South Africa: Coega Steel issued with prohibition notice

Department of Employment and Labour inspectors have issued a prohibition notice to Coega Steel in Gqeberha after the company was found to have flouted various health and safety regulations.

The discovery of non compliance came to effect after an Occupational Health and Safety Inspector received anonymous pictures of a Coega Steel employee with burns on the hands and face due to an explosion that took place at the employers furnace department.

The life threatening incident which left employees traumatised revealed that a total of five employees were injured on the day. All these employees sustained multiple burns all over their bodies from face, neck, chest, head, hands, ankle due to the explosion, said the department in a statement on Thursday.

It is alleged that the incident happened on 22 August 2021, during a night shift and was not reported to the department in terms of legislation.

The employer continued with production on the same day without conducting an internal investigation in order to get to the root cause of the incident and concluded that the incident was due to human error.

Employment and Labour inspectors handed over prohibition notice to stop all operations at the furnace department where the explosion took place, as there were no steps or action taken by the employer to prevent the re-occurrence of such an incident.

The employer was further instructed to attend to the traumatised employees. To-date the employer has not yet reported the incident as prescribed.

The is a high rate of fatal incidents in the sectors such as agriculture, chemicals, iron and steel as well as construction and investigations regarding the incident is underway. As the custodians of the Occupational Safety Act (OHSA), the department will make sure that employee rights are protected and employers who contravene the law are brought to book, said the department. - SAnews.gov.za

This story has been published on: 2021-09-03. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
South Africa: Corruption main cause in licensing backlogs

One of the main challenges to undoing backlogs in licence renewals and applications is corruption at Driving Licence Testing Centres (DLTC) around the country.

This is according to Transport Department Deputy Minister Sindisiwe Chikunga who was briefing the Portfolio Committee on Transport about plans to improve the online licence booking system.

It was revealed during the briefing that the country is losing billions of Rands to corruption at DLTCs with corruption in Mpumalanga costing the state about R2 billion.

The deputy minister said collusion between drivers license operators and officials working at testing centres results in a lack of booking slots, particularly in Gauteng.

If corruption was not as endemic, entrenched and systemic, most of the challenges would not be here. The issue is mainly about corruption. We have syndicates operating in our centres, from the security at the gate to the most senior official of the licencing station, and we are trying by all means to fight this corruption. Our interventions and the action plan on the renewal of licences seek to overhaul the current system, which is plagued with inefficiencies and corruption, Chikunga said.

The deputy minister was joined in the briefing by Road Traffic Management Corporation (RTMC) chief executive officer Advocate Makhosini Msibi.

He told the committee that corrupt activities are hampering progress at DLTCs.

In Mpumalanga alone we are losing about R2 billion to fraudulent activities by officials. It is a very lucrative deal to work at a DTLC. Most make, on average, no less than R22 000 per day. We arrested officials who were making about R140 000 in two days, he said.

Msibi told the committee that the RTMC will be upgrading its National Traffic Information System (NaTIS), moving towards the digitisation of mobile booking centres, introducing online eye tests and bringing more provinces onto the online booking system in order to counter corruption.

With the online booking system, a driver will do bookings online and only go for eye tests at the station, and also have the option of having their licence delivered at home, to avoid queuing. The new system of smart services speaks to all the elements of the fourth industrial revolution (4IR) and the harmonisation with Home Affairs to establish validity of identity documents will all deal with the problem of fake driving licences, Advocate Msibi said.  SAnews.gov.za

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South Africa: SA urged to vaccinate to counter resurgence of infections

President Cyril Ramaphosa says those that choose not to vaccinate increase the risk for a resurgence of infections and prolonged economic hardship for the rest of the population.

The President said this when he responded to oral questions in a hybrid sitting of the National Assembly on Friday.

If we can vaccinate a large proportion of our population, particularly the adult population, by December, we can avoid another devastating wave of infections and restrictions on the economy.

Those who refuse to be vaccinated are increasing the risks for all of us, not only for a further resurgence of infections, but of prolonged economic hardship and lack of recovery.

We therefore all have a responsibility to encourage South Africans over the age of 18 to go to their nearest vaccination sites today to protect themselves, to protect others and to help all of us get our economy back on track. Above all, vaccines are free in our country, they are safe and effective, he said.

The President said since the outbreak of the Coronavirus pandemic in March last year, more than 82 000 people are known to have succumbed to the disease in South Africa and nearly 2.8 million people are known to have been infected.

He said the virus has caused a massive damage to the economy and disrupted education, and has increased levels of poverty and unemployment.

When combined with other preventative measures such as mask wearing and social distancing, the COVID-19 vaccine is the most effective instrument that we have to prevent deaths, reduce infections and restore the economic and social life of our country.

Evidence shows that COVID-19 vaccines reduce the chances of severe disease, hospitalisation and death, he said.

Leaders urged to encourage vaccination

The President said some leaders of society have contributed to vaccine hesitancy.

Yes, there is hesitancy in our country in a few pockets of our community, and some of it unfortunately is also being encouraged and propelled by statements and positions that are articulated [by some leaders].

Around the whole world, millions of people are being vaccinated against COVID-19 and lets say that if one looks historically in our own lives, we have all been vaccinated.

From a very young age, each one of us has been vaccinated. Even before I was vaccinated for COVID-19, I had to be vaccinated for yellow fever and when I was told that my yellow fever certificate for previous vaccinations had expired and if I wanted to travel to certain countries, especially on our continent, I should have that and if not, I should not bother.

Vaccination is not a new thing to all of us. Therefore, for me it is absolutely bizarre that when we are dealing with a pandemic that is killing people more directly in front of our eyes, that we should be encouraging people not to be vaccinated when it has been proven that vaccination does actually save lives.

Regulations for employees, employers on vaccination

President Ramaphosa said, however, no one should be forced to vaccinate.

He said that instead, there is a need to use the available scientific evidence to encourage people to be vaccinated to protect themselves and also to protect people around them.

At the same time, our occupational health and safety laws require that we ensure a safe working environment.

This situation poses challenges for employers who want to keep their workers safe from COVID-19 by respecting the rights of those who dont want to be vaccinated.

On the 11th of June this year, the Department of Employment and Labour issued consolidated directions on occupational health and safety measures in terms of the Disaster Management Regulations.

The directions provide guidelines for employers that intend to make vaccinations mandatory.

Such employers need to determine the category of employees to be vaccinated, taking into account the vulnerability of the employees owing to age or any comorbidities that they would have, as well as the risks that are posed as a result of the role of the employee for the work that they do.

The implementation of any mandatory vaccination policies must in the end be based on mutual respect, which is the respect and rights of the people, which achieves a balance between public health imperatives, the Constitutional rights of employees and the efficient operations of the employers business. That is quite a delicate balance that needs to be struck.

Employees may refuse vaccination on medical or Constitutional grounds. In such instances, the employer should counsel the employee and if requested, allow them to seek guidance from a health and safety representative or a trade union official as well as a health practitioner.

These necessary steps should be taken to responsibly accommodate the employee in a position that does not require the employee to be vaccinated and it could range from the employee continuing to work at home without contact with others or customers or suppliers, or to be placed in an area where they are able not to interface with others to spread the virus.  SAnews.gov.za

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South Africa: More COVID-19 vaccines needed in Africa

At least 80% of African countries are expected to miss the global target of vaccinating at least 10% of their populations against COVID-19 by the end of September.

This was revealed by World Health Organisation (WHO) regional director for Africa, Dr Matshidiso Moeti.

She was speaking during a press briefing on the COVID-19 pandemic and vaccine rollout on the continent on Thursday.

Although Africas third wave peaked in July, the decline in new cases is at a glacial pace  far slower than in previous waves. The pandemic is still raging in Africa and we must not let our guard down. Every hour, 26 Africans die of COVID-19. As long as vaccination rates are low, severe illness and death risk are staying high, she said.

According to Moeti, only nine of Africas 54 countries have already met the 10% target, including South Africa, Morocco and Tunisia.

[T]hese countries are in the upper middle or high income brackets and have procured vaccines directly from manufacturers as well as receiving various vaccine supplies. For lower income countries that are receiving mainly vaccine donations, the situation is more dire (sic), she said.

Dr Moeti told the briefing that less than 3% of Africas entire population have been fully vaccinated as opposed to Europe and the United States 50%.

She said this is due to vaccine inequality.

Vaccine hoarding has held Africa back and we urgently need more vaccines, but as more doses arrive, African countries must zero in and drive forward precise plans to rapidly vaccinate the millions of people that still face a grave threat from COVID-19.

Equally concerning is a continuing inequity in the distribution of doses. Africa counts for just 2% over the over five billion doses given globally. This percentagehasnt shifted in months. It is encouraging though that in the past month over 21 million doses have arrived on the continent through COVAX, thats equal to the entire four previous months, Dr Moeti said.  SAnews.gov.za

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Hong Kong: Sophia Chan visits Genome Institute

Secretary for Food & Health Prof Sophia Chan today visited the Hong Kong Genome Institute to learn more about the progress of the Hong Kong Genome Project and exchange views with the institute staff about their work.

The Chief Executive announced the launch of the genome project in the 2018 Policy Address, with $1.2 billion earmarked in the 2019-20 Budget for related purposes.

The Genome Institute was established in May 2020 to take forward the project with partners including the Hospital Authority and local universities. It is staffed by a team of professionals including doctors, scientific officers, bioinformaticians and genetic counsellors.

The project will be implemented in two phases, with the pilot phase having commenced in July 2021 which covered about 2,000 cases with undiagnosed disorders and hereditary cancers.

The main phase, which will be extended to cover 18,000 cases of diseases linked to hereditary components, is expected to commence in mid-2022.

Speaking during her visit of the institute, Prof Chan said that genomic medicine has huge potential in screening, diagnosis and personalised treatment of diseases.

The Government is determined to promote local development of genomic medicine, so that our patients can benefit from more precise diagnosis and more effective treatment, she added.

The health chief then proceeded to the Hong Kong Children's Hospital where she toured the facilities of a partnering centre.

In the pilot phase of the project, eligible participants will be recruited by the partnering centres at the Children's Hospital, Prince of Wales Hospital and Queen Mary Hospital in collaboration with the Genome Institute.

"Making reference to similar overseas projects, genomic and clinical data collected under the Hong Kong Genome Project will be de-identified and kept in a bioinformatics analysis platform set up by the Hong Kong Genome Institute for access by approved researchers, with a view to promoting the development of local medical research and international academic exchanges.

The project will strengthen Hong Kong's international status in such areas as genomic medicine and innovation and technology (I&T). I am delighted that local universities and I&T institutions welcome and have indicated strong support for the Genome Project," she added.

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South Africa: SAHPRA agrees with FDA warning against Ivermectin for COVID

The South African Health Products Regulatory Authority (SAHPRA) has joined the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to caution against the use of Ivermectin to treat COVID-19.

According to SAHPRA, its position to align itself with the FDA is reflected in the statement issued in January this year, outlining its views on the drug and the Controlled Compassionate Use Programme.

SAHPRA echoes the FDAs stance that Ivermectin does not have proven antiviral properties against SARS-COV-2, but it is currently used to treat parasitic conditions in animals.

It is also used to treat certain conditions in humans such as very specific doses for some parasitic worms and there are topical formulations for head lice and skin conditions like rosacea.

In August, the FDA said it had been receiving multiple reports of patients who had required medical support and had been hospitalised after self-medicating with Ivermectin intended for horses.

The FDA has not approved Ivermectin for use in treating or preventing COVID-19 in humans. Ivermectin is not an anti-viral or a drug for treating viruses, the US agency explained.

The local drug watchdog has since reiterated that taking such a drug without it undergoing the requisite testing and protocols could adversely affect peoples health and could lead to death.

Meanwhile, the Ivermectin Controlled Compassionate Use Programme, implemented by SAHPRA on 28 January 2021, makes approved Ivermectin products accessible.

In South Africa, SAHPRA said there is registered Soolantra 10mg/g cream formulation, which contains ivermectin.

Soolantra cream is indicated for the topical treatment of moderate to severe inflammatory lesions of papulopustular rosacea in adult patients and is not suitable for the prevention or treatment of COVID-19.

As SAHPRAs focus is on the health and wellbeing of the South African public. SAHPRA continuously engages the scientific and medical community to explore the options for controlled, monitored access to reliable quality Ivermectin-containing products for human use with simple but essential reporting requirements, said SAHPRA CEO, Dr Boitumelo Semete-Makokotlela.

In addition, Semete-Makokotlela said SAHPRA is monitoring the illegal sale of so-called Ivermectin by unscrupulous individuals.

The public should not buy any drug online or from unauthorised dealers, she said.

SAHPRA, like the FDA, cautioned against fake news and misinformation.

It reminded citizens that medical professionals should oversee the medical treatment of any disease.  SAnews.gov.za

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Hong Kong: CE visits secondary school

Chief Executive Carrie Lam today visited a Tsing Yi school to learn more about the promotion of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education and listened to the students views and suggestions on the upcoming Policy Address.

At Po Leung Kuk Lo Kit Sing (1983) College, Mrs Lam received a briefing on the schools experience in promoting STEM education, and viewed the students award-winning works in various competitions as well as a display of STEM teaching materials.

They included sumo robots, 3D printing technology, a hydroponics system and virtual reality devices.

Mrs Lam told the students she was pleased to see that they are devoted to STEM learning. She encouraged them to keep up their efforts and be brave in their endeavours to explore their interest and potential in STEM.

The Chief Executive pointed out that the current-term Government has devoted substantial resources to innovation and technology (I&T) development and attaches great importance to the promotion of STEM education in schools to stimulate students interest in I&T and innovative thinking as well as popularise science.

She said in the past few years, the Government has implemented various measures to support STEM education in schools, including updating the curriculum, strengthening training for teachers, providing financial and other support and organising large-scale learning activities.

The Government will continue to enhance the relevant measures to develop students interest in STEM from a young age and strengthen learning to ensure a steady supply of talent for Hong Kongs I&T development, Mrs Lam added.

She then proceeded to the school hall to attend a session with students on the upcoming Policy Address. In addition to some 60 Secondary 5 and 6 students of the school, about 800 students from 16 other Po Leung Kuk schools joined the session through video conferencing.

During the hour-long session, about 20 students put forward their views covering youth development, education, I&T, healthcare and environmental protection. They also expressed views covering national security education and enhancing support for Hong Kong athletes.

Mrs Lam thanked the students for actively giving their views on the upcoming Policy Address.

She said Hong Kong enjoys the institutional strength of one country, two systems and a number of traditional advantages. She stressed that, together with the countrys strong support in the National 14th Five-Year Plan for Hong Kongs development in a number of key areas, the future of Hong Kong is very promising.

She encouraged the students to fully equip themselves and be courageous to pursue their dreams and develop bright prospects for themselves.

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RTHK: Former US cardinal pleads not guilty to sexual abuse

Former US cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the most senior Roman Catholic official in America to face criminal charges in the massive clergy abuse scandal, pleaded not guilty on Friday to charges that he sexually assaulted a teenage boy.

McCarrick, 91, arrived at Massachusetts District Court in the town of Dedham walking hunched over with the aid of a walker, amid some boos, video shared on social media showed.

McCarrick's attorney, Barry Coburn, confirmed that he pleaded not guilty. Coburn said he had no further comment.

"Today, history is being made. History that will not be forgotten," the victim's attorney Mitchell Garabedian said.

"The trailblazing complainant is sending a direct message to the Catholic Church that its reign of sexual abuse by Bishops and Cardinals is going to be confronted head on."

The former archbishop of Washington DC was charged in July with three counts of indecent assault and battery against a child over 14.

McCarrick was thrown out of the Catholic Church in 2019, becoming the highest-ranking Church figure to be expelled in modern times.

He had been found guilty by the Vatican of sexually abusing at least one teenage boy in the 1970s and of sexual misconduct with adult male seminarians.

Prosecutors in this case allege that McCarrick groped a 16 year old boy in 1974 as they walked around the campus of Wellesley College in Massachusetts during the boy's brother's wedding reception.

The victim says that McCarrick led him into a room and groped his genitals while "saying prayers", according to the criminal complaint.

McCarrick left the courthouse on Friday after posting US$5,000 bail, according to court papers.

The ex-cardinal has been the subject of several civil lawsuits brought by accusers but this is the first criminal case against him. (AFP)

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RTHK: Blinken to visit Qatar for Afghan crisis talks

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Friday he would travel to Qatar on Sunday to meet with the country's leaders and thank them for their help with evacuees from Afghanistan, and later go to Germany for a ministerial meeting.

Blinken told a news conference at the State Department he would meet with Afghans and workers in the Qatari capital Doha "who are doing truly heroic work around the clock".

He said he would travel to the Ramstein Air Base in Germany where he also would meet with Afghans. The ministerial meeting will be held virtually with partners, including more than 20 countries that have a stake in relocating and settling Afghans.

Blinken also said the US government was maintaining contact with the Taliban. "We continue to maintain channels of communication with the Taliban, on issues that are important," Blinken said.

The State Department was "in constant contact" with Americans remaining in Afghanistan who still wish to leave the country, Blinken said.

"We have dedicated teams assigned to each of these American citizens to be in constant contact with them. We're providing them with very tailored, very specific guidance," he said.

Almost all of those remaining are dual nationals whose homes are in Afghanistan and whose extended families live there, Blinken said.

"It's no surprise that deciding whether or not to leave the place they call home is a wrenching decision," he said.

Blinken also described the department's efforts since President Joe Biden took office in January to speed the processing of special visas for Afghans who worked with US forces during the 20-year war, thousands of whom are still in Afghanistan. (Reuters)

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Xi unveils new measures to facilitate trade in services

Xinhua) 07:55, September 03, 2021

Chinese President Xi Jinping addresses the Global Trade in Services Summit of the 2021 China International Fair for Trade in Services via video, Sept. 2, 2021. (Xinhua/Huang Jingwen)

BEIJING, Sept. 2 (Xinhua) -- President Xi Jinping on Thursday unveiled a slew of new measures to facilitate trade in services in the country's latest efforts to share its development opportunities and boost global economic recovery.

China will explore the development of national demonstration zones to promote the innovative development of services trade and increase support for services sector in countries participating in the Belt and Road Initiative, Xi said while addressing the Global Trade in Services Summit of the 2021 China International Fair for Trade in Services (CIFTIS) held in Beijing.

The country will optimize the rules for the services sector by supporting Beijing and other localities in piloting the alignment of domestic rules with the ones in high-standard international free trade agreements and in building digital trade demonstration zones, Xi said.

A stock exchange will be set up in Beijing to serve innovation-oriented small and medium-sized firms, Xi said.

"Let us join hands to defeat the COVID-19 pandemic and get through these tough times," Xi said.

"Using peace, development and win-win cooperation as the 'golden key', we will be able to address the challenges facing the world economy and international trade and investment, and create a brighter future for all," he said.

Themed "Towards Digital Future and Service Driven Development," the 2021 CIFTIS will last from Sept. 2 to Sept. 7.

As a massive exhibition and trading platform dedicated to trade in services, the CIFTIS played an important role in boosting worldwide trade last year, when the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted global trade.

Addressing the CIFTIS in 2020, Xi made three proposals, calling on all countries to jointly foster an open and inclusive cooperation environment, work together to invigorate momentum for cooperation driven by innovation, and break new ground in win-win cooperation.

At a press conference last week, Vice Minister of Commerce Wang Bingnan said the ministry has rolled out 36 detailed measures to implement what was proposed at last year's CIFTIS, with many seeing significant progress.

For example, the country introduced its first negative list for cross-border trade in services at the Hainan free trade port in July, marking the highest level of opening-up in the cross-border services trade realm.

As COVID-19 has accelerated the digitalization of trade in services, this year's CIFTIS features a dedicated section for digital services for the first time.

The 2021 CIFTIS has attracted the registration from more than 12,000 enterprises, up 52 percent from that in 2020. Representatives from 153 countries and regions signed up for the event, compared with 148 last year.

Full text of Chinese President Xi Jinping's remarks at Global Trade in Services Summit of 2021 China International Fair for Trade in Services

(Web editor: Xia Peiyao, Liang Jun)
Senior Chinese diplomat urges U.S. to adopt rational, pragmatic China policies

Xinhua) 08:05, September 03, 2021

Yang Jiechi, a member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), also director of the Office of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the CPC Central Committee, meets with U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry via video link upon invitation, Sept. 2, 2021. (Xinhua/Zhai Jianlan)

BEIJING, Sept. 2 (Xinhua) -- Yang Jiechi, a member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), on Thursday met with U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry via video link upon invitation, urging the United States to adopt rational and pragmatic China policies to work with China in bringing ties back on track as soon as possible.

Yang, also director of the Office of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the CPC Central Committee, said for some time China-U.S. relations have faced severe difficulties due to a series of erroneous acts by the United States to interfere in China's internal affairs and undermine China's interests. "China is strongly opposed to and even more resolute in countering such practices."

As confrontation between China and the United States serves no one's interests, Yang said the two countries should have mutual respect, coexist peacefully, handle differences properly, and work for win-win results.

"This will serve the fundamental interests of people on both sides and people of all countries in the world," Yang said.

He expressed the hope that the United States can take into consideration the common interests of the two sides and the long-term interests of itself, take concrete steps to rectify wrongdoings, view China and bilateral relations in an objective and rational manner, and respect China's political system and development path.

China is open to dialogue and pragmatic cooperation with the United States, Yang said, noting that the two countries can enhance coordination and cooperation on a broad range of issues including climate change, COVID-19 control and economic recovery.

"At the same time, such cooperation must be two-way and mutually beneficial," he added.

Noting that China has taken a series of major strategic decisions and strong measures to respond to climate change, a demonstration of its active and determined attitude, Yang said China respects other countries' rights to development and choice, and the rights to development and choice of China must be respected as well.

China is ready to enhance policy communication and pragmatic cooperation on climate change with the United States to facilitate the full and effective implementation of the Paris Agreement, said Yang.

Noting U.S.-China relations are very important to the two countries and the whole world, Kerry said the United States is willing to step up dialogue with China and jointly cope with climate change based on mutual respect, so as to inject impetus into the improvement of bilateral ties.

(Web editor: Xia Peiyao, Liang Jun)
Afghanistan shows deficiency in EU's strategic autonomy comes with price: top diplomat

Xinhua) 08:07, September 03, 2021

The High Representative of the European Union (EU) for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell speaks at a press briefing after the EU foreign ministers' video conference on the Middle East situation at the EU headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, May 18, 2021. (European Union/Handout via Xinhua)

"Everybody has been insisting on the need to draw lessons and understand why our efforts to build a modern state in Afghanistan have not led to a sustainable result," Borrell said.

BRUSSELS, Sept. 2 (Xinhua) -- The European Union (EU) should combine its forces and strengthen, including capacity and will to act to improve its strategic autonomy, as lessons should be drawn from Afghanistan, the bloc's top diplomat warned on Thursday.

"Afghanistan has shown that the deficiency in our strategic autonomy comes with a price," the bloc's foreign policy chief Josep Borrell told journalists after an informal meeting of EU defense ministers in Slovenia.

"The only way forward is to combine our forces and strengthen not only our capacity but also our will to act," he said.

Borrell said that this means raising the level of readiness through joint military training and exercising, establishing new tools like the "first entry force" of 5,000 troops that will be presented at the November defense council of minister.

Photo taken on Aug. 31, 2021 shows a military plane at Kabul airport in Kabul, capital of Afghanistan. (Photo by Saifurahman Safi/Xinhua)

The European Union (EU) has evacuated 17,500 people from Afghanistan, including 520 EU staff and their family members, Borrell noted.

"Everybody has been insisting on the need to draw lessons and understand why our efforts to build a modern state in Afghanistan have not led to a sustainable result," Borrell said.

"This is not the moment to disengage; on the contrary, we have to increase our engagement to continue supporting Afghan people, especially those who wanted to leave but were unable to do so."

Photo taken on Aug. 31, 2021 shows military vehicles at Kabul airport in Kabul, capital of Afghanistan.(Photo by Saifurahman Safi/Xinhua)

Following the United States' hasty military withdrawal from Afghanistan and its refusal to extend the withdrawal deadline of Aug. 31, its European allies felt dazed and betrayed as they were scrambling to depart the war-torn country with their own meagre resources.

Without U.S. military support, the Europeans would not be able to evacuate their own personnel and local Afghan forces from Kabul, said Senior Policy Fellow Jana Puglierin at the European Council of Foreign Relations.

Concerns were also surging over a possible flood of Afghan refugees into Europe after the U.S. military withdrawal, casting doubt over Europe's long-standing strategic dependence on the United States.

(Web editor: Xia Peiyao, Liang Jun)
China opens int'l services trade fair, unveiling opening-up measures for global recovery

Xinhua) 08:13, September 03, 2021

-- The 2021 China International Fair for Trade in Services kicked off on Thursday in Beijing, highlighting China's new pledges to open the country's services sector wider and enhance global cooperation for further economic recovery.

-- Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday announced a slew of new measures at the Global Trade in Services Summit of the 2021 CIFTIS.

-- This year's CIFTIS features a special section for digital services for the first time, with up to 33 well-known enterprises and institutions participating in the special section.

BEIJING, Sept. 2 (Xinhua) -- The 2021 China International Fair for Trade in Services (CIFTIS) kicked off on Thursday in Beijing, highlighting China's new pledges to open the country's services sector wider and enhance global cooperation for further economic recovery.

Themed "Towards Digital Future and Service Driven Development," the fair, held both online and offline, will tap the potential of cutting-edge digital technologies and functions as a platform for promoting world economic recovery and growth.

Enterprises from home and abroad have flocked to the fair, hoping to seek opportunities in the world's second-largest economy.

The 2021 CIFTIS has attracted the registration from more than 12,000 enterprises, up 52 percent from that in 2020. Representatives from 153 countries and regions signed up for the event, according to the Ministry of Commerce (MOC).

Up to 21 percent of offline exhibitors are Fortune 500 companies or industry leading enterprises, according to the MOC.

Along with Thursday's Global Trade in Services Summit of the 2021 CIFTIS, five summit forums as well as 119 thematic forums and conferences will also be held on the sidelines.

The holding of CIFTIS this year has shown that China is open and confident about embracing the world, and is committed to working with the global community to "make its market cake bigger" so that everyone can enjoy and share the benefits, said Michael Bi, EY Greater China Markets Managing Partner.

MOC data showed that China's services trade rose by 7.3 percent year on year to nearly 2.81 trillion yuan (about 435.02 billion U.S. dollars) in the first seven months of the year.

Journalists visit a venue of CIFTIS at the China National Convention Center in Beijing, capital of China, Aug. 31, 2021.(Xinhua/Lu Peng)

OPENING-UP COMMITMENT

Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday announced a slew of new measures at the Global Trade in Services Summit.

China will open up at a higher level, by implementing across the country a negative list for cross-border services trade and by exploring the development of national demonstration zones for the innovative development of trade in services, said Xi.

The country will also scale up support for the growth of the services sector in the Belt and Road partner countries and share China's technological achievements with the rest of the world, according to Xi.

At 2020 CIFTIS, Xi made three proposals for the international community, including jointly fostering an open and inclusive environment for cooperation, working together to invigorate momentum for cooperation driven by innovation, and making joint efforts to break new ground in win-win cooperation.

Over the past year, China has walked the talk in turning those proposals into concrete actions.

Photo taken on Aug. 31, 2021 shows a venue of CIFTIS at Shougang Park in Beijing, capital of China.(Xinhua/Chen Yehua)

China issued the country's first negative list for cross-border trade in services in the southern island province of Hainan, built Beijing into a national comprehensive demonstration zone, and added four pilot zones for deepening opening-up in services trade in Tianjin, Shanghai, Chongqing and Hainan.

According to a report published by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, China is one of the economies that saw the largest declines in services trade restrictiveness in 2020.

Xi announced on Thursday that China will set up a stock exchange in Beijing and build it into a major base for innovative small and medium-sized firms.

"We are excited by China's commitment and concrete actions to further strengthen its financial markets," said Rochelle Wei, CEO of J.P. Morgan Futures Co., Ltd.

The further opening up of China's financial market will present significant opportunities for the company and its clients, Wei said, adding that global investors have shown great interest in China and some have beefed up their investment.

Journalists visit a venue of CIFTIS at the China National Convention Center in Beijing, capital of China, Aug. 31, 2021.(Xinhua/Lu Peng)

DIGITAL FUTURE

"The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the digitalization of trade in services, thus providing opportunities for structural adjustment and the development of new services trade businesses," said Vice Minister of Commerce Wang Bingnan at a press conference last week.

In 2020, China's digitally deliverable trade in services stood at 294.76 billion U.S. dollars, up 8.4 percent year on year and accounting for 44.5 percent of the total services trade, MOC data showed.

This year's CIFTIS features a special section for digital services for the first time, with up to 33 well-known enterprises and institutions participating in the special section.

China has made digital development a clear national strategy, and achieved stunning achievements in information infrastructure construction in the past few years, said Michael Bi.

With the sound infrastructure base, vast smart terminals and digital environment, China will speed up its digital transformation, he added.

(Web editor: Xia Peiyao, Liang Jun)
China to provide 110m doses of COVID-19 vaccines to COVAX, signs long-term supply deal with WHO: Chinese FM

Global Times) 08:27, September 03, 2021

Staff members unload Chinese Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccines at Islamabad International Airport in Islamabad, capital of Pakistan, Aug. 11, 2021. The first batch of COVID-19 vaccine that China provided to the COVAX facility was officially handed over to Pakistan during a ceremony held here on Thursday. Early Wednesday morning, a batch of over 970,000 doses of Chinese Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccine arrived at Islamabad International Airport. (Photo/Xinhua)

China will provide 110 million doses of Sinovac and Sinopharm COVID-19 shots to the pandemic program of the World Health Organization (WHO) by the end of October, and it will continue to provide vaccines to WHO in the long term as outlined in a deal recently reached by the two sides, said Wang Wenbin, a spokesperson of the Chinese Foreign Ministry, on Thursday.

China has always been actively engaged in the WHO's COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access (COVAX) program, and committed to promoting the accessibility and affordability of the shots in developing countries, Wang said.

A WHO document showed that the COVAX program plans to ship 100 million doses of the China-produced vaccines by the end of October, mostly to African and Asian countries, in its first delivery of Chinese vaccines, Reuters reported.

Responding to the report, Wang noted that the two Chinese companies, Sinopharm and Sinovac, negotiated with GAVI, the global vaccine alliance on the supply issue, in the first half of this year, after getting the WHO's approval for emergency use.

They were included in the procurement pool of the COVAX program this July, and will provide 110 million doses to the program by the end of October, which will be allocated to countries according to their needs, Wang said, adding that the two sides have reached an agreement on long-term vaccine supply and are now discussing details of subsequent shipments.

The first batch of some 9 million doses of Chinese vaccines provided to COVAX arrived in Pakistan and Bangladesh in early August, Wang said. Another 30 million doses will be shipped to Algeria, Cote d'Ivoire, Niger, Kyrgyzstan, Venezuela and other developing countries in the near future.

Sinovac, now as a partner of COVAX, said in a statement on Thursday that it has provided more than 1.8 billion shots of COVID-19 vaccines to the whole world.

"This is another practical move by China to fulfill its commitment to provide vaccines as global public goods and to promote the fair distribution of vaccines," Wang said, urging countries with such abilities to support the developing world and contribute more to the global fight against the pandemic.

China will provide 2 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines for the world and offer $100 million to COVAX throughout this year, Chinese President Xi Jinping said in early August in a written message to the first meeting of the international forum on COVID-19 vaccine cooperation.

(Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Liang Jun)
Bosten Lake wetland a paradise for wild waterfowls in China's Xinjiang

People's Daily Online) 08:35, September 03, 2021

An egret flies at the Bosten Lake wetland, Bayingolin Mongol Autonomous Prefecture, northwest Chinas Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. (Peoples Daily Online/Que Hure)

Located in the Bayingolin Mongol Autonomous Prefecture of northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, the Bosten Lake wetland has become a paradise for wild waterfowls, thanks to years of environmental protection.

In recent years, the prefecture has continuously improved the lake's ecological environment through a slew of measures such as implementing wetland conservation and restoration projects and returning farmland back into forests and grasslands, which has turned the lake into an ideal habitat for wild waterfowl.

(Web editor: Xian Jiangnan, Liang Jun)
China's AG600 amphibious aircraft to perform flights at Airshow China

Xinhua) 08:54, September 03, 2021

BEIJING, Sept. 2 (Xinhua) -- China's independently developed AG600 large amphibious aircraft will perform its first airshow flight at the upcoming Airshow China, according to its developer, the Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC).

Among multiple key exhibits of China's self-developing aviation products, the AG600 will show its capacities of aerial water-dropping at Airshow China, or the 13th China International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition, said the AVIC spokesperson Zhou Guoqiang.

The water-dropping performance will fully display the firefighting capacities of this large amphibious aircraft model, Zhou said.

Code-named Kunlong, the AG600 is a key piece of aeronautical equipment in China's emergency rescue system. It is developed by the AVIC to meet the needs of firefighting and marine rescue missions, as well as other critical emergency rescue operations.

This year's Airshow China will be held from Sept. 28 to Oct. 3 in Zhuhai, south China's Guangdong Province.

(Web editor: Xia Peiyao, Liang Jun)
Beijing accelerates construction of demonstration zone for greater openness in service sector and pilot FTZ

09:04, September 03, 2021 By Zhu Jingruo, Wang Haonan ( People's Daily Online

Signs and posters of the China International Fair for Trade in Services (CIFTIS) can be seen everywhere in Shougang Park, a venue for the event in Shijingshan district in Beijing, August 28, 2021. (Peoples Daily Online/He Luqi)

Beijing, whose service sector accounts for more than 80 percent of its GDP, has speeded up the development of a national integrated demonstration zone for greater openness in the service sector and a pilot free trade zone (FTZ), and witnessed rich fruits in relevant endeavors over the past year.

Since the 2020 China International Fair for Trade in Services (CIFTIS) held last September, the city has implemented a good number of pioneering policies and projects to advance the construction of the two zones, continuously optimized its business environment, guided the transformation and upgrading of trade in services, and become a digital economy leader. The citys achievements in developing the two zones are showcased at the ongoing 2021 CIFTIS.

As of August 1, 198, or 78.9 percent, of the 251 tasks set out in the plans for the development of the two zones had been implemented.

Many of the policies and projects implemented for the construction of the two zones were unprecedented in the country, such as a policy that allows qualified companies to be granted accreditation as soon as they submit application for recognition as high-tech enterprises, preferential income tax policies for corporate venture capital firms and technology transfer, and a pilot platform for transfer of private equity investment shares, according to Liu Meiying, deputy director of the leading group office for the development of the two zones, Beijing Municipal Commerce Bureau.

Continuously taking bigger and bolder steps in the construction of the two zones, Beijing became one of the first cities in the country to pilot cash-pooling service for multinational companies that integrates domestic and foreign currency management and the first Chinese city to implement a new supervision model for bonded logistics supply chain.

While injecting vitality into the market, the implementation of such innovative policies has benefited enterprises in the city.

Thanks to Beijings pioneering policy on tax exemption, credit, and rebate for key aviation materials, an aircraft maintenance company, whose hangar is located to the south of the Beijing Capital International Airport, has saved about eight million yuan (about $1.24 million) in expenditure on transportation and shortened aircrafts maintenance cycle by more than 400 days.

In Tianzhu comprehensive bonded zone in Shunyi district, Beijing, efforts to streamline work processes and cut administrative fees are making cross-border trade more convenient. The introduction of single-window document processing mechanism and smart devices at checkpoints has enabled vehicles to pass through entrance and exit of the bonded zone in less than one minute.

More than 1.07 million orders of pharmaceutical products worth of over 110 million yuan have been completed since the launch of the pilot project for the import of pharmaceutical products in cross-border e-commerce, said Zheng Jie, deputy director of the policy and regulation department of the management committee of the bonded zone.

Digital economy is playing an important role in driving trade in services in Beijing. The city has continuously enriched the application scenarios of digital RMB. So far, more than 5,000 businesses in Beijings Haidian district accept digital RMB payment.

By approving testing of self-driving vehicles in a 10-km section of the Jingtai (Beijing-Taipei) Expressway, Beijing has brought the development of its intelligent connected vehicle (ICV) industry onto a fast track.

The city has also promoted digital transformation by kicking off the construction of a supercomputing center, establishing the Beijing International Big Data Exchange, and cultivating exemplary digital economy enterprises, among other endeavors.

Beijing has about 1,500 artificial intelligence (AI) companies, which account for around 28 percent of the countrys total. Last year, the added value of Beijings digital economy, including AI industry, reached 1.44 trillion yuan, accounting for 40 percent of the citys GDP.

In August this year, Beijing announced its goal of growing into a global model of digital economy by the year 2030.

The development of the two zones has bettered Beijings business environment and made the city more attractive to foreign companies.

Changping district in the city has launched a special service window for government services related to the development of the two zones; Chaoyang district has set up the Beijing CBD International Talent One-stop Service Center to help foreign nationals with documentation issues; and Daxing district has actively developed a demonstration zone for innovation cooperation between China and Japan.

In July this year, Ueda Yagi Money Broking (China) Co., Ltd., the first wholly foreign-owned money broker in China, was inaugurated in the Beijing Municipal Administrative Center. According to Huang Hong, president of the company, it was the citys sound business environment and favorable measures that appealed to the company.

To attract and retain talents, Beijing rolled out reward policies to support for-profit human resource service providers in introducing urgently needed international talents for employers in the city.

City-level and district-level one-stop service centers for foreign talents have been set up in many areas of the city, which allow foreign nationals to apply for work and residence permits at a single service window and receive both permits at the same time, cutting one-third of the time needed for relevant procedures compared to the past.

By piloting cash-pooling service for multinational companies that integrates domestic and foreign currency management, Beijing has facilitated capital arrangement of multinational companies.

In addition, the city has also piloted a project to make it more convenient for employees sent overseas by Chinese-funded organizations to handle exchange settlement online for their salaries. The project has reduced the time needed for relevant procedures by 80 percent.

(Web editor: Hongyu, Liang Jun)
China urges European Parliament to abide by one-China principle

Xinhua) 09:21, September 03, 2021

BEIJING, Sept. 2 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese spokesperson on Thursday urged certain bodies and members of the European Parliament to adhere to the one-China principle when handling Taiwan-related issues.

Zhu Fenglian, a spokesperson for the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council, made the remarks when commenting on a recent report adopted by the European Parliament's Committee on Foreign Affairs, which called for elevating EU-Taiwan "political relations."

The one-China principle is a widely recognized norm for international relations and a consensus of the international community, said Zhu, urging the relevant bodies and members of the European Parliament to rectify their wrong remarks and decisions.

Zhu also reiterated that any attempts by Taiwan's Democratic Progressive Party to rely on foreign forces to seek "Taiwan independence" will amount to nothing.

(Web editor: Xia Peiyao, Liang Jun)
Chinese vocational workshop in Egypt prepares graduates for labor market

Xinhua) 09:26, September 03, 2021

Mohamed Ahmed Awad, executive director of Luban Workshop at Egypt's Ain Shams University, introduces Luban Workshop to the trainees at the university in Cairo, Egypt, Aug. 16, 2021. (Xinhua/Sui Xiankai)

CAIRO, Sept. 2 (Xinhua) -- An engineering professor was taking a group of students on a tour inside a spacious vocational training workshop, Luban Workshop, at Cairo-based Ain Shams University, introducing its courses to them.

Under the cooperation among China's Tianjin Light Industry Vocational Technical College, Tianjin Transportation Technical College and Egypt's Ain Shams University, Luban Workshop was set up to provide vocational training for Egyptian youth and prepare them for the labor market.

Opened in late November 2020, Luban Workshop covers an area of around 1,200 square meters, dividing into three training sections. The total cost of the workshop's equipment is 9.35 million yuan (about 1.4 million U.S. dollars).

The first section is designed for training students on computer numerical control equipment application and maintenance, the second for new energy application technology and the third for automobile application and maintenance technology.

Motivated by the successful experiences of such workshops in China, Ain Shams University President Mahmoud al-Metini welcomed the idea of establishing the Luban Workshop, showing his gratitude for the contribution of the two colleges in Tianjin.

In the workshop, a white SUV car stood at one corner of the section for training on automobile maintenance technology, while the workshop director showed the students a showcase at another corner next to a large screen featuring parts of a vehicle and how they function.

He then took the students to the new energy section and showed them a unit of solar energy production and how it works.

Mohamed Ahmed Awad, executive director of Luban Workshop, said that the workshop was reopened a month ago after it was closed as a precautionary measure against the spread of COVID-19 pandemic.

It has provided two training courses and the current is the third, the professor said, adding that at least 20 more students will join the workshop within a few days.

"Luban Workshop boosts the students' practical experience and gives them the opportunity to apply the theoretical knowledge. This is a huge step in the development of education, especially for students of engineering," Awad said.

He also spoke of future plans to make the workshop an independent college with a dual Egyptian-Chinese degree given to graduates.

Ibrahim Abdel Ghaffar, a 22-year-old student at the Faculty of Engineering, has been receiving training at Luban Workshop for two weeks. He commended the specialized training programs and the well-equipped labs provided by the workshop.

"I practically applied what I learn in the faculty through the training program of the workshop," he said.

"Luban Workshop project is a success story between Egyptian and Chinese universities," said Omar Mohamed el-Husseiny, dean of the Faculty of Engineering.

"It will boost the students' skills and their future interaction with the labor market," the dean told Xinhua, pointing out that "practical training is much more important than theoretical training, especially in engineering fields."

(Web editor: Xia Peiyao, Liang Jun)
Fengyun 3E weather satellite captures first images of sun

China Daily) 09:46, September 03, 2021

(An extreme ultraviolet image of the sun taken by China's Fengyun 3E weather satellite. CHINA DAILY)

Pictures will help forecasters predict interruption of communication on Earth

The Fengyun 3E weather satellite has captured its first test pictures of the sun, offering improved assistance in predicting solar activities and their impact on Earth and space weather.

"With the images, we will better forecast and instantly warn people and authorities of impacts on Earth from solar activities, including interruption of communications, navigation and large-scale power outages," Zhang Peng, deputy director of the National Satellite Meteorological Center, told a news conference on Thursday at which the pictures were released.

Solar activities including solar flaresexplosive events that release energy from the sun's surfacedisrupt the functions of infrastructure by altering the Earth's magnetic field and ionosphere.

As the sun is the major energy source for Earth, its activities also affect weather and climate systems, Zhang said, adding that people need to always pay attention to solar activities.

The images can also provide more accurate data for space weather forecasts to ensure the safety of manned spacecraft operations and of astronauts who conduct spacewalks, Zhang said.

Zhang said that facilities on Earth can only see light from the sun through unfavorable atmospheric and weather conditions, while the satellite can detect other light that directly affects Earth's environment.

"Like a CT scan for a body check, the satellite's imager can 'check' the sun all the time," he said.

The imager, the first of its kind, can capture images of hot gases in the Sun's outer atmosphere with X-rays, while extreme ultraviolet images show the Sun's dark bars at a lower temperature. Combining the two images can predict solar eruptions more effectively, the China Meteorological Administration said.

By the end of this year, the administration will release an album of photos taken by the satellite.

Data from the Fengyun series of satellites has served 118 countries, the administration said.

China launched Fengyun 3E, the world's first early morning weather satellite for civil use, from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center on July 5.

It belongs to the polar-orbiting satellite group, which pass over the north and south poles in a north-south ellipse synchronous with the sun, passing places on Earth at the same local time.

One of the satellite's sides faces the sun all the time, making it suitable for monitoring solar activities, Zhang said.

(Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Liang Jun)
Chinese ambassador lambastes U.S. intelligence community's COVID-19 origins tracing report

Xinhua) 09:46, September 03, 2021

JOHANNESBURG, Sept. 2 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Ambassador to South Africa Chen Xiaodong has refuted a U.S. intelligence community's COVID-19 origins tracing report, saying the U.S. effort to hype up the so-called Wuhan lab leak is "nothing but a farce and a terrible scandal for the international community," according to the South African news website IOL.

The report released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence of the United States on Aug. 27 slandered that "China withholds information, refuses to cooperate and obstructs international investigation," Chen said on Monday at a press briefing on COVID-19 origins tracing.

"The Chinese side opposes and condemns such a report filled with groundless accusations and lies," said the ambassador, noting it is anti-science for politicians and the intelligence community to uncover the origins of viruses, IOL reported on Tuesday.

Chen denied allegations that China manufactured or leaked the virus from a lab in Wuhan before it spread to the rest of the world, which was fueled by former U.S. President Donald Trump.

The so-called Wuhan lab leak theory is "full of loopholes" and "a complete fabrication," he stressed, noting that the lab has been operating safely and stably since it opened in 2018 by strictly following international standards all the way from design, construction to management.

China is "open and transparent" on origins-tracing cooperation, with nothing to hide, the ambassador noted. China has twice invited World Health Organization (WHO) experts to study the origins of COVID-19 in July 2020 and March 2021, respectively. After that, the WHO released the China-WHO joint study report on COVID-19 origins-tracing, which clearly concluded that a lab leak of COVID-19 is "extremely unlikely."

The timeline of China's COVID-19 response proves that China has no reservations about sharing information with the world, he said. The U.S. government received its first formal notification of the outbreak of the novel coronavirus in China as early as Jan. 3, 2020, but did not treat it in a more serious manner until 70 days later. "I guess all of us are very clear about what the U.S. has done during the 70 days," said the ambassador.

Calling the U.S. move a witch-hunt that only looks for excuses in favor of their verdict presuming China to be guilty, Chen said the United States held science in contempt, turned a blind eye to the loss of lives, and undermined global solidarity against the virus.

"It is important for the international community to join hands to fight against not only COVID-19, but also the political viruses," he said.

(Web editor: Xia Peiyao, Liang Jun)
Mainland decries external intervention in Taiwan affairs

Xinhua) 10:22, September 03, 2021

BEIJING, Sept. 2 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese mainland spokesperson on Thursday warned against external intervention in Taiwan affairs.

Zhu Fenglian, a spokesperson for the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council, made the statement in response to a recent so-called security dialogue hosted by Taiwan's Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) authority, with participants from countries like the United States and Japan.

Reiterating that Taiwan is part of China and the Taiwan question is a domestic affair of China, Zhu said that the DPP authority has never stopped its attempts to seek "Taiwan independence" and use foreign forces to resist reunification through military means.

"Its moves have posed a serious threat to peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait and will bring disaster to the people of Taiwan," she said.

(Web editor: Xia Peiyao, Liang Jun)
Foreign political leaders oppose politicization of COVID-19 origins tracing (2)

Xinhua) 10:24, September 03, 2021

BEIJING, Sept. 2 (Xinhua) -- Foreign political leaders and parties have firmly opposed politicizing the origins tracing of COVID-19, believing that a recent report on the issue by the U.S. intelligence community has absolutely no scientific basis or credibility.

In their messages to the International Department of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, they said that the U.S. report has ignored science and facts, persisted with political manipulation, continued smearing China, and severely interfered with and undermined the solidarity of the international community in combatting the pandemic and global cooperation in origins tracing.

They appreciated China's active participation in global tracing into the origins of COVID-19 with an open and transparent attitude, expressing belief that such studies should be led by global scientists and medical experts. They also called on the international community to strengthen unity and cooperation and jointly build a global community of health for all.

The so-called report the United States concocted recently has no scientific basis, noted Bayazeed Kasi, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party's Advisor on Cooperation with the Communist Party of China. The United States has messed up its own epidemic prevention and control, Kasi said, adding that far from reflecting on its own mistakes, the country has spent a vast amount of resources on politicizing the pandemic and stigmatizing the virus.

The U.S. report has severely disrupted global anti-pandemic cooperation, Kasi said, expressing strong opposition to any deeds that undermine science-based origins tracing.

Vice Secretary-General for Foreign Affairs of Sudan's National Umma Party Ahmed Hussein Ahmed said that China has taken the right approach to the origins tracing of the COVID-19 pandemic, adding that his party appreciates China's openness and transparency as well as tremendous efforts and significant role in this regard.

China is the world's most successful major country in responding to the novel coronavirus, Ahmed said, thanking China for helping Arab countries mitigate the impact of the pandemic.

Yahya Ahmed Al-Waqf, vice president of Mauritania's Union for the Republic, said that research on the origins tracing of the novel coronavirus should be carried out in a scientific manner and the practice of politicizing it should be abandoned.

China has taken the lead in sharing the information of the virus with other countries and in providing various forms of assistance to developing countries to fight the pandemic, which is widely recognized and appreciated by all countries, Al-Waqf said, adding that China's attitude and actions in the face of the pandemic are the right approach for all countries to learn.

Muhammad Alloush, a member of the Central Committee of the Palestinian Popular Struggle Front, expressed firm opposition to politicizing and labeling the origins tracing of the novel coronavirus and all attempts to block global cooperation in the fight against the virus.

The so-called U.S. report, Alloush said, tries to smear China's success in fighting the pandemic, but cannot cover up the country's own failure in this regard.

Countries should give top priority to people's lives and health, trace the origins of the virus with scientific methods, establish a sense of a community with a shared future for mankind, and jointly confront SARS-CoV-2, a common enemy of mankind, Alloush added.

Stephen Bwansa Mabele, a politburo member of the People's Party for Reconstruction and Democracy of the Democratic Republic of Congo, said that the COVID-19 pandemic and variants of the virus have impacted the life and safety of people in all countries and the world economy.

A few countries have tried to politicize scientific issues, even issued false reports regardless of facts and poured dirty water on other countries, which has seriously hindered the WHO's efforts to coordinate countries to jointly prevent and control the pandemic, Mabele added.

The Communist Party of Peru (Red Fatherland) said that the United States has instrumentalized and politically manipulated origins tracing, and produced a report against China without scientific basis, in a clear attempt to evade responsibility and blame China for this global disaster.

This move seriously hindered a science-based origins tracing and the global anti-pandemic progress, the party said, calling on all countries to conduct origins tracing research through international cooperation on the premise of respecting science.

The Communist Party of Britain said that after sending a team of international experts to China to study earlier this year, the World Health Organization (WHO) concluded that it was extremely unlikely that the virus was introduced to humans through a laboratory, but the United States still ordered its intelligence community to fabricate the report.

The U.S. assertion was suspected extremely by leading British experts in the field of virology, who followed the generally accepted genetic evidence that the virus originated in nature, said the party.

(Web editor: Xia Peiyao, Liang Jun)
China tightens regulations on livestreaming agents

Xinhua) 10:25, September 03, 2021

Huang Lili promotes longan products via livestreaming in Putian, southeast China's Fujian Province, Aug. 17, 2021. (Xinhua/Wei Peiquan)

BEIJING, Sept. 2 (Xinhua) -- China's Ministry of Culture and Tourism has unveiled regulations for livestreaming industry agents and performers, urging them to uphold right values.

According to these regulations, the agents of livestreaming performers are prohibited from inducing users to consume goods or services through fraudulent practices, such as hyping up the tipping lists or false advertising.

The regulations also stipulate that the agents should ban the contracted performers from inducing consumption using verbal stimulation or promising special treatment to generous tippers.

(Web editor: Xia Peiyao, Liang Jun)
Chinese regulators order ride-hailing firms to rectify irregular practices

Xinhua) 10:27, September 03, 2021

BEIJING, Sept. 2 (Xinhua) -- Chinese regulators have summoned 11 ride-hailing service platforms for talks over their irregular practices, ordering the firms to examine their operations and immediately rectify non-compliant behaviors.

Some platform companies have used multiple marketing tactics to engage in vicious competition, and also taken part in illegal operations such as the hiring of unlicensed drivers, according to several regulatory authorities including the Ministry of Transport and the Office of the Central Cyberspace Affairs Commission.

The 11 firms, including Didi Chuxing and the ride-hailing service of Meituan, were ordered to cease recruiting non-compliant cars and drivers, stop vicious competition and disorderly expansion, and ban practices that exclude or restrict competition.

The authorities also called on the platforms to regulate their pricing mechanisms to reduce the commission they take from drivers and adopt necessary security measures to protect user information.

(Web editor: Xia Peiyao, Liang Jun)
Transparent research into COVID-19 origins needs to go beyond Wuhan, says observer

Xinhua) 10:32, September 03, 2021

MEXICO CITY, Sept. 2 (Xinhua) -- The United States continues its drive to pin the blame for the COVID-19 pandemic on China despite scientific evidence, according to Dominican economist Eduardo Klinger Pevida.

In a recent op-ed article in the Dominican daily Hoy, Klinger noted that an international panel of experts gathered by the World Health Organization (WHO) "found no evidence" that the novel coronavirus escaped from a laboratory in Wuhan, as Washington claims.

However, the United States has kept pressing the WHO to once again send investigators to Wuhan, citing the need for openness and transparency.

It appears Washington would have the panel "contradicting science" to not only discredit China but also deflect from its own possible role in unleashing the pandemic, Klinger said in the article headlined "Fort Detrick, biological laboratories and viruses as weapons,"

In the Western media there have been reports of "'suspicious' outbreaks of lung disease with symptoms similar to COVID-19 in the vicinity of Fort Detrick and the USAMRIID -- United States Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases, a very important military facility for biological warfare," said Klinger.

In addition, "North American media registered several thousand suspected cases of COVID-19 from July to December 2019," prior to the global outbreak of the disease, he added.

China has called for an investigation into these reports, but so far its concerns have not been taken up, said Klinger.

In the interest of openness and transparency, he suggested that these incidents be investigated.

(Web editor: Xia Peiyao, Liang Jun)
Chinese mainland reports no new locally transmitted COVID-19 cases

Xinhua) 10:34, September 03, 2021

A medical worker inoculates an old woman with a dose of COVID-19 vaccine in Neikeng Town in Jinjiang City, southeast China's Fujian Province, Aug. 31, 2021. (Xinhua/Song Weiwei)

BEIJING, Sept. 3 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese mainland on Thursday reported no new locally transmitted COVID-19 cases, the National Health Commission said in its daily report on Friday.

Thursday saw 28 new imported cases, nine of which were reported in Yunnan, eight in Shanghai, five in Guangdong, two in Henan and one each in Heilongjiang, Zhejiang, Sichuan and Shaanxi.

Two suspected cases arriving from outside the mainland were reported in Shanghai. No new deaths related to COVID-19 were reported on Thursday, the commission added.

A total of 8,395 imported cases had been reported on the mainland by the end of Thursday. Among them, 7,775 had been discharged from hospitals following recovery, and 620 remained hospitalized. No deaths had been reported among the imported cases.

The total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases on the mainland reached 94,954 by Thursday, including 935 patients still receiving treatment, two of whom were in severe condition.

A total of 89,383 patients had been discharged from hospitals following recovery on the mainland, and 4,636 had died as a result of the virus.

A total of 22 asymptomatic cases, all arriving from outside the mainland, were newly reported. There were a total of 433 asymptomatic cases, of whom 378 were imported, under medical observation on Thursday.

By the end of Thursday, 12,113 confirmed COVID-19 cases, including 212 deaths, had been reported in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR), while 63 cases had been reported in the Macao SAR, and 16,006 cases, including 837 deaths, had been reported in Taiwan.

A total of 11,799 COVID-19 patients in the Hong Kong SAR had been discharged from hospitals following recovery, while 60 had been discharged in the Macao SAR, and 13,692 had been discharged in Taiwan.

(Web editor: Xia Peiyao, Liang Jun)
Root cause of U.S. fentanyl abuse problem is "in itself" -- Chinese embassy

Xinhua) 13:07, September 03, 2021

WASHINGTON, Sept. 2 (Xinhua) -- The root cause of the U.S. fentanyl abuse is "in itself," and Washington is "purely wrong" to "groundlessly criticize China and spread disinformation," said the Chinese Embassy in the United States on Thursday.

"This would only set up obstacles to our cooperation. It is hoped that the U.S. side will face up to its own problems, come up with practical solutions, and learn from international experience to safeguard the health and wellbeing of the American people. We sincerely hope that the United States can solve its opioid abuse crisis at an early date," said a spokesperson of the Chinese embassy in a statement.

ROTTEN FABRICATIONS

"For all the goodwill and sincerity of the Chinese side, for all its strenuous efforts and huge sacrifices, as well as the great achievements of China-U.S. cooperation in drug control," it is disappointing that some American politicians and media are spreading such toxic disinformation as "American fentanyl mainly origins from China," the spokesman said.

"They even claim that China often delays the requests from the U.S. side. These assertions are highly irresponsible and utterly false," said the spokesperson.

In response to the rumor that Chinese fentanyl precursors flow into the United States via Mexico, the spokesperson said that China has never found any scheduled precursor chemicals trafficked to Mexico, or received any notification from the Mexican side about seizing scheduled chemicals originating from China.

"Such made-up allegations show zero sense of responsibility towards American fentanyl abuse victims and their families, and seriously mislead the Chinese and American people. They are not in the least helpful for the United States to solve its drug problem and should be rectified as soon as possible," the statement read.

On May 22, 2020, without any evidence, the U.S. Department of Commerce added the Institution of Forensic Science under China's Ministry of Public Security and the Chinese National Narcotics Laboratory onto its "entity list."

"This action has seriously affected China's examination and identification of fentanyl substances and hindered the operation of its fentanyl monitoring system," the spokesperson said. "China has expressed serious concern and protest to the U.S. side through various channels."

Labelling narcotic drugs as a common enemy of mankind, the spokesperson said, "The Chinese government takes a 'zero tolerance' attitude to drugs. It has been rigorously combating drug production, trafficking and other kinds of drug crimes."

U.S. FENTANYL CRISIS

The Chinese side empathizes with American people who are suffering from the opioid crisis, and has been offering sincere and law-based assistance to the international community, including the United States, in dealing with fentanyl abuse, said the spokesperson.

From 2017 to 2018, China scheduled control over six fentanyl substances and two precursor chemicals, more than the number of varieties listed by the United Nations at that time.

On May 1, 2019, the Chinese government took the lead globally in officially scheduling fentanyl substances as a class, though there was no large-scale abuse or prominent hazards of them in China.

"In contrast, as the biggest producer and user of fentanyl drugs in the world, the U.S. has a fentanyl problem more rampant than other countries, but it has not officially scheduled fentanyl substances permanently yet. The reasons behind are worth pondering. Here, we urge the U.S. side to permanently schedule fentanyl substances as soon as possible," the spokesperson said.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2020, the number of drug overdose deaths in the United States reached a record high of 93,000, among which 69,700 were caused by opioids overdose, up by over 30 percent year-on-year.

Against the backdrop of increasingly strict control of fentanyl substances in the world at large, America's worsening fentanyl crisis and the resulting rise in deaths have shown that it has not addressed the crux of the problem, said the spokesperson.

CHINA'S STANCE

"China advised the U.S. side, out of goodwill and many times, to strengthen supervision and regulation of fentanyl-related prescription and raise public awareness about it, which have been proved worldwide to be effective solutions," the spokesperson said.

China's National Narcotics Control Commission and the Ministry of Public Security have maintained close, candid and in-depth coordination with their American partners, including the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, the International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs Bureau of the State Department and the Drug Enforcement Administration.

China has made every effort to improve its legal and regulatory framework to control fentanyl sales, and investigate and combat online sales. Notably, China has required its postal and parcel industry to take specific measures to combat the trafficking of fentanyl substances and other scheduled chemicals via post services.

"These measures have produced notable results and have been widely recognized by U.S. law enforcement partners, who have expressed appreciation on many occasions and called drug control a highlight in our bilateral law enforcement cooperation," the spokesperson said.

According to information offered by U.S. anti-drug authorities, since September 2019, the United States has not seized any fentanyl or its analogues originating from China.

"At the same time, China attaches great importance to multilateral international cooperation in drug control, and has been actively participating in global drug governance," the spokesperson said.

"We are ready to work with various countries, including the United States" to promote international co-governance on the fentanyl issue, share experience in drug control and address the drug problems together, said the spokesperson, noting, "The Chinese government has taken a consistent and resolute stance on drug control."

(Web editor: Xia Peiyao, Liang Jun)
Virus origin tracing by intelligence community is a failed US conspiracy

13:23, September 03, 2021 By Chen Zi ( People's Daily Online

(Cartoon by Lu Lingxing)

In May, US President Joe Biden ordered intelligence agencies to investigate the origins of COVID-19 and submitted the results to him within 90 days. On Aug.27, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a report on the origin of the virus, which said the intelligence community is split on whether the virus leaked from a lab or developed in nature. The report also accused China of hindering global investigations into the origins of the virus, refusing to share information and placing the blame on other countries.

It took the US intelligence community 90 days to finally come up with this inconclusive report on the origins of COVID-19. As they failed to provide any persuasive evidence to prove the so-called lab leak theory, and they instead resorted to the old trick of scapegoating China by accusing the country of being uncooperative in the investigations.

Clearly, the virus origin tracing process conducted by the American intelligence community which is nothing but a farce, has proven to be a complete failure. The US, having the highest number of COVID cases and deaths worldwide, is worthy instead of being crowned with the names of the loser in the fight against COVID-19, the spreader of COVID-19 to the world, the suspected country of origin for COVID-19, and the destroyer of global anti-pandemic efforts. In order to cover up its own failures in coping with the virus, the US government has been racking its brain to pass the buck to China by fabricating lies and pretending to be a victim of the virus.

People who have even just a little knowledge about US intelligence agencies could foresee that their investigations wouldnt produce any constructive results, with the report having no scientific basis and now being confirmed as just another absurd show.

The Hong Kong-based news website, the Asia Times, published an article recently, saying that the origin tracing initiated by the US government was just a bad joke. Origin tracing studies must be carried out based on science, and in this respect, the US government was being unreasonable by handing over a scientific task to its intelligence community, clearly a move that has nothing to do with science, expecting ironclad conclusions from the investigations, and setting an arbitrary deadline for the task. In an article published by the Associated Press, scientists had cautioned that it was unlikely that a 90-day review would yield definitive answers.

The investigation is a farce that has nothing to do with the truth. The US intelligence community, which was in charge of the origin-tracing task, maintains a notorious record of cooking up lies. We lied, we cheated, and we stole. We had entire training courses. It reminds you of the glory of the American experiment, as relayed in a speech given by former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who also served as the former CIA director, revealing in stark reality the true nature of the US intelligence world.

The misconducts of the US intelligence agencies are too numerous to count. They fabricated the Gulf of Tonkin incident, which led to the US escalating their engagement in the Vietnam War; they fabricated the baby incubator story, which led to the further aggravation of the Gulf War; they launched Operation Mockingbird, recruiting journalists from around the world to create fake news through bribery; they wielded washing powder as evidence as proof that Iraq was in possession of weapons of mass destruction and then declared war on Iraq based on this pretext. The intelligence community is the pride of the US government, which can spew forth lies in order to help achieve the deceitful machinations of governing elites in Washington, D.C.

Ever since the outbreak of the pandemic, China has raced against the clock to share information about the coronavirus to the world, having shared with the world the genome sequence of the virus and called for global cooperation by acting in keeping with the principles of openness, transparency and responsibility. It has always taken a scientific, professional, serious and responsible attitude in tracing the origins of the virus, taking the lead in cooperating with the World Health Organization (WHO) on virus origin tracing, and inviting WHO experts to China twice to carry out studies on origin tracing. The open and transparent attitude demonstrated by China on issues concerning virus origin tracing has won acclaim from global experts.

By contrast, the nasty investigation into the origins of the virus conducted by the US intelligence community, which is a tool of Washington, D.C. to maintain US hegemony, can only be despised by the international community. The conspiracy-based report, which represents an attempt by the US to shirk its responsibility in failing to control the pandemic and continue its now hardening campaign to smear and contain China, will only hinder global efforts to complete virus origin tracing and undermine the global fight against the pandemic. The US is advised to stop smearing other countries and instead make a concerted effort to trace the origins of the virus within US territory by first investigating its own labs.

(Web editor: Hongyu, Liang Jun)
Brazil's Sao Paulo launches investment guide to China

Xinhua) 14:07, September 03, 2021

SAO PAULO, Sept. 2 (Xinhua) -- The government of Brazil's largest and most industrialized state, Sao Paulo, on Thursday launched an investment guide to China for Brazilian companies.

"It is very important for Sao Paulo to have a foot in China," Gustavo Junqueira, president of InvestSP, a Sao Paulo government investment agency, said during a webinar.

The guide is a roadmap that contains key information on the Chinese economy and geography, as well as a legal framework for foreign entrepreneurs.

"We want to be part of the Chinese business ecosystem, taking investment over there not only from large companies but also from small and medium-sized ones," said Junqueira.

The launch of the guide followed the second anniversary of the opening of Sao Paulo's trade office in Shanghai, whose opening is seen as underscoring the fact that China has been Brazil's biggest trade partner since 2009.

The trade office was opened in August 2019 during Sao Paulo Governor Joao Doria's visit to China. Sao Paulo is the state with the most Chinese investment in Brazil.

(Web editor: Xia Peiyao, Liang Jun)
Number of Alsophila costulari hits 100,000 in Mojiang, Yunnan

People's Daily Online) 14:30, September 03, 2021

The number of Alsophila costularis in Mojiang county, southwest China's Yunnan province has reached 100,000.

Alsophila costularis is hailed as a "living fossil" in the plant world. It is under national second-class protection in China.

(Photo/Yunnanfabu)

The species is densely distributed on the banks of the Lixian River, Mojiang, Yunnan province.

To protect the species and the local biological environment, a provincial-level nature reserve was established in Mojiang county in 2005.

After years of efforts, the number of Alsophila costularis in the nature reserve has experienced a sharp increase, with a maximum distribution of over 150 per hectare.

The total number of the plant found in the nature reserve has hit the 100,000 mark, making it one of the regions in the world to see the highest number and densest distribution of the Alsophila costularis.

The plants look like flower baskets when viewed from above and look like umbrellas on tree trunks from the opposite direction.

The plants straight trunks and dense crowns make them uniquely different from other species of flora.

(Web editor: Hongyu, Liang Jun)
U.S. companies fret about anti-China sentiment, oppose trade restrictions against China: Politico

Xinhua) 15:08, September 03, 2021

WASHINGTON, Sept. 2 (Xinhua) -- U.S. companies are concerned that Washington's anti-China sentiment could hurt their ability to do business in the world's second-largest economy, reported news portal Politico on Wednesday.

Groups, including the Chamber of Commerce, the U.S.-China Business Council and the National Retail Federation, have been campaigning against congressional and White House moves to toughen trade and finance rules on China, said the report.

U.S. companies are concerned that a trade crackdown could strangle investments U.S. firms have made in the world's most populous nation, it said.

"There's a huge consumer market in China. Most of the big U.S. companies are selling there. They're not just using it as an export platform. They're integrated into the economy in other ways," Rufus Yerxa, a former senior U.S. trade representative and now president of the National Foreign Trade Council, was quoted as saying.

(Web editor: Xia Peiyao, Liang Jun)
Tracing origins of America's war addiction

Xinhua) 15:09, September 03, 2021

The U.S. Capitol building is seen through a barrier fence in Washington, D.C., the United States, Jan. 17, 2021. (Xinhua/Liu Jie)

Since the end of World War II, the United States has either intervened or waged a number of wars overseas, causing not only severe civilian casualties, but serious property damage and harrowing humanitarian crisis.

-- According to a study by Brown University, at least 800,000 people have died in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria and Yemen since the United States launched the "War on Terror" after the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001.

-- More than 7,000 U.S. troops and over 8,000 contractors working for the United States have also died fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Brown University study showed. In addition, tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers and contractors have been injured or suffered from mental illness, many of them having committed suicide due to the post-war trauma.

-- The U.S. wars have brought political turmoil, economic stagnation and destitute families in many countries. The United States itself is also struggling with the massive military spending and health care for veterans.

WASHINGTON, Sept. 3 (Xinhua) -- Since its declaration of independence in 1776, the United States has been involved in warfare through most of its history. And Washington has been proactively engaged in military interventions or even launched military operations in hotspot regions worldwide over the past decades.

While there are historical reasons for the bellicosity, America's heavy reliance on military approaches over the past decades has been essentially driven by a hankering to retain hegemony in the world and vested interests of the country's influential military-industrial complex, media pundits and experts have said.

Its "war addiction", which has led to hundreds of thousands of deaths and destruction of countless homes in an array of countries, has also backfired, with casualties and tragedies among its own troops piling up amid sky-high military spending.

File photo shows American soldiers patrolling at attack scene in Maidan Shahr, capital city of Wardak province, Afghanistan on Sept 8, 2013. (Xinhua)

HISTORY OF USING VIOLENCE

In early 1600s, colonists and Native Americans attempted a mutual relationship based on exchanges of goods and ideas.

However, with the influx of more European migrants, settlers stepped up violent seizure of land and resources while carrying out massacres of the indigenous. The barbaric acts, along with imported diseases such as smallpox, and famine, had radically reduced the indigenous population.

Worsened relations led to King Philip's War, also known as the First Indian War from 1675 to 1676. In the bloodiest war per capita in U.S. history, thousands of Indians were killed, wounded, or captured and sold into slavery or indentured servitude, and several hundred colonists were dead and dozens of English settlements destroyed or heavily damaged.

Thirty colonies on the Atlantic coast of North America declared their independence from Great Britain in 1776 and formed the United States of America while fighting the "American Revolutionary War." Yet the federal government did not move to alleviate the suffering of the Native Americans after winning the war. Instead, its policies motivated violent displacement and bloody killings of them.

Take the Indian Removal Act. Effective from 1830, it gave land belonging to the Native Americans to southern states. More than 46,000 Native Americans were forced -- sometimes by the U.S. military -- to abandon their homes and relocate.

Thousands of them died of disease, starvation, and exposure to extreme weather, on the forced journey in what became known as the "Trail of Tears."

There was a widespread belief in Manifest Destiny in the 19th century that the United States is destined to expand its dominion and spread its values to justify the forced removal of Native Americans and other groups from their homes, as well as its territorial expansion through wars.

"Violence is the primal problem of American history, the dark reverse of its coin of freedom and abundance," wrote U.S. historian David Courtwright in 1996.

People are seen in the rain caused by tropical storm Henri, in Times Square in New York, the United States, on Aug. 22, 2021. (Xinhua/Wang Ying)

WAR ADDICTION

During a speech in 2019, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter said that the United States is "the most warlike nation in the history of the world," because it has only enjoyed 16 years of peace in its 242-year history.

The root cause of America's addiction to the use of armed forces, firstly, lies in its yearning to maintain hegemony. For long, the U.S. government has pursued hegemonic policies and spared no effort to hold the global standing. Waging wars have thus been a crucial tool to that end.

The United States has no moral scruples to initiate a war, by hook or by crook. To justify their military operations, the United States has frequently hyped up the military threats posed by other countries, though it has had the world's largest and most expensive military and sought a military superiority with an obsession in arms races.

Secondly, the war addition is related to Washington's desire to export its values. Boasting of "a city upon a hill," the United States believes in so-called "American exceptionalism" and has tried relentlessly to spread its self-defined "universal values." For those countries who have different systems and values, they are more likely to be subject to military intervention by the United States and its allies.

Thirdly, the United States pursues the law of the jungle in the international arena. Since the end of the Cold War, America's strength has grown unprecedentedly dominant and become increasingly arrogant in addressing international affairs. It is habituated to resort to military means with no regard to international order and rules and with no respect for other countries.

One of the reasons that the United States "keeps fighting foolish wars" is that "it has a remarkably powerful military," wrote Stephen Walt, a Harvard University professor of international relations, in an op-ed article published by Foreign Policy magazine in 2011.

"When you've got hundreds of planes, smart bombs, and cruise missiles, the whole world looks like a target set," Walt argued.

Children wearing masks are seen outside fuel distribution site in Hasansham U3 Camp in Nineveh province, Iraq, Dec. 8, 2020. (Xinhua)

DISASTROUS CONSEQUENCES

Since the end of World War II, the United States has either intervened or waged a number of wars overseas, causing not only severe civilian casualties, but serious property damage and harrowing humanitarian crisis. Till now, many countries are still stuck in a disastrous state, and the United States itself has paid a huge price.

According to a study by Brown University, at least 800,000 people have died in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria and Yemen since the United States launched the "War on Terror" after the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001. That number only includes lives directly lost "through bombs and bullets" in major hotspots, according to the study. The U.S. wars have also turned tens of millions into refugees.

More than 7,000 U.S. troops and over 8,000 contractors working for the United States have also died fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Brown University study showed. In addition, tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers and contractors have been injured or suffered from mental illness, many of them having committed suicide due to the post-war trauma.

In addition, the U.S. wars have brought political turmoil, economic stagnation and destitute families in many countries. The United States itself is also struggling with the massive military spending and health care for veterans.

The war addiction of the United States has not only jeopardized world peace and stability, but also harmed the interests of the vast majority of its own people. And yet America's influential military-industrial complex is profiting off the wars.

The United States boasts five of the world's ten largest defense contractors, and U.S. companies account for 57 percent of total arms sales by the world's 100 largest defense contractors, according to a study by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. In 2020, America's military expenditure reached an estimated 778 billion U.S. dollars, accounting for nearly 40 percent of the world's total.

"Defense companies spend millions every year lobbying politicians and donating to their campaigns," Daniel Auble, a senior researcher for U.S. research group The Center for Responsive Politics, wrote in a report published earlier this year. "To further these goals they hired more than 200 lobbyists who have worked in the same government that regulates and decides funding for the industry."

Erica Fein, advocacy director of Win Without War, a U.S. public education and advocacy coalition, has warned, "continuing to funnel near-limitless resources into the pockets of arms manufacturers while underfunding public goods only undermines the safety of people in the United States and around the world."

(Web editor: Xia Peiyao, Liang Jun)
Chinese astronauts talk with Hong Kong youths from space

Xinhua) 16:23, September 03, 2021

Photo taken on Sept. 3, 2021 shows Hong Kong students asking questions to three astronauts in Tiangong space station via a video chat in Hong Kong, China. (Xinhua/Lui Siu Wai)

Hong Kong youth representatives are talking with the three Chinese astronauts Nie Haisheng, Liu Boming and Tang Hongbo via a video chat to learn more about space-related knowledge.

HONG KONG, Sept. 3 (Xinhua) -- Three Chinese astronauts talked with Hong Kong youth representatives from space on Friday afternoon.

In a real-time video chat, the astronauts in the Tiangong space station answered questions from the youngsters and showed them how to conduct experiments, do exercise and drink water in a weightless environment. Nearly 300 researchers, teachers and students participated in the event.

Nie Haisheng, Liu Boming and Tang Hongbo were sent into space aboard the Shenzhou-12 spaceship on June 17 and have as far completed their second-time extravehicular activities.

They will continue to carry out scientific and technological space experiments before returning to Earth in mid-September.

During the event, the young participants learned how astronauts live and work in the space station and also video chatted with multiple space experts including China's first astronaut Yang Liwei in Beijing.

The event was organized by the Liaison Office of the Central People's Government in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR), the HKSAR government and the China Manned Space Agency.

The event was the latest of a series of space-related activities in Hong Kong. In the past months, renowned national space scientists visited Hong Kong and a lunar soil sample was also on display here.

(Web editor: Xia Peiyao, Liang Jun)
Nepali handicraftsmen look forward to expanding export to China in post-pandemic era

Xinhua) 17:05, September 03, 2021

KATHMANDU, Sept. 3 (Xinhua) -- Rajesh Shakya, a Nepali handicraft trader, has seen a significant drop in handicraft export to China due to the COVID-19 pandemic, while the northern neighbor remains the top export destination for his products.

As a managing director of Harati Ma Handicrafts Pvt. Ltd. based in the Kathmandu Valley, Shakya has been exporting metal crafts to China for the past decade.

"China is the largest market for my products, with 60 percent of my total handicrafts going to China," Shakya told Xinhua, and added that has been pulled down around 90 percent by the pandemic.

"I'm awaiting the COVID-19 situation to normalize as soon as possible so that we could send more goods abroad."

Europe has been the major market for Nepali handicraft items, however, in recent years, China has emerged as a large market for Nepali traders, according to handicraft exporters.

As shown by the Nepali central bank's statistics, handicrafts topped Nepal's exports to China in the 2020-21 fiscal year that ended in mid-July.

The South Asian country shipped handicraft products worth 308 million Nepali rupees (2.62 million U.S. dollars) to China in the last fiscal year, accounting for nearly one-third of Nepal's total exports to China valued at 1.01 billion rupees (8.66 million dollars) during the period, according to the central bank.

The export has suffered badly in the last two fiscal years as the COVID-19 pandemic rages, noted the bank.

Statues are a major item among the handicraft products being shipped to China. According to figures of Nepal's Department of Customs, metal statues worth 13.65 million rupees (116,445 dollars), wooden statues valued at 3.84 million rupees (32,787 dollars) and other statues worth 126.55 million rupees (1.07 million dollars) were sent to China in the past fiscal year.

Besides, felt worth 46.01 million rupees (392,520 dollars), hand-made papers worth 4.27 million rupees (36,421 dollars) and imitation jewelry at 8.16 million rupees (69,652 U.S. dollars) were exported to China as well.

What is more, Chinese tourists were major customers for Nepali handicrafts, according to traders.

"I sold around 70 percent of my handicrafts in the domestic market in normal times and the Chinese tourists were also my important customers," said Dharma Raj Shakya, proprietor of Araniko Stone Carving Pvt. Ltd. in the Kathmandu Valley.

With few foreign tourists setting foot in Nepal amid the pandemic, the handicraft traders have lost an important source of revenues.

Dharma Raj Shakya, who has been involved in handicraft export to China, said China has emerged as "very important market" for Nepali handicraft products in recent years.

"I used to export handicrafts worth over 3 million Nepali rupees (255,885 dollars) to China in a year before the pandemic hit. Now, exports to China fell to around 1.5 million Nepali rupees (12,794 dollars) only in the last fiscal year," said the trader, a former president of the Federation of Handicraft Associations of Nepal.

Still, handicraft traders are hopeful about exports to grow, in particular to China after the COVID-19 pandemic is brought under control.

"I think the suppressed demand for handicrafts during the pandemic will grow once the pandemic is over," said Rajesh Shakya.

(Web editor: Xia Peiyao, Liang Jun)
UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 2 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese envoy on Thursday called for dialogue and cooperation, as well as a return to the framework of the Chemical Weapons Convention, to resolve the issue of Syrian chemical weapons.

It is imperative to maintain dialogue and cooperation to resolve the Syrian chemical weapons issue. China encourages the Technical Secretariat of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) to strengthen dialogue with Syria to jointly resolve outstanding issues, said Geng Shuang, China's deputy permanent representative to the United Nations.

The international community should create favorable conditions for dialogue and cooperation between the two sides, respect the legitimate concerns of Syria and avoid exerting political pressure, he told the Security Council.

"We must go back to the framework of the Chemical Weapons Convention to resolve the issue of the Syrian chemical weapons. All States Parties should safeguard the authority and integrity of the convention. The investigation and handling of incidents of alleged use of chemical weapons must be in strict compliance with the provisions of the convention and the Verification Annex and follow the principles of objectivity, impartiality and professionalism," said Geng.

Based on this position, China maintains that the establishment of the Investigation and Identification Team is beyond the authorization of the convention, he said. "We have always had concerns about its working methods, procedures and staff composition. China urges all States Parties to observe the principle of multilateralism, strengthen dialogue and consultation, reduce political confrontation, and work together to create favorable conditions and a good atmosphere for the OPCW to resume its normal functioning."

In previous Security Council meetings on the issue of Syrian chemical weapons, China has comprehensively and clearly stated its position, stressing that the investigations of issues related to Syrian chemical weapons should be based on facts and guided by science, and should be conducted in an objective and fair manner, he said.
By Feng Sheng

Virus origin tracing is a serious scientific issue. It is a consensus of the international community that origin tracing should be jointly carried out by scientists around the world from a global perspective. But the US has been spreading stigmatizing rumors and slander about the virus since the last administration. On August 2, members of the House of Representatives of the US Congress released an updated version of a so-called investigation report on COVID-19 virus origins tracing, which once again hyped the theory that the virus leaked from a Chinese lab and attempted to frame China with fabricated lies and twisted facts.

For the past year and more, instead of doing their best to contain the pandemic, these American politicians, out of geopolitical considerations, have kept manufacturing and spreading the American political virus and using the pandemic as a weapon to frantically suppress China.

From writing the 57-page red book of lies to guide American politicians on how to blame China for the pandemic to blabbering about the lab leak theory over and over, and to coercing and pressuring scientists to support this fallacy, the US has felt no qualms whatsoever about trampling upon the bottom line of human civilization and the norms governing international relations.

The American political virus has become a global scourge. It is the lies and rumors initiated and spread by the US that have fanned up the anti-Asian sentiments in America and certain other western countries, with obviously more violent actions against Asians. It is also because of Americas coercion that the origin-tracing work cannot move forward in a scientific, professional and objective spirit.

Many scientific experts have been subject to attacks, invectives and threats because they refused to bow to such coercion, and some of them had to resign to hold their ground. Peter Daszak, head of the American non-profit environmental organization Eco Health Alliance, has become the target of certain forces in his country because he had refuted such falsities as lab leak and China holding back data many times.

During the first-phase origin tracing of coronavirus, China, upholding the principle of open, transparent and scientific cooperation, fully supported the work of the WHO expert team comprising scientists from many countries, and did its best to coordinate relevant entities and meet the WHO experts requests for visit and access.

The international community is becoming more aware of Americas origin-tracing terrorism. To date, 70 countries have sent letters to WHO Director-Generaland issued statements opposing politicization of the origin-tracing issue and stressing the need to respect the Report of the WHO-China joint mission on COVID-19, which fully reflect the attitude of the international community.

The origin-tracing investigation is particularly imperative in the US that has the most serious pandemic situation and most virology labs. If the American politicians concocting false reports have the least sense of responsibility for the American people, they should urge the American government to release as soon as possible the facts about the respiratory disease of unknown cause in Virginia in 2019 and the large-scale vaping disease in Wisconsin and Maryland, and to allow the international community to conduct a thorough investigation into Fort Detrick and Americas over 200 biological labs overseas.

Washington has been racking its brains to politicize the origin tracing work and scapegoat China, getting increasingly hysterical as its lips further down the path of origin-tracing terrorism. But despite all its abject tricks, lies can never hide the truth, and the American origin-tracing terrorism that is opposed by the whole international community is bound to go bankrupt.
By Liu Min

ORENBURG, Sept. 3 -- A 19-member Chinese advance team participating in Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) "Peace Mission 2021" joint anti-terrorism military exercise arrived in Orenburg Oblast, Russia, via a Y-20 transport aircraft on September 2, local time.

The team will establish a mechanism with Russia to jointly survey the airports, transportation stations and exercise areas, carry out information docking, and coordinate the logistic support work.

It is learned that the "Peace Mission2021" exercise will kick off at the Donguz training range in Orenburg Oblast, Russia, from September 11 to 25. Four echelons of the Chinese participating troops have departed by railway in succession from the Manzhouli Port of Inner Mongolia in northern China and have completed their transfers and reloads at the Zabaikalsk railway station in Russia.
By Yang Chun

As the US announced the completion of its withdrawal from Afghanistan on August 30, its 20-year military presence in the country came to an end. The scrambled withdrawal once again triggered extensive questioning of the defect-ridden US intelligence agencies, whose inability to provide accurate intelligence about Afghanistan for the US government despite nearly 20-year actual control of the country has eventually led to the shameful, shocking and confidence-shattering debacle on the US side.

US intelligence agencies questioned for inaccurate intelligence

The highly complicated US intelligence system consists of 18 agencies affiliated to a number of federal departments and has an annual budget of more than USD 60 billion. The information it collects and the analysis it makes are vital references for top-level decision-making, and intelligence agencies are seen behind several wars the US has waged or engaged in. Yet their performance in the recent Afghan battlefield has cast the US military into disgrace.

According to Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, there was no evidence among the intelligence they had collected that pointed to an absolute collapse of the Afghan government force in 11 days. The US side expected it to hold on for at least months, or even years, after the American pullout.

American media commented that the recent Kabul moment in Afghanistan has exposed the ineptitude of American intelligence circle to the whole world. Ian Bremmer, president and founder of Eurasia Group and political scientist on global political risk, said lousy intelligence work was an important reason why the US withdrawal has ended up a fiasco, which was further corroborated by the bombing at Kabul airport days ago.

US intelligence agencies' anti-terrorist capability doubted

After all US troops are pulled out of Afghanistan, the US intelligence agencies capability of assisting in anti-terror operations comes under the spotlight. Foreign media reports dont seem to be optimistic about how much a role they going to play in future anti-terror battles.

First, its hard to keep informants. New York Times reported that a major difficulty faced by US intelligence agencies in IT-backward Afghanistan is how to operate without any local contact points as, according to American intelligence officers, many informants will disappear after the withdrawal.

Second, its hard to continue the US-Taliban cooperation. The US military has to cooperate with the Taliban to collect information about terrorist organizations in remote mountainous areas in Afghanistan. Its learned that before the US military launched the airstrike on the Afghan branch of extremist organization Islamic State (IS) on August 27, the Taliban shared with it relevant information about the organization, but it was greatly displeased because the US didnt inform it of the attack in advance. American website The National Interest commented that such limited intelligence cooperation wont go far as their divergences widen.

Third, its hard to integrate reconnaissance with attacks. After obtaining information about terrorists hideouts, the US military usually conducts targeted elimination with manned or unmanned strike platforms. The longer UAVs have to fly, the shorter they can fight and the lower the success rate. At present, the US has deployed a UAV formation at the UAE base in the Persian Gulf; to shorten the flight, it needs a new base in Central Asia, but Russia has expressly objected to any American military presence in the region.

Bad name hard to whitewash

In recent years, the US intelligence agencies, on the surface, are focused on assisting the US military in carrying out diverse combat operations; but they have secretly organized and implemented a long list of actions that are skeletons in the closet, such as assassination, torture of prisoners, and tapping. The debacle in Afghanistan has exposed the US militarys incompetence in intelligence collection and analysis, posing a serious challenge to its future development of intelligence agencies.

On the one hand, its insufficient hard power will be more prominent. After the withdrawal, the US militarys intelligence work in Afghanistan will be at an asymmetrical disadvantage. While military forces cannot solve the anti-terror problem, intelligence agencies will hardly play an important role in the increasingly complicated and grave anti-terror war.

On the other hand, its strained soft power will be hard to improve. To make anti-terror battles more effective, US intelligence agencies may step up the targeted elimination of heads of terrorist organizations in the future, which, given the US militarys usual mode of operation, will inevitably cause civilian casualties and therefore aggravate the negative comments on the US intelligence department and military.
Chinese astronauts on board the Tiangong space station have a real-time video dialogue with Hong Kong students on Sept 3, 2021. [Photo/Xinhua]

Astronauts on board China's Tiangong space station had a real-time video dialogue on Friday afternoon with a group of students in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.

During the dialogue that lasted about 20 minutes, the three crew members of the Shenzhou XII mission - Major General Nie Haisheng, the mission commander, as well as Major General Liu Boming and Senior Colonel Tang Hongbo - greeted participants in Hong Kong and then answered questions from the students, such as how they conduct experiments, do physical exercise and drink water. They also showed the students different parts inside the colossal spacecraft and demonstrated the functions of some equipment.

Taking part in the event were HKSAR Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor; Tan Tieniu, deputy director of the Liaison Office of the Central People's Government in the HKSAR; Zhou Jianping, chief designer of China's manned space program; Hao Chun, director of the China Manned Space Agency; Yang Hong, chief designer of the Tiangong space station; as well as senior HKSAR officials and a group of Hong Kong teachers and students.

Participants watched a video about the country's space station program and the Shenzhou XII mission and listened to Zhou's speech about the latest developments in the space station program.

Zhou and several space officials including Yang Liwei, the first Chinese in outer space and now a senior planner, also answered questions from Hong Kong residents before the dialogue.

The China Manned Space Agency said the occasion was intended to respond to Hong Kong people's questions concerning the motherland's space endeavors, foster cooperation and communication between the mainland and Hong Kong, encourage and enable Hong Kong youngsters to know about space exploration, and inspire their pursuit of adventure and innovation as well as patriotism.

The Shenzhou XII mission was launched on a Long March 2F carrier rocket that blasted off on June 17 from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern China. The astronauts entered the Tiangong space station later that day after the two spacecraft docked with each other, becoming the first inhabitants of the station.

By now, both of the crew's two planned spacewalks have been successfully completed. They will continue performing scientific experiments and technological tests until mid-September, when they will return to Earth.

The three-month Shenzhou XII mission, the nation's seventh manned spaceflight, is part of the Tiangong program, which aims to complete a three-component station in a low-Earth orbit before the end of 2022.
At a training interval, Abulaiti (R, front) entertaines with his comrades-in-arms. (Photo by Zhan Lihong)

By Zhan Lihong and Hai Yang

Abulaiti, a young man of Uyghur nationality, is a private first class (PFC) soldier assigned to the 10th armored infantry company of the 4th battalion of a brigade under the 79th Group Army. He is of medium height and wheat-colored skin, sunny and confident. This is what he has left on others at first sight. Speaking of his growth since childhood, Abulaiti has become more confident about his vision for the future.

In 1997, Abulaiti was born in a small remote village in Pishan County, Hotan Prefecture, northwest Chinas Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. Pishan County is located near the Taklimakan Desert, featuring sparse precipitation, dry air and frequent sandstorms. Abulaiti has an elder brother and a younger sister. When he was 6 years old, his parents left the village to work in the cities to support the family. After graduating from junior high school, his elder brother Abulimiti dropped out of school and became a migrant worker as well. Abulimiti returned to campus four years later to finish senior high school education and was admitted to a university. Today, Abulimiti has been a teacher in a local school.

When admitted into junior high school, Abulaiti often collected wastes around the campus in exchange for living expenses as a way to ease his familys burden,. In 2014, due to his excellent academic performance, Abulaiti was identified as a subsidy recipient under a preferential policy implemented by the Party and the government in Xinjiang and was sent to study at the Liang Xiang High School Affiliated to Beijing Normal University.

From a remote border village to Beijing, Abulaiti felt as if I was in a dream. All his study and living expenses were afforded by the Chinese government during his senior high school education. He treasured the opportunity, studied hard, and served as a monitor for 4 consecutive years.

In September of 2018, Abulaiti was admitted to Anhui Normal University. Last September, his younger sister was also admitted to a university.

My family is a beneficiary of Chinas targeted poverty alleviation policy. As early as 2014, Abulaitis family has been identified as a poor household. Under the unified planning and funding of the government, his family built a spacious house and his parents who used to work in the city returned to their hometown to grow fruit trees with incomes increasing year after year. In 2017, his family got lifted out of poverty at last.

In recent years, sandstorm-resisting afforestation belts have been built in Abulaitis hometown, through which sandstorm hits become fewer. In his village, homes of villagers have been connected by running water and cement roads lit by solar LED street lights at night. 4G network and radio and television signals have covered the village. The villagers have even purchased cars, or motorcycles for the convenience of transportation...

All the folks said: The Communist Party of China (CPC) is Yakexi (great)!

In the nations poverty alleviation campaign, , has been receiving by Anhui province for years.

When filling out college application, with the hope of returning home as a teacher like his elder brother, Abulaiti chose Anhui Normal University, a university located in east Chinas Anhui Province, which has provided pairing assistance to Pishan County, the hometown of Abulaiti for years.

However, Abulaiti has always had a dream of joining the army at the bottom of his heart, since he attended a national flag-raising ceremony at Tiananmen Square during his senior high school years. When the soldiers of the PLA Guard of Honor walked out of the Tiananmen Gate (Gate of Heavenly Peace), Abulaiti was shocked by their neat pace, well-trained and upright demeanor and resonant commands, all of which left a deep impression on him. As a freshman in the university, he learned that the universitys armed forces department was recruiting college students to join the army. When he told his father his dream of serving in the army, his father said: It is the Party and the country that have brought us a happy life. As long as you are qualified for joining the army, you do have the responsibility to defend our country...

Upon receiving the notice of enlistment, Abulaiti posted a message in his WeChat Moments, reading: Looking back, there are many ways to repay the loving care of the Party. My ideal choice is to become a college student-turned soldier. In September 2019, Abulaiti arrived at the military camp that he had dreamed for a long time.

In the recruits training camp, Abulaiti attended the first physical fitness assessment after enlistment, he failed in the 3km cross-country race and scraped through the other subjects including formation drill and hand grenade throwing... "To be an excellent soldier, he can only rely on practice! With hard work and persistence, he achieved excellent results in all subjects with a personal score ranking first in his platoon and fifth in the company at the new recruits graduation assessment.

Due to his excellent performance in the light weapons shooting assessment in the new recruit training camp, after assigned to the 10th armored infantry company, Abulaiti acted as a vehicle-based sniper . When a new batch of main battle equipment was commissioned to his company, Abulaiti got promoted to be the gunner of the infantry fighting vehicle (IFV), becoming the first Private gunner in the brigade. In the brigades annual competency contest, he came to the fore in comprehensive performance and was awarded the title of Professional Technical Expert of the Group Army.

Abulaiti is good at singing and dancing. At training intervals, his traditional Uyghur songs and dance with strong ethnic flavor have brought a lot of joy to his comrades-in-arms. In order to further introduce culture of minority ethnic groups in Xinjiang to his comrades-in-arms, he ever performed at five evening galas organized by the brigade and has become quite a celebrity in the brigade.

Ive kept reminding myself every day of staying true to my original aspiration: I join the army to repay the loving care of the Party, and I will continue to work hard and strive to become a member of the CPC as soon as possible! Abulaiti told PLA Daily reporters solemnly.
The government on Friday announced slightly relaxed lockdown rules for Chuseok to ensure that families can at least get some small enjoyment out of the biggest holiday of the year.

In a big blow for business, the current lockdown is being extended until Oct. 3 after the Chuseok holiday, but restaurants and coffee shops in the Seoul metropolitan area can open until 10 p.m. instead of the current 9 p.m. from next week.

Groups of up to six people will be allowed to gather even after 6 p.m., when only two can currently meet, but they must include at least two vaccinated people during the day and four in the evening.

In provincial regions, up to eight people can gather if four are vaccinated. During the Chuseok holiday week only, gatherings of up to eight family members will be permitted to celebrate.

The decision comes amid an outcry from small businesses that restrictions are arbitrarily being imposed on different categories and they are being deprived of yet another peak season by the government's slow vaccination rollout.
Increasing depression is a source of concern in Korea's never-ending lockdown and the financial devastation it has wrought on so many people. But although many feared that this would drive up the suicide rate among suicide-prone Koreans, it has actually gone down.

According to the Ministry of Health and Welfare, suicides in fact declined 5.7 percent last year to 13,018. In the U.S., the suicide rate also declined 5.6 percent.

Suicide rates in the U.K., Canada and Australia also shrank.

Experts had forecast an increase as the coronavirus pandemic resulted in soaring unemployment, bankruptcies and social isolation. And indeed, the number of people suffering from depression has risen.

According to the Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service, the number of people who received treatment for depression in 2020 increased by almost 250,000 to 4.02 million. But the suicide rate declined.

Some believe that government support turned the tide. A study in Sweden from 2010 suggests that countries that adopted generous social welfare programs witnessed declines in suicide rates.

"Disaster relief payments and other aid measures appear to have had a positive effect on decreasing the suicide rate," the Ministry of Health and Welfare said. But that seems fanciful.

Park Jong-ik at Kangwon National University Hospital said, "There are many instances during disasters where people are too busy dealing with the bigger crisis or too tired to actually take their own lives. There is a danger that the pandemic stress will kick in two or three years down the road."

Suicide rates in various countries tend to manifest themselves two years after major disasters, such as the SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) and MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) epidemics and Fukushima nuclear plant meltdown.
A year and eight months have passed since the COVID-19 pandemic started, but there is still a lot about the virus that is unknown. One of the certainties is that wearing face masks indoors significantly lowers the chances of infection, and few people question it. Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency chief Jeong Eun-kyeong said recently, "Wearing face masks indoors is probably the quarantine guideline we must abide by the longest."

You can spot officials cracking down on people without masks each time you go on a walk to Mt. Nam or the Han River Park. They seem to materialize out of nowhere when there are big crowds shouting at people to wear their masks properly. That means few people go without masks even in outdoor venues, and people who walk around without their masks attract dirty looks. In July, the government allowed people who had at least one coronavirus vaccine shot to take off their face masks outdoors, but a surge in Delta variant infections prompted them to backpedal.

But why wear them outdoors in places that are not crowded? A team of researchers led by Martin Bazant at MIT studied indoor infection risks and found that maintaining a 1-m distance between people outdoors is enough to remain safe without face masks. At present, few countries crack down on people who wear no masks outdoors. Since last month, the U.K. eased most restrictions and made it no longer mandatory to wear masks even indoors, while France and Germany are the only European countries that still require them.

Even in Korea it is not actually mandatory to wear masks outdoors, and they only have to be worn in crowded areas where it is impossible to maintain a 2-m distance between people. But the regulations are vague and provincial governments can adjust them, which only adds to the confusion.

Of course health authorities want to protect themselves from criticism by maintaining the strictest possible lockdown. But rules without scientific evidence protect nobody but bureaucrats. At present, 57.4 percent of Korea's 52 million people have received their first vaccine shots and 31.7 percent are fully vaccinated. Unnecessary rules that are not based on science only increase the pain and inconvenience of the public. That is also something the government must consider.
China's services trade fair to bolster global confidence in economic recovery, say experts, business leaders

From:ChinaDaily | 2021-09-02 14:49

BEIJING -- With more than 10,000 enterprises from 153 countries and regions signing up for participation, this year's China International Fair for Trade in Services is scheduled to start Thursday in Beijing.

Appreciating China's endeavors to promote global trade in services, experts and business leaders have said the event will help the world share China's development opportunities and bolster global confidence in the economic recovery amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

"China is growing faster in the service sector than any other country in the world," said Stephen Perry, chairman of Britain's 48 Group Club.

China's services trade fair will provide people with a great opportunity to get a sense of the world's digital future, as well as China's fast expanding service industry, said the business leader.

Being the first major economy worldwide to recover from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, China is the place to go to do business, especially when it comes to the service industry, which represents the future of the world economy, Perry said.

The services trade fair is an important platform that demonstrates China's opening-up, said Dennis Wilkens, Germany Trade and Invest's director for China.

"A large number of companies have emerged in China that are being offered opportunities in Germany and Europe. The development shows the performance of China and its companies in the digital and services sector in recent years," Wilkens said, adding, "Chinese companies are now globally active in the markets of the future."

This year's fair will play a key role in bolstering China-Brazil relations by strengthening their channel of communication, according to Jose Ricardo dos Santos Luz Junior, CEO of Group of Corporate Leaders in China.

"Brazil's participation creates the potential for exchange and business opportunities in the trade in services sector, especially the digital economy," he added.

In the eyes of Anneriese Rodriguez, an international news editor at Cuban state TV, the event "confirms the Chinese government's will to promote global commerce and enhance the digital economy within the complex context the world is going through" amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

"I have no doubt this international fair will become a platform to reinforce international cooperation in the context of the sanitary emergency and to contribute to the economic recovery of nations," Rodriguez said.
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The interior of Wu Yuan, a superconducting quantum computer developed by Origin Quantum. [Photo/WeChat account: hefeigaoxinfabu]



Chinese leading quantum computing company Origin Quantum will work with a construction company to build the country's first quantum computing industrial park in Hefei, capital of East China's Anhui province, local media outlet reported.

The Hefei-headquartered company, a leader in the commercialization of quantum computing technology in China, inked the deal for the project construction with Lanke, a subsidiary of Hefei Construction and Investment Holding Group, on Aug 31.

The park is expected to bring in about 60 upstream and downstream enterprises to help form a complete quantum computing industrial chain, said Zhang Hui, general manager of Origin Quantum.

Zhang added that the park will integrate resources to help tackle technical bottlenecks and provide a boost to the wider application of quantum computing technology, which is being used in sectors like biotechnology, financial analysis and big data.

He pointed out that the project will be built in three phases. The first phase will include a packaging workshop, a testing and processing laboratory, and a software R&D center.

The second and third phases will include facilities such as a superconducting quantum chip and semiconductor quantum chip pilot line, a quantum chip R&D and manufacturing center, and a quantum computing science education and engineering practice center.

Origin Quantum has made a number of breakthroughs in the field of quantum computing since its establishment in the Hefei National High-tech Industry Development Zone, which is also known as the "Quantum Center", in 2017.

Its inventions, all of which are firsts in China, include a superconducting quantum computer called Wu Yuan, an all-in-one quantum computer measurement and control machine, a quantum computing cloud platform equipped with a superconductor quantum computer, a quantum computer operating system, and superconducting and semiconductor quantum chips.
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Digital corpus linguistics is an old idea using a new tool in interpreting the meaning of documents. It uses deep data searches for words and phrases in documents recorded through the centuries to try to glean from context accurate understanding of their import.

From Dennis Baron at the Duke Center for Firearms Law: Corpus linguistics, which some hail as better than dictionaries for legal interpretation, allows us to access and analyze vast swaths of digitized text going back to the fourteenth century. (Note the word some, which is not referenced.)

Further clarifying the Centers thinking,  its not clear that the [Second A]mendment ever had a single shared meaning, or if it did, whether that meaning is recoverable . The best we can hope for when investigating any older text is to examine how it was discussed around the time it was written and to use historical sources to glean the meaning of any difficult or ambiguous words or phrases. And even so, theres no guarantee that a reasonable reader in 1791 would interpret the Second Amendment the same way as their equally-reasonable neighbor. When the Supreme Court said in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) that it had determined the original public meaning of the Second Amendment, its reading, like any linguistic interpretation, involved both an examination of the text and a certain amount of guesswork.

The DCFL contends that because nearly all the examples they find of the phrase bear arms in the English language are used to refer to military conduct, the Second Amendment must only guarantee the people the right to bear arms in the service of the state (i.e., a state-appointed militia). .....
Indiana Sen. Todd Young talked with farmers in southern Allen County on Thursday about infrastructure and broadband federal investment. But the Republican also had plenty of harsh words for the Biden administration's hurried withdrawal from Afghanistan that saw Americans and allies left behind.

"It's really this simple: first you get out the civilians, ... then you get out the people with guns," Young told the crowd, which had gathered for an agriculture roundtable at Wyss Farms Enterprises on Yoder Road. "You know the Marines, the soldiers, the Special Forces, they wanted to stay behind. They wanted to extract Americans. They understand part of our military doctrine has always been, and part of our cultural ethic should always remain: Never ever leave any Americans behind."

Young, who was in the Marine Corps, said "this commander in chief is guilty of a dereliction of duty."

He called the action worse than Saigon, a reference to the U.S. withdrawal from South Vietnam's capital and its evacuation of thousands as the government fell to the People's Army of Vietnam and the Viet Cong, ending the Vietnam War. It also is worse than the Iran hostage crisis, in which Americans in the U.S. Embassy were held by a group of militarized Iranian college students for over a year before being released.

In a letter Wednesday in USA Today, Young placed the responsibility for the "failure" of the Afghanistan withdrawal squarely on the president's shoulders.

Young accused President Joe Biden of assigning a date for the U.S. withdraw of troops from Afghanistan that would allow the president to make a speech on the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the U.S. The terrorism attacks served as catalyst for U.S. fighting agains the Taliban that ended with Biden saying that about 200 American civilians had not gotten out from Kabul's airport, the scene of 13 American troop deaths during the evacuation as the Taliban triumphantly took over the government.

The date was totally arbitrary, "unless one wants to give a victory speech and say they were the president that got us out after 20 years. Sort of a 'mission accomplished.'"

Mission accomplished is often used to refer to the 2003 speech that Republican President George W. Bush gave to announce that major conflict operations in Iraq had ended. However, casualties followed in the ensuing years, and the U.S. didn't withdraw until Dec. 18, 2011.

As the top Republican in the Senate's Subcommittee On Near East, South Asia, Central Asia, And Counterterrorism, Young said he has jurisdiction to hold subcommittee hearings on the Afghanistan withdraw, "about lessons learned and mistakes made" over the entire time in Afghanistan.

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"Then we need to hold people accountable once we get more answers about why certain decisions were made, and why certain information was not duly factored into this decision to evacuate in such a rapid-fire and rushed way."

High-level military, diplomatic and intelligence leaders must be fired, he said.

He said his office has received hundreds of requests for help from interpreters and family members of Hoosiers who want to leave Afghanistan.

Farm-related news

Asked how the New Orleans port will get repaired to allow for export of farm goods, Young said he expects federal emergency aid to be available as it has in other natural disasters.

A farmer asked for Young to keep an eye on ethanol production. Half of all corn in Indiana is used by ethanol plants, but farmers expect to see up to a 2 billon-gallon reduction in volume. That amounts of twice what Indiana produces.

Young explained that he opposed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act in August because Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi insisted on tying passage of the bill to the Democrats $3.5 trillion tax-and-spend budget proposal, which he previously called "reckless." Young said he will, however, continue to work to see that Indiana benefits from increased broadband and improvements to roads and bridges in the legislation as changes are made in the House. The legislation passed in the Senate.
An Allen Superior Court judge has granted Gov. Eric Holcomb's, the state of Indiana's and the Allen County Health Department's requests to dismiss a lawsuit filed against them for COVID-19 restrictions.

Ceruti Catering Inc. had filed a lawsuit March 9 in Allen Superior Court that claimed the imposed restrictions caused it monetary damages and lost revenues.

Judge Jennifer L. DeGroote stated in her Aug. 25 decision in part that Ceruti's claim was moot because a new executive order was in place that rescinded the restrictions for which Ceruti's was filing. She also wrote that the health department is subject to the governor's and Indiana Department of Health's orders. Also, under Indiana's Epidemic Statute, the local department has the authority to order schools and churches closed and to prevent public gatherings to prevent and stop epidemics. Its decision "to implement additional requirements to operate certain businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic were not arbitrary, conscience-shocking or oppressive."

Ceruti is a full-service catering and event-planning company that offers banquet space, catering, alcoholic beverage service and decorating services.

Ceruti's Summit Park location is designed to host social events, such as wedding receptions, and business events. It's Diamond Room has a maximum capacity of 600, according to its website.

The lawsuit alleged that Holcomb's executive orders over the previous year had decimated the business due to loss of revenue. In March 2020 Holcomb's executive order 20-08 declared Ceruti a nonessential business and ordered it to cease operations. Ceruti lost 34 events that month. The company also lost money on food and products that had been ordered in preparation for these cancelled events.

Support Local Journalism Now, more than ever, the world needs trustworthy reportingbut good journalism isnt free. Please support us by making a contribution. Contribute

April 2020 was worse; Ceruti lost 49 events and customers weren't booking future events due to uncertainty over the pandemic.

In May Holcomb's executive order 20-26 began the process of opening up the state, but Ceruti would have been limited to gatherings of 10 to 15 people. The lawsuit noted the size of the banquet rooms would have allowed for much greater numbers of people while still maintaining social distancing requirements.

The Allen County Department of health also established rules even stricter than EO 2036. The lawsuit notes that neighboring Whitley County did not have to abide by those rules, therefore the ACDH requirements are discriminatory against Ceruti, the lawsuit stated.

Ceruti lost all its booked events for November and December 2020, resulting in a loss of revenue of over $500,000.

Yergy's State Road BBQ in Bluffton sued Holcomb and the Wells County Health Department in December 2020. Yergy's sued the health department, the governor and the state after being forced to shut down for violating the state's executive orders aimed at slowing the spread of COVID-19 in the summer.
On 2 September Chiles state-owned copper mining company, Codelco, struck a deal with trade unions representing workers at its Andina mine, ending a three-week strike.

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On Sept. 1, 2021, Auburn President Jay Gogue, and representatives from National Cheng Kung University in Taiwan and the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Atlanta signed a joint agreement to establish close academic ties between Auburn and NCKU, as well as to foster the learning of Mandarin and English by students of the respective institutions through faculty and student exchange.



The signing ceremony began with both presidents sharing the foundations of their respective institutions. Gogue shared Auburns beginnings as a land-grant institution and how that core characteristic in combination with the mission to produce global citizens that improve the state, nation and world has been the driving force behind Auburns initiatives and partnerships. NCKUs president, Huey-Jen Jenny Su, also shared the rich history of the institution, dating back to 1931, and its vast and beautiful campus environment.



The agreement outlines that NCKU will provide a Mandarin lecturer to teach both credit and non-credit Chinese language and culture courses at Auburn, recruit Auburn students for Huayu scholarships at NCKU, and arrange faculty travel to NCKU to explore the collaborations in Mandarin and English language instruction. Overall, the goal of the agreement is to promote joint educational and cultural collaboration, and in turn establish a long-lasting friendship and cooperative partnership that enhances the educational experience at both institutions.



This is one of our partnerships that will address the goals of our University Strategic Plan and the University Strategic Internationalization Plan, strengthening high-impact teaching practices and providing for post-graduation employment for our students, said Andrew Gillespie, assistant provost for international programs. With regard to our students, Auburn is well on its way to producing global citizens.
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Insolvency process against Transaero airline extended until March 2022

 RIA Novosti, Natalia Selivestova

10:54 03/09/2021

MOSCOW, September 3 (RAPSI)  The Commercial Court of St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region has extended the insolvency process against Transaero airline, once Russia's second-biggest carrier, until March 1, 2022, according to the court materials.

A petition to extend the period of bankruptcy at the air carrier was submitted to the court by its bankruptcy trustee Alexey Belokopyt.

This May, the Thirteenth Commercial Court of Appeals confirmed the dismissal of the Transaero bankruptcy commissioner to bring PJSC Aeroflot Russian Airlines to subsidiary liability for the debtor's obligations.

As the court noted at that time, the arguments and circumstances referred to by Belokopyt had previously been repeatedly presented by the commissioner, nevertheless, after being examined had been rejected by judicial acts that had entered into legal force with respect to several disputes.

Thus, the decision said, actions carried out by Aeroflot to fulfill previously taken obligations of Transaero in the period from September to October 2015 were aimed to replenish the debtor's working capital for the transportation of the airline's passengers, including to pay for refueling aircraft, servicing aircraft, passengers and crews at airports, preventing a complete stop of Transaero's activities and suffering of even greater losses, the commercial court noted.

In its ruling, the court noted that Aeroflot company had never been an entity controlling Transaero, either within the framework of corporate relations, or within the framework of any other relations.

In October 2020, the commercial court satisfied an application of the Transaero bankruptcy commissioner as to bringing the former general director of the company Alexander Burdin to subsidiary liability for the obligations of the air carrier. The amount of subsidiary liability is to be determined upon completion of settlements with the airline's creditors.

The decision states that from November 16, 2015 to September 13, 2017, Burdin committed actions that significantly worsened the financial situation of Transaero and created conditions for a further significant increase in the disproportion between the value of the debtor's assets and the size of his liabilities. The court also indicated that a causal relationship existed between Burdin's illegal actions to evade the transfer of documents, material assets of the debtor and the impossibility of satisfying the claims of creditors.

Moreover, the court is to decide on a statement by VTB bank seeking to recover 249.2 billion rubles ($3.4 billion) from the founder of the debtor Alexander Pleshakov, his mother, and ex-chairman of the board of directors Olga Pleshakova.

The Commercial Court of St. Petersburg and Leningrad Region declared Transaero air carrier bankrupt in September 2017. The airline was unable to service its debts, which, according to some estimates, make about 250 billion rubles ($3.4 billion). The company has not operated flights since October 26, 2015.

Burdin acted as Transaero CEO from late 2015 to September 2017 and headed the company after revocation of the air carriers flying license.

On August 28, 2018, a Moscow court arrested Burdin in absentia, he was put on the international wanted list. Burdin stands charged with failure to pay wages, pensions, scholarships, benefits and other payments for more than two months, embezzlement committed by an organized group or in an especially large amount, and abuse of office, which entailed grave consequences.

According to investigators, ex-Transaero CEO has embezzled over 1.3 billion rubles (about $17.5 million) and has not paid wages to employees for well over two months. As a result, a salary debt to nearly 7,000 employees reached about 400 million rubles ($5.4 million). The defendant has pleaded not guilty.

Besides, in August 2020 a Moscow court sentenced former Transaero bankruptcy manager Mikhail Kotov to 5.5 years in a general regime colony in a criminal case over embezzlement of the airline's property in the amount of over 1 billion rubles ($13.5 million). The ex-manager was also found guilty of abuse of office.

Kotovs action resulted in embezzlement of the airlines property worth over 1 billion rubles ($15.3 million). Moreover, he forged some documents to suppress crimes allegedly committed in conspiracy with the former Transaero CEO Alexander Burdin, the statement reads.
NASA SERVIRs drought and crop watch tool allows users to choose their region and see current drought conditions and drought outlooks for the future. The image shows conditions in Vietnam on Aug. 5, 2021 (left) and a one month forecast beginning on Aug. 12, 2021 (right). Credit: NASA SERVIR/Mekong Drought and Crop Watch

Millions of people suffer from food insecurity around the globe. With the help of Earth-observing satellites, the NASA-USAID SERVIR project is hoping to reduce that number.

Food security - the consistent availability and affordability of food - is a basic human need, yet it remains elusive for billions of people around the world. The United Nations' 2021 State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World report, released in July, paints a grim picture of this reality: in 2020, nearly 1 in 3 people globally did not have enough to eat, up by more than 300 million people from the previous year.

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to disrupt food systems and supply chains on a global scale, but the heart of the problem - and the solutions to it - are far more diverse than any single factor. In Kenya, climate change, water shortages, and land degradation jeopardize crops and rangelands. In Southeast Asia, rising temperatures, increasingly variable weather, and low water levels along the Mekong River threaten livelihoods and food production. In Nepal, areas reliant on rain-fed agriculture are extremely susceptible to drought, a phenomenon becoming more frequent in an ever-warming climate.

There is no one-size-fits-all solution to these challenges; however, each region has a common ally: a fleet of Earth-observing satellites working around the clock to take measurements of everything from snowmelt and soil moisture to land cover and plant health. This data is the ultimate tool in building capacity within food systems - and is often the difference between anticipating drought with enough time to prepare or losing crops to lack of water.

Because each region's infrastructure and challenges are unique, the trickier task is getting relevant data into the hands of the people who need it and in a way that is easily accessible.

Meet SERVIR

A joint NASA-USAID initiative called SERVIR is paving the way to do just that. The goals of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and NASA complement each other well: NASA uses the unique vantage point of space to look back at our home planet while USAID, working in over 100 countries, understands development needs from the ground level.

In addition to this expertise, SERVIR partners with leading regional organizations around the world to meet specific needs.

"Our model is very different than many traditional projects," said Dan Irwin, SERVIR's Global Program Manager based at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. "Rather than building something and expecting it to be adopted, we collaborate hand-in-hand with people in the countries where we work to identify needs and implement sustainable solutions together."

SERVIR works in more than 50 countries through five regional hubs. The hubs are entirely staffed by local experts, and each have their own partnerships with organizations working toward the same goals. What services and day-to-day operations look like depends on the specific needs identified and infrastructure present in each region.

Eastern and Southern Africa

Lilian Ndungu, Agriculture and Food Security Lead for SERVIR's Eastern and Southern Africa hub, wears many hats. On any given day, she may go into the field in Kenya to collect data, consult with high-level government officials on the co-development of services that improve food security, or head into the office to work on advocacy, technical program development, and training programs.

More than half of the working population in the region works in agriculture in some capacity, mainly on small, family-run farms. Most of these farms are not irrigated and instead rely on rain, making them especially vulnerable to changes in climate and water availability.

With the right information, farmers and local governments can be proactive rather than reactive in their response to these challenges, and in doing so, improve food security. It is this information that Ndungu and SERVIR aim to provide. The Regional Centre for Mapping of Resources for Development (RCMRD) in Kenya, which hosts SERVIR's Eastern and Southern Africa hub, helps bridge data and science with decision makers to support decision making processes that reduce risk.

"One project that has had an impact on food security in East Africa is our crop monitoring project," Ndungu said. "Crop monitors are web-based portals that make it easy for non-technical people to access observational tools that incorporate satellite and ground data in order to make better agricultural decisions."

Ndungu has lead the integration of these crop monitoring tools, developed by NASA Harvest researchers at the University of Maryland in close partnership with agricultural experts of the GEOGLAM Crop Monitor initiative, into crop monitor systems in Kenya, Rwanda and Ethiopia.

The tools - which incorporate satellite data on vegetation conditions, soil moisture, rainfall, and land use - produce localized maps of where plants are growing and how healthy they are. They can also indicate where and to what extent drought conditions may become problematic.

While the crop monitors are a success story, getting to the point where tools and services like this are widely implemented and sustainable - which is the ultimate goal -takes time.

"It takes a high level of engagement. You cannot just call someone in the government today and then call again in six months and expect to have made progress," Ndungu said. "But through consistent communication and consultation, often over several years, you end up co-creating something that meets their needs and the buy-in and commitment to make it happen."

In some areas, the SERVIR Eastern and Southern Africa hub is also working to get satellite and crop health data incorporated into crop insurance programs. Rather than having to inspect farms in person, stakeholders can assess the health of farms - and quickly identify areas in need of financial assistance - without needing to send staff into the field. In Kenya, this little bit of automation has already reduced the cost of providing crop insurance by 70%.

The Lower Mekong Basin

Nearly 5,000 miles away, in Southeast Asia's Lower Mekong Basin, food security and economic prosperity are largely contingent on a crop dubbed "white gold" by farmers: rice. In 2020 alone, the region - which includes Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Myanmar and Vietnam - exported $6.8 billion worth of it.

"Rice is a very water-intensive crop. You need lots of water to grow it," said Susantha Jayasinghe, Agriculture and Food Security Lead for SERVIR's Mekong hub, hosted at the Asian Disaster Preparedness Center in Thailand. "What we learned from the countries and agencies working closely on agriculture and food security in the region is that they didn't have a good information system to monitor and forecast drought and water availability, so this is where we began."

Working closely with the Mekong River Commission (MRC) and other regional and national partners, SERVIR-Mekong brought together satellite imagery, ground-based measurements, and local expertise to produce water resource maps, drought forecasts, and other online data resources. These products help the MRC and other agencies prepare for and respond effectively to drought. They're available at the regional level in several Lower Mekong countries and at the provincial level in Vietnam.

Moving forward, SERVIR-Mekong plans to expand the use of drought information tools to other provinces in Vietnam and other countries of the Lower Mekong Region - and they hope to use even more enhanced technology to do it.

"NASA has planned a new water monitoring satellite called Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT)," said Ankit Joshi, SERVIR-Mekong's Communications Lead. "SWOT's higher resolution sensors will enable SERVIR-Mekong to improve forecast accuracy using more granular data thereby providing better insights to policymakers and farmers."

SWOT is being jointly developed by NASA and Centre National D'Etudes Spatiales (CNES) with contributions from the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and United Kingdom Space Agency. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory leads the U.S. component of the project which is scheduled to launch in 2022. SERVIR-Mekong is ready to be one of the earliest users of its data.

The Himalayas

The remote countries in the Himalaya and Hindu Kush (HKH) mountain ranges have been experiencing worsening drought conditions over the past few decades - and climate change isn't helping. But, by fostering drought resilience, SERVIR-HKH, hosted by the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) in Nepal is.

"Our main focus is on drought monitoring and assessing drought impacts on crops," said Faisal Qamar, Agriculture and Food Security Lead for SERVIR-HKH. "We combine data from satellites with water system models and weather forecasts to create a framework for forecasting drought in the region."

This SERVIR hub works with governments and stakeholders in Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Nepal, among others. Each country has a different approach to managing agriculture, so the design and communication of the product must be tailored to the specific needs of each country.

"We have to be persistent, and to work with teams within the governments, and then prove how the use of satellite information is better than the traditional way in terms of the quality of the information and the value of money," said Mir Matin, the hub's Geospatial Solutions Lead. "Having a tool become mainstream requires substantial investment so partnerships and capacity building are important."

To build capacity, the hub offers on-the-job training to partners on the development and application of products and tools. They train staff from other agencies to use these services and work to link their products with multilateral agencies for greater uptake and sustainability. The hub also offers trainings through schools and universities - including programs aimed at increasing the equity and role of women in agricultural solutions.

"Connecting space to village," an apt motto for SERVIR, highlights how the program provides stakeholders with specialized information to make the best possible decisions in the face of ever-growing environmental challenges. Making the right decisions now will bring us one step closer to a food secure future.



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Agthia Group, the regions leading food and beverage company, has announced that its Board of Directors has approved the strategic acquisition of a 100% stake in BMB Group, the GCCs leading innovative healthy snacks and food company.

BMB manufactures and distributes a wide variety of chocolate, Mediterranean sweets, bakery ingredients and healthy snacks and food for its own brands and partners.

Launched in 2007, BMB has a large portfolio of confectionery and healthy food brands  including Asateer, Al Qamar, Freakin Healthy and Benoit  and distributes over 2,000 SKUs in more than 23 countries worldwide, including the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and the US.

The acquisition of BMB would represent Agthias commitment to expanding its healthy food categories and enable the company to leverage the strength of BMBs capabilities to accelerate its presence in the snacking and healthy food segment.

Agthia established a footprint in the space earlier this year with the acquisition of date company Al Foah. With the global healthy snacks market forecast to reach almost AED360 billion ($98 billion) by 2025 according to Euromonitor, Agthia is positioning itself in an expanding segment, with scalable regional and global brands.

The acquisition of BMB is expected to drive tangible short- and long-term value for all stakeholders with significant cost and revenue synergy opportunities from the integration of the combined platform, enabling footprint expansion in the confectionery market, healthy snacking market, and cross-market distribution.

Khalifa Sultan Al Suwaidi, Chairman of Agthia Group, said: Earlier this year, we presented Agthias corporate strategy to the public, and outlined our commitment to investing into the fastest growing and profitable segments of the food and beverage space. The acquisition of BMB aligns with that mandate, and will accelerate the footprint of our snacking business, while adding strong brands and capabilities to our portfolio. We are also pleased with the immediate value accretion that the acquisition of BMB creates for Agthias shareholders.

Alan Smith, Chief Executive Officer of Agthia Group, said: This acquisition would enable Agthia to expand its presence and operations in the snacking vertical, further diversifying our extensive product portfolio and geographic reach. In addition to immediate access to new revenue streams and markets, we are excited by the prospect of exploring opportunities to fuel product innovation, such as the development of new healthy and specialist snacks in response to market trends.

Bilal Ballout and Mohamad Khachab, Co-Chief Executive Officers of BMB Group, said: As a homegrown UAE business, it gives us immense pride to partner with Agthia for the next phase of our growth, one in which we wish to serve our customers through increased product innovation, scale our business across the healthy foods segment, and continue to evolve into a truly global foods conglomerate. We would like to thank our customers, suppliers, and employees for the invaluable role that they continue to play in our journey and wish to welcome Agthia to the BMB family.

During the last 12 months (LTM) period ending June 30, 2021, BMB generated total revenues of around AED268 million and EBITDA of approximately AED54 million, with healthy EBITDA margins expected to grow to around 20% this year.

The transaction will be for 100% of BMB and is expected to be fully funded by cash, and immediately accretive to Agthias earnings.

BMB is headquartered in Dubai, UAE, where its two manufacturing facilities, stretching over a combined total of 150,000 square feet, are located. The group employs nearly 1,000 staff.

The transaction is subject to satisfying customary closing conditions, including obtaining relevant regulatory approvals.

Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP is acting as legal counsel to Agthia. EFG Hermes is acting as financial adviser to Agthia.-- TradeArabia News Service
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Following the death of senior separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani on Wednesday night, the entire Kashmir valley was shut and phones and internet services suspended. The valley continues to remain shut.

Auqib Javeed | TwoCircles.net

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Srinagar:- The authorities in Kashmir imposed a strict lockdown and subsequent restrictions in the valley on the second day following the death of veteran Kashmiri leader and iconic figure in the separatist political camp Syed Ali Shah Geelani.

Geelani was buried at a local graveyard near his Hyderpora home in Srinagar in the wee hours on Thursday in a quiet funeral organised by authorities, amid tight security and restrictions with internet services by and large snapped in Kashmir.

Eyewitnesses said that the burial was completed by 4:45 AM on Thursday in presence of a small group of people at the graveyard 300 meters from his residence.

Meanwhile, restrictions were imposed throughout the Valley to prevent people from marching to Srinagar and there was heavy deployment of government forces to thwart any untoward incident.

The officials said the curbs were intensified in downtown (old city) and some uptown parts of the city here in view of the Friday congregational prayers.

While the roads leading to Geelanis residence in the Hyderpora locality remained sealed, barricades were put up in other areas to stop the movement of people, they added.

Government forces have been deployed in strength in the city and elsewhere to maintain law and order, the officials said.

Mobile phone services except for the postpaid connections of BSNL continued to remain snapped, while mobile internet services also remained barred to avoid rumour-mongering.

However, Inspector General of Police Kashmir range, Vijay Kumar, said that the mobile voice-calling service and broadband services on all platforms will be restored at 10 pm tonight.

So far the situation remained peaceful & under control. Thanks for the publics cooperation in maintaining law & order. Mobile service (voice call) and broadband of all TSPs shall open from today evening at 10pm: IGP Kashmir, Kashmir Zone Police wrote on its official twitter handle.

The officials said a review of the situation will be done after the congregational prayers and a decision will be taken on whether to lift the restrictions or not.

On the first day, Police on Thursday said the situation across the valley was peaceful and no untoward incident was reported from anywhere.

A police spokesperson said some vested interests tried to spread baseless rumours about a forcible burial of SAS Geelani by police.

The veteran Kashmiri leader was suffering from a kidney disease for over two decades, besides other age-related issues, including dementia.

Police in riot gear backed by paramilitary personnel moved out on the streets of Srinagar and other major towns of Kashmir on Thursday night immediately after news broke that veteran separatist leader Syed Ali Geelani had passed away.

At many places, eyewitnesses said, the government forces had placed barricades and laid razor wire to restrict the movement of people and vehicles. At many intersections forces had used armoured vehicles to block the road.

In Srinagar the atmosphere was by and large relaxed with uptown areas witnessing movement of private vehicles. There were reports of sporadic incidents of stone pelting on police and CRPF from a few pockets of the old city on Thursday evening but the situation remained largely peaceful.

According to reports from north Kashmir, security measures were put in place to thwart any attempt by people to reach Srinagar or to stage protests over Geelanis death. Sopore, considered to be the bastion of the deceased leader, was placed under a thick blanket of security.

Baramulla town too was placed under severe restrictions and all roads leading to the Old Town were sealed with spools of razor wire, eyewitnesses said.
China is paying close attention as a new Afghan government is set to be established, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said Friday.

The Chinese embassy in Afghanistan is a key channel for the contacts between the two countries, and the embassy is currently operating as normal, Wang told a regular press briefing.

"We hope that Afghanistan will form an open and inclusive government framework, adopt moderate and prudent domestic and foreign policies, and sever ties with all terrorist organizations," the spokesperson said.

Wang also voiced the hope that all parties in Afghanistan can resolve their differences through negotiation, to ensure a smooth transition of power for the country.

"To ensure a peaceful transition of power, it is necessary to solve differences through negotiation. Only then can the residents of war-torn Afghanistan recover from chaos, and a lasting peace be reached."

He added that China hopes that all parties in Afghanistan will echo the aspiration of the Afghan people and shared expectation of the international community.
The wounded include five children. 26-year-old Ahmad Salleh was killed by a bullet fired by a soldier, the third victim in a few days. The demonstrations promoted by Hamas against the blockade imposed by Israel in the Strip. For the Palestinian extremist movement recent openings are insufficient.

Gaza (AsiaNews/Agencies) - A young Palestinian was killed by Israeli soldiers, during the clashes that broke out yesterday between the two sides along the eastern border separating the Gaza Strip from the Jewish State. According to what is reported in a note by the Palestinian Ministry of Health, led by the extremist movement Hamas inside the Strip, the 26 year old Ahmad Salleh was hit by a bullet "fired by an Israeli army soldier, near the border".

In the violence between the parties there are also 15 injured Palestinians, among whom there are also five children. Among the wounded, five were hit by the bullets shot by Israeli soldiers and another 10 suffered from suffocation after inhaling tear gas exploded by the military to disperse the crowd.

The 26-year-old is the third Palestinian victim in a few days to die during the protests. Previously, a 12-year-old boy and a Hamas militant died. An Israeli soldier also died in recent days from gunshot wounds sustained in these clashes.

Eyewitnesses add that last night dozens of protesters, members of the so-called "Night Disturbance Unit," gathered for the sixth consecutive day along the eastern border area between the Jewish state and the Palestinian enclave. Hundreds of demonstrators chanted slogans and songs along the border, to protest against the blockade imposed by Israel on Gaza, although just in these days the Israeli authorities have decided to ease it by granting more concessions, including the reopening of the main border crossing.

The disruption unit includes members and supporters of different Palestinian factions, including Hamas, which has ruled the Gaza Strip since 2007 after ousting Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' security forces. Protesters burned tires, threw homemade percussion grenades and clashed with soldiers, who responded by firing several rounds to disperse them.

Among the concessions offered by Israel are the pumping of a greater volume of drinking water, the entry of construction materials needed for reconstruction after last May's flash conflict and the increase in the number of permits for commercial reasons from 2,000 to 7,000. Hamas has rejected the Israeli openings, calling them "insufficient" measures and announcing further demonstrations.
The sentence was eventually reduced to three years on appeal. Released on bail with obligation to report to police, the Christians were charged with spreading propaganda against the state, and engaging in deviant educational activities. In East Azerbaijan province, a man sent to prison for alcohol possession dies from flogging.

Tehran (AsiaNews)  Three men in the town of Karaj were sentenced on 22 August to five years in prison for propaganda against the state after they converted to Christianity from Islam.

The sentence was later reduced to three years on appeal. In the meantime, they were released on bail with obligation to report weekly to the intelligence branch of Irans police.

According to Article18, a London-based advocacy group dedicated to religious freedom in Iran, the three converts  Milad Goudarzi, Ameen Khaki and Alireza Nourmohammadi (pictured)  were convicted of spreading propaganda against the state and engaging in deviant educational activities opposing Islam, i.e., practicing a religion different from Islam.

The initial verdict in June also imposed a fine of almost US$ 1,500 on each man who were released on bail for nearly $ 9,000. They will have to report to the authorities at least once a week for the next six months.

In November 2020, security forces raided their homes and seized personal items, including computers, mobile phones and religious books.

At the end of the trial, investigators returned the personal effects, but not the Christian literature.

Under Iranian law, evangelisation, missionary work and conversion to Christianity are offences that entail 10 years of imprisonment or more. Distributing Christian literature in Persian is illegal.

Although apostasy was officially abolished in 1994  the last execution for this crime dating back to 1990, courts can still convict people for leaving Islam on the basis of fatwas (Islamic legal opinions).

Meanwhile, recent media reports indicate that a prison inmate in Irans East Azerbaijan province died from flogging after he was convicted for possession of alcoholic beverages.

Hadi Atazadeh allegedly died while serving an unspecified prison sentence, which included an unspecified number of lashes.

He was convicted a year and a half ago, but his family were never officially informed of the verdict nor of the number of lashes. Under Iranian law, consumption and possession of alcoholic drinks are punishable by up to 80 lashes.

In a video released by the family showing the preparation for the Islamic pre-burial ritual, the mans black and blue body shows clear lash marks, which might indicate the cause of death.

Prison authorities have rejected the familys accusations, but have not provided any convincing explanation, claiming instead that the prisoner had reported some stomach pain.

State media have reported various causes of death, including suicide, the coronavirus, intoxication, but none with convincing evidence.
by Sumon Corraya

The work of the seven priests of Don Bosco who arrived in Bangladesh in 2009 is bearing its first fruits. We also teach children from other faiths, said Salesian coordinator Fr Alencherry. So far, we have never received any threats from Islamic extremists. The first local Salesian will be ordained in the near future.

Dhaka (AsiaNews)  In a country where the Catholic Church has fewer than 400,000 members (0.25 per cent of the population), a group of seven Salesians, mostly from India, is working hard at educating a new generation of young believers.

The Salesians of Don Bosco arrived in Utrail parish, Netrakona, Diocese of Mymensingh, in 2009. Gradually, they extended their ministry to the parishes of Lokhikul and Khanjanpur, Diocese of Rajshahi.

For a number of years, they also managed a parish centre in Uttara, Dhaka, which has become the Salesian coordination centre for the country.

Fr Francis Alencherry, 71, hails from Kerala (India) and is the Salesian coordinator in Bangladesh. A Christian education is the Salesians priority.

We started our journey twelve years ago in one parish with one school, he told AsiaNews. Now we serve in four places. We work for youths.

In 2009, before the Salesians arrived in Uttara and took over the local school, students did not attend classes regularly. Now more and more do. This is a matter of joy and hope for us, said the clergyman.

"Within two years, we will get a local priest from our religious congregation, Fr Francis explained. We are getting more religious vocations. We now have 39 seminarians.

One crucial aspect of the Salesians work is having seminary students bear witness and share life with youth.

The Salesian ministry in Bangladesh is not exclusively centred Catholic pupils. We also teach children from other faiths, a great achievement.

Although getting along with Muslims has not always been easy and obvious, Fortunately, we have never received any threats from Islamic extremists, but we know that jihadism is still widespread.

Salesians also have to deal with red tape and bribery. "At government offices, it is hard to get things done without paying a bribe. For us, this is a great challenge that we face openly for the good of our children and school.

In a young Church like that of Bangladesh, a lot of work remains to be done.

We will soon welcome some local priests. Our first task will be to train them so that they can develop good experience and a strong faith.

After that, we plan to extend our ministry to other dioceses in Bangladesh. We have already received invitations from four other dioceses.
I was like, Oh, my God. Were already on Day Six. If I dont get my results back for five days, what was the point of this whole experience? The whole incubation period for my daughter was completely done, said Nuzzo, referring to the time from exposure to COVID-19 to when symptoms emerge, which is slightly shorter for the delta variant than the original strain.
Recruiting and hiring has been difficult, but we know that this is a problem shared by many other businesses and industries across the country, Seguin said. We are happy to report that we are now starting to see an increase in candidates applying for positions again. These are good jobs with competitive pay and benefits that we are still actively hiring for.
In a statement, Raj Parekh, acting U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, who is also a member of the prosecution team on the Kotey and Elsheikh cases, said the case has always been dedicated to the victims and their families. He added, Their resilience, courage, and perseverance have ensured that terror will never have the last word. The justice, fairness, and humanity that this defendant received in the United States stand in stark contrast to the cruelty, inhumanity, and indiscriminate violence touted by the terrorist organization he espoused.
The Black Lives Matter Movement has helped resuscitate the age-old debate about reparations. We need to stop fooling ourselves. Reparations will never happen, and even if they did, no amount of student loan forgiveness or even 40 acres and a mule can repair the long-lasting psychic damage of the painstakingly constructed dehumanization campaign launched against Americas enslaved Africans. There is no number this nation can conjure that would be just compensation to the descendants of the people who literally built this nation, whose bodies were the basis of its first collateralized debt instruments, who were its amusements and its playthings. What price can one possibly put on centuries of systematic and Federally sanctioned rape, kidnapping, wrongful imprisonment, assault, stolen labor and murder?
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Dakota graduated from Bret Harte in 2013 and went to Davidson College, NC where she earned a bachelor's degree in Arab studies. After spending time studying in the Middle East and Europe, she is happy to be home, writing about the community she loves.

Comment Policy Calaveras Enterprise does not actively monitor comments. However, staff does read through to assess reader interest. When abusive or foul language is used or directed toward other commenters, those comments will be deleted. If a commenter continues to use such language, that person will be blocked from commenting. We wish to foster a community of communication and a sharing of ideas, and we truly value readers' input.
Mgr. Julius Agbortoko, Vicar General, Mamfe Diocese Facebook

Armed kidnappers have freed the Vicar General of the Mamfe Diocese of the Roman Catholic Church, Mgr. Julus Agbortoko two days after he was kidnapped.

The prelate was freed on the evening of Tuesday, August 31, 2021, open sources say.

In a statement Monday, 30 August 2021, Fr. Sebastine Sinju, Chancellor of the Mamfe Diocese said the Vicar General had just returned from a weekend pastoral visitation at the time he was abducted.

It is with a very heavy heart that I bring to your notice the sudden abduction of the Mgr. Julius Agbortoko yesterday Sunday, 29 August 2021. The Vicar General, who had spent the weekend at Kokobuma for pastoral visitation and the inauguration of the presbytery of the parish, drove in yesterday at about a few minutes to 6 pm, said Fr. Sebastine Sinju, Chancellor of the Mamfe Diocese. About 30 minutes after his arrival some youngmen who identified themselves as separatist fighters bumped into the Major Seminary compound and made their way straight to the residence of Bishop Lysinge. While there, they noticed the presence of the Vicar General whom they considered younger and stronger than the frail Bishop emeritus. 

Bro. Sebastine Sinju says the said boys made off with Mgr. Julius Agbortoko at about 6:45 pm and are now asking a 20 million CFA francs ransom.

I call on all of you to invoke the One Family Spirit and pray unanimously for his safety and his subsequent release. I use this opportunity to decry the seemingly incessant attacks on the Church in general and that of Mamfe in Particular. Could the stakeholders of the ongoing armed conflict kindly hands off the Church, for God's sake, Fr. Sebastine Sinju pleaded, asking Mary, the Mother of Priests, and the Queen of Peace to intercede.

On Tuesday evening, a message from the Chancellor read: Good evening Fathers. We are happy to bring you the news that Mgr Julius Agbortoko has been released. Thank you all for your prayers and for standing by us. We are united in prayers. 

Rev. Fr. Sinju said the Vicar General was released without payment of the FCFA 20 million ransom demanded by the kidnappers.

"After three days in captivity, we are glad to announce that our brother and priest, Mgr. Julius Agbortoko Agbor has been released without any ransom paid," said Rev. Fr. Sinju.
Professor Ngomo Horace Manga UB Facebook page

Professor Ngomo Horace Manga, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Buea, UB, has said his administration does not have the authority to create an annex in Akonolinga in the Centre Region or anywhere else.

Our role ends with administrative and academic management of the University, he said on CRTVs Sunday newsmagazine program, Cameroon Calling as he responded to claims that they are concluding plans for the creation of an annex of the University of Buea in Akonolinga.

The South West Chiefs Conference had called on the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Buea to, first of all, decongest the institution to all six divisions of the South West Region before considering the request made by the elite of Akonolinga.

Here is the full text of the interview Prof. Ngomo granted CRTV last Sunday. He was responding to questions from CRTVs anchorman, Ebenezer Motale.

For the clarity of our readers, what is an annex of a university prof?

Well, an annex of a university will virtually be a duplication of all the teaching programs of the university in buildings located elsewhere. But usually, an annex is under the management of the main campus. In an annex, you will have all that the main campus will have. But if the hierarchy so desires, if such a thing is created at all, then at some point it will be under some kind of autonomous management.

Has the request by Akonolinga prospered at all?

No, let me put it this way, it was just a request. It was a request to be studied.

How did they come to know about UB?

Yes, thats a fair question. Let me say that some of the lecturers in UB accompanied by their students had already been carrying out research in the Akonolinga area long before, and thats how the community came to know about UB and got to know us.

After seeing the results of such research carried out there, they believed UB could be of assistance to their activities which were mainly farming and aquaculture. Some researchers from the department of fisheries and aquaculture had taken an interest to study the multiplication of the kanga fish in the Nyong River and which had not been excessively studied and how it could be domesticated. This is in addition to some socioeconomic studies they had done. These researchers quite often presented their results to members of that community and they found them remarkable. Those elites then offered the university 40 hectares to help them carry out those activities. Let me say that when they showed up here, they pledged another 121 hectares making it a total of 161 hectares.

Does UB need that amount of land?

Why not? You know we have a department of forestry and students, lecturers and researchers in forestry need the land to carry out inventories of trees and wildlife species and it is important to go with students to a forest we control so that experiments cannot be destroyed.

So Prof., At this point we can assume that if this request gets granted, it will be something to do with agriculture and aquaculture?

Let me put it this way, these people came with a project. But first of all, researchers had individually been carrying out work on fish species not just from the Nyong River but from other rivers in Cameroon within the context of some research projects which some researchers had. And so the focus of particular research which concerned Akonolinga was on the establishment of a resistant species by cross-breeding species we got from Akonolinga, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone. So that was within the context of a joint research project.

This was going on. But of course, that was being carried out at the level of the University of Buea. And when these people eventually showed up for a visit, and thats when everybody knew there was something like this. When the people came for a visit, they were taken to our laboratories to be shown the development of those species. It had nothing to do with any annex or anything. It was within the context of individual and collective research of some researchers.

Prof., the text creating UB states that it will pursue an Anglo-Saxon education with English as the medium of instruction. In Akonolinga, the language of instruction, of course, is French. Whats your take on this?

Well, I think I need to clear some grey areas there. Nobody has created anything. We took the matter to Senate. In fact, when the elites of that community came visiting, it coincided with the meeting of the deans and directors. So we gave them some time to do some presentations they had with them on PowerPoint. And so after listening to them, we continued with our meeting while they went visiting some of the facilities in the faculty of agriculture and veterinary medicine.

So having learned from them what they wanted from us, the next step was to inform Senate.

And Senate is the highest decision-making organ in the university regarding academic matters. So the discussion in the Senate was simply informative, and we had to do that before transferring that request to the ministry. So, of course, we dont have the authority to create an annex, an antenna, a college, talk less of a university campus.

On August 8, 2020, the chiefs paid you a courtesy visit on the occasion of which they proposed to decongest your institution in the following ways; Faculty of Agriculture in Ekondo-Titi, Ndian Division, Fisheries and Marine Studies in Limbe, Fako Division, Higher Teachers Training College in Bangem, Kupe Muanenguba, School of Mines and Geology in Mamfe, Manyu, a School of Pharmacy and Pharmacopeia in Menji, Lebialem Division and Faculty of Engineering and Cyber Criminology in Kumba, Meme Division. Now tell us, Professor, has the South West Chiefs Conference the authority or capacity to make the demands as we have just enumerated?

While I appreciate their demands, you know, like any other body, the demands are made to the wrong people. The demands should be made to those who have the authority to create those structures. For now, the University of Buea decree locates the University in Buea.

When the Higher Teachers Training Technical College was created in Kumba, it was created by the head of state. So, you know, they cant address such a request to us. We dont have that authority. They can inform us as they did. But to say that they have a decongestion plan for the university, such a request should be addressed to those who have the authority and we dont have. Our role ends with administrative and academic management of the University.
The lawsuit, filed Aug. 25, lists Liberty Mutual as the defendant as Enterprise Electric submitted a claim after not receiving payment from the contractor, according to the lawsuit. Liberty Mutual, which declined to comment on the pending litigation, is listed as the surety on the Aug. 25, 2017, payment bond for the project.
The FRA putting a hold on this process again just reiterates how far away their project truly is from coming to fruition, Ray Jackson, a Stonewall principal, said in an email Thursday. The ONE Westport development team will continue to work diligently to ensure our project stays on track and delivers what we have proffered to the community and city of Baltimore including the public park and accessible waterfront area.
We are excited to welcome Michael to this critically important role for Carroll County, Commissioner Stephen Wantz, R-District 1, said. The director is the cornerstone for building the best combination system possible, and we believe hiring Michael gives us a huge advantage moving the department forward. He is well known and respected in the state, has comprehensive knowledge of all aspects of Fire/EMS from legislative issues to front line operations, and has the leadership and experience for this complex and momentous initiative.
Rosenkrans led the efforts to have the first historical marker in Harford County that commemorates the countys suffragists. The unveiling in Tydings Park on March 27 capped off a town-wide celebration and a suffragist parade led by Havre de Grace Mayor Bill Martin. This historical marker puts Havre de Grace on the map as part of the National Votes for Women Trail. It is located near where the Prairie Schooner Womens Suffrage Campaign stopped in Havre de Grace on June 30, 1915.
Officers arrived at the store on the 2000 block of Solomons Island Road for a reported theft. The store manager advised police that a couple stole the laundry detergent by fleeing the store without paying.
In a debate on Afghanistan on Thursday, foreign ministers of the European Union (EU) discussed how to engage with the Taliban, in particular humanitarian aid and a possible tide of Afghan refugees.

"The purpose of the meeting is to try to reach an agreement on coordinated engagement with the Taliban on the basis of certain conditions, and on the possibilities of cooperation with regional players," the bloc's foreign policy chief Josep Borrell told journalists before the start of the informal meeting in Slovenia.

This does not mean recognition, Borrell stressed. "This requires cooperation with the Taliban."

It is important for Germany to set certain conditions, such as the formation of an inclusive government, the protection of human rights and women's rights, and that Afghanistan does not again become a haven for terrorists, said German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas during the meeting.

Luxembourg's Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn stressed that the Taliban must be aware that without international assistance, the country will collapse.

"Europe cannot be a positive Europe if it limits the number of refugees," he said. The need to allow Afghans at risk to come to Europe was underlined by several other EU foreign ministers.

However, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto disagreed, saying that Afghans should not be encouraged to leave the country without restrictions. Polish Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau agreed with him.

On Friday, the ministers will discuss EU-China relations, the EU's approach towards the Gulf countries and EU cooperation with the Indo-Pacific region. Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar will present his views at the meeting.

(ANI)

Also Read: China miffed over report calling for stronger EU-Taiwan ties
Clay Center, KS (67432)

Today

Partly to mostly cloudy skies with scattered thunderstorms during the evening. Low 58F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 60%..

Tonight

Partly to mostly cloudy skies with scattered thunderstorms during the evening. Low 58F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 60%.
We are pleased Sysco has decided to finally come to the table and give our members the workplace protections and respect they deserve. We tried to avoid a strike at all costs, but it proved a necessary action to inspire dialogue, Teamsters Local 703 Vice President Pat Bruno said in a news release.
Im delighted to have access to COVID-19 boosters for myself and my family. I had the virus last October. It damaged my heart, left me hospitalized for days and out of work for six weeks. I spent most of the last 18 months writing about the ravages of the virus on families and communities and livelihoods. I want to do anything in my power to vanquish this beast.
The World Health Organization this week spotlighted a new and worrying COVID-19 variant it says might be resistant to vaccines. The mu strain accounts for a tiny fraction of all coronavirus cases in the U.S.  Illinois has detected only 18, according to the outbreak.info database  but like the delta variant that has become omnipresent, mu has properties that could make it more transmissible.
Vaccines remain our strongest tool to protect ourselves from COVID-19, the delta variant, and most crucially, to maintain our health care systems ability to care for anyone who walks through their doors in need of help, Pritzker said in a statement. While hospitals and schools move forward in good faith, this extension ensures they are prepared to meet this requirement to better protect our most vulnerable residents and children who are not yet eligible to get vaccinated.
But while the outbreaks are listed alphabetically by school name, the data does not include the specific district or town where the school is located  an omission that can be confusing, given there can be several Illinois schools with the same name.
I love rock n roll: Get ready to sing your heart out to classic rock songs performed by some of the most talented tribute bands in the Chicago area. Concertgoers are treated the music of Jimmy Buffet, Elton John, Crosby, Still, Nash, & Young, Queen, and more throughout the two block festival grounds. More than 30 vendors provide tastes from local restaurants and food trucks along with nearly two dozen varieties of beer and wine. Rock n Rail through Sept. 5 in downtown Griffith on Broad Street in northwest Indiana; free. Full event information can be found at griffith.in.gov.
But the fire still burned and as has ever happened in the face of calamity, marauding looters and thieves took advantage. As Edgar Lee Masters wrote in Tale of Chicago, Bad men in the spell of whiskey, haggard, collarless, some ragged and filthy, and blackened with smoke, glided through the masses, picking pockets, having turned to wolves in this time of despair.  Women were shrieking as they were knocked down by robbers in order to take small bundles of clothing, or what not.
Besides natural disasters, the president has had to contend with a multitude of other challenges. He is searching for ways to rescue the 100-200 Americans stuck in Afghanistan after the longest war in U.S. history ended a matter of days ago. He is also confronting the delta variant of the coronavirus that has plunged the country into an autumn of uncertainty only months after he declared independence from the disease at a July 4 celebration on the White House lawn.
McCarricks fall began in 2017 when a former altar boy came forward to report the priest had groped him when he was a teenager in New York. The next year, the Archdiocese of New York announced that McCarrick had been removed from ministry after finding the allegation to be credible and substantiated, and two New Jersey dioceses revealed they had settled claims of sexual misconduct against him in the past involving adults.
Chansley was among the first wave of pro-Trump rioters to force its way into the Capitol building. He yelled into a bullhorn as officers tried to control the crowd, posed for photos, profanely referred to then-Vice President Mike Pence as a traitor while in the Senate. He wrote a note to Pence saying, Its only a matter of time, justice is coming. He also made a social media post in November in which he promoted hangings for traitors.
I think the perspectives were pretty wide, and so its our job now to take all of that and see what makes sense to include in the final policy, Boik said. But, again, one of the reasons were here is because we also want to make sure that were following what the data tells us and you know that we have a more complete picture upon which weve been having serious conversations.
For someone to do this to these babies, you think about the people who are capable of such a thing. I wonder, what type of animal lives inside of people? Regina Broughton said. Because thats what youd have to be, an animal. What type of animal could do this?
Its unclear how CPS will fix the problem, which was revealed shortly before the first day of the new school year last Monday. The district said it is offering transportation stipends of $1,000 for the first two weeks and $500 the following months for the 2,100 students without transportation, as well as the 5,500 students facing longer route times. The stipend and reimbursement process have not been announced.
In Old Town, a man was killed and a woman seriously wounded after three people chased them to a porch at 10:45 p.m. in the 1300 block of North Cleveland Avenue, police said. At least one person fired shots, striking both the man and woman, whose ages were unknown. Both were shot in the torso. The man was pronounced dead at Northwestern University Medical Center, and the woman was taken to Stroger Hospital in serious condition. No one is in custody, police said.
They eventually boarded an elevator to the parking garage, and the three white officers, Jarocki, Kelly and Gilmore, got on with them, according to the lawsuit. The officers at the time were downtown to meet with city Law Department attorneys about another lawsuit in which they were defendants. But by the time the officers were on the elevator, Baskins suit alleged, they had been drinking at a nearby bar.
It also is a statewide problem. More than 8 of every 10 Illinoisans live in a community where the toxic metal was detected in drinking water from at least one home during the past six years, the Tribune reported in March. Dozens of homes had hundreds and even thousands of parts per billion of lead in tap water  just as extreme as what researchers found during the same period in Flint, Michigan, where mismanagement of the public water system drew a world spotlight to the hazards.
Recently, he was reminded of the haunting things he saw during his service through the gaunt eyes of his own family members when he reunited with them at OHare. They had been stranded in Afghanistan after going there to visit relatives, and Amer is still reeling from the harrowing ordeal of 10 sleepless days as he worked to get them out of a Kabul apartment where they were hiding. He and his family have lived in Chicago since 2015; he remained here when they went to visit family in Kabul and worked from Chicago to help evacuate them.
From what we can see, Black voters in the state of Illinois are worse off under the revised plan than we were under the plan enacted in June, said Valerie Leonard, who leads the group. In fact, every redistricting plan the legislature has come up with after 2011 has done progressively more harm to Black voters.
While the alderman did not acknowledge that he wrote these texts, the mayor urged him to apologize to those involved as soon as possible, the mayors office said in a statement. The words attributed to him are personally offensive to the mayor and any woman who reads them.
When he bought it, the market was not like it is now, Sanders listing agent, Joe Nash of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Chicago, said. Theres been this flight from the city to the suburbs, and he was able to make a good amount of return on the deal. And for the age of the house, it was a really good house. It did generate multiple offers and it did sell for over list price. It was a family home with a lot of bedrooms and with a really nice (primary) bedroom suite, with his and hers water closets and just a lot of high end things that you normally dont find in a spec house, like radiant heat in the basement floors.
Art and science are, as Albert Einstein put it, "the branches of the same tree".



Both exist in the pursuit of truth and beauty, nurturing the minds of the people and prompting social progress.

Charm of Science and Technology, an exhibition that opened at the National Art Museum of China on Sunday, and which will run through Monday, shows more than 100 artworks from the museum's collection, which sparkle with the radiance of art and science. Broken down into three sections, it presents major events, accomplishments and luminaries in the Chinese sciences spanning more than seven decades.

A famous quote by Einstein is prominently displayed on the wall at the exhibition: "After a certain high level of technical skill is achieved, science and art tend to coalesce in aesthetics, plasticity and form. The greatest scientists are always artists as well."

Wu Weishan, director of the NAMOC, says the exhibition not only reviews the toil and glories of modern Chinese science, it also invites people to examine the interaction between science and art.

He says many world-famous projects, since ancient times, have been the result of a marriage between art and science, such as the Forbidden City and Cologne Cathedral, while scientific works of momentum also present an artistic charm, such as Shui Jing Zhu (commentary on the water classics), which was about the ancient geography of China and authored by Li Daoyuan, who lived between the 5th and 6th centuries.

"Art and science are inseparable in helping people understand, transform and construct the world," Wu says.

"On one level, this exhibition shows the beauty of reasoning, thinking and argumentation. On the other level, it shows how new technologies reinvent the way artworks are created and further influence their aesthetic value. For example, more artists are embracing 3D printing as an efficient aid to their work."

Pieces on show reach back as early as the mid-1940s, with woodcuts being made to populate knowledge of agriculture and midwifery among farmers, in the border areas led by the Communist Party of China.

There are works from the 1950s and '60s that show several hydrology projects and the development of China's steel industry after the founding of New China.

The latest works hail heroes from the medical profession that are fighting against the prevailing COVID-19 pandemic, as well as those from the aerospace sector who have recently helped send Chinese astronauts into space, and hardware to the moon and Mars.

Also on show are works by artists from abroad, including a bust created by late artist Hsiung Ping-ming who grew up in China, but lived most of his life in France. The sculpture depicts his father Xiong Qinglai, a noted mathematician who headed the mathematics department at Tsinghua University in the late 1920s.

The Xiong family neighbored the family of Yang Wuzhi, also a mathematician, while at Tsinghua, and Hsiung and Yang's son, C.N. Yang, forged a lifelong friendship across continents.

A bust of Yang, the Nobel Prize laureate, by Wu, a sculptor in his own right, is also on show.
The 2021 China International Fair for Trade in Services (CIFTIS) kicked off on Thursday in Beijing, highlighting China's new pledges to open the country's services sector wider and enhance global cooperation for further economic recovery.



Themed "Towards Digital Future and Service Driven Development," the fair, held both online and offline, will tap the potential of cutting-edge digital technologies and functions as a platform for promoting world economic recovery and growth.

Enterprises from home and abroad have flocked to the fair, hoping to seek opportunities in the world's second-largest economy.

The 2021 CIFTIS has attracted the registration from more than 12,000 enterprises, up 52 percent from that in 2020. Representatives from 153 countries and regions signed up for the event, according to the Ministry of Commerce (MOC).

Up to 21 percent of offline exhibitors are Fortune 500 companies or industry leading enterprises, according to the MOC.

Along with Thursday's Global Trade in Services Summit of the 2021 CIFTIS, five summit forums as well as 119 thematic forums and conferences will also be held on the sidelines.

The holding of CIFTIS this year has shown that China is open and confident about embracing the world, and is committed to working with the global community to "make its market cake bigger" so that everyone can enjoy and share the benefits, said Michael Bi, EY Greater China Markets Managing Partner.

MOC data showed that China's services trade rose by 7.3 percent year on year to nearly 2.81 trillion yuan (about 435.02 billion U.S. dollars) in the first seven months of the year.

Opening-up commitment



Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday announced a slew of new measures at the Global Trade in Services Summit.

China will open up at a higher level, by implementing across the country a negative list for cross-border services trade and by exploring the development of national demonstration zones for the innovative development of trade in services, said Xi.

The country will also scale up support for the growth of the services sector in the Belt and Road partner countries and share China's technological achievements with the rest of the world, according to Xi.

At 2020 CIFTIS, Xi made three proposals for the international community, including jointly fostering an open and inclusive environment for cooperation, working together to invigorate momentum for cooperation driven by innovation, and making joint efforts to break new ground in win-win cooperation.

Over the past year, China has walked the talk in turning those proposals into concrete actions.

China issued the country's first negative list for cross-border trade in services in the southern island province of Hainan, built Beijing into a national comprehensive demonstration zone, and added four pilot zones for deepening opening-up in services trade in Tianjin, Shanghai, Chongqing and Hainan.

According to a report published by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, China is one of the economies that saw the largest declines in services trade restrictiveness in 2020.

Xi announced on Thursday that China will set up a stock exchange in Beijing and build it into a major base for innovative small and medium-sized firms.

"We are excited by China's commitment and concrete actions to further strengthen its financial markets," said Rochelle Wei, CEO of J.P. Morgan Futures Co., Ltd.

The further opening up of China's financial market will present significant opportunities for the company and its clients, Wei said, adding that global investors have shown great interest in China and some have beefed up their investment.

Digital future



"The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the digitalization of trade in services, thus providing opportunities for structural adjustment and the development of new services trade businesses," said Vice Minister of Commerce Wang Bingnan at a press conference last week.

In 2020, China's digitally deliverable trade in services stood at 294.76 billion U.S. dollars, up 8.4 percent year on year and accounting for 44.5 percent of the total services trade, MOC data showed.

This year's CIFTIS features a special section for digital services for the first time, with up to 33 well-known enterprises and institutions participating in the special section.

China has made digital development a clear national strategy, and achieved stunning achievements in information infrastructure construction in the past few years, said Michael Bi.

With the sound infrastructure base, vast smart terminals and digital environment, China will speed up its digital transformation, he added.
China's service trade rose by 7.3 percent year on year to nearly 2.81 trillion yuan (about 435.02 billion U.S. dollars) in the first seven months of the year, the Ministry of Commerce said Thursday.



Of the total, service exports reached about 1.34 trillion yuan, up by 23.2 percent year on year, and service imports stood at 1.47 trillion yuan, down by 4 percent from a year earlier.

In July alone, the country's service trade reached 431.92 billion yuan, up by 10.1 percent, year on year.

Trade in knowledge-intensive services rose in the January-July period to reach nearly 1.29 trillion yuan, up 11.8 percent year on year. The figure accounted for 45.8 percent of the total service trade.

Knowledge-intensive service exports increased 15.4 percent to 704.47 billion yuan, accounting for more than half of total service exports, while knowledge-intensive service imports rose 7.6 percent to 582.35 billion yuan.

Trade in travel services in the first seven months declined 32.7 percent to 429.98 billion yuan as countries around the world continued to take strict measures to restrict people's cross-border movement.

China has taken a slew of measures to widen the opening-up of the service industry and pledged to make more efforts to promote the opening-up of trade in services to a higher level.
Chinese regulators have summoned 11 ride-hailing service platforms for talks over their irregular practices, ordering the firms to examine their operations and immediately rectify non-compliant behaviors.

Some platform companies have used multiple marketing tactics to engage in vicious competition, and also taken part in illegal operations such as the hiring of unlicensed drivers, according to several regulatory authorities including the Ministry of Transport and the Office of the Central Cyberspace Affairs Commission.

The 11 firms, including Didi Chuxing and the ride-hailing service of Meituan, were ordered to cease recruiting non-compliant cars and drivers, stop vicious competition and disorderly expansion, and ban practices that exclude or restrict competition.

The authorities also called on the platforms to regulate their pricing mechanisms to reduce the commission they take from drivers and adopt necessary security measures to protect user information.
China's top political advisory body has voiced strong dissatisfaction with and resolute opposition to a report recently adopted by the European Parliament's Committee on Foreign Affairs.



Despite China's solemn representations, the report on so-called "EU-Taiwan political relations and cooperation" advocated the elevation of EU-Taiwan relations, said a statement issued on Thursday by the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference National Committee.

The report seriously violated the one-China principle and blatantly interfered in China's internal affairs, and was also severely in conflict with international law and the basic norms of international relations, said the statement.

Stressing that there is only one China in the world and Taiwan is an inseparable part of China, the statement said the Taiwan question is purely a matter of China's internal affairs.

The one-China principle is a widely recognized norm of international relations and a general consensus of the international community, as well as the prerequisite and the political basis for China to maintain and develop friendly relations of cooperation with other countries.

The statement said China resolutely opposes any interference in its internal affairs and obstruction of the process toward the peaceful reunification of China.

The committee urged the EU side to fully recognize the highly sensitive nature of the Taiwan question, respect China's sovereignty and territorial integrity, and cease sending any wrong signal to the "Taiwan independence" forces.

The EU side should invest more efforts in boosting the mutual trust and cooperation, and ensure that the China-EU relationship steadily moves forward on the right track, said the statement.
You are here: China

A Chinese spokesperson on Thursday urged certain bodies and members of the European Parliament to adhere to the one-China principle when handling Taiwan-related issues.



Zhu Fenglian, a spokesperson for the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council, made the remarks when commenting on a recent report adopted by the European Parliament's Committee on Foreign Affairs, which called for elevating EU-Taiwan "political relations."

The one-China principle is a widely recognized norm for international relations and a consensus of the international community, said Zhu, urging the relevant bodies and members of the European Parliament to rectify their wrong remarks and decisions.

Zhu also reiterated that any attempts by Taiwan's Democratic Progressive Party to rely on foreign forces to seek "Taiwan independence" will amount to nothing.
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The remains of 109 Chinese soldiers killed in the 1950-1953 Korean War were returned to China on Thursday from the Republic of Korea (ROK).



Escorted by two Chinese fighter jets, an air force plane carrying the remains and belongings of the fallen soldiers landed at the Taoxian international airport in Shenyang, capital of northeast China's Liaoning Province, at 11:26 a.m.

It is the eighth such repatriation since 2014.

Around 230 representatives from central and local authorities, the military, and family members and relatives of the Chinese People's Volunteers (CPV) martyrs attended a ceremony at the airport to welcome the soldiers' remains at 12:37 p.m.

Following the event, the remains were escorted to the CPV martyrs' cemetery in Shenyang, where a burial ceremony will be held Friday.

The remains of 716 soldiers returned from the ROK and were laid to rest in the cemetery between 2014 and 2020.
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Three Chinese nurses were awarded the Florence Nightingale Medal on Thursday for their outstanding contributions to healthcare.



Wang Qishan, Chinese vice president and honorary president of the Red Cross Society of China (RCSC), presented the medals to the nurses at a ceremony at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.

The Chinese awardees are Cheng Shouzhen from Guangdong Province, Hu Minhua from Jiangxi Province, and Tuo Yali from Gansu Province.

A total of 25 nurses from 18 countries won the medal this year.

Noting that China has the most recipients of the Florence Nightingale Medal this year, State Councilor Wang Yong said that the awarded nurses demonstrated the core socialist values and the Red Cross spirit of humanity, compassion, and dedication.

When addressing the ceremony, Wang Yong called on nurses across the country to learn from the awardees and make progress in improving people's health, building a healthy China, and promoting the humanitarian cause.

The Florence Nightingale Medal, introduced in 1912, is the highest international honor for nurses. A total of 83 Chinese nurses have won the award since the country began to recommend candidates in 1983.
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Chinese President Xi Jinping addresses the Global Trade in Services Summit of the 2021 China International Fair for Trade in Services via video, Sept. 2, 2021. [Photo/Xinhua]

Chinese President Xi Jinping delivered a speech at the Global Trade in Services Summit of the 2021 China International Fair for Trade in Services on Thursday in Beijing via video.

Please see the attachment for the translation of the full text of the speech.

Full text of Chinese President Xi Jinping's remarks at Global Trade in Services Summit of 2021 China International Fair for Trade in Services
A medical worker registers information of an old woman who comes to receive a COVID-19 vaccine in Neikeng Town in Jinjiang City, southeast China's Fujian Province, Aug. 31, 2021. [Photo/Xinhua]

The Chinese mainland on Thursday reported no new locally transmitted COVID-19 cases, the National Health Commission said in its daily report on Friday.

Thursday saw 28 new imported cases, nine of which were reported in Yunnan, eight in Shanghai, five in Guangdong, two in Henan and one each in Heilongjiang, Zhejiang, Sichuan and Shaanxi.

Two suspected cases arriving from outside the mainland were reported in Shanghai. No new deaths related to COVID-19 were reported on Thursday, the commission added.

A total of 8,395 imported cases had been reported on the mainland by the end of Thursday. Among them, 7,775 had been discharged from hospitals following recovery, and 620 remained hospitalized. No deaths had been reported among the imported cases.

The total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases on the mainland reached 94,954 by Thursday, including 935 patients still receiving treatment, two of whom were in severe condition.

A total of 89,383 patients had been discharged from hospitals following recovery on the mainland, and 4,636 had died as a result of the virus.

A total of 22 asymptomatic cases, all arriving from outside the mainland, were newly reported. There were a total of 433 asymptomatic cases, of whom 378 were imported, under medical observation on Thursday.

By the end of Thursday, 12,113 confirmed COVID-19 cases, including 212 deaths, had been reported in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR), while 63 cases had been reported in the Macao SAR, and 16,006 cases, including 837 deaths, had been reported in Taiwan.

A total of 11,799 COVID-19 patients in the Hong Kong SAR had been discharged from hospitals following recovery, while 60 had been discharged in the Macao SAR, and 13,692 had been discharged in Taiwan.
Amid the COVID-19 epidemic running riot around the planet, China has provided over 900 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines for more than 100 countries, particularly developing countries, and will endeavor to provide two billion more for the world this year.

China has always upheld the idea of building a community with a shared future for mankind, kept its solemn promise to make COVID-19 vaccines a global public good, and taken actions to fight the global war against the virus, winning wide praise from the international community.

The Federal Commission for Protection against Sanitary Risks of Mexico authorized the emergency use of COVID-19 vaccines produced by Chinas Beijing Institute of Biological Products Co., Ltd. (the Sinopharm vaccines) in Mexico in an announcement issued on August 26.

According to analysis and research undertaken by relevant government departments in Mexico, the Sinopharm vaccines meet the countrys standards for quality, safety, effectiveness and other aspects of COVID-19 vaccine, said the announcement.

On August 23, a new shipment of 500,000 China-donated vaccine doses arrived in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia. Noting that vaccination is an important strategy of the Cambodian government for combating the virus, Tea Banh, Deputy Prime Minister and Defense Minister of Cambodia, believes that Chinas selfless assistance has effectively safeguarded the lives and health of the Cambodian people.

On the same day, a handover ceremony was held to mark the donation of 100,000 COVID-19 vaccine doses to the Cambodian Red Cross from the Red Cross Society of China.

The second batch of COVID-19 vaccines donated by the Chinese military to the Lao People's Army arrived in Vientiane, capital of Laos, on August 23.

Various anti-epidemic materials donated by the Chinese military, such as COVID-19 vaccines, medical masks, and virus testing reagents, as well as military medical experts from the Chinese army, have played an important role in preventing and controlling the spread of the epidemic in Laos, said Vongkham Phommakone, deputy minister of National Defense of Laos, at the handover ceremony held on the arrival of the vaccines.

On August 23, Ethiopia received the third batch of COVID-19 vaccines donated by the Chinese government at the Addis Ababa Bole International Airport in Addis Ababa, the capital of the country.

Ethiopian Minister of Health Lia Tadesse and Minister of Education Getahun Mekuria attended the ceremony marking the handover of the vaccines at the airport.

Tadesse believed that the shipment would significantly increase the vaccination rate of Ethiopia and support the country in defeating the virus.

The 700,000 teachers and 27 million students in Ethiopia were in urgent need of inoculation, and China-donated vaccines were expected to provide them with a strong immunity shield, according to Mekuria.

Jordan Food and Drug Administration has approved the emergency use of COVID-19 vaccines made by Chinese biopharmaceutical company Sinovac Biotech Ltd. in Jordan, announced Nizar Mhaidat, director general of the administration, on August 23. The country has so far authorized the use of nine vaccines, including the Sinovac and Sinopharm products.

On August 20, the second batch of China-assisted vaccines arrived in Lome, the capital of Togo. Moustafa Mijiyawa, health minister of Togo, pointed out that China had lent a hand to Togo when it needed help amid the rampant pandemic by providing the latter with two batches of vaccines promptly.

A shipment of 200,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccines donated by the Chinese government to Rwanda arrived in Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, on August 19.

Rwandan Minister of Health Daniel Ngamije expressed gratitude to China for its strong support for and generous donation to Rwanda in its epidemic response. According to the office, China's donation will significantly help push ahead with Rwanda's vaccination drive and safeguard the health of Rwandan people.

On August 18, a handover ceremony for China-donated COVID-19 vaccines and testing reagents was held at the Ministry of Health and Sanitation of Sierra Leone.

China had always provided support and help for Sierra Leone in health care, education, agriculture, infrastructure, and other sectors, and given a helping hand to Sierra Leone when the latter was in times of need, said Austin Demby, Sierra Leone's minister of Health and Sanitation.

The third batch of COVID-19 vaccines donated by the Chinese government to Iraq arrived in Baghdad, the capital of Iraq, on August 12.

Noting that China and Iraq have cooperated closely and supported each other in the fight against the epidemic, Ali al-Baldawi, director-general of the Iraqi State Company for Marketing Drugs and Medical Appliances, said that the entry of larger quantities of vaccines into Iraq means that more Iraqis will receive the jab, which will have a significant impact in curbing the disease's spread.

On August 6, a new batch of COVID-19 vaccines donated by China to Bolivia arrived in Cochabamba, the third-largest city in Bolivia, together with some Chinese vaccines and anti-epidemic supplies purchased by the Bolivian government.

Bolivian officials, including Benjamin Blanco, deputy minister of Foreign Trade and Integration, received these materials at the city's Cochabamba Jorge Wilstermann International Airpor. Blanco thanked China for its strong support and selfless help for Bolivia.
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Three Chinese astronauts talked with Hong Kong youth representatives from space on Friday afternoon.

In a real-time video chat, the astronauts in the Tiangong space station answered questions from the youngsters and showed them how to conduct experiments, do exercise and drink water in a weightless environment.

Nie Haisheng, Liu Boming and Tang Hongbo were sent into space aboard the Shenzhou-12 spaceship in June.

The event was the latest of a series of space-related activities in Hong Kong.
The U.S. Central Command announced Monday that the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan was complete, ending 20 years of U.S.-led occupation. However, this doesn't mean an end to the United States' responsibility in the war-torn country.



The invasion of Afghanistan under the banner of "counterterrorism" has seen many war crimes committed against its people by troops from both the U.S. and its allies, and has been a human rights disaster.

Under the pretext of democracy and human rights, the U.S. attempted to impose its own ideology and vision of government in Afghanistan which was completely unsuited to the country's conditions. Its interference in the domestic affairs of other countries has only undermined the peace and stability of other countries and regions.

The catastrophe in Afghanistan is the inevitable outcome of the long-term exertion of hegemony and power politics by the U.S. in the world.

The United States, alongside the power of its alliance system, is what is traditionally known as the "hegemon." It keeps distorting and violating international law and norms, as well as seeking to impose arbitrary, unilateral sanctions or engaging in military intervention against other countries.

The U.S. and its allies of course frequently call out other nations in the name of "human rights" and likewise advocate "justice" for such. If any other country had committed the same "events" in Afghanistan, it would have been universally decried as an unjust invasion and a series of atrocities.

This shows how the U.S. always seeks to hold a monopoly not just over global discourse, but also a monopoly owing to its hegemonic status.

The U.S. and its allies should be held to account for what they have done in Afghanistan. The 20-year conflict has achieved precisely nothing, led to a loss of American lives as well as those of civilians and innocent people, and ultimately promulgated instability and conflict in the country. Is there no thought that perhaps war was never the answer in the first place? Yet the mainstream media and the U.S. continually call other countries the "aggressors"  but this is a distortion of reality. America has long been a hegemonic state imposing war and destruction throughout the world. It should be brought to justice not only for the situation in Afghanistan, but everywhere else before it, including Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen and many more.

The United States should stop practicing hegemony and power politics in the world, which only lead to greater division, chaos and tragedy, rather than peace and stability.

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.
 Flash

Yang Jiechi, a member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), on Thursday met with U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry via video link upon invitation, urging the United States to adopt rational and pragmatic China policies to work with China in bringing ties back on track as soon as possible.



Yang, also director of the Office of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the CPC Central Committee, said for some time China-U.S. relations have faced severe difficulties due to a series of erroneous acts by the United States to interfere in China's internal affairs and undermine China's interests. "China is strongly opposed to and even more resolute in countering such practices."

As confrontation between China and the United States serves no one's interests, Yang said the two countries should have mutual respect, coexist peacefully, handle differences properly, and work for win-win results.

"This will serve the fundamental interests of people on both sides and people of all countries in the world," Yang said.

He expressed the hope that the United States can take into consideration the common interests of the two sides and the long-term interests of itself, take concrete steps to rectify wrongdoings, view China and bilateral relations in an objective and rational manner, and respect China's political system and development path.

China is open to dialogue and pragmatic cooperation with the United States, Yang said, noting that the two countries can enhance coordination and cooperation on a broad range of issues including climate change, COVID-19 control and economic recovery.

"At the same time, such cooperation must be two-way and mutually beneficial," he added.

Noting that China has taken a series of major strategic decisions and strong measures to respond to climate change, a demonstration of its active and determined attitude, Yang said China respects other countries' rights to development and choice, and the rights to development and choice of China must be respected as well.

China is ready to enhance policy communication and pragmatic cooperation on climate change with the United States to facilitate the full and effective implementation of the Paris Agreement, said Yang.

Noting U.S.-China relations are very important to the two countries and the whole world, Kerry said the United States is willing to step up dialogue with China and jointly cope with climate change based on mutual respect, so as to inject impetus into the improvement of bilateral ties.
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The Kremlin said on Thursday that U.S. plans to provide military assistance to Ukraine could prompt Kiev to opt for a coercive settlement of the Ukrainian crisis.

"We believe that this could potentially be the cause of Ukraine's unpredictable actions in the form of attempts to forcefully resolve the internal conflict in southeast Ukraine. This is very dangerous," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a daily briefing.

He said that Russia strongly opposes "Ukraine's Euro-Atlantic aspirations" that have been supported by the U.S. side.

The spokesman recalled that the Russian president has repeatedly spoken out against the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's expansion and military build-up close to Russian borders.

Peskov said that it was unfortunate that the U.S.-Ukraine relationship is primarily marked by a hard stance against Russia.

"They are friends not for themselves, but against Russia. This can also cause only regret," he added.

The United States and Ukraine have signed a Strategic Defense Framework agreement, which is set to define a new stage of bilateral cooperation in the field of defense and security, the Ukrainian presidential press service said Wednesday.

The deal inked during the visit of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to Washington creates conditions for a significant strengthening of bilateral cooperation in defense and provides international legal support from the United States for the sovereignty, territorial integrity and independence of Ukraine, said a statement on the Ukrainian presidential website.
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The United States and Ukraine have signed a Strategic Defense Framework agreement, which is set to define a new stage of bilateral cooperation in the field of defense and security, the Ukrainian presidential press service said Wednesday.

The deal inked during the visit of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to Washington creates conditions for a significant strengthening of bilateral cooperation in defense and provides international legal support from the United States for the sovereignty, territorial integrity and independence of Ukraine, said a statement on the Ukrainian presidential website.

The agreement also helps accelerate Ukraine's entry into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, according to the statement.

During Zelensky's visit, Kiev and Washington also signed a series of agreements on scientific and technical cooperation, space flight security, information protection and border security.
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A fresh Israeli missile strike targeted sites in Damascus at midnight Thursday, state news agency SANA reported.

The Syrian air defenses intercepted missiles over the southwestern countryside of Damascus as the sound of the interception was clearly heard in the capital.

The Israeli strike was carried out from inside the Lebanese airspace, SANA reported, citing a military source. And the air defenses intercepted most of the missiles.

Meanwhile, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor said the Israeli attack targeted military sites in Damascus.

The Israeli attack is the latest in a string of strikes targeting military sites across Syria.

On Aug. 20, Israel struck several military sites in Damascus, just two days after attacking sites in the southern province of Quneitra.

Israel has repeatedly launched attacks on Syrian military sites under the pretext of fighting pro-Iran militias.
The global coiled tubing market size is expected to reach USD 4.72 billion by 2027, expanding at a CAGR of 4.8% over the forecast period, according to a new report by Grand View Research, Inc. The market is expected to grow on account of the increasing need to maximize oil and gas output from existing oil and gas wells. Rising demand for primary energy for transportation, power generation, and household activities has resulted in increased consumption of oil and gas in major economies. As a result, there are increasing investments in exploration and production activities in unconventional oil and gas reserves.

Coiled Tubing (CT) plays a significant role in enabling upstream oil and gas players to produce oil in a cost-effective way. It can be used on live wells as the product can be inserted into the well while the oil and gas production is ongoing. Moreover, there are a number of well intervention operations such as well completion and well cleaning that can be performed in a cost-effective manner through the utilization of coiled tubing. It can endure greater tensile and compressive forces when perforating highly deviated and horizontal wells.

North America was the largest regional market for coiled tubing in 2019. The region is predicted to maintain its dominance in the forthcoming years. A significant boost in the production of tight oil particularly in the U.S has resulted in a significant rise in demand for coiled tubing. Canada is yet another prominent regional market, as there are a number of deviated wells in the country, for which CT is largely used for well intervention and drilling services.

Browse Details of Market Report @ https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/coiled-tubing-ct-market

The top three players in the global coiled tubing market include Halliburton, Baker Hughes Company, and Schlumberger Limited. These companies gain a competitive edge in the oilfield service market, as the oil and gas exploration and production companies are aiming to minimize the cost of production through innovative technologies like coiled tubing.

Further key findings from the report suggest:

 North America is expected to register the fastest CAGR of 5.5% in terms of revenue, from 2020 to 2027, owing to accelerating production of tight oil in the country

 Well intervention service is estimated to exhibit the fastest CAGR of 5.0% in terms of revenue from 2020 to 2027. The growth is attributed to rising demand from oil and gas producers to maximize production from the existing wells

 Onshore application acquired the highest market share of 61.5% in 2019 owing to the abundant production of oil and gas from onshore fields

 Offshore application is estimated to experience the fastest CAGR of 5.6% in terms of revenue, from 2020 to 2027, owing to rising investments in offshore fields on a global scale

 In 2018, Baker Hughes Company was awarded a contract by Saudi Aramco for coiled tubing services and drilling for Marjan oilfield expansion

Grand View Research has segmented the global coiled tubing market on the basis of service, operation, application, and region:

Coiled Tubing Services Outlook (Volume, Units; Revenue, USD Million, 2016 - 2027)

o Well Intervention

o Well Completion

o Well Cleaning

o Others

o Drilling

o Others

Coiled Tubing Operation Outlook (Volume, Units; Revenue, USD Million, 2016 - 2027)

 Circulation/Deliquification

 Pumping

 Logging

 Perforation

 Others
San Francisco, 3 Sep 2021: The Report Digital Patient Monitoring Devices Market Size, Share & Trends Analysis Report By Type (Wireless Sensor Technology, mHealth, Telehealth, Wearable Devices, Remote Patient Monitoring), By Product, By Region, And Segment Forecasts, 2021 - 2028

The global digital patient monitoring devices market size is expected to reach USD 444.6 billion by 2028, based on a new report by Grand View Research, Inc. The market is expected to expand at a CAGR of 23.5% from 2021 to 2028. The growth of the market is driven by the rapid adoption of Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM) solutions, technological advancements such as artificial intelligence and Internet-of-things (IoT), and new product launches. Furthermore, rising per capita income and growing awareness among patients are anticipated to positively impact the market.

Furthermore, the growing number of startup businesses and increasing funding for them is expected to bode well with the market. Active government measures for expanding the coverage for RPM, mHealth, and telehealth have accelerated the shift towards digital health. As a result, a plethora of startup companies have started to utilize this opportunity. For example, in August 2020, Optimize Systems Inc. raised USD 15.6 million to expand its RPM platform. This is likely to favor the growth of the market.

The COVID- pandemic has significantly increased the demand for remote monitoring and patient engagement solutions such as multiparameter, temperature, respiratory, cardiac, insulin, pressure/hemodynamic, and neonatal/fetal monitoring devices. This equipment plays a significant role in helping combat the COVID-19 infection. The manufacturers are focusing on expanding their production to meet the growing demand. Furthermore, the use of mobile-based solutions can help in reducing the patient volume in hospitals and controlling the spread of infection. Thus, the increasing adoption of mHealth apps in the current scenario is expected to positively impact the market.

Access Research Report of Digital Patient Monitoring Devices Market @ https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/digital-patient-monitoring-devices-market

Digital Patient Monitoring Devices Market Report Highlights

The wearable devices segment dominated the market in terms of revenue share in 2020. Growing demand for home-based medical care, increasing penetration of IoT-based medical equipment, and growing expenditure on healthcare across are propelling the growth of the segment

The diagnostic monitoring devices segment held the maximum portion of the market in 2020 owing to the rising prevalence of diabetes and drastic increase in demand for pulse oximeter as a result of COVID-19

North America dominated the market in 2020. The rapid adoption of RPM in hospitals and clinics, strong government support, and new product launches are attributable to the prominent share of the region

The APAC region is anticipated to witness lucrative growth during the forecast period owing to the rising geriatric population and increasing smartphone penetration

In February 2021, Philips acquired BioTelemetry, Inc.-a remote cardiac diagnostics solution provider to strengthen its position in the industry

List of Key Players of Digital Patient Monitoring Devices Market

GE Healthcare

AT&T

ATHENAHEALTH, INC.

Abbott

Koninklijke Philips N.V. AB

Hill-Rom Services Inc.

Medtronic

Omron Healthcare, Inc.

FitBit, Inc.

Garmin Ltd.

VitalConnect

ResMed

Siren

Access Press Release of Digital Patient Monitoring Devices Market @ https://www.grandviewresearch.com/press-release/global-digital-patient-monitoring-devices-market
Coronado Unified School District (CUSD) is welcoming a new role for the district  Public Affairs Officer. Coronado local and past school board member, Maria Simon, will be taking on the title and taking the lead on the CUSDs public communications strategies.
The Coronado Chamber of Commerce has selected Coronado resident Rena Clancy as its next Executive Director. Clancy previously served as the Chambers Membership Coordinator and will follow in the footsteps of Sue Gillingham who announced her retirement last month. Pictured: Rena Clancy, husband Sean, and son, Adrian.
Join Edith Salas of Salas Properties & host Jenn Barlow as they visit the Coronado Shores community. The towers have amazing views including the world famous Hotel del Coronado, downtown San Diego, San Diego Bay, the City of Coronado, Point Loma, and the Pacific Ocean.
Litchfield, CT (06759)

Today

Partly cloudy this evening with more clouds for overnight. Low 63F. Winds light and variable..

Tonight

Partly cloudy this evening with more clouds for overnight. Low 63F. Winds light and variable.
The 13-seat corporate jet hit the ground outside TRUMPF Inc. 111 Hyde Road, soon after takeoff and slammed into a corner of the building. The plane appeared to be having a mechanical failure, officials said, although what caused the crash is at the center of the ongoing investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board. The NTSB investigators are expected to be on the scene throughout the weekend.
Coates told The Courant on Wednesday that the mixed-use nature of the project makes the phased construction approach successful. As it goes forward, the company can adjust to changes in the consumer and housing markets as well as the financial markets, he said.
UConn deeply values our partnership with the Town of Mansfield, and we believe that whenever possible a collaborative approach to local residential and commercial development will yield the best results, Agwunobi said. We would like to immediately begin work with the town to create a shared framework to guide that joint approach. Such a framework would transparently reflect the goals and needs of both the town and the University.
The emails also show that hours after the budget speech, Lamont flatterer and Yale School of Management Dean Jeffrey Sonnenfeld tempered his earlier praise of the speech with some distressing news. Nooyi was embarrassed and surprised by the soda tax  avoiding PepsiCo colleagues and media. Sonnenfeld had cause to be mindful of Nooyis feelings. In 2016, Nooyi became the most generous graduate of Yale School of Management in terms of lifetime giving to the school, as well as the first woman to endow the deanship at a top business school, the school announced in 2018.
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Riders in Hampton must be 18, four years older that the state requires, to use a scooter. Speed limits are set at 15 miles per hour; the state law allows up to 20 miles per hour. The city and Lime will use geofencing, technology to limit where people are allowed to use the scooters and where they can park.
The order comes after the Food and Drug Administration formally approved the Pfizer vaccine. However, any of the vaccines available under the emergency use authorization, such as those from Moderna and Johnson & Johnson, will fulfill the Pentagons requirement, the Navy said. The Marine Corps is part of the Navy department.
Newport News Police Chief Steve Drew falls to one knee and touches the hearse carrying officer Katherine Thyne outside of the Newport News Police Department South Precinct during a procession Saturday afternoon January 25, 2020. Officer Thyne died Thursday night after being dragged by the car of a man who she and another officer were questioning. On Saturday, the Newport News Police Department transported officer Katherine Thyne from the Medical Examiners Office in Norfolk to Altmeyer Funeral Home in Newport News. (Jonathon Gruenke/Daily Press)
As for how people can help, Brown said CCC is in need of financial assistance, household supply donations, and volunteers to help assist with setting up apartments, coordinating and more. He also said they need employers and landlords or individuals with housing units that will work with them to provide housing and employment.
The new business area, just over one block in length on both sides of the street would contain a bank, post office, movie theater and the stores and businesses moved from the developing Historic Area. For example, Frazier-Callis mens shop moved from the courthouse area to new quarters and H.M. Polly Strykers dentist office also moved from downtown to a second-floor suite above what would become the A&P grocery store, 1932-1954.
For many of the artists, nature is a key part of their work. For Gray, it is used for decoration. In her latest piece, as sunflower petals fell from a vase on her table, she decided to incorporate them into the piece. Imprints of the flowers petals form a collar along the bowls opening. Gray said it is popular for potters to use corn cobs to add texture to their pieces.
Born to a Hyderabadi mother and Lucknow father, Shreya Dhanwanthary calls herself biryani  from the best of the worlds. In fact, she feels she is the best biryani one can be.

Shreya who had debuted in Telugu films over a decade ago for a lark is now on a roll with shows such as Scam 92, in which she played Sucheta Dalal and The Family Man series and the upcoming series Mumbai Diaries 26/11.

But shes still a surprised when we list out her works. I react to it in disbelief. I am surprised. One keeps hoping that something like this happens and then there is a constant flux of good work that comes and one can only look at it with incredulity, she tells us.

Even so, the actress believes Scam 1992 was the show that changed her career graph. In the series, shed played the author-backed role of Sucheta Dalal to Pratik Gandhis Harshad Mehta. Scam 1992 is sort of the point  it is like that pinned comment under photos. It was a pinnacle sort of moment in my career. The show has been talked about and it really provided me a platform to be seen, adds Shreya.

Her tribute to truth seekers

Moving from being a firebrand economic journalist to an on field reporter in the forthcoming show on frontline workers in Mumbai Diaries 26/11, Shreya describes her character in the upcoming series as a paradigm shift from that of Scam 1992.

I play the role of a field journalist called Mansi Hirani, who covers events and incidents, and wants to climb up the ladder. And before you ask me, it is a far cry from my role in Scam 1992. It is a bit of a mishmash of a lot of journalists who were reporting on that day and has been fictionalised to a very large extent, says Shreya.

The actress also points out that the particular story, about the horrors in a hospital on a regular day, has been covered in many formats and that they have a different spin to it. The show is basically an ode to the frontline workers  a term we didnt know till the pandemic, she says.

I dont want to give away much though you will identify her with journalists and the various means they try to get a story. She is genuinely concerned about bringing out the truth.

The funny kid on the sets

As regards her Telugu stint in the 2010-film Sneha Geetham, she considers herself a kid. The director was an alumnus of my engineering college. I was 17 and a moron then, she says with a chuckle. I still am. But I am keen to do Telugu films. And honestly, if they call me, I will jump at it. My mother also badly wants me to do a Telugu film.

Incidentally, Shreya is now working with R Balki in his next film with Sunny Deol, Pooja Bhatt and Dulquer Salman. I get to work with such people and my behaviour on the set is ridiculous. I lose it every time I see them and I have embarrassed everyone on the sets, she says, laughter rolling out in her words.
Four new industrial estates would be set up in Trichy, Thiruvallur, Chengalpattu and Madurai districts to ensure balanced industrial growth in all parts of the State at a cost of Rs 218.22 crore and it would open job opportunities for 7000 persons.  PTI file photo

Chennai: A new park for sculptors would be set up at Kadambadi village in Chengalpattu district by the Tamil Nadu Small Industries Development Corporation (TANSIDCO) for the benefit of 100 artisans and to provide employment to 1000 others.

This was one of the 18 announcements made by Minister for Rural Industries T M Anbarasan with regard to the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MDME) department in the State Assembly on Thursday.

Most of the projects announced for the year would be implemented by the TANSIDCO, the organization set up in 1970 to help the MSME sector, which has now grown to be the third largest in the country.

Four new industrial estates would be set up in Trichy, Thiruvallur, Chengalpattu and Madurai districts to ensure balanced industrial growth in all parts of the State at a cost of Rs 218.22 crore and it would open job opportunities for 7000 persons.

In Nilgiris district, 10 industrial cooperative tea factories would be modernized with a Rs 50.06 crore loan from NABARD and State government assistance.

The policy note on the department traces the States long and ancient tradition in small scale manufacturing as evidenced by the excavations at the Keeladi archeological site near Madurai and through the verses of Sangam literature.
VIJAYAWADA: State chief secretary Adityanath Das has sought three months from the union government to hand over required lands for various railway projects being implemented in Andhra Pradesh. He said the government has already initiated measures to acquire the required lands for Vizianagaram-Titlagarh third lane, Nadikudi-Srikalahasti and Kadapa-Bangalore projects. Das assured that the lands will be handed over by end of December.

The chief secretarys assurance came during a video conference co-chairman of Pragati Projects Monitoring Group and union minister Manish Mandaviya, apart from union minister of state Jitendra Singh, had with chief secretaries of Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, and Jharkhand governments on Friday.

Adityanath Das said the state government has already taken steps to acquire land for the railway projects. He told the union ministers that some of the land has already been handed over to the Indian Railways, while the process has been expedited to acquire the remaining lands.

He pointed out that construction of the new Kovvur-Bhadrachalam railway line is part of APs bifurcation project and the government will take necessary steps in this regard.

The union ministers responded positively to the request seeking another three months for handover of the remaining lands to railways.

Chief secretaries M.T. Krishna Babu and V. Usharani were among the higher officials who participated in the video conference.
Bengaluru: Karnataka Home Minister Araga Jnanendra on Friday directed the city traffic police to strictly adhere to the 'towing' rules in lifting the vehicles parked at the 'no parking' areas in the city, giving 'no room' for any complaints of harassment to the public.

The minister held a meeting with City Police Commissioner Kamal Pant and the Additional Police Commissioner (Traffic) Ravikanthe Gowda today and discussed the issue with them.

"The traffic police should alert the vehicle owners by blowing sirens and collect only the fee amount prescribed for parking the vehicle at the no-parking area if the owner was present on the spot before lifting off the vehicle", the Home minister instructed them.

While stressing that the towing staff should not engage with any arguments with the public during their duties and treat them in a courteous manner, the Home Minister has also directed that "all care should be taken not to cause any damage to the vehicles during towing".
The court directed the state government to inform it about the actions taken on the recommendations of the Excise Commissioner for shifting certain outlets and providing basic facilities. (ANI)

Kochi: Kerala High Court on Thursday asked the Kerala State Beverages Corporation (Bevco) to abide by the Excise Commissioner's directives to shift or relocate the liquor shops to avoid long queues in front of them.

Single Bench of Justice Devan Ramachandran observed that long queues have been eliminated to some extent from in front of the liquor shops and the state has not yet witnessed its third wave of COVID. Otherwise, we would have been sitting on a catastrophic time bomb by now.

The court directed the state government to inform it about the actions taken on the recommendations of the Excise Commissioner for shifting certain outlets and providing basic facilities.

The court directed this while hearing a contempt of court petition filed claiming non-compliance of its 2017 judgement directing the state government and BevCo to ensure that no nuisance is caused to businesses and residents of an area in the Thrissur due to a liquor outlet there.

Court further said, "Long queues were still seen in front of certain liquor shops. However, the Court was keeping silent. Because the Court believed that the Excise Commissioner and the state government would take actions to avoid such queues."

"BevCo might be the highest revenue-generating industry in the state. But it could not gloat that it was doing a good job as the people were forced to go to the public health system because of it," it added.

The court adjourned the case to September 16.
HYDERABAD: Special secretary (Urban Development) Arvind Kumar Friday announced that the 200-year-old Mir Alam Mandi will be restored by the state government. He was speaking after visiting the mandi, which has 43 wholesale shops and about 300 vendors spread over five acres.

The kaman (arch) of the market is in a dilapidated condition. There have been constant complaints of the arch chipping off and it requires urgent restoration. One of the pillars is also in very bad condition. Social and heritage activists have been raising the issue of the kaman being in a dilapidated state from time to time.

Member of Parliament Asaduddin Owaisi, who was also present during Arvind Kumars visit, had earlier raised the issue of restoring Mir Alam Mandi during a review meeting municipal administration minister K.T. Rama Rao.

The government also proposes to restore the Nampally Sarai near the Hyderabad Railway Station.

Moazzam Jahi Market, which has been restored, has become a model for the government to take up renovation of other markets and historical places in the city.
Thiruvananthapuram: A guava sapling, nurtured by a Keralite girl in her village home with dreams to propagate the message of organic farming across the country, will soon spread its leaves in the courtyard of the official residence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, if everything goes as planned.

Actor-turned-BJP MP, Suresh Gopi handed over the tree sapling, gifted by Jayalakshmi, a 10th standard student in the southern state, to the Prime Minister during his recent meeting with him in New Delhi.

The MP shared the photo of Modi accepting the gift by the aspiring girl farmer in his Twitter and Facebook handles on Thursday with a brief note.

"Nurtured by a thoughtful young girl in a courtyard of Kulanada, a village in Pathanamthitta, all set to bloom in the residence of the Indian Prime Minister," Suresh Gopi tweeted.

Hailing from Pathanamthitta district, Jayalakshmi was a recipient of the state government's 'Karshaka Thilakam' award for the best student (female) for developing and maintaining an organic farm in her home courtyard.

The student had handed over the sapling to gift to the Prime Minister during the MP's visit at Gandhi Bhavan in Pathanapuram earlier this week.

"The PM accepted it wholeheartedly and assured to have it planted in his official residence," the 'Kaliyattam' actor further said in the FB post.

Gopi also said if the plant is reached his hands, we can also expect an Indian Prime Minister to say tomorrow that a sapling sent by a little girl from Kulanad is growing in the yard of my official bungalow.

"Anyway, this is a great message... the message of pure democracy," he added.

The elated Jayalakshmi later said she had never ever expected that her gift would reach the prime minister and she was so happy to know it from the actor-MP's social media posts.
Puttur police had on Wednesday registered a case against the five people. (Photo: PTI/Representational Image)

Mangaluru: Three people have been arrested for allegedly assaulting a 19-year-old youth from Raichur, who had come to meet a girl from a different faith at Puttur in Dakshina Kannada district, police sources said.

The youth had complained to the police that he was assaulted by a five-member gang when he was chatting with his friend at the KSRTC bus stand in Puttur on Wednesday.

They had also threatened him for talking to a girl from a different religion, he said in the complaint.

The arrested accused have been identified as Abdul Majeed (27) of Puttur and G Farooq (32) and G Alebi (33) from Sullia. Two others involved in the case are absconding, police sources said.

Puttur police had on Wednesday registered a case against the five people on charges of criminal intimidation, unlawful assembly and wrongful restraint.
KAKINADA: Cargo ship M.T.QIAN TAI 1 is stranded at Kakinada Anchorage Port for more than 50 days. Ship captain Wang Zeyan, a Chinese national, has not been allowing the Indian crew into the ship. He along with other Chinese crew members are allegedly threatening the Indian crew, raising an axe when they made attempts to enter the ship.

The stand-off followed a change in the technical ownership of the vessel from Chinese company Seacon Ships Management to Singapores Oka Ship Management. It remained unresolved despite intervention of the Andhra Pradesh High Court.

Though the court categorically said the Indian crew should be allowed on to the ship, the state agencies did not implement the order, forcing the Singapore company to approach court once again seeking the arrest of the vessel.

If the court issued an order in favour of Oka, the Chinese crew will be made to sign off with the assistance of the local police and repatriated to their native country.

Inquiries revealed that the cargo ship entered the Kakinada anchorage port on July 8 for discharging crude palm oil of 4,000 tonnes.

After handling of the cargo, the ship was placed at the anchorage port on July 12. Following the signing of the new technical management contract with the shipping liner, the Singapore company engaged the captain, a cook and two other crew members, who all are Indians.

Following all the Covid19 protocols, the crew tried to enter the ship but were denied entry by the Chinese captain and other crew members, said a local agent who was hired by the Singapore firm.

There were already 21 crew members on board, of which seven are Chinese nationals.

We dont know the reason and if there are any contractual issues, the Chinese crew should deal with their company Seacon, the agent said, adding that the stand-off had been causing a huge financial loss.

As the stand-off continued, the Chinese company complained to the Director General of Shipping that its crew were not supplied food and water at the anchorage port. There is a dispute between two companies and the ship got stranded at the anchorage port, AP Maritime Board Superintendent Engineer Raghava Rao told Deccan Chronicle.
Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy distribute Industrial Incentive cheques to MSMEs and Textile Units in Andhra Pradesh, at the camp office on Friday. (DC)

VIJAYAWADA: Chief Minister Jaganmohan Reddy on Friday credited Rs 1124 crore towards incentives for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) and textile units across the state. This would benefit 97,423 units and over 12 lakh employees.

The chief minister announced that the YSR Congress government would reimburse Rs 450 crore as electricity charges by giving a rebate in the power bills. Our government provided a total of Rs 2,086 crore to MSMEs, lending a helping hand in the past 27 months," he said, and added that the YSRC government has paid dues of Rs 1,588 crore, pending from the term of the previous TD government, and we did so without showing any bias.

The CM released Rs 440 crore to MSMEs and Rs 684 crore to textile and spinning mills, with a provision for a rebate on electricity bills.

So far, the state government had spent a total of Rs 2086 crore on the MSME sector, which includes clearing the pending arrears left behind by the previous government, totalling around Rs 1588 crore.

About 62 per cent of the MSMEs run by the BC, SC, ST and Minorities and 42 per cent units that are operated by women have been benefited from the governments incentives.

Jagan said the government has been embarking on this course to support MSMEs as well as spinning mills, which are providing employment to over 12 lakh people.

Supporting MSMEs is more like saving the state economy amidst the pandemic crisis, when the world economy is at minus 5.2 per cent, where even the global markets have taken a huge hit due to the Covid19. In the last 27 months, the government introduced over 25 welfare schemes without leaving any scope for discrimination and corruption even in difficult times.

Due to this, the purchasing power has been sustained, eventually leading to the sustainment of the MSME and industrial sectors.

While slamming the previous TD government, the chief minister said there had been a huge hype by way of holding big summits and signing pacts, during the TD term. They promised industrial incentives, but failed to pay on time and dues piled up for years. These were eventually cleared by the YSRC government.

Jagan stated that the Opposition has been misleading the public by taking things in a negative way and creating hurdles in the path of development by filing cases in courts and stalling various projects.

He said that in the last 27 months, 68 major industries have invested a capital of Rs 30,175 crore and provided direct employment to 46,199 people. In addition, by investing Rs 34,384 crore, another 62 mega industries have come in, which would provide employment to 76,916 people.

The government had already made law to ensure 75 per cent of the jobs in these units to locals. This will benefit the unemployed youths. This apart, the government is starting the YSR Electronics Manufacturing Cluster (EMC) in Kopparthi at a cost of Rs 730.50 crore. This is spread over 801 acres and would attract investment from domestic and global companies of the order of Rs 10,000 crore in electronics manufacturing sector.

These would provide employment to 30,000 people in the next two years. Similarly, YSR Jagananna Mega Industrial Hub is also being set up on 3155 acres in Kopparthi, with an aim of attracting investments worth Rs 25,000 crore and creating jobs for over 75,000 people.

The chief minister said the government has focused attention on providing water, power and roads, which are essential for establishing industries.

He said the government would set up a 10,000mw solar project by inviting investment of Rs 30,000 crore that produces power at a low cost of Rs 2.48 per unit. Free and quality electricity would be provided to farmers for another 30 years, he said.

As part of the Chennai-Bangalore Industrial Corridor, the government is developing the Krishnapatnam Green Field Industrial Node in an area of 13,000 acres at an estimated cost of Rs 2139 crore.
HYDERABAD: Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao has invited Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the inauguration of renovated Yadadri temple complex. Rao extended the invitation when he met Modi in Delhi on Friday.

The Chief Minister reportedly requested Modi to attend the inaugural event as the chief guest. He told Modi that Yadadri temple would be ready for inauguration by October-November this year.

A release issued by the CMO stated that the Prime Minister had responded positively to the Chief Ministers invitation and assured him that he would attend Yadadri inauguration without fail.

Meanwhile, the Chief Minister sought allotment of land in Delhi for construction of the state government's official building "Telangana Bhavan". He said all states had official bhavans in the national capital but not for Telangana after the formation of state in 2014.

This fuels speculation that the Chief Minister has given up Telangana's claim on the existing AP Bhavan in Delhi. The Chief Minister has been demanding all these years to handover AP Bhavan to Telangana, claiming that it is the property donated by Nizam and AP has no rights on it.
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DeSoto County parent and former Mississippi governor candidate Robert Foster speaks to the DeSoto County Board of Education. Foster said masks should not be required in schools. Instead, parents should continue to have the choice to decide what is best for their children.
Elk Grove Police Chief Tim Albright was the guest speaker at the Elk Grove Chamber of Commerces Aug. 27 luncheon.
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Scattered thunderstorms early, then mainly cloudy overnight with thunderstorms likely. Low 64F. Winds NE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70%. Rainfall near an inch..

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Scattered thunderstorms early, then mainly cloudy overnight with thunderstorms likely. Low 64F. Winds NE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70%. Rainfall near an inch.
The Kremlin shakes the West as Putin touts his fear-inducing nuclear torpedo exposed by satellite intel recently.

Recent events from the HMS Defender, with activity from NATO fleets in the Black Sea, Crimean waters, have prompted the Russian leader to broadcast new weaponry to the NATO alliance, especially the US. An image of a colossal torpedo armed with a nuclear warhead that the Russian forces possess is causing concern for western strategists.

Poseidon is Russia's latest superweapon

The world has witnessed hypersonic weapons, advanced submarines, a new stealth fighter, and even plans for robotized weapons as future weapons roll out at the Kremlin's behest in the past few months.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has leaked out the newest superweapon that his country developed. A torpedo as long as a bus called ominously 'Poseidon' has a nuke warhead and can propel itself to the target, reported the Express UK.

When the Russian leader revealed the development of Poseidon in 2015, western security experts have scrambled to know more about it. Pictures of the torpedo give an idea of how it will attack. The issue is how it will go deep and fast in the water to reach its target, noted CNN.

Introducing such a weapon in the Russian arsenal is another category of nuclear-tipped weapons that is not traditional, adding this nuke torpedo to the new set of supersonic and hypersonic missiles. It would bring cold sweat to western powers, especially to the US.

Read Also: Russia's Newest Submarines Pose a Greater Threat to US Coasts, Says American General

State of the art weapons to equal the US

Within a short number of years, Putin has nudged the warfighting potential of Russian military forces with updated weaponry, support bases, and infrastructures. The rocket design bureau NPO Mashinostroyenia has pioneered advanced rocket technology capable of striking ground targets from a sea-based launch from 1,000 kilometers away.

An image taken from Maxar Technologies early in the month has confirmed the ship Akademik Aleksandrov is adapted to deploy the Poseidon. The facility's location is on the north shore, Dvina River, close to the edge of the White Sea. This quay started in 2018 and was completed in 2020.

Images show a large building close to the port that might be for the Poseidon operations. The deadly torpedo will be used by new submarines developed to carry it, cited Popular Mechanics.

One of the submarines used to deploy the weapon is the K-329 Belgorod, which is docked at the new pier. Another submarine, Khabarovsk, is under construction close by. An earlier submarine, the Sarov (B-90) in 2007, was in service with the ability to fire the size of the torpedo.

Recent reports state that the Severodvinsk shipyard builds a new generation of a submarine that can use the Poseidon superweapon. Russian military developers are creating ships and submarines to carry advanced weapons, which are also there. NATO allies are hobbled now as Putin touts his fear-inducing nuclear torpedo with new facilities to support it.

Related Article: Russian Federation Developing Underwater Aircraft Carrier Submarine Prototype to Increase Its Naval Advantage

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Shocking alligator attacks are fearsome, and their victims are in a challenging situation when those awful jaws lock on them. The damage these animals can do is unimaginable, and these animals are ferocious forces of nature. This reptile can grow bigger than an adult male and lives a semi-aquatic lifestyle, usually lies in wait until a victim comes close enough for its jaws.

Here are horror stories where encounters between these predators and people sometimes end in death.

When these terrible jaws strike!

Recently, when a 71-year-old man went into the water at the height of Hurricane Ida, he went out to check his property. Unfortunately, one of the reptiles was lurking in the water and took the victim, said the police, reported the Sun UK. The pensioner never thought the beast lurked in the floodwaters and got ambushed, then death rolled by the predator. It is not so uncommon for these incidents, as shown by these reports.

When Darth Gator dragged her into its aquarium, Utah Alligator handler Lindsay Bull's hand was injured. It went into a death roll that injured her hand, which was in its jaws. She was saved by one of the visitors who went in and wrestled the ghastly gator wanting a part of the woman for lunch. But Bull says she does not blame the gator.

Arms almost ripped off

In 2012, an alligator encountered an off-duty scientist, Fred Boyce. When the victim helped out, one of these predators was seen on Highway 70 in North Carolina, cited the Sun-Sentinel. What happened could have killed him. It was a dreadful error that ended in tragedy in these shocking alligator attacks.

Read Also: Chicago Sets Loose 1,000 Feral Cats to Control Increasing Rat Infestation

When he was trying to help the reptile, it charged toward him and bit him, which nearly made the victim one-armed. No provocation was done to the animal, and it just wanted to kill the man.

A recorded video shows Boyce fighting off the awful blood-thirsty beast. The North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission took him to the hospital because he nearly lost an arm in the encounter.

Head nearly torn off

In 2013, one teen boy narrowly got killed in a gator attack. Oddly the beast had its jaws clamped on his head. The victim, Andrew Hudson, 17, survived with 19 stitches on his head when he met with the awful beast in Geneva, Florida. Barely surviving a death roll in the water but got away with great luck when it could have been fatal. The wound went around the forehead and to the back of the skull. A 10-foot monster gator caused it at the Econ River, State Park.

A man survived but lost his testicles

This attack is still dreadful to even think about it, and the victim Fredric Iman, 68, is lucky to be breathing at all. He reported that a nine-footer alligator attacks him when gotten ambushed in a pond while taking a bath in 2007. During the attack, he Had the eyes of the animal been poked in desperation.

It's not as severe as getting bitten on the head or an arm almost torn off, but he lost one testicle with a finger and toes in this not-so-good encounter. He spoke to the ABC7 in the hospital, saying he could have died. These shocking alligator attacks show the power of these beasts, and the lucky manage to get away.

Related Article: Louisiana Alligator Gets Washed Up 400 Miles Away to South Texas Beach, Park Rangers Are Stumped

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The creation of a quantum crystal might detect dark matter, according to physicists. Proving the existence of dark matter is the riddle that many scientists want to answer once and for all.

The exotic dark matter calculations compose about 27% of the known universe, which has not been decisively proven to be where it should be.

One idea is the presence of gravity is proof that it exists as it holds everything together. If it did not exist, the fabric of reality would be vastly different.

Detecting the unknown

Whether this matter is there even when there is no shadow or whether a glimpse of the dark particle has been substantiated, Researchers made a quantum crystal that might detect dark matter via its electromagnetic field, reported Express UK.

Such a discovery might be instrumental in this kind of unseen matter and answer what it truly is, a mystery of creation. Several institutions like the University of Colorado Boulder, the National Institute of Standards and Technology have devised a quantum crystal composed of magnetic fields which are supposed to cage 150 charged particles or ions of beryllium inside it.

What the construct does is prevent the repulsion of particles which is quite normal. As a result, the ions will be connected to a structure that is only two times as thick as human hair.Scientists engineered the shape to look like a crystal that vibrates when an external power would act upon it.

According to Ana Maria Rey, a physicist at the JILA research institute in Colorado, who told Livescience that atoms act as a group, not just parts, using this system of the quantum crystal might detect dark matter.

The oscillations of the quantum crystal, noted the researchers, could be implemented to identify the strength of an electromagnetic field.

Read Also: Hubble Space Telescope Using Gravitational Lensing Captures Images of Dark Matter Clumps

Black holes

No one knows what these black holes are. They are composed of dark matter and how unseen black holes are mysterious. One other thought is these galactic behemoths are leaking gravity, which is from another parallel universe.

A popular theory is that the unusual particle(dark matter) will be a new particle in the experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in CERN is hoping to prove this. However, before the quantum crystal could be used in the quest for dark matter, the investigators had to work around a significant quantum mechanics anomaly.

The Heisenberg uncertainty principle says that there is no way to get a proper measurement of the particles. It translates as no way to know its speed. One of the ideas to go around the uncertainty principle is the concept called quantum entanglement, which states even in an opposite universe, there will still be connections almost unbreakable.

As an example, Professor Rey called it a way to remotely sense via great distances that can even be so many lightyears away. They entangle the momentum of the beryllium particles to the spin. Each crystal oscillation is because of a magnetic field passing by., measuring the displaced beryllium is how to detect the magnetic field. Scientists think it will help look for universal dark matter when axions become light particles or photons, making them more visible. The study was submitted to Science that a quantum crystal might detect dark matter.

Related Article: Closest Black Hole to Earth Discovered 'Hiding in Plain Sight' by Astronomers

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The Taliban is disappointed that Americans got over them, with too many wrecked US combat vehicles demilitarized, leaving them with junk. Initially, they were left with many war fighting vehicles intact, but many were damaged in a hurry out.

The latest report said the Jihadis had equipment in states of disrepair, from Blackhawks, Chinooks, assault prop-driven planes that could have been used to subdue their opposition. Many fighters complain that the equipment should have been left, but US military personnel destroyed what they can.

Talibs cannot repair broken equipment

Despite the problematic pullout by Joe Biden and his officials, many on the ground had the hindsight to scrap fight vehicles before leaving the US bases, as revealed by Gen. Frank Mackenzie, who commanded the evacuation of Kabul, reported the Daily Mail.

According to the reports, there were 73 aircraft grounded due to scuttling by US crews in the last days of the pullout. The terror group was left with only 48 aircraft, but how many are working was not confirmed.

Al Jazeera reported frustrated Jihadis who expected the equipment to be in working condition when they toured the airport after Biden's controversial deadline for the pullout.

Read Also: Afghanistan in Economic Disaster, Food Shortage; Locals Encounter Devastating Results Days After Taliban Takeover

Taliban is disappointed that too many wrecked US combat vehicles were supposed to be left untouched, it was owned by them and made to good use. They are grating over what they called betrayal.

The Taliban were disappointed to find inoperable planes and helicopters left behind by American forces on the military side of the Kabul airport. pic.twitter.com/HfmlwYNjO0  Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) September 1, 2021

US equipment scuttling has left them useless junk, unusable due to heroic service members who arranged what can be done in the last moments, not the leadership on top.

On the bright side for the Talibs

One statement by the Jihadists is that the airport can run finally in a few days to allow Afghans to leave on with visas. Other hardware left beside the aircraft are 70 anti-mine personal vehicles (MRAP), with only 27 Hummers left; but saddening is 200 US civilians facing the threat of death and abuse. In the last inspection by the US on June 30, the air force had 167 aircraft, 108 helicopters, and 59 airplanes, which were all in working order. Before Kabul fell, the Uzbekistan government verified that 46 Afghani aircraft, with 24 helicopters were sent by friendly forces to keep them from the terror group.

Americans had taken propellers and guns from their aircraft, and other planes were on their belies on the tarmac because their wheels were stripped or destroyed. None can be fixed anymore. It was the general condition of all aircraft but none too specific if they can be rehabilitated, not without cost. Most are obsolete and from the '80s, which need constant maintenance or combat-ready.

Taliban might have some ability if they had a few aircraft, but it's mostly a bust. The few operational aircraft are few and with the Panjshir resistance with more assets. Jihadis hunt for Afghan pilots who can use these machines, but some may be working for them.

Taliban is disappointed their haul of US airpower amounts to junk. Too many wrecked US combat vehicles are less than what the resistance has. Using whatever equipment like a helicopter to execute a man was contested by CNN media ally Joe Biden.

Related Article: Joe Biden has Dropped it in Afghanistan; Allies Fear US Fail Against China in the Future

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Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, got into an argument with a male reporter about Joe Biden's support for abortion rights after the reporter brought up the president's Catholic beliefs.

Psaki was confronted by reporters on Thursday at the White House press briefing about the Supreme Court's decision this week to allow a highly controversial Texas law that bans abortions after six weeks and deputizes state citizens with promises of $10,000 rewards for bringing lawsuits against anyone who helps someone obtain an abortion other than the patient herself.

Jen Psaki targets male reporter's gender

Throughout Wednesday and Thursday, Democrats and women's health advocates slammed the court's decision to allow the law to take effect, and members of Congress, as well as the White House, have called for legislation to enshrine abortion rights in federal law, though such a bill would almost certainly fail in the 50-50 vote in the Senate

"I know you've never been pregnant," White House press secretary Jen Psaki said to a male Catholic TV reporter who questioned how President Joe Biden reconciles his abortion views with his faith. She was also questioned if Biden's stance on court cramming had altered as a result of the current decision, Daily Mail reported.

In April, Biden established a committee to investigate the Supreme Court, which is exploring suggestions such as increasing the number of justices, imposing term limits, narrowing the court's authority, or mandating that an act of Congress be invalidated only by a supermajority of the court's members.

When the Senate approved Justice Amy Coney Barrett only weeks before the election, Biden pledged such a panel as progressive Democrats campaigned to enlarge the Supreme Court. Psaki stated that departments throughout the White House and the Department of Justice were working immediately to see what, if any, actions might be done in Texas to protect women's freedom to choose and access to healthcare.

Other abortion laws are enforced by state and local authorities, with possible criminal penalties. The measure's opponents sought Supreme Court review after a federal appeals court refused to enable a quick review of the statute before it went into force.

Following the Supreme Court's refusal to hear a lawsuit over Texas' strict new abortion legislation, Biden issued a strong statement on Thursday ordering the executive branch to undermine the court.

Later in the briefing, Psaki described herself as a firm supporter of a woman's right to an abortion, praising Planned Parenthood and other organizations that strive to protect and maintain abortion services across the United States.

Per The Independent via MSN, the Supreme Court's decision this week has sparked a new round of calls from progressives to expand or "stack" the Court and eliminate its conservative majority. While the president has expressed opposition to such a move, he did follow through on a campaign promise earlier this year to establish a commission to look into judicial reforms, including Supreme Court expansions.

Read Also: Lauren Boebert Claims Biden, the Rest of His "Incompetent Administration" Should Face Impeachment Over Handling of Afghanistan Chaos

Pro-life leaders blast Jen Psaki's defense to Biden

The White House press secretary has come under fire for appearing to attack a male reporter's gender when defending President Biden's abortion stance. Psaki's remarks reflect a trend of powerful women exploiting their gender to obstruct men's participation in abortion debates. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., for example, has previously stated that she knows more about childbearing than the Pope.

The government has been divided on the issue, with Biden supporting taxpayer funding of most abortions as well as codifying Roe v. Wade. The Catechism's section on abortion, on the other hand, declares that the process and infanticide are "abominable sins."

The problem occasionally transcends political boundaries as well. Terrisa Bukovinac, who served on the board of Rehumanize International and previously chaired Democrats for Life, told Fox News that abortion was a human rights problem. Despite this, several left-wing organizations have promoted abortion as a basic human right or necessary health treatment.

Related Article: Psaki Dodges Questions About Leaked Biden-Ghani Call; Conversation Reveals US President Urges to Conceal Taliban's Dominance

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Authorities revealed in court records that the QAnon conspiracy theorist who wore a horned bearskin outfit during the Capitol Hill riot will be pleading guilty to federal charges on Friday.

The suspect, identified as Jacob Chansley, was arrested in January and has been kept in jail since. Officials charged the man with six federal crimes in connection to his role in the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill attack. The charges include felonies for civil disorder and obstructing congressional proceedings. However, the court did not specify to which charges Chansley would plead guilty and his attorney, Al Watkins, declined to comment.

QAnon 'Shaman' To Plead Guilty

In a statement, the suspect's attorney said that he was processing the entire time he was in jail in the wake of the Jan. 6 Capitol siege. Chansley reportedly went through pain, depression, solitary confinement, introspection, recognition of mental health vulnerabilities, and coming to terms with the need to improve himself.

Several times, Chansley's attorneys have tried to get him out of prison, but their requests were all denied by the judge that considered the suspect too dangerous to be set free. DC District Judge Royce Lamberth wrote a letter in March that said despite Chansley's attempts to downplay his acts during the Capitol riot and saying he was a peaceful person, there was no evidence that the court found to support his claims, CNN reported.

Chansley is a well-known member of the QAnon conspiracy community, who are believed to have spearheaded the Capitol Hill riot. On Thursday, Watkins repealed that his client was now "seeking, as part of his reconciliation of where he is today, to step away and distance himself from the Q vortex."

Read Also: Sen. Ron Johnson Says Donald Trump Lost Elections Because 51,000 Republicans Didn't Support Him

The suspect first garnered attention after he was filmed and photographed wearing a unique costume during the Jan. 6 attack. He was considered one of the most notorious members of the large crowd in the area at the time. He had tattoos, face paint, a fur hat, and held a spear during the insurrection, CNBC reported.

Similar Incident

There are also about 600 defendants who have been charged in relation to the Jan. 6 riot, which started after former United States President Donald Trump urged his supporters to rally to Congress. The statements were made in the wake of his loss to Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential elections.

One of the defendants is ordered to go back to prison two months after being set free due to viewing conspiracy theories after his release, including from the MyPillow guy. On Thursday, a judge told the suspect, identified as Doug Jensen, to be imprisoned again because of violations to conditions related to his release.

In previous court filings, prosecutors said that Jensen admitted he watched Mike Lindell's Cyber Symposium, which was about the recount of the presidential election. He was not permitted to access the internet following his release.

The suspect is believed to have led a group of supporters at the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill riot while his lawyer argued his client was "bought into a pack of lies." However, District Judge Timothy Kelly argued on Thursday that Jensen did not experience the transformation that his lawyer claimed he had gone through, Yahoo News reported.

Related Article: Senate Calls to Impeach Biden But McConnell Says POTUS Not Going To Be Removed From His Post

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The Federation of American Scientists, the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, and others have received satellite pictures that appear to show China developing large fields of new missile silos in its sparsely inhabited western area.

This has sparked worries that Beijing is on the verge of building a far greater nuclear arsenal than anybody had anticipated, aiming to compete with the US and Russia, the two nations that have historically controlled the global nuclear order.

If this occurs, tripolarity will become the main property of that order for the first time, raising concerns about nuclear stability. Furthermore, tripolarity would be especially bad news for Washington in the present security climate, which is marked by increased US competitiveness with both Beijing and Moscow.

China urges to complete control over nuclear weapons

After successfully testing its first nuclear device in 1964, China became a nuclear-armed state in the late 1960s. Despite this, Beijing maintained a very restricted nuclear posture after that, owing to Chinese officials' belief that nuclear weapons were of little use. The Chinese leadership also wanted complete control over the weapons, which was simpler to do by keeping a limited nuclear arsenal and refusing to engage in arms races with the US and the Soviet Union, as per The Business Insider.

According to the Pentagon, China's nuclear weapon stockpile may double in size, bringing it to more than 400 warheads at the very least. Concerns that China poses a nuclear danger have been dismissed by Beijing, which points out that its arsenal is far inferior to that of the United States and Russia, the world's two greatest nuclear powers.

Along with expanding nuclear weapons, US Air Force Lieutenant General Thomas Bussiere pointed out that the United States and China lack a system for nuclear talks or treaties, as the United States does with Russia. Despite the US' efforts to get China to sign a nuclear weapons pact with Russia, Beijing has refused, stating that it has no intention of doing so.

Per Newsweek via MSN, the relationship between China and the United States has been worsening for some time, and Beijing regards most of America's activities as a method of preventing China from progressing. Attempts to draw China into treaties and discussion mechanisms, were a method of curbing "China's nuclear arsenal growth," which would perpetuate the gap in nuclear weapons, according to Hu Xijin, editor-in-chief of the Global Times.

Read Also: Photos: North Korea's Kim Jong Un Looks Slimmer Than Ever as He Meets Young Volunteers, Vows to Prepare Confrontation with US

The US offers talks with China

Despite Hu's denials that China is engaging in anything more than modest nuclear deterrence, he said that the country should continue to expand its nuclear weapons. He urged Beijing to take a "strong stance" on the issue and not be "dissuaded and influenced" by US officials and generals' "tricks."

According to Hu, a fundamental component of China's national security, this isn't the first time he's urged for China to increase its arsenal. Hu wrote an op-ed in June urging the country to prepare for an "intense battle between China and the United States," which would need a quick buildup in nuclear weapons and missiles.

While China has always positioned itself as a moral high ground, avoiding costly and hazardous weapons competitions, this looks to be changing under President Xi Jinping. China is heading into new terrain with nuclear weapons at the same time as it is cracking down on opposition at home and establishing new authority over Hong Kong.

Analysts are discussing the reasons for the country's fast expansion of its weapons, as well as the appropriate course of action for the US. The simplest explanation for the shift in strategy was that China desired an arsenal to match its economic, technical, and military might. Another reason was that China was anxious about American missile defenses, India's nuclear development, and Russia's terrifying new weapons.

There was also speculation that China was concerned about the vulnerability of its few ground-based missiles, and that by constructing more than 200 silos in two places, they might play games with the US, challenging authorities to guess where they were. China may be pulled into weapons control talks with the US and Russia at some point, with US officials allegedly requesting openness from Beijing before, as per The Sun.

Related Article: China, Russia Agree to Strengthen Coordination to Prevent Security Risks; Xi Jinping Reiterates Respect for Afghanistan Sovereignty





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On Friday, the United Kingdom announced the release of $41 million in assistance to help neighboring countries cope with the influx of migrants leaving Afghanistan since the Taliban seized power.

British Government To Pay Millions of Pounds

In a recently published article in MSN News, the British government said that ten million pounds will be made available immediately to the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and other humanitarian organizations to assist with border shelters and sanitation.

British foreign minister Dominic Raab said it is important that the United Kingdom assists people leaving Afghanistan and does not allow the country's problems to jeopardize regional security. Additionally, the rest of the money will be used to offer critical services and supplies to countries that have experienced large numbers of refugees.

According to the UNHCR, up to half a million Afghans may leave their country by the end of the year. Many Afghans are reported to be fleeing to Pakistan while Tajikistan, one of Afghanistan's neighbors, has promised to take in 100,000 refugees, U.S. News reports.

Read Also: Biden Administration Expands Processing 'Special Immigration Visa' for Afghan Refugees

EU Plans To Offer Cash for Countries That Will Accept Afghan Refugees

EU nations pledged on Tuesday to provide an undisclosed amount of money to Afghanistan's neighbors to help them deal with the refugee problem at their borders. However, they postponed talks on the EU's role in possibly admitting asylum seekers, expressing concerns over a "pull effect" that might attract more people.

EU interior ministers approved a document in Brussels pledging financial assistance to relevant international organizations and Afghanistan's surrounding countries to strengthen their capacity to offer refugee protection, dignified and safe reception circumstances, and a sustainable livelihood, according to a published article in POLITICO.

Furthermore, EU ministers and the European Commission were unable to say how much money they would give to Afghanistan's neighbors, Pakistan and Iran, citing the "ongoing" nature of talks. According to one EU official, the idea was to give up to 1 billion to neighboring nations.

How Many Afghans Were Evacuated and Where are they Going?

In a published article in BBC News, the present issue of refugees adds to the 2.2 million Afghans who are already living in neighboring countries and the 3.5 million Afghans compelled to leave their homes inside the country's boundaries.

The US-led air evacuation operation is officially complete, with the last aircraft departing Kabul airport just after midnight on Tuesday, the Taliban-agreed deadline for Western troops to leave. After the Taliban seized control of the city on August 14, the U.S. troops and coalition allies evacuated more than 123,000 people, but it is unknown how many of them were Afghan citizens.

According to the U.S., over 80,000 people were flown out of Kabul, with roughly 5,500 of them being Americans and more than 73,500 being Afghans or other foreign nationalities. While the UK Ministry of Defense claimed it had flown out more than 15,000 individuals, 8,000 of them were Afghans, the evacuations stopped on Saturday.

Moreover, many of those flown out of the country were transported to emergency processing centers set up in Spain, Germany, Qatar, and Uzbekistan, among other nations. According to the International Rescue Committee, up to 300,000 Afghans have been associated with U.S. activities in the country since 2001, and tens of thousands of people are qualified for a U.S. visa but many will now have to find another way out.

Related Article: UK to Accept 20,000 Afghan Refugees Under Resettlement Scheme Prioritizing Women, Children Who Face Persecution



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A few states are utilizing their own stimulus money or surpluses to aid specific populations, such as low-income families and teachers, and have given direct support to almost 25 million people.

States Redistribute Stimulus Checks and Bonuses

In a recently published article in CBS News, the roughly $1 trillion in government assistance sent to American households in three stimulus cheques is credited with decreasing poverty and assisting millions of families in surviving the epidemic. However, as the COVID-19 Delta variant spreads throughout the country, some states are redistributing payments.

At the same time, many families have already spent their third stimulus check, which the IRS sent in March. Another event that may put a strain on people's finances is the termination of the pandemic unemployment benefit on September 6, which will reduce unemployment by 7.5 million individuals.

Furthermore, a fourth stimulus check has been proposed by some federal legislators, although it is unlikely at this time given the White House's emphasis on its infrastructure proposal. The Biden administration also said that unemployment benefits will not be extended beyond September 6, but that the state may utilize stimulus money to prolong its own programs, according to a published article in Florida News Times.

Read Also: Two New $1,400 Stimulus Checks Are On Their Way; Are You Eligible for Both Payments?

States Sending Checks To Certain Groups of People

California

On August 27, California began issuing checks worth up to $1,100 to roughly 25 million people as part of an attempt to help the state's low- and middle-income families. The state has issued a second stimulus check. According to the state, those who got the first check but do not have a dependent will not be eligible for any benefits. If you got the first check and had a dependant, however, you will get $500, according to the U.S. Sun.

Maryland

Maryland approved stimulus payments earlier this year, but only for individuals who claimed the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) on their tax filings. The Earned Income Tax Benefit (EITC) is a tax credit for low- to moderate-income taxpayers. According to the state of Maryland, a married couple with two children may only qualify if their combined income is less than $53,000. Individuals will be eligible for $300, while couples filing jointly will be eligible for $500.

Florida

Governor Ron DeSantis authorized $1,000 incentives for the state's more than 170,000 K-12 public school and public charter school teachers and administrators earlier this year. The money comes from a $216 million government stimulus package.

Texas

Returning instructors in Irving, Texas, will get a $2,000 one-time payment, while workers in Denton, Texas, will receive a $500 retention incentive. More school districts have authorized salary increases as part of an attempt to compensate instructors for their efforts in implementing remote learning during the epidemic.

Stimulus Checks of Other States

Other states, such as Colorado, have already used the Pandemic Fund to provide stimulus payments to almost 400,000 people who received unemployment benefits during the pandemic in December. New Mexico, Washington, DC, and Vermont are among the states and areas that have given pandemic assistance to citizens.

Meanwhile, around 70 million families will get checks every month through December as part of an extended federal child tax credit worth up to $300 per kid. The money helps families with children pay for basic necessities like food, school supplies, and clothes, according to a study of census data from the left-handed economic security initiative.

Related Article: Here are States Giving New Stimulus Check Despite Federal Government's Unclear Possibility of Handing Out Fourth Round of Payments



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Armed Nigerian gunmen conducted a mass abduction of 73 young children in the region's northwestern Zamfara State, forcing schools to close down amid fears of additional kidnappings of students.

In a statement, local police reported that a large number of students were kidnapped from a state-run high school in Zamfara's Maradun district. Officials added that the high school was being targeted by "armed bandits" in the area.

Nigerian Mass Student Kidnappings

The Zamfara State Police Command noted that the abduction of the children followed the previous invasion of the school by a large number of bandits equipped with guns. Officials added that they have deployed a search and rescue team to cooperate with the military to locate and rescue the missing students. Authorities have also increased security at Kaya Village to protect communities from further attacks.

On Thursday, Ibrahim Dosara, Zamfara's Information Commissioner, said that schools all around the state were forced to close down to prevent more kidnappings. In a statement, the official revealed that they closed primary and secondary schools in the region but allowed some schools who were still writing examinations to finish before shutting down, CNN reported.

The latest attack comes only days after armed men released 91 students in north-central Niger State. The children were previously abducted for ransom, which the parents of the victims paid thousands of dollars for in exchange for the hostages.

Read Also: Taliban Celebrates US Troops Withdrawal in Afghanistan; Parade Shows Plundered Military Equipment

Before the Wednesday kidnappings, about 1,000 students were kidnapped in about a dozen schools across the region since December. The United Nations, agency responsible for providing humanitarian and developmental aid to children worldwide, UNICEF, said that about 200 children are still in captivity, NBC News reported.

The Armed Suspects

The gunmen were described as bandits but their actual relation of the recent attackers to previous ones remains unclear. Nine different states have suffered from attacks from armed men, and students, including preschoolers and university students, have been the targets of the kidnappings.

Three different groups of students were victims of kidnappings in three separate states, which are Niger, Kaduna, and Zamfara. The hostages were all released within 24 hours of each other, leading some to believe that it may have been more than just a coincidence. Some claim that the bandits are in leagues with each other.

Witnesses said that the armed bandits were young men from the Fulani ethnic group, who are known to be a nomadic tribe of cattle herders. They are currently in a decades-long conflict with Hausa farming communities, where they are fighting for access to water and grazing land.

Some officials argued that the group had begun to fight back because they felt fear for their communities who are neglected by the Nigerian government. However, some kidnappers appeared to simply be opportunists who wanted to make money off of ransom payments, Idayat Hassan, leader of Democracy and Development, a West Africa-focused policy advocacy and research organization, said.

Abdulaziz Abdulaziz, a Nigerian journalist who works as an editor for the Abuja-based Daily Trust newspapers, has previously interviewed some of the armed gunmen. The suspects said they have set up dozens of camps in remote forest areas in the northwestern region of the country, the New York Post reported

Related Article: China's Scandal-Hit Stars Are in Harsh Inequality Drive as Communist Government Launches Celebrity Crackdown

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A new SARS-CoV-2 C.1.2 variant discovered in South Africa has not been confirmed to be virally dangerous. It is essential to know that the new variant is composed of a viral cluster, not just one, unlike other variants. It should be a cause of concern, but it has not been fully understood but still needs necessary precautions.

Although many fear, the new variant C.1.2 is far worse than the Delta, which the World Health Organization has not cited as an object of interest, cited by Matrix.

Study of C.1.2 variant still in the initial stage

Researchers said the study is pre-printed and only posted just a week ago and has not been peer-reviewed yet. Their initial findings are that several changes in the COVID-19 variant have mutations in the cluster in a short period, reported Sciencealert.

One thing viruses do is change and evolve, depending on the circumstances. Changes are governed by chance, the opportunity to get the best advantages to kill the host or make it sick. It is too early to conclude about how mutations can impact people.

One thing to consider is how the new variant unloads as a package to sicken the host cells, mainly how it can compare to other variants and their infectiousness. Fear and panic should be ignored as there is not enough information to say how it will impact populations. The C.1.2 variant from South Africa is different but similar to the Lambda, which took root in Peru first, cited the Conversation.

Read Also: New Kind of Virulent COVID-19 Type Can Evolve with Relevant Changes

Some adaptations might be more menacing if how they attack host cells is known. So, this cluster type variant is still an unknown factor. There should be solid evidence before alarmist declare its mutation are serious.

WHO says C.1.2. COVID-19 variant does not seem to be spreading https://t.co/im1HyYYTjA pic.twitter.com/lsis3bLDOG  Reuters (@Reuters) August 31, 2021

How it can be so infectious to humans must be determined how it can be transmitted to host cells. Will it be causing more diseases or can avoid antibodies than other variants. There is not enough information from studies with complex data to say if it has spread far already. Only 5% are the cases seen in South Africa and only 100 cases from May.

Lambda, Delta still virus of concerns

Whether it gets to the level that fear-mongers what to depict the new South African variant, the answer is there is no way to know for sure. However, some sectors might blow it up sooner as the next in line to the Delta strain.

A good chance will be that it would be a significant SARS-CoV-2 strain of immense concern that beats other strains and go poof and drop all the mutations it gone as a natural result. One view is that this viral cluster with multiple mutations can successfully replace another variant to be dominant. Chances are it will naturally die out, which is normal.

The new South African strain has many evolving and adaptations to unseat the Delta variant, the most concerned strain. Eyes will be on the C.1.2 variant to see how far it will go, but the Delta is the top strain detected for now. In Australia, the Communicable Diseases Genomics Network is looking out for variants to watch if ever it starts transmitting widely.

Related Article: Another COVID-19-Like Pandemic May Happen in 60 Years? Researchers Anticipates the Probability

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In court, a man accused of using a blowtorch to set fire to a two-year-old's genitals before putting the boy's body in the trash has denied the accusations. Following the discovery of toddler Athian Rivera's corpse, Wyatt Dean Lamb was charged with first-degree murder and ten additional crimes, including child abuse with injury.

In June, nearly four months after 2-year-old Athian Rivera was discovered dead in an apartment complex in Cheyenne, the Laramie County District Attorney's office announced charges against Wyatt Dean Lamb. Lamb pleaded not guilty to 11 accusations against him on Monday, including murder and criminal child abuse on ten counts.

Man accused of using a blowtorch on boy's genitals

Lamb was arrested for breaking probation from a previous unconnected incident on February 19, the day of Athian's murder. After a preliminary autopsy failed to identify the child's official cause of death, they had yet to charge him with murder. Lamb killed the boy, then took steps to hide his body, according to prosecutors in a nine-page probable cause statement.

Athian died on February 19 between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m., according to Laramie County Coroner Rebecca Reid. His body was covered in a bedsheet and blanket before being stuffed into five garbage bags, Crime Online reported.

Cerebral edema with herniation, induced by heat traumas, suffocation, and blunt force trauma, was eventually confirmed to be the official cause of death. Dr. James Wilkerson, a forensic pathologist, stated that the boy had blunt force injuries all over his body, as well as contusions, abrasions, and burn scars on his genitals, legs, and groin, which were likely inflicted by a portable blowtorch found in the mother's apartment.

The corpse of the 2-year-old boy was discovered in a dumpster outside an apartment building entrance on Desmet Drive in Cheyenne, Laramie County, two hours later. If found guilty of the charges leveled against him, Wyoming's Lamb may face the death sentence. He came before a judge in the Laramie County District Court, where part of the evidence against him was heard in the courtroom as he denied the offenses.

Read Also: Illinois Woman Gets Caught After Using Fake "Maderna" COVID-19 Vaccine Card to Enter Hawaii

Autopsy report claims victim's death is murder

The burn scars matched those left by a portable torch discovered in Orona's residence, as per MIRROR. Athian's death was declared a murder, with cerebral edema with herniation as the cause, with three contributing factors: blunt force trauma, suffocation, and heat injuries.

On May 6, Wilkerson signed an autopsy report declaring Athian's death a murder. According to the affidavit, he claimed Athian was the victim of "non-accidental trauma." Suffocation or physical strangulation caused the full or partial collapse of a lung or lung region, according to Wilkerson. Two Cheyenne Police investigators were present for the autopsy, which took place on February 20.

The Cheyenne Police Agency named Lamb as a suspect in Athian's death on February 23, announcing that the department has proposed charges of murder and aggravated child abuse against Lamb to the Laramie County District Attorney's office.

According to court papers, bond terms imposed by a Laramie County Circuit Court judge in a separate matter in March 2020 banned Lamb from having contact with the boy's mother, Kassandra Orona, and from being within one block of her house.

After an incident involving Orona, Lamb was charged with felony strangling of a household member, misdemeanor property destruction, and interference with a peace officer. Per Wyoming News, the New York man denied the state's claims of bail revocation on March 4, 2021, stating that he had broken his release requirements in the strangling case by living with Orona since August 2020.

Related Article: Pennsylvania Caretaker Sentenced to 47 Years After 2-Year-Old Boy Dies of Beating, Eating Antifreeze

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Dr. Anthony Fauci, the White House top medical adviser, said Thursday that he would not be shocked if the recommended complete regimen for the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines became three doses.

Third Dose Helps Immune System To Mature

In a recently published article in MSN News, according to Fauci, who is also the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, giving patients the third dosage, or perhaps a final dose, many months after their first vaccine helps the immune system develop.

Fauci told reporters during a White House Covid briefing "I must say from my own experience as an immunologist, I would not at all be surprised that the adequate full regimen for vaccination will likely be three doses," He later explained that other vaccines also need three doses.

Furthermore, the infectious disease expert's remarks come as the Biden administration prepares to start broadly disseminating COVID-19 booster injections the week of September 20. Priority groups are those who are in the nursing homes and those who have comorbidities, according to a published article in NBC Washington.

Read Also: FDA Plans to Allow Third Dose of Some COVID-19 Vaccines for Immunocompromised Persons

Concept of "Full Vaccination" Is Likely To Change

The definition of "complete vaccination" is likely to vary, whether it implies two doses of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine or one dose of the Johnson & Johnson shot. That is according to Dr. Anthony Fauci, who presented evidence supporting booster injections during a White House COVID-19 response team meeting on Thursday.

When asked whether another dosage would be needed, Fauci indicated the Food and Drug Administration will make that choice. The addition of a third dosage for "complete vaccination" would have far-reaching consequences for schools, companies, and other organizations with vaccine requirements, according to a published article in USA Today.

Fauci cited the findings of a trial involving over 1 million individuals in Israel, which found a "rather significant beneficial impact" 12 days or more after they got a Pfizer booster injection in the midst of the delta variant's spread. According to the findings, the booster reduced the relative risk of infection and serious illness by more than tenfold.

Health Experts Say It Is Common That Vaccines Require More Than Two Shots

Vaccines sometimes need more than two doses, according to health experts. Hepatitis B and HPV vaccines, for example, need a third dosage after a gap of many months between the second and third shots. Health experts said this after more Americans questioned why there is a need for a booster or third shot.

Meanwhile, while Americans may need a third injection in the future, several health experts have advised authorities against referring to them as "boosters." This is because, unlike other vaccinations, Americans may not need further boosters in the future, according to a published article in The Bharat Express News.

Moreover, the Biden administration announced that booster vaccinations would begin on Sept. 20 for individuals who had their second dosage at least eight months ago. Although the necessity for a J&J booster injection has yet to be established, the CDC believes it is probable.

Related Article: Third Shot: FDA Allows Immunocompromised Persons to Get COVID-19 Booster Shot



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Yoshihide Suga, the Japanese prime minister, informed members of his governing party that he intends to retire after roughly a year in office, igniting a race to replace him.

Suga Announces He Will Not Run in the Upcoming Election

In a recently published article in MSN News, Suga said Friday at a press conference in Tokyo that he would not run for head of the governing Liberal Democratic Party this month. Because of the LDP's parliamentary majority, whoever wins the next leader is almost certain to become Prime Minister.

Suga told reporters in a brief statement without taking questions that the battle against COVID-19 has been at the forefront of his efforts since he became Prime Minister a year ago. He also emphasized that dealing with the pandemic while campaigning for the election would require a significant amount of energy and that he recognized he could not do both and had to choose one.

Meanwhile, party secretary-general Toshihiro Nikai told the reporters that during their meeting, Suga wanted to focus on the policies to combat the impact of COVID-19 and its increasing number of infections. Nikai also confirmed that Suga will not run, according to a published article in The New York Times.

Read Also: Japan Extend State of Emergency as COVID-19 Cases Spurt, Olympics and Vaccine Remain Uncertain

Spike of New COVID-19 Infections in Japan Affects Suga's Rating

After his predecessor Shinzo Abe became Japan's longest-serving prime minister, Suga took office in September 2020, aiming to prevent reverting to the days of short-term leaders. However, a slow reaction from COVID-19, as well as corruption scandals and issues surrounding the Olympics, all took their toll.

Suga's popularity had plunged in the weeks after the Tokyo Olympics as virus cases spread throughout the country. He has suffered a series of defeats in recent weeks, including the loss last month of one of his friends in a race for mayor of Yokohama, the city where he started his political career, according to a report published in Bakersfield.

Nikai also shared to the reporters, "To be honest, I'm surprised. But I believe he came to this decision after thinking about it deeply." Suga also postponed plans for a governing party executive change next week.

General Election in Japan

In a published article in Miami Herald, by the end of November, Japan must conduct a general election, in which the governing alliance is expected to retain power despite losing seats. The major opposition party's popularity is in the single digits.

Former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida, Suga's sole announced opponent for the party leadership, has pledged to spend more money to combat the virus and reinvigorate the LDP by hiring younger executives. Public opinion surveys indicate that Taro Kono, the government's vaccination czar and a former foreign minister, has widespread backing.

Shigeru Ishiba, a former defense minister, is often included in media surveys as one of the most popular candidates for future Prime Minister. A year ago, he ran against Suga. According to Kyohei Morita, chief Japan economist at Credit Agricole Securities Asia, Kishida's prospects of becoming Prime Minister have improved.

Related Article: Japan's China Policy Becomes More Confrontational in 2021



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Authorities indicted a former Georgia district attorney on Thursday on charges of violating her oath of office and showing favor to a suspect involved in the shooting murder of Ahmaud Arbery, a Black man who was jogging and gunned down by three White men.

The former official, Jackie Johnson, who was a former Brunswick Judicial Circuit top prosecutor, allegedly showed favor to 65-year-old retired police officer Greg McMichael. The man was one of the defendants in the case of Arbery and previously worked under Johnson as an investigator.

Former Georgia DA Indicted

The indictment alleged that Johnson recommended another county's prosecutor's appointment to handle the case. The decision was made without the official revealing that she previously sought that prosecutor's assistance in the Arbery investigations. Officials are also accusing the former DA of obstructing the arrest of Greg's son, Travis McMichael.

The third man who was with the McMichaels was William "Roddie" Bryan, who recorded the incident. The father and son chased Arbery in their truck and shot the 25-year-old Black man on Feb. 23, 2020, in Brunswick. It was reported that Travis used a shotgun to shoot the victim three times. CNBC reported.

At the time of the killing, Johnson was the appointed DA but disqualified herself from handling the case as a prosecutor. The grand jury indictment wrote that she took actions that resulted in the delayed arrests of all three suspects.

Read Also: Capitol Hill Riot 'Shaman' To Plead Guilty to Federal Charges

Waycross Judicial Circuit District Attorney George E. Barnhill handled the case and defended the McMichaels in his letter in April 2020. He told the police captain at the time that the two suspects had probable cause to believe that Arbery was a burglar. However, no further information regarding the allegations was released at the time.

It was not until the video of Arbery's shooting was revealed and shared on social media in early May 2020 that the case received intense scrutiny from the public. After drawing national outrage, the case was later referred to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation shortly after it was released, Yahoo News reported.

Ahmaud Arbery's Shooting Murder Case

Lee Merritt, an attorney for Arbery's family, called the criminal charges against Johnson were outstanding, calling them, "historic." He said that they rarely observed accountability for a prosecutor who interfered in an investigation.

Johnson was ousted last fall by voters and did not immediately reply to requests for comments regarding the case. While it remains unclear whether or not she has a lawyer, she previously denied any wrongdoing regarding the Arbery shooting case.

An individual found to violate oath for a public officer can be sentenced to one to five years in prison while obstructing and hindering a law enforcement officer is a misdemeanor that can carry a sentence of up to 12 months in jail. The Georgia attorney general's office presented evidence against Johnson to a Glynn County grand jury over several months.

This fall, the three suspects are scheduled to face trial on murder charges and also face federal hate-crime charges, accused of racially profiling Arbery, who was jogging through the Satilla Shores neighborhood in Brunswick, the Washington Post reported.

Related Article: Senate Calls to Impeach Biden But McConnell Says POTUS Not Going To Be Removed From His Post

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Fierce firefights erupted in Afghanistan turning the northern Panjshir Valley province into a battleground between the Taliban group and the resistance forces on Thursday night, an official source from within the group revealed.

The Panjshir Valley is a region found in the northern parts of Kabul and is a mountainous, inaccessible area. It is also the last major holdout fighting against the insurrection group's rule of the country. Forces in the region have a long history of fighting and resisting the militant group.

Taliban and Resistance Force Face Off

For the past two weeks, Taliban forces and members of the National Resistance Front (NRF) have been engaged in sporadic gunfights. For several weeks, the Taliban have been deploying large groups of its forces in and around the Panjshir province. On Monday, the group said they have successfully taken control of three districts in the valley.

Late on Thursday, forces from the two groups entered overnight clashes that were very intense, the NRF source said. They revealed that the Taliban were trying to use all of their military might to get into the region and take control, CNN reported.

An NRF spokesperson, Fahim Dashti, said earlier in an audio message on Thursday that the Taliban lost 40 of their members during their assault of the region. Another spokesperson, Ali Nazary, said that the militant group also lost a number of heavy equipment and weaponry that were destroyed during the encounters.

Read Also: UK To Pay $41 Million to Countries Accepting Afghan Refugees; EU Plans To Offer Cash Also

The forces in Panjshir include troops that traveled to the region after the Taliban took control of Kabul on Aug. 15, 2021. The fighters and local militia numbered several thousand and were remnants of army and special forces units from the country.

The son of a former Mujahideen commander, Ahmad Massoud, leads the resistance force that has been holding their ground in the valley that has made it difficult for the insurgent group to advance. Negotiation attempts between the two groups appear to have deteriorated with each side accusing the other of failing talks, Yahoo News reported.

Casualties on Both Sides

Zabihullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesman, said that some of the militant group's troops have successfully entered the region and taken control of some areas. "We started operations after negotiation with the local armed group failed. They suffered heavy losses," he said.

However, a spokesperson for the NRF said that the resistance had stationed firm defenses across all passes and entrances in the region and have successfully pushed back the Taliban from the Shotul district and have reclaimed the area. The spokesperson revealed that the NRF has suffered losses against fights with the militant group on two different fronts since the beginning of the encounters earlier this week.

Both groups have shared varying numbers on the actual extent of losses that each of them sustained amid the fighting. Neither of the two has provided evidence to support their claims of the casualties. The battles between the two groups came after negotiation attempts in the Panjshir Valley deteriorated as both sides claim the other did not want to partake in discussions, The Hill reported.

Related Article: Afghanistan in Economic Disaster, Food Shortage; Locals Encounter Devastating Results Days After Taliban Takeover

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In a US courtroom on Thursday, a British member of the Islamic State terrorist group called "the Beatles" admitted to helping the militant group torture and murder prisoners in Syria, including four Americans.

In federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, the defendant, Alexanda Kotey, pled guilty to all charges. Authorities in the United States stated he and another British member of the group, El Shafee Elsheikh, were engaged in the kidnappings of foreign hostages, including American humanitarian workers Kayla Mueller and Peter Kassig, as well as American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff.

The US and foreign nationals were killed by British ISIS member

The four American hostages, as well as other European and Japanese people, were killed by Kotey. As part of the plea agreement, Kotey accepts a sentence of life imprisonment in the United Kingdom, even if he is granted a lower term there, to be spent in either the United States or the United Kingdom. It also demands that he talk with authorities about his experience with ISIS.

According to the NY Post, Kotey is also obligated to meet with the relatives of his victims upon request. Family members of all four of his victims were present during the court on Thursday. On March 4, they will have the opportunity to speak at Kotey's official sentence.

Per Daily Mail, he and another British ISIS member, El Shafee Elsheikh, 32, also known as "Jihadi George," were accused of executing foreign captives and American journalists. Both men have been charged with hostage-taking that resulted in death, as well as conspiracy to murder US citizens overseas and providing material assistance to terrorists.

Elsheikh has not entered a plea agreement, according to court documents. In January, he is set to stand trial. They are accused of taking part in gruesome extremist recordings depicting the beheadings of foreign hostages that were broadcast on the internet.

According to the 24-page indictment, the torture of the captives included forcing hostages to fight one other, electric shocks with a taser, and 20-minute beatings with sticks and waterboarding. Other hostages who died as a result of the two men's actions include Alan Henning, a British cab driver who was bringing aid, David Haines, a Scottish humanitarian worker, and two Japanese nationals

Read Also: Taliban Celebrates US Troops Withdrawal in Afghanistan; Parade Shows Plundered Military Equipment

Alexanda Kotey admitted hostages need to be beaten to control them

Elsheikh's mother filed a court challenge, claiming that it would violate the UK's anti-capital penalty stance, and the US and the UK reached an agreement. According to a British Supreme Court ruling, it is illegal for the UK to disclose evidence with the US without first obtaining guarantees that the two would not face death.

Since the US consented to the agreement, the UK and the US have exchanged intelligence. During the Syrian Civil War, ISIS kidnapped American journalist James Foley, who was working as a freelance war correspondent.

Elsheikh previously confessed that Foley would occasionally be beaten to ensure that the captives were fed sufficiently. In Syria, the hostages were severely assaulted. Waterboarding, fake executions, excruciating stress postures, food starvation, stick beatings, chokeholds inducing blackouts, and electric shocks were all used against them.

After ransoms were paid in certain cases, captives were released. The deaths of the American hostages shocked the Obama administration, forcing the government to rethink how it handled captive families. Kotey said the violence was necessary for "controlling" the captives, according to authorities.

In 2015, another member of the cell, Mohammed Emwazi, also known as Jihadi John, was killed in a Syrian airstrike. Kotey claimed he went to Syria with Emwazi in August 2012 and joined Al-Nusra Front, a Qaeda affiliate, before transferring to ISIS.

Aine Davis, the group's fourth British member, is being held in Turkey on terrorist accusations. If Turkey agreed to extradite Davis to the United States or the United Kingdom, Kotey's participation would be critical to any prosecution effort, as per NY Times.

Related Article: Europe Court Blames Russia for Failing to Investigate Death of Human Rights Activist Natalya Estemirova

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Epidemic in Southeast Asia hits global Q2 mobile phone production quarterly down by nearly 11%

The Southeast Asian epidemic has impacted parts supply and market buying. TrendForce, a market research agency, said that the global smartphone production in the second quarter fell by nearly 11% to 307 million units. Among them, Samsung was the most affected, with a quarterly decline in shipments of up to 23.5%; Apple\'s seasonal decline was as high as 22.2% due to the replacement of new and old products; Xiaomi, OPPO, and vivo also affected overseas market buying due to the Southeast Asian epidemic. The output of the three brands in the second quarter decreased by a single-digit percentage.

Due to the unpredictable impact of the epidemic on terminal demand, mobile phone production and component supply, and the tight foundry capacity, TrendForce has revised down the annual growth rate of mobile phone production this year from 8.5% to 7.3%.

Under the raging epidemic in Southeast Asia, according to TrendForce data, smartphone production and market demand both declined in the second quarter. The output fell by nearly 11% quarter-on-quarter to 307 million, but it still grew by about 10% over the same period last year. Mobile phone production in the first half of the year It is 652 million, which is still an increase of nearly 18% over the same period last year.

Samsung, the worlds largest smartphone brand, has the largest mobile phone assembly plant in Vietnam, and India is also one of Samsungs key markets and production locations. As a result, the output in the second quarter has dropped by 23.5% from the first quarter to 5,850. Ten thousand sticks, the decline ranks among the top five brands in the world. As for Apple, although iPhone production and demand are relatively unaffected by the epidemic in Southeast Asia, the second quarter coincides with the transition period between the old and the new products, and the output is also 22.2% lower than the first quarter to 42 million units.

In contrast, OPPO series, Xiaomi series (related brands including Xiaomi, Redmi, POCO, Black Shark), and Vivo (related brands including Vivo, iQoo) from China, even if India is the largest overseas market for these three brands, The above-mentioned three brands were relatively mildly affected by the epidemic in Southeast Asia, and the quarterly reductions in output in the second quarter were only 6.6%, 2%, and 8%, respectively.

TrendForce said that the three largest production bases and markets for the above three Chinese brands are in China where the epidemic is under control, and they all share the market share released by Huawei. Only overseas sales are affected by the epidemic in Southeast Asia. Among them, the Xiaomi series and OPPO The production in the second quarter of the series was 49.5 million units, ranking second in the world, and the production of the Vivo series in the second quarter was ranked fifth in the world with 34 million units.

What did this affect the ipad pro 12.9 battery replacement industry?

With the rapid updating and selling of Xiaomi smart phones, another industry associated with it-the mobile phone accessories industry has also grown rapidly. The so-called mobile phone accessories are what people usually call the secondary products of mobile phones, especially when the iPhone smart phones are popular nowadays, consumers have a huge demand for ipad pro 12.9 battery replacement. The number of smartphones on the market that is increasing year by year will stimulate people demand for ipad pro 12.9 battery replacement. The upstream raw materials of the ipad pro 12.9 battery replacement industry chain mainly include plastics, lithium salts, integrated circuits, positive and negative materials, connectors, etc., and the downstream are mobile phone brands, mobile phone sellers, channel sellers and operators. Oriwhiz (Shenzhen DongYe Tengfei Electronics Co., Ltd) is a professional iPhone, iPad, iMac, Mac Book, Xiaomi, Huawei, Samsung, Sony, LG, ASUS repair parts and repair tools supplier. For technical consulting or more information about ipad pro 12.9 battery replacement, send an email to: info@oriwhiz.com.

Analysis of the current market demand status of the global ipad pro 12.9 battery replacement industry

The global population of nearly 7 billion provides the basis for the continuous growth of the mobile phone market, and with the continuous improvement of population quality, having smart phones has become an inevitable choice for people to meet their personal communication needs. According to statistics, as of January-June 2021, global mobile phone shipments were 2.481 billion units, a year-on-year increase of 21.5%.

With the continuous advancement of technology, people have higher and higher demands for quality and enjoyment, and most consumers have begun to pay attention to the quality and function of ipad pro 12.9 battery replacement. The ipad pro 12.9 battery replacement follows the continuous development of mobile phone products faster and faster. According to statistics, as of January-July 2021, global shipments of ipad pro 12.9 battery replacement are approximately 2.579 billion pieces.

In terms of import and export, according to statistics, the import value of Chinese ipad pro 12.9 battery replacement in 2019 was US$701 million, a year-on-year decrease of 2.23%, and the export value was US$20.624 billion, a year-on-year increase of 6.84%; as of January-November 2020, the import value of Chinese ipad pro 12.9 battery replacement was 5.88 Billion U.S. dollars, and the export value is 18.969 billion U.S. dollars.

Analysis of the demand for ipad pro 12.9 battery replacement in the market segments of the mobile phone accessories industry

From the perspective of global mobile phone accessories market demand, according to statistics, as of January-March 2020, China export demand for smart phone ipad pro 12.9 battery replacement was 898 million, a year-on-year decrease of 7.49%. The demand for ipad pro 12.9 battery replacement is closely related to the output of mobile phones. According to statistics, as of April-June 2020, the export demand for ipad pro 12.9 battery replacement in China is 1.39 billion. From the perspective of market demand for ipad pro 12.9 battery replacement, according to statistics, as of July-September 2020, the export demand for ipad pro 12.9 battery replacement in China was 1.207 billion. In terms of ipad pro 12.9 battery replacement shipments, according to statistics, as of 2019, the annual shipment of Chinese ipad pro 12.9 battery replacement was 5.38 billion, a year-on-year increase of 3.3%.

The ipad pro 12.9 battery replacement supplier

Oriwhiz (Shenzhen DongYe Tengfei Electronics Co., Ltd) is a professional iPhone, iPad, iMac, Mac Book, Xiaomi, Huawei, Samsung, Sony, LG, ASUS repair parts and repair tools supplier. Oriwhiz team aims to provide the best quality cellphone replacement parts and repair tools to all customers. We provide comprehensive solutions for cellphone, digital devices, computer repair shops with powerful and handy cellphone repair packages, repair tools, and repair machines. Browse our product category to select an item you like or contact us for wholesale and distribution issues via: info@oriwhiz.com.
The devastation of Hurricane Ida can be mapped out from space through NASA's space satellite showing power outages after lines and infrastructures were damaged. Energy Provider DEMCO says restoring power can take weeks.

Power Outage From Space

Hurricane Ida's fierce winds, rain, and storm surge caused devastation after devastation across Louisiana. Downed lines and damaged transmission towers all over the state leave citizens without power. Many have also lost access to running water and even gasoline due to the damaged infrastructures, Sci Tech Daily reported.

NASA's team of scientists was able to map out the devastation. The Goddard Space Flight Center and the Universities Space Research Association or USRA used satellite data to track the damage caused by Hurricane Ida.

Images collected included nighttime lights data acquired on August 9 and 31 by the Suomi NPP Satellite.

The Black Marble Project by the USRA captured the aftermath of Hurricane Ida's wake. The Black Marble imagery captured a log of diesel-power/backup generation as well.

The @NOAA /NASA #SuomiNPP  captured the extent of the power outages across eastern Louisiana after Hurricane #Ida. Imagery from this morning is compared to August 9, and shows a significant drop in nighttime lights around New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Slidell, and Hammond, LA. pic.twitter.com/8c8k7TvVRB  NOAA Satellites (@NOAASatellites) August 31, 2021



Read Also: Fourth Stimulus Check Update: $2000 Petition Progressing, Golden State Payments Release Date Confirmed

Hurricane Ida Power Outage Map: Electricity Restoration

More than 985,000 customers reported having no access to power by the morning of September 1, PowerOutage.US reported, noting that the total considers homes and businesses, and not individual people. Mississippi had 33,000 customers reporting no power access as well.

A lot of the damage was caused by falling trees and branches. The winds caused trees and power lines and poles to be uprooted and cause damage to surrounding infrastructures.

According to WAFB Channel 9, restoring power can take weeks. Energy provider DEMCO advises its members to "make plans now for their health, safety, and comfort" as they begin the "weeks-long process" of bringing power back up to its members.

NASAs Atmospheric Infrared Sounder captured Hurricane Ida before & after it made landfall. The eye of the strong Category 4 storm appears over the Louisiana coast as a small blue-green area in the midst of an area linked w/ heavy rainfall (purple patch). https://t.co/yEXvrgwCaa pic.twitter.com/tIYQ58o30k  NASA JPL (@NASAJPL) August 31, 2021

A problem DEMCO is currently facing is repairing transmission and transformer poles which have taken a hit, making resting power to members take more time. Damaged Infrastructures also get in the way of replacing distribution poles and lines. According to DEMCO's Facebook post on Tuesday, August 31, estimated times of restoration are not possible.

The energy provider assures members that crews are beginning the work, replacing and repairing damaged electrical infrastructure that is in their means to do so, despite their outage website going down Tuesday afternoon, WAFB Channel 9 said.

Entergy has cleared off most inroads in East Baton Rouge Parish, providing reconnected power over the course of the day, Wednesday, Septer 1, The Advocate reported.

Restoration efforts made by utility and electricity companies do not have a definite schedule as of the moment, considering the swath of destruction caused by Hurricane Ida. As DEMCO says, the current repair work is "as-they-go fixes."

Utility companies are bringing in more than 25,000 workers out of state to help in the repair efforts. Meanwhile, residents are preparing generators, heading to hotels, and doing whatever they can while waiting for power reconnections.

Related Article: Child Tax Credit Update Portal: How to Claim $3600 for Your Baby Born This 2021
A giant asteroid has been spotted nearing Earth's atmosphere. The asteroid called 2021 NY1 is 300-900 feet in diameter, which is approximately three times larger than the Statue of Liberty. Fortunately, it isn't on a collision course with Earth and will pass within 930,487 miles of the planet sometime this September.

NASA takes its job seriously on tracking all massive near-Earth objects (NEOs) in the atmosphere. These are often comets and asteroids that have been drawn to the gravitational pull of nearby planets.

Usually, NASA monitors NEOs to notify researchers ahead and give them time to study the object as it passes by. However, NASA also takes into account the possibility of asteroids hitting on Earth, which happens every few hundred years.

NASA Asteroid Warning 2021: 2021 NY1 Nearing Earth

An asteroid with the size of 2021 NY1 is not a planet killer, but it could cause severe damage to the planet. However, as previously mentioned, 2021 NY1 is not on a collision course with Earth.

The 2021 NY1 is a unique asteroid on many different levels. Aside from its significantly large body, it might also be one of the closest asteroids to fly by Earth. It has an estimated Lunar Distance of 3.90 | 0.01001, which makes it as the third closest asteroid predicted to approach within the next two months as the time of writing. The distance from Earth is estimated at 930,487 miles.

It's close approach date is predicted to be on September 22.

According to iHeart, NASA is currently tracking 24 asteroids in the planet's orbit, and only one of them will pass between Earth and the Moon. This notable asteroid is the 2015 TQ21, which has a diameter between 8-20 meters. For reference, the Moon is 238,855 miles from Earth, and 2015 TQ21 is predicted to pass 215,000 miles from Earth. This phenomenon is expected to happen sometime in October.

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How to Check NEOs: The NASA Asteroid Tracker

An online tool is available for interested viewers to track and understand the different NEOs around the planet. Note that data available on this tool is exclusive to NEOs between 1900 A.D. and 2200 A.D. The NASA CNEOS tool is emphasized to have high reading accuracy with its data.

NASA released a quick video tutorial on how to navigate the online tool, which is embedded below.



When visiting the website, viewers can customize their NEO search results based on timeline and distance. The online tool also provides full details for the NEO like its name, estimated date of approach, position based on Lunar distance, velocity, and diameter.

Also, note that you can click open each NEO name to learn more about it. Aside from the scientific jargon and orbital parameters listed, some of these NEOs can be viewed in an interactive simulator and animation interface. To do this, you will need to:

Click on the NEO name

Click on "Orbit Diagram" found under its name.

Click "Play Forward," the icon on the upper left side of the simulation tool.

Related Article: Hurricane Ida Power Outage Map from Space: Devastation Seen from NASA Satellite, Electricity Restoration Will Be A Long Process
09/01/2021



The university and community gathered on the lawn in front of Angle Hall for a Day of Prayer and Remembrance on Sept. 14, 2001. Photo by Steve Latham.

By Buffy Lockette

Two decades have passed since two airplanes struck twin towers in New York City, forever changing America. On Sept. 9, JSU will host a remembrance marking the 20th anniversary of September 11, 2001. The free public event will be held from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. in the Ernest Stone Performing Arts Center's theatre. The event will be streamed on YouTube for those who cannot attend in person.

"It is important that we commemorate this event to honor those who died in New York, at the Pentagon and in the field in Pennsylvania on September 11," said Dr. Lori Owens, event organizer and professor of political science. "We also want to ensure that family and other loved ones of those who died know that the nation still remembers them."

Today's college student isn't old enough to remember September 11, 2001. Freshmen weren't yet born. To ensure this generation understands the impact of 9/11, JSU has assembled a panel of individuals to share their unique perspectives from that historic day.

Panelists will include:

Dr. Bill Meehan, JSU president from 1999 to 2015

Miranda Killingsworth Pate, 2001 SGA president

Dr. Robert E. Hayes III, 2002 SGA president

Ben Cunningham, a US Air Force veteran who served as editor of The Chanticleer, JSU's student newspaper, on 9/11

Col. David A. McPherson, Commander of the National Guard at Fort McClellan on 9/11

Angie L. McPherson, principal at Ft. Benning's Department of Defense School on 9/11

Lt. Col. Travis J. Easterling, a current professor of military science/aviation for JSU ROTC who has been deployed once to Iraq, three times to Afghanistan, once to Pakistan, and to Operation Atlantic Resolve

Pearl Williams, a retired JSU staff member who lost her son at the Pentagon on 9/11

Dr. Owens will serve as the panel's moderator. She was on faculty at JSU on 9/11 and witnessed the deployment of several of her students and former students, most of whom were in their early 20s.

"Our Sept. 9 program is a time for us to pause our hectic lives, remember what matters, thank those who served and continue to serve, and gratefully acknowledge those we lost," she said.
Pianist Cho Seong-jin plays Chopin's "Piano Concerto No. 2" during a press conference held at Seoul Arts Center, Friday, to promote his latest album of Chopin works and his upcoming recitals in Korea. Yonhap







By Park Ji-won



Had it not been for the COVID-19 pandemic, pianist Cho Seong-jin, the winner of the 2015 International Chopin Piano Competition, would have been one of the busiest pianists in Korea and the world holding solo recitals and concerts with renowned orchestras.



However, after his last recital in New York in March 2020, all of his performances were canceled following the virus spread, and he barely had a chance to appear on stage except for online performances until he had a national tour in Korea starting from October, 2020. He started online concerts and resumed some offline recitals, but it didn't satisfy as performing on a stage in front of an audience did.



Despite the pandemic, however, he came back to Korea to embark on a nationwide recital tour in seven different cities starting from Jeonju Sept. 4 with the new album of Chopin works released on Aug. 27. He is planning to hold recitals in Jeonju (Sept. 4), Daegu (Sept. 5), Seoul (Sept. 7), Incheon (Sept. 8), Yeosu (Sept. 11) and Suwon (Sept. 12) and Busan (Sept. 16). Upon many requests, he is also planning to hold an additional concert in Seoul at the Seoul Arts Center, Sept. 18 which will be broadcast via Naver.



It is the first tour for Cho since he released his new album of Chopin works titled "Chopin: Piano Concerto No. 2  Scherzi" featuring "Piano Concerto No. 2 in F Minor, Op. 21," and a series of scherzos, including, "Scherzo No. 1 in B Minor, Op. 20," "Scherzo No. 2 in B Flat Minor, Op. 31," "Scherzo No. 3 in C Sharp Minor, Op. 39" and "Scherzo No. 4 in E Major, Op. 54" as well as three bonus tracks, "Revolutionary" Etude, Op. 10 no. 12," "Impromptu No. 1, Op. 29" and "Nocturne, Op. 9 no. 2." Cho will be playing the works included on the latest album, as well as other rare works, such as Janacek's "Piano Sonata 1.X.1905," and Ravel's "Gaspard de la nuit."



For the winner of the renowned Chopin competition, it would be inevitable to play the composer's pieces. But he made an "intentional" choice to record the Chopin pieces some five years after showing his abilities as a pianist who can play various and profound works such as those of Debussy, Mozart, Schubert and Liszt, apart from Chopin.





Pianist Cho Seong-jin speaks during a press conference held at Seoul Arts Center, Friday, to promote his latest album of Chopin works and upcoming recitals in Korea. Yonhap



"Since I recorded Chopin works in 2016, I did not record his pieces on purpose. The winner of the Chopin competition can receive a lot of opportunities and build a good career. But the position also can have risks to be regarded as a Chopin specialist. I didn't want that ... I decided to record the album of Chopin in 2018 and planned to record it in 2020 intrinsically thinking the five year gap is a good amount of time after the first recording even though the pandemic delayed the recording," Cho said during a press conference held at Seoul Arts Center, Friday, to promote the release of the recent album and the upcoming recitals in Korea.



He stressed that he decided to record Chopin's "Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 2 in F minor Op. 21" to create a certain cycle and the four Scherzo's as they are "substantial" Chopin pieces.



"As I recorded Chopin's 'Piano Concerto No. 1' about five years ago with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Gianandrea Noseda, I thought it would be nice to create the cycle again with Chopin's 'Piano Concerto No. 2' with them. Also, I chose to play 'Scherzo No. 1 to 4' as they are the most substantial and heaviest works of Chopin and substantial in terms of length and composition."



He added that he has a lot of memories associated with "Scherzo No. 2" as he first played it when he was in the sixth grade in elementary school and it helped him to meet his lifetime teacher and other musicians.



"The four works are different and excellent independently, but I had some good memories about 'Scherzo No. 2.' I played it when I was in the sixth grade in elementary school and I played it again in front of conductor Chung Myung-whun in 2009 and was able to build a relationship with him. I was also able to meet with my teacher Shin Soo-jung with the work as she randomly found me playing the piece. I also played it in the semi-final stage of the 2015 Chopin competition."



He said he doesn't notice big differences in his playing style as one doesn't realize oneself aging while seeing their face every day in a mirror.





Pianist Cho Seong-jin plays Chopin's "Piano Concerto No. 2" during a press conference held at Seoul Arts Center, Friday, to promote his latest album of Chopin works and upcoming recitals in Korea. Yonhap
Actors Ryu Jun-yeol, left, and Jeon Do-yeon pose during an online press conference for JTBC's new series, "Lost," Thursday. Courtesy of JTBC



By Kwak Yeon-soo



Actress Jeon Do-yeon is returning to the small screen for the first time in five years through JTBC's "Lost." Her last appearance on television was playing the lead role in the 2016 drama "The Good Wife."



Directed by Hur Jin-ho, "Lost" tells the story of ordinary people who feel adrift in life and try to make their lives better.



Jeon plays the role of Bu-jung, a ghostwriter who feels like she hasn't achieved anything at the age of 40, while Ryu Jun-yeol appears as Kang-jae, who runs a company that rents fake family members, friends or romantic partners for money.



Hur, best known for directing the films "Christmas in August" and "The Last Princess," is making his first foray into a TV drama. Kim Ji-hye, the screenwriter for hit romance film "Architecture 101," penned the script.



The star director revealed that he had neither the courage nor the confidence to helm a TV series, but changed his mind after reading Kim's script.



"Even I didn't know I would be making a TV series. In contrast to a film that goes into production once the script is completed, a drama starts shooting while the script is still being written along the way. So, there were feelings of curiosity and frustration from time to time. It literally felt like making three to four films," Hur said during a press conference for the drama, Thursday.



Hur also shared his thoughts on the title of the series.



"Our drama evokes feelings of existential dread. It's a beautiful odyssey of loss  material or emotional loss  when people feel like they've failed to live up to their expectations and how they recover a sense of possibility," he said.





A scene from JTBC's new series "Lost" / Courtesy of JTBC
South Korean nuclear envoy Noh Kyu-duk, left, speaks in front of the U.S. Department of State building in Washington, Monday, after meeting with his U.S. counterpart Sung Kim on North Korea. Yonhap



Interim deal may recognize Pyongyang as nuclear power



By Kang Seung-woo



Grappling with the fallout from its withdrawal from Afghanistan, the United States is weighing the possibility of shifting its tone on North Korea's nuclear program  in other words, seeking to maintain the status quo on the Korean Peninsula rather than aggressively pursuing complete denuclearization.



Under the circumstances, diplomatic observers believe that the Biden administration is open to reaching an interim deal, which means that the two sides would take simultaneous steps that could lead to the denuclearization of North Korea and they believe are more practical and realistic.



Last week, when Sung Kim, the U.S. special representative for North Korea, visited Seoul, he indicated that Washington would want to stably manage the situation on the Peninsula due to the crisis in Afghanistan.



According to Rep. Tae Yong-ho, a former North Korean diplomat who defected to South Korea in 2016, the U.S. nuclear envoy delivered a conciliatory message to the Kim Jong-un regime that the U.S. could compensate for its absence of military provocations at this point  in spite of a recent International Atomic Energy Agency report suggesting that North Korea has restarted its nuclear reactor in Yongbyon.



In addition, the U.S. Congressional Research Service (CRS), published July 30, said the Biden administration is likely to pursue a phased approach to the North Korean nuclear issue, offering some partial sanctions relief in exchange for steps toward denuclearization.



"The Biden administration does have the option of just forgetting about North Korea in the short to medium term," said Harry Kazianis, a senior director of Korean Studies at the Center for the National Interest.



"If the administration gets sucked back into Afghanistan and feels it does not have the time or the political capital to try and push for a deal with North Korea, it could simply opt not to rock the boat and hope the status quo holds, even if that means a North Korea that builds more and more nuclear weapons."



Joseph DeTrani, a former U.S. special envoy to the six-party talks, said, "A step-by-step approach to complete and verifiable denuclearization is something I would support."



He added, "It is similar to what we had with the six-party talks Sept. 19, 2005 Agreement of an action for action, commitment for commitment path to the complete dismantlement of North Korea's nuclear weapons and facilities."



The six-party talks on the denuclearization of the peninsula is a multilateral forum, composed of the U.S., China, Russia, Japan and the two Koreas, that has been suspended since 2008.



Ramon Pacheco Pardo, a professor of international relations at King's College London, said the U.S. has already settled on a step-by-step approach.



"The ultimate goal will always remain denuclearization. But statements by Vice President Kamala Harris and Secretary of State Antony Blinken in years past suggest that they knew that outright denuclearization wasn't realistic," said Pacheco Pardo, who doubles as the KF-VUB Korea chair at the Brussels School of Governance.



"Since the Biden administration took office, the U.S. has signaled its willingness to negotiate. To me, this suggests that the administration has accepted that a step-by-step approach is the only viable way to address the North Korean nuclear issue."



Former chief U.S. nuclear negotiator Robert Gallucci said if talks do ever begin again, the U.S. should not characterize initial incremental moves, such as partial sanctions relief for some restraint in the nuclear weapons area, as "abandoning the denuclearization objective." "A 'reciprocal process' aimed at normalization and denuclearization can begin with small steps," he added.



However, there are lingering concerns that, should the U.S. adopt the action-for-action process with the Stalinist state, it would have to formally recognize the country as a nuclear state  a status the country has aggressively sought.



"We should never accept North Korea as a nuclear weapons state," DeTrani said. "Indeed, this is North Korea's goal: A normal relationship with the U.S. and acceptance as a nuclear weapons state."





This image shows North Korea's main nuclear complex in Yongbyon, north of Pyongyang. Yonhap
In this photo released by North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un speaks during an enlarged politburo meeting of the Workers' Party in Pyongyang, Sept. 2. Yonhap



North Korean leader Kim Jong-un presided over a politburo meeting to discuss a series of key issues, such as nationwide anti-coronavirus measures and farm production, state media reported Friday.



Kim also discussed measures to thoroughly boost production of consumer goods and implement a land management policy, during the enlarged politburo session of the Workers' Party held Thursday, according to the Korean Central News Agency.



"Saying that the present dangerous situation of the worldwide pandemic which keeps spiraling out of control demands tighter nationwide epidemic prevention, he emphasized that all the party organizations and officials should reexamine the national epidemic prevention system and the work in this field, and conduct an intense political offensive to strain and awaken the epidemic prevention front once again," the KCNA said.



He stressed that tightening epidemic prevention is a task of "paramount importance" and warned officials against letting down their guard for "even a moment under the present situation."



The North has claimed to be coronavirus-free but has taken relatively swift and tough measures against the pandemic, such as imposing strict border controls since early last year.



Kim also set forth tasks to successfully conclude this year's farming and to "make a breakthrough in settling the food problem of the people."



Stressing the need to fully mobilize the labor force to ensure the state provision of farming equipment, he instructed officials to push ahead with increasing the grain yield "as much as possible before harvesting" to achieve the planned grain production goal.



Kim also called for improved land management to make them "unperturbed and safe from any natural disasters."



"He underlined the need to take thorough-going measures to overcome abnormal climate the danger of which has become higher in recent years, and to work out active and ambitious plan to conclude river improvement, afforestation for erosion control, dyke maintenance and tide embankment projects in the main and enter into their regular management in the five-year plan at least," the KCNA said.



The KCNA said the enlarged meeting dealt with "an organizational issue" but did not provide further details.



Top officials attended the meeting, including Jo Yong-won, secretary for organizational affairs of the party's Central Committee, and Choe Ryong-hae, president of the Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly. Kim Jae-ryong, director of the Organization and Guidance Department, was also seated in the front row next to the presidium members.



Ri Pyong-chol, vice chairman of the Central Committee of the Workers' Party who is believed to have been dismissed from the Presidium, and Kim Yong-chol, head of the North's United Front Department, appears not to have attended the meeting.



The meeting comes as the North struggles to cope with its chronic food shortage, aggravated by recent flood damage in agricultural fields, amid the prolonged coronavirus pandemic. (Yonhap)


A commercial satellite image by 38 North shows North Korean troops preparing for a military parade in Pyongyang. Yonhap



Pyongyang anxious about no action from US



By Kang Seung-woo



North Korea appears to have increased its provocative military activities on purpose in a bid to get the attention of the Joe Biden administration, according to Pyongyang watchers.



According to 38 North, a U.S.-based website specializing in the North Korean regime, troop formations were observed earlier last week at Mirim Airport in Pyongyang, raising speculation that the country is preparing for a military parade ahead of its state and ruling party founding anniversaries on Sept. 9 and Oct. 10, respectively. The airfield has served as a rehearsal ground for large-scale military parades.



"This could indicate an upcoming military parade in Oct, as we saw in 2020," it said on Twitter, Thursday.



"The unification ministry will closely watch any signs, without prematurely determining, for the possibility of the North holding a military parade," Cha Deok-cheol, deputy spokesperson of the unification ministry, told a regular press briefing, Friday.



The observation by a commercial satellite image followed a recent International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report indicating that North Korea has restarted its nuclear reactor in Yongbyon.



However, some are questioning whether North Korea intentionally displayed its activities to pressure the United States to re-focus on its nuclear issue given that it could have hidden the activity of the nuclear reactor by operating it underground. Currently, Washington is busy grappling with the fallout from its withdrawal from Afghanistan.



"Both the nuclear reactor and preparations for a military parade are North Korea's way of showing off to gain an upper hand in future negotiations with the U.S.," said Park Won-gon, a professor at Ewha Womans University.



"They are safe yet effective measures to pressure the U.S."



On Thursday, the North Korean foreign ministry issued a statement denouncing the U.S. policy toward the totalitarian state for adopting the "strategic patience" policy once pursued by the Obama administration.



The policy meant no engagement with the reclusive state as long as its leadership persisted with nuclear weapons development and ballistic missile testing, but many critics say the policy failed to address the North's growing nuclear and missile programs.



"A typical example is that of a Member of the European Parliament from a political party of the Netherlands, which censured the current U.S. administration for following the strategic patience policy," it said via the state-run Korean Central News Agency.



"He ridiculed the United States for acting stupidly while impatiently waiting for the collapse of the DPRK till now even in the face of the great pressure from the Afghan crisis."



The DPRK stands for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the official name of North Korea.



Park said the North Korean regime may be anxious about the U.S. negligence over its issue.



"North Korea may be fretting about no action from the U.S.," the professor said.



In fact, Noh Kyu-duk, South Korea's chief nuclear negotiator, met with his U.S. counterpart Sung Kim earlier this week following the IAEA report, but they did not issue a statement on the issue.



"Given that North Korea is well aware that the Biden administration will not get drawn into Pyongyang's intention, the North is likely to be jittery about it," Park added.




An employee at a hospital in Dobong District, northern Seoul, looks at the monitor showing the inside of an operating room through a surveillance camera, Aug. 23. Yonhap



Surveillance cameras in operating rooms to be mandatory from 2023



By Lee Hyo-jin



A controversial bill on requiring the installation of surveillance cameras in hospital operating rooms has been approved by the National Assembly, drawing mixed reactions from patient and doctor groups.



The revision bill to the Medical Service Act was passed at a plenary session, Tuesday, in a 135 to 24 vote, with 24 abstentions.



Under the new measures, which will take effect from Aug. 30, 2023, hospitals should be equipped with closed-circuit cameras in operating rooms and must video-record surgical procedures, without audio, upon request of the patient or guardian. Audio can be recorded upon mutual consent of the medical personnel and the patient.



The recorded footage must be saved for more than 30 days. Viewing the video will be allowed upon request by an investigative body, a court, or when both the medical personnel and the patient agree.



Those accused of leaking, damaging, or falsifying footage may face up to five years of imprisonment, or a fine of up to 50 million won ($42,600).



The passage of the bill came amid growing public calls to come up with measures after a series of alleged medical malpractice cases involving proxy surgery conducted by unqualified staff, along with sexual assaults on anesthetized patients, have made headlines in recent years.



In a poll conducted in June by the Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission, 98 percent of the 13,959 respondents supported the bill.



"I've been in support of the installment of surveillance cameras since reading the news on victims of 'ghost surgeries.' Having cameras would protect the safety of unconscious patients who are completely unaware of what's happening in the operating room," said Choi Ga-gyung, a 27-year-old office worker in Seoul.



A Gyeonggi Province resident surnamed Bang said, "The video evidence will be helpful in settling medical disputes. Patients usually have very little chance of winning medical malpractice lawsuits because it's difficult to prove the doctors' negligence."



She added, "But I think there should be some follow-up measures to prevent leakage of the footage as it would contain images of the patients exposed."





The revision bill to the Medical Services Act on mandatory installment of surveillance cameras in hospital operating rooms is being passed at the National Assembly's plenary session on Yeouido, Seoul, Aug. 31. Yonhap



The Korea Alliance of Patients Organization, a civic groups representing patients, welcomed the passage of the bill calling it "the result of six years and seven months of efforts for legislation."



Bills requiring cameras in operating rooms had been proposed multiple times since 2016, but to no avail, in the 19th and 20th National Assemblies.



"The revision bill will make operating theaters a safer environment for the patients," read a statement released from the organization.



Though, the group viewed that further discussions should be made on some details of the new bill, such as the clause giving doctors the right to refuse video recording if they have valid reasons, such as in the case of urgent or high-risk operations.



"The Korea Consumer Agency should also be included in the list of organizations that can request to view the camera footage," said Ahn Ki-jong, head of the patient's organization.



The Citizens' Coalition for Economic Justice also welcome the measure, but it insisted that patients should be guaranteed easier accessibility to video footage, without a request from an investigative body or consent of medical staff.



On the contrary, a doctors' group, who has fiercely opposed the installment of cameras, is seeking to take legal actions to block the implementation of the bill.



They argue that monitoring doctors in operating theaters will undermine trust between physicians and patients, while raising concerns over violation of human rights and privacy in the case of possible leakage of the footage.





Lee Pil-soo, president of the Korean Medical Association, stages a protest in front of the National Assembly, Aug. 30, against the revision bill to the Medical Service Act that requires the installation of surveillance cameras in hospital operating rooms.
Na Soon-ja, left, the head of the Korean Health and Medical Workers' Union, and Kwon Deok-cheol, the minister of health and welfare, hold their documented agreement after their last-ditch negotiations at the Korea Institute for Healthcare Accreditation in Seoul, Thursday. Yonhap



By Jun Ji-hye



The government is facing a pile of tasks to implement an agreement it reached with unionized healthcare workers to improve their working conditions amid their worsening burnout and fatigue due to the prolonged COVID-19 pandemic that began early last year.



Though the agreement stopped the workers' plan to go on a general strike, the possibility remains that conflict between the two sides could arise again at any time during the process of implementing the agreement, which could deal a heavy blow to the country's medical system amid no signs of a slowdown in coronavirus infections.



The Korean Health and Medical Workers' Union, associated with the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, called off their planned strike, Thursday, just about five hours before the strike was set to begin, as they reached the agreement with the government at 2:10 a.m. after their 11-hour last-ditch negotiations that began the day before.



The union represents nurses, pharmacists, care workers and most other healthcare-related workers other than doctors.



The agreement centered on expanding public health services and infrastructure, and giving better treatments to front-line nurses and healthcare workers, which requires budget and system improvements.



As part of the first steps to implement the agreement, the government needs to draw up detailed measures by October on how to assign nurses based on the severity of patients' condition.



The union holds that two nurses should be assigned for one patient in critical condition, and one nurse per patient in less severe condition or mild-case patients with Alzheimer's disease or mental illness. For all other patients with mild conditions, the union has asked for one nurse per five such patients.



"It is true that nurses here have been required to handle a relatively high number of patients compared to developed countries," said Lee Chang-joon who in charge of healthcare policies at the Ministry of Health and Welfare. "We are aiming to reduce the number of patients per nurse."



As for measures to enhance public services, the government vowed to set up four regional hospitals dedicated to infectious diseases by 2024 and build public hospitals in six regions including Ulsan and Gwangju in cooperation with local governments.



Other measures include the establishment of a state-run medical school. But this has been opposed by a doctors' group, which took collective action last year against the government's push to increase admission quotas at medical schools, plus other thorny issues including the plan to set up the aforementioned state-run medical school.



This could become another seed of conflict in the future.



"The government unilaterally agreed with the Korean Health and Medical Workers' Union, without prior consultation with the Korea Medical Association (KMA)," the KMA said in its statement, Thursday.


In this Aug. 3 file photo, foreign arrivals follow instructions from health care workers at Incheon International Airport. Yonhap



South Korea has confirmed the country's first cases of a coronavirus strain called "Mu" from three patients, health authorities said Friday.



The variant, which was first identified in Colombia, was confirmed from three imported cases from Mexico, United States and Colombia, the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency said, without providing further details.






An individual gets tested for the coronavirus at a testing center near Seoul Station, Friday. Yonhap









By Lee Hyo-jin







The government has decided to ease private gathering bans for the upcoming Chuseok holiday amid growing complaints from small business owners  although the current social distancing measures will be extended for four more weeks until Oct. 3.







The Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasures Headquarters announced Friday a set of special virus control measures to be applied during the five-day weekend. The national holiday runs from Sept.18 through 22, during which millions of people are expected to travel across the country to visit their families and relatives.







According to the government, Seoul and its surrounding areas will remain under the current social distancing measures  Level 4, while Level 3 will continue in the rest of the country.







Under the measures, from Sept 17 to 23, up to eight family members will be allowed to gather at home if the group includes four fully vaccinated individuals.







From Sept. 13 through 26, visits to nursing homes will be allowed across the country regardless of the social distancing measures in place. In-person visits are allowed only when both the patient and visitor have been fully vaccinated, while in other cases the visits should be non-contact ones such as through a transparent barrier.







Questionable vaccines administered to 140 people at Seoul hospital New virus cases rise above 1,800 amid tight vigilance Korea detects 3 'Mu' variant cases for first time The eased restrictions seem to quell protests from independent businessmen as they have fallen victim to the prolonged distancing rules that have been in place for months.



A recent survey conducted in August among 500 self-employed individuals by the Korea Economic Research showed that four out of 10 were mulling closing their business.



When multiple answers were allowed, an overwhelming majority of 95 percent cited business slowdown as the key reason, which further breaks down into 45 percent citing decrease in sales, 26 percent fixed costs and 22 percent debt as the primary reason.



Members of a coalition of small business owners stage a rally in front of Gwangju City Hall, Aug. 26, to protest against the stringent COVID-19 restrictions, demanding suitable compensations from the government. Yonhap

Against this backdrop, the government has decided to push back the curfew on eateries and cafes in the greater Seoul area to 10 p.m., an hour later than the current 9.p.m.



Also, in regions under social distancing Level 4, up to six people can gather in eateries and cafes if the group includes two fully vaccinated people in the daytime, and four vaccinated individuals after 6 p.m.



Under Level 3, private gatherings of up to eight people are allowed if the group includes four vaccinated people.



But some critics expressed concerns that such relaxations of COVID-19 restrictions may lead to an explosive growth in infections as the current fourth wave of infections are showing no signs of abating.



"Extending operation hours of eateries and cafes may worsen the coronavirus situation. I am also concerned about possible spread of the virus during the Chuseok holidays, especially among the younger population, many of whom haven't been vaccinated yet," said Chon Eun-mi, a respiratory disease professor at Ewha Woman's University Mokdong Hospital.



"It would have been better to push back the curfew when at least 50 percent of the population are fully vaccinated," she added. So far, Korea has fully vaccinated about 33 percent of its population, according to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA).








By Lee Hae-rin







A bill to ban discrimination against multicultural families and support their settlement here in a financial and administrative manner has been proposed.







Rep. Kwon In-sook of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) and fellow DPK lawmakers introduced the bill, Friday, which will revise the Multicultural Family Support Act.







The current act does not have a provision that prohibits discrimination against multicultural families and there is no basis for evaluating the differentiation of multicultural policies, drawing flak for its failure to enhance multicultural acceptance.







The revised bill includes an anti-discrimination clause, and obligates the government and local municipalities to evaluate and enhance their multicultural policies with respect to discrimination.







Also, the current act lacks a legal basis to provide government aid for establishing and running multicultural family support centers.







The revision allows multicultural family support centers to apply for government funds. There are 228 centers throughout the country in need of financial aid.







"Multicultural families are members of our community. Yet they suffer many difficulties due to lack of legal protection from discrimination and promotion of their integration into the community," said Kwon.







"By passing this legislation, we can establish legal grounds to help multicultural families' settlement and enhance their social inclusion in the country."







According to data from Statistics Korea, there were 370,000 multicultural households in the country as of 2020, accounting for 1.8 percent of total households.







Meanwhile, Korea only scored 52.8 out of 100 in terms of multicultural acceptance in 2018, which is 1.14 points lower than that of three years ago, according to the latest study by the Korean Women's Development Institute.






The state corruption investigative agency asked the prosecution Friday to indict the chief of the Seoul education office on charges of alleged abuse of power in the process of reinstating dismissed teachers.







The Corruption Investigation Office for High-ranking Officials (CIO) said Cho Hee-yeon, the superintendent of the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education, and one of his aides should be charged for illegally influencing the process of reinstating five dismissed teachers, including members of a teachers' labor union, in 2018.







The office said Cho also violated the State Public Officials Act by exerting undue influence in the hiring process.







The decision came more than four months after the CIO started to look into the allegations as the agency's first case since it began operation in January.







The CIO can prosecute only judges, prosecutors and high-ranking police officers. Thus, it must ask the prosecution to indict Cho, assuming there is enough corroborated evidence to support the charges against him.







The Seoul Central District Prosecutors Office will make a final decision on whether to indict Cho and the official.







On Monday, the CIO's review panel was briefed on the investigation results on Cho's case and recommended indictments against the two.







Expressing frustration at the decision, Cho called the move "unfair" and said he expected the prosecution to "reveal the truth."







He criticized the anti-corruption body for holding the panel meeting without giving him a chance to refute the prosecution's claims.







"According to the CIO's logic, it would be hard to reinstate countless fired workers in our society," he also said.







Cho said he will ask the prosecution to hold an independent panel meeting to review the legitimacy of the ongoing investigation against him.







The prosecution introduced the outside review system in 2018 to enhance the neutrality and fairness of cases that are of great public interest. (Yonhap)


gettyimagesbank



Justice Minister Park Beom-kye said Friday the ministry will work out anti-crime measures to "fundamentally reduce recidivism" among high-risk sexual offenders, in the wake of alleged murders by an ex-convict.



The minister said at a briefing that the ministry will amend the relevant law to allow investigators to immediately conduct a search operation and house raid when and if high-risk ex-convicts remove their electronic ankle devices and run off.



Earlier this week, police arrested Kang Yoon-seong on suspicion of killing two women before and after he cut off his ankle bracelet and fled. The 56-year-old ex-offender, with 14 previous criminal convictions, walked into a police station in eastern Seoul on Sunday and confessed to murdering the two women he had known.



The ministry said it will set up a response team at probation offices nationwide to swiftly deal with violations of the law on electronic surveillance, an offense punishable by up to seven years in prison or 20 million won ($17,000) in fines.



Other measures included enhanced cooperation between probation offices and police by sharing information on criminals wearing such a device, an introduction of an improved system to gauge the risk of recidivism, and hiring more probation officers to reduce their workload. According to the ministry, a total of 281 probation officers monitor 17.3 convicts each.



The minister said he learned that there were also "lack of information-sharing between prisons and probation offices" and an "insufficient control system" for released prisoners.



"It is necessary to put in place a management system dedicated to high-risk ex-convicts," he said, adding the probation officers should not let their guard down in tracking and supervising the conduct of convicted offenders.



The ministry is also considering expanding a housing program to high-risk ex-convicts, as part of efforts to prevent them from relapsing. Currently the program is run for those who cannot afford their own houses after release from prison.



On Monday, the ministry said it will make the monitoring bracelet harder to cut off, as incidents of forcible removal of the device have repeatedly occurred. Thirteen criminals have cut off the device as of August this year. (Yonhap)


Officials disinfect a traditional market in Buk District, Gwangju, ahead of the upcoming Chuseok holiday, Sept. 2. Yonhap



The upcoming Chuseok holiday, the Korean equivalent of Thanksgiving and one of the country's most celebrated holidays, is posing a significant hurdle to health authorities struggling to contain the fourth wave of COVID-19.



This year's three-day Chuseok holiday runs from Sept. 20-22, and it will be extended by an extra two days due to a preceding weekend. Traditionally, Koreans head back to their hometowns to be with their family members and visit their ancestors' graves to commemorate them.



Fearing that simultaneous gatherings of people at homes and tourist spots would further heighten the chances of COVID-19 transmissions, local governments nationwide are advising against hometown visits or travel during the extra-long holiday.



Some of them are determined to take more visible actions, such as the elimination of public transport discounts for hometown visitors and the imposition of a cap on the number of entrants to public cemeteries and columbariums, to discourage people's holiday movements.



The central government also remains on extra high alert ahead of Chuseok, with Prime Minister Kim Boo-kyum asking the nation Friday to minimize gatherings during the holiday. It announced that up to eight people, as long as at least four are fully vaccinated, will be allowed to get together during the extended Chuseok holiday.



Incheon's Ongjin County, about 50 kilometers west of Seoul, will not offer discounts on ship fare for people visiting their hometowns on numerous islands in the Yellow Sea during Chuseok as it did last year.



The county had previously subsidized homecoming people's ferry rides to its islands but has suspended the program since last year to fight COVID-19.



"The cumulative number of COVID-19 cases in Ongjin totals a mere nine. But the spread of the coronavirus will inevitably cause great damage to islands where the proportion of the elderly population is high," an Ongjin County official said.



Ulleung County of the southeastern province of North Gyeongsang has also decided to stop providing ferry fare discounts for homecoming visitors to the remote East Sea island.



Many provincial and municipal authorities, such as Gangwon Province, the east coast city of Gangneung and central province of North Chungcheong, plan to launch various public campaigns via social media and street banners to urge people to stay at home during Chuseok.



Ulsan, a southeastern city, plans to scale down its perennial Chuseok celebration events hosted by its museums, libraries and art centers.



Some local governments, including Seoul, Busan, the southern resort island of Jeju and the southeastern city of Changwon, plan to close parts of their public cemeteries and columbariums during Chuseok, while others are determined to impose a limit on the number of visitors to their memorial facilities by introducing a reservation system.



So far, four cities in Gyeonggi Province that surrounds Seoul  Pyeongtaek, Osan, Goyang and Uijeongbu  have announced plans to enforce a reservation system for visitors to their public cemeteries and columbariums.



Those local governments are asking people to use online ancestor worship services, instead of traveling to public cemeteries and columbariums.



In accordance with such efforts, the Ministry of Health and Welfare said Friday it will again offer a free online worship service for Chuseok, helping people pay their respects to their dead ancestors in cyberspace and communicate with their relatives.



Anybody can freely use the ministry's online worship service by accessing the "funeral information system" at sky.15774129.go.kr and opening an individual memorial hall, ministry officials said. (Yonhap)


In this 2020 December file photo, a multifunctional printer is seen at former ruling Democratic Party chairman Rep. Lee Nak-yon's office in central Seoul. Yonhap



A Seoul court on Friday fined two jailed brokers of a massive fund scam for giving financial assistance to a late aide of former ruling Democratic Party (DP) chairman Lee Nak-yon in violation of the political funds act.



The Seoul Central District Court fined the brokers, surnamed Shin and Kim, 6 million won ($5,200) and 4 million won, respectively.



The two were indicted in May for providing a former close aide to Lee with about 10 million won as a deposit for the aide's private office. Lee is now one of the leading presidential hopefuls from the ruling party.



The brokers were also accused of providing a multifunction printer and other office supplies for the aide, which were later sent to the former DP chief's campaign office in central Seoul ahead of the April 15 legislative election last year. They were later found to have paid about 1.6 million won in usage fees of the multifunction printer on behalf of the campaign office.



They admitted to all of their charges during court hearings.



Lee's former aide was found dead in a building near the Seoul Central District Prosecutors Office on Dec. 4, a day after he was questioned by the prosecution on this case.



Rep. Lee Nak-yon had said he did not know about his late aide's connection to Optimus brokers until media reports came out and his staff left out the printer rental fees from accounting by mistake.



In a separate case, Shin and Kim were sentenced to four years and three and a half years in prison, respectively, earlier this year for defrauding the CEO of Optimus, a local private equity company on the center of a massive fund scam scandal.



Optimus was found to have taken in about 1.35 trillion won from approximately 3,200 individual and institutional investors from April 2018 to June 2020, by lying that the money would be invested in safe public institutions.



However, most of the money was actually funneled into risky assets or used to pay returns to investors to give the appearance the company was engaged in serious and sound financial transactions, according to investigators. (Yonhap)


In this file photo Rivian's R1T, an all-electric pickup truck is displayed at the Amazon booth during CES 2020 at the Las Vegas Convention Center on January 7, 2020 in Las Vegas, Nevada. AFP-Yonhap



By Kim Bo-eun



The electric vehicle (EV) industry is keenly observing U.S. electric truck manufacturer Rivian's moves for an initial public offering (IPO), given the startup's stock market debut will propel its business and expand opportunities for suppliers. Suppliers such as EV battery maker Samsung SDI could potentially benefit.



The company announced the plan, Aug. 27, local time, but did not offer details such as the timing of the IPO or corporate valuation aim. Bloomberg reported Rivian is seeking to be listed by November, with a valuation of $80 billion.



In this case, Rivian's corporate value would exceed that of GM and Ford. The company is backed by investments from Amazon and Ford, and is considered to be the next Tesla. Rivian has received 100,000 delivery van orders from Amazon. The company, focused on EV trucks and SUVs, is set to launch models within this year.



Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe said in April that Samsung SDI would be supplying batteries for its EVs. An IPO would accelerate the company's business and Samsung SDI's battery supply volume could also grow.



A report surfaced of Rivian preparing to produce its own batteries, but industry views are that carmakers will have to rely on battery manufacturers for the time being, considering the fact that battery development takes a long time.



"Carmakers will not be able to develop EV batteries in a short time span, given that battery manufacturers spent decades on development. Battery makers won't be willing to share key battery technology for clear reasons," an industry official said.



Given the probability that Rivian would continue to be receive battery supplies from Samsung SDI for the time being, the Samsung affiliate could build an EV battery plant close to Rivian's factory. Samsung SDI is seeking to construct an EV battery cell plant in the U.S. to capture opportunities in the next big EV market. At present, the Samsung affiliate only has a battery pack plant in Michigan. Rivian has a plant in Normal, Illinois. Senator Dick Durbin said in August that Samsung SDI officials were visiting the state to discuss possible investments for a plant there. Building a battery cell plant near a carmaker's factory presents multiple advantages such as saving logistics costs.



But there is still a chance that Samsung SDI could partner with another carmaker. Reports also stated Samsung SDI officials visited Detroit for talks with the world's fourth largest auto group Stellantis, which has brands including Jeep and Fiat under its arm. It has an SUV plant in Detroit. Stellantis has unveiled a plan to build a battery factory in North America as it makes the switch to electric vehicles.



Samsung SDI may set up a joint venture with either of the auto makers or set up a battery cell plant independently. The company has maintained that it is "reviewing multiple possibilities."






Unionized workers at Renault Samsung Motors voted Friday to approve a tentative wage deal with the carmaker.







About 55 percent of its union members voted in favor of the deal that includes a freeze in basic pay for 2020 and 2021 and a lump sum bonus payment of 8 million won ($6,915) plus 300,000 won worth of gift certificates per worker, the union said.







On Tuesday, the South Korean unit of Renault S.A. and its labor union reached the wage agreement.







With Renault Samsung's settlement, all five carmakers in the country, including Hyundai Motor, have concluded wage negotiations for this year. (Yonhap)






A Seoul appeals court sharply reduced the fine for Audi Volkswagen Korea (AVK) on Friday after clearing the company of much of the charges in its diesel emissions scandal.







The Seoul High Court ordered the South Korean unit of the German carmaker to pay a 1.1 billion won ($950,800) fine, revising a lower court ruling that slapped a 26 billion won fine.







The court also commuted the sentence for Park Dong-hoon, former chief executive of AVK, from two years in prison to an eight-month suspended term. He has not been detained.







AVK was indicted in January 2017 after its imported cars were found to be fitted with defeat devices that fool government emissions tests.







In February 2000, a lower court in Seoul ruled the company violated laws on pollution, customs and advertising in connection with about 120,000 diesel vehicles in 15 models it imported from 2008 to 2015.







The appellate court overturned the decision, saying it is difficult to view that the prosecution's evidence fully proved Park and company officials knew of the manipulation.







The court also rejected the previous guilty verdict on charges of importing about 41,000 vehicles without the government's certification on emissions and noise or replacing their parts after such tests. The court said only product numbers of the parts appear to have been changed.







But the court upheld the lower court's ruling that convicted the company of doctoring 149 documents related to emissions and noise tests for vehicles imported from 2010 to 2015.







A former AVK executive, surnamed Yoon, in charge of emissions approval, was sentenced to 1 1/2 years in prison, heavier than the previous one-year term, after he was found guilty of additional charges. The court did not order his detention. (Yonhap)


SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won speaks at a company event held online last month. Courtesy of SK





By Kim Bo-eun







SK, Korea's third-largest business group, has recently been realigning its businesses in an apparent move to boost efficiency and secure funds to foster new businesses after the COVID-19 pandemic ends. But the reorganization is facing a backlash from investors who are claiming it has undermined corporate value and will end up incurring losses for them.







SK decided recently to split some businesses up into new entities and integrate existing units. SK appears to be gearing up to concentrate resources on its semiconductor and electric vehicle battery businesses, as well as streamlining entities focusing on investments in future growth sectors.







One of the group's largest reorganization efforts is the planned split-off of SK Innovation's (SKI) battery and oil and gas production business, scheduled for next month.







The new battery affiliate plans to draw needed funds via an initial public offering, but this will take time, given the battery business has yet to see stable profit. The battery business, however, needs funds immediately to scale up production.







SKI said it will spend 1.23 trillion won to build its fourth battery plant in China. Investments for the plant will be made starting this month through December 2024. The battery company also needs to pour 3 trillion won into a planned joint venture with the U.S. carmaker Ford.







SKI has prepared part of immediately needed funds by selling off shares of another wholly owned subsidiary, SK geo centric, formerly named SK Global Chemical.







But SKI's split-off plan has sparked a backlash from investors, given the company's shares have been on a downward trajectory since the announcement in July. Prior to the announcement, SKI's share price reached as high as 302,000 won on June 24 during intra-day trading, but is now down by nearly 20 percent.







At the center of the controversy is the way SKI has chosen to separate its battery business  via a split-off. Under the planned split-off, existing shareholders of SKI will be unable to obtain shares in the new battery business. Shareholders regard the remaining entity with its less attractive conventional petrochemical business as unpromising.







A petition appeared on Cheong Wa Dae's website on Aug. 20, demanding the group Chairman Chey Tae-won be held accountable for the losses that retail investors are facing.







"As the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry's chairman and the chairperson of SKI's largest shareholder SK Inc., Chey is being introduced by the media as a businessman engaging in ESG management, but he is pushing for the split-off of SKI, which is hard to understand from the perspective of SKI investors," the petition said.







The petition stated SKI should have conducted a spin-off which would have provided shareholders shares of the new entity.







A spin-off and a split-off are different ways for companies to divest their assets or subsidiaries. A spin-off distributes shares of the new entity to existing shareholders, while under a split-off, stocks of the divested firm are transferred to the parent company.


Cars are stranded by high water on the Major Deegan Expressway in Bronx borough of New York as high water left behind by Hurricane Ida still stands on the highway hours later, Sept 2. AP-Yonhap



Flash flooding caused by the remnants of Hurricane Ida killed at least 41 people in the New York area overnight into Thursday, including several who perished in their basements during the "historic" weather event that officials blamed on climate change.



Record rainfall, which prompted an unprecedented flash flood emergency warning for New York City, turned streets into rivers and shut down subway services as water cascaded down platforms onto tracks.



"I'm 50 years old and I've never seen that much rain ever," said Metodija Mihajlov whose basement of his Manhattan restaurant was flooded with three inches of water.



"It was like living in the jungle, like tropical rain. Unbelievable. Everything is so strange this year," he told AFP.



Hundreds of flights were cancelled at LaGuardia and JFK airports, as well as at Newark, where video showed a terminal inundated by rainwater.



"We're all in this together. The nation is ready to help," President Joe Biden said ahead of a trip Friday to the southern state of Louisiana, where Ida earlier destroyed buildings and left more than a million homes without power.



Flooding closed major roads across New Jersey and New York boroughs including Manhattan, The Bronx and Queens, submerging cars and forcing the fire department to rescue hundreds of people.



At least 23 people died in New Jersey, Governor Phil Murphy told reporters.



"The majority of these deaths were individuals who got caught in their vehicles," he said.



Twelve died in New York City, including 11 who could not escape their basements, police said. The victims ranged from the ages of 2 to 86.



"Among the people MOST at risk during flash floods here are those living in off-the-books basement dwellings that don't meet the safety codes necessary to save lives," lawmaker Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted.



"These are working class, immigrant, and low-income people families," she added.



Three also died in the New York suburb of Westchester while another three died in Montgomery County outside Philadelphia in Pennsylvania, a local official confirmed.



Ida blazed a trail of destruction north after slamming into Louisiana over the weekend, bringing severe flooding and tornadoes.



"We're enduring an historic weather event tonight with record-breaking rain across the city, brutal flooding and dangerous conditions on our roads," New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said late Wednesday.



State emergencies were declared in New York and New Jersey while the National Weather Service issued its first-ever emergency flash flood warning for New York City, urging residents to move to higher ground.



"You do not know how deep the water is and it is too dangerous," the New York branch of the National Weather Service (NWS) said in a tweet.



The NWS recorded 3.15 inches (80 millimeters) of rain in Central Park in just an hour  beating a record set just last month during Storm Henri.



The US Open was also halted as howling wind and rain blew under the corners of the Louis Armstrong Stadium roof.





Felix Delapuente, a neighbor for the home in the Queens borough of New York where some of the occupants died including a 2-year old child, shows the flood damage in his basement in New York, Sept. 2. AP-Yonhap




A new coronavirus variant known as "Mu," identified first in Colombia in January, is now the country's predominant strain and behind its deadliest pandemic wave yet, a health official said Thursday.







The variant was responsible for Colombia's deadly third infection wave between April and June, health official Marcela Mercado told a local radio station.







During this period, with about 700 deaths per day, nearly two-thirds of tests from people who died came back positive for the Mu variant, she said.







"It is already in more than 43 countries and has shown high contagiousness," she added.







On Tuesday, the World Health Organization declared Mu, scientific name B.1.621, a "variant of interest."







It said the variant has mutations that indicate a risk of resistance to vaccines and further studies were needed to better understand it.







"The Mu variant has a constellation of mutations that indicate potential properties of immune escape," the agency said.







There is widespread concern over the emergence of new variants as infection rates tick up globally, with the highly transmissible Delta variant taking hold, especially among the unvaccinated and in regions where anti-virus measures have been relaxed.







All viruses, including SARS-CoV-2, which causes Covid-19, mutate over time and most changes have little or no effect on the properties of the virus.







But certain mutations can alter how easily a virus spreads, the severity of the disease it causes, or its resistance to vaccines and drugs.







The WHO lists four coronavirus variants of concern, including Alpha, present in 193 countries, and Delta, in 170.







Colombia recently has counted around 100 Covid-19 deaths and 2,000 infections per day, on average.







Less than a third of Colombians have been vaccinated against the virus, which has claimed nearly 125,000 lives in the country to date. (AFP)




Customer Analytics - Software Engineer Austin , Texas , United States Marketing Summary

Posted: Aug 27, 2021 Weekly Hours: 40 Role Number: 200214349 Imagine what you could do here. At Apple, new ideas have a way of becoming great products, services, and customer experiences very quickly. Bring passion and dedication to your job and there's no telling what you could accomplish. The Product Marketing Customer Analytics team is seeking a data engineer to support customer analytics with advanced, scalable and robust architecture, tools, data products, and critical data pipelines that are optimized for rapid business intelligence, data analysis, and data science. Key Qualifications Proficient in Spark

Experience with MPP databases preferred

6+ years of experience in data engineering and ETL pipeline development.

3+ years of Spark development.

6+ years of experience in Big Data Technologies (Hadoop, MapReduce, Hive etc...).

Experience on Kubernetes, Docker preferred. Description Develop and automate large scale, high-performance, scalable platform (batch and/or streaming) to drive faster analytics Ability to design large-scale, complex applications and frameworks with excellent run-time characteristics such as low-latency, fault-tolerance and availability Experience in building and maintaining custom frameworks to support engineering/analytics needs Knowledge of continuous integration, testing methodologies, TDD and agile development methodologies. Partner with analytic consumers and data scientists to build and improve new/existing constructs and solve data engineering problems @ scale. Good knowledge of Data formats (Parquet, ORC etc.) and consensus management systems Exposure to structured or unstructured storage and distributed caching. Deploy inclusive data quality checks to ensure high quality of data. Experienced Engineer or Contributor or Committer to open source technologies is plus. Evangelize high quality software engineering practices towards building data infrastructure and pipelines at scale. Structured thinking with ability to easily break down ambiguous problems and propose impactful solutions. Communication Strong documentation and technical writing skills. Attention to detail and effective verbal/written communication skills. Education & Experience Prefer: BS/MS in Computer Science Quantitative Finance, Math, Physics or a related Engineering degree




Pro University Park Mall Mishawaka , Indiana , United States Apple Retail Summary Posted: Aug 30, 2021 Weekly Hours: 40 Role Number: 200283472 Do you want to help grow Apple's community? We seek perfection. We are idealists and problem-solvers. Forever tinkering with products and processes, always on the lookout for better. A job at Apple will be demanding. But it also rewards forward-thinking, original thinking, and tenacity. And none of us here would have it any other way. Are you highly skilled at presenting elegant solutions that simplify the complex? Are you an extremely knowledgeable salesperson? As a Pro, you understand how Apple can help customers discover their passions, and how our products differ from our competitors. You have an eye for opportunity and demonstrate your breadth of expertise in technology to craft unique value propositions and insights that differentiate Apple solutions in the market. You provide authoritative recommendations of Apple's products that build loyalty and improve the customer experience, and help drive skills and knowledge of technology across your team. Key Qualifications Extensive track record of top performing sales and customer experience results maintained over extended periods of time.

Mastery of Apple services and products as well as third-party solutions across different industries and fields, for personal, business, educational, and creative professional use.

Knowledge of business solutions and industry trends. Description You drive sales by designing complete solutions with Apple and complementary product-service offerings. You demonstrate and advise how customers can integrate technology into their homes and scale solutions across small to medium size businesses and educational institutions. You demonstrate a real passion for technology to become the go-to resource across the store for our Hardware, Software, and Services. You use knowledge about Apple technology, technical expertise, and creativity to meet customer needs and stay up to date on new information, product and service offerings, and company initiatives, by using internal tools and resources, on-the-job experiences, and peers. You partner closely with store leadership, Global Retail Support, and peers within your Region. You contribute to success across all store areas and flex appropriately to meet business needs. You will identify emerging technology and consumer trends and share how the team can use those insights to develop new sales opportunities and maintain technology industry knowledge and macro-movements within verticals to anticipate how technology can be utilized. You will lead and assist with briefings, provide recommendations for deployment and set up, and identify when to pull in additional support. The Pro mentors others in the Product Zone on specialized product knowledge and purchasing options, including financing and carrier contracts and shares practices on ownership and customer loyalty within the Product Zone and with the larger store team. You maintain expertise in all Apple products and services (in store and online), our ecosystem, and many third-party products to offer complete solutions while actively approaching and engaging with our customers to understand their needs and present customized solutions. You set up the customer's newest Apple products. The Pro brings Apple solutions to life through demos, personalization, and answers to customer questions. Build memorable experiences that showcase the benefits of Apple products. You will provide troubleshooting advice and introduce the advantages of shopping with Apple - often to multiple customers at the same time. You will support peers at the Genius Bar as needed to share knowledge and assist in providing ownership options all while providing world-class customer service to customers, and maintaining accuracy in all operational duties and transactions. Note: Apple benefits programs vary by country and are subject to eligibility requirements. Education & Experience Additional Requirements Able to effectively communicate and work with business owners and C-level executives.

Self-starter and able to achieve individual goals while also influencing the success of the overall team.

Able to collaborate cross-functionally within the store and among key partners.

Familiar with a CRM.

Superior teamwork, interpersonal, and customer service skills.

Drive for results, and make things happen.

Can tackle customer concerns using composure, listening, and presentation skills.

Strong time management and multitasking skills.

Curious to seek out information and share with the broader team.

Flexible about work, often performing multiple activities simultaneously.

Able to prioritize tasks effectively.

Provide and receive feedback from others.



If you live in Colorado, please click here .






Company: Central Arizona Project Location: Phoenix, AZ Starting Salary Range: $68,845 - $89,452 Closes: 9/21/21 Note: The salary range listed ($68,845 - $89,452) reflects the TARGET HIRING RANGE only and does not represent the full employee pay range for this position. About Central Arizona Project Central Arizona Project (CAP), 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 Position As a Systems Infrastructure Engineer, you would design and implement in-house information systems and network architecture that support core wide area networks, field functions and assure their high availability. This role will implement, design, and update network architecture as well as evaluate and recommend technologies required to support Windows, Wireless, and other systems requiring network access. Works with the Bureau of Reclamation and United States Homeland Security to satisfy yearly site audits to ensure and prevent possible security threats. Reviews all security-related activities for projects by analyzing data and preparing reports that document network vulnerabilities and recommends actions to prevent, repair or mitigate these vulnerabilities. Some of the duties include: Meets with CAP department managers and staff to define application requirements and determine priorities. Implements new and revised systems and resolves complex application, database, network system problems. Must make crucial decisions affecting production operations. Identifies gaps in architecture between current state and future design. Develops plans to ensure best practices, system designs, and technology standards are mapped to CAP business strategies. Determines job priorities based on criticality and business need. Performs software installations and upgrades. Coordinates the installation and modification of software by outside vendors. Tests software/hardware to ensure appropriate functionality. Monitors and tests hardware and software to ensure appropriate functionality and performance. Develops strategies and standards to maintain system stability, sufficient bandwidth, and integration of devices follow best practices. Performs extensive problem determination and resolution for CAP technology. Conducts research on emerging technologies that will increase cost effectiveness and system flexibility. Why is THIS Job Awesome? You have the opportunity to work as part of an in-house team of technical professionals with a mission of profound importance to the community. Central Arizona Project Electronic Communications Department embraces work life balance, professional improvement, honesty, dedication and personal accountability. Our employees have said that some of the things they like best about working at CAP are the variety of technologies they work on.



About the Qualifications

The successful candidate for this position will have: A Bachelors Degree or higher from an accredited university with a technology- based emphasis with seven (7) years of experience programming, designing, and implementing computer application systems including at least five (5) years with large scale systems. OR, a high school diploma or equivalent with fourteen (14) years of technology experience. Strong working knowledge of application design, implementation and support of systems such as Oracle, network, server infrastructure, virtual systems, database, and cyber security. Must have a valid drivers license with a good driving record. Preference given to candidates with a Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA) certification and/or a Microsoft Certified Solutions Expert (MCSE). If you are looking for a unique and challenging role with the opportunity to make a difference in Arizona while enjoying a great work/life balance, APPLY ONLINE TODAY! Your water, your future.

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Summary This position is at the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) in the, OCIO. This position serves as an IT Specialist (Data Management). Learn more about this agency



Responsibilities As an IT Specialist (Data Management), you will accomplish the following duties: Perform database creation, modification to User/Application specifications, security rights assignment, and management.

Assist with preparing and migrating on-premise databases on cloud platforms.

Develop database reports for business systems and applications.

Identifies deficiencies and provides corrective action recommendations.

Plan, coordinate, install, test, configure, maintain, and upgrade database software.

Administer and maintain assigned database systems.



Travel Required Occasional travel - Once onsite work resumes, you may be expected to occasionally travel for conferences or training. Supervisory status No Promotion Potential 13 Job family (Series) 2210 Information Technology Management



Requirements



Conditions of Employment You must be a U.S. Citizen.

Suitable adjudication of background/security investigation is required.

A Financial disclosure is required.

A probationary/trial period may be required.

Must complete initial online questionnaire.

Applicants must complete an assessment battery (i.e., Assessment Questionnaire and USA Hire Assessment) via the USA Hire platform if notified to do so.



Qualifications Specialized experience is the experience that has equipped you with the specific knowledge, skills, and abilities to successfully perform the duties of the position, and that is typically in or related to the work of the position to be filled.



For the CU-12 grade level: One (1) year of specialized experience equivalent to at least the next lower grade level (CU-11). Specialized experience for this position is defined as experience: Performing database maintenance activities to include all of the following: data loads, data fixes, schema updates, database copies, database related software installation ,upgrades and patches, SQL query tuning, and Extract, Transform & Load (ETL) scripting for an organization/company.



For the CU-13 grade level: One (1) year of specialized experience equivalent to at least the next lower grade level (CU-12). Specialized experience for this position is defined as experience: Performing database administration activities to include database encryption, data and user security, database availability activities (on-premise and/or in the cloud) database failover, data recovery for an organization or company.



In addition to the above qualifications, all individuals must have IT related experience demonstrating each of the four competencies listed below and demonstrate each of the following in your resume:

* Attention to Detail - Is thorough when performing work and conscientious about attending to detail.

* Customer Service - Works with clients and customers (that is, any individuals who use or receive the services or products that your work unit produces, including the general public, individuals who work in the agency, other agencies, or organizations outside the Government) to assess their needs, provide information or assistance, resolve their problems, or satisfy their expectations; knows about available products and services; is committed to providing quality products and services.

* Oral Communication - Expresses information (for example, ideas or facts) to individuals or groups effectively, taking into account the audience and nature of the information (for example, technical, sensitive, controversial); makes clear and convincing oral presentations; listens to others, attends to nonverbal cues, and responds appropriately.

* Problem Solving - Identifies problems; determines accuracy and relevance of information; uses sound judgment to generate and evaluate alternatives, and to make recommendations.



You must meet the qualifications for this position by the closing date of this announcement.

Please note, all experience statements (i.e., duties, specialized experience, or occupational assessment questionnaire) copied from this announcement and pasted into your resume will not be considered as a demonstration of your qualifications for this position.



YOUR RESUME MUST provide specific details as to how your experience meets the specialized experience and support your responses to the online questionnaire as described in the vacancy announcement. When describing your experience in your resume, please be specific. We will not make assumptions regarding your experience. Please ensure that your resume includes the grade (if you are a current or previous federal employee), month, and year that you began and ended for each position held or that position may not be credited toward meeting the specialized experience requirement. Full-time employment will be assumed unless otherwise stated on your resume. Part-time employment will be prorated in crediting experience. Failure to provide details will result in an ineligible rating.



Your resume must also support your responses to the online questionnaire. Failure to provide support may result in a lower rating and/or you may be excluded from consideration. Your latest resume submitted for this vacancy announcement will be used to determine qualifications and supersedes previous submissions.



Education Education is not required for this position nor may it be used to qualify.



Additional information Note: Career Ladder Promotion Statement

For positions that are multi-graded, you may be noncompetitively promoted to the next grade level in accordance with OPM regulations and NCUA policies.



SALARY: Pay will be set within the advertised pay range to align with the selectee's skills and experience and the requirements of the position.



Pay will be set using NCUA's compensation policy. The salary range shown is NCUA's Local Pay Rate (LPR) which includes the locality rate for the Alexandria, Virginia geographical area. Please click here to review all salary ranges based on locality.



SELECTIVE SERVICE: If you are a male applicant born after December 31, 1959, you must certify that you have registered with the Selective Service System or are exempt from having to do so under the Selective Service Law. You may register or check the status of your registration by visiting the Selective Service website at: (see application details) .



This position is in the bargaining unit.



NOTE: Effective January 1, 2010, OPM must authorize any employment offers we make to current or former (within the last 5 years) political Schedule A, Schedule C, or Non-career SES (political) employees in the executive branch. If you are currently, or have been within the last 5 years, a political Schedule A, Schedule C, or Non-career SES employee in the executive branch, you must disclose that to the point of contact listed on this vacancy announcement.



Illegal drug use by individuals working for or on behalf of the federal government, whether on duty or off duty, is contrary to the efficiency of the service and in direct violation of the Controlled Substance Act and the Drug-Free Workplace Act.



Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the NCUA's current posture will not require employees to perform official travel or work onsite at NCUA offices any earlier than September 30, 2021. This date may be extended.



If it becomes necessary for NCUA to request on-site work, NCUA may solicit volunteers for the assignment. Management reserves the right to request employees to perform on-site work in exigent circumstances.



NCUA IS A COMPETITIVE SERVICE FEDERAL AGENCY.



NCUA uses E-Verify, a web-based system, to confirm the eligibility of all newly hired employees to work in the United States. Learn more about E-Verify , including your rights and responsibilities.



More than the number of positions listed may be filled through this vacancy announcement Read more



How You Will Be Evaluated You will be evaluated for this job based on how well you meet the qualifications above. First, your application package will be reviewed for completeness (resume, completed assessment questionnaire, and supporting documentation). You will not be considered if you fail to submit all the required documents as outlined in this vacancy announcement.



Second, if you have a complete application package, your resume will be reviewed to determine if you meet the basic qualifications and specialized experience requirements (see "Qualification" section). You must provide specific details in your resume as to how your experience meets the specialized experience.



Third, your resume and supporting documentation may be compared to your responses to the assessment questions. The numerical rating you receive is based on your responses to the questions. If upon review it is determined that your resume and supporting documentation do not support your responses to the questions, your numerical rating may be adjusted and you may be excluded from consideration for this position.



In addition to the application and application questionnaire, this position requires an online assessment. The online assessment measures critical general competencies required to perform the job.



The assessment includes a cut score based on the minimum level of required proficiency in these critical general competencies. You must meet or exceed the cut score to be considered. You will not be considered for the position if you score below the cut score or fail to complete the assessment.



The self-assessment questions have been developed to evaluate your competency in the following areas: Accountability

Attention to Detail

Customer Service

Data Management

Flexibility

Influencing/Negotiating

Integrity/Honesty

Interpersonal Skills

Learning

Self-Management

Stress Tolerance

Teamwork



Reference Checks: Reference checks will need to be conducted prior to an offer of employment for the top candidate(s) for this position. The reference checks will need to be conducted with current and former supervisors, if applicable, as a part of NCUA's selection assessment process.



If you are found to be among the top qualified candidates, your application will be referred to the selecting official for employment consideration. To preview the application questionnaire, please click here: (see application details)



Overstating your qualifications and/or experience in your application materials or application questionnaire may result in your removal from consideration. Cheating on the online assessment may also result in your removal from consideration. Read more



Background checks and security clearance

Security clearance Not Required Drug test required No Position sensitivity and risk High Risk (HR) Trust determination process Suitability/Fitness



Required Documents To apply for this position, you must provide a complete application package which includes:

1. Resume

2. Other supporting documents: Cover letter, optional

College transcript(s), if qualifying based on education or if a basic requirement

Most recent SF-50 or Notification of Personnel Action showing you are/were in the competitive service and the highest grade or promotion potential held (if applying as a status candidate with current or former Federal Service)

DD-214, SF-15 Form, and VA letter, or certification of expected discharge or release from active duty for veterans for consideration under veteran hiring authorities.

Non-competitive appointment authority documentation, if applicable.

Interagency Career Transition Assistance Program documentation, if applicable (e.g. Certification of Expected Separation, Reduction In Force separation notice, or Notice of Proposed Removal; SF-50 that documents the RIF separation action; and most recent performance appraisal.)

Most recent performance appraisal, optional CURRENT AND FORMER FEDERAL EMPLOYEES:

Current and former federal employees must submit a Notification of Personnel Action, or SF-50, that indicates grade, status, tenure, and the full performance level (FPL) of the position held. Please do not submit an SF-50 for a cash/time off award.



Note : Current permanent NCUA employees are not required to submit a Notification of Personnel Action (SF-50). Status will be confirmed by the Agency.



VETERANS:

If you wish to receive consideration under an applicable Veteran's authority such as VEOA, 30% or more disabled vet, VRA, etc., you must submit a copy of your Veteran's documentation including a DD-214 (member 4 copy preferred, however, the documentation provided must contain dates and character of service), along with a VA letter, SF-15 , etc., if applicable. If you are a current active duty service member, please submit an official statement of service from your command.



Note: If you are a current active duty military member who does not have a DD-214 and is claiming preference under the Veterans Opportunity to Work (VOW) Act, you must submit certification from the Armed Forces indicating that you will be discharged or released under honorable conditions from active duty within 120 days from the date on the certification. Certifications must be on letterhead from the appropriate military branch and include the following information: military dates of service and expected discharge or release date, the character of service, military rank, type of discharge, and date when terminal leave will begin. Certifications must be signed by, or by the direction of military members' military personnel offices, unit commanders, or higher headquarters.



CTAP/ICTAP: Federal employees seeking CTAP/ICTAP eligibility must submit proof of their eligibility: Copy of agency notice;

Most recent performance rating; and

SF-50 noting current position, grade level, and duty location or Certification of Expected Separation, Reduction In Force separation notice. Note: To be well-qualified and exercise selection priority for this vacancy, displaced Federal employees must be rated well-qualified or above on the rating criteria for this position. For additional information, click CTAP .



Benefits A career with the U.S. Government provides employees with a comprehensive benefits package. As a federal employee, you and your family will have access to a range of benefits that are designed to make your federal career very rewarding. Opens in a new window Learn more about federal benefits . Review our benefits Eligibility for benefits depends on the type of position you hold and whether your position is full-time, part-time, or intermittent. Contact the hiring agency for more information on the specific benefits offered.



Fair & Transparent The Federal hiring process is setup to be fair and transparent. Please read the following guidance.



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. Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) for federal employees & job applicants Read more



Reasonable Accommodation Policy Federal agencies must provide reasonable accommodation to applicants with disabilities where appropriate. Applicants requiring reasonable accommodation for any part of the application process should follow the instructions in the job opportunity announcement. For any part of the remaining hiring process, applicants should contact the hiring agency directly. Determinations on requests for reasonable accommodation will be made on a case-by-case basis. A reasonable accommodation is any change to a job, the work environment, or the way things are usually done that enables an individual with a disability to apply for a job, perform job duties or receive equal access to job benefits. Under the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, federal agencies must provide reasonable accommodations when: An applicant with a disability needs an accommodation to have an equal opportunity to apply for a job.

An employee with a disability needs an accommodation to perform the essential job duties or to gain access to the workplace.

An employee with a disability needs an accommodation to receive equal access to benefits, such as details, training, and office-sponsored events. You can request a reasonable accommodation at any time during the application or hiring process or while on the job. Requests are considered on a case-by-case basis. Learn more about disability employment and reasonable accommodations or how to contact an agency. Read more Legal and regulatory guidance Financial suitability

Social security number request

Privacy Act

Signature and false statements

Selective Service

New employee probationary period




Description



System ID 730427

Category Environmental Services / Custodial

Relocation Type No

Employment Status Full-Time

Unit Description

Grow your career and make a difference in healthcare. Sodexo is seeking an Environmental Services/ Custodial Manager 2 at Riverside Regional Medical in Newport News, VA supporting a team of 35 employees on second shift (2:30pm start time). This team will have responsibility for driving client satisfaction at this 450 bed facility by providing stellar customer service via effective communication with all levels of hospital staff, as well as follow-through with action items that impact both client and patient satisfaction. At Sodexo Health Care, patients are the heart of everything we do. Our ability to create a clean, healthy and comfortable environment for hospitals is key to the full patient experience. Our Sodexo Health Care Environmental Services/Housekeeping teams work to direct housekeeping operations at health care client locations, partnering with them to deliver innovative solutions. The successful Director level candidate will: have exceptional client service mentality and executive presence;

be responsible for driving client and patient satisfaction scores;

provide a clean and safe environment for patients, visitors and staff and works closely with the Infectious Control department;

support a diverse and inclusive workforce. Is this opportunity right for you? We are looking for candidates who: are leaders who develops and motivates a team to exceed the expectations of clients and customers in service and the technical execution of a housekeeping system;

are an expert in building and maintain strong customer / client relationships;

possess strong leadership skills and can work independently to drive program compliance and reach project target dates of completion;

have 1-3 years previous custodial or housekeeping director level experience preferably in a hospital environment;

can analyze data, present and effectively communicate to all levels within the organization related to training, leading committees and change management;

have experience effectively managing projects within agreed upon timelines;

are proficient with computers and other technology. Learn more about Sodexo's Benefits Not the job for you? At Sodexo, we offer Environmental Service/Housekeeping positions in Health Care and Senior Living locations across the United States. Continue your search for ES/Housekeeping jobs. Working for Sodexo: Sodexo fosters a culture committed to the growth of individuals through continuous learning, mentoring and career growth opportunities.

Position Summary

Provides management oversight for Environmental Services non-exempt level staff (client and/or Sodexo employees) in the delivery of Sodexo Environmental Service Programs. Ensures Sodexo Operating Standards for Environmental Service are in place as required to consistently meet all company, client, and regulatory requirements. Responsible for non-exempt work force planning through effective scheduling, development of daily work flow assignments, training and development, and monitoring for compliance to the plan. Key Duties

-Establishes a safe work environment for clients, customers and staff by ensuring equipment safety and compliance with Sodexo safety and loss prevention programs and by providing safety-related training and equipment inventory maintenance. -Provide leadership and direction to non-exempt employees

-Coordinate/conduct employee training

-Administer Human Resource processes (hiring, performance reviews, constructive counseling, prepare work schedules, payroll, etc.)

-Interact with outside vendors

-Ensure Sodexo Operating Standards for Environmental Service are in place and consistently met.

-Develop/implement action plans for improvement in compliance with Sodexo Operating Standards as identified.

-Reviews and maintains assigned areas of the Sodexo/Client budget commitments.

Qualifications & Requirements

Basic Education Requirement - Associate's Degree or equivalent experience Sodexo is an EEO/AA/Minority/Female/Disability/Veteran employer.



Requirements

See Job Description






AI/ML - Firmware Engineer, Machine Intelligence Pittsburgh , Pennsylvania , United States Machine Learning and AI Summary

Posted: Sep 1, 2021 Weekly Hours: 40 Role Number: 200277053 On the Machine Intelligence Sensing Team, we envision a future where our devices are aware of us and our environment, they support our health and well-being, and they encourage us to be more thoughtful, present, and inspired human beings. We believe we can enrich people's lives and the world by understanding our activities, our health, our connections, and our lived environments through sensing and machine learning on our devices. Our team works across Apple to create innovative high-impact features and thoughtful interaction modes on Apple's phones, wearables, home products, and future devices. We prototype new experiences, develop and ship products, and we publish our work. We are a creative, multi-disciplinary, optimistic, and collaborative team. We are actively looking for a highly motivated candidate (Firmware Engineer) to contribute and build Apple's future interactive experiences. The successful candidate will demonstrate deep knowledge of embedded systems, sensors, driver design and architecture, low-level sensor interfaces, and a desire to work with system programming for Apple devices. Our team builds technology that will drive effortless user experiences, and therefore we are seeking candidates who are creative and innovative. Tenacity and the passion to learn are skills we value on our team, and if you want to influence the future of Apple products, we want to talk to you. Join us in a hands-on applied machine learning team that fosters creativity and generates novel solutions that can impact millions of users. We partner with a variety of cross and multi-functional team members from a diverse array of groups across the company. Are you deeply accountable for your work? Self-driven? Your passion for ownership and track record of project development will prove critical to your success on the team. Key Qualifications Operating system fundamentals

Embedded system development and optimization

Experience with low-level sensor interfaces, driver design, architectures and data structures optimized for constrained environments

A knack for problem solving, the ability to formulate ideas, and comfort with ambiguity

Experience with applied machine learning and data modeling is a plus Description As part of the Machine Intelligence group at Apple, you will build experimental and user-facing interactive systems running on embedded and low-power compute, with state-of-the-art sensing technologies. You will supply to software development, implementation and integration of sensor systems, working collaboratively with world-class product development teams at Apple. Your work will contribute to interactive experiences that will surprise and delight. Strong candidates demonstrate knowledge of low-level sensor interfaces, operating system fundamentals, have strong experience with embedded system development and optimization, software standard methodologies, a knack for creative problem solving, and demonstrate a strong intuition for exploring multiple hypotheses via the scientific process. Education & Experience B.S., M.S. or Ph.D. in Computer Science, Electrical or Computer Engineering, Robotics, or related fields. A background in Human-Computer Interaction is a plus.




Salary $86,424.00 - $131,996.80 Annually Location VA 22204, VA Job Type Full-Time Department Department of Human Services Job Number 6116-22A-DHS-EM Closing 9/16/2021 11:59 PM Eastern Position Information Please note: This announcement is to fill a current bilingual (English/Spanish) vacancy. It may be used in the future to fill bilingual, non-bilingual, full, and/or part-time positions.



The Arlington County Department of Human Services is hiring a Nurse Practitioner (Family Planning Clinic/Bilingual) within its Public Healthcare Division. This licensed Nurse Practitioner will provide clinical assistance to clients with family planning needs, including services for teens, prenatal maternity care, STI services, medical case management, and health appraisal exams for school age children. The Nurse Practitioner will participate on an inter-disciplinary team with other licensed Nurse Practitioners, Physicians, Public Health Nurses, Clinic Aides, Nutritionists, and Laboratory Technicians. The population served is culturally and ethnically diverse. The incumbent will practice primarily as a licensed Nurse Practitioner as well as a Public Health Nurse as needed.



To learn more about Arlington County's Public Health Services, please visit PHD



Clinical responsibilities are within the Licensed Nurse Practitioner's scope of training and practice and includes: Performing physical examinations;

Documenting medical histories and clinical care;

Obtaining and interpreting laboratory screening and diagnostic tests;

Developing treatment plans, including the prescribing and dispensing of medication;

Performing medical procedures for Family Planning clients including inserting and removing IUDs and contraceptive implants;

Providing clinical consultation to other members of the clinical team; and

Other Public Health and clinic duties as needed. Arlington County DHS is committed to delivering client services in an effective, equitable, respectful, and trauma-informed manner. Our staff is dedicated to ensuring our clients are approached, engaged and cared for in ways that demonstrate competency, sensitivity and awareness of factors which impact the client experience including but not limited to: cultural identity, gender, racial, and ethnic diversity, religious/spiritual ascription, physical capability, cognitive and literacy levels, sexual orientation, and linguistic needs.

Selection Criteria Minimums: A Bachelor's Degree in Nursing from a college or university program accredited by the American Nurses' Association;

Graduation from an education program accredited by the American Nurses' Association, the National League for Nursing, or the Joint Virginia Boards of Nursing and Medicine as an approved Nurse Practitioner in the Commonwealth of Virginia;

Prescriptive authority in the Commonwealth of Virginia;

Licensed as a Registered Nurse in the Commonwealth of Virginia;

Licensed as a Nurse Practitioner in the Commonwealth of Virginia within 60 days of hire; and

Bilingual in English/Spanish (for this recruitment)*. Desirables: Preference may be given to applicants with experience in one or more of the following: Women's Health;

Family Health;

Prenatal Maternity Care;

Public Health; and/or

Proficiency in English and Spanish

Special Requirements An online application is required.



*This announcement may be used to fill future vacancies. An assessment of oral Spanish proficiency will be required before a candidate can be appointed to a bilingual position (English/Spanish). The incumbent in a bilingual position would receive the language pay premium on all hours worked and on paid leave hours.



A resume and letter of interest are also required for a complete application.



Must be licensed by endorsement to practice professional nursing as a Registered Nurse in the Commonwealth of Virginia within 60 days of hire. The Board of Nursing may issue a license by endorsement to an applicant who has been licensed as a professional nurse by another state, the District of Columbia, or a United States possession or territory. (see application details) .



Must be certified as a Nurse Practitioner by the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC) in the Commonwealth of Virginia within 60 days of hire. The Board of Nursing and the Board of Medicine may issue certification by endorsement to an applicant who has been certified as a Nurse Practitioner by another state, the District of Columbia, or a United States possession or territory.



Applicant must possess, or obtain by the time of appointment, a valid motor vehicle operator's license from the applicant's place of residence or the applicant must have the ability and willingness to use alternative methods of transportation to perform assigned duties and responsibilities at locations other than the primary worksite.



A pre-hire background check will be made on all candidates who are selected for employment. It may include checks of the following: criminal record, driving record, education, professional licensure, and credit history. You may be required to sign a release authorizing the County to obtain your background information.



Virginia State Central Registry check is required.



Must possess current CPR and AED Certification.

Additional Information Work hours: Flexible schedule Monday through Friday within the core hours of 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. plus one or two evenings per week.



Employee must be available to work after hours and in emergency situations. Work is performed as part of a 24/7 operation and the worker must be available to work shifts as necessary.



This position is part of an alternative pay program that includes career path and pay-for-performance elements. Starting pay within the band is based on a review of qualifications and experience. Pay potential will be based on performance and development.



Your responses to the supplemental questionnaire are considered part of the selection process. Please do not enter "see resume" as a response to the questions. Each section of the application must be completed. A resume may be attached, however, it will not substitute for the completed application. Incomplete applications will not be considered. Arlington County Government employee benefits depend on whether a position is permanent, the number of hours worked, and the number of months the position is scheduled.



Specific information on benefits and conditions of employment can be found on the Arlington County Human Resources Department website: (see application details)



Permanent, Full-Time Appointments

All jobs are permanent, full-time appointments unless otherwise stated in the announcement. The following benefits are available:



Paid Leave : Vacation leave is earned at the rate of four hours biweekly. Leave accrual increases every three years until eight hours of leave are earned biweekly for twelve or more years of service. Sick leave is earned at the rate of four hours biweekly. There are eleven paid holidays each year.



Health and Dental Insurance : Three group health insurance plans are offered - a network open access plan, a point-of-service plan, and a health maintenance organization. A group dental insurance plan is also offered. The County pays a significant portion of the premium for these plans for employees and their dependents. A discount vision plan is provided for eye care needs.



Life Insurance : A group term policy of basic life insurance is provided at no cost to employees. The benefit is one times annual salary. Additional life insurance is available with rates based on the employee's age and smoker/non-smoker status.



Retirement : The County offers three vehicles to help you prepare for retirement: a defined benefit plan, a defined contribution plan (401(a)), and a deferred compensation plan (457). The defined benefit plan provides a monthly retirement benefit based on your final average salary and years of service with the County. You contribute a portion of your salary on a pre-tax basis to this plan. General employees contribute 4% of pay; uniformed public safety employees contribute 7.5% of pay. Employees become vested in the plan at five years of service. The County also contributes to this plan.



For general employees, the County also contributes 4.2% of pay to a defined contribution plan (401(a)) . The County also matches your 457 contribution, up to $20 per pay period, in this plan. The 457 deferred compensation plan allows you to set aside money on either a pre-tax (457b) or post-tax (457 Roth) basis up to the IRS annual limit. New employees are automatically enrolled with a pre-tax contribution equal to 2% of your base pay.



Other Benefits: The County also offers health, dependent care, and parking flexible spending accounts; long-term care insurance; tuition assistance; transit and walk/bike to work subsidies; a college savings plan; wellness programs; training opportunities; and a variety of other employee benefits.



Permanent, Part-Time Appointments:

Part time employees who work ten or more hours per week receive paid leave and benefits in proportion to the number of hours worked per week.



Limited Term Appointments:

Benefits are the same as permanent appointments except that the employees do not achieve permanent status.



Temporary Regular Appointments:

Temporary regular employees who work 30 hours or more per week are eligible for health, dental, and basic life insurance as described above. They are also eligible for vacation, sick leave, and paid holidays.



Temporary Seasonal and Occasional Appointments:

Temporary employees who work on a seasonal basis or variable hours receive sick leave, but do not normally receive other paid leave or benefits. Exceptions are noted in individual announcements.


Magnolia, AR (71754)

Today

Some clouds. Low 67F. Winds E at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Some clouds. Low 67F. Winds E at 5 to 10 mph.
Haitian President Jovenel Moise was assassinated early this morning at his home by unidentified gunmen. At the time of writing, it is not clear who carried out this attack or to what end. With the country descending daily into a deeper and deeper crisis, there is now the possibility of an intense struggle for power between various actors, including the Prime Minister, the courts, as well as the armed forces and even Haitis powerful gangs. The fact of the matter is that Moise, a corrupt, authoritarian, right wing president who was originally backed by US imperialism, had become increasingly isolated, and there are many different groups that would have an interest in his removal from

...
This article was produced in Spanish some weeks before the coronavirus pandemic, which has obviously affected the situation in Haiti. There are around 70 confirmed cases in the country, and its fragile healthcare system means the virus could have a catastrophic impact if it takes hold. The hated president Jovenel Moise declared a state of emergency and lockdown in March. Protests continued all the way up to the lockdown, and violent clashes between the army and police over pay disrupted carnival in February, showing splits in the repressive state apparatus. Clearly, none of the fundamental issues have changed since this piece was written.


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Canon (www.Canon.com), an Official Provider of Expo 2020 Dubai and the first company ever to be the single provider of imaging and printing for a World Expo, has launched a special series of its monthly online Frontiers of Innovation broadcasts to celebrate the partnership.

Canon Middle East launched the Frontiers of Innovation series five years ago, bringing together industry experts to discuss technological innovations and evolving trends, and look for actionable solutions to pressing challenges. It provides a valuable platform to enable thought leaders to share their ideas, insights and experiences and serves to raise awareness of the Canon brand and its technology, and to drive innovation.

The Frontiers of Innovation @Expo 2020 events will be hosted jointly on Canons EMEA LinkedIn page (https://bit.ly/38wz8Bv). They will focus on topics that are relevant to audiences in the UAE and the wider Middle East and Africa. While mostly business-oriented, some of the broadcasts will be equally relevant to the general public, especially those interested in travel, photography and filmmaking.

Mai Youssef, Corporate Communications and Marketing Services Director, Canon Middle East and Canon Central and North Africa, commented: Featuring some of the best minds in the region from a range of sectors discussing key issues of our time, Frontiers of Innovation is an important aspect of Canons external communications. The subjects discussed reflect our commitment to the environment, empowering talent, innovation and the future. This joint initiative with Expo 2020 is part of our ongoing commitment to drive innovation and generate solutions to support businesses in various sectors across the Middle East and Africa.

Dina Storey, Director  Sustainability Operations, Sustainability-Real Estate from Dubai Expo 2020 commented: Our joint venture with Canon Middle East will create an important platform to discuss key issues that are cropping up in the photography and filmography world. With a large focus on sustainability and innovation  two things that are extremely important to us at Dubai Expo 2020  were able to create a better future for young artists and encourage more people to join this inspiring community.

The series will kickstart this September 2021, with a session which will focus on the print industry in the run up to International Print Day, reflecting on how the industry has changed in recent years  especially in the light of the pandemic  and how it is evolving to meet future needs. Future monthly sessions will consider issues including:

Steps towards a more sustainable future

The information security battle

What the next decade holds for the tourism sector

How to empower future filmmakers, photojournalists and content creators

Creating workplaces that support good mental health

Empowering women

World Expos are festivals of culture, technology, innovation, design and human brilliance that usually take place once every five years in a major international city. Hosted by Dubai, UAE, Expo 2020, which was originally supposed to take place in October 2020 but was delayed due to the pandemic, will be the first World Expo to take place in the Middle East, Africa and South Asia region. Expo 2020s theme is Connecting Minds, Creating the Future, recognising the importance of collaboration and partnership for growth.

Like Expo 2020, Canon is dedicated to inspiring a more sustainable future, added Mai Youssef. Our three pillars, Future of People, Future of Planet and Future of Possibility, tie in with the Expo sub-themes, Opportunity, Mobility and Sustainability. Were delighted to be collaborating on this special series of broadcasts and hope it will enable us to reach and inspire even more people.
Recently, I was in the middle of a real estate deal, great property with a lot of potential. During the negotiation period, I spent a great deal of time going back and forth with the seller, negotiating the terms of the deal in ways that was favorable for them and for us, a win-win situation for everyone. Everything was going well, financing was in place, except, when we got to the title/due diligence part of the transaction, we found out the owners had a large number of judgments attached to the property, over $2 million in judgments that lenders and financial institutions were unwilling to release.
While consumer behavior has shifted toward online shopping, the global pandemic has changed what consumers expect from a retailer, Stephanie Young, president of consumer products, games and publishing, said in the statement. Over the past few years, weve been focused on meeting consumers where they are already spending their time, such as the expansion of Disney store shop-in-shops around the world. We now plan to create a more flexible, interconnected ecommerce experience that gives consumers easy access to unique, high-quality products across all our franchises.
Ed Easterly, with the law firm Hoffman, Hlavac & Easterly, said as Lehigh Valley employers set their mandates, he has received sporadic calls from people asking if they can take legal action against their employers. However, he said has told these workers that as long as employers are following the law and allow medical and religious exemptions, there isnt anything he or another lawyer can do.
It was an ambitious move. I was impressed then. And, to say the least, Im even more impressed one year later  since the brewery/restaurant began.
Im going in with 20 strong men, and Im going to speak to the school board, and Im going to give them an option. They can leave or they can be removed. And then after that, were going to replace them with nine parents and were going to vote down the mask mandates that evening  that evening. This is how you get stuff done. Forget writing your legislator. Forget it! Theyre not listening, Lynch said before saying people would have to take his life before he allowed criminals to enforce the mask mandate.
My daughter thinks that I should be looking more actively right now, and quite frankly, a lot of these places want an entrance fee of over $200,000, she said. And some of the places dont require an entrance fee but its a higher rent. And if your spouse has to go into memory care, that money is used up. And what happens to the remaining spouse?
The burial ground, which lay in the footprint of a 1-million-square-foot building in the projects original plan, contains the gravesites of Theobault Dewalt Kemp, who was among the first settlers in the area in the 1720s, and his son Capt. George Kemp, who served in the Revolutionary War. It is also the gravesite of a woman known only as Hannah and listed in tax records as George Kemps slave, the only known Black slave in that area.
You may not even know the name Mike Kaiser. But if you drive on Route 22, Route 33, Route 78 or any major highway in the Lehigh Valley, chances are that Mike and his staff at the Joint Planning Commission of Lehigh and Northampton Counties would have had a hand in the planning and the funding for the construction of that roadway or improvements to the intersections or many of the bridges crossing the Lehigh River or its various tributaries.
A: This is really part of my portfolio with the health equity work that we are doing ... The first thing we want to do is work on policy. So one of the things that HHS has already done is through the Office of Civil Rights, where they are interpreting Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act where you cannot discriminate on the basis of sex to include sexual orientation and gender identity  It really informs many things in terms of insurance coverage and health care coverage, etc.
These writers have short memories of the GOP and Trump. He abandoned Syria and evacuated zero of our Kurdish allies, plus he handed over our military bases to Russia, while Biden is rescuing tens of thousands.
Burley, ID (83318)

Today

Mostly clear. Low around 45F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Mostly clear. Low around 45F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph.
Berlin [:][bingya] , 2021090213:15:07 ,874,6 APP   0  [:1 ] bingya   board=Military&u=bingya [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [ 1 ] : bingya (bing), : Military

 : Berlin

: BBS  (Thu Sep 2 13:15:07 2021, )



Excellencies, dear colleagues and friends,



It is an honour and a pleasure to join you today for this signing of a

Memorandum of Understanding between WHO and the Charite.



The Charite is one of Germanys most research-intensive medical

institutions, and it is an honour to join it in partnership for a long-term

strategic collaboration to support the work of the WHO Hub for Pandemic and

Epidemic Intelligence.



As you know, I will have the honour of launching the WHO hub later today

with Chancellor Merkel. This is to expand the support that WHO gives

countries to predict, prevent, detect and respond to risks from known and

emerging pathogens.



The Hub will make use of cutting-edge analytical technologies, coupled with

insights from timely, high-quality, and high-frequency data sources to allow

countries to respond rapidly to disease outbreaks.



The Hub is also a centre for collaboration and research, and will provide a

nurturing environment for the brightest minds across disciplines and

countries to work on challenging problems facing pandemic and epidemic risk

management.



That has never been more important.



The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated that trust, partnership and

solidarity are essential for confronting shared public health threats.



It is more important now more than ever that we work across borders and

across disciplines to prepare for, prevent, detect and respond to known and

emerging diseases with epidemic and pandemic potential.



Fundamental to our mission at the Hub is the visiting research fellows who

will become part of our ever-expanding global network, so that our work is

informed by practical, on-the-ground experience.



The WHO Hub will work for the benefit of all populations, based on

principles of equity and the right to health.



The Charite will play a vital role in WHOs work in this honourable

endeavour. I look forward to working together with the Charite in the years

ahead to promote health, keep the world safe and serve the vulnerable.



Vielen dank.



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 : Re: Berlin

: BBS  (Thu Sep 2 13:16:32 2021, )







Good afternoon Chancellor Merkel, Minister Spahn, Mayor Muller, Dr Tedros

and esteemed colleagues,



Ive spent most of my professional life working with so many others in this

room and around the world to protect people from epidemics and other health

emergencies.



Together with partners present here today we have faced the greatest Public

Health crisis in generations and we are learning important lessons to drive

our future actions.



Yes, we must innovate and develop global solutions/goods and share them

locally but crucially we must also build local systems and connect them

globally in an unbreakable chain of health protection for all the people who

inhabit this fragile planet.



Indeed it is this very challenge that brings us together today.



In my experience, three things are critical to an effective response: be

ready, be fast and be agile.



We must:



Predict, Prepare and Plan for what may happen

We must Detect, Assess and React fast to the earliest possible signal of

something happening

We must Adapt to what is happening and the reality of an evolving health

emergency which is never quite what you expected

The better we prepare, the more ready we will be to respond.



The faster we can identify new infectious disease risks, the faster we can

respond.



The more adaptable and agile we are the more effective our response will be.



None of this is possible without better data, analytics and insights to

improve the speed and adaptability of our response.



Germany has long been a pioneer in this space. In 1848, Rudolf Virchows

seminal outbreak response to typhus in Upper Silesia was based on collecting

and analyzing data about disease and the population infected.



Virchow also knew that public health is about more than just data. He said

Medicine is a social science.



Those words capture what Ive experienced during every epidemic response -

that the control of epidemics depends on understanding not only the disease,

but also the social dimensions of how people react to it.



Weve seen this demonstrated over and over again during the COVID-19

pandemic.



The WHO Hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence embodies the spirit of

Virchows insight while embracing the contemporary world of ubiquitous data

, the extraordinary accessibility of computing power, and an ultra-connected

global population in which information spreads even faster than disease.



How do we link all the data that are currently available around the world to

improve our public health intelligence?

How do we create new ways to analyze this vastness of information, while at

the same time ensuring equity of access to these tools?

How can we make these insights available for decision makers globally and

locally?

In short how do we turn what on the face of it is our greatest weakness in

the face of epidemics...the CONNECTEDNESS that allows disease and

misinformation to spread...into our greatest strength the CONNECTEDNESS that

allows us to collaborate, innovate and share data, insights, innovations

and solutions



These are the essential questions that the WHO Hub will address with

partners from around the world.



The WHO Hub will help develop state of the art analytic tools and predictive

models that will take us to a new level in our ability to collect and

analyse ever more complex data.



The Hub will link communities of practice around the world to enable better

data access and data sharing.



This will lead to better decisions and better outcomes for the people we all

serve in the face of epidemic and pandemic threats we will face in the

future.



This would not have been possible without the vision and investment of the

German Government and is a major step forward as we collectively and

collaboratively face future threats to the health and well-being of our

people.



Thank you.













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 : Re: Berlin

: BBS  (Thu Sep 2 13:17:48 2021, )







Your Excellency Jens Spahn,



Professor Lothar Wieler,



Dear colleagues and friends,



I am delighted to be here with you in person C after so many months of

video conferences C to sign this Memorandum of Understanding with the

Robert Koch Institute.



As we all know, the Robert Koch Institute is one of the worlds leading

research agencies, charged with the monitoring and prevention of health

threats.



Our two organizations have enjoyed a longstanding technical and scientific

collaboration, including parts of RKI being designated as WHO Collaborating

Centres, for emerging infections and biological threats, viral hepatitis and

HIV, and as part of the Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network, or

GOARN.



Today we are taking the partnership between WHO and RKI to a new level, with

this Memorandum of Understanding to support the work of the WHO Hub for

Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence.



The Hub is being launched to expand the support that WHO gives countries to

predict, prevent, detect and respond to risks from known and emerging

pathogens.



It will make use of cutting-edge analytical technologies, coupled with

insights from timely, high-quality, and high-frequency data sources to allow

countries to respond rapidly to disease outbreaks.



The Hub is also a center for collaboration and research, and will provide a

nurturing environment for the brightest minds across disciplines and

countries to work on challenging problems facing pandemic and epidemic risk

management.



That has never been more important.



The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated that trust, partnership and

solidarity are essential for confronting shared public health threats.



The Robert Koch Institute will play a vital role, and I look forward to our

two institutions working together even more closely in the years ahead to

promote health, keep the world safe and serve the vulnerable.



Vielen dank.

--

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 : Re: Berlin

: BBS  (Thu Sep 2 13:23:09 2021, )







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 :chinsome  Sep 2 13:23:29 2021 [FROM: 73.]

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 : Re: Berlin

: BBS  (Thu Sep 2 13:24:13 2021, )







Your Excellency Dr Angela Merkel, Chancellor of the Federal Republic of

Germany,



Your Excellency and my friend Jens Spahn, Federal Minister of Health,



Your Excellency Michael Muller, Governing Mayor of Berlin,



Distinguished guests, dear colleagues and friends,



Ich freue mich, heute in Berlin zu sein, und danke Bundeskanzlerin Merkel, B

urgermeister Muller, Bundesgesundheitsminister Spahn und den Berlinerinnen

und Berlinern fur die herzliche Aufnahme und den wunderbaren Empfang.



It is an honour and a privilege to be here today for the opening of the WHO

Hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence.



I want to start by taking you back to 2015, when the terrible West African

Ebola outbreak was just beginning to be brought under control.



As the world gathered in Geneva for the World Health Assembly, questions

were being asked about how this could have happened.



There was a guest speaker at the Assembly that year. It was, of course,

Chancellor Merkel.



This is what she said:



The war will only have been won when there are no new infections. In fact,

it will only really be won when we are properly equipped to face the next

crisis C in other words, when we have learned from this crisis. One lesson

that we all need to learn is that we should have reacted sooner. We thus

have to ask: how we can do that?



Lessons were learned from our experience in West Africa that have helped the

response to subsequent outbreaks of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of the

Congo.



Those outbreaks were brought under control without spreading across borders

as they did in West Africa, even though the North Kivu outbreak occurred in

a highly unstable and insecure environment, and very close to the border

with Uganda.



But the lessons from West Africa were not sufficient to prepare the world

for a global pandemic of a respiratory pathogen.



So the advice from the Chancellor remains very relevant.



The COVID-19 pandemic is the defining crisis of our time. It has taught the

world many painful lessons.



One of the most clear is the need for new, powerful systems and tools for

global surveillance, to collect, analyse and disseminate data on outbreaks

with the potential to become epidemics and pandemics.



Viruses move fast, but data can move even faster.



With the right information, countries and communities can stay ahead of

emerging risks, and save lives.



Urbanization, deforestation, climate change and intensified agricultural

practices are all increasing the risks of zooneses spilling over into human

populations.



At the same time, new technologies are giving us the ability to predict,

prevent, detect and respond to outbreaks faster than ever before.



Harnessing the power of these new technologies to save lives is not just an

opportunity, its an obligation.



As the German saying goes, Wer rastet, der rostet. Who rests, rusts.



That is what the WHO Hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence is all about

: leveraging innovations in data science, harnessing the power of artificial

intelligence, quantum computing and other cutting-edge technologies, and

fostering greater sharing of data and information, between communities and

countries.



No single institution or nation can do this alone. Thats why we have

coined the term collaborative intelligence to sum up our collective

mission.



This Hub will bring together scientists, innovators, policy makers, and

civil society representatives from around the world to work across borders

and disciplines, making collaborative intelligence a reality.



Of course, the ultimate goal is not just to develop new toys. Its to save

lives.



Our aim is to put the knowledge and insights that are developed here in

Berlin to practical use on the ground all over the world.



As you know, there have been several reviews of the global response to the

pandemic, with recommendations for countries and for WHO about what we can

do to keep the world safer in future.



This hub is one response to those recommendations, filling a gap in the

worlds defences and answering the question that Chancellor Merkel asked in

2015: how can we react faster, to avoid the needless suffering and death of

the COVID-19 pandemic in future.



For WHO, this is part of our commitment to keeping the world safer, to being

the organization the world needs, and to giving countries the information

and tools they need to protect their people.



My brother Chikwe is the perfect person to lead the WHO Hub. He brings

vision and experience, and will be an excellent addition to our WHO

leadership team. Thank you so much for accepting the challenge.



And Berlin is the perfect place to host it, as a vibrant, dynamic, creative

and modern city that is the ideal incubator for what we want to achieve, as

my friend Minister Spahn said.



My thanks once again to Governing Mayor Muller and the people of Berlin for

hosting the WHO Hub, and to the Federal Government for its generous

financial support.



So many people have come together and worked so hard, so quickly to make

this happen.



I would especially like to offer my profound thanks and appreciation to my

friend and brother Dr Bernhard Schwartlander, who has devoted himself

to bringing us all to this moment.



As some of you know, Bernhard is leaving WHO to take up a new role with the

German government.



And as you all know, Bernhard is a WHO institution, with decades of

experience in HIV, as a WHO Representative, and as my Chef de Cabinet for

three-and-a-half years, steering the WHO ship through some difficult waters.



His last assignment was to build this new ship here in Berlin. So he knows

how to steer a ship, and also how to build a ship.



We are reluctantly saying goodbye to Bernhard. WHOs loss is Germanys

gain. So hes not going anywhere still.



My brother, we will miss you C I will miss personally you. Thank you, from

the bottom of my heart, and we wish you every success for the next chapter

of your life and career.



As always I am proud of you, and continue to be proud of you.



===



Excellencies, colleagues and friends,



No one has done more to make the vision of the WHO Hub a reality than

Chancellor Merkel.



Under her leadership, Germany has become a leading advocate for global

health.



This is not a recent development, or a sudden realisation that health

matters in the wake of a pandemic.



Health has been a central theme of Chancellor Merkels leadership

throughout her tenure.



This began with the 2007 G8-Summit in Heiligendamm, which mobilized 60

billion US dollars for global health.



In 2015, she addressed the World Health Assembly, at a critical moment in

global health.



In 2017, in my first week as Director-General, I had the honour of attending

the G20 Summit in Hamburg, where under Chancellor Merkels leadership,

Germany put a very strong emphasis on health and emergency preparedness.



As part of Germanys G20 presidency, Chancellor Merkel also initiated the

first ever meeting of G20 health ministers, which included a health

emergency simulation exercise.



In 2019, together with the Prime Minister of Norway, Erna Solberg, and the

President of Ghana, Nana Akufo-Addo, she also initiated the Global Action

Plan for Healthy Lives and Well-being for All, bringing together 13

multilateral health partners to develop a coherent approach for achieving

the health-related targets in the Sustainable Development Goals.



When the COVID-19 pandemic struck, the German government moved quickly to

expand its financial support for WHO, becoming our biggest donor, and was

one of the first supporters of the Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator.



In October last year, I was honoured to speak to Chancellor Merkel, which is

when we first discussed the idea for a new centre that would serve as a

global platform to enhance global capacity for pandemic and epidemic

intelligence.



Which brings us to today. We have arrived at this moment in no small part

because of one woman who says what she means, and means what she says.



The first time I spoke to her about the centre, she understood it because

she has been advocating for the same. We didnt need another cycle of

discussion to explain or clarify.



I began by reminding you of Chancellor Merkels speech to the World Health

Assembly in 2015.



She concluded that speech with an appeal, that, Every single person is

vitally needed to fight for the human right to health.



As usual, she was right. The right to health is not a job for one

organization or one leader. It is a job for every single one of us, every

single day.



Your Excellency C and I dare to call you my friend,



You have more than played your part. Your leadership, integrity, humility C

above all, humility C and dedication are an example to us all. Im not

saying this as DG only, I had the privilege of meeting you when I was

Foreign Minister of Ethiopia, and I saw the consistency of your behaviour.



You have served your country with great distinction, but you have also

served the people of the world with the same distinction. And I know that

whatever life brings you in the months and years ahead, you will continue to

serve others, and you will continue to work for the right to health.



Your legacy for global health will be so much more than your name on a

plaque on a wall in Berlin. It will be etched in the lives of people all

over the world for years to come, who will enjoy healthier and safer lives

because of you.



You have my deep admiration, my deep respect, and my deep gratitude.



It is therefore with both pride and humility that I have the honour to

present you with the WHO Global Leadership Award, in recognition of your

outstanding contribution to the health of the worlds people.



My friends, please join me in showing our appreciation and respect for Her

Excellency Dr Angela Merkel.





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: BBS  (Thu Sep 2 13:33:38 2021, )





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Regional

Assam refutes Mizorams charge of kidnapping of a driver

Aizawl/Hailakandi (Assam), Sep 3 | Publish Date: 9/3/2021 12:06:04 PM IST

A day after a civilian construction worker was allegedly assaulted and kidnapped by Assam police, a Kolasib based union on Friday demanded both Mizoram and Assam state governments should compensate the worker.

While Assam police altogether refuted Mizorams allegations that the driver of an excavator had been kidnapped and assaulted by the Hailakandi district police.

Mizoram has levelled false and fabricated allegations against Assam police, Hailakandi Superintendent of police, Gaurav Upadhyay said at a press conference here on Friday.

In a letter written to his counterpart in Assams Hailakandi district, Mizorams Kolasib Deputy Commissioner H. Lalthlangliana had on Thursday alleged that one Lalnarammawia, operator of an earth excavator was blindfolded and kidnapped at gun point by Assam Police personnel in commando fatigues from near Mizorams Vairengte village.

Upadhyay claimed photographs of the driver released does not have any marks on his body, adding the allegations were probably a ploy to divert attention from the main issue.

Hailakandi Deputy Commissioner Rohan Jha said that Mizoram has occupied 1,000 acres of Assam land and out of that, 200 acres have been freed in Dhalaikhal area with tree plantation started by the district administration.

Mizoram was continuing with road construction in Assams land, he alleged.

Upadhyay requested his Kolasib counterpart to withdraw Mizoram state police forces and construction workers from Assams land.

A statement issued by Kolasib Excavator Backhoe Loader Operator Association (KEBOA) has however expressed disappointment over the attack on its member and accused the Mizoram government of being responsible for the incident as it failed to adequate provide security protection despite written assurance.

It claimed that its member was constructing a road at Aitlang area near Vairengte town in Kolasib district after a written assurance from the district magistrate on providing security cover.

The association said that its member Lalnarammawia, a resident of Kolasibs Vengthar, an earth excavator operator, had been allegedly brutally assaulted by Assam police personnel while working at the road construction site near the Assam border on Thursday.

It said the victim was in serious condition as he had suffered rib bone fractures, and ear injuries during the assault.

We demand the Assam government give compensation to the victim for the assault. We also ask the Mizoram government to compensate him for failing to protect him, the statement signed by the association general secretary Zohmingthanga Tlau said.

The association also asked the Mizoram government to take measures to ensure that the victims mobile phone and excavators key are returned to him at the earliest.

The JCB operator was blindfolded and kidnapped with a gun pointed at his head by Assam Police wearing Commando uniform. He was then dragged to the river and threatened. His mobile phone along with JCB keys were taken by the Assam Police, the letter sent by Kolasibs deputy commissioner had claimed.

After simmering tensions for several months over a border dispute, at least six Assam Police personnel and one civilian were killed and more than 50 people injured in a fire-fight between the police of the two states on July 26.

The two states share a 164.6-km border between Assams Cachar, Hailakandi and Karimganj districts, and Mizorams Kolasib, Mamit and Aizawl districts.

Both states have differing interpretations of their territorial border. While Mizoram believes that its border lies along an inner line drawn up in 1875 to protect tribals from outside influence, Assam goes by a district demarcation done in the 1933.
Editors Note: Theres almost nothing as beautiful as the love that has stood the test of time. That is why, in collaboration with BellaNaija Features, BellaNaija Weddings is bringing you beautiful stories of couples whose love has not waned through the years with The Ever After Series.

Today, Mr. and Mrs. Ayano, who have been married for 20 years, are sharing their insights on love, marriage, and the forever journey. Lets take you on a dive into their Ever After story. Ride with us!

_

Marriage, for every couple, is unique. What might be sweet oranges in your home may be sour grapes for others. That is why, when you speak with couples who have been married for long, they always give you one very important piece of advice: marry your friend. Theres a question that follows this: before nko? Will I marry my enemy? Marrying your friend doesnt mean you would marry just anyone you are cordial with, it means marrying someone with whom your friendship is planted on solid soil.

Mr. and Mrs. Ayanos marriage is rooted in friendship. Their friendship comes through for them even in times when situations are tough and things dont seem to be going so well. Based in Ibadan, this couple have been married for 20 years. Mr. Bunmi Ayano is a businessman who is into real estate and other forms of entrepreneurship. Mrs. Ayano is also a businesswoman and both of them are pastors in redeem church. Together, they have 5 children- 2 adopted kids and 3 biological kids.

They met in church, were both ushers, and then became friends. While doing the work of God, Mr. Ayano was busy eyeing Mrs. Ayano.

We were always posted together to officiate, so we were always laughing and arguing together. I was trying to befriend her, then I discovered we were fond of each other. So we started like that and after 9 months, we got married in August, 2001.

Mrs. Ayano liked him too, but, you know, a little shakara hurts no one.

I was an usher and was very beautiful so I had men asking me out. He was also very handsome, and he jokes a lot, so I said let me go for this one.

Mr. and Mrs. Ayano may not always be together geographically, but remember what we said about friendship?

I still work outside Ibadan and she is at Ibadan and up till now, I can call more than 30 times in a day. Every little gist, I will call. Every little gist, she will call. We gist, we travel, we go on holidays, we discuss anything, we argue and quarrel. Now, my birthday is on the 7th of February, and we are planning on which country to go for the birthday. We keep friendship with our children. They tell me their secrets and say dont tell mummy, and I, in turn, leak it to my wife.

He makes fun of me a lot. He taught me how to play and joke. No one can come in-between us, Mrs. Ayano says. I remember that in our wedding program, I wrote thank God Im getting married to my friend, because I believe a husband and wife should be friends. People, including the extended family, know they cant come in-between us. We fight and settle. Hes a little bit stubborn but Im calm.

On being stubborn and fighting  these two things are major deal breakers in marriages, but with 20 years of marriage? This couple has definitely sailed through stormy waters successfully. How did they do this?

Were into marriage counselling and I tell couples that the first 2-3 years are always tough, financially and in knowing each others character. I call it early marriage waves. If youre not careful, it will make you break up.

Remember I told you hes very jovial? When we got married, I didnt know there was another aspect of him that was very very tough. He can abuse you and youll feel like dying. Any little thing and hell flare up. Then I was so gentle and Id be so scared, wondering whats wrong with this man? Did I get married to the right person? But because Im a child of God, I learnt humility and gentleness. My husband will talk and talk and when he notices that the words are not entering you deeply, hed say they didnt even train you well. I will just go into the corner and keep quiet. Seconds later, hed realise what he said and then apologise for it. Id just say it is well. The good thing is that he wasnt abusive. Me, I promised God that if a man hits me once, Im done with the marriage.

Mr. Ayano on managing his anger:

You must have a mentor, someone who can call you to order. Those you respect a lot. Even when youre right on issues, the way you present it matters. The first stages of marriage are difficult because sometimes, you can never tell a persons character. You can never tell that my temperament is high because I play and joke a lot. I like respect and if you dont respect me, I might take it up with you and this can lead to a fight.

But when we first started, I had a cousin she would call when things were going wrong. My cousin helped us settle a lot of issues. I also have some people that can talk to me and calm me down. The first few weeks, months, and years are usually tough to acclimatise to issue. Both of you have to make up your mind never to divorce. You must be determined to make it work. There are people who will gossip or hate your marriage, you have to be firm. You should also help each others weaknesses. She has been helping me, when Im angry, she wont talk. When Im aggressive and fuming, she would be calm. But I know how to apologise to her; sometimes I buy gifts and all.

Mr. Ayanos anger issues werent the only problem Mrs. Ayano had. Family intrusion is a big deal in marriages, especially in the first few years. How do you handle it when your spouses family members come to fight you in your own home? Mr. Ayano says there was something he didnt like about his wife: she couldnt fight.

My siblings were a bit intrusive, and I always wanted her to confront them. She will run away. I wanted someone that could face them. So I wasnt happy when I married someone who will just be looking when my younger ones were abusive. I stood up for her most times, but because I wasnt always around, they would go to Ibadan to bully her. And shes always too calm. Now that were older, she gets pissed off easily and that bothers me.

Mrs. Ayano is not a fighter.

Hell be telling me to face his sibling but I cannot. In my home, were not used to fighting; all my siblings are very calm.

The good thing is that when it comes to fighting his siblings, Mr. Ayano is quite capable.

He defends me well, they know they cant mess up his wife. He handed over all family things to me so even if his mum needs money or anything, she has to pass through me. Initially, she complained she couldnt be collecting money from me, my husband told her it was obvious she didnt need the money. Im busy and shes the one youll be seeing. With time, my mother-in-law and I became so close to each other.

Mrs. Ayanos non-fighting nature is not just restricted to family matters only, it affects her businesses too. Mr. Ayano doesnt like this.

When she starts a business and encounters a few hitches, she gets tired and fed up immediately. I learned to assist her in her business.

Shes the type of person who needs more conviction on issues. But I can perceive things that will happen seven kilometres away, but she cant see that so we always argue on ways to do things.

Mrs. Ayano quickly chips in.

Physically I see far and I can tell him certain things will not work, but spiritually, he sees farther than me  thats one way we rub each others back. And hes the kind of person that when you tell him this thing will not work, he hands off it immediately. Thats why, to the glory of God, we hardly make mistakes.

Mrs. Ayano is very calm and Mr. Ayano is the one who fumes easily. But when it comes to parenting, the couple found a way to ensure their children are well disciplined as well as calm and caring; Mrs. Ayano holds the whip while her husband dangles the carrot. Lets start with the carrot.

I didnt enjoy fatherly love from my dad, so I learned from his mistake to love my children and ensure they dont lack anything. The girl is still enjoying that up till now. She has a method of handling me. One day she and her mum borrowed 1 million from me  the mum stood as surety. Up till now, they did not return it. Both of them swallowed my money.

The thing with me is that once someone starts crying, it melts my heart immediately, and my daughter knows how to shed both crocodile and real tears when she wants to get something from me. My boy, on the other hand, has ego. He doesnt like someone questioning him when he makes a request for money. But as soft as I am, I am very disciplined, I dont take nonsense.

And now, the whip.

Growing up, in my own home, no siblings must not raise a hand on each other. When my children were growing up, it was the same, you must never beat your siblings. You must respect each other and be calm. No abusive words. I beat my kids and he supports me.

Once the children asked my husband who is the head of the family? Because any small thing, youll tell us to go and ask mummy, He told them it was me. He can pamper a child to a fault. He will be disciplining a child and then ask have you eaten?, I will be like why would you ask a child you are scolding if he has eaten?

When my daughter was in Bowen, my husband used to pay about 100k per month as allowance; the girl would just be demanding and collecting. As a matter of fact, she used to teach her younger ones how to demand for more money. One day, I called her and told her from now, your allowance is 50k a month. And that was how the allowance was reduced.

100,000 allowance every month! Mr. and Mrs. Ayano definitely need to adopt us, what do ya say?

Adoption is a big deal in Nigeria; many people dont want to take in kids for fear of ogbanjes. Mr. and Mrs. Ayano are proof that adopting kids is great for the world.

We weighed our options and prayed before adopting. Once I tell you youre my son or daughter, you are, forever. I cant make a decision without them. I dont see any difference; if youre at fault, I scold you. I love them equally, and buy them gifts equally. Theres no discrimination.

Being a whip or a carrot is not the only way Mr. and Mrs. Ayano are different. When it comes to spending, Mr. Ayano is an oga patapata.

He loves buying things. Me, I dont, maybe because of my humble background. He started exposing me to big big things. One day, my shoe removed in the church and he started laughing. He said when youll not allow me buy you better shoes, youll be wearing cheap shoes of 10,000 naira. See your life.

Even when were broke, he will still continue to buy. I can stay 6 months without buying anything, but he cant stay two weeks without buying anything. He will buy t-shirts and I will help him wear them. He still buys us Christmas clothes as if we are children, including all the households and the driver. Sometimes, he sneaks out to buy things and then sneaks them into the house.

My husband can plan for Africa, he can plan for next year. He hardly saves; he invests all his money. Hes pompous so he shoulders all the responsibilities including fueling my car, buying my clothes, and making my hair.

Mr. Ayano is a buyer, yes, but beyond his nature, he believes buying is a mans responsibility.

I believe a man should be responsible for his familys finances. We handle our finances well. Most times, she handles the project were currently working on. All I do is bring the architecture and design of the building, and tell her when I want the house to be ready. She gets the engineer and puts things together, all I do is drop the funds. I dont even check the account balance. She will spend it, steal my money, and rob me.

Wait, hol up, hol up. Mrs Ayano, come and defend yourself.

In 2004, that was when we began to be free of poverty. I looked at him one day, and said Alani, Ive promised God that one day, I will take your 500,000 naira from you and you wont know. But I take responsibility for his business and hes seeing the result. Theres no way you will build a house and something will not enter your own pocket. Ask him, is he paying me for helping me build the house? So I take what will be comfortable for me to enjoy myself. He always says that the money Ive stolen from him will be enough to build another house.

Mr. and Mrs. Ayano have managed to keep the fire burning in their marriage, and it is exciting to see. He has advice for married men.

Dont be selfish. I have been buying beautiful things for my wife and children ever since and I still do so. Dont get complacent, continue to impress your spouse. I check magazines, the internet, go to stores, and shop for her. I will buy any pretty thing I see for my wife.

You cannot say you love a woman and shell just be your cook or sex mate, you have to show commitment. Even during morning devotion this morning, I was still sending her photos of beautiful clothes and asking her if I should get it for her.

Mrs. Ayano believes friendship and communication are key.

Were both friends and we can talk from morning to night. Sometimes, when we talk too much, our conversation goes like this:

Me: (after talking for several minutes) Wait, am I the one who called or its you who called me?

Him: Its you now.

Me: Ehn? Cut it, cut it, cut it immediately.

When I discover Ive spent more than one thousand naira, I tell him, youve used all your calls for this week. For the rest of the week, youre on flash mode. I will be flashing you.

Him: Ahan, are you that broke, are you not a big woman?

Me: I am not a big woman o. Im not big.

He can call for hours. We will just be talking and talking. Even during service, were always doing cho cho cho, and laughing. Our friendship is even stronger now than when we first got married. Did I also tell you he loves taking pictures? He can snap for Africa and he changes his DP more than three times a day.

Theres one more important factor: Prayer.

I had to settle a lot of things on my knees, especially his anger. If I had continued saying you get angry too much, it may have changed nothing. So its better for me to take it to God. It was not rosy when we got married but I believe so much in the power of prayer and I believe prayer can turn situations.

Amen to that, and amen to this love that will clearly last forever.



Did you enjoy this episode as much as we did? We bet your answer is a solid yes. Be sure to check back next Thursday for the next episode! If you missed our previous episodes with the Akinseyes, the Owolabis, and the Olayinkas, you can read them all here.
A Save Afghanistan sign is seen in front of the White House during the Save Afghan Lives Protest in Lafayette Park on August 28 in Washington, DC.  Agence France-Presse/Getty Images/Liz Lynch

ALL flags are on half-mast in the US of A. The cause is the 13 American soldiers killed in the huge suicide bombing outside the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul on 26 August.

As it stands, at least 150 people  Afghans, including at least 30 Taliban, plus 13 American military  were killed and at least 1,300 injured, according to the Afghan health ministry.

The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the bombing via Amaq Media, the official ISIS news agency. The perpetrators, the message says, were members of the ISIS-Khorasan, or ISIS-K.

As reported by RT, US military leaders knew hours in advance that a mass casualty event was planned at the Kabul airport. However, accounts from the troops in harms way suggest that nothing was done to protect them or the airport.

RT further reports: The bombing provoked the US into launching two drone strikes, one targeting an alleged planner and facilitator with the group responsible, and another supposedly wiping out multiple would-be suicide bombers but reportedly annihilating a family and children alongside them.

Why was nothing done to prevent this bloody, atrocious attack? In fact, the Pentagon announced recently that another massive attack was likely, meaning they have information that another mass-killing may take place?

In the meantime, the US Central Command confirmed that the last three US military transport planes have departed the Hamid Karzai Airport just ahead of the August 31, 2021, deadline, officially ending the American withdrawal from Afghanistan.

The war is over. Americas last troops have just left Kabul airport, RTs Murad Gazdiev tweeted from Kabul, adding that the war lasted 19 years, 10 months and 25 days.

What he didnt say is that the monetary cost of the war was at least $3 trillion, that about 241,000 people have been killed in the Afghanistan and Pakistan war zone since 2001. More than 71,000 of those killed have been civilians. These figures include (through April 2021) 2,448 American service members; 3,846 US contractors, and some 66,000 Afghan national military and police.

Twenty years of war  and only 10 days to defeat the US military.

Really? Is this really the end of the US involvement in Afghanistan? Too many strange events and occurrences are pointing in a different direction.

Lets have a closer look. The Islamic State claims responsibility. As we know by now and since quite a while, ISIS is a creation of the Central Intelligence Agency. The sophistication of the attack, the Pentagon non-interference despite their prior knowledge might, just might, indicate that this attack may have been a well-coordinated false flag?

Who benefits? Cui Bono?

On August 19, 2021, the Washington Post, referring to president Trumps peace agreement with the Taliban in Doha, Qatar, in February 2020, reports:

As president Donald Trumps administration signed a peace deal with the Taliban in February 2020, he optimistically proclaimed that we think well be successful in the end. His secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, asserted that the administration was seizing the best opportunity for peace in a generation.

Eighteen months later, president Joe Biden is pointing to the agreement signed in Doha, Qatar, as he tries to deflect blame for the Taliban overrunning Afghanistan in a blitz. He says it bound him to withdraw US troops, setting the stage for the chaos engulfing the country.

But Biden can go only so far in claiming the agreement boxed him in. It had an escape clause: The US could have withdrawn from the accord if Afghan peace talks failed. They did, but Biden chose to stay in it, although he delayed the complete pullout from May to September.

So, again, who benefits from such an atrociously deadly attack like the one of August 26 at the Kabul airport?

President Biden, though unjustified, can and does blame president Trump for the chaos he left behind by negotiating this irresponsible peace deal. Why irresponsible? Wasnt it time after 20 years without apparent success  whatever that means, or may have meant at some point in time  to end this senseless bloodshed and destruction of a sovereign Afghan society let alone the killing of hundreds of thousands of people, most of them civilians?

It seems that Trump may have done the right thing. Peace over war should always win, on the ground as well as in the minds of people, and foremost of politicians. However, there are several reasons, why peace is not welcome. And chaos and destruction and death as demonstrated by the August 26 suicide attack, and who knows, there may be more to follow, might justify sending back US troops?

There are several other irons in the fire about which hardly anybody talks and the bought anti-Trump and pro-Biden mainstream media are silent.

Heroin trade

THERE is a multi-multi-billion, perhaps up to a trillion-dollar heroin trade at stake, for the United States and for the US and European pharma-industry  the huge and deadly opioid-market.

As reported by Michel Chossudovsky on August 21, 2021:

One of the key strategic objectives of the 2001 war on Afghanistan was to restore the opium trade following the Taliban governments successful 20002001 drug eradication programme which led to a 94 per cent collapse in opium production. This programme was supported by the United Nations.

In the course of the last 19 years following the US-NATO October 2001 invasion, there has been a surge in Afghan opium production. In turn the number of heroin addicts in the US has increased dramatically. Is there a relationship?

There were 189,000 heroin users in the US in 2001, before the US-NATO invasion of Afghanistan.

By 2016, that number went up to 4,500,000 (2.5 million heroin addicts and two million casual users).

In 2020, at the height of the Covid crisis, deaths from opioids and drug addiction increased threefold.

Its big money for big pharma.

Belt and Road Initiative

BOTH China and Russia have already indicated that they would help the new Taliban regime to gain stability and to develop towards a newly independent, sovereign state. Afghanistans border with China is only about 70km wide, but it forms a crucial connection to Chinas westernmost province, the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. It is a vital pivot for Chinas Belt and Road Initiative, or One Belt One Road  OBOR  also called the New Silk Road.

While transit routes already go through Pakistan to the Indian Ocean, an OBOR rail and road transit through Afghanistan would connect China directly with Iran, facilitating, among other trade, hydrocarbon transport from Iran to China. OBOR would also be an effective development instrument for war-destroyed Afghanistan. A reconstruction and economic development scheme for Afghanistan could bring the country back to a respected nation state  even through the Taliban.

Furthermore, Afghanistan might be prepared for becoming an active member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, one of the worlds most significant political, economic and strategic defence organisations. In addition to China, Russia and the Central Asian former Soviet Republics, India and Pakistan are already full members, while Iran, Malaysia and Mongolia are, so far, in observer and associate status.

The SCO covers almost half of the world population and controls some 30 per cent of the worlds gross domestic product. Afghanistan would be in a solid and guiding association as an SCO member. Afghanistans socioeconomic development and improvement of war-damaged peoples standard of living could benefit enormously.

Washington, however, dislikes OBOR with a passion. They see it as Chinese expansionism and competition. It is actually neither. China has, in her thousands of years of history, never had expansionist trends, or ambitions, and always respected other countries sovereignty. OBOR, an ingenious idea of president Xi Jinping, is patterned according to the ancient Silk Road, a trading route from 2,100 years ago connecting Asia with Europe and the Middle East.

OBOR is an instrument to help to develop and connect the world, while respecting each nation states independence and sovereignty.

The hugely profitable heroin trade and the further development of Chinas OBOR  and particularly bringing Afghanistan under the wings of the east through association with the SCO  would spoil the United Statess multibillion heroin trade, as well as another Middle East country would orient itself to the east and away from the fangs of the ever weakening and crumbling Anglo-US empire.

Hence, commanding the US-created ISIS to sow chaos and death in Afghanistan, and blaming the Taliban, might be a good reason for Biden to bring back US troops  to fight a new kind of war  fighting for the continuing highly profitable heroin trade and, simultaneously, fighting against OBOR. On top of it all, it would suit Biden and his globalist agenda image and standing in a totally misinformed world.

DissidentVoice.org, August 31. Peter Koenig is a geopolitical analyst and former senior economist at the World Bank and World Health Organisation.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-09-02 23:16:00|Editor: huaxia

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Yang Jiechi, a member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), also director of the Office of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the CPC Central Committee, meets with U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry via video link upon invitation, Sept. 2, 2021. (Xinhua/Zhai Jianlan)

BEIJING, Sept. 2 (Xinhua) -- Yang Jiechi, a member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), on Thursday met with U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry via video link upon invitation, urging the United States to adopt rational and pragmatic China policies to work with China in bringing ties back on track as soon as possible.

Yang, also director of the Office of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the CPC Central Committee, said for some time China-U.S. relations have faced severe difficulties due to a series of erroneous acts by the United States to interfere in China's internal affairs and undermine China's interests. "China is strongly opposed to and even more resolute in countering such practices."

As confrontation between China and the United States serves no one's interests, Yang said the two countries should have mutual respect, coexist peacefully, handle differences properly, and work for win-win results.

"This will serve the fundamental interests of people on both sides and people of all countries in the world," Yang said.

He expressed the hope that the United States can take into consideration the common interests of the two sides and the long-term interests of itself, take concrete steps to rectify wrongdoings, view China and bilateral relations in an objective and rational manner, and respect China's political system and development path.

China is open to dialogue and pragmatic cooperation with the United States, Yang said, noting that the two countries can enhance coordination and cooperation on a broad range of issues including climate change, COVID-19 control and economic recovery.

"At the same time, such cooperation must be two-way and mutually beneficial," he added.

Noting that China has taken a series of major strategic decisions and strong measures to respond to climate change, a demonstration of its active and determined attitude, Yang said China respects other countries' rights to development and choice, and the rights to development and choice of China must be respected as well.

China is ready to enhance policy communication and pragmatic cooperation on climate change with the United States to facilitate the full and effective implementation of the Paris Agreement, said Yang.

Noting U.S.-China relations are very important to the two countries and the whole world, Kerry said the United States is willing to step up dialogue with China and jointly cope with climate change based on mutual respect, so as to inject impetus into the improvement of bilateral ties. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-09-02 23:26:17|Editor: huaxia

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Chinese President Xi Jinping addresses the Global Trade in Services Summit of the 2021 China International Fair for Trade in Services via video, Sept. 2, 2021. (Xinhua/Huang Jingwen)

BEIJING, Sept. 2 (Xinhua) -- President Xi Jinping on Thursday unveiled a slew of new measures to facilitate trade in services in the country's latest efforts to share its development opportunities and boost global economic recovery.

China will explore the development of national demonstration zones to promote the innovative development of services trade and increase support for services sector in countries participating in the Belt and Road Initiative, Xi said while addressing the Global Trade in Services Summit of the 2021 China International Fair for Trade in Services (CIFTIS) held in Beijing.

The country will optimize the rules for the services sector by supporting Beijing and other localities in piloting the alignment of domestic rules with the ones in high-standard international free trade agreements and in building digital trade demonstration zones, Xi said.

A stock exchange will be set up in Beijing to serve innovation-oriented small and medium-sized firms, Xi said.

"Let us join hands to defeat the COVID-19 pandemic and get through these tough times," Xi said.

"Using peace, development and win-win cooperation as the 'golden key', we will be able to address the challenges facing the world economy and international trade and investment, and create a brighter future for all," he said.

Themed "Towards Digital Future and Service Driven Development," the 2021 CIFTIS will last from Sept. 2 to Sept. 7.

As a massive exhibition and trading platform dedicated to trade in services, the CIFTIS played an important role in boosting worldwide trade last year, when the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted global trade.

Addressing the CIFTIS in 2020, Xi made three proposals, calling on all countries to jointly foster an open and inclusive cooperation environment, work together to invigorate momentum for cooperation driven by innovation, and break new ground in win-win cooperation.

At a press conference last week, Vice Minister of Commerce Wang Bingnan said the ministry has rolled out 36 detailed measures to implement what was proposed at last year's CIFTIS, with many seeing significant progress.

For example, the country introduced its first negative list for cross-border trade in services at the Hainan free trade port in July, marking the highest level of opening-up in the cross-border services trade realm.

As COVID-19 has accelerated the digitalization of trade in services, this year's CIFTIS features a dedicated section for digital services for the first time.

The 2021 CIFTIS has attracted the registration from more than 12,000 enterprises, up 52 percent from that in 2020. Representatives from 153 countries and regions signed up for the event, compared with 148 last year. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-09-03 01:23:34|Editor: huaxia

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BEIJING, Sept. 2 (Xinhua) -- China's top political advisory body has voiced strong dissatisfaction with and resolute opposition to a report recently adopted by the European Parliament's Committee on Foreign Affairs.

Despite China's solemn representations, the report on so-called "EU-Taiwan political relations and cooperation" advocated the elevation of EU-Taiwan relations, said a statement issued on Thursday by the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference National Committee.

The report seriously violated the one-China principle and blatantly interfered in China's internal affairs, and was also severely in conflict with international law and the basic norms of international relations, said the statement.

Stressing that there is only one China in the world and Taiwan is an inseparable part of China, the statement said the Taiwan question is purely a matter of China's internal affairs.

The one-China principle is a widely recognized norm of international relations and a general consensus of the international community, as well as the prerequisite and the political basis for China to maintain and develop friendly relations of cooperation with other countries.

The statement said China resolutely opposes any interference in its internal affairs and obstruction of the process toward the peaceful reunification of China.

The committee urged the EU side to fully recognize the highly sensitive nature of the Taiwan question, respect China's sovereignty and territorial integrity, and cease sending any wrong signal to the "Taiwan independence" forces.

The EU side should invest more efforts in boosting the mutual trust and cooperation, and ensure that the China-EU relationship steadily moves forward on the right track, said the statement. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-09-03 04:49:05|Editor: huaxia

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A protester burns a tire during clashes with Israeli soldiers near the border area between eastern Gaza Strip and Israel, Sept. 2, 2021. A Palestinian young man was killed by Israeli soldiers on Thursday during clashes near the border area between eastern Gaza Strip and Israel, Palestinian medics said. (Photo by Rizek Abdeljawad/Xinhua)

GAZA, Sept. 2 (Xinhua) -- A Palestinian young man was killed by Israeli soldiers on Thursday during clashes near the border area between eastern Gaza Strip and Israel, Palestinian medics said.

The Palestinian health ministry, run by the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), said in a statement that Ahmad Salleh, 26, was shot dead by Israeli soldiers in eastern Gaza Strip near the border with Israel.

The statement said that 15 Palestinians, including five children, were injured by Israeli soldiers, adding that five of them were shot by live ammunition and 10 others suffered suffocation after inhaling tear gas.

On Thursday night, eyewitnesses said that dozens of protestors, members of "the night disturbance unit" gathered along the border area between eastern Gaza Strip and Israel for the sixth consecutive day.

Members of the unit have been demonstrating every night near the border with Israel to protest the continuation of an Israeli blockade that has been imposed on the impoverished coastal enclave for more than 14 years.

The unit comprises members and supporters of several Palestinian factions, including Hamas which has been ruling the Gaza Strip since 2007 after it ousted the security forces of Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas.

The protestors usually burn tires, detonate homemade percussion grenades and clash with the Israeli soldiers, who usually fire shots to disperse them.

The violent protests came just one day after Israel reopened the only commercial crossing of Kerem Shalom between Israel and the Gaza Strip and expanded the fishing area off the Gaza coast to 15 nautical miles.

The Israeli media earlier reported that Israel also pumped potable water, allowed the entry of more construction materials into Gaza, and increased the number of permits for Gaza merchants to enter Israel from 2,000 to 7,000. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-09-03 05:31:54|Editor: huaxia

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Tourists ride on a double decker bus on Lincoln Road in Miami-Dade County, Florida, the United States, Aug. 6, 2021. (Photo by Monica McGivern/Xinhua)

The U.S. travel industry, which earlier this year had begun to rebound from the impact of COVID-19, is now under renewed pressure because of the Delta variant.

NEW YORK, Sept. 2 (Xinhua) -- With U.S. federal holiday Labor Day approaching, the travel industry is in particular spotlight to bear the brunt of the raging COVID-19 pandemic, as the country's higher education sector sees less transfers and many families with children under 12 years old worry about the absence of a coronavirus vaccine for their young members.

The United States has been reeling from the buildup of cases and fatalities upon the outbreak of the deadlier and more transmittable Delta variant of COVID-19, as the 7-day average of confirmed cases climbed to 166,080 nationwide on Wednesday, with the 14-day change recording an 18 percent rise, and that of COVID-19 deaths was 1,418, with the 14-day change realizing a 75 percent hike, according to data updated by The New York Times (NYT).

ABSENCE OF VACCINE

About 48 million American children are not eligible for a coronavirus shot, and their parents face difficult choices as schools start, reported NYT on Thursday.

"Because a vaccine is not yet authorized for young children, and may not be for some time, their families are left in a particularly difficult position heading into this school year," said the report.

Polls showed that a considerable number of parents do not intend to get their children vaccinated even when shots become available. The Kaiser Family Foundation found that 25 percent to 30 percent of parents with younger children would "definitely not" get them vaccinated. A Gallup poll found that 46 percent do not plan to do so.

Kindergarten children play toys in a classroom at Montrara Ave. Elementary School in Los Angeles, California, the United States, on Aug. 16, 2021. (Xinhua)

But millions of other families are in anxious limbo, waiting for a vaccine, as the Delta variant leads to a swell of new cases, including in children, according to the report.

"The timeline for a vaccine for children under 12, initially expected by this fall, appears to have slowed, as officials consider safety, effectiveness and dosage," said NYT.

Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert, recently indicated that a vaccine could become available to young children "hopefully by the mid, late fall and early winter." Shots for children aged 5 to 11 are expected first; children as young as six months may have to wait longer, according to the report.

LESS TRAVEL

The U.S. travel industry, which earlier this year had begun to rebound from the impact of COVID-19, is now under renewed pressure because of the Delta variant.

Business travel particularly is taking a hit as companies, many of which have slashed corporate travel budgets, postpone out-of-town meetings in favor of virtual ones, reported CBS on Thursday.

New restrictions from the European Union on unvaccinated travelers from the United States are also expected to cut into airline, hotel and other hospitality company profits, while Europeans still cannot travel freely to the United States, it added.

Travelers with face masks are seen at the Los Angeles International Airport in Los Angeles, the United States, July 18, 2021. (Xinhua)

Underscoring those challenges, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has recommended that unvaccinated Americans stay home over the Labor Day weekend, which used to feature spending sprees by travelers.

The U.S. Travel Association (USTA), a group representing the travel industry, said its members cannot afford another major setback.

"In 2020 alone, the pandemic resulted in a 500 billion U.S. dollars loss in travel spending that cost the U.S. 1.1 trillion dollars in economic output. Great strides have been made to combat the virus and restore the U.S. economy, and we cannot afford to backslide," said Tori Emerson Barnes, USTA's vice president of public affairs and policy, in a statement on Wednesday.

LESS COLLEGE TRANSFERS

Nearly 200,000 fewer students transferred between U.S. colleges and universities last year compared to the year before, an 8.4 percent decline, possibly exacerbating existing higher education inequity, according to new data from the National Student Clearinghouse.

"In normal times, the transfer plays a very important role," Mikyung Ryu, director of research publications at the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, was quoted by National Public Radio (NPR) as saying.

Transfer options provide students with "more accessible educational pathways to bachelor's degree attainment, particularly for students who come from disadvantaged backgrounds or low income communities or racial and ethnic minorities," added Ryu.

Students enjoy day time outdoors on the campus of Columbia University in New York, the United States, March 10, 2020. (Xinhua/Wang Ying)

"Lateral transfers," a term describing the switch from similar types of schools, like one 2-year school to another, or from one 4-year school to a different one, declined 11.9 percent. Meanwhile, "reverse transfers," from a 4-year university to a 2-year community college, for example, dropped by 16.2 percent, according to the data.

Overall, enrollment for Black transfer students dropped the most, though white students, Native American students and Latino students also saw large declines. The decline in transfer enrollment for men was also double that of women.

What this means, Ryu said, is that students who may have opted to transfer in previous years have instead stayed put at their schools or withdrawn altogether. 
Source: Xinhua| 2021-09-03 05:54:18|Editor: huaxia

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Aerial photo taken on Aug. 25, 2021 shows a view of the Nianbaoyuze national geology park within the Sanjiangyuan national nature reserve in Jiuzhi County, Golog Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, northwest China's Qinghai Province. (Xinhua/Zhang Long)

With climate change as its main theme, this Congress of the IUCN, which is composed of some 1,400 governmental and civil society member organizations, also calls itself a "major stepping-stone toward a global agreement for protecting biodiversity."

MARSEILLE, France, Sept. 2 (Xinhua) -- The next 10 years will be a "pivotal decade" in which humanity must take action to battle global warming and save biodiversity, President of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Zhang Xinsheng has told Xinhua.

China's progress in biodiversity protection and ecological governance is inspiring, Zhang said on the eve of the seventh IUCN World Conservation Congress (WCC).

Tens of thousands of participants will come together in Marseille, France, and also online for the Congress from Sept. 3 to 11, to set priorities for conservation and sustainable development action.

PIVOTAL DECADE

With climate change as its main theme, this Congress of the IUCN, which is composed of some 1,400 governmental and civil society member organizations, also calls itself a "major stepping-stone toward a global agreement for protecting biodiversity."

Aerial photo taken on July 22, 2019 shows a Chinese scientific expedition team taking a boat to the main area of Lake Yamzbog Yumco for survey in Shannan, southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region. (Xinhua/Jigme Dorje)

"The next 10 years will be a pivotal decade," said Zhang. "A core mission of WCC Marseille and the upcoming UN Biodiversity Conference in Kunming, China, is to set the post-2020 framework agenda for biodiversity."

The decade from 2010 to 2020 was called the "UN biodiversity decade," since parties of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) set 20 goals during a summit in Japan's Aichi in 2010. "However, many of the Aichi Biodiversity Targets have been difficult to achieve," Zhang said.

"The degree of biodiversity loss and the degradation of the ecosystem have been approaching planetary limits and tipping points," he said. "If this loss and degradation still cannot be reversed by 2030, we will not be able to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals."

"This IUCN congress can be seen as a prelude to the Kunming Conference. Both are milestones to see whether mankind can set a 10-year agenda to turn crisis into opportunity," said the IUCN president.

Unlike the Kunming Conference, which as a UN convention meeting has the authority to propose global policy agenda, the IUCN congress, which brings together government agencies, non-government organizations and scientists, produces global resolutions which have strong scientific authority and influence on various international conventions and treaties. In this way, IUCN contributes to inclusive governance.

CHINA'S ACHIEVEMENTS INSPIRING

Zhang, who is also co-founder of Eco Foundation Global, a leading Chinese public private partnership organization striving to build global consensus for a green and sustainable future, said that China has achieved a lot and taken an increasingly leading role in nature conservation and ecological governance.

He cited the epic journey of China's wandering elephants, which went viral on social media this summer, as a vivid example.

Wild Asian elephants are under A-level state protection in China. "Thanks to stronger environmental and wildlife protection efforts, the wild elephant population in the country has doubled in the past 30 years to about 300," Zhang noted.

Aerial photo taken on Aug. 9, 2021 shows a herd of wild Asian elephants in Yuanjiang County of Yuxi City, southwest China's Yunnan Province. (Xinhua/Hu Chao)

Earlier this year, a herd of 14 Asian elephants strayed from their nature reserve. Heading north, they wandered some 500 km across southwest China's Yunnan Province before returning to their jungle paradise in August.

During the trip, the elephants crashed into people's houses, munched their crops and guzzled their water. Some 150,000 residents were evacuated, over 180 tonnes of food were provided to the "elephant tourist group" and many vehicles and drones were deployed to monitor and guide their way home.

"Wherever the elephant herd went, people quietly gave way," Zhang said. "Everyone, from villagers who let their crops get trampled or netizens who followed the live cam showed tolerance and love towards this endangered species," said Zhang.

"It was a vivid example of China's achievements in promoting the harmonious coexistence of humans and nature."

The IUCN President also cited the cases of giant panda, whose vulnerability has been downgraded from "endangered" to "vulnerable" on the IUCN list, and Tibetan antelopes, downgraded from "endangered" to "nearly endangered".

Tibetan antelopes are released into the wild at a wildlife rescue center of the Sonam Dargye Protection Station in Hoh Xil, northwest China's Qinghai Province, July 7, 2021. (Xinhua/Zhang Long)

"The downgrades on the Red List show an improvement in protection results," he said. "China has many successful cases."

Zhang said that China has been building an eco-civilization, with effective measures aligned with national context, which reflects Chinese wisdom. Once a follower and contributor in the field of nature conservation, China has now become a leader.

He noted that all provinces in China have drawn up "ecological red lines," and the zones demarcated by the "red lines" have a combined area of up to a quarter of the total land area of the country.

Regarding the climate, "by pledging to achieve carbon peaks by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2060, China has taken the lead in making commitments for the implementation of the Paris climate agreement," Zhang said. 
Source: Xinhua| 2021-09-03 13:37:40|Editor: huaxia

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A police officer stands guard near the New Lynn supermarket in Auckland, New Zealand, Sept. 3, 2021. New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern confirmed that the violent attack that happened at New Lynn supermarket in Auckland at 2:40 p.m. local time Friday was a "terrorist attack" carried out by an "extremist." (Photo by Zhao Gang/Xinhua)

AUCKLAND, New Zealand, Sept. 3 (Xinhua) -- New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern confirmed that the violent attack that happened at New Lynn supermarket in Auckland at 2:40 p.m. local time Friday was a "terrorist attack" carried out by an "extremist."

New Zealand Police Commissioner Andrew Coster confirmed that the terrorist was holding a knife to stab people at the scene.

Local authorities said at least six people were injured, including three in critical conditions. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-09-03 13:51:17|Editor: huaxia

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A police officer stands guard near the New Lynn supermarket in Auckland, New Zealand, Sept. 3, 2021. New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern confirmed that the violent attack that happened at New Lynn supermarket in Auckland at 2:40 p.m. local time Friday was a "terrorist attack" carried out by an "extremist." (Xinhua)

AUCKLAND, New Zealand, Sept. 3 (Xinhua) -- New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern confirmed that the violent attack that happened at New Lynn supermarket in Auckland at 2:40 p.m. local time Friday was a "terrorist attack" carried out by an "extremist."

"A violent extremist undertook a terrorist attack on innocent New Zealanders at a New Lynn Countdown in Auckland," she told a press conference in Wellington.

"This was a violent attack. It was senseless and I'm sorry it happened," said the prime minister.

New Zealand Police Commissioner Andrew Coster confirmed that the individual behind the attack was under heavy surveillance over "concerns about his ideology," adding he was holding a knife to stab people at the scene.

The man was shot dead by police at the scene after injuring multiple people at a supermarket Countdown in Auckland's New Lynn. Local authorities said at least six people were injured, including three in critical conditions.

Several shoppers are understood to have suffered serious injuries and have been taken to Auckland City Hospital's emergency department with status 1, meaning the life-threatening condition, NZ Herald reported.

Armed police have blocked off the roads nearby and at least 10 police vehicles are around the mall, where the supermarket is located. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-09-03 18:15:07|Editor: huaxia

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Chinese President Xi Jinping addresses the opening ceremony of the sixth Eastern Economic Forum via video link on Sept. 3, 2021. (Xinhua/Huang Jingwen)

BEIJING, Sept. 3 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping attended and addressed the opening ceremony of the plenary session of the sixth Eastern Economic Forum on Friday via video link in Beijing and called on all parties in Northeast Asia to join hands to tide over the difficult time and plan for common development.

Noting that today marks the 76th anniversary of the victory of the Chinese People's War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression and the World Anti-Fascist War, Xi said the international community must defend firmly the victorious outcomes of World War II, safeguard the truth of history, and stay committed to taking history as a mirror to open up a brighter future.

"Earlier in June, President Vladimir Putin and I had a successful video meeting. Together, we announced the extension of the China-Russia Treaty of Good-Neighborliness and Friendly Cooperation, and reached new common understandings on major issues such as strengthening China-Russia strategic coordination and advancing bilateral practical cooperation across the board," Xi said, adding that the China-Russia comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination for a new era boasts strong momentum and broad prospects.

He stressed that the international landscape is going through profound transformation, the COVID-19 pandemic keeps raging with frequent flare-ups, and the world economy faces a daunting recovery.

"This presents regional cooperation in Northeast Asia with both stern challenges and important opportunities," he said, adding that it is only right that all parties ground themselves in regional realities while adopting a global perspective, join hands to tide over the difficult time and plan for common development.

"We need to offer each other help to overcome the pandemic challenge," Xi said, calling for intensifying cooperation in vaccine research, development and production, providing more public goods to the international community, firmly rejecting any politicization of COVID vaccines and origins-tracing, and striving to build a global community of health for all.

He called on all parties to redouble their efforts to advance mutually-beneficial cooperation, deepen the collaboration between the Belt and Road Initiative and the Eurasian Economic Union, support the innovative development of the digital economy, jointly tackle global climate change, and promote social and economic development in the region.

"We need to form synergy to safeguard regional peace and stability," he said, adding that all parties need to narrow differences and build consensus through dialogue and exchanges, embrace the concept of common, comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable security, and work for a harmonious and tranquil homeland for us all.

Noting that this year marks the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China, and China has started a new journey toward fully building a modern socialist country, Xi said China is ready to work with all parties to uphold true multilateralism, advocate trust and harmony, promote win-win cooperation, and march with firm steps toward the goal of building a community with a shared future for mankind.

The sixth Eastern Economic Forum is being held from Sept. 2 to 4 in Russia's far eastern city of Vladivostok, with the theme of "The Opportunities for the Far East in a World under Transformation." Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-09-03 18:27:15|Editor: huaxia

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BEIJING, Sept. 3 (Xinhua) -- Friday marks the 76th anniversary of the victory of the Chinese People's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the World Anti-Fascist War.

On many occasions, Chinese President Xi Jinping, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, has called for learning lessons from history, looking to the future, and jointly cherishing and safeguarding peace.

The following are some highlights of those remarks.

July 1, 2021

Through the Northern Expedition, the Agrarian Revolutionary War, the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression, and the War of Liberation, we fought armed counter-revolution with armed revolution, toppling the three mountains of imperialism, feudalism, and bureaucrat-capitalism and establishing the People's Republic of China, which made the people masters of the country. We thus secured our nation's independence and liberated our people, Xi said, addressing a ceremony celebrating the CPC centenary at Tian'anmen Square in Beijing.

Through tenacious struggle, the Party and the Chinese people showed the world that the Chinese people had stood up, and that the time in which the Chinese nation could be bullied and abused by others was gone forever, Xi said.

The Chinese nation has achieved the tremendous transformation from standing up and growing prosperous to becoming strong, and China's national rejuvenation has become a historical inevitability, he said.

Sept. 3, 2020

The victory belonged to the Chinese people, and also to people across the world, said Xi in his speech at a symposium commemorating the 75th anniversary of the victory of the Chinese People's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the World Anti-Fascist War.

The great spirit of resisting aggression bred during the war is an invaluable source of inspiration, and will always motivate the Chinese people to overcome all difficulties and obstacles and strive to achieve national rejuvenation, he said.

The victory will go down in the history of the Chinese nation as well as in the history of humanity's fight for justice, Xi said.

Sept. 19, 2018

The Chinese nation loves peace and the Chinese people know well the value of peace, Xi said in a congratulatory letter to the commemorative event in Nanjing marking the 2018 International Day of Peace, adding that China is committed to peaceful development.

Pointing out that peace has been universally aspired after and pursued by human society, Xi said that peace and development had become themes of the times, but countries still faced increasingly complex security threats and the lingering threat of war.

Xi called on those engaged in the activities to pool their wisdom and strength, build consensus and contribute to the building of a community with a shared future for mankind and a better world.

Sept. 3, 2015

The experience of war makes people value peace all the more, Xi said at the Commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the victory of the Chinese People's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the World Anti-Fascist War.

In the interest of peace, we need to foster a keen sense of a global community of shared future. Prejudice, discrimination, hatred and war can only cause disaster and suffering, while mutual respect, equality, peaceful development and common prosperity represent the right path to take, Xi said. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-09-03 20:52:41|Editor: huaxia

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Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Carrie Lam addresses an Earth-space video link interaction event in south China's Hong Kong, Sept. 3, 2021. Three Chinese astronauts talked with Hong Kong youth representatives from space via video link on Friday afternoon. In a real-time video chat, the astronauts in the Tiangong space station answered questions from the youngsters, gave them a virtual tour inside the core module Tianhe, and showed them how to conduct experiments, do exercise and drink water in a weightless environment. Nearly 300 researchers, teachers and students participated in the event. (Xinhua/Lui Siu Wai)

HONG KONG, Sept. 3 (Xinhua) -- Three Chinese astronauts talked with Hong Kong youth representatives from space via video link on Friday afternoon.

In a real-time video chat, the astronauts in the Tiangong space station answered questions from the youngsters, gave them a virtual tour inside the core module Tianhe, and showed them how to conduct experiments, do exercise and drink water in a weightless environment.

Nearly 300 researchers, teachers and students participated in the event.

Nie Haisheng, Liu Boming and Tang Hongbo were sent into space aboard the Shenzhou-12 spaceship on June 17 and have as far completed their second-time extravehicular activities.

They will continue to carry out scientific and technological space experiments before returning to Earth in mid-September.

During the event, the young participants learned how astronauts live and work in the space station and also video chatted with multiple space experts including China's first astronaut Yang Liwei in Beijing.

The event was organized by the Liaison Office of the Central People's Government in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR), the HKSAR government and the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA).

Several officials delivered speeches. HKSAR Chief Executive Carrie Lam said the country has made historic progress in the space sector over the recent years and she hopes Hong Kong youths will learn from the astronauts' spirits and work hard to realize their dreams.

Tan Tieniu, deputy director of the Liaison Office of the Central People's Government in the HKSAR, said the Earth-space video link interaction is a special gift from the central authorities to Hong Kong compatriots, in particular to the youth.

Hong Kong's technology and innovation sector has bright prospects and offered opportunities for young people, Tan added.

Hao Chun, director of the CMSA, stressed Hong Kong's contribution to the country's development in the space sector.

Scientists and engineers from Hong Kong joined multiple research programs and several experiments of the Shenzhou-11 mission were designed by Hong Kong youngsters, Hao said.

The event was the latest of a series of space-related activities in Hong Kong. In the past months, renowned national space scientists visited Hong Kong and a lunar soil sample was also on display here. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-09-03 21:08:15|Editor: huaxia

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BEIJING, Sept. 3 (Xinhua) -- China Special Envoy for Climate Change Xie Zhenhua held talks upon invitation with visiting U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry in Tianjin from Tuesday to Thursday, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment said Friday.

The two sides conducted candid, in-depth and pragmatic dialogues and had a full exchange of views on key issues, including the seriousness and urgency of global climate change, plans for bilateral talks and cooperation on climate change, and the upcoming United Nations (UN) Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Britain.

The two sides shared the policies and actions on climate change adopted by their respective countries. China has set up a leading group on carbon peak and carbon neutrality, and is working on a policy system to peak carbon dioxide emissions by 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2060, according to the Chinese side.

The U.S. side introduced the Biden administration's policies to facilitate the country's goals on cutting emissions, according to the ministry.

Recognizing the significance of the China-U.S. climate talks on the multilateral efforts to address climate change, the two sides discussed the next moves to put the bilateral talks on a more institutional, concrete and pragmatic footing, and to nail down certain cooperation plans and projects in the green and low-carbon sector by establishing relevant mechanisms.

Under the multilateral process of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Paris Agreement, the two sides will jointly work with other parties to push for the success of the Glasgow conference.

The two sides agreed to continue their dialogues and consultations, take action on climate issues, strengthen pragmatic cooperation, jointly push forward the multilateral process and boost the full, effective and sustained implementation of the Paris Agreement. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-09-03 21:13:53|Editor: huaxia

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Chinese Premier Li Keqiang addresses the opening ceremony of the Taiyuan Energy Low Carbon Development Forum 2021 via video link, Sept. 3, 2021. (Xinhua/Ding Haitao)

BEIJING, Sept. 3 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Premier Li Keqiang on Friday called on all countries to work together to overcome difficulties, and strive to achieve development and green transition at the same time.

Li made the remarks while addressing the opening ceremony of the Taiyuan Energy Low Carbon Development Forum 2021 via video link.

Noting that the Chinese government attaches great importance to the high-quality development of its energy sector and tackling climate change, Li said the country has seen an improving environment over the past few years amid efforts to fight pollution, optimize energy and industrial structure and cut emissions.

In his keynote speech, Li made a three-point proposal.

All countries should uphold a scientific spirit and take a pragmatic attitude in utilizing clean energy and pushing low-carbon transformation, Li said.

Efforts should be made to continue to advance global climate governance in light of the respective historical responsibilities and national conditions of different countries, he said.

He also called on all countries to strengthen policy coordination and carry out structural reforms, while working together to achieve the balanced, green and sustainable recovery of the world economy.

China will uphold the new energy-security strategy and push reforms in energy consumption, supply, technology and mechanism, Li said, adding that the country will strengthen international cooperation on all fronts to advance the energy transition.

While implementing cross-cyclical macro policy adjustment, the country will speed up industrial upgrading, curbing high energy-consuming and high-emission industries, while developing energy-conserving and environmentally friendly ones, Li said.

The forum is being held in Taiyuan, capital of north China's Shanxi Province, and will last from Sept. 3 to Sept. 4. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-09-03 23:57:45|Editor: huaxia

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-- China has decided to set up a new stock exchange in Beijing, building it into a primary platform serving innovation-oriented small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) as the capital market evolves to meet the financing needs of various entities.

-- Since the reform and opening-up, China's SMEs have played a major role in spurring innovation and quickly grown into major job creators and drivers of growth.

-- The creation of the Beijing stock exchange is part of the country's efforts to deepen reforms of the New Third Board, marking a major institutional breakthrough and a new start in China's capital market.

BEIJING, Sept. 3 (Xinhua) -- In a key step forward, China has decided to set up a new stock exchange in Beijing, building it into a primary platform serving innovation-oriented small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) as the capital market evolves to meet the financing needs of various entities.

Differentiated from the stock exchanges of Shanghai and Shenzhen, the new Beijing bourse has the clear mission of serving innovative SMEs, as China's economic resilience hinges heavily on the well-being of the country's myriad businesses.

The creation of a third bourse aims to shore up the weak link in China's capital market, build a complementary development path for SME financing, and foster a healthy market environment for innovation and entrepreneurship, according to the country's top securities regulator.

Photo taken on Sept. 30, 2018 shows Zhongguancun InnoWay, an entrepreneurship-oriented street in Haidian District of Beijing, capital of China. (Xinhua/Ju Huanzong)

WEAK LINK

Since the reform and opening-up, China's SMEs, on the back of the country's vast market and economic rise, have played a major role in spurring innovation and quickly grown into major job creators and drivers of growth.

But in recent years the sector has faced increasing pressure from economic headwinds, higher costs of labor and materials, as well as financing difficulties due to a lack of support from banks and financial institutions.

According to a report by the World Bank in 2018, China's SMEs and micro firms had a finance gap of 1.89 trillion U.S. dollars, accounting for 17 percent of the country's GDP.

Besides encouraging banks to lend more to the SMEs, Chinese policymakers have been taking steps to reform the capital market to enable direct financing of the firms to fix the structural imbalance.

In 2013, a national equity exchange system known as the "New Third Board" was launched to facilitate financing for China's non-listed firms, allowing them to exchange equity and raise funds on the platform.

Positioned as an important venue for the capital market to serve SMEs and private businesses since its debut, the New Third Board has offered financial services to 13,000 companies.

Employees of a network creative cultural products company design webpages in Yongqing County, north China's Hebei Province, Dec. 18, 2019. (Xinhua/Li Xiaoguo)

But problems have emerged, such as insufficient liquidity and dwindling listings, as the financing and trading rules in the system can no longer meet the needs of firms, prompting authorities to make further reforms.

Last year, China introduced new rules allowing eligible companies listed on the New Third Board to shift to the sci-tech innovation board of the Shanghai Stock Exchange and the Shenzhen Stock Exchange's board of growth enterprises, so as to strengthen the connection between multi-level capital markets.

NEW START

The creation of the Beijing stock exchange is part of efforts to deepen reforms of the New Third Board, marking a major institutional breakthrough and a new start in China's capital market.

Built upon the New Third Board, the Beijing bourse will host selected companies traded on the equity exchange platform and pilot the registration-based IPO system.

The stock exchange will not impose a limit on the price change on the first day of trading, and daily trading movements will be restricted within 30 percent after that.

The move offers an important venue for SME financing, lowers the threshold for growth companies to obtain financing through formal institutions, and will help foster a multi-level capital market, said Zou Yasheng, head of the School of Banking and Finance with the University of International Business and Economics.

E-commerce entrepreneurs celebrate as an online order was clinched in Rong'an County, south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, May 8, 2021. (Xinhua/Zhang Ailin)

Stressing the significance of the Beijing stock exchange, Sui Zhenjiang, vice mayor of Beijing, pledged that the city would solidly implement related policies to facilitate the setting up of the bourse.

As the national center of science and technology innovation, Beijing has rich resources in the field and has achieved remarkable results in applying related technologies.

In the future, the city will provide equity trading conditions for multinational companies investing in technology-based SMEs to promote win-win cooperation, Sui said.

Mattias Debroyer, economic and commercial consul with the Brussels Agency for Business Support, hailed the move to shore up support for innovative SMEs and called on more synergies between Beijing and Brussels.

"Beijing and Brussels have been partners for more than 25 years," he said, adding that he hopes the two cities will "have more cooperation in the field of stock exchange."

(Video reporters: Hong Yan, Yang Zhigang, Liu Chunhui; Video editor: Zhang Yucheng) 
Source: Xinhua| 2021-09-03 09:33:24|Editor: huaxia

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TRIPOLI, Sept. 2 (Xinhua) -- The ambassador of the European Union (EU) Delegation to Libya stressed here on Thursday the EU's support for the upcoming elections in Libya.

Jose Antonio Sabadell voiced this view during a meeting with Emad Al-Sayeh, chairman of the Libyan Higher National Commission of Elections.

The meeting "covered developments of the elections according to the current political data, as well as the level of readiness of the Commission, especially following the voter registration process, and the most important preparations for the next stage," said a statement issued by the commission.

Sabadell praised "the commission's efforts for voters registration, which contributes to holding the elections on time," the statement said.

The ambassador expressed his delegation's readiness to cooperate with the commission to organize successful elections.

The UN-sponsored Libyan Political Dialogue Forum in February selected a new executive authority of a unity government and a presidency council, whose main task is to prepare for the general elections to be held on Dec. 24 this year. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-09-03 21:44:41|Editor: huaxia

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NAIROBI, Sept. 3 (Xinhua) -- Kenya's half-year avocados exports rose nearly 30 percent compared to a similar period last year, the Horticultural Crops Directorate said Friday.

The exports of avocado hit 60,511 metric tons in the first six months of 2021, compared to 46,707 metric tons in a similar period last year, the state agency said in a report released in Nairobi, the Kenyan capital.

The agency said that the east African nation generated earnings of 9.9 billion shillings (about 90.8 million U.S. dollars) from the exports of the fruit.

The key markets for avocado were European and Middle East countries. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-09-04 00:23:00|Editor: huaxia

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RABAT, Sept. 3 (Xinhua) -- Morocco reported on Friday 4,381 new COVID-19 cases, bringing the total infections in the country to 876,732.

The death toll rose to 12,923 with 104 new fatalities during the last 24 hours, while 2,250 people are in intensive care units, according to a statement by the Ministry of Health.

The total number of recoveries from COVID-19 in Morocco increased by 6,237 to 813,670, the statement said.

The COVID-19 fatality rate in Morocco stands at 1.5 percent while the recovery rate is 92.8 percent.

Meanwhile, 19,041,052 people have received so far the first vaccine shots against COVID-19 in the country, and 15,476,607 people have received two doses.

The North African country launched a nationwide vaccination campaign on Jan. 28 after the arrival of the first shipment of China's Sinopharm vaccines. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-09-03 13:08:20|Editor: huaxia

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WASHINGTON, Sept. 2 (Xinhua) -- Since its declaration of independence in 1776, the United States has been involved in warfare through most of its history. And Washington has been proactively engaged in military interventions or even launched military operations in hotspot regions worldwide over the past decades.

While there are historical reasons for the bellicosity, America's heavy reliance on military approaches over the past decades has been essentially driven by a hankering to retain hegemony in the world and vested interests of the country's influential military-industrial complex, media pundits and experts have said.

Its "war addiction", which has led to hundreds of thousands of deaths and destruction of countless homes in an array of countries, has also backfired, with casualties and tragedies among its own troops piling up amid sky-high military spending.

HISTORY OF USING VIOLENCE

In early 1600s, colonists and Native Americans attempted a mutual relationship based on exchanges of goods and ideas.

However, with the influx of more European migrants, settlers stepped up violent seizure of land and resources while carrying out massacres of the indigenous. The barbaric acts, along with imported diseases such as smallpox, and famine, had radically reduced the indigenous population.

Worsened relations led to King Philip's War, also known as the First Indian War from 1675 to 1676. In the bloodiest war per capita in U.S. history, thousands of Indians were killed, wounded, or captured and sold into slavery or indentured servitude, and several hundred colonists were dead and dozens of English settlements destroyed or heavily damaged.

Thirty colonies on the Atlantic coast of North America declared their independence from Great Britain in 1776 and formed the United States of America while fighting the "American Revolutionary War." Yet the federal government did not move to alleviate the suffering of the Native Americans after winning the war. Instead, its policies motivated violent displacement and bloody killings of them.

Take the Indian Removal Act. Effective from 1830, it gave land belonging to the Native Americans to southern states. More than 46,000 Native Americans were forced -- sometimes by the U.S. military -- to abandon their homes and relocate.

Thousands of them died of disease, starvation, and exposure to extreme weather, on the forced journey in what became known as the "Trail of Tears."

There was a widespread belief in Manifest Destiny in the 19th century that the United States is destined to expand its dominion and spread its values to justify the forced removal of Native Americans and other groups from their homes, as well as its territorial expansion through wars.

"Violence is the primal problem of American history, the dark reverse of its coin of freedom and abundance," wrote U.S. historian David Courtwright in 1996.

WAR ADDICTION

During a speech in 2019, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter said that the United States is "the most warlike nation in the history of the world," because it has only enjoyed 16 years of peace in its 242-year history.

The root cause of America's addiction to the use of armed forces, firstly, lies in its yearning to maintain hegemony. For long, the U.S. government has pursued hegemonic policies and spared no effort to hold the global standing. Waging wars have thus been a crucial tool to that end.

The United States has no moral scruples to initiate a war, by hook or by crook. To justify their military operations, the United States has frequently hyped up the military threats posed by other countries, though it has had the world's largest and most expensive military and sought a military superiority with an obsession in arms races.

Secondly, the war addition is related to Washington's desire to export its values. Boasting of "a city upon a hill," the United States believes in so-called "American exceptionalism" and has tried relentlessly to spread its self-defined "universal values." For those countries who have different systems and values, they are more likely to be subject to military intervention by the United States and its allies.

Thirdly, the United States pursues the law of the jungle in the international arena. Since the end of the Cold War, America's strength has grown unprecedentedly dominant and become increasingly arrogant in addressing international affairs. It is habituated to resort to military means with no regard to international order and rules and with no respect for other countries.

One of the reasons that the United States "keeps fighting foolish wars" is that "it has a remarkably powerful military," wrote Stephen Walt, a Harvard University professor of international relations, in an op-ed article published by Foreign Policy magazine in 2011.

"When you've got hundreds of planes, smart bombs, and cruise missiles, the whole world looks like a target set," Walt argued.

DISASTROUS CONSEQUENCES

Since the end of World War II, the United States has either intervened or waged a number of wars overseas, causing not only severe civilian casualties, but serious property damage and harrowing humanitarian crisis. Till now, many countries are still stuck in a disastrous state, and the United States itself has paid a huge price.

According to a study by Brown University, at least 800,000 people have died in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria and Yemen since the United States launched the "War on Terror" after the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001. That number only includes lives directly lost "through bombs and bullets" in major hotspots, according to the study. The U.S. wars have also turned tens of millions into refugees.

More than 7,000 U.S. troops and over 8,000 contractors working for the United States have also died fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Brown University study showed. In addition, tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers and contractors have been injured or suffered from mental illness, many of them having committed suicide due to the post-war trauma.

In addition, the U.S. wars have brought political turmoil, economic stagnation and destitute families in many countries. The United States itself is also struggling with the massive military spending and health care for veterans.

The war addiction of the United States has not only jeopardized world peace and stability, but also harmed the interests of the vast majority of its own people. And yet America's influential military-industrial complex is profiting off the wars.

The United States boasts five of the world's ten largest defense contractors, and U.S. companies account for 57 percent of total arms sales by the world's 100 largest defense contractors, according to a study by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. In 2020, America's military expenditure reached an estimated 778 billion U.S. dollars, accounting for nearly 40 percent of the world's total.

"Defense companies spend millions every year lobbying politicians and donating to their campaigns," Daniel Auble, a senior researcher for U.S. research group The Center for Responsive Politics, wrote in a report published earlier this year. "To further these goals they hired more than 200 lobbyists who have worked in the same government that regulates and decides funding for the industry."

Erica Fein, advocacy director of Win Without War, a U.S. public education and advocacy coalition, has warned, "continuing to funnel near-limitless resources into the pockets of arms manufacturers while underfunding public goods only undermines the safety of people in the United States and around the world." Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-09-03 13:12:15|Editor: huaxia

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WASHINGTON, Sept. 2 (Xinhua) -- U.S. companies are concerned that Washington's anti-China sentiment could hurt their ability to do business in the world's second-largest economy, reported news portal Politico on Wednesday.

Groups, including the Chamber of Commerce, the U.S.-China Business Council and the National Retail Federation, have been campaigning against congressional and White House moves to toughen trade and finance rules on China, said the report.

U.S. companies are concerned that a trade crackdown could strangle investments U.S. firms have made in the world's most populous nation, it said.

"There's a huge consumer market in China. Most of the big U.S. companies are selling there. They're not just using it as an export platform. They're integrated into the economy in other ways," Rufus Yerxa, a former senior U.S. trade representative and now president of the National Foreign Trade Council, was quoted as saying. Enditem
An overloaded boat sank on Wednesday night leading to the discovery of a contraband of smuggled bales (highlighted) of clothes at Msampakaruma Island in Lake Kariba. The contraband is believed to have been smuggled from Zambia.

The incident took place at Msampakaruma Bay when the boat, a Dolphin mini houseboat, tilted to one side under the weight of the bales of clothes.

Water started filling in the boat and it sank before members of the smuggling syndicate, believed to have been coming from Kariba Town and their Zambian links, disappeared in other boats.

The semi sunken boat was left behind with its captain at the island. The boat had been hired at Marineland Harbour and people became worried after it did not return by yesterday morning.

The MV Jesamine KF230 was hired out and it did not return as expected while communication was lost leading to alarm being raised, said sources close to the case.

When authorities visited Msampakaruma Island yesterday, only the captain of the hired boat was found hiding in nearby bushes. The bales of clothes were left behind.

According to some sources, the smuggled bales were coming from as far as Dubai. Investigations into the incident and the people behind the botched smuggling racket are in progress.

The vast waters of Lake Kariba and high number of boats makes it easier for smuggling syndicates to breach the invisible water boundary. Herald
She corresponded with Ferrante who gave notes on the script, which takes many creative liberties with the text, including making Leda British and Nina American, instead of Italian. The Italian author was supportive, wanting Gyllenhaal to make it her own. But Ferrante did say one thing: It was very important that Leda not be crazy. If she was, it would make the story dismissible.
I was just flabbergasted, said Dilenys Valdez, the mother of an 12-year-old student with albinism who attends the New York Institute for Special Education in the Bronx. Theres so many things going on. To add one more thing its like the cherry on top. Having to be a single, working parent of a child with a disability and have so many inconveniences with the DOE is just unacceptable.
City officials last week announced the vaccine mandate  which covers all 150,000 Education Department employees. Mulgrew told UFT members in an email that union lawyers believe the mandate has a strong legal foundation, but that the UFT will fight for fair and equitable process for medical and religious exemptions, an independent review and appeal process for members who are denied an exemption, and an appropriate outcome for members who decline to be vaccinated.
Because we have no staff, some days there is no one assigned to a housing unit. Sometimes for eight hours theres no one. Thats very dangerous, said Barnwell, who works in the MDCs medical department. The agency [Bureau of Prisons] is quite aware weve had several posts unmanned, and theyve done absolutely nothing about it.
The overwhelming feeling that I have towards the police and prosecutors is that they knew that we had not done this crime, Salaam told NPR earlier this year. They knew it, but yet they chose to move forward. They built their careers off of our backs. And the law of karma caught up to them.
Hsu, 48, died in a freak accident while visiting the building super in his basement residence. After he was called to check out the buildings pumps, the apartment flooded with such force that the water slammed the front door shut and trapped her inside, according to her ex-husband. She was found unconscious and died at Long Island Jewish Forest Hills hospital.
Bailey, a resident of Chandler, Ariz., was conscious and complained of pains to his head when he was taken to Mount Sinai-Morningside Hospital. He succumbed to his injuries a few hours later.
On Sept. 17, the FDAs outside advisory committee is due to publicly review Pfizers data supporting a booster shot. Pfizer is asking for approval on booster doses for people 16 and older, but at least one prominent member of the FDA panel who works at a childrens hospital in Pennsylvania has called the request premature.
Though there is no direct evidence, it appears likely from the information obtained that John Paul IIs past experience in Poland regarding the use of spurious allegations against bishops to degrade the standing of the Church played a role in his willingness to believe McCarricks denials, according to a summary of the report.
When deputies arrived at the Vero Beach home to serve the eviction that morning, they found what appeared to be a bomb taped to the front porch pillar with wires attached to it. A bomb technician went to the scene to investigate and determined it was fake, authorities said.
Also in Louisiana, health officials confirmed they were investigating the deaths of four nursing home residents who were among hundreds taken to a warehouse in Independence. Investigators have been told that some of those people were lying on mattresses on the floor, were not fed or changed and not kept at a safe distance from each other to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
We are the nations Army, and we continue to value and strengthen our shared trust with our local communities. Soldiers are trained to conduct themselves in a respectful manner and adhere to the Army values. They are also held accountable when they do not, Michaelis said.
People aiding anyone seeking an abortion after the detection of a fetus heartbeat or six weeks of pregnancy  when many have yet to even discover theyre pregnant  can be sued, including doctors, clinic workers, and even rideshare drivers who transport someone to a clinic.
I am extremely disappointed and angry that Missouri State Parks would bend to pressure from those who want to see people like me stripped of our rights and our dignity as American citizens, Sen. Greg Razer, the only openly gay member of the Missouri Senate, said in a statement.
Chansleys case has been one of the most high-profile from the Capitol riot. An estimated 600 people have been charged with various crimes. Five people were killed Jan. 6, and four police officers who responded to the riot have died by suicide since.
The records cannot possibly excuse Remingtons egregious marketing conduct, or be of any assistance in estimating the catastrophic damages in this case. The only relevant part of their attendance records is that they were at their desks on December 14, 2012.
When theres a snow event, you block people from going on the New York State Thruway, she said. To me thats just very logical: Dont let anybody else enter the subways until we can let everybody know theres a danger out there and clear out the people.
Those words appear to serve as a prelude to a cryptic tweet he put out on the Jan. 6 insurrection on Capitol Hill that, aside from those who perished, resulted in dozens of arrests and accusations that Trump encouraged groups like the Proud Boys and others to take part in the frenzy.
The families have long asserted that Saudi officials played more of a direct role than the U.S. government has said publicly, citing in part the fact that the first two hijackers to arrive in the U.S. ahead of the attack were welcomed and assisted by a Saudi diplomat. They have long accused the government of stonewalling their demands for documents, and on Thursday, urged the Justice Departments inspector general to investigate the FBIs apparent inability to locate a photograph, video and other records they seek
De Mbella apologized for having the guest on his primetime program and claimed the segment was his attempt at raising awareness of sexual assault issues. The show aired on the private TV channel Nouvelle Chaine Ivoirenne (NCI) on Monday, according to CNN.
He was seen as a ruler for the people, but his approval ratings plunged over the coronavirus measures he implemented to slow the spread of disease. Suga ultimately declared a state of emergency in January and has since repeatedly expanded and extended the emergency measures, most recently until Sept. 12. In the latest media surveys, his support ratings have declined to around 26%.
To everyone who was there and who witnessed such a horrific event, I cant imagine how they will be feeling in the aftermath, Ardern said. But thank you for coming to the aid of those who needed you when they needed you.
Documents obtained by Politico indicate the Cabinet Office for Operation has drafted a 10-day strategy that goes into action the day after the queen dies and includes how the announcement will be made, the planning of her funeral and everything in between.
By prioritizing funding for evidence-based programs, we can do a better job of ensuring that federal legislation is actually supporting economic mobility rather than just funding nonprofits. There are a number of national organizations that have utilized randomized controlled trials to certify the impact their programs have on economic mobility  not just six months after individuals go through the training, but over the course of a decade. At Per Scholas, these assessments have shown that our graduates experience at least a 20% increase in annual salary as a result of our training. That kind of economic boost is enough to catapult entire families into the middle class. By scaling programs with similar proven success metrics, just imagine the nationwide impact tens of thousands of newly minted middle-class families could have on our economy at large.
At the same time, its important to remember that the battle to secure the basic rights to health care goes on across this nation, even in places that seem to be progressive. Thats why none of us can afford to take our eyes off our own states. Thats true even right here in New York, home to Planned Parenthoods first birth control clinic, where we legalized abortion in 1970, when New York was one of only four states to do so.
The thread that since 1973 has woven reproductive rights into the fabric of our constitution has now been pulled out. The courts ruling in the Texas abortion case is alarming in its own right, to be sure. But it should also garner our attention to the radical rewriting of the U.S. Constitution by this Supreme Court. Were witnessing a new approach to constitutional rights, which the framers originally intended to hold together as an organic whole, each right in equal importance to the others, to be balanced carefully in hard cases. Now we are presented with an approach to constitutional rights in which some rights are more fundamental and absolute, while others are regarded as background values to be recognized and protected when there is little cost to doing so.
Owens was slated to speak at a conservative conference in Texas over the weekend, but withdrew, according to one speaker there, due to sudden illness. When it was suggested online that the 32-year-old Connecticut native may have been stricken by COVID, Owens went online to call it a conspiracy theory and said she was vacationing with her family in Aspen, Colo.
Its one of these crazy things where youre right inside the eye of the storm, you have no clue whats happening, but anyone 8,000 miles away, in front of a TV, knows much more than you do, Jules said. And then managing to get out, but still not realizing what happened. Radios are chaotic. Its only, Mayday! Mayday! "
Already, Orange County has received reports of more than 200 people dead with the virus in August, making it the third deadliest month of the pandemic. But more deaths are expected to be reported for August, which could make it the deadliest, Pino said. The deadliest month so far was January, where 229 people died.
Markeiths Loyd former attorney will represent him again when he stands trial for the 2017 killing of Orlando police Lt. Debra Clayton after Loyd told a judge Friday that he was having trouble handling his case on his own while in jail.
Toths attorney, Marc Consalo, said he worried they wouldnt even make it to Toths sentencing, because she attempted to kill herself many times since Jayces death, but said she became determined to get justice for him. He said it was impossible for her family to get her needed counseling or other help because of the criminal case against her.
When a family member or a close friend loses someone, especially in a situation like this, that is a very, very traumatizing experience, Rolon said. ... I understand how frustrating or emotional this could be for someone who has lived that experience. But again, I would say reserve all judgment until you have an opportunity to review the entire outcome of this investigation.
We know we are going to go back and review this and it is going to take some time, Gillingham said. Youve got to have a design, youve got to do the economics and you have to look at associated supply chains. I can commit that we are absolutely going to be looking at options.
I am very saddened by Dontrells death, Scarola said. He had a very difficult life that was made even far more difficult by the tragically unjustified paralysis. I hope that he did have at least some comfort derived by the modest compensation that he received from the claims bill, but it clearly wasnt sufficient to provide for the care he needed.
The School District of Lee County said the children and the bus driver were not hurt during the ordeal, according to WINK News.
Carr ended up appointing Barnhill to take over on Feb. 27, four days after the shooting. In his letter ordering an investigation last May, Carr said he was never told that Barnhill had already advised police that he did not see grounds for the arrest of any of the individuals involved in Mr. Arberys death.
Project Opioid found people already using opioids used them more often during the pandemic, and that people found it harder to get help for their addictions. The groups study found the crisis was particularly hard on communities of color, with overdoses among Black people increasing by more than 100% in the early months of the pandemic. The increase was 67% among Hispanics.
If these subsidies do expire, around 12 million Americans would face monthly insurance premium increases. On average, this would cost families an extra $600 per year, but that cost could be much greater for some. When families are ineligible for more benefits, their budget often does not afford them any flexibility. Far too many people would be left in limbo without the coverage they need.
Scott Maxwells article, Trump, Bondi and $25,000: The investigation that never was on Sept. 2 is evidence of why we need to keep print newspapers. So much of the news that I read online is sound bites; bits and pieces to grab your attention. The research and follow-through that Maxwell and others have done over a period of years led to this well-written, clear and concise summary of not just this case, but why Florida too often conducts political business in shady or illegal ways (too many turn a blind eye to it). This is a state of good people; lets not turn a blind eye to corruption and undue influence by any of our leaders.
Rep. Anna Eskamani, an Orlando Democrat and one of the panelists on Crists conference call, said demonstrations outside of district offices of lawmakers supporting the bill are already being planned. Although Democrats are outnumbered in the Legislature, they hope to pressure Republicans, especially moderates, into abandoning a bill similar to Texas.
The law of Florida does not permit the defendants to punish school boards, its members, or officials for adopting face mask mandates with no parental opt-outs if the school boards have been denied their due process rights under the Parents Bill of Rights to show that this policy is reasonable and meets the requirements of the statute, Cooper wrote.
If its something that is going to be with us, we cant just all go in our homes, shut the door, not have business, not work and not be able to conduct ourselves in a way with the community, Stargel said. So, we are going to work with it the best we can this year.
The crew will get a special view from the Crew Dragon Resilience, which first flew with passengers as part of NASAs Commercial Crew Program in November 2020 and spent more than six months attached to the International Space Station. SpaceX plans to refurbish and reuse Resilience for the upcoming Crew-3 mission to the ISS as early as Oct. 31. The other working Dragon capsule, Endeavour, is currently attached to the space station.
Oswego, NY (13126)

Today

Partly cloudy skies early. Thunderstorms developing late. Low 67F. Winds SSW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 70%..

Tonight

Partly cloudy skies early. Thunderstorms developing late. Low 67F. Winds SSW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 70%.
Welcome back pirates! As you make your return to campus The East Carolinian has created a forum that centers around topics within the community where readers can express their experiences and concerns. With the new guidelines set in place by East Carolina University do you feel as these precautions will keep you safe?

Survey
If you were looking for the Charlestown Democratic Town Committee website and ended up here, try this





Got news tips, gossip, suggestions, complaints?E-mail us: progressivecharlestown@gmail.com We strive to avoid errors in our articles. Our correction policy can be found here
Yes, August 24, 2021

By Sonali Kolhatkar

I am feeling a pervasive sense of deja vu in reading the news of how the Taliban has taken over Afghanistan within weeks of the U.S. withdrawal. Nearly 20 years after the U.S. invaded one of the worlds poorest nations in a retaliatory response to the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, the so-called enemy force is back in power. Afghan feminist activists have spent the past two decades warning the U.S. against resorting to violent solutions like war and collaborating with armed fundamentalists. Their pleas were ignored. So, it should not surprise us that the Afghanistan occupationand withdrawalhave gone as badly many predicted they would.

Watching the Talibans consolidation of national control is like seeing the start of the war in reverse, when American forces overthrew the fundamentalist government with stunning speed in 2001. But now, the Taliban arent just back where they startedtheyve gained a well-armed military worth $83 billion, bought and paid for by American tax dollars. And just as Western media pundits and liberal feminists in 2001 justified the war in the name of saving Afghan women from the institutionalized misogyny of the Taliban, today we hear similar warnings about how women will now be subject to laws from the seventh century under Taliban rule.

I first became aware of the appalling conditions facing Afghan women in 2000 via reports by the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan. RAWAs website detailed the Talibans edicts and how the Orwellian-sounding Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice enforced those strict rules against womens education, employment, and assembly. RAWA is the oldest feminist organization in Afghanistan and for decades has been operating underground inside the country as well as in the Afghan refugee camps of neighboring nations such as Pakistan.

Inspired by their courage, I joined a handful of other Americans in starting a nonprofit organization to gather small donations from American individuals and grassroots groups to financially support RAWAs long-term educational, health, and employment projects for women and girls. In 2000, I organized a nationwide speaking tour for two young RAWA members who spoke enough English to explain to American audiences why they should care about the Talibans misogyny. During their speaking events, the women showed an appalling video that a RAWA member had secretly recorded under her burqa in 1999 of the Talibans public execution of a woman in broad daylight in Kabul Stadium.

Then, the 9/11 attacks happened, and less than a month later, American aircraft were dropping bombs over Kabul and other Afghan cities. My colleagues and I, educated by RAWA of the history of U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, knew in 2001 that a war would do nothing to solve the nations problems. In fact, as RAWA members had explained during their American events, the Taliban first came to power to quell a bloody civil war that was fought by fundamentalist warlords (known as the mujahedeen) hired by the CIA to defeat the Soviets using American-supplied weapons. War was the problem, not the solution.

Warnings Ignored

Within days of the U.S. invasion, RAWA released a statement titled, Taliban should be overthrown by the uprising of Afghan nation. The organization knew that war would only hurt ordinary Afghans: This invasion will shed the blood of numerous women, men, children, young and old of our country, RAWAs statement read in part. They were right. The eventual death toll for Afghan civilians was more than 70,000likely an underestimate, given that bombing victims were often assumed to be fighters and not counted as civilians.

RAWA also warned that, The continuation of U.S. attacks and the increase in the number of innocent civilian victims not only gives an excuse to the Taliban, but also will cause the empowering of the fundamentalist forces in the region. Once again, they were right. The Taliban has justified their return to power by claiming, during their Aug. 17 press conference, that emancipating the country was a great, noble cause, to get rid of the occupiers.

RAWA was also prophetic in its prediction that U.S occupation would fuel fundamentalist violence. The U.S. oversaw the resurgence of violent armed warlords, who were handed power and money and offered up as a less extremist alternative to the Taliban. These men spent the past decade and a half ensuring that freedom remained out of reach for most women. As Human Rights Watchs Rachel Reid testified to the Senate Foreign Relations committee in 2010: The Afghan government, often with the support of the Bush administration, has empowered current and former warlords, providing official positions to some and impunity to the rest. She added, Backroom deals with extremist and abusive commanders profoundly undermine the rights and security of Afghan women.

What the Afghan People Want

When my partner James Ingalls and I visited Afghanistan in 2005 to research our book, Bleeding Afghanistan: Washington, Warlords, and the Propaganda of Silence (Seven Stories, 2006), we were struck by the profound thirst among Afghan people for democracy, education, and womens rights. Not only did we meet women who were working in dangerous conditions to educate their people, but we also met men who deeply believed in equality for their mothers, sisters, wives, and daughters.

We visited an orphanage filled with bright-eyed children who had lost both parents to the civil war fueled by the U.S. or whose parents simply could not afford to care for them. We spoke with the male principal of a brand-new school in Farah province run by RAWA. We met the widows of men who had died valiantly standing up to years of American-sponsored terrorism that predated the 2001 war. And, we met a young, soft-spoken woman named Malalai Joya who would go on to win election in 2005 to the Afghan parliament and emerge as one of the most vocal critics of the warlords, the Taliban, and the U.S. occupation.

As a member of Parliament, Joya gave voice to Afghan demands for democracy and womens rights. Whether or not Afghanistans nascent government would tolerate her presence was to be a measure of the freedoms that Americans believed they had delivered via war and occupation. Within just two years, Joyas outspokenness proved to be too much for the U.S.-backed warlords in government to bear. In 2007, they banned her from Parliament and forced her underground in what was a stark symbol of Americas failure to live up to the promises of Afghan womens rights.

The Taliban Are BackBecause of Us

In a 2008 interview with The Guardian, Joya warned, The perpetrators of these crimes should have to face the courts. But every day, they become more powerful. Like RAWA, she called for international accountability for war crimes by U.S.-backed warlords. Instead, the U.S. allowed the warlords to keep a stranglehold on political power, thereby ensuring that Afghan democracy remained weak and hostile to women.

Even more presciently, Joya pointed out in the interview, Now the U.S. wants to negotiate with the brutal Taliban and share power with them. Indeed, it emerged during Barack Obamas presidency that U.S. diplomats had been engaging with Taliban leadership to lay the groundwork for a withdrawal. Now, as the Taliban resume control of Afghanistan, we see the fruits of the Western validation of the very group that the U.S. had designated as an enemy and claimed to be saving Afghan women from.

The Talibans return ought to be sparking retrospection among American elites about the folly of exploiting Afghan womens oppression for war. Instead, a deeply racist victim blaming has emerged, exemplified most recently by an ignorant headline written by USA Todays Jill Lawrence: We cant make a country care about its own women. Only Afghanistan can do that. Like so many in U.S. media today, Lawrence ignored the U.S.s central role in deliberately undermining womens rights and democracy for decades by choosing over and over again to work with fundamentalist misogynist leaders.

Perhaps if Lawrence had met people living in the U.S.-backed fundamentalist hell that has been Afghanistan since the 1970s, she might have insisted on a different headline. Perhaps she would have realized that we cant expect womens rights to flourish when we have empowered misogynist leaders in Afghanistan.

We should have listened to RAWA and Malalai Joya. But we didnt, and the Taliban are back.

Of the many people I met more than 15 years ago in Afghanistan, the words of a woman named Mariam, who lost her husband to war in the 1980s, still remain with me:

We are also human beings. We are women. We want our rights, we want education. We also want all these things that your people want. I also want to be free like you people, to go freely to America, and to Japan, and to other countries to visit and see other people, to see how they live. For how long should we be living in these rooms with no freedom and such cruelty?

I have no answers left for Mariam. Today, we have relegated Afghan women once more to a locked room with no freedom and such cruelty. No amount of bombing or U.S. troops will free them. No amount of hand-wringing or judgmental ignorance will absolve us.

When I asked RAWA about its response to the Talibans takeover, the group promised to persevere: We will continue our struggles while finding smart ways to stay safe, they wrote. But they still have fearsnamely that the world may forget Afghanistan and Afghan women like under the Taliban bloody rule in late 90s. After so many decades of using womens oppression to justify our war and occupation, the very least we can do is not forget about the women of Afghanistan.
AFP, August 31, 2021

Kabul (AFP) When Ezmarai Ahmadi returned home from work on Sunday evening in Kabul, the usual gaggle of squealing children were waiting to greet him -- his sons and daughters, and a slew of nieces and nephews.

He pulled his white sedan into the driveway of a modest house in Kwaja Burga, a densely populated neighbourhood in the northwest of the Afghan capital, and handed the keys to his eldest son to park.

Youngsters piled into the vehicle -- pretending the parking routine was an adventure -- while Ezmarai watched from the side.

Then out of the blue Afghan sky, a missile came screeching down -- striking the car with a terrible force and obliterating the lives of 10 people in an instant.

The United States said Sunday it had destroyed an explosive-laden vehicle in an air strike, thwarting a bid by the Islamic State to detonate a car bomb at Kabul airport.

On Monday, it looked as if they could have made a terrible mistake.

"The rocket came and hit the car full of kids inside our house," said Aimal Ahmadi, Ezmarai's brother.

"It killed all of them."

Aimal said 10 members of the family died in the air strike -- including his own daughter and five other children.

On Monday, when AFP visited the scene, Aimal was impatiently waiting for other relatives to arrive to help him organise burials for most of his family.

"My brother and his four children were killed. I lost my small daughter... nephews and nieces," he said disconsolately.

"We are aware of reports of civilian casualties following our strike on a vehicle in Kabul," Captain Bill Urban, a US military spokesman, said in a statement.

- Despair -

Aimal can scarcely believe his brother could be mistaken for an Islamic State sympathiser, let alone an operative planning a deadly car bomb attack.

Ezmarai was an engineer working with a non-governmental organisation -- an ordinary Afghan trying to make ends meet in a turbulent time.

US nerves have been frayed since an IS suicide bomber triggered a massive blast at an entrance to the airport on Thursday, as huge crowds clamoured to get inside in the hope of getting aboard one of the final evacuation flights out of Afghanistan.

Nearly 100 Afghans were killed, and also 13 US service members -- just days before the last American soldier withdrew from the country on Monday night.

Against that backdrop, US intelligence had warned of another imminent attack, and on Sunday the US military said it had stopped one before it happened.

"We are still assessing the results of this strike, which we know disrupted an imminent ISIS-K threat to the airport," Urban said Sunday, using an acronym for the Afghan branch of the Islamic State group.

"We know that there were substantial and powerful subsequent explosions resulting from the destruction of the vehicle, indicating a large amount of explosive material inside that may have caused additional casualties," he continued.

"It is unclear what may have happened, and we are investigating further."

The deaths were among the last reported before the final US forces flew out of Afghanistan on Tuesday, after a brutal 20-year war.

Just over 38,000 civilians were killed between 2009 and the end of 2020, according to the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, which began systematically recording civilian casualties in 2009.

More than 70,000 others were wounded over the same period.

When locals heard the blast in the neighbourhood, they swiftly came to see what help they could offer.

"All the children were killed inside the car, the adults were killed just outside. The car was on fire -- we could hardly find body parts," said one, named Sabir.

"We would be deeply saddened by any potential loss of innocent life," the US spokesman said in the statement.

But those words rang hollow for another neighbour, Rashid Noori.

"The Taliban kill us, IS kill us and the Americans kill us," he said.

"Do they all think our children are terrorists?"
Posted by Liam on at 09:32 AM CST

Thanks for joining us,fans! This week weve dedicated our Expanded Universe coverage to thesaga, an exciting epic that explores the history of the Royal Guards in the years following. In order to learn more about the history of this storyline, make sure to check out our base  Expand Your Mind  article before delving into the rest of ourcoverage.Today with our Character Spotlight, were looking at the central protagonist of, Kir Kanos. While many of the Imperial Royal Guard had perished during the destruction of Death Star II, Kanos managed to escape in order to serve under the fragmented Imperial Remnant. The remaining guards train at a newly formed Royal Guard Academy, but theyre massacred by the turncoat Carnor Jax, who seeks to become Emperor himself.The events spark a lifelong rivalry between Kanos and Jax. Kanos became the last surviving Royal Guard loyal to Emperor Palpatine, whose clone had been defeated in. With Jax now a prominent member of the Imperial Ruling Council, Kanos became one of the most wanted men in the galaxy and was hunted down by legions of bounty hunters.Jax presented a compelling antagonist for. Despite his brutality, Kanos was fiercely loyal to his sworn duty and took a blood oath against the traitor Jax. Jax had received training under Palptaines acolyte Lumiya and possessed dark side abilities, becoming the presumed new Emperor. Their rivalry culminates in an epic duel, in which Kanos gains the upper hand and takes vengeance for the deaths of his fallen brothers-in-arms.picked up with Kanos as he took on the identity Kenix Kil and roamed the galaxy as a mercenary. With the Imperial Ruling Council still targeting him after the death of their leader, Kanos aimed to infiltrate their ranks by offering to track down his alternate identity. Unfortunately, the plot was doomed from the beginning, as the crime syndicate Black Sun had begun a covert operation to replace prominent Imperial figures with clones and blamed Kanos for the conspiracy.Once again facing off against his own ranks, Kanos once again was forced to take down a failed successor to Palpatine. The new Emperor Xandel Carivus is pretty much everything that Kanos hated; a wealthy bureaucrat with no combat experience, Carivus had worked with Jax to destroy Palpatines clones so he could take the Emperorship for himself.It wasnt all doom and gloom though, as the mission introduced Kanos to Mirith Sinn. A guerilla fighter for the New Republic, Sinn began to fall for Kanos despite their political differences. The two pair up to survive the desolate jungles of Zanibar, but their romance is cut short following Kanoss execution of Carivus. Sinn would return to the New Republic to work directly as Chief of Security for Princess Leia.It wasnt untilwhere Kanos finally saw peace. After reuniting with Sinn on Coruscant, the star-crossed lovers are once again roped within a conspiracy plot when the new Imperial Supreme Commander Ennix Devian aimed to disrupt a key peace treaty between the Remnant and New Republic. Devian meets his demise at Kanoss hands, but the last Imperial patriot is left critically injured and forced to abandon Sinn once more. Kanos rides off to an ambiguous fate; while his future is in question, hes no longer bound to the Empire.What do you think,fans? Are you a Kir Kanos fan? Who is your favoritevillain? Do you want to see Kanos join the official canon? Let us know in the forums , and as always, may the Force be with you!
A Place for All Conservatives to Speak Their Mind.
Espanola, NM (87532)

Today

A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible early. Partly cloudy skies. Low around 55F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible early. Partly cloudy skies. Low around 55F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph.
Actor Rakul Preet Singh on Friday appeared before the Enforcement Directorate (ED) for questioning in connection with a money laundering probe linked to a four-year-old drug case.

She reached the ED office here around 9.10 a.m., an hour before the scheduled time.

The ED has summoned Rakul for questioning on September 6 but she had sought more time citing her busy shooting schedule. However, the agency declined to postpone the questioning and asked her to appear three days before the scheduled time.

She is the third Tollywood personality being questioned by the ED. Director Puri Jagannadh was questioned for nearly 10 hours on Tuesday while actor Charmme Kaur was quizzed for about eight hours on Thursday.

The ED officials are questioning the film personalities about the financial transactions, if any, with those involved in the drugs case.

Both Puri and Charmme were reportedly questioned about the suspected links with Calvin Mascarenhas, a key accused in the case.

The ED last week issued notices to 10 persons connected to Tollywood and two others including a private club manager as part of a money laundering probe linked to the drugs racket.

Actors Rakul Preet Singh, Rana Daggubati, Ravi Teja, Charmme Kaur, Navdeep, Mumaith Khan and director Puri Jagannath have been asked to appear before ED between August 31 and September 22.

Tanish, Nandu, actor Ravi Teja's driver Srinivas are also among those summoned in connection with the drugs racket which was busted with the arrest of drug peddlers in 2017.

Rakul Preet Singh and Rana were not among Tollywood personalities questioned by the Special Investigation Team (SIT) of Telangana's prohibition and excise department, which probed the case.

The drugs racket was busted on July 2, 2017 when customs officials arrested Calvin Mascarenhas, a musician, and two others and seized drugs worth Rs 30 lakh from their possession.

They had reportedly told the investigators that they are supplying drugs to film celebrities, software engineers, and even students of some corporate schools. Mobile numbers of some Tollywood celebrities were allegedly found in their contact lists.

The excise department had constituted SIT for a comprehensive probe. A total of 12 cases were registered, 30 people were arrested while 62 individuals including 11 people connected with Tollywood were examined by the SIT under section 67 of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act and section 161 of Criminal Procedure Code.

The SIT had collected blood, hair, nail and other samples from some of those who appeared before it for questioning and sent them for analysis.

Actors Ravi Teja, Charmme Kaur, Mumaith Khan, director Puri Jagannath and young actors Tarun Kumar and P. Navadeep were among the stars who were questioned by the SIT.

Cinematographer Shyam K. Naidu, actors Subbaraju, Tanish, Nandu and Ravi Teja's driver Srinivas were also among those questioned.

The SIT filed chargesheet in eight out of 12 cases. It, however, gave clean chit to the film personalities who were questioned as part of the investigation.


The Union government has said that no cases of 'MU' variant of coronavirus have been detected from over 51,000 samples analysed so far in India. This new coronavirus variant 'MU' was identified first in Colombia in January. The World Health Organisation (WHO) has designated the MU strain of coronavirus as a 'variant of interest'. The Indian Council of Medical Research Director General Dr. Balram Bhargav said, "We are closely monitoring the new coronavirus 'Variants of Interest' named MU and no case has been detected so far in India". The WHO has warned that the new MU variant shows signs of possible resistance to the vaccines. The WHO said in a statement, "Based on the latest round of assessments, B.1.621 was classified as a Variant of Interest on August 30 and given the WHO label MU". "The MU variant has a constellation of mutations that indicate potential properties of immune escape. Preliminary data presented to the Virus Evolution Working Group show a reduction in neutralization capacity of convalescent and vaccines sera similar to that seen for the Beta variant, but this needs to be confirmed by further studies," the bulletin added. Commenting on the MU variant, NITI Ayog Member (Health) Dr V.K. Paul said that government and health scientists are keeping a close watch on this variant of interest. "It is a must to administer both doses of vaccine and follow the Covid appropriate behaviour to fight against any Covid variant", he added.




The UN Humanitarian Air Service (UNHAS), operated by the World Food Programme (WFP), has resumed flights to enable 160 humanitarian organisations to continue their life-saving activities in Afghanistan since the Taliban took over the war-torn nation, a top official said.

The air passenger service is currently linking the Pakistani capital of Islamabad to Mazar-i-Sharif and Kandahar in Afghanistan, Xinhua news agency quoted Stephane Dujarric, spokesman for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, as saying on Thursday.

He added that three flights have already arrived in Mazar-i-Sharif since Sunday.

All efforts are being made to step up operations as soon as possible and increase the number of flown-to destinations in Afghanistan, according to the WFP.

In addition, a cargo air bridge is being established to transport non-food items, such as medical and other emergency supplies to where they are needed the most, it added.

The Afghan capital of Kabul remains inaccessible by air at the moment, Dujarric said.

"That airport is not yet operational, for us at least. We, obviously, very much hope that it will be in the near future. I think access to airports throughout Afghanistan is very important given the difficulty of often travelling by road.

"And obviously the airport in Kabul is, indeed, very important for us to be able to rotate staff and bring in goods," the spokesman added

UNHAS' domestic passenger service requires $18 million, and $12 million is required for the cargo air bridge.

Both services will be utilised by the entire humanitarian community, said the spokesman.

From 2002 to 2021, UNHAS served more than 20 destinations in Afghanistan.

It will seek to return to these locations once security and funding permits, Dujarric added.
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The Minister of Public Health, Social Development and Labor, Omar Ottley extends his heartfelt condolences to the families and friends of the three (3) victims who passed away due to COVID-19.Much strength to the families during this time.





As of September 2nd, there were twenty nine (29) persons who tested positive for COVID-19; however thirty four (34) persons have recovered; bringing the total active cases to two hundred fifty seven (257). The total number of confirmed cases is now three thousand seven hundred seventy five (3775).





The Collective Prevention Services (CPS) are monitoring two hundred forty two (242) people in home isolation. Fifteen (15) patients are hospitalized at the St. Maarten Medical Center. The total number of deaths due to COVID-19 has increased to fifty six (56).





The number of people recovered since the first case surfaced on St. Maarten has increased to three thousand four hundred sixty two (3462). Two hundred twelve (212) people are in quarantine based on contact tracing investigations carried out by CPS.





The Ministry of Public Health, Social Development and Labour (VSA) Airport Health Team in collaboration with Health Care Laboratory Sint Maarten (HCLS) have tested 3, 625 travelers arriving at the Princess Juliana International Airport (PJIA), while CPS tested 41, 509 people throughout the community. As the numbers continue to fluctuate, CPS will continue to actively execute its contact tracing measures.





Minister Ottley urges everyone to take your health seriously. Do your research and consider getting vaccinated.
Page Content

On Tuesday, August 31, four civil servants of the Department of Legal Affairs graduated from the University of Curacaos School of Law Sint Maarten Division. The Certified Legislative Lawyer course completed by the civil servants was organized by the Caribbean Center for Legislation in Sint Maarten, Curacao and Aruba. The aim of the course is to enable the participants to work as legislative lawyers in each of the three Caribbean countries, in principle in any policy area. Prime Minister and Minister of General Affairs Silveria Jacobs, Minister of Education, Culture, Youth and Sport drs. Rodolphe Samuel, Ministry of General Affairs Secretary General Hensley Plantijn and Former Acting Head of the Legal Affairs Department Gilbert de Windt were all present at the ceremony.





During the ceremony, Prime Minister Jacobs addressed the civil servants and stated, An organizations strength lies in the possibility to allow personal growth and individual development of personnel. In turn, the institution benefits from your skills, knowledge, hard work and dedication. I am grateful that our sister countries are able to collaborate with St. Maarten on this level. If we want to go far within this Kingdom, the best way to do so is together.





Legal Advisors within the government of St. Maarten are highly encouraged to register for the online course by September 10, by emailing CCL@uoc.cw. The registration is open for civil servants, lawyers, higher councils and persons with a legal background. The Certified Legislative Lawyer course lasts one year and consists of five modules, namely, Deepening constitutional and administrative law; General legal doctrines; Legislative engineering; Clinic legislation; and In-depth Constitutional and Administrative Law. To obtain the Certified Legislative Lawyer diploma, all modules must be completed with a passing grade.





On behalf of the government of St. Maarten, I would like to congratulate these four women on their major accomplishment for themselves and the people of St. Maarten by extension. Their sacrifice and commitment make a lasting impact on themselves, their department and the government of St. Maarten, concluded Prime Minister Jacobs.
Several recent incidents of violent crimes against women have once again highlighted the need for reform in the police, courts and society as a whole.

Citizens in Pakistan have been left horrified and enraged by a video that surfaced recently showing a crowd of more than 400 men groping and assaulting a young woman. The incident, which took place on 14 August outside the Minar-e-Pakistan, a national monument in Lahore, has called attention to the alarming rise in gender-based violence in the South Asian nation.

Violent acts targeting women and girls such as rape, so-called honour killings, acid attacks, domestic violence and forced marriage have long been a problem in Pakistan, but the recent spike in such crimes has once again emphasised their pervasiveness. The Minar-e-Pakistan incident happened just a few weeks after the grisly murder of a 27-year-old woman sparked a massive public outcry.

19 August 2021: A screengrab of India Todays interview with the woman who was harassed by a group of 400 men at an independence day celebration in Lahore, Pakistan. (Image via www.indiatoday.in)

On 20 July, Noor Mukadam, the daughter of a former Pakistani diplomat, was discovered decapitated in an affluent neighbourhood of the capital Islamabad. The killing resulted in a nationwide campaign seeking justice for the victim, with the hashtag #JusticeforNoor trending on Twitter. The murder was the latest case in a string of attacks against women in Pakistan, where gender-based violence, especially femicides, continue to be rooted in patriarchal norms.

An epidemic of honour killing in Pakistan

Pakistan is ranked 153 out of 156 countries in the World Economic Forums 2021 Global Gender Gap Report, just below war-ravaged Iraq, Yemen and Afghanistan. The nation features among the bottom 10 countries in two of the four sub-indexes: economic participation and opportunity (152nd) and health and survival (153rd).

Mukadams social standing as a member of the countrys elite may be one of the reasons the tragedy has drawn attention. The majority of women who are victims of gender-based violence, activists contend, are from the countrys low and middle classes and their deaths are often not recorded, or disregarded.

Womens lives in rural areas differ considerably from those in metropolitan places such as Islamabad, where they enjoy relative safety. Landlords retain social, economic and political clout in rural parts of the country, where feudal structures persist and the administration and police often function subserviently to these chieftains.

Bloodthirsty femicide

When Mukadams murder became public, social media platforms in Pakistan were already buzzing with hashtags like #JusticeForQuratulain and #JusticeForSaima. This came after the murders of Qurat-ul-Ain Baloch, a mother of four who was allegedly killed by her husband in Sindh province on 15 July, and Bushra Raza, who died on 3 July, also at the hands of her husband. Both are said to have been victims of domestic abuse for years.

Noors death came in the wake of a lurid melee of cases of Pakistani men slaughtering Pakistani women. Just days before her death, Pakistan, or rather those Pakistanis who mourn such crimes and killings, had witnessed another act of bloodthirsty femicide, author Rafia Zakaria wrote in the newspaper Dawn. It is as if the sheer horror of Noors case has suddenly made us all feel the burden of the bodies of dead women killed by our inability to punish men.

In the same newspaper, Amnesty International South Asia campaigner Rimmel Mohydin contended that the countrys political and criminal justice systems have failed to redress the structural inequities, prejudices and discrimination that have fostered the permissive culture in which such atrocities occur.

The violence with which [Mukadam] was taken is extraordinary, but what is required now is what has always been required: an understanding at the highest level of deep-seated patriarchy that fuels gender-based violence and perpetuates impunity, selective outrage and victim blaming, Mohydin wrote.

Womens rights activists have frequently accused the Pakistani state of abdicating its obligation to implement laws that protect women from abuse, and have chastised the government for its failure to respond to violence against women.

In April, Prime Minister Imran Khan was berated for saying that an increase in sexual assault cases may be attributed to womens attire and labelled a rape apologist. Khan responded saying his remark was taken out of context and that any person who commits rape is solely responsible for the crime and never the victim. Many, however, feel that such remarks are a reflection of the larger culture of sexism and misogyny prevalent in Pakistan.

An epidemic of violence

According to the countrys Human Rights Commission and the Pakistan Journal of Medical Sciences, almost 90% of women have experienced some form of domestic violence at the hands of their husbands or families, while 47% of married women have experienced sexual abuse, particularly rape. Only 0.4% of women take their cases to court, while 50% of women who experience domestic violence do not respond in any way and suffer silently.

Other government data highlight that about 28% of women aged between 15 and 49 have experienced physical violence since the age of 15, and 6% have experienced sexual violence. Almost 7% of women who have been pregnant experienced violence during their pregnancy. The most common type of spousal abuse is emotional violence (26%), followed by physical violence (23%). Conviction rates remain low at just 2.5% of all cases that make it to court.

Likewise, data by the Human Rights Commission suggests that there were 15 222 so-called honour killings recorded in Pakistan between 2004 and 2016. As many as 430 such cases were reported in 2020, involving 148 male and 363 female victims. Although laws prohibit these killings, legal experts say enforcement is often lackadaisical and trials get drawn out while defendants are released on bail and prosecutors lose cases.

In June, Parliament adopted new legislation, the Domestic Violence (Prevention and Protection) Bill, aimed at protecting women against domestic abuse with penalties of between six months and three years imprisonment. Only the presidents signature was required to enact the law, but it has been held up after Khans adviser on parliamentary affairs asked for its review by the Council of Islamic Ideology.

Pakistan does have fairly progressive laws in place, but their implementation remains an issue. Sindh enacted its domestic violence act in 2013. Balochistan passed a similar law in 2014 and Punjab did so in 2016. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa enacted a law on domestic violence only in January this year that prescribes a maximum of five years imprisonment and a fine for culprits.

Women are let down by an entire system

The fault lies in Pakistans criminal justice system, which remains steeped in patriarchy, gender bias and traditions that prejudice women. Officials at law enforcement agencies have been observed harassing, intimidating and silencing women. Often, womens voices are not heard and their complaints brushed under the carpet by the police saying it is a family matter, hence violence is normalised. The women who bravely tell their stories of violence are stigmatised and treated with scepticism.

The major deficiency stems from poor investigations by the police. Activists report that many officers do not even inform victims that they have to undergo medical examinations within 96 hours and consent to having them done. This eventually weakens the prosecutions case.

The judiciary has an extremely protectionist approach to cases of gender-based violence, especially sexual harassment. Modesty and character become the subject of trials instead of acknowledging sexual harassment as a crime. Focusing on the victims inhibitions, honour and embarrassment is another form of harassment.

The criminal justice system requires change. The police need more female representation. Global evidence has shown that women in leadership roles in policing can serve as role models and respond to complaints more effectively. The polices public image must be improved and officers sensitised to gender issues so that they handle womens complaints with empathy and the investigative process is humanised.

Pakistan requires the feminisation of the law and judiciary. There is also a need to develop and cultivate a feminine perspective on how the legal system judges gender-based violence. Laws have to be rewritten from the feminine perspective, as was the case when Justice Ayesha Malik banned the two-finger or virginity test in January, saying they were humiliating and had no forensic value. The landmark judgment has declared the test a human rights violation and will shift the focus from the victim to the perpetrator.

Women in Pakistan have theoretical but not practical protection under the law. Across the board, almost all human rights activists and lawyers agree that the surge in domestic violence is owing to a lack of implementation and enforcement. Pakistan needs to strengthen the internal checks and balances in the police and other organs of the state to ease the burden on the judiciary.

The way forward lies in the transformation of the social order, too. Women empowerment needs to start at home. An active campaign is also needed that should highlight the unacceptability of violence and womens legal right to end toxic and abusive marriages.

Aisha Ayub is a lawyer, activist and researcher based in Lahore. The article originally appeared in New Frame
The politicization of the Easter attack by Islamic extremists inspired by IS Ideology not only subdues the truth but also makes the enemy more tactful than before.

Editorial

Lone wolf attacks (lone actor attacks) in Auckland, New Zealand today is another horrific experience that has provided insight into the ideology maintained and propagated by jihadist terrorists, including Islamic State (IS). In the face of the false arguments of conspiracy theorists, it is vital to look at this incident in a context that challenges the scope of national security in this country.

The perpetrator of the Auckland shopping mall attacks has been under surveillance by the New Zealand security forces for many years and has been arrested on a previous occasion. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern clarified the attacks and the ideology the attacker was inspired, the IS ideology. Accordingly, the well-disciplined and media institutions in the country have taken steps to report the relevant incident by maintaining ethics. In a few days, hopefully, no one from the Catholic Church or any other civil rights group will appear in front of the media and say that the Prime Minister or the country's intelligence chief conspired to carry out the attacks. Fortunately, unlike in Sri Lanka, the majority of the country believes in science and reason rather than myth and conspiracies.

The man named S by New Zealand media came to the attention of New Zealand police in 2016 after he posted "staunchly anti-Western and violent" material on his social media accounts. Photo NZ Herald

What is important about the Easter attack in Sri Lanka in 2019 is to reach a scientific consensus and build a social discourse despite propagating misconceptions to deceive the public. It is important to reiterate what a Rand analyst told the Sri Lanka Guardian a few days after the attack. The attack was not the result of IS's choice of Sri Lanka, but the result of the ideology spreads by IS and other jihadist organizations being inspired by Islamic extremists in Sri Lanka. Internal disputes between top government leaders at the time set the stage for the attack.

But the Cardinal of the Catholic Church, who claim to be the modern Moses for the relief of the victims of this nightmare, and certain groups that use human rights as the sole source of income, are engaging in hideous schemes. From the day of the attack, they carried out a vicious campaign to confuse society and fabricate allegations against people for no apparent scientific reason.

Any country has a strategic process in which the intelligence services operate. The functions and responsibilities of modern intelligence services have been further complicated, especially by the tools introduced to the market for the exchange of information. In such a social complexity, turning the information into intelligence is a task that needs to be accomplished with great diligence. The politicization of the Easter attack by Islamic extremists inspired by IS Ideology not only subdues the truth but also makes the enemy more tactful than before.

The primary lesson that the Auckland shopping mall attacks teach us is the difference between man-centric terrorist groups and extremists who believe in an ideology based on immortality. The answer to this serious social threat cannot be found through conspiracy theories. Conspiracy theories can only create the environment the enemy needs to make the next attack more subtle. Let us pray to Almighty to open the eyes of His Holiness the Cardinal in Colombo and give him and those who surrounded him the wisdom to leave their nonsensical conspiracy theories. Amen!
Brussels (Belgium), September 2, 2021 (SPS) - Several European parliamentarians have raised the complicity of the European Union during the meeting of the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development of the European Parliament, held yesterday, Wednesday, denouncing the Illegal exploitation of natural resources in Western Sahara by the European Union and the occupying power, the Kingdom of Morocco.

European parliamentarians also highlighted attempts to circumvent international law and the decisions of the European Union Court of Justice regarding Sahrawi natural resources, placing emphasis on fraudulent labeling of products imported from the occupied areas of Western Sahara.

On the other hand, members of the European Parliament addressed the issue of the water level in Western Sahara, which drops 2 meters every year due to the excessive and frenzied exploitation of the Moroccan occupation. SPS

125/090/TRA
Mark and Vivian Darrell, 2021 co-chairs of the Charmaine Chapman Society, are proud that the societys more than 600 members are committed to building a brighter future for all and have raised more than $50 million to help the St. Louis community. The Society was established in 1994 and its 2021 campaign was launched on Aug. 25.
Comptroller Darlene Green announced that Moodys has upgraded St. louis credit rating, in part because fiscal impacts from the coronavirus pandemic have not been as drastic as we feared.
Dr. David Lenihan, Ponce Health Sciences University president, Dr. Jose Torres-Ruiz, chancellor, and Dr. Olga Rodriguez de Arzola, dean of medicine, were surrounded by students in the Master of Science in Medical Science (MSMS) Program following Tuesdays announcement that the school will open an $80 million facility with construction beginning in 2023 on the citys northside near the new NGA complex.
The disease continues to prove itself deadly for Floridians of all ages. The number of people who died from COVID in the last seven days increased by 2,325 additional deaths, topping the 1,727 additional deaths reported a week earlier. Of those newly reported deaths, 40 were younger than 29 years old. The majority of COVID deaths continue to be from the 65 and older age group. August has proven to be the deadliest month for the pandemic in Florida thus far.
Fauci also said that he believes a third dose of mRNA vaccines, namely Pfizer and Moderna, will be required to provide long-term protection against COVID. The U.S. is still studying the need for a booster dose of the single-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
His attorney, David Salomon, wrote to the inspector general that we deny most allegations, assumptions, speculations and arrive at different conclusions to the ones expressed by your office. It is clear from the record that the actions or failures to act on the part of Mr. Gilmartin or any of the listed supervisors are not nefarious, malignant, or criminal in nature.
Everybody that comes to Miami Beach knows of this house, said Jack Finglass, the chair of the Miami Beach Historic Preservation Board, which will be taking up the matter later this month. Finglass said he personally opposes knocking down the house because it is historical and an attraction to visitors.
Im actually going to pay my rent for the rest of my lease, because I have money, just so I can stay there to get the problem solved, he said. All I care about is little children not dying of lung cancer, because thats whats going to happen. Might not happen this year, but its gonna happen 10 years from now.
The Palm Beach Sheriffs Office said when deputies arrived at the motel, they found a man dead from an apparent gunshot wound. The female was detained at the scene.
Local school boards can adopt policies dealing with the health and education of school children, he wrote. To the extent that those policies may affect parents rights to control their childrens education or health, then it is incumbent on the school board to demonstrate that the policy is reasonable under the Parents Bill of Rights.
According to the IPCC report, climate change is causing more extreme weather, like heavy downpours and catastrophic hurricanes, which leads to more frequent and intense floods. A FEMA-sponsored study estimates that the size of the nations special flood hazard areas  areas with a 1% or greater chance of flooding in a given year  will grow by 40% to 45% and the total number of NFIP policies will double due to both climate change and population growth by the end of the century. If that scenario plays out, the average amount the NFIP would have to pay to cover claims could increase by as much as 90% and the average premium would have to rise by about 70% in todays U.S. dollars to offset the anticipated increase.
We recognize that face-to-face instruction is the most effective educational model. However, COVID numbers are currently on the climb and having an impact on students, teachers, and on the support staff on whom we rely so heavily  particularly our food service workers and bus drivers, Norton wrote on the districts Facebook page.
The court also uses it to dispose of emergency appeals. Each justice handles requests from a different region, and can reject them or bring them to the full court. And increasingly, the court has been using its orders docket  which was deemed the shadow docket in 2015 in an influential law journal article by William Baude, a University of Chicago law professor  to swiftly decide whether to block government actions, turning it into a powerful tool for affecting public policy without fully hearing from the parties or explaining its actions in writing.
Larry remains a big hurricane with its hurricane-force winds extending up to 90 miles from its core and tropical-storm-force winds reaching up to 230 miles. Larry, now a Category 1 hurricane, will skirt Bermuda before heading up to Canada, where its due for a landfall.
As for mask mandates, school boards across the state have rightly defied the governor and put the health of children before some benighted Floridians insistence that their rights trump public health measures. Unfortunately, DeSantis kowtows to those who would wave an American flag while their nation burns. They are the same people who cheered when Donald Trump would molest a flag onstage at his rallies, and they are an important constituency for DeSantis 2024 presidential ambitions.
Rivkees departure means DeSantis has to find a replacement for one of the most important positions in state government. The next health secretary must be a public health expert with authority to speak directly to 22 million Floridians and millions more who visit the state every year. Its a demanding and important job. But DeSantis has politicized public health to the point where its hard to imagine why a serious expert would want it.
I was not in favor of getting out of Afghanistan, and President Biden will no doubt pay a huge political price for the way it ended and for the horrors to come. But I would observe that Trump wanted to get out from his Day 1, yet somehow couldnt get it done for four years until early 2020, and finally negotiated an exit date of 14 months later, well after his re-election bid. A shrewd political strategy, taking credit for negotiating the end of the war, but leaving the potentially disastrous consequences of his action until after the election.
Benalmadena town hall has announced that the green light has been given to a project that will enable the La Tribuna building to be transformed into a tourist information office.

La Tribuna, known among the locals as El Corralon (the barn), is situated between Plaza de Espana and Avenida de Andalucia, and it is the oldest building in Arroyo de la Miel. The new centre, the only surviving edifice of an 18th century papermaking complex, will be part of a route dedicated to Felix Solesio, founder of Arroyo de la Miel. Solesio, an Italian impresario, purchased a small farm in 1784 to build six paper factories to supply the Royal Factory of Playing Cards in Macharaviaya, a village in the Axarquia region of Malaga.

"The idea is that every emblematic corner of the town with vestiges of the history of the municipality acquires value so that we can establish a route that narrates the past of Benalmadena," the town's mayor Victor Navas said.

The work on the new centre, which will also include a small museum, is expected to cost around 32,000 euros and will take two months to complete.
Princess Leonor, heir to the throne, started a new stage of her life this week when she left Spain for a boarding school in Wales nicknamed Hippy Hogwarts.

Leonor was setting out for two key years of study; not just like any young person of her age - she turns 16 in October - but also because of the role that history has reserved for her. Next will come military service and, when she comes of age, her own diary of engagements.

Leonor, also known as Princesa de Asturias, arrived in Wales on Monday and met her three new roommates. She is joining Atlantic College where she will study the International Baccalaureate. The school - set in a castle alongside the sea in the Vale of Glamorgan, near Cardiff - is known for its innovative approach to education and emphasis on preparing pupils for leadership roles while encouraging applicants from a wide range of social backgrounds. It has been popular with other members of royalty and one daughter of the King of the Netherlands is also joining this year.

According to the college, new pupils will confront situations to explore their own strengths and weaknesses.

And so Princess Leonor effectively woke up on Monday in a Spanish palace and went to sleep in a Welsh castle.

Family goodbye in Madrid

Her final few hours before travelling at the King and Queen's Zarzuela palace home, a relatively simple official residence, would have logically been full of nerves.

It was expected that the Royal Household would release some images of the farewell but nothing was expected of the princess's arrival in Britain. However, there was a surprise for the media when a set of very natural photographs was sent out showing the Royal Family at the entrance to Terminal 4 of Madrid's Barajas Airport while saying goodbye.

King Felipe and Queen Letizia were there, as was Infanta Sofia, Leonor's younger sister, to hug and give final words of wisdom before checking in. Timeless scenes of a goodbye to a teenager, suitcase in hand, who was going to study abroad (if it weren't for the mask wearing and having to separate at the entrance door to the terminal). Images that said, "We are going to miss you". After the goodbye, Felipe was seen comforting his younger daughter while watching Leonor stride on.

The suitcase was small - in Wales she will have a wardrobe just a metre wide and a chest of drawers to store things. However, pupils at Atlantic College can wear what they want as there is no school uniform.

New arrivals faced 10 days of lockdown at the school in order to stifle any possible Covid cases. Once term starts, classes will begin at 8am and go through to 1.10pm. The afternoons are for sport or other chosen educational or voluntary activities. Two years at the school cost 76,000 euros, which the Royals are paying from personal funds, however many students receive full grants.

"One of the biggest obstacles these days is socioeconomic, so being able to bring together royalty like Princess Leonor with refugees, for example, is a great opportunity to meet as equals and to understand the world where others live," outgoing school director, Peter T. Howe, previously explained.
The announcement that the Junta de Andalucia plans to coronavirus jab children under the age of twelve in their schools from October has reopened the debate on the vaccination of the youngest.

To what extent is it necessary if the majority are asymptomatic? Will they receive the same dose as adults? Can parents object to having their children vaccinated?

The coordinator of the vaccine advisory committee of the Spanish Association of Paediatrics, Francisco Alvarez, has reminded that a vaccine has not yet been approved for this age group, although there are several trials underway. That is why the health professionals consider the Andalusian Government's plans, which even included a date, "hasty", saying: "They have thrown themselves into a pool that is only half full."

Pfizer is developing the most advanced paediatric study to date. The American pharmaceutical company has explained to SUR that they have already completed the first phase and have started the second and third "to further evaluate the safety and tolerability" of their serum in children between five and eleven years old.

The second phase that assesses the impact of the vaccine in children between six months and five years will begin "in the coming weeks." These studies involve "up to 4,500 volunteers" aged 11 and under from the United States, Finland, Poland and Spain.

Upon completion of the trials, Pfizer will present its findings to drug regulatory bodies, first to the United States Agency (FDA) and then to the European Agency (EMA).

The regions in Spain will only be able to start administering the vaccine when the European agency gives the green-light for its use.

Pfizer has not revealed what the planned schedule is, although they have announced that the doses will be lower than in adults: one third for children between five and eleven years old and one tenth for children between six months and five years old.

After the Juntas announcement on Wednesday, when vice-president Juan Marin said that children will be vaccinated in their schools, the regional government has closed ranks. The Health minister, Jesus Aguirre, clarified on Thursday (2 September) that we will have to wait for the conclusion of the studies that are underway, taking into account that they refer to a very sensitive population and must be approved through the European Medicines Agency, before being administered in the regions.

This prudence has been better received by the Spanish Association of Paediatrics, which prefers to wait for the trials to finish to assess the status of the pandemic.

Alvarez insists that paediatricians support the administration of the vaccine as a "preventive method" and points out that children under the age of twelve make up around ten per cent of the population in Spain. That is why the vaccination of the group could play an essential role to reduce the transmission of the coronavirus, but always conditional "on the approval of the European Medicines Agency."

The Spanish Association of Paediatrics also considers that the benefits of the vaccine in children are still "much greater" than any risk: "That Covid-19 hardly has any consequence in minors is only partially true. Most are asymptomatic, but a recent study by the Carlos III Institute confirms that there have been eleven deaths among children under the age of ten in Spain and more than a hundred admissions to intensive care units. In Malaga province, some 18,473 infections and two deaths among children under 14 years have been reported so far.

The use of schools as vaccination centres, as planned by the Junta, is a "great idea according to paediatricians, believing that the percentage of vaccinated children will be higher when the serum is administered in schools rather than when parents have to take their children to health centres. But for that to happen, they remind, a vaccine must first be approved for the little ones.
This week, the United Nations' Human Rights Committee (UNHRC) announced its decision that two 2012 trials against Spanish human rights judge Baltasar Garzon were arbitrary and lacking impartiality, thus upholding Garzon's claims that he suffered human rights violations throughout them. It's the first time that the Committee has condemned a state for criminally prosecuting a judge for doing his or her job, and reopens the debate about the politicisation of Spain's highest judicial bodies.

Garzon received international attention for securing the arrest of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in London in 1998. Ten years later, he launched a controversial investigation into the tens of thousands of people who disappeared during Spain's 1936-39 Civil War and the ensuing, forty-year dictatorship of Francisco Franco. Critics, mainly from the Spanish right, claimed that he was violating 1977's "Pact of Forgetting", an agreement made after Franco's death by both right and left wing parties to not prosecute crimes committed by either side during the Civil War or dictatorship.

This was one the cases for which Garzon was suspended in 2010, pending a decision by Spain's Supreme Court on whether his activities breached the 1977 Amnesty Law. The court's other investigation concerned the so-called Gurtel corruption case against the Popular Party, in which Garzon was accused of phone tapping.

Just under two years later, the Supreme Court acquitted Garzon for the Civil War and Franco-era investigations, but disbarred him for eleven years for his conduct in the Gurtel case. The UNHCR maintains, however, that both of these trials were lacking impartiality and that in neither case did Garzon commit professional infractions, let alone any serious enough to merit criminal prosecution.

The Committee's decision lends credence to concerns expressed at the time by Garzon's supporters, to the effect that the suspension and subsequent disbarral were efforts to thwart a project to which the Spanish right was deeply opposed. "Judges," said the Committee, "should be able to interpret and apply the law without fear of being punished or judged for the content of their decisions."

The underlying criticism is that Spain's Supreme Court, far from being an independent body that metes out justice impartially and disinterestedly, has become a politicised extension of the executive. The court also provoked this accusation - apparently for good reason - in October 2019, when it gave lengthy prison sentences to the orchestrators of an illegal independence referendum held in Catalonia in October 2017 (all of whom were granted pardons in June).

Such draconian punishments made it plausible to believe that the judges wanted to make examples of these secessionists, especially as former Catalan president Artur Mas was merely fined and banned from politics for two years for committing the same offences in 2014. One wonders whether the UNHRC will, in time, also find the separatist trials of 2019 to have been insufficiently impartial and in violation of fundamental human rights.
A few weeks ago a book was published in Spanish entitled Nazis en la Costa del Sol (Nazis on the Costa del Sol, in English). In charge of the Almuzara publishing house, its author is Jose Manuel Portero, born in Seville, but well known in Benalmadena, among other reasons because he has lived there for more than thirty years and because he has been the director of a secondary school.

The book collects stories about the condition of the coast of Malaga as a haven for Nazis. In its pages appear, therefore, people as important in that dark age as Aribert Heim, also known as Doctor Muerte; Otto Remmer, the SS general who saved Hitler; Alfred Giese Hausmann, head of German military espionage in Malaga; Belgian General Leon Degrelle, or Otto Skorzeny, Hitlers chief of special operations and the person who led Mussolinis rescue operation.

Just to find out about the lives of these men is worth the book, since they are about some of the most sinister who were in the service of the Third Reich for a few years, about all those that coincided with the Second World War, which changed the world map.

But the importance of this work goes further. As with others published on the same issue, some focused on other geographical areas of Spain, it is yet another proof of the collaboration that Francos Spanish government had with the Nazi regime. A collaboration that was very important during the war, but which also lasted after 1945.

We have been made to believe that Spain was neutral during the Second World War. But its a lie. One of the great lies in the most recent history of this country. Franco collaborated with Hitler from the beginning.

There was political affinity, but he also had to return the favor of the help that the Germans gave to the Francoists in the Civil War, a help without which they would surely not have been able to win.

The espionage and sabotage operations that the Germans carried out in Spain, especially in the area closest to Gibraltar, had the direct help of Spaniards.

The Nazis also had at least three supply bases in this country for their submarines. The sale of tungsten was also very important for Hitlers war machine. These are just a few of the many examples in which that help was embodied.

And that collaboration was about to turn the tide of World War II. It would have done so if the so-called Operation Felix had been carried out for the invasion of Gibraltar. They would have cut off access to the Mediterranean for the Allies, the subsequent occupation of North Africa would not have been carried out, the British and Americans would not have been able to enter Europe through Italy ... An operation, by the way, that was studied down to the last detail. It even had a date, 11 January, 1941. But in the end it was not carried out. Fortunately.

It is also striking that this aid to the Nazis continued after the war and despite the German defeat. What happened precisely on the Costa del Sol is good proof.

And for that reason alone it is convenient to read the book. It is always good to know history, if only so as not to repeat the mistakes of the past.
The 2021 Women's Leadership Reception was held on Thursday, Sept. 2. The panel consisted of prominent female student and campus leaders, Natalie Parks, Staci Rende and Texas A&M University President, Dr. M Katherine Banks.
Morehead, KY (40351)

Today

Mostly clear skies early. Increasing clouds with showers late. Low 69F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 50%..

Tonight

Mostly clear skies early. Increasing clouds with showers late. Low 69F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 50%.
New Delhi, Sep 3 (UNI) Indian Air Force Chief Air Chief Marshal RKS Bhadauria attended the four-day Pacific Air Chiefs Symposium, aimed at 'enhancing mutual understanding and deepening of relationships with like-minded nations', the IAF said on Friday.

Air Chief Marshal RKS Bhadauria attended the Pacific Air Chiefs Symposium 2021 at the Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii (USA) from August 30 to September 2. The event was themed "Enduring Cooperation towards Regional Stability".

"PACS-21 brought together Air Chiefs of countries in the Indo-Pacific region to deliberate on topics ranging from Regional Security, Air Domain Awareness to cooperation on HADR (Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief) Ops," the IAF said in a tweet.

Air Chief Marshal Bhadauria also met Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force General CQ Brown, Commander, Pacific Air Forces Gen Kenneth S Wilsbach, and held bilateral dialogues with Air Force Chiefs of 11 countries.

"Participation in #PACS21 provided an opportunity for enhancing mutual understanding and deepening relationships with like-minded nations," the IAF said.

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Wellington, Sep 3 (UNI) Six people were injured in a 'terrorist attack' in the New Zealand city of Auckland on Friday, with three of them being in a critical condition.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern confirmed that the violent attack that happened at New Lynn supermarket in Auckland at 2:40 p.m. local time Friday was a "terrorist attack" carried out by an "extremist."

"A violent extremist undertook a terrorist attack on innocent New Zealanders at a New Lynn Countdown in Auckland," she said in a press conference here.

The prime minister added that the person who staged the stabbing attack was inspired by the Islamic State (ISIS).

She averred that the attack was carried out by "an individual, not a faith, not a culture, not an ethnicity."

Ms Arden informed that the suspect was a Sri Lankan national who arrived in New Zealand in October 2011. "He became a person of national security interest from 2016. The detailed reason he is known to the agencies is the subject of suppression orders made by the court," she said.

New Zealand Police Commissioner Andrew Coster, who also was part of the press briefing, confirmed that the individual behind the attack was under heavy surveillance over "concerns about his ideology," adding he was holding a knife to stab people at the scene.

The man was shot dead by police at the scene after injuring multiple people.

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SANDRA ESPARZA is a News and Features Reporter for The Vidette. Esparza can be contacted at smespa1@ilstu.edu. Follow Esparza on Twitter at @esparzasandra21

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Source: Xinhua| 2021-08-18 05:26:48|Editor: huaxia

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TRIPOLI, Aug. 17 (Xinhua) -- The Libyan Ministry of Health on Tuesday announced the signing of a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Turkey for cooperation on healthcare and medical sciences.

The deal was signed by Libyan Health Minister Ali Zanati, who was visiting Turkey, with his Turkish counterpart Fahrettin Koca, the Libyan health ministry said in a statement.

The MoU includes cooperation on hospital management, short-term training of medical staff, development of medical services, and combating the COVID-19 pandemic, the statement said.

"This memorandum of understanding comes within the framework of the keenness of both sides to deepen their cooperation and partnership, as well as enhancing the friendly relations between the two countries," the statement added.

Due to years of armed conflict and instability in the country, Libyan authorities are struggling to provide proper healthcare services to Libyan citizens. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-09-03 12:11:48|Editor: huaxia

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PYONGYANG, Sept. 3 (Xinhua) -- Kim Jong Un, top leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), presided over a politburo meeting on Thursday to discuss a series of key issues, including enhancing nationwide anti-coronavirus measures and farm production, state media reported Friday.

At the third enlarged meeting of the Political Bureau of the 8th Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea, Kim urged all party organizations and officials to "reexamine the national epidemic prevention system and the work in this field, and conduct an intense political offensive to strain and awaken the epidemic prevention front once again," the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported.

The present dangerous situation of the worldwide pandemic, which keeps spiraling out of control, demands tighter nationwide epidemic prevention, and tightening epidemic prevention is a task of "paramount importance", Kim stressed, warning officials against letting down their guard for "even a moment under the present situation."

At the meeting, Kim also talked about measures to thoroughly boost production of consumer goods and implement a land management policy, according to KCNA.

The DPRK closed its borders in late January 2020 in a bid to prevent the COVID-19 pandemic from reaching the country, and has taken tough measures against the disease. It has reported no single case of infection so far. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-09-03 12:43:48|Editor: huaxia

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CANBERRA, Sept. 3 (Xinhua) -- The Australian government has secured another 4 million doses of coronavirus vaccine in a deal with Britain as the country continued to battle the third wave of COVID-19 infections.

Prime Minister (PM) Scott Morrison announced the deal in Canberra on Friday, saying the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine doses would arrive in Australia in the coming weeks.

The announcement came after 500,000 doses from Singapore, which were secured in a swap deal announced on Tuesday.

Friday was Australia's another record day of the COVID-19 infections, with a record 1,657 new locally-acquired cases of COVID-19 reported across the country.

Of the new cases, 1,431 were from New South Wales (NSW), Australia's most populous state with Sydney as the capital city, where the state health department also recorded 12 deaths on Friday morning.

"There have been 119 COVID-19 related deaths in NSW since 16 June 2021," said the statement from NSW Health.

Victoria, the second-most populous state with Melbourne as the capital city, reported a further 208 new local cases. And the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) reported another 18 new local cases, only three of which were in quarantine for their entire infectious period.

ACT Chief Minister Andrew Barr described the figures as troubling and urged more Canberrans to get tested.

So far about 60.5 percent of Australian adults have received at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose and 36.4 percent were fully vaccinated.

At the current pace of 851,354 second doses a week, Australia can expect 70 percent of the adult population to be fully vaccinated by late October 2021, according to The Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-09-03 13:20:57|Editor: huaxia

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ISLAMABAD, Sept. 3 (Xinhua) -- Pakistan firmly opposes politicizing COVID-19 origins tracing, believing that it is a scientific matter and should be examined via science-based approaches, the foreign ministry said Thursday.

Commenting on a recent origins-tracing report by the U.S. intelligence community, Asim Iftikhar Ahmad, spokesman for the ministry, said that Pakistan dispels insinuations on the virus origins, which should not be affiliated with race, region and ethnicities.

Pakistan firmly believes in multilateralism and vows to extend full support to the World Health Organization (WHO)'s science-based work and reject any politicization, Ahmad said.

The China-WHO joint study report on COVID-19 origins-tracing published earlier in March has drawn an authoritative and scientific conclusion on issues in this respect, which should be recognized, respected, maintained and taken as the basis for global origins tracing in the next phase, said the spokesperson.

It is hoped that the WHO can "join the international community in maintaining the scientific nature and preciseness of the study on origins-tracing, resisting the practice of politicizing the origins-tracing issue, and retaining the good atmosphere of global cooperation in fighting the pandemic," he added. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-09-03 16:46:45|Editor: huaxia

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KATHMANDU, Sept. 3 (Xinhua) -- Rajesh Shakya, a Nepali handicraft trader, has seen a significant drop in handicraft export to China due to the COVID-19 pandemic, while the northern neighbor remains the top export destination for his products.

As a managing director of Harati Ma Handicrafts Pvt. Ltd. based in the Kathmandu Valley, Shakya has been exporting metal crafts to China for the past decade.

"China is the largest market for my products, with 60 percent of my total handicrafts going to China," Shakya told Xinhua, and added that has been pulled down around 90 percent by the pandemic.

"I'm awaiting the COVID-19 situation to normalize as soon as possible so that we could send more goods abroad."

Europe has been the major market for Nepali handicraft items, however, in recent years, China has emerged as a large market for Nepali traders, according to handicraft exporters.

As shown by the Nepali central bank's statistics, handicrafts topped Nepal's exports to China in the 2020-21 fiscal year that ended in mid-July.

The South Asian country shipped handicraft products worth 308 million Nepali rupees (2.62 million U.S. dollars) to China in the last fiscal year, accounting for nearly one-third of Nepal's total exports to China valued at 1.01 billion rupees (8.66 million dollars) during the period, according to the central bank.

The export has suffered badly in the last two fiscal years as the COVID-19 pandemic rages, noted the bank.

Statues are a major item among the handicraft products being shipped to China. According to figures of Nepal's Department of Customs, metal statues worth 13.65 million rupees (116,445 dollars), wooden statues valued at 3.84 million rupees (32,787 dollars) and other statues worth 126.55 million rupees (1.07 million dollars) were sent to China in the past fiscal year.

Besides, felt worth 46.01 million rupees (392,520 dollars), hand-made papers worth 4.27 million rupees (36,421 dollars) and imitation jewelry at 8.16 million rupees (69,652 U.S. dollars) were exported to China as well.

What is more, Chinese tourists were major customers for Nepali handicrafts, according to traders.

"I sold around 70 percent of my handicrafts in the domestic market in normal times and the Chinese tourists were also my important customers," said Dharma Raj Shakya, proprietor of Araniko Stone Carving Pvt. Ltd. in the Kathmandu Valley.

With few foreign tourists setting foot in Nepal amid the pandemic, the handicraft traders have lost an important source of revenues.

Dharma Raj Shakya, who has been involved in handicraft export to China, said China has emerged as "very important market" for Nepali handicraft products in recent years.

"I used to export handicrafts worth over 3 million Nepali rupees (255,885 dollars) to China in a year before the pandemic hit. Now, exports to China fell to around 1.5 million Nepali rupees (12,794 dollars) only in the last fiscal year," said the trader, a former president of the Federation of Handicraft Associations of Nepal.

Still, handicraft traders are hopeful about exports to grow, in particular to China after the COVID-19 pandemic is brought under control.

"I think the suppressed demand for handicrafts during the pandemic will grow once the pandemic is over," said Rajesh Shakya. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-09-03 19:26:52|Editor: huaxia

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PHNOM PENH, Sept. 3 (Xinhua) -- Cambodian Prime Minister Samdech Techo Hun Sen said on Friday that the China-hosted Taiyuan Energy Low Carbon Development Forum 2021 is a good opportunity to accelerate the development of low-carbon energy.

He made the remarks in a pre-recorded address at the forum held in Taiyuan, capital of north China's Shanxi province.

"While the whole world has been combating COVID-19, this forum is a reminder that we should not neglect energy, climate and environmental issues which require continued attention and responsibility through constant consideration in finding common global solutions," Hun Sen said.

"In the context that many countries have been preparing socio-economic recovery plans, this forum will provide a good opportunity to accelerate the development of low-carbon energy to address energy, climate and environmental issues, as well as to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement targets," he added.

The prime minister said the development of low-carbon energy, such as clean coal technology, the use of carbon storage technology, the use of technologies for hydrogen production from coals and so on, will be an essential method to combat climate change on a large scale.

Hun Sen said although Cambodia is a country with a low level of development, the government is highly committed and has set energy, climate and environmental issues as an essential and long-term policy agenda.

Hun Sen said addressing energy, climate and environmental issues is a difficult task that requires participation with high responsibility and commitment from all stakeholders, calling for the strengthening of international dialogue and cooperation among stakeholders to create a common green and sustainable future without leaving anyone behind. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-09-03 20:21:15|Editor: huaxia

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Photo taken on Sept. 2, 2021 shows damaged vehicles at the site of the U.S. airstrike in Kabul, capital of Afghanistan. (Photo by Saifurahman Safi/Xinhua)



KABUL, Sept. 3 (Xinhua) -- "Can children be a member of Daesh group? Can you believe that a two-year-old child who even couldn't speak become a Daesh member to fight?" Musawar, a Kabul resident, asked angrily.

Daesh, or the hardliner Islamic State (IS) group, claimed responsibility for the deadly attack at Kabul airport on Aug. 26, which killed 13 U.S. soldiers and 170 Afghan civilians who were attempting to leave Afghanistan after Taliban took over the capital city on Aug. 15.

The United States said on Aug. 29 that its military forces carried out an airstrike in Kabul against a suspected ISIS-K vehicle, a local affiliate of the Islamic State outfit in Afghanistan, which could pose an imminent threat to the airport.

Recalling his ordeal, Musawar said it was in the afternoon that day when a sudden big bang erupted and he passed out. After a few minutes he recovered his sense and saw bodies of members of his neighbor Zamarai's family lying around.

"It was horrible to see the bodies of your neighbors in a pool of blood. Zamarai and his children were rolling in blood. They were alive minutes ago but suddenly were killed and no one knows why," Musawar said.

"Bodies of the ill-fated children Farzad, Zamir, Faisal, Somia and Aya between two and 15 years old were scattered in and outside the car, and it demonstrated a tragic scene of the so-called U.S. war against terror," he said.

"The U.S. is ridiculing us. How is it possible for a two-year-old child or a 12-year-old child to become Daesh member?" the man lamented.

With the withdrawal of the U.S.-led forces from Afghanistan in late August, U.S. President Joe Biden announced the end of the 20-year war in Afghanistan but vowed to pursue the IS outfit's operatives in the Central Asian country.

Although several days have passed since the deadly U.S. drone strick, survivors of the ill-fated family were still crying when recalling the tragedy.

Expressing his hatred towards the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan, Emal Hamedi, Zamarai's brother and a survivor of the drone strike said the U.S. forces begun its invasion of Afghanistan by killing Afghans, and on its last leg of pullout, it also brutally killed civilians including innocent children.

"It was a terrorist attack against our family and it happened when my brother was parking his car and the attack claimed 10 lives, all civilians including children," Emal told Xinhua.

The U.S.-led forces have killed thousands of Afghans over the past 20 years and countless more would be killed under the pretext of hunting IS operatives or other terror groups in the future, said Emal, who claimed to have worked for a U.S. company in the past.

"It is not a joke to launch drone attack and kill 10 members of a family including children on charge of having links with the Daesh group, but actually the U.S. committed the crime," he said.

"I want justice and will appeal to the peace-loving nations and related international agencies to help me achieve the goal by bringing to justice the criminals," said Emal. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-09-03 23:41:06|Editor: huaxia

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KABUL, Sept. 3 (Xinhua) -- A United Arab Emirates (UAE) plane loaded with food supplies landed in Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan on Friday, reported a local TV channel.

This was the first cargo flight into the airport since Tuesday when the U.S. forces finished pullout from Afghanistan and evacuated the airport, Tolo News TV reported.

"A huge United Arab Emirates plane carrying 60 tons of food landed in Kabul airport today," the report quoted Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid as saying.

Mujahid said that "the arrival of food assistance provided by the UAE was good news for Afghans. We are thankful to the brother nation of the UAE for the support to Afghans."

The report came as the airport has remained close for international and domestic flights since Taliban takeover on Aug. 15.

Taliban forces took control of the airport on Aug. 31 after the U.S.-led evacuation flights ended.

Technical teams and experts from Turkey, the UAE and Qatar had already arrived and were working to help the Afghan side to make the airport operational, and the international and domestic flights will resume soon, Mujahid said.

Earlier on Friday, an expected domestic flight was suspended with an unclear reason. Enditem
The Kaduna State Government has banned the transportation of livestock from the state to other parts of the country as part of efforts aimed at tackling insecurity.

The government also prohibits the transportation of livestock from other parts of the country to state.

This was contained in a statement issued on Thursday in Kaduna by the Commissioner for Internal Security and Home Affairs, Samuel Aruwan.

The commissioner said the decision was taken after a thorough review of the security situation in the state.

Aruwan also announced the immediate suspension of the Kawo weekly market in Kaduna North Local Government Area which holds every Tuesday.

The statement warned that transportation of donkeys into the state is a criminal offence, stressing that anyone found engaging in this will be prosecuted accordingly.

The commissioner said: "After wide consultations and thorough security reviews, the Kaduna State Government has banned the transportation of livestock from the state to other states in the country.

"This ban also prohibits the transportation of livestock into Kaduna State from other states. Both bans take effect immediately, from today 2nd September 2021.

"The government also wishes to reiterate that the transportation of donkeys into the state is a criminal offence and anyone found engaging in this will be prosecuted accordingly.

"Furthermore, the Kawo weekly market, which usually holds every Tuesday in Kaduna North LGA, has been suspended with immediate effect."

According to Aruwan, "The previous directives suspending weekly markets and selling of petrol in Jerry cans in Birnin Gwari, Giwa, Chikun, Igabi and Kajuru LGAs, as well as banning the felling of trees for timber, firewood and charcoal and other commercial purposes in Birnin Gwari, Kachia, Kajuru, Giwa, Chikun, Igabi and Kauru LGAs, are still in force."

The statement added that the directives will be vigorously enforced by security agencies.

Kaduna is one of the states worst hit by activities of bandits with cases of rampant invasion of communities, killings and abductions almost on a daily basis.

Currently, 31 of the 121 students of the Bethel Baptist High School, Damishi, Kaduna, who were abducted in their school on July 5, 2021, are still in captivity.
The Rwanda Correctional Services (RCS) has offered details about what caused the death of rapper Joshua Tuyishime, commonly known as Jay Polly.

According to a statement, released on Thursday, September 2, the 33-year-old rapper died in the wee hours of Thursday morning, at 4:30a.m, at Muhima Hospital in Nyarugenge District where he had been admitted on the same night.

Jay Polly had been rushed to the hospital from the clinic of Mageragere correctional facility where he had been received at about 6pm on Wednesday, September 1. He was attended to by the medics there before he was transferred to Muhima when his condition deteriorated, according to the statement, signed by SSP Pelly Uwera Gakwaya, the RCS Spokesperson.

The prisons authorities said in the statement that preliminary investigations had indicated that Jay Polly and two other inmates had recently consumed a concoction of aftershave, water and sugar.

It was not immediately clear whether the other two had also experienced complications as a result.

"Rwanda Investigation Bureau and Rwanda Forensic Laboratory are conducting thorough investigations into the cause of death," the statement added.

Jay Polly, who is survived by a daughter, is regarded as one of the best local Hip Hop artistes of his generation. He's also one of the only two rappers to win the now-defunct Primus Guma Guma Superstar contest.

He had been arrested, along with 11 others, on April 23, at his home in Kibagabaga suburb in Kigali for allegedly hosting a house party in violation of Covid-19 protocols.

It later emerged that law-enforcement officers had found illegal substances at his home, which would subsequently result into a criminal case against him and others.

The accused had been denied bail by both Gasabo Primary Court and Gasabo Intermediate Court before the latter set December 2 as the start date for the hearing of the substantive case against them.

Jay Polly had denied the charges.

editor@newtimesrwanda.com

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The Federal Government has disclosed that the country will stick with only four vaccines for its COVID-19 response.

The government through the Executive Director of the National Primary Health Care Development Agency, NPHCDA, Dr. Faisal Shuaib said that Nigeria is prioritising the AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson vaccines.

Shuaib who spoke in Abuja said that even though the Sinopharm vaccine had been approved by the national medicines regulator "for emergency use", rolling it out was not a priority.

"We don't want a situation where we may have 10 or 20 vaccines that have been globally recognised or listed for emergency use, and then you want to take all 20 vaccines to Nigeria, it doesn't make any sense. We're prioritising those ones that we are already familiar with," he stated.

Shuaib added that whether vaccines other than the four he had named will be used in Nigeria at a later stage would depend on availability and 'how this pandemic shapes up".

At a briefing a week earlier, Shuaib had said Nigeria was expecting to take delivery of 7.7 million doses of the Sinopharm vaccine through the COVAX scheme aimed at providing vaccines to developing countries. However, he had not made clear whether the Sinopharm doses would be administered or not.

So far, 2.9 million people in Nigeria have received one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, while 1.4 million people have received two doses. Nigeria's population is estimated at 200 million.

The main constraints are a lack of supply and high levels of vaccine hesitancy among parts of the population.

Shuaib said Nigeria had taken delivery last week of close to 600,000 doses of the AstraZeneca (AZN.L) vaccine supplied by Britain through the COVAX scheme, the latest out of a series of donations from developed countries.

Nigeria is also expecting deliveries over coming months of tens of millions of doses of the Johnson & Johnson (JNJ.N) vaccine which it has purchased through an African Union programme.

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The Defence Headquarters disclosed on Thursday that more than 5,890 Boko Haram/ISWAP terrorists comprising foot soldiers and their commanders have so far surrendered with their families to troops in the North East Zone.

This is just as it said "a total of 565 BHT's comprising 3 Commanders, 4 Amirs, 5 Nakibs and 5 cattle rustling specialists, out of the surrendered BHTs and their family members were handed over to the Borno State Government in Maiduguri for further management after thorough profiling.

Acting Director, Defence Media Operations, Brig Gen Bernard Onyeuko who made the disclosure while speaking on Military Operations against security threats across the country said, "No fewer than 48 of Boko Hsram terrorists, 20 arrested including fighters and commanders were neutralized and their logistic base and facilities including 3 gun trucks were destroyed in the process.

He continued, "A cumulative total of 52 assorted arms and 1,977 rounds of 7.62mm assorted calibre ammunition including AK-47 and FN rifles with magazines, hand grenades, commando mortar guns, locally fabricated rifles, Dushka anti-aircraft guns, Dane guns and Nigerian Police rifles among other items were recovered from surrendered terrorists and operations within the period.

"Also, a total of 7 terrorists collaborators/informants and logistics suppliers were arrested and handed over to appropriate prosecuting agencies for necessary actions.

In the war against banditry, Onyeuko said, "Troop's of Operation Hadarin Daji sustained their operations against the bandits', kidnappers and other criminal elements in the North West Geo-political zone.

"Cumulatively, a total of 15 armed bandits and 2 armed robbers were neutralized, 13 bandits informants arrested, 15 motorcycles were recovered, 2 AK 47 rifles recovered, 33 kidnap victims rescued, 66 criminal elements arrested and some vandalized railway sleepers/tracks were recovered within the period in focus.

"The operations that led to the significant results were carried out at Gidan Zuma village under Kwatarkwashi District and Bakinwa in Gusau LGA; Matuzgi and Gora Namaye village in Maradun LGA of Zamfara State; and along Gurbi - Shimfida Road in Jibia LGA of Katsina State.

"Other locations where significant results were recorded include; Magam village in Tangaza LGA of Sokoto State, Faskari Town and Batsari/Ruma general area in Batsari LGA and Jibia Town in Jibia LGA of Katsina State.

'In the North Central Zone, troop's of Operation Safe Haven arrested 20 persons involved in the attack and killing of 26 travellers at Rukuba Town in Jos North LGA of Plateau State.

"The arrested persons have been handed over to appropriate prosecuting agency for further necessary action.

"In a related development, on 27 August 21, troops conducted raid operation at Rikkos, Jos North LGA of Plateau State, also in the course of operation, troops arrested 4 suspected Sara Suka members. The suspects were profiled and subsequently handed over to the relevant security agency for prosecution.

" In the same vein, on same 27 August 21, own troops arrested 3 criminal namely Messrs Mujahid Isah, Kamal Isah and Abdulrahman Jibrin in connection with attack on Mr Aliyu Mukhtar at Dilimi Jos North LGA of Plateau State.

'"The suspects are undergoing interrogation and would be handed to the relevant security agency for further action.

"On 28 Aug 21, troops in conjunction with Nigerian Police and some vigilante group responded to a distress call on attempted kidnap of one Mr Ayuba Pam at Rantiya Gas Plant, Jos South LGA.

"Troops engaged the gunmen and neutralized one kidnapper while others escaped with gunshot wounds. One AK 47 rifle was recovered during the encounter. Efforts are ongoing to apprehend the fleeing gunmen.

"Similarly, on 29 August 21, own troops on stop and search intercepted one Mr Francis Achi on motorcycle with 3 unfinished locally fabricated revolver rifles concealed in a sack along Ganawuri-Manchok road in Riyom LGA of Plateau State. The suspect is currently undergoing interrogation.

For the Nger Delta, Onyeuko said that, "Troops of Operation Delta Safe conducted anti-illegal oil operations at Opuoma and Mmahu communities in Ohaji-Egbema LGA of Imo State; Sand Community in AkwaIbom State; Madangho Creek in Warri South West LGA, Ndoro and Beneside Communities in Burutu LGAas well as Yokri-Egbe Seashore, all in Delta State.

"Other operations were executed at Ibaa in Emohua LGA, Iyala, Buguma and Cawthorne Channel Creeks as well as Samkiri, Orutoru and Dema Abbey Communities, all in Rivers State.and Delta State.

"During the operations, troops discovered and deactivated a total of 33 illegal refining sites with 46 illegal refining units, 94 boiler ovens and 9 reservoirs.

"Also, a cumulative total of 139 metal storage tanks and 63 dugout pits, all laden with 440.2 barrels and 1,637,500litres of illegally refined AGO as well as 62.2 barrels and 572,000litres of stolen crude oil and shelter stations were discovered and treated accordingly.

"Other illegally refined products intercepted and immobilized were a wooden boat used for transportation of illegal oil products; 321 polythene bags, 16 drums and 15 jerry cans laden with illegally refined petroleum products.

"Furthermore, troops disconnected all illegal pipes connecting to Shell Petroleum Development Company pipelines around Okporowo Right of Way in Ahoada East LGA and Edeoha Community in Ahoada LGA of Rivers State.

"In same vein, troops discovered and immobilized a Cotonou boat laden with 2,000 litres of stolen crude oil. In addition, troops carried out a cordon and search operation around Bonny LGA Recruitment and Empowerment Centre in search of the mastermind of kidnap incidents at Abalamabie Community in Bonny LGA, Rivers State.

"During the operation, troops arrested a notorious kidnapper identified as Mr Promise aka Bummi, who had been on security forces watch list.

"Troops of Operation Whirl Stroke on13 August 2021, responded to distress calls of armed herdsmen activities at Udei and Ughedu towns in Benue State.

"During which troops repelled armed bandits' attacks on villages, destroyed 3 criminal camps and recovered 23 rustled cows and 3 motorcycles.

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"On 14 August 2021 troops on fighting patrol intercepted and arrested 9 cultists who had been terrorizing Utonkon community in Ado LGA of Benue State.

"On 15 August, troops acting on credible intelligence ambushed and arrest some railroad vandals at Tse-Guma village and recovered some railroad tracks and sleepers, while the criminals were handed over to appropriate prosecuting agency for further action.

"Additionally, on 16 August, own troops carried out raid and clearance operations on criminals' hideouts at Terr village in Sankera Uyum Council Ward and Ukpam Community in Guma LGA of Benue State and arrested 2 notorious armed robbers named, Mr Aondosoo Aba and Mr Emmanuel Gobo, respectively.

"Meanwhile in the non-kinetic operations, troops of Operation Whirl Stroke carried out repairs on a collapsed bridge that connects Lau Town and Jalingo Road in Taraba State, to enable locals have free passage.

Additionally, troops on 14 and 16 August simultaneously held different security meetings with youths/community leaders as well as other critical stakeholders at Takum Town, Lau Town in Taraba State.

Other locations include the Palace of Sarkin Kadarko in Keana LGA of Nasarawa State and Igumale Town in Ado LGA of Benue State. Issues discussed were incessant clashes between farmers and herders, kidnapping acts, destruction of farmlands by herders' cattle other lingering security challenges in the general areas.

"Troops have continued to maintain presence with aggressive ground and air patrols to forestall criminal activities and boost confidence of locals to carry out their daily activities."
Abuja  "The abductions of school children present us with the prospects of a traumatized generation of young people". The words of the Bishops of Nigeria resound as a grave warning after the kidnapping, yesterday September 1st, of 73 pupils from the day secondary school in the village of Kaya, in the State of Zamfara in the north-west of the Country.

The news of yet another kidnapping comes a few days after the release of three other groups of hostages who were kidnapped in the federal State of Niger in northern Nigeria in May, apparently after the payment of a ransom. Since December, more than 1,000 students have been kidnapped from schools in northern Nigeria.

An intolerable situation according to the Bishops, who in the declaration published at the end of their second plenary meeting, denounce how in Nigeria "life has never been so cheap". In addition to the scourge of the kidnappings of students and adults, including members of the clergy, the Bishops underline the widespread violence on the territory of the Nigerian federation. "Regrettably, except for the civil war, our nation has never witnessed the kind of widespread evil, wanton destruction and murderous bloodletting". "Deaths in the hands of kidnappers, killer herdsmen, bandits, terrorist groups have made Nigeria one of the most terrorized countries in the world", say the Bishops, who are calling upon the government to "take full responsibility for the present culture of violence". Addressing the Catholic faithful, the Bishops underline that "as Christians, we are called to constantly hope in God who never fails. We, therefore, call on Nigerians to hope for a better Nigeria knowing full well that without hope we as a people cannot move forward". "May the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of all consolation and Queen of Nigeria continue to intercede for our country", they conclude.
Zamfara lawmakers say bandits take their time to kill and abduct people because security operatives do not act on distress calls

The Zamfara State House of Assembly say security formations in the state often do not respond to distress calls from communities under attack by armed bandits.

The lawmakers stated this on Wednesday at their plenary presided over by the deputy speaker, Musa Yankuzo.

The lawmakers also passed a resolution calling on the state and federal governments to do more to check insecurity in the state.

The member of the assembly representing Kaura Namoda South, Anas Sarkin-Fada, accused the security agencies of not acting on distress calls, describing the alleged attitude as most unfortunate.

Mr Sarkin-Fada gave an instance of a recent attack at Kyambarawa in his constituency. He said despite numerous calls to the security agencies in the area, no officer responded.

The lawmaker said the bandits took their time to kill and abduct many people in the village, saying the attack could have been prevented if the security personnel responded to the distress calls.

RESOLUTION

The Assembly also passed a resolution urging the executive arm of government to bring an end to banditry in the state

The resolution followed a motion raised by the House leader, Faruk Dosara, under matters of urgent public importance, the assembly's spokesperson, Mustapha Jafaru, said in a statement.

Mr Dosara commended the efforts of the state government in enforcing some emergency measures aimed at checking the activities of bandits in the state.

He called on the people to cooperate with the government and security agencies as the punitive measures announced were meant to end over two decades of insecurity in the state.

Mr Dosara described as unpatriotic the comments of some residents condemning the government for closing down weekly markets in the state and imposing a statewide curfew.

"COVID-19 is a case in point The fifth pillar of Islam, Hajj, was halted by Saudi Arabia authorities for fear of infection only and the whole world was also put on a total luckdown but no one said anything," the lawmaker said.

"Members of the state House of Assembly are in in full support of the government's laudable security initiatives aimed at getting to the roots of this insecurity menace that has crippled almost all facets of economic activities of our dear state," Mr Dosara added.

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In their separate remarks and contributions, Yusuf Alhassan, representing Maru North, Mansur Daki-Takwas, representing Gummi one, Abdulnasir Gayari, representing Gummi 2 and Ibrahim Tukur representing Bakura local government area said the emergency rules were timely .

In his response, the deputy speaker, Mr Yankuzo, commended his colleagues for their contributions on the mater.

"The House also at the Wednesday's plenary received the 2020 annual Audit report from the office of the state Auditor general and commit same to the House Committee on Public Accounts for scrutiny and report findings to the House in the next one month.

"With yesterday's plenary by the House and subsequent adjournment for today put to rest the baseless and frivolous allegation by some sections of conventional media Houses in the country that the House suspends all plenaries till the abducted father of Mr speaker is released hale and hearty by his abductors about four weeks ago," the statement said.

The spokesperson for the police in Zamfara, Muhammad Shehu, could not be reached on phone for comments on the allegation by the lawmakers that security agents do not respond to distress calls.
President Muhammadu Buhari, on Thursday, received the final report of the forensic audit of the Niger Delta Development Commission, NDDC.

Buhari, who was represented by the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Mr. Abubakar Malami, received the documents, which were conveyed in sacks and presented by the Minister of Niger Delta Affairs, Godswill Akpabio.

In his remarks shortly before he handed over the report, Akpabio, disclosed that the forensic audit covered a total of 13,777 contracts that were awarded from 2001 to 2019 at a final contract value of over N3trillion.

Responding after he received the report, the AGF, noted that the Federal Government approved about N6trillion for the NDDC in 18 years.

He however decried that bulk of funds the Commission received for the development of the Niger Delta region, was diverted into private pockets, noting that execution of 13,777 projects were substantially compromised.

Malami said the essence of the forensic audit was to ensure probity and accountability in the use of public funds.

He said FG was concerned that the NDDC operated a total of 362 bank accounts, leading to "lack of proper reconciliation of accounts".

The AGF maintained that the Buhari-led government would in consequence, apply the law to remedy the deficiencies outlined in the audit report, as well as to recover funds that were not properly utilized for the public purposes they were meant for.

He said: "I welcome you all to the presentation of the Report on the forensic audit of the Niger Delta Commission (NDDC), which report I am to receive on behalf of the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, President Muhammadu Buhari, GCFR.

"You will recall the President had ordered for a holistic forensic audit of the activities of the Commission from inception to August 2019 in response to the yearnings of the people the Niger Delta Region to reposition it for effective service delivery.

"It is imperative to state that, the call for the audit by the people of the Niger Delta Region arose from the huge gaps between resources invested in the region vis a vis the huge gap in infrastructural, human and economic development.

"It is on record that between 2001 and 2019, the Federal Government has approved N3, 375, 735,776,794.93 Three Trillion, Three Hundred and Seventy Five Billion, Seven Hundred and Seventy Six Thousand, Seven Hundred and Ninety Four Naira, Ninety Three Kobo as budgetary allocation and N2,420,948,894,191.00 Two Trillion, Four Hundred and Twenty Billion, Nine Hundred and Forty Million, and, Eight Hundred and Ninety Four Thousand, One Hundred and Ninety One Naira as Income from Statutory and Non Statutory Sources, which brings the total figure to the sum of approximately Six Trillion Naira given to the Niger Delta Development Commission.

"Consequently, the Federal Executive Council (FEC) approved the engagement of a Lead Forensic Auditor, as well as 16 reputable Audit Firms to conduct the audit exercise.

"The President is delighted that the auditors have now completed this exercise and the Report is today being presented.

"Furthermore, the President is not oblivious of the interest generated by Stakeholders towards the forensic audit exercise and the agitation for the constitution of the Board of the NDDC.

"However, this Administration is determined to address challenges militating against the delivery of the mandate of the NDDC to the people of the Niger Delta Region.

"It is in the broader context of the foregoing developments that the President recently signed into Law the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) which has been a contentious issue over the years for successive Governments, to bring about the prudence and accountability in the Petroleum Sector and to give a sense of participation and ownership to the Host communities.

"The Report on the forensic audit of the NNDC and your recommendations will therefore be critically analysed for necessary action and implementation.

"We owe it a duty to the people of the Niger Delta Region to improve their standard of living through the provision of adequate infrastructural and socio-economic development.

"The welfare and socio- economic inclusion of the Niger Delta Region is paramount to the development and security of the Region and by extension the Country.

"Funds spent on development activities should as a consequence promote political and socio-economic stability in the Region.

"Citizens affected by these development projects should also exhibit the ability to contribute to the continuous progress of their immediate and wider communities by engaging in constructive activities that will sustain and supports these development projects.

"It is evident that considerable resources have been channeled by the Federal Government to the development of the Niger Delta from 2001 to 2019.

"It is therefore important for the Federal Government and the public to be properly informed of what has been spent and how that has been spent.

"The essence of the forensic audit is to ensure probity and accountability in the use of public funds.

"It is against this background that the Federal Government will without hesitation strategically implement all aspects of the audit exercise that will promote probity and greater prosperity for the Niger Delta Region and Nigeria as whole.

"The Federal Government is particularly concerned with the colossal loss occasioned by uncompleted and unverified development projects in the Niger Delta Region, in spite of the huge resources made available to uplift the living standard of the citizens.

"We have on record over 13,777 projects, the execution of which is substantially compromised.

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"The Federal Government is also concerned with the multitudes of Niger Delta Development Commission's bank accounts amounting to 362 and lack of proper reconciliation of accounts.

"The Federal Government will in consequence apply the law to remedy the deficiencies outlined in the audit report as appropriate.

"This will include but not limited to initiation of criminal investigations, prosecution, recovery of funds not properly utilized for the public purposes for which they were meant for review of the laws to reposition and restructure the NDDC for the efficiency of better service delivery amongst others.

"In all these instances of actions, legal due processes will strictly be complied with.

"The President has directed that the forensic audit report be forwarded to the Federal Ministry of Justice for a legal review and relevant Ministries, Departments and Agencies of Government will be engaged in doing justice to the findings accordingly".

Malami commended the Minister of Niger Delta, Akpabio, the Interim Administrator and Staff of the NDDC for their support towards the completion of the audit exercise.

He equally commended the Lead Forensic Auditors and the 16 Field Audit Firms for completing the exercise, as well as the Security Committee for securing the lives and properties of the Audit Firms throughout the duration of the forensic audit exercise.
analysis

Although armed conflict is the leading cause of people going missing, migration is increasingly becoming a factor.

The number of people missing across Africa appears to be rising. By the end of June, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) had recorded more than 48 000 missing across the continent - an increase of 4 000 since June 2020.

These figures account for just a small fraction of the total. Beyond those documented by the ICRC and the International Organization for Migration (IOM), no reliable information exists on how many are missing and for how long.

Most registered disappearances are connected to armed conflict, situations of violence, natural disasters and migration. Armed conflict in seven African countries accounts for 39 360 (82%) of missing people recorded by the ICRC.

In recent years, governments and humanitarian organisations have intensified efforts to track and identify missing people, prevent disappearances and restore family links. However, the problem seems to be worsening. Greater awareness, more coordinated action and information exchange may help fix it.

Armed conflict in seven African countries accounts for 82% of missing people recorded by the ICRC

Limiting the numbers who go missing is vital. For the ICRC's Regional Director for Africa, Patrick Youssef, this means better collaboration between national authorities, non-governmental organisations, communities and humanitarian actors. He says although initiatives exist in most African countries, they aren't always consistent.

The African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights (ACHPR) recent resolution on missing migrants and refugees and the impact on their families could help. Maya Sahli-Fadel, ACHPR's Special Rapporteur on Refugees, Asylum Seekers, Migrants and Internally Displaced Persons, told ISS Today that it was important for the commission to take leadership on this issue.

She said the main step was for more African countries to ratify the 2006 International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance. She lamented the slow pace of ratification or accession - it took almost four years to get the required 20 ratifications for the convention to enter into force. Of the 98 countries that have signed, only 64 have ratified (18 are from Africa).

Armed conflict and violence are the main reason why people go missing. However, migration is increasingly a cause - and a major concern, says Sahli-Fadel. More and more migrants travel along perilous routes as options for legal migration in and out of Africa diminish. And for various reasons, they lose touch with their families and loved ones.

Migrants increasingly use perilous routes as legal migration options in and out of Africa diminish

Some who are smuggled or trafficked across borders are arrested and detained without access to the outside world. Others might not want to contact their families until their situation improves or their immigration status is legalised. Not wanting to expose relatives to investigations or difficulties with authorities and criminal networks is a way to protect loved ones.

Without any information though, families continue to search. Many fear their relatives are dead, and the risks are indeed high. Almost 1 300 migrants died trying to cross the Mediterranean from Africa to Europe between 1 January and 31 August this year. On other African migration routes, by 31 August the IOM had recorded 513 deaths in 2021.

Mame Bara Ndoye, Secretary-General of Senegal's Association of Families of Missing Migrants, says that knowing the fate of missing relatives was critical for many people. He was speaking at a joint ICRC-Institute for Security Studies (ISS) seminar to mark the International Day of the Disappeared on 30 August.

And since most of the missing are men, he said many families left behind were headed by women. In deeply patriarchal societies this brings its own challenges in relation to remarriage, divorce and custody of children, sources have told the ICRC.

Governments must recognise the tragedy of missing people and deal with families' multifaceted needs

These difficulties are also evident in Cameroon, South Sudan and Niger. Dr Maman Aminou A Koundy, an adviser to the Appeal Court of Niamey in Niger, said the role of security services and the judiciary was critical. He emphasised the need for governments to efficiently issue identity and travel documents, document migration and trace missing persons.

Senior officials at the ICRC-ISS seminar shared this view. Zimbabwe Police's Assistant Commissioner Crispen Lifa called for coordination among police at the regional level and through Interpol in the search for missing people. Beyond the state, he said, community workers should be trained on the importance of information sharing to help locate missing people.

While contexts differ, the same five ingredients are needed for responses to succeed, according to a new ISS-ICRC report on Africa's disappeared. First, families have a central role to play. Authorities should support them and provide individual assessments and responses. To do this, governments must acknowledge the tragedy of missing people and deal with the multifaceted needs of their families.

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Second, prevention and early action are needed to solve pending cases. Third, strong laws and effective protocols are essential, which means missing people and their families must be recognised under national law. Depending on the circumstances, death certificates or certificates of absence must be issued efficiently, along with services from a well-trained and resourced medico-legal system.

Fourth, authorities should consider establishing national and regional missing persons mechanisms and databases to clarify the fate and whereabouts of the disappeared. Finally, for those missing in the context of migration, committed inter-government efforts from countries along migration routes are vital. Procedures to search for and identify missing migrants are needed, along with information exchange and coordination protocols.

Underpinning all five of these action steps is the understanding that Africa must tackle the plight of missing people and their families, and that states must lead.

Ottilia Anna Maunganidze, Head of Special Projects, ISS

This article is funded by HSF. The opinions and statements in this article do not necessarily reflect those of the HSF. The article is part of a collaboration on missing persons with the ICRC.
The report says 27.9 per cent of Nigerians living in poverty (more than 15.6 million) earned between N100,000 and N200,000 per annum.

At least 27.4 million Nigerians earn below N100,000 per annum, a report by the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) has said.

The report, presented in Lagos on Thursday, said the figure represented 48.9 per cent of persons living in poverty in the country.

The report is titled: "The Ignored Pandemic: How Corruption in the Health, Education and Water Sectors is Plunging Nigerians into Poverty."

Presenting the report, Elijah Okebukola, Senior Research Fellow at the Anti-Corruption Academy of Nigeria, an arm of the ICPC said the report's survey covered the six geopolitical zones of the country.

The report states that 27.9 per cent of Nigerians living in poverty (more than 15.6 million) earned between N100,000 and N200,000 per annum.

It states that 10.7 per cent earned between N201,000 and N300,000 per annum while 12.5 per cent earned more than N300,000 per annum.

"Poor people are victims and not perpetrators of corruption in the health, education, and water sectors.

"States did not have documented policies for helping people living in poverty or people earning low income to have access to healthcare, education, and water.

"Even if these policies existed, they were not known to public officers who serve the people living in poor neighbourhoods," Mr Okebukola said.

According to the SERAP Report, 79 per cent of people living in poverty (more than 44.3 million Nigerians) relied on personal wells or boreholes for water supply.

The report showed that of 34 per cent of people living in poverty, about 19 million Nigerians, did not use the government's medical facilities at all.

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The report added that 5.2 per cent of people living in poverty (more than 2.9 million Nigerians) who went to government medical facilities were denied medical treatment in the last year.

It also noted that 4.2 per cent (2.3 million) of people living in poverty had not received any direct poverty alleviation donation or support from the government in the past year.

SERAP declared that in spite of the absence or inadequacy of learning tools and infrastructure, people living in poor neighbourhoods believed that good quality education was provided in their schools.

The report recommended the amendment of the 1999 Constitution to recognise the socio-economic rights of Nigerians to quality healthcare, education, and clean water as legally enforceable human rights.

It also recommended an increase in investments in public health, education, and water services and an improvement of transparency and quality of the information in government budgets.

SERAP also called on relevant anti-corruption agencies to jointly investigate and prosecute public officers allegedly involved in corruption in the education, healthcare and water sectors.

(NAN)
Abuja  Police in Nigeria's northwest Zamfara state say they are trying to rescue 73 students kidnapped by gunmen Wednesday. Within the last week, three other groups of kidnapped students in the northwest were freed, but only after large ransoms were paid.

The latest abductees included 53 male and 20 female students, all teenagers at a government secondary school in the remote village of Kaya. Police said a large number of bandits invaded the school and seized the students.

Zamfara state police spokesperson Shehu Mohammed said in a written statement that police and the military are on the trail of the bandits and have reinforced security in the village.

Following the attack, Zamfara state officials ordered closure of all primary and secondary schools in the state. They also imposed travel restrictions as well as a daily dusk to dawn curfew to prevent further attacks.

Zamfara is not the only state taking security measures in northern Nigeria, where kidnapping is rife these days.

Authorities in Kaduna, Niger and Katsina states have also introduced movement restrictions and are limiting sales of jerrycans and gasoline in a bid to stop bandits who often move around on motorcycles.

Sani Shuaib, a VOA Hausa service reporter in Zamfara state, said the movement ban is already having an impact.

"It involves all vehicles except military and security personnel. Immediately Zamfara announced it, Kaduna followed, Niger and then Sokoto too, I understand they're planning to adopt similar measures and it has started biting hard," said Shuaib.

But security expert Kabir Adamu said lack of accountability is the reason attacks on schools have lingered.

"The security departments don't have monitoring and evaluation systems in place and so there's no form of oversight or pressure on them to meet set targets. Even where there is clear failing, no one is held accountable," said Adamu.

Armed gangs have kidnapped about 1,100 students from schools in northern Nigeria since December of last year.

The increase in crimes in the region is believed to be crippling economic activities and contributing to the poor standard of living there.

Last Friday, gunmen released 90 pupils from an Islamic seminary in Niger state where children as young as four were abducted and held for nearly three months.
Vice President Yemi Osinbajo on Thursday declared that the African Cross-border Informal Trade is estimated to be worth $93 billion.

This revelation is coming just as the Vice President begins a four-day official visit to Arusha, Tanzania Thursday (today).

Osinbajo, in a message sent to a Roundtable on Industrialization in Africa with the theme "Positioning African Industries for Economic Transformation and Continental Free Trade", organized by the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN) to celebrate its Golden Jubilee,

stressed the need to rapidly operationalise the effort by Afreximbank to establish a Pan-African Payments and Settlement Platform.

This, according to him, "will go a long way in creating the desired continental payments system and also in facilitating cross-border informal trade which is estimated to be about $93 billion per annum."

The Vice President, according to a release by his spokesman, Laolu Akande, also declared that the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) offers limitless opportunities for the industrialization of Africa, urging authorities to take the right actions to actualize them.

He stated that such actions include the protection of local industries and improving value chains.

According to him, "for certain, the AfCFTA is indispensable if industrial development is to take off in Africa because it offers wider markets and economies of scale which are essential for manufacturing to be competitive.

"We must take policy actions to create an environment in which businesses can thrive. To start with, we must adopt the right type of macroeconomic and industrial policies.

"It is important for African governments to provide a stable macroeconomic environment which avoids and smoothens out volatility in prices, sharp deteriorations in the current account and budget deficits and of course, rapid accumulation in debt burdens."

Speaking on actions that will boost manufacturing, Osinbajo said "on the industrial side, policies like tariffs, quotas, subsidies and non-tariff barriers which protect our infant industries so that they can create jobs and enable learning are vital."

He added that "well negotiated rules of origin are important in the context of the free trade agreements as they are key to preventing trans-shipment and the deflection of trade. Without them, firms from non-state parties could set up simple labelling operations in one member State with a view to shipping already finished products to another member State without really adding any value."

Osinbajo observed that it is important for MAN to involve itself in an advisory capacity to government negotiators "as we go further into the rules of origin negotiations (these rules negotiations have, of course, started), but I think as we go on, we should get more contributions and advise from MAN.

"Our manufacturers must also strive to become competitive after clearly specified time periods so that they can withstand the ever present danger of stiff competition from imports. In other words, while our manufacturing industries must be nurtured and supported, they cannot remain infants forever".

Stressing the need to enhance industrial competitiveness, Osinbajo noted that "one of the ways to increase the competitiveness of African industries is to develop and deepen regional value chains wherein production systems starting from conception and design right through to supply of raw materials, processing, transport, storage, marketing and sales take place within our countries and continent."

Citing examples of Nigeria and South Africa, he explained, "when we export commodities to the rest of the world, we are also exporting jobs and the positive spillover effects such as learning that come with manufacturing are lost.

"Happily, we are already beginning to see some green shoots emerging in this regard as Nigerian fertiliser blenders obtain phosphates from Morocco for blending with urea produced in our petrochemical plants. Similarly, South African car manufacturers already buy leather for car seats from Botswana. We however need much more of such activities.

He identified some other things that need to be put in place "if we are to see the kind of manufacturing activity that we desire. First of all, we need to develop a strong infrastructural base. Extensive, cheap and affordable infrastructure is vital for the success of our economies.

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"We must build a network of roads, bridges and rail that will facilitate the movement of goods and people just as we build the electricity plants to power our factories and the broadband networks that lubricate modern business. It would also be essential in the interim to develop sites with dedicated infrastructural and regulatory structures like Special Economic Zones and Shared Facilities for small businesses."

Osinbajo added that another major objective of policies aimed at preparing industries for AfCFTA "must be to ease payments across borders and implementation of the protocols on free movement of persons".

Meanwhile, the Vice President is going on a brief official visit to Arusha in Tanzania from Thursday (today) to Monday.

Osinbajo, who is expected to be received by his Tanzanian counterpart, Dr. Philip Mpango, will be visiting the African Court of Justice and Human Rights (ACJHR), an African Union agency in Arusha, among other engagements before he returns to Abuja on Monday.
United States President Joe Biden and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison have reaffirmed plans for an in-person meeting of the Quad alliance within the next three months in their first phone call since the hurried withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Plans to hold the summit  which involves Australia, the US, Japan and India  in late September were thrown into doubt by the upcoming Japanese election and the resignation of Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga.

Scott Morrison and Joe Biden have had their first phone conversation since the Afghanistan withdrawal. Dominic Lorrimer, AP

In his conversation with the Australian Prime Minister on Friday morning Australian time, Mr Biden affirmed plans to hold the meeting later this [autumn] in Washington, meaning the meeting would now likely take place in October or November.

It is unclear whether Mr Morrison will be granted his first one-on-one meeting with Mr Biden when he travels to the US. Mr Morrison met Mr Biden for the first time on the sidelines of the G7 summit in June, but the encounter was not one-on-one as originally planned, with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson joining in.

The Australian Prime Minister said he had a warm conversation with the President and was looking forward to travelling to Washington when the Quad meeting will take place.

We have some working dates around it but still some confirmations around that need to occur, he said.

The re-emergence of the Quad in recent years had angered Beijing, which has labelled the group an Asian NATO designed to contain China.

The four leaders of the Quad countries held their first virtual meeting in March where they pledged to distribute one billion COVID-19 vaccine doses to developing countries in the Indo-Pacific.

Mr Morrison said support for the equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines and economic development initiatives in countries in the Mekong River region downstream from China would be on the Quad agenda when the leaders meet.

The two leaders also discussed the evacuation of thousands of people from Kabul in recent weeks, which saw Australia alone airlift more than 4100 Australian citizens, Afghan nationals and foreign officials.

Mr Morrison also told Biden he was sorry for the 13 American soldiers who were killed in a terror attack on the airport by Islamic States local affiliate. The Prime Minister said he and the US President also discussed the next stage of the Afghanistan exit, which involved creating a safe pathway for the hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees out of the country.

Rory Medcalf, head of the National Security College at the Australian National University, said the Quad was maintaining momentum as the new core for security cooperation in our Indo-Pacific region.

The tragedy of Afghanistan does not alter the long-term strategic focus of the Quad on preventing coercion and conflict through balancing Chinese power, he said. Quad cooperation is rapidly being normalised, right up to leaders level.

Professor Medcalf said it remained to be seen if Sugas departure will affect the timing of the next Quad summit but the pace and direction of the Quad wont fundamentally change as Suga goes.

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Presidente @PedroCastilloTe: Tenemos que trabajar juntos y de la mano por la confianza que nos dio el pueblo. Invoco al gabinete para agilizar y viabilizar las gestiones y proyectos de las alcaldesas, y que se prioricen las obras en sus localidades. pic.twitter.com/GyXLCLeRvp
El jefe de Estado, @PedroCastilloTe, junto con los titulares del @Minsa_Peru y @MineduPeru, asi como el alcalde de San Martin de Porres, superviso el inicio de vacunacion de los docentes urbanos contra la COVID-19, en la Gran Unidad Escolar Jose Granda. pic.twitter.com/Gw6tNpZbdR
?? Ahora | Ministro de Economia y Finanzas, @pedrofrancke, inicia presentacion ante el @congresoperu, para sustentar los proyectos de Ley de #Presupuesto2022, de Endeudamiento y Equilibrio Financiero del Sector Publico.

??Sigue la transmision: https://t.co/BwTsqZskOK pic.twitter.com/jjNzEbVbrO
YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 3, ARMENPRESS. A bipartisan group representing the Congressional Armenian Caucus joined with Armenians across the U.S. and around the world in marking the 30th anniversary of the Republic of Artsakhs (Nagorno Karabakh) independence, pledging to continue efforts to strengthen U.S.-Artsakh ties and push back against ongoing Azerbaijani and Turkish aggression, reported the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA).

In videos shared with the ANCA and premiered during September 2nd Artsakh Independence Day celebrations hosted by ANC International in Artsakhs capital city, Stepanakert, Members of Congress congratulated the people of Artsakh for their commitment to peace and democracy, as they continue to recover from the September, 2020 war launched by Azerbaijan, with Turkeys military backing.

Congressional Armenian Caucus Co-Chairs Frank Pallone (D-NJ) and David Valadao (R-CA), and Vice-Chair Adam Schiff (D-CA), were joined by Representatives Judy Chu (D-CA), Jim Costa (D-CA), Anna Eshoo (D-CA) and Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA) in sharing powerful words of solidarity with the Artsakh people, excerpts of which are provided below.

Rep. Frank Pallone (D-NJ): Ive never seen a more resilient people than the people of Artsakh, faced with all this aggression and all these problems from their neighbors around them, and I just want you to know that we in Congress remain supportive of you. Were working diligently with President Biden and his Administration with the spending bills to try to see and get as much help to Artsakh, to rebuild as possible, and also to penalize Turkey and Azerbaijan for their aggression. Also, I would like to see, ultimately, official recognition of Artsakh as a state, as a country, an engagement in an official way between the United States and Artsakh, and also really move forward with the peace process.

Rep. David Valadao (R-CA): On September 2nd, 1991, the people of Artsakh voted overwhelmingly to stand up to ongoing Azerbaijani aggression  in a fight for freedom to determine their own destiny. [] I visited Artsakh in 2017 and saw first-hand the dedication of its people to peace and self-determination  foundational values that the U.S. and Artsakh share. I have led efforts on the House floor to ensure expanded U.S. aid to Artsakh, to strengthen U.S.-Artsakh relations, and save lives through demining efforts. [] I stand with the people of Artsakh and Armenia in condemning Azerbaijani aggression and will continue working with my Congressional colleagues to secure the release of Armenian POWs, zero-out military aid to Azerbaijan, and increase U.S. assistance to Artsakh and Armenia.

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA): Today we come together to mark Artsakhs independence day  when 30 years ago, the brave people of Artsakh declared their independence from the Soviet Union. And while Artsakhs path has never been an easy one, the war over the past year or so has tested the people of Artsakh in unimaginable ways. Your resilience in the face of adversity is an inspiration to all of us. So, on this important day, lets rededicate ourselves to confronting the many threats to the people of Artsakh. Because independence is just the beginning of the struggle for liberation.

Rep. Judy Chu (D-CA): Thirty years ago, in an embrace of democracy and self-determination, the people of Artsakh voted overwhelmingly for independence. Sadly, this peaceful vote was met with years of violence, including the war in the summer of 2020, that left homes and villages destroyed and claimed far too many lives. But I have been to Artsakh and I know how strong the people there are. That is why I am proud to stand with the people of Artsakh and Armenians everywhere. I am committed to ensuring the support needed, to help Artsakh not only rebuild but thrive.

Rep. Jim Costa (D-CA): Its an honor and a great pleasure to shine light on the achievements and contributions made by the people of Artsakh. As we saw with the great American experiment, the path to freedom is never easy. However, we know that freedom and independence are worth fighting for. After three decades, Artsakh and her people have made great strides. Here in America, certainly in my home in the San Joaquin Valley, CA  the land of William Saroyan  Armenian Americans have contributed to the vibrancy and strength of our own democracy. Please know, my colleagues and I have pledged to continue to work in the U.S. Congress to ensure a free and prosperous Artsakh during these challenging times.

Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-CA): Today we celebrate the 30th anniversary of Artsakhs independence. This is a historic moment for the people of Artsakh. Your resilience against decades of adversity is an inspiration to me and to millions of people around the world. As I speak to you from my office in Washington, DC, across from the Capitol, I want you to know that you have many friends in the U.S. Congress who stand with you against those who refuse to accept your independence and seek to do you harm. I look forward to celebrating many more years of your independence and know that you will always have a friend and a partner in me here in the Congress of the United States.

Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA): Even as Azerbaijan has launched countless assaults and attempted to redraw the map by force, culminating in the deadly wave of Turkish and Azerbaijani violence last September, Artsakh remains standing strong as ever and, just as importantly, remains steadfastly dedicated to long-term regional peace. I want you to know that so many people in Massachusetts and across the United States stand with the people of Artsakh and Armenia in condemning Azerbaijani aggression. And, we will continue working in Congress to build strong support on behalf of Artsakh for a peaceful, democratic, negotiated resolution that treats the people of Artsakh and Armenians everywhere with the dignity and the respect that they deserve.
YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 3, ARMENPRESS. The ball in terms of the normalization of the Armenian-Turkish relations is in Turkeys court, and it is Turkey that must take actions on this path, Editor of Armenian section of the Istanbul-based Agos daily Bagrat Estukian told Armenpress, commenting on the recent so-called exchange of positive signals between Yerevan and Ankara.

Mr. Estukian says at this moment Armenia has no need to negotiate and moreover sit at a bargaining table with Turkey, because Turkey has refused from establishing diplomatic relations with Armenia and it also has unilaterally closed the border. Therefore, Estukian added, Turkey must record progress on this matter, without expecting anything from the Armenian side.

These days Erdogan [President of Turkey] is talking about a five-party agreement, meaning Armenia, Azerbaijan, Russia, Turkey and Iran, and doesnt rule out that Georgia could be the 6th factor. Whereas, our problem is bilateral. It is the following: immediately after the independence of Armenia, Turkey, by officially recognizing Armenia, has refused to establish diplomatic relations. Therefore, in this sense, the ball is in its court, it should take actions on this path. At the same time, citing the Artsakh war, Turkey has blocked the Armenia-Turkey land border. Here as well it should record progress without expecting anything from us, because these borders have been closed because of Turkeys unilateral decision, not because of negotiations. Today, if the borders should reopen, its again Turkeys unilateral decision. There is no material for negotiation with us. Therefore, we do not need to negotiate with Turkey or moreover, to sit around a bargaining table, Bagrat Estukian said.

According to Estukian, what Turkeys Erdogan has recently said about the Armenian-Turkish relations received quite a broader reaction in Armenia than in Turkey itself. Estukian notes that Erdogans statements that Ankara is ready to work on gradually normalizing the relations with Armenia, was not a prepared statement, but just an offhand response to the journalists question.

What President Erdogan said was not about plans. He expressed mood, and he has expressed that mood before, at the end of the 44-day war, stating that those relations in Caucasus, and of course, the Armenia-Turkey relations as well would gradually normalize. However, till now we have not seen any concrete action yet. Therefore, we have not taken into consideration that statement very seriously. It was not a discovery of any development, it was just a discovery of a mood, Bagrat Estukian said.

Interview by Aram Sargsyan

Editing and Translating by Aneta Harutyunyan
YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 3, ARMENPRESS. For ensuring the return of Armenian prisoners of war and civilians held in Azerbaijan, Armenia needs the strong support of international partners and the strengthening of international pressure in this regard, ARMENPRESS reports Justice Minister of Armenia Karen Andreasyan said during the meeting with Thierry Ribo, Head of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) Delegation to Armenia.

The Minister praised the ICRC mission during and after the 44-day war unleashed by Azerbaijan for visiting the Armenian POWs and civilian hostages in Azerbaijan and ensuring their communication with their families.

He shared with Thierry Ribo deep concern over the torture, inhuman and degrading treatment of Armenian captives and hostages in Azerbaijan.

The head of the ICRC delegation presented the activities carried out by the organization in the post-war period and touched upon other issues of mutual interest.

At the request of the guest, among other issues, Karen Andreasyan referred to the reform agenda of the Ministry of Justice.

The interlocutors stressed their readiness to further deepen the existing cooperation between the two institutions.
YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 3, ARMENPRESS. Minister of Finance of Armenia Tigran Khachatryan received UK Ambassador John Gallagher on September 3.



''During the meeting the parties discussed the Government Program of Armenia of 2021-2026, the particularities if foreign debt of Armenia and the manageability of debt, also the introduction of the system of the management of public finance and reform strategy. It was specially emphasized that currently Armenia does its best for creating favorable, predictable and stable environment for foreign investors'', ARMENPRESS reports reads the message released by the Ministry of Finance.



Congratulating the minister on the occasion of being appointed and wishing productive work at the new position, the Ambassador informed that the UK carefully follows and highly appreciates the reforms implemented by the Government of Armenia.



The Minister wished productive work to the Ambassador for the benefit of the development of friendly relations between the two countries. Referring to cooperation in different fields Ambassador Khachatryan particularly gave importance to the continuous support of the UK Government in forming an institutional environment in Armenia, and the importance of exchange of experience in the field of management of public finances.



The opportunities of broadening the cooperation were highlighted by both sides, as well as agreed to continue dialogue on the issues on the agenda.
YEREVAN, 3 SEPTEMBER, ARMENPRESS. The Central Bank of Armenia informs Armenpress that today, 3 September, USD exchange rate is up by 0.11 drams to 493.65 drams. EUR exchange rate is up by 1.17 drams to 586.06 drams. Russian Ruble exchange rate stood at 6.78 drams. GBP exchange rate up by 2.32 drams to 683.06 drams.

The Central Bank has set the following prices for precious metals.

Gold price is up by 18.31 drams to 28767.37 drams. Silver price is up by 3.98 drams to 383.53 drams. Platinum price is down by 186.88 drams to 15871.21 drams.
YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 3, ARMENPRESS. The Russian peacekeeping forces deployed in Nagorno Karabakh conflict zone have not recorded a ceasefire violation incident during the past day, ARMENPRESS was informed from the Defense Ministry of Russia. By this, the Russian Defense Ministry denies the statement of the Azerbaijani defense ministry about the ceasefire violation incident committed by the Defense Army of Artsakh in Shushi direction.

Earlier, the Azerbaijani defense ministry had issued a statement that allegedly on September 3 from 01:00 to 02:15 the Armenian side opened fire at one of the Azerbaijani positions in Shushi, but after the counteractions of the Azerbaijani side, retreated suffereing casualties. The Defense Ministry of Artsakh had announced about the Azerbaijani disinformation, noting that the Defense Army units strictly respect the ceasefire regime and only take counteractions for preventing the provocations of the adversary.
Moscow will consider recognizing Afghanistans new authorities once an inclusive government is formed in the country, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said at a briefing on Thursday, Tass informs.

September 3, 2021, 09:39 Russia to consider recognizing new Afghan authorities once government is formed

STEPANAKERT, SEPTEMBER 3, ARTSAKHPRESS: "We call for the establishment of an inclusive coalition government in Afghanistan that would involve all of the countrys ethnic and political forces, including ethnic minorities, so the question of recognizing the countrys authorities will rise after the process is over," she pointed out.

According to Zakharova, Russia consistently emphasizes the need for Afghanistan to turn into a peaceful, independent and economically stable country.

At the same time, in her words, "Western countries spontaneous operation to leave Afghanistan may have a negative impact on the nations welfare in a new historical era." "It is Western countries that made a decision on the form of their presence [in Afghanistan] but they failed to do it based on a mandate issued by the United Nations Security Council, as well as to present reports to the UN Security Council and the international community. So it is these countries that bear the primary responsibility for this step and everything that Afghanistan and the Taliban movement (outlawed in Russia) have inherited," the Russian diplomat added.
The statement issued by the Ministry of Defense of Azerbaijan that, allegedly, between 1am and 2:15am on Friday, the Armenian side fired on one of the positions located in Shushi city and retreatedsuffering lossesafter retaliation, is another disinformation by the opposing party, the press service of the Artsakh Defense Army reports.

September 3, 2021, 12:01 Artsakhs military denies Azerbaijani accusations on shelling positions in Shushi

STEPANAKERT, SEPTEMBER 3, ARTSAKHPRESS: The Ministry of Defense of the Republic of Artsakh reiterates that Defense Army units are strictly adhering to the ceasefire and are taking countermeasures only for thwarting provocations of the adversary, it said.

The Azerbaijani defense ministry also falsely claimed that the Artsakh military had suffered losses.
Ukraine and Western countries did not show the relevant level of respect to deploying a group of OSCE observers at the Russian initiative on the Gukovo and Donetsk checkpoints located on the Russian-Ukrainian border, spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova said in a statement issued on Friday after this group stopped operating, Tass informs.

September 3, 2021, 17:48 Kiev disrespected Moscows initiative on OSCE observer group on border

STEPANAKERT, SEPTEMBER 3, ARTSAKHPRESS: "The deployment of the group was a goodwill gesture by Russia to encourage Kiev to follow the path of peaceful settlement of the eastern Ukraine crisis. This confidence building measures was expected to facilitate a quick settlement of the domestic Ukrainian conflict. Nevertheless, the Ukrainian authorities and their Western patrons did not demonstrate the necessary level of respect to this step taken by Russia," she said.

The Russian diplomat emphasized that the OSCE group had not recorded any instances of deployment of forces, weapons, ammunition or military hardware from Russia to Donbass in the seven years it was active.

On Thursday, Russias envoy to the OSCE Alexander Lukashevich told a meeting of the OSCE Permanent Council that Russia sees no reasons to extend the groups mandate beyond its expiration date on September 30, 2021. According to him, this decision will not be revisited.
Abba has a particularly bedazzled way of avoiding tax. (Image: Getty).

The news that beloved Swedish band Abba has fresh music has fans around the world saying Thank you for the music, and reminiscing on Agnetha, Bjorn, Benny and Anni-Frids spectacular outfits.

While the spangled hotpants and sequinned minidresses are as much a part of Abba as smash hits like Dancing Queen and Fernando, for the Scandinavian quartet, the song that would best represent their elaborate costumes would be Money, Money, Money.

According to Swedish tax law, the cost of costumes can be deducted against tax, provided the outfits are so flamboyant that they couldnt be used for everyday use.

"In my honest opinion we looked like nuts in those years. Nobody can have been as badly dressed on stage as we were, Bjorn Ulvaeus revealed in 2014 book, Abba: The Official Photo Book.

Celebrity Net Worth puts each of the four members' net worth at US$200-$300 million, or collectively as much as US$1.2 billion (AU$1.62 billion).

The Fernan-dos and donts of claiming clothes on tax in Australia

The tax law is a bit different in Australia, but when all is said and done, the same rules generally apply.

You can claim a deduction for the costs required to buy, hire, repair and care for clothing, provided it is occupation-specific clothing, a uniform or protective clothing required for your job, according to the Australian Tax Office (ATO).

This would include a chefs white jacket and chequered pants, or a tradies high-visibility jacket. However, the blouse that an office worker wears into work would be non-tax deductible as the item isnt occupation specific, or required for the workers safety.

You also need to have spent your own money to buy the garments and not have been reimbursed by your employer.

You also need to prove that you spent the money, so its important to keep detailed records.

Australians have until 31 October to lodge their tax returns, unless theyre using a tax return.

The ATO has so far paid out more than $5.3 billion in tax returns, with the average taxpayer receiving a $2,490 refund.

Story continues

So if youre young, sweet and stuck in quarantine, and have a dream of extra cash, nows the time to lodge your tax return.

And if the prospect of lodging a tax return or paying a bill has you saying SOS, the ATO has dedicated services available to help.

Follow Yahoo Finance on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and Twitter, and subscribe to the free Fully Briefed daily newsletter.
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - The Israeli military said on Thursday it was investigating the fatal shooting of a Palestinian civilian in the occupied West Bank, who residents said was killed by soldiers while returning from work in Israel.

In a statement, the military said troops operating on Wednesday near a highway where Israeli vehicles had come under fire-bomb attack earlier in the week, had fired at a "suspect, who fled the area".

Some 90 minutes later, "a civilian with a gunshot wound" arrived at an Israeli military checkpoint in critical condition and was treated by medical personnel, but died, the statement said.

Palestinian residents identified the deceased as a 39-year-old man who lives near the scene of the shooting. They said he could work legally in Israel and was on his way home when he was shot.

"The incident is under review, and is simultaneously being investigated by the Military Police Criminal Investigation Division," the military said. "The findings will be transferred to the Military Advocate General's Corps for examination."

The West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, areas where Palestinians hope to create an independent state, were captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East War. Violence has erupted often since U.S.-sponsored peace talks broke down in 2014.

(Reporting by Jeffrey Heller; Editing by Stephen Coates)
Up to 20 million sterile flies will be released in the skies above Adelaide every week for the rest of the year as efforts continue to contain a spate of fruit fly outbreaks threatening the state's horticulture sector.

The flies will be released from a low-flying plane as part of the ongoing eradication program across 12 separate outbreaks.

"Sterile male fruit flies seek out female fruit flies in outbreak areas, mating with them so they can't reproduce and therefore breaking the life cycle," Primary Industries Minister David Basham said.

"As well as from a plane, our biosecurity officers are releasing up to six million sterile fruit flies in Adelaide each week on the ground.

"We expect fruit flies in the outbreak areas across South Australia to become active again as the weather warms up and the government has been working closely with industry to prepare for our biggest fight against fruit fly."

So far the government has spent $40 million on its eradication efforts across the 12 outbreaks in metropolitan Adelaide as well as five in the state's Riverland and one at Port Augusta.

Mr Basham said fruit flies could have a devastating impact on our $1.3 billion horticulture sector, threatening thousands of jobs.

"Overwhelming the wild population with our sterile flies will stop them breeding and now is the time, before the weather really warms up and the flies become more active," he said.

"More than 400 staff have been baiting and trapping within the fruit fly outbreak areas across the state during these cooler months, and working with residents to remove fallen fruit and picking ripe fruit from trees to reduce the numbers of flies and the quantity of fresh produce available to them.

"Fruit flies lay their eggs in fruit, the eggs grow into maggots that make the fruit rotten and when it falls to the ground the maggots dig into the soil to finish their life cycle, becoming flies that emerge from the ground to breed again."

Restrictions on the movement of fruit are in place across the 18 outbreaks and are expected to remain in force until at least December.
The state Department of Transportation held four information sessions  two in-person and two virtual  on the project. The agency is also holding neighborhood meetings in Syracuse and surrounding towns.

A final decision will be made in early 2022, but the department has identified the community grid as its preferred alternative. The $2 billion project would tear down the I-81 viaduct and make street-level improvements. A business loop would be created through the city and Interstate 481 would be redesignated as I-81.

There are two other alternatives under consideration  a no-build option and reconstructing the elevated highway. Other ideas, such as a depressed highway or tunnel, have been considered over the years. But the state determined those projects either weren't feasible or too expensive.

Some of central New York's federal, state and local leaders are backing the community grid, including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and Syracuse Mayor Ben Walsh. Katko maintains that he does not have a preference.

But there is opposition to the community grid from other local officials and businesses, namely Destiny USA. One recent proposal calls for replacing the I-81 viaduct with an iconic bridge named in honor of Harriet Tubman.
Malatras told The Citizen that CCC has a 60% vaccination rate. He expects that they will reach 100% because students and staff want to remain on campus.

"Students aren't really rejecting it," he said. "They're getting it done and they're doing clinics here to get it done." CCC hosted vaccination clinics at its Auburn and Fulton campuses this week.

The benefits of returning to in-person classes were highlighted by Mackenzie Cunningham, a student in CCC's nursing program. She was one of the participants in the roundtable discussion with Malatras.

Cunningham, who is in her second year in the nursing program, told Malatras that this first week of classes was the most time she has been spent on campus since the pandemic began in 2020. Before this semester, she had to be on campus for labs but classes were held online.

Malatras asked Cunningham how it felt to be on campus.

"Amazing," she said. "It's nice because it's not just nursing students. Last semester, because of it being limited to so many people, it was really just nursing students here on campus other than people who had lab components with their classes. It's really nice to see people around."
Wayne Mahar, a staple of central New York television news media for more than three decades, announced his retirement on Thursday during a live broadcast at the New York State Fair.

Mahar was chief meteorologist for CNY Central, Sinclair Broadcast Groups central New York television stations WSTM NBC3, WTVH CB5, and CW6. He plans to retire in December.

In a news release, CNY Central said Mahar joined the company in 1985. He was among the first TV meteorologists to commit to broadcasting the weather outdoors on CNY Centrals Weather Deck. His love of animals led him to adopt a stray cat that once wandered onto the Weather Deck and incorporate him into his daily forecasts. Doppler the Weather Cat remains a memorable chapter in Syracuse television history.

As one of the first full-time meteorologists in one of the snowiest cities in the country, Mahar was among the industry leaders who led local news broadcast teams to prioritize severe weather. He will be honored by the New York State Broadcasters Association when he is inducted into the Hall of Fame in October.
A series of stories by the Times-Picayune in 2005 documenting neglect at nursing homes around the state singled out conditions at some of Dean's facilities, describing a brain-damaged resident at one site drowning unattended in a whirlpool bath and another woman who was hospitalized after being swarmed by ants that ate away part of her skin.

The nursing home owner didn't respond to messages left by The Associated Press at multiple phone numbers listed for him and his businesses. But Dean defended the Ida evacuation in a phone interview with WAFB-TV.

We only had five deaths within the six days, and normally with 850 people youll have a couple a day, so we did really good with taking care of people, he said.

Even before the evacuation, Dean's nursing facilities and their quality of care received poor federal ratings based on inspections. Medicare.gov gives six of the seven nursing homes the lowest possible rating, and five of the sites were specifically dinged for poor quality of resident care.

About 220 nursing home evacuees from the Tangipahoa warehouse site were being housed at a special needs shelter in a civic center in northwest Louisianas Bossier City.
Evergrande Auto completes hot-weather testing for five Hengchi-branded models

Shanghai (Gasgoo)- Evergrande Auto, the electric vehicle unit of Chinese property conglomerate China Evergrande Group, has completed hot-weather testing for five models, namely, the Hengchi 1, 3, 5, 6, and 7, the company announced on September 3 via its WeChat account.

The testing was carried out in Turpan of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region featuring a surface temperature of up to 85 degrees Celsius and Qionghai of Hainan province with humidity of up to 90%, according to Evergrande Auto. A total of 53 vehicles of the 5 models were being tested simultaneously for 70 days, accumulating testing range of over 500,000 kilometers.



Hengchi 1, 3, 5, 6, and 7 in hot-weather tests; photo credit: Hengchi



The company said those vehicles all sailed through the tests for calibration of battery system, electric drive system, charging system, thermal management system, and complete vehicle performances in hot weather. They also went through super-long-distance road testing and validation to prove their weather-resistance ability in high temperatures.

Since announcing the foray into electric vehicle industry in 2019, Evergrande Auto has formed an industrial chain that encompasses technologies, production qualification, battery, sales network, and talents, and obtained core technologies about complete vehicle manufacturing, chassis architecture, powertrain, in-wheel electric motors, and power batteries through a host of acquisitions.

In March, Evergrande Auto said it had invested 47.4 billion yuan ($7.329 billion) in the NEV industry, 24.9 billion yuan ($3.85 billion) of which were plowed in the vehicle development and design, power batteries, autonomous driving and intelligent networking.

According to the company's semi-annual financial results, Evergrande Auto faced a net loss of 4.787 billion yuan ($740.135 million) attributable to the company's owners, versus the loss of 2.274 billion yuan ($351.591 million) for the year-ago period.

During the reporting period, revenue from new energy vehicle segment decreased by 30.22% year on year to 36.98 million yuan ($5.718 million), mainly due to the decrease in revenue from sales of batteries, said Evergrande Auto.
NIO's Aug. deliveries zoom up 48.3% YoY

Shanghai (Gasgoo)- NIO saw its monthly deliveries vigorously grow 48.3% year on year to 5,880 units in August 2021, the EV startup announced on Wednesday.

To be specific, NIO's July deliveries were composed of 1,738 ES8 SUVs, 2,342 ES6 SUVs, and 1,800 EC6 coupe SUVs.

By the end of August, the company's cumulative deliveries amounted to 131,408 units.

NIO ES6; photo credit: NIO

The company said its new order volume hit an all-new high last month thanks to the rising market demands. However, the vehicle production, especially the manufacturing of the ES6 and the EC6, was disrupted by the supply chain constraints stemming from the coronavirus pandemic in some areas in China and Malaysia.

Considering the continued uncertainty and volatility of semiconductor supply, NIO has adjusted its product plan and revised its quarterly deliveries guidance for the third quarter. It expects its Jul.-Sept. deliveries to reach roughly 22,500 to 23,500 vehicles, versus the previous outlook of 23,000 to 25,000 vehicles, which was just announced in NIO's second-quarter financial results.



At the end of August, NIO struck a deal with Sinopec Group's Hainan sales subsidiary to co-deploy EV charging and battery swapping stations in Hainan province. Leveraging the massive energy supply network of the state-owned oil giant, the startup will quicken the pace of launching its battery swapping facilities.


SAIC MAXUS YTD overseas sales surpass 2020 annual sales

Beijing (Gasgoo)- SAIC MAXUS sold 15,022 vehicles in August, including 5,871 vehicles overseas, representing an increase of 20% compared to the same month of last year. The year-to-date overseas sales volume by the end of August is 32,323 vehicles, exceeding the annual sales in 2020.

the MAXUS G50 Plus; photo credit: SAIC MAXUS



In August, the sales volume of Maxuss LCVs saw an increase of 35% year on year to 6,440 vehicles. MPVs were sold 3,698 vehicles while sales of pickup trucks more than doubled (up by 111% year on year) to 4,312 vehicles.

Both individual and corporate consumers overseas showed great interest in Maxuss new energy vehicles. In July, the brand exported over 5000 units of new vehicles, including the EV30, the EV90, and the V90, to the UK, Norway, Ireland, and other European countries. Maxus, therefore, shattered the record of the most-exported Chinese single model vehicles to Europe. The brands EUNIQ 5 model owns the most share in Norways NEV MVPs market by total sales of the first seven months of this year.

Moreover, SAIC MAXUS showcased 18 of the companys C2B customized vehicles at the Chengdu Auto Show.

Several automakers were forced to slash their production and sales this year due to the worsening chip shortages. According to the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA), the passenger vehicle retail sales in the first three weeks of August saw a decline of 15% year on year. Nonetheless, SAIC MAXUS is well positioned for the rest of this year.
CHATSWORTH, Calif.Adult industry mental health nonprofit Pineapple Support welcomes Ariel Anderssen as a support-level sponsor. The professional BDSM model and producer joins over 60 adult businesses and organizations in committing funds and resources to the organization.

"As a BDSM film maker, I have many friends and peers who've delayed getting support for their mental health, because of the discrimination they anticipate facing if they tell a therapist about their career choices, says Anderssen. The safety-from-stigma that Pineapple Support represents seems immensely valuable to me."

Pineapple Support was founded by British performer Leya Tanit in 2018, after a string of losses in the adult industry from depression and other mental illnesses. The organisation, which is a qualified 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization in the United States, has so far connected over 5,000 adult performers to mental health services, including free and low-cost therapy, counseling and emotional support.

We are thrilled to welcome Ariel Anderssen as a supporter of our organisation," says Tanit. "Generous contributors like Ariel help us to fight the stigma surrounding mental health and help send a message to our industry that seeking support is encouraged. Im incredibly grateful to all of our generous sponsors that enable us to continue providing mental health services and emotional support to performers all around the world."

To find out more about becoming a sponsor of Pineapple Support, visit pineapplesupport.org/sponsorship.
Interrupting and interfering with news media members trying to do their job sometimes goes quite badly. We saw that in 2019 when Thomas Callaway was arrested for sexual battery after slapping reporter Alex Borzarjian on the butt as he ran by during an event (he pled guilty last year and was sentenced to a fine, probation, and community service), and we saw it earlier this year when the guy who mooned a live shot in New Jersey got some camera scrutiny (he doesnt appear to have been identified, though). The latest case of this came during MSNBCs Hurricane Ida coverage Monday.

During that coverage Monday morning, a man ran up to MSNBC reporter Shaquille Brewster and his camera crew during a live shot from the beach in Gulfport, Mississippi. The man started heckling Brewster, then bumped Brewster and appeared to try to initiate more physical contact with him. That man was since identified as Benjamin Eugene Dagley, 54, of Wooster, Ohio, and he was arrested Thursday in Dayton, Ohio by the U.S. Marshals violent fugitive task force. Dagley has been charged with two counts of simple assault, one count of disturbing the peace and one count of violating an emergency curfew. Heres how this played out on MSNBC:

That clip shows Dagley running towards Brewster, saying Youre reporting this accurately, right?, then screaming Report accurately! and bumping Brewster (who had tried to shift to the ocean backdrop and keep reporting despite Dagleys interference). There may have been further contact after Brewster threw it back to studio anchor Craig Melvin; the last part of the interaction wasnt shown on MSNBC. Brewster did post to Instagram Tuesday that he and his crew were fine, even with that being the wildest moment Ive had on air, and that they resumed on-air hits in the next hour:

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Shaquille Brewster (@shaqbrewster)

Dagley was identified after the Gulfport police called for assistance figuring out who he was:

Thank you to the help of the community, the individual has been identified. https://t.co/pEbiqGR4vr  Gulfport Police Dept (@GulfportPolice) August 30, 2021

That led to Dagley being arrested by U.S. marshals Thursday. And this is not Dagleys first run-in with the law. Courtney Astolfi of The Cleveland Plain Dealer wrote in 2017 about Dagley being arrested for a break-in into an electroplating company he once owned that saw him drill holes in tanks of sodium cyanide, hydrochloric acid, sulfuric acid and more, causing a chemical leak that sent one employee to hospital:

Employees called police around 8 p.m. Aug. 22 after a security guard discovered gas escaping in one of the facilitys chemical rooms. Surveillance footage later revealed Dagley drilled into tanks of sodium cyanide, hydrochloric acid, yellow chromate, ferrous chloride, and sulfuric acid, according to a current owner, Ed Cochran. If you mix the (cyanide and hydrochloric acid), you basically have the cyanide gas of World War I, Cochran said. It certainly would produce a toxic vapor that could kill. Employees told police that the released chemicals are severe enough to cause a large scale catastrophe, and Dagley knew what he was doing, the report says. Potential cyanide poisoning is the reason why the 27-year-old security guard who found the leaks was taken to University Hospitals, according to Cochran and the report.

Dagley pled guilty to attempted felonious assault, inducing panic, and vandalism around that incident in 2018, and was sentenced to five years of probation, including a prohibition on leaving the state without permission (which also led to another arrest warrant for him here). Its unclear what he was doing in Mississippi, and what led him to harass Webster and the MSNBC crew. But it seems likely to lead to some further consequences for him.

[The New York Times; screenshot from MSNBC on YouTube]
With their new addition to Marvels superhero universe, the makers of Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings hope to further represent the real world.

The movie is the first in Marvels interconnecting film franchise to be led by an Asian hero and a predominantly Asian cast.

For director Destin Daniel Cretton, the mission was to tell an epic, relatable story that stays true to Chinese culture.

Growing up in Hawaii, movies were always my window to other cultures and other experiences, Cretton told the Daily News. When I watched a movie like E.T. on Maui, that was seeing how high schoolers are in California.

But it also allowed me to feel connected to those kids, because theyre also struggling with a broken home life or insecurities or pain ... and they have the same dreams as me. It helped me to feel connected to people that were not like me. I hope that this movie is something that the Asian community can be very proud of, but I also hope its a window to people who are not from this community to feel connected.

Simu Liu stars as Shang-Chi, who was raised as an assassin in China by his power-hungry father before fleeing his family and starting a low-profile life in San Francisco.
The focus of our first season is really all about...freedom of expression and its all about how working artists in the Latinx community really find expression in their own art forms, Maloney said.

The program is divided into three chapters lasting around 10 minutes each, with staff-led instruction between sections.

Maloney said they are also in the process of developing related curriculum for teachers to use before and after the program.

Obviously we're really making this a fun experience, but I want kids to be able to take something away from it too. ...There is so much educational value in any kind of experience where you're leaving campus. But this experience in particular, I think, is really engaging [and] not just because VR in itself is just inherently engaging, she said.

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Since VR for K-12 arts education is so new, Maloney said they are also planning to use the program for research in partnership with Arizona State University.

Maloney said that as they were testing the program, she saw students identify with the featured artists. She mentioned a student who was moved to tears by the story of Las Azalea's founder and another who said This artist's dope! after watching the chapter on Sentrock.
Shimoni chose to attend the special meeting remotely from Phoenix, while Aslan, Salas and Sweet sat out. Daggett, who was not at the conference, was the fourth councilmember who didn't attend the special meeting. The mayor said the following about Daggett and the other councilmembers in an email:

Vice Mayor Daggett was in town and not at the conference in Scottsdale, but did not attend. Councilmember Shimoni showed up virtually for the meeting despite being at the conference with the exact same meetings as the no-show councilmembers, Deasy said.

Attempts to contact Deasy were made by phone and email, but were not returned by press time.

Three of the four missing councilmembers, including Daggett, cited the short notice as a reason for their absence. Daggett said she was just returning from a camping trip when she saw that the meeting had been called, and chose not to attend due to standing commitments.

She said that Flagstaff needs focused, strong collaborative leadership.

Im a collaborative and thoughtful leader with a long list of accomplishments, Daggett said in the announcement. But in my role as an elected leader I am here to represent a wide range of perspectives, listen to opposing viewpoints, and discourage political grandstanding and drama.
In Heller, Scalia, speaking for a 5-4 court, cast Miller and the militia requirement aside and struck down a District of Columbia ordinance that required all firearms including rifles and shotguns be kept "unloaded and disassembled or bound by a trigger lock," even in an individual's home. For the first time, the court found that the right to keep and bear arms applied to private individuals. The decision was excoriated by dissenters, who claimed (correctly) that the Second Amendment was intended to address the need for common defense in a nation that could not afford a standing army. Conservatives, of course, hailed the decision as an expression of personal freedom.

But what those freedom-loving conservatives generally fail to mention is the limitations Scalia put on a right they view as unconditional. "Like most rights," Scalia wrote, "the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited. From Blackstone through the 19th-century cases, commentators and courts routinely explained that the right was not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose." As a result, although Congress has lacked the will to do so, any number of laws limiting the sale or use of firearms would not infringe on the Heller decision.
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(Global Times) I think what we can expect most from the new Afghan government should be as follows, and in that order:

First, they draw a clear line against the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) and other terrorist forces that pursue "Xinjiang independence," and they do not support any activities aimed at destabilizing China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

Second, they form an open, inclusive and broadly representative government, bringing a complete end to the civil strife for a permanent peace. They should also contribute to ease the regional situation and promote the well-being of the Afghan people, providing no more pretexts for possible future interventions by outside forces.

Third, they keep distance from the US and other forces that turn out to be hostile to China. They should refuse to act as a pawn for those forces to jeopardize China's strategic interests. Instead, we hope they are committed to developing friendly and cooperative relations with China and other neighboring countries and integrating into the common cause of regional peace and development.

Fourth, they promote the moderation of basic domestic social policies, boost the development of human rights, protect the rights of women and children, and turn Afghanistan into a moderate Islamic country.

In my opinion, such an order is very crucial. China does not have strength or interest in "reforming" Afghanistan, because that will not be in line with the country's basic diplomatic concept. China's national interests must be the starting point for our review of the ever changing situation in Afghanistan. In fact, this applies to all countries.

Some people in China now use human rights issues, such as women's rights, as the primary standard to decide if they will like the new regime in Afghanistan. Such a focus of attention is a common perspective in modern society, and it does have its own intrinsic and realistic logic. But it is impulsive and irrational to decide whether to develop relations with the new regime in Afghanistan on the basis of that standard alone.

In fact, "human rights diplomacy" is usually used as a geopolitical lever by countries even like the US. For example, Muslim-majority countries such as Iran and Syria are much more secular than Saudi Arabia. But the US has never attacked human rights issues, including women's rights issues, in Saudi Arabia. Yet the Americans have pointed their moralizing finger at similar problems in Iran and Syria as an excuse for US intervention.

The US hates terrorism on one hand and discriminates against Muslims on the other. I have watched a video from the US in which a female speaker drew a full house by thoroughly denying and smearing Islamic civilization. However, American people are specifically concerned about the "human rights" of Muslims in Xinjiang, slandering China's anti-terrorism actions there as "genocide."

Noninterference in other countries' internal affairs is indeed the golden rule of China's diplomacy. But the practical effect of judging the Taliban from an ethical perspective and asking China to disdain Taliban diplomatically is to cater to Washington's policy in Afghanistan and to benefit the US. China will surely work to insert a positive influence on the Afghan administration. However, we cannot take the US' national interests as a starting point. We do not dance to Washington's drumbeat.

The US launched the war in Afghanistan in 2001 and then abandoned the country last week in 2021. Such a rude act has taken countless Afghan people's lives and harmed their rights. Chinese people are not obliged to clean up the messy situation left by the US' failed Afghanistan policy. Nor are we obliged to help pull Washington out of the pit it had dug, and then jump into it ourselves.

We need to calmly observe the Taliban's rule and should not rush to conclusions in any direction. Meanwhile, we should open up the channels of contacts with the Taliban and prepare for advancing China's national interests in the future situation in Afghanistan.

The author is editor-in-chief of the Global Times.




US Vice-President Kamala Harris visited Singapore and Vietnam from Aug 22 to 26.

Earlier, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken held talks, via video link, with leaders of ASEAN member states, and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin visited some Southeast Asian countries. These visits and meetings are part of the US' intensive diplomatic push to expand its influence in the region.

Harris' visit to the region was a continuation of the strategies of the Barack Obama and Donald Trump administrations, and aimed at promoting the Joe Biden administration's Indo-Pacific strategy.

Washington has been desperately trying to consolidate its hold on the region for more than 10 years and Harris' visit, despite the chaos caused by the US' withdrawal from Afghanistan, shows the Biden administration's focus is back on the Indo-Pacific region.

Yet Harris' visit may not yield the desired results. Although Harris visited the region to look for potential partners for the Quad (a loose strategic partnership among the US, India, Japan and Australia) in Southeast Asia, she did not get any assurance from either Singapore or Vietnam, so she tried to smear China, saying that by claiming the majority of the South China Sea as its maritime territory, China is violating the rules-based order.

On the economic front, the US needs to consider whether it will join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, the free trade arrangement created by 11 countries after Trump pulled the US out of the original Trans-Pacific Partnership floated by Obama.

The US is promoting a digital ecosystem in Indo-Pacific region, and trying to convince the member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations to join the "Blue Dot Network" as an answer to China's Belt and Road Initiative. But Singapore and Vietnam remained noncommittal despite Harris' exhortations.

The US is using the Indo-Pacific strategy to strengthen its alliance network, in order to check China's rise. But since it cannot dominate the region without the support of allies, it is trying to restore its military ties with Thailand and the Philippines and promoting a "new rules-based order" to expand its alliance.

Biden is focusing on Southeast Asia also to divert US public attention from a series of domestic and foreign issues. The talks Blinken and Austin have held with the leaders of Southeast Asian countries over the past two months, and Harris' visit reflect the great importance the US attaches to the Indo-Pacific region. The US' renewed focus on the region and its efforts to strengthen its alliance network will be reflected in two ways.

First, the US will likely announce its commitment to, and achievements in, Southeast Asia at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meetings scheduled for November. And second, Biden or Harris may attend the video conferences likely to be held during the East Asia Summit in November, because Trump's absence from the meetings concerning the region for three consecutive years has not gone down well with ASEAN leaders and Biden wants to woo them back to the US' fold, in order to push forward his Indo-Pacific strategy.

However, even if ASEAN members accept the US' offer, they may not want to be part of any anti-China alliance network. ASEAN members, including Singapore and Vietnam, are reluctant to choose sides and instead want to maintain friendly relations with both China and the US.

In fact, Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has been reiterating that it is impossible for Singapore to choose sides between Washington and Beijing. And while the US has a lot of work to do to restore its military ties with Thailand and the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia seem more inclined to exercise greater strategic autonomy rather than becoming US pawns, and Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar are working with China to build a community with a shared future in the region.

Besides, ASEAN's goal is to maintain peace and promote common development in the region. Hence, even if some ASEAN members may welcome the US' increasing presence as a security guarantee, they would still prefer to leave economic policy to ASEAN decision-makers.

Also, ASEAN wants to maintain its centrality in regional cooperation, by limiting the US' involvement in the region. And since the US' attempt to isolate China from Southeast Asia can harm ASEAN members' interests, the US' plan could face opposition from ASEAN.

As both China and the US are strategic partners of ASEAN and have acknowledged the importance of the ASEAN Outlook on the Indo-Pacificwhich aims to strengthen ASEAN's position and engagement in the Asia-Pacific and Indian Ocean regions, and connect ASEAN with other regional blocsthe EAS is a good platform for them to communicate with each other.

Furthermore, since the US-led Indo-Pacific alliance network could pose a threat to ASEAN's centrality in the region, as was proved by the Obama administration's efforts to dominate the Asia-Pacific, the regional economic bloc may not side with Washington.

And given that the US only pays lip service to ASEAN, for it offers to help the regional bloc to tap into the huge demand for infrastructure, Southeast Asian countries favor China's win-win solution. As such, the US faces an uphill task in trying to consolidate its foothold and expand its influence in the region to check China's rise.

The author is a professor at the School of International at Peking University.
The Billings airport will have fewer, and in some cases, no direct flights to Denver, Portland and Dallas through fall and winter as airlines adjust their routes due to an increase in COVID cases.

As cases climb fewer people fly, and airlines are trying to anticipate what ridership will be moving into the fall, said Kevin Ploehn, director of aviation and transit for the city.

"They're pulling in their wings," he said.

Frontier will suspend its direct flights to Denver starting next month and likely won't resume until mid-April, Ploehn said. He explained that much of it will depend on what COVID does over the winter, but so much is unknown at this point.

"It's hard to say what they're going to do," he said.

Along with changes from Frontier, American Airlines will suspend one of its twice daily flights to Dallas in November, hopefully resuming them both in the spring.

In years past, the extra flight was discontinued for just January and February, typically the slowest months for the airlines, Ploehn said.

Likewise, Allegiant will end its direct flights to Portland for the winter, something that was planned. Those flights have been running since May.
Other factors, too, OScannlain said, have made it harder to hire: Because big companies such as Amazon and Walmart have raised wages, he has had to match their higher pay. Overall, he's raised pay 10% to 15% from a year ago. And some people fear becoming sick on the job from delta.

Those fears were easing in the spring as the numbers were coming down, he said. As infections have spiked, those concerns have risen again.

Governors in about 25 states stopped paying the $300-a-week federal jobless benefit in June and July because, they said, the extra money was discouraging recipients from looking for work. Yet the proportion of Americans with jobs or searching for one was flat in August, Friday's report showed, suggesting that the cutoff has had little impact so far. Some academic research has found that the early cutoffs have led to only a small increase in hiring.

The $300 payment, as well as two federal programs that cover the self-employed and gig workers, and the long-term unemployed, are set to end next week. About 8.9 million people will lose all their unemployment aid as a result.
Hsu described his former wife as a "very kind and lovable person."

 Susan Haigh, Associated Press

***

LAFITTE, La.

Nora Indovina was desperate to find someone to evacuate her mother before Hurricane Ida came ashore  and thought she had succeeded.

"Last time we talked, I told her to get her stuff together because they're coming to get you," Indovina said. "I guess they couldn't get to her."

Emily Boffone, 55, became trapped in her Lafitte home and died in the floodwaters. Her two beloved dogs survived the storm.

Boffone had worked for the Jefferson Parish sheriff's office, first in tax collection and later at booking intake, before retiring five years ago.

She had decided to ride out Ida because her neighbor was also staying, and she thought he could help her in an emergency, Indovina said. But the water rose so fast on Sunday that the neighbor wasn't able to get to her.
Most of those rescued were in shock, Middendorf said, with some stationing themselves in their attics, fearful of rising waters and with nowhere to go. Many sought help from CrowdSource Rescue, a Houston-based disaster response group that connects people seeking help with trained volunteers. Along with Middendorf, it has aided dozens of other volunteers do rescues or wellness checks during the disaster response.

By the time Middendorf arrived at the homes, most of the floodwaters had receded. But some residents still feared leaving their attics. A couple of the families, I literally coaxed down the attic as the waters receded, Middendorf said.

CrowdSource Rescue, which launched in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey in 2017, directs people seeking help to call 911 before contacting them. The group says it provides assistance when local officials are overwhelmed with requests. Matthew C. Marchetti, the group's executive director, says its average donation size is $60. So far, Marchetti says he's confirmed that the volunteers have rescued 364 people from floodwaters using boats and high-water vehicles.
As of Friday morning, Jack Old Horn said there were 43 positive cases on the Crow Indian Reservation, and 46% of those living within the Crow Tribes borders were considered to be fully vaccinated.

In early August, Crow Tribal Chairman Frank Whiteclay announced a mask mandate that within a few weeks was expanded to all public buildings on the reservation. The response to the mandate has been mixed, Old Horn said. There is still a contingent of people resisting both masks and vaccines, and health officials nationwide have struggled against this resistance for the past 18 months. If he knew how to address that problem, Old Horn said, COVID-19 would not be an issue.

If I wear a mask, Im protecting you. If you wear a mask, youre protecting me. If everyones wearing a mask, everyones protecting each other, Old Horn said.

The Crow Indian Health Service, partnering with the Big Horn County Public Health Department, is still offering vaccines and conducting outreach to the rural residents of the 2.2 million-acre reservation, Old Horn said.

Its not like theyre sitting back and waiting for people to come in. Theyre being aggressive, he said.
Additionally, McMahon said eliminating the Judicial Nomination Commission (JNC) would only enhance the governor's accountability in who is appointed to the bench.

"Under SB 140, the governor may not now hide behind the JNC shield to explain was a particular judge was appointed," McMahon wrote. "They will now have to directly answer to the people why a particular judge was appointed or why another person was not selected."

In his ruling, McMahon lists all 30 Supreme Court justices, District Court judges and Workers' Compensation Court judges appointed by the two previous governors, both Democrats, noting these governors were "duty bound" to appoint well-qualified judges, just as governors will be under SB 140. All but two of former Gov. Steve Bullock's 27 judicial appointments remain on the bench after being elected to retain their positions.

"It is with firm hope, conviction and belief that governors utilizing SB 140 will appoint similar 'great, not just good' Montana Supreme Court justice and district judges," McMahon wrote. "If not, this court anticipates the Montana people will say otherwise on election day."

Winter said in an email on Thursday the plaintiffs are still weighing an appeal.
Have a hard time finding a state campsite this summer, or did your favorite park seem more crowded?

That's reflected in statistics as visitation to Montana's state parks climbed by 11.1% through June compared to last year. Anxious to be outside as the COVID-19 pandemic persisted, more than 1.5 million visitors camped, hiked and boated in the first half of the year.

The information is contained in the midyear visitation report released by Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks late last month, which analyzes data from January through June.

When compared to 2019 visitation, the increase is a whopping 44.1%. Of the 45 state parks that were seasonally open during the first half of the year, 27 experienced an increase in estimated visitation compared with last year.

For the second straight year, the state parks system has experienced significant visitation growth for the first half of the year, said Beth Shumate, state parks division administrator, in a press release.

Interestingly, some popular state parks still ranked high for visitation but saw drops when compared to 2020, including Lake Elmo in Billings and Cooney near Roberts.
The Sangeh Monkey Forest typically had about 6,000 visitors a month, but as the pandemic spread last year and international travel dropped off dramatically, that number dropped to about 500.

Since July, when Indonesia banned all foreign travelers to the island and shut the sanctuary to local residents as well, there has been nobody.

Not only has that meant nobody bringing in extra food for the monkeys, the sanctuary has also lost out on its admission fees and is running low on money to purchase food for them, said operations manager Made Mohon.

The donations from villagers have helped, but they are also feeling the economic pinch and are gradually giving less and less, he said.

"This prolonged pandemic is beyond our expectations," Made Mohon said, "Food for monkeys has become a problem."

Food costs run about 850,000 rupiah ($60) a day, Made Mohon said, for 200 kilograms (440 pounds) of cassava, the monkeys' staple food, and 10 kilograms (22 pounds) of bananas.

The macaque is an omnivore and can eat a variety of animals and plants found in the jungle, but those in the Sangeh Monkey Forest have had enough contact with humans over the years that they seem to prefer other things.
Water is our lifeblood and sustains all amenities, entities and users in this state. Its future market value is immeasurable. All water resources begin with a drop of rain or a flake of snow. Water is a finite commodity and its availability is based on our ability to enhance and manage water use throughout the water cycle. We must enhance every aspect of its journey from the clouds to the ocean for the benefit of all users.

Drought unapologetically reminds us of waters importance to all life, but it also shows the resilience of the landscapes we live in. Rather than squabbling and pointing fingers we need to embrace precipitation and water management practices that make a difference in the long term. It all begins with the amount of precipitation received and how we manage our watersheds for yield and the impacts of evapotranspiration. Initially we need to get the precipitation into the soil profile where it becomes available as ground and surface water.
The gnats can become a problem if wet conditions early in the year create mud flats that dry out later in the year and create perfect breeding areas for the insects. Outbreaks end only after a hard freeze kills off the gnats.

EHD has been present in North Dakota for decades. It impacts white-tailed deer more than mule deer, due to the makeup of the animals. Its not considered a danger to people.

Compiling hard data on case numbers isn't an exact science because most of the evidence is word-of-mouth from landowners. If there appears to be a large number of cases in an area, state wildlife officials will then sometimes investigate themselves.

"Most reports are singles or maybe two deer. At this point we're well over 50 reports," Bahnson said. "That volume of reports is pretty high."

Game and Fish last year monitored the outbreak for about two weeks before deciding whether to offer license refunds, and Bahnson said that likely will be the scenario this year.

"It's certainly an option that we'll consider," he said. "We're not at the point where we're going to pull that lever right yet."
The Corps originally said the review would take 13 months, but it indicated in late 2020 that it would take longer given operator Energy Transfer's plans to expand the line's capacity. Earlier this year, an attorney for the agency said it aimed to wrap up the study in March 2022.

It's not unusual for Environmental Impact Statements to take a few years to complete, according to a recent federal review of the documents. Such studies are a means to comply with federal law when an agency proposes a major action that could significantly affect the environment -- in this case, the Corps potentially granting another permit for the line to carry oil under the Missouri River. The pipeline has undergone other shorter environmental reviews, which courts have deemed insufficient.

Energy Transfer announced earlier this month that it had completed part of the pipeline's expansion. The line can carry an extra 180,000 barrels of oil per day from North Dakota to Illinois for a total capacity of 750,000 barrels. It now has the ability to carry about two-thirds of North Dakota's daily oil output to market. Energy Transfer's plan is to ultimately boost the line's capacity even more to transport 1.1 million barrels of oil per day.
The Burleigh County Commission rejected a plan to offer employees a paid day off as incentive to get a COVID-19 vaccine.

The commission voted 3-2 on Wednesday to deny the proposal from Human Resources Director Pam Binder. Commissioners Brian Bitner, Jim Peluso and Mark Armstrong voted to deny the plan, while commissioners Kathleen Jones and Becky Matthews voted for the incentives.

Binder said she spoke to State's Attorney Julie Lawyer and neither wanted to mandate vaccines for employees.

The county cannot offer monetary incentives for vaccination, Binder said. County department heads instead proposed offering eight hours of annual leave.

Burleigh County Sheriff Kelly Leben told the commissioners he felt incentives would help his department. He said that from June 2020 to June 2021, 118 employees were out from work because they were close contacts or they had COVID-19. The length of employee absences ranged from one to 48 days.

"This may or may not be the answer, but I think we have a responsibility to at least discuss it and see where we're at and make a decision," Leben said.

He added that his staff is starting to tire from having to take on additional shifts.
Let's commemorate September 11 as Resistance Day.

At dawn on September 11, 1851, a militia of escaped slaves in Christiana, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, helped by a biracial intelligence network of abolitionists, resisted a gang of Maryland slave catchers that had come to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.

At dawn on September 11, these slave catchers barged into Stephen Parker's home. Their leader, Edward Gorsuch, got into a shouting match with Stephen Parker. This shouting match escalated into a gun battle.

At dawn on September 11, Edward Gorsuch said, My property I will have or I'll breakfast in hell. He did not get his slaves, only his wish.

At dawn on September 11, Eliza Parker blew her horn to alert the militia which then drove off this gang of federally sponsored kidnappers.

When Eliza Parker blew her horn, free state resistance against the Fugitive Slave Act began in earnest.

When Eliza Parker blew her horn, she showed how the right to bear arms has never been a white privilege but rather is a universal right.

When Eliza Parker blew her horn, white men refused to let slave catchers conscript them into sending their friends and neighbors into slavery.
Controlling Classified Information

For Australian Government organizations required to comply with the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) and Information Security Manual (ISM), Clearswift aims to address several controls around email, data protection and enforcement of the PSPF.

Clearswifts Secure Email Gateway and Secure ICAP Gateway work together with classification tools by:

Automatically enforcing policies for classified, unmarked or inappropriately marked emails & documents

Ensuring the correct classifications are correctly applied in the subject line, body, attachment and metadata of a message or file transfer

Cross domain secure file transfers

& additional Hygiene Features

Read on to learn more.
Forgiveness is the summit of all the terrorists fears, for it renders terror impotent. If only we had the strength to forgive. []

[A]t 12 Oclock  our country gained its full independence, praise and gratitude be to God.

Who said it?

An American revolutionary on Sept. 3, 1783, at the signing of the Treaty of Paris, perhaps?

Maybe a French soldier on Aug. 25, 1944, when allied forces liberated Paris from the Nazis?

How about a Romanian civilian after the execution of Nicolae Ceausescu on Dec. 25, 1989?

An East German witnessing the fall of the Berlin Wall?

No, these words were spoken (tweeted, actually) on Aug. 31, 2021, by Zabihullah Mujahid, a spokesman for the Taliban. The last U.S. forces left at 12 Oclock.

Nearly 175,000 people, if not more, lost their lives due to the war in Afghanistan, most of them civilians.

With every atrocity, they [the terrorists] hope that America grows fearful, retreating from the world and forsaking our friends. These words were spoken by then-president George W. Bush on Sept. 20, 2001. And thats what happened on Aug. 31, 2021. After 20 years, the United States retreated from Afghanistan, forsaking 38 million people to the return of the Taliban, known for their extensive violations of human rights, especially against women and ethnic and religious minorities.

On Sept. 11, 2001, Al Qaeda terrorists, based in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, hijacked and flew commercial jets into the World Trade Center towers in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., killing over 3,000 people. In response to the attack, despite campaigning for extensive military operations for the United States War on Terror, Bush at least had some sense that the sort of people who do such things do them for more than political reasons.

Americans are asking: Why do they hate us? Bush said to Congress. They hate what they see right here in this chamber, a democratically elected government  They hate our freedoms  our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to meet and assemble and disagree with one another.

Whether or not that were true at the time, the means chosen to defend those ideals  bombs, guns, and drones  have not borne the banner of freedom to the nations in which we and our allies have fought this War on Terror.

During the final evacuations of U.S. forces and allies from the Kabul airport in Afghanistan, a suicide bombing near the airport  killed 13 U.S. service members and more than 150 Afghans, according to Ellen Mitchell at The Hill.

In response to these attacks, for which the terrorist organization ISIS-K, a regional branch of ISIS, claimed responsibility, President Joe Biden authorized drone strikes that killed two militants in Jalalabad and destroyed an ISIS-K car bomb.

To justify the strikes, Biden offered these strong words: Let me say it clearly to those who wish America harm, to those who engage in terrorism against us or our allies. Know this: The United States will never rest. We will not forgive. We will not forget. We will hunt you down to the ends of the Earth, and you will pay the ultimate price.

Sorry, Ive mischaracterized his words. Strong is the opposite of what they are.

[T]he increased drone use, coupled with limited intelligence, also comes with a higher chance of civilian casualties, added Mitchell. That reality was on full display Sunday, with reports indicating that 10 civilians, including seven children, were killed by the U.S. drone strike.

The Taliban believe that God is on their side. Al Qaeda believe that God is on their side. ISIS believe that God is on their side. All are willing to use violence, including suicide attacks, to fight for their faith, because they adamantly and obviously do not believe that death is the ultimate price. As such, no bombs, guns, or drones can ever defeat them, and we delude ourselves to think otherwise.

I understand the predicament this puts us in. I remember Sept. 11, 2001 vividly. An announcement was made about the attacks early in the morning, during my senior-year English class in high school. The rest of the day we did no classwork, but instead watched the news unfold on TV. We watched the first tower fall, then the second. Thousands of innocent people died as a cloud of debris lifted into the air and covered the streets of New York with dust and ash like snow.

I would turn 18 that following May, a fact I could not get out of my head. Despite demographers attempts to classify my generation through passing fads like technology use, which are socioeconomically conditioned in the first place, witnessing this tragic event defines my American peers more than anything.

I remember supporting the War on Terror. Few didnt at the time. Of course, we thought, we cant do nothingafter September 11. We all know friends and family, our peers, who fought bravely in Afghanistan or Iraq. They fought and we supported them because we believed we couldnt do nothing.

The hard lesson over the last 20 years has been that there are worse things than doing nothing. Seven dead children at our hands are worse than doing nothing. 175,000 people dead with the undeniably terrible tyrants once again in charge is worse than doing nothing. Giving a nation of 38 million people false hope for freedom for 20 years, then skipping town in the middle of the night is worse than doing nothing. Leaving these same people in desperation to dangle off our planes and drop to their deaths or lift their infants over airport walls with no hope of ever seeing or holding them again is worse than doing nothing.

Vengeance isnt the only something we could have done. We added locks to cockpit doors, for example. While they are not as flashy as bombs, they kill fewer children last I checked.

Moreover  and this, I know, is the hardest part  forgiveness isnt nothing. It may even be everything.

Forgiveness is the summit of all the terrorists fears, for it renders terror impotent. Thus, for Biden to say, We will not forgive, is to continue the very error that led to our ignominious defeat, the folly of fighting a spiritual war with bombs, guns, and drones, the last of which our president is expected to continue using, despite seven children dying at our hands.

St. Paul called the forgiveness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ the power of God (Romans 1:16) and exhorted his readers, Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good (Romans 12:21). If only the Afghan people could have seen more of that vision of Gods power  a stark contrast to those who confuse it with jihad.

If only we had the strength to forgive.

If we can yet manage to forgive even terrorists, and say to our drive for vengeance, Enough!, maybe someday those whose lives weve devastated in the War on Terror will be able to forgive us. Maybe some would even leave the ways of terror behind because they wanted what we have, too. But wed need to have it first.

At the very least, it would have meant  and could still mean  fewer dead children on our hands.
Students at Mesquite Elementary School in Vail, Arizona, a suburb of Tucson, were in close contact with an individual who tested positive for Covid. After the students were told to isolate, as per state policy during the pandemic, a group of locals live-streamed themselves getting ready to confront the school's principal. The footage shows them carrying what one describes as "law enforcement" zip-ties and threatening to kidnap her. They managed to get into her office and ranted at her, but left when police were called, according to reports. She is now under police guard, according to local media.

A local coffee shop owner posted a message on social media saying that the school was breaking the law and violating the parents' rights by not letting their child attend the field trip. The coffee shop owner, the parents and another community went to the school Thursday. Streaming on Instagram, they showed what they claimed to be "law enforcement grade" zip ties and said they were going to make a citizen's arrest of the principal.

There are no charges as yet. If it stays that way, it'll be a starting gun for others to do likewise.

Below, the videos. One of the most worrisome things about it is that the man filming it, identified as a local coffee shop owner who doesn't even have children at the school, is constantly complaining about teachers "taking the law into their own hands" and "creating fear" while making clear that he intends to zip-tie them and drag them off somewhere.

Kelly Walker walking onto the school campus making threats and the carrying zip tips intended for school staff.



His buddy really doesn't want to appear on camera, gee wonder why  pic.twitter.com/YWBN1599vi  AZ Right Wing Watch (@az_rww) September 3, 2021
There's no shortage of presidential food gaffs. Vice President Quayle famously misspelled "potato" in front of sixth graders in 1992, and Mayor Pete pigged out at the 2019 Iowa State Fair. Hillary Clinton, in a radio interview, said she carries around hot sauce in her bag everywhere she goes. More recently, Donald Trump criticized opponent John Kasich's consumption of pancakes when he said, "I have never seen a human being eat in such a disgusting fashion This guy takes a pancake and he's shoving it in his mouth "Do you want that for your president? I don't think so."

One of the most memorable, though, is Gerald Ford's ambitious bite into the husk of a tamale. President Gerald Ford and Governor Jimmy Carter were head-to-head on the campaign trail, and Ford made a campaign stop in San Antonio. Things went even further south when he bit a tamale with the corn husk still on.

The media pounced. Mike Huckabee described the optics of the event to Sporkful.

"Every newscast in Texas all weekend long, all they did was show Gerald Ford not knowing how to eat a tamale. To this day I am convinced that it was that gaffe with the tamale that cost him the state of Texas. Carter won Texas and Carter won the presidency, and it may have been a tamale that did it." From Sporkful

San Antonio then-Mayor Lila Cockrell told the Houston Chronicle that she thought Ford "just picked up the plate because if someone had given him the plate, the tamales would not have had the shucks He didn't know any better. It was obvious he didn't get a briefing on the eating of tamales."
"To see an owner want to bring it back to life is a beautiful thing," said Fillmore District Common Councilmember Mitch Nowakowski, who advocated against demolition, and is now trying to help Antecki. "We want to show that preservation projects can be successful."

It won't be easy, however. Antecki wants to convert the house into four two- and three-bedroom apartments, with the aim of renting it to doctors and medical residents, since it's a short walk from the medical campus.

He knew he'd have to gut the interior, but discovered that the overall deterioration of the structure was more than he expected, with at least two large holes in the roof. The foundation has to be repaired, both the front and rear masonry section must be redone, and the roof needs to be replaced. We found out the exterior needs more work than we thought, Antecki said. Its extensive stuff.

Inside, meanwhile, "the place is a mess," requiring "new framing, new trusses, everything." So after spending $150,000 on the purchase, Antecki now estimates the repair and renovation cost at more than $700,000, describing it as a "scary scenario."
But members of the organizing team knew what had happened in prior years when funding fell short, the ruling explained. Johnson asked if the team could be present when the budget was given to the board, but was told no. So she drafted an email that Cejka sent to the board on Aug. 6, and copied Ghirmatzion and the two deputy directors, Amchan said in his ruling.

The note asked for a chance to view the budget in advance of the board, and to attend the board meeting. It was signed by six organizers. Cejka was lectured soon after by one of the deputy directors, while Ghirmatzion fired off an email to the entire team, calling the email "troubling," according to Amchan's decision.

At a meeting with the team the next day, Ghirmatzion called the email "disrespectful" and suggested some of them "don't want to be here." She warned that "we will double back" and "we will be making some very different changes."

"There's clearly no trust here. We can't move forward if we don't trust each other," Ghirmatzion said, according to Amchan. "And it's a mutual thing."

Later that day, Cejka lost access to the Salesforce platform she needed to do her job, at Ghirmatzon's direction, according to Amchan.

Cejka submitted her resignation five days later. Johnson was fired Aug. 27.
Like the Simpson series, Impeachment gives a fresh look at events two decades earlier that in retrospect seem to have been unfairly covered and guilty of sexism.

The cast is as excellent as it was in the Simpson series. You might quibble with some physical qualities of the actors playing real-life figures in the late 1990s, but they present them in a believable, compelling way.

Two of the leads, American Crime Story regular Sarah Paulson as Linda Tripp and British actor Clive Owen as President Clinton, are unrecognizable.

Wearing a fat suit, Paulson is terrific as the woman who befriended Lewinsky to get details of the affair with Clinton that Lewinsky felt were mutual and consensual and wanted to keep private but ultimately led to his impeachment trial in January 1999 and acquittal in February.

Owen doesnt have the weight of Clinton, but he gets his mannerisms and voice down perfectly and exudes charm like the former president, who eventually complained that no one has been more supportive of women than me in his hiring practices.

Beanie Feldstein (Booksmart, Lady Bird) may not remind people of Lewinsky physically, but she inhabits her personality, anxiety and naivete.
India Walton and Byron Brown pick up endorsements, support The mayoral campaign picked up momentum Tuesday, with incumbent Byron Brown touting support from veterans and developer Doug Jemal, while India Walton picked up Latino support with her promises for more affordable housing and less gentrification.

Its disappointing that Ms. Walton, who claimed to want to debate anywhere, anytime, has now gone back on that commitment," Brown said Thursday.

Brown said he committed to three other debates  "all the others we were asked to do by reputable news organizations.

Debates loomed as an issue in the primary campaign after Brown refused any efforts to pair him with Walton to discuss the issues. The mayor barely acknowledged Walton during the primary campaign and rejected her proposals to debate.

When I received a late demand from one of the candidates running for mayor, it really reinforced for me that persons lack of understanding of the role of mayor, Brown told The News in early June.

Buffalo Dems officially endorse India Walton for mayor "Were the party of making sure everyone has a boat, so a rising tide lifts them, instead of drowning them. Were the party of 'everybody in, nobody out,'  Walton said after receiving the endorsement.

Waltons debate challenge was issued very, very late  super late, Brown said then, adding that it ignored his responsibility to run Buffalo and guide it through Covid-19 recovery.

Anything less than that focus would be a dereliction of duty, he added in June. The people of Buffalo know me and know where I stand on the issues. The people who are running need to run their own campaigns.
After thinking about it for more than a decade, on Thursday Lockport formally renamed its only junior high school to honor a Black businessman who led the fight to desegregate the city's public schools in the 1870s.

"I'm feeling tearful," said Rae Alexander-Minter, 84, as North Park Junior High School was renamed Aaron Mossell Junior High School, after her great-grandfather.

Naming Lockport school for Black leader is delayed justice, descendant says Earlier this month, the Lockport Board of Education decided unanimously that this September, North Park Junior High School will become Aaron Mossell Junior High School.

"This is not only a historic moment, but a moment that reflects the very best of the State of New York, Lockport and the nation," Alexander-Minter told a crowd of about 150 outside the school.

"His name will now be known, and what he did for our community will now be known," said Mayor Michelle M. Roman, who attended North Park and later taught there.

"I'm a little teary-eyed because these are the kinds of things that need to happen so that we understand where we come from and where we need to go," Roman said.

On June 9, the Lockport Board of Education voted unanimously to rename the school after receiving a report strongly recommending the change from a committee of administrators and residents.

That reversed a vote rejecting the same idea in 2014 when the school board decided the North Park name was too deeply ingrained in the community to change.
A judge in Albany ruled this week that a lawsuit filed by some Lockport parents over the facial recognition security system in public schools there is moot because the state passed a law banning such systems.

The lawsuit contended that the state Education Department's November 2019 approval of the system's use was improper, but State Supreme Court Justice James H. Ferreira wasn't interested in pursuing the matter.

In a nine-page ruling, Ferreira said the approval was invalidated when former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo signed a law in December 2020 banning the use of facial recognition technology in schools.

The ban, which was imposed six months after the lawsuit was filed, is in effect until the Education Department completes a study of privacy issues connected with their use, or until July 1, 2022, whichever is later.

That law forced Lockport to turn off its system, which involved 300 digital cameras in the district's buildings and image-scanning software sold by a Canadian company, SN Technologies.

Ferreira said when the state study is issued, the question of facial recognition systems will be analyzed in a newly created legal framework.
All teachers and staff in New York preK-12 schools must be tested weekly for Covid-19 unless they can show proof of vaccination under a regulation issued Thursday by state Health Commissioner Dr. Howard Zucker.

Settings such as schools "pose increased challenges and urgency for controlling the spread of this disease because of the vulnerable populations served," and the number of children who are not eligible for the vaccine, according to the health commissioner.

+2 What parents need to know as kids return to school in Buffalo Niagara Schools have updated their protocols with an eye toward making sure all students can safely return.

"Regular Covid-19 testing enables the immediate identification of Covid-19-positive individuals, even if they are not symptomatic, so that they can isolate and prevent further transmission," Zucker said in his formal determination about the screening and diagnostic testing.

The testing requirement for teachers and staff is for areas with low to high transmission rates.

Zucker also is requiring schools to offer weekly testing to unvaccinated students in areas of moderate, substantial or high transmission rates.

All of Western New York has a high transmission rate, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, except for Wyoming County, which has a substantial transmission rate.
But the news of the latest steps forward was hailed by locals.

"To get rid of that site and get it out of here, I'm very much looking forward to having that area cleaned up," Lewiston Supervisor Steve Broderick said. "I believe it's happening faster than what I thought was going to occur."

The Buffalo District of the Army Corps of Engineers said Congress has significantly increased funding for the Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program in the past three years. That's the government program dealing with nuclear waste sites derived from government programs of the past.

Corps of Engineers explains delay in Lewiston nuclear waste removal In December 2015, the Army Corps of Engineers announced a $490 million plan to remove all of the nuclear waste from the Niagara Falls Storage Site in Lewiston. More than three years later, all of that waste remains buried under 20 feet of clay. The Corps has not followed through with the removal work, or even issued a record

The funding hike allows accelerated cleanup of other sites where work has already begun, and makes it possible that the Lewiston site might be cleaned up sooner than expected.

"We've waited quite a long time," said Wendy Guild Swearingen, who served on the Citizens Advisory Committee for the site. "Any first step is a good step."

She said the presence of the nuclear waste weighs on the minds of many Lewiston residents.
A lawyer for Walton, who the judge allowed to intervene in the case, did not ask the judge to recuse himself.

In addition to her scathing comments about Sinatra, Walton called Brown a sore loser.

"This is huge. I do believe this warrants national attention," Walton added. "We held a primary election. Mayor Brown was the endorsed Democrat, he was on the ballot in the primary and he lost. So the fact that he's able to have a second bite at the apple, it just shows that he is a true sore loser."

Walton had submitted an affidavit asking the court to deny the order putting Brown's name on the ballot.

Her lawyer, Sean Cooney, said in court papers that if the order was granted it would undermine the public's right to a fair election where the time periods under the election law are enforced equally. He cited her removal from the Working Families line on the ballot due to a similar missed timing deadline.

"If the temporary relief is granted and the name of Byron Brown appears on the ballot, he may continue on to win the general election without the public's right and confidence that the election was fairly won," Cooney said in his court papers. "This will be especially true when ultimately the constitutionality of the deadline is upheld."
Local refugee service agencies on Thursday announced plans to try to raise $750,000 to help the 350 or so Afghan evacuees who will be resettling to Buffalo in the coming months.

Banding together as the Western New York Refugee and Asylee Consortium, the five agencies said they need to raise that money because most of the Afghans will get no government assistance beyond an initial $1,225 payment. The money the agencies raise will be used to provide housing, health care, food, financial assistance and other aid to the newcomers.

"Buffalo has a proud history as a welcoming community: businesses, nonprofits, elected officials, neighborhoods, ethnic organizations and individual Buffalonians care for each other every day  not just in snowstorms," said Eva M. Hassett, executive director of the International Institute of Buffalo, which is part of the consortium. "We call on the community once again to show our newest neighbors  who have already been through experiences we cannot imagine  that the heart and spirit of this community is the generosity of its people."

In addition to trying to collect $750,000, the consortium is seeking donations of household items for the new arrivals. Volunteers are also needed to help the Afghans settle in Buffalo.
The high court sided with the governor, citing historians who testified the statue was erected as a monument to the Confederacy's Lost Cause and is now widely seen as a symbol of racial injustice.

Democracy is inherently dynamic. Values change and public policy changes too. The Government of the Commonwealth is entitled to select the views that it supports and the values that it wants to express," Justice S. Bernard Goodwyn wrote.

Virginia Democrats cheered, while Northam's statement called the ruling a tremendous win for the people of Virginia.

One of Virginia's most powerful Black lawmakers, state Sn. Louise Lucas, tweeted, For far too long, the Lee statue stood tall in our capital and represented nothing but division and white supremacy -- but it is finally coming down.

Patrick McSweeney, an attorney for the residents, declined immediate comment, saying his clients have to review the decision. He did not say whether they are considering appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Gregory's attorney, Joseph Blackburn Jr., did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.
Ida was the fifth-most powerful storm to strike the U.S. when it hit Louisiana on Sunday with maximum winds of 150 mph (240 kph), likely causing tens of billions of dollars in flood, wind and other damage, including to the electrical grid. The storm's remnants dropped devastating rainfall across parts of Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey on Wednesday, causing significant disruption to major population centers.

The storm has killed at least 13 in the Gulf Coast region and at least 46 in the Northeastern U.S.

More than 1 million homes and businesses in Louisiana and Mississippi remained without power after Ida toppled a major transmission tower and knocked out thousands of miles of lines and hundreds of substations. New Orleans was plunged into total darkness; power began returning to parts of the city Wednesday. Biden is set to visit Louisiana on Friday to survey some of the damage and meet with government officials there.

Biden said the flooding in Louisiana was less than the region experienced 16 years ago during Hurricane Katrina, crediting federal investments in the area's levee system.
It is going to be a very motivating issue for women who havent typically been single-issue pro-choice voters, said Republican pollster Christine Matthews. That includes suburban women and independents in swing House districts and competitive governors races who in past elections didnt believe Roe v. Wade was truly under threat, Matthews said.

The new Texas law represents the most significant threat yet to the Supreme Courts 1973 decision establishing the right to an abortion. Surveys suggest that ruling still has broad support  69% of voters in last year's elections said Roe v. Wade should be left as is, compared with just 29% saying it should be overturned, according to AP VoteCast, a poll of the electorate.

Democrats and abortion-rights advocates, who have sometimes been frustrated by voters taking access for granted, vowed Thursday to use the moment to wake people up. They promised to go after not just GOP candidates and office holders who support the Texas measure and others like it but also corporations that support them. Some reignited calls to end Senate filibuster rules to give abortion access a better chance at passage in Congress.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the House would soon vote on codifying Roe v. Wade into law, though chances in the Senate are all but nil.
Waiting lists continue to grow. They had more than 18,600 names in eight Mexican border cities in May, more than half in Tijuana, according to a report by the Strauss Center for International Security and Law at the University of Texas at Austin. Waiting lists peaked at nearly 27,000 names in August 2019.

The judge found in a 45-page ruling that the practice violated constitutional rights to due process under the law and a federal law requiring officials to screen anyone who shows up seeking asylum.

The judge, ruling in a lawsuit filed nearly four years ago, unequivocally backed criticisms that U.S. officials did not monitor the waiting lists, which were subject to fraud and corruption, and that asylum-seekers were exposed to grave physical danger while waiting in Mexico. Those who sued the government felt vindicated.

The Court properly recognized the extensive human costs of metering, including the high risk of assault, disappearance, and death, when Customs and Border Protection officers flout their duty to inspect and process asylum seekers and force them to wait in Mexico, said Melissa Crow, an attorney for the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The Justice Department declined to comment.


WASHINGTON  U.S. military bases housing Afghanistan evacuees are building their own city-type leadership organizations to deal with sanitation, food and other challenges as the numbers of Afghans coming into the U.S. grows.

Air Force General Glen VanHerck, who heads U.S. Northern Command, said there were more than 25,000 Afghan evacuees being housed at the eight bases as of Friday. He acknowledged there have been problems as the bases grapple with language, cultural and other issues.

He told Pentagon reporters that he's "building eight small cities, were going to have challenges. He said the bases have designated a military officer as a mayor to be in charge of a couple dorms or housing units and an Afghan counterpart who can communicate about any ongoing issues. He said Northern Command has asked the Defense Department for additional linguists who are fluent and can speak with the Afghans.

The U.S. military will eventually be able to house as many as 50,000 Afghanistan evacuees at the eight bases around the country and wont likely need to tap additional facilities, said VanHerck, who is also the head of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD),
Prime among these, though, must be immigration. Its a primary engine of growth and, if any city understands its value  and knows enough to ignore the often racist fears of critics  its this one.

Immigration, here and around the country, was choked off during the Trump administration, which viewed all newcomers with suspicion. President Biden has promised to reverse those policies. One place to launch a new decade of growth is by seeking out and attracting additional refugees and other immigrants from long-suffering Afghanistan.

Some of those people, we owe. They put their lives and the families safety at risk by helping the United States in its work there. With the Biden administrations plausible but poorly executed decision to end that war, interpreters and others are at mortal risk. Others will simply want to leave, given the abusive nature and practices of the Taliban. There is abundant evidence that girls and women are at exceptional risk.

Buffalo should have its welcome mat out for these people, and others from the Middle East, Asia, Latin America and other areas. We know how to absorb them into this community, how to help them adjust and then to succeed.

And we know that they help to make Buffalo a bigger, better and more interesting place.

  

Whats your opinion? Send it to us at lettertoeditor@buffnews.com. Letters should be a maximum of 300 words and must convey an opinion. The column does not print poetry, announcements of community events or thank you letters. A writer or household may appear only once every 30 days. All letters are subject to fact-checking and editing.
Sept. 10-11  Montezuma Muck Race from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. at the Montezuma Wetlands Complex. Teams identifying species of birds. For more information, check out friendsofmontezuma.org/projects-programs/muckrace/

Sept. 11  12th Annual Women Conquering Outdoors Adventures at North Forest Rod and Gun Club, 6257 Old Niagara Road, Lockport, starting at 8:30 a.m. Register by Sept. 1. Call Colleen Gaskill for more info at 628-9023.

Sept. 11  First Responders Fishing Day, sponsored by the Southtowns Walleye Association of WNY. Held out of all New York harbors in Lake Erie from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. Picnic to follow at the SWA clubhouse located at 5895 Southwestern Blvd., Hamburg, starting at 2 p.m. Fish fry included. Call Steve Haak at 225-0229 for more info.

Sept. 11  Birding the Beaver Pond with Buffalo Audubon and naturalist Tom Kerr from 9 to 11 a.m. At Beaver Meadow, 1610 Welch Road, North Java. $10 non-members, $8 members. Call 585-457-3228 for more info.

Sept. 11  Sun Life Marina Bass Open on the lower Niagara River/Lake Ontario from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. $70 per boat. Canadian waters open to fish. Register before 6:45 a.m. at Fort Niagara launch ramp.
SWA First Responders Day Sept. 11

The Southtowns Walleye Association of WNY will be paying tribute to those people who sacrifice every day all year long by hosting First Responders Day on Lake Erie on Sept. 11. The club is planning for fishing out of all Lake Erie ports in New York waters from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. At 2 p.m. there will be a fish fry and picnic at the club located at 5895 Southwestern Blvd., Hamburg.

If you would like to fish, contact Steve Haak at 225-0229 or call the club at 649-8202 and let them know which port. You could also contact Haak if you would like to donate your time with your boat on the water. Donations for the event can be made in care of Southtowns Walleye Association of WNY. For more information, check out southtownswalleye.org.

LOTSA meeting Sept. 9

The Lake Ontario Trout and Salmon Association will be holding its monthly meeting at 7 p.m. Sept. 9, returning to its location at the North Amherst Fire Company, 2200 Tonawanda Creek Road, Amherst, for the first time since the pandemic began. The seminar is open to the public and is free. For more information, visit the clubs website at lotsa1.org.
The number of flash flood watches in advance of warnings issued by the NWS Philadelphia and New York City offices was the most I recall seeing. Infrared satellite imagery retrieved by National Center for Atmospheric Research scientist Dakota Smith tells some of the story.

Doctoral candidate Tomer Burg recovered NWS Doppler radar rainfall estimates through mid-Wednesday evening, when the event was still ongoing.

The NWS Central Park Observatory received 3.14 inches of rain in 60 minutes, smashing the old hourly record, which occurred just a week earlier during Henris passage, by more than an inch. Newark had its rainiest day in history as well, with more than 8 inches in a few hours. The NWS issued New York City's first flash flood emergency in history, which is a step beyond a flash flood warning and points to the truly life-threatening nature of the flooding.

Idas total death toll is now up to at least 49, according to NBC News, with 45 of those deaths in the mid-Atlantic and Northeast. Here are the local storm reports compiled just by the NWS New York City office, not including reports from Philadelphia or Boston NWS offices.
By Mark Hosenball

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Capitol rioter nicknamed the "QAnon Shaman" is disappointed former President Donald Trump did not pardon him, his defense lawyer said on Friday after the man pleaded guilty to taking part in the Jan. 6 unrest.

Jacob Chansley, of Phoenix, Arizona, was photographed inside the Capitol shirtless, wearing a horned headdress and heavily tattooed. He has been held without bond since his arrest shortly after the riot, and on Friday entered a guilty plea to obstructing an official proceeding.

While in detention, Chansley underwent mental examinations and was diagnosed by prison officials with transient schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression and anxiety.

Nearly 600 people have been arrested over the attack on the Capitol where Congress was meeting to certify Joe Biden's November victory over Trump. Earlier Trump had given a fiery speech falsely claiming his defeat was the result of fraud.

While the felony charge Chansley pleaded guilty to carries both a maximum 20-year prison term and a fine of up to $250,000, prosecutor Kimberly Paschall indicated the maximum sentence the government was likely to request would be much shorter.

Chansley had been a supporter of the QAnon conspiracy theory that casts Trump as a savior figure and elite Democrats as a cabal of Satanist pedophiles and cannibals.

Although he did not get a pardon from Trump, Chansley's defense lawyer Albert Watkins said "there will always be a soft spot" for Trump in Chansley's heart.

At Friday's plea hearing, Watkins asked Judge Royce Lamberth to allow Chansley to be released from prison pending a sentencing hearing, scheduled for Nov. 17. The judge said he would consider this request.

Watkins noted that prosecutors had acknowledged Chansley was "not a planner or organizer" of the riot. Watkins later told reporters that Chansley had cooperated with Jan. 6 investigations and informed on a group he saw stealing classified materials from a Senate office.

(Reporting by Mark Hosenball; Editing by Howard Goller)
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has threatened political retaliation against tech and telecommunications companies that comply with a request for user data, including his, as part of the investigation into the Jan. 6 insurrection. (Associated Press)

The Jan. 6 committee is looking for a smoking gun  or, more likely, a smoking tweet.

That appears to be the aim behind a recent series of requests issued by the House committee investigating the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol this year. The committee has asked 35 technology and telecommunications companies to preserve communications data from hundreds of individuals who may have been involved in or have information about the days chaos.

The firms havent been asked to turn over the data yet; for now, the committee is asking the companies only to preserve records from specific people in case the committee later needs them as part of its investigation. If that happens, the committee will probably issue a subpoena.

Nevertheless, the request has already put some Republicans on edge. If the companies comply, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield) threatened, members of his party will not forget it the next time theyre in power. McCarthy is one of the individuals whose data are part of the committee's request, CNN reported.

But what, exactly, is at stake? What information do these companies have, and how likely are they to fork it over if it comes to that?

The requests were sent to a wide swath of companies, ranging from social media platforms and messaging apps to email services and phone companies.

But language shared across the letters outlines the same requests: that each company preserve information it possesses about individuals who have been charged by the Department of Justice or the District of Columbia with crimes related to the insurrection; were involved in organizing the rallies held in Washington on Jan. 5 and Jan. 6 that preceded the Capitol attack; or may have been involved with plans to delay or disrupt the election certification process.

Beyond that, however, the requests differ among subsets of companies.

The social networks, forums, email platforms and messaging services  as well as tech companies that offer a wide variety of products, such as Amazon and Microsoft  were asked to preserve metadata, subscriber information, technical usage information, and content of communications from April 1, 2020, through Jan. 31, 2021, for individuals named by the committee.

Story continues

Subject to that request are data such as the names, IP addresses and other identifying information behind relevant user accounts; the metadata and call or message details associated with accounts; and the contents of communications such as emails, voice messages, direct messages, text messages, videos, photos and other files or other data communications stored in or sent from the account.

Phone companies including AT&T, T-Mobile, U.S. Cellular, Verizon Wireless and Sprint received versions of a different, longer letter focused on telecommunications data.

Among the information theyve been asked to preserve is cellular location information (such as cell tower locations and historical GPS locations); records about incoming and outgoing calls and texts (including the contents of texts); voicemail and text metadata; and subscriber information including Social Security numbers, physical addresses and billing records.

The nature of the data requested for preservation could signal the direction committee members plan to take during the course of their investigation  as well as concerns that tech companies might lose or purge the data otherwise, as Facebook was recently caught doing. (Facebook has chalked the disappearance up to an accident and said its now been fixed.)

Meanwhile, Google appears to have been singled out with a custom letter calling on Chief Executive Sundar Pichai to preserve a long list of Google account records such as search and browsing activity; emails (including drafts and emails located in trash and spam); Google Pay transactions; Google Calendar events (and information on all attendees or invitees); files saved with Google tools such as Drive, Photos and Contacts; messages sent through Google Hangouts and Chats; account location history; and Google Voice call logs.

Although the list of the individuals whose data are being targeted has not been released, committee Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) has said it includes hundreds of names. CNN reported Monday that the list, which is said to be evolving, at one point included former President Trump, various members of the Trump family and Trump-aligned Republican members of Congress such as Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz, Lauren Boebert, Jim Jordan and Madison Cawthorn.

McCarthy, who opposed the creation of the Jan. 6 committee, has warned companies that they would be violating federal law if they handed over records during the investigation. His office did not answer an email asking which law he might be referring to. The Times was unable to identify any federal law that would bar companies from complying with such a request.

Among the greatest unknowns from Jan. 6 is exactly what Trump was doing during the hours-long riot, including whom he spoke with. Military and Justice Department leaders have told Congress they did not speak to the president that day. But several GOP representatives and senators, including McCarthy, are known to have been in direct contact with him and have largely declined to discuss the contents of the conversations.

Although some Democrats have made broad accusations that some of their Republican colleagues aided the Jan. 6 rioters, they have not provided evidence to back up the assertion.

There is a history of communications companies complying with government subpoenas  and of politicians being upset about it.

Democrats were aghast to learn this year that the Trump administrations Justice Department had subpoenaed some House members communications as part of an investigation into leaks related to the Russia election interference investigation.

And during Trumps first impeachment, Republicans were angered that Democrats had identified GOP representatives' phone numbers as part of a broader sweep of communications from the White House.

Many of the companies subject to the inquiry did not respond to a request for comment from The Times, or declined to comment. The few that issued statements offered few details as to what data they have and will turn over if asked.

We have received the request and look forward to continuing to work with the committee, said a Facebook representative.

We received the letter in question and are fully cooperating with the Committee on this matter, said a spokesperson for Reddit.

We have been contacted by the House Select Committee and intend to cooperate fully as appropriate, a Discord representative wrote.

However, ProtonMail  an encrypted email service based in Switzerland  said that its encryption means the company doesn't have access to the data in question. Additionally, a representative said, Swiss law makes it illegal to share such data with American authorities.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Richard Branson floats in space aboard a Virgin Galactic rocket plane. Virgin Galactic

The FAA has grounded a Virgin Galactic rocket plane as it investigates a mishap during a July 11 flight.

Billionaire and company co-founder Richard Branson was taken to the edge of space in the vehicle.

The FAA said the space plane went outside its clearance zone while returning.

See more stories on Insider's business page.

This story was updated with a new statement from Virgin Galactic at 5:15 p.m. ET on September 2.

The Federal Aviation Administration has grounded a Virgin Galactic rocket plane as it investigates a mishap aboard the flight that brought Richard Branson to the edge of space.

"Virgin Galactic may not return the SpaceShipTwo vehicle to flight until the FAA approves the final mishap investigation report or determines the issues related to the mishap do not affect public safety," the FAA told Insider in a statement Thursday.

The New Yorker's Nicholas Schmidle initially reported Wednesday that Branson's spaceflight on July 11 aboard VSS Unity didn't go as smoothly as it appeared.

The plane didn't climb to the boundary of space at a steep enough angle, Schmidle reported, ultimately causing it to deviate from its approved flight path on its way back to Earth.

As it descended, the space plane flew outside of its airspace clearance zone for a total of one minute and 41 seconds.

"The FAA is overseeing the Virgin Galactic investigation of its July 11 SpaceShipTwo mishap that occurred over Spaceport America, New Mexico," the agency said in its statement. "SpaceShipTwo deviated from its Air Traffic Control clearance as it returned to Spaceport America."

Virgin Galactic told Insider that the New Yorker report was "misleading" and said that no passengers or crew were in danger, and that the space plane did not pose a "hazard to the public."

The company said that its spaceship did not fly outside "the lateral confines of the protected airspace," but instead dropped "below the altitude of the airspace that is protected for Virgin Galactic missions."

"We take this seriously and are currently addressing the causes of the issue and determining how to prevent this from occurring on future missions," the company said in a response to the FAA's statement, adding, "We have been working closely with the FAA to support a thorough review and timely resolution of this issue."

Read the original article on Business Insider
Roughly 81% of all hospital beds in the county are now in use, including 96% of ICU beds, and about 13% of all ventilators are in use, she said.

Weideman said the countys hospitalized patients mirror what is being seen nationwide  between 95% and 98% of those hospitalized have not taken a COVID-19 vaccine.

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The COVID-19 positivity rate remains high, with 169 positive cases from 491 tests (34.4%) in the past week, similar to last week, when 148 people tested positive from 402 tests (36.8%).

In recent weeks, it has become a challenge to receive a COVID-19 test, or results are taking more than two days, she added. Anyone who is exhibiting any of the COVID-19 symptoms should seek out a test, she added.

Increased vaccinations

On Tuesday, Chippewa County crossed the 50% mark of all residents having received at least one COVID-19 dose; statewide, 37 of 72 counties have reached that mark.

Weideman said 802 doses were given in the past week, up from 615 a week ago. Chippewa County still has a lower vaccination rate than the state average and the national average. Chippewa County also borders Taylor, Rusk and Clark counties, which have the three lowest vaccination rates in Wisconsin.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, September 3)  Investors have snapped up the bond offering of listed food and chemical products manufacturer D&L Industries, with total bids reaching 13.8 billion.

In a disclosure, the company said the robust demand from fixed income investors may prompt it to exercise the 2 billion oversubscription option, boosting the issue size to 5 billion.

RELATED: Corporate regulator greenlights D&L's 5-B bond issuance

If the option will be tapped, the offering will be composed of 3- and 5-year bonds sized at 3 billion and 2 billion, respectively.

The 3-year issuance will be priced at 2.7885% per annum, while the 5-year bonds will carry a coupon rate of 3.5962% pa.

"We are overwhelmed with the strong support the fixed income community has shown us in our debut bond issuance. This has allowed us to price our bonds at among the lowest rates in Philippine corporate bond history," D&L Industries president and chief executive officer Alvin Lao was quoted as saying in a disclosure Friday.

As earlier disclosed, proceeds from the fundraising will finance the expansion of D&L's production facility in Batangas.

"This maiden offering will be a useful financial exercise for the company and will allow us to fully fund our Batangas expansion, which will be the next leg of growth for the company. We are looking forward to May 2022 when commercial operations finally start," he added.

In July, D&L received a PRS Aaa credit ratingthe highest credit ratingfrom local debt watcher Philippine Rating Services Corporation (PhilRatings) for the bond issuance.

The group's capacity to finance its obligation is also considered "extremely strong." PhilRatings also gave it a stable outlook, which means it is expected to last for the next 12 months.

D&L tapped China Bank Capital Corporation as the sole issue manager, lead underwriter, and sole bookrunner of the bond offer.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, September 3)  Investors from Europe are counting on the passage of key economic reforms before the 2022 elections, the European Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines (ECCP) said Friday.

In an interview with CNN Philippines' The Exchange, ECCP President Lars Wittig particularly cited bills amending the Public Services Act, Foreign Investments Act, and Retail Trade Liberalization Act.

"Those three are pivotal in order to ensure that we literally capitalize on this big interest that currently is from European investors," Wittig said.

The ECCP chief also emphasized the importance of promoting more competition and better variety of services among the likes of telecommunications, energy, and transportation in the country.

"That can only be allowed by bringing down these barriers," he said.

In a separate interview with The Exchange, Trade Secretary Ramon Lopez also emphasized that these measures - along with the government's flagship infrastructure program Build, Build, Build - are among reforms that will further reel in investments from abroad despite the COVID-19 pandemic.

Lopez also noted the country tallied $3.5 billion in foreign direct investments from January to May - a 37.8% annual growth.

Malacanang earlier expressed confidence that President Rodrigo Duterte's priority measures, which include the proposed pieces of legislation, will be passed even with the national polls fast approaching.

Both the Senate and the House will go on a break by October. The filing of certificates of candidacy will happen that month.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, September 3)  Megawide Construction Corporation said earnings attributable to parent hit 138 million in the first six months of 2021, a reversal from the 290-million losses it suffered a year ago, as its core business regained momentum.

In a disclosure on Friday, the group's consolidated revenues reached 7.6 billion, up 18% from a year prior, propelled mainly by its construction business.

Megawide said its construction business booked 7 billion in revenues, lifting its bottom line.

Landport and airport segments contributed 360 million and 235 million, respectively.

"We remain bullish for our construction segment as our primary growth driver in the coming years, as we slowly work towards global herd immunity to usher in the next normal and restart the economy," Edgar Saavedra, chairman and chief executive officer of Megawide, said in the filing.

Consolidated earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization stood at 1.7 billion. Operating expenses in the period were also cut by 8%.

Megawide is seeking to secure deals for the construction of the Metro Manila Subway Project, where it partnered with Tokyu Construction and Tobishima Construction from Japan for Package CP-104. The company also partnered with Hong Kongbased Chun Wo Construction for Packages 1 and 7 for the North-South Commuter Rail Southline.

The group is also in discussion with Baguio City for a potential landport location, as well as a bus rapid transit system in the southwest area of Luzon to bolster its transport-oriented development portfolio.

Megawide is also the operator of the Paranaque Integrated Terminal Exchange. It recently sealed the deal for the Carbon Market Redevelopment in Cebu City.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines)  SM Supermalls and the Commission on Elections (Comelec) have officially teamed up to provide voters with more registration venues at SM.

After signing a memorandum of agreement last Aug. 27 at SM Mall of Asia, the Comelec has opened satellite registration centers at SM Supermalls nationwide.

They are designed to give the public a safer, more convenient option amid the prevailing COVID-19 health crisis.

With the approaching registration deadline on Sept. 30, the Comelec and SM Supermalls expect a good turnout of registrants.

In view of this, health and safety standards will be strictly observed. The voter's registration center, like all other government service centers in the mall, is required to follow the safety protocols issued by the IATF.

The Comelec will limit the number of registrants per day. It will enforce filling up of health declaration forms, checking of body temperature, and physical distancing along with the mandatory wearing of face masks and face shields on site.

All strategically located 47 SM Supermalls across the country will participate. It will help ease and unburden registration traffic in barangays, providing the public with a more convenient, faster, and safer way to access the registration process.

The poll body is the latest government agency to partner with the mall chain in bringing basic government services closer to the public.

Other in-mall government services include COVID-19 vaccination, international vaccine certification at the Bureau of Quarantine satellite office, National ID registration, passport application, and express services from government agencies such as PAGIBIG, PhilHealth, SSS, and GSIS.

For locations of SM Supermalls with the Voter's Registration Center and schedules, visit this page or follow @smsupermalls on social media.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, September 3)  The Philippine Health Insurance Corporation's (PhilHealth) projected actuarial life is only until 2027, an official of the state health insurer told lawmakers during a House hearing on Friday.

This is due to projected net losses, which PhilHealth Actuarial Service chief Nerissa Santiago said could reach 57 billion by the end of the year, due to the expected rise in the number of COVID-19 related claims.

Santiago said based on their estimates, they will be paying for 173,000 COVID-19 hospitalization claims, and around 6.5 million COVID-19 tests.

"Average value per claim... Doon po sa (In) 2021, it's about 162,000 per claim or confinement. And for tests, that's an average of 3,000," Santiago explained.

By 2022, the state health insurer also projected a net loss of 17 billion, with the introduction of the Konsulta package (medical consultation package).

Santiago said the projected cost of the Konsulta package - benefitting around 89 million Filipinos - could reach 53 billion.

But Marikina Rep. Stella Quimbo questioned why PhilHealth is shouldering the medical consultation package when it's the job of the Health department to provide primary care for all Filipinos.

"Bakit kayo ang magbabayad ng Konsulta package? Kasi Mr. Chair, Konsulta package is a check-up. They basically, they pay for check-up for every Filipino, which is really not insurable. So arguably, dapat ang nagbabayad niyan is DOH," Quimbo said.

[Translation: Why are you paying for the Konsulta package? Because Mr. Chair, Konsulta package is a check-up. They basically, they pay for check-up for every Filipino, which is really not insurable. So arguably, the DOH (Department of Health) should be paying for that.]

A third party audit on the actuarial projections of PhilHealth was mandated by the General Appropriations Act of 2021.

But so far, PhilHealth said the Insurance Commission has yet to get a third party firm that will do the audit.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, September 3)  The government should take out the proposed 45 billion budget for COVID-19 booster shots from its unprogrammed allocations in the 2022 budget and learn from last year's uncertainties, a lawmaker said on Friday.

Speaking to CNN Philippines' The Source, House Deputy Minority Leader Stella Quimbo said the budget for booster shots must be part of the Department of Health's (DOH) regular appropriation due to the "emerging consensus" on the importance of securing a third vaccine dose.

"Keeping it as an unprogrammed appropriation means it is low priority in terms of spending, and not only that, you can only actually spend that if tax revenues of the government will be big enough such that there will be excess funds," Quimbo said. "(There is) uncertainty in other words."

At Wednesday's House hearing, Health Secretary Francisco Duque III disclosed that his agency initially proposed about 104 billion for the purchase of booster shots.

The Department of Budget and Management (DBM), however, only earmarked 45 billion under unprogrammed appropriations in the proposed budget for 2022.

READ: Budget request for COVID-19 booster shots cut by more than half

Quimbo said the situation can be compared to last year, when Congress had no choice but to approve the 70 billion budget for vaccines under the unprogrammed funds in the 2021 General Appropriations Act, without certainty on when they will be used. At the time, the DOH only set aside 2.5 billion for vaccine procurement.

"In the end, what Congress had to do to fix the situation was to add 70 billion and the only thing they could do is to give an unprogrammed appropriation, but then somehow nakahanap ng funds kaya napondohan iyon (funds were eventually sourced for that)," the lawmaker said. "But we don't want to have that kind of uncertainty now that we know better."

"It's a little bit somewhat disappointing," Quimbo also said, "that we seem to not have learned from the experience last year and we continued to keep the vaccine budget as unprogrammed."

The DBM defines programmed appropriations as those "with definite/identified funding as of the time the budget is prepared," while unprogrammed appropriations are "those which provide standby authority to incur additional agency obligations for priority programs or projects when revenue collection exceed targets, and when additional grants or foreign funds are generated."

The DOH told Wednesday's hearing that the Department of Finance will "immediately find funds" as soon as the Health Technology Assessment Council recommends the use of booster shots.
(CNN)  A Singaporean hawker stall known for offering the world's least expensive Michelin-starred meal has just lost its designation.

Hawker Chan, founded by Chan Hong Meng, became famous for its simple-yet-delicious $2.50 soy sauce chicken noodle dish when it was included in Michelin's first-ever guide to Singapore in 2016, earning one star.

But when the food bible unveiled its latest Singapore edition on September 1, Hawker Chan  previously known as Liao Fan Hong Kong Soya Sauce Chicken Rice & Noodles  was nowhere to be found.

After his Michelin triumph, Meng's career took off. His brand has grown from one humble stall in a Chinatown hawker center to a franchise restaurant with locations in Thailand, the Philippines, and more.

He changed the name of the restaurant to Hawker Chan and began branching out to other dishes.

CNN has contacted Hawker Chan for comment on the loss of the star.

'Michelin has correctly stuck to their guns'

While some have applauded the Malaysia-born chef for capitalizing on his hard work, others felt the quality of the food slipped following the opening of his new establishments.

Singaporean food expert KF Seetoh tells CNN, "I think Michelin has correctly stuck to their guns and protected the dignity of the stars."

Seetoh was a longtime friend of the late Anthony Bourdain and took the chef to several hawker centers in the Lion City. Bourdain's support of these small, local food stalls, many of which specialize in just one dish, helped to show travelers outside of Singapore how much great food the city had to offer at every price level.

The two had been working on a hawker center concept in New York City when Bourdain died in 2018.

For Seetoh, though, the future of Singapore's food scene depends on much more than just one chef or one restaurant.

"On a bigger note, and with due respect, Michelin should stick to their core strength and power the restaurants as the restaurants need help now."

Singapore, like nearly every country in the world, has seen its tourism industry devastated by the coronavirus pandemic. Amid border closures and local lockdowns, the food and beverage industry has been particularly hard hit.

However, the country's high vaccination rate has spurred the Singaporean government to begin slowly reopening and developing a strategy to live safely with Covid.

Michelin under the microscope

Michelin, which is owned by the tire company of the same name, is one of the most secretive publications in the world. The names of its editors and contributors are closely guarded secrets.

The company originally began publishing travel guides for people driving in Europe, making the leap from tires to cars to tourism. In the travel guides, some restaurants would get special mentions.

Later, the star system emerged and took on a life of its own. The highest number of stars a restaurant can earn is three.

The Michelin brand became so respected in the world of fine dining that some chefs were driven into a frenzy trying to score its accolades.

French chef Marc Veyrat sued Michelin in 2019 when his famed restaurant, La Maison des Bois, was downgraded from three stars to two. Veyrat, the first chef ever to sue Michelin, wanted the company's mysterious criteria to be more transparent, and to know the names of people who worked on the guides and what their backgrounds were.

Ultimately, Veyrat lost his suit. But he isn't the only chef to speak out against the food bible recently.

Korean chef Eo Yun-gwon, whose restaurant Ristorante Eo was awarded a Michelin star in the 2019 guide to Seoul, complained that he did not want to be included in the book at all.

"I have filed a criminal complaint against Michelin Guide's behavior of forcibly listing (restaurants) against their will and without a clear criteria," Eo wrote in a Facebook post.

"Including my restaurant Eo in the corrupt book is a defamation against members of Eo and the fans. Like a ghost, they did not have a contact number and I was only able to get in touch through email. Although I clearly refused listing of my restaurant, they included it at their will this year as well."

Over the years, Michelin had been criticized for focusing too much on Europe and North America while ignoring the rest of the world and for prioritizing high-end establishments.

Amid this criticism, Michelin created a new category, the Bib Gourmand, in 1997. According to the company, the Bib Gourmand designation recognizes a "simpler style of cooking" that is "something you feel you could attempt to replicate at home."

It released its first guide to Tokyo in 2007 and its inaugural guide to Hong Kong and Macao two years later.
(CNN)  Apple will allow companies such as Spotify and Netflix to direct customers to their own websites to make payments, allowing them to more easily avoid fees levied by the App Store.

The iPhone maker's latest concession in a long-standing fight with app developers was announced Wednesday in response to an investigation initiated by Japan's Fair Trade Commission.

The update  which will take effect in early 2022, and applies worldwide  will allow developers of what Apple calls "reader" apps to insert a link out to external websites and let people set up or manage their accounts there.

Such apps provide previously purchased content or subscriptions for magazines, newspapers, books, audio, music and video, according to Apple. Amazon Video and Kindle are also frequently cited as examples of reader apps.

Spotify and Netflix once allowed users to pay for services in-app, but have since stopped that form of billing for new members amid a dispute with Apple over the hefty commission it charges. Downloading the Netflix app, for example, will allow you to sign in  but only if you have an existing account. The app otherwise tells you to "join and come back" once you have an account.

Spotify did not immediately respond to a request from CNN Business for comment about the change. Netflix declined to comment.

"To ensure a safe and seamless user experience, the App Store's guidelines require developers to sell digital services and subscriptions using Apple's in-app payment system," Apple said, adding that it is allowing for the change "because developers of reader apps do not offer in-app digital goods and services for purchase."

The update will make it easier for some developers to bypass hefty charges imposed by Apple. The company's commissions go as high as 30% on some purchases made through its platform. Developers have said they have little choice but to comply, since Apple does not allow customers to download apps from any source other than the company's official store.

'Divide and conquer'?

The issue is at the heart of an EU antitrust investigation and a lawsuit brought against Apple by Fortnite-maker Epic Games. A verdict in the Fortnite case is due any day now. Epic CEO Tim Sweeney tweeted late Wednesday that Apple's "special deal" for some media apps amounted to the latest in a "day-by-day recalculation of divide and conquer in hopes of getting away with most of their tying practices."

"Apple should open up iOS on the basis of hardware, stores, payments and services each competing individually and on their merits," he wrote.

Apple's announcement comes about a week after the company said it would relax some restrictions on how iPhone app makers could communicate with customers outside its App Store.

The company said last week that "developers can use communications, such as email, to share information about payment methods outside of their iOS app," as long as users consent to receiving those emails and have the right to opt out.

The announcement also comes after South Korea passed a law that will allow developers to select which payment systems to use to process in-app purchases. That means they may be able to bypass hefty charges imposed by Apple and Google.

 Michelle Toh and Rishi Iyengar contributed to this report.

This story was first published on CNN.com 'Apple relaxes App Store rules for services such as Spotify and Netflix'
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, September 3)  The country's overall chicken inventory decreased in July, latest data from the Philippine Statistics Authority revealed.

The PSA estimated the national chicken population at 183.99 million birds as of July 1, lower by 1.3% from the 186.49 million tallied in the same period last year.

Native/improved chicken inventory dwindled by 2.7%, while the population of broiler chicken dropped by 6.7% from last year. Layer chicken inventory, meanwhile, grew by 10%.

The total chicken inventory was comprised of 45.2% of native/improved chicken and 31.1% of broiler chicken, while layer chicken had a 23.7% share.

Central Luzon had the largest chicken inventory among all regions at 31.35 million birds, followed by Northern Mindanao at 23.85 million, and Calabarzon with 22.79 million.

The PSA said these regions contributed 42.4% of the total chicken inventory of the Philippines.

In terms of chicken types, Western Visayas logged the highest native/improved chicken inventory with 13.16 million birds. Central Luzon recorded the biggest population of broiler chicken at 15.63 million birds, while Calabarzon had the most layer chickens at 15.44 million birds.

The Agriculture department earlier touted the poultry sector's "crucial function" in the country's pursuit of agricultural development.

Agriculture chief William Dar earlier said "the poultry subsector remains a major bright spot for spurring agricultural growth this year, towards a target of 2 percent" even while the Philippines reels from the threat of the African Swine Fever and repopulates its hog inventory.
Trigger warning: sexual abuse and assault.

Ive visited a church five times since March 2020: twice to attend a wedding, once to celebrate my parents 30th wedding anniversary with my family, and twice simply because I wanted to. The first time I went out of my own volition, it was a sunny Saturday morning in November. The church was large, empty and quiet. Plastic covered the spaces on the pews in which we were to distance from one another. I sat at the very back of the church, gazed at the vast space between the crucifix and me, and, praying for the first time beneath a mask and face shield, began to cry.

On another Saturday eight months later, I visited a church again, this time inside a mall. Save for a few people, the chapel was still largely bare. As I sat in one of the back pews, I could feel my eyes swelling up with tears, but I tried to hold it in. Perhaps I was a little embarrassed to cry again beside my boyfriend, an agnostic who had accompanied me, because I could not explain why such visceral tears came whenever we visited a church at this time. I am lucky to not have lost anything or anyone during the pandemic  but why did this emptied, sacred space make me feel like I have?

When I was a kid, my parents were active in a Catholic charismatic community, whose members became my extended family. My Sunday mornings then were devoted to Hillsong-esque worship. I listened to talks and conversion testimonies. I made pretty bookmarks with Bible verses. I attended youth camps and retreats, where preternaturally cheerful leaders would pray over us in that mysterious, magical language of tongues. Meanwhile, my weekdays were spent in a different, but no less devoted religious environment. Insulated within a sprawling suburban village in the south of Manila, I attended a brick-walled, all-girls school that aspired for the solemnity and discipline of a medieval convent.

Teachers and priests taught us the intricacies of Catholic rituals, showing us, for instance, the preciousness of the Eucharist during a school tradition in which we decorated campus floors with lovely petal carpets to adore the holy object. During my first confession, I counted with my small seven-year old fingers all my seven sins, learning not to hide one from the priest lest I be guilty of dishonesty. Since then we learned to remember all our wrongdoings, big or small, from overeating to fighting with our parents.

As we blossomed into teenagers, our school focused more and more on sexual morality. Teachers drilled in us the virtues of chastity and purity during religion classes; school administrators reprimanded us if our long checkered skirts ever hovered too close to our knees. We resented this, for the most part, but morality would still animate our lunchtime conversations, where my friends and I would ruminate on whether or not French kissing was a mortal sin. In college, I found out that students from other schools could identify the girls that came from my high school by our alleged signature look: pearl earrings and a scapular around our necks.

None of this felt strange. For most of my life, religion was as normal as the air I breathed. Studying in a Jesuit university after high school then made it easy to look for it, find shelter in it, and embrace it as my own. I realized that the charismatic spirituality of my parents simply did not match my temperament, but I retained a love for the Catholic sacraments that my high school exposed me to. I went to confession regularly  at times, obsessively  addicted to the pure feeling that would immediately wash over me, as if my newly cleansed soul were bright and glowing. I visited the adoration chapel every morning before my first class, finding solace in the Eucharist. I brought with me all my fears and sorrows, praying through exams, heartbreaks, broken friendships and failures, and always left that small, dark room more grounded and light.

Mandatory theology classes reconciled this interior religiosity with my growing concern for the world beyond my bubble, turning faith outward. Professors opened us up to the plight of the poor and marginalized, and instilled in us the importance of a faith not divorced from justice. I began to understand that with the freedom God gave us came the responsibility to help him alleviate the sufferings of others.

But as the months dragged on [during the pandemic], I began watching the shortest Masses I could find online. I would delay it to the end of my Sundays, and end up falling asleep during the ceremony. Recently, I started skipping Sunday Mass altogether  the first time I have ever consciously done so in my life. My prayers have become dry and impersonal, barely there. I stopped attending Zoom calls with my faith group, even as they continue to hold it every week. And, I did not re-enroll in my theology classes.

I believed so much in the beauty of my Catholic faith, felt so much spoiled by my spiritual heritage, that two years after I graduated college, I left my job in the art world to study theology. I was convinced that I was called to teach it. In 2019, I spent most of my days in a tranquil school overlooking mountains and clouds and the colorful roofs of Marikina, amid seminarians and nuns being groomed to be the next shepherds of the Church. As I retreated into the lives of the prophets and Jesus in my classes and read for hours in the old school library, I felt safe and detached from the world. More and more, the place became my escape.

Religious practices changed drastically when the pandemic hit. Churches closed, Holy Week services were cancelled, and all Masses and celebrations moved online. In predominantly Catholic Philippines, where especially amid tragedy people rely on carnal manifestations of faith  receiving communion, worshipping amid masses of people, touching icons of Jesus and Mary  something dimmed.

In the beginning, I would attend the live-streamed Masses of Pope Francis with my family, and listen intently to the translations of his somber homilies. At night, my prayers felt raw and real, as if they were part of a larger cry of voices pleading to God for consolation. I joined Zoom calls with friends in faith, comforted by their check-ins and awed at the urgency in which they moved to help those in need.

But as the months dragged on, I began watching the shortest Masses I could find online. I would delay it to the end of my Sundays, and end up falling asleep during the ceremony. Recently, I started skipping Sunday Mass altogether  the first time I have ever consciously done so in my life. My prayers have become dry and impersonal, barely there. I stopped attending Zoom calls with my faith group, even as they continue to hold it every week. And, I did not re-enroll in my theology classes. I returned to my previous job in the pandemic, and told myself that online classes werent for me.

But deep down, a part of me felt betrayed; ashamed by how easy it was for me to slip away from piety, when striving to be holy had been so much a part of my identity. I want to go to heaven, I would say to myself everytime I had to make a wish as a kid. Without the physical spaces that attempted to recreate that heaven on earth, the routines that made me feel I was drawing closer to that warm place with angels and saints, this abstract dream was made even more abstract, the invisible God I prayed to even more invisible, absent. What I was left with instead were realities about my faith that I had, perhaps unconsciously, long tried to bury.

In 2018, new revelations about clergy sexual abuse and systematic cover-ups in the Church hierarchy emerged. It was the first time I had ever allowed myself to be angry at the Church. It pains me to hear the news of abuse protected by the institution that led me to you. How do I begin to come to terms with this? I wrote in my diary where I recorded my conversations with God. I attempted, but never came to terms with it. While I was in theology school, I began working on a research paper that explored the Philippine Churchs role in contributing to the silence of sexual violence survivors, hoping to undo harmful theologies that glorified suffering and cheapened forgiveness. I never finished the paper, stunted with no adequate solution or conclusion.

In my Prophets class, I channeled my discomfort at the fact that I was the only lay woman in a sea of religious men into writing papers about strong, misunderstood women in the Old Testament. This harkened back nights in college, when I would argue with my dad for hours, lamenting how his charismatic community discouraged women to be leaders.

The more I look back, the less idyllic were my years growing up in such conservative religious atmospheres. I was sexually assaulted in my senior year of high school. It was in large part because of our schools culture that shifted the blame on us, girls, for tempting boys with how we dressed or behaved that I repressed my rape for six years. The pandemic forced me to confront if my outward acts of piety through all these years were indeed born out of something pure and true, or an obsession with convincing others  and most of all, my 17 year-old self  that I am good.

During lockdown, I found myself drawn to films that wrestle with some kind of spiritual tension. I watched One of Us, a haunting documentary that follows the lives of three Hasidic Jews as they leave behind their ultra-Orthodox community. Gradually, they become what staying could not let them be, from an actor to a woman free from an abusive marriage. I watched Pray Away, another documentary that interviews ex-leaders and survivors of the conversion therapy movement, which believed that you could pray the gay away. Exposing how these ministries coerced young people to shun their identities, the film captures the irreparable guilt and trauma caused by hatred cloaked in religious devotion. I re-watched Spotlight, the Oscar-winning film that revealed how five Boston Globe investigative journalists, with stunning modesty and dedication to their jobs, brought to light a dark web of secrets within the Catholic Church that allowed priests to molest children for years.

Without the physical spaces that attempted to recreate that heaven on earth, the routines that made me feel I was drawing closer to that warm place with angels and saints, this abstract dream was made even more abstract, the invisible God I prayed to even more invisible, absent. What I was left with instead were realities about my faith that I had, perhaps unconsciously, long tried to bury.

Watching these films, I was glued to how characters dealt with the precise moment in which a veil was lifted, and they could no longer unsee the wounds that their religions had inflicted. But I also felt their deep loss  their longing for the solace their churches once gave them. Their instinct to preserve something sacred.

Julie Rodgers, a lesbian advocate whose story was featured in Pray Away, shared about learning to separate Jesus from the Christians who hurt her. In Spotlight, the journalist Michael Rezendes (played by Mark Ruffalo) remembers how he enjoyed going to church as a little kid. He stopped going because of typical shit, but admits that he always thought he would one day go back. I was holding on to that, he tells another journalist, in a particularly poignant scene towards the end of the film.

There are no neat conclusions to their moral dilemmas, most of all not returning to the innocent, insular worlds of their childhoods, shielded from the truth. But whether or not religion remained part of the picture, watching some of them gently grow more honest and compassionate with themselves was soothing. As they let a part of themselves breathe, so did I.

On my first day of a Revelation-Faith class I took in theology school, my teacher, a Jesuit priest, emphasized the importance of engaging with a tension between devotion and doubt. One of the hardest things to learn as a person of faith is that it takes more courage to doubt. It takes courage to step outside the comforts of our certainties, and into the shoes of those who have long felt harmed by the Church, abandoned by God. In the pandemic, just as there are those whose beliefs grew stronger and richer, serving as a balm through their losses, there are those of us whose beliefs provided a deafening silence. For me, it has become increasingly hard to avoid that silence. I am left with no choice but to sit with it, and listen to what it is doing to me.

To love purely is to consent to distance, it is to adore the distance between ourselves and that which we love, French philosopher Simone Weil writes in Gravity and Grace, a book I borrowed from the library on one of my last days of attending theology school. I began reading it during those first hazy mornings of the lockdown, when I had to remind myself that the pandemic was real, and not a dream. Looking back now, Weils words feel particularly prophetic for how piercingly she speaks of void, of Gods absence, of atheism as a kind of purification. Writing this essay, I remembered how there was a line in the book that I found deeply moving, so plainly true, that I took a picture of it back then and posted it on my Instagram Story. I am also other than what I imagine myself to be, writes Weil at the end of the chapter Void and Compensation. To know this is forgiveness.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines)  Call it a power breakfast for the soul. The new segment "Bagong Tapang sa One Ginebra Nation Stories" will help you start your day with inspiring stories to fuel you with the much-needed hope to go on during these challenging times.

Hosting the weekly narratives is 2021 Ginebra San Miguel calendar girl Christelle Abello. With grit and composure, she best represents how to have "bagong tapang" (new courage) and a never-say-die attitude, especially in these times when people are looking for motivation and positivity.

"It is an honor to be part of the morning show 'New Day'. I am beyond thrilled to share the stories of individuals who are ganado sa buhay (who have zest for life) and have a never-say-die attitude to face the challenges of the pandemic," said Abello, who believes that even a small effort in the service of others can go a long way in helping people bounce back.

The Filipino-American model herself was a beacon of hope when she put up the "Kapit-Bisig Tayo" fundraiser last year as part of her advocacy to assist healthcare workers.

She raised US$1200, or around 60,000, which she distributed among five organizations. Half of the funds went to the Philippine General Hospital for the purchase of personal protective equipment for health workers.

The remaining donations went to Aklan-based projects and organizations  Akajan: Act as Juan, Project Lunchbox, Project Kalibo, and Giving Tree Relief Fund  to provide relief aid, medical supplies and PPEs to affected sectors in her home province.

Among those who will be featured on the segment are people who lost their jobs but pivoted and started their own businesses such as LPG dealership and selling rattan products and milk tea.

Get inspired and be ganado to face lifes challenges. Watch Bagong Tapang sa One Ginebra Nation Stories every Friday, 6 am on CNN Philippines morning news program New Day (Free TV Channel 9, Sky Cable Channel 14, Cignal Channel 10), and on CNN Philippines' Facebook page and YouTube channel.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, September 3)  Instead of vaccine bubbles, a lawmaker would rather have "business bubbles" that would allow safer spaces for employees who need to return to their workplaces to jumpstart the economy.

House Deputy Minority Leader Stella Quimbo on Friday gave CNN Philippines' The Source her opinion on the proposed "bakuna (vaccine) bubbles" by Presidential adviser for entrepreneurship Joey Concepcion.

"I would rather call it a business bubble rather than a vaccination bubble," Quimbo said.

The lawmaker from Marikina said a business bubble can replicate the format of the government's travel bubble concept, which allows travelers who have been vaccinated or have tested negative for the virus to get to certain tourist spots.

"That idea was successful and acceptable," Quimbo pointed out. "I think that concept can be replicated for the business sector in general."

"Meaning, for certain businesses, for certain work places that would be safe because either employees are vaccinated or there's 70% of employees vaccinated, at the same time there is commitment to do regular testing or commitment against social distancing. Why don't we allow them to operate?"

Quimbo noted that this could be applicable even to non-essential businesses which are usually not allowed to operate during stricter lockdowns.

The proposed business bubble shares a similar approach with Concepcion's "bakuna bubble," which was designed to work as pockets of micro-herd immunity among closed groups like homes and workplaces to allow greater mobility for individuals who are vaccinated against the virus.

Concepcion earlier said under his proposal, a vaccination card or a negative RT-PCR test will be required before entering commercial establishments.

There would also be designated public utility vehicles for the vaccinated and unvaccinated to reduce transmission, he said.

This method could start in Metro Manila, where majority of the LGUs have already achieved a high vaccination rate, he added.

READ: 'Bubbles' for fully vaccinated to create more econ activity, lessen lockdowns - Palace adviser

However, the Department of Health and the World Health Organization earlier opposed the vaccine bubble proposal, noting that inoculated individuals can still catch the virus, especially amid the threat of the Delta variant.

The Commission on Human Rights also warned that segregating the vaccinated from unvaccinated individuals would be discriminatory.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, September 3) The Commission on Audit (COA) sees no reason to carry out a special audit of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict's (NTF-ELCAC) budget for now.

"Ang recommendation nung assistant commissioner in charge is parang wala pa siyang nakikitang material matter that would require a special audit as of this time," COA chairman Mike Aguinaldo said during the agency's 2022 budget briefing at the House of Representatives on Friday.

[Translation: The recommendation of the assistant commissioner in charge was that the official did not see material matter that would require a special audit as of this time.]

Bayan Muna Party-list Rep. Carlos Zarate asked for an update on whether COA has done a special audit of the NTF-ELCAC, as he noted the task force's increasing budget.

During the budget deliberations last year, Aguinaldo said they were considering the move as some lawmakers raised concerns over the regularity of the task force's expenditures.

However, the NTF-ELCAC's funds were audited through member agencies such as the Department of the Interior and Local Government and the Philippine National Police.

"'Yung audit po nun (The audit back then) was part of the regular audit of these agencies as part of funds allocated to them sa (in the) GAA," Aguinaldo explained.

He added there were challenges in doing a more detailed audit due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Duterte administration is asking Congress for a 28.1 billion budget to fund its anti-insurgency machinery next year.

This request is 11.66 billion more than the 16.4 billion the NTF-ELCAC received in 2021.
(CNN)  After Ida's remnants swept through the East Coast and left at least 46 people dead, New York's mayor urged everyone to see the storm as "the biggest wake-up call we could possibly get."

"We are in a new world now, let's be blunt," Mayor Bill de Blasio said Thursday, adding that the intensity and frequency of storms are rising and the US is going to have to do a lot of things "differently" and "quickly."

Late Thursday, the White House said President Joe Biden had approved an emergency declaration for New York and New Jersey after at least 39 people died in those two states alone.

Ida first devastated parts of the Gulf Coast as a major hurricane Sunday. It rolled through the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast on Wednesday as remnants of a tropical depression, dropping rain that unleashed deadly flooding from Virginia to New England. The flooding was especially concentrated in a stretch including metro Philadelphia, New Jersey and southern New York.

Of the dozens killed in the East, many died in flooded homes  including many in flooded basements  or while overtaken by water in or outside their vehicles.

Friday morning, about 4.5 million people in the Northeast remained under flood warnings, mostly in northeastern New Jersey, as rainwater flows into larger creeks, streams, and rivers. Some rivers in the Northeast are forecast to remain above flood stage into the weekend, though many are already receding.

"We have to start from scratch as we are mourning," Amrita Bhagwandin of Queens, New York, told CNN's Chris Cuomo on Thursday. "We have to see how we can move on in the most graceful way here. Because this -- if you see the situation here, it's very unsafe, very unlivable. Death is upon us."

Bhagwandin's home sustained serious damage in the flood, but her biggest heartbreak was losing her neighbors, a mother and a son, she said.

Bhagwandin's husband, Sahadeo, said that their neighborhood has had flooding issues before. And officials may come through during times of disaster, but the residents there need more action.

"We need a lot of help in this neighborhood and over the years we have been neglected. I came here in 2003, and since 2003 to 2021, we're getting flooding and nothing has been done," Sahadeo Bhagwandin said. "We have several projects that were completed in this block but it is not resolving the issue we have."

In addition to the 39 deaths in New York and New Jersey, four deaths were attributed to the storm in Pennsylvania, and one each in Maryland, Connecticut and Virginia.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said she wants answers.

"I want to know who knew what when and what could have been done differently  because New Yorkers deserve to know what we're doing to learn from this event and make sure that it doesn't happen again," Hochul told CNN's Anderson Cooper.

But part of making sure it doesn't happen again is fighting back against climate change, Hochul said. She advocated for a continued transition in the state to carbon neutral energy.

"We have no choice my friends, the future we spoke about in dire terms, that future is now. It's happening, we're losing life, lives we're losing property and we cannot continue on this path."

25 homes destroyed or damaged by tornado in New Jersey

At least eight tornadoes were confirmed in the Northeast on Wednesday: four in Pennsylvania, three in New Jersey and one in southeast Massachusetts, according to the National Weather Service.

In the southern New Jersey community of Mullica Hill, a tornado destroyed or severely damaged 25 homes, police Lt. David Marrow said. The weather service rated that tornado an EF-3 with 150 mph winds.

Hundreds of trees were downed, and power was knocked out for a third of the township, Marrow said.

"This is going to take some time to dig out of, there's no question about it," Gov. Phil Murphy said Thursday, standing in front of one of the wrecked homes.

As terrifying as the tornadoes were, none of the state's 23 storm deaths were related to them, Murphy said, adding that he believes residents took the flood warnings less seriously than the tornado warnings.

"The tornado warnings came out just as the flood warnings came out," Murphy said. "Everybody, when they got the tornado warning, went into their basement and I think there were too many people who thought that they could deal with flooding and sadly, some of them either in their homes or in their cars, lost their lives."

People standing to ensure they did not drown in the bus

The danger of floodwaters was readily apparent in New York City, where the police department made 69 water rescues and 166 non-water rescues, the Chief of Department Rodney Harrison said.

More than 800 subway riders were evacuated, New York Police Department Chief Rodney Harrison said Thursday. And another 500 New Yorkers were rescued from flooded roadways, buildings and subway stations, the New York City Emergency Management Department said.

In the chaos, New York bus driver Rosa Amonte became an overnight viral sensation after she drove passengers to safety, even as 3 to 4 feet of water filled the bus.

"People literally standing on their seat to make sure they did not drown inside a bus," Hochul said. "She stood there, she drove, through the night and did what it took to get people there safely."

This story was first published on CNN.com "With dozens dead and rescue efforts ongoing, NYC mayor says the dire future experts warned of is now"
Buettner said Blue Zones Activate partners with communities that can manifest a well-being transformation for their residents. CCH and Columbus fit that bill, he added.

Lemke said a Blue Zone will set Columbus back to default which is considered a healthy option.

You can approach chronic pain disease from two directions, he said. One, you can do it from an individual standpoint  which is what we try to do daily.  (Second), you have to do it from a systemic issue. If you can change the environment as such to where people dont even know it, it becomes easier for them to get healthier.

Vis and Lemke said theyve known about Blue Zones for a while.

Vis said he first heard of it when he started working at the hospital. Through discussions, PCLC members thought about bringing Blue Zones to town, he added.

When you look at it, its really exciting seeing whats happening in those five areas of the world, Vis said.

Lemke said CCHs effort in inviting Blue Zones is forward-thinking, as the staff is looking to the future in how the community can handle another possible pandemic 100 years from now.

If we dont pay attention to our environment and the things around us and our health, were going to be back here again someday, Lemke said. Weve really got to step back and say, Is that something we want to happen again?

Andrew Kiser is a reporter for The Columbus Telegram. Reach him via email at andrew.kiser@lee.net.

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The excitement could have been compounded by last years coronavirus-caused hiatus, because Nebraskas Largest Classroom took a pause during the pandemic. Gottlob said Wood River made up for it.

Due to COVID, the third-graders didnt get to go last year. The second-graders came yesterday and third grade came today, she said.

In 2019, the year before the pandemic pause, the fair welcomed students from more than 100 schools  just short of 4,000 students and their adults  for the three-day event.

Sarah Polak, experience coordinator for Raising Nebraska, said providing students like those from Wood River with a fun, educational experience is important.

What were hearing is they are so excited to be here, Polak said. To be able to have a fun and educational experience with their friends is something were very proud to offer.

Much of that fun comes from partnerships with organizations such as Midwest Dairy and Nebraska Forest Service, among many others, she said.
Platte County Deputy Sam Avila's first inkling that he might pursue a career in law enforcement came when he was a kid.

"My cousin was a police officer in El Paso, Texas," Avila, 49, said. "When I was very young and I saw him out on the street, he waved at me, I waved back and I was like, 'OK, that's cool.' It was something I wanted to do from that point on."

Avila -- who is originally from Las Vegas -- started his career in law enforcement in Nevada in 2004. He joined the Platte County Sheriff's Office in 2017 and has been in Nebraska ever since.

When he was younger, Avila said, his cousin became a role model for him and helped him take the steps to get where he is now.

"If it wasn't for him, I'd probably be doing something totally different," Avila said.

Years later, Avila would do the same for his younger sister, who is now doing field training for a position at a police department in Nevada.

Sheriff Ed Wemhoff said it's always special to see families with multiple current or former members of law enforcement.
Between receiving an Xbox One and being welcomed into his new home, it was an amazing day for both Moises Ortiz and his mother, Maria.

Moises - a Columbus Middle School student  said while having the Xbox is greatly appreciated, he can rest easy knowing his mom doesn't have to worry about their living conditions. The Ortiz family previously lived in a trailer which Moises described as "cold" and worrisome for his mother.

Im just happy that we got the house, Moises said. For my mom, she would cry because the thunderstorms would move (the trailer).  She doesnt have to worry about the storms anymore.

Members of the Ortiz family received their home from Habitat for Humanity of Columbus. The nonprofit held a welcoming party Thursday afternoon at the new house.

Around 100 folks packed the living room, kitchen, hallway and utility room to celebrate the occasion. The attendance was so large that some of it spilled outside.

The house was constructed to assist Moises, who has cerebral palsy. It boasts a walk-in shower which is large enough to fit his walker or wheelchair if needed. Maria previously said while he can walk without them he needs them some of the time, especially during the colder winter months. His legs become stiff, affecting his balance.

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The letter said differences between the leaked Dominion software images and the versions used in California are relatively minor. The experts said thousands of people now have blueprints to the underpinnings of Dominion's election management system, including some who may have access to voting equipment.

That increases the risk of undetected outcome-changing cyber-attacks on California counties that use Dominion equipment and the risk of accusations of fraud and election manipulation which, without rigorous post-election auditing, would be impossible to disprove, the letter states.

A majority of voters are expected to cast mail ballots during the recall, returning them through the U.S. Postal Service or by drop boxes in their counties.

California law already requires counties to hand-count ballots from a random sample of 1% of the precincts after an election. Although the state has conducted a pilot program with risk-limiting audits, Dresner said state law does not currently allow one for the recall election. Its not clear whether that could be changed with less than two weeks to go before the election.
I anticipate we will have some cases, she said. I dont think weve made a huge impact on any behaviors at the State Fair.

Mitigation efforts remain from last years unique installment of the fair, including free masks and sanitizer stations located at the public entrances to indoor facilities. Jaime Parr, the fairs deputy executive director, said extra efforts to promote social distancing also have been made, including spreading things out in livestock barns.

We are doing a lot of the same things we put in place last year as far as mitigation tactics, she said.

That includes signage encouraging attendees to take appropriate precautions. Parr said that in the end the responsibility for preventing the spread of COVID-19 falls on the shoulders of fairgoers.

We really do see that its up to the individual to how they maneuver through the event, Parr said.

The absence of mandates has allowed for events like concerts to return to the fairgrounds.

We dont have the health mandates from the state so were able to have bigger events, Parr said. She said adjustments have still been made. We put a lot of time, effort and finances into having things in an outdoor venue.
That was a reference to the Social Democrats' left-leaning party leaders, whom members chose over the pragmatic Scholz in 2019, and other figures on the party's left.

As its poll ratings have declined, the Union bloc has issued increasingly frequent warnings that Scholz would form a government with the hard-left opposition Left Party. Scholz has refused to rule out that option, but it also doesn't appear very likely.

Parties don't necessarily have to finish first in German elections to win the chancellery, since much depends on what coalitions they can form in the weeks and months afterward  but it certainly helps. And a senior Laschet ally insisted that the Union must set its sights on regaining the lead.

We absolutely must not be content with second place, because second place ultimately means opposition and first place means an option to govern," said Bavarian governor Markus Soeder, who battled Laschet for the Union's nomination to run for chancellor earlier this year and has often sounded impatient with the bloc's campaign.

Soeder dismissed the idea of the Union serving as a junior coalition partner in a future government.

If the Union is not No. 1 and by some distance, then there will be a left-wing government  whether it's a very left-wing one or a diluted left-wing coalition, he said.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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Shermans Creek in Shermans Dale, Perry County, crested above the minor flood stage of 9 feet at 11:45 p.m. Wednesday before dropping below the flood action stage by 2:30 p.m. Thursday.

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The Susquehanna River at Harrisburg crested at 13.3 feet at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, putting it just over two feet above the flood action stage of 11 feet, but well below the minor flood stage of 17 feet, according to the weather service. As of 9 a.m. Friday, the river had dropped to 11.23 feet and was expected to drop below flood action stage by 2 p.m. Friday.

I know that today, many people in Pennsylvania are hurting, Gov. Tom Wolf said at a news conference Thursday. We experienced an historic storm here all across the commonwealth. A lot of Pennsylvanians will be dealing with very hard emotions today.

The Associated Press reported that dozens of people from Virginia to Connecticut were killed Wednesday night into Thursday morning as Ida swept through the Northeast.

At least 25 people died in New Jersey, the most of any state. Most drowned after their vehicles were caught in flash floods. At least six people were missing, Murphy said.

In New York City, 11 people died when they were unable to escape rising water in their low-lying apartments.
According to Gavigan, MIS-C can be diagnosed up to four to six weeks after the initial COVID infection, and is often seen in children who presented initially with a mild infection. He said theres still a lot that is unknown about the syndrome, including why it happens and who is at risk, but it can run the gamut of symptoms and issues, including evidence of inflammation or heart/cardiac dysfunction.

Because MIS-C does not occur until weeks after infection, Gavigan said the reports of diagnoses often come after rises in COVID cases.

It tends to lag a little behind the rise in community infections, he said, adding that the last time they saw increasing reports of MIS-C was in January after the winter holiday surge. Were on the look out for it, and were watching for it.

Though health officials are concerned about this syndrome, the number of children affected by it in the state is still relatively low. So far, according to the state Department of Health, there have been 140 confirmed cases of MIS-C in Pennsylvania since the pandemic began in March 2020.

When it comes to knowing when a parent or guardian should contact a childs physician, Gavigan said the most important signs are to watch if a child is breathing properly and to keep them hydrated, especially when they present with fevers.
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In the plea deal , he admits that life is an appropriate sentence in the United Kingdom as well. If he were to receive a sentence of less than life there, the deal requires that he serve the rest of his life sentence, either in the United Kingdom if that country will do so, or be transferred back to the U.S. to serve the life term.

The deal also requires him to cooperate with authorities and answer questions about his time in the Islamic State group. He would not, though, be required to testify at Elsheikh's trial.

The deal also requires him to meet with victims' families if they request it.

Kotey gave a somewhat detailed account of his time in Islamic State when U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis asked him to explain in his own words what he had done.

He said he traveled to Syria to engage in a military fight against the Syrian forces of Bashar Assad and that he eventually pledged allegiance to Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

I accept I will be perceived as a radical who holds extremist views, he said.

He acknowledged that he had participated in capture-and-detain operations to kidnap Foley and other Western hostages and that he led efforts to extract ransoms.
Major inequalities exist even within much smaller geographic areas. Different neighborhoods within the city of Pittsburgh, for instance, have upward mobility rates ranging from almost 50% to less than 1% for low-income boys raised in those neighborhoods. Predictably, the two neighborhoods in question have major differences in median household income (about $50,000) and rates of single parenthood (57 percentage points) and poverty (51 percentage points), among several other differences.

We should be clear that our research does not indicate what should be done about poverty or inequality, or whether conservative or liberal approaches are better. What our research does is provide concrete evidence of the negative consequences of allowing such problems to exist. Agreeing on a common set of facts is a crucial step toward having fruitful conversations about what is to be done to address these problems.
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"The COVID-19 pandemic originated in December 2019 and is still active today. Since the COVID-19 virus is still spreading, we have had four waves at this point in time, but we don't know how many waves will follow.

"The main reason the waves or spikes in coronavirus cases occur is because of human behavior. Being cautious by physical distancing, hand washing and mask wearing lessens the likelihood of future waves."

Beyer also took a moment to answer a few questions regarding COVID-19.

How does coronavirus mutate, change or cause a change in form or nature?

"When viruses infect you, they attach to your cells, get inside them, and make copies of their RNA, which helps them spread," Beyer said. "If there's a copying mistake, the RNA gets changed and thus mutates. Scientists call those changes, mutations."

Beyer said the current delta variant is a mutation of the coronavirus, which is more infective and spreads more readily.

What is herd immunity and how is it achieved?

"Herd immunity happens when a large part of the population, the herd, is immune to the virus," Beyer said. "This can happen either because these people got vaccinated or had already been infected.
Flight Nurse and Clinical Base Lead Laura Moran said their base came about as a way to utilize the aircraft that's there with St. Louis Childrens Hospital. The pediatric air base opened at Parkland Health Center in May of 2013.

"Our role is to basically get people where they need to go for services that aren't available locally," she said.

The adult base is staffed by a crew of four nurses, four medics, four pilots, and two mechanics and operates an EC145 dual engine aircraft. Moran said each shift includes a nurse and a medic.

During missions, Life Net 2-4s highly skilled medical teams care for patients with lifesaving interventions, the release said. The Life Net 2-4 crew is trained to provide trauma care after an accident and can administer clot-busting medications that must be given shortly after a major stroke to significantly improve outcomes. With the continued consolidation of hospitals and the trend toward centers with specialized heart or neurological care, the clinical support and speed of missions is critical to giving patients the best possible outcomes.

As an in-network provider in Missouri with an advocacy team to help patients navigate post-flight insurance requirements, the release said, it is Air Methods goal to keep their patients out-of-pocket expenses low. They do this without requiring the purchase of air medical memberships.

Nikki Overfelt-Chifalu is a reporter for the Daily Journal. She can be reached at noverfelt@dailyjournalonline.com.

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James Hahn said the city should be proud that there have been no trash fees for all these years. But $14 might not seem like a lot to many people, he said, but for some on a fixed income, it is.

I agree with some of the folks here that only have one bag, he said. It's disproportionate as far as cost is concerned out of their pockets compared to their neighbors and I understand what theyre saying. To that point, I think the board needs to be considerate of that.

Lisa Gibson is concerned about outsiders bringing their trash in the city and the large carts encouraging abuse. She suggested charging by weight or setting limits.

Again, I commend the city, she said. I think they are doing a great job, but I dont think this is the right answer for what we need.

Although the city is considering the 96 gallon carts, 64 gallon carts are also available. Many residents encouraged the board members to make both sizes available.

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City officials assured residents that there were no plans for layoffs. The city workers will no longer need to lift the trash into the truck, but they will still be needed to drive the truck and to bring the carts to the automatic arm.
A Missouri judge on Tuesday refused to reinstate federal unemployment benefits that were cut in June when Gov. Mike Parson pulled out of several programs, saying the court would not substitute its judgment for that of the governor.

The ruling by Cole County Circuit Judge Jon Beetem came a day after lawyers representing Missouri residents who lost the jobless benefits asked for reinstatement with back pay that, for some people, could have amounted to $1,500.

The enhanced benefits from several federal programs added money to the unemployment checks for out-of-work Americans to help ease the crunch caused by shutdowns for the COVID-19 pandemic. But some Republican governors, including Parson, ended the benefits, saying they wanted to prod people to rejoin the workforce.

In his four-page ruling denying a preliminary injunction, Beteem wrote that "the balancing of harms and the public interest strongly favor the Governor's decision to promote economic recovery and encourage workers' re-entry into Missouri's critically understaffed labor force.

The Court will not substitute its judgment for that of Missouri's duly elected Governor on such an important policy question, which both Missouri law and the principle of separation of powers confer on Missouri's Executive Branch, Beetem wrote.
Domestically, the Biden administration speaks breezily about "transforming" the financial and energy components of the nation's almost $23 trillion economy, oblivious about possible unintended consequences. In foreign policy, a chastened administration needs to tailor its objectives to fit its ability to know what it does not know.

In 1950, Secretary of State Dean Acheson called the United States "the locomotive at the head of mankind." Europe was recuperating, Asia's economic development had barely begun and U.S. prestige had soared because of its prodigies of war production. Forty years later, as the Berlin Wall was being chipped into souvenirs and the Soviet Union was a year from extinction, former U.N. ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick published an article whose title expressed her expectation and the nation's yearning in 1990: During the Cold War, foreign policy had acquired "an unnatural importance," but now the United States could again be "A Normal Country in a Normal Time."

The U.S. holiday from history lasted 11 years. It ended with the thunderclap of 9/11, which shattered long-standing assumptions about technology and civilization advancing in tandem.
The boards vote to change the rules is now being considered by Gov. Ralph Northams office before it is made official, which could happen this month. The rules will be published before they become official.

Northam had previously called for the board to revisit the rules, proposing that businesses in compliance with CDC standards should be considered compliant with the state rules.

Some business organizations such as the Virginia chapter of the National Federation of Independent Business and the Virginia Retail Federation had pushed for a full repeal of the rules.

We have found that the CDC recommendations is what employers have been following, said Nicole Riley, Virginia state director of the NFIB. They are more comfortable with that, and that is what they know. The awareness is much higher on what CDC guidelines are than another state regulation.

The changes, she said, will help businesses because if they are following CDC [recommendations], then there is a really good chance that they are compliant with the [state] permanent standard.
In posts attached to a video of poet Funmilola Fagbamila and congressional testimony from Fannie Lou Hamer, Walker said she was not sharing information because it would change the outcome but because white supremacy is powerful.

Chief Brackney isnt going to return, nor would I ask her to come back. Im simply acknowledging how toxic this community is, she said. I wish I had facts and didnt have to gossip or speculate as our world-class twitter guru pointed out. I would appreciate receiving respect as the mayor and having been given a reason why.

Walker also posted a five-page document titled Departmental Investigation Executive Summary, which appeared to be a longer, more detailed version of a press release sent out by the city last month in response to a PBA survey. The document, which is dated Aug. 9, appears to be an official report, but it is unclear to whom the report was sent.

In August, the PBA released survey data from 65 police employee respondents that indicated dissatisfaction among its members with the leadership of the city police department. On Aug. 20 the city released a lengthy unsigned response that said the PBAs survey and the release of its results occurred during a difficult reorganization and the recent terminations of employment of members of the citys SWAT Team.
Employees ability to adapt to a new normal was key in the business success throughout the past 18 months, including shifting operations to drive-thru.
PHOENIX (AP)  Gov. Doug Ducey says the state has received its first group of recently evacuated Afghans to be resettled in Arizona.

Ducey said in a Tweet overnight that the group arrived Sunday night, and we know there are more on their way.

The Republican governor noted the Afghans were vetted through background checks.

He said the U.S. must keep its promises to the people who helped the American military in Afghanistan. Tens of thousands of Afghans have been evacuated from their country with the end of the United States' longest war. Many helped the U.S. military as interpreters and in other roles.

Ducey did not say how many were in the group.

The Arizona office of the International Rescue Committee says its nonprofit agency on Sunday received 18 evacuated Afghans for resettlement.

In the next six months, we probably will see hundreds" of Afghans arrive through the state's various resettlement agencies, said Aaron Rippenkroeger, executive director for the committee in Arizona.

Rippenkroeger said he was grateful for the bipartisan support that Ducey and other leaders in Arizona had given the effort to resettle Afghans in the state.
RICHMOND  A federal judge says hes not ready to dismiss a lawsuit over Virginias slow processing of unemployment claims, citing among other things ongoing complaints that have been arriving in his own office.

The Court continues to frequently receive telephone calls from individuals reporting difficulties processing their claims and communicating with the VEC, wrote U.S. District Judge Henry Hudson in an ordered filed last week.

The Virginia Employment Commission, which throughout the pandemic has ranked among the slowest in the country at processing claims that required human review, had asked Hudson to dismiss a lawsuit filed by legal aid groups around the state.

The commission wrote that they had met the terms of a settlement reached in late May, beating a deadline that required the state to adjudicate at least 95% of the 92,000 backlogged claims by Labor Day.

The legal aid groups, led by the Legal Aid Justice Center in Charlottesville, objected, arguing that while the commission had addressed most of the backlog that existed as of May, thousands more claims have piled up since then.
Ruben Villano, 35, Bridish Crawford's partner; his children Irene Villano, 18, and Eric Villano, 14; and cousin Karlos Villano, 14, of LaPorte, were able to cling to the dam for 22 hours before rescuers came to their aid, Allen said.

Irene Villano said she was able to gain a hold on the dam with a pinkie finger and then her foot, and other family members held onto her.

"It was just like you were standing there, and things were trying to push you and knock you," she said. "It was like rotating around over and over again, and the only way to stop it was if you had something to hold on to."

She watched the sun set and rise again before she and her family members were rescued, Allen said.

Irene Villano said she made it through the ordeal because she had hope, but the loss of so many family members has been "awful."

Deborah Villano, the family's matriarch, said she waited more than three weeks before officials in North Carolina found Teresa Villano's body.

"I don't think anybody should have to go through that," she said. "I prayed every morning that she would be alive, but God took her."

Allen said the family has endured so much tragedy.
The Polish philosopher Leszek Kolakowski proposed the Law of the Infinite Cornucopia, stating that for anything people want to believe, there is no end of proof out there to support that belief.

Kolakowski proposed this decades before the internet existed, and later weaponized to create black holes of misinformation. Need proof the world is flat? Its there on the internet. Need proof that COVID, rabies and other diseases are caused by vitamin deficiency? Done. There is a current epidemic of misinformation on vaccinations, much of it disseminated by regimes who do not wish America well. Cui bono? Russia, China, North Korea, Iran come to mind.

The internet can also provide information that humans have been dealing with epidemics for millennia, with smallpox reported as early as 10,000 BCE. The period known as the Second Pandemic lasted 400 years! From about 1330 until midway through the 18th century, killing hundreds of millions of people. More recently, between 50 and 100 million people died from the spread of the H1N1A virus (aka Spanish flu, from 1918 to 1920).

There have been pandemics in almost every decade since. Pandemics are the norm. There will be more, even deadlier.
Iraq continues to face a number of political and economic challenges, though increasing civil stability has made it easier for mobile and fixed-line operators to rebuild telecom services and infrastructure damaged during the last few years.

The government was minded to extend the licences held by the MNOs for an additional three years to compensate for the chaos and destruction caused between 2014 and 2017 when Islamic State held sway in many areas of the country. However, this plan was scuppered by opposition among some politicians, who asserted that the market needed more competition rather than extensions of existing licenses.

The three major MNOs are Zain Iraq, Asiacell, and Korek Telecom, which together control over 90% of the mobile market. The operators have struggled to develop LTE services, partly because of issues related to damaged infrastructure but also partly due to wrangles with the government and regulator concerning the conditions of their licences. With the availability of LTE services being very low, there is little change for 5G to be available in the short term. In the meantime, most services are still based on GSM and 3G, except in the Kurdish region where LTE is more widely available.

This BuddeComm report provides key telecoms industry information and statistics for Iraq. It provides information on existing telecoms infrastructure, the regulatory environment, fixed and mobile subscriber statistics and information on the major operators.

BuddeComm notes that the outbreak of the Coronavirus continues to have a significant impact on production and supply chains globally. During the coming year the telecoms sector to various degrees is likely to experience a downturn in mobile device production, while it may also be difficult for network operators to manage workflows when maintaining and upgrading existing infrastructure.

Overall progress towards 5G may be postponed or slowed down in some countries.

On the consumer side, spending on telecoms services and devices is under pressure from the financial effect of large-scale job losses and the consequent restriction on disposable incomes. However, the crucial nature of telecom services, both for general communication as well as a tool for home-working, will offset such pressures. In many markets the net effect should be a steady though reduced increased in subscriber growth.

The report covers the responses of the telecom operators as well as government agencies and regulators as they react to the crisis to ensure that citizens can continue to make optimum use of telecom services. This can be reflected in subsidy schemes and the promotion of tele-health and tele-education, among other solutions.

Key developments:

Security concerns continuing to pose issues for safety of operators telecom infrastructure;

Prepaid segment instrumental in encouraging mobile take-up by the mass market;

Mobile operators focused on lucrative enterprise and B2B market segments.

Get a Full Copy of this Report

Developing Telecoms market report summaries are produced in partnership with BuddeComm, the worlds largest continually updated online telecommunications research service.

The above article is a summary of the following BuddeComm report:

Report title: Iraq - Telecoms, Mobile and Broadband - Statistics and Analyses

Edition: July 2021

Lead Analyst: Sebastien De Rosbo

Number of pages: 103

Companies mentioned in this report: Iraqi Telephone and Postal Company (ITPC), Newroz Telecom, Asiacell, Zain Iraq, Korek Telecom, Regional Telecom, Communication and Media Commission (CMC), ScopeSky Communications.

Single User PDF Licence Price: US$890

For more information or to purchase a copy of the full report please use the following link: https://www.budde.com.au/Research/Iraq-Telecoms-Mobile-and-Broadband-Statistics-and-Analyses/?r=83
Toko Wireless (Tonga) and WanTok Networks (Vanuatu) have announced the formation of WanTok Pacific Corporation, a company that will launch a new local mobile operator and, it says, provide a full suite of additional telecom services.

Launching in Tonga and Vanuatu simultaneously, the new service provides a mobile network called WanTok Mobile.

x-Mobility, the enabler of digital MVNOs, has supplied the AppVNO service that is powering WanTok Mobiles launch. Using x-Mobilitys digital MVNO service, WanTok Mobile can provide an over-the-top mobile network, with customers subscribing to WanTok Mobile numbers and utilising their existing data and Wi-Fi connections to make low-cost mobile calls, chat and SMS.

But thats not all the new service is offering. There is also a new remittance/money transfer solution. WanTok Money, in partnership with money transfer operator KlickEx Pacific, is described as a safe and transparent digital payment ecosystem that allows users in Australia and New Zealand to send, save and receive money into Tonga and Vanuatu. Sending money from the US will follow shortly.

The new company has also launched its new brand identity and new broadband plans for consumers and businesses. New services to follow include WanTok Beats (music) and WanTok Go (movies).

WanTok Pacific Corporation says it has an experienced senior management team on board that will also look to expand and invest across the whole Pacific region.

Current investments have seen state-of-the-art infrastructure upgraded and put in place, with new cell towers built in Nukualofa and off-island bandwidth now connected. The company has also become a new member of the GSMA.
India's telecom operator Bharti Airtel said that it has successfully demonstrated cloud gaming in the country over a 5G network.

The demonstration was conducted in Manesar, Gurgaon, as part of the ongoing 5G trials, using the 3500 MHz high capacity spectrum band allotted by the Department of Telecom (DoT), the second-largest mobile operator in India said.

For the 5G cloud gaming demo, Airtel partnered with Mortal (Naman Mathur) and Mamba (Salman Ahmad), Indias leading gamers. Leveraging the gaming technology platform from Blacknut, a sprint racing challenge on Asphalt was unveiled for Mortal and Mamba to put their gaming skills to test in a blazing fast and ultra-low latency 5G environment.

During the tests, Airtel 5G network was able to deliver low latency of 10ms and a download speed of over 1 Gbps

Randeep Sekhon, Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Bharti Airtel, said mobile gaming is a new phenomenon and gaining popularity. Cloud gaming will be one of the biggest use cases of 5G, given the combination of high speed and low latency, he added.

India, with its vast youth population, growing smartphone penetration and 5G networks, will see mobile gaming evolve into a USD 2.4 billion market opportunity. As per some estimates, India's base of 436 million online gamers is expected to reach 510 million by 2022, Airtel said.

Airtel is also conducting 5G trials in multiple cities across India and validating technologies and use cases through the trial spectrum allotted by the Department of Telecom. Airtel has partnered with Ericsson and Nokia for these trials. It is also spearheading the O-RAN Alliance initiatives in India to build 5G solutions.
As I walk with my daughter under the canopy of hardwoods to the Moscow Public Library and back, I am immersed in the feeling of belonging and privilege that comes with living in the Fort Russell Historic District; I wish the feeling to be replicated for others.
On the Alabama Department of Public Health Data and Surveillance dashboard main page, our numbers show 231 positive NAAT tests in a seven day period, or about 33 per day. The last report was about 34 per day, so this is about equal to the numbers we showed two weeks ago, he said. However, if we check the Centers for Disease Control website, they show 429 cases in the last seven days, or about 61 a day.

Because of the discrepancies and delayed reporting of cases, Brown said they are now focusing on the positivity rating to give an idea of community transmission.

These numbers are better aligned between various sites and agencies, so we feel they are more accurate for our planning purposes, he said. We have seen a slight decline in this rate, which gives us some hope that our cases may further plateau and perhaps start to decline in the coming month.

The current positivity rate for Coffee County is 30.7, which is down from the previously reported 35.9 percent. Brown said the ideal rate would be below 5 percent. With Labor Day weekend activities, another spike in cases is a concern.
TALLAHASSEE (AP)  Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said Thursday he might support enacting a law that would ban abortion when a fetal heartbeat can be detected, much like a Texas law that the U.S. Supreme Court allowed to take effect.

The Republican governor told reporters that he wants to pass stronger laws against abortion, but he doesn't know enough about the Texas ban to definitively say he would support a similar bill in Florida.

What they did in Texas was interesting and I havent really been able to look enough into it, DeSantis said at a West Palm Beach news conference when asked about the Texas law. I am going to look more significantly at it.

The Texas law that took effect Wednesday bans abortions once medical professionals can detect cardiac activity, usually around six weeks and before many women know theyre pregnant. But instead of the ban being enforced by the state, it allows private citizens in state court to sue providers and anyone involved in facilitating abortions  such as someone who drives a woman to a clinic. Any person who successfully sues would get $10,000 or more.
In the aftermath of 9/11, America was introduced to an array of personalities. Some we had known well. Others were thrown into the spotlight. Where are they now?
CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP)  Fed up with the deadly work and poor wages and living conditions, thousands of coal miners marched to unionize in West Virginia a century ago, resulting in a deadly clash and the largest U.S. armed uprising since the Civil War.

On Friday, some of their descendants joined others in retracing the steps that led to the 12-day Battle of Blair Mountain. Multiple events are planned looking back at the fight, highlighted by the 45-mile (72-kilometer) march over three days.

Every step you take, you just think about what kind of courage that took, said United Mine Workers international President Cecil Roberts, whose great-uncle, Bill Blizzard, was a leader of the 1921 march as a union subdistrict state organizer.

The miners  whites, Blacks, and European immigrants  banded together, bent on doing something about their treatment by coal operators. They became known as the Red Neck Army for the distinctive bandanas around their necks.

Those people had a specific purpose in mind, Roberts said. "And they were willing to die for that. And because they were willing to die for that, weve all had a good living, a much better life than we would have had had they not gone on that march.
There are nearly 1.8 million people in Alabama who are fully vaccinated  an increase that reflects the uptick in vaccinations since the surge in cases began in July. While the daily number of vaccinations fluctuates, there have been anywhere from 10,000 to 20,000 vaccine doses administered each day since early August. There are 2.3 million people in Alabama who have received one or more doses of vaccine.

In Houston County, there are now 35,777 people who are fully vaccinated  33.79% of the population eligible to be vaccinated. There are 42.75% who have received at least one dose of vaccine.

Henry County has 34.12% of eligible people fully vaccinated and 44.48% who have had at least one dose. Barbour County has 32.69% of its eligible population fully vaccinated and 43.41% with at least one dose.

Coffee Countys rate of fully-vaccinated people is up to 28.75% with 36.78% having received at least one dose. Dale County has 27.35% fully vaccinated with 34.89% having received at least one dose. Geneva County has 28.11% of people fully vaccinated and 36.19% with at least one dose.

Pike County has 29.78% fully vaccinated and 38.66% who have received at least one dose. And Covington County has 28.83% fully vaccinated and 39.19% who have received at least one dose.

Peggy Ussery is a Dothan Eagle staff writer and can be reached at aussery@dothaneagle.com or 334-712-7963. Support her work and that of other Eagle journalists by purchasing a digital subscription today at dothaneagle.com.

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A neighbor, William Roddie Bryan joined the chase and took cellphone video of Travis McMichael shooting Arbery at close range with a shotgun. The McMichales said they believed Arbery was a burglar and that he was shot after attacking Travis McMichael.

Police did not charge any of them immediately following the shooting, and the McMichaels and Bryan remained free for more than two months until the cellphone video of the shooting was leaked online and Gov. Brian Kemp asked the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to take over the case.

Both McMichaels and Bryan were charged with murder and other crimes in May 2020 and face trial this fall. Prosecutors say Arbery was merely jogging in their neighborhood and was unarmed when Travis McMichael shot him. They say there is no evidence Arbery had committed a crime.

Greg McMichael had worked as an investigator in Johnson's office, having retired in 2019. Evidence introduced in pretrial hearings in the murder case shows he called Johnson's cellphone and left her a voice message soon after the shooting occurred.

Jackie, this is Greg, he said, according to a recording of the call included in the public case file. Could you call me as soon as you possibly can? My son and I have been involved in a shooting and I need some advice right away.
This Texas law could be a ray of light at the end of a very long and dark tunnel, and our state is ready, Dunn said in a statement.

Democrats also anticipated the Supreme Courts new conservative majority overturning Roe, although they fear a ruling striking it down would leave old state laws outlawing abortions in effect.

Reproductive freedom in our state is built on case law, said New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat, as he pushed for state lawmakers to enact a bill that would enshrine access to abortions.

All of that case law is in turn built on the Supreme Courts decision on Roe v. Wade. If the foundation of that series of case laws is impacted, impaired, taken away, the entire reality in our state falls like a house of cards, which is why we need to, as soon as possible, put this protection into statute."

In New Mexico, Democratic state Rep. Patricia Roybal Caballero of Albuquerque said she was angered by the Texas law because it might lead to underground abortion procedures that endanger the lives of women.
The slowdowns in travel and dining out meant that employers had less reason to add jobs in those areas. And many job hunters were likely reluctant to take public-facing jobs as the delta variant has spread.

Health care and government employers also cut jobs in August. Construction companies, which have struggled to find workers, lost 3,000 jobs despite strong demand for new homes.

Government employers shed 8,000 jobs, mostly because of a sharp declines in local education hiring after strong gains in June and July. That decline reflected, at least in part, volatile hiring patterns around education as schools prepared to reopen amid the pandemic.

One areas of solid hiring strength last month was among manufacturers and shipping and warehouse companies.

But job growth among service industries that involve public engagement weakened sharply, a consequence in some cases of diminished public traffic. Some live shows, including the remaining concerts on country star Garth Brooks' tour, for example, have been canceled. Businesses are delaying their returns to offices, threatening the survival of some downtown restaurants, coffee shops and dry cleaners.
A woman uses a platform developed by Kiot Viet to manage sales. Photo by VnExpress/Hue Chi

Global investment firm KKR has become the biggest investor in Vietnamese startup KiotViet, pouring $45 million in a Series B funding round.

Ashish Shastry, co-head of Asia Pacific Private Investment Fund and head of KKR Southeast Asia, said KiotViet has "terrific growth potential."

KiotViet, a store management software provider launched in 2014, offers cloud-based point-of-sale sales management solutions to more than 111,000 small and medium-sized enterprises.

"Our investment in KiotViet marks our sixth in Vietnam and the first made under KKRs growth technology strategy in Southeast Asia," Shastry said.

Tran Nguyen Hao, Founder and CEO of KiotViet, said with its "rich experience, global network and extensive expertise," KKR will strongly support KiotViet in its future development.

Hao said his company has also been expanding its product to include providing services to connect with suppliers and integrate with third-party shipping service providers to serve customers, and planned to leverage its platform to provide financial service solutions such as payments and loans.

Before KKR, KiotViet had received investments from Singapore-based Jungle Ventures and Thailands Kasikorn Bank.

David Gowdey, CEO of Jungle Ventures, said that since investing in KiotViet in 2019, the fund has been "impressed with how business has evolved from basic small business software to a multifaceted small business platform.

"The addition of this new capital will only enable them to provide more services to small businesses, who as a segment are a major contributor to GDP throughout Southeast Asia."

KKR is a New York-listed investment company that offers asset management and capital markets and insurance solutions. It sponsors investment funds that invest in private equity, credit and real assets and has strategic partners that manage hedge funds. KKRs insurance subsidiaries offer retirement, life and reinsurance products under the management of The Global Atlantic Financial Group.

Louis Casey, KKRs growth technology lead in Southeast Asia, said KKRs investment in KiotViet aligns with one of its core themes of backing businesses that are enabling digitization of small and medium companies through software and financial technologies.
Launched in May, the online Medical Training Program for nursing staff aims to support medical facilities in treating heart failure patients and improve their quality of life.

Since 2018, Novartis has piloted the Heart Failure Management program in nearly 20 hospitals nationwide to optimize treatment for heart failure patients, helping them access standard treatment and comprehensive management for healthy lives.

The nursing training program is the result of cooperation between HCMC University Medical Center and Novartis as part of Heart Failure Management Program.

Two sessions with the attendance over 1,400 doctors and nurses nationwide showed the interest of health staff in the Heart Failure Management program and the need for in-depth study at both general and specialized hospitals nationwide.

The goals of heart failure treatment comprise improving symptoms, enhancing quality of life, minimizing repeated hospitalizations, and reducing mortality.

"To achieve these goals, it is compulsory to have the cooperation of both doctors and nurses, relevant specialties, and patients and families in monitoring at home. Above all, the close connection between physicians and patients is the most necessary element to manage heart failure in the most optimal and comprehensive manner," a program's representative said.

In early 2020, Novartis officially established a dedicated project team to promote the implementation of the Heart Failure Management model in many hospitals like Hanoi Heart Hospital, Ho Chi Minh City Heart Institute, University Medical Center HCMC, Gia Dinh People's Hospital, District 2 Hospital (Le Van Thinh Hospital currently), Hue University of Medicine and Pharmacy Hospital, An Giang Cardiovascular Hospital, and Dong Nai General Hospital.

Novartis has also coordinated with several hospitals and specialized associations to carry out on-site training activities. This has helped nurses improve their knowledge, consulting skills, and their ability to monitor patients. This basic training provides the most core knowledge so nurses can confidently practice clinical counseling and help manage heart failure patients effectively.

The nursing training program is the result of cooperation between HCMC University Medical Center and Novartis. Photo by: Novartis

In particular, field observation programs from other countries in the region were implemented to learn their heart failure management models and offer training to the core teams of the program at local hospitals. Among these, many dedicated training programs are used for raising the level of Vietnamese nursing staff to help them keep pace with others in the region in taking care of heart failure patients.

Rachel O'neale, head of Country Pharma Organization, Novartis Vietnam, said: "As the number of heart failure patients is increasing dramatically, we expect the Heart Failure Management program to become a solution reducing the heavy burden on the health system. This program will provide updates on the latest information and innovated treatment that health staff could apply to clinical research practice to improve treatment results as well as meeting the needs of patients. This program is also expected to be implemented throughout provinces"

An estimated 64.3 million people are living with heart failure worldwide and this number is still growing. Vietnam does not have official statistics on the number of heart failure patients. Yet, it is estimated that 320,000 to 1.6 million people living with this disease need treatment.

As a leading global medicine producer, Novartis is reimagining medicine to improve and extend peoples lives with innovative science and digital technologies to create transformative treatments in areas of great medical need.

Novartis consistently ranks among the worlds top companies investing in research and development with products reaching nearly 800 million people globally. About 110,000 people of more than 140 nationalities work at Novartis around the world.

Find more at: https://www.novartis.com.
Since normalizing diplomatic relations in 1995, the relationship between the United States and Vietnam has progressed to the point where both nations now cooperate on a wide range of issues, including fighting COVID-19, combatting the climate crisis, and promoting shared economic opportunities.

On her recent visit to Vietnam, Vice President Kamala Harris announced that the United States is donating an additional one million doses of the COVID-19 Pfizer vaccine, bringing the total U.S. donation to Vietnam to more than 6 million doses. The U.S. Agency for International Development and Centers for Disease Control are providing Vietnam with an additional $23 million in technical assistance, which will accelerate delivery of COVID-19 vaccine doses, strengthen Vietnams health system to respond to COVID-19, and build capacity to detect and monitor COVID-19 and future disease threats.

The United States is now Vietnams second largest trading partner and its top export market worldwide. USAID and the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry signed a Memorandum of Understanding, or MOU, to boost Vietnams competitiveness, expand market opportunities for U.S. companies, and strengthen Vietnams environmental policy. This MOU will promote sustainability and green technology in an effort to protect the environment, reduce emissions, and address the climate crisis.

The Biden-Harris Administration continues to put human rights at the center of its foreign policy. While in Vietnam, Vice President Harris expressed support for Vietnams civil society and advocated for freedoms of expression, belief, and association in Vietnam, noting the United States would continue to be frank with Vietnam about ongoing human rights challenges, including advocating for Vietnams release of individuals detained for peacefully exercising their fundamental freedoms.

Vice President Harris committed to Vietnamese government leaders the U.S. resolve to continue addressing shared war legacy issues. As such, the United States will provide an additional $17.5 million for surveying and clearing unexploded ordnance.

Vice President Harriss travel to Vietnam signifies the United States deep commitment to a strong, prosperous, and independent Vietnam, as well as a free, open, healthy, and resilient Indo-Pacific region.
SACRAMENTO, Calif.  Just last week, managers overseeing the fight against the massive wildfire scorching Californias Lake Tahoe region thought they could have it contained by the start of this week.

Instead, the Caldor Fire crested the Sierra Nevada on Monday, forcing the unprecedented evacuation of all 22,000 residents of South Lake Tahoe and tens of thousands of tourists who would otherwise be winding down their summers by the alpine lake straddling the California-Nevada state line.

That drastic move might never have been needed if authorities could have thrown more firefighters at the blaze when it was small. That didnt happen because the Dixie Fire was simultaneously raging across the mountain range 100 miles to the north, on the way to becoming the second-largest wildfire in California history.

I do think the Dixie and the way that its burned and its magnitude did impact the early response to the Caldor, said Scott Stephens, a professor of wildland fire science at the University of California, Berkeley. It really drew resources down so much that the Caldor got very few for the first couple days.

By the time Caldor approached Lake Tahoe two weeks later, there were 4,000 fire personnel, dozens of water-dropping aircraft and hundreds of fire engines and bulldozers.
LAMOILLE  A new firehouse has been built in the small town of Lamoille and there will be a dedication ceremony at 5:30 p.m. Sept. 11.

I joined the department when I moved to Lamoille three and a half years ago, said Lamoille resident Joe de Braga. Jess Sustacha is the chief and Jess asked me to do more than fight fires. He wanted to get a new station built.

The building was supposed to be completed in December of last year, but, due to Covid, stuff wouldnt get shipped and they had to wait on all kinds of things, de Braga said.

He said the previous station next to the old schoolhouse was a small garage that housed two WW II vintage trucks. The town of Verdi donated newer trucks a few years back and those require storage in a heated facility so the water in them does not freeze.

Cold weather was one of the problems in housing equipment at the old fire station. De Braga said he sometimes kept a truck in his barn during colder months, but if it got too cold he could not keep water in it. Water had to be added after a call came in. Now trucks can be stored in the new firehouse, which is heated, and they are ready to go at a moments notice.
SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. (AP)  Better weather on Thursday helped the battle against a huge California wildfire threatening communities around Lake Tahoe, but fire commanders warned firefighters to be prepared for ongoing dangers.

Strong winds and dry conditions that drove the Caldor Fire east through high elevations of the Sierra Nevada for days faded, sparing for now the largest city of a recreational gem that straddles the California-Nevada state line. Thousands were forced to flee South Lake Tahoe earlier this week.

I feel like we are truly the luckiest community in the entire world right now. Im so incredibly happy, said Mayor Tamara Wallace, who evacuated to Truckee, California.

But wind gusts were likely in some areas, and the forest was still extremely dry, officials warned. The fire is pushing on several fronts, threatening multiple communities.

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Still, the mood was one of optimism, given the speed with which the fire grew earlier in the week. Flames raced so quickly toward the resort city that officials ordered a mass evacuation of all 22,000 residents on Monday before ordering those across the state line in Douglas County, Nevada, to leave a day later.
The sentencing brought an end to years of court delays and negotiations that Kims deputy federal public defender, Rebecca Levy, and prosecutor Christopher Burton said avoided a trial at which victims would have to testify.

Burton called it an effort to help (one) victim avoid retraumatization by having to relive everything that happened to her at the hands of the defendant.

Kim was arrested after a 14-year-old Arizona girl escaped to a Las Vegas-area convenience store and told police he abducted her near her home; drove her to his fathers home in North Las Vegas; kept her locked for a month in a bedroom; threatened her with a handgun; raped her repeatedly; photographed her in sex acts; and left her with a bucket for a toilet when he was gone.

Kim pleaded guilty in state court to two felony charges of attempted sexual assault with a minor under 16, based on accounts by the Arizona girl and a 15-year-old from Las Vegas who went to Reno before telling police she had also been kept captive for two weeks at a home in North Las Vegas.
LAS VEGAS (AP)  The governing board of the school district serving metro Las Vegas has voted to generally require that teachers and other employees be vaccinated for COVID-19.

The 5-1 vote by the Board of Trustees of the Clark County School District to impose the mandate came early Thursday after a seven-hour meeting. District Superintendent Jesus Jara will next draw up a plan to implement the mandate.

Officials said the plan will include a process for requesting exemption from the vaccination requirement for either medical conditions or for sincerely held religious beliefs. There is no deadline for the plan to be implemented.

I trust the medical experts  I understand the fear, Trustee Lola Brooks said while making the motion for the vote.

We are experiencing a substantial surge in COVID-19 infections in our entire community. COVID-19 knows no geographical limitations, Jara said. The district has an obligation to protect the health of our children, our staff and the public that we serve, from this virus.
Other than a frightening level of hubris and a distain for the average American, our leadership classs worst sin has been their brushing aside of reality.

A nation that cant do math will produce about as many scientists as Afghanistan. Yet trendy social issues excite educators like actual education does not. Universities (and I speak from personal experience) are more interested in diversity and inclusion than they are in whether their students actually learn anything.

Universities do not test their seniors. Truth be known, they are afraid to do so. Those who have tested immediately hide their findings. Isolated research, that has seen the light of day, has found that many graduates know almost nothing. Many have fewer math skills than they did leaving high school.

They do, however, know how to borrow money for tuition, which has risen to obscene levels. Some have learned to write papers on hormonal treatment without ever using a gendered pronoun.

If they knew any history, they would know that many states like California had free universities, but not for students who couldnt pass exams that modern diverse administrators want banned. Heavens, they are so unequitable.

The real world doesnt care.
Biden was dishonest in framing the Afghan mission as fighting in another countrys civil war. The U.S. didnt remain in Afghanistan for 20 years to nation build or send women to school. The core mission was to prevent the country from again becoming a terrorist safe haven. The Talibans victory will attract jihadists from around the world.

Biden capitulated to the August 31 red line demand of the Taliban to an arbitrary deadline set by our military to leave Afghanistan. On August 18, Biden promised U.S. troops would stay until all Americans were out of the country, even if past the August 31 deadline.

His promise was broken. Biden left behind perhaps several hundred Americans and as many as 60,000 Afghans who fought or assisted the NATO mission  a moral stain. Also left was an enormous stockpile of expensive military equipment quickly claimed by a triumphant Taliban.

President Donald Trump embraced the ending endless wars narrative espoused by many politicians in both parties. As a result, the Trump administration signed a four-page peace deal with the Taliban on February 29, 2020.

This Doha agreement gave huge legitimacy to the Taliban, whose leaders met with Secretary of State Pompeo and Trump outrageously tried to invite them to Camp David.
UMB recognizes the outstanding work of its faculty, staff, and students each year with awards for Entrepreneur, Researcher, Public Servant, Educator, and Student of the Year.

Every fall, the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB) commemorates our rich history and celebrates the future were building together during Founders Week, which this year runs Oct. 23-28. Among the highlights is recognizing the extraordinary work of our UMB community. Four awards are given to faculty or staff members, each signifying outstanding accomplishment in one facet of UMBs mission, and in 2021 we have inaugurated a Student of the Year Award. For more information on UMBs annual celebration and associated events, please check out the Founders Week website.

DAVID J. RAMSAY ENTREPRENEUR OF THE YEAR

Vincent Njar, PhD

School of Medicine

Professor, Department of Pharmacology

Dr. Njar is a leading medicinal chemist and oncopharmacologist who has made significant discoveries in the development of novel therapeutics for breast, prostate, and pancreatic cancers. He is head of the medicinal chemistry section in the Center for Biomolecular Therapeutics at the Institute for Bioscience and Biotechnology Research at the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM). He is an inaugural Distinguished University Professor, the highest appointment bestowed on a faculty member at UMB.

Dr. Njars significant contributions to science include the design, discovery, and clinical translation of the CYP17 inhibitor galeterone for the treatment of cancer. Because of its clinical efficacy, galeterone and subsequent variants continue to be developed as novel therapeutics. Dr. Njars most recent National Institutes of Health R01 grant focuses on the development of next-generation galeterone analogs for prostate cancer.

Dr. Njar founded two startup companies  Terpene Pharmaceuticals, LLC and Isoprene Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (IPI), a cancer therapeutic company  and has served as president and board member of both. IPI recently was awarded a two-year, approximately $2 million grant from the National Cancer Institute for a translational project to develop a novel therapeutic for triple negative breast cancer.

Dr. Njar has secured 34 issued patents, more than 30 pending patents, and numerous active intellectual property and licensing activities at UMB. He is the lead inventor of these technologies. He obtained his PhD in organic chemistry from University College London in the United Kingdom. Except for a brief stint at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, he has worked at UMSOM for almost 20 years.

RESEARCHER OF THE YEAR

Ronna P. Hertzano, MD, PhD

School of Medicine

Professor, Department of Otorhinolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery

Dr. Hertzano is a highly respected otolaryngologist, surgeon, educator, and researcher who holds a secondary appointment in UMSOMs Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology and is an affiliate faculty member of the schools Institute for Genome Sciences.

With significant grants from the National Institutes of Health and other sources, her research is focused on developing new therapeutics to prevent and treat genetic and acquired hearing loss. Dr. Hertzanos lab has three main focus areas: cell-type specific molecular pathways in inner ear development; sex differences in hearing and the molecular basis of acquired hearing loss; and tools for sharing, visualizing, and analyzing multi-omic data.

As a clinician, she focuses on the diagnosis and treatment of diseases of the ear, with an emphasis on hearing restoration. She also has a strong interest in mentorship, and her research team includes undergraduates, graduate students, medical students, residents, audiologists, and postdocs. She is a member of the American Academy of Otolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery, American Neurotology Society, American Otology Society, Association for Research in Otolaryngology, Collegium Oto-Rhino-Laryngologicum Amicitiae Sacrum, Maryland Society of Otolaryngology, and the Society for Neuroscience.

Dr. Hertzano was born in Israel and received her medical degree and PhD in human molecular genetics and biochemistry from Sackler School of Medicine at Tel Aviv University. She completed her residency in otorhinolaryngology-head and neck surgery at UMSOM before joining the school as an instructor in 2011. She was promoted to assistant professor in 2012, associate professor in 2016, and professor in 2021.

PUBLIC SERVANT OF THE YEAR

Joshua M. Abzug, MD

School of Medicine

Associate Professor, Departments of Orthopaedics and Pediatrics

Dr. Abzug is a pediatric orthopaedist who has completed specialty training for pediatric upper extremity problems and treats fractures throughout the body. In addition to his roles at UMSOM, he is director of pediatric orthopaedics at the University of Maryland Medical Center; director of the University of Maryland Brachial Plexus Practice; and deputy surgeon-in-chief at the University of Maryland Childrens Hospital. He serves as president of the University of Maryland, Baltimores Faculty Senate.

Dr. Abzug founded Camp Open Arms in 2015 with six children and held activities over two days. The camp, which he also directs, allows children with limb differences such as brachial plexus birth palsy and congenital/traumatic deformities to enjoy a carefree experience. In its seventh year, the program in Monkton has grown into a weeklong camp with activities such as hiking, arts and crafts, and visits from musicians, entertainers, and zoo animals. Camp Open Arms provides a safe and supportive environment for kids to engage in traditional summer camp activities with their specific physical and emotional needs in mind.

Dr. Abzugs research is focused on identifying and optimizing surgical and nonsurgical treatments that will enhance a childs ability to conduct vital self-care tasks.

He earned his medical degree from Penn State College of Medicine and completed his residency in orthopaedic surgery at Drexel University College of Medicine. He has held fellowships in pediatric orthopaedics at St. Christophers Hospital for Children and Shriners Hospitals for Children, and in hand surgery at Thomas Jefferson University Hospitals, all in Philadelphia.

EDUCATORS OF THE YEAR

Renaissance Curriculum Team

School of Medicine

In June 2018, UMSOM embarked on its first major curriculum revision in 25 years. After speaking with education colleagues at 20 institutions and studying curricula and best practices across the country, the Renaissance Curriculum Team recognized the importance of identifying the environment and values that contribute to making UMSOM excellent in biomedical education, basic and clinical research, and quality patient care and service.

The new curriculum incorporates the information learned from other institutions with UMSOMs strengths and values according to its faculty and students. The goal of this major revision is to train the Renaissance Physician: lifelong learners who are clinically excellent and possess humanism, professionalism, scholarship, leadership, critical thinking, and attention to social justice and diversity.

The team of 10, working with more than 100 core educators in UMSOM, spent countless hours brainstorming and implementing new methodologies and incorporating adult learning theory into the curriculum. Then the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted clinical care and medical education. The team rose to the challenge of quickly and thoughtfully implementing changes to meet the needs of students, balancing education with the responsibility to protect health and safety. The members of the team, many of whom are also front-line providers, developed a new COVID-19 course that encompasses the epidemiology and public health response, the pathophysiology, diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of the disease.

The Renaissance Curriculum was launched for first-year students in August 2020.

The team members are: Philip Dittmar, MD; Olga Ioffe, MD; Constance Lacap, DO; Joseph Martinez, MD; Donna Parker, MD, FACP; Devang Patel, MD; Sandra Quezada, MD, MS; Norman Retener, MD; Nirav Shah, MD; and Kerri Thom, MD, MS.

STUDENTS OF THE YEAR

Jazmin Jones

School of Dentistry

Class of 2022

A fourth-year student at the University of Maryland School of Dentistry (UMSOD), Ms. Jones is the Class of 2022 president and has helped lead students through the COVID-19 pandemics challenges by fostering communications among students, faculty, and staff. As president, she leads a diverse team of officers and organization representatives who work to ensure students have an effective and fulfilling dental school experience.

Ms. Jones co-founded the UMSOD Global Health Student Association and served as vice president of the chapter. She also holds leadership roles in numerous other organizations including the UMSOD chapters of the Hispanic Dental Association, American Student Dental Association, and Maryland Academy of Pediatric Dentistry.

She is a member of UMBs Diversity Advisory Council, serving on a subcommittee that offers insights on how the Universitys schools can promote diversity within their curricula, and she participated in the UMB Presidents Student Leadership Institute, with concentrations in effective leadership and inclusive leadership.

Because of her strong academic achievement, she was recognized as a member of the Gorgas Odontological Honorary Society, the Gamma Pi Delta Prosthodontics Honor Society, and selected to participate in a pediatric dentistry clerkship during her senior year at UMSOD. She also is conducting research on treatment outcomes of silver diamine fluoride application on primary and mixed dentition for the Department of Pediatric Dentistry.

Ms. Jones attends dental school on a full U.S. Army Health Professions Scholarship. After graduation, she will start four years of obligated Army service beginning with the rank of captain. She is a 2017 graduate of the University of California, San Diego, earning bachelors degrees in human biology and theater.

Emily M. Smith

Graduate School

Class of 2022

Ms. Smith is a PhD candidate in the Graduate Program in Life Sciences in Molecular Microbiology and Immunology with a concentration in bacterial pathogenesis. She arrived at UMB in 2016 after graduating with a bachelors degree in biology from James Madison University.

Ms. Smith works in the laboratory of Eileen Barry, PhD, in UMSOMs Center for Vaccine Development and Global Health and has developed strong research skills during her graduate work to complement her undergraduate and postbaccalaureate experiences. She has presented her work at international, national, local, and institutional conferences and published manuscripts in top-tier journals. Ms. Smith also has led research collaborations pivotal to her work and served in laboratory mentoring and teaching roles for undergraduate, graduate, and medical students.

She has been active in the Graduate Student Association since 2017, first as a program representative, then vice president, and president from May 2020 to June 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic. In that role, she advocated for students coping with ongoing issues involving health and safety, tele-education, transportation, and financial and academic support.

Committed to promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), Ms. Smith led hands-on activities and STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) career discussions for female high school students from underrepresented groups through opportunities at UMSOM. She also helped write student policy documents on DEI and advocated for hiring a chief equity officer within the Graduate School and at the University level. She served on a student committee that met candidates for the UMB position and promoted the inclusion of a graduate student on the selection committee.

(In photo: Top, from left: Vincent Njar, Ronna Hertzano, Joshua Abzug; Middle: Renaissance Cirriculum Team; Bottom, from left: Jazmin Jones, Emily Smith)
The US Capitol rioter nicknamed the 'QAnon Shaman' is disappointed former President Donald Trump did not pardon him, his defense lawyer said on Friday after the man pleaded guilty to taking part in the 6 January unrest.

QAnon Shaman joins list of those ignored by Trump

Jacob Chansley, of Phoenix, Arizona, was photographed inside the Capitol shirtless, wearing a horned headdress and heavily tattooed. He has been held without bond since his arrest shortly after the riot, and on Friday entered a guilty plea to obstructing an official proceeding.

While in detention, Chansley underwent mental examinations and was diagnosed by prison officials with transient schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression and anxiety.

Nearly 600 people have been arrested over the attack on the Capitol where Congress was meeting to certify Joe Biden's November victory over Trump. Earlier Trump had given a fiery speech falsely claiming his defeat was the result of fraud.

While the felony charge Chansley pleaded guilty to carries both a maximum 20-year prison term and a fine of up to $250,000, prosecutor Kimberly Paschall indicated the maximum sentence the government was likely to request would be much shorter.

Chansley had been a supporter of the QAnon conspiracy theory that casts Trump as a saviour figure and elite Democrats as a cabal of Satanist pedophiles and cannibals.

Although he did not get a pardon from Trump, Chansley's defense lawyer Albert Watkins said 'there will always be a soft spot' for Trump in Chansley's heart.

Chansley informed on 6 January thieves

At Friday's plea hearing, Watkins asked Judge Royce Lamberth to allow Chansley to be released from prison pending a sentencing hearing, scheduled for Nov. 17. The judge said he would consider this request.

Watkins noted that prosecutors had acknowledged Chansley was 'not a planner or organizer' of the riot. Watkins later told reporters that Chansley had cooperated with 6 January investigations and informed on a group he saw stealing classified materials from a Senate office.
(File photo)

In the span of more than a year, COVID-19 pandemic has raged across the world with a devastating impact on human health. The pandemic comes as a huge shock to the world order and casts shadow on global economic growth and social development. The United States has stood first over and over again among the least successful countries in terms of pandemic control. US politicians put political gains before public interests, disregarding the right of health and other basic human rights. In the face of staggering numbers, the US government refuses to reflect on its failure or unite together. Instead, US authorities manipulate the pandemic, label the virus, politicize virus tracing, spread lab leak" theory, and dismiss the WHO-convened Global Study of Origins of SARS-CoV-2. The US government asked its intelligence agencies to produce a report on the origin of the coronavirus in 90 days in the hope to shift the blame to other countries, but that will surely end up in vain.

US intelligence report on COVID origin is a political circus. The motive and falsehood of the report is evident. The ill-crafted report with presumed conclusions and misleading bias is nothing but a heap of waste paper. Why did Biden direct the infamous intelligence community to investigate the origin of the virus? Is it because the intelligence community is required to be objective and professional or to be loyal at this special time?

The loyal intelligence community may disgrace its boss. US intelligence community was asked to gather evidence that would justify the invasion of Iraq. Former US Secretary of State Colin Powell showed Iraqs "powerful chemical weapons"a bottle of white powerat the UN Security Council. In 1961, the intelligence community badly masterminded the Bay of Pigs Invasion. In order to conceal the secret invasion of Cuba, former US Ambassador to the UN Adlai Stevenson II demonstrated a picture of a pilot traitor driving an aircraft. To the dismay of US authorities, the trick was soon seen through. The Biden administration might juggle with the public version and the classified version to hide the loopholes of the report. It is also likely that Biden would create a tense atmosphere to maximize the political value of anti-China gimmicks as Congressman Kevin Owen McCarthy who claimed to have a list of communist members did.

US intelligence COVID origin report is a political tragedy which disregards science and peoples health. From Trumps China virus and pay the United States 10 trillion dollars for the damages to Bidens lab leak" theory and second phase of virus-tracing, the words of the two presidents victimized ordinary Americans most. The US can hardly find a way out if it politicizes virus-tracing. The US attempts to make virus-tracing a strategic weapon will backfire. People still remember how Trump suggested injection of disinfectant to beat coronavirus and how awkward Doctor Fauci was at the White House briefing. It is hard to believe the US government on the one hand downplayed the severity of infections and on the other hand launched a scientific and rigorous investigation into the origin of the coronavirus. It is an appropriate solution to delineate the boundary between science and politics when it comes to surviving the pandemic and other challenges. Virus-tracing requires scientists careful study and honest answers in order to understand the pathogenic mechanism of the virus and prevent the next pandemic. The investigation can absolutely not be dominated by short-sighted US politicians.

The US virus-tracing report is a political parody created by the US to control political polarization and distract public attention when it fails to bridge the division of American society. The US leads the world in medical technology and resources. The failure to control the pandemic is attributed to the inability of the US administration as Doctor Fauci said that a highly polarized society and an incapable leader cant get the country to function. Biden swore to be a President for all Americans, all Americans and heal a broken land, but failed to bring together a broken American society. Last year, China successfully curbed the pandemic and provided precious window of opportunities for the US to control the pandemic. Sadly, the US missed the window when Trump dismissed and ignored the reality. As a result, the pandemic aggravated and the US had to launch a smear campaign and shift the blame to China.

Bidens administration has also had a fleeting window to swiftly put the pandemic under control, recover the economy and make substantial progress in racial equality. However, the honeymoon for Biden and the Congress has come to an end and polls showed public dissatisfaction with the government began to rebound. The resurgence of COVID cases and mid-term election have made it harder for Biden to heal the COVID-torn America. Under the dual pressure from home and abroad, the Biden administration failed to figure out more brilliant solutions and had to continue a hard-line China policy to rearrange internal interests and push forward political agendas. Such response may bring small political gains but lacks the lucidity, decisiveness and wisdom that define a considerate statesman who resorts to reforms when facing the crux of problems. Half a year ago, Biden mourned at the White House more than 500, 000 lives that had been claimed by the coronavirus, more than the mortality combined in World War  and . By August, more than 650,000 people had been killed by the coronavirus. Biden may make a speech in condolence over the death of these compatriots as the death toll of the pandemic is heavier than the American Civil War, a disaster that descended on a ripped US society.

The US intelligence virus-tracing report is an utter lie, which the US thought is well designed, but can neither deceive people all over the world or history, nor alter the era. As the pandemic continues to rage across the world, the US needs to stay on the right track and join global efforts to curb the pandemic. The obsession with the farce of virus-tracing will prove a shame.

Contributed by LL.D. Chen Changning Director of American Studies Centre, Sichuan University

Translated by Wu Zidan

Editor: Zhang Zhou
Coffins containing the remains of the Chinese People's Volunteers (CPV) martyrs are escorted at the Taoxian international airport in Shenyang, northeast China's Liaoning Province, Sept. 2, 2021. The remains of 109 CPV martyrs killed in the 1950-53 Korean War and 1,226 related relics were returned to China on Thursday from South Korea in the eighth repatriation of its kind since 2014. (Xinhua/Yang Qing)

SHENYANG, Sept. 2 (Xinhua) -- The remains of 109 Chinese soldiers killed in the 1950-1953 Korean War were returned to China on Thursday from the Republic of Korea (ROK).

Escorted by two Chinese fighter jets, an air force plane carrying the remains and belongings of the fallen soldiers landed at the Taoxian international airport in Shenyang, capital of northeast China's Liaoning Province, at 11:26 a.m.

It is the eighth such repatriation since 2014.

Around 230 representatives from central and local authorities, the military, and family members and relatives of the Chinese People's Volunteers (CPV) martyrs attended a ceremony at the airport to welcome the soldiers' remains at 12:37 p.m.

Following the event, the remains were escorted to the CPV martyrs' cemetery in Shenyang, where a burial ceremony will be held Friday.

The remains of 716 soldiers returned from the ROK and were laid to rest in the cemetery between 2014 and 2020. Enditem

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Editor: Zhang Zhou
Yuriy Vitrenko, the chairman of the board of NJSC Naftogaz Ukrainy, has told about the best guarantees for gas transit through Ukraine.

"The best guarantee is contracts with European companies," Vitrenko said on the air of the Pravo na Vladu program on 1+1 TV Channel.

The company head added that Ukraine is not against the extension of the contract with Russia for the transit of gas through Ukraine for another ten years, but this contract is not the best guarantee for the state.

He noted that negotiations on this issue will be held soon.

"We are now awaiting the promised consultations at the technical level. These will be negotiations to be organized by Germans. During these negotiations we will talk with European companies about specific contracts for gas transit through Ukraine. These are guarantees. If these contracts are violated, we will go to European courts," Vitrenko said.
During his visit to the United States, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky presented a number of projects, including a project to build data centers of leading American IT giants in Ukraine.

The relevant information is contained in the list of projects presented by Zelensky in the United States, the text of which was published on Telegram by MP Oleksiy Honcharenko.

The project provides for construction in Ukraine of hyperscale data centers with cloud services from corporations Amazon (AWS), Microsoft (Azure) and Alphabet (Google Cloud).

On the part of the United States, the project provides for financial and expert support for the idea of building cloud infrastructure.

The construction costs of one such facility are expected to range from $20 million to $2 billion.

It is noted that the government of Ukraine is ready now to contribute to construction of cloud infrastructure in the country.

A government source confirmed to Interfax-Ukraine that the list had been prepared on the eve of the visit. However, according to the source, some changes could have been made to it already in the United States.
During the visit of President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky to the United States, the Ukrainian delegation presented a $277 billion Ukraine Transformation Plan, according to which Naftogaz may be responsible for the implementation of most decarbonization projects with the assistance of the United States, it follows from the relevant list of projects released by MP Oleksiy Honcharenko on Telegram on Friday.

A government source confirmed to Interfax-Ukraine that the list had been prepared on the eve of the visit. However, according to the source, some changes could have been made to it already in the United States.

In particular, the Group has planned a project on the use of biomass for production of biogas, biomethane and electricity, which involves construction of a network of biogas plants and biomass thermal power plants. As noted, the United States could provide Ukraine with technology and equipment, as well as provide incentives in the U.S. financial market.

The project is designed until 2030 and requires financing in the amount of $10 billion. Ukraine is ready to allocate, at best, $3 billion for its implementation.

Naftogaz also intends to engage in a project for production of second-generation biofuels, in particular biodiesel, for export to the EU and for domestic consumption. The role of the United States is similar. The project will require $2 billion, of which Ukraine can allocate half on its own.

The project could be completed by the end of the decade. At the same time, with U.S. support, the pilot project will last from one and a half to three years, while the entire program can be completed in seven years instead of 10.

In addition, the Group offered to equip its underground gas storage facilities (UGS) for storing carbon dioxide, including in the event of the start of production of "blue hydrogen" from natural gas. It is expected that U.S. companies could share their experience in capturing, utilizing and storing carbon dioxide.

The document states that the implementation of this project requires $2.2 billion in investments and about eight years. Ukraine alone can cover only one third of the costs. At the same time, the start of the project on its own will depend on the possibility of involving partners and ensuring the possibility of supplying carbon dioxide to achieve the necessary conditions for commercialization.

"Provided the United States is involved, a pilot project to rebuild UGS facilities or inject carbon dioxide into existing wells could be planned to be implemented within five years with further scaling up until 2030," the document said.

In addition, Naftogaz is counting on grant funding for the energy efficiency project from the United States and the involvement of American companies to implement energy efficiency measures in Ukraine. The total project budget is $7 billion, Ukraine is ready to allocate $2.5 billion.
A $25 billion decarbonization plan for the Ukrainian energy sector provides for the decommissioning of obsolete coal generation facilities and the construction of flexible capacities.

This follows from the $277 billion worth plan for transforming Ukraine, presented in the United States during the visit of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, made public by MP Oleksiy Honcharenko (the European Solidarity faction) on Telegram.

According to the decarbonization project, the implementation of which is envisaged until 2030, obsolete coal-fired power plants will be replaced with storage and other devices, small modular reactors, gas and ready-to-use hydrogen capacities, as well as thermal power plants operating on biomass and other types of renewable energy.

At the same time, the list of projects presented in the United States also included a project for technical synchronization with ENTSO-E worth $11.7 billion and a deadline until 2023 (the planned integration period) plus 20 years.

The project provides for the implementation of technical measures for the integration of the energy systems of Ukraine and Europe, as well as the introduction of Smart Grids systems, construction, reconstruction of overhead power grids and substations, as well as automation of the latter.

The share of Ukraine's participation in the projects is not indicated. The U.S.'s participation, according to the short description of the projects, provides for the supply of equipment and technologies, and the interest of the U.S. side is in the return on investment.

A government source confirmed to Interfax-Ukraine that the list had been prepared on the eve of the visit. However, according to it, "some changes could have been made to it directly in the United States."
The project for the development of nuclear energy worth $9.6 billion presented in the United States includes the construction of two power units of the Khmelnytsky nuclear power plant (NPP) and small modular reactors (SMRs), as well as a project for the construction of a nuclear fuel production plant on the basis of PJSC Skhidny Mining and Processing Plant.

This was reported in the Telegram channel of MP Oleksiy Honcharenko (the European Solidarity parliamentary faction) on Friday.

According to the report, these projects are included in the $277 billion plan for the transformation of Ukraine presented in the United States during the visit of President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky.

A government source confirmed to Interfax-Ukraine that the list of projects had been prepared on the eve of the visit. However, according to him, "some changes could have been made to it directly in the United States."

According to the list of projects, the project for the development of nuclear energy until 2035 is estimated at $9.6 billion.

The project also provides for the supply of equipment and technologies and nuclear fuel to Ukrainian nuclear power plants, which, along with profit from investments, should be of interest to the United States.

Along with this, a project for the extraction of uranium ores and the production of nuclear fuel in Ukraine worth $1.2 billion was also presented. It provides for the construction of a mine for the extraction of uranium ores and a plant for the production of nuclear fuel (fuel elements) on the basis of Skhidny Mining. The project is expected to be implemented in the period from 2022 to 2026.

The share of Ukraine's participation in both projects is not indicated. However, it is noted that they are designed to attract investment.
The Joint Investigation Team (JIT), investigating the crash of the Malaysian Airlines plane, which performed MH17 flight and was shot down in the skies over Ukraine on July 17, 2014, appeals to the residents of the Russian Kursk and the military stationed in this city to share information to identify the members of the anti-aircraft missile complex Buk, from which the airliner could be shot down.

"According to the JIT the Buk-TELAR that downed the plane was delivered from Kursk. The Dutch police, who coordinate this action, write in a letter addressed to the citizens of Kursk that the investigation into the crew members and the decision-making process of the deployment of the Buk-TELAR has reached an advanced stage, but is not yet finalized. In the letter, the investigation refers to Russian military who possess more information such as photos, videos, emails and official documents, are invited to share this information with the JIT," a press release posted Thursday by the Dutch police says.

In addition, the Dutch police also released two videos addressed to a broader public, in which a Dutch retired military officer and the parents of one of the victims -Australians who have Soviet heritage- explain how important it is for them to get answers to their questions. In particular, Vera Oreshkina, who lost her son Victor (29 years of age) in the crash, says in the video: "This tragedy should not have happened, and it must never happen again. We appeal to everybody who knows something about it, please tell it to those who need to know it."

Retired Lieutenant-Colonel Marseille, who has often worked with Russian military, says that he hopes that his Russian colleagues will provide answers: "It is very important for the families of the 298 innocent victims of the crash of flight MH17 to finally hear the truth. (.) It is essential for the future of our countries to bring the investigation to an end successfully, and finally close this sad chapter in our common history."

The Dutch police noted that the new call for information is not made on behalf of the criminal case against these suspects, but for the continuing investigation. "The continuing investigation is focused on the following questions: Who decided to deploy this missile system in Ukraine, and who were part of its crew? According to the JIT the Buk-TELAR was delivered by the 53rd Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade from Kursk, and therefore the answers are sought in that area. With this call the JIT hopes to obtain the missing information in order to deliver the whole picture of this tragedy, so that the families of the victims will finally find peace knowing the truth about what really happened," the press release says.

Andy Kraag, head of the National Criminal Investigation Department of the Dutch police explained that the investigation wants to know "who were part of the crew, what was their order and who gave them that order." "We also want to know who decided to deploy this missile system in Ukraine. And first and foremost we want to know why the passenger airliner was downed. How could it happen that the plane with 298 innocent civilians on board was shot down? We can only answer these questions with full confidence when the persons involved provide clarity in this matter," the policeman is quoted in the press release.
Ombudswoman of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine for Human Rights Liudmyla Denisova has met with head of the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine Matilda Bogner, the press service of the Ombudswoman's Office reported.

"The parties discussed the humanization of national legislation in relation to persons serving life sentences, because today Ukraine is the leader among European countries in terms of the number of life sentences  1,536 people," the message posted on the Telegram channel says.

In particular, Denisova cited the example of citizen S., who is awaiting a review of the verdict of the Crimean Court of Appeal of November 26, 2004 due to newly discovered circumstances.

"His criminal case is in the temporarily occupied Crimea, and due to the absence of a norm in international agreements on the transfer of cases, the Russian Federation refuses to provide it to Ukraine," Denisova said.

She clarified that today the legislation of Ukraine does not provide for an effective mechanism for the possible release of life sentences from further serving the sentence and deprives the so-called right to hope - the revision of the court's decision after a certain period of time.

The Ombudswoman is confident that this issue can be resolved by the adoption by the Verkhovna Rada of draft laws No. 4048 "On amendments to certain legislative acts on the implementation of decisions of the European Court of Human Rights" and No. 4049 "On amendments to the Code of Administrative Offenses of Ukraine, the Criminal Code of Ukraine and the Criminal Procedure Code of Ukraine regarding the implementation of decisions of the European Court of Human Rights" at the second reading and as a whole.

"Then the Ukrainian legislation will comply with the ECHR practice on the early release of persons sentenced to life imprisonment. I hope that the bills will be included in the agenda of the next session of the Ukrainian parliament," Denisova emphasized.

The parties also discussed the importance of the adoption by the Verkhovna Rada of the law "On the indigenous peoples of Ukraine" and noted that the document requires clarification, in particular with regard to the inclusion in the list of the indigenous peoples of the Gagauz people living in Ukraine and Moldova, and not having their own state. Denisova thanked Bogner for joint work in the field of protecting human and civil rights and freedoms.
Ukraine is currently unable to legitimize dual citizenship at the legislative level, since in the territories of Donbas and Crimea, temporarily occupied by the Russian Federation, there is a compulsory Russian passportization of Ukrainian citizens, said President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky.

He noted that he himself is in favor of dual citizenship and, if it were peaceful time in Ukraine now, the Ukrainian parliament would quickly vote for the introduction of the corresponding law as a priority for the sake of Ukrainians who live all over the world.

"This issue is very complicated precisely because there is a passport issuance [Russian] and some citizens who have other citizenships can get Ukrainian one through this law, and today we must very seriously protect our borders," Zelensky said answering students' questions at the Stanford University.

"You know that the passportization lasted with Russian passports of Ukrainian citizens in Crimea for over 20 years. Now parallel things are happening in the temporarily occupied territories of Donbas. About 600,000 Russian passports have been handed over in our Ukrainian territories," the head of the Ukrainian state added.

At the same time, he stressed that the issue remains relevant and is being considered among Ukrainian parliamentarians. "That is, this issue is relevant, but through these difficulties we need to build legislation on dual citizenship. It cannot be universal, but with a unique approach for each community and each individual country," Zelensky added.
Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine Commissioner for Human Rights Liudmyla Denisova addressed Chairman of the Parliament Dmytro Razumkov with an official letter, in which she points to the inconsistency with the Constitution of Ukraine of bill No. 5599 on the prevention of threats to national security associated with the excessive influence of persons with significant economic or political weight in public life (oligarchs).

"The results of our analysis of the provisions of the bill cause concern, since they allow us to conclude that its provisions do not comply with the Constitution of Ukraine, and their implementation will lead to violations of human and civil rights and freedoms," Denisova said in the letter.

The list of such provisions indicates the vesting of the president and the NSDC with powers not provided for by the Constitution of Ukraine, limitation of human rights depending on the property status, indirect introduction of censorship in the media, and the like.

"In my opinion, in order to ensure the observance of the rights and freedoms of citizens and prevent their violations when adopting this legislative initiative, it is necessary, before consideration at second reading, to send it to receive the opinion of the European Commission For Democracy through Law (Venice Commission)," Denisova said.

The commissioner said the adoption of the law on oligarchs in the current version will lead to its consideration in the Constitutional Court. "If this bill is adopted in the wording adopted at first reading, I will be forced, in accordance with Article 15 of the Law of Ukraine on the Commissioner of the Verkhovna Rada for Human Rights, to submit to the Constitutional Court of Ukraine a constitutional submission regarding the resolution of the issue of compliance with the Constitution of Ukraine (constitutionality) of such a law," she said.
The Hasidic community condemns the participants in the shooting incident in Uman on the eve of Rosh Hashanah and thanked the Ukrainian authorities for the activities that allowed pilgrims to celebrate the Jewish New Year at the tomb of Tsadik Nachman. This is stated in a letter from the president of the Keren Or Institute Yakov Meir Shechter addressed to the Ambassador of Ukraine to Israel Yevhen Korniychuk.

We ways preach the necessity to be peaceful and appreciative to our hosts, and to comply with local government regulations. It is very troubling to hear about the security incident you mentioned that was perpetrated by an individual. Not only is this not condoned-to the contrary such bad perpetrators, are outcasts of the society. Unfortunately we all know that no one can control all these lawless perpetrators, and this cannot and should not reflect the entire community. We appreciate law enforcement to prevent any violence and preserve harmony and peace, - the letter reads.

It is also emphasized that the only person authorized to coordinate with the Ukrainian authorities is Rabbi Natan Ben Nun, head of the Beslov International Charitable Organization/

No one but Rabbi Natan Ben Nun is authorized to make any statements or make claims on behalf of our community. He works hand in hand with the authorities with the mutual goal, for the well being and benefit of the pilgrims, to assure compliance and cooperation. It is totally against our principles to make accusations and baseless claims against a hosting government, and its security personnel, - the letter says.

Representatives of the Hasidic community also express their gratitude to the Ukrainian government for the opportunities created for the pilgrimage of so many people.

I also want to thank to the Ambassador personally for all that the Embassy does on outreach to assist in the process while travelling to the Ukraine, - the letter reads
During his working visit to the United States, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky met with top investors, representatives of venture funds and Silicon Valley accelerators, and urged them to actively cooperate with Ukraine, the website of the head of state reported on Friday.

"Our country is rapidly transforming and adopting innovations. Over the past year, we have managed to make a real breakthrough in the digital sphere. At the same time, we still need to do a lot," Zelensky said noting that over the past two years, Ukraine has made a huge leap towards creating a digital state, and the Ukrainian IT sector has significant potential, especially in human resources.

Zelensky is convinced that Ukraine also has a high potential for developing its own products, and it is necessary to provide conditions for implementing it. "For that, we are creating one of the best tax and legal frameworks for IT companies  Diia City," he said.

According to the President, thanks to its implementation, the income of the IT industry in Ukraine in three to five years may increase from $6 billion to $16.5 billion per year. The share of the Ukrainian IT sector would expand to 10% of GDP. The number of jobs in the IT industry is expected to grow by 450,000 by 2025.

Zelensky assured that Ukraine would exercise as much as possible assistance to foreign and Ukrainian investors: the special legal framework is aimed at creating companies in our country with a capitalization of more than $100 million, which will be residents of Ukraine.

Zelensky said that the state is ready to address the concerns of investors and cooperate with them, and Ukraine is very flexible in changing legislation and will facilitate investments.

"Ukraine is open for investments in the IT sector in cooperation with U.S. businesses. We want your business to be interested not only in the possibilities of opening representative offices in Ukraine, but also in investing in Ukrainian innovative products," the President said, addressing the event participants.

It is noted that representatives of investors and venture funds noted the high level of Ukrainian IT specialists and their huge potential.
Two improvised explosive devices detonated Saturday near Gizas Imbaba Police Station. No casualties were reported.

Preliminary investigations showed that the bombs were planted close to the nearby Ahmed Orabi School and targetted police vehicles.

The bombs caused the glass of the school to shatter with one police vehicle damaged, according to Reuters Aswat Masriya.

Egypt has been battling a decade-long militant insurgency in North Sinai that spiked since the ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in July 2013.

In recent months, dozens of smaller bombs have been planted by alleged Islamist militants nationwide, targeting security personnel as well as economic installations such as electricity pylons and mobile phone stores.

Militants have also placed a large number of decoy and sound bombs in various spots around the capital and other cities.

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A trilateral summit between Egypt, Jordan, and Palestine's leaders has kicked off in Cairo to discuss a number of issues of mutual concern, including the Palestinian cause, Extra News channel reported.

Earlier on Thursday, Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi received Jordan's King Abdullah II and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas at the presidential palace.

Egypt and Jordan have been in talks with regional and international sides to revive the long-frozen talks between the Palestinian and Israeli sides in accordance with the international resolutions, the Arab Peace Initiative and the two-state solution with the aim of establishing an independent Palestinian state on the 1967 border, with East Jerusalem as its capital.

El-Sisi, during a meeting with Abbas ahead of the summit, stressed that Egypt would proceed with its painstaking efforts to support the Palestinian cause.

Egypt is coordinating with the Palestinian side to help Palestinians restore their rights, the Egyptian president said.

He highlighted the importance of rallying efforts in the coming period to support a political settlement, push towards resuming negotiations, and maintain the Palestinian-Israeli truce.

He also called for the unification of Palestines ranks and reconciling all Palestinian factions so that they may support the Palestinian Authority and its role in the Gaza Strip.

He underscored the importance of improving the economic, humanitarian, and living conditions in the strip.

Presidential Spokesman Bassam Rady said the meeting tackled the latest developments in the Palestinian cause and the Middle East peace process.

For his part, Palestinian President Abbas hailed the strenuous efforts exerted by Egypt to support the Palestinian cause.

He lauded Egypt's historical role in advocating for a just and comprehensive solution to the Palestinian cause, referring to Egypt's pivotal efforts in facilitating the recent ceasefire with Israel.

He also cited the initiative launched later on by President El-Sisi to reconstruct Gaza, stressing the depth of Palestinian-Egyptian ties.

The two leaders agreed during their talks to hold continued consultations to discuss various issues of mutual concern as well as future steps for supporting the Palestinian cause at all levels.

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Egypt has offered its deepest condolences to the United States over the victims of flash flooding caused by the remnants of Hurricane Ida that brought torrential rains.

In a statement Thursday, the Egyptian foreign ministry wished speedy recovery for the injured.

It stressed Egypts solidarity and support for the government and people of the United States in this painful loss.

Flash floods from Hurricane Ida, the fifth most powerful hurricane to hit the US, damaged homes and cars and caused the death of 46 people on Wednesday and Thursday as it hit a number of states on the US east coast.

The US states hit by the hurricane include Louisiana, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia.

Louisiana reported 9 deaths, New Jersey reported 23 deaths and New York reported 16 deaths.

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Minister of Culture Ines Abdel-Dayem said that arts and culture in Egypt are thriving at the local, regional and international levels under the rule of President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi.

In an interview with MENA Chief Editor and Board Chairman Ali Hassan, she added that she is working to increase societal awareness within the framework of the presidential Decent Life initiative.

She further noted that the political leadership is aware of the importance of archaeological sites in Egypt.

The minister added that her ministry has a plan for holding artistic activities in six governorates including 21 villages.

She pointed out that opening an opera house in the New Administrative Capital boosts the process of enlightenment in Egypt and shows that the political leadership is aware of the cultural dimension in enriching the national product of the Egyptian State.

As for the Year of Egyptian-Russian Humanitarian Exchange, she pointed out that the culture ministry prepared a major program for this great event in coordination with the Egyptian Embassy in Moscow through the Egyptian foreign ministry for implementing artistic activities.

She also noted that these activities reflect the close relations and cooperation between the two countries in different fields.

She pointed out that the ministry is coordinating with other Arab countries on confronting the effects of the pandemic on cultural activities. She added that she has chaired a meeting of the Arab culture ministers via video conference that discussed the effects of the coronavirus on the cultural sector in Arab countries.

The conference participants discussed the Egyptian experience in confronting the coronavirus crisis as Egypt is one of the first countries that adopted precautionary measures against the virus.

She also noted that Arab cultural strategies were set to confront difficulties during the post-coronavirus phase.

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Head of the Egyptian mission in Tripoli Tamer Moustafa told Libyas interim Prime Minister Abdul-Hamid Dbeibah that Egypt is keen to extend all forms of support to the Libyan Government of National Unity (GNU), according to to a statement by the GNU.

Moustafa's statement came during a meeting with Dbeibah in the Libyan capital of Tripoli on Wednesday to discuss means to enhance this support and open broader horizons of cooperation between the two countries.

Dbeibah highlighted the deep relations between Egypt and Libya, the statement read.

The meeting discussed a number of issues of mutual concern and efforts to enhance the strategic partnership between the two countries, according to the statement.

The meeting comes two days after Egypts Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry affirmed Cairo's "unwavering" position of support for Libya's security and stability during the meeting of Libya's neighbours in Algeria on Monday.

During the Algeria meeting, Shoukry stressed the need to hold the Libyan general elections in December as scheduled.

Shoukry also urged support for the 5+5 Libyan Joint Military Commission (JMC) to enable it to complete its mission, which includes ensuring the departure of all foreign forces and mercenaries from the North African country.

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The Egyptian flag carrier EgyptAir announced that it will operate two weekly flights to Kuwait starting 5 September after a year hiatus due to Kuwaiti concerns over coronavirus situation in a number of countries.

In a statement, CEO of EgyptAir Airlines Amr Abul-Enein said the flag carrier will use the Boeing 737-800 and 787 Dreamliner in the flights to Kuwait.

The announcement comes two weeks after the Kuwaiti Cabinet decided to resume commercial flights from Kuwait to Egypt, India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Nepal, under a set of conditions.

Kuwaiti airports will receive slightly less than 11,000 Egyptians per week following this decision, Al-Arabiya has cited sources as saying.

In August last year, Kuwait banned commercial flights to 31 countries, including Egypt, over coronavirus concerns.

Conditions for the return of flights to Kuwait, according to a statement by the Kuwaiti Centre for Government Communication on 19 August, include presenting a negative PCR lab test result conducted 72 hours at most before arrival.

The Kuwaiti airports will allow the entry of those who have received one dose of the Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine or two doses of the vaccines approved by Kuwait, which are Moderna, Pfizer or Astrazeneca.

Those who received two doses of the Russian Sputnik vaccine or the Chinese Sinopharm and Sinovac vaccines will be allowed to enter the country only after they receive a third dose of one of the approved vaccines, the centre said.

Those who received the coronavirus vaccine need to show certificates that include their names as in their passport, the vaccine type, dates of doses, vaccine provider, and QR code.

Travelers will also need to download the Kuwait Mosafer and Shlonik applications. Shlonik assists the Kuwaiti health ministry in following up on the condition of incoming travelers in isolation.

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Egypts Paratroopers and Commandos concluded joint drills to combat terrorism with US Special Forces, the Egyptian military spokesman said in a statement on Thursday.

The SOF03 and SOF06 drills lasted for several days and took place on Egyptian paratroopers and commandos training grounds, the statement said.

The drills come within the framework of the joint trainings plan implemented by the Armed Forces with sisterly and friendly countries to exchange military expertise, the statement noted.

The training showed the distinguished level and the field and combat skills the joint elements have reached and the extent of coordination and cooperation between the two sides, the statement added.

The excercises also "affirm the ability of the forces to carry out all tasks with accuracy and high efficiency.

They are of a great importance in terms of exchanging and transferring experiences between the special forces of Egypt and the US, the statement affirmed.

The drills provide an environment that is rich in mutual field and tactical experiences [and] that contributes to raising the level of combat preparedness of the participating forces and enhancing the combat and technical capabilities of both sides, the statement added.

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Turkey said on Thursday it was "evaluating" proposals from the Taliban and others for the safe operation of Kabul's airport after the Islamist group's return to power in Afghanistan.

Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu's comments came hours after Qatar said it was working with the Taliban to reopen Kabul's airport "as soon as possible".

Turkey has also been involved in the negotiations but has expressed concern over who will organise security for its personnel in the Afghan capital after the US troop withdrawal.

"There are proposals from the Taliban and other countries for cooperating with us. We are considering these proposals," Cavusoglu told a joint media event with his Dutch counterpart Sigrid Kaag.

"But the most important thing is to insure security inside and outside the airport."

Qatar and Turkey are close regional allies that have taken the international lead in direct talks with the Taliban in recent weeks.

Turkey was intially negotiating with Washington and the Taliban about providing security for the airport.

But it withdrew its entire contingent of more than 500 non-combat soldiers as Taliban fighters converged on Kabul last month.

Turkey has since said it was open to providing professional and technical services such as baggage handling at the airport to help relaunch civilian flights.

But the Taliban have officially rejected Ankara's offer to keep Turkish non-combat soldiers ensuring security at the air hub.

"Until today, the Taliban have said that they would like to insure the security themselves," Cavusoglu said.

"But the security should be insured in a way that gives trust to the international community."

Cavusoglu added that Turkey was open to the idea of private companies providing security for the air hub.

"It doesn't have to be done by a state, it can also be done by a company specialising in that," he said. "There are companies that we are and other countries are working with like that."

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As they bring war to other parts of Ethiopia, resurgent Tigray fighters face growing allegations that they are retaliating for the abuses their people suffered back home.

In interviews with The Associated Press, more than a dozen witnesses offered the most widespread descriptions yet of Tigray forces striking communities and a religious site with artillery, killing civilians, looting health centers and schools and sending hundreds of thousands of people fleeing in the past two months.

In the town of Nefas Mewucha in the Amhara region, a hospital's medical equipment was smashed. The fighters looted medicines and other supplies, leaving more than a dozen patients to die.

``It is a lie that they are not targeting civilians and infrastructures,'' hospital manager Birhanu Mulu told the AP. He said his team had to transfer some 400 patients elsewhere for care. ``Everyone can come and witness the destruction that they caused.''

The war that began last November was confined at first to Ethiopia's sealed-off northern Tigray region. Accounts of atrocities often emerged long after they occurred: Tigrayans described gang-rapes, massacres and forced starvation by federal forces and their allies from Amhara and neighboring Eritrea.

Thousands of people died, though the opaque nature of the war -- most communications and transport links have been severed -- means no one knows the real toll.

The Tigray forces retook much of their home region in a stunning turn in June, and now the fighting has spilled into Amhara. Angered by the attacks on their communities and families, the fighters are being accused of targeting civilians from the other side.

The United States, which for months has been outspoken about the abuses against Tigrayans, this week turned sharp criticism on the Tigray forces.

``In Amhara now, we now know that the (Tigray forces have) ... looted the warehouses, they've looted trucks and they have caused a great deal of destruction in all the villages they have visited,'' the head of the US Agency for Economic Development, Sean Jones, told the Ethiopian Broadcasting Corporation.

He called the Tigray fighters ``very aggressive.'' USAID, which feeds millions throughout Ethiopia, has seen Tigray forces looting and emptying some of its warehouses, he said.

While the US, United Nations and others urge all sides to stop the fighting and sit down to talks, those on the ground believe there's no peace to come.

Many Ethiopians outside Tigray support the federal government's war effort, and as Tigray forces advance, families heed recruiting drives and send loved ones for military training. Ethiopia's government says ``millions'' have answered the call.

``Our children are living in terror. We are here to stop this,'' said Mekdess Muluneh Asayehegn, a new Amhara militia recruit. Propping a gun on a full plastic sack, she lay on the ground and practiced sighting.

But the consequences of the call to war are already coming home.

``As we came here, there were lots of dead bodies (of defense forces and civilians) along the way,'' said Khadija Firdu, who fled the advancing Tigray forces to a muddy camp for displaced people in Debark. ``Even as we entered Debark, we stepped on a dead body. We thought it was the trunk of a tree. It was dark. We came here crying.''

It is not clear how many people in Amhara have been killed; claims by the warring sides cannot be verified immediately. Each has accused the other of lying or carrying out atrocities against supporters.

Shaken, the survivors are left to count bodies.

In the town of Debre Tabor, Getasew Anteneh said he watched as Tigray forces shelled and destroyed a home, killing six people.

Getasew helped carry away the dead. ``I believe it was a deliberate revenge attack, and civilians are suffering.''

In recent interviews with the AP, the spokesman for the Tigray forces Getachew Reda said they are avoiding civilian casualties. ``They shouldn't be scared,'' he said last month. ``Wherever we go in Amhara, people are extending a very warm welcome.''

He did not respond to the AP about the new witness accounts, but tweeted in response to USAID that ``we cannot vouch for every unacceptable behavior of off-grid fighters in such matters.''

The Tigray forces say their offensive is an attempt to break the months-long blockade of their region of some 6 million people, as an estimated 400,000 face famine conditions in the world's worst hunger crisis in a decade. The situation ``is set to worsen dramatically,'' the U.N. said Thursday.

The fighters also say they are pressuring Ethiopia's government to stop the war and the ethnic targeting that has seen thousands of Tigrayans detained, evicted or harassed while the prime minister, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, has used words like ``cancer'' and ``weeds'' to describe the Tigray fighters.

Ethnic Amhara, more than half a million now displaced, say innocent people have been killed as Tigray forces move in.

``I've witnessed with my own eyes when the (Tigray forces) killed one person during our journey,'' said Mesfin Tadesse, who fled his home in Kobo town in July. ``His sister was pleading with them when they killed him for no reason.''

Zewditu Tikuye, who also fled Kobo, said her 57-year-old husband was killed by Tigray fighters when he tried to stay behind to protect their home and cows. ``He wasn't armed,'' she said. Now she shelters with her six children in a small house with 10 other people.

Others seek shelter in schools, sleeping in classrooms as newcomers drenched from the rainy season arrive. They squat in muddy clearings, waiting for plastic plates of the spongy flatbread injera to be handed out for the latest meal.

And as earlier in Tigray, people in Amhara now watch in horror as the war damages religious sites in one of the world's most ancient Christian civilizations.

On Monday, the fourth-century Checheho monastery was hit by artillery fire and partially collapsed.

``This is very brutal,'' said Mergeta Abraraw Meles, who works there as a cashier. He believes it was intentionally targeted by the Tigray forces. They had come peacefully, he said, but then lashed out after facing battlefield losses.

In the rubble of the monastery was a young boy, dead.

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The Ethiopian army claimed on Friday it defeated an attempt by "elements aligned with the Tigray Peoples Liberation Front (TPLF)" to disrupt construction work on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD).

A statement by the Ethiopian National Defence Force  also known as the FDRE Defence Force  cited an army commander as saying that the "attackers have joined our 'historic enemies' in an attempt to stall the construction of the dam, but they have failed," but without identifying who these enemies are.

The statement quoted Colonel Seif Ingi, the operations coordinator in the Metekel Zone in the Benishangul-Gumuz region, as saying that the Ethiopian army killed "50 terrorists and wounded over 70 others as they tried to infiltrate through the Sudanese border to the area where the GERD is being built.

Inji said that "the attackers carried light and heavy weapons as well as mines" during their infiltration, but were thwarted by the Ethiopian army who are monitoring the area round the clock.

The coordinator claimed that a large part of the armed elements fled "back to the north" after their defeat and the Ethiopian army seized some of their weapons and destroyed others.

He said the TPLF attempted to attack GERD construction because they mistakenly assumed that the majority of the Ethiopian army troops had moved to the north.

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Related WHO brings in first aid to north Afghanistan

The United Arab Emirates sent a plane carrying "urgent medical and food aid" to Afghanistan on Friday, the official WAM news agency said, nearly three weeks after the Taliban's takeover.

The "assistance comes within the framework of the humanitarian role being played by the UAE to provide full support to brotherly Afghan people in such current circumstances," WAM said.

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Even in the final days of Washington's chaotic airlift in Afghanistan, Javed Habibi was getting phone calls from the U.S. government promising that the green card holder from Richmond, Virginia, his wife and their four daughters would not be left behind.

He was told to stay home and not worry, that they would be evacuated.

Late Monday, however, his heart sank as he heard that the final U.S. flights had left Kabul's airport, followed by the blistering staccato sound of Taliban gunfire, celebrating what they saw as their victory over America.

'They lied to us,'' Habibi said of the U.S. government. He is among hundreds of American citizens and green card holders stranded in the Afghan capital.

Victoria Nuland, undersecretary of state for political affairs, would not address individual cases but said all U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents who could not get evacuation flights or were otherwise stranded had been contacted individually in the past 24 hours and told to expect further information about routes out once those have been arranged.

'We will communicate directly to them personalized instructions on what they should do, when they should do it, and how the United States government feels we are best positioned to help them do that,' added State Department spokesman Ned Price.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken praised the evacuation effort despite the scenes of thousands of people jammed outside the gates at Kabul's airport. He said between 100 and 200 remained in Afghanistan, promising that any American who wants to leave Afghanistan would be taken out.

For some of those who remain, however, the trauma of trying for nearly two weeks to get onto a U.S. plane is still harrowing.

Habibi, an electrician who has lived in Richmond since 2015 on a special immigration visa, had returned to Afghanistan for a visit on June 22 _ the first time his family had been back since 2019. Their return flight was to have been Aug. 31.

About Aug. 18, Habibi said he got an email from the U.S. government saying that his family _ all green card holders except for their youngest, who has a U.S. passport _ would be evacuated.

Subsequent emails said he should take his family to the airport. He obeyed, but the mad crush of people prevented him from getting near the gate on his first two attempts.

His daughter, Madina, who at 15 has flawless English and serves as the family spokesperson, said she and her younger sister were almost trampled at the airport. The family wrote back, 'It's too dangerous. We can't go into the crowd,'' she said.

The emails kept arriving, saying they should go to the airport, she said.

By Aug. 25, the emails had been replaced by phone calls from Arlington, Virginia, Madina said. The callers, who identified themselves as being from the U.S. Embassy, told the family to stay at home and that the government was aware of their location, she said, speaking for her father.

Habibi said he still made four or five more attempts, even recruiting friends and relatives to wade into the crowd with the family, forming a kind of protective cordon. The youngest of the four girls, Dunya, is 2 and was born in the U.S.

Habibi said that on at least two occasions, he got close enough to the gate that his passport was scanned but was refused entry. He shouted at the U.S. soldiers, waving his documents.

'What does this green card even mean? Nothing. They did nothing,'' he said.

Madina, who spoke to most of the callers from Virginia, said she told them the family was from Richmond. Even as the evacuations came to an end, Madina said one caller promised, 'We are going to get you out. You are not going to get stuck. Don't worry. We know where you are.'

Habibi said they even pledged to pick them up in a car.

'They lied. They did nothing,' he said.

Habibi says he hasn't been threatened by the Taliban and that no one has bothered him but he is still afraid. News stories and horrifying posts on social media have him convinced that the Taliban will kill him, he said, although he admitted he doesn't know of anyone being targeted.

'I'm just afraid. I follow the news,'' he said.

He said he knows of many families, some with U.S. green cards, who remain in Afghanistan.

Madina said Marcia Vigar Perez, a teacher at Dumbarton Elementary, her former school, started a prayer chain for her safe return.

'Every day they call me,'' she said.

Another Afghan native who asked to be identified only as Ajmal, fearing retribution, said he, his two brothers and their families _ 16 people in all _ were granted emergency immigrant visas to be evacuated after another brother in Virginia submitted the paperwork.

Ajmal displayed emails from the U.S. government that said 'please make your way to the Hamid Karzai International Airport' and use the Camp Sullivan Gate, not the civilian entrance, although he also was warned that the gate could change daily.

He said he and his relatives went to the airport, but heavy gunfire by the Taliban and the crush of thousands of people sent them back home. On one occasion, he said he received an email telling him and his family they would be picked up at a spot near the airport at 3 a.m. He and his family waited on the street until 9 a.m., but no one came, he said.

His brother Wais, a U.S. citizen living in Virginia, said he had petitioned senators and filled out paperwork to get his family to America.

'I am frustrated and angry' at U.S. officials, Wais said. 'All the time they say, `We are working on it, we are working on it,' but then _ nothing.''

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Many of the more than 120,000 people evacuated from Afghanistan are qualified professionals from civil servants to lawyers, a brain drain that will affect the Taliban's ability to rule, experts say.

During the airlift from Kabul led by the United States and other Western countries, people who had worked with the US-backed government as well as NATO forces were prioritised, along with anyone who had reason to fear the new Islamist regime.

This included bureaucrats, bankers, people who had worked for NGOs, civil society activists, journalists and other graduates who formed the backbone of the former Afghan state and society that was corrupted by the West in the eyes of the Taliban.

"I never wanted to leave my country, to start from scratch someplace else," Rachid, a former senior civil servant in Kabul, told AFP in France where he is seeking asylum along with his wife and child.

"In Afghanistan, I had everything: job satisfaction, 50 people under my supervision, social prestige. But more importantly, what I was doing was useful for the Afghan population," said the 40-year-old graduate who has a masters degree from a European university.

He asked not to be identified with his full name or with his university out of fear of reprisals for his family back home.

"The 30 or 40 people who studied with me abroad all left. It is a big loss for our country," Rachid said.

After years of suicide bombings and targeted killings, people like him dismissed out of hand attempts by the Taliban leadership to reassure them they would be safe and free to continue working.

Governance problems

The losses for one of the world's poorest countries are considerable and will complicate the ability of the Taliban to run the country, experts say.

The Taliban appeared to realise this, with a spokesman accusing America of removing "Afghan experts" on August 24, a week before the airlift ceased.

"We ask them to stop this process," spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said at a press conference in Kabul. "This country needs their expertise. They should not be taken to other countries."

Frederic Docquier, a migration expert at the Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (Liser), said the exodus from Syria in 2015 included many of the country's skilled workers, with the more educated always over-represented among migrants.

"We dont know exactly the composition of the Afghan refugee outflow, but when there is a crisis in a country... the percentage of educated people among asylum seekers is higher than in the population of origin," said Docquier.

Michael Barry, a specialist on Afghanistan who taught at the American University in Kabul, said that many members of the Taliban are from rural areas and lack the know-how and education to run the state bureaucracy.

"The know they need a minimum of technicians, of highly educated people, to keep the wheels turning of an administration that needs to keep taking in international aid, even if it is only Chinese, Pakistani or Qatari," he explained.

"Up until now they viewed their supreme responsibility as destroying the country and causing the break up of the adminstration. That's why they were financed by Pakistan," he said.

Intellectuals

Given the potential impact on their new regime, why did the Taliban allow so many people to leave with the assistance of their sworn enemy, the United States?

"They are seen in a more positive light by the international community by making this concession and they get rid of possible sources of opposition at the same time," explained Barry.

"Brainpower also means criticism and free-thinking," he added, recalling the case of Fidel Castro who let thousands of people -- "worms" he called them -- leave Cuba after his revolutionary takeover in 1959.

"The intellectuals in any highly repressive society are a source of opposition. When you let them go, you remove the potential for opposition and therefore of change," said Docquier.

Many exiles maintain links with their country of origin and help develop trade and two-way investment over time.

But if the Taliban revert to the style of their brutal 1996-2001 rule, with its virulent anti-Western propaganda, today's Afghan exiles risk making a long-term break with their country of origin.

"I saw 30 years ago the dramatic impact on my own country, Somalia, which has many things in common with Afghanistan: civil war, a tribal society..." said Ali H. Warsame, a teacher at the East Africa University in Nairobi, Kenya.

"I left in 1990, the year I graduated and it took me 20 years before I returned," he said.

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In the ghastly rubble of ground zero's fallen towers 20 years ago, Hour Zero arrived, a chance to start anew.

World affairs reordered abruptly on that morning of blue skies, black ash, fire and death.

In Iran, chants of ``death to America'' quickly gave way to candlelight vigils to mourn the American dead. Vladimir Putin weighed in with substantive help as the U.S. prepared to go to war in Russia's region of influence.

Libya's Moammar Gadhafi, a murderous dictator with a poetic streak, spoke of the ``human duty`` to be with Americans after ``these horrifying and awesome events, which are bound to awaken human conscience.''

From the first terrible moments, America's longstanding allies were joined by longtime enemies in that singularly galvanizing instant. No nation with global standing was cheering the stateless terrorists vowing to conquer capitalism and democracy. How rare is that?

Too rare to last, it turned out

Civilizations have their allegories for rebirth in times of devastation. A global favorite is that of the phoenix, a magical and magnificent bird, rising from ashes. In the hellscape of Germany at the end of World War II, it was the concept of Hour Zero, or Stunde Null, that offered the opportunity to start anew.

For the U.S., the zero hour of Sept. 11, 2001, meant a chance to reshape its place in the post-Cold War world from a high perch of influence and goodwill as it entered the new millennium. This was only a decade after the collapse of the Soviet Union left America with both the moral authority and the financial and military muscle to be unquestionably the lone superpower.

Those advantages were soon squandered. Instead of a new order, 9/11 fueled 20 years of war abroad. In the U.S., it gave rise to the angry, aggrieved, self-proclaimed patriot, and heightened surveillance and suspicion in the name of common defense.

It opened an era of deference to the armed forces as lawmakers pulled back on oversight and let presidents give primacy to the military over law enforcement in the fight against terrorism. And it sparked anti-immigrant sentiment, primarily directed at Muslim countries, that lingers today.

A war of necessity _ in the eyes of most of the world _ in Afghanistan was followed two years later by a war of choice as the U.S. invaded Iraq on false claims that Saddam Hussein was hiding weapons of mass destruction. President George W. Bush labeled Iran, Iraq and North Korea an ``axis of evil.''

Thus opened the deep, deadly mineshaft of ``forever wars.`` There were convulsions throughout the Middle East, and U.S. foreign policy _ for half a century a force for ballast _ instead gave way to a head-snapping change in approaches in foreign policy from Bush to Obama to Trump. With that came waning trust in America's leadership and reliability.

Other parts of the world were not immune. Far-right populist movements coursed through Europe. Britain voted to break away from the European Union. And China steadily ascended in the global pecking order.

President Joe Biden is trying to restore trust in the belief of a steady hand from the U.S. but there is no easy path. He is ending war, but what comes next?

In Afghanistan in August, the Taliban seized control with menacing swiftness as the Afghan government and security forces that the United States and its allies had spent two decades trying to build collapsed.

No steady hand was evident from the U.S. in the harried, disorganized evacuation of Afghans desperately trying to flee the country in the first weeks of the Taliban's re-established rule.

Allies whose troops had fought and died in the U.S-led war in Afghanistan expressed dismay at Biden's management of the U.S. withdrawal, under a deal President Donald Trump had struck with the Taliban.

The 'Homeland'

In the United States, the Sept. 11 attacks set loose a torrent of rage.

In shock from the assault, a swath of American society embraced the us vs. them binary outlook articulated by Bush _ ``Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists`` _ and has never let go of it.

You could hear it in the country songs and talk radio, and during presidential campaigns, offering the balm of a bloodlust cry for revenge. ``We'll put a boot in your ass, it's the American way,`` Toby Keith promised America's enemies in one of the most popular of those songs in 2002.

Americans stuck flags in yards and on the back of trucks. Factionalism hardened inside America, in school board fights, on Facebook posts, and in national politics, so that opposing views were treated as propaganda from mortal enemies.

The concept of enemy also evolved, from not simply the terrorist but also to the immigrant, or the conflation of the terrorist as immigrant trying to cross the border.

The patriot under threat became a personal and political identity in the United States. Fifteen years later, Trump harnessed it to help him win the presidency.

The Othering

In the week after the attacks, Bush demanded of Americans that they know ``Islam is peace`` and that the attacks were a perversion of that religion. He told the country that American Muslims are us, not them, even as mosques came under surveillance and Arabs coming to the U.S. to take their kids to Disneyland or go to school risked being detained for questioning.

For Trump, in contrast, everything was always about them, the outsiders.

In the birther lie Trump promoted before his presidency, Barack Obama was an outsider. In Trump's campaigns and administration, Muslims and immigrants were outsiders. The ``China virus'' was a foreign interloper, too.

Overseas, deadly attacks by Islamic extremists, like the 2004 bombing of Madrid trains that killed nearly 200 people and the 2005 attack on London's transportation system that killed more than 50, hardened attitudes in Europe as well.

By 2015, as the Islamic State group captured wide areas of Iraq and pushed deep into Syria, the number of refugees increased dramatically, with more than 1 million migrants, primarily from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq, entering Europe that year alone.

The year was bracketed by attacks in France on the Charlie Hebdo magazine staff in January after it published cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, and on the Bataclan theater and other Paris locations in November, reinforcing the angst then gripping the continent.

Already growing in support, far-right parties were able to capitalize on the fears to establish themselves as part of the European mainstream. They remain represented in many European parliaments, even as the flow of immigrants has slowed dramatically and most concerns have proved unfounded.

The Unraveling

Dozens of countries joined or endorsed the NATO coalition fighting in Afghanistan. Russia acquiesced to NATO troops in Central Asia for the first time and provided logistical support. Never before had NATO invoked Article 5 of its charter that an attack against one member was an attack against all.

But in 2003, the U.S. and Britain were practically alone in prosecuting the Iraq war. This time, millions worldwide marched in protest in the run-up to the invasion. World opinion of the United States turned sharply negative.

In June 2003, after the invasion had swiftly ousted Saddam and dismantled the Iraqi army and security forces, a Pew Research poll found a widening rift between Americans and Western Europeans and reported that ``the bottom has fallen out of support for America in most of the Muslim world.'' Most South Koreans, half of Brazilians and plenty more people outside the Islamic world agreed.

And this was when the war was going well, before the world saw cruel images from Abu Ghraib prison, learned all that it knows now about CIA black op sites, waterboarding, years of Guantanamo Bay detention without charges or trials _ and before the rise of the brutal Islamic State.

By 2007, when the U.S. set up the Africa Command to counter terrorism and the rising influence of China and Russia on the continent, African countries did not want to host it. It operates from Stuttgart, Germany.

The Successes

Over the two decades, a succession of U.S. presidents scored important achievements in shoring up security, and so far U.S. territory has remained safe from more international terrorism anywhere on the scale of 9/11.

Globally, U.S.-led forces weakened al-Qaida, which has failed to launch a major attack on the West since 2005. The Iraq invasion rid that country and region of a murderous dictator in Saddam.

Yet strategically, eliminating him did just what Arab leaders warned Bush it would do: It strengthened Saddam's main rival, Iran, threatening U.S. objectives and partners.

Deadly chaos soon followed in Iraq. The Bush administration, in its nation-building haste, failed to plan for keeping order, leaving Islamist extremists and rival militias to fight for dominance in the security vacuum.

The overthrow of Saddam served both to inspire and limit public support for Arab Spring uprisings a few years later. For if the U.S. showed people in the Middle East that strongmen can be toppled, the insurgency demonstrated that what comes next may not be a season of renewal.

Authoritarian regimes in the Middle East pointed to the post-Saddam era as an argument for their own survival.

The U.S.-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq killed more than 7,000 American military men and women, more than 1,000 from the allied forces, many tens of thousands of members of Afghan and Iraqi security forces, and many hundreds of thousands of civilians, according to Brown University's Costs of War project. Costs, including tending the wars' unusually high number of disabled vets, are expected to top $6 trillion.

For the U.S., the presidencies since Bush's wars have been marked by an effort _ not always consistent, not always successful _ to pull back the military from the conflicts of the Middle East and Central Asia.

The perception of a U.S. retreat has allowed Russia and China to gain influence in the regions, and left U.S. allies struggling to understand Washington's place in the world.

The notion that 9/11 would create an enduring unity of interest to combat terrorism collided with rising nationalism and a U.S. president, Trump, who spoke disdainfully of the NATO allies that in 2001 had rallied to America's cause.

Even before Trump, Obama surprised allies and enemies alike when he stepped back abruptly from the U.S. role of world cop. Obama geared up for, then called off, a strike on Syrian President Bashar Assad for using chemical weapons against his people.

``Terrible things happen across the globe, and it is beyond our means to right every wrong,'' Obama said on Sept. 11, 2013.

The Newish Order

The legacies of 9/11 ripple both in obvious and unusual ways.

Most directly, millions of people in the U.S. and Europe go about their public business under the constant gaze of security cameras while other surveillance tools scoop up private communications. The government layered post-9/11 bureaucracies on to law enforcement to support the expansive security apparatus.

Militarization is more evident now, from large cities to small towns that now own military vehicles and weapons that seem well out of proportion to any terrorist threat. Government offices have become fortifications and airports a security maze.

But as profound an event as 9/11 was, its immediate effect on how the world has been ordered was temporary and largely undone by domestic political forces, a global economic downturn and now a lethal pandemic.

The awakening of human conscience predicted by Gadhafi didn't last. Gadhafi didn't last.

Osama bin Laden has been dead for a decade. Saddam was hanged in 2006. The forever wars _ the Afghanistan one being the longest in U.S. history _ now are over or ending. The days of Russia tactically enabling the U.S., and China not standing in the way, petered out. Only the phoenix lasts.

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Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi was basking in the international limelight with the support of the countrys allies this week at the most extraordinary conference ever held by his government. The summit, which brought Iraqs neighbours together, was meant to help the beleaguered nation pitch itself as a regional mediator.

Yet, despite the upbeat atmosphere surrounding the occasion, multiple questions remain about how the Baghdad Conference could help in tackling the mounting challenges lying ahead for Iraq, including holding viable national elections next month.

The elections are widely seen as being decisive for reform and change in a country that has been struggling to rebuild after nearly two decades of ruinous wars, sectarian strife, foreign intervention and widespread corruption and mismanagement.

In her latest routine briefing to the UN Security Council last week, Geanine Hennis-Plasschaert, head of the UN mission in Iraq, warned the international community that Iraqs crucial parliamentary elections next month were threatened by a perfect storm.

Misinformation is abundant and wide-ranging, Hennis-Plasschaert said. It is high time to acknowledge that the credibility of these October elections will prove essential for Iraqs future.

Hennis-Plasschaerts warning about the credibility and transparency of the voting has increased concerns over the integrity of the elections and hardened fears of a deepening political crisis that could further stall Iraqs transition.

The UN envoys warning came hours before the countrys judiciary announced a crackdown on a network linked to the political leadership that has been using social media to spread false information about the elections on 10 October.

A statement by the judiciary said investigators had found that the group had set up an online network first and foremost to manipulate the upcoming elections and change their results.

The second goal of the group was to create political chaos by blemishing [the reputation] of Iraqi politicians, societal figures and government leaders, the statement said.

Quoting an investigating judge, the judiciary said two of the accused had admitted that they had plotted to use social media to influence the elections and hired a group of experts to rig the next parliamentary elections in Iraq.

The judge said the group had created a Telegram account under the name the Lady of the Green Zone and pinned posts on it that aimed at creating chaos and deepening the rift between the political parties.

The Iraqi judiciary did not disclose further details, but the TV channel Al-Ahad, which belongs to the Iran-backed Assaib Ahlluhaq group, said the accounts administrators were officials working at the office of Prime Minister Al-Kadhimi.

Inspection had shown that the account carries posts favourable to Al-Kadhimi, who is not running in the elections, and lashes out at pro-Iran groups and leaders in Iraq. Other posts on social media, however, blamed the fake Telegram group on Sunni politicians engaged in a fierce electoral dogfight.

Details of other attempts to release politically damaging information and spread propaganda about political opponents have also burst across the Iraqi sky as election day approaches and competition intensifies.

Former Iraqi prime minister Ayad Allawi told an Iraqi television news network last week that Al-Kadhimi had participated in rigging the last elections in 2018 when he was the countrys intelligence chief.

He [Al-Kadhimi] came to my office and told me he had managed to breach the electronic electoral system in four minutes and a few seconds, Allawi told the Asharqiyya TV channel without further elaboration.

Elections held in Iraq since the ouster of former dictator Saddam Hussein in 2003 have been hit with claims of fraud by opposing parties. What was supposed to mark the start of a new democratic era for Iraq has turned into an ongoing political crisis as charges of vote-tampering have followed each election.

Competing claims of vote-rigging and irregularities have been flung at all the key players in the elections in what has become a chaotic routine, often leading to months before forming a new government.

In 2018, Iraqs Supreme Court ordered a hand recount of the ballots from the national elections after widespread allegations of fraud had embarrassed political leaders and marred the initial results.

Several election observers, including an EU team, had raised doubts about the votes integrity.

Early elections were one of the key demands of pro-reform protesters who began a mass movement in Iraq in October 2019. After months of a violent crackdown and intimidation, the countrys entrenched political parties agreed to draft a new election law and fix a date for a ballot.

While there is much to fear about the integrity of the voting, infighting, entrenched militias, the sectarian divide and a long legacy of distrust in Iraqs governing system remain stubborn challenges that cast shadows over the entire political process.

Some parties that grew out of the October protests have formed blocs to run in the upcoming elections, hoping that they can contribute to the hoped-for changes. Others have opted to stay out of the elections as a result of security concerns following the killing, kidnapping and disappearance of prominent activists.

One key issue in the elections is how the populist Shia Muslim cleric Moqtada Al-Sadr has been manoeuvring, seeking a dominant role for himself in the face of strong competition by other Shia parties already positioning themselves to divide up the electoral spoils.

Al-Sadr reversed his decision to boycott the October elections on Friday and said his movement would take part in order to help end corruptionafter he had abruptly announced in July that he would not take part in the vote.

Al-Sadr had claimed earlier that his Sadrist Movement would secure the majority of the seats in the 319-member parliament, allowing him to have a final say on the countrys affairs, including nominating Iraqs next prime minister.

The powerful Shia leader, long known for his unpredictability, said he was returning to the race after receiving pledges from political leaders to reform the country and put an end to its lingering woes.

Though Al-Sadrs change of mind was welcomed by Iraqi leaders, among ordinary Iraqis and many analysts concerns are high of another deadlocked election and the possible eruption of violence, especially if Al-Sadrs followers continue to push the claim that their movement will win a landslide victory.

Even if the voting produces no clear winner among the Shia groups to form a new government, Iraqis will still watch a post-election scenario unfolding that is similar to those that they have seen before, when these factions fought for their pieces in the cake in what they will again call a power-sharing government.

In the weeks ahead, Al-Kadhimi and his international and regional backers, in particular those gathered at the summit meeting in Baghdad this week, will need to ensure that there will be free-and-fair elections in Iraq that will deprive the ruling factions of their ability to shape the outcome of the voting.

If there are widespread claims of fraud, or if the turnout by fatigued and sceptical voters is low, it will spark concerns about the legitimacy of the elections and will send feelings of alarm and fear about the future of democracy in the country among Iraqis who have been pushing for change.

Such an outcome will render the favourable headlines the Baghdad summit meeting has received meaningless and will send Iraq back to square one where the mathematics of the dysfunctional Iraqi political system will remain the same.

This is what makes most Iraqis anxious about the forthcoming elections and about whether much-awaited changes will come about as a result of the vote. There are also concerns that violence could erupt in their aftermath.

*A version of this article appears in print in the 2 September, 2021 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly

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After a hiatus of many years, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas met on Monday with Israeli Defence Minister Benny Gantz, also the leader of the Kahol Lavan Party, a partner in the Israeli government coalition. This is the first meeting of its kind and the highest-level meeting between the Palestinian president and Israeli officials in 11 years.

Palestinian Civil Affairs Minister and member of Fatahs Central Committee Hussein Al-Sheikh announced the meeting simultaneously with an announcement by Gantzs office. Al-Sheikh said the meeting had discussed ways of bolstering Palestinian-Israeli relations, while Gantz said it had focused on providing economic aid to strengthen the Palestinian Authority (PA), which is facing a political and financial crisis.

Gantzs office added that the meeting also probed bilateral security, political, civil and economic issues. Gantz told Abbas that Israel was prepared to take steps to boost the PAs economy in the West Bank, and the two also talked about security, economic and civilian conditions in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The meeting took place just days after Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett met with US President Joe Biden at the White House, where Biden stressed his support for a two-state solution in Israel-Palestine.

Mondays meeting was also preceded by talks between Israeli ministers and their Palestinian counterparts for the first time in many years. In Occupied Jerusalem, Israeli Minister of Health Nitzan Horowitz sat with his Palestinian counterpart Mai Al-Kaila. Israeli Environment Minister Tamar Zandberg also met with her Palestinian counterpart.

The Israeli media reported earlier that Israeli President Isaac Herzog might meet soon with Abbas in the light of reports that Washington is pushing for a reactivation of the political process between the PA and Israel.

The Abbas-Gantz meeting in Ramallah on the West Bank raised questions about whether this was the start of a political track between the two sides, or whether it was merely a stone thrown in otherwise still waters.

It coincided with efforts by the Biden administration and Arab action led by Egypt and Jordan to jump start the peace process and block Israeli unilateral actions to create a fait accompli on the ground and undermine political attempts to relaunch the peace process.

Officials in the Israeli government, which has a fragile majority in the Knesset, tried to cut short speculation about the meeting. The Israeli Broadcasting Corporation (Makan) quoted an official as saying that the meeting was not part of political negotiations with the PA, adding that it was unlikely Israel would take this path.

According to Makan, the official said that Bennett had earlier given the green light for Gantz to meet with Abbas in Ramallah, and he revealed that the talks had focused on security coordination between the security agencies and the PA.

Some Israeli affairs experts believe Israel has been underplaying the meeting to mitigate the concerns of some partners in the Israeli coalition government, which include right-wing forces that reject an independent Palestinian state. A political track with the Palestinians that leads to statehood could be a threat to the cohesion of the incumbent coalition cabinet.

Meanwhile, left and centre partners in the Israeli cabinet believe that looking into returning to negotiations with the Palestinians should not be the top priority of Bennetts government, because this is an issue that would trigger discord within the coalition government and risk its collapse.

If the cabinet breaks up, this will take Israel back to the political vacuum it suffered from until the present cabinet was formed by the smallest of margins. However, those calling for a return to talks with the PA believe that this is necessary to prevent the PA itself from collapsing and losing popularity in favour of Hamas.

Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid said that a two-state solution is not an option, while Yamina Party leader Bennett is in power as prime minister. Lapid said this option could return to the governments agenda when he becomes prime minister when the leadership rotates to him in two years.

This would be according to the power-sharing agreement of the coalition [government] that both sides signed earlier this year, according to which former Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu was removed from power, Lapid said.

The statements by the alternate prime minister came in response to US efforts to promote Israeli-Palestinian dialogue as a precondition to returning to the negotiating table and improving conditions in the Palestinian Territories. But these requirements would be difficult for Bennett to implement.

Israeli officials understand that a political track with the Palestinians without the necessary groundwork within the Israeli government would likely provide ammunition for the opposition under the leadership of Likud Party leader Netanyahu.

Israeli Minister of the Interior Ayelet Shaked, a member of Bennetts Yamina Party, threatened to dismantle the coalition if Lapid moves towards negotiations with the Palestinians.

Shaked said that there is a rejection of a political settlement that includes the creation of a Palestinian state during Bennetts tenure, and if this happens there will be no government.

She said there would never be a Palestinian state during the tenure of any government in which she was a member. Lapid is well aware of this, as are left-wing parties in the cabinet.

Bennett, meanwhile, has been clear on his refusal to return to negotiations with the PA, but he is facing pressure from Washington and Arab moves that may force him to take steps in that direction.

On the Palestinian front, the PA believes that Israel must stop its punitive actions against the Palestinians, causing the economy to hit rock bottom and leading to escalations with Israel.

But returning to talks for economic reasons and ignoring political obstacles that go beyond what the two sides agreed in previous agreements has also drawn criticisms from the Palestinian factions.

Waleed Al-Awad, a member of the Politburo of the Palestinian Peoples Party which is under the umbrella of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO), said that the Abbas-Gantz meeting represented a slide towards an economic solution at the expense of a political one.

Hamas and Islamic Jihad, both in opposition to the PA, were harsher in their criticisms of the meeting.

All this puts pressure on the PA because of Israels refusal to make major compromises to achieve tangible results that are worthwhile to the Palestinians and because of Palestinian anger against the PA for many reasons, with Mondays meeting only making this worse.

The controversy between some of the Palestinian factions and the PA came after a leaked document revealed that Abbas had asked Hamas to recognise various international resolutions and send him a letter saying as much signed by Hamas Politburo chief Ismail Haneyya before Fatah would consider entering into a national unity government.

Hamas views this as capitulating to Israels demands.

In the light of these statements, Fatah accused its political rival Hamas of not being serious about ending the divisions between the Palestinian factions. Both sides have begun a media war about who is responsible for delaying reaching an agreement to end divisions and achieve the Palestinian national reconciliation that Egypt has sponsored for years.

These factors indicate that divisions in both the Palestinian and Israeli ranks pose a serious threat to attempts to resume the political track of the peace process. Israel sees the PAs inability to extend its control over the Gaza Strip as an excuse to backtrack on previous understandings or pressure to sit down with the PA again.

For its part, the PA believes the US administration, the EU and influential Arab parties must play a bigger role in pressuring Israel to move further on the path to peace.

*A version of this article appears in print in the 2 September, 2021 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly

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The recent visit by US Vice President Kamala Harris to the two Southeast Asian states of Singapore and Vietnam coincided with the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. Many of the regions states were previously exposed to waves of terrorism, and the Talibans takeover of power definitely raises fears of new ones, especially if they develop alliances with fundamentalist armed groups in this part of the world. But experts generally believe that the connection between Harris visit and the withdrawal from Afghanistan is weak.

According to Douglas H Paal, a Carnegie expert, the plan for Harris to visit Southeast Asia was made before the crisis in Afghanistan. Paal, who previously worked on Asia in the White House, in National Security Council and the US State Department, it is commendable Harris went ahead with her visit despite the distraction of the crisis, because it is important to intensify the involvement of senior officials in the region, as part of redirecting American attention from wasting efforts in the Middle East to growing challenges in Asia.

Yet he thinks it is at best too early to say whether the Taliban will represent a threat to Southeast Asia. I would be more inclined to worry about Taliban weakness eventually permitting a home for IS-K or other radical groups that might seek to propagate support in Southeast Asian Muslim communities. So far, the threat seems more theoretical than real, he pointed out. It is worth mentioning that Harris boss, President Joe Biden, has not yet spoken with any Southeast Asian leader, although many of his top officials did and visited the region. Asia will continue to be an arena in which the Americans and the Chinese compete for hegemony for years to come. These too are factors suggesting that Harris might not be going to Southeast to speak about Afghanistan.

However, ironically, she took questions from reporters about it, together with the leaders she met. We hope Afghanistan does not become an epicentre for terrorism again, Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien said at a press conference with Harris. Lee added that the US commitment to the region would be determined by what the US does going forward, how it repositions itself in the region, how it engages its broad range of friends and partners and allies.

Seeking to avoid bearing her share of the responsibility for the US withdrawal from Afghanistan by saying that she was one of the last advisers that Biden spoke to about the issue, Harris had to say something to persuade the Asians that the United States does not abandon its allies. She stressed that Washington is singularly focused on evacuating Americans and Afghans who have worked with us and are vulnerable, including women and children.

Ann Marie Murphy, director of the Center for Foreign Policy Studies at Seton Hall University, told Al-Ahram Weekly that the US withdrawal made Harris objective of ensuring

US commitment to the Indo-Pacific region more difficult, since it raised questions about US credibility as a partner. Murphy, who previously briefed the US Congress on Asia, stressed that Southeast Asian countries that have been the victims of terrorist attacks like the Philippines and Indonesia will be watching developments closely.

There are numerous terrorist groups in SEA, and after the fall of ISIS in the Middle East, many SEA jihadist groups allied with ISIS heeded the call to stay home. It is unclear how the Talibans restoration of power in Afghanistan will impact terrorist groups in SEA because it is unclear how the relationship between a Taliban government and other groups like ISIS will evolve, Murphy nevertheless argued.

The visits gave Harris an opportunity to talk business with Asian leaders. She told the Vietnamese President Nguyen Xuan Phuc that both countries need to find ways to pressure and raise the pressure, frankly, on Beijing to abide by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, and to challenge its bullying and excessive maritime claims in the South China Sea.

Harris also announced that the USAID will back Vietnam on a number of challenges, including Covid-19, growing its business sector, digitalising its economy, reforming education and addressing legacy of war issues.

The same happened with Singapore, which during Harris visit finalised deals with Washington over financial cooperation, military and cybersecurity affairs. For example, they agreed that the United States will begin rotational deployments of US P-8 aircraft and littoral combat ships to Singapore. They will also work together on smart cities and green building throughout the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) member states. At least for now, these deals might help reduce the security concerns of the Southeast Asian governments about the implications of the US departure from Afghanistan.

According to John A Calabrese, an assistant professor at the Washington-based American University School of International Service, officials in countries like Indonesia and Malaysia remain very concerned with potential blowback and returnees from the conflict in Syria. I would guess that, given the fluid situation in Afghanistan and uncertainty as to whether that country might once again become a hive of jihadi activity their counterterrorism teams, as well as those in Singapore and Philippines -- not to mention India, China, Russia and the Central Asian states -- are already on high alert, moving quickly to enhance their surveillance and taking other measures to detect and disrupt potential terror threats.

*A version of this article appears in print in the 2 September, 2021 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly

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The latest report issued by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis, released on 9 August, was a wake-up call for immediate action to avoid what it described as the catastrophic warming of the planet as a result of climate change driven by increasing carbon emissions.



The report delivers the most up-to-date and comprehensive assessment of the climate system and climate change yet published.



Some 3,500 pages long and prepared by about 200 climate scientists, the report warns of more extreme weather events, including extended heat waves, droughts, floods and higher sea levels that will affect people living in coastal areas. It highlights the urgent need for nations to accelerate plans to decarbonise and transition to renewable energy resources.



Relying on fossil fuels for industry, transportation, and generating electricity is still the main problem, and the transition to renewable energy has been slower than planned in many countries, especially the major industrial countries and Asia.



During the COP21 Climate Change Conference in Paris in 2015, 197 countries agreed to increase their efforts to fight climate change and keep global temperature rises to well under 2 C as part of the Paris Agreement designed to halt climate change.



This is still above pre-industrial levels, and the countries agreed to try to keep temperatures closer to 1.5 C as a result. However, the most recent IPCC report suggests that the world is moving towards a dangerous threshold faster than ever.



The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is one of the hot spots suffering from the negative effects of climate change, including rising sea levels, extreme heat waves, and worsening droughts and water scarcity.



Most of the severe impacts of climate change will be affecting the MENA region in terms of scale and key sectors, said Hammou Laamrani, a senior expert on water, energy, food security, and climate change at the Arab League.



He added that it was challenging for the region to mitigate such impacts, as there was much to do in terms of contributing to global mitigation and adaptation measures.



Adaptation is the process by which each country adjusts to the effects of climate change, while mitigation means reducing emissions of the greenhouse gases (GHGs) that drive global warming.



The regions efforts are improving, but there is room for it to raise its ambitions and contribute more to reducing GHGs, such as carbon dioxide, by the faster transition to renewable energy.



The region is heavily affected by the effects of global warming, despite its minimal contribution to global emissions.

Mohamed Darrag, deputy focal point for the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) at the Egyptian Ministry of Environment, pointed out that emissions of GHGs in the African continent with its 54 countries do not exceed four per cent of the world total, with Egypts share at 0.58 per cent.However, Darrag added, Egypt is one of the countries most affected by extreme weather events caused by climate change, and according to the IPCC, the Nile River Delta is among the top three river deltas worldwide threatened by the effects of climate change, due to the rise of the land surface, desertification and salinisation, and the erosion of the Delta layer.That is why the developed countries are required, according to the Paris Agreement, to provide financial resources to assist the developing countries in mitigation and adaptation efforts, he noted.According to a UN report, 80 per cent of the $100 billion the developed world promised to deliver by 2020 came through in 2018. IPCC says between $1.6 and 3.8 trillion are needed annually for transformation of energy systems alone between 2016 and 2050.Egypt has received a total of $300 million from the Green Climate Fund (GCF), created as part of the Paris Agreement to support developing countries raise and realise their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) towards lower emissions, and has carried out projects worth billions on its path towards the transition to clean energy.Darrag stressed that Egypt does not have a specific target to reduce its GHG emissions, because it is working from an ethical commitment towards protecting the environment. The countrys emissions are already very low, he said, but the effects on the country from global warming are a major problem.

Laamrani said that the implications of climate change, according to the IPCC report, are going to affect the water and agriculture sectors severely in Egypt.



The report refers to water some 3,000 times, which is an indication of how important the future of water security is going to be, he said, adding that water security and food security are interlinked, and both are going to be affected in a dramatic way unless preparations are made to face up to impacts on water and food.



Agriculture is the largest consumer of water in Egypt, and modernising the agriculture sector is needed urgently for the future of food and water security, Laamrani said. We are a region that suffers from multiple scarcities, so we need to become a region of multiple efficiencies to survive sustainably, he added.



The MENA region is considered the most water-scarce region in the world, and Egypt is placed well below the international threshold for water scarcity, with an annual share of water of 560 cubic metres (m3) per person. According to the United Nations, a population faces water scarcity if the share of water per person drops below 1,000 m3. Below 500 m3 is considered absolute scarcity.



Rationalising the use of water in agriculture has been one of Egypts top priorities, with the Ministry of Irrigation announcing a plan to replace flood irrigation systems on 1.55 million hectares of agricultural land with modern drip systems that bring water precisely to crops.



Rising sea levels are also a major problem that Egypt and the region are facing. Global warming causes sea water to expand and icebergs to melt, causing a rise in sea levels.



The sea-level rise means beaches will erode more frequently, and this will affect settlements by the coasts and might lead to a loss of jobs, said Alexander Kolker, a water expert and associate professor at Louisiana Universitys Marine Consortium in the US.



The IPCC predicts up to a metre rise in sea levels this century, with more severe scenarios predicting several metres if major iceshelfs become destabilised and melt.



Climate change is also leading to desertification, Kolker said, and increased droughts in many places, including Egypt. These mean there is a growing stress on the water supply.



People living near the sea or rivers in Egypt and across the world are subject to increased extreme weather events like flooding and increased salt-water intrusion. This could cause the migration of such populations, Kolker said.



The restoration and preservation of coastal systems are needed in order to prevent damage to coasts, and these can often provide economic benefits as well because the money spent to restore a coastal system can help to sustain the economies of such systems, Kolker stressed.



The Egyptian Authority for Coastal Protection is currently implementing several major projects aimed at protecting Egyptian coasts through investments, public and private projects, and infrastructure projects in coastal areas, according to a press statement by the authority.



The protection efforts are also contributing to the development of fisheries in the countrys northern lakes by working to ensure the quality of water in the lakes, as well as protecting the estuaries of the Nile at Damietta and Rosetta to prevent problems of erosion and sedimentation.



Other efforts are being made at touristic sites in coastal areas.



According to the IPCC report, it is still possible to meet the target of limiting global warming to 1.5 C if collective action takes place sooner rather than later to reduce GHG emissions.



Actions

Yasmine Fouad, Egypts minister of the environment, announced last month that work was being done to ensure lower emissions in various sectors, increase renewable energy sources, and preserve natural resources.



Egypts commitment to switching to renewables and expanding its renewable energy projects is a clear commitment in the fight against climate change, said Maged Mahmoud, technical director and lead renewable energy advisor at the Regional Centre for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency (RECREEE).



Egypt has made real and tangible efforts to switch to clean energy, and it has already reached 20 per cent as the percentage of renewable energy in electricity production is up from five per cent in 2014, he pointed out, adding that Egypt is targeting 42 per cent of the total in 2035, subject to increases in the current rate of production.



The country has embarked on a major solar-energy production scheme that has seen the implementation of several projects during the last few years, including the Benban Solar Park in Aswan, which upon completion will be the largest solar-energy project in the world, generating up to 1,600 Megawatts (MW) of electricity.



A feed-in tariff system for renewable energy was also introduced in 2014, which is a special pricing system by which the government is obliged to buy electricity generated from renewable energy installations by the private sector at a fixed price.



Egypt then introduced a net-metering scheme that was initially approved by the Egyptian Electrical Utility and Consumer Protection Regulatory Agency (Egypt ERA) in 2013. Net-metering is a billing system in which individuals or businesses generate their own electricity using solar cells and feed the excess power to the national grid at fixed prices.



In the region, Mahmoud noted, the rate of increase in energy generated from renewable energies before the coronavirus pandemic was about 3,000 MW annually, but in 2020 the number fell by half due to disruption in production at a number of factories and their supply lines, especially since China is a supplier of basic components of solar-energy cells.



The situation started to improve at the beginning of 2021, he said.



According to the International Energy Agency, the growth rate in the worlds renewable energy capacity jumped by 45 per cent in 2020 despite the coronavirus pandemic, to reach a total capacity of 278.3 gigawatts compared to 191.8 gigawatts in 2019.



Mahmoud stated that Egypt is also moving towards clean energy in several sectors, including the industrial sector, with the availability of financing mechanisms and initiatives to serve industry and improve its productivity to become more efficient and sustainable having been introduced.



Many of these financing mechanisms and initiatives include conditions such as reducing emissions and improving energy efficiency. There is also the transportation sector, in which Egypt is implementing an ambitious programme to convert vehicles to work with natural gas, which is more environmentally friendly than petrol and diesel and contributes to reducing emissions. This is in addition to signing agreements to locally produce electric buses and cars in cooperation with international partners starting next year, as part of modernising the transport network to make it more efficient and more environment-friendly.



The industrial sector has many opportunities for financing, Mahmoud added, but not all manufacturers are aware of them, especially at the level of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).



The main incentive is to improve the competitiveness of Egyptian products to facilitate their export abroad through the more sustainable management of resources.



Mohamed Saadeddin, head of the Energy Committee at the Federation of Egyptian Industries, said that the industrial sector needs more incentives to increase its transition towards renewable energy and energy efficiency.



When the prices of electricity increased with the gradual lifting of subsidies on electricity, and at the same time the cost of solar panels decreased due to technological progress, this became a good incentive for manufacturers to seek to use clean energy since it had become more cost efficient, he said.



Saadeddin added that manufacturers need more incentives to reduce emissions through the use of renewable energy, such as the availability of loans to install solar panels with convenient installments over a long period of time. We need more initiatives to encourage more manufacturers to turn to renewables, he stressed.



Hoda Sabry, a banking and financial expert, believes that the present financing initiatives are enough to encourage manufacturers to go for energy efficient and renewable energy solutions.



The Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) and international financial institutions have introduced several funding initiatives to encourage the private sector to invest in green financing that covers resource efficiency, the circular economy, and renewable energy installation, Sabry said.



Green financing is available through international financial institutions and a number of initiatives with local banks, she pointed out, adding that there is also a project to reduce industrial pollution with the participation of many international financial institutions. These include grants of up to 20 per cent before and 25 per cent after the success of a project, she stated.



These grants and initiatives, Sabry added, include technical assistance and capacity-building to raise the capacity for financing projects related to the green finance involved in climate-change mitigation and adaptation such as resource efficiency, energy efficiency, and renewable energy installations.



There are other available initiatives, but the coronavirus crisis was a major obstacle in rolling them out because businesses were suffering and leading to less demand, especially in 2020. The situation has been getting better since the beginning of 2021, she said.



Government initiatives to reduce subsidies for electricity and petrol are considered a key catalyst for the transition to green methods and energy efficient ways to do business, Sabry added.



Stimulating the market to switch to a more efficient and sustainable way of performance is a sound economic tool, she stressed.



Going green

Green buildings are another way of achieving energy efficiency and helping to lower emissions.



Mahmoud of RECREEE pointed out that there are solutions for new buildings and more expensive and difficult solutions for old buildings to make them more environmentally friendly. The focus now is on new buildings, he said, with regulations ensuring that they are built in a sustainable manner from the beginning.



Mahmoud stated that there is an energy efficiency code for buildings already in place, but it has not yet been implemented.



He added that RECREEE is working in cooperation with the Ministry of Housing and the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and a number of other partners and international financial institutions to design a pilot project to simplify the application of the energy efficiency code in buildings, in addition to searching for technological solutions available in the Egyptian market that can be applied to the buildings being constructed within the framework of the large urban expansion projects implemented across the country.



There is a pilot project in Hurghada implemented by the Ministry of Housing, along with another implemented by the private sector, the results of which will appear in the next few months, he said.



Mahmoud also said that this was in parallel with a EU project called Build the Middle East (Build ME) and another project managed in cooperation with a German company and the Egyptian Housing and Housing Research Centre on how to activate the role of the housing sector within the framework of national energy efficiency plans.



We have already started cooperating with the Building and Housing Research Centre on developing an executive plan to activate the energy efficiency in buildings plan as a national plan, he said.



Developers in the Egyptian market need to be more aware of the environment and the economic returns of environmentally friendly buildings in the long term compared to the initial cost, Mahmoud pointed out, adding that there should be incentives for those who submit models for the use of environmentally friendly architecture or green architecture, as well as fines for those who do not comply.



One development in Egypts transition towards green energy was President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisis directive in July to prepare an integrated national strategy for the production of hydrogen in the light of the growing international interest in this green fuel.



Green hydrogen is hydrogen fuel created by using renewable energy instead of fossil fuels, and according to Mahmoud it will enable energy-intensive industries to be more environmentally friendly.



The industrial sector, for example the steel industry, he explained, needs energy generated from hydrogen that can be produced from natural gas or coal, but if green hydrogen is the energy source, the climate-change impacts will be very different.



The cost of green hydrogen is currently high, but its cost is expected to gradually decrease in the near future, as was the case with solar-energy cells which have seen a cost reduction of about 50 per cent over the last few years, he said.



The Egyptian Electricity Holding Company and the German company Siemens Energy signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) last week on the development of the green hydrogen industry in Egypt.



Nature-based solutions

There is an increased awareness of the important role of nature-based solutions in climate-change adaptation and mitigation efforts.



These solutions, Laamrani pointed out, include treating wastewater and preserving wetlands in many countries in the region including Egypt, Morocco, Jordan and Tunisia. There are also increasing coastal-services projects for water preservation and security, and Egypt is one of the leading countries in this regard.



Wetlands, as defined by the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, are areas of marsh, fen, peat land, or water, whether natural or artificial, permanent or temporary, with water that is fresh, brackish, or salt.



Such ecosystems have a role to play in adaptation efforts as a buffer against extreme climate events, mainly droughts and floods, and they also provide water for different purposes including productive uses.



Ecosystems are at the heart of adaptation efforts against climate change in the Arab region, and that is why we need to take care of fragile ecosystems by increasing efforts to protect and preserve them and improve the quality of aquatic ecosystems, including lakes and ground-water quality, Laamrani stressed.



That is also why we need an integrated approach that takes into consideration the water, energy, food and ecosystems nexus to help the region better prepare for the effects of climate change and also contribute to the reduction of harmful emissions, he said.



We should make sure to put the ecosystems benefits at the heart of the economic benefits.



Laamrani pointed out that there has been a profound shift in the economies of the region, including Egypt, towards the green transition, with an increased awareness of green solutions and their environmental and economic benefits.



Egypt is on the right track in terms of the energy transition and encouraging the nation to become more energy efficient, Laamrani said.



We need to minimise emissions and improve our adaptation measures, as well as improve preparedness, by designing new cities differently and educating more people and institutions about the challenges and efforts that need to be made, he added.



Laamrani noted that it is important to look into climate-change impacts across sectors and design solutions with the same approach.



This integrated approach has the benefit of reducing the cost of investments across sectors, he pointed out, adding that a main challenge was to move from a sectorial approach to an integrated development one where all sectors are all taken into consideration when designing policies and implications for other sectors.



The energy transition is a difficult but necessary step to make sure we are contributing our share to the Paris Agreement and preserving the planets future without hampering economic-development efforts, Laamrani concluded.

*A version of this article appears in print in the 2 September, 2021 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly

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The United States has the capacity to evacuate the approximately 300 U.S. citizens remaining in Afghanistan who want to leave before President Joe Biden's Tuesday deadline, senior administration officials said, as rocket fire in Kabul and another U.S. drone strike against suspected Islamic State militants underscored the grave threat in the war's final days.

``This is the most dangerous time in an already extraordinarily dangerous mission these last couple of days,'' America's top diplomat, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, said Sunday not long before confirmation of the drone strike in Kabul.

The steady stream of U.S. military jets taking off and landing at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Afghanistan's capital continued Monday even after rocket fire apparently targeted the airport. No one claimed responsibility for the rockets, which hit a nearby neighborhood, and it wasn't immediately clear if anyone was hurt. The U.S. military did not respond to requests for comment, although the White House said President Joe Biden had been briefed on the rocket launch.

Biden's national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said Sunday that for those U.S. citizens seeking immediately to leave Afghanistan by the looming deadline, ``we have the capacity to have 300 Americans, which is roughly the number we think are remaining, come to the airport and get on planes in the time that is remaining.''

Sullivan said the U.S. does not currently plan to have an ongoing embassy presence after the final U.S. troop withdrawal. But he pledged the U.S. ``will make sure there is safe passage for any American citizen, any legal permanent resident'' after Tuesday, as well as for ``those Afghans who helped us.'' But untold numbers of vulnerable Afghans, fearful of a return to the brutality of pre-2001 Taliban rule, are likely to be left behind.

Blinken said the U.S. was working with other countries in the region to either keep the Kabul airport open after Tuesday or to reopen it ``in a timely fashion.''

He also said that while the airport is critical, ``there are other ways to leave Afghanistan, including by road and many countries border Afghanistan.'' The U.S., he said, is ``making sure that we have in place all of the necessary tools and means to facilitate the travel for those who seek to leave Afghanistan`` after Tuesday.

There also are roughly 280 others who have said they are Americans but who have told the State Department they plan to remain in the country or are still undecided. According to the latest totals, about 114,000 people have been evacuated since the Taliban takeover Aug. 14, including approximately 2,900 on military and coalition flights during the 24 hours ending at 3 a.m. Sunday.

Members of Congress criticized the chaotic and violent evacuation.

``We didn't have to be in this rush-rush circumstance with terrorists breathing down our neck,'' said Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah. ``But it's really the responsibility of the prior administration and this administration that has caused this crisis to be upon us and has led to what is without question a humanitarian and foreign policy tragedy.''

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said the U.S. policy in Afghanistan, with 2,500 troops on the ground, had been working. ``We were, in effect, keeping the lid on, keeping terrorists from reconstituting, and having a light footprint in the country,'' he said.

U.S. officials said Sunday's American drone strike hit a vehicle carrying multiple Islamic State suicide bombers, causing secondary explosions indicating the presence of a substantial amount of explosive material. A senior U.S. official said the military drone fired a Hellfire missile at a vehicle in a compound between two buildings after individuals were seen loading explosives into the trunk.

The official said there was an initial explosion caused by the missile, followed by a much larger fireball, believed to be the result of the substantial amount of explosives inside the vehicle. The U.S. believes that two Islamic State group individuals who were targeted were killed.

In a statement, U.S. Central Command said it is looking into the reports of civilian casualties that may have been caused by the secondary explosions. An Afghan official said three children were killed in the strike. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss military operations.

It was the second airstrike in recent days the U.S. has conducted against the militant group, which claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing Thursday at the Kabul airport gate that killed 13 U.S. service members and scores of Afghans struggling to get out of the country and escape the new Taliban rule. The Pentagon said a U.S. drone mission in eastern Afghanistan killed two members of IS' Afghanistan affiliate early Saturday local time in retaliation for the airport bombing.

In Delaware, Biden met privately with the families of the American troops killed in the suicide attack, and solemnly watched as the remains of the fallen returned to U.S. soil from Afghanistan. First lady Jill Biden and many of the top U.S. defense and military leaders joined him on the tarmac at Dover Air Force Base to grieve with loved ones as the ``dignified transfer'' of remains unfolded, a military ritual for those killed in foreign combat.

The 13 service members were the first U.S. troops killed in Afghanistan since February 2020, the month the Trump administration struck an agreement with the Taliban in which the militant group halted attacks on Americans in exchange for a U.S. agreement to remove all troops and contractors by May 2021. Biden announced in April that the 2,500 to 3,000 troops who remained would be out by September, ending what he has called America's forever war.

The White House has rescheduled Biden's meeting with Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, from Monday to Wednesday as the U.S. pullout from Afghanistan enters its tense final hours.

Sullivan appeared on CBS' ``Face the Nation,'' CNN's ``State of the Union'' and ``Fox News Sunday.'' Blinken was interviewed on ABC's ``This Week'' and NBC's ``Meet the Press.'' McConnell was on Fox and Romney was on CNN.

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An Ethiopian Air Force cargo plane crash-landed at Mogadishu's seaside airport on Friday, killing four people on board, the African Union said.

Two crew members were rescued by emergency personnel and are being treated in the African Union military hospital near the base, said Mahamat Saleh Annadif, an African Union representative to Somalia. He said the runway wasn't damaged and airport operations are expected to resume soon.

The 8 a.m. crash sent dark plumes of smoke over Mogadishu. An airport official who insisted on anonymity said the plane was full of weapons. The official insisted on anonymity because he is not an authorized spokesman.

The weapons most likely would have been destined for African Union or Somali troops, who continue to battle Al-Qaeda-linked militants from al-Shabab. The militants have shot at planes in the past but not in recent years.

Air traffic has increased significantly at the airport as Mogadishu continues on a slow recovery from decades of warfare. Two major international carriers  Turkish Airlines and Air Uganda  operate direct flights into Mogadishu.

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A century ago, Gibran Khalil Gibran wrote a love poem to Lebanon: You have your Lebanon, I have my Lebanon. He spoke of his affection for the people, their poetry, art, music and love of life; their generous and welcoming spirit; their gifts to the world  especially the gifted among them; and the sheer beauty of the country from its snow-capped mountains to its pristine seascapes. Gibran contrasted this with the countrys petty bickering politicians who lead because of an accident of birth. That poem has stayed with me since I first read it.

Fifty years ago, my wife, our toddler son and I went to Lebanon for my first visit to the country of my fathers birth. I found it just as his stories had described. Beirut was a vibrant, splendid metropol, the mountains were stunning and the people were as hospitable as I had been told they would be.

We had an apartment near the American University of Beirut  a few blocks from Hamra Street. It was an exciting adventure to awaken each morning and just walk the streets, see the shops open, listen to the chatter and noise of city life and feel the remarkable energy of the place.

We were able to spend time with my family in their little village safely tucked amidst towering mountains. While in Lebanon we also had the opportunity to meet with Lebanese from all walks of life, visit with Bedouin in their campsite and spend lengthy periods in Palestinian refugee camps  where I was engaged in research for my doctoral dissertation.

Even after we returned to the US, I could feel the pulse of Lebanon beating in my heart and see its sights in my minds eye. It wasnt hard to have fallen in love with the place and its people.

And yet, my wife and I often recalled an unsettling undercurrent we had experienced in our conversations with those we met. We had become concerned listening to the subtle ways some Christians had spoken dismissively about Muslims, or Muslims about Christians, or the distrust or resentment some Lebanese and Palestinians exhibited towards one another. It reminded us of simmering racial tensions in the US. And when I heard Lebanese from one village disparage their fellow Lebanese from a neighbouring village, I thought of the legendary Hatfield-McCoy feud that defined conflict in US mountain country.

I wrote a paper a few years later in which I tried to unravel what had been bothering me. Lebanon was a country that was modern on the surface, but its forward path was hamstrung by a political system that fuelled traditional feuds born of sectarian, tribal and regional divisions. And so I wasnt surprised when Lebanon erupted in civil war a few years later and these tensions exploded in full view  with devastating results for the people and the country.

I went back to Lebanon a few times during its long war with itself. Each time, as the plane crossed the Mediterranean and approached Beirut, my heart would skip a beat. I saw the glorious city of white, with its orange tiled roofs, against the blue sea, with snow-capped mountains as a backdrop. And I would think, Its alright, only to have this notion shattered once on the ground.

What couldnt be seen from the air, became all too clear travelling through the city: bullet-hole pockmarked buildings, armed men (and boys) everywhere, and checkpoints separating all parts of the city. The once glorious and prosperous Hamra had lost its lustre. Its walls were papered with pictures of dead young men and bearded, dour-faced religious leaders. The eastern side of the city fared somewhat better but was choking under the weight of congestion. Here too, signs of war were ever-present. Up in the mountains, village life continued. It was like a refuge from the conflict raging below.

In the mid-1980s, I helped found Save Lebanon, a project to bring to the US for medical treatment children who had been wounded in the civil war or from Israels massive destruction of Beirut and southern Lebanon. In 1983, we hosted a heroic doctor, Amal Shamaa, to speak about medical needs and help us raise funds for the project. After appearing in a few cities and listening to the questions and comments of the young Lebanese Americans she met, she said to me: Yours is the last generation that will know Lebanon as a whole country. Future generations will not be able to speak about the north, south, east and west  because they wont know it. Hold on to this vision of the country that was.

Lebanon got a second lease on life with the Taif Accords that ended the civil war in 1990. And under the leadership of the visionary prime minister Rafik Al-Hariri, Beirut was rebuilt, block by block. It once again became, in his words, the beating heart that brought life back to the country.

But Lebanon remained deeply divided with sectarian elites draining the country and foreign powers  especially Syria, Israel and Iran  competing for advantage or occupying it through surrogates.

Hariri and many of his cabinet and supporters were assassinated in 2005, and since then the country has been in a tailspin, deteriorating to the point where it is today.

I have often thought of Amals words as I watched Lebanon unravelling before our eyes. And I recall Gibrans love poem to Lebanon as I see horrors that even he could not have imagined: widespread poverty; corrupt, feudal, sectarian elites dancing on the grave of the country in a vain effort to sustain their privileged roles; and an armed militia functioning as a state within a state  willing to use force to maintain its position.

In the future, I want to write about the political situation in Lebanon. For now, I just want to remember what there is to love about the Lebanon that was (and I hope will be again), and damn those who are hell-bent on burying it.

The writer is president of the Arab American Institute.

*A version of this article appears in print in the 2 September, 2021 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly

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The problem I raised some weeks ago concerning the Arabic Language Academy continues to stir responses. The academy itself continues to battle against the control of adherents to Muslim Brotherhood ideas and attitudes which the Egyptian people had risen up against on 30 June 2013. Cairo University professor of philosophy and former secretary-general of the Supreme Council for Culture Said Tawfik contributed an excellent article in Al-Akhbar entitled Crisis in the House of the Immortals: The Academy against the Muslim Brotherhood. He, too, believes this problem cannot be understated.

The academy, he writes, is currently split between a progressive academic group and a reactionary traditional camp. It is no secret to the intellectual community that the venerable academy has endured this crisis for decades because the Muslim Brothers, consciously or instinctively, are given to flagrant favouritism of their own kind, fellow members of the family and clan, regardless of competence and academic merit. This explains the presence of certain individuals among the academys members, while it is impossible even to nominate far more gifted literary talents and academically qualified individuals for membership.

Professor Tawfik agrees with my suggestion that a number of enlightened intellectuals should be appointed to the academy as a means to counterbalance the proponents of Islamo-fascist thought, whose majority has always enabled them to prevail in internal elections. In my previous article, I mentioned the major precedent for this, namely King Farouks Royal edict of 1940 appointing to the academy such eminent intellectuals as Taha Hussein, Mohamed Hussein Heikal, Abbas Mahmoud Al-Akkad, Tawfik Al-Hakim and Mohamed Abdel-Kader Al-Mazni. These were among the pioneers who steered the academy into its golden era. Tawfik cautions that the academy will not be able to perform its duties effectively unless it is given a strong boost by our political leadership who, with the assistance of trustworthy experts, should restructure the academy, identify its operational mechanisms and set the criteria for membership.

In his recent Al-Ahram column, the well-known scholar Osama Al-Ghazali Harb wrote that he had been watching developments in the Arabic Academy since November with increasing concern. Mona Makram Ebeid and Abdel-Moneim Taha Al-Mohandes wrote to me, voicing their support for an examination of the current condition of the academy. I also received a letter from the academic, Dr Mohamed Madkour, the son of the former director of the academy, Ibrahim Bayoumi Madkour, saying that he, too, urged the Minister of Higher Education Khaled Abdel-Ghaffar, to have the academys bylaws amended as soon as possible in order to expand its membership.

Madkour pointed out how the minister of transport had recently amended certain laws and regulations, enabling him within a few weeks to tear down one of the icons of underdevelopment, the old labour law which had protected incompetent, bribe-taking and obstructive state employees. He added, your article, in which you mentioned that there is not a single Christian or woman among the academys members reminded me of my fathers repeated attempts, during his tenure to support the nominations of the writers Sohair Al-Qalamawi and Bint Al-Shati as members, but sadly without success.

Ahmed Magdi Hegazi, professor of political science at Cairo University and a member of the Supreme Council for Culture, wrote that it is a national duty and humanitarian honour to rid the nation of terrorist thought and to strengthen national identity, adding, saving society from those terrorist groups is an implementation of constitutional justice on the path to progress and the leap towards advancement.

My friend Fakhri Abdel-Nour, a Wafd Party leader and former minister, wrote to me to express his gratitude for my drawing attention to the crisis of the Arabic Language Academy. It is a very important yet delicate subject. I hope it does not lead to a clash with Al-Azhar. This institution, in its capacity as a mosque and a university, regards itself as responsible for the preservation of the Arabic language and its dissemination throughout the world. But the academy was eminently qualified for this purpose. Since its establishment, the membership of the Arabic Language Academy represented an Egyptian and international coalition of devotees to the preservation and defence of the Arabic language. Unfortunately, this coalition is collapsing under the pressure of the current polarisation we see.

In a recent article, Said Tawfik spoke of the fiction being promoted by some people that graduates of the Dar Al-Ulum University are the only proper guardians of Arabic. With all due respect to Al-Azhar, to Dar Al-Ulum and to other organisations concerned with our language such as the Arabic language and literature departments in our universities, the main mission our constitution confers on the Arabic Language Academy is the preservation of the Arabic language.

In other words, the academys responsibilities are a constitutional mandate. Our ancient and uniquely rich language is too great and vast for its defence to be confined to a single institution. In fact, there is a certain consistency in having a plurality of guardian agencies. What weakens its defence is to leave it prey to intolerant, fanatic thought, which we hope will be eliminated from the academy under new bylaws that reflect the changes society has undergone since the 30 June Revolution.

*A version of this article appears in print in the 2 September, 2021 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly

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By Osamu Nakahi, KYODO NEWS - Sep 3, 2021 - 12:51 | Feature, All, Japan

Top Japanese aviation companies ANA Holdings Inc. and Japan Airlines Co. are planning to launch commercial drone services to deliver medical supplies and daily necessities to people living in remote areas of Japan.

The two companies see the new services as playing a useful role in supporting local health care provision and disaster preparedness as well as expanding community infrastructure on remote islands and other far-flung areas. At the same time, the initiatives will help them promote management diversification and strengthen profitability as the coronavirus pandemic continues to take a toll on their overall business performances.

ANA Holdings, the parent of All Nippon Airways Co., conducted a trial run jointly with a pharmaceutical company and other concerns in March. Footage that it released shows a drone carrying a package of medical supplies from one island to another among Nagasaki Prefecture's Goto Islands in southwestern Japan at a speed of around 100 kilometers per hour.

The drone, whose propellers rotate at high speed before the 8-kilogram body slowly rises off the ground, took about 10 minutes one way to reach its destination, compared with 45 minutes needed by conventional delivery using a ship-and-land route.

In Goto and other remote areas across Japan, residents struggle to obtain food products and medicines due to a shortage of delivery workers. ANA Holdings has been testing the service in various areas since 2018 to launch it commercially in the near future.

The company has formed a project team of 15 members for the new service, including pilots, flight mechanics, and other workers using their expertise. Passenger aircraft operation managers, for instance, set flight routes according to weather patterns, while flight mechanics prepare maintenance manuals.

Passenger transport and other aviation services are ANA Holding's bread and butter, but its principal earnings have dropped sharply amid the coronavirus pandemic, making expansion of its non-aviation operations an urgent task.

Indeed, the drone project "has made headway due to the pandemic," an official of the company said.

An amendment to the civil aviation law has eased the transition. Current regulations ban drone flights beyond the operator's visual line of sight in areas where people live or work. However, the government has made regulatory adjustments under the amendment that will allow ANA Holdings to begin a commercial drone service in such areas beginning in fiscal 2022.

JAL began to increase the use of drones three or four years ago following upper management's insistence that it become less dependent on passenger flights.

Planning to begin the drone-based service of delivering goods in fiscal 2023, JAL has already experimented with transporting disaster supplies and blood for transfusions in collaboration with medical institutions and other concerns in Hyogo and Nagasaki prefectures.

In another trial, fresh fish caught off the Goto Islands were carried by a drone to the nearby main island of Kyushu and airlifted aboard a JAL flight from Nagasaki airport to Tokyo to be served at restaurants in the capital the same day.

JAL hopes that a similar use of drones to collect produce from remote areas will allow it to begin exporting fresh marine and agricultural products to neighboring countries.

With the use of drones, "we will not only seek to increase our revenue but also offer solutions to local problems," a JAL official said.
By Miya Tanaka, KYODO NEWS - Sep 4, 2021 - 06:57 | All, Japan, World

The United States on Friday appeared to tamp down concerns that Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga's abrupt decision to resign will impact the bilateral relationship, calling the alliance "ironclad" and hailing recent joint efforts in addressing China and Taiwan issues.

President Joe Biden is "grateful for Prime Minister Suga's leadership and partnership on the shared challenges we face in the Indo-Pacific and the world, including COVID-19, climate change, North Korea, China, and preserving peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait," a White House spokesperson said.

"We wish Prime Minister Suga well for the future. The U.S.-Japan alliance is and will remain ironclad, not just between our governments, but our people," the official said.

Despite the upbeat statement, the dramatic turn in politics for the close U.S. ally is likely to have brought some disappointment to the Biden administration, which has been working for months to step up cooperation with Japan to counter China's assertiveness in the Indo-Pacific region.

"The Japanese government will have to start over with the Biden administration, which is a little disappointing, frankly," said James Schoff, an expert on U.S.-Japan relations at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Washington-based think tank.

But he indicated that the impact may not be critical, saying, "I suppose it's manageable at this early stage in the Biden term."

On Friday, the 72-year-old Japanese prime minister made headlines by expressing his intention to step down amid public criticism over his response to the coronavirus pandemic and growing doubts among ruling Liberal Democratic Party lawmakers about his leadership.

A State Department spokesperson highlighted that Suga was the first foreign leader Biden asked to visit the White House for in-person talks.

In a joint statement issued after their meeting in Washington in April, Biden and Suga underscored "the importance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait," making it the first time in more than half a century that the self-ruled island was explicitly mentioned by Japanese and U.S. leaders in such a document.

The situation regarding Taiwan has been drawing attention recently as China increases its pressure on the democratic island, which Beijing regards as a renegade province awaiting reunification.

Earlier this year, Suga also took part in the first-ever meeting of the leaders of the Quad group, which Biden hosted virtually. The grouping also involves Australia and India, two other key Indo-Pacific democracies.

The four countries have since been working to expand COVID-19 vaccine production for developing countries apparently in a bid to counter China's vaccine diplomacy.

Schoff acknowledged he was surprised by the news that Suga decided not to seek re-election as LDP leader later this month, which means the ruling party will choose a successor who will become prime minister.

But Schoff also said the latest development had "become an increasingly more feasible outcome as Suga's support level has dropped and the Delta variant (of the coronavirus) persisted in recent weeks."

Suga became Japan's prime minister in September last year, succeeding Shinzo Abe, who served for nearly eight years from late 2012 until he stepped down citing a chronic illness. Suga was the government's top spokesman under Abe's tenure.

While Suga was seen at the time as qualified to carry Abe's policy legacy forward, experts have been wondering whether he would become a viable long-term leader or merely serve as a caretaker in the wake of Abe's unexpected departure.

Patrick Cronin of the Hudson Institute, a Washington-based conservative think tank, said Suga's resignation "may have been abrupt, but it was hardly unexpected."

"From the moment he succeeded Shinzo Abe, there were questions about the likely duration of his tenure," the expert on East Asia issues said.

While noting that "the momentary uncertainty about Japan's leadership will complicate near-term diplomatic scheduling," he also said the "immediate outlook is for a successor who brings mostly continuity rather than radical change."

"In short, the domestic political turmoil inside Japan is not likely to disturb Japan's basic policies and predictability as a staunch ally in seeking to uphold a free and open Indo-Pacific and international order," he said.

In the past, Japan has tended to see short-lived governments after the departure of long-term leaders, with some experts calling the development a revolving door.

Before Abe took office in December 2012 and eventually became Japan's longest-serving prime minister, the country had seen six prime ministers in six years -- including Abe's first stint from 2006 to 2007, cut short due to the same chronic illness.

(Toshihide Kochi, Mitsuya Tanaka contributed to this article.)

Related coverage:

Japan PM Suga to resign amid criticism over COVID-19 response

LDP leader hopefuls reiterate intention to run after Japan PM Suga withdraws

Chronology of events related to Japan PM Suga's Cabinet
KYODO NEWS - Sep 3, 2021 - 18:46 | World, All, Japan

China is expected to closely watch whether Japan's stance on the Taiwan issue will change under a new leader, after Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga expressed on Friday his intention to resign, diplomats said.

The Chinese leadership under President Xi Jinping, meanwhile, is likely to adopt a "well-balanced" diplomatic strategy that would not hurt its ties with Japan, as its strains with the United States have shown few signs of easing soon, they added.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin declined to comment on Suga's move on Friday, telling reporters in Beijing only that the two nations should maintain healthy and stable development of bilateral relations.

After Shinzo Abe stepped down as prime minister last year, Suga, who was his chief Cabinet secretary, won the ruling Liberal Democratic Party's presidential election with the backing of its powerful secretary general, Toshihiro Nikai, who is known for his close relations with China.

With Beijing at odds with Washington over several matters, including its alleged human rights abuses in Xinjiang and security challenges to Taiwan, hopes grew among Chinese officials that Suga would make conciliatory gestures to Beijing, given the role Nikai played in paving the way for his premiership.

While Japan's relations with China deteriorated in the early 2010s over Tokyo-controlled, Beijing-claimed islands in the East China Sea, the then Abe government extended an olive branch to the Communist Party by utilizing Nikai's influence on bilateral ties.

However, Suga, who took office in September 2020, sought closer ties with the United States, Japan's longtime defense ally, and continued to do so as President Joe Biden came into office in January.

At their summit in Washington in April, Suga confirmed with Biden "the importance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait." It marked the first time in 52 years that Japanese and U.S. leaders have mentioned self-ruled Taiwan in a joint statement.

The Suga government has also repeatedly voiced concern over Beijing's crackdown on Hong Kong's pro-democracy movement and human rights abuses against the Muslim Uyghur minority in the far western Xinjiang region, which Washington has described as a "genocide."

"Many Chinese officials have been disappointed with Suga," one of the diplomats in Beijing said, adding, "Their attention has already turned to who will become Japan's next prime minister and how the new government will handle the Taiwan issue."

But China would shy away from taking a hard-line approach to Japan at least until the end of the Beijing Winter Olympics and Paralympics next year, another diplomat said. The events will be held between February and March.

Should China intensify tensions with the United States and its close ally Japan, the two democratic countries could boycott the Winter Games, bringing disgrace on Xi, who has been keen to use the sporting events to enhance national prestige, he said.

China "does not want to hold a large-scale athlete festival only for China-friendly nations," the diplomat said, adding Xi would try to avert friction with Japan before the Beijing Games so that the neighboring country will participate in the events.

Related coverage:

Japan PM Suga to resign amid criticism over COVID-19 response

Chronology of events related to Japan PM Suga's Cabinet

U.S. signals surprise over Japan PM Suga's intention to resign
KYODO NEWS - Sep 3, 2021 - 23:33 | All, Japan, Coronavirus

Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga's sudden announcement of his intention to resign at a time when the country is battling a resurgence of COVID-19 infections was met Friday with surprise and criticism by many people in Japan, with medical workers lamenting his slow and inadequate response to fight the virus.

"I thought he would stay on (as prime minister) a little longer," said a 35-year-old female nurse in Sapporo on the northernmost main island of Hokkaido, who was among those caught off guard by Suga's abrupt announcement.

Suga's intent to step down came amid strong public criticism over his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, with the Delta variant rapidly spreading across the country and now 21 out of Japan's 47 prefectures under COVID state of emergency.

He was also criticized for going ahead with the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics despite public opposition amid mounting concerns over the spread of the virus.

"Japan lagged behind in securing and distributing vaccines, and the Suga administration did not provide any information (about it)," said Yasuhiko Hirata, chairman of the medical association of Fukuoka city in southwestern Japan.

"If (Suga's government) is going to pursue vaccination policies, I wish he could have better handled the vaccinations rather than (going ahead in) holding the Olympics," said Haruka Honda, 34, who was at a vaccination site for young people in Tokyo's Shibuya district.

Suga's handling of COVID drew further flak after the government introduced a policy last month allowing only patients with severe symptoms to be hospitalized to prevent a hospital bed shortage.

A nurse at a Tokyo hospital criticized the policy as being out of touch with reality, saying it shows how the government was "totally not aware of the situation on ground."

"There is not a single COVID policy that can be praised, and whatever comes out of the government comes out hollow," said the 47-year-old nurse said.

The government's handling of COVID was also unpopular among people running eatery businesses reeling from the impact of the pandemic.

The government had banned eateries from serving alcohol and had them close early under a COVID emergency, but Yoshihito Konishi, who operates a Japanese "sukiyaki" hot pot dish eatery in the city of Osaka, said more and more stores are not complying with the requests.

Shinya Murakami, manager at a restaurant in Osaka Prefecture in western Japan, also criticized the government for being "one step behind" in dealing with the sense of crisis facing eateries.
KYODO NEWS - Sep 3, 2021 - 23:42 | World, All, Coronavirus

The Singapore government said Friday it will start giving a booster vaccine shot to people aged 60 and older as well as immunocompromised people this month to better protect them against the coronavirus.

The move comes as infections with the highly contagious Delta variant are increasing, even though the country has fully inoculated at least 80 percent of the population since vaccinations began in late December.

Under the new policy, people aged 60 and older will receive a third shot six to nine months after completing a two-dose regimen of mRNA vaccine.

Several Cabinet ministers who head the government's task force to combat the pandemic also signaled Friday that Singapore has moved to a new stage in its battle against COVID-19, due in part to difficulties containing the Delta variant.

One of them, Finance Minister Lawrence Wong, said that going forward, the government will put more emphasis on ICU bed occupancy rates and the number of people who become severely ill rather than daily new cases.

Health Minister Ong Ye Kung said Singapore will transition into a "COVID-resilient nation" that lives with the disease caused by the virus.

"In the past we tried to suppress every cluster, trace down to the last infection and try to eliminate them," he said. "But with the more transmissible Delta variant, this will be very challenging to do and we may not be prepared to pay the price of doing so in the form of border closures, circuit breaker, heightened alert. It is just not sustainable."
KYODO NEWS - Sep 3, 2021 - 13:33 | All, Japan, Coronavirus

The Japanese government plans to allow restaurants to serve alcohol even in areas under a COVID-19 emergency if sufficient steps are taken to prevent infections, according to a draft plan for restarting economic and social activities, government sources said Friday.

The plan is likely to be adopted in October or November, when all people who wish to be vaccinated are expected to have been fully inoculated. But some experts on infectious diseases remain cautious over relaxing the current measures.

Under the plan, the government will not ask residents to refrain from traveling across prefectural borders and will consider resuming its subsidy campaign to boost domestic tourism battered by the pandemic, the sources said.

The government aims to release the plan in the near future, but it could stir controversy as Japan is in the midst of coping with a resurgence of infections driven by the highly contagious Delta variant, putting a strain on the country's health care system.

In relaxing the current measures, the plan says the spread of the virus can be controlled to a certain extent if vaccination progresses, on the premise that basic countermeasures are in place, the sources said.

Among eased measures are allowing restaurants to offer alcohol and open for longer hours. The government also plans to relax restrictions on the number of people attending large events if thorough countermeasures are taken, the sources said.

The government's COVID-19 advisory panel will hold a meeting later Friday to discuss the measures and will compile proposals for how people's lives can progress when the vaccination rate rises, the source said.

A total of 21 of Japan's 47 prefectures have been placed under the state of emergency, with restaurants asked not to serve alcohol or offer karaoke and instructed to close by 8 p.m.

The emergency is currently set to expire on Sept. 12, but it is seen as increasingly difficult for the government to lift the measure given the current situation, as infections remain high across the country.
New Delhi:

The Cabinet on Thursday approved the building and development of the Kartarpur corridor from Dera Baba Nanak in Punjabs Gurdaspur district to the International Border (IB) with Pakistan. The corridor will facilitate Sikh pilgrims from India to visit Gurdwara Darbar Sahib at Kartarpur on the banks of river Ravi in Narowal District of Punjab in Pakistan. The project with all modern amenities and facilities will be implemented with the central government funding, announced Home Minister Rajnath Singh.

The decision was taken at a meeting of the Union Cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to commemorate 550th Birth Anniversary of Guru Nanak Dev. New Delhi will also request Islamabad to recognise the sentiments of the Sikh community and develop a corridor with suitable facilities in their territory as well.

Read More | Not in favour of any government formed with underhand defection, horse trading: Jammu and Kashmir Governor Satya Pal Malik

"In a landmark decision, the Cabinet approves building and development of Kartarpur corridor from Dera Baba Nanak in Gurdaspur district to International Border. Kartarpur corridor project with all modern amenities and facilities to be implemented with Central Government funding," Rajnath Singh said in a series of tweets.

Hours later Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi took to his official Twitter handle and agreed with India's decision to Kartarpur corridor from Dera Baba Nanak in Punjabs Gurdaspur district to the International Border (IB) with Pakistan

"Pakistan has already conveyed to India it's decision to open Kartarpura Corridor for Baba Guru Nanaks 550th birth anniversary. PM Imran Khan will do break ground at Kartarpura facilities on 28th November. We welcome the Sikh community to Pakistan for this auspicious occasion," Qureshi wrote.

Pakistan has already conveyed to India it's decision to open Kartarpura Corridor for Baba Guru Nanaks 550th birth anniversary. PM Imran Khan will do break ground at Kartarpura facilities on 28th November. We welcome the Sikh community to Pakistan for this auspicious occasion.  Shah Mahmood Qureshi (@SMQureshiPTI) November 22, 2018

The corridor will provide smooth and easy passage to pilgrims to visit the holy shrine throughout the year. "The Pakistan government will be urged to reciprocate and develop a corridor with suitable facilities in their territory," said Rajnath Singh.

The Ministry of External Affairs also said, In keeping with the resolution adopted by the Cabinet today to commemorate 550th birth anniversary of Guru Nanak Dev ji in 2019, we have approached and urged the Pakistan government to recognise the sentiments of Sikh community and build a corridor with suitable facilities in their territory to facilitate easy and smooth visits of pilgrims from India to Kartarpur Sahib throughout the year. The government of India has already decided to build a corridor from Dera Baba Nanak to the International Border with all modern amenities on our side.

Highlighting the key points for the development on the issue, Singh said that a high-level committee chaired by him will regularly review, monitor and oversee the implementation of activities to celebrate the anniversary of Guru Nanak.

Taking to Twitter, Singh said, "The States/UTs also being requested to celebrate 550th Birth Anniversary of Shri Guru Nanak Devji in a befitting manner. Indian missions overseas to organize special events on the occasion. UNESCO to be requested to publish Shri Guru Nanak Devjis writings in world languages. Ministry of Railways will run a train passing through holy places associated with Shri Guru Nanak Devji."

Commemorative coin and postage stamps to be released by the Government of India. A High Level Committee chaired by me will regularly review, monitor and oversee the implementation of activities to celebrate 550th Birth Anniversary of Shri Guru Nanak Devji: Home Minister https://t.co/NMl3MdK9z6  ANI (@ANI) November 22, 2018

"Commemorative coin and postage stamps to be released by the Government of India. Religious activities to be organised throughout the country. Doordarshan to telecast programmes on Shri Guru Nanak Devji and Gurubani," Singh said further.

Also Read | Omar Abdullah on backing PDP: This arrangement was to save Jammu and Kashmir from current mess

"A centre for inter faith studies to be set up at Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar. Chairs on Shri Guru Nanak Devji to be set up in one University each in UK and Canada. International seminar on the life and teachings of Shri Guru Nanak Devji to be organised in New Delhi. As major attraction for pilgrims and tourists, a heritage complex at Sultanpur Lodhi, Pind Babe Nanak da to be developed to depict life in the times of Shri Guru Nanak Devji. Sultanpur Lodhi railway station to be upgraded and developed," added the Union minister.

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New Delhi:

Just when India is about to observe a two-minute silence in the remembrance of 166 people slayed by Pakistani terrorists in Mumbai on November 26, 2008, the killing of three people in a grenade attack on a Nirankari sect congregation in Rajasansi close to Amritsar has once again exposed the dastardly acts of Pakistans Inter-Services Intelligence-backed anti-India forces. Investigations carried out by the Punjab Police so far suggest that the grenade used by terrorists to attack the congregation was similar to the ones being manufactured by the Pakistan Army Ordnance factory. Undoubtedly, without Pakistans ISI or Armys involvement, no grenade or ammunition can be obtained from that countrys ordinance factory. That means Pakistans quartetterrorists, Islamic hardliners, ISI and Armyinvolved in perpetrating one of the monstrous attacks 10 years ago in Mumbai, is still active. Worse, these anti-India forces are trying to replicate Jammu and Kashmir-like terrorist attacks in Punjab.

Read More | Amritsar attack accused arrested: Punjab CM Amarinder Singh



Such fear may not be wrong since the HG-84 grenade used by terrorists in Rajasansi was earlier recovered by the Punjab Police from a terror module present in the state. In June, the Punjab Police arrested two students from Jammu and Kashmir who were studying in a college in Jalandhar. They told their interrogators that they were trained by the terrorist outfit under the control of ISI. These students had also admitted that they had links with Zakir Musa, an Al Qaeda commander who wants to set up his base in Punjab. Musa had come to study BTech at a private engineering college in Mohali in 2010, but he left it in 2013 without passing the exams. Suspected to be behind attack the Nirankari congregation, Musa is said to have several contacts in Punjab.



Although probe is in the early stage, it is a fact that Pakistan has tried several times in the past to revive terrorism in Punjab. After Pakistan burnt its finger in Punjab where terrorism was mercilessly crushed in the 1990s, Islamabad took drugs route in Indias Northern state to harm the countrys interest by making youth drug addict. But since the past two years illegal drug consumption in Punjab has been on the decline, frustrated Pakistan is at its nastiest form: It wants to push J&K militants and the pro-Khalistani group into terrorism again.



Dhariwal-based Bikramjit Singh, who has been arrested by the police for the Rajasansi attack, is suspected to be an operative of the Khalistan Liberation Force (KLF), while Avtar Singh, who is still absconding, is the son of Gurdial Singh who reportedly deserted the Indian Army after the 1984 Operation Blue Star. In the course of his interrogation by the NIA and the local police, Bikramjit Singh reportedly confessed that the terror attack was carried out in connivance with the ISI and the Pakistani establishment.

Also Read | Amritsar Nirankari Bhawan Attack: Akali Dal blames Punjab government for suspected terror strike



The ongoing probe has further revealed that Gopal Singh Chawla, a pro-Khalistani group leader who is currently in Pakistan, has been plotting terrorism in Punjab for a long time. Security agencies have inputs on Chawlas activities. They say the pro-Khalistani leader remain in touch with ISI and banned Lashkar-e-Taiba chief Hafiz Saeed. His inflammatory posts on social media have been a cause of concern for Indian security establishment. In the course of their investigations in the murder of eight RSS workers in Punjab in 2017, the NIA officials have stumbled upon some sensational discoveries on coming together of pro-Khalistani leaders, Pakistan-based terrorist groups the Pakistani establishment to resuscitate terrorism in Punjab. By doing so, Pakistans objective is to keep India burning. It is the only country in the world where terrorists are considered as tools to serve its strategic interests. It has been put in the grey list of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), a Paris based inter-governmental body which promotes effective implementation of legal, regulatory and operational measures for combating money laundering and terrorist financing.



A team of FATF officials, which visited Pakistan in August, expressed its unhappiness over Islamabads performance on terror financing. FATF officials feared that Pakistan-based non-profit orgnisations, brokerage houses, exchange companies donations of corporate houses and religious entities are still channeling their funds to Jaish-e-Mohammad, Hafiz Saeed-headed Jammat-ud-Dawa which is a front of terrorist outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba and others. Warning has been served to Pakistan that it will have to face the toughest international scrutiny leading to accessing overseas funding, including remittances sent by Pakistani workers would be very difficult if it failed to stop terror financing.



Deep in economic problem, Pakistan, it seems, is not serious to listen to FATF warning as the countrys Army and the ISI fears that they will lose their tactical assets that terrorists are for them if monetary resources are choked. The Pakistani establishment knows it well that Saudi Arabia, Turkey and iron friend China will come to its rescue if international community through instruments like FATF tries to screw it up on the terrorism issue. Frustrated over Pakistans ineffective move in combating terrorism, US President Donald Trump has already suspended its $1.66 billion security assistance to Islamabad. Earlier, mincing no words against Pakistan, the US President said 9/11 mastermind and Al Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden was hiding in Abbottabad under the protection of its military. We paid Pakistan Billions of Dollars & they never told us he was living there. Fools! Trump wrote on his Twitter handle.

Also Read | Click here to know all about Gurdwara Kartarpur Sahib



Pakistans Army Generals might be laughing at the worlds lone superpowers frustration. Given the situation at the United Nations Security Council where China is using its veto power to defeat any terrorism-related censure against Pakistan, these Generals might feel more encouraged to sponsor terrorism. Spurt in terrorism in India should be seen in this background. But the need of the hour is, India should understand that no terrorism sustains without the support from locals. Radicalisation of youth in Punjab, Jammu and Kashmir or other parts of the country needs to be stopped at any cost.
New Delhi:

Nine policemen were injured on Friday when the van in which they were travelling to join Tamil Nadu Deputy Chief Minister O Paneerselvams convoy overturned near Orathanadu in the Thanjavur district, the police said. The armed reserve police personnel were proceeding in a van from Thanjavur to Aladikkimolai to join the deputy chief ministers convoy when it overturned at Ammamuthukula near Orathanadu, the police added.

Panneerselvam was touring cyclone-affected areas in Thanjavur district. Cyclone Gaja had crossed the states coast last week, leaving a trail of destruction in several districts including Thanjavur. The injured policemen were being treated at the government hospital in Orathanadu.

Read More | Death count rises 45 as cyclone Gaja leaves a trail of destruction

On Thursday, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister K Palaniswami Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Delhi to talk about the devastation caused by the cyclonic storm Gaja and sought comprehensive central assistance package to tide over the situation.



Today I met PM Modi and submitted a memorandum seeking assistance of Rs 15,000 crore for destruction caused by Cyclone Gaja. The money requested has been sought as interim relief. We also requested Prime Minister to depute central team to carry out cyclone's assessment. PM Modi assured us for the same, he said.

Coconut trees and banana plantations spread across several lakhs of acres in districts including Tiruvarur and Nagapattinam were uprooted pushing farmers into a crisis in the state.

Earlier, Tamil Nadu Governor Banwarilal Purohit meanwhile visited affected areas including Vedaranyam and Pushpavanam in Nagapattinam district and distributed assistance to people.

He also inspected food preparations at the relief centres and interacted with doctors at a medical camp.

Also Read | Cyclone Gaja: Tamil Nadu Chief Minister K Palaniswami seeks Rs 15,000-crore aid from PM Modi

Speaking to reporters, the Governor said, "As far as food is concerned it is being supplied everywhere, rice is available and administration is doing whatever is possible. I appreciate their zeal, dedication and work."

On the questions posed to him by the affected people, he said, "they wanted tarpaulins and some money."

Purohit said he had told the people to be patient for a few days and that the administration would fulfil their requirements.
New Delhi:

Jammu and Kashmir Governor Satya Pal Malik on Thursday said that he was not in favour of any government formed in the state with underhand defection and horse trading, adding that he would instead want that elections are held and an elected government rules the state.

I've been receiving complaints for past 15 days of horse trading & that MLAs are being threatened. Mehbooba Ji herself complained that her MLAs are being threatened.The other party said there is planning of distribution of money.I couldn't have allowed this to happen:J&K Governor pic.twitter.com/dClcBtc9Sj  ANI (@ANI) November 22, 2018

Ye forces wo hain jo grassroot democracy bilkul nahi chahti thin aur achanak ye dekhke ki hamare haath se chijein nikal rahi hain,ek unholy alliance karke mere saamne aa gaye. Maine kisi ka pakshpat nahi kiya.Maine jo J&K ki janta ke paksh me tha wo kaam kiya hai: J&K Governor pic.twitter.com/6t3TyqIRSK  ANI (@ANI) November 22, 2018

Read More | We did not favour alliance with PDP, we wanted polls earlier: Omar

Speaking to news agency ANI, Governor Malik said that this unholy alliance didn't want grassroots democracy and that by dissolving the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly, he didnt take any partys side instead took the decision for the larger good of the people of the state. On the digs by former chief ministers Omar Abdullah and Mehbooba Mufti that the fax machine in the Raj Bhavan wasn't working, the governor said, "Fax isn't an issue. It was Eid yesterday. Both of them are devoted Muslim and should know that offices are closed that day. Even my cook was on leave, let alone the person who handles fax. Even if I had received the fax, my stand would have been the same."

Fax isn't an issue. Yesterday was Eid. Both of them are devoted Muslim & should know that offices are closed that day. Even my cook was on leave, let alone the person who handles fax. Even if I had received the fax, my stand would have been the same: J&K Governor Satya Pal Malik pic.twitter.com/QEMkuZAtIC  ANI (@ANI) November 22, 2018

Why will they go to court? They were demanding this since five months. I want that they go to court, it's their right, they should go: J&K Governor Satya Pal Malik on reports that PDP will approach court against dissolution of #JammuAndKashmir assembly pic.twitter.com/BWpKFitJrq

Are govts formed through social media? I neither tweet nor see the tweets.I selected y'day for the decision (dissolution of assembly) as it was holy day,it was Eid.Election Commission will decide when polls will be held:J&K Governor on Mehbooba Mufti's tweet of letter sent to him pic.twitter.com/OqeaAoTA2B  ANI (@ANI) November 22, 2018

Also Read | Pakistan had probably instructed PDP, NC to form government: BJP

Barely minutes after former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Mehbooba Mufti confirmed the grand alliance with the National Conference (NC) and the Congress, Governor Satya Pal Malik on Wednesday dissolved the state Assembly under the relevant provisions in Jammu and Kashmir constitution, according to reports. Taking to Twitter, Mufti on Wednesday announced the alliance with the two mainstream political parties, saying the PDP was faxing a letter to Governor Satya Pal Malik with the support of 56 candidates in the 87-member house. According to reports, the PDP will lead the grand alliance in a bid to form the next government in the Governor-ruled state. The purpose behind this far-reaching realignment of political forces is to defend the Article 35A in the Supreme Court in January 2019. While the PDP has 29 seats (including one Independent) in the state Assembly, the National Conference and the Congress have 15 and 12, respectively.

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New Delhi:

The Delhi police on Tuesday sounded high alert after two Jaish-e-Mohammad terrorists have allegedly sneaked into the national capital. The police have also released pictures of the two suspected terrorists standing next to a milestone on which its written Delhi 360 km Firozpur 9km in Urdu.

According to reports, the police are searching hotels, guesthouses and vehicles in the city. Pictures of the two suspected terrorists have been posted across the city and shared on social media.

Punjabs Firozpur is 133 km from Amritsar where two motorcycle-borne youths threw a grenade at a religious congregation on Sunday, killing three persons were killed and leaving 20 injured.

The incident came just a few days after an intelligence report claimed that

at least six to seven terrorists belonging to Jaish-e-Mohammad had sneaked into Punjab and were believed to be hiding in Firzopur area. The report added that the suspected terrorists might be planning to move towards Delhi.

"According to an input, a group of 6-7 JeM terrorists are reportedly in Punjab, India (possibly Firozpur area) and are planning to move towards Delhi from Punjab side," the report said.

Meanwhile, the Punjab Police have found striking similarities between the modus operandi of the perpetrators of the grenade attack at a Nirankari congregation in Amritsar and the one allegedly planned by an ISI-backed terror module busted in Patiala early this month.

The Punjab Police had nabbed on November 1 Shabnamdeep Singh alias Maninder Lahoria, who "confessed" to the police that he was asked by his Pakistani handlers to target police posts and crowded places during festivals.

Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh had Monday described the grenade attack as a suspected handiwork of the ISI-backed terror modules.

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New Delhi:

The security forces on Friday gunned down six Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists, including one, who was accused of killing Rising Kashmir editor-in-chief Shujaat Bukhari, in a gun battle in Jammu and Kashmir's Anantnag district, according to officials. The accused has been identified as Azad Malik and was eliminated in Sekipora area of Bijbhera at the wee hours of Friday. The operation was jointly conducted by Indian Army's 3 Rashtriya Rifles (RR), 166 battalions of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) and the police force of the state Jammu and Kashmir.

The other terrorists killed in the ensuing encounter were Unais Shafi, Shahid Bashir, Basit Ishtiyaq, Aqib Najar and Firdous Najar. The security forces launched a cordon and search operation following specific inputs about the presence of terrorists in the wopods of Sekipora. The operation turned into a gun battle after terrorists opened fire on the forces.

Read | Jammu and Kashmir: Let PDP go to court, I will prove my numbers, says Sajjad Lone

Apart from the gunning down, weapons were seized in large quantity, including a massive number of arms and ammunition at the site of encounter. Besides, five AK-47 rifles and one INSAS rifle were recovered by the forces.

We have recovered war-like stores from encounter site, army spokesperson Rajesh Kalia told reporters.

Bukhari was attacked by three motorcycle-borne gunmen while he was leaving his office in Press Enclave at Srinagar's Lal Chowk for an iftar party on June 14. Two of his security guards were also killed in the incident. Bukhari is survived by his wife and one son and a daughter.

Read | Jammu and Kashmir: Mehbooba, Omar take digs at Governor's fax machine

Earlier, Bukhari survived three assassination attempts and had been under police protection since 2000. Bukhari is the fourth journalist to be killed by militants in the nearly three-decade-long violence in Kashmir.

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New Delhi:

A delegation of over 10,000 protesting tribals and farmers on Thursday met Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis at Maharashtra Legislative Assembly in Mumbai, where the winter session of the state legislature kick-started on November 19. Agitating farmers led by the Lok Sangharsh Morcha, started their march from Mulund Octroi Naka this morning and refused to leave Azad Maidan until or unless the state government addresses their concerns. The demands include the implementation of Swaminathan Committee Report, pending claims under the Forest Rights Act (FRA), minimum support price and setting up of a judicial system to ensure its implementation, complete farm loan waiver and drought compensation of Rs 50,000 per acre for non-irrigated land and Rs 1 lakh per acre for irrigated land and other issues.

Fadnavis, however, addressed the representative of the protesting farmers, assuring that their forest land rights claims will be settled by December 2018. Tribal welfare minister Vishnu Savra said 3.6 lakh claims were received, of which 1.74 lakh have been settled in favour of the tribals. Similarly, 12,000 claims for community forest activity were also received, of which 7,700 have been settled, Savra added.

Read | Ram Madhav retracts his 'instruction from Pak' remark, mocks at PDP-NC equations

Here are the Highlights:

20:56 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In Lok Sangarsh Morcha, which has led the farmers' protests at Azad Maidan, Mumbai has called off the protest after getting written assurances on their demands from Maharashtra Government.



Lok Sangarsh Morcha, which has led the farmers' protests at Azad Maidan, Mumbai has called off the protest after getting written assurances on their demands from Maharashtra Government. pic.twitter.com/N3PMzmjrJT

 ANI (@ANI) November 22, 2018



19:54 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In Lok Sangarsh Morcha which has led the farmers' protests at Azad Maidan, Mumbai has called off the protest after getting written assurances on their demands from Maharashtra Government.



Lok Sangarsh Morcha which has led the farmers' protests at Azad Maidan, Mumbai has called off the protest after getting written assurances on their demands from Maharashtra Government.

 ANI (@ANI) November 22, 2018



19:16 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In Fadnavis assured tribal farmers that their forest land rights claims will be settled by December this year. Fadnavis gave this assurance to representatives of protesting farmers who marched to Azad Maidan here for redressal of their grievances, which include compensation for drought and transfer of forest rights to tribals.

19:15 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In A delegation of farmers met Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis at 1.30 pm this afternoon.

19:15 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In Protesters reached Azad Maidan in south Mumbai this afternoon following which they will hold a demonstration near Vidhan Bhawan, where the state legislature session is underway.

19:14 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In Trouble areas across Mumbai.



Commuters starting journey from South Mumbai using JJ flyover, Lalbagh flyover and Parel flyover towards Dadar are advised to avoid & use Slip Roads till 10 AM. Farmers agitation scheduled today.

Regular Traffic movement on Dr BA Road towards CST and on these flyovers.

 Mumbai Police (@MumbaiPolice) November 22, 2018



19:13 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In A traffic alert in and around Azad Maidan



Traffic in the vicinity of Azad Maidan will be marginally affected around 9 AM - 10 AM

 Mumbai Police (@MumbaiPolice) November 22, 2018



19:12 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In Thousands of farmers protest from Thane to Mumbai



Maharashtra: Lok Sangharsh Morcha that comprises of tribals and farmers across the state reaches Dadar. The Morcha that has begun from Kalyan yesterday is marching towards Azad Maidan in Mumbai. The farmers are demanding loan waiver and drought compensation among others. pic.twitter.com/K6c3RHp4jb

 ANI (@ANI) November 22, 2018



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New Delhi:

Deepika Padukone and Ranveer Singh are leaving no stones unturned to make their wedding last in the memories for a lifetime. The couple gave their wedding guests giveaways that are too adorable to look at and impeccably considerate. The company, which designed their wedding giveaways, took to their Instagram account to share a glimpse of the gift. The star couple apparently gifted beautiful silver plated photo frames to their guests, along with handwritten notes.

Also Read | #MeToo case: IFTDA to deliver its findings about Sajid Khan, Alok Nath in a week

Along with the picture, the company wrote, Beauty is in minimalism, but that's also what's challenging. It was a pleasure fabricating Deepika Padukone and Ranveer Singh's wedding giveaways." For the representative purpose, they used a picture of the newlyweds, but the original giveaways consisted of handwritten notes by the duo.

The couple, after their extravagant and glamorous nuptials, grabbed all the eyeballs, is now planning to hold multiple receptions. While Deepika and Ranveer garnered the show buzz attention at their Bengaluru wedding reception, invites for their upcoming celebrations have already left everyone in awe of them. The Ram Leela actors have a lot more in store for family, friends, and fans. Following Bengaluru reception, the newlyweds will head to Mumbai for the other reception ceremonies to be held on November 24, November 28 and December 1.

Also Read | Disney classic The Lion King remake is out and we cant hold back our excitement; Watch the trailer here

Here are the wedding pictures of the Ram Leela stars:
New Delhi:

The cases of date rape that mostly goes unreported have frequented over the years because of lifestyle changes such as the increasingly clubbing scenes. This scenario has become even worse because the cases of date rape are often perpetrated by the person you presumed safe. These drugs are commonly used in trains and buses to rob passengers, and in youth, parties to exploit young females for drug-facilitated sexual assault.



The drugs often have no colour, smell or taste and are easily added to flavoured drinks without the victim's knowledge. Most often date rape drugs are GHP or Gamma-hydroxybutyric acid, which is a hypnotic depressant.



When synthesised artificially, GHB can take the form of a white powder, much like table salt, or a clear liquid. It also comes in a liquid form that can be mixed with other liquids. They are often purchased by body builders at health food stores for their purported muscle-building and fat-burning qualities. GHB is less commonly available in the capsule form.

Also Read | Indians gear up for white Christmas, New Year this season: Report



Historically, GHB was prescribed to people who struggled to get to sleep at night. However, that usage largely stopped in 1990, when the Federal Drug Association in the United States outlawed the drug. , GHB is predominantly known in its illegal guise as a recreational drug taken by clubbers. Dosage in this scenario is much higher than naturally occurring levels of GHB  normally between 500mg and 3,000mg, compared with the 4.1-21.4mg found in an average litre of red wine.



As with most recreational drugs, the negative effects of GHB become more apparent with larger doses. While small amounts may make the user feel relaxed, a little more can lead to dizziness and general disorientation; more still can result in nausea, vomiting, and muscle spasms.

The even bigger danger that is proving with this date rape drug is that it can create an overly potent sedative effect when mixed with alcohol or illegal party drugs such as ketamine. Various studies have reported that when this drug is mixed with other sedatives, you can suffer the risks of suffering from amnesia or slipping into a coma are greatly increased under these circumstances.



Most crooks opt for this drug because after a 12-hour period and the alleged assault, GHB disappears from the bloodstream leaving the culprits to escape scotch free.

Also Read | The Quiet Space: The spell of a blade of grass



So, how can you tell if your drink is spiked?



There are a few tale-tell signs to know if your drink has been spiked. One common observation is that it lends drinks a slightly salty taste. Other sings are any unexpected change in your mood or sensory perception such as feeling sleepy, unexpected extasy or feeling disoriented could indicate an unintentional dose of GHB.



Dos and Don'ts to avoid being drugged:
New Delhi:

The Indian government has decided to fast-track three projects, including construction of two dams, to arrest the unutilised water of its share under the bilateral Indus Waters Treaty with Pakistan. The three projects include the Shahpur Kandi dam project, Sutlej-Beas link in Punjab and the Ujh Dam project in Jammu and Kashmir, news agency PTI quoted government officials as saying.

These (three) projects were stuck in red tape and inter-state disputes. But it has been decided to expedite the execution of these projects, one of them added.

Read More | Pakistans warning to India on Indus Waters Treaty: Will trap you in your own bluff

Under the Indus Waters Treaty, waters flowing in three of Indus tributaries  the Sutlej, Beas and Ravi  have been allotted to India; while the Chenab, Jhelum and Indus waters have been allotted to Pakistan.

The Indus Waters Treaty is a water distribution pact between India and Pakistan, brokered by the World Bank to use the water available in the Indus System of rivers located in Jammu and Kashmir. The treaty was signed in 1960 by Indias first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and then Pakistani President Ayub Khan.

Of the total 168 million acre-feet, Indias share of water from the three allotted rivers is 33 million acre-feet, which constitutes nearly 20 per cent.

India uses nearly 93-94 per cent of its share under the Indus Waters Treaty. The rest of the water remains unutilised and goes to Pakistan, an official added.

Also Read | Indus Water Treaty: India, Pakistan agree on mandated tours to each other's hydropower projects

The Ujh dam, over the river Ravi in the Kathua district, is a proposed hydroelectricity and irrigation multipurpose project with a capacity to generate 196 MW of electricity. The total water utilisation from this project is 172.8 million cusec metre, but it has the capacity to store 925 mcm of water, the officials said. The estimated cost of the project is Rs 5,950 crore.

The Jammu and Kashmir government has forwarded the Detailed Project Report (DPR) to the Centre for its appraisal, which is expected to be approved by the Advisory Committee of the Ministry of Water Resources for clearance, they said.

(With PTI inputs)

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New Delhi:

MakeMyTrip on Tuesday announced the appointment of Vipul Prakash as the new chief operating officer (COO) of the online travelling company and of Goibibo. Before joining MakeMyTrip, Prakash worked with PepsiCo where he served as the senior vice president (beverage category for PepsiCo-India), the company said in a statement.

We are excited to welcome Vipul to our leadership team. His rich experience of two decades at PepsiCo spanning geographies, deep understanding of consumer market and expertise in industry-leading operational practices are truly invaluable. We are confident that his proven track record and extensive experience will extend MakeMyTrips upward trajectory, said MakeMyTrip co-founder and CEO India Rajesh Magow.

Also Read | Ola continues to expand across the UK, now services in England

In MakeMyTrip, Prakash will be responsible for developing and executing strategic direction and priorities of the company, Magow said.

Speaking about his new role, Prakash said: MakeMyTrip is an iconic brand that has played a defining role in shaping the online travel space in India. I have been truly impressed with the companys institutional expertise and relentless focus on serving customers better. I look forward to driving the next phase of innovation and growth through operational excellence.

We are confident that his proven track record and extensive experience will extend MakeMyTrips upward trajectory, said Magow.

Read More | Salary can't be withheld for not linking bank account with Aadhaar: Bombay High Court

Prakash joined PepsiCo in 1998 and held various positions in marketing and franchise, both at sector and global levels during his two decades association with the American multinational food, snack, and beverage company, it said.

Vipuls rich experience of two decades at PepsiCo spanning geographies, deep understanding of consumer market and expertise in the industry, leading operational practices are truly invaluable, Magow said.

He was associated with PepsiCo for 20 years. He holds a post-graduate diploma in management from IIM Ahmedabad and a mechanical engineering degree from IIT Delhi, Magow added.

(With PTI inputs)

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New Delhi:

Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Thursday said that that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had no role in the dissolution of the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly by Governor Satya Pal Malik on Wednesday evening. The BJP has no role. It is unfortunate that some section is trying to drag the BJP into this, Rajnath Singh told the Hindustan Times.



ALSO READ | Jammu and Kashmir: 6 terrorists killed in Anantnag encounter



The governor of Jammu and Kashmir took the decision after considering the political situation there; he reached to a conclusion that government formation was not possible in the state, Rajnath Singh said. It was a decision taken by the governor. The BJP has no role. It is unfortunate that some section is trying to drag the BJP into this, he said.



The home minister questioned former chief minister Mehbooba Muftis claim of having secured the support of the Congress. Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad has made a statement that suggests his party had not supported PDPs bid to form the government. Why did he make that statement if Mufti was right, Singh asked.



The state has been under governors rule since June.



The governor, it looks, felt there was not a situation where any party had the numbers to form the government, he said.



Jammu and Kashmir witnessed an intense political drama on Wednesday after Mehbooba Mufti claimed to form a coalition government with sworn enemies, the National Conference and the Congress finally resulting in the dissolution of the state Legislative Assembly by Governor Satya Pal Malik.



ALSO READ | Pakistan: Indian diplomats stopped from meeting Sikh pilgrims in Lahore gurdwara



Mehbooba Muftis efforts to form a government got a boost after former deputy chief minister and senior Peoples Democratic Party leader Muzaffar Hussain Baig openly supported the third front. I would leave the party if the third front emerges, Baig said addressing a press conference in Srinagar on Tuesday. According to Baig, the PDP failed to live up to its vision.

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New Delhi:

Launching a fierce attack on TRS chief and caretaker Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao, UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi and Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Friday accused him of running a family rule in Telangana and failing to respond to the aspirations of people of the state. Both Sonia and Rahul were addressing an election rally at Medchal on the outskirts of the city. Apart from the Congress, other alliance partners like TDP, Telangana Jana Samiti and CPI shared the dais to intensify its poll campaign days ahead of the crucial assembly elections across the state. It was Sonia's maiden visit to Telangana after the formation of the state in June 2014.

Recalling the problems, the Congress faced due to its decision to bifurcate Andhra Pradesh, the former party president said despite being aware of adverse political consequences, the Congress went ahead and created Telangana, and paid the price in the elections that followed.

It (carving out Telangana) was not an easy task. It was no small decision. But former prime minister Manmohan Singh and Rahul Gandhi and the Congress party decided to form Telangana state, Sonia as quoted as saying during the rally.

The Congress intends to use its role in the creation of Telangana as a major election plank to blunt Raos claim that a protracted agitation led by him forced the Centres hand. The decision to field Sonia Gandhi, who has hardly addressed an election meeting in a long time, apparently stemmed from the Congresss desire to appeal to the pro-Telangana sentiments of the voters.

Read | Shujaat Bukhari's murderer among 6 terrorists killed in Jammu and Kashmir's Anantnag encounter

Accusing KCR of turning a blind eye to the welfare of the state, the senior Congress leader further said, Chief Minister Rao has cared only for himself and his own people leaving the child (Telangana) to suffer", adding that "Adivasis, minorities, backward classes, women and students were all neglected".

Mothers know how important it is to look after a newborn baby. It is unfortunate that after the birth of Telangana, your responsibility fell into the hands of those who cared for themselves, but not for you: UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi in Medchal. #TelanganaElections2018 pic.twitter.com/ll3RPIVfgg  ANI (@ANI) November 23, 2018

"The chief minister should tell us what promises he made to them and he kept," the UPA chairperson reiterated. Farmer suicides were taking place and agriculturists were still facing water scarcity, she went on to claim further.

The TRS government failed to fulfil the aspirations of the people of the state, she said, adding it did not implement the land acquisition law enacted by the UPA government.

Read | Gauri Lankesh murder: SIT files additional charge sheet against 18 accused, names right-wing group

The people did not reap full benefit of the UPA dispensations flagship rural employment scheme MNREGA under Raos government, Gandhi said.

Through this meeting I appeal to you to vote for the Congress and allied parties, and ensure their victory. Extend your support for the development of Telangana, she said even as she reaffirmed the Congress partys commitment to special category status for Andhra Pradesh.

Rahul, on the other hand, attacked Chandrasekhar Rao, saying only one man ran Telangana for the last five years. He did whatever came to his mind for his family.

The Congress chief said his party had formed an alliance with the TDP, CPI and the TJS and will provide jobs to the unemployed youth and address the problems of the suffering farmers across the state.

"The alliance government will work for the people and not for one person. The dreams for which you fought (for creation of Telangana) the CM did not fulfil. This alliance with fulfil them, the Gandhi scion said.

Read | Sabarimala Temple to allow entry of women exclusively for two days: Kerala government to High Court

When people of Telangana dreamed of forming the state, it was Sonia Gandhi Ji who stood by the people. If Telangana was formed, it was the public who formed it with their sweat and blood. Sonia Gandhi Ji also had a hand in its formation: Rahul Gandhi in Medchal. #Telangana pic.twitter.com/pZ8Di4NgVf  ANI (@ANI) November 23, 2018

Talking about other key developments in the rally, Lok Sabha member Konda Vishweshwar Reddy, who quit the TRS a few days ago citing disappointment with the party leadership, formally joined the Congress this evening.

Read | BJP ranked India's leading television advertiser in BARC TRP chart, placed ahead Netflix, Trivago, Amazon

Though TDP president and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu was not present in the rally, Telangana unit chief L Ramana represented his party. Besides, CPI state secretary Chada Venkat Reddy and TJS chief M Kodandaram also took part in the rally.

(With inputs from agencies)
Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama has announced his new cabinet following the April 25 elections, generating a new record in the country by giving women 12 of the 16 posts in his team. The ruling Socialist Party, led by Rama, won the general elections held on April 25, setting an unprecedented case in Albania for a political party to rule the country for three consecutive mandates, according to reports. Rama revealed the names of his new cabinet during an Assembly meeting on Thursday, where 12 out of 16 ministers will be women.

In the new cabinet, Arben Ahmetaj, former economy minister, will replace Erion Brace as the new deputy prime minister, who resigned from his post earlier this week after running this post for eight years. Ulsi Manja, former head of the Parliamentary Committee on Legal Affairs in the parliament, has been appointed as the new justice minister.

In addition, Rama announced three new state ministers -- Minister of State for Youth Bora Muzhaqi, Minister of State for Standards and Services Milva Ikonomi and Minister of State for the Protection of Entrepreneurship Edona Bilali. Rama acknowledged that assigning public-sector jobs for ruling party members and their relatives has become an important part of Albanian politics.

New Zealand police kill a violent extremist" inspired by Islamic State - PM says 'terrorist attack'

Guidelines for international travellers: RT-PCR mandatory on arrival from 7 more nations

Sources reveals 58 people killed in Houthi large-scale attacks against Yemen's Marib
India on Thursday made RT-PCR test compulsory for passengers arriving from 7 more nations, including South Africa, Bangladesh and China, owing to a rise in new Covid-19 strains. The Health Ministry imposed restrictions on passengers from additional countries, citing the reports of new mutations in SARS-CoV-2 and the rising number of "Variants of Concern (VOCs) and Variants of Interest (Vols) globally".

The Ministry said to the list of UK, EU and Middle East more countries including South Africa, Bangladesh, Botswana, China, Mauritius, New Zealand and Zimbabwe. International travellers from all these countries would now need RTPCR negative reports to get on flights to India and RTPCR testing upon arrival.

"Considering the reports of new mutations in SARS-CoV-2 and rising number of Variants of Concern and Variants of Interest globally, the following countries have been added in the scope of part B of MoHFW's Guidelines on International Arrival, in addition to existing Countries in "Part-B" i.e. United Kingdom, Europe and the Middle East," Bhushan said in a statement. The countries including South Africa, Bangladesh, Botswana, China, Mauritius, New Zealand and Zimbabwe. International travellers from all these countries would now need RTPCR negative reports to get on flights to India and RTPCR testing upon arrival here," it added.

Sources reveals 58 people killed in Houthi large-scale attacks against Yemen's Marib

Northern Alliance killed 40 Taliban militants, gunfire resonated in Panjsheer Valley

Left royal family for love, Japan's princess is to MARRY this common man now
A man was shot dead by New Zealand police on Friday after assaulting at least six people at a supermarket in Auckland city and the incident has been termed by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern as a terrorist attack carried out by a Sri Lankan national who was under surveillance.

Several shoppers were understood to have suffered serious injuries and have been taken to the Auckland City Hospital's emergency department with status 1, meaning the life-threatening condition, Xinhua news agency quoted the NZ Herald newspaper as saying in a report.

Auckland police confirmed that a man in a supermarket injured multiple people, who was shot and died at the scene. Armed police have blocked off the roads nearby and at least 10 police vehicles were currently around the mall, where the supermarket is located. Addressing the media after the incident, Ardern said the perpetrator was killed within 60 seconds of the attack by police, according to BBC reports.

Ardern said the man had arrived in New Zealand in October 2011 and became a person of a national security interest in 2016. He added that he been under constant monitoring and heavy surveillance due to concerns about his ideology".

Guidelines for international travellers: RT-PCR mandatory on arrival from 7 more nations

Sources reveals 58 people killed in Houthi large-scale attacks against Yemen's Marib

Northern Alliance killed 40 Taliban militants, gunfire resonated in Panjsheer Valley
Yemen: The Houthi militia launched large-scale attacks against the Yemen's government forces stationed in the country's oil-rich province of Marib on Thursday, according to reports.

According to official statement, "Several areas and positions controlled by the government forces were heavily attacked by the Houthis who are expanding their military operations aimed at capturing Marib" Ferocious battles are still taking place between the two warring sides in various areas of Marib amid intensified airstrikes, the source added.

During the past 48 hours, 40 Houthis and 18 soldiers of the Saudi-backed Yemeni government forces were killed, he confirmed. He clarified that scores of the Houthi fighters were left injured as warplanes of the Saudi Arabia-led coalition continued striking their positions in Marib.

Another official of the government forces said before media that "a series of Saudi-led airstrikes largely participated in aborting the Houthi offensive against Marib". He said that "hundreds of new Houthi fighters from other northern provinces were dispatched to Marib as reinforcements for the rebel militia". The Houthis also intensified their random shelling against the government-controlled areas in Marib's southern part, causing civilian casualties, according to the official. In February, the Houthis began a major offensive on Marib in an attempt to seize control of the oil-rich province, the government's last northern stronghold. The UN has warned that the offensive on Marib, which hosts nearly 1 million internally displaced people, could lead to a major humanitarian catastrophe.

Northern Alliance killed 40 Taliban militants, gunfire resonated in Panjsheer Valley

Left royal family for love, Japan's princess is to MARRY this common man now

Placards in hands, slogans on tongues, Afghan women protest against Terror group
Musician Mikis Theodorakis has died in Athens at the age of 96. He rose to fame with the music for the 1964 film Zorba the Greek, Zorba the Greek telling the story of an English writer in Crete whose life turns upside down when he meets Alexis Zorba, a sociable farmer. The scene when Zorba dances barefoot on the beach became a popular image of Greek culture. The subject of the film, which won three Oscars, remains perhaps the most famous piece of Greek music more than half a century later.

"Today we lost a part of the soul of the Greek," wrote Culture Minister Lena Mendoni on Twitter, "the one who sang poetry for all Greeks". The song Antonis composed by him became popular among the Afghans. It was sung in 2001 by residents of Kabul who congratulated Northern Coalition troops for entering the city and expelling the Taliban. The same song was the subject of the 1969 Costa-Gavras-directed film Z, whose soundtrack won the 1970 BAFTA Award for Best Film Music.

Theodorkis himself was a leftist and at times communist for most of his life. In 1947, during the civil war that followed World War II, he was arrested and tortured. Theodorakis' lyrics were always deeply political. He was repeatedly imprisoned for his beliefs and sent into exile within Greece.

New Zealand police kill a violent extremist" inspired by Islamic State - PM says 'terrorist attack'

Guidelines for international travellers: RT-PCR mandatory on arrival from 7 more nations

Sources reveals 58 people killed in Houthi large-scale attacks against Yemen's Marib
Description

With live music offered just about every night, K.J. Farrell's is a must-visit for music fans in Nassau County. The venue has a full menu of appetizers, pizzas, tacos, sliders, and more to snack on during each show. Fivestone will be performing on this particular date.
Workforce

Federal managers seek hard info on COVID-19 testing plans

Frontline agency managers and executives have questions about how they'll implement the Biden administration's vaccination and testing requirements, they said in an Aug. 25 letter to top administration officials released publicly on Thursday.

The Government Managers Coalition, a coalition of five executive and management professional associations collectively representing over 250,000 federal executives and managers, told administration officials that they're concerned with how requirements laid down by the administration in July will be implemented. Under the scheme, feds either have to attest that they've been vaccinated or follow strict testing, masking and distancing requirements.

The letter was sent to White House Coordinator of the COVID-19 Response Jeff Zients, Office of Personnel Management Director, Kiran Ahuja and General Services Administration head Robin Carnahan.

Since the release of the new requirements, a task force with representatives from the White House COVID-19 response team, GSA, OPM and the Office of Management and Budget have released guidance about the new policies.

But the situation requires a "a paradigm shift" for how management agencies help agencies carry out policies, said Senior Executive Association President Bob Corsi in a statement about the letter.

"These are unprecedented times which require innovative problem-solving techniques that unite all levels of government," he said. "We cannot continue the same failed approach of tossing vague, general guidance at agencies in the hopes they can work out the kinks. This only causes disparate impacts and duplicative work."

One major question: how agencies will pay for the COVID-19 testing, something the White House has said will be their responsibility. As the letter points out, agencies weren't appropriated funds for this exact purpose.

The letter's authors also are also concerned about managers' role and ability to lay out the policies on the ground.

"Site managers are not trained nor equipped to develop and implement a rigorous healthcare screening protocol. Such a task, in addition to their day-to-day activities and increased hours worked during the pandemic, will undoubtedly lead to inefficiencies in their core responsibilities, as well as an inadequate screening protocol," the letter says.

Typically, federal supervisors go through training upon reaching that role, said Stephanie Rapp-Tully, a partner at Tully Rinckey who specializes in federal employment law.

"Tasking managers with standing up a public health testing structure and a system for keeping personal health data private, is asking a great deal from agencies from across government with no prior expertise in this area. This effort requires many more answers to actually implement the guidance on the ground," said Federal Managers Association President Craig Carter in a statement.

The group also raised concerns about disciplining noncompliant employees. The administration has said that feds who don't comply with testing requirements or lie about their vaccination status would face discipline.

"Managers are likely to face employment disputes enforcing COVID-19 protocols, especially as the Administration strengthens potential disciplinary consequences to employees. How will agencies protect and support these managers?" they wrote. "Managers are left choosing accountability for a worker who is disregarding the rules or having sufficient staffing to perform the central duties they are tasked with."

The group also wrote that they're unsure how the Safer Federal Workforce Task Force and OPM are guaranteeing that agencies comply with their guidance. Agencies "often" interpret the same OPM guidance differently, they wrote.

Finally, the coalition also flagged staffing concerns stemming from the effects of the pandemic on managers.

With staffing and safety requirements in the workplace, many managers have had to take on additional duties like opening mail and scanning documents for employees that can't come into the office, they said.

"Consequently, we are observing managers voluntarily downgrading their positions, returning to bargaining unit eligible line roles or simply putting in paperwork for retirement and in some cases disability," they wrote. "We are seeing many employees unwilling to step up and apply for management positions."

The group requested that the White House monitor and make plans to remedy the staffing issues and meet with them on the vaccination and testing requirements.
Congress

House infrastructure bill includes over $3 billion for federal tech

The House Oversight and Reform Committee voted to approve over $3 billion for federal tech initiatives, including another billion dollar investment into the Technology Modernization Fund, on Thursday.

They're tucked into the committee's part of the budget reconciliation package Democrats are using to enact the Biden administration's Build Back Better infrastructure agenda, along with another bipartisan infrastructure bill. The committee voted to approve their committee print after a markup on Thursday.

"If the technology infrastructure for delivering federal assistance is unreliable or unavailable, then no amount of policy or expertise, political will, or subject matter expertise can save this nation," said Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), chair of the Subcommittee on Government Operations, during the markup. "These IT investments will modernize legacy systems and help us craft the workforce we need to drive government into the digital government future."

During the markup, the committee approved an amendment from Connolly with several IT measures, including $1 billion in funding for TMF, which received the same amount from the American Rescue Plan. Currently, the board that oversees the fund is working to implement that funding.

Connolly's amendment also includes $2 billion for the General Services Administration's Federal Citizen Services Fund, an office charged with supporting interagency IT projects ranging from login.gov to FedRAMP.

The amendment also includes $350 million for the Office of Management and Budget's Information Technology Oversight and Reform account, which contributes funding for U.S. Digital Service staffing and administration.

Outside of that amendment, the bill also has $60 million to the National Archives and Records Administration to clear backlogs and improve cybersecurity.

NARA's National Personnel Records Center holds veterans records that are key parts of the disability compensation and pension claims for veterans. The majority of them are paper-based. During the pandemic, shuttered centers have contributed to backlogs of records requests, which has in turn increased a backlog of pending claims at the Veterans Benefits Administration.

The agency is partnering with the VA for mass digitization of NPRC holdings, which began Sept 1 and will ramp up this month, according to a NARA spokesperson.

The NRPC is also developing functionality to support in-stack digitization, which "will provide NPRC staff with the ability to digitize documents in records storage areas immediately upon retrieving a record from storage," they said. "The digitized documents will be ingested into its production system and made available for the remote servicing of reference requests."

The bill also includes $12 billion to electrify the General Services Administration and United States Postal Service vehicle fleets.
SINGAPORE, September 03, 2021--(BUSINESS WIRE)--AM Best has affirmed the Financial Strength Rating of B++ (Good) and the Long-Term Issuer Credit Rating of "bbb+" (Good) of The New India Assurance Company Limited (New India) (India). The outlook of these Credit Ratings (ratings) is stable.

The ratings reflect New Indias balance sheet strength, which AM Best assesses as very strong, as well as its adequate operating performance, favourable business profile and marginal enterprise risk management (ERM). The ratings also factor in a neutral impact from the companys ultimate majority ownership by the Government of India.

New Indias balance sheet strength assessment is underpinned by its risk-adjusted capitalisation, which remained at the strongest level in fiscal year 2021, as measured by Bests Capital Adequacy Ratio (BCAR). In addition, a large absolute capital base of INR 376.8 billion (USD 5.1 billion) at the end of fiscal year 2021 continues to enable the company to provide significant underwriting capacity and insure large risks domestically and overseas. Nevertheless, New India is exposed to high market risk arising from a notable allocation to domestic equity investments, with market value fluctuations amid the COVID-19 pandemic having resulted in elevated volatility in the companys reported shareholders equity in recent years. The company is also subject to moderate reserving risk due to its exposure to long-tail motor third-party liability insurance business in India.

The companys operating performance is assessed as adequate. New India has reported positive operating results over the past five years, with an average return-on-equity ratio of 3.9% (fiscal years 20172021). However, underwriting losses have remained persistent and significant in size as a result of stiff market competition in many lines of business in India and restrictive tariff rates for motor third-party liability insurance. Investment income, including interest and dividend income, as well as realised gains from the sale of equity investments, has been crucial in offsetting underwriting losses, which has enabled the company to report positive earnings over the past five years. In the near-to-medium term, AM Best expects the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and challenging market conditions to continue to pressure the companys underwriting and investment activities, albeit overall operating results are expected to remain profitable.

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New Indias favourable business profile assessment reflects its market position as the largest non-life insurer in India in terms of gross premiums written, capital size and total assets in fiscal year 2021. Its underwriting portfolio is considered to be well-diversified by line of business, distribution channels and geographically. In addition, the company is the only direct insurer in India with considerable overseas operations, which provide a level of diversification to its domestic portfolio. While the domestic market continues to present significant growth opportunities for New India, intense competition in the largest lines of motor and health business continue to drive premium rate inadequacies and pressure underwriting margins.

The companys ERM is assessed as marginal with the profile of some key risks viewed to exceed the associated risk management capabilities. The companys audited financial statements have been qualified for several years as a result of internal control weakness in the reconciliation of certain items and accounts. While significant progress has been made by the company in fiscal year 2021 to reduce the number of items leading to the qualified audit opinions, some unresolved matters remain. AM Best notes that the company is in the process of further strengthening its internal controls and audit, specifically in the area of data input and validation. Overall, whilst New India continues to take actions aimed at strengthening its ERM, there remains a gap between the companys ERM framework and the global standards for an organisation of its scale.

Ratings are communicated to rated entities prior to publication. Unless stated otherwise, the ratings were not amended subsequent to that communication.

This press release relates to Credit Ratings that have been published on AM Bests 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 Bests Recent Rating Activity web page. For additional information regarding the use and limitations of Credit Rating opinions, please view Guide to Bests Credit Ratings. For information on the proper use of Bests Credit Ratings, Bests Preliminary Credit Assessments and AM Best press releases, please view Guide to Proper Use of Bests Ratings & Assessments.

AM Best is a global credit rating agency, news publisher and data analytics provider specialising 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/20210903005328/en/

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TechnologyOne, an Australian SaaS enterprise, has agreed to acquire U.K.-based higher education software provider Scientia for 12 million/$16.6 million in cash.

TechnologyOne claims to have 75% of higher education institutions in Australia using its software, while Scientia claims 50% market share in the U.K.

The acquisition includes an initial payment of 6 million and further payments.

Adrian Di Marco, TechnologyOne founder and executive chairman said:

This is our companys first international acquisition and it demonstrates our deep commitment to serving the higher education sector and the U.K. market. The unique IP and market-leading functionality of Scientias product supports our vision of delivering enterprise software that is incredibly easy to use.

Commenting, Michelle Gillespie, registrar and director of Student Administration and Library Services at Swinburne University of Technology said: The one thing that students care most about is their timetable. Being able to fully integrate a schedule into the full student experience is very important, and an exciting step for those universities  like Swinburne  that use TechnologyOnes student management system.
Steve Morris, Founder and Chairman of EXIT Realty Corp. International, today announced key executive appointments in celebration of the company's 25th anniversary.

Featured Image for EXIT Realty Corp. International

Featured Image for EXIT Realty Corp. International

Featured Image for EXIT Realty Corp. International

MISSISSAUGA, Ontario, Sept. 03, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Tami Bonnell has been appointed Co-Chair of EXIT's international organization. Mrs. Bonnell joined EXIT Realty in 1999 and was appointed Chief Executive Officer in 2012. She is a 40-year veteran of the real estate industry and is an internationally renowned and respected leader. Mrs. Bonnell has been recognized as one of the 200 most powerful and influential people in residential real estate and among the top 10 women leaders.

Craig Witt has been appointed CEO of the company's U.S. organization. Mr. Witt has been with EXIT Realty since 2004. He owned and operated multiple EXIT Realty franchises, rapidly rising through the ranks, and in 2017 he assumed the role of President of the company's U.S. Division. Mr. Witt works with all levels of the organization to expand EXIT's footprint across the U.S.

Lori Muller has been appointed President, U.S. Division. Joining the company in 2007, until recently Mrs. Muller was the owner of three EXIT Realty brokerages in Wisconsin and was appointed Vice President of the company's U.S. Division in 2020. She has a passion for growing people and has served the National Association of REALTORS and Women's Council of REALTORS in a leadership capacity both locally and nationally.

Joyce Paron has been appointed CEO of the company's Canadian organization. Ms. Paron joined EXIT Realty in 1997 within months of the company's launch as a District Owner selling franchises in Ontario. Her entrepreneurial drive, along with a background in land development and business management were the precursors to her being named President of the Canadian Division for EXIT in 2001.

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These appointments coincide with the company's 25th anniversary being celebrated on September 3.

"These individuals all have long and esteemed careers with EXIT Realty and unparalleled depth of knowledge and wisdom," said Mr. Morris. "They work harmoniously in the leadership of our company and will continue to shepherd our tremendous growth under my direction as Founder and Chairman. We heartily thank them for their dedicated service and offer them our warmest congratulations."

About EXIT Realty: EXIT Realty is a company founded and built on human potential. A full service, forward-thinking, real estate franchisor with offices across North America, EXIT has to-date paid out more than a half a billion dollars in single-level residual income to its associates. The Expert Marketing Suite including geolocation Smart Sign technology gives sellers an edge in a competitive marketplace. A portion of every transaction fee received by EXIT Realty Corp. International is applied to its charitable fund, and to-date, $6 million has been allocated to charity. For more information, please visit www.exitrealty.com and www.joinexitrealty.com .

Media Contact:

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SEATTLE, Sept. 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- ClearSign Technologies Corporation (Nasdaq: CLIR) ("ClearSign" or the "Company"), an emerging leader in industrial combustion and sensing technologies that improve energy, operational efficiency and safety while dramatically reducing emissions, announces that it has received a verbal notification from ExxonMobil to put on hold the testing of its ClearSign Core process burners to be installed at the Baytown, Texas refinery. The rationale for the notification was that there is now insufficient time for ExxonMobil to engineer their inclusion during the targeted 2022 refinery turnaround.

ClearSign Logo (PRNewsFoto/ClearSign Combustion Corporation) (PRNewsfoto/ClearSign Combustion Corporation)

"We were informed late yesterday on a call that ExxonMobil was putting this project on hold," said Jim Deller, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer of ClearSign. "This news was a surprise and obviously disappointing. We believe that we have met all of the necessary qualifications and were looking forward to completing the final product demonstration and subsequent installation in Baytown. Although these burners would have been but one of our growing number of installations, we were particularly excited about demonstrating the capabilities of these burners because of the extensive operating flexibility we have developed to meet the expansive needs of the ExxonMobil refinery while also showcasing ClearSign Core's unique ability to greatly reduce NOx emissions technology," concluded Dr. Deller.

As a reminder ClearSign will hold its previously announced investor call on Wednesday, September 8, 2021 at 5:00 PM ET. Investors interested in participating on the live call can dial 1-866-372-4653 within the U.S. or 1-412-902-4217 from abroad. Investors can also access the call online through a listen-only webcast at https://www.webcaster4.com/Webcast/Page/987/42573 or on the investor relations section of the Company's website at http://ir.clearsign.com/overview.

About ClearSign Technologies Corporation

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ClearSign Technologies Corporation designs and develops products and technologies for the purpose of improving key performance characteristics of industrial and commercial systems, including operational performance, energy efficiency, emission reduction, safety and overall cost-effectiveness. Our patented technologies, embedded in established OEM products as ClearSign Core, and ClearSign Eye and other sensing configurations, enhance the performance of combustion systems and fuel safety systems in a broad range of markets, including the energy (upstream oil production and down-stream refining), commercial/industrial boiler, chemical, petrochemical, transport and power industries. For more information, please visit www.clearsign.com.

Cautionary note on forward-looking statements

All statements in this press release that are not based on historical fact are "forward-looking statements." You can find many (but not all) of these statements by looking for words such as "approximates," "believes," "hopes," "expects," "anticipates," "estimates," "projects," "intends," "plans," "would," "should," "could," "may," "will" or other similar expressions. While management has based any forward-looking statements included in this press release on its current expectations, the information on which such expectations were based may change. These forward-looking statements rely on a number of assumptions concerning future events and are subject to a number of risks, uncertainties and other factors, many of which are outside of our control, that could cause actual results to materially differ from such statements. Such risks, uncertainties and other factors include, but are not limited to, general business and economic conditions, the performance of management and our employees, the performance of our products, our ability to obtain financing, competition, whether our technology will be accepted and adopted and other factors identified in our Annual Report on Form 10-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission and available at www.sec.gov and other factors that are detailed in our periodic and current reports available for review at www.sec.gov. Furthermore, we operate in a competitive environment where new and unanticipated risks may arise. Accordingly, investors should not place any reliance on forward-looking statements as a prediction of actual results. We disclaim any intention to, and undertake no obligation to, update or revise forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances that subsequently occur or of which we hereafter become aware.

Cision

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SOURCE ClearSign Technologies Corporation
This article was originally published on ETFTrends.com.

Coffee futures and related exchange traded notes jumped on Monday as another round of poor weather forecasts threatened to weigh on an already-stressed crop outlook in Brazil, the world's biggest coffee producer.

The iPath Series B Bloomberg Coffee Subindex Total Return ETN (NYSEArca: JO) increased 4.4% Monday and was up 41.0% year-to-date. Meanwhile, ICE Coffee C futures gained 4.0% to $1.999 per pound.

jo ytd

While weekend rains helped bring some moisture to the drought-stricken central regions of Brazil, including Mato Grosso do Sul, parts of Parana, and Sao Paulo, Donald Keeney, senior meteorologist for Maxar Technologies Inc warned in Bloomberg that the the rainfall didnt spread out to Minas Gerais, the top coffee-growing region.

Additionally, major arabica crop areas in Sao Paulo and Minas also face dry weather conditions and above-average temperatures over the next two weeks, according to Somar Meteorologia.

Prices on arabic coffee, which is the favored bean for many companies like Starbucks Corp, have surged this year due to a devastating drought that has decimated the crop outlook in Brazil for 2021.

The main driver is Brazils forecast, Hernando de la Roche, senior vice president for StoneX Financial Inc., told Bloomberg. This will remain a weather market for the next few weeks, at least until the typical arrival of the rainy season by the second half of September.

Additionally, traders are weighing the crop outlook against the potential negative impact of COVID-19 variants on the economy and demand, de la Roche added.

This isn't the only weather problem that Brazil's coffee producers have had to contend with. Widespread frosts have previously hit Brazil's coffee regions and appeared to have decimated the following years Brazilian coffee production outlook. Farmers and traders had been relying on the 2022 harvest to help recover the low stockpiles after a drought caused a significantly smaller crop.

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In addition, too many cloudy days have stunted growth in coffee crops across Columbia, the second-biggest exporter of arabica. COVID-related lockdowns are also weighing on export flows out of Vietnam, the biggest exporter of robusta beans traded on London exchanges.

For more information on the commodities market, visit our commodity ETFs category.

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Eastern Europe has become a hotbed for cryptocurrency scams, according to a new analysis, with addresses in the region having a high rate of exposure to illicit transactions  second to only Africa.

A new report from Chainalysis, a blockchain forensics firm, mapped out the crypto crime landscape of Eastern Europe over the past year. Notably, a little-known billion dollar Ponzi scheme called Finiko accounted for more than half of funds in the region sent to scam addresses.

Indeed, crypto scams emanating from the region's 290 million strong population are only dwarfed by the continent of Africa, which has a far larger estimated population  1.3 billion people. According to the report, illegal crypto activity made up 0.5 percent of total crypto value, or more than $400 million sent and received from Eastern Europe.

With a market capitalization already at $2 trillion, half a percent of all the regions crypto transactions is concerning to say the least, said Tyler Moffitt, a senior security analyst with Canada-based information security company, OpenText.

Even if the market continues to rise every four or five years, illicit crypto flows should only keep growing, especially in places like Eastern Europe where cybercrime is abundant, he added.

And the stakes are higher as scams proliferate. In the past year, the Russia-based Ponzi scheme and exit scam called Finiko dominated Eastern Europes illicit crypto flows. According to Chainanalysis' report, more than 60% of all cryptocurrency sent from the region went to addresses attributed to TheFiniko.com.

An exit scam is a crypto-based trap whereby promoters (or founders) of an online business vanish without returning investor holdings. Well known perpetrators include the high-yield investment program and cryptocurrency, Bitconnect; and Canada-based bitcoin exchange, Quadriga, which lost $215 million of customer funds after its founder mysteriously died on his honeymoon.

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More recently, an alleged $3.6 billion worth of crypto was stolen from investors who used the South Africa-based crypto platform, Africrypt.

Other major crypto scams highlighted by Chainanalysis included J-Enco, which accounted for half the illicit crypto flows in Eastern Asia, and Mirror Trading International (MTI), another South Africa-based scam that received more than 60 percent of illicit crypto flows on the continent before its founder flew the coup.

'Like Uber or Amazon Fresh'

This Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) computer screen image shows an online forum called "Dark Market" where it educates users where to buy skimming devices to penetrate bank accounts, how to distribute malware through spam, and buy stolen credit cards among other things. REUTERS/FBI/Handout (UNITED STATES CONFLICT SOCIETY BUSINESS SCI TECH)

In the past year, Eastern Europe received approximately $950 million in crypto from scam addresses, and the region also sends more cryptocurrency to 'dark net' markets than any other. This comes largely from Hydra market, a dark web market place that caters only to users in Russian-speaking countries throughout the region.

Think of [Hydra market] as a competitor to Uber or Amazon Fresh but with the items for sale to include guns, drugs, false IDs, or anything else you covet on the black market, much of the same way that we might have groceries delivered to us, said Carol Alexis Chen, a partner with the global law firm Winston & Strawn. She specializes in investigating and prosecuting large-scale white collar crime.

Eastern Europes massive illicit volume is unsurprising to Chen. She pointed out that by creating a widely expanding market for buyers and sellers, decentralized finance (DeFi) has offered criminals new opportunities to take advantage of the social and economic fallout stemming from COVID-19.

While the majority of money flooding into crypto over the past year appears legitimate, regulators have already begun to threaten crackdowns on questionable projects that offer higher than usual gains.

On Wednesday, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commissioner Gary Gensler pointed out that the more than $2 trillion asset class is "truly global" and "could continue to be a catalyst for change in the fields of finance and money."

But he also reiterated the need to incorporate crypto into global public policy in order to protect investors, hinting at the DeFi and stable space.

"We've seen a lot of frauds, scams and abuse in the field," Gensler told an audience at the European Union's Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs."We're focused on platforms, whether it's trading or lending."

Later that day, the SEC charged the founder of the crypto exchange platform, BitConnect, with fraudulently raising $2 billion dollars from retail investors.

'That's how they get you'

Source: Chainalysis

Launched in Russia in 2019 before going international the next year, Finiko once described itself as an automated profit-generating system on its now defunct website.

The company offered a number of haphazard investment programs such as loan repayments and discounts for buying cars or real estate. Its main deal, a supposed stablecoin called CFR, guaranteed investors a 20 to 30 percent monthly return, at a minimum payment of $1000 worth of Bitcoin or Tether.

Unlike most cryptocurrencies which are volatile, stablecoin prices dont fluctuate. However, they can be staked for yield on DeFi platforms, such as Uniswap or SushiSwap.

A stablecoin that guarantees to pay you 30 percent returns is not real, said OpenText's Moffitt. The analyst, who invests in cryptocurrency, admitted to falling prey to an Ethereum scam several years earlier.

Anyone who buys into a scam desperately needs money. Some of Finikos initial investors might have even made a return, at the beginning of the Ponzi," Moffitt said. "They might have also thought they were geniuses onto something no one else could see. Thats how they get you.

And Chainalysis found that Finiko received more than $1.5 billion worth of cryptocurrency between December 2019 and August 2021 worldwide.

With the majority of volume coming from large and high exchanges, the scheme amounts to one of the largest crypto investment frauds perpetrated against investors, predominantly in Russian and Ukraine. This stands in stark contrast to the territorys burgeoning ransomware industry, which often uses code that specifically restricts hurting victims within the regions countries.

Three of Finikos founders were arrested by Russian authorities back in December 2020. In May, Finiko announced the launch of another cryptocurrency, FNK token. This cryptocurrencys price and market cap varies widely based on cryptocurrency price tracking websites  but all show a massive price spike on June 17, when Finiko transferred all depositor settlements from into FNK tokens.

Withdrawal issues began in July shortly after the FNK price collapsed according to the blog, BehindMLM which tracks Ponzi schemes and multi-level marketing scams.

In July, Finikos main founder and Instagram Influencer, Kirill Doronin, withdrew all the companys remaining funds from Turkey, then returned to Russia  leaving his investors on the hook for millions.

Authorities detained Doronin and put him on trial in his hometown in the Russian city of Kazan. In a Yotube video posted 5 months earlier titled, Money Now, Money Tomorrow, Money Later, Doronin explained to his audience, no one can give us any guarantees in this world. Uncertainty is the norm. Were open to it.

David Hollerith covers cryptocurrency for Yahoo Finance. Follow him @dshollers.

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Keeping the step counts and calory meter running while doing good

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Sept. 3, 2021 /PR Newswire/ -- Etex Group, a building materials manufacturer kick started the Etex Challenge to contribute to the society driven through the company's purpose of "Inspiring Ways of Living", made possible by putting its own employees first and ensuring their well-being. The Etex challenge tracked employees' daily active periods to win the grand cash prize to be donated to a local charity of choosing.

Virtual cheque giving ceremony with Pertiwi President, Datuk Munirah and Etex Malaysia Director, Eric Yap

A virtual cheque giving ceremony was held on August 26 with the online presence of Pertiwi President, Datuk Munirah Abdul Hamid and Etex Malaysia Director, Eric Yap to officiate the donation of RM25,090 to Pertiwi.

The effort encouraged Etex's 11,000 employee workforce to remain active whilst working together as a team to bring about a positive change. This global initiative serves to remind all employees to work towards an attainable goal with every active step and effort towards a meaningful purpose.

Pertiwi, a non-governmental organization involved in charitable projects dedicated towards addressing the welfare needs of women, children, hard-core poor and homeless people, was selected as the lockdown restriction and severity of COVID-19 cases in Malaysia have limited the reach to vulnerable communities.

"Through this challenge, the Etex family demonstrated their commitment to our purpose, 'Inspiring of Living', to further motivate themselves to win the challenge and contribute back to society," said Etex Malaysia Director, Eric Yap.

Etex incorporates "connect & care" values in daily tasks to strengthen working relationships and to continuously motivate as seen in daily commitments to remain active while staying connected globally by sharing active time statistics and exercising initiatives through the Oopla App and internal channels.

About Etex

Etex is a global building material manufacturer and pioneer in lightweight construction. Etex wants to inspire people around the world to build living spaces that are ever more safe, sustainable, smart and beautiful.

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Founded in 1905, headquartered in Zaventem, Belgium, Etex is a family-owned company with more than 11,000 employees globally. It operates more than 110 production sites in 42 countries and recorded a revenue of EUR 2.6 billion and a REBITDA of EUR 484 million in 2020. Etex fosters a collaborative and caring culture, a pioneering spirit and a passion to always do better for its customers.

Etex has six R&D centres supporting four global sales divisions:

Building Performance: dry construction solutions including plasterboards and fibre cement boards, plasters and formulated products, passive fire protection and associated products.

Exteriors: a range of aesthetic fibre cement materials for use in agriculture, architectural and residential exteriors.

Industry: fire protection and high-performance insulation products for the construction and OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) industries.

New Ways: high-tech offsite modular solutions based on wood and steel framing

Etex is Inspiring Ways of Living, for more information, please visit our website: www.etexgroup.com

About Oopla

Oopla is a lifestyle game to get everybody active, engaged and better connected. Oopla is a series of 28-day activity challenges for absolutely everybody. Oopla is a simple app that's all about creating daily habits, managing your daily routines and always dedicating time towards physical activity. No more counting steps or calories. Oopla converts activity distance or duration into points, making you feel better about yourself and helping you become more productive and confident. It is available online at www.oopla.app

Etex is Inspiring Ways of Living, for more information, please visit our website: www.etexgroup.com

SOURCE Etex Malaysia
Fujifilm has announced the latest addition to its GFX family of cameras. Body-only, the new GFX 50S II will debut at $3,999, making it the companys most affordable medium format camera to date. Thats still a lot of cash to put down to get the tonality and micro-contrasts you can only find on a medium format camera, but its significantly less than the $5,999 and $5,499 Fujifilm sells the GFX 100S and GFX 50S for at the moment.

Fujifilm GFX 50S II

Headline features of the GFX 50S II include a 51.4-megapixel sensor thats 1.7 times larger than what youll find on a full-frame camera like the Sony A7 III , five-axis in-body stabilization Fujifilm claims provides up to 6.5-stops of shake reduction and a body that weighs just under two pounds. According to Fujifilm, the GFX 50S II also features faster and more accurate autofocus than its predecessor thanks to the inclusion of its latest X-Processor 4. In practice, well have to see how quickly the GFX 50S II can acquire a subject since it uses a contrast-detection system, instead of the more modern phase-detect approach, for autofocus.

The GFX 50S II comes with 19 of Fujifilms signature film simulations. It also includes the pixel shift multi-shot feature the company introduced at the end of last year in an update to the GFX 100. In the case of the GFX 50S II, it allows you to combine 16 RAW captures into a 200-megapixel DNG file. One other notable feature is the 1.8-inch monochrome display on the top of the camera you can glance at to see your current capture settings. In addition to selling the camera on its own, Fujifilm will bundle the GFX 50S II with a new 35-70mm kit lens for $4,499. Fujifilm says the GFX 50S II should arrive in the US sometime in late October.

Fujifilm X-T30 II
Alexanda Kotey pleaded guilty to all counts of kidnap-taking and conspiracy to murder (Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)

A British member of an Isis cell that was nicknamed the Beatles and was notorious for its brutal kidnapping and beheading of hostages, has pleaded guilty in an American court.

Alexanda Kotey, 37, pleaded guilty to federal charges of hostage-taking resulting in death, conspiracy to commit murder against US citizens abroad, and conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists.

Reports said that family members of many of the victims killed by the cell of British jihaidis, nicknamed the Beatles because of their accents, were in court to watch the proceedings in Alexandria, Virginia.

Alexanda Kotey, an avowed member of Isis, pleaded guilty today to all charges that were brought against him in the United States for his participation in a horrific hostage-taking scheme that resulted in the deaths of four US citizens, as well as the deaths of British and Japanese nationals, in Syria, Acting United States Attorney and one of the lead prosecutors on the case, Raj Parekh, said in a statement. He has agreed to spend the rest of his life in prison.

Mr Parekh added: The four American victims in this case  James Wright Foley, Kayla Jean Mueller, Steven Joel Sotloff, and Peter Edward Kassig  were journalists and humanitarian aid workers, pillars of courage and kindness on the front lines of a perilous conflict.

They risked their lives to shine a light on the darkest corners of the globe and to help others most in need. The values that they personified to the very end are the antithesis of those embodied by the terrorist organisation that murdered them.

Kotey and fellow alleged Beatle El Shafee Elsheikh initially pleaded not guilty at a hearing last October. But in a move that indicated the British-born extremist had done a plea deal with prosecutors, he pled guilty to each of the charges levelled at him.

The New York Times reported that as family members of four of the cells victims sat in silence in the federal court, that has been frequently used to try terror and espionage cases, Kotey spoke without apparent emotion as he detailed his crimes.

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He said he had always known that the hostages would be killed if the US government did not meet their ransom demands, which he emailed to their families. If they did not meet those demands, it would ultimately result in either indefinite detention of those foreign captives or their execution.

Reports said that as part of the plea deal, Kotey must meet with the family members of the murdered hostages if they wish to talk to him. After he has served 15 years in the US, the UK will be allowed to try him.

Britain has accused the cell of being involved in the deaths of several other hostages, including Alan Henning, a British taxi driver who was delivering aid, and Scottish aid worker David Haines, as well as two Japanese nationals.

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The Washington Post reported that Kotey pleaded guilty to charges including hostage-taking resulting in the deaths of four Americans. and conspiring to support the terrorists who killed American, British and Japanese hostages.

In a statement after the hearing, Diane Foley, mother of James, said the plea had arrived on the anniversary of Sotloffs death.

She said she was grateful to all involved in apprehending Alexanda Kotey, investigating his brutal crimes against humanity, and making the strong case for his direct culpability in the death of her son as well as the deaths of Mueller, Sotloff, Kassig and and countless other innocents.

She added: This accountability is essential  if our country wishes to ever deter hostage taking, said Foley. I would like to use this moment to beseech our government to prioritize the return of all US nationals kidnapped or wrongfully detained abroad. Attacks on journalists are at an all-time high and our US hostage crisis is a silent epidemic, which few are aware of.

Kotey was captured in Syria by a Kurdish-backed militia in 2018, along with Elsheikh, reportedly as they sought to escape to Turkey as Western and Kurdish forces confronted Isis and started to retake land the extremists had taken in Syria and Iraq to establish a so-called caliphate.

Another member of the cell  Mohammed Emwazi, better known as Jihadi John  was killed in an airstrike in 2015 in Syria.

The fourth member of the group, Aine Davis, has been held in Turkey on terrorism charges.
Middlefield Canadian Income PCC Net Asset Value

Middlefield Canadian Income PCC

Middlefield Canadian Income - GBP PC

(a protected cell company incorporated in Jersey with registration number 93546)

Legal Entity Identifier: 2138007ENW3JEJXC8658

Net Asset Value

As at the close of business on 02 September 2021 the estimated unaudited Net Asset Value per share was 128.95 pence (including accrued income).

Investments in the Companys portfolio have been valued on a closing price basis.

Enquiries:

JTC Fund Solutions (Jersey) Limited

01534 700 000




Top companies covered in non-destructive testing market are Acuren Inspection Inc. (The U.S.), Ashtead Technology (The U.K.), Bosello High Technology Srl (Italy), Eddyfi (Canada), Fischer Technology Inc. (The U.S.), Fprimec Solutions Inc. (Canada), General Electric (The U.S.), Labquip NDT Limited (The U.K.), LynX Inspection (Canada), Magnaflux Corporation (The U.S.), Mistras Group (The U.S.), NDT Global GmbH & Co. Kg (The U.S.), Nikon Metrology (Japan), Olympus Corporation (Japan), Sonatest Ltd. (The U.K.), TD Williamson, Inc. (The U.S.), YXLON International GmbH (Denmark), and more players profiled in NDT market research report

Pune, India, Sept. 03, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The global non-destructive testing market is set to gain momentum from the ongoing technological advancement in wireless sensors and IoT for generating higher accuracy in testing results. In March 2021, for instance, Zetec Inc. unveiled a scanner named ElbowFlex for detecting flow accelerated corrosion and measuring wall thickness on pipe elbows. It can be used in industrial, manufacturing, petrochemical, and oil & gas applications. This information is given by Fortune Business Insights in a report, titled, Non-Destructive Testing (NDT) Market, 2021-2028. As per the report, the market size was USD 7,160.0 million in 2020. It is projected to grow from USD 6,300.0 million in 2021 to USD 14,800.0 million in 2028 at a CAGR of 12.98% in the forecast period.





COVID-19 Pandemic: Cancellation of Commercial Aircraft Delivery to Hamper Growth

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the aviation industry negatively because of the implementation of travel bans by governments of various countries worldwide. The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), for instance, declared that approximately 4.3 million air passengers were carried globally in 2019. This number declined drastically in 2020. Also, cancellation or postponement of commercial aircraft delivery is hampering the demand for NDT.

Story continues





Top companies covered in the non-destructive testing market are:

Acuren Inspection Inc. (The U.S.)

Ashtead Technology (The U.K.)

Bosello High Technology Srl (Italy)

Eddyfi (Canada)

Fischer Technology Inc. (The U.S.)

Fprimec Solutions Inc. (Canada)

General Electric (The U.S.)

Labquip NDT Limited (The U.K.)

LynX Inspection (Canada)

Magnaflux Corporation (The U.S.)

Mistras Group (The U.S.)

NDT Global GmbH & Co. Kg (The U.S.)

Nikon Metrology (Japan)

Olympus Corporation (Japan)

Sonatest Ltd. (The U.K.)

TD Williamson, Inc. (The U.S.)

YXLON International GmbH (Denmark)





Request a Sample PDF Brochure:

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Segments-

Ultrasonic Testing Segment Held 27.23% in 2020: Fortune Business Insights

By the technique, the market is segregated into ultrasonic testing, visual inspection testing, magnetic particle testing, liquid penetrant testing, eddy current testing, radiographic testing, and acoustic emission testing. Amongst these, the ultrasonic testing segment procured 27.23% in terms of the non-destructive testing market in 2020. This growth is attributable to the surging utilization of this technique in weld inspection, mapping, pipeline corrosion, and composite applications.





Report Coverage-

The NDT market report aims to analyze the market by considering contributions, prospects, and growth trends. It presents detailed profiles of every key player operating in the market to analyze their core competencies in each segment. Apart from that, it ensures to help our clients better understand the competitive developments, namely, joint ventures, acquisitions, new product developments, agreements, and expansion of production facilities.





Drivers & Restraints-

Urgent Need to Prevent Fatal Accidents will Accelerate Growth in Future

The aerospace industry has to maintain the highest quality standards regarding strength, structure, and materials as failure in checking leaks, or cracks can lead to fatal accidents. According to the International Air Transport Association (IATA), in 2020, the total number of accidents reached 38 from 52 in 2019. Similarly, the accident rate of IATA member airlines was 0.83 per million flights. This showcases an improvement in the prevalence of accidents. At the same time, the availability of various methods, such as radiographic, liquid penetration, eddy current testing, ground penetration, and acoustic emission testing would drive the NDT market growth in the near future. However, workers operating NDT equipment should have various certifications and high training levels to handle complex tasks. Unavailability of these can obstruct growth.





Regional Insights-

Presence of Fischer Technology and Magnaflux Corporation to Help North America Dominate

Geographically, North America earned USD 2,759.2 million in terms of revenue in 2020. It is expected to maintain its dominance throughout the forthcoming years because of the presence of various reputed NDT companies, such as Magnaflux Corporation, Acuren Inspection Inc., and Fischer Technology Inc. in the U.S. Europe, on the other hand, is anticipated to show a remarkable growth on account of the expansion of the automobile and aerospace industries in Germany and France, respectively.





Browse Summary of This Research Report:

https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/non-destructive-testing-ndt-market-103596





Competitive Landscape-

Key Players Focus on New Product Launches to Intensify Competition

The global market for non-destructive testing contains various companies. Most of them are striving to launch innovative products to cater to the high consumer demand across the globe. A few others are participating in the collaboration strategy to compete with their rivals.





Below is one of the latest industry developments:

January 2021: Olympus introduced RollerFORM XL scanners to enhance the inspection of composite components possessing large surface areas. It can be used in the aerospace and defense industry.





Detailed Table of Content:

Introduction Research Scope Market Segmentation Research Methodology Definitions and Assumptions

Executive Summary

Market Dynamics Market Drivers Market Restraints Market Opportunities

Key Insights Key Industry Developments  Key Contracts & Agreements, Mergers, Acquisitions and Partnerships Latest technological Advancements Porters Five Forces Analysis Supply Chain Analysis

Quantitative Insights- Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic on Non-Destructive Testing (NDT) Market Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Non-Destructive Testing (NDT) Market Steps taken by Industry/ Companies/ Governments to overcome the impact Key Developments in the Industry in Response to COVID-19 pandemic Potential opportunities due to COVID-19 Outbreak

Global Non-Destructive Testing (NDT) Market Analysis, Insights and Forecast, 2017-2028 Key Findings / Summary Market Size Estimates and Forecast 2017-2028  By Technique Ultrasonic Testing Visual Inspection Testing Magnetic Particle Testing Liquid Penetrant Testing Eddy-Current Testing Radiographic Testing Acoustic Emission Testing Market Size Estimates and Forecast 2017-2028  By Method Visual Inspection Surface Inspection Volumetric Inspection Others Market Size Estimates and Forecast 2017-2028  By Service Ultrasonic Inspection Equipment Rental Services Calibration Services Training Service Market Size Estimates and Forecast 2017-2028  By Vertical Manufacturing Oil & Gas Aerospace Public Infrastructure Automotive Power Generation Others



TOC Continued!







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Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - September 3, 2021) - Raffles Financial Group Limited (CSE: RICH) (FSE: 4VO) (OTCQX: RAFFF) is pleased to announce that the Company's quotation on the from the Pink market has been upgraded to the OTCQX Best Market, and its common shares will begin trading today on the OTCQX Best Market (the " OTCQX ") under the ticker symbol "RAFFF".

"The trading of RAFFF on the OTCQX now provides global investors the ease and convenience to tap into SE Asia's US$ 1 billion financial advisory market with Raffles Financial. We invite investors to grow and expand with us in the world's fastest growing economy of Indo-Pacific," says Dr Charlie In, Chairman/CEO of Raffles Financial Group Limited.

The Company is extremely pleased to have qualified for the OTCQX where companies must meet high financial standards, follow best practice corporate governance and demonstrate compliance with applicable securities laws. The OTCQX market includes both multinational companies seeking access to U.S. investors and domestic growth companies. To be traded on this tier, companies must undergo a qualitative review by OTC Markets Group.

There will be no change to Raffles Canadian listing as the Company's common shares will continue to trade on the Canadian Securities Exchange under the symbol " RICH".

About Raffles Financial Group Limited

Please visit www.rafflesfinancial.co for more information.

Raffles Financial Private Limited (a wholly-owned subsidiary of Raffles Financial Group Limited) is an exempt corporate finance advisory firm, registered with the Monetary Authority of Singapore, which provides public listing advisory and arrangement services. RFP serves as advisor for family trusts, family offices and investment funds.

For more information, please contact: Monica Kwok, Investor Relations

Phone: (65) 6909 8765

Email: monica@rafflesfinancial.co

Neither the Canadian Securities Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the Canadian Securities Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. Certain statements contained in this release may constitute "forward-looking statements" or "forward-looking information" (collectively "forward-looking information") as those terms are used in Canadian securities laws. These statements relate to future events or future performance. The use of any of the words "could", "intend", "expect", "believe", "will", "projected", "estimated", "anticipates" 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 Company's current belief or assumptions as to the outcome and timing of such future events.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/95492
DAVID PORTER and JENNIFER PELTZ Associated Press

NEW YORKA stunned U.S. East Coast faced a rising death toll, surging rivers, tornado damage and continuing calls for rescue Thursday after the remnants of Hurricane Ida walloped the region with record-breaking rain, drowning more than two dozen people in their homes and cars.

In a region that had been warned about potentially deadly flash flooding but hadnt braced for such a blow from the no-longer-hurricane, the storm killed at least 45 people from Maryland to New York on Wednesday night and Thursday morning.

At least 12 people died in New York City, police said, one of them in a car and 11 in flooded basement apartments that often serve as relatively affordable homes in one of the nations most expensive housing markets. Suburban Westchester County reported three deaths. Officials said at least 10 people died in New Jersey and at least five in Pennsylvania, including one killed by a falling tree and another who drowned in his car after helping his wife to escape, according to authorities. A Connecticut state police sergeant perished after his cruiser was swept away.

In New York City, Sophy Liu roused her son from bed and put him in a life jacket and inflatable swimming ring as their first-floor apartment flooded in Queens.
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Meanwhile, the identity of the tenants who will occupy a larger facility located across the street from the Amazon building is still unannounced. Holden said the nature of the business coming to that new 457,000-square-foot distribution facility has not been publicly disclosed.

They have not yet announced a tenant, but theyve built the building, he said.

Elsewhere on Centreport Parkway, just north of Mountain View Road and the FedEx facility, even more large-scale construction is underway.

Last November, Stafford County supervisors voted to rezone 178 wooded acres along the parkway to make way for a sprawling facility that includes about 3 million square feet of warehouse space. Taylor Chess, president of Peterson Cos., a property management firm based in Fairfax, did not name any companies or businesses that might one day occupy the space, but had told supervisors the project could ultimately be distribution, data [center], innovation or manufacturing.

On Friday, Holden said the county still does not know who the tenants of those new buildings will be. Holden said the site has since been graded and construction is imminent.
Shackelford added that the citys own interpretation of the churchs doctrine unnecessarily delves into issues of faith and doctrine in a way that violates the First Amendment.

Virginia law does not define the term minister, but the city argues that courts in the state have opined in the past that the term refers to the head of a religious congregation and a person set apart as the leader. Informal designations from churches are not applicable, the citys attorneys maintain.

This is not a case about who may be a minister of the petitioners church or about the free exercise of religion, the citys brief states. Instead this case is about the authority of a court to make a determination of relevant facts, based on the evidence, when adjudicating a churchs application for Virginias tax exemption for the residence of the minister of the church.

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A Fredericksburg Circuit Court ruling supported the citys decision earlier this year, agreeing with the citys assertion that the Stormses are not ministers according to the Book of Church Order, which governs the Presbyterian denomination. The Virginia Supreme Court refused the churchs petition for appeal.
Youngkin said its the most common complaint he hears on the campaign trail.

When the government stands in the way of work, when Virginia has regulations that restrict freedom and entrepreneurship, with Virginias high cost of living, it makes it difficult to actually achieve our dreams, Youngkin said. Government becomes the problem, not the solution.

During the event, McAuliffe doubled down on calls for businesses to require their employees be vaccinated, describing the approach as necessary to ensure Virginia and its economy can quickly recover from the pandemic.

Youngkin, meanwhile, continued to argue that individuals should not be required to be vaccinated  by their employers or the government. Youngkin said if he were elected governor, he would undo Gov. Ralph Northams vaccine mandate on the states workforce.

Youngkin blamed lagging vaccination rates on the government, saying lack of public education and access, particularly among underserved communities, are to blame.
MARSEILLE, France (AP)  French President Emmanuel Macron opened a global summit on biodiversity on Friday, saying the world needs to act promptly and decisively to safeguard the Earth's natural resources.

There is no vaccine for a sick planet," he warned.

In remarks at the World Conservation Congress in the southern city of Marseille, on Frances Mediterranean coast, Macron also promised an EU-wide initiative to curb pesticide overuse, which damages ecosystems. He called for better protection of the high seas, which largely dont fall under any national jurisdiction but are threatened by overfishing and other human activities.

Macron urged world leaders and institutions to safeguard biodiversity as they work to curb climate change and support human welfare. We must reinvent our trade policies so that they are coherent with our climate and biodiversity policies, he said.

The conference, held every four years, focuses on urgent action needed to protect wildlife. Thousands of people are set to attend the event, both in person and virtually, amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Several recent studies have shown that many of the planet's ecosystems are severely strained by global warming, deforestation, habitat degradation, pollution and other threats.
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP)  The battle over mask requirements to guard against coronavirus in Florida schools headed for a new legal phase Friday following an appeal by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis of a judge's ruling that a blanket ban on mask mandates exceeds the state government's authority.
The initial draft called for teaching children as young as first grade about gender identity and gender stereotypes and older children about homophobia, transphobia and vaginal, oral and anal sex.

Within days of the first draft being released, Republican Gov. Pete Ricketts called for scrapping the sex-education topics, which he said were developed with input from activists and promoted "gender ideology."

Fifty-two of Nebraska's 244 school districts adopted resolutions opposing the first draft, with additional districts expressing concerns, according to the office of Sen. Joni Albrecht. This week 27 of Nebraska's 49 state senators urged the board to halt development.

Nebraska Education Commissioner Matt Blomstedt acknowledged in July that concerns over the health standards had helped "fuel a crisis of confidence in the department and across the education system in Nebraska."

He promised then that some of the material critics found objectionable in the first draft would be removed, which was done.

Advocates for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer youth had hailed the initial draft as a positive step toward inclusion, but they expressed disappointment when the second draft stripped out most references to gender identity and sexual orientation.
I was sitting at a table eating my toast and drinking coffee when a colleague came over and told us about news reports of a plane crashing into the World Trade Center in New York City. We thought it had to be a terrible accident. We left the Mess shortly thereafter, unaware of the impact of the second plane.

Get out now

This story began as an assignment from the White House Historical Association to write about that day for its 9/11 20th-anniversary edition of the White House History Quarterly. I interviewed a range of White House staffers, from Cabinet officials and aides assisting the vice president and the National Security Council to the interns from around the country who had begun their service at the White House that momentous day.

In the minutes after we heard about the plane crashing, there was a rush of activity in the ground-floor hallway. I was directed by the Secret Service to get West Wing staff out of their offices and into the windowless Mess, which was thought to be the safest place at the time.
A senior manager with Afghanistans flag carrier Ariana Afghan Airlines has said that domestic flights were set to resume on September 3, AFP reported.

"We have received a green light from the Taliban and aviation authorities and plan to start flights today," Tamim Ahmadi told the news agency.

On September 2, Al-Jazeera quoted an Afghan civil aviation official as saying that domestic flights from Kabul airport will resume on September 3, though international flights will "take time" before restarting.

The Kabul airport has remained shut since August 31 after the United States fully withdrew its troops following 20 years of presence, but international efforts are under way to resume operations there to facilitate humanitarian assistance and further evacuations.

Qatari Foreign Minister Mohammad bin Abdulrahman al-Thani said on September 2 that the Gulf Arab state was working with the Taliban to reopen Kabul's airport as soon as possible.

Qatar was also working with Turkey for potential technical support to restart operations at the airport, he said, adding that he hoped for some good news" in the coming days.

Based on reporting by AFP
Pakistan's interior minister announced on September 2 that the border crossing into Afghanistan at Chaman would be temporarily closed. Fear of Taliban rule has caused tens of thousands of Afghans to flee the country, with many streaming into Pakistan via Afghanistans southeastern Kandahar Province. An RFE/RL Radio Mashaal correspondent on the scene said that despite the announcement, some Afghans with identity documents showing residence in the districts of Spin Boldak or Kandahar were still able to cross the border.
The Taliban appears to have moved closer to forming a new government in Afghanistan as the hard-line Islamist group continues to battle resistance fighters in a key opposition stronghold north of Kabul.

The militants face the challenge of shifting gears from being an insurgent group to governing power more than two weeks after seizing control of most of the country and days after the United States fully withdrew its troops after a 20-year presence.

Many of the world's leading nations are waiting to see who will be in the government and whether the next administration's actions will be in line with the Taliban's promises of being more moderate than during its brutal rule between 1996 and 2001, when it enforced a radical form of Islamic law.

"We have to judge them on their actions, not on their words," NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said on September 3. "We will hold them accountable to what they have promised -- on preventing Afghanistan being a safe haven for international terrorists, on human rights, especially rights of women, and on free passage."

The legitimacy of the new administration in the eyes of international donors and investors will be crucial for the economy, which is in tatters as the country battles drought and the ravages of a conflict that took the lives of an estimated 240,000 Afghans.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will travel to Geneva to convene a high level conference on aid for Afghanistan on September 13, his spokesman said.

"The conference will advocate for a swift scale-up in funding so the lifesaving humanitarian operation can continue; and appeal for full and unimpeded humanitarian access to make sure Afghans continue to get the essential services they need," Stephane Dujarric said on September 3 in a statement.

Development gains must also be protected and the rights of women are an "essential" part of Afghanistan's future stability, Dujarric said.

Aid agencies have warned that many Afghans were struggling to feed their families and millions may now face starvation.

Reuters quoted three sources as saying that the government will be led by Taliban co-founder and political chief Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, who is considered a relative moderate within the group.

He will be joined by Mullah Mohammad Yaqoob, the son of late Taliban founder and spiritual leader Mullah Mohammad Omar, and Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanekzai, a member of Talibans Doha political office, in senior government positions.

"All the top leaders have arrived in Kabul, where preparations are in final stages to announce the new government," a Taliban member said under condition of anonymity.

Another source said that Taliban leader Haibatullah Akhunzada will focus on religious matters and governance within the framework of Islam, according to Reuters.

A Taliban spokesman told AFP on September 3 that the announcement of a new administration would not happen until September 4 at the earliest.

While the Taliban have spoken of its will to form a consensus government, a source close to the militants told Reuters that the interim government being formed would consist solely of Taliban members.

Baradar, one of the founders of the Taliban in 1994, spent eight years in prison in Pakistan after being reportedly arrested in Karachi in 2010 in an operation by U.S. and Pakistani intelligence agents. He was eventually released at the request of the United States.

In February 2020, he helped negotiate the landmark Doha agreement with the United States that aimed to end the 20-year war in Afghanistan.

Since the Taliban seized Kabul on August 15 after a lightning offensive across the country, the militants have faced resistance from opposition groups and remnants of the Afghan Army holding out in Panjshir Valley, about 100 kilometers northeast of the capital, with reports of casualties.

A spokesman for the National Resistance Front (NRF) said the resistance fighters were battling to repulse "heavy" assaults, as the Taliban seeks to capture the only province that has not fallen to the militants.

The NRF followers, said to number in the thousands, are led by Ahmad Masud, son of a former mujahedin commander who fought against the Taliban in northeastern Afghanistan in the late 1990s.

Efforts to negotiate a settlement appear to have broken down, with each side blaming the other for the failure.

The Taliban has declared an amnesty for all Afghans who worked with foreign forces during the war that ousted it from power and said it was in talks with all factions to reach an agreement on a future government.

The group has also promised a more tolerant and open brand of rule compared with their first stint in power, but many reports have said summary executions and house-to-house searches for those who worked with international groups or the previous government are occurring across the country.

Amid speculation on how the new Taliban government is likely to treat women, around 30 women took to the streets of Kabul to demand access to education, the right to return to work, and a role in governing the country.

"Freedom is our motto. It makes us proud, read one of the protesters signs.

The small rally was the second women's protest in as many days demanding equal rights from Afghanistan's new rulers, with the other held in the western city of Herat.

The Taliban has said women will be able to continue their education and work outside the home, which was denied them when the militants were last in power, but the Taliban has also vowed to impose Shari'a, or Islamic law.

Meanwhile, a BBC correspondent reported coming across a beauty salon whose owner said he had been ordered to paint over the women's faces displayed on its shop front.

The European Union laid out its conditions for stepping up engagement with the Taliban, saying it has no plans to recognize Afghanistan's new government, once announced, but it will engage with the Taliban-led administration on an "operational" basis.

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell told a news conference that the 27-nation bloc will coordinate its contacts with the Taliban through a joint EU presence in Kabul to oversee evacuations and to ensure that the incoming government in Kabul fulfils commitments on security and human rights.

A Pakistani official said the government planned to send security and intelligence officials to Kabul to help the Taliban reorganize the Afghan military in order for them to control their territory," amid concerns about a potential rise in Islamic State attacks along the border with Afghanistan.

"Whether we recognize the Taliban government or not, stability in Afghanistan is very important, the official, who has direct knowledge of the country's security decisions, told Reuters.

The Kabul airport has remained shut since August 31 after the United States fully withdrew its troops following a 20-year presence, but international efforts are under way to resume operations there to facilitate humanitarian assistance and further evacuations.

A senior manager with Afghanistans flag carrier Ariana Afghan Airlines told AFP on September 3 that domestic flights were set to resume later in the day.

"We have received a green light from the Taliban and aviation authorities and plan to start flights today," Tamim Ahmadi told the news agency.

The United States and its allies were able to evacuate more than 123,000 foreigners and Afghans from Kabul since August 14, the day before the Taliban regained control of Afghanistan two decades after being removed from power by the U.S.-led invasion in 2001.

But tens of thousands of Afghans who had helped Western nations oust the militants during the long war and others at risk remained behind.

The militants have promised to allow Afghans to travel freely in and out of the country, but many remain in doubt about the group's intentions.

With Kabul airport still closed, many Afghans were seeking to flee over land, with large crowds reported at the Spin Boldak border crossing with Pakistan in recent days.

The UN refugee agency, UNHCR, said last week that up to 500,000 Afghans could flee their homeland by year-end.

But UNHCR spokesman Babar Baloch said the numbers of Afghan nationals fleeing across the borders to Pakistan and Iran "remain small," without giving a figure.

"So far what we have not seen is a large refugee influx," Baloch told a Geneva news briefing from Islamabad.

Separately, a top aide to Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said that a first group of some 250 Afghan evacuees will arrive to the Central European country on September 3 from Germany.

Michal Morawiecki said Poland will temporarily host a total of some 500 Afghan evacuees who had worked for NATO in Afghanistan.

The Afghans will remain in Poland for up to three months before moving on to other countries. But up to 50 of them will be able to settle in Poland, depending on their choice, according to Dworczyk.

In a positive development, Western Union and MoneyGram have announced they would resume money-transfer services to Afghanistan, allowing vital remittances into a war-torn country that has been reliant for years on foreign aid.

The opening of the money-transfer services will be especially welcomed by Afghans with foreign relatives abroad since hundreds of people have been lining up daily outside Afghan banks to withdraw cash up to a limit of $200 per week. Cash machines, meanwhile, aren't working.

However, the U.S. administration has no plans to release billions of dollars in Afghan gold, investments, and foreign currency reserves that the United States froze following the Taliban takeover.

With reporting by Reuters, AFP, the BBC and AP
Ben Hoffer is realizing his dream of owning his own restaurant.

He opened High Rise Pizza Kitchen, 6660 Delmonico Drive, on Aug. 18. His menu includes appetizers, salads (make any a meal with chicken for $3), specialty and house favorite pies, build your own pizza, sips and sides. There are 17 topping choices for $2 each and six fancy topping for $3 each. All the pizzas are 16 inches.

For a test drive, we picked up The Amazing Aru pie ($21) and the Brutus salad ($8), which is a Caesar salad. The pizza is on the House Favorites list. Hoffers excellent three-day pie dough is topped with a delicious mixture of pistachio pesto, mozzarella, roasted artichoke heart, roasted red pepper, spinach, red onion, feta, roasted tomato, and sweet basil.

My first reaction when Hoffer recommended it was, Thats a lot of ingredients for a single pizza.

To my amazement, the combo worked. I totally see why it rates being called amazing. Its apparent Hoffer has not cut corners on quality ingredients.

The salad was top notch, too. The romaine was crispy fresh, the garlic season croutons addictive and the creamy Ramano dressing tangy good. The bonus was whole roasted garlic cloves tossed in the salad. I added white anchovies from the fancy topping list for Caesar salad perfection. The salad portion was plentiful, easily enough for two to share.

I have my eye on the Pig Newton ($24) for my next visit. Who can resist a combo of mozzarella, roasted tomato, Calabrian chile, smoked bacon, prosciutto, gorgonzola, a drizzle of fig jam and a splash of roasted garlic olive oil?

Hours are 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Wednesdays through Sundays.

Or until I run out of dough, Hoffer says. I try to make what I think I will need for a days service. We sold out the first couple of days when we opened.

Details: 375-5694, highrisepizzakitchen.com. Delivery and liquor license in the future.

Wild things

Brother Luck, owner of Four by Brother Luck, Lucky Dumpling and The Studio, will create the Let the Wild Rumpus Start dinner at The Historic Day Nursery, 104 E. Rio Grande St., 5 p.m. Sept. 25. For $150 you will get a multicourse dinner paired with wine. If its anything like his Willy Wonka dinner in June, ticket holders are in for an amazing, creative culinary experience. Details: 632-1754, earlyconnections.org.

Big Easy doughnuts

Rocky Mountain Beignets, 724 Manitou Ave., Manitou Springs, is the place to get happy eating powder sugar-covered beignets.

Brandi and Billy Chism and their family are the owners. Hailing from Baton Rouge, La., the Chism family started the business in 2019 as a food truck in Woodland Park.

In June, they opened the small shop in Manitou Springs. In addition to making the sugary treats, they offer espresso drinks. Theres a shady patio where you can sip a latte and nosh hot beignets. Im told by an employee that plans are underway to expand the business in the vacant space to the west of the shop.

Hours are 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Details: 435-4369, rockymountainbeignets.com, facebook.com/Rocky-Mountain-Beignets.

Chefs cook for good cause

The Hospital Chefs Challenge takes place at Cielo at Castle Pines, 485 W. Happy Canyon Road, Castle Rock, from 6 to 9 p.m., Oct. 9. Chefs from Colorado hospitals compete for a traveling trophy while preparing a three-course meal. This years chefs include Joe Colcleasure from St. Anthonys St. Anthony Hospital & Medical Campus, Lakewood; Billy Charters, aka Ortho Colorado, from UCHealth Poudre Valley Hospital and Medical Center of the Rockies; and Ashlea Tobeck from Childrens Hospital Colorado.

The event benefits The Childrens Treehouse Foundations work with children of adult cancer patients. Cost is $80 or $150 per pair, and $100 for VIP ticket. Details: 303-322-1202, tinyurl.com/urmumm37.

Click or tap here for more local dining and drink news.

Contact the writer: 636-0271.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday she will bring up a bill that would enshrine into federal law sweeping protections for abortion procedures, essentially codifying the landmark Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision, when Congress returns later this month.
El Paso County planning commissioners this week approved a request to rezone about 20 acres of land in the northern portion of the county despite heavy neighborhood opposition, a step forward in a developers plans to build nearly 40 homes on roughly 55 acres adjacent to the towns of Monument and Palmer Lake.

Planning commissioners voted 5-3 Thursday, with commissioner Grace Blea-Nunez absent, to approve the request by developer JZ's Land Development LLC to rezone 20.88 acres of land at the intersection of Colorado 105 and Red Rock Ranch Drive, about a mile south of Palmer Lake. The developer plans to build seven single-family homes on -acre lots and three homes on 2 -acre lots, said Ingrid Richter of Olive Real Estate Group, representing JZ's Land Development. The new zoning allows for approximately six more lots than permitted under the previous 5-acre zoning, she said.

The rezoning is the first step in plans to build out the parcel in conjunction with development on a 33-acre parcel directly east of the property, which allows -acre lots. That property is also owned by the developer, Richter said. In total, about 37 new homes would be built on both parcels in a development called Red Rock Acres, providing much needed housing in booming El Paso County, she said.

But residents opposed to the project said Thursday they were concerned about increased traffic and wildfire risk, the availability of water and wastewater services to serve the new development, and potential damage to natural wildlife habitats as deer, birds and the Prebles meadow jumping mouse traverse the property.

New development must be well managed against the necessity of preservation and protection, said Elizabeth Lonnquist of the Red Rock Ranch Homeowners Association, which includes neighboring developments Red Rock Ranch, Cloven Hoof Estates and Forest View Acres. We need to accommodate growth that preserves the natural environment.

Assistant County Attorney Lori Seago advised planning commissioners that traffic, water, emergency services and wildlife were not part of the review criteria for the request to rezone the property.

Not that theyre not legitimate concerns, but theyre not part of the review criteria for the rezone, Seago said.

Commissioners can consider those concerns during the next phase, when the developer will bring forward preliminary site plans for review, county planners said.

Residents said they were worried if those concerns werent addressed Thursday, they would be more difficult to address later in the development process. Richter said developers were aware of residents' concerns and were working to address them.

Our goal is working with (neighbors) to figure out how we do accommodate growth and maintain the character of this beautiful sub-area of the Pikes Peak region, Richter said.

Residents also argued the property is not compatible with other developments in the area, criteria planning commissioners could consider as part of Thursdays request.

About seven single-family homes would be built on -acre lots on about 5 acres on the north side of the property, near where most traffic currently is along the Colorado 105 corridor, Richter told commissioners. The remaining three homes would be built on 2 -acre lots on about 15  acres on the south side of the property, closer to the existing Cloven Hoof Estates neighborhood where homes are built on 1-acre lots. Monument Creek cuts through the property and splits the north and south portions, allowing for a combination of densities within Red Rock Acres, with higher densities to the north and lower densities south of the creek, Richter said.

Were trying to minimize any impact this development might have on our neighbors to the south and keep Monument Creek as a natural waterway and open space, Richter said.

Residents argued the new zoning is not consistent with land zoning in all directions, including to the north and west, where the parcels are zoned for 5-acre lots.

Once you approve new density thats 10 times heavier, thats in perpetuity, resident Tom Nicholson said. Thats a concern. I think this decision is the most critical decision of the whole application. We should be very careful.

A woman who said she lived in Red Rock Ranch said the planned development didnt fit the rural look and feel of the area.

It seems to me there are very few places close by on less than 1-acre lots, she said. I think it would really change the look and feel of our community, which is a small community.

But Cloven Hoof Estates, for example, is also zoned to allow -acre lots, though it was built out in the late 1950s with 1-acre lots, Richter said.

Before voting against approving the rezoning request, Planning Commissioner Jay Carlson said he was also concerned the planned development isnt compatible with surrounding neighborhoods.

This is a few houses in either direction and it doesnt make a huge difference, he said. The bigger problem is the 30-acre property and the half-acre lots there.

The rezoning request now moves before the Board of El Paso County Commissioners for consideration.
All Huerfano County government offices went into lockout status Thursday after the family member of a 9-year-old Walsenburg student who died that morning allegedly made credible threats to a county agency.

School district officials havent said how the girl, an unidentified student at Peakview School in Walsenburg died on Thursday morning, but said that it had happened while she was off-campus.

Soon after, they were told by the Huerfano County sheriffs office that one of the girls family members had allegedly made a credible threat to a county agency.

The Huerfano County sheriffs office is actively looking for the individual, district officials said, but havent released information on a suspect. A call to the sheriffs office was not immediately returned on Thursday.

Michael Moore, Huerfano school districts superintendent, said that he heard about the girls death from a school resource officer just after he arrived at work on Thursday.

Soon after, as he and his team worked to determine how they would break the news to their community, Moore said he got a call from the sheriffs office, who told him that a county agency had allegedly received a threat from an unidentified family member of the girl.

The nature of that threat, or which county agency it was made to, hasnt been released, but Moore said the sheriffs office deemed it credible enough to advise that all county offices operate under lockout conditions. Even though the district or its schools didnt seem to be in the crosshairs, Moore said, there was still a chance the family members grudge carried over to Peakview, where the girl was a student, or another local school.

In response to the threat, Moore said the district kept students inside, on lockout status, but eventually sent out a robo-call asking families who had students at Peakview or its neighbor John Mall High School to come pick their kids up just before 1 p.m., after the sheriffs office told the district itd be better to send students home.

Moore said that students at Gardner Valley Charter School also went home for the day.

When they first heard about the girls death, Moore said, he and his team feared that COVID-19 was the culprit, as they hadnt seen her after she had gone home sick two days before. They were also worried that a positive case of the virus would require other measures for the rest of the school, which Moore said would likely include remote learning.

However, a rapid COVID-19 test administered to her before she went home came back negative, Moore said, adding that a preliminary post-mortem COVID test also came back negative. Moore said that the investigation into her cause of death is ongoing.

With school out of session on Friday and Monday for Labor Day weekend, Moore said Tuesday is still a toss-up, and that further findings on the girls cause of death would inform the districts plan on whether to bring kids back to school.

Moore said the district has arranged for grief counselors to be posted at schools for students, parents, teachers, or anyone else who needs their support through their grief. People can also call Health Solutions Walsenburg to schedule grief counseling sessions.

Its been a very sad and emotional day for everyone, and my heart goes out for the family that has lost this young person, as well as all the kids and teachers who knew her, Moore said. Its an incredibly hard thing to go through.
A rural Colorado county clerk whose whereabouts have been a mystery since several investigations were opened into an elections-related security breach told colleagues she remains on the job and has been working remotely
Jimmy Sengenberger is host of The Jimmy Sengenberger Show on News/Talk 710 KNUS. He also hosts Jimmy at the Crossroads, a webshow and podcast in partnership with The Washington Examiner.
Congress may put the brakes on the move of U.S. Space Command from Colorado Springs.
Just over a week after the national eviction moratorium ended, Gov. Jared Polis plans to give some struggling Colorado renters extra time to catch up on their rent payments, said Conor Cahill, Polis' press secretary.

Polis will extend the order on Saturday, which applies only to tenants who are waiting for the state's emergency rental assistance program to make a payment. The order requires landlords to give these renters 30 days notice, instead of 10, before filing an eviction action in court.

"This directive provides assistance to Colorado residential tenants at risk for eviction while State and federal funds are distributed," a previous order read.

The current order is set to expire on Sunday after being extended on Aug. 6.

The state's program offers tenants who haven't been able to pay rent due to financial struggles caused by COVID-19 up to 15 months in past due and future rent payments.

Earlier in the day Friday, Melissa Thate, Denver's Department of Housing and Stability director, said her department was hoping for this.

"We're really hoping that this executive order can be extended (because) ideally it's the best way to prevent evictions across the state," Thate said.
Colorado Springs, CO (80903)

Today

A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible early. Partly cloudy skies. Low 51F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible early. Partly cloudy skies. Low 51F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph.
Its name "marks the birth of Black America," a news release notes, and the legacy of the free community schools launched by the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee during the 1960s Civil Rights Movement. They were created to educate Black youths on their history while empowering them to fight oppression with the goal of achieving social, political and economic equality.

Not 1619 Project

Hannah-Jones emphasized that the program "has nothing to do with the 1619 Project at all." The project has been a target of conservative critics, who question its historical accuracy and tie it to the concept of critical race theory, an academic framework for analyzing racial inequalities.

"We're not teaching critical race theory," she said, and the "1619 Project is not teaching critical race theory." Hannah-Jones added that she is "completely unconcerned" about what critics might say about the privately funded effort.

"Parents will opt into the program if they believe in what we're doing," she said. "And if they don't, they won't. I don't understand how one can criticize an effort to help children to become more literate and excel academically."
To verify compliance with the mandate, employees and students must turn in their vaccination cards via an app or email to the office of health services.

For those without a vaccination  and who arent granted a medical or religious exemption  Averett plans to take what Jones calls a phased approach.

That will start with weekly COVID-19 testing followed by progressive accountability for noncompliance up to and including separation from the university, she said.

We sincerely hope this can be kept to a minimum.

The mandate also includes third-party vendors on campus, such as the bookstore, security and dining service workers.

Masks

Averett will extend its mask mandate for the foreseeable future, citing the increase in COVID-19 cases in the region. That means anyone on campus  employees, students and visitors  must don face coverings indoors and outside whenever social distancing isnt feasible.

We also encourage our Averett Family to wear face coverings when in the larger community to help keep themselves and others safe here on campus, Jones said.
GREENSBORO  The board of Alternative Resources of the Triad, the nonprofit that produces Greensboro Pride, has decided to cancel its 2021 festival because of the uptick in COVID-19 cases in the area.

The festival had been scheduled for Sept. 19. The festival was postponed in 2020 as well by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The board made the announcement on Friday "with heavy hearts."

"With the community we serve already dealing with many autoimmune disorders, it would be irresponsible of Greensboro Pride to continue to hold an event that could become a super spreader," the announcement said.

The board held an emergency meeting on Thursday to make the decision. All Pride-sponsored events are canceled as well, according to the announcement.

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The Greensboro Pride Board held out until the last possible minute, hoping for a change in the COVID-19 situation, the organization said in its announcement.

But the board felt that "No matter the protections taken, they wouldnt be enough to hinder the spread of the disease at their event," according to the announcement.
These pardons, granted Tuesday, do not address the guilt of the 'Martinsville Seven,' but serve as recognition from the Commonwealth that they were tried without adequate due process and the death sentences were racially-biased.
RALEIGH  Gov. Roy Cooper on Friday vetoed legislation that would prohibit the public disclosure of donors to North Carolina-based nonprofits, calling the measure unneeded.

Republicans who sent the bill to his desk said the restrictions would protect the free-speech and free-association rights of contributors. Other bill supporters say the identifying information could be used by those who wish to harass donors for their viewpoints on social issues.

Cooper sided with fellow Democrats who questioned the necessity of the restrictions and argued they would discourage efforts to identify who is giving to dark-money political groups.

This legislation is unnecessary and may limit transparency with political contributions, Cooper wrote in his veto message. The bill was approved by the House and Senate last month almost completely along party lines, so the odds for a successful override are long.

Republicans pointed out the bill specifically says the proposed restrictions wouldnt supersede campaign finance laws that demand contributor information to political committees or campaigns.
Silvia Gonzalez Scherer is the Executive Artistic Director and co-founder of the Hanford Multicultural Theater Company. She is also a playwright and an actress.
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On August 31st, the central committees in Daraa, along with the Russian guarantor and the forces of the Damascus government, reached a new agreement and a cease-fire armistice in Daraa al-Balad.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that an agreement was reached between the forces of the Damascus government and the central committees in Houran regarding Daraa.

According to the observatory; It was agreed with the Security Committee and the Russian delegation to implement the demands starting from Wednesday. The terms of the new agreement include a cease-fire, settlements for wanted persons, handing over weapons, displacing those who do not wish to conduct a settlement, entering the Russian military police into Daraa al-Balad and raising the Damascus and Russian flags, establishment three common points between Military Security and the Eighth Brigade of the Fifth Corps.

On the extent of the success of the new agreement in Daraa al-Balad, Syrian journalist and political analyst Malik al-Hafiz said: "It is a copy of the Russian road map that was presented a few days ago. A Russian role must end the escalation supported by elements of Iranian influence in the south, as Tehran seeks to establish great influence It has it in the south, and this is what most of the active forces in the Syrian issue reject, and it obstructs any future steps for a solution in Syria.

Al-Hafiz continued: "The last agreement can continue to succeed if Russia remains a real guarantor of it and maintains coordination with the Arab parties, particularly Jordan, in parallel with an American monitoring role that prevents any military escalation or ground invasion of the region."

Regarding the beginning of the implementation of the Russian proposal after the Jordanian Kings visit to Russia one day only, political analyst Malik al-Hafiz said: It seems that there is a common vision for both Jordan and Russia regarding the Syrian file, especially in efforts to reach an appropriate solution to the intractable situation in southern Syria.

Russian-Jordanian consensus on Daraa

The Jordanian king met with the Russian president on August 23rd, at a time when meetings were continuing to reach a solution regarding Daraa al-Balad, and the media reported that the Daraa file would top the Jordanian-Russian meeting.

In this regard, Al-Arab newspaper said on Monday, "The security file and the latest developments in Daraa, Syria, dominate the discussions that will start on Monday between Jordan's King Abdullah II and Russian President Vladimir Putin, in addition to discussing files related to bilateral relations between the two countries and regional and international developments."

Militants to the occupied north of Syria

A group of armed men opposing the Russian proposal and rejecting the settlement with the Damascus government left for northern Syria occupied by Turkey and its mercenaries in two batches. The first batch carried 8 people, while the second batch carried 79 people.

On August 25, the observatory said that a bus carrying 8 displaced people from Daraa al-Balad, who had refused to compromise with the forces of the Damascus government, arrived at the Abu al-Zandin crossing near the occupied city of al-Bab, east of Aleppo, the first batch of displaced people.

The second batch of 79 displaced people from Daraa al-Balad arrived in the city of al-Bab, occupied by Turkey, on the 27th of the same month.

To establish its influence, Iran fails negotiations

Regarding the party responsible for the failure of the previous negotiations and their goals, the Syrian political analyst explained that "the one responsible for this collapse is Iran and the elements of its influence in the south who seek to sabotage any agreement in their desire to establish a long-term influence there after the military escalation they aspire to."

And he added: "The forces of the regime have different loyalties between the Russian and the Iranian, while those with Russian influence are working to stop the specter of military escalation in return for imposing security and military influence throughout the province, while the pro-Iran side seeks to make the south a military platform to serve Iranian interests in particular, so they obstruct any agreement. They are trying to inflame the situation and continue the siege and bombardment of civilians."

Before the new agreement, Daraa al-Balad witnessed intense bombardment. During the past period, Damascus government forces have intensively bombed areas in Daraa, with attempts by the Fourth Division to storm Daraa al-Balad, in addition to local gunmen attacking checkpoints of the latter in the area, and demonstrations condemning the bombing.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitored the bombing of more than 50 surface-to-surface missiles on the besieged neighborhoods of Daraa al-Balad, coinciding with continuous missile shelling in light of violent battles that took place on the fighting axes in the area, where the forces of the Fourth Division tried to storm Daraa al-Balad backed by the groups loyal to them, several checkpoints of the Damascus government were also attacked by local militants in separate areas of Daraa.

As a result of the bombing, 22 people lost their lives, including 10 children and women, and about 26 elements of the Syrian government forces were killed in clashes with the militants, of whom about 17 were killed, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The people of a number of settlements' areas in southern Syria staged evening demonstrations that block the roads, denouncing the military attack on the city of Daraa al-Balad. The demonstrators demanded the cessation of military operations in Daraa al-Balad and the lifting of the siege on it.

Daraa will not witness a new movement

Regarding the possibility of Daraa returning to square one, Al-Hafiz said: "We cannot witness any new movement in the south by emptying it of armed forces with heavy influence. There are currently a few fighters with light weapons who cannot continue the military confrontations for a long time."

T/S

ANHA
Jane Shawn, president of the Helena Educators Association union, agreed last year was an extraordinary amount of work and would not be repeated. She said various options were discussed last spring but she didnt hear about using Edgenuity until a couple weeks before school started.

I did not know they were going to outsource this, Shawn said. Teachers are happy to teach in person, I do not know whether theyre happy about this outsourced program.

Unlike the Montana Digital Academy, Edgenuity said its teachers are not unionized. Shawn said the union plans to ask the district for a memorandum that the companys services will be a one-time arrangement. The district said it was in discussions with the union and emphasized the intent is to serve students and families.

Kinsey Rawe, a senior vice president at the company, said its classes can be taught by teachers from the district or the company, who are Montana-certified, and it has no preference which the district chooses. He said students can reach out for help and are in contact with the teacher at least once a week. The district has also hired four instructional tutors to coordinate between schools, families and the company.

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The severity of COVID-19 cases in Lewis and Clark County has increased since the first wave of infections and multiple people have died this week from the disease.

St. Peter's Health spokeswoman Kathryn Gallagher confirmed Thursday that "several people passed due to complications related to COVID-19 this week." Gallagher did not provide an exact number.

Additionally, she said "anecdotally, we are seeing sicker patients."

"It's a reminder to the community that we are very much still in this pandemic," Gallagher said. "These are people, not statistics. These are lives, local lives."

Local health care personnel have been sounding the alarm in recent weeks over the resurgence in COVID-19 cases.

More than 500 St. Peter's personnel signed their names to a social media post Wednesday pleading with the community to get vaccinated.
He and his brother did not say their uncles name, fearing it would paint him in a negative light. But they said the uncle, who at one time lived in Helena, was interested not only in other cultures, but in preservation as well.

It does not make sense that he would have taken them, Tom Wright said.

Dave Wright had tried to do some research on his own. And when he moved or changed residences, the grave markers went with him.

They said they got some help from Christopher Merritt of Montana State University, who had done some research on the Chinese experience in Montana. But things began to fall into place when they came into contact with Johnson.

Johnson found Moon in an obituary from 1934, which listed him as dying in January of that year. It noted he was a member of the Helena Chinese community. It also said that old-timers had called him The Chicken.

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Moon had missed the heyday of the Chinese community in Montana, Johnson said, noting that in 1870, the Chinese made up more than 20% of Montanas population. In 1870, there were over 650 Chinese descendants in Helena alone. By 1930, the Chinese population in the state had dipped 490.
The president has pointed to that destruction to call for greater public resolve to confront climate change. His $1 trillion infrastructure legislation intends to ensure that vital networks connecting cities and states and the country as a whole can withstand the flooding, whirlwinds and damage caused by increasingly dangerous weather.

At Fridays briefing with local officials, Biden insisted the infrastructure bill and an even more expansive measure later on would more effectively prepare the country.

It seems to me we can save a whole lot of money, a whole lot of pain for our constituents, if we build back, rebuild it back in a better way, Biden said. I realize Im selling as Im talking.

Sen. Cassidy tweeted later that in his conversation with Biden, "we spoke about the need for resiliency. We agreed putting power lines beneath the ground would have avoided all of this. The infrastructure bill has billions for grid resiliency.

Past presidents have been defined in part by how they handled such crises.
Montanans personal income grew 20% year-over-year, housing prices are up more than 30% and the number of job postings in the state were 62% higher in July than in February 2021.

It really is a recession experience like no other.

What does it mean for Montanas economy, the businesses that support it and Montanans? Bureau of Business and Economic Research Director Patrick Barkey boiled down and explained the data for the Montana Chamber Foundations mid-year economic update this summer.

Workforce shortages and affordable housing, big issues in the Montana economy in recent years, continue to present challenges.

But another looming challenge is how Montana can continue to retain our valuable business recruiting and retention asset, our affordable and reliable electricity.

California is by far the nations largest net electricity importer today.

Montanas historical position as an electricity exporter is fading. Total electric generation is down from a decade ago in the state. Montanans are using more electricity than we were a decade ago.

What happens if that trend continues?
Browse through recently listed homes in the Decatur and Macon County real estate market and find your next home!
DECATUR  The Macon County Health Department on Friday said three women, one in her 40s and two in their 70s, with COVID-19 have died.

Health officials also announced 129 new COVID-19 cases in Macon County since the departments Thursday report. Also, one previously reported case was determined from out of count and was transferred appropriately.

This brings the total number of COVID-19 cases to 13,258 since the start of the pandemic, said county director of health promotion and public relations Marisa Hosier.

The most recent statistics show there have been 219 COVID-related deaths in Macon County since the pandemic began, and 27 residents were hospitalized with the virus as of Friday.

The health department and the The Illinois Department of Public Health also announced Friday there have been 312 variant COVID-19 cases in Macon County.

The most prevalent is the UK variant, with 143 cases. There have been 87 cases of the Brazil/Gamma variants, 71 cases of the Delta variants, six cases of the California variant (B.1.429), four cases of the South Africa variant and one case of the California variant (B.1.427).

The health department is offering the first does of the Pfizer vaccine next week at the following times and locations:

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Richland Community College (Enter at the flag poles), 3 to 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 7. Must return to Richland Community College Tuesday, Sept. 28, for second dose.

Macon County Health Department, 1221 E. Condit St., Decatur, 1 to 5:30 p.m., Wednesday, Sept. 8. Must return to the health department Wednesday, Sept. 29, to receive second dose.

Bring a photo ID or insurance card if possible.

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Labor Day is a bit of a misnomer. While it may seem like a day devoted to work, many workers in the United States and don't work at all on Labor Day.

Labor Day is much more than the unofficial end to summer. Labor Day weekend tends to be the last big travel weekend before the holiday season, benefiting towns and businesses that cater to tourists. But while road trips and backyard barbecues are now staples of Labor Day, the origins of the holiday bear little resemblance to the celebrations of today.

Labor Day in the United States dates back to the 19th century, though its origins are still debated by historians. According to the United States Department of Labor, recent research supports the idea that Labor Day was the brainchild of machinist Matthew Maguire, who supposedly devised the idea in 1882 while serving as secretary of the Central Labor Union in New York. Others attribute the holiday to Peter J. McGuire, a cofounder of the American Federation of Labor and general secretary of the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners.

Historians say the first Labor Day was celebrated on Tuesday, September 5, 1882, in New York. This was based on plans from Maguire's Central Labor Union. Other states and cities would eventually adopt the first Monday in September as Labor Day. As labor unions grew, other cities started celebrating Labor Day, which McGuire suggested should be a day to honor those "who from rude nature have delved and carved all the grandeur we behold."

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Soon the popularity of Labor Day grew and recognition by the government followed. By 1885, municipal ordinances recognizing Labor Day had been passed, and they inspired state legislation. While Labor Day was first celebrated in New York, in 1887 the state of Oregon became the first state to officially pass a law recognizing the first Monday of September as Labor Day. New York, along with Colorado, Massachusetts and New Jersey, implemented Labor Day observations soon after.

On June 28, 1894, Congress officially passed an act that declared the first Monday in September of each year a legal holiday. This applied to all states as well as the District of Columbia.

It's important for people living in North America to recognize both the significance and the history of Labor Day, which is about far more than backyard barbecues and the last of summer jaunts to the beach.

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THUMBS UP! To outdoor fun. Last weekend featured the second Black Business Expo and the Devon on Tap Decatur Craft Beer and Music Festival. Then Decatur again welcomed the world to the Farm Progress Show.

THUMBS DOWN! To poor self-evaluation. President Joe Biden called the airlift out of Afghanistan an "extraordinary success." If we're discussing the efforts of the Air Force in getting cargo planes down and back up, even as explosions at the airport continued to take lives. Biden is understandably trying to paint a positive portrait, but the thousands left behind to face whatever the Taliban has in store would disagree with Biden's assessment.

THUMBS UP! To those able to communicate clearly while wearing masks. Some of us can do it well, but many cannot. Those who have mastered the skill have our admiration. It's beginning to appear we'll be wedded to masks for some time, so there will be plenty of opportunities to practice.

THUMBS DOWN! To Parvo. The Parvo virus is highly contagious, mainly affects dogs and is spread through secretions like bowel movements and urine. The virus tends to be found in dogs less than six months of age and symptoms include bloody vomit and diarrhea, lack of appetite, lethargy or lack of energy, fever or low body temperature and abdominal pain. Be sure to take your dog to the veteranarian if needed.

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THUMBS UP! To an impressive milestone. HSHS St. Mary's Hospital marked its 60th anniversary. Matt Bennett, chair of St. Mary's board of directors, pointed out that the hospital's cost was $8 million 50 years ago, and "today, we have projects that cost $8 million."

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VILNIUS, Lithuania (AP)  Lithuania on Friday recalled its ambassador to China following the Baltic countrys decision in July to allow self-governing Taiwan to open an office in its capital under its own name.

The Foreign Ministry said Ambassador Diana Mickeviciene had been recalled from Beijing for consultations following the Chinese government statement on August 10.

Last month, China recalled its ambassador to Lithuania and told the Baltic nation to immediately rectify its wrong decision, take concrete measures to undo the damage, and not to move further down the wrong path.

The statement referred to potential consequences for Lithuania if it allowed the office to open but gave no details.

The Lithuanian Foreign Ministry expressed regret over Chinas action and stressed that while respecting the one China principle, it stands ready to develop mutually beneficial ties with Taiwan, just as many other countries in the world do.
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We have been seeing significant increases in new case numbers over the past month, accompanied by increases in hospitalizations and an increasing number of deaths, and we expect further rises in all three metrics for the near future, she said.

The delta variant accounts for nearly all new infections in North Carolina right now because of how easily it spreads, Killian said. With the original COVID-19 virus, one person would typically spread the virus to one or two other people. Someone infected with the delta variant typically spreads it to six or more other people.

The delta variant is also causing a steep increase in cases in children, Killian said. During the winters peak, Catawba County saw 108 cases reported in children 5 to 17 in one week. This summer, the week of Aug. 22, there were 136 new cases in children 5 to 17.

The countys hospitals are worried about the current rise in cases, Killian said. Catawba Valley Medical Center had 72 COVID-19 patients as of Thursday, and Frye Regional Medical Center had more than 40 COVID-19 patients as of Wednesday.

Public health is asking people to take the same measures as in the winter to stop the spread, like wearing a mask, social distancing and handwashing.
Firefighters from Hickory, Mountain View and Long View extinguished flames and assessed damage at James Oxygen and Supply after the propane explosions at the business off U.S. Highway 321 in Hickory.

Hickory Fire Education Coordinator Terri Byers confirmed that one employee of the propane company was taken to a local hospital and then flown to a regional hospital. She did not say which hospital.

Byers said the employees condition was at least serious since the person had to be transported by helicopter.

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She said at least one truck and several outdoor tanks were damaged in the fire based on information the fire department had gathered by around 3:30 p.m. Friday.

Firefighters extinguished the fire by 3 p.m., and there was no threat from the chemicals at the site, Byers said.

The cause of the fire is not known. Byers said it likely would take some time to make that determination.

Erik McMillan, owner of the nearby Invictus Lighting, said he and some of the people at the business came outside when they felt the building shake and heard noise.
The Yellow Jewish Badges worn during the Nazi Era are a thing of the past. But we all know that is not true. There is talk, and some action, to stigmatize and ostracize people by forcing them to wear a vaccine passport. Now wait, this isnt about the necessity of the vaccine, this is about segregating people. This is about demeaning and stigmatizing people. If you dont think this is a terrible thing  just ask almost anybody that grew up during the years of racial segregation. I know its easy for someone to say, Those stupid blankety-blank people that have those stupid blankety-blank reasons not to get the vaccine, but at what cost to our society do you really want to take this segregation?

And of course, this isnt the only Yellow Jewish Badge in our society today. In todays culture it is becoming a societal norm to label someone a "racist" simply because they hold a different opinion. And a new term meant to demean and stigmatize people is Trumper. In todays society, being called a Trumper is worse than Hillarys basket of deplorables because it is all encompassing; racist, a homophobe, a pervert. But those are only words, or are they?
The Trump administration in February 2020 negotiated a withdrawal agreement with the Taliban that excluded the Afghan government, freed 5,000 imprisoned Taliban soldiers and set a date certain of May 1, 2020, for the final withdrawal. FactCheck, August 17, 2021. Before playing the blame game, read this document.

June 26, at a rally in Ohio, Trump says, All the troops are coming back home. They (the Biden administration) couldnt stop the process." The Taliban from the outset never met the conditions of the agreement relative to continued violence and working with al-Qaeda but the drawdown of troops continued with 2,500 remaining at the end of Trumps term.

Even Republicans in Congress were warning as far back as November of a Saigon-type situation. Americans, Biden and Trump were eager for this war to end. Biden moved the timeline to August 31. To criticize Biden is to criticize Trump and Pompeo.

Regardless of our politics, most people were shocked at how Bidens comments on July 8 could be so far from the realities we saw unfold a month later. While claims of incompetence or senility are sadly typical in todays politics, they contribute nothing to understanding how we got here and learning from our years of miscalculations.

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The author is Vice President of Editorial Services for the U.S. Dairy Export Council.

When shoppers at 16 Costco stores in South Korea are offered samples of U.S. cheeses in the coming months, they wont merely experience a delectable dairy product from the worlds largest single-country exporter of cheese. They will meet an attentive and knowledgeable USA Cheese Specialist, ready and willing to answer questions because they have been trained and certified by the U.S. Dairy Export Council (USDEC).

The pins and the apron I am wearing today encourage me to promote USA cheeses actively, said Ms. Kim, a recent graduate of the USDEC program. My goal is to study continually about cheeses and become the expert in increasing sales at my branch!

A team of 55 strong

Forty-eight promoters and seven team leaders from Club Demonstration Services (CDS)  the promotion company Costco uses around the world to provide product samples  have been trained and certified by USDEC this summer for promotions at Costco stores across South Korea. The Korea push is part of what USDEC calls the USA Cheese Specialist Certification Program, a forward-looking initiative that gets the bulk of its funding from state and regional dairy checkoff groups.

Were building an army of people knowledgeable about U.S. cheeses who can transmit their knowledge to others, said Angelique Hollister, USDEC senior vice president of global cheese marketing. This is all about increasing the visibility of U.S. cheeses.



The initiative is part of a larger strategy to educate influencers in key export markets about the high quality of U.S. cheeses.

USDEC believes that changing perceptions with efforts like this will, over time, lead to more cheese exports, said USDEC President and CEO Krysta Harden. What this means for dairy farmers is that more of their milk will be leaving the country as the key ingredient in U.S. cheeses.

USDEC created the USA Cheese Guild, a customer-facing entity to run its international marketing efforts highlighting U.S. cheese products. The USA Cheese Specialist Certification Program is one of its signature initiatives.

The program launched three years ago by training future chefs at culinary schools in South Korea, Japan, United Arab Emirates, and Taiwan. Culinary schools in Hong Kong and Zhejiang, China are scheduled to participate this year. Mexico also will receive training.

The educational effort is now expanding to include retail promoters like the ones trained for Costco. Additional tracks to educate professional chefs and supply-chain professionals are also underway.

This is a long-term investment, said Hollister. This is not instant gratification. Its not like people will start importing full container loads after they learn and taste U.S. cheese. Instead, this is about changing peoples minds over time. Its about helping people see the United States as an important cheese player that competes to win with European cheeses and cheeses from New Zealand.



Poised to expand

If successful, the retail program with Costco may expand to Mexico, Japan, and other countries, said Merle McNeil, USDEC senior vice president, global retail programs, who oversaw the training in Korea and manages the global relationship with Costco.

We can get an exponential amount of visibility, said McNeil.

Visibility is needed because the global perception of U.S. cheese doesnt match the reality. When combining the 2020 export volume of all 28 countries in the European Union, that group is the worlds largest cheese exporter. However, a closer look at individual countries paints a different picture, with the U.S. at No. 1 and New Zealand at No. 2.

Nonetheless, marketing research shows not enough people realize that the U.S. is a significant cheese exporter by volume. They also dont know that U.S. artisan cheeses have been winning medals in world competitions for years, defeating cheeses from countries like France and Italy. Two years ago, the worlds most prestigious cheese competition named a cheese from Oregon Best in the World from a field of 3,804 entries hailing from 42 countries.

Having consumers experience U.S. cheeses in a Costco store, with the help of a knowledgeable guide, creates a positive imprint of U.S. cheese not only on palates but in minds.

The big thing about Costco, said McNeil, is you reach consumers and the food service industry because they go and buy from Costco in some markets. In Taiwan, the only place you can get U.S. cheese is in Costco. Customers in Costco are generally more affluent. These are the people who can afford to buy our cheeses.



Koreas enthusiastic learners

Claire Yoon and Yoona Lee from USDECs South Korea office conducted the training. They said participants showed passion for U.S. cheeses and asked many questions about taste, storage, and shelf life, as well as cutting and pairing tips. Here are some observations from the classs comments:

 Training enables in-store promoters to respond to consumers questions confidently.

 Participants gained a good understanding of the cheesemaking process, characteristics of cheese varieties, nutritional benefits of consuming cheese, and how to sell and sample cheese.

 They can now refer to a reliable source, the USA Cheese Specialist textbook, for their cheese questions.

Even though the course was held virtually due to COVID-19 concerns, there was a tasting session involving the five types of U.S. cheeses designated for sampling in all 16 Costco stores in the upcoming weeks. CDS Korea said it is interested in offering the USA Cheese Specialist training on an annual basis to their staff.

Korea wont be the first successful promotion of USDEC cheeses in Costco stores. In August 2019, U.S. cheeses were in full display when Costco opened a store to overflow crowds in Shanghai.

Cheeses made in the U.S. from Belgioioso, Sartori, Tillamook, Pacific Cheese, Saputo, Schuman, and Lactalis were showcased in the refrigerated section, thanks in part to a new partnership facilitated by USDEC with Costco in China.

For much of last year, COVID-19 limited in-store sampling and promotion, spurring the creation of an online training program. In-store activities began restarting in late 2020 and continued into this year with the loosening of restrictions in some nations, including parts of the Middle East and China.

When USDEC gets access to a store like Costco, it doesnt merely hand out samples. Instead, a Cheeses from the USA pop-up truck goes on display. Cheese from the USA seals are on products. The promotion strategy works. The average sales gain of U.S. cheeses during in-store Costco promotions in 2020 exceeded 153%.



USA cheese shines

COVID-19 forced the training program to go virtual in 2020. It now operates on three platforms, reaching trainees through online instruction, partnerships with learning institutions, and a hybrid model (a combination virtual and in-person).

Training and certifying USA Cheese Specialists at Costco stores in Korea is an example of what the USA Cheese Guild through its learning academy can accomplish.

When Koreans sample U.S. cheeses in Costco stores, there will be no question about the country of origin. USDEC-created branding and the shared knowledge of in-store specialists interacting with consumers will enhance understanding.

The strategy that were working on right now is to bring awareness, said Hollister. We want to increase the perception of U.S. cheese. What better way to do that than to be in front of consumers? Its all about getting our U.S. cheeses in the mouths of people around the world.
In your September 10, 2021 issue . . .

FUTURES MARKETS SEEM TO BE NERVOUS about the long run and our milk checks are living in the present, wrote Mark Stephenson in Milk Check Outlook on the next page. Thats because most farmers, processors, and forecasters cant see around the COVID-19 market corner.

AT THE MAGAZINES CLOSE, CLASS III contracts for the first six months of the new year traded in an ever-so-tight window from $17.15 to $17.42 to yield a $17.30 average. Class IV had a slightly wider range of $16.56 to $16.98 to yield a $16.80 net for January to June 2022.

AS FOR THE REMAINDER OF THE CURRENT YEAR, Class III contracts ranged from $16.90 to $17.25 for a $17.30 average. Class IV had an equally narrow footprint, from $16.10 to $16.50, for a $16.25 average.

NEGATIVE PRODUCER PRICE DIFFERENTIALS (PPDs) finally began to evaporate as markets returned to more traditional prepandemic pricing patterns. That resulted in positive PPDs in July milk checks from coast-to-coast. The Northeast Order posted the highest PPD at $1.57 per cwt., and the lowest was a positive 25 cents in the Upper Midwest.

DAIRY WILL RECEIVE $350 MILLION via USDAs Pandemic Market Volatility Assistance Program. The program will reimburse dairy farmers for 80% of the revenue difference per month based on annual production of up to 5 million pounds of milk marketed and on fluid sales from July through December 2020, reported USDA on August 19.

THE FLORIDA, APPALACHIAN, AND SOUTHEAST ORDERS will receive the highest payouts, ranging from a projected $1.12 to $1.42, due to large Class I sales. The remaining eight orders would see 9 to 50 cents per cwt., with the Upper Midwest on the low end.

SNAP RECIPIENTS WILL RECEIVE A 25% BUMP in food assistance support. In all, 42 million Americans receive Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, with half of that total being children. The adjustment could yield $2 billion more for dairy. Read more on page 492.

THE CANADIAN HEIFER INVENTORY (1 year and older) was 445,500 in July, up 1% when compared to 2020 and up 1.5% from five years ago.

THERE WERE 4.1 MILLION HEIFERS in the U.S. (over 500 pounds) this July, up 2.5% from last year, but down 2.3% from five years ago.

THE SLIDE IN FLUID MILK SALES RETURNED as Americans grew tired of COVID-19 precautions. Those sales are shown in the graph below.
RALEIGH  With many North Carolina colleges and universities returning to the classroom for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic started, vaccination is a critical component to keep campuses open and students safe.

The state released a study last week that concluded unvaccinated people are more likely to become infected with COVID-19 and to be hospitalized or die due to complications related to respiratory disease.

Spread of the virus has accelerated over the last month due to the delta variant, a mutation of the coronavirus thats more than three times as contagious as the original strain.

UNC System universities dont require students to be vaccinated, but each campus is tracking how many students and employees are inoculated. Those who are not vaccinated or dont provide proof of vaccination will be required to get tested for the virus at least once a week.

Heres where some of the states universities stand in terms of vaccination rates on campus.

For UNCG residential students, 80% are fully vaccinated as of Wednesday. University officials said that the school is still gathering vaccination rates from students living off campus as well as faculty and staffers.
The acquisition cements TechnologyOnes position in the higher education market as its solutions supports 75% of institutions in Australia and 50% in the UK.

This is part of our strategy to deliver a student-centric, end-to-end ERP SaaS solution for the higher education sector, TechnologyOne CEO Edward Chung says.

Scientias product integration into our already world class student management, HRP, assets, and finance supply chain products, rises to meet the current needs of the higher education sector, Chung adds.

Swinburne University of Technology registrar and director of student administration and library services Michelle Gillespie says students care most about their timetable.

Being able to fully integrate a schedule into the full student experience is important, Gillespie says. It is an exciting step for universities like us to use TechnologyOnes student management system.

TechnologyOne founder and executive chairman Adrian DiMarco says the acquisition demonstrates their commitment to serving the higher education sector and UK market.

The unique IP and market-leading functionality of Scientias product supports our vision of delivering enterprise software that is incredibly easy to use. We are excited about the opportunities this will bring to both our UK and Australian customers in the coming years, he concludes.
DANVILLE  A Central Illinois man has been sentenced to 96 years in prison for the 2017 slaying of his longtime girlfriend, whose body was burned and dismembered.

A Vermilion County judge sentenced Ocheil Keys, 30, on Thursday to 60 years in prison on a murder charge for Barbara Rose's killing, 30 years for dismembering her body and another six years for concealing her death.

A jury had convicted the Danville man in July in Rose's killing, The (Champaign) News-Gazette reported.

Evidence presented at trial indicated that after killing Rose on Oct. 22, 2017, Keys told her family and friends that she had left the state, and then tried cover up the crime by burning her body in an abandoned house.

After that failed to work, he dismembered Rose's body, which was found by Danville police weeks later in a car owned by Keys' mother, prosecutors said.

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CHICAGO  Rowers, kayakers and other users of the Chicago River are getting a real-time look at one measure of water quality in the system that weaves through downtown and several neighborhoods.

Chicago nonprofit Current in 2019 installed three sensors in the river's three main branches to continuously estimate the amount of bacteria from human and other warm-blooded animals' waste.

The organization initially planned to begin making the real-time results public in 2020. But the coronavirus pandemic delayed their plans until Thursday, when a website updating with data taken every 15 minutes went online.

The city's development in the 19th century was thanks to the river  truly a system of rivers and manmade canals  that provided a path between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River system. While the meatpacking and lumber industries could use it for shipping, the waterway also became a dumping ground for those and other industries and for sewage from homes and businesses.

Quality of the 156-mile river system has improved in recent years, helped by multibillion-dollar construction of new reservoirs and underground tunnels. But when rain overwhelms Chicago's sewer systems, sewage and stormwater is diverted to the river, prompting warnings to stay off the water for several days.

That's unlikely to change; city authorities have warned that climate change's effects will continue bringing more frequent and intense storms to the region.

Fecal coliform isn't dangerous itself, but the bacteria's presence in a body of water is a warning, telling scientists that illness-causing pathogens likely are there too.

Results from traditional testing based on water sampling from the river are available through local or state regulators, but those are collected intermittently. Users also can check for alerts warning of a recent sewage diversion into the river.

But neither help someone hoping to get on the water that day, said Alaina Harkness, Current's executive director.

The optical sensors Current uses can't measure the level of fecal coliform present. Instead, they gather data about the murkiness and temperature of the water and light emitted by tryptophan  an amino acid from microorganisms that has been linked to fecal coliform. That allows an estimate of the level of bacteria present, Harkness said.

"We have a rich sense of how the river's doing today, how does it compare to how the river is doing historically, and how does it vary across the branches," she said. "And that's the important story for users who are making decisions about how to use the river on a day-to-day basis."

A kayaker, for instance, may decide to use the river's main branch instead of the southern or northern branch if those sensors estimate a level of bacteria above the state standard for safe recreational use, she said.

Trish Brubaker, executive director of the Lincoln Park Boat Club, said she can use that information when planning workouts for rowing clubs.

Brubaker said clubs often used single sculls last year to allow for social distancing. But singles are more vulnerable to tipping and one athlete became sick after falling into the river water.

"It would definitely impact who we put into singles or whether we practice singles at all," Brubaker said.

Officials with the agency responsible for Chicago's wastewater system warned that people shouldn't depend entirely on the data from the sensors.

The technology is newer than traditional water sampling and testing, and it captures only a moment in time, said Dr. Heng Zhang, assistant director of monitoring and research at the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago.

River users also should consider recent weather, boat traffic and any official warnings, he said.

"The more information people have, the better," he said. "But just understand the information is just an indicator, and it's not 100%. It has a lot of variations."

Current officials hope providing more information about the river will improve its reputation among people who still see it as a dumping ground.

Doug McConnell, co-founder of the nonprofit A Long Swim that raises money toward Lou Gehrig's disease research, for several years has been seeking city approval for a river swim. He is excited about the Current project and hopes the information will lead to more interest in the river.

"What needs to happen here is a change of impression and perception people have," McConnell said. "The river is the whole reason Chicago is here. It's really something to honor."

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Gun reform advocates, frustrated that President Joe Biden has put on the back burner his campaign vow to finally address Americas gun violence epidemic, are calling for the creation of a new top-level office to spearhead the issue. That would be an appropriately high-profile approach to a national crisis that has been allowed to fester too long. Decades too long, in fact.

Americas political dysfunction is perhaps nowhere more evident than on guns. Despite broad public support (even among gun owners) for basic reforms like universal background checks for gun purchases and restrictions on military-style firearms and high-capacity ammunition magazines, Congress has been deadlocked for years.

Thats in large part due to the National Rifle Association  not just the campaign money it wields, but its dark success at whipping up the noisy minority of Americans who stubbornly oppose any gun restrictions whatsoever. Too many red-state politicians are more terrified of that segment of their base than they are concerned about the gun violence terrorizing the rest of their constituents, and to the country itself.

That dysfunction is the reason no director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has received Senate confirmation since 2015: The ATF enforces what meager federal gun laws there are on the books, so the gun lobby endlessly finds reasons to oppose any nominee who falls short of gun-fanatic standards.

Biden nominee David Chipman is the latest to languish, despite a long and impressive career within the agency, because hes had the gall to speak frankly in the past about the need for reasonable firearms restrictions. With every Republican opposing him, Chipman needs every Democrats support, and a few fence-sitters arent there. So the nations lead agency for addressing gun issues remains rudderless.

In a letter obtained by Politico, a coalition of gun safety groups took Biden to task for, among other things, standing by the filibuster, the archaic Senate rule that has helped the GOP hold America hostage on guns even when its in the minority.

The letter makes a series of recommendations, most notably calling for creation of an Office of Gun Violence Prevention to act as the staging point for federal gun-reform efforts. Since the head of such an office wouldnt be subject to Senate confirmation (as the ATF director wasnt before 2006), the White House would be able to avoid letting this urgent issue become mired in partisan procedural games.

To say Biden has other issues on his plate would be an epic understatement, but this one deserves a return to front-burner status.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch

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A: Philip Boileau (1863-1917) was an artist who opened a studio in New York City in 1902. He was known for his portraits of beautiful women. His work appeared on postcards, prints, magazines, calendars and other items. Reinthal & Newman was a publisher of postcards and prints, in business in New York from 1906 to 1928. Most postcards sell for 25 cents or less or in groups of 25 or 30 cards for less than $10. Only a few sell for high prices. Since your mother was an ephemera dealer, she may have collected cards that are more valuable than most. Postcards with illustrations by Philip Boileau have sold recently for $1.50 to $6. Go to a postcard show and see what postcards like yours are selling for. Talk to the dealers and see if theyre interested in your collection. But dont let them just pick out the best postcards and leave you with the rest, which will be harder to sell. You can find postcard shows by searching online.
A plea hearing was continued Wednesday for a Pilot Mountain woman charged in the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol riot, according to court documents.

Virginia Marie Spencer, 38, is facing several charges, including obstruction of an official proceeding and disorderly conduct in a Capitol building. Her husband, Christopher Spencer, 41, faces the same charges.

Both were scheduled to plead guilty to those charges Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. However, according to court documents filed Thursday, the hearing was continued until Sept. 9 because of Virginia Spencers health. No details were provided about her condition.

Christopher Spencer was the first North Carolina resident to be charged in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. Federal authorities have said he was an enthusiastic participant in storming the building. Authorities have alleged that Spencer did a Facebook livestream where he is seen encouraging people to kick open the doors of the U.S. House chamber and yelling obscenities as police approached the mob inside an area in the Capitol.
As a nation mourned the Sept. 11 attacks that killed thousands, the Journal asked readers to share their thoughts. Here's what they had to say
The nurses who havent left, who have stayed with their facilities, they are seeing these other people come in now who are making more money. It provides a tense working environment," Kroll said.

The pandemic was in its early stages when Kim Davis, 36, decided to quit her job at an Arkansas hospital and become a travel nurse. She said she has roughly doubled her income in the 14 months that she has been treating patients in intensive care units in Phoenix; San Bernardino, California; and Tampa, Florida.

Since Ive been traveling, Ive paid off all my debt. I paid off about $50,000 in student loans, she said.

Davis said many of her colleagues are following the same path.

Theyre leaving to go travel because why would you do the same job for half the pay? she said. If theyre going to risk their lives, they should be compensated.

Health leaders say nurses are bone-tired and frustrated from being asked to work overtime, from getting screamed at and second-guessed by members of the community, and from dealing with people who chose not to get vaccinated or wear a mask.
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Ruben Villano, 35, Bridish Crawford's partner, his children, Irene Villano, 18, and Eric Villano, 14; and cousin Karlos Villano, 14, of LaPorte, were able to cling to the dam for 11 hours before rescuers came to their aid.

Irene Villano said she was able to gain a hold on the dam with a pinkie finger and then her feet, and other family members held onto her.

She watched the sun set and rise again before she and her family members were rescued, Allen said.

The Villano family had no idea, nor does most of the public at large, that low-head dams are treacherous," he said. "These dams are known as 'drowning machines' by those who own or operate them," said Allen, whose Allen Law Group represents the family along with North Carolina law firm Edwards Kirby.

Allen used photos to show how placid a river can look beyond a low-head dam to someone on a tube or boat.

Some estimates put the number of low-head dams in North Carolina at more than 1,000, but no official inventory exists, Allen said.

The attorney said hundreds have died as a result of encounters with low-head dams, but many remain unguarded.
We have metal detectors in our courthouses for the protection of our judges and lawyers. Why dont we have them in our schools for the protection of our children and teachers?

Sadly, it appears thats what this gun-crazy country has come to.

Sonny Thomas

Winston-Salem

All the people

First, the good news. Vaccines stop smallpox, polio, measles, mumps, tetanus, rabies, anthrax, hepatitis, shingles, typhoid fever, yellow fever, HPV, seasonal flu and COVID.

Now, the bad news. You actually have to take the vaccines for them to work. That is not much different from drinking water, which if you dont do, you will suffer and die.

Dying from thirst can happen all too easily and has happened on deadly battlefields, which is the current national mood. Abraham Lincoln worried mightily about the nation and its people perishing at a now famous battlefield cemetery when he proclaimed optimism, saying that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. Clearly, matters of national interest, as in global pandemics, are always about all the people, not just some of the people.
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editor's pick topical alert top story

Heading back to the stadium? Here's a refresher course to manage the chaos

Journal Star file photo Traffic is backed up from 10th and Q streets, looking east, as Husker fans converge on downtown Lincoln. Building construction in the area will make for more bottlenecks as Nebraska opens the 2021 football season Saturday.

Now that the Husker football game sellout streak has been saved, and last years gathering restrictions have been lifted, expect the usual downtown delays during Saturdays home opener.

And after last years gameday ghost town, chaos will have never felt more natural.

Heres what you need to know if you want to swim more safely, and swiftly, in the sea of red:

Whats new this year

* Mask up at the game: Masks are encouraged in Memorial Stadiums concourses, lobby entrances, suites and outdoor seats, but theyre required in restrooms, elevators, hallways, lobbies and other indoor spaces, including the club level and press box.

* And mask up while you pregame: The Lincoln-Lancaster County Health Department requires masks in indoor areas, including bars, restaurants and stores, although the masks can come off while eating and drinking.

UNL to host student tailgate before Husker football home games Before the first four home games of the season, "The Bone Yard," funded by the university, will consist of 60 tents, food and music just north of the student union.

* Fewer Big Red Express shuttles: Dont wait for the bus at Holmes Lake or the airport area on West Bond Street, because its not coming this year. StarTran had to make the cuts because of a pandemic-related staffing shortage, a spokeswoman said, though it's still serving the four quadrants of the city.

* Mobile tickets will be accepted, and can be stored on phones and scanned at the gates. The university recommends saving it to your Apple Wallet or Google Pay app before you get to the stadium.

* The sidewalk around the north and east areas of the stadium is closed because of construction. Be prepared to walk around the outside of South Stadium to reach your gate.

* The Husker Nation Pavilion will not be open this season because of construction.

* E-scooters wont work in downtown Lincoln during home games.

* Not new, but worth noting: The stadium has a clear-bag policy. Don't get to the gate and have to take your purse back to the car.

Driving from Interstate 80

There are ways to avoid the stop-and-go traffic resulting from most fans choosing to take Interstate 180 into downtown Lincoln. Better options:

* From the west: Exit at U.S. 77 South to Rosa Parks Way.

* From the east: Exit at Waverly and follow Cornhusker Highway to State Fair Drive and Salt Creek Roadway.

* If parking at Haymarket Park: Exit I-80 at airport, then take Cornhusker to Antelope Valley Parkway to Salt Creek Roadway.

* Still plan to risk I-180s traffic delays? You must use N Street and Pinnacle Arena Drive to access the Haymarket and its garages.

* And after the game, avoid the Waverly interchange. The state sometimes closes the on-ramp if I-80 traffic is thick, forcing cars onto U.S. 6.

'Full gung-ho'  Longwell's bartender ready for new season behind Lincoln Railyard window Veterans on staff don't look forward to Saturdays the same way a new hire might  "I've done this dance before, I know how hectic it can be," Austin Dixon said  but the reemergence that comes with the opener is enough to excite.

Driving from Lincoln

* From the north: Antelope Valley Parkway to Salt Creek Roadway.

* From the south: Capitol Parkway or N Street to north-south routes.

Projects that could slow traffic

* North 27th Street  Lanes closed between Superior Street and Cornhusker.

* West O Street  Lanes closed between Sun Valley Boulevard and South First Street.

* Q Street between 11th and 12th  Southern two lanes closed.

* North Antelope Valley Parkway from Saunders Avenue to Military Road will have lane reductions from mid-September through mid-October.

* U.S. 77 near Saltillo Road  Lanes closed for South Beltway construction.

No, those Memorial Stadium Runzas aren't prepared any differently, but they still taste just as great Add in a cold souvenir-cupful of Pepsi or a warm slice of Valentino's pizza -- don't forget the over 80,000 red-clad fans -- and you have a recipe for one heck of a gameday experience.

More traffic tips

* Stadium Drive will be closed, and passenger drop-off and pick-up will not be allowed before or after game.

* Uber, Lyft and taxi stops will be at the bus stop in front of Henzlik Hall, 1430 Vine St.

* 17th Street from R Street to Vine is closed.

* Vine Street from Antelope Valley Parkway to 16th Street has a traffic lane change affecting eastbound and westbound lanes. The bike lane is closed in each direction.

* Two hours before kickoff, Ninth Street will be closed at the Salt Creek roundabout, reopening once vehicles have left the area after the game.

* Three hours before kickoff, R, Q and P streets will be closed to traffic into the Haymarket from Ninth Street.

* Salt Creek Roadway will have lane restrictions at 14th Street.

* 16th Street from Vine to Q will be closed to northbound traffic postgame.

* Postgame traffic on northbound 10th Street will be restricted to I-180, with no traffic allowed past the stadium; and southbound traffic on North 10th south of Charleston will be closed.

* Parked in Haymarket garages? After the game, Seventh Street from N to M streets will be one-way southbound; M Street from Seventh to Ninth streets will be one-way eastbound.

Leading Off: It's Husker Eve; so where's the excitement? This town has all the excitement of a Yanni concert. This used to be a day that had a buzz of its own as people began to arrive in town and commenced to eating, drinking and other forms of merriment.

City parking

* Reserve reduced-price, prepaid football parking in the Haymarket and other city garages and lots through parkandgo.org.

* Parking meters are enforced from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturdays and are operated with coins, credit cards or the PassportParking app. Most meters are $1.25 per hour; 10-hour meters are 75 cents per hour.

* Visitors can park at any meter all day for only $15 using the PassportParking app and entering Zone 90.

University parking

* The university accepts credit cards and cash, and prices at its more than a dozen garages and lots available for gameday parking range from $10 to $25 For details: parking.unl.edu.

* Handicap-accessible parking is available for $25 at 14th and R streets; Avery Avenue garage (with free cart shuttle); 14th and U streets, east of Morrill Hall; and 14th between Vine and W streets.

Taking the bus

StarTrans Big Red Express will pick you up  and drop you off  starting two hours before kickoff at four locations:

* Southeast Community College, 88th and O streets, south parking lot.

* Gateway Mall, 61st and O streets, southeast parking area.

* SouthPointe Pavilions, 27th Street and Pine Lake Road, south of Von Maur.

* North Star High School, 33rd Street and Folkways Boulevard.

Buses will drop off and depart from R Street between 12th and 14th. Masks and exact change are required. The cost is $5 each way, with no bills larger than a $20 accepted.

Big Red Express season tickets, good for round-trips for all home games, are available for $50 at the shuttle lots on gamedays. You can also buy tickets by texting TOKEN to 41411 to receive a download link. For more details, call 402-476-1234 or visit transit.lincoln.ne.gov.

Alternate transportation

Bike UNL offers free bike valet service during home games. Cyclists can drop off bikes two hours prior to kickoff at the Outdoor Adventures Center, 930 N. 14th St. It also accepts returns of BikeLNK bicycles from the city bike-share program. Bikes must be picked up within one hour after game. Details: bike.unl.edu/bikevalet or call 402-472-4777.
Zaruba said he couldn't say if his friend  part of his pandemic "pod" in Auburn  would have survived if a transfer could have been arranged earlier. But the delay definitely didn't help, he said.

"In this day and age, we shouldn't have to send patients to other states, we shouldn't have to work this hard to find a place to put a patient," the physician said.

Zaruba spoke about the case with the permission of McConnaughey's wife, Jodie, and son, Joel. He was more than a doctor to the family as part of a group of friends who would gather, socially distanced, on driveways to grill out and share an adult beverage during the pandemic.

Telling McConnaughey's story, the doctor said, could help other people understand how strained medical resources are now with the surge in new coronavirus cases caused by the more contagious delta variant. It might also, Zaruba said, convince some people to take common-sense precautions against becoming infected, such as getting a vaccine and wearing protective masks where appropriate.

Mark McConnaughey, the doctor said, was the kind of guy who would drop everything to help someone, even if it meant interrupting a job he had to finish. So by sharing his story, he could help someone again.
The project, a partnership with several legal, city and community organizations, brings lawyers to the courtroom to assist people going to eviction hearings. Theyve enlisted the help of law students in the Civil Clinical Law Program who do research on cases, helping the volunteer lawyers prepare to represent clients when they come to court, said Mindy Rush Chipman, director of the Lincoln Commission on Human Rights, which began the project.

The program  which is being duplicated in Omaha and has received several awards  also uses outreach volunteers to go to peoples homes once an eviction lawsuit has been filed against them. Volunteers give families a packet of information to make sure they understand they need to show up in court, get legal representation, and can sign up for rental assistance.

As soon as people get off the elevator in the courthouse, a law student and a volunteer attorney working together will greet them and offer assistance, Rush Chipman said.

In August, Sullivan said, there were 30-40 eviction cases a week.

The moratorium was one of the tools in our toolbox to keep people housed. Now that tools been taken away, said Rush Chipman.
Dungan argued for probation, saying Loseman has been sober since the day of the crash and takes treatment seriously, despite calling it "BS" in a presentence interview with the probation office.

Loseman briefly thanked the judge for the opportunity to do treatment and get clean. It's helped a lot, he said.

Deputy County Attorney Erica Pruess asked the court to consider the impact Loseman's actions had on Stotts' family, especially the lasting effect on his two young sons.

She said it's clear that Loseman wasn't taking treatment seriously and hasn't been cooperating with Community Corrections for the past month.

"Ultimately, your honor, the state feels that if Mr. Loseman continues on the path that he has been with regard to his treatment, he's going to end up injuring himself and another person," Pruess said.

In the end, Lancaster County Court Judge Timothy Phillips said Loseman benefited from some "sloppy law enforcement work," which resulted in the deal, and he received the benefit of pre-trial release bond that he didn't follow through on.

At the time of the crash, he said, Loseman was driving after consuming, without a permit and his comments made it clear he thought counseling was a "joke."
Leah Rediger, the director of religious and spiritual life at Doane, said encouraging vaccinations, which protect individuals as well as communities, is a natural extension of the office's mission.

"We do a lot of work around religious literacy education to help students, faculty and staff understand how to be a better neighbor to those who orient around religion differently than they do," Rediger said.

The ambassadors  11 undergraduate, graduate and recently graduated Doane students  are encouraged to create "a positive culture" around the vaccine, Rediger said, by listening to where a vaccine-hesitant person may be coming from before asking them what may change their mind.

"We want to avoid the backfire effect, where the more you try to convince someone of your point of view, the more deeply entrenched they become in their perspective," she said.

Bilingual ambassadors will do outreach into Spanish-speaking communities in Lincoln and Crete to better understand what barriers are keeping people from getting vaccinated and find out how those obstacles can be removed.

The goal is to build relationships and model behavior that could potentially inspire a person to make a healthy choice for their community, Rediger added.
The Nebraska State Patrol is investigating an officer-involved shooting early Thursday in Milford.

No one was injured in the shooting, according to a State Patrol news release.

Spokesman Cody Thomas said the preliminary investigation shows that at about 3:15 a.m., a Milford Police officer saw an SUV parked at the Super Storage on U.S. 6 and approached the people inside, who were reportedly uncooperative.

When the driver sped away as the officer was standing near the front of the SUV, the officer fired his weapon, striking the rear drivers side tire, according to the news release.

The SUV stopped north of Milford because of the flat tire.

Police arrested the driver, 21-year-old Tyrez Ashley of Kansas City, Missouri, on suspicion of willful reckless driving, felony flight to avoid arrest and criminal impersonation.

He is in the Seward County Jail and hasn't yet been charged.

The Milford Police Department has requested that the Nebraska State Patrol conduct an investigation into the incident.
It said the display was unveiled in 2017 after two groups, the Gay and Lesbian Archive of Mid-America (GLAMA) and LGBT-KC, placed a commemorative marker in Kansas City the year before.

An Aug. 27 Facebook post by GLAMA at the University of Missouri-Kansas City said Queer History Invades the Missouri Capitol! The touring version of Making History: Kansas City and the Rise of Gay Rights is now on display at the Missouri State Museum!

It said the exhibit details the contributions made by Kansas Citians to gay and lesbian civil rights in the years before Stonewall, referencing the 1969 riots in New York City that are seen as a central part in the movement for LGBT rights.

We are absolutely thrilled that our colleagues at the Museum have mounted the exhibit, which will be on display for Capitol visitors and state legislators through the end of the year, the post said.

The Missouri State Museum, located within the state Capitol, features numerous historical exhibits, including portraits of former governors and more.
Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital and deserves much higher consideration.

As we honor the contributions of American wage earners on Labor Day on Monday, these words from President Abraham Lincoln in his first message to Congress in December 1861 still ring true today after a tumultuous 18 months for our nation suffering through a deadly pandemic.

The resiliency of the American wage earner has allowed for the economy to recover from the brink of disaster, the likes of which we have not experienced since the Great Depression.

Throughout this nations history, amid decades of policy choices by our elected officials that accelerated income inequality for wage earners in their pursuit of the American dream, the one institution that has fought for the American wage earner, through good times and bad times, has been organized labor.

Organized labors efforts are again being recognized by the American people as playing an important role in improving the quality of life for wage earners both in the workplace and in the community.

Since 1936, the Gallup Organization has asked if Americans approve or disapprove of labor unions.
Everybody wins when college students engage in service learning. College students working with younger youth create a palpable near-peer energy that makes learning engaging and fun. It also stimulates college students educational experience.

This summer, a partnership between Nebraska Honors and Beyond School Bells created the Huskers Afterschool and Summer Learning Opportunities (HALO), training 80 college students to engage in hands-on summer activities.

This summer of service, supported by CARES Act funding, provided college students with a modest stipend and important learning experiences to complement their academic courses. In surveys, students indicated their participation taught them crucial skills in communication, organization and collaboration -- just the skills employers find lacking in college students. They also indicated that they learned about topics like inequality and diversity.

Students also had fun. As one, Michael Zavodny, said, I really enjoyed working with the staff and kids at Clinton -- they were amazing! I hope I gave as much to them as I got from them. Working with underserved populations will always be a passion of mine, so this was a fantastic opportunity to work with that kind of group and really learn and grow from the process.
The investigation began Aug. 31, when the suspect allegedly followed the woman he is accused of assaulting into the Burlington Police Department, 224 E Jefferson St.
RACINE  A Racine man who said he volunteers at a school to help children learn to read allegedly had multiple images of child pornography on his computer.

David C. Peters, 65, of the 100 block of West Campus Court, was charged with 10 felony counts of possession of child pornography and misdemeanor counts of possession of THC and possession of drug paraphernalia.

According to a criminal complaint:

On Monday, officers executed a search warrant at Peters house after learning that he had downloaded child pornography. He at first denied possessing child pornography and claimed he was a computer guy, an engineer, then said he worked at a hospital in the computer department and that he used to fix computers.

Peters gave an investigator the password for his computer and the investigator noticed a program capable of downloading shared child pornography. Eventually, Peters came up to the police and said Im guilty. He then went on to state he found images through a company that produces child pornography.
Two other notes

 I am vaccinated. My wife is not, Vos said last week during a Q&A with Racine-based group H.O.T. (Honest, Open, Transparent) Government.

He added that his wife, Michelle Litjens, a former one-term member of the Wisconsin Assembly, "would chew off her fingers before she got" the vaccine.

Vos argued that this is how it should be: that people should be able to choose if they want the vaccine or not, adding that he does not and will not require masks or vaccinations against COVID-19 at his business.

 Vos said that, this fall, Republicans plan to present a more dramatic reform for Wisconsin's unemployment system.

He offered no details during last week's Q&A, both both Democrats and Republicans have blamed the other for how Wisconsin's unemployment system failed in the early months of the pandemic.

Democrats blamed Republicans, in control of the Legislature and thus the state's budget, for failing to update Wisconsin's outdated unemployment software despite the knowledge it could fail.

Republicans blamed the administration of Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, for not more quickly and effectively getting unemployment benefits to the hundreds of thousands of Wisconsinites who unexpectedly lost their jobs when the pandemic arrived in spring 2020.
MOUNT PLEASANT  When Andre Sandoval was a teenager, he took part in an effort to combat gun violence.

When he was 15, because of gun violence, we did a campaign called My name is Andre and I am Racine. I posted that video six years ago. Today, ironically, six years later, it would be gun violence that takes Andre away from us, Eloy Contreras, a youth pastor who is the leader of the Active Catholic Teens In Service Youth Ministry that Sandoval had been part of throughout his life, said during a vigil for Sandoval on Wednesday night.

Sandoval was active in the Catholic community of Racine, continuing to work with ACTS as a young adult and remaining an active St. Patrick Parish member.

On Wednesday, more than 100 people gathered outside Angels Beauty Salon, 2221 Durand Ave., to mourn the loss of the Sandoval, who had been killed there Saturday afternoon. It was one of the most well-attended vigils for a person killed in the greater Racine area in recent memory.

According to police reports, a barber at the salon shot Sandoval in the back of the head after Sandoval allegedly didnt pay for a haircut.

Several people at the vigil spoke about Sandovals generosity, including his commitment to a community improvement project this summer. While he had committed to coming back for a day, he ended up helping for a whole week, all the while balancing his early morning shifts as a dock worker at Dayton Freight. A couple weeks before his death, he had taken on a second job as a security guard.

Family, friends and community members grappled with the loss and shared memories of Sandoval, who was described as a gentle giant by one of his aunts. Throughout the vigil, attendees took up the call to live like Andre  a call to live with kindness, generosity and forgiveness.

Andre, my son, you know I love you and I will always love you, my son, and were going to miss you dearly, Maria Sandoval, mother of the deceased, said. I love you. Thank you so much for being a part of our life for the 21 years that God gave you to us, I love you. You will always and forever be in our hearts and go everywhere with us.

A violent time The killing of Sandoval was the ninth homicide in Racine County so far in 2021, and was the third homicide in the month of August alone. On Aug. 13, Rebecca Becky Rannow, 41, a beloved local bartender, was discovered in her Edgewood Avenue home dead from multiple gunshot wounds. On Aug. 24, Musa Tawfig Musa, 44, was gunned down near the intersection of LaSalle and English streets. At least two other non-fatal shootings have occurred in Racine since Rannow was killed.

CORRECTION: The name of the mother of Angel Sandoval was originally misstated in this article. It has been corrected.

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RACINE  Adriana Cochran was at work when she felt a tingling on her right arm down to her leg Aug. 18.

Cochran, a professional recruiter for Express Employment Professionals, 1300 S. Green Bay Road, Suite 200, told a coworker about the issue. The coworker urged her to see a doctor.

Soon after that, she was rushed to Ascension All Saints Hospital. Doctors found a benign tumor on the outer left side of her brain.

She was transferred to Froedtert Hospital in Wauwatosa, where she underwent surgery Aug. 23 to remove the tumor. Her recovery could be as long as six months to a year.

She has support from family and friends near and far, along with the support of her community. Many have rallied behind her, each paying for portions of her medical bills via the fundraising website GoFundMe (gofund.me/95d962ab). As of Thursday, $3,580 has been raised of the $20,000 goal.

A successful surgery

Cochran, 32, grew up in Racine, moved to Chippewa Falls and graduated from Chippewa Falls High School in 2007, then moved back to Racine after completing college at Milwaukee Area Technical College.

She had been suffering from headaches and migraines for the last two years. Her doctor had simply given her headache/migraine medication at the time.

Lorenzo Rosario, who has been her partner for six years and is now her fiance, said her headaches had gone from bad to worse.

The doctors didnt think it was serious, Rosario said. I felt like they probably shouldve conducted more research because to assume it was a headache and theres nothing going on  they shouldve checked it earlier. They couldve caught it earlier.

On Aug. 18, things were a little hectic, Rosario said. Cochran could have been going through a mini-seizure as a side effect from the tumor, doctors said.

It was overwhelming, Rosario said.

However, the surgery was a success. The tumor was removed from the outer front-left side of her brain.

Rosarios main concern was making sure she made it through and went home to see their kids: Eliana, 4, and Levi, 18 months.

Surgery no matter the severity of it, is a very serious procedure, he said. On the brain, its a pretty serious one. Once you wake up, after that, you just kind of build and start over and take it day by day.

Before surgery, Cochran was worried about the process and was worried she wasnt going to be able to talk or write.

However, she stuck it through and she pushed hard. She was able to talk, she can communicate, walk and do the things they were skeptical if she would be able to do, Rosario said. Shes recovering day by day and its taking a little bit, but she will get there.

The recovery process

Brain surgeries are among the most dangerous to perform. The risks include loss of sight or speech, stroke, coma, brain swelling, the list goes on.

Cochran didnt run into those serious problems. She can now have conversations, speaking full sentences. She may get puzzled on a word or two, but its getting better, Rosario said: the more she lets herself rest, the more her brain gets back to normal.

Rosario works as a community specialist for Racine/Kenosha Community Action. Hes trying to be as supportive for Cochran as possible, whether if thats taking care of their kids, bringing them to daycare or school or simply letting Cochran sleep.

Shes participating in physical, occupational and speech therapy. She additionally will have annual checkups.

The family is helping her take her medicine and helping her remain stress-free to aid the healing process and prevention of another tumor; theres a chance one could come back.

Adrianas aunt, Maria Cartagena, is welcoming Cochran into her Franklin home. Cochran will be staying with her until she feels better.

Cartagena said she initially was in shock to hear her niece had a brain tumor.

Thats not a phone call you expect to receive, Cartagena said. I was a little sad to see how this would affect her job and her as a mother. I get emotional about it because she is so young.

Cochrans own mother Lucy Ortiz additionally is visiting from Florida, where Ortiz has lived for the last 10 years.

I feel like the more support she has, the better shell get, Ortiz said. Cochrans condition was, very shocking and very unexpected because shes so young.

Cochran and Ortiz often visit each other and their families; the last time they saw each other was Memorial Day weekend and Cochran was planning on visiting for Labor Day.

Its very overwhelming to see your child going through this, but just having faith that everything is going to be OK is keeping us strong, she said. Having faith in God is the first thing.

Cochran is doing well in therapy and off to a good start, Ortiz said.

Ortiz is playing affirmations she found on YouTube for her daughter, something she also did for her while Cochran was in labor.

Listening to affirmations is a positive gesture. Hearing that everythings going to be OK, and different things that are positive to influence her can help with keeping a positive mind, Ortiz said. She is positive no matter what, but right now were on a different track. We just love her so much.

Getting financial help

Cartagena started the GoFundMe page, called Adrianas Journey, to communicate how Cochran was doing, as well as to support her niece and family. Donations are going toward medical expenses, loss of income and therapy.

The GoFundMe is helping cover the main part of the medical bills that we cant afford, Rosario said. We do have to start paying this, little by little.

Rosario said the family is remaining positive. There are some lingering worries about other obstacles that could come up, but overall, Rosario said things could have been worse and hes glad theyre not.

The family is overwhelmed with the financial support people have been giving, and greatly appreciate the love, support and prayers.

I feel like I kind of owe people, Rosario said. We got family thats donating from other states, people that Ive met on Facebook or people I dont even know, donating $10 or $20. They didnt have to give anything if they didnt want to. Every dollar counts, every dollar matters.

He said even though its Cochrans job to help people, shes a great person and does a lot for others.

Its a nice feeling to get that in return, he said. She has a lot of people in her corner that she didnt even know were there. Shes very grateful for that.

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RACINE  The City Council decided on a split vote Tuesday to defer a policy change that would have required city employees to COVID test weekly if they are not vaccinated.

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The council voted 8-6 to defer the resolution in order to give the city time to meet with the unions representing the Racine police and fire departments. That meeting occurred Thursday; no update was available as The Journal Times went to press regarding what came out of those conversations.

I say we defer this item until that happens, Alderman Jeff Coe said of Thursdays meeting with the unions. Lets see if we can work together and come up with an agreement.

Coe explained the deferment would give the city time to work with its employees, which could go a long way toward improving morale.

City Administrator Paul Vornholt explained the policy itself was not an issue regarding the unions. Rather, what needed to be discussed was the impact of the policy, for which they might have a right to bargain.

Under the proposal, an employee who is not vaccinated would have to test on their own time, but the tests are free.

Safety
Milwaukee County, one of the counties that the chair of the Assembly committee on elections subpoenaed nearly a month ago to aid in a probe of the presidential election, rejected the subpoena for election materials on Friday.

In a statement, Milwaukee County Clerk George Christenson said he would not appear before the elections committee nor comply with other demands in its subpoena, such as request for election materials, reminiscent of the heavily criticized Arizona-style recount effort. Assembly elections committee chair Rep. Janel Brandtjen, R-Menomonee Falls, issued subpoenas for election materials to Milwaukee and Brown counties in early August, but they didnt appear to be valid due to the lack of signatures from Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, and the chief clerk.

Christenson said he rejected the subpoena because it is invalid.

The subpoena issued by Representative Brandtjen is invalid, he said. Because this subpoena is not valid, I will not be appearing before the Assembly Committee on Campaigns and Elections on September 7.
A Marine from Kenosha is recovering at Walter Reed National Military Center in Bethesda, Md., after being injured in the blast outside the Kabul airport that left 13 service members dead.

Lance Cpl. Romel Finley III was critically injured in the suicide blast at the airport Aug. 26 that killed more than 170 people, including 13 U.S. service members.

Supporters of Finleys family are raising funds online to help in his recovery. Mary Zorc, a close friend of Finleys mother, created a GoFundme page on behalf of the family. As of Friday afternoon, more than $7,600 had been donated. The money help with costs associated with Finleys recovery.

His wounds will impact his life forever, Zorc wrote. Romel has suffered partial face paralysis, multiple gunshot wounds, shrapnel throughout his body, a broken hip as a result of gunshot wound and large blast wounds to an arm and leg.

Zorc said Thursday that while Finley was seriously injured he is being treated at the hospital and it appears that hes headed in the right direction.
Virgin Galactic said high-altitude wind caused the change in flight path and insisted the two pilots "responded appropriately." In a statement, the company said the flight was "a safe and successful test flight that adhered to our flight procedures and training protocols."

"At no time were passengers and crew put in any danger as a result of this change in trajectory," the company noted..

Branson ended up beating fellow billionaire Jeff Bezos  founder of Amazon as well as rocket company Blue Origin  into space by nine days. Bezos launched July 20 with three others from West Texas.

Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin are vying to sell seats to tourists, scientists and anyone else looking to experience a few minutes of weightlessness. Virgin Galactic's rocketship is launched from an airplane, while Blue Origin's capsule is hoisted by a reusable New Shepard rocket.

Virgin Galactic is aiming for late September or early October for its next flight, with two Italian Air Force officers, an engineer for the National Research Council of Italy, Virgin Galactic's chief astronaut instructor and the rocketship's two pilots. It will be the company's first launch where researchers accompany their own experiments. The company plans to start flying ticket holders next year.
The Legislative Fiscal Bureau last month estimated the current two-year budget will produce a roughly $1.7 billion surplus in June of 2023, when the budget expires.

It is remarkable that with continued strong economic news the Republican Legislature could add almost zero new funding for K-12 public school classrooms, Hintz said. Todays news should serve as another opportunity to invest in our future at a time of increased need so local school districts are not forced to make cuts or ask voters to raise property taxes.

The largest portion of the $319 million increase came in the form of corporate income taxes, which came in nearly 10%, or about $230 million, higher than previous estimates.

Under state statute, half of any excess of general fund tax collections must be deposited into the budget stabilization fund, a rainy day fund to be tapped in times of emergency. According to the latest report, an estimated $967.4 million will be transferred into the fund for the previous fiscal year, bringing the fund to an estimated $1.73 billion.
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1. Yes. COVID-19 can only be stopped through vaccinations. A mandate is needed.

2. Yes. This is a major step, but were facing a national emergency. It is a justifiable move.

3. No. The government is right to promote vaccinations, but not to require them.

4. No. This is government overreach and legally questionable. A mandate is wrong.

5. Unsure. Its in the publics interest, but mandates infringe on individuals rights.

Vote

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UPDATE:

Reynaldo A. De Los Angeles posted a $10,000 Friday and was released from the Buffalo County Jail. He is scheduled to appear in court in October. ______________________________________________________________

KEARNEY  A Kearney psychiatrist is in jail accused of sexually assaulting a patient.

Reynaldo A. De Los Angeles, 76, was arrested Thursday morning at his office at 409 E. 25th St., on a Buffalo County warrant charging him with third-degree sexual assault, a misdemeanor. According to court records, the alleged incident happened Aug. 25 at his office.

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The charge alleges sexual contact without consent of the victim that didnt cause serious personal injury to the victim. Court records detailing the charge against him are sealed. Its unclear if the alleged victim is one of De Los Angeless patients.

According to his Facebook page, De Los Angeles is a board certified psychiatrist with certification in addiction and forensic medicine and provides professional psychiatric services, care and treatment, individual and family. His page says he is also a certified forensic examiner, senior disability analyst and certified in psychotherapy, and he is Honorably acknowledged as the top psychiatrist for 2016 thru 2021.
Power should be restored to most customers around the Baton Rouge area by Sept. 8 after workers finish assessing damage, Entergy Louisiana President Philip May said Thursday. Damage assessments are not as far along in the harder-hit regions, so Entergy said it has no timetable for getting service to those areas, which include New Orleans.

Gasoline shortages were also a problem for people trying to run generators and waiting in drive-thru lines for food and water. The lines for gas stretched for blocks in many places from New Orleans to Baton Rouge.

President Joe Biden also ordered the release of extra fuel from the nation's Strategic Petroleum Reserve to ensure a steady supply. He said he would also provide utilities with satellite images to help restore power.

We know that there is much to be done in this response on our part, said Biden, who was getting hourly updates on the recovery. We need to get power restored. We need to get more food, fuel and water deployed.

Ida knocked out Port Fourchon, the primary hub to support offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and send that oil on its way to refineries. Port leaders said the damage to structures where the powerful eye came ashore was not as bad as feared.
Although several countries have implemented vaccine passport programs in order to encourage people to get shots, DeSantis has argued they are a violation of personal freedom. Before he signed SB 2006 into law, DeSantis also issued an executive order banning mandatory vaccinations at businesses.

Florida currently ranks 19th of the 50 states in vaccination rate, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The state reported last week that 68% of eligible residents have gotten at least one shot. Thousands of Floridians  the vast majority of whom were unvaccinated  have become seriously ill from the virus this summer, resulting in the states worst coronavirus surge on record.

Its unclear how many businesses have already been cited under the new vaccine passport law. A spokesperson for the Department of Health did not immediately respond to a request for information.

But there is evidence that some businesses are working around the statute. For example, the concert promoter Live Nation has announced it will mandate proof of vaccination or a negative test to customers hoping to attend one of its concerts starting Oct. 4.
Keith Butcher, general manager of Princeton Public Utilities, was presented the Rising Star award from the Minnesota Municipal Utilities Association Aug. 17 at the associations annual conference.

The award is presented to a municipal utility employee who has been in his or her current position for five years or less and has demonstrated a dedication to the goals and principles of municipal utilities through problem solving and creativity.

Butcher is mindful that every commission decision has an impact on the ratepayers and ultimately the Princeton community, the associations press release says. Public input, transparency and open discussion have been hallmarks of his tenure in Princeton.

Butcher, a 1990 graduate of Tomah High School, joined Princeton Public Utilities in 2019. Since that time, he has worked to improve PPUs presence in the community through an improved and more interactive web presence as well as more contemporary online offerings that educate and inform the community about the goings on at the utility.
Thousands of refugees from Afghanistan have arrived at Fort McCoy. The base currently has capacity for approximately 13,000 people and they expect to continue receiving new visitors for a while.

I, along with several of my colleagues in the Wisconsin legislature who represent districts near Fort McCoy, visited with Major General Darrell Guthrie, Senior Commander at Fort McCoy and Commanding General of the Army Reserves 88th Readiness Division on Wednesday, August 25. He is overseeing all of the operations at Fort McCoy.Our goal was to understand the mission, ask questions and share the concerns of our constituents. Since my visit, I have been monitoring the mission at Fort McCoy and asking additional questions. I want to share what I have learned with you.

During my visit, we received a thorough briefing from Maj. Gen. Guthrie, the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security and members of Guthries team. We took a driving tour of Fort McCoy to observe the operations and I saw many families playing in the yards around the barracks and on the playgrounds. I saw busy laundromats, people hanging laundry to dry and walking around the base talking on cell phones and with each other. I saw people rebuilding their lives. I saw relief.
Fort McCoy is expected to boost its capacity for housing Afghan refugees from 10,000 to 13,000 by early next week.

Representatives from the U.S. State Department and Task Force McCoy discussed Fort McCoys response to Afghan refugees during a background briefing Thursday at the installation. The State Department official said 7,000 refugees were at Fort McCoy Thursday and that the installation will be ready to nearly double that number by Sunday.

As more and more people arrive, there are people who know each other, the State Department official said. People are finding out who are here and are connecting.

The Task Force McCoy official said refugees are being housed in two-story buildings with 30 people per floor. He said the refugees are adapting to their new surroundings and have been adept at creating separate spaces as needed.

Were starting to call them neighborhoods, he said.

He said outdoor space has been created for children to play ball and that people are starting to get outside and take walks.

The State Department officials said a top request from refugees has been WiFi access and that steps have been taken to upgrade wireless communication.

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Virgin Galactic said high-altitude wind caused the change in flight path and insisted the two pilots responded appropriately. In a statement, the company said the flight was a safe and successful test flight that adhered to our flight procedures and training protocols.

In another statement Thursday, Virgin Galactic added that at no time did the ship travel above any population centers or cause a hazard to the public. Virgin Galactic operates out of Spaceport America in the southern New Mexico desert.

We take this seriously and are currently addressing the causes of the issue and determining how to prevent this from occurring on future missions, the company said.

Branson ended up beating fellow billionaire Jeff Bezos  founder of Amazon as well as rocket company Blue Origin  into space by nine days. Bezos launched July 20 with three others from West Texas.

Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin are vying to sell seats to tourists, scientists and anyone else looking to experience a few minutes of weightlessness. Virgin Galactic's rocketship is launched from an airplane, while Blue Origin's capsule is hoisted by a reusable New Shepard rocket.
WASHINGTON  President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden visited injured U.S. troops at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Thursday night.

There are 15 Marines at the hospital in Bethesda, Maryland, just outside Washington, who were wounded in an Aug. 26 suicide bombing at the Kabul airport. The attack occurred as the U.S. government was arranging evacuations of Americans, Afghans and allies before the nearly two-decade war in Afghanistan officially ended Aug. 31.

Eleven Marines were also killed in the attack, as well as one Army solider and one Navy corpsman. Biden traveled to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware on Sunday to witness the return of their remains to U.S. soil in a solemn dignified transfer.

One of the wounded Marines was in critical condition. Three were in serious condition and 11 in stable condition.



WASHINGTON  Air Force Gen. Tod Wolters, head of U.S. European Command, said Thursday that so far only one individual evacuated from Afghanistan is being retained in Germany for problems getting through security screening.

Speaking to Pentagon reporters, he said that as far as he knows, the person in custody is not of a high threat.
UW-Whitewater is not requiring students, faculty or staff to be vaccinated for COVID-19 as a condition of enrollment or employment, but Henderson said he encourages all members of the campus community to get vaccinated and report their vaccination status to the university.

Im committed to providing the best learning environment possible at UW-Whitewater, and a healthy community is a necessary condition for that environment to be present, Henderson said.

Nass in recent weeks has strongly criticized university COVID-19 mitigation efforts and wants to sue UW System to control such policies.

Sen. Kelda Roys, D-Madison, who serves on the Joint Committee for Review of Administrative Rules, of which Nass is co-chair, slammed Nass for aiding and abetting the spread of COVID and called for universities to mandate vaccinations.

Everyone has the right to be safe in their school and workplace, Roys said in a statement. Faculty should not have to resort to creative ideas to promote safety if UW-Whitewaters administration would follow the lead of hundreds of other colleges and universities to make vaccines mandatory for all students, faculty and staff.

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Milwaukee and Brown counties, the two counties the Assembly elections committee chair subpoenaed nearly a month ago to aid in a probe of the presidential election, rejected the subpoenas for election materials on Friday.

In a statement, Milwaukee County Clerk George Christenson said he would not appear before the elections committee nor comply with other demands in its subpoena, such as a request for election materials, reminiscent of the heavily criticized Arizona-style recount effort. Assembly elections committee chair Rep. Janel Brandtjen, R-Menomonee Falls, issued subpoenas for election materials to Milwaukee and Brown counties in early August, but they didnt appear to be valid without signatures from Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, and the chief clerk.

Both Christenson and Brown County attorney David Hemery said they rejected the subpoenas because they are invalid.

The subpoena issued by Representative Brandtjen is invalid, Christenson said. Because this subpoena is not valid, I will not be appearing before the Assembly Committee on Campaigns and Elections on September 7.
While it carries a similar name, the elementary literacy program has nothing to do with the 1619 Project at all and does not teach critical race theory, Hannah-Jones said. The 1619 Freedom School is privately funded.

The curriculum, which teaches literacy through Black history, was designed by educators from Georgetown Universitys Program in Education, Inquiry, and Justice and the University of Missouris Carter Center for K-12 Black History Education. By 2022, the curriculum will be made available for free to anyone in the country.

The 1619 Freedom School is built on the understanding that for a people for whom it was once illegal to learn to read and write, education is a revolutionary act, Hannah-Jones said. A quality education has been the key to my success, and I wanted to give back to the community that raised me and to the children whose opportunities may be limited but who have potential that is limitless."

For copyright information, check with the distributor of this item, Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier.

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FRANKLIN, Wis. (AP)  Police shot and killed a man Friday outside a Wisconsin Walmart after he allegedly kidnapped a man, carjacked a vehicle and stole another vehicle as officers were closing in on him.

The Milwaukee County Sheriff's Office, the Franklin Police Department and the Oak Creek Police Department issued a joint statement saying the events leading up to the shooting began early Monday when a 31-year-old man kidnapped another man in Milwaukee.

They visited three stores, including a Walmart in suburban Franklin, on Friday morning. The kidnapping victim told store personnel there that he needed help. Someone from the Walmart called police and said there was an active shooter there, the statement said.

Multiple deputies and officers from the two departments converged on the area. As officers closed in the suspect abandoned his vehicle and stole another one, the statement said.

A chase ensued on Interstate 94 with speeds reaching 110 mph. The suspect exited the freeway and crashed in a Franklin parking lot. He then stole another vehicle at gunpoint and engaged an Oak Creek officer in an armed confrontation." The statement did not elaborate.
That ruling was appealed, with the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council, Wisconsin Newspaper Association and Wisconsin Broadcasters Association filing a friend of the court brief in favor of the trustee. (My law firm authored the brief.)

The appeals court ruled that the trustee was entitled to fee recovery, citing the open records laws statement that all persons are entitled to the greatest possible information regarding the affairs of government and its direction that the law be liberally construed in favor of public access.

Laws that allow requesters to recover attorneys fees have always been important to ensuring access to information. For example, they allow people who could not otherwise afford an attorney to hire one on a contingent-fee basis to bring an open records case.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court is also considering a different attorney fees case this term. It will decide whether requesters can get attorney fees when an agency voluntarily produces records after a suit is filed, if the initial denial was unlawful.

The Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council joined with four other organizations in filing a friend of the court brief urging a yes answer to this question.
The University of Wisconsin System owns a critical responsibility to open our classrooms this September to deliver the in-person education students deserve and parents expect. And we are planning to do just that. Unfortunately, some want us to ignore our unambiguous authority and duty under Wisconsin law to protect the health, safety, and welfare of the university.

As soon as I accepted the UW System Presidency in July 2020, I put my experience as former U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services and Wisconsin Governor to work, with chancellors, to ensure we keep our universities open and safe. Together over the last 14 months we have been Johnny-on-the-spot, building a robust student testing program, cultivating a culture of responsibility on campus, and providing tests and vaccinations to Wisconsin residents  steps praised by some of the top federal health officials and scientists.
The health care "professionals" who object to Gundersen's requiring them to get a vaccine against a deadly disease:

Maybe they can go down to Alabama, where the ICUs are filled with the unvaccinated and the health care workers are burned out and would like a break.

The protestors screaming about "their bodies, their choice" seem not to care about their neighbors, friends and family, especially the children who are still too young for the vaccine.

Gundersen and all other businesses that require vaccination of their employees should be thanked. It's the only way we will get out of this pandemic.

Pat Schmid

La Crosse

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When the smoke clears and we have a chance to take a breath and think objectively about the war in Afghanistan, lets remember two things. First, former President George W. Bush (Republican) got us into this war, and secondly, U.S. Rep. Barbara Lee (Democrat-California) was the only member of Congress to vote against it. Some called her a traitor. She even faced death threats, insults and hate mail.
Locast, a service that streamed local TV for free in about three dozen U.S. cities, suspended its operations Thursday after losses in court against the broadcast industry.

The owners of the country's major broadcast TV networks  ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox  had sued Locast in 2019, saying it violated their copyrights, and asked for the service to be shut down.

Locast has held that because it is a nonprofit, it found a legal loophole in copyright law  it can stream the networks of ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox without paying them. The companies that own the networks make billions annually in fees from cable companies that pay to include them in TV packages.

But a federal judge in New York ruled on Tuesday that Locast isn't protected by that exemption from copyright law. He said Locast is effectively charging users and using that money to expand its service, which he said isn't allowed under the law.

While Locast was free, users who didn't pay $5 a month would get an ad every 15 minutes asking for a donation.

The digital rights organization Electronic Frontier Foundation, which has defended Locast in court, said the judge interpreted the law in an artificially narrow way and that Locast was fulfilling Congress' mission to make sure Americans had access to their local broadcast stations.

Locast has been around for years but flew under the radar as new streaming services emerged that grabbed peoples attention. It had more than 3 million users, EFF said.

As a nonprofit, Locast was designed from the very beginning to operate in accordance with the strict letter of the law, but in response to the courts recent rulings, with which we respectfully disagree, we are hereby suspending operations, effective immediately, a the company said Thursday.

The legal case will continue, including an appeal, to resolve the remaining issues, said EFF attorney Mitch Stoltz. He did not specify what those issues are.

An attorney for the TV networks, Gerson Zweifach, declined to comment on Locasts shutdown Thursday. On Wednesday, he issued a statement on behalf of ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC saying the court ruling was a victory for copyright law. The networks filed for a permanent injunction to stop Locast operations Wednesday night.

Disney owns ABC, ViacomCBS owns CBS, Comcasts NBCUniversal owns NBC and Fox Corp. owns Fox.

The major broadcast networks are available free with a TV antenna, which you can buy for less than $10.
For the second year in a row, Landis Valley Village & Farm Museum will hold an Exclusively Landis Valley Online Benefit Auction.

That means you can bid from your couch at home on more than 100 items including original artwork, handcrafted pieces and experiences such as tavern dinners on-site at the Landis Valley Village & Farm Museum.

You can preview items up for bid in the Landis Valley auction online from Sunday to Saturday, Sept. 5 to 11. The week when bids can be placed online runs from Sunday to Saturday, Sept. 12 to 18.

This year's online auction, like last year's, takes the place of Landis Valley's traditional in-person spring auction.

Items up for bid will include gift baskets from area businesses, quilted pieces and items handcrafted by Landis Valley site demonstrators in woodcraft, tin, redware, fiber and more.

The auction benefits the educational programs of Landis Valley, a living-history museum in Manheim Township that celebrates Pennsylvania German heritage in the 18th and 19th centuries.

If you don't find anything you'd like to bid on, you can also make a donation through the auction.

For more information, and to participate in the auction once viewing and bidding start, visit www.landisvalleymuseum.org/event/2021_auction.
Lancaster city police have arrested a 14-year-old for the fatal shooting of a man late last month near a city park.

Elijahuwon Ashmeir Brown of the 700 block of Manor Street was arrested Thursday morning and charged with homicide in the Aug. 27 shooting death of 23-year old Rolando Rivera in the 500 block of Third Street, next to Rodney Park.

Rivera was found lying in the street, unresponsive, with multiple gunshot wounds at 9:44 p.m., police said. He died from multiple gunshot wounds to the head and torso, an autopsy found.

Police said they made the arrest after reviewing video footage from the area around the incident, including some that shows the suspect raising a firearm and then firing multiple gunshots at Rolando Rivera and continues firing as Rivera falls, a police press release said.

A criminal complaint filed in the case describes video footage from residences, businesses and Lancaster Safety Coalition cameras that first record Brown in the area just before 3:30 p.m. when he is shown carrying what appears to be a handgun. At 9:38 p.m., video footage indicates Brown saw Rivera as Rivera was walking west in the 500 block of Manor Street, the complaint says.

Brown cuts through an alley near Old Dorwart Street and then reappears on a video walking south on Crystal Street next to Rodney Park as Rivera is ahead of him on the Third Street side of the park, the complaint says.

As Rivera is walking away from him, Brown runs at Rivera from behind, shooting him twice in the back of the head and several times in the back when Brown is within several feet of Rivera, the complaint says. After Rivera falls, Brown approaches and fires again while overtop of him. Elijahuwon Brown then runs east on Third Street, the complaint says. Eight 9mm shell casings were recovered at the scene.

Five Lancaster city police detectives who reviewed the footage recognized Brown from personal experience and familiarity, the complaint says.

In July 2020, when he was 13 years old, Brown was adjudicated as a minor for aggravated assault and possession of a firearm by a minor, the complaint said.

Brown was arraigned Thursday afternoon before District Judge Adam Witkonis and committed to Lancaster County Prison with no bail.

Brown is one of the youngest people to be charged with homicide in Lancaster County history, although two other 14-year-olds have been charged with homicide here in the last two years.

In October 2019, 14-year-old Rahmir I. Hopkins was charged with killing Luis A. Perez in the southeast part of the city. In February 2021, 14-year-old Claire Elaina Miller was charged with homicide after calling police to say she had stabbed her 19-year-old sister in their Manheim Township home while their parents were asleep.

Under Pennsylvania law, juveniles accused of homicide must be charged as adults.
Bethany Christian Services, a faith-based nonprofit that supports vulnerable families in the United States and abroad, is starting a transitional foster care for unaccompanied children program in Reading. Reading was chosen for its large Latino and Spanish-speaking population, as the migrant children come from Spanish-speaking countries.

More than 1,380 unaccompanied children were released into Pennsylvania sponsor care between October 2020 and July, according to the federal Office of Refugee Settlement. The migrant children are sent by their parents to the United States, often with the name of a relative or family friend, to escape violence, poverty and unsafe condition in their country.

Bethany has a capacity of resettling 24 children at one time, with hopes of keeping siblings together. Each child stays with Bethany for 30 to 50 days as potential sponsors go through a vetting process that includes background checks, a home study and pre-service trainings. Bethany is working to place children with families as early as the end of September.

Foster parents receive a stipend from Bethany, funded by ORR. Anyone in northern Lancaster County or Reading who is interested in applying should contact Taylor Wasson-Kline at twasson-kline@bethanyorg. For more information, visit Bethany.org/Lancaster or Bethany.org/Reading.
As state crews continue to inspect bridges throughout southcentral Pennsylvania, Lancasters county-owned bridges appear to have avoided the worst of tropical depression Ida, which swept across the region Wednesday.

There was no major damage to any of the county-owned bridges, though workers will spend approximately two weeks cleaning up debris that built up underneath them, said Robert Devonshire, the countys director of facilities management.

The storm, which dumped an average of 6 inches of rain in Lancaster County, surged under two local covered bridges that span the Conestoga a few miles northeast of Lancaster, connecting Manheim and Upper Leacock townships.

The Hunsecker Mill and Pinetown bridges were both open to traffic today, although some of the outer boards at Hunsecker, which is maintained by the state, were visibly damaged. Pinetown is a county-owned bridge. Both covered bridges have experienced damage in previous storms.

Dave Thompson, a spokesperson for the state Department of Transportation, said crews continue to inspect state-owned bridges throughout the area impacted by the storm. It was unclear how long it would take the agency to inspect all of its bridges in the region.

The Conestoga River crested at 18.49 feet around 10 a.m. Thursday, according to the National Weather Service. That was its third-highest mark on record.
The death of a 65-year-old New Holland woman is being investigated as a homicide.

Responding to a call for a welfare check around 10 a.m. Wednesday, New Holland police discovered Nora Sanchez dead inside her residence in the 300 block of East Main Street, the Lancaster District Attorneys Office said.

Although results of an autopsy were still pending, the district attorneys office announced Thursday evening it is investigating the death as a homicide, adding that additional information about the case would be released later.

Anyone with information about the case is asked to call the New Holland Borough Police Department at 717-354-4647. Tips can also be submitted online at: lancaster.crimewatchpa.com/da/submit-tip
Two attorneys who represented Raymond Rowe after he was arrested for the 1992 rape and murder of schoolteacher Christy Mirack said that Rowe was adamant that he wanted to plead guilty -- even as they explored potential defenses.

There was something else motivating him, they said: The countys top prosecutor at the time was prepared to file criminal charges in another, unrelated crime.

And Rowe, the once-popular local entertainer known as DJ Freez, did not want the details ever to be known.

Testifying in a court hearing on Thursday, attorneys David Blanck and Patricia Spotts said Rowe told them that hed been having a secret affair with Mirack, even though he was married and Mirack was involved with someone else.

Rowe had gone to her Greenfield Estates townhouse in East Lampeter Township on Dec. 21, 1992, where they had consensual sex, the attorneys testified he told them.

But Mirack also threatened to tell Rowes wife about their relationship. And Rowe wanted to break up with Mirack.

Blanck said Rowe never could give him an explanation of why he snapped and did what he did, Other than it was his thug days coming through.

Spotts said Rowe told her he lost it on (Mirack) and thats how she died. She also said he told her, That was the thug part of my life when I was using cocaine. But that is not who I am now.

Rowe was 24 at the time of Miracks killing. He was 49 when he was arrested on June 25, 2018.

Rowe had never been a suspect in the killing until 2018, when genetic genealogy led detectives to Rowe; crime scene DNA matched DNA that Rowes half sister uploaded to a public genealogy database.

Rowe now wants Lancaster County Judge Dennis Reinaker to allow him to withdraw that guilty plea and go to trial -- something he avoided by pleading guilty to murder, rape and related charges in exchange for prosecutors not seeking the death penalty or filing the criminal charge he did not want known. The Jan. 8, 2019, plea took the death penalty off the table and avoided a trial in exchange for a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole and an additional 60-120 years tacked on.

The details of those charges were not made public during Thursdays hearing -- and they likely never will be. According to Blanck and Spotts, Rowe did not want the nature of the charges to become known -- ever. Then-District Attorney Craig Stedman agreed, they said.

Blanck and Spotts each testified that prosecutors had evidence supporting the charges. And if convicted, it would affect both Rowes incarceration in the state prison system and who could visit him.

That concerned Rowe greatly, according to Blanck and Spotts. Rowe is married and has a daughter with his wife.

Still, Blanck and Spotts said that while Rowe repeatedly said he wanted to plead guilty, they prepared for the possibility the case could go to trial.

A crime-of-passion defense or seeking a third-degree murder conviction were explored, they said, explaining how they assessed strategies.

However, Rowe could give them no one who could corroborate his claim that he and Mirack were having an affair. And because Rowe had told them he was guilty of the charges, they could not put him on the stand.

Still, their job was to get the best outcome for Rowe, they each said.

Confession is irrelevant. The Commonwealth has to prove it, Blanck said.

But the evidence wasnt in their favor.

Though Blanck acknowledged under questioning by Rowes current attorney, Todd M. Mosser, that there wasnt evidence of sexual trauma, he also said, Consensual (sex) really doesnt seem compatible with the beating this woman suffered.

Mirack had been beaten and strangled -- by hands and by a sweater and undershirt. Her jaw was broken.

Rowe wasnt particularly helpful as his attorneys pursued alternatives to a plea, according to Blanck and Spotts. He was adamant he wanted to plead guilty and he would not look at evidence.

Rowe refused to look at the autopsy report. And he refused to look at crime scene photos.

Ive never experienced it. Mr. Rowe didnt want it. Didnt want to look at it, Blanck said.

And there would have been another problem with trying to argue that Rowe had consensual sex, but someone else killed her, Spotts said: how to explain the presence of his DNA in samples recovered from under her lifeless body.

But the perpetration of the murder by someone else is exactly what Rowe now contends.

In court filings, he now claims his DNA wont be found on a cutting board used in the attack.

Under an agreement made by Rowes current attorney and the Lancaster County District Attorneys Office -- which opposes Rowes bid to withdraw his plea -- Blanck and Spotts were not bound by attorney client privilege and were required to answer questions at Thursdays hearing, in which they testified separately without the other allowed in the courtroom.

Members of Miracks family and Rowes family were in court. Rowes wife testified briefly, concerning things police sought from their house after her husband was arrested.

Miracks brother declined to comment after the hearing.

The hearing is being held in response to an appeal Rowe filed under the Post Conviction Relief Act.

The hearing is scheduled to resume next Wednesday, with a Pennsylvania State Police crime lab witness expected to testify.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP)  Fed up with the deadly work and poor wages and living conditions, thousands of coal miners marched to unionize in West Virginia a century ago, resulting in a deadly clash and the largest U.S. armed uprising since the Civil War.

On Friday, some of their descendants joined others in retracing the steps that led to the 12-day Battle of Blair Mountain. Multiple events are planned looking back at the fight, highlighted by the 45-mile (72-kilometer) march over three days.

Every step you take, you just think about what kind of courage that took, said United Mine Workers international President Cecil Roberts, whose great-uncle, Bill Blizzard, was a leader of the 1921 march as a union subdistrict state organizer.

The miners  whites, Blacks, and European immigrants  banded together, bent on doing something about their treatment by coal operators. They became known as the Red Neck Army for the distinctive bandanas around their necks.

Those people had a specific purpose in mind, Roberts said. "And they were willing to die for that. And because they were willing to die for that, weve all had a good living, a much better life than we would have had had they not gone on that march.

At least 16 men died and many more were injured before the miners surrendered to federal troops in September 1921.

Bloody conflicts in the mining industry in the early 20th century, known as the West Virginia Mine Wars, have been overlooked in public schools. But Blair Mountain has received much more attention recently.

In 2018, the Blair Mountain Battlefield was restored to the National Register of Historic Places, protecting the site from coal operators mountaintop removal operations.

Weve gone from when I was a teenager it not even being talked about in class to now a much greater visibility, said Chuck Keeney, a history professor at Southern West Virginia Community and Technical College and author of The Road To Blair Mountain.

So its a testimony of the success of the preservation movement, Keeney said. And this movements revitalized the history.

Keeney, whose great-grandfather Frank Keeney was president of the United Mine Workers unions District 17 in West Virginia during the uprising, planned to march along with Roberts this weekend.

In 1920, southern West Virginia had the nations largest concentration of nonunion miners. Company towns were prevalent and oppressive. Miners lived in employer-built encampments and were paid in private company currency, called scrip.

Jean Evansmore of Mount Hope remembers her coal-mining grandfather getting food and supplies at the company-owned store. She said she wants others to use the Blair Mountain centennial to understand the connections, an idea that you could get paid in something called scrip. That was very real. Scrip was a fraction of what a dollar was. Thats how people got paid.

When union organizers showed up, the companies retaliated. In her 1925 autobiography, union organizer Mary Harris Mother Jones said she witnessed numerous conflicts between the industrial slaves and their masters during visits to West Virginia.

Matewan Police Chief Sid Hatfield sympathized with the unionization efforts. He led a group of miners in a May 1920 gunfight with private security guards who had been hired by coal companies to evict them for joining a union. Ten people were killed in what became known as the Matewan Massacre.

Fifteen months later, agents from the same firm fatally shot Hatfield. Infuriated, miners gathered by the thousands, intent on confronting the companies and freeing imprisoned miners accused of violating martial law in Mingo County.

The miners made it to Logan County, whose sheriff, Don Chafin, was anti-union. Chafin assembled law enforcement officers, coal operator guards and recruited civilians to hold off the advancing miners, including using biplanes to drop a few homemade bombs. Federal troops sent by President Warren Harding eventually arrived by train.

According to historians, 13 miners and three deputies were killed and 47 others were wounded. Hundreds of miners later were acquitted on charges of murder and treason.

The setback at Blair Mountain stalled the UMW's efforts in southern West Virginia and caused membership to plummet. When workers were finally guaranteed the right to collectively bargain in 1933 as part of President Franklin D. Roosevelts New Deal, West Virginia coal miners joined the UMW in droves, said Lou Martin, a history professor at Chatham University in Pittsburgh and a board member of the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum in Matewan.

UMW membership peaked in 1946, then spiraled downward as unions lost government support and the industry waged an all-out war on union mines. The numbers kept falling as the industry in the Appalachian coalfields declined.

Despite the exodus of mining jobs, money still flows into coalfield communities through worker retirement payments, health care benefits and pension plans, all thanks to the labor movement, Roberts said.

If it wasnt for the union, none of that would be happening right now," he said.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP)  The Federal Aviation Administration said Thursday that Virgin Galactic cannot launch anyone into space again until an investigation is complete into a mishap that occurred during July's flight with founder Richard Branson.

The ban came as Virgin Galactic announced plans to launch three Italian researchers to the edge of space in a few weeks.

The FAA said the rocketship carrying Branson and five Virgin Galactic employees veered off course during its descent back to its runway in the New Mexico desert on July 11. The deviation put the ship outside the air traffic control clearance area.

The FAA is overseeing the probe; it's responsible for protecting the public during commercial launches and reentries. Crew safety, on the other hand, is outside its jurisdiction. Virgin Galactic insisted Thursday that Branson and everyone else on board were never in any added danger.

Virgin Galactic may not return the SpaceShipTwo vehicle to flight until the FAA approves the final mishap investigation report or determines the issues related to the mishap do not affect public safety, the FAA said in a statement.

Virgin Galactic acknowledged the space plane dropped below the protected airspace for one minute and 41 seconds. The spacecraft's free-flying portion of the up-and-down flight lasted about 15 minutes and reached an altitude of 53.5 miles (86 kilometers).

Virgin Galactic said high-altitude wind caused the change in flight path and insisted the two pilots responded appropriately. In a statement, the company said the flight was a safe and successful test flight that adhered to our flight procedures and training protocols.

In another statement Thursday, Virgin Galactic added that at no time did the ship travel above any population centers or cause a hazard to the public. Virgin Galactic operates out of Spaceport America in the southern New Mexico desert.

We take this seriously and are currently addressing the causes of the issue and determining how to prevent this from occurring on future missions, the company said.

Branson ended up beating fellow billionaire Jeff Bezos  founder of Amazon as well as rocket company Blue Origin  into space by nine days. Bezos launched July 20 with three others from West Texas.

Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin are vying to sell seats to tourists, scientists and anyone else looking to experience a few minutes of weightlessness. Virgin Galactic's rocketship is launched from an airplane, while Blue Origin's capsule is hoisted by a reusable New Shepard rocket.

Virgin Galactic is aiming for late September or early October for its next flight, with two Italian Air Force officers, an engineer for the National Research Council of Italy, Virgin Galactic's chief astronaut instructor and the rocketship's two pilots. It will be the company's first launch where researchers accompany their own experiments. The company plans to start flying ticket holders next year.

Blue Origin has yet to announce a date for its next passenger flight, other than to say it will be soon.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institutes Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
NEW YORK (AP)  How can something like this happen?

The plaintive question posed by a Queens resident whose neighbors drowned was on the lips of many after the remnants of Ida furiously swept through the Northeast.

Dozens of people from Virginia to Connecticut were killed Wednesday night and Thursday morning. Elected officials expressed shock at the severity of the deluge, but the National Weather Service as early as Monday had cautioned that Ida could bring flooding to the New York City area.

By Tuesday, the National Hurricane Center had increased the urgency of the warning, heralding the potential for significant and life-threatening flash flooding and river flooding throughout the region.

So, why didn't anyone see it coming?

Well, some did. Over the weekend, National Weather Service Director Louis Uccellini and other meteorologists started seeing an eerie similarity to 1969s Hurricane Camille, which killed more than 100 people in Virginia with 20 inches (50 centimeters) of rain long after making landfall in Mississippi.

We collectively were aware of this possibility. These discussions were started even before the storm made landfall in Louisiana, Uccellini told The Associated Press.

Despite this, the news conferences and loud warnings from public officials that accompanied storms like Sandy or even last months Henri were mostly absent until the brunt of the storm was upon the region.

Pennsylvania suffered first, with flash flood warnings issued in an area that included two poorly rated dams Wednesday afternoon.

I know that today, many people in Pennsylvania are hurting. We experienced a historic storm here all across the commonwealth, Gov. Tom Wolf said at a news conference Thursday. A lot of Pennsylvanians will be dealing with very hard emotions today.

Flash flood emergencies  which are pushed to cellphones  are the most extreme alert the National Weather Service has, reserved as an 11th-hour attempt to get people to seek safety after catastrophic flooding has begin.

But many in harms way in New York didnt flee, whether because of the time of day, the lack of warning by government officials, the lack of resources to find shelter  or a disregard of the many alerts that filter through cellphones on a daily basis.

Asked how last nights subway disruption and the deaths of at least 11 people in New York City could have been prevented, city and state officials stressed the unprecedented amount of rain that fell between about 8:50 and 9:50 p.m. and the grim reality of climate change.

Mayor Bill de Blasio said initial estimates indicated a minimum rainfall of 3 inches (8 centimeters) over the course of the day  but more than 3 inches fell in just one hour, breaking a city record.

Records were broken, but what is fascinating is that the records that they broke were literally set a week before. Thats what were dealing with now, my friends," New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said during a Thursday briefing.

People have been warning for decades about climate change and its dangers, she said.

Its happening right now, she said. "It is not a future threat.

New York City's environmental protection commissioner, Vincent Sapienza, said the city's sewer system isn't really equipped to handle anything over 2 inches (5 centimeters) an hour without trouble.

City Council Member Justin Brannan, a Brooklyn Democrat, said it's not that the sewers were poorly designed  the problem is they were designed 100 years ago, he tweeted.

De Blasio touted a $2 billion investment in fixing sewer problems and other infrastructure issues in southeast Queens in the wake of 2012's Superstorm Sandy, but said much more needs to be done to temper deadly flooding throughout the city. The city has until September 2022 to spend federal disaster relief funds from Sandy.

This is a tragically, very longstanding problem. And one of the things that became clear was we were going to have to make an extraordinary investment to address it. That investment is having impact, but its not complete," he said.

De Blasio criticized meteorologists' predictions as projections that then are made a mockery of in a matter of minutes.

But the weather service was sounding alarms. On Monday morning, federal forecasters warned of 3 to 6 inches (8 to 15 centimeters) of rain. They increased that to 3 to 8 inches (8 to 20 centimeters) of rain in forecasts on Tuesday, also increasing their extreme rainfall forecast to high risk  something that rarely happens.

The trouble is that after Sandy, officials talked about better getting infrastructure ready for climate change-charged storms, said Columbia University climate scientist Adam Sobel.

Nearly a decade after Sandy, after a lot of planning and effort at the state and local level on resilience to extreme weather events, one might have hoped, in an alternate reality (where, for example, the MTA werent chronically under-funded), that we might have seen a bit more progress on keeping water out of the subways, for example, Sobel said in an email.

What were once 100-year floods now happen far more often. Some subway stations flooded scarcely two months ago, courtesy of Elsa.

Hochul outlined her first priority: Heres what we need to do, we need to identify the areas where we have vulnerabilities on our streets, where the drainage systems are not functioning properly, and theyre close to the entrance of a subway, and we need to be able to fix those first so we dont get a situation where the drainage system, the sewer system cant handle the volume. And then the water just creates a river down the steps and into the subway system.

People are ready, Uccellini said, but is the infrastructure ready for the magnitude of these storms? It doesnt appear to be that way, he said.

Gov. Phil Murphy said New Jersey, which saw a major tornado in the south and fatal flooding in the north, is perhaps more susceptible to climate change.

These things are coming more frequently, theyre more intense, sadly more deadly, and weve got to update our playbook, Murphy said Thursday on Good Morning America." He acknowledged later that officials would reassess to see what they could do better about warning people.

De Blasio questioned whether people themselves were truly ready, especially as watches and warnings didn't indicate the true ramifications until Wednesday evening.

We need to start communicating to people that we should assume things are going to be much worse in literally every situation, he said Thursday, later adding: From now on what I think we do is tell New Yorkers to expect the very, very worst. It may sound alarmist at times, but unfortunately, its being proven by nature.



Borenstein reported from Washington. Associated Press reporters Karen Matthews and Michael R. Sisak in New York and Mike Catalini in Hillsborough, New Jersey, contributed reporting.
A Lebanon County man was fatally shot Wednesday night after what started as a fight, police said.

Lebanon City Police officers found Josue Miguel Rivera, 30, dead in the 800 block of Crowell Street, after they responded to a report of gunfire in the 500 block of North Ninth Street.

Wensly Morales-Rodriguez, 23, turned himself in to police at 400 S. Eighth St. and is facing charges of criminal homicide and other related offenses, police said. He was arraigned before Magisterial District Judge John Ditzler and is being held without bail at the Lebanon County Correctional Facility. A warrant had been issued for his arrest.

Morales-Rodriguez shot Rivera during the fight, police said. Officers recovered used shell casings from the scene and secured video surveillance from the surrounding area.

An investigation is ongoing and the Lebanon City Police Department is asking anyone with information regarding the incident to call them at (717) 272-2054 or call Crime Stoppers at (717) 270-9800.
When: Manheim Borough Council meeting, Aug. 31.

What happened: Borough Council discussed the location of a new veterans memorial plaza and a proposed new memorial honoring the late Ken Myers. Both memorials would be located in Manheim Veterans Memorial Park.

Manheim Veterans memorial: The Manheim Veterans Memorial committee plans to construct a memorial plaza honoring Manheim veterans in an area of Memorial Park just off Memorial Drive near an existing cannon and small parking lot. The design for the memorial would incorporate existing plaques and markers honoring veterans that are now scattered throughout the town. The committee launched a fundraising campaign in July for the nearly $300,000 project. Council approved the memorial plan in 2017.

Ken Myers memorial: Wes Geib, vice president of the Manheim Historical Society, said the historical society, Manheim Fire Department and Manheim Meals-on-Wheels would like to construct a memorial to Myers, a benefactor of those organizations who died in 2019. The proposed memorial would be 12 feet wide and 12 feet long, with benches, brick pavers, shrubs and a park sign. Geib said the proposed location for the memorial is the corner of Gramby and Laurel streets and Memorial Drive in an area adjacent to a softball field known as Island Field.

Discussion: Council members Chad Enck and Bryan Howett asked if the Ken Myers memorial could be located closer to the veterans plaza. Mayor Scot Funk said hes concerned with the location of the plaza because it would require the removal of several healthy trees. He suggested moving the plaza across Memorial Drive near the softball field, which would make it closer to the proposed Myers memorial. Enck said that location would also place the two memorials front and center as people enter the park.

Quotable: I live a block or two from Memorial Park. If theres one thing that the COVID-19 pandemic has shown us is how much people enjoy walking, and the park is a great place to do that, Geib said.

Whats next: Borough Manager Jim Fisher suggested an architect for the memorials create a sketch showing both the design for the plaza and the proposed Myers memorial along Memorial Drive near Gramby and Laurel streets.

n Student drop-off area: Council agreed to review public safety concerns council member Brad Roth said he has observed at a student drop-off area used by Lancaster-Lebanon Intermediate Unit 13 at the former H.C. Burgard Elementary School at the corner of Penn and Ferdinand streets. Roth said with the vans and mini-buses parked to discharge students, an emergency services vehicle would not be able to get through. Officials plan to review the parking regulations along Ferdinand Street. If regulations do not prohibit stopping or standing, council agreed to amend the ordinance to include those restrictions.

n Park improvements: Council approved the replacement of the roof and drip edge at the concession stand at pool field in Memorial Park. Cost of the project is $6,800; work will be done by M R Roofing, Manheim. Council tabled discussion about repairs or replacement of the bleachers and retaining wall at pool field. Council member Bryan Howett, who also chairs the parks and pool committee, said Manheim Central School District, where he serves as business manager, is reviewing the facilities it uses at the park for potential improvements.
When: South Lebanon Township supervisors meeting, Aug. 24.

What happened: Township supervisors acknowledged the concerns of resident David Rotunda, who lives at 457 Schaeffer Road, about noise and dirt being created by the ongoing construction of the 970,000-square-foot DHL supply chain warehouse next to his property.

Background: Construction of the warehouse began in May at the site of the former Alcoa plant.

Board response: South Lebanon supervisors promised to relay Rotundas concerns to the developers of the warehouse at 3100 State Drive.

Follow-up: John Friess, external communications manager for DHL supply chain, said members of the construction team met with Rotunda on Aug. 31 to address his concerns.

Quotable: Our goal is to be good neighbors and good employers, Friess said after the meeting.

Also: The board approved the annual trick-or-treat night in the township from 6 to 8 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 28.

Whats next: The board will meet Sept. 14 at the South Lebanon municipal building, 1800 S. Fifth Ave., Lebanon.
As the COVID-19 delta variant spreads throughout Chester County, officials in South Coatesville opened discussion on mandating vaccines for borough employees during the Aug. 24 Borough Council meeting.

Council took no action.

The transmission level in Chester County is in the substantial phase as of Aug. 20, according to the Chester County Health Department.

Borough Manager Allen Smith said he received a recent email from a municipal managers group in Chester County. Municipal managers have talked about emerging concepts, including vaccine mandates, and he added that a lot of municipalities are discussing the issue.

Council member Robert Floyd advised officials the matter should be discussed during executive session because it relates to personnel, calling it very important. Smith responded, Its a good thing to be aware of.

The Pennsylvania Sunshine Act allows public agencies to go behind closed doors to discuss terms and conditions of employment affecting any specific prospective public officer or employee. However, Pennsylvania NewsMedia Association has advised the personnel exception does not extend to policy affecting a group of employees.

Its every humans right to choose (to be vaccinated), council member Thomas Roney said.

Smith said he sent over communications to borough solicitor Siana Bellwoar for a critique. Smith said council members will have the opportunity to review over the next two weeks whether the borough should mandate the vaccine, with potential approval at the Sept. 14 meeting accessible in person and online.

Smith said the municipality could also investigate an indoor mask mandate in the borough.

A lot is going to change within the next two weeks; that timelines perfect, Council President Montez Jones said.

In other business, Vice President Ken Bond mentioned the boroughs centennial. The borough was established in 1921. Bond asked how and when the milestone will be celebrated. He suggested that officials begin to plan for a future event after the pandemic.

We havent done or talked about it; nobodys mentioned it, Bond said.

Borough officials havent explored how to commemorate the milestone. He said the borough should begin planning a centennial celebration once pandemic restrictions are lifted and the pandemic ends; they are hoping to do a celebration in a few years.

Theres a lot of history around here, Bond said.
Humanitys Exploration of Mars Is Continuing Right Along

Sept. 2, 2021 (EIRNS)While Chinese taikonauts are scheduled to address schoolchildren across China today from its new space station, on such topics as Ocean of Stars Are Always Where We Are Headed, Chinas space agency, CNSA, announced this week that after 100 days of joint operation on Mars, its Zhurong rover and Tianwen-1 orbiter companion remain in good condition and are functioning properly in their exploration of the red planet. Zhurong completed its original 90-sol [Mars day] mission on Aug. 15, with its six scientific instruments working well, CNSA reported, with Zhurong relaying 10 gigabytes of raw science data through Tianwen-1 over that time, Space.coms Andrew Jones reported on Aug. 20. To celebrate completion of Zhurongs original mission, China released new Mars pictures it had taken.

The Tianwen 1 orbiter has been passing over Zhurongs position once a day to pick up and relay its data back to Earth, but CNSA teams are currently working on an orbit which will allow it to both begin a global survey of Mars with its own seven science payloads, while still assisting Zhurong. The shifting of its orbit would be executed sometime after Oct. 14.

The second of the new Mars exploration missions undertaken in 2021, the United States Ingenuity helicopter and Perseverance rover team, is also working away. Today, NASA received confirmation that Perseverances second rock-drilling attempt succeeded in collecting a core sample, now stored away for an eventual return flight back to Earth. The first attempt failed when the rusty rock chosen crumbled upon being drilled. NASA scientists, although disappointed at the time, explained that they gained a sterile container of the Martian atmosphere out of the experiment, as well as getting an idea of the parameters required for drilling to work.

Ingenuity, whose original mission was simply to test its engineering and capabilities with five flights, has now flown 12 missions, and proven itself a valuable tool for advanced exploring of possible terrain for Perseverance to cross or explore. Todays New York Times cited the example given by Kenneth A. Farley, a geochemistry professor, who is the project scientist for Perseverance, of one site that orbital images conveyed might be striking, until we looked at the helicopter images.... We will save a bunch of time by not driving over there, Farley said.

The third of the Mars exploration missions to start operations in 2021, the United Arab Emirates orbital probe, Hope, has also been mapping Mars atmospheric weather since successfully entering its orbit last February. The Emirates Mars Mission team reported this August that it has been checking and validating data received, and it will release the first science data from the mission globally with no embargo in October.
EIR LEAD EDITORIAL FOR FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 2021

The British Empire Senses Its Pending Doom

Sept. 2, 2021 (EIRNS)The level of panic, and outright horror, being expressed by leading spokesmen for the British Empire, is unprecedented in modern times. Perhaps a review of the British press in October 1781, following Cornwalliss surrender at Yorktown, would find a similar public gnashing of teeth. Perhaps also in April 1865, when the Empires Confederate Army under Robert E. Lee surrendered to Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, ending the Empires last great hope for the military destruction of the Union. Since then, the Empire has depended on subversion rather than military power. In the Great War, the British succeeded in dragging the racist, Anglophile Woodrow Wilson into saving them at the last moment, while in World War II Franklin Roosevelt joined the war only because the Frankenstein monster the City of London had created in Germany was an even greater dangerand he forced the British to accept an alliance with the Soviet Union and China, without which the war would possibly have been lost.

Unfortunately, after the death of Roosevelt, and Harry Trumans capitulation to the Empire and help to the European imperial powers in retaking their colonies, and especially after the successful assassination of Jack Kennedy, the City of London has systematically replaced the Hamiltonian American System of directed credit with the British System of free markets and deregulation of banking and industry, while also flooding the U.S. with their drugs and their Malthusian environmentalist delusions. Despite Lyndon LaRouches clear explication of this subversion, and his presentation of the steps necessary to return to the American System, his ideas were suppressed and he was slandered and persecuted, while America became the dumb giant to the British financial oligarchy, waging wars on behalf of the Empire in Indochina, Central Europe, and Southwest Asia.

When Donald Trump appeared out of nowhere (or so the Empires minions believed), threatening to end the endless wars, be friends with Russia and China, reject the fake science of anthropogenic climate change, and rebuild American industry and infrastructure, the British control of the U.S. media, the intelligence community, and Wall Street left Trump impotent to do anything but fight the coup attempt led by MI6 and GCHQ. In the end, none of his promises were realized, and the Empire heaved a huge sigh of relief.

But look what has happened now! The aging, stumbling Joe Biden has done what Donald Trump failed to doend the endless war in Afghanistan, without listening to or even consulting John Bull. Biden acted on the basis of what Tony Blair called the imbecilic political slogan about ending the forever wars,  And, horror of horrors, the Empire is suddenly seeing the ghost of FDR drifting overhead, threatening to bring the World War II cooperation between the U.S., China, and Russia together again, to address their common aim to develop Afghanistan, to end the miserable backward conditions which foster terrorism and drug production, and extend the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor into Afghanistan as part of the New Silk Road. See below for the hysteria coming from the British today.

Biden is not promoting this himself, at least not publicly, although representatives of his government have participated in international forums where these issues were put forward. But even the Empire senses that decisions in the U.S. are not always made by the President alone, but by what Lyndon LaRouche called the institution of the presidency. Just as that institution during the Trump Administration was dominated by the military-industrial complex and their Wall Street allies, so today the Afghanistan decision, and Bidens capacity to stand up against the almost universal denunciation from the Congress, the media, and the military-industrial crowd, demonstrates a powerful resistance from the current institution of the presidency. As demonstrated in the last year-and-a-half of Schiller Institute conferences, leading scientists, political leaders, policy experts, retired military, health professionals, farmers, and more, from all over the world, including from Russia and China, have engaged in dialogue at the highest level on the urgent need for a new paradigm based on global peace through development.

The Empire is not omnipotent. In fact, it is decadent and dying. It is capable of provoking chaos, even a nuclear war, but only if the people fail to live up to what Friedrich Schiller posed as the responsibility of all human beings to be patriots of ones nation and citizens of the world. This is our moment.
Activists see hope after charges in Elijah McClains death

The indictments of three suburban Denver officers and two paramedics on manslaughter and other charges in the death of Elijah McClain could be a pivotal step toward meaningful police accountability, law enforcement reform advocates say.

Our hope has been renewed, said Candice Bailey, an activist in the city of Aurora who has been a liaison between the community and police and has led demonstrations over the death of McClain, a 23-year-old Black man who was put into a chokehold and injected with a powerful sedative in 2019.

The charges come as Colorados elected leaders have taken strides to toughen repercussions for officers accused of wrongdoing in the wake of nationwide racial injustice protests last year that reawakened outrage over McClains death.

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State lawmakers passed a sweeping police accountability law, which bans the use of chokeholds like the one used on McClain and requires officers to intervene to stop excessive force from being used. The law has helped lead to charges against some officers and allowed the state attorney generals office to open a civil rights investigation into the Aurora Police Department.
Texas bans most abortions, with high court mum on appeal

The nations most far-reaching curb on abortions since they were legalized a half-century ago took effect Wednesday in Texas, with the Supreme Court silent on an emergency appeal to put the law on hold.

If allowed to remain in force, the law, which bans most abortions, would be the strictest against abortion rights in the United States since the high courts landmark Roe v. Wade decision in 1973.

The Texas law, signed by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott in May, prohibits abortions once medical professionals can detect cardiac activity, usually around six weeks and before most women know theyre pregnant.

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Its part of a broader push by Republicans across the country to impose new restrictions on abortion. At least 12 other states have enacted bans early in pregnancy, but all have been blocked from going into effect.

What makes the Texas law different is its unusual enforcement scheme. Rather than have officials responsible for enforcing the law, private citizens are authorized to sue abortion providers and anyone involved in facilitating abortions. Among other situations, that would include anyone who drives a woman to a clinic to get an abortion. Under the law, anyone who successfully sues another person would be entitled to at least $10,000.

Starting today, every unborn child with a heartbeat will be protected from the ravages of abortion, Abbott said in a statement posted on Twitter. Texas will always defend the right to life.

But protests were quick.

President Joe Biden said in a statement that the law blatantly violates the constitutional right established under Roe v. Wade and upheld as precedent for nearly half a century. He said the law outrageously gives private citizens the power to bring lawsuits against anyone who they believe has helped another person get an abortion.

Likewise, the American Medical Association said it was deeply disturbed by this egregious law and disappointed by the Supreme Courts inaction.

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The law not only bans virtually all abortions in the state, but it interferes in the patient-physician relationship and places bounties on physicians and health care workers simply for delivering care, said a statement from Dr. Gerald E. Harmon, the AMA president.

In a phone call with reporters, Marc Hearron, a lawyer for the Center for Reproductive Rights, said the abortion providers his group represents were still hoping to hear from the Supreme Court but as of now, most abortion is banned in Texas.

Clinics have said the law would rule out 85% of abortions in Texas and force many clinics to close. Planned Parenthood is among the abortion providers that have stopped scheduling abortions beyond six weeks from conception.

Abortion opponents who wrote the law also made it difficult to challenge in court, in part because its hard to know whom to sue.

Abortion rights advocates say it will force many women to travel out of state for abortions, if they can afford to do so and also navigate issues including childcare and taking time off work. The Guttmacher Institute, a research organization that supports abortion rights, says if legal abortion care in Texas shuts down, the average one-way driving distance to an abortion clinic for Texans would increase from 12 miles to 248 miles.

Already, abortion clinics beyond the Texas border are feeling the impact. At the Trust Women clinic in Oklahoma City, there had been 80 appointments scheduled over the past two days, more than double the typical number of patients, said Rebecca Tong, co-executive director of the clinic. Two-thirds of those patients were from Texas, another sharp increase, and the earliest opening was now three weeks out.

Oklahoma has just barely enough clinics for the amount of people here, Tong said. If anyone is thinking, Oh, they can just go out of state, itll be so easy, a lot of clinics in the Midwest and South, we dont do abortion care five days a week.

Late into the night Tuesday before the ban took effect clinics in Texas were filled with patients, said Amy Hagstrom Miller, CEO of Whole Womens Health, which has four abortion clinics in Texas.

Twenty-seven women were still in the waiting room after 10 p.m. at one clinic, leaving doctors crying and scrambling over whether they would see all of them in time, she said. The last abortion at one of her clinics finished at 11:56 p.m. in Fort Worth, where Hagstrom Miller said anti-abortion activists outside shined bright lights in the parking lot after dark looking for wrongdoing, and twice called police.

This morning I woke up feeling deep sadness. Im worried. Im numb, she said.

The law is part of a hard-right agenda that Texas Republicans muscled through the statehouse this year ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, when Abbott is up for a third term as governor.

Another law taking effect Wednesday ended required firearm training and background checks to carry handguns in public in Texas, and GOP lawmakers on Tuesday approved election changes that will further tighten what are already some of the strictest voting laws in the nation.

Texas has long had some of the nations toughest abortion restrictions, including a sweeping law passed in 2013. The Supreme Court eventually struck down that law, but not before more than half of the states 40-plus clinics closed.

Lawmakers also are moving forward in an ongoing special session in Texas with proposed new restrictions on medication abortion, a method using pills that accounts for roughly 40% of abortions in the U.S.

Even before the Texas case arrived at the high court the justices had planned to tackle the issue of abortion rights in a major case that will be heard after the court begins hearing arguments again in the fall. That case involves the state of Mississippi, which is asking to be allowed to enforce an abortion ban after 15 weeks of pregnancy.
CAT a dead letter in the Fifth Circuit? I respectfully dissent by Geoffrey A. Hoffman

This week a panel of the Fifth Circuit issued Tabora Gutierrez v. Garland , interpreting the Convention Against Tortures (CATs) state action requirement so restrictively that it led the dissenting judge to call CAT a virtual dead letter in most cases (in the Fifth Circuit, at least).

In this piece, I want to consider this dire prognostication and also think about what it may mean for future practice - at least for those of us in the Fifth Circuit.

Two panel members found that petitioner failed a key requirement for relief: that the government in Honduras consented or acquiesced to the torture. In dissent, Judge W. Eugene Davis remarked, I agree with the IJ, the BIA, and the majority that [petitioner] will likely be tortured by MS-13 gang members. . .[but] I read the record to compel a conclusion that the torture will be with the acquiescence of a public official. According to Judge Davis, the majority raised the bar so high regarding this requirement under CAT that for most if not all people CAT will be out of reach, if they are from countries with (merely) corrupt policy or police without the will or courage to protect them from brutal gangs. While I agree with Judge Davis, the fact is CAT need not be a dead letter in the Fifth Circuit.

I was moved to comment on another split panel decision previously in the Fifth Circuit in Inestroza-Antonelli v. Barr , see my prior post here , and I am similarly moved to write about this present decision.

Significantly, the majority here carefully acknowledges up front that the BIA and IJ below found petitioner likely to be tortured or killed if returned to Honduras, and even catalogued the horrible injuries he had already suffered, mentioning gruesome photos that are part of the record in the case.

Because I think the majority erred, and would agree with most of what the dissenting judge says, let me address three issues where I think the majority got it wrong: (1) what it means for a record to compel a different conclusion on appeal; (2) what it means for a government to consent or acquiesce to torture and (3) the notion that Petitioner waived his argument about the correct standard of review merely by failing to bring it up in a motion to reconsider.

I address all three of these points below.

First, the majority importantly conceded in its opinion that the police failed to investigate petitioners injuries. However, because the Board and IJ interpreted these failures of the police as better explained by the fact the petitioner was unable to disclose the specific identity of any of his attackers this showed the police did not willfully ignore the attacks. The majority reasoned that the evidence did not compel a contrary conclusion and therefore the IJs findings, adopted by the BIA, were considered conclusive.

I am struck here by the notion that just because the BIA and IJ had inserted their own explanations for the unrebutted record evidence showing lack of any police action that this must have meant (according to the majority) that the appellate court was constrained to accept this explanation and would not disturb the lower tribunals interpretation of the evidence.

Such a reading of the word compel means that judges can have an out anytime they want to rubber stamp any decision of the Board, all they have to do is say the explanation offered characterizing the evidence in one way or another was good enough and must not be disturbed. But this is a very troubling proposition.

Take, for example, the present case where the supposition on the part of the BIA and IJ was that the petitioner was somehow at fault for not being able to identify his attackers by name. Think about that for a minute...Police are not acquiescing and not at fault and should not be held to have turned a blind eye because the victim was unable to identify his attackers.

But this does not make sense.

Such a blame-the-victim mentality goes against the motivation and underlying rationale behind other federal types of relief immigrants have available, for example, U visas for crime victims, VAWA, T visas, etc., premised in many cases on the victims cooperation with law enforcement and their investigation. Just because a victim does not know the exact identities of their attackers does not disqualify them from relief. Would that be a reasonable interpretation for example of the U visa statute and attendant regulations?

In addition, lets consider the use of the compel standard for a minute and where it came from exactly. This standard, as acknowledged by the majority, comes from a previous case, Chen v. Gonzales , 470 F.3d 1131, 1134 (5th Cir. 2006), among other cases. Chen in turn cites 8 USC 1252(b)(4)(B) and emanates from the Supreme Courts famous decision, INS v. Elias-Zacarias, 502 U.S. 478 (1992), authored by Justice Scalia.

Chen was a case about a Chinese petitioner who converted to Christianity after entry into the U.S. and so her applications did not rely on past persecution but a well-founded fear of future persecution based on religion. The IJ in the former case found that there were many Christians in China and that Chens claims of future persecution were allegedly highly speculative. The facts of Chen and the current case relating to police inaction in Honduras could not be further apart. Moreover, the Fifth Circuit in Chen was not considering past persecution, as here, but the more difficult to prove future persecution and well-founded fear standard.

Similarly, Justice Scalia in Elias-Zacarias was concerned about proof supporting a political opinion claim. In that case, the Supreme Court found that the petitioner could not produce evidence so compelling that no reasonable factfinder could fail to find the requisite fear of persecution on account of political opinion. The so compelling language has been used by many courts to deny asylum on many other grounds throughout the past decades and has not been limited to political opinion claims.

But the reliance in the present case for the compel standard on the statute in question, 8 USC 1252(b) here is misguided. The statute states in pertinent part as follows: the administrative findings of fact are conclusive unless any reasonable adjudicator would be compelled to conclude to the contrary . . . . But the consent and acquiescence determination under CAT is not a determination of administrative facts but is certainly a mixed question of law and fact. As such, the entire structure of the compel standard should not have been applied but instead de novo review applied.

And this brings me to the practice pointer that this case so unfortunately stands for. Although on appeal before the circuit court the issue of standard of review was raised by petitioner, it was rejected by the majority on the theory that he had to have filed a motion to reconsider before the Board to preserve the issue for appellate review.

This waiver argument has always seemed to me a weak and tenuous one.

For example, what if the petitioner (i.e., the respondent before the BIA) argued in his brief to the Board that the correct standard of review was de novo due to the mixed question raised by a very complicated consent or acquiescence determination under CAT, and courts have so held, but the BIA decided to just rubber stamp the IJ and refused to overturn the IJs finding based on clear error. Wouldnt that have preserved the issue? Why is there a need for a litigant to then file a motion to reconsider after the fact to preserve an issue which had already been preserved? To make matters worse it appears Mr. Tobora Gutierrez appeared pro se, see page 3 of the Fifth Circuit majority decision, at least initially. The decision does not reveal if he had appellate counsel before the BIA. But if he did not it would be an especially onerous requirement to impose an after the fact requirement that a litigant must file a motion to reconsider to preserve an issue for appellate review, especially if he is unrepresented.

All of that said, the practice take-away here is: (1) everyone must file a very carefully drafted and thorough motion to reconsider on all issues that could be in any way (mis)interpreted to be subject to waiver so you preserve all issues for review before the circuit courts; and (2) everyone should read Judge Davis cogent and reasoned dissenting opinion, which hopefully will be followed instead of the majoritys strained application of the compel standard. Judge Davis was right: the evidence does compel a different outcome. Judge Davis does a wonderful job also of distinguishing the prior case law in this area and showing how Mr. Tobora Gutierrezs case is fundamentally different. As he says, if the egregious facts of this case are not sufficient to support a finding of public-official acquiescence, CAT relief will be a dead-letter to most if not all individuals who live in countries where the police are corrupt or simply do not have the will or courage to protect them from brutal gang attacks.

Judge Davis is right, this is a most troubling decision but not just for the reason he provides. It is troubling for the further reason that the majority applies the wrong legal standard here, the compels standard versus a de novo review. The majority also leaves the door open for deferred action, for this sympathetic and horrendous case, although it declines to recommend it. Most importantly, it also leaves the door open for de novo review, in future cases, at least where those litigants are perceived to have preserved the issue. Litigants can do this by filing a motion to reconsider with the BIA, then filing (another, second) petition for review when the motion to reconsider is denied, and then (following the procedure mandated by section 1252) consolidating the two cases.

KJ
Friday, September 3, 2021

A decision issued yesterday by the District of Columbia Court of Appeals disbarred a convicted attorney but - because the case was not contested - did not opine on a proposed new procedure adopted below for the more efficient handling of felony convictions

The Board of Professional Responsibility recommends that Thomas Ian Moir be disbarred from the practice of law after pleading guilty to one count of child pornography in violation of 18 U.S.C.  2252(a)(2). Although the Board concluded that the crime was not a crime of moral turpitude under the most benign conduct punishable under the statute standard, it did conclude that under the facts acknowledged as part of the respondents plea his actions constitute a crime of moral turpitude. The Board therefore recommends disbarment. Respondent did not file an exception to the Disciplinary Counsels recommendation that he be disbarred for committing a crime of moral turpitude, nor did he file any exceptions to the Boards Report or Recommendation.

Noting that the Board on Professional Responsibility departed from its prior practice of looking solely to the elements of the offense - not the conceded facts - in determining moral turpitude per se (which requires disbarment), the court concluded here

Because no exceptions have been filed, we need not address the Boards newly enacted procedures for resolving disciplinary matters based on criminal convictions or reach the issue of whether this offense constitutes a crime of moral turpitude per se or as applied to respondents actions, as both support the recommendation of disbarment.

Footnote to the above sentence

See, e.g., In re Goldsborough, 654 A.2d 1285, 1287 (D.C. 1995) (imposing recommended discipline while declining to resolve some difficult questions raised in the Boards [Report] where respondent took no part in the proceedings).

The "difficult question" in the Goldsborough case, which involved reciprocal discipline from Maryland, was whether spanking one's client was conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice.

The facts of this unusual case are set forth in detail in the opinion of the Maryland Court of Appeals, Attorney Grievance Comm'n of Md. v. Goldsborough, 330 Md. 342, 624 A.2d 503 (1993) (Goldsborough I). Briefly, on two separate occasions in 1978, Goldsborough pulled the initial complainant, an adult female client, over his knee, chastised her for being a "bad girl," and spanked her lightly on the buttocks.

The Maryland opinion further noted

While investigating [client] Sweitzers complaint, the Commissions investigators learned of allegations that Goldsborough had behaved improperly toward at least one other female client, and had also repeatedly spanked a young woman who had been his personal secretary several years earlier.

...[secretary] Schisler testified that during her employment from January 1986 to November 1987, Goldsborough spanked her approximately once a week. By Schislers account, on more than just a handful of occasions Goldsborough required her to bare her buttocks for the spankings. She testified that these disciplinary measures were provoked by typing errors she made in Goldsboroughs documents and elementary mistakes that Goldsborough called no brainers. Schisler testified that she did not want to be spanked, but felt that Goldsborough was trying to teach her to be a good secretary. When asked if she believed she could lose her job if she did not submit to the spankings, Schisler testified that she thought so, because I wouldnt be learning, and I wouldnt be trying to correct my mistakes. In November 1987, Goldsboroughs wife heard of the spankings and suggested that Schisler leave her job. Mrs. Golds-borough referred Schisler to counseling, for which Mrs. Goldsborough paid. Schisler also received over three times her gross weekly salary in severance pay.

In D.C., a "moral turpitude" felony conviction draws automatic disbarment.

I roundly applaud the BPR's common sense approach of considering, rather then ignoring, admitted facts in determining whether a convicted attorney gets a hearing prior to sanction.

A perfect example of the bad old approach is linked here.

The attorney in the above-cited case has been suspended and awaiting a hearing for nine years.

If he had been disbarred as inevitable under the new procedure, he would have been eligible for reinstatement for years.

The crimes are described in a news report

A Philadelphia lawyer has been jailed for making a 12-year-old boy from the famed Bolshoi Ballet Academy his sex slave for six years....he will spend the next 15 years behind bars.

And from the United States Attorney's office of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania

In the summer of 1998, Schneider, founder and president of the Apogee Foundation, traveled to Moscow, Russia where he told two ballet instructors at the Moscow State Academy of Choreography that he was willing to provide assistance to students attending the academy. The instructors identified a 12-year old student whose family could no longer afford to pay his board. Schneider convinced the boys parents to allow him to live with Schneider in an apartment a few blocks from the school. Between August 22, 2000 and November 22, 2001, Schneider engaged in a sexual relationship with the victim, bringing him to Philadelphia for a summer program in 2001, then returning to Moscow with the victim in August 2001 to continue the sexual relationship. Schneider was arrested March 27, 2010 in Larnaca, Cyprus.

The new policy- if and when adopted - would avoid such results. (Mike Frisch)

https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/legal_profession/2021/09/a-decision-issued-yesterday-by-the-district-of-columbia-court-of-appeals-the-board-of-professional-responsibility-recommends.html


United Nations food supplies in Afghanistan could run out this month, a UN humanitarian official warned Wednesday.

The situation threatens to add a hunger crisis to the problems facing the country's new Taliban rulers. They are trying to return the country to a peaceful state after many years of war.

Ramiz Alakbarov is the U.N.'s humanitarian chief in Afghanistan. He said that about one third of the country's population of 38 million does not know if they will have a meal every day.

The UN's World Food Program has brought in food and given it to tens of thousands of people in recent weeks. But winter is coming soon and dry weather is continuing. Alakbarov said at least $200 million is needed urgently to be able to continue to feed the Afghans who are at risk.

"By the end of September, the stocks which the World Food Program has in the country will be out," Alakbarov told reporters at an online news conference. "We will not be able to provide those essential food items because we'll be out of stocks."

Earlier, UN officials said that, of the $1.3 billion needed for overall aid efforts, only 39 percent had been received.

The Taliban militant group seized control of the country ahead of the withdrawal of American forces this week. Now, the group must govern a nation that depends heavily on international aid and is facing an economic crisis that is growing.

In addition to the concerns about food supplies, government workers have not been paid in months. The local currency is also losing value. Most of Afghanistan's foreign currency supplies, which are held in other countries, are currently frozen.

Khalid Payenda is Afghanistan's former acting finance minister. He spoke about Afghanistans dangerous economic situation on Wednesday at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.

Payenda said the Afghan currency has not sharply lost value because money exchanges have been closed. Its value could drop by more than 100 percent, he added.

Part of the disorder shows the speed at which the Taliban took control of the country. "I did not expect it to be this quickly," Payenda said. "Nobody actually did."

Mohammad Sharif, a shopkeeper in the capital, Kabul, said shops and markets there have supplies, but a major concern is rising food prices.

"If the situation continues like this and there is no government to control the prices, that will cause so many problems for local people," he said.

Many Afghans are worried. They are waiting to see how the Taliban will rule. They were very severe when they held power before their fall in 2001.

But more recently, their leaders have tried to show a more moderate image. Schools have reopened to boys and girls although Taliban officials have said they will study separately. Women are out on the streets wearing Islamic head cloths  as they always have  rather than the long burqas that cover the whole face which the Taliban required in the past.

Ambassador Geraldine Byrne Nason is Irelands ambassador to the UN. Ireland is the current president of the United Nations Security Council. Byrne Nason said Wednesday that the most important test for the new Taliban government will be how it treats women and girls.

The problems Taliban rulers have in rebuilding the economy could give Western nations influence. These nations want the Taliban to meet its promise to form an inclusive government and guarantee women's rights. The Taliban said it wants to have good relations with other countries, including the United States.

Bilal Karimi is an official member of the Taliban spokesman's office. He said Wednesday that a team of Turkish and Qatari technicians arrived in Kabul to help restore operations at the citys airport. Alakbarov, the UN humanitarian official, said the United Nations is asking to use the airport so it can bring food and other supplies to the capital.

The Taliban also must deal with the threat of militants from the Islamic State in Afghanistan group, known as ISIS-K. It took responsibility for last weeks bombing at the airport. The Taliban have promised they will not let Afghanistan be used as a base for attacks on other countries.

After the bombing, American officials said air strikes targeted ISIS-K. U.S. President Joe Biden said they would continue.

U.S. Army General Mark Milley is chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Milley said Wednesday it was "possible" that the U.S. will have to work in agreement with the Taliban on any counterterrorism strikes in Afghanistan in the future.

Im John Russell.

Kathy Gannon, Rahim Faiez and Edith M. Lederer reported on this story for the Associated Press. Jill Robbins adapted it for Learning English. Mario Ritter, Jr. was the editor.

__________________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

stock  n. a supply of something that is available for use

burqa  n. a long piece of clothing that covers the face and body and that is worn by some Muslim women in public places

essential adj. extremely important and necessary

item n. an individual thing

currency n. the money that a country uses; a specific kind of money

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Declared dead by a French court in 2017, Jeanne Pouchain has spent the past four years trying to prove she is alive. French officials, however, disagree.

"My name was Jeanne. It still is Jeanne, after I've been declared dead in 2017," said the 59-year old.

She cries at times when explaining her story and what she plans for when she will officially be "alive" again.

It all started, Pouchain said, when the family received a letter four years ago from a court saying mistakenly that she was dead. The letter also said she owed money that her husband had to pay.

The letter was part of a legal process launched by a former employee of Pouchain's cleaning business.

It has not been easy or quick to fix the mistake.

Pouchain is unable to work and afraid to leave her house because she does not have an identification card or social security number. She lives as a recluse.

Some of the family's belongings were taken by the courts and all their saved money has gone to trying to get things back to normal.

"My life, well, it's nothing. I feel I'm of no use. I'm nothing and I'm of no use. And this is hard," Pouchain said.

She spoke to Reuters in the house she shares with her husband Pierre-Jean in a small village near Lyon, in south-east France.

Now, the courts are looking at her case again. Pouchain and her husband have begun to have some hope. But it will still take months. The courts must overturn their decision, and a judge must recognize officially that she is not dead and never was.

She has great dreams for that day.

"I know exactly what I will do...I will get a health check, because I know some things are wrong with my body," she said.

She said that she could not see a doctor because she does not have a social security number. She has several health problems, including having lost most of her teeth.

"I would so love to be able to bite into an apple...I would love to have teeth. I would be so happy, even if they were to give me two dentures, I would be happy to have teeth."

Her other dream is simply to be able to enjoy life again, at home, with her husband, Pierre-Jean. He is sure things will be put right.

"Hope is what makes us carry on," he said. "Eventually, the outcome will necessarily be in our favor."

Im Anna Matteo.

Reuters reported this story. Susan Shand adapted it for Learning English. Mario Ritter, Jr. was the editor.

____________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

recluse  n. a person who lives alone and avoids other people

dentures  n. (pl.) a set of manufactured teeth to replace lost natural ones

eventually adv. at some later time

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South Korea lawmakers approved a law on Tuesday banning app stores from controlling how apps and their services are paid for.

South Korea is reportedly the first country in the world to pass such a law.

Technology companies Google and Apple operate profitable app stores. They require app makers to use their payment systems.

Google and Apple have faced a lot of criticism for their requirements on payment systems. That is because they get up to 30 percent of the money from the sales in their app stores. They say that the money helps pay for the cost of operating these stores. Googles Google Play and Apples App Store are used by people around the world.

The new South Korean law prevents app stores from using their strong market positions to require use of their payment systems. Instead, they must let app makers give the public additional ways to pay. South Korea says the ban is aimed at supporting fairer competition.

The law also aims to prevent retaliation against app makers by banning app stores from unreasonably delaying app approval.

Apple criticized the law in a statement Tuesday. It said the law will put users who purchase digital goods with other payment methods at risk of fraud. The company also said the law would weaken users privacy protections and make it hard to oversee their purchases. And, Apple said, it will make parental controls and other tools less effective.

The company said user trust in app store purchases will decrease and lead to fewer opportunities for Korean app developers.

The new law will also let Korean officials examine app markets to find disputes and stop actions that block fair competition.

Officials in Europe, China and other places worry about the market control of Apple, Google and similar companies. That includes their control over payment systems, online advertisements and other things. Chinese officials have fined some companies for breaking rules meant to prevent monopolies. Other governments are trying to decide how best to keep markets competitive.

The Korea Internet Corporations Association is an industry group. Its members include South Koreas largest internet companies, such as Naver, a search engine and online shopping service. Naver welcomed the passage of the law and said it would create healthier competition. The company also said it would give users more choices at lower prices.

Google said it is considering how to obey the new law.

Google Play provides far more than payment processing, and the service cost helps keep Android free, the company said in a statement. Android is Googles operating system for smart phones. The company said it gives developers the tools to reach a market of billions of people around the world.

And just as it costs developers money to build an app, it costs us money to build and keep an operating system and app store, Google said.

Recently, Apple announced it will let makers of iPhone apps tell users about low-cost ways to buy digital subscriptions and media.

That decision was part of a legal case involving iPhone app developers in the U.S. Also, a U.S. federal court judge will soon rule on a separate case brought by Epic Games. The company created the popular video game Fortnite.

The judge wondered why Apple would not let developers of apps like Fortnite show different payment choices within their apps.

Over the last year, Google and Apple reduced the percentage of sales they take from app makers from 30 percent to 15 percent. That reduction is for app makers that earn less than $1 million a year, which is the case for most apps in their stores. But that does not help the largest app makers, like Epic Games and Spotify. The two have taken their complaints around the world.

The European Unions executive Commission has accused Apple of forcing developers to use its payment system. Several U.S. states brought a legal case in July against Googles app store. And Australian officials have also said they are concerned about Apple and Googles requirements related to payment methods.

Im Alice Bryant.



The Associated Press reported this story. Alice Bryant adapted it for Learning English. Mario Ritter, Jr. was the editor.

__________________________________________

Words in This Story

app (application) n. . a computer program made for smart phones and tablets that carries out a specific job

monopoly n. a situation in which a company has complete control of the supply of goods or service in an area or market

retaliation n. to do something bad to someone who has hurt you or treated you badly

fraud n. the crime of using dishonest methods to take something valuable from another person

opportunity n. an amount of time or a situation in which something can be done or gained; a chance to do business

subscription n. an agreement that you make with a company to get a publication or service regularly




A divided United States Supreme Court refused to block a Texas law that activists say effectively bans abortions in the nations second-largest state.

An abortion is a medical operation used to end a pregnancy and cause the death of the fetus.

Some experts say the Texas law puts the power of enforcement in the hands of private citizens. And it also offers money for them to do so.

Last May, Governor Greg Abbott of Texas signed legislation banning abortions in the state once a fetal heartbeat is discovered. This usually happens at six weeks. Activists say that is before many women know that they are pregnant.

On Monday, a group of abortion activists asked the nations highest court to block enforcement of the law. The group said the Texas law would bar at least 85 percent of abortions in the state. They said it would likely cause many clinics to close. The group asked the court to intervene while it is fighting the constitutionality of the law in lower courts.

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court refused to block the Texas law by a vote of five to four. The majority issued an order saying that opponents had raised serious questions regarding the constitutionality of the Texas law. But it said that was not enough. The majority explained that it is unclear whether the named defendants in this lawsuit can or will seek to enforce the Texas lawthat might permit our intervention. The named defendants, in this case, are Texas state public officials.

The court's majority, however, said the decision was "not based on any conclusion about the constitutionality of Texass law" and permitted legal cases against it to continue.

Chief Justice John Roberts, in his dissent, called the Texas law unprecedented. He wrote that by leaving the enforcement of the law to private citizens, the Texas law aims to protect the State from responsibility. He questioned whether a state can avoid responsibility for its law in such a way.



Whats in the Texas law?

The Texas law is one of several heartbeat laws enacted in states where the Republican Party has a majority. At least 12 other states, including Idaho, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Mississippi, have passed laws that place restrictions on abortions this year.

The legislation is considered part of an effort to overturn Roe v. Wade. That is the 1973 Supreme Court decision that established a womans constitutional right to an abortion.

Abortion laws are often enforced by state and local officials. But the Texas law permits private citizens to bring legal actions in state court against anyone involved in an abortion, other than the pregnant woman.

Actions could be brought against doctors, office workers and others involved in helping with abortions. That could include anyone who drives a woman to a clinic to get an abortion. Under the law, anyone who successfully brings legal action against another person would receive at least $10,000.

Harold Krent is a professor at Chicago-Kent College of Law. He told Reuters, "It is a little bit like the Wild West." Krent compared it to an earlier time in U.S. history when private citizens enforced laws when the government was limited and there was little organized law enforcement.

Following the high courts order, Abbott said in a statement, Starting today, every unborn child with a heartbeat will be protected from abortion.

U.S. President Joe Biden said in a statement, however, that the law violates the constitutional right established under Roe v. Wade. He said the law gives private citizens the power to bring lawsuits against anyone who they believe has helped another person get an abortion.

Dr. Gerald E. Harmon is president of the American Medical Association. He said the Texas law bans nearly all abortions in the state. He said it interferes with the relationship between people and their doctors. He also said it places bounties on physicians and health care workers simply for delivering care.

Can the law be overturned?

The U.S. Supreme Court has already agreed to study a Mississippi law banning abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy. In that case, Mississippi and its supporters have urged the court to formally overturn Roe v. Wade.

The Texas case will now return to lower courts, where the Center for Reproductive Rights is questioning the constitutionality of the law.

In May, the Pew Research Center released a public opinion study showing that a 59 percent majority of Americans say abortion should be legal. That center said that opinion has remained the same since 1995.

As for those providing abortions like Dr. Anuj Khattar, he told Reuters, "I feel like there's a bounty on my head and I dont want to play this game.

Im Jonathan Evans.

Hai Do wrote this report for Learning English with additional reporting from The Associated Press, Reuters and other sources. Mario Ritter Jr. was the editor.

____________________________________________________

Words in This Story

clinic n. a place where people go to get medical help

regarding prep. about; related to

conclusion n. a final decision or judgement; an opinion or decision formed after a period of thought or research

dissent n. (legal) a statement by a judge or justice giving the reasons why he or she does not agree with the decision made by the court

bounty n. (legal) an amount of money given to someone as a reward for catching a criminal

deliver v. to provide or produce something

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I wholeheartedly support it.

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A forensic specialist and two K-9 handlers testified in court Thursday on details of their searches that occurred earlier this year under the deck of an Arroyo Grande home, where San Luis Obispo County sheriff's investigators dug for evidence of missing 19-year-old Cal Poly student Kristin Smart.

Kristine Black, Karen Atkinson and their cadaver dogs, and Shelby Liddell, a Sheriffs Office forensic specialist, were called to search under the back porch of Ruben Flores home in the 700 block of White Court after warrants were executed on the residence in March and April.

Additionally, Liddell provided testimony on the presence of human blood allegedly discovered only in soil samples taken from excavated sites under the deck and from inside a trailer after it was sprayed with a forensic chemical.

The cadaver dogs and dig sites were part of a series of Sheriffs Office search warrants that included ground-penetrating radar and were executed on Ruben Flores residence. The San Pedro residence of his son, Paul Flores, was also searched by investigators.

+6 Detective in Kristin Smart case: stain of human body found in 2020 trailer search A 2020 search of a trailer seized as part of the Kristin Smart investigation revealed a stain similar to a human body after the inside was sprayed with a chemical used to detect bodily fluids, according to testimony Wednesday from the San Luis Obispo County Sheriffs detective who is leading the case.

Paul Flores, 44, is charged with the murder of Smart. His father, 80-year-old Ruben Flores, is charged with accessory to murder after the fact and is accused of hiding her body.

Paul Flores and an intoxicated Smart walked back from an off-campus party on Crandall Way, and were last seen together only steps from their dorms near the intersection of Perimeter Road and Grand Avenue at about 2 a.m. on May 25, 1996, according to witness Cheryl Manzer, who broke away from the pair after initially walking with them.

Smart was never seen again. She was declared legally dead in 2002 and her body has never been found.

Paul and Ruben Flores were arrested and charged in April. They both have pleaded not guilty.

Atkinson and Black and each of their cadaver dogs were called to the White Court residence on March 15 and were asked by investigators to search areas of Ruben Flores house, including a Volkswagen Cabriolet parked at the residence and area underneath the deck.

Atkinson brought Amiga, her English Labrador, and they were the first to search that morning. They started with the VW, then moved on to the deck area.

After Atkinson, Black and her Belgian Malinois, Annie, searched the VW and space under the deck.

Both dogs are certified in human remains detection through the California Rescue Dog Association, according to testimony.

Black said she intentionally stood out of sight from the house at the end of White Court in order to not influence her search.

The dogs did not alert on the VW, nor did the dogs alert on the area under the deck, although both handlers recalled changes in the dogs behavior.

Atkinson noted a slight change in behavior in Amiga as she worked a long, narrow area area that sloped up near the foundation.

Amiga began to sniff and make head pops, which indicated she detected an odor, according to Atkinson.

Attorney Sarah Sanger, who represents Paul Flores, asked whether changes in behavior are the same as alerts.

[Amiga] wont have an alert until she reaches the strongest point of the target odor, Atkinson said. She alerts to let me know when she has found a source.

Annies behavior changed as she entered through the gate and showed signs consistent with an alert along the sloped area, including putting her nose hard to the ground, changing breathing patterns and pawing at the dirt, according to Black.

It suggested to me there was enough information odor-wise that she had in her register that she trained on, Black said.

Liddell was present for the dog searches and admitted opening the VW door for Annie.

During the March and April search warrants, Liddell and an archeologist supervised and conducted an excavation search of a sloped area under the deck, where the blood was allegedly found but no DNA.

Investigators had to remove a portion of the deck in order to reach the search area, which was divided into quadrants, according to Liddell.

As investigators carefully removed and documented each layer of soil, Liddell said they eventually reached what appeared to be dark staining two to three feet down.

In court, Deputy District Attorney Christopher Peuvrelle showed dozens of photos of the dig site as it progressed, laying down each photo one at a time, and the photos with the stains became more apparent.

Liddell said control samples were taken from different locations of the property to rule out what was found at the stain site was not found throughout other areas of the property.

It was definitely something that was notable, Liddell said.

In addition, Liddell testified spraying the inside of the trailer seized from the Flores' residence with Bluestar, a forensic chemical used to presumptively detect blood and other bodily fluids.

The trailer belonged to the boyfriend of Susan Flores, Paul Flores mother, and was seized on the belief that it was used to transport the remains of Smart from Ruben Flores residence in February 2020, according to sheriffs Detective Clint Cole.

Liddell said that 30 minutes after spraying Bluestar, a blue luminescent stain approximately a foot-and-a-half wide appeared on the inside of one of the trailers doors, which was documented with a camera.

Bluestar, which reacts to the hemoglobin in human blood and is a proprietary formula, can also show false positives for cleaning materials and some types of vegetables, although the reaction is typically a white flash that goes away after awhile, according to Liddell.
Public notice All recreational facilities, including Vandenberg beaches that were closed for the launch, remain closed until further notice due to an ongoing investigation into the explosion, base officials said. Anyone who locates suspected debris is asked to keep at least 50 feet distance from the objects and report findings to the Firefly Aerospace Inc. hotline at 805-605-2734.

Spectators who gathered across the Central Coast to watch the launch of Firefly Aerospace's Alpha rocket  a privately designed, unmanned rocket built to carry satellites  instead saw it explode midair and debris rain down on nearby areas.

"I saw this thing floating down from the sky ... then another piece, then another, and then hundreds of pieces varying in size were falling," said Mike Hecker, a resident of Solvang who was out mountain biking in the Orcutt Hills with a large group of friends.

"It was surreal to have rocket debris raining down on you," he said.

After a successful liftoff at 6:59 p.m. Sept. 2 from Space Launch Complex-2 at Vandenberg Space Force Base, the ascending Alpha rocket exploded over the Pacific Ocean two minutes and 30 seconds after takeoff when Space Launch Delta 30 terminated its flight, according to Vandenberg Space Force Base range operations.

The explosion, which could be seen for more than 100 miles in the clear evening sky, left a large cloud of smoke and visible debris falling back to Earth.

"I quickly registered that it was debris from the rocket," recalled Hecker, who had separated from his group to ride out of the hills only to find himself in the path of falling wreckage.

"Some fell as close as 50 feet from me," he said, noting that he quickly sought shelter under a nearby tree to avoid being hit  some pieces were as large as a Volkswagen bug.

Shortly after the incident, Firefly Aerospace Inc., based in Austin, Texas, announced via Twitter that the vehicle had been lost due to an "anomaly" during first stage ascent.

The company also alerted the public to possible debris in the area as a result of the explosion and asked locals to keep at least 50 feet away from pieces of wreckage, which investigators said should be considered unsafe.

Hecker said he has reported the debris he found to Firefly, but before the company's alert, admitted to inspecting the pieces up close.

"It wasn't steaming or glowing," he said, "so I touched it. It's carbon fiber."

Lompoc resident Frank Barna, who witnessed the launch from his front yard with his wife, Becky Barna, said he was at first "confused" by what he saw.

"I knew it wasn't right when I saw the big explosion," he said. "I didn't believe what I saw. But I thought maybe that's how their stages separate."

Barna, who retired last year from nearly 50 years "in the missile business" between the U.S. Air Force and as a contractor with NASA, said it was the first time he had seen such a sight.

"I've seen a lot of them get aborted while on the pad, but it was the first time I've seen one destroyed in midair," he said.

In reviewing videos online, Barna said he suspects that range operations lost control of the rocket when it began tumbling, forcing the mission to be aborted for safety reasons.

Barna said from what he understands, such an outcome is typical for aerospace companies conducting their first test launch.

"So, it's kind of expected," he said. "I feel bad that it happened, but it was also pretty awesome to watch."

According to Vandenberg Space Force Base officials, no injuries associated with the explosion have been reported and a team of investigators is working to determine the cause of the failure.

On Sept. 3, Firefly Aerospace released a statement assuring the public that information gathered from the incident would be applied to future missions as they continue to develop various launch and space vehicles, including a lunar lander.

While we did not meet all of our mission objectives, we did achieve a number of them: successful first stage ignition, liftoff of the pad, progression to supersonic speed, and we obtained a substantial amount of flight data," Firefly's statement read.

The rocket was carrying a payload dubbed "DREAM," or the Dedicated Research and Education Accelerator Mission, which consisted of items from schools and other institutions, including small satellites and several demonstration spacecraft.

The Firefly Alpha is designed to become the company's first two-stage rocket  carrying up to 2,200 pounds (1,000 kilograms) of payload  that launches small satellites into Earth orbit twice a month.

Launches would have a starting price of $15 million, according to Firefly.

+2 Weeklong celebration planned around Landsat satellite launch in September The weeklong celebration planned for September will feature such events as a geo tour coordinated through geocaching.com, a USGS-developed, life-size Landsat 9 model to be displayed at the Lompoc Airport, and hands-on science activities during the launch window of the Sept. 15 late morning launch.

+2 U.S. Space Force, Vandenberg members, now can receive Common Access Cards The 30th Force Support Squadron Military Personnel Flight is now issuing Common Access Cards or CACs at Vandenberg Space Force Base for Space Force members.
The Los Padres National Forest is closed to the public through Sept. 17 as part of an order that temporarily closes all California's national forests due to extreme fire conditions.

In addition, Midland School in Los Olivos announced closure of its trail system until further notice, in support of the Los Padres National Forest closure.

School officials explained that the decision to close local trails is to assist with mitigating fire risk and to eliminate the need for public-assisted emergency response.

"Due to upcoming weather forecasts and the limited resources to respond in the event of a fire, we find this to be a prudent measure for public safety and the safety of our campus," Midland officials said.

As it stands, all roads, trails, trail camps, campgrounds and day use areas in the Los Padres National Forest are closed at least through Sept. 17.

The Department of Agriculture Forest Service on Aug. 31 announced closure of the Pacific Southwest Region, which includes 18 national forests, as a precautionary measure.

Los Padres National Forest extends shooting ban into January 2022 The ongoing and increasing danger of wildfire prompted Los Padres National Forest officials to extend the recreational shooting ban on forest 

We do not take this decision lightly, but this is the best choice for public safety, said Regional Forester Jennifer Eberlien. It is especially hard with the approaching Labor Day weekend, when so many people enjoy our national forests.

Through the closure, Forest Service officials aim to temporarily reduce the number of people in national forests to minimize the likelihood visitors could become trapped during an emergency, such as a wildfire, and decrease the potential for new fire starts as firefighting resources are stretched thin across the state.

Further, forecasts show that conditions this season  including record-level fuel and fire conditions and fire behavior that is beyond the norm  are also trending the same or worse moving into late summer and fall, Forest Service officials said.

For more information and updates, visit Los Padres National Forests website at www.fs.usda.gov/main/lpnf/home.
Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough, The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Governments Campaign to Squelch It" is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net
Cinderella and Robert hit it off, but when he invites her to the palace for the royal ball, she goes mainly to network with royals from other lands. The resolution of the film doesnt come down to whether a glass slipper fits, but whether romance with a Prince fits in with Cinderellas startup plans.

There doesnt seem to be any rhyme or reason behind which familiar songs are performed in the musical numbers. For every time a song makes sense for a character, such as Menzels stepmother lecturing her daughters with Madonnas Material Girl, theres a number that seems totally random, like the townspeople all singing Janet Jacksons Rhythm Nation. Because they have rhythm, I guess?

Cannon wrote the Pitch Perfect movies and the highly underrated teen comedy Blockers, and shes able to cram some pretty funny lines in the margins, such as a running gag where the characters wonder why they use medieval phrases like toothsome and Huzzah! Casting Billy Porter of Pose as Cinderellas Fabulous Godmother is a masterstroke (even though hes only in one scene), and Brosnan, whose shaky singing voice was so memorable in Mamma Mia, doubles down here with an enjoyably hammy performance.
Requirements like Italys, and other restrictions on movement imposed by programs, have convinced some students not to go abroad. Noal Basil, a senior, decided to postpone his abroad experience until after graduation when the Italy program he hoped to attend was canceled. Basil and his friends re-evaluated their plans to travel and decided against applying to a different program.

We wanted to be able to travel around as much as possible. Until early August or so, we were still expecting to go, Basil explained. Around that time is kind of when we realized that there could be a possibility that we wouldn't be able to do that and that wed be restricted to the city or country.

Another factor in students unwillingness to commit to studying abroad this year is the lack of time that freshmen, sophomores and even juniors have been able to spend on campus. Humbert added that she would also be open to traveling after she graduated, without the guidance of the Study Abroad department, if it meant that she had more time at UW-Madison.

Taking flight: Nonstop routes returning to Madison airports sooner than expected Frontier Airlines nonstop flight to Las Vegas started this month, with American Airlines beginning a new nonstop route from Madison to Miami in November.

I was sent home (from UW) as a freshman, so Europe would be amazing, but I feel like my time got cut on campus a little bit. If I could figure out a way to go after my four years on campus, that would be awesome, she said.
The money from the Wisconsin Movie Theater Grant Program was intended to be put toward pandemic-related measures and safeguards, as well as assist movie theaters while federal support remained stalled.

Actually, most of those funds went to pay business personal property taxes to the city of Madison and other taxing entities. It basically came from government and went to the government, but at least that gave us a clean slate, Reagan said. I give my tip of the hat to Gov. Evers, his office and the people who administered that grant. I wish they could have been multiplied by a factor of 50 and sent to Washington.

In spite of struggles with funding and delays, Flix Brewhouse Madison is ready to start showing movies again. Reagan said many of its staff members were willing to return to their jobs at the theater. The Madison location opened with a screening of Marvels "Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings" Thursday night and is celebrating with giveaways all weekend long.

Weve got beer, flicks, good food and some friendly Madisonians to take care of you and give you a respite from all the crap thats out there right now, Reagan said. For now, we're cautiously optimistic.
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Madison Hall parked herself at a picnic table on the UW-Madison campus earlier this week to browse off-campus job listings and prepare for the school year ahead.

With the sun shining, Lake Mendota shimmering, a nearby stereo blaring and other students shuffling in and out of the Lakeshore dorms, it felt like the campus experience the incoming sophomore had envisioned but largely missed out on when she lived in Elizabeth Waters Hall last year.

Theres a different vibe to the start of this school year, she said. Were still wearing masks, so were not back to normal, but it feels more normal, or like were at least headed in that direction.

Excitement was the prevailing theme for Hall and the nearly 8,500 other students moving into UW-Madison dorms this week. There were also nerves, but more often because of typical college concerns  grades, classes and finding ones way around campus, for example  than reasons related to COVID-19.

Some of the two dozen students interviewed for this story seemed worried about the state of the pandemic, like freshman Rohit Bakayat, who is frustrated that the virus is something we have to worry about again after case numbers fell to promising levels earlier this summer.
Ive been living in Madison long enough to conclude that theres no central hub of Hispanic life here as there is in other cities.

A few examples: New York City has its heavily Puerto Rican Latin American diaspora mostly in the Bronx; Chicago has separate neighborhoods for Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and Central and South Americans, among other groups; and last time I checked, Cleveland had the largest concentration of Latino residents (mostly Puerto Rican) in Ohio.

In Madison, I long to see the face of a fellow Latinos/Latinas  not because I dont love all the white, Black and other people, but because there seem to be so few of us that it feels necessary to acknowledge each others presence here as a fellow other.

According to the latest census numbers, the Hispanic or Latino percentage of both Madison and Wisconsin stands at 7%, which is about the same as the Black or African American alone population in the city as well as the state.

(For comparisons sake, lets note that at 9%, Madison has the largest population of people who identify as Asian, in contrast to them being only 3% of the population of Wisconsin as a whole. American Indian and Alaska native, and Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islanders represent less than 1% of Madisons population.)
This setup was meant to avert a constitutional challenge, and so far, its working. Because state officials have no role in enforcing the law, the Supreme Court ruled Wednesday, it has no authority to block it.

Part of the sinister genius of the law is that it doesnt ever have to be used to succeed in extinguishing the right to abortion. Clinics and medical personnel will be at risk of onerous judgments if they terminate pregnancies after the cutoff point. If they win their cases, they would still have to pay their own attorneys  and if they lose, they would have to pay the lawyers who sued them.

By merely cooperating with women who choose to exercise a constitutional right, providers would invite severe financial penalties. The law may eliminate the vast majority of abortions even if no one ever files a lawsuit or collects a reward. It promises to render the constitutional right null and void.

You may assume the effects will be confined to the Lone Star State. Women with money may figure they can always drive to New Mexico or fly to Chicago to terminate a pregnancy. But as Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe told me, the law has an unlimited reach.
Little in July signed onto an amicus brief in a different case before the U.S. Supreme Court that could overturn Roe. In that test case from Mississippi, the justices will consider whether states can ban abortions before a fetus can survive outside the womb. Viability occurs roughly at 24 weeks.

Idahos abortion bill passed the House 53-16 and the Senate 25-7 with no support from Democrats. Republicans in the House who opposed the bill generally did so because it allowed exceptions for rape and incest.

The Texas law has no exceptions in cases of rape or incest. Idahos exception for rape and incest would likely be impossible for many women to meet, opponents say, because Idaho prevents the release of police reports in active investigations.

Texas also differs from Idaho because instead of setting criminal penalties, as other abortion restrictions do, it asks private people to enforce the ban by suing doctors or anyone who helps a woman get an abortion. Among other situations, that would include anyone who drives a woman to a clinic to get an abortion. Under the law, anyone who successfully sues another person would be entitled to at least $10,000.
Why is Governor Little allowing companies to force vaccinate Idahoans when the data is clear that they may be significantly worse off health-wise if they get vaccinated? the newsletter said.

Schneider said asking a question that manufactures that sense of uncertainty is a common tactic. She pointed to Fox News opinion host Tucker Carlson as an example.

By pretending theres a debate, or pretending theres information we dont have, it creates that sense of doubt and uncertainty. Which then allows somebody to come in and say There is no expertise on this, so Im just going to default to my political identity, Schneider said.

I think what this accomplishes is to further underline this sense of uncertainty, and that people in authority are making decisions on bad information or bad science. And so that supports the lieutenant governors position around no mask mandates, no vaccine requirements, that sort of thing. Because shes really trying to position herself in opposition to Governor Little, who himself has not implemented any of those, but shes trying to make it seem as if he had, I think.

Little on Tuesday said one way to slow COVID-19s impact on the state would be for Idahoans to get the vaccine.
BOISE (AP)  The Idaho commission charged with redrawing the states legislative and congressional districts will hold public hearings across the state over the next several weeks.

The hearings  one in each region and another online  will allow the commission to gather public comment with an aim toward finishing its work by October, a full month before the late November deadline, the Idaho Press reported.

Thats very ambitious, and I acknowledge that we may be still working on that for another week or two after that, but thats at least the initial target I get a sense were going to work towards, said commission co-chair Bart Davis.

Under a 1994 constitutional amendment approved by Idaho voters, the six-member bipartisan commission is in charge of drawing new legislative and congressional district lines to match up with the results of the most recent census, to ensure the one-person, one-vote principle is preserved in Idaho elections amid population shifts.
The children of Chad and Tammy Daybell told 48 Hours that they were told their mother died of asphyxiation, according to a news article.
The Idaho Supreme Court delivered a resounding blow for democracy of, by and for the people on August 23, declaring the Legislatures bill to throttle the initiative and referendum to be unconstitutional. Although many people, including five former Idaho Attorneys General, had warned that the legislation, Senate Bill 1110, was violative of the Idaho Constitution, the legislators passed it anyway. Now, they will have to pay the price, which could come close to half a million dollars.

The Legislatures disregard for the Constitution in this case is not out of the ordinary. In recent years, particularly this years session, legislators have shown little consideration for constitutional limitations. House majorities approved legislation to unlawfully restrict the Attorney Generals authority to represent State agencies, to keep itself in session throughout the year in violation of the Constitution, to defy and disregard valid federal laws, among other things. Thankfully, cooler heads in the Senate stymied a number of the unlawful acts, except of course for the legislation to kill the initiative and referendum.
The new school year began with more uncertainty than we expected because of the rapid spread of the COVID-19 delta variant strain. However, based on our overall performance and experience last year, I am confident that our local school boards, administrators, teachers and parents are ready to meet the challenge, help students recover from the pandemic-caused disruption, and do what it takes to keep them on track, learning and in school.

The 2020/21 school year was the most difficult year in the history of public education in Idaho. As a result of the pandemic, many schools had to pivot between in-person, remote and blended learning over the course of the school year. In order to deliver these flexible education models, the public and private sectors worked together to provide tens of thousands of computers and other electronic devices into classrooms and homes throughout the state. Our teachers did an amazing job of continuing to educate Idaho students during this extraordinary time.

Schools also put protocols in place designed to keep students and staff safe. As a result, most Idaho schools re-opened and stayed open last year, while schools in many other parts of the country were forced to provide online instruction for the entire school year. For that we should all be proud.
In todays world it has become commonplace to praise people who are seen as fighters, as if that is the only way to get along in a world of disagreement. You often hear praise for those who are willing to fight for their beliefs, defend their way of life, stand up to their opponents. People who talk that way seem to believe friendliness is a sign of weakness. They dont know that one can be serious without being solemn.

We would all be much better off if we took Ralph Waldo Emersons advice: Let our affection flow out to our fellows; it would operate in a day the greatest of all revolutions.

But letting affection flow out is not something we can do simply by intending it. Like all virtues, kindness follows a developmental process that takes time to unfold. One begins by imitating the behavior of a person one admires, the behavior turns into a habit, the habit changes ones perception, and gradually the change in perception shapes ones character.

The key thing about smiling is that it is outward directed. A person wearing a genuine smile is not worried about what others think of them; they are expressing their attitude of good will in advance of any interaction.

The outward-directed nature of a smile is what Emily Dickinson expressed when she wrote
You can rest assured that the vaccine works tremendously well to keep you from having to go to the hospital, but you can spread it to others even if you dont know you have it. Thats why it behooves us to mask when were indoors and avoid crowds.
At a news conference Thursday, Attorney General Mark Herring said he doesnt anticipate an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court but would fight one if there is.

I dont think theres any legal basis for a further appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, but Ill say this. If they try, we will be there to oppose it. This statue is coming down, and I really hope that the parties in the case and the lawyers who are representing them see the strength and the power of the decision, and the will of the people that it come down, and not delay it further, Herring said.

Patrick McSweeney, lawyer for the property owners, said Thursday that he had not yet had a chance to read the rulings and indicated he may or may not comment.

The 130-year-old, 60-foot-tall bronze statue of the Confederate general on a horse gained national attention last year as a focus of protests in Richmond. The base of the monument is now covered with graffiti and it was illuminated at night with holographic images. A year ago, demonstrators at the circle  now surrounded by fencing  were tear-gassed by police.

Other Confederate statues and memorials along Monument Avenue located on city property came down following the protests. The Lee statue is on state property.
Asking professors to check their students entry pass before each class isnt always feasible, Carpenter said. He teaches a freshman chemistry class with 160 students.

Carpenter said VCU is also considering less drastic measures, including restricting access to certain buildings.

There are 756 students out of 28,850 who have not reported their vaccination or requested an exemption, Porter said. Of the 756, about 300 are taking online classes away from campus and dont have to be vaccinated.

Other universities in Virginia chose to disenroll noncompliant students before the semester began. Virginia Tech disenrolled 134 out of 37,000 students, a spokesperson said Tuesday, though its unclear how many of them intended to return for the fall semester.

The University of Virginia disenrolled 238, though only 49 had registered for classes. The College of William & Mary withdrew 42, though only 12 had registered for classes.

After he wrote his letter, Carpenter immediately got a response from Meredith Weiss, VCUs vice president for administration, he said. She said the university would seek faculty input on what should happen to noncompliant students. Weiss was unavailable for an interview Wednesday, Porter said.
Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

Children and adolescents rarely have a severe COVID-19 disease course, and the vast majority have few or no symptoms. At a time with high transmission in this age group, the NIPH believes that it is right to also offer vaccines to this group so that they are protected against a severe disease course.

"Transmission among children and adolescents is increasing, and adolescents have many social contacts. When many are infected, a few more will also be at risk of being admitted to hospital. Some may also develop the rare and serious complication MISC, which is an inflammatory condition that can occur about 26 weeks after COVID-19 disease. Therefore, we have recommended to the government that the coronavirus immunization program is expanded so that 12-15-year-olds can be offered a vaccine," says Camilla Stoltenberg, director-general of the Norwegian Institute of Public Health.

To date, just over 1,300 young people in the 20062009 cohorts have been vaccinated. This is a small group of adolescents who have been recommended vaccination because they have serious underlying diseases that can increase their risk of a severe COVID-19 disease course and admission to hospital.

Single dose

The coronavirus vaccine offered is approved from 12 years and up. The vaccine will be offered to the 20062008 cohorts, as well as everyone in the 2009 cohort once they have turned 12 years old.

Vaccination will consist of one dose in the first instance. Adolescents aged 12 to 15 years generally have a very good effect from immunization.

"One dose provides good protection against a severe disease course, and the protection will probably be better among adolescents at this age than for older age groups," says Stoltenberg.

She explains that the NIPH will make new assessments with updated knowledge about side effects, disease development and the overall situation before a recommendation is given for dose two for this age group.

A rare side effect in the form of inflammation of the heart, called myocarditis, has been reported after using mRNA vaccines, especially in younger people. The side effect mainly occurs after the second dose and is temporary, so most people recover within a month.

"We consider that the offer of one dose provides the clearest benefit for the individual adolescent when the benefit is weighed against possible disadvantages of the vaccine. The second dose will be considered when there is more knowledge from other countries that have come further in the vaccination of this age group," says Stoltenberg.

The greatest transmission-limiting effect of the vaccines is achieved when two vaccine doses are given. The NIPH has assessed that for this age group, which to a lesser extent than adults and older adolescents has contributed to transmission, the individual considerations of offering vaccination is more important than the benefit to society of limiting transmission. However, this may be reconsidered if the infection situation changes in the future.

Arrangements for the 20062008 cohort can begin as soon as the municipalities have the capacity for this. The municipalities must also establish systems to be able to invite children born in 2009 to vaccination when they have reached the age of 12 years. This can take a little longer to organize, as the systems in places are often based on year group and not date of birth.

The Norwegian Institute of Public Health recommends that the vaccine Comirnaty from BioNTech / Pfizer should be used because there is greater experience with the vaccine in this age group.,

Tailored information

Parents are responsible for health decisions for children under the age of 16, but children and adolescents must be consulted about decisions concerning their health.

"We want children to receive tailored information and are now working to develop information material that will be available within a few days on our website fhi.no," says Stoltenberg.

For coronavirus vaccination among adolescents under 16 years of age, consent from both parents is required where there is joint parental responsibility.

Explore further Vaccines from BioNTech/Pfizer and Moderna can be combined
(HealthDay)As the school year gets underway across the United States, new data shows that coronavirus cases among children are climbing.

Since the pandemic began, children have represented 14.8% of total cases, but for the week ending Aug. 26, that percentage jumped to 22.4%, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.

While child COVID-19 cases declined in early summer, they have "increased exponentially" recently, with more than a five-fold increase in the past month, according to the academy. Child cases went from about 38,000 the week ending July 22 to more than 200,000 in the last week.

That rate was well above the average that has been seen throughout the pandemic, and the trend is concerning as the Delta variant may pose greater danger to children, most of whom are not yet eligible for the COVID-19 vaccines.

The academy collected COVID-19 data from 49 states, New York City, Puerto Rico and Guam. Overall, the rate of child COVID-19 cases as of Aug. 26 was 6,374 cases per 100,000 children in the population, according to the AAP.

Twenty states reported more than 8,000 cases per 100,000. Tennessee, South Carolina, Rhode Island, North Dakota, Arkansas and Mississippi had the highest rates of child cases per 100,000 kids, according to the AAP data.

There was one bit of good news in the statistics.

"At this time, it appears that severe illness due to COVID-19 is uncommon among children," the AAP report concluded. "However, there is an urgent need to collect more data on longer-term impacts of the pandemic on children, including ways the virus may harm the long-term physical health of infected children, as well as its emotional and mental health effects."

At this time, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends universal indoor masking by all students, staff, teachers and visitors to K-12 schoolsregardless of vaccination status.

"I can tell you that most of the places where we're seeing surges and outbreaks are in places that are not implementing our current guidance," CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said recently, adding that it's not hospitalizations that are spiking, but number of cases, CBS News reported.

Meanwhile, several school districts are taking things one step further than masking by requiring staff to get vaccinated  including New York City, Chicago and all of California  as experts say one way to keep kids safe is for the adults around them to be vaccinated, CBS News reported.

But the governors of Texas and Florida have threatened to punish districts that implement mask mandates in schools, though many districts are defying their orders.

On the other side, the U.S. Department of Education announced it is investigating five statesIowa, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee and Utahover concerns that their mask mandate bans could leave students with disabilities and underlying health conditions more vulnerable to COVID-19.

"Masks save lives and reduce the transmission of COVID-19," Dr. Leslie Diaz, an infectious disease specialist at Jupiter Medical Center in Florida, said Wednesday on CBSN.

"The science is there, masks work and we should utilize them," Diaz said. "Especially in the school district and in the schools that are inundated now with all of the kids coming back and not doing virtual learning."

The science proves masks work in preventing the spread of COVID-19, she said.

"We are in a crisis... the reality is there every day of my life. I can't dismiss it," Diaz said. "Wearing masks has become very relaxed behavior around here, and around the United States. It shouldn't be."

FDA Advisory Panel Set to Meet on Booster Shots

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration will hold a key advisory panel meeting on coronavirus booster shots on Sept. 17, a mere three days before the Biden administration plans to begin offering third shots for Americans.

While the public session could add clarity to what some feel has been a confusing decision-making process, it also could fuel more controversy over the administration's plan.

Panel member Paul Offit, a vaccine expert at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, has questioned whether boosters are needed at this time because data indicates the vaccines still work well against severe COVID-19. But administration officials have stressed that protection is waning.

Though the stated purpose of the meeting is to review booster data on the Pfizer vaccine, it will likely deal with broader questions about booster shots, the Washington Post reported: Those include who should get booster shots and when, and what is this country's obligation to other countries who are scrambling for first and second doses of the vaccines.

The panel's recommendations are not binding. But a split between the FDA's expert panel and agency officials could make it more difficult for the agency to approve boosters.

If the committee concludes boosters are needed, it could strengthen the agency's hand in approving a third Pfizer shot and later doing the same for boosters by Moderna and Johnson & Johnson, the Post said. The two-shot Pfizer regimen received full FDA approval last week, while the Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines are still given under an emergency use authorization.

Peter Marks, director of the FDA's Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, told the Post that "a transparent, thorough and objective review of the data by the FDA is critical so that the medical community and the public continue to have confidence in the safety and effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines."

Outside experts praised the scheduling of the meeting, saying it shows the agency is trying to stick to the normal procedures on vaccines, despite the urgency caused by the highly transmissible Delta variant. The Biden administration announced Aug. 18 that boosters would be available the week of Sept. 20 to most people fully vaccinated eight months earlier, pending clearance from the FDA and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But critics said that typically the FDA and the CDC, and their advisers, would review data before decisions were announced.

"It's a good sign that the FDA is trying to adhere to a regular process," said Jason Schwartz, an associate professor of health policy and the history of medicine at the Yale School of Public Health. But he told the Post that the meeting could be "awkward," with the administration receiving criticism for "a really messy sequence of events."

That argument was amplified Tuesday when news broke that two top vaccine officials would retire this fall. Marion Gruber, who leads the Office of Vaccines Research and Review, will step down at the end of October. Philip Krause, Gruber's deputy, is expected to leave the agency in November. The two have decades of experience in vaccines and have helped steer the agency's efforts through a demanding period with the pandemic.

People familiar with the decisions told the Post that Gruber has been talking about retiring for some time, but that Krause's decision was more of a surprise. They said both officials were frustrated by what they saw as an encroachment by the White House on the agency's ability to analyze data and make independent decisions. But they also said they did not know whether that was the reason for the retirements, the Post added.

Explore further Vaccines' power against COVID hospitalization fades in elderly

More information: The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more on The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more on COVID-19

Copyright  2021 HealthDay. All rights reserved.
(HealthDay)Opposition is mounting among U.S. and international health experts against President Joe Biden's push to make COVID-19 booster shots available later this month.

The scientific evidence simply isn't there to support booster shots, and those doses would be better used in the arms of the unvaccinated around the world to prevent future mutations of COVID, infectious disease experts said in an interview with HealthDay Now.

"The important thing to remember is this is being driven by the unvaccinated. That's what's in the hospital right now. It's not vaccinated people that are the issue in this pandemic," said Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar with the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. "The whole debate over boosters needs to be framed by that, because putting third doses into highly vaccinated populations isn't going to change what's happening in the United States."

Unfortunately, the Biden Administration's advocacy for booster shots has created a rush by some Americans to get a third doseeven though the additional jabs haven't yet been approved by federal regulators, said Dr. Camille Kotton, an infectious disease specialist with Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

"I will say that I'm shocked at the number of people that have gone out and just helped themselves to booster doses," Kotton said. "It's a little bit greedy to do something that's not really recommended yet, just because they've read the newspaper and thought that was a good idea for themselves."

Last month, Biden told the nation that booster shots would be available the week of Sept. 20 for the earliest recipients of the COVID-19 vaccines, although he added that the plan was pending approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The FDA will hold an advisory board meeting on Sept. 17 to review data from Pfizer regarding booster shots for its vaccine, the agency announced this week.

WHO, EU don't back booster shots

Both the World Health Organization and the European Union have counseled against booster shots, urging that nations instead focus on getting shots into the arms of the unvaccinated.

That's the approach Adalja and some other health experts are promoting.

"The longer this virus is unchecked anywhere in the world, the more likely we are to see variants. Until we control this pandemic in all corners of the globe, we're still going to have variants," Adalja said. "The way we control this pandemic is by getting first doses, second doses into people's arms all around the world, even in the United States."

Kotton and Adalja both noted that at this point, the scientific evidence doesn't seem to support the need for booster shots in fully vaccinated people.

"Really what we're seeing is higher rates of breakthrough disease, which is still generally mild symptoms," said Kotton, who serves on the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), the board that will review booster shots prior to their approval. "People aren't going to the hospital the vast majority of the time. They just have a little bit of a viral syndrome."

Check out the full HealthDay Now interview:

ACIP recently approved a third dose of vaccine for people with compromised immune systems, but Kotton noted that the dose isn't a booster. Rather, people who are immune-compromised will receive a three-dose vaccine series rather than a two-dose series.

"This is not actually a booster dose," Kotton said. "This is a third dose that is considered part of their primary vaccine series."

In that case, medical evidence showed that people with immune system deficienciessolid organ recipients, bone marrow transplant patients, folks fighting cancerneeded a three-dose series to achieve sufficient protection against COVID, Kotton said.

But for the general population, the evidence continues to show that the vaccines protect people against severe illness and hospitalization, Kotton and Adalja said.

"Primarily we've been trying to prevent this virus from causing severe disease, hospitalization and death," Adalja said. "By that standard, the vaccineseven when you see antibody levels wane or you see breakthrough infections occurringthey're still performing off the charts, because that's what they were designed to do."

Let scientists make the call

"Vaccines are not bug zappers. They're not force fields. They're not meant to stop every breakthrough infection," Adalja continued. "Because the breakthrough infections are generally mild, I don't know that we want to be in the business of chasing them with booster shots when this is not a virus that's ever going to go away."

Adalja said he's "very eager" to see the ACIP debate the data and discuss when healthy people might need a booster.

"This is something we want to be proactive about. We want to have a plan in case it's necessary," Adalja said. "But I think giving a date certain that [is] six months or eight months or Sept. 20, that doesn't really strike me as something that's evidence-based. I think that's why you see many infectious disease doctors question the clinical need for these boosters.

"These types of decisions shouldn't be announced by the White House," Adalja noted. "They should be announced by the ACIP and the CDC. If we reverse this process, we kind of go back to the old days of the pandemic where you had politicians making decisions about what treatments were effective or were not effective."

In the meantime, Kotton cautions people not to seek out a booster until it's been formally approved.

She noted that doctors or pharmacists could wind up in trouble for providing a booster, since it's "a significant violation of federal policy," Kotton said.

In addition, people might be on the hook for the cost of their booster dose, since it hasn't been approved.

"I would really not recommend that people do that of their own accord until such time as we have good scientific evidence to support that," Kotton said.

Explore further Pfizer seeking FDA OK for COVID-19 vaccine booster dose

More information: The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more on The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more on COVID-19 vaccines

Copyright  2021 HealthDay. All rights reserved.
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The Domestic Abuse Act 2021, which received Royal Assent in April, has the potential to save lives, increase safety, protect children from the ongoing impact of growing up with violence and abuse, and improve the protections available for victim and survivors in the family courts and beyond, an expert from the University of Exeter Law School has said.

Dr. Charlotte Bishop, Senior Lecturer in Law, has warned the legislation does not provide the groundwork for the far-reaching systemic change that is needed. In a study published in Child and Family Law Quarterly, Dr. Bishop says a "gendered approach" is needed by those working to tackle domestic violence and abuse. Under this approach ir is not merely 'coincidence' that the majority of domestic violence and abuse is commissioned by heterosexual males; men who are violent towards their wives and female partners do so as a result of conforming to cultural norms that support male dominance.

The research says putting coercive control at the heart of domestic violence and abuse would enable greater identification and prevention of the root causes; pervasive sex-role stereotypes and expectations rooted in gender inequality at a social and cultural level.

Dr. Bishop said: "Women are disproportionately impacted by domestic violence and abuse, so there needs to be a gendered approach to addressing it, which takes into account social and cultural inequalities. There needs to be a shift in focus away from discrete incidents.

"This Act is welcome, and has clear potential to improve prevention and protection for individual victims, but much more is needed in order to truly transform the response to domestic abuse in England and Wales.

"The legislation itself will not transform understandings of domestic abuse, in large part because of its gender-neutral approach and the fact that it does not place coercive and controlling behaviour at the heart of the wrong of domestic abuse. This means the improvements in responses and protections for victim/survivors in the civil courts, police and criminal justice system, and statutory and non-statutory agencies that are set out in the Act can only go so far."

The study says the wide-ranging provisions under the Domestic Abuse Act have the potential to protect many more victims and prevent abuse from continuing and escalating. These include enhanced protection orders, new measures for victims in the courts, obligations on local authorities, and the inclusion of children in the definition of victims. But it warns there is inadequate funding and allocation of resources, which could reduce the effectiveness of the new measures and obligations.

Dr. Bishops analysis shows the legal duty on local authorities to provide refuge accommodation has the potential to save lives, but this provision will be undermined if it is not matched with adequate and sustainable funding for specialist women's services and ongoing support for victims and survivors. The study calls for a commitment to long-term funding for these vital services.

Dr. Bishop said: "It is very important that the passing of this new legislation is not allowed to act as a distraction from the lack of government funding in this area."

Explore further Domestic violence survivor elder abuse risk
A R.N. holds the hand of a COVID-19 patient in the Medical Intensive care unit (MICU) at St. Luke's Boise Medical Center in Boise, Idaho on Tuesday, Aug. 31, 2021. More then half of the patients in the ICU are COVID-19 positive, none of which are vaccinated. Credit: AP Photo/Kyle Green

The intensive care rooms at St. Luke's Boise Medical Center are full, each a blinking jungle of tubes, wires and mechanical breathing machines. The patients nestled inside are a lot alike: All unvaccinated, mostly middle-aged or younger, paralyzed and sedated, reliant on life support and locked in a silent struggle against COVID-19.

But watch for a moment, and glimpses of who they were before the coronavirus become clear.

Artfully inked tattoos cover the tanned forearm of a man in his 30s. An expectant mother's slightly swollen belly is briefly revealed as a nurse adjusts her position. The young woman is five months pregnant and hooked to a breathing machine.

Down the hall, another pregnant woman, just 24 and hooked to a ventilator, is lying proneon top of her developing fetusto get more air into her ravaged lungs.

Idaho hit a grim COVID-19 trifecta this week, reaching record numbers of emergency room visits, hospitalizations and ICU patients. Medical experts say the deeply conservative state will likely see 30,000 new infections a week by mid-September.

With a critical shortage of hospital beds and staff and one of the nation's lowest vaccination rates, Idaho health providers are growing desperate and preparing to follow crisis standards of care, which call for giving scarce resources to patients most likely to survive.

St. Luke's Boise Medical Center invited The Associated Press into its restricted ICUs this week in hopes that sharing the dire reality would prompt people to change their behavior.

Jack Kingsley R.N. attends to a COVID-19 patient in the Medical Intensive care unit (MICU) at St. Luke's Boise Medical Center in Boise, Idaho on Tuesday, Aug. 31, 2021. St. Luke's Health System announced on Tuesday that it will pause certain elective surgeries and procedures starting Sept. 1 because of increasing COVID-19 cases in Idaho. Credit: AP Photo/Kyle Green

"There is so much loss here, and so much of it is preventable. I'm not just talking about loss of life. Ultimately, it's like loss of hope," said Dr. Jim Souza, chief medical officer. "When the vaccines came out in December, those of us in health care were like, 'Oh, my God, it's like the cavalry coming over the hill.' ... To see now what's playing out? It's all so needless."

Inside the ICUs, Kristen Connelly and fellow nurses frequently gather to turn over each patient, careful to avoid disconnecting the tangle of tubes and wires keeping them alive. With breathing tubes, feeding tubes and half a dozen hanging bags of medications intended to halt a cascade of organ damage, turning a patient is a dangerous but necessary endeavor that happens twice a day.

When Idaho's hospitals were nearly overwhelmed with coronavirus patients last winter, Connelly wasn't fazed, believing she could make a difference. Now, instead of focusing on one patient at a time, she cares for multiple. Many colleagues have quit, burned out by the relentless demands of the pandemic.

Medical professionals pronate a 39 year old unvaccinated COVID-19 patient in the Medical Intensive care unit (MICU) at St. Luke's Boise Medical Center in Boise, Idaho on Tuesday, Aug. 31, 2021. Credit: AP Photo/Kyle Green

"At this point, I'm overwhelmed. I don't have much left," the 26-year ICU nursing veteran said Tuesday.

Connelly's own life is in triage mode as she tries to maintain her last reservoirs of energy. She doesn't eat at home anymore and has cut out all activities except for walking her dog. Her normally deep sense of compassionwhich Connelly considers a critical job skillhas been shadowed by a seething anger she can't shake.

"We had a mother-daughter team in the hospital last week, and the mother died and the daughter was still here," Connelly said. "In that moment, I had a reprieve from the anger, because I got to be just overwhelmed with sadness."

"It's devastating," she said. "Where we are right now is avoidablewe didn't have to go here."

All of the ICU coronavirus patients were generally healthy people who simply didn't get vaccinated, Dr. Bill Dittrich said. Idaho could enact crisis care standards in days, leaving him to make gut-wrenching decisions about who gets life-saving treatment.

Dr. William Dittrich, M.D. looks over a COVID-19 patient in the Medical Intensive care unit (MICU) at St. Luke's Boise Medical Center in Boise, Idaho on Tuesday, Aug. 31, 2021. More then half of the patients in the ICU are COVID-19 positive, none of which are vaccinated. Credit: AP Photo/Kyle Green

"I don't think anybody will ever be ready to have the kinds of conversations and make the kinds of decisions that we're concerned we're going to have to be making in the next several weeks. I'm really terrified," Dittrich said.

Most of the ICU patients fell prey to con artists before they fell ill with the virus, said Souza, the chief medical officer. He points to a patient who first tried the anti-parasite drug ivermectin. U.S. health officials have warned it should not be used to treat COVID-19. The man, in his 50s, refused standard medical treatments until he became so sick he needed to be hospitalized.

"What we're left with is organ supportive therapy. Misinformation is hurting people and killing people," Souza said.

What the science is clear on? Vaccines, he said. "We don't have any vaccinated patients here."

A pregnant and intubated COVID-19 patient is pictured in the Surgical Intensive care unit (SICU) at St. Luke's Boise Medical Center in Boise, Idaho on Tuesday, Aug. 31, 2021. Credit: AP Photo/Kyle Green

In deep-red Idaho, however, vaccinations, masks and nearly anything related to the coronavirus marks a de facto borderline between more traditional Republicans and the far-right.

Republican Gov. Brad Little urged residents this week to show love for their neighbors by getting vaccinated and announced he was using federal programs and mobilizing the Idaho National Guard to bring in hundreds of additional health care workers. In response, Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin called the statement "shameful."

McGeachin, who is running against Little in the Republican gubernatorial primary and has tried to bar schools and cities from from enacting mask rules, said people should make their "own health choices."

The rift exists at the local level, too. Ada County commissioners voted to nominate a local pathologist to a regional public health board who has referred to COVID-19 vaccines as "needle rape" and the "clot shot." Dr. Ryan Cole's appointment still depends on votes by other county leaders.

Dr. William Dittrich M.D. holds the hand of a COVID-19 patient in the Medical Intensive care unit (MICU) at St. Luke's Boise Medical Center in Boise, Idaho on Tuesday, Aug. 31, 2021. More then half of the patients in the ICU are COVID-19 positive, none of which are vaccinated. Credit: AP Photo/Kyle Green

Even families who have witnessed the trauma of COVID-19 firsthand are on opposite sides.

Lisa Owens' 48-year-old stepbrother, Jeff Scott, has been in the Boise hospital's ICU since early August.

"My kids call him the 'Candy Man' because he always brings candy when he comes," Owens said. "He really is this kind, loving, jovial person, and I wish with all my heart that he'd gotten vaccinated."

She's vaccinated, along with about half of her extended family. But Jeff Scott, their aunt and uncle, Jeff's daughter and a few others are not. Her stepbrother likely caught COVID-19 from the aunt and uncle, Owens said. The aunt was hospitalizedshe developed blood clots from the virusbut has since recovered.

If anything, those experiences entrenched other relatives in their anti-vaccination beliefs, Owens said.

Dr. William Dittrich M.D. looks over a COVID-19 patient in the Medical Intensive care unit (MICU) at St. Luke's Boise Medical Center in Boise, Idaho on Tuesday, Aug. 31, 2021.. More then half of the patients in the ICU are COVID-19 positive, none of which are vaccinated. Credit: AP Photo/Kyle Green

Kristen Connelly, R.N. of the Surgical intensive care unit (SICU) at St. Luke's Boise Medical Center in Boise, Idaho holds back tears as she talks about the pressure of dealing with the influx of patients to the hospital because of COVID-19 on Tuesday, Aug. 31, 2021. Credit: AP Photo/Kyle Green

Ann Enderle, R.N., checks on a COVID-19 patient in the Medical Intensive care unit (MICU) at St. Luke's Boise Medical Center in Boise, Idaho on Tuesday, Aug. 31, 2021. There are only 4 open ICU beds available in all of Idaho as of Tuesday. Credit: AP Photo/Kyle Green

Ann Enderle R.N. checks on a COVID-19 patient in the Medical Intensive care unit (MICU) at St. Luke's Boise Medical Center in Boise, Idaho on Tuesday, Aug. 31, 2021. There are only 4 open ICU beds available in all of Idaho as of Tuesday. Credit: AP Photo/Kyle Green

Medical professionals pronate a 39 year old unvaccinated COVID-19 patient in the Medical Intensive care unit (MICU) at St. Luke's Boise Medical Center in Boise, Idaho on Tuesday, Aug. 31, 2021. Credit: AP Photo/Kyle Green

Lisa Owens holds back tears as she talks about her stepbrother, who has COVID-19 and is in the Intensive care unit at St. Luke's hospital in Boise, Idaho, on Tuesday, Aug. 31, 2021. Owen's stepbrother has been in the ICU for a month and hasn't shown improvement. Credit: AP Photo/Kyle Green

Neeraj Soni, M.D. walks through the emergency department at St. Luke's Boise Medical Center in Boise, Idaho on Tuesday, Aug. 31, 2021. Idaho Gov. Brad Little said during a news conference today that "nearly all Idaho hospitals are overwhelmed with unvaccinated COVID-19 patients," Credit: AP Photo/Kyle Green

Ann Enderle R.N. attends to a COVID-19 patient in the Medical Intensive care unit (MICU) at St. Luke's Boise Medical Center in Boise, Idaho on Tuesday, Aug. 31, 2021. There are only 4 open ICU beds available in all of Idaho as of Tuesday. Credit: AP Photo/Kyle Green

Medical professionals pronate a 39 year old unvaccinated COVID-19 patient in the Medical Intensive care unit (MICU) at St. Luke's Boise Medical Center in Boise, Idaho on Tuesday, Aug. 31, 2021. There are 208 COVID-19 patients in the St. Luke's ICU's statewide as of Tuesday. Credit: AP Photo/Kyle Green

James Souza, M.D. Senior Vice President and Chief Physician Executive is pictured during a tour of St. Luke's Boise Medical Center in Boise, Idaho on Tuesday, Aug. 31, 2021.. "We are making an enormous effort to save lives." Souza said, "but this is a pandemic of unvaccinated citizens". Credit: AP Photo/Kyle Green

A pregnant COVID-19 patient rests in the Medical Intensive care unit (MICU) at St. Luke's Boise Medical Center in Boise, Idaho on Tuesday, Aug. 31, 2021. Idaho Gov. Brad Little activated the National Guard on Tuesday to assist state hospitals. Credit: AP Photo/Kyle Green

Pictures of health care professionals hang on the wall of the Medical Intensive care unit (MICU) at St. Luke's Boise Medical Center in Boise, Idaho on Tuesday, Aug. 31, 2021. More then half of the patients in the ICU are COVID-19 positive, none of which are vaccinated. Credit: AP Photo/Kyle Green

"Sure, they see Jeff in the hospital, but they also see his aunt and uncle, and they're OK. The last update we had is even if he does recover, he's looking at eight months of rehab," she said. "If he pulls through, I'm going to march him into the nearest vaccine clinic myself."

Owens fears her stepbrother may be taken off life support if someone with a better chance of survival needs the bed.

"I don't even want to think about it. ... I mean, he's been in there for a month. If it comes to crisis standards of care, they're going to say he's not showing enough improvement, because he's not," she said, fighting back tears. "I hope he pulls through it."

___

This story has been updated to correct the last name of the man in the ICU. He is Jeff Scott, not Jeff Owens.

 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

Banning menthol flavors in cigarettes could reduce smoking by 15% by having smokers giving up tobacco products altogether or switching to e-cigarettes and other nicotine vaping productsavoiding 16,250 tobacco-related deaths per year by 2060, according to a new University of Michigan study.

The report supports the April 2021 announcement by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration of its intention to ban menthol cigarettes and cigars nationwide. The menthol ban would not affect e-cigarettes or other flavored products. The study, published in the journal Tobacco Control, notes that additional measures such as increasing taxes on cigarettes and cigars could further reduce smoking and related deaths.

"This work is the culmination of a series of sequential projects aimed to assess the impact that a menthol ban could have on smoking, tobacco use and downstream health effects," said Rafael Meza, one of the authors of the study and a professor of epidemiology at U-M's School of Public Health. "Our findings show that a menthol ban could result in considerable health gains and highlight the urgency for final approval and implementation of the ban."

The study is based on the data analysis and computational modeling infrastructure that the researchers have assembled as part of the Center for the Assessment of Tobacco Regulations. Researchers used the Smoking and Vaping Model, a simulation model they had previously developed to reflect recent cigarette and vaping products and incorporated current trends in the use of menthol and nonmenthol cigarettes.

Then, the researchers developed a scenario with a menthol ban starting in 2021, informed by expert assessment of the potential impacts, and estimated the public health impact as the difference between smoking and vaping attributable deaths and life-years lost in the current and the menthol ban scenarios, between 20212060.

They found that with a menthol ban, combined menthol and nonmenthol cigarette smoking would decline by 15% by 2026. Deaths attributable to smoking and vaping were estimated to fall by about 5% and life-years lost by 8.8%translating to 16,250 deaths per year averted and 11 million life-years gained (almost 300,000 per year) over a 40-year period.

"Recent evidence finds that a menthol ban would likely increase smoking cessation, with more limited evidence of reducing smoking initiation and switching from smoking to other products like e-cigarettes," said David Levy, professor of oncology at Georgetown University and lead author of the paper.

The researchers said that the effects of a menthol ban will also depend on other tobacco control policies. In particular, higher cigarette taxes would reduce smoking initiation and increase cessation, and increased enforcement of age 21 purchase laws would likely reduce smoking initiation. However, a menthol ban is likely to be very effective as a standalone policy, they said.

More information: David T Levy et al, Public health impact of a US ban on menthol in cigarettes and cigars: a simulation study, Tobacco Control (2021). Journal information: Tobacco Control David T Levy et al, Public health impact of a US ban on menthol in cigarettes and cigars: a simulation study,(2021). DOI: 10.1136/tobaccocontrol-2021-056604
(HealthDay)A new coronavirus variant called Mu that may be able to evade existing antibodies, including those from vaccines, is under close watch by U.S. health officials.

The variant hasn't taken extensive hold in the United States at this point, but the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases is taking it "very seriously," according to its director, Dr. Anthony Fauci, CBS News reported.

"We're keeping a very close eye on it... but it is not at all even close to being dominant," Fauci said. "As you know, the Delta is more than 99% dominant."

He noted that while Mu, technically known as B.1.621, has mutations suggesting "it would evade certain antibodies," there isn't a lot of clinical data to suggest that.

"It is mostly laboratory in vitro data," Fauci explained.

He added that officials "don't consider it an immediate threat right now," CBS News reported.

This week, the World Health Organization (WHO) designated Mu a "variant of interest," and said more research is needed to determine if it can evade existing antibodies.

Mu was first detected in Colombia in January.

Mu has been responsible for the country's third wave of coronavirus infections from April to June, Colombian health official Marcela Mercado told a local radio station on Thursday. She said there were nearly 700 deaths per day during that wave, and nearly two-thirds of tests from people who died came back positive for the Mu variant, CBS News reported.

In the past week, Colombia has seen just under 14,000 new cases of COVID-19 and 530 new deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University. Less than 30% of the country's citizens are fully vaccinated, CBS News reported.

"Although the global prevalence of the Mu variant among sequenced cases has declined and is currently below 0.1%, the prevalence in Colombia (39%) and Ecuador (13%) has consistently increased," according to the WHO, CBS News reported.

Some larger outbreaks of the Mu variant have been reported in South America and Europe.

Johns Hopkins University reported that Colombia has had about 14,000 new cases of COVID and 530 deaths this week, CBS reported. Its vaccination rate is below 30%.

More information: Find out more about COVID-19 variants at the Find out more about COVID-19 variants at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Copyright  2021 HealthDay. All rights reserved.
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

A new coronavirus variant known as "Mu," identified first in Colombia in January, is now the country's predominant strain and behind its deadliest pandemic wave yet, a health official said Thursday.

The variant was responsible for Colombia's deadly third infection wave between April and June, health official Marcela Mercado told a local radio station.

During this period, with about 700 deaths per day, nearly two-thirds of tests from people who died came back positive for the Mu variant, she said.

"It is already in more than 43 countries and has shown high contagiousness," she added.

On Tuesday, the World Health Organization declared Mu, scientific name B.1.621, a "variant of interest."

It said the variant has mutations that indicate a risk of resistance to vaccines and further studies were needed to better understand it.

"The Mu variant has a constellation of mutations that indicate potential properties of immune escape," the agency said.

There is widespread concern over the emergence of new variants as infection rates tick up globally, with the highly transmissible Delta variant taking hold, especially among the unvaccinated and in regions where anti-virus measures have been relaxed.

All viruses, including SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19, mutate over time and most changes have little or no effect on the properties of the virus.

But certain mutations can alter how easily a virus spreads, the severity of the disease it causes, or its resistance to vaccines and drugs.

The WHO lists four coronavirus variants of concern, including Alpha, present in 193 countries, and Delta, in 170.

Colombia recently has counted around 100 COVID-19 deaths and 2,000 infections per day, on average.

Less than a third of Colombians have been vaccinated against the virus, which has claimed nearly 125,000 lives in the country to date.

Explore further WHO monitoring new coronavirus variant named 'Mu'

 2021 AFP
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

Singapore will start giving coronavirus vaccine booster shots to the elderly and those with weak immune systems, officials said Friday, as cases rise despite high inoculation rates.

The city-state joins a number of countries worldwide in giving a third jab to the most vulnerable groups, as it faces a new outbreak driven by the Delta variant.

The health ministry said an expert committee had recommended the third dose for people aged 60 and above and those with weak immune systems.

Health Minister Ong Ye Kung described the decision as a "preemptive step before antibodies wane further".

For the over 60s, the boosters can be given six to nine months after the second shot, which means as early as this month for some, Ong said.

For those with weak immune systems, it should be administered after two months. Immune systems can be weakened by some diseases, or by treatments for illnesses such as cancer.

Giving a third jab to the most vulnerable groups is in line with measures adopted in other countries, such as Israel and Germany, according to the health ministry.

The US Food and Drug Administration has also approved a third dose for those with weak immune systems, and is considering it for the elderly.

Singapore has shifted to a strategy of living with the virus instead of regularly imposing lockdowns to eradicate it as vaccination rates increase.

More than 80 percent of the population are fully inoculated but officials say easing domestic restrictions and opening borders will only be done gradually.

Singapore has seen a steady uptick in infections in recent weeks, and is now reporting more than 100 cases a day and regular deaths.

But its outbreak has generally been mild, with about 68,000 infections and 55 deaths.

Explore further Cyprus to give booster jab to over 65s

 2021 AFP
SARS-CoV-2 (shown here in an electron microscopy image). Credit: National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, NIH

A team of researchers affiliated with several institutions in Israel has found evidence that suggests healthcare workers are more likely to become infected with COVID-19 at home than on the job. They have published a paper on the open-access JAMA Network Open describing the results of surveys they conducted at Hadassah Medical Center.

As the global pandemic has continued, the general public has become aware of the sacrifices that healthcare workers have made to treat people with COVID-19 and to save lives. Over time, risks have been reduced by vaccines and protective gear. In this new effort, the researchers have found that as a result, healthcare workers are now more likely to become infected at home than at work, when they are not wearing their protective gear.

The work involved surveying all of the employees at Hadassah Medical Center back in March, before the delta variant arrived on the scene. At that time 5,312 medical center employees had received both doses of the Pfizer vaccine, while 690 had not.

The researchers found that 15 of the vaccinated employees had been infected after exposure to an infected person in their home, while 12 had become infected at work. They found also that eight of the infected vaccinated employees worked in a department where patients were being treated for COVID-19, though only two of those infections could be tied to their workplace. The researchers also found that 69 of the unvaccinated workers were infected.

The researchers suggest that the reason healthcare workers are more likely to be infected at home is because they do not wear protective gear there, and because the chances of becoming infected by someone nearby is greater in the home because it is such a closed environment where people are in close proximity. They suggest healthcare workers exposed to COVID-positive people at home be quarantined immediately. They also note that only one vaccinated infected worker needed to be hospitalized and no workers had died whether they had been vaccinated or not.

Explore further Largest operator of nursing homes in U.S. issues vaccine mandate for all workers

More information: Yonatan Oster et al, Association Between Exposure Characteristics and the Risk for COVID-19 Infection Among Health Care Workers With and Without BNT162b2 Vaccination, JAMA Network Open (2021). Journal information: JAMA Network Open Yonatan Oster et al, Association Between Exposure Characteristics and the Risk for COVID-19 Infection Among Health Care Workers With and Without BNT162b2 Vaccination,(2021). DOI: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.25394

 2021 Science X Network
In this Monday, March 8, 2021 file photo, pupils queue for a socially distanced assembly at a school in in Manchester, England. The independent body advising the British government on the rollout of coronavirus vaccines says the direct health benefits of offering the jabs to all healthy 12 to 15 year olds are marginal. With just two per million of healthy children needing intensive care treatment for COVID-19, the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation said the "margin of benefit, based primarily on a health perspective, is considered too small to support advice on a universal program." Credit: Jon Super/PA via AP, File

The U.K.'s vaccine advisors declined Friday to recommend the vaccination of healthy older children against COVID-19, saying the direct health benefits are "marginal." However, the British government said it may join others around the world in offering the vaccines after assessing wider societal issues.

In its analysis of whether the rollout of coronavirus vaccines should be expanded to children aged between 12 and 15, the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation concluded that the benefits are "marginally greater than the potential known harms."

With just two per million of healthy children needing intensive care treatment for COVID-19, the JCVI said the "margin of benefit, based primarily on a health perspective, is considered too small to support advice on a universal program."

In contrast, the rate among children with underlying health conditions is far higher at over 100 per million. As a result, the JCVI did expand the group of older children with underlying health conditions who should be offered the vaccine. These include those with chronic major heart, lung, kidney, liver and neurological conditions. It means about 200,000 more children will be invited for either the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines.

Though the JCVI failed to back a universal rollout to older children just as schools reopen for the new year, the U.K. may still end up joining others such as France, Germany and the U.S. in offering vaccines to that group.

The health ministers from the four U.K. nationsEngland, Scotland, Wales and Northern Irelandsaid they have asked their respective chief medical officers to make their own assessments in light of the JCVI's analysis.

"People aged 12 to 15 who are clinically vulnerable to the virus have already been offered a COVID-19 vaccine, and today we'll be expanding the offer to those with conditions such as sickle cell disease or type 1 diabetes to protect even more vulnerable children," said British Health Secretary Sajid Javid.

"We will then consider the advice from the chief medical officers, building on the advice from the JCVI, before making a decision shortly," he added.

One risk that has been identified is a condition known as myocarditis, which involves inflammation of the heart muscle. The condition can result in short periods of hospital observation, followed by typically swift recoveries, but the JCVI concluded that the medium to long-term outcomes are still uncertain and more follow-up time is needed to get a clearer picture.

"This was a very finely balanced decision," said Anthony Harnden, the JCVI's deputy chairman. "But while the benefits slightly outweigh the risks, the risks are very uncertain at the moment."

Though the JCVI opted against a universal rollout to older children, it stressed that it was not within its remit to assess wider societal impacts, such as on education or children acting as sources of transmission.

Javid has already asked the National Health Service to prepare to roll out vaccinations to older children should it be be recommended by the chief medical officers.

The NHS is also preparing for possible "booster" shots for older adults. The JCVI is expected to decide soon whether third doses should be offered to all adults or just to those above a certain age or with certain health conditions.

The government is being urged to make the decision soon, potentially before the JCVI has made its conclusion, not least because winter is approaching, a time of year when the virus finds fresh legs.

Though nearly 80% of the U.K.'s adult population has been fully inoculated, the country has seen infection numbers edge higher over the past month following the lifting of lockdown restrictions. On Friday, Britain recorded another 42,076 infections, the highest daily total since July 21. Virus-related deaths have also been rising, with another 121 recorded on Friday, taking the U.K.'s total to 133,041, Europe's highest.

Jeremy Hunt, the former health secretary whom Prime Minister Boris Johnson defeated in 2019 in the race to become Conservative Party leader, said time is of the essence.

"In a pandemic I think even a few days can make a big difference," he told BBC radio. "So I think we should just get on, not wait for that advice, get on with a booster program."

Explore further UK regulator approves Moderna jab for children aged 12-17

 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
PRESIDENT RODRIGO Duterte who accepted the endorsement of his own political party, the PDP-Laban, for him to run as Vice President in next y...
Kyler Nerison, communications director for the Montana Department of Justice's Attorney General's Office, said the "less lethal" tool used was a sponge grenade.

Shots were then fired by deputies, injuring the man, according to the release. Deputies immediately administered medical aid and requested Emergency Medical Services. He was transported by air to Providence St. Patrick Hospital where he later succumbed to his injuries.

Our deputies are faced with difficult and sometimes dangerous situations such as the incident this evening, Missoula Sheriff TJ McDermott said in the release. We recognize the profound impacts these tragic events have on our Deputies and all those involved. Our heartfelt condolences go out to the family and friends of the suspect involved in this incident.

Two deputies have been placed on administrative leave in connection with the shooting, Nerison said.

The Division of Criminal Investigation at the Montana Department of Justice is investigating the incident.

The completed investigation will be provided to the Missoula County Attorney's Office in order to conduct a coroner's inquest.
Theres a wide range  suspension and expulsion  theres just a lot of different things that can happen and we are way too early to talk about what student discipline might look like (in this scenario), Miller said.

Parents and students gathered outside the schools entrance near the corner of Gerald and Eddy avenues, anxiously sharing updates about what theyd heard from people inside the building.

Elizabeth Dove, who had two students inside the school at the time of lockdown, lives a few blocks away. One of her children was locked down in an art classroom and was still doing work.

Dove assumed the situation was serious but was unsure of what was happening indoors during the lockdown, as her children reportedly had not heard or seen anything to provide more context.

Regardless, she said she was anxious  and disappointed.

Im just so deeply disappointed in this dystopian situation, I mean the children are in there with masks because of the pandemic and during a lockdown, and Im sure the teachers are terrified and dont know what to do, Dove said.
Albuquerque Public Schools, which serves 1 in 5 New Mexico children, said that it does not track voluntary student testing, and doesnt collect testing data citing logistical challenges, according to district spokeswoman Monica Armenta.

The district has focused instead on vaccine drives for students 12 and up who are eligible for the shots.

Its likely an undercount, but children 17 years old and younger still account for around 20% of cases, according to the Department of Health. A similar portion was seen last spring when schools allowed in-person schooling again.

More testing means identifying more cases and sending home those who are infected as well as close contacts for about a week of observation. Online schooling for those children is even worse than it was last year, since their classes are focused on in-person instruction.

Which does not go well, shes basically doing nothing, said mom Dawn Lourenco who has a sixth-grader on quarantine from The Public Academy for Performing Arts charter school. Without me becoming the teacher its hard to know what is expected.
"I have no words," she said. "How can something like this happen? And the worst is that there's a family downstairs with a baby, and they couldn't get out."

The remnants of Ida lost most of the storm's winds but kept its soggy core, then merged with a more traditional storm front and dropped an onslaught of rain on the Interstate 95 corridor, meteorologists said. The situation has followed hurricanes before, but experts said it was slightly exacerbated by climate change  warmer air holds more rain  and the urban setting, where expansive pavement prevents water from seeping into the ground.

The National Hurricane Center had warned since Tuesday of the potential for "significant and life-threatening flash flooding" and moderate and major river flooding in the mid-Atlantic region and New England.

Still, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said the storm's strength took them by surprise.

"We did not know that between 8:50 and 9:50 p.m. last night, that the heavens would literally open up and bring Niagara Falls level of water to the streets of New York," said Hochul, a Democrat who became governor last week after former Gov. Andrew Cuomo resigned.
Ordonez said thats because he himself didnt know that until Hernandez mentioned it on television in June.

Hector Herrera, director of the nongovernmental Southern Platform Against ZEDEs, said that locals had told his organization that people from the industrial park had pressured them to sell their land or risk expropriation.

But Las Tapias communal leader Filadelfo Izaguirre said that while he had heard such rumors, no one had approached him about acquiring land. He has lived in the community for 48 years and said the 60-some families there would not easily part with their land.

It would be a lie for me to say they had asked (us) to sell, Izaguirre said. But if that happens, we are going to defend our land and there could even be deaths.

Victor Wilson, an investor and promoter of the industrial park, said there was no intention to expropriate property.

Right now we are generating 500 jobs and our goal is to generate more than 2,400 jobs in San Marcos de Colon, Wilson said. This investment would not have happened without the ZEDE because the process is more agile and allows approval in 60 days.

The normal process could take four years to start a project, he said.
A lunch pail of huckleberries to the start of a new school year for most K-12 students in Missoula this week, and a mini fridge stocked with huckleberries for those pursuing higher education at the University of Montana who moved into their dorms last month. Educators, students and their families have all been looking forward returning to in-person classes, along with gathering together for games, clubs and other fun school-related activities. Although the start of this school year came with a lot of unnecessary controversy thanks to misplaced opposition to masking requirements and other COVID-19 prevention measures  measures that are essential to keeping our schools virus-free and open to all students  thankfully, it didnt extinguish that back-to-school enthusiasm.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk talks during a tour of the plant of the future foundry of the Tesla Gigafactory on August 13, 2021 in Grunheide near Berlin, Germany. (Getty Images)

Elon Musk has refused to take sides in the Texas abortion battle after its governor claimed the billionaire liked the states social policies.

The Tesla CEO refused to comment directly on the recently enacted abortion law, after being dragged into the debate by Republican Governor Greg Abbott.

The politician appeared on CNBC and said that companies should not quit the state because of the controversial new law, which bans abortion after a heartbeat can be detected, which is normally around six weeks, often before women realise they are pregnant.

Elon had to get out of California because in part of the social policies in California. Elon consistently tells me that he likes the social policies in the state of Texas, claimed Mr Abbott.

Mr Musk moved from California to Texas last year, where he is building a massive factory to produce electric vehicles and where SpaceX is developing rockets.

The entrepreneur took to Twitter to comment and retweeted a clip of Mr Abbotts interview.

In general, I believe government should rarely impose its will upon the people, and, when doing so, should aspire to maximize their cumulative happiness, he tweeted.

That said, I would prefer to stay out of politics.

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The US Supreme Courts conservative majority upheld the Texas abortion law, stripping women of the rights to one in most cases in the second largest state in the country.

The court majority claimed it was not ruling on the issues in the case, but refused to block it from going into law.

Following the landmark Roe v Wade case the Supreme Court has consistently upheld the right of women to terminate pregnancies prior to the foetus being able to survive outside the womb, which is generally between 22 and 24 weeks.

(CNBC)

The new Texas law makes no exception for rape or incest, but there is an exception for medical emergencies.

Mr Musk in 2020 gave $2,800 donations to three anti-abortion Republicans and four pro-abortion rights Democrats, according to OpenSecrets.org, which tracks political contributions.

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This is Dillion Sain, your principal. The Burke County Health Department has informed us that we have a cluster of COVID-19 cases at our school. Based on local and state guidance, we do not need to move to remote learning for the school or particular classrooms at this time. We will have extra staff in the building this evening conducting a thorough cleaning. We ask that you continue to monitor for symptoms and keep your child home is he or she is sick. Please do not hesitate to call the school at 828-433-3000 if you have questions or concerns, and we thank you for your continued support of our school.

BCPS said in a press release that it follows the StrongSchoolNC Public Health Toolkit for guidance on isolation, quarantine and monitoring for symptoms. The guidance, if masks are properly and consistently worn, includes:

When a masked person tests positive and those exposed are wearing a mask, the positive person must isolate and the masked persons are to self-monitor but do not have to quarantine.

When an unmasked person tests positive and those exposed are wearing masks, the positive person must isolate and the close contacts must quarantine, unless the close contact has been vaccinated or has had a confirmed case of COVID-19 in the last three months, then they do not quarantine but monitor for symptoms.
Trinity Johnson, shelter technician at BCAS, wants all of the animals in the shelter to find a loving fur-ever home. These are the animals she chose to spotlight this week.

This weeks dog of the week is Rover, Johnson said. Rover is a boxer male that is just over 1-year-old. He is a very affectionate dog that loves to play. He would most likely do well with other dogs, if introduced properly. Rover has been at the shelter for over 30 days, so he will have a reduced adoption rate every Saturday throughout the month of September

All animals brought to BCAS come from different backgrounds and are in different physical condition. The BCAS staff works to ensure all animals are taken care of while theyre in the shelter and in preparation to be adopted into their forever homes.

BCAS tries to take in as many animals as it can and with the help of foster home volunteers, it is able to care for more animals. This weeks highlighted cat is Ebony.
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But retirement of Plant 1 will come with a human cost. Huston said it will involve elimination of 25 to 30 staff positions through retirements, attrition, and layoffs. "This decision for us is gut wrenching," Huston said. "We are looking at retraining and job placement services."

Eric Donald, a 13 1/2-year employee of MPW, spoke to the board representing employees. He said jobs are available in the field of renewable energy, but they don't pay as well. "The wages are nowhere comparable to what they are now," he told the board.

Retirement of Unit 9 by 2028 is an option under consideration, pending results of ongoing studies. The board approved environmental compliance strategies for Unit 9, ensuring the facility remains compliant while retaining flexibility to allow those studies for replacement resources to be completed in the coming year. Those resources include addition of local renewable sources, construction of a natural gas fired unit, and purchase of power from the grid. "Total reliance on just any one of those options puts Muscatine customers at more risk," Huston said. "We continue to pursue development of a diversified portfolio to balance reliability, affordability, flexibility, and sustainability."
Before MCC, Cleary taught sociology as a graduate student at the University of Iowa. With his first teaching job outside of UI, he wanted a job in the area he was originally from.

I felt I had a responsibility, as well as a passion, to pass down the knowledge that I was gaining to others. That was what attracted me to the idea of teaching, and being that Im from Eastern Iowa, having an opportunity to teach locally in a place that Im from is pretty meaningful for me, he said.

Nigg said she is looking forward to seeing growth in her students and to interacting with more people on campus as a full-time member of the faculty.

Were kind of out by ourselves at the Ag. Learning Center, so there was never really a need for me to go onto campus and do this or that. So this new full-time position helps open doors where Ill have to go over there, and through that you start meeting people, she said.

Bruessard plans to collaborate with other instructors to teach a more dynamic class. She is also interested in starting new programs like a Forensic Speech team or a speech program.
SAN DIEGO (AP)  A federal judge ruled Thursday that the U.S. government's practice of denying migrants a chance to apply for asylum on the Mexican border until space opens up to process claims is unconstitutional.
MIAMI BEACH, Fla. (AP)  The South Florida house that gangster Al Capone owned for nearly two decades, and died in, is facing demolition plans.

The Miami Herald reported Thursday that the new owners of the nine-bedroom, Miami Beach house plan to demolish it after buying it for $10.75 million this summer.

One of the owners, developer Todd Glaser, told the Herald the home, which is about 3 feet (1 meter) below sea level, has flood damage and standing water underneath it. The new owners plan to build a two-story modern spec home with 8 bedrooms, 8 bathrooms, a Jacuzzi, spa and sauna.

The house is a piece of crap, Glaser said. Its a disgrace to Miami Beach.

The other owner is Glaser's business partner, Nelson Gonzalez, an investor and senior vice president of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices EWM.

The house has been placed on the September agenda for possible historic designation by the city of Miami Beach, but Glaser said that is not going to stop the new owners' plans.
Cassidy often recalls being told to go home and do the dishes when she first tried to join a union more than two decades ago. But her career has also been empowering, and her daughter, Carey Mercer, followed her into the trades.

You're always learning something every day. There's always some kind of challenge that you might run into where you might need to do some math or think about it and take a second a look at it, said Mercer, an apprentice sheet metal worker.

The good news is that gains already made by women appear to have held steady during the pandemic, in contrast to the Great Recession that hit the industry hard.

The number of women employed in construction had reached a high of nearly 950,000 in 2007 before plummeting to a Great Recession-low of 711,000 in 2011, according to the BLS. It took nearly a decade for their numbers to recover, eventually reaching new highs of about 970,000 at the onset of the pandemic.

But this time, the ranks of women dipped just briefly in the spring of 2020 before continuing their rise  surpassing more than 1 million for the first time in history in April. The share of women employed in the industry also rose, reaching 13.2% in 2020, compared to 12.5% in 2016.
The group used civil disobedience in the form of shutdowns and protests as a tactic to counter Indian rule. The alliance split in 2003, when a group of its leaders led by Geelani walked out after other leaders decided to hold talks with the Indian government.

For many in Kashmir and beyond, Geelani was an enduring icon of defiance against India.

Farmer Mohammed Akbar said Geelani's death filled him with remorse but also anger after he learned that Geelanis body had been buried by authorities who excluded Kashmiris and his extended family from participating in the last rites.

They are looking at ways to humiliate us, Akbar said as he held his grandson in his arms. They are even scared of dead Geelani.

Pakistan observed a day of official mourning and flags flew at half staff on orders by Prime Minister Imran Khan. Its foreign ministry condemned the non-public burial by Indian authorities.

Pakistan strongly condemns the barbaric act of snatching of the mortal remains of the iconic Kashmiri leader by Indian police, the ministry said in a statement in Islamabad.
South Africas first mobile virtual network operator (MVNO), Virgin Mobile, has announced it will stop operating under its current name at the end of November 2021 and move from a consumer-focused business to an MVNO-enabler.

The operator expects its 10-month business rescue process to be concluded by the end of September.

In accordance with the business rescue plan, creditors will be settled in full upon exiting business rescue, the company said.

Although details in relation to the recapitalisation of the business cannot be shared at this stage, the directors have announced that it will cease trading as Virgin Mobile South Africa from the end of November 2021 and that the Virgin Mobile brand will be withdrawn from the South African market.

Current Virgin Mobile South Africa CEO Zak van de Merwe will also step down as executive director and CEO.

Van de Merwe said the business aims to take a different direction, which will see it move away from its traditional consumer-focused business to play a more enabling role in the further development of the South African MVNO market.

The company said it would allow all customers to transfer to a new service provider with no penalties up to the end of November 2021.

The companys customer care team will be on hand for those customers who wish to migrate to different service providers, the operator stated.

The company appointed senior business rescue practitioner John Henning and junior practitioner Peter Thompson as its business rescue practitioners in 2020, after the business suffered due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Virgin Mobile said it was already in a vulnerable position when the pandemic hit.

The onset of the Covid19 pandemic exacerbated the issues the company was facing, it stated.

Virgin Group previously decided to cease using the Virgin Mobile brand in South Africa as part of the sale of the business in 2019.

Under an agreement on the restructuring of the business, Virgin Mobile was allowed to continue using the brand for the duration of the companys restructuring, but neither Richard Branson nor the Virgin Group has any share in the company.

Virgin Mobile South Africa has been proud to connect people across South Africa for the past fifteen years, said Van de Merwe.

As we enter this next phase of the business growth strategy, the business plans to take a different direction which will see it move away from its traditional consumer-focused business to play a more enabling role in the further development of the South African MVNO market, he said.

As the first MVNO on the continent 15 years ago, we were proud and still are proud to service and shape an industry that today is a significant contributor to the Telecommunications sector. As the market now starts to enter the next phase of its evolution, the team are excited and equally hopeful that we will continue to play a pivotal role in the industrys development.

Now read: Mango Airlines to be placed into business rescue
Johannesburgs City Power has appealed to the Fleurhof community in Roodepoort for information after thieves stole a mini-substation worth half a million rand one day after it was installed.

The mini-substation was snatched on Wednesday night outside Fleurhof Secondary School after it replaced a faulty unit on Tuesday.

City Powers general manager for security risk management, Sergeant Thela, said the utility has opened a case of theft of essential infrastructure with the police and was hopeful that they would crack the case.

The theft of our infrastructure, including cables, substation doors, fuses, and busbars, has become so brazen, and the perpetrators are heavily armed in some instances, Thela said.

We are appealing to the members of the community to assist us and the police in finding the perpetrators.

City Power said it has also launched an internal investigation into the incident as it believed the suspects might have had the help of insiders, including the contractors.

The mini-substation supplied electricity solely to the school, so it was the only customer impacted by the theft.

We have been liaising with the school and community to find solutions to protect the infrastructure as the inconvenience affects them, City Power said.

The service provider has ordered a new mini-substation to be installed at the school, this time in an area where it will be visible to the schools security.

City Power added it has beefed up security in the Fleurhof area, as it was generally susceptible to cable theft.

ALERT  ##ROODEPOORT#Crimestop

City power urges its customers to help them find criminals responsible for the missing/stolen mini- substation in #Flurhof . Read attached for details.^NN pic.twitter.com/YkObu2lm7n  @CityPowerJhb (@CityPowerJhb) September 2, 2021

Now read: Irrational and unfair limits on selling your extra solar power to the Eskom grid
South African companies that plan to implement a mandatory Covid-19 vaccination policy have several legal obligations to meet before firing an employee for refusing to get the jab, says Labourwise founder Jan Truter.

Financial services group Discovery recently announced it would institute a mandatory vaccination policy for its 12,950 employees and all suppliers who work in its building effective from 1 January 2022.

The company maintained it was legally and morally obligated to implement the policy and that its approach was in line with major multinationals, including Google, Facebook, Netflix, Walmart, and Disney.

Truter said that although mandatory Covid-19 vaccinations in the workplace in South Africa may be justified in certain circumstances, it remains a highly emotive matter.

The most controversial issue in relation to mandatory vaccination appears to be the extent to which employees may rely on their constitutional rights not to be vaccinated, in particular freedom of religion, belief, or opinion.

Constitutional rights are not absolute, though. In some cases, these rights clearly need to yield to the rights of others,

An employer has a legal obligation to ensure the health and safety of its employees, as well as members of the public with whom its employees interact.

However, Truter warned that the pre-dismissal considerations that apply in the case of mandatory vaccinations appear to be significantly more onerous than the considerations that apply in most other situations where the termination of employment is considered.

He provided a list of guidelines that employers should follow before dismissing an employee for refusing to take a Covid-19 vaccination.

10 steps before considering dismissal for vaccine refusal

1. Perform a Covid-19 risk assessment

This will determine whether a mandatory vaccination policy is necessary and to identify employees who work in situations where:

The risk of transmission is high due to the nature of their work.

The risk for severe Covid-19 or death is high due to an employees age or comorbidities.

2. Develop a vaccination plan or adjust your existing Covid-19 plan

3. Educate employees about vaccines and provide them with more information

Relevant information can be found in the vaccine FAQ section of the NICDs website.

4. Assist employees with registering for vaccination on the EVDS portal

Registering on the health departments Electronic Vaccination Database System (EVDS) allow South Africans to book a time and select the vaccination site where they would like to receive their vaccine.

5. Give employees paid time off to be vaccinated

If you implement a mandatory vaccination policy, you may not withhold pay or force employees to take leave without pay.

6. Place employees who suffer from vaccine side effects on paid leave

Employees who suffer from side effects after taking the vaccine should be given sick leave. If their sick leave is exhausted, they may qualify for further paid time off.

7. Keep employees informed on vaccination issues

This includes notifying them about:

The obligation to be vaccinated and by what date.

The right to refuse to be vaccinated on constitutional or medical grounds.

The opportunity to consult with a health and safety representative, worker representative or trade union official.

8. Counsel employees who refuse to be vaccinated on any constitutional grounds

Talk to employees and allow them to seek guidance from a health and safety representative if requested. Refer the employee for further medical evaluation if they refuse to be vaccinated based on a medical condition.

9. Explore alternative arrangements

Dismissal should only be a last resort. The employer should attempt to accommodate the employee in a position where they do not require the vaccine.

Possible options to consider include letting the employee:

Work off-site

Work from home

Work in isolation (at the workplace)

Work outside normal working hours

Work while wearing an N95 mask

10. Follow the correct procedure for dismissals

If all other options have been exhausted, Truter advised against disciplinary action. Instead, he said to deal with the dismissal as one of operational requirements or incapacity.

Now read: Unvaccinated people may be banned from public amenities in South Africa
State-and-regional

Lake Tahoe wildfire seemed controllable, until winds flared

AP Photo/Noah Berger, File Capt. Adam Tinker and his crew monitor a firing operation, where crews burn vegetation to create a control line, while battling the Caldor Fire in Eldorado National Forest, Calif. Last week, managers overseeing the fight against the massive wildfire scorching California's Lake Tahoe region thought they could have it contained by the start of this week. Instead, on Monday, Aug. 30, 2021, the Caldor Fire crested the Sierra Nevada, forcing the unprecedented evacuation of all 22,000 residents of South Lake Tahoe. AP Photo/Noah Berger, File Traffic on Highway 50 stands still in South Lake Tahoe, as residents try to evacuate. AP Photo/Ethan Swope, File A partially melted street sign stands after the Caldor Fire burned through Grizzly Flats. AP Photo/Ethan Swope, File A vehicle and property are seen destroyed by the Caldor Fire in Grizzly Flats. AP Photo/Ethan Swope, File Firefighters refill water while fighting the Caldor Fire on Hazel Valley Road east of Riverton. AP Photo/Noah Berger, File) The Caldor Fire burns along both sides of Highway 50 as firefighters work to stop its eastward spread in Eldorado National Forest,

SACRAMENTO  Just last week, managers overseeing the fight against the massive wildfire scorching California's Lake Tahoe region thought they could have it contained by the start of this week.

Instead, the Caldor Fire crested the Sierra Nevada on Monday, forcing the unprecedented evacuation of all 22,000 residents of South Lake Tahoe and tens of thousands of tourists who would otherwise be winding down their summers by the alpine lake straddling the California-Nevada state line.

That drastic move might never have been needed if authorities could have thrown more firefighters at the blaze when it was small. That didn't happen because the Dixie Fire was simultaneously raging across the mountain range 100 miles (161 kilometers) to the north, on the way to becoming the second-largest wildfire in California history.

I do think the Dixie and the way that its burned and its magnitude did impact the early response to the Caldor, said Scott Stephens, a professor of wildland fire science at the University of California, Berkeley. It really drew resources down so much that the Caldor got very few for the first couple days.

By the time Caldor approached Lake Tahoe two weeks later, there were 4,000 fire personnel, dozens of water-dropping aircraft and hundreds of fire engines and bulldozers.

But all that manpower and equipment were overmatched by tinder dry conditions, whipping downslope winds and an overgrown forest ripe to burn, a half-dozen fire experts said. And with resources already stretched across the West and internationally, they said the long-term situation will only worsen as exhausted firefighters battle bigger blazes that start earlier and last longer.

Mother Nature is calling the cards on our hubris that we can conquer and control wildfires during these extreme conditions," said Timothy Ingalsbee, a former federal firefighter who now heads Oregon-based Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics and Ecology, which advocates for working with wildfires instead of reflexively putting them out.

The Caldor Fire ignited from an unknown cause on Aug. 14 in the steep wooded foothills east of California's capital city of Sacramento. In the first few days, about 240 firefighters were dispatched, compared to the 6,550 firefighters battling the Dixie Fire at the time.

It wasn't until four days later that Cal Fire Chief Thom Porter said fire managers diverted 30 fire engines from the Dixie Fire to the Caldor Fire. Overnight, the number of engines and firefighters nearly tripled. But by then the fire had already burned through Grizzly Flats, destroying dozens of homes in the town of about 1,200 people.

We are moving resources around as needed, sharing among the incidents," Porter told reporters on Aug. 18. But he acknowledged that we are having a very difficult time because resources were so stretched across the West.

Officials couldn't say how many firefighters would have been ideal and when, but Cal Fire was candid that there initially was a shortage, said Ken Pimlott, who retired as the agency's director in 2018 and lives a few miles from the fire's origin.

Early on, this was not the highest priority because there were other threats on other fires that were higher," Pimlott said.

As the fire marched toward Lake Tahoe and its crystal clear waters that attract visitors from around the world, it destroyed hundreds of homes and other structures and left a firefighter with serious burns.

Still, officials predicted as recently as last weekend that they could hold the fire outside the Lake Tahoe Basin. They feverishly expanded fire lines to take advantage of the barren granite that caps the mountain chain which has formed an impenetrable barrier to flames in the past. This time, their optimism merely lulled residents into a false sense of security, leaving many scrambling to pack their lives in bags when evacuation orders came Monday.

Chad Hanson of the John Muir Project said fire managers were foolish to think they could stop the flames based on the expected winds.

It is 100% predictable that under those conditions the fire will continue to move in that direction. So its hard for me to imagine why anyone would conclude otherwise, said Hanson, a frequent critic of forest management efforts.

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Firefighters had thought they made good progress during favorable conditions going into the weekend, said Jason Hunter, a spokesman for Caldor Fire managers. But then came the changing weather pattern with incredibly gusty winds that pushed burning embers over the crest.

The weather, is what it boils down to, is what changed, Hunter said. Containment projections are a constantly moving target based on evolving conditions, he said. The Caldor Fire's containment projection has since been pushed back to Sept. 13.

Experts agreed conditions are grim because drought has been worsened by consecutive climate change-driven heat waves that sap humidity before dry winds whip flames and ferry embers sometimes a mile or more ahead of the main blaze.

These embers are leapfrogging over fire lines and rivers, ridges and roads and other things that typically stop wildfire spread, and so you have these fires kind of hopscotching across the landscape, Ingalsbee said.

Firefighters were outflanked by a shift in localized winds that funneled flames into the Tahoe basin, said John Battles, a University of California, Berkeley professor of forest ecology.

Fire managers have become adept at projecting the weather and how fuels will burn, but still lack the ability to predict localized winds at fires  some caused by the fires themselves  with 10 different computer models offering as many conflicting outcomes, he said.

Theyre trying to predict winds at a mountain pass. That is the most complex topography we have, Battles said. Thats why you have this feeling like they didnt know what theyre doing."

He added: "When youre fighting a fire the size of the Caldor, you make your best guess.

The Caldor Fire is just the second in modern history to have traversed the Sierra. The first was the Dixie Fire that started in mid-July near the town of Paradise and has grown to 1,300 square miles (3,367 square kilometers), more than four times as large as Caldor.

Such monster fires typically come later in the year when conditions are their driest but also when cooler days, rising humidity and ultimately rain and snow have aided the firefight, said Char Miller, a professor at Pomona College who has written extensively about wildfires.

But California has received far less precipitation than normal the last two years and there's no guarantee more will arrive this fall to aid firefighters. This may burn through October, Miller said.

Yet the fire experts said the biggest challenge is neither drought nor climate change, but the overgrown forests that could actually benefit from fire  so long as it is set or allowed to burn at a low intensity during the spring or fall before it can explode out of control.

Firefighters still quickly contain about 95% of fires, but it's the ones that escape that do the major damage, Pimlott said. Once fires spread, firefighters may need to start prioritizing communities that can be protected while letting the flames burn around them, he said.

Its a hard pill to swallow for all of us in the firefighting community, because we want to put these fires to bed, he said. We just may not be able to do that on every one of these fires, because of the conditions were facing.
Garrett Buckland of Premiere Viticulture Services said grapes are a very drought-tolerant crop. Lots of growers are bringing to bear their experiences on how to make due with less water from the last drought.

For grape growers, a good rainfall year would be some big winter rains to get creeks flowing and fill small reservoirs used at some vineyards. Then rains in March and April are especially important, he said.

Every inch of rain I get in March allows me to delay any additional irrigation by several weeks, Buckland said.

Vines are dormant during the winter, he said.

They go into a long-running sleep like a hibernating bear, he said. When they wake up next year, it would be great if they had a full soil profile.

Meanwhile, he found this year he could take dry farming further with some vineyards without detrimental effects, Buckland said. The vineyards were more resilient than he had once thought.

Napa County last faced a one-two drought punch like the present one in 1975-76 and 1976-77. Those rain years each brought about 12.5 inches to the city of Napa, comparable whats happened today.
The only reason that there is distrust by anyone in our voting system is because of the unfounded, false conspiracy theories that are being spread on social media," said Sen. Scott Wiener, a Democrat from San Francisco. Expanding the ability to vote, which is what we are doing today, that does not reduce trust.

Historically, California has had no major fraud issues with mail-in ballots. In the 2020 election, which was the first time all active registered voters in California got a ballot in the mail, data shows nearly 71% of eligible voters cast ballots in California  the highest turnout of eligible voters since 1952, according to the Secretary of State's office.

That historic turnout was because of a number of factors, including voters being allowed to register to vote on Election Day and a temporary rule change giving county election officers more time to receive ballots in the mail.

California's state government does not print and mail ballots. That job falls to the state's 58 county governments, which vary in size and funding. Since most of the state's more than 22 million registered voters already vote by mail, this bill  if it becomes law  would require an additional 2.3 million ballots to be mailed for statewide elections.
We are moving resources around as needed, sharing among the incidents," Porter told reporters on Aug. 18. But he acknowledged that we are having a very difficult time because resources were so stretched across the West.

Officials couldn't say how many firefighters would have been ideal and when, but Cal Fire was candid that there initially was a shortage, said Ken Pimlott, who retired as the agency's director in 2018 and lives a few miles from the fire's origin.

Early on, this was not the highest priority because there were other threats on other fires that were higher," Pimlott said.

As the fire marched toward Lake Tahoe and its crystal clear waters that attract visitors from around the world, it destroyed hundreds of homes and other structures and left a firefighter with serious burns.

Still, officials predicted as recently as last weekend that they could hold the fire outside the Lake Tahoe Basin. They feverishly expanded fire lines to take advantage of the barren granite that caps the mountain chain which has formed an impenetrable barrier to flames in the past. This time, their optimism merely lulled residents into a false sense of security, leaving many scrambling to pack their lives in bags when evacuation orders came Monday.
All it will take for Gavin Newsom to survive and serve the remaining year of his term as governor is for most people who have voted for him before either to go to Californias relatively few remaining polling places today (editors: if using this column before Sept. 14, say either Tuesday or Sept. 14, here as you deem appropriate) or mark their ballots and stick them in a mailbox.

Thats a simple formula, but its far from certain Democrat Newsom can pull it off.

Some reports on polling have stated that Newsom has lost significant ground among likely voters over the last several months. Thats not exactly what the polls themselves show. An often-cited Emerson College survey out in late July showed that among likely voters over the previous two months, support for the no side on the recall question went from 42-37 percent to 48-43 percent. That means previously undecided likely voters who made up their minds during those months broke about evenly between yes and no.

But among all registered voters  where Democrats have almost a 2-1 margin  the no side retained the same 16-point lead it held even before the recall was certified for a special election vote.
Democrats are sounding the sirens, trying to shake like-minded voters from their complacency: Wake up! Polls show Gov. Gavin Newsom could be recalled in less than three weeks and a Trump toady installed in his place.

For Donald Trump, it would be revenge on the state he most loved to hate. But "the political ramifications will echo far beyond the Golden State's borders," as Dan Pfeiffer, a California transplant and the former chief strategist in the Obama White House, warned in his newsletter this week.

The national implications of Newsom's recall are real, and not just for the standard political reasons.

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First, the standard sort: If Newsom is ejected, Republicans everywhere will be even more emboldened as they mobilize to recapture Congress next year and the presidency in 2024. California? If we can make it there, we can make it anywhere! More money will flow to their party war chests. The national media, which hasn't paid all that much attention, suddenly would see in a Newsom loss a stinging rebuke more broadly for the Democratic agenda of President Biden, who's already reeling from coverage of the collapse of Afghanistan.
The U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Munro (WMSL 755) arrived in Subic Bay, Philippines, Tuesday following operations and exercises in the West Philippine Sea with the Philippine Coast Guard and the Philippine Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources.

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US Coast Guard Cutter munro (left) and Phillipine Coast Guard Offshore Patrol Vessel Gabriela Silang (right) render honors to each other following bilateral operations and exercise Aug. 31, 2021, in the West Phillipine Sea (Picture source: US Coast Guard)

Munros crew participated in bilateral operations, professional exchanges, search-and-rescue and communications exercises, small boat operations, multi-vessel maneuvering, and maritime domain awareness drills while at sea.

As the maritime security challenges in the Indo-Pacific region become increasingly complex, partnering with our Philippine Coast Guard and fisheries counterparts is vital to our shared interest in a free and open maritime environment, said Munros Commanding Officer Capt. Blake Novak. We thoroughly enjoyed our Philippine hosts professionalism and hospitality, and we look forward to future bilateral operations to further our longstanding relationship.

The search-and-rescue exercise simulated the agencies bilateral response to a vessel in distress. During the exercise, the Munro, PCG, and BFAR practiced searching for the distressed vessel, shipboard firefighting techniques, and recovering and treating persons in the water. As part of the exercise, members of the PCG joined USCG members aboard Munro as they launched the cutters Small Unmanned Aircraft System to aid in the search-and-rescue response. The days exercises and operations provided opportunities for each involved agency to learn from each other.

"The success of the joint maritime exercise between the PCG and USCG will not only strengthen international partnerships for immediate response to calamities and disasters but will also ensure that our personnel could effectively perform their mandated functions in countering terrorism and other acts of lawlessness in our countrys waters, said Admiral George V. Ursabia JR., PCG commandant.

The USCG has a long history of cooperation with the PCG. In 2019, the Coast Guard Cutter Bertholf conducted engagements with the PCG as part of its Western Pacific deployment, focusing on search and rescue, maritime security, and law enforcement capabilities.

Munro, a 418-foot national security cutter, departed its homeport of Alameda, California, in July for a months-long deployment to the Western Pacific. Operating under the tactical control of U.S. 7th Fleet, the cutter and crew are engaging in professional exchanges and capacity-building exercises with partner nations and are patrolling and conducting operations as directed. National security cutters like Munro feature advanced command and control capabilities, aviation support facilities, stern cutter boat launch, and increased endurance for long-range patrols, enabling the crews to disrupt threats to national security further offshore.

The Coast Guard shares deep and abiding interests with our allies and partners, who, like us, have long endorsed a rules-based international order, said Vice Adm. Michael F. McAllister, commander, U.S. Coast Guard Pacific Area. Partnering with the Philippines to enhance maritime governance, including important missions such as search and rescue and enforcement of fisheries laws and treaties, is essential to the security, stability and prosperity of all nations.

As both a federal law enforcement agency and an armed force, the USCG is uniquely positioned to conduct defense operations in support of combatant commanders on all seven continents. The service routinely provides forces in joint military operations worldwide, including the deployment of cutters, boats, aircraft, and deployable specialized forces.
Karabakh President's spokesperson: Azerbaijanis shoot in direction of Taghavard village, no victims

Armenia Investigative Committee: Battalion commander who was on-duty in Karabakh's Khtsaberd village is arrested

Trilateral MoC signed to raise level of seismic safety of Armenian Nuclear Power Plant to the highest level

Armenia opposition MP: Authorities didn't help Ombudsman prepare report on tortures of Armenian citizens in Baku

Hanged body of 44-year-old serviceman of Armenia MOD found in village

Armenia opposition MP slams parliamentary committee chairman's statement

Police apprehend armed student at Yerevan metro station

Azerbaijanis demand punishing Member of the Russian State Duma Vitaly Milonov

Armenia Parliament Deputy Speaker receives Russia President's Special Representative

Armenia President grants high state award to chess grandmaster Elina Danielyan

Armenia PM appoints deputy economy minister

Putin holds phone talks with Iranian counterpart

Armenia Supreme Judicial Council chairman on his relations with PM Nikol Pashinyan

Karabakh President meets with journalists and editors of country's Free Artsakh newspaper

US Embassy in Armenia to Baku: Only comprehensive solution can help normalize Armenian-Azerbaijani relations

Armenia President receives Slovakia FM

Armenia defense minister's mother dies

Armenia parliament's foreign relations committee chairman meets with Ukrainian MPs

Armenia Syunik Province governor meets with newly appointed US Deputy Ambassador

Monument to heroes who took revenge over Armenian Genocide organizers to be placed in Yerevan

Armenia Parliament Speaker receives Slovak Foreign and European Affairs Minister-led delegation

Digest: Protests being held in Yerevan, more on COVID-19 in Armenia

Yerevan mayor: Not going to resign

Dollar still going down in Armenia

Karabakh emergency situations service: Remains of 1 Armenian serviceman found in Varanda

Armenia Cassation Court has new judge

PACE recommends holding debates over Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and Afghanistan situation

National Archives of Armenia and Iran to sign memorandum within scope of cooperation

Armenia PM, Gazprom Management Committee chairman discuss Armenian-Russian energy partnership

Armenia Deputy PM participates in session of Eurasian Economic Commission's Council

Police apprehend Yerevan neighborhood resident on hunger, water strike

Armenia Ambassador to Ukraine: Aim of intergovernmental commission is to take steps to unblock communication

Deceased serviceman's little brother born at medical center in Armenia's Etchmiadzin

Taliban denies war crimes charges against human rights defenders

Armenia PM, Slovakia FM discuss Karabakh peace process

Criminal case opened into death of Armenia soldier, another one receiving gunshot wounds

Biden: You either keep Gavin Newsom as your governor or you'll get Donald Trump

Armenia Investigative Committee former chair, ex-Prosecutor Generals arrest appealed

4 of Yerevan neighborhood residents protesting outside city hall apprehended

Frances Macron makes social media post in Armenian

Iran ambassador tries to discuss, with Azerbaijan presidential aide, demarche against Iranian trucks in Armenia

4 new cases of coronavirus reported in Artsakh

US and EU urge global community to cut methane emissions by 30%

Ukraine official: We have always considered Armenia as important partner in South Caucasus

US, Japan and South Korea discuss new North Korean missile tests

Yerevan neighborhood residents close off street adjacent to city hall

Armenia Central Bank raises refinancing rate by 0.25 percentage point

Appeal filed against court decision to arrest mayor of Armenias Goris

25,000 doses of coronavirus vaccine sent by France arrives in Yerevan

Armenia FM informs visiting Slovakia colleague about Azerbaijan provocations

Armenia ruling partys parliamentary faction holding closed meeting

Armenia MOD confirms: There is also wounded soldier in tragic incident at the military outpost

Slovakia FM: Process of returning Armenian captives from Azerbaijan must continue

US intends to invite Russia and China to international summit on COVID-19 fight

Armenia legislature elects Corruption Prevention Commission new member

657 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in Armenia

Karen Vardanyan has allocated 105 million AMD to rescue the Yerevan Botanical Garden

Armenia MOD: Army representatives will observe Russia-Belarus joint military exercise

ArmLur.am: New details become known from tragic incident at Armenia military outpost

China to start cooperation with Singapore on drug development

Armenia to assume CSTO chairmanship on Thursday

Google fines $ 177 million by South Korea's antitrust regulator

Yerevan neighborhood resident on hunger strike declares water strike too

Slovakia FM visits Armenian Genocide Memorial in Yerevan (PHOTOS)

Armenia MOD: Reserve sergeant receives fatal gunshot wound

Armenian historical sites in Djulfa, Nakhichevan, elsewhere in Azerbaijan systematically erased

Armenia parliament continues regular sessions

Newspaper: Armenia authorities ready to offer deal to Investigative Committee former head, ex-Prosecutor General

Newspaper: Opposition Armenia bloc itself to not run in upcoming local elections

Armenia ombudsman: Azerbaijan police base, barricades, cameras on Vorotan road must be removed immediately

Armenia PM receives French Co-Chair of OSCE Minsk Group, paths for Karabakh conflict settlement discussed

Armenia Deputy PM introduces newly appointed governor of Gegharkunik Province

Traffic jams on Armenia's Goris-Kapan interstate road, Azerbaijanis rudely telling Armenians to drive away

About 50 soldiers and police officers killed after attacks in Myanmar

2 dead after explosion near COVID-19 testing site in central Myanmar

Armenia pregnant woman with COVID-19 dies

Azerbaijan planning another festival in occupied Armenian Shushi

Karabakh emergency situations service: Remains of 2 more Armenian servicemen found in Hadrut

Russia to resume flights to Spain, Iraq, Kenya and Slovakia

Russia Senator: Russian peacekeepers will remain in Karabakh so long as their presence is necessary

Armenia FM receives French Co-Chair of OSCE Minsk Group

"Armenia" alliance: Armenian authorities have turned detention into punitive mechanism against opposition

Armenia appoints new Ambassador to Belarus

Armenia has new Ambassador to the State of Qatar

Iran MFA responds to situation regarding Iranian truck drivers in Armenia's Syunik

Armenian MFA: No negotiations being held for normalization of Armenia-Turkey relations at the moment

Digest: Azerbaijan tries to control goods transportation via Armenia, more on COVID-19

Armenia Deputy PM receives Co-Chairs of Armenian-Ukrainian Intergovernmental Commission

Armenia appoints new Ambassador to Greece

Judge delays granting Armenia ex-President Kocharyan permission to travel to Moscow

Armenia Ambassador to Ukraine Vladimir Karapetyan is in parliament

Armenia Armed Forces' General Staff chief has new deputy

FM: Azerbaijan armys illegal presence in Armenia undermines de-escalation efforts in region

Armenia Parliament Speaker: Results of all elections between 1996 and 2018 were falsified

Armenia parliament considering election of member of anti-corruption commission

Armenia girl, 6, falls from 7th floor of building, in grave condition

Tehran to resume nuclear deal talks in Vienna soon

First international commercial flight carried out in Kabul after pullout of US troops

Armenia PM, EU special representative discuss Karabakh peace process

Price of natural gas per 1,000 cubic meters in Europe reaches record-setting $730
It is possible to create an Armenia-Iran-Russia format on the issue of the Goris-Kapan road of Armenia; Russia, which in fact controls that road, is interested in this issue. Iranian studies specialist Vardan Voskanyan told this to Armenian News-NEWS.am.

He noted that the EU, which wants the project connecting the Black Sea with the Persian Gulf to be formed, is also interested in this issue, and it is no coincidence that the moneyi.e., 2.6 billionprovided earlier was allocated for the construction of the North-South road of Armenia.

"Undoubtedly, Iran is concerned about the situation on that road; however, the Iranians show a logical approach: If Armenia is not concerned, then why should Iran be concerned? (). However, when Yerevan is silent at the defense level, it is clear that our allies and friendly countries will not accept and will not understand that approach.

If we look at the issue globally, that road is important for Iranians. It connects not only Yerevan and Tehran, but also the territory of Iran with the EEU territory, and in that sense, the issue goes beyond the Armenian-Iranian agenda and passes to the Iran-EEU level. Therefore, it is a somewhat trilateral issue.

(). When it is asked why the Goris-Kapan road does not operate, populist arguments are brought: there is a dirt, but an alternative road. And if we imagine the worst case scenario: complete closure of that road. That is, we will have an alternative dirt road which will connect Syunik [Province] with the rest of Armenia, and Armeniawith Iran. That road has a tough landscape. All this must be taken into account, and Armenia's interests must be promoted," Vardan Voskanyan added.
The Miami Dolphins Foundation recently announced six South Florida students as this years recipients for scholarships from the Nat Moore Scholarship and Vocational Grant Endowment Program. The award offers studentswho exemplified community service, leadership, financial need, and a strong academic standingtuition support toward their college degrees.

Among those selected to receive the scholarship is Stracey Aurelien, a first-year University of Miami student studying health sciences. Aurelien hails from Lake Worth, Florida, and is a first-generation college student.

Both of my parents are immigrants from Haiti, and they worked really hard to provide for my siblings and me, said Aurelien, who is the second child of five in her family. No matter what, they always emphasized excelling in school and staying on top of my academics.

Aurelien said she worked earnestly throughout high school to be eligible for scholarships that would alleviate the cost of tuition. At Lake Worth Community High School, she was a member of the National Honor Society and the Key Club and a Path to College fellow. She also was a member of several other student organizations and participated in extracurricular activities.

Im definitely happy that the Miami Dolphins Foundation chose me to win this award, said Aurelien. Of all the students who applied, to be one of six who got the scholarship makes me feel so supported and motivated to achieve my dreams.

Nat Moore, Miami Dolphins senior vice president of special projects and alumni relations, said that the winners of this award displayed exemplary character and are the future leaders of the community who will one day make an impact in South Florida and the world.

As stewards of the community it is our responsibility to support the future leaders in their youth by giving them access to gain greater knowledge, said Moore. We are so proud to select these outstanding students.

Now, two weeks into her college studies, Aurelien is proud to be a new student at the University. Upon enrolling she was admitted into the Foote Fellows Honors Program which recognizes the most academically accomplished incoming first-year students. She is also the recipient of the Canes Achievement Award merit scholarship. She hopes to continue service in the community through engagement and leadership while pursuing her coursework in health sciences.

According to Aurelien, she has dreamed of attending medical school and becoming a neonatologist since she was young. Being able to pursue her education with the assistance of community partners like the Miami Dolphins Foundation and her own institution puts her one step closer to achieving that goal, she noted.

My parents are very proud of me for being the first in my family to go to college, said Aurelien. I know theyre scared that Im on my own, but its so reassuring for them to know that I have all this financial help and support.
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Good morning and welcome to 10 Things in Tech. If this was forwarded to you, sign up here. Plus, download Insider's app for news on the go - click here for iOS and here for Android.

A quick programming note: there will be no newsletter on Monday in observance of Labor Day. We'll be back in your inbox Tuesday morning.

Now, let's get started.

1. Amazon is planning to roll out its own TV. A closely guarded secret within the company, the US launch could happen as early as October. More on the project that's been two years in the making.

2. Some of your favorite Twitter accounts may start charging you to read their tweets. Twitter is launching a new feature, Super Follows, which will allow some users to charge a monthly subscription fee for exclusive content. Get the rundown on Super Follows.

3. Uber's CEO spent a weekend delivering Eats - and came back with things he wanted fixed. The CEO spent hours biking deliveries around San Francisco, and found Uber should offer better instructions to couriers delivering to multibuilding apartment complexes, among other things. See what else he wants Uber to change.

4. Ireland's data privacy watchdog fined WhatsApp $266 million this week. The fine, which WhatsApp called "entirely disproportionate," follows an inquiry into how the app shares personal data with other Facebook companies. Here's what you need to know.

5. Amazon has advised its delivery partners to stop screening would-be drivers for marijuana use. Amazon said testing applicants has disproportionately impacted communities of color, and that dropping marijuana tests boosted job applications by 400%. Everything we know about the move so far.

6. ROLI, the startup that made futuristic musical instruments, has collapsed into administration and will relaunch as a new company. ROLI won backing from Grimes and Pharrell, but struggled to reach a mass market. More on the reset here.

7. Some Amazon employees can get a $69 weekly bonus for coming to work on time. To help prepare for the company's busiest season, Amazon is offering staff in the UK a bonus for racking up 100% attendance. Here's how the bonus payment will work.

Story continues

8. Facebook helped a group of employees evacuate Afghanistan. The employees, alongside "families who were in grave danger" and 75 children, fled Taliban rule earlier this week. More on the evacuation here.

9. A former SAP exec wants to help people get a job at her $9 billion startup. Jenny Dearborn is helping people land jobs at marketing startup Klaviyo - even if they don't have a traditional tech background. She explains her ambitious new plans.

10. Index Ventures is on a dealmaking tear. The venture firm is cranking out funding for startups faster in 2021 than ever, and added 14 unicorns to its portfolio of startups worth $1 billion or more. Here's what Index is doing - and why it shows no signs of slowing down.

Compiled by Jordan Erb. Tips/comments? Email jerb@insider.com or tweet @JordanParkerErb.

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Read the original article on Business Insider
The scene at the Kabul airport in the days before the last U.S. military plane left Afghanistan, nearly 20 years after 9/11. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)

A handful of merchants and workers gathered around an old TV in a dilapidated stall in Cairos Khan el-Khalili souk as a friend and I walked through the marketplace during a visit to Egypt in the late summer of 2001. The picture on the screen was fuzzy and the sound wasnt working, but the images permeated the static: Two planes had crashed into the sides of skyscrapers. The scene was engulfed in flames.

Where is this happening, a boy asked urgently in Arabic. Palestine?

The older men didnt know. But I did. I told them it was the World Trade Center in New York. They stared at me for a minute, searching for context, but the location meant nothing to them. The target was neither a worldwide landmark nor global beacon of freedom in their eyes, though it would later be described as such by counter-terrorism experts across the U.S. media. The only thing the Arab locals seemed to know was that someone had just provoked a war, and the Middle East would likely pay.

As an American Muslim, I knew I would pay too.

The stark differences between how that horrible day was covered on television overseas and in the U.S. exemplified the cultural gaps between East and West  a gulf that would expand over the next 20 years. My journalism career was shaped inside that chasm, a divide between wildly varied takes on the same event, a terrible day Id much rather forget than relive in vivid detail.

Theres no shortage of documentaries and specials commemorating the 20th anniversary of the 2001 terror strikes, when four coordinated attacks by Al Qaeda operatives were carried out via commercial jetliners on civilian and government targets: Apple TV+s 9/11: Inside the President's War Room, NatGeos One Day in America, HBOs NYC Epicenters 9/11-2021 by Spike Lee, four documentaries from the History Channel. That dark day is explored from every angle possible, including the stories of those who lost their lives, the history of the World Trade Center, and more than one look at the now-adult perspectives of the kids of 9/11, including those whose parents died in the attacks and those in the classroom listening to President George W. Bush read them a book called "The Pet Goat" when he was interrupted with the news.

Story continues

Mourning loss is critical, and the ongoing need to make sense of a senseless act like the one perpetrated by Osama bin Ladens henchmen is understandable. Still, its hard to get behind the medias ongoing canonization of the attacks after two failed wars, thousands of lives lost and millions of people displaced, including my extended Iraqi family. Im not sure whether there is a right way to process a devastation so deep, with such lasting ramifications, but last weeks withdrawal from Afghanistan is a stark reminder that remembering it as a Pearl Harbor-like prelude to war is not the answer.

An image of the last U.S. soldier to leave Kabul airport was broadcast across the media  a lone man photographed through a night vision lens. Theres no victory parade at the end of a war that was launched to stamp out terrorism but ended with the Taliban retaking power. The anti-climactic close of a campaign, and the televised anniversary of the event that launched it, are unintended bookends in Americas longest war. They tell a story in reverse, and its filled with moments that irrevocably changed all our lives, some of us more than others.

The last two decades have arguably been the hardest I've experienced as a journalist and the daughter of an immigrant who left the tribalism of his old country behind for the wide-open promise of the West. Few things are worse than having to defend your intentions, your faith and your loyalty to your fellow countrymen. I too was weaned on Scooby-Doo" reruns and McDonald's jingles. Isnt that enough?

Apparently not, judging by the hate mail and threats, the trolls and profiling. No-fly lists aside, I lost a high-profile journalism job, friends and, at points, my identity and confidence. But it was nothing compared with what my relatives lost overseas.

They were scattered by the war, so I traveled across the Middle East to reconnect with them: Jordan, Syria, the United Arab Emirates and finally Baghdad when it was safe enough for a writer whos not trained in the perils of war reporting.

On my first trip to Amman, Jordan, they recounted what the early days of the bombing were like in Baghdad. In the U.S. we called it Shock and Awe and the press treated it like a Fourth of July fireworks show: The night sky is lit up like a Christmas tree! The U.S. and allied forces launched a war based on fake intel against a nation that had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks, under the banner of defending the free world from more terror attacks. I told my relatives that I watched from my living room in Brooklyn while pregnant with my son, and all I could think about was them, the neighborhoods where Id spent summer vacations. What had they done to deserve more pain and suffering after a long war with Iran, U.S. sanctions and Saddam Hussein's brutality?

Lorraine Ali inside the Baghdad home of her Uncle Khairy in November 2011 while U.S. troops were withdrawing from Iraq. (From Lorraine Ali)

My uncle Mehdi and cousin Afrah recounted trying to hide in the basement during the bombardment, but getting my uncle's wheelchair down there was another matter, so they settled for shelter under the stairs. They were lucky and lived to tell the tale. So did other family members, only to be killed years later in a suicide bombing that wasn't covered on CNN and certainly won't be part of a 9/11 retrospective. One of the victims was a 7-year-old.

Even after Iraq's Hussein was captured by U.S. forces during an operation named after the movie "Red Dawn," his tribunal and 2006 execution were sparsely covered on American news, likely because it was so brutal, and that sort of ending doesnt fit a tidy narrative of democratic nation-building. His hanging was telecast, unedited, across the Middle East, where I watched it from Damascus, Syria, in its entirety. Ghoulish as that sounds, its not unusual for the brutality of conflicts to be broadcast unedited on overseas newscasts. Viewers see the true cost of combat. It was the least I could do before returning to the yellow ribbons and commemorative anniversaries back home.

The objective of the U.S. campaign in Afghanistan was met in in 2011 when Bin Laden was hunted down in Pakistan by Navy SEALs and executed. Footage of the operation captured on body cams of the SEALs was beamed to the U.S. Although there were revelers outside the White House, there was no ticker-tape parade, no Mission Accomplished photo op. The enemy was never well enough defined to be defeated. There were reports of new Al Qaeda offshoots, ISIS was on the horizon and conspiracy theorists still insisted the evil mastermind was not dead but holed up in a cave, plotting his next move.

By the time Trump rolled into the White House, the wars triggered by 9/11 had spawned plenty of questions about America's intentions, who we were supposed to be fighting and why there seemed to be an endless string of militant groups and their offshoot factions vowing death to America. Alongside the the unwavering commitment to never forget about those we lost in the attacks were newer voices from groups that had previously been maligned or misunderstood. But they weren't being piped in from Lahore. Comedy Central's Hasan Minhaj hosted the 2017 White House Correspondents' Assn. dinner just in time to roast one of the president's first pieces of policymaking, the Muslim ban.

Only in America can a first-generation, Indian American Muslim kid get on the stage and make fun of the president, said Minhaj, addressing the room of journalists. The orange man behind the Muslim ban. And its a sign to the rest of the world. Its this amazing tradition that shows the entire world that even the president is not beyond the reach of the 1st Amendment.

And then theres the Hulu dramedy Ramy, comedian Ramy Youssef's semi-autobiographical series about a first-generation Muslim American millennial in New Jersey. In a flashback episode, the 9/11 attacks were shown from a totally different perspective  his. It was a defining moment for the shows protagonist, portrayed in the series as the schools only Arab kid. In essence, 9/11 filtered through Egyptian eyes. If only those kids in the Cairo souk could see themselves now.

Im grateful my son was born after 9/11. I know he'll always feel its weight, partly because hes American and it's now woven into our collective heritage, and partly because of his skin tone, ethnicity and faith. But he has more than just "Scooby-Doo" in his pop culture arsenal of generational connectivity. He has Minhaj, he has "Ramy" and he has dozens of other voices adding fresh perspective to an otherwise tragic narrative. A progress forged by fire.

For the record:

5:30 p.m. Sept. 4, 2021: An earlier version of this article said Saddam Hussein was captured in 2006. Hussein was captured in 2003.



This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
A 9-month-old Afghan girl died Wednesday after a flight carrying refugees from Afghanistan landed in Philadelphia, authorities said.

The baby, whom authorities did not identify, was traveling from Ramstein Air Base in Germany to Philadelphia International Airport on a C-17 when the crew was notified that the infant was unresponsive, Department of Defense spokesperson Lt. Col. Chris Mitchell told NBC News in a statement.

Emergency medical technicians and an interpreter met the flight when it landed about 9:15 p.m., and the child and father were taken to Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, according to the official. The child was pronounced dead shortly after 10 p.m.

"Our thoughts and prayers are with the parents and family, Mitchell said.

No other details, including a cause of death, were immediately released.

The girl was among hundreds of Afghan refugees on several planes that landed at the Philadelphia airport this week, according to NBC Philadelphia. Her death came just days after the last U.S. flight out of Kabul took off a minute before midnight local time Monday, capping a bloody and chaotic end to Americas longest war and opening a new, uncertain chapter for Afghanistan.

Since July, the U.S. has helped airlift more than 120,000 people out of Afghanistan, including roughly 5,500 Americans. President Joe Biden said Tuesday that roughly 100 to 200 Americans still remained in Afghanistan who have some intention to leave, many of whom are dual citizens.

Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney said the refugees arriving in the city's airport were given food and medical assistance from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency. After taking some time to rest, Kenney said the Afghan refugees were bussed to a military base in New Jersey, according to NBC Philadelphia.
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP)  A small group of Afghan women protested near the presidential palace in Kabul on Friday, demanding equal rights from the Taliban as Afghanistan's new rulers work on forming a government and seeking international recognition.

The Taliban captured most of the country in a matter of days last month and celebrated the departure of the last U.S. forces after 20 years of war. Now they face the urgent challenge of governing a war-ravaged country that is heavily reliant on international aid.

The Taliban have promised an inclusive government and a more moderate form of Islamic rule than when they last ruled the country from 1996 to 2001. But many Afghans, especially women, are deeply skeptical and fear a rollback of rights gained over the last two decades.

The protest in Kabul was the second women's protest in as many days, with the other held in the western city of Herat. Around 20 women with microphones gathered under the watchful eyes of Taliban gunmen, who allowed the demonstration to proceed.

The women demanded access to education, the right to return to work and a role in governing the country. "Freedom is our motto. It makes us proud, read one of their signs.

A Taliban fighter ventured into the crowd at one point, but witnesses said he was angry at the bystanders who had stopped to watch the demonstration and not the protesters themselves.

We are concerned about the issues of human rights in Afghanistan, notably on the rights of women, U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Friday. It is imperative that women have the right to work, to work in a safe environment, and those are some of the issues that have been brought to the attention of our interlocutors in Kabul and elsewhere.

The Taliban have said women will be able to continue their education and work outside the home, rights denied to women when the militants were last in power. But the Taliban have also vowed to impose Sharia, or Islamic law, without providing specifics.

Story continues

Interpretations of Islamic law vary widely across the Muslim world, with more moderate strains predominating. The Taliban's earlier rule was shaped by Afghanistan's unique tribal traditions, under which women are not to be seen in public. Those customs endure, especially in the countryside, even during 20 years of Western-backed governments.

A potentially more pressing concern for the Taliban is the economy, which is mired in crisis. Civil servants haven't been paid for months, ATM's have been shut down and banks are limiting withdrawals to $200 per week, causing large crowds to form outside them. Aid groups have warned of widespread hunger amid a severe drought.

The Taliban said Western Union, which halted service after the militants entered Kabul last month, will resume transfers, which may help Afghans to receive cash from relatives living abroad. But most of Afghanistan's foreign reserves are held abroad and frozen while Western nations consider how to engage with the Taliban, putting pressure on the local currency.

There was no immediate comment from Western Union on the resumption of service.

Meanwhile fighting has been brutal in the Panjshir Valley, north of the capital Kabul, a last holdout against the Taliban sweep. Late on Friday celebratory gunfire erupted in the capital as rumors circulated that the Taliban had captured the valley, which was being defended by former vice president Amrullah Saleh and Ahmad Massoud, the British-educated son of Ahmad Shah Massoud, who was killed in a suicide bombing just two days before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in America.

But Afghanistan's popular TOLO TV carried a message from Saleh who said the fighting had been intense and fighters on both sides had died but he was still in the Panjshir Valley and he would stay to defend it.

The staccato of gunfire throughout the capital lasted nearly 15 minutes prompted the Taliban's spokesman and head of its cultural and information commission Zabihullah Mujahid to warn his rank and file against wasting their ammunition.

Avoid aerial firing, instead thank the God, Mujahid tweeted.

Meanwhile, the Taliban say they want good relations with all countries, even the United States, and have held a string of meetings with foreign envoys in recent days in the Gulf nation of Qatar, where they have long maintained a political office.

Western nations are expected to demand the Taliban live up to their promises to form an inclusive government and prevent Afghanistan from being a haven for terrorist groups. They may also press the Taliban on women's rights, though that could be a harder sell for the group's hard-line base, which is steeped in Afghanistan's deeply conservative, tribal culture.

Ahmadullah Muttaqi, a spokesman for the Taliban's cultural commission, said a senior official from the United Arab Emirates flew into Kabul's international airport on Friday to meet with Taliban officials, without naming him. Afghanistan's TOLO TV reported that the aircraft was also carrying 60 tons of food and medical aid.

Sher Mohammad Stanikzai, a senior Taliban official based in Qatar, recently met with British and German delegations, according to the Taliban, which said another official, Abdul Salam Hanafi, had a phone call with Chinese deputy foreign minister Wu Jianghao.

Most Western embassies were evacuated and shuttered in the days after the Taliban rolled into Kabul on Aug. 15. The Taliban have urged diplomats to return.

Taliban political leaders have gone on TV to say the world has nothing to fear from them. But many Afghans, as well as Western nations that spent two decades fighting the group, remain deeply skeptical.

Tens of thousands of Afghans fled the country after the Taliban takeover in a massive U.S.-led airlift out of Kabul international airport. The scenes of chaos, from Afghans clinging to military aircraft as they took off before falling to their deaths, to a suicide bombing that killed 169 Afghans and 13 U.S. service members, marked a bitter end to America's longest war.

The Taliban assumed control of the airport after the last American forces flew out and are now working to restore operations with technical experts from Qatar and Turkey. The Taliban say they will allow free travel for anyone with proper documents, but it remains to be seen whether any commercial airlines will offer service.

Officials from Pakistan International Airlines have met with Afghanistan's still-independent civil aviation administration. But Abdullah Hafeez, a spokesman for the airline, said it will take some time to clean up the debris and restore normal operations.

There is still a lot of work to be done before international flights can come into the airport, he said.

______

Associated Press writer Tameem Akhgar in Istanbul, Turkey and Edie Lederer at the United Nations contributed to this report.
Thousands are reported to be taking part in the fighting in Panjshir

Fresh fighting has been reported in Afghanistan's Panjshir Valley, the final pocket of territory which remains out of the hands of the Taliban.

One of the resistance leaders in the valley, Amrullah Saleh, dismissed reports that the Taliban had captured it as "baseless".

But he admitted conditions are difficult, with the Taliban closing phone, internet and electricity lines.

The fighting comes with the Taliban set to finalise a government.

Panjshir Valley, north of the capital Kabul, is one of Afghanistan's smallest provinces and the only one not to have fallen to the Taliban.

The traditional anti-Taliban stronghold is home to somewhere between 150,000 and 200,000 people, and is hidden behind mountain peaks.

The resistance - which includes former Afghan security force members and local militias - is led by local tribal leader Ahmad Massoud. His father successfully fought the Soviets who invaded in the 1980s, and the Taliban in the 1990s.

In a video message sent to the BBC, Mr Saleh, a former vice-president of Afghanistan, said there had been casualties on both sides.

"There is no doubt we are in a difficult situation. We are under invasion by the Taliban," he said, adding that his forces would not surrender.

But resistance leaders concede that some districts have fallen to the Taliban, while pro-Taliban social media showed clips seeming to show their fighters with captured tanks and other military gear.

Rumours that the Taliban had captured Panjshir prompted celebratory gunfire to ring out in Kabul and other cities, reportedly killing a number of people.

A Taliban spokesman said fighters should "avoid firing in the air and thank God instead".

A decisive moment looms

Story continues

By Yalda Hakim, BBC News

Both sides see the next few weeks as crucial to determining the fate of the anti-Taliban resistance.

The Taliban leadership want to crush Saleh and his group before announcing a new government.

But if they fail to do so by late October, the harsh winter months are likely to prevent further large-scale offensives.

Saleh's National Resistance Front, on the other hand, are playing for time. If the anti-Taliban fighters can hold ground for another few weeks, that will give them at least five months to remobilise and try to persuade foreign powers to aid their cause.

With the Taliban expected to announce a new government in the coming days, foreign powers are adapting to the new reality of dealing with a Taliban administration.

The head of Pakistan's intelligence agency, Faiz Hameed, is in Kabul for talks. An official told Reuters earlier this week he could help the Taliban reorganise the Afghan military.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is travelling to Qatar on Sunday. The country plays a key mediating role in Afghanistan, but he is not expected to meet anyone from the Taliban.

The European Union and UK on Friday joined the US in saying they will deal with the Islamist group, but won't recognise them as Afghanistan's government.

The BBC's chief international correspondent Lyse Doucet, who is in Kabul, says that while the Taliban are seeking international acceptance, they are seeking it on their terms.

If the West does not want to deal with them, there are other powers such as China, Russia and Pakistan they can turn to, our correspondent adds.

You might also be interested in:
Taliban and Pakistani soldiers guard Afghanistan's border with Pakistan

For some Western powers hoping to influence the new Taliban government, there are hopes that Pakistan could play a role as a mediator.

The country has a unique relationship with Afghanistan. They share a 2,570km (1,600 mile) border. They are significant trading partners. There are numerous cultural, ethnic and religious connections. The former Afghan leader Hamid Karzai once described the two countries as "inseparable brothers".

But for some capitals queuing up to revive their relationship with Islamabad, there are mixed feelings.

Pakistan has not been seen by all as a firm ally in the battle against jihadist terrorism. It has long been accused by many in the United States and elsewhere of providing support for the Taliban, something it denies.

Yet diplomats in the West want to persuade the Taliban to allow their nationals to leave Afghanistan, to let humanitarian aid in and to govern moderately. And that means they need to talk to countries like Pakistan and others in the region.

What is Pakistan's relationship with Afghanistan and the Taliban?

Critics of Pakistan have accused it of hedging its bets over Afghanistan and the Taliban.

After the 9/11 attacks that were planned in Afghanistan, Pakistan positioned itself as an ally of the US in the so-called "war on terror".

But at the same time, parts of the country's military and intelligence establishment maintained links with Islamist groups in Afghanistan like the Taliban. Those links, so it is claimed, at times turned into significant material and logistical support.

The belief among strategists was that Pakistan wanted a stake in Afghanistan, to ensure it did not end up with a government that was pro-India. The extent and duration of Pakistan's support for the Taliban is disputed.

But when the Taliban were last in power 20 years ago, Pakistan was one of the few countries to formally recognise its government. And when the Taliban seized Kabul last month, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan declared the group were "breaking the chains of slavery".

Story continues

What is Pakistan worried about?

Pakistan's historic support for the Taliban does not, however, mean it is entirely relaxed about the group's takeover in Kabul. Pakistanis have suffered hugely over the years at the hands of Islamist terror groups launching attacks over the border from Afghanistan.

Pakistan has a huge interest in ensuring the new government in Kabul cracks down on groups like Al Qaeda and the local Islamic State offshoot - ISIS-K. That means Pakistan has an interest in the Taliban acting firmly and not allowing Afghanistan to descend into an ungoverned space.

The other great concern of Pakistan is a refugee crisis. The country already has about three million Afghan refugees from previous wars and, with its ravaged economy, it cannot afford to support any more.

Pakistan's High Commissioner to the UK, Moazzam Ahmad Khan, told the BBC Today programme: "We don't really have the capacity to take more refugees in and that's why we're suggesting - and requesting - that let's sit down together and work on the possibility of avoiding that eventuality."

What does this mean for relations with West?

Pakistan's relations with the West are not great.

Perhaps the poorest are with the United States. Joe Biden has refused even to call Prime Minister Khan since he became president.

Lt Gen HR McMaster, the former US National Security Adviser, told a Policy Exchange seminar this week that Pakistan should be treated as a "pariah state" if it did not stop its support for jihadi groups.

"We have to stop pretending that Pakistan is a partner," he said. "Pakistan has been acting as an enemy nation against us by organising, training and equipping these forces and by continuing to use jihadist terrorist organisations as an arm of their foreign policy."

Afghans have been waiting at the border with Pakistan

But that American view has not stopped other Western powers knocking on Pakistan's door. In recent days, foreign ministers from Britain and Germany have visited Islamabad. Italy's will go soon.

Diplomats believe - or at least hope - that Pakistan still holds some sway over the Taliban. They also fear that shunning Pakistan risks encouraging the country even further into the warm embrace of China.

The question of course is whether Pakistan really can influence the Taliban.

Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, widely tipped to be the leader of the new government, has in the past spent time in Pakistani detention. How warm he remains towards his former gaolers remains to be seen.
Air Senegal Airbus A330-900neo. Davide Calabresi/Shutterstock

Air Senegal has launched service between its country's capital of Dakar to Baltimore in the US.

The route will run with a layover in New York, but most Americans can't fly on the domestic leg.

One of Airbus' newest wide-body jets, the A330-900neo, will operate the route.

See more stories on Insider's business page.

The African airline Air Senegal launched flights from its capital of Dakar to Baltimore on Thursday. The unique route includes a layover in New York before continuing on to Baltimore, but most Americans cannot fly the domestic leg.

As of September 2, Air Senegal will fly twice weekly between its country's capital of Dakar to Baltimore in the US.

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The route will operate on Thursdays and Sundays and include a short layover at New York's John F. Kennedy Airport in both directions, according to the airline. Here's the schedule (all times are local):

Depart Dakar at 1:30 a.m. and arrive in New York-JFK at 6:00 a.m.

Depart New York-JFK at 8:30 a.m. and arrive in Baltimore at 10:00 a.m.

Depart Baltimore at 8:25 p.m. and arrive at New York-JFK at 9:55 p.m.

Depart New York-JFK at 11:55 p.m. and arrive in Dakar at 12:25 p.m. the next day

Passengers who fly Air Senegal between Baltimore and Dakar will have to spend two to two and a half hours in New York in each direction, meaning Air Senegal is tapping into its Eighth Freedom rights.

According to the International Civil Aviation Organization, the Eighth Freedom of the Air gives a carrier the right to transport passengers between two cities in one territory as long as the entire service originates or terminates in the foreign airline's parent country. The domestic leg is known as a "tag" flight.

In the case of Air Senegal, the hop between New York and Baltimore is legal as long as the airline carries only travelers who either originate or are destined for Dakar. Passengers who want to fly domestically between the two cities will not be able to book a ticket on the carrier.

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"We are pleased to announce and celebrate this new service from Senegal by our newest international airline Air Senegal," the Baltimore airport's executive director, Ricky Smith, said at a welcome ceremony. "This new air service that we celebrate today is an example of the strength of Maryland and the success of our entire national capital region."

According to Air Senegal, it will run the route using one of Airbus' newest jets, the A330-900neo, configured with 32 business-class seats, 21 premium-economy seats, and 237 economy seats. The aircraft can carry up to 12 tons of freight, according to the airline, which is keen on boosting its cargo business between Senegal and the US.

In a press release, Air Senegal explained the benefits of operating out of Baltimore versus Washington Dulles International Airport. Specifically, the airport is situated close to a majority of the West African population in the greater Washington-Baltimore metropolitan area and offers easy connectivity to the US capital and other cities in the country via Amtrak or Southwest Airlines, which has a base in Baltimore.

The New York-Dakar route is in direct competition with Delta Air Lines, which flies between JFK and Dakar on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.

Read the original article on Business Insider
Photograph: Mark Lennihan/AP

A group of Apple workers is organizing to fight against what it says are patterns of discrimination, racism and sexism within the company and managements failure to address them, in a rare public display of dissent within the notoriously secretive company.

Last week, a group of employees launched #AppleToo, a campaign to gather and share current and past employees experiences of inequity, intimidation and abuse. The group hopes to mobilize workers at a time when workers across the tech industry are calling for greater accountability from their employers, and to push Apple to more effectively address such complaints.

For too long, Apple has evaded public scrutiny, the workers said in a public statement. When we press for accountability and redress to the persistent injustices we witness or experience in our workplace, we are faced with a pattern of isolation, degradation, and gaslighting, they added.

The initiative on Monday released five accounts from employees who say they were subjected to discrimination and sexual harassment at work, allegations they say they shared with management but were left unaddressed. The accounts were anonymous, and did not share what department or city the employees worked in.

There was [an] employee, who was actually someone in an elevated position, who was constantly predatory. Constantly sexually harassing our team members, and nothing was done about it until it became impossible to ignore, one of the five employees wrote.

There were several instances where leadership would not let certain employees of color interview for positions that they were very deserving of, they added.

The initiative comes after workers tried to address complaints with Apple leadership internally, organizers say, to little avail. Apple reportedly has put a stop to surveys from employees that sought to gather data related to pay. Earlier this week, it barred workers from creating a channel on the communication platform Slack to discuss pay equity, the Verge reported, claiming the topic didnt meet Slacks terms of use, though it allows channels dedicated to dogs, cats and gaming.

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Since launching, organizers say, the initiative has received hundreds of stories from workers across the company. Seventy-five per cent of them involved discrimination of some sort, and almost half involved sexism, retaliation and dismissed HR reports.

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The effort has also prompted an outpouring of response on social media from former Apple employees detailing their experiences with discrimination and retaliation.

Cher Scarlett, an Apple security engineer and #AppleToo organizer, said hundreds of people have come to her looking for support. I cant even keep track anymore of the number of people whove shared their stories with me. These are peoples lives. They are human beings, Scarlett told Protocol. What else do you do when hundreds of people you dont know are coming to you with all of these different issues?

Scarlett said she had filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board alleging the company stopped her effort to conduct pay transparency surveys. She said she had been doxxed by a colleague for pushing for pay transparency, and had been told she was ruining the company.

The initiative marks a new phase of employee organizing at Apple. Until recently, the company had largely escaped some of the increased scrutiny faced by other major tech companies. Employees of Activision Blizzard, the video game company behind Call of Duty, staged a walkout in July to call for better working conditions amid allegations of a frat boy culture at the company and severe harassment and discrimination against female workers.

Google in 2018 faced global protests from workers over claims of sexual harassment, gender inequality and systemic racism.

Timnit Gebru, a former Apple employee and AI scientist at Google who was fired from Google after the company attempted to suppress her research and she criticized its diversity efforts, has offered her support to those sharing their stories.

Apple HR and lawyers have the sickest retaliatory tactics I have seen so far, she said on Twitter. [Apple] how long do you think you can keep doing these horrible things to people under the radar?

In response to the workers claims, Apple said: We are and have always been deeply committed to creating and maintaining a positive and inclusive workplace. We take all concerns seriously and we thoroughly investigate whenever a concern is raised and, out of respect for the privacy of any individuals involved, we do not discuss specific employee matters.
By David Schwartz

PHOENIX (Reuters) - A former Arizona nurse pleaded guilty on Thursday in the 2018 sexual assault of a severely disabled woman at a long-term care facility, a crime that came to light only when she unexpectedly gave birth.

Nathan Sutherland, 39, pleaded guilty to one count each of sexual assault and vulnerable adult abuse during a brief hearing in Maricopa County Superior Court in Phoenix, a court official said.

Sutherland faces up to 10 years in prison when sentenced on November 4, as part of a plea agreement with prosecutors. His attorney could not immediately be reached for comment.

The defendant, an ex-licensed practical nurse at Hacienda HealthCare Skilled Nursing Facility, was arrested in January 2019 after police said investigators tied him through DNA evidence to the victim.

The woman's pregnancy was discovered only when she went into labor at the Phoenix care center. Investigators gave all male employees DNA tests.

The woman, who was in her 20s, was disabled as a result of seizures since early childhood and had been at the facility for most of her life. Her parents said she was capable of making facial gestures and had limited movement of her limbs, head and neck.

Sutherland, who had worked at Hacienda since 2012, was fired by administrators immediately upon learning of his arrest, a spokesman has said. He later agreed to relinquish his nursing license.

(Reporting by David Schwartz in Phoenix; editing by Dan Whitcomb and Richard Pullin)
LAGOS, Nigeria (AP)  The Nigerian army says nearly 6,000 Islamic extremists have surrendered in the country's northeast in recent weeks, marking one of the largest defections since the 12-year insurgency began.

The announcement Thursday by military spokesman Bernard Onyeuko comes several weeks after Nigeria's army had announced that some 335 militants had laid down their arms.

The mass defections also follow the reported death of Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau in May, whose control over the group had been substantially weakened in recent years as a breakaway faction known as Islamic State West Africa Province, or ISWAP, rose to prominence.

ISWAP's leader has said that Shekau detonated explosives killing himself after a battle between the two groups. Analysts believe some of the militants may now be defecting because they do not want to join ISWAP in the wake of Shekau's death.

Borno State Gov. Babagana Zulum has supported the surrendering of the militants but he has acknowledged that the defections put the state in a very difficult situation."

We have to choose between an endless war or to cautiously accept the surrendered terrorists, which is really painful and difficult for anyone that has lost loved ones, difficult for all of us and even for the military, whose colleagues have died, Zulum said last month.

Boko Haram has been waging a bitter war against Nigeria since 2009, and the insurgency has spread over the years to the neighboring countries of Cameroon, Niger and Chad.

The conflict has left tens of thousands dead and displaced more than 2.3 million people in the Lake Chad region.
MIAMI (AP)  A Black man who received a multimillion dollar settlement after being shot and paralyzed by a Florida deputy in 2013 has died, his attorney said Thursday.

Attorney Jack Scarola told the Palm Beach Post that Dontrell Stephens died Sunday from complications associated with his paralysis. Scarola represented the 28-year-old man in his civil suit against the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office.

Stephens had been hospitalized for three weeks before his death, dealing with bed sores and other issues, Scarola said. He had been left paralyzed from the waist down from the 2013 shooting.

Dontrell had a very sad and difficult life, Scarola said. I hope that as a consequence of the resolution of his case that he had some relief. But whatever relief he had was very short-lived.

A federal civil jury in 2016 had awarded Stephens $22 million after he sued, an amount Palm Beach Sheriff Ric Bradshaw refused to pay. After years of negotiations, Bradshaw had offered Stephens $4.5 million, but the state Legislature went $1.5 million above that in 2020 and awarded a $6 million payment, which was approved by the governor.

Deputy Adams Lin pursued Stephens, then 20, in his patrol car after Stephens rode his bicycle across a busy road through traffic. Videotape from Lins dashboard camera showed that when Stephens saw Lin behind him as he rode into a duplexs parking lot, he slowed his bike and hopped off.

Lin, an Asian American, testified at the 2016 trial that he thought Stephens was trying to run away and jumped out of his car to cut him off. The video shows that after Stephens hopped off his bike, he walked toward Lin. The deputy is out of sight of the dash cam and Stephens is mostly out of sight when Lin opens fire four seconds after Stephens jumped off the bike. Stephens falls back into view with Lin close behind, still firing.

Lin testified at the 2016 civil trial that Stephens put his left hand behind his back and flashed a dark object that he thought was a gun. The dash cam video, however, showed Stephens had his phone in his right hand and that his left hand was empty.

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Stephens attorneys argued that Lin must have pulled his gun almost immediately after leaving his car as he could not have opened fire so quickly otherwise.

The jury took 3 and 1/2 hours to side with Stephens, ruling that Lin had violated Stephens civil rights.

Prosecutors cleared Lin of criminal wrongdoing and he remained employed by the Palm Beach Sheriffs Office.
President Joe Biden said Friday that were seeing an economic recovery that's durable and strong" despite data released earlier in the day by the Labor Department showing weaker-than-expected growth in the employment market.

The Biden plan is working. We're getting results. America is on the move again, Biden said in a speech at the White House.

Bidens positive rhetoric on the economy followed the release of Fridays relatively weak August jobs report, which showed Americas employers added just 235,000 jobs in August. The number fell well short of the jobs added for both June and July  about 1 million a month.

Biden laid blame for the sluggish growth of U.S. jobs on the impact of the Delta variant of the coronavirus. But he also claimed that his American Rescue Plan and vaccination strategy have helped buoy the economy even as the Delta variant has spurred a resurgence in the Covid-19 pandemic.

Because of the groundwork we laid with the American Rescue Plan and our vaccination strategy, we're seeing an economy and job market that can weather the ups and downs of the Delta variant and anything else that comes our way, he said.

Biden largely focused during his Friday remarks on how well the economy is doing compared to last year, as well as how many jobs have been created overall since the start of his presidency. He also touted the more positive aspects of the August report, such as the unemployment rate dropping to 5.2 percent from 5.4 percent in July and the decreasing number of people filing unemployment claims each week.

The measures we've taken so far have brought America out of an economic free fall, steadied us and enabled us to grow our economy even as we continue to combat Covid. We are adding jobs, not losing them, Biden said.

He didnt waste an opportunity to take aim at former President Donald Trump, either, suggesting economic conditions would be worse if Trump had been reelected last November.

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There have been so many records the stock market has hit under my presidency, Biden said. Imagine if the other guy was here: We're doing great. Its wonderful. The stock market is surging. Its gone up higher with me than anybody. But that doesn't mean that its the best for the economy.

Biden did acknowledge that despite the progress during his presidency, we're not where we need to be in our economic recovery.

He urged states to extend the benefits of his American Rescue Plan, as some are set to expire next week, and pushed Congress to pass his economic agenda to lower the cost of living for families and create millions of good-paying jobs for hard working Americans.

Biden also took aim at wealthy corporations, saying they need to pay their fair share to make his economic agenda work without increasing taxes for working families.

For those big corporations that don't want things to change, my message is this, it's time for working families, the folks who built this country, to have their taxes cut, he said.
US President Joe Biden on Friday ordered declassification over the next six months of still secret documents from the government investigation into the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Biden is responding to pressure from families of some of the approximately 3,000 people killed by Al-Qaeda on September 11, 2001.

They have long argued that the classified documents might contain evidence that the government of Saudi Arabia, a close US ally, had links to the hijackers who flew into the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

"Today, I signed an executive order directing the Department of Justice and other relevant agencies to oversee a declassification review of documents related to the Federal Bureau of Investigation's September 11th investigations," Biden said in a statement.

Declassification must take place "over the next six months."

"We must never forget the enduring pain of the families and loved ones of the 2,977 innocent people who were killed during the worst terrorist attack on America in our history," Biden said.

The move comes ahead of the 20th anniversary of the attack, which spurred then-president George W. Bush soon after to order the invasion of Afghanistan, where the Taliban sheltered Al-Qaeda's leadership.

Biden pulled the last US troops out of Afghanistan this week, completing a dramatic evacuation from Kabul's airport after the Taliban defeated the US-backed government and surged back to power.

The push for more information is being driven by victims' families suing Saudi Arabia for alleged complicity in the horrific attack. The families have long expressed frustration at the number of documents that remain off limits.

The official 9/11 Commission, which was set up by Congress, said there was "no evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi officials individually funded" Al-Qaeda.

That phrasing has been interpreted by some as suggesting that unofficial or lower ranking Saudi figures might have played a role.

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Some of the investigation may still be deemed too sensitive to release.

In an executive order triggering the declassification process, Biden noted the "events in question occurred two decades ago or longer, and they concern a tragic moment that continues to resonate in American history."

"It is therefore critical to ensure that the United States Government maximizes transparency... except when the strongest possible reasons counsel otherwise."

sms/sw
(Bloomberg) -- President Joe Biden said his administration is pressuring insurers to cover damage from Hurricane Ida, warning them not to deny claims because homeowners werent under mandatory evacuation orders.

No one fled this killer storm because they were looking for a vacation or a road trip. And so Im calling on private insurance companies: Dont hide behind the fine print and the technicality, he said after surveying storm damage in LaPlace, Louisiana, just west of New Orleans. Pay what you owe your customers.

Earlier, Biden met with local officials and Governor John Bel Edwards as hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses remained without electricity. The president said his team also met with heads of energy companies and that power is being restored as fast as possible.

Faster than anything that happened during Katrina, he said, referring to the devastating 2005 hurricane that caught the George W. Bush administration off guard.

Ida is testing the Biden administrations ability to assist tens of thousands of people in a path of destruction stretching from the Gulf Coast to the New York City region, which suffered catastrophic flooding from the storms remnants.

Efforts to restore electricity in Louisiana and Mississippi are moving slowly but steadily after the storm severely damaged the power grid. About 863,000 homes and businesses were still in the dark Friday, down from 1.1 million after Ida blew through the region Sunday.

All eight of the key transmission lines feeding New Orleans were damaged but Entergy Corp., the states biggest utility, had two back in service by Thursday. The company expects to have power restored to most of its customers by Sept. 8, but has said some people in the hardest-hit areas may be without service for weeks.

Biden said Friday that he understands residents are frustrated with continued power failures. He said his administration is working 24/7 with power companies on restoration efforts.

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The president said the federal government would supply generators to provide electricity, adding that officials have been working to supply food and water.

And he took the opportunity to tout the bipartisan $550 billion infrastructure plan the Senate passed, saying it would modernize roads, bridges, sewer systems and power grids to make sure theyre more resilient.

Bidens administration deployed roughly 6,000 National Guard members to Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Texas and has sent generators to hospitals and medical facilities.

The Louisiana congressional delegation, including fiscally conservative Republicans, on Thursday called on Congress to pass emergency-funding legislation to help the state recover from Hurricane Ida and other recent storms.

During his tour of LaPlace, Biden was joined by two members of Congress, Representatives Troy Carter, a Democrat, and Garret Graves. Graves is a Republican who voted after the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection to reject Electoral College results from Pennsylvania, where Biden defeated former President Donald Trump.

Were reminded that this isnt about politics, Biden said on Thursday. Hurricane Ida didnt care if you were a Democrat or Republican, rural or urban.

The storm left environmental hazards in its path. Louisiana is investigating 161 oil spills of various sizes in land and on water, said Sam Jones, of the states Oil Spill Coordinators Office. But officials have been hampered in their ability to inspect them. Among the spills reported to state officials are a dark sheen in the Gulf of Mexico coming from a well and a dark stream of oil.

Biden has directed his administration to take steps to increase the availability of gasoline to ease pressure on prices at the pump while most oil production in the Gulf of Mexico remains shut. The Department of Energy authorized Exxon Mobil Corp. to receive crude oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to kick-start the production of fuels.

Many fuel producers shut their plants as Hurricane Ida came ashore, leaving supplies pinched, and widespread damage to the electricity grid has cut off their power.

Ida is the fifth-largest storm to hit the U.S. mainland. It smashed into Louisiana on Sunday with record 150-mile-per-hour winds,leaving more than 1 million customers across the South.

More than 1,400 employees from the Federal Emergency Management Agency have deployed in the South in response to the hurricane. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is also helping, including with efforts to return power and access damage in the storm wracked area. The Transportation Department has waived hours-of-service rules for truckers who are hauling shipments of fuel and other supplies.

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CANBERRA, Australia (AP)  Britain is rushing 4 million Pfizer doses to Australia, where authorities are scrambling to bolster supplies of that COVID-19 vaccine and protect the population against a rapidly spreading outbreak of the delta variant.

The swap deal announced Friday follows Australian deals with Singapore and Poland to address a short-term Pfizer shortage.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the British shots would leave Britain on Saturday and double Australias Pfizer supplies in September.

Australia was keen to make more vaccine deals with other governments, Morrison said.

I said I would leave no stone unturned and I can tell you Ive been turning over some stones in recent times to ensure that we can progress the vaccination program as quickly as we possibly can, Morrison said.

Thanks Boris, I owe you a beer, he added, referring to his British counterpart Boris Johnson.

Australia has particularly low vaccination levels compared to other wealthy nations, with only 36% of Australians aged 16 and older fully vaccinated.

The Australian government has been criticized for failing to strike more vaccine deals with manufacturers. Australia had planned to manufacture most of the vaccine for its 26 million people, including 20 million adults.

But one home-grown vaccine was abandoned during development because it produced false positive results to HIV tests. Locally-produced AstraZeneca, which is the only alternative to Pfizer registered for use in Australia so far, proved unpopular with many due to changing medical advice on the risk of blood clots. Australia initially bought only 10 million Pfizer doses but has increased the order to 40 million shots this year.

The first of 10 million shots of the Moderna vaccine is expected to become available soon.

The need for vaccines comes as Australias most populous state, New South Wales, on Friday reported its deadliest day of the pandemic with 12 fatalities and a record 1,431 new infections. The state government predicted the daily death toll will peak next month if the pace of vaccination is maintained.

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The state government plans to triple the number of intensive care unit beds and staff in October when the number of COVID-19 patients are expected to peak, New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian said.

She expects 70% of the population aged 16 and older in her state will be fully vaccinated by mid-October.

The outbreak that began in Sydney in June has spread to Melbourne, Australias second-most populous city and the capital of Victoria state.

Victoria reported 208 new infections in the last 24 hours and a single death.

New South Wales and Victoria are in lockdown and see increased vaccinations as the only way to safely ease pandemic restrictions.

The Australia Capital Territory still hopes that its lockdown will stamp out delta. The rest of Australia remains virtually free of the virus.

Singapore delivered 500,000 Pfizer shots to Sydney on Thursday. Australia must repay Singapore and Britain with equivalent numbers of doses in December.

Australia bought 1 million Pfizer doses from Poland for an undisclosed price in August.

The Australian government hopes the states will end pandemic lockdowns once 80% of the population aged 16 and older was fully vaccinated.
An internally displaced Afghan girl sits inside a box as she waits for the distribution of winter assistance in Kabul December 23, 2012. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) began a winter assistance programme for returnees from Pakistan and Iran, internally displaced persons and others who are at risk in the cold weather. REUTERS/Omar Sobhani

In late August, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken authorized "humanitarian parole" for Afghans.

The process allows Afghans to escape the Taliban and come to the United States.

But it does not offer permanent legal status or access to refugee services.

See more stories on Insider's business page.

The Biden administration has told refugee agencies to prepare for resettling potentially tens of thousands of people fleeing the threat of persecution in Afghanistan. But because of the suddenness with which the Afghan government collapsed, compounded by a severe backlog of applications in the US immigration system - and the lengthy visa process even in the best of times - many could be arriving not as formal refugees but as "parolees."

In reality, these people are the same: They have been determined to have a credible fear of serious harm and have been subject to extreme vetting to ensure they pose no risk to US national security. But, legally, being granted "humanitarian parole" does not confer the same rights as refugee status, in terms of either public benefits or being put on a path to permanent legal residence. Once here, these Afghans will need to apply for asylum or some other visa.

But how are they supposed to make ends meet in this country after fleeing, with next to nothing, from a nation where the per capita income is about $500 a year?

Cathryn Miller-Wilson is executive director of HIAS Pennsylvania, one of the refugee resettlement agencies that has been welcoming the Afghan men, women, and children who have been flown to the Philadelphia airport.

Here's what she told Insider.

Afghans on "parole" do not have access to traditional refugee services. But an official at another resettlement agency told Insider they expect to receive $2,275 per Afghan on humanitarian parole. Can you offer more detail?

The $2,275 is divided between the parolee and the agency so that the agency receives about $1,080 and the parolee receives about $1,200. The money is provided per person per 30 days for 90 days. This is the same amount that refugees receive when they are resettled.

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How does this differ from the refugee program, then?

The parolees will receive a little extra money to pay for legal fees because the legal status that the parolees have is not equivalent to refugee status. It is a temporary status that allows them to enter the country but does not provide immediate work authorization, access to Medicaid, or other safety-net benefits. Refugee status provides access to these safety net benefits, which are critically important for a refugee who is learning English and looking for work while they get acclimated to the US.

What are the next steps for Afghans who arrive on humanitarian parole?

The legal fees will help parolees pay an attorney to file for asylum on their behalf. A helpful thing, but, because of the backlog in asylum cases, the asylum process could take years. Once you file for asylum, work authorization will be issued approximately six months after filing. But the issuing of work authorization, otherwise known as Employment Authorization Documents (EADs), are backlogged as well so it could take longer than six months.

What problems does that pose?

Currently, the law requires that employers examine original EADs - not copies or electronic versions. So this causes other problems as well. With the increasing problems with the US mail service we have had clients who are notified by electronic mail that their EADs have been issued but the actual EAD doesn't arrive until a week or two or even three after the electronic notification. So this delays their ability to look for a job. We have also had clients who never received their EAD because it got lost in the mail. They then have to request another one and that process can take several months.

It seems like there's still a rough road ahead for many parolees. How can the government help make it easier? And how can those reading this assist this population?

There are many ways that the government can make this easier. First, there is the problem of humanitarian parole in and of itself. This is not a legal status, it's a kind of visa that permits someone to enter the US. The government could, at the military bases, grant these parolees refugee status so that they get all that comes with that: immediate work authorization and eligibility for safety net benefits including Medicaid and eligibility for government-funded employment programs that exist in order to help refugees and asylees.

Alternatively, they could make humanitarian parole a legal status that comes with all of those things rather than simply an entry visa.

Another option is to immediately staff up both the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services and asylum officers so that these applications, which parolees will have to file once they get resettled in order to gain permanent status, can be processed much more timely - they now take years. There should be sufficient staff to make it take weeks or a few months.

Another thing that the government can do, given that the crisis is ongoing, is to waive filing fees for Afghans who are now seeking to get their family members out of Afghanistan.

The largest problem that can be fixed by our government is separating the security vetting process from the other processes that any immigrant undergoes. Once vetted, persons should be allowed to come to this country without so much additional delay and bureaucracy. Providing pathways to those who are fleeing, those who want to be with their loved ones, those who are resilient and courageous and love democracy is good for our country as well as, in this instance, our moral obligation.

Have a news tip? Email this reporter: cdavis@insider.com

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The ill effects of climate change on many of the great wine regions in the United States and Europe have only just begun to be felt.

Wildfires have torn through vineyards in Napa Valley in California and elsewhere in Oregon, and even vineyards that were spared have had to contend with smoke damaging their grapes. In France, years alternating between unusual heat and damaging frosts have changed how much and what types of wine are being made. In the normally cooler regions that grow the grapes to make Champagne, the annual harvest yield has swung wildly from half the normal amount to double. (The region is allowed to store wine from a boom year to blend with wine from a low year.)

But the rising temperatures have had other, unforeseen effects. Parts of the United Kingdom, a country not at all known for wine production, are now making sparkling wine  as they did back in Roman times.

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For wine connoisseurs, that means changes in the types of wines they have long loved and where those wines are produced. The average consumer may not notice, but the seemingly stable world of wine has become anything but.

Were seeing a broader selection of very interesting wines because of this warming, said Dave Parker, founder and chief executive of the Benchmark Wine Group, a large retailer of vintage wines. Were seeing regions that historically were not that highly thought of now producing some excellent wines. The U.K., Oregon, New Zealand or Austria may have been marginal before, but theyre producing great wines now. Its kind of an exciting time if youre a wine lover.

The rising temperatures have certainly hurt some winemakers, but in some wine-growing areas, the heat has been a boon for vineyards and the drinkers who covet their wine. Parker said growing conditions for sought-after vintages in Bordeaux used to come less frequently and sometimes only once every decade: 1945, 1947, 1961, 1982, 1996 and 2000. They were all very ripe vintages because of the heat. But in the last decade, with temperatures rising in Bordeaux, wines from 2012, 2015, 2016, 2018 and 2019 are all sought after  and highly priced.

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And then there are the wines from previously overlooked regions.

What Id say is, currently, there hasnt been a better time for wine collectors, said Axel Heinz, the estate director of Ornellaia and Masseto, two of Italys premier wines. The vintages and wine have become so much better. And for us, the changes over the past 20 years have put a focus on many growing regions that collectors werent interested in before, like Italian and Spanish wine.

(Still, he said, his vineyards are not immune to the negative effects of climate change, with increased risk of spring frosts and hail.)

Yet for all the romance attached to making wine, it is essentially farming. So while winemakers have been reaping the benefits of higher temperatures, the grape growers have had to adapt in ways that are going to affect prices as well as the types of grapes. (And of course, vineyards are sometimes integrated, so the grape growers and the winemakers are all part of the same operation.)

Like other wineries, Jackson Family Wines, one of the largest wine producers in the United States, has already begun to take steps to deal with climate change.

If we plant a vineyard today, were asking, what will the vineyard look like in 2042, not 2022, said Rick Tigner, the companys chief executive. We might have a bigger canopy to provide the grapes shade, or different varietals. All of those things cost money. Farming for the future is going to be more expensive in the short term, but those vines could last 30 years, not 20 years.

The company has installed solar panels throughout its vineyards, but the energy need during the 12 weeks of harvest is so intense that it cannot put in enough panels to meet those peak needs. Separately, the vineyard is also looking at reducing the weight of its glass bottles. While glass stores wine well and is recyclable, it requires a huge amount of energy to produce (since sand is being melted in furnaces to make glass).

Far Niente, which owns several brands including Nickel & Nickel and Dolce, opted to float almost half of its solar panels in an irrigation pond to save vineyard space. In doing so, the winery has covered all of its energy costs and is confident that as long as its aquifer holds up, it can manage the increased heat, said Greg Allen, president and winemaker for Dolce.

While wildfires are a significant concern for wineries, so is water usage. Hamel Family Wines, in the Sonoma Valley, turned to dry farming as a way to eliminate the need for extensive irrigation. John Hamel, winemaker and managing director of wine growing, said the process involves cutting slits in the dry earth, allowing rain that does fall to be absorbed and held in the ground longer. It also makes the vines more resilient to temperature swings, he said.

For Hamels 124 acres, dry farming saves 2-4 million gallons of water annually. But there is a trade-off: The yield is lower, with only 2.5 tons of grapes per acre as opposed to 5-6 tons per acre with irrigation.

The vines get used to this drought and are able to grow in this condition, he said.

The impact of the different sustainability measures on the wines themselves is still unclear. The average wine drinker is likely not to notice the difference, said Christian Miller, research director for the Wine Market Council, a wine market research firm.

Consumer perceptions of wine and styles lag the actual conditions, he said. It takes a while to undo the perception at a winery or at a regional level. You also have normal variance in weather, and wineries can take corrective action to maintain the taste profile.

The one wild card is fire. A fire can shift the perception of an entire vintage, even when some vineyards in a region escape unharmed. Avoid that vintage for Napa Valley because of smoke taint could be a blanket assumption that isnt true for all vineyards, Miller said. Given the higher temperatures, some growers are harvesting grapes weeks earlier than they used to so they could have the harvest safely fermenting in sealed tanks.

The fires also threaten to upend the economic model of many boutique vineyards, which charge more for their wines. A high percentage of their sales, sometimes close to 70% or more, comes from people buying bottles at the vineyard and signing up for wine clubs that automatically ship them wine several times a year.

But as certain wine regions struggle to grow the varietals they have always grown, their customers could find themselves unable to drink the types of wines they have always loved.

A fire came within 100 feet of Medlock Ames, a vineyard in Healdsburg, California, in 2017. Two years later, a wildfire ripped through the vineyard. After surveying the damage, Ames Morison, Medlocks winemaker, said he decided to plant different types of grapes. Malbec, the hearty Argentine grape, replaced the lighter white sauvignon blanc grape.

Its sad, Morison said. Ill miss those wines. But sauvignon blanc grows better in cooler climates than we have.

Similarly, Larkmead, in the Napa Valley, which grows Cabernet Sauvignon but also produces three blends, has created a research vineyard with nine types of grapes. The merlot it uses for its blends has become harder to grow.

Our merlot blend is loved by everyone, but were having a conversation about discontinuing, said Avery Heelan, winemaker at Larkmead. We wont have enough merlot to make that wine in the future. Its 60% merlot now, but were going to have to shape-shift.

Some of the grapes it is growing have historically thrived along the hotter Mediterranean growing regions in Spain and Italy. It is also using Shiraz, the Australian grape. The Australians have a leg up on us on understanding fire and smoke, she said. Without manipulating our style or quality, there is not a lot we can do. Its Mother Nature.

Initiatives to adapt to climate change and to produce wine more sustainably are being driven by vineyards, for sure, but they are really being pushed by the big wine buyers, including sommeliers in restaurants, wine distributors and retailers who can see how climate is changing wine. Consumers, Miller said, are playing less of a role since most drinkers are not going to know the difference, and the collectors who do are a small part of overall wine drinkers.

The trade is more aware, and is trying to react to climate change, than the wine consumers themselves, he said, noting that sustainably produced wines cost $1-$4 more a bottle. The impact of climate change is a moving average over a number of years, he added, and thats why its going to have a slower impact on consumer behavior.

 2021 The New York Times Company
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Kids accounted for more than one-fifth of total COVID-19 cases in the U.S. for week ending Aug. 26, according to data from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Childrens Hospital Association.

Last week, children made up 22.4% of the reported cases. Thats higher than the overall total average of child cases during the pandemic, which is 14.8% of total cumulative cases. The report also noted there was a 9% increase in the cumulative number of child cases from Aug. 12 to Aug. 26.

The increase comes as children have begun in-person schooling for the first time since the pandemic began in many cases. The ages that states consider to be a child case vary, but children under 12 are currently ineligible for COVID-19 vaccines.

In Iowa, for example, 22% of Iowa's 8,308 COVID-19 cases are reported in children, according to state data released this week.

In Tennessee, daily infections among children between ages 5 and 18 have climbed to the highest level since the pandemic began, and more than 154,000 children between ages 5 and 18 have been infected since the start of the pandemic.

Despite record-high cases among school-age children and school districts statewide struggling to stay open, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee on Thursday stood by his administration's response and resisted further response to climbing cases.

Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Thursday that new studies to be released Friday show hospitalizations in kids were four times higher in states with low vaccination rates in the month of August.

Cases, emergency room visits and hospitalizations are much lower among children and communities with higher vaccination rates. Vaccination works," Walensky said.

COVID-related hospitalization and death among children is still rare, but more data is needed to determine long-term impacts on children, the American Academy of Pediatrics noted.

Also in the news:

The United States is once again reporting more than 10,000 COVID-19 deaths each week, a USA TODAY analysis of Johns Hopkins University data shows. The country reported 10,105 deaths in the week ending Thursday, passing a mark not seen since early March. Less than two months ago, the U.S. had been reporting 1,525 deaths per week, accounting for a 562% increase.

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As part of a new vaccine swap, Britain will send 4 million doses of Pfizer's vaccine to Australia with the agreement that Australia will return the same number to the United Kingdom later this year. The agreement will "enable the UK better align timings of our own supply of vaccines with our future need" while helping Australia with immediate vaccine supplies for a domestic campaign.

The European Union and AstraZeneca settled a lawsuit Friday over the slow pace of COVID-19 vaccine deliveries with the drugmaker committing to deliver 300 million doses by next March, as was agreed in an advance purchasing agreement both parties signed a year ago. AstraZeneca's vaccine is not yet available in the U.S.

Alabama health officials have recruited 13 colleges, including the University of Alabama and Auburn University, to host COVID-19 vaccination campaigns ahead of football games this fall, with fans eligible for $75 voucher incentives on game days.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has appealed a judges ruling that the governor exceeded his authority by ordering school boards not to impose strict mask requirements on students to combat the spread of the coronavirus.

 Today's numbers: The U.S. has recorded more than 39 million confirmed COVID-19 cases and more than 643,000 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University data. Global totals: More than 218 million cases and 4.5 million deaths. More than 174 million Americans  52.7% of the population  have been fully vaccinated, according to the CDC.

 What we're reading: Denver has a strict vaccine mandate for teachers, plus masks. It's keeping kids in school. Here's how they're doing it.

Keep refreshing this page for the latest news. Want more? Sign up for USA TODAY's Coronavirus Watch newsletter to receive updates directly to your inbox and join our Facebook group.

Breast milk of vaccinated mothers contain COVID-19 antibodies, study finds

Mothers vaccinated against COVID-19 may be able to pass along protection against infection to their nursing babies, according to a recently published study from the University of Florida.

Antibodies passed through breast milk could prove beneficial to babies, researchers said, but further study is needed to determine their impact.

The study tested the blood and breast milk of 21 lactating mothers before vaccination, after the first dose and following the second shot. The researchers found that in breast milk, after the second dose, there was a 100-fold increase of immunoglobulin A antibodies, said Joseph Larkin III, a senior author of the study.

Babies are born with their immune systems not fully developed, Larkin said. They are too young to get the COVID-19 vaccine and cannot protect themselves. Breast milk, however, is like a helpful tool box that can be altered to potentially improve that vulnerability.

"A lot of moms, pregnant women, are afraid to get vaccinated. They want to do what's best for their babies," said Dr. Josef Neu, a co-author of the study. "This is something that we wanted to know whether it may actually provide some benefit."

 Danielle Ivanov, The Gainesville Sun

Pandemic makes finding child care more overwhelming than ever before

For parents across the country, the process of finding and signing up for child care  and the government subsidies that help them afford it  has become more overwhelming than ever before. Quality early-learning options are in short supply across the country. Centers are understaffed, and case managers are overextended. Many families lack the time and savvy needed to land a seat at the programs that do exist.

First, theres the hassle of figuring out whats available: Reliable, go-to directories listing up-to-date openings are rare, as are clear ratings of a program's quality. Then theres the time-consuming task of calling or visiting each of those providers to see where there are vacancies, filling out applications and, sometimes, going through interviews. Then the months- or even years-long waitlists. Preschool admissions can be cutthroat.

And for many low- and middle-income parents, theres the added step of figuring out and applying for financial aid, which typically entails its own mishmash of procedures and paperwork.

Given todays technology, it should be as easy to find child care as it is to make a dinner reservation, said Cara Sklar, the deputy director of early and elementary education policy at New America, a Washington, D.C., think tank. Instead, Lara said, it feels like youre submitting an application into outer space. Read more here.

 Alia Wong, USA TODAY

'It's a law': Iowa governor declines to recommend masks for students

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds on Thursday declined to recommend whether students should wear masks in schools, saying the opinion "doesn't really matter" because state law bans local districts from making it a requirement.

Reynolds' response, which came during a news conference at the Iowa Capitol, was to a question on whether the Iowa public health director Kelly Garcia would recommend students wear masks at school despite the ban on mandates. The governor answered the question instead of Garcia.

"It is a law that elected officials that are elected by Iowans and constituents across this state listened to the people that they represent, passed a bill, sent it to my desk and it was signed into law," Reynolds said.

Following the news conference, Garcia told reporters she sends her own children to school wearing masks.

"As the governor answered, there is a law on the books in Iowa, but that doesn't mean a parent can't make their own decision," Garcia said. "As a parent, I send my children to school in masks every day and I've had that conversation with our health care provider and our teachers."

Like many Republican governors across the U.S., Reynolds has been resistant to mask requirements throughout the pandemic. Iowa's policies have diverged from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance, which recommends universal masking in schools and that people wear masks in areas with high coronavirus transmission regardless of their vaccination status.

 Ian Richardson and Stephen Gruber-Miller, Des Moines Register

Pediatric ICUs 'under stress' as more kids get hospitalized for COVID, RSV

As hospitals continue to see a spike in hospitalizations among young children for COVID-19, another respiratory disease is simultaneously dominating pediatric intensive care units and overwhelming health care workers.

Respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, is a common virus that usually causes mild, cold-like symptoms primarily in children, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Its the most common cause of pneumonia in children younger than 1 in the U.S.

A typical RSV season occurs in the final quarter of the calendar year, from October to December. But an unseasonable RSV surge came this summer, threatening hospital capacity in states grappling with high coronavirus transmission, as young children sick with COVID-19, RSV or both fill up ICU beds.

Health experts say theyre especially concerned about children who are infected with both COVID-19 and RSV. Versalovic said approximately 50% of children with co-infections have been hospitalized at Texas Childrens, mostly patients under 5. Read more here.

 Adrianna Rodriguez, USA TODAY

A shot in the dark: Millions of Americans keep vaccination secret

The stigma of actually believing in vaccines is so powerful in some communities that millions of Americans are getting inoculated in secret to avoid reproach -- even though the shots have been proved safe and effective.

About 1 in 6 who are vaccinated against COVID-19 say they're keeping that information a secret from at least some people, while more than 1 in 17 aren't telling anyone, according to a Harris Poll survey conducted exclusively for USA TODAY. With more than 174 million being fully vaccinated in this country, that adds up to upward of 10 million declining to share that information.

In many cases, vaccinated people hide it because they know others in their life wouldn't approve.

I was very uncomfortable with the idea of letting the supervisor know that I was going out to get a COVID shot, said William, a manufacturing worker in Maine whose boss spread vaccine misinformation. It does feel quite hostile.

 Nathan Bomey

Contributing: Yue Stella Yu, The Tennessean

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: KID COVID cases account for one-fifth of US infections: Live updates
SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China's environment ministry said on Friday talks with visiting U.S. climate envoy John Kerry this week were "candid, in-depth and pragmatic" and the two sides would continue "dialogue and consultation".

The world's two biggest sources of carbon emissions would work together to help achieve success at this year's climate talks in Glasgow in November, where nearly 200 countries will review global efforts to tackle rising temperatures, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment said.

Kerry, the U.S. president's special envoy on climate change, held talks with his Chinese counterpart, Xie Zhenhua, in the northern city of Tianjin on Wednesday and Thursday. He also spoke to senior diplomats Yang Jiechi and Wang Yi by video link.

Wang rejected U.S. efforts to separate climate issues from the broader diplomatic conflicts between the two countries, while Kerry insisted that the crisis facing the world should not be a matter of ideology or political partisanship.

The Global Times, a tabloid run by the Communist Party-controlled People's Daily stable of newspapers, said in an editorial on Friday that the United States was trying to show "a friendly face" on climate after pursuing a series of "wicked" policies that threatened China's national security.

"The U.S. lowers the drawbridge when it needs it, and raises it up when it doesn't need it any more," the newspaper said.

Kerry, speaking to journalists on Thursday, said he would pass on China's concerns to Washington but his remit was limited to climate.

But Kerry acknowledged the difficulties of reconciling global climate concerns with U.S.-China disputes on issues like the far western region of Xinjiang, where the United States says authorities are committing rights abuses.

"On the one hand, we're saying to them - you have to do more to help deal with the climate," he said. "And on the other hand, their solar panels are being sanctioned which makes it harder for them to sell them."

The United States has imposed sanctions https://www.reuters.com/business/us-restricts-exports-5-chinese-firms-over-rights-violations-2021-06-23 on Chinese companies it alleges are involved with forced labour in Xinjiang. China dismisses the accusations as a lie.

(Reporting by David Stanway; Editing by Robert Birsel)
Christopher Lee and Berant Zhu in iQiyi series Danger Zone. (Photo: iQiyi)

iQiyi's big-budget crime thriller series, Danger Zone, premieres today worldwide. At a press conference this week, the streaming platform said that the show, which stars Singapore-based Christopher Lee and Taiwan's Vic Chou, had a US$1 million budget.

Besides Lee and Chou, the headlining cast includes newbie Taiwanese heartthrob Berant Zhu. Other stars include Sandrine Pinna, Wu Hsing-kuo, Tseng Chin-hua, and Teresa Daley.

Lee and Zhu are police officers Tan Chong-hui and Ren Fei, who seek the help of Chou's character, Liang Yandong, a suspected serial killer who is also a psychological profiling expert, to catch a criminal.

Speaking about why he took this role, Christopher Lee said, "Within the past 10 or 20 years, I hadn't really played police characters, so I was excited to perform this role," he said. "After I saw the script, I thought that it was very gripping. There are many characters and many twists and turns in the plot, so it's very interesting."

Actor Christopher Lee at a press conference in Taipei, Taiwan for iQiyi series Danger Zone on 1 September 2021. (Photo: iQiyi)

Vic Chou spent a lot of effort immersing himself in the intense role of a criminal suspect in prison. It was a role that he accepted with relish. "I had just finished filming for a romantic film. I really wished at that time to get a role that didn't focus on a romantic relationship," said Chou. "It was very timely then that the role in Danger Zone was offered to me and I was attracted to it. I felt lucky that my wish had been granted with such a script."

Danger Zone, which was filmed in Taiwan, marks another series by iQiyi set outside China, as the Chinese company looks to expand its market internationally. Fantasy horror series, The Ferryman: Legends Of Nanyang, set in Singapore but filmed mostly in Malaysia, premiered just last week on 24 August.

The show, which spans 24 episodes, will drop its first episode at 8pm (SGT) today. New episodes will be released every Friday. Available in 10 subtitled languages (Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, English, Bahasa Indonesia, Bahasa Malaysia, Thai, Vietnamese, Korean, Arabic, and Spanish), viewers around the world can watch the series in their preferred language.

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Check out these pics of Danger Zone:

Vic Chou in iQiyi series Danger Zone. (Photo: iQiyi)

Berant Zhu and Vic Chou in iQiyi series Danger Zone. (Photo: iQiyi)

Danger Zone, a Chinese-language prison drama by iQiyi set in Taiwan, stars Christopher Lee and Berant Zhu.

Danger Zone, a Chinese-language prison drama by iQiyi set in Taiwan, stars Christopher Lee.

Danger Zone, a Chinese-language prison drama by iQiyi set in Taiwan, stars Christopher Lee and Berant Zhu.

Danger Zone, a Chinese-language prison drama by iQiyi set in Taiwan, stars Christopher Lee and Berant Zhu.

Danger Zone, a Chinese-language prison drama by iQiyi set in Taiwan, stars Vic Chou.

Get more TV and movie news from Yahoo Life on our Entertainment page.
Half the nation faces drought and wildfire, the other half floods. A firefighter lights a backfire to stop the Caldor Fire from spreading near South Lake Tahoe on Wednesday. Cars and trucks are stranded by high water on Thursday on the Major Deegan Expressway in New York City. (Jae C. Hong / Associated Press; Craig Ruttle / Associated Press)

Journalist Ginia Bellafante hit the nail on the head Thursday when she tweeted that the overused phrase historic weather event must be retired.

It gives the ongoing climate catastrophe the hint of something novel and fun.

The destruction of two major office towers in New York City 20 years ago was never called a historic airplane event; the destruction of two major cities in Japan in 1945 was not a historic atomic event.

Instead, these events were immediately understood as parts of the larger global horrors of terrorism and war. The climate crisis, too, must be addressed not as a series of one-off inconveniences  the current fires in California and the floods in New York  but as a global convulsion that is already structuring our geopolitics, our everyday lives, our futures. The climate catastrophe makes it increasingly likely that many of us in the coming decades will face injury, displacement and destitution, as we are forced to abandon damaged or destroyed homes and hometowns.

One way to comprehend the planetary convulsion is to consider the map the New York Times generated this week using data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The map divides the nation by warm and cool colors. The variations dont signal political affiliations. They dont indicate who does and doesnt believe in the climate crisis. They stand for something much more elemental: fire and water.

The data capture the 30-year change in annual average precipitation across the United States, and its staggering. Half of the nation has been grappling with drought while the other gets inundated.

The too-scorched West gives way to the drowned East across a surprisingly clear border that runs down the middle of the Dakotas and cuts through Texas.

Left of the line, there are a lot of amber hues, indicating that rainfall has decreased by between 1 and 5 inches since 1991.

To the right, its largely medium to dark aqua green. Rainfall in these areas has increased by between 2 and 5 inches in the same period. The exception is a swath of the Southern states  chiefly Georgia, North Carolina and northern Florida  that in places are about as dehydrated as Arizona.

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In short, the map gives context to the West Coasts consuming fires, the lethal storm surges in Louisiana, the flash floods in Tennessee and the Hurricane Ida aftermath that flooded houses and closed schools in New York this week.

It all adds up to a century that has broken out of the steadier weather patterns of the past, in which flood and drought were indeed events. It signals a breakdown of climate but, more important, a breakdown of American government and industry, which have utterly failed over the last 50 years to modify a rapacious economy that still depends on gouging stuff out of the earth and burning it.

The result can be charted: precipitation changes.

In California, two years of deep drought have set the state up for record-breaking wildfires. Already in 2021, more than 1.9 million acres have burned. Firefighters are warning that despite their all-out effort, the Caldor fire at Lake Tahoes edge may yet burn all the way to Nevada.

Out East, the ever-warming atmosphere retains more water  and then dumps it onto communities that are not built to sustain it. Some 41 million Americans, most in the East, live near enough to a floodplain to be in urgent danger from floods.

We grow used to these numbers, which once would have terrified us.

The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 left 500 people dead and 700,000 homeless, and cost the federal government around $1 billion, a full third of the 1927 federal budget. In response to the devastation, tens of thousands of Black Mississippians left their homes and moved North and West.

In that historical migration Americans today might see their future. Our sea-to-shining-sea nation is becoming less and less habitable. Those with means may move farther north, but even in Canada, projected precipitation maps are ominous. Almost no part of the North American continent is safe from fires or floods.

How to prepare? A famous 2007 quote by John Holdren, then Barack Obama's senior science advisor, is apt: "We basically have three choices: mitigation, adaptation and suffering. We're going to do some of each. The question is what the mix is going to be."

In the name of reducing the suffering, we had better start mitigating and adapting fast. The checklist is simple but drastic. Stop taking fossil fuel from the ground and burning it, shrink livestock farming, switch to sustainable electricity. Build raised houses, relocate farms and plant heat-tolerant trees. Admit its happening.

The single remaining hope is that Americans will not see the amber-to-green evidence as a pretext for more infighting and blame but rather as a call to common sense, pragmatic action and moral responsibility. Mitigation and adaptation are vitally important, but only a more humane society will help us care for one another in the crisis that stretches before us.

@page88

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Evening_T / Getty Images/iStockphoto

In August, the Wall Street Journal reported that corporate leaders across the country were scrambling to reschedule, replan and reassess the logic in reopening their offices this fall. Although they had been confident that autumn would bring a return to on-site work, the Delta variant had other plans. Now, once again, office managers are joining school administrators in stumbling out of summer into yet another season of uncertainty.

Read: GDP Report Shows Economic Recovery Moving Along, but Delta Variant Fears Linger

See: More Americans Are Moving Back to Pre-Pandemic Life  How Will It Affect Spending?

Another Month, Another Surprise From the Virus

Even many of the experts who had warned about the likelihood of mutations and new strains were startled by the speed and ferocity of the viruss latest incarnation.

The Delta variant of COVID-19 is already spreading faster than expected, and theres no clear end in sight, said Jordan Bishop, founder and CEO of the finance site Yore Oyster. As a business owner who serves as his companys human resources manager, he knows the issue well.

It seems like businesses that were planning to reopen their offices by fall of 2021 have been resetting them for winter 2021, Bishop said. Theyve all delayed it because of these recent developments with the virus since no one knows how contagious or deadly it really is.

Before they commit one way or the other, managers should first ask what  if anything  is to be gained by returning to the office at this critical moment.

News: Small Businesses and Workers See Slowdown Due to Delta Variant

Canceling Travel Over Delta Variant?: Heres What Airline and Hotel Policies Say

The move to open is just unnecessary at a time when things are still changing and developing, said Kathy Bennett, CEO and founder of Bennett Packaging Company. Unless businesses have to, investing in safety precautions that might be changed with the new variant seems a waste of money, and keeping employees at home makes much more sense logistically and financially. Of course, there will be industries and parts of businesses that require on-site working, but for those that this doesnt apply to, then now doesnt seem the right time for upheaval if it is not needed.

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As Always, the Pain Will Not Be Distributed Equally

For businesses, the decision to open or not will have a lot to do with where theyre located. Employers in Delta hotspots face different choices than those in areas that have so far been spared. It also, of course, depends on what they do.

Where I think we will see the real difference is in the industries, Bennett said. Hospitality, travel, service, and retail are unlikely to make any changes unless commanded to do so because this essentially means seriously depleted or zero income for them.

For the individual worker, the false starts and all the back and forth can be stressful, upending and burnout-inducing  unless, of course, theyre already telecommuting.

Remote Work: 40 Legit Companies That Will Pay You To Work From Home

Career Change: 26 Highest-Paying Jobs That Let You Work From Home

People who work remotely or in hybrid positions will, for the most part, be unaffected by this development, Bishop said. It will only mean more time spent at home. Remote and hybrid teams can still use all their existing tools to stay connected with one another and perform their jobs. However, for retail businesses that need in-person personnel, this could lead to more layoffs and unemployment.

But what would opening mean financially for workers who had gotten used to pocketing the money they werent spending on commuting?

I think you could argue that the savings vs. expenses of remote working do eventually cancel each other out, Bennett said. Whereas you may be saving on your commute, it is likely you will be receiving a slightly higher electric bill for the extra time spent at home. The money saved eating out at lunch will just be spent on having extra food at home instead. Im not sure working remotely actually means you save money.

Discover: How Much Youre Saving Still Working From Home

Learn: How To Convince Your Boss To Let You Keep Working From Home

For Offices That Jumped the Gun, Tough Choices Lie Ahead

Post-vaccine optimism led many companies to open their offices and move fully remote workers to hybrid or even full-time status throughout the summer  a move that hindsight has revealed as premature in many cases.

Businesses already back in the office will face a significant choice about how to proceed, Bennett said. If they decide to stay in-office then it will be important for businesses to enforce social distancing measures where possible, even if it is not required by the current government guidelines. This will just help to keep employees safe and will mean less chance of the virus spreading far if somebody does come down with COVID.

More: 4 Valid Reasons Your Company Wont Let You Work From Home Indefinitely

See: How To Protect Yourself When You Return to Your Office

Even if they already opened, however, they dont necessarily have to stay the course.

Alternatively, businesses could return to remote working if they feel this is the safest option, Bennett said. This could be another upheaval for an already tired team, though, and I think it is important to discuss any possible decisions with the employees and be as transparent as possible as early as possible about what you are thinking.

In reality, however, closing and reopening offices are expensive processes that squander both time and resources. Many businesses simply cant keep doing it in perpetuity.

This sudden surge of the Delta variant means that businesses that had opened or been preparing to reopen will have to pack their things again and delay reopenings, possibly until late fall or winter of 2021, Bishop said. Its sad to see that people were more than ready to start working again, only to have to close again. For businesses that opened because they needed the revenue, this surge could be the final straw economically before filing for bankruptcy.

More From GOBankingRates

Last updated: Sept. 2, 2021

This article originally appeared on GOBankingRates.com: The Delta Variants Impact on Back-to-Office Plans  And What It Means for Workers
Former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick passes protesters as he leaves the Dedham courthouse after pleading not guilty during his first appearance for sexual assault charges on on September 3, 2021 in Dedham, Massachusetts. Scott Eisen/Getty Images

McCarrick pleaded not guilty to three counts of child sex assault, according to the Washington Post.

McCarrick is accused of abusing a 16-year-old boy in the 1970s at his brother's wedding, the Post reported.

Crowds of onlookers yelled "Shame on you!" as McCarrick entered the courtroom, according to the report.

Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.

Disgraced ex-cardinal Theodore McCarrick pleaded not guilty on Friday to charges that he sexually assaulted a teen in the 1970s, the Washington Post reported.

Demonstrators outside a suburban Massachusetts courthouse shouted "Shame on you!" at the disgraced former Catholic leader, according to the report.

McCarrick entered his not guilty plea in Dedham District Court. Friday's court appearance was the first public sighting of the former Catholic archbishop since he was hit with sex abuse allegations in 2018, the Post said.

After pleading not guilty, McCarrick was ordered to turn over his passport and stay away from people under the age of 18, according to the Post.

The sexual assault charges stem from an incident in which McCarrick is accused of abusing a 16-year-old boy in the 1970s, at the boy's brother's wedding. More than a dozen people have now publicly accused McCarrick of sexual abuse or harassment, the Post reported.

The man whose abuse allegations led to charges against McCarrick is now in his 60s. He was present in the courtroom on Friday, the Post said.

"We want to see McCarrick looking at us. The look on his face. That's why I'm driving. That's why it's a big deal," Karen, a sister of the accuser, told the Post. The newspaper did not name the accuser, or give the last name of the accuser's sister, in order to protect his identity.

According to the Post, the accuser comes from a large Catholic family and his grandparents were close friends of McCarrick. His sister said that he was baptized by McCarrick, and then later abused for several years.

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The accuser's sister told the Post that she and other family members drove to Dedham to witness the trial because they consider it historic.

"You can go through all these other processes [including civil suits and Vatican probes] but they never face their victims. I think it's a big deal," she said.

Read the original article on Insider
California DoorDash workers protested outside of the home of DoorDash CEO Tony Xu on Thursday, prompted by a recent California superior court judge ruling calling 2020s Proposition 22 unconstitutional. Prop 22, which was passed last November in California, would allow app-based companies like DoorDash, Uber and Lyft to continue classifying workers as independent contractors rather than employees.

A group of about 50 DoorDash workers who are affiliated with advocacy groups We Drive Progress and Gig Workers Rising traveled caravan style to the front of Xus house in the Pacific Heights neighborhood of San Francisco. They demanded that DoorDash provide transparency for tips and 120% of minimum wage or around $17 per hour, stop unfair deactivations and provide free personal protective equipment, as well as adequate pay for car and equipment sanitizing.

Dasher concerns and feedback are always important to us, and we will continue to hear their voices and engage our community directly," a DoorDash spokesperson told TechCrunch. "However, we know that todays participants do not speak for the 91% of California dashers who want to remain independent contractors or the millions of California voters who overwhelmingly supported Proposition 22. The reality is, the passage of Prop 22 has addressed in law many of the concerns raised today through its historic benefits and protections: Workers earn 120% of their local minimum wage per active hour in addition to 100% of their tips, receive free PPE and enjoy access to healthcare funds.

DoorDash drivers say getting paid for the time they're "active," meaning actively driving to either pick up food and drop it off, rather than when theyre online and waiting for gigs to come through, leads to inadequate pay. They also say much of their living wage comes from tips, which should be an added bonus, but ends up helping make ends meet based on DoorDash's pay structure. DoorDash says paying drivers only for engaged time allows them to have the flexibility to use multiple apps at one time, either while they're actively working or while they're driving around running personal errands.

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Prop 22 is also meant to guarantee a reimbursement of 30 cents per engaged mile, which drivers say "would be great if it were true."

Rondu Gantt, a gig worker whos been working for DoorDash for two and a half years and also drives for Uber and Lyft to get by, says his base pay from DoorDash is often as low as $3 per hour, and that around 40% to 60% of his money comes from tips. Although this model sounds similar to the restaurant industry in the United States, which can be quite lucrative for servers and bartenders, for a delivery driver, its an unsustainable way to make a living because tipping culture isnt nearly as strong.

DoorDash pays so low because they want to make it affordable for the customer, but I would say for the driver it becomes unaffordable, Gantt told TechCrunch, citing the costs of owning, maintaining, parking and fueling a vehicle as potentially crippling. Last week, I drove for 30 hours and I made $405. Thats $13.50 per hour, which is below minimum wage.

Gantt said drivers also have had to deal with pressure to drive in unsafe conditions, and we can look to the images of delivery drivers in New York City during Hurricane Ida as an example of some conditions drivers feel compelled to accept. Over the past two years, DoorDash drivers have also been deemed essential workers, interacting with and providing services for many people during a pandemic at the risk of their health.

Gig Workers Rising says DoorDash workers have received little to no safety support with some workers reporting being reimbursed as little as 80 cents per day for cleaning/sanitizing equipment and PPE that they use to keep themselves and customers safe. A DoorDash spokesperson said workers have been entitled to free PPE since the start of the pandemic, which they can learn more about online and order weekly supplies.

Right now gig work isn't flexible, a spokesperson for Gig Workers Rising told TechCrunch. Workers are at the mercy of when there's demand. If they were employees the work would change as they'd work in the knowledge that they have healthcare and can take a sick day off.

Because Prop 22 was ruled unconstitutional, the spokesperson said by rights it shouldnt be in operation.

The gig corporations violate that law everyday by choosing not to comply with it, he said.

DoorDash holds firm that Prop 22 is still the law, and they expect the ruling to be appealed and Prop 22 to be upheld.

For Gantt's part, he doesnt necessarily want to be an employee; he just wants to make sure that hes being paid what he deserves.

Which is not minimum wage, he said. Minimum wage would be unacceptable as well. The cost of doing this, the danger, makes minimum wage unacceptable pay. And realistically, theyre only sometimes paying you minimum wage before taxes. After taxes youre definitely making less.

TechCrunch was given access to DoorDash workers dashboards that break down their pay. For the week of July 12 to July 19, one dasher was paid a total of $574.21 for 53 deliveries, $274 of which came from customer tips. His "active time" was 14 hours and 21 minutes, and his "dash time," or when he was logged onto the app waiting for gigs to come through and doing deliveries, was about 30 hours.

The dashers "guaranteed earnings" from DoorDash for the week was $300.21, a number that's calculated to ensure drivers go home with 120% of minimum wage for active time. His base pay ended up at about $257.62, but DoorDash added an additional $42.59 to adjust to guaranteed earnings. If we divide the amount DoorDash paid by the number of hours of active time, the worker was paid about $21 per hour. If we divide it by the dash time, it looks more like $10 per hour.

Again, this is before tax. Independent contractors are usually advised to put aside around 30% of their paycheck because they have to pay self-employment tax, which is 15.3% of taxable income, federal income tax, which varies depending on tax bracket, and potentially state income tax. After taxes, this dashers total pay for 30 hours of work, including his $274 worth of tip, would be around $402, which comes out to $13.40 per hour.

Tips were of concern at the protest on Thursday as drivers called for transparency. Gantt says dashers can see a cumulative amount of tip earnings per week, as well as how much tip theyre receiving from each order, but they dont trust the amount theyre receiving is actually the amount customers are tipping them. DoorDash told TechCrunch drivers definitely do receive 100% of their tips.

Gantt and other drivers arent just being paranoid. Last November, DoorDash agreed to pay $2.5 million to settle a lawsuit alleging the company stole drivers tips and allowed customers to think their tip money was actually going to the drivers. The suit, filed by Washington, D.C. attorney general Karl Racine, alleged DoorDash reduced drivers pay for each job by the amount of any tip. DoorDash denies the allegations and that they pertain to its former pay model that hasn't been in use since September 2019.

During the second quarter, DoorDash saw a $113 million profit adjusted for EBITDA, but was overall unprofitable with a net loss of $102 million. One of the rallying cries of the protest was for Xu to share the wealth. In 2020, the CEO was reportedly the highest paid CEO in the Bay Area, making a total income of $413.67 million, which includes salary and stock options. DoorDash says Xu has not actually been paid any of the compensation in the report as of today, compensation which Xu only gets paid if DoorDash significantly outperforms the market and achieves a 5x return over the next seven years.

We all work for money and how that money gets distributed when they go through their earnings is telling you who matters and who doesnt matter," said Gantt. "Its a clear sign of whos important, who has value. If they dont pay you, they dont value you.

This article has been updated with more information from DoorDash.
(Reuters) -Europe's medicines regulator said on Friday it was reviewing if COVID-19 vaccines caused a risk of a rare inflammatory condition, following a report of a case with Pfizer/BioNTech's shot.

The safety panel of the European Medicines Agency is looking into Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome (MIS) after the condition was reported in a 17-year-old male in Denmark, the agency said https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/news/meeting-highlights-pharmacovigilance-risk-assessment-committee-prac-30-august-2-september-2021.

The teenager has fully recovered. This condition has also been reported after some other COVID-19 vaccines, the regulator said.

MIS has also been previously reported in people following the COVID-19 infection, the agency said. However, the Danish teen had no such history.

The syndrome is a serious but rare condition in which different body parts become inflamed, including the heart, lungs, kidneys, brain, skin, eyes, or gastrointestinal organs.

In its response, Pfizer said it reviews all possible adverse events thoroughly, along with regulatory authorities.

"It is important to understand that a careful assessment of MIS is ongoing, and it has not been concluded that mRNA COVID-19 vaccines cause MIS," a Pfizer spokesperson said.

The European regulator said at present there was no change to its recommendations for the use of the Pfizer vaccine, as well as other shots.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment.

Five cases of MIS were reported in the European Economic Area as of Aug. 19 after the Pfizer vaccine, while one case was reported with each Johnson & Johnson's and Moderna's vaccine, the regulator said.

Safety data released by the CDC and Pfizer at a meeting on Monday did not include any incidences of MIS in those who took the vaccine, which was granted full U.S. approval last month.

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Meanwhile, the European safety panel is also looking into cases of blood clots in veins, or Venous Thromboembolism, with J&J's vaccine.

J&J did not immediately respond to Reuters request for comment.

(Reporting by Pushkala Aripaka and Manas Mishra in Bengaluru, additional reporting by Ankur Banerjee; Editing by Ramakrishnan M. and Arun Koyyur)
File: District attorney Jackie Johnson campaigns for reelection on St Simon Island in November 2020 (AP)

A former Georgia prosecutor who handled the case of Ahmaud Arbery, a Black man who was gunned down while out jogging, was indicted on Thursday for using her position to shield the two accused men from being charged.

Former Brunswick judicial circuit district attorney Jackie Johnson was charged with misconduct on a felony count for violating her oath of office and hindering a law enforcement officer, reported the Associated Press (AP).

Ms Johnson was charged with showing favour and affection toward one of the accused in the investigation, who had worked in her office till 2019, reports said. She has also been indicted for interfering with police officers at the scene, by issuing orders against the arrest of the man who shot down Arbery.

Ms Johnsons indictment followed a probe by Georgias attorney general Chris Carr, after a video showing the accused chasing and killing Arbery and the delay in charging them sparked high-voltage protests nationwide.

The US Department of Justice investigated Arberys killing as a possible hate crime.

Greg and Travis McMichael, the accused father and son, both white, chased 25-year-old Arbery in their neighbourhood outside the coastal city of Bruncswick in February 2020 and shot him dead.

They were captured in a video by their neighbour William Roddie Bryan, who joined the chase in shooting Arbery with a shotgun at close range.

The McMichaels claimed Arbery was a burglar and shot him for allegedly attacking Travis.

The two were not charged with any crime and were free for more than two months, until cellphone video of the shooting surfaced online, prompting severe public backlash against what was seen as a racial hate crime.

Stating that the case was not closed after Ms Johnsons indictment, Mr Carr said: While an indictment was returned today, our file in not closed, and we will continue to investigate in order to pursue justice.

Arberys family took to Facebook to laud the indictment. Wanda Cooper Jones, Arberys mother said: Former DA Jackie Johnson... Indicted!!! JusticeForMyBaby!!!!

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Cooper Joness attorney Lee Merritt said prosecutors must be held accountable when they interfere with investigations in order to protect friends and law enforcement.

The case was handed to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation by the states governor Brian Kemp.

Prosecutors said an unarmed Arbery was jogging in the neighbourhood and was shot by Mr Travis. No evidence suggests Arbery committed a crime, they added.

The McMichaels and Bryan were charged with murder and other crimes in May 2020 and now face a trial this fall.

Soon after the shooting, Greg McMichael, who worked as an investigator in Johnsons office till 2019, called the prosecutor and left her a voice message, according to the evidence in pretrial hearings.

Jackie, this is Greg. Could you please call me as soon as you possibly can? My son and I have been involved in a shooting and I need some advice right away, according to the call recording in the public case file. Greg McMichaels phone records, however, do not show her calling him back.

Ms Johnson previously maintained she did not do anything wrong and immediately recused herself from the case due to the involvement of a former employee.

She went on to fight her re-election for Brunswick district attorney, but lost to independent candidate Keith Higgins. She blamed her loss on the controversy surrounding Arberys killing. Shortly after, she said people will understand that her office did what it had to under the circumstances.

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By Jessica DiNapoli

(Reuters) - FedEx Corp shareholders should reject founder and CEO Fred Smith's $54 million pay package because the logistics company gave him stock options after scrapping a cash bonus in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, only to reinstate it later, the Teamsters labor union said on Friday.

Smith, whose net worth is pegged by Forbes at $5.8 billion, was given a special option award "for motivation and retention purposes" in June 2020 after FedEx canceled a $3.4 million cash bonus for him, citing uncertainty around the COVID-19 pandemic.

Those options were worth $6.4 million as of the end of May, the close of FedEx's fiscal year, more than doubling in value since Smith received them. As more people shipped and received items during the pandemic and FedEx's business rebounded, the Memphis, Tennessee-based company reinstated Smith's $3.4 million cash bonus in December, but also allowed him to keep the special stock options.

This amounted to "double-dipping" that undercuts the pay-for-performance structure of Smith's compensation, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, which is bargaining on behalf of FedEx employees at a freight facility and is an investor in FedEx through pension and benefit funds, argued in a letter to shareholders on Friday, which was seen by Reuters.

"Having founded the company, been chief executive since 1998 and holding an 8% equity stake, surely CEO Smith has the appropriate incentives to drive shareholder value," the Teamsters general secretary-treasurer, Ken Hall, wrote in the letter.

The union is urging shareholders to vote against the company's executive pay plan at the company's annual meeting on Sept. 27. As with most companies, the vote at FedEx is non-binding.

FedEx declined to comment beyond what it has disclosed on executive pay in securities filings. In its informational disclosure to investors, FedEx said a significant portion of executive compensation is "at risk" and dependent on the company hitting performance goals and share price targets.

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FedEx Chief Operating Officer Rajesh Subramaniam, the company's highest paid executive after Smith, also had his $2 million cash bonus reinstated after he received a similar special option award and stock grant worth approximately $6 million at the end of May.

Many U.S. companies tweaked the pay of executives during the pandemic, easing performance targets and even giving them pay rises. Investors then voted down a record number of CEO pay packages at their annual shareholder meetings earlier this year. [L2N2NL2O2]

Although most shareholder votes on pay are non-binding, some companies have tweaked executive pay when faced with investor opposition. For example, in 2018 Walt Disney Co renegotiated the compensation of its chief executive at the time, Bob Iger, to toughen performance targets after shareholders voted down his pay.

The Teamsters acknowledged in the letter that Smith's options had yet to vest and that there was still uncertainty over the value of that grant. Smith also accepted a 91% cut in his annual salary during some of the last fiscal year. His salary was $966,125.

(Reporting by Jessica DiNapoli in New York; Editing by Greg Roumeliotis and Leslie Adler)
Jonathan Pollock arrived at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 dressed for concealment.

Pollock, a North Lakeland, Florida, resident, wore camouflage attire from neck to ankles after traveling to Washington, D.C., to protest the certification of the 2020 presidential election. As the demonstration turned to rioting, Pollock joined the throng who fought through police officers and pushed their way toward the Capitol entrance, according to federal court records.

Nearly seven months later, Pollock stands in contrast to most of the 630-plus suspects in the Jan. 6 insurrection. While the overwhelming majority indicted in the unrest  including his sister, Olivia Pollock  have been arrested, Jonathan Pollock remains a fugitive.

Pollock, 22, was grouped with his sister, a cousin and two friends when the U.S. Department of Justice filed indictments against them in late June on a range of charges, including assaults on law-enforcement officers. The other four have appeared in court and been released on bond.

Related: Prosecution: Polk man was ready to die in January 6 U.S. Capitol attack

'It's a political move': Relatives defend Lakeland siblings accused in U.S. Capitol riot

Jonathan Pollock stands at the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6 riot, according to an arrest affidavit from an FBI agent.

When FBI agents arrived early on the morning of June 30 at the Pollock familys property in the Kathleen area, they captured Olivia but didnt find her brother. More than two months later, Jonathan Pollock  known to friends as Johnny  is the only Jan. 6 suspect from Central Florida still at large.

James Wedick, a retired FBI agent, said Pollocks ability to elude arrest isnt necessarily surprising and doesnt mean the agency has made no progress in finding him.

It does require paperwork; it does require court orders; it does require attending meetings, said Wedick, who spent 35 years with the FBI. It requires getting coordination. Hes listed in the national database now, and theyre getting those entries in  if you have bank accounts and credit cards. Its minutiae that requires time to do, and two months is not unusual.

Story continues

The suspects: US Capitol riot photos show 4 North Lakeland residents arrested

Capitol Riot Roll Call: A running list of those who have been arrested

Wedick, who operates the website RetiredFBI.com, said the agency has the advantage of time.

The problem (for a fugitive) is the FBI has got all day to look for you, and the only way you can really remain a fugitive  and today its even tougher  is for you to walk away from your family and whatever you owned, Wedick said. You cant touch or pick it up again.

Supporters of former President Donald Trump clashed with police at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, and some broke into the building, disrupting the work of Congress as it met to certify Electoral College votes that confirmed the election of Joe Biden as president.

Pollock has been indicted on five charges, the most serious of which is assaulting, resisting or impeding law-enforcement officers. The maximum possible sentence on that charge is 20 years in prison, and the other four charges carry potential combined sentences of 10 years.

An FBI arrest affidavit includes photos taken from police body cameras outside the Capitol on Jan. 6. Several show a bearded man, identified by the FBI as Pollock, fighting with officers who tried to protect the Capitol against a swarm of rioters. Another image allegedly depicts Pollock standing near the entrance to the Capitol, holding an American flag and raising one arm, as if urging other rioters toward the building.

Another Jan. 6 case: Judge postpones Lakeland resident Corinne Montoni's hearing in U.S. Capitol riot case

Though the affidavit doesnt accuse Pollock of breaching the Capitol, as some rioters did, it quotes him as saying, We didnt come this far just to push back the cops.

In court records, FBI agents said that Pollock moved in a group that included his sister, his cousin, Joshua Doolin of North Lakeland, and two friends: Joseph Hutchinson of North Lakeland and Michael Perkins of Plant City.

Two weeks after the riot, the FBIs Washington Field Office opened a file on Unknown Subject (UNSUB) #144, later identified as Pollock.

Inspecting records

Wedick, who retired in 2004, said he tracked fugitives while working as an FBI special agent in California. He spent years working to capture Gilbert Chilton, convicted of embezzling millions from a teacher retirement system, and helped recover a former state senator convicted of bribery who fled to Costa Rica before sentencing.

Wedick said FBI agents searching for Pollock would get court orders to review financial records, which could reveal a travel history, and place stops on his credit cards. The agency would also develop a list of friends and associates with whom Pollock might have had recent contact.

And so, it might have been hard 30 years ago, but today, with all of the social media and computer stuff, it becomes easier, Wedick said. That is, it becomes easier if you maintain contact with those folks because most people do maintain contact.

Professor Kevin McMunigal, a former federal prosecutor and now a law professor at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, said investigators have several options for tracking possible contact between Pollock and associates, including family members.

McMunigal, a former Assistant United States Attorney in California, said one of the main surveillance tools is a dialed number recorder, also called a pen register, an electronic device that records all numbers called from a particular phone line. Agents could also use a trap and trace device, which identifies all incoming calls.

In other news: Lakeland lawyer says translator getting covert help to cross border out of Afghanistan

A third option, a tap of associates phone lines, would allow agents to listen to the content of phone calls. While all three require court approval, the standard of evidence for obtaining a wiretap is much higher, McMunigal said.

They also might be able to get a grand jury subpoena to get phone records of past calls, either from him or from his sister or from associates, to try and figure out where he might be, McMunigal said. Thats a way to kind of historically do the same kind of stuff they would be doing with a pen register or trap and trace.

Agents could also get permission to monitor Pollocks computer activity or that of family members, McMunigal said.

The former prosecutor said the FBI has likely established some form of active surveillance on Pollocks family members. Olivia Pollocks release agreement requires her to wear a GPS ankle bracelet, making it easy for agents to track her movements.

COVID-19: Months later, Auburndale COVID-19 survivor faces lasting physical, emotional effects

If a family member transferred money through a company such as Western Union, agents would likely be able to request records without even needing a judges order, McMunigal said.

The fact that Pollock hasnt yet been arrested suggests he has been careful and is not using any phones registered to him. While typical cell phones can be tracked through GPS signals and their proximity to transmission towers, Pollock could easily obtain a burner phone, a device that can be bought anonymously and used without an identifiable carrier account.

That makes it harder, for sure, McMunigal said.

Getting assistance?

Federal agents are no doubt looking for signs that someone is helping Pollock as he avoids arrest, both Wedick and McMunigal said.

While some of the Jan. 6 suspects have known ties to right-wing extremist groups, such as the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, no evidence has emerged to connect Pollock and his family to such organizations.

There is an entry dedicated to Pollock on Empty Wheel, a website operated by Marcy Wheeler, an independent journalist and a senior fellow at George Washington Universitys Center for Cyber and Homeland Security. Wheeler cites a detention memo for Perkins, Pollocks co-defendant, that suggests Pollocks group walked to the Capitol as part of a larger group that assembled at the Washington Monument, suggesting there may be some tie to the Proud Boys.

Also: Why did this quiet Florida town produce 4 Capitol riot suspects? Locals share different opinions

More: Florida emerges as a cradle of the insurrection as Jan. 6 Capitol riot arrests keep piling up

But court documents dont mention any affiliation between either Pollock or Perkins and the Proud Boys, Wheeler wrote. In an update, she wrote that an online researcher told her the local contingent did little more than nod at the Proud Boys.

The group included Pollocks father, Ben Pollock, Wheeler wrote, a detail that hasnt been previously reported. The elder Pollock has not been charged with any crimes related to the Jan. 6 riot.

Wheeler wrote that the arrest affidavit suggests the group left relatively few digital tracks for investigators (or had thoroughly scrubbed them by March 17, when the FBI conducted its first overt interview relating to Pollock). Of the five arrested, only Olivia gets mentioned as carrying a cell phone that placed her at the Capitol.

The affidavit says Jonathan Pollock shared cell phone photos from the Capitol riot with co-workers but makes no mention of his social media activity, Wheeler noted. Prosecutors have relied heavily on social media posts to make indictments against many other Jan. 6 suspects, including Corinne Montoni, a South Lakeland woman arrested in March. She has no reported ties to Pollocks group.

Anyone found to be assisting Pollock as he eludes arrest could be charged with a crime, McMunigal said. And Pollock could face an additional charge himself. McMunigal cited a federal statute that makes it a crime to cross state lines in order to avoid prosecution. That crime carries a maximum penalty of five years.

Could affect sentence

Pollocks continuing effort to avoid arrest will also work against him if he is eventually caught, McMunigal said. For one thing, it probably eliminates any chance that he would be released before a trial.

Opinion: Guest column: Jan. 6 was just the beginning of the GOP's attempt to control elections

When he gets arrested, theres no way hes going to be out, McMunigal said. So hes going to be in jail the whole time his case is pending, and that would increase the pressure on him to plead guilty. Its much harder to resist it if youre in jail and deprived of interaction with your family and everything.

The prosecution will also cite Pollocks actions in seeking a maximum sentence, McMunigal said. Federal judges consider advisory sentencing guidelines that consider the crimes, how they were committed and the defendants background. (Pollock has no criminal record in Florida.)

Judges have discretion to move up or down on the range of potential sentences.

To accept responsibility, traditionally thats seen as the first step toward rehabilitation, is to say, OK, I fess up and I did it,  McMunigal said. So it would not surprise me at all that this flight thing, the judge would be more inclined to go up.  So hes going to face serious consequences for this. I would bet, compared to the other guys (from Lakeland), he would have a more serious sentence.

There have been rare cases of suspects who avoid capture for years, such as Eric Rudolph, the Atlanta Centennial Park bomber. Rudolph hid in the mountains of North Carolina for five years before being captured.

But most fugitives give up or are caught much sooner. Wedick said FBI agents look for someone eluding arrest to make a mistake, such as contacting a relative.

Youre your worst enemy, he said. You want be a fugitive, but you cant keep your distance and so thats what happens. Its human psychology; thats all it is. If youre into chasing fugitives, you have to understand human psychology.

The FBI is still seeking dozens of people whose images were captured during the Capitol riot and who have not yet been identified. But McMunigal said he didnt think the heavy caseload would hamper efforts to find Pollock.

In my experience, unlike state prosecutors, where resources are usually very strapped and there are very high caseloads, at the U.S. Attorneys Office, we were working with the Secret Service and the FBI and stuff, he said. Anything we wanted, we got it.

Gary White can be reached at gary.white@theledger.com . Follow on Twitter @garywhite13.

This article originally appeared on The Ledger: US Capitol Riots: Experts say FBI has tools to find Jan. 6 suspect
With coronavirus infections again rising, and many governments, businesses and schools requiring tests for those not vaccinated, more Marylanders are seeking COVID-19 swabs.

But residents are encountering a different testing landscape than during the last big surge over the winter. Pharmacies and doctors offices, and even pop-up clinics, have taken the place of expansive, largely state-run mass testing sites, resulting in widely varying turnaround times for results.

The combination has experts worried that, as the highly contagious delta variant continues to expand demand for tests, capacity at the state and national levels will be stretched thin and cause further delays, like those seen during previous waves.

They say access to timely results could be restricted to those who can afford to bypass testing centers by buying tests to use at home. Those left waiting for results from labs associated with centers may not quarantine. This could make the pandemic worse and produce unreliable data that could hamper efforts to counter it.

My two main concerns are: Is access to testing constrained? I have a hunch that it may be, in many places. And, two: Is the test turnaround time fast enough to make public health decisions? I have a hunch that in many places, the answer to that question is, No, said Jennifer Nuzzo, lead epidemiologist for the Johns Hopkins COVID-19 Testing Insights Initiative at the Bloomberg School of Public Healths Center for Health Security.

Nuzzo should know.

A few weeks ago, her daughter was exposed when a vaccinated teacher at her day care tested positive for COVID-19  six days after her daughter had last seen him, Nuzzo said. Planning to see older relatives soon, Nuzzo sought tests for her immediate family.

She said it wasnt easy. Two urgent care centers seemed like they would be too crowded. Eventually, she found a walk-in testing option through the Anne Arundel County Health Department that was open for another hour that day.

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It seems like to do that level of kind of searching and trying to figure out where to go, I could imagine thatd be off-putting for a lot of people, a barrier, Nuzzo said.

On location, Nuzzo and her family got the swabs done swiftly. But afterward, she said, a health department worker told them results would take two to five days.

I was like, Oh, my God. Were already on Day Six. If I dont get my results back for five days, what was the point of this whole experience? The whole incubation period for my daughter was completely done, said Nuzzo, referring to the time from exposure to COVID-19 to when symptoms emerge, which is slightly shorter for the delta variant than the original strain.

Tests are recommended closer to three days past exposure, compared with three to five for previous strains.

In the meantime, Nuzzo purchased the BinaxNOW at-home COVID-19 tests, which came back negative. The more reliable polymerase chain reaction, or PCR, tests from the health department confirmed those results three and four days later.

More cases are prompting more authorities to ask for tests, for example, to enter a campus, office or school. Infections in Maryland have been on an upswing since early July, with 1,272 added Thursday. A dozen deaths were reported and 778 were hospitalized, the most since May.

Exactly how fast results are needed depends on the situation, said Gigi Gronvall, an immunologist and senior scholar at the Hopkins Center for Health Security.

For people to isolate, the sooner the better, she said. However, the de facto standard for travel and other things has been 72 hours.

She took her son, too young for vaccination, to be tested ahead of sleepaway camp during the summer and had him swabbed at two sites. The CVS test came back in 14 hours, while results from the state-run mass testing site at the Baltimore Convention Center came back in 74 hours, times she said show how uneven and unpredictable testing has become.

Gronvall said she plans more studies on testing times. For now, shes expecting more people to turn to over-the-counter rapid testing. That could be a big potential cost for consumers and results may not be accepted for all purposes such as travel.

The at-home tests cost about $24 for a two-pack at CVS, which is out of stock online and limiting customers to six packs per order.

More affordable and widely available rapid and at-home tests could help fill the void of government testing sites and alleviate the burden of other testing facilities said Neil Sehgal, assistant professor of health policy and management at the University of Maryland School of Public Health.

But he said the tests, especially if used routinely, can be expensive.

I dont think the average Maryland resident has that in their budget, Sehgal said.

Nuzzo said there shouldnt be a two-tiered system where only people with means and knowledge of the tests have access to timely results.

And at-home tests raise another concern: If positive, are all of those cases being reported to public health officials who help formulate policies to protect their communities?

While it was helpful for me to be able to make decisions for my familys health and make decisions about putting others at risk, no health department knows about this, she said.

Maryland doesnt publish testing turnaround data, though Charles Gischlar, a spokesman for the state Department of Health, said the states contract labs offer results within approximately 72 hours.

CVS said the outside labs it uses across the country have been averaging a turnaround of one to two days. A national private lab company Quest, said it is maintaining a one-day turnaround.

Thats better than some times reported last summer that exceeded a week or two. But testimonials from about a dozen people in the Baltimore area suggest the wait time varies  from a couple hours to four or five days.

One thing is clear: The demand for tests has increased compared to earlier this summer, though it has yet to reach the levels of April or during the pandemic peak over winter.

The average daily tally of tests reported by the state during the last week of August was 28,263, according to an analysis by The Baltimore Sun of state data. Thats about double from the 14,079 daily tests reported during the last week in June, but well below the average 41,379 daily tests reported during the last week of January.

The state health department said the numbers, reported on a state website, reflect PCR tests electronically reported to the agency by labs and other clinical facilities, which are required to report positive tests. Officials have not said whether results from testing programs at schools and universities, private business or other venues are included in the total.

David McCallister, a health department spokesman, said the state works with state-contracted labs on turnaround times.

Generally, test results may be available in 48 to 72 hours, he said. However, turnaround time for test results may vary depending on laboratory testing demands and resources. Individuals who may have been potentially exposed should follow CDC guidelines regarding self-isolation.

People may need the tests for travel, work or returning to school. Governments and businesses have instituted a variety of coronavirus vaccine requirements, some offering the option for regular testing instead of immunizations. And with infections among vaccinated people, called breakthrough cases, becoming more common, more people may be seeking tests when they have cold or allergy symptoms.

Sehgal said that officials had expected testing demand would decrease as more people got vaccinated. But the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now recommends vaccinated people be tested after a being exposed to someone with COVID-19.

Especially with delta and the amount of virus that people are putting out into the environment around them, because the delta variant replicates so rapidly once someone is impacted, timely access to test results are more important now than ever before, Sehgal said.

Shortly after Baltimore County resident Kevin Opeth and his fiancee returned from a trip to Nashville, he started to feel sick. And, although the couple is fully vaccinated against the coronavirus, Opeth wanted to be tested before his fiancee had her upcoming bridal shower. The 34-year-old hurried to a local Walgreens and got himself tested for COVID-19.

That was around 3 p.m. Aug. 25, he said, but the results of his PCR test didnt arrive until about 5 a.m. Aug. 28  the morning of the shower. His results came back positive, prompting a scramble to obtain a rapid test for his fiancee.

I expected to get it in two days, but it took close to four, he said.

Thankfully, her test came back negative, and, after consulting with their doctor, the party went on as scheduled while Opeth isolated.

Baltimore Sun reporter Hallie Miller contributed to this article.
Reuters

Boxer Manny Pacquiao on Tuesday sued for libel an influential celebrity evangelist followed by millions of Filipinos, after he accused the eight-division world champion of embezzling funds intended for a $70 million sports complex. Pastor Apollo Quiboloy, a self-proclaimed "Owner of the Universe" and "Appointed Son of God", is a longtime friend and spiritual adviser of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, with whom Pacquiao has recently locked horns. The popular Pacquiao is considering running for president next year and has alleged corruption in Duterte's government and criticised his cosy relationship with China https://www.reuters.com/world/china/philippine-president-spars-with-pacquiao-over-south-china-sea-2021-06-09.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) indicated Thursday he could support a law banning abortion after the detection of a fetal heartbeat, saying it was "interesting" and that he was "going to look more significantly at it."

Why it matters: States with Republican governments  newly emboldened by the Supreme Court's decision to leave Texas' law in place  could soon attempt to enact their own near-total abortion bans.

Stay on top of the latest market trends and economic insights with Axios Markets. Subscribe for free

What he's saying: What they did in Texas was interesting and I havent really been able to look enough into it, DeSantis told reporters at a news conference in West Palm Beach. I am going to look more significantly at it.

Driving the news: Florida legislative officials are expected to take up new anti-abortion bills during the upcoming session in January, the Tampa Bay Times reports.

State Senate President Wilton Simpson (R) told WFLA that "there is no question" the legislature will consider a "heartbeat" bill similar to the one passed in Texas.

The big picture: The Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision late Wednesday, rejected an emergency application to block Texas' restrictive law that bans abortion after about six weeks of pregnancy.

The law, which contains no exceptions for cases of rape and incest, bans the procedure after the detection of a fetal heartbeat  before many women know they are pregnant.

But it isn't enforced by the state and instead allows private citizens to sue anyone suspected of facilitating an abortion, including people who transport a patient to get the procedure.

Flashback: DeSantis signed onto a brief in July asking the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade as it considers a separate case over a Mississippi law that bans abortion after 15 weeks.

Go deeper: Here are the next states that could pass abortion bans after Texas

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By Rich McKay

ATLANTA (Reuters) - A Georgia grand jury indicted a former district attorney on Thursday on two charges stemming from her delay in charging suspects captured on video fatally shooting a Black man as he was out jogging in the coastal city of Brunswick.

The men accused of the Feb. 23, 2020, killing of Ahmaud Arbery were not arrested until weeks after the release of the video, which sparked outrage across the country. Civil rights activists said it marked another example of a targeted attack on a Black man.

The video showed Arbery, 25, jogging down a two-lane street, then being shot with a rifle as he was confronted by two men who had stopped their pickup in his path. A third man in another truck shot phone video of the incident.

Former Brunswick District Attorney Jackie Johnson told Glynn County police to make no arrests in the case, according to the indictment, which says she showed favor toward one of the men accused of the shooting, a former Glynn County police officer with whom she worked.

The indictment also alleges that she failed "to treat Ahmaud Arbery and his family fairly and with dignity."

After the video was released, Johnson recused herself from the case, and another prosecutor indicted the murder suspects. Johnson lost her bid for re-election last November.

Johnson was charged with obstruction of a police officer and violating her oath of office. She could not immediately be reached for comment.

In a statement issued by her office when the investigation started, Johnson's office said: "We are confident that any investigation will show that our office acted appropriately under the circumstances."

The statement added: "There is a public misconception about this case due to false allegations against our office by those with an agenda."

The former police officer, Gregory McMichael, 65, his son Travis McMichael, 35, and William "Roddie" Bryan, 51, are each charged with felony murder, federal hate crimes and other charges in Arbery's death. All have pleaded not guilty and are set to go to trial in October.

(Reporting by Rich McKay in Atlanta; Editing by Peter Cooney)
(L-R) "Red Notice" stars Ryan Reynolds, Gal Gadot, and Dwayne Johnson. Netflix

Johnson teams with an art thief (Reynolds) to capture another art thief (Gadot).

It's "Hobbs & Shaw" meets "The Thomas Crown Affair."

"Red Notice" will be available on Netflix beginning November 12.

Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.

The title refers to a real alert used by Interpol.

Gal Gadot and Dwayne Johnson in "Red Notice." Netflix

Red Notice is an alert used by the global police organization when there's a need to seek the location and arrest of one of the world's most wanted criminals.

Honestly, we're shocked it's taken this long for Hollywood to base an action movie around this term.

Johnson plays an FBI agent while Reynolds and Gadot are thieves.

(L-R) Dwayne Johnson, Ryan Reynolds, and Gal Gadot in "Red Notice." Netflix

In the movie, Johnson plays FBI agent John Hartley, who needs the help of the world's greatest art thief, Nolan Booth (Reynolds), to capture the world's most wanted art thief, known as "The Bishop" (Gadot).

Think of it as "Hobbs & Shaw" meets "The Thomas Crown Affair."

The movie also stars Chris Diamantopoulos ("Silicon Valley") and Ritu Arya.

The movie was originally bought by Universal in 2018.

Dwayne Johnson in "Red Notice." Netflix

The project is the brainchild of Johnson and director Rawson Marshall Thurber, who directed him in "Central Intelligence" and "Skyscraper."

The globe-trolling heist movie idea led to a bidding war among all the major studios and at the end of the day Universal came out on top. It would team up with production company Legendary ("Dune") to release it.

It looked like yet another collaboration between Universal and Johnson/Thurber, as the studio released "Central Intelligence" internationally and was the global distributor of "Skyscraper."

This marks the first time Johnson earned $20 million on a movie (he technically made $22 million).

A term sheet The Wall Street Journal obtained in 2018 revealed that Johnson would get a base pay of $21 million plus another $1 million for promoting the movie on his social media for the movie.

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It's an unheard of deal in today's Hollywood.

Gal Gadot also scored a $20 million payday.

Gal Gadot in "Red Notice." Netflix

Gadot's $20 million to be the illusive villain in the movie led to her being in third place on Forbes' 2020 list of highest paid actresses.

Netflix bought the rights to the movie in the summer of 2019.

Ryan Reynolds in "Red Notice." Netflix

Perhaps because of the large paydays for those involved (Thurber even pocketed at least a $10 million salary), Universal had second thoughts on the project and in 2019 allowed the movie's production companies to go back out and shop the project.

Netflix quickly gobbled it up.

You can't blame the streaming giant. Who's going to turn down an action movie with three the biggest movie stars in the world?

Filming took place during the pandemic.

To give the story its secret agent/heist feel, the movie is filled with on-location shots around the globe.

Much of production was shot during the pandemic. Production began in January 2020 and was halted for six months once COVID-19 hit in March. By November, shooting took place in Rome and Sardinia, Italy.

The movie's budget is one of the largest ever for a Netflix original movie.

Dwayne Johnson in "Red Notice." Netflix

The movie reportedly had a budget of close to $200 million, making it one of the most expensive Netflix original movies of all time.

The first trailer for the movie came out September 2.

Dwayne Johnson in "Red Notice." Netflix

Our first look at the movie makes it seem it's an action-packed thrill-ride  something we would expect from this cast.

Gadot takes off her heels to kick Johnson and Reynolds' butts; Johnson is diving away from explosions; and throughout Reynolds is pulling out the solid one-liners.

This looks like money well spent by Netflix.

Read the original article on Insider
A man armed with a gun is accused of holding a baby as he fired at three women during a road-rage shooting in Ohio, police say.

The bizarre scene unfolded after two women crashed their vehicles in Cincinnati on Wednesday. A 54-year-old woman said she and another driver were involved in the minor collision that didnt cause any damage and words were exchanged afterward, according to police.

Im gonna go get my man, the 54-year-old recalled the other woman telling her, police said. You better go get yours.

About half an hour later, 31-year-old Ladon Penn arrived and walked into a home before reappearing with gun, police said.

A screenshot from a video obtained during the investigation captured Penn holding a handgun in his right hand while holding a baby with his left arm, police said. Another screenshot shows him pointing the gun while holding the baby.

A 31-year-old man held a baby while shooting a gun at three women in Cincinnati, Ohio, police said. Photo from Cincinnati Police Department.

Penn is accused of shooting at the 54-year-old and two women with her. A bullet ricocheted and grazed the 54-year-olds forearm, police said.

She was treated for the minor gunshot wound at the scene.

Officers arrested Penn and found a 9mm handgun shortly after he left the scene of the shooting with the other woman, police said.

Penn was charged with felonious assault, child endangering and having weapons while under disability.

In Ohio, a defendant can be charged with having weapons under disability if theyre a fugitive, under indictment or convicted of a violent felony, under indictment or convicted of a felony drug offense, drug dependent or a chronic alcoholic or under adjudication of mental incompetence.

Penn was in jail on bonds totaling $150,000.

Owner said dog shot itself in the face  but that isnt what happened, Ohio cops say

Boyfriend kills woman to stop her reporting restraining order violation, WA cops say

Driver runs over cop, rams home before police kill him in wild chase, Texas police say
Dr Rochelle Walensky, the director of the CDC and Dr Janet Woodcock, the acting commissioner of the FDA, have reportedly told the White House to think more about booster vaccine roll out ((EPA))

Senior federal health officials have advised the Biden administration to hold off on its vaccine booster plan until further research is completed, say reports.

Dr Janet Woodcock, Food and Drug Administrations acting commissioner, and Dr Rochelle Walensky, the director of the Centres for Disease Control and Infection, said in a briefing with the federal government, there needed to be further inquiries before they can advise that a round of third doses go ahead.

According to the New York Times, they said it also needed to be established if was possible to give people a different dose from a different manufacturer from their first two doses, or even if all people require a third vaccination.

Dr Woodcock and Dr Walensky reportedly asked for more data before any final decisions could be reached. It is believed that Modernas FDA approval is lacking data, while the Johnson & Johnson vaccines data has not arrived.

The discussion is said to have taken place during a meeting with Jeff Zients, the White Houses pandemic coordinator. It is unknown how Mr Zients responded, says the Times.

Chris Meagher, a White House spokesperson told newspaper:We always said we would follow the science, and this is all part of a process that is now underway. He stressed that they were seeking full review and approval for the booster shot scheme from the FDA and the CDC before initiating it.

The plan for booster shots eight months after getting fully vaccinated against covid was announced by President Biden last month. It is scheduled to begin on 20 September, and Mr Biden said that he and the First Lady Jill Biden, would be getting their doses as soon as they can.

On 2 September, Dr Anthony Fauci, Senior Medical Advisor to Mr Biden and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, threw his support behind a potential third dose.

From my own experience as an immunologist, I would not at all be surprised that the adequate, full regimen for vaccination will likely be three doses, he said.

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The scheme is initially intended to give a third dose include the elderly, healthcare workers and care home residents. Inspiration for the plan came from Israel, the first jurisdiction to give out third doses, beginning with people over 60. However, the Times also reports that the FDA is interested in seeing the raw data from that programme, which it is yet to.

Questions have circulated in the medical community about the need for unilateral third doses. A few senior vaccine regulators have resigned from the FDA in protest.

Dr Paul Offit, the director at the Vaccine Education Center in the Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia and member of the FDAs advisory panel told the Times: There is no compelling reason to get a third dose.

Various studies have shown that the vaccines offer strong protection despite waning over time.

We have seen also data from Israel that there is a waning of immunity and that starts impacting what used to be what was 100% against hospitalization. Now, after the six month period, is becoming low 90s and mid-to-high 80s, Albert Bourla, the CEO of Pfizer told CNBC in July.

However, despite this dip, being vaccinated still provides advantages over not, especially in light of the Delta variant. Data from the CDC shows unvaccinated people are at much high risk from covid. As the rate of infection among the unvaccinated is five times higher than among the vaccinated.

In addition to this, it showed the rate of hospitalisation is also greater among the unvaccinated. One in 24.9 per 100,000 people are admitted to hospital, while only one in 100,000 vaccinated people are.
The past week was yet again dominated by Afghanistan, but as the dust began to settle following the withdrawal and mass evacuation, domestic politics again began to creep into the discourse. In particular, the passing of a Texas abortion law appears to have galvanized both the Left and the Right into action, and the Supreme Court refusing to strike it down could lead to a protracted fight as the midterm elections start to come into focus. Meanwhile, Sen. Joe Manchin once again appears to be a thorn in the side of his own party. Here are the quotes of the week.

"The Taliban seeks international legitimacy and support. Our message is: Any legitimacy and any support will have to be earned. The Taliban can do that by meeting commitments and obligations on freedom of travel, respecting the basic rights of the Afghan people, including women and minorities, upholding its commitments on counterterrorism, not carrying out reprisal violence against those who choose to stay in Afghanistan, and forming an inclusive government that can meet the needs and reflect the aspirations of the Afghan people."

 Secretary of State Antony Blinken after the military evacuation of Afghanistan was completed on Monday

"I thought that the secretary of state's statement, which was videotaped, and he was looking slightly off-camera, I mean, it looked like a hostage video. It was not the kind of production values that you would expect for such a moment in time."

 Fox News reporter Jennifer Griffin on Blinkens speech and how it was delivered

To correct erroneous reports, the U.S. military did not leave any dogs in cages at Hamid Karzai International Airport, including the reported military working dogs. Photos circulating online were animals under the care of the Kabul Small Animal Rescue, not dogs under our care.

 Pentagon spokesman John Kirby

Never in my lifetime would I ever believe America would have an administration knowingly make a decision to leave Americans behind. ... We now have Americans stuck in Afghanistan, the Taliban in charge, with more weapons than theyve ever had in the past.

 House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy condemns the Biden administrations handling of the withdrawal from Afghanistan

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Remember i am the one who stood 5 inches from your face and was letting you know i would never get to hug my son again, hear his laugh and then you tried to interrupt me and give me your own sob story and i had to tell you that this isnt about you so dont make it about you!!!

 Shana Chappell, the mother of Lance Cpl. Kareem Nikoui, who was among the 13 U.S. service members killed, reveals what she told President Joe Biden as their bodies were being transferred back to the United States

I need not tell you the perception around the world and in parts of Afghanistan, I believe, is that things are not going well in terms of the fight against the Taliban. ... And there is a need, whether it is true or not, there is a need to project a different picture.

 A transcript obtained by Reuters between Biden and Ashraf Ghani in their last phone call before the Taliban seized Afghanistan and Ghani fled.

"I was not going to extend this forever war, and I was not extending a forever exit.

 Biden offering a vigorous defense of the Afghanistan withdrawal, the day after the final evacuation flights

"You can't talk yourself out of something you behaved yourself into. And the administration behaved itself into this."

 Sen. John Kennedy, a Louisiana Republican, on Bidens address after the end of the Afghanistan War

The Supreme Courts cowardly, dark-of-night decision to uphold a flagrantly unconstitutional assault on womens rights and health is staggering. That this radically partisan Court chose to do so without a full briefing, oral arguments, or providing a full, signed opinion is shameful.

 Speaker Nancy Pelosis response to a restrictive Texas abortion law that the Supreme Court on Wednesday declined to block from going into effect

"The Supreme Courts ruling overnight is an unprecedented assault on a womans constitutional rights under Roe v. Wade, which has been the law of the land for almost 50 years. By allowing a law to go into effect that empowers private citizens in Texas to sue healthcare providers, family members supporting a woman exercising her right to choose after six weeks, or even a friend who drives her to a hospital or clinic, it unleashes unconstitutional chaos and empowers self-anointed enforcers to have devastating impacts."

 Biden on the same law

"This nomination is deeply shameful. As mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel helped cover up the murder of Laquan McDonald  a mere teenager when he was shot 16 times in the back by a Chicago Police Officer. This alone should be flatly disqualifying for any position of public trust, let alone representing the United States as an ambassador."

 Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat, on Bidens nomination of Rahm Emanuel to be ambassador to Japan

"How the heck did we get to this position? How do you create an army that folded in that matter of time? The Taliban did not have any artillery support. The Taliban did not have air or logistic support. How did we lose the country after 20 years of us being there? Somebody needs to be asking some questions about how did we get to where we're at and on the strategic failures that were made."

 Retired Army Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, a former national security adviser to President Donald Trump

I think its been clear for many months that the situation could go very fast, and thats been part of the intelligence briefing. There have also been suggestions that the Afghan national defense force might hold on for longer. But logically, you can see what happened.

 Prime Minister Boris Johnson speaking to British troops who just returned from Kabul

"Instead of rushing to spend trillions on new government programs and additional stimulus funding, Congress should hit a strategic pause on the budget-reconciliation legislation."

 Sen. Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat, throws a spanner in the works over Biden's proposed $3.5 trillion budget package

Manchin has weekly huddles w/ Exxon & is one of many senators who gives lobbyists their pen to write so-called bipartisan fossil fuel bills. Its killing people. Our people. At least 12 last night. Sick of this bipartisan corruption that masquerades as clear-eyed moderation.

 Ocasio-Cortez tweets her response to Manchin's op-ed

Washington Examiner Videos

Tags: Afghanistan, Abortion, Joe Manchin, Joe Biden

Original Author: Washington Examiner Staff

Original Location: 'How the heck did we get to this position?': Quotes of the week
Teslas Cybertruck wont be available until 2022, but people are already coming up with fun ways to modify it into something even more unusual. The CyberLandr is an add-on retractible camper that mimics the Cybertrucks futuristic angular shape, popping up to offer comfortable digs on the road and disappearing completely into the bed when its not in use. Lance King, CEO of software and artificial intelligence company Stream It, came up with the idea when he was preordering the Cybertruck and realized no existing camper was going to fit the trucks unique body shape.

Stream It's CyberLandr Cybertruck Camper slots neatly into the back of the upcoming Tesla Cybertruck for an unparalleled luxury camping experience.

The CyberLandr add-on folds up neatly into the bed of the Cybertruck for incredibly easy transportation.

Full view of Stream It's CyberLandr Tesla Cybertruck camper on.

The only company I can think of that could do that is my company, King told Business Insider. Weve got the software developers; weve got the AI; and were really creative. We wanted it to be a Tesla-like experience even when you were in an RV.

That means the CyberLandr is more than just a hunk of metal and plastic that fits into the back of Teslas controversial pickup. Its a piece of high-tech machinery that aims to level up the whole camping experience using Stream Its AI sensors, solar power, and the ability to connect to Elon Musks StarLink satellite internet service. In other words, anyone toting this camper around in their Cybertruck definitely wont be roughing it.

The uniqueness of the CyberLandrs design starts with its form factor. Since it fits so snugly into the truck bed, its only revealed when the tailgate is opened, offering a fold-out set of stairs and a pop top that rises surprisingly high for comfortable standing height inside. This compactness when closed means the pickups center of gravity is maintained during travel, its aerodynamic drag is unaffected, and the drivers rear visibility is unimpaired. The 1,200-pound weight of the camper is estimated to reduce the range of the electric truck by just five percent, and the whole thing can be lifted in and out of the truck using a special dolly.

Clean, spacious interiors inside the CyberLandr Cybertruck Camper add-on

Folding chairs in the CyberLandr can be taken outside whenever you feel like dining al fresco, and turn into a cozy bed when it's time to sleep.

Clean minimalist kitchen area inside the CyberLandr Cybertruck Camper add-on.

Modern, eco-friendly bathroom in the luxurious CyberLandr Cybertruck Camper add-on.

Capable of holding 40 gallons of fresh water and 20 gallons of gray water, the CyberLandr camper manages to pack a functional bathroom into its tiny footprint, featuring a spa-style shower head, heated one-piece porcelain floor, and a self-cleaning dry flush toilet that eliminates the need for a black water tank. The shower and sink water can be continuously recirculated thanks to an onboard four-stage water filtration system with UV sterilization, which also allows you to safely refill the fresh water tank from a source like a river or stream.

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Inside, youll also find a built-in kitchen with an intelligent faucet featuring touchless voice control, a built-in colander, wash bin, drying rack, and cutting board, along with a five-square-foot porcelain countertop, an invisible induction cooktop, and a compressor fridge. A set of freestanding chairs and pivoting tables slide out of the walls to offer seating inside the camper or outside, if you want to dine al fresco, and they transform into a queen bed when its time to hit the hay. A 32-inch smart TV, dual pane windows with electrochromic dimming, a built-in surround sound system, and voice-activated home automation with a 360-degree-view surveillance system add to the sense of a luxury home on-the-go.

Rear view of the fully expanded CyberLandr Tesla Cybertruck camper add-on.

All 20 initial CyberLandr offerings at a discounted price of $39,995 have sold out, but you can still place a preorder at the $43,995 tier for a deposit of just $100. If you prefer to wait until this thing is actually built and on the market, youll pay $49,995, which is higher than the base price of the Cybertruck itself. Lets be real, though  the kind of people who would drop the cash on this high-end, Tesla-specific camper arent sweating the price. Production is supposed to start later this year with development and testing beginning after the Cybertruck is available sometime in 2022.

What does Elon Musk think of the CyberLandr camper? One word: cool.
The House and Senate Judiciary committees will hold hearings on the Supreme Courts so-called shadow docket following its decision to let stand a new Texas law restricting abortion.

The high court on Wednesday voted 5-4 not to block the law, preserving it without allowing opponents to make oral arguments. It was just the latest example this year in which the court used the opaque process to rule on cases involving key political issues.

This anti-choice law is a devastating blow to Americans' constitutional rights  and the Court allowed it to see the light of day without public deliberation or transparency, Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat and the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said in a statement Friday. At a time when public confidence in government institutions has greatly eroded, we must examine not just the constitutional impact of allowing the Texas law to take effect, but also the conservative Courts abuse of the shadow docket.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler of New York also said in a statement Thursday that his committee will hold hearings to shine a light on the Supreme Courts dangerous and cowardly use of the shadow docket, adding that decisions like this one chip away at our democracy.

PELOSI WILL BRING VOTE ON BILL CODIFYING ABORTION PROTECTIONS IN RESPONSE TO TEXAS RESTRICTIONS

University of Chicago law professor William Baude coined the term shadow docket in a 2015 law journal article to describe a range of orders and decisions that the court makes outside its normal procedure to address emergency appeals such as blocking government actions. Often, the orders are unsigned, do not explain the courts reasoning, and do not reveal how each justice voted.

In the Texas case, the Supreme Court denied an emergency request to block state legislation that bans abortion procedures if medical workers have "detected a fetal heartbeat for the unborn child and allows individuals to file civil lawsuits against anyone who "aids or abets" such abortions.

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The majority opinion said that the order allowing the Texas abortion restrictions to take effect is not based on any conclusion about the constitutionality of Texass law, and in no way limits other procedurally proper challenges to the Texas law.

In a dissenting opinion, Justice Elena Kagan said that the ruling illustrates just how far the Court's 'shadow-docket' decisions may depart from the usual principles of appellate process and that the majority's decision is emblematic of too much of this Court's shadow docket decision-making  which every day becomes more un-reasoned, inconsistent, and impossible to defend.

Other Congressional Democratic leaders are also planning actions in response to the Texas law. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday that she will bring a vote on the Womens Health Protection Act, a bill that would essentially codify Roe v. Wade into federal law by prohibiting states from implementing many kinds of requirements or restrictions that abortion advocates argue infringe on reproductive rights.

Democratic frustration with the Supreme Courts shadow docket extends beyond the Texas abortion law.

Last week, an unsigned court order blocked the Biden administrations targeted eviction moratorium intended to protect renters during the COVID-19 pandemic, saying Congress would have to act to extend a pause on evictions.

And in another action last week, the Supreme Court refused to block a lower court ruling that ordered the Biden administration to reinstate the Trump administrations Remain in Mexico immigration policy.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

This is not the first time Congress has noted its concerns with the shadow docket. During a February House subcommittee hearing on the issue, both Republicans and Democrats expressed concern that the Supreme Court was not transparent enough in how it makes the emergency decisions.

I am a big fan of judges and justices making clear whos making the decision, and I would welcome reforms that required that, Texas Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert said in the February hearing.

Washington Examiner Videos

Tags: News, Congress, Senate, Senate Judiciary Committee, Supreme Court, Abortion, Law, Healthcare, Texas

Original Author: Emily Brooks

Original Location: House and Senate Judiciary committees to examine Supreme Court 'shadow docket'
By Tyler Clifford, Julia Harte and Jessica Resnick-Ault

NEW YORK (Reuters) - New Yorkers are a stoic lot - and no strangers to extreme weather. But even they were taken off guard by the sheer volume of rain that fell in a few short hours on Wednesday evening and the chaos it provoked.

Social media was abuzz with videos showing cars nearly submerged on major roadways and waterfalls gushing into subway stations as New York scrambled to respond https://www.reuters.com/world/us/new-york-city-mayor-declares-state-emergency-after-record-breaking-rain-2021-09-02 to the unexpected ferocity of Ida, a storm that had already clobbered https://www.reuters.com/world/us/louisiana-left-without-power-mississippi-highway-collapses-idas-wake-2021-08-31 Louisiana when it made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane on Sunday.

College student Daniel Winchester, 18, said he waded through water for more than four hours on Wednesday night, helping people escape from about 100 cars that got stranded on the street near his apartment in the Elmhurst neighborhood of Queens. The water was so deep in some places that cars simply floated away, he said.

Other New Yorkers were forced to evacuate their homes.

"When the water started coming up through the drains, it was like a bad nightmare," said Rebecca Timman, 29, a real estate agent whose basement apartment in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn flooded.

Timman rushed to bring her belongings up to the first floor of the building as two inches of water collected in her basement bedroom. Like other New Yorkers, she had been receiving flash flood warnings on her phone since Tuesday, but was still taken by surprise by the sheer amount of water.

Ida's remnants brought 6 to 8 inches (15 to 20 cm) of rain to a swath of the Northeast, from Philadelphia to Connecticut, and set an hourly rainfall record of 3.15 inches for Manhattan - breaking the record set by Tropical Storm Henri less than two weeks ago, the National Weather Service said.

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New York police were dispatched to at least six homes in Brooklyn and Queens on Wednesday and Thursday where residents were found dead or near death as a result of the floods, according to the New York Police Department public information office.

Outside a house where officers discovered a 45-year-old woman and 22-year-old man who died after their home flooded, New York officials held a press conference on Thursday where they emphasized the scientific consensus that human-caused climate change is increasing the frequency and impact of natural disasters such as Ida.

U.S. Representative Gregory Meeks said he was devastated by the loss of his two constituents. "A mother, a son, gone from us, because of climate change and these record storms," Meeks said.

"The suddenness, the brutality of storms now, it is different," said New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio at the same news conference, adding that the storm was "the biggest wake-up call" that the United States needs to do more to fight climate change.

For 55-year-old Dave Sarni, a resident of the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn, the storm also highlighted an urgent need for improvements to New York City's sewer lines and other infrastructure. "That's gotta be addressed," he said.

New York officials blamed much of the flooding that stranded subway trains and cars throughout the city on the unexpected record-setting intensity of the rainfall that occurred in a short space of time, rather than the total for the day, which was within predictions.

"This is the first time we've had a flash flood event of this proportion in the city of New York and in the outlying areas," said New York state Governor Kathy Hochul.

In Scarsdale, a suburb north of the city, residents began the process of cleaning up after seeing their cars submerged and their garages filled with water less than an hour after the rains began.

"We're lucky we're not in New Orleans," said Jason Gold, 49, of Astoria in Queens, who was visiting a family member in Scarsdale.

"We take for granted that it won't happen in this part of the country."

(Reporting by Tyler Clifford in New York, Jessica Resnick-Ault in Scarsdale, and Julia Harte in Washington, Editing by Rosalba O'Brien)
Illinois Republicans want Gov. J.B. Pritzker to veto the legislative maps Democrats passed this week.

Maps drafted in May were passed by majority Democrats at the statehouse. Despite calls from civic groups asking that lawmakers wait until the final Census data was released, Gov. J.B. Pritzker enacted the maps. Republicans criticized the governor for going against his campaign promise to veto partisan legislative maps.

Democrats said they drafted and passed maps based on estimates to meet a constitutional deadline of June 30 for the legislature to act. Final data from the Census wasnt released until mid-August, months tardy because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

A special session to revise the maps was held Tuesday in Springfield. A status hearing was held Wednesday in the federal lawsuit Republicans filed this summer challenging the legislative maps.

House Deputy Minority Leader Tom Demmer, R-Dixon, noted on the House floor Tuesday Illinois population decline. Those remaining, he said, were left out of the process to draw new political lines for the next ten years by the Democratic majority in the House.

Seventy-three people went behind that closed map room door and 12,812,435 other Illinoisans were literally shut out, Demmer said.

But theres one person Republicans say can block the maps: Gov. J.B. Pritzker. Theyre again urging the governor to abide by a campaign promise to veto maps drawn by politicians.

I hope that Gov. Pritzker rights your wrong with a veto of this politician-drawn map, but unfortunately given the recent history Im not confident of that, because this Democrat majority continues to prove over and over again that you care more about your personal power than the people you represent, Senate Minority Leader Dan McConchie said on the Senate floor.

Pritzkers office didnt return messages seeking comment.

Senate President Don Harmon, D-Oak Park, said all Republicans have done is sue Democrats.

Weve never seen any of your plans, weve never seen any of your maps produced by the minority party, Harmon said. Where are those maps?

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Republicans say they didnt draft maps in May because final Census data wasnt available. They also contend its beyond the June 30 deadline for lawmakers to act and a bipartisan commission must take over the process.

Change Illinois Executive Director Madeleine Doubek said in a statement the organization hopes the courts will force the correction of lawmakers callous political mapping calculations.

Twice in a matter of months, Illinoisans have seen their overwhelming pleas for independent and transparent mapmaking utterly ignored by those elected to represent them, Doubek said. Their maps make a farce of democracy and their mapmaking process was a charade. Illinois lawmakers have effectively demonstrated the clear and compelling need to end gerrymandering once and for all.

Democrats said the maps are fair, in bounds and represent the diversity of the state.

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Tags: States, News, Republicans, Illinois, Redistricting

Original Author: Greg Bishop, The Center Square

Original Location: Illinois Republicans ask Pritzker to veto legislative maps
BENGALURU (Reuters) - India has granted homegrown drugmaker Biological E permission to begin midstage studies of its COVID-19 vaccine in children and adolescents, according to an official statement on Friday.

The Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) gave the approval to the Hyderabad-based pharmaceutical company on Sept. 1, the statement https://pib.gov.in/PressReleseDetail.aspx?PRID=1751664 said.

The company will study the safety and tolerability of its vaccine, CORBEVAX, in this population, it added.

So far, six vaccines have been authorized for use in the country where only about 11.28% of the entire population has been fully vaccinated so far, according to Johns Hopkins data https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/region/india.

Of these, the COVID-19 shots for adults by Bharat Biotech and Zydus Cadila have been indigenously developed.

In late August, India also approved Cadila's COVID-19 vaccine, the world's first DNA shot against the coronavirus, for emergency use in children aged 12 years and above.

Biological E. is also running a late-stage trial of its vaccine in adults.

(Reporting by Vishwadha Chander in Bengaluru; Editing by Rashmi Aich)
Washington Post

Davy Macias, 37, was intubated and dying of complications from covid-19 when doctors helped her give birth to her daughter. She would never see her baby. Her husband, Daniel Macias, 39, would only get a brief glimpse of their child because he, too, was hospitalized after contracting the virus. According to Davy's sister-in-law, Terri Serey, Daniel waited to name the baby girl because he believed he and his wife would walk out of the hospital alive to introduce the newborn to their four other chi
Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The civil trial of three former Wells Fargo & Co employees over their alleged roles in a scandal involving phony accounts kicked off on Monday, a rare public confrontation between a top U.S. banking regulator and former high-level bank executives. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) is squaring off against executives it says are partly culpable for the San Francisco lender's misconduct before an in-house OCC judge in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, in a hearing expected to last at least two weeks. The long-running scandal over Wells Fargo's pressurized sales culture that led staff to open millions of unauthorized or fraudulent customer accounts has cost the bank billions of dollars in civil and criminal penalties and has badly damaged its reputation.
An ISIS militant pleaded guilty Thursday to all charges related to his participation in a "brutal" scheme to capture, torture and ultimately behead hostages in Syria, including four Americans, the Justice Department said Thursday.

Why it matters: Alexanda Amon Kotey, a former British citizen who was part of an ISIS cell dubbed "The Beatles," is among those responsible for the 2014 executions of American journalist James Foley and other hostages, according to the DOJ.

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Kotey supervised ISIS' jails and, with other ISIS members, engaged in a "prolonged pattern" of physical and psychological violence against the hostages, which often ended with public beheadings that were videotaped and uploaded online.

Details: Kotey's actions, which included forcing hostages to witness other hostages' murders, were part of an effort to compel the U.S. government and victims' family members to pay ransoms for their release, according to the DOJ.

The four Americans in his custody were Foley, Kayla Jean Mueller, Steven Joel Sotloff and Peter Edward Kassig. They all died as ISIS hostages.

Video of Foley's beheading spurred widespread public rebuke of the militant group, and helped galvanize support for the U.S. campaign to destroy ISIS.

The Syrian Democratic Forces captured Kotey and an alleged co-conspirator in January 2018 as they were attempting an escape to Turkey. He faces a mandatory sentence of life in prison and is scheduled for sentencing on March 4, 2022.

What they're saying: "This guilty plea ensures that Kotey will spend the rest of his life in prison for the horrific crimes he has committed," Mark J. Lesko, acting assistant attorney general for the DOJs National Security Division, said in a statement.

"Although there remains much work to be done in this case, we hope todays events provide some measure of justice for Koteys victims and their families as they continue to grieve the loss of their loved ones."

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Japan's Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga said Friday he will not run for re-election as party leader this month, effectively ending his tenure after just one year, his party's secretary general said.

Suga announced his intention to resign at an emergency meeting of senior members of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), Toshihiro Nikai told reporters.

"Today at the executive meeting, (party) president Suga said he wants to focus his efforts on anti-coronavirus measures and will not run in the leadership election," Nikai said.

"Honestly, I'm surprised. It's truly regrettable. He did his best but after careful consideration, he made this decision," he added.

The shock announcement comes with Suga's approval ratings at an all-time low over his government's handling of the response to the pandemic.

But it was a decision that had not been foreshadowed, with Suga dropping no hints of his plans to leave office after just a single year in power and before contesting his first general election.

He came to office last year, stepping into the post left empty when Japan's former prime minister Shinzo Abe resigned for health reasons.

Suga had been widely expected to seek reelection as LDP leader in a vote set for September 29, with most speculation surrounding only how soon after that he would call a general election.

The election must be called by late October, and the LDP is expected to remain in power but possibly lose seats as a result of Suga's unpopularity.

His government's approval rating has nosedived to an all-time low of 31.8 percent according to a poll by the Kyodo news agency last month.

And recent reports about his plans for a cabinet reshuffle, as an attempt to remedy his unpopularity, appeared to be insufficient.

Suga has been battered by his government's response to the pandemic, with Japan struggling through a record fifth wave of the virus after a slow start to its vaccine programme.

Story continues

Much of the country is currently under virus restrictions, and the measures have been in place in some areas for almost the entire year.

But they have been insufficient to stop a surge in cases driven by the more contagious Delta variant, even as the vaccine programme has picked up pace with nearly 43 percent of the population fully inoculated.

Japan has recorded nearly 16,000 deaths during the pandemic.

The 72-year-old Suga's election as prime minister last year capped a lengthy political career.

Before taking the top office he served in the prominent role of chief cabinet secretary, and he had earned a fearsome reputation for wielding his power to control Japan's sprawling and powerful bureaucracy.

The son of a strawberry farmer and a schoolteacher, Suga was raised in rural Akita in northern Japan and put himself through college after moving to Tokyo by working at a factory.

He was elected to his first office in 1987 as a municipal assembly member in Yokohama outside Tokyo, and entered parliament in 1996.

hih-kaf-sah/oho
U.S. Labor Secretary Marty Walsh told Yahoo Finance on Friday there's "no question" the Delta variant had an impact on the disappointing August jobs report. Nonfarm payrolls increased by 235,000 in August, far short of the 733,000 expected.

"One of the biggest areas of decline... from the last three job reports was hospitality and leisure, and you can see a correlation to the Delta variant right there," Walsh said.

The leisure and hospitality sector added a net of zero jobs in August  with restaurants and bars losing 42,000 jobs. Retail also lost 29,000 jobs. Walsh told Yahoo Finance if the U.S. continues to see a surge in variants, those sectors highly impacted by health worries and restrictions will continue to be a concern.

"There's kind of a perfect storm brewing here that caused this problem  and we need also the perfect storm to continue to move us out of this," Walsh said. "We're making the investments in places that need to be made and we just need to continue to get people vaccinated...I think we will fully recover. It's just a matter of, we don't know what the timeline is."

U.S. Labor Secretary Marty Walsh speaks while accompanying Doug Emhoff during a visit to the Benjamin L. Hooks Job Corps Center in Memphis, Tennessee, U.S., May 6, 2021. REUTERS/Justin Ford/Pool

The slowdown in job growth comes as enhanced unemployment benefits are set to expire on Sept. 6  leaving millions of Americans set to lose benefits. The Biden administration has said states can use previous stimulus funds to extend the extra jobless aid after the programs expire, but it doesn't appear any states are likely to do so, as of Friday. Twenty-six have already ended the enhanced benefits early.

When asked what needs to be done to help those unemployed workers amid the Delta variant surge, Walsh said he thinks the restart of schools will help many parents get back to work.

"There's no playbook on how to come out of a pandemic, so we just need to continue to be focused on how do we continue to support our businesses and support our workers to get back into the job market," said Walsh.

Story continues

The Biden administration is also pushing Congress to send the bipartisan infrastructure bill and a multi-trillion dollar reconciliation package to the president's desk. But a divide between moderates and progressives within the Democratic party threatens the reconciliation package, which will invest trillions in social programs and climate change measures.

Sen. Joe Manchin (D., W.Va.) called for a "pause" on the reconciliation legislation in an op-ed this week.

"I personally don't think we should pause. I think we should continue to move forward," Walsh said. "As we think about coming out of the pandemic, as we think about building back better, as we think about winning the future of America  we need to make investments now, not just in building a bridge, but also building a bridge to get people to work."

Jessica Smith is chief political correspondent for Yahoo Finance, based in Washington, D.C. Follow her on Twitter at @JessicaASmith8.

Read more:
A Los Angeles police pursuit of human trafficking suspects in a Mercedes-Benz ended in a three-car crash in Koreatown shortly before midnight Thursday, killing an innocent motorist and injuring three others.

The person killed, who has not been identified, was an innocent bystander, said LAPD Lt. Rex Ingram.

"Our hearts go out," he said. "It's tragic for the victim of the human trafficking and also for the victim's family, the victim of this traffic collision."

Police officers were conducting undercover surveillance of human trafficking suspects at Melrose and Western avenues when they saw the suspects drop off an apparent victim about 11:40 p.m., according to LAPD Officer Tony Im. When the officers attempted a traffic stop, the black Mercedes-Benz sped away, he said.

The pursuit continued until the Mercedes struck three other vehicles at Sixth Street and Wilton Avenue in Koreatown, he said. The force of the collision sent some of the vehicles spinning around the intersection, while the Mercedes crashed into some bushes.

One of two people in a white Toyota truck was pronounced dead at the scene, police said. The other person was taken to a hospital.

At least three other motorists suffered serious injuries in the collision, police said. The two male suspects in the Mercedes suffered minor injuries, police said.

LAPD officials did not identify the dead pending notification of next of kin.

The two suspects, whom police described only as in their 20s, could be seen on video being removed from the Mercedes by officers. As of Friday morning, the LAPD did not have formal booking information for the pair.

Detectives also are interviewing a woman investigators believe was the victim of a human trafficking scheme, police said.

In 2017, a grand jury found police chases in Los Angeles County are causing unnecessary bystander injuries and deaths and that law enforcement officers need better training to reduce the risk of crashes during high-speed pursuits, according to a report.

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The report came after a data analysis by the Los Angeles Times showed that 1 in 10 car chases initiated by the Los Angeles Police Department from 2006 to 2014 resulted in injuries to civilians.

The grand jury said both the LAPD and the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department need to improve training for officers who engage in pursuits, and questioned the need to chase suspects for nonviolent crimes.

Citing data provided by the California Highway Patrol, the grand jury report found that 17% of the car chases that took place in the county in a 12-month period beginning in October 2015 ended in a crash that could have resulted in injury or death. Two-thirds of those 421 pursuits ended in an arrest.





This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
At least 58 deaths so far have been blamed on Hurricane Ida, including 13 in the South, and 47 in the Northeast, where remnants form the storm tore through the region on Wednesday.

In Louisiana, where the storm made landfall, the power is still out for hundreds of thousands of people. That means shortages of food, water and fuel. President Joe Biden will visit the area later today.

Across the Northeast, record rainfall caused unprecedented flooding, catching many people by surprise in their cars and homes, requiring rescues by first responders from rising tides and powerful floods.

In New Jersey, a police officer saved a man stuck in his submerged car, but the search is being ramped up for two missing college students whose car may have been pulled into the river in Wayne.

Boats went house-to-house in Delaware and Pennsylvania to save the stranded. Meanwhile, New York residents were carried to safety on a bulldozer.

Ida tore through the region, leaving flooded neighborhoods, a submerged stadium, and rushing water strong enough to send a shipping container floating, and pile cars on top of each other.

TD Bank Ballpark in Bridgewater, N.J., home of the Yankees' AA affiliate team, was completely submerged in water. / Credit: CBS News

When Somerville, N.J., resident Hakim Hampton's basement started flooding, he tried to drive to a friend's house to borrow a pump. "I climbed out the window, because I knew if I opened the doors, all of that water was gonna get in the vehicle," he told correspondent Mola Lenghi.

"Was it scary?"

"I was kind of nervous, so I didn't know what to expect," said Hampton. "But thank God I'm safe. Made it back safely, and now this (pointing to the flooded street) is the aftermath of what we're going through... We wasn't prepared for anything like this. This is the worst I've ever seen it, even with Sandy."

In places where water has receded, communities are left to dry out and pick up the pieces. Crews are cleaning up towns torn apart by tornadoes, and fixing crumbled roads that swallowed up cars.

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On Thursday Governor Phil Murphy toured the damage in New Jersey. "This is going to take us some time to dig out of, there's no question about it," he said.

As the storm moved through the region, homes flooded, and the New York City subway system shut down after the onslaught of rain.

"Storms affect all of us, but what we've got to recognize is the suddenness, the brutality of storms now, it is different," said New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio.

People look at cars abandoned on the flooded Major Deegan Expressway following heavy rains from the remnants of Hurricane Ida on September 2, 2021 in the Bronx borough of New York City. / Credit: Spencer Platt/Getty Images

People across the region were caught off-guard by the rare weather, described as a once-in-500-years event, now all the more common because of climate change.

"It's time for an entirely different approach," De Blasio said, "because we're getting a signal here. We have to make a change to protect the lives of the people of this city."

As the death toll continues to rise, those who made it to safety are especially grateful.

"I know we lost everything, materialistic, everything, you know?" said Jeff Lopez. "That, you can repair, but family you can't bring back."

There are still a lot of streets and parking lots under water. It could take some time for a lot of the standing water to recede, and only then can communities really begin to assess the damage.

Who is Nate Burleson? Meet our new co-host of "CBS Mornings"

Heavy clashes erupt between Taliban and resistance fighters

As Delta variant spreads, Americans reconsider travel overseas
When Ronald Burns found a second noose hanging at a Central Kentucky factory, hed had enough.

Burns is a Black Lexington resident who worked at Berry Global, an international plastics company with a factory in Nicholasville, according to court records. In seven months working for Berry in Nicholasville, Burns received two racist notes, one of which called him a racial slur and told him to die. He also found two nooses, one in his locker, another on his toolbox.

He quit his job at Berry due to the harassment, according to court records.

In an ongoing legal fight taken to the U.S. Court of Appeals, Berry acknowledged the incidents but insisted its not to blame or liable. The company won with that argument in federal district court.

The racist behavior, which began the day after he started full time with the company, terrified Burns and made his wife fearful.

His wife worried that he would be killed, his attorneys wrote in court records. He was losing sleep and barricaded himself inside a locked office at work.

Burns attorneys also wrote that he was diagnosed with diverticulitis. His doctor said the stress of the racial discrimination may have caused the condition.

In February 2020, Burns filed a federal lawsuit against the company, alleging it failed to adequately combat the harassment. He was left in a hostile work environment where he was repeatedly subjected to racial discrimination, he alleged. He also said company investigations into the harassment werent thorough. Berry wasnt able to identify Burns harasser.

Burns didnt convince a federal Lexington judge who determined Berry wasnt responsible for the racial harassment. Judge Danny C. Reeves ruled March 9 that Berry did its best to investigate the discrimination. Reeves dismissed Burns claims before trial.

As the number of incidents increased, so, too, did Berrys efforts to root out the perpetrator, Reeves wrote in his memorandum.  ... Berrys investigative efforts were sufficient, despite their lack of success.

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Burns filed an appeal on Aug. 18 with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. The appeals court would determine if Reeves decision to dismiss was correct. The company denies that it created an unlawfully hostile work environment.

Burns seeks damages to cover lost money and embarrassment, humiliation, pain and suffering, mental anguish, loss of enjoyment of life and other issues, his attorneys wrote in his initial complaint.

A racist note. Video didnt show possible perpetrators faces.

Burns was hired for a permanent, full-time job with Berry on Aug. 6, 2018, after working as a temporary employee, according to court records. He finished his first night shift on Aug. 7, 2018, and found a note that read dance monkey when he returned to his locker.

Burns notified the plant manager of the note  written on cardboard  the day he found it, according to court records.

The plant manager asked Burns if the note was slang or some sort of prank, according to court records. He also told Burns that he seemed like hed be capable of defending himself if someone tried to fight him.

The plant manager reported the note to human resources, which started an investigation without Burns knowledge, his attorney said in court records.

A supervisor met with employees who were working when Burns found the note and advised this type of harassment would not be tolerated, according to court records.

Surveillance camera footage was reviewed to see who may have entered the mens locker room at the factory before Burns found the note. Burns attorneys alleged that Burns was given conflicting statements about whether or not the footage existed.

But the footage only showed individuals from the waist down, according to court records. Efforts were made to match people by their clothing using surveillance video from other cameras. Berry later adjusted the surveillance camera to identify passersby more easily, according to court records.

A few days later, a noose.

No suspects were identified by Berry before Burns found a noose hanging from his locker after his shift on Aug. 11, 2018, according to court records.

He again alerted higher-ups. He sent a photo of the noose to a human resources employee, who later called him to get more information, according to court records.

Burns also filed a complaint with Berrys ethics hotline, according to court records.

Burns later received an email from the company, which said, the investigation of this matter has been completed and appropriate action has been taken. Due to the confidential nature of any investigation, findings must remain confidential and cannot be shared. Thank you for filing your report.

A supervisor met with another set of shift employees who had access to the locker room before Burns found the noose. They were told Berry wouldnt tolerate the harassment, according to court records.

Some Berry employees were interviewed and asked a few questions about what they saw or heard. The employees werent shown photos of the note and noose left in Burns locker, according to court records.

Berry planned to move its lockers to an area where they could be caught on a surveillance camera. Berry also planned to do a refresher training on company policies against discrimination and harassment, according to court records. Burns attorneys alleged in court records that the refresher training wasnt thorough enough.

Facility supervisors were also asked to check the locker room and look for offensive items. But Burns attorneys alleged in their appeal that locker room inspections didnt occur frequently enough, which allowed another incident to happen.

2nd note got more hateful

One day after Berry did harassment training, Burns found a note in his locker on Aug. 24, 2018. The writer of the note called him a racial slur and told him to die, according to court records.

Burns was upset by the note and went home for the night. He later called the police and provided a statement to an officer, according to court records.

Berry supervisors identified one employee they suspected was involved and suspended him from work, according to court records. But Burns had to walk past the accused employee as that employee was being escorted from the building. The suspected employee threatened to harm Burns.

Burns said he was scared by the altercation because the accused employee had a company-issued knife, according to court records.

Burns also indicated he didnt think the suspended employee was actually his harasser, according to court records. The company eventually ended the employees suspension after deciding it didnt have enough evidence that he was responsible.

Another noose found. Victim resigns

Several months passed before Burns found the second noose on Jan. 14, 2019. He was the on-call technician that night and was called into work, according to court records. He found a noose tightened inside a vice on his toolbox when he arrived. It was covered by a cloth.

Burns notified a supervisor at the factory at the time. Burns and the supervisor contacted management. They were instructed to take pictures and write up a report.

Berry supervisors and human resources employees again reviewed surveillance footage and interviewed employees. Again, the culprit went unidentified, according to court records. Burns left the company a few months later after finding another job.

Burns attorneys also alleged in the appeal that sufficient evidence existed to believe a supervisor may have been Burns harasser, opening the company up to liability for the continued harassment.
Sep. 3PORTLAND, Maine  While attempting to get a novel angle, a daredevil newsreel cameraman lashed himself beneath a bouquet of hydrogen-filled balloons 84 years ago this month.

Then he floated away into the skies above Old Orchard Beach.

It took guts to get up there but, when his tether failed, it took a priest with mad marksmanship skills to get him back down.

It was front page news in the Sept. 29, 1937, edition of the Bangor Daily News.

"A New York newsreel photographer went on an unscheduled, un-scientific ascent into the atmosphere today," the Associated Press reported.

The newsman's name was Al Mingalone of Paramount and it wasn't his first stunt. Mingalone was already well-known for his dangerous antics.

He once let a roller skater twirl him around a platform atop the Empire State Building without a railing. Mingalone also reportedly hung onto the outside of a submarine while it submerged and he filmed with a waterproof camera.

He was so well known, he was even a pitchman for Camel cigarettes.

"I'm for Camels. My experience proves that Camels are a big aid to digestion," read ads in the BDN that same year. "I smoke a lot of Camels. They don't jangle my nerves."

Both large endorsements showed Mingalone at work, dressed in a trench coat and fedora, cigarette between his fingers.

But back to the story.

On Sept. 28, the day before the article ran, Mingalone strapped into a parachute harness connected to 30-odd, four-foot balloons on a golf course in Old Orchard Beach. He'd planned to get aerial footage of the area.

At the time, the town was already a long-standing summer resort, known for aviation and motorsports. Planes, including Charles Lindbergh's, would land on the beach while cars and motorcycles held races on the sand.

According to the AP story, and another published by Time Magazine in October, Mingalone was at first tethered to the ground by a 200-foot rope.

It snapped.

Story continues

A young man named Thomas Bowman, who worked for the golf course, ran and leaped for the ragged end of the rope. But, like something out of a movie, he tripped and the cord drifted upward, just out of reach. Soon, Mingalone was lost from sight in a rain cloud about 2,000 feet overhead.

Also on hand that day was a Catholic priest and aviation buff the Rev. James Mullen. Along with another Paramount photographer, Philip Coolidge, Mullen jumped into a car and headed in Mingalone's last known direction. Lucky for the newsman, winds took him south, not east and out to sea.

Around two miles from the point of departure, Coolidge and Mullin spotted Mingalone. Rain-soaked and shivering, he'd dropped to just 600 feet above the ground. The priest was reportedly fond of skeet shooting and somehow then produced a .22 caliber rifle.

"Mullen jumped from the car, chanced a shot at the balloons 25-feet above Mingalone's head, missed," Time wrote. "His second shot punctured two of the spheres."

That might have brought him down but, at the same time, Mingalone accidentally dropped his 12-pound Bell & Howell movie camera. With the loss of ballast, he shot back up into the heavens, still traveling south.

"Dangling from a harness beneath the runaway balloons, Mingalone attracted considerable attention when he soared over the mill cities of Biddeford and Saco," the AP wrote.

Mullen and Coolidge gave chase and finally caught up with the floating cameraman about 13 miles from his original launch sight. Mingalone was scudding along, about 200 feet above a farmer's field.

"Father Mullen sprinted into a cornfield, kneeled, plunked another balloon," Time wrote. "That was all the exhausted, dripping Mingalone needed to bring him to earth."

Almost a year later, a page three story and photo in the BDN said the National Headliner's Club had awarded Mingalone a silver plaque in Atlantic City for his adventure. In the photo, the daring cameraman wears a monocle and white tuxedo.

Mingalone went on to live through several more stunts and died at age 86 in 1991. Many of his newsreels still exist in the Getty collection.

Mullen died in 1954. There's no record of him winning anything, even though his marksmanship saved the day  and Mingalone's noggin.
MSNBC video shows the man running toward the NBC News reporter. MSNBC

The man accused of assaulting an NBC News reporter during a Hurricane Ida broadcast has been arrested.

Police charged Benjamin Eugene Dagley with two counts of simple assault, one count of disturbing the peace, and one count of violating an emergency curfew.

According to Cleveland.com, Dagley broke into a factory in 2017 that he once owned in an attempt to make cyanide gas.

Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.

An Ohio man accused of assaulting an NBC News reporter during a live Hurricane Ida broadcast in Gulfport, Mississippi, has been arrested, police said.

The Gulfport Police Department said Benjamin Eugene Dagley, of Wooster, Ohio, has been charged with two counts of simple assault, one count of disturbing the peace, and one count of violating an emergency curfew in the case.

The news correspondent, Shaquille Brewster, was reporting live on the beach about the postal service's return to Mississippi post-Ida when a white pickup truck parked behind him.

A man police identified as Dagley quickly ran out of the truck and accosted Brewster and his crew while yelling something indiscernible about "accuracy," according to live footage of the incident.

Police issued an arrest warrant for Dagley one day after the confrontation and noted that he may be in violation of his probation in Ohio. In 2017, Dagley drilled holes into chemical tanks of hydrochloric acid and other substances in an attempt to make cyanide gas at an electroplating company he formerly owned, according to a report from Cleveland.com.

Brewster tweeted shortly after the incident that he and his team were "all good." The journalist traveled to Louisiana after the experience and was back to reporting on the hurricane in New Orleans on September 1.

Hurricane Ida knocked out all eight of the city's transmission lines, eliminating electricity for hundreds of thousands in the region as a sweltering heatwave continues to grip the area.

Read the original article on Insider
Logan Paul declined to offer Austin Wallace a job. Victor Decolongon/Getty Images

Aspiring influencer Austin Wallace went viral on TikTok after asking YouTuber Logan Paul for a job.

Wallace said he quit his $100,000-a-year job as a welder and drove 12 hours to speak to Paul.

The TikTok video showing Paul turning him down has 12.5 million views.

Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.

A TikTok video by an aspiring social-media star who said he quit his $100,000-a-year job in an attempt to land employment with the online personality and boxer Logan Paul has gone viral.

Along with his brother, Jake, 26-year-old Logan Paul has built an empire off the back of his YouTube channel, where he has over 23 million subscribers and has been posting vlogs, storytimes, pranks, and other comedic content since September 2016.

The TikTok, which has amassed 12.5 million views since it was uploaded on Sunday, was posted by Austin Wallace, a 22-year-old welder from Ohio. Wallace said that two days after quitting his job, he drove 12 hours to talk "business" with Paul.

@aj_wallace69 Well heres the end result with Jakes brother Idk what to do at this point.  original sound - Austin Wallace

The TikTok shows Wallace approaching Paul at a press conference for Jake's fight against Tyron Woodley and telling Paul that he "took a risk" in order to ask him for a job.

When asked by Paul what he was "good at," Wallace said he could do TikTok dances. In response to Paul's question of whether he's "got what it takes," Wallace said, "I don't."

"Then why would I give you a job?" Paul asked. "Why would I do that?"

Paul said he could not give Wallace a job, describing his team as "locked." He added: "Go make content and do stuff with your friends. I'm glad you quit your job. It takes balls to do that, but now you gotta activate."

The TikTok shows clips of these interactions interspersed with Wallace, who appears to be crying, explaining the context.

Story continues

"I wanna act. I wanna do these things," Wallace said. "I don't know what to do. I did come up here by myself. I do have family, but we're not the closest, and I don't have really close friends."

After his story went viral, Wallace posted two more TikToks. In the first, he responded to the mixed reactions to his viral TikTok, which led some viewers to brand him as "pathetic." He said he didn't care about the negative comments. He added, "Just remember, I'm fricking trying."

In the second TikTok, which was directly addressed to Paul, Wallace asked the creator if he could feature on his podcast "Impaulsive."

Wallace then posted a vlog on his YouTube channel, which had 1,051 subscribers at the time of writing, documenting his drive to his former workplace. He said he was going to "beg" for his job back. Upon returning, he told his viewers he had been successful.

Wallace also said in the video that he was contacted by Hector Penate, the host of the HP Podcast, to appear as a guest. The podcast describes itself as a show "about dealing with failure while having the best effort and attitude possible."

"I failed, but there is definitely a silver lining coming," Wallace said. The aspiring influencer then shared a short clip from the podcast, where he said he was able to share his "side of the story."

Paul has faced a number of controversies over the years, most notably over filming what appeared to be a dead body while exploring the Aokigahara forest in Japan. He has since apologized and spoken up on various social-justice issues.

Neither Paul nor Wallace immediately responded to Insider's request for comment.

For more stories like this, check out coverage from Insider's Digital Culture team here.

Read the original article on Insider
As children return to school amid a rise in COVID-related hospitalizations in various parts of the U.S., health professionals are calling on schools to mandate masks to stem the spread of coronavirus.

The simple message I have is: Lets get the kids in masks, Dr. Andre Campbell, an ICU physician and trauma surgeon at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, said on Yahoo Finance Live (video above). Masks dont hurt. Theyre safe. And the kids will wear them. If we do that in the short term, that will help protect the kids. Remember, weve had 204,000 new cases in kids. On average, there are 330 new cases of children being hospitalized in the United States.

According to the latest data from the American Academy of Pediatrics, over the week ending August 26, the U.S. saw 204,000 newly confirmed COVID-19 cases in children. Over the past month, COVID cases among children have risen five-fold and now account for 22.4% of weekly cases.

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Vaccines from Pfizer (PFE), Moderna (MRNA), and Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) are very effective in preventing cases of serious illness and death. At the same time, transmission among unvaccinated populations seems to occur at a much higher rate as the highly contagious Delta variant circulates in the U.S.

The unvaccinated folks are the ones who are actually spreading the virus around, Campbell said.

Most children are unvaccinated since only kids ages 12 and up can receive a COVID-19 vaccine. Nevertheless, some states are prohibiting mask mandates in schools as those governors leave it up to the parents to decide whether or not to mask their children.

Govs. Doug Ducey (R-AZ), Ron DeSantis (R-FL), Greg Abbott (R-TX), Henry McMaster (R-SC), Asa Hutchinson (R-AR), Spencer Cox (R-UT), Kim Reynolds (R-IA), and Kevin Stitt (R-OK) have signed laws banning school mask mandates in their respective states.

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Campbell disagreed with these decisions.

We have to do anything we can do, Campbell said. This debate about masking up, it shouldnt be a debate. Lets do whats safe for our kids. Lets protect them. Mask them up.

Story continues

A couple of governors have reconsidered: Hutchinson has spoken openly about his regret for allowing such legislation, and Cox is reportedly considering allowing local jurisdictions in his state to implement their own mask policies.

'Lets protect our kids until they can get the vaccine'

Studies have shown that masking makes a difference in protecting the wearer and those around them from the virus by mitigating the viral loads being transmitted both ways.

Masking is safe, Campbell said. We should mask our kids. Lets protect our kids until they can get the vaccine. Its now fully approved for 16 and over. Were waiting for the data for younger kids. Lets protect our kids and make sure theyre not a source now of the next wave.

A mother adjusts the facemask of her child as she enters the St. Lawrence Catholic School on the first day of school near Miami, on August 18, 2021. (Photo by CHANDAN KHANNA/AFP)

Campbell also asserted that all school employees "should be mandated now to get the vaccine."

States like California, Connecticut, Illinois, New Jersey, Oregon, and Washington have put mandates in place that require any employee working in a school to be vaccinated against COVID-19 or undergo weekly testing.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently released a report highlighting how an unvaccinated teacher in California infected with COVID-19 likely spread the virus through her classroom after working for just two days and sometimes speaking to the class unmasked.

An unvaccinated teacher likely infected half of a class. (CDC)

'Way more patients than there were before'

There have been more than 39.5 million cases of coronavirus in the U.S., with an 18% increase over the past 14 days. During that time period, COVID-related deaths have surged by 75% while hospitalizations have risen 17%.

I think we have to do every single thing we can to push this back because think about what it was like in June, Campbell said. In June, we thought things were turning the tide. There were only 10,000 cases. Now were up above 150,000 cases. And thats because the Delta variant in June was 1% of our infections. Now, its 99%. So it has changed the character of the pandemic.

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He added that Americans are currently "in a new phase. Its a little bit Back to the Future again. Were back to where we were. But we have to remember: This is a new variant and a variant that is much more virulent, much more powerful, and there are way more patients than there were before.

On top of rising case counts, Southern states are also dealing with the aftermath of Hurricane Ida. When natural disasters strike, public health guidelines  like social distancing, wearing masks, hand hygiene, and proper ventilation become a challenge to maintain.

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Louisiana, Texas, and Florida are already hard-hit, Campbell said. It will get worse there before it gets better. Thats combined with kids going back to school. Theres a bit of a surge with kids going back to school, too, because theres a little bit more debate than I think there should be.

Those three states are among the top 10 in COVID-related hospitalizations and deaths.

Remember, this is a pandemic now of the unvaccinated, Campbell said. That means that greater than 96-97% of the people in the hospital and the people who are dying are unvaccinated.

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Campbell also cautioned against traveling during Labor Day Weekend, noting that people could become exposed and bring transmission back to their home communities.

I think to protect everybody I would say dont travel over the Labor Day Weekend unless you absolutely have to, he said. "You have to make sure youre protected. Be careful. Mask up. The handwashing, the distancing, all those things that we know that work until everybody can get vaccinated.

Adriana Belmonte is a reporter and editor covering politics and health care policy for Yahoo Finance. You can follow her on Twitter @adrianambells and reach her at adriana@yahoofinance.com.

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Companies, like Match Group and Bumble, are offering help to their employees impacted by Texas new restrictive abortion laws. (Getty Images)

Businesses with employees based in Texas are starting to offer financial help to those affected by the states new restrictive abortion law.

The proposed aid comes after the states ban on abortions after six weeks, when most women are not aware they are pregnant, came into effect. Exceptions are not granted for pregnancies caused by rape or incest.

Civil action may also be taken in the state against anyone who has, provides or enables an abortion to take place, such as doctors or anyone who drives someone to a clinic. Private citizens can seek damages for up to $10,000.

According to research from the University of Texas, the ramifications of the law will not be felt equally, as those on low incomes will be more negatively affected due to the costs involved of leaving the state to get a legal abortion. Illegal abortions are also predicted to rise, with the World Health Organisation stating that 13 per cent of maternal deaths are a result of such abortions.

In light of this, two companies have vowed to offer relief funds to their employees are known for dating apps; Bumble and Match Group.

Austin-based Bumble announced it was going to make a relief fund to help its employees looking to terminate their pregnancies.

Starting today, Bumble has created a relief fund supporting the reproductive rights of women and people across the gender spectrum who seek abortions in Texas, the company said in a statement.

Bumble is women-founded and women-led, and from day one weve stood up for the most vulnerable. Well keep fighting against regressive laws like #SB8, the company wrote on its Twitter account.

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In addition, a Bumble spokesperson directed The Independent to several grassroots abortion funds it was urging people to support. These included Fund Texas Choice, National Network of Abortion Funds and Frontera Fund.

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Shar Dubey, the CEO of Match Group, issued a memo to staff that she would personally establish a relief fund for members of staff based in Texas and any dependents who were required to get family planning treatment outside of the state. The firm is based in Dallas, and owns and operates numerous dating apps; including Match, Hinge and Tinder.

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In the letter, first reported by Bloomberg, Ms Dubey said:, As I have said before, the company generally does not take political stands unless relevant to our business. But in this instance, I personally, as a woman in Texas, could not keep silent.

It continued: Surely everyone should see the danger of this highly punitive and unfair law that doesnt even take an exception for victims of rape or incest. I would hate for this state to take this big step back in womens rights.

The Independent contacted Match Group for further comment.

This comes as the federal government vocalised the unconstitutional nature of the law. President Biden described it as unconstitutional chaos, and said that he was looking into options within the Justice Department to insulate women and providers on 2 September.

Along with this, Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, floated the idea of a codification of Roe v Wade, the 1973 US Supreme Court ruling that granted women across the country the right to abortion. This would involve passing a vote through Congress bringing womens right to choose as federal law.

After the US Supreme Court voted to not block the law by five votes to four, Justice Sonia Sotomayor stated the law was a breathtaking act of defiance  of the constitution, of this courts precedents and of rights of women seeking abortions throughout Texas.

However, Texas governor Greg Abbot said that the state will always defend the right to life.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel returned Friday to the scene of deadly flooding in the west of the country in a bid to shore up support for her embattled party before this month's national election.

Since the July disaster put crisis management and climate change back at the top of the agenda, Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU) and their unpopular candidate, Armin Laschet, have been haemorrhaging support.

With the September 26 vote fast approaching, the outgoing Merkel checked in on the flood-stricken village of Altenahr in Rhineland-Palatinate state, and will view two inundated towns in Laschet's own neighbouring North Rhine-Westphalia on Sunday.

After touring the rubble-strewn roads of Altenahr where the vast majority of homes are still uninhabitable, Merkel acknowledged residents' trauma.

"When you are here you get a small sense of the mortal fear many people had in the night of the flooding, who had to wait it out on top of or under their roofs," she said.

"We will not forget you, and the next government will pick up where we left off" to ensure public aid reaches the victims, she pledged.

Merkel, who will retire from politics when a new government is in place, had made a well-received visit in the immediate aftermath of the deluge, offering billions of euros in federal aid to rebuild ravaged infrastructure.

The appearance stood in marked contrast with a politically calamitous stop by Laschet in what is now widely seen as a fateful moment in the erstwhile frontrunner's campaign.

As President Frank-Walter Steinmeier gave a sombre speech mourning the floods' 181 victims, the CDU leader was caught on camera behind him joking with local officials.

- 'Put foot in it' -

"Merkel went there and listened and had the right expression and the right gestures and Laschet managed to put his foot in it," political scientist Ursula Muench told AFP.

She noted that after Merkel's 16 years in office, her shadow looms large over the race -- particularly as Laschet's chief rival, Social Democratic Finance Minister Olaf Scholz, also tries to present himself as her rightful heir.

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His party is now polling 25 percent, five points up on Laschet's conservatives, according to a new survey for public broadcaster ARD.

The Christian Democrats are now encouraging as many joint appearances as possible between Merkel and Laschet, who will accompany her on Sunday.

However, the visit carries some political risk as emotions are still running high in the stricken region.

In the village of Dernau, clean-up volunteer Christine Jahn complained this week about red tape holding up tranches of a pledged 30 billion euros ($36 billion) in federal and state aid.

"I want less babbling and more getting on with it, so that the money arrives without bureaucracy," the 66-year-old told AFP.

Public anger has also focused on a failure to sufficiently warn vulnerable residents or rush them to safety before the waters surged through their community.

- Flippant response? -

The catastrophe at the same time renewed the focus on climate change, which 80 percent of Germans say they want more political action to mitigate, according to a poll for broadcaster RTL.

A major international study last month found that man-made global warming made the deadly floods in Germany as well as Belgium up to nine times more likely.

In the Ahr and Erft regions of Germany, 93 millimetres (3.6 inches) of rain fell in a single day at the height of the crisis.

In the immediate aftermath, Laschet drew criticism for seemingly contradictory statements in a television interview on the urgency of addressing the climate crisis.

Asked whether he thought the government had made mistakes on the issue, Laschet said it would be wrong to "change policies just because of one day" in what sounded to many critics like a flippant response to the disaster.

All eyes are now on Laschet, whose CDU has shed around 14 points in support since he became party leader in January and is still on a downward slide, to see whether he can find his footing again before election day.

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More than a million people are expected to fly through Chicagos airports over Labor Day weekend, twice as many as last year, but travelers driving to the airport may encounter some extra headaches. Some OHare International Airport parking lots remain closed and the People Mover train that once connected parking lots and terminals remains out of service.

At least two economy lots remain inaccessible to travelers. Lot E is closed. Lot H was converted to paid employee parking in 2019, and though some employees were temporarily able to park closer to the terminals last year as part of pandemic mitigation efforts, they have since returned to other lots, including Lot H, Chicago Department of Aviation spokeswoman Christine Carrino said in an email.

The airport does not anticipate parking shortages, but if lots reach capacity staff will offer parking vouchers for the main garage, Carrino said, as they have done before.

Those who do park in the economy lots will rely on shuttle buses to get to and from the terminals, while the People Mover remains closed more than 2  years after work to update and expand the Airport Transit System was supposed to be substantially complete. The work has been going on for six years, and the trains have been shut down completely since January 2019.

Carrino did not provide an updated time frame for when the train might reopen, but said the system was going through the final testing process.

The contractor on the project was following a systematic and deliberate procedure to ensure train systems meet requirements, testing that included verifying the systems response to unscheduled door opening alarms, Carrino said. Some of the systems have not achieved the required results, and are undergoing work.

The Aviation Department understands the inconvenience and impacts of not having the system active to support airport operations but also needs it to perform reliably before opening to the public, she said.

Story continues

In the meantime, both airports are expected to be busy over the holiday weekend, even as Chicago health officials recommended stricter quarantine and testing for unvaccinated travelers, with the delta variant of the coronavirus on the rise nationwide.

Nearly a million people are expected to travel through OHare between Thursday and Monday, with more than 210,000 flying Friday, the busiest day at OHare, according to the Aviation Department.

More than 200,000 are expected to fly through Midway Airport, where the busiest day will be Monday, with 45,000 travelers. Both airports anticipate seeing more than twice as many people over the holiday weekend as last year, the Aviation Department said.

sfreishtat@chicagotribune.com

lzumbach@chicagotribune.com
(Bloomberg) -- Emirates Global Aluminium, the Middle Easts biggest producer of the metal, is poised to select three U.S. banks as lead underwriters for its potential initial public offering, people with knowledge of the matter said.

The company, which is backed by sovereign fund Mubadala Investment Co., is preparing to bring on Citigroup Inc., Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. to arrange the planned IPO, the people said. A share sale could value EGA at more than $15 billion, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private.

Emirates NBD Bank PJSC and First Abu Dhabi Bank PJSC are also expected to have roles on the offering, one of the people said. EGA may add more banks to the listing at a later stage, according to the people.

Deliberations are ongoing, and theres no certainty EGAs owners will decide to proceed with the listing, the people said. Representatives for Mubadala, EGA and the banks declined to comment.

EGA is owned equally by Abu Dhabi fund Mubadala and another sovereign wealth fund, Investment Corp. of Dubai. Mubadala said in April it was close to a listing of the company.

The company has smelters in Abu Dhabi and Dubai and a bauxite mine in Guinea. With aluminum prices at their highest levels since 2011, EGA generated a record income of 1.74 billion dirhams ($473 million) in the first half, after a loss of $57 million a year earlier. Core earnings were $950 million.

A listing of EGA would rank among the largest-ever share sales in the United Arab Emirates and would come at a time when state-owned entities are seeking to monetize their core assets. Mubadala raised $731 million in a July IPO of satellite operator Yahsat, in what was Abu Dhabis second-largest listing.

Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. is considering IPOs of its drilling business and a fertilizer venture called Fertiglobe, which could each raise more than $1 billion, people with knowledge of the matter have said.

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A previous plan to list EGA in 2018 was shelved after then-U.S. President Donald Trump imposed tariffs on aluminum imports from the UAE. Bank of America Corp., Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan worked on the plans for the earlier share sale.

(Updates with details of planned Adnoc unit listings in penultimate paragraph)

More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com

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After a semester online, Wang Ziwei looked forward to meeting classmates who are returning to campus at Washington University in St. Louis. Wang is among at least 500 students the Chinese government says have been rejected under a policy issued by then-President Donald Trump to block Beijing from obtaining U.S. technology with possible military uses. Students argue it is applied too broadly and fume at what they say is an accusation they are spies.
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Hello. Its September, and North Carolina lawmakers are nowhere near having a budget agreement for the fiscal year that started two months ago. That sort of feels like a problem, right?

Well, heres why its (kind of) not:

When Congress cant pass a budget, or the president and Congress cant agree on a spending plan before the start of a new fiscal year, Congress has to pass a temporary spending plan or the federal government shuts down. That means the government closes national parks, stops issuing passports and furloughs workers.

When North Carolina state lawmakers cant pass a budget, by contrast, the previous years spending plan automatically rolls over, which can keep spending low. That has the potential to lower lawmakers incentive to quickly pass a budget. In fact, the state hasnt passed a full spending plan since 2018.

Thats because a contentious 2019 budget stalemate between the legislature and Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper led the governor to veto the Republican-majority General Assemblys proposed budget that year. The two branches never came to a compromise, and the legislature passed mini budget bills, or separate spending plans rather than one large, comprehensive plan.

Some lawmakers and politicos have told me that what happened in 2019, and the states lack of a comprehensive spending plan since then, is motivating all parties to come to a compromise this time around. Another motivating factor: the billions of dollars in surplus the state has to fund programs and agencies that desperately need a boost.

How motivating those things are, though, is hard to say, considering the state is still without a budget plan.

So why no budget? At the moment, the stalemate isnt between the legislature and the governor, but the state House and Senate, which proposed vastly different spending plans for the next two years.

The two chambers have to come to a compromise on what should be included in that document before the legislature can vote on it and send it to the governor. So, at the moment, were still waiting for the House and Senate to work out their differences. How long will that take? It remains to be seen. But were operating on previous years spending plans to keep the state running until that happens.

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My colleague Dawn Baumgartner Vaughan asked Senate leader Phil Berger what lawmakers are going to do for the rest of the month if theyre not planning on voting on the budget anytime soon.

His response made me laugh.

Hopefully something more than us just staring at each other, Berger said.

Well see about that.

WHAT WERE READING

Go-to Lawyer for Capitol Riot Defendants Disappears, from The New York Times.

Trumps pick in a key Senate race touts his agriculture ties. He doesnt mention his role in a bankruptcy that cost farmers millions, from The Washington Post.

MORE BIG STORIES FROM THE TEAM

Many unemployment benefits are running out this week. Will Doran has answers to your questions about what that means.

Also from Will: North Carolinas GOP is looking to curtail a potential 2024 gubernatorial candidate who has made national news lately.

Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper signed three bipartisan bills aimed at criminal justice reform into law Thursday, Danielle Battaglia reports.





More from Danielle: State employees who are transgender can sue North Carolina for its banning of health care coverage of transition care and surgery.

Thirteen things schools wouldnt be able to promote if the North Carolina legislatures newly-passed critical race theory bill is signed into law (though its doubtful it will be), from Dawn Baumgartner Vaughan.

In a speech, U.S. Rep. Madison Cawthorn said bloodshed would follow another stolen presidential election. Will Wright examines whether what he said is covered under the First Amendment.

Dont forget: Listen and subscribe to our podcast wherever you usually like to listen. (Pandora, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, Amazon Music, Megaphone.)

Thanks for reading. See you next week.

 Lucille Sherman, state government reporter for The News & Observer. Email me at lsherman@newsobserver.com.
Vaccinated travelers heading to the Netherlands will need to plan around a quarantine period after the country announced plans to tighten restrictions on the U.S.

The European Union member moved the U.S. into its "very high-risk" category on Saturday, which will prohibit entry among unvaccinated travelers from the U.S. and require testing and a quarantine period for those who are vaccinated.

Starting Saturday, vaccinated U.S. travelers must quarantine 10 days but can cut the isolation period short if they test negative for coronavirus on day five. Children 12 and under are exempt, according to the Government of the Netherlands' website.

As of Monday, the country will also require U.S. travelers to show a negative test result to enter.

The new restrictions do not apply to the Caribbean islands Aruba, Curacao and Sint Maarten, which are part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, according to the Netherlands' Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The changes come on the heels of the European Union's decision to move the U.S. off its safe travel list, which signaled to member states that they should no longer ease restrictions on nonessential travel for people from the U.S. as COVID-19 cases spike.

As of Friday, the seven-day moving average of new COVID-19 cases in the U.S. was 153,246 with nearly 53% of the population fully vaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

A traveler wearing a face mask checks the flight departures at Schiphol Airport, near Amsterdam, Netherlands, Friday, Dec. 18, 2020. Starting Saturday, the European Union member state will prohibit entry among the unvaccinated and require testing and quarantine period for vaccinated travelers.

Previously, U.S. travelers were able to show proof of recovery or vaccination or a negative COVID-19 test to enter.

The Netherlands is the latest to announce new restrictions against U.S. travelers. EU member state Bulgaria announced it would move the U.S. into its red zone and prohibit travel from the U.S., and Italy added testing and self-isolation requirements for U.S. travelers earlier this week.

Israel, Kosovo, Montenegro and North Macedonia are also set to move to the Netherlands' very high-risk category.

 A sense of defeat: Travelers struggle to find timely COVID tests, putting trips in jeopardy

Story continues

 COVID testing for travel: Here's what travelers should know about at-home COVID-19 tests

Last-minute shakeups for travelers

Cole Turner Franco of Austin, Texas, had wanted to make a quick stop in the Netherlands during his move to Oxford, England, next week but had to throw his plans out the window to avoid the new quarantine mandate.

He had intended to fly with his Pomeranian, Yuki, to Amsterdam and then ferry to the U.K.  which doesn't allow pets in the cabin on international flights  and have his husband join them at a later date. As a fully vaccinated U.S. citizen, Turner Franco thought he would have an easy time getting into the Netherlands.

Then the new travel restrictions were announced.

To avoid the quarantine period, Turner Franco added another leg to the journey in France immediately after landing in the Netherlands, which does allow travelers from "high-risk" areas to have a layover in the country so long as they do not leave the airport. From there, he'll take a taxi across the Eurotunnel into the U.K.

The additional stop is expected to cost an extra $1,200.

Turner Franco said he understands the need for more restrictions but was surprised how quickly the country pivoted from very few COVID-19 restrictions for vaccinated U.S. citizens to a mandated quarantine.

It created a much longer, much more expensive, much, much more painful trip, he said. "But I feel like it's my job to just be as respectful of the restrictions as possible while kind of quietly fuming about how difficult it is to comply.

 US travel to Italy: Italy tightens entry requirements on US tourists, adds self-isolation mandate for the unvaccinated

 Mixed reactions to EU safe travel list: Bulgaria prohibits travel, Portugal plans to remain open

Follow USA TODAY reporter Bailey Schulz on Twitter: @bailey_schulz.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Netherlands adds quarantine requirement for vaccinated US travelers
Hollywood star Kristen Stewart may be no stranger to the paparazzi, but after playing Princess Diana on the silver screen she feels that no one can understand what it felt like to be her.

New movie "Spencer" premiered at the Venice Film Festival on Friday, with Stewart the latest actor to play Diana, whose marriage to Britain's Prince Charles ended in scandal and divorce. The princess later died in a Paris car crash in 1997, after fleeing photographers.

The film focuses on her decision to flee the pressures of the royal family and take control of her own life at a key juncture in the early 1990s.

"She was the most famous woman in the world, she was the most photographed woman in the whole world," Stewart told journalists ahead of the premiere.

"I have tasted a high level of that, but really kind of nowhere near that monumental, symbolic representation of an entire group of people, an entire country -- and the world," she said.

"I can relate but I don't think anyone can understand what that felt like," said Stewart, of the royal family's claustrophobic watch over Diana, who was expected to bend to protocol and was powerless to make her own decisions.

In taking on the role, Stewart joins a long list of actors who have sought to capture the spirit of the royal, most recently Emma Corrin, who this year won a Golden Globe for her portrayal in season four of Netflix's "The Crown".

Early reviews for "Spencer" were enthusiastic, with Variety trade magazine calling it "magnificent" and ScreenDaily calling Stewart's performance "brittle, tender, sometimes playful and not a little uncanny".

Stewart, wrote The Telegraph, "will be instantly and justifiably awards-tipped for this".

- 'True tragedy' -

The new film, which is competing for the top Golden Lion award at Venice, was directed by Chilean Pablo Larrain and is described from the outset as "a fable from a true tragedy".

Story continues

It tracks the princess over three days at Christmas when the royal family is assembled at Queen Elizabeth's private residence at Sandringham.

We first see Diana at the wheel on a rambling country road -- lost, as it turns out, and late for Christmas Eve lunch at the castle.

Tensions with Prince Charles (Jack Farthing) are at their peak, after the heir to the throne has gifted his wife the same pearl necklace offered to his mistress, Camilla Parker Bowles.

As played by Stewart, Diana's misery is palpable.

But more revealing is the inner radiance and sparkle we see when Diana is alone with her children, the young princes William and Harry.

"The idea of somebody being so desperate for connection and somebody who is able to make other people feel so good, feeling so bad on the inside, and being so generous with her energy, we just haven't had so many of those people," said Stewart.

"The saddest part of the story is we will never know her and that's all she wanted, was to just tell the story herself."

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A group of lawmakers has proposed a plan to legalize slot machines and other video gaming machines in North Carolina.

House Bill 954 authorizes and spells outs regulation for video lottery games in North Carolina. It allows select licensed providers to offer video lottery terminals, while a percentage of the revenue goes to the state.

North Carolina would use its portion of the funding to support historically Black colleges and universities, provide scholarships and regulate the industry.

The North Carolina State Lottery Commission would oversee the video gambling industry. The machines would not dispense coins, cash or tokens. Players could receive free games or credits redeemable for cash.

The bill directs the commission to use up to $10 million from the North Carolina State Lottery Fund to launch operations. It must repay any money withdrawn from the fund within 24 months after the bill becomes law.

Licensees would be required to pay fees to the state. The lottery commission must decide the price tag for the license fees. Licensees also would be required to pay an annual privilege tax to the North Carolina Department of Revenue.

Under the current version of HB 954, manufacturers must pay $50,000 in privilege tax each year. Video lottery operators would be required to pay $25,000 plus $150 for each video machine licensed to the operator. Video lottery merchants must pay $1,000 plus $150 for each retail location.

Up to 32% of the total net revenues from the machines would be transferred to a new North Carolina Video Lottery Fund. Up to 8% of total annual net revenues can be used for administrative expenses. Operators would get 35% of net revenues, and merchants would get 25% of the revenues from the machines.

The commission must transfer unused revenue to the North Carolina Video Lottery Fund.

The General Assembly would be required to allocate money from the new fund each fiscal year for forgivable loans for community college students.

Story continues

The measure also sets aside $2 million from the fund annually to support and improve graduation rates at Elizabeth City State, Fayetteville State, North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State, North Carolina Central and Winston-Salem State universities.

The bill was introduced by Reps. Harry Warren, R-Rowan; Timothy Moffit, R-Henderson; Howard Hunter, D-Hertford; and Michael Wray, D-Northampton.

Opponents of legalized gambling say it can increase gambling addiction, crime, and other social costs.

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Tags: States, News, North Carolina, Video Games

Original Author: Nyamekye Daniel, The Center Square

Original Location: North Carolina lawmakers introduce plan to legalize video gaming
By Yingzhi Yang and Brenda Goh

BEIJING (Reuters) - The Chinese government's campaign to improve conditions for workers has spurred companies, particularly some of its hardest-driving tech giants, to cut down on long hours of compulsory overtime but not all employees are happy about it.

Some employees at TikTok-owner ByteDance were shocked to find their August paychecks slashed 17% after the company ended its policy of requiring its China-based staff to work a six-day week every second week.

"My workload hasn't actually changed," a product manager at ByteDance told Reuters, declining to be identified given the sensitivity of the topic. "But unfortunately the salary is lower."

For the past decade, Chinese tech firms were known for "996", a gruelling business culture that usually means work hours from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. six days a week. But 996 was also seen as a badge of honour and was hailed as a competitive advantage over U.S. and European rivals.

It was also a guarantee of high pay as Chinese law stipulates that employees are entitled to double pay for working overtime on weekends and triple pay for public holidays.

ByteDance declined to comment on the pay cuts which were widely discussed on social media. A separate company source said staff can still be paid overtime on weekends if they need to meet deadlines, adding that some employees in its gaming unit had done so recently.

Some workers in the tech sector began pushing back against 996 about two years ago - a movement that has gathered support from authorities keen to promoting socialist values and workers rights as they push through with wide-ranging regulatory reforms. China's top court last month described 996 as illegal.

Other tech companies such as short-video platform Kuaishou and food-delivery giant Meituan have also cut compulsory weekend overtime recently.

In another boon for workers rights, ride-hailing giant Didi Global and e-commerce powerhouse JD.com have set up government-backed unions https://www.reuters.com/technology/didi-workers-get-union-groundbreaking-move-chinas-tech-sector-2021-09-01 in the past few weeks - a groundbreaking development in the tech sector where organised labour has to date been very rare.

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Authorities are also working to mandate more breaks for workers, especially in the food delivery sector where companies have been accused of pushing drivers to make tight deadlines at the expense of safety.

Meituan has said it will introduce such breaks. The southern city of Xiamen has also requested that companies implement a "20-minute break for every four hours of work" for delivery workers, the state-run People's Daily said this week.

Concerns remain though about unintended consequences.

"Won't this restrict their earnings?" said one user on China's Twitter-like Weibo, citing how these drivers are paid per order. "This will cause more problems, won't they drive even faster to deliver?" said another.

Reduced pay could also spell trouble for staff retention and the topic of whether companies should be raising salaries to compensate workers for their loss of overtime became one of the most viewed on Weibo this week, with over 120 million views.

After receiving my paycheck this month, I want to know - are there other companies that still practice 996 in Shanghai? posted a ByteDance employee.

(Reporting by Yingzhi Yang and Brenda Goh; Editing by Edwina Gibbs)
NY Daily News

A Brooklyn mom kicked down a subway escalator by a complete stranger says shes covered in claw marks from her tumble down the metal stairs  and terrified of ever seeing her attacker again. Speaking on condition her name not be published, the 30-year-old fashion design student said she was on her way home when she was assaulted at the Atlantic Ave.-Barclays Center station Thursday evening. I ...
The Daily Beast

Media MattersFox News host Tucker Carlson confessed over the weekend that he will lie whenever hes really cornered or something.During a Sunday appearance on right-wing provocateur Dave Rubins podcast, Carlson took aim at his rivals on CNN over what he claimed was their habit of telling falsehoods on the air. (The segment was first flagged by Media Matters, a liberal watchdog and Carlson nemesis.)How do you think they live with themselves at this point when they just lie again and again a
Detailed plans of what will happen in the event of the Queen's death have been revealed for the first time. (Getty)

Details of plans for what will happen when the Queen dies have been revealed for the first time in leaked documents.

The Queen, who was 95 in April, continues to carry out a healthy diary of public engagements.

There has been widespread speculation about what will happen in the event of her death for a number of years. In 2017, it was revealed that the code name that would be used in the event of passing was 'Operation London Bridge'.

Now, documents obtained by the POLITICO news website have revealed step-by-step what will happen following the Queen's death when it happens.

According to the plans, the day of Her Majesty's death will be dubbed 'D-Day' with each day afterwards leading up to her funeral known as 'D+1', 'D+2' etc.

A "call cascade" will inform the Prime Minister, the cabinet secretary and a number of the most senior ministers and officials. Senior civil servants will inform ministers using the phrase: "We have just been informed of the death of Her Majesty The Queen. They will then urge discretion.

The public will find out for the first time when an "official notification" is released by the royal household, the plans say.

A 'call cascade' will inform the Prime Minister of the Queen's death, according to plans obtained by POLITICO. (Getty)

On the same day, the new King Charles will meet with the Prime Minister and then will deliver a broadcast to the nation at 6pm.

The Queen's funeral will take place 10 days after her death, according to the plans which warn of concerns over the number of people who will travel to the capital in the aftermath of the Monarch's death

Read more: Queen sits alone in chapel as Royal Family pays respects to Prince Philip

One memo reportedly warns that London could become "full" for the first time ever, stretching services like public transport, healthcare, accommodation and policing to breaking point.

Unexpected details within the plans include a ban on 'retweets' by government departments' social media pages.

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The day of the Queen's death will be referred to as 'D-Day', according to the documents. (Getty)

According to POLITICO, all departmental social media pages will show a black banner and change their profile pictures to their department crest. It also notes that the plans say non-urgent content must not be published, and "retweets are explicitly banned".

While the day of the Queen's funeral will be a 'Day of National Mourning', making it effectively a bank holiday, it will not be called by that name, the documents suggest, and if the funeral falls on a weekend or existing bank holiday, an extra bank holiday won't be granted.

The plans also suggest that the government doesn't plan to order employers to give employees the day off if the funeral falls on a weekday - and instead will leave that to them to decide.

Previous reports have revealed that a footman in mourning clothes will be sent out of a door at Buckingham Palace to pin a notice of the news to the gates, while the official palace website will feature just one page, displaying the news on a dark background.

Television news, including Sky and ITN, have already signed up royalty experts to speak to them exclusively, while rehearsals on delivering the news that have taken place for years will be put into action.

Newsreaders will be wearing black suits and outfits, while regular television coverage will be cancelled to switch to the news.

Commercial radio stations have blue lights that begin flashing in the wake of a national tragedy  these will alert DJs to switch to the news and play inoffensive music in the lead up to the announcement to millions listening in cars and trains across the country.

Watch: Prince Philip 100th birthday: Remembering the Duke of Edinburgh
Kate Walsh attends the 2020 Whitney Art Party at The Whitney Museum of American Art on January 28, 2020 in New York City. Noam Galai/Getty Images

Kate Walsh announced Thursday that she will be reprising her role on "Grey's Anatomy" this season.

Walsh's Dr. Addison Montgomery joins a long list of beloved characters who have returned recently.

"Grey's Anatomy" season 18 premieres Thursday, September 30 at 9/8c on ABC.

Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.

Kate Walsh just made many "Grey's Anatomy" fans very happy. The actress announced on social media Thursday night that she'll be reprising her role as Dr. Addison Montgomery in season 18 of the hit ABC drama.

Walsh teased her return in a clever video on TikTok before announcing more details on the official "Grey's Anatomy" Twitter account.

"That's right, my loves. Dr. Addison Montgomery is coming back to Grey-Sloan Memorial Hospital, and I'm so excited to be home again joining Shonda, Ellen, and the rest of the incredible cast this season," she said. "Just wait until you see what she has in store for you."

Walsh will return for a multi-episode arc, according to Deadline. There is no official word yet on when Addison will make her "grand return," but IMDb currently has her slated to appear on the first three episodes of the new season, so it appears she may show up in the premiere.

We first met Addison on season one of the show, when she showed up in Seattle to announce to Dr. Derek Shepherd (Patrick Dempsey) that she was staying in town to fix their marriage. This was a shock to his then-girlfriend Dr. Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo), who had no idea he was married.

Walsh appeared on "Grey's Anatomy" for three seasons before Addison moved to California and landed the medical drama's first spinoff, "Private Practice." Her last appearance on "Grey's" was for an alternate reality episode in season eight titled "If/Then."

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"Private Practice" ran on ABC for six seasons before Addison walked off into the sunset with her adopted son Henry and second husband Dr. Jake Reilly (Benjamin Bratt).

Walsh joins a long list of "Grey's Anatomy" alums who have reprised beloved roles on the show in the past few seasons. On season 17, Sarah Drew returned as Dr. April Kepner to facilitate Jesse Williams' exit as Dr. Jackson Avery. Plus, a plethora of fan favorites like Derek Shepherd, Lexie Grey (Chyler Leigh), Mark Sloan (Eric Dane), and George O'Malley (T.R. Knight) visited Meredith in her COVID-induced dreams.

We don't know yet what will bring Addison back to Seattle, but it will be the first time she and Meredith are face-to-face since Derek's death, so fans can probably bet that the reunion will be emotional.

"Grey's Anatomy" season 18 premieres Thursday, September 30 at 9/8c on ABC.

Read the original article on Insider
Parental leave policies vary widely depending on which Minnesota organization you work for.

Get market news worthy of your time with Axios Markets. Subscribe for free.

Axios Twin Cities polled some of the biggest employers in the metro's private sector to see what they offer.

Hint: It's good to sell Cheerios.

Why it matters: It's a job seekers' market and talented professionals planning a family will weigh the generosity of a company's parental leave policy in deciding to take a position.

Below are responses by company representatives, unless otherwise noted.

Note: If your company is missing from the list, drop us a line and we'll add it in. Some firms didn't respond or declined to respond to Axios.

3M Co. (14,065 Minnesota employees)

Mothers and fathers of newborn or newly adopted children are entitled to up to 20 weeks (10 weeks paid and 10 weeks unpaid) of parental leave in the U.S. This is a benefit that they are eligible for from the first day of employment.

Allina Health (28,751 Minnesota employees)

Allina recently announced a new paid caregiver policy that provides up to two weeks of paid time off each year for eligible staff to spend time caring for immediate family members having serious health issues or to care for and bond with a new child.

Ameriprise Financial (4,842 Minnesota employees)

Women who deliver a baby are eligible for 16 weeks of paid time off to care for their new child or children. Ameriprise offers a two-week paid parental leave to birth, adoptive and foster parents who have worked for the company for more than six months.

Best Buy Co. Inc. (9,000 Minnesota employees)

Best Buy provides up to six weeks of time off at 100% of base pay. It allows full-time benefits-eligible employees to take a leave of absence for their own medical condition, such as needing a surgery or for mental health, without an interruption in pay.

This is in addition to a caregiver pay benefit, which is four weeks of full pay for those who need to care for a spouse/domestic partner, parent, children under the age of 18, siblings, in-laws, grandchildren, grandparents and children 18 or older.

Best Buy has some other benefits, like $14,080 in adoption expense reimbursement and up to $10,000 lifetime for infertility treatments.

General Mills (3,000 Minnesota employees, per Biz Journal)

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General Mills offers fully paid time off for new birth mothers for 18 to 20 weeks, and 12 weeks parental leave (for fathers, partners and adoptive parents).

Medtronic (10,463 Minnesota employees)

Employees are eligible for up to 16 weeks of paid time away to care for a new child.

Six weeks of family leave can also be used to care for a parent, spouse, or child with a serious health condition, and for bereavement following the death of spouse/domestic partner, child or parent.

Birth mothers get another six to eight weeks fully paid.

Mothers who complete a healthy pregnancy program can get another two weeks paid.

Medtronic also offers reimbursement of $25,000 per child (up to $50,000) for adoption, surrogacy and third-party reproduction expenses.

Target (24,000 Minnesota employees)

Target in 2019 doubled its parental leave benefits, but did not specify how many weeks.

CNBC reported the new policy provides "up to four weeks paid time off annually to care for a newborn or sick family member. New moms at Target will get an additional six to eight weeks of paid maternity leave, too."

UnitedHealth Group (18,000 Minnesota employees)

UnitedHealth Group offers four weeks of paid parental leave following the birth of a child or adoption.

In addition, UHG offers an employer sponsored/paid short-term disability benefit, which is income replacement for maternity leave for six weeks, or eight weeks following a cesarean delivery. This benefit is 60% paid by UHG, and employees have the option to buy-up an additional 20% for an 80% benefit. This means employees can secure paid coverage for up to 10-12 weeks.

United Natural Foods Inc., including Cub Foods (8,781 Minnesota employees)

UNFI offers four weeks of paid parental leave for mothers and fathers, including adoption. It also offers one week of maternity disability leave or one week of paid adoption leave (for mothers and fathers). It offers five to seven weeks of short-term disability leave for birth mothers.

Of note: This is for non-union employees.

U.S. Bank (13,400 Minnesota employees)

Provides 13 weeks of paid leave (a combination of pregnancy disability leave and parental leave) to the birth parent and four weeks of paid parental leave to non-birth parents.

Wells Fargo (17,000 Minnesota employees)

Provides up to 16 weeks of paid leave for a primary caregiver, and up to four weeks for a parent who isnt the primary caregiver, to care for a new child following birth or adoption. Eligibility begins after 12 months of service.

Xcel Energy (5,456 employees, according to the Biz Journal)

In addition to six to eight weeks of paid maternity leave, Xcel offers an additional four weeks of paid time off to help parents bond with their new child, whether through birth, adoption or fostering.

It also offers adoption assistance services, which reimburses employees for eligible expenses up to $2,000.

Declined: North Memorial, M Health Fairview, and Life Time Inc. declined to participate by the deadline.

Health Partners did not respond to Axios emails.

Of note: Axios offers 12 weeks of paid parental leave for a primary caregivers following the birth or adoption of a child. Secondary caregivers get four weeks.

Like this article? Get more from Axios and subscribe to Axios Markets for free.
Prince Albert of Monacos wife, Princess Charlene, is "eager" to come home sooner than expected.

The 63-year-old, who has since returned from visiting his wife with their twins in South Africa, dismissed media reports that alleged the royal couple is facing marital woes, prompting their separation.

"Shes ready to come home," Albert told People magazine on Friday, noting that her exact return date to Monaco "depends on what her doctors say."

"I know shes said possibly late October," he said. "But that was before this most recent round of appointments. Im pretty sure we can cut that time frame a little short."

PRINCE ALBERT OF MONACO VISITS PRINCESS CHARLENE WITH THEIR TWINS AFTER MONTHS-LONG SEPARATION

According to the outlet, Charlene has been in South Africa since mid-May due to a series of medical procedures intended to correct a previous ENT surgery. The 43-year-old also developed an infection after the procedure.

Albert told the outlet that on Aug. 13, Charlene underwent a four-hour surgery.

"Shes ready [to come home]," he said. "Shes jokingly said that shes ready to stowaway or on a ship to come back to Europe She was in good spirits."

Last week while Albert and the children were in town, the prince accompanied his wife on a doctors appointment to get "a new reassessment about how things are looking up."

PRINCE ALBERT, PRINCESS CHARLENE FACED WITH SPLIT RUMORS FOLLOWING HEALTH WOES: SHELL NEVER LEAVE HER KIDS

On Aug. 26, Charlene took to Instagram and revealed that she finally reunited with her husband and their 6-year-old twins, Princess Gabriella and Prince Jacques.

Doctors have prohibited Charlene from flying about 20,000 feet, making the reunion all the more sweeter.

The royal has used her time in South Africa to further raise awareness on wildlife conservation.

Charlene recently told South Africa Radio 702s host Mandy Wiener that she was "in a waiting game" to be alongside her family and is expected to leave the country around the end of October. The princess stressed she "cannot force healing," as previously quoted by People magazine.

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"I cannot force healing, so I will be grounded in South Africa until the end of October," said Charlene, noting she is due for another medical procedure.

"I feel well, I feel good," she added.

Still, Charlene admitted that being far away from her husband and their twins has made the ordeal more difficult.

In late June, Charlene announced she was being forced to miss her 10th anniversary with Albert due to additional surgery required. It didn't take long for the separation to spark rumors of an impending split. Sources alleged to Frances Paris Match that Charlene has "no intention of returning" while Germanys Bunte claimed Charlene was house-hunting near Johannesburg.

The rumors intensified when Albert attended the Tokyo Olympics solo despite the prince being a longtime member of the International Olympic Committee. Charlene is also a former Olympic swimmer.

In June, Charlene told People magazine in a statement that shes hopeful for the future.

"My daily conversations with Albert and my children help me keep my spirits up a lot, but I miss their presence very much," she said. "I cant wait for us to be together."

The celebrated athlete married the son of Grace Kelly on July 1, 2011. The wedding was a spectacle, costing an estimated $70 million for the four-day event. They welcomed twins in 2014.

Their planned public anniversary celebration was canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Passengers form a line inside Terminal 5 at Los Angeles International Airport on Aug. 3. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)

Holidays have long been a source of public health heartburn in the COVID-19 era, but the upcoming Labor Day weekend presents a new conundrum: California may still be in the midst of a coronavirus surge, but the danger is not the same for everyone.

The robust vaccine rollout, as well as ubiquity of the highly contagious Delta variant, has created a wide spectrum of risk  with people's inoculation status, home lives and job settings, as well as the characteristics of particular activities, all helping shape how cautious they should be.

A fully vaccinated person mingling outdoors with a small group of others who are inoculated, for instance, is considered fairly low risk in terms of coronavirus transmission. But the calculus might be different if one of the participants has children at home still too young to be vaccinated, or is caring for an immunocompromised parent.

"Many of us do have some choices we can make about how we live our lives right now," Los Angeles County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer told reporters Thursday. "There is great power to protect ourselves and each other in those choices, and approaching them thoughtfully is our path through this together."

Riskier settings include those that are crowded, are held indoors, include groups of unmasked or unvaccinated people or feature individuals shouting, singing or breathing hard.

The presence of unvaccinated people poses a much larger risk. Scientists suspect that unvaccinated infected people are contagious for a far longer duration than vaccinated infected people.

But even in generally safer situations, personal factors come into play.

Someone who's older, has a chronic medical condition, is unvaccinated or lives with someone who isn't inoculated might consider avoiding certain situations altogether, or at least taking additional precautions like wearing a mask or maintaining physical distance where possible.

Ferrer also noted that circumstances aren't always cut and dry. While a masked, distanced backyard book club might be considered relatively safe, how people behave also plays a role.

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"If everyone in your backyard gathering stands up and unmasks to crowd around the snack table for half an hour, that will increase the risk of that activity," Ferrer said. "Again, were thinking of risk on a spectrum."

But Ferrer did add that unvaccinated people "should really avoid gatherings that are indoors, unless it's just with your household members, or it's with everybody else who's fully vaccinated."

Health officials at the state and federal level are also urging those who are unvaccinated not to travel over the long weekend, and to take precautions when ringing in the holiday.

"If gathering with family and friends, remember that spending time outside with others who are vaccinated will help to prevent transmission," Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said during a briefing this week. "Throughout the pandemic, we have seen that the vast majority of transmission takes place among unvaccinated people in closed, indoor settings."

The L.A. County Department of Public Health agreed "that unvaccinated people should take as many precautions as possible over the holiday and every day."

"Avoiding non-essential travel makes sense as does testing before traveling and quarantining and testing upon return," health officials wrote in response to an inquiry from The Times. "Unvaccinated people should avoid crowded outdoor and indoor settings, always keep their masks on when indoors in public places and worksites, and upgrade their face coverings to a respirator or KN95 if they have prolonged close contact with others who may be unvaccinated."

Unvaccinated plane travelers risk exposure to the coronavirus at multiple points on their journey.

"When you get to the airport, you're going to be exposed to a lot of people, and then you're going to get an airplane, said Dr. Regina Chinsio-Kwong, a deputy health officer for Orange County. Even if you're wearing your mask, you're going to be in an enclosed area for a prolonged period. Your immune system takes a hit because you're not sleeping well. I mean, there's just so many other factors that make things ripe for you to  if you would get exposed  to unfortunately become ill with COVID.

State health officials also recommend residents delay both domestic and international travel until they're fully vaccinated. Those who are uninoculated should also get tested before and after their journeys.

All Californians, regardless of vaccination status, also must wear masks while aboard public transportation  including airplanes  or while in transit hubs.

While L.A. County and California as a whole are starting to see some promising signs that the latest COVID-19 wave may be starting to lose steam, health officials stress that the danger has not yet passed.

It will take more weeks before officials understand whether the reopening of schools and college campuses will result in a significant uptick in disease transmission. And gatherings held over Labor Day, especially those attended by unvaccinated and unmasked people, also pose additional risk.

L.A. County has reported an average of 2,596 new cases per day over the last week  down 25% from two weeks ago, when many schools began to reopen, according to data compiled by The Times. Orange County has reported 562 new cases a day, down 27% from two weeks ago.

Statewide, the daily number of new infections being reported, on average, is essentially unchanged from where it was a week ago.

But the battle is far from over, officials said.

"We are seeing less transmission across the board in general," Ferrer said. "But because the Delta variant is so capable of infecting lots of people, we still have very high numbers of people getting infected."

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Puerto Rico will prosecute a person under a new law that codifies gender-related killings as first-degree murder for the first time, part of the governments battle against violence towards women.

The law, which Gov. Pedro Pierluisi signed a week ago, defines what constitutes feminicides and transfeminicides  the killing of women and of people whose gender identity is not the one assigned at birth. Luis Rivera Matos, who is accused of killing Damaris Ortiz Rosario, his 48-year-old spouse, will be the first person tried under the statute.

We must do justice to women and we must implement all the measures in our power to deter gender violence, said Justice Secretary Domingo Emanuelli Hernandez, Everyone has to know that feminicide and transfeminicide will be punished with the maximum penalty in Puerto Rico.

Rivera, 59, shot Ortiz after an argument in their home in the northern town of Rio Grande on Tuesday night, according to police reports. The couple had been together for two decades and married for 10 of those years, said Lieutenant Joaquin de la Cruz. He was a diesel mechanic and she worked at Walmart.

Five months ago, the couple had separated after facing infidelity issues. After the split, they continued to live under the same roof with Ortizs 24-year-old son.

She had tried to throw him out of the house several times already and he did not want to leave, said de la Cruz, who is the director of the Criminal Investigation Corps of the Fajardo police region.

Ortiz was found in the bedroom with several gunshot wounds, including several in the chest area. Rivera also threatened Ortizs adult son, pointing the weapon at him, police said. Neighbors called 911 after hearing the shots.

When the agents arrive at the scene, they meet the man on the balcony of the house with the firearm, de la Cruz added. Rivera indicates that he had killed [Ortiz] and that he wanted the police to kill him.

If convicted, Rivera could face 99 years in prison. Rivera, who is being held at a San Juan area jail, was also charged with obstruction of justice and aiming and shooting a firearm.

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De la Cruz said that Ortiz had never gone to the police to report her husband for gender violence, but that her son said they often argued. There was also no restraining order against Rivera for domestic violence.

The deceased womans friends mourned her passing on social media. One colleague called her a warrior and an example to follow.

There was no person who did not love you every time they went to the deli! wrote Fabery Wilfredo, who also worked with Ortiz Rosario.

What is not named is not seen

Puerto Rico has experienced an increase in the killings of women in recent years. The Observatory for Gender Equity, a coalition of academics and womens rights groups considered a leading authority in tracking gender-based violence on the island, has recorded a total of 38 feminicides in 2021. Ortiz was the ninth woman killed by an intimate partner this year.

Why Puerto Ricos governor declared an emergency on violence against women

As one of his first acts in office, Pierluisi declared a state of emergency over gender-based violence in January. It was a measure local activists had demanded for years. The move was celebrated by womens groups on the island and hailed among the first of its kind in Latin America and the Caribbean. The back-to-back, high profile murders of two women  Andrea Ruiz Costas and Keishla Rodriguez  in late spring fueled more outrage over the gender-violence crisis in Puerto Rico.

The feminicides we had last year, each and every one of them, is regrettable, Pierluisi said in an interview with the Miami Herald in March. We should put a stop to it. Gender violence in general... should be stuff of the past.

The aim of the executive order the governor said, is to dramatically reduce the number of women murdered in Puerto Rico. The recent criminal law is among the latest policies that the Pierluisi administration has pushed in the governments renewed fight against gender violence.

It also outlines what constitutes these crimes, including the victim presenting signs of sexual violence, the death occurring during an act of abuse, the crime occurring in front of the victims children, and the victims body being dumped in a public place, among others.

A being of light: Puerto Rico mourns Keishla Rodriguez as anger swells over femicides

What is not named is not seen, and therefore is not addressed. Naming feminicides for what they are makes a difference, not only in how they are going to be processed, but in the information that is collected and how that information is recorded, said Amarilis Pagan, executive director of Proyecto Matria, a local rights group with a focus on the economic advancement of women.

Pagan, who is also a member of Comite PARE, a governors advisory group that recommends gender-violence public policy, said the group is working on creating a specific protocol for feminicide and transfeminicide criminal investigations to ensure that they are in compliance with the law. She added she hopes that the new law will improve statistical collection of violence against women within the police department and other government offices.

A 2019 study from Proyecto Matria and Kilometro Cero, a government watchdog group, found that Puerto Rican police annually underreported feminicides by as much as 27% compared to their own internal statistics on the number of feminicides on the island. Pierluisi has previously said he wants the government to address how it keeps statistics on gender violence.

If the statistics are not real and they are not accurate, we will never be aware of the magnitude of the problem, said Pagan, Now, with this bill, we should be able to know exactly how many homicides we are talking about in Puerto Rico and assess and evaluate the problem.

Pagan also said that the inclusion of transfeminicides in the legislation is vital in eradicating gender violence. At least 15 trans people have been killed in Puerto Rico since 2010, according to data collected by the Observatory; in 2020, close to 14% of all murders of transgender people in the United States recorded by Human Rights Watch took place in Puerto Rico.

The approval of the law as such already recognizes that the state was not working adequately with the identification of transfeminicides, she said. It has a lot of meaning that feminicides and transgender people are also recognized in the same legislation, because both things have their origin in the same thing, in a machista vision.

A good start

The Observatory for Gender Equity historically has used the terms feminicide and transfeminicide in its data collection and employs United Nations protocols that incorporate a broader range of crimes than those used by police.

Observatory analyst Debora Upegui-Hernandez called the criminal law a good start. But she said the bill should be revised to ensure a broad application of the law in gender-related killings and different degrees of murder charges.

The causes are still mostly limited to cases that are related to domestic violence. Although space is made for some cases, there are some additional situations, it does not cover all of them, said Upegui-Hernandez.

He wont leave me alone. She tried to leave the man she met at 13. Then she went missing.

She also hopes that the Puerto Rico Institute of Statistics, a government agency, will not limit itself to recording cases that comply with the grounds for criminal charges, but use a broader definition based on sociological aspects and international protocols.

Upegui-Hernandez told the Miami Herald that despite the declaration of emergency on violence against women, Puerto Rico is on pace to match last years feminicide figures. In 2020, the island had 60 feminicides, according to Observatory data.

The numbers are not so different, said Upegui-Hernandez, They look too similar. Its worrisome.

You can read the new legislation here:

LEY NUM. 40 27 DE AGOSTO DE 2021 by Miami Herald on Scribd
(Reuters) -Executives of hedge fund Renaissance Technologies LLC could pay as much as $7 billion to U.S. tax authorities after agreeing to settle a dispute over whether they improperly reduced their tax liability from trading profits, according to a letter reviewed by Reuters and a source familiar with the matter.

James Simons, the founder of one of the worlds most successful quantitative hedge funds and a major Democrat donor, will make an additional settlement payment of $670 million to the Internal Revenue Service, according to the letter from Renaissance's Chief Executive Peter Brown sent on Thursday to investors.

In describing the settlement, one of the largest in IRS history, Brown wrote that the fund worked through the IRS appeals process for several years before concluding that it was better to agree to the resolution "rather than risking a worse outcome, including harsher terms and penalties, that could result from litigation."

The settlement comes after former U.S. Senator Carl Levin in 2014 detailed a practice in which Deutsche Bank AG and Barclays Plc helped several hedge funds, including Renaissance, treat some capital gains as longer-term profits, attracting a lower tax rate, than gains made from trades on assets held for less than a year. The banks sold the funds options to help them achieve that outcome, the report said.

In the letter, Brown said the trades in question were done by its flagship Medallion fund between 2005 and 2015. Medallion is solely managed internally for friends and family.

The IRS did not immediately respond to Reuters' request for comment. Barclays and Deutsche Bank declined to comment. The Wall Street Journal earlier reported news of the settlement.

Levin died in July, aged 87.

"I wish Senator Levin were here, seven years after he first exposed its outrageous tax scam, to see RenTec finally held accountable," said Elise Bean, a former longtime aide.

"It's good to see that, despite a years-long knock-down bare-knuckles battle, the IRS prevailed in compelling at least one set of billionaires to pay the taxes they owe," Bean said.

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Levin in 2014 had presented the findings of a year-long probe into basket options, calling for tougher action from the authorities. The report said the largest user of the options, Renaissance Technologies Corp, saved an estimated $6.8 billion in taxes.

In 2015, the IRS issued guidance https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-irs-hedgefunds-idUKL3N0ZP3D320150709 that hedge funds using "basket options" had to report them on their tax returns and correct past returns, which came after a U.S. Senate subcommittee reported some funds were using this to avoid federal taxes.

According to Renaissance's investor letter, the seven individuals who were members of Renaissance's board during those years, and their spouses, will be required to pay the tax and interest and penalties. Investors in the fund will be required to pay additional tax and interest but not penalties.

The payment would dwarf that of a transfer pricing dispute with GlaxoSmithKline in 2006 which saw the drug firm pay $3.4 billion. The IRS's press statement https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-news/ir-06-142.pdf said at the time it was the largest single payment to the IRS to resolve a tax dispute.

(Reporting by Manojna Maddipatla in Bengaluru, Maiya Keidan in Toronto, Paritosh Bansal and Megan Davies in New York and Pete Schroeder in DC; Editing by Amy Caren Daniel, Chris Reese and Richard Pullin)
BUCHAREST (Reuters) - Romania's Prime Minister Florin Citu was due to hold crisis talks with his coalition partners on Friday, urging them to stay united to rebuild the economy after the coronavirus pandemic despite a row over the sacking of the justice minister.

The USR-Plus, a junior ally to Citu's Liberals, has begun gathering signatures for a no-confidence vote in parliament after its minister, Stelian Ion, was dismissed when the party opposed a local infrastructure development funding scheme.

A rupture in the centrist coalition, which also includes an ethnic Hungarians group, could endanger an ambitious agenda to reduce Romania's budget and current account deficits.

"Only this (three-party) coalition is feasible for Romania. It's that political setup that can handle European Union's recovery plan, our local development, and make use of EU money," Citu said after an emergency meeting of his Liberal Party.

"This is my message for the coalition talks later today. We have all promised Romania's investments."

The three parties were due to hold a meeting to discuss their cooperation from 1500 GMT.

To oust Citu's cabinet, the USR-Plus would need to work with the opposition Social Democrats, who it previously clashed with over attempts to dilute the rule of law.

Citu, a relative newcomer but backed by centrist President Klaus Iohannis, hopes to win the Liberal Party leadership in an internal election this month.

(Reporting by Radu Marinas; Editing by Alison Williams)
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More than 1,400 dolphins were killed on Sunday (September 12) off the coast of the Faroe Islands in a single day, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society said, as part of the Danish territory's century-old traditional Grindadrap hunt.The U.S.-based NGO said the slaughter of 1428 Atlantic white-sided dolphins is considered to be the largest single hunt of cetaceans ever recorded worldwide.The annual dolphin drive, when several hundred pilot whales are slaughtered for their meat and blubber, is part of a 1,000-year-old tradition in the North Atlantic archipelago.This year the number of mammals slaughtered prompted an outcry from animal rights groups for the excessive killing, producing "more dolphin meat from this hunt than anyone wants to take," Sea Shepherds said in a press release.
Giant worms and inter-planetary battles rocked the Venice Film Festival on Friday as "Dune", one of the most hotly anticipated blockbusters in years, was finally set for its world premiere.

It brought a cavalcade of A-listers to the city's glitzy Lido island, along with fans packing the waterfront for the arrival of Timothee Chalamet, Zendaya, Oscar Isaac, Josh Brolin and Javier Bardem.

Based on a landmark of sci-fi literature about warring clans fighting for control of a desert planet, the film boasts a $165-million budget and a critically adored director in Canadian Denis Villeneuve.

With its release delayed by a year due to the pandemic, anticipation among fans has reached fever pitch.

Lips were sealed after early morning screenings for press and industry folk, who had to lock their phones in plastic bags to prevent any images leaking out.

"This has been the honour of a lifetime for me," Chalamet told reporters ahead of the official premiere.

"I hope we get to do a second one, that would be a dream."

- 'A physical experience' -

Through hits like "Sicario" and "Arrival", Villeneuve has put himself alongside Christopher Nolan as one of the few directors who can deliver deadly serious cinema that also pulls in the punters.

He has previously proved his worth to sci-fi fans with "Blade Runner 2049", a lauded sequel to the Ridley Scott classic.

The build-up has not been all roses, however.

Villeneuve has clashed with Warner Bros. over its decision to release the film on streaming platforms at the same time as cinemas.

At the press conference on Friday, he pleaded with audiences to see it on the big screen.

"It has been dreamed, designed, shot thinking iMax," he said. "The sound and everything -- it's a physical experience, we designed it to be as immersive as possible."

But he said the toughest issue lay elsewhere.

"The biggest challenge of making this movie was to deal with and master Timothee's hair. It's alive!" Villeneuve said.

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- Giant worms -

Set many millennia in the future, "Dune" follows the tribal battles for control of "spice", a powerful resource only found on the planet of Arrakis, which also happens to be infested with giant worms.

The brainchild of author Frank Herbert, "Dune" was first published in 1965 and became a six-volume space opera of massive influence, not least on "Star Wars".

Brolin said he was proud they had matched the vision from the books, recounting the experience of showing the film to a long-time fan.

"He started screaming at the top of his lungs: 'That's what I saw as a kid.' When you see that kind of reaction, you realise it hit someone on a very visceral level," Brolin said.

- 'Ahead of his time' -

Fans have long praised the book's visionary edge, anticipating debates over global warming and the impact of technology.

"The author was ahead of his time, already concerned about what the world was heading towards," said Bardem when asked about its environmental concerns.

Despite its ready-made audience and clear cinematic potential, previous transfers to film have been famously difficult.

One attempt by cult Franco-Chilean filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky fell apart after four years of work in the 1970s.

Another attempt by horror auteur David Lynch in the 1980s turned into an expensive flop, though it still has its fans.

"I love that version and I watched it about two months before shooting," Chalamet said.

"But when Denis Villeneuve asks you to do a movie, you forget all that and make yourself humble to the source material."

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After what felt like years of waiting for representation, Marvel Studios' first Asian-lead film  Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings  has officially hit theaters!

Out got the chance to chat with Shang-Chi director Destin Daniel Cretton (who helmed 2019's Just Mercy) about crafting the film, the pressure he felt from bringing a story that will mean so much to so many viewers and fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, working with actors Awkwafina and Simu Liu on their characters' platonic friendship, and more!

"I think it's really cool that the most successful studio in Hollywood has made it one of their greatest goals to continue to tell stories that reflect the ethnic background of their fans," Cretton told Out when asked about being a part of a slow-but-sure tide of new, diverse stories and perspectives coming from Marvel Studios.

Earlier this year, Marvel's original Disney+ series Loki confirmed the beloved antihero (portrayed famously by British actor Tom Hiddleston) is canonically bisexual, and later this year, the MCU is reportedly set to introduce the first gay superhero in its lineup via Phastos (played by Atlanta star Brian Tyree Henry) in the ensemble cast of The Eternals. The MCU has also become more racially and gender inclusive, with titles like 2018's Black Panther and 2019's Captain Marvel having been huge hits with superhero fans.

"It is something that I hope other studios and other producers in the industry see, that that is the wave of the future," he continued. "If we're going to continue to thrive as an industry, we need to tell stories that reflect the people around us."

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings is now playing in theaters!
The United States is building small cities on military bases across the country temporarily to house the Afghan evacuees who fled their home country in the final days and weeks of August.

The eight military installations that are being used to house Afghan refugees currently have approximately 25,600 people with a capacity of 36,000, though they are still short of the 50,000 goal, Gen. Glen VanHerck, commander of Northcom, said during Fridays briefing.

VanHerck does not anticipate that the military will need to use additional bases to reach that threshold.

EXCLUSIVE: FORMER NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER CALLS FOR AFGHANISTAN 'ACCOUNTABILITY'

We continue to provide culturally appropriate food, water, bedding, religious services, recreational activities, and other services such as transportation from the port of entry to the location of accommodations and some medical services, he said. Im building eight small cities. Were going to have challenges.

VanHerck also described a mayor cell in place, which he described as how at least one base established an Afghan leader within the village to be a point person to help make sure the refugees have what they need.

"We take our military leaders, we put them into the mayor's cell, and they're responsible for a specific location, maybe a few dorms, a dorm or two, and they have a counterpart on the Afghan side that would essentially be their equal, if you will, in rank," the general explained. "This is great because not only does it allow the Afghans to express their concerns or challenges or where they need resources or help, it allows us to also communicate with them through the same process, and they can perpetuate that information."

Within the bases, families are housed together, while single males and females are housed among each other.

There have also been "a couple" of unaccompanied minors who were evacuated, VanHerck said, noting that those children are handed over to the Department of and Human Services. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas also characterized the amount of unaccompanied minors as a "small number" during a Friday briefing.

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Unaccompanied minors do not represent a significant share of arriving Afghan nationals," a spokesperson for Health and Human Services told the Washington Examiner. "We are working to ensure that Unaccompanied Afghan Minors who are referred to the Office of Refugee and Resettlement (ORR) for processing, unification, or placement are placed with licensed care providers that are able to provide culturally and linguistically appropriate services. When possible, Unaccompanied Afghan Minors are unified quickly on site or transported to licensed facilities. We will continue to work with our government partners to provide care for all of the children referred to us.

The tens of thousands of Afghans flown out of Afghanistan in August, before the U.S. withdrew all of its troops, have been taken to the Middle East and Europe, where they are being screened before going on to the U.S. The U.S. European Command spans across Germany, Italy, and Spain.

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Tags: News, Pentagon, War in Afghanistan, Afghanistan, Refugees

Original Author: Mike Brest

Original Location: 'Small cities': Inside the military bases that will temporarily house Afghan evacuees
Katie Harp / Unsplash

GOBankingRates wants to empower women to take control of their finances. According to the latest stats, women hold $72 billion in private wealth  but fewer women than men consider themselves to be in good or excellent financial shape. Women are less likely to be investing and are more likely to have debt, and women are still being paid less than men overall. Our Financially Savvy Female column will explore the reasons behind these inequities and provide solutions to change them. We believe financial equality begins with financial literacy, so were providing tools and tips for women, by women to take control of their money and help them live a richer life.

Keep Up With the Latest: Sign Up for The Financially Savvy Female Newsletter



According to a recent study by Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, over 27% of women are in the process of starting or running a new business. But despite starting businesses at a high rate, only a startling 10% of women are running mature businesses, meaning that many of them fail in the first few years. In todays column, were exploring ways that readers like you can help support women-owned small businesses so we can change those stats.



Read: 3 Money Moves Women Business Owners Should Be Making Right Now

Helpful: How To Thrive as a Female Founder in a Male-Dominated World

Actively Seek Out Women-Owned Businesses

When seeking out new service providers, like a hairdresser, mechanic or dentist, prioritize companies owned by women, said Zainep Mahmoud, acquisitions marketing lead, small business card at Capital One. Dont be afraid to call and ask!

You can also be proactive about buying from women-owned businesses when online shopping.

Keep in mind that some big-box retailers will allow you to filter by women-owned businesses and/or small businesses when shopping online, Mahmoud said.

Find Out: 4 Essential Tips for Moms Re-Entering the Workforce

Show Your Support Digitally

Take the time to leave online reviews or shout them out on social media, as personal recommendations make a big difference for small businesses, Mahmoud said.

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See: 3 Money Moves Every Woman Must Make, According to Rachel Cruze

Donate to Crowdfunds

Search crowdfunding platforms for opportunities to provide financial support for women just starting or expanding their businesses, Mahmoud said.

Read: 4 Money Lies Women Tell Themselves (& Why Theyre Not True)

Share Your Expertise

If you have skills that could benefit a women-owned small business, offer to share what you know.

Seek out pro bono opportunities to leverage your skills like marketing, legal support or financial planning, which are extremely valuable for women as they build their businesses, Mahmoud said.

If you are an established small-business owner, considering mentoring a woman who is just getting started.

Mature business owners were once in the same position, and sharing how they got started and overcame obstacles in their career helps to catapult younger business owners past those struggles in the early years, said Land Bridgers, CEO at Integrated Financial Group.

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Last updated: Sept. 1, 2021

This article originally appeared on GOBankingRates.com: How To Support Women-Owned Small Businesses
DAMASCUS, Syria (AP)  Syria says it shot down Israeli missiles as they approached the capital Damascus on Friday, saying it had countered an aggression from its longtime adversary with its own air defenses.

State news agency SANA said Syria shot down most of the missiles, which were launched from the area southeast of neighboring Lebanon and targeted areas near Damascus. It provided no further details. The Russian military, which provides air-defense systems to Syria, said later Friday that Syria had shot down more than 20 missiles launched from Israeli F-15 fighter jets from Lebanons airspace. The claims could not be immediately verified.

The Israeli military, which rarely speaks of its operations in the war-ravaged country, did not acknowledge that they carried out any airstrikes.

It said only that a surface-to-air missile launched from Syrian territory towards Israeli air space exploded over the Mediterranean Sea on Friday, and that residents in central Israel had located several missile fragments on the ground.

Israel has launched hundreds of strikes against Iran-linked military targets in Syria over the years. but rarely acknowledges or discusses such operations.

Israel views Iranian entrenchment on its northern frontier as a red line, and it has repeatedly struck what it says are Iran-linked facilities and weapons convoys destined for Lebanese Hezbollah. The Iran-backed militant group is fighting alongside Syrian government forces in the country's long-running civil war.

Russia has waged a military campaign in Syria since 2015, helping President Bashar Assads government reclaim control over most of the country after a devastating civil war. Moscow also has helped modernize Syrias military, including providing Assad with air defense systems, and trained its personnel.

Rear Adm. Vadim Kulit, head of the Russian militarys Reconciliation Center in Syria, said Syrian air defense units downed 21 of the 24 guided missiles launched by the Israeli aircraft with Russia-supplied air defense systems. He didnt specify what Syrian facilities were targeted by Israeli jets and whether they inflicted any casualties or damage.
(Reuters) -Three Taliban sources said the Islamist militia had on Friday seized the Panjshir valley north of Kabul, the last province of Afghanistan holding out against it, although a resistance leader denied it had fallen.

"By the grace of Allah Almighty, we are in control of the entire Afghanistan. The troublemakers have been defeated and Panjshir is now under our command," said one Taliban commander.

Deafening volleys of celebratory gunfire resounded all over Kabul and Facebook accounts were full of mentions of the fall of Panjshir.

It was not immediately possible to confirm the reports, which if true would give the Taliban complete control of Afghanistan, something they did not achieve when they first ruled the country between 1996 and 2001.

Former Vice President Amrullah Saleh, one of the leaders of the opposition forces, said his side had not given up.

"There is no doubt we are in a difficult situation. We are under invasion by the Taliban," he said on a video clip posted to Twitter by a BBC World journalist. "We have held the ground, we have resisted."

Several other resistance leaders also dismissed reports of the fall of Panjshir, where thousands of fighters from regional militias and remnants of the old government's forces had massed.

"News of Panjshir conquests is circulating on Pakistani media. This is a lie," said Ahmad Massoud https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/son-slain-afghan-hero-massoud-vows-resistance-seeks-support-2021-08-19, who is leading the forces.

There had been reports of heavy fighting https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/taliban-afghan-rebels-claim-heavy-casualties-fighting-over-valley-2021-09-02 and casualties in the valley, which is walled off by mountains except for a narrow entrance and had held out against Soviet occupation as well as the previous Taliban government that was ousted in 2001.

Meanwhile, U.S.-trained Afghan pilots who flew 46 military planes out of the country before the Taliban seized Kabul on Aug. 15 questioned when they would be allowed to leave the Uzbekistan camp where they were being held.

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"We are kind of like in jail," one pilot told Reuters https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/exclusive-theyll-kill-us-afghan-pilots-held-uzbek-camp-fear-deadly-homecoming-2021-09-03.

The Taliban seized Kabul on Aug. 15 after rapid advances across Afghanistan.

NEW GOVERNMENT

Earlier, Taliban sources said the group's co-founder Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar would lead a new Afghan government set to be announced soon.

Its immediate priority may be to avert the collapse of an economy grappling with drought and the ravages of a 20-year conflict that killed around 240,000 Afghans before U.S. forces completed a tumultuous pullout on Aug. 30.

Afghanistan is facing not only humanitarian disaster https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/afghan-taliban-victory-brings-new-challenge-governing-country-crisis-2021-09-03 but also threats to its security from rival jihadist groups, including a local offshoot of Islamic State.

Baradar would be joined by Mullah Mohammad Yaqoob, the son of late Taliban co-founder Mullah Omar, and Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai in senior positions, three sources said.

"All the top leaders have arrived in Kabul, where preparations are in final stages to announce the new government," a Taliban official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Haibatullah Akhundzada, the Taliban's supreme religious leader, would focus on religious matters and governance, another Taliban source said.

While Taliban officials have spoken of wanting to form a consensus government, a source close to the militants said the interim government would consist solely of Taliban members.

It would comprise 25 ministries, with a consultative council, or shura, of 12 Muslim scholars, the source added.

Also being planned within six to eight months is a loya jirga, or grand assembly, bringing together representatives from across Afghan society to discuss a constitution and the structure of the future government, the source said.

Without the aid that has sustained the country for years, the Taliban will find it hard to avert economic collapse.

Western powers say they are prepared to engage with the Taliban and send humanitarian aid, but that formal recognition of the government and broader economic assistance will depend on action - not just promises - to safeguard human rights.

When they were in power from 1996 to 2001, the Taliban imposed violent punishments and barred women and older girls from school and work.

This time, the group has tried to present a more conciliatory face to the world, promising to protect human rights and avoid vendettas, although it has yet to explain what social rules it will enforce.

The United States, the European Union and others have cast doubt on its assurances.

RIGHTS OF WOMEN

On Friday, dozens of women protested near the presidential palace, urging the Taliban to respect the rights of women and their significant gains in education and the workforce over the past two decades.

"Our demonstrations are because without the presence of women, no society will prosper," said one protester, Fatema Etemadi.

Footage obtained by Reuters showed most of the women dispersing after an armed Taliban militant intervened.

Afghanistan's 250 female judges https://www.reuters.com/article/us-afghanistan-conflict-judges/hunted-by-the-men-they-jailed-afghanistans-women-judges-seek-escape-idUSKBN2FZ0YX are particularly afraid of men they jailed who have now been freed by the Taliban.

"Four or five Taliban members came and asked people in my house: 'Where is this woman judge?' These were people who I had put in jail," a judge who had escaped to Europe said from an undisclosed location, asking not to be identified.

(Reporting by Reuters bureaus; Writing by Lincoln Feast, Mark Heinrich and Kevin Liffey; Editing by Clarence Fernandez, Peter Graff, Alex Richardson and Grant McCool)
Some refugees boarding planes reportedly do not know where they are heading (AFP via Getty)

Up to 100,000 Afghan refugees have been scattered around the world in the aftermath of the Taliban takeover, plunged into anxiety and fear and facing bureaucratic hurdles that could leave them stranded for years.

In the two weeks between the Taliban taking control of Afghanistan and the 31 August deadline for the US to complete the evacuation of both civilians and its soldiers, around 123,000 individuals were flown out. The US said its own aircraft had carried 79,000 people, including 6,000 Americans and more than 73,500 third-country nationals and Afghan civilians.

Yet campaigners say that while this mad-dash scramble may have saved huge numbers of lives, it has cast tens of thousands of individuals into uncertain futures.

Up to 20 countries, ranging from Albania to Uganda, have agreed to house some Afghans on a temporary basis while their documentation and legal status is assessed. Those working with refugees say there are reports of some people having no idea of their destination when they board a plane, and that some are still unsure even when they land.

Recently, a former four-star US marine general, James Hoss Cartwright, urged the international humanitarian community to focus immediately on establishing places where refugees can live when they move from the USs temporary staging locations. He said they may be there for a decade.

The hard thing is to get people focused on the longer-term refugee population. Theyre not in a place where they can stay, theyre not in a place where theyre going to get settled, he said at an event organised by the Atlantic Council in Washington DC.

The general, who served as vice chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and is a scholar at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, added: They are going to have to be in place for five to 10 years. Its going to take that long to sort out the refugee status.

In the drama of the USs final evacuation from Afghanistan, an act that ended a 20-year military occupation, much media attention has focused on the deaths of 13 US troops, and more than 100 Afghans, killed in a suicide bomb attack in the very final days. There has also been criticism of US president Joe Biden for leaving behind up to 200 American citizens and potentially tens of thousands of Afghans who had worked with the US or other allied governments.

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Indeed, already under pressure from Republicans, Mr Biden has often sought to emphasise the blocks he is putting in the way of ordinary Afghans coming to the US.

Planes taking off from Kabul are not flying directly to the United States, Mr Biden said last month. At these sites ... we are conducting thorough security screening for everyone who is not a US citizen or a lawful permanent resident.

There has been much less focus on the very basic question of what will happen now to the 100,000 or more Afghans who were flown out, either to the US or to third countries.

Robyn Barnard, an immigration expert at Human Rights First, told The Independent there was concern about having people processed outside of the US.

Were urging the government to not leave people in these countries for visa processing, because some of the processing times can stretch into many years, she said.

Rather, her organisation is urging Mr Biden allow refugees to enter the US on so-called parole, and to process their applications there.

Many of the people in these countries are pretty vulnerable and shouldnt be left to languish in other countries when they have support here, and theres a large community of Afghan Americans to support them, she said.

Kosovo is one of of three Balkan nations that has agreed to house refugees (AFP via Getty)

One of the countries that has accepted several hundred refugees, including a number of Afghan journalists, is Mexico, where one of the groups helping them is the International Rescue Committee (IRC).

Speaking from Mexico City, Raymundo Tamayo, the IRCs country director for Mexico, said his group was telling refugees they should expect to be there for anywhere between 12 and 18 months before they are in a position either to move on or to apply for residency in Mexico.

He said the people he spoke to were tired, and grateful to be there, but also concerned about friends and family still in Afghanistan. Mexico has a long history of welcoming evacuees and asylum seekers when conflict has hit the hardest, he said.

Last month, as the US flew its final evacuation mission, America, along with 98 other countries, said it was prepared to offer safe harbour to Afghans. So far, the list of nations that have actually taken people or given a firm commitment to provide visas numbers less than 20, and is made up of Albania, Australia, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Spain, the UK, the US, Canada, Uganda, Rwanda, Mexico, Germany, France, Iran, Pakistan, Spain and Tajikistan.

Some, such as Spain and France, have agreed to accept fewer than 100 families.

Britain has evacuated 8,500 Afghans, most of whom had worked with UK forces and have been resettled under the Afghan Relocation and Assistance Policy (ARAP). The government says it plans to accept an additional 5,000 vulnerable Afghans in the next year, and 20,000 in the long term, under a separate programme that has not yet started.

Meanwhile, The Independent has launched a campaign urging the government to be more generous.

The US is reportedly housing 20,000 Afghan evacuees in five states  Virginia, Wisconsin, New Mexico, New Jersey and Indiana  with another 40,000 overseas.

A number of countries, including Australia, Switzerland and Turkey, have made clear they do not want to accept thousands of Afghans. Some, including Austria, China and Russia, have said they will not accept any whatsoever.

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The Soviet Union launched its own, bloody occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s. But Vladimir Putin said he would not open the countrys borders, and would not accept militants showing up here under cover of refugees.

In some of the countries where refugees have arrived, including Uganda, some locals have expressed concerns about the alleged threat presented by people fleeing decades of war. In the United States, Republicans have sought to weaponise the issue to attack Mr Biden.

The influential Fox News broadcaster Tucker Carlson, who some believe could run for the presidency in 2024, has claimed America is facing an invasion.

The US State Department did not answer specific questions as to how long processing visas would take, or whether people were told where they were being flown to.

The Biden administration has demonstrated, in the face of significant challenges, its sacrosanct commitment to the thousands of brave Afghans who have stood side by side with the United States over the course of the past two decades, a spokesperson said in a statement, adding that it was escalating its processing of so-called SIV visas for those most at risk.

This week the State Department admitted that the vast majority of Afghans who had worked for the US as interpreters or in other roles, and were eligible for such visas, were still in Kabul.

Rina Amiri, a former adviser to the late Richard Holbrooke, who was himself a special adviser on Afghanistan and Pakistan to Barack Obama, has been seeking to raise awareness of the plight of Afghans who are now stranded everywhere.

Mexico has agreed to take several hundred Afghans, including a number of journalists (Getty)

Ms Amiri, a senior fellow at New York Universitys Centre for International Cooperation, said friends had been calling her, asking how they could help. She said she advised them to start calling anyone in government or business or philanthropy who could help.

She said this entrepreneurial, grassroots effort had linked regional experts with people with enough spare money to charter a plane, as well as government officials.

One friend started calling people she knew and tried to find countries that would take people, she said. She had no luck with Greece, but Spain agreed to take 40 families.

Ms Amiri said many were leaving Afghanistan with nothing. She was hearing from people getting on planes not knowing where they were going, or even where they had landed.

A major challenge, she said, was to counter a simplistic perception in the west of Afghanistan being an utterly poor country. The truth, she said, is that it has a sizeable middle class, and those people fleeing with just a bag previously had homes, cell phones, televisions.

Of the effort to help those people, she said she was immensely moved by individuals and organisations and people who have just stepped up and mobilised because they are horrified by whats happening out there.

She added: Ive never seen anything like this anywhere. And it both breaks your faith in institutions, and restores your faith in humanity.

Read More

What is the difference between the Taliban and Isis?

Why did US leave Afghanistan and how much did America spend?

The Taliban: Who are they, who are the leaders and what do they want?
A Texas school district will screen its employees' social media accounts for any content it deems inappropriate, it announced.

The Austin Independent School District will monitor staff's social media accounts twice annually starting in September for any "illegal activity; violent, threatening, or sexually explicit posts; or racist, bigoted, or discriminatory behavior."

The measure will help foster a suitable environment for students in and out of the classroom, the district said.

TEXAS PRINCIPAL SUSPENDED AFTER BEING ACCUSED OF TEACHING CRITICAL RACE THEORY

Conducting the screening will be Social Intelligence, an independent company from California.

Using employees' personal information, such as names, phone numbers, addresses, and emails, the company will view social media content.

"Social media checks include a review up to 7 years of history," according to the Austin Independent School District's website.

The district listed social media activities that will be deemed inappropriate.

"Social Intelligence will review employees social media content and will flag any media that may violate district policy, including: racism/intolerance, violence, potentially illegal activity, or sexually explicit material," the district said. "Please note that if federal or state-protected class information is viewable within the flagged content, it is redacted from the final report sent to the District. Please see AISD Board Policy DC (Regulation) for more information."

Violators will be contacted by supervisors and possibly the district's human resources officers, and staff found to violate district policy are subject to "discipline, up to and including termination," according to the district.

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Posts made by staff members and those they are tagged in are fair game, but Social Intelligence is unable to access accounts set to private, the district said.

"Social media accounts that are set to private may not be accessed through Social Intelligences system," according to the district's site.

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"Considering the district is running a deficit budget, the teachers are fighting for a 2% raise, why are we spending the money on this right now?" one employee asked, according to KXAN.

Leslie Stephens, the district's chief human capital officer, justified the program as an attempt to clean an image.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

"It's just a matter of trying to make sure that we represent our best selves forward to our students, parents, and community," Stephens said. "There is always that opportunity to clean up those things."

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Tags: News, Texas, Austin, Schools, Students, Social Media

Original Author: Luke Gentile

Original Location: Texas school district to monitor employees' social media accounts
The Tshikapa river in DR Congo turned red because of the pollution, officials say

A toxic leak from a massive diamond mine in Angola killed at least 12 people and left 4,500 sick, a minister in neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo says.

The leak turned a tributary of the River Congo red and killed huge numbers of fish, which some people ate, said Environment Minister Eve Bazaiba.

She said that DR Congo would seek damages but did not specify how much.

There has been no public response so far from the Catoca mine's owners.

According to Reuters news agency, the mine produces about 75% of Angola's diamonds.

After a reservoir containing toxic by-products from the mine leaked in late July, the Tshikapa river across the border in DR Congo turned red killing hippos, fish, and other animals.

Ms Bazaiba said there were "tonnes of dead fish floating on the river... and then the first reflex was to take the fish".

Officials in Kasai province banned people from drinking water and eating fish from the river but about a million people were affected.

Communities living on the river banks suffered from diarrhoea and other health problems.

Ms Bazaiba said it was good that both the Angolan government and the mine's owners recognised what had happened.

But she did not give any further details of DR Congo's request for damages which she said was in accordance with the "polluter pays" principle.

Catoca, which is jointly owned by Angolan state diamond company Endiama and Russia's Alrosa, said it had built two dykes to filter sediment out of the water and that the leak had been sealed, Reuters reports.

AFRICA LIVE: Updates on this and other stories from the continent

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TUNIS (Reuters) - Tunisia's powerful UGTT union and two political parties rejected on Friday an invitation to discuss the political crisis with a U.S congressional delegation visiting Tunisia, saying they refuse any foreign interference in local crisis.

U.S. Senator Chris Murphy will lead a congressional delegation to discuss the path forward to protect democracy in Tunisia in a visit on Saturday, after President Kais Saied's seizure of governing powers https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/tunisian-president-relieves-prime-minister-his-post-2021-07-25 in July in a move critics called a coup.

Saied dismissed on July 25 his prime minister, froze parliament and assumed executive authority in a sudden intervention that his Islamist opponents have labelled a coup but that he said was necessary to save the country from collapse. Last week, the exceptional measures were indefinitely extended.

The president's actions appear to have widespread support after years of economic stagnation and political paralysis.

However, Saied's delay in appointing a new government or announcing his longer-term plans has caused jitters among some Tunisians fearing a lack of direction in the face of major economic challenges or even a return to autocracy. []

The U.S. delegation, which will visit Tunisia as part of a regional visit that included Lebanon, Israel and the West Bank, will discuss with officials and politicians the crisis in Tunisia.

"Our Tunisian affair should be resolved only among Tunisians, UGTT union will not participate in the invitation of the American embassy", said Sami Tahri, the spokesman of UGTT union, a key player in Tunisia's political scene.

He added that UGTT did not accept the bullying of foreigners in the time of former President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, and "will not accept it today and tomorrow."

The Free Constitutional party led by Abir Moussi, a supporter of former President Ben Ali overthrown by the 2011 revolution, and Achaab party close to Saied also rejected the invitation saying that no way to accept any interference in local crisis.

(Reporting By Tarek Amara; Editing by Marguerita Choy)
By Julia Love

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) -A U.S. national labor agency is investigating two charges against tech giant Apple Inc filed by employees, records on its website show, amid a wave of worker activism at a company known for its secretive culture.

The charges, filed on Aug. 26 and Sept. 1, are being reviewed by the U.S. National Labor Relations Board's office in Oakland, California. The agency declined to comment.

"We take all concerns seriously and we thoroughly investigate whenever a concern is raised," Apple, which is based in Cupertino, California, said in a statement that cited employee privacy in declining to discuss specifics.

Ashley Gjovik, a senior engineering program manager at Apple, told Reuters that she filed the Aug. 26 charge, which cites harassment by a manager, reduction of responsibilities and increases in unfavorable work, among other complaints.

The Sept. 1 charge was filed by Cher Scarlett, an Apple software engineer who said the company repeatedly stopped discussions of pay among employees.

The documents she sent the agency, which she provided to Reuters, say Apple "engaged in coercive and suppressive activity that has enabled abuse and harassment of organizers of protected concerted activity."

The labor relations agency investigates all charges it receives, and launches a prosecution against the employer if merited.

Workers in Silicon Valley, and especially those of Apple, are known to avoid publicity, reflecting companies' desire to keep new products tightly under wraps.

In recent weeks, some current and former Apple workers have critiqued company culture on Twitter, using the hashtag #AppleToo. U.S. law allows employees to openly discuss certain topics, such as working conditions.

In addition, workers have engaged in a heated debate on the messaging platform Slack about Apple's move to scan U.S. customer phones and computers for child sex abuse images, Reuters reported https://www.reuters.com/technology/exclusive-apples-child-protection-features-spark-concern-within-its-own-ranks-2021-08-12.

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In a letter accompanying her NLRB charge, Scarlett wrote that Apple employees began a pay equity survey in April, but the company blocked them, citing privacy concerns.

It also halted subsequent surveys, including one that aimed to address the privacy issues, Scarlett added.

In late August, Apple denied employees' request to create a Slack channel to discuss pay equity, which Scarlett told Reuters was "the last straw" that led her to file the complaint.

Gjovik told Reuters that after Apple started investigating her complaints, as well as accusations of sexism, her managers began re-assigning her work to colleagues and loading her up with undesirable tasks.

The company put her on paid administrative leave in early August. She said Apple had not finished its investigation.

Gjovik said she felt encouraged after seeing more employees speaking out about the company's culture in recent weeks.

"The biggest obstacle for making progress at Apple is the culture of secrecy and alienation," she said.

(Reporting by Julia Love; Additional reporting by Stephen Nellis; Editing by Leslie Adler and Clarence Fernandez)
A US judge has ruled that artificial intelligence can't get a patent for its creations, ruling that such a privilege is reserved for people.

District court judge Leonie Brinkema backed a decision by the US patent office to turn away applications made on behalf of a "creativity machine" named DABUS.

Brinkema issued a ruling on Thursday saying that "the clear answer is 'no'" to the question of whether an AI machine qualifies as an inventor under patent law.

"As technology evolves, there may come a time when artificial intelligence reaches a level of sophistication that might satisfy accepted meanings of inventorship," Brinkema said in the ruling.

"But that time has not yet arrived and, if it does, it will be up to Congress to decide how, if at all, it wants to expand the scope of patent law."

Stephen Thaler had applied for patents on behalf of his DABUS machine in 2019, only to have US patent officials conclude the AI didn't qualify because it isn't an individual, according to court documents.

"The AI came up with the invention and not me, so it would be inaccurate to list myself as the inventor," Thaler said in response to an AFP inquiry.

One of the purported inventions was for a light beacon that flashes to attract attention, and the other for a beverage container "based on fractal geometry."

Brinkema said in the ruling that the law lets "individuals" hold patents, and people -- not machines -- fall into that category.

Thaler's attorney, Ryan Abbott, who heads an Artificial Inventor Project, said they will appeal the ruling.

"We believe that listing an AI as an inventor is consistent with both the language and purpose of the US Patent Act," Abbott told AFP.

"This decision would prohibit protection for AI-generated inventions and it diverges from the recent findings of the Federal Court of Australia."

In July, a judge in Australia sided with Thaler in a legal fight to get a patent for DABUS under the auspices of that country's Patent Act, according to a copy of the ruling posted online.

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"In my view, an inventor as recognized under the Act can be an artificial intelligence system or device," the judge wrote.

"It is consistent with the Act. And it is consistent with promoting innovation."

The Artificial Inventor Project has obtained a patent for DABUS in South Africa in a world first, according to Abbott.
There's no doubt that money can be made by owning shares of unprofitable businesses. For example, biotech and mining exploration companies often lose money for years before finding success with a new treatment or mineral discovery. Nonetheless, only a fool would ignore the risk that a loss making company burns through its cash too quickly.

Given this risk, we thought we'd take a look at whether PainChek (ASX:PCK) shareholders should be worried about its cash burn. For the purposes of this article, cash burn is the annual rate at which an unprofitable company spends cash to fund its growth; its negative free cash flow. The first step is to compare its cash burn with its cash reserves, to give us its 'cash runway'.

View our latest analysis for PainChek

Does PainChek Have A Long Cash Runway?

You can calculate a company's cash runway by dividing the amount of cash it has by the rate at which it is spending that cash. When PainChek last reported its balance sheet in June 2021, it had zero debt and cash worth AU$11m. In the last year, its cash burn was AU$4.2m. Therefore, from June 2021 it had 2.7 years of cash runway. Importantly, though, the one analyst we see covering the stock thinks that PainChek will reach cashflow breakeven before then. In that case, it may never reach the end of its cash runway. Depicted below, you can see how its cash holdings have changed over time.

How Is PainChek's Cash Burn Changing Over Time?

In the last year, PainChek did book revenue of AU$3.1m, but its revenue from operations was less, at just AU$234k. We don't think that's enough operating revenue for us to understand too much from revenue growth rates, since the company is growing off a low base. So we'll focus on the cash burn, today. The skyrocketing cash burn up 116% year on year certainly tests our nerves. That sort of spending growth rate can't continue for very long before it causes balance sheet weakness, generally speaking. While the past is always worth studying, it is the future that matters most of all. For that reason, it makes a lot of sense to take a look at our analyst forecasts for the company.

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How Easily Can PainChek Raise Cash?

While PainChek does have a solid cash runway, its cash burn trajectory may have some shareholders thinking ahead to when the company may need to raise more cash. Issuing new shares, or taking on debt, are the most common ways for a listed company to raise more money for its business. One of the main advantages held by publicly listed companies is that they can sell shares to investors to raise cash and fund growth. We can compare a company's cash burn to its market capitalisation to get a sense for how many new shares a company would have to issue to fund one year's operations.

PainChek has a market capitalisation of AU$58m and burnt through AU$4.2m last year, which is 7.2% of the company's market value. That's a low proportion, so we figure the company would be able to raise more cash to fund growth, with a little dilution, or even to simply borrow some money.

Is PainChek's Cash Burn A Worry?

It may already be apparent to you that we're relatively comfortable with the way PainChek is burning through its cash. For example, we think its cash runway suggests that the company is on a good path. Although we do find its increasing cash burn to be a bit of a negative, once we consider the other metrics mentioned in this article together, the overall picture is one we are comfortable with. It's clearly very positive to see that at least one analyst is forecasting the company will break even fairly soon. Taking all the factors in this report into account, we're not at all worried about its cash burn, as the business appears well capitalized to spend as needs be. Taking an in-depth view of risks, we've identified 3 warning signs for PainChek that you should be aware of before investing.

Of course, you might find a fantastic investment by looking elsewhere. So take a peek at this free list of companies insiders are buying, and this list of stocks growth stocks (according to analyst forecasts)

This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned.



Have feedback on this article? Concerned about the content? Get in touch with us directly. Alternatively, email editorial-team (at) simplywallst.com.
Wisconsin police fatally shot a man outside a local Walmart on Friday after he allegedly carjacked two vehicles and kidnapped one of the drivers.

Milwaukee County Sheriff Earnell Lucas said investigators are still trying to put together exactly what happened, but it appears the suspect carjacked a vehicle sometime before 8 a.m.

The unidentified man then forced the driver to take him to a Walmart in Milwaukee, where they may have "obtained items," the sheriff said.

Next, they went to a service station, where the driver went inside and told the attendant to call police. The carjacker and the driver then left and went to a Walmart in Franklin. The driver somehow managed to tell a clerk to call police, the sheriff said.

WISCONSIN MAN, 23, SPUN 'WEB OF LIES' AFTER KILLING, DISMEMBERING HIS PARENTS, AUTHORITIES SAY

Officers received a call of an active shooter at the Walmart, Lucas said. Officers from multiple agencies swarmed the scene. The suspect fled in the vehicle but crashed it as police gave chase.

12-STATE HUMAN TRAFFICKING STING FREES 59 VICTIMS, INCLUDING 2 MINORS; 102 SUSPECTS ARRESTED

The suspect immediately hijacked another vehicle and but crashed that one as well. He jumped out of the wreckage with a gun and officers opened fire, killing him, the sheriff said. Franklin Police Chief Rick Oliva said during the news conference that there were "indications" the suspect pointed his weapon at officers.

Lucas said deputies from his office as well as at least one Franklin officer and multiple officers from neighboring Oak Creek fired their weapons. He said it was unclear exactly how many officers fired shots.

He said he had no information on the suspects background and didnt know the status of the carjacking victims. He said investigators are working across multiple crime scenes in Milwaukee County.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Over the years, the U.S. public has shown little appetite for the war in Afghanistan. The same could be said for the country's cultural institutions. We have been at war with and occupied Afghanistan for two decades, yet culturally it has been a blip.

"It takes a lot of convincing to make anyone want to do shows about it," says Muheb Esmat, an Afghan independent curator based in New York City. "This war has been going on for a long time, but we only get into it when it's a catastrophe."

A year ago, Esmat organized "No End in Sight," the first U.S. solo show of work by Afghan artist Aziz Hazara, who is based in Berlin. Staged at the Hessel Museum of Art at Bard College in New York's Hudson Valley, the works examined the ways in which media and technology  such as omnipresent night vision technology  have shaped the way we have viewed the war in Afghanistan.

Early last year, Hazara was also the subject of an installation at the 22nd Biennale of Sydney in Australia. For that show, he presented a multichannel video installation titled "Bow Echo," which shows five Afghan boys struggling to stand atop a windy peak as they play notes of warning on a plastic bugle. The piercing cries of the bugle, along with the ways in which the boys struggle mightily with the unseen force of the wind, are full of poignance and futility.

The Biennale, however, was shut down a little more than a week after it opened due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Thankfully, aspects of Hazara's installation can be viewed online courtesy of the Google Arts & Culture initiative.

The U.S. military occupation of Afghanistan may have officially ended with Monday's departure of the last U.S. evacuation plane from Kabul, but the cultural ramifications of the conflict will be felt for decades. How they will reverberate in the West remains to be seen  particularly in the U.S., where Afghan cultural representation has generally been sparse or, in some cases, remains focused on the ancient.

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The biggest exhibition of Afghan art to be held in U.S. was perhaps the traveling show "Afghanistan: Hidden Treasures From the National Museum, Kabul," which landed at various institutions in 2008 and 2009, including the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. It featured an estimated 200 ancient objects from the pre-Islamic era that illustrated the region's strategic position as a Silk Road hub, a place where Persian, Greek, Mesopotamian and Indian cultures met and mingled.

Not only had these artifacts survived the centuries, they had made it through a particularly turbulent period of invasion and war at the end of the 20th century  stashed away by prescient curators around the time of the Soviet invasion in 1979 and unearthed in 2004 after the Taliban's fall. Roberta Smith in the New York Times described these pieces as "triumphant"  a reminder that "every survivor saves much more than just itself: long strands of culture and identity and history waiting to be woven back together."

A 1st century decorative ivory from Begram, Afghanistan, was one of hundreds of objects hidden by workers at the National Museum in Kabul during the Soviet invasion. (Thierry Ollivier / Musee Guimet / Getty Images)

More contemporary visions of Afghanistan by Afghan artists, however, have been harder to come by. Often, exhibitions staged in connection with Afghanistan feature photography by Western artists and journalists. There also appears to be a preoccupation with skateboarding girls. (The soft power of shredding.)

In the world of contemporary art, in fact, Afghanistan is generally registered through the eyes of Western artists  mostly famously, Italian artist Alighiero e Boetti, who in the 1970s became enamored of Kabul and opened the One Hotel, a guesthouse that became a gathering spot for itinerant artists and critics. It was there that he conceived his "Mappa" series, maps that question the subjectivity of maps and were presented in the form of an embroidered Afghan rug. Boetti would commission Afghan weavers to make the works, which would often takes years to complete. (One of these resides in the permanent collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.)

When documenta, the quinquennial organized out of Kassel, Germany, chose Kabul as a satellite location for the 13th edition of the show in 2012, Mexican artist Mario Garcia Torres highlighted Boetti's legacy in his own installation. Torres, who has a long-running dialogue with Boetti's work, went to Kabul to find the location of the famous hotel and staged an imagined fax correspondence with the long-dead Boetti about the film he wanted to make about it.

It's a charming rabbit hole. It also provides a limited view of art in Afghanistan.

"Everyone [in the West] who thinks of Kabul thinks of Boetti and his hotel," says Esmat. "They trace his history back, but they couldn't trace it back to the artists who are already there at the time that Boetti was traveling to Afghanistan."

Boetti has received copious institutional treatment; the representation of work by contemporary and 20th century Afghan artists, not so much.

A show of video art from Afghanistan and Iran titled "Sight Unseen," featuring work by artist and educator Rahraw Omarzad, appeared at New York's Asia Society in 2009. In 2016, the Hammer Museum hosted Afghan street artist Shamsia Hassani for a residency. Last year, artist Mariam Ghani (who happens to be the daughter of deposed Afghan President Ashraf Ghani) presented work from her project "What We Left Unfinished" at the Blaffer Art Museum in Houston. Among other works, it included a documentary of the same name that looks at the stories of five films from Afghanistan's communist era that were left unfinished. (It was released in the U.S. last month.)

Lida Abdul is one of the better known Afghan artists to emerge in the Western art scene. Born in Kabul, she and her family fled Afghanistan after the Soviet invasion. She ultimately relocated to Los Angeles, where she received a pair of bachelor's degrees from Cal State Fullerton (in philosophy and political science) and a master's in fine art from UC Irvine.

She has had solo exhibitions at the Indianapolis Museum of Art in 2008 and the Krannert Art Museum at the University of Illinois in 2010. And she represented Afghanistan at the 51st Venice Biennale in 2005  the one and only time the country has had a national pavilion in the exhibition. On that occasion, she presented the video work "White House," which shows the artist painting the rubble of the former presidential palace in Kabul a bright shade of white. The piece was later acquired by the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Late next month, her work will be featured alongside that of high-profile U.S. artists such as Joan Jonas and Lawrence Weiner in the inaugural exhibition of ZACentrale, a new three-year project space in Palermo, Italy, run by the Fondazione Merz.

Despite living in the U.S., Abdul's CV shows that she has exhibited more extensively abroad than she has here. And while she has appeared in various Los Angeles group shows, including several exhibitions at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions early on in her career, she has yet to land a solo museum exhibition in L.A. Not even a project space.

"No one has taken any interest," says independent curator Sara Raza, who has worked extensively with Abdul for almost two decades, most recently featuring her work in a group exhibition at New York's Rubin Museum titled "Clapping With Stones: Art and Acts of Resistance." "They take interest only once there is a disaster."

And when institutions do take an interest, the narratives presented can reinforce preexisting notions about Afghanistan  often dwelling on gender and conflict at the expense of everything else.

Gazelle Samizay is an artist who was born in Afghanistan and now is based in San Francisco. Her video work "Upon My Daughter," from 2010, can be found in the permanent collection at LACMA. In 2019, she co-curated, with Helena Zeweri, the group exhibition "Fragmented Futures: Afghanistan 100 Years Later," held at the Brand Library in Glendale  one of the rare group shows in the U.S. devoted exclusively to the Afghan experience.

"I think [institutions] should be self-reflective about what kinds of narratives they are accustomed to, the Orientalist narratives of the oppressed Afghan woman who is both submissive and exotic," she says. "Those kinds of images and artworks sell really well in the West, but they are really harmful because they portray Afghan women in a really simplistic way that doesn't acknowledge their agency."

Esmat concurs. "There are different narratives and the art world needs to be supportive of that," he says. "We need to take a wider look at the whole place."

Afghanistan, says Raza, "has a very unique cultural topography, both in terms of climate and environment, but also its politics. It's diverse. It's multiethnic. It's important to say that."

Khadim Ali is an Afghan artist of Hazara origin who is now based in Australia. The Hazara have been persecuted by the Taliban and Ali was therefore born in Pakistan. His work draws from classical traditions (the painting of miniatures and epic poetry) but also more conceptual forms (he has created sound installations employing Taliban propaganda CDs). His paintings were shown as part of documenta 13's presentation in Kabul and are held in the permanent collection of the Guggenheim Museum. Last year, he had an exhibition at New York's Aicon Gallery.

Ali's story is more complicated than the picture generally presented in the West, and his art represents that. This spring, in an interview with Ocula Magazine, he noted that the Taliban "are children of the West."

"The were created by Westerners in Afghanistan to fight the Soviets at that time. And then after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, these terrorist organizations were left with no exit plan."

For two decades, the U.S. and Afghanistan have been inextricably linked. But, in so many ways, our museums have failed to examine that. The withdrawal marks a moment in which to take a look.

"Tell the complicated story," says Samizay. It's the least we can do.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
(Getty Images)

A woman who allegedly punched a flight attendant in the face causing her to lose two teeth has been charged in federal court.

Vyvianna Quinonez was arrested in May after being accused of attacking the Southwest Airlines employee on a flight from Sacramento to San Diego.

Now she has been charged with felony assault resulting in serious bodily injury and interference with flight crew members and attendants, according to court documents, and is due appear in court in San Diego later this month,

Court papers state that the female flight attendant, identified only as SL, initially asked Ms Quinonez to fasten her seatbelt, stow her tray table and wear her mask as she prepared the cabin for landing.

The suspect, who is from Sacramento, allegedly pushed the flight attendant in the initial fracas.

An affidavit in the case states she later got out of her seat, punched the victim in the face and head with her fist and grabbed her hair.

The filing says that several passengers came to the victims defence, with one standing between the women and ordering the suspect to sit back down.

The victim suffered three chipped teeth in the incident, including two that had to be replaced by crowns, the court papers state.

Prosecutors say she also had a bruised left eye, needed four stitches to a cut under her eye, and had bruises on her arms.

The affidavit says that when she was arrested by San Diego Harbor Police at the airport, she claimed she had acted in self-defense and blamed the victim for provoking her.

The incident was one in a string of violent outbursts against flight attendants as the airline industry opened up again after travel slowed during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Last month, the Federal Aviation Administration said it had handed out fines against unruly passengers of more than $1 million in 2021.

Officials also said they had received reports of nearly 4,000 incidents of unruly behavior by passengers so far this year.

Read More

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A woman on Thursday was allegedly shot twice in Harris County after becoming involved in a road rage incident - when the other vehicle followed her home and opened fire (KPRC 2)

A Texas woman is recovering after being shot twice in the wake of an alleged road-rage incident, according to Harris County authorities.

The 21-year-old victim was found by deputies called to the scene on Thursday, the Harris County sheriffs office told The Independent on Friday. Her injuries were not life-threatening, the statement added.

Before the female was transported to the hospital, she stated she was involved in an accident and that lead to the shooting, the department said. Deputies found several spent rounds in a span of four block area no other information.

The department did not respond to a request for further detail on Friday including the womans condition or whether there had been arrests made.

According to a local NBC affiliate, the assailants stopped, and then once they got on the street and straightened out, the shooter, leaned back out the window and continued firing at the vehicle, HCSO deputy Matthew Curry said.

The details of the incident allegedly leading to the shooting were also not released.

I head about 10 to 12 shots, neighbour Arletha Ferguson told KPRC, adding that she ran outside after hearing the gunfire.

My heart started beating real fast because they were some loud shots and I just felt like somebody was getting shot, she told the station.

Ive been living here for over 15 years and this has never happened on my street. But you know, todays time it can happen anywhere, Ms Ferguson said.
Of the wounded people, three were in critical condition, one in serious condition and another in moderate condition, the St John ambulance service said in a statement to Reuters.

Witnesses told reporters outside the mall they had seen several people lying on the floor with stab wounds.

Others said they heard gunshots as they ran out of the supermarket.
WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP)  New Zealand authorities were so worried about an extremist inspired by the Islamic State group that they were following him around the clock and were able to shoot and kill him within 60 seconds of him unleashing a knife attack that wounded six people Friday at an Auckland supermarket.

Three of the shoppers were taken to Auckland hospitals in critical condition, police said. Another was in serious condition, while two more were in moderate condition.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern described the violence as a terror attack. She said the man was a Sri Lankan national who was inspired by the Islamic State group and was well known to the nation's security agencies.

Ardern said she had been personally briefed on the man in the past but there had been no legal reason for him to be detained.

Had he done something that would have allowed us to put him into prison, he would have been in prison, Ardern said.

The attack unfolded at about 2:40 p.m. at a Countdown supermarket in New Zealands largest city.

Police Commissioner Andrew Coster said a police surveillance team and a specialist tactics group had followed the man from his home in the suburb of Glen Eden to the supermarket in New Lynn.

But while they had grave concerns about the man, they had no particular reason to think he was planning an attack on Friday, Coster said. The man appeared to be going into the store to do his grocery shopping.

He entered the store, as he had done before. He obtained a knife from within the store, Coster said. Surveillance teams were as close as they possibly could be to monitor his activity.

Witnesses said the man shouted Allahu akbar  meaning God is great"  and started stabbing random shoppers, sending people running and screaming.

Coster said that when the commotion started, two police from the special tactics group rushed over. He said the man charged at the officers with the knife and so they shot and killed him.

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A bystander video taken inside the supermarket records the sound of 10 shots being fired in rapid succession.

Coster said there would be questions about whether police could have reacted even quicker. He said the man was very aware of the constant surveillance and they needed to be some distance away for it to be effective.

Ardern said the attack was violent and senseless, and she was sorry it had happened.

What happened today was despicable. It was hateful. It was wrong," Ardern said. It was carried out by an individual. Not a faith, not a culture, not an ethnicity. But an individual person who is gripped by ideology that is not supported here by anyone or any community."

Ardern said the man had first moved to New Zealand in 2011 and had been monitored by security agencies since 2016. She said authorities are confident he acted alone.

Ardern said legal constraints imposed by New Zealand courts prevented her from discussing everything that she wanted to about the case, but she was hoping to have those constraints lifted soon.

Some shoppers in the supermarket tried to help those who had been wounded by grabbing towels and diapers and whatever else they could find from the shelves.

To everyone who was there and who witnessed such a horrific event, I can't imagine how they will be feeling in the aftermath, Ardern said. But thank you for coming to the aid of those who needed you when they needed you.

Auckland is in a strict lockdown as it battles an outbreak of the coronavirus. Most businesses are shut and people are generally allowed to leave their homes only to buy groceries, for medical needs or to exercise.

Sri Lanka's government expressed shock and sadness over the attack attributed to a person of Sri Lankan origin.

Sri Lanka condemns this senseless violence, and stands ready to cooperate with New Zealand authorities in any way necessary, its Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Extremist ideology is rare in New Zealand, and Ardern said only a tiny number of people would be subject to such intense surveillance.

In 2019, a white supremacist gunned down worshippers at two Christchurch mosques, killing 51 people and injuring dozens more. After pleading guilty last year, Brenton Tarrant was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The killings sparked changes to gun laws in New Zealand, which has now banned the deadliest types of semi-automatic weapons.

Among those to condemn the attack Friday were members of the Al Noor mosque in Christchurch, which was at the center of the mosque attacks two years ago.

We stand with the victims of the horrible incident, said Gamal Fouda, the imam of Al Noor. We feel strongly the pain of terrorism, and there are no words that can convey our condemnation of such a horrible act.
A crowd of 75,000 to 100,000 people came to see the monument when it was unveiled in 1890. And thousands are likely to watch it come down from its graffiti-covered granite base thats surrounded by a chain-link fence the state installed in January in preparation for the removal.

However, in the cool, clear-skied morning Thursday, most people who came across the monument were either jogging, walking their dog or commuting to work or class. There were no work crews or other signals that the days are numbered for Lee and his horse to cast their long shadow over Monument Avenue.

Several of the people who said they visit the monument often did not know about the court decision until they arrived Thursday morning.

Juliette Miller, 26, said she started attending the protests last year to advocate for racial justice and police accountability at the circle around the statue, which people informally renamed in honor of Marcus-David Peters, a Black high school teacher fatally shot while in a mental health crisis, by a Richmond police officer in 2018.

Miller, who grew up in Hanover County, said the protests were not about the statues, but that their removal will represent a symbolic victory.
The number of new print magazines started in the U.S. fell by more than half in 2020 to 60, compared t
A Tokyo court has sentenced a 90-year-old man to five years in prison without suspension for a 2019 car accident that killed a young mother and her child. The incident prompted many elderly drivers to surrender their licenses.

Iizuka Kozo plowed his car into people at a crosswalk in Tokyo's Ikebukuro district in April 2019, killing 31-year-old Matsunaga Mana and her 3-year-old daughter Riko and injuring nine others, some seriously.

The defendant, a former senior bureaucrat of the industry ministry, had pleaded not guilty. He blamed mechanical problems, saying the car sped up even though he stepped on the brakes.

The Tokyo District Court ruled on Thursday that the defendant committed gross negligence by stepping on the gas pedal instead of the brake.

Presiding Judge Shimotsu Kenji said that based on an inspection of the car and police investigations, the vehicle was traveling 96 kilometers per hour at one point. He added that no abnormality or malfunction was found with the car.

Shimotsu said the mother and child had their hopes for the future dashed suddenly and had to leave their family forever. He also said the bereaved family members feel deep sorrow and their sense of loss has not abated at all.

After the ruling, the judge told Iizuka to admit his responsibility and negligence, and sincerely apologize.

Matsunaga Takuya, who lost his wife and daughter in the accident, later met reporters.

Matsunaga said he just wishes his loved ones were back, but that the ruling will help the bereaved family look forward, even a little.

He said he was grateful that the judge expressed sympathy for their sorrow and suffering. He added that he wants Iizuka to accept the ruling.

Matsunaga said he will continue his campaign to eliminate traffic accidents so that the deaths of his loved ones will not be in vain.
The Shinkansen is a fantastic bullet train in Japan. From Tokyo station to Sendai station it's just 90 minutes via the Akita Line (Tohoku Shinkansen) and it was the best transport during the Olympics (yes, there were competitions outside of Tokyo too).

When you travel to Japan, make sure to include a bullet train ride. Very unique experience for rail lovers.

During the Olympics, there were a few restrictions for foreigners, so it was interesting to compare to my previous trips. Still, the Japan high-speed train is always worth it.
Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga's sudden announcement of his intention to resign at a time when the country is battling a resurgence of COVID-19 infections was met Friday with surprise and criticism by many people in Japan, with medical workers lamenting his slow and inadequate response to fight the virus.

"I thought he would stay on (as prime minister) a little longer," said a 35-year-old female nurse in Sapporo on the northernmost main island of Hokkaido, who was among those caught off guard by Suga's abrupt announcement.

Suga's intent to step down came amid strong public criticism over his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, with the Delta variant rapidly spreading across the country and now 21 out of Japan's 47 prefectures under COVID state of emergency.

He was also criticized for going ahead with the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics despite public opposition amid mounting concerns over the spread of the virus.

"Japan lagged behind in securing and distributing vaccines, and the Suga administration did not provide any information (about it)," said Yasuhiko Hirata, chairman of the medical association of Fukuoka city in southwestern Japan.

"If (Suga's government) is going to pursue vaccination policies, I wish he could have better handled the vaccinations rather than (going ahead in) holding the Olympics," said Haruka Honda, 34, who was at a vaccination site for young people in Tokyo's Shibuya district.
The Chinese authorities have shut a 928 million Japanese-themed shopping centre just two weeks after it opened after protests by locals that it represented a cultural invasion.

The Tang Little Kyoto project was opened to great fanfare in the northeastern port city of Dalian and had dozens of shops selling Japanese cuisine, cultural items and electronics. However, within days social media was awash with complaints over its Japanese architecture in a city that suffered under Tokyos imperial rule early last century.

In a video posted online a Chinese man was seen chiding shoppers for being spineless because they were buying Japanese products. I just want to tell fellow countrypeople not to worship Japan, the man said as he walked through the projects shops.
Xiaomi launches All new Redmi 10 Prime and Redmi TWS Earbuds, in India Today

New Delhi, Fri, 03 Sep 2021 NI Wire

Xiaomis new Redmi 10 Prime was launched in India today, 3rd September, alongside an all-new Redmi branded truly wireless stereo earphones (TWS). The launch event was live-streamed on youtube, on Xiaomi Indias official channel, at 12 PM.



The Chinese smartphone giants had already released a few details before the launch event. Most recently, Xiaomi had announced that the Redmi 10 Prime would pack a 6000 mAh battery and also support features like reverse charging. While the Redmi earbuds were tested to have 30 hrs battery life.



The launch event introduced two variants to the Redmi Prime cohort of Xiaomi. One with 4 GB RAM and 64 GB internal storage at Rs 12,499 and the other one with 6 GB RAM and 128 GB internal storage at Rs 14,999. The phone also comes in three different colourways, Bifrost Blue, Phantom Black and Astral White.



The phone has a quad-camera setup, which houses a 50-megapixel primary camera, a first time in the Indian smartphone market. The camera setup also includes an 8-megapixel ultra-wide shooter, with a 120 Degree field view, a 2-megapixel Macro lens with 2x zoom and a 2 MP depth sensor. On the front, the phone supports a 8-megapixel front camera.



The Redmi 10 Prime comes with a large 6.5 inch FHD display, which was marketed to have a self-adjusting refresh rate of up to 90Hz. Xiaomi also packs with the phone a new reading mode, which is to cater to the highly digitizing modes of education since the pandemic.



The phone also marks the arrival of the MediaTek Helio G88 processor in the Indian market. Which gives a higher GHz frequency than Redmi 10 Primes predecessors and competitors. The phone houses an extendable RAM feature of up to 2 GB, which can be turned on to run heavy-duty apps and games. The phone in such cases borrows memory from the in-built storage to use as RAM, for faster and better processing.



The phone houses a massive battery capacity of 6000 mAh and also supports 18W fast charging. It also allows a 9W reverse charging, where the phone can be used as a make-shift power bank.



The phone runs on the MIUI 12.5. It has a side mounted fingerprint sensor and an IR blaster.



Along with a new Redmi 10 Prime model, the company also introduced a new set of Redmi branded earbuds, the Redmi Earbuds 3 Pro. Which are TWS earphones, with dual drivers and IPX4 sweat and splash-proof, priced at Rs 2999.



Consumers can purchase the Redmi 10 Prime on Mi.com, Mi Home, Amazon, Xiaomi showrooms and Xiaomi retail partners on the 7th of September, 12 PM onwards. The Redmi earbuds 3 pro however goes on sale, on the 9th september, two days later.

-Supratik Mitra (03/09/21)
Josephine Taulborg is ready to shine a spotlight on the school year as a member of the Lynx yearbook team.

Taulborg, 17, was born and raised in Omaha, but her family moved to Council Bluffs when she was a sixth-grader. Although she was living across the river in southwest Iowa, Taulborg continued to study with the Westside Community School District in Omaha through all of middle school. She then transferred to Council Bluffs Schools as a freshman, attending Abraham Lincoln High School, where she is now a senior.

Taulborg said she was nervous about starting high school, a pivotal point in many young students lives, in a totally new district, but she quickly felt at home. She said it was a very welcoming environment, and she soon made new friends and started looking into extracurricular activities.

She met A.L.s journalism advisor, Gerry Appel, who suggested she look into taking media classes. Taulborg took an introduction to journalism class and knew she would enjoy following up with it down the road. She joined the yearbook staff last year and she is back on as a copy editor and designer this year.
Habitat for Humanity of Council Bluffs has been awarded a $30,000 one-year grant from United Way of the Midlands.

The grant will help fund construction of Habitats next two houses for low to moderate income Council Bluffs families, according to Blake Johnson, executive director of Habitat for Humanity of Council Bluffs.

Habitat has been preparing a lot at 2130 Seventh Ave. and expects to break ground there soon for the first home, Johnson said.

Weve been doing some tree work and lot cleanup, he said.

The second house, which will be larger, will be built either on an adjoining lot or a larger one yet to be acquired, Johnson said.

The nonprofit dedicated its last home on Aug. 18 at 4115 Jewel St.

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The Council Bluffs Habitat for Humanity Homeownership Program is working to address the lack of affordable housing options for those with low to moderate incomes living in the community, the organization said in a release. Stable, affordable and safe housing is known to improve childrens school performance, lessen anxiety and depression and improve occupants health outcomes. The pandemic has shown how important an adequate, affordable home is for those who need to learn, work or shelter at home.
An Illinois woman who showed a fake vaccine card listing two Maderna shots has been arrested in Hawaii after trying to evade the states strict COVID-19 rules, police say.

Chloe Mrozak, a 24-year-old Oak Lawn, Ill., woman, uploaded false documents to bypass state quarantine rules, including a vaccine card that misspelled Moderna as Maderna, Hawaii News Now reported.

Visitors to Hawaii are required to quarantine for 10 days after arriving unless they have uploaded valid COVID-19 vaccine cards under the states Safe Travels program.

Mrozak arrived on Aug. 23, and authorities began an investigation after an administrator with the program tipped them off about the misspelling, KHON reported.

Thats one indication, as well as other things that in the card they thought it was suspicious and as part of being suspicious they did an excellent job of notifying us, Special Agent William Lau of the attorney generals office told the station.
Harlan Williams, an instructional designer who voted at a drive-thru center in the last presidential election, described the process as fast and well-organized.

It really just doesnt make any sense to take it away from us, he said. I think its clearly voter suppression. Its a way for a party thats losing influence and power to try and stay in power.

Texas Republicans defend the law as a way to ensure that only eligible voters cast ballots, even though there has been no evidence of widespread fraud there or in any other state. They also say the law takes steps to help voters  for example, allowing those who cast a mail ballot to fix mistakes rather than having it automatically rejected as well as a measure that would have polling places open for at least an extra hour during early voting periods.

The sorts of provisions that were talking about have never been demonstrated in any way to suppress the vote, to prevent people from voting or even necessarily to make it hard to vote, said Jason Snead, executive director of Honest Elections Project, a conservative advocacy group.
ADEL  A task force to explore opportunities for federal investment in rural America carries the weight of its members  Democratic U.S. House members who represent rural districts  and will have the ear of Congressional leadership, the task forces co-chairs say.

Those co-chairs are Rep. Cindy Axne of central and southwestern Iowas 3rd District, and Rep. Cheri Bustos of northwest Illinois 17th District.

Axne and Bustos conducted the first road trip and listening sessions for House Democrats Rural Reinvestment Task Force in Iowa on Thursday, with roundtable discussions and listening sessions with local rural leaders at Iowa State University Extension offices in Indianola and Adel, and meetings with small business leaders in Winterset.

During an interview before the event at the Dallas County Fairgrounds in Adel, Axne and Bustos said they are confident that House Democratic leadership will be receptive to the recommendations that the rural reinvestment task force produces.

Axne and Bustos are two of the just seven House Democrats who in 2020 were elected to districts that were carried by Republican Donald Trump in the presidential election.
As a nation, if we want to create good jobs, modernize our crumbling infrastructure and expand the middle class, then we need to elect dependable leaders and true public servants like Abby Finkenauer who know its their job to make it happen, USW District 11 director Emil Ramirez said in a news release from the Finkenauer campaign. We need reliable advocates to ensure American workers are playing on a level field when it comes to international trade and that Social Security and Medicare are safe from privatization. Abby Finkenauer will fight for policies based on fairness and justice, and Iowas workers will be proud to fight for her.

LOEBSACK ENDORSES BOHANNAN: The former Democrat who represented Iowas 2nd Congressional District endorsed the current Democrat running for the seat.

Former Congressman Dave Loebsack, who represented the 2nd District for seven terms, endorsed Iowa City attorney Christina Bohannan in the 2022 election. Thus far, Bohannan is the only Democrat running in the primary for the right to face freshman Republican incumbent U.S. Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks.
The Legislature's redistricting committee set sail Thursday on its time-constricted journey in preparation for what is likely to be four days of intense meetings next week leading to development of proposed maps for new legislative and congressional districts.

Operating on a schedule dictated by delayed federal census figures as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, the committee has scheduled public hearings on its resulting proposals during the following week in Grand Island, Omaha and Lincoln.

The Legislature will gather in a special session beginning on Sept. 13 to tackle the once-every-decade task.

The committee agreed to conduct its map-drawing sessions, which are almost certain to be contentious, in executive sessions rather than at public hearings, rejecting arguments from Sen. Carol Blood of Bellevue that those deliberations should be open to the public.

With redistricting virtually certain to divide members of the nonpartisan Legislature into partisan camps with political parties actively engaged in the background, the committee decided it could do its work best in executive sessions attended only by legislative staff members and the press.
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Texas ban on most abortions after 6 weeks takes effect with Supreme Court mum; Louisiana's recovery from Ida will be slow; Spears claims extortion by father. Get caught up.
MPCC stays at the two-cent mark with its capital fund so that it can maintain its approximately $170 million worth of facilities spread out across an 18-county service area.

During 2013-14, the Nebraska legislature changed the capital levy from one cent to two cents, which we moved to across six budget years, so it wouldnt be such a burden for taxpayers, Steele said. Most of the other colleges in the state went straight to two cents. Every time we increased the capital levy, we decreased the operating levy.

The operating fund and capital fund are the only two funds at the college that are tax supported. There are also auxiliary and federal funds.

Auxiliary and federal funds support themselves, Steele said. The majority of increased expenditures this year are in the federal funding bucket because of significant awards from CARES that we still havent spent. There are also several pending grant applications that we dont know the status of at the time we publish the budget. Thats why we always budget for what could happen. We dont want to have to go in and amend the budget. Im not saying we will spend all the money, but were budgeting for what could be a possibility.
Telegraph staff reportsThe Bureau of Reclamation has awarded $106,350 to two communities in west central Nebraska for water management improvements.Twin Platte Natural Resources District in North Platte will receive $31,350 and Hooper Irrigation District in Lewellen will receive $75,000 for projects to help them improve their water efficiency, according to a press release.The grant is part of a $5.5 million investment in WaterSMART Small Scale Water Efficiency Grants for 82 projects throughout the West. These grants will help local communities improve water efficiency by installing flow measurement, automating a water delivery system or lining a canal section to reduce seepage.Through a relatively small investment, Reclamation can support western communities with grant funding to improve water conservation and reliability, said Chief Engineer David Raff. These small, community-driven projects help improve water resiliency in these communities as they seek to meet future water needs.The Hooper Irrigation District will convert 1.5 miles of open, earthen irrigation canal to buried polyvinyl chloride pipe. The project will reduce required canal maintenance, reduce water losses through seepage and evaporation, and improve the reliability of water deliveries. It will also allow the district to deliver pressurized water to farmers to improve irrigation efficiency. The total project cost is $206,166.The Twin Platte Natural Resources District will install 30 flow meters on irrigation wells across the district. The flow meters would allow for data validation on 30 of the districts 3,100 irrigation wells and enable collection of real-time water use data via a new radio frequency data transmission technology network established by the state of Nebraska. The total project cost is $62,700.To see all the projects selected or learn more about the program, visit https://www.usbr.gov/watersmart/swep.
Its all based on fire behavior. For now, things are looking good. On that contingent, were getting close," he said.

The fire had been driven northeast on a course leading to South Lake Tahoe for days by southwestern winds, but that pattern ended this week. Calmer winds and increased humidity Thursday and Friday helped crews increase containment of the blaze to 29%.

Very positive trends with regards to weather," said Dean Gould, a U.S. Forest Service administrator. Thats huge for us. Lets take full advantage of it while we have this window.

With the fire growing at the smallest rate in two weeks, he said, Things are clearly heading in the right direction for us."

Amid the positive outlook, incident meteorologist Jim Dudley warned that the air mass in the Sierra Nevada drains downslope every night and then sloshes upslope during the day and that the region's terrain of ridges and deep canyons can create winds that go in squirrely directions.

Just because we dont have red flag wind conditions across the fire, the wind threat is still there and its all localized, he warned.
Photo: Jeenah Moon/REUTERS

Never attribute to malice, states Hanlons razor, that which is adequately explained by stupidity. In defiance of that precept, many liberals have suggested that the Republican Partys subversion of the pandemic response is a plot to undermine the Biden presidency.

The rights strategy on COVID-19 vaccines, as planned and executed by the Republican Party and Fox News, was a [sic] simple as it was sinister: sabotage President Joe Bidens rollout by sacrificing the bodies of their own supporters, argues Amanda Marcotte. The GOP plan was to sabotage herd immunity and blame Democrats for it, argues Brian Beutler. Jamelle Bouie floats this hypothesis without fully endorsing it, acknowledging that Republican vaccine denial might be sincere but might also be an unbelievably cynical and nihilistic strategy.

No doubt Republicans are happy to see the Delta wave harming Bidens polls, and for many, their Schadenfreude may even outweigh their humanitarian concern. But the notion that they engineered this outcome deliberately flies in the face of nearly all the evidence we have.

The Republican posture toward the coronavirus has not fundamentally changed since Bidens election. Since the virus appeared, the party has consistently denied or downplayed its seriousness and opposed any measures to contain it: masking, vaccines, shutdowns of both public and private spaces.

The pressure to adopt this denialism has come from both above (Donald Trumps belief that the pandemic was a hoax designed to sabotage the economy and prevent his reelection) and below (the Republican base having nurtured a distrust of science.) I analyzed the rights denialism as an outgrowth of its paranoid rejection of science in a story that ran in July 2020. And even though Trump hoped a vaccine would end the pandemic, the anti-vax movement was already mobilizing on the right and gaining adherents among Republican elected officials.

If Republicans had a partisan motive then, it was the belief that opening up the economy and taking the hit to public health would help President Trump. It seems hard to understand how they would suddenly decide the same course of action would hurt President Biden.

Whats more, its difficult to explain why Republicans would get buy-in on this strategy from governors, who would pay an immense political price for their cooperation. Ron DeSantis used to enjoy a promising brand as a Republican governor who had flouted restrictions while still registering average-ish public-health outcomes.

But his state has turned into such a basket case that conservative pundits have (at least briefly) paused their incessant demands that the media apologize to him. DeSantis has been left picking unpopular fights with local school boards and cruise lines that are trying to serve the public without getting people killed.

Meanwhile, Republican vaccine skepticism is killing a nontrivial number of Republican voters, including a tragic procession of mid-level party officials. Three unvaccinated conservative talk-show hosts have died of COVID this month alone. For a movement so obsessed with demographic replacement that it sees Afghan refugees as a plot to entrench Democratic majorities, its odd that it would deliberately kill off its own voters.

Noting this MAGA-cide, Christopher Ingraham accuses Republicans of following the most breathtakingly cynical political strategy Ive witnessed in my lifetime, revealing a stunning level of contempt for the true believers in the party who end up laying down their lives for the cause.

But why should we consider it a political strategy, or even a strategy at all? Republican COVID denialism began as a kind-of strategy, designed to justify steps Trump believed would help him win reelection, but has evolved into haphazard, self-harming gestures of cultural resentment. Having initially convinced themselves COVID isnt serious, enough Republicans have invested themselves in vaccine skepticism now that most Republican politicians hesitate to alienate their own voters.

There have been times in the past when the cynicism of Republican elites and the paranoia of the base have worked in concert. The tea-party rebellion was like that: Republican leaders stoked their base into a rage, which they used to justify contractionary fiscal and monetary measures that hampered the recovery under Obama.

But whatever temporary harm they are inflicting on Biden seems incidental to the damage they are absorbing themselves. In the current crisis, Republican leaders are not controlling the paranoia of their base but are being controlled by it.
Lin, an Asian American, testified at the 2016 trial that he thought Stephens was trying to run away and jumped out of his car to cut him off. The video shows that after Stephens hopped off his bike, he walked toward Lin. The deputy is out of sight of the dash cam and Stephens is mostly out of sight when Lin opens fire four seconds after Stephens jumped off the bike. Stephens falls back into view with Lin close behind, still firing.

Lin testified at the 2016 civil trial that Stephens put his left hand behind his back and flashed a dark object that he thought was a gun. The dash cam video, however, showed Stephens had his phone in his right hand and that his left hand was empty.

Stephens attorneys argued that Lin must have pulled his gun almost immediately after leaving his car as he could not have opened fire so quickly otherwise.

The jury took 3 and 1/2 hours to side with Stephens, ruling that Lin had violated Stephens civil rights.

Prosecutors cleared Lin of criminal wrongdoing and he remained employed by the Palm Beach Sheriffs Office.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.


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A consortium of Indian energy companiesincluding state major ONGCis in early talks with Rosneft for the acquisition of a stake in the Russian state companys massive Vostok oil project, the Economic Times reported, citing unnamed sources.

Talks are at a very early stage and the companies are evaluating the project, one of the sources said.

Meanwhile, Rosneft official reported it has been discussing the project with Indias oil minister Hardeep Singh Puri, who is currently visiting Russia.

The Vostok Oil mega project in Siberia, which includes the Vankor and Payakha clusters, has resources estimated at 44 billion barrels. All those clusters are close to the Northern Sea Route that Rosneft wants to use to ship oil to Europe and Asia.

The project will make up the backbone of Russias future oil production, tapping into 5 billion tons of oil to yield 50 million tons by 2024 and 100 million tons by the end of the decade. The development of Vostok Oil over its lifetime is estimated at some $170 billion.

Because of the massive cost of Vostok Oils development, Rosneft has been looking for foreign partners. Commodity trading major Trafigura said last December that it had acquired a 10-percent stake in the project, getting access to high-quality crude oil resources from a major new onshore oil-producing region in Siberias Taymyr province.

India is one of the more obvious choices when it comes to investment partners. Dependent on oil imports for about 80 percent of its oil consumption and unlikely to swiftly move away from oil to renewable electricity and hydrogen, India has been seeking ways to secure the future supply of the commodity.

Earlier this year, Indian media reported the country was in talks to invest between $2 and $3 billion in Russian oil and gas assets, including in the Arctic.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

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Iran plans to ramp up its crude oil exports even though negotiations with the United States on its nuclear deal are currently paused.

"Good things will happen regarding Iran's oil sales in the coming months," the country's new oil minister, Javad Owji said on Iranian television as quoted by Trade Winds, in the latest demonstration that Iran is pursuing its oil production growth plans despite continued U.S. sanctions.

"There is strong will in Iran to increase oil exports despite the unjust and illegal U.S. sanctions," Owji also said, as quoted by Reuters, adding that "Iran will return to its pre-sanctions crude production level as soon as U.S. sanctions on Iran are lifted."

The U.S. sanctions, reimposed on Iran by the Trump administration and maintained so far by his successor, have decimated Iran's crude oil production and exports. The latter fell from an estimated 2.8 million bpd in 2018 before the sanctions snapped back to as little as 200,000 bpd, according to Reuters.

Regarding production, the U.S. Energy Information Administration recently published an update on Iran, estimating that the country last year pumped less than 2 million bpd, which was the lowest production rate in four decades.

Outgoing Iranian oil minister Bijan Zanganeh said last month that the country had lost $120 billion from oil export revenues because of the U.S. sanctions, as they prevented it from exporting some 2 billion barrels of crude.

Earlier this year, an official from the National Iranian Oil Company said that Iran could ramp up production to levels close to pre-sanction output within a month after the sanctions are lifted and then to full pre-sanction levels within three months. This would mean total production of 3.3 million bpd and a production capacity boost to 4 million bpd, the official told Iranian media in June.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

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After breaking the WTI $70 resistance level Thursday with 2.8% gains for both key benchmarks, prices have since slid, but with a weaker-than-expected jobs report, the Fed is now likely to delay tapering, giving more impetus to oil prices in the short term.

WTI was trading at $69.81 at 10:57a.m. EST, while Brent was at $72.95.

By August 18th, oil had posted its longest losing streak in 18 months after the fed report.

Now, the new jobs data will give the Fed an excuse to push off the taper, possibly until October, so oil prices should respond positively, cutting the long-running losing streak.

Softening demand and worker shortages as a result of COVID-19 lent to slowed August job growth, with data coming in weaker than expected, but still showing a sustained economic expansion. Nonfarm payrolls were up 235,000 in August, far below their over 1 million surge in July. Many analysts found this disappointing.

But there are plenty of cross-currents in the August jobs report, and oil prices should benefit.

The bad news is that it missed by two thirds basically of expectations and the good news is that it gives the Fed cover to push off tapering. It just means more Fed for longer, Thomas Hayes of Great Hill Capital in New York, told Reuters on Friday.

"My guess is the announcement will be in November instead of September and the implementation will probably be late this year or more likely early next year. Beginning taper in October is now off the table."

Oil prices have a history of responding negatively to Fed tapering. Most notably, in the summer and fall of 2014, oil investors fled the market when the Fed was tapering bond purchases. That massive sell-off further accelerated the oil price slide.

By Julianne Geiger for Oilprice.com

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Nigeria has failed to adequately implement and deliver thousands of projectsfunded with $14 billionto help the social, economic, and infrastructure development of the oil-rich but impoverished Niger Delta region, Nigerias Attorney General Abubakar Malami has said.

Between 2001 and 2019, the government agency Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) was tasked to implement projects that would offer a lasting solution to the socio-economic difficulties of the Niger Delta Region and to facilitate the rapid and sustainable development of the Niger Delta into a region that is economically prosperous, socially stable, ecologically regenerative and politically peaceful.

The Niger Delta is the heart of Nigerias oil industry, producing all of the onshore crude oil that Africas top producer and exporter pumps. Yet, most of the people living there are very poor, and some resort to oil theft, which frequently results in pipeline ruptures, leaks, and force majeure on crude production and exports.

Despite the fact that $14 billion (6 trillion Nigerian naira) was allocated to NDDC over two decades, as many as 13,777 projects to improve the living conditions for people in the Niger Delta were substantially compromised, Malami said, presenting a forensic audit of NDDC.

The Federal Government is particularly concerned with the colossal loss occasioned by uncompleted and unverified development projects in the Niger Delta Region, in spite of the huge resources made available to uplift the living standard of the citizens, the attorney general said, as carried by Reuters.

In addition, NDDC had as many as 362 bank accounts, and there was no proper reconciliation of accounts, the forensic audit found.

The findings could result in initiation of criminal investigations, prosecution, recovery of funds not properly utilized for the public purposes for which they were meant, Malami said.

Even though oil from the Niger Delta generates much of Nigerias state revenues, the country has failed so far to improve the lives of the people living in its oil-rich region. According to OPEC estimates, the oil and gas industry accounts for about 10 percent of Nigerias GDP, while petroleum exports revenue represents a massive 86 percent of total exports revenue.

By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com

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Citgo is shutting down for four days parts of its refinery in Corpus Christi, Texas, due to a shortage of oxygen, which is needed at hospitals as COVID cases surge.

Citgo Refining and Chemical is idling a unit at the Corpus Christi refinery for four days until September 6 due to losing third-party oxygen supplies, according to a filing from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality quoted by Bloomberg.

CITGO West Plant will be shutting down its sulfur recovery unit B-train due to the loss of third-party O2 supply resulting from increased medical field demand, the Texas commission says.

Oxygen in the U.S. South is running low amid a spike in COVID infections and hospitalizations, which have led to an increased use of oxygen. Suppliers of oxygen are prioritizing deliveries to hospitals and diverting O2 supply from industrial customers to medical use.

Rich Craig, Vice-President of Technical and Regulatory Affairs at the Compressed Gas Association (CGA), told gasworld that he had not heard of hospitals running out of oxygen.

The tighter oxygen supply for industrial use, however, is impacting refinery operations, at least those of Citgo Refining and Chemical in Corpus Christi.

Soaring demand for medical liquid oxygen has also impacted the space industry, which faces fuel shortages because of tighter oxygen supplies needed for rocket fuel.

Last week, NASA said it was postponing the launch date for the Landsat 9 spacecraft scheduled to launch from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The Landsat 9 launch now is expected no earlier than Thursday, September 23, a week later than scheduled earlier.

Current pandemic demands for medical liquid oxygen have impacted the delivery of the needed liquid nitrogen supply to Vandenberg by the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) and its supplier Airgas. Airgas converts the liquid nitrogen to gaseous nitrogen needed for launch vehicle testing and countdown sequences. DLA and Airgas now have implemented efforts to increase the supply of liquid nitrogen to Vandenberg, NASA said.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

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The world's largest sovereign wealth fund, Norway's $1.4 trillion Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG), is excluding India state firm Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Limited (ONGC) from its portfolio due to the company's ties to groups that seriously violate human rights in South Sudan.

Norges Bank, which manages the so-called oil fund that has amassed its wealth from Norway's oil and gas, has decided to exclude four companies from the fund, including the Indian state-owned ONGC, Norges Bank said in a statement.

The Council on Ethics has recommended to Norges Bank to exclude ONGC "due to an unacceptable risk that the company is contributing to serious violations of the rights of individuals in situations of war or conflict."

"Control of the petroleum resources in the country has been a key driver in the conflict. In this context, ONGC participates in two joint ventures with, among others, the South Sudan's state oil company Nilepet," the Council on Ethics says.

In January this year, in response to the recommendation, ONGC told the Council on Ethics, "the company states that no incidents of human rights abuses have been reported within the joint ventures' areas of operation, and that there are no links between assaults on the civilian population and the company's operations."

Still, the fund is now excluding the Indian firm from its portfolio. The fund and Norges Bank continuously review the companies in which the sovereign wealth fund is invested and excludes companies violating human rights, and most recently, engaging in coal mining.

Last month, a Norwegian government panel said that the fund should ask oil firms in its portfolio to cut their emissions more drastically.

Norway is one of Europe's richest countries thanks to the decades of oil revenues amassed in the world's largest sovereign wealth fund with $1.4 trillion in assets and holdings of 1.4 percent of all of the world's listed companies, including stakes in oil majors Exxon, Chevron, Shell, and BP.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

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Papua New Guinea has granted a license to a state-owned company to develop a gas field, preferring to keep control and income from the resources within the government rather than giving a private foreign company the rights to develop the new project.

The government of Papua New Guinea has given the rights to state-controlled Kumul Petroleum to develop the Pandora gas field, preferring the government-owned entity to private firm Twinza Oil, which is headquartered in Australia, Reuters reports.

Apart from Twinza Oil, other international players in Papua New Guinea include supermajors ExxonMobil and TotalEnergies, as well as Oil Search of Australia, which has just announced a megamerger with Australias gas giant Santos.

Oil Search holds a 29-percent stake in the PNG LNG project in Papua New Guinea led by Exxon, as well as a 22.8-percent interest in Papua LNGa brownfield growth opportunity, according to the company.

Handing the Pandora gas field license to a state-controlled firm signals that the government of Papua New Guinea is not easing its nationalist policies despite being open to discussing projects with international majors, Reuters notes.

The decision to give the development rights to state-held Kumul Petroleum is a new revolutionary approach in the way the State has been conducting its petroleum business, Papua New Guineas Petroleum Minister Kerenga Kua said in a statement carried by Reuters.

Twinza Oil, which was hoping to tie the Pandora field with its Pasca A gas project, said it was disappointed with the governments decision.

Before the license was awarded, Twinza Oils chairman and CEO Ian Munro said last month: Industry is closely watching the Pandora license award to gauge transparency and whether the Government will support a proven offshore operator and stimulate additional exploration and development investments.

It is quite a risk with government money to take on exploration and appraisal, when foreign companies like Twinza are looking to take the risk on. The industry is confused by these decisions, Munro told Reuters after the license was awarded to the state firm.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

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Govt-and-politics

Sarpy farmers who value conservation easement disappointed by Ricketts' critique

LILY SMITH, THE WORLD-HERALD Cloisters on the Platte, right, and the water tower of Eugene T. Mahoney Park can be seen from the north side of Dean Feddes land south of Gretna. LILY SMITH, THE WORLD-HERALD Hay waves in the breeze on the north side of Dean Fedde's land south of Gretna.

Dean and Wayne Fedde know their Sarpy County farm like its a family member. They know the lands stories, the names of people whove laid claim to it since the mid-1800s, the animal and tree species that survive on it.

Wayne and I grew up on this farm and the farm of our grandparents, Dean Fedde said. We were taught a deep respect for the land and for the nature upon it.

The brothers purchased the farm, which borders Schramm Park just south of Gretna, from their aunt in the early 90s.

As development crept closer to home, they turned to a conservation easement to ensure their land retains its rural identity. Now, theyre watching with alarm and disbelief as Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts campaigns against conservation programs and tools theyve relied on for years.

Its just harming a lot of potential farmers and ranchers that would do a conservation easement, Dean Fedde said. Hes got them all in fear of any government programs.

Conservation easements, which have been used in Nebraska and the U.S. for decades, are voluntary agreements that keep land in private ownership while an organization, typically a nonprofit or government entity, monitors the land and can enforce the easements requirements.

The Feddes were offered a permanent conservation easement, which permanently limits how land can be used, by the Nebraska Land Trust in 2010, according to Dean Fedde.

When the trees in the cedar windbreak they planted in the mid-1990s werent so tall, the Fedde brothers could look northeast from one of their fields and see the main impetus for accepting the Land Trusts offer. Their grandparents farm, once situated diagonally from the land the brothers farm today, was sold and broken up into parcels that now hold five homes.

LILY SMITH, THE WORLD-HERALD The homestead on Dean Fedde's land, built in 1876, south of Gretna.

The Feddes easement sets limits on what can happen on much of their property. They can farm it and do other things like hunt on it and put up fences. But the land cant be developed, and only a pocket of it can be built upon.

Dave Sands, the Land Trusts executive director, said making this decision is a big deal.

Conservation easements are a huge decision for a landowner, because youre determining the future of your land, he said. So, we encourage landowners not to make the decision lightly.

But Dean Fedde said it was an easy choice for them. They saw their lands future as a road with two permanent forks: It gets developed and stays that way, or they act and keep it in agriculture forever.

We can protect it forever, or its going to be gone forever, Dean Fedde said. Thats the two choices I see right now  because its coming.

Agriculture is shrinking in Sarpy County, the fastest-growing county in Nebraska. In 2010, there were about 89,572 acres of agricultural land in Sarpy County, according to data provided by Assessor Dan Pittman. This year, there are 78,722 acres  a 12% decrease over 11 years.

And that may not offer a full picture. Land thats in agriculture  say, along Nebraska Highway 370 or U.S. Highway 6  may have already been purchased by a speculator whos continuing to grow beans or corn until they develop it or sell it to a developer.

Best way to put it is, every piece of land is in the path of development, Pittman said.

From the Fedde farm, theres a view of the Cloisters on the Platte, a religious retreat center founded by Joe Ricketts, the father of Gov. Ricketts.

LILY SMITH, THE WORLD-HERALD A field of hay is seen on the north end of Dean Fedde's land south of Gretna.

The governor has criticized permanent easements while detailing his opposition to President Joe Bidens goal to conserve 30% of the nations land and water by 2030, often referred to as 30-by-30. Thats a nationwide goal, not a state-by-state goal.

Temporary easements may be appropriate, Ricketts has said, but hes opposed to perpetual easements  entering a permanent easement means surrendering control of the land forever and stunting future generations flexibility in managing it, he has argued. However, he has stopped short of supporting state intervention to halt such easements.

During his monthly radio show in July, the governor said concerns about how such easements affect property taxes and future development possibilities need to be weighed against the rights of private landowners to direct what happens to their property.

We want to strike a balance between personal property rights and the public good here, Ricketts said.

Broadly, Ricketts has framed the 30-by-30 initiative as a threat to landowners. He signed an executive order in June directing state agencies to take any necessary step to resist the initiative.

In a statement issued Thursday, Ricketts said he wants Nebraska farmers to look closely at any federal contract.

We expect the federal government to look for more ways to leverage existing programs to exert more control over our land and water to achieve the goals of radical environmentalists, he said.

Less than one-half of 1% of acres in Nebraska  or 176,066 acres out of more than 49 million  are under a conservation easement, according to the National Conservation Easement Database. If a county has zoning in place, the local government can deny an easement if it conflicts with a previously approved land use plan or a previously announced plan for government land use.

One point Ricketts often makes is that an easement can impact taxes. Since it limits what a property owner can do with their land, it might reduce what someone is willing to pay for it and decrease its taxable value.

But the Feddes dont pay a penny less than they did previously in property taxes, Dean Fedde said.

LILY SMITH, THE WORLD-HERALD The southeastern border of Dean Fedde's land is seen south of Gretna.

When people try to throw all conservation easements into one basket, Sands said, its a huge mistake. Every easement is different, and every organization wielding them differs, too, he said. The Land Trust preserves working farms and ranches, and mainly focuses on the Pine Ridge area and the Lower Platte Valley from Fremont to Plattsmouth.

Theres always more people who would like to sell conservation easements than there are funds to purchase them, Sands said.

For their easement, Dean Fedde said they hired an appraiser who valued their land at two different amounts: if it sold for development and if it sold for agriculture. The difference between those numbers was the value of the easement: $750,000, according to Dean Fedde. They wanted to use the one-time money to expand their farm, he said, but no neighbors wanted to sell and they used it to purchase agricultural land in Saunders County instead.

The USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service offers two types of easements, said Brad Soncksen, assistant state conservationist for programs at the agency. Soncksen is responsible for the implementation in Nebraska of conservation programs in the Farm Bill that President Donald Trump signed into law in 2018.

One type is agricultural land easements, which, like the Feddes easement, protects current land use and farming operations. An authorized entity, such as the Land Trust or a local government, holds title to those easements, Soncksen said.

The other type of easement is a wetland reserve easement, for which the agency works directly with landowners. That type of easement primarily restores converted wetlands to their original state to create wildlife habitat, according to Soncksen, and can be perpetual or last for 30 years. Generally, those areas are not the most highly productive agricultural land, he said.

Both programs are 100% voluntary, Soncksen said.

LILY SMITH, THE WORLD-HERALD A wild turkey walks through Dean Fedde's land south of Gretna.

Similarly, John Denton with Nebraska Ducks Unlimited said landowners approach the organization with interest in easements.

A lot of them have a conservation ethic and really want to protect their land as crop and habitat at the same time, he said. And were able to do that.

Ducks Unlimited, a waterfowl and wetlands conservation organization, holds 35 easements across 11,000 acres in the state, according to Denton, manager of the organizations conservation programs in Nebraska.

Primarily, the lands are along the Platte River corridor, he said. And, in most cases, cropping or at least grazing is allowed on the lands, as long as the wetland isnt being drained. The organization wants the lands to stay working lands, because it doesnt want to be seen as taking highly productive lands out of production, he said.

The governor has raised concerns about existing conservation programs that arent permanent, too, saying contracts with the Conservation Reserve Program are a way the federal government could expand its control.

Through that program, known as CRP, farmers idle land and plant species to improve environmental health in exchange for a yearly rental payment from the federal government. In 2019, nearly 1.1 million acres were enrolled in CRP in Nebraska, federal data shows, and the program sent about $72 million in rental payments to Nebraska farmers.

According to the USDA, Nebraska has 44.9 million acres in farm operations. So, CRP land would have accounted for about 2% of it.

LILY SMITH, THE WORLD-HERALD Terraces on the north side of Dean Fedde's land are seen south of Gretna.

The Feddes also participate in CRP. They have three 10-year contracts with varying expiration dates that include 32.58 acres, according to Dean Fedde. The first includes field borders and areas prone to erosion. A few years later, they added isolated acres that were difficult to access and at risk of being eaten by wildlife, and they applied for their third, Dean said, when he realized his responsibilities would limit the time he could dedicate to their time-consuming organic operation.

Those acres are a mix of prairie grasses, legumes and wildflowers that boost sustainability while offering wildlife a place to nest, he wrote in an email. The land attracts pollinators for their grain and alfalfa fields, and insects that feed the birds. The field edges now filter rainwater run-off and snowmelt and protect the hillsides from erosion. The borders also serve as a barrier between their organic farm and a neighbors conventional operation, he said.

Theyve received about $180 an acre per year in rental payments, Dean Fedde said. When they signed one of the contracts that will soon expire, Fedde said the payment was $140 an acre  this time, theyve been quoted $265 an acre.

The Feddes recognize certain programs wont make sense for everyone, but they hear the governor question those tools and take it personally. They are proud of their land, and they hope theyre not the only ones who appreciate the preserved view of their land, which is visible from local attractions that include a restaurant at Eugene T. Mahoney State Park.

You can either see our treetops, or you can see a series of rooftops, Dean Fedde said.
The number of Nebraska students enrolled in home schooling has decreased this school year following a surge in families choosing to educate students at home last year during the pandemic.

As of last month, numbers from the Nebraska Department of Education show 10,525 students are enrolled in home-school this school year. Thats 4,255 fewer students than the 14,780 students who were estimated to be enrolled in home-school at the end of the 2020-21 school year.

David Jespersen, a spokesman for the Nebraska Department of Education, said the home-school numbers for the 2021-22 school year will change throughout the year as people enroll in home-school or in public school.

Over the decades, the number of Nebraska home-school kids has steadily inched up, but jumps of last years size had never been recorded before.

The preliminary numbers for this school year are closer to numbers seen in pre-pandemic school years but still higher than previous years. In the 2018-19 school year there were 9,030 students enrolled in home-school and 9,450 students in the 2019-20 school year.
Were going to vote to say health is off the table for now because its too hard, she said.

Fricke responded that the board did not delay the process because it was hard work.

We kept in mind children, communities, parents, leadership officials and schools from across the state, she said. We are not going to abandon working or developing health standards.

Prior to the vote, board members were told that, under board rules, any board member could attempt to revive the process with the support of a board majority.

Gov. Pete Ricketts, who called for the sex-education topics to be scrapped within days of the first draft being released, on Friday thanked the thousands of Nebraskans who wrote in, attended meetings and called their State Board of Education members.

The State Board of Education could bring these controversial standards back at any time. We must remain vigilant, Ricketts said.

He also noted that the state education department is independently governed by an elected board and that the governor does not appoint board members or agency staff.
More than a century ago, groups of Sicilians followed two Omahans to the United States.

Brothers Joseph and Sebastiano Salerno, immigrants to Omaha from their homeland in Carlentini, Sicily, became recruiters for their new home.

Drawn from Carlentini, Italian immigrants flowed into Omaha, establishing the Little Italy neighborhood and creating a burgeoning Italian link that continues in Omaha to this day.

Now, Omaha will take a step toward becoming a sister city with the Italian city so tied to its heritage.

Mayor Jean Stothert announced Friday that Omaha will sign a friendship agreement with Carlentini, Italy, a town of more than 17,700 people. The City Council will vote on a resolution supporting the friendship ties on Sept. 14, and the connections could lead to the two becoming official sister cities later.

Stothert, in a statement, said Omaha is proud of its vibrant Italian-American community and its strong ties to Carlentini. The agreement, she said, will show us what a small world it really is.

Italian-Omahans have been stumping for a formal sister city agreement between the two cities.
BEIJING (AP)  U.S. climate envoy John Kerry came to China this week seeking to press the worlds largest emitter of greenhouse gases to do more in the global effort to hold down the rise in temperature.

What he got was renewed demands for Washington to change its stance toward China on a host of other issues from human rights to Taiwan, the self-governing island that China claims.

The back and forth underscores a divide between the worlds two largest emitters that is complicating chances for a breakthrough agreement on carbon reduction goals at COP26, a United Nations conference to be held in Glasgow, Scotland, in November.

Both sides agree that climate is an area of joint interest, but while the U.S. says they should cooperate despite their differences, China says the U.S. cannot expect cooperation while also attacking it on other issues.

The U.S. side wants the climate change cooperation to be an oasis of China-U.S. relations, Foreign Minister Wang Yi told Kerry. However, if the oasis is all surrounded by deserts, then sooner or later, the oasis will be desertified.
In war you do what you must in order to reduce risk to mission and force, not what you necessarily want to do, Milley said.

Biden has promised further targeting of the IS group in Afghanistan in response to the IS suicide bombing last week at a Kabul airport gate that killed scores of Afghans and 13 American service members. On Saturday the U.S. military carried out a drone strike in Afghanistan that it said killed two IS planners. On Tuesday, Biden said, To ISIS-K: We are not done with you yet, referring to the IS group.

Targeting Islamic State militants or other extremist groups, such as al-Qaida, will be more difficult with no U.S. military forces on the ground and no friendly government forces with which to share intelligence on extremist networks. But the Biden administration asserts that it can contain these groups by monitoring and potentially striking with assets based elsewhere in the region.
LINCOLN  Nebraskans on both sides of the abortion divide are watching a new Texas law that bans almost all abortions in that state, with an eye toward similar legislation here.

The U.S. Supreme Court voted 5-4 late Wednesday night to let the Texas law stand after it took effect earlier in the day. The court did not decide the constitutionality of the law, which became the most restrictive in the country.

The law prohibits abortions once medical professionals can detect cardiac activity, usually at about six weeks and before many women know that theyre pregnant. In addition, it leaves the enforcement to private citizens, who can sue anyone involved in an abortion other than the patient.

Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts, an abortion opponent, praised the Texas law and suggested that it could be a model for Nebraska policymakers in the coming year.

Nebraska is a pro-life state, and the Legislature and I have successfully worked together to pass life-saving laws over the past several years, he said. I am pleased to see the Texas law has taken effect, and well be watching closely as we pull together our legislative plans with pro-life leaders here in Nebraska.
When the trees in the cedar windbreak they planted in the mid-1990s werent so tall, the Fedde brothers could look northeast from one of their fields and see the main impetus for accepting the Land Trusts offer. Their grandparents farm, once situated diagonally from the land the brothers farm today, was sold and broken up into parcels that now hold five homes.

The Feddes easement sets limits on what can happen on much of their property. They can farm it and do other things like hunt on it and put up fences. But the land cant be developed, and only a pocket of it can be built upon.

Dave Sands, the Land Trusts executive director, said making this decision is a big deal.

Conservation easements are a huge decision for a landowner, because youre determining the future of your land, he said. So, we encourage landowners not to make the decision lightly.

But Dean Fedde said it was an easy choice for them. They saw their lands future as a road with two permanent forks: It gets developed and stays that way, or they act and keep it in agriculture forever.

We can protect it forever, or its going to be gone forever, Dean Fedde said. Thats the two choices I see right now  because its coming.
Zaruba said he couldnt say if his friend  part of his pandemic pod in Auburn  would have survived if a transfer could have been arranged earlier. But the delay definitely didnt help, he said.

In this day and age, we shouldnt have to send patients to other states; we shouldnt have to work this hard to find a place to put a patient, the physician said.

Zaruba spoke about the case with the permission of McConnaugheys wife, Jodie, and son, Joel. He was more than a doctor to the family, he was a friend, part of a group that would gather, socially distanced, on driveways to grill out and drink an adult beverage during the pandemic.

Telling McConnaugheys story, the doctor said, could help other people understand how strained medical resources are now with the surge in new coronavirus cases caused by the more contagious delta variant. It might also, Zaruba said, convince some people to take common-sense precautions against becoming infected, such as getting a vaccine and wearing protective masks where appropriate.

Mark McConnaughey, the doctor said, was the kind of guy who would drop everything to help someone, even if it meant interrupting a job he had to finish. So by having his story shared, he could help someone again.
The only two children's hospitals in downstate Illinois are among those in a national group requesting aid from the Biden administration in the midst of a rising caseload of pediatric patients.

"Children's hospitals are reporting high demand and staffing challenges," Wietecha wrote. "With pediatric volumes at or near capacity and the upcoming school season expected to increase demand, there may not be sufficient bed capacity or expert staff to care for children and families in need."

Recently-released data from the American Association of Pediatrics reported nearly 17% of COVID cases confirmed in Illinois since last year have been among those ages 0 to 17, a percentage that represents 252,596 cases in total.

Just 24 of all COVID-related deaths in the state have been among that same age group. Hospitalization data by age was not provided in the report or available via the Illinois Department of Public Health's data portal.

Since last year, OSF Children's Hospital has seen 120 pediatric COVID patients and is now averaging between zero and three such patients each day, president Mike Wells said.

Similar data was not immediately available from HSHS St. John's Children's Hospital.

But while neither hospital is overwhelmed by pediatric COVID cases, beds are filling quickly for other reasons.

"Our overall census at OSF Children's Hospital is up," Wells said, adding that's "largely driven by other infectious illness, such as RSV, since children are having more contact with each other; and trauma cases since children have resumed more typical activities like sports, traveling, etc."

HSHS St. John's Children's Hospital Chief Medical Officer Dr. Douglas Carlson credited area vaccination rates for lack of pediatric COVID patients, but noted the beds in Springfield are filling up regardless.

"We in Central Illinois (hospitals) haven't been as affected as areas close to us that have low vaccination rates," he said during a press conference Thursday. "But our hospital is nearing capacity with RSV cases, other infections and injuries. We can't afford to have a COVID surge also on top of that."

Carlson's concerns echo those of the Children's Hospital Association, which said in the letter that "the (fall/winter virus) cycle began unexpectedly this summer, months ahead of the usual schedule, with a severe wave of RSV (respiratory syncytial virus) putting many children in the hospital, with infection rates and severity continuing to rise as children reengage after the extended isolation of the past year."

While CHA urged the federal government to "provide critical support for pediatric hospital capacity," Carlson called on community members to get vaccinated, thereby lowering the chances of spreading COVID from person-to-person.

Both OSF Children's Hospital and HSHS St. John's have relationships with other pediatric hospitals and contingency plans in place should bed capacity max out.

Still, health care workers would prefer it not get to that point.

"As the only full-service children's hospital outside of Chicago, we have a responsibility to keep our capacity open to avoid families having to travel far from home for care," Wells told The Pantagraph.

Added Carlson: "Our worry is that this will get harder. Even though we can get great care out of the area, we want children and families to get great care where they live. We're not 'at capacity' in the broad sense... but we're worried that we might be if we don't continue to take precautions."
BLOOMINGTON  Like many Americans on Sept. 11, 2001, Herb Eaton first heard the news of the terrorist attacks from a friend, who called him unexpectedly and told him to turn on the news.

He soon began to hear from family, friends and neighbors and realized the many ways his personal life was tied to the four jets and the buildings that were hit.

He and his wife waited anxiously until the evening to hear that a family friend had been transferred out of his office in the World Trade Center just the week before. A woman who lived across the street from them in Bloomington had recently quit her job as a flight attendant, where she would have flown on those same flights. A woman stopped by the Eatons' house saying United Airlines Flight 93 had crashed near or on her family farm.

This is all in this little neighborhood, Eaton said.

Eventually he became tired and frustrated with watching the news. He went to the building that is now Eaton Studio at 411 N. Center St. in Bloomington and started to paint.

Over the next five days he created a series of paintings on wood panels and on paper, some with clear figures and images, others more abstract. Many of the pieces feature his house, juxtaposed with the chaos of scenes from New York City that morning.

His feelings were like nothing else he had experienced, he said. He and his wife had just come back from a wonderful trip to Germany and now, suddenly, he was feeling anger unlike any he had felt before.

The creation of images, either visually or in writing, is something Eaton has drawn on to sort through his feelings, and something he encourages everyone to do.

You never know when that might be your only solace, he said.

At the time of 9/11, Eaton had been starting to do landscapes of tornadoes amid quieter Midwestern farm scenes. He had also started to prepare some pieces with roses, trying to highlight the contrast between the petals and the thorns.

Since those were what Eaton had in his studio at the time, some of those scenes became the backdrops for his 9/11 works.

A rose persists in one painting, in which a female figure looks out a window at New York City. In a piece that started as a landscape, a tornado became the smoke rising from Ground Zero.

Eaton described his work as taking metaphorical and natural dangers and changing them into the human danger of terrorism.

News images from the coming days also made it into his work, like the orange body bags used at some of the sites that were hit. The color had a certain visual attractiveness to it, Eaton said.

And then you realize these are body bags, there are dead people in there from some act of terrorism, he said.

A figure he had never painted before also began to appear in his work: skeletons. He continues to paint them, though now they have shifted from the eerie, almost monstrous version in response to 9/11 into a figure he calls Yorick, in tribute to Hamlet. Hamlet also features in a poem Eaton wrote in response to the attacks.

Having worked in construction, including renovating old buildings, the physicality of the collapsed towers fascinated Eaton. He wondered how something the size of the towers could come apart.

I kept getting struck by those incredible broken towers, he said.

To commemorate the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Eaton and his wife, Pam Eaton, will place his paintings and poem in the studio window from Sept. 11 through Sept. 22. The art serves as a reminder of the fragility of life, even here in the Midwest, Pam Eaton said.

Contact Connor Wood at (309)820-3240. Follow Connor on Twitter: @connorkwood

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BLOOMINGTON  Labor Day has a different meaning for different folks, depending on who you ask.

Mack Wood, associate director of bands at Illinois State University, said on his way to class Friday that it meant getting everything ready for the parade.

James Brown, a guest services supervisor for the Childrens Discovery Museum in Normal, said at the close of his shift on Thursday that the holiday is meant to honor workers.

Its for those workers back in the day who worked dangerous jobs, built skyscrapers and the infrastructure we enjoy today, Brown said. Just honoring them and that we appreciate the labor they put in.

They wake up, go to work, and do it all again the next day.

David Williams, of St. Louis, was waiting out a layover Friday morning at Uptown Station in Normal. Hes retired after working for Pepsi-Cola for 40 years and said for him, Labor Day is a day to relax.

I think everyone deserves a day to relax, he added.

Kris Stack, a staff member with Cornerstone Church in Normal, echoed Williams' statement.

I think its a day to relax, kick back and do something you can't do when youre working, Stack said.

Eric Marshall and Ronnie Powell, both crewmen for the Town of Normal, were busy setting up equipment Friday for day four of Festival ISU.

Powell told The Pantagraph he thinks its a day to celebrate all the hard-working people and what they do for the community.

Its a day to celebrate the trades, said Marshall, laborers, electricians and carpenters.

Plumbers and Pipe Fitters Local 99 training coordinator Scott Spaid told The Pantagraph in an interview last week that they take great pride in the holiday because its our day.

All the skill trades come out and represent ourselves in the parade, he said. Electricians, painters, carpenters, all skill crafts are definitely involved."

We love it, he added. Its our day to celebrate what we do.

Spaid said the occasion also honors factory workers.

The Bloomington Labor Day Parade is returning this year after being canceled in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The theme this year is "Labor, Stronger than Ever. Union groups, ISUs marching band, elected officials and others step off at 10 a.m. Monday at Front and Center streets in downtown Bloomington.

Moe Woldemariam, cook and server at Maguires Bar & Grill in Bloomington, said after the pandemic, Labor Day just isnt the same. He said there was no parade and now people are really tense.

He said as a server, hes used to working more with people.

A worker tending the grounds on ISUs quad said the holiday is another day to spend time with family.

It gives blue collar people, and people who do all the grimey work, a day to relax.

To Desiree Campbell, associate pastor at Eastview Christian Church in Bloomington, Labor Day is all about service and honor, she saidvFriday.

Sue Randle, an administrative worker for the ISU Office of Equal Opportunity and Access, said the holiday is about rest and appreciation for all the hard work we do.

A U.S. postal worker told The Pantagraph that Labor Day just means more work to them, adding, I appreciate just having a job with everything thats going on.

Nothing special. Not for me, at least.

Contact Brendan Denison at (309) 820-3238. Follow Brendan Denison on Twitter: @BrendanDenison

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One candidate of the Dadieso Senior High School of the on-going West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) was invited yesterday while an invigilator is on the run for allegedly taking a snapshot of the candidates English Oral paper, while the examination was ongoing.



The candidate has however, been released on bail, while the security operatives of the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) are on the heels of the invigilator, who is also a teacher of the school.



The snapshot photo was uploaded on social media purported to portray that the paper had been leaked.



Briefing Graphic Online, the Head of the Public Relations Officer of the WAEC Mrs Agnes Teye-Cudjoe told the Daily Graphic that the matter had been reported to the Director-General of the Ghana Education Service (GES) Professor Kwasi Opoku-Amakwa.



She explained that while the Oral English was being written, the said photo was circulated in the social media.

Source: Graphiconline.com









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

Featured Video
A 33-year-old man who advertises himself as a real estate agent has been dragged to court for allegedly defrauding a senior military officer of GH170,000.



Nelson Azaglo is accused of collecting the amount from his supposed victim under the pretext of securing him a 2015 Toyota Prado, a Corolla and a Toyota Hilux pick-up, all from Togo.



Azaglo who appeared before the court presided over by Ms Evelyn Asamoah, pleaded not guilty to the charge of defrauding by false pretence.



He was subsequently granted bail in the sum of GH300,000 with three sureties, two to be justified.



He is to report to the police every Monday.



The case has been adjourned to September 27, 2021.



Facts



The facts as presented by the prosecutor, Chief Inspector Emmanuel Haligah, were that last year Azaglo presented himself to the military officer that he was in a position to buy cars from Togo for him (the military officer).



Based on the representation made by the accused, the complainant placed an order for the three vehicles.



The prosecutor said Azaglo sent the complainant pictures of the three vehicles and assured him of delivery upon receipt of the amount involved.



Azaglo then gave the complainant his mobile money number for the complainant to transfer money to him.



Money transfer



Chief Inspector Haligah said the complainant then transferred a total of GH170,000, which the accused acknowledge receipt of.



The accused then promised to deliver the vehicles in November 2020 but failed to fulfill his promise and switched off his phone.



The prosecutor told the court that Azaglo then went into hiding, making it difficult for the complainant to reach him.



Upon several months of surveillance, the accused was arrested on August 28, 2021 at Spintex Road.



During investigation, the accused admitted the offence in his caution statement, and after investigations he was charged accordingly and put before this honourable court, the prosecutor added.









Source: Graphiconline.com









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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The police have arrested 22 herdsmen at Donkorkrom in the Afram Plains North District in the Eastern Region for illegally possessing firearms and other weapons.



The Anti-Robbery Operational Team, led by Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) Lovelace Kofi Glago, arrested the suspects last Saturday for possessing a number of unregistered offensive weapons, including machetes, guns and bullets.



The suspects  who were arrested onboard a Toyota Tacoma Pickup with registration number AW 983-20, a Ford Pickup with registration number GE 7066-11 and a motor tricycle with registration number M-21-EN 635  included a Fulani Chief, Sariki Iddrisa Sambo, 51; Issaka Ali, 37; Mohammed Abubakari 27; Ibrahim Abubakari, 20; Alhaji Omaru, 47; Mohammed Bello, 28; and Mohammed Abubakari Jamallah, 40.



The accomplices were Omaru Bawah, 23; Alhaji Mohammadu, 42; Osmanu Mohammadu, 35; Osmanu Omaru, 31; Osmanu Omaru Dandahle, 30; Osmanu Ibrahim, 38; Aliu Omaru, 30; and Abass Omaru, 21.



Completing the list of the suspects are Sule Omaru, 20; Ali Waale, 20; Ibrahim Ali, 20; Omaru Balla; Waale Sindo, 49; Osmanu Abubakari, 28; and Abdulai Mesaiji, 29.



Operation



The Public Relations Officer (PRO) of the Eastern Regional Police Command, Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) Ebenezer Tetteh, told the Daily Graphic that the Anti-Robbery Operational Team, in a joint exercise with the Donkorkrom Divisional and District Police Command, intercepted the vehicles upon a tip off at about 1 p.m. last Saturday in front of the Glory Oil Filling Station at Donkorkrom.



Upon a search, several weapons and ammunition, including 17 machetes, one foreign pistol, three locally manufactured pistols, four single barrel shot guns, two daggers, 66 live AAA and BB cartridges, 410 cartridges, 10 of 7.65-millimetre ammunition and 19 mobile phones were found on them.



DSP Tetteh added that the team further found 12 BB cartridges in the room of Iddrisa Sambo, one of the suspects.



Investigations



DSP Tetteh said the police had commenced investigations into the incident to make sure justice was served to deter others from possessing firearms illegally.



He urged the public to be vigilant and report any suspicious acts to the police to help combat crime across the Eastern Region and the country as a whole.



Misunderstanding between Fulani herdsmen and farmers are common in the Afram Plains area, sometimes resulting in deaths.



While the farmers accuse the herdsmen of destroying their farms when herding their cattle to graze, the herdsmen are said to usually resort to violent means to protect their cattle when attacked by the farmers.

Source: Graphiconline.com









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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The Minister of Lands and Natural Resources, Mr Samuel Abu Jinapor, has advocated a total ban or a freeze on the granting of public lands for private individuals until further notice.



In the estimation of the minister, a freeze on the granting of public land for private purposes would help preserve the resource for future generations.



"I have made it clear to the Executive Secretary of the Lands Commission my position on this matter, and I want to state publicly that the protection and preservation of public lands is one that must be done responsibly.



"I have a big appetite for a total ban or freeze on the grant of public lands until further notice," he said.



The minister stated this at a staff durbar organised by the Lands Commission in Accra yesterday.





The durbar was a platform for the minister to interact with the staff of the commission on a wide range of issues ranging from staff welfare, conditions of work, the challenges to land administration and policy direction going forward.



Mr Samuel Abu Jinapor (2nd left), Minister of Lands and Natural Resources, in a tete-a-tete with Mr James Dadson (left), Ag. Executive Secretary, Lands Commission. Those with them are Mr Benito Owusu-Bio (2nd right), a Deputy Minister of Lands and Natural Resources, and Mr Jones Ofori Boadu (right), Deputy Executive Secretary, Lands Commission. Picture: NII MARTEY M. BOTCHWAY



Collective responsibility



Mr Jinapor said while the possibility of freezing the granting of public lands for private use was being explored, the ministry would work with all stakeholders in the land value chain to protect state lands.



The minister stressed that the current situation where state lands were handled as though they were private property would no longer be countenanced.



He said the Constitution placed a duty on the President to hold all state lands in trust for the people of Ghana, and having been appointed as the Minister of Lands and Natural Resources, he had the responsibility to help the President to fulfill that mandate.



"Knowing the responsibility placed on me as the sector minister, I want to state that encroachment on public lands must be a thing of the past; we cannot continue on that path," he stressed.



Reforms



Mr Jinapor urged the Lands Commission and its regional officers to implement reforms, including the digitisation of its services, to ensure effective and efficient land administration.



Those reforms, he said, would ensure that the various development initiatives by the government and private sector were carried out.



"All talks about Ghana Beyond Aid, Agenda 111 and building prosperity for Ghana cannot be possible if investors come into the country and cannot register titles to lands or be assured that if they buy land, they are not buying litigation," he said.



Vested lands



For his part, the Ag. Executive Secretary of the Lands Commission, Mr Arthur Dadson, said the commission had started the process to divest all vested lands across the country.



He said a committee had already been deployed to the Bono, Western and Central regions to engage stakeholders as part of the first phase of devesting the vested lands.



"I am sure that by December 2021, full details of phase one, which is the engagement process, will be made available," he said.



Mr Dadson assured the minister and members of the public that the Lands Commission was ready to vigorously pursue the digitisation agenda to make land administration efficient.



He also assured the staff of the commission that steps were being taken to address their concerns.









Source: Graphiconline.com









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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The Member of Parliament for Effutu, Alexander Kwamena Afenyo-Markin, has affirmed the readiness of Effutu to host the entire West Africa.



In a one-on-one interview with Omanhene Kwabena Asante on Adom TVs Badwam morning show, the Deputy Majority Leader reiterated the commitment and preparedness of Effutu to host the entire ECOWAS Parliament.



Omanhene, we hosted the extraordinary session of ECOWAS successfully in Effutu. We are more than capable to host the entire ECOWAS Parliament in October he said.



The lawmaker stressed that Winneba has enough facilities that will make participants comfortable. We have hotels like Windy Lodge, Windy Bay, Gloriaka and other similar facilities in Winneba. We are capable of pulling this one off as well he stated.



For the first time in its history, ECOWAS had its extraordinary session in a place other than the national capitals of member states.



The success of the extraordinary session made it possible for the main session to be held in Winneba again in October, instead of Accra, the national capital.

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 Ghana Immigration Service (GIS) has waged a war against foreigners who attempt to acquire Ghanaian passport through dubious means.

It has, therefore, repatriated 52 foreign nationals who attempted to acquire Ghanaian Passport by false declaration.

In the last nine months, GIS has prosecuted over 35 foreign nationals who were subsequently fined a total of GHC91,360.00.



Those prosecuted include eight Ghanaians, Nigerians, 17, South Africans, 1, Congolese,1, Togolese, 4, Beninese, 1, Cameroonians, 1, Sierra Leoneans, 1, and two Ivoirians.



Head of Legal at GIS, Chief Superintendent Adolf Aboagye-Asenso, said in an interview that the local accomplices of those repatriated were on the run, and that the GIS would spare no effort in arresting them.

He said the foreign nationals acquired genuine source documents such as the birth certificates from the Births and Deaths registry, Ghana Cards from the National Identification Authority and voter ID cards from the Electoral Commission with the assistance of their local collaborators.



He said the source documents were presented to the Immigration Service as proof of citizenship for the acquisition of Ghanaian passport.



Countrys image



Such actions go a long way not only to dent the image of the country among the comity of nations but also to erode the integrity of such documents, he said.





The GIS had earlier arrested 79 people in the Volta Region allegedly for engaging in illegal business.



They include 72 Togolese, four Nigerien nationals and three Ghanaians.



The Volta Regional commander of the GIS, Deputy Commissioner of Immigration Peter Nantuo, said the foreigners had been living in Ghana without permits and had been engaging in illegal online trading activities.



Last warning





The GIS will never let the region and the country down, especially when drugs, cyberfraud, Q-Net [the controversial online network marketing organisation] are trying to take root in the region.



Dont deceive yourselves that maybe theres a claim that the border is porous. It is not true. That does not mean we do not man or patrol our borders, DCI Nantuo said.



You people will go back right now to Togo. If you like, come back, and I will prosecute and jail you in Ghana.



When you come, do something better. You cannot come and engage in something we all know is criminal and you think we should turn the other side? It will not work, he said.



He advised foreign nationals who had interest in coming to Ghana to come in through the right way, with the right travel documents. Come and do lawful business and nobody will worry you. But this everyday crime, petty crime business, I can assure you that you will not know peace so far as you engage in it.





The immigration chief also cautioned landlords to be mindful of individuals to whom they rent out their properties, and asked them to do proper background checks on potential tenants.











Source: graphiconline.com









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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The Municipal Director of Health Service for Sefwi Wiawso Municipal District in the Western North Region, Mr Francis Boakye Takyi, has said the waste bins provided at the vaccination centres will help to prevent littering, apart from taking care of the medical waste that will be generated.



He was happy that Zoomlion Ghana Limited was at the forefront of the medical waste management at the vaccination centres, providing free bins and bin liners for the collection of metal waste, cotton wool and other types of waste.



The bins have been provided at the CHPs compounds and what Zoomlion does is to pick all waste items from the hospitals, he said.



Mr Boakye Takyi made the statement while speaking to journalists on the sidelines of a vaccination exercise at his directorate on Thursday, September 2, 2021.



He was very optimistic that Zoomlion will do a good job by safely disposing of the medical waste the various centres in the region.



However, he pleaded with the government to supply them with more vaccines to be able to attend to more people in the municipality.



He explained that Ghana Health Service (GHS) took delivery of the medical items to help facilitate the second jabs of the AstraZeneca vaccine, adding that a number of persons were trained specifically for the exercise.



With the vaccination of the second jab of the AstraZeneca, what we do is to ask those coming for the jabs to produce a card that was issued to them along with their voter's ID card when they took the first jab. And once they produce that they are given the second jab, Mr Boakye Takyi said.



The Coordinator of the Expanded Programme for Immunisation, Ms. Victoria Ayog-yam, was full of praise for Zoomlion and its partners for helping in the safe disposal of general and medical waste products at the centres.



Zoomlion picks up the waste every day from the various vaccination centres, the cotton wool waste are separated from syringes.



and their workers wear protective gears like medical gloves and medicated nose masks for safety reasons, she noted.



According to her, the vaccination exercise on Tuesday, September 1, 2021, which saw over 100 people turning out to be vaccinated



According to the WHO, vaccination waste predominantly comprises used needles, syringes, and blood-stained cotton is classified as potentially infectious waste. In this regard, the vaccination waste needs to be managed with hazardous waste management protocols.



To this end vaccination waste needs to be managed with hazardous waste management protocols.



It is in line with the above that Zoomlion medical waste teams have positioned waste bins with colour-coded liners in all vaccination centres across the country, serving as temporary storage containers for segregated waste.



The sharp and other infectious waste materials are then collected and transported by specialized medical waste trucks deployed across the country.



The collected waste will then be treated at centralised medical waste treatment facilities through sterilization and shredding. At this point, the waste is considered safe for final disposal.



Thus, the medical waste teams of Zoomlion are collaborating with technical experts from the Schools of Hygiene in Ghana to provide medical waste management services to all vaccination centres across the country.

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 Ministry of Communications and Digitalization through the National Information Technology Agency (NITA) has partnered global leading ICT company, Huawei Technologies in Ghana to organize a virtual workshop on Digital Technologies for the public sector on the theme Digital Economy: The Changing Public Space for an effective and sustainable Nation Building.



The workshop which will be held in three (3) separate tracks for participants according to departments and rank will highlight on latest Digital Transformation trends and new ICTs that are transforming economies to build the capacities of the key civil servants in Ghana.



The first track of the training workshop is scheduled to take place from September 1 to September 9, 2021. With selected participants from all the Ministries and key Government Agencies, the focus of the workshop will be to challenge participants to embrace digitalisation as a key catalyst for national development.



The maiden workshop which will be facilitated by Huawei will bring on board renowned ICT persons from Ghana, China, and South Africa among other countries to share their wealth of experience and expertise with participants. Some of the courses set to be instructed and discussed will be centered on digitalisation, best policy frameworks for digital economy, talent cultivation for digital economy and a holistic value creation for digitalisation.



The Director General of NITA, Richard Okyere-Fosu said NITA is keen to impart knowledge through these training exercises to equip the ICT players in the sector. In so doing we will impact the ecosystem positively as a regulator.



On his part, the Managing Director for Huawei Ghana, Tommy Zhou reiterated that the workshop is geared towards fulfilling a commitment made to the Government of Ghana through the President of the Republic to build the ICT skill capacity of up to 10,000 Ghanaians by the year 2024. He added that Huawei as an industry leader believes that in order to achieve a digital Ghana and world at large, the ICT skill gap of countries and industries must be closed, hence as a socially responsible organization, the company will continue to invest resources to achieve this goal.

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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Former Head of Monitoring at the Forestry Commission, Charles Owusu, has waded into discussions regarding a recent survey conducted by the Center for Democratic Development (CDD) about the Akufo-Addo administration.



The new survey reveals that majority of Ghanaians lack confidence in President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo to fight corruption.



Sixty-two (62) percent of 2,400 Ghanaians interviewed in the CDD post-election survey conducted between May 23 and June 3, 2021 indicate a lot of the citizens don't trust the President to protect the countrys financial resources and curb corruption in the next four years.



While Ghanaians are split (48% vs. 48%) on the governments ability to ensure that rule of law is upheld in the next four years, majority [of them] are not confident in its ability to protect the countrys financial resources (53%) and curb corruption and official impunity (62%).



Making his submissions on Peace FM's 'Kokrokoo' programme, Charles Owusu raised concerns about the corrupt practices not resolved by the incumbent administration.



To him, the government should be seen practically tackling corruption, but in reality, the government is not doing much as those who have to be punished are left off the hook.



He singled out the former National Coordinator of the defunct Ghana Youth Employment and Entrepreneurial Development Agency (GYEEDA), Abuga Pele who was sentenced to a six-year jail term but has been pardoned and freed by President Nana Akufo-Addo.



Mr. Pele, a former Member of Parliament for Chiana/Paga in the Upper East Region and a businessman, Philip Akpeena Assibit were both sentenced to a total of 18 years in prison on February 23, 2018 for their involvement in the GH4.1 million GYEEDA scandal.



Charles Owusu believed the Presidential pardon sends a wrong signal to the public.



He questioned why high-profile personalities found guilty of corruption are pardoned while ordinary Ghanaians who commit offences rot in prisons.



Speaking to host Nana Yaw Kesseh, Charles Owusu admonished the government to treat corruption with extreme seriousness and punishment saying, "corruption should be like death sentence. When we weigh corruption, it should be just as death sentence".





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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Charles Owusu has issued a stern warning to Ghanaians who use insults to address national issues.



He descended on this type of the citizenry while commenting on the recent kind gesture by the National Chief Imam, Sheikh Osman Nuhu Sharubutu, towards the National Cathedral.



The board of trustees of the National Cathedral Secretariat has rolled out the ketewa biara nsua initiative to raise funds to build the edifice.



Ghanaians are being encouraged to make a GHC 100 donation towards the project.



The National Chief Imam, on Thursday, August 26, made a GHC 50,000 donation to the National Cathedral project when the board of trustees paid a courtesy call on him at his office.



But the Chief Imam has come under criticisms following his donation.



Speaking on Peace FM's 'Kokrokoo' programme, Charles Owusu noted that some of the criticims are insulting and therefore wondered why some people cannot make their arguments devoid of insults.



He lambasted the public generally for raining invectives on the leaders of the nation including the National Chief Imam who he reminded Ghanaians about his able leadership and long life.



"Let's be careful for the Bible says everything is permissible for me but not everything is beneficial," he warned.







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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National Communications Director of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP), Yaw Buaben Asamoa, has welcomed the CDD report on corruption involving the Akufo-Addo administration.



CDD's new survey indicates a majority of Ghanaians have lost confidence in President Nana Akufo-Addo to fight corruption.



According to the survey, 62% of 2400 Ghanaians interviewed by the CDD lack confidence in the government.



While Ghanaians are split (48% vs. 48%) on the governments ability to ensure that rule of law is upheld in the next four years, majority [of them] are not confident in its ability to protect the countrys financial resources (53%) and curb corruption and official impunity (62%).



But to Yaw Buaben Asamoa, the survey is rather an indication that Ghanaians have noticed the good works of the government.



Speaking during Peace FM's ''Kokrokoo'' programme Friday morning, Mr. Buaben Asamoa noted that the government is tackling corruption head-on.



He asked Ghanaians to continue to be confident in President Akufo-Addo, not pay attention to the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) who he argued has nothing better to offer Ghanaians.



''We know what NDC can do, nothing!'', he stated, adding, "we're solving corruption. We're not afraid to say we're working about it . . . continue to have confidence in the NPP, for we will cause a major transformation in the country''.



Watch video below





Source: Ameyaw Adu Gyamfi/Peacefmonline.com/Ghana









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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Taliban officials have declared China as their closest ally in the international community.



The militants say Beijing is ready to invest in and reconstruct Afghanistan and describe the nation as their principal partner".



Zabihulla Mujahid, the spokesman for the group, stated the Chinese would help to revive Afghan copper mining. He also praised the Chinese for their One Belt One Road investment project which has forged forward despite criticism from western countries.



China is one of the few countries which did not evacuate staff from their Kabul embassy in the wake of the Talibans takeover.



It was also been reported that a Taliban delegation visited China in July for talks with the foreign minister Wang Yi, in Tianjin.



Mr. Mujahid told the Italian newspaper La Repubblica: China is our principal partner and for us represents a fundamental and extraordinary opportunity because its ready to invest in and reconstruct our country.



We hold in high regard the One Belt One Road project that will serve to revive the ancient Silk Road.



Beyond that, we have rich copper mines which thanks to the Chinese can be brought back into production and modernised.



"China represents our passport towards the markets of the whole world.



His comments come after Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab declared that Britain wont be recognising the Taliban at any time in the foreseeable future.



But he said there was a need for "direct engagement" with the group, to ensure UK nationals and Afghan allies could leave Afghanistan.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson reiterated the message, adding that if the Taliban wanted to engage with the West then the first priority for them for us is safe passage for those who want to leave".



Raab also said that evacuation flights from Afghanistan could resume in the near future after talks with leaders in Qatar.









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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Ransford Gyampo, an associate professor in the Political Science Department of the University of Ghana, has stated that the New Patriotic Party (NPP) can break the eight-year power cycle in 2024.



Gyampo, however, said achieving the feat is dependent on how the governing party welcomes the outcome of the latest survey conducted by the Ghana Centre for Democratic Development (CDD).



The report which sampled the views of over 2000 Ghanaians from all 16 regions of the country between 23 May and 3 June shows 62% of Ghanaians are not confident government can tackle corruption.



While Ghanaians are split (48% vs. 48%) on the governments ability to ensure that rule of law is upheld in the next four years, majority are not confident in its ability to protect the countrys financial resources (53%) and curb corruption and official impunity (62%), the survey said.



Speaking with Kojo Mensah on The Asaase Breakfast Show on Friday (3 September), Prof Gyampo said the outcome is the reason why the NPP lost seats in Parliament.



 It is good for the NPP that this thing has come up now, if they are thinking of breaking the eight-year cycle, and if they really mean business. Looking at the timing, if I were them, I will seize the opportunity to begin to do something drastic.



Gyampo added: You can do one thing today and it changes the way people think about you. So if they will take this in good faith and begin to work on them in the next six months to one year, I am sure they will be making giant strides in their quest to think about breaking the eight-year cycle.



Positive response

He said he is, however, impressed with the reaction of the NPP to the survey. I commend their attitude and response to this, he said.



CDD report

The findings among others, however, reveal 57% of Ghanaians have no confidence in the government to expand the One District One Factory (1D1F) initiative across the country.



Touching on the 2020 elections, the report blamed the reduction of the presidents vote on his own performance and that of NPP MPs.



A cumulative 58% attributed the reduction in President Nana Akufo-Addos vote margin to the presidents policy decision and actions (cited by 21%), his MPs and appointees performance (19%), as well as the presidents performance (18%).



Respondents attributed the loss of seats by the NPP to the non-performance of the NPP and its MPs (33%), as well as the partys bad campaign strategy (24%), the CDD report added.



The report, however, attributed the gains the NDC made in the parliamentary elections to the non-performance of the NPP MPs (22%) and the NDCs campaign strategy (15%).





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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Veteran Ghanaian actor, Abeiku Nyame popularly known as Jagger Pee has stated that he doubts if ace Ghanaian dancer Nana Kwasi Agyemang known well as Gemann, now a Pastor, is truly a Man Of God.



Jagger Pee and Gemann were thrown behind bars following the shooting of a taxi driver in 1995 by the latter.



Gemann was convicted of a first-degree felony and sentenced to death by hanging on May 15, 1996, while Jagger Pee who was said to have hassled the taxi driver and was holding him before the shooting - also got a life sentence.



Speaking in an interview on TV3 on Friday, August 20, 2021, Gemann, while answering a question in line with the current situation of Jagger Pee said he has no idea about him.



No, because you see there are some friends known as fair-weather friends. I talked about it in the book, he said.



Fair-weather friends are people who will hang around with you when the weather is good. When the weather is bad, they will turn their back on you.



So its not every friend that is a friend but you see, you will get to know your friends when you are in trouble and that is one of the things thatyou see when you are famous people will hang around you.



You are known as groupies but tomorrow when you are in trouble they will not be there. They will move on to the next and God allowed me to go through that for a purpose. So today I have brothers and I dont have friends.Gemann said.



Responding to Gemann's comments on Hot 93.9FM, Jagger Pee stated emphatically that he doubts if the former is truly a Pastor.



According to Jagger Pee, "if the family of the murdered taxi driver has forgiven Gemann, why can't he also forgive me for not just coming to pay him a visit...Is it a crime when you refuse to visit someone?



"He is a Pastor, and I am also a member of a Church... he should learn about the Bible well," Jagger Pee added.

Source: hotfmghana.com









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

Featured Video
Refugees from Afghanistan waiting to be processed after arriving on an evacuation flight at Heathrow. (Getty)

Afghan refugees could be taught about British values including "enhanced" English language training so they can "contribute fully to British life'.

The Times reported the government will test plans for a new integration scheme on Afghans who have arrived in the country after fleeing the Taliban.

The scheme would mimic countries like Italy, France and Germany, the newspaper reported, where arrivals are given extensive language lessons as well as passes for museums and galleries and classes to help them integrate more fully.

According to the Times, communities secretary Robert Jenrick said the government is looking into how it can: "comprehensively introduce people to British culture, civic and political life, increasing peoples knowledge and understanding of the country and its values, so they can contribute fully to British life".

Dominic Raab is visiting the area around Afghanistan for talks with counterparts on how to ensure safe passage of Britons and eligible Afghans who have fled the country. (Getty)

News of the scheme comes as the government announced up to 30 million of aid to Afghanistans neighbouring countries to help those who have fled after it was retaken by the Taliban.

In a statement, the Foreign Office said 10 million would be made available immediately to humanitarian partners, such as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), to enable essential supplies such as shelters to be despatched to the Afghan borders as well as setting up sanitation and hygiene facilities.

Read more: Haibatullah Akhundzada: Who is the hardline leader of the Taliban?

A further 20 million will be allocated to countries that experience a significant increase in refugees to support reception and registration facilities and provide essential services and supplies.

The aid was announced as Dominic Raab visited the region for talks with his counterparts on Afghanistan in a bid to secure safe passage for UK nationals and "eligible Afghans" who have fled the country, with talks also including how to prevent the country from becoming a haven for terrorists, addressing humanitarian issues and "holding the Taliban to account on human rights".

Story continues

Watch: Dominic Raab criticised for laughing during emergency Afghanistan debate

The government - particularly the Foreign Office - has come under fire for its handling of the evacuation from Afghanistan.

Raab himself was criticised for being on holiday when Afghanistan's capital Kabul fell to the Taliban while it also emerged that documents with sensitive details on employees who had worked at the Embassy in the capital were left for the Taliban to find, putting their lives at risk.

The number of people the UK has left behind in Afghanistan who were eligible for repatriation has remained controversial, with the government suggesting the figure is between 800 and 1,100, while Labour say it is aware of 5,000 cases.

On a visit to paratroopers in Essex, Boris Johnson failed to shed any light on the number, giving a lengthy comment that did not provide a number, saying: "Obviously there are some and we care for them very much, were thinking about them and doing everything we can to help."

Boris Johnson gave a rambling answer when asked for a clear figure on how many people had been left behind in Afghanistan by the UK. (PA)

Announcing its 30 million aid package, the government said 550,000 people have been displaced within Afghanistan since the start of the year and said the UNHCR estimates a worst-case scenario of more than 500,000 refugees fleeing the country to Pakistan, Tajikistan, Iran, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan in the coming months.

In a statement on the aid, Raab said: "It is vital that we help those fleeing Afghanistan and do not allow the crisis there to undermine regional stability. Thats why these life-saving supplies are so important.

"They will provide Afghans who have left everything behind with essential kit offering shelter and basic sanitation as they seek to pick up the pieces of their lives.

"This aid demonstrates the UKs commitment to shoulder our humanitarian responsibility and support those countries who will face the greatest demands for those displaced."

Watch: UK official meets senior members of Taliban to ensure Britons can safely leave Afghanistan
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The fashion scene in Malaysia has gradually grown more prominent over the years, thanks to great designers like Melinda Looi and Farah Khan who have helped make a name for us. It is also undeniable that fashion trends are ever-changing and creators are constantly hard at work discovering, reviving, and modernising traditional wardrobe pieces for a whole new generation.

For a cultural mosaic like Malaysia though, where each ethnicity has its own unique garb, how do we assimilate contemporary designs while staying true to our rich culture and heritage?

This 11 September at 3pm, Malaysian designers Ariffa Maryam Yeop Abdul Mutalib and Fern Chua, who are known for their use of batik, chat with returning guest host, Eliza Thomas about how each of their brands incorporate a sense of Malaysia into their designs. All this while adding modern twists and trends to not just suit different style aesthetics, but generations as well.

About Maryam Mutalib

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Born and bred in Kampung Chalet, Negeri Sembilan, Malaysia  Maryams background started out in Culinary Arts in preparation of taking over the family business, but her love for fashion remained. Somewhere down the line, Maryam fell deeply in love with Batik, and all things related to it, and so MaryamBayam was born. Maryam, through her work, continues to promote and educate people from all walks of life about the beauty of Malaysian Batik and the rich heritage and culture behind it.

MaryamBayam: Better in Batik

With a focus on preserving the ancient art of batik-making, educating, and honouring the hard work done by skilled batik artisans, MaryamBayam wants to connect people from all over the world with the beautiful craft that is batik and its rich role in Malaysias history. Each piece is meticulously designed and made to outlast fast fashion trends, thus changing the way we spend on our clothes. A big part of what they do is finding new purpose for scrap fabrics and reducing their overall impact on the environment as part of a commitment to be responsible and caring to our beautiful world.

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maryambayam.com

About Fern Chua

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Ferns journey as a designer started with a life-changing car accident that resulted in her left hand being paralysed. While in the process of rehabilitating her hand movement, she decided to learn how to sew, and it was while playing around with fabrics and materials that she fell in love with batik. A few years later, Fern won the Fashion Pitch 2013 awarded by MyCreative Ventures in Malaysia, and her label was launched in 2015.

FERN: The New Batik

FERN is a design house formed to celebrate and rediscover the aesthetic elegance of the ancient fabric art form, Batik. All pieces are luxurious to the touch, and uniquely handcrafted by in-house artisans using only the finest natural and sustainable materials. The result? Luxury resort wear that will take you through the ages.

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Ready To Wear: New Generation Batik

will be hosted on Zoom for FREE. Details of the web session are as follows:

DATE

Saturday, 11 September 2021

TIME

3PM (GMT+8)

DURATION

60  75 minutes

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Sign up for the session on Zoom here:

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Please note that:

If this is the first time youre using Zoom, youll need to have the app downloaded on your device. Download it here.

Each session is limited to 100 participants. If you are directed to a Waiting Room and are not admitted within 5 minutes, it means that the session is full. You can only join the session if another participant leaves. You can choose to either wait there for a spot to open up, or head over to our Facebook page where the session will be hosted live as well.

Stay up-to-date on this and future sessions of Hello Zafigo by following us on Facebook and/or Instagram. All past sessions are available for viewing at hellozafigo.com.

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Zafigo is dedicated to the woman traveller, offering tips, guides and insights to make travel  be it for work or leisure  better, safer and more interesting. Focusing on selected cities in Asia and the Middle East, we also serve as a platform and community for women to share their experiences and knowledge with fellow travellers.

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The post Hello Zafigo Session #17 | Ready To Wear: New Generation Batik appeared first on Zafigo.
Pictures of the Adelpha corcyra and Adelpha alala butterflies pictures in Colombia's Antioquia department.

Like the more than 3,000 species of butterflies in Colombia, agronomist Juan Guillermo Jaramillo underwent his own metamorphosis several years ago, as his passion for photographing nature took an unexpected twist.

The 65-year-old, who used to run an animal feed business, originally took photographs of birds, but he is now a key figure in the world of Colombian butterflies.

Jaramillo is the co-author of an inventory that led to Colombia being recognized as having the widest variety of butterfly species in the world.

The list he worked on was published in the British Natural History Museum in Londonwhich has the world's largest collection of butterfliesin June.

The Checklist of Colombian Butterflies identifies 3,642 different species in the Andean country, which makes up 19.4 percent of the known global varieties.

But Jaramillo is keen to point out he is not a collector.

"I broke from the traditional image associated with butterflies of collectors that kill them, put them in an envelop and then pin them to the inside of a box," Jaramillo told AFP.

"I'm simply not capable of killing them."

Like bees, butterflies are pollinators vital to the ecosystem. They are also an important source of food for birds and snakes.

Yet their habitats are under threat from deforestation, agriculture and global warming.

Jaramillo, who lives in the southwestern Antioquia department, has an archive of 220,000 photos of butterflies and has captured images of 1,500 different species.

The Altinote ozoneme have velvety black wings with red patches at the base of the forewings, and are mostly found in cloudforests.

Tricking the butterflies

Jaramillo has spent the last 15 years trekking through jungles and woodlands in search of the "winged jewels"a dangerous pastime given those areas are infested with armed groups and drug traffickers.

The signing of an historic 2016 peace accord between the government and the marxist guerrilla Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia after more than half a century of armed conflict sparked hope areas previously off limits would become safe for scientists and naturalists.

But it was not long before armed rebels and drug-traffickers returned.

"I want to go to many places but there are some I don't go to out of fear," said Jaramillo.

When he does venture out, Jaramillo takes with him a camera, tripod and a container of pink liquid he prepares every morning: shrimp bait.

Having tried various other types of bait, he found shrimp worked best.

Juan Guillermo Jarmaillo has made his own shrimp bait liquid that he spreads on rocks and leaves to attract the butterflies.

He spreads the foul-smelling bait on rocks and leaves by a rushing stream, and even lays out cotton balls soaked in the liquid.

"That's how I make them think it's bird droppings," he explained.

"When the butterflies land on a leaf they stay there for quite some time... they're almost like models," he added.

"Without the bait, it would be impossible to see certain species in the woodland because they live in very tall trees."

Another potential barrier is the weather.

"If there's no sun, there are no butterflies."

Some like it hot

Jaramillo used to be a bird watcher and also compiled an inventory of the species he observed.

Colombia boasts the widest varieties of bird species and orchids, according to the United Nations's Convention on Biological Diversity.

It was the switch from film to digital photography that sparked Jaramillo's conversion to butterflies.

Juan Guillermo Jaramillo says he has taken photographs of 1,500 different species of butterflies, almost half the number of varieties there are in Colombia.

A butterfly settles on the side of Juan Guillermo Jaramillo's nose.

"Taking a good photo of birds is very difficult because you need very big, heavy lens."

While filming birds, he also took photos of butterflies and was amazed by their colors and shapes.

It opened up a vast world to Jaramillo. After beetles, butterflies and moths are the most numerous insect on the planet with almost 160,000 described species.

"In Colombia, I think there are about twice as many species of butterflies as birds," American Kim Garwood, Jaramillo's fellow inventory author, told AFP.

"In the Andes I have been told there are about 10-15 percent of the butterfly species that are undescribed. We have many photos of undescribed species."

Near his farm on a road with little traffic, Jaramillo, who is retired, says he is in the perfect place to photograph butterflies when the sun rises and the day's warm air helps them stay aloft.

But Jaramillo's work doesn't end with sunset, as at nightfall, he turns his lens onto moths.

"With butterflies and moths, I have work for this lifetime and 10 more," he said.

 2021 AFP
Pangolins, also known as scaly anteaters, are currently the most trafficked mammal species. Credit:  Shutterstock By Arief Budi Kusuma

As governments around the world turned to lockdowns and travel restrictions to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 virus, smugglers used social media to find new ways to connect with potential customers.

Criminals can be resourceful and unrelenting in their efforts to find a way around obstacles. Wildlife traffickers are no exception. Today's trade in wildlife and wildlife products has shifted from physical markets to online marketplaces where traffickers apply e-commerce business models and use encrypted messages in an attempt to evade detection by law enforcement.

While the move towards online platforms started several years before the COVID-19 pandemic, the restrictions imposed to contain the virus accelerated this digital transformation. According to Interpol, traffickers are advertising and selling wildlife and wildlife products via social media platforms. Gaining access to a vast international marketplace and following the same routes as other crimes such as drugs and weapons smuggling, wildlife crime is rising 5 percent to 7 percent annually, two to three times the growth rate of the global economy.

"The information available to investigate the illegal trade in wildlife is often incomplete or missing. As such, we can't get the full picture," said Enrico Di Minin, associate professor of conservation geography at the University of Helsinki in Finland where he leads the Helsinki Lab of Interdisciplinary Conservation Science. "Since 2015, when the illegal trade in wildlife began moving increasingly onto digital markets, I started investigating the wildlife trade from digital platforms."

This is how the concept for the WILDTRADE project came aboutto quantify the global patterns and trends of the illegal wildlife trade and to investigate how market forces shape them. The idea is to use big data mined from social media platforms in combination with machine learning methods and data gathered from online surveys and literature reviews to identify what species and wildlife products are traded online and what are the motives behind the trade. The findings will also help Di Minin and his research team identify global hotspots and the global flow of goods.

Data collection, codes and digital platforms

"The innovation of using machine learning methods is that we are able to automatically identify data from many digital platforms and for many species and products at the same time without needing to manually go through this content," said Di Minin, who will address the IUCN World Conservation Congress in Marseille, France, on 5 September.

Data collection complies with data privacy and protection regulations so it can no longer be attributed to a specific person.

Di Minin's cross-disciplinary team of expert computer scientists and social scientists sift through the flood of data using machine learning algorithms. "By filtering and analyzing the data, we can provide new insights into the hotspots of the trade, the quantities traded and the prices. These are aspects that are still poorly known at the global level," said Di Minin. "We're also particularly interested in learning how rarityhow rare a species is on the market or in the wildaffects the preferences of people who use these products.

One of the areas where researchers are focusing their attention is Southeast Asia. "In a recent study we investigated the online market for songbirds in Indonesia, where keeping pet songbirds has strong cultural traditions. We found that the online trade was not limited to major cities but spread throughout the country. We also found that prices on online marketplaces were significantly higher than the prices stated in consumer surveys," Di Minin explained.

Framing the illegal wildlife trade as a global security threat

Examining online data can tell a far wider story than the impact on wildlife, revealing the complex reasons why people get drawn into poaching and trafficking, such as poverty and poor governance. It also highlights the different actors involved and the challenges they present including the threat to livelihoods, national security and even global stability.

One result of the idea that the illegal wildlife trade is conducted by criminals, organized crime networks and shadowy groups operating outside the law is the growing integration of conservation and security. Professor Rosaleen Duffy from the University of Sheffield coordinated the project BIOSEC, which highlighted possible harm to wildlife and people by casting the trade as a crime and security issue. She warns that this approach can obscure some of the underlying drivers of the illegal wildlife trade, such as demand from the world's wealthiest communities.

"It is important to address why some people continue to engage in illegal hunting," said Prof. Duffy. "It may be because they have no alternative opportunities or because they do not recognize the legitimacy of colonial laws that forbid access to or use of wildlife in the area. By focusing on the relationship between nature and society these omissions and blind spots are revealedhighlighting how they shape and change conservation policy."

"After all, it's these blind spots and omissions that eventually result in ineffective and socially unjust policymaking, which impacts both conservationists and people living with wildlife," added Duffy.

On the ground, this means gaining a better understanding of the complexities of threats to wildlife, such as elephants, and designing effective and socially just conservation solutions. This requires a knowledge of conservation biology, development studies, international politics and economics. "For instance, our research on demand reduction for ivory used critical race theory to unpick and understand the often racist underpinnings of demand reduction campaigns by NGOs aimed at Asian ivory markets," said Duffy. "We called for more culturally nuanced and effective campaigns which engaged positively with consumers."

The work also focused on overlooked European species in illegal wildlife trade debates: songbirds, timber and caviar. "There is often an assumption that illegal wildlife trade is a "problem" of Asia and Africawhich ignores the role of Europe as a source, consumer and transit region."

Explore further Using artificial intelligence to investigate illegal wildlife trade on social media
Research reveals a connection between Indigenous languages, bears and their terrain. Credit: Michelle Valberg, Author provided

Along the central coast of what is now known as British Columbia, Gitga'at, Haizaqv (Heiltsuk), Wuikinuxv, Nuxalk, and Kitasoo/Xai'xais First Nations are monitoring and managing wildlife populations, continuing a legacy of stewardship of this landscape since time immemorial. Stewardship often represents an extension of long-term relationships with ecosystems and animals, including iconic species like mountain goats, salmon and grizzly bears.

A long-term bear monitoring collaboration between five central coast First Nations, the Raincoast Conservation Foundation and the University of Victoria has described a new connection in the long-known relationship between people, bears and the land.

On the central coast, genetic analyses have identified three genetic groups of grizzly bearsbears are more likely to be related to other bears within their own group than to bears in another group.

Link to language

Often, the presence of distinct genetic groups can mean that a landscape barrier is preventing animals from moving and mating. This research partnership tested traditional landscape features that had been found to prevent bears from freely moving in other areas, including landscape ruggedness, large waterways, snow and ice, and the presence of human settlements and infrastructure.

Knowing that the central coast looked very different prior to the disease and violence-mediated genocide that came with colonization, and that genetic methods can sometimes reflect longer timescales, we also incorporated archeological indicators of where people lived in the past.

Despite dense settlement and use of the coast by people in the past, the rugged landscape and large waterways, none of these features explained the pattern of grizzly genetic groups. However, the geographies of these three genetic groups strikingly align with those of three Indigenous language families: Tsimshian, Northern Wakashan and Salishan Nuxalk.

This finding was not a complete surprise to Indigenous collaborators, co-authors, and communities. Bears and people have shared resources and watersheds for millennia, emphasizing the potential for both to respond to and be shaped by the landscape in similar ways. This overlap additionally suggests that the pattern of genetic grouping may be more linked to what the landscape can provide in resources than what it can limit in resistance.

Knowledge sharing between bears and people

Elders pass on stories about people watching and learning from bears as they eat many of the same things and are also omnivores. Bears and people both learn from their ancestors what to eat and where. In some places, bears stay close to the home range and territory of their mothers just as Indigenous families traditionally have rights to manage a specific part of a river or watershed. These familial links to territories and sharing of knowledge suggest not only a parallel in resource use, but also a cultural equivalency between bears and people.

William Housty of the Haizaqv Integrated Resource Management Department, describes the process of capturing DNA samples from grizzly bears.

These findings also have management implications. The geographies of the three grizzly genetic groups do not spatially align with how grizzlies are currently managed by the provincial government. One genetic group is split in half by a current management boundary, meaning that that two halves of the same group could be managed differently.

Incorporating genetic evidence into management plans can provide important information about population health and the ability of groups of animals to adapt to changes or stressors in their environment.

The findings of genetic grouping despite traditional barriers to mating, and the striking overlap between groups and Indigenous language families highlights the close relationship between bears and people. This overlap also emphasizes the need for local and Indigenous-led monitoring and management of grizzlies.

Traditional knowledge and conservation

Central coast First Nations are effectively pairing local and traditional ecological knowledge with western science to change policy.

While this study focused primarily on grizzly bears, Indigenous-led stewardship considers the whole ecosystem, with the collaborative bear monitoring group also focusing on salmon as a species inextricably linked to people and bears.

One of the primary goals of this long-term monitoring collaboration is to ensure that salmon populations are healthy and there is always enough fish for bears and people. The work described here represents a small piece of a long history and future of Indigenous stewardship of important species and places, and the relationships among them.

Explore further 1st female grizzly in 40 years collared in Washington state

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Cruz Palma, left, watches as her son, Jose Duran, center, and husband, Jose Garcia, work to remove a water heater from what's left of their home in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida, Thursday, Sept. 2, 2021, in Golden Meadow, La. Credit: AP Photo/David J. Phillip

Commercial flights resumed in New Orleans and power returned to parts of the business district Thursday, four days after Hurricane Ida slammed into the Gulf Coast, but electricity, drinking water and fuel remained scarce across much of a sweltering Louisiana.

Meanwhile, the remnants of the system walloped parts of the Northeast, dumping record-breaking rain in a region that had not expected a serious blow and killing at least 46 people from Maryland to Connecticut. Eleven people in New York City drowned in basement apartments.

New Orleans fared better than many other places because it was protected from catastrophic flooding by the levee system that was revamped after Hurricane Katrina. The power was back on before dawn in some downtown neighborhoods. Utility crews also restored electricity to several hospitals in Jefferson Parish and near Baton Rouge. Some streets were cleared of fallen trees and debris, and a few corner stores reopened.

The city's main airport reopened to commercial flights for the first time since the hurricane. Delta was the first airline to return, to be followed Friday by United Airlines and later by other carriers, officials said.

Louisiana officials also reported a big drop late Thursday in the number of customers with no running water: 185,000 compared to more than 600,000 the day before.

Cruz Palma pauses while salvaging belongings from her destroyed home in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida, Thursday, Sept. 2, 2021, in Golden Meadow, La. Credit: AP Photo/David J. Phillip

Still, the overwhelming majority of homes remained dark, and Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards said efforts to drain flooded parishes continued.

In seven parishes, at least 95% of customers remained without power Thursday. Only 35,000 of the 405,000 homes and businesses in New Orleans and Jefferson Parish had power Thursday, according to the poweroutage.us website. Statewide, about 900,000 customers were without electricity, down from about 1.1 million at the height of the seventh named storm to hit Louisiana since the summer of 2020.

"This isn't our first rodeo, but it's our worst rodeo," Kirt LeBouef said, wiping away tears as he looked at damage to the Little Eagle restaurant in Golden Meadow, a 75-mile (120 kilometer) drive down a narrow highway from New Orleans toward the Gulf.

LeBouef's family has owned the crawfish restaurant since 1920.

Louisiana National Guard Staff Sgt. Justin Dufreche helps load water into vehicles at a distribution site, in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida, Thursday, Sept. 2, 2021, in Golden Meadow, La. Credit: AP Photo/David J. Phillip

Edwards said more than 220,000 people already have registered for assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and 22,000 have applied for a federal program to place tarps on damaged roofs.

"It really pains me to see that people are hurting and their lives are upside down, and we're going to do everything we can every single day to make things better," the governor said at a stop in Tangipahoa Parish.

Power should be restored to most customers around the Baton Rouge area by Sept. 8 after workers finish assessing damage, Entergy Louisiana President Philip May said Thursday. Damage assessments are not as far along in the harder-hit regions, so Entergy said it has no timetable for getting service to those areas, which include New Orleans.

Gasoline shortages were also a problem for people trying to run generators and waiting in drive-thru lines for food and water. The lines for gas stretched for blocks in many places from New Orleans to Baton Rouge.

Kirt LeBouef wipes away tears as he looks at the damage done to his family restaurant, in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida, Thursday, Sept. 2, 2021, in Golden Meadow, La. LeBouef, who's family has owned the Little Eagle since 1920 and has stood through numerous hurricanes, said "This isn't our first rodeo, but it's the worst rodeo." Credit: AP Photo/David J. Phillip

President Joe Biden also ordered the release of extra fuel from the nation's Strategic Petroleum Reserve to ensure a steady supply. He said he would also provide utilities with satellite images to help restore power.

"We know that there is much to be done in this response on our part," said Biden, who was getting hourly updates on the recovery. "We need to get power restored. We need to get more food, fuel and water deployed."

Ida knocked out Port Fourchon, the primary hub to support offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and send that oil on its way to refineries. Port leaders said the damage to structures where the powerful eye came ashore was not as bad as feared.

"The majority of them are still good, and we can get things back up and running," said Chett Chiasson, executive director for the Greater Lafourche Port Commission, who did not give an exact estimate on reopening the facilities.

Cruz Palma carries a bag of her belongings while sifting through what remains of her destroyed home, in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida, Thursday, Sept. 2, 2021, in Golden Meadow, La. Credit: AP Photo/David J. Phillip

Biden was scheduled to visit Louisiana on Friday to survey the damage from Ida, which hit Sunday with 150 mph (230 kph) winds and was tied for the fifth-strongest hurricane ever to strike the mainland U.S.

At least 13 deaths were blamed on the storm in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, including two 19-year-old utility employees who were electrocuted Tuesday as they were restoring power near Birmingham, Alabama. Authorities blamed several other deaths on carbon monoxide poisoning.

The deaths of three Louisiana nursing home residents were classified Thursday as storm-related. They were among more than 800 residents who had been evacuated to a warehouse in the town of Independence from seven nursing facilities. The Louisiana Department of Health determined that conditions at the warehouse were unacceptable and transferred all of the remaining residents to other locations on Wednesday and Thursday.

Floodwaters slowly recede in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida in Lafitte, La., Wednesday, Sept. 1, 2021. Credit: AP Photo/Gerald Herbert

Outside New Orleans, neighborhoods remained flooded and residents were still reeling. Lafourche Parish President Archie Chaisson said 25% of the homes in his parish of 100,000 people were gone or had catastrophic damage, and up to 40% more had severe damage from winds that blew at over 100 mph (160 kph) for 12 hours.

"Lafourche took the brunt of this storm," Chaisson said at a briefing.

Hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses in the state were told to boil their water before using it.

Evacuees who were considering returning home to Terrebonne Parish were warned by emergency officials on Twitter that "there are no shelters, no electricity, very limited resources for food, gasoline and supplies and absolutely no medical services."

Louisiana's largest hospital system, Ochsner Health, was considering opening a field hospital somewhere in Terrebonne or Lafourche parish because the shuttering of most of the hospitals in the area removed about 250 to 300 beds.

Scott and Carol Blazer carry a door from their destroyed barn, in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida, Thursday, Sept. 2, 2021, in Golden Meadow, La. Credit: AP Photo/David J. Phillip

Josh Montford rests his head in his hand while going through his flood damaged home in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida, Wednesday, Sept. 1, 2021, in Jean Lafitte, La. "I'm overwhelmed," said Montford as he searched for items to salvage. Credit: AP Photo/John Locher

A man rests while helping neighbors at a home damaged in Hurricane Ida, Wednesday, Sept. 1, 2021, in Jean Lafitte, La. Louisiana residents still reeling from flooding and damage caused by Hurricane Ida scrambled Wednesday for food, gas, water and relief from the sweltering heat as thousands of line workers toiled to restore electricity and officials vowed to set up more sites where people could get free meals and cool off. Credit: AP Photo/John Locher

A man walks down a flooded street in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida, Wednesday, Sept. 1, 2021, in Lafitte, La. Credit: AP Photo/John Locher

Danielle Plaisance picks up shingles from her roof in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida, Thursday, Sept. 2, 2021, in Golden Meadow, La. Credit: AP Photo/David J. Phillip

Emily Francois walks through flood waters beside her flood damaged home in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida, Wednesday, Sept. 1, 2021, in Jean Lafitte, La. Louisiana residents still reeling from flooding and damage caused by Hurricane Ida scrambled Wednesday for food, gas, water and relief from the sweltering heat as thousands of line workers toiled to restore electricity and officials vowed to set up more sites where people could get free meals and cool off. Credit: AP Photo/John Locher

Declining numbers of COVID-19 patients and restoration of power at additional sites helped Ochsner Health recover, CEO Warner Thomas said during an online news conference. The Ochsner system's COVID-19 patient count fell to 663 from 990 about a week ago, Thomas said. That coincides with the state's overall declining case numbers.

Hard-hit areas in southeast Louisiana were also under a heat advisory Thursday. Forecasters warned that combined heat and humidity could make some areas feel like 106 degrees Fahrenheit (41 degrees Celsius).

Explore further New Orleans under curfew as US South tallies Hurricane Ida damage

 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
Biro training a macaw in free-flight. Credit: Constance Woodman

A training technique that has been practiced by parrot owners for decades is now being applied by Texas A&M University researchers in establishing new bird flocks in the wild.

While many parrot owners clip their birds' wings to reduce their flight abilities, free-flight involves training an intact parrot to come when called, follow basic commands, recognize natural dangers, and otherwise safely fly in open areas.

In a recently published paper in Diversity, Constance Woodman, a doctoral graduate student of the Texas A&M College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences (CVMBS), and Donald Brightsmith, a CVMBS associate professor, shared their findings from a project with Chris Biro, a globally recognized free-flight trainer, that included documenting Biro's training process step by step so that conservationists can apply his methods when releasing birds into the wild.

Biro, one of the most experienced free-flight trainers, has trained more than 400 students from more than 30 countries on how to free-fly their birds, but his process had previously only been captured via video.

"We have colleagues up and down the Americas raising and releasing birds, but their main objective is conservation and they don't have the chance to write up a lot of the science," Brightsmith said. "A&M's role in this project is to make sure that this information gets put into a place and a format so the rest of the world can read it, criticize it, use it, and improve it. If information hasn't made it into scientific literature, it's not improving the future of the science of macaw and parrot conservation, it's just helping one or two populations."

Woodman, supported by a National Science Foundation fellowship, and Biro spent several years training three different flocks of multiple parrot species using Biro's techniques, thoroughly documenting every step of the process.

These 37 birds, which collectively spent 500 months in free-flight, were hand-raised from chicks to build a strong bond with the trainer before being gradually taught new commands and introduced to increasingly complex environments to learn the skills necessary to safely fly in open, uncontrolled areas.

"As scientists, one of the most important things we can do for conservation is offer ready-to-use solutions for practitioners on the ground who are trying to save animals and ecosystems," said Woodman, who now serves as program manager for the CVMBS' Conservation Innovation Grant program. "By learning from communities that already work with the target species, in this case parrot owners and trainers, we can take their knowledge and transform it into a conservation tool."

The birds learned to recognize, evade, and even intimidate predators; forage for food and recognize safe vs. unsafe options; fly in flocks; navigate and mentally map the environment; and avoid unsafe situations, like dogs and cars.

During the entire training process, Biro's methods were proven successful by the fact that neither trainer lost a single bird to predators or had a bird leave the training area.

Macaws in free-flight. Credit: Chris Biro

Taking Flight

As the next step in this process, the team will work to adapt the training in support of parrot conservation.

Texas A&M and Biro's nonprofit, Bird Recovery International, will be among the first to test free-flight as a conservation tool through collaborative projects in Brazil and Honduras.

Traditionally, attempting to release hand-reared parrots has resulted in birds that show little fear of humans, which increases their chances of being trapped by poachers or killed by people.

By using a "kernel flock"human-socialized birds trained in free-flightto teach survival behaviors to other parrots, conservationists should be able to release wild birds without having to train them themselves.

"The idea of using a kernel flock is a way to cut the difference when human socialization is not desirable in your wild birds," Woodman said.

After the kernel flock trains the non-socialized birds, the kernel flock could be recalled and moved to another location, leaving behind a well-established colony of wild parrots.

"This is a really, really important project," Biro said. "For example, the Spix's macaw is extinct in the wild and there are only about 150 or so left in captivity. One of the problems of putting the Spix's macaw back into Brazil is that there are limited options for introducing birds into environments where no flock exists. This project produces a flock where there isn't one."

Woodman said there are many groups of animal keepers, fanciers and breeders with specialty knowledge, "but they may not be plugged into conservation communities."

"The work we've donespending years working with a group to learn how they do what they do and then translating that into something useful for scientists and practitionersis critically important to moving conservation forward," Woodman said.

For parrot owners who are interested in learning free-flight, Woodman recommends finding a local free-flight community to learn more.

"Free-flight is highly technical and it almost requires an apprenticeship-type learning system to do well, just like with falconry," Woodman said. "To free-fly a parrot safely, you've got to be involved in the free-flight community, because there's always a risk of losing an animal and that risk goes up without proper training."

Explore further New system for tracking macaws emphasizes species' conservation needs

More information: Constance Woodman et al, Parrot Free-Flight as a Conservation Tool, Diversity (2021). Constance Woodman et al, Parrot Free-Flight as a Conservation Tool,(2021). DOI: 10.3390/d13060254
Big cats have lost 90 percent of their range and population.

The world's leading global conservation congress opened on Friday, with warnings that humanity must tackle the grave risks of biodiversity loss and climate change together.

The key message from the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) is that disappearing species and the destruction of ecosystems are no less existential threats than global warming.

"The battle for the climateagainst climate changeis twinned with the battle to preserve and restore biodiversity," said French President Emmanuel Macron in a speech at the opening ceremony in the French port city of Marseille.

But efforts to stem the losses of the world's wildlife had fallen behind, he warned.

How to reverse relentless habitat destruction, unsustainable agriculture, mining and a warming planet will dominate discussion during the conference.

"We are facing huge challenges. We are seeing the climate changing and impacting hugely our societies," said IUCN chief Bruno Oberle in a speech before the congress opened.

"We are seeing biodiversity disappearing and the pandemic hitting our economies, our families, our health."

The meeting, delayed from 2020 by the pandemic, comes ahead of crucial UN summits on climate, food systems and biodiversity that could shape the planet's foreseeable future.

Tackline wildlife crime will be among the issues discussed at the conference.

Previous IUCN congresses have paved the way for global treaties on biodiversity and the international trade in endangered species.

But efforts to halt extensive declines in numbers and diversity of animals and plants have so far failed to slow the destruction.

In 2019 the UN's biodiversity experts warned that a million species are on the brink of extinctionraising the spectre that the planet is on the verge of its sixth mass extinction event in 500 million years.

Protesters in Marseille, with banners that read "Nature is not for sale!" and "Change the system not the climate!", urged more urgent action.

"It's hard to read the headlines: floods, fires, famines, plagues and tell your children that everything is alright," said actor Harrison Ford, who has become a vocal environmental campaigner, the opening ceremony.

"It's not alright. Dammit, it's not alright!"

Graph showing the percentage of vertebrate groups driven to extinction since 1500.

'Our right to exist'

The nine-day IUCN meeting will include an update of its Red List of Threatened Species, measuring how close animal and plant species are to vanishing forever.

Experts have assessed nearly 135,000 species over the last half-century and nearly 28 percent are currently at risk of extinction, with habitat loss, overexploitation and illegal trade driving the loss.

Big cats, for example, have lost more than 90 percent of their historic range and population, with only 20,000 lions, 7,000 cheetahs, 4,000 tigers and a few dozen Amur leopards left in the wild.

The IUCN will also, for the first time in its seven-decade history, welcome indigenous peoples to share their knowledge on how best to heal the natural world as voting members.

Oberle thanked indigenous groups for joining the IUCN's membership and bringing a "wealth of experience" on how to have a different relationship with the planet.

Protesters gathered in Marseille to urge more urgent action to protect nature.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) last year confirmed the extinction of 36 plant and animal species, not seen for decades.

Recent research has warned that rampant deforestation and climate change are pushing the Amazon towards a disastrous "tipping point" which would see tropical forests give way to savannah-like landscapes.

Rates of tree loss drop sharply in the forests where native peoples live, especially if they hold some degree of titlelegal or customaryover land.

"We are demanding from the world our right to exist as peoples, to live with dignity in our territories," said Jose Gregorio Diaz Mirabal, lead coordinator for COICA, which represents indigenous groups in nine Amazon-basin nations.

Motions on the table include protecting 80 percent of Amazonia by 2025, tackling plastic in the oceans, combating wildlife crime and preventing pandemics.

Macron has said the conference should lay the "initial foundations" for a global biodiversity strategy that will be the focus of UN deliberations in China in April next year.

The international community is trying to frame interim goals for this decade as well as longer-term aims for 2050.

Explore further Planet in peril: Global conservation congress urges wildlife protection

 2021 AFP
Research area. Credit: University of Helsinki

The University of Helsinki's Environmental Change Research Unit (ECRU) took part in an international study investigating the millennia-long history of the most important oasis in the Arctic and the potential effects of climate change on its future.

The North Water Polynya is an area of year-round open water located between northwest Greenland and Ellesmere Island, Canada, in northern Baffin Bay, which is otherwise covered by sea ice roughly eight months of the year. The area is known as an Arctic oasis, and one of the main migration routes of Greenland's original population runs just north of the area.

In the study, microfossils and chemical biomarkers preserved in marine and lake sediments were analyzed as keys to the past, exposing historical variation in the North Water Polynya in the past 6,000 years.

The polynya's high rate of primary production, for which, in marine environments, diatoms and other microalgae are responsible, maintains a diverse and unique ecosystem that serves as a safe haven for a range of species in Arctic conditions, which are otherwise harsh. Keystone Arctic species, such as the polar bear, the walrus and the narwhal, also thrive there. For the indigenous populations reliant on hunting and fishing, this area, the largest polynya in the northern hemisphere, has been a lifeline.

According to the study, the polynya was stable and its primary production was high roughly 4,4004,200 years ago, at the time when people arrived in Greenland from Canada over the frozen Nares Strait.

A millennium of instability and new heat records

However, the polynya's stability has varied over the last millennia: during the warmer climate periods 2,2001,200 years ago, the area was unstable and its productivity fell drastically. When primary production rates are low, significant reductions are seen in the populations of organisms in the upper levels of the food web, such as zooplankton, fish and marine mammals.

"According to archaeological finds, there were no inhabitants in the area during this period. It's a mystery that can potentially be explained, in light of the research findings, by conditions that were unfavorable to people reliant on hunting and fishing," says researcher Kaarina Weckstrom from the Environmental Change Research Unit, University of Helsinki.

The researchers point out that air temperatures have never reached the current level in northwest Greenland in the 6,000-year-long period of the polynya's history studied. Global warming and reduction in sea ice caused by human activity have led to the polynya's instability. The area is maintained by favorable ocean currents and winds, and particularly by an ice bridge located north of the polynya, which prevents drift ice in the Arctic Ocean traveling further south. It is the annual formation of this natural block that the warming of the climate is now threatening.

"This area, the Arctic's most important oasis, is likely to disappear if temperatures continue to rise as forecast. It would be important to at least slow climate change down, in order for Arctic indigenous peoples to have some kind of a chance to adapt to their future living conditions. Then again, as the history of the polynya suggests, if we can reduce greenhouse gas emissions and mitigate the rising air temperature, both Arctic sea ice and the polynya can be restored," Weckstrom sums up.

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More information: Sofia Ribeiro et al, Vulnerability of the North Water ecosystem to climate change, Nature Communications (2021). Journal information: Nature Communications Sofia Ribeiro et al, Vulnerability of the North Water ecosystem to climate change,(2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-24742-0
Huanyu "Larry" Cheng, Dorothy Quiggle Career Development Professor in Penn State's Department of Engineering Science and Mechanics, is leading research on flexible graphene devices made with lasers, like the wearable pressure sensor shown here. Credit: Huanyu Cheng

Graphene, hexagonally arranged carbon atoms in a single layer with superior pliability and high conductivity, could advance flexible electronics according to a Penn State-led international research team. Huanyu "Larry" Cheng, Dorothy Quiggle Career Development Professor in Penn State's Department of Engineering Science and Mechanics (ESM), heads the collaboration, which recently published two studies that could inform research and development of future motion detection, tactile sensing and health monitoring devices.

Investigating how laser processing affects graphene form and function

Several substances can be converted into carbon to create graphene through laser radiation. Called laser-induced graphene (LIG), the resulting product can have specific properties determined by the original material. The team tested this process and published their results in SCIENCE CHINA Technological Sciences.

Samples of polyimide, a type of plastic, were irradiated through laser scanning. The researchers varied the power, scanning speed, number of passes and density of scanning lines.

"We wanted to look at how different parameters of the laser processing process create different nanostructures," Cheng said. "Varying the power allowed us to create LIG either in a fiber or foam structure."

The researchers found that lower power levels, from 7.2 watts to roughly 9 watts, resulted in the formation of a porous foam with many ultrafine layers. This LIG foam exhibited electrical conductivity and a fair resistance to heat damageboth properties that are useful in components of electronic devices.

Increasing the power from approximately 9 watts to 12.6 watts changed the LIG formation pattern from foam to bundles of small fibers. These bundles grew larger in diameter with increased laser power, while higher power promoted the web-like growth of a fiber network. The fibrous structure showed better electrical conductivity than the foam. According to Cheng, this increased performance combined with the fiber's form could open possibilities for sensing devices.

"In general, this is a conductive framework we can use to construct other components," Cheng said. "As long as the fiber is conductive, we can use it as a scaffold and do a lot of subsequent modifications on the surface to enable a number of sensors, such as a glucose sensor on the skin or an infection detector for wounds."

Varying the laser scanning speed, density and passes for the LIG formed at different powers also influenced conductivity and subsequent performance. More laser exposure resulted in higher conductivity, but eventually dropped due to excess carbonization from burning.

Demonstrating a low-cost LIG sensor

Using the previous study as a foundation, Cheng and the team set out to design, fabricate and test a flexible LIG pressure sensor. They reported their results in SCIENCE CHINA Technological Sciences.

"Pressure sensors are very important," Cheng said. "We can use them not only in households and manufacturing but also on the skin surface to measure lots of signals from the human body, like the pulse. They can also be used at the human-machine interface to enhance performance of prosthetic limbs or monitor their attachment points."

The team tested two designs. For the first, they sandwiched a thin LIG foam layer between two polyimide layers containing copper electrodes. When pressure was applied, the LIG generated electricity. The voids in the foam reduced the number of pathways for electricity to travel, making it easier to localize the pressure source, and appeared to improve sensitivity to delicate touches.

This first design, when attached to the back of the hand or the finger, detected bending and stretching hand movementsas well as the characteristic percussion, tidal and diastolic waves of the heartbeat. According to Cheng, this pulse reading could be combined with an electrocardiogram reading to yield blood pressure measurements without a cuff.

In the second design, the researchers incorporated nanoparticles into the LIG foam. These tiny spheres of molybdenum disulfide, a semiconductor that can act as a conductor and an insulator, enhanced the foam's sensitivity and resistance to physical forces. This design was also resilient to repeated use, showing nearly identical performance before and after nearly 10,000 uses.

Both designs were cost-effective and allowed for simple data acquisition, according to Cheng.

The researchers plan to continue exploring the designs as standalone devices for health monitoring or in tandem with other extant equipment.

More information: Ming Liu, Jianan Wu, Huanyu Cheng, Effects of laser processing parameters on properties of laser-induced graphene by irradiating CO 2 laser on polyimide. SCIENCE CHINA Technological Sciences, (2021) Ming Liu, Jianan Wu, Huanyu Cheng, Effects of laser processing parameters on properties of laser-induced graphene by irradiating COlaser on polyimide., (2021) doi.org/10.1007/s11431-021-1918-8
A hotshot crew from Tahoe Hotshots hikes along a trail in Meyers, Calif., Friday, Sept. 3, 2021. Fire crews took advantage of decreasing winds to battle a California wildfire near popular Lake Tahoe and were even able to allow some people back to their homes but dry weather and a weekend warming trend meant the battle was far from over. Credit: AP Photo/Jae C. Hong

Better weather has slowed the growth of the huge California wildfire near Lake Tahoe resort communities, authorities said Friday.

The Caldor Fire remained only a few miles from the city of South Lake Tahoe, which was emptied of 22,000 residents days ago, along with casinos and shops across the state line in Nevada, but no significant fire activity occurred since Thursday , officials said.

Tim Ernst, an operations section chief, said fire officials were cautiously optimistic thanks to "a lot of hard work" by firefighters over the past two weeks.

The nearly 333-square-mile (862-square-kilometer) fire was not making any significant advances and was not challenging containment lines in long sections of its perimeter, but Ernst said "the risk is still out there" with some areas that remained hot.

Crews were restoring utility services, knocking down hazardous trees and putting out smoldering hot spots to prepare certain areas for repopulation, but the timeline for allowing residents back to their home remains unclear, said Capt. Parker Wilbourn, a spokesman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

"At this point, we don't know. We're doing everything we can to mop up the fire and clean up areas that need to be cleaned up," Wilbourn said.

A firefighter carries a water hose toward a spot fire from the Caldor Fire burning along Highway 89 near South Lake Tahoe, Calif., Thursday, Sept. 2, 2021. Credit: AP Photo/Jae C. Hong

The fire had been driven northeast on a course leading to South Lake Tahoe for days by southwestern winds, but that pattern ended this week. Calmer winds and increased humidity Thursday and Friday helped crews increase containment of the blaze to 29%.

"Very positive trends with regards to weather," said Dean Gould, a U.S. Forest Service administrator. "That's huge for us. Let's take full advantage of it while we have this window."

With the fire growing at the smallest rate in two weeks, he said, "Things are clearly heading in the right direction for us."

Amid the positive outlook, incident meteorologist Jim Dudley warned that the air mass in the Sierra Nevada drains downslope every night and then sloshes upslope during the day and that the region's terrain of ridges and deep canyons can create winds that go in "squirrely directions."

Firefighter Taj Costa from Rough and Ready Fire Department wears a helmet covered with fire retardant while monitoring a spot fire from the Caldor Fire near South Lake Tahoe, Calif., Thursday, Sept. 2, 2021. Credit: AP Photo/Jae C. Hong

"Just because we don't have red flag wind conditions across the fire, the wind threat is still there and it's all localized," he warned.

The firewhich began Aug. 14, was named after the road where it started and raged through densely forested, craggy areaswas still considered a threat to more than 30,000 homes, businesses and other buildings ranging from cabins to ski resorts.

Residents who were forced to flee South Lake Tahoe earlier this week remained evacuated along with people across the state line in Douglas County, Nevada.

The resort area can easily accommodate 100,000 people on a busy weekend but was eerily empty just before the Labor Day weekend.

The wildfire dealt a major blow to an economy that heavily depends on tourism and was starting to rebound this summer from pandemic shutdowns.

Embers fly as a spot fire from the Caldor Fire burns along Highway 89 near South Lake Tahoe, Calif., Thursday, Sept. 2, 2021. Credit: AP Photo/Jae C. Hong

A warning sign is placed outside an evacuated home as fire crews continue to battle the Caldor Fire in Meyers, Calif., Friday, Sept. 3, 2021. Fire crews took advantage of decreasing winds to battle a California wildfire near popular Lake Tahoe and were even able to allow some people back to their homes but dry weather and a weekend warming trend meant the battle was far from over. Credit: AP Photo/Jae C. Hong

Fire retardant is sprayed from a truck along Highway 89 as firefighters continue to battle the Caldor Fire near South Lake Tahoe, Calif., Thursday, Sept. 2, 2021. Credit: AP Photo/Jae C. Hong

A firefighter pauses for a moment with a water hose while monitoring a spot fire from the Caldor Fire near South Lake Tahoe, Calif., Thursday, Sept. 2, 2021. Credit: AP Photo/Jae C. Hong

A truck passes a spot fire from the Caldor Fire burning along Highway 89 near South Lake Tahoe, Calif., Thursday, Sept. 2, 2021. Credit: AP Photo/Jae C. Hong

Chris Billberg, a fire captain from Rough and Ready, monitors a spot fire from the Caldor Fire burning along Highway 89 near South Lake Tahoe, Calif., Thursday, Sept. 2, 2021. Credit: AP Photo/Jae C. Hong

A hotshot crew from Tahoe Hotshots hikes along a trail in Meyers, Calif., Friday, Sept. 3, 2021. Fire crews took advantage of decreasing winds to battle a California wildfire near popular Lake Tahoe and were even able to allow some people back to their homes but dry weather and a weekend warming trend meant the battle was far from over. Credit: AP Photo/Jae C. Hong

A hotshot crew from Tahoe Hotshots hikes along a trail in Meyers, Calif., Friday, Sept. 3, 2021. Fire crews took advantage of decreasing winds to battle a California wildfire near popular Lake Tahoe and were even able to allow some people back to their homes but dry weather and a weekend warming trend meant the battle was far from over. Credit: AP Photo/Jae C. Hong

Chris De Deo, a fire captain from Olympic Valley, walks past his fire truck while working against a spot fire from the Caldor Fire near South Lake Tahoe, Calif., Thursday, Sept. 2, 2021. Credit: AP Photo/Jae C. Hong

"It's a big hit for our local businesses and the workers who rely on a steady income to pay rent and put food on their table," said Devin Middlebrook, mayor pro-tem of South Lake Tahoe.

He said the shutdown will also hurt the city, as it gets most of its revenue to pay for police and fire services, as well as road maintenance, from hotel taxes and sales taxes.

Friday's forecast called for lighter winds but also extremely dry daytime weather, with a warming trend through the weekend as high pressure builds over the West, fire officials said.

More than 15,000 firefighters were battling dozens of California blazes that have destroyed at least 1,500 homes. One blaze, the Dixie Fire, was about 65 miles (105 kilometers) north of the Caldor Fire. It is the second-largest wildfire in state history at about 1,350 square miles (3,496 square kilometers) and is 55% contained.

California has experienced increasingly larger and deadlier wildfires in recent years as climate change has made the West much warmer and drier over the past 30 years. Scientists have said weather will continue to be more extreme and wildfires more frequent, destructive and unpredictable. No deaths have been reported so far this fire season.

Explore further Lake Tahoe resort city OK for now, wildfire fight not over

 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

What started as a casual dinner conversation between two very different researchers in 2016one a data scientist and engineer, the other an expert in economic modelshas since turned into a journal article quantifying the effects of the "beauty premium," the notion that those who are more physically attractive tend to have a greater income.

The research team's engineer is Stephen Baek, an associate professor of data science at the University of Virginia, while the econometrician is Suyong Song, an associate professor of economics and finance at the University of Iowa. Five years ago, the two found that their research interests overlapped more than they initially realized, causing an unexpected idea to spark.

Baek began his collaboration with Song as a researcher at Iowa before joining the UVA School of Data Science faculty in August 2021. In his previous work, Baek analyzed and modeled human body shapes for engineering applications such as product design, virtual fashion, garment design and ergonomics. Song, on the other hand, brought expertise studying economic models that suffer from measurement and reporting error.

Compared to previous publications on the beauty premium, Baek and Song's research methods are novel, due to the nature of their data set, sourced from the 2002 Civilian American and European Surface Anthropometry Resource project, or CAESAR. In addition to self-reported height and weight measureswhich have been used in previous studiesthe project also gathered 3D body-scanned data, extensive information on demographic and family income, as well as tape-measure and caliper body measurements from nearly 2,400 civilians. With this data, the two researchers could provide a richer story of physical appearance and socio-economic variables.

"The issue with previous works was that people were oversimplifying the parameters to describe body shape," Baek said. "The traditional processes for determining physical appearance, such as stature, weight and BMI, are imperfect processes, and therefore not capable of capturing all the dimensions of human body shape."

Using a novel machine-learning algorithm called a "graphical autoencoder" or "deep machine learning," the 3D scans were inputted to encode geometric features of human body shape. After the machine was introduced to thousands of individual scans, the algorithm reduced the data's dimensionalityfrom a few hundreds of thousands of points down to a few important features characterizing each human body shape using numerical values. Baek and Song then visualized the features to determine which body parts the algorithm was referencing and estimated their relations with socio-economic variables. Using this scientific approach, the causal effects of physical appearance could be quantified.

For male and female subsamples, stature and obesity were both important features, while hip-to-waist ratio was an additional unique feature in the physical appearance of women. The empirical results found that greater stature in males was correlated to higher family income, while greater obesity in women was correlated to lower family income.

In addition to their findings regarding the beauty premium, Song's expertise in economic models added another layer to their findings: the negative role that survey and measurement error play in studies utilizing body measurements. According to his calculationsmade possible by the fact that the 2002 data also included self-reported body measurementsSong found that reporting error highly correlated with true weight and height. On average, lighter-weight individuals tended to over-report their weight, whereas heavier individuals tended to under-report. The findings proved that survey errors regarding these measurements are substantial, and that previous studies utilizing self-reported survey data likely suffer because of it. Song explained that when regression models are run in which economic variables suffer from survey or measurement error, the estimation becomes biased, blurring the correct relationship.

"To address the issue of error, many economists assume that these errors are negligible or they are zero on average," Song said. "However, our study showed that they are not negligible and they are not zero on average, but rather showed that they are correlated with true height or weight, which alarms many studies using survey data."

Initially, Song anticipated a target audience of economists and statisticians, but with these findings, has since realized the topic's broader impact on fields like engineering, computer science, biology and social science.

Three years after its initial submission, the research paper, "Body Shape Matters: Evidence from Machine Learning on Body Shape-Income Relationship," was published in the open-access journal, PLOS One.

With heightened publicity, not only do Baek and Song hope to present the extent of error in previous body shape studies that relied on self-reported survey data, but also to bring awareness to the issue of beauty premiums.

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More information: Suyong Song et al, Body shape matters: Evidence from machine learning on body shape-income relationship, PLOS ONE (2021). Journal information: PLoS ONE Suyong Song et al, Body shape matters: Evidence from machine learning on body shape-income relationship,(2021). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0254785
From the left: Masahiro Nakaoka, Hokkaido University; Rommel Llanillo, BFARMC Chairperson, Barangay Quezon; and Muammar Princess Soniega, Programme Officer, C3 Philippines, assessing seagrass abundance and species diversity in Barangay Quezon, Busuanga, during the study. Credit: T. E. Angela L. Quiros

Social vulnerabilities of coastal communities and their reliance on blue carbon ecosystem services may be improved by addressing three major factors, according to a study led by Hokkaido University researchers.

Ecosystem services (ES) are benefits nature provides to humans. In coastal areas, seagrass meadows and mangroves provide key ecosystem services, including carbon sequestration and climate mitigation. The carbon sequestered in coastal and marine vegetated ecosystems is known as blue carbon, and the ecosystems are usually referred to as blue carbon ecosystems. Blue carbon ecosystems are being lost at a high rate in Southeast Asia. This is problematic because local communities living on the coast heavily rely on seagrasses and mangroves for provisioning services such as livelihoods and food security.

A team of scientists from Japan and the Philippines, including Dr. T. E. Angela Quiros, Dr. Kenji Sudo and Professor Masahiro Nakaoka of the Field Science Center for Northern Biosphere at Hokkaido University's Akkeshi Marine Station, examined the social vulnerability of fishing communities that rely on blue carbon ecosystems. The Hokkaido University team collaborated with Busuanga-based NGO C3 Philippines and members of the local government, as well as the Busuanga community for the field collections. Their findings, presented at the sixth International Marine Conservation Congress (IMCC6) and published in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science, suggest conservation strategies to manage social vulnerabilities of coastal communities who rely on blue carbon ecosystems.

The 10 fishing communities on Busuanga Island surveyed in this study. Black lines indicate the barangay (administrative district) in which each community is located; and mangroves and seagrass beds used by each community are indicated by orange and green, respectively. Credit: T. E. Angela L. Quiros, et al. Frontiers in Marine Sciences. August 3, 2021

The scientists examined how ten fishing communities on Busuanga Island, Palawan Province, Philippines responded to the loss or degradation of blue carbon ecosystems, namely seagrasses and mangroves. They assessed the ES provision for small-scale fisheries in multiple ways. They performed ecological assessments of seagrass beds, spatial analysis of seagrass and mangroves along the coast, fisher landing surveys, household and key informant interviews. This wealth of data was used to map social vulnerability in three criteria: Exposure, or threats to the blue carbon ecosystems; Sensitivity, or the local importance of blue carbon ecosystems; and Adaptive Capacity, the assets available to avoid impacts in the future from the loss of blue carbon ecosystems.

Seagrass ecosystems and their fisheries were more vulnerable to loss and degradation than mangrove ecosystems and fisheries as it takes more effort to catch the same amount of fish from seagrass ecosystems compared to mangrove ecosystems. Furthermore, certain seagrass meadows and mangrove forest types were more sensitive as they occupied a smaller area of the coastline and were host to lower species numbers; others had decreased adaptive capacity due to physical isolation and hosting species with slower growth.

Socio-economic sensitivity increased in communities with greater reliance on fisheries and tourism income. Communities with low adaptive capacity were mainly composed of fisherfolk with low education levels and high average fishing experience, and thus few alternatives to fishing. Urbanized (Barangay 5, Tagumpay) communities were more vulnerable than rural communities (Borac, Quezon, Turda) due to degraded blue carbon ecosystems, greater population density and threats from tourism and development.

The social vulnerability of each community surveyed in this study, broken down into the three criteria and combined to determine the total vulnerability. Credit: T. E. Angela L. Quiros, et al. Frontiers in Marine Sciences. August 3, 2021

Across all communities, adaptive capacity was constrained by the lack of education, but increased with diversified livelihoods and access to information from and initiatives by NGOs and community organizations.

"Our findings show the need to improve access to education, increase NGO activities and the number of organizations around blue carbon ecosystems, and initiate equitable fisheries management for the vulnerable seagrass and mangrove fisheries," says Angela Quiros.

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More information: T. E. Angela L. Quiros et al, Blue Carbon Ecosystem Services Through a Vulnerability Lens: Opportunities to Reduce Social Vulnerability in Fishing Communities, Frontiers in Marine Science (2021). Journal information: Frontiers in Marine Science T. E. Angela L. Quiros et al, Blue Carbon Ecosystem Services Through a Vulnerability Lens: Opportunities to Reduce Social Vulnerability in Fishing Communities,(2021). DOI: 10.3389/fmars.2021.671753
An oyster shells inside is lined with nacre or mother-of-pearl, which can provide an inspiration for the design of MXene-based composites. Credit: South Dakota State University

Materials for aerospace applications face many challenges. The structure of an aircraft must be light yet strong. Structural components such as the wings or fuselage must resist damage while at the same time in some areas be able to handle high temperatures from engine exhaust. An aircraft's electronic components must also be shielded from electrical surges due to lightning strikes or other interference.

Developing new materials that meet these multiple demands is what assistant professor Anamika Prasad of South Dakota State University's Department of Mechanical Engineering has been working on in collaboration with the materials research group at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.

Prasad received an eight-week U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory fellowship last summer to work with the materials and manufacturing directorate and is continuing her research on MXene-based composites through a second fellowship this summer. The fellowship program, sponsored by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, builds relationships with full-time science, mathematics and engineering faculty at U.S. colleges and universities by giving them an opportunity to perform research at an Air Force Research Lab.

"It was an amazing collaborative experience working alongside AFRL scientists and summer fellows (faculty and students)," said Prasad, whose research at SDSU focuses on using plant-inspired structures to design and manufacture composite materials.

Faculty normally perform research on-site, but the COVID-19 pandemic led to Prasad working remotely and shifted the focus to computational analysis of MXenes, a new class of two-dimensional engineering materials. A paper that describes the results of their summer 2020 research is under review by the MRS Bulletin Impact.

AFRL research materials engineer Dhriti Nepal said, "It is a great pleasure working with professor Prasad. Her insights on bioinspired structures for mechanics and multiscale modeling has been exceptionally valuable for designing next-generation composites."

Focusing on multifunctionality

Engineering materials typically fall into individual buckets, Prasad said. "If we want materials that are tough, we choose a metal; if we want a material designed for flexibility and low density, we choose a polymer or plastics; if we want high strength and heat resistance, we choose a ceramic." However, for aerospace applications, the emphasis is on multifunctional materials.

"Multifunctionality is built into natural systems," Prasad said. Fast-growing plants must be flexible yet maintain optimum strength and provide a resilient path for water and thermal management as the structure grows. Shells and exoskeletons are examples of materials with a good balance of toughness and strength while maintaining properties, such as surface smoothness for defense against parasites.

MXenepronounced like the name Maxine, discovered in 2011 at Drexel University, has unique property combinations. It can be made into highly conductive and strong thin films in layers of only a few atoms, similar to graphene. "This new two-dimensional material has very high strength in a plane when you pull it and is very conductive and heat resistant," Prasad said.

Unlike the single-atom (carbon) of graphene, MXene's 2D layer structure can have a wide range of compositions, where M stands for early transition metal, such as titanium or chromium, and X stands for carbon and/or nitrogen. "Because the compounds are not just a single element, we can play around with them, functionalizing the surface layers for different applications," Prasad said. Other researchers estimate more than a million MXene alloy compounds are yet to be discovered.

However, pure MXene films have a thin, flaky structure that makes it difficult to create a composite combination that retains the unique properties while providing structural durability. "If you add polymer to MXenes to form a composite, it provides structural stability, but the composites may lose their main functionality of conductivity. To make them useful, we must find pathways of composite design that do not alter their unique properties," Prasad said.

AFRL research chemist Vikas Varshney said, "Combining multifunctionality with structural viability in such composites is crucial for a number of Air Force structural applications. Working with Dr. Prasad, we plan to model and explore as much of a phase space as possible towards understanding the role of different composite parameters in governing their structural properties, eventually guiding experimentalists towards developing structurally sound multifunctional composite materials."

Analyzing MXene structures

Prasad compared the structure of the thin, flaky individual tablets of MXene-polymer composites to the layered bricks and the mortar structure present in some natural systems as a means of gaining inspiration for the composite design.

"Many shells, for example, internally have a brick-mortar structure in which brick or tiles are polygons and are rigid. All the tiles are dispersed within a polymeric mortar, which binds the tiles and allows them to give or flex," she said.

The tiles themselves have a wavy, rough structure, Prasad continued. This unevenness makes the tiles interlock. "When a crack occurs, it travels the zigzag path through the mortar-like polymer, which provides sacrificial joints that break to give it (the piece) further strength and fracture toughness."

Last summer, she and her AFRL teams analyzed natural composites to understand how their unique design features could be applied to MXenes. This summer, she continued tasks to develop simulations to model MXene-based composites and surface interactions.

"We want to predict their macroscale response from what's happening at an atomic level of material design," Prasad. Beginning this fall, senior mechanical engineering major Jordan VonSeggern of Elk Point, South Dakota, will join her research group to continue developing the model through an AFRL-supported internship.

Through her collaboration with AFRL researchers, Prasad has "found a group of people who are really supportive and have helped me explore new ideas." She plans to continue to apply what she has learned about MXene-based composites to her research at SDSU.

"I can create MXene-based composite materials and functionalize the layers to provide the capability to sense the growth of plants or to see what is flowing inside the xylem tissues," she said. Tough, flexible films made using MXenes can be used to create biomedical sensors that measure electrical conductivity as different nutrients flow through plant tissues.

This spring, Prasad received an SDSU Research, Scholarship and Creative Activities Challenge Fund grant to begin developing simulation tools to predict the properties of MXene-based composites and bring machine learning capabilities in her materials research. SDSU's RSCA Challenge Fund helps faculty generate preliminary data to increase their ability to compete for external funding.

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BNI-enabled crops. Credit: Science Manga Studio

An international collaboration has discovered and transferred to elite wheat varieties a wild-grass chromosome segment that causes roots to secrete natural inhibitors of nitrification, offering a way to dial back on heavy fertilizer use for wheat and to reduce the crop's nitrogen leakage into waterways and air, while maintaining or raising its productivity and grain quality, says a new report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

Growing wheat varieties endowed with the biological nitrification inhibition (BNI) trait could increase yields in both well-fertilized and nitrogen-poor soils, according to G.V. Subbarao, researcher at the Japan International Research Center for Agricultural Sciences (JIRCAS) and first author of the new report.

"Use of wheat varieties that feature BNI opens the possibility for a more balanced and productive mix of nitrogen nutrients for wheat fields, which are currently dominated by highly-reactive nitrogen compounds that derive in large part from synthetic fertilizers and can harm the environment," Subbarao said.

The most widely grown food crop on the planet, wheat is consumed by over 2.5 billion people in 89 countries. Nearly a fifth of the world's nitrogen-based fertilizer is deployed each year to grow wheat but, similar to other major cereals, vegetables, and fruits, the crop takes up less than half of the nitrogen applied.

Much of the remainder is either washed away, contaminating ground waters with nitrate and contributing to algae blooms in lakes and seas, or released into the air, often as nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide.

The study team first homed in on the chromosome region associated with the strong BNI capacity in the perennial grass species Leymus racemosus and moved it from the grass, using "wide crossing" techniques, into the cultivar Chinese Spring, a wheat landrace often used in genetic studies. From there, they transferred the BNI chromosome sequence into several elite, high-yielding wheat varieties, leading to a near doubling of their BNI capacity, as measured through lab analyses of soil near their roots.

An excess of nitrogen fertilizer is causing environmental problems. Credit: Science Manga Studios

The new wheatselite varieties from the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) into which the BNI trait was cross-bredgreatly reduced the action of soil microbes that usually convert fertilizer and organic nitrogen substances into ecologically-harmful compounds such as nitrous oxide gas, according to Hannes Karwat, a CIMMYT post-doctoral fellow and study co-author.

"The altered soil nitrogen cycle was even reflected in the plants' metabolism," Karwat said, "resulting in several responses indicative of a more balanced nitrogen uptake in the plants."

The scientists involved said BNI-converted wheats in this study also showed greater overall biomass and grain yield, with no negative effects on grain protein levels or breadmaking quality.

"This points the way for farmers to feed future wheat consumers using lower fertilizer dosages and lowering nitrous oxide emissions," said Masahiro Kishii, a CIMMYT wheat cytogeneticist who contributed to the research. "If we can find new BNI sources, we can develop a second generation of elite wheat varieties that require even less fertilizer and that better deter nitrous oxide emissions."

A recent PNAS paper by Subbarao and Princeton University scientist Timothy D. Searchinger mentions BNI as a technology that can help foster soils featuring a more even mix of nitrogen sources, including more of the less-chemically-reactive compound ammonium, a condition that can raise crop yields and reduce nitrous oxide emissions.

CIMMYT researcher Masahiro Kishii examines wheat plants in a greenhouse. Credit: CIMMYT

Scale out to slow global warming?

The present study comes just as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has released its Sixth Assessment Report, which among other things states that " limiting human-induced global warming  requires limiting cumulative CO 2 emissions  along with strong reductions in other greenhouse gas emissions."

Globally, 30% of greenhouse gas emissions come from agriculture. BNI-enabled wheat cultivars can play an important role to reduce that footprint. Wheat-growing nations that have committed to the Paris Climate Accord, whose provisions include reducing greenhouse gas emissions 30% by 2050, could be early adopters of the BNI technology, together with China and India, the world's top two wheat producers, according to Subbarao.

"This work has demonstrated the feasibility of introducing BNI-controlling chromosome segments into modern wheats, without disrupting their yields or quality," said Subbarao. "To realize the technology's full potential, we need to transfer the BNI feature into many elite varieties adapted to diverse wheat growing areas and to assess their yield in many farm settings and with varying levels of soil pH, fertilization and water use."

A project to establish nitrogen-efficient wheat production systems in the Indo-Gangetic Plains using BNI has recently been approved by Japan and is under way, with the collaboration of JIRCAS, the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), and the Borlaug Institute of South Asia (BISA). Under the project, BNI-converted wheat lines developed from JIRCAS-CIMMYT partnerships will be tested in India and the BNI trait transferred to popular national wheat varieties.

"The BNI-technology is also featured in Green Technology, a Japanese government policy document for moving towards a zero-carbon economy," said Osamu Koyama, President of JIRCAS, which has also posted a note about the new PNAS study.

"Adaptation and mitigation solutions such as BNI, which help lessen the footprint of food production systems, will play a large role in CGIAR research-for-development, as part of One CGIAR Initiatives starting in 2022," said Bram Govaerts, CIMMYT Director General.

Explore further Keeping more ammonium in soil could decrease pollution, boost crops

More information: Guntur V. Subbarao et al, Enlisting wild grass genes to combat nitrification in wheat farming: A nature-based solution, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2021). Journal information: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Guntur V. Subbarao et al, Enlisting wild grass genes to combat nitrification in wheat farming: A nature-based solution,(2021). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2106595118

Provided by International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT)
Lions are doing 'incredibly well' at the Balule reserve because they have enough space to operate, says warden Ian Nowak.

At sunset, a buffalo calf's distressed grunts reverberate through the bush.

But it's a trick.

The grunts are blaring from a loudspeaker, designed to lure lions to a tree and let a South African wildlife reserve carry out a census of its apex predator.

As an added enticement, the carcasses of two impalas are affixed to a tree. The scent promises a fresh meal.

In the headlights of a 4x4, armed rangers with night binoculars and torches watch over the scene.

"We know our lions, but with this process, we verify them," says Ian Nowak, head warden at the Balule Nature Reserve.

A wildlife researcher next to him listens intently, her ears tuned to clues from the nocturnal sounds.

That's how she knows a rumbling is from elephants grazing in the tall grass. And that's how she knows when to raise her camera to photograph lions, looking for distinctive scars or peculiar earsanything that identifies them for the count.

This job requires patience. The team once spotted 23 lions ripping into the bait.

"They growl and they fight. Then they lie down and eat," Nowak whispers. "It can be quite a frenzy on the bait. They smack each other and then settle down."

Grunts of distressed buffalo calfs and impala carcasses are used to attract predators during a census.

Don't fence them in

At 55,000 hectares (136,000 acres), Balule is hugeyet it connects with an even bigger ecosystem that, all told, is almost the size of Belgium.

Balule and other nearby game farms have transitioned into nature reserves, joining up with the Kruger National Park to create a vast territory without internal fences, covering 2.5 million hectares, that extends to Mozambique.

To create such enormous space for wildlife is a rare success story these days.

Conservationists meeting in Marseille, southern France, are deeply worried for Africa's "big cats", facing loss of habitat and human encroachment as well as poaching.

Balule is so big that its census-takers have to criss-cross the terrain to make the count as thorough as possible.

"Sometimes they've eaten. If they're full, they don't come," Nowak said. "Especially the males, they're lazy as hell."

The Balule Nature Reserve is part of an ecosystem the size of Belgium.

Twenty years ago, Balule was mostly farmland and lions were few.

Last year, the census found 156 of the lordly beasts.

"Lions are doing incredibly well, mainly because there's a large enough space to operate," Nowak says.

Overall, the news is good for lions in South Africa, thanks to government conservation effortshelped by the inducement of tourists who are willing pay to see the animals. Private investors have also stepped in.

A years-long drought has also been a boost. Antelopes and buffalo did not have enough to eat, making them easier prey for large carnivores.

'Lions don't share'

The loudspeaker rumbles again with the recording of the injured buffalo calf. This time, a small jackal appears, hoping for a nibble. At the slightest sound, it dashes away.

The wildlife researcher detects another movement in her thermal binoculars. The headlights flash back on, illuminating the majestic mane of a lion approaching stealthily, careful but calm.

Lions are not the only animals thriving in the Balule reserve.

Last year's census found 156 lions in Balule, an area that was mostly farmland 20 years ago.

"He's initially cautious," says Nick Leuenberger, one of the regional wardens. "He doesn't know if he'll be walking in on another pride."

"Lions defend their food, they don't share," he adds.

"Here the lion tolerates the jackal. He knows he's not a major threat to his food source."

Suddenly, the lion leaps up to one of the suspended impalas, biting into its belly. After his meal, he lies at the foot of the tree.

Now the team can move on. No other animals will dare approach.

The next night, seven hyenas take turns snipping at the fresh impala, without a lion in sight.

But on the way back, the 4x4 slams the brakes. To the left, a hippo roars furiously, its mouth wide open.

To the right, seven lionesses raise their heads above the grassline. A magical sight, but no danger to the hippo. Nowak says it would take at least twice as many lions to threaten the hippo.

The tension eases. A lion emerges from the brush and walks along the trail. A lioness joins him, and the 4x4 follows them slowly until they disappear into the night.

Explore further Yawn contagion in lions found to also play a role in social behavior

 2021 AFP
Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

Over the last year, COVID-19 lockdowns brought blue skies to the most polluted regions of the globe, while wildfires exacerbated by a drier and hotter climate sent smoke to the normally clean skies of cities thousands of miles away. The conflicting events offer two visions of the future. The difference between those futures lies in policies to reduce fossil fuels.

New data from the Air Quality Life Index (AQLI) underscores the health threat of a world without policy action. Unless global particulate air pollution is reduced to meet the World Health Organization's (WHO) guideline, the average person is set to lose 2.2 years off their lives. Residents of the most polluted areas of the world could see their lives cut short by five years or more. Working unseen inside the human body, particulate pollution has a more devastating impact on life expectancy than communicable diseases like tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS, behavioral killers like cigarette smoking, and even war.

"During a truly unprecedented year where some people accustomed to breathing dirty air experienced clean air and others accustomed to clean air saw their air dirty, it became acutely apparent the important role policy has played and could play in reducing fossil fuels that contribute both to local air pollution and climate change," says Michael Greenstone, the Milton Friedman Distinguished Service Professor in Economics and creator of the AQLI along with colleagues at the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago (EPIC). "The AQLI demonstrates the benefits these policies could bring to improve our health and lengthen our lives."

China is an important model showing that policy can produce sharp reductions in pollution in short order. Since the country began its "war against pollution" in 2013, China has reduced its particulate pollution by 29 percentmaking up three-quarters of the reductions in air pollution across the world. As a result, China's people have added about 1.5 years onto their lives, assuming these reductions are sustained. To put China's success into context, it took several decades and recessions for the United States and Europe to achieve the same pollution reductions that China was able to accomplish in six years.

China's success demonstrates that progress is possible, even in the world's most polluted countries. In South Asia, the AQLI data reveal that the average person would live more than five years longer if pollution were reduced to meet the WHO guideline. The benefits of clean air policies are even greater in the region's pollution hotspots, like Northern India where 480 million people breathe pollution levels that are 10 times worse than those found anywhere else in the world.

In Southeast Asia, air pollution is emerging as a major threat in metropolises like Bangkok, Ho Chi Minh City and Jakarta. The average resident in these cities stands to gain two to five years of life expectancy if pollution levels were reined in to meet the WHO guideline. At the same time, in Central and West Africa, the effects of particulate pollution on life expectancy are comparable to those of well-known threats like HIV/AIDS and malaria yet receive far less attention. For example, in the Niger Delta area, the average resident is on track to lose nearly five years of life expectancy if pollution trends continue.

"The events of the past year remind us that air pollution is not a problem that developing countries alone must solve," says Ken Lee, the director of the AQLI. "Fossil-fuel driven air pollution is a global problem that requires strong policies at every frontincluding from the world climate negotiators who are meeting in the coming months. The AQLI's latest data provides leaders and citizens alike with the justification for strong clean air policies in the form of longer lives."
Macaques eat bananas during feeding time at Sangeh Monkey Forest in Sangeh, Bali Island, Indonesia, Wednesday, Sept. 1, 2021. Deprived of their preferred food source - the bananas, peanuts and other goodies brought in by the tourists now kept away by the coronavirus - hungry monkeys on the resort island of Bali have taken to raiding villagers' homes in the search for something tasty. Credit: AP Photo/Firdia Lisnawati

Deprived of their preferred food sourcethe bananas, peanuts and other goodies brought in by tourists now kept away by the coronavirushungry monkeys on the resort island of Bali have taken to raiding villagers' homes in their search for something tasty.

Villagers in Sangeh say the gray long-tailed macaques have been venturing out from a sanctuary about 500 meters (yards) away to hang out on their roofs and await the right time to swoop down and snatch a snack.

Worried that the sporadic sorties will escalate into an all-out monkey assault on the village, residents have been taking fruit, peanuts and other food to the Sangeh Monkey Forest to try to placate the primates.

"We are afraid that the hungry monkeys will turn wild and vicious," villager Saskara Gustu Alit said.

About 600 of the macaques live in the forest sanctuary, swinging from the tall nutmeg trees and leaping about the famous Pura Bukit Sari temple, and are considered sacred.

In normal times the protected jungle area in the southeast of the Indonesian island is popular among local residents for wedding photos, as well as among international visitors. The relatively tame monkeys can be easily coaxed to sit on a shoulder or lap for a peanut or two.

Ordinarily, tourism is the main source of income for Bali's 4 million residents, who welcomed more than 5 million foreign visitors annually before the pandemic.

Made Mohon, the operation manager of Sangeh Monkey Forest, feeds macaques with donated peanuts during a feeding time at the popular tourist attraction site in Sangeh, Bali Island, Indonesia, Wednesday, Sept. 1, 2021. Deprived of their preferred food source - the bananas, peanuts and other goodies brought in by the tourists now kept away by the coronavirus - hungry monkeys on the resort island of Bali have taken to raiding villagers' homes in the search for something tasty. Credit: AP Photo/Firdia Lisnawati

The Sangeh Monkey Forest typically had about 6,000 visitors a month, but as the pandemic spread last year and international travel dropped off dramatically, that number dropped to about 500.

Since July, when Indonesia banned all foreign travelers to the island and shut the sanctuary to local residents as well, there has been nobody.

Not only has that meant nobody bringing in extra food for the monkeys, the sanctuary has also lost out on its admission fees and is running low on money to purchase food for them, said operations manager Made Mohon.

The donations from villagers have helped, but they are also feeling the economic pinch and are gradually giving less and less, he said.

"This prolonged pandemic is beyond our expectations," Made Mohon said, "Food for monkeys has become a problem."

Food costs run about 850,000 rupiah ($60) a day, Made Mohon said, for 200 kilograms (440 pounds) of cassava, the monkeys' staple food, and 10 kilograms (22 pounds) of bananas.

A worker feeds macaques during a feeding time at Sangeh Monkey Forest in Sangeh, Bali Island, Indonesia, Wednesday, Sept. 1, 2021. Deprived of their preferred food source - the bananas, peanuts and other goodies brought in by the tourists now kept away by the coronavirus - hungry monkeys on the resort island of Bali have taken to raiding villagers' homes in the search for something tasty. Credit: AP Photo/Firdia Lisnawati

The macaque is an omnivore and can eat a variety of animals and plants found in the jungle, but those in the Sangeh Monkey Forest have had enough contact with humans over the years that they seem to prefer other things.

And they're not afraid to take matters into their own hands, Gustu Alit said.

Frequently, monkeys wander into the village and sit on roofs, occasionally removing tiles and dropping them to the ground. When villagers put out daily religious offerings of food on their terraces, the monkeys jump down and make off with them.

"A few days ago I attended a traditional ceremony at a temple near the Sangeh forest," Gustu Alit said. "When I parked my car and took out two plastic bags containing food and flowers as offerings, two monkeys suddenly appeared and grabbed it all and ran into the forest very fast."

Macaques eat donated peanuts during a feeding time at Sangeh Monkey Forest in Sangeh, Bali Island, Indonesia, Wednesday, Sept. 1, 2021. Deprived of their preferred food source - the bananas, peanuts and other goodies brought in by the tourists now kept away by the coronavirus - hungry monkeys on the resort island of Bali have taken to raiding villagers' homes in the search for something tasty. Credit: AP Photo/Firdia Lisnawati

Local residents feed macaques with food they brought to Sangeh Monkey Forest in Sangeh, Bali Island, Indonesia, Wednesday, Sept. 1, 2021. Deprived of their preferred food source - the bananas, peanuts and other goodies brought in by the tourists now kept away by the coronavirus - hungry monkeys on the resort island of Bali have taken to raiding villagers' homes in the search for something tasty. Credit: AP Photo/Firdia Lisnawati

A worker prepares bananas to feed macaques during a feeding time at Sangeh Monkey Forest in Sangeh, Bali Island, Indonesia, Wednesday, Sept. 1, 2021. Deprived of their preferred food source - the bananas, peanuts and other goodies brought in by the tourists now kept away by the coronavirus - hungry monkeys on the resort island of Bali have taken to raiding villagers' homes in the search for something tasty. Credit: AP Photo/Firdia Lisnawati

Normally, the monkeys spend all day interacting with visitorsstealing sunglasses and water bottles, pulling at clothes, jumping on shouldersand Gustu Alit theorizes that more than just being hungry, they're bored.

"That's why I have urged villagers here to come to the forest to play with the monkeys and offer them food," he said. "I think they need to interact with humans as often as possible so that they do not go wild."

Explore further Ghanaian villagers profit from monkey business

 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
Credit: Research Center for the Earth Inclusive Sensing Empathizing with Silent Voices

A joint project team in Japan have started field testing for Asset-Based Lending (ABL) applicability at Kuroshima Sakura Farm in Kuroshima island, Okinawa prefecture, which is known for the world-famous "Wagyu" cattle industry. The ABL approach employs cattle behavior monitoring system "PETER" developed by the project team aimed for labor-saving grazing management using edge-AI and LPWA (Low Power Wide Area) technologies. PETER, a remote state-estimation system on the edge, is expected to contribute to appropriate and efficient operation of ABL.

The project has conducted by Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo Tech), Shinshu University, Information Services International-Dentsu, Ltd. (ISID), Farmnote Inc., TechnoPro Inc. & TechnoPro Design Company, and Sony Group Corporation under the supervision of Tokyo Tech's Center of Innovation (COI) Research Center for the Earth Inclusive Sensing Empathizing with Silent Voices (EISESiV), cooperating with the Kagoshima Bank,LTD. Field tests will be completed by conducted through March 2022. The outcome of the field tests is expected to pave the way for a more sustainable livestock industry.

Background of the field tests

Recently, cows are recognized as a movable property which can be used for ABL. This recognition is expected to improve management in livestock industry. On the other hand, when cows are in grazing field, it takes long time or huge labor cost to confirm the number of cows and conditions of cows. The joint project team has been working on cattle monitoring operations at low-cost with attention for improving animal welfare.

Since April 2019, the team conducted several field tests in the Shinshu University farm. They developed collar type edge-devices for cows in grazing field and executed technology verification of cattle behavior estimation regarding complicated information concerning cattle postures and behaviors (eating, drinking water, prone posture, standing and walking positions, ruminating etc.). As a result, the team has developed cow state-estimation system "PETER" composed of collar type edge-device and cloud system.

The project team has attempted a field test in the Kuroshima Sakura Farm to apply the developed PETER system to ABL. Cooperating with the Kagoshima Bank who has been active in livestock ABL and Kuroshima Sakura Farm who is focusing on beef cattle farming in grazing field, the team will verify efficiency and applicability of PETER to ABL for cows in grazing. The functions of PETER will be reviewed for both side of ABL operations for banks and pasture management for livestock farms.

Objectives of the field tests

Ten different PETER edge-device are to be attached on ten different cows' necks in Kuroshima Sakura farm. The location data and classified cow-behavior data will be captured by PETER edge-device, and to be sent to PETER cloud with LPWA technology. In addition, the environmental data at Kuroshima Sakura Farm are gathered and sent to PETER cloud. The combination of these data can be observed by users with PETER application, which monitors cattle in the grazing field. The team will extract effective data items for bank's ABL operation, then verify the way of providing data to bank from PETER cloud. The team pursuits effective cooperation between bank and livestock farm and promote livestock ABL in cattle industry through this trial using PETER for ABL.

Credit: Research Center for the Earth Inclusive Sensing Empathizing with Silent Voices

Features of cattle management system "PETER"

"PETER" is a complete management system for cattle groups in grazing field, developed by the project team. "PETER" edge-devices attached to individual cows can not only acquire the location information of each cow but also estimate their behaviors such as walking, eating, ruminating and prone posture by using edge-AI. These collected data are analyzed and processed locally on the devices, and only most essential and small amount of data are sent to the cloud at very low power by "ELTRES" , a Sony original LPWA technology. Thanks to these advantage, tens of kilometers connectivity can be achieved with longer device battery lifetime. "PETER" has a dedicated application which has unique and user-friendly interface, designed based on interviews with farmers in livestock industry. In addition to the joint team, ART&PROGRAM, Inc. and Sakai Design Associate Ltd. supported development of "PETER" edge-device. ELTRES communication antenna uses DP-929-INF1-100 (product of Nippon Antenna Co., Ltd.) verified and measured by Nippon Antenna Co., Ltd.

Explore further Feeding cattle seaweed reduces their greenhouse gas emissions 82 percent
A county judge has the authority to condemn the house, set a deadline for demolition and fine and/or jail the owner if the deadline isnt met, Bogle said. But the judge wants to give the owner a chance to clean up the property before condemning it. Washington County Attorney Roger Wickes has the information on the situation and has been successful with similar cases elsewhere in the county, Bogle said. It will be up to the judge to decide how to proceed on Sept. 27, she said.

Unless the village has the necessary permits, were essentially doing an illegal demo, Bogle said. The village faces potential legal risks no matter what it does, she said.

Bogle noted that there are other derelict properties in the village.

If we get involved in this one, well have to get involved in all of them, Bogle said.

The last time the village carried out a demolition, of a two-story brick building on West Main Street, the legal process took years, the demolition process was complicated, and the cost to village taxpayers ran to more than $500,000.
KINGSBURY  A petition has been started opposing the proposal for a slaughterhouse in the Airport Industrial Park.

Kilcoyne Farms, of Hudson Falls, wants to build a 25,000- to 30,000-square-foot facility. The building would be located on a 21-acre parcel on Ferguson Lane in the park, which is a 66-acre site straddling the border of Queensbury and Kingsbury adjacent to the Warren County airport.

The facility would butcher animals for Kilcoyne and other local farms and also serve as an educational center to develop skilled labor.

Cody Kilcoyne, manager for the farm, said previously that the farm currently uses a third-party slaughterhouse about 3  hours away. He expects to hire 15 to 20 people to start at the facility. The company is working to obtain financing for the project with the goal of starting construction this fall and being open by spring.

The petition at Change.org had 68 signatures as of mid-afternoon on Thursday. It was organized by a Queensbury-based group calling itself the Coalition of Animal Rights Enthusiasts. The petitioners claim that property values decline around slaughterhouses and it makes it more difficult to sell and rent properties.
On Friday and Saturday, Indovina had been calling officials, trying to find someone who could help her evacuate. I told them she was on oxygen, so she wouldnt be OK if the power goes out. They said they would get her out, said Indovina, speaking by phone from the car as she and her family made their way from Missouri to Louisiana.

She was the best mom in the entire world, she said.

 Travis Loller, Associated Press



This item has been corrected to show that Emily Boffone was 65, not 55.



NEW YORK

The storm was raging, and Knrishah Nick Ramskriet, who lived in a basement apartment in Queens, called a friend to say he and his family were leaving.

He wasnt heard from again.

We thought he was OK. But my son called him the next morning and couldnt reach him, said his friends mother, Ahilia Arjun.

Later came the heartbreaking news: Nick and his mother never made it out of their flooded apartment.
C.J. Conrady was at one of those centers Friday in Marrero with his brother and their mother. She was in a wheelchair after a surgery just before Ida struck left her with incisions all the way up her back. An intravenous line to give her antibiotics fell out the day before, and there was no refrigeration in their home to keep the insulin for her diabetes cold.

We decided to tough it out and see if the power would come back on soon. It did not, Conrady said.

New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell said the city on Friday started helping to relocate residents of senior homes. At the Renaissance Place senior home, dozens of residents lined up to get on minibuses equipped with wheelchair lifts after city officials said they determined conditions at the facility were not safe and evacuated it.

Reggie Brown, 68, who was waiting to join fellow residents on a bus, said residents, many in wheelchairs, have been stuck at the facility since Ida. He said elevators stopped working three days ago and garbage was piling up inside. The residents were being taken to a state-run shelter, the mayor's office said.

Im getting on the last bus," Brown said. "Im able-bodied.
The severe weather threat and the flash flooding threat in these areas were very well-forecast days in advance, but that doesnt reduce the destruction they cause, McNoldy said in an email, attaching National Weather Service warnings from Monday and Tuesday.

Ken Kunkel, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration meteorologist who specializes in extreme rainfall and heat, said his study a few years ago found that one-third of the extreme rainfall events in the Northeast came from remnants of hurricanes and tropical storms.

Government officials in New York had been planning for heavy rain, but Uccellini said the rain that fell  more than 3 to 8 inches of rain forecast Tuesday  just overwhelmed infrastructure in the Northeast.

People are ready but is the infrastructure ready for the magnitude of these storms? Uccellini said. It doesnt appear to be that way.

I think with the weather getting worse. .. This is something we have to look at now and into the future," he said.

Human-caused global warming from burning of fossil fuels also likely made Ida's far-reaching impacts a bit worse, experts said.
A petition requesting pardons was sent to Northam in December. It read in part: "The Martinsville Seven were not given adequate due process 'simply for being black,' they were sentenced to death for a crime that a white person would not have been executed for 'simply for being black,' and they were killed, by the Commonwealth, 'simply for being black.'"

Among the organizers pushing for pardons were Liz Ryan and Pamela Hairston and groups such as The Martinsville Seven Initiative Inc., the Free Minds Book Club and Writing Workshop, law students and graduates from the William & Mary Law School.

The families were invited to meet with Northam Tuesday, presumably to make their case for a pardon in person. Instead they got a welcome surprise.

After the executions of the Martinsville Seven, three more men, all Black, died in the electric chair for rape, the last in 1961. In 1977 the U.S. Supreme Court ended rape as a death-eligible crime.
While there are neighborhood food stores in the city, there has not been a full-service supermarket for more than 15 years. Many residents leave the town or even go over the bridge to the mainland to shop for groceries.

Speaking during the public comment portion of the meeting, Shabazz told the CRDA division that area churches and the community organizations also support the plan.

Im not aware of anyone in the whole city that is not enthusiastically supportive of this project, he said.

Mayor Marty Small Sr. also talked up the proposal, saying it brings the city one step closer to realizing its dream for residents and revitalization.

There was no vote at the Thursday meeting. That will come at the Sept. 21 CRDA board meeting, set for 2 p.m., said Lance Landgraf, who led the Thursday morning meeting, which was held remotely.

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CRDA is in negotiations with Village Supermarket Inc. on an agreement on the project, which will include financial incentives for the company, according to Matt Doherty, CRDAs executive director. Without financial support, the project would lose more than $100,000 a year, according to previous news reports. On Friday, Doherty said he could not say how much CRDA would contribute to the project.
Vigliotta said he had just gotten home from work and was getting ready to shower. He looked down at his phone and saw there was a tornado warning. His friends started to text him that the storm was coming straight toward his neighborhood.

I was like, 'Oh, crap' and grabbed my dogs. We went to the basement and we nearly got hit, he said. Like, 30 meters and I wouldnt have a house right now. Its kind of shocking. Looking around, these houses are destroyed. If this happened to my house, I wouldnt really know what Id do with myself. Its really sad, especially for my neighbors. Like adults. Ive never heard an adult sob like that before. Its honestly really sad. But whatever we can do to help, clean up the debris, Ill do what I can and thats about it.

Murphy said the state would act quickly and ask for a major emergency disaster declaration by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which would unlock millions of federal dollars to assist state and local efforts. Murphy said he expected to also speak to President Joe Biden about the situation.

U.S. Rep. Jeff Van Drew, R-2nd, said he would work to ensure the federal government would work with state and local officials to ensure disaster funds and money would flow to the storms victims.
SEA ISLE CITY  Sea Isle City will honor the 13 United States service members killed last month in a terrorist attack at the Kabul Airport in Afghanistan with a ceremony 9 p.m. Saturday on the Promenade at JFK Boulevard.

During the event, Shine For Our Bravest, the names of the 13 military personnel who were killed will be read aloud. At about 9:15 p.m., fire sirens will be sound and everyone will be asked to observe a moment of silence while shining the light of their cell phones  or other devices such as flashlights.

My wife and I were discussing the bombing with friends, when we decided that our community should make a grand gesture to remember those who made the ultimate sacrifice for our freedom, said Jim White, a resident who came up with the idea. So, we spoke with Mayor (Leonard) Desiderio and got his blessing, and then we worked with the VFW and our local first responders to make this event happen.

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Residents and visitors who are not able to attend also are asked to shine a light at 9:15 p.m. wherever they are.

VFW Post 1963 Commander Mark Lloyd said the post was happy to work with the Whites to make it happen.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said the storm made a mockery of the forecast, as 3 to 6 inches of rain were expected, while 7.19 inches of rain fell in Central Park, 6.86 inches of rain fell at LaGuardia International Airport in Queens, 2.77 inches of rain fell at John F. Kennedy International Airport, also in Queens.

The weather community is doing its part in looking at communication of the event, what was in the forecast and the warnings and when was it issued, but communication is a two-way street, and senior political leadership in NY/NYC did a stunning job of not listening, Gary Szatkowski, retired meteorologist-in-charge of the National Weather Service in Mount Holly said in a Tweet. Even if you are buying what the senior political leadership is selling, there is a level of obliviousness during the event that is simply negligent. Because in the runup to the event, all they had to do was pay attention to what was going on around them, particularly upstream in a weather sense.
At 10:23 p.m., officers responded to the Best Western in the 1400 block of Pacific Avenue for a report of a man threatening others, police sai
The other central element of Bidens foreign policy is the degree to which it stems from domestic policy and the presidents conviction that the United States can only be effective overseas if its economy and political system are strong at home.

Were in a contest  with autocratic governments around the world as to whether or not democracies can compete with them, he said during his first overseas trip to Europe in June. Weve got to prove that democracy works. Those are domestic goals as much as diplomatic ones.

Biden often says hes intent on making foreign policy work for the middle class  a principle his national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, has championed.

The idea is to ensure that voters will support continued U.S. global leadership because they see benefits, rather than just the costs, of globalized trade and foreign military adventures.

When Biden opened a news conference about Afghanistan recently by crowing about progress in Congress on his infrastructure program, the juxtaposition may have seemed jarring  but in this administration, domestic priorities are the highest vital interest.
This is especially discouraging because Croatia had been one of the most open countries to visitors. It also heralds a broader policy of continually shifting standards and uncertainty about travel restrictions. It just got more difficult to organize a group trip to Croatia for the spring of 2022, because who knows what the entry standards will look like by then.

In the U.S., President Joe Bidens administration is now pushing third booster shots for people who already have been vaccinated. That might be a good idea, but it too creates additional uncertainty for travel and migration  and for social interaction more broadly. If three doses are so important, should people be allowed to travel (or for that matter interact indoors) with only two doses? The bar is raised yet again.

Of course the issues do not end with the third dose. If the efficacy of the second dose declines significantly in less than a year, might the same happen with the third dose? How long before four doses are necessary, or maybe five? Or what if yet another significant COVID-19 variant comes along, and only some people have a booster dose against that strain? What then counts as being sufficiently vaccinated?
Some voters made disparaging comments about the party and candidates they oppose. Others crossed them out or even blackened them with a marker  sometimes ensuring that the scanner would see the ink in the ovals as votes for the opponents of their chosen candidates.

Many of the machine-rejected ballots had votes for three or four commission candidates, even though there were only two seats to be filled. The bipartisan recount officials rejected them again.

But where the clear intent of the voter could be determined  an oval with an X over it replaced by another filled in, or even a little note written on the ballot (which of course is only read if there is a recount)  the officials added their votes to the official tally.

Every vote rejected by the counting machine was because the voter had failed to follow the very clear and simple instructions on the ballot.
FIRST THREE HONOREES NAMED FOR 2022 THESZ/TRAGOS PROFESSIONAL WRESTLING HALL OF FAME

Greg Oliver over at Canada's SlamWrestling.net is reporting that Waterloo, Iowa's Lou Thesz/George Tragos Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame has revealed the first honorees for its 2022 Hall of Fame weekend:

*Trish Stratus will receive the Lou Thesz Award, the Hall's highest honor. Stratus was originally scheduled to receive this award in 2020 but the pandemic prevented her being able to accept.

*A most deserving Jim Ross will become the second-ever recipient of the Gordon Solie Award for excellence in professional wrestling broadcast. The first receipient, last year, was Solie himself.

*Mike Rotunda will be inducted into the Tragos/Thesz Hall of Fame itself, an honor that is bestowed upon professional wrestlers with great ties to amateur wrestling and overall excellence as in-ring performers. Rotunda, who used his accolades from his time wrestling for Syracuse University as a central point of his time in the NWA's Varsity Club is a perfect choice for the Hall.

The ceremony will be the weekend of 7/22-7/23 in Waterloo.

On a personal note, I had the opportunity to visit the Hall of Fame and Museum this past July while traveling and if you have even a passing interest in amateur wrestling, it is absolutely incredible with a really wonderful corner wing devoted to professional wrestling. If you are ever anywhere in the area, it is well worth visiting. For more on the Hall and Museum, click here.

If you enjoy PWInsider.com you can check out the AD-FREE PWInsider Elite section, which features exclusive audio updates, news, our critically acclaimed podcasts, interviews and more by clicking here!
The Tri-City Jewish Center sat empty Thursday afternoon, save for a small group of people and the Torah. Rabbi Linda Bertenthal spoke a blessing of gratitude for the building congregation Beth Israel at the Tri-City Jewish Center has used for services for years. Then, they picked up the Torah, closed the doors one last time and began a miles-long trek to their new home.

Giving a blessing for the building wasn't just to profess gratitude, Bertenthal said, but to bring forward the hope that it may become a spiritual home and house of learning for all of Rock Island, as it was for them.

Congregation Beth Israel  along with Temple Emanuel of Davenport, who left its building a couple hours later  took that hope with them as they walked the Torah to both the congregations' new home.

Temple Emanuel and Congregation Beth Israel moved together into their new space, called Beit Shalom Jewish Community, after more than 20 years of attempts to unite while both congregations' numbers dwindled.

Bertenthal serves as rabbi for both groups, and said the moves are both bittersweet and joyful.

"We're leaving two really beloved homes, but at the same time, there is this kind of joyful anticipation that we really feel like we can be stronger together," Bertenthal said.
If the proposal is adopted into the Iowa Constitution, future state courts may be less likely to strike down abortion restrictions.

The latest Republican effort to negate the 2018 high court ruling was introduced this week. Sixty state legislators, all Republicans, signed onto a brief submitted by multiple conservative groups, including The Family Leader in Iowa, which asks the Iowa Supreme Court to overturn its 2018 ruling.

Attorneys representing the conservative group are arguing that the 2018 court grossly overstepped its authority and that nothing in the Iowa Constitutions text, structure, history, or tradition suggests that abortion is a fundamental right.

Three justices remain from the 2018 court that ruled on Planned Parenthood v. Kim Reynolds, including the two who dissented: Edward Mansfield and Thomas Waterman. The only justice who remains from the majority in that ruling is Brent Appel.

However, that could be one reason the current court may be unlikely to strike down the 2018 ruling, Frank said. She said courts are often hesitant to overturn a previous ruling just because there are new justices on the bench.
Nearly 30% of Carlyle's 1,004 students had to quarantine because they either tested positive for COVID or were considered a close contact as of Aug. 27, according to the district. While fifty-four students have tested positive, only one school staff member tested positive for COVID, and no others had to quarantine.

Children under the age of 12 are not yet eligible for the COVID vaccine, but the cases Carlyle reported were more prevalent among older students, at the junior high and high schools.

In Clinton County, where Carlyle is the county seat, few youth cases were reported over the summer. Around the end of July, though, new weekly cases sharply rose, first from one or two weekly cases in youths ages 5-17 to 10 weekly cases, then to weekly cases in the 20s and 30s, according to data from the state health department.

Youth case data from the state health department is updated on a lag, so the most recent data available only extends through Aug. 21. The outbreak in Carlyle is not yet reflected in the data.

The Illinois Department of Public Health's school outbreak data does not include an exact number of cases, but breaks it into ranges: fewer than five, between five and 10, between 11 and 16, and more than 16.
He said his client acknowledged the violations but said that it was Orwellian for the government to seek to jail a man who was sitting in his garage listening to the news.

Jensen was among the first people to enter the Capitol during the Jan. 6 attack, crawling through a broken window. On Thursday, prosecutors cited new video evidence to claim he was also among the last to leave over an hour later, scuffling with officers on his way out.

He told investigators he positioned himself as one of the riot leaders because he was wearing a shirt promoting QAnon and he wanted the theory to get the credit. Jensen was widely photographed during the attack.

Jensen had a knife in his pocket when he led a crowd of people toward Capitol Police officer Eugene Goodman, who was by himself and had only a baton. The crowd chased Goodman up a flight of stairs toward the Senate chamber as Jensen ignored Goodman's orders to stop and put his hands up.

Before his July release, Jensen had spent six months in jail after he was arrested Jan. 8. He faces the prospect of years in prison, and lawyers on both sides said Thursday they were unsure if the case could be resolved in a plea or would go to trial.
Ethiopia is Africas second-most populous nation and was, until the civil war broke out last fall, held up as a beacon for the rest of the continent: Its recent economic success was cited by investors and aid donors alike as an example for other developing countries.

That success is now imperiled as the conflict exacts a heavy toll on the economy. The risk premium on Ethiopias dollar debt has almost doubled this year. The ardor of investors has cooled with the governments pleas for a debt restructuring. As Bloomberg News has pointed out, the premium demanded to hold Ethiopias 2024 Eurobonds instead of U.S. Treasuries has climbed to 987 basis points, the highest in Africa after Zambia, which is in default. The average spread for African dollar bonds is 541 basis points.

And yet neither economic nor humanitarian considerations carry much weight with Abiy. The prime minister seems to have taken an election triumph in June  his party won a large majority in parliament  as an endorsement of his no-compromise posture in the war against the Tigrayans.

But the conflict has grown more complicated since then. Insurgents from the Oromo, Ethiopias largest ethnic group, have formed an alliance with the Tigrayans against the government.
Those opposed to the death penalty should oppose releasing Sirhan, a move that would give death penalty supporters reason to claim that execution is the only way to remove from society the very worst offenders. And those favoring the death penalty surely should oppose releasing Sirhan.

Under California law, Sirhan has not met the factors that would entitle him to release. For those sentenced to life, parole can be granted only upon a finding of suitability for release. The law leaves to the judgment of the panel how to weigh factors such as the crime itself, the convicts motivation and signs of remorse. When asked if he would kill again at his parole hearing on Friday, Sirhan remarked, I would never put myself in jeopardy again. Even in asking the state for mercy, Sirhan thinks only of himself, and not at all of his victims.

Bobby Kennedys nine surviving children have expressed divergent views on this issue. But as much as I sympathize with the pain felt by the majority of the Kennedy children, who oppose Sirhans release, no member of the senators family has a special claim to be heard here.

The promise of our judicial system is to impart equal justice based on our collective moral judgments as embodied in law, not on the grief and anger of victims families.

In this case, the question we need to answer is, what does an assassin deserve in matters of justice? Sirhan victimized not only the Kennedy family but also the American family. We the people were his victims. And it is we the people who should be outraged by the parole board panels decision to recommend his release. The full parole board should reverse that decision. If it doesnt, Gov. Gavin Newsom must.

Laurence H. Tribe is the Carl M. Loeb university professor and professor of constitutional law emeritus at Harvard University. 2021 Los Angeles Times. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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Despite social media reports, Department of Health Communications Director Daniel Bucheli said there have been no instances where the COVID-19 vaccine has led to a person's death.

"I want to be very clear on this, there have been no deaths due to/or caused by any of the COVID-19 vaccines in South Dakota," Bucheli said. "There was one case in South Dakota where a doctor listed COVID-19 vaccine on the death certificate. This case was promptly reported to the CDCs VAERS system for additional follow-up and it was the CDCs perspective that even though a COVID-19 vaccine was listed on the death certificate, it did not indicate a direct causal association. The patient was elderly (over 90 years) and had a heart attack."
South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem announced Friday that National Guard troops that she deployed to the U.S. border with Mexico will return later this month.

The Republican governor deployed 48 National Guard troops to Texas in July. The deployment came in response to a request from Texas and Arizona to send law enforcement officers under an agreement between states to assist during emergencies. Noem said the soldiers encountered more than 6,000 people crossing the border in the month and a half they were stationed there.

Overall, U.S. authorities stopped migrants about 210,000 times at the border in July, up from 188,829 in June and the highest in more than 20 years. But the numbers arent directly comparable because many crossed repeatedly under a pandemic-related ban that expelled people from the country immediately without giving them a chance to seek asylum but carried no legal consequences.

A federal judge ruled Thursday that the U.S. governments practice of denying migrants a chance to apply for asylum on the Mexican border until space opens up to process claims is unconstitutional.

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Corvallis High School Graduate Frances Carrasco has been selected for Forward Montana Foundations 2021 25 Under 25 Award.

Carrasco said she was nominated anonymously and then she had to complete an application for the award.

I won, which is amazing, Carrasco said. I am excited and honored. Its great to know I won and then it is great for resumes. It is just wonderful.

Carrasco will be honored at Forward Montana Foundations annual Williams Effect: Montana Youth Organizing Summit & 25 Under 25 Award Ceremony in Bozeman on Sept. 17. Her parents will accept the award for her as she is out of state.

Forward Montana Foundation is a statewide nonprofit organization that organizes, educates and engages young people in the political process to improve their lives and the lives of their fellow Montanans.
She rose to the rank of lieutenant and was wounded four times. She was pulled from combat after taking shrapnel to the face.

In 1942, she visited President Franklin Roosevelt. She fashioned an unusual friendship with Eleanor Roosevelt, who asked if she would like to join her on a nation-wide tour to speak about women in combat.

It was during this tour that Pavlichenko endured sexist questions from the press with one reporter asking whether Russian women could wear makeup on the frontline. She replied "There is no rule against it, but who has time to think of her shiny nose when a battle is going on?" When one newspaper commented "there isnt much style to her olive-green uniform," she responded, "I wear my uniform with honor. It has the Order of Lenin on it. It has been covered with blood in battle.

By the time the tour had reached Chicago, Pavlichenko had grown weary of questions about whether she curled her hair and other "silly questions." Addressing a large crowd, she said, "Gentlemen, I am 25 years old, and I have killed 309 fascist occupants by now. Dont you think that you have been hiding behind my back for too long?" The crowd let out a huge roar and her comment secured her role as a leading crusader for the Red Army.
Despite some heavy rainstorms in August, flows from Fort Peck Dam will be reduced from 9,500 cubic feet per second to 5,000 cfs this month as managers respond to persistent drought.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced the changes after examining August inflows and forecasts for the remainder of the year.

Reservoir inflows in August were much lower than average, said John Remus, chief of the Corps Missouri River Basin Water Management Division. "We expect below-average inflows into the system through the rest of 2021."

Heavy rainfall was localized throughout the Upper Missouri River Basin during August, allowing drought conditions to expand across the basin due to the exceptionally dry soils, the Corps reported. August runoff in the upper basin was 54% of average. The 2021 calendar year forecast for the upper basin, updated on Sept. 1, is 14.7 million acre-feet, 57% of average. The average annual runoff is 25.8 MAF.

As of Sept. 2, the total volume of water stored in Corps' dams along the Missouri River was 52.1 MAF, which is 4 MAF below the base of the systems flood control zone.
While Bill and Hillary Clinton figure into Impeachment, theyre not the focus. Instead, adviser Linda Tripp and accuser Paula Jones share the spotlight with Lewinsky. They are not in the drivers seat of their own careers or lives, Jacobson says. The only person who really is  at the start of the story  is Monica, because she is an affluent young woman who is smart and charismatic and going places. But they are all trapped in their proximity to power.

Tripp, who met Lewinsky when they were both transferred to the Pentagon, wanted to get back to the White House where she felt she had influence.

Impeachment details that tenuous friendship and how Tripp tried to use Lewinsky to get where she wanted.

Jones became an ancillary character in the story because she came forward and said she had been sexually harassed by Bill Clinton when she was an Arkansas state employee.

Even though its called Impeachment, the series is about the events that led to Clintons impeachment. By the time he was impeached, just like the Trump impeachment, it was already preordained that he was going to be found not guilty in the Senate, just the way it was with Trump, says Simpson. We wanted to come in through the women.
Who knows what happened to those items that were strewn about and not properly stored? Petersburg Public Defender Shaun Huband said last month.

Contacted Friday and told that state police would not investigate, Huband said, Its baffling to me that this sort of thing can occur. I dont understand how a police organization could determine something like a lack of criminal intent by just talking to one person  and not looking at records, not going into the property room, and not interviewing people.

Attorney Susan Allen, who represents a juvenile defendant charged with an offense for which Harris collected evidence, has said she still is not aware of any accounting of the evidence that was recovered, what cases are affected, what the evidence was that was mishandled or the nature of the mishandling.

In a recent interview, Buckner said she requested state police to intervene several weeks ago and conduct an investigation related to issues of the [police] property room where evidence is stored.

Buckner said she asked for the probe because of the impact that this incident is having on my office, and the ability for us to do what we need to do  which unfolded because of everything that was found related to Detective Harris.
The bulk of our population will likely be exposed to the delta variants at some point in the next few months, Avula said in an August briefing. Theyre either going to be exposed to it fully vaccinated or theyre not.

And unlike in 2020, schools are reopened, there are fewer restrictions and more residents are congregating in crowded spaces. Nationally, theres an influx of people traveling despite the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advising people not to travel this Labor Day weekend  especially if unvaccinated.

For domestic travel within the U.S., where all 50 states are facing high levels of community transmission, proof of vaccination or a negative COVID test is not required to fly. Face coverings, however, are mandated on any form of public transportation.

Roughly 1.9 million passengers boarded flights on Thursday, which is more than double the number on the same day last year, according to Transportation Security Administration. This figure is also higher than the numbers recorded over Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years Eve  three holidays that partially fueled the spike in January.
Today is Friday, Sept. 3, 2021. Let's get caught up.

Here are today's top stories, celebrity birthdays and a look back at this date in history:

TOP STORIES

US hospitals hit with nurse staffing crisis amid COVID

The COVID-19 pandemic has created a nurse staffing crisis that is forcing many U.S. hospitals to pay top dollar to get the help they need to handle the crush of patients this summer.

The problem, health leaders say, is twofold: Nurses are quitting or retiring, exhausted or demoralized by the crisis. And many are leaving for lucrative temporary jobs with traveling-nurse agencies that can pay $5,000 or more a week.

It's gotten to the point where doctors are saying, Maybe I should quit being a doctor and go be a nurse, said Dr. Phillip Coule, chief medical officer at Georgia's Augusta University Medical Center, which has on occasion seen 20 to 30 resignations in a week from nurses taking traveling jobs.

***

Seeing danger, some in GOP leery of Texas abortion law
He was sentenced to 45 months in prison.

Ted Hull, superintendent of the jail, located in the town of Warsaw, answered questions by email about the air conditioning.

One of four compressors in a water chiller thats part of the air condition apparatus malfunctioned and went offline, on Aug. 29, he said.

Jail staff immediately contacted a company for repairs, and the company found that a part was needed, he said. Its been ordered and once it arrives the compressor will be fixed.

The high temperature in that area on Tuesday was 89 degrees, according to the National Weather Service in Wakefield.

The weather in the region cooled off Thursday, and that day, Hull said, temperatures in the pod were down to the 70s.

Staff brought in fans on the hotter days, he said.

The Twitter account supporting Hull said one man in the jail had a seizure and one is in hospice care for terminal cancer.

Hull said the high temperatures did not cause any medical problems for staff or people held in the jail.

The jail turned off the phones for J Pod for a time, he said, because so many calls were coming in.
The developer of a proposed natural gas pipeline in central Virginia asked the State Corporation Commission on Friday to issue a ruling saying the project can go forward without commission approval.

The proposed Chickahominy Pipeline would serve a yet-to-be-built natural gas power plant in Charles City County. The line would run through a route in Louisa, Hanover, New Kent, Henrico and Charles City counties. The proposed route has not been disclosed but property owners have received letters from the developer about it.

The Richmond Times-Dispatch reported in July that property owners concerned about environmental impacts plan to fight the pipeline. The developer, Irfan Ali, has said he can build it without approval from the State Corporation Commission. He also said he would change the route to accommodate any property owners who didnt want it coming through their land.

Alis company, in Fridays filing with the commission, said it wants confirmation that the construction and operation of the pipeline is not subject to the commissions jurisdiction.
Among those expressing shock and frustration with Brackneys termination was Walker, who took to Facebook on Wednesday evening to share her thoughts. Though Walker does not often talk to members of the media, she regularly uses Facebook as a means of communicating with constituents. She said she was not sharing information because it would change the outcome but because white supremacy is powerful.

Chief Brackney isnt going to return, nor would I ask her to come back. Im simply acknowledging how toxic this community is, she said on Facebook. I wish I had facts and didnt have to gossip or speculate as our world-class twitter guru pointed out. I would appreciate receiving respect as the mayor and having been given a reason why.

Walker also posted a five-page document titled Departmental Investigation Executive Summary, which appeared to be a longer, more detailed version of a news release sent out by the city last month in response to a Police Benevolent Association survey. The document, which is dated Aug. 9, appears to be an official report, but it is unclear to whom the report was sent.
AMHERST  Due to an increase in positive COVID-19 cases, Amherst County Public Schools will close to students and staff until Sept. 13.

Amherst schools Superintendent Rob Arnold said during a news conference Thursday evening that the division determined it could not safely operate schools for the next week and all facilities will be closed to students and most staff until Sept. 13.

Clearly we have a major health issue in our community, Arnold said.

Arnold said 198 active positive cases of COVID-19 have been reported since the school year began Aug. 18.

During the entire 2020-21 school year, the division saw about 100 positive cases of the virus.

All students and staff should consider that they have experienced some exposure to COVID in the last week of school, and to act accordingly, he said.

Arnold expects schools to reopen Sept. 13.

We believe this will be sufficient time to contain the outbreak, Arnold said.

No in-person or virtual instruction will be provided, and all extracurricular activities have been canceled. Transportation and meals also will not be provided.
Dominion Energy overcharged its Virginia customers $1.2 billion since 2015, according to testimony filed Friday by a utility expert in an ongoing review of energy monopolys finances.

The testimony filed at the Virginia State Corporation Commission came from Heather Bailey, an Austin, Texas-based consultant and former utility executive and regulator. The testimony was submitted by the environmental group Appalachian Voices, which is represented by the Southern Environmental Law Center in Charlottesville.

Dominion Energy will file a response to the testimony in the coming weeks. A final hearing in the case, known as a triennial review, is set for late October.

Unfortunately, the law prevents the commission from returning all the $1.2 billion to customers, said Will Cleveland, senior attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center. They can only get a fraction of that back at best.

The commission cant order any refund of excess profits Dominion earned in 2015 or 2016 because of a Dominion-backed 2018 law called the Grid Transformation and Security Act, Cleveland said.
Tim Kaine is padding around his house these days in his bare feet. And when he is elsewhere, the Virginia Democrat is wearing flip-flops.

Its because one foot is bandaged, having been scalded when Kaine accidentally tipped a pot of boiling water on it while preparing his morning cuppajoe during a canoe trip along the James River.

The staged journey with family and friends over the river that bisects Kaines adoptive hometown, Richmond, is pegged to the 50th anniversary of the introduction of the federal Clean Water Act, instrumental in reviving the James, an historic habitat that, by the 1970s, had been decimated by industrialization and development.

As he went about the business of being a U.S. senator, said Kaine, sitting on the screen porch of his home in North Side several days into a Labor Day swing, the rubber sandals might have seemed out of place  until he traveled to nearby Fort Lee.

It is among three hastily organized hubs for absorbing Afghan refugees after the lightning collapse to the Taliban of their homeland, which for two decades was propped up by the United States.

Parents and their children arrived to the applause of soldiers. Each youngster was presented with a small American flag.
Full court rehearings can also be held should a new panels decision conflict in some way with a prior panel decision, he said.

The 4th Circuit was once famously seen as one of the most conservative appeals courts in the country.

Tobias said, In the old days when the court was so conservative ... what happened was exactly what the Democratic-appointed majority is doing now. So, in the 80s and 90s, when the Republican majorities saw a panel decision that they felt was too liberal, then they would take it en banc and change it. Now the shoe is on the other foot.

Now its 9-6 Democratic as opposed to Republican appointees and the Democrats are doing something pretty similar ... when they see a panel decision they dont like, or they disagree with, they take it up en banc and then they change it. That is what happened in two Fourth Amendment cases, one from Richmond and one from Baltimore in the past year, when the 4th Circuit majority held en banc hearings and overturned minority judges panel decisions.

Tobias said Wynn is indicating that such dissents should be rare and that there should be transparency about them because he thinks they are being misused: What youre really doing is trying to get the attention of the Supreme Court, to tell the Supreme Court why the panel got it wrong.
The Virginia Redistricting Commission has just 37 days to finalize its district maps for the Virginia House and Senate. As of Friday, the commission is down one member.

Sen. Steve Newman, R-Lynchburg, announced in a Facebook post Friday afternoon that he was resigning from the commission, leaving the body without one of its GOP members.

I have enjoyed working with my colleagues on the Virginia Redistricting Commission for the past nine months. Approved by the voters last November, the bipartisan Commission is in its first year and I wish them well as they continue to navigate uncharted territory, Newman wrote, without citing a reason for his departure. The senator could not be immediately reached for comment.

Its unclear how Newmans departure will affect the commissions work, which could be stalled until a replacement is found. Just last week, the commission hit a different snag when one of its members  whose name has not be disclosed  tested positive for COVID-19, delaying a key meeting.

Newman was appointed to the commission by Senate Minority Leader Tommy Norment, R-James City, to fill one of the two spots that need to be filled by Republican senators, as called for in the state constitution.
BERLIN (AP)  German automaker Daimler on Friday dismissed a cease and desist demand from two environmental groups to commit to ending the sale of combustion engine vehicles by 2030.

Lawyers for Greenpeace and the group Deutsche Umwelthilfe have threatened to sue Daimler, BMW and Volkswagen unless they sign a legal pledge not to put new gas-fueled vehicles onto the market from the end of this decade.

The groups argue that companies are bound by the same rules as governments when it comes to reducing greenhouse gas emissions to combat climate change. The same lawyers successfully sued the German government earlier this year, forcing it to adjust its emissions reduction plans to shift more of the burden onto older generations.

In a letter addressed to Volkswagen, Greenpeace said it believes VW poses a threat to the absolute rights, such as the property, health, and life of our clients by being responsible for the release of large amounts of planet-warming carbon dioxide.
There are many lessons to learn from 20 years of war in Afghanistan. But the last two years deserve additional scrutiny and insight that only a commission of significant heft and a fair-minded approach can offer.

 Dallas Morning News

***

The recent loss of at least 13 American service members, killed along with some 200 Afghan men, women and children, by a brutal terrorist attack outside the airport in Kabul does not appear to have been carried out by the Taliban, the long-standing adversary. It was the work of a third party, a yet-more-extreme group with a vested interest in undermining the Talibans apparent victory  particularly if the Taliban plans to, as it has claimed, mend its ways.

ISIS-K is known for disregarding international borders on the premise that the Islamic caliphate cannot be confined by such. Its stated goals include the defeat of Israel and the United States.

An inconvenient truth blew up in Americas face. This was the message: There are those to the right of the Taliban who specialize in terrorism.

In Afghanistan and beyond, the war on terror is far from over. All nations who believe in freedom, safety and democracy will have to re-engage. There can be no withdrawal from that.
Bassett-based Carter Bank & Trust and West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice, a former billionaire coal magnate, have settled their dispute out of court and will have their dueling lawsuits dismissed.

Carter in May had filed suit in Martinsville Circuit Court regarding $58 million in loans that the bank had maintained were personally guaranteed by Justice and his wife, Cathy. Justice responded with a lawsuit against the bank, seeking $421 million related to outstanding loans.

Justices suit included court documents that described a longtime gentlemans agreement between Justice and Worth Carter, the founder of the bank.

Steve Ruby, Justices attorney, released a statement Wednesday that said Justice and his businesses had successfully concluded a number of matters relating to CB&T, one of the companies longtime financing partners.

Worth Carter died in 2017, and Justice claimed that was when the cozy relationship that allowed for growing loans and indefinite extensions on payback arrangements had ended.

The bank had been seeking a judgment against Justice related to loan modifications in 2017 that asked for a more aggressive repayment schedule and one that could not reasonably be met, the action on Justices behalf said.
As COVID-19 case numbers continue to rise across Virginia, Roanoke-area health officials on Friday recommended that unvaccinated people stay home and avoid crowds over the long Labor Day weekend, and that even those who have been fully vaccinated should carefully consider their options when deciding whether to travel.

Anything outdoors is going to be safer than indoors, but people should think through their plans and assess their risk, Dr. Cynthia Morrow, director of the Roanoke City and Alleghany Health Districts, said in a news release.

On Friday, the districts reported 430 new cases of COVID-19 over just the previous three days. On Tuesday, the districts had reported 715 cases over the prior seven-day period.

Similar increases are being seen across the state.

For the first time since early February, Virginia reported more than 4,000 new COVID-19 cases two days in a row, both Thursday and Friday.

Over the past seven days, Virginia saw 23,515 new infections, almost 3,000 more than during the previous seven-day period. The cumulative total in the state since the start of the pandemic has reached 778,167, according to the Virginia Department of Health.
That has limited his options to executive actions.

At the end of his first term, his administration began enforcing tougher air pollution standards on equipment in new or updated well sites and along pipeline networks in Pennsylvania's vast natural gas industry.

He kicked off his second term by committing his administration to putting Pennsylvania on a path to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, in line with 2015s landmark Paris climate agreement.

The administration has worked hard on that, orienting state agencies toward climate-friendly practices and helping cities and counties to do the same while educating the public about how climate change affects them, Wolfs environmental protection secretary, Patrick McDonnell, said.

People are seeing it and are hungry for more information on how they can engage and how they can help, McDonnell, said. I think the programs were talking about are things that help businesses, residents, others take advantage of all the things were learning to really push things forward.
The same Joe Biden and now Afghanistan.

Is there anyone who is surprised by this long running record of Joe Biden on foreign policy?

The same Joe Biden who was the only voice in the situation room that did not think it was a good idea to kill Osama Bin Laden. The same Joe Biden who agreed with the Iraq pull out that created the Islamic State and that brutal regime.

The same Joe Biden who thinks that an open border is OK and not a crisis.

The same Joe Biden who stood in front of cameras and said to the world that he had not heard any criticism from our allies regarding his Afghanistan pull out only hours after the British House of Commons scathing rebuke of the same. The same Joe Biden who could not get back to Boris Johnson for more than a day regarding Afghanistan.

The same Joe Biden who decided it was a good idea to give up a very defensible air base in Afghanistan for a civilian airport and put innocent people and our soldiers into a killing field.

The same Joe Biden who proposes gun control for U.S. citizens but has armed terrorist with the most sophisticated weapons in the world funded by those same U.S. citizens. How long will it be before those weapons show up at our southern border?
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Our policy toward Vietnam changed repeatedly as we tried to figure out what would work with an enemy whose motives we didnt fully understand.

Our initial mission in Afghanistan could hardly be more clear: Find and eliminate Osama bin Laden and others behind the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Mission accomplished. It turns out that would have been a great time for us to have declared victory and come home.

Lesson three: No nation building.

In other words, dont try to build or strengthen a sense of national identity and create a politically stable and viable state in a country thats not ready for it.

I mean no insult to those fighters for the South Vietnamese or Afghan military who fought heroically. But even they, too, often found that their own governments, our allies, didnt have their backs.

Biden assured reporters that defeat was not inevitable because the Afghan troops have 300,000 well-equipped  as well-equipped as any army in the world  and an air force against something like 75,000 Taliban.
Amazon rainforest is a carbon source. No longer a carbon sink

Fires, deforestation, and climate change have taken their toll, turning the Brazillian Amazon rainforest into a carbon source. The rainforest is now a net emitter of carbon dioxide rather than an absorber. Read to know what this unprecedented change means for all of us.

What are a carbon source and sink?

What are a carbon source and sink?

A carbon source is anything that releases more carbon, usually in the form of CO2 in the atmosphere than what it incorporates. Volcanic eruptions, burning fossil fuels, etc are carbon sources. However, a carbon sink is anything that absorbs more carbon from the atmosphere than what it releases. Plants, soil and the ocean are carbon sinks.

A Nature article and the IPCC report confirmed the shifting of the Amazons from a carbon sink to a source earlier this year. The new study reveals that Amazonia is giving up more carbon than it can take in.

Why is this scary?

Well, as more and more lands become carbon sources, the carbon dioxide build-up in the atmosphere rises. Forests are generally a carbon sink since trees absorb the carbon in CO2 form from the atmosphere through photosynthesis. It then gets separated or stored in various plant parts.

The transition of the amazon rainforest

The Amazon study observed the transition of the Amazon from a sink across four sites. They were conducted through monthly sampling using aircraft from 2010 to 2018. Human disturbances are amplifying the cycle of drying and warming, mainly during the dry season. This can reduce the capacity of these forests to store carbon. And increase their vulnerability to fires, said Luana Basso, the co-author of the study.

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These possible changes in the carbon uptake capacity of tropical forests will require larger reductions in fossil fuel emissions to achieve the main goals of the Paris Agreement, she added.

Amazon rainforest: Now a carbon source

The latest research published by Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project (MAAP) reveals more. In the last two decades, the Brazillian portion of the Amazon emitted 3.6 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide. Moreover, it is the largest part of the rainforest. But, in the same period, the parts of the rainforest in Columbia, Bolivia, Ecuador, Guyana, French Guyana, Suriname, Peru, and Venezuela were carbon sinks. However, they only removed 1.7 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide.

Story continues

For the first time, we have carbon data across the entire Amazon. Brazil literally has tipped as a whole from a sink to a source. But the western Amazon and northeastern Amazon are keeping it together as a sink, said Matt Finer, the director of MAAP. All of a sudden you go from the Brazillian Amazon to being a key buffer against climate change to putting its foot on the accelerator, added Finer.

The MAAP study adds more gravity to the climate crisis at hand. It is shocking to learn that one of the largest forests in the world is a net carbon emitter. What makes it scarier is that the Amazons are highly studied when compared to others. It reinforces what has been known: protected areas are less deforested than unprotected areas, said Phillip Fearnside. Feranside is a researcher and professor of environmental dynamics at the National Institute of Amazonian Research (INPA). He also suggested that we are close to a double tipping point.

What is a double tipping point?

In terms of climate change, a tipping point is a threshold which when exceeded leads to a large and usually irreversible change in the system. Amazons first tipping point was the rise in deforestation and change in rainfall patterns, which are well studied. This tipping point made the rainforests drier and savanna-like.

Moreover, the second tipping point is connected to the first. The second tipping point is the shift from a carbon sink to a source. The planets systems are all connected; what happens in one area of the world impacts other areas, based on how water and energy flow, said Nancy Harris.

This article Amazon rainforest is a carbon source. No longer a carbon sink appeared first on BreezyScroll.

Read more on BreezyScroll.
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Ljubljana [Slovenia], September 3 (ANI/Xinhua): In a debate on Afghanistan on Thursday, foreign ministers of the European Union (EU) discussed how to engage with the Taliban, in particular humanitarian aid and a possible tide of Afghan refugees.

"The purpose of the meeting is to try to reach an agreement on coordinated engagement with the Taliban on the basis of certain conditions, and on the possibilities of cooperation with regional players," the bloc's foreign policy chief Josep Borrell told journalists before the start of the informal meeting in Slovenia.

This does not mean recognition, Borrell stressed. "This requires cooperation with the Taliban."

It is important for Germany to set certain conditions, such as the formation of an inclusive government, the protection of human rights and women's rights, and that Afghanistan does not again become a haven for terrorists, said German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas during the meeting.

Luxembourg's Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn stressed that the Taliban must be aware that without international assistance, the country will collapse.

"Europe cannot be a positive Europe if it limits the number of refugees," he said. The need to allow Afghans at risk to come to Europe was underlined by several other EU foreign ministers.

However, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto disagreed, saying that Afghans should not be encouraged to leave the country without restrictions. Polish Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau agreed with him.

On Friday, the ministers will discuss EU-China relations, the EU's approach towards the Gulf countries and EU cooperation with the Indo-Pacific region. Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar will present his views at the meeting. (ANI/Xinhua)
Four Indonesian soldiers were killed and two other wounded in an ambush by guerillas in the breakaway Papau region (AFP/Handout)

At least four Indonesian soldiers were killed and two others wounded in an ambush by guerillas in the breakaway region of Papua, authorities said Friday.

More than 30 rebels ambushed a military outpost in Maybrat, attacking the soldiers with machetes before escaping into the jungle.

"It was still dark when the attack happened and the perpetrators escaped right away," West Papua military chief I Nyoman Cantiasa said in a video statement made available to AFP on Friday.

Security forces arrested two members of the rebel group responsible for the ambush after hours of searching the jungle, the army said.

The military has ordered a manhunt and vowed to "destroy" the rebels in response to Thursday's killings.

The bodies of the dead soldiers have been flown home for burial, according to the Papua army, while the two wounded security forces are currently being treated at a hospital.

Papua rebels have claimed responsibility for the killing, which took place just a week after the group killed two construction workers in Yahukimo district in the region's highlands.

Tensions in the conflict-wracked region have soared this year, punctuated by deadly clashes after rebels killed Indonesia's top intelligence chief in Papua in April.

Jakarta responded by formally designating the Papuan separatists "terrorists" -- a move that sparked fears of more violence and rights abuses.

Indonesia's counter-terrorism laws give authorities enhanced powers, including holding suspects for several weeks without formal charges.

A former Dutch colony, mineral-rich Papua declared itself independent in 1961, but neighbouring Indonesia took control two years later promising an independence referendum.

The subsequent vote in favour of staying part of Indonesia was widely considered a sham.

Papua's Melanesian population shares few cultural connections with the rest of Indonesia.

hrl/oho
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Chandigarh (Punjab) [India], September 3 (ANI): Punjab Gau Sewa Commission Chairman Sachin Sharma, on Thursday, welcomed the advice of the Allahabad High Court, in which the Court has asked the union government to declare cow as the national animal.

According to a statement from Information and Public Relations Department, Punjab,

presiding over a meeting of the commission in this regard, Sharma said that the legal experts also believe in the importance of the cow being unparalleled and as per the holy scriptures, the cow is a symbol of Indian culture and devotion.

Referring to the letters written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on August 5, 2020, and June 15, 2021, asking him to consider cow as the national animal like Nepal, he asked the Modi government what action has been taken so far on the appeal. He lamented that no attention had been paid to those letters and no concrete law has been enacted so far to stop the cruelty against bovine, the statement said.

"The Chairman alleged that the Central government had, in fact, completely forgotten the importance of the cows and no Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) activist has done anything meaningful for the welfare of cows," the statement read.

Sharma said that the government should take appropriate action in light of the Allahabad High Court's remarks. "I believe any religious act, performed on a land where Gaumata is disrespected, cannot succeed," he stated.

The Allahabad High Court on Wednesday observed that cows are an integral part of the Indian culture and suggested the Central government to give fundamental rights to the animal and declare it as the national animal.

The Court's observations came as a single bench of Justice Shekhar Yadav was hearing the bail application of a person named Javed who was arrested under the Cow Slaughter Act in Uttar Pradesh. The bail application was rejected by the court. (ANI)
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Washington [US], September 4 (ANI/Sputnik): The United States has imposed sanctions on four Iranian citizens linked to their country's Ministry of Intelligence and Security, the Treasury Department announced on Friday.

"Today, the US Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) is designating four Iranian intelligence operatives who targeted a US citizen in the United States and Iranian dissidents in other countries as part of a wide-ranging campaign to silence critics of the Iranian government," the Treasury Department said in a press release.

The Treasury Department listed Alireza Shahvaroghi Farahani, Mahmoud Khazein, Omid Noori and Kiya Sadeghi as the individuals being added to the Specially Designated Nationals list.

The FBI has previously accused the four men of participating in an alleged plot to kidnap an Iranian American activist, Masih Alinejad. The four were indicted in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York on several charges including conspiracy related to kidnapping.

The Treasury Department added that the men used a private investigator to conduct surveillance on the victim and used laundered money from Iran in order to pay for it. They allegedly researched ways to abduct the victim from his home and transport him to Venezuela via speedboats. (ANI/Sputnik)
BEIJING (AP)  Chinas government banned effeminate men on TV and told broadcasters Thursday to promote revolutionary culture, broadening a campaign to tighten control over business and society and enforce official morality.
That Sioux City girl was Tami Clausen. The two were married just before Daane began his three-year Army service obligation. He envisioned a career that would take him to the Pentagon. The young couple instead moved to Sioux City once his service was ended.

It was an adjustment, Daane said. He wasn't enamored with the weather, and he remembers Sioux City was struggling to emerge from the '80 farm crisis. In the 33 years since then, he's grown to love Sioux City and brags to anyone who'll listen about the strides the city has made since he moved here.

"It's been particularly rewarding to me to be a Sioux Cityan during all that change," he said.

Daane initially practiced real estate law, then spent the past 26 years as a trial lawyer taking criminal, civil and juvenile cases. Becoming a judge was at the back of his mind, he said, and he applied a couple of times. When District Judge Duane Hoffmeyer announced earlier this year he was retiring and taking senior status, Daane said that at age 61, it was probably his last shot at the bench, and he applied. He was appointed by Gov. Kim Reynolds in July.
John Goldsmith Sr., of Sergeant Bluff, told Hanson he wasn't convinced that the cemetery could legally be moved. In an interview after the meeting, Goldsmith said the cemetery is historically significant, one of the sites he takes out-of-town visitors when showing them the area's history.

"This thing to me is only two issues: history and morality," he said. "I don't want it moved. It's immoral. It's just plain, simple immoral."

He's not the only one opposed. An online petition at change.org had 980 signatures as of Thursday afternoon. A Save the Woodbury Township Cemetery page on Facebook has 188 followers. Comments on both sites were similar: many of those who posted said those buried there should be left in peace. Others accused Brickworks of greed, seeking to the cemetery site for its own profit.

Hanson did not deny the company's intentions. If vacated, Brickworks would mine the site for the high-quality clay it suspects may be located there, adding an additional source of raw material to the company's existing property, which Hanson said would provide clay for another 60-80 years.

The company is willing to abide by the public's wishes if its proposal is turned down and the cemetery remains, Hanson said.

"If the cemetery stays were it is, we've got to figure out a way to be a better corporate citizen, and we will do that," he said.

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TUCSON, Ariz. (AP)  The father of an Arizona elementary school student was arrested after he and two other men showed up to the campus with zip ties, threatening to make a citizen's arrest on the school principal over a COVID-19 quarantine, school officials said Friday.

Diane Vargo, principal of Mesquite Elementary School in Tucson, said the parent came to her office Thursday with his son in tow. The father was upset the child would have to isolate and miss a school field trip because of possible exposure to someone with COVID-19. She said two other men also barged in.

One was carrying military, large, black zip ties and standing in my doorway. Vargo said she tried to de-escalate the situation while explaining the school had to follow county health protocols.

I felt violated that they were in my office claiming I was breaking the law and they were going to arrest me, a visibly shaken Vargo said in a video statement released by the Vail Unified School District. Two of the men weren't parents at our school, so I felt threatened.

In a video posted on social media, Vargo can be heard calmly asking them to leave. One of them replies they aren't leaving because they're not going to let her control the situation.

The principal called Tucson police.
DALLAS (AP)  A data breach at the Dallas public school system earlier this month exposed the personal information of students, parents, teachers and staff dating to 2010, system officials revealed Thursday.

In statements posted to its website Thursday, the Dallas Independent School District said it learned of the breach on Aug. 8. Since then, the district says it has been investigating and working to contain the exposure before making it public.

According to the website statements, an unauthorized third party downloaded the data and stored it temporarily on an encrypted cloud storage site. Social Security numbers, birth dates, contact information and grades were among the data exposed.

The district said it had not received any reports of fraud or identity theft due to the data breach. It planned to open a hotline Friday to answer questions of those affected and help them set up credit monitoring.

The district is the second-largest in Texas, ranking behind only the Houston Independent School District. The Dallas district employs 22,222 staff members and enrolled 153,861 students in 230 schools, according to its website.
Several of the families, accompanied by Issa and school officials, spoke to reporters Thursday for the first time since they returned, recounting their harrowing experiences.

The parents described running with their kids as gunfire whizzed overhead. One father said he was beaten by the Taliban. They said they were blocked at Taliban checkpoints.

They said they are grateful to be back but their children have suffered nightmares, and they worry about the family that was unable to get out, along with countless others still stuck there, including distant relatives.

My kids are now safe at home right now thanks to God and all of you, Yousef said.

But he asked people not to forget about so many others, including U.S. citizens, green card holders and Afghans who are at risk because they helped the American government. He held in his hand a folder that he said contained the documents of 30 people who qualified for a special immigrant visa and should be in the United States but are still in Afghanistan, desperate to escape.
EL CAJON, Calif. (AP)  When Yousef's wife and their four children boarded a July 15 flight in San Diego to attend her brother's wedding in Afghanistan, they were looking forward to a month of family gatherings. It was long overdue  the coronavirus pandemic prevented them from traveling earlier.
Cooper set a hearing for Wednesday morning on the parents' request that the stay be lifted. Jacob Oliva, public schools chancellor at the state Department of Education, said in a notice Thursday to local superintendents that enforcement must cease if the stay is lifted.

Under the DeSantis executive order, state education officials have been seeking to penalize defiant school boards by withholding salaries of board members. As of Friday, 13 districts representing more than half of Florida's 2.8 million public school students had imposed mask mandates despite the governor's order that a parental opt-out must be included. Most have only an opt-out for medical reasons.

The rebel districts showed no signs of backing down, with some hiring lawyers to defend their decisions that often came after raucous public meetings pitting pro- and anti-mask parents against each other. Alachua County school Superintendent Carlee Simon, like others, insisted a mask mandate is permitted under the Parents Bill of Rights.

The judge's ruling against the DeSantis order, she said in a statement, confirms what weve said all along, which is that our mask mandate does not violate Florida law.
TUCSON, Ariz. (AP)  State Rep. Randy Friese of Tucson is dropping out of the race to replace retiring Democratic Congresswoman Ann Kirkpatrick.

Friese, a trauma surgeon, said in a statement Thursday that he's not ready to give up his career in medicine.

As the delta variant surges across our region, it has become an increasing challenge to fulfill my obligations to the hospital, my patients, and the campaign amidst a run for Congress, Friese said.

Friese treated then-U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords after she was critically wounded in the Jan. 8, 2011, mass shooting in Tucson. He is a trauma surgeon who has served in the Arizona House since 2015.

Friese's departure from the race leaves two others seeking the Democratic nomination: state Sen. Kirsten Engel, an attorney, and state Rep. Daniel Hernandez, a Giffords intern who put pressure on her wound after she was shot. They're running in the district Giffords represented before she resigned to focus on her recovery.

Friese had led the field in fundraising, reporting $566,000 with $425,000 in the bank as of the end of June, according to Federal Election Commission records.
HONOLULU (AP)  Health care workers in Hawaii say a lack of government action is worsening an already crippling surge of coronavirus cases in the islands, and without effective policy changes the states limited hospitals could face a grim crisis.
At a news conference Thursday, Attorney General Mark Herring said he doesnt anticipate an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court but would fight one if there is.

I dont think theres any legal basis for a further appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, but Ill say this. If they try, we will be there to oppose it. This statue is coming down, and I really hope that the parties in the case and the lawyers who are representing them see the strength and the power of the decision, and the will of the people that it come down, and not delay it further, Herring said.

Patrick McSweeney, lawyer for the property owners, said Thursday that he had not yet had a chance to read the rulings and indicated he may not comment.

The 130-year-old, 60-foot-tall bronze statue of the Confederate general on a horse gained national attention last year as a focus of protests in Richmond. The base of the monument is now covered with graffiti, and it was illuminated at night with holographic images. A year ago, demonstrators at the circle  now surrounded by fencing  were tear-gassed by police.

Other Confederate statues and memorials along Monument Avenue located on city property came down following the protests. The Lee statue is on state property.
SAN DIEGO (AP)  The Marine Corps on Friday halted waterborne operations for its new amphibious vehicle that resembles an armored seafaring tank after identifying a problem with its towing mechanism.

Marine Corps spokesman Maj. Jim Stenger said the decision was made out of an abundance of caution.

The Amphibious Combat Vehicle was obtained by the Marine Corps last year to replace the Vietnam-era Amphibious Assault Vehicle, or AAV, which suffered problems. Last year, eight Marines and one sailor were killed off the coast of San Diego inside an AAV after becoming trapped inside the tank.

Marine Corps leaders after the July 2020 accident vowed to make safety a bigger priority.

The break in waterborne operations come a day after the families of the eight Marines and one sailor filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles against the manufacturer, BAE Systems.

Realistic training is a vital component of readiness, and the Marine Corps is committed to ensuring Marines train under the safest conditions possible; this includes ensuring the functionality of vehicles and equipment," Stenger said in a statement Friday.
UNITED NATIONS  The United Nations chief will convene a ministerial meeting in Geneva on Sept. 13 to seek a swift scale-up in funding to address the growing humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan, where nearly half the countrys 38 million people need assistance.
A former University of Nebraska-Lincoln graduate student and lecturer is suing the university for violating her rights after she was removed from her teaching duties following a political protest.

The federal lawsuit, filed in Nebraska last week by Courtney Lawton, accuses UNL Chancellor Ronnie Green and former NU President Hank Bounds of violating her rights to free speech and due process following the 2017 incident.

Lawton, who held a part-time teaching appointment in UNL's English Department, was filmed protesting Turning Point USA, a student organization with ties to then-President Donald Trump, at the Nebraska Union, a designated "free speech zone" on campus.

The viral video prompted backlash from conservatives, who pointed to it as evidence the university was a hostile place for conservative students, and elicited a critical tweet from Bounds that Lawton's behavior was "unprofessional."

UNL later removed Lawton from the classroom, citing security concerns and not disciplinary action, according to the lawsuit, but publicly stated she had been reassigned because her protest did not meet "expectations for civility."
If lawmakers approve the first plan, it will go to the governor for her signature. If rejected, the Legislative Services Agency will draw another map that again is subject to a yes-or-no vote without any changes. If rejected, the agency draws a third that can be amended by lawmakers.

Supreme Court role

Whats unknown, Wahls said, is what role the Iowa Supreme Court will play.

Because of census delays, the current timeline does not does comply with the constitutional requirement for the Legislature to approve a plan by Sept. 1 and for the plan to be enacted by Sept. 15. After that, the Iowa Constitution shifts redistricting to the court.

In April, the court issued a statement saying it tentatively plans to meet its constitutional responsibility by implementing a process which permits, to the extent possible, the redistricting framework presently set forth in Iowa Code chapter 42 to proceed after Sept. 15.
LINCOLN, Neb. (AP)  The Nebraska Supreme Court on Friday denied a postconviction appeal by a man serving three life sentences for the 2012 shooting deaths of three Omaha men in a botched drug robbery.

The states high court said Timothy Britt, 34, failed to show in his appeal that he was entitled to an evidentiary hearing on his claims that his trial lawyer was ineffective for failing to call witnesses who could have helped exonerate him.

The high court said one of those witnesses would have been barred from testifying, and the others testimony likely would not have changed the trials outcome.

Britt and an accomplice were convicted of killing 44-year-old Miguel Avalos Sr. and two of his sons, 18-year-old son Miguel Avalos Jr. and 16-year-old Jose Avalos, in their home in July 2012. Avalos wife and other children survived by hiding behind a locked basement door.

Britt originally was found guilty in 2014, but the Nebraska Supreme Court overturned the conviction, saying prosecutors improperly relied on hearsay evidence to convict him.
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP)  South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem announced Friday that National Guard troops that she deployed to the U.S. border with Mexico will return later this month.

The Republican governor deployed 48 National Guard troops to Texas in July. The deployment came in response to a request from Texas and Arizona to send law enforcement officers under an agreement between states to assist during emergencies. Noem said the soldiers encountered more than 6,000 people crossing the border in the month and a half they were stationed there.

Unfortunately, because of the Biden Administrations failed border policies, the system has become one of facilitating the crossing of illegal immigrants into our country, she said in a statement.
WELLINGTON, New Zealand  New Zealand reported its first coronavirus death in more than six months on Saturday, while the number of new cases continued to trend downward.
SAN MARCOS DE COLON, Honduras (AP)  Row after row of gleaming new greenhouses are rising on fields just a short walk from the land where the family of Zonia Amparo Vasquez has grown corn and beans for four decades.
Perhaps the most important duty performed by nurses in Nebraska state institutions is taking care of the states most vulnerable residents.

That alone makes the states recent mailer to health care professionals touting the states lack of a COVID-19 vaccine mandate for nurses  done in a cheerful tone, to boot  all the more appalling and unconscionable.

Has the pandemic exacerbated Nebraskas existing nursing shortage? Absolutely.

Should the lack of a vaccination requirement be considered a recruiting tool? Not in the least.

Yes, the advertisement notes that vaccinations are encouraged. But that sentence is in a font about half the size of the benefits listed  first among them is no mandated COVID-19 vaccination, printed atop even the $5,000 signing bonus.

The fact that this battle over vaccinations continues to rage  now spreading to facilities like state veterans homes and the Beatrice State Development Center  is indicative of too many peoples unwillingness to do their part in supporting the collective fabric of our society, even when action could help save lives and livelihoods.
DAKOTA CITY  Tyson Foods, by far the largest employer in metro Sioux City, is offering its front-line workers paid sick leave for the first time, part of an agreement that secured union support for its mandate that all U.S. employees get vaccinated against the COVID-19 virus.

The meatpacking giant said 90,000  or 75%  of its 120,000 U.S. workers have now been vaccinated, up from 50% when it announced the mandate on Aug. 3. Workers have until Nov. 1 to get vaccinated, but the agreement with the United Food and Commercial Workers provides for medical and religious exemptions.

Tyson Foods, which has over 4,500 employees and contractors at its flagship beef plant in Dakota City, Nebraska, is among the few companies with a large front-line workforce to impose a vaccine mandate so far. Many companies have taken aggressive steps to encourage workers to get the vaccines while avoiding mandates that could worsen a labor shortage.
From tweet to updated rebuttal - a little saga

Posted on 3 September 2021 by BaerbelW

This blog post tells the little saga of how a tweet aimed at Repustar's @Fact Sparrow led to a quickly drafted new Fact Brief and how our internal review of the brief made it clear in turn that our related rebuttals were in dire need of updates as well.

The Tweet

On July 19, Spencer Fletcher tweeted the question "Why was there an ice age in the paleozoic era even though CO2 was 3000 ppm?" at @Fact Sparrow, Repustar's friendly fact delivery bot:

FactSparrow logged Fletcher's concern about this topic and promised to keep looking for more information. Acting on this promise included a notifcation from Repustar's staff to our team, to see if we - as one of Repustar's content partners - could help out with a new Fact Brief to answer Spencer's question.

Drafting and reviewing the Fact Brief

As I had some time available, I quickly drafted a Fact Brief edited down to 140 words from our related rebuttal's basic version. That rebuttal version had placed a lot of emphasis on the fact that the sun was less bright in Earth's early history. But Earth has been around for 4.6 billion years, and the sun has only brightened by about 3% since the Paleozoic, so we needed to check it with team members who know about climates of the past, namely Peter Jacobs and Howard Lee. Both were quick to respond.

Peter referred me to a paper by Foster et al. 2017 showing CO 2 levels for the last 420 million years, in the context of a 4% increase in solar luminosity since then.

Howard pointed out that there was a load of newer, clearer data than those used for the rebuttal, and that in the process of reducing the Fact Brief to 140 words (the maximum allowed by Repustar), the Yes-No sense of the rebuttal had become reversed - it was now incorrect.

"When CO 2 was higher in the past climate was warmer, when it was lower in the past it was cold," Howard said in an email. "The solar luminosity thing is a red herring, especially since the weathering feedback has compensated for it (Foster et al. 2017) and the difference in luminosity is small over that time period. The Paleozoic ice age, for example, had CO 2 levels not far off those of the last 3 million years. The rebuttals figures based on Geocarbsulf are horribly out of date now. The Lavoisier denial is a mishmash of wrong facts and wrong inferences. There wasnt glaciation at times of high CO 2 . There isnt runaway greenhouse because of the weathering feedback. The Ordovician is pushing the limits of climate proxies but I recall there have been newer, improved proxy data even for back then."

Howard offered to revise both the Fact Brief and the rebuttals to bring them up-to-date with current information. As this would take some time, I added a note at the top of the rebuttals to make readers aware that updates were being worked on:

"Please note: Records of past CO 2 and temperature have improved considerably since this rebuttal was written, reconfirming CO 2 is the principal control knob on climate. This rebuttal is currently being revised and an updated version will be published as soon as it becomes available."

Updating the draft and publishing the Fact Brief

Howard quickly re-created the draft for the Fact Brief which then also had a reworded question and a "NO" as the answer - so, quite a u-turn from what we started out with!

Was there an ice age in the Earths past when CO2 was 3000ppm? NO There was an ice age around 340-290 million years ago during the Paleozoic, but CO2 was relatively low, at about 390ppm. A supercontinent at the South Pole, major mountain building, massive carbon burial in sediments (forming coal), along with a 3% dimmer sun back then, contributed to the low CO2 and cold climate. Data spanning more than 400 million years show that climate and CO2 levels have varied together. During ice ages CO2 levels were low, and during warm periods CO2 was higher. In the hot Eocene, for example, there were no polar ice caps, temperatures were about 10C hotter than the 20th Century, and CO2 was about 1,500ppm. In contrast, during the last Ice Age, CO2 varied between about 180 and 300ppm, close to Paleozoic Ice Age levels, as ice sheets waxed and waned with orbital wobbles.

I updated the draft in the Repustar editing system and also added the references Howard had included in the Fact Brief:

John Cook submitted the Fact Brief and Repustar published it on July 30, making this our fastest published brief to date with about 10 days from initial draft to publication!

Updating the rebuttals

With the Fact Brief "out of the way", Howard started to work on the rebuttals with the basic version as the first one to get updated. For this relatively short rebuttal version, Howard put the focus on the CO 2 concentrations of the past 420 million years and explained how Earths long-term climate (over millions of years) is governed by the balance between CO 2 emitted into the atmosphere by volcanoes and CO 2 removed from the atmosphere by weathering of rocks (Joel 2017).

Afterwards, Howard set out to work on the much longer and complex intermediate rebuttal version which expands on the basic version, and gets to grips with "Snowball Earth" scenarios where climate was temporarily cold when CO 2 was temporarily high. It also includes a list of non-CO 2 drivers of the climate system. Not only did Howard write this rebuttal version he also added about 50 references to our ever expanding glossary while doing so!

CO 2 levels for the last 420 million years, showing periods with ice ages. Note this curve is smoothed and too low resolution to show spikes in CO 2 , eg at the end-Permian, end-Cretaceous, PETM, etc. Data from Foster et al. nature communications 2017. Late Paleozoic Ice Age per Rolland et al. EPSL 2019. Preindustrial CO 2 278 ppm, 2021 CO 2 420ppm (CO2.Earth). Newer data zooming in on the last 66 million years can be found on the intermediate tab.

Epilog

In case you are wondering why we even tell this story, the reason is simple: it's a pretty good example for "how we work", namely that we strive to update our content once we are made aware of errors in e.g. our rebuttals. This may not always work quite as quickly as it did here, but we'll make an effort to get it done sooner rather than later. You can help with this task by alerting us of necessary updates via the Google form linked to at the end of each rebuttal as explained in the Housekeeping article published in December 2020.

So a big Thanks to Spencer Fletcher for setting things in motion with his tweet and to Howard Lee for updating the Fact Brief and rebuttal versions!
In a city gone dark, the St. Peter Apartments were a bright spot. After most of New Orleans power went out over the weekend, the 50-unit affordable housing complex in Mid-City had eight hours of electricity a day. Thats a luxury right this moment; nearly a million people in Louisiana have been without service since Hurricane Ida made landfall.

Residents at St. Peter Apartments can charge their phones and run appliances thanks to a 178-kilowatt solar array on the roof and a battery downstairs. We were able to give folks eight hours of energy in a city where no one else has power, said Lauren Avioli, director of housing development at SBP, the nonprofit that developed the complex, which also includes a community center. Ive been thinking a lot about how cool it would be for the community if more places had on-site battery storage systems, especially public buildings where people could come charge phones and so on.

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Ida knocked out eight of the eight transmission lines feeding New Orleans and thousands of miles of distribution lines. The citys core functions, like hospitals and drainage pumps, are running on diesel generators. Most people are stuck in dark, hot homes where nothing turns on.

The next time this happensand there will be a next timeNew Orleans ought to have solar panels and batteries at public buildings around the city and, more generally, more local power infrastructure thats ready for the grid to fail. In 2017, a team from Sandia National Laboratories studied New Orleans power problems and concluded that the city and its utility ought to plan for some degree of self-sufficiency, to operate localized sections of the grid without centralized utility power or communications for at least seven days, and up to 12-13 days for more critical functions where costs allow. In the electricity business, thats called distributed energy. Build with the expectation that the system will give out. Because it has, over and over again.

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Transmission hardening is necessary, said Logan Burke, the executive director of Louisianas Alliance for Affordable Energy. But we cant just assume they can build a strong-enough transmission system for this. Theres some vulnerability built in to the very idea of shipping electricity hundreds of miles, or even across town in the shade of trees liable to snap in a storm. The problem with distributed energy is that it cant yet replace the grid, and its expensive. But the cost of a prolonged citywide blackout can run into the billions of dollars.

Few cities have less reliable electric power than New Orleans. In the region, Ida marks the sixth time that more than 200,000 households have been without power for more than four days in the past 20 years. From 2011 to 2016, the city averaged more than 2,000 sustained outages a year. For their trouble, low-income households in New Orleans spend a greater portion of their income on energy bills than in almost any city in the country.

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Build with the expectation that the system will give out. Because it has, over and over again.

Its not like Entergy, the electric utility serving much of the Deep South, didnt see this coming. Hurricanes Rita, Katrina, Ike, and Gustav all knocked out power to the city. The provider boasted of state-of-the-art infrastructure on the west bank of the Mississippi and new transmission towers that could withstand 150 mph winds. The utility even built a new natural gas plant in New Orleans East that was intended to serve the city in the event of a transmission failurehiring actors to speak at community meetings in its defense. The towers and lines didnt make it; the plant took a few days to get back online too, and its promise to meet the citys needs has gone unmet.

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This is not to say Entergy cant do better. Rather, its to underscore that the utility, the city and state, and the legislators about to pass a massive federal infrastructure bill should all focus a little less on power transmission and a little more on local power generation.

That has not been Entergys strong point. Like utilities across the country, Entergy fought to limit the ability of solar-panel owners to sell their power back to the grid, a practice known as net metering that greatly offsets the costs of solar-panel installation. Utility companies argue that net metering sticks customers who dont have home-power generation with the costs of maintaining the grid.

This resistance to small-scale renewable energy might be baked into the way utilities are structured. One of the biggest things from a policy perspective is the business model that vertically integrated, investor-owned utilities have in this country, which strongly disincentivizes allowing customers to produce their own power or use storage, said Mark Dyson of the Rocky Mountain Institute, a clean energy think tank. Everything in the utility business model pushes against that, and as result, fewer folks are able to cost effectively install solar storage at home, or even the equivalent at campuses and community centers.

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Though Entergy made a grant to help SBP install its solar panels and battery at St. Peter Apartments, the companys endorsement of sustainable energy has been halfhearted at best. The subsidiary Entergy New Orleans established a program to install solar power at houses in the city; it wired just four homes a month over its first 18 months of operation. The city too has moved slowly to deploy a $5.75 million grant earmarked for microgrids that can function independently of Entergys system, despite longstanding plans to invest in the idea. (For comparisons sake, Entergy spent $210 million on the nearby gas plant.)

Solar penetration in New Orleans is pretty good, said Burke of the Alliance for Affordable Energy, in spite of disinterest from the powers that be. Whats missing are batteries. Thats where a recovery program can help: by building up what Burke called liability centers where communities know they have a clean and well-lit place to gather and organize during a disaster. Those buildings could run on diesel generators, as many emergency facilities in New Orleans do. But solar arrays and batteries would be cleaner, cheaper, and more reliable in the long run.

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Washington can help by prioritizing those local-level investments in the bipartisan infrastructure plan waiting to pass the House, because the weakness of the long-distance transmission system is not limited to Louisiana.

Everywhere in the country has some version of this, what Ill call a black sky threat, that has the potential to take out large portions of the transmission system in one event, said Dyson. Its the same problem even if the problem in California is wildfires, versus hurricanes in the Southeast. And the same general principle: locating at least some generation and storage near to customers, and reducing their reliance on what we know is a very fragile grid. In short, the grid will fail again. But we can be ready when it does.
In the dark of Wednesday night, five justices on the Supreme Court voted to allow Texas to effectively ban abortion. Their reasoning was related to the seemingly novel enforcement mechanism embedded in the bill by Texas lawmakersa mechanism many people, ourselves included, see as a form of vigilante justice. The law empowers anyone to sue Texas abortion providers, or anyone who helps anyone else get an abortion in Texas in any way, including driving pregnant persons to a clinic, housing them, or otherwise providing support. A successful lawsuit nets $10,000 plus legal fees for the vigilante; there is no risk of legal penalties for the person bringing the lawsuit, if the claim is not successfully proven.

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The five members of the Supreme Court claimed that this was such a new idea for enforcement that they couldnt strike down the law. (A more traditional response would be to keep the law from going into effect until after a full assessment of its constitutionality.) And the approach is new, in the context of the laws of the United States. But relying on neighbors to spy on neighbors, specifically in the realm of reproductionasking citizens to decide whose pregnancy, miscarriage, stillbirth, or abortion should be revealed to the authoritiesis in fact a tradition reaching back centuries.

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When the news about Texas broke, MSNBC legal analyst Neal Katyal went on air to say that Texas was on the verge of turning into something very medieval. But theres a key difference between then and now. In pre-modern Europe, as early as the ninth century, and especially in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and beyond, efforts to regulate pregnancy and criminalize infanticide are best understood as one part of a wide array of moral and legal decrees all intended to, above all, protect both pregnant women and children from all manner of accidental and intentional harm. Today, on the other hand, anti-abortion laws promote surveillance, criminalization, and control, driven by a movement that only cares about the fetus until the moment of birth. Its easy to assume that these vigilante tendencies around reproduction have deep roots, and to call them medieval as a way of distancing ourselves from the horror. In fact, they are the fruits of far more recent, and newly grafted, plantings.

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Before we describe how laws around reproduction worked in the pre-modern era, its important to know that medieval authorities routinely issued laws calling for fierce punishment for all kinds of crimes, but fell far short of regular enforcement. Both in text and in practice, they balanced ferocity with calls for mercy: The penitent should be forgiven. Life, including the lives of the worst offenders, should be preserved. This was not because kings and judges were nice guysthey assuredly were not. Instead, these powerful authorities feared judging too harshly, lest they be judged harshly, in the world to come. As a result, while prosecution of stillbirth or infanticide relied upon denunciation and rumor from neighbors, pardons and mitigated punishment had a predominant role in sentencing. These acts of mercy should be understood as part of that endeavor to avoid judicial overreach.

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Matters of sentencing aside, the laws concerning pregnancy and children should be recognized as emerging from a context of a broader obligation incumbent on all Christians to help to protect and preserve the lives of pregnant women, infants, and children. These vulnerable people lived in a world rife with environmental dangers: animals, diseases, food scarcity. They were also at risk from violence, corporal punishment, or neglectadults were busy with the labors of living in the Middle Ages, and not necessarily able to keep the kids safe from the livestock, the boiling water, the fire, or the well.

Local church laws from medieval Europe, for example, contain repeated calls for community leaders to join parents in doing all they could to protect and preserve life, especially that of the infants and children all too often surrounded by peril. Every Christian, according to these principles, had a moral obligation to protect pregnant women and children from all manner of possible harm. As a result, all persons involved in injury to a pregnant woman or child could be prosecuted and punished. For those suspected of provoking a miscarriage by forcing a pregnant woman to engage in heavy labor, for those whose runaway horse trampled an infant, for those who gave poisonous herbs to a pregnant woman desperate to terminate a pregnancy, or for the woman who herself smothered a newborn infantall of which are stories we find in the records of medieval courts and beyondwhile there could be harsh punishment, there could also be clemency.

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Even at the highest level, and in the most important law texts the Middle Ages produced on the topic of infant murder, forgiveness was the model to be followed. As Pope Alexander III wrote in his instructions to a bishop towards the close of the 1160s, writings that would subsequently form the standard legal doctrine on the subject, a single mother living in the county of Flanders had taken her newborn son to the man she claimed was the father. He had denied paternity and the mother, despairing, killed the infant. The count of Flanders banished her and she, cast out, decided to go to Jerusalem to atone. She had stopped off to see the pope on her way, to confess her sins and ask for penance. The pope rejected her idea of travel to Jerusalem, but moved by her tears, decided that she should return to Flanders. If she were willing, she should spend the rest of her life in a convent. But if she did not feel capable of a life of chastity, she was free to marry.

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Neither this example, nor our general description of the place of clemency, mercy, and restoration of community in medieval law enforcement, is intended to exonerate the Middle Ages of its myriad manifestations of patriarchal oppression. Rather, we hope to explain that the underlying concern of their laws regulating abortion, neonaticide, or the death of a child was a focus on the preservation of lifethe whole life, not just that of a fetus.

Laws depending on neighbors deciding to turn in neighbors for infanticide and related crimes grew harsher in early modern Europe, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but even here, scholars like Julie Hardwick have explained that the chief aim was not punishment of pregnant women. Pregnancy surveillance laws issued in the sixteenth century and beyond were intended to induce pregnant unmarried women to name the fathers, so that local authorities could then push the putative father to either marry the woman, or to provide for the childs support.

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To call whats just happened in Texas medieval is wrong, but this is a common move intending to impose what we call chronological alterity between us and something that we abhor. It might make us feel better to describe the law this way, but it actually makes it harder to fight. The Texas law that these ready and willing vigilantes are so eager to take advantage of coexists not with a general ethic of protection for women and children, but with child abuse and sexual exploitation of minors, high maternal and infant mortality rates in the Black population, lack of protections for pregnant women in the workplace, and the dangerous treatment of incarcerated pregnant women.

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We arent here to act as apologists for either medieval or early modern Europe. We just want to point out that oppressive legal systems have long relied on vigilantes to let the state know what women were doing with their own bodies, while also recognizing that the purpose and function of the Texas law is entirely new. Its a 21st-century exploitation of peoples hatred of each other. It deserves a different, and higher, level of condemnation.
On Sept. 1, a new law banning abortion after six weeks took effect in Texas. The measure, known as SB 8, will not be enforced by government officialsinstead it allows anyone to sue any individual who performs, aids, or abets such an abortion for a minimum of $10,000 plus attorneys fees. Republican lawmakers devised this convoluted structure to insulate the law from judicial review, and so far, the gambit has worked: At midnight on Wednesday, the Supreme Court refused to block SB 8 by a 54 vote, citing complex and novel procedural questions. The decision effectively overturned Roe v. Wade by allowing Texas to ban abortions before viability, a direct affront to nearly 50 years of precedent.

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SB 8 has prompted widespread outrage already, but theres also been a great deal of confusion about how, exactly, it is meant to function. As Chief Justice John Roberts noted in dissent, its scheme is not only unusual, but unprecedented. No state has ever before tried to get around the Constitution by deputizing private parties to carry out unconstitutional restrictions on the states behalf, in Justice Sonia Sotomayors words. No one knows exactly how SB 8 will work in practice yet. Below is a list of questions and answers about SB 8, roughly ordered from straightforward to ambiguous to unknowable.

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Does SB 8 criminalize abortion?

No. SB 8 does not allow government officials to prosecute anyone for performing or abetting an abortion. Rather, it allows private citizens to sue anyone who performed or abetted an abortion in Texas. Thus, while the measure bans abortion after six weeks, it does not criminalize it. These abortions are illegal in the sense that they violate state law, but they are not (yet) a criminal act.

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Are you liable under SB 8 if you induce your own abortion?

Probably not. The bill does not permit lawsuits against patients on whom an abortion is performed or induced. So if a person obtains an abortion from a physician, then as a patient, she cannot be sued. But what if she terminates her own pregnancy using abortion pills she bought online? SB 8s language does not envision this possibility and conceives of abortion exclusively as something that one person does to another. The exemption here appears broad enough to prevent litigation against patients who self-terminate. As a result, Texans who have miscarriages also cannot be sued under SB 8though their doctors, friends, and family may fall under suspicion for clandestinely abetting the end of a pregnancy.

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Note, though, that obtaining abortion pills online, or shipping them into Texas from another state, violates other state laws, including strict limits on medication abortion. Any one Texas resident who self-terminates in this way opens themselves up to both civil and criminal liability.

Can insurance companies be held liable under SB 8?

Yes. The bill bars insurance providers from paying for or reimbursing the costs of an abortion. Under existing Texas law, patients may only acquire insurance coverage for abortions through a supplemental plan called a rider. But these riders are now functionally illegal, since any insurance company that offered or honored them would be liable for at least $10,000.

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If you lose an SB 8 suit, do you have to pay the other sides attorneys fees?

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It depends on what side youre on. If you bring a lawsuit under SB 8 and win, you get to collect attorneys fees from the defendant (in addition to the main payout). If you face a lawsuit under SB 8 and win, you get nothing. The law therefore incentivizes frivolous, harassing lawsuits, because plaintiffs need not pay their targets attorneys fees if they lose.

Do you have to live in Texas to file an SB 8 suit?

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No. You merely need to file the lawsuit in Texas state court. You can live anywhere.

What happens to abortion providers who are sued under SB 8?

Most public outcry over SB 8 has focused on the monetary damages. But the measure includes another layer of punishment: If a plaintiff prevails under SB 8, the court must issue injunctive relief sufficient to prevent the defendant from violating the law again. Marc Hearron, a lawyer for the Center for Reproductive Rights who asked SCOTUS to block the law, told Slate that this provision would shut down abortion providers. If a plaintiff prevailed in an SB 8 suit against a clinic, the court would have to issue an injunction preventing future violations of the law, which Hearron said would probably take the form of a court order shutting down the clinic.

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Does SB 8 prohibit Texas residents from traveling to another state to get an abortion?

SB 8s text does not explicitly limit its scope to Texas. As a general constitutional principle, however, one state cannot regulate the medical practice of anothers. So the bills restrictions on abortion almost certainly apply only within Texas borders. The tougher question is whether the bills restrictions on aiding or abetting an abortion could apply even if the procedure occurred out-of-state. For instance, if you drove a friend from Texas to New Mexico to terminate a pregnancy, could you be sued in Texas for aiding or abetting her abortion?

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Probably not, though the answer is unclear. SB 8 bars aiding or abetting an abortion thats performed in violation of Texas law. Again, an abortion performed in New Mexico does not violate SB 8, which seems to regulate the practice of medicine within Texas. Helping a Texas resident travel elsewhere to terminate a pregnancy thus appears unlikely to fall under the law. But the text is ambiguous enough that an aggressive anti-abortion advocate could certainly file a lawsuit attempting to punish such behavior. And the onus would fall on the abettor to prove that their conduct falls outside SB 8.

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If someone aids or abets an abortion in Texas but lives in another state, can Texas punish them? For example, say you live in New York but donate to an abortion fund that pays for procedures that violate SB 8. Can you be sued?

The text of the bill does not limit its geographic scope in this regard, so the answer may well be yes, at least in theory. Giving money for the specific purpose of aiding or abetting a Texas abortion likely establishes the minimum contacts necessary for a Texas court to assert jurisdiction over an out-of-state resident.

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Can Texas actually ensure that out-of-state defendants pay up?

Probably not, but its complicated. Texas has few if any tools to haul non-Texans facing lawsuits into its state courts. It seems improbable that judges would send out marshals to hunt down no-shows, or that many states would cooperate if they tried. That doesnt mean the out-of-state abettor is off the hook: If a defendant in an SB 8 lawsuit fails to appear in court, the judge must automatically rule against them. Courts might fine these defendants but lack the ability to enforce their decisions. Abortion fund donors may therefore find themselves on the hook for more than $10,000 (plus attorneys fees) the next time they cross into Texas state lines.

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In this sense, there is a parallel between SB 8 and the stringent Alabama defamation laws that the Supreme Court struck down in 1964s landmark New York Times v. Sullivan. Alabama used these laws to chill the expression of out-of-state speakers who sought to report on the civil rights struggle or criticize Jim Crow. The threat of ruinous libel suits in Alabama courts limited this kind of media coverage throughout the U.S. Similarly, Texas is using the threat of ruinous lawsuits to stop pro-choice advocates throughout the country from supporting abortion within the state.

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Is there an exception for rape and incest?

There is no general exception; in virtually all cases, a pregnancy that resulted from rape or incest may not be terminated, either. There is one minor exception: The person who impregnated the abortion patient through an act of rape or incest may not file a suit over her abortion. But this rule is highly ambiguous. For instance, what if a man impregnates a woman who gets an abortion, then sues under SB 8, and the woman accuses him of rape? If he has not been convicted or even chargedand most rapes are not reportedhow can courts know whether he is truly a rapist? It seems his culpability would be adjudicated as part of the civil proceeding. The victim would then be dragged into the litigation and interrogated.

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Does SB 8 violate HIPAA?

SB 8 allows anyone to collect at least $10,000 if they can prove that (1) someone performed an abortion after six weeks, (2) someone aided or abetted a banned abortion, (3) someone formed the intent to perform a banned abortion, or (4) someone formed the intent to aid and abet a banned abortion. So how does the plaintiff prove the abortion occurred? The federal health care law known as HIPAA strictly limits health care providers ability to share confidential medical records with third parties. But the law specifically pertains to medical records, so nosy neighbors do not run afoul of HIPAA by telling a court that they suspect someone of getting an abortion. (Similarly, private citizens cannot violate HIPAA by simply asking someone about their vaccine status, or even by revealing that someone has not been vaccinated.)

But if these nosy neighbors filed an SB 8 suit, could they get their hands on someones abortion records to prove that it occurred? Presumably, though they would have to file suit first, then ask a judge to make the clinic turn over the paperwork. Such an order might conflict with HIPAA by forcing the unapproved transmission of private medical information. The conundrum is made stickier by the fact that the patient herself is not (and cannot) be a party to the suit, potentially limiting discovery into her records. David Donatti, a staff attorney with the Texas ACLU, captured the confusion over patient privacyand many other lingering questions about SB 8 when he told KVUE, I dont know that anybody knows.
ARCHIVED - Incidence rate in younger population plummets: Spain Covid update September 2



Every region in Spain has experienced an overall decline but death toll continues to climb in fifth wave

The latest data published by the Ministry of Health in Spain on Thursday September 3 show that the 14-day cumulative incidence rate has fallen by a further 11 points to 210 cases per 100,000 inhabitants and is now approaching the high risk threshold of 150 on a day when the government has announced plans to vaccinate 90 per cent of the population . Crucially, the incidence in the younger populations, who have been the hardest hit in this wave of the pandemic , has fallen more than 1,000 points in just one month, although the 12 to 29 age group still has the highest overall incidence rate.

The 20 to 29 population has dropped from 1,626 cases per 100,000 on August 2 to just 290 this Thursday, while those aged between 12 and 19 years have experienced a decline from 1,516 infections last month to 398 this week. The age bracket that has decreased the least includes those under 11, who arent yet being vaccinated in Spain.

Despite the general decline, there are still eight regions that have cumulative incidence rates of more than 250 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, placing them firmly in the extreme risk category: Melilla (428), Ceuta (419), Extremadura (413), Basque Country (278), La Rioja (268), Cantabria (267), Castilla-La Mancha (265) and the Balearic Islands (253).

On the other hand, absolutely every community has experienced a decline compared to Wednesday, with the most marked decreases in Extremadura (down 30 points), La Rioja (down 18 points) and Cantabria (down 17 points).

New infections, however, are on the rise again with 9,561 cases recorded yesterday, bringing the total number of infections since the beginning of the pandemic up to almost five million (4,871,444). This new high daily number comes after the lowest figure since June 25 was recorded the previous day.

Moreover, Covid-related deaths show no signs of improvement unfortunately. In the last 24 hours, 168 more fatalities were reported, the second-highest figure this week. Overall, since August 26, there have been 779 deaths in Spain, bringing the total death toll to 84,640.

Hospital pressure continues its very gradual decline. According to the Ministry, there are currently 6,288 people hospitalised with Covid (compared to 6,623 the previous day), which corresponds to 5.34 per cent of available hospital beds. There are 1,491 patients in ICUs, accounting for 16.2 per cent of beds.

Image: Ayuntamiento Torre Pacheco
In the middle of Grand Circuit month at Woodbine Mohawk Park, five of Canada's leading drivers will make the trip to Clinton Raceway on Sunday (Sept. 5) for that ovals annual Charity Drivers' Challenge.

Over the past 40 years, the event has raised in excess of $332,000 for a variety of community organisations in and around Clinton, and drivers from the provinces premier circuit have been an essential ingredient in its success.

Its been a good event for local charities, and its always had the same theme, said Clinton Raceways general manager Ian Fleming. We invite some drivers from out of town that people are familiar with from racing on the Woodbine circuit and then, this year its a little bit different, weve got our leading driver Travis Henry, and last years winner Brett MacDonald, and weve added in Natasha Day, who won the Ontario Womens Driving title. Its always a big day for us.

Representing Woodbine Mohawk Park in the 41st annual Charity Drivers' Challenge are Trevor Henry, Bob McClure, Jody Jamieson, James MacDonald and Doug McNair. All are repeat participants in the event, and all but McClure have claimed at least one title, with Jamieson the ranking heavyweight at six wins.

I think Ive only missed one year, maybe two, in the last 20, said Jamieson, who is currently ranked third in Canada, having driven his mounts to more than $2.5 million in earnings. Its always nice to give back and its always a nice day there. Its fun to have a little competition.

The drivers will accumulate points based on where they finish in the eight challenge races, and the top point earner will be declared the 2021 champion. The other big winner will be Branch 140 of the Royal Canadian Legion. Drivers typically receive 5 per cent of their mounts purse earnings, but on Sunday, those fees will be donated to the Clinton Legion, along with the proceeds from a silent auction and 50-50 draw.

I like raising money for the Legion. Its a good cause, and I know this year of all years they are struggling more than ever, so its good to be able to chip in and help them out, said McClure, who sits just behind Jamieson in the national drivers standings and is the reigning Ontario Sires Stakes Lampman Cup champion. Its a fun day to be a part of and its a good cause too, so it certainly is not a burden to take a Sunday off to head down there and participate.

James MacDonald currently leads all drivers in the country in both earnings and number of wins  more than $3.2 million and 156  and also sits atop the OSS Lampman Cup point standings. He won the Clinton Raceway Charity Drivers' Challenge title in 2014 and said the event is always competitive in spite of its philanthropic purpose.

You cant do anything with these drivers without it being super competitive, so its a fun day and we get to raise some money for a good cause, said MacDonald. I love driver challenges and I think most of the drivers do. They love them until theyre not doing well and then they hate them, myself included.

After the challenge wraps up, the drivers will have a second chance for success as Clinton Raceway hosts the fourth OSS Grassroots leg for two-year-old pacing colts.

Post time for the 41st annual Charity Drivers' Challenge this Sunday is 1:30 p.m. Fans can find more information, including a free program and live stream, on the Clinton Raceway website.

To view Sunday's complete entries, click the following link: Sunday Entries  Clinton Raceway.

(Clinton Raceway)
The USCTs first combat occurred on May 15, 1864, when Rosser advanced his cavalry detachment along Catharpin Road to learn the Union armys position. His men encountered and repulsed the 2nd Ohio Cavalry.

But the nearby 23rd United States Colored Infantry hurried forward to Catharpin Roads intersection with Orange Plank Road, skirmished with the rebels and forced Rosser to withdraw.

The Battle of Spotsylvania Court House, also known as the Battle of Spotsylvania, was the second major battle in Grants 1864 Overland Campaign, which led 11 months later to the surrender of Lees Army of Northern Virginia in the village of Appomattox Courthouse.

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The Spotsylvania combatthe costliest battle of the campaigninflicted nearly 32,000 casualties on the two armies.

It followed the bloody but inconclusive Battle of the Wilderness in Orange and Spotsylvania counties. Grants army disengaged from Lees army and headed southeast, where Grant tried to lure Lee into battle under more favorable conditions.
For superintendent Nicole Regan, the entire day opened her eyes to how the school might get more involved in connecting with individuals like Stinner and organizations like Stand for Schools to help advocate for the education of their students.

With bringing (in) the state senators, as Anne and Daniel have with this opportunity, its just bringing them so they do understand what were doing, she said. I think they hear it in a different way at the legislature, but when youre actually in here and you see kids, and you can talk to kids, and talk to people that are really doing the ground work  I know theyre really busy, and we try and respect them for that, but maybe we need to do a bigger approach of just getting more engaged with them on our campus. Its a good learning opportunity.

Thats exactly how Hunter-Pirtle sees their visits to schools across the state, and shes always amazed by the dedication every community has to its students.
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Leaders from the Lake Cities and Corinth Police Departments met Aug. 18 to discuss plans for the trial merger of the two departments, which began Wednesday.
Pictured: a 2019 ceremony in The Colony wherein a piece of steel from the World Trade Center was placed on a stand in front of Fire Station No. 4 in The Colony
Piedmont HealthCare welcomes Dr. Jeffrey T. Reeves, MD, to Piedmont Bone & Joint. Reeves is an orthopedic surgeon and specializes in hip and knee replacements.

Born and raised in Dayton, Ohio, Reeves completed his undergraduate education at The Ohio State University with a bachelor of science in biology. He then completed his medical school training and orthopedic surgery residency at Wright State University, Boonshoft School of Medicine. Following residency, Reeves sought out fellowship training in adult reconstruction, hip and knee replacements, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, at Holy Cross Hospital. There he trained with world renowned mentors in robotic assisted knee and hip arthroplasty as well as anterior approach total hip arthroplasty.

Its an exciting time to be joining Piedmont Healthcare, said Reeves. We have orthopedic specialists to take care of patients literally from head to toe. I am excited to bring my expertise in hip and knee replacements, including revision work, to the Statesville and Mooresville communities.

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Dennis Beaver Practices law in Bakersfield and welcomes comments and questions from readers, which may be faxed to (661) 323-7993, or e-mailed to Lagombeaver1@gmail.com. And be sure to visit dennisbeaver.com.
When people are convicted of crimes, they often owe money to the court and victims families, in addition to serving time in jail or prison. According to the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington, the average amount of these Legal Financial Obligations, or LFOs, for a felony case in Washington state is $2,540. Cowlitz County Prosecuting Attorney Ryan Jurvakainen said people are entitled to the amount of fees they paid, not what they were ordered to pay.

Invalid law

In February, the state Supreme Court ruled Washingtons simple drug possession law was unconstitutional. The ruling, known as the Blake decision, overturned roughly 40 years of convictions of people possessing drugs for their own use, as opposed to selling narcotics.

Myklebust said it is unclear if the state will have enough funds to cover the countys total reimbursement fees because the figure is subject to change, as, over time, people continue to vacate their convictions, enabling them to receive refunds. She said most of the county court fees goes to the state, and a small portion is allocated to the county general fund.

After the state Supreme Court ruling, simple drug possession convictions werent automatically erased. County officials where the convictions took place are re-evaluating sentences without the unconstitutional charge and holding hearings to finalize new sentences, or completing paperwork to remove convictions from records. Jurvakainen said his office likely will be working on vacations of Blake case convictions for a very long time.

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Commissioner of Public Lands Hilary Franz is asking the public over the Labor Day weekend to stay vigilant and help prevent human-caused wildfires.

This is not the time to let our guard down, Franz said in a press release from the Washington Department of Natural Resources. Last year, only 93,000 acres had burned by the end of August. What happened next showed us how fast things can change  the Labor Day weekend firestorm burned more than 500,000 acres in less than 36 hours. Im asking the public to help prevent a repeat of last years tragedy by avoiding starting outdoor fires.

The fires that started on Labor Day weekend last year accounted for more than 70% of all acres burned in 2020. The fires also destroyed the town of Malden and burned 283 homes and more than 600,000 acres across the state. The smoke also temporarily gave Western Washington the worst air quality in the world, according to the press release.

This year, fire season started several months earlier than usual because of drought and heat, leaving firefighters worn out and resources spread thin, the press release said.
A solar storm has a massive potential for destruction, especially when it comes to electronics and infrastructure. So, any big enough solar storm today, would have a catastrophic impact on the global infrastructure that keeps our Internet running. However, if the digital infra is destroyed, it will bring the Internet down along with it. An Internet outage in this modern era will not only cause massive money loss, it would also cost many lives. The Internet is the backbone of everything that happens in the world today, but nothing carries a greater threat of a mass outage than solar storms. A big enough solar storm today, referred to as a 'solar superstorm', can threaten this very backbone. The world, as such, in unprepared for a solar storm-Internet linked apocalypse. This is in addition to having an impact on the electrical grids, which has already been documented in the case of past solar storms that were truly massive in nature.

Solar storm and the Internet: Sangeetha Abdu Jyothi starts her research paper with this sentence, "Black swan events are hard-to-predict rare events that can significantly alter the course of our lives. The Internet has played a key role in helping us deal with the coronavirus pandemic, a recent black swan event. However, Internet researchers and operators are mostly blind to another black swan event that poses a direct threat to Internet infrastructure. We investigate the impact of solar superstorms that can potentially cause large-scale Internet outages covering the entire globe."

Also read: Looking for a smartphone? Check Mobile Finder here.

What is a solar storm? For those who are not familiar with the term solar storm, heres a quick explainer. A Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) is popularly known as a solar storm. It is a directional ejection of a large mass of highly magnetized particles from the Sun. When the Earth is in the direct path of a solar storm, these magnetized and charged solar particles interact with the Earths magnetic field and produce a number of effects, which includes damaging vital parts of long-distance sea cables that make up the backbone of the Internet. They also create the beautiful lighting seen in Aurora Borealis.

How solar storm will cause Internet outage: The internet today primarily uses fiber optic cables. However, these are mostly immune to solar storms since they carry light and not electric current. But, long haul cables use an accompanying conductor that connects repeaters in series along the length of cables called the power feeding line. According to a research paper published by Sangeetha Abdu Jyothi of the University of California, Irvine and VMware Research, a solar storm will impact this conductor and the world needs to sit up, take notice. More than that, they should prepare for any solar storm caused Internet apocalypse..

The researcher says that submarine cables are more vulnerable to a solar storm today than land cables. This is mostly due to the fact they have larger lengths and hence have more repeaters.

The researcher also indicated the impact of a solar storm on the internet infrastructure is also based on the area where the fiber optics cable has been placed. In her research paper, Jyothi has explained that cables in the US are highly susceptible to disconnection from Europe. Similarly, Europe is in a vulnerable location but is more resilient due to the presence of a larger number of shorter cables. Asia, on the other hand, has relatively high resilience with Singapore acting as a hub with connections to several countries.

Furthermore, the researcher also determined that Google data centers were more resilient than Facebooks data centers, which means that your data on Google is safer in case a solar storm does hit the Earth when compared with your data on Facebook.

Nasa says one of the largest events caused by such a storm was dubbed as the Carrington event, which hit Earth at 11:18 AM on a cloudless morning of Thursday, September 1, 1859. According to Nasa, "Telegraph systems worldwide went haywire. Spark discharges shocked telegraph operators and set the telegraph paper on fire. Even when telegraphers disconnected the batteries powering the lines, aurora-induced electric currents in the wires still allowed messages to be transmitted." Carrington event was dubbed as a solar superstorm by many thereafter.
The MAXIMA and MINIMA sensors were used to measure COVID-19 particles at the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. Credit: University of Miami

In the not-so-distant-future, Pratim Biswas envisions a time when people can measure their risk of catching COVID-19 in all sorts of environmentslike restaurants, doctor's offices, and hospitalsby simply wearing a small air quality sensor and connecting it to an application on their phone.

Biswas, a veteran aerosol scientist who is dean of the University of Miami College of Engineering, has been refining these sensors for years, with the original goal of monitoring air quality for industrial workers in different settings. But when COVID-19 came along, it provided an even more pertinent avenue for the devices, which absorb air from a small box that can be worn or a larger one placed on the wall.

"Air quality sensors are a pretty new field, and we are one of the pioneers of using them for COVID-19 detection," Biswas said, adding that two of his former graduate students even formed a company, Applied Particle Technology, to mass produce the wearable sensors before the pandemic. "The MAXIMA device is a somewhat larger unit and is placed on a surface such as the wall and the MINIMA is the wearable sensor, and they can exchange data with each other as well as with a dashboard."

Yet, as the world began to focus on the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020, Biswas's aerosol research shifted, too. He is now working on several projects that reveal how SARS-CoV-2the virus that causes COVID-19spreads through the air and how engineers can help people to reduce their chances of contracting the illness. While the sensors currently measure all airborne particles in real time, Biswas wants to integrate them with technology that could indicate whether the particles contain active viruses.

"In the future, these sensors could even be applicable to the flu and other viruses, which may be less severe but are still important to monitor," he said. "And if there's an increase in virus concentration levels, the sensor could set off a warning."

In fact, Biswas and one of his Ph.D. students, Sukrant Dhawan, even published a paper outlining how SARS-CoV-2 virus can travel through the air in droplets. In it, they explained that some of the smallest particles can linger in the air for hours after an infected person talks, coughs, sneezes, or breathes and that some particles can travel more than 6 feet from an infected person. Biswas and Dhawan also crafted their own computer model that can compute a person's risk of being infected from someone standing in front of them with COVID-19, based on the circumstances of the uninfected individual.

Biswas and his team at the Aerosol and Air Quality Laboratorypreviously based at Washington University in St. Louis, and now located at the University of Miamiare also looking at the effectiveness of different COVID-19 prevention strategies, such as masks and ventilation systems to help lower the risk of indoor transmission. In another study, they measured the efficacy of several types of masks and found that the N95 and KN95 masks are ideal, but if people do not have access to these, it is important to use some type of mask, Biswas said.

The researchers also wanted to measure the risk of being infected with COVID-19 in places like a hospital waiting room, an orchestra hall, and a dental office. Therefore, Biswas' team, including Shruti Choudary, a doctoral student in chemical, environmental, and materials engineering, set up their MAXIMA and wearable MINIMA sensors in a variety of locations in the St. Louis region. They then created heat maps showing where the highest levels of aerosols were located.

Although they are still analyzing the data, early indications reveal that the air in hospital waiting rooms with adequate ventilation was relatively clean, whereas dental offices and orchestra halls had more hot spots, or locations of higher particle concentrations, with the potential for more COVID-19 transmission. Based on these measurements, they also found solutions to minimize the level of airborne particle concentrations in orchestra halls.

"You can create a certain ventilation pattern to clean the area where the aerosols are building up," Biswas explained. "In the case of the orchestra, the facility could direct the ventilation system to suck out the air from the area of heavily emitted aerosol concentrations at a higher rate."

Meanwhile, in dental offices, they learned that ventilation and masking are also critical, and they also realized that certain procedures may put the dentist and staff at a higher risk. Therefore, Biswas' team suggested certain strategies for those procedures, such as using suction tools more often to protect both the dentist and any dental workers in close contact with patients.

"This was the first study of its kind to deploy real-time instrumentation to precisely map out the airborne concentrations of particulate matter in these environments," Biswas noted.

Meanwhile, Biswas said that he hopes that once they are refined, the MINIMA and MAXIMA sensors will be able to track COVID-19 for businesses and individual consumers. And the more sensors that are deployed, Biswas added, the more accurately they can predict potential risks from the spread of disease.

"The sensors could give information in real time, and if there were a network of them throughout the community, an application could take that data and alert people to take extra precautions if there's a high level of virus particles near them," he said.

More information: Sukrant Dhawan et al, Aerosol Dynamics Model for Estimating the Risk from Short-Range Airborne Transmission and Inhalation of Expiratory Droplets of SARS-CoV-2, Environmental Science & Technology (2021). Journal information: Environmental Science & Technology Sukrant Dhawan et al, Aerosol Dynamics Model for Estimating the Risk from Short-Range Airborne Transmission and Inhalation of Expiratory Droplets of SARS-CoV-2,(2021). DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.1c00235
Apple is bending strategically to growing anti-monopoly pressure, analysts say.

Apple has unveiled major changes to its app store after years of criticism, as the Silicon Valley colossus tries to stave off a deeper, swelling effort to regulate Big Tech, experts said Thursday.

In a matter of days the company has announced long-demanded concessions after seeing investigations, lawsuits and rules pile up against what critics call an abuse of global dominance by Apple and other big firms.

"Looks like a preemptive movegetting out in front of possible DOJ (US government) action", tweeted CNBC contributor Lawrence McDonald, after news Wednesday that certain companies would be allowed to bypass some App Store control and charges.

Experts see the changes from Apple as proof that Big Tech companies have succumbed to pressure and decided to give an inch to try to avoid a collision with government rules that they would not control.

Apple's concessions were rare and "extraordinary", but calculated, Joshua Davis, a University of San Francisco law professor, told AFP.

"Apple's strategy, at this point seems to be to try to find a compromise where it can maintain most of its practicesand the profits it makes from those practicesand give away as little as it can," said Davis.

The concessions made in recent days deal specifically with the App Store rules that centralize control with Apple but also profits.

Until now, those restrictions have allowed Apple to take a cut of up to 30 percent for purchases of apps and payments made inside apps downloaded via the App Store, which Google also does through its Play Store.

The tech giants, whose operating systems run on 99 percent of the world's smartphones, have argued this is fair compensation for providing the platforms that allow apps to be downloaded in the first place.

But developers are furious over the lost profits, and Apple is fighting a high-stakes legal battle with video game company Epic on just that question.

So far Apple agreed at the end of August to loosen payment restrictions on its App Store. The decision came after a class-action lawsuit from small developers that accused it of running a monopoly.

'Arbitrary, self-serving steps'

Then came the announcement late Wednesday that Apple would allow media apps to steer customers directly to their websites, in a deal brokered with Japanese regulators but which will take effect globally next year.

The modification will spare apps that provide newspapers, books, music or video from having to use the App Store payment system and thus avoid paying a 30 percent commission.

As it stands, the changes are no threat to Apple's economic model, which generated, on its App Store alone, $72 billion in revenue in 2020, according to Sensor Tower, a data and insight company.

Apple lauded the policy change as helping "make it easier for users... while protecting their privacy and maintaining their trust."

Many of the people directly impacted by Apple's change of heart, weren't impressed.

"Our goal is to restore competition once and for all, not one arbitrary, self-serving step at a time," tweeted Daniel Ek, founder and CEO of Spotify music streaming service.

"We will continue to push for a real solution," he added.

A change of the magnitude that Ek describes, may not come willingly from Silicon Valley's giants.

There has been some movement in Washington, with lawmakers debating legislation aimed at curbing the staggering power of Big Tech, but no new rules yet.

However, South Korea passed a law this week banning Apple and Google from forcing app developers to use the companies' payment systems, effectively declaring their lucrative App Store and Play Store monopolies illegal.

Apple and Google "are facing pressure from around the world, to open up their systems," Mark MacCarthy, a tech industry expert at the Brookings Institution think tank, told AFP.

"We'll see how the system responds to that and how... effectively they can continue to operate in the face of these challenges," he added.

Explore further Apple plans to loosen App Store payment policy

 2021 AFP
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

China's biggest chipmaker said Friday it would invest $8.87 billion in a new semiconductor plant in Shanghai, as Beijing is hit by a US blacklist and a global chip shortage.

The country is running extremely low on advanced microchips following a US ban on many sales to the country, and after production lines were hit by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The US government blacklisted Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC) last September over security concerns, denying it access to advanced manufacturing equipment from American suppliers.

On Friday SMICwhich has denied links to the Chinese militarysaid it would pour investment into a new chip plant in the east of the country.

"The new plant in Shanghai will produce about 100,000 12-inch wafers per month," SMIC said in filing to the Hong Kong stock exchange.

These are older-generation chips globally in short supply, and used in everything from home appliances to self-driving cars.

"The US tech export ban has affected plans to develop smaller, more advanced chips," the group's CEO Zhang Haijun told state-run Global Times last month.

SMIC has received billions of dollars in support from Beijing and is at the heart of its efforts to improve the country's technological self-sufficiency.

There has been a flurry of new investment pledges by chipmakers after major Chinese tech hubs announced concessions including tax breaks and low rents in recent months.

SMIC announced plans to build smaller semiconductor factories in Beijing and Shenzhen earlier this year.

In April, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.the world's biggest contract chipmakersaid it would invest $2.8 billion to expand its production capacity in Nanjing.

Explore further China chip giant SMIC shares dive on US export controls

 2021 AFP
Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

Lately, it seems the place to be for job seekers is TikTok, where users are posting video resumesand racking up impressive page viewsas they look to set themselves apart in increasingly competitive candidate pools.

On the popular video app, a one-minute video can draw hundreds of comments and shares, resulting in multiple job leadseven interview requests.

For job seekers, those kinds of stats are compelling, as is the prospect of being able to tell their stories in a way that goes beyond the humdrum, one-page resume. But, for employers, there are additional points to consider with the TikTok resume trend, recommends Maryland Smith's Cynthia Kay Stevens.

Human resources industry experts have long cautioned companies about peeping at the social media accounts of job applicants. The drawbacks of using social media in professional contexts are exactly the same even if the platform differs.

Employers who use TikTok, Facebook, Twitter or other social networks to evaluate job candidates run certain risks, including overlooking potentially strong non-video savvy applicants or unwittingly succumbing to bias, Stevens says. Social media profiles and TikTok resumes almost always include user images, which can reveal the candidate's age, race, weight and level of attractivenessfactors that are more easily obscured in a resume.

Plus, many people's social media feeds divulge other details that aren't within the purview of the traditional resume, but that could bias a potential employer: political leanings, religious affiliations, sexual orientation and parental status, for example.

And it's not just what's on social media that can trigger bias, Stevens cautions. It's also what's not there.

"TikTok users skew younger than the U.S. population as a whole, with a third of users between ages 10 and 19 and 50% under age 34," Stevens says. "Keep in mind that the EEOC prohibits discriminating against prospective employees on the basis of age."

A key consideration is what applicants would be asked to do on the job. The closer that work is to creating visually impactful video or social media content, the fewer problems employers will face. The farther from such work, the more problematic it becomes to use TikTok resumes.

Yet, given the choice between a job candidate whose video portrays amusing, creative, or stylishly edited content and one who submits a traditional paper resume, a hiring manager may feel justified in favoring the TikTok candidate, Stevens says. They intuitively feel as if they know more about that person and what type of employee they would be.

The trick is to acknowledge what we do and do not knowto recognize that we are assuming qualifications for the TikTokers and missing information about non-TikTok candidates.

"When we have different amounts of information about things we are trying to choose between, we lean toward the thing we have more information about, without even realizing that we're missing the whole picture," Stevens says.

Explore further TikTok launches video resume feature as US firms struggle to hire
Stephen Thaler had applied for patents on behalf of his DABUS machine in 2019, only to have US patent officials conclude the AI didn't qualify because it isn't an individual.

A US judge has ruled that artificial intelligence can't get a patent for its creations, ruling that such a privilege is reserved for people.

District court judge Leonie Brinkema backed a decision by the US patent office to turn away applications made on behalf of a "creativity machine" named DABUS.

Brinkema issued a ruling on Thursday saying that "the clear answer is 'no'" to the question of whether an AI machine qualifies as an inventor under patent law.

"As technology evolves, there may come a time when artificial intelligence reaches a level of sophistication that might satisfy accepted meanings of inventorship," Brinkema said in the ruling.

"But that time has not yet arrived and, if it does, it will be up to Congress to decide how, if at all, it wants to expand the scope of patent law."

Stephen Thaler had applied for patents on behalf of his DABUS machine in 2019, only to have US patent officials conclude the AI didn't qualify because it isn't an individual, according to court documents.

"The AI came up with the invention and not me, so it would be inaccurate to list myself as the inventor," Thaler said in response to an AFP inquiry.

One of the purported inventions was for a light beacon that flashes to attract attention, and the other for a beverage container "based on fractal geometry."

Brinkema said in the ruling that the law lets "individuals" hold patents, and peoplenot machinesfall into that category.

Thaler's attorney, Ryan Abbott, who heads an Artificial Inventor Project, said they will appeal the ruling.

"We believe that listing an AI as an inventor is consistent with both the language and purpose of the US Patent Act," Abbott told AFP.

"This decision would prohibit protection for AI-generated inventions and it diverges from the recent findings of the Federal Court of Australia."

In July, a judge in Australia sided with Thaler in a legal fight to get a patent for DABUS under the auspices of that country's Patent Act, according to a copy of the ruling posted online.

"In my view, an inventor as recognized under the Act can be an artificial intelligence system or device," the judge wrote.

"It is consistent with the Act. And it is consistent with promoting innovation."

The Artificial Inventor Project has obtained a patent for DABUS in South Africa in a world first, according to Abbott.

Explore further Two AI-led inventions poke at future of patent law

 2021 AFP
Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

A recently passed Texas law banning women from having an abortion after six weeks of pregnancy is getting some resistancefrom TikTok.

Sean Black, an activist who goes by "black_madness21" on TikTok, created a technological way to oppose enforcement of the law, which relies on private citizens to sue anyone who helps a woman get an abortion after a fetal heartbeat is detected.

Initially, he wrote some computer code to constantly input false data into the Texas Right to Life organization's Pro-Life Whistleblower website, created to take anonymous tips about potential lawbreakers. The script uploaded about 300 entries before the site blocked his IP address, Black says in a video on TikTok.

"But then I started thinking, 'What if I made this a bit easier for everybody,'" he said in the video. So he created an iOS shortcut users of Apple devices can download that automatically fills in the site's form. It picks a random Texas city, county and zip code and fills in and submits the form, he said.

"Because it uses realistic information, it makes it harder for them to parse through the data," Black said in the video.

News of Black's invention was welcomed by some on Twitter. "Gotta love the kids!" one person tweeted.

Others have tried to get in on the action by manually submitting fake reports, with one Twitter user urging others to retweet the idea and "to make Good Trouble," citing the advice of the late Rep. John Lewis, a civil rights activist who passed away in 2020.

The Texas Right to Life organization says its site has been bombarded but is still operational. The group "completely anticipated this and were prepared for all the trolls coming to the website," Kimberlyn Schwartz, the group's director of media and communication, told U.S. TODAY in an email.

"Yes, pro-abortion advocates have been trying to crash the site for over a week and have failed," she said. "You might see some people online saying it crashed, but that's not true. They can't access it because their IPs are getting blocked."

The website also on Thursday displayed a captcha, which requires you to type in some characters shown before you can fill in a form, according to Motherboard, which reported on Black's tech trick. By completing the captcha, you can then run the shortcut. (Motherboard also said users had to turn on "Allow Untrusted Shortcuts" in settings of your iOS device.)

Black told Motherboard he was inspired by TikTok friend @victoriahammett who suggested submitting fake tips. He also said that he is "working on a solution" for the captcha "hurdle."

Explore further Dutch data protection authority fines TikTok over privacy

(c)2021 U.S. Today

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
To mark their 10th anniversary season this year, the Nexus orchestra has decided to use artificial intelligence to create a four-minute extract of Beethoven's Tenth Symphony.

As conductor Guillaume Berney marks the opening downbeat, the first chords ring out in a Lausanne concert hall of what could conceivably be an extract of Beethoven's Tenth Symphonyif the great German composer had ever managed to complete the piece.

The classical music world has often speculated what Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) would have gone on to write after his monumental Ninth Symphony.

And a number of musicologists and composers have already ventured to orchestrate and complete some of the scraps of notation they believe were his first sketches for his next symphonic masterpiece.

But to mark their 10th anniversary season this year, Berney and the Nexus orchestra have decided to use artificial intelligence to create a four-minute extract which they have dubbed BeethovANN Symphony 10.1.

"That is not a typo," Berney told the audience at the first night, with a second performance scheduled in Geneva on Friday.

Berney explains that the ANN refers to the artificial neural network that created it, basically without human intervention.

"We don't know what it will sound like," Berney acknowledged to AFP ahead of the Lausanne concert.

The final score was only generated and printed out hours before the performance, after computer programme designer Florian Colombo oversaw the final step in what for him has been a years-long process.

The final score was only generated and printed out hours before the performance.

'Like watching a birth'

Seated in his small apartment with a view over the old city of Lausanne and the Alps in the distance, Colombo made a couple small changes before clicking a button to generate the score.

"It's like watching a birth," Berney said as he picked up the first pages emerging from the printer.

The excitement was palpable as the freshly created sheet music was presented to the orchestra.

The musicians eagerly began rehearsing for the evening concert, many smiling with surprise as the harmonies unfolded.

"This is an emotional experience for me," said Colombo, himself a cellist, as the sound filled the hall.

"There is a touch of Beethoven there, but really, it is BeethovANN. Something new to discover."

Berney agreed.

"It works," he said. "There are some very good parts, and a few that are a bit out of character, but it's nice," the conductor said, acknowledging though that "maybe it lacks that spark of genius."

The classical music world has often speculated what Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) would have gone on to write after his monumental Ninth Symphony.

Colombo, a computer scientist at the EPFL technical university, developed his algorithm using so-called deep-learning, a subset of artificial intelligence aimed at teaching computers to "think" via structures modelled on the human brain or ANNs.

To generate something that might possibly pass as an extract from Beethoven's Tenth, Colombo first fed the computer all of the master's 16 string quartets, explaining that the chamber works provided a very clear sense of his harmonic and melodic structures.

He then asked it to create a piece around one of the theme fragments found in Beethoven's sparse notes that musicologists believe could have been for a new symphony.

"The idea is to just push a button to produce a complete musical score for an entire symphonic orchestra completely without intervention," Colombo said.

"That is, except for all the work I put in ahead of time," added the computer programmer who has been working for nearly a decade towards deep-learning-generated music.

'Not blasphemous'

Colombo said that using a computer to try to recreate something begun by one of the world's greatest musical geniuses was not encroaching on the human creative process.

The excitement was palpable as the freshly created sheet music was presented to the orchestra.

Instead, he said, he saw his algorithm as a new tool for making musical composition more accessible and for broadening human creation.

While the programme "can digest what has already been done and propose something similar," he said the aim was for "humans to use the tools to create something new."

"It is not blasphemous at all," Berney agreed, stressing that "no one is trying to replace Beethoven."

In fact, he said, the German composer would likely have been a fan of the algorithm.

"Composers at that time were all avantgarde," he said, pointing out that the best were "always eager to adopt new methods."

Explore further AI puts final notes on Beethoven's Tenth Symphony

 2021 AFP
Credit: Shutterstock

Child sexual abuse material is rampant online, despite considerable efforts by big tech companies and governments to curb it. And according to reports, it has only become more prevalent during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This material is largely hosted on the anonymous part of the internetthe "darknet"where perpetrators can share it with little fear of prosecution. There are currently a few platforms offering anonymous internet access, including i2p, FreeNet and Tor.

Tor is by far the largest and presents the biggest conundrum. The open-source network and browser grants users anonymity by encrypting their information and letting them escape tracking by internet service providers.

Online privacy advocates including Edward Snowden have championed the benefits of such platforms, claiming they protect free speech, freedom of thought and civil rights. But they have a dark side, too.

Tor's perverted underworld

The Tor Project was initially developed by the US Navy to protect online intelligence communications, before its code was publicly released in 2002. The Tor Project's developers have acknowledged the potential to misuse the service which, when combined with technologies such as untraceable cryptocurrency, can help hide criminals.

Tor is an overlay network that exists "on top" of the internet and merges two technologies. The first is the onion service software. These are the websites, or "onion services," hosted on the Tor network. These sites require an onion address and their servers' physical locations are hidden from users.

The second is Tor's privacy-maximizing browser. It enables users to browse the internet anonymously by hiding their identity and location. While the Tor browser is needed to access onion services, it can also be used to browse the "surface" internet.

Accessing the Tor network is simple. And while search engine options are limited (there's no Google), discovering onion services is simple, too. The BBC, New York Times, ProPublica, Facebook, the CIA and Pornhub all have a verified presence on Tor, to name a few.

Service dictionaries such as "The Hidden Wiki" list addresses on the network, allowing users to discover other (often illicit) services.

Child sex abuse material and abuse porn is prevalent

The number of onion services active on the Tor network is unknown, although the Tor Project estimates about 170,000 active addresses. The architecture of the network allows partial monitoring of the network traffic and a summary of which services are visited. Among the visited services, child sex abuse material is common.

Of the estimated 2.6 million users that use the Tor network daily, one study reported only 2% (52,000) of users accessed onion services. This suggests most users access the network to retain their online privacy, rather than use anonymous onion services.

That said, the same study found from a single data capture that about 80% of traffic to onion services was directed to services which did offer illegal porn, abuse images and/or child sex abuse material.

Another study estimated 53.4% of the 170,000 or so active onion domains contained legal content, suggesting 46.6% of services had content which was either illegal, or in a gray area.

Although scams make up a significant proportion of these services, cryptocurrency services, drug deals, malware, weapons, stolen credentials, counterfeit products and child sex abuse material also feature in this dark part of the internet.

The Hidden Wiki main page. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Only about 7.5% of the child sex abuse material on the Tor network is estimated to be sold for a profit. The majority of those involved aren't in it for money, so most of this material is simply swapped. That said, some services have started charging fees for content.

Several high-profile onion services hosting child sex abuse material have been shut down following extensive cross-jurisdictional law enforcement operations, including The Love Zone website in 2014, PlaypEn in 2015 and Child's Play in 2017.

A recent effort led by German police, and involving others including Australian Federal Police, Europol and the FBI, resulted in the shutdown of the illegal website Boystown in May.

But one of the largest child sex abuse material forums on the internet (not just Tor) has evaded law enforcement (and activist) takedown attempts for a decade. As of last month it had 508,721 registered users. And since 2013 it has hosted over a million pictures and videos of child sex abuse material and abuse porn.

The pedophile (eroticisation of pre-pubescent children), haebephile (pubescent children) and ephebophile (adolescents) communities are among the early adopters of anonymous discussion forums on Tor. Forum members distribute media, support each other and exchange tips to avoid police detection and scams targeting them.

The WeProtect Alliance's 2019 Global Threat Assessment report estimated there were more than 2.88 million users on ten forums dedicated to pedophilia and paraphilia interests operating via onion services.

Countermeasures

There are huge challenges for law enforcement trying to prosecute those who produce and/or distribute child sex abuse material online. Such criminal activity typically falls across multiple jurisdictions, making detection and prosecution difficult.

Undercover operations and novel online investigative techniques are essential. One example is targeted "hacks" which offer law enforcement back-door access to sites or forums hosting child sex abuse material.

Such operations are facilitated by cybercrime and transnational organized crime treaties which address child sex abuse material and the trafficking of women and children.

Given the volatile nature of many onion services, a focus on onion directories and forums may help with harm reduction. Little is known about child sex abuse material forums on Tor, or the extent to which they influence onion services hosting this material.

Apart from coordinating to avoid detection, forum users can also share information about police activity, rate onion service vendors, share sites and expose scams targeting them.

The monitoring of forums by outsiders can lead to actionable interventions, such as the successful profiling of active offenders. Some agencies have explored using undercover law enforcement officers, civil society, or NGO experts (such as from the WeProtect Global Alliance or ECPAT International) to promote self-regulation within these groups.

While there is a lack of research on this, reformed or recovering offenders can also provide counsel to others. Some sub-forums seek to offer education, encourage treatment and reduce harmusually by focusing on the legal and health issues associated with consuming child sex abuse material, and ways to control urges and avoid stimuli.

Other contraband services also play a role. For instance, onion services dedicated to drug, malware or other illicit trading usually ban child sex abuse material that creeps in.

Why does the Tor network allow such abhorrent material to remain, despite extensive oppositionsometimes even from those within these groups? Surely those representing Tor have read complaints in the media, if not survivor reports about child sex abuse material.

Explore further What is the dark web?

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Breaking

breaking

Former DA Jackie Johnson indicted over handling of Arbery investigation

A grand jury is accusing former Brunswick Judicial Circuit District Attorney Jackie Johnson of obstructing a police officer and interfering on behalf of two murder defendants in the racially charged killing of Ahmaud Arbery on Feb. 23, 2020.

The grand jury indictment announced Thursday by Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr charges Johnson with one felony count of violation of oath of office and one misdemeanor count of obstruction and hindering a law enforcement officer.

Carr convened a grand jury in June at the Glynn County Courthouse, county sheriff Neal Jump confirmed at the time. Carr would not comment at the time, but media outlets said the grand jurys proceedings focused on Johnson and her actions in the aftermath of Arberys killing.

Travis McMichael, 35, shot the unarmed Arbery three times at close range with a 12-guage shotgun on a public street in the Satilla Shores neighborhood that Sunday afternoon. The deadly shooting occurred after McMichael, and his father, Gregory McMichael, armed themselves, jumped in a pickup truck and pursued Arbery after he ran past their home on Satilla Drive. Gregory McMichael, 65, retired in 2019 from a 20-year career as an investigator with the DAs office and served nine of those years under Johnson.

The McMichaels and co-murder defendant William Roddie Bryan all are White. Arbery, 25, was Black.

Johnson immediately recused herself the day of the shooting, citing conflict of interest.

No significant action was taken on the case until May 7, when Georgia Bureau of Investigation agents moved in and arrested the McMichaels  and later Bryan  on charges of felony murder and criminal attempt to commit false imprisonment. The case had produced national outrage and cries of racial injustice by then, sparked when Bryans cellphone video of the deadly confrontation between the McMichaels and Arbery was leaked onto the internet.

However, the grand jury indictment alleges Johnson may have thwarted two Glynn County police officers from acting to make an arrest the day of the shooting. The grand jury alleges Johnson informed Glynn County Police officers Stephanie Oliver and Stephen Lowrey that Travis McMichael should not be placed under arrest the report said. The grand jury said Johnson did knowingly and willfully hinder ... law enforcement officers with the Glynn County Police Department.

The indictment further accuses Johnson of showing favor and affection to Greg McMichael during the investigation into the shooting death of Ahmaud Arbery, thereby failing to discharge her duties as district attorney.

Additionally, Johnson is accused of funneling the case to Waycross District Attorney George E. Barnhill, and in doing so, failing to treat Ahmuad Arbery and his family fairly and with dignity. The indictment alleges Johnson recommended DA Barnhill to the Attorney Generals Office for appointment as the case prosecutor without disclosing that (Johnson) had previously sought the assistance of Barnhill on the case.

Shortly after the three men were arrested, Carr called on the U.S. Attorney Generals Office to investigate the actions of Johnson and Barnhill.

After recusing herself, Johnson contacted Barnhill the day of the shooting, asking him to offer Glynn County Police legal guidance. Barnhill met with police at the county police department the next day. It was later learned that he offered police officials an initial assessment that the incident appeared to be a case of self defense in the act of a citizens arrest.

According to reports, Johnson contacted Carr on Feb. 27, 2020, citing her conflicts in the case. Carr assigned the case to Barnhill that same day.

However, when calling for the federal investigation in May 2020, Carr heatedly asserted he was unaware that Johnson and Barnhill had already discussed the case. Carr said he also was unaware that Barnhill had already consulted with county police on the case. Further, it was later learned that Barnhills son, George F. Barnhill, served as a prosecuting attorney with the Brunswick DAs office.

That conflict of interest prompted Arberys family to demand George E. Barnhill to step down, which he did in April. Carr then assigned the case to Hinesville DA Tom Durden. Carr later reassigned the case to the Cobb County DA, which is prosecuting the case.

Keith Higgins defeated Johnson to the win the Brunswick DA seat last November, a heated race in which Johnsons handling of the Arbery case was often a focus. Before the election, Johnson faced repeated demands for her resignation from individuals and local civil rights groups upset over the Arbery case.
'Had to Start Up the Union From Scratch' After Damage

Veteran DC 37 Staffers Remember 9/11 Turmoil Like It Was Yesterday (free article)
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HOW IS THE TEXAS LAW DIFFERENT FROM THOSE IN OTHER STATES?

The key difference is the enforcement mechanism. The Texas law relies on citizens suing abortion providers over alleged violations. Other states sought to enforce their statutes through government actions like criminal charges against physicians who provide abortions.

Texas is one of 14 states with laws either banning abortion entirely or prohibiting it after eight weeks or less of pregnancy. The rest have all been put on hold by courts. Most recently, a court halted a new Arkansas law that would have banned all abortions unless necessary to save the life of the mother in a medical emergency. Other states with blocked laws banning abortions early in pregnancy are Alabama, Georgia, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee and Utah.

HOW DID THE TEXAS ABORTION LAW COME ABOUT?

Texas has long been a major battleground over abortion rights and access, including a 2013 law that closed more than half of the 40-plus abortion clinics in the state before it was blocked by the Supreme Court.
Domestically, the Biden administration speaks breezily about transforming the financial and energy components of the nations almost $23 trillion economy, oblivious about possible unintended consequences.

In foreign policy, a chastened administration needs to tailor its objectives to fit its ability to know what it does not know.

In 1950, Secretary of State Dean Acheson called the United States the locomotive at the head of mankind. Europe was recuperating, Asias economic development had barely begun and U.S. prestige had soared because of its prodigies of war production.

Forty years later, as the Berlin Wall was being chipped into souvenirs and the Soviet Union was a year from extinction, former U.N. ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick published an article whose title expressed her expectation and the nations yearning in 1990: During the Cold War, foreign policy had acquired an unnatural importance, but now the United States could again be A Normal Country in a Normal Time.

The U.S. holiday from history lasted 11 years. It ended with the thunderclap of 9/11, which shattered long-standing assumptions about technology and civilization advancing in tandem.
Im very concerned about children, getting them into schools, said Bill Canny, executive director of the USCCBs Migration and Refugee Services program.

World Relief, a global Christian humanitarian organization, has helped resettle about 360 Afghans in the past month and is expecting many more, said Matthew Soerens, the groups U.S. director of church mobilization.

These are individuals in many cases who have put their lives at risk and their families lives at risk for the people of the United States of America, he said. Now that theyre facing the risk of retribution and retaliation from the Taliban ... I think most Americans of all religious traditions see it as a moral imperative for us to keep our promise.

Among the evacuees are Afghans who obtained special immigrant visas after working with the U.S. or NATO as interpreters or in some other capacity; people who have applied for the visas but not yet received them; and those who might have been particularly in danger under the Taliban.

But thousands of others who also qualified for visas have been left behind because of a backlog of applications, and faith-based groups have called on President Joe Bidens administration to get them safely to the U.S.
Invalidating the candidacy would, in effect, deprive voters of a fair choice in a democratic election (emphasis on the small d). Its unlikely that Democrats (big d) could find an effective replacement on short notice, and whoever they did find would be at a competitive disadvantage in starting the race late.

As Gilbert said, its hard to see how this upheaval would actually serve the cause of democracy.

Thats not to say the error should be completely ignored  at least, not by voters.

Voters will have to decide whether this error by McAuliffe is immaterial, or whether it should be taken more seriously as part of a pattern of free-wheeling inattention to detail.

Readers might remember his mass restoration of voting rights, which  despite admirable intentions  was undertaken in contradiction to the state constitution, according to the Supreme Court of Virginia. Or his book about the events of Aug. 12, 2017, which several sources criticized as containing important inaccuracies.

Thats not to say that Republicans arent afflicted with carelessness, too.
This is the second 20th Century icon-in-crisis that Larrain has brought to Venice, after he premiered Jackie, a portrait of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis starring Natalie Portman, in 2016. Larrain said he decided to profile Diana because he wanted to make a movie that my mother would like.

The Chilean director said his mother adored Diana, dressed like her and even had her hair done like her  the famous Lady Di feathered shag. But he said the more he researched Diana, I realized that she carried an enormous amount of mystery, and that mystery combined with the magnetism she had creates the perfect elements for a movie.

Indeed. Diana has been the subject of at least a dozen movies and TV series, from two U.S. made-for-TV movies about the 1981 royal wedding, released a year later, to a 1993 film based on the book Diana: Her True Story to the 2013 movie Diana starring Naomi Watts as the princess.

None have been particularly flattering to the monarchy. Queen Elizabeth IIs motto is often summarized as never complain, never explain. On that principle, Buckingham Palace has refrained from commenting on the many fictionalized accounts of the royal familys life, from The Queen  Stephen Frears 2006 film about the aftermath of Dianas death  to Netflix The Crown.
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I hate to see it come down here, because we use it for parades, but its going to have a nice home here, he said. Its been around for a long time.

Hall County Commissioner Scott Sorensen, of Cairo, told how he had a grandfather who was serving on the rural fire department when the engine was first bought.

Plans to donate the 1936 Dodge to Stuhr began before the pandemic started in early 2020.

Its been a long time in the making and hopefully its location here will provide a good spot for other folks in the community to have a chance to see one of their older fire engines thats been out of service for a while but served its purpose back in the day, he said.

The vehicle is still in working condition, Sorensen noted.

There were several folks who wanted to drive it because it is functioning, but they figured it was a better idea to put it on a trailer to get it here, he said. Im very happy to see it sheltered here.

Assistant Curator Robb Nelson was able to sound the 1936 siren at Thursdays event.
The rich and diverse history and heritage of the state of Nebraska as told through its often secluded historical monuments and markers is the subject of a Grand Island Public Library presentation set for 2 p.m. Sept. 19.

The talk is free and open to the public and sponsored by Humanities Nebraska with the support of the Grand Island Library Foundation and the Hall County Historical Society.

Marking Nebraska: Our (Mostly) Hidden Historical Monuments by historian Jeff Barnes is a review of the states earliest historical markers, from setting its borders to marking its trails to honoring its people. Drawing from his site visits and photographs collected from across the state, Barnes shares some of the more interesting, colorful, and even controversial ways Nebraskans told their stories through boulders, tablets, plaques, and statues.
A: That remains to be seen because three days (the busier days) still remain. State Fair officials release those figures after the state fair is completed.

Q: When was Bradshaw destroyed by a tornado?

A: The town of Bradshaw was nearly completely destroyed by a tornado on June 3, 1890.

Q: What is the history of Arborville?

A: According to local history accounts, early in 1870, John Willard Kingston and his two young sons arrived in the community by covered wagon from Michigan. He had earlier lost his wife and daughter, who had tuberculosis. In the tax records of the county, Mr. Kingston paid taxes in 1871 and received title to his land in 1877. His home served as the first post office, known as Willard Station, and he acted as the first postmaster. He was also Justice of the Peace, and in the 1885 York County atlas he was listed as the coroner.

In 1872, the first school district was organized in his home.

Some years later, Mr. Kingston remarried and had four more children.

Second to arrive in the settlement was Philander Church.
But one home-grown vaccine was abandoned during development because it produced false positive results to HIV tests. Locally-produced AstraZeneca, which is the only alternative to Pfizer registered for use in Australia so far, proved unpopular with many due to changing medical advice on the risk of blood clots. Australia initially bought only 10 million Pfizer doses but has increased the order to 40 million shots this year.

The first of 10 million shots of the Moderna vaccine is expected to become available soon.

The need for vaccines comes as Australias most populous state, New South Wales, on Friday reported its deadliest day of the pandemic with 12 fatalities and a record 1,431 new infections. The state government predicted the daily death toll will peak next month if the pace of vaccination is maintained.

The state government plans to triple the number of intensive care unit beds and staff in October when the number of COVID-19 patients are expected to peak, New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian said.

She expects 70% of the population aged 16 and older in her state will be fully vaccinated by mid-October.

The outbreak that began in Sydney in June has spread to Melbourne, Australias second-most populous city and the capital of Victoria state.
We know a lot of kids missed out on services for a while and kids who needed to be evaluated for new services had a long delay, Norton explained.

When they were able to meet in person, Norton said masks just made things more difficult.

For example, for a child who might have trouble making certain sounds, one of the things that therapists might do would be to really show how they move their mouths to make those sounds. Obviously, that is extra challenging with a mask on. So I think in a lot of those cases, therapists tried to use clear masks or face shields, but it was still harder to understand, she said.

The problem is not just with masks  a required accessory in schools and day care centers across Illinois. The lockdowns and cancellations of everything  from childrens performances and birthday parties to play dates and family gathering  have also hindered language development in children.
She said one of her goals with the podcast is to dispel the myth is that businesses locate in small communities simply because it is home.

My biggest hypothesis is that not everyone is in their small town because of family, she explained. I feel like it is a misnomer. I believe it is more than that. I want to showcase the quality of life small towns provide, the low cost of living and the sense of comradery you get from your neighbors, your customers and even your competitors.

The team has often records the podcasts weeks in advance, providing ONeill with time for editing and post-production. In addition to releasing audio podcasts on a variety of platforms, each Small Town, Big Business episode is also video recorded and available on YouTube.

Williams said one of the goals of the podcast is to encourage entrepreneurs and small businesses in the region.

People often think that theres not enough money or enough support in small towns for a new business; that you have to go to a metro area, he said. Thats not true. Small towns are looking to invest in their small towns, in their businesses and jobs.
MARION  The Williamson County Board passed a new host community agreement with Walkers Bluff Casino Resort on Friday during a special meeting.

Board Chairman Jim Marlo said the newest HCA protects the taxpayers of the county from incurring additional expenses in the future related to the project.

Originally, the plan was to construct a temporary casino building, then permanent structures in several phases. The new plan, announced in May, calls for construction of a permanent building in one phase instead.

Marlo said the new agreement eliminated information about a temporary building, but had included some language that was unclear regarding the countys responsibility for any new infrastructure beyond those agreed on with the initial casino project.

After talking with Cynde Bunch and her partner Dan Kehl of Elite Casino Resorts, they agreed to add wording to a clause about incurring future costs for roadways to include utilities, water and sewer. Before this new agreement could be passed, the board had to rescind the version that was approved on Monday, officials said.
CHICAGO  A Chicago police lieutenant on Thursday became the fourth member of the department to appear in court on felony charges in recent weeks, with prosecutors accusing him of shoving his flashlight into the buttocks of a teenage carjacking suspect, but over his clothes.

Lt. Wilfredo Roman, a 21-year department veteran, faces charges of aggravated battery and official misconduct. He was ordered released from custody on his written promise to appear in court.

The police department said in a statement that after Roman was stripped of his police powers after he surrendered to its internal affairs bureau on Wednesday night. It also said he could face further discipline pending the outcomes of the criminal and administrative investigations.

During the hearing, Cook County Assistant State's Attorney Mary McDonnell said the alleged assault happened on Feb. 9, shortly after Roman, 44, spotted the teen and another teen inside a car that had been stolen at gunpoint minutes earlier. The pair immediately jumped from the vehicle and ran, with Roman chasing them on foot.
A kayaker, for instance, may decide to use the river's main branch instead of the southern or northern branch if those sensors estimate a level of bacteria above the state standard for safe recreational use, she said.

Trish Brubaker, executive director of the Lincoln Park Boat Club, said she can use that information when planning workouts for rowing clubs.

Brubaker said clubs often used single sculls last year to allow for social distancing. But singles are more vulnerable to tipping and one athlete became sick after falling into the river water.

"It would definitely impact who we put into singles or whether we practice singles at all," Brubaker said.

Officials with the agency responsible for Chicago's wastewater system warned that people shouldn't depend entirely on the data from the sensors.

The technology is newer than traditional water sampling and testing, and it captures only a moment in time, said Dr. Heng Zhang, assistant director of monitoring and research at the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago.

River users also should consider recent weather, boat traffic and any official warnings, he said.
Many people feel like they cant have the life they want because of their past limitations or failures.

Maybe your family wasnt there for you; you didnt get the proper education, youve been fired from multiple jobs, or mistreated in relationships.

Many things arent fair and can cause a chain reaction of events that may take us far off course. There are also many bad choices we make, and as a result, we end up missing out on the life we want.

You may have made mistakes, gotten into trouble, got fired from a job, lost a relationship, but that doesnt mean it always has to be that way.

George Washington Carver said, Where there is no vision, there is no hope.

I agree with his quote completely. George Washington Carver was a more brilliant man than I will ever be. For todays column, I would like to modify the selection to say, Where there is no positive vision of the future, there is no hope.

It seems most peoples vision of the future is dictated by the failures and limitations of their past, and therefore, they do have a vision, but its a negative one.
Its been an interesting six months since Glenn Poshard and I hosted the kickoff meeting for Clean SoIL, an anti-litter movement, at Marions Veterans Airport.

Although it may not seem like it from the outside, a lot has happened. There have been setbacks and successes. There have been breathtaking steps forward and there has been the frustrations of inertia created by working with bureaucracies and government agencies.

However, the movement took a huge step forward last week.

After nearly six months in limbo, Clean SoIL was notified of its tax exempt status. That was a significant hurdle. It will allow us to solicit donations and grants to put a structure in place to fight Southern Illinois long-going battle with litter.

Yet, that notification is the tip of the iceberg.

The real news is that a working agreement that had been reached with Southern Illinois University became a reality with the hiring of a pair of graduate students, Katrina Medernach and Andrew Taylor, who will work with the Clean SoIL board on a daily basis to clean up Southern Illinois, and keep it clean.
Rep. Russell Ott, D-St. Matthews, called McMasters plan a good idea.

I am glad to see, number one, that he accepted the money. It is always a good thing when we have federal money to draw down from and put to good use, whether it be for infrastructure or Medicaid, Ott said.

I certainly think widening I-26 from Columbia to Charleston is long overdue, he said. Anybody who lives in our area knows how important it is. It is dangerous the way it is right now.

Ott said the widening will help commuter traffic as well as Port of Charleston traffic.

It is a big deal all the way around, he said.

The widening of I-26 will help make the region more attractive for economic development, Ott said.

Businesses don't want to lose time to get their product to where they want to go, Ott said. When you have backup after backup after backup, it is a problem for them.

Ott said that it seems there are traffic backups on I-26 daily, causing traffic to get off the interstate and use routes such as U.S. 21 and U.S. 176.

It is pretty rough for those communities, Ott said.
SWANSEA  South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster urged state lawmakers Thursday to use $360 million in federal pandemic relief funds to jumpstart the widening of Interstate 26 between Charleston and Columbia.

McMaster joined state transportation officials and business leaders south of Columbia at an eastbound exit off the busy highway, calling on legislators to speed up the expansion of one of South Carolina's most economically vital corridors as state has become the 10th-fastest growing in the nation.

With that comes a lot more travel, a lot more traffic, Secretary of Transportation Christy Hall said. And with that, congestion when the infrastructure does not keep up with that growth.

The General Assembly has about $2.5 billion to spend in federal COVID-19 relief and will likely decide how to use the money in a special session later this month. The funds could go toward any number of needs, such as upgrading water and sewer systems, expanding broadband or replacing lost pandemic revenue.

But an influx of cash toward the I-26 expansion could move up the project timeline by six years and save money on construction costs, Hall said.
The Department of Transportation had previously planned to expand the nearly 70-mile (113-kilometer) corridor over the course of several phases through the end of the decade, working on adding a third lane to segments at either end before moving onto the middle stretch.

A funding boost would allow the agency to put out contracts for most of the widening in the next three to four years instead, officials said.

The stretch that crosses the rural areas between two of the state's largest cities frequently sees traffic jams, delays and accidents. About 66,000 vehicles travel the corridor daily, as beachgoing tourists and other motorists mingle with the 15,000 trucks headed to and from the bustling Port of Charleston.

Modernizing I-26  from extending entry and exit ramps to designing better interchanges and signs  will help the state remain competitive, said Shawn Godwin, board chair of the South Carolina Trucking Association.

We all share this critical corridor, Godwin said. But, when I-26 bogs down, we all bog down with it.
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Today

Cloudy skies with a few showers after midnight. Low 66F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 40%.

Tonight

Cloudy skies with a few showers after midnight. Low 66F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 40%.

Tomorrow

Considerable cloudiness with occasional rain showers. High around 75F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 50%.
Today

Cloudy this evening with showers after midnight. Low 66F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 40%.

Tonight

Cloudy this evening with showers after midnight. Low 66F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 40%.

Tomorrow

Cloudy with showers. High near 75F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 50%.
After the nation erupted in months of protests following George Floyds death last year, Andrew Lincowski knew he wanted to go back into law enforcement.

He has multiple graduate degrees, including a PhD in astronomy and astrobiology, but didnt want to stay in academia. Out of everything hed done, being a police officer was the job hed liked the most.

He just didnt want to be an officer in Tucson again, where he lived and had been on the force several years before. And he definitely didnt want to join up in Seattle, where he lived for most of his doctorate.

In December, Lincowski served his first day as a Casper police officer

People want to come here from Seattle or Portland or Illinois or wherever, all these places I wouldnt work in, Lincowski said. You couldnt pay me enough to go work in some of those places, the anti-police sentiment, the rioters  I want to live somewhere where Im not worried about that stuff being really bad.

Hes not the only officer to come to Casper seeking a change in recent years  a change in scenery, a higher salary or a less dangerous place to raise a family. Officers have come from larger cities like Denver and Chicago and metropolitan areas in states including Arizona, Illinois, Florida, Louisiana, Virginia and North Carolina that dwarf Casper in size and call volume.

The central Wyoming city, whose residents are enthusiastic in their support of law enforcement, now has a growing cohort of police officers who came here specifically for a place where they feel their job is respected.

***

There are just over 100 police and community service officers actively serving Casper, according to the most recent roster. Six of them were hired this year, four in 2020 and 11 in 2019. That means that about one in every five officers have been at the department for three years or less.

Not all of those officers are from out of state, of course  the department still likes to recruit locally, too.

But when people from coastal or more urban areas start looking to move to the Mountain West, Wyoming stands out. For one, its conservative even by the regions standards, which means support for the police is high and vocal, even as national attention has been put on police brutality and reform.

And, while other cities may be cutting their police departments budget or eliminating positions, Casper is still hiring. And the hiring bonuses, which start in the thousands and go higher if youre already trained as a police officer, dont hurt either.

Any new hire signing on with CPD gets a $3,000 bonus. If you were an officer but your certification is lapsed, thats a $5,000 bonus. Active officers working in Wyoming can nab a $12,500 bonus, and those from out of state can take home $7,500. Salaries start in the $50,000 range for officers with no experience  and thats all before overtime.

But an even bigger bonus, at least for a group of officers who moved here from Florida, Arizona, Illinois and Louisiana, was the communitys avid support for police.

Its been overwhelming, the support, said Senior Police Officer Ryan Brownell, who left his job in Moline, Illinois, to take the post in Casper in December. Ive just had so many people say, Thank you for your service, or offering to pay for my meals at a drive-thru or in a store.

Obviously you tell them no thank you, but the gesture means a lot and shows me how much people appreciate what we do and understand and respect that.

Brownell said that after George Floyds murder at the hands of Minneapolis police, he saw more people in his area of Illinois becoming agitators during police interactions  standing around, recording and heckling officers, especially while they were arresting people of color.

In the year following the 2014 police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, Brownell said he also saw growing anti-police sentiment, even in Moline. His wife started wondering whether it was safe for him to park his marked squad car outside of their home while off-duty. Meanwhile, murders and shootings were becoming a near-daily occurrence in the area, and with three kids to worry about, the Brownells started looking for somewhere to move.

Officer Dave Romero, who came to CPD from a sheriffs office in Caddo Parish, Louisiana, in 2019, said he didnt feel comfortable eating in his uniform in the area, which includes the city of Shreveport. In the wake of Floyds death last year, even Casper wasnt immune to rising criticism of the police, but Romero said critics are the exception here.

Aside from our little stuff last summer, where people were just like, F the police, everybody else has been just really nice, Romero said. People are like, Hey man, thank you for what you do. I was mowing my lawn the other day, this guy stops in front of my patrol car ... And hes just like, Hey, man, just want to tell you thank you very much for what you do.

Im like, you sure? Im not used to that.

In Leesburg, Florida, where Senior Police Officer Jeff Broneck worked before joining CPD, Broneck said people would often tail his patrol car, taking videos and trying to catch officers doing something they werent supposed to. He avoided going shopping in town when possible, worried about running into someone hed arrested.

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In Casper, a larger city in a smaller metropolitan area, most of the people Broneck runs into around town are friendly faces. There are some residents who heckle or throw up the occasional middle finger, but he said thats par for the course for police officers these days.

Most of our community is very much behind us, Broneck said.

Like Brownell, Broneck said violent crime also played a role in driving him away from his old department. In Casper, he sees the occasional armed robbery or other violent offense, but when he left Leesburg those were everyday calls. Less than a week out of training there, he said, he was the first officer to respond to a murder.

Broneck, whos been on the force in Casper for around five years, said hes starting to notice those kinds of crimes becoming more common even here. When he started, most tips hed receive from the public were for bikes left in yards or drunk people on the streets. Now, its more common for people to tell him about gun violence, drive-bys or houses that attract methamphetamine dealers.

Theres definitely more violent crime going on right now. As much fun as it is, I really dont want to see it, Broneck said. Its fun to go fast, get there I like doing all that stuff, but Id rather not.

Lincowski, coming from Tucson in December, has also noticed more people fighting back during police encounters as of late.

Ive probably been in as many physical fights in the last six months as seven years in Tucson, the senior officer said. Fighting with us isnt gonna make it better, its just gonna make it worse. And thats unfortunate. I dont know if thats mental health or alcohol or just post-George Floyd, I dont know why, it seems like its just happening more.

When Lincowski came out to Casper last August to scout out the job, he said officers were burnt out from working overtime in the wake of a police shooting that killed one man and injured a woman. But he still left impressed with the department, and started in December.

Months later, while he was completing the tail end of his training here, he found himself caught in the middle of another police shooting  in May, when Officer Jake Bigelow shot and killed a Casper man after the man drove the wrong direction onto I-25 with Bigelow still in the car. Lincowski was left to chase in the patrol car, bringing in backup.

In seven years in Tucson, I never had any circumstances ever quite like that, Lincowski said, but hopefully I reacted quick enough to go help the other officer. Its a pretty helpless feeling when they just get driven off and all I can do is chase behind them.

***

The department itself, one of the largest local law enforcement agencies in Wyoming, offers its own set of perks. One often cited by officers making the move is the availability of take-home cars, some of them unmarked, for officers to use while off-duty.

And although the department is large by Wyoming standards, its small enough for officers and other employees to get to know each other quickly, passing each other constantly in the back of the Hall of Justice.

That helps collaboration, the officers said, and made it easier to transition into the job after moving. Romero, whose wife gave birth to their youngest child soon after they moved from Louisiana to Casper, said several of his new coworkers even offered to cook meals for his family while she was on leave.

Romero said Casper also feels safer for his five children, whom he didnt want going downtown in Shreveport at all. Here, he said, the schools also have more funding and resources.

High pay rates, especially for lateral officers whove already gone through training and have experience on the force, are a big plus often cited by those making the move. Several officers said they hope to eventually buy larger homes on more land to take advantage of Wyomings wide open spaces, higher salaries and low taxes.

If we got the same amount of land were looking at here in Louisiana, it would cost like a million dollars, Romero said. Taxes are so freaking high, youre taxed to death in that state. Thats another good selling point (for Wyoming).

Others also said they were looking for a place with less government encroachment. Lincowski, who moved from Arizona during Wyomings winter COVID-19 spike in December, said it was nice to not have to wear masks everywhere or worry about the town going into lockdown.

I dont want to live in some big city where theyre like, You have to have your vaccine passport, and all this stuff, Lincowski said. If the last place is gonna do that its probably gonna be Wyoming.

The setting doesnt hurt, either. Just like the recent wave of remote workers who have been moving to Wyoming during the pandemic, officers cited the mountain, river, reservoirs and recreation available in and near Casper as a major draw. Thats especially true of those with children who want to raise them to be active and love the outdoors.

And Wyoming, with one of the highest rates of gun ownership in the nation, also has a streak of individualism thats attractive to some, like Romero.

People take care of most things themselves here, the officer said. Im old fashioned, I guess, conservative  thats another thing I like about Wyoming.

During last years police protests, Caspers downtown streets were lined with people armed with long guns who said they were there to protect local businesses from potential rioters. Lincowski, who was still living in Tucson at the time, said when he heard that, he took it as a sign that people were supporting the cops on the street and wanting to protect their community.

People seem to really have a good opinion of the police here, Lincowski said. Especially with all the riots, I wanted to come somewhere where they already had a decent relationship with the community.

Follow city and crime reporter Ellen Gerst on Twitter at @ellengerst.

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Police have arrested a man on suspicion of murder in connection with the death of a Casper man reported missing in June.

Justin Armando Marquez, 40, was taken into custody on Friday, according to the Casper Police Department.

The department said on Thursday that it was investigating Ryan Schroeders death as a homicide after his body was identified earlier this week after it was found in rural Natrona County.

Marquez faces one recommended charge of second-degree murder. Fridays police announcement did not offer details as to why Marquez was suspected in Schroeders death. Police said they would not be releasing further information on the investigation to ensure the integrity of the case.

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Schroeder was reported missing on July 6. Afterward, officers spoke to people whod been around him and learned he was planning to leave Casper for a trip to Denver around June 24, police said.

The subsequent investigation led detectives to believe Schroeder was dead. It also brought them to an unidentified location in rural Natrona County, where they found a body. Police did not specify the location nor what drew investigators to it.

On Wednesday, authorities identified the body as belonging to Schroeder.
He said that instead of considering a more permanent masking requirement, school administrators need to work on how to mitigate the damage mask wearing has already done to kids over the past week.

While there was a strong anti-mask contingent at the meeting, held in the auditorium at Laramie High School, the local medical community also turned out to advocate for wearing masks as one of the effective ways people have to help curb the spread of the novel coronavirus.

Dr. Kent Kleppinger said he didnt want to throw a lot of statistics at you, but one in 14 people in Wyoming is COVID-19 positive, and the numbers are taking an alarming surge with the more contagious delta variant.

The rate has doubled in the last two weeks, and its tripled in the last five, he said. One-third of new cases are children  and the hospitals are full.

Jackie Grimes said she works at the high school and not only supports the mandate, she would like to see it expanded to include grades 9-12.

Keeping schools open is the top priority, she said.

With students attending seven classes a day with an average of 30 in a class, each student has at least 210 potential exposures per day not including moving through the halls.
The ranked-choice bill failed Thursday in an 8-4 vote and the jungle primary bill was tabled, but committee support for a jungle primary did not appear to be robust.

Committee-sponsored bills historically have a better chance of success when the full Legislature gathers. Still, an individual lawmaker could bring an election reform bill to the session.

Case, the most vocal advocate for ranked-choice voting, believes that its superior to a jungle primary or a runoff.

This is the wave of the future, and this is a good one, he said.

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The third option came from Rep. Chip Neiman, R-Hulett, who is not a member of the committee. He brought a bill  and a necessary constitutional amendment to go along with it  that would implement a runoff election for the 2024 election, in the hopes of getting the committee to sponsor it. The committee voted to discuss the bill and the amendment at its next meeting, which will occur before the full session.

Under Neiman's bill, the primary would be in May and the runoff election would occur in August if no candidate received more than 50% of the votes. If a runoff is triggered, voters will not be able to switch parties between the two elections.
Memorial services for Rylee McCollum, the Wyoming Marine killed in last weeks airport bombing in Kabul, will take place after his baby is born.

We are waiting until Gigi (Crayton, McCollums widow) has the baby and can safely travel again, the Marines sister, Roice McCollum, told the Star-Tribune.

In an interview with Fox News on Tuesday morning, McCollums family said that Crayton is staying at Camp Pendleton, the Marine Corps West Coast base camp in Southern California. She should be expecting the baby in roughly two weeks.

The girl is so strong, McCollums father, Jim, told Fox News. Obviously shes heartbroken, shes confused, shes devastated, shes trying to process this... She is going to be a wonderful mother, she loved Rylee so much.

In the same interview, Jim McCollum said the family plans to wait for Crayton to have the baby and give her time to settle in before having a celebration of life for Rylee somewhere down the road.

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Roice McCollum previously said that the service, whenever it takes place, will be held in Jackson.
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Nor do they report to the Wyoming Department of Health, said spokesperson Kim Deti. The state health department will eventually be able to derive how many students and school staff statewide test positive for the virus from case interviews with those individuals. But the department wont get any information from school districts, and wont track staff and student quarantines at all.

The health department will also be responsible for compiling the information from those interviews, meaning the data does not cover a point-in-time. Deti confirmed she did not yet have K-12 data for the week as of 1 p.m. Friday.

The Casper-Natrona County Health Department will be involved in contract tracing infections within the local school district, but it is not receiving aggregate data.

We arent getting any data from NCSD on positives or quarantines, county health department spokesperson Hailey Bloom said via text. The only way we know if they attend school or work for NCSD would be through contact tracing on positives only and at this time we dont have the staff capacity to track it.

Natrona County School District, which went back to school Wednesday, is publicly sharing the data once every two weeks  a change from the weekly updates given last school year. Southerland said there will be no update this week.
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It is said, You can find a Trini anywhere.

And this may be true, such as on board a US military ship.

Trinidad-born logistics specialist, Officer Nadia Francis, is on board the US Navy vessel Burlington which is currently in T&T on a three-day trip to conduct joint training with the Coast Guard.
The eyes and ears of employees and employers alike are intensely focused on the industrial relations battle between Republic Bank and the Banking, Insurance and General Workers Union (BIGWU) and, by extension, the trade union movement, regarding the banks position: unvaccinated workers are required to pay for Covid-19 tests every two weeks.
For Star subscribers: Real fears exist that the two big lakes on the drying Colorado River could fall so low that no water could be taken from them, Arizona water director Tom Buschatzke recently told a private conference, reports say.
A father in the Vail School District was arrested on suspicion of trespassing after arriving at his sons school to insist the student, who had been exposed to COVID-19, be allowed in class and refusing to leave.

Rishi Rambarans son, a student at Mesquite Elementary School, was one of several students whom the county Health Department had told to quarantine due to being a close contact with someone who tested positive for the virus in the school. COVID-19 transmission in Pima County is high, and there have been 1,413 cases in schools since July 20, 54 outbreaks and more than 4,000 people told to quarantine for an exposure.

Rambaran, his son and two other men who dont have children in the district livestreamed their time at the school. They began the video outside the school where they showed one of the men was holding zip ties and said they were going to tell the principal she was breaking the law, call the sheriff and if necessary do a citizens arrest.

Principal Diane Vargo brought the men into her office and quietly listened to them tell her that she was breaking the law for following quarantine protocols set by local and state health departments. One of the men held the zip ties in his hands while they spoke to her.
Old-fashioned pizza night with a twist: Tinos Pizza , 6610 E. Tanque Verde Road, tinospizza.com , 296-9656. Tinos has been around since 1984 and when it comes to pizza, this pizzeria doesnt settle for just the classic pepperoni and cheese. Tinos has whipped up a large Sonoran hot dog pizza to go with a large house salad and canoli ($35). Dino Chonis opened the family pizzeria and its still run by his family. Chonis died of cancer in April 2020.

Old school destination dining: Wildflower, 7037 N. Oracle Road, wildflowertucson.com, 219-4230. This is throwback to white tablecloth dining, with servers calling you sir and maam as they pour your water or hand you a menu, which is why the $35 price tag (per person) will make you feel so spoiled without the pain in the wallet. The meal starts off with a seasonal or Tuscan kale salad, soup of the day or Lebanese hummus with grilled pita, followed by the main course  choose from roasted chicken, steelhead salmon, pasta bolognese, pan-roasted chicken, braised beef short rib or grilled shrimp and avocado bowl  then end the meal on a sweet note with your choice of blackberry cheesecake trifle or bars of sin made with praline chocolate cookie and cappuccino mousse topped by vanilla bean gelato. Oh, and the meal comes with a glass of wine. Wildflower was Sam Foxs maiden voyage into the culinary world and helped launch the Tucson natives impressive restaurant legacy that included a dozen brands from North Italia and Zinburger to Blanco Tacos and Culinary Dropout, all under the umbrella of Scottsdale-based Fox Restaurant Concepts. Fox sold the company to the Cheesecake Factory in 2019 in a deal reportedly valued at $440 million. Wildflower, which Fox opened in 1998, was not part of the sale.
With Sen. Kirsten Engel leaving office to run for the Democratic nomination for Congress, Rep. Stephanie Stahl Hamilton, also a Dem, is planning to run for Senate.

Meanwhile, the other House member in the district, Rep. Domingo DeGrazia, said this week that he will not run for reelection. The two-term Democrat said in an announcement that he had been talking with legislative colleagues and his family about the decision for months.

In an interview he said one of the reasons was in the Legislature, being away from family for four, five, six months out of the year. The other is campaigning, which takes about as much work as being in the Legislature.

DeGrazia, an attorney, said he plans to continue to be involved in his areas of expertise  foster care and data privacy.

Now that I know how the Legislature works, I can be a little more of a resource, said DeGrazia, who was a member of Democratic leadership as minority whip in the last session.

Democrat Morgan Abraham and Republican Rachel Jones have filed to run for the House in LD 10. Republican Sherrylyn Young has filed to run for Senate.

Thiel-backed PAC blasts Brnovich
Tucson-based stratospheric balloon startup World View Enterprises furloughed most of its employees last year as the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted businesses worldwide.

Now the company is on a trajectory to recovery, resuming flights and ramping up hiring thanks in large part to a new lease deal with Pima County for its south-side headquarters.

Founded in 2013, World View has developed an unmanned balloon vehicle known as a Stratollite that can fly payloads such as scientific sensors and communications equipment to stratospheric altitudes of up to 75,000 feet and navigate them over long-duration missions.

The company had flown more than 100 test and commercial flights for customers including NASA and was upping its tempo of flights when COVID-19 hit and operations were suspended.

As the pandemic unfolded in the spring of 2020, World View kept some of its manufacturing staff busy making medical isolation gowns, provided at cost for health-care workers, company CEO Ryan Hartman recalled.

We werent flying but we were able to use our expertise in pliable plastics to help in the fight against COVID, he said, noting that the effort helped the company keep its manufacturing team intact.

The company is flying again, and back to making its giant plastic balloons at its headquarters just south of Tucson International Airport, where workers assemble balloon skins on 600-foot-long tables.

After recalling many workers, World Views headcount is back up to around 60, and the company expects to be back to about 100 by the end of the year, Hartman said.

Hitting reset

A new lease deal approved by the Pima County Board of Supervisors in early July has helped the company recover from the disruption wrought by the pandemic.

We worked with the county to enable us to bring more people back, but mainly it was an opportunity for us to double down on our commitment to Tucson and Pima County and make sure our long-term path kept us in Tucson and in our facility, said Hartman, who took the helm at World View in February 2019 after a career that included a six-year stint with Raytheon in Tucson.

The original 2016 lease agreement had World View paying nearly $25 million over a 20-year period for the headquarters facility and 12-acre parcel that includes a launch pad, with rent increases every five years and an option at the leases end to buy the property including the $15 million building from the county for a token payment of $10. The company also got a $4 million tax break.

That deal was challenged in court by a taxpayer represented by the conservative Goldwater Institute, which contended it was an illegal giveaway of taxpayer money, but the county won at trial and on two appeals, with only one issue still pending before the Arizona Court of Appeals.

Under the new deal, the lease payments are gradually increased but are kept relatively low for the next year to help World View rehire staff, County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry told the supervisors.

World View will end up paying about $23.4 million rather than $24.9 million, but the price for the purchase option at the end of the term now will be $5 million and the company gave up a right of first refusal on a 6-acre parcel of adjacent county-owned property

The new deal also eases the hiring requirements in the initial lease, while increasing the minimum average salary level. It requires World View to grow to 125 full-time employees in 2022, increasing gradually each year until the original final goal of 400 employees is reached.

With the increased minimum average salaries, the resulting total payroll will surpass the level required under the original lease, starting in 2024, Huckelberry told the supervisors.

The amended lease was approved on a 3-2 vote, with supervisors Matt Heinz and Steve Christy voting against the deal.

Christy said during the meeting that he opposed what he saw as preferential treatment of World View. He said the refinancing was a sign of financial troubles and that he would rather see the facility or its lease turned over to a private company for financing.

The final issue in the Goldwater lawsuit  whether the agreement violated the Arizona Constitutions gift clause, which prohibits giving away public funds to private business entities  is pending before the Arizona Court of Appeals.

The revised rent structure is designed to ensure that the countys return is every bit as high as under the original lease and that it is therefore covered by the trial courts gift-clause ruling, Huckelberry said in his memo to the supervisors.

But in an opening legal brief filed Aug. 24 in the gift-clause case, Goldwater contended that the building financing, below-market lease payments, launch-pad construction and tax break all represent illegal gifts under the Constitution, and that lease changes approved in July do not remedy the illegality of the countys conduct.

Expanded offerings

While the legal challenge drags on, World View is busy getting back to the stratosphere.

Hartman said the company resumed flight operations with missions in June and July, with a mission originally planned for August still pending and roughly monthly missions planned through the end of the year.

World View cant talk about many of its clients under confidentiality agreements, but customers who have been made public include NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Ball Aerospace and the U.S. government.

World View also is moving forward on both the technology and marketing fronts.

Besides offering customers the opportunity to fly their own hardware on a Stratollite, the company is now offering a service called World View Perspectives, an online portal where customers can ask for imaging data collected on a certain day, or peruse an archive of data, from missions World View has flown over areas of high interest, such as the Permian Basin area of west Texas.

World View can keep its Stratollites aloft for days or weeks at a time, using an air-ballasting system to change altitudes to where winds can steer the crafts in the desired direction  or allowing them to loiter over an area of interest at a fraction of the cost of a space satellite in geostationary orbit.

The company also is launching World View Orbits, a fleet of its Stratollite balloon vehicles over North and Central America  an initiative announced in March 2020 but delayed by the pandemic  to offer customers high-resolution imagery and related analytical products for a variety of uses.

The idea, Hartman said, is to fly regular missions over areas of interest to customers to give them a predictable, consistent flow of imagery to meet their needs.

The baseline high-resolution imagery system World View uses can provide resolution down to 5 to 7 centimeters, compared with the highest satellite-imagery resolution of 30 centimeters, Hartman said.

The company also offers mid-band and shortwave infrared thermal imagery and can fly radars and communications payloads.

In July, Hartman said, the company flight-tested a new super-pressure ballasting balloon, which helps steer the Stratollites, that is simpler to make while providing increased weight capacity.

World View also is working with a partner to give customers more analytics with their data.

Last fall, the company announced a strategic partnership with North Carolina-based Geo Owl to provide data for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, or ISR.

World View is providing the flights and raw imagery, with Geo Owl providing analytics to measure the data against safety or other compliance requirements, for example, said Hartman, who was CEO of the Boeing-owned drone and ISR company Insitu before joining World View.

Imagery is just data well take imagery and turn into something the customers can do something about, he said.

Contact senior reporter David Wichner at dwichner@tucson.com or 573-4181. On Twitter: @dwichner. On Facebook: Facebook.com/DailyStarBiz

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WASHINGTON (AP)  U.S. officials are looking into reports that in the frantic evacuation of desperate Afghans from Kabul, older men were admitted together with young girls they claimed as brides or otherwise sexually abused.

U.S. officials at intake centers in the United Arab Emirates and in Wisconsin have identified numerous incidents in which Afghan girls have been presented to authorities as the wives of much older men. While child marriage is not uncommon in Afghanistan, the U.S. has strict policies against human trafficking that include prosecutions for offenders and sanctions for countries that don't crack down on it.

One internal document seen by The Associated Press says the State Department has sought urgent guidance from other agencies after purported child brides were brought to Fort McCoy in Wisconsin. Another document, described to the AP by officials familiar with it, says Afghan girls at a transit site in Abu Dhabi have alleged they have been raped by older men they were forced to marry in order to escape Afghanistan.
A neighbor, William Roddie Bryan, joined the chase and took cellphone video of Travis McMichael fatally shooting Arbery at close range with a shotgun as Arbery fought back with his fists.

The McMichaels told police they thought Arbery was a burglar and that Travis McMichael shot him in self-defense. No arrests were made in the shooting until more than two months later, after the cellphone video leaked online, sparking a national outcry, and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation took over the case. The McMichaels and Bryan are now jailed as they await trial on murder charges.

Johnson has insisted she did nothing wrong, saying she immediately recused her office from handling the case because Greg McMichael had been an employee.

Still, Arbery's parents and their attorneys have long accused the ex-district attorney of trying to help the young man's killers avoid prosecution.

Ain't no man or woman above the law, and it was a great day when they arrested Jackie Johnson, Marcus Arbery Sr., the slain man's father, told reporters.

Johnson did not immediately return phone messages seeking comment. It was not immediately known if she had an attorney to represent her. None was listed in the case record of the court where the indictment was filed.
JACKSON, Miss. (AP)  An Emmett Till historical marker in the Mississippi Delta will be repaired or replaced after it was knocked off the pole that supports it, says the president of an advertising agency that made the sign.

Although a previous version of this metal sign was vandalized and another Till historical marker in the area was shot multiple times, Allan Hammons said Friday that he does not see malicious intent in the damage this time.

It was not defaced in any way," Hammons told The Associated Press.

Till was a Black 14-year-old from Chicago who was abducted and killed in August 1955 while visiting relatives in Mississippi. Witnesses said he whistled at a white woman working in a store in the small community of Money, north of Greenwood. Days later, his body was pulled from the Tallahatchie River, where it was tossed after being weighted down with a cotton gin fan.

Tills mother, Mamie Till Mobley, insisted on an open-casket funeral so people could see her sons mutilated body. Jet magazine published photos, and his case became a catalyst for the civil rights movement.
The sudden leap in migration led Mexico to end the visa-free option. As of Saturday, Ecuadorians will once again need a visa. Mexican officials said the requirement is a provisional measure that will help ensure that Ecuadorians do not fall prey to human trafficking networks."

Murillo said the election of President Joe Biden increased hope among would-be migrants because they perceived he would be friendlier than his predecessor, Donald Trump. False rumors spread about U.S. authorities allowing migrants to cross the border, the attorney said.

Gloria Chavez, chief of the Border Patrols El Paso sector, has said Ecuadorians are not subject to pandemic powers that allow the government to expel migrants at the border on the grounds it prevents spread of the coronavirus.

The agency started noticing the surge in Ecuadorians last year, she said.

We started seeing an increase slowly in every week after we started seeing more Ecuadorians come into our area. And thats how we started noticing that there was a trend, Chavez said in May.

Carlos Lopez, Muquinche's husband, was a cobbler who lost his job at the end of 2019 as political unrest roiled Ecuador. In search of better opportunities, he went north.
NEW YORK (AP)  The chief executive of Tinder-owner Match Group has sharply criticized the new law prohibiting most abortions in Texas and says she is setting up a fund to help any Texas-based employees who need to seek an abortion outside the state.

Rival dating app Bumble also criticized the law and announced on Instagram it will donate funds to six organizations that support women's reproductive rights.

Both companies are based in Texas and led by women.

Dallas-based Match Group said CEO Shar Dubey is creating the fund on her own and not through the company. She spoke out against the law in a memo to employees Thursday.

I immigrated to America from India over 25 years ago and I have to say, as a Texas resident, I am shocked that I now live in a state where womens reproductive laws are more regressive than most of the world, including India," Dubey said in the memo.

Dubey said her fund would help cover any additional costs incurred by Match Group employees if they need to travel outside the state to seek an abortion.
In 2019, Walmart said it would stop selling ammunition for handguns and short-barrel rifles, and the store chain requested that customers not openly carry firearms in its stores; the announcement followed a shooting at a Walmart store in Texas that left 22 people dead.

Ten years ago: A judge in North Carolina sentenced Robert Stewart to spend the rest of his life behind bars for killing eight people at a rural nursing home in 2009. (Stewart had opened fire on his victims, seemingly at random, as he searched for his wife, an employee at the home.) The Vatican vigorously rejected accusations it had sabotaged efforts by Irish bishops to report priests who sexually abused children to police.

Five years ago: President Barack Obama and Chinas President Xi Jinping (shee jihn-peeng) sealed their nations participation in the Paris climate change agreement during a ceremony on the sidelines of a global economic summit in Hangzhou. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump visited the Great Faith Ministries International, a predominantly Black church in Detroit, to call for a civil rights agenda for our time. Authorities in Minnesota said they had identified the remains of Jacob Wetterling, an 11-year-old boy kidnapped by a masked gunman in October 1989 near his home in St. Joseph; the case was solved when a man confessed to sexually assaulting and killing the boy.
The anti-vaxers are now using this slogan to give them the right to do what they want with their own bodies and avoid vaccination. Haven't we 
The U.S. war effort at times seemed to grind on with no endgame in mind, little hope for victory and minimal care by Congress for the way tens of billions of dollars were spent for two decades. The human cost piled up  tens of thousands of Americans injured in addition to the dead.

More than 1,100 troops from coalition countries and more than 100,000 Afghan forces and civilians died, according to Brown Universitys Costs of War project.

In Bidens view the war could have ended 10 years ago with the U.S. killing of Osama bin Laden, whose al-Qaida extremist network planned and executed the 9/11 plot from an Afghanistan sanctuary. Al-Qaida has been vastly diminished, preventing it thus far from again attacking the United States.

Congressional committees, whose interest in the war waned over the years, are expected to hold public hearings on what went wrong in the final months of the U.S. withdrawal. Why, for example, did the administration not begin earlier the evacuation of American citizens as well as Afghans who had helped the U.S. war effort and felt vulnerable to retribution by the Taliban?
She added that draconian laws in neighboring states may increase the need for abortion services in New Mexico.

The Texas law bans abortions once medical professionals can detect cardiac activity, usually around six weeks  before some people know theyre pregnant. In a highly unusual twist, enforcement will be done by private citizens who can sue anyone they believe is violating the law.

Rushforth said limited access to abortion services in Texas had already resulted in waiting lists that were pushing more patients to New Mexico and other states. She called New Mexico a safe haven for people who are afraid and are now having to navigate what she called an impossible legal landscape.

These consequences will continue to be enormous as we move forward, she said. The financial and logistical barriers for many abortion patients are often times insurmountable.

Democratic state Rep. Patricia Roybal Caballero of Albuquerque said she wants New Mexico to continue to provide safe passage for those seeking abortion procedures. She voiced concerns about the potential of the Texas law leading to underground abortion procedures.
What would you like to say about We Need to Do Something?

I think the less said about the plot the better for audiences to experience it themselves. I will say that although it is about a family trapped in their bathroom during a storm, it is more a hallucinatory, phantasmagorical trip of a movie than a straight-up kitchen sink (bathroom sink?) drama. And although the subject matter sounds grim, the movie is also a lot of fun in the best off-kilter way.

What appealed to you about the story?

We had all been stuck in our own homes for more than six months last year when this movie came along. There were no vaccines yet last October when we shot, and the election hadnt taken place. So there was this general feeling we all had, some of us for the first time in our adult lives: Is everything going to be OK? We werent sure. I have always kind of felt that as bad as things get, they are always going to turn out OK in the end. Call me naive. But this was a time of true uncertainty. We didnt know what was coming behind the next door. I like the way this movie explores that idea.

In Killers of the Flower Moon, you are playing John Burger, who, from a historical standpoint, is one of the good guys.
For businesses, the way to the heart of many Americans just may be through their pets. With pet parenting on the rise, and people spending even more time, affection, and money on their pets, pleasing pet parents is a solid way for businesses to gain an edge. Pet parents love businesses who love their furry kids, and theyre willing to spend a little more and go a little further out of their way to show their appreciation. That means there are a number of different ways businesses can win with this large and growing demographic.

Brand loyalty

In a recent TripsWithPets survey, out of 500 pet parents who were asked, 82 percent said they were more likely to choose a hotel brand that they knew was pet friendly  whether they were traveling with their furkids or alone.
Despite facing a pandemic, natural disasters and other unforeseen challenges, the 2020 census results thus far are in line with overall benchmarks," the statement said.

Cabrera said the city is pulling data to show that the 2020 count was off and plans to appeal.

Somerton Mayor Gerardo Anaya worries about the city's share of state revenues. He says Somerton's sales tax revenue, school enrollment and building permits have gone up in the past few years. Developers continue to build.

As it did in many Latino communities, the pandemic had an outsized effect in Somerton. Latinos were almost twice as likely to become infected and more than twice as likely to die from COVID-19 than whites, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In Somerton, few people have jobs they can do from home. Anaya says there was a point last summer when the Somerton zip code had the highest infection rate in Arizona.

This time it was just chaotic here during the summer. We all had family members that were in the hospital or dying or infected with COVID. So it was very scary, Anaya said.
That the entirety of the McGirt ruling should be overturned because it was wrongly decided.

OConnor said in a written statement Friday that public safety is my number one concern, and I will never stop fighting for justice for the victims of crime, such as the Chickasaw family murdered by Bosse.

Although the Bosse case has now been resolved, many other criminal convictions were overturned because of the McGirt decision, he noted.

Each case is important to the victims of the terrible crimes at issue, so we will continue to appeal these decisions to the U.S. Supreme Court. Each appeal also presents the Supreme Court with an opportunity to overrule McGirt or limit its ongoing impact on the people of Oklahoma.

The state currently has nine petitions before the U.S. Supreme Court that are aimed at overturning or limiting the McGirt decision; none of those, like Bosses case, involves a death sentence.

Meanwhile, Stephen Greetham, senior counsel for the Chickasaw Nation, reacted to the states decision to dismiss the Bosse appeal.
Like his late brother, the collector Beryl Ford, Charles Ford took a deep interest in history. He founded the Oklahoma Senate Historical Fund and was largely responsible for much of the artwork in the Capitol not original to the building.

Ford was first elected to the Oklahoma House of Representatives in 1966; his classmates included a young Tulsa insurance executive named Jim Inhofe. In 1982, Ford was elected to a newly created Senate district.

I think Ive known Charlie Ford longer than anyone else on the planet  going all the way back to our old school days, Inhofe, now a U.S. senator, said in a statement Thursday evening. The thing about Charlie is that he had characteristics others dont have. If hes your friend, hes always your friend. He was a true friend for decades, even if he was a bit of a rascal.

Charlie was respected and admired by all  especially for his directness and hard work on behalf of Tulsa and all of Oklahoma. Even back in our old Oklahoma House of Representative days he was always ahead of the game and cause-oriented. Kay and I are thinking of our dear friend and his family today, and join them in honoring a remarkable man.
The findings released last year pinned much of the blame on Pope John Paul II, who appointed McCarrick archbishop of Washington, D.C., despite having commissioned an inquiry that confirmed McCarrick slept with seminarians.

In the Massachusetts case, authorities began investigating McCarrick after Garabedian sent a letter to the prosecutor's office alleging the abuse, according to the court records.

The man told authorities in January that McCarrick was close to his family when he was growing up and that the abuse started when he was young.

The man said that during his brothers wedding reception at Wellesley College in June 1974, when he was 16, McCarrick told him his father wanted him to have a talk with the priest because the boy was being mischievous at home and not attending church.

They took a walk around campus, the man said, and McCarrick groped him before they went back to the party. The man said McCarrick also sexually assaulted him in a coat room type closet after they returned to the reception, authorities wrote in the documents.
Richard Leoncini said 6 feet (2 meters) of water rushed in when he opened his door, knocking him backwards.

The fire department came and got me in a boat, Leoncini, 65, said. Youre waiting for that boat to arrive and youre surrounded by water in your apartment and youre thinking, How am I going to get out of this?

Leaders in some states pledged to examine whether anything could be done to prevent a catastrophe like this from happening again.

New Jersey and New York have both spent billions of dollars improving flood defenses after Superstorm Sandy hit in 2012, but much of that work was focused primarily on protecting communities from seawater, not rain.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said the region needs to turn its attention to storm water systems unprepared to handle a future of more frequent flash flooding because of climate change.

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said the city will work to clear people from roads, subway trains and basement apartments in advance of major rainstorms, and will ban travel as it does during major snowstorms. He said the city will also send cellphone alerts warning people to leave basement apartments and dispatch city workers to get them to shelters.
NEW YORK (AP)  A woman reluctantly took the witness stand against R. Kelly on Thursday to recount how he struck up a relationship with her in 2006 when she was 15, but dodged a prosecutors questions about when they first had sex.

I dont recall how old I was, the woman, now 31, testified at Kelly's New York City sex-trafficking trial.

When pressed further on the timing, she demurred, saying, Its hard. It was 16 years ago.

The witness stood apart from other women who have testified for the government against the R&B superstar in Brooklyn federal court by not accusing him of sexually abusing her when she was underage.

Do you want to be here today? the prosecutor asked at one point. No, she responded.
The challenged laws are unconstitutional and contrary to clear Oklahoma Supreme Court precedent, the suit says. In some instances, the challenged laws purport to reenact requirements largely identical to ones already struck down as unconstitutional by the Oklahoma Supreme Court.

The law created by House Bill 1102 effectively bans abortion by classifying it as unprofessional conduct by a doctor that carries a minimum penalty of license suspension for one year, according to the suit.

Rep. Jim Olsen, R-Roland, is author of the legislation.

House Bill 2441, authored by Rep. Todd Russ, R-Cordell, bans abortion at about six weeks of pregnancy, a point before most women know they are pregnant and roughly four months before viability, according to the suit.

House Bill 1904, drafted by Rep. Cynthia Roe, R-Lindsay, arbitrarily disqualifies abortion providers who are not board certified in obstetrics and gynecology, according to the suit.

Six out of 10 of plaintiffs doctors will be barred from providing care under the OB/GYN requirement without any medical justification, according to the suit.

Senate Bill 778 imposes a myriad of medically unnecessary and burdensome requirements on medication abortion, the suit says.
That announcement came in the wake of the court-ordered release of redacted police body camera footage showing the brief foot pursuit that led to Pridgeons arrest.

King opted not to set a jury trial date but instead ordered Pridgeon to reappear Nov. 22 so attorneys can provide a status update.

Defense attorney Gretchen Mosley has argued previously that Pridgeon has serious mental health needs that likely factored into the shooting of Lee, who she claimed in court played a role in the childrens deaths. Prosecutors have denied the allegation and maintain that Pridgeon is responsible.

Assistant District Attorney Larry Edwards said out of court that he projects the case could go to trial in the fall of 2022.

But Pridgeons defense team told King they have never seen a capital case go to trial in under two years from when the state files its intent to seek the death penalty, as attorneys need time to find expert witnesses and locate records to aid with mitigating evidence presentations.

King also said Thursday that he will ensure that transcripts of Pridgeons preliminary hearing  which another judge ordered closed to the public  are made available for inspection following a motion from the nonprofit Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.
After a four-month hiatus, the state began releasing hospital capacity data this week that seemingly conflicts with what several hospitals and physicians have publicly conveyed about being maxed out of intensive-care beds.

State Health Commissioner Lance Frye on Thursday afternoon acknowledged that the state had hospital capacity data despite not making it public again until Monday. Three days earlier, Oklahoma City-area hospital systems had banded together to provide transparency by publishing their own point-in-time capacity data  with bleak snapshots so far.

In each of their three updates since Aug. 27, INTEGRIS Health, Mercy and SSM Health St. Anthony reported having zero ICU beds available. OU Health each time has reported no more available beds for COVID patients.

Some inpatients in Oklahoma are being transferred out of state, including as far as South Dakota, to find an ICU bed.

The states point-in-time reports this week have listed anywhere from 19 to 34 available staffed ICU beds in Oklahoma County. The hospital region surrounding Oklahoma County had two to six open ICU beds.
But those Americans who would most benefit from such a system are also those least equipped to pay back a tax bill of up to $3,600 per child should they have to pay back credits they were actually ineligible for.

And unfortunately, the process of opting out of the monthly payment system is complicated and carries risks of its own. Taxpayers seeking to bypass this feature are obliged to sift through a maze of bureaucracy and hassle.

To opt-out of monthly CTC payments, taxpayers must go to the IRS website and go through the Child Tax Credit Update Portal. They then have to sign up for an account using a private company the IRS contracts with to prevent fraud, called ID.me.

Signing up for an ID.me account requires sending pictures of yourself and your photo ID, and can even require a video call with an ID.me employee to verify your identity.

Its more than just a hassle. The IRSs $86 million contract with ID.me allows the company to disclose or share non-personally identifiable information such as the URL taxpayers visited before or after coming to ID.mes website, taxpayers IP address, occupations, device identifier, approximate location and type of browser.
Vietnam Airlines on Thursday allowed 18 passengers to use the IATA Travel Pass to board a flight from Hanoi to London, marking the first time the pass has been used by travelers leaving Vietnam en route to Europe.

The IATA Travel Pass is a digital health record which allows medical officers to access the COVID-19 test result and vaccination statuses of travelers from other countries.

The flight, coded VN55, is the second Vietnam Airlines departure to use the IATA Travel Pass, the first being a Tokyo-bound flight that left Hanoi on August 12.

Both trial runs showed positive results, potentially paving the way for a near relaunch of regular international flight routes, many of which have been halted since March 2020 due to COVID-19.

The IATA Travel Pass is considered a safer and more effective solution than paper-based documentation, particularly given the variety of data many airlines and countries require passengers to present in order to board flights.

What makes the digital pass so appealing is that it allows for contactless travel, biometric recognition, and digital health certificate storage, which passengers can use to prove their health status to governments, airlines, and test clinics.

Select adult passengers will be invited to download the IATA Travel Pass app to their mobile phones, create a digital ID using their photo and passport information, and fill in flight details in order to receive information on entry requirements at the destination.

Before departure, passengers will be required to get tested at eligible clinics based on the IATA registry, then share the test results digitally, and confirm flight status to the airline ahead of their arrival at the airport.

Currently, 30 airlines from around the world are piloting the IATA Travel Pass.

Governments of countries such as Singapore, Panama, and Estonia have also endorsed the pass.

In Vietnam, domestic carriers Bamboo Airways, Vietjet, and Vietnam Airlines are working to incorporate the IATA Travel Pass into their protocols.

Vietnam Airlines will continue to pilot the system on several flights in September, including one that leaves Hanoi for Seoul on September 12 and another bound for Tokyo on September 21, a company associate said.

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Authorities have declared that the COVID-19 epidemic has been kept under control in Cu Chi District and District 7 under Ho Chi Minh City, which is the largest virus epicenter of Vietnam.

Cu Chi District has principally contained the spread of the coronavirus, Nguyen Thi Le, chairwoman of the Ho Chi Minh City Peoples Council, told Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper on Thursday.

The northernmost district of Ho Chi Minh City, Cu Chi recorded 2,327 coronavirus infections from August 16 to 31, all of whom were either sent to quarantine centers or strictly monitored at home, district officials said at a meeting on Thursday.

Among the adult populace of Cu Chi District, 93 percent have received at least one jab against the coronavirus, while four percent have got the second dose, they added.

One of the areas deemed at low risk of COVID-19 spread in Ho Chi Minh City, Cu Chi has put all residents in the most susceptible neighborhoods through three rounds of testing, whereas those in relatively safer areas are about to enter the second round of screening.

As a total of 260 zones, home to 3,200 households and 9,100 residents, are still in lockdown, district authorities are striving to provide relief packages, bringing over 200,000 gift bundles containing essential items and groceries to 96,000 struggling households.

The districts effort in containing the virus was commended by Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh, according to chairwoman Nguyen Thi Le.

Also on Thursday, the Steering Committee for COVID-19 Prevention and Control of District 7 announced the locales initial success in curbing the spread of the pathogen.

The death toll in the district has declined sharply since August 23, while the vaccination rate among adult citizens has reached 94 percent, district officials declared.

Local authorities have funneled VND98 billion (US$4.3 million) from the public budget into COVID-19 relief programs, which have so far reached 57,878 residents.

They have raised VND94.5 billion ($4.15 million) worth of donations from various sources, besides persuading 2,500 landlords to waive a total of VND14.5 billion ($638,000) in rents for tenants.

District 7 has completed the rollout of the first two welfare packages, while 87 percent of the third package has been distributed to local residents, according to officials' report.

Local leaders are planning to move 2,500 vulnerable residents, such as senior citizens and obese individuals, out of high-risk zones to specialized lodgings for better care and monitoring.

Health workers in District 7 are working to screen residents for the coronavirus, while providing at least one vaccine jab to all citizens aged 18 years old and above.

By September 15, they aim to have 15-20 percent of the populace inoculated with two doses, targeting to raise the ratio to 100 percent by September 30.

Ho Chi Minh City is currently the gravest coronavirus outbreak site in Vietnam, recording over 232,000 cases since the fourth wave emerged in the Southeast Asian country on April 27.

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Authorities of a commune in the north-central Vietnamese province of Thanh Hoa have locked the doors of 278 houses with 388 people, who came into indirect contact with a COVID-19 patient, so that they cannot travel outdoors and spread the virus to the community.

Some residents of Hoang Thai Commune in Hoang Hoa District threw their support behind this approach, while others criticized it.

The 388 locked-up residents were direct contacts of 20 people, who had interacted in person with a coronavirus-infected employee working at Thanh Hoa Hospital for Lung Diseases.

The Hoang Thai Peoples Committee decided to isolate all of them at home for 14 days following their negative COVID-19 test results.

Functional forces have even locked the doors of the 278 houses since Tuesday as there were not enough personnel to monitor every household around the clock, according to Trinh Huu Vui, chairman of Hoang Thai Commune.

Medical workers visit the households and check their health status on a daily basis.

This measure has come under fire as several people said that it is not prescribed in national COVID-19 prevention and control regulations.

Locking the doors of those households will cause many conveniences if the family members with a serious illness, such as heart disease, high blood pressure, and diabetes complications, need to go to the hospital for emergency treatment, or in case of accidents such as an electrical short, fire, and explosion, said a resident of Hoang Thai Commune.

In response to Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspapers queries regarding the issue, both chairman Vui and Le Xuan Thu, secretary of the Hoang Hoa District Party Committee, affirmed that the authorities had received approval from the 388 residents before locking up their houses.

The residents are expected to undergo their second COVID-19 tests on Friday, according to Thu.

Once their results all return negative for the virus, the Hoang Hoa District authorities will ask the Peoples Committee of Hoang Thai Commune to relax this quarantining method, Thu said.

From April 27, when the fourth coronavirus wave struck Vietnam, Thanh Hoa has recorded 310 cases of COVID-19, including 122 recoveries and one death, according to VnExpress news site.

As the number of community outbreaks has bounced back recently, the provincial authorities have placed the two districts of Nong Cong and Nga Son and Thanh Hoa City under social distancing.

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A man has been charged for acting against law enforcement officers at a COVID-19 checkpoint in Vietnam and threatened to murder the whole family of a policeman there.

Lam Dinh Bao, a 31-year-old man residing in Thu Dau Mot City under Binh Duong Province, just outside Ho Chi Minh City, was indicted on Thursday for resisting on-duty law enforcers, several days after his arrest, local police reported.

On August 27, Bao did not stop his car at a COVID-19 checkpoint in the city to perform epidemic prevention procedures, and attempted to pass it.

After being stopped by a mobile police team, Bao claimed he was on the way to carry out a charity plan but he failed to produce any supporting documents.

Bao, without wearing a face mask, got out of his car and loudly swore at the police officers who were asking him to put on a mask and show his travel pass.

When a policeman refused to let Bao get through the checkpoint as he had no travel pass, he threatened to kill the entire family of this officer.

Given his aggressiveness, the team detained and escorted him to a local police station, leaving his car at the checkpoint.

Bao insisted he did not commit any offence, explaining that he could not obtain proof for his charity trip due to the COVID-19 pandemic impacts.

The man tested positive for drugs, police said.

Two hours later, Le Van Tuan, 36, a friend of Bao's, came to the checkpoint to steal the car and drove it away.

The team then found out both Tuan and the vehicle and escorted them to the police station.

Tuans act of theft will be handled separately, police said.

Searching Baos residence, police officers seized a lot of documents related to usury activities.

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A married couple was killed in an explosion at their home in the central Vietnamese province of Quang Nam on Friday morning.

The incident occurred in Tien Phong Commune, Tien Phuoc District at around 6:20 am, according to Vo Xuan Anh, chairman of the communes Peoples Committee.

The victims were Nguyen Minh, 59, and his 55-year-old wife Nguyen Thi Loan.

Preliminary reports said the explosion was so loud that it could be heard and felt by everyone in a two-kilometer radius.

Local residents gather at the site of the explosion in Quang Nam Province, Vietnam, September 3, 2021. Photo: Minh Hieu / Tuoi Tre

By the time local residents made it to the site, the house had already collapsed while Minh and Loan were buried in the rubble.

Competent authorities carried out an examination of the site and are still trying to work out the cause of the incident.

It was either a gas cylinder or unexploded ordinance, chairman Anh stated.

The married couple lived by themselves and had no children, the official added.

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Three family members drowned while clamming in a river in the central Vietnamese province of Quang Ngai on Thursday.

The tragedy took place at around 3:00 pm in Song Ve Town, Tu Nghia District, said Nguyen Phuc Nhan, secretary of the districts Party Committee.

Four family members, including Truong Thi Diep, 56, Nguyen Thi My, 33, Truong Thanh Truong, 14, and Truong Cong Chanh, 10, were clamming together in the local Ve River.

The group all fell into a particularly deep section of the river and by the time nearby residents were able to bring them to shore, My, Truong, and Chanh had already died.

Diep was still alive and was rushed to the hospital for emergency treatment.

According to secretary Nhan, the Ve River is a popular place for local residents to catch clams to earn a living.

It had rained heavily in the region for several days prior to the incident, the official added.

The Ve is one of the three largest rivers in Quang Ngai and often becomes dangerous during the rainy season.

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Vietnams COVID-19 caseload has surpassed 500,000 patients as the Ministry of Health reported 14,922 cases on Friday, including 8,499 in Ho Chi Minh City.

Thirty-four provinces and cities recorded 14,894 domestic cases while the country logged another 28 imported infections, the health ministry said.

The ministry had documented 13,186 domestically-infected patients on Thursday.

It detected 9,275 of the new cases in the community, with the remainder found in isolated areas or centralized quarantine facilities.

Ho Chi Minh City registered a record high of 8,499 domestic infections, up by 2,536 cases from yesterday; Binh Duong Province 3,676, up by 828; Dong Nai Province 986; Long An Province 564; Tay Ninh Province 267; Da Nang 81; and Hanoi 58.

Vietnam has confirmed 497,391 community transmissions in 62 out of its 63 provinces and cities since the fourth  and worst  virus wave emerged in the country on April 27.

Ho Chi Minh City tops the table with 241,084 patients, followed by Binh Duong Province with 126,408, Dong Nai Province with 26,314, Long An Province with 23,785, Tien Giang Province with 10,290, Dong Thap Province with 7,224, Khanh Hoa Province with 6,731, Da Nang with 4,477, Hanoi with 3,670, and Ba Ria-Vung Tau Province with 3,595.

By comparison, Vietnam confirmed a combined 1,570 locally-transmitted infections in the previous three waves.

The health ministry announced 11,344 recoveries on Friday, taking the total to 270,668.

The toll has mounted to 12,476 fatalities after the ministry logged 338 deaths on the same day, including 250 in Ho Chi Minh City and 44 in Binh Duong Province.

Vietnam has registered 501,649 patients since the COVID-19 pandemic first struck it early last year.

Health workers have given around 20.8 million doses, including 283,221 shots on Thursday, since inoculation was rolled out on March 8.

Over 2.95 million people have been fully vaccinated.

Health authorities aim to immunize at least two-thirds of a population of nearly 98 million people against COVID-19 by the first quarter of next year.

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On Sundays 60 Minutes, companies that received JobKeeper when they didnt need it, and a 9/11 victim who fell 18 floors but survived.

Cashing In

Theres no such thing as free money, right? Wrong. On 60 Minutes, Liam Bartlett reports on what has become a highly controversial, government-sanctioned, get-rich-quick scheme. It began at the start of the COVID pandemic last year when Canberra was forced to take urgent action to avoid economic oblivion. It came up with JobKeeper, a package that gave struggling businesses billions of dollars to pay their workers. No one disputes the success of the program which saved 700,000 thousand jobs. But more than 150,000 companies that werent in financial trouble  many actually thriving  still applied for JobKeeper benefits. These companies received $13 billion of taxpayers money they didnt need. For them, it was money for nothing. Although what these businesses were doing wasnt illegal, and the federal government is happy for them to keep the cash, does it pass the pub test?

Reporter: Liam Bartlett

Producer: Thea Dikeos

The Miracle Man

The evil that occurred on September 11, 2001 will never be forgotten. On that horrible day the world changed forever. There was so much destruction and so much loss that even now, 20 years later, it is hard to comprehend the magnitude of what happened. But out of the utter despair there were also incredible stories of heroism and survival. And none is more extraordinary than that of New Yorker Pasquale Buzzelli. He was trapped inside the north tower of the World Trade Centre as it collapsed. Amongst the rubble, he fell 18 floors to the ground, but against impossible odds somehow emerged alive and barely injured. As Tara Brown discovers, Pasquale really is a miracle man, grateful for his second chance at life, and determined to offer hope and inspiration to us all.

Reporter: Tara Brown

Producer: Garry McNab

8:30pm (ish) Sunday on Nine
Million Dollar Listing Los Angeles returns for Season 13 today with a 90-minute episode.

Returning are agents Josh Flagg, Josh Altman, Tracy Tutor, James Harris and David Parnes, also joining team LA is real estate broker Fredrik Eklund of Million Dollar Listing New York.

This season, our LA agents are back and at the top of their game as they face a booming market that has defied expectations. With demand from both sellers and buyers that has skyrocketed as high as the prices, the agents must rise to the next level to beat the competition. As homeowners seek properties with more space and privacy during the pandemic, the agents are busier than ever as they negotiate huge listings and manage even bigger egos.

Josh Flagg returns to his Old Hollywood roots focusing on high-end, historic properties in the coveted Beverly Hills Flats, including his own. Tracy Tutor faces her biggest challenge when listing a $30 million-dollar Holmby Hills estate owned by the toughest customer she has ever dealt with  her little sister. Josh Altman ventures into new territory with a $25 million-dollar cliffside listing in Orange County, but discovers he is not the only agent looking to expand there.

Fredrik Eklund quickly establishes himself in LA, but a few missteps within the real estate community puts him at odds with the other agents. James Harris and David Parnes continue to dominate the Bel Air market and expand into the historic Hancock Park area. After butting heads with Fredrik and dealing with several challenging sellers, they must set aside their British manners and break a few rules to get the job done.

Million Dollar Listing Los Angeles is produced by World of Wonder with Randy Barbato, Fenton Bailey, Danielle King and Shannon Wilson serving as Executive Producers.

1.30pm Friday on Binge and hayu. Foxtel is yet to advise.
Local

Supreme Court upholds for now Texas abortion restriction law authored by Sen. Bryan Hughes

ZAK WELLERMAN/ Tyler Morning Telegraph Judge Austin Reeve Jackson of the 114th District Court in August speaks about a lawsuit from abortion providers that he is named in and that challenges Senate Bill 8, also known as the heartbeat bill, at the Axia Center in Tyler. The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday decided to deny an emergency appeal from the abortion providers. SB 8 went into effect this Wednesday. ZAK WELLERMAN/ Tyler Morning Telegraph State Sen. Bryan Hughes, R-Mineola, author of Senate Bill 8, speaks about the legislation and the lawsuit that targets the bill on Wednesday at the Axia Center in Tyler. The lawsuit names 114th District Judge Austin Reeve Jackson and challenges SB 8, also known as the heartbeat bill. SB 8 prohibits abortions after six weeks into a womans pregnancy and it went effect on Sept. 1.

After abortion providers tried to sue 114th District Judge Austin Reeve Jackson to stop enforcement of Texas abortion restriction bill, the Supreme Court late Wednesday night decided not to block the law authored by state Sen. Bryan Hughes, R-Mineola.

Senate Bill 8, which went into effect Wednesday, bans abortion in Texas about six weeks into a pregnancy and allows people to sue a physician who performs an abortion and to possibly be awarded no less than $10,000 in statutory damages, according to the text of the law.

A class-action suit filed by abortion providers, including Whole Womans Health and Planned Parenthood, on July 13 in a federal Austin-based court sought to stop officials like Jackson and Smith County District Clerk Penny Clarkston from processing potential abortion-related lawsuits against providers. Right to Life East Texas Director Mark Lee Dickson was also named in the lawsuit.

U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman initially set a hearing to address the abortion providers request to halt the enforcement of Senate Bill 8 until the litigation is resolved. However, that hearing was later canceled and the abortion providers chose to seek an emergency appeal from the Supreme Court.

In a 5-4 vote, the court denied the appeal; however, the courts opinion did note the abortion providers raised serious questions regarding the constitutionality of the Texas law.

The Supreme Court document states that its unclear if those named in the lawsuit, including Jackson and Clarkston, can or will seek to enforce SB 8 against the abortion providers that might require the Supreme Courts intervention.

Its also unclear, under current precedent, if the Supreme Court can stop state judges, which refers to Jackson in this lawsuit, from deciding a lawsuit under Texas law, according to the opinion.

Jackson on Facebook said Thursday he was thankful to Smith County citizens who supported him during the lawsuit.

Yesterdays Supreme Court decision belongs to the citizens of Smith County who have supported me in this lawsuit, and who continue to support me, as much as it belongs to anybody, Jackson said in a statement. Today, my family and I are particularly thankful for that support and honored to play a small part in living out the values of this great place we call home.

The opinion notes the order is not based on any conclusion about the constitutionality of the heartbeat law, and it does not limit procedurally proper challenges to this law, including in Texas state courts.

According to the Associated Press, President Joe Biden said his administration will launch a whole-of-government effort to respond to this decision and look at what steps the federal government can take to ensure that women in Texas have access to safe and legal abortions as protected by Roe (v. Wade).

Roe v. Wade, a 1973 Supreme Court ruling, was a decision that protects a womans right to choose to have an abortion.

Jackson in August during a news conference in Tyler called the lawsuit frivolous, and both his and others lawyers attempted to have the litigation dismissed last month in the lower federal court.

In the Supreme Courts dissenting opinion, Justice Sonia Sotomayor called her conservative colleagues decision stunning.

Presented with an application to enjoin a flagrantly unconstitutional law engineered to prohibit women from exercising their constitutional rights and evade judicial scrutiny, a majority of Justices have opted to bury their heads in the sand, she wrote.
Savorys parents were born and raised on the Caribbean island of Jamaica. In May, the son of immigrants graduated from the University of Dayton School of Law. This summer Savory is studying for the bar in preparation for starting work as an associate attorney in September at the Thompson Hine Dayton office.

1. How has being a first-generation American affected your life?

The American dream is different for immigrants. Coming here you do everything you can because where you came from you could not. My family had the opportunity and took a huge risk to come to the greatest country in the world in order to exploit that opportunity.

2. How did you connect with Thompson Hine?

My first year, I attended a mock interview program at their office. Most of us first-years had never been in a law office. I didnt have the grades to be a summer associate, but one of my interviewers, Christine Haaker 91 [partner in charge of the Dayton office of Thompson Hine], talked of the possibility of an externship in two years. I wanted that and attained it.

3. So what did you do about your grades?

That summer I interned with a firm in Miami. Once I was able put the things I learned in the classroom into practice at work, everything clicked. I also lost 100 pounds, which helped my focus and clarity of thinking. When I realized that lawyers are ordinary people who work extremely hard, I became more self-assured in myself and my work product, which allowed me to walk into my second year confident, and the grades followed. And when COVID hit during my second year, we had an option of taking pass/fail grades and retaining our previous GPA. I chose not to take that option. I bet on myself and got the grades, including the highest grade in my business law class.

... when COVID hit during my second year, we had an option of taking pass/fail grades and retaining our previous GPA. I chose not to take that option. I bet on myself and got the grades, including the highest grade in my business law class.

4. Did you get involved with activities outside of class?

In my first year, I joined the Business Law Society and the Black Law Students Association. I wasnt much involved, but I was impressed by what Simeon Lyons 19, BLSA president, was able to do. Second year, I ran for office. I lost. But I was named sergeant-at-arms. BLSA liked my drive. Marissa Weatherly 20, BLSA president, gave me opportunities to be involved.

5. And your last year?

I was vice president of my class, chair of the board for Business Law Society and president of the Black Law Students Association. In the Ohio Attorney Generals mock trial competition, I won best attorney. And I got the Thompson Hine externship followed by an offer to return as an associate. I also was an organizer of a Zoom series titled Lets Get Real, which fosters community conversations on social issues affecting Black and minority demographics. The death of George Floyd took a massive toll on me. In law school, I had gotten in touch with my Blackness, and it struck me that if I were stopped for a traffic offense, I could be handcuffed as appearing  because of my size  to be a threat. Lets Get Real was born from that feeling.
During the mid-1990s I traveled between Dayton, Ohio, and Washington, D.C., twice a month during the school year as half of a commuting couple. I could leave Dayton by 5:15 p.m., drive nearly 80 miles to the Columbus airport during rush hour, park my car in the economy lot, and still get to my gate in plenty of time for a 7:30 p.m. departure.

Then 9/11 happened.

Airplane passengers line up for TSA security screenings at Denver International Airport in 2019. Robert Alexander/Getty Images

The terrorist attacks brought swift and lasting changes to the air travel experience in the United States. And after 20 years of ever-more-elaborate airport security protocols, many air travelers have no knowledge of  or only vague memories of  what air travel was like before 9/11.

As someone who has studied the history of airports in the United States  and someone old enough to remember air travel before 9/11  I find it striking, on the one hand, how reluctant the federal government, the airlines, and airports were to adopt early security measures.

On the other hand, its been jarring to watch how abruptly the sprawling Transportation Security Agency system was created  and how quickly American air travelers came to accept those security measures as both normal and seemingly permanent features of all U.S. airports.

Security Kabuki

In the early decades of air travel, airport security  beyond basic policing  was essentially nonexistent. Getting on a plane was no different from getting on a bus or train.

But in the late 1960s and early 1970s, there was a wave of hijackings, terrorist attacks and extortion attempts  the most infamous being that of the man known as D.B. Cooper, who commandeered a Boeing 727, demanded US$200,000 and, upon securing the case, dramatically parachuted from the plane, never to be found.

Attacks on U.S. flights usually prompted another new security measure, whether it was the formation of the air marshal program, which placed armed federal agents on U.S. commercial aircraft; the development of a hijacker profile, aimed at identifying people deemed likely to threaten an aircraft; or the screening of all passengers.

By 1973, under the new protocols, air travelers had to pass through a metal detector and have any bags X-rayed to check for weapons or suspicious objects.

For the most part, however, these measures were intended to reassure nervous flyers  security theater that sought to minimally impede easy passage from check-in to gate. For domestic travel, it was possible to arrive at the airport terminal 20 to 30 minutes before your flight and still be able to reach the gate in time to board. Families and friends could easily accompany a traveler to their gate for take-off and meet them at the gate upon their return.

Above all, airlines didnt want to inconvenience passengers, and airports were reluctant to lose the extra revenue from family and friends who might frequent airport restaurants, bars and shops when dropping off or picking up those passengers.

In addition, these security measures, though called for by the Federal Aviation Administration, were the responsibility of not the federal government, but the airlines. And to keep costs down, the airlines tended to contract private companies to conduct security screenings that used minimally trained low-paid employees.

The clampdown

All that changed with the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Once the airlines returned to the skies on Sept. 14, 2001, it was immediately apparent that flying was going to be different. Passengers arriving at airports were greeted by armed military personnel, as governors throughout the country had mobilized the National Guard to protect the nations airports. They remained on patrol for several months.

Security measures only increased in December 2001, when Richard Reid, the so-called Shoe Bomber, attempted to set off explosives in his shoes on an international flight from Paris to Miami. Taking off your shoes before passing through security quickly became a requirement.

Then, in 2006, British officials intercepted an attempt to carry liquid explosives aboard a flight, resulting in a ban on all liquids. This was later modified to restricting passengers to liquids of no more than 3.4 ounces. By 2010, the full-body scanner had become a familiar sight at airports throughout the U.S.

A 2019 study indicated that the average time to get through security at some of the nations busiest airports varied from just over 23 minutes at Newark Liberty to 16.3 minutes at Seattle-Tacoma, but could go as high as 60 minutes and 34 minutes, respectively, at those same two airports during peak times.

These new security measures became the responsibility of the federal government to enforce. In November 2001, Congress created the Transportation Security Agency, and by the early months of 2002, their employees had become the face of transportation security throughout the United States  at airports as well as railroads, subways and other forms of transportation.

Today, the TSA employs over 50,000 agents.

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No end in sight

In the first decade after 9/11, the federal government spent over $62 billion on airport security in total, as annual spending for the TSA increased from $4.34 billion in 2002 to $7.23 billion in 2011, and has only grown since then.

In many ways, the post-9/11 scramble by airport officials to address security concerns was similar to the impulse to address public health concerns in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, when plastic barriers, hand sanitizers and floor markings encouraging social distancing appeared at airports throughout the U.S.

How long the COVID-19 measures will need to stay in place remains to be seen. However, the security measures adopted after 9/11 have proved permanent enough that they have become incorporated into recent airport terminal renovations.

For example, when Reagan National Airports new terminal opened in 1997, passengers could move freely between the shop- and restaurant-filled National Hall and the gates in Terminals B and C. After 9/11, airport officials placed security checkpoints at the entrances to Terminals B and C, effectively making shops and restaurants no longer accessible to passengers who had passed through security.

Now, the almost-completed $1 billion redesign will move the security checkpoints to a new building constructed above the airports roadway and open up access among National Hall, Terminals B and C and a new commuter terminal.

Nearly a generation has passed since the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Even those of us old enough to remember air travel before that fateful date have grown accustomed to the new normal. And while passengers today might quite happily mark the eventual end of the COVID-19 public health security measures, theyre far less likely to see a return to pre-9/11 security levels at the airport anytime soon.

Janet Bednarek is a professor of history at the University of Dayton.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
As children return to school amid a rise in COVID-related hospitalizations in various parts of the U.S., health professionals are calling on schools to mandate masks to stem the spread of coronavirus.

The simple message I have is: Lets get the kids in masks, Dr. Andre Campbell, an ICU physician and trauma surgeon at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, said on Yahoo Finance Live (video above). Masks dont hurt. Theyre safe. And the kids will wear them. If we do that in the short term, that will help protect the kids. Remember, weve had 204,000 new cases in kids. On average, there are 330 new cases of children being hospitalized in the United States.

According to the latest data from the American Academy of Pediatrics, over the week ending August 26, the U.S. saw 204,000 newly confirmed COVID-19 cases in children. Over the past month, COVID cases among children have risen five-fold and now account for 22.4% of weekly cases.

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Vaccines from Pfizer (PFE), Moderna (MRNA), and Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) are very effective in preventing cases of serious illness and death. At the same time, transmission among unvaccinated populations seems to occur at a much higher rate as the highly contagious Delta variant circulates in the U.S.

The unvaccinated folks are the ones who are actually spreading the virus around, Campbell said.

Most children are unvaccinated since only kids ages 12 and up can receive a COVID-19 vaccine. Nevertheless, some states are prohibiting mask mandates in schools as those governors leave it up to the parents to decide whether or not to mask their children.

Govs. Doug Ducey (R-AZ), Ron DeSantis (R-FL), Greg Abbott (R-TX), Henry McMaster (R-SC), Asa Hutchinson (R-AR), Spencer Cox (R-UT), Kim Reynolds (R-IA), and Kevin Stitt (R-OK) have signed laws banning school mask mandates in their respective states.

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Campbell disagreed with these decisions.

We have to do anything we can do, Campbell said. This debate about masking up, it shouldnt be a debate. Lets do whats safe for our kids. Lets protect them. Mask them up.

Story continues

A couple of governors have reconsidered: Hutchinson has spoken openly about his regret for allowing such legislation, and Cox is reportedly considering allowing local jurisdictions in his state to implement their own mask policies.

'Lets protect our kids until they can get the vaccine'

Studies have shown that masking makes a difference in protecting the wearer and those around them from the virus by mitigating the viral loads being transmitted both ways.

Masking is safe, Campbell said. We should mask our kids. Lets protect our kids until they can get the vaccine. Its now fully approved for 16 and over. Were waiting for the data for younger kids. Lets protect our kids and make sure theyre not a source now of the next wave.

A mother adjusts the facemask of her child as she enters the St. Lawrence Catholic School on the first day of school near Miami, on August 18, 2021. (Photo by CHANDAN KHANNA/AFP)

Campbell also asserted that all school employees "should be mandated now to get the vaccine."

States like California, Connecticut, Illinois, New Jersey, Oregon, and Washington have put mandates in place that require any employee working in a school to be vaccinated against COVID-19 or undergo weekly testing.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently released a report highlighting how an unvaccinated teacher in California infected with COVID-19 likely spread the virus through her classroom after working for just two days and sometimes speaking to the class unmasked.

An unvaccinated teacher likely infected half of a class. (CDC)

'Way more patients than there were before'

There have been more than 39.5 million cases of coronavirus in the U.S., with an 18% increase over the past 14 days. During that time period, COVID-related deaths have surged by 75% while hospitalizations have risen 17%.

I think we have to do every single thing we can to push this back because think about what it was like in June, Campbell said. In June, we thought things were turning the tide. There were only 10,000 cases. Now were up above 150,000 cases. And thats because the Delta variant in June was 1% of our infections. Now, its 99%. So it has changed the character of the pandemic.

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He added that Americans are currently "in a new phase. Its a little bit Back to the Future again. Were back to where we were. But we have to remember: This is a new variant and a variant that is much more virulent, much more powerful, and there are way more patients than there were before.

On top of rising case counts, Southern states are also dealing with the aftermath of Hurricane Ida. When natural disasters strike, public health guidelines  like social distancing, wearing masks, hand hygiene, and proper ventilation become a challenge to maintain.

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Louisiana, Texas, and Florida are already hard-hit, Campbell said. It will get worse there before it gets better. Thats combined with kids going back to school. Theres a bit of a surge with kids going back to school, too, because theres a little bit more debate than I think there should be.

Those three states are among the top 10 in COVID-related hospitalizations and deaths.

Remember, this is a pandemic now of the unvaccinated, Campbell said. That means that greater than 96-97% of the people in the hospital and the people who are dying are unvaccinated.

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Campbell also cautioned against traveling during Labor Day Weekend, noting that people could become exposed and bring transmission back to their home communities.

I think to protect everybody I would say dont travel over the Labor Day Weekend unless you absolutely have to, he said. "You have to make sure youre protected. Be careful. Mask up. The handwashing, the distancing, all those things that we know that work until everybody can get vaccinated.

Adriana Belmonte is a reporter and editor covering politics and health care policy for Yahoo Finance. You can follow her on Twitter @adrianambells and reach her at adriana@yahoofinance.com.

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Despite the deterioration in relations between the United States and Russia, theres some hope that new forms of vaccine diplomacy may once again take hold. The June 2021 summit held in Geneva between President Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin suggests the two countries are open to high-level dialogue.

But, as history shows, much more could be done to strengthen ties in the name of global public health. Decades ago, in the midst of the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union worked together in surprising ways to combat polio and smallpox. These collaborative efforts averted millions of deaths around the world, The Washington Post writes. Until Joseph Stalins death in 1953, U.S.-Soviet scientific engagement remained limited, despite rising polio cases in both countries. Then, relations between the Soviet Union and the West improved during Nikita Khrushchevs Thaw. Starting in the mid-1950s, Khrushchev initiated cultural and societal reform, aiming for peaceful coexistence with the West and the end of the repressive Stalin era. The Thaw paved the way for greater collaboration between scientists. Albert B. Sabin was a leading American virologist. He met his Soviet counterpart Mikhail P. Chumakov in 1956, when both scientists made government-approved visits to each others countries to cooperate in the fight against polio. They recognized the value of working together because the perceived threat of infectious disease transcended the East-West divide.

Certain key factors played a role in fostering scientific cooperation during the Khrushchev years. One such factor was the 1958 Lacy-Zarubin Agreement, which encouraged official bilateral exchanges in science, technology, the arts and other areas. This agreement provided crucial structure for public health engagement.

Sabin had developed an oral polio vaccine and sent his virus strains to Chumakov on the other side of the Iron Curtain. Sabins live vaccine had the potential to immunize millions of people at a faster rate and lower cost than Jonas Salks killed vaccine, and a partnership with Chumakov ensured that it would have a lasting global impact. Using Sabins strains of the virus, Chumakov produced and then tested the oral vaccine on 10 million children across the Soviet Union in 1959.

In a letter he wrote in December 1959, Chumakov began, My dear Doctor Sabin, reflecting the warm personal relationship between the two experts. I am very glad to tell you that your vaccine has been winning new victories in our country. The number vaccinated is steadily increasing which reflects the simple fact  great advantages of the live oral vaccine over the killed one. He continued, The evidence of epidemiologic effectiveness of mass vaccinations keeps accumulating greatly.

In 1960, approximately 100 million people in the Eastern Bloc, including a whopping 77 million people younger than 20 in the Soviet Union, were vaccinated. Although polio primarily infects children under 5, older children and adults can also contract the disease.

The impact of the collaboration between Sabin and Chumakov extended well beyond the borders of Eastern and Central Europe. For instance, Asian countries, including Japan, received the vaccine from the Soviet Union. In 1962, the oral polio vaccine was federally licensed for use in the United States.

A decade later, when Sabin made the altruistic decision to donate his strains to the World Health Organization, global access to the vaccine increased considerably. By 1984, the vaccine was widely distributed in the United States, the Soviet Union, China and other temperate-climate countries with a combined total population of almost 2 billion people. The vaccine was not as prevalent in tropical and subtropical nations. Four years later, the World Health Assembly established the Global Polio Eradication Initiative. This was so successful that today polio is endemic only in two countries: Afghanistan and Pakistan.

This polio campaign was not a one-off collaboration. In the 1960s, the United States provided funding as the Soviet Union developed a freeze-dried smallpox vaccine and prepared 450 million doses for developing countries worldwide. By the late 1970s, thanks in no small part to these efforts, smallpox was considered eradicated. In a relatively short period of time, the United States and the Soviet Union became leaders in the realm of global health, protecting people around the world from infectious diseases.

Today, the history of U.S.-Soviet collaboration in fighting polio and smallpox remains largely forgotten, in part because of rising tensions between the U.S. and Russia in recent years.

In the decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the U.S. and Russia have attempted to encourage engagement in the public health realm. In 2009, then-presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev created the Bilateral Presidential Commission (BPC) to foster dialogue and enhance cooperation through working groups in key areas of U.S.-Russia relations, including health. Two years later, the two sides even signed a Protocol of Intent on Cooperation for the Global Eradication of Polio, demonstrating that the legacy of polio cooperation exists. But the reset between the U.S. and Russia did not last long. In the wake of the Ukraine crisis, the U.S. suspended the BPC in 2014.

When SARS-CoV-2, a new coronavirus, emerged five years later in 2019 and caused a pandemic, relations between the U.S. and Russia were at a low point. Although President Donald Trump personally venerated Putin, Russian interference in both the 2016 and 2020 U.S. presidential elections and the United States continued imposition of sanctions against Russia, among other issues, caused tensions to escalate even further. Both countries were unprepared, even unwilling, to put aside their differences to effectively engage in vaccine diplomacy, marking a departure from previous collaborative efforts at the height of the Cold War.

The success of U.S.-Soviet collaboration in the fight against polio in the late 1950s and 1960s stands in stark contrast to the lack of cooperation between the U.S. and Russia in the current coronavirus pandemic. Despite the pandemics devastating impact on both countries and the world at large, bilateral tensions have impeded joint efforts in vaccine development and distribution. Even though Russia has exported its Sputnik V vaccine globally, vaccine hesitancy and shortages have complicated efforts to vaccinate people domestically.

While half of the U.S. population has been fully vaccinated, many Americans still remain vaccine-hesitant, and the U.S. has hindered the global effort to contain the spread of the coronavirus by hoarding vaccines. Beyond the current pandemic, the U.S. and Russia could also work together to develop vaccines against leishmaniasis, West Nile virus and other diseases. In addition, reviving the BPC or creating new frameworks to promote cooperation would follow historical precedent with proven success.
The position of one of the Azerbaijani military units in the direction of liberated Shusha city was intensively shelled by illegal Armenian armed groups in the territory of Azerbaijan, where Russian peacekeepers are temporarily stationed, according to the Azerbaijani Defense ministry.

The intensive firing took place from 01:00 to 02:15 (GMT+4) on September 3, 2021.

Thanks to the vigilance and urgent measures taken by the Azerbaijani Armed Forces, the opposite side suffered casualties and was suppressed.

The Russian peacekeeping command and the Russia-Turkey Joint Monitoring Center were informed about the incident.
European Union countries evacuated 17,500 people from Afghanistan, EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell said following an informal meeting of EU defense ministers hosted by Slovenia, which currently presides over the Council of the EU.

"Together, the member states evacuated 17,500 persons, including 520 European Union staff and their relatives, who were transported to a hub in Madrid and from there redistributed to the member states that provided visas to them," Borrell pointed out. "It was done in a matter of few days without previous notice and under difficult circumstances," he added.

According to the EU top diplomat, "the only way forward is to combine our forces and strengthen not only our capacity but also our will to act. This means raising the level of readiness through joint military training and exercising and establishing new tools like the entry force" that will be presented in November. "This would have helped us to provide a security perimeter for the evacuation of EU citizens in Kabul," Borrell noted.
Accepting of Afghan refugees in the EU will be done on an individual and voluntary basis, High Representative Josep Borrell said, speaking at the informal meeting of Foreign Affairs Ministers

He noted that people at risk, people who were working with the EU, people who were supporting the process of democratisation of Afghanistan have to be evacuated.

"Individual Member States will decide, on a voluntary basis, on the persons at risk that they are willing to receive under their protection," Borrell said.
Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby said the U.S. military mission in Afghanistan is over, meaning that the U.S. is not going to support the Taliban (outlawed in Russia) in Afghanistan.

"The U.S. military mission in Afghanistan is over," he told the briefing.

On August 15, Taliban militants entered the capital city of Kabul without fighting and took complete control over the city in a matter of hours. The President of Afghanistan Ashraf Ghani announced that he was leaving the country in order to prevent bloodshed.
Russias head sanitary doctor Anna Popova has not ruled out the possibility that Russia will be hit by an influx of coronavirus infections in fall.

"We always know that in fall when people return from their holidays, kids return to school, employees get together, and they not only exchange their holiday stories but also sometimes viruses and bacteria. <> And this exchange of course leads to an increase in cases. In all working teams. It is usually seen in the middle of September. This is an annual increase but we are already used to it," she said.

Popova underlined that Covid will ensure its spread as a respiratory infection. "But again, only if we are not vaccinated," she added.
The formation of a new Afghan government by the Taliban (banned in Russia), which was to be announced on Friday, has now been delayed by a day, according to spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid.

Mujahid said the announcement about the formation of the new government will now be made on Saturday, September 4, The Times of India reported.

Sources said that Chairman of Taliban's Political Office, Doha, Qatar Mulla Abdul Ghani Baradar is likely to be the head of the Taliban Government.

More than two weeks after the Taliban took over Afghanistan, the hardline Islamists are all set to announce the formation of a new government in Kabul on the lines of the Iranian leadership, with the group's top religious leader Mullah Hebatullah Akhundzada as Afghanistan's supreme authority, a senior member of the group has said.
Spokesperson for the UN Secretary-General Stephane Dujarric urged the parties in Panjshir Valley to avoid targeting civilians.

"Any continued fighting is of great concern to us, making a humanitarian situation that's difficult even worse, obviously, having it increases the issues of access for us. As in any conflict, for the parties to avoid targeting civilians, avoiding civilian casualties, as well as the destruction of civilian infrastructure," he said.
During his working visit to the United States, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky met with top investors, representatives of venture funds and Silicon Valley accelerators, and urged them to actively cooperate with Ukraine, the website of the head of state reported on Friday.

Zelensky assured that Ukraine would exercise as much as possible assistance to foreign and Ukrainian investors: the special legal framework is aimed at creating companies in our country with a capitalization of more than $100 million, which will be residents of Ukraine.

Zelensky said that the state is ready to address the concerns of investors and cooperate with them, and Ukraine is very flexible in changing legislation and will facilitate investments, Interfax reported.

"Ukraine is open for investments in the IT sector in cooperation with U.S. businesses. We want your business to be interested not only in the possibilities of opening representative offices in Ukraine, but also in investing in Ukrainian innovative products," the president said, addressing the event participants.
Georgian President Salome Zurabishvili has stated it is unclear for her and the public why the Georgian Dream government has refused to take the second tranche of the EUs 150 million euro loan which should have been addressed to decrease 'the social and human damage that COVID has done to our population'.

Zurabishvili said that the reason cited by the government for the refusal - positive moves in the state economy and the wish to decrease the countrys foreign debt - is weak.

She also said that such unilateral decisions affect the countrys reputation and discourage investors.

"We must also understand that in the post-Afghanistan period, a new strategic situation is emerging where our stability and security will depend more on Europe than before," Zurabishvili said.

She stated that when Georgia has plans to apply for EU membership by 2024 it is important for the country to show more stability in its decisions and retain the trust of partners.

According to her, the October 2 municipal elections will be significant on the path of Georgias Euro-Atlantic integration and the government should ensure the holding of the race in a free and a competitive environment, Agenda.ge reported.
Some businesses with a huge amount of charter capital have been included on the national portal on business registration.

The business registration certificate

The portal showed that two businesses registered their establishment in May 2021. The special characteristic of the businesses, both of them in the information and communications sector, was that they had huge registered charter capital of a total of VND525 trillion.

The two businesses included Cong ty co phan tap doan kinh doanh tu dong toan cau (English name Global Auto Business Group JSC) with charter capital of VND25 trillion, and Cong ty CP tap doan dau tu cong nghe tu dong toan cau (English name Auto Investment Group) with charter capital of VND500 trillion.

Both businesses have the same legal representative, the same three founding shareholders. They operate in the field of information and communications.

The legal representative is Nguyen Vu Quoc Anh, born in 1986, residing in Thu Duc City, HCMC.

The information about the establishment of the two mega businesses stirred up the public because of the huge capital registered. Many analysts and economists expressed doubts about the financial capability of the businesses.

Questions were raised why the business registration agency granted certificates on business registration to two businesses with suspiciously high capital.

In January 2020, a business was registered with capital of VND144 trillion, or $6.5 billion.

Asked about capital contributions, Kim Thi Phuong, one of the three founding shareholders of the company, who registered to contribute VND43.2 trillion, or 30 percent of capital, said: I dont know. I have not contributed capital. I dont have money, even the money for daily food."

The answer can be found in the current laws.

In the past, state management agencies needed to verify and be sure that businesses had enough capital before granting business licenses.

However, later policymakers believed that the verification was beyond the capacity of public agencies, and wasted time and money.

The 2014 Enterprise Law, with amendments to encourage people to do business, stipulated that people can make self-declarations about businesses charter capital when registering for business establishment.

The current laws dont contain provisions on the compulsory minimum or maximum the capital businesses must have, except for businesses in conditional business fields. For example, real estate firms must have minimum charter capital of VND20 billion, and debt trading companies must have no less than VND100 billion.

The capital contributed to businesses can be Vietnam dong, convertible foreign currencies, gold, land-use right value, intellectual property value, technologies, technological knowhow and other properties that can be assessed in Vietnam dong.

The requirement on declaring charter capital aims to identify the contributed capital proportions and the ownership ratios of members and shareholders of the companies. This serves as a basis for defining rights, benefits and obligations of members and shareholders.

However, the absence of a requirement on minimum or maximum charter capital of a company doesnt mean that the State wont supervise capital contribution.

Company members and shareholders must complete their capital contribution as committed within 90 days after the day they received certificates on business registration.

If they cannot contribute enough capital, they must adjust the capital equal to the capital they contribute in reality. They will not be fined for not contributing enough capital as initially committed.

Decree 50/2016 calls for fines of VND10-20 million for not registering adjustments with the business registration agency when investors dont have enough capital as initially committed.

This means that owners of enterprises with registered capital of VND144 trillion or VND500 trillion still can receive business registration certificates, but they will be fined if they cannot contribute the committed capital.

However, analysts point out that the fine of VND10-15 million dong for the behavior is not heavy enough to deter to those who treat laws as a joke.

Luong Bang

Fourth Covid-19 wave still raging, 80,000 businesses leave market The Ministry of Planning and Investment's latest report found that production and business activities have been seriously affected by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Many offshore wind power investors are holding their breath waiting for the next move of the Ministry of Industry and Trade and the Government.

Nearly three years have passed since the Prime Minister's Decision 39 dated September 10, 2018 on wind power prices was issued, with the offshore wind power price over VND2,223/kWh (US$9.8 cent/kWh), but no offshore wind power project has kicked off yet.

Many foreign and domestic investors have surveyed and conducted research on offshore wind power in Vietnam. They have said the price of over VND2,200/kWh is acceptable. However, three years is still a short time for these projects to be implemented in reality, while this incentive price will end in two months.

Many offshore wind power investors are holding their breath waiting for the next move of the Ministry of Industry and Trade and the Government. Will the feed-in tariff (FIT) for offshore wind power continue to be applied, or immediately move to the bidding phase as planned?

Representing investors, Liming Qiao, Asia Regional Director of the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC), expects that the Ministry of Industry and Trade and the Government of Vietnam will allow offshore wind power projects with a capacity of 4,000- 5,000 MW to he supported through the FIT, instead of projects with a capacity of 2,000-3,000 MW by 2030, as in the draft power plan 8.

GWEC's research shows that it is the choice of each country to apply FIT or instant bidding. Taiwan and the Netherlands also applied bidding after the period of using FIT for offshore wind power. Meanwhile, France, the new market for offshore wind power development, adopted competitive bidding from the start.

In Vietnam, the FIT mechanism is also applied to offshore wind power projects, but three years is not enough for projects of this kind. According to experts, an offshore wind power project is only economical if the scale reaches 4,000-5,000 MW/project, with an investment capital of $800 million - $1 billion USD or more. The time of implementation takes about five to seven years.

Foreign investors worry that if the bidding mechanism is implemented right away Vietnam may face obstacles as France experienced. Offshore wind power is a very new industry in Vietnam, and the domestic supply chain is also extremely limited.

Unforeseen challenges

At this time, the application of FIT or bidding is still unclear. A "clear policy" is what many investors are waiting for. Mainstream representative said that they are ready to start phase 1 of the 1,400MW Phu Cuong wind power project in the southern province of Soc Trang when there is a clear policy from the Government.

Investors believe that, after the end of the Feed in Tariff mechanism in November 2021, Vietnam needs a new momentum. The country should continue to apply the FIT mechanism for the first 4,000-5,000 GW projects to ensure the stability of the market during the transition to the bidding mechanism. Because the first projects are very risky, they need policy support.

However, whether bidding or FIT are applied, offshore wind power development will face many challenges. In particular, capital mobilization is a problem because these projects need huge capital. Therefore, having access to international capital is very important, which requires clear, stable and predictable policies.

In addition, will foreign investors accept to cut output when there is a local oversupply of electricity at some periods of time, as it is happening for onshore wind and solar power projects?

According to Bernard Casey, Development Director of Mainstream Vietnam, cutting output will make it difficult for investors raising capital, because it creates an unpredictable element in terms of revenue. Most offshore wind power projects have to mobilize capital, so it must go through a rigorous appraisal process by banks and insurance companies before signing a contract.

He said that capacity reduction can only be accepted in a short period of time and with a clear commitment.

Sean Huang, Development Director of Copenhagen Offshore Partner (COP), which invests in La Gan offshore wind power project, said that when signing a power purchase agreement (PPA), capacity cutting must be defined, including estimated output cut for force majeure. But the rate is usually small, and otherwise, measures to protect investors should be taken into account, such as compensation. In Taiwan, if the output cut is high, they will extend the term of the power purchase agreement to make up for the output cut.

Luong Bang

Wind power project developers want FIT extension Since many wind power projects may not be put into commercial operation prior to October 31, the Prime Minister and Ministry of Investment and Trade have been asked to extend the feed in tariff (FIT) application.
Having loved Vietnam since the day they set foot on the land, the Swedish couple Kawa Wandi and Nishte have been living in Hoi An City for two years.

Wandi (left) helps Hoi An people







Wandi, whose own parents and family wete not that well-off, understands the feelings of people who lead unlucky lives and wanted to do something to help them even when he was young.

When he was 20, he used his savings to buy small gifts such as tomatoes and potatoes for needy people stating in hospitals.

After Wandi married, he and his wife opened three restaurants in Sweden, while making plans to help poor people.

In 2017, they decided to sell all the restaurants in Sweden to begin a journey around the world to help the needy.

We have been to many countries in the world, including the UK, the US, France, Laos, Cambodia, Malaysia, and to Africa, and finally Vietnam, Wandi said.

They have fond memories of every country. In South Africa, they 'adopted' five kids. Each of them receives $200 a month that supports their daily lives.

After traveling to many countries and learning about different cultures, in early 2020, they decided that Vietnam would be the last destination on their journey.

When I arrived in Hoi An, I was fascinated by the houses there. It is peaceful there and people are friendly. My wife and I decided to stay there to fulfill our dream of helping needy people, he recalled.

Though we have been living there only for two years, we really consider this our second homeland, he added.

Support to the poor

As he was preparing products to be shipped to the needy in Hoi An City, Wandi told reporters that he would feel guilty if he did not help those in need.

I think I need to wholeheartedly support our second homeland, he said.

Hoi An has been experiencing social distancing for the last two weeks. Wandi and a group of friends have organized campaigns, donating necessities to people affected by the pandemic in the area.

The gifts include rice, canned meat, instant noodles and vegetable oil, worth VND400,000 each.

Three days ago, I went to Tan An Ward to give gifts. I could not hold back my emotions when seeing a man, 60, feeding his mother, 80, and his son, mentally ill, who was lying on a concrete bed. I burst into tears, he recalled.

This is the most haunting scene in my memory. There are so many unhappy lives. I gave gifts to them and I hope I can come back, he said.

Wandi and his wife, together with his Vietnamese friend, Trang Quoc Tri, have prepared 3,500 servings of meals for four quarantine zones and needy people in the city.

Tri said the Swedish couple last year rented a house next to his home. They shared the same idea of helping needy people. In 2020, their group of friends went to Quang Tri province to give support to people in the flood stricken areas.

In early 2021, they built and repaired two clean water treatment systems for people in Dang commune in Quang Nam province, worth VND200 million.

Wandi said he wants to thank his wife, who has always supported him and stood by him on every path, and Tri, who has helped him learn about charity in Vietnam.

In the coming days, I still want to accompany my friends to help people. Sweden is my birthplace, but Vietnam is my second home, so I will try my best to contribute to beautifying this land," Wandi said.

Vice Chair of Hoi An City Nguyen Van Lanh said: Your family has chosen Hoi An as a home. But the reality is still not as good as you want and we want it to be. The pandemic has rushed down and you have quickly integrated into the life of the city and accompanied the citys people. The things you have done are quiet, but they have rekindled the flame for the community, which makes us feel warmer and stronger in the fight against the pandemic."

I thank you and your friends who have wholeheartedly helped Vietnam, Hoi An and needy people. Human love will give us strength to overcome all challenges together, Lanh said.

Cong Sang - Nguyen Hien

Two men buy ambulances to take patients to hospital for free Understanding the difficulties of the poor, a car mechanic in Kien Giang and a young man in Can Tho have bought ambulances to take patients to the hospital for free.
Chairing an online meeting of the National Steering Committee for Covid-19 Prevention and Control with officials of 1,060 communes, wards and towns in 20 provinces and cities, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh has issued a landmark directive.

The Prime Minister said at a meeting on August 29: "We have set the goal to contain and control the epidemic, but we are also determined that this war is still long, we have to live with the epidemic for a long time, we can't absolutely control it and we must adapt and have a suitable way of doing things: Prevention is basic, long-term strategy, combat is important and regular."

This point of view was made after the Prime Minister analyzed the epidemic situation in the world, noting that even developed countries have increasing cases and their health systems are overloaded, and after his field trip to the southern provinces as the Head of the National Steering Committee for Covid-19 Prevention and Control.

PM Pham Minh Chinh during the recent field trip to the southern province of Binh Duong.

Personally, I strongly agree with this point of view. The Sars-Cov-2 virus will exist indefinitely and continue to produce many unpredictable variants while fully vaccinated people can still contract and transmit the virus. Vietnams approach still has to follow the motto of 5K + vaccine + technology. We will have to live with the virus, and when the epidemic is about to peak, threatening the healthcare system, we will impose lockdown.

Many business associations proposed changing the way of thinking and the ways of fighting the epidemic at a recent dialogue with the Government. According to the US-ASEAN Business Council, countries around the world are determined to live with the epidemic for the next few years, even after having covered the entire population with vaccines. Therefore, the blockade cannot be maintained for a long time. This is also the viewpoint of the Vietnam Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers (VASEP).

The world has had to adjust and adapt to the Delta variant. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 142 countries have recorded Delta variant infections. In just 6 months, the world has added 100 million infection cases caused by the Delta variant, bringing the total number of global Covid-19 infections to more than 200 million in early August.

Australia, which has a similar approach to disease prevention and control as Vietnam, has had a different view. Prime Minister Scott Morrison, while defending the blockade strategy until 70% of the population is fully vaccinated, said it is necessary to shift the focus from the number of infection cases to the rate of hospitalization. He admitted it is difficult to achieve a 'Zero-Covid' goal. Australia implemented social distancing when there were only a few new cases, but every time the blockade was lifted, new cases appeared.

Economic impact

New thinking and views, as the Prime Minister said, are very important in the next steps to fight the epidemic and develop the economy. Long blockades help limit the spread of disease, and avoid an overloaded health system, but from another angle, they exhaust livelihoods, and disrupt production and circulation chains.

More worrying, many localities have taken extreme measures, which have caused disruption of the supply chains. The Prime Minister has had to order local governments to immediately abolish regulations that hinder the circulation of goods and not issue sub-licenses.

It is very important for us to fight the epidemic to save lives, but it is equally important to save people's livelihoods, production and business circulation. That awareness must be unified to avoid unnecessary breakdowns and have an effective strategy in the long-term fight against the virus.

Personalizing anti-epidemic

Based on the Prime Minister's point of view that this war is still long, we must live with the epidemic for a long time, we cannot control it completely, we must adapt to and have a suitable approach", I think it is necessary to personalize epidemic prevention and control. Each citizen must be identified as a "soldier" against the epidemic, besides other "fortresses" to continue the long and risky road ahead.

Each citizen must improve their awareness and skills in disease prevention to protect themselves and their family as well as the health system. The Ministry of Health and the Government have disseminated rules and experiences for patients to be treated at home.

The policy that allows F0 cases to self-isolate at home should be seriously implemented in some provinces where their healthcare systems are about to be overloaded. Without coming up with worst-case scenarios and getting used to it, how can we deal with a worse situation in a future still full of Covid-19?

Looking to Israel, the world's most vaccinated place and still recording tens of thousands of positive cases every day, the country has accepted to live with the virus. Prime Minister Naftali Bennett pledged that his government considers lockdown as a last resort, only used when there is no other way. "The people of Israel today cannot leave the burden of debt to their descendants," he said.

I think that is the hope, the light at the end of the tunnel for all.

Tu Giang
On September 2, 1945 at Hanois Ba Dinh Square, President Ho Chi Minh read the Declaration of Independence declaring the birth of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (now the Socialist Republic of Vietnam).

The Declaration, which demonstrates the strong will and aspirations of Vietnamese people, remain deeply topical both at home and abroad after 76 years.

On September 2, 1945 at Hanois Ba Dinh Square, President Ho Chi Minh read the Declaration of Independence declaring the birth of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (File photo: VNA)

The Declaration was the work that reflects President Ho Chi Minhs philosophical, political and even human points of view most fully and deeply, as well as containing the values of human civilisation.

Illustrative image (Source: nhandan.vn)

In this document, the late President affirmed that national rights and human rights have a dialectical relation.

The Declaration was not only a declaration of independence of the Vietnamese people but also a declaration of human rights and the rights of colonial nations. President Ho Chi Minh's elevation of human rights to national rights was his contribution to the treasure of human rights ideology.







Under the leadership of the Communist Party of Vietnam, the Vietnamese people rose up to repel the colonialists, feudalists and imperialists, regaining independence, freedom and human rights. Human rights in Vietnam are not a value given by anyone but the result of the long struggle of the Vietnamese people.

The Declaration of Independence is a solid legal basis that strongly affirms the national sovereignty of the Vietnamese people to the whole world; laying the foundation for the establishment of a rule-of-law state with the goal of independence, freedom and happiness; and illuminating Vietnam's revolutionary path in the cause of building a socialist rule-of-law state of the people, by the people and for the people, for the sake of wealthy people, strong country, democracy, justice and civilisation.

Seventy-five years have passed, President Ho Chi Minh's views and thoughts on human rights, national rights, aspirations and resilience to maintain independence and freedom shown in the Declaration still remain topical and significant to the nation building and safeguarding cause at present.

Since then, the Vietnamese people have constantly strived for human rights and achieved many positive and important results. Human rights, civil rights in political, civil, economic, cultural and social fields are recognised, respected, protected and guaranteed in accordance with the Constitution and laws. With its achievements in ensuring human rights, Vietnam was elected as a member of the United Nations Human Rights Council in the 2014-2016 term.

After nearly 35 years of Doi moi (Renewal), Vietnam escaped from the underdevelopment state. Its human development index (HDI) has gradually improved, currently in the upper middle group and ranking 118th out of 189 countries.





A corner of Ho Chi Minh City today.

Years will pass, but the spirit of the Declaration of Independence that gave birth to the Democratic Republic of Vietnam will always live on in the hearts of generations of Vietnamese people./.

Source: VNA
Since the fourth wave of Covid-19 is considered the most serious that has ever hit Vietnam, foreign businesses and experts have highly spoken of the efforts of the Government and people of Vietnam in fighting the pandemic and developing the economy.

A ventilator has been delivered to Nguyen Tri Phuong Hospital in Ho Chi Minh City.

Representatives from EuroCham and RMIT University told The Hanoi Times about short-term challenges and long-term opportunities for Vietnam to achieve the growth targets by 2025.

Alain Cany, Chairman of the European Chamber of Commerce (EuroCham)

Vietnam has been one of the international success stories of preventing and controlling the spread of Covid-19. Throughout the previous three waves in 2020, the government managed to keep cases low while other countries were suffering from more serious outbreaks.

Effective public health measures such as international travel restrictions, social distancing, and localized lockdowns meant that businesses were able to operate with limited controls on their normal commercial operations - other than sectors such as tourism and aviation which took a significant hit.

However, the emergence of new variants and the licensing of vaccines have now changed the situation altogether. The public health measures that were so successful in containing previous outbreaks are no longer a reliable solution.

Firstly, the Delta variant has proven to be much more transmissible and much harder to contain. Secondly, over the long term, these measures will cause economic damage, undermine growth, and reduce foreign direct investment.

There is no route out of this pandemic without an accelerated and ambitious mass vaccination program and this must now be the urgent focus of the government. The sooner a critical mass of people can be vaccinated, the sooner we can get back to business as usual and life as normal.

I have lived and worked in Vietnam since 2002. In that time, I have seen how the Vietnamese people have united to overcome health and economic challenges with resilience and togetherness. Whether it was the Asian financial crisis in 1997 or the SARS pandemic in 2003, Vietnam has weathered each storm in turn and emerged stronger.

Throughout this pandemic, and during the latest outbreak in particular, the Vietnamese people have shown incredible fortitude in the face of rising cases and ever more complicated challenges to normal life. We have seen people eat, sleep, and live in factories and industrial zones in order to keep essential goods moving.

And we have seen healthcare professionals working around the clock in hospitals to treat those most in need. This collective spirit will be essential to realizing the governments dual goals of protecting health while maintaining economic growth.

EuroCham and our one thousand members stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the Vietnamese people during these difficult times. Last week, we launched an ambitious new fundraising campaign in order to procure essential medical equipment to treat Vietnamese patients and support frontline doctors during this pandemic.

In ten days, we raised more than US$150,000 and we will continue to encourage our members to donate so that vital medical equipment can reach the places where it is most needed. Anyone wishing to make a donation can do so at: https://breatheagain.fund/.

Vietnam - more attractive destination for European investment

Vietnam faces both short-term challenges and long-term opportunities. In the short term, of course, the focus of the government must be on containing the pandemic and vaccinating the population. This is essential if we are to re-start normal commercial operations and resume Vietnams positive GDP growth. Once the virus has been brought under control, Vietnam will need to rebound and recover.

The most reliable route to economic growth is free, fair, and rules-based trade. In this respect, Vietnam has significant opportunities on its horizon and a competitive advantage over other countries in the region.

We are just 12 months into the implementation of the EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA). Now the EVFTA has entered into force, both companies and consumers are able to benefit from a gradual elimination of tariffs and a mutual opening of markets. From the moment it entered into force, 65% of EU exports to Vietnam and 71% of Vietnamese exports to the EU became tariff-free. Over the next decade, this will rise to almost 99%.

This will enable European enterprises to compete on an equal footing with companies from other countries with which Vietnam has a free trade agreement. This, in turn, will make Vietnam a more attractive destination for European investment. Meanwhile, Vietnamese goods will get privileged access to the EUs large and prosperous consumer market of around 450 million people.

In short, the EVFTA will provide a boost to EU-Vietnam trade and, in doing so, support the government to achieve its growth and development goals.

Dr. Greeni Maheshwari, Lecturer, School of Business & Management at RMIT University

More than ever before, Vietnams response to the current wave of outbreaks has been characterized by agility and a strong sense of community.

Within a very short time, the government has been able to mobilize massive numbers of health workers and military and police forces to help the hardest-hit areas. Essential aid has been provided in a timely manner to people in need, especially vulnerable low-income groups. The community has also come forward to help the government in funding for vaccination.

Vietnams top priority right now is undoubtedly fighting the pandemic, yet economic development continues to be high on the agenda. Together, the government and businesses are coming up with innovative models to continue production in factories, resolve supply chain disruptions, and make bailout packages truly work.

Transparent and effective communication has been the key driving force behind Vietnams success in managing the last three waves of the outbreak and continues to play a major role in this fourth wave.

As expatriates, our family feels safe staying in a country like Vietnam during this pandemic wherein the people are provided with detailed, up-to-date information and advice. The government is trying to control the situation by taking all the measures right from vaccination to supporting people most hit by Covid-19.

In the past 15 years, my family has called Vietnam our second home. It has been amazing to see that whenever a casualty happened in Vietnam, such as the avian flu in 2016, flooding in central Vietnam in 2020, or the past three Covid-19 waves, the country always bounces back strongly. I'm hopeful that this fourth wave shall pass away soon as well.

Vietnam needs to develop skilled workforces

In terms of short-term goals, Vietnam should focus on job creation, accessing the projects that are durable, and generating stimulus and employment benefits over the short term.

The first and foremost challenge towards achieving the growth goal by 2025 will be to devise the post-Covid-19 economy recovery plans.

Its important to determine how the government will protect the population and the economy from the pandemic shock, and how the government might need to change some fiscal and monetary support initiatives. Further economic challenges include lack of infrastructure, the time required to start a business, an aging population, and the amount spent on research & development.

To attain the long-term growth goals, Vietnam should continue to work on its human capital to develop skilled workers, foster industrial development, increase investment in new infrastructure, and focus on innovation and technological advancement.

Vietnam can focus on encouraging startups since small-medium enterprises are the economys core engine of job creation. This will create a highly conducive ecosystem accelerating the growth of innovation and entrepreneurship within a fast-growing economy.

Overall, it is important that the country builds a plan towards resilience for future shocks, with actions to build capacities for the society and economy to cope with any external shocks, such as Covid-19 at present and any other forms of crises in the future.

Source: Hanoitimes
Me Linh district in Hanoi has been using drones to monitor people in isolated areas to ensure that people "stay where they are.

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Drones are used in epidemic-hit areas in the district, including Lam Ho village in Thanh Lam commune and Phu Tri village in Kim Hoa commune.

Phu Tri village has about 1,300 households with about 4,500 people, while Lam Ho village has 700 households with about 3,000 people. Through images from drones, those who are identified violating regulations on prevention and control of the Covid-19 epidemic will be fined.

Director of the Cultural Center of Me Linh district Le Xuan Hung told VietNamNet that the use of drones has been very effective in raising people's awareness, increasing deterrence, and handling violations.

"After three days of application, local people have strictly obeyed the rules on social distancing. Roads and alleys in the two villages of Phu Tri and Lam Ho are always quiet, Hung said.

As of August 30, Me Linh district had recorded 15 cases of Covid-19 in the community, of which seven have been discharged from the hospital and eight are under treatment. There are two new outbreaks in Lam Ho village and Phu Tri village. After strictly applying isolation measures, Me Linh district has not detected new infection cases in the community for many days.

Me Linh is the first district in Hanoi using drones to monitor the observance of social distancing rules of the local people. In the central city of Da Nang, Thanh Khe district is also the first to use drones for the same purpose.

Doan Bong - Dinh Hieu
The proposed property tax rate would drop to a little more than 76.7 cents per $100 property value, from a little more than 77.6 cents, the rate since 2013. With rising property values, property tax revenue still would increase by about 10.5%, or almost $8.3 million. About $1.5 million of the increase would be from properties newly added to the tax rolls, through either annexation or new development.

Waco City Council will hold a public hearing on the tax rate at 6 p.m. Sept. 7 in the Bosque Theater at the Waco Convention Center, 100 Washington Ave.

Waco Mayor Dillon Meek thanked the council, staff and public for their role in the lengthy budgeting process, and said the city will soon have other significant decisions to make about how to spend federal coronavirus relief money provided through the American Rescue Plan.

The budget as a finished project represents consensus, compromise, hard work, listening to the council and listening to our community, Meek said. I think it is exciting for me to see where our city is going, given what is reflected in this budget.

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Like many fellow Americans, I know a number of men and women who served in Afghanistan. And whatever you think of the imprudence of the Afghan war, there is no doubt our U.S. service members were doing an important job there, and have more than earned our respect and gratitude.

With them in mind, they certainly deserved an end to this war after 20 years. But they didnt deserve to end it this way. Nor did the Afghan people. The last few weeks have been difficult to process and impossible to defend.

And yet, thats just what President Biden did on Tuesday in a speech to the American people, inexplicably calling our Afghan withdrawal an extraordinary success. With all due respect to the president, that is preposterous.

Biden is not a stupid man. Nor is he an evil man or an incompetent man. I still believe Biden is the right person to lead our country through a very tumultuous and fragile time.

However, and let me be very clear: He has disastrously bungled Afghanistan, and the damage from that will be long-lasting, catastrophic and perhaps irrevocable.
WAVERLY  The City of Waverly continues to move into modern day by offering online bill payments for residents.

During the city council meeting on Aug. 24, the council approved a quote from gWorks for $5,724 for the software upgrade which will also be accessible on the new city website and app that is currently in the works.

City Administrator Stephanie Fisher and Council Member Abbey Pascoe both discussed the highlights of this upgrade including online billing being easier and the ability to make adjustments based on customer feedback.

They can pay for the water bill and sign up their kids and it will all get diverted to the correct department without us having to do a whole paper trail on it and everything, Fisher said.

Fisher said after the meeting it will likely be in two to three months before residents have access to the programming.

This is what the citizens of our community want, Pascoe said. Its another step toward that and I think this is great.
In 1982, Princess Grace of Monaco, formerly film star Grace Kelly, died at age 52 of injuries from a car crash the day before, and more events
CONTRACT AWARD

GSA makes additions to OASIS small business on-ramp

One initial protestor who initially missed out on the OASIS professional services contract vehicles on-ramp has momentarily moved to the win column, but a second remains off the list of awardees pending an appeal.

The General Services Administration on Friday unveiled a new list of apparent awardees pending a pre-award accounting system review or approval by the Small Business Administration of any amendments to mentor-protege joint venture agreements.

DigiFlight Inc. is the name that jumps off the page in GSAs latest announcement. That company filed a lawsuit at the Court of Federal Claims last year over its exclusion from an award, saw it dismissed in a favorable ruling for GSA and subsequently took the case up a level to the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

Whatever caught the attention there of either GSA or the Federal Circuit Appeals Court judge overseeing the matter was apparently enough of an argument that led to DigiFlight getting a position in Pools 3 and 4 of the OASIS small business on-ramp.

GSA said anticipates no additional rolling contract awards other than those announced Friday for the pools that respectively cover professional services for military applications and accounting and financial services.

DigiFlight joins the dozens of awardees for Pool 3 and 4 that secured their positions earlier this year.

Still not in the on-ramps win column yet is Wavelink, which did get a minor victory in July after GSA revealed it would take a corrective action and evaluate revised proposals including that companys bid for a Pool 3 award.

Wavelink does have the option of continuing its protest. But this also serves as a reminder that winning ones protest does not guarantee an ultimate victory of a contract award.
GAO rules conflict of interest tainted $500M Navy jammer competition

An apparent conflict of interest on the part of the winning company led the Government Accountability Office to recommend the Navy conduct an independent review of the requirements contract for its Next Generation Jammer.

We earlier reported that the Navy was conducting a review of its decision to pick L3Harris over Northrop Grumman for the $500 million contract, but details did not become available until GAO released a public version of its decision Friday (today).

A second decision for the classified portion of the jammer project went against Northrop. That decision hasnt been released and may not given its nature.

Northrop Grumman and L3Harris were in a fly-off of sorts to test concepts for the Next Generation Jammer, which will sit as a pod under the EA-18 Growler aircraft. The technology allows the craft to engage in electronic warfare.

The publicly-released GAO decision includes allegations Northrop raised about a Navy employee that developed specifications for the jammer at the same time he negotiated with L3Harris for a job there.

Northrop argued the Navy did nothing to mitigate this conflict, and that L3Harris should be disqualified and found ineligible for the award.

The Navy apparently admitted the person was negotiating for a job with L3Harris as he was developing specifications for the contract. But the Navy argued the situation had no impact on the decision to choose L3Harris.

The Navy said that person had a limited role developing the contract specifications and was interviewing for a job in a different L3Harris division, not the one bidding on the jammer.

But GAO disagreed and found that this persons actions created the appearance of an unfair competitive advantage in favor of L3Harris and that the agencys consideration of the conflict was unreasonable, the audit agency wrote in its ruling.

That person worked for the Navy from 2013 to 2019 as an electrical engineer and was familiar with both companies' designs for the jammer. He even attended working group and design status meetings with both contractors. He helped develop the evaluation criteria.

When offered the job with L3Harris space business, he went to the Navys ethics counsel and was told no post-government employment ethics opinion was needed. But another Navy employee talked to him about recusing himself.

After accepting the job, he was told to have no more contact with either team but did continue to work on the solicitation's specs. He left a few weeks later.

GAO's decision describes how deeply involved he was with the development of the solicitation and in evaluating prototypes both companies were working on in the fly-off portion of the competition.

Usually when GAO finds that this kind of conflict of interest, it recommends the contractor be eliminated from the competition. But GAO said it isnt feasible or desirable to eliminate L3Harris in this case.

Instead, GAO recommends an independent review and then for discussions to reopen with the bidders. But if the review finds that the Navys requirements have changed, then the service needs to ask for revised proposals.

A simpler solution could be to just continue the fly-off. L3Harris was only tapped to build eight jammer pods as a step toward a full order more than 150.

Why not award a contract to Northrop and let them build eight, then evaluate them against each other?
WATERLOO  The Board of Education continues to give Superintendent Jane Lindaman high marks for her leadership of Waterloo Community Schools.

Board members met in closed session for 3-1/2 hours Wednesday to review her performance during the past year. Board president Shanlee McNally said all seven members participated in the meeting and provided input on the superintendent, who is in her eighth year at the districts helm.

Im not overstating it when I say it was the most positive review since Ive been on the school board, and it was Janes most positive review since shes been superintendent, said McNally. Make no mistake, she will be receiving a raise and increase in compensation this year.

No action was taken after the board came back into open session. Lindamans contract extension is expected to come before the board later this month.
We cannot allow our democracy to be undermined by these blatantly illegal voting restrictions aimed at disenfranchising communities of color and voters with disabilities, said Ryan Cox, senior attorney with the Texas Civil Rights Project.

Republicans say the bill provides safeguards against voter fraud. They also point out that it would increase the minimum number of hours during early voting and expand the number of counties where polls would have to stay open for 12 hours.

"Protecting the integrity of our elections is critical in the state of Texas, which is why Governor Abbott made election integrity an emergency item during the regular legislative session and worked to ensure its passage by calling special session after special session ensuring uniform statewide rules, Abbott spokeswoman Renae Eze said in a statement.

Texas is one of several Republican-led states that have pushed through new voting restrictions in the name of election security since the party lost the White House. The effort, which led to new restrictions in Georgia, Florida, Arizona and elsewhere, was spurred in part by former President Donald Trumps false claims that the election was stolen from him.

In July, the Supreme Court upheld new voting limits in Arizona that a lower court had found discriminatory under the Voting Rights Act. The court rejected the idea that showing that a state law disproportionately affects minority voters is sufficient proof that it violates the federal law.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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NEW YORK (AP)  Federal prosecutors urged a judge Thursday to reject claims by a former New York doctor that his guilty plea in state court in a sex abuse case means he cant be prosecuted in federal court on sex assault charges.

In papers in Manhattan federal court, prosecutors defended their charges against Robert A. Hadden, calling it an absurd contention" to say they can't prosecute because Hadden in 2016 pleaded guilty under a state plea deal, admitting to forcible touching and one count of a criminal sex act.

They urged rejection of defense arguments contending that federal prosecutors were a puppet of the New York County District Attorneys Office.

Hadden, 63, of Englewood, New Jersey, was arrested a year ago and has pleaded not guilty to charges accusing the former New York gynecologist of singling out young and unsuspecting victims for abuse, including a young girl hed delivered at birth.

Prosecutors said they began their probe last year before obtaining an indictment charging Hadden with sexually abusing dozens of female patients from approximately 1993 to 2012 while trying to make the victims believe that the sexual abuse was appropriate and medically necessary.
Drake University Law School professor Sally Frank said Republicans have two obstacles to ending abortion in Iowa: the 2018 decision and Roe v. Wade. And it would be highly unusual for the high court to overturn a ruling it made just three three years ago, she said.

I think if a Supreme Court decision is overturned very quickly after its been reached and the only difference is a change in the composition of the court, then it makes the court look more political instead of more judicial, she said.

The court has not set a date for arguments in the appeal.

The 2018 decision was made by a more centrist court now dominated by Republican appointees. Four justices were appointed by Gov. Kim Reynolds, who has called on the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade  the 1973 decision that legalized abortion nationwide  and two who were appointed by her Republican predecessor, both of whom opposed the 2018 majority ruling in their own dissenting opinions. The lone Democratic appointee still on the court is the only remaining justice who sided with former Chief Justice Mark Cady, who wrote the 2018 opinion.
FINKENAUER ENDORSEMENT: The American Federation of Government Employees has endorsed Democrat Abby Finkenauer for the U.S. Senate in 2022.

Abby Finkenauer has a lifetime 97% AFGE voting record, District 8 National Vice President Gregg James said. Abby voted to end the longest government shutdown in U.S. history in 2019 and to pass the PRO (Protecting the Right to Organize) Act.

According to supporters, the PRO Act would restore fairness and protect workers right to join a union. Opponents argue it would strip workers right and outsource them to unions.

More than 17,400 federal employees live in Iowa and there are nearly 37,700 current and retired federal employees in the state.

AFGE is the largest federal employee union in the country, representing 700,000 federal and Washington government workers.

BOUSSELOT ENDORSEMENT: A second business group has endorsed Republican candidate Michael Bousselot in a special Iowa House election in Ankeny. In addition to the state chapter of the National Federation of Independent Business, also the Iowa Association of Business and Industrys political arm has endorsed Bousselot, the former state Department of Management director.
This statement/title above includes all the propaganda and family members whom are responsible for the situation that became a reality

Svetochkas uncle was on his death bed. Svetochka has fought for months now, trying to get the help for her uncle to survive.yes he is almost 90 years old.but they (Sveta and the Russian state system.) had him gaining weight and they had him doing better. This was contrary to the efforts of foreign living immediate family relatives, whom say simply that he needs to just die. Too old and life is time to end

Besides they want to sell his flat that is in prime Moscow area and worth a fortune. (Now you understand!)

Did the uncle get a vaccine?

No, the daughter said do not get the vaccine and she then went and got it herself in Britain as well as all her kids did in Britain. Hmm

Svetochka tried to get him to get the vaccine and he finally said in anger at her, that he never wants to hear about it again

Now King Corona-19 visited him in the hospital and decided to stay and see what happens

The pictures are of the Coronavirus Hospital that he has been put in after officially diagnosed with Covid-19

Bless Svetochkas heart, she has tried and tried. She has talked to me hours and hours on the phone. She has taken a hundred trips by taxi, to doctors, hospitals, psychiatrists and sat by his side through all of this. Yet

When the cards are stacked against you and you listen to jerks.

Yes it pisses me off

Now we wait and see!

WtR
When the final curtain fell on Beach Blanket Babylon on New Year's Eve 2019, a shudder of collective grief rippled across the city. After 45 years skewering politics and pop culture with humor and camp, the end of the long running musical revue cut right to the core, another loss in a series of losses in a city where change is the only constant.

For nearly two years now, only the ghosts of Beach Blanket Babylon have taken the stage at the show's former North Beach home, Club Fugazi. That changes this fall with the opening of Dear San Francisco: A High-Flying Love Story, a production steeped in circus arts, acrobatics and a deep affection for the seven-square-mile metropolis by the bay.

"We want to unearth that soul that many think has been trampled and remind people of the beauty of the city and why we all fell in love with it," says Shana Carroll, one of the show's two artistic directors.

(from left) Melvin Diggs, David Dower (executive director, Club Fugazi Experiences), Gypsy Snider, and Devin Henderson at rehearsal for 'Dear San Francisco: A High-Flying Love Story,' at Club Fugazi this August. (Guru Khalsa)

Carroll and co-artistic director Gypsy Snider share a great affection for San Francisco, where both became members of the city's first major troupe, the Pickle Family Circus, in the 1970s and '80s. Snider, whose parents were two of the Pickle Family's founding members, was barely more than a toddler when she began touring at their side. By four, she was a full-blown Pickles performer.



She was still a teenager when another young woman, 18-year old Carroll, discovered the Pickles on the suggestion of her father, a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle who'd become enamored with the troupe after writing an article about their work. "There was something really infectious about the Pickles," she explains. "As soon as I got involved, I fell in love with them and with trapeze."

Carroll spent the next two years with the Pickles before moving to Montreal to hone her skills at the city's National Circus School, the first step in a gravity-defying career that kept her soaring through the air for the next decade-and-a-half.

Snider, too, continued to perform into adulthoodboth did stints with Cirque du Soleil, among other thingsand by 2002, they were ready to establish their own circus arts company. Along with their husbands and three other colleagues, Carroll and Snider founded Montreal's The 7 Fingers Collective. There, they focused on creating something intimate and original.

"Our first show was really extreme in a way. Our costumes were basically undergarments, we wanted to be stripped down and raw and make a statement," remembers Snider. "The premise was that we were in a loft and doing tricks on the bathtub and the couch. We used our own voices, which is not something a lot of circuses do, humanizing the person behind the tricks."

The 7 Fingers repertoire grew from there, and so did Carroll's and Snider's careers both within and outside the company. In addition to directing several 7 Fingers productions, Snider choreographed the Broadway musical Pippin, while Carroll choreographed multiple Cirque du Soleil performances, including that at the 2012 Academy Awards. All the while, they quietly dreamed of returning to SF to helm a sister company to their Montreal juggernaut.

Although that opportunity never materialized, Carroll and Snider continued to keep an eye out for ways to bring themselves, and their talents, back to the Bay Area. So when Club Fugazi lost its signature show, it felt like fate had intervened. Together, they penned a love letter to the city of their youth in the language of the circus.

(Guru Khalsa) Cast members Natasha Patterson and Devin Henderson.

Dear San Francisco: A High-Flying Love Story tells the city's history in a series of tableaus featuring tricks like hoop diving, hand balancing, and hand-to-trap, a form invented by Carroll in which a woman flies between porters on a trapeze and on the ground. There are scenes of earthquake and fire, and scenes of boom and bust. In one act dedicated to the Beat movement, the performers simultaneously accomplish acrobatic feats and recite beat poetry with heart-racing urgency.

"There's something very limitless about circus arts, there's something very rebellious about circus as an art form," Snider explains. "It has existed in many respects outside of the realm of the rules that society might put on other art forms."

And while the show never directly references the pandemic, "there's something in the narrative that we're telling that feels very true to what we are experiencing now," says Carroll. "We're a city that's used to getting back up and brushing off the dust."

Dear San Francisco isn't trying to replace Beach Blanket Babylon but they are working to once again fill Club Fugazi with a production that delights both locals and visitors.

"We are incredibly grateful to exist and create for a room that is so bubbling with life, story, and experience," says Snider. "This love letter to the city has become so much more powerful than I ever imagined it would."

// Dear San Francisco: A High-Flying Love Story previews September 22nd through October 10th and makes its world premiere on October 12th; tickets are now on sale at clubfugazisf.com.


Trenching Program Commencing - 64North Project, Alaska

Adelaide, Sep 3, 2021 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Resolution Minerals Ltd ( ASX:RML ) ( FRA:NC3 ) is pleased to announce a mid-season update on field work at the 64North Project in Alaska and presents planned exploration activities.The 64North Project contains over 20 gold prospects and 1 porphyry prospect, with combinations of favourable host rocks, structural regime, proximity to the right age source rocks, surface geochemistry and geophysical signatures. The exploration team have spent 22 months systematically investigating these targets and establishing extensive new data sets in order to generate a robust target pipeline for upcoming field testing. Resolution have spent much of the 2021 field season capitalising on the geochemical, geophysical and remotely sensed dataset collected during the 2020 field season.During July and August 2021, Resolution completed "boots on ground" reconnaissance and surface geochemical sampling. The purpose was to firstly, to assess the new exploration space identified in the immediate vicinity of the earlier in the year drilled Sunrise Prospect, drilled earlier this year, at the West Pogo block for potential further examples of Fort Knox style mineralisation.Secondly, to assess the highest priority regional targets with a primary focus on the North Pogo, South Pogo, Last Chance and East Pogo blocks. We are pleased to have confirmed the targets for follow up exploration now and next field season. The remaining less prospective claims (tenements) will be relinquished, and Resolution will not be liable for any future holding costs.Tourmaline Ridge Trenching Program - next to the Sunrise ProspectHighly anomalous surface geochemistry up to 118g/t Au in rock chips extends across a 1km x 750m zone. Resolution interprets from geophysical signatures that the intrusion is at least 2km x 1km. This is a priority target for Resolution to test using the low-cost trenching program. It was only during the summer months that on ground assessment could be made of location for trenching using historic rock chip data. With an access road currently undergoing construction, this prospect will have year-around access for further activities.The prospect lies on a NE-SW trend of mineralisation leading to Northern Star's ( ASX:NST ) Goodpaster Discovery which is undergoing a $21m resource drill out along strike.The distribution of gold bearing rock chips indicates that Tourmaline Ridge, whilst intrusion hosted, contains significantly higher-grade structurally controlled zones, making it an intrusion hosted / orogenic hybrid. With these mineralisation systems occurring from surface, the most effective exploration technique to define mineralisation is to undertake trenching.Trenching will outline the exact location of high-grade mineralised structures (obscured by talus), which can then be targeted directly with IP geophysics and further trenching. Based on results, a follow-up maiden drilling program will then be considered.Sunrise Prospect Follow UpSurface sampling and RAB drilling at the Sunrise Prospect has demonstrated the potential for Fort Knox style gold mineralisation on the 64North Project. RAB drilling identified gold mineralisation across a 280m wide zone to depths of 75m (max depth of a RAB rig) from surface.Results received from drillhole 21SU009 (74.7m @ 0.26 g/t Au from surface); and 21SU007 (36.6m @ 0.33g/t Au from surface) are in line with the 0.3g/t gold grade at the operating 5.6Moz Fort Knox mine. See Figure 4* Cross section of Sunrise Prospect mineralised corridor (RML ASX Announcement 17/5/2021).RML has also recently located a 188m historic diamond drill hole (AGGP-1) which was only assayed to 64m (see Figure 4*). We now have the opportunity to assay the remaining 124m and further assess the depth potential of the Sunrise Prospect without incurring additional drilling costs. Assaying is currently underway and we expect to have results in October.Elaine Prospect Cu-Mo-Au Porphyry potential - Divide BlockThe Elaine Prospect Porphyry is located within a continental arc, defined as being prospective for porphyry mineralisation by the United States Geological Survey (USGS). The Divide Block is also considered prospective for gold, at the Kramer Prospect, which will be assessed in conjunction with the Porphyry Cu-Mo-Au exploration program.A geochemical sampling program is underway, aiming to prioritise near term drill targets.A separate report of the Elaine Prospect will be presented as more information becomes available.Managing Director Comments - Duncan ChessellThe Tourmaline Ridge Prospect, with rock chips over 100g/t gold, is the immediate focus for an extensive trenching program located 2km west of our Sunrise Prospect. The presence and grade of gold in rock chips over a large area highlights the potential for significant mineralisation close to the surface. Trenching is a highly effective low-cost method to define the scale and structures of the gold mineralisation. A road is being bulldozed now to enable access from the existing all-weather Pogo Gold Mine Road and trenching will commence shortly.In addition, we have designed a follow up three-hole 1600m deeper drilling program in the immediate vicinity of East Pogo RC hole 21EP008 to test for high grade Pogo-Style gold mineralisation. Recent RC drill results and geophysics surveys indicate proximity to a gold bearing system from pathfinder elements below our previous drill holes. This next round of drilling will access those depths. Due to rig availability, location and season drilling will be undertaken next summer. This prospect is a high value target.The 64North Project is a highly prospective district surrounding the world-class high-grade operating Pogo Gold Mine positioned in the well-endowed Tintina Gold Province, which is home to over 100M oz of gold deposits across the Yukon and central Alaska.Alaska also hosts some of the worlds giant Cu-Au porphyry deposits, such as Pebble which is the world's single largest copper deposit and worlds 3rd largest gold deposit. The exploration team is undertaking work to assess the copper porphyry potential of the Divide Prospect at the Elaine Prospect.*To view tables and figures, 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.


BTC Shareholder Update - September 2021

Melbourne, Sep 3, 2021 AEST (ABN Newswire) - I am pleased to provide you with a detailed update on BTC Health Limited's ( ASX:BTC ) investments, along with an operational update of BTC's wholly owned investee companies, BioImpact Pty Ltd (BioImpact) and BTC Speciality Health Pty Ltd (BTC Speciality Health) (collectively 'BTC'). As our business develops, we feel it is important that our reporting should continue to evolve, with the goal of ensuring we are providing shareholders with useful insights into both underlying performance, as well as the direction and outlook for our future growth prospects.New Products UpdateBronchitol(R) and Aridol(R)On 30 June 2021, BTC health's wholly owned subsidiary BioImpact acquired the exclusive sale and distribution rights for Bronchitol(R) and Aridol(R) from Pharmaxis for $2m, in Australia, New Zealand and selected Asian countries. Both products have been successfully integrated into our business; customer orders are being received and processed in an efficient manner and we are achieving timely distribution of critical pharmaceutical drugs to clinics via our supply partner Sigma Healthcare. The integration involved making Bronchitol(R) and Aridol(R) available to over 200 customers and in some instances establishing new accounts for clinicians to trade. We have finalised our commercialisation plan for the year ahead and presently focused on providing ongoing training and education to clinicians across the country. As COVID restrictions gradually ease BTC will utilise its existing national sales force to support product growth and consult with Cystic Fibrosis (CF) Key Opinion Leaders to position Bronchitol(R) as a first choice for mucociliary clearance for patients suffering from CF. BTC is pleased to continue the ongoing relationship with "For Benefits Medicine", a not-for-profit healthcare organisation which provides ongoing support to the CF sector and Cystic Fibrosis Australia. The marketing program for Aridol(R) will be strengthened, ensuring ready access to an innovative bronchial hyperresponsiveness test for Asthma diagnosis which helps with the management of ongoing patient compliance and medication protocols. Bronchiotol(R) and Aridol(R) sales were $1.4m in financial year 2020/21 and it is BTC's expectation that the portfolio will deliver good growth out into the future as COVID restrictions ease and access to respiratory clinics improves.Neola(R)BioImpact has partnered with GPX Medical to register Neola(R), an innovative system that has potential to change the care and long-term outcomes of preterm born infants through continuous and non-invasive lung monitoring. The commercialisation plan for Australia has been agreed and we remain on track to submit Neola(R) for registration to the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), once GPX Medical has obtained Conformite Europeenne (CE) approval. The Neola(R) system has already received positive feedback from Australian Neonatal Intensive Care Units (NICUs) and BioImpact will work with Australian NICUs to undertake clinical evaluation trials. International feedback to date on Neola(R) has been positive, with Professor Eugene Dempsey, Horgan Chair in Neonatology, INFANT Centre at the University College Cork (UCC) commenting; "Preterm born infants are at increased risk of requiring breathing support due to the underlying lung immaturity; this technology has the potential to change the way we manage these babies, helping to avoid invasive mechanical ventilation and reduce longer-term lung problems".New agencies licensedSince completion of the 2020/21 financial year, BioImpact has licensed a range of new product lines which both compliment and broaden the range of medical products which BTC Speciality Health markets, sells and distributes to public and private hospitals in Australia and New Zealand. A number of single use medical devices in anaesthesia, including but not limited to TIVA sets, peripheral IV connectors and IV sets, have been secured from Mediplus, a quality UK manufacture and distributor. Furthermore, a sale and distribution agreement has also been secured to market Breg orthopaedic braces to clinicians in hospitals. Breg manufactures a wide range of premium high-value braces that advance patient orthopaedic care. BTC's sales team already has strong relationships with orthopaedic surgeons in relation to the support they provide with the ambIT(TM) infusion pumps.ISO 13485 AuditBTC recently underwent an independent audit of its ISO 13485 certification, which we are pleased to report confirmed very strong compliance with our companywide quality systems, procedures, and controls. The infrastructure and quality systems that have been implemented by BTC supports new product introductions, for both pharmaceuticals and medical devices, ensuring they can be effectively and reliably integrated into the business.Financial updateBTC is an investment entity and therefore does not consolidate the operating results of its investments. Statutory accounts are reported on an NTA basis. With a view to providing Shareholders with a greater insight into the operating results of BTC's underlying investments, a pro-forma consolidated, unaudited, financial view of BTC and its wholly owned subsidiaries is provided below. We intend to report in this format at both the mid-year and full-year.IncomeIncome of $7.1m improved 17% compared to the prior year and can be split into two segments; income received from the listed entity BTC and income from the underlying business.BTC health Limited: Revenue largely comprised management fee income, which decreased due to the sale of Bio101, the wholly owned accounting business, in July 2021 (2021: $13.3k, 2020: $160.0).Underlying business: Underlying business income of $7.1m grew 23% over prior year and largely comprised of product sales to Sigma Healthcare, our wholesale and distribution partner, which supplies BTC products to public and private hospitals on our behalf.During the financial year ended 2020/21, sales to hospitals from Sigma totalled $7.3m, growing 25% over financial year 2019/20. Demand for our cornerstone product, ambIT(R) infusion pumps and general surgery medical devices is evident given the growth in hospital purchasing volumes. Growth can be attributed to the onboarding of new accounts, which grew 9% year-on-year, as well as the increase in surgeons using BTC products over those marketed by competitors within the existing hospital accounts.The variance between sales to hospitals and consolidated income partially relates to the wholesale margin earned for undertaking the customer order and logistics function on behalf of BTC Speciality Health. The remainder of the variance relates to higher levels of wholesale stocks held at the beginning of 2020/21 to accommodate anticipated hospital demand as the respective Australian and New Zealand governments released elective surgery restrictions in early Q1 2020/21.EBITDAEBITDA loss of ($464.3k) improved 53% compared to the prior year and can be split into two segments; costs of running the listed entity BTC and the costs attributable to the underlying business.BTC health Limited: EBITDA loss of ($391.7k) increased 38% over the prior financial due to a reduction in management fee income (2021: $13.2k, 2020: $160.0k), partially offset by a reduction in group overheads (2021: $410.9k, 2020: $577.6k), largely due to a reduction in transaction costs.Underlying business: The underlying business comprises the operating results of BTC Speciality Health and BioImpact. Net loss of ($72.6k) significantly improved over prior year, driven by increased sales volume and overhead efficiencies. A step change is expected in 2021/22 as the business expands its product portfolio and further leverages its cost base across Bronchitol(R), Ariodol(R) and the new agencies recently acquired.Working CapitalWorking capital is actively managed to ensure the business is able to utilise funds to expand the business. Debtors, Inventory and Payables were skewed in the prior year due to elective surgery closure which resulted in a delay in onboarding new surgeons and accounts. The increase in Debtors at June 2021 reflects normalised trade and growth in customer demand. Receivables are well managed and trading on 30-day terms. Payables and provisions largely reflect purchases from suppliers for stock, employee entitlements and accruals for bills not yet received. Supplier terms are generally settled on 30-day terms.Inventory at $1.1m broadly reflects 2-3 months stock holdings. After considering stock held by wholesalers, stock within BTC's supply chain is 3-4 months.Consolidated cash at hand of $2.4m will continue to be optimised through management of the business' working capital needs.Ongoing COVID responseBTC is extremely adaptive and responsive to hospital COVID protocols and has moved to online training to ensure our customers can continue to access comprehensive training and education, sales and service support 24/7. Elective surgery rates are somewhat variable across the country, but overall demand within the private sector remains good and slightly ahead when compared to the same time last year.TransformationBTC is actively pursuing larger sale acquisitions which would result in transforming BTC's underlying investments' revenue and returns. Transformative acquisitions in the pharmaceutical and medical device areas are a key focus for the business and the BTC Board. Further information will be provided to investors as appropriate. The BTC Board is positive about the company's acquisition pipeline as well as the future growth prospects for the group and its investee companies.To view tables and figures, please visit:About BTC Health Limited

BTC Health (ASX:BTC) is a listed entity on the ASX and is a Pooled Development Fund, registered under the Pooled Development Funds Act 1992. It is a high-growth company, focused on making world-class innovative medical products available to patients in Australia and New Zealand.


Okapi Appoints Corporate Advisor

Perth, Sep 3, 2021 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Okapi Resources Limited ( ASX:OKR ) ( FRA:26O ) is pleased to announce it has appointed Canaccord Genuity (Australia) Ltd (Canaccord Genuity) as its corporate advisor.Canaccord Genuity will assist with the Company's ongoing capital markets strategy, provide introductions to a broader investor community both domestically and internationally, and other advisory services. Canaccord Genuity is a leading independent financial services firm with a global presence and strong credentials in the uranium sector.About Okapi Resources Ltd

Okapi Resources Limited (ASX:OKR) is a minerals exploration company focused on the discovery and commercialisation of mineral deposits in Australia. Okapi's primary objective is to discover and develop mineral resources from its current portfolio. The Company has carefully selected projects with historical workings and excellent results. Okapi has a team of professionals with an exemplary record of success and with a particular history in Australia. Okapi is also pursuing a growth strategy that aims to appraise and secure further exploration and development opportunities within gold and mineral endowed districts.
TEXARKANA, Texas  The mother of a man who died two years ago after his arrest following a foot chase has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against three Texas police officers, alleging they were deliberately indifferent as her son complained that he couldnt breathe.

Keisha Boykin filed the lawsuit Sunday in U.S. district court in Texarkana, Texas, against three local officers on behalf of her son, Darren Boykin, who died on Aug. 29, 2019.

According to the lawsuit, officers Jerrika Weaver and Brent Hobbs, and their supervisor during the arrest, Sgt. William Scott, knew that Boykin was unable breathe and had asked for help, but they deliberately chose not to provide medical care. It says they had the duty and ability to call for medical assistance, but did not, and that Boykin died because of their deliberate indifference.

It was clear that this wasnt just someone who happened to die. It was someone who was complaining that they were in distress, that they needed help and they were in a situation where they couldnt provide themselves with that care, said attorney James Roberts, who filed the lawsuit along with attorney Scott Palmer on behalf of Keisha Boykin.

A police department spokesman, Shawn Vaughn, said the department couldnt comment on pending litigation.

Texarkana College police, who initially confronted Darren Boykin, sent a custodial death report to the Texas attorney general saying the coroner determined that Boykin died of natural causes linked to complications of sickle cell trait.

According to the lawsuit, Boykin fled on foot after being confronted by Texarkana College police officers, who suspected him of theft. After running for about half a mile in the heat, he was detained and city police officers arrived.

At that point, Boykin was having trouble breathing as he lay handcuffed on the ground, and officers carried him to the patrol car, the lawsuit contends. According to body camera footage, Boykin had an Ohio drivers license, and officers found he had a felony warrant in that state. On the footage, Boykin says hed been in Texarkana for around six months.

The lawsuit states that Boykin repeatedly said he couldnt breathe, that his breathing was labored and that he said he was going to pass out before he fell unconscious in the back of the patrol car as Weaver drove him to jail.

According to the lawsuit, at one point, Weaver told Boykin, You cant call I cant breathe after you ran forever and then you have felonies.

At one point during the drive to jail, Boykin told Weaver: Maam, Im about to pass out. Weaver tells him to just lean against the glass, the lawsuit says. He also told her, I cant even talk.

Eventually, Boykin leaned over and no longer responded to Weaver, the lawsuit states. He was unconscious when they arrived at the jail, and she pulled him from the car and began CPR.

He was then taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Roberts said Thursday that they are still doing research, but its his understanding that getting Boykin help when he first started saying he couldnt breathe would have made a difference.

If they would have just gotten oxygen for him, either by calling 911 straight to the scene or even driving straight to the hospital, then I believe his life would have been saved, Roberts said.
PHOENIX  Gov. Doug Ducey says the state has received its first group of recently evacuated Afghans to be resettled in Arizona.

Ducey said in a Tweet overnight that the group arrived Sunday night, and we know there are more on their way.

The Republican governor noted the Afghans were vetted through background checks.

He said the U.S. must keep its promises to the people who helped the American military in Afghanistan. Tens of thousands of Afghans have been evacuated from their country with the end of the United States longest war. Many helped the U.S. military as interpreters and in other roles.

Ducey did not say how many were in the group.

The Arizona office of the International Rescue Committee says its nonprofit agency on Sunday received 18 evacuated Afghans for resettlement.

In the next six months, we probably will see hundreds of Afghans arrive through the states various resettlement agencies, said Aaron Rippenkroeger, executive director for the committee in Arizona.

Rippenkroeger said he was grateful for the bipartisan support that Ducey and other leaders in Arizona had given the effort to resettle Afghans in the state.

Stanford Prescott, a U.S. network communications officer for the organization, said details about the evacuees being resettled in Arizona were being withheld for now for their safety.

Afghans evacuated in recent days by the American military are largely being processed and housed in U.S. government facilities across the country before going to resettlement agencies that will determine their final destinations.

Prescott said the top states for Afghans with special immigrant visas for military translators historically have been California, Washington state, Texas, Virginia, and Maryland, although Arizona has received a smaller, significant number.

He said the committees Arizona office was already receiving Afghans including military translators through normal resettlement pathways long before the current crisis.

He said 31 Afghans with the special immigrant visas granted to military translators and another 18 Afghans with refugee status were brought to Arizona between Oct. 1, 2020, through July 31.
Copyright  2021 Albuquerque Journal

SANTA FE  After several recent high-profile shootings in Albuquerque, violent crime appears poised to be a major topic of debate during the 30-day legislative session that starts in January.

House Democrats from New Mexicos largest city announced Thursday a comprehensive crime-fighting package that would include changes to the states pretrial detention system, expanded mental health treatment programs and increased criminal penalties.

In all, the package includes 16 proposals, though details on some of the items are not likely to be fully fleshed out until they are filed as bills.

And at least some of the provisions, such as extending prosecutors time limit for filing second-degree murder charges, have been previously pushed by House Republicans, who have urged Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham to call a special session focused on crime.

In response to the Democrats announcement, House GOP floor leader James Townsend, R-Artesia, accused Democrats of helping to create a rampant crime problem.

We hope they are as serious about addressing crime as they have been about coddling criminals throughout our communities, Townsend said. We also hope they start to give law enforcement the credit and respect they deserve. The disregard Democrat legislators have for our officers is simply not conducive to turning things around.

However, Rep. Meredith Dixon, D-Albuquerque, said shes hopeful some crime-related proposals, including a bill dealing with penalties for stealing copper materials, can win bipartisan support.

She also said lawmakers and top state officials increasingly agree a comprehensive approach is needed to reverse an increase in violent crime across New Mexico.

Theres probably more consensus that stiffer penalties arent the only answer, said Dixon, who recently accompanied law enforcement officers on patrol in her foothills-area legislative district.

Democratic lawmakers blocked many GOP-backed crime bills from advancing during the administration of former Gov. Susana Martinez, including a push to bring back the death penalty for those convicted of certain violent offenses.

However, proposals dealing with tougher penalties for drunken driving and distributing child pornography have been signed into law in recent years.

More recently, crime-related proposals were not a primary focus of this years 60-day legislative session, as measures dealing with pandemic relief, abortion, public schools and legalizing recreational cannabis all drew lengthy debates.

But things could be different in 2022, after the recent shooting of three Albuquerque police officers  another officer was also injured in the incident  and the shooting death of a 13-year-old boy at his middle school have prompted calls for action.

Albuquerque has already set a yearly record for homicides with 86 suspected killings, and other types of violent crime have also increased, though the metro areas auto theft rate has dropped by 42% since 2017.

Rep. Gail Chasey, D-Albuquerque, the chairwoman of the House Judiciary Committee, said the proposed crime package backed by 18 House Democrats from Albuquerque would take a multi-faceted approach to addressing violent crime.

Whats become evident is that while we have been increasing our investments in long-term solutions like education, families, and mental and behavioral health, much more needs to be done to address the violence happening today, Chasey said in a statement.

For her part, Lujan Grisham has said she wants to see changes to New Mexicos pretrial detention system aimed at making it easier to keep people charged with violent offenses behind bars pending trial, though some fellow Democrats oppose such a plan.

The governor, who has the power to determine which non-budgetary bills can be discussed during 30-day legislative sessions, has also said she wants lawmakers to approve $100 million to fund an additional 1,000 police officer positions throughout the state during next years session.

Meanwhile, the legislative focus on crime-related issues comes with a new election cycle on the horizon. All 70 House seats will be up for election in 2022, along with statewide offices for governor, attorney general and secretary of state.
Copyright  2021 Albuquerque Journal

SANTA FE  A four-month tax holiday for New Mexico restaurants, food trucks and bars didnt prove as lucrative as lawmakers hoped.

The unusual program delivered about $50.5 million in tax relief to food and drink establishments for sales from March to June this year  by allowing them to charge gross receipts taxes on food but keep the money.

The relief, however, fell far short of the $90.3 million the state had expected, according to the Taxation and Revenue Department.

Its one example of the findings now under review by lawmakers as they evaluate New Mexicos efforts to provide economic relief amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

In a hearing Thursday at the Capitol, legislators also heard that the state issued about $98.4 million in $600 rebates to low-income workers  much closer to state expectations  and about $34.6 million in emergency aid to renters.

Taxation and Revenue Secretary Stephanie Schardin Clarke said her department is still aiming to distribute more tax relief to restaurants  in part by publicizing the tax holiday and reminding eligible businesses that they can amend their tax returns to claim the deduction.

The unusual offer allowed restaurants to collect gross receipts taxes from customers during a four-month period but keep the money rather than surrender it to the state. They also had the option of not charging the tax at all.

Fast food restaurants werent eligible.

Carol Wight, CEO of the New Mexico Restaurant Association, said the timing of the legislation may have squeezed efforts to get the money out.

Senate Bill 1 was signed into law by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham in March, and the first tax filings eligible for the deduction were due in late April, Wight said.

The turnaround time on that was very quick, Wight said, and it wasnt easy to get the word out.

But she said the restaurant owners who participated were grateful for the help.

The program didnt involve as much paperwork as other relief programs, Wight said, and restaurants would welcome another tax holiday in the future, especially as concerns about the delta variant reduce demand for in-person dining.

Schardin Clarke said there are a host of potential explanations for the $50 million cost coming so far below the $90 million estimate. Restaurants may have been less busy, for example, than economists expected, she said.

The four-month holiday came before the state lifted business capacity restrictions July 1.

But Schardin Clarke said its likely some establishments didnt take advantage of the offer to keep the tax money.

It strikes me that there is relief left on the table, she told lawmakers.

Senate Majority Leader Peter Wirth, D-Santa Fe, said its critical the state ensure that restaurants, food trucks and bars are aware of the program because they can still participate.

He estimated they have about three years to amend their tax returns and get the money back.

The pandemic has just been brutal on our restaurant and hospitality industry, Wirth said. We were really trying to do something unique here to help.

About 900 businesses a month claimed the gross receipts tax deduction, Schardin Clarke said.

Wirth was a co-sponsor of Senate Bill 1, along with Democratic Sens. Siah Correa Hemphill of Silver City and Jacob Candelaria of Albuquerque and House Majority Leader Javier Martinez, D-Albuquerque.

In a meeting of the Revenue Stabilization and Tax Policy Committee, legislators also were told the state has issued:

 About $98.4 million in $600 rebates to people making $15 an hour or less, also part of Senate Bill 1. Nearly 164,000 rebates went out.

The state had expected to issue about $109.4 million in rebates, and Schardin Clarke said New Mexico may get close to that figure by the Oct. 15 deadline.

 About $34.6 million in emergency rental and utility assistance out of about $185 million available.

Donnie Quintana, director of the Local Government Division in the Department of Finance and Administration, said New Mexico is on track to meet a requirement to obligate a certain amount of the money by Sept. 30, or risk having the funds swept back into the U.S. Treasury.
Put yourself in the place of Albuquerque Police Chief Harold Medina, tasked with reining in Albuquerques surging homicide rate (approaching 90 victims, already shattering the previous annual record).

Or consider what it would be like to be a member of APDs homicide unit that, as of July 26, had 14 detectives and two sergeants. Your job is to clear murder cases, make arrests, get dangerous suspects off the streets and build cases prosecutors can take to trial.

As chief or homicide cop, how would you react if a defendant you recently arrested in a womans stabbing death was back on the streets after cutting off his ankle bracelet  when you believe he should have been held in pretrial detention? Now, youre supposed to find and arrest that same accused felon and hope this time he wont hit that revolving door?

Not to mention you dont officially find out hes on the run for 24 hours.

That sums up the frustration of Medina and APDs homicide unit in the case of Trey Bausby, 19, arrested in February and charged with an open count of murder in the death of Jessica Benavidez, 42, near Eubank and Interstate 40.

District Judge Richard Brown denied a motion to detain Bausby, finding that, while prosecutors proved he posed a danger, they did not prove conditions of release couldnt mitigate that danger. A familiar refrain. Prosecutors filed two more motions to reconsider. Both were denied.

Bausby was released to a rehab facility Aug. 9 with an ankle bracelet. District Court pretrial services received a tamper alert about 3 p.m. Aug. 24, and an email was sent to a prosecutor, Bausbys attorney and an account shared by judges. The prosecutor notified an analyst at APD, but an arrest warrant officially notifying APD wasnt issued by a judge until 3 p.m. Aug. 25  24 hours after Bausby took off.

Medina lashed out publicly. The Court is putting too much faith into ankle monitors, rather than keeping offenders in jail, he said in a media alert. Making matters worse, we get no notification from the Court a dangerous murder suspect has been on the loose for nearly 24 hours. On Twitter, This is unacceptable.  This is a murder suspect.

District Attorney Raul Torrez weighed in, saying the case builds on a serious level of frustration. Its impacting the morale of police officers and the morale of prosecutors, and shaking the confidence of the public in whether this system can make the right  changes to keep them safe.

Defense lawyers defend the system as generally working well and stress the accused are presumed innocent until proven guilty, though they concede Bausbys case is an unfortunate incident.

But its not the only one in recent months. Devin Munford, 18, is accused in the shotgun slaying of Devon Heyborne, 22, in April while on pretrial release for allegedly shooting a pistol from a car. District Judge Clara Moran had released him, over prosecutors objections, with strict supervision, including an ankle monitor. Angello Charley too was on pretrial release with an ankle monitor in what Judge Britt Miller Baca agreed was an extremely terrifying rape case, according to KRQE-TV. He allegedly sexually assaulted a 15-year-old girl while monitored.

As with Bausby, in the Munford and Charley cases there was a lag before law enforcement was contacted after the alleged offender broke whatever restrictions he was supposed to be under. In fact, according to pretrial services guidelines, if a violation happens on a weekend, holiday or after hours, the report wont be filed until the next business day. Seriously?

Crime does not stop at the end of a work day or on weekends and holidays, Medina and Torrez say in a joint letter to the chief judge at District Court, and neither should GPS monitoring.

The public deserves better. If defendants accused of serious violent crimes are released pending trial, they must be subject to 24/7 monitoring, with immediate consequences for breaking rules and putting people at risk.

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.
He was playing the violin, standing in the gridlock of cars on Highway 50 in California, the sky behind him an ugly orange.

Traffic was at a standstill, refugees from South Lake Tahoe stuck there, forced to evacuate Monday from the Caldor Fire roaring toward their homes. So he got out of his car and fiddled as homes burned.

The image was so good, the metaphor so on point, that at least two newspapers ran with the photo, which then popped up across social media.

Similar images of people leaving home, perhaps forever (and perhaps sans the violin), have played out across the world, from those who escaped the watery, windy wrath of Hurricane Ida this weekend to the last people aboard the last cargo plane out of Afghanistan on Monday.

To people who have struggled to stay in their homes during the pandemic who now face losing those homes in some parts of the country now that the federal eviction moratorium has been lifted.

Home defines us. Its where we hang our hats. Its where the heart is. Its sweet.

Ive thought a lot about home lately, the importance of it, the need of it, the ephemeral nature of it these days for both those forced to leave with what they can carry and those who cannot leave at all.

For whatever reason, the Journal has received several emotional messages from people who find themselves in the latter category. Complaints have included not being allowed to keep a service animal at an apartment complex, not having air conditioning fixed for weeks at another, and not being accommodated when the tenants apartment at a fourplex was damaged by an explosion in the unit directly below.

And then there is Brittany and Derek Hernandez, parents of two boys ages 6 and 8 and a 2-year-old daughter. Brittany, a house cleaner, and Derek, a roofing salesman, have worked hard to keep a roof over their familys heads. The owners of the home they were renting recently decided to sell the property, so they were forced to find a new place in a hurry.

They decided on The Towers, a towering  by New Mexico standards  seven story, two-building complex on Montgomery east of San Mateo NE that boasts welcoming and stylish amenities including indoor and shimmering outdoor pools, sauna and hot tub, social center, fitness center, ample balconies, gourmet kitchens and spacious wall-to-wall closets.

Or so its website promises.

Of all the places he looked at, Derek said, The Towers had the roomiest units. For $1,000 a month, he could rent a three-bedroom, three-bath luxury apartment home, as the units are called.

There werent many places available like that and we needed a place fast, so we signed the lease, he said.

That was in March. The Hernandezes said their unit was undergoing renovations but were told the fixes would be finished after they moved in.

Six months later, those fixes havent happened and the problems have grown worse.

Two of the three bathrooms have large holes in the ceilings, exposing pipes, rotted wood, soggy sheetrock and mold.

Since July, the holes have been leaking, presumably from the bathroom on the fourth floor above their unit on the third floor. The Hernandezes say theyre afraid to know exactly what it is that is leaking.

Derek said he can see mice crawling inside the holes.

If I dont see the mice, I hear them, fighting, chewing something, he said.

In one of the bathrooms, a light fixture dangles from electrical cords. Closet doors have yet to be installed in bedrooms and a hallway. Roaches abound.

That shimmering pool? The Hernandezes said it never opened this summer, and the indoor pool has been closed awaiting some sort of inspection.

But it gets worse.

Starting about Aug. 15, the unit lacked hot water, and the Hernandezes said they believe their entire building is without hot water. They say the apartment management wont pro-rate their rent as a result because tenants still have access to hot water by signing up to shower in an empty unit in the other building or waiting in line for a shower in the pool locker room.

Well, first of all I have children and Im not putting them into that type of situation for a shower, Brittany said.

And second of all? The entire Hernandez family has COVID-19.

Theres no way that we would be able to use any type of outside amenities even if we wanted to, which we dont, she said.

Brittany was the first to get sick. Then down went Derek. Then each child. They tested positive earlier this month, still dont feel well and are in quarantine. Neither adult had been vaccinated.

The property is managed by Chamberlin and Associates of Chandler, Arizona. After repeated calls and messages, a woman named Hope finally called me back and explained that her company took over management of The Towers in June and that she was not aware of any complaints but would look into them. She said a lawyer would call me for further comment. So far, he hasnt.

But, a day after I spoke with Towers management, the hot water was restored and the Hernandezes finally heard from managers as well about the status of their rental.

Its a little crazy how fast we had water yesterday, Brittany said.

Shell take it.

For now, for better or worse, this is home. May they find happiness there soon.

And may all those who are displaced find their place to hang their hats and hold their hearts.

UpFront is a front-page news and opinion column. Reach Joline at 730-2793, jkrueger@abqjournal.com, Facebook or @jolinegkg on Twitter.
The U.S. Supreme Courts decision to uphold a Texas law that bans most abortions will likely result in more people coming to New Mexico for the procedure, advocates said Thursday.

The state already was among the ones that pregnant people travel to because Albuquerque is home to one of only a few independent clinics in the country that perform abortions in the third trimester.

An Associated Press analysis in 2019 found that New Mexicos share of abortions performed on women from out of state in recent years more than doubled to about 25%.

Officials with New Mexico Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, which helps women with lodging, transportation and other needs, said they already are experiencing an influx of women from elsewhere and are preparing for more in the next couple of weeks.

New Mexico earlier this year adopted legislation to overturn a dormant 1969 ban on most abortion procedures. Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signed the measure in February, saying women have the right to make decisions about their bodies.

Had the old statute been left in place, New Mexicos ban on most abortion procedures would have gone into effect if the U.S. Supreme Court eventually overturns the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling.

While theres no pressure so far for the Democrat-controlled Legislature to go further with abortion protections, Lujan Grishams office said Thursday that the state supports reproductive health care decisions being made between women and their doctors, with no government interference.

We do not and we will not stand for any attempts to criminalize or restrict health care access in New Mexico, said Nora Meyers Sackett, the governors spokeswoman.

She added that draconian laws in neighboring states may increase the need for abortion services in New Mexico.

The Texas law bans abortions once medical professionals can detect cardiac activity, usually around six weeks  before some women know theyre pregnant. In a highly unusual twist, enforcement will be done by private citizens who can sue anyone they believe is violating the law.
ALEXANDRIA, Va.  A British national admitted Thursday evening in a federal courtroom near the nations capital that he played a leadership role in an Islamic State scheme to torture, hold for ransom and eventually behead American hostages.

Alexanda Anon Kotey, 37, pleaded guilty to all eight counts against him at a plea hearing in U.S. District Court in Alexandria. The charges include hostage-taking resulting in death and providing material support to the Islamic State group from 2012 through 2015.

He admitted guilt in connection with the deaths of four American hostages  journalist James Foley, journalist Steven Sotloff and aid workers Peter Kassig and Kayla Mueller  as well as European and Japanese nationals who also were held captive.

Kotey is one of four Islamic State members who were dubbed the Beatles by their captives because of their British accents. He and another man, El Shafee Elsheikh, were brought to the U.S. last year to face charges after the U.S. assured Britain that neither man would face the death penalty.

Elsheikh is still scheduled to go on trial in January. A third Beatle, Mohammed Emwazi, also known as Jihadi John, was killed in a 2015 drone strike. A fourth member is serving a prison sentence in Turkey.

The plea deal sets a mandatory minimum sentence of life without parole. After 15 years, though, he would be eligible to be transferred to the United Kingdom to face any possible charges there.

In the plea deal , he admits that life is an appropriate sentence in the United Kingdom as well. If he were to receive a sentence of less than life there, the deal requires that he serve the rest of his life sentence, either in the United Kingdom if that country will do so, or be transferred back to the U.S. to serve the life term.

The deal also requires him to cooperate with authorities and answer questions about his time in the Islamic State group. He would not, though, be required to testify at Elsheikhs trial.

The deal also requires him to meet with victims families if they request it.

Kotey gave a somewhat detailed account of his time in Islamic State when U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis asked him to explain in his own words what he had done.

He said he traveled to Syria to engage in a military fight against the Syrian forces of Bashar Assad and that he eventually pledged allegiance to Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

I accept I will be perceived as a radical who holds extremist views, he said.

He acknowledged that he had participated in capture-and-detain operations to kidnap Foley and other Western hostages and that he led efforts to extract ransoms.

He described the acts of violence that were inflicted on the hostages as a necessary part of keeping them in line and persuading Western governments to pay ransom.

In the years after the hostages had been killed, he said he filled multiple roles within the Islamic State, including as a sniper and as director of a special forces training camp.

Prosecutor Dennis Fitzpatrick said at Thursdays hearing that Kotey, Elsheikh and Emwazi were all friends at a young age in London, where they became radicalized.

In a statement, Raj Parekh, acting U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, who is also a member of the prosecution team on the Kotey and Elsheikh cases, said the case has always been focused on the victims and their families.

Their resilience, courage, and perseverance have ensured that terror will never have the last word. The justice, fairness, and humanity that this defendant received in the United States stand in stark contrast to the cruelty, inhumanity, and indiscriminate violence touted by the terrorist organization he espoused, Parekh said.

Mueller also was raped by the Islamic States leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, according to the indictment. Al-Baghdadi was killed by U.S. forces in Syria in 2019.

Kotey and Elsheikh were captured in Syria in 2018 by the U.S.-supported Syrian Democratic Forces while trying to escape to Turkey.

Family members of all four victims attended Thursdays hearing and stood outside the courthouse afterward with prosecutors. They will have an opportunity to speak at Koteys formal sentencing on March 4.

James Foleys mother, Diane, said she was grateful for the conviction and praised prosecutors for obtaining a detailed account of Koteys culpability.

This accountability is essential if our country wants to discourage hostage-taking, she said. Diane Foley also called on the U.S. government to prioritize the return of all Americans being held abroad.
DENVER  The indictments of three suburban Denver officers and two paramedics on manslaughter and other charges in the death of Elijah McClain could be a pivotal step toward meaningful police accountability, law enforcement reform advocates say.

Our hope has been renewed, said Candice Bailey, an activist in the city of Aurora who has been a liaison between the community and police and has led demonstrations over the death of McClain, a 23-year-old Black man who was put into a chokehold and injected with a powerful sedative in 2019.

The charges come as Colorados elected leaders have taken strides to toughen repercussions for officers accused of wrongdoing in the wake of nationwide racial injustice protests last year that reawakened outrage over McClains death.

State lawmakers passed a sweeping police accountability law, which bans the use of chokeholds like the one used on McClain and requires officers to intervene to stop excessive force from being used. The law has helped lead to charges against some officers and allowed the state attorney generals office to open a civil rights investigation into the Aurora Police Department.

Democratic Gov. Jared Polis ordered the attorney general last year to open a new criminal investigation into McClains death after a prosecutor opted against charges in 2019. An outside review of Aurora police policies also was quickly launched by the city and Police Chief Vanessa Wilson, who has vowed to regain the publics trust since taking over the department last year.

Police stopped McClain as he walked home from the store on Aug. 24, 2019, after a 911 caller reported a man wearing a ski mask and waving his hands who seemed sketchy. Officers put McClain in a chokehold and pinned him down. Paramedics injected him with 500 milligrams of ketamine, an amount appropriate for someone 77 pounds (35 kilograms) heavier than McClains 143-pound (64-kilogram) frame, according to the indictment. He was later taken off life support.

A grand jury indicted three Aurora officers and two paramedics on charges of manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide, state Attorney General Phil Weiser announced Wednesday. Some face additional charges. They all turned themselves in and were released on bond.

Marc Sears, president of Auroras branch of the Fraternal Order of Police, which says its the largest union representing police in the city, told the Sentinel Colorado newspaper that our officers are innocent until proven guilty, and we stand by our brothers.

Bailey said she cried when she heard about the charges and believes they will likely change the gravitation of what happens in our community and other communities in this nation.

Deborah Richardson, executive director for American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado, said the indictments are a step in the right direction but that they dont mean the work is over.

It opens the doorway, but in terms of if this is going to be part of a momentum of change, thats really up to us, Richardson said. We dont select the police chiefs, we dont determine who wears the uniform. But we do elect the public officials that are responsible for that and we need to hold them accountable.

Richardson also attributed the nationwide shift on egregious behavior by law enforcement to social media and video that keep the cases alive and accessible. Richardson compared it to her experiences growing up in Atlanta during the civil rights movement. She said national television broadcasts of police beating civil rights protesters marching from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, changed public opinion.

Democratic state Rep. Leslie Herod praised the indictments as a result of community pressure and the police accountability law, which she helped write. The law also eliminated liability protections for police officers, enacted stricter body camera regulations and limits law enforcements use of deadly force.

Justice is moving forward because the people of Colorado elevated Elijahs story to the entire world and demanded change and because of Sheneen McClains tireless fight for reforms and for Colorados first-in-the-nation police accountability law, she said.

Elijah McClains mother said she had her first peaceful sleep in a long time after learning about the indictments. Sheneen McClain is pleased the officers involved will lose their jobs and could go to prison, but importantly, that her sons death did not get forgotten.

Im definitely satisfied because my goal as Elijahs mom was to make sure the world knew what happened to him and somehow hold Colorado accountable for the people that they employ, she said. Our humanity matters. Thats one thing Elijah believed in.

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Nieberg 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.
WELLINGTON, New Zealand  New Zealand authorities were so worried about an extremist inspired by the Islamic State group that they were following him around the clock and were able to shoot and kill him within 60 seconds of him unleashing a knife attack that wounded six people Friday at an Auckland supermarket.

Three of the shoppers were taken to Auckland hospitals in critical condition, police said. Another was in serious condition, while two more were in moderate condition.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern described the violence as a terror attack. She said the man was a Sri Lankan national who was inspired by the Islamic State group and was well known to the nations security agencies.

Ardern said she had been personally briefed on the man in the past but there had been no legal reason for him to be detained.

Had he done something that would have allowed us to put him into prison, he would have been in prison, Ardern said.

The attack unfolded at about 2:40 p.m. at a Countdown supermarket in New Zealands largest city.

Police Commissioner Andrew Coster said a police surveillance team and a specialist tactics group had followed the man from his home in the suburb of Glen Eden to the supermarket in New Lynn.

But while they had grave concerns about the man, they had no particular reason to think he was planning an attack on Friday, Coster said. The man appeared to be going into the store to do his grocery shopping.

He entered the store, as he had done before. He obtained a knife from within the store, Coster said. Surveillance teams were as close as they possibly could be to monitor his activity.

Witnesses said the man shouted Allahu akbar  meaning God is great  and started stabbing random shoppers, sending people running and screaming.

Coster said that when the commotion started, two police from the special tactics group rushed over. He said the man charged at the officers with the knife and so they shot and killed him.

A bystander video taken inside the supermarket records the sound of 10 shots being fired in rapid succession.

Coster said there would be questions about whether police could have reacted even quicker. He said the man was very aware of the constant surveillance and they needed to be some distance away for it to be effective.

Ardern said the attack was violent and senseless, and she was sorry it had happened.

What happened today was despicable. It was hateful. It was wrong, Ardern said. It was carried out by an individual. Not a faith, not a culture, not an ethnicity. But an individual person who is gripped by ideology that is not supported here by anyone or any community.

Ardern said the man had first moved to New Zealand in 2011 and had been monitored by security agencies since 2016. She said authorities are confident he acted alone.

Ardern said legal constraints imposed by New Zealand courts prevented her from discussing everything that she wanted to about the case, but she was hoping to have those constraints lifted soon.

Some shoppers in the supermarket tried to help those who had been wounded by grabbing towels and diapers and whatever else they could find from the shelves.

To everyone who was there and who witnessed such a horrific event, I cant imagine how they will be feeling in the aftermath, Ardern said. But thank you for coming to the aid of those who needed you when they needed you.

Auckland is in a strict lockdown as it battles an outbreak of the coronavirus. Most businesses are shut and people are generally allowed to leave their homes only to buy groceries, for medical needs or to exercise.

Sri Lankas government expressed shock and sadness over the attack attributed to a person of Sri Lankan origin.

Sri Lanka condemns this senseless violence, and stands ready to cooperate with New Zealand authorities in any way necessary, its Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Extremist ideology is rare in New Zealand, and Ardern said only a tiny number of people would be subject to such intense surveillance.

In 2019, a white supremacist gunned down worshippers at two Christchurch mosques, killing 51 people and injuring dozens more. After pleading guilty last year, Brenton Tarrant was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The killings sparked changes to gun laws in New Zealand, which has now banned the deadliest types of semi-automatic weapons.

Among those to condemn the attack Friday were members of the Al Noor mosque in Christchurch, which was at the center of the mosque attacks two years ago.

We stand with the victims of the horrible incident, said Gamal Fouda, the imam of Al Noor. We feel strongly the pain of terrorism, and there are no words that can convey our condemnation of such a horrible act.
NEW ORLEANS  Power should be restored to New Orleans by the middle of next week, utility officials said Friday, and sheriffs deputies warned people returning to communities outside the city to come equipped like survivalists because of the lack of basic services in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida.

The storm knocked out electricity to more than 1 million customers in Louisiana, but almost all lights in the city should be back on by Wednesday, according to Entergy, the company that provides power to New Orleans and much of southeast Louisiana in the storms path.

The utility issued a statement asking for patience and acknowledging the heat and misery in the storms wake. More than 25,000 workers from 40 states are trying to fix 14,000 damaged poles, more than 2,200 broken transformers and more than 150 destroyed transmission structures.

Please know that thousands of employees and contractors are currently in the field working day and night to restore power. We will continue working until every community is restored, said Rod West, a group president for utility operations.

The outlook was bleaker south and west of the city, where Idas fury fully struck. The sheriffs office in Lafourche Parish cautioned returning residents about the difficult situation that awaited them  no power, no running water, little cellphone service and almost no gasoline.

Residents can return to the parish outside of curfew times but are advised to come prepared with all provisions necessary to self-sustain, deputies wrote on Facebook.

The utility offered no promises for when the lights will come back on in the parishes outside New Orleans, some of which were battered for hours by winds of 100 mph (160 kph) or more.

President Joe Biden arrived Friday to survey the damage. He met with local officials and toured a neighborhood in LaPlace, a community between the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain that suffered catastrophic wind and water damage that sheared off roofs and flooded homes. The president also planned a flyover tour of other hard-hit communities, including Lafitte, Grand Isle, Port Fourchon and Lafourche Parish.

I promise were going to have your back, Biden said at the outset of a briefing by officials.

But some people could not wait for the power to come back, and a second evacuation was underway. New Orleans and neighboring Jefferson Parish continue to help people find shelters or connect with family members outside the heavily damaged areas.

C.J. Conrady was at one of those centers Friday in Marrero with his brother and their mother. She was in a wheelchair after a surgery just before Ida struck left her with incisions all the way up her back. An intravenous line to give her antibiotics fell out the day before, and there was no refrigeration in their home to keep the insulin for her diabetes cold.

We decided to tough it out and see if the power would come back on soon. It did not, Conrady said.

New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell said the city on Friday started helping to relocate residents of senior homes. At the Renaissance Place senior home, dozens of residents lined up to get on minibuses equipped with wheelchair lifts after city officials said they determined conditions at the facility were not safe and evacuated it.

Reggie Brown, 68, who was waiting to join fellow residents on a bus, said residents, many in wheelchairs, have been stuck at the facility since Ida. He said elevators stopped working three days ago and garbage was piling up inside. The residents were being taken to a state-run shelter, the mayors office said.

Im getting on the last bus, Brown said. Im able-bodied.

A phone message for the company that manages the Renaissance site, HSI Management Inc., was not immediately returned.

On Saturday, the city was to start providing daily transportation for other residents seeking to leave for public shelters, Cantrell said.

Gwen Warren was trying to get out on her own on Friday, waiting for a bus to Alexandria or maybe farther north to Monroe. She stayed after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 knocked out power for weeks. But at 61, Warren said the stifling September weather was just too much.

Any place the Lord blesses us to go out of this heat, where were able to get some food, get a hot bath and, you know, just some comfort, is fine, Warren said.

In other developments, Louisiana health officials started an investigation into the deaths of four nursing home residents who were evacuated to a warehouse ahead of the severe weather.

The residents who died were among hundreds from seven nursing homes taken to the warehouse in Independence, where health officials received reports of people lying on mattresses on the floor, not being fed or changed and not being socially distanced to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, which is currently ravaging the state.

A coroner classified three of the deaths as storm-related.

When a large team of state health inspectors showed up on Tuesday to investigate the warehouse, the owner of the nursing homes demanded that they leave immediately, Louisiana Department of Health spokesperson Aly Neel said.

Neel identified the owner as Bob Dean. The Associated Press called several numbers connected to Dean and attorneys who have represented him in the past, but they did not respond.

Dean told Baton Rouge television station WAFB that the inspectors were on his property illegally.

We only had five deaths within the six days, and normally with 850 people, youll have a couple a day, so we did really good with taking care of people, Dean said.

Louisianas health department said Friday that two dozen nursing homes have been evacuated from parishes hard-hit by Ida.

Gov. John Bel Edwards promised a full investigation and aggressive legal action if warranted and said none of the other nursing homes were having issues.

Biden has promised full federal support to Gulf Coast states and the Northeast, where Idas remnants dumped record-breaking rain and killed at least 50 people from Virginia to Connecticut.

At least 14 deaths were blamed on the storm in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, including the three nursing home deaths. The Louisiana Department of Health on Friday reported an additional death  a 59-year-old man who was poisoned by carbon monoxide from a generator that was believed to be running inside his home. Several deaths in the aftermath of the storm have been blamed on carbon monoxide poisoning, which can happen if generators are run improperly.

The most dangerous part of a hurricane is after the storm, said Entergy New Orleans CEO Deanna Rodriguez, who asked people to be careful around generators. Here its sadly happening again.

More than 800,000 homes and businesses remained without power Friday evening across southeast Louisiana, according to the Public Service Commission. Thats about 36% of all utility customers statewide, but its down from the peak of around 1.1 million five days ago as the storm arrived with top winds of 150 mph (230 kph). It is tied for the fifth-strongest hurricane ever to strike the mainland U.S.

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Deslatte reported from Baton Rouge and Santana reported from Marrero. Associated Press writers Kevin McGill in New Orleans; Stacey Plaisance in Lafitte, Louisiana; Jeff Martin in Marietta, Georgia; Sudhin Thanawala in Atlanta; and Jeffrey Collins in Columbia, South Carolina, contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON  The U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security says the government expects to admit more than 50,000 people into the country from the Afghanistan airlift.

Alejandro Mayorkas suggested Friday that figure could climb in what he called an unprecedented evacuation. Mayorkas told reporters during a news conference that the U.S. has brought more than 40,000 people into the country from Afghanistan since the fall of Kabul last month.

About a quarter of those who have come so far are U.S. citizens or permanent residents. The rest, he said, include people who have received the special immigrant visas for Afghans who worked for the U.S. or NATO as interpreters or in some other capacity. Also included in this group are people who have applied but not yet received the visa and those considered vulnerable under Taliban rule.

That last group includes women, children, and members of civil society, Mayorkas said.

The secretary, who came to the U.S. as a refugee from Cuba as a child with his family, spoke proudly of the evacuation effort and said the number of people admitted could exceed 50,000.

He said all those entering the U.S. are undergoing security screening and vetting in a number of transit points, where they are tested for COVID-19 and offered a vaccine.



WASHINGTON  The Pentagon says Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin will visit Persian Gulf allies to thank them for their cooperation in the evacuations from Afghanistan.

Spokesman John Kirby said Austin will depart Sunday and visit Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

He said the Pentagon chief will reaffirm U.S. defense relationships in the region. He also will visit with U.S. service members.

Qatars permission for the United States to temporarily house Afghan evacuees at al-Udeid air base was a key to facilitating the Kabul airlift. It will be Austins first visit to the Gulf since President Joe Biden announced in April that he was ending U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan.



DUBAI, United Arab Emirates  A Qatari jet carrying the Gulf countrys special envoy for counterterrorism and conflict resolution has arrived in Kabul.

A Qatari official with knowledge of Fridays visit said officials would discuss efforts at an inclusive government and the resumption of civilian commercial operations at the airport. The official addded that Qatar continues to work closely with nations whose embassies relocated to the Qatari capital of Doha from Kabul in past days. Those countries include the United States, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Japan part of an effort to provide safe corridors and freedom of movement for those still in Afghanistan.

No further details were provided.

Mutlaq bin Majed Al Qahtani, the Qatari envoy who landed in Kabul, said his nation remains an impartial mediator and has engaged with all sides. Qatar has hosted Taliban political leaders for years, as well as unsuccessful attempts at peace talks between the militant group and the U.S.-backed government before its collapse.

Al Qahtani said in a statement to The Associated Press that Qatars priority with the Taliban includes guaranteeing a peaceful transfer of power and ensuring an inclusive and effective government is formed to serve the Afghan people.



PRISTINA, Kosovo  Kosovos government says that the number of Afghan evacuees who had worked with NATO, and their families arriving in the country has reached 467.

The first group of 111 Afghans arrived in the country on Sunday.

Interior Minister Xhelal Svecla on Friday met with international organizations to discuss the current situation and needs on the temporary housing of the Afghan citizens in Kosovo.

Svecla said that NATO has assisted in their accommodation so far and called for assistance from the organizations despite their support for dignitary accommodation to make their stay easier in the country.

Kosovo has said it may temporarily shelter up to 2,000 Afghans while they process documentation on their final destination to the United States.



COPENHAGEN, Denmark  Denmarks foreign minister says the country will not recognize any Taliban government.

Jeppe Kofod told Danish broadcaster DR on Friday that leaders there are concerned about ensuring that the progress we have made through two decades of efforts in Afghanistan can be sustained.

The most immediate priority, Kofod said, is ensuring that everyone on the countrys evacuation list can leave Afghanistan in good order.



KABUL, Afghanistan  A few dozen protesters have gathered outside the presidential palace in Kabul, urging the countrys new Taliban leadership to uphold womens rights achieved under Western patronage and include women in the upcoming government.

At one gate on Friday, around a dozen women held up small printed pages urging for A heroic Cabinet with the presence of women. The protestors chanted slogans asserting human rights and saying they did not want to return to the past.

A document circulated by protesters demanded that Afghan women are granted full rights to education, social and political contributions in the countrys future, and general freedoms including that of free speech.

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MORE ON AFGHANISTAN:

 US defends strike that Afghan family says killed innocents

 Qatar says its not clear when Kabul airport will reopen

 Those left in Afghanistan complain of broken US promises

 Afghans face hunger crisis, adding to Talibans challenge

 Biden defends departure from forever war, praises airlift

 UN chief urges countries to help Afghans in hour of need

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 Find more AP coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/afghanistan

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HERES WHAT ELSE IS HAPPENING:

WARSAW, Poland  A government official says that Poland will temporarily host some 500 Afghan evacuees who had worked for NATO in Afghanistan.

Michal Dworczyk said Friday that the Afghans will remain in Poland for up to three months before moving on to other countries. Depending on their choice, up to 50 persons will be able to settle in Poland. However, Poland has not been a popular destination in Europe for migrants.

Dworczyk, a top aide to Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, said on Radio RMF FM that the first group of some 250 persons would arrive Friday from the NATO air base in Ramstein, Germany.

Separately, Poland has evacuated some 1,300 people from Kabul, mostly Afghanis, who had worked with Polands military and diplomatic mission, and their families and said it is taking responsibility for them.

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KABUL, Afghanistan  The Taliban say Western Union will resume its operations in Afghanistan, opening a rare conduit for foreign funds to flow into the cash-strapped country.

The groups s cultural commission spokesman, Ahmadullah Muttaqi, announced the move Friday. The American financial services giant had halted operations in Afghanistan when the Taliban took power in the capital on Aug. 15.

The opening will be especially welcomed by Afghans with foreign relatives abroad. Hundreds of people have been lining up daily outside Afghan banks to withdraw cash. Withdrawals have been limited to $200 per week and cash machines arent working. The overcrowding means that not everyone manages to obtain money on a given day.

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WASHINGTON  President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden visited injured U.S. troops at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Thursday night.

There are 15 Marines at the hospital in Bethesda, Maryland, just outside Washington, who were wounded in an Aug. 26 suicide bombing at the Kabul airport. The attack occurred as the U.S. government was arranging evacuations of Americans, Afghans and allies before the nearly two-decade war in Afghanistan officially ended Aug. 31.

Eleven Marines were also killed in the attack, as well as one Army solider and one Navy corpsman. Biden traveled to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware on Sunday to witness the return of their remains to U.S. soil in a solemn dignified transfer.

One of the wounded Marines was in critical condition. Three were in serious condition and 11 in stable condition.
PHOENIX  An Arizona man who sported face paint, no shirt and a furry hat with horns when he joined the mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 pleaded guilty Friday to a felony charge and wants to be released from jail while he awaits sentencing.

Jacob Chansley, who was widely photographed in the Senate chamber with a flagpole topped with a spear, could face 41 to 51 months in prison under sentencing guidelines, a prosecutor said. The man who called himself QAnon Shaman has been jailed for nearly eight months since his arrest.

Before entering the plea, Chansley was found by a judge to be mentally competent after having been transferred to a Colorado facility for a mental health evaluation. His lawyer Albert Watkins said the solitary confinement that Chansley faced for most of his time in jail has had an adverse effect on his mental health and that his time in Colorado helped him regain his sharpness.

I am very appreciative for the courts willingness to have my mental vulnerabilities examined, Chansley said before pleading guilty to a charge of obstructing an official proceeding.

U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth is considering Chansleys request to be released from jail while he awaits sentencing, which is set for Nov. 17.

Chansley acknowledged in a court record to being one of the first 30 pro-Trump rioters to stream into the Capitol building. He riled up the crowd with a bullhorn as officers tried to control them, posed for photos, profanely referred to then-Vice President Mike Pence as a traitor while in the Senate. He wrote a note to Pence saying, Its only a matter of time, justice is coming. He also made a social media post in November in which he promoted hangings for traitors.

The image of Chansley with his face painted like the American flag, wearing a bear skin head dress and looking as if he were howling was one of the first striking images to emerge from the riot.

Chansley is among roughly 600 people charged in the riot that forced lawmakers into hiding as they were meeting to certify President Joe Bidens Electoral College victory. Fifty others have pleaded guilty, mostly to misdemeanor charges of demonstrating in the Capitol.

Only one defendant who pleaded guilty to a felony charge has received their punishment so far. Paul Hodgkins, a crane operator from Florida who breached the U.S. Senate chamber carrying a Trump campaign flag, was sentenced in July to eight months in prison after pleading guilty to obstructing an official proceeding.

Chansleys lawyer said his client has since repudiated the QAnon movement and asked that there be no more references to his past affiliations with the movement.

After the hearing, attorney Watkins told reporters that Chansley was under pressure from family members not to plead guilty because they believed Trump would be reinstated as president and would pardon him. Watkins said Chansley previously felt like Trumps message spoke to him and that his clients fondness for Trump was akin to a first love.

The man had long been a fixture at Trump rallies. Two months before the riot, he appeared in costume and carried a QAnon sign at a protest alongside other Trump supporters outside an election office in Phoenix where votes were being counted.

His attorney has said Chansley believed like other rioters that Trump called him to the Capitol, but later felt betrayed after Trumps refusal to grant Chansley and others who participated in the insurrection a pardon.

After spending his first month in jail, Chansley said he re-evaluated his life, expressed regret for having stormed the building and apologized for causing fear in others.

Chansley twice quit eating while in jail and lost 20 pounds (9 kilograms) until authorities gave him organic food.

Watkins has characterized the spear Chansley carried as an ornament and disputed that his clients note to Pence was threatening.
MEXICO CITY  Mexico has faced immigration pressures from the north, south and within its own borders in recent weeks, putting it in an increasingly difficult position.

Thousands of migrants continue to cross its southern border, the United States sends thousands more back from the north and theres the renewed prospect of the U.S. making asylum seekers wait in Mexico for long periods of time.

President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said Thursday the strategy of containing migrants in the south was untenable on its own and more investment is needed in the region to keep Central Americans from leaving their homes.

But the groups of migrants walking north from southern Mexico in recent days have mostly been Haitians, a group that would not be addressed by the presidents proposed tree planting and youth employment programs in Central America.

MEXICOS SOUTHERN BORDER

Protests among the thousands of mostly Haitian migrants stuck in the southern city of Tapachula have intensified in recent weeks. Many have been waiting there for months, some up to a year, for asylum requests to be processed.

Mexicos refugee agency, which handles the applications, is overwhelmed. It was already behind and the pandemic slowed things even more. So far this year, more than 77,000 have applied for protected status in Mexico, 55,000 of those in Tapachula. Haitians account for about 19,000 of those applicants.

Tapachulas shelters are full, leaving many asylum seekers to live in unsanitary conditions while they wait. Without the ability to work, many have few options.

Frustrated by the delay and their living conditions, some began to organize in groups of hundreds. Last Saturday, several groups began walking out of Tapachula headed north. The groups have so far been dispersed and-or detained by Mexican authorities, sometimes with excessive force.

MEXICOS NORTHERN BORDER

Concern has been growing in northern Mexico since the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the restart of the controversial program that made asylum seekers wait in Mexico while their cases are processed. The Trump-era policy called the Migrant Protection Protocols, but better known as Remain in Mexico, led to more than 70,000 asylum seekers waiting, mostly in dangerous Mexican border cities.

The Biden administration ended the program earlier this year and said it would appeal the court decision even as the Department of Homeland Security takes steps to comply. On the ground, asylum seekers trying to enter the U.S. have been frozen out. Shelters in northern Mexico fear they could soon be overwhelmed again by returned asylum seekers. The Mexican government has not said how it will respond.

Meanwhile, the U.S. government continues the rapid removal of migrants under a pandemic-related authority invoked by the Trump administration. So far this year, the U.S. government has made 674,000 expulsions under that Title 42 authority.

U.S. EXPULSIONS TO SOUTHERN MEXICO

The U.S. government is also flying thousands of migrants from other countries to southern Mexico, where Mexican authorities drive them to remote locations on its border with Guatemala and drop them off. The idea is to reduce returns by making it more difficult for migrants to reach the U.S. again. Mexico is similarly moving migrants detained in the north to its southern border, said Dana Graber Ladek, Mexico chief for the International Organization for Migration, a part of the United Nations system.

Alejandra Macias, from the nongovernmental organization Asylum Access Mexico, says those are illegal transfers because they dont screen for people at risk. The IOM has expressed concern about the flights as well, because people are dropped off sometimes at night, sometimes without knowing exactly what they are doing or where they are, said Graber Ladek.

MEXICAN GOVERNMENT ACTIONS

President Lopez Obrador went along with the tough immigration policies of the Trump administration and has expressed willingness to continue cooperating with the Biden administration.

Defense Secretary Luis Cresencio Sandoval said last week that the main objective of the armed forces and National Guard is to detain all migration and cover the northern border, the southern border with soldiers.

But on Thursday, the president sounded frustrated with the migrant containment strategy, which lately has drawn widespread criticism. He said he would write a letter to Biden insisting the U.S. government invest in his proposed development projects to help people in Central America and southern Mexico feel less need to migrate  though so far, U.S. officials have been unenthusiastic about the specific plans.

His government has promised to issue thousands of work visas and welcome asylum seekers. But it was the military that received more budget support, while the refugee agency saw its budget reduced.

We are overflowing with an absolutely unusual avalanche, above all of Haitians, said Andres Ramirez Silva, head of the Mexican Commission for Refugee Assistance.

Others say the problem goes beyond an increase in asylum applicants. The Roman Catholic Church said the government lacks a clear immigration policy and strategic planning. It faults a mismanagement of resources, militarization of immigration policy and a lack of coordination between factions in government that push for containment and those that prioritize human rights.

POSSIBLE FIXES

To clear the backlog in Tapachula, Mexicos refugee agency wants to offer new options to Haitians  the second largest migrant group behind Hondurans  that would allow them to travel outside the state of Chiapas and find legal work.

Ramirez Silva says these migrants dont meet all the requirements to win asylum, but they do need protection because they cant be returned to a country amid a political and humanitarian crisis.

He said not everyone in the Mexican government agrees with that approach, but he does have the support of United Nations agencies. Graber Ladek said they are working with the Mexican government to facilitate the granting of temporary immigration permits until officials can develop other ideas that wouldnt be limited to one nationality.
One Valencia County deputy was shot and another was hit by shrapnel before the suspect was killed after a chase Friday afternoon near Los Lunas.

Valencia County Sheriff Denise Vigil said the two deputies were taken to an Albuquerque hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.

At about 3 p.m. Friday a deputy was dispatched to the area of mile marker 19 on N.M. 6 west of the village of Los Lunas to investigate a suspicious vehicle. When the deputy arrived, he found a Honda Civic and a man and a woman.

New Mexico State Police Chief Tim Johnson said during a news conference Friday evening the exact details of the contact between the deputy and the two individuals are still being investigated.

Were looking into that piece to figure out exactly what happened, but at some point, it appears gunfire was exchanged between the male subject and the deputy, Johnson said.

The deputy was struck at least once by gunfire, and the man and woman fled in a white Dodge pickup truck. The deputy alerted dispatchers about the incident and a short time later additional VCSO deputies and Los Lunas police officers found and began pursuing the truck driving east on N.M. 6 through Los Lunas.

State Police officers in the area heard the radio traffic and assisted in the pursuit. The driver of the Dodge turned north onto N.M. 314, eventually losing control of the vehicle and crashing near Davila Road, Johnson said.

After the crash, the woman got out of the truck and ran east on foot, the chief said, and the man began shooting at the two Valencia County deputies and a State Police officer at the scene.

The three officers returned fire, killing the suspect. At this time, Johnson said it is unknown which officer fired the fatal shot.

We wont know that until weve done trajectory at the crime scene, other analysis, he said.

One of the two VCSO deputies involved in the shooting on N.M. 314 was injured by shrapnel and, along with the deputy shot on N.M. 6, was taken to the hospital.

The woman has been detained and is being interviewed, Johnson said, but her name and that of the dead suspect arent being released at this time.

The chase through town caused several crashes along Main Street, Johnson said, which are being handled by the sheriffs office and Los Lunas Police Department.

Vigil said she was grateful for the assistance of State Police and the Los Lunas Police Department.

My prayers are with the deputies and their families. They will never be the same, Vigil said. They are expected to just continue on, but theyll never, ever be the same.

The two Valencia County deputies brought the total number of law enforcement officers injured in New Mexico on Friday to three, Johnson said. A Dona Ana County sheriffs deputy sustained minor injuries from bullet fragments after responding to a call of shots fired earlier Friday.

I just want to wish the best to the two deputies that were injured today, the one officer in Las Cruces earlier today, to the sheriff and her department, the families of the deputies and to my officer, who probably wont ever be the same, as you arent after these types of incidents, Johnson said. Four (Albuquerque Police Department) officers were shot two weeks ago. I am beyond disgusted with the violence were seeing in the state.

Albuquerque Police Chief Harold Medina, on Twitter, offered prayers to the deputies injured in the incident.

Once again NM is seeing Law Enforcement Officers injured by violence. We will all be looking for answers in the coming days, he wrote. We must unite and work to create statewide legislation to hold criminals accountable and safeguard citizens and officers.

The incident comes on the heels of a shooting that left four Albuquerque police officers injured  one critically  during a gunfight with an armed robbery suspect in Albuquerques Northeast Heights.

Journal Staff Writer Matthew Reisen contributed to this report.
Instagram Celebrity

The former 'Bigg Boss 13' contestant has passed away when he arrived at a Mumbai hospital after being rushed to the facility for medical treatment following a heart attack.

Sep 3, 2021

AceShowbiz - Actor Sidharth Shukla has died aged 40 following an apparent heart attack.

The screen star was rushed to Mumbai's Cooper Hospital on Thursday morning (02Sep21) after the reported cardiac event, but was dead when he arrived at the medical centre.

A senior Cooper Hospital official told the Press Trust of India, "He was brought dead to the hospital some time ago."

While the initial report suggests he died of a heart attack, more will be known after a post mortem examination is performed.

As well as making a name for himself on television, winning reality shows "Bigg Boss 13" and "Fear Factor: Khatron Ke Khiladi 7" and hosting "Savdhaan India" and "India's Got Talent", he made his Bollywood debut in 2014 in "Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhania".

Roughly a week before his death, he paid tribute to frontline heroes on Instagram, "To all the frontline warriors, a thank you from the heart! You risk your lives, work for countless hours, and comfort patients who couldn't be with their families. You truly are the bravest! Being on the frontline surely isn't easy, but we really appreciate your efforts."

In response to his passing, fellow "Bigg Boss" alum, TV actress Devoleena Bhattacharjee, tweeted, "I am just numb ..Why Sid? Too soon...May your soul rest in peace my friend." Another former contestant Himanshi Khurrana penned, "Om shanti."

Comedian Sunil Grover also sent condolence, "Shocked and sad to know about Sidharth Shukla. Gone too soon. Prayers. Rest in peace." Actress Munmum Dutta wrote, "Shocked and numb."
Celebrity

The celebrated composer, who also wrote music for Al Pacino's 1973 movie 'Serpico', has died at the age of 96 in Athens following his struggle with heart problems.

Sep 3, 2021

AceShowbiz - Mikis Theodorakis, the celebrated composer best known for the 1964 film "Zorba the Greek", has died in Athens aged 96.

Theodorakis, who also wrote the film music for Al Pacino starrer "Serpico" (1973) was renowned for being politically active, died at his home on the foot of the Acropolis after suffering years of heart problems, reported The Times.

"Zorba the Greek" told the story of an English writer in Crete whose life is transformed when he meets Alexis Zorba, a gregarious peasant.

The iconic film, which starred Anthony Quinn, won three Oscars and remains one of the most famous pieces of Greek music.

"Today we lost a part of Greece's soul. Mikis Theodorakis, Mikis the teacher, the intellectual, the radical, our Mikis has gone," said Culture Minister Lina Mendoni, calling him "the one who made all Greeks sing poetry."

As news of his passing swept through the nation, the Greek parliament held a moment of silence and the country has declared three days of mourning.

Theodorakis' song "Antonis" from the "Mauthausen Trilogy" became popular with Afghans and was sung by the residents of Kabul in 2001 who greeted troops of the Northern Alliance as they entered the city and expelled the Taliban.

It was also the theme of 1969 film "Z", whose soundtrack won a BAFTA Award for Best Film Music in 1970. The film, directed by Costa-Gavras, is a thinly fictionalised account of the assassination of a left-wing Greek politician.

Theodorakis himself was for much of his life a leftist and at times a communist and remained politically active throughout his life.

However, he once told Reuters in an interview, "I'm not a communist or social democrat or anything else. I'm a free man."
Instagram Celebrity

The 'Where I'm From' star and the 'Bigger Picture' rapper plan to build a hospital to help people of Haiti affected by the natural disaster in the country.

Sep 3, 2021

AceShowbiz - Jackboy and Lil Baby are teaming up to build a hospital in Haiti after the country's devastating 14 August (21) earthquake.

Responding to the damage the powerful 7.2 temblor caused to the island nation, Jackboy - who was born in Haiti - took to Instagram Stories, calling for volunteers to come together to help construct a new medical facility.

"I just walked through a hospital in Haiti and all the patients sleeping outside (sic)," he wrote. "I personally handed every single last one of them a(n) envelope full of money but fr fr (for real) I feel like that ain't enough (sic). Who want to go to Haiti with me and get a hospital built. It's not really that much especially if we use U.S. dollars. #PrayForHaiti."

Lil Baby, real name Dominique Jones, responded to Jackboy's plea and sent him a direct message on Wednesday (01Sept21), writing, "I'm in."

Jackboy, real name Pierre Delince, replied with a series of messages, penning, "You just got a whole different type of respect for me. Ima set everything up and keep y'all in contact with the hospital director (sic)."

The "Pressure" hitmaker, who's on the same label as Kodak Black, posted a screenshot of their exchange to his Instagram Story on Wednesday, with an additional caption that read, "Got my n**ga on it with me we on God about to make something special @lilbaby (sic)."

He also posted a video of himself to his Instagram page, driving around Haiti and interacting with locals, and another showing some of the island's damage, soundtracking the clips with his own track, "Where I'm From".

According to CNN, the earthquake killed at least 1,297 people and injured more than 5,700.
WENN/Apega Celebrity

The hip-hop mogul and his business advisors are suing Nicole for allegedly 'stealing' money from his recording studio business, which she used to be involved in 'maintenance and control' of its assets.

Sep 3, 2021

AceShowbiz - Dr. Dre and Nicole Young's legal war is far from being over. As they're still battling over divorce settlement, the rapper is now suing his ex-wife for allegedly embezzling money from his recording to studio business.

The hip-hop mogul and his advisors are accusing Nicole of "stealing" money from the accounts of Recording One studio in Sherman Oaks, according to new legal documents obtained by The Blast. The documents state that Dr. Dre and his ex-wife were listed on the business to be involved in "maintenance and control" of its assets, so Nicole was entrusted with the authority to withdraw checks and transfer funds for the business.

According to the suit, Nicole "decimated" the bank account and withdrew $353,571.85 during the time they started their divorce proceedings. She has since been removed from the business trust.

Now, Dr. Dre claims she "egregiously" breached her fiduciary duties by "embezzling and stealing money from (the company's) bank account, and using the money for her own, personal obligations."

The lawsuit claims Nicole has violated Penal Code 496, which reads, "Every person who buys or receives any property that has been stolen or that has been obtained in any manner constituting theft or extortion, knowing the property to be stolen or obtained, or who conceals, sells, withholds, or aids in concealing, selling, or withholding any property from the ownershall be punished by imprisonment in county jail for not more than one year."

Dr. Dre has also turned over details of the same situation to LAPD, which investigated the incident for possible criminal charges. Sources say Nicole has already returned the money, though she had every right to move the cash.

Nicole filed for divorce from Dr. Dre in June 2020 after 24 years of marriage. He was recently ordered to pay his ex-wife nearly a month in temporary spousal support.
Twitter Celebrity

The former WCW wrestler has been found dead inside her Georgia home just a day after posting suicidal clip in which she appeared to be issuing her last words while holding a small handgun.

Sep 3, 2021

AceShowbiz - Daffney Unger has passed away. The former professional wrestler for WCW was found dead just a day after she posted tearful and disturbing video on her social media platform. She was 46 years old.

Confirming her death was a spokesperson for the Gwinnett County Medical Examiner's Office, noting that her body was found inside her home in Georgia early on Thursday, September 2. The spokesperson said an examination has been conducted and that the office cannot release the cause and manner of the star's death at this time.

A day before Daffney's death, she appeared on her Instagram Live in tears while holding what appeared to be a small gun, according to TMZ. "Do you guys not understand that I'm all alone?" she said during the livestream. "Do you not understand that?"

Daffney, who battled brain injuries, could be heard in the footage saying that she didn't want to do anything to hurt her brain as she wanted it to be examined. She stated, "Remember, my brain goes to Boston."

Following her death, her friend and fellow wrestler Lexie Fyfe told the outlet that Daffney, whose real name is Shannon Spruill, had been battling mental health issues in recent weeks. Lexie also mentioned that the authorities were called following Daffney's Instagram Live video. However, the cops had trouble finding her as she had just moved into a different apartment a few days ago.

Mourning her death was WWE star Mick Foley, who had expressed concern on Twitter over her well-being. Taking to his Twitter account, he wrote, "I'm so very sorry to learn of Daffney's passing. A terrible loss for her family, friends and wrestling. She was far ahead if her time in our business. #RIPDaffney. If you're hurting and thinking of doing harm to yourself, please know that help is available. 800-273-8255."

Mick Foley mourned over the tragic death of Daffney Unger.

Previously, Mick admitted he had been trying to contact Daffney before her tragic death. "If anyone has a way of reaching Daffney Unger, or knows her address, please help out. She's in a bad personal place and is threatening to harm herself. My phone call went straight to voicemail," he penned.
Instagram Celebrity

Duane Chapman and his fiancee reportedly tied the knot on Thursday, September 2 in Colorado, two years after his wife Beth Chapman and her husband Bob died of cancer.

Sep 3, 2021

AceShowbiz - Duane Chapman is officially a married man again, two years after Beth Chapman died of cancer. The "Dog the Bounty Hunter" star reportedly tied the knot with his fiancee Francie Frane on Thursday, September 2 in Colorado.

Details of the nuptials, which were first confirmed by ET, are currently unknown, but the couple spoke to the news outlet on Tuesday ahead of their big day. They revealed that they would be writing their own vows and honoring their late spouses.

"We have been doing that all along," she said. "We have done that privately, and in our vows, we will be honoring them. We honor them all of the time. And so we will continue to do that throughout their lives. Throughout our life together, we will continue to do that. They will be a part of that always."

Francie, who also lost her husband Bob to cancer six months before Beth died, also teased about her wedding dress. "It has more bling on it than I ever thought I would wear," she gushed. "It is really heavy."

Francie admitted that she and Duane don't have the same tastes in terms of wedding cake flavors and they would let it show on the wedding day. "So, he picked one part and I picked the other and we have several tiers of the cake and I don't like his part and he doesn't like mine," she explained with a laugh.

"The reception is going to be a fun party and right after the wedding, it is all in one place. And we are going to be dancing and having a blast with all of our friends and our family and everybody that wants to share all of this with us," she went on sharing. Duane then chimed in, "This is going to be the celebrity wedding of 2021, scoot over Blake Shelton."
Channel 5/WENN/Ivan Nikolov Music

After 'Peppa's Adventures: The Album' gets a higher rating than Kanye's 'Donda', the official Twitter page of the British animated series brags that it 'didn't need to host listening parties' to get that score.

Sep 3, 2021

AceShowbiz - Drake may not be the only one that currently has an album war with Kanye West. Peppa Pig has trolled the Atlanta MC online after it got a better album review than the rapper's highly-publicized effort "Donda".

The British animated series recently released an album titled "Peppa's Adventures: The Album", which earned a 6.5 out of 10 score from Pitchfork. The same music website, meanwhile, gave "Donda" a 6.0 rating, slightly lower than the "Peppa Pig" album.

After learning of it, the official Twitter account of "Peppa Pig" couldn't help mocking Kanye for his over-the-top efforts to promote his album. "Peppa didn't need to host listening parties in the Mercedez-Benz stadium to get that .5," so it tweeted, adding a dropped microphone and a pig snout emoji, as well as side-by-side pictures of the two reviews.

Pegga Pig mocked Kanye West over album reviews.

The tweet has since been removed from "Peppa Pig" official Twitter page, but it didn't stop social media users from weighing on which album is better. "Well, they not wrong," one Instagram user agreed with Pitchfork. Another commented, "Peppa pig album goes hard."

Disagreeing fans, meanwhile, blasted the website, "Aint these the same ppl that kept hating on X and also rated Rodeo a 6?? Yeaa, their opinion does not matter at all." Someone else claimed, "Pitchfork rated a Christ based album low."

Kanye hosted two listening parties for "Donda" at the Mercedez-Benz stadium in Atlanta and another listening party at the Soldier Field in Chicago before releasing his album last Friday, August 27 following multiple delays.

He now may be too busy to respond to Peppa Pig's diss as he has been taking his beef with Drake to the streets in Toronto, Canada. The two artists have placed Billboards promoting their own albums all over the city ahead of the release of Drake's "Certified Lover Boy".
Instagram TV

After taking time off the reality show to focus on family matters and her mental health, the realit star confirms she has been filming for season five of 'Jersey Shore: Family Vacation'.

Sep 3, 2021

AceShowbiz - Snooki is returning to the "Jersey Shore" after retiring from the reality show and telling fans she was taking time to focus on family matters and her mental health.

The TV favorite, real name Nicole Elizabeth LaValle, has confirmed she is "ready to party" again for season five of "Jersey Shore Family Vacation".

"So right now we are filming the next season and I'm filming as much as I can," the 33-year-old told TooFab. "I want to say I'm back fully, but when it comes to trips and stuff like that I'm gonna be here and there. Like I said, I hate leaving my kids, but I'm ready to be back."

The mother-of-three added, "I kind of needed, like, a mental health day, you know how you take that for work? So I had a mental-health-off-season just because I needed to get myself back together [sic]."

And the reality star told fans to expect much of the same old Snooki. "It's already a s**tshow," she laughed. "We've been filming a couple of weeks and we're just drinking. So I brought the party back."

Snooki was not really part of the show's last season after her comedy roast routine at "Jersey Shore" co-star Angelina Pivarnick's wedding fell flat. The backlash reportedly prompted her to quit the show.

"She always had one foot basically out the door...," Angelina told Jenny McCarthy. "I would like to sit down with her."

Snooki became a "Jersey Shore" stand-out when the hit show debuted on MTV back in 2009.
WENN/Joseph Marzullo Celebrity

Aside from the pop icon and the 59-year-old comedienne, Bradley Whitford, Michael Rapaport and Kerry Washington express outrage over the 'fetal heartbeat' bill.

Sep 3, 2021

AceShowbiz - Cher and Rosie O'Donnell have condemned Texas' new law that bans abortion after about six weeks of pregnancy. After the U.S. Supreme Court denied a request to issue emergency relief blocking the "fetal heartbeat" bill, the pop icon and the comedienne expressed their disapproval on social media and likened it to "The Handmaid's Tale".

Taking to Twitter, Cher shared pictures of a burqa and of a character from the dystopian TV series who had her lips pierced shut. "IF Texas IS Going 2 Take Women's Rights Away THEY SHOULD AT LEAST FURNISH STATE AUTHORIZED UNIFORMS. WONT [be] LONG,TILL Texas OFFERS 'HANDMAID'S TALE' JEWELRY ON LINE. [Be] 1st.ON UR BLOCK 2 GET NEW' SHUT MY MOUTH' LIP RINGS," she argued in her tweet, which she deleted after people criticized her for being culturally insensitive.

As for Rosie, she argued in a video shared on TikTok and Twitter, "Texas, what the f**k. Before this country turns into a real version of 'The Handmaid's Tale', let's all get together and stop what's going on in Texas." She then urged, "Keep abortions safe and legal."

Also speaking out against the bill was "The Handmaid's Tale" actor, Bradley Whitford. "Women don't inseminate themselves. If you want to take away their right to control their own bodies without insuring that the inseminator takes full legal responsibility for the child at the moment of inception, you're not 'pro-life'. You just hate women. You want to punish them," he elaborated on Twitter.

Meanwhile, Kerry Washington asked her fans to sign a petition defending abortion access. "We should all be able to make our own decisions about our health & future. We have to fight for everyone's reproductive freedom. Join me in standing with the women of Texas, sign the petition https://ppact.io/sb8 #BanOffOurBodies," she tweeted.

Michael Rapaport, on the other hand, took to social media to put Texas lawmakers on blast. He fumed in a video, "Aren't these red states, aren't you Texas people down there the ones who are [saying] 'my body, my choice' about the vaccine? You're not gonna make us take the vaccine but you want to to take away women's right to get an abortion?"

"Who's going to pay for all these unwanted children, guys, in Texas," the 51-year-old further raged. "One-night stands are about to get really expensive for some of you motherf**kers, beer-drinking, s**tkicking, bar-going motherf**kers in Texas."

The Texas law is pretty controversial because it allows private citizens to sue abortion providers and anyone involved in "aiding and abetting" abortions. According to the law, anyone who is successful in suing is entitled to $10,000.
Facebook Celebrity

The former star of 'Here Comes Honey Boo Boo' has reportedly been in a relationship with Dralin Carswell, who attended a Nashville technical school, for six months.

Sep 3, 2021

AceShowbiz - Alana Thompson a.k.a. Honey Boo Boo is apparently keeping her love life off the camera. The reality TV star, whose life has been under the spotlight since she was a child, has reportedly been quietly dating an older college student.

The former child beauty pageant contestant has been in a relationship with 20-year-old Dralin Carswell for six months, The Sun reports. A source tells the U.K. tabloid, "Dralin and Alana are attached at the hip and hang out together all the time. "

According to the source, Dralin attended a Nashville technical school before the pandemic hit, but now resides in Georgia near Alana and her sister Lauryn Shannon a.k.a. Pumpkin, who is also her legal guardian. The source says that Alana's sister Pumpkin, Jessica and Anna also approve of Dralin. "He was quiet at first, but he's like one of the family now. He's just as fun and crazy as the rest of them," the source spills.

The pair are believed to have made their relationship official when Dralin changed his status to In a Relationship on Facebook back in March. On the same day, the 16-year-old reality TV star posted a photo of the pair together on her private account. In the comments on the photo, Dralin called her his "bae" and added a heart emoji.

The so-called insider goes on noting that both Dralin and Alana bond over their love of cars. "He has a Camaro, that's like his baby, and he lets her drive it sometime," the source reveals, before adding, "Right now she is saving up for her own car though- she wants a Jeep."

Alana, who recently appeared in Teen Vogue, was reportedly joined by her beau during the photo shoot, though his identity was kept a secret at the time. In the interview with the magazine, the "Mama June: From Not to Hot" star said her boyfriend is probably her only real friend, since she has found it hard connecting with peers due to her fame.
WENN Celebrity

The former 'Two and a Half Men' actor has decided to call off some of his comedy tour dates because the venues didn't comply with Covid-19 safety protocols.

Sep 4, 2021

AceShowbiz - Patton Oswalt has cancelled several dates on his comedy tour in Florida and Salt Lake City due to the venues refusing to comply with COVID-19 prevention demands.

The comedian took to Instagram to tell fans that he'd asked the venues on his "Patton Oswalt Live: Who's Ready To Laugh?" comedy tour, to require audience members to have had their COVID-19 vaccinations, or a negative test within 48 or 72 hours before the gig.

However, Patton said in a video on the social media site that after some of the venues refused to comply to the regulations, he had made the "difficult decision" to cancel his four dates in Florida in December (21), and one in Salt Lake City in 2022.

"This difficult decision was made due to the rising numbers of COVID cases," he said in the video. "I have an ego but my ego is not big enough to think that people should die to hear my stupid comedy. Hopefully in the future we can rebook those, when sanity holds sway again."

In the caption for the video, Patton wrote, "Sorry, Florida and SLC Ugh. I did EVERYTHING I could to prevent this. But my 2022 show in SLC and my 4 shows in Florida in December have been canceled. Hopefully I will rebook them in the future. Every other venue on the tour - even the Texas ones - were cool about requiring proof of vaccination or a negative COVID test. I'm really bummed about this."

"SLC is an eerily beautiful city where the sun refracts through the mountains and gives everything this otherworldly glow. And Florida - well, I love Florida. We've been best of frenemies since the mid-90s. We were probably gonna add shows in Orlando and Clearwater. Oh well. Someday I'll get my pic taken beside the Travis McGee plaque at slip F-18 in Ft. Lauderdale. Stay safe everyone."

The rest of the tour is going ahead, kicking off on 13 November (21) and continuing until April 2022.
ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) - A British national has admitted in federal court that he played a leadership role in an Islamic State scheme to torture, hold for ransom and eventually behead American hostages.

Thirty-seven-year-old Alexanda Anon Kotey pleaded guilty Thursday evening to all eight counts against him at a plea hearing in U.S. District Court in Alexandria.

The charges include hostage-taking resulting in death.

The charges include a mandatory minimum life sentence but allow him to serve the remainder of his sentence in the United Kingdom after serving 15 years in the U.S. Kotey was one of four Islamic State members who were dubbed the Beatles by their captives because of their British accents.
BUTTE COUNTY, Calif. - We're less than two weeks away from the recall election and Action News Now is checking in to see how many people have already voted locally.

The Butte County Clerk-Recorder says there are still about 70,000 people who haven't voted yet. It's a similar situation in Shasta County.

About 31,000 people have turned in their ballots in Butte County and some 21,000 in Shasta County.

Both counties initially sent out more than 100,000 ballots to registered voters.

Action News Now spoke to a few voters in Butte County who already sent in their ballot. We asked them why they're voting for or against the recall.

RELATED: California recall voters so far largely Democratic and older

"He imposes rules and doesn't follow himself. Says he did the fire protection and from what I understand he has not done what he claimed he had done," said Michael Hannah, a man voting to recall Gov. Newsom.

"I find that it's a bit unnecessary to be recalling the governor at this time. we should be focusing on putting our efforts forward," said Kyle Vasser, a man voting against the recall.

Butte County Clerk-Recorder Candace Grubbs says special elections typically don't get as much turnout as the general election does.

While Shasta County says it's expecting a high turnout.

Vote-by-mail ballots must be postmarked on or before Sept. 14 or hand-delivered by 8 p.m. that day, according to the Secretary of State's office.

Action News Now also reached out to Glenn and Tehama counties about their ballot returns.

So far Glenn has received 2,600 ballots while Tehama has received 7,100 ballots.

Modoc and Trinity counties have not gotten back to us.

For those voting in Butte County, Clerk-Recorder Candace Grubbs, also has some good advice on how you can make sure your vote is counted.

RELATED: Experts call for rigorous audit to protect California recall

You have either already received your ballot or will soon, along with a return envelope and an information packet.

Make sure you sign your name on the return envelope. Grubbs says your name will still be hidden under that flap.

But one thing the county does not want you to do.

"Do not sign your ballot, because that invalidates it" Grubbs explained. "Do not tear off the top of stub. Don't deface the ballot. I know other counties might have a stub on their ballot. We do not."

Grubbs says if you have still not received your ballot you have until Sept. 7 to call the elections office and request one.

Right now 376 people in Butte County have either not signed their return envelope or their signatures didn't match and they have been notified too.

You can also track where your ballot is here.
CHICO, Calif. - During the Chico Unified Board of Education meeting on Wednesday, the Board appointed its next assistant superintendent of business services, the Chico Unified School District said.

Jaclyn Kruger was unanimously voted in as the next assistant superintendent.

Kruger was serving as the director of fiscal services since 2013 and served as a financial analyst for the Butte County Office of Education before that.

I am looking forward to transitioning into this new leadership role, shared Assistant Superintendent Jaclyn Kruger. My dedication to our local community and my past experience facilitating budgets and organizational structures have prepared me to take on the challenges of navigating the continued fiscal solvency of Chico Unified School District.

Kruger would like to continue implementing the comprehensive facilities master plan to improve campus facilities for students.

Kruger got her masters in Business Administration from Chico State and an undergraduate work includes a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from Magna Cum Laude with a double option in Corporate Financial Management Pattern Accounting and Financial Management Pattern in financing.
SHASTA COUNTY, Calif. - The coronavirus is bearing down on local hospitals and clinics as cases are rising in Shasta County.

Shasta County Health and Humans Services (SCHHS) reported 84 were hospitalized for COVID-19 and 26 were admitted into ICU on Sept. 1. It reported one death, which was a man in his 40s.

The Redding Rancheria Tribal Health Center says it's seeing up to 100 patients a day and it's mostly COVID-19 related cases.

We have noticed over the last three weeks, a greater increase in patients coming into be tested, either symptomatic or asymptomatic or they've had exposure, Glen Hayward, Redding Rancheria Executive Director of Health Services said. So we had a great increase in the patients that are arriving to us daily.

The Tribal Health Center said it has a system in place to handle the surge.

We have processes in place that we can move patients to each campus if one urgent care is too busy or gets inundated, Hayward said. We move those patients over to our next urgent care and fill up that urgent care and if that one gets full. We move them over to our other one.

Mary Deschenes, who lives in Redding, is worried about the rise in cases especially since some of her family members caught the virus.

RELATED: Butte County is seeing increase in breakthrough COVID-19 cases

I have a sister and a niece, and a great-niece and they all have COVID, Deschenes said. My niece is eight months pregnant and they induced labor yesterday and they're in Southern California and it all could've been avoided if they just went and got the shot.

Deschenes also worries about how the surge in cases will not only impact local hospitals and clinics.

My worry now is the children because all the respirators will be used for the adults and there's going to be a surge in children, and it's going to affect us but also kids, Deschenes said.

SCHHS said 25% of people between the ages of 20 and 49 are fully vaccinated.

The Redding Rancheria said at least 72% of its staff is vaccinated. It has four health clinics one in Shasta Lake, two in Redding and one in Weaverville.

2,500 Shasta County residents got vaccinated last week, making it the highest number SCHHS has seen since early June. Currently, 41.2% of Shasta County residents eligible for the vaccine are fully vaccinated, 50% have at least one dose.

For continuing coronavirus coverage, click here.
BUTTE COUNTY, Calif. - One doctor at Chico Immediate Care said the clinic has been overwhelmed with trying to keep with the COVID-19 testing demand and this is a concern for some in the community.

"I want people that want to be tested to get in so they can be tested, Butte County resident Yvonne Loomis said. So, yeah it is concerning."

Loomis isn't the only one who is worried about having access to a COVID-19 test.

"It is overwhelming the doctor's offices and the hospitals too and especially some kids that have COVID-19 and they don't know what to do, Butte County resident Robin Uselton said. They are scared."

RELATED: Butte County is seeing increase in breakthrough COVID-19 cases

Doctor Bradley Smith with Chico Immediate Care said they can barely keep up.

"There are huge reporting requirements, Smith said. There are huge paperwork issues. We have been overwhelmed to the point where we are going to have to stop testing for two days so we can catch up on the paperwork."

Smith said the clinic tests about 100 people a day at the clinic for COVID-19.

He said 20% of the people requesting a test are positive. That means one in every five is testing positive for coronavirus.

Over the past year, the clinic has administered a total of 10,000 coronavirus tests.

"I look at the numbers every day, Smith said. We are in the middle of a mega-surge. I called it 6 weeks ago because I look at these numbers and I have been looking at it long enough and we are in big trouble."

RELATED: COVID-19 cancels 2 high school football games

Ampla Health who has a total of five clinics in Butte County that offers coronavirus testing said all of their clinics are overwhelmed with trying to keep up with testing everyone that needs to be tested.

"It is scary all the way around, Loomis said. So all I can do is pray and I am vaccinated."

Chico Immediate Care will open back up for COVID-19 testing on Sept. 4 from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Hospitals and clinics in Shasta County like Tribal Health center and community health center said it is also experiencing a surge in people needing to get tested for the coronavirus.
RED BLUFF, Calif. - The Red Bluff Union Elementary School District has decided to close schools within its district for 10 days due to high rates of quarantine among staff and students.

The following schools are included in the closure:

Bidwell Elementary

Jackson Heights

Metteer Elementary

Vista Preparatory

Over the last week, there have been between 200-450 students and staff out daily due to quarantine, according to the Red Bluff Union Elementary School District.

On Thursday after a conference with the Tehama County Department of Public Health the Tehama County Director of Public Health recommended the closure of the Red Bluff Union Elementary school district for 10 days.

The recommendation was made due to the current and pending status for COVID-19 cases and pending tests among staff and students.

The schools will close beginning tomorrow, Sept. 3, and will last through Sept. 12.

The school district is providing instruction and meals to students for the duration of the school closure.

Chromebook pick-up will begin on Sept. 3 at the elementary schools from:

10 a.m. to 12 p.m.

5 p.m. to 6 p.m.

Meal pick-up will also take place on Sept. 3 and Sept. 7 through Sept. 10 at the elementary schools from:

Sept. 3 from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m.

Sept. 7 through Sept. 10 from 7 a.m. to 8:15 a.m.

Schools will be closed on Sept. 6 for Labor Day.

The Red Bluff Union Elementary School District expects to resume classes on Monday, Sept. 13.
REDDING, Calif. - A Chevrolet pickup truck was hit by an Amtrak train around 3 a.m. in Redding on Friday, the Redding Police Department said.

The truck was hit in the area near Girvan Rd. and State Route 273 and when officers arrived the truck was fully engulfed in flames.

The train was able to reverse direction and separate itself from the truck.

The owner of the truck, 51-year-old Charles Graham, remained on the scene and was not injured. Police said he turned too soon on Girvan Rd. attempting to turn northbound on State Route 273.

Grahams front tire was stuck on the railroad tracks and he attempted to free his truck but was not able to get it free.

The train hit the truck at about 45 to 50 mph, according to the Amtrak driver. The train had about 186 passengers and was traveling from Los Angeles to Redding.

Union Pacific stopped all of its traffic until the tracks were clear at 4:12 a.m.

Redding Police Department said the average train can travel about 1.25 miles before it can come to a complete stop.

It also said no one was injured in the crash.
Marking yet another industry first on 5G, Bharti Airtel Limited (Airtel), Indias leading provider of telecommunications services, today said that it has successfully conducted Indias first cloud gaming session in a 5G environment. The demonstration was conducted in Manesar (Gurgaon) as part of the ongoing 5G trials using spectrum allotted by the Department of Telecom (Government of India).

For the 5G cloud gaming demonstration, Airtel partnered with two of Indias leading gamers Mortal (Naman Mathur) and Mamba (Salman Ahmad). Leveraging the gaming technology platform from Blacknut, a sprint racing challenge on Asphalt was unveiled for Mortal and Mamba to put their gaming skills to test in a blazing fast and ultra-low latency 5G environment.

Describing their experience Mortal and Mamba said: We were totally blown away. This was high end PC and console-quality gaming experience on a smartphone. We can say with confidence that 5G will truly unlock the online gaming scene in India and massify by creating opportunities to build and publish games out of India and bringing a lot of talented gamers from small towns to the mainstream. Thank you Airtel for giving us this wonderful opportunity.

Mortal and Mamba enjoyed the thrilling session on smartphones connected to 3500 MHz high capacity spectrum band. The 5G test network delivered speeds in excess of 1 Gbps and latency in the range of 10 milliseconds.

Cloud gaming allows users to stream and play games in real time without having to download these or invest in gaming hardware. With the advent of 5G networks, cloud gaming is expected to become the new normal as users will be able to enjoy high end console like gaming experience on smartphones and tablets while on the move. India, with its vast youth population, growing smartphone penetration and 5G networks will see mobile gaming evolve into a $2.4 billion market opportunity. Indias base of 436 million online gamers is expected to reach 510 million by 2022. (Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1064010/number-of-online-gamers-india/)

Randeep Sekhon, CTO, Bharti Airtel added: Cloud gaming will be one of the biggest use cases of 5G thanks to the combination of high speed and low latency. After delivering Indias first 5G demo over a test network, we are thrilled to conduct this exciting 5G gaming session. Imagine enjoying real time gaming on the go with someone sitting in another part of the world. This is just the beginning of an exciting digital future that Airtel will enable for its customers as we prepare to roll-out 5G in India.

Earlier this year, Airtel successfully demonstrated 5G services over a LIVE 4G network in Hyderabad, marking an industry first. It is also conducting 5G trials in multiple cities across India and validating technologies and use cases through the trial spectrum allotted by the Department of Telecom. Airtel has partnered with Ericsson and Nokia for these trials.

Airtel is also spearheading the O-RAN Alliance initiatives in India to build 5G solutions. It has already announced partnerships with Tata Group, Qualcomm, Intel, Mavenir and Altiostar.
Leading pharma company Brinton has launched a wellness and personal care range named Hohner Health. Hohner has a wide range of products in nutritional supplements, baby skincare and personal care category. Brinton plans to make Hohner a global brand, where India launch will be followed by the USA, UK, Europe, and south-east Asian Market along with Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and more. Hohner being a D2C brand, will give direct access to its range to the new age consumer all across.

Hohner, which means balance, aims to bring in the perfect balance of nature and science to its consumers. Made with care all products are of the finest quality natural extracts, vitamins, minerals and are manufactured in world-class production facilities certified with US FDA, UKMHRA, WHO-GMP and others. Thereby delivering pure and premium quality products that are natural and chemical-free.

Rahul Darda, CMD, Brinton Pharmaceuticals ecstatically shares the new age individual has lost the balance between work and recreation which has taken a huge toll on their health & immunity. We want to aid them to take care of their health while still being able to cope up with the demands of a hectic lifestyle. With Hohner, they will be able to bring back the lost balance of health and feel revitalized in all forms. We aspire to be their constant companion by providing a one-stop solution to maintain a healthy lifestyle. All Hohner products are carefully formulated with a perfect balance of Nature and Science, and goes through stringent quality processes and checks, guaranteeing safety, purity and efficacy.

The company also plans to keep high-quality products accessible and affordable to many. In all, Hohner aims to meet the needs of the modern lifestyle of its new-age consumers.
To Beard Or Not To Beard, &flix and &PriveHD answers mans most sought after question with a lineup of good looking bearded actors that will ensure the question is a question no more. Those who have it flaunt it, those who dont are envious and want it. Its loved, its nurtured and sometimes its even feared. Show your swag and bring on the beard. Catch your main men in the biggest blockbusters sporting their meanest beards on World Beard Day Special, September 4th, 11AM onwards on &flix and &PriveHD. Bringing to you a binge worthy catalogue of movies all-day, stay tuned to Hollywoods biggest blockbusters and feast your eyes on some of the baddest, boldest and most beautiful all day long.

Celebrating the awesomeness of Beards and a symbol that they stand for with &flix as we bring to you a new meaning to mens grooming with a fun mix of Hollywoods biggest hits. Men of high stature talk and walk like a gentleman but in this worldwide success phenomena Bad Boys franchise, its the attitude that counts. Look out for super cop, super smart and might I say super dashing duo Will Smith and Martin Lawrence as they gun down drug smuggling cartels, ruthless street criminals and Miami citys most feared outlaws in this smashing hit series. Directed by Denis Villeneuve, there has been no comparison yet to a cult classic like the Academy Award nominated feature Sicario starring Benicio Del Toro, Emily Blunt and Josh Brolin. When a team of FBI agents are tasked with carrying a raid to seize and capture Mexicos biggest druglord, its only time before they have some of the most dangerous criminals and enforcers chasing them for a daring rescues mission.

With great movies, come great beards. Watch out for Hollywoods very own thrill seeker and maestro of his own making, Academy Award-nominee Liam Neeson who once again finds himself in the grip of his biggest challenge in another fast-paced action blockbuster The Commuter. Also starring Vera Farmiga and directed by Jaume Collet-Serra, this is just one of the many smashing hits to air on &PriveHD. Who here isnt a fan of Adam Sandler and the funniest movie of all that hes ever been in, hands down without a doubt is You Dont Mess With The Zohan. To some, a superhero, to others, a savior, Zohan dreams of leaving behind his life of constant war to start his own beauty parlor. Watch the comedy that follows this young Arab man as he travels a thousand miles to the land of opportunity in search of love and wonders.

Be it a Frenchie, a stubble, a goatee or simply a stache, this World Beard Day, take inspiration from Hollywoods most seductive men with a special day binge on &flix and &PriveHD
Johnnie Walker Princes Street, the eight-floor new visitor experience for the worlds best-selling Scotch whisky, officially opened today in the heart of Scotlands capital city.

Set over 71,500 sq ft, Johnnie Walker Princes Street uses world-first technology to reimagine the traditional whisky tour experience. Visitors will be taken on a personalised journey of flavour and discovery, which identifies unique flavours and tastes tailored to them, and learn about the fascinating 200-year-old journey brought to life by actors.

Ivan Menezes, Chief Executive, Diageo said: This is a proud day for everyone. Last year Johnnie Walker celebrated 200 years since founder John Walker opened the doors to his small grocery store and today represents the next chapter of the incredible story. Johnnie Walker Princes Street is a landmark investment in Scotch whisky and into Scotland and it sets a new standard for immersive visitor attractions. It celebrates Scotlands remarkable heritage, our incredible skilled whisky-makers, and looks to the future by engaging new generations of consumers from around the world in the magic of Scotch whisky.

Facts about Johnnie Walker Princes Street visitor experience:

Set over 71,500 sq ft, it takes the concept of personalisation to a scale never before seen in a global drinks visitor experience.

Visitors on the Johnnie Walker Journey of Flavour tour will have their personal flavour preferences mapped with drinks tailored to their palate.

With more than 800 flavour combinations available in innovative dispensation systems, one person could visit Johnnie Walker Princes Street every day for more than two years and not have the same experience twice.

Over 150 diverse and talented new employees, speaking 23 languages between them, will bring to life the 200-year story.

The cellar has become a true whisky treasury with some of the most unique whisky casks in the world gently maturing and waiting to be sampled by guests.

The building  formerly a traditional department store for almost 100 years  will contain a state-of-the-art experiential retail space where shoppers can select from most unique and exclusive whiskies, fill bottles direct from casks and have them engraved.

Johnnie Walker Princes Street opens its doors with a Green Tourism Gold Award  the highest sustainability accolade for a visitor attraction. The building includes roof terrace planters which will provide herbs for garnishes and infusions for drinks, a sedum roof covering and bird boxes to encourage biodiversity.

Johnnie Walker Princes Street is crowned by two world-class rooftop bars and a terrace with breath-taking views of the Edinburgh skyline, including the Explorers Bothy whisky bar stocked with 150 different whiskies, and the 1820 cocktail bar where drinks are paired with a carefully curated menu sourced from, and representing in culinary form, the four corners of Scotland.

Four and a half years in the making, Johnnie Walker Princes Street is the centrepiece of Diageos 185million pound investment in Scotch whisky tourism in Scotland  the largest single investment programme of its kind ever seen in Scotch whisky tourism.

Barbara Smith, Managing Director of Johnnie Walker Princes Street, said: Were thrilled to be opening the doors and helping to re-build the tourism and hospitality industry after a very difficult 18 months.

The story of the worlds best-selling whisky has been brought to life with flair and imagination and we have built a team which includes some of the most talented individuals in their fields. We are now ready to welcome visitors and begin telling the next chapter of how we are woven into the fabric of Scotlands history and communities.

In 2019, the Scotch Whisky industry attracted a record 2.16 million visitors and Johnnie Walker Princes Street, and Diageos 185m tourism investment programme aims to rebuild Scotch whisky tourism for the future. The investment includes the transformation of distillery visitor experiences around Scotland, including Glenkinchie, Clynelish, Cardhu and Caol Ila  the Lowland, Highland, Speyside and Islay homes of Johnnie Walker, linked to Johnnie Walker Princes Street to form a world-class network of attractions the length and breadth of Scotland.

Johnnie Walker Princes Street will open its doors to the public at 1pm on Monday 6th September. Tickets for tours start from 25 per person, including a 90-minute tour and three personalised Scotch whisky drinks. (all samples are provided with carefully controlled measures and non-alcoholic alternatives available to all guests).
Spotifys brand new Original podcast, Virus 2062, voiced by Bollywood actors and couple, Richa Chadha and Ali Fazal is now available to stream and download for free on the platform. The audio thriller, a 10-episode one time release, centres around patient 63 (Fazal), who says hes time traveled from the past to prevent a pandemic.

The podcast is an adaptation of Caso 63, a Spotify Original from Chile. After transfixing listeners with its science fiction and thriller storytelling in Chile and Brazil, the time traveling show is going the geographical distance with its release in India. It has been produced locally by MnM Talkies, which produced podcasts such as Bhaskar Bose, I Hear You, and Darr Ka Raaz with Dr. Phobia. Virus 2062 is the first on Spotify in India, to be led by voices from Bollywood, bringing together Chadha and Fazal as protagonists.

According to Unni Nambudripad, Executive Producer  Podcasts, Spotify India, Spotify is where audio storytelling is. Virus 2062 will keep listeners on the edge of their seat. We are releasing all episodes together so that its a complete audio thriller experience that can be binge-listened to. Its also been such a privilege to work with Richa Chadha and Ali Fazal for this podcast given their background in theatre and the creative process they brought while recording the podcast.

Recording a podcast is very different from dubbing for shows. It requires the right voice modulation and practice to keep listeners engaged throughout, because even your expressions reflect in the narration. Because Virus 2062 is a fiction thriller, I had the opportunity to explore a new form of storytelling and it was an insightful experience for me to work with Spotify and Mantra. I try and do unconventional roles in theatre, film, and now on audio, and hope my fans like this new experiment Ive done, explained Richa Chadha

Speaking about his experience and creative process while recording for the show, Ali Fazal said, Making a shift from onscreen to audio has definitely been a fun ride. Its new, exciting and fresh. As an actor, I am always looking for ways to expand my creative abilities and starring in a podcast has given me just that. Thanks to Spotify and the MnM Talkies team for guiding me throughout and making this entire experience so fulfilling."

The original story of Caso 63 was written by Julio Rojas, and is set in the year 2022, when psychiatrist Elisa Aldunate begins a series of therapy sessions with patient 63. As the sessions progress, time, space, and reality begin to blur, playing with listeners minds. Drama builds over the course of 10 episodes, delivering thought-provoking mystery for listeners. To enjoy the adaptation of this audio thriller in Hindi, click here and stream / download all episodes of Virus 2062.
The delivery and logistics business are witnessing a surge as they recalibrate to operate in the new normal. While the nation battled the first wave of COVID-19 last year, delivery brands became the key aspect during this pandemic.

While many brands were promoting the new normal through different campaigns, Zomato launched two new advertising campaigns featuring Bollywood actors Hrithik Roshan and Katrina Kaif to show how much they care about their delivery "partners". The campaign was titled Har Customer Hai Star. The message behind the advertisement was to thank the delivery personnel who are working for the brand by keeping it as their first priority. The campaign highlighted how the Zomato delivery guy wanted to click a selfie with these celebrities but was more loyal to its work rather than his own wishes.

This aggressive marketing strategy by Zomato took a different angle on Social Media when people went berserk on Twitter. Twitteraits suggest that instead of paying Hrithik Roshan such a huge amount, they should pay the Delivery executives a better payment which will be a greater thanksgiving gratitude for all the employees.

After receiving outrage on social media, Zomato issued a public statement on its Hrithik Roshan and Katrina Kaif advertisements. It argues that the advertising was "well-intentioned," but that "some people unfortunately misinterpreted it."

According to Zomato, the advertisements were created with the goal of highlighting delivery partners as heroes and emphasising the need of speaking properly to them . The advertisements were also designed to raise the degree of respect connected with a delivery partner's profession and to emphasise that every client is a star for them, just like prominent stars.

The other side of the story... pic.twitter.com/hNRj6TpK1X  zomato (@zomato) August 30, 2021

Speaking on the statement and clearance given by Zomato, Shrenik Gandhi, Co-founder and CEO, White Rivers Media, said "Zomato has been doing some incredible work and by issuing a mature statement, they've addressed the backlash, justly.

This is a quintessential PR learning for other brands on how to deal with such issues. There is no doubt that the TVCs were made in absolute good faith. Being genuine with consumers should be an uncompromised factor at all times, he added further.

Rajni Daswani, Director - Brand Experience, SoCheers, noted, Having been following Zomatos social media strategy for a very long time, I feel they missed judging the one thing they do best - social listening - before releasing this set of TVCs with Katrina & Hrithik. While their intent, like in their letter, was to establish the respectfulness around the job of a delivery person, its got lost in the chatter that has been surrounding the pay scales & working conditions conversation. If the chatter around the brand is not favourable, then it makes more sense to shelf the pre-planned ads than to invest more money on TV spots and fuel the negative chatter.

According to Manesh Swamy, Senior VP - Creative, Social, PR, Marcom, Logicserve Digital, the brands intent looks honest. They are celebrating their partners, keeping their customers on a podium. I liked the way how the big celebs are weaved into the story but the spotlight is still on the delivery partners. Some people are reading too much between the lines which I feel is not required.

Last year a similar case had happened with the brand Zomatrolled because of a Twitter incident. The brands response to a tweet by actress Swara Bhaskar was what led to the entire fiasco and #boycottzomato started trending as actor Swara Bhaskar asked Zomato to stop advertising on TV news channels like the Republic Bharat.

Hey @zomatoin @zomato @deepigoyal Im your regular customer.. do u plan to #DefundTheHate & pull your ads from hate espousing channels like @Republic_Bharat ? Im not okay with my money even indirectly funding this kind of communal bigoted hate! Pls let your consumers know.. https://t.co/mMacP8IawZ  Swara Bhasker (@ReallySwara) November 18, 2020

Another incident took place in March 2020, when the most eligible candidate of Zomato delivery app Sonu aka the the Smiling Zomato guy went viral after one of the TikTok users shot his video. The Zomatos happy rider spoke about having a 12-hour shift and getting paid 350 a day while describing how happy he is with his job at Zomato India.

This incident not only encouraged the famous food delivery app but also made the favorite guy of the brand. Zomato India changed its Dp into his face as they also called themselves as the happy rider fan club account.

While Zomato has recently received a lot of flak for it's recent campaigns lately for its campaigns with Bollywood Actors Hrithik Roshan and Katrina Kaif and Bengaluru-based comedian-writer, Host, and RJ, Danish Sait, the food delivery app was seen delivering Birthday Cake to The Great Khali and wrote, "got a chance to deliver a very special birthday cake today"

This just seemed like a marketing post by Zomato, as Khali posted a reel on his birthday with Red Balloons and mentioned in his caption, Balloons ke bina kaisa birthday? Aaj socha balloon ke saath wrestle karke dekhu. Must say, unique cheeze try karne me kafi maza hai! Watch this space for what I'll try next. Coming soon on Aug 31".

It's suspected that the wrestler might have partnered with the food delivery app for its next campaign.

As we see a lot of negative trolls by the citizens on social media, Zomato is still not backing off with its marketing strategy for its users. With these developments, the food delivery app launched its first IPO on Wednesday, July 14, which attracted a significant demand from young investors in India

According to the media reports, on the first day of the launch, the food delivery app witnessed 25 and 60 percent of investment under 30. The average ticket size of IPO applications for Zomato on the first day of its launch was also 20 per cent higher than that of other IPOs on Paytm Money, the company said.
Alton, IL (62002)

Today

Thunderstorms likely this evening. Then a chance of scattered thunderstorms overnight. Low 63F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 70%..

Tonight

Thunderstorms likely this evening. Then a chance of scattered thunderstorms overnight. Low 63F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 70%.
As harvest winds down, unlike durum, which has seen prices skyrocketing up, spring wheat prices have continued to move in a sideways trading pattern. But, also unlike durum, there has been some buying and selling of spring wheat, whereas there has been little of either for durum.

Spring wheat prices have mostly been in a sideways trading pattern for the last month or so, said Erica Olson, market development and research manager for the North Dakota Wheat Commission. Today (Aug. 31) the nearby futures are trading around $9.10 a bushel. That puts cash prices between $8.40 and $8.80. Thats a pretty good price and weve seen a fair amount of spring wheat moving to the elevators, so that is attracting sales.

One reason the market hasnt edged higher, Olson believes, is because the market has already taken in or absorbed the reality of a smaller U.S. crop. The U.S. spring wheat crop is projected to be down 40 percent and harvest results that have come in are confirming that.

I think thats already been built into the market, she said. We've had some producers report that they were pleasantly surprised by yield outcomes, but still below average though. But then you have the other side where theyre seeing extremely low yields, and of course, abandoned fields.

The amount of abandoned acres is difficult to ascertain, but Olson said it will likely be well above normal.

Recent rains in late August did cause some harvest delays, but still, by the end of the month close to 90 percent of the U.S. spring wheat had been harvested. North Dakotas spring wheat harvest was at 85 percent complete at that time.
Crops in many parts of Missouri are showing good potential as harvest draws closer, although hot weather to end August and the threat of fall armyworms have added some late-season drama for the crops and for hayfields.

Kevin Rice, state entomologist for University of Missouri Extension, says after talking with farmers and entomologists in multiple states, this is a historic outbreak of armyworms.

We are experiencing the greatest fall armyworm outbreak across the Midwest and the U.S. that weve seen in at least 30 years, he says.

Armyworms are a native pest in North America, and Rice says they can be very damaging to hayfields and pastures, as well as soybeans. Farmers have been fighting the pest for a long time, and there are records of major armyworm outbreaks in 1797, 1856 and 1975-76. This year is a big challenge for a number of reasons.

Were experiencing weather conditions that are extremely favorable for armyworms and not for their predators, Rice says.

Farmers have noticed the threat.

Armyworms have been a topic of discussion over the past couple days, Shelby County farmer Jonah Barry says. There have been some found in the area and growers are concerned about potential injury to soybeans.

Rice says armyworms overwinter in Texas and Florida, and a fairly warm spring there contributed to the insects getting a leg up on their population growth and northward movement. Rice says armyworms are able to ride gulfstream winds and travel hundreds of miles.
The right timing can help producers get the most benefit out of manure applications, although weather uncertainty adds nuance to the best time to apply.

Dan Andersen, associate professor of engineering at Iowa State University specializing in manure management, says in general, applying as close as possible to when the crop is growing is ideal.

The closer you can time the application to when the crop is up and growing, the better, he says.

When applying in the fall, Andersen says the ideal timing can depend on the cropping system. With continuous corn systems, for example, it can be good to let soil temperatures get cooler, which means less biological activity in the soil and less break down of nutrients from manure.

We want to try to wait till the soil temperature is cool, about 50 degrees and trending cooler, Andersen says.

For fields using rotations, in particular those using over-winter crops like wheat or cereal cover crops, Andersen says getting manure applied close to planting those crops can be effective.

Getting that manure on right before planting that crop is pretty good, he says.

Andersen says there are some factors to consider when deciding whether to apply manure in the fall or the spring. Applying manure closer to the growing season in the spring is beneficial, although Andersen says the weather is a wild card.

Fall in the Midwest tends to be drier (than the spring), and makes field logistics drier, he says.

Also, nutrients in manure applications need a little time before a rain to get attached to the soil. Andersen says there are some unknowns that are just part of the process.
So, what is going on in the Ahwatukee real estate market? Is the bubble going to burst?
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The Oklahoma Wheat Commission is sponsoring their annual bread baking contest at county fairs throughout Oklahoma. The Woods County Free Fair will be held Sept. 9-11.

The Oklahoma Wheat Commission and the Oklahoma Wheat Growers Association provide awards for this contest. These items will be displayed along with the entries at the Woods County Fair Foods Division in the Women's Building.

Two recipes for each entry must accompany the product when exhibited at the fair. The recipe must be typed or printed and include cooking or baking time and temperature, with the participants name and social security number on the recipe card.

Please wrap recipes in clear plastic wrap or put in a clear plastic baggy. Recipes become the property of the Oklahoma Wheat Commission, including publication rights.

At the county level, a person may enter as many baking classes as they wish and may win first in each class; however, the same person can not receive Champion and Reserve Champion.

If a loaf of bread is entered, the whole loaf will be exhibited; no half loaves.

Participants will be responsible for entering their own products at the Oklahoma State Fair. Social security numbers should be available for state competition.

Classes available for entry are the senior division: white bread, whole grain bread, three dinner rolls, other white breads, sweet breads ad bread machine bread.

In the junior division: white bread, three dinner rolls, other wheat breads, sweet breads, specialty shapes and bread machine bread. Bread machine breads will not compete for division winners.

NO QUICK BREADS! These classes are in the senior division (18 years of age and over) and the junior division offers specialty shapes. Ribbons will be provided for the first four placings in each class. First place winners in each class will compete for the Best of Show Wheat Award

Entry procedures are the same this year. Exhibitors should stop by the OSU Extension Center for a copy of the fair book with the guidelines.
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Looking like oversized versions of Tweedledum and Tweedledee, Generals Lloyd Austin and Mark Milley lumbered onto the stage for a press conference a couple of days after the U.S. military debacle brought the 20 years' war in Afghanistan to an ignominious end.

In girth, they might be considered imposing figures. General Austin seems perpetually clothed in black, which has become the fashion statement for the Biden-Harris administration. General Mark "Thoroughly Unmodern" Milley all but bursts out of his old khaki-colored uniform, festooned with row upon row of military ribbons that add even more weight to his persona. Big bags under his piercing eyes give him an ominous appearance.

Shambling General Austin  or let's just call him "General," as Biden does  seems to be lower-key, answering questions with what appears to be a sense of weariness. In sum, both brass bigwigs come across as a tad tarnished and unfit for duty  as though the last battle they waged took place, say, during the War of 1812.

Far be it from me, perhaps, to criticize men who have served their country as a career. On the other hand, far be it from them to feel themselves above criticism by those who have not.

The pair's main message at their press conference was that war is hell. Anything can happen, and, unfortunately, in Kabul, it did. In an earlier address to the nation, secretary of state Antony Blinken  of the triumvirate "Winkin' (Kamala), Blinkin', and Nod (Joe Biden)"  put it even more simple-mindedly by calling withdrawals from foreign countries like Afghanistan "messy," as though they were finger-painting sessions. I suppose what really got "messy" were Blinken's vacation plans in the Hamptons since it's doubtful that he had a black suit with him at his beach retreat when all Hell broke loose.

The first postmortem order of duty was for those who hadn't taken command to eulogize those who lost their lives because of it. Not enough could be said for their bravery, their devotion to duty, and our everlasting gratitude for how they made the rest of us safer. But it all came out canned. And, unfortunately, the rest of us do not feel at all safer now, knowing that the "concluded" war in Afghanistan could reignite elsewhere, perhaps even in the form of another 9/11-style attack on American soil.

General Milley lectured us on how tough it is to be a military leader, how others had died or been damaged  some of them under his command  in this score-of-years conflict. He assured us, however, that none of them had died or been wounded in vain. But it is hard to swallow his high-flown rhetoric when, in effect, America hurried from its latest mission with its tail between its legs.

Like Bill Clinton, the culpable players in the Biden administration are now trying to assure everyone that they "feel your pain." Instead, they come across as old-time schoolmasters who pull down the trousers of an errant student while assuring him that the punishment will hurt them more than it will him. We're all in this terrible thing together, after all, as we were with COVID-19.

Several of the grieving parents who met with President Biden remarked that he spent more time talking about the tribulations of his own son, Beau, than he did of their Marine children who had just perished in the line of duty at the Kabul airport.

We've all heard the Beau story many times before. The last time the president mentioned it, he could not recall whether Beau had served in the Army or Navy, in Iraq or Afghanistan. In fact, Beau Biden, a politician, lawyer, member of the Delaware National Guard, and major in the Judge Advocate General's Corps, was deployed to Iraq in October 2008, the day after his father condescendingly faced Sarah Palin in the only V.P. debate of that election.

Ironically, Joe is on record as saying at the time, "I don't want him going. But I tell you what. I don't want my grandson or granddaughters going in fifteen years, and so how we leave makes a big difference." Ultimately, he did not live up to his words.

Beau Biden spent a year's deployment in Iraq fulfilling his active-duty stint and at the same time serving as Delaware's attorney general. His tragic, untimely death a half-dozen years later was from a brain tumor, which thenvice president Joe Biden suspected was caused by his son's exposure to the burn pits or other toxins while serving overseas, although this has never been proven.

However sincere Joe Biden may have sounded about saving future generations from involvement in needless foreign wars, his hasty, humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan does little to assure this, and perhaps much to make it more likely.

One worrisome can of worms pried open by this debacle is whether America's fighting force, generally recognized as the greatest force on Earth, can be entrusted to our current political and military leadership. Despite the fact that we apparently had in place in Afghanistan and on the home front thousands of intelligence specialists, informants, translators, and cooperative Afghans, none of them, presumably, was aware of an insurgent army marching across the country and heading with speed for Kabul. Or if they were, nobody in authority bothered to listen.

In fact, there are other things that Americans are finding hard to wrap their minds around, like why the more convenient allies-controlled airport near Kabul was abandoned by our military, why our troops were evacuated before civilians were, and why millions of dollars of military equipment was left behind for our enemy to use against our allies or sell to our adversaries. And perhaps most appalling of all  how Western camouflage uniforms are now being worn by Taliban soldiers, grinning in triumph behind their bushy beards.

But nobody in "authority" will admit incompetence, much less resign. No heads will roll. Fingers may be pointed from bureaucrat to bureaucrat, but in the end, they will all be given the thumbs-up.

John Kirby, the spokesman for the Pentagon, assures us that "nobody" could have seen what was coming, "nobody" could have imagined the rapidity with which a raggle-taggle terrorist force could sweep in and occupy the major city in Afghanistan. For that matter, "nobody" could have supposed that the well-trained Afghan military force, which outnumbered the invaders in spades, would, in the end, cut and run!

In the end, the buck stops nowhere.

There is evidence now of Biden's "colluding" with the then soon-to-flee Afghanistan president, Ashraf Ghani, in an attempt to change the "perception" of what was going on. But no Democrat members of Congress are likely to attend any hearings regarding that. They are too busy still trying to tie Trump to an "insurrection" staged by a hapless group of unarmed protesters  "domestic terrorists," they called them  whose misbegotten goal had less to do with revolution than with relevance.

There are so-called "leaders" in this country who have let us down. They may act solemn and knowing. They may tell us we will "learn" from our experience in Afghanistan and "make sure" it will never happen again. But they cannot hide their present incompetence under a bushel of military ribbons awarded for their service in the past.

Image: PBS NewsHour via YouTube.

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A post-mortem is needed on President Joe Bidens decision to make a hasty withdrawal of all troops from Afghanistan. The resulting debacle will haunt us because of his simplistic concept of what war is about -- a blunder he has made not only in Afghanistan.

The U.S. adopted a nation-building strategy in Afghanistan that went far deeper than the number of troops deployed. It started off badly, with the ten-year rule of the corrupt buffoon Hamid Karzai. It took a troop surge by President Barack Obama (supported by Vice President Biden) to prevent a collapse in 2012. The presidency of Ashraf Ghani doubled down on nation-building to give the Afghan people something worth defending. Gilani has a Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from Columbia University and was working at the World Bank on social transformation when tapped for Kabul. He was unsuited to be the kind of charismatic leader needed in wartime, but that was not his mission. He was to spread western values across the land and his army created schools and hospitals, infrastructure and enlightenment. Those who embraced this effort to better their lives are now the prey of the Taliban whose only interests in modernity are machine guns and high explosives. By pulling out the troops to end the war before evacuating vulnerable civilians, Biden has set the stage for a humanitarian crisis whose horror stories (especially of women and students) will blacken his name.

Making matters worse was the fear that pervaded the White House. President Biden dared not extend the August 31 deadline in the face of Taliban objections even though he knew not all endangered civilians could be evacuated in time. And the number to be left behind would soar when under terrorist threat from ISIS-K, Americans and Afghan refugees were told to stay away from the Kabul airport whose gates were locked. The airplanes the outside world had mobilized to rescue them could not be reached. As thousands clamored at the gates, the soldiers were told to stand down and leave them to their fate. The troops would have fought to save them, but their leaders back in Washington were afraid to let them do so.

Biden has not been alone in denouncing a forever war. Yet, it lasted just as long for the Taliban without them losing the will to fight. But then the Taliban have no network of defense intellectuals to discuss theories of limited war, proportionate responses, exit strategies, deconfliction, and self-restraining rules of engagement at think tank conferences and in learned journals. They lack teams of lawyers to review military operations. There are no sophisticated nuances in their primitive concept of total war and its obsession with victory. They cannot be persuaded to quit; they must be stopped dead in their tracks. Despite having the capability to wage decisive warfare, the U.S. no longer does so, allowing the enemy to continue the struggle on their own terms.

A campaign of relentless strikes against enemy groups has elements of total war, but despite tough talk about making terrorists pay, Biden has been timid about conducting such a campaign. It should be remembered that he opposed the raids that killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan and Iranian General Qasem Soleimani in Iraq. His puny retaliation against ISIS-K after the Kabul bombing only highlighted his drop everything and run exit plan.

In his August 16 address, President Biden blamed the collapse of the Afghan military on its unwillingness to fight. But in another civil war, he is the one purposely trying to collapse resistance to an insurgency backed by a hostile power in a strategic location: Yemen. Just as he pulled logistical and intelligence support from Afghan forces, he has done the same to cripple the nine-nation coalition led by Saudi Arabia fighting the Iran-backed Houthi insurgency in Yemen.

While Biden has argued that the Afghan conflict is not in the national interest in part because the country is so remote, the same cannot be said for Yemen. It sits at the outlet of the Suez Canal-Red Sea maritime link between Europe and the Indo-Pacific. It is one of the most strategic spots on the map under threat from Iran, an avowed enemy of the United States. Yemen is also on the border of Saudi Arabia, and the Houthis have launched numerous missile and drone attacks on Saudi oil facilities that serve global markets and on commercial shipping. The vital consequences of the civil war in Yemen are why Obama provided the Arab coalition with support for its air campaign and President Donald Trump continued that policy.

Yet, at a February 5 press briefing only days into the new administration, State Department spokesperson Ned Price concluded his review of statements about ending all American support for offensive operations in Yemen, including relevant arms sales and ending our intelligence sharing arrangement with Saudi Arabia and the Saudi-led coalition. As an afterthought, he did concede that Saudi Arabia faces genuine security threats from Yemen and from others in the region but made no mention of Iran or the security of the Red Sea.

Antiwar and isolationist voices had shifted the theme of the war from the dire strategic consequences of an Iranian-proxy victory to Yemen as the worst humanitarian crisis of the day. There is no question that war breeds suffering, but the blame is on those who launch wars of aggression, as we see playing out in Afghanistan. But in Yemen, it is the Saudi coalition fighting back against aggression that is being told to stand down even though the State Department knows The Houthis benefit from generous military support from the Iranian government to wage attacks against civilian population centers and commercial shipping. In May, sanctions were imposed against two senior leaders of Houthi forces in Yemen who are involved in military offensives that exacerbate the humanitarian crisis, pose a dire threat to civilians, and destabilize Yemen. Secretary Anthony Blinken has called on Tehran to pressure the Houthis to negotiate, but the situation has continued to escalate since Iran has no fear of America taking effective action to back its diplomacy.

Millions face starvation. The Houthi captured Hodeidah on the Red Sea, and the Arab coalition will not allow fuel and food into the port where the insurgents will seize the shipments for their own use. On July 27, Special Envoy Timothy Lenderking arrived in Riyadh to discuss with Saudi and Yemini officials the import of fuel into northern Yemen even as the Houthis were launching new offensive operations. But with the U.S. telling the Arabs to stand down, there is no way to deliver supplies to the civilian population.

Biden did not want to risk American lives in an ingoing Afghan civil war, In Yemen, however, no Americas were in combat. The Arab coalition was doing all the fighting. What President Biden was responding to was pressure from congressional Democrats led by Sen. Bernie Sanders to appease Iran. A resolution calling for the end to all support for the Saudi-led war effort was passed by Congress in 2019. President Trump vetoed it, showing that in a broader context Biden is not continuing the foreign policy of his predecessor in either Yemen or Afghanistan, a policy that was based on strength. If Bidens behavior does not change, allies around the world will have cause to wonder if the United States can be relied upon as a security partner.

William R. Hawkins has served on the staff of the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee. He has written widely on international economics and national security issues for both professional and popular publications

Image: Ibrahem Qasim

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In 2020, at the World Economic Forum, David Solomon, the CEO of Goldman Sachs, proclaimed that the investment firm wouldnt take corporations public unless they had at least one diverse member on their board. The ostensible logic: a diverse leadership performs better by avoiding groupthink. But the proclamation came too late. Six months before, the last S&P 500 company with an all-male board had inducted a woman. Goldman was actually virtue-signaling to divert attention from its role in the 1Malaysia Development Berhad scandal, described in 2016 as the largest kleptocracy case to date. Goldman had paid $1 billion in bribes to win work raising money for 1MBD, a slush fund linked to then-Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak and corrupt officials. Fined $5 billion for its machinations, Goldman was embracing woke to burnish its credentials.

Its not just Goldman. Corporate America has learned to invoke buzzwords like stakeholder capitalism and social justice to boost its profile, cachet, and profits. In Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate Americas Social Justice Scam, biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy lays bare this duplicitous con. He writes in the introduction, Heres how it works: pretend like you care about something other than profit and power, precisely to gain more of each. Worryingly, this deception is subverting democracy.

Like most American capitalists, Ramaswamy believes that the job of business is to provide products, maximize profit, and deliver value to shareholders. Its not the realm of business to impose one particular vision of social responsibility on society. Corporate law limits boards focus to the financial interests of shareholders. This protects democracy from corporate overreach, for with financial power, businesses can easily crowd out dissent, whether from employees or from ordinary Americans.

On the other hand, corporations are granted the privilege of limited liability -- protection from being pursued for business failure -- so that they can innovate without fear. The business judgment rule (BJR) also protects CEOs and boards from being sued for bad decisions. But when corporations engage in social activism, they use the power of that immunity against democracy. They are able to work from behind shields denied to genuine activists, who may have a different social vision. They are also able to go unquestioned for funding fashionable but unprofitable causes in conflict with the interests of shareholders, who may not subscribe to those causes. In both ways, as Ramaswamy writes, this concentrates the power to determine American values in the hands of a small group of capitalists rather than the hands of the American citizenry at large, which is where the dialogue about social values belongs.

The newfangled stakeholder model, which dilutes corporate accountability to shareholders, gives corporations a virtual carte blanche as long as they pretend to have everyones best interest in mind. Therefore, they can claim to have pursued policies with conscience to explain away bad performances. Or cheat, as Volkswagen did, when it claimed it was the most climate conscious automaker while using defeat devices on emission tests.

Ramaswamy exposes how top government officials leverage corporate ties to accomplish what they cant get done in Congress. By allying with major woke companies, woke politicians get a megaphone for their message, while the corporates get to project moral superiority. Theres even a certification system for corporate wokeness -- the environment, social, and corporate (ESG) index -- devised, not surprisingly, by the U.N. Economist Milton Friedman viewed such regulations as big government interference, adversely affecting a companys performance and ultimately damaging the economy. Instead, executives committed to a particular cause should make products in consonance with their ideologies.

The author declares that hes a defector from corporate America. Hes fed up with its pretense of caring about justice, all the while wreaking havoc on democracy and robbing people not only of their money but also their identity and voice. Wokenomics allows corporations to provide influence and money to woke people and gain a cloak of moral superiority to hide wrongdoing. When companies are sued, part of the settlement money typically goes to left-wing nonprofits as tax-deductible donations that can result in a huge discount of the original fine. The Department of Justice thus deprives taxpayers of the benefits from a class-action suit; it also deprives the treasury of taxes.

The book describes scenarios in which dictators -- even the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) -- can become stakeholders. First, the BLM and environmental and feminist activists front for American companies to win consumer approval. The companies monetize the trust, generating clicks, selling ads, charging fees, and thus gathering huge amounts of personalized data. When they do business in China, the CCP demands access to that data. The companies comply, ignoring gross human rights abuse in China while hyperventilating about systemic racism and transphobia in America.

Disney happily filmed in China, where Uighurs are forcibly sterilized or aborted, but demurred about filming in Georgia when the heartbeat abortion ban was implemented. With wokenomics, corporations arbitrarily decide who should speak and who should be censored as a hater or hate group. Support for BLM is de rigueur; criticism of China is verboten. The American government can be condemned, not the CCP.

So-called woke corporations have also become propaganda machines and censors for the government, doing for it what the Constitution forbids. Big Tech, especially firms controlling social media, interferes in elections by restricting debate and deciding in advance what information the electorate gets to access. In effect, they legislate a value system, ban alternative narratives, and render the democratic process irrelevant. In the past, monopolies fixed prices; now they fix ideas. Congress gave Big Tech immunity (Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act) from any liability for censoring or regulating content; in exchange for the protection, Big Tech makes massive one-sided campaign contributions.

Woke idea-fixing has also changed corporate America into a dogma-bound Church of Diversity -- not of thought but of skin-deep factors like race and sex. Employees who dont share a particular worldview are fired. A particular skin color is absurdly conflated with one particular left-wing opinion. A black person who espouses a conservative viewpoint is not black. And its impossible to be racist towards whites. The utterly racist implication of wokeness -- race and gender being the only woke diversity metrics -- is that genetics alone reveals how a person thinks.

As a solution, Ramaswamy advocates critical diversity theory. The idea is that organizations should screen for diversity of thought and experience. They should define their purpose, demarcating areas where they would prefer alignment with the organizational view rather than diversity of opinion and where the latter is valued more.

He concludes that the underlying issue is the lack of a shared American identity, rather than lingering racism or sexism. Woke diversity, without an all-American communality, divides people into tribes in conflict. Woke capitalism arrogates to corporations what should be adjudicated through our democracy -- racial justice, gender equality, climate change, and beyond. Two things, he says, define us as a nation: the American Dream, and E Pluribus Unum. The first is best achieved through capitalism; the second through democracy. Wokeism is noxious because it destroys democracy.

Image: Center Street Publishing

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Candace Owens needed a COVID test, so she contacted a rapid response testing facility in Aspen, Colorado to make an appointment. Instead of an appointment, she got a letter telling her there was no way that this business would ever test Owens because Owens is an anti-vaxxer. Instead, said the owner, Owens could go to the slow, back-alley testing facility. Owens publicized the exchange because it gives away the fact that this whole COVID panic in 2021 is a scam.

It all happened on Wednesday evening, when Owens contacted what purports to be the only rapid COVID testing site in Aspen, Colorado. Instead of getting an appointment confirmation, Owens received a lunatic letter from Suzanna Lee, who identifies herself as the owner. Having established her bona fides, she proceeds to ream Owens, saying Owens is unfit for one of Lee's tests:

We cannot support anyone who has pro-actively worked to make this pandemic worse by spreading misinformation, politicizing and DISCOURAGING the wearing of masks and actively dissuading people from receiving life-saving vaccinations.

To emphasize what a terrible thing it is for anyone to be denied service at Lee's elite facility, Lee lets Candace know what's in store for her elsewhere in Aspen:

The only other local testing option is the free kiosk by city hall. They mail their tests to Texas and have inconsistent result times, do not take appointments so its walk in only midday weekdays in their back alley.

Oh, no! Not the back alley. If I wanted to play the Democrats' racial games, I might suggest that telling this to a Black woman sounds remarkably like a 1950s Democrat telling a Black person to get to the back of the bus, use the back entrance, or go to that separate drinking fountain.

Lee closes by playing the martyr card, saying she and her team work too hard "to ensure that our community remains protected" to waste any time serving someone like Owens.

Owens responded in her typical insouciant fashion, first saying that the email could "be the most hilarious e-mail I have ever received in my life." After laughing, Owens moved in for the kill:

Nothing screams "this virus isn't political" quite like googling the names of the people who book tests with you and determining on a case by case basis whether or not you will let them comply with your community covid measures. Nothing screams "I love my local community" quite like refusing to test people who are going to a local event and wish to ensure that are negative and therefore do not spread the virus.

Owens closed with a few more well-deserved verbal punches about the owner's sanity and vanity.

After Owens went public with the email exchange, she immediately received pushback from a leftist accusing her of showboating and, of course, wishing COVID on Owens:

This is a private facility-now you think private businesses shouldn't be allowed to determine who they serve? Which is it? & once you get that test (after a long wait in an uncomfortable chair) let's talk about how you were just bragging that your unvaxxed self is CovidFree  Erin Kotecki Vest (@QueenofSpain) September 2, 2021

Owens was unfazed. She replied by making even more explicit her position that the issue wasn't what a private business could or could not do. Instead, she was "pointing to the OBVIOUS FACT that she (and ALL of you lefties) know that this pandemic is fake. If you were legitimately fearful you would encourage testing of the unvaxxed in your neighborhood."

I literally do not care that she turned me down (as a private business).



Just pointing to the OBVIOUS FACT that she (and ALL of you lefties) know that this pandemic is fake.



If you were legitimately fearful you would encourage testing of the unvaxxed in your neighborhood.  Candace Owens (@RealCandaceO) September 2, 2021

In a second tweet, Owens doubled down on her main point that COVID paranoia in 2021 is a con game, noting that Lee had explicitly said that there was no one between Aspen and Texas who could give Owens a test. "So she was willing to let me wander in her community unvaxxed, untested, and without a means to test  why?" Owens answered her own question: "Because she isnt afraid. None of you are."

She makes a point in her email to tell me that she is the only one from Aspen to Texas that can get me a rapid result.



So she was willing to let me wander in her community unvaxxed, untested, and without a means to testwhy?



Because she isnt afraid.



None of you are.  Candace Owens (@RealCandaceO) September 2, 2021

As for the vaccination, it's pretty clear that it's useless against the delta variant. Thankfully, the delta variant isn't that severe (as is often the case as viruses mutate their way through communities). In addition, if you're like Joe Rogan and have access to ivermectin, you may do just fine.

All in all, the brilliant Candace Owens took what a leftist intended as a monumental, principled stand against "bad" people and turned it around to reveal the terrible hypocrisy and cruelty lurking behind everything that leftists are doing.

Image: COVID testing by lukasmilan. Pixabay license.

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Our political pundits are focusing on Biden's disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan as a political blunder by the president and our military leaders, but what if the root cause for Biden's withdrawal is much more ominous and sinister than mere stupidity? The following questions demand an answer.

Why would our military commanders willingly give up Bagram, a strategic airport built by the Russians, and why would they willingly leave $85 billion in military hardware behind?

Why would they leave thousands of Americans stranded behind enemy lines while providing the Taliban a "kill list" of those Americans left behind? Unlike previous withdrawals, where it is customary upon withdrawal to first evacuate our citizens, and then destroy the equipment and blow up the bases, we did the opposite. We did not evacuate our citizens. We did not destroy the equipment. And we did not blow up the bases.

We have learned that the Biden administration cut off all communication with the anti-Taliban resistance group, the National Front. Although Ali Nazar, head of foreign relations for the group, has said he "tried to reach out," there has been no response from the Biden administration. Glenn Beck recently reported that his mission to rescue Afghan Christians has been blocked by our State Department and the White House, and he fears that they may be burned alive or crucified by the Taliban.

Are we to believe that our military leadership, led by four-star generals, is so naive and incompetent? Highly unlikely!

A more likely scenario is that Afghanistan was surrendered at the urging of the Red Chinese, who saw an opportunity to blackmail old Joe for the many kickbacks he and his son, Hunter, had been taking throughout his years in Washington, D.C. It is no secret that the Red Chinese have had their eye on Afghanistan's mineral deposits. Just two weeks before the American surrender, a Chinese delegation met in Kabul with the Taliban. Although the mainstream media have protected and covered for Joe Biden, reports of information contained on Hunter Biden's laptop and emails exchanged between his partner, Tony Bobulinski, and Hunter, are damning proof of illicit wheeling and dealing by the Bidens to provide access to the White House while Joe was vice president.



YouTube screen grab (cropped).

In a May 2017 email exchange between Hunter Biden and his former business partner, Tony Bobulinski, the two discussed how to cut Joe Biden in on a multi-million-dollar deal with a Communist Party billionaire. In the email, Joe Biden was referred to as "The Big Guy." That email exchange was one of thousands of messages found on Hunter Biden's laptop that he left behind in a repair shop in Wilmington, Delaware in April of 2019. The repair shopowner turned over the laptop to the FBI, but in a telling sign of the FBI's lack of fidelity to our country, it failed to investigate what was clearly a sign of selling access.

As far back as 2013, Hunter Biden's equity firm scored a $1.5-billion deal with the Bank of China only days after his father paid an official visit to the country. The deal was made at a time when the Red Chinese declared their sovereignty over the South China Sea. Our allies in the region were rightfully upset and voiced their disapproval; thus, it was in that context that Vice President Joe Biden was sent to China to confront the Chinese about their controversial move. He flew to China on Air Force Two along with his son, Hunter, and his granddaughter. However, Joe Biden failed to challenge the Chinese. Instead, he went soft, and, not surprisingly, his son returned to the United States with a $1.5-billion deal.

Surrendering to a terrorist organization, leaving Americans behind enemy lines, providing the terrorists with $85 billion in military aid which they will in return use against us, and blocking the evacuation of Americans are indicative of an administration acting as a proxy for those who seek our demise. Already, there has been a transfer of our left-behind arms to Iran and Pakistan, while secretary of state Antony Blinken has announced our intention to recognize the Taliban as a legitimate government should they renounce terror. Blinken should not need to be reminded that the Taliban is a terror organization, and to drive that point home, they wasted no time in releasing the ISIS and al-Qaeda terrorists held as prisoners while we were there.

Investigative journalist Lara Logan recently stated that instead of holding the terrorists accountable, we are deferring to them on the 20th anniversary of 9/11, the deadliest terrorist attack upon our country. Negotiating with a terrorist organization is forbidden under U.S. law, but with a corrupt DOJ and a spineless Congress, it appears there is no one we can rely upon but ourselves to conduct a proper investigation into the treasonous acts committed by Joe Biden and his band of cohorts.

Is China, by way of a domestic proxy, now dictating American foreign policy? If so, where do we go from here?

Shari Goodman has written political commentaries for American Thinker, World Net Daily, the Los Angeles Times, and Israel Today among others. She is a political activist and public speaker.

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In July, Biden's narrative was that the American pullout from Afghanistan was proceeding perfectly. The Taliban would never come close to Kabul before Americans left, and there was no way there would be a Saigon-style retreat. In August, when the Taliban had clearly overtaken Kabul, the administration promised that everything was under control and that no Americans would be left behind. It turns out that every statement made in service of those narratives was a lie when made. In other words, the administration knew the pulling out was a disaster and knew that it would be abandoning Americans.

Earlier this week, it emerged that Biden knew in July that pulling out American troops abruptly would effectively turn Afghanistan over to the Taliban. Just two weeks after assuring Americans (including those in Afghanistan) that the situation was completely under control, Biden had a telephone call with Afghanistan president Ashraf Ghani. Ghani made clear that the facts on the ground were disastrous, with the Taliban ascendant and the Afghan army totally unprepared to handle it.

Upon hearing those words, Biden did not revisit the wisdom of pulling out abruptly and abandoning all the stringent conditions Trump had placed on the Taliban. Nor did he contemplate accelerating the process of getting both Americans and Afghan allies out of the country. Instead, Biden told Ghani to lie. "And there is a need, whether it is true or not, there is a need to project a different picture."

With the lie in place, the administration presented a serene face to the world. Everything is under control.

In addition to affirmatively lying to the American people, it turns out that Biden also lied to Congress by failing to give a legally required report about the withdrawal:

Earlier this week, Biden administration officials also conceded the president granted himself a waiver to avoid providing Congress this summer a legally required report on the dangers of withdrawing from Afghanistan, leaving lawmakers mostly in the dark about a situation in which U.S. confidence in the Afghan government and military rapidly deteriorated.

And then, as John Solomon explains in the same article quoted above, there were the terrible lies from administration figures about getting people to safety:

Every American who wants to come home will be able to do so before Aug. 31.

Every Afghan loyalist in danger could be evacuated.

The Afghan army could hold Kabul for months after the U.S. departed.

John Solomon's Just the News also exposed the fact that the administration deliberately turned its back on Americans left behind:

[T]ext messages between U.S. military commanders and private citizens mounting last-minute rescues tell a far different story, one in which pleading American citizens were frantically left behind at the Kabul airport gate this past weekend to face an uncertain fate under Taliban rule while U.S. officials sought to spread the blame between high-ranking generals and the State Department "We are f------ abandoning American citizens," an Army colonel assigned to the 82nd Airborne Division wrote Sunday in frustration in a series of encrypted messages that detailed the failed effort to extricate a group of American citizens, hours before the last U.S. soldiers departed Afghanistan.

(You can see the screen shot here.)

No president or presidential administration has ever engaged in such perverse, deadly  indeed, obscene  lies. Indeed, when you look at impeachment proceedings over the past fifty years, they can't compare:

Nixon was impeached because he tried to cover up that his lieutenants had cheated in the election  with both cheating and cover-ups now unchallengeable if Democrats do it.

Clinton was impeached because he lied about his sexual peccadilloes in the Oval office  a behavior that is no longer a problem when there are credible accusations that Biden sexually assaulted a woman in the Senate.

Trump was impeached for purely partisan reasons  although it's useful to note that while Democrats had fainting spells because Trump asked Ukraine's president to investigate charges that Biden engaged in completely corrupt dealings in the country to funnel money to Hunter, they are blissfully unbothered by Biden asking Ghani to lie about the unfolding deadly disaster in Afghanistan.

Sen. Mitch McConnell was correct to say Biden won't be impeached with Democrats controlling Congress. It would have been nice, however, if he'd laid out chapter and verse detailing why Biden should be impeached and promising to do so the moment Republicans regain Congress. After all, it's hard to conceive of a more corrupt, immoral, and cruel presidential administration. Nothing will wash the blood off the hands of anyone connected to Biden.

Image: Biden caricature by DonkeyHotey. CC BY 2.0.

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"My fellow Americans, the war in Afghanistan is now over." Thus spoke hapless Joe Biden following the last U.S. military flight out of Kabul. "This decision about Afghanistan is not just about Afghanistan," he continued. "It's about ending an era of major military operations to remake other countries." And then he unleashed this zinger: "This will make us stronger and more effective and safer."

Whaaat?



YouTube screen grab (cropped).

Great nations are not made stronger, more effective, and safer by a horrific show of weakness, much less by a thoughtless cut-and-run operation that left our shocked allies aghast and our enemies gleefully rubbing their hands together.

One of the worst presidents in American history led the country into a massive humiliation made even worse by the deaths of 13 needlessly sacrificed men and women. Here's how bad it was. Roger Pardo-Maurer, former U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense for Western Hemisphere affairs, told a reporter that the Department of Defense had foreknowledge of the Kabul Airport suicide bomber but denied permission to fire a Predator drone missile even when they had a lock on the bomber. The shame also includes dozens of Americans plus Afghans with close ties to the U.S. and Europe left behind. Many Americans also are outraged that even service dogs were left behind.

WOAT Biden may have declared the war over, but some fighting against the Taliban continues. Resistance fighters have reportedly killed dozens of Taliban fighters trying to enter their Panjshir Valley territory just north of Kabul. The self-proclaimed National Resistance Front (NRF), comprising an ethnic Tajik militia and former Afghan security forces, has vowed to defend the enclave as the Islamist group says they have it surrounded.

An unnamed three-star general told the U.K. Daily Mail:

I think it's inevitable that we'll be back in Afghanistan before long. You'll have a narco state run by Islamic terrorists. This is not a good development to peace and stability in the world. How in the world can we stand back, with a nuclear-capable Pakistan and Iran working towards a nuclear weapon and Afghanistan wedged in the middle between the two? (It) is unbelievable to me that the U.S. and NATO are going to have no on-the-ground bases in that region. That region is bordered on the West by Iran, bordered on the East by Pakistan, bordered on the North by China and Russia, and we will have nothing on the ground. No eyes, no ears, no logistics and intelligence bases. The next time we go there, if we need to go there, the 82nd Airborne will probably be the guys that need to take it by force. And then there will be a big expense in dollars and blood to make it happen.

The general is not the only one who sees our retreat from Kabul as anything but the end of "endless wars." Former Israeli defense specialist Mordechai Kedar says:

Kabul is phase one on the way to conquering the world. Kabul is pumping new blood into the arteries of the Jihad and the results are seen all over the world. We must understand that the Islamic mentality is a zero sum game. When Islam wins, Christianity loses and the Crusaders lose. The (Islamists) always see a connection between what happened in the 10th century and what happens in the 21st century. Islam progresses, state by state, continent by continent[.] ... Kabul is only one phase of a global plan. They think it is proof that their path is the right one. They think they have defeated Western culture, embodied by America, which wanted to spread Westernism in the Islamic world.

For the Islamic jihadis, wars never end, regardless of statements by ignorant American presidents. Raymond Ibrahim said, "Although August 15, 2021 will forever live in infamy as the date when the Taliban reconquered Afghanistan, for over 13 centuries that date was famous for another event  Constantinople's defeat of the Caliphate, August 15, 718. While these two events separated by exactly 1,303 years are vastly different in nature  not least that in 718 Islam lost, while in 2021 it won  they both confirm one irresistible point that the confident West should take to heart: the tenacity of Islamic jihad  this relentless snake of war always bides its time, even if remaining coiled for many centuries before striking."

This is another way of saying peace is an illusion, particularly in dealing with the jihadists. In Afghanistan, war is somewhat of a national pastime  call it a national hobby if you will. Enemies are not just invading powers like the Mongols, British, Russians, and Americans; they're also one another. This is because Afghanistan is not a real country and never really has been. It's just a geographical area occupied by numerous tribes and cultures constantly at one another's throats.

There is no reason to believe that this pattern will be changed by the American retreat. In fact, no one in his right mind believes for a minute that this is the end of the matter.

The bottom line is that war and conflict are the true history of humankind. War has always been a major human activity. It's particularly startling when you realize that all civilizations owe their origins to the warrior and are products of violence.

Peace is simply a period of time when power-seekers arm up and wait for others to grow weak or, for those naive enough, to disarm. Lenin put it this way: "Peace is only a continuation of war by other means." That parallels the mindset of the jihadists. History is a record of civilizations, empires and, in fact, entire cultures being created and inevitably destroyed. If you show weakness, this cannot be avoided. If you try to shy away from war, it will find you. Weakness is indeed provocative.

Here's another thought for feeble Joe. Will our country, which produced the greatest civilization in history, ultimately be strong enough to save itself? Or are we going to be just another civilization that collapsed after a few hundred years as most have? A nation that does not value what it has and will not fight for itself and its national interests will ultimately fall to the ever-hungry predators. History guarantees it.

Frank Hawkins is a former U.S. Army intelligence officer, Associated Press foreign correspondent, international businessman, senior newspaper company executive, founder and owner of several marketing companies, and published novelist.

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China's government recently banned effeminate men from appearing on TV and instructed broadcasters to promote "revolutionary culture." This was done as part of an ever-growing campaign to tighten the Chinese Communist Party's control over business, education, culture, and religion. The CCP will spare no effort in its desire to enforce official morality and position China for world domination. China's president, Xi Jinping, has called for a "national rejuvenation" to foster a healthier society and an even more powerful China.

Chinese officials were concerned that the more girlish look of some male South Korean and Japanese pop stars may have otherwise rubbed off on China's young men, effectively emasculating them to the detriment of Chinese ambitions. Therefore, China's National Radio and TV Administration declared that broadcasters must "resolutely put an end to sissy men and other abnormal aesthetics."

The CCP has also forbidden those under 18 from playing video games for more than three hours a week.

Moreover, Xi Jinping has warned officials and citizens alike to "discard their illusions" about having an easy life and instead "dare to struggle" to protect the country's integrity, security, and sovereignty. According to Xinhua, the state news agency, Xi stated: "The great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation has entered a key phase, and risks and challenges we face are conspicuously increasing."

Contrast that with what is happening here in America. Our progressives are worried about "toxic masculinity" and are constantly tabulating the number of new genders they claim to have discovered. They are consumed with making sure those men who claim to be women can use women's bathrooms and locker rooms  and vice-versa. Americans have gradually become feminized and infantilized. We are more worried about "microaggressions" than we are about macro-aggressions such as those perpetrated by China or the Taliban. Too many of our college students run for their "safe spaces" if they hear something with which they don't agree or that may make them sad or confused...all while exclaiming, "Where are my warm milk and cookies? Where is a furry little puppy? Where's the Play-Doh?"

Virtually all Democratic politicians  whether male, female, or other  claim to be feminists, in touch with their feelings, empathetic. Yet they just handed an entire nation over to a ruling mob that lops off women's clitorises and then forces them into sex slavery.

We are simply not a serious  or sane  nation anymore.

We can no longer afford to listen to the likes of AOC, Bernie Sanders, Chuck Schumer, Maxine Waters, Nancy Pelosi, or Ilhan Omar. We can't let crazed "progressives" tell us that the protest that occurred on January 6 was a massive, violent insurrection that nearly overthrew our government while simultaneously telling us that the Taliban are our "brothers" and the legitimate "government" of Afghanistan.

While the left in the United States pushes its fictitious and depraved "1619 Project" dogma on American schools, China has embarked on a "2021 and Beyond Project." Sadly, schools across the fruited plain are now teaching "Critical Race Theory" to incite hatred and reverse racism. What we need is the understanding that it's critical we race to avoid being left behind by China. And that's not theory.

China is barring effeminate men from appearing on television. Ironically, America is banning the Ten Commandments from public spaces, free speech, truth, justice, and the American way.

Gee, why do so many believe that America is in decline?

What will be the ultimate result of the vastly different cultural and policy prescriptions between the two nations' similarly authoritarian governments? Who's going to win, and who will be left on the ash heap of history?

At the rate things are going, we will know by the day after tomorrow.

Hint: China is acting like the proverbial bull in a China shop, America under Biden is like a dull and frightened cow.

Graphic by Donkey Hotey CC BY 2.0 license.

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I watched with dismay CNN's special report on Jerusalem (pay link) on the history of Jerusalem, first broadcast on August 22, 2021. One particular portion of the documentary was so egregious for promoting propaganda that I was shocked to see it get through the editors. James Zogby, a well-known Palestinian propagandist, was speaking about Jerusalem regarding the aftermath of the 1967 Six-Day War. He had the nerve to say Israel ethnically cleansed the Arabs from Jerusalem's famed Old City, particularly the area in front of the holiest site in the Jewish faith: the Western Wall/Temple Mount.



Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem (photo credit: Mwinner, CC BY-SA 3.0 license).

What Zogby failed to tell the viewers was that the area he was describing was only 19 years earlier home to dozens of synagogues and Jewish neighborhoods. The area Arabs he described were living in a neighborhood known as the "Jewish Quarter." Every last Jew was evicted from the Jewish Quarter by the Arabs when they invaded and conquered the Old City in Israel's 1948 War of Independence. In that war, seven neighboring Arab countries and the local Arabs (now known as Palestinians) attacked the nascent Jewish state and lost. But they didn't lose everything. Jordan, which attacked from the east, captured the Old City  a site where Jews had resided continuously for thousands of years. There were also numerous historic synagogues in the Jewish Quarter. Jordan ethnically cleansed the entire Old City of Jews and destroyed virtually every synagogue  dozens of them. So Mr. Zogby reversed history  it was the Jews who were ethnically cleansed, not the Arabs.

Moreover, when Israel captured the Old City from the Jordanians just nineteen years later in 1967, the Israelis maintained the Muslim Quarter as Muslim and let Jews refill the Jewish Quarter. No ethnic cleansing there! Further, the Israelis let Jordan remain in charge of religious affairs at the Temple Mount, which is holy to Muslims, Christians, and Jews and is known to Muslims as the Harem al Sharif.

Compare the treatment of the Old City holy sites by Israel and the local Muslims. Israel permitted Muslims to stay and make full use of their holy sites. By contrast, when the Arab Muslims controlled the Old City from 1948 to 1967, they ethnically cleansed every last Jew and blew up the synagogues.

CNN should not distort the facts. The ethnic cleansing of the Jews of the Old City was a travesty. So was the CNN broadcast on Jerusalem. The network's Orwellian fiction tried to reverse history 180 degrees by leveling a charge of ethnic cleansing at the victims of that horrible crime. In the process, CNN followed a long tradition of journalistic discrimination against Jews. CNN should correct its mistakes.

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Whoever the man is in the video below, addressing the Dallas mayor and city council by video in an open microphone session, he is one gifted comedian. He pretended to be a resident of the very expensive Highland Park neighborhood, fully supportive of mandatory vaccinations, and then took the logic farther and farther, all the while parodying the mentality of rich, white liberals who seek to force the lower orders into compliance with their diktats.

The escalating hysteria he embodies in his performance deserves an Emmy more than ex-governor Andrew Cuomo ever did. It is not clear when the council members realized they were being mocked, but the man was cut off with "time's up" while he was in full parody mode.

Sundance of The Last Refuge found the recording and deserves the hat tip:

Photo credit: YouTube screen grab.

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Now we know what President Joseph R. Biden (D) does when he takes a "lid" early in the day and retires to his basement: he watches Seinfeld reruns for instructions on governing the country. As a result, Biden has morphed into an Alzheimer's version of the hapless George Costanza character, who notably proclaimed: "Remember: it's not a lie if you believe it."

For example, adding painful insult to deadly injury, serial liar Biden, speaking to Jewish leaders on Thursday prior to the upcoming Jewish New Year (Rosh Hashanah), which begins Monday night, guilelessly, irrelevantly lied.

"I remember spending time at the, you know, going to the, you know, the Tree of Life synagogue, speaking with them," Biden said in a 16-minute virtual address ahead of the Jewish holidays Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

LIE!!! Do not believe it. Almost three years ago, on October 27, 2018 C.E., a known hater of Jews and Judaism gunned down 11 Jews who were members of three congregations that met in the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh's heavily Jewish Squirrel Hill neighborhood. Seven others were injured. Casting aside his schedule, then-president Donald J. Trump (R) and his wife Melania paid a condolence call to the community several days later. Former vice president Joseph Biden did not visit, nor did he issue a public statement on the incident at the time.

Barb Feige, executive director of the Tree of Life, said that Biden did not visit the synagogue in the nearly three years since the anti-Semitic attack. In a phone interview, Feige, executive director since July 2019, said firmly that "no" Biden didn't visit, even before taking office when he had a lower public profile as a former vice president and then-Democratic presidential candidate.

Oh.

The White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Oh.

Biden continued his narcissistic babbling lies about his relationship with Jews and Judaism, all of which had no relationship to the supposed purpose of the call. Because in his foggy state of mind, he believed what he was saying, so therefore, it was true.

Biden believes that America withdrew honorably from Afghanistan, saving American lives. Biden believes he can "build back better."

Jerry Seinfeld knew better. As did George Costanza. And so should we.

Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.

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In 1975, a freshman senator from Delaware exclaimed that he saw no U.S. "obligation, moral or otherwise, to evacuate foreign nationals."

That senator was Joe Biden, who opposed an attempt by then-president Gerald Ford to resettle hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese refugees in the U.S. At the time, Biden made clear that he wanted the American government to prioritize American citizens over foreign nationals.

"I feel put upon in being presented an all-or-nothing number," Biden said at the time. "I will vote for any amount for getting the Americans out. I don't want it mixed with getting the Vietnamese out."

At the time, America was retreating from a decades-long conflict, scrambling to get its citizens out, while a refugee crisis loomed on the horizon. Now history is repeating itself, and this time, Biden is the man who occupies the Oval Office. While Biden hasn't spoken much about the looming refugee crisis, his overall immigration agenda and his scarce public statements suggest that he is preparing to flood the U.S. with Afghan refugees.

"Once screened and cleared, we will welcome these Afghans to their new home in the United States with open arms," Biden said in early August. "We are a nation that has been strengthened by generations of immigrants adding their unique talents to our American tapestry."

Biden has flip-flopped on nearly every major issue, and immigration is not at all different. His statements on Vietnamese and Afghan refugees could not be more diametrically opposed. As I've written before, I support efforts to help Afghans who aided our war effort, but that does not mean they all should be given a one-way ticket to the U.S. As Biden seemed to understand in 1975, the U.S. government has a responsibility, first and foremost, to its citizens, our safety, and our security. Bringing in tens of thousands of unvetted refugees from one of the most dangerous parts of the world would present a clear danger to America's national security. Unfortunately, there's already evidence that this is happening.

A recent report from Bloomberg News stated that the Biden administration has alerted refugee organizations that it plans to bring in 50,000 migrants from Afghanistan. These migrants would be part of not the Special Immigrant Visa program, which is intended to help Afghanis who helped the U.S., but rather a vague "humanitarian" program the administration is promoting. This is in defiance of the wishes of the American public, which has consistently disapproved of Biden's immigration policies. In fact, a recent poll from Rasmussen found that a majority of Americans oppose bringing in this many refugees, including 68 percent of Republicans.

In addition to security concerns, there are also legitimate concerns about what importing tens of thousands of refugees would do to the social fabric of our deeply divided nation. In 2013, a Pew Research Center survey found that a whopping 99 percent of Afghan Muslims support sharia law, and 61 percent believe that all citizens should be subject to sharia law. Of the Afghan Muslims who favor making sharia the law of the land, 81 percent support hudud punishments for crimes such as theft and robbery. Hudud punishments include amputations, flogging, and brutal executions. Beliefs in subjugating Christians, Jews, women, and gays are deeply ingrained in sharia law and are incompatible with a Western liberal democracy.

This is not to say that Afghan refugees are bad people. Many of them may be great people, but importing tens of thousands of refugees from a completely different culture and with little knowledge of and tolerance for American principles could have devastating consequences for our deeply fragile social fabric and our national security. The U.S. government should put the interests of U.S. citizens first. They should not exploit the compassion of the American people in order to dramatically change the makeup of the country.

This is not the time for our chief executive to again pander to his radical left base by flip-flopping on this critical issue. He needs to channel his former self from 1975 and prioritize American lives and interests.

Dale L. Wilcox is executive director and general counsel at the Immigration Reform Law Institute, a public interest law firm working to defend the rights and interests of the American people from the negative effects of mass migration.

Image: USAID via Pixnio, CC0 public domain.

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Joe Biden must be breathing a sigh of relief now that Hurricane Ida has switched the news cycle to a natural disaster from his Afghanistan failure. Maybe the public will now forget his Afghanistan fiasco, which has tanked his poll numbers, so the logic goes.

He's certainly acting that way, taking better than average interest in the devastation from Hurricane Ida, particularly compared to his run-and-hide response to Afghanistan.

But in Biden's remarks to the public about Hurricane Ida, it's pretty obvious he can't escape the Afghanistan story.

Get a load of the queasy-making statements he's come out with in his speech addressing the hurricane-ravaged parts of the country:

So, I'm calling on private insurance companies right now, at this critical moment: Don't hide behind the fine print and technicality. Do your job. Keep your commitments to your communities that you insure. Do the right thing and pay your policy holders what you owe them to cover the cost of temporary housing in the midst of a natural disaster. Help those in need.

Biden is telling other people to keep their commitments? Like an insurance company wouldn't know that, given the payouts that some have had to make in the past for not paying claims? Most are going to pay their claims, and the ones that don't will have the government after them. So for him to make that call, and grandiosely think he's going to make a difference, is nonsense.

But that's not the half of it.

Biden's the guy who assured Americans stuck in Afghanistan that he was going to rescue them. "Any American who wants to come home, we will get you home," he assured in a televised speech two weeks ago.

Instead, he's the guy who cut and runs on them.

According to Instapundit, citing a report from Salena Zito, here's how Biden keeps his commitments:

SALENA ZITO: For these Marines, a constant rush to zero hour to rescue stranded Americans. For the last few weeks, Lt. Col. Jonathon Myers, a retired Marine intelligence officer, conducted a sleepless and exhaustive effort to get American citizens and green card holders connected with Marines in Afghanistan out of the country before the Aug. 31 withdrawal deadline. On Monday afternoon, that mission went from dire and dangerous to clandestine for the hundreds of U.S. citizens and thousands of green card holders and journalists left stranded when the last military plane exited the airport in Kabul. ... Myers has been working with two other retired Marines, Katy Garroway of Maryland and Rico Reyes of Texas. In the final grim 12 hours in Kabul, no matter what anyone in military leadership or President Joe Biden said, no Americans who reached the airport were able to get out, Myers said. "Within that last 12 hours, I had four buses of American citizens outside the gate," he said. "They were mostly pregnant women and babies, including a child with spina bifida, just all packed together waiting at the gate." Myers said his team paid off the Taliban with a big bribe to allow their buses to go through. "They got to the gate, and there was an aid organization that was supposed to meet us with representatives, with the rosters, and to tell the Taliban to expect them." The aid organization didn't show up. "I, in panic mode, called, and called, and called all my Marine networks, I got the number for one of the top commanders down there explained the situation and we got in a big argument when he told me the Taliban makes the calls down here," said Myers. They never got out. No Americans were able to get out on the last five jets to leave Afghanistan, as Gen. Frank McKenzie, head of the U.S. Central Command, confirmed on Tuesday. He said that Americans tried desperately to get to the Kabul airport for the final evacuations but could not. Myers spoke to the Washington Examiner from Germany after Biden proclaimed the withdrawal "an extraordinary success." He says what happened in the closing days in Afghanistan is not what any type of success looks like. Based on what he saw, he disbelieves Biden's claim that 90% of the people who wanted to leave did so. I disbelieve it too.

The only thing that Joe Biden's promises not to leave anyone behind in the hurricane's wake will do is to remind the public that Joe never keeps his promises, particularly to those in dire straits he's obliged to look out for. Biden failed the Americans in Afghanistan, cutting and running, leaving, according to his estimates, 10 percent of them behind, which many people think is a much higher number. He ran out on his tab with them, doing it very, very quickly, well before the promise was memory-holed.

Why would anyone believe him now on hurricane relief? Joe abandons his commitments all the time. And for him to implicitly accuse insurance companies of the same, without evidence, is rich in irony.

Here's another example of blatant hypocrisy that can only serve to remind people of his broken promises to Afghanistan:

My message to the people of the Gulf Coast, who I'm going to visit tomorrow: We are here for you. And we're making sure the response and recovery is equitable so that those hit hardest get the resources they need and are not left behind.

You're here for them? As you were for the Afghan translators and stranded Americans?

That triggered a choice tweet from Mark Meadows:

Joe Biden just told hurricane survivors they wont be left behind, which would be comforting words had he not just said the exact same thing last week, and then turned his backleaving hundreds of Americans behind in Afghanistan. Then and now. Bidens words are empty.  Mark Meadows (@MarkMeadows) September 2, 2021

Biden has repeatedly turned his back on the very people he's promised to help.

Now, there's no reason as of this writing to think FEMA isn't going to do its normal job and help victims of natural disasters as the agency always does. It might happen that way. But Biden has a bad record of politicizing previously apolitical agencies, such as the CDC and FDA, as I wrote about here yesterday, and there could be problems. That will sort itself out in the news cycle.

What we do have as of now is a stark reminder that Biden is a total disaster on the matter of Afghanistan as his words to the hurricane victims uncomfortably echo his words to the abandoned Afghan translators and Americans left behind in Taliban-ruled Kabul as that last U.S. plane took off.

Biden is never going to escape this. His every word is a reminder of all the flowery things he promised those under threat in Afghanistan and his absolute failure to live up to his word. It may well be that everything he brings up will recall something he said about Afghanistan. That's a good thing. It's happening because he's in denial about his failure there, calls it a success, and has shut down questions. So everywhere he goes, the same questions will come up again. And when Biden's out spewing hypocrisies with it, telling us to pay no attention to his phony Afghan promises but believe him on whatever he's promising now, that ugly Afghan recrudescence should follow him wherever he goes.

Image: Screen shot from Today video via shareable YouTube.

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In early July, a viral video showed a woman berating the staff at Wi Spa, a Korean family spa in Los Angeles, for letting a naked man in the women's and children's area. The staff was helpless to stop that because California law mandates that so-called "transgender women" (i.e., men) can go anywhere women can go. Andy Ngo now has the follow-up: the man who frequented the women's and children's area at the Wi Spa is a serial sex offender. Is anyone reading those words surprised?

The left is trying hard to convince people that human biology is meaningless. Men and women, they assure us, and even boys and girls, can magically change sex through wishful thinking, dangerous hormones, and mutilating surgery. And tough luck if you think human biology isn't so easily manipulated. You need to get with the program.

One of Biden's first acts was to mandate that people have access to all gender-specific facilities at federal sites based on their "gender identity." Biden also reinstated so-called transgender people in the military, in yet another sign that, for Democrats, the military is not about defending America, but instead about re-ordering society.

In July, a viral video showed a customer complaining that a naked man was flaunting himself in the women's spa area at Wi Spa in Los Angeles. Not long after, another woman did a video explaining that she and her daughter had been exposed to the same behavior  and in a deliberately lascivious manner, to boot.

Unfortunately for the Wi Spa, it was helpless to do anything about this situation thanks to California's "Gender Nondiscrimination Act," which went into effect in 2012. Under the law, so-called "transgender" people in California get to go into whichever locker rooms and other gender-specific spaces match their "gender identity." All that the Wi Spa could do was take the abuse  and watch as violent protests about the rights of the so-called transgender took place in front of the business.

And then, with all the other insanity in America, including the debacle in Afghanistan, the whole Wi Spa thing dropped from view.

Journalist Andy Ngo, however, didn't forget it. Instead, he investigated the man who's been taking advantage of the "Gender Nondiscrimination Act" to turn women's facilities into his playground. It turns out that he's a serial sex offender:

But on Monday, charges of indecent exposure were discreetly filed against a serial sex offender for the Wi Spa incident, following an investigation by the Los Angeles Police Department. Sources with knowledge of the case but not authorized to speak publicly say four women and a minor girl came forward to allege that Darren Agee Merager was partially erect in the women's section of Wi Spa. Besides being a suspect in this case, Merager is facing multiple felony charges of indecent exposure over a separate incident in Los Angeles.

Merager denied the charges, claiming "transphobia," but there's a little problem of history:

Law-enforcement sources revealed that Merager is a tier-one registered sex offender with two prior convictions of indecent exposure stemming from incidents in 2002 and 2003 in California. She [sic] declined to comment on the convictions. In 2008, she [sic] was convicted for failing to register as a sex offender. [snip] She [sic] also has a long criminal history in California that includes nearly a dozen felony convictions for crimes ranging from sex offenses to burglary and escape. In addition to Merager's new felony charges of indecent exposure, she [sic] is also facing six felony counts of indecent exposure over a separate locker room incident in December 2018. Los Angeles County prosecutors accuse Merager of indecent exposure to women and children in a changing area at a swimming pool in West Hollywood Park.

Merager is part of a big club. In England and Wales, almost half of all "transgender" prisoners are convicted sex offenders. When drag queen storytime at libraries was a thing, two men in Houston were exposed as sex offenders. Likewise, a judge in Wisconsin who participated in drag queen story hour is also a sex offender.

Not all drag queens are sex offenders. The point is that people whose entire identity is defined around sex probably shouldn't be around children  but that's where Democrats insist they should be allowed.

Image: Wi Spa. YouTube screen grab (cropped).

To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here.
In the Newport harbor in Rhode Island, Americas smallest state, stands a small, squat lighthouse named after Ida Lewis, the fearless lighthouse keeper who manned this outpost for more than fifty years. During this period Ida Lewis was known to have saved countless lives from drowning.

Ida Lewis was born in 1842 in Newport, Rhode Island, the second oldest of four children of Captain Hosea Lewis of the Revenue-Marine. She was first brought to Lime Rock in 1854, when her father was made the lighthouse keeper there. Initially called the Lime Rock Lighthouse, it was a square granite tower equipped with a sixth order Fresnel lens and an oil-burning lantern. To reach the light, Hosea had to row 200 meters each day, which was not possible at all times especially when the sea was rough. So In 1857, a two-story house was built for the lighthouse keeper, and Ida and her family moved into her new house on the island.

Ida Lewis rescues two drowning soldiers from Fort Adams

Less than than four months after the family had been at Lime Rock, Idas father suffered a debilitating stroke. In the aftermath, Ida and her siblings took on many of the lighthouse tasks, including filling the lamp with oil at sundown and again at midnight, trimming the wick, polishing carbon off the reflectors, and extinguishing the light at dawn. She also took care of her younger siblings and rowed them to school every weekday and fetched supplies from town as they were needed. She became very skillful at handling her heavy rowboat, and by age 15, Ida had become known as the best swimmer in Newport.

For more than twenty years, Ida assisted her mother to keep the light, until 1879 when she finally received the official appointment as keeper with a generous salary of $750 per year. For a time, Lewis was the highest-paid lighthouse keeper in the nation. The extra pay was given in recognition of her remarkable services and going beyond the call of duty and saving lives.

Ida made her first rescue when she was just 12 years old, pulling four men out of the water after their boat capsized. Her most famous rescue for which Ida became nationally known happened in 1869, when she saved two soldiers after their boat was swamped during a winter storm. Idas mother saw the two soldiers clinging to the overturned boat and woke up Ida, who jumped out of bed and ran towards the lighthouse boat without taking the time to put on a coat or shoes. When Ida reached the stricken soldiers, one of them saw her and uttered in surprise It's only a girl. The soldier nearly lost his grip when Ida grabbed him by the hair and pulled him into her boat. Later, the soldiers gave Ida a gold watch for saving them, and the citizens of Newport presented her with a boat.

Idas fame spread quickly following the 1869 rescue, and she appeared in the New-York Tribune, Harper's Weekly and Leslie's magazine, among others. The Life Saving Benevolent Association of New York sent her a silver medal. A parade was held in her honor in Newport on Independence Day, followed by the presentation of a sleek, mahogany rowboat with red velvet cushions, gold braid around the gunwales, and gold-plated oar-locks.

In 1881, she was awarded the rare Gold Lifesaving Medal from the United States government  the first woman to receive it  for her rescue on February 4, 1881, of two soldiers from Fort Adams who had fallen through the ice while attempting to return to the fort on foot.

Woodcut of Ida Lewis, light-house keeper

During her 54 years on Lime Rock she is credited with saving 18 lives, although unofficial reports suggest the number may have been as high as 25. Ida made her last recorded rescue when she was 63. A friend was rowing out to the lighthouse, stood up in her boat, lost her balance, and fell into the water. Lewis rowed out to her and hauled her aboard.

During her lifetime, Lewis was called the Bravest Woman in America and her exploits were detailed in the national press. Thousands of people came to meet her on the island. In one summer, Idas father counted nine thousand. She also received numerous gifts, letters, and even marriage proposals.

Ida Lewis died in 1911 after suffering a stroke. As Idas body left the Lime Rock Lighthouse for the last time her brother Rudolph said, That is the way poor Ida wanted to leave; she never wanted to part from the lighthouse until she was taken to her grave. She was buried in the Common Burying Ground.

In 1924 the Rhode Island legislature officially changed the name of Lime Rock to Ida Lewis Rock. Three years later, the lighthouse was automated, and finally in 1963, the lighthouse was deactivated.

The lighthouse today. Photo: Kenneth C. Zirkel/Wikimedia Commons




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GMR To Invest Big In Hyderabad Airport Metro:- The Telangana government has been keen to expand the Hyderabad Metro to various regions in different phases. One among them is the metro lane for the Hyderabad's Rajiv Gandhi International Airport. The estimated value of the project is said to be Rs 5195 crores and is named as Airport Link Project. GMR Group who built the Hyderabad Airport is investing Rs 519.52 crores which is ten percent of the total value of the project. The metro line will be extended from Raidurg to Hyderabad airport during the second phase of the expansion of the Hyderabad Metro.

The lane is stretched for 30.7 km and it would be an express metro lane. The Telangana government proposed the project three years ago and it is now taking shape. Hyderabad Airport Metro will have 51 percent stake and HMDA will have 49 percent stake in this Airport Metro Link project. GMR Group is also expanding the Hyderabad Airport and there are predictions that 3.2 crore people would fly to and from Hyderabad airport in the coming years. Airport Metro Link project will also have limited stations of Gachibowli, Appa, Rajendra Nagar and Shamshabad. There are talks that the Airport Metro Link project will have an underground lane for some of the distance.
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(ANSA) - ROME, SEP 3 - Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio told his EU counterparts in Slovenia Friday that the Union should support countries neighbouring Afghanistan as they struggle to cope with refugees, while fighting a possible resurgence in terrorism in the region.

Di Maio said he would shortly carry out a tour of the neighbouring countries.

"In the next few hours I will travel to Qatar and Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Pakistan, on a mission," he told the other foreign ministers.

"We need agreed action on the front of assistance and development and humanitarian aid.

"We must support the neighbouring countries which are already facing Afghan migratory pressure.

"We are ready to earmark for assistance the resources which were previously dedicated to the Afghan security forces." Di Maio went on to say that "the fight against terrorism is another priority.

"We must work with the major international actors and guarantee that the Taliban respect their commitment to stop any terrorist group operating in the country." Di Maio also said the EU needed a policy on migration with targeted resources ranging from Afghanistan to the central Mediterranean route where Italy bears the brunt of arrivals.

"The EU has the moral and political duty to lend its humanitarian assistance to Afghan refugees in a cohesive way," said the Italian FM.

"Humanitarian intervention in favour of countries neighbouring Kabul should find funding among the programmes of humanitarian intervention.

"The resources that will be mobilized for migrant policies in Afghanistan and the neighbouring countries must be inserted into the context of a broad EU migratory policy that is able to meet the needs of all the migratory routes, including that of the central Mediterranean". (ANSA).


(ANSA) - ROME, SEP 3 - Some 92.1% of Italian teachers and other school and university staff have had at least one COVID-19 jab, or the single J&& jab, Emergency Commissioner Francesco Figliuolo said in his weekly report Friday.

This was 1.65% up on the last weekly report.

Some 7.9% have not had any dose.

Some 3.7 million people in Italy over the age of 50 have not had any jab, Figliuolo said.

Italy's head teachers on Friday warned that unvaccinated children would be "marginalized" by classmates wanting to take off their face masks.

Officials said Friday that the Delta variant now accounted for almost 100% of all new COVID cases.

The Lazio regional administrative court (TAR) on Thursday rejected a plea from teachers who were suspended because they did not have the COVID-19 Green Pass vaccine passport showing they had been immunized from the virus.

The TAR said education authorities had acted correctly in suspending the teachers.

It said the right not to get vaccinated was "not absolute".

Anti-vax teachers are among the many Italians who have been protesting against the Green Pass. Government tensions rose Thursday after a rightwing League MP voted against the government's Green Pass vaccine passport on Wednesday night.

Claudio Borghi voted against the government having made the passport compulsory for long-distance trains and buses and domestic airline flights, a move that has sparked widespread protests by anti-vaxxers.

Planned protests against the Green Pass on trains largely failed to materialise this week, apart from a 30-strong demo outside Rome's Termini Station including militants from the far-right Forza Nuova movement.

In Naples only two demonstrators came to the main rail station while in Genoa about a dozen protesters turned out, and in Turin one man was arrested.

In Rimini, an anti-vax stronghold, just a handful of 'No Green Pass' protesters made it to the station.

Carabinieri police on Thursday escorted a teacher who had come to school without the Green Pass vaccine passport out of the building in Turin.

It was the second day in a row that French teacher Giuseppe Pantaleo had presented himself at the Istituto Curie-Levi high school without the passport, which is compulsory for teachers and other staff across Italy.

Premier Mario Draghi on Thursday reiterated a plea for all Italians to get vaccinated against COVID-19 and voiced "solidarity" with those who had fallen victim to the "odious violence" of anti-vaxxers. Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio, health officials and journalists have received repeated death threats because of their pro-vax stances.

He also said the jab would be made compulsory in Italy and recommended a third booster jab starting with the vulnerable.

(ANSA).


ROME - Italian Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio told his EU counterparts in Slovenia Friday that the Union should support countries neighbouring Afghanistan as they struggle to cope with refugees, while fighting a possible resurgence in terrorism in the region.



Di Maio said he would shortly carry out a tour of the neighbouring countries.



"In the next few hours I will travel to Qatar and Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Pakistan, on a mission," he told the other foreign ministers.



"We need agreed action on the front of assistance and development and humanitarian aid.



"We must support the neighbouring countries which are already facing Afghan migratory pressure.



"We are ready to earmark for assistance the resources which were previously dedicated to the Afghan security forces." Di Maio went on to say that "the fight against terrorism is another priority.



"We must work with the major international actors and guarantee that the Taliban respect their commitment to stop any terrorist group operating in the country." Di Maio also said the EU needed a policy on migration with targeted resources ranging from Afghanistan to the central Mediterranean route where Italy bears the brunt of arrivals.



"The EU has the moral and political duty to lend its humanitarian assistance to Afghan refugees in a cohesive way," said the Italian FM.



"Humanitarian intervention in favour of countries neighbouring Kabul should find funding among the programmes of humanitarian intervention.



"The resources that will be mobilized for migrant policies in Afghanistan and the neighbouring countries must be inserted into the context of a broad EU migratory policy that is able to meet the needs of all the migratory routes, including that of the central Mediterranean".



Di Maio added that it is the aim of Italy and the EU to "help the Afghan people and the neighbouring countries there, make sure we can manage migratory flows together, that (otherwise) could become a mass exodus towards Europe."
The funeral of Pat Hume, the widow of late SDLP leader John Hume, will take place on Monday.

Tributes have continued to pour in for Mrs Hume, a mother-of-five from Derry, who died at home after a short illness on Thursday, surrounded by family.

The death of Mrs Hume, a former teacher, comes just over a year after that of her Nobel Peace Prize-winning husband.

Derry City and Strabane District Council mayor Graham Warke signs the Book of Condolence for Pat Hume (Martin McKeown/PA)

The death of the SDLP founder, who was a key architect of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, led to a flood of tributes from around the world.

A requiem Mass for Mrs Hume will be celebrated in St Eugenes Cathedral in Derry on Monday, where her husbands funeral took place last year.

Former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton was among those paying tribute to Mrs Hume, describing her as a gracious, determined force behind the achievement of peace in Ireland.

Mrs Hume had worked alongside her husband for several decades, from the beginning of the civil rights movement in the 1960s until after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998.

She later cared for him when he developed dementia.

The message left by the mayor, Graham Warke (PA)

She was awarded the Irish Red Cross Lifetime Achievement award in 2018 and a foundation honouring her and her husbands peace and reconciliation work was launched last year.

The book of condolence in Derrys Guildhall was opened by the mayor of Derry and Strabane, Graham Warke, on Friday.

He said: I wanted to open this book of condolence today to offer the people the chance to pay their respects and say thank you to a remarkable and courageous woman who was unfailing in her service to the people of this city and right across Northern Ireland and beyond.

The tributes that have been pouring in from across the globe, from all spectrums of life, are testament to the contribution Pat Hume made in her own right to achieving peace and reconciliation, and the many lives she touched with her kindness and courage.

I want to extend my own personal condolences to the Hume family today  they have given much over the years and to lose both John and Pat in such a short space of time is particularly heartbreaking.

Mary McAleese said Pat Hume was the perfect partner for her husband John (Brian Lawless/PA)

However, it must be some comfort to know that Pats legacy will live on in the people of this city, and in the ongoing work of the John and Pat Hume Foundation.

I think I speak on behalf of everyone when I say thank you Pat for your compassion, grace and commitment, and the life you devoted not just to your husband and your family but to all who needed a helping hand or a listening ear.

Former Irish president Mary McAleese said Mrs Hume was the perfect partner for her husband.

From away back in the 1960s, John was the political strategist of the century in Ireland  the peace process, the Good Friday Agreement, hes the architect, hes the chief architect of those things, she told RTE Radio One.

Pat beside him wasnt just a person who raised the family, as she did, she wasnt just the family who nurtured and encouraged and kept John going, as she did, she was also a formidable community activist in her own right.

Stormont leaders also paid tribute.

First Minister Paul Givan said it was testament to Mrs Humes legacy that her death had prompted so many tributes from home and abroad.

There is a real sense of loss following the death of Pat Hume, he said.

Not just among her friends and family  and my thoughts and prayers are with them at this difficult time  but for the many lives she touched, both directly and indirectly.

Deputy First Minister Michelle ONeill said: I was very sad to hear about the death of Pat Hume. Pat was a strong and determined person whose immense contribution to our peace is recognised across this island and across the world.

My thoughts are with Pat and Johns children, the entire Hume family, and the people of Derry who will feel her loss deeply.
The Duke of Cambridge has helped an Afghan officer he knew at military college get his family out of Afghanistan and onto a UK-bound plane, it has emerged.

William intervened following the chaotic scenes outside Kabul airport last month as people tried to get through the gates and onto flights.

The Daily Telegraph newspaper reported the Afghan, who was a fellow Sandhurst officer cadet with the duke, is believed to have served with his countrys national army and been integral to the British military operation in Afghanistan.

Sandhurst graduates, including William, march in the Sovereigns parade (Tim Clarke/PA)

His role meant his family  more than 10 people who were reportedly eligible to leave  were in potential danger, but could not get past the airport crowds to board a plane to the UK.

But the duke tasked his equerry, Lieutenant Commander Rob Dixon, to make some calls on his behalf to help the Afghan officer and his family access the airport after he heard about his plight, the newspaper reported.

More than 8,000 former Afghan staff and their family members eligible under the Afghan relocations and assistance policy were among the 15,000-plus people evacuated by the UK since August 13.

But thousands of Afghans who helped British efforts in the nation and their relatives, as well as other vulnerable civilians, are feared to have been left behind.

After graduating from St Andrews University, William joined the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst as an officer cadet and was commissioned as an Army Officer in December 2006.

He later served with the RAF as a search and rescue helicopter pilot.

Kensington Palace declined to comment.
FILE - In this Jan. 6, 2021, file photo insurrections loyal to President Donald Trump rally at the U.S. Capitol in Washington. The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol is asking social media and telecommunications companies to preserve phone or computer records for hundreds of people who were potentially involved with planning to challenge, delay or interfere with the certification of President Joe Bidens victory. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File)

WASHINGTON (AP)  Far right extremist groups like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers are planning to attend a rally later this month at the U.S. Capitol that is designed to demand justice for the hundreds of people who have been charged in connection with Januarys insurrection, according to three people familiar with intelligence gathered by federal officials.

As a result, U.S. Capitol Police have been discussing in recent weeks whether the large perimeter fence that was erected outside the Capitol after Januarys riot will need to be put back up, the people said.

The officials have been discussing security plans that involve reconstructing the fence as well as another plan that does not involve a fence, the people said. They were not authorized to speak publicly and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

The planned Sept. 18 rally at the Capitol comes as a jittery Washington has seen a series of troubling one-off incidents  including, most recently, a man who parked a pickup truck near the Library of Congress and said he had a bomb and detonator. Among the most concerning events: A series of unexploded pipe bombs placed around the U.S. Capitol ahead of the Jan. 6 insurrection remain unexplained and no suspect has been charged.

On Capitol Hill, the politics around fencing in the iconic building and its grounds were extremely difficult for lawmakers after the Jan. 6 insurrection. Many said they disliked closing off access, even as they acknowledged the increased level of security it provided.

The decision on whether or not to erect the fence again will likely be considered by the Capitol Police Board, according to a House aide familiar with the matter and granted anonymity to discuss it. No decisions have been made. The board consists of the Sergeant at Arms of the U.S. House of Representatives, the Sergeant at Arms and Doorkeeper of the U.S. Senate, and the Architect of the Capitol.

The deadly riot overwhelmed the police force that was left badly prepared by intelligence failures and has resulted in internal reviews about why law enforcement agencies werent better equippped. More than 100 police officers were injured and the rioters did more than $1 million in damage.

The planned presence of the extremist groups is concerning because, while members and associates of Oath Keepers and Proud Boys make up just a fraction of the nearly 600 people who have been charged so far in the riot, they are facing some of the most serious charges brought so far.

Those charges include allegations that they conspired to block the certification of President Joe Bidens victory. Several Oath Keepers have pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges and are cooperating with investigators in the case against their fellow extremists, who authorities say came to Washington ready for violence and willing to do whatever it took to stop the certification of the Electoral College vote.

As officials prepare for this month's rally, Yogananda Pittman, the Capitol Police official who led intelligence operations for the agency when the rioters descended on the building, has been put back in charge of intelligence.

In a statement to the AP, Capitol Police Chief Tom Manger said the department was closely monitoring September 18 and we are planning accordingly.

After January 6, we made Department-wide changes to the way we gather and share intelligence internally and externally. I am confident the work we are doing now will make sure our officers have what they need to keep everyone safe, Manger said.

FILE - In this April 2, 2021, file photo, the U.S. Capitol is seen behind security fencing on Capitol Hill in Washington. Far right extremist groups like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers are planning to attend a rally in September at the U.S. Capitol that is designed to demand justice for the hundreds of people who have been charged in connection with Januarys insurrection, according to three people familiar with intelligence gathered by federal officials. As a result, U.S. Capitol Police have been discussing in recent weeks whether the large perimeter fence that was erected outside of the Capitol after Januarys riot will need to be put back up, the people said. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File)

Still, law enforcement officials are increasingly concerned about the rally and the potential for violence. The Metropolitan Police Department will activate its entire force for that day and has put specialized riot officers on standby, law enforcement officials said.

But for federal officials, the person who planted the pipe bombs also remains a serious concern. Many of the leads in the investigation have come up dry and investigators working on the case havent even been able to figure out whether the suspect is a man or a woman, people familiar with the case said.

The FBI has released grainy surveillance video of the person they believe left the bombs and have said the person wore a gray hooded sweatshirt and a face mask and had a backpack and distinct Nike Air Max Speed Turf sneakers in yellow, black and gray.

The FBI had asked Nike for information about the shoes and sought to analyze information from purchasers, according to law enforcement documents obtained by The Associated Press. Agents also looked into a tip that someone had placed an ad on Facebook Marketplace with someone selling nearly identical shoes, the documents said.

The bombs  each about a foot long with end caps and wiring that appeared to be attached to a timer  had contained components that were unique and specific enough that agents reached out to companies like Walmart and other vendors and asked to review information about recent purchases, the documents said.

The explosive devices were placed outside the headquarters of the Republican and Democratic national committees between 7:30 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. Jan. 5, the night before the riot. But they were not located by law enforcement until the next day, shortly before thousands of pro-Trump rioters stormed into the Capitol.

It is not clear whether that means the pipe bombs were unrelated to the next days riot or were part of the riot planning. Both buildings are within a few blocks of the Capitol.
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Everything shown in a section of private news channels bear a communal tone. Ultimately, this country is going to get a bad name

A bench headed by Chief Justice N V Ramana was hearing a batch of petitions including the one filed by Jamiat Ulema-i-Hind. (PTI)

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Thursday voiced serious concern over running of fake news on social media platforms and web portals, and said even news shown in a section of channels bears communal tone, which may bring a bad name to the country.

A bench headed by Chief Justice N V Ramana was hearing a batch of petitions including the one filed by Jamiat Ulema-i-Hind seeking directions to the Centre to stop dissemination of "fake news" related to a religious gathering at the Markaz Nizamuddin and take strict action against those responsible for it.

Everything shown in a section of private news channels bear a communal tone. Ultimately, this country is going to get a bad name. Did you ever attempt to regulate these private channels," asked the bench.

Social media only listens to the powerful voices and several things are written against judges, institutions without any accountability, said the bench which also comprised justices Surya Kant and A S Bopanna.

"There is no control over fake news and slandering in web portals and YouTube channels. If you go to YouTube, you will find how fake news is freely circulated and anyone can start a channel on YouTube," it said.

The top court agreed to hear after six weeks the Centre's plea seeking transfer of petitions from various high courts to itself on the issue of newly-enacted IT rules meant to regulate online content including social media and web portals.
The 70- year-old has sought to be transferred out of Taloja Central Prison, citing the lump in his chest

Mumbai: The Bombay High Court on Thursday issued notice to the NIA and Maharashtra government in a petition filed by Gautam Navlakha for keeping him under house arrest pending trial in the Bhima Koregaon-Elgar Parishad caste violence case. The 70- year-old has sought to be transferred out of Taloja Central Prison, citing the lump in his chest and great hardship owing to the alleged denial of basic medical and other necessities in the prison.

During hearing of the petition counsel Yug Mohit Chaudhry and advocate Payoshi Roy on behalf of Navalakha informed the division bench of Justice S.S. Shinde and Justice N.J. Jamadar that Navlakhas health is not in good condition and he had a lump in his chest. They requested that he be taken to a private hospital where his sister is a nurse.

However, there was no mention of shifting Navlakha to a private hospital and hence court adjourned the hearing.

On demand of shifting Navlakha to a private hospital Additional Solicitor General (ASG) Anil Singh, representing the National Investigation Agency (NIA) probing the case, pointed out to the court that there is no mention about moving Navlakha to a private hospital in the petition and added government hospitals are good.

ASG Singh also said that if at all the petitioner wants to go for a check-up, he can go to Tata Memorial Centre Advanced Centre for Treatment, Research and Education in Cancer.

The court also noted that shifting Navalakha to a private hospital was not mentioned in the petition and hence directed advocate Chaudhry to make an application for the same.

Advocate Chaudhry agreed for Navlakha to be taken to Tata Hospital and also to make changes in the petition.

The bench directed the NIA and the State to file their replies to the petition and adjourned the hearing to September 27. Before adjourning the matter the bench had also asked the respondents to inform the bench during the afternoon session if Navalakha could be taken to a private hospital or not.

In the afternoon, the Maharashtra Government through public prosecutor Sangeeta Shinde informed the bench that Navlakha would be taken to Tata Hospital at Kharghar on September 3.
The BJP was baying for the blood of law minister Pratap Jena, alleging he was the key conspirator in the Mahanga double murder case

The Congress, on the other hand, created a ruckus in the House demanding special commitments from the state government on a special relief package for drought-hit farmers.  odishaassembly.nic.in

Bhubaneswar: The second day of the Odisha Assemblys Monsoon Session witnessed uproarious scenes as the Opposition BJP and Congress MLAs set off a ruckus, resulting in repeated adjournments of the House.

The BJP was baying for the blood of law minister Pratap Jena, alleging he was the key conspirator in the Mahanga double murder case. The Congress, on the other hand, created a ruckus in the House demanding special commitments from the state government on a special relief package for drought-hit farmers.

Soon after the House assembled in the morning, the BJP and Congress members rushed to the Well and began shouting slogans. The BJP MLAs demanded the law ministers removal, saying his remaining in the state council of ministers was impacting the 2020 Mahanga double murder case. The Congress MLAs, expressing displeasure over Wednesdays reply by state agriculture minister Arun Kumar Sahoo in an adjournment motion on drought, demanded a special debate on the subject.

The name of law minister Pratap Jena has been mentioned in the first information report (FIR). The concerned court has directed (that the) minister be brought under the purview of the investigation. We demand his removal. We will continue to protest in the Assembly till our demands are met, said BJP leader Mohan Majhi, the Opposition chief whip, outside the House.

Congress MLA Santosh Singh Saluja told reporters: The revenue and disaster management minister should place his reply on the drought issue instead of the agriculture minister. We had on Wednesday staged a walkout expressing dissatisfaction over the reply of the agriculture minister.

On the other hand, government chief whip Pramila Mallick said the administration was ready for any kind of discussion on the issue of the farmers. Amid pandemonium, Speaker Surjya Narayan Patro initially adjourned the House till 11.30 am and later till 4 pm.
A CBI team interrogated the duo in jail recently after getting the courts permission and before submitting the chargesheet

The Mamata Banerjee government has, meanwhile, assigned 10 senior IPS officers to assist the special investigation team set up on the orders of the Calcutta high court on August 19 to probe the incidents of post-poll violence.  calcuttahighcourt.gov.in

Kolkata: The CBI on Thursday filed its first chargesheet in the post-poll violence in West Bengal. This was filed at Rampurhat court in Birbhum against two accused who have been remanded in the judicial custody after their arrest for the murder of a BJP worker, Manoj Jaiswal.

A CBI team interrogated the duo in jail recently after getting the courts permission and before submitting the chargesheet. Jaiswal, a Kolkata businessman, was found lying killed at Nalhati on May 12 after he was allegedly abducted by a group of Trinamul Congress workers.

The Mamata Banerjee government has, meanwhile, assigned 10 senior IPS officers to assist the special investigation team set up on the orders of the Calcutta high court on August 19 to probe the incidents of post-poll violence. This came a day after Justice Rajesh Bindal, acting chief justice, said he was aware that the SIT was yet to start work after one of the writ petitioners had complained of delays.

In an order on September 1, the state home department divided West Bengal into four zones and a headquarters for the SIT in line with the CBI, which has already launched its probe and filed 34 FIRs for heinous crimes like murder, gangrape and rape.

Each zone has two IPS officers who were drawn from the group of 10. At the headquarters wing, DIG (Railways) Soma Das Mitra and DC (Reserve Force) of Kolkata police Subhankar Bhattacharya have been deputed.

The North Zone has IG (North Bengal) D.P. Singh and DIG (Malda Range) Praveen Kumar Tripathi, while the South Zone has ADG (South Bengal) S.N. Gupta and DIG (Barasat Range) Prasun Banerjee.

In the West Zone, ADG (Western Zone) Sanjay Singh and IG (Burdwan Range) B.L. Meena have been deputed. The Kolkata Zone has additional police commissioner (III) Tanmay Roy Chaudhuri and joint commissioner (armed police) Nilanjan Biswas deputed there.
In his words: "I am just a professional writer, which means I don't do blogs and try and get money for whatever I write."

I am one of the 80 per cent of people in Britain who have had at least one anti-Covid vaccination

The only reason he could come up with was that Bully Bill would then get him to approve of being vaccinated. (AFP Photo)

On the outside of my right arm, a couple and three inches from my shoulder, are two now, faint but still-discernible horizontal scars, perhaps a centimetre wide. When I was but a happy lad, they were clearly discernible abrasion, the lower one resembling a vampires serrated lips.

As children, we all had these scars, except that two of my cousins had round ones. We used to compare the scars and I may even have enquired from an adult why these disfigurements had different shapes. The answer I got was that some doctors had knives and others had cylindrical vaccinating devices.

The scars originated from diligent parents and family doctors giving us infants preventive shots against the prevalent Indian diseases, such as smallpox.

I have since had, in my short and happy life, several other vaccinations --mostly when I travelled to continents in which there was some risk of catching something to which I couldnt possibly have natural immunity. Or perhaps the anti-tetanus stuff I was injected with was because I was fooling around with rusty instruments.

That being said, I think I was even once vaccinated against rabies, though I cant recall any plague of mad dogs in my travels.

None of these subsequent vaccines -- the ones delivered after infancy -- have left any physical mark, having been injected through sublime syringes. And so, gentle reader, with the two anti-Covid-19 jabs that the UKs National Health Service has generously given me gratis.

I am one of the 80 per cent of people in Britain who have had at least one anti-Covid vaccination. But thats the statistic for the whole of the UK. I live in London, and though the vaccine has been universally and conveniently available now for anyone above the age of 18, the take-up in the British capital has been tardy. The percentage of vaccinated people is much lower and statistical surveys demonstrate that the resistance to being vaccinated is significantly higher among the black and Asian communities. Since these constitute over 30 percent of Londons population, and since London has a high density of ethnic communities, the prevalence of Covid-19 infections, hospitalisation and deaths from the viral disease are considerably higher than in other parts of the UK.

There are all manner of reasons for people being against vaccination. All of them, in my opinion, are irrational, ludicrous and, most of all, acutely selfish. It becomes a matter of social concern as the rules on wearing face masks have been scrapped and become voluntary. Londons mayor, Sadiq Khan, has said masks are compulsory on Londons buses and the Tube, but thats akin to King Canute holding back the tides. The opening of pubs and public spaces allows the possibly infected carriers of this plague to freely associate with the vaccinated and the unvaccinated.

There is enough evidence now to indicate that the doubly vaccinated may catch the Covid-19 infection by travelling on the crowded Tube with a lot of voluntarily unmasked passengers or being in crowded venues, but the symptoms will be mild and will not, in the absence of other severe bodily complications, lead to any fatalities. Its the unvaccinated who are most at risk.

Their choice to be, but not their right to infect others.

Why the resistance?

Cranky and conspiracy theories, religious injunctions and downright stupidity abound.

Let me count the ways: A mullah in the north tells his congregation that vaccines are not necessary as he knows of a divine protection through the recitation of particular formulated verses. I must add that this is not a universal Muslim belief in the country, and very many mosques have voluntarily and magnanimously turned themselves into vaccination centres and encouraged and welcomed all comers.

I have no idea whether the cranky contention that Bill Gates has infested all anti-Covid vaccines with microchips that enter the body so that Mr Gates can control your thoughts and actions is something peculiar to Britain and the United States or whether it has reached Indias sunny clime.

Ive bothered to ask one individual, a carpet cleaner by profession, who was convinced that Bill Gates was up to this universal trick, why Mr Windows would want to control him. The only reason he could come up with was that Bully Bill would then get him to approve of being vaccinated. Engagement with paradox was not this gentlemans forte.

The best anti-vaxxer justification came from a lady who said she was a vegan and since the vaccines contained living organisms, she couldnt import them into her body. Her caution or caveat reminded of me of the Jains who wore masks so as not to breathe in living creatures. Their belief was born before science revealed to all humankind that trillions of bacteria live and die in each living creatures guts and that, masks or no masks, we breathe in all manner of species that can share our conceit of being labelled living beings.

The Covid-19 virus is just one of these and the vegan lady may, through resisting the living matter (mRNA, to give it its proper biological name) in the vaccine, invite the real thing to invade her already bacteria-infested, impure guts and lungs.
As per The Verge, the four-by-four 12.5-megapixel feature is intended for low-light usage

The Verge informed that the 'ISOCELL HP1' has 0.64 micrometres pixels and can bin 16 of them at once for the equivalent of a 12.5-megapixel sensor. (Photo: AFP/File)

Seoul: The tech giant company- Samsung has announced the world's first 200-megapixel image sensor intended for smartphone cameras.

The Verge informed that the 'ISOCELL HP1' has 0.64 micrometres pixels and can bin 16 of them at once for the equivalent of a 12.5-megapixel sensor with 2.56 micrometres pixels.

Samsung has named the HP1's pixel-binning technology "ChameleonCell."

As per The Verge, the four-by-four 12.5-megapixel feature is intended for low-light usage, but it can also capture full 200-megapixel resolution photos, or use a two-by-two binning technique for 50-megapixel images. The two-by-two binning mode also lets the HP1 capture 8K video.

Although standard 8K (7,680 x 4,320) is less than 50 megapixels, the tech- giant company informed that the new sensor can shoot up to 8K without cropping.

Samsung is also introducing a new sensor called the 'ISOCELL GN5'. As per The Verge, it is a 50-megapixel sensor with 1.0 micrometres pixels, and it is reportedly the first 1.0 micrometres pixel sensor to integrate its Dual Pixel Pro technology.

There has been no word yet on whether the new sensor will be going into mass production, but as per The Verge the samples are currently available for phone manufacturers.
Candace Owens uses a gesture to signify an air quote as she says the word pandemic in an Instagram video she posted Tuesday, in which she describes the context and her experience surrounding being declined an appointment to get a COVID-19 test in Aspen.
Nelsonville woman who crashed into Arts West building gets four years in prison
Recreational marijuana in Ohio? State gives OK for petitioners to gather 133K signatures
Graveside services for Teresa May Dickson, 60, of Flint, Texas, were held on Friday, September 10, 2021 at 2 p.m. at Rose Lawn Cemetery in Tyler with Rev. Kim Beckham officiating under the direction of Stewart Family Funeral Home. Teresa went to be with her Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ on S
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Just as we suspected from the spy images and official teaser, the Jogger is a crossover styled, with utilitarian yet modern looks. It measures just over 14.7 feet (4.5 meters) in length, making it the longest Dacia model currently on sale. Speaking of utilitarian, the Jogger comes with 7.87 inches (200 mm) of ground clearance, which comes in handy whenever you run across a badly surfaced road or various obstacles.The styling meanwhile features Dacias signature Y-shaped LED daytime running lights , a wide grille, Volvo-like vertical rear lights, alloy wheels and modular roof rails (176 lbs carried capacity) which use a patented system that can fit anything from skis to mountain bikes. At launch, Dacia will release a limited edition Extreme specification with even more pronounced off-road styling.The Jogger Extreme will be offered in the following five body colors: Pearl Black, Slate Grey, Moonstone Grey, Glacier White and Terracotta Brown. It will also get black roof rails, black door mirrors, black shark-fin antenna and black alloys, to go with the contrasting Megalith Grey front and rear skid plates, protective door strips and Extreme badging.Moving on to the interior, Dacia claims the Jogger offers unrivaled space for a family of seven (although you can also get it as a five-seater), using three rows of seats. There are over 60 possible configurations for the split-folding seats and up to 64.2 cu.ft (1,819 liters) of cargo space.Each row of seats has its own roof light, while even third row passengers get to have their own armrests. Then theres the storage space  in total 0.84 cu.ft (24 liters).In terms of multimedia and infotainment systems, the Jogger offers a choice of three units. The first is dubbed Media Control and it revolves around a smartphone docking station integrated into the dash design. Next up is the Media Display which upgrades your sound system capabilities with four speakers and an 8-inch touchscreen display mounted high on the dashboard and angled towards the driver. This system boasts Bluetooth connectivity and is compatible with both Android Auto and Apple CarPlay.Last but certainly not least is the Media Nav system, which adds Wi-Fi connectivity for Android and Apple users, a full in-car navigation function and an upgraded sound system with six speakers and two USB ports.Safety-wise, all Jogger models come with Emergency Brake Assist, Blind Spot Warning, Park Assist and Hill Start Assist, while cruise control is only available on selected grades. Other options include heated front seats, climate control system with a digital display, hands-free key card with remote trunk unlocking, automatic wipers and an electric parking brake.Now, lets talk about power units. First, the all-new TCe 110 engine which is a turbocharged 1.0-liter three-cylinder mill good for 110 hp and 147 lb-ft (200 Nm) of torque. Your other option, at least for the time being, is the TCe100 Bi-Fuel engine, featuring a 10.5-gallon (40-liter) LPG tank and a 13.2-gallon (50-liter) gasoline tank for a maximum range of 621 miles (1,000 km) as perstandards.Heres where things get even more interesting though. Come 2023, the Jogger will become Dacias first ever car to feature hybrid technology, thanks to a 1.6-liter gasoline engine, two electric motors and a multi-mode automatic gearbox working alongside a 1.2230V battery. Together, they allow for full electric start and electric-only driving. The Romanian carmaker claims that with the help of regenerative braking, the Jogger Hybrid will be able to spend 80 percent of its time on city roads in full-electric mode thereby saving up to 40 percent on fuel compared to an equivalent gasoline-only model.Expect to see the Jogger in dealerships across Europe in February of next year, as well as on display during next week's IAA Mobility 2021 event in Munich.
The U.S. Air Force 85th Test and Evaluation Squadron worked together with the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) to equip the F-15E Strike Eagle with upgraded 2,000-pound (907 kg) GBU-31 Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAM).The JDAM is not a stand-alone weapon but a guidance kit that turns unguided gravity bombs into precision-guided weapons. It mainly consists of a tail section with aerodynamic control surfaces, a (body) strake kit, and a combined inertial guidance system and GPS guidance control unit.On August 26th, three fighter jets from the 85th Test and Evaluation Squadron participated in the QUICKSINK Joint Capability Technology Demonstration. Teaming up with the AFRL, the F-15E crews "successfully demonstrated new tactics, techniques, and procedures" for engaging modified 2,000-pound (907 kg) GBU-31 JDAM on both moving and static maritime targets.Last year, a B-52H bomber from the 49th TES dropped JDAMs in order to assess the viability of specific marine impact scenarios. The recent exercise builds on the previous test, focusing on a new method of using air-delivered weapons on ships that will change the maritime target lethality approach."For any large moving ship, the Air Force's primary weapon is the 2,000-pound laser-guided GBU-24," said Maj. Andrew Swanson, 85th TES F-15E weapons system officer. "Not only is this weapon less than ideal, but it also reduces our survivability based on how it must be employed. This munition can change all of that." Navy submarine is capable of launching and destroy a ship with a single torpedo at any time, but doing so discloses the vessel's location. The goal of the QUICKSINK JCTD is to develop a low-cost method of achieving torpedo-like seaworthy kills from the air.
Born like all others of its kind agile and ready to blast through city streets, the 750 was altered by a Japanese shop called Bad Land. And by altered, we mean drastically so, as this thing, now called Akira, looks nothing like the stock two-wheeler Harley made back in 2017.There are two major things that catch the eye as soon as the bike comes into view. In a random order, they are the gold Ohlins front fork, and the solid-design wheels made by Rick's MotorCycles, sized 19 inches front and 18 inches rear and wrapped in Avon Cobra tires.Combine these game-changing elements fitted on the build with things like a custom front fender, custom headlight, and the unique-looking exhaust system (all of Bad Land make), and youve got yourself a motorcycle like no other in the Harley custom world.Bad Land may have contributed a lot of parts for this build (full list of extras here ), but other big names of the industry were involved to some degree or another as well. The front brake caliper is a Brembo, Performance Machines supplied the control kit, and Kens Factory was responsible for things like the mirrors and LED lights.The stock engine of the Street does not seem to be modified, except for the addition of the new exhaust system and air cleaner.The Akira was shown for the first time back in 2018, but we are not being told how much it cost to put together like this.
The downfall became all the more apparent after Fiat Chrysler Automobiles decided to sell Chryslers under the blue shield logo, a move thats been widely criticized by European customers. The final nail in the coffin was the discontinuation of the Bravo-based Delta, leaving the Panda-based Ypsilon alone in the lineup. Adding insult to injury, the premium-oriented city car that feels like a 2000s econobox inside is sold exclusively in Italy.Under the Stellantis cross-border merger between Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and Groupe PSA, the storied automaker has been given a 10-year grace period to become relevant again. Head honcho Carlos Tavares gave this helping hand to Chrysler and Alfa Romeo as well, but only time will tell if those in charge of these brands will see the plan come to fruition.As far as Lancia is concerned, there is no mistaking that a brand-new Delta is duly needed. Imagined by pixel artist Kleber Silva with a full-width light bar up front and a full-width light bar connecting the rear clusters, the design study before your eyes further boasts a high-tech cockpit with a minimalist design for the center console, dashboard, air vents, and interior door panels.Obviously based on the L-generation Opel Astra - itself based on the Peugeot 308 - the speculative rendering is vanilla from the standpoint of exterior styling. More to the point, I would mistake this car for a lowly Opel instead of a really-bred hatch if I were to see one while commuting to work. Non-car people wouldnt even pay attention to these details, which makes the commercial viability of the Opel Astra-based Delta even more delicate.According to fresh reports from Italy, the lance-badged automaker is allegedly developing a trio of models that will be unveiled between 2024 and 2027. These may be an urban dweller, a compact hatchback, and a compact crossover, and their designs will be handles by Jean-Pierre Ploue.Although the crossover utility vehicle has the most chances of bringing the Italian marque back to profitability, I have to admit that Ploue is the right man for the job. Why, you might ask? As it happens, hes the guy responsible for the quirky-but-pretty Citroen C6 as well as the DS3. His portfolio also includes the first-gen Renault Twingo, second-gen Clio, and first Megane.
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Measuring just 9.4 ft (2,894 mm) in length, 5.4 ft (1,655 mm) in width, 5.2 ft (1,595 mm) in height, and with a 6.6-ft (2,020 mm) wheelbase, the new Baojun is presented as a trendy four-seater aiming to appeal to younger customers.The electric minicar is based on the Baojun E300 Plus, sharing that same bizarre design that isnt necessarily eye-catching, although SAIC-GM-Wulings insists that the car has a futuristic-looking, two-tone avant-garde split body styling to it.Setting aside the odd suspended cab design, the EV is available in six exterior colors meant to please a wide range of tastes: Rouge, Sable, Emerald, Azure, Cream, and Mint. Regardless of the color you opt for, combinations of three body tones are used with contrasting accents on the roof, grille, mirrors, trim, and wheels.But even though the KiWimay not make the best first impression based on its looks alone, at least it proves to be reliable enough once you get behind the wheel. It also packs in some nice, hi-tech features under the hood. The new Baojun minicar also boasts of delivering comfortable rides, with its McPherson independent suspension and double wishbone independent suspension design.The rear axle-mounted motor of the KiWi EV generates 40kW of maximum power and 150 Nm of maximum torque. It has a top speed of 62 mph (100 kph), but then again, the KiWi was designed to be rather trendy and useful, not a speedster.Range-wise, the car offers up to 190 miles (305 km) on a charge. Thanks to its DC fast charging feature, you can fully recharge the battery in one hour.Baojuns latest telematics comes with AI (artificial intelligence) voice interaction, voice-controlled WeChat function, and real-time navigation.There are two trim levels available with the Baojun KiWi EV. The Designer variant is priced at approximately $10,800 (69,800 CNY), while the Artist trim goes for around $12,200 (78,800 CNY).
The stunning piece of Americana was a five-passenger, two-door bit of ostentatious messaging, and it represented Detroits luxury cars at their 1930s peak. For 1939 the Packard Model 1707 Victoria sent a message that the owner was a man or woman of means intent on showing off their taste for class and luxury.The 473 ci cast-iron V12 engine produced 175 hp, was fed by a dual Bendix Stromberg downdraft carburetor, featured a three-speed, column-mounted manual transmission with Synchromesh. It also boasted innovative and relatively rare suspension bits such as front longitudinal arms and coil springs, a semi-floating rear axle and four-wheel Lockheed hydraulic drum brakes.When first on offer, the Victoria convertible finished in gleaming silver sold at a startling (for the time) $5,230 USD. At that point in America, a loaf of bread cost just nine cents and a gallon of gas went for just 10 cents.So this magnificent vehicle was not for the masses. These cars were fitted with a burled walnut dash, offered a push-button radio and a luggage rack which included a leather traveling case.These sedans were meant to be exclusive, and nearly all of them were made to order. To convince Packard to build you one, it was necessary to plunk down a sizeable deposit with a dealer. But for your money, you would receive a look into the future with features such as those four-wheel hydraulic brakes to bring the yacht-sized beast to a halt.But it was the interior of these cars that assured you of your success. This one is decked out in a fabulous trim of red leather and displays a sublime Art Deco dashboard with elegant trim work set in the burled walnut. These cars were so amazing that the steering wheel stands alone as a work of art.Packard built just 20 of these museum pieces, and the one shown here is number 15 of that run.All the Packards offered a level of style, materials and craftsmanship that the best of the prewar era could offer, and this Twelve marks the final moments of what would prove to be a watershed moment in automotive history.You can bid on this beautiful 1939 Packard Twelve 1707 Victoria Convertible during the weekend auction at the Worldwide Auctioneers event being held today in Auburn, Indiana.
This will be VSS Unity 's first commercial trip, with three paying crew members from the Italian Air Force and the National Research Council. The mission's purpose is to assess the effects of the transitional phase from gravity to microgravity on the human body.Other payloads onboard will investigate the influence of microgravity on a variety of chemical and physical attributes. The mission's goal is to gain insight into current and future spaceflight systems and technologies by testing and evaluating different responses in sub-orbital flights.The company says that it plans to have its first commercial flight in late September or early October, but we have yet to see it actually happen. Currently, the FAA is investigating Virgin Galactic's July 11th crewed flight.The flight to the edge of space seemed to have gone accordingly. The crew, together with billionaire Richard Branson, have reached an altitude of 50 miles (80 km) and, after a few minutes in zero-G, they all returned back to Earth safely.However, a report from the New Yorker released on Wednesday, September 1st, has uncovered that the "SpaceShipTwo deviated from its Air Traffic Control clearance as it returned to Spaceport America."In a statement to Reuters , FAA concluded the next day that "Virgin Galactic may not return the SpaceShipTwo vehicle to flight until the FAA approves the final mishap investigation report or determines the issues related to the mishap do not affect public safety."So, until further notice, we'll just have to wait and see how things will progress with Richard Branson's commercial flights.
Theres a law on the books in Idaho that for years has been interpreted to allow a retailer licensed in another state to ship wine directly to consumers in Idaho, if the other state allows Idaho residents to receive wine from that state without payment of additional state tax. This suggests Idaho is whats known as a reciprocal state for wine retailers.

However, in a request for validation of this rule, Idaho Alcohol Beverage Control Bureau (ABC) representatives state that Idaho has no reciprocity agreements with other states at this time. As a result, out-of-state retailers may not be allowed to sell wine directly to consumers in Idaho after all.

A reciprocity law seems to still be on the books in Idaho, though we now know it isnt interpreted that way. Idaho recently stated that its reciprocity agreements mostly expired in 2006, when 23-1309 was amended to allow out-of-state manufacturers (wineries) to ship directly to consumers in Idaho.

A bit of background: Idaho 23-1309A, created in 1992, allowed a business with a license for the retail sale of wine for consumption off premises to ship not more than two cases per shipment for personal use directly to a resident of another state if the state to which the wine is sent allows residents of Idaho to receive wine sent from that state without payment of additional state tax, fees, or charges. Such a sale is considered to occur in Idaho. (See Ch. 236, Sec 1 in the 1992 Session Laws.)

When 23-1309A was amended in 2006 to change winery shipping to a permit system, the retail shipping language described above was left the same. Although this doesnt mean there are reciprocal arrangements in place, amended 23-1309A(7) doesnt clearly state that out-of-state retailers cannot ship to consumers in the state. The actual language is a bit confusing: A licensee who holds a license for the retail sale of wine for consumption off the licensed premises may ship not more than two (2) cases of wine, containing not more than nine (9) liters per case, per shipment, for personal use and not for resale, directly to a resident of another state if the state to which the wine is sent allows residents of this state to receive wine sent from that state without payment of additional state tax, fees or charges (emphasis mine).

The Idaho ABC maintains that subsection (7) does not speak to nor permit out-of-state retailers to direct ship to consumers in Idaho. Therefore, according to the Idaho ABC, only wine manufacturers can ship to consumers (with a license), and out-of-state retailers may not ship into Idaho from any other state.

Learn more about the three-tier system and other issues facing direct-to-consumer shippers.
The Armenian Defense Ministry said on Friday that the team of Russian military specialists led by Major-General Valery Zhila has arrived in Yerevan for further negotiations with Armenian military officials.

A statement released by the ministry said Zhila briefed Armenian Defense Minister Arshak Karapetian on the directions and volume of upcoming work at a meeting held on Thursday. Karapetian specified, for its part, the scope of issues of utmost importance to the Armenian side, the statement said without elaborating.

Armenia moved to deepen its already close military ties with Russia shortly after the six-week war in Nagorno-Karabakh stopped by a Russian-brokered ceasefire last November.

Moscow has since deployed troops in Armenias Syunik province bordering districts southwest of Karabakh retaken by Azerbaijan during and after the hostilities. Yerevan requested additional Russian troop deployments along the Armenian-Azerbaijani border in May.

The Russian and Armenian militaries held at least two rounds of staff negotiations in the first half of this year. Karapetians predecessor Vagharshak Harutiunian said in January that they are aimed at assisting us in the reform and modernization of Armenias armed forces.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu reportedly assured Karapetian on August 11 that Moscow will continue to provide such assistance. Shoigu also signaled the start of more Russian arms supplies to the Armenian army.

Karapetian again visited Moscow two weeks later to attend the opening ceremony of an international arms exhibition and meet with top Russian defense industry executives. He said Armenia plans to buy modern Russian weapons but did not go into details.

I can say that I havent heard a single word no here, the Armenian defense minister told reporters in the Russian capital.

Dmitry Shugayev, director of the Russian Federal Service for Military-Technical Cooperation, listed Armenia among several countries with which Russia signed defense contracts on the sidelines of the Army-2021 Expo.

Earlier this week the TASS news agency quoted a senior military official in Moscow as saying that Russia and Armenia are now discussing a new agreement on a joint air-defense system.

The two states already have such a system that includes elements of a Russian military base stationed in Armenia. It was set up in the late 1990s and upgraded by a Russian-Armenian treaty signed in 2015.
Now that the groundwork has been laid for a political process and the unblocking of all [Armenian-Azerbaijani] transport and economic links after the end of the war there I think that it would be totally logical if our Turkish and Armenian colleagues resumed their efforts to normalize relations, Lavrov said during a youth forum in Moscow.

We are ready to assist in that in the most active way, he said, echoing a statement made by a Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman on Thursday.

Turkey has for decades made the establishment of diplomatic relations and opening of the border between the two countries conditional on a resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict acceptable to Azerbaijan. Baku claims that its victory in the six-week war stopped by a Russian-brokered ceasefire last November put an end to the conflict.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian spoke on August 27 of some positive signals sent by the Turkish government of late and said his administration is ready to reciprocate them.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan responded by saying that Ankara is open to normalizing ties with Yerevan. But he appeared to echo Bakus demands for a formal Armenian recognition of Azerbaijani sovereignty over Nagorno-Karabakh.

A senior Armenian pro-government lawmaker said earlier this week that Pashinians administration will not accept any Turkish preconditions.

Armenia and Turkey came close to normalizing bilateral relations in 2009 when their foreign ministers signed two relevant protocols in Zurich, Switzerland in the presence of Lavrov and the top U.S. and European Union diplomats.

Ankara subsequently linked their ratification by the Turkish parliament to a Karabakh settlement. As a result, Armenias former government formally annulled the protocols in 2018.

Lavrov revealed on Friday that during the 2008-2009 Turkish-Armenian rapprochement he warned then Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian that the Turks will not drop their preconditions.
Armenias Ararat Mirzoyan phoned his Iranian counterpart Hossein Amir Abdollahian late on Wednesday one week after Irans parliament confirmed the latter as foreign minister.

According to the Iranian Foreign Ministry, Amir Abdollahian told Mirzoyan that Tehran is ready to deepen relations with Yerevan.

Irans new President Ebrahim Raisi pledged to strive for closer Armenian-Iranian ties when he met with Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian in Tehran on August 5. Pashinian was among foreign leaders who travelled to the Iranian capital to attend Raisis inauguration.

In a statement, the Armenian Foreign Ministry said Mirzoyan and Amir Abdollahian had a detailed discussion on productive cooperation between their states.

Prospects for expanding cooperation in the economic sphere were especially emphasized, it said.

Regional security and ongoing Armenian-Azerbaijani border disputes were also on the agenda, according to the statement, with Mirzoyan bringing up the recent illegal infiltration of Azerbaijans armed forces into the sovereign territory of Armenia.

The Iranian foreign minister said all countries should respect internationally recognized borders, said the official Iranian readout of the phone call. He underlined the need for finding a peaceful solution to disputes between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Azerbaijani troops briefly blocked last week a section of the main highway connecting Armenia to Iran which runs along a disputed portion of the Armenian-Azerbaijani border.

The Iranian Embassy in Yerevan expressed concern over the two-day blockage which disrupted cargo traffic between Armenia and Iran. It expressed hope that the Armenian government will speed up work on alternative routes for Iranian-Armenian trade.

Amir Abdollahian, 57, is an anti-Western hardliner believed to have close ties with Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards. He was a deputy foreign minister between 2011 and 2016 and served until recently as a senior adviser to Irans parliament speakers.

In March 2020, Amir Abdollahian criticized the Armenian governments decision to open an embassy in Israel, saying that it will have a negative impact on stability and security in the region.

Yerevan recalled the Armenian ambassador in Tel Aviv just days after outbreak of the war in Nagorno-Karabakh on September 27, 2020 in protest against Israel's continuing arms supplies to Azerbaijan.
PHOENIX (3TV/CBS 5) - The Arizona man who is known as the "QAnon Shaman" entered his guilty plea to one charge in connection to the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. Jacob Chansley had a change of plea hearing in federal court on Friday morning after his attorney announced he had made a plea deal.

On Friday, prosecutors announced that his sentencing guidelines suggest 41 to 51 months in prison, based on his guilty plea to the charge of obstruction of an official proceeding. Prosecutors will count the eight months Chansley has served behind bars.

Chansley was hit with six federal criminal charges, including civil disorder and entering a restricted building. He faces decades behind bars. He became one of the more recognizable suspects among the hundreds of people arrested in connection to the riot because he wore face paint and a horned, furry hat at the Capitol. Photos and video showed him walking around with a spear that had an American flag on it. His lawyer argued it was a flagpole but a federal judge determined it was a dangerous weapon.

'QAnon shaman' must remain in jail, judge rules A federal judge ruled Monday that the so-called "QAnon shaman" who was charged in the Capito

The FBI said it easily tracked down Chansley after the unrest due to his distinctive tattoos on his arms and chest. He was arrested just days after the riot and has been in jail ever since. Chansley gained headlines when he went on a hunger strike because he would only eat organic food because of his Shaman faith. A federal judge ruled in his favor in February.

Chansley, who went to Moon Valley High School, has worn the same outfit at several "Stop the Steal" protests in Arizona, including one on the day after the November election. He previously said that he only went inside the Capitol because former President Donald Trump invited him and called former Vice President Mike Pence a traitor.

Chansley's sentencing is set for an in-person hearing on November 17 at 10 a.m.
A mother says her family can hardly grieve the loss of her murdered 16-year-old son because the accused killer is tormenting them.
PHOENIX (AP)  Abortion opponents in Arizona are carefully mulling a U.S. Supreme Court decision that allows a Texas law banning abortion after a heartbeat can be detected  though they aren't ready to say whether they would try to pass a similar law here.

The high court late Wednesday refused to block the new Texas law from taking effect, but it did not rule on its constitutionality. The law directly conflicts with Roe. v. Wade, the landmark 1973 case in which the court ruled women have a constitutional right to a pre-viability abortion. A heartbeat can be detected as early as 6 weeks into a pregnancy, before many women know they are pregnant and many weeks before the fetus is viable.

A spokesman for Republican Gov. Doug Ducey, an abortion opponent who has signed every bill restricting abortion that has reached his desk in his seven years in office, said Thursday that it was too early to comment on the ruling or whether he would seek similar legislation.

But you know where this governor stands on this issue, Ducey spokesman C.J. Karamargin said.

Republican Senate President Karen Fann said she had not yet studied the issue but reiterated her stance on abortion.

What I can tell you is Im a pro-life person, Fann said. And I do not think abortion should be a form of birth control. We have so many ways to prevent pregnancies these days, and so just everybody running out to get an abortion whenever they just think they want to get rid of an unborn child, I dont think thats acceptable.

EXPLAINER: What to know about the new Texas abortion law The Supreme Court allowing a new Texas law that bans most abortions is the biggest curb to the constitutional right to an abortion in decades, and Republicans in other states are already considering similar measures.

The GOP-controlled Arizona Legislature enacts additional abortion restrictions almost each year, and this year is in court defending a new law that bars abortions for genetic abnormalities like Down syndrome. A provision in the law conferring personhood on a fetus is also being challenged in a federal lawsuit filed by the Center for Reproductive Rights and the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of two doctors who perform abortions, the National Council of Jewish Women, the National Organization for Women and the Arizona Medical Association.

The law is set to take effect Sept. 29 unless it is blocked by the courts. A hearing is set for Sept. 22.

Cathi Herrod, who leads a group that pushes anti-abortion laws in Arizona, said the courts action on the new Arizona law, the Supreme Courts decision on a Mississippi law banning abortions after 15 weeks it will hear this fall and developments in the Texas case will determine her group's next steps. The high courts new 6-3 conservative majority signaled its openness to reconsidering Roe v. Wade ruling when it agreed to hear the Mississippi case, and its refusal to block the new Texas law made it even more clear.

Theres a lot of activity in the courts on the life issue, said Herrod, president of the Center for Arizona Policy. We applaud the U.S. Supreme Court decision on the Texas heartbeat law, it was the right decision. Its a novel approach to enforcing pro-life laws. Well take a serious look at that approach.

Divided Supreme Court leaves Texas abortion law in place A deeply divided Supreme Court is allowing a Texas law that bans most abortions to remain in force, stripping most women of the right to an abortion in the nations second-largest state.

The Texas heartbeat law survived, at least initially, because although it bans abortion after about 6 weeks it is not enforced by the state. Instead, the law allows individuals to bring civil court lawsuits against abortion providers or anyone who helps someone get an abortion. It allows awards of at least $10,000. Abortion providers say the legal jeopardy is untenable, and they will stop providing abortion care.

Democratic Arizona Rep. Athena Salman called the high courts decision a dark day for pregnant women in Texas and across the nation.

The draconian Texas abortion ban is straight out of a totalitarian nightmare where the government pays vigilantes to inform on any woman," she said in a statement. The Republican partys contempt for women has never been clearer."

Democrat Katie Hobbs, Arizona Secretary of State and a 2022 candidate for governor, blasted the high court ruling and said candidates need to show where they stand.

"This decision is a clear infringement on our reproductive and constitutional rights and paves the way to overturn a decades-long decision, Hobbs said.

But Kari Lake, a Republican candidate for governor, tweeted her support.

I would sign this bill in a heartbeat, Lake wrote.
Drake is never shy about his love for all things Houston. He once again shined a light on one of his favorite cities by putting a song called "TSU" on his new Certified Lover Boy album, which dropped Friday.

The song is about an exotic dancer trying to get out of the stripping game to start her own business.

The track starts out about as Houston as it can get with H-Town legend OG Ron C shouting out communities all over the area in his own chopped and screwed way. OG Ron C helped start the Swishahouse label with Michael "5,000" Watts back in 1995 and currently works as a producer for Drake's OVO Sound.

Here's how OG Ron C kicks things off on the song:

"Whats up, ladies?

Swishahouse, baby;

Whats up to all the ladies on the northside, southside, eastside and westside?

Whats up in Bay City?

Whats up to all the ladies in Louisiana?

Whats up to all the ladies in Dallas, Austin, San Antonio?

Marshall, Prairie View, its going down;

Wharton County, Texas City, H-Town, baby;

TSU ladies."

Thaddaeus McAdams/Getty Images

Drake's fans actually already were familiar with the song, because it leaked last year under the title "Not Around," but they were glad to see it included on the new album.

There's plenty of other Houston love on the album with Missouri City's Travis Scott included on the song "Fair Trade."

Houston also gets a shout out on the song "N 2 Deep" when Drake says: "Kept the Galleria open 'til 10 for you and your friends;

You know how I spend in H-O-U-S-T-O-N."
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Joe Rogan, the mega-popular podcaster who has questioned the necessity of the COVID vaccine on his show, revealed to his fans that he was sick from coronavirus and has to postpone a live show. Rogan took to Instagram on Sept. 1 to share a message titled I GOT COVID. My apologies, but we have to move the Nashville show to Sunday, October 24.

Much love to you all.

Along with the announcement was a video, where the comedian said that he was feeling very weary, I had a headache, and I just felt just run down after a string of tour dates in Florida. He quarantined from his family, tested positive for COVID, and then threw the kitchen sink at it, all kinds of meds. He then proceeded to list said medicine: Monoclonal antibodies, ivermectin, Z-Pak, prednisone, everything. I also got an NAD drip and a vitamin drip and I did that three days in a row. Here we are on Wednesday, and I feel great.

Ivermectin, one of the drugs Rogan listed, is not recommended as a treatment of COVID. In fact, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has a page on their website titled Why You Should Not Use Ivermectin to Treat or Prevent COVID-19.

Watch the video below:

In April, Rogan was criticized for comments he made on his Joe Rogan Experience podcast when he said, Im not an anti-vax person. In fact, I said I believe theyre safe and I encourage many people to take em. I just said, I dont think that if youre a young, healthy person, that you need it.

He later walked back the statement, saying, Im not a doctor, Im a fucking moron, and Im a cage-fighting commentator whos a dirty stand-up comedian Im not a respected source of information  even for me.

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Mikis Theodorakis, the celebrated Greek composer of Zorba the Greek, Z and Serpico and among the most politically active of all 20th-century composers, died Thursday at his home in Athens. He was 96.

His official website listed the cause of death as cardiopulmonary arrest. Today we lost a part of Greeces soul, Greeces cultural minister, Lina Mendoni, said on Twitter. Mikis Theodorakis, Mikis the teacher, the intellectual, the radical, our Mikis, has gone.

Greek president Katerina Sakellaropoulou called him a pan-Hellenic personality a universal artist, an invaluable asset of our musical culture, and Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis announced three days of national mourning.

Theodorakis colorful score for the 1964 Zorba the Greek, starring Anthony Quinn and Alan Bates, was an international hit (its soundtrack album reached the top 30 of Billboards album charts) with its infectious Zorbas Dance and its unusual bouzouki sounds. It was nominated for a Grammy and a Golden Globe. The dance became known as sirtaki and Zorbas Dance was covered numerous times, including by Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass.

As director Michael Cacoyannis said at the time, Theodorakis succeeded in creating music of such inner excitement and stirring rhythms as to match the glorious defiance of Zorbas spirit. They did five other films together, including adaptations of classic literature (Electra in 1962, The Trojan Women in 1971, Iphigenia in 1977), a contemporary comedy (The Day the Fish Came Out, 1977) and a Biblical story for television (The Story of Jacob and Joseph, 1974).

Theodorakis political activities inspired later film-music masterpieces. He was elected three times to the Greek Parliament, first as a left-wing deputy in 1964, and his outspoken nature resulted in his music being banned by the military junta that took power in 1967. He was jailed, then interned in a concentration camp, and  after international pressure by fellow artists including Leonard Bernstein, Arthur Miller and Harry Belafonte  exiled in 1970.

The Greek-French film director Costa-Gavras insisted on his music for Z, the 1969 political thriller loosely based on the 1963 assassination of Greek anti-war activist Grigoris Lambrakis. Theodorakis wrote a compelling score in secret, the music smuggled out and recorded in Paris; it won the BAFTA as the years best score in 1970.

Costa-Gavras reunited with Theodorakis for another political thriller, 1972s State of Siege, about terrorist kidnappings in South America; the composers use of traditional Latin American folk instruments resulted in one of his most evocative scores. And in 1973, Theodorakis wrote the music for Sidney Lumets Serpico, about corruption in the New York City police department. Both scores were BAFTA nominated; Serpico, with arrangements by American jazz artist Bob James, also earned a Grammy nomination.

After the overthrow of the Greek military regime, Theodorakis returned to Greece in 1974, continuing both his musical career and his political activities. He was re-elected to the Greek Parliament in 1981 (as a Communist) and 1989 (as a Democrat), and in the 1990s he became general music director of Hellenic Radio and Television orchestras. And while he continued to score the occasional European film, most of his music was in the classical realm including several symphonies, operas and song cycles.

He was born in Chios, a Greek island in the Aegean Sea, in 1925. He studied music at the Athens Conservatory during the 1940s and later on a state scholarship in Paris during the early 1950s. His early works, including a piano concerto, a symphony, and four ballets, written during the late 1950s, received international acclaim (including a gold medal at the 1957 Moscow Music Festival).

Theodorakis other scores for notable directors included Ill Met by Moonlight, for British filmmakers Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger in 1957; Phaedra for Jules Dassin in 1962; and Five Miles to Midnight for Anatole Litvak in 1962.

Survivors include his wife Myrto Altinoglou, daughter Margarita Theodoraki and son George Theodorakis.

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Before this weekend, I had been to Fredericksburg only once. In 2019, my mom and aunt were in town from the East Coast and wanted to experience something quintessentially Texas. I drove us out in their rental car and we spent a few hours walking down Main Street. We had lunch at the Fredericksburg Brewery and bought little dog hats at Dogologie and then drove home.

As we pulled back into Austin I turned to my aunt, and asked, What did you think of the Hill Country? I didnt expect it to be so hilly, she replied.

Katie Friel/MySA

Day one

This past weekend, I returned to the Hill Country hamlet to spend three blissful days drinking wine, eating schnitzel, and walking through cemeteries. Inspired by this recent New York Times article, we booked a room at the Stonewall Motor Lodge, a recently renovated 1960s motel halfway between Fredericksburg and Johnson City. Its cute and quirky, with a very photogenic sign. It feels, like so many things in this part of Texas, like you will turn a corner and Lyndon B. Johnson will pop out.

Staying at the motor lodge gives you a direct route into downtown Fredericksburg via 290, a road populated with wineries and farm stands and two large Trump 2020 banners (and one that reads Trump 2021). The town itself is small, with a population just shy of 12,000, according to U.S. Census numbers. But over the past few years, Fredericksburg has boomed along with the rest of Texas, drawing visitors (and many, many bachelorette parties) to its picturesque, Western-meets-German streets.

On Friday evening, a large group of us gathered at the statue of Admiral Chester W. Nimitz on Main Street to begin the Haunted Fredericksburg Ghost Walk, a one-mile, 90-minute tour around downtown.

dlewis33/Getty Images/iStockphoto

Our tour guide Justin wore a linen shirt, cropped pants, and suspenders with a bowie knife tucked into his belt, as if dressed for a costume party where the host was vague about the theme. An excellent storyteller (likely due to his full-time job as a high school English teacher), Justin led us around, pointing out places around town where people were allegedly smoked alive, hung from trees, and scalped in front of their loved ones. At the corner of Adams and Main streets, he stopped and let the group catch up. This is a very angry intersection, he warned us, before traipsing towards the next haunted spot. For the rest of the weekend, I approached the intersection with caution, convinced I would see a ghost giving me the middle finger.

Katie Friel/MySA

Day two

The next morning, during breakfast at Hill & Vine, I ordered the eggs Benedict with chicken schnitzel and learned that despite living in Central Texas for almost 13 years, I had no idea what a schnitzel was until it was placed in front of me. As he cleared our plates, our server David asked if we were going to the 133rd annual Gillespie County Fair, taking place just a few blocks away.

David was the first of many people to ask this particular question about the fair throughout the day. During a visit to The Edge winery, an employee began talking about the fair, and I asked if she had gone to the festivities.

I dont go anywhere where they make me wear a mask, she replied. She wore a mask while she told us this, which seemed to be a requirement for working at the winery.

Fredericksburg, if anything, has always been a dichotomy, a place that holds two truths at once: German and Texan, small town and tourist destination, historic yet modern. Church steeples climb skyward on nearly every downtown corner, yet parents push strollers down Main Street while wine glasses slosh in the cup holders (similar to New Orleans, you can openly carry booze). T-shirts emblazoned with anti-vaccine or anti-Biden slogans hang in storefront windows, reminders of the nations ongoing culture war, yet everyone is so dang nice to everyone else. During a visit to one store, the cashier asked us what county we lived in. When she heard the answer (Travis), she looked at us sadly and then perked up. Ill just say youre from Hays, that way you can get the discount, she said, hitting the 10-percent-off button.

On Saturday evening, following stops at the Edge and Safari Winery (where the bartender also asked about the fair), we ventured back onto Main Street with no plans and tucked into a The Bar, which offers good music, a romantic stone patio, and a dog named Julius who lives upstairs.

Katie Friel/MySA

Despite the name, The Bar does serve a small food menu. Do you have anything with vegetables? All Ive had today is schnitzel and wine, I asked the server. Welcome to Fredericksburg, he said with a laugh.

Day three

The following morning, with the remnants of a very generous glass of pinot noir still mucking about in my head, it was time for a final breakfast at the Squeeze In. The diner is exactly what you want after a day spent drinking Texas wine: a very large menu of omelettes, pancakes, and potatoes all served under a giant sign reminding everyone in the dining room to back the blue.

Fredericksburg offers exactly what one wants in a weekend trip, especially during a pandemic: close enough to San Antonio to drive but far enough away to feel like youre somewhere  anywhere  else. It also offers a reminder that the anger and frustration boiling up in state houses across the nation is spilling out on Fredericksburg's literal Main Street. A weekend trip might break up the monotony of your day-to-day life, but it's certainly not going to give you a break from the nation's culture wars.

But without sounding too much like Pollyanna, it was also a reminder that most people are nice and generous with their time. That locals are eager to offer suggestions and tell you about their lives and ask about yours. It reminds us that we don't know everything (hello, schnitzel) and of the extraordinary benefit of spending time surrounded by people who maybe don't think like you. Traveling takes us out of ourselves and gives us a glimpse into something different. Even if it's just 70 miles away.
Recent rains in the Guadalupe Mountains have made for a most unusual site: Caribbean-esque pools as far as the eye can see.

These "pools" are actually salt flats, a 2 million-year-old expanse located east of El Paso and near the small, appropriately named town of Salt Flat, Texas. Though the salt flats are usually dry, this year's rainy summer has created a kind of magical oasis.

According to KTSM 9 News, based in El Paso, the knee-high water has people flocking to the "banks" of these pools to swim or simply take in the majestic scene. Unfortunately, the majority of these salt flats are also on private property, which is causing headaches for the local sheriff's office.

In a Facebook post shared on August 30, the Hudspeth County Sheriff's Office issued a warning to would-be visitors to stay away.

The flats sit at the base of the Guadalupe Mountains, and are actually the remains of an ancient, shallow lake from the Pleistocene Epoch, according to a 2016 piece by the Houston Chronicle. In more recent times, the flats have been the source of land scuffles, political strife, and even war.

According to reporting by the Chronicle, El Pasoans in the 1700s would make the 100-mile trek to the flats to procure salt. It remained communal property open to all until the 1870s, when two El Paso businessmen tried to acquire land rights to the flats and instead ignited a four-day gun battle.

Today, the salt flats are mainly spread across privately owned ranches. While a visit today to see the natural wonder probably won't end in gunfire (although in Texas it's possible), the sheriff office says it's issuing citations to anyone caught trespassing on private land.

We reached out to both the National Parks Service and the Hudspeth County Sheriff's Office for comment, but did not immediately receive a response.
Cort Ayler Smith and Colti ShyAnn Wright are set to tie the knot in September.

The couple is set to exchange vows in Caballo, New Mexico on Sept. 25, 2021.

Colti Wright, of Plainview, is the daughter of Colby and Lisa Wright and granddaughter of Ernest Patty and the late Dorothy Patty and Colette Wright and the late Clarence Wright.

Cort Smith, of Caballo, New Mexico, is the son of Twister and Nellie Smith. He is the grandson of Judy Smith and the late Kenneth Smith and of Mary Abercrombie and the late Robert Abercrombie.

Colti Wright was born in Lubbock and raised in Plainview. Growing up, she was highly involved in the Hale County 4-H program, FFA and in her community. She showed goats and horses, enjoyed public speaking contests, nutrition quiz bowl and horse judging, as well as many other activities.

She served as president of her 4-H club and FFA chapter. She also served as District 2 4-H president and was on Texas 4-H State Council.

Colti graduated from Plainview High School in 2017 and attended Tarleton State University in Stephenville. While attending Tarleton, she worked at Saddle Rags - The Western Store, was involved in Delta Zeta Sorority and was president of Agriculture Communicators of Tomorrow.

She received a bachelors degree in Agriculture Communications from Tarleton in May 2021, moved to Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, and is now employed with Edward Jones.

Cort Smith was born and raised in Caballo, New Mexico. He attended Hot Springs High School in Truth or Consequences, where he spent most of his free time competing in rodeos. Cort was a two-time National High School Finals qualifiers in calf roping. Cort graduated in 2010 and attended New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, where he competed with the rodeo team. Cort is currently employed with the family business, Smithco Construction, and still enjoys team roping with family and friends and competing in ranch rodeos. He also enjoys hunting and guides elk hunts in the fall.
DENVER (AP)  A Colorado elections clerk whose whereabouts have been a mystery since she was accused of allowing a security breach of voting equipment that the FBI is investigating has told county commissioners that she remains on the job and has been working remotely.

Mesa County Clerk and Recorder Tina Peters has not been seen in Colorado since Secretary of State Jena Griswold opened her own investigation last month into the security breach.

Griswold says images of election equipment management software from Mesa County were obtained by elections conspiracy theorists and posted on far-right blogs. Her office says one of the images was taken May 23 from a secure room in Mesa County where the voting equipment was stored and was accessed that day by Peters, who allowed a non-employee into the room.

Griswold, a Democrat, has sued to remove Peters as clerk and recorder. The lawsuit was filed earlier this week after county commissioners unanimously voted in August to replace Peters with former Secretary of State Wayne Williams.

In an email, Peters said she has been working every day starting at 7 a.m., and refuted claims by the county commissioners that she was missing in action, The Grand Junction Sentinel reported.

For me to work remotely now whether I am physically at my home office in Mesa County or elsewhere is not indicative of the reckless assertions that I am being accused of insinuating Im not doing the job the people of Mesa County elected me to do, Peters said.

It is unclear where Peters is working from. Emails sent to Peters by The Associated Press were not immediately returned.

The secretary of states office has identified the person it says was allowed into the secure room but has refused to say anything more about who he is or why he was there. The Associated Press isnt naming him until more information becomes available. He has not been charged with a crime.

During Peters absence, the FBI announced it was assisting a criminal investigation into the breach being conducted by Mesa County District Attorney Dan Rubinstein.

Separately, Rubinstein has filed charges of second degree burglary and cybercrime against Deputy County Clerk Belinda Knisley, who turned herself in to court officials on Wednesday. The charges stem from conduct as a county employee after Knisley was placed on paid leave due to a confidential personnel matter, Rubinsteins office said in a statement.

On Aug. 23, Mesa County officials served Knisley a written notice of her suspension as an employee, explaining that the county received numerous workplace harassment complaints. Two days later, Knisley allegedly attempted to access the countys computer network using Peters computer and log-in credentials, according to the arrest affidavit.

On broadcasts hosted by MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, a staunch supporter of former President Donald Trump who has made unsubstantiated claims about fraud in the 2020 election, Peters claimed that Griswolds investigation is an attempt to take over one of the few remaining conservative counties in Colorado.
(The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.)

Russ Schumacher, Colorado State University

(THE CONVERSATION) Record downpours from Hurricane Ida overwhelmed cities across the Northeast on Sept. 1, 2021, hitting some with more than 3 inches of rain an hour. Water poured into subway stations in New York City, and streets flooded up to the rooftops of cars in Philadelphia. The storm had already wreaked havoc on the Gulf Coast after hitting Louisiana three days earlier as a Category 4 hurricane.

Ida had weakened well below hurricane strength by the time it reached the Northeast, so how did it still cause so much rain?

Two major factors likely contributed to its extended extreme rainfall.

First, Idas tropical moisture interacted with developing warm and cold fronts.

Second, evidence is mounting that, as the climate warms, the amount of precipitation from heavy rainstorms is increasing, especially in the central and eastern U.S.

From tropical to extratropical

As hurricanes move northward from the tropics, they often transition from their characteristic circular shape to become extratropical cyclones with warm and cold fronts extending outward from the low pressure at the center. Even though they no longer have the intense winds that they did in the tropics, they still bring tropical humidity. That moist air is lifted along the fronts, and long-lasting, very heavy rain can result. That was happening as Idas remnants moved toward the Northeast.

Weather forecasters saw the disaster coming.

Forecasters emphasized the threat of flash flooding well ahead of its arrival, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrations Weather Prediction Center issued a rare high risk of excessive rainfall outlook for parts of the Northeast a day in advance.

The widespread, intense rainfall overwhelmed rivers and drainage systems in the highly populated corridor from Philadelphia to New York to Boston. That led to major flash flooding and at least 50 deaths in the region, in addition to at least 17 deaths earlier along the Gulf Coast. Newark, New Jersey, recorded 8.41 inches of rain, their most ever in a single day, shattering the old record by over 1.5 inches. Weather stations in New York City saw rain rates over 3 inches per hour. The extreme rainfall arrived with tornadoes in several states, including Maryland and New Jersey.

Warmer climate, heavier rainfall

Extreme rain and flash flooding arent new to the Northeast, and they often result from hurricanes or their remnants. The remains of Hurricanes Agnes (1972), Floyd (1999), Irene (2011), Lee (2011) and Sandy (2012), among others, all brought widespread rainfall and flooding through the area.

Yet, heavy downpours are becoming more common in the region as the climate warms.

The reasons are fairly simple: Warmer air can have more water vapor in it. With every 1 degree Celsius (1.8 F) increase in temperature, there can be about 7% more moisture in the air. This is formally known as the Clausius-Clapeyron relation.

Because the amount of rain that a storm produces is closely connected to the amount of water vapor in the air, this means that, all else being equal, heavy downpours are more likely in a warmer climate. It explains why heavy rain occurs year-round in the tropics, whereas it is much more likely in summer than winter in the U.S.

This is also why the intensity of rainfall is expected to increase as the climate warms. When weather patterns that bring together the ingredients for heavy rainfall, like hurricanes, occur in a warmer world, more moisture is available, and more rain falls. Unfortunately, this is not a linear process: A small bit of added moisture can lead to a lot more rain.

The latest National Climate Assessment, in 2018, described a trend toward increasing precipitation in the Northeast and also warned that aging infrastructure in the region isnt prepared to handle the water.

Hurricanes are limited to certain areas, but extreme rainfall from other types of storms can occur just about anywhere  think of intense cloudbursts during the summer monsoon in the Desert Southwest, or organized thunderstorm systems like the one that caused deadly flooding in Tennessee in August 2021.

Many communities are already highly vulnerable to the type of extreme precipitation that has been observed historically. Floods have always been a hazard, and intense rainfall can test the infrastructure even in places where it happens often. But as the climate changes, these risks will only increase further.

This article was updated Sept. 3 with the Northeast death toll rising.

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This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article here: https://theconversation.com/hurricane-ida-2-reasons-for-its-record-shattering-rainfall-in-nyc-and-the-northeast-long-after-the-winds-weakened-167252.
HOLLAND, Mich. (AP)  A Michigan restaurant owner who flouted COVID-19 restrictions and spent four nights in jail in March said she plans to reopen in a few weeks.

The food license yanked from Marlenas Bistro and Pizzeria in Holland has been restored, Marlena Pavlos-Hackney said.

Im grateful, but my fight isnt finished yet, Pavlos-Hackney said, referring to an appeal of earlier court decisions that landed her behind bars.

Pavlos-Hackney became the face of defiance over enforcement of virus-related restrictions. She continued to welcome indoor diners, despite state and local orders, and ignored other rules aimed at controlling the spread of COVID-19.

Pavlos-Hackney said her customers' health was up to them.

Diners filled tables and held rallies outside the restaurant to support her. Republican Sen. Tom Barrett called Pavlos-Hackney Michigans first political prisoner of the pandemic.

Ingham County Judge Rosemarie Aquilina, who put Pavlos-Hackney in jail, said she had put the community at risk. The judge also ordered a $15,000 fine.

The restaurant could be open again by Sept. 21. It has been closed since March.

I suspect there will be a line out her door for a long time. The food is good, attorney Robert Baker said Friday. She loves serving people.
From Texas Sen. Robert Nichols:

We continue to hold our friends in Louisiana in our prayers after Hurricane Ida made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane this week. Texas was proud to send a Chinook helicopter, 14 crew members, 30 fire engines, and 132 firefighters to aid in hurricane recovery efforts.

Here are five things happening around your state:

1. COVID-19 antibody treatment center opens in Nacogdoches

The Texas Division of Emergency Management in conjunction with Nacogdoches County, the City of Nacogdoches, and Nacogdoches Medical Center launched a new COVID-19 therapeutic infusion center in Nacogdoches. The center uses Regeneron's monoclonal antibodies to treat outpatient cases of COVID-19. Importantly, patients need a referral from a doctor to receive the treatment. This treatment is available at no cost to the patient. This new center ensures that East Texans have access to high quality treatment options at no cost. The Regeneron treatment is shown to prevent a patient's symptoms from worsening to the point of hospitalization. There are also more than 200 private health providers across the state who provide the antibody infusion treatment, including 15 in Senate District 3. To find a provider near you, visit www.meds.tdem.texas.gov.

2. Hogg Foundation awards $3.75 million in grants

The Hogg Foundation announced grants to five organizations for the second phase of the Well-Being in Rural Communities initiative. The grants totaled $3.75 million. One of the awardees was Better Together, a group in Nacogdoches dedicated to improving the mental and physical health of all residents in Nacogdoches County. The grants are designed to support collaborative approaches to well-being in rural communities. During the first phase of the program, awardees were successful in completing baseline assessments of communities needs, developing identities and brands, and elevating themselves to a leadership role in their communities.

3. Funding for securing the border passed House, Senate

House Bill 9 was finally passed by the Senate this week, sending the measure to Governor Abbott's desk. The legislation appropriates $1.8 billion for securing our southern border. This bill appropriates funds for activities related to the border crisis in the Office of Court Administration, the Texas Military Department, the Department of Public Safety, the Department of Criminal Justice, the Commission on Jail Standards, the Department of State Health Services, and programs within the Governor's Office. There are ongoing threats of property crime, human trafficking, violent crime, to public health, and violations of sovereignty and territorial integrity. These funds will provide additional appropriations for overtime and staffing related to border security efforts.

4. Election integrity bill going to Governor

After hours of debate during regular session and two special sessions, Senate Bill 1, the election integrity bill, is finally passed and headed to the Governor's desk. It was named an emergency item by the Governor at the beginning of regular session and has been on the call for both special sessions. Ensuring the security and validity of our elections are central to the democratic process. Voting is a sacred right and any form of illegal voting is a violation of that right. This bill expands voting access by expanding voting hours and ensures voters in line at closing time during early voting can vote. It also gives disabled Texans more options when voting. This bill makes it easier to vote and harder to cheat. I was proud to vote for this legislation and look forward to the Governor signing it into law.

5. Bail reform legislation passes

Another priority bill that was held up during the regular session and both special sessions was Senate Bill 6, the bail reform bill. SB 6 is the enacting legislation for Senate Joint Resolution 3, which proposed a constitutional amendment codifying the changes in the bail system made in the bill. While SB 6 did pass and will become law with Governor Abbott's signature, the SJR did not receive a two-thirds vote of the House, so the measure will not be on a constitutional ballot election. SB 6 prohibits the release of violent offenders on personal bonds or the release of offenders who are charged with additional crimes while out on bail. It also requires more judicial training, data collection, and that officials examine a defendant's criminal history before setting bail. The bill is also known as the Damon Allen Act, named after State Trooper Damon Allen who was ambushed, shot, and killed following a traffic stop. His accused murderer had been previously convicted of assaulting a sheriff's deputy and was out on bond on an aggravated assault of a public servant charge.
WELLINGTON, New Zealand  New Zealand reported its first coronavirus death in more than six months on Saturday, while the number of new cases continued to trend downward.

Health authorities said the woman who died was in her 90s and had underlying health problems.

Authorities reported 20 new community cases, all in the largest city of Auckland.

New Zealand remains in lockdown as it tries to eliminate an outbreak of the delta variant that began last month.

New cases in the outbreak have steadily fallen from a peak of more than 80 each day. New Zealand has so far escaped the worst of the pandemic and has reported just 27 coronavirus deaths since it began.

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MORE ON THE PANDEMIC:

 US booster plan faces complications, some may miss Sept. 20 start

 Parents of disabled kids sue over Iowa ban on mask mandates

 Idaho hospitals nearly buckling in relentless COVID-19 surge

 U.S. hospitals hit with nurse staffing crisis; some travel for more pay

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 Find more AP coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic and https://apnews.com/hub/coronvirus-vaccine

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HERES WHAT ELSE IS HAPPENING:

MADRID  Spain is tweaking its travel entry rules from next week to require vaccination certificates from U.S. tourists, adjusting to recent European Union advice on stricter rules due to growing anxiety over coronavirus contagion in the U.S.

The European Councils decision earlier this week to remove the U.S. from a safe list of countries for nonessential travel also came amid unanswered calls from European officials for reciprocity in travel rules. Despite the EUs move to open its borders to U.S. citizens in June, the U.S. didnt allow EU tourists in.

Spain, a major tourism destination, is among a handful of EU countries that has announced steps to adjust its entry rules to the Councils recommendation.

The country published Friday the new guidelines on its official gazette, also removing Israel, Kosovo, Lebanon, Montenegro and North Macedonia from the safe list.

Under the rules, U.S. tourists will no longer be admitted from Monday, Sept. 6, unless they can show proof of being fully vaccinated at least 14 days before their trip. Unvaccinated children under 12 traveling with vaccinated adults are also allowed in the country.

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SACRAMENTO, Calif -- Hospitals in the heart of Californias Central Valley are running out of beds in their intensive care units because of an influx of coronavirus patients.

State officials announced Friday that hospitals in the 12-county San Joaquin Valley region have had fewer than 10% of staffed adult ICU beds for three consecutive days.

The news triggered special rules that require nearby hospitals to accept transfer patients.

If ICU capacity falls to zero, hospitals statewide must also accept transfer patients.

California is averaging 27.9 newly confirmed cases per 100,000 people, down from 33.1 last month. But hospitalizations have continued to increase, with 8,766 patients.

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NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- As hospitalizations, deaths and COVID-19 case numbers continue to climb in Tennessee, health experts on Friday pleaded with the public to get vaccinated and continue to wear a mask.

In a letter distributed by the Tennessee Hospital Association, a group of chief officers and chief nursing officers stressed that the latest surge of the virus outbreak is taking a deep toll on the states frontline workers and wreaking havoc on families who have lost loved ones to the virus.

As of Friday, there were nearly 1,395 new cases per 100,000 people in Tennessee over the past two weeks, which ranks third in the country for new cases per capita. One in every 134 people in Tennessee tested positive in the past week, according to researchers from Johns Hopkins.

Meanwhile, 42.1% of the population is now fully vaccinated against the virus.

Gov. Bill Lee told reporters earlier this week that the vaccine was the key tool to overcoming the outbreak. But he said he had no plans to change the states current pandemic mitigation strategy.

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IOWA CITY, Iowa  Parents of disabled students have filed a federal lawsuit seeking to strike down Iowas law banning schools from requiring masks, arguing it endangers their health and denies equal access to education.

The lawsuit is backed by the American Civil Liberties Union and disability rights organizations. Coronavirus cases and hospitalizations are climbing in Iowa to their highest levels since last winter.

Iowa is averaging about 1,200 confirmed cases per day in the last week, and roughly a quarter of those are among ages 17 and under. About 5% of Iowa patients hospitalized with confirmed COVID-19 infections on Wednesday were age 17 or below.

Gov. Kim Reynolds defended the law at a news conference, saying it lets parents choose whether their students should wear masks. She says those who feel unsafe in classrooms can enroll in online-only programs.

Unlike last fall, schools are barred by law from offering a hybrid schedule or temporarily moving to online-only classes.

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CONCORD, N.H.  New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu is hospitalized with flu-like symptoms after testing negative three times for the coronavirus.

Governor Sununu is being evaluated by Portsmouth Hospital this morning as a precautionary measure to determine the cause of the flu-like symptoms he has been experiencing this week, Chief of Staff Jayne Millerick said in a statement.

On Wednesday, Sununu said he tested negative hours after his office said he wasnt feeling well, postponed an Executive Council meeting and began isolating. Sununu is vaccinated, receiving the Johnson & Johnson vaccine on April 10.

He took a trip to Kentucky on Monday to see how officials in that state are handling a surge in cases.

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ATLANTA  A nurse staffing crisis is forcing many U.S. hospitals to pay top dollar to get reinforcements to handle the crush of COVID-19 patients this summer.

The problem, health leaders say, is twofold: Nurses are quitting or retiring, exhausted or demoralized by the crisis. Many are leaving for lucrative temporary jobs with traveling-nurse agencies that can pay $5,000 or more a week.

In Texas, more than 6,000 travel nurses have flooded the state to help through a state-supported program. But the same time 19 travel nurses started work at a hospital in the northern part of the state, 20 other nurses there gave notice theyd be leaving for a traveling contract, said Carrie Kroll, a vice president at the Texas Hospital Association.

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WASHINGTON  President Joe Bidens plan to start delivery of booster shots by Sept. 20 for most Americans who received COVID-19 vaccines is facing complications that could delay the availability for those who received the Moderna vaccine, administration officials said Friday.

Biden announced last month that his administration was preparing to administer boosters to provide more enduring protection against the coronavirus, pending approvals from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration. He recommended boosters eight months after the second shot.

However, those agencies are awaiting critical data before signing off on the third doses, with Modernas vaccine increasingly seen as unlikely to make the Sept. 20 date.

According to one official, Moderna produced inadequate data for the FDA and CDC to approve the third dose of its vaccine. The FDA has requested additional data that is likely to delay those boosters into October. Pfizer is further along in the review process, with an FDA panel review on boosters on Sept. 17.

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MADISON, Wis.  Wisconsins $100 reward program for those receiving the COVID-19 vaccine will be extended two weeks until Sept. 19.

Democratic Gov. Tony Evers says extending the incentive will give an opportunity for more people to get vaccinated. The program began Aug. 20 and was originally scheduled to end Monday.

Between Aug. 20 and Sept. 1, more than 65,000 people received their first dose. Evers launched the program amid a spike in cases across the state caused by the more infectious delta variant. The level of new cases and hospitalizations are at a level not seen since January.

On Aug. 22, the day before Evers announced the program, the seven-day average of vaccinations in Wisconsin was 8,360. That grew to 9,712 as of Wednesday. More than 3 million people are fully vaccinated in Wisconsin, about 52% of the total population. Among adults age 18 and over, more than 62% are fully vaccinated.

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NEW YORK  There will be celebrations and somber reflections as American Jews observe the upcoming High Holy Days. There also will be disappointment as rabbis once again cancel or limit in-person worship due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The chief culprit is the quick-spreading delta variant of the coronavirus. Its surge has dashed widespread hopes that this years observances, unlike those of 2020, could once again fill synagogues with congregants worshipping side by side. One rabbi in Florida has decided to hold only virtual services for the holy days.

Other synagogues are offering a mix of in-person and virtual offerings. Temple Beth El, in Augusta, Maine, will require masks inside the synagogue. Workers also erected a big tent in the yard for an outdoor service Sept. 7.

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BOISE, Idaho  Intensive care beds are full of unvaccinated coronavirus patients at a hospital in Boise, Idaho, and doctors are bracing for the need to conserve scarce resources for the patients most likely to survive.

At St. Lukes Boise Medical Center, the view in every direction is heartbreaking. In one room, a pregnant woman in her second trimester relies on an artificial breathing machine. Down the hall, a nurse cries as she recounts the waves of anger and grief that fill her days.

Idaho is among the nations lowest in vaccination rates, and experts warn new infections could number 30,000 a week by mid-September.

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ROME  Italy officials say theyd consider making COVID-19 vaccination mandatory, but for now theyre generally pleased at the publics turnout for shots.

On Friday, 71% of those in Italy age 12 and older have been fully vaccinated. The government says its confident it will meet its target of having 80% of the eligible population vaccinated by the end of September.

Health Minister Roberto Speranza says the government wants this number to grow even more and is weighing whether to extend the Green Pass requirements to other situations. The pass indicates a person has at least one vaccine dose, recovered from COVID-19 in the last six months or tested negative for the illness in the last 48 hours.

Its needed to dine indoors, access gyms, attend concerts or travel on domestic flights or train, ferry or bus between Italys regions. School teachers and other personnel need a Green Pass to access school premises. Vaccination is required for health care workers.

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BRUSSELS  The European Union and drugmaker AstraZeneca say they reached a deal to end a legal battle over the slow deliveries of the companys COVID-19 vaccines.

The European Commission says AstraZeneca made a firm commitment to deliver a total of 300 million vaccine doses by March. The commission says it involves the pharmaceutical company providing 135 million doses by the end of this year plus another 65 million doses in the first quarter of 2022. Around 100 million have already been supplied.

The EU accused AstraZeneca of acting in bad faith by providing shots to other countries, notably former EU member Britain. It argued the company should have used its production sites in the U.K. to help fill the EUs order.

AstraZeneca says, along with its partners, it has supplied more than 1.1 billion doses of vaccine to more than 170 countries and approximately two-thirds have gone to lower-income countries.

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JOHANNESBURG  South Africas Health Minister Joe Phaahla says the government will let businesses decide whether to make vaccinations mandatory for employees and clients.

He says restaurants, bars, grocery stores and other businesses must set their own policies on deciding if patrons must be vaccinated. He says the government plans to encourage people to get inoculated, with incentives such as allowing soccer matches and music concerts for vaccinated people.

Currently, such public gatherings are not permitted under COVID-19 restrictions. More than 13 million South Africans have received at least one vaccine dose, including 5.7 million who are fully vaccinated.

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LONDON  Children across Europe are going back to school after 18 months of pandemic disruption.

But in many countries, there are concerns of a new surge in infections from the highly infectious delta variant of the coronavirus.

Unlike the U.K., Italy and Spain are maintaining social distancing and masks for students and staff. Italy also requires teachers to show proof of vaccination or a recent negative coronavirus test, along with Turkey and Greece.

In France, where students headed back to school Thursday, face masks must be worn by pupils 6 and up.

Britain, which lifted nearly all pandemic restrictions on business and socializing in July, has among the highest coronavirus rates in Europe, with upward of 30,000 new cases each day. Hospitalizations and deaths remain far lower than during previous surges, thanks to an inoculation campaign that has seen nearly 80% of people over 16 fully vaccinated.
Google Maps

If your daily commute involves I-10, it might be time to make alternate travel plans.

The Texas Department of Transportation, better known as TxDOT, will close a portion of I-10s access road for about six weeks. The closure will include the eastbound frontage road at the Bandera Road intersection as well as Upper Balcones Road at the eastbound frontage road intersection.
Supporters of UNDI18, the movement demanding that 18- to 21-year-olds be allowed to vote, protest against the governments delay in lowering the voting age in front of the parliament building in Kuala Lumpur, March 27, 2021.

Young Malaysians were jubilant Friday after five of their peers won a High Court lawsuit against their government for its delay in granting the vote to millions of 18- to 21-year-olds.

If the government does not appeal the ruling, people in that age range will be able to vote in the next general election. The current unelected prime minister has yet to comment on polls, but his predecessor had said he would call for a national vote as soon as the COVID-19 pandemic ended.

The federal government must allow youths to vote by Dec. 31, the Kuching High Court in Sarawak ruled, in a case filed in May after the Election Commission (EC) delayed granting young people the vote to September 2022 from July this year.

The five plaintiffs in the suit, members of the Sarawak branch of the national Young Voters Association, called Undi18, said they were grateful to the court and called its ruling a monumental decision.

[O]ur main goal was not to win, but more towards sending a message, saying that delaying the implementation of the Undi18 bill is irrational, illegal, disproportionate, and amounts to voter suppression, UNDI18 Sarawak said in a statement.

Now, in the upcoming general elections, there will approximately 8 million new voters, which is a significant figure that can change the course of an election.

In his order, Judge Alexander Siew said the federal government and the EC had acted illegally and irrationally when they delayed implementing a constitutional amendment that lowered the voting age, and which Parliament passed in 2019.

[T]his Court is compelled to and hereby grants [the order] that the respondents take all steps necessary for [the constitution amendment] to come into operation as soon as possible and in any event by December 31, 2021, the judge ruled.

Former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamed had said in 2019 that the amendment lowering the voting age to below a minimum age of 21 would increase the number of voters in the country  15 million back then  by 50 percent, or 7.5 million.

Upcoming KL ruling

Meanwhile, a ruling is expected Oct. 21 on another similar case filed by Undi18 at the Kuala Lumpur High Court. The Sarawakian Undi18 group hoped the Kuala Lumpur court would use the Kuching courts verdict as a precedent and pass a similar order.

If the Kuala Lumpur court also ruled in favor of Undi18, the government could appeal one or both verdicts in the Court of Appeal. The government could also postpone implementation of the constitutional amendment by filing a stay of execution on one or both orders.

But if the Kuala Lumpur court ruled against Undi18, it would create dissonance and confusion, Clarice Chan, a lawyer, told BenarNews.

The Election Commission will have to implement the federal constitution differently in one state and not the other, she told BenarNews.

The government has one month to appeal the Kuching courts ruling.

Lawmaker Syed Saddiq Syed Abdul Rahman, 28, who had spearheaded the movement to lower the voting age, and many on social media, said they hoped the government would not appeal the Kuching ruling.

Young people had to go to court to get their voting rights. Respect their rights! Syed Saddiq said on Twitter.

Government officials did not immediately respond to BenarNews requests for comment on the verdict in Sarawak.

Implications for next election

The youth vote will be decisive in GE15, said Bridget Welsh, an academic at the University of Nottingham Malaysia, referring to the next general election, which under ordinary circumstances would have been scheduled for 2023.

However, after the collapse of Mahathirs elected government last year, and the second consecutive unelected government at the helm currently, the national elections could take place next year if the pandemic subsides.

New Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob has not said anything about the next election since he took over on Aug. 23. His predecessor Muhyiddin Yassin  under whose government the EC delayed lowering the voting age  had promised nationwide polls as soon as the pandemic abated.

Academic Welsh said the Kuching courts ruling and the upcoming election would keep all political parties on their toes.

Decision puts all parties on notice that more needs to be done to address [the] needs [of the] young  education, employment and respect, she said on Twitter.

The pandemic has increased employment and income difficulties for Malaysias young workers aged 15-24, said an article published this week by Singapores Yusof Ishak Institute.

Youth unemployment touched 12.5 percent in 2020, up from 10.5 percent in 2019, the article said, adding the COVID-19 stimulus packages prioritized the more experienced workers.

[I]t is also imperative to buffer the adverse effects on young workers and fresh graduates. Malaysia has implemented various programs, mostly for the general populace but with a few addressing young worker concerns, the article said.

The freshly appointed government will face severe pressure to address the plight of the unemployed youths and young workers.

Young Malaysians had been coming out in force to protest the previous Muhyiddin administration. They said the PM should resign because his government was incompetent and had botched the pandemic response.

Muhyiddin did resign, but because the main party in his ruling coalition withdrew their support to him. The new Ismail Sabri government, though, looks almost exactly like its predecessors, with a near-identical cabinet  many on social media ridiculed it.

On Friday, one Malaysian said via Twitter that the 18- to 21-year olds would have a big impact in the next national elections.

The Undi18 decision will greatly change the outcome of the coming election, Ulya Husamudin said.

If the government truly believes and supports the youth, they should not appeal [the courts decision.]
National police chief Gen. Guillermo Eleazar, who at the time served as chief of police for the Philippine capital region, speaks to reporters in a Manila suburb after the arrest of 277 Chinese nationals linked to an alleged online investment scam syndicate, Sept. 16, 2019.

Public safety leaders in Manila and Beijing agreed during a virtual meeting to boost efforts against gangs blamed for kidnapping and holding for ransom Chinese nationals who work at online casinos and elsewhere in the Philippines.

National police chief Gen. Guillermo Eleazar, joined by other top Philippine police officials, met on Thursday with Wang Xiaohong, the vice minister of Chinas Ministry of Public Safety.

The Philippine National Police and the Ministry of Public Security of the Peoples Republic of China moved to strengthen cooperation and collaboration on mutual law enforcement and transnational security concerns affecting both countries, according to a statement issued by the Philippine police.

Topping the agenda were discussions on law enforcement and security concerns involving the crackdown on illegal POGO activities, telecom fraud, drug-related crime and kidnapping, Eleazar said Friday.

In addition, the conference opened doors for training cooperation and mutual assistance, including counter-terrorism and anti-drug operations.

POGOs, or Philippine offshore gaming operators, are set up in the country but cater to foreign customers  mainly gamblers from mainland China.

Based on records kept by the immigration bureau and labor department, more than 150,000 Chinese nationals work in the Philippines with many employed at the online casinos.

A rash of kidnappings in recent years has targeted Chinese nationals in the Philippines, including an incident in June when police rescued a casino employee and arrested five members of a Chinese crime gang and their Filipino getaway driver in a Manila suburb.

In January, police in Manila apprehended eight suspected Chinese kidnappers, including their leader, over the alleged abduction of fellow nationals identified as Lyu Long and Liu Xue Xue and who worked at a Chinese-owned electronics firm. Their supervisor paid ransom, but Lyus captors did not release him.

The company waited to inform police until after receiving information that Lyu Long was killed and dumped in a deep ravine, Maj. Gen. Joel Napoleon Coronel, chief of the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group, said at the time. He confirmed that investigators found Lyus body based on his clothing and a kidnappers video.

In June 2020, police killed two suspected Chinese nationals allegedly linked to a kidnap gang during a shootout in northern Pampanga province. Officials said the men were involved in abducting three other Chinese nationals who had come to the Philippines to work for an online casino.

The influx of Chinese nationals started shortly after Rodrigo Duterte was elected president in mid-2016. Duterte, who has focused on ties with Beijing, has said he would not ban online casinos here despite calls to do so, even from Beijing.

In 2019, Duterte said he told Chinese President Xi Jinping that the casinos were an economic boon for the country.

Maybe out of courtesy I will listen to you, but I decide. I decide that we need it. Many will lose their jobs, Duterte said when asked what he told Xi.

Since then, Duterte has said repeatedly that the Philippines owed China a debt of gratitude for sending vaccines as the world grappled with the COVID-19 pandemic.

China desks

During their virtual meeting, the public safety leaders also discussed potentially establishing China desks in all police precincts in the country to address security concerns by Chinese nationals, Eleazar said.

The chiefs predecessor, Archie Gamboa, had suggested establishing such desks in 2020 but dropped the plan following criticism, Philippine media reported.

Eleazar also said that Philippine police agreed to work with their counterparts in China to ensure security for the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing.

Jeoffrey Maitem in Cotabato City, Philippines, contributed to this report.
Thousands of protesters gather in downtown Bangkok to demand the resignation of Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-o-cha, Sep 3, 2021.

Thousands of protesters took to the streets of Bangkok for a second straight day on Friday to call for the resignation of Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-o-cha, who faces a parliamentary confidence vote this weekend over his handling of the COVID-19 crisis.

The protesters set up a stage at the busy Rajaprasong Intersection in the Thai capital to denounce the governments handling of the pandemic, as infection numbers continue to rise and only 11 percent of the 66 million population have been fully vaccinated.

This government came to power unlawfully. It has underperformed [in regard to the] handling of COVID in particular. For our sake, please resign since you have failed to perform, Nattapon Tulagarund, a 21-year-old university student, told BenarNews.

On Saturday, former army and junta chief Prayuth is expected to face a no-confidence vote for the third time in his 29 months as civilian leader. He will likely survive the test again because his coalition has enough seats in the parliament.

When asked who he wished could replace Prayuth, Nattapon said: I have no specific choice but just let him be gone, rewrite the constitution, reform the monarchy and the armed forces to make the country democratic.

For more than a year, Prayuth, the 2014 military coup leader who was elected prime minister after nationwide polls in 2019 that many said were rigged to keep the junta in power, has stared down a largely peaceful youth-led movement.

On Friday, a Thai comedian, nicknamed Platu Dokkradone, 44, told BenarNews that the COVID mishandling had caused her economic difficulty.

I lived without a job for a year. During these most recent five months, I had some gigs, but the prolonged restriction on nightlife venues caused another joblessness.

Since August, some anti-government street protests turned violent after young demonstrators clashed with riot police, reflecting widespread anger at the governments perceived botched handling of the pandemic.

On Friday, hundreds of motorbike-riding youngsters gathered at the Din Daeng area in Bangkok and exploded firecrackers and pipe bombs. A deputy national police spokesman said five youngsters were arrested with guns, over 20 rounds of ammunition, and pipe bombs.

They admitted that they carried arms to create turmoil in Bangkok area, said Pol. Col. Krisana Pattanacharoen, told journalists at Din Daeng.

Since July, police have issued arrest warrants for 645 protesters, while 388 of them were arrested, Krisana said.

Prayuth likely to win confidence vote

Prayuth, meanwhile, will likely survive the confidence vote on Saturday because he has enough votes in parliament. Of 487 lawmakers eligible to vote, the coalition holds 275 seats, while the opposition has 212.

Also, the leader of the main coalition party affirmed support for Prayuth on Friday.

If he goes, I will go, too, Palang Pracharat Party leader Prawit Wongsuwan, who also serves as deputy prime minister, said during a press conference. PPP is Prayuths party.

During a no-confidence debate on Friday in parliament, Chaiwut Thanakamanusorn, the digital economy and society minister, accused an opposition party seeking the censure vote as a way to brainwash Thai youths.

They brainwashed the new generations in order to get rid of something in our country.  I have to protect the monarchy, he told parliament, referring to the three pillars that many royal supporters say Thailand stands on: Nation, Religion, Monarchy.

You are the enemy of the new generations so you wont stay that long because you are hostile to the future, Rangsiman Rome, a lawmaker with the opposition Move Forward Party, said in rebuttal.

On the second day of the parliamentary debate, Prayuth said he would not step down.

I am affirmed here. I would not resign, shuffle the cabinet, nor dissolve the parliament, he told parliament on Wednesday. There were rumors the prime minister will be voted against; that does not sound what a gentleman would do.

The government has rejected the oppositions allegations of corruption, mismanagement and a bungled response to coronavirus pandemic. Since April, Thailand has seen a massive outbreak of the far more contagious Delta variant.

The country has recorded more than 1.2 million confirmed cases and more than 12,300 deaths since the start of the pandemic last year, according to the Center for the COVID-19 Situation Administration (CCSA), a government task force.

Most of the infections and related fatalities have occurred since April 2021.

The governments reliance on domestic vaccine production by a company owned by the royal family, and which has no previous experience in manufacturing such vaccines, has been criticized by many for the failure to curb the pandemic.

Though Prayuth may survive the vote, the pressure on him from Thailands emboldened young protesters will not go away quickly as they have vowed to keep demonstrating until he is ousted.

A rally is planned for Saturday when parliament is due to hold the vote.

Though the protests could not pressure the government to call it to quit, they one way or another bear fruit in the future, said Navaporn Sunanlikanon, an academic at Chulalongkorn University.

But I dont believe in violence, and the police have to negotiate with the protesters.

Kunnawut Boonreak in Chiang Mai contributed to this report.
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Ziaulhaq Zia, a native of Afghanistan living in the U.S. and a 2012 MAUHS graduate, is raising money to help bring several family members to the U.S. after they fled across the border this week into Pakistan.
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Jennifer Huberdeau is The Eagle's features editor. Prior to The Eagle, she worked at The North Adams Transcript. She is a 2021 Rabkin Award Winner, 2020 New England First Amendment Institute Fellow and a 2010 BCBS Health Care Fellow.
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Across Massachusetts, case counts and hospitalizations among people 19 and younger have continued to rise  with vaccines still yet to be authorized for younger children. And while children are at very low risk for severe illness, infections can disrupt school, force family members to quarantine and put immunocompromised members of households at risk. We take a look at the current data and what it means for back-to-school season.
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Nine additional inmates at the Berkshire County Jail and House of Correction have tested positive for COVID-19, for a total of 12 cases among 
Community News Editor / Librarian

Jeannie Maschino is community news editor and librarian for The Berkshire Eagle. She has worked for the newspaper in various capacities since 1982 and joined the newsroom in 1989.
The anti-abortion movement in Texas won a major victory Thursday, after a novel legal approach to banning abortion was not blocked by the Supreme Court, seen here Wednesday, throwing abortion services across the state into chaos and prompting some women to leave the state for procedures.
Dattatreya Haynes, top, as he tries to speak during public citizen speak time at the end of the Aug. 26 Berkshire Hills School Committee meeting. Member Richard Dohoney, left, and Chairman Stephen Bannon, cut him off.
The death of Instagram star and influencer, Jenae Gagnier, known publicly as Miss Mercedes Morr, was a shock to her millions of fans and admirers. But her parents are struggling to come to terms with their daughters senseless killing.

Gagniers parents granted an interview to local Houston station KTRK, and her father, Mark Gagnier, told the station that he worried about his daughters fame.

"My daughter was beautiful, he said. That scared the hell out of me. And she kept trying to get more and more beautiful, she worked on it hard. That scared the hell out of me."

When he and his daughters mom, Jeaneta Grover, hadnt heard from their 33-year-old daughter all weekend, Mark Gagnier suspected something was wrong.

He says he kicked in Jenaes door to find her murdered and lying at the bottom of her stairs. Upstairs, her apparent killer was still clinging to life. The man, later identified as Kevin Accorto, 34, still had a knife in his neck from a self-inflicted wound. A Fort Bend County medical examiner later confirmed that he stabbed himself to death

"He was twitching, he was gurgling," Gagnier said.

Investigators dont believe Accorto knew Jenae personally and are working to determine exactly how the two connected. But there is reported speculation that Accorto was an obsessed fan who somehow found where Gagnier lived and came to kill her. He used lipstick or pens to write on the Instagrammers walls barely coherent notes containing confessions, apologies and his professed love for Jenae.

Morr had over 2 million followers on Instagram at the time of her passing, including celebrities like Megan Thee Stallion and Cardi B.
The former Minnesota police officer accused of fatally shooting Daunte Wright during a traffic stop is now facing an upgraded charge in the his death, according to CBS Minnesota. The Minnesota state attorney general's office has now charged former Brooklyn Center, Minn., police officer, Kim Potter, with first-degree manslaughter. This charge is in addition to a previously filed second-degree manslaughter charge.

Wright, 20, was killed on April 11, after being pulled over for expired license plate tags, but was placed under arrest after it was determined he had outstanding warrants.



The police chief at the time, Tim Gannon, said he believed Potter, a 26 year veteran at the time of the killing, confused her taser with her service weapon. Potter resigned from the force after the shooting. She was given the manslaughter charge two days after resigning.

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison's office filed the additional charge of first-degree manslaughter by recklessly handling a firearm.
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Navigating the meaning of statements from the Old Testament prophets can be difficult. Some sayings are obscure and vague, making them hard to understand. Others have such specific meanings to their time, it can be difficult to imagine how they could be relevant to believers today. Some verses are so famous they are ubiquitous. They have become part of common language, and their meaning is changed by out-of-context usage or misuse by non-believers.

Centuries ago, the prophet Isaiah cried out, Here I am! Send me (Isaiah 6:8b). This famous response to the call of God has been worked into books, songs, and speeches ever since. Here, Isaiah modelled the response of a believer to the invitation of God to join Him in His work in the world, to spread the news of His love, justice, and coming kingdom; Isaiah in his day obeyed the call to be a prophet to the nation of Israel, and today those who have a relationship with the Lord are called to obey and follow the Great Commission, to tell the world about Jesus Christ.

What Is the Context for Isaiah 6?

Chapter 6 in the book of Isaiah is rich with historical information, theological insight, and awe-inspiring glimpses into what it looks like at the throne of God. It begins by sharing that the visions recorded were given the year King Uzziah died. His reign was somewhere around 783-742 BC, and he suffered from leprosy because of his disobedience of Gods law. Though he started out being a good king, he fell into sin and ruined his legacy. His sons ran the government because of his sickness.

Theologians look back at Uzziah as a king who had great promise, but ultimately let his pride get the better of him, and he was not all he could have been, had he been more faithful to the Lord. The visions God sent to Isaiah at that time, and the call He was going to put out came on the heels of another disappointing ruler, though perhaps not its wickedest.

The next section of the chapter details the visions God sent Isaiah at the beginning of his call to be Gods prophet. He showed Isaiah the great throne of the Lord, with the angels singing, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory! (Isaiah 6:3b). As a result of seeing God enthroned in all His glory, Isaiah cried out for forgiveness of His sins, overwhelmed by the might and holiness of God and crushed beneath the weight of his own sin. God forgave Isaiah, and purged his lips with hot coals. This moment in the Old Testament is one where Isaiah was deemed cleansed  not because of his own merit or sacrifice, but Gods mercy, foreshadowing the coming grace for all people through Jesus Christ.

Isaiah Was Willing to Go, Wherever God Sent Him

It is at this point in the passage that the lines are recorded, And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then I said, Here I am! Send me. The Lord wanted to use someone to warn the people, to call them to repentance, and Isaiah volunteered to go be that person. It should be noted God could only use Isaiah after his sins were cleansed.

The message God initially charged Isaiah with was, Keep on hearing, but do not understand; keep on seeing, but do not perceive. Make the heart of this people dull, and their ears heavy, and blind their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed (Isaiah 6:9b-10). The people of Israel and Judah were often in conflict with the Lord, rebelling against His laws and rejecting His love, so God sent Isaiah to declare their sins back to them, as well as the consequences.

God told Isaiah to preach to the people, but knew they would not hear the truth. They would ignore him. In the second half of the prophecy, covered in verses 11-13, the Lord paints a bleak picture for Isaiah. It would take a long time, a lot of hardship and pain before the people of Israel would hear and repent. Isaiah was still willing to go share the word of God, knowing it would not be discerned in his lifetime. Despite the sad implications, God ends His message to the people with some hope; And though a tenth remain in it, it will be burned again, like a terebinth or an oak, whose stump remains when it is felled. The holy seed is its stump (Isaiah 6:13). That holy seed is a reference to the coming Savior, Jesus Christ, who would also be called the Shoot of Jesse later in Isaiahs prophecies. No matter how small Israel became, no matter how disobedient, in that nation lay the hope for salvation.

How Does This Statement, Here I Am, Send Me Apply Today?

The Lord still has plans and purposes He wants to accomplish by sending each person out with Him. It helps people grow closer to Him, be more like Him, and have experiences that will have significance into eternity. Isaiah called people into repentance, and - according to church tradition - was martyred for following the Lord.

When looking at how God wants to use Christians, Jesus issued a similar call as He ascended back to Heaven to be with the Father until His return; And Jesus came and said to them, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age (Matthew 28:18-20). Just like Isaiah had to be cleansed of his sins before He could say, Here I am Lord, send me, a person must repent of their sins, and be cleansed by the blood of Jesus Christ. To be useful to the Lord, there must be a relationship.

Isaiahs willingness to go and be obedient to whatever God asked him is an example for todays believers to follow. Isaiah agreed to go for the Lord before he knew what God was going to ask him to say. Likewise, Christians should be willing to obey the Great Commission, however God leads them to fulfill it, even if they are not sure what their specific assignment may be. Some people will be called to go to the ends of the earth to give the Gospel to unreached people groups. Others will be in the secular workplace, reaching their neighborhoods for Christ. Regardless of what assignment God wants to give His children, it is important, and the believer should embrace it, obey, and do it with love.

Isaiah saw the many sins of Israel, but was called to preach Gods truth. Ultimately, he knew going into his assignment that he was not called to fix Israels problems, but point them to the mercy of the Lord and the hope of a coming Messiah. Today, Christians cannot fix every problem in their respective cultures and societies, as mans heart is desperately wicked. They can and should go out and share the good news that Jesus Christ came as the Messiah, died for everyones sins, rose from the grave, and now offers forgiveness and eternity in Heaven with him. Just like Isaiah responded with passion and obedience to Gods assignment for Him, Christians should answer to the Great Commission with the same fervent answer, Here I Am! Send me.

Sources

Sawyer, John F. Isaiah Vol. I. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1984.

Wiersbe, Warren. The Wiersbe Bible Study Series: Isaiah: Feeling Secure in the Arms of God. Colorado Springs: David C. Cook, 2012.

Wilmington, H.L. Wilmingtons Guide to the Bible. Wheaton: Tyndale House Publishers, 1981.

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Photo credit: Pexels/Andrea Piacquadio

Bethany Verrett is a freelance writer and editor. She maintains a faith and lifestyle blog graceandgrowing.com, where she muses about the Lord, life, culture, and ministry.
BOISE - On July 9, Idaho Governor Brad Little issued a wildland fire emergency declaration, making the resources of the state available to assist Idaho Department of Lands in its firefighting efforts. The declaration was extended and is now set to expire on September 4.

The Governors action, coupled with the assistance provided by the Idaho Office of Emergency Management and Idaho National Guard resources proved vital this fire season.

In an unprecedented fire year, the emergency declaration was critical in Idahos firefighting efforts, said Governor Little. Joining with the team from IDL, the men and women of Idaho National Guard stepped up to help save lives and property from wildfire. The people of Idaho are grateful.

Idaho National Guard provided resources and support in many areas.

Aviation:

- 6 UH 60 black hawk helicopters supported IDL fire operations.

- 45 service members supported National Guard aviation mission assignments.

Hand Crew:

- 1 National Guard Type 2 hand crew worked fire suppression operations on the Cougar Rock Complex

- 18 service members were part of the hand crew.

Coeur dAlene Interagency Fire Cache:

- 18 service members worked in three separate missions in the fire cache.

The Idaho National Guard is proud to have contributed to this seasons wildland firefighting efforts, said Brig. Gen. Russ Johnson, director of the Idaho National Guard Joint Staff. We thank our service members, families and employers for their contributions and support, and IDL for integrating our aerial, ground crew, and warehouse support teams into their firefighting operations. We stand ready to contribute to future wildland firefighting efforts.

Because of the extreme fire season in the west, firefighting resources have been difficult to obtain. This was the first time Idaho Department of Lands has ever requested a statewide emergency declaration.
MOSCOW - The Idler Fire, north of Moscow, is now 100% contained at 116 acres. Officials say the containment figure is the percentage of the constructed fireline fire managers feel will stop any future fire spread. Fire crews will continue to locate and destroy any internal hot spots and will be mopping up and patrolling until the fire is declared out.

Yesterday fire managers employed one of the Idaho Department of Lands unmanned aerial systems with infrared cameras to fly over the entirety of the fire to map heat signatures. With the flight data, firefighters are targeting hot spots that sometimes arent easily seen with the naked eye during daylight hours.

Officials say the blaze possibly started with a faulty battery charger that ignited a barn fire in the area but the official cause is still undetermined.

Today crews will continue mop up operations with the arduous work of cold trailing. Cold training involves firefighters walking grids and testing the soil with their hands to make sure the fire is dead out. While using the UAS data to pinpoint locations of spot is helpful, the dirty and hard on-the-ground work remains.

North Idaho Type 3 Team will be returning command of the fire back to the local Idaho Department of Lands fire protection district this morning.
Bill again joined Glenn Beck to discuss the weeks big stories. They predicted that the corporate, pro-Biden media will try to make the Afghanistan debacle fade into the rearview mirror. But Bill theorized that any terror attack in the USA during the Biden administration will be blamed squarely on the president. He lamented that we are laden with a commander-in-chief who cannot retain information or remember what he says from day to day. The duo also opined on Hurricane Ida and the Democrats habit of blaming any and every weather event on climate change. And they scrutinized the new law in Texas that bans abortion once a fetal heartbeat is detected. As before, Bill expressed bewilderment that the Catholic Church allows pro-abortion Joe Biden to take communion.
African communities often face barriers to financial services. A newly launched digital platform that is not dependent on smart phone technology overcomes these by combining the simplicity of mobile money with the sophistication of a bank account.

Self-onboarding process

Unlimited capacity

Unayo, which means You have it in some African languages, is a multi-faceted, interactive platform designed by Standard Bank to reach into, and across, all sectors and communities.By enabling fully KYC compliant onboarding and activating mechanisms for external funding (via donors and producers) it overcomes factors such as income, access to branch services and technology as well as the cost of transactions.Anyone with a cell phone number, agnostic of the mobile network operator, and handset technology, can receive value through the use of the Unayo solution and become part of the financial world, comments Wally Fisher, head of Unayo of Standard Bank.It is primarily supported by USSD, which extends its reach to users without smartphone access and where they are most comfortable and active: on their mobile devices.Customers with smart mobile devices can also use the solution by downloading the app from the Google Play, the iOS App Store or Hauwei Gallery and access more enhanced features of the banking system, he adds.A key feature of Unayo is the self-onboarding process.Whether users want to access Unayo via USSD or the smart app, they will not be required to visit a physical banking branch. There are no geographical restrictions and no need to present documentation or undergo a paper-bound KYC process. On registration, users can also opt for additional identification features such as facial recognition.Fisher says that this has immense potential impact - particularly in an informal market. He says that the value that users can derive from Unayo is best illustrated by way of a practical example.When users get the Unayo capability via USSD, they are presented with various options. They can receive money, lets say $10 via another Unayo user. Should they wish to cash that $10 out, they can seek out someone in their community who has signed up as an Unayo merchant to do so."The Unayo merchant can then provide that person with their $10, earning a commission fee in the process. Alternatively, the person with the $10 could exchange it for basic goods through another person that has signed up as an Unayo merchant, he explains.Through Unayo, Standard Bank will service four key payment ecosystems: salaried individuals, cross border payments, traders, and donor organisations. It aims to create an ecosystem of users and merchants with the goal of stimulating entrepreneurial activity and driving financial inclusion on the continent.Unayo also holds the potential to initiate a richer savings and investing culture in these ecosystems, as the receivers and holders of funds are able to create society and shared savings schemes.It also allows for the management of funds and the participants of the collective funding in one place, from one profile, in a simple and understandable manner and without data restrictions.Fisher says that the unique beauty of Unayo is its unlimited capacity to add features and services to the solution that are not determined by us as Standard Bank, but by the users of the platform themselves.It is not about us building services, but users adding services that can better connect their lives. This underlying technology means that users can be the custodians of their preferences and tailor the platform for their unique needs. Business owners or individuals can create savings pockets for specific goals like education by opening transactional or business accounts, he adds.Already operational in Botswana, Malawi, Lesotho and eSwatini with broader country deployments to follow, Standard Bank estimates that it will facilitate up to 90% of Africas payments through Unayo. In the first quarter of 2021. Unayo has already processed over 60,000 customer-initiated transactions.Unayo transactions are free or attract nominal charges.
From brokenness to breakthrough, that has been the entrepreneurial journey for Matsidiso Kolobe, CEO and founder of Leseli Creative, a Cape Town-based advertising and marketing agency specialising in native languages as a primary form of communication.

Leseli Creative started out as a hobby at first until 2018 when Matsidiso felt she had toyed enough with the idea of starting her own business, and decided to give entrepreneurship a go. "Before I made the move to operate my business full-time, it was lonely and difficult. I didn't know what to do or who to approach. I had worked for a few agencies, moved to Johannesburg, hated it, moved back to Cape Town and then took a moment to reflect on what really mattered to me," shares Matsi as she is more commonly known to her colleagues and friends.Growing up in a single-parent household in Willows, a local suburb in Bloemfontein, in the Free State, Matsi cites her mother, an entrepreneur herself, as her role model. "I always saw myself in business, it was others who saw the creative in me. Initially, I wanted to study psychology but my mom always worried that I would be the one crying if I became a psychologist," she says with a chuckle.It was only years later, after completing her studies at the AAA School of Advertising, that the creative in her would truly arise in roles such as brand manager, and art director at the likes of mega-agencies FCB and Ogilvy. Although these environments presented an ideal training ground for a young Matsi, she began to realise that in all the roles and projects she had been a part of, none of them were really speaking to the hearts of the people to whom they were targeted. "I felt that I was getting tired in the work and especially in the lack of campaigns delving into native languages. It was always so difficult translating a message from vernac to English, it loses its impact. I realised then that I wanted to be the one to figure out how to capitalise on that gap and so the vision for Leseli Creative was born," says Matsi.Having started out back in 2018, not completely new to the ad industry, but quite the newcomer to the world of business, Matsi quickly realised that she needed help. "In the beginning of my journey as an entrepreneur, I was broken. Both personally and in business, I felt stagnant. I was unable to make profit, I almost lost my home, every amount of money I made I put into my bond. My marriage was non-existent. I remember on two occasions, I just started crying in meetings for no reason. I had the belief that my vision had true potential but I didn't know how to get there. I didn't just need any help at the time, I needed the right people to come alongside me. People that could help me understand the true value of the services I was offering, and then I came across the Innovator Trust, shares Matsi.Leseli Creative became a beneficiary of the Innovator Trusts 2-year Enterprise Development incubation programme in 2018 where she found herself the only one-woman run business among her peers, all business owners with teams. My journey on the programme was an emotional one. I had to unpack and unlearn what I thought I knew. I was open enough to take on the important, constructive criticism for my business to grow but I was not aware that it would be the emotional support and mentorship that would be such a major thing for me, recalls Matsi.Through the ED programme, Leseli Creative had the opportunity to undergo a gap analysis to identify areas in the business where potential could be maximised. For small business owners like Matsi, the programme also provided the correct tools, training and infrastructure support needed in order to support and accelerate growth. As a business owner and a team of one, Matsi had recognised her need for therapy and the Innovator Trust, through the programme, was able to provide her with that support.If, it would be the Innovator Trust, says Matsi jokingly. Usually you ask for help and people say I'm really sorry and thats that, but not with this team. Whenever I was faced with a challenge, they somehow always managed to help me out of it. It was a time of rebuilding, a real detox moment for me - that's what the therapy brought. It also made me realise my value as a human being.Matsi notes the value of steady growth in her own entrepreneurial experience and how being a woman in a male-dominant industry such as advertising has affected her. As a women in the ad industry, it was challenging for me to be heard. Ive always struggled with my soft voice, even since my varsity days. I was often overlooked at work because you need to speak up, you need to sell yourself. I questioned whether I was in the right industry but what this also did was give me time to observe, to study other people in the advertising space. I had time to work on myself and play the cards that make sense for me. It has taken patience but it has given me an opportunity to craft my skill, hone what I can offer and let my work, and not my gender, speak for me, she comments.In the last four years, Leseli Creative has specialised in visual communications, corporate IDs, web design and general design work but since the advent of the Covid-19 pandemic, a shift to more strategic content development and campaign building has been evident among the company's client base. Being patient with myself and with my business journey has also attracted the right clients for us, shares Matsi who now, after graduating from the ED incubation programme in 2020, services a boutique range of corporate clients including the Innovator Trust, as facilitator of their current SMME Marketing programme.During Covid, when we saw a lot of businesses closing, that was not the case for us. My team and I had the opportunity to work proactively on new ideas, we did not have to concentrate on the fact that no work was coming in because the Innovator Trust had ensured that we could cover salaries through access to their Resilience Fund. They are the ones who truly kept us afloat, says Matsi.In hindsight, it is through a process of reflection and refinement brought on by many learnings, mistakes and a few difficult clients, that Leseli Creative has taken shape and solidified its vision and brand as a female, black-owned and run digital agency."Our vision has always been to champion the local use of languages in branding, not only as brand building but as a significant contributor to the evolution of South African marketing, thats what we aim to do," says Matsi with a sense of pride and patriotism.On the road ahead and final parting words to aspiring entrepreneurs entering the tech space, she had this to say, I once heard this quote, this would be my message, if you think you're too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito. No idea is ever small if youre serving a need. Start your business, scale fast but do not rush to grow. Grow at a pace that is directly aligned to where you are as the compass of your ship. Please know that it is what you say no to that will forever empower you on your journey as an entrepreneur. Outside of business, we are breadwinners, wives, mothers, we are all of these roles that people dont know about. I see how some people are able to step into fully fledged entrepreneur mode where its all about the money from day one. I dont know if there is any rule of law of how to be an entrepreneur, but you cannot build a business on a foundation that is not sound and you as the business owner are the foundation. I dont know anything else but this, my story.
Ares Holdings Group, the distributor of apparel brands Under Armour, Birkenstock, Crocs and 2XU in southern Africa, has appointed Gareth Kemp as its new chief executive officer, succeeding Neil Scheibe who will remain on the company's board.

Gareth Kemp, Ares Holdings Group CEO. Source: Supplied

Gareth, congrats on the new appointment. What do you believe this means for you and brands in the Ares Group Holdings stable?

Whats at the top of your to-do list in your new role?

What inspires/excites you most about the brands youre working with?

In your opinion, what are the qualities of a great business leader?

How do you plan to help navigate Ares Group Holdings through these unusual times?

What do you view as the key challenges and opportunities in SA retail at present, particularly in the apparel and footwear space?

Could you share some of the most rewarding moments or milestones of your career journey?

Anything in particular youre currently reading or listening to for work inspiration?

What is your hope for the company and South Africas retail industry at large?

Kemp was instrumental in establishing the Ares Group in 2016 and has since occupied the role of managing director of Under Armour since its launch in South Africa. He has been a key player in the larger business, supporting exiting CEO Scheibe in growing the brands and their distribution as well as establishing the systems infrastructure and teams required to position the business as a foremost distributor of global brands.Here, Kemp talks us through the meaning of this next step in his career, the challenge that awaits in steering the company through a turbulent economic landscape, and the market opportunities that Ares aims to harness.Its a huge honour to be heading up the Ares Holdings portfolio with leading global brands Under Armour, Birkenstock, Crocs and 2xU in southern Africa. I was one of the founding members who started this fledgling company back in 2015 when I took up the responsibility as MD of the Under Armour brand.Ares has collectively experienced a number of major successes and milestones over the years. My new role is to make sure we continue this upward trajectory.The CEO appointment is a huge undertaking; we are busy navigating a very tricky period with the pandemic having caused major issues globally and locally. I enjoy working in a challenging environment, and with the amazing talented teams we are fortunate to have within Ares, I believe we are going to be in good shape once we come out at the other end. Its an exciting new chapter for both myself and the group.We are currently adapting strategy to take advantage of new opportunities and to address the new challenges of today. As a company, we must continue to evolve and remain relevant and top of mind with our customers. Our global partner relationships are critical to our success, getting alignment of our strategy we are wanting to implement and an understanding of our local market conditions will be a key task.We have always had a great culture, nurturing this, and working out how we can build on this, especially with the challenges around workplace and work from home, will also be very important.The Ares Group has set a very high standard for itself, individually each brand has its own unique story with its own unique selling points. We have clearly defined goals, and we service varied market segments, so every day poses a new challenge and with that comes new opportunities. It is very exciting to work in such a dynamic environment.To be a successful leader you need to be more than just a visionary steering the brand around pitfalls. You must know when to seize opportunities and how to rally employees to work hard toward the companys goals.For me, its all about being honest, transparent and collaborative, being completely self-aware, understanding your own strengths and weaknesses and that of your team. Every day is a new opportunity, remaining humble and hungry and to keep learning and working on my own leadership skills is something I will keep pushing myself to do.There is no pretty answer, every brand has been forced to reinvent themselves and adjust to a new and ever-changing normal. We need to continue to do the grunt work, stay abreast of the latest trends and also understand that the global pandemic has not only affected the consumer pocket but also their buying power and trends.We need to accept that we will be operating in prolonged survival mode and are going to have to learn to be more elastic and flexible. For me, its all about leaning on your strengths, embracing new technologies, remaining innovative, understanding the customers needs and being agile to ensure that we stay ahead of the competition.South Africa's clothing industry has not escaped the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, with retail sales in the SA clothing and textile industry reaching the worst decline ever recorded in 2020. There is simply no margin for error, we have however been fortunate to be in a particular sector that has seen some impressive growth despite the current economic climate.We have continued to open stores with decent results, further proving that we have demand for our brands. The focus for us is to remain relevant, to offer a product that solves a problem and services a need. Theres some stiff competition and consumers are spoiled for choice, however we are all fighting for the same pocket.Consumer behaviour is changing rapidly, and this is largely because of the explosive growth of e-commerce. Customers have many choices at their fingertips before they commit to a purchase decision. A huge share of purchases are now made online, but studies show that consumers prefer to buy things in person at brick-and-mortar shops.Its common for customers to research products online only to purchase in person. This is a massive opportunity for us, and we have invested substantially in our e-commerce offering as well as our retail offering and experience.Throughout my career I have always wanted to start a distribution business. The set-up of Ares and seeing where we are today, especially having dealt with what we have, is a proud moment.This new chapter is definitely a big milestone. Being a part of the team that launched Under Armour to the SA market, growing the brand and its distribution lines and firmly cementing UAs presence as one of the leading performance footwear and apparel brands in the country has also been special.I listen to podcasts on a regular basis; understanding how different companies are reimagining themselves is inspiring.I hope that we will find a bit of stability and consistency in the not-too-distant future. I encourage our industry and others to find ways to support each other, keep investing and building their businesses wherever they can. The business leaders in South Africa, however big or small, can all play a part to positively influence our country's economic recovery.
South Africa's unemployment rate has risen to a shocking 34.4% in Q2 of 2021, which according to Stats SA is the highest rate recorded since the start of the QLFS in 2008. With one in three South Africans looking for a job, something needs to change. SA's private investment rate may have fallen to its lowest level in four decades but it doesn't mean we need to stop investing time into start-ups who are looking for a leg up.

Its widely known that entrepreneurship can help to reduce unemployment as it offers paying jobs and provides employees with the means to further grow one's own earning potential through training and on-the-job experience. The challenge is persuading people who follow this path, to not give up as it can be a lonely road fraught with obstacles.The Entrepreneurs Organisation (EO) is a NPO that offers peer-to-peer networking opportunities for entrepreneurs across South Africa and the globe. There are currently 198 chapters in 61 countries worldwide. EO Cape Town Chapter President, Julia Finnis-Bedford, has launched an initiative called Bootcamp to Boardroom which aims to support young entrepreneurs as they navigate the perilous first three-year phase of their business. It will be run in collaboration with EO Diversity Chair Luvuyo Rani as well Over the Rainbow Foundation and Further which focus on entrepreneurial growth, support, and sustainability.I am passionate about creating transformation and inclusivity within our organisation as well as our country and believe the only way to do this is to start from a grassroots level. I think as entrepreneurs we need to give back and share our knowledge with younger businesses in this country and be the change we want to see. In doing this, we will be creating jobs in this country and helping young entrepreneurs help others to grow our economy, comments EO Cape Town Chapter President, Julia Finnis-Bedford.The EO Bootcamp to Boardroom is a free nine-month-long programme and is ideal for entrepreneurs looking for a network, mentorship, connections, and exposure to the best business leaders in Cape Town. To be selected, startups will need to show they have the potential to create a social and economic impact in their communities.To apply,go to https://overtherainbow.co.za/bootcamp-to-boardroom/
JPMorgan Chase is the bank that gambled with the bank deposits of moms and pops across America in 2012 by trading exotic derivatives in London and losing $6.2 billion in the process. Its also the bank that admitted to two felony counts in 2014 for its role in facilitating Bernie Madoff ripping off the life savings of thousands of more moms and pops across America. Its rap sheet of ripping off the little guy reads like that of an entrenched crime family.

But when the bank was indicted in France on April 16, 2015 for being complicit in tax fraud, it had the temerity to appeal the charges on the basis that its human rights had been violated, along with various codes of criminal procedure. Its argument boiled down to this: it hadnt been advised that it had the right to remain silent during an interrogation.

JPMorgan is an international bank that has been in existence for more than a century. It has legions of international lawyers on its payroll, employed at the most sophisticated law firms in the world. After a century of court battles, shouldnt the bank and its lawyers know it has the right to remain silent?

Amazingly, on September 26, 2018, the criminal chamber of the Court of Cassation in France bought into this argument and not only annulled the indictment but ordered that all references to the bank, including its attorneys names, be removed from the indictment.




Police do not need warrants to use drones:

Police can use drones to respond to 100 percent of 911 calls

Police use drones 'to get more information about emergency (911) calls'

Police use drones to 'map' traffic intersections and surveil public buildings

Police use drones to monitor protesters (revealing pro-police comments)

Police "Robotics Division" uses drones to monitor public events

Police use drones to listen to protesters conversations

Austin Police Drone Robotics Unit (monitor protests and car clubs)

Police Want To Keep "Austin Car Club" Spying Top Secret (approx. 4:45)
The UKs WE117B nuclear missile, via Flickr

The ambiguity allows the US to give Israel aid, which is technically illegal due to the existence of Israels nuclear arsenal. Under foreign assistance laws, the US cannot provide aid to nuclear-armed states that refuse to sign the NPT.

The irony of the arrangement is that Israel constantly accuses Iran of operating a secret nuclear weapons program. And one of the main Israeli talking points is that if Iran ever acquires a nuclear bomb, it would trigger a regional arms race.

Israel is not just waging a propaganda war against Iran. The accusations come along with covert attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities and brazen assassinations of nuclear scientists.

The US entertains the Israeli narrative, and pressure from Israel is what led to the Trump administration withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal, known as the JCPOA. Iran remains under heavy US sanctions, and this economic warfare is justified by the idea that Tehran is racing to develop a bomb when that is not the case.

The JCPOA puts strict limits on Irans nuclear program. But instead of favoring a US return to the deal, Israel is doing everything to sabotage negotiations. One reason the Israelis say they are against the JCPOA is that it has an expiration date. But that ignores the fact that after the JCPOA, Iran would still be bound by the NPT.
In a bid to recapture the narrative and distract the minds of Americans from the Afghan farce, the Biden administration and liberal media appear to be attempting to shift the focus to who they believe the real enemy is...

"White supremacist and anti-government extremists have expressed admiration for what the Taliban accomplished, a worrying development for US officials who have been grappling with the threat of domestic violent extremism," CNN reported on Wednesday.

For weeks, Americans on both sides of the political spectrum were shocked by the images coming out of Kabul Airport, resembling the Fall of Saigon in 1975.

Nearly 100 retired generals and admirals have demanded US Defense Secretary (and former Raytheon board member) Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley resign immediately over the botched Afghanistan withdrawal by the Biden administration.

All of which has prompted the White House and liberal media to find a way to come together again to remind Americans that far-right groups are the real enemy.

John Cohen of the Office of Intelligence and Analysis at the Department of Homeland Security was on a conference call last Friday with various law enforcement agencies and warned that white supremacists groups were "framing the activities of the Taliban as a success," according to CNN, who reviewed a transcript of the call.

Cohen warned about the "the great replacement concept" theory that white supremacists groups believe they're losing control of the country as immigrants from other countries, including Afghanistan, come in by the thousands.

"There are concerns that those narratives may incite violent activities directed at immigrant communities, certain faith communities, or even those who are relocated to the United States," he added.

CNN continued to hype the far-right extremist threat by citing a story from SITE Intelligence Group, an NGO run by professional "extremist tracker" Rita Katz.

Katz's warned that "far-right group" Proud Boys allegedly said:

"These farmers and minimally trained men fought to take back their nation back from globohomo. They took back their government, installed their national religion as law, and executed dissenters ... If white men in the west had the same courage as the Taliban, we would not be ruled by Jews currently."

The story also quotes two unnamed federal officials.

Matt Taibbi summed up the farcical 'sourcing' here very succinctly:

This entire CNN story about alleged white supremacist praise of the Taliban worrying officials cites exactly one anonymous online quote on Instagram: https://t.co/zzG4tA2peW  Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) September 1, 2021

What the liberal media is doing is clear. They're shielding Biden from the withdrawal debacle while attempting to change the narrative because presidential polling data is slumping ahead of the midterms. The goal is to refocus the masses once again on domestic white terrorists at home, which as a reminder are "the greatest threat to democracy" according to the Biden admin.

The transparency of this move by the administration and its key allies is evident for all to see.

If someone created a parody site of CNN, it would never be as deranged and hilarious as the *actual* CNN https://t.co/KwrRo0S7vL  Buck Sexton (@BuckSexton) September 2, 2021

Is it any wonder, trust in the media is in the toilet?
via Sovereign Man

More than 400 years ago in the year 1615, the Catholic Church hired eleven expert consultants and asked them to review the scientific work of Nicolaus Copernicus.

Copernicus, of course, was one of the first scientists to propose that the sun (not the earth) was at the center of the universe.

But even though Copernicus had been dead for more than 70 years at that point, his ideas still lived on and were being advanced by none other than Galileo.

Galileo had published his own research with compelling evidence that Copernicus was right.

This view of the universe conflicted with Church teachings that the Earth was at the center of the universe.

So the Vatican decided to settle the matter with its panel of expert fact checkers.

On February 4, 1616, the fact checking committee issued its final report to Rome: the Earth is clearly the center of the universe. And any other view constituted heresy.

They concluded that the Copernicus/Galileo heliocentric view is foolish and absurd in philosophy, and formally heretical since it explicitly contradicts in many places the sense of Holy Scripture

The fact checkers assessment ultimately helped convict Galileo of heresy later in life; his works were banned, was threatened with torture, forced to recant his scientific conclusions, and spent the last eight years of his life under house arrest.

It was a very sad ending to the life of a man who contributed so much to the world.

Vatican bureaucrats would go on to ban works by many other scientists and philosophers , including Rene Descartes, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Immanuel Kant, and John Locke.

The Vatican may very well have felt that their censorship and fact-checking were righteous.

But we obviously know in retrospect that many of the people they censored were legitimate scientists whose only crime was having a different point of view.

Its not so different from the legions of fact-checkers lurking the Internet today.

Facebook, for example, banned the heretical question last year: did COVID-19 escape from a lab in Wuhan?

Its fact-checkers based their censorship on a letter penned by a zoologist named Peter Daszak , who said it was anti-Asian hate speech to suspect a Wuhan lab leak.

Daszaks day job is packaging federal grants for scientific labs, some of which funded the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Daszak was also later sent to the Wuhan Institute of Virology as part of a World Health Organization fact-finding mission. Shockingly, he concluded that everything in Wuhan was fine.

In other words, the guy responsible for funding the lab which may have leaked COVID-19 was presented as a neutral, third party fact-checker.

And he was given the authority to decide what you were allowed to say on social media.

Then, of course, theres PayPal and the Anti-Defamation League , which recently announced their own inquisition of fact checkers to decide if your online free speech is too extremist or anti-government.

These terms, of course, are defined in the sole discretion of the fact checkers. Do you have a problem with the current administration? That might make you anti-government, and youll end up banned from using PayPals platform.

Not to be outdone by the private sector, the White House said it will partner with Big Tech companies in its new initiative to encourage you to report your radical family and friends to the government.

Then theres David Mikkelson, the co-founder of the fact-checking website Snopes; he recently admitted to plagiarizing at least 54 articles, demonstrating that the Godfather of fact-checking has absolutely zero ethical standards.

FactCheck.org set up a special COVID-19/Vaccination Project on its website, in order to fact check claims about vaccines.

Funding for the project came from a foundation started Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which owns billions of dollars worth of stock in Johnson & Johnson (the foundations namesake).

So FactCheck.org is supposed to be scrutinizing its primary benefactor. Isnt this at least a major conflict of interest?

It reminds me of an article I read in Forbes last summer entitled, You Must Not Do Your Own Research When It Comes To Science.

The author claimed that when it comes to issues like vaccinations, climate change, and the novel coronavirus doing your own research can be dangerous, destructive, and even deadly.

Ignorance is strength!

Abandon all reason you peasant. If you think for yourself, you are putting lives at risk. Believe what the woke fact-checking elites tell you.

Calling attention to the conflicts of interests makes you a science denier a heretic. Questioning the ulterior motives of the people involved makes you a conspiracy theorist.

If you can see what is happening, and where this is going, you understand why it is so important to have a Plan B.


US Marines conduct evacuation mission in Afghanistan on August 28. Image via US Department of Defense

Maybe this isnt the Afghanistan-related content that my largely-American audience is most eager to consume, but having been in London for the past two weeks and followed the coverage of the Afghanistan withdrawal here, I cant help but be grimly fascinated by the steady stream of overwrought fury bellowing from UK political and media elites. Its worth paying attention to as an American, even if you dont have any particular reason to care about what goes on in the UK. Because whats most grimly fascinating is that a furor which has dominated UK political debate for weeks arose not due to any decision taken by UK policy-makers, but rather due to a unilateral policy decision taken by Joe Biden. And yet, debate in the UK proceeds with hardly any acknowledgement of the willfully subservient military arrangement its elected officials have acceded to for decades. Instead, UK politicians and pundits lash out at Biden like hes their own de facto chief executive or something; few seem aware of how fundamentally strange this is.

While minor operational critiques have been raised in relation to the UKs own smaller-scale evacuation effort, ultimately the UK Government did not choose to withdraw from Afghanistan. Another country autonomously dictated that choice on their behalf. One struggles to imagine the US, so aggressively defensive of its military hegemony, ever tolerating such a lopsided dynamic. But in decades past, the UK likely wouldve struggled to imagine it too.

For a variety of reasons  including residual fantasies of Post-WWII glory, the exigencies of short-term party politics, among others  UK elected officials and pundits have studiously avoided any frontal acknowledgement of this submissive arrangement, and what it signifies about the limits of their own agency. In a collective act of deflection, they end up fixating unrelentingly on the person of Biden  to the point that youd almost think Westminster has votes in the Electoral College or something.

Why take any interest in this, as an American who otherwise ignores or is apathetic toward the UK? Perhaps because the shambolic uproar here is a preview of whats to come on this side of the Atlantic (an annoyingly ubiquitous cliche). As US hegemony inevitably and ineluctably recedes, just like UK hegemony did in an earlier era, our own elites are unlikely to fare any better in the process of reconciling themselves to their newfound impotence. At least the British occasionally evince some dry humor on the subject. In the US, its sure to be a whole lot uglier  and nuttier. A few relatively unremarkable affirmations of foreign policy realism by Biden was already enough to drive US media and politicians into blithering paroxysms:

What about some not-so-farfetched future hypothetical scenario where, like the UK in Afghanistan, the US one day finds it doesnt have control anymore over its own military decision-making? That it gradually sleep-walked into a balance-of-power dynamic whereby its autonomy had been effectively forfeited? Thered probably be a whole lot of comically overblown theatrics, and convoluted mental gymnastics, performed in service of avoiding any real facing up to this fact. It wont happen overnight; the US still has time left to retain some measure of military and economic supremacy. But its coming. A subset of national security elites are at least self-aware enough to admit being filled with deep angst over what the alleged catastrophe in Afghanistan portends for the future of US hegemony. This also explains much of their prior angst about Donald Trump, who was viewed by these same elites as an unacceptably crass and embarrassing steward of US global power.

And while such angst often manifests in the most outlandishly self-discrediting ways, these elites arent wrong that the US is a power in steep decline. It has engaged in multiple military conflicts over the past 20 years that could not be described as anything but colossal failures. It has squandered trillions of dollars on these efforts, which range from full-scale invasions and occupations (Afghanistan, Iraq) to protracted regime change operations (Syria) to proxy wars (Yemen) to one-off aerial attacks (Libya) that just happen to result in mass emigration crises. Multiple presidents from both parties campaigned in opposition to these failed military adventures, but through a combination of bureaucratic capture, deliberate intra-governmental undermining, and lack of will, ended up perpetuating them. Eventually the allies who view the US as a reliable guarantor of global stability will come to detect a pattern, wouldnt you think?

After the Taliban seized Kabul, and British MPs were summoned back from their summer holidays, The Telegraph dramatically reported that Parliament had held Biden in contempt. Wow  contempt. Sounds very bracing and startling. But what does it mean in practice? Turns out that the UK Parliament holding a US President in contempt entails no tangible policy action at all. Not even a vote, or a letter, or anything. (What are they going to do, impeach?) What this apparently entails is just a bunch of politicians standing up to complain  it bears repeating  about a policy decision taken by the head of another country. To give just one tedious example among many, Labour MP Chris Bryant rose to denounce Bidens remarks about the situation in Afghanistan as some of the most shameful comments ever from an American president.

For the past several weeks, Bryant and his fellowmen have been consumed by controversy over an action  sorry to keep repeating this  over which they had no direct control, and which the countrys top leadership actually opposed, but had no option other than to begrudgingly accept. Last Sundays edition of the The Times reported that Boris Johnson (allegedly the Prime Minister of a sovereign government) had desperately lobbied President Biden by phone to extend the August 31 deadline for the airlift, but Biden refused on security grounds. In the UK military command structure, the buck doesnt stop with their own governments top official. It stops with Joe Biden.

Tom Tugendhat, another performatively aggrieved MP, has spoken for many colleagues in his repeated condemnations of the Afghanistan withdrawal as the single biggest foreign policy disaster since Suez. There are multiple layers of irony here, because the UKs 1956 invasion of the Suez Canal is generally regarded as so disastrous and humiliating not for any strictly military reason, but because it was seen a symbolic turning point in the decline of UK international influence. President Dwight Eisenhower rebuked the UKs gambit to retake control of the Canal from Egyptian nationalist leader Gamal Nasser, and UK forces therefore had to retreat in ignominy  unable to carry out the mission without the backing of the ascendant US hegemon.

In 2014, journalist Peter Hitchens even uncovered archival evidence showing that a top-ranking US Admiral, Arleigh Burke, discussed with Secretary of State John Foster Dulles whether it would be feasible to blast the hell out of UK forces seeking to re-capture the Canal, so determined as Eisenhower was to thwart UK (and French) plans. And while the US Navy never opened fire on any Britons, they did try to impede the UKs advance. Hitchens relayed a quote from a UK Admiral who reported that his fleet had been continually menaced during past eight hours by US aircraft, as well as an after-action report from a UK General who lamented that it was the action of the US which really defeated us in attaining our object. You have to wonder  if this 65-year-old episode is still such a painful memory  why the UK nonetheless chose to join itself at the hip with the foreign power blamed as most responsible for their greatest humiliation.

The disaster of Suez parallels why US elites were driven totally apoplectic by the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. It wasnt so much the logistical details of the withdrawal operation itself, although many flamboyantly insist thats what theyre really so worked up about. The war is now over after 122,000 people were successfully evacuated, and there were no direct hostilities between the US military and the Taliban. (Can anyone figure out if Republicans think too many people were evacuated, or too few? Hard to keep track of what the criticism is supposed to be.) Yes, 13 US military personnel were tragically killed in a suicide bombing, but thats 31 fewer US fatalities than occurred between 2017 and 2020  casualties that no one even seemed to notice. Odd that prior escalations of the failed war engendered exponentially less outrage than the belated termination of it. And at least those 13 were conducting the only defensible US military operation in Afghanistan since 2002  getting out.

Underneath all the partisan sniping and cheap talking points, though, is a deep-seated reason this withdrawal has provoked such a catastrophizing outburst of Suez-like magnitude: because the embarrassing symbolism (or optics) portends that the US is on a similar trajectory of decline as the UK, although a couple of decades removed. Much the same intangibles that animated UK elites feeling of humiliation pursuant to Suez  loss of credibility, diminution of status, relinquishment of territorial assets  very much also animate the angst of US elites who just watched trillions of dollars go down the drain in a failed Central Asia boondoggle. In time, this could well mean the US will be forced to accommodate itself to a similar kind of enfeebled, subservient global role that the UK has

Ill be doing a Rokfin livestream today at 8pm EST on this and related subjects. As always, if you cant watch live, the full video will be available afterwards at the same link.
Robert and Mulvihill on Aug. 30 filed a motion for an emergency temporary restraining order against the mandate, asking the court to prevent the DOD from vaccinating them and others who can document they previously had COVID.

Plaintiffs claim if theyre not granted the relief they seek, they will suffer immediate physical harm by being forced to take a vaccine for a virus to which they already have immunity.

In their motion, they also said the mandate constitutes an unconsented physical invasion of the worst kind  with a novel mRNA technology that has not even been tested on people who have acquired natural immunity to the virus, and who have a clear and unequivocal right to the exemption they are seeking under the DODs own regulations.

Vaccines could cause physical harm for some

The lawsuit also alleges the COVID vaccines could cause potential harm to the body  including harm caused by the spike protein.

Plaintiffs said the Centers for Disease Control and Preventions Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), which contains adverse event reports for all vaccines administered in the U.S. from July 1,1990, shows a significant increase in adverse events since the rollout of COVID vaccines.

According to the lawsuit, before the FDA introduced COVID Emergency Use Authorization vaccines in December 2020, VAERS had recorded a total of 5,039 deaths and 12,053 permanent disabilities for all prior vaccines. However, for the week beginning Aug.13, VAERS showed 13,068 reports of deaths and 1,031,100 reports of serious adverse events from COVID vaccines alone.

The plaintiffs said they have the right to be free from unwanted physical intrusion and involuntary inoculation against a virus that poses statistically zero threat to people with natural immunity, and to reserve their guaranteed, codified and fundamental rights of informed consent. They allege forcibly inoculating a class of people with natural immunity will provide no benefit and will cause significant and irreparable physical harm and/or death.

Mary Holland, Childrens Health Defense president and general counsel, applauded the lead plaintiffs, Robert and Mulvihill, for standing up to the militarys mandate.

They raise critical issues that courts must resolve  on medical exemptions for natural immunity, and whether the clinical trials serving as the basis for Pfizers licensure were sufficient, Holland said.

Holland explained:

The plaintiffs case is exceptionally strong, resting as it does on proven natural immunity. Not only do Army regulations provide presumptive exemption to such individuals, but science and common sense require exemption of such people, in the military and out. It is well-established that natural immunity to COVID-19 is far more robust than vaccine-induced immunity, and those with natural immunity are at greater risk of injury if they are vaccinated. It is unfortunate that such a relatively simple matter needs to go to federal court for resolution, but we are delighted that plaintiffs Robert and Mulvihill brought the case. We hope that the court decides in their favor based on firm legal principles.

Holland said a vaccine mandate for all members of the U.S. military is an issue of national security and of supreme importance to all Americans. These plaintiffs raise challenges that the military brass and the federal government must respond to in open court, she said.

Vaccinating those with natural immunity to COVID not supported by science

As The Defender reported Aug. 30, natural immunity appears to confer longer lasting and stronger protection against SARS-CoV-2 infection, symptomatic disease and hospitalization from the Delta variant compared to Pfizer-BioNTechs two-dose vaccine-induced immunity.

In the largest real-world observational study comparing natural immunity gained through previous SARS-CoV-2 infection to vaccine-induced immunity afforded by the Pfizer mRNA vaccine, people who recovered from COVID were much less likely than never-infected, vaccinated people to get Delta, develop symptoms or be hospitalized.

The study, published as a preprint Aug. 25 on medRxiv, showed people who had never been infected with SARS-CoV-2 but were vaccinated in January and February were six to 13 times more likely to experience breakthrough infection with the Delta variant compared to unvaccinated people who were previously infected with SARS-CoV-2.

Researchers noted increased risk was significant for asymptomatic disease as well.

Its a textbook example of how natural immunity is really better than vaccination, Charlotte Thalin, a physician and immunology researcher at Danderyd Hospital and the Karolinska Institute, told Science.

A recent Israeli study affirmed the superiority of natural immunity. Health Ministry data on the wave of COVID outbreaks which began in May 2021, found a 6.72 times greater level of protection among those with natural immunity compared to those with vaccinated immunity.

In June, a Cleveland Clinic study found vaccinating people with natural immunity did not add to their level of protection.

The clinic studied 52,238 employees. Of those, 49,659 never had the virus and 2,579 had COVID and recovered. Of the 2,579 who previously were infected, 1,359 remained unvaccinated, compared with 22,777 who were vaccinated.

Not one of the 1,359 previously infected subjects who remained unvaccinated had a SARS-CoV-2 infection over the duration of the study.

As The Defender reported, a December 2020 study by Singapore researchers found neutralizing antibodies (one prong of the immune response) remained present in high concentrations for 17 years or more in individuals who recovered from the original SARS-CoV-2.

More recently, the World Health Organization and National Institutes of Health (NIH) each published evidence of durable immune responses to natural infection with SARS-CoV-2.

In March 2020, the NIHs Dr. Anthony Fauci shared his view (in an email [p. 22] to Ezekiel Emanuel) that their [sic] would be substantial immunity post infection.

American Institute of Economic Research reported, it appears in order to promote the COVID vaccine agenda, key organizations are not only downplaying natural immunity but may be seeking to erase it altogether.

Dr. Marty Makary, a professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and editor-in-chief of MedPage Today, said mandating vaccines for every living, walking American is not well-supported by science.

In an interview with U.S. News & World Reports, Makary said there is no scientific support for requiring the vaccine in people who have natural immunity  that is, immunity from prior COVID infection. There is zero clinical outcome data to support arguing dogmatically that natural immune individuals must get vaccinated.

Makary explained:

During every month of this pandemic, Ive had debates with other public researchers about the effectiveness and durability of natural immunity. Ive been told that natural immunity could fall off a cliff, rendering people susceptible to infection. But here we are now, over a year and a half into the clinical experience of observing patients who were infected, and natural immunity is effective and going strong. And thats because with natural immunity, the body develops antibodies to the entire surface of the virus, not just a spike protein constructed from a vaccine.

Makary said instead of talking about the vaccinated and the unvaccinated, we should be talking about the immune and non-immune.

Vaccinating people who previously had COVID could cause significant harm

Numerous scientists have warned vaccinating people who already had COVID could potentially cause harm, or even death.

According to Dr. Hooman Noorchashm, surgeon and patient safety advocate, it is scientifically established that once a person is naturally infected by a virus, antigens from that virus persist in the body for a long time after viral replication has stopped and clinical signs of infection have resolved.

When a vaccine reactivates an immune response in a recently infected person, the tissues harboring the persisting viral antigen are targeted, inflamed and damaged by the immune response, Noorchashm said.

In the case of SARS-CoV-2, we know that the virus naturally infects the heart, the inner lining of blood vessels, the lungs and the brain, explained Noorchashm. So, these are likely to be some of the critical organs that will contain persistent viral antigens in the recently infected  and, following reactivation of the immune system by a vaccine, these tissues can be expected to be targeted and damaged.

Colleen Kelley, associate professor of infectious diseases at Emory University School of Medicine and principal investigator for Moderna and Novavax phase 3 vaccine clinical trials, said, in an interview with Huffington Post, there had been reported cases in which those who previously had the virus endured harsher side effects after they received their vaccines.

Dr. Dara Udo, urgent and immediate care physician at Westchester Medical Group who received the COVID vaccine a year after having the disease, had a very strong immune response very similar to what she experienced while having COVID.

In an op-ed published by The Hill, Udo explained how infection from any organism, including COVID, activates several different arms of the immune system, some in more robust ways than others, and that this underlying activation due to infection or exposure, combined with a vaccination, could lead to overstimulation of the immune response.

In a public submission to the FDA, J. Patrick Whelan M.D. Ph.D., expressed similar concern that COVID vaccines aimed at creating immunity against the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein could have the potential to cause microvascular injury to the brain, heart, liver and kidneys in a way that does not currently appear to be assessed in safety trials of these potential drugs.
What it means to be fully vaccinated is set to change, Covid adviser Anthony Fauci said, suggesting the standard regimen will soon include three doses, amid reports that FDA staff voiced concerns over a rushed booster roll-out.

While Fauci noted that the decision will ultimately be left up to federal health agencies, he told reporters at a Thursday press briefing that he believes an additional dose will likely be needed for Americans to be considered fully vaccinated in the near future, citing recent data out of Israel.

From my own experience as an immunologist, I would not at all be surprised if the adequate, full regimen for vaccination will likely be three doses, he said, adding that the booster data from Israel showed a very clear and dramatic improvement in protection.

Israel has seen a significant decline in vaccine effectiveness over time, reporting a major spike in serious illness among the fully-vaccinated (under the previous two-dose definition) beginning in July. However, Fauci pointed to a study based on data from about 1 million Israelis aged 60 and older that suggested a third dose of the Pfizer jab had substantial positive impact, resulting in a ten-fold reduction in severe illness.

While Fauci stressed that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have yet to reach a final verdict on boosters, he said there is good reason to believe that third doses will not only produce a strong immune response in recipients, but a durable one.

And if it is durable, then youre going to have very likely a three-dose regimen being the routine regimen. But well just have to wait to make sure thats the case when the data gets presented to the FDA, he said.

Earlier this week, two top executives involved in vaccine research and testing at the FDA resigned, reportedly in protest over a number of blunders made by regulatory agencies, with Bidens rushed booster announcement being a last straw. He made the address ahead of official approval from the FDA, though the agency had previously backed boosters for those with compromised immune systems and has since acknowledged declining vaccine-induced immunity in the US.However, though the Joe Biden administration has already begun promoting boosters  with the president himself telling all American adults to receive their third shot within eight months of their last dose  the move has stirred controversy among federal regulators and concerns the White House is moving too quickly on its booster campaign.

Fauci himself was previously hesitant about additional vaccine doses, saying in July that it was far too soon to discuss boosters, and even stating that Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla had apologized to him for publicizing the companys work on a third shot at such an early stage.

By mid-August, however, the health adviser changed his stance significantly, instead arguing that Americans would inevitably need boosters. No vaccine, at least not within this category, is going to have an indefinite amount of protection, he said at the time.

According to the CDC, nearly 175 million Americans, or just over 52% of the population, have been fully vaccinated under the current two-dose regimen (or one-dose for Johnson & Johnsons formula). Full vaccinations among the most vulnerable age group, those 65 and older, is now just shy of 82%.
Reporters, lobbyists, activists, Biden administration officials and, of course, lawmakers and their staffs spent countless hours and an ocean of ink on the negotiations for and passage of a recent bipartisan infrastructure bill totaling around $1 trillion. Casual observers probably wont hear as much, though, about two votes  one in the Senate and one in the House  that could pave the way for Congress to spend a whopping $1.2 trillion additional dollars on the military, above current projections, over the next decades. Heres how.

These pages recently covered the Senate Armed Services Committees successful effort to add $25 billion in taxpayer-funded slush to the annual defense budget bill. Democrats and Republicans joined hands to fatten up the defense bill by 3.5 percent, with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) casting the lone dissenting vote. That increase was just endorsed by the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) on Wednesday.

Lawmakers approved, again on a widespread and bipartisan basis, an amendment by the committees ranking Republican, Mike Rogers of Alabama, to add $23.9 billion to the House version of the defense bill. Rogers proudly noted that his amendment would provide for a five-percent increase over the defense budget topline enacted in the previous fiscal year. And thats where the $1.2 trillion comes in.

Defense hawks in Congress have made no secret that they would like to see up to 5 percent growth in the defense budget each and every year. Rogers has said it. His Senate counterpart, Jim Inhofe (R-OK), has also said it. What few budget or military watchdogs have done is explain the compounding effects of 5 percent annual boosts to the defense budget.

Boosting the defense budget 5 percent each year over the next 10 fiscal years would leave the U.S. with a whopping $1.2 trillion defense budget by the end of the decade, heading into fiscal year (FY) 2031. Compare that 5 percent boost each year to what the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office currently projects defense spending will be over the next 10 years (as of their most recent July 2021 estimate), and the delta (the difference between a 5 percent annual boost and current budget projections) over 10 years is astounding.
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Cardi Bs home has flooded.

The WAP hitmaker shared a video on social media on Thursday (02.09.21) which showed puddles forming on the floor of her home in Atlanta, Georgia, following the devastation caused by Hurricane Ida.

In her video, Cardi showed the extent of the water damage and said: What the f***? This s*** is so f****** whack! F***.

And when she made it to her bathroom, she added: Oh my god, its starting to stink.

Cardi also wrote a caption on the clip which simply read: Storm is no joke.

Hurricane Ida has wreaked havoc on the east coast of the US and has left millions without electricity as well as causing severe flooding.

For Cardi, the devastation caused by the storm comes as shes already dealing with the stresses of having a baby on the way, as shes currently pregnant with her second child with husband Offset.

The 28-year-old rapper already has three-year-old daughter Kulture with the Migos star, and recently said she will financially support her children when they get older  as long as they are in school.

Cardi wrote on her Twitter account: "When my kids get older and they want to move out imma get them a big a** condo and imma be paying their rent ONLY IF they are in school or workin on business ventures!! If not you living in my house, under my rules or you gotta pay your own rent. (sic)"

Meanwhile, the I Like It rapper also recently admitted she thinks the US could be on the cusp of another COVID-19 lockdown, even though they have been rolling out the vaccine for months.

Cardi asked her followers on social media: "Yall think they finna close down the US again ? [question emoji] (sic)"
MEMOIR

Stranger Care: A Memoir of Loving What Isnt Ours

Sarah Sentilles

Text, $34.99

Early in American writer Sarah Sentilles memoir a two-week-old baby boy is pulled out of rubble alive. This baby was stronger than barrel bombs, stronger than collapsed ceilings, stronger than everything, says his rescuer, a member of Syrias White Helmet volunteers.

In reality, babies are only as strong as the love we give them. Without love they are the most vulnerable beings of all  porous to the afflictions and addictions of the adults around them. Written with Sentilles characteristic sensitivity, Stranger Care is a deeply moving story about our capacity to love those children who dont belong to us, but who so desperately need us.

In Sarah Sentilles book she includes a series of poignant vignettes about mother-like attachment in all its forms, across all species. Credit:iStock

As Sentilles and her husband Eric wrestle with whether to have their own child, she quietly aches for a baby, and he grieves for the future of Planet Earth. The biggest gift I can give to a planet under stress is not creating another human, he says.
Send us a picture or Instagram one of Good Weekend in your life, using the hashtag #goodweekendmag. We choose one each week to publish here and in print.

Sharing my love of letter-writing and Good Weekend. Credit:Melbourne_seaplane

Letters

Stand by me

Weve never been more in need of a feel-good story than now, with the pandemic and rising stress levels affecting us all. There is a simple solution to the situation outlined in this article [August 21]: allow that lovely family to return to their very good friends and community in Biloela. It will be much more economical than continuing to keep them incarcerated. It will restore confidence in our leaders if they do what is in their power to do and show some compassion and humanity. We really are all in this together.

Kath Maher

Lidcombe, NSW

Thank you for your story on the Murugappan family, and more so, thank you to the wonderful people of this small Australian country town. What I dont understand is why, with all the problems this government is facing (COVID-19, climate change, treatment of women, Afghanistan) it just doesnt clear the decks of this issue and get on with the really important stuff. If Immigration Minister Alex Hawke sent the family back to Biloela, his government would not lose a single vote and might possibly gain a few.

Ron Brown

Wallsend, NSW
On the empty streets of Wilcannia police walk door to door to check the people inside are staying put. Visiting more than 300 homes every single day, they often come with food hampers for the residents struggling under lockdown.

The tiny town in far western NSW, where more than 60 per cent of the population is Aboriginal, is battling a COVID outbreak thats already infected one in seven residents.

Assistant commissioner Brett Greentree said the Wilcannia community was grateful for the support being offered by local police. Credit:Nick Moir.

With police, the army, and roving teams of doctors and nurses descending on the community, the organiser of Wilcannias emergency response said he acknowledged the stress being put on the towns vulnerable population.

I understand initially coming in can be confronting, but Ive been on the ground all this week, and Ive been speaking to many community members as well, said Brett Greentree, an assistant commissioner with NSW Police and the commander of the far western region.
NSW has reported 1431 new local coronavirus cases on Friday and 12 deaths that have been attributed to the virus. It is the highest number of cases and deaths recorded in the state within a 24-hour period.

There are currently 979 COVID-19 cases in hospital in NSW, including 160 in intensive care, while 63 require ventilation.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian at Fridays COVID-19 briefing. Credit:Dominic Lorrimer

As I have said previously, the best health advice I have is that we anticipate a peak in cases in the next fortnight, Premier Gladys Berejiklian said.

The next fortnight is likely to be our worst in terms of the number of cases, but as I have said it is not the number of cases we need to be focusing on, but how many of those cases end up in our intensive care wards and hospitals and how many people we have vaccinated.
Sydney firefighters and more paramedic graduates are on standby to bolster the NSW COVID-19 response as the state prepares for the biggest surge in cases since the start of the pandemic, with Premier Gladys Berejiklian expecting a peak in the next fortnight.

The state recorded 1431 cases on Friday and 12 deaths, the highest numbers recorded in a 24-hour period since the pandemic began. Ms Berejiklian foreshadowed the healthcare system would probably operate differently in the near future.

Premier Gladys Berejiklian said NSW should prepare for difficult days ahead, with hospitals preparing for the worst. Credit:Dominic Lorrimer

In an email to staff seen by the Herald, NSW Ambulance chief executive Dominic Morgan said contingency surge workforce plans developed last year were now being reviewed.

Given the potential for continuing increased demand, we are likely to see increased numbers of patients transported to hospital with Covid-19, Dr Morgan said, adding some options include accelerating more graduates into the workforce, cancelling annual leave and partnering with other emergency service organisations.
Queensland has recorded no new cases of COVID-19, as Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk says she stands by comments she has made about vaccination in children.

The Premier had come under fire this week over comments about vaccination in children under the age of 12, which critics labelled as scaremongering.

On Friday Ms Palaszczuk defended her comments, saying I stand by what I believe in.

We need to get our vaccination rates up. This is absolutely critical that we use this window of opportunity to get as many Queenslanders vaccinated so when the virus does get here we are well-prepared, she said.
Victorias first mobile vaccine hub will hit the road within days, delivering vaccinations to isolated residents of regional Victoria while thousands of people prepare to leave home quarantine in Shepparton.

The mobile service, which has been nicknamed Jabba the Bus (think Star Wars), will administer doses of the Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines.

Mobile vaccine service Jabba the Bus will begin administering doses within days.

On Friday, three new cases were reported in Shepparton, taking the total number of active cases in the regional city to 127.

Goulburn Valley Health chief executive Matt Sharp said the vaccine bus would ensure everyone had access to immunisation regardless of where they lived.
But by the end of his rambling tirade in June 2019, devoid of his usual attempts at blokey humour, nothing would be the same again for Setka or the union.

Setka was in his comfort zone here, in the John Cummins Building, the Elizabeth Street offices named in honour of the legendary former Victorian president of the CFMEU. Setka also thought he was safe speaking to the national executive of the union, away from the prying eyes and ears of the media.

And the domestic violence charges against him? He had nothing to be ashamed of. He even raised how the activism of anti-domestic violence campaigner Rosie Batty had meant men now had fewer rights .

So what if he was friends with underworld figure Mick Gatto, he demanded rhetorically. If you dont like it tough f---ing luck, too f---ing bad. As for the Labor Party and other opponents, if they dont like how he conducts himself, he said, you can suck me off.

His deep voice booming across the cavernous room, his tattooed biceps bulging from one of his trademark T-shirts, Setka leant forward over a table facing a nearly all-male audience at the head office of the CFMEU in Melbourne, where he is the state secretary, sticking it to his enemies, his disloyal friends, and defending his more colourful social connections.

John Setka was at full throttle  not an unusual thing for the outspoken and divisive trade unionist. But this time it was different.

Setka likes to say to colleagues: You throw a stone at me and Ill throw a mountain back. Since the leak of his speech, Setka has tossed back many mountains.

Private investigators have been engaged by Setka to hunt down leakers and a climate of deep paranoia has enveloped the union. Many of his critics  and even his staff  reckon they are being bugged or followed. Some have quit their positions or been forced out. Even those remaining silent, as has the unions deposed national secretary Michael OConnor, have still felt Setkas wrath.

Central to its decline is 57-year-old John Setka, a proud Croatian-Australian with a thirst for revenge and an almost superhuman refusal to yield. That refusal has led to a schism in the labour movement over the issue of domestic violence, with a noisy minority doggedly offering Setka support despite the allegations.

The leaks and internal fighting triggered a series of chain reactions that has now left one of Australias most powerful unions and important forces on the left wing of Labor politics a smouldering ruin. Two years after that speech, the CFMEU is likely to split into at least three smaller unions, the biggest upheaval of a major union in decades. Its days as a national political force are over.

Instead, Setka dug in further. For people to try to portray me as some misogynist pig that bashes women is absolutely disgraceful, he told another national executive meeting a year later , also leaked to The Age . I aint going to wear that; thats just absolute bullshit.

Leaks from the meeting to The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald and graphic details of his criminal charges for domestic violence sparked a rolling national story that ultimately led to calls from Labor leader Anthony Albanese for Setka to quit the party, and from ACTU secretary Sally McManus and much of the union movement for him to resign from his union role.

We found out later that the fire brigade never actually said it was safe to come back to work  I was very young and naive and just believed the company because we were told it was safe.

Kruschel became a committed unionist after one of the factories she worked at, Rocklea Spinning Mills in Moe, caught fire in the late 1980s when she was in her 20s. The workers were told it was safe to return to work. An hour later the factory went completely dark. And so then the roof went up, and we had to run for it, she recalls.

Outside the room, boxes are stacked up. This is an office and a union in transition. I realised how powerless women really are, she continues. And we think we are further along than what we are, and we are not. 

I think women dont have the rights they think they have, says Kruschel, who is in her late 50s, from a meeting room in a nondescript three-level office building in Carlton. Its the space where her manufacturing union recently moved to escape the building it shared with Setkas branch.

Jenny Kruschel is struggling to hold it back. Her voice is breaking. Until now she has been plain-speaking and direct, what you would expect from a working-class woman from country Victoria who spent much of her life labouring in textile factories.

That leaked Batty comment  and the subsequent weeks of media and political fallout  obscured the seriousness of the 30 domestic violence charges against Setka, which included recklessly causing injury and a pattern of harassment through breaching court orders and threats. The harassment included 45 texts in which he called his wife a weak f---en piece of shit and a treacherous Aussie f---en c--- . Setka was later convicted of two of the charges after many of the charges for breaching a court order were combined and his wife, Emma Walters, was no longer a co-operative witness because the couple had reconciled. The remaining charges were dropped.

The Batty statement came towards the end of the meeting. I just couldnt really believe it, Kruschel says. Shocked, wanting to just really get out of the room, I wanted it to finish.

Kruschel had previously been on friendly terms with Setka but did not know him well. Kruschel refuses to even say what Setka said about Labor (the suck me off comment). I think the comment about the ALP was absolutely disgusting and offensive, and I dont think anyone should have had to put up with that.

Setkas speech at the June meeting was one of Kruschels first on the national executive. It was a male-dominated space, she recalls. He just went on this big rant and there was fear if anyone tried to say anything it would have just got a lot worse.

The CFMEU itself had been created in the 1990s as one of the Bill Kelty-inspired super unions that was meant to give the already sliding movement greater clout. It notched up considerable successes, securing world-leading wages and conditions for its members, improving safety on the job and campaigning against deadly asbestos. Since its creation, its been the countrys most influential blue-collar union.

Kruschel went on to become a senior official with the textile union. (I didnt really choose this path; it chose me. ) When her 15,000-member union, along with the maritime union, merged with the CFMEU in 2018, she was hopeful about its future in a bigger, more powerful entity, the clunkily named CFMMEU and its 100,000-plus members nationwide in mines, construction sites, wharves and factories.

For weeks, Ive been asking for an interview but my role in reporting Setkas charges and his Rosie Batty comments has clearly soured his enthusiasm (we had previously been on reasonable terms). Early in 2019, outside a courtroom at the Magistrates Court in Melbourne was the last time we spoke and for half an hour Setka had provided me with his side of the domestic violence case against him. In this, and other meetings with me, Setka could be charming and self-deprecating, but also cunning. His reputation for threats and intimidation preceded him.

Im sitting in Cafe John in Carlton on a bleak day in July waiting for Setka to arrive. Theres no sign of him. Peering through the window I can see his construction union office across the road as officials mingle on a balcony.

Kruschel says the denials by Setka and his allies over the Batty comments reflects on them very poorly. The response from then national secretary Michael OConnor and other leaders at the union was silence. They would neither defend Setka nor speak out about domestic violence.

Setka added to the confusion, at times angrily denying he had made them and at other times conceding he had, but they were taken out of context, and that his was essentially a mens rights argument.

And yet, the public debate became about what Setka actually said about Batty, whose son was murdered by her estranged husband in 2014. Setkas allies, including the maritime divisions Chris Cain, said the Batty allegations were false and rubbish.

In Setkas stead, his offsider Mick Myles, a Queenslander in his 40s, built like a bear with a greying beard, arrives. He thinks youre biased as f--- , Myles tells me by way of explaining Setkas absence. Myles agreed to the interview to give Setka and the construction branchs view on why the overall union was so split.

People tried to use Johns personal life against him to try to move him on and they just didnt get the internal dynamics of our organisation  they got it badly wrong, Myles says. I think one of the issues stems from the fact [Bill] Shorten lost the [2019 federal] election and there are certain elements within our union who dont have the strength we have  and they thought it was the end of the world.

The legends of struggle and victory  construction workers on big sites in Melbourne have enviable pay and conditions  run through Setkas own life. His father, Bob, was nearly killed in the West Gate Bridge collapse in 1970 that claimed 35 lives. He rode it [the span] down, John Setka told the Financial Review in 2012. Thats why my lucky numbers 18. There were 18 survivors that day.

Westgate Bridge collapse, 1970: A victim is carried from a massive pile of twisted girders by civil defence men and workmates. Credit:Fairfax

Setka grew up in rough, working-class Footscray the son of Croatian migrants, and by his own telling, got into trouble with the police. By the time he was 19 he was following his fathers footsteps into the industry as a labourer (a son from a previous marriage, David, now also works in the industry).

Setka witnessed the demise of the Builders Labourers Federation (BLF) first hand as young muscle for the union in the 1980s on city building sites. He was later convicted of dozens of trespass-related offences, and some for assault, for entering building sites once the BLF was banned but still operating.

From there he worked for decades in the building union, rising to assistant secretary and later leader from 2012, a story of success for Melbournes large Croatian community. Much of Setkas extended family work in construction, and tales of Croatians getting cushy jobs on sites swirl around the rumour-filled industry.

Along the way he garnered notoriety as a senior official shutting Melbournes CBD in 2012 in a dispute with Grocon that required nearly 1000 police. In 2003 he was fined after threatening a Grocon manager, stating: You just f---ing watch, Ill get you. Ive got a 12-year-old son and I swear on his f---ing life, I swear on my sons life, you watch, Ill fix you up.

When Tony Abbott as opposition leader called him a thug, Setka sued for defamation and lost.

A prominent supporter, who asked not to be named, said: John is as rough as guts ... a western suburbs working-class kid. Hes going to get his words wrong. But, the supporter says, Setka is incredibly effective and helped make the union the strongest in the country by a long way.

Setkas spokesman Mick Myles echoes the point. The views of Albanese, McManus and the 13 national unions that Setka should have resigned do not matter, he says. A lot of people would have, 95 per cent of union leaders would have at least. But he had massive support from rank and file members  and in the end that is all that matters, all the bullshit written in the papers, all the ALP statements, statements from ACTU  it all doesnt matter.

When asked why Setka was convicted of two charges related to domestic violence, Myles says, Hes a CFMEU leader, suggesting the legal and political systems are stacked against them. (Magistrate Belinda Wallington said during his sentencing that Mr Setkas behaviour had been nasty and misogynistic.)

Myles says Walters public support for Setka outside court on the day he was convicted should be the last word on it. Everyone wants to go on about women and their voices ... people dont take what she said and her condition and all that sort of stuff into account when they view this.

As for the case against Setka, he dismissively calls it texting, a reference to the string of abusive texts and calls Setka made to his wife. Setka himself, in leaked recordings to union activists, has dismissed the conviction as a few bad text messages.

I mean, big deal.

Emma Walters reconciled with Setka and appeared in solidarity with him in 2019 when he pleaded guilty to harassing her. Credit:Jason South

No insight into his behaviour

A few weeks before Christmas in 2018, Emma Walters, Setkas estranged wife, took out an intervention order against him. She had accused him in sworn statements of a pattern of violence and a campaign of harassment (Setka and later Walters denied there was any violence in their relationship at that time). He had obscured her face out of family photos, and she said she feared she was under surveillance including at home.

On the day Walters got the intervention order, she put a safety device under her front door of her house to stop him getting in, according to a sworn witness statement from Walters friend Anne Gooley.

When John arrived back at the house, he broke the door in while I was sitting in the front room of Emmas house. I yelled out to Emma and she ran into the downstairs bathroom and locked herself in. Emma then called the police.

Gooleys statement, which was leaked to The Age in 2019, continued: Seeing Johns anger  whilst yelling at Emma I was extremely distressed. Most of these details are now reported for the first time, due to the lifting of legal restrictions.

Gooley, in her statement, said Walters had accused Setka of throwing her against a wall, throwing her down the stairs and also tossing an iPad at her, striking her in the head. Walters took refuge at Gooleys house a number of times through this period, according to the statement, and had been physically shaking, catatonic and at times barely able to speak.

Gooley is as credible a witness as you could get. She sat on the Fair Work Commission, had been a senior lawyer and a respected figure in the industrial relations world for decades. The language in her statement is careful, formal and lawyerly.

When I contacted her for this article she emailed a response, which described the severity of Setkas conduct.

Johns behaviour was not simply a few abusive emails or text messages, she wrote. His conduct drove my friend out of her home and at one time out of the state. I was not surprised that John did not stand down or that he targeted those who did not support him as I never believed that he had any real insight into his behaviour. It was always someone elses fault or he downplayed his conduct.

Gooley explained that she had sat on the Fair Work Commission full bench that dealt with the ACTUs claim for paid family violence leave  a world-leading entitlement.

She said the union movement had made significant progress on the issue of domestic violence but was concerned about what message was being sent by Setkas supporters. My concern about their support for John is the message this sends to those in the movement who experience family violence that their experiences will not be believed, she wrote. It also tells those in the movement who are perpetrators of family violence that their conduct will be condoned.

But the matter does not end with the events of 2018. In late August this year, Walters provided a new sworn statement to police. We started having a verbal argument and it was getting very heated and aggressive. We were arguing about issues with our relationship, the statement read. We were standing near a small circular table in the outdoor area. John was on my left side, and he grabbed the back of my head and my hair and forced my head into the table.

John was out of control. He hit my head against the table about five times. It was very painful. John is a lot bigger and stronger than me and he can totally physically control me. When he loses his temper, there isnt anything I can do but submit to him.

An image of the bruise on Emma Walters head.

Police are investigating the most recent incident. Walters, who has two children with Setka, told police the couple had a long troubled relationship and have separated at times. I have grave concerns for my physical safety and that of my children.

Within hours of the allegations being published by The Age, Setka issued a statement to fellow union officials attacking the credibility of his wife, calling the allegations false and stating he would not stand down. I would never harm my wife and I have done nothing but stand by her.

Mindful militancy

A recognisable Scottish accent echoes down the line from his home in Hobart, barely dimmed despite nearly five decades living in Australia. Doug Cameron, the feisty left-wing unionist and later Labor senator, is now retired but as sharp as ever. I just find it really tragic, he says of whats happened at the CFMMEU.

In the last year, the unions national secretary Michael OConnor has been driven out by the Setka-backed construction division and their allies in the maritime division with the idea of replacing him with Setkas ally, Chris Cain.

The mining division under veteran leader Tony Maher has meanwhile applied to the Fair Work Commission to quit the broader amalgamated union. It is expected the manufacturing division, where OConnor has retreated, will do the same.

Cameron says this union should be at the forefront of a labour movement seeking to re-energise itself. We had a union with the resources and capacity to provide so much leadership and it is focused on this stuff (infighting). With OConnor and Maher as leaders, the union had been rebuilt into a national political force, he says. These are two of the most effective union officials Ive come across.

With Bill Shorten as Labor leader, OConnor had used his factional influence to protect him from his rival Albanese as part of an unusual left-right factional alliance. He had supported Shorten on contentious issues such as boat turn-backs, moving the party closer to the Coalition, while extracting concessions on some of the unions key claims.

If Shorten had won in 2019 it would have given the CFMMEU unprecedented influence over a Labor government. OConnor, whose brother Brendan is a Labor frontbencher, is also close to ACTU secretary Sally McManus, while Maher has the ear of Albanese. It was quite the contrast to when Labor was last in government and the union had been openly attacked by Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd. That influence is now all but gone.

Cameron says its not enough for a union to be tough and uncompromising. Looking at whats happened, I think its a perfect example of what the old metal workers union (now the AMWU) used to teach me: you had to be a mindful militant. Its alright being a militant but you have to be mindful.

Tony Maher has been with the CFMEU since it was created in the 1990s. Now, his mining branch remains uncomfortably part of the union, and has been operating completely independently of the union since late November ... We are better already from the informal divorce  we will never go back.

Maher blames Setka and his allies for wrecking a good political strategy after the 2019 federal election loss by changing the whole basis of the CFMEU and what made it successful.

When Michael OConnor took over from John Sutton, he actually breathed life into what was really a latent political force, he says. Michael was shrewd enough to work out we could have a bigger impact if we pooled our political activities and he was dead right about that.

He says the strategy worked. If you look at the [2018] Adelaide ALP conference. I wont say we ran the show, but we succeeded in most policy areas we identified.

Surveillance concerns

Im sitting across from a nervous-looking employee of Setka. He looks at my phone and wants me to turn it off, worried it could be accessed remotely as a listening device. I comply. He tells me hes convinced the cameras at the union office are used to monitor staff and the office is bugged. Hes not alone; several other employees have passed on similar messages of concern that theyre being surveilled at work and their phones are being monitored. Many use second or third phones, or devices with special encryption.

Shop stewards at CFMEUs Elizabeth Street office in Melbourne. Credit:Justin McManus

The office itself has a windowless secure room for senior leadership to avoid surveillance and in which phones are not allowed to be used. Suspicion runs deep  of authorities, of journalists and of each other.

Soon after his national executive comments were leaked to The Age, Setka engaged former homicide detective Stephen Curnow to hunt down the leakers. Setka did not respond to written questions about who is paying for Curnows services and a range of other issues raised in this article.

Even so, national executive meetings were routinely taped and leaked to The Ageand even meetings of union activists were recorded and passed on. In 2019, Setka was recorded saying in a private meeting to activists that theres a full-on investigation going on by Curnow, which was almost like a f---ing murder investigation.

It is unclear how much of this was bluster, but the pressure on perceived enemies has been real. The Age and Herald have confirmed that Setkas former deputy, Shaun Reardon, who quit in June 2019, felt he had been unable to get work in the construction industry because of pressure from Setkas branch. Reardon declined to comment with the information relayed by others.

Reardon and Setka had been close  he even ran Setkas Twitter account for him  and the pair had faced possible jail together over blackmail charges that collapsed in 2018.

When Reardon, a long-term campaigner against family violence, quit, he said he made the decision as it related to personal values I will live and die by. Hes now working outside the industry.

Blackmail charges against Setka and his deputy, Sean Reardon, were dropped in 2018. Credit:Justin McManus

Other staff quit Setkas branch soon after Reardon, including three senior women, one of whom was the head of the legal team. As part of this piece, The Age and Herald interviewed more than 30 people and many noted that those who stood up to Setka had suffered most. Hes absolutely driven by revenge, said one senior union figure.

Kruschel, whose branch had been sharing an office with Setkas at that time, said the atmosphere was oppressive. Within the building there were jokes about domestic violence. It was very uncomfortable to the point where our division had to leave the building.

Others have said Setka would swear, then ask sarcastically: Is that domestic violence?

The ACTU leadership  which called for Setkas resignation in 2019 along with 13 national unions  have also been targeted. ACTU secretary McManus was dismissed as a stooge by Setka, while president Michele ONeil was attacked in a Facebook post by Setkas union as talking shit while visiting and helping public housing tenants locked down in Flemington last year.

There has been a recent election challenge supported by Setkas branch to try to remove OConnor from his manufacturing division job  OConnor won comfortably. Setka has also offered support to a small rival union to the Australian Services Union, a union that had called on him to resign.

The Setka charges  and his subsequent pushback against opponents  have exposed surprising fault lines. A host of factionally aligned Victorian unions  part of the Industrial Left sub-faction  supported Setka, including the Electrical Trades Union and Rail, Tram & Bus Union.

Victorias Trades Hall did not join the chorus calling for Setka to resign despite its leader Luke Hilakari typically taking a progressive stance on social issues while the construction division and its national secretary, Dave Noonan, also fell in behind Setka. Friendships have been severed.

Senior union sources say Noonan and others from his own branch in June 2019 wanted Setka gone but then changed their position. The expectation was Dave Noonan was going to deal with it and should have dealt with it, Kruschel says. In a brief statement, Noonan denied he wanted Setka gone.

Senior union leaders have even described Noonan and Hilakari  who was filmed at a meeting of building union delegates chanting John Setka here to stay in 2019  as Setkas enablers.

Without their support, they say, not even Setka could survive.

Friendship with Gatto

Mick Gatto occupies an uncomfortable place in Melbourne somewhere between underworld figure and minor celebrity. After being acquitted of murder in 2005 during the citys gangland wars, hes continued his side-hustle of mediating building industry disputes.

When two CFMEU organisers were attacked by up to seven men on a Hawthorn East building site last year, the expectation was that the union would live up to its motto, If Provoked Will Strike, and shut the developers down. One of the organisers was bashed so badly  thought to be either with a piece of wood or metal bar  that hes been unable to work for more than a year.

But after an initial protest, the issue died away. Instead of industrial action or a police complaint, a meeting was held within days at the unions office between Setka, his friend Gatto and developer Raman Shaqiri, one of the men who demolished the 159-year-old Corkman pub in Carlton without approval.

The demolished Corkman hotel immediately after Kutlesovski and Shaqiri demolished it. Credit:Eddie Jim

By the end of it, the only apparent concession was the flying of a union flag on the site. The union did not co-operate with police.

Setkas links to Gatto seem to work to keep people quiet. (One source mentioned it nervously on why they would not speak publicly). Its a mix of myth-making and reality that the union harnesses in other ways too, or as Setkas late mentor John Cummins used to say: This job is 90 per cent bluff and 10 per cent bullshit.

Everyone likes to say the union is tough. It suits the agenda of the union itself as well as employers and the Liberals who use it as a bogeyman. But in many trades such as plastering, underpayment and exploitation of migrant labour is rife. Afghan or Chinese workers can labour alongside union members on a fraction of the rates.

Strikes are rare (made extremely hard by restrictive laws) and the unions membership and coverage in parts of the industry is weak to non-existent and has been falling, according to a recent shop stewards meeting.

Yet when faced with this reality, Setka  whose attitude towards internal enemies is unrelenting  can play a smarter, more subtle game when he needs to.

CEO of the Master Builders of Victoria Rebecca Casson. Credit:Scott McNaughton

Rebecca Casson, head of industry group Master Builders Victoria, said the relationship with the union had been very combative, with a long turbulent history. But when the pandemic hit Victoria, that all changed. Instead of confrontation, co-operation became the byword to work with government, workers and employers to keep the industry open.

Very much in our conversations, John has always treated me with respect and we have had some very robust discussions. We agreed very early on that the biggest thing would be for us to talk.

Casson has welcomed the rapprochement, which allowed construction to tick over even during Melbournes long second lockdown. Fair play to John, Casson says. It was the first time in history weve got that level of trust, and it enabled us to be agile and to do things that no other industry was able to.

Times changing?

Maybe even a decade ago, John Setka would not have faced the same intense pressure to quit. Domestic violence was still often regarded as a private matter, but that has changed after decades of feminist advocacy and social, legal and political change.

Unions have played an admirable role. In 2010, Surf Coast Shire Council in regional Victoria became the first place in the world to offer staff paid domestic violence leave. That entitlement has now spread throughout much of the workforce.

A typical unionist now is more likely to be a woman and a nurse  the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation is by far the nations biggest union  than a burly bloke on a building site. Kruschel says if the male-dominated CFMMEU had a different gender balance on its national executive, maybe things would have been different.

Kruschel draws on a broader narrative of why that gender balance matters. Women think about all the women we know who have been murdered, raped or abused.

For decades, the union has survived concerted attacks from conservative governments and big business. Theres been royal commissions, police charges and special industrial regulators. It endured all that was thrown at it. In the end, though, it has destroyed itself in a climate of payback, deep paranoia and a failure by some of its leaders to adapt to changing social mores or to stand up.

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Mining division chief Maher says the union has been destroyed by the ambition of some and the personal vendettas of others. The CFMEU will probably go down as a worthwhile experiment but probably a failed one, he says.

Yet if Setka had resigned two years ago it is almost certain the union would have survived. Instead, one mans will to power and refusal to bend has now brought it undone. In 2019 he told hundreds of activists that he wanted to confront the scandal swirling around him head-on. I was going to call a media conference today, get all the media here, sit down and they probably expect me to say ... I was resigning, Setka said in secretly recorded comments. But that was not his real message.

Listen. I just want to say I want to tell everyone to get f---ed.
United States President Joe Biden and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison have reaffirmed plans for an in-person meeting of the Quad alliance within the next three months in their first phone call since the hurried withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Plans to hold the summit  which involves Australia, the US, Japan and India  in late September were thrown into doubt by the upcoming Japanese election and the resignation of Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga.

Scott Morrison and Joe Biden have had their first phone conversation since the Afghanistan withdrawal. Credit:Dominic Lorrimer, AP

In his conversation with the Australian Prime Minister on Friday morning Australian time, Mr Biden affirmed plans to hold the meeting later this [autumn] in Washington, meaning the meeting would now likely take place in October or November.

It is unclear whether Mr Morrison will be granted his first one-on-one meeting with Mr Biden when he travels to the US. Mr Morrison met Mr Biden for the first time on the sidelines of the G7 summit in June, but the encounter was not one-on-one as originally planned, with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson joining in.
A well-connected network of philanthropists, activists and political operatives plans to support independents gunning for Liberal seats in Sydney and Melbourne in next years federal election, hoping to increase climate action by shifting the balance of power in Parliament.

Liberal Party MP Dave Sharma on the night of his victory for the seat of Wentworth in 2019. Credit:Louise Kennerley

Among seats being considered by Climate 200, the group founded by Simon Holmes a Court, are North Sydney, Wentworth and Mackellar in Sydney, and Goldstein and Flinders in Melbourne.

Mr Holmes a Court said the group will announce the make-up of its own advisory council in the coming weeks. The council will include three former politicians as well as an experienced political strategist to help select candidates to support.

It is already in talks with some candidates on shortlists for support in some seats.
Unvaccinated Victorians would be blocked from pubs, restaurants and sporting events as the state moves to reward the fully immunised and lock those who have not had two doses out of many, many venues instead of locking down entire cities and regions.

Announcing 208 new locally acquired coronavirus cases on Friday, Premier Daniel Andrews implored Victorians to get vaccinated and warned those who chose to remain unimmunised could soon find themselves unable to participate in many activities.

He said the state government was working on trials that would see fully vaccinated Victorians able to move freely in outdoor drinking or dining venues when the state got near the target of 70 per cent fully vaccinated.

Federal figures show 36.6 per cent of Victorians have had a second dose of a COVID-19 vaccination, and Mr Andrews said a surge in people booking in for jabs meant the state would probably hit its target of 70 per cent first-dose vaccinated some days before September 23.
Catholic boys school Xavier College has told staff they must vaccinate themselves against COVID-19 before the beginning of term 4, in what is believed to be the first move by a Victorian school to mandate the jab for its staff.

Xavier principal William Doherty told staff a duty of care inevitably exists for those who work closely with children to be vaccinated and said that families and colleagues should be able to expect every precaution to protect their health and safety.

Xavier College's Kew campus. Credit:Simon Schluter

Exemptions to the vaccination mandate would only be granted in the most exceptional circumstances, he said.

The move comes as Premier Daniel Andrews confirmed work on ventilation was being carried out at schools across the state to prepare for the return of students.
There was a time, not long before everything changed for all of us, when I stayed in a room in an ancient building right behind the most marvellous bookshop.

Shakespeare and Company, it is called.

Shakespeare and Company bookshop, on the Left Bank of the Seine in Paris. Credit:Tony Wright

It sits in a small side street on the Left Bank of the River Seine in Paris.

You could sit outside Shakespeare and Company and gaze to the gothic towers and the soaring spire of Notre Dame, and listen for the cathedrals bells calling the faithful to the devotional prayer known as the Angelus.
She revealed that on the same day he grabbed a knife from a supermarket shelf and started stabbing fellow customers, New Zealands Justice Minister was rushing to amend the nations counter-terrorism laws to allow them to detain extremists before attacks were carried out. The man was being shadowed by the police when he went to the New Lynn shopping mall in Auckland on Friday afternoon. He went shopping for 10 minutes in a supermarket before grabbing a knife from a shelf and attacking people around him, stabbing seven people, three of whom are critically injured. CCTV suggested police took 69 seconds to respond after the attack first began. Police shot the man dead as he ran out of the supermarket still wielding the knife. In a press conference, Ardern said that even if the laws had been amended in time, they could not have applied retrospectively. We wanted to make this rule change, but it is still really speculative to say that even that would have made a difference here, she said.

This individual was kept in prison as long as we could. He was charged with possessing objectionable materials, and for possessing a knife. Ardern said she wanted changes to terrorist suppression laws by the end of the month. We must be willing to make the changes that we know may not have changed history, but could change the future, she said. Ardern revealed that the courts rejected an application from the government to monitor the mans movements through GPS tracking, so when he was released from remand in July, a dedicated police team started round-the-clock surveillance. Police guard the area around Countdown LynnMall after an extremist carried out a terrorist attack, stabbing six people before being shot by police. Credit:Getty

The Prime Minister said she was personally updated on the case in late July, and by August 9 had met with officials to discuss further options to try and reduce the risk that this person posed to the community. In late August, officials including the commissioner of police raised the possibility of expediting the amendments to the counter-terrorism legislation. Within 48 hours of these discussions, the Minister of Justice contacted the chair of the select committee with the intention of speeding that law change up. That was yesterday, the same day the attack happened. As you can see, agencies used every tool available to protect innocent people from this individual. Every legal avenue was tried. She said she could not explain why a known terrorist threat was not deported until suppression orders were lifted. Ardern said that while she was working with the courts to release the mans name, she was not intending to name him herself.

No terrorist, whether alive or deceased, deserves their name to be shared for the infamy they were seeking. On Friday night, High Court judge Justice Edwin Wylie ruled the man can be named  but delayed publication for 24 hours to give his family time to seek suppression if they wish. Justice Wylie, in his decision to lift suppression, said there was without doubt, high public interest in this matter in this country, given the prime minister and police commissioner had spoken of the attack on public television but were restricted in what they could say about the man, the judgment said. Justice Wylie gave the family 24 hours to file opposition to the suppression order, which will expire at 11pm on Saturday (9pm AEST). The man was granted name suppression back in 2018 before he was found guilty of possessing ISIS propaganda and refusing to comply with a police search.

The reason for that suppression cannot be reported. The trial judge, Justice Sally Fitzgerald, found the man had an operative interest in the terrorist organisation, and a report writer concluded he had the means and motivation to commit violence in the community. The Crown had sought to charge him under the Terrorism Suppression Act, but the application was declined as the law does not cover plans for attacks. He was instead sentenced to one years supervision for possession of extremist material.
New Zealands daily case numbers have edged up by only 28, suggesting its restrictions and contract tracing are gaining results in containing the outbreak.

This was down markedly from the 49 new cases announced on Thursday.

The outbreak, sparked this month by someone returning from New South Wales, triggered an immediate nationwide hard lockdown.

While the fall is encouraging, we are mindful these outbreaks can have a long tail, Director of Public Health Dr Caroline McEnlay said at the daily news conference.

This week, PM Jacinda Ardern announced the lowering of the lockdown restriction level for all areas outside of Auckland.
Bryan, OH (43506)

Today

Scattered thunderstorms early, then cloudy skies after midnight. A few storms may be severe. Low 59F. Winds NW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 60%..

Tonight

Scattered thunderstorms early, then cloudy skies after midnight. A few storms may be severe. Low 59F. Winds NW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 60%.
The Washington Crossing Toll-Supported Bridge between Bucks County, PA. and Mercer County, N.J. is scheduled to be closed in both directions from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Monday, Sept. 20, the Delaware River Joint Toll Bridge Commission announced today.
is recalling 181,754 cars to inspect and rectify possible safety defects in one of the biggest vehicle recalls in the country.

Indias largest carmaker will try to repair faults in the petrol variants of Ciaz, Ertiga, Vitara Brezza, S-Cross, and XL6 that were manufactured between May 4, 2018 and October 27, 2020.

The latest recall is the biggest ever for the company, which sells one in every two cars in the country. Earlier, in April 2014, had recalled 103,311 units of its popular models Ertiga, Swift and DZire -- manufactured between November 12, 2013 and February 4, 2014 -- to replace faulty fuel filler necks.

This is also the second vehicle recall by in less than 10 months. In November last year, the company recalled 40,453 units of the Eeco to fix a fault in the vehicles headlamp. The recalled units were manufactured between November 4, 2019 and February 25, 2020.

Leading manufacturers such as Hyundai Motor India, Mahindra & Mahindra, and Toyota Kirloskar Motor saw recalls this year primarily due to the malfunctioning of fuel pumps and airbags, incorrect fitment of parts, and critical braking issues.

The recalled vehicles will be inspected and if any fault is found in their motor generator unit, that will be replaced free of cost. Owners of the affected vehicles will be contacted and notified by Maruti Suzukis authorised workshops. The repairs will be conducted from the first week of November 2021 in a phased manner, the company said.

Until then, Maruti has advised its customers to avoid driving in waterlogged areas and spray water directly on the electrical/electronic parts of the vehicle.

To check if a vehicle has been affected, customers have been asked to visit the companys website (for the Vitara Brezza and Ertiga) or the Nexa website (for the XL6, S-Cross and Ciaz). One needs to fill in their vehicle chassis number to check if it needs attention.

India does not have a mandatory vehicle recall policy. In 2012, the Society for Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM) introduced a voluntary recall code for its members. The code puts the responsibility of recalling a defective vehicle, be it a two-wheeler, passenger car or a commercial vehicle, on the manufacturer.
Bharti's rights issue is credit positive for the company, Moody's Investors Service has said as it noted that the fresh capital would keep the leverage relatively stable amid 5G investments, ongoing cash payments for spectrum and settlement outgo related to AGR.

For Bharti's 31.7 per cent shareholder, Singapore Telecommunications (Singtel), the transaction is 'credit neutral', it said.

board had recently approved raising up to Rs 21,000 crore by way of rights issue, at a price of Rs 535 per share.

In a statement, Moody's Investors Service said that the proceeds from the transaction are expected to be used for debt repayment and capital spending, including network upgrades, 5G investments and growth initiatives such as more aggressive subscriber growth to wrest market share from India's struggling third-largest operator, Vodafone Idea.

"The transaction is credit positive for Bharti. Fresh capital will keep leverage relatively stable amid growing investments in 5G, ongoing cash payments for spectrum and a settlement payment related to the adjusted gross revenue (AGR) dispute with the government," it added.

The fund raising also provides Bharti with more financial capacity to leverage its network in the Indian mobile space, as competition eases and tail winds from higher data usage and increases in average revenue per user (ARPU) benefit EBITDA and margins, Moody's noted.

"We view the transaction as credit neutral for Bharti's 31.7 per cent shareholder, Singapore Telecommunications Limited," it said and while observing that Singtel can subscribe to its portion of the rights without a significant increase in leverage.

Singtel's 31.7 per cent ownership includes a direct stake of 14 per cent and indirect ownership through Bharti Telecom Limited.

Citing the terms of rights issuance, Moody's wrote that Singtel would need to pay only about USD 100 million as upfront payment for subscribing to rights from its direct stake in Bharti, and the remaining USD 300 million is callable over the next 36 months, which can be accommodated within the ratings for Singtel.

In case Singtel has to make further debt-funded payments for BTL's portion of the rights, "its leverage will weaken".

"However, in our view, the likelihood of that is low," it said.

Bharti Airtel's rights issue is a move that is expected to strengthen its competitive positioning in the market, and provide the telco with the necessary ammunition for aggressive 5G rollout.

The promoter and promoter group of the company would collectively subscribe to the full extent of their aggregate rights entitlement. The company has informed that they will also subscribe to any unsubscribed shares in the issue.

Promoter holding in the company stands at about 55.8 per cent, while public shareholding is about 44.09 per cent.

(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.)
Future Retail Ltd Friday sought an early hearing in the on its fresh appeal against a recent Delhi High Court order which said it will implement an earlier direction restraining FRL from going ahead with its Rs 24,731 crore merger deal with Reliance Retail.

Let me look into the file and I will give a date, Chief Justice N V Ramana, heading a three-judge bench, told the FRL counsel.

While hearing the plea of US-based e-commerce giant Amazon, seeking enforcement of the award by Singapore's Emergency Arbitrator (EA) restraining FRL from going ahead with the deal, the high court on August 17 said that it would implement the earlier order of the single judge bench restraining FRL from going ahead with the deal.

The high court had said that in the absence of any stay from the apex court, it has no option but to enforce the order passed by its single judge on March 18.

The bench, also comprising Justices Surya Kant and Aniruddha Bose, was requested by senior advocates Harish Salve and Mukul Rohatgi, appearing for FRL, for early hearing of the appeal in view of the fact that the high court would go ahead with the enforcement of EA's award in case stay is not granted in its favour by the top court.

The high court order will have far reaching consequences, Salve said, adding that the FRL's appeal be heard on September 9 as the matter before the high court is listed on September 16.

Rohatgi, referring to another appeal, said that the entire property has been ordered to be attached by the high court and the contempt proceedings would be initiated if the and others do not get a favourable order from the apex court.

The high court had said that simply filing of the appeal will not help the FRL.

You get the order to stay. I have only one option i.e to get the order implemented, the high court judge had said.

Kishore Biyani and 15 others including FRL and FCPL have been embroiled in a series of litigations with Amazon, an investor in FCPL, over the deal with Reliance.

On March 18, besides restraining FRL from going ahead with its deal with Reliance Retail, a single judge bench of Justice J R Midha had imposed costs of Rs 20 lakh on the and others associated with it and ordered attachment of their properties.

The high court had asked the parties to file an affidavit detailing their assets within one month and show cause as to why they not be detained under civil prison for 3 months for violating the Singapore EA's order.

It had also asked the to place on record the details of action taken by it in connection with the Reliance deal after the EA order.

Amazon and Future have been locked in a bitter legal tussle after the US e-commerce giant dragged Future Group to arbitration at Singapore International Arbitration Centre (SIAC) in October last year, arguing that FRL had violated their contract by entering into the deal with rival Reliance.

On August 6, the gave the verdict in favour of Amazon and held that Singapore EA's award, restraining the Rs 24,731 crore FRL-Reliance Retail merger deal, is valid and enforceable under Indian arbitration laws.

The apex court had also set aside the two orders of February 8 and March 22 of the division bench of Delhi High Court order which had lifted the single-judge's orders staying the FRL-RRL merger.

A bench headed by Justice R F Nariman, since retired, had dealt with the larger question and held that an award of an EA of a foreign country is enforceable under the Indian Arbitration and Conciliation Act.

(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.)
Mixed views were expressed by insurance industry officials to whether a shakeout or promoter exits in the Indian are on the cards, as HDFC Company Ltd on Friday announced the acquisition of Exide Company Ltd for Rs 6,687 crore.

"As regards the sector, the storyboard is clear. The insurers have limited products (endowment, money back), lower internal rate of return (IRR) in endowment policies and disinterest on the part of life insurers to sell term insurance policies after Covid-19 death claims," a senior life insurance industry official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told IANS.

"If a life insurer has commercial banks as its distributors, then it is fine. If not, then the going will be tough," he summed up.

The bancassurance channel business is a major sales channel for the life insurers.

In the case of Exide Life, it does not have a major nationalised/private bank as its corporate agent, but several cooperative banks in this role.

During the first quarter of the current fiscal, Exide Life got bulk of its business from individual agents, brokers, and direct sales.

Interestingly there are banks that have teamed up together to float their own insurance - in both life and non-life sectors.

According to the official, even after the foreign direct investment (FDI) limit was hiked to 74 per cent, no new foreign player has started business.

Further, many of the foreign partners in existing life insurance have not hiked their stake to 74 per cent, the official added.

Not agreeing that a shakeout is in the on the anvil, an industry analyst, not wanting to be named, told IANS that there may be promoters who may want to exit their insurance ventures and focus on their core business.

The analyst said for Exide Industries, its main focus is batteries and would like to concentrate on that by committing additional funds in that business.

Announcing the sale of Exide Life to HDFC Life, Exide Industries Ltd Vice Chairman and Exide Life Insurance Company Ltd Chairman Rajan B. Raheja said: "The focus of Exide Industries has always been to enhance the value for its stakeholders."

According to Exide Industries, it has invested a total of Rs 1,679.59 crore in Exide Life, a wholly-owned subsidiary and in turn, gets a value of Rs 6,687 crore on the sale.

Exide Life is the second life insurance company to be sold after AMP Sanmar Life Insurance was sold to Reliance Life Insurance, now Reliance Nippon Life Insurance.

The sector saw stake sale/purchase last year. Paytm acquired Raheja QBE, HDFC Ergo acquired Apollo Munich, Sachin Bansal bought DHFL General Insurance, and Bharti Axa General was acquired by ICICI Lombard.

Industry officials had earlier told IANS that world over, post opening up of the insurance sector, there will be a large number of players.

About eight years after the sectoral liberalisation, mergers and acquisition would happen but in India, it has not happened in large numbers.

Perhaps the trend is slowly in the making and mergers and acquisitions, promoter's selling out may start happening is one view.

(Venkatachari Jagannathan can be contacted at v.jagannathan@ians.in)

--IANS

vj/vd

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Jindal Steel & Power (JSPL) on Friday received shareholder approval for divestment of the entire holding of the company in its subsidiary Ltd.

At the companys extraordinary general meeting (EGM) held electronically today, 97.12 per cent of Jindal Steel shareholders via special resolution approved divestment of the companys power business.

In April, Naveen Jindal-led Jindal Steel & Power (JSPL) had sought shareholders approval to sell 96.42 per cent of shares of Ltd to Worldone Pvt Ltd, a company owned by promoter group Jindal family.

Worldone will now buy out all the equity shares and redeemable preference shares of Limited held by JSPL for a total consideration of about Rs 7,401 crore.

Alongside, the EGM which had also floated an ordinary resolution to seek shareholder approval for divestment of power entity to Worldone Private Limited received relatively lower e-votes in favour at 90.28 percent with 9.72 percent voting against this resolution.

Divestment of the companys power business is in line with JSPLs strategic objective to bring down its debt and focus on domestic steel business going ahead.

In April, JSPL also exited Oman business, where it held 48.99 percent stake via Jindal Steel & Power (Mauritius) Limited.

Apart from selling off non-core businesses to lower its debt, the company in July this year pre-paid Rs 2,462 crore debt to lenders in a bid to further strengthen its balance sheet.

Delhi-based JSPL is into long steel products with its 6 million tonne capacity located at Angul in Odisha.

Shares of JSPL today ended at Rs 392 per share on BSE, up 3.86 percent from Thursdays close.
Bengaluru-based property developer Puravankara, predominantly a residential developer currently, expects a fifth of its portfolio consisting of commercial properties the next four to five years. It is looking to develop commercial properties in Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai and Mumbai, and Pune. In the next 3-4 years, the company is planning to develop a portfolio of commercial properties of 8.5 million sq ft.

Of which, the company is looking to launch two projects this financial year in Bangalore , he said , adding that both will have an area of about 3 million square feet.

The company's plans come at a time when analysts said vacancies at the listed REITs are set to raise another 200 to 300 basis points due to work from home norm triggered by the pandemic and delaying their leasing decisions.

"We believe market is showing signs of improvement and wil pick up by end of this financial year ," Kapoor said .

He said the company will acquire land, develop the properties and exit at right time and at right valuations. In the last quarter, the company sold its land for in Bengaluru to Godrej Fund Management for Rs 685 crore. Puravankara will develop one million sq ft property as part of the deal.

The company would raise capital for both commercial and residential properties.

"We want to scale up the business for which capital is important. We wil raise equity, quasi equity and debt for that," he said.

He said the company's debt to equity level has come down from 1.34 last year to.0.9 times now and average cost of debt has come down to 11.78 per cent, he said .

Kapoor added the company is looking to launch 14 million sq ft of residential properties in FY22, of which half will be under its affordable housing brand Provident Housing and the rest under its flagship brand Puravankara and plotted developments.


co-founder has moved the challenging a show cause notice (SCN) dated July 1 this year issued by the Enforcement Directorate (ED), which held that he and another individual were personally responsible for the alleged violation of FDI policy involving a staggering amount of approximately Rs 23,000 crore.

Justice R Mahadevan, before whom the writ petition from Bansal came up for hearing on Friday, pulled up the authorities for the delay of 12 years in issuing the notice and adjourned the matter by three weeks, after directing the ED and its officials to file the counters. The petition sought to quash the notice as illegal and arbitrary, insofar as he is concerned.



The interim prayer is to stay its operation. The SCN was issued on the basis of a complaint filed by the Deputy Director of Enforcement in Bengaluru, for instituting adjudication proceedings under Sec.16 of the Foreign Exchange Maintenance Act (FEMA) against the petitioner, another co-founder Binny Bansal of the e-commerce giant, Accel, Tiger Global, Subrata Mitra (nominee director of Accel) and Lee Fixel (nominee director of Tiger Global) on the alleged contravention of the various provisions of the FEMA.

The notice was issued pursuant to an alleged non-compliance with a condition prescribed vide the Consolidated Foreign Direct Investment Policy of 2010 dated April 1, 2010 in respect of issuance of shares of certain group to foreign investors during 2009-14.



According to Bansal, he ceased to have any association with and its group of companies, pursuant to his unanticipated exit following the acquisition of Flipkart by Wal-mart International Holding, Inc. on August 17, 2018.Among other things, he contended that issuance of the SCN was arbitrary, unreasonable and patently a perverse one, as it was issued after 12 years. The complaint followed an investigation by the Directorate of Enforcement in New Delhi, which commenced in 2012, i.e. 9 years ago. He had proactively participated and cooperated in the investigation undertaken by the ED.Given the substantial lapse of time following the inquiry, the petitioner has conducted himself under the bonafide belief that after due study of the materials obtained during the course of the probe, the ED had concluded that no action was warranted in the matter.And, he had effected bonafide transfers to third parties in the intervening period and had completely exited from the Flipkart group in August 2018. However, to the utter shock and dismay, the ED issued the notices, he contended. Specifically, there is no statutory period prescribed under FEMA within which the authorities concerned were required to file the complaint for initiating the adjudication proceedings.In the absence of any period of limitation under the statute, it has been settled by the Supreme Court in various judgments that the Constitution requires every authority, including the ED, to exercise its power to file a complaint within a reasonable time, failing which the actions taken by the statutory authority will be amenable to the writ jurisdiction of constitutional courts, petitioner 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.)
E-commerce retailer is eyeing an initial public offering to raise $350-400 million, according to sources aware of the talks, and is looking for a valuation of $2-2.5 billion. The company, which has backers like SoftBank, wants to look at this as an opportunity to allow retail investors to become a part of its expansion story in tier-2, 3, and 4 markets.

 is a reinvention story and they want to take the value story to consumers in Bharat, said a source privy to the discussion. The sources also said that JM Financial, Axis Bank, and Bank of America have been roped in as the bankers to run the mandate.

Emails sent to Snapdeal, SoftBank, Axis Bank, and JM Financial did not elicit a response.

If the company decides to proceed with the process, it will join the ranks of other start-ups that are looking to join the listing frenzy. In the first four months of this fiscal, about 12 have raised as much as Rs 27,000 crore through listings.

Snapdeal, which was founded in 2010, has off late repositioned itself as a player in the value e-commerce segment. Co-founders Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal put in place a plan called 2.0 in 2017 after talks of a merger with Flipkart fell through.

Value play

According to a recent report by Kearney, the value e-commerce segment  defined as a category that caters to customers who focus on affordable products  is expected to grow to about $20 billion by 2026 and $40 billion by 2030 in India.





Co-founders Kunal Bahl (left) and Rohit Bansal. JM Financial, Axis Bank, and Bank of America have been roped in as the bankers to run the mandate

Recently, Snapdeal said it saw huge traction in the sale of kids apparel, a jump of 493 per cent in the sixth month period between January and July.

This growth was led in large part by purchases made in the Rs 400-600 range for combo pack offerings, followed by the second best-selling range of Rs 200-400 for individual items.

Value e-commerce will emerge as the biggest growth opportunity within lifestyle retail and may grow 10 times in 10 years, the Kearney report, titled Value e-commerce: the next big leap in Indias retail market, says.

As part of its efforts to deepen the availability of value merchandise online, Snapdeal has in the last year added more than 5,000 manufacturer-sellers on its platform, it said in March.

Most of these manufacturer-sellers are from hubs like Meerut, Ludhiana, Tiruppur, Jaipur, Panipat, Surat, and Rajkot and cover popular products like juicers and food processors, steel and copper utensils, crockery, bed linen, fashion accessories, kids wear, sarees and suits, casual apparel, and fitness equipment.
A section of of went on strike at the Delhi airport on Friday morning over issues related to reduced salaries and later returned to work following talks with the airline management, sources said.

When asked about the matter, spokesperson clarified that the carrier's flight operations at the Delhi airport are functioning normally.

"A section of working at the Delhi airport and having some issues have met senior officials and the matter is being resolved," the spokesperson added.

Later during the day, the spokesperson said the issue with a section of at the Delhi airport has been resolved and the employees have returned to work.

"SpiceJet's flight operations remain normal," the spokesperson added.

Sources said the employees who went on strike discussed with the management their issues such as reduced salary and its disbursement.

SpiceJet has been paying reduced salaries to a significant number of employees since 2020 as its finances have been hit due to COVID-19 pandemic-related travel restrictions. Other airlines in India have cut the salaries too since 2020 for the same reason.

(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.)
Even as it continues to open new properties stuck due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Cinemas will look at expansion and capital outlay next year, the company's joint managing director Sanjeev Kumar Bijli said.

Having opened a new property in Jamnagar, taking the tally to 849 screens at 177 properties in 72 cities, Cinemas might launch properties in Mumbai, Rourkela, Hyderabad and Jalandhar depending on approvals and licenses from the respective states.

According to Bijli, is launching properties that were supposed to be launched before the pandemic hit the country in March 2020. These newer properties are the ones that were awaiting either some finishing touches or licenses to be operational and faced delay due to the pandemic-led lockdown in various states.

"These 3-4 properties, including Jamnagar, were already capitalised and were awaiting licenses. Now that states have relaxed norms, it made sense to open up these new properties. However, we will not be looking at any major expansion plan this year. We will look at capital outlay later next year," Bijli told Business Standard.

Barring states like Maharashtra, Kerala, Jammu and Assam which are still shut, most of the states have relaxed rules, allowing PVR and the industry in general to reopen cinema exhibitions as well as grant licenses for newer properties.

Talking about operations post pandemic, Bijli said that the company was trying to keep costs in control with segments like online ticketing helping the company to keep manpower costs down.

Led by Hollywood releases like 'F9' and 'Shang-Chi' along with the major Hindi release of 'Bell Bottom', PVR expects footfalls or cinema admissions to grow. "August has been slow with people not knowing that cinemas have reopened. As against a normal of 7.5-8 million a month, August 2021 saw only one million admissions. However, going forward, regional language films such as Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu and Kannada might see more releases since these states have opened up in recent times," he added.

Overall, PVR has seen 70 per cent of its properties reopen since August 2021.

Meanwhile, with the opening of Jamnagar property, PVRs total screen count in Gujarat stands at 68 screens across 15 properties, augmenting its presence to 247 screens in 59 properties in Western India.

The 3-screen PVR property is spread over an area of 30,000 sq ft and can house up to 706 audiences. Additionally, the new property in the city is integrated with modern in- cinema technologies like 2K RGB Laser projection system, Dolby 7.1 surround sound and next generation 3D system, ensuring excellent visual and sound experience for an enhanced cinema-viewing experience.
Pakistan's death toll crossed the grim figure of 26,000 on Friday, even as the country reported 3,787 new cases during the last 24 hours.

So far the country has recorded 1,171,578 confirmed cases of the and 26,035 total deaths since the first patient was diagnosed on February 26, 2020, the Ministry of National Health Services reported.

The data showed that the pandemic death rate has been 2.2 per cent in Pakistan, whereas an overwhelming number of 1,055,467 or over 90 per cent cases have fully recovered so far. Another 88,076 or 7.5 per cent are still active patients.

The ministry reported that 59,745 tests were carried out in the last 24 hours, confirming 3,787 new cases which showed a positivity rate of 6.34 per cent.

In the same period, 6,595 people recovered, showing the number of people who recovered was more than those reported as infected.

The vaccination programme was going on at a good pace and so far 5.8.1 crore doses have been administered, including 13.8 lakh doses in the last 24 hours.

Pakistan on Wednesday administered a record 15.90 lakh doses of the COVID-19 vaccines, as the government ramps up efforts to combat the fourth wave of the pandemic.

The surge in vaccinations also comes as the government places multiple restrictions on unvaccinated people and opens up vaccination for individuals over 17 years of age.

As per the restrictions, vaccination has been made mandatory for those employed in various sectors. Only fully vaccinated people would be allowed to travel domestically and internationally from September 30 and the same condition would apply to incoming passengers.

Full vaccination by October 15 would be compulsory to use public transport facilities. Visitors at shopping malls, hotels, restaurants and weddings would have to get the first dose by August 31 and second jab by September 30 to enter premises.

Students aged 17 and above should get their first dose by September 15 and second dose by October 15 and in case of non-compliance, they would not be allowed to enter educational institutions.

(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 will throw open for public a British-era tunnel and renovated execution room next year, Speaker Ram Niwas Goel said on Friday.

Goel said the tunnel was discovered under the floors of the way back. He said the tunnel and the execution room both are British-era architecture.

"We will open the renovated British-era 'Fansi Ghar' (execution room) of revolutionaries and the tunnel for public by January 26 or latest by August 15, 2022. People will be allowed to visit these two places when the is not in session," Goel told PTI.

He said the historical significance of the tunnel, discovered in 2016, is yet to be established but it is conjectured that it connects the Legislative Assembly to the Red Fort.

"We are not going to renovate the tunnel or dig it further as it will not be possible because lots of construction activities such as Metro Rail would have blocked its way. We will keep it as it is and allow the public to see it," Goel said.

He said the work on the project of renovation of the execution room had already started.

"Tenders have been floated and the PWD would soon begin its work. The design on which the execution room will be renovated have also been prepared," Goel said.

The building was built in 1911. The Delhi Assembly was used as Central Legislative Assembly after the capital of the country was shifted to Delhi from Kolkata in 1912.

Goel said that the building was emptied in 1926 as the Central Legislative Assembly was shifted to present day Lok Sabha building.

Later, this Delhi Assembly building was converted into a court by Britishers, he said.

The Delhi Assembly had been a soil and temple of revolutionaries. Those who were prisoned in the Red Fort used to be brought here through this tunnel and decisions were pronounced here. Revolutionaries who used to be given a death sentence were taken to the execution room located in the Delhi Assembly, he said.

The tunnel is located right beneath the central hall of the Assembly premises where legislators sit during the session and its length beneath the Assembly Hall is around 50-60 metres, Goel said.

The distance between Delhi Assembly and the Red Fort is about 5-6 kilometres. The Red Fort was built by Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan in the mid-17th century.

The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader said the execution room was shut so far. All this history was spread through word-of-mouth publicity and I came to know about this when I became the MLA in 1993, he said.

Goel also said that the historic Delhi Assembly will be developed into a tourist spot where people will also be able to see a 25-minute film depicting its history and that of freedom fighters and the city.

Other activities like showcasing the history of freedom fighters digitally on the lines of Gandhi Darshan at Rajghat will also be developed.

Details of 90 per cent of those leaders who used to sit here (then Central Legislative Assembly) have been collected. All this will be showcased in the Assembly, Goel said.

According to Goel, the tourism department will be roped in for the project to bring it on the tourism map.

He said that these tourist attractions will be free for students, however, the tourism department will be free to fix ticket for other tourists.

(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.)
Amid concerns in India that Afghan soil under the regime can be used for terrorist activities against it, the insurgent group has said it has the right to speak out in favour of anywhere, including in Kashmir, though it does not have a policy of conducting armed operations against any country.

Suhail Shaheen, spokesman for its political office in Doha, in an exclusive interview to BBC through video link on Thursday, said: "We will raise our voice and say that are your own people, your own citizens and they are entitled to equal rights under your law." As Muslims, it was the group's right to speak out for living in and any other country, Shaheen said while speaking from Doha.

While recalling the terms of the Doha agreement with the US, he said they had no policy of conducting armed operations against any country. Shaheen's remarks came days after the Ministry of External Affairs in New Delhi said Indian envoy to Qatar Deepak Mittal met Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanekzai, the head of the Taliban's Political Office in Doha, at the request of the group.

In the meeting, Mittal conveyed to Stanekzai that Afghanistan's soil should not be used for anti-Indian activities and terrorism. It was the first publicly acknowledged formal diplomatic engagement that came two weeks after the seized control of





ALSO READ: Taliban co-founder Mullah Baradar to lead new Afghanistan govt

MEA Spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said India's immediate focus in is to ensure that Afghan soil is not used for terrorist activities against it and it was still "very early days" to talk about any possible recognition to the Taliban.

On a question on Mittal's meeting with Stanekzai, he said: "We used the opportunity to convey our concerns whether it is in getting people out (from Afghanistan) or on the issue of terrorism. We received a positive response.

Regarding the Haqqani Network, Shaheen said that the propaganda against the Haqqanis was based on mere claims.

He said Haqqani is not a group but they are part of the Islamic Emirate of

They are the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, he added.

His remarks came as after Al-Qaeda through its Al-Sahab media asked the Muslim community to free other Muslim lands after the liberation of Afghanistan, putting on the list of targets of jihad.

Besides Kashmir, it shortlisted the Levant, comprising Iraq, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon; Maghreb, or the region in northwest Africa consisting of Libya, Morocco, Algeria, Mauritania, Tunisia and Somalia; and Yemen on its priorities.

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India and the United States have signed an agreement for cooperation in the development of Air-Launched Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (ALUAV), in yet another step to further expand bilateral defence and military cooperation.

The said on Friday that the Project Agreement (PA) for ALUAV was signed on July 30 under the overall framework of the Defence Technology and Trade Initiative (DTTI).

The pact was signed between the Ministry of Defence and the US Department of Defence.

The described it as a significant step towards deepening defence technology cooperation between India and the US.

"The Ministry of Defence and the US Department of Defence signed a Project Agreement (PA) for ALUAV under the Joint Working Group Air Systems in the Defence Technology and Trade Initiative (DTTI) on July 30," it said in a statement.

The PA pact falls under the ambit of the Research, Development, Testing and Evaluation (RDT&E) agreement between the two sides that was first signed in 2006 and renewed in January 2015.

"The PA outlines the collaboration between Air Force Research Laboratory, Indian Air Force, and Defence Research and Development Organisation towards design, development, demonstration, testing and evaluation of systems to co-develop an ALUAV Prototype," the ministry said.

It said the main aim of DTTI is to bring sustained leadership focus to promote collaborative technology exchange and create opportunities for co-production and co-development of future technologies for Indian and US military forces.

Under DTTI, Joint Working Groups on land, naval, air, and aircraft carrier technologies have been established to focus on mutually agreed projects in respective domains.

"The PA for co-development of ALUAV has been overseen by the Joint Working Group on Air Systems and is a major accomplishment for DTTI," the ministry said.

The Indo-US defence ties have been on an upswing in the last few years.

In June 2016, the US had designated India as a "Major Defence Partner".

The two countries have also inked key defence and security pacts over the past few years, including the Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement (LEMOA) in 2016 that allows their militaries to use each other's bases for repair and replenishment of supplies as well as provides for deeper cooperation.

The two sides have also signed COMCASA (Communications Compatibility and Security Agreement) in 2018 that provides for interoperability between the two militaries and the sale of high-end technology from the US to India.

In October last year, India and the US sealed the BECA (Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement) agreement to further boost bilateral defence ties. The pact provides for sharing of high-end military technology, logistics and geospatial maps between the two countries.

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The government has decided to enrol children of Myanmarese refugees who have taken shelter in the state after the military coup hit the neighbouring country.

Mizoram's School Education Director James Lalrinchhana, referring to the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 (RTE Act-2009), has asked all the district and sub-divisional education officers that children aged between 6 and 14 years belonging to disadvantaged communities have the right to be admitted to schools in a class appropriate to his or her age for completing elementary education.

"I, therefore, request you to take the necessary steps to give admission to migrant and children in schools under your jurisdiction so that they can continue their schooling," said the order issued by the School Education Director.

A senior education department official told IANS that the exact number of Myanmarese students to be registered in schools would be known after completing the process of enrollment of the kids.

"The approximate number of Myanmarese students aged between 6 and 14 years sheltered in is likely to be 1,000 to 1,200," the official said on condition of anonymity.

He said that some Myanmar parliamentarians recently had an informal meeting with Mizoram Education Minister Lalchhandama Ralte and urged him to "look into the academic and other problems" of the Myanmarese children.

According to the officials of the Crime Investigation Department (CID), which maintains the data of the Myanmarese refugees, around 9,450 Myanmarese refugees, including about 20 legislators, have taken shelter in 10 of the state's 11 districts since March.

The Champhai district along the India-Myanmar border is currently sheltering 4,500 refugees, the highest, followed by Aizawl district where 1,700 refugees have taken shelter.

A majority of those who have taken shelter in the bordering state belong to the Chin community, also known as the Zo community, who share the same ancestry, ethnicity and culture as the Mizos of Mizoram.

Six Mizoram districts - Champhai, Siaha, Lawngtlai, Serchhip, Hnahthial and Saitual - share 510 km unfenced borders with Myanmar.

Mizoram Chief Minister Zoramthanga had earlier urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to provide asylum, food and shelter to those refugees who have arrived in the state since the military coup in Myanmar on February 1.

Referring to the Union Home Ministry's advisory to four northeastern states bordering Myanmar and also to the Assam Rifles and the BSF for taking action to prevent illegal influx from Myanmar into India, Zoramthanga had said, "This is not acceptable to Mizoram."

A Mizoram government delegation had already met the top BJP leadership in Delhi to persuade them to impress upon the Centre not to forcefully push back the Myanmar nationals sheltered in Mizoram.

As per the MHA advisory, the state governments and UT administrations have no power to grant "refugee" status to any foreigner and India is not a signatory to the UN Convention of 1951 and its 1967 Protocol.

A one-year state of emergency has been declared in Myanmar, where power has been transferred to Senior General Min Aung Hlaing after President U Win Myint and State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi were detained by the military on February 1.

--IANS

sc/shs

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Kerala's daily Covid tally showed a slight decline on Friday, dropping below the 30,000 level after a few days, with 29,322 new cases from 1,63,691 samples tested in the past 24 hours, while the test positivity rate also dropped marginally to 17.91 per cent.

A statement issued here by Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said that 22,938 people turned negative taking the total active cases to 2,46,437.

The day saw 131 Covid deaths, taking the total death toll to 21,280.

Thrissur district recorded 3,530 cases, followed by Ernakulam with 3,435, and Kozhikode with 3,344 cases.

Chief Minister Vijayan has called a meeting of experts on Saturday to finalise the way forward, after interacting with local body representatives on Friday and appreciated the hard work to contain the Covid spread. Though the relaxations for the Onam festivities had kindled apprehensions, but things, however, seem to be under control and what was feared has not happened.

--IANS

sg/vd

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on Friday summoned the Indian Charge d' Affaires (Cd'A) to the Foreign Office for a demarche over what it called a reprehensible conduct" after the death of Kashmiri separatist leader

Geelani, 91, died at his home in Srinagar on Wednesday night after a prolonged illness. The pro- separatist leader, who spearheaded separatist politics for over three decades in Jammu and Kashmir, was buried at a mosque near his residence.

The Foreign Office said in a statement that the Indian Cd'A conveyed Pakistan's strong demarche on Indian security forces' handling of the mortal remains of Geelani.

It alleged that India's conduct was in blatant violation of international humanitarian laws, and all tenets of civil and human rights.

The Indian forces repeatedly resorted to indiscriminate use of force against Kashmiris protesting against their conduct, the FO alleged.

It was emphasised to the Cd'A that India must refrain from any missteps that might further jeopardise regional peace, it said.

The Indian Cd'A was conveyed Pakistan's principled position that lasting and durable peace in the region was contingent on the peaceful resolution of the Jammu and Kashmir dispute in accordance with the relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions and the wishes of the Kashmiri people, according to FO.

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In some of Asias Covid-19 hotspots, powerful and wealthier citizens are nabbing booster shots even as most people remain unvaccinated, undermining the inoculation strategies of nations struggling with the highly infectious delta variant.

The growing trend in countries like Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines is worsening inequities at a time when they are grappling with vaccine shortages.

In Indonesia -- where the health ministry has said boosters are only for health workers -- members of the political elite, including the governor of a prominent region, were caught on camera discussing the boosters they received. The conversation was inadvertently broadcast in a livestream of an event on the Presidential Secretariats official channel. President Joko Widodo could be heard saying he hasnt received a booster because he was waiting for Pfizer Inc.s shot to be available. Widodos office and the governor didnt respond to requests for comment at the time, and the video has since been deleted.

Thailand is investigating a director and a doctor at two hospitals who allegedly gave Pfizer Inc. jabs meant for pregnant women and health workers to family members and aides. Ronaldo Zamora, a representative for San Juan City in the Philippines, has spoken openly at a press conference about getting four Covid shots -- a round of Pfizer, adding to the Sinopharm Group Co. vaccine he received last year before it was even approved by regulators. His son, a mayor of the same city, later said it was done under doctors orders because Zamora was immunocompromised.

The chase for added inoculations comes at a time when there is a growing global debate around booster shots, which have been shown to increase protection against the virus as the delta variant drives up cases worldwide. The World Health Organization has urged developed nations to hold off on boosters until supplies are available for poorer nations. Meanwhile, at the end of August, U.S. President Joe Biden said his administration was considering giving boosters five months after the second dose.

For countries in Southeast Asia that are hamstrung by vaccine shortages, extra doses for the well-connected means fewer stockpiles for health professionals or the vulnerable. In the Philippines, Malaysia and Thailand, daily infections are near record levels, while Indonesias death toll is among the worlds highest. Displacing others in the vaccine queue is very morally questionable and also puts the entire population at greater risk of the virus in the long run, said Voo Teck Chuan, assistant professor at the Centre for Biomedical Ethics of the National University of Singapore.





You might or might not make yourself safer by taking a booster shot, Voo said. But if you let the virus continue to transmit and mutate across your community, you will see more variants and more infections. Then, youre not sure if your vaccine, no matter how many youve taken, will be enough.

In the U.S., White House chief medical adviser Anthony Fauci said Thursday that three doses of Covid-19 vaccine may become the standard regimen for most people.

Southeast Asia is particularly emblematic of the complexities of the debate around boosters because countries like Indonesia and the Philippines relied heavily on inactivated shots made by Chinese companies, which studies have found to be less effective than the mRNA vaccines made by Moderna Inc. as well as Pfizer Inc. and its German partner BioNTech SE.

With the exception of Singapore, which has met its goal of inoculating 80% of its population, many Southeast Asian nations are falling behind their vaccination goals. Both the Philippines and Indonesia are at 13%. Vietnam and Thailand are at 10% and 11%, respectively. The Philippines has yet to approve booster shots, unlike Thailand and Indonesia which have greenlit extra doses for priority groups.

Often, it is money, connections or influence that help people jump the queue for vaccines. However, the rush to distribute shots as quickly and as widely as possible has also left open loopholes for many who want to take advantage. In Indonesia, instances of booster misuse were spotted in the governments registry after complaints were raised by whistle-blowers, according to crowd-sourcing platform LaporCovid-19.

In the Philippines, its possible to register in one city as a resident and in another as an employee, with no unified database. Thats helping a privileged few with better jobs and higher salaries get added jabs.

A project manager in metropolitan Manila, who asked not to be named discussing his inoculations, initially signed up for a jab with his company because the Philippines allows the private sector to procure and vaccinate workers. However, with little clarity on when his vaccine would arrive this year, he chose to take two shots from Chinas Sinovac Biotech Ltd. through the government program when supplies became available in a nearby city.

Still, the limited data then available on Sinovacs effectiveness against the delta strain weighed on his mind, he said. He didnt report the vaccination to his company and went on to take a round of the Moderna vaccine through the firm this August.

In Indonesia, meanwhile, the military chief, who was also seen and heard on the livestream on the Presidential Secretariats official channel, denied getting a vaccine booster and said he had used the term booster to refer to a stem cell treatment he had received.

Amid shortages, some in Southeast Asia have resorted to traveling great distances or camping out at health centers just to vie for first or second shot. As governments start to ease lockdown measures for the vaccinated, crowds have swelled further, increasing the risk of infection.

Illicit booster shots undermine the governments surveillance abilities because if authorities dont know how many people have been inoculated or what segments of society remain exposed, it hinders their ability to track transmission, said Leonila Dans, a clinical epidemiologist at the University of the Philippines.

Jumping the queue harms not just one or two people, Dans said. It puts the entire community at risk.
The on Friday in an interim order stayed the government's decision to hold the Class XI exam physically from September 6 amid rising cases of COVID-19 in the state.

A bench headed by Justice AM Khanwilkar said that situation in is alarming because of the continuing rise in COVID-19 cases and children of tender age cannot be exposed to risk while noting that around 35,000 cases are being reported daily from the state.

The class XI (Plus One) exam was scheduled to be conducted from September 6.

The Bench observed, "There is alarming situation in It accounts for more than 70 per cent of cases of the country, with around 35, 000 daily cases. Children of tender age can't be exposed to risk."

In its order, the apex court stated, "we grant interim relief staying offline exam for till next date of hearing. List this matter on September 13."

The bench was hearing an appeal against the Kerala High court order refusing to interfere with the decision to hold offline exams.

The appeal filed by one Rasoolshan A stated that holding physical exams when the COVID-19 cases are at their peak in the state was a huge risk, especially since the children are not vaccinated.

Around three lakh students will take the exam scheduled to be held from September 6 and as the students pursuing class XI are largely unvaccinated, they are very vulnerable to the virus, argued advocate Prashant Padmanabhan appearing for Rasoolshan.

During the hearing, advocate CK Sasi, appearing for the Kerala government, defended the state government's decision to hold the exams offline and submitted that all safety protocols have already been taken care of.

"Assure us that no student will be infected. These are children of tender age. Even one case reported for a student, we will hold you accountable," the bench told Kerala government's counsel.

The apex court said that the Kerala government may think of alternate forms of assessment and inform it on the next date, September 13.

The Kerala High Court while observing that conducting Plus One examination was a matter of government policy and that much deliberation had gone into the same, refused to interfere in the matter.

The High Court's order had come on the plea of some students who had approached the court against the Kerala government decision to hold the Class XI exam offline. They had said that the decision was taken without considering the gravity of the COVID-19 pandemic situation prevalent in the State.

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The Friday expressed displeasure over delay in framing guidelines for issuance of death certificates to the families of those who died of COVID-19 and directed the Centre to file compliance report by September 11.

"We passed the order a long time back. We have already extended the time once. By the time you frame the guidelines, the third phase will also be over", a bench comprising Justices M R Shah and Aniruddha Bose observed.

Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the Centre, assured the court that everything is under consideration.

Advocate Gaurav Kumar Bansal, who has filed the petition, submitted that under the pretext of consideration things should not be delayed as the top court has already granted four-week extension to the Centre on August 16 to frame guidelines for ex-gratia compensation and now it is seeking more time.

Advocate Sumeer Sodhi, who appeared for some of the applicants, said extended time for the first direction passed on June 30 is getting over on September 8.

The bench said it is for the Centre to take decision on compensation within that period of time and today it was adjourning the matter only for the purpose of compliance with other directions.

"Put up on September 13 as Solicitor General seeks time to enable Union Of India to comply with earlier order and place on record compliance report of other directions issued by this court on June 30, 2021. Compliance report to be filed with the registry on or before September 11," the bench said.

The apex court had in its June 30 verdict directed the National Disaster Management Authority to recommend within six weeks appropriate guidelines for ex-gratia assistance on account of loss of life to the family members of persons who died due to COVID-19.

The Centre had moved an application seeking some more time to frame the guidelines on the ground that the exercise which was in active consideration of the NDMA was at an advanced stage and requires a little more in-depth examination.

In its June 30 verdict, the top court had also ordered steps to simplify guidelines for issuance and correction of death certificates/official documents, stating the exact cause of death, that is, 'Death due to COVID-19' for enabling dependents to get benefits of welfare schemes.

The top court's verdict had come on two separate pleas filed by lawyers Reepak Kansal and Gaurav Kumar Bansal seeking directions to the Centre and the states to provide Rs 4 lakh compensation to the families of victims as provisioned under the Act.

Four intervenors, who had lost their family members due to COVID have also moved the top court contending that there cannot be any discrimination in the amounts being paid by different states to family members of those, who had succumbed to the deadly infection.

The apex court in its verdict, however, had noted the peculiarity and the impact and effect of the pandemic and said that it cannot order payment of Rs four lakh as ex-gratia compensation which should be decided by the NDMA as there was a need to focus simultaneously on prevention, preparedness, mitigation and recovery, which calls for a different order of mobilization of both financial and technical resources.

"We direct the NDMA to recommend guidelines for ex gratia assistance on account of loss of life to the family members of the persons who died due to Covid-19, as mandated under Section 12(iii) of Disaster Management Act (DMA) 2005 for the minimum standards of relief to be provided to the persons affected by disaster - Covid 19 Pandemic, over and above the guidelines already recommended for the minimum standards of relief to be provided to persons affected by Covid-19, it had said.

It had also directed the Centre to take appropriate steps on recommendations of the Finance Commission on providing insurance cover for deaths caused by Covid.

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A parliamentary panel will visit the central's HQs in Mumbai to discuss a possible reform. The government plans to sell land worth Rs 600 crore. More in our top headlines this morning.



Trai's order paves the way for tariff hike by telecom operators

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has directed telecom operators against discriminating between subscribers of the same class in tariff offers. In an order, that would make it difficult for telcos to offer highly discounted segmented tariffs, the regulator has also made it clear that differential pricing for subscribers porting out from a rival firm would not be allowed. Read more...

Centre plans PSU land sale worth more than Rs 600 crore via e-bidding

The Centre is planning to sell land parcels worth more than Rs 600 crore of some public sector undertakings (PSUs) through its new online bidding platform as it looks to push the sale of idle assets. The initiative, managed by the Department of Investment and Public Asset Management (Dipam), will be similar to the pipeline of core assets created for monetisation by the NITI Aayog. Read more...

Parliamentary panel to talk divesting of debt management role

Amid the pandemic and record borrowing spree by the central government, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance is visiting the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) headquarters on Saturday to discuss, among other things, separation of the debt management function from the Jayant Sinha, chairman of the committee, and former prime minister Manmohan Singh, who also served as governor of from 1982 to 1985, would be among the members present at the meeting. Read more...

Reliance's cheap JioPhone can unleash a credit revolution across the globe

A smartphone widely believed to be priced below $50, likely the worlds cheapest, will start selling a week from now. If Mukesh Ambanis JioPhone Next, an Android device custom-built for India by Alphabet Inc.s Google, is a hit in the price-conscious market, it will solve one problem for banks while posing another. With the countrys remaining 300 million feature-phone users going online, there will be a surge of customer data that can stand in for collateral. The question is, how will banks get their hands on it? Read more...

Your EPF account will now show taxable and non-taxable balance

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had announced in the Union Budget for 2021-22 that interest earned on employees annual contribution to Provident Fund (PF) exceeding Rs 2.5 lakh would be taxed from April 1. The threshold was subsequently hiked to Rs 5 lakh for cases where employees alone contribute (and the employer does not). Read more...
The dilution of Public Sector Undertakings and other moves by the NDA government, as outlined in the National Monetization Pipeline (NMP), would hurt the common people, benefit a few and ultimately affect reservations in jobs, Leader of the Opposition in Rajya Sabha alleged on Friday.

The income and education levels of 35 lakh PSU employees have increased over time and Prime Minister Narendra Modi was 'finishing the units off' one after the other, he alleged.

"If in banking, insurance and railway sectors are finished, ultimately reservation in jobs will also be finished," he told reporters.

Kharge said the Congress, when in power, disinvested only chronically loss-making or those in non-strategic sectors.

He claimed that the government gets about Rs 3.5 lakh crore profit annually through and the estimated loss of some PSU firms is about Rs 45,000 crore.

"Whatever we earned, it is taxpayers money... people's assets...public assets. Modi ji is selling (them) one by one," the senior Congress leader said.

Kharge said the Congress has often been accused of doing nothing for 70 years, but asked how then had the public sector come up.

"You are thinking of getting Rs six lakh crore (through NMP). Whose is it?," he asked.

Alleging that the dilution of PSUs and others was not in the interest of people, he said Congress would fight the move. "Congress will try to save all of this," he said.

Pointing out that substantial number of bank accounts under the NDA government's Jan Dhan Yojana were opened in PSU banks and not in private banks, he said this became possible because the then Indira Gandhi government nationalised banks.

Cities like Hyderabad and Bengaluru have grown because of large number of PSUs, he said.

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At a time when India has already announced its intent to seal trade pacts with key exporting partners, industry participants said their discussions with the government regarding proposed with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and the United Kingdom (UK) have already kicked off.

However, with respect to countries such as the European Union (EU), Australia, the discussion with industry is at a premature state and domestic players will get more clarity as and when the chief negotiators of both nations sit and discuss what can be offered.

Industry consultation is going on not only through the department of commerce but other line ministries also are approaching the industry, with discussion mostly on the goods side and pertaining to the We expect some progress in the coming months, with respect to talks with the and UK, an industry official said, citing anonymity.

In fact, pre-negotiation deliberations between India and the have already started. India hopes to kick start FTA negotiations with the by the end of December. On Thursday, a joint statement by India and UK said that they agree to be ambitious in the forthcoming FTA negotiations.

As far as the is concerned, India is aiming to finalize a comprehensive trade deal by December. Representatives from sectors such as steel, textile, engineering products, gems and jewellery have been meeting with the government, on FTA-related consultations with respect to the

Last week, the Centre said that India and Australia are looking at finalizing an early harvest or a mini trade deal by December. It is learnt that the government will begin consultations with the industry within the next 10 days. Negotiations between the both nations will also start soon, a person aware of the matter said, adding that any investment agreement will be kept out of the deal, with the main focus being deepening of bilateral trade between the two countries.

In May, India and the EU had agreed to resume negotiations for balanced and comprehensive free trade and investment agreements. However, it is learnt that there hasn't been much progress on this front as the EU is yet to appoint chief negotiators and kickstart pre-negotiation talks with India.

Rahul Mehta, past president and chief mentor of Clothing Manufacturers' Association of India (CMAI), said that various stakeholder meetings are being called by the government. "(Any deal) with the EU will be a bit complicated with each country having its own requirements. India's FTA with the UK should come through fairly rapidly with the latter being equally interested. Australia should also be coming through soon," Mehta told Business Standard.

According to other textiles and clothing (T&C) industry sources, barring Japan, most of the FTAs were signed with non-consuming countries from the T&C industry's perspective. However, FTAs with the EU, the US, Australia, and the UK would be a win-win situation, they said.

The US recently indicated that it is not considering a new trade agreement with India.

India would look at working with the US on market access issues to promote bilateral trade.

Data collection exercise from the T&C industry has been going on for some years. So while no new data is to be gathered, government officials are meeting with industry representatives and are coming across as aggressive about signing at least some of these FTAs soon.

We have made our stand clear that, as an industry, we want these FTAs to be signed soon since we are losing out to other manufacturing competing nations like Bangladesh who currently have a 10-12 per cent price advantage due to their concession agreement with countries such as the UK, said another senior industry representative on condition of anonymity.

The industry is also trying to convince its buyers to initiate talks with their respective governments, said A Sakthivel, chairman of Apparel Exports Promotion Council (AEPC) and president of Federation of Indian Export Organisations (FIEO).

The minister and officials are having frequent meetings and talks with the respective nations as well as industry councils in India. From our side, we have been trying to convince our buyers in countries like the UK, EU, UAE and Australia to work proactively with their respective governments for these FTAs. We hope these FTAs are done soon, Sakthivel added.

On the other hand, the most sensitive sector--dairy--is yet to hear from the government on the FTAs, R S Sodhi, managing director of Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF), popularly known as Amul, said.

Prioritising mini trade deals

Experts and government officials said that signing mini can be a good strategy to begin with, before signing a full fledged deal. Till now, India has signed an early harvest deal with Thailand and Singapore.

Early harvest agreement can be a good strategy because first of all it will help us to start the FTA in a limited way and over a period of time, as industries give more negotiating room to the government, the list can be expanded. We can start in a limited way. It sends a very positive signal to the industry Ajai Sahai, director-general (DG) and chief executive officer (CEO), Federation of Indian Export Organisations (FIEO) said.
Textiles Minister on Friday said the sector will achieve USD 44 billion exports target in 2021-22, and in the next five years, both the ministry and the industry have agreed to aim for USD 100 billion outbound shipments.

He also said the Production Linked Incentive Scheme for technical textiles and man-made fibre segment will be approved soon by the Union Cabinet, a move which would give a boost to domestic manufacturing and exports.

The proposed Mega Investment Textiles Parks (MITRA) scheme, under which seven such parks will be set up in the country over the next three years, is at an advanced stage of approval, the minister told reporters here.

This scheme was announced in the Union Budget 2021-22.

"Delighted at the way the textiles sector has engaged with the idea of achieving bigger targets. We must aim for a USD 100 billion export target in the next five years," he said.

He added that export has to stand on its own feet and has to be independently viable as demand for subsidies would not always help.

On free trade pacts, he said India is interacting with different nations to expedite FTAs or PTAs (preferential trade agreements).

This engagement has been ongoing with the UK, EU, UAE, Australia, among others.

Further, Goyal said they are working with the finance ministry on interest equalisation scheme and enhancement of insurance cover.

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NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India on Friday allowed of genetically modified (GM) through three more ports, according to a government order seen by Reuters, facilitating overseas purchases of the animal feed in large volumes.

New Delhi last month allowed of GM for the first time to help the poultry industry, which is reeling from a surge in local prices that tripled in a year to a record high.

But the government permitted overseas purchases of the animal feed only through the Nhava Sheva Port, primarily for containers. Traders said the restriction slowed down

Friday's government order said that besides the Nhava Sheva Port, traders could now import soymeal via the Mumbai Sea Port, the Tuticorin Sea Port and the Visakhapatnam Sea Port.

Reuters on Wednesday reported that India has contracted to import 250,000 tonnes of soymeal, including 15,000 tonnes that Indian dealers had shipped out only two months ago.

(Reporting by Rajendra Jadhav and Mayank Bhardwaj; Editing by Marguerita Choy)

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Mukesh Ambani, Chairman and Managing Director of (RIL), on Friday said India can be the first country to bring down the cost of green to $1 per kg within a decade, reiterating the companys push towards alternate energy.

Addressing the International Climate Summit 2021, he said, Efforts are on globally to make green the most affordable fuel option by bringing down its cost to initially under $2 per kg. Let me assure you all that Reliance will aggressively pursue this target and achieve it well before the turn of this decade. He added that India can set an even more aggressive target of achieving under $1 per kg within a decade. This will make India the first country globally to achieve $1 per 1 kg in 1 decade  the 1-1-1 target for green hydrogen, he added.

According to the European Commissions July 2020 strategy, green hydrogen produced with renewable resources costs anything from $3 to $6.5 per kg. Fuel-based hydrogen is cheaper at around $1.80 per kg.

While hydrogen generation technologies have been around for a while, green hydrogen is made using renewable energy, making it more sustainable and environment friendly.

The rapid fall in the cost of production has made solar energy highly competitive, attracting large-scale investments. This shall play a key role in ensuring similar growth trends in green hydrogen  the future replacement of fossil fuels, Ambani said.

While transition is a global imperative, it is important for India for another reason, he said. Most of our present energy demand is met by imported fossil fuels costing us $160 billion every year, he said.

In his Independence Day speech, Prime Minister Narendra Modi called for an energy independent nation before 2047. He highlighted multiple avenues to cut the import bill, including for hydrogen. He also announced a national hydrogen mission.





ALSO READ: Hydrogen's green fix



At another session during the International Climate Summit on Friday, Deepesh Nanda, Chief Executive Officer, GE Gas Power South Asia, said, Indias potential to transform into an international hub for green hydrogen can be realised through implementing a robust policy framework that can further boost development of the necessary infrastructure, monitor supply chain dynamics and promote using latest innovative technology to burn carbon-free Hydrogen in a safe manner.

Tirtha Biswas, programme lead at the Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW), said, As per CEEW analysis, the total investment potential of green hydrogen in India is $44 billion by 2030. Further, green hydrogen holds the potential to become competitive for end-use sectors like steel and ammonia within the next decade.

To scale up green hydrogen, the government should focus on research and development, ensure access to round-the-clock renewable power for decentralised hydrogen production, and explore blending green hydrogen in existing processes, especially the industrial sector, Biswas added.

Ambani said a new green revolution had already begun in India. The old green revolution made India self-reliant in food production. The new green revolution will help make India self-sufficient in energy production, he said.

Making a pitch for more renewable energy, Ambani said, Taking advantage of over 300 sunny days in a year, India can easily generate over 1,000 GW of solar energy on just 0.5 per cent of our land. Solar is perfectly suited to decentralised energy production, which in turn can promote decentralised socio-economic development.

By investing in smart, two-way grids, micro-grids, efficient storage solutions and smart meters, we can enable individuals, communities and neighbourhoods to become both consumers and producers of energy. These installations can be located close to demand. They have low maintenance requirements, he said.

Ambani noted that the PM had set a goal to reach 450GW of renewable energy capacity by 2030. Out of this, Reliance will establish and enable at least 100GW of solar energy by 2030. This will create a pan-India network of kilowatt and megawatt scale solar energy producers who can produce green hydrogen for local consumption, he said.

On the new energy business, he said, We have started developing the Dhirubhai Ambani Green Energy Giga Complex over 5,000 acres in Jamnagar. It will be amongst the largest integrated renewable energy manufacturing facilities in the world.

This complex will have four giga factories, which cover the entire spectrum of renewable energy. The first will be an integrated solar photovoltaic module factory. The second will be an advanced energy storage battery factory. The third will be an electrolyser factory for the production of green hydrogen. The fourth will be a fuel cell factory for converting hydrogen into motive and stationary power, he said.

Over the next three years, the company plans to invest Rs 75,000 crore in these initiatives.
In order to make more coal available to power plants that do not have any power purchase agreement (PPA), the union agreed to changes in the guidelines for SHAKTI scheme.

SHAKTI, or Scheme for Harnessing Scheme for Harnessing and Allocating Koyala Transparently in India, was launched in 2018 to provide coal to stressed power units which lack coal supply.

The in a meeting with Association of Power Producers (APP), the representative body for private gencos, agreed to three separate windows for auction--3 months, 6 months and one year.

"In order to make coal available for a longer period, MoP will examine whether the duration of auction can be extended for more than one year. Issue of Bank Guarantee is also to be examined if duration has to be extended beyond one year," said a statement by the ministry.

In the earlier two rounds held over the last two years, around 9,389 megawatt (MW) of power capacity bid for the coal under the SHAKTI scheme.

During the last round in February, private power players had alleged that Coal India was offering less than the required amount of coal.

In the bidding round for medium-term PPAs for assets that dont have any sale agreement, six projects received an interest from four states to buy power for three years at Rs 4.24 per unit.

The union ministry in turn asked the private gencos to cooperate with the the central government owned gencos when power is regulated to the defaulting states. "MoP advised IPPs on reciprocal basis not to derail the regulation of power by Central Gencos in case of non-payment of dues by Discoms," said the statement.

APP also asked the ministry for amendments in the 'Mega Power Policy' which the MoP said is being taken up through inter-Ministerial consultation.

'Mega power policy' is for projects over 1,000 Mw and was to expire on March 31, 2017, but the CCEA extended it by five years. Thereby doubling the period to 10 years for projects to receive the 'mega power' certificate.

The incentives provided in the scheme are lower customs duty and excise duty exemption for equipment.
Textiles Minister on Friday said the value of should be increased to $100 billion from $33 billion currently.

The government and industry should collectively resolve to reach the target of $44 billion of exports by the end of the current fiscal year for textiles and apparel, including handicrafts, Goyal, who is also minister for commerce and industry, told reporters.

I have settled for $44 billion this year... I am sure nothing less than $100 billion will satisfy any of you, and certainly will not satisfy the government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi," he said at a meeting with textile exporters.

The textile ministry is working closely with finance ministry to resolve the issue of pending dues on incentives for exporters, Goyal said. Even as the government is always open to considering all industry requirements, industries that dont depend on subsidies and incentives from the government thrive much more.

He assured the industry that the production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme for textiles and mega investment textile parks is at an advanced stage of approval.

The minister also said that the government will not be able to force freight rates as it is a double-edged sword. The government will also take up the issue of container shortages and high freight rates with shipping lines.

Currently, the Department of Commerce, along with the shipping ministry and Indian Railways, are working towards finding a solution to the problem of container shortage hitting Indian exporters. Cabinet Secretary Rajiv Gauba had also chaired a meeting regarding this on Thursday. Container prices have jumped between 300 per cent and 500 per cent year on year (YoY).

Goyal also said that the problem is not unique to India. If its a problem for you then its a problem for other countries as well. In a way, things are levelised, he added.

The minister further said that the finance ministry is likely to set up a review committee to study the inputs given by the export boosting scheme Remission of Duties and Taxes on Exported Products (RoDTEP).

If any of you feel that your product has not rightly received what is due... it will be examined by the independent committee, he said, while reiterating that the scheme is not incentive-based, but only remission of unremitted levies.
Union Minister on Friday asked vice chancellors of central universities to fill up over 6,000 vacant posts in mission mode by October.

The minister also set a deadline of September 10 for the universities for advertising the vacancies.

During his interaction with vice chancellors, Pradhan said 6,229 posts are vacant in universities, out of which 1,012 are in SC category, 592 in ST category, 1,767 posts in OBC category, 805 in EWS category and 355 in divyang category.

"Let us work on a mission mode to fill up the posts by October. There can be a few anomalies, but by September 10 all the universities should have advertised," he said.

Apart from representatives from 46 central universities, Minister of State for Subhash Sarkar, Higher Secretary Amit Khare, UGC Chairman D P Singh and senior officials of the ministry and UGC attended the meeting.

The minister said that there will be student rebellion and in a democracy there has to flexibility to accommodate.

"The onus of ensuring that teaching and learning is not compromised lies with the VCs. Universities should focus on bringing back on schedule the academic routine which had been disrupted by the pandemic in last two years," he said.

On reforms like four-year degree courses, Pradhan said that the universities have the autonomy to decide the roll-out strategy and as these reforms take time, universities should start consultations with teachers and students while preparing the framework for implementation from 2022.

Talking about creation of a collective framework by various agencies to fulfil the NEP's vision of enhancing skill and vocational education, Pradhan noted that Japanese language should be an additional skill. "Suppose a postgraduate in English literature has also studied Japanese language, that person's employability gets enhanced multifold in India itself."



"The amount of investment that is coming to India in the near future in the field of infrastructure and automobile will open up opportunities for our students with knowledge of Japanese. I hope the central universities will be pioneers in implementing the Academic Bank of Credit and schemes like multiple entry and exit," said the minister.

Addressing the participants, Pradhan said that Indian universities are cradles of creativity, innovation and opportunities.

"The New Education Policy, 2020 will play a crucial role in placing India at the top of the emerging new world order and as custodians of India's destiny our universities should fulfil their responsibilities outlined in the NEP," he said.

"The minister said that our higher education institutions are key catalysts for promoting socio-economic development and for realising aspirations and national goals," he said.

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The high-level FSDC headed by Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Friday discussed a host of issues concerning the economy and underlined the need for keeping a continuous vigil on the by the government as well as different regulators.

Presided over by Sitharaman, the Financial Stability and Development Council (FSDC) meeting was attended by various regulators, including RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das.

The 24th meeting deliberated on various mandates of the FSDC like financial stability, development, inter-regulatory coordination, financial literacy, financial inclusion, and macro prudential supervision of the economy including the functioning of large financial conglomerates, the ministry said in a statement.

"It was noted that there is a need to keep a continuous vigil by Government and all regulators on the financial conditions," it said.

It also discussed issues relating to management of stressed assets, strengthening institutional mechanism for financial stability analysis, framework for resolution of financial institutions and issues related to IBC, banks' exposure to various sectors and government, data sharing mechanisms of government authorities, internationalisation of Indian rupee and pension sector related issues.

This was the first meeting of the high-level panel in the current financial year. The last meeting (23rd) was held on December 15, 2020.

The council also took note of the activities undertaken by the FSDC Sub-Committee chaired by the RBI Governor and the action taken by members on the past decisions of FSDC.

The meeting was held in the backdrop of a record 20.1 per cent GDP growth in the April-June quarter, helped by a very weak base of last year and a sharp rebound in the manufacturing and services sectors in spite of a devastating second wave of COVID-19 cases.

Both Ministers of State for Bhagwat K Karad and Pankaj Chaudhary were present at the meeting.

Besides the RBI Governor, Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) Chairman Ajay Tyagi; Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India (IBBI) Chairman M S Sahoo; Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA) Chairman Supratim Bandyopadhyay; and International Financial Services Centres Authority (IFSCA) Chairman Injeti Srinivas attended the meeting.

Finance Secretary T V Somanathan, Economic Affairs Secretary Ajay Seth, Revenue Secretary Tarun Bajaj, Financial Services Secretary Debasish Panda, Corporate Affairs Secretary Rajesh Verma and other top officials of the finance ministry were also present.

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Punjab National Banks (PNB) board will meet on September 10 to consider the proposal for raising of capital through issuance of Basel-III compliant Additional Tier-1 (AT-1) Bonds and Additional Tier-II bonds or a combination of both.

The capital would be raised through this route, in one or more tranches, the lender said in an exchange filing.

Earlier, the meeting of board of directors was scheduled on August 27, but was deferred.
The All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) Chief has decided to launch the 2022 Assembly election campaign from district from September 7.

Owaisi will address a conference in Rudauli in on this day to which Muslims, Dalits, backwards and upper caste Hindus have also been invited.

AIMIM state president Shaukat Ali, said, "Not only Muslims but other communities too have been harassed and exploited by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government at the Centre and in The AIMIM has decided to fight for the rights of the people suppressed by the BJP government by organising a series of 'vanchit-shoshit samaj' conferences across "

On September 8, Owaisi will address a similar conference in Sultanpur and in Barabanki.

Shaukat Ali said, "These communities are looking for an alternative and the AIMIM emerged as a hope and voice of the deprived communities. The AIMIM will call upon the people to support it in the 2022 Assembly elections to form a government that works for the welfare and development of all the communities."

The AIMIM has announced to field candidates on 100 Assembly seats in

It has also joined an alliance of smaller political parties to form the Bhagidari Sankalp Morcha, which includes Suheldev Bhartiya Samaj Party (SBSP) led by Om Prakash Rajbhar, Jan Adhikar Party led by Babu Singh Kushwaha, Rashtriya Uday Party led by Babu Rampal, Rashtriya Upekshit Samaj Party led by Premchanda Prajapati and Janata Kranti Party led by Anil Singh Chauhan.

The Morcha has invited the Bhim Army to join the pre-poll alliance.--IANS

amita/dpb

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Plc and the ended months of bitter legal wrangling over vaccine supplies with a deal to provide millions of extra doses to the bloc by early next year.



The deal ends a blame game over the EUs slow start in vaccinating its 448 million population as the U.S. and the U.K. raced to secure supplies that allowed them reopen their economies after a series of lockdowns. The pressure on supplies is now off with the EU managing to vaccinate 70% of adults.

Astra has so far delivered about 140 million doses to the EU. Under the agreement the drugmaker will need to provide a further 20 million doses this quarter, 75 million by the end of the year and another 65 million in the first quarter of 2022.

Falling Behind

The agreement will bring the total number of doses delivered to 300 million doses as agreed under the contract, the EUs executive said in a statement on Friday.

The deal ends a legal dispute that led to arguments of bad faith play out in a Brussels courtroom earlier this year. The court ordered Astra to deliver 50 million doses by Sept. 27 under threat of a penalty of 10 euros ($12) per missing dose. said at the time that the court hadnt insisted it prioritize EU supplies over other contracts.

Plans for a settlement were signaled by Astra at its quarterly earnings in July. Astra does not think it is useful for both parties to continue this litigation, Ruud Dobber, executive vice president of Astras BioPharmaceuticals unit, said at the time.

Im very pleased that we have been able to reach a common understanding which allows us to move forward and work in collaboration with the European Commission to help overcome the pandemic, Dobber said in a statement Friday.

The company hasnt been selling its shot for profit, but the prospect of a long legal battle with 27 governments raised the risk of litigation costs and damage payments.

It isnt clear how many Astra shots will be needed in Europe. has mostly been used to inoculate older adults in the region amid concerns over potential side-effects. That over-40 population has some of the highest vaccination rates. Younger people are mostly being given Pfizer Inc. or Moderna Inc. shots.

At the same time, EU health authorities are so far steering away from widespread use of vaccine booster shots.

Some European countries have been donating unused Astra supplies to other parts of the world. Italy last month pledged some 800,000 Astra doses to Vietnam.
Prime Minister on Friday described as a "role model" for the developing countries to address poverty, saying Beijing's high economic growth has brought 800 million people out of penury.

Prime Minister Khan was speaking virtually at a forum on the 20th Anniversary of Juncao Assistance and Sustainable Development Cooperation being held in Beijing, according to a statement by his office.

He said Juncao technology, which is famed as "magic grass", is two Chinese characters meaning "mushroom" and "grass", is one such way which helps small-scale farmers to develop low-cost and commercial-scale mushroom cultivation.

The particular breed of grass was discovered by Chinese scientists to be an economical and environment-friendly substitute for timber, traditionally used as a substrate for growing mushrooms.

is a role model for developing countries in alleviation, he said, adding that its stellar growth brought 800 million people out of over the last four decades.

He said achievement of food security, and improved nutrition, have become an even greater challenge for developing countries. Sustainable ways of achieving economic recovery, growth and development are critical during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Khan said China's leadership role in climate change is also highly appreciated and commended Chinese President Xi Jinping's vision of a prosperous, clean and beautiful world and initiative to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060.

The Prime Minister said alleviation and tackling climate change are his government's key priorities.

Khan expressed his commitment to cooperation aimed at poverty alleviation, sustainable growth and addressing climate change, saying that COVID-19 has triggered an economic meltdown and extreme poverty rose last year for the first time in over 20 years.

We have launched a wide ranking social safety programme Ehsaas with an objective of uplifting marginalised people, eradicating poverty and supporting vulnerable households, he said.

He said Pakistan, being one of the most climate vulnerable countries, fully supports efforts to combat this scourge.

We are progressing towards a clean and green We have already planted a billion trees as part of our ten billion tree project as part of one of the most ambitious efforts to expand and restore forests, he said.

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U.S. aviation authorities wont permit Virgin Galactic Holdings Inc. to fly its space plane until an investigation is complete into whether a July 11 flight deviation threatened public safety.



The Federal Aviation Administration is reviewing why SpaceShipTwo flew outside the area in which it was cleared by the agency during the trip to space that carried company founder and others. The flight landed safely.

Virgin Galactic may not return the SpaceShipTwo vehicle to flight until the FAA approves the final mishap investigation report or determines the issues related to the mishap do not affect public safety, the FAA said in an emailed statement.

The company is working with FAA to address the flight deviation, which didnt endanger the passengers or the public, it said in an emailed statement.

We take this seriously and are currently addressing the causes of the issue and determining how to prevent this from occurring on future missions, it said in the statement. We have been working closely with the FAA to support a thorough review and timely resolution of this issue.





The FAA news sent Virgin Galactic shares down 2.9% to $26.01 at the close in New York.

Virgin Galactic was planning its next flight to the fringes of space for later this month or in early October. The research flight is scheduled to include two members of the Italian Air Force, an aerospace engineer and a Virgin Galactic employee, the company said Thursday in an earlier statement. Virgin declined to comment on whether the FAAs edict would alter that flights schedule.

It will be the companys first commercial research mission.

The FAA regulates commercial space flights and sets rules to protect the uninvolved public on the ground and other aircraft near launches. But Congress has prohibited it from setting safety standards for crew members.

The flight deviation occurred because the spacecraft, which floats back into the atmosphere using devices designed to keep it stable and limit its speed, was outside the optimal descent path, the New Yorker reported Wednesday.





The ship, which becomes a glider once it reenters thicker air, flew beneath an area that FAA had set aside to prevent conflicts with other aircraft, the company said on Wednesday. It was outside the protected area for one minute and 41 seconds, it said.

It then reentered protected airspace for the remainder of the flight, according to the company.

Although the flights ultimate trajectory deviated from our initial plan, it was a controlled and intentional flight path that allowed Unity 22 to successfully reach space and land safely at our Spaceport in New Mexico, the company said in a statement Wednesday.
Prime Minister on Friday said the India-Russia friendship has stood the test of time and asserted that the two countries together can help bring stability to the global energy market.

In his virtual address at the plenary session of the Eastern Economic Forum (EEF) being held in the Russian city of Vladivostok, Modi noted the robust cooperation between the two countries during the Covid-19 pandemic, including in the vaccination programme.

Lauding President Vladimir Putins vision for the development of the Russian Far East, he said India will be a reliable partner for Russia in realising the vision.

Noting that India has a talented and dedicated workforce while the Far East is rich in resources, the prime minister said there is tremendous scope for Indian talent to contribute to the development of the Russian Far East.

He recalled his 2019 visit to Vladivostok to attend the forum and the then announcement of Indias commitment to an Act Far East policy.

The policy is an important part of Indias special and privileged strategic partnership with Russia, Modi said.

President Putin, I remember our detailed conversation during the boat ride from Vladivostok to Zvezda during my visit in 2019. You had shown me the modern ship-building facility at Zvezda and had expressed the hope that India would participate in this great enterprise. Today, I am delighted that one of India's biggest shipyards, Mazagon Docks Limited, will partner with Zvezda for the construction of some of the most important commercial ships in the world, he said.

India and Russia are partners in space exploration through the Gaganyaan programme and the two countries will also be partners in the opening of the Northern Sea Route for trade and commerce, the prime minister noted.

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External Affairs Minister on Friday called on Prime Minister of Slovenia Janez Jana and held discussions on enhancing bilateral ties, and major global issues, including Europe's challenges, the Indo-Pacific and the Afghanistan situation.

Jaishankar is in the central European nation as part of a four-day visit to Slovenia, Croatia and Denmark to enhance India-EU ties and for bilateral talks.

Called on Prime Minister of Slovenia @JJansaSDS. Valued the discussion on enhancing our bilateral ties. Appreciated his insights and perspectives on major global issues including Europe's challenges, Indo-Pacific and Afghanistan, he said on Twitter.

Earlier in the day, Jaishankar also held a cordial meeting with President of the National Assembly of Slovenia Igor Zorcic and discussed the strengthening of bilateral relations and increasing parliamentary exchanges and people to people contacts.

On Thursday, he had a panel discussion with Slovenian counterpart Anze Logar at the Bled Strategic Forum (BSF) on the subject of 'Partnership for a Rules-Based Order in the Indo-Pacific' here.

There is a sharper awareness in Europe that what happens in the Indo-Pacific impinges directly on its interests, Jaishankar said.

India-EU relations have emerged stronger as the world battles a global pandemic and that issues of trust and transparency, reliable and resilient supply chains have created common ground, he added.

Slovenia currently holds the presidency of the Council of the European Union and has invited Jaishankar to attend the informal meeting of the foreign ministers of the EU states.

The crisis in Afghanistan was on the agenda of the closed-door ministerial discussions on Thursday.

The Taliban seized power in Afghanistan on August 15, two weeks before the US' complete troop withdrawal on August 31 after a costly two-decade war. This forced Afghan President Ashraf Ghani to flee the country to the UAE.

The Taliban insurgents stormed across Afghanistan and captured all major cities in a matter of days, as Afghan security forces trained and equipped by the US and its allies melted away.

Thousands of Afghan nationals and foreigners have fled the country to escape the new Taliban regime and to seek asylum in different nations, including the US and many European nations, resulting in total chaos and deaths.

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Japanese Prime Minister announced plans to resign after failing to control the countrys surge, with two former foreign ministers seen as leading the pack to take over, weeks before a general election.

In a surprise announcement, Suga told reporters Friday he couldnt campaign for re-election as leader of the Liberal Democratic Party this month while battling the virus, ending his premiership almost exactly a year after it started. Whoever becomes the next LDP leader is virtually assured of becoming prime minister due to the partys dominance in parliament.

Since I became prime minister a year ago, dealing with has been at the center of my efforts, Suga, 72, said in a brief statement without taking questions. Dealing with the virus while campaigning for the election would take a huge amount of energy. I realized I couldnt do both and I should choose one.

Japanese stocks climbed on hopes the next prime minister would favor expanding economic stimulus, with at least one contender for Sugas job -- former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida, 64 -- supporting more spending to soften the pandemics blow. The Topix gauge jumped 1.6%, closing at its highest level since 1991.

Sugas resignation amplified speculation about possible replacements. Vaccine czar Taro Kono -- a 58-year-old former foreign minister -- plans to seek the LDP presidency, broadcaster TBS and other media reported. Kono told reporters he would consult with colleagues before making a decision to run.

Kono and Kishida have first-hand experience in negotiating with the U.S., Japans sole military ally, and China, the countrys biggest trading partner. Suga entered the premiership as a diplomatic novice, and as premier, offered support for President Joe Biden as he tried to line up allies for a united front to the security threats posed by China.

Public opinion polls have also shown support for Shigeru Ishiba, 64, a former defense minister. Ex-Internal Affairs Minister Sanae Takaichi has also said she wants to run and be the first woman to serve as prime minister.

If the LDP holds to pattern, potential candidates will likely spend the next few days talking to bosses of powerful factions within the party, who have great sway in the formation of a government.

Sugas approval ratings plummeted over his handling of Japans worst-yet wave of virus cases, which coincided with the Tokyo Olympics. In recent weeks, he had seen a series of alarming setbacks, including a loss by one of his allies last month in an election for mayor of Yokohama, the city where he began his political career.

The current prime minister is walking out because I think hes sick and tired of excessive pressure from these corona-related issues, Seijiro Takeshita, a professor at the University of Shizuoka who specializes in business management and comparative governance, told Bloomberg Television. Its going to be a very colorful election because they think it will be a very good chance for them to have the seat of prime minister.

Suga decided not to seek a new term as leader after his efforts to reshuffle the ruling partys executive team faced resistance, Kyodo News reported, citing a person close to the prime ministers office.

Suga took over as prime minister on Sept. 16, 2020, hoping to avoid a return to the days of revolving-door leaders after his predecessor, Shinzo Abe, became Japans longest-tenured premier. But corruption scandals, the sluggish Covid response and public opposition to holding the Olympics took their toll.





Abe, whos still a lawmaker, said Friday that his successor and former top aide had performed admirably, Jiji Press reported.

Suga has faced widespread criticism of his handling of the pandemic. While the country has succeeded in keeping its death toll at a fraction of the level seen in many other developed nations, a shortage of hospital beds and reports of people dying from the virus at home have sparked anxiety among the public.



must hold a general election by the end of November, in which the ruling coalition is likely to remain in power despite losing seats. Support for the main opposition party is mired in single digits.

The procedural requirements of appointing a new prime minister could make it difficult to hold an election before Oct. 21, Kishida told the Nikkei newspaper. Kishida separately told Bloomberg News in an interview Friday that he was concerned about friction with China, predicting that tension in the Taiwan Strait would will be the next big problem for

Kono, the vaccine czar, is not only popular, but a member of Finance Minister Taro Asos powerful faction.

I dont expect a meaningful change in Japans fiscal, monetary and economic policies even after Suga steps down, said Kyohei Morita, chief economist at Credit Agricole Securities Asia.
OSLO (Reuters) - Norway's $1.4 trillion wealth fund has excluded India's top oil producer Oil and Natural Gas Corp from its portfolio due to concerns over the company's business in South Sudan, the fund said in a statement.

The world's largest sovereign fund also excluded three Israeli firms, Elco, its subsidiary Electra and Ashtrom because of their links to Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

The companies were not immediately available for comment.

Exclusions are based on advice from the fund's ethics watchdog and holdings are sold before any announcement is made.

For ONGC, the primary concern was over its participation in two joint ventures in oil-dependent South Sudan, the watchdog said, a country where violent clashes between rival factions continue even after the end of a civil war in 2018.

"The council considers that through its operations has accepted a risk of contributing to serious abuse committed to enable oil production in the country," said the watchdog, formally known as the Council on Ethics.

"The council also takes into consideration that actors who are directly or indirectly responsible for grave violations are providing services to the joint ventures and are responsible for the security at the oil fields that the joint ventures operate."

In Israel, industrial group Elco and its construction subsidiary Electra were excluded because Electra builds roads in the Israeli settlements in the West Bank, with Electra recently winning a tender for the construction of a major road project.

Along with a number of other countries, Norway considers the settlements a breach of law, a view that Israel disputes. A 2020 United Nations report said it had found 112 companies with operations linked to the region, home to around 650,000 Israelis.

Meanwhile, Ashtrom lets industrial premises in the settlements which the council says "contributes to the continuation of an illegal state that their construction once initiated".

The fund held a 0.38% stake in at the end of 2020, its latest disclosure, valued at $60.6 million. It held a 0.1% stake worth $1.35 million in Elco, a 0.38% stake worth $7.8 million in Electra and a 0.04% stake worth $749,000 in Ashtrom.

Set up in 1996 to preserve Norway's oil revenues for future generations, the fund holds around 1.4% of globally listed shares and its decisions are often followed by other investors.

(Reporting by Terje Solsvik and Gwladys Fouche in Oslo, Ari Rabinovitch in Jerusalem and Sudarshan Varadhan in Chennai; editing by David Evans)

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were largely steady on Friday as a rebound in global demand was widely expected but a slow recovery for the U.S. Gulf Coast export and refining hub from the hurricane earlier this week weighed on prices.

Brent crude futures were up 22 cents, or 0.3%, to $73.25 a barrel at 0911 GMT, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures were down 5 cents at $69.94 a barrel. Both benchmark oil contracts were largely steady for the week.

The move down in WTI was likely due to traders squaring positions ahead of the U.S. non-farm payrolls report for August set to be released on Friday, analysts said, on worries the report may be weaker than consensus forecasts.

Oil demand has been curbed as extended power outages are slowing the reopening of refineries that were shut in Louisiana.

"It's safe to say that the oil market is still feeling the effects of Hurricane Ida," said Stephen Brennock of oil broker PVM.

"The loss of U.S. refinery demand will likely be more prolonged than the loss of crude supply given the extent of power outages and flooding in the region."

About 1.7 million barrels per day of oil production remains shut in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico, with damage to heliports and fuel depots slowing the return of crews to offshore platforms, sources told Reuters.

Some analysts see room for further price gains amid tightening crude supplies and signs of recovering demand after the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and allies, known as OPEC+, stuck to a plan to add 400,00 barrels per day (bpd) to the market over the next few months.

"With an oil market still strongly in deficit for the remainder of the year, oil seems poised to rally further as OPEC+ signals discipline in easing cuts and as U.S. stockpiles continue to decline," Edward Moya, senior market analyst at OANDA, said.

(Additional reporting by Roslan Khasawneh in Singapore and Sonali Paul in Melbourne; Editing by Richard Pullin and David Evans)

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co-founder Mullah Baradar will lead a new Afghan government set to be announced shortly, sources in the Islamist group said on Friday, as its fighters battled forces loyal to the vanquished republic in the Panjshir Valley north of

Baradar is one of the three deputies of the Talibans Supreme Commander Haibatullah Akhundzada, and was the main signatory of the peace deal with the Trump administration in February 2020 that laid out the roadmap for the withdrawal of U.S. and forces from

He also held secret talks with Central Intelligence Agency Director William Burns late last month and recently met Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi.

Baradar, who heads the Taliban's political office, will be joined by Mullah Mohammad Yaqoob, the son of late co-founder Mullah Omar, and Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanekzai, in senior positions in the government, three sources said.

All the top leaders have arrived in Kabul, where preparations are in final stages to announce the new government, one official told Reuters, on condition of anonymity.

Militants may use Afghan chaos to infiltrate US, EU, says



The North Atlantic Treaty Organization warned that militants could join migrants fleeing Afghanistan, potentially adding to security threats for Europe and the US.

Pak urges effort to help



Pakistan is urging the community to adopt a three-pronged approach to following the Taliban takeover: Quickly deliver aid to 14 million people facing a hunger crisis, promote an inclusive government, and work with the Taliban to attack all terrorist groups in the country.

EU ministers outline conditions



EU officials have said they are willing to cooperate with the Taliban. EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said that to gauge the Taliban's good will, the bloc would use several benchmarks.

They include a guarantee that Afghanistan won't become a base for the export of terrorism to other countries, a commitment to free access for humanitarian aid deliveries, and adhering to standards in the areas of human rights.
UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab on Friday said it is important to engage with the government in for a range of reasons, including the safe passage of British citizens, but dismissed talks of recognising it officially as "premature".

Addressing a joint press conference in Islamabad alongside Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, Raab, who is Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, said it would not have been possible to evacuate some 15,000 people from Kabul without some degree of cooperation from the

"The approach we are taking is that we don't recognise the as a government [...] but we do see the importance of being able to engage and have a direct line of communication, the reason being that there is a whole range of issues that need to be discussed including the question of safe passage of British nationals and the Afghans who worked for the UK government, he said.

Though he hoped that the Taliban would bring stability and an end to violence in the country, Raab said it was "premature" to talk about recognising the Taliban at the moment. He noted that the Taliban had made a series of undertakings, "some of them are positive at the level of words" but there was a need to test whether they translated into deeds, which would not be possible if some channel of dialogue was not present.

To a question on the expectations from the Taliban and the dangers of pushing them towards "radical tendencies", Raab said some early tests needed to be set on the Taliban promises and whether they had the sincerity and will to deliver on them.

The Taliban seized control of Afghanistan's capital, Kabul, on August 15. The last of the foreign troops left the country on August 31, bringing an end to 20 years of war amid fears of an economic collapse and widespread hunger.

Following the chaotic departure, Western states have severely restricted their aid payments to Raab thanked the Pakistani government for safely evacuating British citizens. He said that the UK will continue to provide aid on humanitarian grounds.

"We will continue to help Afghanistan's neighbouring countries, including PakistanWe want to see a prosperous Afghanistan, he said. The foreign secretary also said that the UK valued its historic relations with Pakistan. "We want to further strengthen our ties with Pakistan," he said.

Qureshi was asked if Pakistan's relation with the Taliban will be condition-based. Qureshi said Pakistan had certain compulsions like geographical closeness, trade and daily commuting of 20,000- 25,000 people across the border, which makes the country's stance unique.

Some have the choice of getting up and leaving (Afghanistan) but we do not. We are neighbours; we have to coexist. Geography ties us together so our approach has to be somewhat different and realistic, he said.

He said: It is up to the people of to decide their future government and we will accept their choice.

The foreign minister said now there was an opportunity for peace in Afghanistan after 40 years. Qureshi said Pakistan had taken legislative and administrative steps to get out of the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force's (FATF) grey list.

He said the issue of the UK's Red List -- highest restrictions in travel amid the COVID-19 pandemic -- was discussed in the meeting with Raab and the British foreign secretary was told how the people in Pakistan felt about it.

Raab said top officials from the two countries would meet to discuss the technical aspects of the case. "We will be able to take the decision on excluding Pakistan's name from the Red List on technical grounds," he said.

To a question on the Kashmir issue, Raab said Britain supported talks between Pakistan and India to resolve the dispute.

"It is not for the UK to impose its solution to the Kashmir crisis," he said, adding that London encouraged both Islamabad and New Delhi to hold concrete dialogue over the issue.

The question was asked in light of Syed Ali Shah Geelani (91), avowedly a pro-Pakistan supporter who spearheaded the separatist movement in Jammu and Kashmir for over three decades, dying at his residence in Srinagar on Wednesday night. The British foreign secretary arrived in Islamabad on Thursday night for talks on the evolving situation in Afghanistan and bilateral matters.

The Pakistan Foreign Office said Raab during his visit on September 2 and 3 will hold official talks with Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi.

The talks will cover the evolving situation in Afghanistan and bilateral matters, said the FO. Pakistan and the United Kingdom have been closely engaged on the latest developments in Afghanistan. Prime Minister Imran Khan had a comprehensive exchange of views with Prime Minister Boris Johnson telephonically on August 18, while Qureshi and Raab discussed the situation in Afghanistan twice on August 16 and 27.

The FO said the visit will reinforce the current momentum in high-level exchanges between the two countries and help strengthen bilateral cooperation on a range of issues. Raab is the third European leader to visit Pakistan this week after German and Dutch foreign ministers visited Islamabad and met top leaders.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The UK's Chief Medical Officers (CMOs) will provide further advice on COVID-19 of young people aged between 12 to 15 years after the government's vaccine advisory body on Friday did not give its green light for vaccinating those falling in the age group on health grounds.

The independent Joint Committee on and Immunisation (JCVI) concluded that the benefits are insufficient to support a universal offer of mass COVID vaccinations for all healthy children in this age group.

However, it has recommended that an even wider group of 12 to 15-year-olds with underlying health conditions should be given the COVID jab.

"The JCVI's view is that overall, the health benefits from COVID-19 to healthy children aged 12 to 15 years are marginally greater than the potential harms," said Wei Shen Lim, Chair of COVID-19 Immunisation for the JCVI.

"Taking a precautionary approach, this margin of benefit is considered too small to support universal COVID-19 vaccination for this age group at this time," he said.

COVID-19 vaccinations in the UK are currently being offered to all adults aged 16 and over, with the JCVI tasked with looking at expanding this cohort.

It said that as its advice focussed on the narrow health parameters, the government could consider wider societal impact such as disruption to schools.

Therefore, the CMOs have been tasked with the process of assessing the broader impact of universal COVID-19 vaccination in this age group. They will now convene experts and senior leaders in clinical and public health to consider the issue and present their advice to ministers on whether a universal programme should be taken forward.

Our COVID-19 vaccines have brought a wide range of benefits to the country, from saving lives and preventing hospitalisations, to helping stop infections and allowing children to return to school, said UK Health Secretary Sajid Javid.

People aged 12 to 15 who are clinically vulnerable to the virus have already been offered a COVID-19 vaccine, and today we'll be expanding the offer to those with conditions such as sickle cell disease or type 1 diabetes to protect even more vulnerable children, he said.

Javid has joined the health ministers from across Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales to write to the CMOs of all devolved regions of the United Kingdom to ask that they consider the vaccination of 12 to 15 year olds from a broader perspective, as suggested by the JCVI.

The UK's medicines regulator, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), has approved the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines for people aged 12 and over.

Following this, the JCVI concluded that the health benefits from vaccination are marginally greater than the potential known harms and therefore advised the government to seek further input. This includes the impact on schools and young people's education, which has been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic.

Meanwhile, an extra 200,000 teenagers with underlying conditions will now be eligible for two doses. Doctors identified that children with chronic heart, lung and liver conditions were at much higher risk of COVID than healthy children.

A group of 150,000 children with conditions such as severe neurodisabilities, Down's syndrome and severely weakened immune systems as well as those living with vulnerable adults are already eligible.

The JCVI decision on healthy children was based on concern over an extremely rare side effect of the Pfizer vaccine which causes heart inflammation. But as children are at such low risk from the virus, it concluded that vaccination would offer only "marginal gain" in this younger age group.

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President plan to establish a new exchange in Beijing will add a new threat to the business of Hong Kongs bourse, but the impact should be limited, according to consultants and lawyers.

Xi on Thursday outlined plans for a Beijing Exchange to allow innovative small- and medium-sized companies to raise capital. The China Securities Regulatory Commission later said the venue would be comprised of selected companies currently trading on the existing National Equities Exchange and Quotations Co. platform, which was launched back in 2013.

Exchanges & Clearing Ltd. is already vying with major trading centers in Shanghai and Shenzhen to attract Chinese firms. China has been opening its financial and also making it easier for companies to list shares, moving to a more market-driven registration system rather than an approval regime. The STAR Board launched in Shanghai in 2019 also has lured some big companies sell shares, such as SMIC and CanSino Biologics Inc.

But the impact on the initial public offering pipeline in should be limited, said Benson Wong, regional lead partner for entrepreneurial & private business at PricewaterhouseCoopers. HKEXs listing profit requirement dictated it serves a completely different segment of companies, which are mostly large-caps tapping overseas capital, Wong said.

Companies must make profit of HK$80 million ($10 million) or more in the recent three financial years to qualify for a listing on HKEX Main Board starting next year. NEEQ, on the other hand, has less stringent listing threshold than Shanghai and Shenzhen, but has struggled with liquidity.

HKEXs shares fell 3% to HK$483.40 as of 11:19 a.m. local time. The bourse wasnt immediately available to comment.

Fang Jian, a Shanghai- and Hong Kong-based partner at law firm Fangda Partners, said its still in Beijings interest to not undercut as a gateway for global investors.

Yes, on some core issues Chinas attitude is more aggressive and firm than before, but its door to global capital is still open, Fang said, noting that threats by the U.S. to delist Chinese companies is still beneficial to HKEX.

The new Beijing plan could boost business for brokers such as Citic Securities, China Capital Corp. and Guatai Junan, Bloomberg Intelligences Senior Industry Analyst Sharnie Wong wrote in a note. But the timing is uncertain and the initial scale may be small, she said.
State-owned Oil & Natural Gas Corp has been excluded from the worlds biggest sovereign wealth fund, due to the unacceptable risk that the company is contributing to serious violations of the rights of individuals in its joint ventures with South Sudans national oil company Nile Petroleum Corporation.

The exclusion was announced by Norges Bank late Thursday after a recommendation from the Council on Ethics, an independent body that investigates possible norm breaches in the wealth funds $1.4 trillion portfolio. The Norwegian wealth fund is the worlds single largest investor in listed companies, owning about 1.4 per cent globally.

The ethics council said that companies operating in situations of war and conflict must be particularly careful when theres a known risk for norm violations.
Shares of (RIL) hit a fresh record high of Rs 2,394.3, up 4.3 per cent on the BSE in the intra-day trade on Friday, surpassing its previous high of Rs 2,368.80, touched on September 16, 2020, ahead of JioPhone Next smartphone launch. The shares closed at Rs 2,388 per share, up 4 per cent, relative to the S&P BSE Sensex's 0.48 per cent gain.

JioPhone Next will be packed with features like Google Assistant, automatic read-aloud of screen text, language translation, smart camera with augmented reality filters, and more. It will be available in the market from the auspicious date of Ganesh Chaturthi, September 10, 2021 -- Mukesh Ambani, Chairman and Managing Director, RIL had said in his address at the companys AGM 2021 held on June 24, 2021. The JioPhone Next will be the most affordable 4G smartphone in India, and world, Ambani had said.

According to a Bloomberg report, a smartphone widely believed to be priced below $50, likely the worlds cheapest, will start selling a week from now. If Mukesh Ambanis JioPhone Next, an Android device custom-built for India by Alphabet Inc.s Google, is a hit in the price-conscious market, it will solve one problem for banks while posing another. CLICK HERE FOR FULL REPORT



The stock of the country's most valued company, in terms of market capitalisation, was up 5 per cent in the past three trading days on report that the company looks to acquire Europe's largest solar panel manufacturer.

RIL, however, on Thursday clarified on the report and said the company evaluates various opportunities on an ongoing basis. "We would like to clarify that we are unable to comment on media speculation and rumors and it would be inappropriate on our part to do so," the company said.

RIL further said there is no information which has not been announced to the stock exchanges and which should have been announced by the company in terms of the Sebi regulations. READ THE EXCHANGE FILING HERE



However, in an event on Friday, Ambani said that Reliance will aggressively pursue green energy projects over the next couple of years and will help in making green hydrogen most affordable fuel option by bringing down its cost to initially under $2 per kg.

"I am sure that India can set an even more aggressive target of achieving under $1 per kg within a decade. This will make India the first country globally to achieve $1 per 1 kilogram in 1 decade  the 1-1-1 target for green hydrogen, he said at the International Climate Summit 2021. READ HERE



In the past one month, RIL has outperformed the market by surging 15 per cent, as compared to a 7.7 per cent rise in the S&P BSE Sensex.

In a separate regulatory filing, Reliance Retail Ventures (RRVL), a subsidiary of RIL, said that it has taken sole control of Just Dial with effect from September 1, 2021 and it now holds 40.98 per cent in the local search engine.

On July 20, 2021, RRVL acquired 13.1 million equity shares of Rs 10 each of Just Dial at a price of Rs 1,020 per equity share from VSS Mani on the floor of the stock exchange through the block window facility. The acquisition represents 15.63 per cent of the post-preferential issue paid-up equity share capital of Just Dial. On September 1, 2021, Just Dial, pursuant to the preferential issue, allotted 21.2 million equity shares of Rs 10 each at a price of Rs 1022.25 per equity share representing 25.35 per cent of the post-preferential issue paid-up share capital of Just Dial to RRVL, Reliance Retail in media release said. READ HERE


Nifty futures on SGX were up 28 points at 17,288 around 8.55 am, indicating a positive start for the benchmark indices. Here are the top stocks to track in today's session:

RIL, Just Dial: Billionaire Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Retail on Thursday said it has acquired sole control of 25-year-old search and discovery firm Just Dial. The firm's subsidiary Reliance Retail Ventures Ltd had in July announced a deal to buy a controlling stake in Just Dial for Rs 3,497 crore.

HDFC Life: The board of country's largest private insurer approved acquisition of Exide Exide Life Insurance Company for a total consideration of Rs 6,687 crore of which Rs 725 crore will be payable in cash and the balance by way of issue 8.7 crore equity shares of face value of Rs 10 at a price of Rs 685 per share to Exide Industries.

MT Educare: Education service provider, MT Educare has defaulted on repayment of interest and principal amount to its lenders, the company said in a communication to exchanges on September 2.

Jammu & Kashmir Bank: The lender has approved raising of equity share capital upto Rs 1,000 crore in one or more tranches, and Rs 1,000 crore by way of non-convertible debentures on a private placement basis. Further, the government has nominated IAS officer Atal Dulloo as a director on its board.

PNB Housing Finance: The company on Thursday said regulator Sebi has approached the Supreme Court against the Securities Appellate Tribunal's order in the matter related to the company's Rs 4,000 crore equity capital raise plan.

Board meetings: Board of Steel Strip Wheels will meet today to consider stock split; and Board of Tourism Finance Corporation is scheduled to meet today to consider fundraising plan.

Rossari Biotech: The company has completed the acquisition of the first tranche of 76 percent of Tristar Intermediaries.

DRL, Natco Pharma: Dr Reddy's Laboratories and Natco Pharma on Thursday said they have launched generic capsules used in the treatment of multiple myeloma and myelodysplastic syndrome patients in the Canadian market.

Goodluck India: Goodluck India Ltd said on Thursday it has been awarded Letter of Intent (LoI) for order worth Rs 198.76 crore by L&T Ltd for the Bullet Train project in the country. The LoI is granted for the supply and fabrication of special bridges on the National High-Speed Rail Track between Mumbai and Vapi (Bullet Train Project), the company said in a release.

Embassy Office Parks REIT: The company will raise up to Rs 300 crore through issue of non-convertible debentures. The company did not disclose where the funds will be utilised.

IRB Infrastructure Developers: The company has emerged as a preferred bidder for Chittoor - Thachur Six Laning Highway Hybrid Annuity Project in Tamil Nadu.

Granules India: The company has received licence from Defence Research & Development Organisation, Ministry of Defence, to manufacture and market 2-Deoxy-D-Glucose. Developed by DRDO, 2-DG has been granted permission by Drug Controller General of India for emergency use as adjunct therapy in moderate to severe Covid-19 patients.

RailTel Corporation of India: The company has received a contract from Directorate of Information Technology, Indian Air Force for implementation of secure OPS Network for value of Rs 299.95 crore.
Key equity indices traded sideways near the record high level in mid morning trade. The Nifty hovered near the 17,300 mark. FMCG and metal shares corrected while auto and media shares rallied.

At 10:28 IST, the barometer index, the S&P BSE Sensex, was up 209.36 points or 0.36% at 58,061.66. The Nifty 50 index gained 62.4 points or 0.36% at 17,296.55.

The Sensex hit record high of 58,115.69 while the Nifty hit an all time high of 17,311.95 in early trade.

In broader market, the S&P BSE Mid-Cap index was up 0.47% while the S&P BSE Small-Cap index was up 0.65%.

The market breadth was strong. On the BSE, 1812 shares rose and 1001 shares fell. A total of 158 shares were unchanged.

Economy:

India's exports jumped 45.17% to $33.14 billion in August as against $22.83 billion in the same month last year, according to the commerce ministry's provisional data.

Imports in August rose 51.47% to $47.01 billion, as against $31.03 billion in the corresponding month of 2020. The trade deficit in August 2021 was $13.87 billion, compared to $8.2 billion in the year-ago period.

Buzzing Index:

The Nifty Realty index gained 1.17% to 418.30. The index has added 12% in seven trading sessions.

Prestige Estates Projects (up 9.6%), Sobha (up 5.2%), Mahindra Lifespace Developers (up 2.53%), Indiabulls Real Estate (up 2.52%) and Sunteck Realty (up 1.88%) were the top gainers. Among the other gainers were DLF (up 1.67%) and Oberoi Realty (up 0.5%).

Stocks in Spotlight:

Granules India rose 1.70% after the company said that it has received licence from Defence Research & Development Organisation (DRDO), Ministry of Defence, Government of India, to manufacture and market of 2- Deoxy-D-Glucose (2-DG).

RailTel Corporation of India added 4% after the company received a contract worth Rs 299.95 crore from Directorate of Information Technology, Indian Air Force, Ministry of Defence for implementation of secure OPS network. The work is to be executed over a period of 12 months.

Jammu & Kashmir Bank gained 1.77% after the bank's board approved proposal to raise up to Rs 2,000 crore through a mix of equity and debt.

Hindustan Aeronautics gained 1.39%. The company said that a meeting of the board of directors of the company will be held on 21 September 2021, to consider the sub-division of equity shares of the company.

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Hindustan Aeronautics (HAL) said that a meeting of the board of directors of the company will be held on 21 September 2021, to consider the sub-division of equity shares of the company.

Shares of HAL rose 2.43% to settle at Rs 1382 yesterday, 2 September 2021.

The stock hit a 52-week high of Rs 1,456.15 on 30 August 2021. The stock hit a 52-week low of Rs 660 on 04 November 2020.

HAL is engaged in carrying out design, development, manufacture, repair and overhaul of aircraft, helicopter, engines and related systems like avionics, instruments and accessories primarily serving Indian defence programme. As of 30 June 2021, the Government of India held 75.15% stake in HAL.

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India's exports jumped 45.17% to $33.14 billion in August as against $22.83 billion in the same month last year, according to the commerce ministry's provisional data.

Imports in August rose 51.47% to $47.01 billion, as against $31.03 billion in the corresponding month of 2020. The trade deficit in August 2021 was $13.87 billion, compared to $8.2 billion in the year-ago period.

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Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders jumped 5.16% to Rs 253.75 after Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that the company will partner Russia's Zvezda for construction of commercial ships.

On the BSE, over 2.71 lakh shares of the company were traded in the counter so far as against an average trading volume of 0.38 lakh shares in the past two weeks.

On the NSE, over 31.06 lakh shares of Mazagon Dock changed hands in the counter as compared with an average trading volume of 19.83 lakh shares in the past three months.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi delivered a video-address during the plenary session of the 6th Eastern Economic Forum (EEF) held on 3 September 2021 in Vladivostok, Russia.

In his virtual address Modi said, "one of the India's biggest ship yards Mazagon Docks Limited will partner with 'Zvezda' for construction of some of the most important commercial ships in the world."

Zvezda is the largest shipyard in Russia, designed for the construction of all types of sea-going vessels and production platforms for operation in the Russian shelf.

Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders is one of India's leading defence public sector undertaking shipyard under the Ministry of Defence. Main activities are construction of warships and submarines with facilities situated at Mumbai and Nhava (under development). It has the capability to build warships, submarines, merchant ships upto 40,000 DWT since 1979. As of 30 June 2021, the Government of India held 84.83% stake held in Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders.

The company's consolidated net profit surged to Rs to Rs 101.60 crore in the quarter ended June 2021 as against Rs 14 crore during the previous quarter ended June 2020. Sales rose 216.26% YoY to Rs 1214.24 crore in Q1 FY22 over Q1 FY21.

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Reliance Industries Ltd is quoting at Rs 2369, up 3.25% on the day as on 12:54 IST on the NSE. The stock is up 14.05% in last one year as compared to a 52.44% jump in NIFTY and a 34.79% jump in the Nifty Energy index.

Reliance Industries Ltd gained for a third straight session today. The stock is quoting at Rs 2369, up 3.25% on the day as on 12:54 IST on the NSE. The benchmark NIFTY is up around 0.25% on the day, quoting at 17277.65. The Sensex is at 57991.31, up 0.24%. Reliance Industries Ltd has gained around 12.61% in last one month.

Meanwhile, Nifty Energy index of which Reliance Industries Ltd is a constituent, has gained around 7.21% in last one month and is currently quoting at 20466, up 1.66% on the day. The volume in the stock stood at 74.2 lakh shares today, compared to the daily average of 61.63 lakh shares in last one month.

The benchmark September futures contract for the stock is quoting at Rs 2380.2, up 3.64% on the day. Reliance Industries Ltd is up 14.05% in last one year as compared to a 52.44% jump in NIFTY and a 34.79% jump in the Nifty Energy index.

The PE of the stock is 46.16 based on TTM earnings ending June 21.

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PNB Housing Finance said that Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has approached the Supreme Court against the Securities Appellate Tribunal's (SAT's) order in the matter related to the company's Rs 4,000 crore equity capital raise plan.

The company is examining the appeal filed by SEBI, the housing financier said in a statement.

On 31 May 2021, the housing financier informed about the scheduling an extra ordinary general meeting (EGM) to seek shareholder's nod for the proposed Rs 4,000 crore-investment by private equity firm Carlyle and others in PNB Housing Finance (PNBHF).

PNBHF had said that the key objective of raising capital is to augment capital adequacy, reduce gearing and accelerate growth with a focus on retail housing including self-employed and affordable housing loans such as the Unnati segment.

The company would raise Rs 3200 crore through preferential equity shares and Rs 800 crore through warrants. The issue price of equity shares and warrants is fixed at Rs 390 each.

Assuming full capital infusion (including warrants) and no other change to the 31 March 2021 financials, the capital adequacy ratio of the company as of 31 March 2021 would increase from 18.7% to over 28% and gearing as of 31 March 2021 will decline from 6.7x to less than 5x.

However, it soon hit a roadblock after a proxy advisory firm reportedly red flagged the preference issue, contending it was not in the interest of the promoter and the minority shareholders of the company. Soon, SEBI restrained the company from going ahead with its proposed share sale to the Carlyle Group.

SEBI directed PNBHF to carry out the valuation process as per the relevant legal provisions. The market regulator said the resolution regarding the deal, which was to be put for shareholders' vote on 22 June 2021, was "ultra-vires" of the company's articles of association (AoA).

In an exchange filing before market hours on 21 June 2021, PNBHF said that it had filed an appeal before SAT against the letter issued by SEBI.

On the same day, in a separate filing, the company said that SAT has allowed the company to go ahead with the shareholders' meeting on 22 June 2021. However, results of the shareholders' voting will not be disclosed till further directions from the tribunal, it added.

Pronouncing its order on 9 August 2021, the two-member bench of the SAT gave a split verdict, saying there was difference of opinion between the members of the bench.

SAT directed that its interim order of 21 June 2021 will continue till further orders, restraining PNBHF from disclosing the voting results by the shareholders on the fund raise plan.

PNBHF is a deposit-accepting housing finance company, with second largest deposits outstanding within housing finance companies. The company provides housing loans to individuals for purchase, construction, repair, and upgrade of houses.

The company reported on a 5.40% decline in consolidated net profit to Rs 243.28 crore on a 9.53% fall in net sales to Rs 1691.81 crore in Q1 FY22 over Q1 FY21.

Shares of PNBHF shed 0.69% to currently trade at Rs 652 on the BSE.

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An all-party meeting convened by Chief Minister on Friday unanimously decided that local body polls be postponed till the state backward class commission compiles empirical data giving a clear picture on political backwardness of OBCs, the government said.

A statement issued by the Chief Minister's Office (CMO) after the meeting said empirical data was required to restore political reservation for the Other Backward Classes (OBCs) in local governing bodies in the state.

The statement said the meeting resolved to direct the State Backward Class Commission (MSBCC) to compile relevant data on the OBCs and till the work is completed, local body polls be postponed. The commission will be directed to complete the data compilation work at the earliest, the CMO said. The Supreme Court earlier this year quashed quota for the OBCs in local bodies in after observing that the total reservation should not exceed 50 per cent. The apex court, while reading down section 12(2)(c) of the Maharashtra Zilla Parishads and Panchayat Samitis Act, 1961 which provided 27 per cent quota for persons belonging to backward class, had also quashed notifications issued by the state election commission in 2018 and 2020 to the extent of providing reservation of seats in local bodies for OBC candidates.

(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.)
: Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao on Friday requested Prime Minister to increase the number of IPS officers for the state in view of creation of more districts.

Rao, who met Modi in the capital on Friday, also sought 100 per cent funding for constructing road networks in the naxal affected areas keeping aside 60:40 ratio (state 60 per cent and Centre 40 per cent) as the internal security issues are of importance.

"The allocation will help the posting of IPS officers as Commissioners/ Superintendents of Police/ Zonal DIGsP/Multi Zonal IGsP in various territorial units. At present these territorial units have no sanctioned Cadre posts," Rao said in one of the memoranda submitted to the PM.

KCR, who is camping in Delhi, performed Bhoomi Puja (groundbreaking) for TRS party office on Thursday. He left for the capital from here on September 1.

The KCR-led government has created 33 districts from the earlier 10.

Rao also requested the Centre to sanction 21 Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas in view of the increased number of districts.

In order to give a fillip to the textile sector in Telangana, the Chief Minister requested Modi to give Rs 1,000 crore as one time grant in aid for the Warangal Textile Park.

He requested the Prime Minister to expedite the work for setting up a Tribal University in the State as promised in the Andhra Pradesh State Reorganisation Act, 2014.

The state government has already identified 200 acres of land near Warangal for the purpose, he further said.

Stating that adequate land is available in University of Hyderabad, the CM asked Modi to sanction an Indian Institute of Management for the state, besides an Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) at Karimnagar under the PPP model.

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Mumbai (Maharashtra) [India], September 3 (ANI/BusinessWire India): The unique 'Okavango Eternal' partnership will help protect Africa's endangered species, ensure water and food security for more than one million people and develop livelihood opportunities for 10,000 people.

De Beers and National Geographic announced the launch of Okavango Eternal, a strategic partnership to address one of the most critical conservation challenges in Africa: protecting the source waters of the Okavango Delta and the lives and livelihoods they support.

The five-year commitment, which will help protect Africa's endangered species, ensure water and food security for more than one million people and develop livelihood opportunities for 10,000 people, represents critical inward investment to underpin the resilience and long-term recovery of the region in the years ahead. The partnership is focused on working hand-in-hand with communities throughout Okavango to deliver shared ecological solutions that lead to collective economic opportunity.

The Okavango Basin, spanning southern Angola, eastern Namibia, and northern Botswana, is the main source of water for the Okavango Delta. Located in northern Botswana, the Okavango Delta is one of Africa's most important ecosystems, unrivalled in its biodiversity, and home to the world's largest remaining elephant population as well as lions, cheetahs, wild dogs, and hundreds of species of birds.

The Okavango Delta's health is dependent on its source lakes and rivers, which carry water that originates as rain in Angola's highlands. While the Delta itself holds protected status, the Okavango Basin that feeds it does not, and the effects of climate change, deforestation and upstream commercial agriculture are putting this critical lifeline at risk.

Since 2015, the National Geographic Okavango Wilderness Project has been working to secure permanent, sustainable protection for the Okavango Basin. National Geographic has been joined by De Beers -- which has worked with the people of Botswana for more than 50 years to advance education, healthcare, livelihoods, and wildlife conservation, as part of the company's Building Forever sustainability approach -- to help secure protection for the Okavango Delta's headwaters.

Over the course of five years, De Beers will work together with National Geographic by providing support, expertise and funding to expand and accelerate work already underway, helping to establish sustainable local livelihoods in harmony with the Okavango Basin's conservation. The partnership will focus on protecting the natural world and supporting communities across Botswana, Namibia and Angola. This includes:

* Protecting the natural world

o Providing long-term wildlife corridor protection for the movement and proliferation of endangered species

o Supporting critical conservation research through funding expeditions to gather new data, installing monitoring technology and building capacity of local researchers through grants and training

* Supporting local communities

o Helping ensure water and food security for more than one million people

o Developing livelihood opportunities for 10,000 people

o Enabling increased resilience to climate-related impacts

* Raising awareness of the Okavango Delta and its benefits through compelling storytelling

o Facilitating access to the Delta for local educators and youth

o Helping bring the wonder and importance of the Delta and its headwaters to a wider global audience

"There is no doubt that the Okavango River Basin is under threat. How we treat this delicate ecosystem in the coming years will dictate its vitality -- for its people and its wildlife -- for future generations. This is our last chance to help protect this natural wonder and we are pleased to partner with De Beers on this critically important project," said Dr Steve Boyes, National Geographic Explorer and leader of the National Geographic Okavango Wilderness Project. "Together, we will leverage our collective resources to scale efforts to facilitate long-term, sustainable management of protected areas in the region by helping establish and further partnerships between governments, NGOs, and local communities through a sustainable conservation economy."

Bruce Cleaver, CEO, De Beers Group, added: "De Beers has been in 50/50 partnership with both Botswana and Namibia for decades, making their people significant shareholders in De Beers and our commitment to the long-term sustainable development of the countries a core part of our business As part of our Building Forever mission to ensure every De Beers diamond creates a positive and lasting impact in the place where it is discovered, we manage half a million acres of land for conservation across southern Africa, protecting wildlife, supporting livelihoods and creating education and eco-tourism opportunities for the surrounding areas. However, many areas in southern Africa are still at risk, including the critically important Okavango Basin. That's why our partnership with National Geographic is vital. By sharing our expertise and resources and working with local communities, governments and other NGO partners, we will deliver a positive impact that is far greater than what any of us could achieve on our own, and ultimately protects the natural world and improves people's lives."

"It is exciting to see this level of support and partnership at a time when coming together to protect this one-of-a-kind place is so urgently needed," said Koketso Mookodi, National Geographic Explorer and Botswana Country Director for the National Geographic Okavango Wilderness Project. "The people of the Okavango Basin rely on its life-giving waters and we must unite our efforts and do everything in our power to ensure that they continue to flow for the future of the people and the wildlife that call this place home."

Through Okavango Eternal, De Beers and National Geographic will work together to help establish and activate one of the largest transboundary protected areas in sub-Saharan Africa. In doing so, it will also help build self-sustaining conservation-based tourism economies to create local support and understanding of the water basin's conservation in Angola, Namibia and Botswana.

The partnership will also produce a Botswana-based film about the Okavango Basin to raise awareness about the issues facing this ecosystem and why it's important that it's protected.

More details of the Okavango Eternal partnership are available at (https://www.nationalgeographic.com/okavango-eternal) and (https://www.debeers.co.uk/en-gb/okavango-eternal.html) (if visiting from the UK); or (https://www.debeers.com/okavango-eternal.html) (if visiting from outside of the UK).

Follow the partnership's progress through the @natgeo, @intotheokavango and @debeersofficial social media handles.

This story is provided by BusinessWire India. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (ANI/BusinessWire India)

DISCLAIMER

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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FILE - Voters cast their ballots for the general election at Victory Houston polling station, one of the Harris County's 24-hour locations, in Houston, on Friday, Oct. 30, 2020. Texas has become the latest state where Republicans have rolled back access to voting methods that soared in popularity during last years pandemic presidential election. Following similar legislation in Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Iowa and some other GOP-controlled states, Texas Republicans passed new restrictions on mail-in balloting as well as bans on 24-hour polling places and drive-thru voting. (Elizabeth Conley/Houston Chronicle via AP, File)
Sarah White, center, area manager of Lost Dog Cafe, trains manager Alex Aleman, left, in a new pasta preparation technique, as they work at the cafe in Fairfax, Va., on Friday, Aug. 27, 2021. Lost Dog is one of a growing number of companies that, in a desperation for hired hands, is loosening restrictions on everything from age to level of experience. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
Spain is tweaking its travel entry rules from next week to require vaccination certificates from U.S. tourists, adjusting to recent European Union advice on stricter rules due to growing anxiety over coronavirus contagion in the U.S.
FILE - In this Dec. 5, 2018 file photo, Leslie McCrae Dowless Jr. poses for a portrait outside of his home in Bladenboro, N.C. The key player in a North Carolina ballot fraud probe that led to a new congressional election was sentenced Thursday, Sept. 2, 2021 to six months in prison for obtaining illegal Social Security benefits while concealing payments for political work he performed. (Travis Long/The News & Observer via AP, File)
Baubeau de Secondigne Marcela Argentina

Baubeau de Secondigne was born in Bahia Blanca, Argentina to an Argentine mother and a father of French origin who was an aviator in the Navy. A member of an art-loving family, her sensitivity pushed her from a very young age to draw and she followed in the footsteps of her ancestor, Procesa Sarmiento, an early Argentinean woman painter. When she was 16 years old, Marcela joined the Manuel Belgrano School of Fine Arts in Buenos Aires and graduated four years later. Her surname became her pseudonym. Her passion for drawing, and the pleasure she derives from it, guide her work as a painter. The artist vacillates freely between abstraction and figuration. Her ultimate goal is summed up in one word: colour. Like her idol, Matisse (French artist of the nineteenth - twentieth century), she seeks to make colour a full-fledged object, the paintings centre of attention. She begins her creation with a preparatory draft in pencil or charcoal, then adds splashes of colour here and there with big brushes or spatulas, before putting the canvas on the floor and letting go by projecting the colour on the canvas, whether in acrylic, oil, pigment or ink. She then constantly corrects, clears and improves the work. Her originality is based in the plurality of her creative process. One day inspired by the state of the society that concerns her, she paints, for example, the fate of prostitutes. The next day, she will choose to paint imaginary landscapes, circus scenes or animals, often horses, which the artist honours with her masterful drawing, accurately transcribing their movements. Nonetheless, her paintings have a common point: they often place the child as a symbol of what their parents (humanity) should do, namely, be respectful, attentive or know how to remain quiet. All of her works are a testimony to the delicate balance of life in which symbols or the recycled materials she uses awaken our civic and environmental awareness. In perpetual motion, Baubeau de Secondignes canvases are like the world, ""a dance in which the man and the elements will never stop spinning.""
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First of all, a huge thank-you to our amazing health care professionals who put their own lives at risk caring for us.

While I understand that people want to make decisions about their own bodies, we all have to understand that decisions come with consequences.

I fully support the deployment of vaccine passports and the intended consequence that those who choose not to be vaccinated will lose the privilege of accessing non-essential services like indoor fitness and restaurant meals.

I am shocked that people in our communities would protest outside of our hospitals and berate our hard working and long-suffering health professionals.

Perhaps it is time to ask those who refuse a vaccine to sign a binding undertaking that when they become ill with COVID they will not ask for medical assistance.

We all make choices and have to live with the consequences.

I have to ask, if you refuse a vaccine are you willing to also agree to refuse medical care?

Rose Harryman
I cannot believe what we are seeing at protests at hospitals across B.C. and the country. Disappointment, anger, frustration, chants of lock her up, shouting abuse and blocking workers and an ambulance. Who are these people that on one hand want freedom to choose and value the ability to receive treatment and care from health care professionals when they or family members are sick?

Do the nurses or doctors or care-aides you know, or Dr. Bonnie Henry or the leaders of our provinces and country deserve this? To my eye, the behaviour and actions directed at those that serve us is reminiscent of the Jan. 6 riots (in Washington D.C.) and just as abhorrent. Such disrespect.

I have been listening and reading the interviews from doctors and nurses in ERs across the countryin Alberta, Ontario Edmonton, Toronto, BC, Saskatchewan. I believe what they are describing in their workplaces is accurate. ICUs and Covid units are full. They are overwhelmed. Health care workers and I believe more chaos and death will result.

I have never been so disappointed in my community one operating room doctor said. Well, I have never been so disappointed in my fellow man.

If we were trying to fight a ground war, its now more like a civil war.

Go home, stay the hell away from hospitals.

I am not trying to change your mindchoose what you will. There are consequences for every choice we make. Today, I choose not to remain silent and I choose to support health care workers.

Kathy Closter, Armstrong
Photo: Contributed NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh met with workers at the Regional District of Okanagan-Similkameen Emergency Operations Centre on Jul. 30, 2021.

The leader of the federal NDP party has made a $3 billion campaign promise during a virtual town hall to people in British Columbias Interior in regards to immediate disaster relief support while the province still battles numerous wildfires.

Jagmeet Singh promised to provide support for people, protect communities, and invest in more climate resilient infrastructure, according to a press release issued by the party.

Families in B.C. are watching their homes burn to the ground and wondering if this is the new normal, said Singh.

The NDP governments campaign promise stated it would provide an additional $3 billion over four years to help municipalities respond to disasters and support communities in building climate resilience infrastructure, provide support for wildfire mitigation strategies as well as training and equipment for firefighters, including Indigenous-led crews.

According to BC Wildfire Service, there are 217 wildfires burning in the province as of Thursday.

A focus of the NDP campaign centres on taking action to fight the climate crisis, building on the climate action plan to protect the area and create more green-energy jobs.

The Liberals announced a campaign promise on Aug. 18 to provide funds to train 1,000 community-based firefighters and to purchase related equipment, saying this would also help Canadians make their homes more resilient against climate change, through retrofits and upgrades.
I watched the news report on the protest against covid-19 restrictions on Wednesday. I found the whole thing sickening. These anti-vaxxers, anti-mask people have no idea of the suffering that infected individuals have gone through, not to mention the anxiety their family and friends have felt. And to hold their protest in front of the local hospital was absolutely disgusting.

(Kelowna) Mayor Colin Basran was right, these people are intellectually challenged, and good for him for saying so. A year ago everyone was cheering the health care workers for the fantastic but tiring job they were doing. Yesterday, those (people) were jeering them. What did those hard-working doctors and nurses do for you to treat them so repulsively?

(Anti-vaxxers) choose to not wear masks, that's their choice. They choose not to acknowledge how they can infect others, that is not their choice. Their cry of loss of freedom is a feeble excuse when it concerns people's health. I too cherish my freedom, but I put my health and that of others first. To claim that government will make these restrictions permanent is nothing but fear-mongering and a pure lie. We have the power to remove politicians from power and change governments, and thus change the laws.

They want to protest? Fine. Pick the proper locations. Don't pick on the hospitals that are trying to save people's lives, including perhaps your friends' and yours. Should you be unfortunate enough to get sick with covid, you can thank the tired doctors and nurses for bringing you back to health, provided you don't die, that is.

Intellectually challenged? Grab a brain. You need one, because the one you have right now is not working.

By the way, you are a small minority. Your views will not change those of the majority and actions such as this Wednesday's protest will only alienate you more from the rest of British Columbians.

Thank you Mayor Basran for being direct and saying what most of us are thinking. And huge thanks to our medical staff for their efforts. They deserve medals, not jeers.

J. Fonseca, Kelowna
Photo: Madison Erhardt Protesters outside Kelowna General Hospital Wednesday.

Following Wednesday's vitriolic protests against B.C.'s incoming vaccination card program outside several hospitals, Dr. Bonnie Henry said the demonstrations left her feeling sad.

More than 1,000 people gathered outside Kelowna General Hospital Wednesday afternoon, protesting the province's so-called vaccine passport system that takes effect Sept. 13. Similar protests were held outside Kamloops' Royal Inland Hospital, Nanaimo Regional General Hospital, the B.C. Legislature and near Vancouver General Hospital, where videos showed protestors delaying an ambulance driving on Vancouver's 12th Avenue.

It makes me very sad that people will do that to others. Watching the ambulance try and get through made me very upset and sad, Dr. Henry said during a press conference Thursday.

Taking it out on me has been something that I've been living with for some time. What upsets me is the amount of vitriol and anger that has been directed at others in public health and at my team and my staff. Thats inexcusable and very upsetting.

Chants of lock her up, directed at Dr. Henry, were shouted at the Vancouver protest. Health Minister Adrian Dix came to Dr. Henry's defence Thursday.

Dr. Henry and all of our staff are doing an extraordinary job under very challenging circumstances, he said, adding that the targeting of hospitals was unacceptable.

He noted that the vast majority of British Columbians don't agree with some of the hateful comments coming from these protests.

We have to be, in these times, respectful and generous to one another, Dix said. We have to reflect on the behaviour of some, which is unacceptable, and reflects very, very badly on them.

Kelowna General Hospital staff told Castanet the local protest left them speechless, after going through a year and a half of the pandemic.

Starting Sept. 13, British Columbians will be required to show proof they've received a single dose of the COVID vaccine to enter places like restaurants, indoor concerts, indoor sporting events, movie theatres and night clubs.

Dr. Henry noted this move is being implemented to make sure we can continue to do things."

To mitigate those risks in those high-risk setting when you come together, particularly indoors, with strangers, Dr. Henry. Knowing that all of those people are vaccinated, the chances of spreading the virus in those settings goes down dramatically.

Further details on how the program will be implemented will be announced Tuesday, Dr. Henry said.
Photo: Grant Stovel

A national organization representing more than 2,000 cities and towns across Canada is calling on the next federal government to commit billions of dollars to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic and face the fallout from climate change.

With 18 days left before the federal election, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) released a detailed call for ramped-up funding to fix aging sewer and water systems, help public transit survive steep revenue shortfalls and adapt to the kind of heat waves and wildfires that scorched British Columbia this summer.

After everything Canadians have been through, they deserve progress they can see  directly in the places where they live, work and raise families, said FCM president and mayor of Strathroy-Caradoc Joanne Vanderheyden, in a written statement.

LONG-TERM FUNDING

Previously known as the Gas Tax Fund, the Canada Community-Building Fund currently provides $2.2 billion a year to municipalities and Indigenous communities across the country. That money gets distributed to provinces, territories and First Nations on a per-capita basis  B.C., for example, will receive roughly $280 million this year.

The FCM is calling on the next government to more than double that, raising the permanent source of funding to $4.6 billion annually.

The FCM is also asking for at least $10 billion over 20 years to upgrade water and sewer systems  both projected to be under increased pressure due to climate-induced drought and flooding  in Canadian towns and cities.

"Ultimately, the federal government has the resources," says New Westminster Coun. Patrick Johnstone, pointing to pressures his riverside community faces from flooding. "They have the tax revenue, theyve got the money."

During the late June heat dome, Johnstone says he received preliminary reports that excess deaths spike from the single digits into the 50s. The Metro Vancouver community has one of the lowest tree-canopy covers out of the region's urban municipalities. Many low-income residents live in three-storey walk-up buildings built decades ago without proper insulation and with little thought of air conditioning. Without the cooling effect of trees, New Westminster residents face a "heat island" effect plaguing many urban areas across Canada.

"We are aggressively planting trees," says Johnstone. "But the best time to plant a shade tree is 20 years ago."

"Were now desperately calling for money... We need money to address the infrastructure damage."

It's not just cities feeling the pressure of huge infrastructure costs in the face of a changing climate. Once the current funding stream runs out in 2028, FCM is looking for an additional $2.5-billion commitment over 10 years to bolster infrastructure projects in rural and northern communities.

TRANSPORTATION

Since the transmission of COVID-19 went global in the spring of 2020, a drop in ridership on public transit has crippled many cities and towns transit networks.

In Metro Vancouver, for example, TransLink ridership dropped to 17 per cent of pre-pandemic. In its 2021 budget, the regional transportation body predicted it would take anywhere from two to eight years to return to the kind of year-over-year growth it enjoyed before COVID-19.

Without a multi-year solution with federal support, FCM warns cities will be forced to scale back service levels and major infrastructure improvements.

At the same time, the municipal organization says the feds need to step up to support an inter-community passenger bus service. The call comes less than four months after Greyhound announced it would cut all of its routes and end operations after nearly a century serving small communities across Canada.

Predictable funding for transportation, says the FCM, should rise to $3 billion annually starting in 2026.

WARDING OFF FUTURE DISASTER

In a summer that set an all-time Canadian temperature record, led to hundreds of heat wave deaths and the burning of two towns by wildfire, the FCM says its time for Ottawa to step up its funding to mitigate disaster.

Canadian municipalities are looking for $2 billion over three years, plus another $1 billion in long-term funding to ward against wildfire, drought, flooding and restore wetlands and shorelines that act as buffers against such catastrophes.

We are surrounded by wildfire, says Kamloops Coun. Arjun Singh, stressing he does not speak on behalf of the FCM. Were not adequately funded to reduce those greenhouse gas emissions.

Like many communities across Canada, Singh describes Kamloops as "truck country," where outsiders may think climate change is not people's top priority. But the councillor says in the past few years, public interest in climate change has grown dramatically.

"Im seeing a real openness to the conversation. Its no longer, 'Is it real or not,'" says Singh. "But theyre also worried about affordability."

To do both is going to take a lot more work and a lot more money at the local level, where life plays out, he says.

We need to all recognize this is a very, very massive undertaking. And we all have to lean into that a lot more.
Photo: Contributed Gail Sandra Rogers

Gail Sandra Rogers, 26 known as Sam to her friends, was last seen on Feb. 17, 1975, after working the noon to 6 p.m. shift at the Penthouse nightclub in Vancouver.

Gails sister Karen reported her missing and when police went to check her Kitsilano basement suite a few days later, they found a carpet and a claw hammer stained with blood.

Gail was a go-go dancer and her mystery disappearance as police called it, was immediately linked to the murder of Barbara Ann LaRocque, a 22-year-old go-go dancer at the Syndicate City who was found strangled two months earlier, her body dumped in Langley.

Gails body was recovered three weeks later in a creek bed 12 metres below a bridge on the Alta Lake Road north of Squamish and found by three skiers. She had been wrapped in a blanket and tied at the ankles and knees. Her hands were tied behind her back and two pieces of clothing were tied around her neck. She had been thrown off the bridge.

Her cause of death was multiple blows to the head by a hammer.

A police source told a Vancouver Sun reporter at the time that they had heard street rumbles that the killings were linked to a racket preying on night club employees. Barbara had been found choked to death with her own scarf. On the day that she went missing, a witness had seen her dragged into a car outside the club on Howe Street where she worked. The police theory was that Barbaras death was the result of a contract killing.

Karen Rogers, Gails older sister by a year, believes her sisters death was related to her job at the Penthouse. She believes Gail was killed by a hit-man, her murder made to look like a crime of passion. [Police] told me they knew who did it, but they didnt have enough evidence to arrest him, said Karen.

Gail, says Karen was very outgoing, fun and generous. She had a great sense of humour, she was an excellent dancer, an honour student at Langley Senior Secondary and she had gone to the Vancouver School of Art. She had recently broken up with her long-time boyfriend.

At the time of Gails murder, Karen was asked to go to the Vancouver Police Department and identify some items that included jewellery and a blanket that had been found with her body. Karen hasnt heard from the police since 1975. As far as she knows, Gails personal items are still there, and both Gail and Barbaras murders remain unsolved.

Just because they were dancers doesnt mean they were bad people, she says. It still hurts after all these years, it doesnt go away.

If you have any information about these murders, call the Vancouver Police Department at 604-717-3321, or CrimeStoppers at 1-800-222-8477 or solvecrime.ca.

Eve Lazarus is a reporter and author. She hosts and produces the Cold Case Canada true crime podcast. She blogs at Every Place has a Story.
Photo: Glacier Media

A British Columbia public health order requiring residents to show proof of vaccination is raising grave concerns it will further exclude several already marginalized populations.

Thats according to 25 organizations that advocate for everything from civil liberties to just treatment for drug users, undocumented and disabled British Columbians.

In a joint letter published Sept. 1 and addressed to Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry and Health Minister Adrian Dix, the groups claim the vaccine passport system will shut out thousands of already vaccinated people from public life because they don't have proper identification, access to a smartphone or legal immigration status.

Weve had more than 2,000 people come to our vaccination clinics, says Ingrid Mendez, executive director of Watari Counselling and Support Services Society, a community group that works with migrant workers and other marginalized people.

Many of them are coming to us: What am I going to do. How am I going to access this vaccine card? People are getting stressed because of this.

Last week, the B.C. government announced it would be launching a vaccine passport system that would bar unvaccinated British Columbians entrance to everything from movie theatres, concerts and sporting events to gyms and restaurants.

Anyone entering such venues will be required to show proof they have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine by Sept. 13 and full vaccination status by Oct. 24.

In an email to Glacier Media, a Ministry of Health spokesperson said the B.C. government would share details on how people can access documentation ahead of the Sept. 13 deadline.

The province is working to ensure vulnerable populations, like people experiencing homelessness or those who may struggle to access computers, have options when it comes to accessing their proof of vaccination, wrote the spokesperson.

Mendez says there are upwards of 10,000 undocumented people in the Metro Vancouver area whose immigration status prevents them from proving theyve been jabbed.

For Adriana, a 36-year-old mother of two, the prospect of not entering businesses or community centres threatens to throw her life back into seclusion. Adriana says she fled to Canada from Mexico four years ago after someone tried to kill her and her husband.

Since arriving in Canada, the husband has worked in construction, earning enough money for the family to get by. But without immigration status, they don't have access to medical insurance and every trip to the doctor threatens to cost a fortune.

During the pandemic, Adriana says she's spent most days alone with her children, isolated from friends and her family back in Mexico. So when Watari offered to get the couple vaccinated, they jumped at the chance.

Since receiving their second dose in July, life has opened up once again  that is, until she learned there would be a proof-of-vaccination requirement for people like her.

"We wont be able to enter a community centre, enter a restaurant," she says. "Im frustrated. Im worried they are going to ask my husband for proof at work."

It's people like Adriana the letter points to when it claims sweeping vaccine passport policies, however well-intentioned, can have the effect of forcing people into isolation, cutting off their lines of resources, and making their lives even more dangerous during a pandemic.

There are more than 9,000 temporary foreign agricultural workers in the province, many of whom have trouble accessing Medical Services Plan, the gateway to accessing a digital or paper proof of vaccination.

Agricultural migrant workers who come here and grow the food we eat. Many are not enrolled with MSP, says Mendez. Many dont have a phone that will deal with an app.

As the letter to Henry and Dix notes: The PHOs order directs people to register online at the B.C. vaccine card website, and references a secure paper version, but has not included any additional support for registering people without required identification, or those without regular internet access.

The 25 organizations are calling on the B.C. government to close several gaps before the vaccine passport program comes into effect Sept. 13.

Anyone who cant get vaccinated due to a pre-existing medical condition should be offered alternatives as well, the group says, such as exemptions or even hospital-based vaccinations to ensure they can get proper treatment if there are unforeseen side effects.
Photo: The Canadian Press Wet'suwet'en hereditary leader Chief Woos, also known as Frank Alec, centre, Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relation Carolyn Bennett, left, and then-B.C. Indigenous relations minister Scott Fraser arrive to address the media in Smithers, B.C., Sunday, March 1, 2020. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jonathan Hayward

British Columbias minister of Indigenous relations and reconciliation says the progress on a memorandum of understanding signed last year marking the start of a new relationship between the hereditary chiefs of the Wet'suwet'en Nation and the federal and B.C. governments has been slower than the parties would have liked.

In a news release, Murray Rankin says the pandemic and the complexities of the negotiations are behind the slow progress.

He says he has met with hereditary and elected Wet'suwet'en leadership over the past two days, and that the parties are committed to implementing the title and rights in the memorandum.

The memorandum of understanding was negotiated between government representatives and the hereditary chiefs who oppose Coastal GasLink's pipeline going across the First Nation's traditional territories.

The project caused countrywide rail blockades and marches early last year.

The memorandum of understanding doesn't address Wet'suwet'en opposition to the pipeline, which is part of a $40-billion liquefied natural gas export terminal project in Kitimat on B.C.'s northern coast, but it states that the federal and B.C. governments recognize the First Nation's rights and title are held under their system of governance.

It also placed timelines when it was signed in May 2020 over a 12-month period on negotiations affecting jurisdiction of land-use planning, resources, water, wildlife, fish, and child and family wellness, among other things.

Five elected Wet'suwet'en councils signed agreements with Coastal GasLink, allowing the 670-kilometre natural gas pipeline to be built through their territory in northern B.C. to Kitimat.
Photo: The Canadian Press

Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau found himself the target of his political opponents over the timing of an election call during the fourth wave of COVID-19, as new modelling suggests the country is headed for a difficult fall.

Trudeau triggered the election three weeks ago and it wraps on Sept. 20.

Since then, daily case counts have ticked up. As of Thursday, the average daily number of new cases over the last week was almost 3,500, up from 2,900 a week ago, and just over 700 at the beginning of August.

The number of people in intensive care units has also gone up during that time, to 241 from 199, and hospitalizations too are up to 559 from 419  although the figures are far below the more than 1,200 people in intensive care and 4,500 hospitalized at the peak of the third wave over April and May.

The Public Health Agency of Canada on Friday warned Canada could see more than 15,000 new cases a day by October under current transmission rates with the ramp up running through election day in two weeks' time.

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh told reporters in Quebec City that the figures were a reminder of why it was problematic for Trudeau to pull the plug on his minority government and "call a selfish summer election."

"People are frustrated, people are upset. It's been a long pandemic and it's been a long and difficult time," Singh said after unveiling his party's promises to Quebecers.

"We can't now let down our guard and throw away all that sacrifice that was made. And so we need to make sure we're very careful and vigilant and prudent about how we move forward."

Singh, like Conservative Leader Erin O'Toole, said he is prepared to fight an election virtually if public health officials demand renewed restrictions, although didn't detail his party's contingency plan.

Speaking in Montreal, O'Toole pointed to a broadcast set the Conservatives created in a downtown Ottawa hotel as an avenue for him to make announcements and do call-in town halls with voters, which he has done at times since the campaign kicked off.

He also noted Trudeau's suggestion after Thursday night's French-language debate that another minority government could send voters to the polls in another 18 months.

"We should not be in a campaign. Only Mr. Trudeau wanted this campaign for his own personal interest," O'Toole said. "And last night, he threatened another election if he doesn't get his way with this one. Canadians deserve better than that."

Trudeau on Friday said he was merely remarking about the average lifespan of a minority government in Canada.

He sought to draw clear lines between him and his opponents, as polls suggest a narrowing race between the three front-runners, by calling the differences between the parties "stark."

Trudeau argued his party's plan would help the country through the pandemic, as well as fully vaccinated Canadians who he said "don't deserve to go back into lockdowns."

"I am not done fighting for Canadians. I am not done with the hard work Canadians expect for a better future for everyone," Trudeau said in Mississauga, Ont.

Green party Leader Annamie Paul said she's hearing from concerned voters about the health and safety of their families, including children heading back to school, many of whom are too young to be eligible for a vaccine.

Added into the mix are concerns about the way politics is conducted in this country and how partisanship seems to have overtaken good public policy, Paul said.

"They're dismayed that we have this election for that reason," she said after calling for a national database to track police use-of-force.

"If there's one thing that people are hoping for, beyond the specific issues of concern, it's just that we will find more ways to get along with each other, to work in co-operation so that we can help people in a meaningful way."

The campaigns have over three weeks tried to largely hold events outdoors and observe public health restrictions. Canada's chief public health officer said campaigns needed to follow local rules.

"I expect everyone, and doesn't matter what we're gathering to do, you have to observe public health, local public health advice," Dr. Theresa Tam said during a virtual briefing with reporters.

"At the same time, more broadly speaking, I think right now is not the time to gather in huge numbers with people that are not within your household without taking significant layers of protection and knowing what you're heading into."
Why is this election so very important?

After decades of warning, denial and pretension, the climate crisis is upon us.

And, as if that was not enough, the Covid pandemic has overrun our political ineptitude, continuing to take lives and to wreak social and economic havoc, abetted by anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers.

These paramount issues of global importance are accompanied by a host of pernicious domestic issues that have eluded resolution by previous Federal governments, notably affordable housing, quality long term care, mental health and drug addiction, and pharmacare to name only a few.

Considered together, all of these issues present an immediate future of alarming uncertainty to Canadas social and economic fabric, our quality of life and, as we look downstream, to our life expectancy and to the possibility of a frightful new reality that we cant even imagine.

Now 85 years young, and a recovering conservative, I have been interested in politics most of my adult life. I cant recall an election ever as important is this one. So much is at stake and we are running out of time. I believe we have failed on so many issues largely because we have elected too many politicians whose only goal was to be a career politician. We must now expect better of our members of parliament. We have had enough of entitled Liberals and free market Conservatives. They are cut from the same cloth of cronyism and kickbacks. We need to elect members of parliament who reject this tired old game. The need is desperate.

Specifically, we voters must seek candidates who will provide courageous leadership on these daunting issues. Leadership that emerges from a successful career experience. Experience that becomes a wellspring of knowledge that informs our parliamentary debates with science and critical thinking. The kind of leadership that seeks elected office not as an end, but as a means for achieving real and desperately needed social and economic change.

With these truths, I challenge us, the electors of South Okanagan-West Kootenay to take a look at the backgrounds of the two front-running candidates in our district and ask which one has the credentials that best meet the urgent needs we have for courageous and skilled leadership that we so desperately need in our Parliament.

The answer should be crystal clear. The need is urgent. I implore you to cast your vote for Richard Cannings as our next Member of Parliament.

Gerry Karr, Penticton
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Cementos Molins to acquire aggregate and concrete business

03 September 2021

Spains Cementos Molins has reached an agreement to acquire Hanson Hispanias aggregate and concrete business in Catalonia. The move will see it bolster its operations with two concrete plants, based in the Barcelona free zone and Montcada i Reixac, as well as a quarry in Begues and another in Llinars.



"This operation will allow Cementos Molins to reinforce its presence in Spain and consolidate its leadership in sustainable concrete solutions in Catalonia," said Julio Rodriguez, CEO of Cementos Molins. "The strategic location of the plants and quarries, close to the Barcelona metropolitan area, responds to our commitment to offer more efficient and sustainable solutions."



The acquisition of the HeidelbergCement business involves the integration of 41 employees and a turnover of approximately EUR18m (US$21.38m). The acquisition is expected to complete in early 2022 but is subject to the approval of the regulatory authorities.

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The need for skilled nurses in America has never been as great. The staffs at every hospital are stretched rubber-band tight and in Hamilton County (Chattanooga), it is so awful that the National Guard is being called out to shore up our troops. But the better trust is Chattanooogas largest hospital  locally owned Erlanger - is perfectly situated in an otherwise perfect storm and if the gambler that dwells within me, our Level 1 Trauma Center could easily have the best nursing staff in the country within 90 days.

All the hospitals Board of Trustees need to do is shake free of the woke generation and announce there will be no silly vaccine mandates for house staff.

Whoa, Im all over the vaccine. I have been a devout believer from the very first. If the fact that over 90 percent of those now hospitalized arrived unvaccinated in this raging duel with the delta variant doesnt prove the worth of the vaccine doesnt stir every man, woman, and child into action, Ill pray for your health anyway because the odds of getting COVID-19 are too great to risk.

That understood, and I beg people to get the vaccine, I am a greater lover of personal freedom. No one should force another to do anything against their will. But the liberal faction would have us believe we should force the vaccine on workers, that big daddy corporate is true and just to callously terminate anyone who doesnt succumb to a mandate and they could care less when some of the greatest walk out the door.

Memorial Hospital, the No. 2 health facility in the region, has already announced their rulers will run off any employee who has not been vaccinated by Nov. 1, and  brother - if I am Erlanger, Parkridge or Hutcheson, I would have already had the Vacancy sign aglow and be advertising,  and well leave the light on for you.

It is suspected that at most big hospitals about 20 percent of doctors, physicians assistants, and registered nurses are not vaccinated. If Memorial were to suddenly fire that many employees on a given day with the end of this COVID wave nowhere in sight, can you spell c-a-t-a-s-t-r-o-p-h-i-c? But if Erlanger could be up to speed by Nov.1 with enough fully qualified and experienced staff to open a rumored 120 empty beds, the win-win could be just as extraordinary.

All Erlanger needs to do is announce there will be no vaccine mandates for current or future staff. While we strongly recommend the modern-day vaccines, this based on what we have witnessed firsthand, we also recognize the freedoms of choice. We refuse to recognize political or personal as agendas  we welcome everyone  and have complete assurance our medical staff will continue to exhibit the best protocols we can against every disease and malady. We do not believe in mandates or unnecessary rules of any kind in the face of mankinds suffering and, after we were established in 1899, we have grown to where we treat over half-million patients each year. And we dont turn anyone away with treatment.

Barring federal or state overrides, no employees will ever be subject to politically-proper mandates or unnecessary impositions. Again, we greatly recommend the current vaccines but with an equal concern for individual liberty and a commitment to healing, we will not be sidetracked nor compromised in our dedication to our mission

Bingo!

---

royexum@aol.com
A woman in an apartment on Northgate Mall Drive told police there was sawdust on the top level of her china cabinet (which the officer later observed). She also said the cord on her China cabinet was improperly placed. She said the cord should be connected to the wall from the lower section of the China cabinet, however it was connected from the upper section of the china cabinet (which the officer also observed). She said there were footprints on her floormat, which the officer did not see. The woman suspects people are coming in her apartment while she is not in her apartment, and she does not wish them to do so.



* * *

An officer was flagged down by a woman at Applebee's at 5612 Brainerd Road. She said she was being harassed by another woman. The woman told the officer she started seeing a guy and the guy had a girlfriend - the other woman. She said the other woman had reached out to her and was threatening her. She told the officer she had already made a report about this in East Ridge, but now the woman was contacting her place of work. She just wanted to report the incident.

* * *

Police were called to 2056 Hamilton Place Blvd. where a person was stuck in an elevator. Chattanooga Fire had to force entry through a locked door to gain access to the elevator. Police met with the property manager who said the door would cost possibly $1,000 to fix.

* * *

A man on Sherry Circle said he had been staying there with a woman for about a week and they got into a verbal argument. She wanted him to leave as a result of the argument. He left without any further problems.

* * *

Police received an anonymous call about a man walking on the shoulder of I-24 near Brown's Ferry Road. The man said he was trying to get back home to Alabama after coming up here trying to get clean. Police assisted the man to the Georgia line.

* * *

A man on Center Street said a car that he was renting had its driver's side window broken out. He said nothing was taken from the vehicle.

* * *

A man on Preserve Drive said sometime during the night someone entered his 2016 Toyota 4 Runner and stole his Taurus 9MM handgun. He said he found no damage to his vehicle and presumes he had accidentally left it unlocked.

* * *

Police responded to 4400 Rossville Blvd. where a man said his Land Rover was stolen several days ago and he has found it on the lot of O' Reilly's Auto. Police confirmed as stolen. The car was released back to the man and removed from NCIC. Police were told that several people got out of the vehicle and left the scene. Police searched the area, but no one was located.

* * *

A woman on East Brainerd Road said she left her Toyota sedan parked by the side of Maxi Automotive Repair at 7 p.m. in order to get repairs done. She was notified in the morning that the driver's side window of her car had been broken. She said nothing was taken from her vehicle because she believes the vehicle's audible alarm scared the suspect off. Police spoke to an employee of Maxi Automotive Repair who said his boss is reviewing security footage and will contact police if he finds anything.

* * *

An unknown caller told police a woman was urinating in the Chick-Fil-A parking lot at 5830 Brainerd Road. However, police have no evidence to support this claim as they could not make contact with the caller. The woman said she was not urinating and someone made that up.

* * *

An officer was flagged down on Campbell Street by a team clearing a lot. One of the employees said their chainsaw was stolen from the worksite. He said a dark blue, four-door Saturn sedan stopped, a man exited, grabbed their chainsaw from the work site and fled the area by driving backwards so the license plate was not visible. There is no suspect information or camera footage. The Stihl chainsaw is valued at $700.

* * *

An employee at 2107 Gunbarrel Road said a man came into the store and stole 20 pairs of Lucky Jeans worth $115 a pair. He said the suspect drove off in a black Ford SUV.

* * *

A man on North Moore Road said he heard a big bang and noticed the AC unit was dented in. He spoke with someone who admitted to hitting the AC unit with his truck. The man only wanted to report the damaged property for insurance purposes.

* * *

A woman on Hickory Valley Road said a fence around her rental property was damaged during the night. She said the person who damaged it had come over to the apartment office to speak with them. The man said he was on his way home and a car swerved into his lane and he avoided it by hitting the fence. The man and woman had both agreed prior to the officer's arrival that the man would pay for the damages and that the woman would not press any charges.

* * *

A woman on Gunbarrel Road said someone stole her wallet and her Social Security card from the breakroom at her place of work. She had no suspect information.

* * *

A man on Carter Street said a woman showed up at his door and asked for $40 for pizza money. He said this woman asked for the same thing last week. He just wanted police to be aware that this woman was doing this.

* * *

While on another call on Sinclair Avenue, police found several items in a homeless camp that are suspected stolen. Two of those items were Dewalt power tools. When the officer arrived on scene, a man was holding the tools and walking towards the vehicle police were called about. When the man noticed the officer, he turned and walked back into the camp and out of sight. He returned shortly and no longer had the items. The officer entered the camp and found the items along with other items he claimed to be his. He said he had bought them from an unknown person. At this time it is unclear who they belong to. The items are being turned into Property.

* * *

An officer conducted a traffic stop on a speeder at 300 Hwy. 27 northbound. The driver was operating an Audi R8 GT with a temporary tag at a high rate of speed. He was cooperative with police and had a valid drivers license with no prior criminal history. He was given a verbal warning to drive at the speed limit.

* * *

Police saw a car on Bonny Oaks Drive broken down in the roadway. The woman had popped the passenger side front tire. Police assisted her with changing the tire and the car was then cleared from the roadway.

* * *

A woman on Poplar Street said she walked out to her vehicle and started it, then it abruptly stopped running. She had her car taken to a repair shop where she was told that she would need a new engine and other items. The woman said the mechanic explained that the vehicle would be better suited to be returned to the dealership, as it was not repairable. The woman said she and the mechanic believe that milk was poured into the gas tank. She said she had been in a relationship and believes that he is responsible for the damage. The woman said the apartment complex she lives in should have video footage of the incident and, if police can have the man positively identified, she wants to press charges. She said she hasn't received any phone calls or texts from the man since this damage was done to her car. Police will conduct a follow up to try and retrieve video footage of the vandalism taking place.
A woman charged with sexually abusing migrant children has been transported from Harris County in Texas to Hamilton County.



According to a court affidavit, an investigator received multiple complaints filed by Childrens Protective Services about inappropriate behavior by staff members at La Casa de Sidney, a facility for migrant children operated in Highland Park by the Baptiste Group. The center was later shut down.



Investigators were told that Florencia Guadalupe Renderos Morales, 22, had an inappropriate relationship with a 17-year-old juvenile at the facility. The affidavit says Ms. Morales was seen kissing the victim inside the facility.



Police said LCDS director Terrance Ware provided recordings of audio conversations between the juvenile and another minor at the facility. Police said that in these recordings, the juvenile said he kissed, cuddled, and touched Ms. Morales several times.



Police saw an email from Ms. Morales to director Ware from June 4, where police said she stated she has been talking to minor (redacted) for about three weeks now even though I know Im not supposed to do that.

Police said Ms. Morales, who is a native of El Salvador, also has inappropriate contact with a 16-year-old boy at the facility - kissing him inside the facility. The boy said she made him nervous and very uncomfortable. He said she would come into his room and stare at him while he was in bed - to the point that he would pull covers over his head until she would leave.

He said one night he was sitting in his room when Ms. Morales came into his room and kissed him on the lips. He said he then told her he was gay just so she would leave him alone.

The boy said she then began treating him badly for turning her down.



She was charged with two counts of sexual battery by an authority figure. Ms. Morales was arrested in Texas on Aug. 28 and taken back to Tennessee. She was booked at the county jail on Tuesday.
On a night where neither team played their best volleyball, Notre Dame found enough of a good rhythm to outlast Boyd Buchannon.





The first set was a back and forth affair until Riley McCormick went on a 6 point service run that was highlighted by two of her six aces on the night and a big kill by Senior middle Regan Wolf. The 25-15 set win was just an appetizer for the next two sets.





No team had more than a 3 point lead and there were 8 lead changes. McCormick again was on the serving line at the crucial moment, a 24-24 tie. Two service points later and Notre Dame had a 26-24 set win. Set 3 was again tight, but not either team's best volleyball. Notre Dame missed nine serves in the set. The difference this time was Boyd's Calla Brady, whose 4 point service run gave her team a 26-24 win. Set two was close throughout.No team had more than a 3 point lead and there were 8 lead changes. McCormick again was on the serving line at the crucial moment, a 24-24 tie. Two service points later and Notre Dame had a 26-24 set win. Set 3 was again tight, but not either team's best volleyball. Notre Dame missed nine serves in the set. The difference this time was Boyd's Calla Brady, whose 4 point service run gave her team a 26-24 win.





The final set was the antithesis of the previous two. Notre Dame got off to a quick start and used a 5 point service run by Madeline Solis and a 6 point run by Maggie Clotfelter to close out the match 25-9.





Notre Dame has a week off and will return to action next Thursday at Collegedale Academy.





Lady Irish Stats:

Mary Fillauer 34 assists, 10 digs, 7 kills, 2 ace

Regan Wolf 13 kills, 2.5 blocks, 3 digs

Lindsay Burns, 2 kills, 1 blocks, 17 digs, 8 aces

Riley McCormick 21 digs, 4 aces, 2 assists

Maggie Fillauer 9 kills, 16 digs,1 block, 4 aces

Madeline Solis 19 digs, 1 ace

Sam Crisp 4 kills, 2 dig

Sam Brown 8 kills, 3 digs, 1 ace, 1 block

Maggie Clotfelter 1 assists,
Michael McElrath on Friday morning pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and agreed to serve 25 years in the Tennessee Department of Corrections at 100 percent in the homicide of his 15-year-old son Dylan, who was a sophomore at Hixson High School.





Executive Assistant District Attorney General Cameron Williams said on Aug. 18, 2018, Hamilton County Sheriff's Office deputies responded to the 1800 block of Cotter Road, where McElrath, then 46, had shot his son multiple times. 18, 2018, Hamilton County Sheriff's Office deputies responded to the 1800 block of Cotter Road, where McElrath, then 46, had shot his son multiple times.





General Williams said deputies found McElrath on the porch at a neighbor's house when they got to the scene. As the deputy approached the defendant and ordered him to the ground he said "I did it, I did it. I'm so sorry. I shot my son. I don't know why.

General Williams said McElrath also killed the family dog.

The state had indicted McElrath for first-degree premeditated murder. Experts for both the state and defense agreed McElrath was suffering from significant psychiatric symptoms that hindered his ability to exercise premeditation with reflection and judgment.




Then-SFC Chris Spence, a member of an elite Army Green Beret team, said, No one will believe this! He picked up his camera and took the photo that captured history. Horses start rolling, bombs go off, except instead of sabers being swung, it was AK-47s.

Mr. Spence was part of the 5th Special Operations Group that led the first invasion into Afghanistan 20 years ago, one month after 9/11. For most of the Americans on the team, it was their first time on a horse. Let alone riding into combat using a mode of transportation last used by the Army in the early 20th century.

Now retired, MSG Chris Spence, US Army (Ret.) will present The 12 Horseman of Afghanistan at the Patriots Day program at 2 p.m. on Sept. 11 at the National Medal of Honor Heritage Center.

Spence will share his stories and horseback experiences from those initial days and weeks as America began its war on terror.

Christopher Spences presentation will provide additional context to recent news events, as well as detailing Americas first military response to the 9/11 tragedy. said Keith Hardison, executive director at the Heritage Center. The Heritage Center is honored to have this hero share his amazing experience with our visitors.



That famous photo that Mr. Spence took would be used by then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in his first press conference of the war and would later inspire a Hollywood producer to create a movie called 12 Strong, based on the New York Times best-selling book, Horse Soldiers by Doug Stanton. The picture is currently on display at the Smithsonian Institute and served as the template for the Horse Soldiers Statue which overlooks the 9/11 Memorial.

Sales and an autograph party for the Doug Stanton book Horse Soldiers, will take place after the presentation.

Admission is free for Heritage Center Members and the presentation is free with the price of Heritage Center admission for the general public. Seating is limited and reservations are required. To reserve a seat please call 423-877-2525, ext. 101.






A man, 22, was shot Thursday night in Chattanooga.

At approximately 9:49 p.m., Chattanooga Police were advised that a man had arrived at a local hospital by private vehicle with a gunshot wound.

Upon arrival, officers located and confirmed that a man was suffering from a non-life threatening gunshot wound.

Officers were unable to confirm the location of a crime scene. Investigators with the Violent Crimes Unit responded to conduct an investigation.

The victim told Investigators that he was walking in the area of Shepherd Hills when he heard gunshots and realized he had been shot. The victim gave inconsistent statements and refused to cooperate with the investigation. As a result, Investigators were unable to corroborate the victim's account of the incident.
Residents, several who are new to the Soddy Daisy area, are doing their part to help keep the city clean and beautiful. In early spring, a group of volunteers joined to pick up litter which had accumulated along the roads. They concentrate on a different part of town each time they get together to work. Nate Sanden is the organizer for this group that has become a non-profit organization known as Keep Soddy Beautiful, and is now receiving recognition and some help from the city.



Jimmy Stewart, who has lived in the area for just two years, is joining the effort of beautifying the city.

He has proposed establishing a Soddy Daisy tree board and received permission from the Soddy Daisy Commissioners to explore its creation. His plan is for the tree board to be affiliated with the city government and to partner with the non-profit organization Keep Soddy Beautiful, which is allowed to raise money. A tree board would benefit Soddy Daisys future growth, he said.On Thursday night, he updated the commissioners on his research concerning the proposed board. In the past two weeks, he has been in contact with representatives from tree boards in eight nearby municipalities to learn their objectives and how they operate. He found that their common goals focus on three things. Educating the community in ways such as having an arborist at events to advise property owners about trees. Another goal is to increase the planting of trees in the city which can be done by giving away seedlings and celebrating Arbor Day. The third objective is to protect existing trees by creating a tree ordinance and working with developers. He told the commission that the Tennessee Department of Forestry is available to help provide advice.Director of the North Chickamauga Creek Conservancy Tim Laramore came to the commission meeting to remind the commissioners of an agreement for closing operations at a rock harvesting site in Soddy Daisy. Two permits, one with Tennessee Department of the Environment and Conservation and the second with the city of Soddy Daisy, will allow the quarry to operate until December 2022. After that, six months will be allowed for remediation to turn the area into a green space for public use.

Mr. Laramore said he is anticipating the work will not be finished by the deadline and urged the city to not extend the time. City Attorney Sam Elliott said if an extension is requested it would go back to the Soddy Daisy Board of Zoning Appeals which issued the city permit, not to the city commission.



Another citizen, Nancy Jo Ogozalek, told the commissioners of her concern about a TDOT construction site on Highway 27. She warned that a lot of fluids are being stored there without any containment underneath. Mayor Rick Nunley asked Public Works Director Steve Grant to look into the matter.



The commissioners passed five ordinances on the second and final reading on Thursday night without additional discussion. The tax rate of $1.1159 was established for the fiscal year 2021-2022. An ordinance to regulate the age of mobile homes brought into a trailer park to be used for rentals establishes the age that they must be replaced and when and what inspections are required. The ordinance for advertising signs was amended so that signs cannot be regulated based on what they say. The regulation of size and location is permissible. Property at 10127 Card Road was rezoned to C-2 Local Business District and a tract of land at 238 Goose Creek Circle was rezoned to R-1 Single Family Residential.
The Hamilton County Health Department will distribute free at-home COVID-19 test kits at its 921 E. 3rd Street location weekdays, beginning Tuesday, from 9 a.m.  3 p.m. while supplies last. Test kits will no longer be available at the Tennessee Riverpark.

Test kits from two manufacturers will be available at the Health Department. The type of test kit provided depends on the age of the person to be tested. Detailed instructions will be provided with each test kit.

We are hopeful that this testing opportunity will help meet the high demand for COVID-19 testing in our county, said Hamilton County Health Department Administrator Becky Barnes. Our local hospitals have been extremely busy with the increase of COVID-19 cases requiring emergency care; we encourage people with mild or no symptoms who are seeking testing to take advantage of testing opportunities such as these rather than visiting emergency departments.

Test kits provided:

Ellume COVID-19 Home Test (Ages 2-17)

The Ellume COVID-19 antigen test will be available for ages 2-17. A smartphone or tablet is required to receive test results. Results will be provided through the Ellume COVID-19 Home Test app (available through the App Store and Google Play). Test results are available 15 minutes after performing the nasal swab.

Positive test results will not be shared with the Tennessee Department of Health; therefore, the Health Department requests that anyone with a positive result report it to the COVID-19 Hotline at 423-209-8383. Hotline staff will provide quarantine and isolation guidance, which helps protect others in the community.

An instructional video for the Ellume test kit is available in English and Spanish.

Everylywell COVID-19 Test Home Collection Kit (Ages 18+)

The Everlywell COVID-19 PCR test will be available to adults 18 years of age and older. Nasal swab specimens must be delivered to a UPS location and mailed to the lab on the same day that the test is performed. A current email address is required to create an account. Results will be sent via email from the lab directly to the individual within a few days. Everlywell lab reports results to the Tennessee Department of Health, as required by law.

An Everlywell instructional video is available in English and in Spanish.

Additional COVID-19 Testing in Hamilton County

Additional testing information is available on the Health Departments testing website and through the COVID-19 Hotline at 423-209-8383. The hotline assists with COVID-19 testing and vaccine inquiries Monday through Friday, 8AM to 4PM.

Current COVID-19 Data

The Health Department reports rapidly increasing COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths in Hamilton County. Hospitalization rates have far surpassed the previous record in December. The Health Department urges residents, including those who are fully vaccinated, to slow the spread by wearing a mask in public indoor settings and practicing mitigation efforts such as social distancing and frequent, thorough handwashing.

COVID-19 data is updated Monday-Friday on the Health Departments case information webpage.

Upcoming Health Department Vaccination Events

Vaccination prevents serious illness and death from COVID-19. The Hamilton County Health Department is hosting Pfizer COVID-19 vaccination events at multiple locations this month. Visit vaccine.hamiltontn.gov and click on Vaccine Calendar of Events to see the most up-to-date COVID-19 vaccine calendar. Free transportation is available to the Tennessee Riverpark vaccination site Monday-Friday. Call 423-209-8383 in advance to schedule a ride.

Health Department vaccination sites accommodate immunocompromised individuals wishing to receive a third dose, as well as anyone needing a first or second dose of the vaccine. The vaccine is free of charge. No appointment is necessary and anyone 12 years of age and older is eligible. To accelerate the vaccination process, print and complete the vaccine encounter form available on the website.
There are plenty of things that made Dance Moms such an entertaining show to watch. But what really made for exciting television was the original cast and the relationships they had with one another. With the exception of Cathy Nesbitt-Stein, all of the original cast members knew each other for years before the show even started filming.

Dance Moms Season 2 cast | Jason Merritt/Getty Images

Of course, the initial casting call for Dance Moms wasnt exclusive to the Abby Lee Dance Company. However, when the producers were reviewing audition tapes, they realized that a lot of the moms that they like hailed from the same studio. To make things even more interesting, a lot of the moms were already talking crap about each other in their audition tapes.

Christi Lukasiak recalls her initial reaction to learning who was in the Dance Moms cast

In a YouTube video, Christi Lukasiak recalled her reactions to learning that Dance Moms had been picked up and that she knew almost all of the cast. Melissa Gisoni made perfect sense to Lukasiak as a casting choice and she was also thrilled when she learned that her good friend, Kelly Hyland had also been cast. Though she didnt know Nesbitt-Stein, the producers assured her that shed meet the Candy Apples Dance Center owner on camera.

RELATED: Dance Moms Nia Sioux Feels She Was Never Wanted from Day One

Though Lukasiak knew Dr. Holly Hatcher-Frazier prior to filming, she was surprised that she would be a part of the Dance Moms cast. However, after further thought, she quickly realized that Hatcher-Frazier would provide the perfect balance to some of the more intense personalities.

Lukasiak was shocked that Dr. Holly Hatcher-Frazier was a part of the cast

I was like, Holly!? Lukasiak recalled. And I was like, Oh, OK, wait, they need normal. But Lukasiak certainly wasnt the only one who was surprised that Hatcher-Frazier joined the cast. Hatcher-Frazier herself was shocked that she got selected for the show. According to the University of Pennsylvania graduate, she allowed her daughter, Nia Sioux, to audition for Dance Moms, but told her not to get her hopes up because they were too boring to ever make the cut for reality TV.

RELATED: Dance Moms: A Video of Abby Lee Miller Dancing Has Been Unearthed

Of course, Hatcher-Frazier couldnt have been more wrong. She and her daughter not only became fan favorites, but also the longest-running cast members in Dance Moms history. Over the years, Hatcher-Frazier developed a reputation for being classy and level-headed. However, fans also loved the way she went to bat for her daughter.

Hatcher-Frazier and her daughter, Nia Sioux, became Dance Moms fan favorites

Holly I remember was the most normal one out of all the moms, Cheryl Burke, who replaced Abby Lee Miller in Season 7 of Dance Moms, shared. Like she is very smart and she tried to just stay out of everything. Hatcher-Frazier may have been a surprising pick for the show, but clearly, the producers instincts were spot on when they chose to add her and her daughter to the cast.
If you have vegetables on hand and arent sure what to do with them, Food Network personality Giada De Laurentiis has a delicious solution that both makes the most of leftover veggies and gets dinner on the table. Heres the celebrity chefs easy, healthy, and tasty take on stuffed vegetables.

Food Network star Giada De Laurentiis | Amy Sussman/Getty Images for Food Network

De Laurentiis wants us to eat our veggies

In her recently published book Eat Better, Feel Better, the author made the case for the veritable rainbow of vegetables to be explored and enjoyed.

If spinach and romaine lettuce constitute the beginning and end of your leafy green spectrum, getting to know the varieties youve been missing out on is going to be a revelation, De Laurentiis wrote. These are some of the healthiest, most nutritious foods you can put on your table, and the more of them you eat, the more you will come to love them. Many  including collards, beet greens, and of course kale  can be eaten either cooked or raw.

The chefs stuffed vegetables recipe makes the most of extra veggies

As the Everyday Italian stars lifestyle and food blog noted on Twitter, Turkey-Stuffed Bell Peppers and Zucchini are a healthy and delicious way to use up those extra veggies you have sitting in the fridge. Theyre easy and customizable, so you can use whatever you have handy.

For this recipe (full instructions and quantities can be found here), De Laurentiis used zucchini and bell peppers. The flesh from the zucchini is removed with a melon baller or a spoon, and set aside. The peppers as well, are hollowed out, and placed along with the zucchini on a greased baking sheet. The reserved zucchini flesh is chopped finely in a processor along with garlic, carrot, celery, shallot, oregano, salt, and pepper. This vegetable mixture is cooked over high heat in a pan until tender. Wine is added and it can continue to cook for another five minutes.

De Laurentiis then instructs that the cooked veggies can be mixed with raw ground turkey, an egg, Parmesan cheese, and white bread that has been soaked in milk. This mixture is placed into each hollowed-out zucchini or bell pepper and baked in a preheated 400-degree oven for almost an hour.

.@GDeLaurentiis' Turkey-Stuffed Bell Peppers and Zucchini are a healthy and delicious way to use up those extra veggies you have sitting in the fridge. They're easy and customizable, so you can use whatever you have handy. https://t.co/zTpY5ZugcO pic.twitter.com/HIpbd6hgKD  Giadzy (@Giadzy) April 6, 2021

De Laurentiis Stuffed Vegetables scored thumbs up from many home cooks

On Food Networks website, reviewers praised the chefs recipe for how simple it was to prepare using basic items: Delicious! My husband loved these and I felt like we were eating a healthy dinner. I followed this recipe exactly and it was easy. I loved that you could put everything in the food chopper instead of chopping all the veggies by hand. I will make this a lot.

Another home cook admitted they didnt have all of the ingredients on hand, but they made it work for them: Delicious! Made few adjustments due to pantry available  used hamburger, celery salt, and pre-cooked meat. Yummy!! Once again thank you Giada.

RELATED: Giada De Laurentiis Mushroom Risotto Recipe Gets Called Out by Reviewers for This Problem
Its hard to believe Harry Potter and his Hogwarts friends boarded the train from Platform 9 3/4 20 years ago. The United Kingdom is celebrating with a little extra flair. The Platform 9 3/4 Trolley at Kings Cross Station tour the UK for witches, wizards, and even Muggles to see.

Prince Charles, Prince of Wales and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall | Chris Jackson/Getty Images

Origins of the Platform 9 3/4 Trolley in Harry Potter

Fans of Harry Potter know the famous portal between platforms 9 and 10 at Kings Cross Station in London.

It serves as one of the many magical portals between the wizarding world and the Muggle world, or the normal human world to those unfamiliar with the lingo.

The world was first introduced to this passage when JK Rowlings Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone released in 1997 (or the Sorcerers Stone for American audiences).

However, fans across the pond might not know the real Kings Cross Station has a tribute to Platform 9 3/4.

While it has moved around over the years, the Platform 9 3/4 Trolley has remained a popular photo-op for years.

The Platform 9 3/4 Trolley at Kings Cross Station

The original installation went up in 1999 and consisted of a cast-iron plaque reading Platform 9 3/4. Underneath it was a luggage trolley  part of one, at least. The other half already passed through the magical barrier.

Apparently, the wizarding world has the same issue as Walmart parking lots.

However, in 2012, it relocated and changed its look. Now including a birdcage and new luggage, it situated itself next to a Harry Potter shop.

The #HarryPotter Shop at Platform 9 3/4, Kings Cross Station, just got a little bit bigger! https://t.co/teDaPYAE3U pic.twitter.com/WOUMo2jGA4  Harry Potter Film (@HarryPotterFilm) July 13, 2016

To celebrate the 20 year anniversary of the first Harry Potter hitting theaters, the Platform 9 3/4 Trolley will be taking a trip of its own.

A replica of the trolley will tour the UK appearing at various train stations, providing even more witches and wizards an opportunity to see the famous half-luggage cart.

MuggleNet reports the start of its travel schedule. The trolley leaves its home in London on October 16, traveling all the way to Edinburgh Waverly Station for a short, two-day vacation.

Next, it heads to Birmingham New Street Station on October 23, the trolley then sets off again on October 25, heading to Cardiff Central Station ready on October 26. After that, the trolley will journey over the sea to Northern Ireland, finishing its tour at Belfast Lanyon Place Station between October 29 and October 31.

Other Harry Potter 20th anniversary celebrations

The Platform 9 3/4 Trolley touring the UK will not be the only celebration event for Harry Potter.

Lego released special builds and golden Minifigures of the main trio and other characters.

Draco Malfoys Tom Felton made a special appearance in the Back to Hogwarts Livestream on the Wizarding World Youtube channel.

Journey back to Hogwarts with these amazing LEGO Harry Potter sets! #LEGOHarryPotter pic.twitter.com/Y0ohEhiJ7q  LEGO (@LEGO_Group) April 16, 2021

In terms of future films from the Harry Potter world, the currently untitled Fantastic Beasts 3 continues progressing.

With a planned fourth and fifth entry, fans can be certain adventures in the wizarding world and real world will continue for a long time.

RELATED: Harry Potter: How Much Are the Stars Worth Today?
It seems like these days, Hollywood cant get enough of Jason Momoa. And who could blame them, given that the hunky star with Hawaiian roots seems to be equal parts talented, charming, and friendly? Hes also a reputation for being a good dad to his kids, Lola and Nakoa-Wolf, who he shares with his equally stunning wife, Lisa Bonet. So what did Momoa say recently about his role on Baywatch: Hawaii, and why exactly wont he let his kids watch?

Youve definitely heard of Jason Momoa

Jason Momoa | Getty Images

If you never caught Momoa on Game of Thrones, he is a hunk of pure muscle and acting talent that has made a name for himself in an industry that didnt always see a place for someone like him. He has proven his strengths in Aquaman and on shows like Stargate: Atlantis and See. Soon, he will appear in the much-anticipated film Dune.

Or maybe you know him from that pink velvet Fendi scrunchie he wore to the 2019 Oscars because we agree with Cosmopolitan and cant stop thinking about Momoas velvet scrunchie.

Momoas first role was on Baywatch: Hawaii

However, if you were born before 1990, you most definitely noticed Momoa first on Baywatch: Hawaii, which ran from 1999-2001. He had to pretend to have modeling experience to land the role and later said that it got him typecast, making it hard to move on to new types of roles.

Momoa has previously commented that part of the issue with the show is that it was a spinoff, so it never quite achieved the fame of the original show. Even though his character, Jason, was one of the most popular shows, it got canceled early due to poor ratings. Momoa then struggled to convince casting directors not to put him in a sort of Baywatch box.

Here is what Momoa said about not letting his kids watch Baywatch: Hawaii

It could be his contentious relationship with the show and how it nearly sank his career. Still, Jason Momoa apparently does not want his kids seeing Baywatch: Hawaii or any of his early work. As Insider reports, Momoa recently appeared on an Australian radio show called Fitzy and Wippa and mostly had jokes about that part of his career.

On the show, Momoa said he enjoys sharing stuff from his superhero movies with the kids and that they got to see a lot of stuff that Papas been doing when they visited him on the set of Justice League. But as for Baywatch: Hawaii? We dont say the B-word at home, Momoa quipped, adding, We hide all of that mate! Never happened mate! The B-word didnt happen. Seems like he doesnt mince words about the lifeguard show, which shall not be named.

What is Momoa up to these days?

As always, Momoa is keeping busy with compelling new projects. Theres Dune, and he recently starred in and directed his own spot for Harley Davidson entitled The Lineage. On his YouTube channel, Momoa described the short film as a dream come true, saying, [I was] able to go out and shoot my art the way that I envision it.

Hopefully, Momoa will continue to share his art the way he envisions it because we sure are thankful for everything from Baywatch: Hawaii onward.

Related: Jason Momoas Baywatch Role at 19 Hurt His Career Instead of Helping It
Christopher Meloni is currently riding high with his series Law & Order: Organized Crime. The show recently wrapped up its first season, with the second season expected to begin on September 23. Although Meloni is today a recognizable face, he had to deal with his fair share of rejections before making it big. Find out how the star dealt with early-career rejection.

Christopher Meloni left Law & Order: SVU on a high

Meloni attended the University of Colorado Boulder and graduated with a degree in history in contemporary U.S diplomacy and communism. After the Berlin Wall fell, Melonis degree was rendered useless, and he had to figure out what he would do with his life.

He, therefore, began his acting journey, which was mostly unsuccessful. The star said that he went through a series of failed auditions until he landed his first role in 1997 in HBOs Oz playing an inmate called Chris Keller.

After the role, Melonis luck started changing as he got more and more acting work. However, his big break came when he starred in Law & Order: SVU alongside Mariska Hargitay. The two had fantastic chemistry, and their roles seemed to fit their storylines.

Meloni played Elliott Stabler while Hargitay played Olivia Benson. The star worked on Law & Order: SVU for 12 seasons until one day he left with the writers writing his character out, leaving room to return.

Meloni said that he quit SVU because he wanted to feel more fulfilled and more money. The actor mentioned that SVU showrunners came to him needing an answer about his possible exit, and in a yes or no situation, he chose to walk away from the show while still on a high.

How did Meloni handle rejection in his early career?

Not every actor in Hollywood is lucky enough to start on a high note. Some like Christopher Meloni have had to work their way through the cracks in the industry to become the big stars they are today. In a recent interview with Mens Health, Meloni revealed that he didnt have the best methods for handling rejection.

Meloni said that anytime his audition would go badly, he would stand in front of his mirror in an apartment he shared with three other people and scold himself. The actor admitted that he was tough on himself during his early career days, and he would always scream at himself after every failed audition for letting a big opportunity pass him by.

When he finally found the big break he had been hoping for, the star didnt know what to do with it. A year after his appearance in SVU as Stabler, Meloni began having anxiety attacks that would violently wake him up in the middle of the night.

He said that he felt cautious about losing his big break as he had lost several opportunities before. He likened the feeling to a dog getting run over by a car, saying he didnt want to trust it as he had struggled for so long.

Nowadays, Meloni takes everything smoothly and lets everything flow. He said he isnt stressed by what will happen. He now has better management skills and clearly understands his gifts, and knows there are bigger things, more important things.

Christopher Melonis body of work

Danielle Mone Truitt as Sergeant Ayanna Bell, Christopher Meloni as Detective Elliot Stabler, Allison Siko as Kathleen Stabler | Eric Liebowitz/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank

Meloni appeared in the 2001 comedy Wet Hot American Summer and on Scrubs playing pediatrician Dr. Norris. He had various cameos in Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle, its sequel, Wonder Showzen, and an uncredited role in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

In 2009, Meloni played Green Lantern in the animated film Green Lantern: First Flight and appeared in True Blood in 2012. He also had appearances in Man of Steel, Happy! and the Handmaids Tale before returning to Law & Order.

RELATED: Christopher Melonis Most Miserable Job Was Being a Bouncer
Nicole Snooki Polizzi is a star on Jersey Shore: Family Vacation, a businesswoman, and a Mawma to three young children. Growing up, Polizzi says she felt this void that wasnt filled until she had her kids. Find out what caused the Jersey Shore roommate to feel that emptiness.

Nicole Snooki Polizzi Johannes Eisele /AFP via Getty Images

Nicole Snooki Polizzi has three kids with Jionni LaValle

Polizzi married her husband, Jionni LaValle, in November 2014. Together, they have Lorenzo Dominic, who was born in August 2012. Two years later, the couple welcomed Giovanna Marie in September 2014. In May 2019, the couple welcomed their third child, Angelo James, into the world.

THANKFUL for my family! pic.twitter.com/Qd8ihHUUTl  Nicole Polizzi (@snooki) November 22, 2018

Jersey Shore stars children look like her, filling a void she felt as an adopted kid

Being adopted was never really a struggle for me, Polizzi explains to Allison Kugel in an interview from 2018. My parents are my parents, period.

Still, Snooki says she had a problem with feeling like she didnt resemble anyone in her family. Oh, I dont look like anyone and this sucks, she remembers thinking. That feeling changed when she started having children.

When I had my kids, they looked like me, says Polizzi. Theyre my twins! Polizzi often posts photos of her daughter next to images of herself when she was a child  the resemblance is uncanny!

[Having kids] filled that void of me always feeling like no one looks like me and feeling weird about that, Polizzi concludes. If anything, I feel blessed that now other people look like me in my family.

RELATED: Nicole Snooki Polizzi Says She Choose Not Being Famous if She Could

While Polizzis kids have filled the void of not looking like anyone in her adopted family, Polizzi says shes open to meeting her biological parents in a YouTube video explaining her adoption story from 2018. She also wonders something else: If I never was adopted and I stayed with my birth parents, would I still be a hot mess like this, just in Spanish? she asks in her video. Probably. I feel like I was always meant to be this hot mess.

Snooki was born in Chile and adopted by an Italian-American couple

As many Jersey Shore fans know, Polizzi was born in Santiago, Chile, in 1987. She was adopted six months later by Andy and Helen Polizzi.

I dont really talk about [my adoption] because I just feel like my familys my family, Polizzi adds in her video. She rarely uses the term adoptive parents because she is so content with her family. Ew, I hate saying adoptive parents because theyre my parents, she says.

I always knew, [my parents] didnt have to tell me, she continues. They didnt have to sit me down at 10 and be like, Nicole, youre adopted. Im like, We dont look alike. Im brown, youre white. This doesnt make sense. But I always knew in my heart I was adopted and I was totally fine with it.

Still, the Jersey Shore: Family Vacation star wanted to know more about her adoption story at one point. As she mentions in her video, Snooki got her dad drunk so he would reveal more details about her adoption. According to the reality stars dad, Polizzis biological parents had several other children. When she was born, they didnt feel financially stable enough to take care of her.
No Time to Die will be the 25th James Bond film released in the EON Productions official series. Itll also feature Daniel Craigs fifth and final time as 007. While this might not be Bonds first outing, there are many firsts for No Time to Die. So many, in fact, that it seems as if the landscape of the franchise, based on Ian Flemings novels, is truly changing for the better and only getting stronger with age.

Daniel Craig | Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images

What is No Time to Die about?

No Time to Die is set to premiere in the U.S. on Oct. 8, 2021. According to Parade, the film is set five years after Spectre. Bond is living a retired life in Jamaica away from secret service when hes approached by his most trusted international ally, Felix Leiter (Jeffrey Wright), about a mysterious case of a missing scientist and powerful technology, they write.

Cary Joji Fukunaga directs the film. Craig and Wright are joined by original cast members Ralph Fiennes, Naomie Harris, Ben Whishaw, Rory Kinnear, and Lea Seydoux. Newcomers include Rami Malek and Ana de Armas.

RELATED: Could No Time to Die Be Released on Streaming?

Daniel Craig has some firsts as James Bond

No Time to Die is Craigs fifth James Bond film. However, according to IMDb, Craig will become the longest-running Bond once it premieres. Hes played the spy for 14 years. The only other actor to have come close was Roger Moore, who played Bond for 12 years.

Craig has also technically become the first American to Bond. In Nov. 2019, Craig became an American citizen. Pierce Brosnan is also an American citizen. But he completed the process in 2004, two years after his last Bond film. Craig is obviously still a British citizen, though.

No Time to Die has the first Cuban Bond Girl

There are a couple of firsts for No Time to Die in regards to production and story. For instance, its the first James Bond film shot on an IMAX camera and 65mm Panavision cameras. At 2 hours and 43 minutes, its the longest Bond film. Also, Cary Fukunaga is the first American and Asian American to direct a Bond film.

However, in terms of the story, No Time to Die is reportedly not based on an original Ian Fleming story, and its the first Bond film to feature the characters of Q, Felix Leiter, Miss Moneypenny, and M since License to Kill in 1989. Its also the first Bond film since Dr. No set in Jamaica.

RELATED: No Time to Die: How Much Did Daniel Craig Earn for His Final Appearance as James Bond?

Most importantly, though, is that No Time to Die will be the first James Bond film to feature a Cuban Bond Girl. Craig wanted Ana de Armas to play Paloma after working with her in Knives Out.

Paloma is actually a really complete character. Cary [Joji Fukunaga, director] created her from zero and he asked me if I wanted to do it, de Armas told Harpers Bazaar. It was very appealing from the very beginning, when he was telling me what he was going to do with the character. I was very excited, and I did feel like she was different, unique. Shes definitely something else that I dont think weve seen in other Bond girls in previous movies. Shes a lot of fun  very active, very bada!

No Time to Die will be remembered as Craigs last James Bond film. But it will also likely be remembered for its impressive firsts, especially certain advancements that will carry the franchise into a new era.
Movie fans were excited to see Tom Cruise nail another stunt in Mission Impossible 7. He and director Christopher McQuarrie unveiled Cruises most dangerous action at CinemaCon in late August 2021. However, Paramount Pictures delayed the release to late 2022 amid pandemic concerns.

Many Mission Impossible fans wonder if the theatrical delay could lead to a streaming release.

Tom Cruise at the Mission: Impossible  Fallout premiere | Jeff Spicer/Getty Images

Tom Cruise has his most dangerous stunt in Mission Impossible 7

Adding to the excitement around his other film, Top Gun: Maverick, Cruise debuted a sneak peek into his MI career-defining stunt at CinemaCon. Audiences thought they had already seen him do it allhes jumped out of airplanes at 25,000 feet, scaled the side of the worlds tallest building, and clung to the side of a plane.

Per Deadline, the actor soared to new heights in Norway by riding a motorcycle off a cliff. Cruise trained for a year to execute the stunt.

Tom Cruise Defies Gravity in Mission: Impossible 7, Top Gun: Maverick Footage at CinemaCon https://t.co/YV4n6d51Sm  Variety (@Variety) August 26, 2021

McQuarrie also teased CinemaCon attendees by mentioning the next Mission Impossible movie: The only thing that scares me more is what we have planned for Mission 8.

Since the untitled flick was delayed to September 2022, fans will have to wait to see Cruises risky stunt.

Could Mission Impossible 7 go to straight Paramount+?

Since multiple companies pushed back movie releases, many moviegoers question whether a theatrical release is worth the wait. Some would rather stream a film from home.

Paramount+ holds an extensive collection of new releases. The studio premiered A Quiet Place Part II in theaters but quickly sent it to its streaming platform. Similarly, Disneys Jungle Cruise screened in theaters but was sent to all digital services one month later.

Swing into a summer adventure! Disneys #JungleCruise is now available with bonus extras: deleted scenes, Expedition Mode, & bloopers. Get it now early on Digital: https://t.co/pKBJV1OReN pic.twitter.com/1iiJMs2xHw  Jungle Cruise (@JungleCruise) August 31, 2021

Paramount Pictures has not discussed the possibility of streaming Mission Impossible 7. However, streaming might be necessary if the pandemic worsens. Also, countless movie fans prefer to watch new, highly-anticipated flicks at home. Since Mission Impossible has a high budget, a hybrid streaming release could assist its budget costs.

Cruise enforced the strict pandemic protocols on the set of Mission Impossible 7.

Tom Cruise had a few setbacks on the set of Mission Impossible 7

The Jack Reacher actor cant catch a break. First, he was seen scolding a few crew members on set. Next, he was robbed in a Mission Impossible-styled robbery scheme.

According to The Sun, Cruise enforced social-distancing requirements while filming the new Mission Impossible. He reportedly yelled at two crew members who were standing within two meters of one another.

The outburst divided viewers. Some understood Cruises frustration, yet some disagreed with his expletive-induced rant. Many of his fans reinforced support for his reaction now that the film was delayed again.

Tom Cruise's "Mission: Impossible 7" onset outburst over COVID-19 regulations is getting mixed reactions from fans #TheBuzz pic.twitter.com/PnRIsiFAD5  BuzzFeed (@BuzzFeed) December 16, 2020

Cruise burst out several profane comments as he threatened to fire the crew members. The audio recording captured the actor saying he wouldnt let the film shut down again.

We are the gold standard, the Oblivion actor said. Theyre back there in Hollywood making movies right now because of us and what were doing. Im on the phone with every f***ing studio at night, insurance companies, producers, and theyre looking at us to make their movies.

Later in August 2021, Cruises expensive luggage was stolen while shooting Mission Impossible 7. He left his luggage in his bodyguards $100,000 BMW, and thieves scanned and cloned the key fob. While authorities retrieved the car, they have not found Cruises luggage.

RELATED: Why This Mission Impossible Star Called Tom Cruise a Leader
Dennis Sixkiller, seen in his studio on Aug. 24, hosts the Cherokee Nations long-running Cherokee Voices, Cherokee Sounds radio show.
Graveside Service will be 11:00 a.m., Saturday, September 18, 2021 at the Rose Hill Cemetery. Service will be under the direction of Sevier Funeral Home. Richard (Ricky) Paul Pace was born on June 30, 1957 in Chickasha, OK. He passed away Tuesday, August 31, 2021 at his home in Chickasha, OK
Picture in your mind the typical outdoorsy person, with Chaco sandals, a Yeti water bottle, and North Face gear, setting out on a backpacking trip. This person buys eco-friendly products and is concerned about climate change, conservation, and environmental stewardship. In your mind, what color of skin do they have?

As recent reports have documented, the environmental movement and outdoorsy spaces have long been overwhelmingly white. Most national parks were segregated up past World War II. Today Black Americans make up 14 percent of the population, but less than two percent of national park visitors. Asian Americans are largely absent in mainstream environmental discussions, and their handed-down sustainable practices often dismissed as immigrant culture.

Both of us have found ourselves as minorities within the Christian creation care movement. Our cross-cultural interactions help us understand and appreciate different ways of seeing, valuing, and acting. As we notice our differences, we have also come to embrace the strengths of our unique cultural perspectives.

Ben: The Southeast Asian context I grew up in was less individualistic and more family and community oriented than much of the American context. Such a collectivistic approach can help us better recognize and address the critical structural and systemic aspects of environmental concerns. Sacrificing individual interests for the good of the broader community is also something that tended to be valued more.

Liuan: My family immigrated from China when I was three. My parents have never been engaged in larger advocacy issues, I think in part because of their history within communist China where dissent was strictly tamped down. However, as I wrote for Reclaim magazine, our focus on familial duty can be transformed into a strength when we pair it with Jesuss call to extend our vision of family beyond blood relatives, to whoever does the will of my Father in heaven (Matthew 12:50, NIV). In this age of coronavirus and climate crisis, we can see our interconnectednessour siblinghoodwith those in far-flung places, and even with other living members of our ecosystem, including trees that supply oxygen and bees that pollinate crops.

Every culture has its strengths, weaknesses, and blind spots. We can learn to better assess and own these aspects of our culture by cultivating relationships with and listening to the wisdom, perspectives, and experiences of those who come from different contexts.

We know that much of modern conservation comes out of colonialism and is still heavily influenced by colonialist and white supremacist ideas and approaches. It takes hard and often painful work to unpack these deeply problematic roots, interrogate how they continue to influence present systems and outcomes, and work to pursue repentance and reform. Much of the progress in these areas has come through learning from and seeking to respect the rights of Indigenous, Black, and local communities.

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Many Black folks who love spending time outdoors have shared about the fear that goes along with being in these spaces  where some look upon them with suspicion and may call law enforcement or worse. The outdoors, especially in the U.S. south, often holds scars of past oppression and the forced labor of Americas slaving history. Indigenous folks who have practiced wise and sustainable land management for generations have been pushed out of protected natural spaces, because the vision of white conservationists is that pristine natural lands should be human-free.

To participate with God in restoring the shalom community of all creationwhich involves addressing the ecological crises that disproportionately affect people of color and the most vulnerable among uswe need to listen to people with different experiences, especially the voices of color who are calling us to more culturally sensitive and wise ways to engage in creation care.

Liuan Huska is a freelance writer and the author of Hurting Yet Whole: Reconciling Body and Spirit in Chronic Pain and Illness. She lives in the Chicago area, on ancestral Potawatomi land, with her husband and three little boys. She serves on the board of A Rocha USA.

Rev. Ben Lowe is the author of multiple books and has over a decade of experience engaging faith communities around social and environmental concerns. He is currently completing a doctorate in global environmental change at the University of Florida and serves as the chairperson of A Rocha USA and the co-chair of Christians for Social Action.
52% of voters think Biden should resign over Afghanistan debacle

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A new poll reveals that a majority of Americans believe President Joe Biden should resign over his handling of the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan.

A poll released by Rasmussen Reports Wednesday found that 52% of likely voters think Biden should resign due to his handling of the Afghanistan withdrawal. By contrast, 39% of likely voters do not think Biden should resign, and the remaining 9% said they were not sure. The survey sampled the opinions of 1,000 likely U.S. voters and was conducted from Aug. 30-31.

The Rasmussen poll is the latest example of the American publics cool reception to the Biden administrations handling of the Afghanistan pullout. As of Wednesday, Bidens approval rating in the RealClear Politics aggregate of polls had reached a record low of 45.8%. At the same time, his disapproval rating was measured at 49.2%, the highest since he took office in January.

Biden has faced intense criticism for his administration's execution of the Afghanistan withdrawal, which has resulted in the Taliban taking control of the country. Additionally, many Americans who would like to leave Afghanistan remain in the country after the U.S. military completed its evacuation of American citizens and Afghan allies earlier this week. The Biden administration has estimated that between 100 and 200 Americans remain in the country, vowing that the State Department will somehow work to secure their release.

At least 24 Sacramento-area students are among those confirmed to be stranded in the South Asian country. The Sacramento Bee quoted San Juan Unified school district staff as saying that 24 students, down from the initial estimate of 150 students, had not returned to campuses since the start of the 2021-2022 school year.

Also among the stranded Americans is a pregnant American from California, whom Taliban militants kicked in the stomach as she tried to flee Kabul with her husband and father, Fox News reported.

She was kicked in the stomach, but she was kicked in the stomach well after  as she got through the first checkpoint where she remained for hours, waiting for those people at the south point to supposedly come out and get her, U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., was quoted as saying.

It wasnt until it was clear theyd closed, [that] they werent taking anyone else for quite a while, that finally she accepted that she was going to have to go back and hide in her apartment, Issa added.

Several members of Congress have already called for Bidens resignation following the Afghanistan withdrawal. Rep. Clay Higgins, R-La., a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, introduced a resolution calling on the president to step down. He introduced additional resolutions calling for the resignations of Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley.

America faces a great division coming into this era of unspeakable grief as we look upon the failure of our executive branch to execute a well-planned withdrawal of American forces, citizens, allies, and weaponry in Afghanistan, Higgins said in a statement Tuesday. This administration has abandoned its oath to the American people, and it is the right thing to do for President Biden, Secretary Austin, and Chairman Milley to step down.

Higgins resolution laid out some of the most frequent criticisms of the Afghanistan withdrawal, specifically that the Biden administration allowed billions of taxpayer dollars in military equipment to fall into the hands of the Taliban, including small arms, body armor, land vehicles, helicopters and drones and jeopardized the safety of United States citizens and Afghan allies stranded in Afghanistan by willingly sharing their identities with Taliban officials. The resolution calling on Biden to resign has received the support of 25 additional House Republicans.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., another member of the Freedom Caucus, has introduced three articles of impeachment against Biden, including one accusing him of dereliction of duty over his handling of the Afghanistan withdrawal. Greene introduced the articles of impeachment on Aug. 20, before the final evacuation and the Aug. 26 suicide bombing outside the Kabul airport that killed 10 Marines, two Army soldiers, one Navy Corpsman and some 170 Afghan civilians.

According to Greene, Biden dishonored the sacrifices made by every American soldier who fought in the 20-year war, especially those who gave their life for the cause. Biden left behind over 10,000 American citizens to face the terrifying rule of the Taliban as they impose Sharia law across the country. No commander-in-chief should leave Americans behind in the aftermath of a failure.

Joe Biden failed to secure the extraction of thousands of American civilians and Afghan allies before and during the withdrawal between August 14 and August 16, 2021, putting thousands of lives in imminent danger, the impeachment article alleging dereliction of duty reads. Joe Biden abandoned tens of thousands of American citizens and Afghan allies stuck in Afghanistan at danger of being captured, tortured, held hostage for ransom, or killed.

The Rasmussen poll also asked voters whether they agreed with a statement from Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who remarked that Joe Biden deserves to be impeached because hes abandoned thousands of Afghans who fought with us and hes going to abandon some American citizens because he capitulated to the Taliban to a 31 August deadline.

While the results of that portion of the poll remain available exclusively to Rasmussen Reports Platinum Service members, Newsmax reported that a majority of likely voters support impeaching Biden over the Afghanistan pullout if he does not resign. Sixty percent of those surveyed support impeachment while 37% oppose.

Should Biden resign or be removed from office, Vice President Kamala Harris would assume the presidency. The Rasmussen Poll asked voters how qualified is Harris to assume the duties of being president? a plurality of likely voters (47%) believe that Harris is not at all qualified to assume the presidency while an additional 11% believe that she is not very qualified.

Twenty-five percent of likely voters think Harris is somewhat qualified to become president while 11% see the vice president as very qualified for the role of commander-in-chief. With Democrats in control of both houses of Congress, Bidens resignation and removal from office remain highly unlikely.
Biden, Psaki and pro-life groups react as Texas heartbeat law goes into effect

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Well-known figures on both sides of the abortion debate are reacting to Texas law banning the abortion of babies at six-week gestation, making it the first state where such a law has gone into effect without a court striking it down.

Senate Bill 8 went into effect Wednesday despite efforts by abortion providers and advocacy groups to challenge the measure in court. The legislation bans abortions in Texas after a baby's heartbeat can be detected, usually around six weeks gestation. The law also allows private citizens to file lawsuits against abortionists or anyone who performs an abortion after a baby's heartbeat is detected or anyone who aids in illegal abortions.

The law went into effect as the U.S. Supreme Court is set to weigh in on the constitutionality of Mississippis 15-week abortion ban. Both the six-week abortion ban and the 15-week abortion ban are designed to chip away at the precedent set by the 1973 Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade that struck down state laws and made abortion legal nationwide.

While pro-life groups are celebrating the implementation of Senate Bill 8, pro-abortion politicians and advocacy groups are lamenting that the legislation has taken effect. Here are reactions to Texas six-week abortion ban becoming law.

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Google Chromebook dropped from Dirty Dozen List of entities that foster sexual exploitation

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An organization centered on combating sexual exploitation has dropped Google Chromebook from its list of worst offenders after Google implemented new safety standards for their product.

The National Center on Sexual Exploitation announced Wednesday that Google Chromebook was being removed from its 2021 Dirty Dozen List, which includes big tech companies and corporations that profit off sexual exploitation.

Googles move to default devices and products to safety for kids is now an industry standard, and we urge other tech companies to follow suit, said Lina Nealon, director of corporate and strategic initiatives for NCOSE, in a statement. Given the safety measures that have been implemented as of today, we have removed Google Chromebook from our 2021 Dirty Dozen List, Nealon added.

The improvements were long sought-after by NCOSE and its allies and ultimately will limit the amount of exposure to harmful content and potential predators through school-issued Chromebooks.

NCOSE released its annual Dirty Dozen List back in February. Google Chromebook, which has been used extensively for educational materials for children and teachers before and during the pandemic, made the list due to concerns about graphic content.

According to NCOSE at the time, Google had refused to take basic safety measures to greatly reduce the risk that children using Chromebook would access harmful material like pornography and possibly be introduced to online predators.

Even prior to the pandemic, we read countless news stories and received personal accounts of children easily accessing harmful material through their school-issued Chromebooks  at school and at home, explained NCOSE as part of their Dirty Dozen List.

Now, with overburdened school administrators and overwhelmed teachers and parents trying to navigate new technology tools and the challenges of virtual schooling, devices are often left insufficiently protected.

In late June, Jennifer Holland, director of education program management at Google, announced that they were going to implement various safety measures for their Chromebook product, which were scheduled to take effect at the start of September.

Were launching a new age-based access setting to make it easier for admins to tailor experiences for their users based on age when using Google services like YouTube, Photos and Maps, wrote Holland.

Starting today, all admins from primary and secondary institutions must indicate which of their users, such as their teachers and staff, are 18 and older using organizational units or groups in Admin Console.

Holland explained that after Sept. 1, students who are under 18 will see changes in their experience across Google products.

For example ... students designated as under 18 in K-12 domains can view YouTube content assigned by teachers, but they wont be able to post videos, comment or livestream using their school Google account, Holland added.

If admins dont make a selection, ... primary and secondary institutions' users will all default to the under-18 experience, while higher-education institutions users will default to the 18-and-older experience.
ISIS-inspired terrorist stabs 7 at New Zealand supermarket

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UPDATE SEPT. 4 at 8 A.M.: New Zealand officials confirmed that Ahamed Samsudeen is the man they killed after he stabbed seven people in a knife attack at a supermarket on Friday. Initial reports said six people were wounded but that number has been increased to seven.

Original report:

A man from Sri Lanka believed to have been inspired by the Islamic State stabbed six people at a grocery store in New Zealand before being killed by law enforcement on Friday.

According to a statement from Commissioner of Police Andrew Coster, the unnamed man entered the Countdown Supermarket at LynnMall on 2:30 p.m. local time, took a knife from a shelf and began attacking people.

The Covert Police Specialist Tactics Group, which had tracked the man over concerns about extreme views, responded to the attack and stopped him around 60 seconds after he began the rampage. Due to court orders, the attacker's name has not yet been publicly disclosed.

Six people were stabbed by the man, with three receiving severe wounds. Victims were taken to Auckland City Hospital and Waitakere Hospital, according to the police report.

The attacker was under constant surveillance and was today observed leaving his Glen Eden property and travelling to the supermarket, as he had done previously without incident, stated authorities.

Our thoughts are with the victims of todays attack, their families and those who were caught up in this horrific event. People have an absolute right to feel safe going about their normal activities.

While authorities concluded that the ISIS-inspired man acted alone, they have maintained a heavy police presence in Auckland as a precaution.

The scene is currently locked down and will be the subject of an extensive scene examination. We are also in the process of compiling witness information and collecting CCTV footage, continued Coster.

Police will continue to have a high presence in the area and will be conducting a number of reassurance patrols over the coming period. We want to assure the community that these were the actions of a lone individual with a violent extremist ideology.

At a press conference, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern commended bystanders who helped the victims.

What happened today was despicable. It was hateful. It was wrong. It was carried out by an individual, not a faith, said Ardern. He alone carries the responsibility for these acts.

Ardern said that the attacker was a Sri Lankan national who arrived in New Zealand in October 2011. He became a person of national security interest in 2016.

"We have utilized every legal and surveillance power to us to try and keep people safe from this individual. Many agencies and people were involved," she said, adding that there will be multiple investigations on this attack.

Coster told reporters that law enforcement did not know the extent of the attacker's intentions and that it appeared that he was going to the supermarket for a "normal shopping expedition."

"Clearly, we have been concerned about his ideology," he said. "This individual was very surveillance conscious, and surveillance teams ... need to maintain sufficient distance for that surveillance to be effective. They were as close as they possibly could."

Ardern said that nothing indicated that the attacker would attack the supermarket.

The Auckland attack comes over two years after a gunman with extremist views entered the Al Noor Mosque and Linwood Mosque in Christchurch and killed around 50 Muslims.

Considered the worst mass shooting in the history of New Zealand, police apprehended the shooter before he arrived at a third location he had planned to attack.

We strongly believe we stopped him on the way to further attacks, so lives were saved by our staff, who were courageous in their interventions, stated then-Police Commissioner Mike Bush at the time.
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As the final American plane left Afghanistan, meeting both the Taliban and the presidents deadline, I feel exceedingly grateful for all those evacuated and now safely home. However, my heart grieves for our family left behind.

Yes, ourfamily.

As believers in Jesus Christ, we have Afghani brothers and sisters in Christ who are now left to their own defenses. The past twenty years have provided unprecedented opportunity for many to hear the Gospel and put their faith in Jesus. Still, Afghanistan has never been a safe place for Christians. Following Christ has always been dangerous and costly there, and now human protection is gone.

We know from reports in the past few weeks that the Taliban has brutalized families, sexually enslaved girls and women, shattered communities, and killed Christians. In mid-August, an anonymous Afghan pastor issued a call to prayer, asking believers around the world to fast and intercede for his country and people.

As freedoms window has now closed, I wonder about that pastor. Is he still alive? Is his family safe? Is his community of believers protected? Or are his daughters now serving the sexual whims of Taliban warriors? Are his sons being re-educated? Is his wife lost to him? Are his fellow believers separated and starving?

I cannot quit thinking about our Christian family left behind in Afghanistan. As a mother, I mourn with them for their sons and daughters. As a pastors wife, I grieve with them for their pain. As a ministry leader, I hear their desperate cries for help and cannot just let them go.

We know the Taliban hates Christians. Their history is record of that. Today, out of the watchful eye of the world, Christ-followers in Afghanistan are surely experiencing their own version of Revelations great tribulation. So, as American Christians, even as we celebrate the homecoming of our troops and citizens, we cannot forget our precious family in Christ left behind in South-Central Asia.

Like that Afghan pastor sent out his call for prayer, the Apostle Paul sent his own prayer request from that part of the world. Think about his words:

For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself.9 Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead.10 He delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again.11 You also must help us by prayer, so that many will give thanks on our behalf for the blessing granted us through the prayers of many. 1 Corinthians 1:8-11

If our brothers and sisters in Afghanistan are now experiencing that deadly peril or sentence of death, there may be little we can do for them in the physical realm, but there is everything we can do in the spiritual realm.You also must help us by prayer, Paul beseeched believers in his day. And so we can do for our brothers and sisters today.

Lets pray for our brothers and sisters in Afghanistan, as well as for those believers in other dangerous places like Iraq, Iran, Syria, Sudan, China, Somalia and India. Lets pray that their faith would remain strong, that they would rely on God, that they would have hope, that their sons and daughters would continue to follow Jesus despite the risk, and that they would all experience Gods grace to help in their time of need. Lets pray for rescue operations and provision, and then lets take action as God leads us.

I have set my phone alarm with a reminder every day at 4 p.m. to Pray 4 these brothers and sisters. To stand in the gap for them. To beseech our all-powerful God to work mightily on their behalf. To ask Him to do the miraculous in their lives.

Im encouraging my kids, family and ministry to do this, too: to intentionally pray 4 for the truly pressing needs of other believers.

American Church, lets all do this. As individuals, families and communities of faith, lets uplift our brothers and sisters in need around the world.

You also must help us by prayer, they cry.

Yes, lets Pray 4 our family, in Jesus Name, amen.
New Bible translation embraces Native American storytelling for indigenous believers

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A new English translation of the New Testament specifically aimed toward conveying Christian beliefs through Native American cultural concepts and storytelling has been released.

Titled the First Nations Version: An Indigenous Translation of the New Testament, it was released Tuesday by InterVarsity Press.

The English translation sought to balance common cultural patterns of Native Americans while also staying accurate to Christian theological concepts stated within the New Testament.

One example is John 3:16, rendered in the commonly used New International Version as For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

In the FNV, it is rendered, The Great Spirit loves this world of human beings so deeply he gave us his Son  the only Son who fully represents him. All who trust in him and his way will not come to a bad end, but will have the life of the world to come that never fades  full of beauty and harmony.

IVP Senior Editor Al Hsu told The Christian Post that the project had extensive input from Native Americans representing a diverse array of tribes in North America.

The lead translator, Terry Wildman, himself of Native American origin, worked with a 12-member council of Native Americans from different tribes and locations, including men, women, pastors, elders and young adults.

The team has engaged with indigenous churches, sharing samples and garnering feedback about potential use throughout the process. Additional reviewers and cultural consultants from over 25 different tribal heritages were also in partnership with the team throughout the process, explained Hsu.

The feedback received from Native churches, leaders and Bible scholars after over 1,300 received draft versions of the translation of the book of Luke was overwhelmingly positive and many suggestions were also incorporated.

Additionally, noted Hsu, there was close collaboration on the project with groups including Wycliffe Associates of Orlando and OneBook, a Canadian organization that focuses on helping translation projects for indigenous peoples all across the planet.

There just haven't been many Bible translations specifically for Native Americans, and certainly not translations done by Natives for Natives. Most Bible translation and Christian publishing has been done by predominantly white communities, continued Hsu.

While this has, of course, produced many excellent English language Bible translations for our study and edification, we may have missed some things in Scripture.

According to an online description, the First Nations Version recounts Christian Scriptures "following the tradition of Native storytellers' oral cultures."

"This way of speaking, with its simple yet profound beauty and rich cultural idioms, still resonates in the hearts of First Nations people," the description reads.

InterVarsity acquired the publishing rights for the FNV Bible in response to its usage by their campus ministry wing, specifically its outreach to First Nations peoples, Native InterVarsity.

We reviewed the FNV Gospels and some of the Epistles, and we were impressed with its fresh, vivid rendering of Scripture in ways that harkened back to its original biblical context, recalled Hsu.

InterVarsity and IVP have from the beginning been committed to helping readers understand, experience, and live out the truth of Scripture, and so we picked up the publishing rights for the FNV New Testament as one way of helping readers discover God's Word anew.

In recent years, there have been multiple efforts by Christian churches and ministries to improve outreach to Native American populations through reconciliation projects and translations of religious works.

In 2018, for example, the Episcopal Church bestowed a $45,000 grant to the Episcopal Diocese of South Dakota for a project aimed at translating the Book of Common Prayer into contemporary Lakota.
Are Baby Boomers Returning to Church?

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Some Baby Boomers are returning to their faith and church, according to recently released findings from researchers at the University of Southern California.

A survey using data from the Longitudinal Study of Generations found that 20 percent of the 599 Boomers in the study had reported an increase in religious activity over the past few years.

The research was conducted by the USC Edward R. Roybal Institute on Aging and the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work and funded by the John Templeton Foundation.

Vern Bengston, research professor with the Roybal Institute, said in a statement released last week that the increase in religiousness appeared to be linked to aging.

"Many people become more engaged in religion and more involved in religious activities as they approach the end of life," said Bengston.

"One of the things we found in our study of Baby Boomers  particular among the older Boomers  was that many are now more likely to be churchgoers or engage in spiritual practices than they did in their middle years."

Typically identified as the generation born between 1946 and 1964, Baby Boomers have been blamed by some social commentators for beginning the decline of religion in America.

Michael Youssef, author and head of the ministry Leading The Way, wrote in an op-ed for The Christian Post in February that 1967, known for the "Summer of Love," drug use, and strong interest in New Age philosophy, might have been the year that marked the end of Western civilization.

"Instead of seeking truth from traditional sources, they embraced the call to make their own feelings the final authority," wrote Youssef.

"Today the hippie generation that bought into that irrational, anti-truth message has turned gray and lives on Social Security  but they have taught this antirational message to their children and grandchildren. The message has spread. It now infects not just a generation, but our entire culture."

The USC research comes not long after a Barna Group study found that Generation Z, whose members were born between 1999 and 2015, are considered the least Christian generation in America today.

In a project released in January titled "Gen Z: The Culture, Beliefs and Motivations Shaping the Next Generation," Barna found that 35 percent of Generation Z teens identified as atheist, agnostic or not affiliated with a religion. By comparison, only 30 percent of millennials, 30 percent of Generation X and 26 percent of Baby Boomers said the same.

The Barna study also showed that almost twice as many teens in Generation Z (13 percent) claimed to be atheist than millennials (7 percent).
Ex-chair of LA Christian Science church sentenced to 11 years for stealing $11M from congregation

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The former board chair of a Christian Science church in California has been sentenced to 11 years in federal prison for stealing $11.4 million from his Los Angeles congregation.

From around August 2006 to December 2016, 56-year-old Charles Thomas Sebesta of Huntington Beach served as board chairman of Fifth Church of Christ, Scientist in Los Angeles, overseeing the finances and budget decisions.

Over the course of 10 years, Sebesta is accused of conducting a series of strategically planned embezzlement crimes in which he stole equity from the churchs assets.

According to the U.S. Attorneys Office for Central District of California, Sebesta is responsible for the church making checks and other payments to bank accounts in the name of fabricated companies he created, bank accounts in his name, names of family members and a female companion.

To further conceal these payments, Sebesta forged a church members signature on numerous checks drawn against the churchs bank accounts.

Sebesta is alleged to have used the proceeds for personal gain, including purchasing a home with more than $2 million in cashiers checks from church bank accounts. The checks were made to a fake company called Sky Blue Environmental and falsely recorded in church records as donations and environmental remediation payments.

The total amount Sebesta is reported to have stolen from the church made up of elderly members was at least $11,438,213 of church assets.

[Sebesta] began a 10-year spree in which he treated the Church and its considerable assets as his own personal piggy bank, prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memorandum. [Sebesta] destroyed a venerable church, its congregation, and the faith its congregants had in one another by employing sophisticated means to abuse his position of trust and cause the Church not only substantial, but ruinous, financial hardship.

Sebesta pleaded guilty in February 2020 to one count of wire fraud and one count of bank fraud. He has been in federal custody since his August 2019 arrest.

Sebesta was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Stephen V. Wilson. He is ordered to pay $11,438,213 in restitution.

Sebesta was initially hired as a facilities manager for the church in 2001. Four years later, he joined the church and was named board chairman. He was trusted with the church's assets and operations. The new role gave him access to some of the church's bank accounts.

According to prosecutors, Sebesta oversaw the sale of the church property in 2008 for about $12.8 million and stole a significant majority of the proceeds for his personal use.

In the next two years following the purchase of Sebesta's home, Sebesta reportedly wired $1.86 million and $309,622 to be credited to his personal tax accounts. Prosecutors say this was done to generate overpayment refunds from the U.S. Treasury and the California Franchise Tax Board.

Sebesta also is accused of impersonating a real estate developer by creating an email account in the executive's name and posing as the developer.

Prosecutors contend that Sebesta sent emails to church members in which he fraudulently represented that the real estate developer held Sebesta in high esteem and was making donations to the church and paying the rent for the churchs new location.

The U.S. Attorney's Office also reports that Sebesta defrauded another former employer. He is accused of stealing about $34,000 from a private high school in Los Angeles County. He is also said to have embezzled over $36,000 a donor's estate had donated to the church.
NRB defends Dan Darling firing over vaccine comments, calls media narrative 'inaccurate, incomplete'

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Following the controversial dismissal of its spokesman, Dan Darling, the National Religious Broadcasters clarified its stance on vaccines and denounced the media narrative surrounding the incident as inaccurate, incomplete, and almost incomprehensible.

One week after Darling was fired from his role as NRB Senior Vice President of Communications after publicly weighing in on why Christians should not hesitate to get vaccinated against COVID-19, the associations board of directors issued a statement deeming the recent management actions "appropriate."

NRB only takes public policy positions on issues of direct interest to the work of its members, as well as on matters impacting the free exercise of religion, free speech and the freedom of the press. Accordingly, NRB has no policy or official position on vaccinations, the board said in a statement made available to The Christian Post Friday.

NRB has more than 1,100 members working in Christian radio, TV and other media. On its website, NRB says it seeks to advocate for the free speech rights of our members.

While individual NRB members have wide-ranging views on the subject, the association has not weighed in on the question of the personal choices being made with respect to vaccines, because this is outside the scope of NRBs public policy engagement," the board's statement continues.

The board clarified that NRBs neutrality on vaccines and other COVID-19-related mandates should not be interpreted as neutrality or a lack of concern about their impact on religious liberty.

We have seen, and the Supreme Court has confirmed, that many Covid-19 mandates have treated religious people and institutions in an unequal manner, the statement reads.

The board said it affirmed, in every particular, the actions of NRB CEO Troy Miller, who terminated Darling after TheOriginal Jesus author refused to sign a document saying that his comments during an appearance on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" on vaccines were an act of insubordination.

During the segment, Darling expanded on an op-ed he wrote that was published by USA Today titled, "Why Christians should get the COVID vaccine." Darling told co-host Joe Scarborough that getting the vaccine fulfills the biblical mandate to love our neighbors.

We are to love our neighbors, and one of the things we do when we get a vaccine is we not only protect ourselves, but we also do our part ... from spreading the virus and hurting our neighbor, Darling said.

NRB leaders reportedly told Darling his statements violated the organizations directive to remain neutral on COVID-19 vaccines. He was reportedly told to either sign a statement admitting he had been insubordinate or be fired. When he refused to sign a statement, Darling was fired.

Miller later explained on Twitter that the organization does not have an official policy on vaccines passed through an executive committee or board of directors as a resolution.

Miller detailed he had issued a directive advising staff that this is not an issue that NRB is called to advocate for one way or another. He stressed that from here out NRB stays neutral.

The CEO stated that No NRB employee has ever been fired for their views on this subject.

Darlings dismissal sparked a media frenzy, with many condemning NRBs actions. In its Friday statement, the NRB board said it considered the runaway media narrative that developed in the aftermath of the dismissal to have been inaccurate, incomplete, and almost incomprehensible given the objective facts of the situation.

Darling, a father of four who formerly worked with the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, wrote in an Aug. 30 USA Today op-ed that he does not believe he violated an NRB policy on vaccines. He assured he harbors no animosity toward my former employer, who are my brothers and sisters in Christ.

It was an honor to serve Christian communicators who work every day to share the Gospel around the world, Darling wrote.

He issued a call to unity in a very polarized nation, adding: There are perverse incentives against unity among Christians, to fail to give the benefit of the doubt, to rush to judgment, to make a name for ourselves by hurting our fellow brothers and sisters.

We dont have to participate in cancel culture, because of the one who canceled our sin and gave us salvation," Darling added.

The NRB board concluded its statement by vowing to vigorously defend the First Amendment freedoms of its members, especially their right to speak out on issues regardless of their position and move forward speaking with one voice on issues related to Christian communicators ability to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ through every medium available.

Critics of the firing noted online that Miller had earlier praised the vaccines' success.

In an April 13 email to supporters promoting NRB's annual Christian Media Convention, Miller is quoted as saying: We are increasingly encouraged by good news as new vaccination records are set daily and COVID-19 cases continue to fall around the country. Though new variants have emerged, research shows that vaccines are mostly effective against the vast majority of new variants. Overall, the COVID-19 vaccines have proven to be stunningly effective.
Trans-identified man who exposed his penis to girls at Wi Spa is registered sex offender

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A trans-identified man who exposed his genitals to women and girls at Wi Spa in Los Angeles has been charged with five counts of indecent exposure for that incident after being allowed to enter the women's-only area despite being a registered sex offender.

More than two months after a video of a woman confronting employees at Wi Spa for allowing the naked man to walk into the women's only section went viral, The Los Angeles Times is reporting that Darren Merager of Riverside County was charged Monday with five counts of indecent exposure and an arrest warrant has been issued in his name.

The publication noted that Merager has been a registered sex offender since 2006, as a result of convictions for indecent exposure in 2002 and 2003, according to the LAPD.

The Instagram video of the woman's complaint has amassed over 188,300 views since June 24. Its OK for a man to go into the womens section, show his penis around the other women, young little girls underage, your spa, Wi Spa, condoned that. Is that what youre saying? she asked, demanding a response.

When the employee mentioned the mans sexual orientation, the woman asked, What sexual orientation? I see a d***. It lets me know hes a man. She repeatedly told the employee that hes not a female.

In December 2018, Merager was arrested for indecent exposure after he exposed himself to women and children in the womens locker room of West Hollywood Park. The New York Post obtained a copy of an internal flyer sent to law enforcement agencies in southern California suggesting that Merager identifies as a woman for predatory purposes.

Merager claims to identify as female so he can access womens locker rooms and showers, the flyer read. Merager has pleaded not guilty to all six counts of indecent exposure filed in response to the West Hollywood incident and is due back in court on Sept. 8.

In an interview with The New York Post, Merager denied all allegations of wrongdoing, asserting that Everything about the Wi Spa was a bunch of garbage and lies. According to Merager, She never saw me naked. I was underwater with water all the way up to my chest.

Additionally, Merager characterized the incident at Wi Spa as part of a pattern of abuse against trans-identified people who use sex-segregated spaces that correspond with their gender identity instead of their biological sex. He further argued that people simply claim indecent exposure and youre arrested.

The registered sex offender also called for an indecent exposure exemption for trans-identified people who use spaces where they plan to be completely nude.

Merager indicated to the Post that he had been in contact with the Los Angeles County District Attorneys Office after becoming aware of the warrant and planned to surrender to authorities. In addition to facing multiple charges for indecent exposure over the years, Merager was arrested for the 2012 theft of $3.2 million worth of art, jewelry, wine and a car from the home of billionaire investor Jeffrey Gundlach. In early 2014, he was sentenced to four years in prison for committing the crime.

After the exchange between a woman expressing outrage at Meragers presence in the womens section of Wi Spa and one of the business employees went viral, another woman came forward to discuss a similar experience she had there more than a year earlier. She alleged that a person with a penis and a beard got into the hot tub naked with my 6 year old daughter on Jan. 7th 2020.

The woman was one of several people who attended a protest outside the Wi Spa that turned violent when the far-left militant group Antifa showed up to harass and assault people. She left the protest after the violence broke out and elaborated on the encounter in a YouTube video.

The person with the penis sat down on the edge of the hot tub  with his genitals fully on display, she recalled. Me and the other women in the hot tub kind of looked each other in the eye and we just kind of made this face like what the heck?

The woman explained that she was trying to block her daughter from seeing the penis on the person with the five-o-clock shadow who was not trying to look like a woman at all. She maintained that other women who requested that the man cover up said that he refused. Upon learning of what happened, Wi Spa staff apologized to the woman and gave her two free passes to the spa.

California is one of 17 states that prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in public accommodations. The incidents at Wi Spa and the subsequent reporting about Meragers status as a sex offender come as congressional Democrats are working to pass the Equality Act, which would implement such protections for trans-identified individuals at the national level.

The Equality Act states that an individual shall not be denied access to a shared facility, including a restroom, a locker room, and a dressing room, that is in accordance with the individuals gender identity. The legislation has passed the U.S. House of Representatives in both 2019 and 2021 but has stalled both times due to opposition in the Senate.
Barna Groups TruMotivate promises to help Christians, young people find true calling

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Evangelical Christian polling firm Barna Group launched a new assessment tool Wednesday called TruMotivate that promises to help students and young adults find their true calling in life as recent studies show nearly half of Americans are now rethinking the kind of job they want to do amid the pandemic.

TruMotivate is an online, self-report assessment of core motivation that identifies the five motivations that represent an individuals strongest natural drives. Unlike a skill or personality assessment, TruMotivate reveals what you love to do, not just what youre good at, a release about the product explained. TruMotivate gets to the heart of the why, revealing why you do what you do.

Data from Prudentials Pulse of the American Worker survey conducted by Morning Consult in May, show that some 48% of Americans are rethinking the kind of work they want to do after the pandemic and if they could retrain, 53% of people would switch to a new industry.

Some 24% of workers plan to leave their jobs once the pandemic is over, citing compensation, work and life balance challenges and limited growth opportunities among the top reasons behind their plans. Workers, according to the survey, are looking for job stability, good work and life balance, good pay, comprehensive benefits and career advancement opportunities.

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused more people than ever to rethink their jobs, Pastor Tim Yee, author of Finding Your TruCenter, said in a statement. During a time when people are thinking more about the why behind what they do, this small group guide will allow people of faith to connect their questions of why to the context of Scripture and their results from TruMotivate.

A recent Bankrate survey also found that most Americans are now rethinking what they want out of their careers, and some 55% say they are likely to look for new employment in the next 12 months.

After spending the last year or more stuck in their homes, a good number of American workers now expect to be on the move, searching for new employment, Mark Hamrick, Bankrate senior economic analyst and Washington bureau chief said in their report. Pandemic-inspired changes, including the ability to work remotely and/or from home, have transformed mindsets and expectations for many workers.

In their survey of more than 30,000 global workers, called The Next Great Disruption Is Hybrid Work  Are We Ready?, Microsoft also found that some 54% of Generation Z workers and 41% of the entire global workforce could resign.

University of Texas sociology professor Jennifer Glass, who is an expert on work and family issues, telecommuting and new labor practices explained in a recent interview that its not just the young who the pandemic has driven to hand in their resignations but older workers too.

We are on the cusp of one of the largest retirements in the history of the United States, the retirement of the baby boomers. We knew that this cohort in particular was probably going to work longer because they dont have as much savings, and I think a lot of economists in particular were thinking that we would not see this massive retirement all at once because of that factor, Glass said.

But COVID-19 changed everything.

A lot of people were home full time. A lot of people had saved a lot and realized that they could get by on less. But more than that I think they realized they liked being home, they liked having an easier schedule, and they didnt want to go back to work. Its sort of like postponed fertility or postponed marriage  well, theres also postponed retirement. That was true for me. I started thinking seriously about my own retirement plans during COVID, she explained.

According to TruMotivate, their assessment is different from other personality assessment tools like the MyersBriggs Type Indicator, Enneagram, and StrengthsFinder because it reveals why you do what you do, as opposed to what youre good at.

Their product can help Christians through a six-week Finding Your TruCenter Bible study which explores readers personal motivations through their TruMotivate results and alongside Scripture. It serves individuals in all stages of life  from college students to experienced professionals and retirees  to identify their unique motivations and empower them in their work or volunteer activities.

Weve seen in past studies the correlation between the resilience of ones faith and the clarity of their sense of purpose in their work. Barna research shows that Christians who find purpose and meaning in their work are more than twice as likely as other Christians to say they are very satisfied with their lives, Brooke Hempell, chief growth officer of TruMotivate and senior research fellow at Barna, noted in a statement. When we see purpose in our work, we thrive in all areas of life. TruMotivate  and TruCenter  helps you identify that God-given purpose.
Christians a little less scared of COVID-19 because they believe in eternal life, Mississippi gov. says

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Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves doubled-down on comments he made last Thursday suggesting that the faith of Christians in his state and other parts of the South makes them "a little less scared" of COVID-19, but made it clear he was not endorsing the flouting of public health guidelines amid the pandemic.

Responding to a question from The Associated Press during a news conference Monday, where he was asked to clarify what he meant by his comments, Reeves said, What I meant when I said that is exactly what I said.

Now, I feel certain you read the article in which the very next sentence after I said what you just asked. I also said that the Bible also teaches us to take necessary precautions. And in our state and in our nation right now, there are certainly necessary precautions that we can take with respect to COVID. But I believe very strongly in my faith, Reeves said before citing John 3:16 from the Bible to support his position.

I believe very strongly in what the Bible says, and the Bibles very clear that Whosoever believeth in him shall not perish but have everlasting life, Reeves said. And that is my worldview. Its how I believe; its what drives me every single day, and I think its what drives a large number of Mississippians. We should take necessary precautions with respect to COVID, but we also understand that we do have everlasting life if we believe in Jesus, if we believe in God the Father, and I certainly do.

Reeves first said that faith made Christians in his state and other parts of the South a little less scared of COVID-19 at an Aug. 26 fundraiser held at the Eads home of Shelby County Election Commission Chairman Brent Taylor, according to the Daily Memphian.

Im often asked by some of my friends on the other side of the aisle about COVID  and why does it seem like folks in Mississippi and maybe in the Mid-South are a little less scared, shall we say, Reeves said.

When you believe in eternal life  when you believe that living on this Earth is but a blip on the screen, then you dont have to be so scared of things, he said before adding: Now, God also tells us to take necessary precautions.

And we all have opportunities and abilities to do that, and we should all do that. I encourage everyone to do so. But the reality is that working together, we can get beyond this. We can move forward. We can move on.

Numbers posted by the Johns Hopkins University COVID-19 tracker Monday show that during the week that ended Saturday, Mississippi had 102.3 new coronavirus cases per 100,000 residents and nearly 1.4 new coronavirus deaths per 100,000 residents. Mississippi also reported nearly 8,000 new COVID-19 cases during the weekend. Since the start of the pandemic in March 2020, Mississippi has had 439,611 confirmed and probable coronavirus cases and 8,490 deaths among its over 2.9 million residents, the state Health Department said.
Texas bill banning abortion as early as 6 weeks goes into effect despite legal challenges

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A sweeping pro-life law that bans abortions as early as six weeks gestation went into effect in Texas Wednesday as the judicial branch has rejected challenges to the measure from abortion providers and advocacy groups.

Senate Bill 8, signed into law by Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott in May, went into effect early morning Wednesday.

The bill bans abortions after a fetal heartbeat can be detected, usually at around six weeks gestation. It also allows individuals to take civil action against anyone who performs and induces an abortion or knowingly engages in conduct that aids or abets the performance or inducement of an abortion, including paying for or reimbursing the costs of abortion through insurance or otherwise.

On July 13, nearly two months after Abbott signed the legislation, a group of abortion providers and pro-abortion nonprofit organizations filed a lawsuit seeking to block the measure from becoming law.

So far, efforts to convince the judicial branch to strike down the law have not had success.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals canceled a hearing that was set for Monday. The Texas Tribune reported that 20 abortion providers sought to convince a court in Austin to block the law from taking effect.

Pro-choice groups filed emergency motions with the 5th Circuit, asking the appellate court to either block the law from taking effect or send the case back to the district court. The appellate court denied the requests.

On Monday, lawyers for Planned Parenthood and abortion providers filed an emergency appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court, asking the high court to block the law. Justice Samuel Alito, the circuit justice for the 5th Circuit and one of the most reliable pro-life jurists on the high court, will consider their motion.

John Seago, Texas Right to Lifes legislative director, described the appeal to the Supreme Court as the abortion industrys last desperate attempt to block the life-saving Texas Heartbeat Act from taking effect Wednesday.

In a statement, Seago called the lawsuit "invalid" and is "hopeful that Justice Alito will examine the compelling arguments raised explaining why the case should ultimately be dismissed.

A Travis County judge issued a temporary restraining order against Texas Right to Life and Seago, preventing them from filing lawsuits under the new law against three plaintiffs they claim are abetting in the abortion process. The ruling does not impact any other citizens ability to sue for violations of the law.

The Travis County judges ruling follows a lawsuit filed last week by pro-abortion attorney Michelle Tuegel against the pro-life organization and several Texas elected officials, including Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton.

Tuegel expressed concern that because she plans to continue providing her clients with advice related to abortion services, she could face criminal charges for aiding and abetting abortions.

Texas Right to Life asserted that in addition to preventing them from suing Tuegel, the ruling forbids them from suing a pro-abortion social worker and an organization called The Bridge Collective. The pro-life group maintained that Texas Right to Life never threatened to sue these specific plaintiffs.

According to Texas Right to Life, Texas is the first state in the nation to "successfully enforce a ban on abortions when the preborn childs heartbeat is detectable."

While many other states have passed heartbeat bills, they have faced resistance from the courts.

In the past, judges have invalidated heartbeat bills passed in Mississippi, Georgia,Missouri and Iowa. This year, after a district court judge struck down South Carolinas heartbeat ban, the state filed an appeal asking the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals to reverse the decision.

Senate Bill 8 is one of several pro-life laws introduced and implemented at the state level in 2021. The pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute has characterized this year as the most devastating antiabortion state legislative session in decades. A report from the group found that more than 500 pro-life bills were introduced in the first four months of 2021 alone.

The Supreme Court has announced earlier this year that it will hear a challenge to Mississippis 15-week abortion ban. Pro-life groups have hailed this development as a landmark opportunity to chip away at the precedent set by the 1973 Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade, which ruled that women have the right to have an abortion while states have more freedom to regulate abortions later in pregnancy.
Va. Supreme Court upholds reinstatement of Christian teacher who opposed trans pronoun policy

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The highest court in Virginia has rejected a request by the Loudoun County School Board to allow the suspension of a Christian teacher punished for criticizing a proposed policy requiring teachers to use trans students' preferred names and pronouns to take effect.

In an order issued Monday, the Virginia Supreme Court granted an appeal to review the merits of a lower court decision in favor of elementary school teacher Byron Tanner Cross and agreed to keep an injunction reinstating the teacher in place.

Cross, a physical education teacher at Leesburg Elementary School for the past eight years, recently sued the Loudoun County School Board for suspending him after speaking out in his personal capacity at a May board meeting against a proposed policy.

Policy 8040, which was enacted earlier this month, requires teachers to use the preferred pronouns of trans-identified students. In his speech before the school board, Cross cited his Christian faith and said he could not "lie" to students.

Looking to federal precedent as persuasive, it is settled law that the government may not take adverse employment actions against its employees in reprisal for their exercising their right to speak on matters of public concern, reads the order in part.

Because the remaining interests the Defendants raise do not override Cross and other teachers interests in exercising their constitutionally protected right to speak on the proposed transgender policy, the circuit court did not abuse its discretion.

The Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative legal nonprofit helping to represent Cross, celebrated the Virginia high court order. The organization also suing on behalf of other teachers to get the policy struck down.

Teachers shouldnt be forced to promote ideologies that are harmful to their students and that they believe are false, nor should they be silenced for commenting at a public meeting, ADF Senior Counsel Tyson Langhofer said in a statement released Monday.

[B]ecause Loudoun County Public Schools is now requiring all teachers and students to deny truths about what it means to be male and female and compelling them to call students by their chosen pronouns or face punishment, we have moved to amend our lawsuit to challenge that policy on behalf of multiple faculty members.

Cross was placed on administrative leave after expressing opposition to Policy 8040 during the May school board meeting, although he did so in his personal capacity.

My name is Tanner Cross, and I am speaking out of love for those who suffer with gender dysphoria, he said at the meeting. I love all of my students, but I will never lie to them regardless of the consequences.

Im a teacher, but I serve God first and I will not affirm that a biological boy can be a girl and vice versa because its against my religion," he added.

The school board claimed that following Cross' comments, parents and students "expressed fear, hurt and disappointment about coming to school." Contending that the suspension was the appropriate response, the school district argued in court that Cross is unlikely to succeed on his free speech claim because his comments created disruption at Leesburg Elementary.

In June, Judge James E. Plowman of the 20th Judicial Circuit of Virginia granted Cross' request for a temporary injunction.

Plowman wrote that putting Cross on leave was extreme and an unconstitutional action since the teachers words, even if controversial, were nevertheless permissible.

The Court agrees with Plaintiffs analysis and concludes that Defendants actions to suspend the Plaintiff, as well as the additional restrictions placed upon him, adversely affected his constitutionally protected speech, wrote Plowman.

The school board appealed the decision, arguing in a statement that the words of Cross were harmful to trans-identified students.

LCPS respectfully disagrees with the Circuit Courts decision to issue the injunction, and it is appealing this ruling to the Supreme Court of Virginia, stated the school district.

Many students and parents at Leesburg Elementary have expressed fear, hurt and disappointment about coming to school. Addressing those concerns is paramount to the school divisions goal to provide a safe, welcoming and affirming learning environment for all students.

The Cross legal complaint was later amended when the school district passed the proposed policy in August by a vote of 7-2. Multiple teachers want to have the new policy struck down.
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The Reverend John Harvard must be rolling over in his grave.

Americas oldest and most prestigious university, named in the Congregational ministers honor, just promoted a devout atheist to be their head chaplain.

This is not surprising since Harvard jettisoned its Christian roots long ago. But its shocking nonetheless. Whats the point of a chaplain if he doesnt even believe in God?

The Dailymail writes: Greg Epstein, 44, who was raised in a reformed Jewish household in Queens, New York, was named president of the chaplains for the religious community at the school after serving as Harvard's 'humanist chaplain' since 2005. They add that Epstein will be overseeing 40 university chaplains, who lead the Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist and other religious communities on campus.

Epstein is the author of a book that has a dubious premise. Its entitled, Good Without God. I say dubious because atheism by definition excludes divine accountability.

Even if an atheist happens to be a very nice person, he is tied into a worldview with no transcendent accountability. That means people can do what they want and not have to give an account to God for their actions  or so they delude themselves into thinking. To paraphrase Dostoyevsky: If there is no God, then all things are permissible.

In the 20th century, we repeatedly saw the deadly effect of that unbelief in communist countries and under the National Socialists in Germany.

As the great British historian Paul Johnson notes in his book, The Quest for God, all the failed totalitarian regimes of the 20th century were godless constructs. Johnson says, The death-camps and the slave-camps were products not of God, but of anti-God.

In 1999, Harvard University Press even published a big volume called, The Black Book of Communism, which documents how in the 20th century the anti-Christian, atheistic philosophy of Karl Marx led to the deaths of at least 100 million human beings  often by their own governments.

Meanwhile, it was not the atheism of the new head chaplain that created Harvard. It was Biblical Christianity.

The Puritans founded Boston in April 1630, and their leader, Rev. John Winthrop, quoted Jesus when he said, We shall be as a city upon a hill. By September of the same year, they laid out plans for a school to train future ministers of the Gospel of Christ. This was the genesis of Harvard.

Even today at Harvard you can see chiseled in stone these words: After God had carried us safe to New England, and we had built our houses, provided necessaries for our livelihood, reared convenient places for Gods worship, and settled the civil government, one of the next things we longed for and looked after was to advance learning and perpetuate it to posterity; dreading to leave an illiterate ministry to the churches, when our present ministers shall lie in the dust.

The Puritan fathers began the college in 1636, and 2 years later, Congregational minister Rev. Harvard died of tuberculosis. In his will, he donated a large sum of money and his books for the school. They named the college in his honor.

Harvard was a Christian school for at least 2 centuries.

Walk around the campus, and you can still see the statue of Rev. John Harvard in his Puritan garb and with a large open Bible on his lap. Selfie-takers love to rub one of the statues shoes, allegedly for good luck.

The original motto of Harvard was: Truth for Christ and the Church. Sometime in the 20th century  at least later than 1914  they cut off the last part of the motto and just stuck with Truth (Veritas). I mention that year because you can still see on the main library building the Christo and Ecclesiae part, and that building dates from 1914.

Laws and Statutes for Students of Harvard College of 1643 began by stating: Let every student be plainly instructed and earnestly pressed to consider well the main end of his life and studies is to know God and Jesus Christ which is eternal life (John 17:3).

The students at Harvard learned the Bible, not only in English, but in the original Hebrew and Greek. And on it goes with Harvards Christian origins.

But in the 19th century, compromises were made towards Unitarianism, which stands in contrast to the Trinitarian beliefs which created Harvard. This compromise led to other compromises, where eventually they cut Truth off from Christ and the Church. And now theyve even hired an atheist as the head chaplain.

All I can say is, O Lord, revive the work of Thy hands.
WHO tracking new coronavirus variant mu and its resistant to vaccines

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The World Health Organization announced it is now tracking a new coronavirus variant known as mu, or B.1.621. Early data suggest the variant is showing resistance to COVID-19 vaccines similar to the beta variant, which one recent study suggests is deadlier than all other variants.

In its weekly epidemiological update published Tuesday, the WHO explained that mu was first identified in Colombia in January 2021 but officially flagged it as a variant of interest on Monday.

Variants of interest usually cause significant community transmission or multiple COVID-19 clusters, in multiple countries with increasing relative prevalence alongside increasing number of cases over time, or other apparent epidemiological impacts to suggest an emerging risk to global public health."

The Mu variant has a constellation of mutations that indicate potential properties of immune escape," the global health agency noted. "Preliminary data presented to the Virus Evolution Working Group show a reduction in neutralization capacity of convalescent and vaccinee sera similar to that seen for the Beta variant, but this needs to be confirmed by further studies.

According to GISAID, over 2,000 cases of mu variant have been reported in the United States. That marks the highest number of all the countries where mu cases were reported.

Since its first identification in Colombia in January 2021, there have been a few sporadic reports of cases of the Mu variant and some larger outbreaks have been reported from other countries in South America and in Europe. As of 29 August, over 4500 sequences (3794 sequences of B.1.621 and 856 sequences of B.1.621.1) have been uploaded to GISAID from 39 countries, the WHO report states.

Although the global prevalence of the Mu variant among sequenced cases has declined and is currently below 0.1%, the prevalence in Colombia (39%) and Ecuador (13%) has consistently increased. The reported prevalence should be interpreted with due consideration of sequencing capacities and timeliness of sharing of sequences, both of which vary between countries. More studies are required to understand the phenotypic and clinical characteristics of this variant. The epidemiology of the Mu variant in South America, particularly with the co-circulation of the Delta variant, will be monitored for changes, the international health agency added.

Since WHO declared the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, nearly 216 million cases of the virus have been reported, and just under 4.5 million people have died.

WHO is tracking four coronavirus variants of concern: alpha, beta, delta and gamma. It is also monitoring five variants of interest, including mu, eta, iota, kappa and lambda,

In a report published in August, researchers from Qatar evaluated the severity, acute-care hospitalization, criticality, ICU hospitalization and fatality of both the alpha and beta variants of the virus through eight case-control studies.

The study came after the Arab nation experienced a severe wave of alpha variant COVID-19 infections beginning in mid-January, which peaked in March. This wave was then immediately followed by the beta variant that peaked in the first week of April.

According to researchers: The Alpha variant presented a 48% higher risk of severe disease than wild-type variants in the population of Qatar, affirming its greater gravity.

Data on the beta variant was even more troubling.

Infection with the Beta variant was associated with even greater risks of severe and critical disease and COVID-19 death, affirming earlier observational analyses suggesting its high gravity. Compared to the Alpha variant, infections with the Beta variant posed a 24% higher risk of severe disease, 49% higher risk of critical disease, and 57% higher risk of COVID-19 death, researchers said.
UNITED NATIONS  The United Nations chief will convene a ministerial meeting in Geneva on Sept. 13 to seek a swift scale-up in funding to address the growing humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan, where nearly half the countrys 38 million people need assistance.

U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric made the announcement Friday and said Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will also appeal for full and unimpeded humanitarian access to make sure Afghans continue to get the essential services they need.

Dujarric said the U.N. appeal for $1.3 billion for 2021 to help more than 18 million people is just 40% funded, leaving a $766 million deficit.

Afghanistan faces a looming humanitarian catastrophe, the U.N. spokesman said. One in three Afghans do not know where their next meal will come from. Nearly half of all children under the age of 5 are predicted to be acutely malnourished in the next 12 months.

Earlier Friday, Dujarric said the secretary-general is very grateful for the generosity of Denmark, Kazakhstan, North Macedonia, Pakistan, Poland, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and the United States for making available facilities and transport for the temporary relocation of U.N. staff in Afghanistan.

Dujarric announced Aug. 18 that about 100 of the U.N.s 300 international staff were being moved to Kazakhstan to work remotely because of security concerns.

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WASHINGTON  U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken says he will travel to Qatar and Germany to visit U.S. diplomats and troops along with Afghans who were evacuated from Kabul amid the scramble to withdraw American troops from Afghanistan.

Blinkens visit to Qatar will coincide with the first stop of a tour of Persian Gulf allies by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.

Blinken told reporters Friday he will visit the Qatari capital of Doha and the U.S. military base in Ramstein, Germany, starting this weekend to thank U.S. personnel for their work in completing the pullout Monday.

The State Department says Blinken has no plans to meet representatives of the Taliban while in Doha, where the group that now controls Afghanistan has an office and which had been the site of failed peace talks with the former Afghan government. Blinken will see Qatari officials and visit with Kabul embassy staffers who are based in Doha since the U.S. closed its diplomatic mission in Afghanistan. Qatars permission for the United States to temporarily house Afghan evacuees at al-Udeid air base was a key to facilitating the Kabul airlift.

In Germany, in addition to visiting Ramstein, Blinken will meet with German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas and participate in a virtual meeting with the foreign ministers of roughly 20 other nations with interests in Afghanistan.

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WASHINGTON  U.S. military bases housing Afghanistan evacuees are building their own city-type leadership organizations to deal with sanitation, food and other challenges as the numbers of Afghans coming into the U.S. grows.

Air Force General Glen VanHerck, who heads U.S. Northern Command, said there were more than 25,000 Afghan evacuees being housed at the eight bases as of Friday. He acknowledged there have been problems as the bases grapple with language, cultural and other issues.

He told Pentagon reporters that he's "building eight small cities, were going to have challenges. He said the bases have designated a military officer as a mayor to be in charge of a couple dorms or housing units and an Afghan counterpart who can communicate about any ongoing issues. He said Northern Command has asked the Defense Department for additional linguists who are fluent and can speak with the Afghans.

The U.S. military will eventually be able to house as many as 50,000 Afghanistan evacuees at the eight bases around the country and wont likely need to tap additional facilities, said VanHerck, who is also the head of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD),

Afghans at the bases are divided, with single males and single females in separate housing, and families walled off in their own sections where possible to provide privacy.

So far, he said, there have been few problems with evacuees testing positive for COVID-19, and he has heard of no serious security problems.

A defense official said the number of Afghans at each of the eight bases will fluctuate over time, but as of Friday the approximate totals were: Fort McCoy, Wisc., 8,800; Fort Bliss, Texas, 6,200; Fort Lee, Va., 1,700; Joint Base McGuireDixLakehurst, N.J., 3,700; Holloman Air Force Base, N.M., 650; Marine Corps Base Quantico, Va., 800; Fort Pickett, Va., 3,650 and Camp Atterbury, Ind., 65.

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WASHINGTON  The U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security says the government expects to admit more than 50,000 people into the country from the Afghanistan airlift.

Alejandro Mayorkas suggested Friday that figure could climb in what he called an unprecedented evacuation. Mayorkas told reporters during a news conference that the U.S. has brought more than 40,000 people into the country from Afghanistan since the fall of Kabul last month.

About a quarter of those who have come so far are U.S. citizens or permanent residents. The rest, he said, include people who have received the special immigrant visas for Afghans who worked for the U.S. or NATO as interpreters or in some other capacity. Also included in this group are people who have applied but not yet received the visa and those considered vulnerable under Taliban rule.

That last group includes women, children, and members of civil society, Mayorkas said.

The secretary, who came to the U.S. as a refugee from Cuba as a child with his family, spoke proudly of the evacuation effort and said the number of people admitted could exceed 50,000.

He said all those entering the U.S. are undergoing security screening and vetting in a number of transit points, where they are tested for COVID-19 and offered a vaccine.

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WASHINGTON  The Pentagon says Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin will visit Persian Gulf allies to thank them for their cooperation in the evacuations from Afghanistan.

Spokesman John Kirby said Austin will depart Sunday and visit Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

He said the Pentagon chief will reaffirm U.S. defense relationships in the region. He also will visit with U.S. service members.

Qatars permission for the United States to temporarily house Afghan evacuees at al-Udeid air base was a key to facilitating the Kabul airlift. It will be Austins first visit to the Gulf since President Joe Biden announced in April that he was ending U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan.

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DUBAI, United Arab Emirates - A Qatari jet carrying the Gulf countrys special envoy for counterterrorism and conflict resolution has arrived in Kabul.

A Qatari official with knowledge of Friday's visit said officials would discuss efforts at an inclusive government and the resumption of civilian commercial operations at the airport. The official addded that Qatar continues to work closely with nations whose embassies relocated to the Qatari capital of Doha from Kabul in past days. Those countries include the United States, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Japan part of an effort to provide safe corridors and freedom of movement for those still in Afghanistan.

No further details were provided.

Mutlaq bin Majed Al Qahtani, the Qatari envoy who landed in Kabul, said his nation remains an impartial mediator and has engaged with all sides. Qatar has hosted Taliban political leaders for years, as well as unsuccessful attempts at peace talks between the militant group and the U.S.-backed government before its collapse.

Al Qahtani said in a statement to The Associated Press that Qatar's "priority with the Taliban includes guaranteeing a peaceful transfer of power and ensuring an inclusive and effective government is formed to serve the Afghan people.

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PRISTINA, Kosovo --- Kosovos government says that the number of Afghan evacuees who had worked with NATO, and their families arriving in the country has reached 467.

The first group of 111 Afghans arrived in the country on Sunday.

Interior Minister Xhelal Svecla on Friday met with international organizations to discuss the current situation and needs on the temporary housing of the Afghan citizens in Kosovo.

Svecla said that NATO has assisted in their accommodation so far and called for assistance from the organizations despite their support for dignitary accommodation to make their stay easier in the country.

Kosovo has said it may temporarily shelter up to 2,000 Afghans while they process documentation on their final destination to the United States.

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COPENHAGEN, Denmark  Denmark's foreign minister says the country will not recognize any Taliban government.

Jeppe Kofod told Danish broadcaster DR on Friday that leaders there are concerned about ensuring that the progress we have made through two decades of efforts in Afghanistan can be sustained.

The most immediate priority, Kofod said, is ensuring that everyone on the country's evacuation list can leave Afghanistan in good order.

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KABUL, Afghanistan  A few dozen protesters have gathered outside the presidential palace in Kabul, urging the country's new Taliban leadership to uphold women's rights achieved under Western patronage and include women in the upcoming government.

At one gate on Friday, around a dozen women held up small printed pages urging for A heroic Cabinet with the presence of women. The protestors chanted slogans asserting human rights and saying they did not want to return to the past.

A document circulated by protesters demanded that Afghan women are granted full rights to education, social and political contributions in the country's future, and general freedoms including that of free speech.

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MORE ON AFGHANISTAN:

 US defends strike that Afghan family says killed innocents

 Qatar says its not clear when Kabul airport will reopen

 Those left in Afghanistan complain of broken US promises

 Afghans face hunger crisis, adding to Talibans challenge

 Biden defends departure from forever war, praises airlift

 UN chief urges countries to help Afghans in hour of need

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 Find more AP coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/afghanistan

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HERES WHAT ELSE IS HAPPENING:

WARSAW, Poland  A government official says that Poland will temporarily host some 500 Afghan evacuees who had worked for NATO in Afghanistan.

Michal Dworczyk said Friday that the Afghans will remain in Poland for up to three months before moving on to other countries. Depending on their choice, up to 50 persons will be able to settle in Poland. However, Poland has not been a popular destination in Europe for migrants.

Dworczyk, a top aide to Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, said on Radio RMF FM that the first group of some 250 persons would arrive Friday from the NATO air base in Ramstein, Germany.

Separately, Poland has evacuated some 1,300 people from Kabul, mostly Afghanis, who had worked with Polands military and diplomatic mission, and their families and said it is taking responsibility for them.

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KABUL, Afghanistan  The Taliban say Western Union will resume its operations in Afghanistan, opening a rare conduit for foreign funds to flow into the cash-strapped country.

The groups s cultural commission spokesman, Ahmadullah Muttaqi, announced the move Friday. The American financial services giant had halted operations in Afghanistan when the Taliban took power in the capital on Aug. 15.

The opening will be especially welcomed by Afghans with foreign relatives abroad. Hundreds of people have been lining up daily outside Afghan banks to withdraw cash. Withdrawals have been limited to $200 per week and cash machines arent working. The overcrowding means that not everyone manages to obtain money on a given day.

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WASHINGTON  President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden visited injured U.S. troops at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Thursday night.

There are 15 Marines at the hospital in Bethesda, Maryland, just outside Washington, who were wounded in an Aug. 26 suicide bombing at the Kabul airport. The attack occurred as the U.S. government was arranging evacuations of Americans, Afghans and allies before the nearly two-decade war in Afghanistan officially ended Aug. 31.

Eleven Marines were also killed in the attack, as well as one Army solider and one Navy corpsman. Biden traveled to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware on Sunday to witness the return of their remains to U.S. soil in a solemn dignified transfer.

One of the wounded Marines was in critical condition. Three were in serious condition and 11 in stable condition.
Talk about being blown away by the news.

Weather reporter Robert Ray was quite literally taken by the wind during a live weather broadcast from a New Orleans parking garage, where he was reporting on Hurricane Ida for Fox Report with John Scott.

Its been like a train all day as these winds and rain have come in, we had to retreat here into this parking garage, Ray says to the camera the wind visibly whipping behind him as his pants and jacket begin to flutter about. Its just not safe out there at all.

Fox News Robert Ray shows power of hurricane winds on air https://t.co/LMNVktCd6M  Fox News (@FoxNews) August 30, 2021

Ray then tells the camera that hes going to step back slowly into the open elements and out of the garage. Weve had gusts up to almost 90 miles an hour, sustained over 60. The second I step out, youre gonna see, Ray said as he steps into the street and is quickly blown to the left side of the screen, struggling to stay stable.

Related: Hurricane Ida: Another Headache for Delta Variant-Hit Airlines?

I just want to show you the power of this wind right now, very close to the Mississippi River, Ray says as he struggles to get his words out while fighting against the wind, grabbing on to the side of the building as he pulls himself back in. This is no joke, folks.

He notes that the infrastructure in New Orleans is unraveling and falling apart and calls the storm a very serious situation.

If anyone is out there they need to get into shelter, cannot stress it enough, as this storm is just battering New Orleans right now, he pleads as the broadcast ends.

Ida, which has been downgraded to a tropical storm since making landfall, has been absolutely pummeling the state of Louisiana, with the most up-to-date reporting saying there has been least one recorded death and more than one million people in the state without power.

We've just been through a horrendous night with winds, rain, gusts, water coming up, rivers rising, power outages, St. Tammany Parish of New Orleans president Mike Cooper told CNN. Its incredible.

Axios reported that the hurricane reached maximum sustained wind speeds of 150 mph.

Related: US Oil & Gas Rig Tally Rises for 4 Straight Weeks: Here's Why

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LONDON (AP)  A Banksy artwork that sensationally self-shredded just after it sold for $1.4 million is up for sale again  at several times the previous price.

Auctioneer Sothebys said Friday that Love is in the Bin will be offered at a sale in London on Oct. 14. The piece has a pre-sale estimate of 4 million pounds to 6 million pounds ($5.5 million to $8.3 million).

It consists of a half-shredded canvas bearing a spray-painted image of a girl reaching for a heart-shaped red balloon.

Then known as Girl With Balloon, the work was sold at Sothebys in October 2018. Just as an anonymous European buyer made the winning bid, a hidden shredder embedded in the frame by Banksy whirred to life, leaving half the canvas hanging from the frame in strips.

The buyer decided to go through with the purchase  a decision that would be vindicated if the picture achieves its estimated price.

Alex Branczik, Sothebys chairman of Modern and Contemporary Art, described Love is in the Bin as the ultimate Banksy artwork and a true icon of recent art history.

Love is in the Bin was born of the most spectacular artistic happening of the 21st century, he said. When Girl With Balloon self-destructed in our saleroom, Banksy sparked a global sensation that has since become a cultural phenomenon.

The artwork will travel and go on public display in London, Hong Kong, Taipei and New York ahead of its sale next month.

Bansky, who has never confirmed his full identity, began his career spray-painting buildings in Bristol, England, and has become one of the worlds best-known artists. His mischievous and often satirical images include two policemen kissing, armed riot police with yellow smiley faces and a chimpanzee with a sign bearing the words, Laugh now, but one day Ill be in charge.

Girl With Balloon was originally stenciled on a wall in east London and has been endlessly reproduced, becoming one of Banksys best-known images.
(Editors note: This project is a collaboration between the Plainview Herald and Saint Francis Ministries to showcase kids who are cleared for adoption.)

Lizzy, PD, and Sylvia are three great kids who are looking for their forever family. They want to be adopted together as a sibling group.

Lizzy, 11, has learned to take on a caretaker role for her younger siblings over the years. Both PD, 10, and 5-year-old Sylvia look up to their big sister, Lizzy. There are days that they will annoy each other, just like any typical sibling group, but at the end of the day, they know that they belong together and cannot imagine life without one another. All three children want to continue to have contact with their younger sister who was just recently adopted.

The ideal adoptive family will ensure that Lizzy, PD, and Sylvia remain together. The family will be loving, patient, and have a good since of humor. The ideal family will provide the children with a structured and active schedule that allows them to grow and learn.

Would you open your heart and home to this wonderful trio?

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Lizzy, PD and Sylvia are among the children listed on the Texas Adoption Resource Exchange (TARE) website. Visit https://www.dfps.state.tx.us/Application/TARE/Home.aspx/Default for more details.

Saint Francis Ministries is a nonprofit organization and a community-based care provider for the Texas Department of Family Protective Services Region 1. This region includes 41 counties across the Panhandle and South Plains.

To learn more about fostering or adopting, those interested are encouraged to attend one of the monthly virtual meetings hosted by Saint Francis Ministries and other child placing agencies. The meetings provide information about how to get started, the basic qualifications and more, in addition to providing opportunity for attendees to ask questions.

Those interested can visit Saint Francis Texas on Facebook @SFMtexas to register for the online meetings, which can also be found below:

The meetings are scheduled for the second Thursday of the month (Lubbock area  https://lubbock-area-foster-care-adoption.eventbrite.com) and the third Thursday of the month (Amarillo area  https://amarillo-area-foster-care-adoption.eventbrite.com).

For more information, please contact Erin Baxter at (806) 317-5631 or email texasinfo@st-francis.org. Visit Saint Francis Ministries online at https://saintfrancisministries.org.
In 2017, Courtney Lynn Ottrix started blogging about things to do in Cleveland. Shed done some freelancing in the past, and the blog offered occasional opportunities for income.

But two years later, when her full-time position was eliminated, Ottrix suddenly found herself self-employed.

I had started to see what could be of my business if I gave it my all, Ottrix says. And literally overnight, Courtney Covers Cleveland went from a blog to next level.

Whether youre pushed into it like Ottrix or have time to make a plan, following these steps can help you transition your business from a side hustle to self-employment.

1. SEPARATE YOUR BUSINESS AND PERSONAL FINANCES

Ottrix started her self-employment by working as an independent contractor. But as she began working with larger brands and bringing in more revenue, she chose a business structure, filed for an employer identification number and opened a business bank account.

Separating your business and personal finances is a key step on the way to formalizing your business, says Keith Hall, president and CEO of the National Association for the Self-Employed.

Start to visualize and treat the business like a business. Its separate from your personal stuff, Hall says, adding that you need to make an unwritten commitment to never mix the two.

Creating a business entity and filing for an EIN is necessary before you can apply for grants and loans or make wholesale purchases, adds Lewis Weil, founder of Austin, Texas-based financial planning company Money Positive.

2. START BOOKKEEPING

At a minimum, keep a spreadsheet listing your revenue and expenses so you can see if youre making money, Weil says.

Business owners grow to enjoy looking at their numbers, Weil says. Its really nice to be able to just push a button and be like, Ah, I made money this quarter.

As your business gets more complex, Weil recommends starting relationships with a bookkeeper and certified public accountant.

Ottrix recently began working with an accountant who uses accounting software, which has helped her develop a better understanding of her different income streams.

Everyone thinks they have to do everything by themselves, Ottrix says. No, you hire help. The most successful people build really, really good teams.

3. FORMALIZE YOUR BUSINESS PLAN

If youre already freelancing, you probably have a good sense of how much you can earn per item or per client, Hall says. But you may not have a formal business plan that translates those numbers into enough money to make a living.

If your family needs you to make $100,000  How many clients is that? How many engagements is that? How many rocking chairs is that? Hall says. That business plan is your map.

Weil recommends new business owners aim to pay themselves twice as much as they need for monthly obligations like rent or mortgage payments, food and utilities. On top of that, youll need enough revenue to cover business expenses and taxes. About 30% of your revenue after expenses should be set aside for quarterly tax payments, Weil says.

4. PREPARE YOUR PERSONAL FINANCES

Some entrepreneurs, like Ottrix, become self-employed out of necessity. But if you have time to plan for a transition, prepare your personal finances by building up your personal emergency fund and paying down high-interest debt, like credit cards. If you get health insurance from your employer, research the cost of COBRA or a health insurance marketplace plan.

If youre earning money from a side business, Weil recommends letting it pile up in your business bank account . He encourages saving enough to pay yourself for three to six months before relying solely on your business for your income.

Take care of the basics in a very conservative way so you can take the big risks, Weil says.

5. JUMP IN

The final step, Hall says, is to let go of the side of the pool  whether you climbed in by choice or were pushed in by circumstances  and start swimming.

Its easy to feel like youre in the deep end, especially when what once fit into evenings and weekends is now a necessity to generate income.

The reality is that every day as an entrepreneur is not glitter and gold, Ottrix says. Like, yes, I work for myself, but I do a lot of work.

In those instances, remember the self in self-employment. Measure success against your business plan  not your peers  and embrace the fact that youre in charge of your own destiny.

I didnt wake up and say, I wanted to always start my own business, but here we are, Ottrix says. And I could never see myself going back to anything else.

_______________________________________

This article was provided to The Associated Press by the personal finance website NerdWallet. Rosalie Murphy is a writer at NerdWallet. Email: rmurphy@nerdwallet.com.

RELATED LINKS:

NerdWallet: Business Structure: How to Choose the Right One

The National Association for the Self-Employed
MISSOULA, Mont. (AP)  Three juveniles were detained for questioning Thursday after reports that some students at Hellgate High School in Missoula indicated they planned a school shooting, Missoula police said.

The school was locked down for just over an hour, starting just before 1:30 p.m.

Principal Judson Miller said all students are safe.

We had a few students indicate they had a firearm and were going to conduct a 'school shooting,'" Judson wrote in an email to parents. We identified the students and are working on next steps with police.

Police continue to investigate and were meeting with the parents of the detained students, police spokesperson Lydia Arnold said. She would not release any information on whether any firearms were found in the building.

The lockdown began after a student told a school administrator that they had been told to leave school because there was a student with a firearm and something was going to happen at 1:30 p.m., police said.

The school resource officer called other police who responded along with officers from Missoula County, the Montana Highway Patrol, the FBI, the U.S. Marshals Service and probation and parole.

Officers and school staff were able to identify the three juveniles associated with the threat and removed them from their classroom, Arnold said in a statement.
SEATTLE (AP)  A charter amendment that would change Seattles approach to homelessness will not appear on the November ballot, after an appeals court rejected an emergency motion from the measures backers.

The Washington Court of Appeals declined the appeal from Compassion Seattle on Friday, a week after a King County Superior Court judge blocked it from the ballot, saying it would usurp the City Councils authority and conflict with state law.
PHOENIX (AP)  Abortion opponents in Arizona are carefully mulling a U.S. Supreme Court decision that allows a Texas law banning abortion after a heartbeat can be detected  though they aren't ready to say whether they would try to pass a similar law here.

The high court late Wednesday refused to block the new Texas law from taking effect, but it did not rule on its constitutionality. The law directly conflicts with Roe. v. Wade, the landmark 1973 case in which the court ruled women have a constitutional right to a pre-viability abortion. A heartbeat can be detected as early as 6 weeks into a pregnancy, before many women know they are pregnant and many weeks before the fetus is viable.

A spokesman for Republican Gov. Doug Ducey, an abortion opponent who has signed every bill restricting abortion that has reached his desk in his seven years in office, said Thursday that it was too early to comment on the ruling or whether he would seek similar legislation.

But you know where this governor stands on this issue, Ducey spokesman C.J. Karamargin said.

Republican Senate President Karen Fann said she had not yet studied the issue but reiterated her stance on abortion.

What I can tell you is Im a pro-life person, Fann said. And I do not think abortion should be a form of birth control. We have so many ways to prevent pregnancies these days, and so just everybody running out to get an abortion whenever they just think they want to get rid of an unborn child, I dont think thats acceptable.

The GOP-controlled Arizona Legislature enacts additional abortion restrictions almost each year, and this year is in court defending a new law that bars abortions for genetic abnormalities like Down syndrome. A provision in the law conferring personhood on a fetus is also being challenged in a federal lawsuit filed by the Center for Reproductive Rights and the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of two doctors who perform abortions, the National Council of Jewish Women, the National Organization for Women and the Arizona Medical Association.

The law is set to take effect Sept. 29 unless it is blocked by the courts. A hearing is set for Sept. 22.

Cathi Herrod, who leads a group that pushes anti-abortion laws in Arizona, said the courts action on the new Arizona law, the Supreme Courts decision on a Mississippi law banning abortions after 15 weeks it will hear this fall and developments in the Texas case will determine her group's next steps. The high courts new 6-3 conservative majority signaled its openness to reconsidering Roe v. Wade ruling when it agreed to hear the Mississippi case, and its refusal to block the new Texas law made it even more clear.

Theres a lot of activity in the courts on the life issue, said Herrod, president of the Center for Arizona Policy. We applaud the U.S. Supreme Court decision on the Texas heartbeat law, it was the right decision. Its a novel approach to enforcing pro-life laws. Well take a serious look at that approach.

The Texas heartbeat law survived, at least initially, because although it bans abortion after about 6 weeks it is not enforced by the state. Instead, the law allows individuals to bring civil court lawsuits against abortion providers or anyone who helps someone get an abortion. It allows awards of at least $10,000. Abortion providers say the legal jeopardy is untenable, and they will stop providing abortion care.

Democratic Arizona Rep. Athena Salman called the high courts decision a dark day for pregnant women in Texas and across the nation.

The draconian Texas abortion ban is straight out of a totalitarian nightmare where the government pays vigilantes to inform on any woman," she said in a statement. The Republican partys contempt for women has never been clearer."

Democrat Katie Hobbs, Arizona Secretary of State and a 2022 candidate for governor, blasted the high court ruling and said candidates need to show where they stand.

"This decision is a clear infringement on our reproductive and constitutional rights and paves the way to overturn a decades-long decision, Hobbs said.

But Kari Lake, a Republican candidate for governor, tweeted her support.

I would sign this bill in a heartbeat, Lake wrote.
MIAMI (AP)  A Black man who received a multimillion dollar settlement after being shot and paralyzed by a Florida deputy in 2013 has died, his attorney said Thursday.

Attorney Jack Scarola told the Palm Beach Post that Dontrell Stephens died Sunday from complications associated with his paralysis. Scarola represented the 28-year-old man in his civil suit against the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office.

Stephens had been hospitalized for three weeks before his death, dealing with bed sores and other issues, Scarola said. He had been left paralyzed from the waist down from the 2013 shooting.

Dontrell had a very sad and difficult life, Scarola said. I hope that as a consequence of the resolution of his case that he had some relief. But whatever relief he had was very short-lived.

A federal civil jury in 2016 had awarded Stephens $22 million after he sued, an amount Palm Beach Sheriff Ric Bradshaw refused to pay. After years of negotiations, Bradshaw had offered Stephens $4.5 million, but the state Legislature went $1.5 million above that in 2020 and awarded a $6 million payment, which was approved by the governor.

Deputy Adams Lin pursued Stephens, then 20, in his patrol car after Stephens rode his bicycle across a busy road through traffic. Videotape from Lins dashboard camera showed that when Stephens saw Lin behind him as he rode into a duplexs parking lot, he slowed his bike and hopped off.

Lin, an Asian American, testified at the 2016 trial that he thought Stephens was trying to run away and jumped out of his car to cut him off. The video shows that after Stephens hopped off his bike, he walked toward Lin. The deputy is out of sight of the dash cam and Stephens is mostly out of sight when Lin opens fire four seconds after Stephens jumped off the bike. Stephens falls back into view with Lin close behind, still firing.

Lin testified at the 2016 civil trial that Stephens put his left hand behind his back and flashed a dark object that he thought was a gun. The dash cam video, however, showed Stephens had his phone in his right hand and that his left hand was empty.

Stephens attorneys argued that Lin must have pulled his gun almost immediately after leaving his car as he could not have opened fire so quickly otherwise.

The jury took 3 and 1/2 hours to side with Stephens, ruling that Lin had violated Stephens civil rights.

Prosecutors cleared Lin of criminal wrongdoing and he remained employed by the Palm Beach Sheriffs Office.
Four people who died in the crash of a small jet in Connecticut were identified Friday as a Boston couple who are both doctors, and two local pilots.

Police in Farmington said Courtney Haviland, 33, her husband, William Shrauner, 32, were passengers on the jet that crashed into a manufacturing company building Thursday morning shortly after takeoff from Robertson Airport in Plainville.

The pilots were William O'Leary, 55, of Bristol, and Mark Morrow, 57, of Danbury, Farmington police Lt. Tim McKenzie said.

The Farmington Police Department extends their deepest condolences to the friends and family of the four passengers who died in this tragic crash, McKenzie said in a statement.

Investigators with the National Transportation Safety Board were at the scene of the fiery crash Friday. The cause remains under investigation.

Haviland, who grew up in Farmington, was a fellow at Brown Pediatric Emergency Medicine in Providence, Rhode Island, working at Hasbro Children's Hospital. Shrauner was a cardiology fellow at Boston Medical Center. Both attended Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City.

We are deeply saddened by the tragic loss of one of our cardiology fellows, Dr. Will Shrauner, and his wife, Dr. Courtney Haviland, Boston Medical Center said in a statement Friday. Will ... was well known as an outstanding educator, physician, colleague and friend to many. Our thoughts and prayers are with Will and Courtneys family and loved ones.

The Cessna Citation 560X took off just before 10 a.m. on a flight headed to Dare County Regional Airport in Manteo, North Carolina, the Federal Aviation Administration said. McKenzie said there appeared to be some type of mechanical failure during takeoff.

The jet contacted the ground a short distance from the runway and crashed into a building at Trumpf Inc. The impact set off chemical fires inside the building. Two employees suffered minor injuries, officials said.

Burke Doar, senior vice president at Trumpf, said in a video posted on Twitter that company officials were assessing the damage Friday and trying to get production of machine tools and lasers for customers back on track.

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Associated Press writer Pat Eaton-Robb contributed to this report.
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP)  The federal agency that oversees schools that educate some Native Americans in nearly two dozen states issued an employee vaccine mandate Thursday.

The mandate covers more than 2,800 faculty and staff at 53 schools and dormitories operated directly by the U.S. Bureau of Education in states including Arizona, New Mexico and the Dakotas.

More than 180 schools operate under the agency's umbrella, but about two-thirds are run by tribes under contract with the federal government or through grants, including most on the Hopi reservation and neighboring Navajo Nation.

Hopi Vice Chairman Clark Tenakhongva said school officials can decide on their own whether to require vaccines.

It's a person's right, he said.

The Bureau of Indian Education, which is part of the Interior Department, joins a growing number of government agencies that are requiring vaccinations or regular COVID-19 testing.

Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez issued an executive order that requires all tribal employees under his watch to be fully vaccinated by Sept. 29 or regularly test negative for the coronavirus. Tribal spokesman Jared Touchin said that extends to employees of the Department of Dine Education.

Nez hasn't acted on legislation recently passed by the Navajo Nation Council to mandate vaccines for all tribal employees. The tribe has maintained a mask mandate throughout the pandemic.

Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said bureau employees must be vaccinated no later than Oct. 15 and provide proof. Those who don't comply could be fired or lose their contract, the Interior Department said.

The department recognizes that education plays a critical role in promoting equity in learning and health, particularly for Indigenous communities that have been disproportionately affected by COVID-19, the department said.

The schools will consider individual requests for exemptions but could require those who aren't vaccinated to follow safety measures established by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, undergo regular COVID-19 testing and prove they've tested negative before they return in-person to schools or dormitories.

The Bureau of Indian Education schools are operating under a mix of virtual and in-person settings that factor in the circumstances in surrounding communities, and input from tribal and health officials, said Interior Department spokesman Tyler Cherry. He said some schools have had confirmed COVID-19 cases but didn't elaborate.

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This story has been corrected to show Clark Tenakhongva is the Hopi vice chairman.
WARSAW, Poland (AP)  A top European Union official condemned Belarus and expressed support for Poland, Lithuania and Latvia on Friday as a state of emergency took effect in areas of eastern Poland following a surge in illegal migration.

EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell, speaking at a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Slovenia, said that the EUs foreign ministers stand in solidarity with Lithuania, Latvia and Poland and we are ready to take all measures to support them if the situation continues deteriorating.

He also said that they deplored that Lukashenkos regime has cynically used migrants and refugees to artificially create pressure on our Eastern borders.

We said that when we had some migrant pressure on the Spanish border, we said the Spanish border with Morocco is a European border. Now it is time to say that the borders of Lithuania and Poland, on the Eastern part of Europe, are also the borders of Europe, Borrell said.

Poland declared the state of emergency after thousands of migrants from Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere tried to illegally cross into the country from Belarus in recent weeks.

Poland and the Baltic states argue that Belarus' President Alexander Lukashenko is waging a hybrid war against their countries  EU nations that border Belarus  in revenge for EU sanctions.

All three nations have reinforced their borders and Lithuania and Latvia also declared states of emergency this summer.

Meanwhile, human rights officials have been voicing concern about a group of 32 Afghans stuck for more than three weeks on the Poland-Belarus border.

Polish officials said the state of emergency was needed to halt migration and prevent provocations following a recent protest at the border that involved 13 activists trying to cut a new razor wire barrier. They also cited possible risks linked to Russian military exercises beginning later this month that will also include elements in Belarus.

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Follow APs global migration coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/migration
DOVER, Del. (AP)  A former General Assembly employee accused of stealing money that had been donated to a colleague as a retirement gift was convicted Thursday on two felony counts.

A Kent County jury convicted Dawn Hill, 52, of theft from a person age 62 or older, and issuing a bad check over $1,500.

Hill is scheduled to be sentenced on Sept. 16. Prosecutors are not seeking prison time but instead will ask for probation and restitution.

Hill, who worked as an executive assistant to the legislatures controller general, was accused of taking money that had been raised in 2018 for former Secretary of the Senate Bernard Brady and using it for more than a year to pay her credit card bills.

Hill, who described Brady as a close friend during testimony on Wednesday, denied the allegations.

I gave every penny that I received directly to Bernard Brady, she said.

Hill and her attorney, Scott Chambers, declined to comment on the verdict Thursday.

Attorney General Kathy Jennings issued a statement praising the jurys decision, describing it a clear message that no one is above justice.

Today, a former public official  someone who was responsible for the General Assemblys fiscal accountability  is guilty of stealing from a lifetime public servant, Jennings said.

Brady, an unassuming and unfailingly polite man who became a beloved fixture in Legislative Hall during his 39 years of Senate service, retired in 2018. Hill led a fundraising effort among lawmakers and legislative staffers to raise money to fund a trip to Ireland for him.

Brady testified that he told Hill to hold on to the money until he was ready to book a trip, but prosecutors say she instead spent it on herself. Brady, who has yet to take the trip, received the money only after former Senate chief of staff Debra Allen told Hill in October 2019 that she needed to give it to him.

In November 2019, Hill gave Brady a check for $6,450 drawn on one of her bank accounts, and a separate check for $2,790 from another account  which had been closed almost a year earlier.

Hill testified that the bad check was simply a mistake, and that she had grabbed the wrong checkbook.

Prosecutor David Skoranski suggested that the fact that the account had been closed for so long and that the check was for almost $3,000 indicated that Hill knew what she was doing.

She wrote a bad check to buy more time, he argued.

After that check bounced, Hill gave Brady a check for $2,500 from yet another account, along with $250 cash, in December 2019.

Skoranski told jurors that donations for Brady totaled $10,245, but that he received only $9,200.

Hill testified that she collected $1,840 cash donations for Brady and $7,350 in checks, totaling $9,190.

Allen testified that she had given Hill $2,895 in cash from donations she had collected, a claim that Hill denied.

That never happened, Hill said.

Hill was indicted in July 2020 on charges of issuing a bad check and theft over $1,500 involving a victim over the age of 62. The jury declined to convict her on the latter charge, likely because of discrepancies in the amounts of money that were discussed in court, but did convict her of the lesser felony of theft involving a person 62 or older.
LONDON (AP)  English educator Richard Sheriff watched this week as a group of energetic 11-year-olds entered their new secondary school for the first time  finding their classrooms, eating in the cafeteria, racing around the halls.

The familiar rituals of a school sparking back to life were especially poignant after a year and a half of disruption driven by the coronavirus pandemic, said Sheriff, head of the Red Kite Learning Trust, a group of primary and secondary schools in the Yorkshire region. But in addition to the usual excitement, he had a new feeling this year: Trepidation.

The start of a new school year in many Northern Hemisphere nations comes as the highly infectious delta variant continues to drive a surge in coronavirus cases.

Still, many governments including Britains are determined to get children back into classrooms after 18 stop-start months of lockdowns, remote learning and abandoned exams. U.K. schools, have closed for three-month stretches twice since early 2020, and major year-end exams have been canceled two years running, throwing university admissions into chaos.

While most European countries are retaining some restrictions for schools, British Prime Minister Boris Johnsons Conservative government is pushing this year for something approximating pre-pandemic normality. It has removed social distancing and mask-wearing orders and no longer requires pupils to be grouped into bubbles to limit the spread of the virus.

Instead, the government says students should be tested regularly, and schools will be given guidance on improving ventilation.

Politicians and the group of scientists that advises the government have acknowledged its a gamble. The Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies said in August that it is highly likely that exponential increases will be seen in school-attending age groups after schools open.

A separate independent group of scientists that is often critical of the British governments pandemic response went further, calling the plan reckless.

But Education Secretary Gavin Williamson said testing would help root out cases, and defended the government's strategy as striking a sensible balance.

Britain, which lifted almost all pandemic restrictions on business and socializing in July, has among the highest coronavirus rates in Europe, with upwards of 30,000 new confirmed infections each day. Hospitalizations and deaths remain far lower than during previous surges, thanks to an inoculation campaign that has seen nearly 80% of people over 16 fully vaccinated. But Britain is still averaging about 100 coronavirus deaths every day.

Unlike the U.K., Italy and Spain are maintaining social distancing and masks for students and staff. Italy also requires teachers to show proof of vaccination or a recent negative coronavirus test, as do Turkey and Greece.

In France, where students headed back to school Thursday, face coverings must be worn by pupils 6 and up, and whole primary school classes will be sent home if one child tests positive.

In the Balkan nations that are among Europes poorest, meanwhile, low vaccination rates and surging outbreaks have made it difficult to get kids back to class after a year and a half.

In Kosovo, where the weekly average of new cases rose more than tenfold between July and August, the start of the school year has been delayed by two weeks until Sept. 13. Neighboring Albania also postponed school, and the government has ordered mandatory vaccinations for teachers. Only a third of Albanias population, and less than 20% of people in Kosovo, have been fully vaccinated.

Even in countries with high inoculation rates, warning bells are sounding in areas where schools have already returned. Scotland has seen cases soar to the highest level yet in the pandemic since schools reopened in mid-August. Israel, where school resumed Wednesday, is restricting students in areas with the highest infection rates to online learning for now.

In Germanys North Rhine-Westphalia, 30,000 students and almost 300 teachers in the state of 18 million are in quarantine, two weeks after school started. Infection rates in young people between 5 and 19 are by far the highest of any age group.

The United States may give hints of what lies ahead. American students returned to classrooms over the last month in many places just as the delta variant started to hammer the country, triggering dozens of outbreaks in schools. In some states, children now make up the largest proportion of new COVID-19 infections.

Many schools have shut down entirely or reverted to online learning because so many children and staff got sick or had close contact with those infected. In the state of Georgia, many school superintendents said they experienced more cases and quarantines in the first few weeks of class than during all of last year.

The start of school year has also led to fierce battles between parents and administrators over mask requirements that have devolved into violence at times.

European countries appear less polarized, but tensions around masks and vaccines are rippling in countries including Poland, where school leaders are bracing for pushback from parents.

I cannot imagine a 7-year-old wearing a mask anywhere at school, even for five minutes, said Alina Nowak, the mother of a student at a primary school in southern Warsaw. They are stressed out enough as it is, returning after the lockdown.

Teachers unions in several countries have opposed mandatory vaccinations for school staff. In Italy, protests against the governments green pass system of vaccine passports have been marred by violence, including an attack in which a reporter for the national daily La Repubblica was punched repeatedly in the face.

Many countries with high vaccine rates are banking on immunization to serve as a bulwark between infection and illness  especially in Britain since there are few other restrictions. Most U.K. teachers have been vaccinated, though its not mandatory. Sheriff says only two of his schools 1,400 staff have declined to get the vaccine.

But most schoolchildren aren't vaccinated. Britain is currently offering shots to those age 16 and up, as well as children ages 12 to 15 considered at heightened risk from the virus. The U.K.'s immunization authority has not recommended shots for all children in that age group, but the government is considering whether to join the United States, Canada and many European nations in vaccinating everyone 12 and over. It said it would make a decision shortly.

In the meantime, some schools are sticking to tougher measures than the government advised.

Pepe DiIasio is keeping masks in hallways and communal areas of Wales High School near Rotherham in northern England where he is the principal.

We felt wed start cautiously and keep masks rather than have to move back into that situation should there be a spike, he said.

My prediction is that well see more masks be worn in the next month. I mean, I hope not," he said. "But I think experience would tell us that they will.

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Associated Press writers Monika Scislowska in Warsaw, Poland, Josh Hoffner in Phoenix and reporters around the world contributed to this report.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP)  The terminated vaccine director in Tennessee has sued the state and says she wants to clear her name.

Michelle Fiscus was fired after Republican lawmakers objected to her promoting COVID-19 vaccinations for teenagers.

The lawsuit, first reported by Axios, explains that she couldnt have sent herself a muzzle from an account listed in a state investigation.

The Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security investigation indicated the package was sent from an Amazon account using a credit card, both in her name. But her attorney, Christopher Smith, said facts were left out of the state's report on the investigation, including that the credit card used to buy the muzzle had been lost and canceled for over a year.

The federal lawsuit says Fiscus has suffered emotional strain and stress over the incident and seeks compensatory damages and injunctive relief. It calls out Tennessee Department of Health Commissioner Lisa Piercey and its chief medical officer, Tim Jones.

The complaint and declaration speak for themselves. I look forward to my name being cleared despite the Tennessee Department of Healths denial of my right to do so. Fiscus said in a statement to WTVF-TV.

The police department in Nashville is conducting a separate investigation into who sent the package.
SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP)  Eulalia Garcia was stunned when she opened an envelope to find an invitation from none other than the president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele. It promised a bus would take her family the following day to receive a surprise Christmas gift.

Garcia had survived a mudslide that killed four in her extended family and destroyed their humble home on the slopes of the San Salvador volcano. It will be a good way to end the year after all weve been through, Garcia told her husband, Ramon Sanchez.

A neighbor in Los Angelitos, Ines Flamenco, was so grateful for her invitation that she spent three days earnings on a gift for the president -- a bouquet of red, white and pink roses that would turn into a beautiful photo opportunity for Bukele.

I wanted to tell him how happy I was, she recalled.

But the Christmas joy would be short-lived. Flamenco and many other guests of the president would soon discover their gifts came with a steep price tag.

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This story is part of a series, After the Deluge, produced with support from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

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The 2020 Atlantic hurricane season, one of the worst ever for Central America, wiped out homes and crops and displaced more than half a million people. Honduras and Guatemala were hardest hit by back-to-back hurricanes, and their governments failure to respond fueled soaring migration to the United States.

Even where one government in the region did act, its response was marred by politics, disrespect for the rule of law and a tendency to embrace simple answers to complicated problems.

In El Salvador, a populist president saw opportunity where tragedy struck. After the tropical storm in October, Bukele moved quickly to demonstrate that he could deliver to hundreds of families from Los Angelitos and another community, Nueva Israel, with a program that surely would be appreciated by his countrymen.

There was a problem, though. Bukele forgot to ask the people what they needed to recover. While some appreciated his help, others said they were left out and still others criticized his program, saying it was typical of the way the president governs -- using public funds for political propaganda.

He acts fast. He does not consult, does not plan and does not listen to anyone, said Francisco Altschul, a former ambassador of El Salvador to the United States.

___

On the night of Oct. 29, it rained so hard on the tin roof of their house that Ramon Sanchez fell into a hypnotic sleep of death, as he called it.

Heaps of broken trees and rocky soil created a dam high on the volcano during the torrent. The accumulation of groundwater throughout the winter, plus days of pounding rain, caused the dam to break and the landslide that devoured Los Angelitos.

Around 10:40 that night, Sanchez was awakened by what felt like an explosion. A rock had hit a tree behind my house, the walls shook and water started coming in everywhere.

Sanchez and Garcia grabbed their two children and got out, fighting the water. A creek to the left and a road to the right were flooded. They reached high ground nearby and, in minutes, a monstrous ball of earth, logs and water that had traveled nearly four kilometers (2 1/2 miles) down the volcanos slope came to a halt behind them.

Sanchezs mother, brother and two nephews who were sleeping in an adobe house next to theirs were buried alive.

They were among 11 people who died as 78 houses were demolished.

It was over as quickly as it began, Sanchez said.

Nearby, Ines Flamenco, 73, awoke to see her kitchen gone and her goats bleating for help. If I tried to get closer and got a foot in the current, I would be pulled go away and die with them, she recalled.

She started running only to encounter the mangled body of a neighbor dragged to death by mud and stones. She breaks into tears every time she remembers him.

After the deluge, everything seemed to happen fast, like in a movie. Contrary to what usually happens in Central America, solutions arrived, along with cameras recording everything for the Bukele administrations social media feed.

Within an hour of the mudslide, Defense Minister Rene Merino appeared on the scene and tagged President Bukele in Twitter to let him know that he had taken personal command of the search and rescue operation. Hundreds of soldiers and trusted inmates from a nearby prison started digging for survivors and bodies.

At dawn, Interior Minister Mario Duran joined the effort with drones and cameras. When he spoke to the media, he had smudges of dirt on his face -- proof that the government was in the thick of it.

Almost as quickly, Adolfo Barrios, mayor of Nejapa and a member of the opposition Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, arrived with his own camera and interrupted Duran. I just want to pose some questions to the minister, he said.

He couldnt even finish his first question when the general director of the police, Mauricio Arriaza Chicas, politely but firmly told him to leave. He organized his own press conference to say he, too, would divert money from the city budget to help the families.

Funerals and burials were held and shelters were set up in schools for the newly homeless. Within 48 hours, Housing Minister Michelle Sol arrived with a promise:. The government would give homeless families houses. And while they waited, she gave them money to rent houses.

Less than a month after the deluge, almost every family had moved to rental locations where, another month later, they received the invitation to meet with the president.

___

The trip to receive their surprise gift was 15 minutes and a world away. When the bus left the main road, they were surrounded by trucks and cranes. Garcia said, I think the gift is a house.

Her husband, a man of few words still traumatized by what had happened weeks before, replied, How can they give us a house?

They could. And they did.

The mudslide survivors crossed a security barrier and entered Ciudad Marsella, a huge private residential development under construction, then saw a succession of gleaming new houses on a street so clean and perfect that it didnt seem real. With mouths agape, they were taken off the bus and asked to form a line.

It was very fast. A guide came up to us, checked our names and took us straight to the door of a house, gave us the keys, said it was ours and told us to wait because the president was on his way, Garcia said.

Each family was given a check for $25,300 to buy their house and documents were exchanged. With the houses came a long list of conditions that they signed without reading them. And suddenly, these homeless families -- small-scale farmers, shopkeepers, gas deliverymen -- were part of a middle-class community.

In record time, 50 days after the storm, the government had delivered its gifts. Survivors from Los Angelitos and Nueva Israel, another neighborhood flooded in the capital in June 2020, received 272 furnished houses in a private development, with access to play spaces for children, a swimming pool, outdoor cinema, medical visits, psychological support, food bags, $250-a-month checks until August and a temporary exemption from paying the expenses for security and common premises.

President Bukele arrived with cameras for a short speech, hugs and pictures. At a podium, he lambasted Congress for failing to approve an emergency declaration that would have allowed him to use government funds without legislative oversight.

Instead, he had earmarked $5 million that he said was saved from the construction of a hospital in the capital to spend on a privately owned, already built residential community with available houses. There was no public bidding, just his decision to give the victims money to buy houses in Ciudad Marsella.

He knew the decision he had taken was considered unconstitutional by many, but Bukele said, rain cannot be unconstitutional.

Garcia was grateful: We lived in adobe in a ravine. When were we going to be able to buy a house? Never.

___

Then the problems began to emerge.

After hugging and giving the bouquet of roses to Bukele, Ines Flamenco remembered that she had to go back to Los Angelitos to tend her animals. She milks the five cows and some goats that survived the mudslide and sells that milk to make a living. She realized that the bus ride would cost $3 round trip.

I panicked. I barely make $5 a day.

Security guards at the gated community couldnt understand why she had to leave in the wee hours to get to her animals. And she felt they treated people like her differently than the middle-class residents who had bought their own homes.

Darker, with no vehicles, walking in and out, wearing humble clothes, we feel abused by guards who follow and question us all the time, she said.

Naively perhaps, she asked if she could bring her animals to the residence and let them graze in the common areas. They looked at her as if she was crazy.

I didnt know who to talk to, she said. So, she went to the mayor. How am I going to live? she asked him.

On Jan. 15, he called another press conference, this time to criticize the presidents actions, surrounded by a dozen people who were ready to give the houses back to the government.

Flamenco was the first person to speak. The house is beautiful, but I feel depressed, it is not for me. I want to ask the government if they could look for a place in the countryside, she said.

Others continued with similar complaints. In Ciudad Marsella, it is prohibited to keep animals, and that means no chickens and no eggs to eat or sell. In any case, they werent allowed to set up small stores to sell their farm goods. They also cannot plant trees for shade and fruit to eat.

Unemployed, displaced, earning $3 a day, they said they wouldnt be able to afford utility payments of about $70 per month when the government-subsidized period ends.

And there is no agricultural employment near Ciudad Marsella for laborers who earn $200 a month when they find consistent work.

The minister called me immediately, outraged, asking me why I was so ungrateful with a government that had given me so much, and had agreed to be used in an opposition political show, Flamenco said in tears.

They took me to a place without asking and then accused me of being ungrateful for a gift that I didnt ask for.

Garcia and Sanchez do not plan to give up their houses, but share the concerns of those who do. We have no income, we have no idea how we are going to survive, the government will have to give us solutions, Garcia said.

Sanchezs grandmother, Victoria Crisostoma, added, We are not allowed to cook with wood and we have to pay for gas. I cannot afford it. We are not allowed to grind corn so I cannot make my own tortillas and I have to buy them. I have no income.

As of July, at least 28 families had decided to return the houses. Like Flamenco, most of them went back to Los Angelitos.

I am defeated. Im afraid of dying here as soon as it starts raining again, Flamenco said.

___

For now, popular support is going Bukeles way. He is getting credit for providing housing to the victims of mudslides as his counterparts in Honduras and Guatemala have yet to do.

After trying to stop the presidents plans since the first night of the tragedy, the opposition mayor of Nejapa, lost local elections in a political landslide to the candidate of Nuevas Ideas -- Bukeles party.

But the problems continue.

The Orellana family is among the residents of Los Angelitos who did not receive an invitation from the president and feel no one is listening. Their shack of wood pallets and aluminum sheeting held up in the tropical storm, so they await the next hurricane season with fear.

They say we are not in danger, said Lourdes Orellana, 27. How do they know how high the water will rise the next time it rains?

Cecilia Flores ailing mother got a house in Ciudad Marsella because she held the title to their family house even though it was not completely destroyed.

But her mother, who did not want to be identified for fear of reprisals, could not live alone in the new house because of her health, and it was not large enough for all 11 family members. If Flores was to move in with her mother, shed have to leave her children behind with the others. Shed also have to leave her business selling lunches to workers at a nearby factory -- her only source of income.

They thought of renting out the new house to live off the income and fix up the old house, but it turned out they werent allowed to do that in the new neighborhood.

What is this property that cannot be sold or rented? Either it is ours or not, Flores said.

So they abandoned the gift house, which now sits empty, and returned to the adobe house where they survived the tragedy. But now the house in Los Angelitos has been seriously damaged by government when it cleared land after the mudslide. There are cracks running along the walls and the floor is sinking.

There were options for land nearby and tailored to our needs, Flores said, but instead of sitting down to listen and think about the options, Bukele looked for a quick photo op and created a bigger problem for people who already had a lot of problems.
CONCORD, N.H. (AP)  Tests confirmed Friday that a bleeding ulcer was the cause of New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu's flulike symptoms, his chief of staff said.

Sununu was admitted to a hospital earlier in the day after having flulike symptoms since Wednesday. He had tested negative three times for COVID-19.

Tests have confirmed that a bleeding ulcer caused the symptoms the Governor has been experiencing this week," Chief of Staff Jayne Millerick said in a statement. After blood transfusion today, he is doing much better. He is extremely grateful to the staff at Portsmouth Hospital for their outstanding care and to everyone who donates blood. As a blood donor himself, he is happy he paid it forward and grateful to all who do the same.

It was not immediately known how long Sununu would remain hospitalized.

Sununu, a Republican, had said Wednesday he tested negative for COVID-19, hours after his office said he wasnt feeling well, postponed a meeting and began isolating.

I woke up with symptoms similar to COVID and out of an abundance of caution I took two rapid antigen tests, which came back negative, and then followed up with a PCR test, which confirmed the negative," Sununu had said. I am going to rest up, and look forward to getting back to the State House soon!

Sununu, 46, is fully vaccinated against COVID-19. He received the single-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine on April 10.

He took a trip to Kentucky on Monday to see how officials there are handling a surge in COVID cases.

State Senate President Chuck Morse, a Republican, said he hopes Sununu has a quick recovery.

The entire Senate sends its best wishes to him, and I know people all across New Hampshire are keeping him in their prayers," he said in a statement.
DALY CITY, Calif. (AP)  Multiple people were shot in an SUV early Friday on a California freeway, highway patrol officials said.

The shooting happened around 1:30 a.m. along Interstate 280 in Daly City, California Highway Patrol told news outlets.

Officials didn't immediately give an exact number of people wounded or their conditions.

Troopers later checked for evidence inside an SUV that came to a stop against a concrete wall on the highway's shoulder. The vehicles windows appeared to have been shot out.

Southbound lanes on the freeway out of San Francisco were closed during the emergency response, but reopened in time for the morning commute.
(The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.)

Susan H. Kamei, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

(THE CONVERSATION) As soon as Islamic extremists were identified as having carried out four deadly, coordinated attacks on U.S. soil in the early morning of Sept. 11, 2001, U.S. Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta started hearing calls from the public to ban Arab Americans and Muslims from all flights  and even to round them up and detain them.

In the chaotic hours and days following the attacks, Mineta did not yet know that his childhood incarceration by the federal government in the aftermath of Japans Pearl Harbor bombing nearly 60 years earlier would be a crucial element in decisions about how the George W. Bush administration responded to 9/11.

Enduring the wartime hardships

Earlier that spring, President Bush had invited Mineta and his wife, Deni, to spend time at Camp David, the presidential retreat. One night after dinner, the president asked Mineta about his imprisonment during World War II.

For three hours, Mineta, an 11-term member of Congress who also had served as President Bill Clintons secretary of commerce, shared his experience of wartime detention and its effects on him and his family.

On Feb. 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt had issued an executive order authorizing the military to round up and remove people of Japanese descent from their homes on the West Coast. Mineta, his parents, three sisters and a brother were among the approximately 110,000 men, women and children of Japanese ancestry who were escorted by armed guards to hastily constructed government detention facilities in desolate inland locations.

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Without any charges brought against them, they were held under harsh conditions for the duration of the war simply because they were the same race as the enemy.

Minetas parents, Kunisaku and Kane Mineta, and other first-generation immigrants from Japan were prohibited by federal law from becoming naturalized citizens. After the declaration of war, they were classified as enemy aliens, no matter their loyalty to America, their adopted country. Their U.S.-born children, like young Norm, were included in the military detention orders as non-aliens  the governments term invented to avoid recognizing that they were natural-born U.S. citizens.

In the spring of 1942, before the family was rounded up by the military, Minetas fathers business license for his insurance agency was suspended, and the family bank accounts confiscated. The family scrambled to dispose of their household belongings since they could only take what they could carry. Ten-year-old Norms great heartbreak was having to give away his dog, Skippy. And yet, when he boarded a train with his family for an unknown destination, Mineta was wearing his Cub Scout uniform to show his patriotism.

The Minetas arrived at the Santa Anita Assembly Center in Arcadia, California, in May 1942, and six months later were transferred to the Heart Mountain Relocation Center near Cody, Wyoming. During the war years, the Minetas and those incarcerated at nine other camps run by the governments War Relocation Authority lived behind barbed wire, under searchlights, with armed soldiers in guard towers pointing guns at them.

From San Jose to Washington

In his foreword to my book, When Can We Go Back to America?: Voices of Japanese American Incarceration during World War II, Mineta describes how he was raised to be positive about the privilege of being an American citizen, in spite of the crushing injustice of indefinite imprisonment without cause.

When the Mineta family was able to return to San Jose, California, following the end of the war, they put the challenges of their incarceration behind them and prioritized rebuilding their lives and standing in the community. Mineta was elected student body president at San Jose High School in his senior year and graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in 1953.

After serving three years as an Army intelligence officer in the Korean War, he joined his fathers insurance business and got involved in local politics. In 1971, he became the mayor of San Jose, the first Asian American mayor of a major American city. Then in 1974 he became the first Japanese American from outside of Hawaii to be elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.

In addition to being the first Asian American to hold a presidential cabinet position, he was one of the few individuals to serve two presidents from different political parties; in Bushs cabinet, he was the only Democrat.

Changing the course of history

The day after the 9/11 attacks, Secretary Mineta was at the White House in a meeting with the president, Cabinet members and Democratic and Republican congressional leaders. The discussion turned to the concerns of Arab Americans, Muslims and those from Middle Eastern countries over the growing demands reported in the media that they be placed in detention facilities.

Mineta later recalled the president saying, We want to make sure that what happened to Norm in 1942 doesnt happen today.

Bush later explained: One of the important things about Norms experience is that sometimes we lose our soul as a nation. The notion of all equal under God sometimes disappears. And 9/11 certainly challenged that premise. So right after 9/11, I was deeply concerned that our country would lose its way and treat people who may not worship like their neighbor as non-citizens. So, I went to a mosque. And in some ways, Norms example inspired me. In other words, I didnt want our country to do to others what had happened to Norm.

At Minetas direction, on Sept. 21, 2001, the Department of Transportation emailed major airlines and aviation associations cautioning against racial profiling or targeting or otherwise discriminating against passengers who appeared to be Middle Eastern, Muslim or both. The message reminded the airlines that not only is it wrong, but it is also illegal to discriminate against people based on their race, ethnicity, or religion. It said the department would be on the lookout to ensure that airport security measures were not unlawfully discriminatory.

Five years later, in December 2006, Bush presented Mineta with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the countrys highest civil honor, paying tribute to Minetas lifetime of public service. While the government of the 32nd U.S. president would not acknowledge Mineta as a citizen, the 43rd president called him a patriot and an example of leadership, devotion to duty and personal character to his fellow citizens.

In 2019, Mineta reflected on how his childhood experience, and the events of 9/11, taught him about how vulnerable U.S. civilians are to being rounded up and detained when the nation is under threat: You think it wont happen again? Yeah, it can.

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This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article here: https://theconversation.com/how-memories-of-japanese-american-imprisonment-during-wwii-guided-the-us-response-to-9-11-166928.
DANVILLE, Ill. (AP)  A central Illinois man has been sentenced to 96 years in prison for the 2017 slaying of his longtime girlfriend, whose body was burned and dismembered.

A Vermilion County judge sentenced Ocheil Keys, 30, on Thursday to 60 years in prison on a murder charge for Barbara Rose's killing, 30 years for dismembering her body and another six years for concealing her death.
MISSION, Kan. (AP)  Lawsuits were filed Friday challenging a mask mandate for students and staff in elementary schools in Kansas most populous county and another mandate requiring everyone 5 and older in a small rural county to mask.

The suits, filed against officials in Johnson County in the Kansas City area and smaller Morris County, are believed to be the first since the state's Supreme Court granted a stay last week allowing enforcement of a pandemic-inspired law. The law allows those who oppose mask requirements or restrictions on public gatherings imposed by Kansas counties to challenge them in court and obtain a ruling within 10 days.

The stay will remain in effect until the high court can rule on a lower courts ruling that declared the law unconstitutional.

Ryan Kriegshauser, the attorney who filed both of the suits, said the issue is that the mandates aren't limited enough to comply with the law. The Johnson County mandate is set to last through May 31. And the one Morris County, which is located about 100 miles (160.93 kilometers) southwest of the Kansas City area, will remain in effect until it is rescinded by the health officer of the 5,400-resident county.

Neither of these lawsuits say that you cant have mask mandates," Kriegshauser said. It is just saying that you need to come back and revisit them within a decent period of time and you need to have adequate exemptions."

Neil Litke, a truck driver and former Marine, sued over the Morris County mandate, which contains no exemptions for religious activity, strenuous physical activity or for those working in private office space that can be closed. Kriegshauser said Litke just believes in individual freedom and feels like the order should have more exceptions in them if people want to engage in those exceptions.

The Johnson County lawsuit is filed on behalf of a middle school student in the Blue Valley district, who is identified only by her initials of M.M.C. The suit said enforcement of the order hurts her emotional and mental well being.

Johnson County spokeswoman Theresa Freed and Morris County counselor Bill Kassebaum said they can't discuss pending litigation.

The law that is at the focus of the litigation was cited by several counties when they ditched their mandates and COVID-19 restrictions in the spring. The law does not apply to school board decisions. A previous version of the law did apply to schools, but those provisions expired in June when top Republican lawmakers ended a state of emergency for the pandemic over Gov. Laura Kellys objections.

As of last week, 30 of the state's 50 largest districts had mask mandates in place, with most passed in the last month during often heated meetings and protests. Those 30 districts educate a combined 262,585 of the states 476,435 public schoolchildren.

Some districts that started the year without masks have struggled. The 1,400-student Wellington district in south-central Kansas was forced to shutter its schools a week ago because of an outbreak. Its board took action this week that will require students to mask up when school resumes on Tuesday.

Hospitals also are being strained by a delta-variant driven surge in COVID-19 cases, with many ICUs full and staff in short supply.

In response, the GOP-led Kansas State Finance Council on Friday approved up to $50 million in federal COVID-19 relief funds towards premium pay for nurses and frontline workers. The pay would be capped at $13 an hour and $25,000 a year to comply with federal guidelines.

Jon Rolph, a Wichita restaurant company CEO who sits on a task force with top legislators that recommended the proposal, said a reason for the program is to make sure were saying loud and clear how much we appreciate these nurses, these frontline workers, who are experiencing all kinds of stress.

___

Andy Tsubasa Field contributed from this report from Topeka, Kansas. Field 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.
ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP)  Minnesota Senate Minority Leader Susan Kent has announced she is stepping down from her role as minority leader and plans to retire when her term ends next year.

Kent, a Woodbury Democrat, has served in the Senate for nearly 10 years and said in a statement Thursday that she decided to retire so she could focus more on her family. Kent said she hasn't seen her mother, who is in an assisted living facility in Dallas, for two years due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
SEOUL, South Korea (AP)  North Korean leader Kim Jong Un ordered officials to wage a tougher epidemic prevention campaign in our style after he turned down some foreign COVID-19 vaccines offered via the U.N.-backed immunization program.

During a Politburo meeting Thursday, Kim said officials must bear in mind that tightening epidemic prevention is the task of paramount importance which must not be loosened even a moment, the official Korean Central News Agency reported Friday.

While stressing the need for material and technical means of virus prevention and increasing health workers' qualifications, Kim also called for further rounding off our style epidemic prevention system, KCNA said.

Kim previously called for North Koreans to brace for prolonged COVID-19 restrictions, indicating the nation's borders would stay closed despite worsening economic and food conditions. Since the start of the pandemic, North Korea has used tough quarantines and border closures to prevent outbreaks, though its claim to be entirely virus-free is widely doubted.

On Tuesday, UNICEF, which procures and delivers vaccines on behalf of the COVAX distribution program, said North Korea proposed its allotment of about 3 million Sinovac shots be sent to severely affected countries instead. North Korea was also slated to receive AstraZeneca shots through COVAX, but their delivery has been delayed.

According to UNICEF, North Koreas health ministry still said it would continue to communicate with COVAX over future vaccines.

Some experts believe North Korea may want other vaccines, while questioning the effectiveness of Sinovac and the rare blood clots seen in some recipients of the AstraZeneca vaccine.

The previously allocated 1.9 million AstraZeneca doses would be enough to vaccinate 950,000 people  only about 7.3% of the Norths 26 million people  meaning North Korea would still need much more quantities of vaccine to inoculate its population.

Leif-Eric Easley, a professor of international studies at Seouls Ewha Womans University, said North Korea is likely angling to receive more effective jabs from COVAX and then strategically allocate them domestically.

Pyongyang appears to have issues with COVAX involving legal responsibility and distribution reporting requirements. So it might procure vaccines from China to deliver to border regions and soldiers while allocating COVAX shots to less sensitive populations, Easley said.

The Kim regime likely wants the most safe and effective vaccine for the elite, but administering Pfizer would require upgraded cold chain capability in Pyongyang and at least discreet discussions with the United States. The Johnson & Johnson option could also be useful to North Korea given that vaccines portability and one-shot regimen," he said.

In a recent U.N. report on the Norths human rights situation, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres asked North Korea to take all necessary measures, including through international cooperation and assistance, to provide access to COVID-19 vaccines for all persons, without discrimination.

He also asked North Korea to form a plan to enable diplomats and aid workers to return to the North and revive humanitarian aid distribution systems as soon as possible in conjunction with its COVID-19 vaccine rollout.

After their meeting in Seoul last month, Sung Kim, the top U.S. diplomat on North Korea affairs, and his South Korean counterpart Noh Kyu-duk told reporters that they discussed humanitarian cooperation with North Korea in providing anti-virus resources, sanitation and safe water.
SEATTLE (AP)  A Port Angeles man remains in jail as he awaits transfer to federal custody for allegedly assaulting a woman at Olympic National Park with whom he was in a relationship.

The Sunday incident closed some of the park while authorities searched for an armed man who had ranted about an impending revolution, according to court documents.

After disappearing into the woods wearing a tactical vest and carrying an assault-style rifle, a shotgun and handguns on Sunday, Caleb Chapman, 41, was arrested Tuesday evening, The Seattle Times reported. No information about the circumstances of his arrest has been released.

A federal complaint on Wednesday accusing Chapman of assault by striking, beating or wounding was filed in U.S. District Court in Tacoma.

U.S. attorneys have requested a detention hearing but it's unclear from court records when Chapman will appear in federal court. It wasn't immediately known if he has a lawyer to comment on his behalf.

According to the complaint, Chapman began acting erratically after using meth on Sunday, delivering notes to two acquaintances around 2 a.m. The notes apparently described Chapmans grievances with the White House, his difficulty in buying ammunition and his contention that an imminent revolution would start in the next 30 days in Texas and on the Olympic Peninsula, the complaint said.

Chapmans girlfriend later told agents that while driving to the Deer Park campground, Chapman stopped his truck and walked into the woods. She said she saw embers from a fire and that he returned smelling of gasoline, according to the complaint.

A fire was reported Sunday near power lines on the Hurricane Ridge parkway, park officials said.

After arriving at the campground around 6 a.m., Chapman became upset, told his girlfriend she was going to die because of the revolution, made suicidal comments and threw a can of soup which cut the woman's leg, according to the complaint. He is then accused of repeatedly slamming the womans head against a car seat before walking away screaming and yelling, it says.

The girlfriend told agents she was concerned that hed act violently toward law enforcement officers if he felt threatened, the federal complaint says.

Hurricane Ridge Road and Obstruction Point Road were temporarily closed to the public, but have reopened. Deer Park Road and the campground remained closed as of Thursday afternoon.
CONCORD, N.H. (AP)  A New Jersey man accused of killing two men at a New Hampshire hotel now faces a first-degree murder charge in one of the deaths.

Theodore Luckey, 42, of Asbury Park, New Jersey, was arrested last month on two counts of second-degree murder and three counts of being a felon in possession of a deadly weapon. Police responding to multiple 911 calls on Aug. 21 went to the Country Inn and Suites hotel in Bedford where they found two dead men, one in the lobby and one in a guest room.
SAN DIEGO (AP)  The Marine Corps on Friday halted waterborne operations for its new amphibious vehicle that resembles an armored seafaring tank after identifying a problem with its towing mechanism.

Marine Corps spokesman Maj. Jim Stenger said the decision was made out of an abundance of caution.

The Amphibious Combat Vehicle was obtained by the Marine Corps last year to replace the Vietnam-era Amphibious Assault Vehicle, or AAV, which suffered problems. Last year, eight Marines and one sailor were killed off the coast of San Diego inside an AAV after becoming trapped inside the tank.

Marine Corps leaders after the July 2020 accident vowed to make safety a bigger priority.

The break in waterborne operations come a day after the families of the eight Marines and one sailor filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles against the manufacturer, BAE Systems.

Realistic training is a vital component of readiness, and the Marine Corps is committed to ensuring Marines train under the safest conditions possible; this includes ensuring the functionality of vehicles and equipment," Stenger said in a statement Friday.

Lawyer Eric Dubin, who is representing the families, has said BAE Systems knew for a decade or more about a design defect that makes it nearly impossible for troops to open the cargo hatches and escape the 26-ton amphibious vehicles when they sink.

The troops last summer were trapped inside for 45 minutes before the vehicle, known as an AAV, sank.

An investigation by the maritime branch found the accident off San Clemente Island was caused by inadequate training, shabby maintenance of the 35-year-old amphibious assault vehicles and poor judgment by commanders.

BAE Systems also was selected by the Marine Corps to make the new vehicles or ACVs, which the military started receiving last year.

BAE Systems has declined to comment on the lawsuit.

The vehicles have been at the heart of the Marine Corps amphibious operations, carrying troops from ship to shore for both combat and humanitarian operations since the early 1980s. It can traverse both land and sea.
The day after Hurricane Ida struck Louisiana, Delaney Nolan spent hours biking around New Orleans, handing out money to people who needed to pay for supplies or for the hotel rooms where they'd taken shelter.

Once the cash ran out  banks were closed, and ATMs were empty or no longer running without electricity  Nolan Venmo'd people the money they needed. As an organizer for the mutual aid group Southern Solidarity in Louisiana, she and her team also handed out free meals from restaurants that were cooking up their food stockpiles before they spoiled.

Nolan is among the faces of philanthropy that are tending to the immediate personal losses inflicted by the hurricane. Mutual aid networks like Southern Solidarity spring into action to supplement the more established relief services from federal and local governments, as well as larger charities.

The networks, in which community members pool resources and distribute donations to care for one another, seek to avoid the traditional charity model of giver and receiver. They grew in popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic as communities across the country faced dire needs. And now they are mobilizing in the wake of other disasters like Hurricane Ida.

Mutual aid is the most effective help right now, Nolan said. It's built on communications with a lot of neighbors and existing relationships, from personally knowing what people need.

Established philanthropic groups are joining to support the mutual aid groups, too. Jasmine Araujo, the founder of Southern Solidarity, said that days after the hurricane hit, the organization GlobalGiving had called her and said there would be donations coming to her group quickly.

Most of our funds, though, come from individual donors, she said. We dont usually get a lot of grants from bigger groups right away.

GlobalGiving launched its Hurricane Ida Relief Fund over the weekend to speed distribution of funds for those in need, said Donna Callejon, who leads the group's disaster response effort.

The funds come in, and we mobilize quickly, said Callejon, adding that because GlobalGiving has worked in the area for years, it has a list of partners that have already been vetted to receive funds. We have experience working in Louisiana with a lot of historically disenfranchised groups.

Another Gulf is Possible, a collective of 11 organizers and artists based in Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida had stored up 30 kits of solar panels, batteries, lanterns, power banks, iPads and water filters in preparation for the storm. They are gearing up to distribute the items to community organizers in New Orleans and the predominantly Native American communities of Grand Bayou and Grand Bois. But reaching people in some areas has been difficult because of the power outages, said Bryan Parras, a member of the group.

People need everything, said Anne White Hat, a Louisiana resident who's part of the group, which has been collecting masks, googles, and gloves to protect communities from mold or lead during clean-up efforts.

Mutual aid efforts allow everyone, no matter their status, to contribute what they are able, said Tanya Gulliver-Garcia, a director at the Washington-based Center for Disaster Philanthropy. The pandemic showed us that even in a cash-dependent society, people and their stuff are still a valuable resource."

Most of the nation's 800 formal mutual aid groups formed during the pandemic, according to the group Mutual Aid Hub. Community fridges, for example, have sprung up in many cities since last year, allowing anyone to donate and take food.

Members of Mutual Aid Disaster Relief, another group, have been circulating an online form where people sign up to help remove trees, share meals, host spaces for donation collections, provide counseling and perform other services for those impacted by Ida. About 90 new people have signed up to contribute in the past few days, a regional coordinator estimates.

Help has also come from grassroots rescue groups. In the aftermath of Hurricane Ida, Paul Middendorf, a volunteer disaster responder from Houston, traveled across hard-hit LaPlace, driving home to home in a high-water vehicle in an effort to rescue Louisianans from chest-deep floodwater.

Most of those rescued were in shock, Middendorf said, with some stationing themselves in their attics, fearful of rising waters and with nowhere to go. Many sought help from CrowdSource Rescue, a Houston-based disaster response group that connects people seeking help with trained volunteers. Along with Middendorf, it has aided dozens of other volunteers do rescues or wellness checks during the disaster response.

By the time Middendorf arrived at the homes, most of the floodwaters had receded. But some residents still feared leaving their attics. A couple of the families, I literally coaxed down the attic as the waters receded, Middendorf said.

CrowdSource Rescue, which launched in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey in 2017, directs people seeking help to call 911 before contacting them. The group says it provides assistance when local officials are overwhelmed with requests. Matthew C. Marchetti, the group's executive director, says its average donation size is $60. So far, Marchetti says he's confirmed that the volunteers have rescued 364 people from floodwaters using boats and high-water vehicles.

Volunteers connected with CrowdSource had been fielding requests for help since Ida made landfall, but the fierce winds had initially made it impossible for them to respond. Middendorf, of Houston, rode out the storm at a parking lot in Baton Rouge, before heading 56 miles (90 km) southwest to LaPlace, where he found many trapped by floodwaters. Requests for help also came in for Lafitte, another town that suffered major flood damage.

Despite coordination efforts amongst different rescue groups, Marchetti says there were overlaps in responses. Similar concerned pleas for help had flooded into Cajun Navy Relief, a group of Louisiana volunteers who help with search and rescue after hurricanes and floods.

Owen Belknap, a student at Louisiana Tech University who leads one of the rescue teams, said his team managed to rescue one person in Laffitte. Belknap and his friends, also volunteers with Cajun Navy, began helping with disasters three years ago when a tornado swept through their hometown of Ruston, Louisiana. They joined the Cajun Navy last year as Hurricane Laura pummeled southwest Louisiana, killing 27 people.

Once a business major, Belknap transitioned to studying nursing as he grew more passionate about rescue efforts. With a few more days before the school year begins, he has time, he said, to help cut knocked-down trees and distribute supplies to the affected communities.

Amid the devastation, institutional funders have also opened their pocketbooks. Among them, the family foundation of Arthur M. Blank, the co-founder of The Home Depot and owner of the Atlanta Falcons, has pledged $500,000 each to a community foundation in New Orleans and The American Red Cross, whose volunteers are on the ground working on recovery efforts. Verizons company foundation has said its donating $100,000 to the Baton Rouge-based Foundation for Louisiana to aid those impacted by Ida.

My inbox is really full right now with queries from the funder community asking where to really pitch in, said Regine Webster, the vice president of Center for Disaster Philanthropy.

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This version is edited to include more states where organizers for Another Gulf is Possible currently live and clarifies Nolan's title.

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The Associated Press receives support from the Lilly Endowment for coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits. The AP is solely responsible for all content. For all of APs philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP)  A North Carolina appeals court on Friday blocked an order that had allowed tens of thousands of felony offenders who aren't serving prison or jail time to immediately register to vote and cast ballots.

The state Court of Appeals agreed to halt last week's decision by trial judges to expand when North Carolina residents convicted of felonies have the right to vote again.

The plaintiffs immediately appealed Fridays decision to the state Supreme Court to seek a reversal. Otherwise, the stay would remain in place until the merits of pending litigation filed by civil rights groups and ex-offenders challenging state law on the restoration of voting rights is heard by the appeals court.

The decision by the intermediate-level appeals court means that  if left in place  the offenders could not vote in this fall's municipal elections. It also likely would bring confusion, since some felons affected by last week's trial court order almost certainly would have registered to vote by now. Voting rights groups have already started registration drives targeting the estimated 56,000 people affected by the decision.

The North Carolina Constitution forbids a person convicted of a felony from voting unless that person shall be first restored to the rights of citizenship in the manner prescribed by law. A 1973 law laying out those restoration rules requires the unconditional discharge of an inmate, of a probationer, or of a parolee.

The trial court order, however, said that election officials cant deny voter registration to any convicted felon who is only on probation, parole or post-release supervision. An attorney for the plaintiffs said the trial courts decision represented the largest expansion of North Carolina voting rights since the 1960s.

The collective will of the state is stifled when so many of our citizens are unjustifiably not able to participate in our democracy, the plaintiffs said in a news release announcing the Supreme Court appeal. That exclusion of our neighbors voices is morally and constitutionally wrong.

Last year, the same trial judges ruled felony offenders couldn't be denied the right to vote if the reason their rights hadn't been restored was due to unpaid fines or restitution. That small expansion of voting access remains enforceable, although the plaintiffs' lawyers wrote Friday to the Supreme Court that it can't be carried out accurately by elections officials.

Republican legislative leaders, some of whom were defendants in the lawsuit, were pleased with Fridays decision. They had earlier accused the majority of the three trial judges who approved last weeks ruling of judicial activism.

The decision to block the lower courts ruling affirms that judges cant just replace laws they dont like with new ones, Sen. Warren Daniel, a Burke County Republican, said in a news release.

During a four-day trial last month, the plaintiffs' lawyers argued the current law needed to be struck down because it was racially discriminatory by disproportionately affecting Black offenders and violated the state constitution.

Their witnesses included a historian who said felony disenfranchisement had origins from a Reconstruction-era effort to intentionally prevent Black residents from voting. The two judges who issued last week's order wrote there was no denying the insidious, discriminatory history surrounding efforts at restoring voting rights in North Carolina.

The overwhelming and undisputed effect of this law is to disproportionately disenfranchise Black people by wide margins throughout the entire state, plaintiffs' lawyer Daryl Atkinson wrote in urging the Court of Appeals to keep the trial court ruling enforced. Changing the rules again now would cause chaos in the first round of municipal elections in October.

But private attorneys for House Speaker Tim Moore and Senate leader Phil Berger said the trial court went too far with its order and that there's no evidence the 1973 law  which actually eased obstacles for ex-felons to vote  is discriminatory in practice today.

The trial court panel has thrown (voting) rules into disarray for no discernible reason, attorney Nicole Moss wrote this week, adding the injunction contravenes the well-established equitable principle that courts should not change election laws on the eve of elections.
Morgan Lee/AP

SANTA FE, N.M. (AP)  A group of New Mexico House Democrats outlined a package of criminal justice bills intended to combat crime that includes penalties for failing to safely store guns, enhanced pay for police and changes in the pretrial supervision and bail system.

A record-setting number of homicides in Albuquerque this year is spurring concerns about violent crime and shortcomings of the police and justice system.
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP)  Oklahoma Attorney General John OConnor said Friday that he is dropping his appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court in the first-degree murder case of death row inmate Shaun Bosse.

OConnor said he made the decision after a state appellate court ruled the high courts decision in a landmark tribal sovereignty case  dubbed the McGirt decision  does not apply retroactively.

As a result of that ruling, Bosses conviction and sentence were reinstated earlier this week. Bosse, who is not Native American, was convicted in the 2010 killings of Katrina Griffin and her two young children, who were Native American, on land within the Chickasaw Nations historic reservation.

Still, O'Connor said he was pushing forward with U.S. Supreme Court appeals in other McGirt-related cases, asking the high court to either overturn or limit the decision. O'Connor claims last year's 5-4 decision was wrongly decided and has led to a criminal justice crisis" in Oklahoma where federal and tribal courts are overwhelmed trying to prosecute cases that were previously handled in state courts.

Although the Bosse case has now been resolved, many other criminal convictions were overturned because of the McGirt decision," O'Connor said in a statement. Each case is important to the victims of the terrible crimes at issue, so we will continue to appeal these decisions to the U.S. Supreme Court."

Attorneys for some of the tribes have argued that the states dire warnings are overblown, and federal and tribal courts are working to handle the additional caseload.

If the state continues trying to overturn rather than implement the law, we will continue to shine a light in court on the risks that attend their placing political position ahead of the publics interest in the law," Stephen Greetham, senior counsel for the Chickasaw Nation, said in a statement. In the meantime, we renew our call for all governments to work together out of our shared commitment to the publics safety and effective law enforcement.
ATHENS, Greece (AP)  Europes top human rights body on Friday called on Greeces parliament to withdraw articles included in draft legislation that would impose heavy penalties on nongovernmental organizations that carry out unsanctioned rescue operations of migrants at sea.

The Council of Europes human rights commissioner, Dunja Mijatovic, said in a statement that the proposed changes would seriously hinder the life-saving work carried out by NGOs.

Greeces center-right government has toughened border controls since taking office two years ago and has promised additional restrictions in response to the ongoing crisis in Afghanistan. It has recently extended a border wall along its frontier and installed a high-tech surveillance network.

Under draft legislation currently being debated in parliament, members of charities involved in rescue operations conducted without coast guard permission could be jailed for up to a year and fined 1,000 euros ($1,190), with the NGOs facing additional fines. The bill is also aimed at simplifying and speeding up deportation procedures.

Mijatovic said some of the measures in the bill had been toughened after a period of public consultation for the draft legislation had ended.

Civil society organizations are instrumental in protecting the rights of refugees, asylum-seekers and migrants, and play a major role in reporting and documenting pushbacks or other human rights violations, she said.

Greece has rejected repeated allegations by human rights groups that it carries out summary deportations, or pushbacks, that deny migrants the right to seek international protection.

Lesbos and other Greek islands close to the coast of Turkey were the main entry point for refugees and migrants into the European Union during mass displacements in 2015 and 2016 largely caused by wars in Syria and Iraq. More than a million people used the route to cross into Greece and onto other European countries during the crisis.

Speaking at a security summit in Slovenia earlier this week, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis expressed support for a decision by EU home affairs ministers to seek cooperation with countries in the region to prevent illegal migration from Afghanistan.

I think what happened in 2015 was a mistake. We acknowledge it openly. We (must) address the need to support refugees closer to the source of the problem, which is Afghanistan, Mitsotakis said.

Based in Strasbourg, France, the Council of Europe was founded in 1949 to monitor human rights across the continent, and currently has 47 member states including Turkey and Russia. It is a distinct organization from the European Union.

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Follow APs global migration coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/migration
WICHITA, Kan. (AP)  A Dodge City man who was arrested in connection to a shooting death near a Wichita park is no longer facing a possible murder charge, police said Friday.

Wichita police said Friday morning that Caesar Hermosillo, 28, was arrested on possible charges of first-degree murder, aggravated robbery and on an outstanding warrant.
To keep tabs on every D.C. restaurant and bar opening is folly. But to keep tabs on the most worthy? Yeomans work, and were proud to do it. Thus we present Table Stakes, a monthly rundown of the five (or so) must-know spots that have swung wide their doors in the past thirty (or so). Lets eat.

Its hard to tell whos more excited to be back in restaurants: the diners or the hardworking people behind the scenes. This summer, the city has welcomed several new spots, ranging from white-linened French bistro tables to innovative, Indian-inspired fusion fare. As summer slowly marches towards a close, heres where were most excited to be dining.



NE DC

Youre here because youre a fan of both spice and spirits, so the idea of pairing expertly crafted Indian-ish food and cocktails is just your cup of chai. Nepalese chef Suresh Sundas offers a welcome departure from traditional curry house fare, inspired in part by his work with chef Vikram Sunderam. Local ingredients are a cornerstone of this menu, which is positively filled with international twists and turns.

Youre dining on Indian classics with a twist. Naan is sprinkled with zaatar; chicken reshmi kebab gets a dose of funky blue cheese and a bright sour cherry sauce. Paneer is bathed in pesto before taking a trip through the tandoori oven, while pomegranate aloo is spiked with tingling Sichuan pepper and bright sumac. Even burrata appears atop buttery black dal, and a halwa dessert is rich with earthy beetroot. Whatever dishes you choose, youre pairing them with one of six ever-changing cocktails from drinks expert Dante Datta and bar manager Tom Martinez: A green chutney-scented kefir daiquiri is bright and herbaceous, while a cashew butter-washed whiskey Old Fashioned boasts a spiced undertone with ginger and saffron.

1451 Maryland Avenue NE

Lupos Signature Carbonara Pizza Rey Lopez



14th Street

Youre here because youre a pizza fan who thinks youve seen it all, and youre ready to stand corrected. And oh, how corrected youll stand, in this bright dining room with Mediterranean-hued seats and a long tile-and-marble bar. Lupo Verde stans, beware: theres no pasta here, but we think youll be just as impressed with this offshoot.

Youre dining on pizzas ranging from the kinda-classic Margherita Rivisitata with passata and two kinds of mozz to a carbonara pie with pecorino cream and guanciale. More adventurous diners can feast both eyes and palate on the Lupo Marino: a squid ink-infused base topped with dashi tomato sauce, calamari, prawns and mussels. Or opt for the Manzo e Formaggio, an Irish-Italian fusion pie (yeah, you read that right) made with corned beef, fontina, peppers, onions and Dijonnaise. The menu also features some intriguing small plates and panuozzo sandwiches. For dessert, dig into a pizza bedecked with Nutella, berries and baby marshmallows.

1908 14th Street, NW



Shaw

Youre here because youre a pasta fan who wants to see a Michelin-star-dusted approach to this pantry staple in a gilded, dramatic space fit for royalty. The prix-fixe menu from the Neapolitan team boasts modernist touches at a fairly reasonable price, considering the technicity on display ($50 gets you three courses; $75 gets you five). Or you can always order a la carte.

Youre dining on alternative Italian with a contemporary flair: Shrimp carpaccio is bedecked with stracciatella straight from Puglia and Japanese hints like yuzu gelatin and wasabi mayo. Lobster risotto is sprinkled with citrus ash; tortelli are topped with a smoked mozzarella foam, braised beef ragu, and rapini puree. For dessert, indulge in a deconstructed cannoli or tiramisu served in an espresso pot.

Crazy Aunt Helens Cobb Salad Crazy Aunt Helens



Capitol Hill

Youre here because grandmillennial is your style go-to, and vegan comfort food is your jam. This all-day spot decorated by Pixie Windsor boasts the bright, glitzy, slightly off-the-wall energy of the eponymous Helen. The dining room is bedecked in bright colors, complete with massive portraits of Elvis, Jackie O. and more. As for the menu, it offers something for everyone, from carnivores to vegans.

Youre dining on Everything from braised brisket to gruyere mac and cheese to burgers. Many dishes lean to the South thanks to owner Shane Maysons Charleston roots: Think deviled egg salad, fried green tomato sandwiches, and Cajun shrimp with Brie-infused creamed corn and okra. Vegan options include the veggie-based gatherers pie for a play on shepherds or cottage, as well as vegan fab cakes made with soy and mushrooms and a vegan remoulade. Brunch offerings run the gamut from eggs benedict to cinnamon roll pancakes to shrimp and grits. Cocktails from Jo-Jo Valenzuela include allusions to grandmas candy dish like a vodka lemon drop or a sassafras-scented pisco drink, all made with local spirits. The upstairs area will soon be used for standup, cabaret, and more.

713 8th Street, SE



Downtown

Youre here because you miss France. (Dont we all?) La Bise is seriously a story of making lemonade, as restaurateur Ashok Bajajs Oval Room, destroyed during last summers protests, has been revamped as a French brasserie. The dining room boasts classic white tablecloths and contemporary decor with shades of teal and gold and 1,000 little mirrors, creating glints of light throughout the space.

Youre dining on hyper-seasonal classics with slightly modern touches from chef Tyler Stout. Think gougeres with 36-month-aged Comte foam; foie gras with local peaches and basil; Berkshire pork belly with peanuts, local watermelon and cilantro sauce vierge; or duck confit with summer corn and local blueberries and huckleberries. True-blue classics like steak-frites, steak tartare and ratatouille feature, too.

800 Connecticut Ave., NW.

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LONDON (AP)  The U.K.s vaccine advisors declined Friday to recommend the vaccination of healthy older children against COVID-19, saying the direct health benefits are marginal. However, the British government said it may join others around the world in offering the vaccines after assessing wider societal issues.

In its analysis of whether the rollout of coronavirus vaccines should be expanded to children aged between 12 and 15, the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation concluded that the benefits are marginally greater than the potential known harms.

With just two per million of healthy children needing intensive care treatment for COVID-19, the JCVI said the margin of benefit, based primarily on a health perspective, is considered too small to support advice on a universal program.

In contrast, the rate among children with underlying health conditions is far higher at over 100 per million. As a result, the JCVI did expand the group of older children with underlying health conditions who should be offered the vaccine. These include those with chronic major heart, lung, kidney, liver and neurological conditions. It means about 200,000 more children will be invited for either the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines.

Though the JCVI failed to back a universal rollout to older children just as schools reopen for the new year, the U.K. may still end up joining others such as France, Germany and the U.S. in offering vaccines to that group.

The health ministers from the four U.K. nations  England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland  said they have asked their respective chief medical officers to make their own assessments in light of the JCVI's analysis.

People aged 12 to 15 who are clinically vulnerable to the virus have already been offered a COVID-19 vaccine, and today well be expanding the offer to those with conditions such as sickle cell disease or type 1 diabetes to protect even more vulnerable children, said British Health Secretary Sajid Javid.

We will then consider the advice from the chief medical officers, building on the advice from the JCVI, before making a decision shortly, he added.

One risk that has been identified is a condition known as myocarditis, which involves inflammation of the heart muscle. The condition can result in short periods of hospital observation, followed by typically swift recoveries, but the JCVI concluded that the medium to long-term outcomes are still uncertain and more follow-up time is needed to get a clearer picture.

This was a very finely balanced decision," said Anthony Harnden, the JCVI's deputy chairman. But while the benefits slightly outweigh the risks, the risks are very uncertain at the moment.

Though the JCVI opted against a universal rollout to older children, it stressed that it was not within its remit to assess wider societal impacts, such as on education or children acting as sources of transmission.

Javid has already asked the National Health Service to prepare to roll out vaccinations to older children should it be be recommended by the chief medical officers.

The NHS is also preparing for possible booster shots for older adults. The JCVI is expected to decide soon whether third doses should be offered to all adults or just to those above a certain age or with certain health conditions.

The government is being urged to make the decision soon, potentially before the JCVI has made its conclusion, not least because winter is approaching, a time of year when the virus finds fresh legs.

Though nearly 80% of the U.K.'s adult population has been fully inoculated, the country has seen infection numbers edge higher over the past month following the lifting of lockdown restrictions. On Friday, Britain recorded another 42,076 infections, the highest daily total since July 21. Virus-related deaths have also been rising, with another 121 recorded on Friday, taking the U.K.'s total to 133,041, Europe's highest.

Jeremy Hunt, the former health secretary whom Prime Minister Boris Johnson defeated in 2019 in the race to become Conservative Party leader, said time is of the essence.

In a pandemic I think even a few days can make a big difference," he told BBC radio. "So I think we should just get on, not wait for that advice, get on with a booster program.

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Jill Lawless contributed to this report.

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Follow APs pandemic coverage at: https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic
They're going where few civilians have gone before: All the way up to Earth's orbit.

SpaceX is launching the first all-civilian orbital flight ever on Sept. 15 in a mission benefiting St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. Here's what you should know.

The four civilians are part of SpaceX's private orbital mission, Inspiration4, researching how space affects the human body.

Inspiration4

Billionaire tech entrepreneur and pilot Jared Isaacman, St. Jude physician's assistant and pediatric cancer survivor Hayley Arcenaux, data engineer Chris Sembroski and geoscientist, science communicator and commercial astronaut Sian Proctor will orbit Earth over three days and conduct multiple experiments from space.

According to Space.com's Chelsea Gohd, crew members' ECG activity, movement, sleep, heart rate and rhythm, blood oxygen levels will be measured throughout the flight. They will also take tests to monitor cognitive and behavioral performance while in space.

This is the first spaceflight for all four crew members.

The flight will raise a lot of money for St. Jude.

The crew's goal is to raise $200 million for the children's hospital. In addition, Isaacman is donating $100 million.

I believe that in the future everyday people will explore amongst the stars, Isaacman said in February, the Houston Chronicle's Andrea Leinfelder previously reported. But before that, we better have defeated some of lifes greatest hardships. St. Judes mission is not about rockets or space exploration. Its about treating some of the most heart-wrenching conditions that any parent could imagine. And if were going to continue making advances up there, in space, then we have an obligation to do the same down here on Earth.

You can watch the flight live.

The flight takes off from the Kennedy Space Center on Sept. 15 and will air live on Netflix's YouTube channel. SpaceX will determine a launch timeframe based upon Florida's weather conditions approximately three days before.

Ahead of the launch, Netflix will release a series showing the preparation for the flight. The first two episodes premiere on Sept. 6, followed by another two episodes on Sept. 13.

On Sept. 30, a final episode will premiere on Netflix documenting the crew's return home.
For weeks, construction crews have been working about half a mile north of the Rio Grande in Mission, erecting 15-foot concrete panels topped with 6-foot steel bollards.

The federal government describes the imposing structure as an upgrade to the levee system that protects Rio Grande Valley residents from potential flooding. The area previously had an earthen levee that lacked concrete and steel.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said the structure is part of [U.S. Department of Homeland Security] plans announced April 30 to reduce flooding risk to border communities in the Rio Grande Valley near McAllen, Texas. The levee repair work does not involve expanding the border barrier.

But to immigrant advocates and environmentalists, what the Department of Homeland Security is building is clearly a border wall.

It pretty much has the same symbolic look as the Trump wall, said Roberto Lopez, a community organizer with the Texas Civil Rights Project, a nonprofit organization that advocates for migrants rights and other social justice issues.

Lopez and other wall opponents see the structure as a broken promise by Biden, who on his first day in office said no more American taxpayer dollars be diverted to construct a border wall. He called for a pause on any border wall construction and a review of the resources spent by the previous administration.

Despite what administration officials want us to believe, border wall construction continues in South Texas, said Eduardo Martinez, a member of the Rio Grande Valley No Border Wall Coalition.

In other parts of the Valley, sections of the border wall constructed during former President Donald Trumps administration  which built 21 miles of new barrier along the Texas-Mexico border  are also concrete topped by steel bollards. Three miles east of the new project, the Trump-era wall is 30 feet tall, half concrete and half steel bollards.

In early May, Hidalgo County officials said contractors would repair levees that were damaged during border wall construction under the Trump administration. By the end of the month, the repairs were done, Hidalgo County officials announced at the time.

The following month, DHS announced that it would conduct an additional 13 miles of levee repairs but insisted that it would not expand border barriers.

In a June statement announcing the start of the levee project, Homeland Security said, These activities support the Administration policy to protect national and border security and address the humanitarian challenges at the southern border while remaining consistent with President Bidens commitment not to continue expanding border barriers.

DHS did not say specifically where it was making levee repairs, but local wall opponents and environmentalists first spotted the construction in July near Mission, Abram and Donna.

Scott Nicol, a McAllen-based environmental activist, said he believes the government used the levee repair as a pretext to continue building parts of the wall.

Theyre just using this as a loophole, to start construction so that those contractors get the full payout for finishing out the contract they signed during the Trump administration, he said.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said the contractors hired for the project are Sullivan Land Services Co., Southwest Valley Constructors and Gibraltar Caddell  companies that had been awarded contracts to build border barriers near McAllen and Brownsville.

Two of the companies didnt immediately respond to emails and calls from The Texas Tribune seeking comment. A spokesperson for Sullivan Land Services Co. referred questions to U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the Army Corps of Engineers.

DHS previously said that it terminated some contracts to build border barriers and repurposed others to address environmental issues resulting from the previous administrations border wall. The Biden administration has paused the remaining contracts and continues to review them.

Nicol said hes opposed to the project because the high walls could cut off access to the river for some animals  while others could drown if theyre trapped on the river side of the barrier during flooding.

A big concern is when these levee walls are being built, it will stop the movement of endangered species like ocelots, he said.

Lopez said levees are important to protect lives and property from flooding on the Rio Grande, especially during hurricane season, but that its a waste of money to build a wall.

I think that theyre taking this opportunity to continue putting up the border wall that everybody whos been calling for one wants, Lopez said. That way the Biden administration can have their cake and eat it, too.

Ronald Rael, an architecture professor at the University of California, Berkeley, said its not uncommon to build walls to reinforce a levee. But if a levee is topped with metal bollards then it could also serve as a way to prevent people from crossing it, he added.

"I hate to use cliches, but if it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck, he said. If DHS is building it, then it is an extension of the border wall.
Last week, at a community meeting, fear mounted in South Lake Tahoe as the Caldor Fire raged and a red flag warning lurked in the forecast.

Cal Fire officials told residents they needed a defense of 3,000 to 5,000 firefighters. The Caldor Fire was elevated to the top priority in the nation and, in an attempt to assure residents and community members, Cal Fire officials said that so many resources were coming to Lake Tahoe, they were causing a traffic jam at base camp.

The days that followed were tense as the fire made its advance into the Lake Tahoe Basin. On Sunday, Aug. 29, southeastern winds flared up and the Caldor Fire burned more than 20,000 acres in 24 hours. On Monday, 3,684 firefighters were working across all fronts, as flames ran up and over Echo Summit, burning cabins built and maintained by generations of families, many from the Bay Area. For the thousands of homes nestled below, in the woods of Christmas Valley and Meyers, the future looked grim.

But then, something incredible happened. On Monday night, the fire ran down the valley, to the edge of the neighborhood in Christmas Valley, where it shot embers over Highway 89, starting a spot fire in the forest just above the houses on the other side of the road and continued burning east.

Both sides of the valley were engulfed in flames. But as of Friday, many of the homes in Christmas Valley, Meyers and South Tahoe are still standing.

On Friday morning, the daily reports showed that only 2,200 acres had burned in the prior 24 hours  a fraction of the acreage compared to Sunday night. The fire is 29% contained. One fire official mentioned that luck played a big role in averting a major crisis this week. Others said that the winds didnt wreck the havoc many feared.

Parker Wilbourn, spokesperson for Cal Fire, says that there were three big factors to the success of this week.

First, the progress on the Caldor Fire could not have happened without the sheer number of firefighters, engines, helicopters, bulldozers and other resources. Over the course of the week, nearly a thousand more firefighters arrived; at the peak, firefighter boots on the ground numbered 4,451.

Oh, its made an incredible difference, Wilbourn said. We have 523 fire engines on this incident. Weve got 84 water tenders, 27 helicopters, 62 hand crews and 95 dozers. So we have a tremendous amount of resources fighting this fire.

Second, Wilbourn said that the massive deployment of resources in the Lake Tahoe basin over the last 5 to 10 years to prevent wildfire and promote forest health  steps that were taken to prevent a catastrophe exactly like the one the Caldor Fire threatened  directly helped firefighters combat flames in Lake Tahoe this week.

Finally, Wilbourn commended Lake Tahoe homeowners who heeded the advice officials have been shouting for years: defensible space.

"They're taking ownership of their housing area and that's phenomenal," Wilbourn said. "We want to say thank you to the homeowners, as well as the forestry service, for their efforts."

Rocky Opliger, incident commander of Cal Fire, described at a community briefing on Thursday evening what he saw happen when the Caldor Fire approached Apache Avenue, a street at the edge of Meyers. Flames were stretching 150 feet high as the fire marched toward homes in Meyers, Opliger said. But once the fire reached parts of the forest that had seen recent thinning or controlled burns, the flames lowered to just 15 feet tall, which gave fire engines and hand crews a window to take action, stop the fire from advancing into the neighborhood and prevent homes from burning.

Thats the kind of work we see in the entire South Lake area, Opliger said. He noted that all of the work on the Caldor Fire has been a collaboration of federal, state and local agencies, supported by law enforcement and community leaders. Thats those efforts of all the agencies working together.

In the wake of the Angora Fire, which burned 280 structures in South Tahoe in 2007, almost two dozen agencies across the basin formed a partnership called the Tahoe Fire and Fuels Team with the explicit mission to reduce fuels in the wildland-urban interface (a term experts use to refer to the forests that edge neighborhoods) and prepare communities for the day a wildfire comes.

South Lake Tahoe saw that day this week.

Since 2008, the Tahoe Fire and Fuels Team has treated some 65,000 acres in the Lake Tahoe basins wildland-urban interface, said Forest Schafer, director of the natural resources division of the California Tahoe Conservancy. Those acres of treatment include forest thinning  by hand and by machine  and prescribed burning.

Between 2010 and 2020, Lake Tahoe basin agencies have spent $133 million on forest health projects that are mostly aimed at reducing fuels in the forest and protecting neighborhoods from wildfire.

This week, firefighters arrived in Lake Tahoe from at least eight different states, Wilbourn said, as well as crews from across all of California. He noted that he was sitting next to a firefighter from Los Angeles who joined the fight to help protect Lake Tahoe.

The last thing anybody wants is to see Lake Tahoe burn, Wilbourn said. So we threw everything we had.

On Friday morning, Cal Fire officials said they were cautiously optimistic about the Caldor Fire, but the work is not done yet. Huge dozer lines  built by machines with blades as wide as 10 feet, according to Wilbourn  are still getting built every day to defend South Tahoe from flames. And on Thursday, air attacks dropped 500,000 gallons of retardant and water on flames.

But the weather has taken a turn toward favorable conditions, granting firefighters with mild winds, lower temperatures and more nighttime humidity to help them make progress on containing the Caldor Fire.

Cal Fire officials know that South Tahoe residents are eager to come home. Evacuation orders are still in effect.

We will do everything we can to get people back into their homes, Wilbourn said. We understand that people are frustrated  they just want some sense of normalcy. They want to get back into their homes. And we totally empathize with that. But we want to do it in a safe way.
The Galleria Mall in Houston is the biggest mall in Texas and, arguably, the best. While some locals who desire a fast in and out trip to the mall may despise the very mention of it, others bask in the variety it offers. Houstons Galleria is home to over 300 retail stores, more than 60 restaurants and dining options, and two hotels. Did I mention, a full size indoor ice-skating rink, too? With so many options, from high end designer to affordably-priced brands, Chron Shopping thought Houstonians (and visitors alike) could use a bit of help finding the best of the Galleria mall.

Most shoppers are familiar with mall directoriesplaced on kiosks throughout mall concoursesbut they only display a map that youll have to search for the stores youre looking for. Imagine having a powerful mall navigation system in your hand, complete with all the details on what to expect in each store, the best deals, and parking tips. Well, thats what youve got now for the Houston Galleria: Eight interactive maps that put a simple mall directory to total shame. See for yourself below.

The Best of Houston Galleria Mall

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The Best of Houston Galleria Mall features all the most searched and sought after stores in the Galleria.

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Looking for top clothing retailers like Forever21, Champs, and Zara in the Galleria? You'll find them all in the Best Clothing Stores in Houston Galleria Mall.

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With five prominent department stores to choose, from affordable finds at Macy's Galleria and Dillard's on Post Oak to luxury sellers like Saks, Neiman Marcus and Nordstrom, you'll get a level by level rundown of what they all have to offer! See it all in The Best Department Stores in Houston Galleria Mall.

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If you're not at least peeking into a fancy, high end designer store like Louis Vuitton, Golden Goose, and Gucci you're visiting the wrong Houston mall. Get a preview and layout of the Best Designer Clothing Stores in Houston Galleria Mall. Don't fret  handbags and red bottoms are included.

Hearst

Do you need to know where to find the best handbags, accessories and luggage in Houston? The answer is at The Galleria mall, of course. Get the details in this best in class roundup feature.

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From Foot Locker to Dr. Martens, you'll step in style with all the great tips you'll find in The Best Shoe Stores in Houston Galleria Mall.

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Sephora, and Morphe, and MAC  oh, my! Indeed, we've got the highlights of all The Best Beauty Stores in Houston Galleria Mall.

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The Best Jewelry Stores in Houston Galleria mall makes finding the perfect Rolex watch or David Yurman bracelet easy for you. From affordable jewelry to luxury treasures, we've got all the best for you.

Houston Galleria Mall FAQs

Where is the Houston Galleria Mall?

The Houston Galleria Mall is located at 5085 Westheimer Rd, Houston, TX 77056.

When is the Houston Galleria Mall open?

On Monday - Thursday, the Houston Galleria Mall is open 11am to 8pm, on Friday & Saturday 10am to 9pm and on Sunday 11am - 7pm. Keep in mind that store hours vary from mall hours, so be sure to use the phone numbers above to contact the retailers directly.

How big is the Houston Galleria Mall?

The Galleria Houston is home to more than 300 stores and over 60 restaurants and dining options.

Where do I park at the Houston Galleria Mall?

There are nine valet parking stations and 13,000 parking spaces in seven parking garages and parking lots. Use our merchant information above to find out wheres the best place to park at the Houston Galleria.

Hearst Newspapers participates in various affiliate marketing programs, which means we may get paid commissions on editorially chosen products purchased through our links to retailer sites.

Micolette Davis is the Managing Curator for Chron Shopping at Hearst Newspapers. Email her at micolette.davis@hearst.com.
Florida, FL (34429)

Today

Mostly cloudy with scattered thunderstorms mainly during the evening. Low 72F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 40%..

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Mostly cloudy with scattered thunderstorms mainly during the evening. Low 72F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 40%.
A. Officials knew the mandates were coming for years; they should have phased in the increase.

B. There's no master plan to justify the millions extra they are collecting.

C. It's Save Our Waters Week; this shows officials care about the environment.

D. Vote them all out of office.

Vote

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ANALYSIS: The September 20 election is arguably one of the most important in Canadian history.

Canada election 2021: An overview of key issues for immigrant voters ANALYSIS: The September 20 election is arguably one of the most important in Canadian history.

Canada election 2021: An overview of key issues for immigrant voters ANALYSIS: The September 20 election is arguably one of the most important in Canadian history.

Canada election 2021: An overview of key issues for immigrant voters ANALYSIS: The September 20 election is arguably one of the most important in Canadian history. Kareem El-Assal Aa Accessibility Font Style Serif

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On September 20, Canadian citizens will have the opportunity to vote in a new government.

Immigrants are eligible for Canadian citizenship if they have resided in Canada for 1,095 days within the five years before applying for citizenship. Canada has one of the highest citizenship uptake rates in the world with around 85 per cent of immigrants becoming Canadians.

According to Statistics Canada, the level of immigrant voter turnout is comparable to that of Canadian-born voters. In 2019, 78 per cent of Canadian-born citizens told Statistics Canada that they voted. In comparison, 75 per cent of citizens who immigrated to Canada over 10 years ago voted. This figure stood at 72 per cent of citizens who immigrated to Canada within 10 years of the 2019 election.

Discover if Youre Eligible for Canadian Immigration

This years election is arguably one of the most important in Canadian history. Canada continues to grapple with the coronavirus pandemic. Although Canada is in a stronger position than many of its global peers due to its high rate of vaccinations and the tremendous monetary and fiscal measures it has taken to keep the economy functioning, it is still dealing with a significant number of pandemic-related challenges that will affect the country for decades to come.

There are several major policy issues that will affect Canadian voters more broadly and immigrants in particular that the new government will need to address. For instance, affordable housing is a hot topic during this years campaign and is an issue that impacts many, whether they are born in Canada or have immigrated here. Immigrant voters have the opportunity to study the affordable housing policies put forward by the federal parties and then make an informed decision on September 20.

The new government will also need to tackle issues that affect immigrants more specifically, such as:

Economic policy: Immigrants come to Canada to pursue a better life including economic opportunity. While Canada is in better economic shape amid the pandemic than most countries, its labour force is yet to recover, and immigrant workers have been among those most negatively affected by the pandemic.

Travel rules: Although Canadas travel rules have been eased, they continue to significantly impact immigrants in a number of ways. Citizens are awaiting the arrival of family members who have had their trips to Canada delayed due to pandemic-related travel restrictions. While restrictions have been lifted, there remain ongoing delays for exempt travellers.

Application processing: Related to the previous point, the pandemic has caused a significant backlog in applications to be processed by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC). The new governments approach to tackling the backlog will have a major impact on immigrant voters, namely those awaiting the arrival of loved ones, be it through economic, family, or refugee class pathways.

Canadian citizenship: The current government previously campaigned they would remove citizenship fees altogether but have been unable to fulfil the promise amid the pandemic. The new government will hence need to make a decision on whether to go ahead with this promise, or potentially reduce fees, freeze them, or increase them.

Parents and Grandparents Program: The PGP remains under heavy scrutiny due to the many challenges successive Canadian governments have had over the years. The PGP garners tremendous interest among Canadas immigrants, but also causes tremendous stress due to the limited number of sponsorship spots that are made available each year. A new government will hence need to decide the most appropriate way to manage the PGP in light of the ongoing significant demand for it.

The above is merely a snapshot of the key issues that will directly impact immigrants in the aftermath of the election. Given the importance of the election to immigrants it will be worth monitoring what the voter turnout among naturalized Canadians will look like on September 20. Statistics Canada data shows the turnout of immigrant voters has improved significantly over the last decade which is a good sign that immigrants will continue to make their voices heard this year.

Discover if Youre Eligible for Canadian Immigration

 CIC News All Rights Reserved. Visit CanadaVisa.com to discover your Canadian immigration options.
Wilkes-Barre, PA (18701)

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Clear skies early then increasing clouds with some scattered thunderstorms late. Low around 70F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 40%..

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Clear skies early then increasing clouds with some scattered thunderstorms late. Low around 70F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 40%.
In the spring of 2020, the Supreme Court did something unprecedented, by allowing the audio of oral argumentswhich justices heard by phone, because of the pandemicto be broadcast live. Many hailed that as a breakthrough for judicial transparency and a first step, perhaps, toward cameras in the courtroom, which justices have long opposed. Rather than become increasingly visible, however, much of the courts decision making has remained hidden from public view, and the court has lately expanded its shadow docketa collective term for rulings handed down without oral arguments. The shadow docket is neither new nor inherently controversialits long been used to tidy up mundane case administration and weigh in on emergenciesbut in recent years, the court has used it to change the status quo, allowing controversial laws to take effect while lower courts hash them out. Often, decisions have been handed down in the dead of night, with little-to-no explanation. Its hard for the public to know what is going on, William Baude, a law professor who coined the term shadow docket, told Reuters in March, and its hard for the public to trust that the court is doing its best work.

This week, five of the courts six conservative justices used the shadow docket to gut Roe v. Wade in the state of Texas. As a new law was about to take effect, the court was silent; its inaction permitted a ban on abortion, including in cases of rape and incest, after six weeks, and an absurd, dystopian loophole through which state officials have established a ten-thousand-dollar bounty for private citizens who successfully sue those who perform or abet an illegal abortion. As the country reacted, five justices confirmed their decision in a brief, unsigned note, stating that their unwillingness to block the law did not amount to an endorsement of its constitutionality. (The courts three liberal justices and John Roberts, the chief justice, each wrote a dissent; Elena Kagans referred to the courts use of the shadow docket as increasingly unreasoned, inconsistent and impossible to defend.) The court is set to hear a case concerning Roe in its next term, a dispute over a Mississippi abortion law. The sneaky Texas decision, as Michelle Goldberg, a columnist at the New York Times, described it to MSNBCs Chris Hayes, enabled an abortion ban without the headline Roe v. Wade is overturned, without the shockwaves and convulsions it would cause if that happened.

ICYMI: Why wont TV news say climate change?

If that had been the five justices intent, then their ploy worked, to an extent. Headlines in major outlets skirted Roe and spoke of the justices decision in passive terms. And the outcome appeared to take the national press by surprise, to the frustration of media critics. I literally watch the news for a living, and I had little to no knowledge of this abortion ban in Texas until late last night, Lis Power, of Media Matters for America, a liberal watchdog group, wrote. Its a huge indictment of cable news that something this impactful can occur with practically no cable news coverage until after its too late. (Power later calculated that cable networks did not mention the bill once in the six days leading up to its enactment as law.) In his newsletter, Press Run, Eric Boehlert accused the press of gorging itself on Afghanistan optics coverage while maintaining a virtual Texas abortion blackout.

Media-watchers didnt only take aim at sins of omissionmany of them also criticized the framing of recent public discourse surrounding the court, resurrecting the ghosts of old op-eds in which commentators insisted that liberals had nothing to fear from President Trumps court nominees, and that Roe was safe. Numerous journalists accused their colleagues of dismissing dire predictions as hysterical alarmism; others took aim at those who have declared the rulings of the post-Trump court unexpectedly balanced and minimalist. We love a redemption story, Dahlia Lithwick, a legal correspondent for Slate, told Hayes on MSNBC. Think of how many gazillion stories you heard at the end of the term about how surprisingly moderate the court was, and how it doesnt matter that they did away with whats left of the Voting Rights Act and ended unions; what really matters is that a cheerleader gets to curse.

Their criticism has not gone without pushback. There seems to be this received wisdom that somehow the news media has downplayed the prospect of abortion rights being curbed by the Supreme Court. Where is the evidence of that? Lawrence Hurley, who covers the court for Reuters, asked. Pretty much everyone involved in abortion litigation has been openly discussing how Roe v. Wade is on the line ever since Justice Kennedy retired and pretty sure every SCOTUS reporter has reported on it as such. Court coverage over time has certainly not been a monolith; plenty of beat reporters have covered it with a careful eye. The same is true of abortion-rights journalism, including on the local level.

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Still, the criticisms have merit, especially when it comes to how the court and reproductive rights rank as matters of urgent concern worthy of top billing in the news cycle. Both stories can often feel siloedthe court, for instance, has immense power, but isnt subject to the same ongoing, top-level focus we afford the White House or Congress. It appears in the news cycle mainly after something big happensa major decision, or the death or retirement of a justice (Ruth Bader Ginsburg dies is a banner headline; Stephen Breyer remains at work, less so). Reactive coverage fails to explain how we arrive at rulings that devastate peoples lives. Reporting on the legal battle over abortion requires sustained attentionof the court, and the judicial activists who seek to manipulate it, often from the shadows.

Below, more on the court and Roe:



Other notable stories:

ICYMI: Facebook plans to show users even less political news

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Jon Allsop is a freelance journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Review of Books, Foreign Policy, and The Nation, among other outlets. He writes CJRs newsletter The Media Today. Find him on Twitter @Jon_Allsop.
Exxon Mobil Corp. released sulfur dioxide and hydrogen sulfide at its Baton Rouge refinery as Hurricane Ida churned ashore. A broken pipeline poured crude oil near a bayou that flows into the Gulf of Mexico. And a miles-long black slick has appeared near an offshore rig off the states coast, stirring fears of a spill.

Days after the storm swept through the region, the environmental aftermath is emerging in a petrochemical corridor packed with hazardous-chemical plants and refineries.

In some areas, the chemicals are mixing with raw sewage released from treatment plants that lost power.

We are totally not prepared for these types of events, said Wilma Subra, an environmental scientist with the Louisiana Environmental Action Network in Baton Rouge. We should be, however we are not.

Nearly 100 spills and other episodes have been reported to the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality as of Thursday afternoon, raising concerns among environmentalists and public health officials about toxic discharges.

Among the chemicals released was anhydrous ammonia from two storage tanks at a CF Industries fertilizer facility near the Mississippi River in Donaldsonville, Louisiana, according to the state agency. A CF Industries spokesman said the issue was resolved and that there had been no off-site impacts.

Exxon said in a statement that the release from its Baton Rouge facility was quickly isolated and contained to the unit and that chemical readings are now below detection limits.

A Koch Industries Inc. subsidiary, Koch Nitrogen, reported a release of the highly toxic, colorless gas at a site near the Mississippi. The company didnt respond to a request for comment.

Phillips 66 reported that two separate pipelines were leaking hazardous propylene and isobutane in St. Charles Parish. A company spokesman said there was no anticipated impact to soil and water and that the propylene was being safely flared. The company said though it had made a preliminary report of a release of isobutane, initial reconnaissance showed no visible signs of release and that it continued to investigate.

And the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said it had been in touch with Royal Dutch Shell Plc about its Norco refinery because of excessive smoke seen in the community.

Raw sewage has also been released. A complete power failure caused 95% of lift stations to fail in New Orleans Jefferson Parish sewer system, resulting in a release of hundreds of thousands of gallons of wastewater, according to the Louisiana DEQ.

Our entire sewage system operates on electricity, said Mike Lockwood, director of the Jefferson Parish Department of Sewage.

Unknown amounts of raw sewage is also being discharged into the Mississippi River near 14 water intakes used by 11 drinking water facilities, the EPA said, citing a notification from the New Orleans Water and Sewerage Board, which said the release was due to a generator failure. And in neighboring Alabama, that states Department of Environmental Management reported flooding from the storm caused tens of thousands of gallons of untreated sewage to be released in the state.

Sewage overflows are a serious threat to public health and our ecosystems, said John Rumpler, a senior director with the group Environment America, Pathogens in our waterways make millions of people sick every year.

The Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality also received several reports of oil-like sheens in the water, including one from an unknown source in the lower Mississippi River. Greg Langley, an agency spokesman, said it would be assisting the Louisiana Oil Spill Coordinators Office to investigate reports of a miles long slick near an offshore rig in the gulf. The U.S. Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement said it was investigating.

The state also had reports of crude oil leaking from damaged tanks, leaking well heads, flooded facilities, as well one that was creating a dark stream of oil in the Gulf of Mexico, and another sheen from a well in East Timbalier National Wildlife Refuge, a protected island in southern Lafourche Parish. It looks like there is widespread pollution, said Naomi Yoder, a staff scientist at Healthy Gulf, a nonprofit environmental group. As the remnants of the storm traveled north, unleashed a torrent of water in the northeast, the EPA reported significant and wide-spread flooding at the toxic American Cyanamid Superfund site in Bridgewater Township, New Jersey. The site, which is contaminated with volatile organic compounds, metals, and chemicals, is located next to the Raritan River above the Brunswick Aquifer  New Jerseys second largest source for drinking water, according to the EPA. Flooding and other damage from Ida, carried on some of the most powerful winds ever to hit Louisiana, caused widespread power failures that have hindered officials ability to access the damage. The Louisiana DEQ said it was being hampered by communications problems and that a number of its air quality monitoring stations had been knocked offline. Everyone is strained to their breaking point right now, said Patrick Courreges, a spokesman for the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources. With assistance from Elizabeth Elkin and Josyana Joshua. About the photo: Offshore oil supply containers are strewn about after Hurricane Idas storm surge swept through Port Fourchon, Louisiana.

Copyright 2021 Bloomberg.
Beachwood, OH (44122)

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Thunderstorms with locally heavy downpours. Low 66F. Winds SW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall may reach one inch..

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Thunderstorms with locally heavy downpours. Low 66F. Winds SW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall may reach one inch.
If you are in sales and trying to bring in new business for your company, I am sure you have heard these words from a customer: Ill get back to you.
Beachwood, OH (44122)

Today

Scattered thunderstorms this evening becoming more widespread overnight. Low around 65F. Winds SW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 70%..

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Scattered thunderstorms this evening becoming more widespread overnight. Low around 65F. Winds SW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 70%.
Marijo Krogman, 86, Clinton, died Sunday, September 12th. Mass will be celebrated at 10:00 AM Saturday, September 18th at Prince of Peace. Visitation from 9:00 AM until the time of the Mass Saturday. Pape Funeral Home is assisting.
Dave Sutor is a reporter for The Tribune-Democrat. He can be reached at (814) 532-5056. Follow him on Twitter @Dave_Sutor.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, September 3)  Ilocos Sur Rep. Bonito Singson is pushing for the creation of a monument for the revolutionary hero Diego Silang.

During the hearing for the proposed 2022 budget of the Department of Tourism (DOT) on Friday, Singson revealed that he is mulling to file the "Diego Silang bill" to honor the Ilocano revolutionary leader, who led a movement against the Spanish forces.

"I will be proposing that Diego Silang will be recognized as one of our national heroes," he said.

"He can be considered as the first revolutionary when he started the first Philippine revolt in 1762How can the Secretary help us to make this proposal into fruition?" he added, referring to Tourism Secretary Bernadette Romulo-Puyat.

Romulo-Puyat said the DOT is ready to support the proposal to honor Silang.

"We will be working with the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NHCP) so we will be supporting the bill," she said.

Singson again mentioned his proposal during the second round of interpellation.

"Will the DOT be able to allocate some funds for the proposed Diego Silang statue [so] it will become a tourist spot again and [will be] complete with history within Vigan?" he asked.

"This will be the same area where he had his headquarters in his revolt," the lawmaker added. "Can the department help us in the funding or help us in designing the complex?"

Romulo-Puyat said the DOT has no budget for infrastructure projects. She explained that the Tourism Infrastructure and Enterprise Zone Authority (TIEZA) has no available funds to support these projects due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

"Wala pong pondo ang TIEZA ngayon (Currently, TIEZA has no funds) but we could submit this to the National Historical Commission of the Philippines kasi may budget sila (because they have a budget) for monuments," she said. "We will endorse this to the NHCP."
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, September 3) The Commission on Audit (COA) said it has no authority to conduct an audit of the Philippine Red Cross (PRC), despite President Rodrigo Duterte's call for state auditors to scrutinize the humanitarian agency.

"Yes, we confirm. We do not have the jurisdiction to audit the organization," COA chairman Mike Aguinaldo told lawmakers during the agency's 2022 budget briefing at the House of Representatives on Friday.

Aguinaldo explained COA can only audit the payments delivered by the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (PhilHealth) to the PRC.

"But in that case what we're auditing actually is PhilHealth in making those payments," he noted.

In his address on Thursday, Duterte said he wants to check the full audit report of the PRC  an NGO and non-profit organization  as he accused its chairman Senator Richard Gordon of using its funds for his electoral campaigns.

Gordon has since dismissed the President's claims.

Meanwhile, the PRC also maintained it is not subject to government audit.

"Being that the PRC is not a government agency, it is not subject to audit by the Commission on Audit," it said in a separate statement.

"The PRC audit is conducted by a private international accounting firm which is also the auditor of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies which receives a copy of the independent audit report," the PRC added.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, September 3)  The Commission on Elections appealed for Congress to increase its 2022 budget, mainly to provide higher benefits to poll workers.

Teachers' groups have been lobbying for more benefits and the provision of a COVID-19 hazard pay for more than 300,000 election officers and support staff who will serve in the 2022 elections.

Last week, the Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) and the Makabayan bloc filed House Resolution 2181 to raise the honoraria for poll workers. They said benefits ranging from 3,000 to 7,000 should be raised after being stagnant since 2016.

ACT is proposing an honorarium of 9,000 for members of the electoral board - or those who will handle the ballots and other election materials - and 10,000 for every board chairperson. On top of this, it is also seeking 2,500 for food allowance and 3,000 as transport allowance.

The Teachers' Dignity Coalition (TDC) is also pushing for a 500 daily hazard pay to compensate for the hard work and the risk of day-long exposure to thousands of people who may be COVID-19 carriers.

Over 300,000 poll workers are expected to be tapped for the upcoming elections.

RELATED: Possible two shifts for 2022 poll workers if voting hours extended

Comelec said it supports such calls, but its approved budget for 2022 has little room for better benefits for poll workers.

The poll body's fund request of 41.99 billion has been slashed by 15 billion. Bulk of that amount was meant for honoraria payments in line with the request of teacher organizations and of the Department of Education.

"We respectfully submit for the restoration of the budget in the aggregate amount of 5 billion to cover the funding requirement for our risk mitigation plan... as well as the honoraria of our poll workers," Comelec Finance Services director Martin Niedo said during the hearing of the House Committee on Suffrage and Electoral Reforms on Thursday.

The Department of Budget and Management (DBM) only allotted 13.6 billion for the conduct of the national and local elections in May 2022 against a 21.66-biillion request, data showed.

The TDC also blasted the department's decision to cut Comelec's budget by nearly 35%.

"Kung sasabihin ng DBM na walang budget, nakakalungkot ito, dapat itong gawan ng paraan," TDC vice chairperson Olive de Guzman told CNN Philippines.

"Napakahirap ng trabaho kapag eleksyon," she added. "Masyado nilang tinitipid yung mga magseserve sa election samantalang sa ibang bagay, alam naman natin kung paano naman sila maglaan ng pondo at ng gastos."

[Translation: If the DBM says there's no budget, that's disappointing. They should look for a funding source. Teachers have a difficult time every election. They are skimping on election workers when they can easily allot money for other expenses.]

Public school teachers like Rina Casanova-Onda also said while she remains willing to serve in next year's elections, better compensation would be significant.

"With no hesitation, magpo-poll worker pa rin kami [I will still be a poll worker]," she said despite the COVID-19 crisis. "Nakakatuwang pakiramdam para sa isang guro na laging pinagkakatiwalaan sa mga ganitong mga bagay [It's rewarding to feel that teachers are trusted when it comes to handling the elections]."

Like many, Onda fears the risks that come with the job, with COVID-19 transmission adding to peace and order concerns.

READ: Lawmakers fear voting day could become superspreader event

"Kung kukuwentahin natin 'yung monetary value ng honorarium, talagang kulang siya. Pero kung ang idea mo ng paggampan sa iyong tungkulin ay para talaga sa bayan ay hindi mo na ito bibigyan ng pansin," said Onda, who has been serving the elections for 15 years now.

"Napakalaki ng impact nito, lalo na nga siyempre di ba 'yung buhay nila 'yung nakataya... Ang dali-dali nila tayong palitan sa ating tungkulin pero bilang mga magulang, bilang mga kapatid, kaibigan, ang ating mga mahal sa buhay hindi tayo basta-basta mapapalitan."

[Translation: If we compute the monetary value of the honorarium, it's not enough. But if you focus on fulfilling your duty to the country, you won't think like that anymore. Still, this has a huge impact especially when our lives are at stake... They can easily replace us in our poll duty, but we are not replaceable as parents, siblings, and friends.]

Lawmakers have said they are willing to restore Comelec's funds for these benefits, but the money will have to be sourced from other items under the 5.02-trillion national budget.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, September 3)  The Department of Budget and Management (DBM) has released an additional 888.12 million to fund the special risk allowance (SRA) of private and public healthcare workers who have handled COVID-19 patients.

In a statement on Friday, the agency said the amount was charged from the Miscellaneous Personnel Benefits Fund and Unprogrammed Appropriations in the 2021 budget.

Along with the 311.79 million disbursed last week, the DBM has now released around 1.2 billion in total to compensate medical frontliners who attended to infected patients from December 20, 2020 to June 30, 2021.

The agency said another 407.08 million will be charged from the 2021 Contingent Fund to complete the allowance payments to 117,926 healthcare workers - not exceeding 5,000 per month in the covered period. The DBM assured the public of the prompt release of these funds.

The Department of Health (DOH) earlier said medical frontliners directly handling COVID-19 patients are entitled to the SRA. However, numerous eligible healthcare workers have complained about not receiving a single centavo.

The DOH has also been under fire after the Commission on Audit flagged the department for "deficiencies" in the management of over 67 billion, earmarked for pandemic response. These include billions worth of unobligated funds.

The agency insisted all the funds were accounted for and were either used to buy equipment or to pay healthcare workers. Two days after the DBM released the first batch of SRA that covered 20,000 medical frontliners, the DOH again asked for more money to compensate another 17,000 healthcare workers.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, September 3)  A doctors' group called on the government to implement a more permanent approach in its pandemic response strategies, as health workers bear the brunt of rising coronavirus cases.

Speaking to CNN Philippines' New Day on Friday, Dr. Maricar Limpin, president of Philippine College of Physicians, shared the "emotional burden" felt by health workers tending to COVID-19 patients.

"It's very difficult," she said. "It's not just the emotional burden of seeing patients die despite the fact that we are doing everything."

"The worst, I think, of all the emotional burden that this pandemic brings to us, is the time that we would have to face a decision on who among the patients will receive mechanical ventilation..." she added. "This is really what makes our work a lot harder because we do not want to be the ones making this decision."

Limpin noted that a call for a "timeout" or a stricter community quarantine may give them respite, but "a more permanent solution" including better containment procedures and data collection, and proper coordination with local governments are more crucial.

"Of course, the most important is to ensure that we have a standardized contact tracing system that is being implemented across the regions..." she said.

"Then we need to immediately isolate those people who have been exposed to COVID-19 patients as well as those who are getting to be symptomatic," she added, "and then we have to do the appropriate testing at the right time."

The country recorded 16,621 new COVID-19 cases on Thursday, pushing the nationwide tally to 2,020,484.

The Department of Health earlier said infections may still peak in the middle of September as the more contagious Delta variant could possibly increase the numbers.

READ: PH logs 16,621 new COVID-19 cases, 148 more deaths
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, September 3) - The Department of Health is looking at baricitinib, which is used to treat rheumatoid arthritis, as a potential solution to the limited supply of tocilizumab, a repurposed drug for COVID-19.

"We have this drug. It's baricitinib," Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said in a briefing.

"Pinag-aaralan po natin iyan (We are studying this) so we can have an immediate alternative to tocilizumab," she added.

Vergeire said the supply problem on tocilizumab, which is given to severe COVID-19 cases, may last for months.

"Nakausap na po namin ang manufacturer nito...They already gave us that declaration na hanggang end of the year, mukhang mahihirapan na tayo maka-access pa ng gamot na ito," Vergeire said.

[Translation: We already talked to its manufacturer. They already gave us that declaration we may have a hard time accessing the drug until the end of the year.]

There is still no approved COVID-19 treatment. Drugs like tocilizumab are used off-label to treat COVID-19 patients.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, September 3)  Lawmakers are set to interrogate health officials over the government's purchase of allegedly overpriced ambulances, Senator Panfilo Lacson said on Friday.

He alleged that the purchases were overpriced by 1 million per ambulance.

"I checked the official records of such procurement  one by the Department of Health, the other by the local government unit. The difference in their purchase prices are too glaring to ignore," he told reporters.

He said DOH records were compared to the orders of local government units for similar ambulances. The senator said DOH bought an ambulance with Automated External Defibrillator for 2.5 million per unit. LGUs purchased the same ambulance vehicle without the defibrillator  worth around 300,000  for 1.27 million.

In an interview with INQside Look, he said there was an "overprice" of 1 million per unit with the "padded" amount.

DOH defended the purchase, saying the deal was awarded to the lowest bidder.

Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said the agency bought Type 1 ambulances, which are equipped with machines and other medical supplies. She explained the amount also covered the training of the driver and health workers who would man the ambulance.

"Ito ay isang complete package ng nilagay natin sa specs. Iyong presyo na binigay natin at nakuha natin ay lowest calculated bid po iyan. Pinadaan po iyan sa proseso ng aming bidding and awards committee. We are very transparent in this process," she said in a media briefing.

[Translation: This is a complete package of what was indicated in the specifications. The price that we received is the lowest calculated bid. It went through our bidding and awards committee. We are very transparent in this process.]

Lacson said the DOH has distributed 98 ambulance units to Calabarzon alone. The agency has yet to say how many units it purchased and how much was spent.

The senator said he will raise the issue during the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee's inquiry into DOH's alleged irregularities in the management of public funds on Sept. 7 or during budget deliberations.

CNN Philippines correspondent Eimor Santos contributed to this report.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, September 3)  The Committee on Appropriations of the House of Representatives on Friday terminated the briefing for the proposed 8.2-billion budget of President Rodrigo Duterte's office for 2022.

4.5 billion of the Office of the President's budget request is for intelligence and confidential funds.

Doing away with the OP's budget presentation is a tradition in the appropriations committee. The House panel does the same thing with other co-equal branches of government.

A few minutes into the hearing, Pangasinan 6th District Rep. Tyrone Agabas moved to terminate the budget briefing, citing "the long-established tradition of extending parliamentary courtesy to co-equal branches of the government such as the Office of the President."

Bagong Henerasyon Party-list Rep. Bernadette Herrera-Dy seconded the motion, but Kabataan Party-list Rep. Sarah Elago objected.

Zamboanga City 2nd District Rep. Manuel Dalipe, panel vice chairman, denied Elago's objection, saying it "cannot be counted considering she is not a member of the Committee on Appropriations." But Dalipe allowed some of his colleagues to make a manifestation.

"This is the last budget of the OP under the Duterte administration and there are a number of pressing issues that need to be brought up before the Office of the President at this budget briefing," Elago said.

One of the issues that ACT-Teachers Party-list Rep. France Castro was hoping to raise was OP's proposed budget for intelligence funds.

"Hindi naman ito opisina ng military o opisina ng PNP para maglaan ng ganyang budget para sa Office of the President," she said.

[Translation: It is not an office of the military or the Philippine National Police to be given such a budget.]

Duterte's office got the same amount this year. He vetoed the 2021 budget law provision requiring the submission of reports to Congress on how these hefty funds would be spent, citing the need to "protect national security."

Dalipe assured Castro and other House members that they will be allowed to raise their concerns during plenary debates.

"Huwag kayo mag-alala. Dadaan pa tayo sa plenaryo," he said.

[Translation: You don't have to worry. We will still go through plenary.]
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, September 3)  Eight people were injured after a fire razed a residential building along Bonny Serrano Street in Quezon City.

The Bureau of Fire Protection said in its initial report that the fire started Friday midnight at an establishment on eighth floor. It reached first alarm at 12:05 a.m. Fire out was declared at 1:05 a.m.

The BFP is investigating the cause of the fire and is yet to provide the cost of damages.

This story will be updated.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, September 3) Senator Richard Gordon on Friday dismissed President Rodrigo Duterte's claims he was using funds of the Philippine Red Cross (PRC), a humanitarian organization he chairs, for his electoral campaigns.

Speaking at the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry's membership meeting, Gordon said Duterte's latest pronouncements may be seen as another distraction tactic.

"I have not even announced anything yet, I may not even run for the Senate anymore, I may not run for president or vice president or even run for mayor," Gordon said.

"This is really tragic. I think it is an attempt by the President to try and distract the people once again," he added.

The PRC also expressed support for Gordon, maintaining that the senator is an "unsalaried volunteer" like the rest of its board members.

The issue was one of Duterte's latest tirades against Gordon during his public address on Thursday.

The President also accused the senator  who leads the Blue Ribbon Committee  of investigating the government's purchasing of medical supplies "in aid of political interest."

In response, Gordon said it was an "honor to be attacked" for doing his job in both institutions.

"I stand behind my record and the good work that I and the Red Cross have done," Gordon said.

"I'm the favorite target of the President right now. It's okay, I just want the President to know that that's no problem... Ang sasabihin ko lang, iniinvestigate siya ng co-equal branch of government (All I can say is, he's being investigated by a co-equal branch of government)," he added.

Meanwhile, Gordon also argued that Duterte's warning he would stop Cabinet members from attending congressional hearings is tantamount to inciting to sedition.

"Do not listen to COA, do not listen to the Senate, do not go there, nobody should go to the Senate investigations, the military do not go there. That is practically sedition, inciting to sedition," Gordon said, adding this sends a bad signal that the rule of law is being compromised.

CNN Philippines correspondent Eimor Santos contributed to this report.
Mares milk and bananas are not two products likely to be brought up in the same conversation. But for Kirk French, a professor of anthropology at Penn State, these two items both create something of great interest  alcohol.

French teaches Anthropology of Alcohol, a class dedicated to studying alcohol use throughout human history and its cultural significance around the world. It is the largest anthropology class in the United States, according to French, clocking in at more than 720 students.

Recently, French made the decision to reduce the class to 50 people in future sections. He said he made this decision because of the coronavirus and how packed his current lecture hall is in Thomas 100.

While French said the decision will pain him, he said hes excited to experience the class in a more conversational format, which will make it easier to engage with students.

French said he breaks down his curriculum into different sections, and each lecture looks at a different location in the world while dissecting cultural relationships with alcohol.

We all have a relationship with alcohol, French said. Even if we dont drink, thats a relationship because you have an opinion about it.

One of the earliest archaeological examples of alcohols influence on history dates back to China 9,000 years ago, according to French.

French said he attributes the start of alcohol consumption to the settling of populations and densely populated areas that began to grow more crops.

Connor Duran, a former student and current teaching assistant in the class, said he believes French is phenomenal as a professor  he became a TA because of French.

I obviously really enjoyed the class, and I find it all interesting, but he just seems like a very sincere and kind person, which is ultimately why I wanted to be a TA, Duran (junior-nuclear and mechanical engineering) said.

Its one thing to learn about alcohol in class, but to actually see its application around the world is another thing. In the study abroad programs French used to have, students would travel to Denmark and Scotland over spring and winter breaks, he said.

On these trips, French said he and his students would tour distilleries and interview those who had started their own alcohol businesses. They would also go to bars and speak to locals about their drinking culture.

It was a way to experience drinking culture and seeing the similarities and differences in different parts of the world through alcohol, French said.

But these trips have since stopped, French said. He said since the trips were held on schoolwide breaks, it meant he didnt have as much time for himself, which would lead to burnout.

French also said since the class had grown so large, it would be difficult to include everyone enrolled.

How do you choose 12 people to go out of 700 people? French said.

The origins of the class go back to when French said he was working on a moonshine archeology project where he would go to North Carolina and spend time with moonshiners to learn more about the practice.

When he brought up the moonshine project in conversations, people were immediately interested, French said, compared to when he would bring up other projects he was working on.

While French said he believes the growth of the class can be tied to party culture at Penn State, he said he believes the class would do well at any large university.

I think the main reason it did so well is just its about something the students relate to, and they wanna know more about it because it's booze, French said.

Yet, the class curriculum is not afraid to show the dark underbelly of alcohol.

The last couple weeks of class are super heavy, French said.

Toward the end of the semester, students will learn about all the ways alcohol is damaging to people, French said, as the lectures dive into alcohol abuse, alcoholism and sexual assault.

Additionally, French said he invites the parents of Timothy Piazza, a Penn State student who died due to hazing with alcohol, to speak yearly.

Piazza, a former Penn State student, died Feb. 4, 2017, in the hospital  two nights after attending an acceptance night at the Beta Theta Pi fraternity house. Piazza consumed 18 drinks in less than 90 minutes and fell down a flight of stairs into the fraternitys basement. Piazza had a fractured skull and lacerated spleen.

The brothers attending the party waited four hours before calling police, and Piazza would later die in the hospital. After Piazzas death, Penn State put a permanent ban on the Beta Theta Pi fraternity and many of the brothers were sent to court.

Recently, Piazzas parents have not been able to attend due to the coronavirus, but French said he plays students a recording of them to hear the familys story.

Kevin Diaz, another former student and current teaching assistant in the class, said he met the Piazza family in person, which was an eye opening experience.

Everyone knows that story, but no one really understands it from the familys perspective  with just an open floor to let them speak unfiltered about their whole experience with it, Diaz (senior-food science) said. I think theyve gotten to the point where they can just lay everything out as raw as possible to show you this is really what happened, and this is what still can happen.

Diaz said he believes one of the lessons the class aims to teach is how people have more in common with each other than they may think.

People are more alike than they are different  especially when it comes to drinking, Diaz said. Even if it may look very different from a very far view, when you zoom in on certain things about it, it becomes almost relatable to your everyday life.

The last week of class focuses on sexual assault and drinking, which French said he believes is even heavier than the other final weeks.

French said he believes alcohol is primarily a social interaction and it has a lot of benefits if used in moderation.

The majority of people in the world use alcohol responsibly. Thats just a fact. But there is a decent percentage that use it irresponsibly, and then theres an even smaller percentage that use it extremely irresponsibly, French said.

He said he cant let the students go at the end of the course without educating them on the darker side of alcohol.

Its super dark, its super messed up and thats the message I want them to leave with, French said.

French said he hopes with the honesty and transparency he has with students, he can build a mutual respect with them  enough so when darker topics arise, there might be even the slightest change within the culture and drinking behaviors of some students, he said.

French said he believes if people respect alcohol, their behavior and how they treat it changes and a deeper appreciation develops.

I never wanna come off as preachy, he said. If it moves the notch [and] changes the drinking behavior just one notch for a few people, thats a big win.
At approximately 5:25 p.m. Wednesday, Penn State University Police and Public Safety responded to a report of physical assault at the Willard Building, according to Penn State spokesperson Lisa Powers.

Bystanders at the scene of the incident allegedly heard a man repeatedly yell help me from the connecting corridor on the second floor between the Willard Building and the new Bellisario Media Center. According to witnesses, a man was lying on the floor and another man walked away from him.

As people rushed toward the man on the floor, others said they saw the other man walk toward the stairwell. Bystanders confirmed the man walking away said he pushed the other man out of the bathroom for not wearing a mask.

According to Powers, the victim  a Penn State employee  was transported to Mount Nittany Medical Center for evaluation, and the police identified the suspect as another employee.

Further details are unable to be confirmed at this time because the investigation is still ongoing, Powers said.

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United Socialists at Penn State to protest tuition increases, departmental budget cuts The United Socialists at Penn State announced via Twitter it will hold a protest against adm
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Mexico has become the first country in North America to ban animal testing for cosmetics, according to Plant Based News.

The source adds the new law also bans the import, manufacture and marketing of cosmetics that have been tested on animals anywhere in the world. The new law was championed by the Humane Society International (HSI)/Mexico and ONGTe Protejo.

As previously reported, in November 2019, HSI and ONGTe Protejo started a Change.org petition to outlaw cosmetic animal testing in Mexico. Just a few months later, more than 21,000 people signed the petition, in part pushing legislators to put the bill through Mexico's legislative system.

The Puerto Vallarata Daily News (PVDN) reported the Mexican Senate voted unanimously, 103 to zero, to approve the draft law on Sept. 2, 2021. The approved opinion will be turned over to the federal executive power for ratification into law in 180 days.

To encourage responsible consumption, PVDN adds commercial product labeling may indicate no testing was carried out on animals during their production or manufacturing. A period of two years will be provided from the issuance of legal provisions to allow manufacturers time to make appropriate testing substitutions.

Per Plant Based News, 41 countries have banned cosmetic animal testing to date, as well as 10 states in Brazil and seven in the United States.
Airlines have a surprisingly good track record of not losing luggage, with less than 1% of bags being lost. There is always a slight feeling of anxiety, though, that a bag wont make it to its intended destination. If the worst-case scenario does come true, though, there is a chance that someone in Alabama is making money off your stuff.

Yes, there is a store in the small town of Scottsboro, Alabama called Unclaimed Baggage, and as the name implies, they sell items from, well, unclaimed baggage. This results in a massive operation with a 50,000 square foot physical storefront and an online shop. Unclaimed Baggage has sold wares from lost luggage for more than 50 years.

Petr Kratochvil The Titanic reboot was fairly anti-climactic.

They arent bad guys stealing suitcases, though. Instead, luggage gets to Unclaimed Baggage after a three-month process. When an airline has an unclaimed bag, they spend 90 days searching for its owner. This process is usually successful, which is why less than one percent of bags are lost. If the three months pass and there is no success, then the shop in Scottsboro comes in. They have a deal with most major airlines to purchase unclaimed luggage.

Once bags get to Alabama (hopefully not getting lost again during the trip), they go through a thorough inspection and cleaning process at Unclaimed Baggage. Personal information is destroyed, and clothing is washed at their cleaning facility. Out of the items that wind up at Unclaimed Baggage, they sell about a third of them.

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Browsing their online store shows that this is not just a small-time thrift store operation either. They have name-brand clothing, Nintendo Switch consoles, iPhones, and jewelry. Some of their items still have tags, likely the lost remnants of someones vacation shopping spree. They also have a section on their website dedicated to unusual items they have found, like this Primitive Wooden Spoon that must have been in the luggage of a traveling caveman.

Unclaimed Baggage Which as of this writing has somehow yet to be sold for its 40% off price of $25.99.

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The things that they dont sell arent wasted, either. Unclaimed Baggage has partnerships with charity organizations to donate items like eyeglasses, wheelchairs, and clothing to people in need. They claim that roughly one item is donated for every item sold.

If you are ever unlucky enough to be the victim of a completely lost bag, take solace in knowing that there is a chance that your stuff found a home with someone who needs it. Or maybe someone in Alabama just sold it. It could go either way.

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Hackers have started exploiting a critical remote code execution vulnerability that was patched recently in Atlassian Confluence Server and Data Center. Some of the attacks deploy cryptocurrency mining malware, but Atlassian products have also been targeted in the past by cyberespionage groups.

"Bad Packets honeypots have detected mass scanning and exploit activity targeting the Atlassian Confluence RCE vulnerability CVE-2021-26084 from hosts in Russia, Hong Kong, Brazil, Nepal, Poland, Romania, Estonia, United States, and Italy," threat intelligence firm Bad Packets told CSO. "Multiple proofs-of-concept have been published publicly demonstrating how to exploit this vulnerability."

Webwork OGNL injection

According to Atlassian, CVE-2021-26084 is an OGNL injection issue that allows authenticated users, and in some instances unauthenticated users, to execute arbitrary code on servers running affected versions of the products. The Object-Graph Navigation Language (OGNL) is an open-source expression language for getting and setting properties of Java objects.

Atlassian Confluence is a web-based team collaboration platform written in Java for managing workspaces and projects that organizations can run locally on their own servers. Atlassian Data Center is a more feature-rich version of Confluence that has support for things like team calendars, analytics, more advanced permissions management, content delivery network support and more.

The flaw impacts all Atlassian Confluence and Data Center versions prior to versions 6.13.23, 7.4.11, 7.11.6, 7.12.5 and 7.13.0 which were released on Aug. 25 for still supported branches of the software. However, Atlassian recommends upgrading to the latest version in the 7.13.x branch if possible, which has long-term support. Manual patch scripts that can be run on Linux or Windows hosts have also been provided as temporary workarounds for users who cannot perform a full upgrade.

According to the Atlassian advisory, the vulnerability was reported by a researcher named Benny Jacob (SnowyOwl) through the Atlassian bug bounty program, suggesting that it wasn't a flaw exploited in the wild at the time of its discovery.

However, since then, other researchers analyzed the patch and wrote detailed reports on the bug, complete with proof-of-concept exploits. Moreover, even though Atlassian says the issue can be exploited by unauthenticated users "in some instances," the existence of unauthenticated exploit paths might be more common than users expect.

"For example, simply visiting /pages/doenterpagevariables.action should render the velocity template file which was modified i.e. createpage-entervariables.vm," security researcher and bug hunter Harsh Jaiswal said in an analysis of the flaw. "Remember that any route that renders this template would cause the vulnerability [to] exist completely unauth regardless of you turning on Sign up feature."

As with all injection-type vulnerabilities, the goal is to inject code into expected user input that would be evaluated and executed by the application out of context. In this particular case, attackers can include command line (bash) commands that would be executed on the operating system. Confluence code does use an isSafeExpression method to evaluate OGNL expressions for hardcoded malicious properties and methods, but like with most blacklist-based approaches, attackers and researchers can usually find a way to bypass them, which was also true in this case.

Past attacks

Cryptocurrency miners are a popular payload for remote code execution vulnerabilities in web applications because they provide an easy way for attackers to directly monetize their access to the underlying servers. However, such access can also be used to deploy stealthier backdoors that can later be used for lateral movement inside corporate networks if the impacted web servers are not properly walled off from the rest of the network.

In 2019, security and incident response firm FireEye published a report about attacks by a China-based hacker group tracked as APT41 in which the group exploited a path traversal and remote code execution vulnerability in Atlassian Confluence (CVE-2019-3396) in order to compromise a web server at a US-based research university. APT41 is a dual espionage and financially focused group that has a history of weaponizing recently-disclosed vulnerabilities, often within days of their public disclosure. In that particular attack the group exploited the Confluence vulnerability to deploy a web shell and a backdoor program.

Bad Packets told CSO that it hasn't observed attacks against Confluence specifically in the past, but it has seen attacks exploiting vulnerabilities in other Atlassian products including Atlassian Crowd RCE CVE-2019-11580, Atlassian Jira SSRF CVE-2019-8451 and Atlassian Jira Unauthenticated Information Disclosure CVE-2020-36289.
DEDHAM, Mass. (AP)  Former Roman Catholic Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the once-powerful American prelate who was expelled from the priesthood for sexual abuse, pleaded not guilty Friday to sexually assaulting a 16-year-old boy during a wedding reception in Massachusetts nearly 50 years ago.

McCarrick, 91, wore a mask and entered suburban Bostons Dedham District Court hunched over a walker. Shame on you! a protester shouted.

He did not speak during the hearing, at which the court entered a not guilty plea on his behalf, set bail at $5,000, and ordered him to stay away from the victim and have no contact with minors.

McCarrick is the only U.S. Catholic cardinal, current or former, ever to be charged with child sex crimes.

His attorney Katherine Zimmerl said afterward that they are looking forward to addressing the allegations in court and would have no other immediate comment. Another hearing was set for Oct. 28.

McCarrick, who lives in Dittmer, Missouri, faced three counts of indecent assault and battery on a person over 14, according to court documents. He can still face charges because he wasnt a Massachusetts resident and had left the state, stopping the clock on the statute of limitations.

An attorney for the accuser said after the hearing that his client has shown enormous amount of courage by coming forward and is ready to see this trial through the end.

Todays arraignment provides hope for many clergy sex abuse victims and survivors that justice will prevail, truth will be told and children will be kept safe, said Mitchell Garabedian.

The Associated Press generally doesnt identify people who report sexual assault unless they agree to be named publicly, which the victim in this case has not done.

The case against McCarrick and other Catholic clerics is especially raw in Boston, where the global priest sex abuse scandal was first exposed.

Anne Barrett Doyle, co-founder of the online research database BishopAccountability.org, said McCarricks case marks a new phase in the global struggle to hold abusive clergy accountable.

The world is witnessing what was unimaginable 20 years ago: a powerful cardinal forced to answer to child sexual abuse charges in a suburban courtroom, she told reporters.

Susan Renehan, who said she was sexually assaulted by another priest as a girl and came to the courthouse to see McCarricks arraignment, called the charges just a crumb for victims who themselves never got justice, but still a cause for celebration.

So many lives have been ruined, and nobody seems to care in the Catholic Church, she said.

Ordained as a priest in New York City in 1958, McCarrick ascended the church ranks despite apparently common knowledge in the U.S. and Vatican leadership that Uncle Ted, as he was known, slept with seminarians.

McCarrick became one of the most visible Catholic Church officials in the U.S. and even served as the spokesman for fellow U.S. bishops when they enacted a zero tolerance policy against sexually abusive priests in 2002.

His fall began in 2017 when a former altar boy came forward to report the priest had groped him when he was a teenager in New York.

The next year, the Archdiocese of New York announced that McCarrick had been removed from ministry after finding the allegation to be credible and substantiated, and two New Jersey dioceses revealed they had settled claims of sexual misconduct against him in the past involving adults.

Pope Francis defrocked McCarrick in 2019 after a Vatican investigation determined he sexually abused minors, as well as adults.

A two-year internal investigation found that three decades of bishops, cardinals and popes downplayed or dismissed reports of sexual misconduct. Correspondence showed they repeatedly rejected the information as rumor and excused it as an imprudence.

The findings released last year pinned much of the blame on Pope John Paul II, who appointed McCarrick archbishop of Washington, D.C., despite having commissioned an inquiry that confirmed McCarrick slept with seminarians.

In the Massachusetts case, authorities began investigating McCarrick after Garabedian sent a letter to the prosecutor's office alleging the abuse, according to the court records.

The man told authorities in January that McCarrick was close to his family when he was growing up and that the abuse started when he was young.

The man said that during his brothers wedding reception at Wellesley College in June 1974, when he was 16, McCarrick told him his father wanted him to have a talk with the priest because the boy was being mischievous at home and not attending church.

They took a walk around campus, the man said, and McCarrick groped him before they went back to the party. The man said McCarrick also sexually assaulted him in a coat room type closet after they returned to the reception, authorities wrote in the documents.

The man told investigators that before leaving the room, McCarrick told him to say three Our Fathers and a Hail Mary or it was one Our Father and three Hail Marys, so God can redeem you of your sins, according to the report.

He also described other instances of sexual abuse by McCarrick over the years, including when the man was an adult, according to the court records.

Cardinals outside the U.S. have faced prosecution. Cardinal George Pell was convicted of sexual abuse in his native Australia, but his conviction was thrown out. And French Cardinal Philippe Barbarin was convicted but later acquitted of charges that he covered up for a pedophile priest.

___

Associated Press writer Nicole Winfield in Rome contributed to this report.
WOODBURY  A veteran Connecticut State Police sergeant was killed Thursday after officials say his vehicle was swept away by floodwaters during Ida.

State police identified the trooper as Sgt. Brian Mohl, a 26-year veteran who was assigned to Troop L in Litchfield. Mohl was the agencys 25th line-of-duty death.

Mohl was working a midnight shift when he notified Troop L that his vehicle was being swept away near Jacks Bridge in Woodbury around 3:30 a.m. Thursday, state police Col. Stavros Mellekas said Thursday afternoon.

That was the last they heard of him, Mellekas said. They pinged his phone. We sent all assets right away with the fire departments, dive teams  everything you could imagine.

Mellekas said once daybreak came and the water receded, first responders were able to locate Mohls vehicle mostly submerged in the river.

Mohl was located in the river about an hour later, according to Mellekas, who declined to say how far the sergeant was located from his vehicle, citing the ongoing investigation. Mohl was brought to shore on Riverbend Drive, Mellekas said.

First responders performed life-saving measures before the trooper was flown to Yale New Haven Hospital, where he was pronounced dead, Mellekas said.

Its just a tragedy, Mellekas added.

Every line of duty death is heartbreaking and the loss of Sgt. Mohl is no different. He was outside, in the middle of the night, in horrendous conditions, patrolling the Troop L area. He was doing a job he loved and he was taken much too soon, Colonel Mellekas added.

Mohl joined the State Police training academy in November 1994. He graduated in June 1995 and was assigned to Troop A in Southbury. He was promoted to sergeant in May 2000 and transferred to Troop L. He also served as a sergeant at Troop B in North Canaan, Troop G in Bridgeport and Troop H in Hartford before returning to Troop L in 2008, Connecticut State Police said in a statement Thursday evening.

Trooper First Class Pedro Muniz said its a tough time for the sergeants family and Connecticut State Police.

We just ask that everybody keep us and the family in their thoughts and their prayers as we endure this tough time right now, Muniz said.

U.S. Rep. Jahana Hayes, D-Conn., and Gov. Ned Lamont also expressed their condolences at a Thursday afternoon press conference.

I was telling everybody stay safe, stay home, lets ride out this storm. Thats not what you do as a trooper, Lamont said. As a trooper, you go out and you look and you try to rescue others  take care of them.

Woodbury Fire Chief Janet Morgan said her agency was notified a little after 3:30 a.m. Thursday about a vehicle being swept down river with an occupant inside.

We didnt know it was a state trooper at the time, she said.

She said the area is prone to flooding. We were used to the swift water in that area, and we knew what resources to immediately call in to assist, she said.

Nine fire departments responded to the scene, along with six boats and three helicopters.

We completed our task, and our thoughts and prayers are with the officer, Morgan said.

Around 30 state police vehicles could be seen Thursday morning between River Bend Drive and Westside Road in Woodbury. The road was blocked off with state police standing at the entrance to the dead-end road.

Morgan said the area where the incident occurred in the small rural community was a back road with no streetlights and the trooper may have come upon the water without realizing it.

It is known for rapid waters and flooding in that area, the fire chief said.

The bridge spans the Pomperaug River, according to Morgan. Overnight the river reached 6 feet over flood stage so that area was under water, she said.

It was not immediately clear if signs or other road blocks had been put up warning of the flooding. Morgan said the town has 47 known locations where flooding can occur.

We had people out in the area knowing where the floods were and recording that to the (police department), Morgan said.

The trooper may just not have known, she added, describing the waters as quick rising.

Up until midnight, we didnt have any flooding, and then it just took off, she added.

Connecticut State Police suffered the death of a trooper exactly 11 years ago. Connecticut State Police said Trooper Kenneth Hall was conducting a traffic stop on Interstate 91 on Sept. 2, 2010, when his car was struck by a driver under the influence of prescription and illegal drugs. Hall sustained multiple injuries and was later pronounced dead.

Staff writers Serenity Bishop, Ken Dixon and Liz Hardaway contributed reporting.
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LONDON (AP)  British rapper Dizzee Rascal pleaded not guilty on Friday to a charge of assaulting his former girlfriend.

The musician, whose full name is Dylan Kwabena Mills, appeared at Croydon Magistrates Court and denied headbutting Cassandra Jones at a home in south London in June. The Metropolitan Police force has previously reported minor injuries following the alleged incident.
BRIDGEPORT  When the Rooster River overflowed in a storm and inundated her Renwick Place home in 2018, Sheila Ortiz consoled herself with the thought that the incident had been a once-in-a-lifetime flood.

I had just moved in two weeks before, and everything we had was in the basement and we lost it all, Ortiz said Thursday as she and her neighbors pumped water out of their basements once again. I remember thinking, Well, thatll never happen again.

When the remnants of Hurricane Ida brought torrential rain to the region Wednesday night, Dave and Christina Ramos, Ortizs next-door neighbors, stayed up nervously watching the weather reports and the rising river across the street from their Cape Cod style house.

The river starts rising, and then it starts backing up, Dave Ramos said. Once it came over the retaining wall, it filled in the area and I was chest-deep in water.

After the September 2018 flood, Christina Ramos said, city workers and Mayor Joe Ganim had come out to inspect the damage to the neighborhood. Since 2018, the city has installed drain scuppers in the rivers retaining wall to allow flood water to drain back into the river.

But that only helps drain the water away after it stops raining, Ramos said.

Dave Ramos said he was thankful he had remained vigilant throughout the night, because at least he had been able to move the familys cars to higher ground. Ortiz had made a similar decision.

The river was at the top of the wall, and it was still raining, she said. The news said we were going to have heavy rain for two more hours and I thought, Thats it. Were done.

Ramos also credited Ganims 2018 visit with a quicker city response than had been the case three years ago.

I had his personal cell number, and I called it about 15 times, until someone came down here, she said.

By Thursday afternoon city workers were using heavy equipment to clear the road of several inches of muck and assorted debris, and workers went door-to-door distributing pizza to residents who had no electricity or running water.

That was a marked improvement from the response in 2018, she said.

After moving their own vehicles, Ortiz said she had retreated to her home. She didnt need to watch the rising river to know when her basement flooded.

You could hear it, the cellar doors caving in under the pressure, she said. It was boom, boom, boom. And then rushing water.

The river, which runs along the border between Fairfield and Bridgeport, has been the subject of numerous meetings in the past few years. At a 2019 meeting, officials from Bridgeport, Fairfield and Trumbull had jointly lobbied the state for funds to cover anti-flooding efforts. The communities had also worked together on a number of projects, including running cameras through drain pipes in the area to look for  and then clear  blockages.

Michael Tetreau, the former Fairfield first selectman, had also advocated above-ground water retention systems similar to a retention pit at Sherman Green that collects runoff from the Post Road. He credited the systems with reducing flooding in Fairfield Center.

In November 2020, Fairfield also completed a Rooster River flooding mitigation assessment.

After the most recent storm, Ganims office said the city had responded to more than 200 calls for service, including 60 flooded streets. The citys first responders had also conducted more than 20 water rescues and noted 45 locations with stranded vehicles submerged in water.

The flood had caused damage throughout the city, and Ganim urged residents to call the citys Emergency Operations Center at 203-579-3829 to report uninsured damage. The reports will be part of a comprehensive report to the state Department of Emergency Management, he said.

Ortiz, like Dave and Christina Ramos, expected very little of their flood damage to be covered by insurance. She said she had spent months replacing flooring and drywall in her house after the last flood, and had recently installed an above-ground pool. She and her neighbors now need to drain their pools after flood water reached over the sides.

The water was deep enough that you couldnt see where the pool was, you could swim in the yard, Christina Ramos said. But you wouldnt want to.

In addition to the muddy river water, Ramos said the pressure had backed up sewer lines in the neighborhood. The water also smelled of gas and oil that she guessed had come from oil tanks and vehicles that had been covered by water.

Ive got a 6-year-old, and he cant even come outside, she said. Would you let a kid play in this? Everything the water touched is disgusting.

Carlisle Stephens, who has lived in the neighborhood nearly four decades, said he has lived through quite a few floods. But Wednesday nights storm, and the flood of 2018, were the worst by far, he said.

In all the years Ive been here, the river never came over the wall before 2018, he said. And this one was worse.

The flood waters had risen high enough that his family vehicles, which had been parked neatly in his driveway and at the end of his front walkway, were left in a haphazard jumble.

The water did that, he said pointing to an SUV sitting at an awkward angle on his front lawn.

As bad as the situation on his lawn was, Stephens said the worst auto-related tragedy was yet to come.

I cant get my garage open, he said. But the water came up halfway up the door, and my classic, 1965 Mustang is in the garage.

Still, he managed to look on the bright side, and even returned a well-wishers comment about having a happy Labor Day weekend.

Ill be busy cleaning up, he said. But Im still alive, so itll still be good.

Scott Trichkas house sits at the top of Renwick Place where it intersects with Briarwood Avenue. The water didnt reach his house but it had filled his backyard sheds where he keeps his power equipment for his carpentry business.

Im up at four every morning, so I go to bed at nine, and when I went to sleep it wasnt even raining hard, he said. I thought, (Tropical Storm Henri) missed us, and this one was going to be nothing, too. Then I get woken up by the flood warning on my phone, and a friend called and said I should probably move my stuff out of the sheds. But by the time I went outside the water was chest deep. It happened that fast.

Trichka, another longtime neighborhood resident, agreed with Stephens that the flooding seemed to be getting worse in recent years. That also is the experience of Rajdaye Mohammed, another resident who moved to the area just in time for the 2018 flood.

Mohammed said she has had enough of meetings and surveys.

In 2018 we lost everything, and now everything is gone again, she said. This is a serious problem. Something needs to be done  now.
NEW YORK (AP)  It took just a few days for Monica Muquinche to reach New York after leaving Ecuadors Andean highlands with her 10-year-old son.

She flew to Mexico City, took a bus to the U.S. border, boated across and was detained by the Border Patrol. After one night in custody in Texas, she was released and then headed to the Big Apple.

I think God protected us, said the 35-year-old, whose husband disappeared last year while trying to make the same journey.

Muquinche is part of an extraordinary number of Ecuadorians coming to the United States. They surpassed El Salvadorans as the fourth-largest nationality encountered by U.S. authorities on the Mexican border, behind Mexicans, Guatemalans and Hondurans. U.S. authorities stopped Ecuadorians 17,314 times in July, compared with 3,598 times in January.

Those from the South American nation were the single largest nationality encountered by the U.S. Border Patrol in the busy El Paso sector in July, even more than Mexicans.

Other nontraditional nationalities have shown large increases in unauthorized arrivals to the U.S., including Brazilians and Venezuelans. But Ecuador stands out because of its small population  fewer than 18 million people.

The rise, which appears to be rooted partly in the coronavirus pandemic and a Mexican policy, also has led to increasing numbers of Ecuadorians vanishing along the perilous journey.

Ecuador's economy had been struggling for several years before COVID-19 devastated it. Hundreds of thousands lost jobs, and officials said 70% of businesses closed at least temporarily.

Meanwhile, Mexico's government announced in 2018 that Ecuadorians could visit without a visa. That gave those with a passport and a plane ticket a huge leap toward the U.S. border once pandemic travel restrictions were lifted.

More than 88,000 Ecuadorians left their homeland for Mexico in the first half of 2021, and more than 54,000 of them havent returned, according to Ecuadorian government data. More than 22,000 of those trips occurred in July alone.

Since 2018, we have seen a big increase in Ecuadorians taking the Mexican route" rather than trying the more complicated and dangerous path through Central America, said William Murillo, co-founder of the law firm 1800migrante.com that handles immigration cases.

While Ecuadorians no longer needed smugglers for the journey north, they were turning in greater number to smugglers who could get them across the U.S. border itself.

Murillo said smugglers lie, trick people. We predicted we would have many deaths and disappeared migrants.

The Foreign Ministry said this month that 54 Ecuadorians have been reported missing since the start of 2019 while trying to cross the U.S. border. Nineteen have disappeared so far this year.

The sudden leap in migration led Mexico to end the visa-free option. As of Saturday, Ecuadorians will once again need a visa. Mexican officials said the requirement is a provisional measure that will help ensure that Ecuadorians do not fall prey to human trafficking networks."

Murillo said the election of President Joe Biden increased hope among would-be migrants because they perceived he would be friendlier than his predecessor, Donald Trump. False rumors spread about U.S. authorities allowing migrants to cross the border, the attorney said.

Gloria Chavez, chief of the Border Patrols El Paso sector, has said Ecuadorians are not subject to pandemic powers that allow the government to expel migrants at the border on the grounds it prevents spread of the coronavirus.

The agency started noticing the surge in Ecuadorians last year, she said.

We started seeing an increase slowly in every week after we started seeing more Ecuadorians come into our area. And thats how we started noticing that there was a trend, Chavez said in May.

Carlos Lopez, Muquinche's husband, was a cobbler who lost his job at the end of 2019 as political unrest roiled Ecuador. In search of better opportunities, he went north.

He was stopped and returned to Mexico on his first attempt across the U.S. border. Muquinche said he called and told her that partners of the smuggler he had hired in Ecuador had pointed guns at him and accused him of giving information to U.S. border officials about them.

Muquinche stopped receiving her husband's calls in April 2020. She filed a complaint against the smuggler, who was arrested in Ecuador but later released. Muquinche said he started threatening her, demanding she withdraw the complaint.

She was making $180 every two weeks as a cobbler and felt overwhelmed by the threats and the debt incurred to pay for Lopez's trip to the U.S.

I was scared of coming, she said. Now, I think the worst is behind me. I have learned to live with this pain.

Muquinche flew to Mexico City with her son, then took buses to reach Ciudad Miguel Aleman, across the Rio Grande from Roma, Texas. They crossed the river in a small boat with other migrants and were detained by U.S. border agents, she said.

She was released but ordered to check in with immigration authorities, which she did in New York.

Many of the Ecuadorians coming to New York are from the Andean highlands, a land of volcanic peaks where most of Ecuadors national parks are located. Many are poor farmers, with little opportunity for other employment.

Those who try to reach the U.S. often go into debt to pay the $15,000 or so per person that smugglers charge to take them over the border. Some are kidnapped for ransom by cartels en route, putting more costs on their families, or face dangers from the tough journey.

Cristian Lupercio, 21, had been an unlicensed taxi driver in the Ecuadorian city of Cuenca when the pandemic left him with few clients. He headed to Mexico in hopes of crossing the U.S. border.

He last spoke to his father, Claudio Lupercio, on Thanksgiving Day and then set out. Claudio Lupercio said he learned from others on the journey that his son's guide got lost in the desert and that Cristian grew tired and was left behind.

The elder Lupercio, a carpenter on Long Island, called the Ecuadorian consulate in Texas, attorneys, hospitals near the border and immigration authorities, asking about this son.

When news of the disappearance spread, people in Ecuador contacted him, saying they knew where Cristian was. It was a scam, he said.

I paid them $2,500. I was so desperate, I believed them, Lupercio said.

New York is the most popular U.S. destination for Ecuadorians, with more than 241,000 living in the state, according to the Migration Policy Institute. Ecuadorian restaurants with names like El Sol de Quito or El Encebollado de Rossy are common along avenues in Queens and Brooklyn.

Many migrated following an economic crisis in their homeland in the late 1990s.

Walther Sinche, director of a community center in Queens called Alianza Ecuatoriana Internacional, said about 10 to 15 Ecuadorians used to show up at his classes on safety regulations in the construction industry. Now, about 50 attend, he said.

They have been here just three days, a week, a month, he said. There is an exodus happening.

For Muquinche, frying green plantain dumplings and chopping onion for a fish stew called encebollado" at the restaurant where she works helps distract her from the memory of her husband's disappearance.

I have my son who needs me, she said, her eyes red from crying. "I have to move forward.

___

Associated Press writer Gonzalo Solano contributed to this report from Quito.
INDIANAPOLIS (AP)  Indianas Republican-dominated Legislature has approved numerous abortion restrictions over the past decade but its top leaders said Thursday it wont hurry to adopt legislation patterned after a new Texas law that bans most abortions.

Even though legislators will be meeting for an unusual session during the last two weeks of September, Indiana House Speaker Todd Huston and Senate President Pro Tem Rodric Bray said they would limit that session to the redrawing of congressional and legislative district maps. That means any abortion law debates wouldn't happen until the next regular legislative session starts in January.

Were closely watching whats happening in Texas in regards to their new pro-life law, including any legal challenges, Huston said in a statement. Indiana is one of the most pro-life states in the country, and well continue to examine ways to further protect life at all stages.

The U.S. Supreme Court, in a 5-4 ruling, allowed the new Texas law to take effect Wednesday even though the court didnt rule on its constitutionality. The action has Republicans in many states eager to pass similar measures.

The Texas law allows private citizens to bring lawsuits in state court against anyone involved in an abortion other than the patient. Other abortion laws are enforced by state and local officials, with criminal sanctions possible. It also prohibits abortions once medical professionals can detect cardiac activity, usually around six weeks, which is before most women know theyre pregnant.

Abortion-rights supporters vowed to continue the legal fight and said Texas politicians had made a mockery of the rule of law.

Republican Indiana state Sen. Liz Brown of Fort Wayne, who sponsored several anti-abortion bills adopted in recent years, said she was interested in pursuing a law similar to the one in Texas.

Brown, who is an attorney, said she believed the provision allowing private citizens to sue abortion providers and others was appropriate.

I think that abortions affect society and the community and frankly, in some states, even though you may have pro-life legislators, you do not always have pro-life bureaucrats who are willing to do enforcement inspections, Brown said.

Indianas Legislature has adopted numerous abortion restrictions over the past decade, with several later blocked by court challenges.

A federal judge ruled in August that several of Indianas laws restricting abortion were unconstitutional, including the states ban on telemedicine consultations between doctors and women seeking abortions.

A judge in 2019 blocked the states ban on a common second-trimester abortion procedure that the legislation called dismemberment abortion.

The U.S. Supreme Court in 2019 also rejected Indianas appeal of a lower court ruling that blocked a ban on abortion based on gender, race or disability. However, it upheld a portion of the 2016 law signed by then-Gov. Mike Pence requiring the burial or cremation of fetal remains after an abortion.
Connecticut schools recorded 305 cases of COVID-19 during what for many was the first week of fall classes, including 247 among students, state officials said Thursday.

There have been 58 cases reported among school staff since last Wednesday, including 34 that were diagnosed in people who were vaccinated, according to a weekly report from the state Department of Public Health.

Of the 247 cases involving public and private students in kindergarten through 12th grade, 21 involved vaccinated children, according to the report.

The governor's office also released its weekly update on coronavirus-related deaths in the state, adding 39 since last Thursday. That brings the total in Connecticut to 8,394 during the pandemic.

The seven-day rolling average of daily new cases in Connecticut has risen over the past two weeks from 619.86 on Aug. 17 to 664.57 on Aug. 31, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

___

EVICTION ISSUES

Connecticut officials said Thursday theyve sped up the process of releasing financial assistance to renters and landlords under the states UniteCT program and have now paid out or plan to pay out roughly $170 million of the first $212 million of federal COVID-19 housing relief funds.

During those first three months, we were building the airplane as we were flying, said Dawn Parker, director of the UniteCT, which was originally launched in March. And now, we are flying.

Parker said 9,388 tenants who were in arrears and 3,742 landlords have so far received financial help under the initiative. As of Thursday, $112 million in assistance has been paid or is in the process of being paid and another $58 million is under financial review.

Parker appeared with state officials and advocates at a roundtable discussion with Wally Adeyemo, deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Treasury, who was visiting the state to learn more about Connecticuts initiative.

Besides requiring less paperwork from applicants, Parker credited Lamonts recent executive order that requires Connecticut landlords to participate in UniteCT with the uptick in approved applications. Lamont said Thursday he plans to discuss with state lawmakers his hopes of extending that rule beyond Sept. 30.

Under UniteCT, financial help is capped at $15,000 and/or 12 months of back rent. She said the average grant has been $7,500 to renters who are four months behind. Parker said three-quarters of applicants earn less than 30% of the state's average median income.

John Souza, president of the Connecticut Coalition of Property Owners, said it small landlords took a leap of faith during the pandemic and agreed to participate in the program and not pursue evictions.

I think many are glad that they did, he said. Many are glad to be able to pay their bills again."
DAMASCUS, Syria (AP)  Syria says it shot down Israeli missiles as they approached the capital Damascus on Friday, saying it had countered an aggression from its longtime adversary with its own air defenses.

State news agency SANA said Syria shot down most of the missiles, which were launched from the area southeast of neighboring Lebanon and targeted areas near Damascus. It provided no further details. The Russian military, which provides air-defense systems to Syria, said later Friday that Syria had shot down more than 20 missiles launched from Israeli F-15 fighter jets from Lebanons airspace. The claims could not be immediately verified.
United Cerebral Palsy of Eastern Connecticut has expanded its assistive technology services into Fairfield County as of Sept. 1, to add to the services that the organization has provided to residents in the New London, Windham, Middlesex and New Haven counties.

The nonprofit organization has expanded its assessment, device demonstration, and lending program with its partners: The Connecticut Tech Act Project, the Connecticut Department of Public Health, the Bridgeport Economic Development Corporation, and the East End NRZ Market & Cafe at 1852 Stratford Ave. in Bridgeport.

The focus of the program is also to help to identify the types of technology equipment that is needed for senior citizens in the East End of Bridgeport as a way to address social isolation. Tablets, iPads, and smart home technology will help senior citizens maintain their health, and safety in their own homes, and allow them to connect to their community. Technology assessments, and demonstrations are taking place in community settings, and remotely.

The organization has also opened a new Assistive Technology Lending and Accessibility Services Center at 300 Long Beach Blvd. #1 in Stratford. Senior citizens and people with disabilities can visit the center by appointment by calling (860) 443-3800, ext. 308.

Social isolation reached an all-time high during the pandemic for seniors and people with disabilities, said Jennifer Keatley, executive director of United Cerebral Palsy.

When you consider the Pew research, which states that one in four Americans live with a disability that interferes with activities of daily living, and a recent national survey that reports 90 percent of Americans age 50 and over want to Age in Place, the problems of isolation cannot be ignored. Despite the overwhelming numbers, few people are aware of how to do that safely, Keatley said.

Assistive technology tools help seniors and people with disabilities with mobility, communication, cognition, learning, vocational support and independent living.

United Cerebral Palsys assistive technology services include technology demonstrations, in person, remote, to explain how new technology can be applied, and used, as well as free technology loans, so people can try new technology before they buy it, to ensure that it meets their specific needs.

To find out more about the program, interested individuals can contact Shannon Taber at 860-443-3800 ext. 111 or at staber@ucpect.org.
WINSTED  The Winchester Registrars are holding a lottery to determine the placement of the candidates names for the Nov. 2 Municipal Election.

The lottery will be held at 1:30 p.m. Sept. 8 in the P. Francis Hicks Room on the second floor of the Town Hall.

It is open to candidates, party chairmen, and the public.

Run & Wag registration now open

WEST CORNWALL  The Little Guilds 8th annual Run & Wag 5K will be held Oct. 16 at the Cornwall Town Green at noon..

The Run & Wag will have live music, as well as food and drinks available for purchase: Ben & Jerrys, Merakis and Norbrook Brewery.

Registration is at www.runsignup.com. The adult fee is $25; 18 and under fee is $15.

After a year of social distancing and cancelled gatherings, we know that our supporters and community are eager to get back on our beautiful course through the Cornwall Valley, said Jenny Langendoerfer, LG Executive Director. Our Run & Wag is the premier dog and human race in the area. We cant wait to see all those happy tails on October 16.

An important change: All registrations must be completed online by Oct. 10. There will be no on-site registration.

The Little Guild is also offering a virtual 5K option. Because of the pandemic, last years race was held virtually. We found many of our supporters liked the flexibility that gave them plus it allowed folks outside of the area to get out for a good cause, members said.

For those who cant participate, runsignup.com has a donation option to help the Little Guild in its mission to rescue and find homes for dogs and cats in need.

Library has wireless hotspots, Chromebook

The Morris Public Library now offers wireless hotspots and a Chromebook for Morris patrons to borrow.

Wi-Fi hotspots offer wireless internet at home, will accompany a uswer on a vacation or help a friend or a family member who does not have Internet access. A Chromebook is a laptop used to perform a variety of tasks using the Google Chrome browser.

Connect to the Internet via Chromebook+Mobile Hotspot combo (borrowed separately; available to Morris residents only. In quire at the desk or call 860-567-7440. Waiting lists are available at the library.

Church receives CT Community Foundation grant

BARKHAMSTED The First Congregational Church of Barkhamsted recently received a $5,000 grant from the Northwest Connecticut Community Foundation, with notification on July 20. The agreement requires use of the grant for the included scope of work by March 31, 2022.

The FCCB is grateful for the award of $5,000, said member John Lavieri. This generous grant will be used to repair window wells in our basement Community Room and to deal with mold which has resulted from water leaking into the room. The designated work will cost more than the amount of this grant. Friends in our community have been very generous to our church for years, and we will seek support from our friends to raise the additional funds throughout these seven months.

The churchs pastor, the Rev. Susan Wyman, said, Many folks who visit the church on various occasions for weddings, baptisms, funerals, or other gatherings, have allergies which limit their ability to stay for food and socialization after the upstairs services.

This grant came from the Douglas and Janet Roberts Fund, a fund within the Community Foundation. Douglas Roberts and his late wife, Janet Roberts, longtime residents of Barkhamsted.

The Northwest Connecticut Community Foundation Inc. was founded in 1969 and services 20 towns in the Connecticut northwest corner with more than 260 funds under management including the Douglas and Jane Roberts Fund. However, since additional assistance is still needed, a letter appealing for support to complete this repair has been mailed to area residents.

The church is located at 6 Old Town Hall Road with the phone of 860-379-5864 only being answered once a week when the church is occupied. The church clerk will check voice messages at that time. Directions or information visit: www.barkhamstedfirstchurch.org. The church is a member of both the National Association of Congregational Christian Churches and the Fellowship of Northeast Congregational Christian Churches.

Company holding prize contest for Facebook likes

NEW HAVEN  LH Brenner Insurance has set aside 10,000 worth of cash prizes specifically for PAL programs in Connecticut.

One for $5,000 and two for $2,500 each will be awarded to one of eight towns: New Haven, Torrington, New Britain, Hartford, Waterbury, Stratford, East Haven, and Danbury.

Each is looking for Facebook Likes. Go to https://rb.gy/iuicie for details. The winner will be announced Oct. 1 at 5 p.m.

The company said it wanted to do something that reflects the many good things police do for the people in their communities.

For information and the participants, go to https://www.facebook.com/lhbrennerinc

Thomaston Savings Bank opens new branch

THOMASTON  Thomaston Savings Bank recently expanded its branch network by opening its 15th location at 2 South Main Street, in the Unionville neighborhood of Farmington, pending regulatory approval. It is the banks second location in Farmington.

Recognizing the important role Thomaston Savings Bank plays in the local economy, we are taking a proactive approach in providing additional access to in-person services. This new branch will reaffirm our commitment to the Farmington community, builds on our existing relationships, and adds an additional layer of convenience for our customers, said Stephen L. Lewis, Thomaston Savings Bank, President and CEO, in a statement.

Each Thomaston Savings Bank branch, including the new Unionville location, has a dedicated commercial lender, residential lender, and Infinex financial advisor on the branch team, offering business and personal customers alike the tools and resources necessary to meet their financial needs and goals.

To learn more about Thomaston Savings Bank and all the services they offer, visit ThomastonSB.com.
AP

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP)  The second-degree murder conviction and 25-year prison sentence of a woman in connection with the fatal shooting of an Oklahoma police officer has been upheld by the state Court of Criminal Appeals.

Arguments by Brooklyn Williams, 27, of insufficient evidence, improper jury instructions and that her statements to police should have been suppressed were rejected Thursday by the court.
Credit unions looking to expand often look at mergers as the best, most expedient way to do so. Especially if they want to expand into a new geographic market, finding a merger partner that is already established in that market has several important advantages.

A merger partner in a new market will likely come to the table with one or more branch offices, saving the continuing credit union the considerable expense of opening up new locations. Additionally, the merging credit union will provide an existing membership base and relationships in the community that the continuing credit union can take over and nurture. And of course, by merging with an already established credit union, the continuing organization will have one less competitor to take away market share.

In our three-part white paper, More for Members: Credit Union Leaders Plan Post-Pandemic Merger & Acquisition Strategies, several credit union leaders shared their experiences of geographic expansion via merger.
Despite news of several big banks offering credit cards to consumers without traditional credit scores or credit history, the credit score as we know it isnt going away any time soon. How much do consumers really know about the inner workings of their credit scores and what factors affect them, whether positively or negatively? To dig deeper into this topic, Elan and PYMNTS surveyed a sample of over 2,000 consumers in the Credit Score Literacy and Building Credit Report. The report explores consumers perceptions of credit scores and plans around improving them. The report found that there is some confusion around credit scores as well as behaviors that improve on or detract from ones credit score. In addition, the report highlighted the need for education and tools that can help consumers monitor and improve their credit scores.

One of the most compelling findings of the report was that consumers have false perceptions about their current credit scores, as 70% of consumers surveyed in the report thought their credit scores were above average while in fact only 45% of them have scores over 751 (the above-average threshold according to national credit reporting data). Perceptions of below-average scores were also skewed, with only 8% of consumers reporting they believed their credit scores were below average. In reality, 21% of those surveyed had a score below 600, the threshold for below-average scores.

Interestingly, Gen-Z and paycheck-to-paycheck consumers possessed the greatest knowledge gap when it came to actual vs. perceived above-average credit scores, with a 33-percentage point difference. While respondents agreed that paying bills on time and having good credit history was key to a higher score, there was confusion around other factors related to the effects of certain actions on creditworthiness. For example, 40% of respondents said that spending close to their credit limits will improve their credit scores (21 percent) or are not sure of its impact (19 percent). 39% of respondents believed that having debt on one credit instrument such as a credit card versus multiple credit instruments would improve their scores, while 33% thought it would make their scores worse.

This discrepancies in these beliefs highlight the need for credit education tools, which is an opportunity for credit unions and credit card issuers to step in. Consumers benefit from tools that allow them to easily track their scores and break down factors that most affect their scores, such as making payments on time, keeping a certain number open, or maintaining low balances. Tools can offer additional insights into credit history and how to improve scores and can alert to potentially fraudulent activity.

Evidence points to consumers being receptive to these types of credit monitoring and improvement tools, as the report also found that 62% of consumers are interested in improving their credit scores, but many are unsure about how to go about it. In addition, more than one-third of consumers would consider switching their current credit cards for those that offer tools to monitor and improve their credit scores.

Consumers view credit cards as a tool to build and expand their credit histories. However, credit unions wanting to offer robust credit card products to members have a lot to consider when it comes to risk, cost, and ongoing investment. The allure of potential fee and interest income gained by offering a suite of credit cards to members may lose its luster when all the costs of running the program are considered, even those not readily apparent. Elans recent paper, Evaluating a Credit Card Programs Profitability: Fee Vs. Interest Income discusses the ins and outs of costs related to credit card program income types and factors to credit unions should consider when deciding whether to run a credit card program in house or outsource to an agent provider.

The research in the Credit Score Literacy and Building Credit Report illustrates the need for clarity around credit scores, what factors affect them, and how consumers can take active control over their credit histories and futures. In order to help with this, credit unions and credit card issuers can provide tools such as credit score tracking, fraud alerts, and more to empower members to be in-the-know about their credit score. By providing these tools, credit unions will reap the benefits of an engaged member and a strengthened member-credit union relationship.

Read the full report here.
Pat Dunn, 81, of Cullman, passed away peacefully on September 10, 2021, after a three-year battle with dementia. Pat graduated from Andalusia High School in 1958 and married the same year. She moved to Cullman in 1966 and after several years of operating her own dress and wig store, Pat's Fa
Deborah Torres, right, talks to police officers in Queens, where three people died after their basement apartment flooded. Photo: Mary Altaffer/AP/Shutterstock

Eight of the nine people who died during the Hurricane Ida floods last night were exactly where emergency alerts told them was the safest place to be: their homes. Specifically, they were in their own basement apartments in Queens and in one case, Brooklyn. Only one of the buildings, at 6120 Grand Central Parkway, was located in an area that was a special flood hazard area, according to Department of Buildings records, highlighting just how unprepared the city is for climate change. And in New York City, these subterranean spaces, many of them turned into apartments in violation of zoning and occupancy laws, are among the few affordable housing available to low-income immigrants. The Pratt Center for Community Development has estimated that there are more than 100,000 illegal basement apartments in New York, the majority of them in Queens.

Its unclear whether the five (and possibly more) apartments where people died were legal or not. But Department of Buildings records suggest that there were questions about at least one of them. At the Elmhurst building on 84th Street where an 86-year-old woman was found unresponsive just before midnight, there had been several complaints in 2012 about a basement unit, after which inspectors failed to get into the building four times. (Per city regulations, an apartment must have ceilings at least seven feet six inches high, a window, and at least two exits, and at least half of the room must be above grade; otherwise its considered a cellar, and youre not supposed to live there. A lot of illegal basement apartments might more accurately be called cellar apartments.) A 2019 Times analysis found that eight areas in Queens were consistently among the top 10 places in the city with the most complaints over illegal home conversions. The city created a pilot program in 2019 toward making these projects legal, launching it in Cypress Hills and East New York, but COVID budget cuts took it down to barely anything: For 2020, it was allocated just $91,000, and reduced its scope from 41 homes to 9.

That said, many legal basement apartments also flooded last night (which is an argument against living in any basement, although obviously many people arent in a position to be choosy). The water came in suddenly and violently, making escape a challenge, especially for older residents. (Basement apartments tend to be popular with seniors because theyre inexpensive and have few or no stairs.) These units are a key part of the housing ecosystem in New York City, said Rebekah Morris, the senior program manager at the Pratt Center for Community Development, which is a member of BASE, or Basement Apartments Safe for Everyone, a coalition of researchers and advocates. Theyre not going to go away, so we need to test and pilot and figure out a pathway to make them safe, Morris said. Particularly as more extreme weather tests decades-old construction: At the building on 64th Street in Woodside where a 48-year-old woman, 50-year-old man, and 2-year-old child died, DOB records indicate that the integrity of the building itself may have been compromised by the surge. An upstairs neighbor told the Times that the woman who lived in the apartment called her, frantic, to say that water was pouring in from the window.

Before last night, fire was considered the primary danger in these units (and still is: yesterday a 9-year-old boy died in an illegally converted Ozone Park basement after an e-bike battery caught fire). But as flash floods become more frequent and fatal, these apartments become an issue in areas where flooding wasnt previously a concern. Morris argues its becoming even more important to study ways to turn them into safe living spaces. Because as long as the city has an affordability crisis, theyll continue to existand as long as the ocean is getting warmer, theyll continue to flood.
The Cyber Security Market Is Booming

Over the past year, its been impossible to ignore the rising tide of threats targeting government and commercial organisations around the world and the cyber security market is reacting. The frequency and intensity of cyber scams and crimes have increased over the last decade, resulting in huge losses for businesses

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 growth of the market can be attributed to the growing sophistication of cyber attacks and ss incidents of cyber crime increased significantly, businesses worldwide channeled their spending on advanced information security technologies to strengthen their in-house security infrastructure.

Ransomware alone, increased 148% year on year with an estimated 2.9 million ransomware attacks so far in 2021, Momentum Cyber reveals. Beyond the numbers, these attacks have manifested in significant and increasingly concerning ways.

There was the disruption of the flow of nearly half of the oil and gas to the East Coast of the United States with the shutdown of the Colonial Pipeline, the interruption of our food supply with an attack crippling of the Irish health system, and countless other attacks that never made the news. On top of that, weve seen supply chain attacks causing widespread impact on thousands of organisations worldwide and the European Union Cybersecurity Agency (ENISA) recently predicted a fourfold increase in supply chain attacks in 2021 over last year, warning that strong cybersecurity protection is no longer effective in defending against these types of attacks.

Commercial and government organisations are recognising the dire challenge at hand and investing significantly in cyber security technologies to combat these threats. Spend on global information security and risk management technologies in 2021 is projected to increase 12.4% to $150 billion.

With evolving threats comes a need for new, emerging technologies. These technologies can supplement technologies from some of our nations most prominent cyber security vendors, or they can stand alone to become the next wave of innovation in our industry.

IT analyst forecasts are unable to keep pace with the dramatic rise in cyber crime with a number of dramatic developments:

The ransomware epidemic.

The proliferation of hackers-for-hire

The refocusing of malware from PCs and laptops to smartphones and mobile devices.

The deployment of billions of under-protected Internet of Things (IoT) devices,

More sophisticated cyber attacks launching at businesses, governments, educational institutions and consumers..

Total investment into cyber security skyrocketed in the first half of 2021, more than doubling over the same period last year. Investors poured $11.5 billion in total venture capital financing in 1H 2021, up from $4.7 billion in 1H 2020. Of the 430 total transactions, 36 were greater than $100 million. Categories like risk & compliance, data security, network & infrastructure security and incident response & threat intelligence captured the attention of investors.

M&A volume also saw a significant increase in the first half of 2021, with significant deals for companies in cloud security, security consulting, risk & compliance and more. Total M&A volume was more than four times what it was during the same period of 2020, with $39.5 billion in total deals in 1H 2021 across 163 total transactions. This total is up from $9.8 billion in 1H 2020 across 93 transactions.



The growing demand for solutions is anticipated to gain traction with cumulative investments from countries including Germany, France, India, Spain, South Korea, Italy, Canada and others. The increasing adoption of enterprise security solutions from manufacturing, banking, financial services, and insurance (BFSI) and healthcare is expected to drive market growth in the forthcoming years.

This unprecedented challenge creates significant opportunities for the right investors with the domain expertise and operational know-how to identify the companies and entrepreneurs developing the disruptive technologies that will change the cyber security landscape.

HelpNetSecurity: Cyber Security Ventures: GrandView Research: Fortune: Statista: Markets& Markets:

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Local

TCOM lands $217M Army contract for Saudi aerostats

jeure / Photo courtesy TCOM Pictured above is a PSS-T aerostat that will be used to support military communications and intelligence gathering activities for Saudi Arabia.

TCOM of Elizabeth City has been awarded a $217.3 million contract from the U.S. Army to manufacture a tethered aerostat platform for Saudi Arabia that the company says will result in significant hiring activity.

A tethered aerostat radar system is a low-level airborne ground surveillance system that uses aerostats, or moored balloons, as a radar platform.

TCOM will produce 10 modified 34-meter Persistent Surveillance Systems-Tethered (PSS-T) that are used to support military communications, for force protection, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance activities.

The PSS-T is designed to collect intelligence information from sensors and integrate that information with other aerial and ground radars.

A U.S. Department of Defense press release states the contract runs through March 2027 and it will be completely funded by foreign military sales.

Fiscal 2021 foreign military sales (Saudi Arabia) funds in the amount of $217,270,662 were obligated at the time of the award, the DOD press release states.

Gal Borenstein of the Borenstein Group public relations firm said a significant portion of the new contract will be performed at TCOMs facility in Elizabeth City. He also said that the contract will require hiring additional personnel in multiple areas, including manufacturing and engineering.

TCOM is planning a phased-hiring plan with significant hiring activity imminently in the coming months, Borenstein said.

Borenstein said TCOM cannot disclose its current employee numbers because of security requirements by the U.S. government.

Pasquotank Board of Commissioners Chairman Lloyd Griffin said the contract will have a positive economic impact on the area since any increase in payroll will benefit businesses in the county.

Good news for the county, good news for the company and good news for TCOMs business model, said Griffin, who also chairs the local economic development commission. One job, 10 jobs, 50 jobs, whatever it is, it is going to benefit Pasquotank County.

Third District U.S. Rep. Greg Murphy said the contract is a win for Elizabeth City and Pasquotank.

I am thrilled to hear that TCOM has been awarded this significant military contract, Murphy said in a press release. I hope it will create new opportunities and bolster additional high-paying jobs for residents in the Third District.

Murphy said that for four decades TCOM has been a leader in leveraging advanced technology to combat threats to national security.

I look forward to seeing how these tactical devices will be used to support military communications and reinforce intelligence capabilities for years to come, Murphy said. The PSS-T is designed to collect intelligence information from sensors and integrate it with other aerial and ground radars. I am proud that this important technology is made right here in the Third District.

Borenstein said TCOM will continue to seek contracts with U.S. allies.

TCOM is planning continued growth in international markets which would result in additional contracts for elevated awareness ISR solutions, Borenstein said.
Authorities say they are trying to identify the two pilots and two passengers who died aboard a small jet that crashed on takeoff in Connecticut and hit a building
Robert Wendell Glover, 81, of Dalton, Georgia passed away on September, 13th 2021 at home surrounded by his loving family. He was preceded in death by his wife of 57 years Patricia Lee McKaig Glover. Robert loved his family and Country and proudly served in the United States Air Force. Born 
Ryan Anderson/Daily Citizen-News

"You want to be there for the celebrations, but you also want to be there for the opposite -- when something doesn't work -- so you can reflect, roll up your sleeves and" fix it, said Lauri Johnson, who was principal of Dalton Middle School and now leads the new Hammond Creek Middle School. "You should make where you're at awesome instead of always looking down the street for something different."
Ronald Leland Dickison of Ironton, Ohio passed away Saturday, September 11, 2021 at home surrounded by his family. Ronald was born November 11, 1942 in Ashland, Kentucky. He was the son of the late Ben Dickison and Dorothy Gillium. There will be a celebration of life, 1:00 P.M., Saturday, Se
One of the great consolations of my declining memory, I find, is that I can re-read a favourite novel again and again, without the faintest recollection of what happens next or whodunnit.

Every character, every twist and turn of the authors imagination, delights and astonishes me afresh, in exactly the same way as when I first read the book all those years ago.

But like so many of us oldies, I feel its wrong to spend my dotage re-reading stuff Ive enjoyed in the past. I tell myself we ought to make an effort to keep up with the times by tackling books weve never tried before.

Judge Timothy Spencer told him hed avoided immediate imprisonment by the skin of his teeth. Instead of locking him up, he told him to read books and plays by Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy, Charles Dickens and William Shakespeare

So I make it my rule to get through at least three unfamiliar novels, before I fall back on a much-loved classic that I know will never fail to give me pleasure.

Over the past fortnight, therefore, I read three Robert Harris thrillers, back to back  all of them new to me. The first was Conclave, his 2016 book about the election of a Pope. Next, I read Munich, about appeasement and Neville Chamberlains visit to Hitler in 1938.

Then I read V2, his latest, published last year, about Nazi Germanys vengeance weapon, the rocket-powered flying bomb that terrorised London in the final months of World War II.

Thriller

Now, I find a great deal to admire in Robert Harris, whom I am proud to say I knew slightly in our days as political reporters at Westminster, before he became a best-selling author.

Hes an excellent storyteller, who keeps those pages turning (if that werent so, I wouldnt have read three of his books on the trot).

It must also be said of him that he meticulously researches every subject he addresses, giving everything he writes a feeling that were in the hands of an expert who really knows his stuff.

But in my view, he will never find a place among the greats. Call me bitterly envious of his success (though Id say I am only slightly) but it seems to me that he spoils his books by giving them endings which are as ludicrously implausible as they are predictable.

Indeed, we can all see them coming a mile off  a serious failing in a thriller.

Then I read V2, his latest, published last year, about Nazi Germanys vengeance weapon, the rocket-powered flying bomb that terrorised London in the final months of World War II

Anyone who has read Conclave or his earlier book, Enigma, about the World War II code-breaking operation at Bletchley Park, will know what I mean.

So it was that on Monday this week, after finishing the three Harrises, none of which quite hit the spot, I decided to reward myself for having ventured into unfamiliar territory by settling down to re-read, for the umpteenth time, Jane Austens sublime Persuasion.

God, its a lovely book, wholly satisfying in every way  funny and touching, with a profound insight into human nature on almost every page, and every word of it written in prose that flows like poetry.

Its no wonder to me that so many rate it the best novel she wrote  though heaven knows, the competition from Emma and Pride And Prejudice could hardly be hotter.

All right, even those of us who have lousy memories have a strong suspicion from the outset that our heroine, Anne Elliot, will get her man. We also have a pretty shrewd idea which of her two principal suitors will finally hook her.

But the book is so completely perfect, unlike anything Ive read that was written in the present century, that the predictability of the outcome doesnt matter a jot.

At this point, I must throw up my hands and admit its both absurd and unfair to compare Robert Harris with Jane Austen.

But though the genres in which they write could hardly be more different, what Im talking about here is the sheer, overall satisfaction a book can give  the feeling when weve reached the end that nothing about it could have been done better.

As far as Im concerned  and I know that a great many readers will agree with me  hardly anyone who has written in our language since Austens day can quite match up to that test, as she did.

Eccentric

Now heres the remarkable thing. No sooner had I finished re-reading Persuasion than I turned to Wednesdays paper, where I read of the extraordinary penalty handed down this week to a former student of criminology and psychology, who had amassed nearly 70,000 white supremacist, anti-Semitic and neo-Nazi documents, including bomb-making instructions.

Imposing a 24-month suspended sentence on Ben John for possessing information likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism, Judge Timothy Spencer told him hed avoided immediate imprisonment by the skin of his teeth.

Instead of locking him up, he told him to read books and plays by Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy, Charles Dickens and William Shakespeare, ordering him to return to court every four months to be tested on his reading.

Have you read Dickens? Austen? he asked him. Start with Pride And Prejudice, Dickenss A Tale Of Two Cities and Shakespeares Twelfth Night. Think about Hardy. Think about Trollope.

In other words, the judge was setting as a punishment the study of literature that has given many like me some of the most richly pleasurable experiences of our lives.

Very eccentric indeed, and it can come as no surprise that campaigners have asked the Attorney General to review a sentence they regard as too lenient.

Several thoughts occur to me.

The first is that unless the judge is recklessly irresponsible, he surely cannot believe that John poses a serious terrorist threat (though, of course, for someone in possession of bomb-making instructions, there is a chance that he does). As for owning books about the Nazis, is that deemed an offence these days?

Extreme

If so, then I myself must plead guilty. Having studied the Weimar Republic and the rise of Hitler at Cambridge, I own several such books  and, for that matter, plenty about Stalin, Karl Marx and Tony Blair, too (though I promise Ive never owned a bomb manual).

No, if the judge had thought the defendant a real threat, and not just a nasty young idiot with a taste for extreme Right-wing reading matter, I feel sure he would have banged him up without hesitation. I hope so, anyway.

More surprising than letting him walk free, I reckon, is Judge Spencers apparent faith in the power of Jane Austen to turn a neo-Nazi bigot into a civilised, anti-racist fellow like me, with a taste for exquisitely written love stories.

I earnestly wish that were true, and I await the results of this eccentric experiment with interest. But frankly, I dont believe it.

I can think of nothing more likely to put a man off Jane Austen for life than the suggestion that reading her is a grave punishment, just a tooth-skin shy of imprisonment.

For the same reason, Ive often thought that children are introduced to Shakespeare too early at school. I was, anyway.

Hes not an easy read for young teenagers  and if youre anything like me, you will have found being made to study him in the classroom often felt like a punishment.

It was not until I was much older that I started reading and re-reading him for the vast pleasure our consummate national genius can give.

All I can say is that if I ever find myself hauled up before Judge Spencer, I pray he will sentence me to the heaven on earth of re-reading Persuasion and King Lear. I cant think of anything more likely to attract me to a life of crime.
One of the main purposes of religion is to teach right from wrong. Yet far too many faith leaders are manifestly failing to do so.

Yesterdays appalling report from the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse has exposed what many of us have known for a long time.

The language could not be more stark. It said there were shocking failings and blatant hypocrisy in how religious groups handle allegations of child sexual abuse.

And there is no doubt, it went on, that the sexual abuse of children takes place in a broad range of religious settings.

In deeply religious communities, victim blaming, abuse of power and the mistrust of external secular authorities are common. And it is children, who are vulnerable to sexual abuse, who bear the brunt of this group isolation. Millions are currently thought to be at risk.

Clearly, any form of child abuse is sickening. But there is something especially shocking when the abuser is a religious leader.

The travails of the Catholic Church in recent decades are well-known.

t is children, who are vulnerable to sexual abuse, who bear the brunt of this group isolation. Millions are currently thought to be at risk (stock image)

But the report saw fit to investigate no fewer than 38 religious organisations and settings in England and Wales, including Jehovahs Witnesses, Baptists, Methodists, Muslims, Jews, Sikhs, Hindus, Buddhists and members of non-conformist Christian denominations.

Over more than two weeks of testimony last year, it found evidence of egregious failings  though those words cannot convey the depth of suffering they mean to the young victims.

Earlier this week, I read of a rabbi in north London who had unforgivably claimed that it is a severe sin to report child abuse to the police.

Paltiel Schwarcz argued that there were almost no circumstances in which a Jewish abuser should be reported to the British authorities.

As a Jew, it shames me that anyone of my religion should hold such a contemptible view. And, rightly, the umbrella bodies for his fellow orthodox rabbis immediately distanced themselves from his foul beliefs.

Yet he is far from alone. It is all too common for leaders of all faiths to believe that their religion somehow gives them a status that puts them above the law of the land.

I have been editor of the Jewish Chronicle for well over a decade. Almost all the rabbis I meet are decent people who would never dream of covering up child rape. But my newspaper has had to report too many stories of abuse for me to believe naively that there are no cover-ups.

Indeed, yesterdays report refers to the terrible case of three children abused by Todros Grynhaus, a prominent figure in Manchesters Haredi Jewish community, who was  of all things  sent for counselling by his rabbi after allegations were first levelled against him. (He was later convicted and jailed.)

And of course the problem is by no means confined to Judaism. A girl who was raped in a house mosque between the ages of eight and 11 was called a s*** by her fellow Muslims.

Clearly, any form of child abuse is sickening. But there is something especially shocking when the abuser is a religious leader (stock image)

There are equally appalling instances referenced in the new report among Jehovahs Witnesses and Methodists; although the true scale of the crimes is surely going under-reported.

Why do religious communities so often fail to protect the victim  and instead protect the abuser? More often than not, the simple and ugly motivation is to avoid bad publicity for the group and their faith.

But cover-ups are not the only explanation. As religious leaders, they might believe they are beholden primarily to the word of God.

And since the word of God carries far more weight than any man-made rules, they might reason that cases of child abuse are therefore properly a matter for internal religious courts, rather than the secular judicial system. Of course, this view is not only illegal: it is deeply immoral.

Over more than two weeks of testimony last year, it found evidence of egregious failings  though those words cannot convey the depth of suffering they mean to the young victims (stock image)

So convinced do many religious organisations become of their rectitude that they cannot see what stares the rest of us in the face: that they are on the wrong side of the divide between right and wrong.

Often when a cover-up is at last exposed, the justification is that the abuser was a wonderful person who unfortunately had a foible  his penchant for abusing children.

So the powers that be take it upon themselves to manage the situation  in other words, to cover up what happened and protect the abuser.

But in the end, it is simple. Religious leaders who do not report or deal with child abusers are effectively guilty of the same abuse themselves and risk it being inflicted on other children.

They, too, should be brought to justice with the full weight of the law. Every religious group in Britain must read yesterdays report carefully and learn from its harrowing conclusions.
Amrullah Saleh, 48, is the former vice president of Afghanistan, who escaped Kabul as the Taliban advanced to join Ahmad Massoud and the National Resistance Front in the Panjshir Valley.

The remote, 70 mile long valley, bordered by high mountains, is a geographical stronghold and the last province in Afghanistan to hold out against the Taliban. After peace negotiations failed, battle has now been joined with each side claiming territorial gains and heavy casualties in the past 48 hours.

In a courageous and moving dispatch from the frontline, Saleh - whose leader, President Ashraf Ghani, fled Kabul for the UAE - reveals his anger at Afghanistan's betrayal by America but urges the West not to abandon his beloved nation.

Yesterday I attended the burial ceremony of two of the best commanders I ever knew who were killed last night.

The fighting here is heavy now, with casualties on both sides. The Taliban are using American munitions against us and Blackhawk helicopters are being flown in to reinforce their attacks.

I did not speak at the funeral, but others did. And when they asked the hundreds of mourners drawn from the communities of the Panjshir Valley - the last Afghan province resisting the Taliban - if they were prepared to continue fighting, a roar of support erupted.

The people are resolute. They - we - are united in defending our dignity, our land, our history, and our pride against the Taliban whose fighters have been amassing here in recent days.

The snow-capped mountains of this valley, some 90 miles north of the Afghan capital, Kabul, are majestic and there is a long history of successful resistance here.

It beats in the proud heart of every man, every woman, and every child.

Right now our entire focus is on ensuring the survival of this valley as the base against the Taliban who in recent months have over run this nation.

Survival does not necessarily mean defending each and every inch of the territory. It means ensuring that the enemy will never gain control here.

In a courageous and moving dispatch from the frontline, Amrullah Saleh reveals his anger at Afghanistan's betrayal by America but urges the West not to abandon his beloved nation

We know we are not alone. Other Afghans are with us - in the nearby Andarab Valley, in parts of Kapisa Province, and in pockets in Parwan. And we have contacts all over the country, particularly in northern and central Afghanistan.

Many fighters are flocking here to join the National Resistance Front (NRF) - anti-Taliban fighters, former Afghan security forces and ordinary Afghans who want to stop us returning to the rule of the Taliban.

For the Taliban have not won any hearts and minds. They have simply exploited the flawed policy of a fatigued American president  not necessarily the United States itself  and they are being micromanaged by Pakistan's notorious intelligence agency, the ISI.

The Taliban's spokesperson receives directions, literally every hour, from the Pakistani embassy.

It is the Pakistanis who are in charge as effectively a colonial power. But this is not going to last because they and their clients will not be able to erect a functioning economy or create a civil service.

They may have territorial control, but as our history has shown, control of land does not necessarily mean control over the people or stability. And I do not see Taliban having any idea about governance.

The betrayal of Afghanistan by the West is colossal.

The scenes at Kabul airport in recent days represented the humiliation of humanity, an embarrassment for any nation that has been involved in Afghanistan since the Taliban were routed by the US-led Coalition Force in the aftermath of the 9/11 atrocity.

The Americans may boast about evacuating some 123,000 people from the country (of whom 6000 were Americans), but there are 40 million of us.

Now, with the closure of the airport in Kabul, the Afghan exodus is continuing at the other border crossings and it is worse than it was during the Soviet occupation of the 1980s.

This is not only shameful for President Biden, it is shameful for the whole of Western civilisation.

'For 20 years, Western leaders promised not to stand on the Afghan constitution - and it is the spirit of that constitution I have carried in my heart here to the Panjshir Valley (pictured)'

Your politicians know that Pakistan is running the show.

They know al Qaeda is back in the streets of Kabul. And they know the Taliban have not reformed. They have been displaying their suicide vests in Kabul.

But there's still time for the West to save its reputation and credibility.

Biden was determined to end America's 'longest war' and would no longer countenance keeping even a few thousand soldiers in my country to support our own Afghan forces - despite our enormous sacrifices and the advice of his own generals.

It was a very artificial frustration and, I believe, for the purposes of electioneering. But the world over, the currency with which the Americans are paying is their credibility and standing.

And yet they have the capability to reverse this.

For 20 years, Western leaders promised not to stand on the Afghan constitution - and it is the spirit of that constitution I have carried in my heart here to the Panjshir Valley.

Now those of us gathered here are fighting to preserve the promise contained in it.

I call upon the West not only to give us moral and  where possible  material support, but also to use this opportunity to press for a political settlement with the Taliban, a settlement that has the backing of the Afghan people and the international community.

Morally, the West owes this to every Afghan. I'm not begging them to save me. I am asking them to save their face, to save their dignity, to save their reputation and credibility.

Why have I chosen to be here? Because I believe those politicians who leave their country in moments of crisis betray its very soil.

Prior to the collapse of Kabul, I was offered the chance to escape, but I found that invitation offensive. I was determined to shatter the notion that every Afghan leader is only good enough when he or she is in a protected environment.

I wanted to follow in the footsteps of my late leader, Ahmad Shah Massoud, known as the Lion of Panjshir, who fought the Soviets and the Taliban and prevented them from ever gaining control of the region.

He endured pain, frustration, and crises and yet he remained, with meagre resources, with his people.

Just days before 9/11 he was assassinated by Al Qaeda operatives masquerading as journalists. For me to flee would have amounted to a betrayal of his soul and his legacy.

Joe Biden was determined to end America's 'longest war' and would no longer countenance keeping even a few thousand soldiers in my country to support our own Afghan forces - despite our enormous sacrifices and the advice of his own generals

The night before Kabul fell, the police chief called me to say there was a revolt inside the prison and the Taliban inmates were attempting to escape.

I had created a network of non-Taliban prisoners. I called them, and they started a counter revolt on my orders within the prison.

Mob control units were deployed along with some Afghan special forces and the situation in the prison was controlled.

Around 8am the next morning, after grabbing a few hours' sleep I was woken by my guard, who informed me that many people were trying to contact me.

There were dozens of missed calls from family, friends, Afghan officials, fellow politicians and security authorities asking for guidance as the Taliban's advance became clear.

I tried to contact the Minister of Defence, the Interior Minister, and their deputies. But I could not find them.

I did find very committed officials in both ministries who reported to me how they are not able to deploy the reserves or the commandoes to the frontlines.

I then spoke to the police chief of Kabul, a very brave man whom I wish all the best wherever he is.

He informed me that the line in the east had fallen, two districts in the south had fallen, and the adjacent province of Wardak had fallen.

He asked for my help in deploying commandoes. I asked him if he could hold the front with whatever resources he had for an hour.

He told me he could. But in that one desperate hour, I was unable to find deployable Afghan troops anywhere in the city.

The night before Kabul fell, the police chief called me to say there was a revolt inside the prison and the Taliban inmates were attempting to escape

And the reason was clear. The Americans had promised close air support in the weeks before but now it was clear that it was a worthless assurance.

Whenever our troops confronted a concentration of the Taliban, the Americans would cite the Doha Agreement - negotiated with the Taliban - to say they could not strike them except in very limited circumstances.

These limitations made no sense as the Taliban marched onwards and served only to strengthen the notion among many that this fight was futile and useless. I was not able to assemble any troops to help the police chief. I called the Palace.

I messaged our National Security Adviser to say we have to do something. I got no response from anyone. And by 9am that morning of August 15, Kabul was panicking.

The Intelligence Chief had visited me the evening before. I had asked him about his plan should the Taliban storm Kabul. 'My plan is to join you wherever you go,' he said. 'Even if we are blocked by the Taliban, we do our last battle together.'

I could not find him now.

These politicians, I believe, betrayed the people. We told them for 20 years that we were engaged in a noble cause for their futures and that of generations to come. And the masses believed this and they stood by us. They gave us ovations and respect.

Then came a moment when the same people were pleading with their leaders to stand up for them. This was a moment of test.

They may say now that they would have become martyrs had they remained in Afghanistan. Why not? We need leaders to become martyrs.

They will say they would have been taken prisoner. Why not? We need leaders to serve as prisoners.

We need these leaders to experience the same suffering that the Afghan people are now being made to endure.

How could I see my people suffering, dying from hunger and thirst, walking barefoot, from a palace of safety and then sit behind a laptop screen and write about it?

Shall I expect the poorest of the poor people in the margins to be more strategic than I am, to be braver than I can demonstrate myself to be, to expect them to rescue the country while I just drop them a note on Facebook or Twitter?

Should I give a radio interview and then hope that these people will decode my messages and revolt? This is what some other leaders are hoping. They have gone.

They stay in these hotels and villas abroad. And then they call on the poorest Afghans to revolt. That's craven. If we want a revolt, the revolt has to be led.

I was deluged with emotional messages inviting me to flee, to be a coward for a while and then jump back into the fray if things stabilised.

That would have been shameful. Not a vein in my body was prepared to accept such a future.

Instead I sent a message to Ahmad Massoud, son of my mentor, the late Massoud. 'My brother, where are you?' He said: 'I'm in Kabul and planning my next move'. I told him I was also in Kabul and offered to join forces.

I then went through my home and destroyed pictures of my wife and my daughters. I collected my computer and some belongings. I asked my chief guard, Rahim, to place his hand on my Koran.

'Rahim, you have served me loyally and I'm very grateful to you,' I told him. 'Here is my last order to you. Put your hand on the Koran and promise not to disobey the order I am giving you.'

He promised three times with all purity.

'We are going to Panjshir and the road is already taken,' I told him. 'We will fight our way through. We will fight it together.

'But should I get injured, I have one request of you. Shoot me twice in my head. I don't want to surrender to the Taliban. Ever.'

And then we got into our convoy of a few armoured vehicles and two pickup trucks with guns mounted on them. The roads were jammed.

We crossed the northern pass with great difficulty because it has become a lawless territory. Thugs. Thieves. Taliban. We were attacked twice, but we survived. We fought our way with determination.

When we reached Panjshir, we got a message that the elders of the community had gathered in the mosque. I spoke to them for an hour and afterwards each of them rose in support.

Panjshir has been a tourist destination for 20 years. We had no military equipment, no ammunition here.

But that night I drew up a strategy to toughen the province's defences.

Then I received a call informing me that Ahmed Massoud was heading to Panjshir by helicopter. I felt a surge of hope course through me. We had our first meeting to strategise that night.

Has it been easy to take up resistance? Absolutely not. I'm in a difficult situation, no doubt. I'm not made of steel I'm a human being. I have emotions. I'm aware that the Taliban want my head. But this is history. And we are in the centre of the history.

As told to Kapil Komireddi, the author of Malevolent Republic: A Short History of the New India
The first meeting with The Murder Board was on Tuesday morning in Dominic Raabs vast office in Westminster. And though the Foreign Secretary wasnt looking forward to it, he knew it might represent his best chance of political survival.

A group of hard-nosed civil servants and advisers were grilling Raab ahead of his appearance before the Foreign Affairs Select Committees hearing over the crisis unfolding in Afghanistan.

The Murder Board is an American import developed in the Pentagon: it aims to foster techniques in terminating tough questions in interrogations.

So did this robust rehearsal (repeated the following day just hours before the Comittee hearing), save Raab from further ignominy?

It did not.

Across a swathe of policy areas a chorus of critics increasingly denounce Johnsons Cabinet, accusing it of complacency, ineffectiveness and rank incompetence. Even loyal backbenchers are voicing their contempt

Not only had the Foreign Secretary failed to make the call to his Afghan counterpart that might have helped speed the evacuation of interpreters working for the British military, it later emerged that he had jetted off on a luxury holiday two weeks after an internal Foreign Office assessment had warned the Taliban might rapidly return to power.

Whether or not  as some have claimed  Raab was sipping pina coladas or, as he insists, holed up in his hotel room working, his lamentable record appears to many symptomatic of a deep malaise spreading through the Government.

The summers fiasco has given new voice to the most bitter internal critics of Boris Johnsons administration.

But it is not just Afghanistan.

Across a swathe of policy areas a chorus of critics increasingly denounce Johnsons Cabinet, accusing it of complacency, ineffectiveness and rank incompetence. Even loyal backbenchers are voicing their contempt.

The list of perceived failings grows by the day. As well as Raab and his Afghan farrago, there is Education Secretary Gavin Williamsons woeful performance on everything from school closures to exam results.

There is Home Secretary Priti Patels serial failures, including her inability to tackle the soaring numbers of migrants crossing the Channel from France.

Look how long it took him to sack Matt Hancock after the Health Secretary was exposed for having an affair in his own ministerial office, breaking the Covid regulations he had noisily imposed on the rest of us

And there is a host of other, smaller problems seemingly no less revealing. Who, for instance, allowed the three most senior civil servants in the Foreign Office, the Home Office and the Ministry of Defence  all involved in the Afghan crisis  to disappear on holiday simultaneously?

Of course, this is by no means the first Tory Cabinet to have faced similar criticism.

Margaret Thatcher ruled her ministers with such an iron grip that it became her nickname  though in the end they famously turned on her.

Relations between John Major and his Cabinet soured so much that he once referred to three of them as b*stards. Stalked by big political beasts including Michael Heseltine, Douglas Hurd and Ken Clarke, Majors authority finally disintegrated amid his ill-conceived back to basics campaign when several of his ministers became mired in sleaze scandals.

But what is so baffling about the current Cabinets woes is that the Conservatives have an 80-seat majority, polling puts them way ahead of Labour and the Prime Ministers personal position seems unassailable. He can do as he pleases.

In December 2019, after he won by a landslide  the biggest since 1987  he pledged to build a Cabinet of all the talents. Yet the reality is an inexperienced administration full of his own supporters.

Fourteen of the 22 have been Cabinet ministers for barely two years. And this suits Boris: he does not like tall poppies, or ambitious ministers who might one day unseat him or steal the publics love for him.

The other reason why there are so many second-rate lieutenants in government is that Johnsons yearning to be popular means he often shuns the hard decisions which might make him enemies.

Look how long it took him to sack Matt Hancock after the Health Secretary was exposed for having an affair in his own ministerial office, breaking the Covid regulations he had noisily imposed on the rest of us.

The Prime Minister initially said he considered the matter closed  before the weight of public fury and indignation forced his hand.

Raab, obviously. But perhaps top of the list should be Gavin Williamson, who has presided over another year of chaos, fury and confusion over A-levels  particularly the yawning gap between the results of private and state pupils

His last major Cabinet reshuffle was February 2020, before the pandemic struck. A reshuffle would have been prudent in July this year, enabling sacked ministers to cool off over the parliamentary recess.

But I am told that any talk of a Cabinet reshuffle generates a pained look from Boris and a shake of the head.

Reshuffles cause resentment and bitterness among the sacked, demoted and those overlooked for promotion.

With the virus  we hope  now largely under control, it is time for Boris to get a grip. The dead wood must be cleared and the elite team he promised the nation installed.

So who needs to go?

Raab, obviously. But perhaps top of the list should be Gavin Williamson, who has presided over another year of chaos, fury and confusion over A-levels  particularly the yawning gap between the results of private and state pupils.

Williamson, a former fireplace salesman, was sacked as Defence Secretary by Theresa May over allegations (which he denied) of leaking information about Chinese firm Huaweis potential involvement in the British 5G network.

The first meeting with The Murder Board was on Tuesday morning in Dominic Raabs vast office in Westminster. And though the Foreign Secretary wasnt looking forward to it, he knew it might represent his best chance of political survival

Boris brought him back into the Cabinet as a reward for running his leadership campaign in 2019. But he has been a disaster, the teaching unions running rings around him.

He will not go quietly, however. Menacingly, as a former chief whip, he reminds people that he knows where the bodies are buried.

Not far behind him in the firing line is Priti Patel. Her Cabinet career looked to be over after an official inquiry in November found she had broken the ministerial code by bullying civil servants. But the PM rejected the findings of his adviser, who then resigned.

Patel, of course, was a key figure in the Vote Leave campaign and is a loyal Boris supporter. Yet her dismal failure over the migrant Channel crossings  nearly 12,500 have arrived since the start of the year  leaves her exposed.

Rumours abound that Michael Gove is being lined up to replace her, and its a post he covets.

Patel, meanwhile, might be demoted to Tory chairman.

This is normally an important role, but when I asked a senior Tory peer yesterday the name of the current incumbent, he didnt know who it was.

Past chairmen have included such Tory heavyweights as Norman Tebbit and Cecil Parkinson, but Milling is not in their league  and she took the blame for the loss of the Chesham and Amersham by-election in June, the 25 per cent swing to the Lib Dems proving to be biggest in a by-election for 30 years

It is, in fact, Amanda Milling, another Boris supporter. Past chairmen have included such Tory heavyweights as Norman Tebbit and Cecil Parkinson, but Milling is not in their league  and she took the blame for the loss of the Chesham and Amersham by-election in June, the 25 per cent swing to the Lib Dems proving to be biggest in a by-election for 30 years.

Next, Boris should consider axeing Alok Sharma, who was moved from Business Secretary to take charge of Novembers COP26 environmental conference in Glasgow.

Last month the Mail revealed that he had visited at least 30 nations during lockdown, including some on the red travel list, and failed to self-isolate on his return.

Hes useless  but he backed Boris, said one source.

There are some ministers who arguably do deserve their place in the Cabinet. But the PM must point out their shortcomings and bring them into line.

Ben Wallace, the Defence Secretary, is a safe pair of hands. But why did he become involved in an undignified spat with ex-soldier turned animal-charity founder Pen Farthing over evacuating a plane-load of dogs and cats from Kabul?

Next, Boris should consider axeing Alok Sharma, who was moved from Business Secretary to take charge of Novembers COP26 environmental conference in Glasgow

And then we have Gove, the formidably intelligent Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, who has been curiously absent from events this summers.

Goves enemies say that, like Macavity the Mystery Cat, he has form for disappearing. He doesnt want any of the blame leaked on to him, said one.

And when he was spotted strutting his stuff in an Aberdeen nightclub last weekend, it could not have been more inappropriate.

Also missing in action is Sajid Javid, nominally the Health Secretary. At a time when he should be everywhere, pushing hard to deliver Covid booster jabs to prevent an autumn surge, sorting out the GP appointment crisis and tackling the NHS backlog that sees record numbers of patients waiting for treatment, The Saj is barely making ripples where his disgraced predecessor Hancock was never off the airwaves.

It is clearly time to bring in some heavy-hitters. But who?

One must surely be Jeremy Hunt, who resigned as Foreign Secretary after he lost the Tory leadership race to Boris in 2019 and would not countenance a demotion to Defence Secretary.

Hunt, the longest-serving Health Secretary, has been a source of considered wisdom throughout the pandemic  but the Prime Minister never calls him.

Perhaps Boris has lost his number, quipped one Hunt supporter this week. It is yet another reminder, say the PMs critics, that he wont promote people whom he regards as a rival or who might disagree with him.

Brexit is decided for good  and Boris should welcome other useful one-time Remainers.

Former Cabinet minister Rory Stewart, who quit politics at the last election, is an ex-military veteran who is rooted in Afghanistans culture.

His experience would be invaluable, said one source. Boris could put him in the House of Lords to utilise his talents, but he wont.

Ruth Davidson, who quit as Scottish Tory leader at the May Holyrood elections and is now Baroness Davidson in the Lords, has told friends she may resume a career in the political bearpit.

Only after Boris has gone, she says at the moment  but Boris should woo her anyway.

If there is any justice, Nadhim Zahawi, the vaccines minister, will also be put in the Cabinet. A clever businessman, he made tens of millions of pounds from the launch of YouGov polling organisation. He was going nowhere until he got the call to take charge of the vaccines rollout. It could be the end of me, he told friends. In fact, its been the making of him.

Some current ministers should also be promoted. Liz Truss, the International Trade Secretary, is the new darling of the Tory faithful after signing 63 post-Brexit trade deals. Educated at a Leeds comprehensive, she would be a natural fit as Education Secretary.

One of the brightest prospects is Kemi Badenoch, 41, a Treasury minister who holds the equalities brief. She is outspoken in her attacks on the woke brigade.

Her cause is being championed by Munira Mirza, head of the Downing Street policy unit, and her husband, No 10 fixer Dougie Smith: both architects of the Governments attacks on wokery.

Indeed, there is an abundance of talent the Prime Minister could make use of if only he took the necessary tough decisions.

The first step towards making use of it, though, should be to discard Dominic Raab and his Murder Board for good.
He was pithy Lily Savage, the risque pub drag act who blazed a trail on mainstream TV. Hes been the hilarious host of family favourites such as Blankety Blank and Blind Date, and the passionate presenter of animal documentaries that have seen him rolling in muck with pigs and crawling on his knees in dog kennels.

Now Paul OGradys reinvented himself again  this time as a childrens author  and the combination of Lilys wicked sense of mischief and his own love of animals has helped make the transition a seamless one, even if it did take him 60 drafts to finish his colourful debut novel.

Eddie Albert And The Amazing Animal Gang: The Amsterdam Adventure is the first in a trilogy centred on ten-year-old Eddie, a somewhat unhappy and quirky outsider who can talk to animals, including his pet dog Butch, his hamster and his two goldfish who claim they were once pirates.

With his own affinity for all creatures great and small Paul seems to have that gift too, along with Eddies knack for becoming the focus of attention. Eddie is me as a kid, says Paul.

Paul O'Grady, who lives in Kent, with husband Andre Portasio, revealed how his own childhood inspired his first children's novel. Pictured: Paul at his Kent farm

I wasnt particularly bad at school, but trouble followed me around. If a window got broken, everybody would scatter and Id be left standing there.

Eddies a sweet boy, and I love the way he gains courage. Me and Eddie both like animals, and Eddies jackawawa Butch is based on my own dog.

'Then theres the headmaster in the book, Mr Pickard, whos similar to a teacher we were all terrified of at school because he could turn on a sixpence, and these were the days when they threw wooden dusters. Imagine that now!

In the book Eddie is sent to stay with his eccentric aunt in Amsterdam, where he discovers that she too has his gift.

And so begins a breathless cosmopolitan comic crime adventure, as Eddie, Aunt Budge, his new friend Flo and a gang of amazing animals take on Vera, the most dastardly villain since Cruella de Vil, in a race to save one of their own.

When I was imagining Aunt Budge, in the back of my mind I kept visualising and hearing Miriam Margolyes as well as Miss Schmitt, a tall, very proper, ramrod-straight German lady I met when I was on holiday in Bavaria, says Paul.

And what about Vera, did anyone inspire her?

No one in particular, but shes everything I loathe in people. She lives her life through social media, she wears the most dreadful clothes she thinks are fashionable and shes just hideous. She craves celebrity.

Paul (pictured), who was the youngest child in a Merseyside working-class family, found fame after his Lily Savage character broke through at the Edinburgh Festival

Unlike Paul, it seems. I dont like it, seriously, thats not false modesty, he says.

I like my own company and space. Ill go into our local post office and theyll say, Youre in so-and-so magazine today, and the first thing I say is, Uh-oh, what have I done now? That feelings still there from when I was a schoolboy.

Eddie is something of an anti-hero, a bit like Paul, who was never expected to become the TV national treasure he is today because he was the antithesis of orthodox. The youngest child in a Merseyside working-class family, he left school at 16 and had a daughter, Sharyn, a year later following a brief romance.

THE BOY WHO TALKS TO ANIMALS Enjoy this delightful extract from Pauls first Eddie Albert novel... Highly improbable as it sounds, Eddie Albert could converse with mammals, birds, fish and even snails (although snails do tend to have a limited vocabulary that involves a lot of slurping and hissing) just as well as with humans. It was an incredible gift, but Eddie didnt see it that way. He was the kind of boy who didnt like to draw attention to himself, preferring to get on with his work rather than mess about, which made him a frequent target for bullies. Eddie was determined to keep his special talent firmly under wraps. He was scared that if it was discovered hed be seen as an oddity, a freak. Hed be ridiculed by the tabloid newspapers and people would point at him in the street. In Paul's book (pictured), Eddie Albert can converse with mammals, birds, fish and even snails Hed be all over social media and made to go on daytime television and have to prove his talents werent just a trick. Hed be world famous, unable to go anywhere without people wanting selfies and demanding that he speak to their dogs. No, no, no! That wasnt going to happen. A bit of fun with Mr Alis cat could be taken for a young boy play-acting, but apart from that he kept his amazing capabilities to himself and only used them when no one was around. Now, where was I? Oh yes, I was telling you about a mouse, the one that caused all the trouble. It appeared from underneath the radiator in Eddies classroom during a maths lesson one afternoon and, for something so small, it caused a lot of problems. From the way the mouse was just sitting there, staring round the classroom, Eddie could see it was lost. He bent down as if he were looking for something in his bag so he could talk to it. Psssst! he hissed. What are you doing here? Go home. 'You couldnt tell me how to get to the boiler room, could you? the mouse asked politely, giving his whiskers a quick wipe with his paws. I seem to have taken a wrong turn. Why dont you go back the way you came? Only head downwards as the boiler room is in the basement, Eddie whispered. Unfortunately, he was overheard... Advertisement

After working at a home for troubled children he moved to London, working as a peripatetic care officer by day and taking to the stage in drag at night.

After decades on the London pub circuit, his Lily Savage character finally broke through at the Edinburgh Festival. That led to TV roles, notably with the late-night Channel 4 comedy show Viva Cabaret! and hosting The Big Breakfast.

Paul retired Lily in 2004 and hes come a very long way since. He got his mainstream break as the host of Blankety Blank in 1998 and in 2004 he was given his own chat show, The Paul OGrady Show, which ended in 2015.

It was a huge hit, but the joy was tarnished when his manager and partner Brendan Murphy was diagnosed with brain cancer in 2005 within days of Paul receiving a BAFTA. He died six weeks later.

Paul had his own health issues too, suffering a near-fatal heart attack a year later, his second in four years. The condition is congenital as his grandparents, parents and cousin all died of heart disease.

My cousin Maureen died earlier this year, she was only four years older than me. She went to bed with indigestion and when her partner brought her a cup of tea she was dead.

'The postmortem said it was as quick as a light switch going off, he says. Ive learnt not to worry about petty things that I used to lose sleep over now. I dont let myself get stressed out any more about daft things.

Paul has latterly established himself as the avuncular host of a number of documentaries about animals such as For The Love Of Dogs, which is filmed at Battersea Dogs Home, and Paul OGradys Animal Orphans which has seen him make numerous expeditions to the African bush to meet assorted baby elephants, hippos and orangutans.

He lives at the farm in Kent he shares with his husband Andre Portasio, a ballet dancer and teacher, and their rescue dogs, chickens, ducks, Kunekune pigs, barn owls (one was rescued from a wardrobe in Birmingham), goats and sheep.

Nothing of mine ever goes to the abattoir, he says.

Ive got a sheep whos 18, Bo Peep. She was my very first lamb and shes still going. I get orphaned lambs and hand-rear them. Its quite heavy at first, you have to feed them every two hours and they sleep in a basket with one of our dogs.

When I met three baby orangutans for Animal Orphans, Orangutan Appeal UKs founder and chairwoman Sue Sheward said the little baby at the back wasnt very fond of strangers.

'Well, he came straight out and clung to me, and she couldnt believe it. I had him sitting on my knee and Id curl his hair at the top and say, Arent you pretty? and hed literally blush.

'Then when I was filming in Zambia they had a baby elephant called Nkala and we bonded. I slept with him. I gave him his bottle. We went for long walks together. He used to try and sit on my knee when I sat down. I couldnt believe it.

He says its been a joy for him to indulge his love of animals while regressing into a childs world for the book, and its been all the more poignant because he missed out on his own daughters childhood.

Id just turned 18 when she was born but I was going on five. I just wasnt equipped for anything like that. But I was always in and out of her life. She was about ten or 12 when I met her properly and then she started to get to know me.

'She wanted to know everything about me. Shes in her 40s now and were very close, although we do fight. We argue because I recognise bits of her in me. I dont like it. Like me, shes got a mouth on her!

He also adores his grandchildren Abel and Halo. They came down last week for ten days, he says.

I hadnt seen them for nearly two years because of Covid, then this big strapping 14-year-old boy comes in with a voice down there, followed by a slinky 11-year-old. You think, Who are these huge monsters? I do feel very close to them, and I get very badly behaved with them  so much so that the adults tell me off.

I wasnt bad at school, but trouble followed me

'Im called Gan-Gan, same as the Queen, but its a terrible name. It sounds like a disease.

Or a goose? Yes, Gan-Gan the goose  theres a childrens book for you. I had geese once. They were so evil. We called them the Geestapo.

'They were hideous, the male was called The Fuhrer and his female was Eva Braun. Theyd attack every chance they got, and then they had goslings. They became the Hitler Youth and they were even worse.

Paul (pictured) admits that he thought his new six-part series Saturday Night Line Up wouldn't be commissioned

But then Paul does love a bit of wicked. And theres plenty of that in his new show Saturday Night Line Up, which starts this month and pits celebrities against each other to find out what the public really thinks of them.

The six-part series will have four celebrities every week who need to line up in order of best to worst in response to questions and scenarios presented to them by Paul.

Whos the richest? Whos most likely to have a midlife crisis? These questions have also been put to the public, and the joy of the show is seeing if the stars place themselves in the same order.

In the pilot two years ago everyone let their hair down, laughs Paul.

The place was rocking. I said, Itll never be commissioned, even Channel 4 wouldnt put it on at 3am, and of course it was commissioned.

'I couldnt believe it. Robert Rinder was wonderful. So was Boy George, and Joan Collins is brilliant in the Christmas episode. Bill Baileys a revelation. Hes so clever its scary. Rupert Everetts an old friend and was such fun.

Meanwhile, its back to the books. Ive got two more to do, so Im thinking, Oh dear, what am I going to do? My great friend Julian Clary seems to be able to knock his novels out so easily.

'Anyway, ones going to be set in Kent and the other in India with an evil elephant keeper. So its all mixed experiences with the amazing animals and places Ive been to.

'I enjoyed writing the first ten drafts of this first one, but when it got to draft 60 I was a bit frazzled!

Eddie Albert And The Amazing Animal Gang: The Amsterdam Adventure is published on 16 September in hardback (HarperCollins Childrens Books, 12.99).

Paul OGradys Saturday Night Line Up starts later this month on ITV.
Rachel Boyle from Melbourne has bravely spoken about her grief after losing two babies days after they were born

A devastated mum who lost two precious babies just days after they were born has revealed how her pregnancies were progressing normally before their heartbreaking deaths.

Rachel Boyle, 29, told FEMAIL she was naive before the death of her son Caden, who arrived at 24 weeks, and daughter Ava who was conceived six months later and born at 27 weeks.

The Melbourne mother shared the horrific ordeal of holding her two babies as they died after being taken off life support just days after birth.

'It isn't instant, you hold them as they slowly die in your arms, it can take hours,' she said.

Rachel, who once dreamed of having a family with children close in age, says she is now terrified of being pregnant.

Rachel, 31, with her first-born son Kai who is now a thriving two-and-a-half year old

Rachel pictured with her son, Caden, who was born at 24 weeks and died six days later in May 2020

Rachel, pictured holding her daughter, Ava, who was born at 27 weeks and died after her kidneys failed at eight days old

The courageous mother, who has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, says she is also concerned for other pregnant women after learning the hard way that the first 12-week 'danger period' can extend far beyond that time.

'I didn't realise how common it was (newborn death) because no-one wants to talk about it and women who haven't gone through it don't think it will happen to them,' she said.

'I know people who have lost babies at 38 weeks or after birth at 40 weeks.

'I am even terrified my two-and-a-half year old son son will die at any time.'

Rachel and her husband, Blake, started trying for a family as soon as they were married. Rachel had a miscarriage at six weeks before falling pregnant with their son, Kai, who was born in 2019.

'I just kind of got over the miscarriage, I was nervous with all my pregnancies until the safe 12-week mark but once that came around we announced them and just expected we would soon have a baby to take home,' she said.

Rachel's pregnancy with Kai was normal and he is now a happy and healthy toddler despite having to spend a lot of time without his mum who has spent extended periods in hospital.

Six months after Kai was born, the couple decided they would start trying again, understanding it could take some time because it took them a year to conceive the first time around.

Ava was crying and breathing on her own when she was born which gave her parents and doctors hope

But Rachel fell pregnant within three months and by March 2020, when she reached the 12-week mark, the couple announced they would be adding a baby boy to their family.

'I was relieved after the 12 weeks because I thought that's when people lost babies and I was confident because I had done this before,' she said.

But at the 20-week scan, which happened at the beginning of the Covid lockdowns last year, there were some red flags.

'I was told I had to go to a specialist the next day. When I saw him he was so fast, he took one look and said within two weeks my baby would be dead,' she said.

Rachel was in shock.

She was told baby Caden was not measuring properly and that his umbilical cord was wrapped around his neck three times, which meant he couldn't grow or move properly.

But the other tests, including genetic testing, came back fine.

Rachel is now focusing all of her energy on Kai, her husband Blake and getting her mind and body healthy

Kai is pictured with a photo of his brother Caden as his parents made an announcement about Rachel's pregnancy with Ava

Instead of having a termination, the family decided to wait and see what would happen.

A month later Caden was still alive, giving his mum and doctors hope that he might survive.

'I was at my mum's house, it was lockdown but I just needed to be with my family, and I felt this huge gush and assumed my waters had broken,' Rachel said.

But when she went to the bathroom she found blood.

An ambulance was called and within hours Caden was born. Doctors had stabilised Rachel's bleeding and were working to keep them both alive.

'I remember scary conversations about who we would have to save at one point because neither of us were doing well,' she said.

Caden and Ava were born within 13 months of each other but were both too small to survive

Caden underwent dozens of procedures, but on his sixth day doctors sat down with Rachel and Blake and told them their tiny baby had catastrophic brain bleeds and nothing more could be done.

The couple made the heartbreaking decision to take Caden off life support on May 13, 2020.

Australia was in lockdown when Rachel came out of hospital without a baby in her arms.

Devastated and unsure of where to go for support, the mum searched Facebook and Instagram and found other parents who had lost babies.

She joined a community of grieving parents and for the first time in her life, understood babies at any gestation and even those who are born seemingly healthy can die.

THE TOP 5 THINGS RACHEL SAYS HAS HELPED WITH HER TRAUMA 1 - Writing out your feelings As we have been in lockdown both times and unable to get out and see family and friends, I found writing out my feelings helped or everything would just bottle up and I would feel like I was going to explode. I typed up my birth story, wrote in a diary, did posts on Facebook and created an Instagram page to share my story. 2 - Seek professional help I searched for a psychologist that specialised in baby loss and saw her weekly in the early stages of my grief. 3 - Listen to your needs Let yourself do whatever you feel you need to do to cope. Whether that's laying in bed all day, exercising, crying. There is no right or wrong way to grieve. Everyone is different. It is unbelievably hard and I found not much really helped in the early stages. I just had to feel what I was feeling and take one minute at a time. 4 - Remember your babies I found comfort in keeping my babies memories alive and continuing to do things to include them in my life. I got a tattoo of Caden's hand and footprint, I bought plaques for the cemetery in remembrance of both babies, I write their names in the sand at the beach, I created special shelves at home with their ashes and little items, I bought birth size posters and I made videos with memories of them. 5 - Find a community I have found the baby loss community online so helpful. I have connected with many other families going through loss and it has made me feel not so alone. Grief doesn't get less over time, we just learn to live with it. You can't ever 'get over' the death of a child but their memory can be carried on forever. Advertisement

When doctors came back with Caden's autopsy results, and genetic testing cleared Rachel and her husband of any problems which could cause infant death, they decided to conceive again.

Six months after Caden's death, Rachel was pregnant again.

'We were told that we had just been struck by lightning and had just been unlucky with Caden's death,' she said.

'And I had recovered from his birth so doctors said we could try again, this time we got pregnant the first month.'

Rachel was terrified but optimistic, especially once she found out she was having a girl, who she called Ava, as it helped separate the two pregnancies.

'At first I was sad because I was supposed to have two boys, brothers, but then the realisation hit that this was a fresh start and at appointments I could call her 'she' which helped,' she said.

Rachel also had a huge amount of support from the hospital and had regular scans to monitor her rainbow baby's growth.

Everything was going well until the 20-week mark, when Ava started measuring behind and Rachel was told her placenta 'looked funny'.

'She completely stopped growing after 21 weeks, but the difference was she didn't have a cord around her neck so if we could get her to stay in their a little longer we had a chance,' Rachel said.

'I kept telling myself that babies are born at 23 weeks and still go home.'

Soon Rachel was having scans every day and before long she was admitted to hospital.

'I was so isolated because I wasn't allowed visitors because of lockdown - in two months I saw Kai three times which made it so much worse.'

Ava was born at 27 weeks and weighed 547g.

Rachel finally got to have a tiny baby in her arms again, but after a few days Ava started struggling and could no longer be held.

Ava died at just eight days old on June 27 after her kidneys failed, causing her organs to slowly shut down.

'The same doctor who was with us when Caden died was the one who told us Ava wasn't going to make it,' Rachel said.

'He remembered us and we remembered him. I didn't understand what he was trying to say and made him come back three times.

Blake and Rachel always wanted children close together in age and have been left devastated after 'lightning struck twice' and two of their babies died

'He tried to explain it in different ways until I understood,' she said. Again, doctors were unable to find out why Ava had stopped growing.

After delivering Caden, Rachel said she felt instantly relieved, it was no longer up to only her to keep him alive. She had faith in the medical system and despite his tiny size and low chance of survival, she held hope that she would be able to take him home.

When Ava was born and she cried and wriggled around, Rachel said the tiny noises gave her a burst of hope.

But both times Rachel and Blake had to make the traumatic decision to take their babies off life support.

'It is horrible and makes me feel sick just thinking about it. It is so hard because both times we had to decide and then we had to watch them slowly die,' she said.

Rachel is still trying to process Caden's death, making Ava's death even harder to get through.

Two weeks ago, the grieving mum started leaking milk. She also went through the baby blues and other post-partum phases despite not having a baby at home.

Rachel has made her story public on Instagram, naming her page 'Our rough journey'.

'I am processing everything by writing it out, telling our story so other people know babies can and do die,' she said.

'My husband is super supportive with the way I am coping with my grief, he is so sad - I can see it in his eyes but he copes with it by playing Xbox and only occasionally looking at photos of our babies.'

Rachel wants people to know that not all infant loss is due to genetic problems or known health conditions.

'I was told every step of the way, from every test that everything was normal. This happens to so many women and I want to raise awareness about that.'

The family are now focusing on healing and are unsure if they will try to have another baby in the future.

For miscarriage, stillbirth and newborn death support call Sands on 1300 308 307.
Mental health advocate Zachery Dereniowski has previously given away money in attempts to give back

A student doctor and mental health activist has warmed the hearts of millions of his followers after giving people in need $20 as part of a social experiment.

Zachery Dereniowski, a 27-year-old Canadian who came to Sydney to study medicine, stopped and told three people they had dropped the money.

One man told the young activist, who posts under MD Motivator online, the money was not his while the other two appeared confused thanked him for giving them back their lost dollars.

Zachery told FEMAIL the experiment started as a way to give back without 'taking away people's pride' but showed him so much more.

'The ones who have the least are the ones who seem the most honest and like they want to help others,' he said.

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A student doctor and mental health activist has warmed the hearts of millions of his followers after giving people in need $20 as part of a social experiment

The video begins with a man sitting alone at the bus stop alongside a few bags of possessions.

When Zachery approached him to let him know he had dropped the money he immediately said he hadn't before looking confused when the young man told him he could keep it anyway.

The video stayed on him as he flipped the orange note over in his hand to inspect it.

Zachery approached the second man with another $20 note and told him he had found it on the ground before asking if it was his.

The man happily accepted the money before thanking Zachery for being honest.

The third man was stopped at the traffic lights and quietly said thankyou as he took the cash from the mental health advocate.

The social experiment was filmed and put up on the popular social media star's TikTok where millions of people had their say.

After posting the video, which has been seen by 1.3million people, Zachery said he hopes people don't judge the two men who simply took the $20.

The second man just thanked Zachery for letting him know he had dropped the money

'Please don't hate on those that didn't 'seem honest'. These experiments happen so fast and if they are anxious in the moment, maybe they believed the money was theirs,' he said.

His followers decided to celebrate the honesty of the first man instead.

'We need to do something for that first man,' one of the followers said.

And others agreed.

The third man also didn't question whether the money was his and quietly thanked the mental health advocate for picking it up for him

Zachery recently announced he would be quitting his place at the University of Sydney and moving home to concentrate on mental health advocacy

'We need to give him more, I don't know if he is homeless but he needs everything,' one woman wrote.

Zachery recently announced he would be quitting his place at the University of Sydney and moving home to concentrate on mental health advocacy.

The young man has pleaded with people to give back and be kind always in his videos.
A couple have revealed how they saved time and money by not telling their guests about their wedding until the minute they arrived at the church.

Jessica Attwood, 26, a domestic abuse caseworker, and and husband Adam, 29, from Widnes, Cheshire, invited their 70 guests to a christening for one-year-old daughter Lucia.

But really they were secretly planning their big day for the same time, and only their parents and bridal party knew ahead of the day on 24 July 2021, with everyone else finding out when they arrived at the church.

'It was truly magical and just the 'us' way of doing things. We wouldn't change a single thing,' Jessica said.

She met Adam, who works as a production group leader at Jaguar Land Rover, in the summer of 2018 and they officially became a couple in February 2019.

The couple on their big day, standing next to a sign telling people that they have just arrived at their 'surprise wedding'

Adam is greeted joyfully by a wedding guest, after people started arriving at the do and realising that it was not just a christening, but the couple's wedding day

Jessica and Adam Attwood said they'd had a 'pretty awful time' after their daughter Lucia Jade was born during lockdown, so their wedding would be a 'lovely surprise' for friends and family

The loved-couple couple make their marriage vows in front of daughter Lucia Jade - as well as the surprised congregation of guests

When guests arrived at the church - for what they thought was just a christening - they were greeted by a sign inviting them to Jessica and Adam's surprise wedding

Their relationship moved fast, as Jessica was pregnant with their first child by the end of their first year together.

Lucia Jade, also known as LJ, was born in April 2020 at the height of lockdown. As restrictions eased, they started to plan her christening  and came up with the idea for a double celebration.

Jessica said: 'We were booking our daughter's christening and actually joked about getting married on the same day. We looked at each other and just knew it's what we were going to do.

'We've had a pretty awful 18 months with Lucia being a lockdown baby and not being able to see friends and family that much.

'We just thought it would be a lovely surprise for everyone to lift people's spirits.

'It was also Adam's dad's 60th birthday so wanted him to have a special day to remember. We basically killed three birds with one stone.'

Jessica, 26, and Adam, 29, show off a sign revealing that daughter Lucia's christening is actually a double ceremony - with them tying the knot at the same time

Surprised family members and friends at the event. Only the couple's parents and bridal party really knew what was planned for the day

The happy couple, bridal party, and guests congregate outside the church after the ceremony to take a crowd shot commemorating the big day

They spent three weeks booking everything they needed and had their plans in order before Adam had even actually proposed, as Jessica told him she didn't need a ring  but he still wanted to surprise her.

On 5 April, the family headed off for a day out in the Lake District, where Adam got down on one knee.

Jessica said: 'I stressed to him it wasn't about a fancy wedding or ring. That I just wanted us to be married because I love him and our family.

'Adam had originally planned to propose a couple of weeks later on my birthday but he felt like a spontaneous day was the right time to do it.

'We were taking pictures with our daughter and Adam had set a timer on his phone when taking the picture and had it record the whole proposal. I genuinely had no idea.'

Although the engagement meant everyone knew they intended to marry someday, the only people who knew the real plan were their parents and the bridal party to ensure they could get everyone sorted with dresses and suits for the day.

Jessica said: 'When we spoke to the priest about what we wanted to do he was really excited.

'However, he said to take the church seriously we needed to declare to people we were getting married, so we told a handful of people who were there to help keep us sane throughout the whole process of planning a surprise wedding.

'We had to tell our parents and the bridal party. I had my two best friends and Adam's sister as bridesmaids. They helped keep the plan together and was a massive help.'

Despite having the massive secret, Adam and Jessica felt it made the whole process easier as there was very little interference from anyone.

Jessica and Adam Attwood gaze lovingly at each other, following their surprise wedding ceremony on July 24

Shocked guest speak to groom outside the ceremony venue - St Bedes Church in Widnes - following the formal ceremony

The pair felt their surprise nuptials would 'lift people's spirits' after everyone's difficult time dealing with the pandemic and lockdown

The most expensive item at the wedding was Jessica's dress, costing 3,500 from Knutsford Wedding gallery. She said she wanted to have her 'dream dress'

She said: 'We didn't feel the pressure from people. Everything was on our terms.

'We knew it was going to be the best surprise ever, so we held onto that feeling to make sure we didn't slip up.

'Don't get me wrong  I wanted to scream to the roof tops about it all. I post a lot of my life on social media and that was the hardest thing I have ever done.'

It also saved them money as they were able to plan the whole thing for just under 10,000  well below the average cost of 27,161, according to Hitched.

The couple's parents were some of the small group of people in on the secret, after the priest told the pair they needed some support throughout the planning process

Bride Jessica felt wedding planning was easier with fewer people knowing the plans - as the couple were subject to 'less interference' from everyone else

Jessica said: 'It wasn't about spending money. We had the bare minimum but had the most magical day.

'We had two buffets - one when guests arrived straight after the ceremony and then one later in the evening with sausage and bacon barms to soak up the alcohol. That cut costs down dramatically.

'We had a venue dresser but we pretty much had the minimal decor - chair covers, bows, tables runners, and little centre pieces with Polaroid pictures of me and Adam from when we met.

'I think the little things just add up over time, like wedding favours. We cut all of that out. We decided to do it as a wedding as well as a christening because we realised how expensive a christening would be.

'To just spend a bit of extra money on getting married made sense to us!'

Jessica and new husband Adam alongside their one-year-old daughter Lucia Jade, enjoying the christening/wedding celebration

Speaking about the double ceremony, Jessica said: 'We knew it was going to be the best surprise ever, so we held onto that feeling to make sure we didn't slip up'

Combining the christening with the wedding allowed the pair to save some pennies, with the bill coming in at 10,000 - a third of the average wedding cost of 27,161, according to Hitched

'We had the bare minimum but had the most magical day', said Jessica, who added that their wedding was 'not about spending money', but having a good time

The most expensive item was Jessica's dress, costing 3,500 from Knutsford Wedding gallery. She said: 'I knew no matter what I still wanted my 'dream dress'. I was really lucky that my mum helped me with that.'

With everything set, Adam and Jessica put on their wedding outfits and prepared to meet the guests at St Bedes in Widnes on 24 July.

To finally let them know what was happening, the pair left a sign outside and leaflets for their guests to pick up as they arrived.

Jessica said: 'A lot of people were shocked! Some of our closest friends and family were clueless and genuinely couldn't believe it, but they were so happy for us.

Disco baby: Lucia Jade takes to the dance floor at the joint christening/wedding do following the formal ceremonies earlier in the day

Mother duties: Jessica, in her 3,500 'dream' wedding dress, feeds baby Lucia Jade during the wedding reception

'Some people guessed because me and Adam are quite spontaneous like that and we certainly don't do things by halves. Our relationship has progressed very naturally quickly. When you know, you just know.'

After the wedding, they threw a party at Widnes Rugby Club  and they couldn't be happier with how it went.

Jessica said: 'It was honestly the most perfect day. I stressed a lot because it wasn't your standard sit down meal, seating plan wedding.

'Covid stressed us out a lot. We risked having a wedding the week we would come out of lockdown.

Jessica fell pregnant with their daughter Lucia Jade (also known as 'LJ') by the end of the pair's first year together

Lucia Jade (or 'LJ) was born in April 2020 - as the first Covid lockdown was in full force, with mother Jessica describing her daughter as a 'lockdown baby'

Lucia Jade with her dad Adam. Lucia Jade's christening and her parents' wedding day also fell on the same day as Adam's father's birthday

Although Jessica - pictured here with daughter LJ - told Andy she did not need an engagement ring, he surprised her with a traditional proposal in the Lake District

She said yes: Adam, baby Lucia Jade, and Jessica celebrate, and Jessica shows off her ring after saying 'yes' to Andy's marriage proposal

'I had to stop watching the news leading up to it because we were so unsure whether lockdown would lift  but it all came together amazingly and we just danced the night away.

'Now it's over, we feel so sad. We wish we could do it all over again. The wedding blues are real.'

The family are now onto their next adventure, having just accepted an offer on their house so they can follow their dreams of moving to Australia. Jessica said: 'When one crazy plan ends, we create a new one.'

The happy couple met in the Summer of 2018, and officially became a couple in February 2019, with their relationship moving quickly

Adam and Jessica were expecting their baby daughter by the end of their first year together - but say that when a relationship is right, it is right
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A new film which shows Meghan Markle 'dying' beneath an overturned car following a horror crash in its opening scene, in echoes of the death of Princess Diana, has been branded 'tasteless and abhorrent' by viewers.

Harry & Meghan: Escaping the Palace, the third made-for-TV movie from US cable channel Lifetime, will dramatise the Sussexes' 'controversial conscious uncoupling from the crown, after the birth of their son Archie', according to its synopsis.

Today it was revealed the movie will open with a dream sequence which sees Meghan, 40, involved in a car accident - just days after the 24th anniversary of Princess Diana's death in Paris.

As her overturned car is surrounded by photographers, a desperate Prince Harry, 36, pushes his way through the mob before pulling the door open.

A seriously injured Meghan then pleads with him to help her - but the ordeal is just a nightmare and Harry wakes up and is comforted to see his wife and their son Archie.

The film's trailer has previously been branded 'a load of old codswallop' by unimpressed viewers, and these latest scenes are incensing royal fans due to the sickening parallels to the real-life death of Harry's mother.

Outraged viewers have taken to Twitter, with one writing: 'This is in bad taste. I don't believe they can make a series like this!!' Another simply branded it: 'Tasteless and abhorrent.'

Meghan Markle lies 'dying' beneath an overturned car following a horror crash in the controversial opening scene of a new film

As her overturned car is surrounded by photographers, a desperate Prince Harry, 36, pushes his way through the mob before pulling the door open in Harry & Meghan: Escaping the Palace

Outraged viewers have taken to Twitter, with one writing: 'This is in bad taste. I don't believe they can make a series like this!!'

'This IS bang out of order WTF????' commented another, while one called it 'the lowest of the low', accusing the film of cashing in on Princess Diana's death.

British actor Jordan Dean and American actress Sydney Morton take over the roles of Harry and Meghan.

The movie was shot in Vancouver, and Harry is given a full head of hair  despite having thinning locks in real life, while his balding brother William is portrayed by an actor who has lost most of his hair.

New stills also show passionate embraces between the couple in bed in their luxurious Montecito mansion.

A seriously injured Meghan pleads with Harry to help her in harrowing scenes that echo the real-life death of Princess Diana

The ordeal is just a nightmare and Harry wakes up and is comforted to see his wife and their son Archie

The clip also shows passionate embraces between the couple in bed in their luxurious Montecito mansion

Another still shows Harry and Meghan kissing on the bed, with the Duchess wearing the linen dress by Reformation which she wore on a trip to Fraser Island in Queensland on their tour of Australia in 2018

The first teaser released earlier this year saw several heated discussions between Harry and Meghan, during which the former was seen expressing his fears that his wife is being 'hounded to death'.

'I see you literally being hounded to death and I'm helpless to stop it,' the actor tells his on-screen partner, echoing comments made by Prince Harry during his Apple TV+ series, in which he said that his late mother, Princess Diana, was 'chased to death' and admitted that he was afraid of 'history repeating itself' with Meghan.

In previous films Harry & Meghan: A Royal Romance and Harry & Meghan: Becoming Royal, the couple were played by Murray Fraser and Parisa Fitz-Henley, and Charlie Field and Tiffany Smith respectively.

The drama, which will be broadcast in the US on Monday, will explore the 'real details' behind the decision that eventually drove the couple to leave their royal life behind.

The trailer sees the actors playing out imagined conversations between Meghan and Harry before their Oprah interview, during which they tell one another, 'I can't lose you'

Pictures released yesterday show American newcomers Jordan Dean and Sydney Morton playing the Duke and Duchess of Sussex in the US TV film Meghan and Harry: Escaping the Palace

It will 'detail Meghan's growing isolation and sadness, their disappointment that The Firm was not defending them against the press's attacks, and Harry's fear that history would repeat itself and he would not be able to protect his wife and son from the same forces that caused his mother's untimely death'.

The trailer - which Lorraine Kelly yesterday called 'hideous' - revealed it will re-enact Harry and Meghan's explosive interview with Oprah Winfrey earlier this year, and dramatise the moment Meghan suffered a miscarriage.

It sees the Duchess questioning whether she 'made the world's biggest mistake' by marrying into the Royal Family, while Harry insists that he 'will do everything in his power to keep his wife and son safe'.

Speaking to Newsweek, Sydney said she feels a 'responsibility to be respectful' while playing the Duchess.

The film features Harry and Meghans bombshell interview with Oprah Winfrey (pictured)

Prince William is played by US actor Jordan Whalen, while Singapore-born Laura Mitchell takes on the role of Kate in the film which has been dubbed 'cheese at its finest' by royal fans

'Because she is a living breathing person and Im playing her pretty much right now in her life, I definitely felt a responsibility to be respectful and very grounded and make her a three-dimensional person and not portray her as this tabloid cartoon,' she told the publication.

'I think that its a different thing when youre playing someone who is alive and experiencing things in real-time you definitely want to approach it with care.'

The trailer also offers an insight into the stuffy way in which other senior royals will be depicted, revealing glimpses at the on-screen versions of the Queen, Prince William and Kate Middleton.

The Duchess of Cambridge will be played by television actress Laura Mitchell, while Her Majesty will be portrayed by Maggie Sullivun.

The reported tension between Meghan, 39, and Kate, 39, is also alluded to in the trailer, with Kate's character insisting that that those marrying into the Royal Family know what 'they signed up for'.

Her Majesty, played by Maggie Sullivun, also makes her debut in the second trailer, in which she firmly insists that 'the Monarchy will always survive'

'This is the life we signed up for. Here, we value dignity above all else,' she says, while flashing a copy of the large sapphire engagement ring that once belonged to Princess Diana and was given to Kate by William when he proposed in 2010.

Jordan Whalen will play Prince William and is seen in the trailer saying: 'Let everyone understand it, the Monarchy is at stake,' he says - while the on-screen Queen states: 'The Monarchy will always survive.'

One clip shows the Queen, Prince Harry, Prince William, and Kate Middleton all sitting in a room together in what appears to be an imagining of the talks that took place between the senior royals in the lead-up to Megxit in January 2020.

At the time, it was revealed that Harry, 36, had a private heart-to-heart with the Queen following a family meeting at Sandringham, and it is understood that Her Majesty made the decision to allow her grandson and his wife to quit their royal roles after this talk.

The trailer shows Dean modeling a military uniform, which suggests that the movie will cover the Sussexes' final days in the royal family. After Megxit, Harry was stripped of his honorary military titles and can no longer wear his uniform

At one point Dean tells Morton that she is being 'hounded to death' and that he is 'helpless to stop it', echoing Harry's comments about his mother, Princess Diana, being 'chased to death' and his fears about 'history repeating itself' with Meghan

The new teaser came just a few weeks after Lifetime offered the first glimpse at Dean and Morton stepping into their royal roles

Harry and William's late mother Princess Diana is also featured in the quick trailer, with actress Bonnie Suter stepping into her shoes.

In a flashback scene, Suter is seen standing at a podium making a speech, while wearing a black silk jacket with a velvet lapel - a near-identical design to the dark green ensemble worn by Diana in December 1993, when she publicly announced that she would be stepping back from her public duties in order to take on 'a more meaningful public role with a more private life'.

The speech was made one year after Diana and Charles announced that they were separating, and saw the former opening up about her struggle to deal with the 'overwhelming attention' she had received in the wake of that news.

'I was not aware of how overwhelming that attention would become,' she said at the time. 'Nor the extent to which it would affect both my public duties and my personal life, in a manner, that's been hard to bear.'

Many have drawn clear comparisons between Diana's 1993 speech and the announcement that Meghan and Harry made when they revealed they would be stepping down as senior members of the Royal Family in order to 'carve out a new progressive role within the institution'.
A woman who was diagnosed with melanoma after 'dreaming' that she needed a skin check-up claims that her boyfriend dumped her when he found out that she had cancer - because it made her 'too much to handle'.

Sarah Southern, 30, says that a 'terrible' dream back in September 2019 told her she had cancer and despite a doctor soon assuring her that her moles didn't look suspicious, the nightmare prompted her to demand that they be tested anyway.

One week later, Sarah - from Winston-Salem, North Carolina - was given the 'core shattering' news that she had melanoma - a diagnosis that left her both devastated and terrified, so she turned to her boyfriend of six months for support.

However, far from offering her a shoulder to cry on, Sarah claims that her partner walked out on her - claiming that her diagnosis was too much for him to deal with.

'Crushed' Sarah maintains the breakup was one of the 'worst days of her life' but following three procedures in December 2019, she was given a glimmer of hope after receiving the all clear.

Terrifying: Sarah Southern, 30, claims she was diagnosed with skin cancer after 'dreaming' that she was sick and needed to see a doctor

Bold: The North Carolina resident woke up from her nightmare convinced that she had skin cancer, so she asked her doctor to check her moles

Warning signs: Although Sarah's doctor insisted that her moles did not look suspicious, tests revealed that two of them (pictured) were cancerous

She also chose to use her ex-boyfriend's cruel words as 'motivation' to change her life - explaining that she now feels 'stronger than ever' after enduring the heartbreak while coping with cancer.

In the months since getting the all clear, Sarah has shed 30lbs, finished her degree after ten years, earned a promotion, and expanded her own company.

'I think I'm the person I am today because of those words, that was my ground zero,' she said.

'Being hurt that bad could have gone one of two ways. I could have let his words hinder me and let this experience hold me back or I could pick up the pieces, stand back up, dust my boots off and be better, and that power was raised.

'I think that whole experience was a good kick that I needed to get my life together because I felt how low, hurt and crushed that I was and I never ever want to go back to that point.

'His words 110 per cent motivated me to be the best version of myself. I could have let this continue to hold me back but I used the pain to push through to become better. It's been my biggest motivator in life so far.

Treatment: Sarah underwent three procedures to cut out the cancerous tissue from her body

Bravery: Before she underwent the procedures, she told her boyfriend that she had skin cancer - and says he broke up with her as soon as he heard about the diagnosis

Heartache: Sarah claims that her unnamed partner looked at her like she was the 'most inconvenient, most disgusting person he has ever met' when he heard about her cancer

'I needed to learn to love myself because I don't think I truly did and that's why he was able to hurt me as badly as he did.

'So in the past two years I've done a lot of exploring, soul searching and I am the happiest, healthiest and the most mentally stable person I have ever been in my whole life. I'm stronger than ever now.'

Bar manager Sarah, who keeps herself busy by also being a bookkeeping company owner and accounts manager, said she first noticed two moles on her abdomen in September 2019.

One was about the size of a pea, while the other was slightly smaller.

Sarah said: 'I had this terrible dream and I woke up and I remember putting my feet on the floor and I said out loud, "I have cancer."

'I don't remember much but someone in my dream told me that I needed to go to the doctor and that I was sick and if I didn't take care of this I'd be in trouble.

'It was terrifying waking up that morning. I don't even know if there's a word to describe how scared I was. Cancer is scary, it's terrifying.

'Without that dream the outcome might have been very different. I would have never suspected I had anything wrong but my gut feeling is what pushed me to go to the doctor and that dream is what caused it.

'That dream could have saved my life.'

Moving on up: Although the break-up left her devastated, Sarah says she now sees it as an important turning point in her life, revealing it taught her how to 'love herself'

Celebration: After the split, Sarah earned her degree, got a promotion and work, and expanded her own business - as well as losing 30lbs

Fighter: 'The past two years I've done a lot of exploring, soul searching and I am the happiest, healthiest and the most mentally stable person I have ever been in my whole life,' she said

The 30-year-old said that following her 'surreal' dream before she even got out of bed she called her doctor to book an appointment and saw him a few days later.

Sarah said: 'I told the doctor the places that I thought were cancerous and he sat there and kind of looked at me funny and said they don't look like spots that should be a cause for concern and I should basically just go home.

'That didn't sit well with me and I told him to cut them out and get them sampled anyway.

'He kind of sat there and went back and forth a little bit because they didn't look suspicious, and that's what's so terrifying. But something in my gut told me this wasn't ok.

'[While waiting for the results] I didn't tell a single person that I was going through this as it's not something that I wanted to burden anybody with in case it turned out to be nothing.

'A week later when the results came back and they were positive for melanoma it was core shattering.'

After the longest seven days of her life Sarah discovered she had stage one melanoma and believes she was very fortunate to have caught it when she did.

The business owner said that during that anxious week her behavior did a 'complete 360' as she became more withdrawn.

She was coincidentally volunteering at a cancer fundraiser that day and afterwards she told her boyfriend of six months the bad news.

Sarah said: 'He came over to my place. I was like, "I need to tell you something."

'I told him I didn't know how to say it because I didn't even know how to handle it yet, but I had just found out that I had stage one melanoma. From what my doctor had just told me, I was not going to need any chemo, I wouldn't lose my hair, I wasn't going to get super sick and hopefully surgery would take care of everything.

'He just looked at me and I've never in my entire life had someone look at me like that. He looked at me like I was the most inconvenient, most disgusting person he has ever met.

Helping hand: Sarah is now sharing her story with others in the hopes that she can inspire anyone else who feels that they have hit rock bottom to pick themselves back up

Support system: She credits the people in her life with helping her through the difficult time, saying she is proud to have 'caring, compassionate' loved ones

'There was some silence for a little bit and he said, "This is too much to deal with. You're too much to handle."

'We didn't even finish the conversation. He literally just turned around and left. I think it was just got too real for him and he didn't know what to do so he walked out of my life.'

The former finance student claims she received a text a few days later from her ex-partner asking if she was ok to which she responded 'yes', but never received an apology.

However, she's now doing better than ever and claims she posted her story online to inspire other women - and urges anyone going through a tough time not to give up.

Sarah said: 'I felt crushed, I crumbled. He completely broke me and I will say that was one of the worst days in my entire life.

'I gave myself three days to be sad over him so I told myself in 72 hours I have to forget about him and move on because he was able to forget about me.

'I am very thankful to be here and to have the support system that I have now. I have the most genuine, true, caring, compassionate people in my life now and that experience is what opened my eyes to stop wasting time on those people who didn't care about me.

'He did me a huge favor and showed me his true colors and I was able to get out of that situation much sooner. I didn't see [his true colors] until I needed him.

'At the time it was terrible but looking back it's the best thing that could have happened because I got my life together. It gave me the push I needed to finish my degree, expand my company and to take a little more risk in my life and quit playing it safe.

'In the beginning I did that to pretty much show him that I didn't need him and that I was better without him. That lasted a couple months and then I found that I started to love who I am, and then I did it for me.'
A 38-year-old mother has opened up about how she overcame years of horrific childhood abuse at the hands of her parents - three decades after they were sentenced to life in prison for the shocking torture they inflicted upon their children.

Heather Trim, who now lives in Michigan, shared that she and four of her six siblings were routinely subjected to disgusting acts of violence - recalling how they starved her, beat her, sexually abused her, and once even stapled her eyelids open when she refused to watch a scary movie.

Now, 30 years after her parents Gerald and Pamela Platz were handed down life sentences, Heather is speaking out about the horrors she endured before being saved by a neighbor, who phoned the police after spotting one of the siblings alone, naked, and bleeding from a painful wound.

By sharing her experiences, Heather hopes that she can show others that it is possible to forge a happy life, not matter what extreme trauma you have endured in the past.

Speaking out: Childhood abuse survivor Heather Trim, now 38, is speaking out about the horrific torture she endured at the hands of her parents, Gerald and Pamela Platz

Struggle: Heather (pictured at age nine), from Michigan, says her parents beat her, raped her, starved her - and on one occasion even stapled her eyelids open

Before being rescued by the police, Heather spent six years living in her parents' house of horrors, which was secreted away in the middle of woodland - allowing them to keep their children, and the abuse they endured, hidden from the world.

Heather recalled how Gerald and Pamela once stapled her eyelids open when she refused to watch a scary movie, and locked her in a basement without food or water.

Stabbed and beaten with rocks, she said she was sexually abused by both parents - claiming that her mother was even 'jealous' of Gerald's abuse of their only daughter.

She said her sick parents defecated on her and stuck objects in her ears, damaging her hearing.

Without schooling, she had no idea what police officers were, until she was rescued from the abusive home, in 1989.

'I remember seeing a scary movie and refusing to watch it, and in my refusal, my eyes were forced to stay open by stapling the lids open,' Heather revealed. 'I don't remember the hurt of getting stapled but I remember running my fingers over them and trying to take them out when my parents passed out.

'I knew of nothing else but what they were teaching me.

'I didn't go to school, I didn't meet anyone, I didn't know what police were or that anyone was around to help me. I didn't know I needed saving.'

The Platz parents were addicted to inhalant drugs and alcohol, meaning Heather was born with fetal alcohol syndrome, she said.

For the first six years of her life, between 1983 and 1989, she said she was stabbed, hit with rocks and had items poked in her ears that scarred her ear drums.

'I have had nearly every bone broken in my body,' Heather said. 'I remember being locked in a basement for a very long time without food or water.

'Torture': Her parents were sentenced to life in prison in 1990, after the police were called to their house by a concerned neighbor and uncovered the horrific abuse they'd inflicted

'I remember being peed and pooped on, spit at and being forced to do things with those bodily fluids.'

She said she remembers being sexually molested, with Gerald raping her multiple times and Pamela hurting her sexually with objects.

She believes this was out of jealousy as it would mean she would be too bloody for her husband to touch her.

She said: 'When I think back to it, it is all fragmented and jumbled up.

'For example, I remember being hit in the face with a rock. I remember spending many long hours locked in a basement.

'I was put there most of the time by Pamela, who I believe was jealous of all the attention Gerald would show me.

'I remember pain and hurt.'

Heather did not attend school until she was taken away from her parents, and didn't know how to speak English properly.

'I spoke like someone heavy on drugs or alcohol,' said Heather.

The Platzs' house was in the middle of some woods with no other houses in sight from any of the windows.

When they did have an occasional visitor, she were forced to hide upstairs.

'I think Pamela and Gerald were so convincing in their manipulations, that neighbors just ignored them,' she said. 'Looked upon like white trash and avoided.'

In September 1989, a neighbor saw Heather's brother Byron, then about four years old, running naked outside their house in Alpena.

Blood was gushing from his back as he was being beaten with a board with nails on it, and the neighbor called Traverse City police who placed the children into foster care, she said.

Inspiration: Heather welcomed her own daughter, Kayla (pictured), now 16, and says that her birth helped to see what kind of person she wanted to become

Heather said: 'No one knew the extent of the case, at the time everyone believed it was just a child abuse story until I came back to my foster care home, after having an unsupervised visit with my biological parents.

'While giving me a bath, they saw the evidence of sexual abuse and bruising beginning to show on arms and legs.'

Visitation rights were rescinded and the Platzs' trial started soon after at Emmet County Circuit Court.

Prosecutors said Gerald Platz allegedly cut his victim's arms with broken glass and stapled their skin and defecated on their faces.

Authorities said the abuse occurred between 1986 and 1988.

According to court reports, the Platzs told court officials they were themselves victims of abuse in families with alcoholism problems.

Judge Richard Pajtas sentenced them on a total of eight abuse and rape charges against heather and others, on August 20, 1990.

Twelve other counts were dropped when the couple pleaded no contest.

The Platzs were sentenced to life in prison for a total of eight abuse and rape charges relating to Heather and others, according to reports from the time.

While Gerald died alone in prison, Pamela's most recent prison 'mugshot' shows her, now age 59, smiling at the camera, with piercing blue eyes, and her grey hair in a neat side sweep.

In sentencing the judge said: 'Gerald Platz has subjected his family to a life of isolation, incest and horrible acts of sexual abuse that can only be described as barbaric, shocking and disgusting.'

Prosecutor Diane Smith said the Platzs 'damaged these children for life'.

According to report, she added: 'These parents robbed their children of their innocence. Instead of watching videos of Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, they were subjected to "Debby Does Dallas."'

Meaningful: 'I knew, seeing her face, I finally understood what unconditional love looked and felt like, and I knew from that moment on the kind of person I wanted to be,' Heather said

Initially, Heather was placed in care with Byron, but their trauma meant they acted inappropriately towards each other, so they were separated.

Heather said her younger brother Byron received the worst of the violence.

Tragically, Byron went missing in November 2017 until his body was found the following March in the Chippewa River in Dunn County, Wisconsin.

Heather said: 'He couldn't fight those extremely dark demons any longer, and it claimed his life.'

She would hear others speaking ill of her parents but it confused her as the little girl still didn't understand what they had done wrong.

She said: 'I just thought of them as someone much older than me that gave me food sometimes when I was very hungry, and sometimes would watch TV with us.

Upset: Heather's brother Byron (pictured) - who endured the worst abuse - disappeared in November 2017 and his body was found in March 2018, with his sister explaining that he 'couldn't fight his demons any longer'

'I didn't know what else to compare it to at that age, so just viewed them as people who took care of me.'

Eventually she began to realize that her foster parents didn't hurt her like her birth parents did and that there was 'more to life than just pain.'

She spent a year-and-a-half in foster care before being adopted, and went to therapy until she was about 15 when she was kicked out due to ongoing behavioral problems.

When she got into trouble when she was 18 she began to think she was turning into her parents and started to turn her life around. She had her daughter, now 16, which finally helped her move on from her childhood trauma.

Heather said: 'The minute I saw her newborn face, it woke me up too. I wanted her to never feel anything that I had personally gone through in my life.

'I knew, seeing her face, I finally understood what unconditional love looked and felt like, and I knew from that moment on the kind of person I wanted to be.'

Heather's friends and children don't know much about Heather's upbringing, but are supportive of her continued fight with PTSD.

'I broke the chain of becoming like my parents, by being a mother myself and teaching my children unconditional love, a happy healthy life,' she said.

'No one taught me what to do - I just knew who I didn't want to be, like them. The fact that I am alive gives me strength. I survived something that should have killed me.

'No matter what a person goes through in their life, they have to decide on the kind of person they want to be. No one or no memory has power over you, unless you let it.

'Every day that you successfully live without repeating the trauma or hurt on others, is a day to celebrate.'
Controversy over the June Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval of the controversial Alzheimer's drug Aduhelm is heating up.

U.S. lawmakers have requested data and documents from the related to the drug's accelerated approval, mounting further pressure on the FDA for clearing the drug.

The chairs of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform and the Committee on Energy and Commerce have requested the FDA to disclose documents related to the interactions between Biogen and the agency's staff.

It is just the latest in a long line of controversy that have follow Biogen and its drug over the past three months.

Aduhelm, developed by Biogen, received controversial FDA approval on June 7 despite two failed clinical trials. Two House committees have begun a probe into communications into the FDA's approval of the drug

'We are concerned by apparent anomalies in FDA's processes surrounding its review of Aduhelm,' chairs of the two committee wrote in a letter to the agency.

The committees had launched an investigation following the drug's approval on June 7 that had sparked controversy and concerns over the FDA's process, as a panel of its outside advisers had recommended against the approval.

The letter, dated September 1, also requests details on the agency's process for approving a therapy when there is a disagreement between the FDA staff and its panel of external advisers, known as the advisory committee.

Biogen said it was continuing to cooperate with the committees' investigation and had produced documents as and when requested.

This is one of two investigations into the drug's approval.

Earlier this summer, the Office of Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services launched an investigation into the process after a request by the FDA commissioner Janet Woodcock.

'I have tremendous confidence in the integrity of the staff and leadership of the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research involved in the [Aduhelm] review and their commitment to unbiased and science-based decision-making,' Woodcock wrote in a statement.

'There continue to be concerns raised, however, regarding the contacts between representatives from Biogen and FDA during the review process, including some that may have occurred outside of the formal correspondence process.

'To the extent these concerns could undermine the public's confidence in the FDA's decision, I believe that it is critical that the events at issue be reviewed be an independent body such as the Office of the Inspector General in order to determine whether any interactions that occurred between Biogen and FDA review staff were inconsistent with FDA policy and procedures.'

Woodcock had previously defended the drug's approval from critics, saying it was 'reasonably likely' that the drug could help slow the cognitive decline associated with Alzheimer's.

Some disagree, though, due to a rocky trial process by the drug manufacturer.

Biogen launched two clinical trials for Aduhelm, the commercial name of the drug aducanumab, in 2016.

Biogen found data from their second clinical trial that showed the drug could reduce the cognitive decline associated with Alzheimer's by 22%. If true, it would be the only drug with the ability to do so

Both were stopped midway because researchers concluded that neither trial would end up reaching its goal.

Later, the company revealed updated data from the second study showed patients had 22 percent decrease in speed of their cognitive decline, which would make it the only drug with the ability to do so.

It also showed that Aduhelm could remove amyloid beta plaques on the brain that some experts believe can reduce the cognitive decline caused by Alzheimer's.

But some experts argued that there was little evidence to show any real world improvement in patients who took Aduhelm, with doctors now keen to see if a large real-world cohort of patients will be able to shed further light on whether or not it is effective.

Woodcock and others have said that the removal of these plaques can stop cognitive decline, which would make the drug the only available Alzheimer's treatment to do so.

The FDA rolled back on the drug, though, later revising its label, now only recommending it to be prescribed to those in the early stages of Alzheimer's, or with more mild case of the condition.
COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations among children are continuing to rise as the early stages of the new school year are struck by the Delta variant.

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) reports that 200,000 children tested positive for COVID-19 in the week of August 26, the second highest weekly total recorded during the pandemic.

Children also accounted for over 19,000 of the 812,000 hospitalizations recorded that week. While week-over-week totals did increase, it was at a much lower rate than the 50 percent increase from the previous week.

Twenty-three children also died from the virus, matching the previous weeks total, per the AAP report.

Cases and deaths around the nation have spike in recent weeks, with some states posting a record number of infections this week, though the overall growth of new cases has begun to slow.

Despite the recent rise in cases, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that in-person learning is safe as long as schools follow the agency's guidelines.

More than 200,000 cases of COVID-19 among minors were recorded last week, the second highest total ever, as the new school year gets underway

Minors are being hospitalized due to the virus at the highest rate ever, with 0.48 of every 100,000 people 17 or younger being hospitalized currently. More than 19,000 children were hospitalized last week

The data is revealed as schools around the country suffer from outbreaks and closures only weeks after returning to class.

Last week was only the second time that more than 200,000 children tested positive for the virus in the same week - with 211,000 positive tests recorded in mid-January.

It also a continuation of a sharp climb in cases among children, who had mostly avoided the brunt of the pandemic until recently

Cases among children have grown by 12 percent week-over-week, from 180,000 a week earlier.

Sine July 1, when the Delta variant-fueled surge first began, cases have increased 18-fold.

Hospitalizations among children have surged since then as well, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

On July 5, 0.05 of every 100,000 American 17 years old of younger were hospitalized with a case of the virus.

Children are still unlikely to die or suffer major negative side-effects from the virus, though.

The figure has risen all the way to 0.48 out of every 100,000 at the start of September.

NBC reports that the CDC plans to soon publish two studies showing a disparity between child hospitalizations in areas of higher and lower vaccination.

'Cases, emergency room visits and hospitalizations are much lower among children in communities with higher vaccination rates,' Walensky said during a news conference on Thursday.

One study found that hospitalizations among unvaccinated teens was 10 times higher than it was for teens that were fully vaccinated.

The second study found that rates of child hospitalizations was four times higher in states with lower vaccination coverage.

An increase of cases and hospitalizations among children has created a problem for schools just getting the new year underway.

Tennessee schools are among the hardest hit.

The state, which is recording a record number of COVID-19 cases this week, has had 20 school districts elect to close this week in order to control outbreaks of the virus.

Florida has become a COVID-19 battleground, with state leadership and county level school boards warring over mask mandates and other pandemic related restrictions.

Gov Ron DeSantis banned mask mandates in schools in a move many larger education districts publicly vowed to disobey.

More than a dozen Florida counties have rebelled and voted to require masks to protect students and teachers as the Delta variant sweeps across the state.

This week, the state's Department of Education sanctioned two counties that passed school mask requirements.

The pushback in Florida against the Republican governor initially was led by large urban school districts run by Democrats.

But this week saw more conservative counties that backed Republican Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election also defying DeSantis and instituting their own mandates.

Earlier this week, populous Brevard County along Florida's east coast, which went for Trump over President Joe Biden by more than 16 percentage points in November, narrowly voted to approve a 30-day school mask mandate.

A day later, Hernando County, which supported Trump over Biden by almost 30 points, also passed a mandate, but one that allows parents to opt out.

In Lake County near Orlando, which also strongly backed Trump, a school official said on Thursday that more than 1,000 students of the 36,000 in the district had tested positive for the virus.

A Florida judge ruled in favor of the school districts on Thursday, giving them a right to institute the mandates.

Schools in the Atlanta have been hard struck as well, with more than 23,000 students and staff being forced to quarantine in August due to the virus.

The CDC is pushing for schools to remain open but to follow guidelines the agency has provided them in order to prevent these kinds of outbreaks.

The agency's plan is a implement 'multilayered' strategy in regards to masking, distancing and ventilation.

The prevention measures include vaccination for all eligible students and staff, masking, increased ventilation, physical distancing and regular testing.

Florida has become a battleground on the issue of mask mandates in schools, with many districts - both Democrat and Republican - defying Gov Ron DeSantis' ban on mandates in schools. Pictured: Students in a Miami Lakes high school wear masks in the classroom

'Schools should implement as many as these prevention layers as possible simultaneously,' Dr Rochelle Walensky, director of the CDC, said during a news conference last week.

'... we know these multilayered mitigation strategies work and thanks to the American Rescue Plan, schools have the resources to implement these strategies.'

The AAP has pushed for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to extend authorization of the COVID-19 vaccines to children younger than 12.

Dr Lee Savio Beers, president of the organization, wrote an open letter to the FDA last month, urging the agency to extend authorization to school aged children.

Not all agree with the AAP, though.

Across the pond in the UK, the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) ruled that children aged 12 to 15 did not need the vaccine, as the benefits to their health would be marginal due to the low level of deaths and serious side-effects the youth suffer from the virus.

The organization still does recommend the jab for kids with chronic heart, kidney, lung and neurological conditions in that age group, though.

In the United States, the country is averaging 164,000 new COVID-19 cases per day, the highest mark since late January.

Growth of cases is slowing, though, with only a 14 percent increase of new cases over the past two weeks.

A majority of states no longer report daily case data, though, so day-to-day changes in numbers are often incomplete.

Deaths are beginning to spike, though, with 1,500 Americans dying due to the virus every day - a 67 percent increase over two weeks.

In total, the nation has recorded 39.7 million COVID-19 cases and 645,383 deaths, the most of any country in the world.

More than 100,000 Americans are being hospitalized with the virus every day as well.

Around 62 percent of people in the U.S. have received at least one shot of a COVID-19 vaccine, and 52 percent are fully vaccinated.
The White House is being advised by some regulators to scale back plans to roll out COVID-19 booster shots this month.

Leadership from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), told White House officials they would need more time to review data before they could make a decision, reports the Washington Post.

The White House announced plans to make boosters available starting on September 20 - less than three weeks from now - last month.

The announcement was made pending approval from regulators, though, and this could prove to be a speed bump to the Biden Administration's plans.

Dr Rochelle Walensky (left) and Dr Janet Woodcook (right) told While House officials during a meeting Thursday that they may not be prepared to fully green light vaccine booster shots by September 20

Dr Janet Woodcock, commissioner of the FDA, and Dr Rochelle Walensky, director of the CDC, met with White House Pandemic Coordinator Jeffrey Zients on Thursday.

They told Zients that they would be unable to make an informed decision in time to meet the targeted roll out date.

With the information they had, Woodcock and Walensky said they could only partially make a recommendation for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, and not make any recommendation for the Moderna jab yet.

Moderna did not submit data on the booster shots to regulators until Wednesday, just 19 days before the third shot was supposed to become available.

Pfizer and BioNTech were slightly ahead of their peer, submitting data on August 16.

'We always said we would follow the science, and this is all part of a process that is now underway,' a White House spokesman told the Post about the report on Friday.

Last month, the White House, together with the FDA and CDC, announced it would make booster shots available for Americans who received the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine.

Jeffrey Zients (pictured) said that all available data in regards to booster shots is being reviewed

People would be eligible for the third shot eight months after they received their second shot.

Officials cited the waning immunity the current crop of COVID-19 vaccines have offered, combined with the Delta variant's ability to cause breakthrough cases among vaccinated people as the reason why boosters are needed.

The decision was pending approval from regulators, though.

Making the announcement before approval was given angered some regulators, and two FDA officials even resigned in protest of the decision by the Biden Administration.

Zients responded to the resignations and the controversy around the boosters on Wednesday.

'As our medical experts laid out, having reviewed all of the available data, it is in their clinical judgment that it is time to prepare Americans for a booster shot,' said Zients during a news conference.

'We announced our approach in order to stay ahead of the virus, give states and pharmacies time to plan, and to be transparent with the American people as to the latest data and expert clinical judgments from the team to give them time to do their own planning.

'We have been  also been very clear throughout that this is pending FDA conducting an independent evaluation and CDC's panel of outside experts issuing a booster dose recommendation.'

Booster shots for the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines are set to roll out starting on September 20. Any American is eligible for the third shot eight months after they received their second. (File Photo)

Other groups have criticized the decision to roll out boosters, and to announce the plans before regulators had a chance to investigate.

Some scientists have argued that the data does not support the need for booster shots, as hospitalizations and deaths among fully vaccinated people remain low, even though breakthrough infections are becoming more common.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO director-general, also called for a pause in the roll out of booster shots, and instead for high income countries to donate doses to low income nations in order to prevent the development of new variants.

'Vaccine injustice and vaccine nationalism' increase the risk of more contagious variants emerging, Tedros said during a speech in Budapest, Hungary, last month.

'The virus will get the chance to circulate in countries with low vaccination coverage, and the delta variant could evolve to become more virulent, a nd at the same time more potent variants could also emerge,' he added.
Parents, experts and teaching unions today warned of tension in schools after the UK signed off on plans to offer Covid jabs to healthy 12 to 15-year-olds - which will see children get the final say on whether they are vaccinated. Around 3million under-16s are due to start getting their jabs from next week after Chris Whitty endorsed the move today, claiming it would help prevent outbreaks in classrooms and further disruptions to education this winter. Doses will be largely administered through the school vaccination programme and parental consent will be sought. But children will be able to overrule their parents' decision in the case of a conflict, which has caused fury. Angry parents fumed against the move to leave the decision with young children who 'can't even decide what they want for tea, never mind' a vaccine, which carry small risks of side effects. Professor Simon Clarke, a microbiologist at the University of Reading who is in favour of jabbing children, warned that giving youngsters the final say could lead to children being bullied by their peers into taking the jab. He told MailOnline: 'It will cause rows I think, if they insist on full consent from parents before vaccination. You may end up in a situation where a minority, it will probably be the unvaccinated, get bullied and excluded by other children.'
Four African countries with low vaccination rates will soon receive 1.2 million donated COVID-19 vaccine doses from the United States.

Vaccines were shipped to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, Guinea and Seychelles on Friday, a White House official confirmed to Reuters.

The doses are being donated through COVAX, a program run by the World Health Organization to help create a more equitable distribution of Covid vaccines.

Africa has lagged sharply behind other regions in vaccinating its citizens, with most countries reporting single-digit vaccination rates, compared with much higher double-digit rates in advanced economies such as the United States.

The U.S. will be donating 1.2 million COVID-19 vaccine doses to four African nations: Uganda, The Democratic Republic of the Congo, Seychelles and Guinea. Pictured: A man in Uganda received a COVID-19 vaccine last month

Uganda, which was shipped received 657,080 doses, and the Congo, 250,320 doses, will each receive the two-shot Moderna vaccine.

Seychelles will receive 35,100 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, which is also two shots.

Guinea will receive 302,400 doses of the one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

In total, more than 1.2 million vaccine doses are being donated to the four countries.

Data from each of the countries is incomplete, making it hard to know exactly how much of each population has received the jabs.

Each of them, like many other African nations, is among the countries with the lowest vaccination rate, though.

Donating vaccines to lower income countries was made a priority by the Biden Administration earlier in the summer.

In June, during the G7 summit, Biden said the United States would donate 500 million doses of Pfizer's shot, made with partner BioNTech, and officials have said they would start shipping out in late August.

The U.S. will ship 200 million of the doses pledged by the end of 2021 and the other 300 million by June 2022, according to Jeff Zients, coordinator of the president's COVID-19 task force.

'Everything is on schedule there,' he said at a White House news briefing earlier this month.

Of those doses, 75 percent will be sent to countries via COVAX and 25 percent will be shared with countries directly.

Earlier this year, the Biden administration sent 80 million doses to other nations after the president promised shots would be donated from the U.S. supply.

Another African nation, Rwanda, received 500,000 doses from the United States earlier this summer as well.

Biden administration health officials have said efforts to quell the coronavirus outbreak worldwide is key to ending the pandemic and preventing future problematic COVID strains, in addition to ongoing efforts to vaccinate people in the United States.

The White House had shifted priorities to sending vaccines abroad after the U.S. vaccination campaign slowed down to fewer than 500,000 doses a day in July, down from 3.5 million per day in April.

Numbers have bounced back, though, with just under a million Americans getting their first shot every day.

Currently in the U.S., 62.2 percent of residents have received at least one shot of a COVID vaccine and 53 percent are fully vaccinated.
Tory donor Peter Cruddas and his wife saw 200million wiped off their paper fortune after his City broking firm warned the pandemic-inspired day trading boom could be over.

CMC Markets performed spectacularly well during the Covid crisis, boosted by workers sitting at home with increased saving pots and more time on their hands than ever.

But yesterday the online platform  set up by Cruddas in 1989 with just 10,000  said trading activity had plummeted during the summer months following on from a slow first quarter.

CMC Markets  set up by Peter Cruddas (pictured) in 1989 with just 10,000  said trading activity had plummeted during the summer months

As a result, the firm slashed profit forecasts for the year to between 250m and 280million, a big fall from the 330million it was targeting as recently as July.

CMC also reported a dip in customer retention, a vital measure as investment platforms seek to hold on to new clients who flocked to them during lockdowns.

The company said retention dipped below its 80per cent minimum target. The update saw shares crash 27.4 per cent, or 115p, to 305p.

That slashed the value of the 57 per cent stake held by Cruddas by 190million to 504million. His wife Fiona also lost out as the value of her 3 per cent stake fell by 10million to 27million.

The company said: Reduced volatility in markets has resulted in lower trading activity across both the newly acquired and existing cohort of clients.

Similar trends have been seen across our non-leveraged and leveraged businesses.

The update came just a couple of months after Cruddas, 67, pocketed a 55million dividend from CMCs soaring profits in 2020.

Once dubbed the richest man in the City, Cruddas was born and brought up on an East End council estate and left Shoreditch Comprehensive with no qualifications.

The father-of-four has at times controversially also strayed into politics. He was made a Conservative peer by Boris Johnson last year.

It later emerged he donated 500,000 to the Tories just days after being elevated to the House of Lords.

Cruddas was appointed co-treasurer of the Conservative Party in 2011 but later resigned amid a cash-for-access row.

His business boomed during the pandemic when as many as 1.8m adults in the UK are estimated to have become day traders.

Analysts, however, warned the craze could be drawing to a close as people return to offices, restaurants, pubs and shops.

Stuart Duncan, at Peel Hunt, said: CMC cannot escape the slowdown in trading activity. He added the decline was down to reduced volatility, fewer reasons to trade, and clients taking holidays as restrictions have eased.

Last month, CMC rival Hargreaves Lansdown cautioned that the pandemic surge in trading would not last, sending its shares down 11 per cent on the day.

Hargreaves was off 0.2 per cent, or 3p, at 1512.5p yesterday, while IG fell 11 per cent, or 104p, to 841p.

The Conservative Party is keen to build on Margaret Thatchers legacy of a shareholder democracy, but others are worried young people could be losing money.

Hargreaves has said almost one quarter of clients  55,900 customers  added this year were younger than 30.

A blue-chip stockbroker said: Traditional brokers like us are openly jealous that these firms have been able to attract this new audience.

But questions do need to be asked about what these young people are doing on these platforms. Are they being protected?

Cruddas has previously stated that all his new clients understand the risks they are taking.
Edinburgh has acquired a new landmark with the opening of the Johnnie Walker whisky emporium on the historic site once occupied by the Binns department store  a victim of the changing face of the High Street.

The 185million seven-storey restoration, incorporating the famous Binns clock, symbolises the faith of distiller Diageo in the future of premium Scotch as Britain carves out a series of free-trade agreements with the rest of the world in the post-Brexit era.

Diageo chief executive Ivan Menezes views the new Johnnie Walker house as his firm's window for the world with emerging markets and India in particular the ultimate prize.

Landmark: The Johnnie Walker site was once occupied by the Binns department store

'We're making the appropriate investments in Scotch to sustain the growth in the business as the tariffs go down,' Menezes says.

Scotch, much of it distilled by Diageo, is one of the UK's biggest food and drink exports accounting for 20 per cent of overseas sales at present. It is the biggest earner for Diageo making up some 23 per cent of the enterprise's earnings.

Menezes is relatively untroubled by the distribution and supply problems for business which recently have dominated the domestic media.

'It's been a little bit more challenging especially for obtaining packaging materials. We are going to be a little more edgy as we go into the holiday season,' he says.

Before the pandemic Scotland attracted up to 2m tourists a year and Diageo's 23 distilleries across the country were part of that experience.

Diageo chief executive Ivan Menezes (pictured) views the new Johnnie Walker house as his firm's window for the world with emerging markets and India in particular the ultimate prize

Menezes says wants the Edinburgh venue 'to be a force for attracting visitors from Europe, Asia and Latin America.'

Of all the trade agreements being signed by Liz Truss, the International Trade Secretary, Menezes regards a potential trade deal with India as the most significant.

He believes there is enormous demand in the country for premium and aspirational whisky brands which are at present disadvantaged by tariff barriers.

Boris Johnson had hoped to put some heft behind a trade deal with India in the early summer but his planned summit was cancelled amid the terrible spike in Covid in the country.

The hope had been to open the Edinburgh emporium in 2000 to mark the 200th anniversary of the brand but it was delayed by the pandemic.

As well as documenting the heritage of Scotch, the visitor centre will also be offering hospitality training for Scotland's unemployed.
Kitty Ussher has been appointed the Institute of Directors's first female chief economist

One of the UK's oldest professional bodies has appointed a female chief economist for the second time in its history.

Kitty Ussher will take the role at the Institute of Directors, joining from cross party think-tank Demos.

It is not the first time the Institute of Directors  founded in 1903  has had a female chief economist with Ruth Lea holding the prestigious role between 1995 to 2003.

Ussher has experience of public life, having served as Labour MP for Burnley between 2005 and 2010.

She was also Treasury minister during the financial crisis, in Gordon Brown's government.

She said: 'I have long been aware of the value of the Institute, going back to my time in government.'
Turnaround specialist Melrose received a boost as investors welcomed plans for a multi-million-pound payout.

In its half-year results, the FTSE 100 business said that on September 14 it will return 729million to shareholders, equivalent to 15p per share, adding that its balance sheet has capacity for a 'significant further capital return next year'. It also declared an interim dividend of 0.75p a share.

The windfall came as the company said it has plugged a 1billion hole in the pension scheme of UK engineering firm GKN, which it controversially acquired for around 8.1billion in 2018.

Paying out: Melrose is to will return 729m to shareholders, equivalent to 15p per share, adding that its balance sheet has capacity for a 'significant further capital return next year'

Melrose said the GKN pension deficit now stood at 150million, enabling it to halve its annual contribution to 30million.

The firm also said its net debt has been cut to 300million from 3.4billion in the prior year, although this will rise above 1billion with the 729million capital return.

The group topped off the good news by saying it is 'trading ahead of expectations' with 'better profit margins and better earnings'.

It posted profits of 109million for the first half of the year, having made an 80million loss in the same period of 2020. The shares climbed 7.2 per cent, or 12.36p, to 184.24p.

Stock Watch - Tiziana Life Biotechnology firm Tiziana Life Sciences notched up healthy gains, rising 14.2 per cent, or 8.7p, to 70.2p after unveiling an exclusive licence agreement for its antibody product, known as Foralumab, with US firm Precision Biosciences. Foralumab is designed to enhance CAR-T therapy, a new type of treatment for blood-borne cancers. Precision will aim to use foralumab to increase the tolerance of CAR-T in patients and potentially increase its long-term viability as a cancer treatment. In return for granting the licence, Tiziana will receive upfront and milestone payments as well as royalties.

The biggest faller on the FTSE 100 was mining giant BHP, which saw its shares sink 5.6 per cent, or 124p, to 2107p after going ex-dividend on a record 145p payment announced in its final results last month. The huge sum means BHP returned over 10.9billion to shareholders in its last financial year.

Another big-cap on the back foot was Dove and Wall's Ice Cream owner Unilever, which dropped 2 per cent, or 83p, to 3961p after being hit with a downgrade from analysts at JP Morgan.

The FTSE 100 managed a small increase, rising 0.2 per cent, or 14.06 points, at 7163.9. The mid-cap FTSE 250 index fell 0.1 per cent, or 24.56 points, to 24,226.27.

Ryanair received a lift to its share price, rising 1.9 per cent, or 0.31, to 16.30 after reporting a rise in passenger traffic during August as holidaymakers jetted away for the summer. The Irish airline said it carried over 11m passengers last month, up from 7m a year ago.

Rival budget carrier Wizz Air also gained altitude as it reported a 50 per cent increase in passengers over August to 3.6m, sending the shares up 1.8 per cent, or 87p, to 5020p.

Pharma firm Evgen shot up 9.4 per cent, or 0.6p, to 7p as the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted orphan drug designation to SFX-01, the company's lead product designed to help treat brain tumours.

Iraq-focused oiler Gulf Keystone Petroleum gushed 13.9 per cent, or 21.6p, to 176.8p after swinging to a profit in its first half.

The firm also raised the lower end of its 2021 production guidance to between 42,000 and 44,000 barrels of oil per day from 40,000 to 44,000 previously.

Dev Clever, a provider of online career guidance platforms, rose 6.4 per cent, or 2p, to 33.5p after inking a partnership deal with a Dubai-based consumer tech firm.

Elsewhere, Surface Transforms, a maker of carbon-fibre reinforced ceramic brake discs, saw its shares accelerate 4.6 per cent, or 3p to 68.5p as investors backed a new manufacturing strategy at its factory in Knowsley, Merseyside.

Online auction specialist Auction Technology Group suffered a fall of 10.2 per cent, or 168p, to 1474p after a group of investors offloaded around 12.6m shares in the group for 189million. The shares were sold for 1,500p each, an 8.6 per cent discount to the firm's last closing price before the sale was announced.

Property developer One Heritage found itself on shaky foundations, down 17.2 per cent, or 12.5p, to 60p, after it was made aware of 'financial issues' relating to a subsidiary of One Heritage Complete, in which it owns a 47 per cent stake.

Meanwhile, Enquest sank 6.1 per cent,, or 1.55p, to 23.7p after the UK-focused petroleum firm said it expects production for 2021 to be at the lower end of guidance.
A British businessman has been arrested in Singapore over alleged links to a fraud connected to collapsed German payments group Wirecard.

Henry OSullivan, an adviser to Wirecard in Asia, is facing ten years in prison, a fine or both for his role in sending a false letter to one of the firms subsidiaries in the Middle East.

OSullivan, 46, has been accused of instructing Singaporean company Citadelle Corporate Services to forge a letter that claimed it was holding 74million in an escrow account in 2016.

Henry OSullivan, an adviser to Wirecard in Asia, is facing ten years in prison, a fine or both for his role in sending a false letter to one of the firms subsidiaries in the Middle East

But Singaporean authorities say Citadelle did not manage said account.

Wirecard had been hailed as one of Germanys great technology stars until it collapsed last year after it found a 1.7billion black hole in its accounts.

Desperate bosses admitted they could not find money supposedly held by Asian banks.

OSullivan is accused of colluding with Citadelle director R Shanmugaratnam, who is alleged to have sent more than a dozen letters to Wirecard, its subsidiaries and an audit firm saying it held huge amounts of money in escrow accounts between 2015 and 2017.
A mum will soon be reunited with her little boy whom she hasn't seen for two months due to Covid-19 border closures.

Queensland couple Dominique Facer and Mick Francis haven't seen their son Memphis, 3, since he went to visit his grandparents Mark and Alex on a cattle station more than 1500 kilometres away in the NSW Riverina region on July 9.

The state slammed shut its borders with NSW at short notice two weeks later due to the worsening Covid outbreak in Sydney.

The family's heartbreaking story sparked a national outcry on Thursday, prompting Queensland health officials to grant an exemption to bring Memphis home.

Angel Flight will fly Memphis home, where he'll finally be in his parents' arms on Friday afternoon.

Memphis Francis (pictured with his grandparents Mark and Alex on their cattle station) hasn't seen his parents in eight weeks. He will finally be reunited with them on Friday

'He's coming home!' an excited Ms Facer told the Today show on Friday.

Poll Should Memphis be allowed to return home to Queensland? Yes No Should Memphis be allowed to return home to Queensland? Yes 278 votes

No 40 votes Now share your opinion





'I have been asked the few times this morning "what's the first thing you will say to him" I don't think there will be any words to get out.

'It will be crying. There will be a lot of tears, I'm not going to want to let him go

'I can't even string words together how excited I am to see him.'

'He's had a great time with his grandparents, but he's definitely ready to come home.'

The family will spend Friday morning grocery shopping for the next two weeks they'll be at home with Memphis, who has to undergo home quarantine.

Memphis' baby sister Paisley is also excited to see him after learning to walk while they've been apart.

'She will also be excited to see her big brother, she has been missing him quite a bit,' Ms Facer said.

'She always sort of walks into his room and looks for him and walks around the house looking for him. I think he will be pretty keen to see she is now walking too, which is great.'

Memphis (pictured) is excited to see his parents and baby sister, who's learned to walk while he'd been away

Queensland Chief Health Officer Jeannette Young confirmed a day earlier Memphis can come home but was unaware of claims the family had applied for multiple exemptions, which were denied.

'We have to be asked to be able to give an exemption,' Dr Young said.

Ms Facer is just relieved she'll finally be reunited with her firstborn.

'It's devastating, he's like my little shadow,' Ms Facer told the Today show a day earlier.

'Having eight weeks without him here, not being able to touch him, kiss him, just everything, it's terrible.'

'FaceTime is the only way I can see him and talk to him.

'He's asking me - Mummy, can I come home now, can you come get me now?' How do I explain to him why I can't come and get him? It's just absolutely gut wrenching.'

His grandmother Alex added: 'Memphis needs to go home to his parents. This over FaceTime is not cutting it.'

'How do you explain to a three-year-old that he can't go home?'

Dominique Facer (pictured) can't wait to hug her son for the first time in eight weeks

Her husband added their grandson continually asks for his mummy and daddy.

'Night times are the worst,' Alex added.

Memphis has also missed out on watching his little sister Paisley learning to walk.

'I have seen the photos of the lady at the border where the blockades are and the barricades are, and she got to hug her kids and her son and all I could think was God, even if I could just do that,' Ms Facer said.

'He's missed out on just so much. It's not like he is missing out on everything, we are missing out on him too.'

'I have missed out on watching him grow for eight weeks. How is this fair?'

She had gone as far as offering to meet Memphis at the Queensland border and self-isolating for 14 days at their home on the Fraser coast afterwards.

But she says she was told by the Queensland government bringing Memphis home doesn't qualify under compassionate grounds.

'They have basically told me that if he was - if I was going to see a loved one that was dying or if I was attending a loved one's funeral that's a compassionate ground, but apparently my three-year-old son wanting to come home isn't a compassionate ground,' Ms Facer said.

'I can't comprehend it.'

The region where Memphis' grandparents are has had no Covid cases during the current outbreak.

'They tell you to go to Sydney to get a plane to fly, why would you go to Sydney. That's in a hotspot. We're isolated. We never see anyone,' Mark said.

Federal health minister Greg Hunt lashed out at Premier Palaszczuk and health officials after hearing about the family's plight, describing it as a 'profound moral failure'.

Memphis Francis (pictured) can't return home to Queensland due to the Covid outbreak in Sydney

Earlier this week, Premier Palaszczuk lashed out after being asked whether the state's hard border closures would continue 'until 100 per cent of the population was vaccinated'.

'You open up this state and you let the virus in here, every child under 12 is vulnerable, every single child,' she told parliament.

Deputy Premier Steven Miles added: 'The LNP and the Prime Minister for Sydney might want us to open our borders, and let the virus in, he might want us to deliberately infect Queenslanders, our young people, who can't have a vaccine.
President Joe Biden flies to New Orleans Friday to view a city nearly completely without power amid a frantic recovery effort to clear debris and get the power on during oppressive heat.

And the president will visit some of the hardest hit areas south of LaFourche, Louisiana where the Category 4 Hurricane made landfall and ripped through structures and devastated entire communities.

His trip comes after Hurricane Ida pummeled Louisiana, before making its way through a swath of the country to cause massive flooding in the Northeast, causing further mayhem and killing dozens. The severe flooding stunned residents of Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York off guard  and could draw national attention away from hard hit coastal areas that took the initial brunt of the storm.

The trip will give Biden the opportunity to address the federal response and meet with local leaders  just days after he defended the chaotic evacuation from Afghanistan.

Homes destroyed in the wake of Hurricane Ida are shown September 2, 2021 in Grand Isle, Louisiana. Ida made landfall August 29 as a Category 4 storm near Grand Isle, southwest of New Orleans, causing widespread power outages, flooding and massive damage

He will also take an aerial tour of some of the hardest hit communities, including Laffite, Grand Isle, Port Fourchon and Lafourche Parish, while touring a neighborhood in LaPlace and giving a speech.

Biden told the nation Thursday he had been monitoring the devastation caused by Hurricane Ida 'closely,' after the Category 4 Hurricane slammed into the Louisiana coast, bringing death and destruction on the way as it made its way up through Pennsylvania and New York.

'While the catastrophic flooding wasnt as severe as it was during Hurricane Katrina 16 years ago, Ida was so powerful that it caused the Mississippi River literally to change direction -- the flow -- change the flow temporarily,' Biden noted.

He said the 'good news' is that the $15 billion levee system put in place around New Orleans after catastrophic failures during Hurricane Katrina appears to have held.

'It held. It was strong. It worked,' he said. 'But too many people and too many areas are still unprotected and saw a storm surge and flooding that was devastating,' Biden said.

President Joe Biden flies to New Orleans Friday to meet with local officials and view the response to Hurricane Ida

A search and rescue team drives through standing water while checking homes destroyed in the wake of Hurricane Ida on September 2, 2021 in Grand Isle, Louisiana. Ida made landfall August 29 as a Category 4 storm near Grand Isle, southwest of New Orleans, causing widespread power outages, flooding and massive damage

He pointed to 170 mile and hour winds he said were still unconfirmed by FEMA 'causing unimaginable damage, with debris and downed powerlines making roads impassable and slowing response efforts to save folks and property.'

Floods let to a series of deaths in the northeast as waters raged in Philadelphia and even Biden's hometown of Wilmington.

Biden said he will meet with Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards and various parish presidents as he views the disaster response.

Homes destroyed in the wake of Hurricane Ida are shown September 2, 2021 in Grand Isle, Louisiana. Ida made landfall August 29 as a Category 4 storm near Grand Isle, southwest of New Orleans, causing widespread power outages, flooding and massive damage

Michael DiSimone, CEO of the Link Restaurant Group prepares meat to be barbecued to give to people for free as power continues to be out in most of the city after hurricane Ida ripped through the state in New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S., September 1, 2021

An official in Jefferson Parish says a transmission tower that provides power for New Orleans and the east bank of the parish has collapsed into the river near Bridge City. According to the parish's Emergency Management Director, cables strung across the Mississippi River

Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards speaks during news conference In the aftermath of Hurricane Ida Wednesday, Sept. 1, 2021, in Gretna, La. He is set to meet with Biden

'Governor Edwards encouraged me to come and assured me that the visit will not disrupt recovery efforts on the ground. That's what I wanted to be sure of,' said Biden  who appears to be skipping hard hit communities in southern Louisiana where people are still digging out and assessing massive damage.

He ran into difficulties when he flew to Surfside Florida to view damage there earlier this summer after the tragic Champlain Towers South collapse. There was a shift on the rubble while Biden was at a hotel several blocks away, and the president visited a memorial wall rather than the disaster site itself.

During that visit, Biden met with local leaders including Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, his counterpart in a coronavirus feud.

Were not going anywhere. Tell me what you need,' he told the assembled leaders, including DeSantis, who praised federal efforts.
Minnesota prosecutors filed a more serious charge Thursday against the Minneapolis police officer who fatally shot Daunte Wright during a traffic stop, but it is not the murder charge that activists were seeking.

Minnesota police officer faces a new first-degree manslaughter charge for the killing of Daunte Wright, 20, after the attorney general reviewed her case with an expert on Thursday, but it wasn't the murder charge activists were seeking.

Wright, 20, was killed by Potter during a traffic stop after he resisted arrest and she threatened to taser him.

She actually fired a gun at Wright and the bullet hit him in the chest. She has since claimed she grabbed the wrong weapon - her gun was holstered on her right side, while the taser was on her left.

Former Brooklyn Center officer Kim Potter is now charged with first-degree manslaughter, in addition to a prior charge of second-degree manslaughter.

Activists had demanded a murder charge during protests in Brooklyn Center and outside a metro-area prosecutor's home before Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison took over the case.

Potter has claimed that she meant to use her taser instead of her handgun when she fatally shot Wright on April 11.

Kim Potter (pictured), who has already been charged with second-degree manslaughter, has been given an additional first-degree manslaughter charge by new attorney general for her involvement in the death of Daunte Wright, 20

Wright supposedly resisted arrest by getting back into the driver's seat when Luckey tried to arrest him, which prompted Potter to threaten to tase him

The amended complaint alleges Potter committed first-degree manslaughter by recklessly handling a firearm and endangering the safety of another when death or great bodily harm was reasonably foreseeable.

The second-degree manslaughter count alleged she acted with culpable negligence and took an unreasonable risk when she consciously took a chance of causing death or great bodily harm with a firearm.

First-degree manslaughter carries a maximum sentence of 15 years while second-degree manslaughter carries a maximum penalty of 10 years, though state sentencing guidelines call for much less.

Washington County Attorney Pete Orput initially handled the case under an agreement signed last year in which metro-area prosecutors said they would take each other's cases involving a person's death after an officer uses force.

In the video, Potter is seen firing her handgun at Wright after shouting 'Taser'

Police body cam footage shows three officers approaching Wright's car in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, on April 11 after he had been pulled over for the traffic stop

Wright (pictured) was pulled over by Potter and her trainee Andrew Luckey for expired license tags and for having an air freshener hanging from his rearview mirror in April. He had an outstanding warrant for his arrest, according to court documents

After Orput charged Potter with manslaughter, he came under intense pressure from activists, but continued to say the case did not warrant a murder charge, as protesters held demonstrations outside his home.

When Ellison's office took over Potter's prosecution in May, he said he would conduct a thorough review to determine whether additional charges should be filed.

Ellison said Thursday that after this review, which included consulting with an expert in police use of force, he concluded an upgraded charge of first-degree manslaughter was warranted.

Jaylani Hussein, executive director of the Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations and an activist on issues of police violence, said Wright's family told him Wednesday that the new charge was coming, and that they were 'obviously disappointed' that it fell short of murder.

Potter (pictured) was given the first-degree manslaughter charge after her case was reviewed by a new attorney general and an expert. Activists protested outside the home of the previous attorney general and were disappointed when she was awarded a murder charge

Potter (pictured in a drawing from court) told Wright 'I'll tase ya' as she pointed her gun at him

Potter (pictured back right in a courtroom sketch) fired the weapon once, striking Wright in the chest and the cartridge hitting Luckey's face, according to bodycam footage

Local defense attorney Joe Friedberg, who is not connected to the case, said the facts of the case didn't merit a murder charge, and the upgraded manslaughter charge 'doesn't fit here at all.'

He said the language on which the new charge is based is normally used when someone commits a misdemeanor that happens to result in death, such as when someone punches someone who falls down, hits their head and dies.

'How can you intend to commit a reckless act? I don't know. I'm sorry, that's a political move,' he said. 'This case is either second-degree manslaughter or it's nothing.'

According to the new criminal complaint, Potter was training another officer, Andrew Luckey, when they pulled over Wright.

Luckey told Wright he was being stopped because he had an air freshener hanging from his rearview mirror - it is illegal in Minnesota to have anything suspended between the driver and the windshield, beside rearview mirrors and sun visors - and because his license tags were expired.

Luckey went back to his squad car and found that Wright had an arrest warrant for a gross misdemeanor weapons violation.

Luckey asked Wright to get out of the car, and as Luckey was trying to arrest him, Wright got back into the driver's seat, the complaint said.

A memorial was held in Minneapolis for Wright in April. The shooting happened while Minneapolis was still deep into Derek Chauvins trial for the killing of George Floyd

As Luckey kept a grip on Wright, Potter said 'I'll tase ya,' and moved a piece of paper that she had taken from Wright from her own right hand into her left hand. One second later, Potter's right hand can be seen in her body camera video, holding her handgun.

The complaint told Potter again said, 'I'll tase you' and 'Taser, Taser, Taser' while she pointed her gun at Wright.

She then pulled the trigger, firing a single round that struck Wright in the chest.

The complaint says Potter was outside Wright's car door when she fired, and her handgun was inches below Luckey's arm.

A cartridge casing appeared to hit Luckey in the face.

On the body camera video, Potter is heard saying she grabbed the wrong gun.

The complaint said Potter's duty belt shows her handgun was holstered on the right side in a straight-draw position, which would have required she use her right hand to draw it, and her Taser was holstered on her left, in a position which would have required her to use her left hand to draw it.

The Taser is yellow with a black grip, the handgun is entirely black.

Potter claimed she meant to tase Wright and can be heard in body cam footage yelling about a Taser. A Taser is black and yellow in design compared to a gun, which is all black

The Taser is located on the left hip, while the gun is positioned on the right

The two weapons also have distinct grips and the Taser has a manual safety switch and a laser-sighting feature. The complaint said Potter had substantial training on Tasers and firearms during her 26 years as a police officer. That training included two Taser-specific courses in the six months prior to Wright's death.

Potter is scheduled to go to trial on November 30 and it will not be broadcasted to the public.

A message left with Potter's attorney and Wright's mother, but was not immediately returned.

At the time of Wright's shootings, which was a few miles outside of downtown Minneapolis, the city was knee-deep in Derek Chauvins trial for the killing of George Floyd.

Chauvin was found guilty of second-degree murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter and sentenced to 22.5 years for killing Floyd by kneeling on his neck after police were called on Floyd for allegedly buying cigarettes with a counterfeit $20 bill.

Minneapolis police have also recently rolled out a new policy change where police will no longer pull drivers over for minor violations, such as an air fresher on the rearview mirror or expired tags.
The Philadelphia airport has welcomed 3,654 evacuees from Afghanistan between August 28 and September 1

Her death marks the first death of an Afghan evacuee on American soil

The baby was traveling with her father on a flight from Germany to Philadelphia when she suffered a medical emergency

A nine-month-old girl on a plane carrying Afghan evacuees died on Wednesday after arriving at the Philadelphia International Airport

A nine-month-old baby girl who was evacuated from Afghanistan died on Wednesday after arriving at Philadelphia airport aboard a military plane, in the first death of an evacuee on US soil.

The baby was on a C-17 flying from Germany's Ramstein Air Base to Philadelphia International Airport with her father when she suffered a 'medical emergency', officials said.

EMTs and an interpreter were on the scene when the aircraft landed at 9:16 pm, and sent the girl and her father to the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.

The baby was pronounced dead at 10:10 pm, according to Officer Tanya Little of the Philadelphia Police Department.

The first death of an Afghan evacuee was recorded on Wednesday in Philadelphia

A nine-month-old baby girl suffered a medical emergency while on a plane from Germany

EMTs and an interpreter met the baby girl and her father at the gate to escort them to the hospital where she was pronounced dead

Chris Mitchell, a spokesman for the Department of Defense told Business Insider that while in flight, 'the crew was notified that an infant was unresponsive' and 'requested medical assistance and priority air traffic control arrival routing.'

A spokeswoman for the Philadelphia Police Department said that officers responded to a call of the infant's sudden death and were met at the hospital by agents from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, who informed them that the young girl had 'suffered a medical emergency' while in flight.

The baby's death is being investigated by the police department's special victims unit and the Philadelphia Medical Examiner's Office.

The City of Philadelphia also confirmed the death to CBS News in a statement which said, 'We send our deepest condolences to the family and loved ones of the decedent.'

On September 1 alone, the city received 579 evacuees on 3 flights and was anticipating hundreds more on 2 more flight by the end of the day, according to city data.

Philadelphia International Airport and Dulles International Airport in Virginia are currently the only two airports serving as a point-of-entry for the thousands of Afghan evacuees.

The U.S. has finished evacuations from Afghanistan along with President Joe Biden's August 31 deadline.

The news of the baby girl's death comes the same day that the White House dodged a question about whether it left 100 Afghan journalists who had worked for U.S.-funded Radio Free Europe and Radio Free Liberty in stranded amid the chaotic Kabul evacuation efforts.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki fielded a question about the journalists who were 'left behind,' after failing to make it through security despite several efforts to make it out of the country before the U.S. troop deadline.

The Washington Post reported the U.S. left behind 'more than 100 government-sponsored journalists, plus their families,' despite State Department promises to assist them and repeat attempts to get them to the airport.
Twin boys who were found dead in their family SUV outside a daycare center in South Carolina died from heat exposure, and may have been in the vehicle for nine and half hours, a coroner has said.

Bryson and Brayden McDaniel, 20 months, were found dead in the small family SUV outside of Sunshine House Early Learning Academy in the Columbia suburb of Blythewood at 5.30pm on Wednesday.

The Richland County Coroner's Office told a press conference Thursday that a parent had placed the children in rear-facing car seats of the SUV at around 7.30-8am, before driving to another location for the day.

The parent later arrived at Sunshine House at 5.30pm, where the children were enrolled and had been due to spend the day.

Richland County EMS was dispatched at 5.40pm and arrived at the scene at 5.54pm. At 5.55pm the twins were pronounced dead.

The Coroner's Office declined to identify the parent who was driving, or the secondary location they traveled to, as the investigation is ongoing.

The Coroners Office ruled out the daycare's involvement in the twin's death and implied the twins' death could potentially be from a parent, who normally doesn't drop off the children to school, going out their normal routine, as seen in previous cases.

Coroner Naida Rutherford, who attended the twin's autopsy this morning, said they believed the twins were in the car for upward of nine and a half hours.

Rutherford said the possible cause of death is hyperthermia, meaning their bodies had became dangerously overheated.

Blythewood was experiencing 83 degree Fahrenheit weather at around 6pm yesterday with a humidity rate of 79 per cent.

These temperatures can cause the interior of a car to reach 117 degrees within 30 minutes, and 126 degrees within an hour.

Examinations of the babies' stomach contents match the absence of food intact for nine and a half hours.

Rutherford also reported that the twins had otherwise been healthy, and did not show any signs of trauma or abuse, no healing or acute fractures, and their organs were developing normally.

The only abnormality a medical examiner found were in the boys' lungs, but it is not clear what exactly the abnormality was.

Additional microscope, histology, and toxicology testing will be SLED and MSNE Laboratories to determine the cause of death.

'This will confirm or rule out any chemicals, toxins, or illicit drugs, or over-the-counter medicines that may have contributed to death,' Naida Rutherford said.

'We will not announce the manner of death until we have all the information.'

Rutherford added: 'I'd like to say at this time, with the evidence at this time, we do not believe the Sunshine Academy staff were involved or complicit in any way to the deaths of Bryson and Brayden McDaniel.'

The Coroner's Office declined to comment on the reason the children were left in the car at the moment as police continue to investigate.

'We have two very distraught parents,' Rutherford said.

She added: 'We can't speak to how or why the children were left in the vehicle for so long. That's why I say if this was an unfortunate accident, we pray the family can find peace. But if it was a criminal act, we will help seek justice for these babies.'

No criminal charges have been pressed as the police are determining whether the twins' deaths were an accident.

The Coroner's Office is working with the Richland County Sheriff's Office and the Department of Social Services to nail down a more concrete timeline.

The Coroner's Office is unaware if the children were marked absent from school on Wednesday.

There are currently no criminal charges being pressed against the parents.

The Sunshine House told Daily Mail: 'We are heartbroken to learn of the terrible tragedy that has touched our Sunshine House family. Two 20-month-old children who attend our school in Blythewood, SC tragically passed away Wednesday September 1.

'Their deaths deeply affect every single one of us, and our entire company mourns this tragedy. Our hearts and thoughts are with the childrens family, friends, and loved ones as they cope with this tremendous loss.

'This news is difficult to process and affects all members of our school family, especially those who cared for these precious babies each day. As a result, our school in Blythewood is closed for the remainder of the week. We are providing grief counseling services to any team members in need of support. We will reopen our school on Tuesday September 7.'

Daily Mail reached out to the Richland County Sheriff's Department for a comment, but did not hear back before publication.
A construction site in locked-down Sydney has been fined after police found unvaccinated tradesmen brazenly breaching Covid-19 public health orders.

Officers stopped at the Waverley construction site in the city's eastern suburbs on Thursday during a patrol when they noticed workers weren't wearing masks.

Three tradesmen allegedly told police they had travelled from Covid hotspots and were unable to produce permits proving they could work in the area.

Three tradies and a business owner were issued a total of $13,500 in fines on Thursday for breaching multiple Covid-19 health orders (pictured, stock image of tradesmen returning to work after Sydney's construction ban)

To make matters worse, two of the three workers could not produce sufficient evidence proving they had received at least one dose of the vaccine.

The workers claimed they were unaware of current public health orders - which requires tradies who live in hotspot areas to have at least one Covid-19 jab.

Two of the workers were issued $1,000 fines for failing to comply with a Covid-19 directive, and all three were slapped with $500 penalty notices for failing to wear masks on site.

Police also noticed there was no QR code check-in and later found the site had no proper Covid safety plan.

The site was shut down after officers contacted the owner of the business, who allegedly said he was unaware of his obligations to ensure workers complied with public health orders.

The 23-year-old business owner was hit with a $10,000 fine and his construction site was shut down for the day.

NSW Police fined the construction site on Bronte Road at Waverley in Sydney's eastern suburbs, for multiple public health order breaches

Police sent the tradesmen home and advised them they were unable to return to work outside of their LGAs until they met public health order requirements.

Workers from Sydney's Covid ravaged south-west were allowed to return to construction sites from August 11 under a raft of stringent health restrictions.

The tougher rules mean workers must prove they are fully vaccinated or have received at least one dose within the last three weeks before they can return to worksites.

Staff must also produce a negative Covid-19 test result within 72 hours, while construction sites are only permitted to operate at a 50 per cent capacity with stronger Covid-safe measures in place.
On August 26, 2021, 11 Marines, one Navy corpsman, and one Army staff sergeant were killed in a suicide attack in Kabul that also claimed more than 160 Afghan lives. The US servicemembers were on a mission of mercy to evacuate at-risk Afghans after the disastrous US withdrawal led to a Taliban takeover. These are their stories:

Sgt. Nicole Gee, 23

Marine Sgt. Nicole Gee was was a maintenance technician with 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit from Roseville, California.

A week before she was killed, Gee cradled a baby in her arms at the Kabul airport. She posted the photo on Instagram and wrote, 'I love my job.'

Sgt. Mallory Harrison, who lived with Gee for three years and called her a 'sister forever' and best friend, wrote about the magnitude of her loss.

'I can't quite describe the feeling I get when I force myself to come back to reality & think about how Im never going to see her again,' Harrison wrote on Facebook. 'How her last breath was taken doing what she loved - helping people. ... Then there was an explosion. And just like that, she's gone.'

Marine Sgt. Nicole Gee, 23, is seen four days before she was killed, escorting Afghans on to a plane in Kabul

Just days before she was killed in the suicide blast, St. Nicole Gee was photographed holding an Afghan baby

Gee, 23, (left and right) of Roseville, California was among those killed in the attack in Kabul

Nicole Gee (left middle), a maintenance technician with 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU), awaits the launch of an MV-22B Osprey during an exercise in April

Gee's Instagram page shows another photo of her in fatigues, holding a rifle next to a line of people walking into the belly of a large transport plane. She wrote: 'escorting evacuees onto the bird.'

The social media account that includes many selfies after working out at the gym lists her location as California, North Carolina and 'somewhere overseas.'

Photos show her on a camel in Saudi Arabia, in a bikini on a Greek isle and holding a beer in Spain. One from this month in Kuwait shows her beaming with her meritorious promotion to sergeant.

Harrison said her generation of Marines hears war stories from veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, but they seem distant amid boring deployments until 'the peaceful float you were on turns into ... your friends never coming home.'

Gees car was still parked in a lot at Camp Lejeune and Harrison mused about all the Marines who walked past it while she was overseas.

'Some of them knew her. Some of them didnt.' she said. 'They all walked past it. The war stories, the losses, the flag-draped coffins, the KIA bracelets & the heartbreak. Its not so distant anymore.'

Friends mourned Gee (right) whom they called a 'model Marine' and a 'Marine's Marine'

'She cared about people. She loved fiercely. She was a light in this dark world. She was my person,' said friend and fellow Marine Mallory Harrison in a Facebook post on Gee (center right)

'She cared about people. She loved fiercely. She was a light in this dark world. She was my person,' said Harrison in a Facebook post.

'I find peace knowing that she left this world doing what she loved. She was a Marine's Marine,' she said.

'She was doing God's work..a warrior. Searching Afghan women and children trying to get out of country,' Captain Karen Holliday said in a Facebook tribute.

Holliday called Gee a 'Model Marine. A leader on the ground in a chaotic situation.'

She said that a photo released of Gee a few days before her death, showing her escorting Afghans onto a waiting plane, had been bombarded with sexist online comments 'degrading her for being a female Marine.'

Lance Corporal Dylan Merola, 20

Lance Corporal Dylan Merola, 20

Lance Corporal Merola was a Marine from Rancho Cucamonga, California.

He was assigned to 2nd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, I Marine Expeditionary Force, based in Camp Pendleton, California.

The 20-year-old was a graduate of Los Osos High School, according to KABC-TV.

Students honored him at the football game on the Friday after the attack by wearing red, white and blue.

'Dylan was a beloved son, brother, grandson, great grandson, nephew, a great friend, and a brave soldier,' said family friend Joseph Matsuoka on a GoFundMe page to raise money for his funeral.

Matsuoka said that Merola 'paid the ultimate sacrifice at the Abbey Gate at Hamid Karzai International Airport during the evacuation.'

Sgt. Johanny Rosario, 25

Marine Sgt. Johanny Rosario, 25

Marine Sgt. Johanny Rosario Pichardo was a Marine sergeant from Lawrence, Massachusetts assigned to 5th Marine Expeditionary Brigade, Naval Support Activity Bahrain.

She was a graduate of Lawrence High School and attended Bridgewater State University.

On social media, friends issued and outpouring of grief and devastation at Rosario's death.

Nastassia Hyatt, a former Marine, recalled Rosario helping her through difficult times in a Facebook post.

'You brought me back to life. Back to life back to life.' Hyatt wrote. 'I wish i could bring you back to life for just one last hug, one last smile, one last nap, one last meal one last anything.'

'She the second half of my heart next to my son. Like she's everything to me. She is the greatest love I've ever known in a human besides my son. This one hit hard,' Hyatt said.

'We are heartbroken by the death of the service men and women due to the bombing in Kabul this week. I and the City of Lawrence are particularly saddened that one of those brave souls was a daughter of our City,' said Lawrence Mayor Kendrys Vasquez in a statement to WCVB-TV.

The Dominican Republic's embassy in the United States tweeted that Rosario was originally from that Caribbean nation.

On social media, friends issued and outpouring of grief and devastation at Rosario's death

Sonia Guzman, the Dominican Republics ambassador to the United States, tweeted that the Dominican community shares in the loss.

'Peace to your soul!' she tweeted in Spanish.

Rosario served with the Naval Amphibious Force, Task Force 51/5th Marine Expeditionary Brigade, which praised her efforts as supply chief this spring and thanked her for a job well done.

In Lawrence, Massachusetts, Mayor Kendrys Vasquez said he has been in contact with the family.

'We are heartbroken by the death of the servicemen and women due to the bombing in Kabul this week,' he said. 'I and the city of Lawrence are particularly saddened that one of those brave souls was a daughter of our city.'

The family wishes for privacy 'and that their loved one be recognized as the hero that she was,' the mayor said.

Rosario (center) was a Marine sergeant from Lawrence, Massachusetts with the Naval Amphibious Force, Task Force 51/5th Marine Expeditionary Brigade

Melendez said people have strong feelings about the U.S. involvement that's coming to an end after two decades in Afghanistan.

'There are people on both sides of the fence. I get it,' he said. 'This is about one of our own, a daughter of Lawrence. For us it is definitely about her service and her familys sacrifice. Thats what will be focusing on.'

'I have been in touch with the family of the Lawrencian killed in action to extend mine and my family's most sincere condolences and offer all of the aid that my administration can provide as they grieve this great loss,' the mayor said.

'At this time, the family's most immediate wish is to be given privacy and that their loved one be recognized as the hero that she was.'

Hospitalman Maxton Soviak, 20

Soviak, an Ohio native, joined the Navy after high school and became a hospital corpsman

Maxton William Soviak was a Navy corpsman from New Berlin, Ohio. He was assigned to 1st Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, Camp Pendleton, California

Weeks before his death, he made a tragic Instagram post on June 10, sharing a photo posing with other service members in what is believed to be Afghanistan.

'It's kill or be killed, definitely trynna be on the kill side,' he wrote in a comment on the post. Navy corpsmen often work alongside Marines, who do not have their own medics.

Soviak's sister Marilyn said in her own Instagram post that her brother was there to 'help people'.

'My beautiful, intelligent, beat-to-the-sound of his own drum, annoying, charming baby brother was killed yesterday helping to save lives. He was a f***ing medic. There to help people and now he is gone and my family will never be the same,' she wrote.

'He was just a kid. We are sending kids over there to die. Kids with families that now have holes just like ours,' she added. 'I'm not one for praying but d**n could those kids over there use some right now. My heart is in pieces and I don't think they'll ever fit back right again.'

Soviak was named as a casualty of the attack by his high school in Milan, Ohio, where he graduated in 2017.

'It is with deepest sorrow that I am sharing this news,' Edison Local School District Superintendent Thomas Roth said in a statement.

'Max was a good student who was active in sports and other activities throughout his school career. He was well respected and liked by everyone who knew him. Max was full of life in everything he did.'

Maxton William Soviak (center), a medic in his early 20s, made this tragic post on June 10, writing 'It's kill or be killed, definitely trynna be on the kill side'. Marines Hunter Lopez (left) and Daegan Page (right) were also killed in the attack

Soviak's sister Marilyn said an Instagram post that her brother was there to 'help people'

Soviak took pride in his Navy service and worked alongside Marines in Afghanistan

In high school, Soviak was on the honor roll and played football. He was named as a casualty of the attack by his high school in Milan, Ohio

Soviak's family confirmed his death to local media and have asked for privacy.

In high school, Soviak was on the honor roll and played football, according to the Sandusky Register.

Soviak was among the nearly 6,000 US troops now working frantically to evacuate Americans and Afghan refugees from Kabul, with just days remaining before President Joe Biden's August 31 deadline to withdraw.

Lance Corporal David Lee Espinoza, 20

David Lee Espinoza, 20, was one of the Marines killed in the attack

David Lee Espinoza, was a 20-year-old U.S. Marine from Rio Grande, Texas.

His mother, Elizabeth Holguin, said: 'He was a very good person. He served his country. He helped in any way he could. He was there (in Afghanistan), helping innocent people.'

This was his second deployment; he first made a trip to the Middle East and arrived in Afghanistan for about a week.

Holguin said she was uneasy about him being deployed there.

'I prayed every day,' she said.

He is one of four children; he is not married and has no children.

The mom last spoke with him the Tuesday before the attack.

'I just told him to be careful, that I was worried about him and I couldn't wait for him to come back,' Holguin said. 'He told me he was fine and not to worry. He was brave. If he was scared, he didn't show it.'

She said she holds no animosity toward the president, saying her son 'wanted to be there.'

Holguin learned her son was dead when she received a phone call on the Friday after the attack at 2.30am.

'He was just brave enough to go do what he wanted and to help out people. Thats who he was, he was just perfect,' his mother, Elizabeth Holguin, told the Laredo Morning Times.

In a statement, U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar said Espinoza 'embodied the values of America: grit, dedication, service, and valor. When he joined the military after high school, he did so with the intention of protecting our nation and demonstrating his selfless acts of service.'

Cuellar concluded, 'The brave never die. Mr. Espinoza is a hero.'

Lance Corporal Rylee McCollum, 20

Marine Lance Cpl. Rylee McCollum was killed in the attack

Marine Lance Cpl. Rylee McCollum was named by his high school in Wyoming as a casualty in the attack.

He was expecting to become a father and was pictured with his pregnant wife shortly before deploying to Afghanistan in April.

Cheyenne McCollum, Rylee's sister, told DailyMail.com her brother had wanted to be a Marine since he was a toddler  and that his own baby is due in just three weeks.

'Rylee was an amazing, man with a passion for the Marines. He was a son, a brother, a husband and a father with a baby due in just 3 weeks,' she said.

'He wanted to be a marine his whole life and carried around his rifle in his diapers and cowboy boots.

'He was determined to be in infantry and this was his first deployment. Rylee was sent to Afghanistan when the evac began. Rylee was manning the check point when he suicide bomb went off.

'Rylee wanted to be a history teacher and a wrestling coach when he finished serving his country. He's a tough, kind, loving kid who made an impact on everyone he met. His joke and wit brought so much joy.

'To his friends and teammates and coaches, he was family. Rylee will always be a hero not just for the ultimate sacrifice he made for our country but for the way he impacted every life around him for the better. Making us stronger, kinder, teaching us to love deeper. We love you Rylee.'

Rylee McCollum graduated from Summit Innovations School in Jackson in 2019.

Wyoming Schools Superintendent Jillian Balow said in a statement: 'Saying that I am grateful for Rylee's service to our country does not begin to encapsulate the grief and sadness I feel today as a mother and as an American.'

'My heart and prayers are with Rylee's family, friends, and the entire Jackson community,' she added.

Rylee McCollum was named by his high school in Wyoming as a casualty in the attack

Rylee McCollum was due to become a father. He is pictured with his pregnant wife, right, shortly before deploying to Afghanistan in April

The Wyoming-born Marine's wrestling coach and close family friend, Benjamin Arlotta said 'heads should roll' over the disastrous US exit and that the young soldier's family is 'absolutely broken'.

Arlotta told DailyMail.com that even in diapers McCollum would stand watch on his porch with a toy rifle, first said he wanted to be a Marine aged eight, and signed up on his 18th birthday.

In a glowing eulogy to the young expectant father, whose new baby is due in three weeks, Arlotta described McCollum as a 'personal hero' and a 'fantastic brother, fantastic uncle, and a wonderful friend'.

'I was his wrestling coach since he was six. He was one of the best. A great kid, a great young man and an American patriot. He loved being a Marine,' Arlotta said.

'He was just a good man all around. We're all hurting pretty bad.

'It's impossible. I'm sitting here with the family right now  with his dad and two sisters, his brother-in-law and niece. They're shattered, they're absolutely broken. The entire community is.'

Arlotta, 37, said he is furious at the Biden administration and blames the White House for putting soldiers in an unnecessarily dangerous position.

'It's a junk show, an absolute junk show. Not just for Rylee but for every serviceman and woman over there. They were put in a very terrible spot. In my opinion this entire circumstance has been mismanaged from every level,' he told DailyMail.com.

'The only thing I can hope for is that accountability isn't forgotten. Because for the 13 men who were killed yesterday, heads need to roll for the way things have gone.

Benjamin Arlotta, and his wife, Talia, are long-time family friends of the McCollums. Benjamin said he is angry and devastated

'We're just seeing the beginning of it. It's not over, it's only going to get worse. Everybody in the country needs to be praying for our servicemen and women right now. They have a scrap out in front of them.

'Sadly those 13 Marines aren't going to be the last ones to perish because of these terrible decisions that were made.'

Recalling fond memories of the young Jackson Hole native, the wrestling coach told a heartwarming story of McCollum's determination.

'When he was 13 he came into the competition season 32lbs heavier than where he wanted to be,' Arlotta said.

'He told me he would lose it. We made a bet. I was going to quit chewing tobacco if he could get down there. That was September, by the time the state championship rolled around in January he had made weight.

'He entered the wrestling tournament at that weight and I quit chewing that day.

'He was first and foremost a man of his word. If he said he would do something, by goodness gracious he stood right in front of you until he did it.'

McCollum moved to California for training. His pregnant wife Jiennah 'Gigi' Crayton lives in the San Diego area.

The 20-year-old lance corporal wanted to be a soldier since childhood, first telling his parents he would join the Marines age eight.

'We were driving back from his first state wrestling tournament, I was riding with his family,' said Arlotta. 'We asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up, he said he wanted to be in the Marines.

'He enlisted on his 18th birthday,' the coach added. 'When he actually enlisted his recruiter told him he could be anything, he could do any job. He swore up and down he wanted to be an infantryman.

'If you know Rylee, you know you can't talk him out of a damn thing, so that's what he did.'

U.S. Congresswoman Liz Cheney, a fellow Wyoming resident, issued a statement when she learned of Rylee's passing.

'I want to offer my deepest condolences to Rylee McCollum's family and loved ones. His bravery and patriotism will never be forgotten. His willingness to put himself in harm's way to keep our country safe and defend our freedom represents a level of selflessness and heroism that embodies the best of America.

'We know that the McCollum family is grieving this tragic loss. I ask that people in Wyoming and across the country please keep those close to Rylee in their prayers, and remember that we are only free because of the courage and valor of service members like him.'

Lance Corporal Jared Schmitz, 20

Marine Lance Corporal Jared Schmitz was a 20-year-old from Wentzville, Missouri

Marine Lance Corporal Jared Schmitz was a 20-year-old from Wentzville, Missouri.

His father Mark Schmitz told KMOX the Marines notified his family about 2.40am on the day following the attack about his son's death.

'This was something he always wanted to do and I never seen a young man train as hard as he did to be the best soldier he could be,' Mark Schmitz said.

The grieving father grew emotional as he spoke about his son, welling up with tears.

'His life meant so much more. I'm so incredibly devastated that I won't be able to see the man that he was very quickly growing into becoming.'

Mark Schmitz slammed Biden and blamed him for his son's death.

'Be afraid of our leadership or lack thereof. Pray every day for the soldiers that are putting their lives at risk, doing what they love which is protecting all of us,' Schmitz's father said.

He added that he was relieved when his son signed up as a Marine when Trump was in office because he 'really believed this guy didn't want to send people into harm's way.'

Jared Schmitz was killed in the attack

Lance Corporal Kareem Nikoui, 20

Marine Lance Corporal Kareem Nikoui was a native of Norco, California

Marine Lance Corporal Kareem Nikoui was a native of Norco, California.

Nikoui's father Steve, a carpenter, vented his frustrations at Biden in an interview with the Daily Beast.

'They sent my son over there as a paper pusher and then had the Taliban outside providing security. I blame my own military leaders Biden turned his back on him. That's it,' he said

Steve Nikoui said he knew his son was dead when he saw two Marines approaching his home on the day of the attack at 7.15pm PST.

He said he sat with the two emotional Marines, who cried more than he cried, and then had them leave.

Steve also appeared on Fox with Tucker Carlson the day after his son's death to further criticize Biden in an emotional interview where he said the attack could have been avoided.

'From what I saw of the airport that they're in, looked like a Turkey shoot. It's funneled in to a single file-type entry point at which if you have in sort of chaos of any sort, they would all like gather to that one funneled area, which they would all be accessed. That's what happened. It was just basically so chaotic and not really planned out,' Steve said.

As he teared up, he also said he was upset by how long it took to learn of his son's death.

'How long does it take for the military to, you know, inform the next of kin?'

Marine Kareem Nikoui, pictured with his mother, was killed. His father said he blames Biden for abandoning them in Kabul

'I was actually trying to console them. But at the same time, I just wanted them to get out as soon as possible so that no one from my family came back and saw them.

'I thought it appropriate that I be able to tell them,' he said.

He added that his son, who was based at Camp Pendleton in California, would often bring other Marines home on the holidays if they couldn't get back to their own families.

'My wife and I felt very honored that [since] these other boys weren't around their homes, that we were able to provide some sort of family life for them.

'He really loved that [Marine Corps] family. He was devotedhe was going to make a career out of this, and he wanted to go. No hesitation for him to be called to duty,' he said.

Speaking outside Kareem's home, a relative told DailyMail.com that Kareem's family were inside signing the documents required to repatriate him.

He added: 'They're totally devastated and they need some time. All the family are here and we're supporting them.'

A steady stream of people have been seen coming and going from the home all day, among them some of Kareem's colleagues from the Camp Pendleton Marine base in San Diego.

Steve Nikoui, right, father the late Kareem Nikoui, spoke with Fox's Tucker Carlson the day after the attack to condemn the Biden administration's efforts in Afghanistan that he said led to his son's death

An American flag flew half-mast outside Norco Intermediate School in honor of Nikoui

Kareem's mother Shana Chappell posted angrily on social media, blaming Vice-President Kamala Harris for the loss of her son.

At the social media message of condolence from the Vice-President, she wrote: 'This c u next Tuesday is a joke! They are the reason my son is dead.'

Kareem's death is also being mourned by his home city of Norco - a small community of 26,000 people nicknamed 'Horsetown' that sits 50 miles east of Los Angeles.

Confirming his death, the city released a message of condolence that read: 'The City of Norco mourns the loss of Norco resident U.S. Marine Corps Lance Corporal Kareem Mae'Lee Grant Nikoui who was killed in action while stationed at the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan on Thursday, August 26, 2021.

'The U.S. Marine, who graduated from Norco High School in 2019 and served in JROTC, was committed to serving his country and is survived by his mother, father and siblings.'

The city of Norco plans to honor Nikoui by placing his name on the 'Lest We Forget Wall' at the George A. Ingalls Veterans Memorial Plaza.

Lance Corporal Hunter Lopez, 22

Marine Lance Corporal Hunter Lopez

Marine Lance Corporal Hunter Lopez, a native of California's Coachella Valley and the son of two police officers, was also killed in the attack, Sheriff Chad Bianco confirmed.

'I am unbelievably saddened and heartbroken for the Lopez family as they grieve over the loss of their American Hero,' Bianco wrote.

'Hunter Lopez, son of our own Captain Herman Lopez and Deputy Alicia Lopez, tragically lost his life while serving our country in the United States Marine Corp. He was killed in Kabul, Afghanistan on Thursday, August 26th,' the sheriff added.

'Before joining the Marine Corp, Hunter proudly served in our Sheriff's Explorer Program. Our entire department is mourning this tragic loss. The Lopez family exemplifies the meaning of Service Above Self.'

City of La Quinta issued a statement: 'Our La Quinta Family is in mourning today with the tragic loss of Hunter Lopez, one of the fallen United States Service Members in the attack in Afghanistan,'

'Hunter is the son of Captain Herman and Alicia Lopez, both members of the Riverside Sheriff's Department. Captain Herman Lopez is our Police Chief and Captain over at the Thermal Station,' the statement added.

'We are all so humbled by the service and ultimate sacrifice that Hunter gave to protect our country. He was a brave and selfless soldier who answered the call to be a United States Marine. Like his parents, Hunter wanted to help serve others and protect his community.'

Marine Hunter Lopez, a native of California's Coachella Valley and the son of two police officers, was also killed, Sheriff Chad Bianco confirmed

'The Lopez family exemplifies the meaning of Service Above Self,' said the local sheriff

'I am unbelievably saddened and heartbroken for the Lopez family as they grieve over the loss of their American Hero,' Bianco wrote of Hunter Lopez (above)

Marine Staff Sgt. Taylor Hoover, of Salt Lake City, Utah

Staff Sgt. Taylor Hoover

Marine Staff Sgt. Taylor Hoover, of Salt Lake City, Utah, was another of the service members killed outside the Kabul airport, his family told KSL-TV.

He was assigned to 2nd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, I Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Pendleton, California.

Friends and family mourned his loss, including fellow students who graduated in the Class of 2008 at Hillcrest High School with him in Midvale.

'Soooooo glad I got to see him before he left. I love you son!!! You're my hero!! Please check in on us once in a while. I'll try to make you proud!!' Hoover's father, Darin Hoover, wrote on Facebook.

'My handsome nephew, Staff Sergeant Taylor Hoover. Taylor spent his entire adult life as a Marine, serving. Doing the hard things that most of us can't do. He is a hero,' Jeremy Soto, an uncle, wrote.

'We are wounded. We are bruised. We are angry. We are crushed... but we remain faithful. Thank you for your courage nephew. We love you always.'

'Always a smile. Always respectful. A joy to be around. He is adored beyond measure. The world has lost a true light. Our hearts are broken. Shock, disbelief, horror, sadness, sorrow, anger and grief,' Brittany Jones Barnett, an aunt, added.

'Thank you sweet boy for the ultimate sacrifice. For giving your life for us all. Fighting for freedom and giving absolutely everything you had. You will never ever be forgotten. We love you so much,' she added.

Marine Staff Sgt. Taylor Hoover, pictured holding a young family member, died in Kabul

Taylor Hoover, a Utah native, was mourned by his mother Kelly Barnett, left, and girlfriend, Nicole Weiss, right, following his death

'He is a hero. He gave his life protecting those that cant protect themselves, doing what he loved serving his country,' said father Darin Hoover, who lives in a Salt Lake City suburb, in an AP interview.

He said he had heard from Marines who said they were grateful they had his son as their sergeant.

'They look back on him and say that theyve learned so much from him,' Hoover said. 'One heck of a leader.'

Hoover said his son was also a best friend to his two sisters and loved all his extended family. He had a girlfriend in California and was the kind of guy who 'lit up a room' when he came in, his father said.

Hoover, center, was among the Marine troops in Afghanistan to helping with the evacuation

Hoover pictured in his uniforms, 'died a hero doing what he always wanted to do and was proud to do, ' a family member said

Nate Thompson of Murray, Utah, first met Hoover when they were 10 years old in Little League football. They stayed friends through high school, where Hoover played lineman. He was undersized for the position, but his heart and hard work more than made up for what he lacked in statute, Thompson said. As a friend, he was selfless and kind.

'If we had trouble with grades, trouble with family or trouble on the field, we always called Taylor. Hes always level-headed, even if hes struggling himself,' he said.

U.S. Representative Blake Moore, who represents Utah's 1st Congressional District, also mourned the loss of Hoover.

'We'll be forever grateful for his sacrifice & legacy. He spent his last moments serving our state & nation, and we'll never forget his unwavering devotion,' he wrote in a statement.

Utah Senator Mike Lee wrote in a statement, 'Burying a child is a grief no parent should bear. Sharon and I mourn with the Hoover family and with all who loved [Hoover]... who gave the last full measure of devotion in Afghanistan.

'He died completing a mission to save his countrymen and civilians from evil and oppression. He lived the Marine Corps motto by living and dying always faithful.'

Utah residents tied fellow ribbons to flags in front of Hoover's family home

Neighbor Lena McIllece helped arranged the flags to honor Hoover and the other fallen troops

Utah Gov. Spencer Cox ordered that flags be flown at half-staff at all state facilities and public grounds effective immediately until sunset on August. 30 to honor Hoover and all those who died in the recent attack.

'We are devastated to hear of the passing of Staff Sgt. Taylor Hoover. Staff Sgt. Hoover served valiantly as a Marine and died serving his fellow countrymen as well as America's allies in Afghanistan. We honor his tremendous bravery and commitment to his country, even as we condemn the senseless violence that resulted in his death. Abby and I pray for Staff Sgt. Hoover, his family and loved ones during this most difficult time,' Cox said in a statement.

A family member told ABC 4 that Hoover, 'died a hero doing what he always wanted to do and was proud to do, serve his country.

Army Staff Sgt. Ryan Knauss, 23, was a native of Tennessee

Staff Sgt. Ryan Knauss, 23

Army Staff Sgt. Ryan Knauss, 23, was a native of Corryton, Tennessee. Knauss was assigned to 9th PSYOP Battalion, 8th PSYOP Group, Ft. Bragg, North Carolina.

He first was identified as one of the victims by his grandfather, Wayne Knauss.

'He grew up in a Christian home, attended Berean Christian school through 8th grade and spent, four years at Gibbs High [School],' said Wayne about his grandson.

'A motivated young man who loved his country. He was a believer so we will see him again in God's heaven.'

Wayne told ABC 6 that Ryan had served right out of high school for five years with special training in Psychology Operations.

Ryan's stepmother, Lianne Knauss, added that Ryan told them he was looking forward to returning to the U.S. and moving to Washington D.C.

'He was a super-smart hilarious young man,' she said.

Knauss, 23, right, said he wanted to move to Washington D.C. when he returned

Members of the Knauss family mourned Ryan's death on social media

U.S. Representative Tim Burchett, a fellow Knoxville resident, also tweeted a tribute to the fallen marine.

'Ryan gave his life outside that airport helping people he didn't know get to safety. This is what true heroism looks like and Ryan's sacrifice will never be forgotten. The Knauss family is my prayers.' Burchett wrote

Diane Trulson Amundson Knauss also urged people to support Wayne and the troops in Afghanistan.

'Please pray for our military in Afghanistan and all over the world,' she wrote. 'Our hearts ache for Wayne and Neena... and all families.'

Marine Corp. Daegan William-Tyeler Page, 23, was a native of Omaha, Nebraska

Corporal Daegan Page, 23

Marine Corp. Daegan William-Tyeler Page, 23, was a native of Omaha, Nebraska.

In a statement, Page's family confirmed that he was one of the slain service members at Kabul airport.

'Our hearts are broken, but we are thankful for the friends and family who are surrounding us during this time,' the family said.

'Daegan's girlfriend Jessica, his mom, dad, step-mom, step-dad, 4 siblings, and grandparents are all mourning the loss of a great son, grandson, and brother.'

Page grew up in Omaha and Red Oak, Iowa. He enjoyed playing hockey for Omaha Westside in the local hockey club and was a diehard Chicago Blackhawks fan.

He also oved hunting and spending time outside with his father.

His family said he was a longtime Boy Scout who was eager to join the U.S. Marine Corps.

'Daegan joined the U.S. Marine Corps after graduating from Millard South High School. He loved the brotherhood of the Marines and was proud to serve as a member of the 2nd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment at Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, California.'

Corp. Daegan William-Tyeler Page died in the Kabul airport bombing attack

Page, left, was a Marine and member of the 2nd Battalion Marine Regiment

They added that Page was looking forward to coming home to see his family and friends. He also had plans to go to trade school, contemplating a career as a lineman.

'Daegan will always be remembered for his tough outer shell and giant heart. Our thoughts and prayers are also with the other Marine and Navy families whose loved ones died alongside Daegan,' the family said.

Shana Nicole, a friend of Page, added that 'the world lost an amazing hero.

'My heart hurts for everyone who knew Daegan. He was so so kind always,' she wrote on Facebook.

The Omaha, Nebraska, native was looking forward to returning home, his family said

Page, center, hoped to reunite with friends back home and go to trade school

Page, third from the left, rear, was drawn to the sense of brotherhood within the Marine Corps

U.S. Congressman Jeff Fortenberry, who represents Page's home district, also issued a statement mourning the loss of the young marine.

'I was just notified about the death of Marine Corporal Page. My heart was already broken over our country's loss of 13 service members in Afghanistan. Now the loss is even harder,' Fortenberry said.

'God bless Corporal Page. He saved lives and served his country honorably. His life was cut short but had ultimate meaning. By his bravery and will, many others will have a chance. I send my heartfelt condolences to his family.'

Marine Corp. Humberto Sanchez was among those killed

Corporal Humberto Sanchez, 23

Officials in Indiana confirmed that Corp. Humberto Sanchez was also among the dead.

Sanchez graduated from Logansport High School in 2017. He also attended Columbia Elementary.

'Like many, I have been heartbroken over the recent loss of the 13 U.S. service members who were murdered in the terrorist attacks against our evacuation efforts in Kabul, Afghanistan,' Logansport Mayor Chris Martin said in a statement on Facebook.

'Even more heartbreaking is learning the news today that one of those killed was from right here at home in Logansport, Indiana.

'This young man had not yet even turned 30 and still had his entire life ahead of him. Any plans he may have had for his post-military life were given in sacrifice due to the heart he exhibited in putting himself into harm's way to safeguard the lives of others.'

Adrian Gazcon, a friend, also wrote a tribute on Twitter for Sanchez, saying that 'it hurts that he's gone.' 'Thank you for your service, you're a hero bro.'

Sanchez pictured carrying friend Rhiannon Rickerd while attending Logansport High School in Indiana
Alexanda Kotey, 36, a member of the British ISIS militant group dubbed the 'Beatles', pleaded guilty to terrorism charges on Thursday for torturing and murdering captives in Syria, including four Americans.

Kotey, known as 'Jihadi Ringo,' plead guilty to all eight counts in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia for his part in aiding the terrorist organization.

He had originally plead non-guilty last October. The change of plea suggests that Kotey may be cooperating with prosecutors.

He and another British ISIS member, El Shafee Elsheikh, 32, known as 'Jihadi George' were implicated in the beheadings of international hostages, including U.S. aid workers Kayla Mueller and Peter Kassig and U.S. journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff.

Both men have been charged with hostage-taking resulting in death, conspiracy to commit murder against U.S. citizens abroad, and conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists.

Nothing in the court records indicates that Elsheikh, known as George, has reached a plea deal. He is scheduled to go on trial in January.

British Islamic State (IS) group fighters Alexanda Kotey known as 'Jihadi Ringo' (left) and El Shafee Elsheikh known as 'Jihadi George' (right), posing for mugshots in an undisclosed location (2018)

Mohammed Emwazi known as 'Jihadi John' brandishing a knife (left) Jailed in Turkey is Aine Davis known as 'Jihadi Paul' (right)

Kotey and Elsheikh were part of a terrorist group of four men from west London nicknamed the 'Beatles'. They were led by Mohammed Emwazi, aka 'Jihadi John' who was killed in a targeted CIA air-strike in 2015. The fourth member, Aine Lesley Davis, known as 'Jihadi Paul' was sentenced to serve seven and a half years in a Turkish prison in 2017.

Escaped ISIS hostages said they named the four men 'The Beatles' because of their British accents.

Standing at the podium Kotey told Judge T.S. Ellis III that he was aware that the minimum sentence he faces for his crimes is life without parole. The U.S. government previously stated that they will not seek the death penalty in order to obtain their extradition.

Family members of all four Americans who were killed appeared in court to hear Kotey's plea but did not speak.

Kotey and Elsheikh had been held in Iraq by the U.S. military before being flown to the U.S. last year to face trial. The two men were UK citizens but had their citizenship revoked in 2018 when they were captured by Syrian Kurds fighting IS.

They had renounced their citizenship when they joined ISIS in Syria in 2014.

They allegedly took part in graphic extremist videos that were posted online showing beheadings of foreign hostages.

The torture of the hostages allegedly included electric shocks with a taser, forcing hostages to fight each other and 20-minute beatings with sticks and waterboarding, according to the 24-page indictment.

The two men are also suspected of being involved in the deaths of other hostages including Alan Henning, a British taxi driver who was delivering aid, David Haines, a Scottish aid worker, and two Japanese nationals.

The mother of Elsheikh mounted a legal challenge saying it would breach the UK's opposition to capital punishment, and a deal was struck between the U.S. and and the UK.

A British Supreme Court judgment ruled it was unlawful for the UK to share evidence with Washington without seeking assurances that the pair will not face execution. Since the U.S. agreed to the deal the UK has shared intelligence.

Kotey who is charged with plotting to torture and behead Western hostages in Syria said in court that he was aware that the minimum sentence he faces for his crimes is life without parole(pictured in 2018)

The 24-page indictment accuses Kotey (left) and Elsheikh (right) of participating in the kidnapping of four U.S. citizens

American journalist James Foley was abducted by ISIS while working as a freelance war correspondent during the Syria Civil War.

Elsheikh previously admitted that Foley would sometimes subject himself to beatings to ensure the hostages were given enough food.

'If the guard would ask, 'Is the food enough?' some of the other prisoners were very timid. It was always him who would say, 'It's not enough'', Elsheikh said in interviews obtained by NBC News.

He also said: 'I didn't choke Jim.

'If I choked Jim I would say I choked him. I mean, I've  I've hit him before. I've hit most of the prisoners before.'

Foley was held by ISIS for two years before being executed on video in August 2014.

American aid worker Kayla Mueller was captured and held hostage in Syria, where she was sexually abused and tortured before she died aged 26 in 2015.

She was abducted in 2013 and during her captivity, she was raped by the former ISIS leader, Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, U.S. officials have said.

ISIS reportedly demanded 5 million euros from Mueller's family, telling them that they would send 'a picture of Kayla's dead body' if their demands were not met.

ISIS said that Mueller was killed near Raqa in February 2015 during an air raid carried out by the US-led international coalition against the jihadists, although the exact circumstances of her death remain unclear.

The terror group sent photos of her dead body to her family which indicate she died from blunt force trauma rather than a bomb blast.

Steven Sotloff, 31, an American-Israeli journalist, was killed on September 2, 2014, after being held captive for more than a year in northern Syria.

He was beheaded by Jihadi John on camera after ISIS demanded a ransom of $140million which the US government refused to pay.

Former US Army Ranger Peter Kassig was killed in 2014 after being captured by ISIS in Syria in October 2013.

The 26-year-old was working to provide aid to Syrians who were fleeing the country's civil war and had formed the aid organization Special Emergency Response and Assistance, or SERA, in Turkey to provide aid and assistance to Syrian refugees.

He was said by his friends to have converted to Islam in captivity and took the first name Abdul-Rahman.

In 2014, graphic footage was released by ISIS showing Kassig was beheaded in captivity.

Kotey has been charged in connection with the deaths of journalist James Foley (left) and aid worker Peter Kassig (right)

Kotey is also charged over the death of U.S. human rights activist and humanitarian workers Kayla Mueller (left) and Steven Sotloff (right)

The indictment says Kotey and Elsheikh were radicalized in London and left for Syria in 2012 as 'leading participants in a brutal hostage-taking scheme' that targeted American and European citizens and that involved murders, mock executions, shocks with Tasers, physical restraints and other brutal acts.

Prosecutors say the men worked closely with a chief spokesman for ISIS who reported to the group's leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who was killed in a U.S. military operation last year.

The indictment accuses Kotey and Elsheikh of participating in the kidnapping of Foley and other captives.

It says they supervised detention facilities for hostages and were responsible for transferring the captives, and that they also engaged 'in a long pattern of physical and psychological violence.'

In July, prosecutors described the pair as 'principal offenders' in the captivity of the four American hostages.

In a 2018 interview, Kotey said the killings were 'regrettable' but blamed Western governments for failing to negotiate.

He said many in the terror group 'would have disagreed' with the deaths 'on the grounds that there is probably more benefit in them being political prisoners'.

He added: 'I didn't see any benefit (in killing them). It was something that was regrettable.'

Elsheikh said the killings were a 'mistake' and might not have been justified. But, he said, they were in retaliation for killings of civilians by the US-led coalition fighting ISIS.

He said the militants shouldn't have initially threatened to kill the hostages because then they had to go ahead with it or else 'your credibility may go.'

Kotey, who is of Ghanaian and Greek-Cypriot descent and converted to Islam in his 20s, is from London's Paddington neighborhood.

Serving in the IS cell as a guard, he 'likely engaged in the group's executions and exceptionally cruel torture methods,' the State Department said. It also said he was an IS recruiter who brought other Britons into the group.

In interviews they gave before being brought to the U.S., the men acknowledged they helped collect email addresses from Mueller that could be used to send out ransom demands. Mueller was killed in 2015 after 18 months in IS captivity.

The indictment describes the execution of a Syrian prisoner in 2014 and says the two forced their Western hostages to watch.

Kotey instructed the hostages to kneel while watching the execution and holding signs pleading for their release.

Emwazi shot the prisoner in the back of the head while Elsheikh videotaped the execution. Elsheikh told one of the hostages, 'You're next,' prosecutors say.
A financial planner who stole the hearts of Australia when he decided to go cold turkey on fizzy drinks has shown off his incredible weight loss transformation.

Rohit Roy, 42, from Melbourne, went viral on TikTok when he started documenting his journey to kick his three-can-a-day soft drink habit.

In June he celebrated 12 months without the sugary drinks and is now just two weeks shy from completing a year on his broader weight loss journey.

Mr Roy last week shared a video on Day 344 of his fitness challenge and compared a photo of him from when his journey first began.

Rohit Roy, 42 from Melbourne, went viral on TikTok when he started documenting his journey to kick his three-can-a-day soft drink habit and has shared a comparison of his amazing weight loss journey

'As you can see I've lost a bit of weight and the differences can be seen on my face,' he said.

'But one thing I think is more important is how I feel and I honestly feel a lot healthier and happier as compared to before both physically and mentally.'

Mr Roy who has lost around 15kg said he's not only eating better but his sleep has also improved, admitting he felt 'amazing'.

In another major milestone for the financial planner, Mr Roy was chosen to be a Weight Watchers ambassador when he started out his journey last year.

He has been giving his 243,000 followers regular updates about his journey and his 15 months without fizzy drinks ever since.

Mr Roy admitted he was feeling 'amazing' and was not only eating healthier but was sleeping better

Mr Roy said before he quit the cans he was drinking at least three bottles a day and could down a Red Bull in just four seconds.

His signature opening line 'hello everyone no fizzy drink for me today' earned him a cult following and many TikTokkers say they've been cheering him on since Day 1.

Some fans have said he even inspired them to quit their own unhealthy habits and change their lifestyles for the better.

'I'm on two months of no fizzy drinks because of you,' one commented on his latest video.

Halfway through his journey on day 50, Mr Roy shared a photo of him and his wife who he said was encouraging him to reach 100 days

'There is no one in the world I am more proud of, you've been such an inspiration and you've done amazing,' another fan said.

'Been here since day one, such a big improvement!' wrote one.

In his early days of cutting back Mr Roy said he would allow himself one can at the end of each week, but now hasn't touched the beverages in more than a year.

In an early video he admitted his doctors had given him strong advice to quit the cans.

He also added his twin brother who was a lot 'thinner' than him was helping him through the journey.
The FTC is as annoyed as the rest of us that McDonald's McFlurry ice cream machines always seem to be broken - and has reportedly started an inquiry.

The Federal Trade Commission reached out to McDonald's franchisees over the summer seeking information on the frequently broken machines, according to a letter seen by the Wall Street Journal.

Regular customers have complained for years that the machines are often out of order when they stop to pick up an iced treat.

A website called McBroken even tracks the number of broken McDonald's ice cream machines across the country. As of Wednesday afternoon, 9.88 percent of them were offline.

And McDonald's franchises have long complained about the overly complicated machines with cleaning cycles that can take up to four hours.

The National Owners Association, a group of franchisees, said in a message to owners in May: We are tired of being the butt of late-night jokes. So are our customers and crews.'

The machines, made by Illinois-based kitchen equipment company Taylor, have a lot of moving parts that get cold for ice cream but hot for cleaning.

If the cycle is not completed, it renders the machines unusable and it can take months to get a repairman in to fix it.

The FTC is reportedly looking at how McDonalds reviews suppliers and equipment, including the temperamental ice cream machines, according to the Journal.

The FTC reportedly sent a letter earlier this summer to franchise owners seeking information as to why the machines are always breaking down

A site called McBroken (pictured) shows customers which locations have working and broken machines to avoid the devastating disappointment of a walking out without any ice cream

But the inquiry is in its early stages, according to the July letter, and 'the existence of a preliminary investigation does not indicate the FTC or its staff have found any wrongdoing.'

McDonalds told the Journal it had no reason to believe it was being investigated by the FTC.

The inquiry comes after the Biden Administration announced plans to crack down on manufacturers making machines that customer's can't fix on their own.

In July, the Biden Administration announced the government to promote competition between manufacturers, which is will lower cost to the consumers.

And Taylor's exclusive repair agreement could explain why the machines are down for so long, powering a never-ending stream of grievances about missed McFlurries.

Taylor charges McDonald's $18,000 per machine and forces franchisees to use its own network of repair services, according to Wired.

A rival manufacturer has even claimed that Taylor's created the machines with faulty software in order to boost profits from the cost of repairing them.

The Federal Trade Commission has reportedly launched an investigation into McDonald's notoriously broken ice cream machines

But a Taylor's representative told the Journal 'There is no reason for us to purposely design our equipment to be confusing or hard to repair or hurt our operators.'

They added: 'A lot of whats been broadcasted can be attributed to the lack of knowledge about the equipment and how they operate in the restaurants. you have to make sure the machine is cleaned properly. The machines are built up with a lot of interconnecting parts that have to operate in a complex environment and manner.'

Frustrated McDonald's workers have even used 'jumpers,' or small metal or plastic brackets that can be installed on the electric pins in the back of the unit to bypass software that makes them inoperable unless they've been cleaned, according to Motherboard.

McDonald's ice cream machines, made by Illinois-based company Taylor, are often broken down. Ten percent of them are offline across the US as of Wednesday afternoon

Kytch, a California-based tech firm, alleges that the machines' software contains 'flawed code that caused the machines to malfunction' and created a patch that quickly fixed the problem.

Once the device, about the size of a small book, is installed on the machine, workers can make simple repairs through an app without having to wait around for a Taylor-approved technician.

That, however, did not sit well with Taylor executives, who told McDonald's and its franchisees that the 'Kytch device is dangerous,' the software maker claimed.

'These guys did a really effective job at frightening off all of our customers and investors so we're hoping the public will support our case in the name of justice, right to repair and humanity,' Kytch co-founder Jeremy O'Sullivan told Motherboard.

Taylor built its own version of the patch to keep making money off repairs.

Taylor charges McDonald's $18,000 per machine and forces them to use their own repairmen

Kytch accused Taylor of getting its devices from a McDonald's franchisee, according to Motherboard.

But the company's chief operating officer said it sought the Kytch device 'in order to evaluate and assess its potential technology-related impacts upon our Soft Serve Machine.'

'Such as whether the radio frequency of the Kytch device would interfere with our software signal, or whether the Kytch device would drain the power source of our software and/or cause it malfunction,' according to court documents.

That brought the ice cream vending war to a head as Kytch took Taylor to court for copying its device. A California judge issued a restraining order against Taylor on July 30.

Taylor was ordered to turn in all of its Kytch devices within 24 hours of the restraining order.

Broken down McFlurry machines are the butt of multiple jokes and complaints online

Kytch claims loss off business from Taylor copying its product.

'We still have some diehard customers sticking with us. Though few in comparison to what we once had before McDonald's and Taylor called our product dangerous.'

McDonald's did not respond to a request for comment from DailyMail.com
Dominic Raab has arrived in Pakistan to announce a 30million aid package as he continues the push to secure safe passage for Britons and Afghans stuck in Afghanistan.

The Foreign Secretary will hold talks with his Pakistani counterpart, Makhdoom Shah Mahmood Qureshi, during a two-day visit and the country's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Mr Raab is scheduled to have 'interaction at the leadership level'.

Mr Raab arrived in Pakistan after Boris Johnson insisted the UK needs to 'level' with the Taliban and make the group understand the need to allow people to leave Afghanistan.

The Prime Minister signalled further engagement between the West and the Taliban could be dependent on whether Britons and Afghans are allowed to leave the country.

We are working with regional partners around the clock. I spoke to Tajikistan Foreign Minister Sirojiddin Muhriddin and discussed how our countries can help maintain stability in the region, and tackle the humanitarian situation in Afghanistan.  Dominic Raab (@DominicRaab) September 2, 2021

The Foreign Secretary will hold talks with his Pakistani counterpart, Makhdoom Shah Mahmood Qureshi, during a two-day visit. Pictured, Mr Raab talks to staff at a resettlement programme for Afghanistan refugees in Doha Qatar

Mr Johnson also claimed it had been 'clear for many months' that the situation in Afghanistan could change 'very fast', but insisted the UK Government's response to the Taliban surge to power was not 'spur of the moment'.

More than 8,000 former Afghan staff and their family members eligible under the Afghan relocations and assistance policy (Arap) were among the 15,000-plus people evacuated by the UK since August 13.

But thousands of Afghans who helped British efforts in the nation and their relatives, as well as other vulnerable civilians, are feared to have been left behind.

During a visit to Qatar on Thursday, Mr Raab said evacuations may be able to resume from Kabul airport 'in the near future' as he expressed a need for direct engagement with the Taliban.

During a visit to Qatar on Thursday, Mr Raab said evacuations may be able to resume from Kabul airport 'in the near future'. Pictured, Mr Raab with his Qatari counterpart heikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani on Thursday

He was using a visit to the region to build a coalition with nearby nations to 'exert the maximum moderating influence' on the Taliban as they 'adjust to the new reality' of the group being in power.

On Thursday evening, Mr Raab tweeted that he spoke to Tajikistan foreign minister Sirojiddin Muhriddin about 'how our countries can help maintain stability in the region, and tackle the humanitarian situation in Afghanistan'.

Pakistan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Mr Raab was visiting on Thursday and Friday.

In a statement, the ministry said: 'Foreign minister Makhdoom Shah Mahmood Qureshi will hold official talks with Secretary of State Dominic Raab.

'The talks will cover the evolving situation in Afghanistan and bilateral matters. Foreign Secretary Raab is also scheduled to have interaction at the leadership level.'

It added: 'The visit will reinforce the current momentum in high-level exchanges between the two countries and help strengthen bilateral co-operation on a range of issues.'

While Mr Raab sought to make progress in the region, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office confirmed details of how a 30 million UK aid package will be used.

It is expected 10million will be made available immediately to humanitarian organisations, such as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), to despatch supplies to the Afghan borders.

Countries predicted to experience a significant increase in refugees will also receive 20million to help with processing new arrivals and to provide essential services and supplies.

Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani and Mr Raab hold a joint news conference in Doha, Qatar, September 2

Mr Raab said: 'They will provide Afghans who have left everything behind with essential kit offering shelter and basic sanitation as they seek to pick up the pieces of their lives.'

Pakistan, Tajikistan, Iran, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan are among the countries where Afghans are expected to flee in their tens of thousands following the Taliban takeover.

Mr Raab, who is visiting the region, said: 'It is vital that we help those fleeing Afghanistan and do not allow the crisis there to undermine regional stability.

'That's why these life-saving supplies are so important. They will provide Afghans who have left everything behind with essential kit offering shelter and basic sanitation as they seek to pick up the pieces of their lives.

'This aid demonstrates the UK's commitment to shoulder our humanitarian responsibility and support those countries who will face the greatest demands for those displaced.'

Prime Minister Boris Johnson last month announced an increase in aid to Afghanistan to 286 million, amid a policy to cut spending on overseas assistance.

A briefing from the House of Commons Library showed the UK sent 290 million of aid to Afghanistan in 2019, and at the Afghanistan Conference, held in Geneva in November 2020, the UK Government pledged 155 million in aid for 2021.

Mr Johnson last month announced an increase in aid to Afghanistan to 286million, amid a policy to cut spending on overseas assistance.

A briefing from the House of Commons Library showed the UK sent 290 million of aid to Afghanistan in 2019, and at the Afghanistan Conference, held in Geneva in November 2020, the UK Government pledged 155 million in aid for 2021.

It comes after Mr Raab was criticised for holidaying in Crete as the Taliban surged to power last month.

On Wednesday, Mr Raab told MPs the 'most likely' outcome foreseen by the Joint Intelligence Committee 'and the military' after the withdrawal of foreign troops was 'a steady deterioration from that point and it was unlikely Kabul would fall this year'.

On Thursday, Mr Johnson told reporters: 'I think it's been clear for many months that the situation could go very fast and that's been part of the intelligence briefing.

'There have also been suggestions that the Afghan national defence force might hold on for longer. But logically you can see what happened.

'Once people felt in Afghanistan, once people in the Afghan army felt that they were no longer going to be getting that American air cover, then I think the logic for them became really to end their resistance and so things did go faster, but you can see to the extent of the planning that's been put into Op Pitting.'
Footage showing a driver open fire on a passing ute is being investigated by police as a possible escalation in the Hamzy and Alameddine gang war.

CCTV captured the white ute parked on Blaxcell Street at Granville, in western Sydney, at 7.30pm on Thursday.

Another ute drives past in the opposite direction before the parked vehicle pulls out and its driver opens fire.

The shooter then drives off before they are followed moments later by the other ute.

Police were called to the scene before they blocked the road and searched surrounding properties. There were no reports of injuries.

Footage showing a driver open fire on a passing ute is being investigated by police as a possible escalation in the Hamzy and Alameddine gang war

They carried out a crime scene warrant and found a grey ute at a home on Blaxcell Street. They seized the vehicle for forensic examination.

Detectives are also investigating whether a rental vehicle, which was caught speeding, is linked to the shooting.

Officers caught the vehicle speeding from the South Granville area and later found it parked at a home on Bulga Lane at Pemulway.

The 21-year-old driver attempted to flee on foot before he was arrested.

Police allege he dumped a bag with $30,000 cash, four mobile phones and a knife.

He was charged with not comply with noticed direction re s 7/8/9 - COVID-19, possess or use a prohibited weapon without permit, deal with property proceeds of crime and enter inclosed land not prescribed premises without lawful excuse.

He was granted conditional bail and will front Fairfield Local Court on October 20.

Two men, aged 28 and 26, were also arrested at a Bulga Lane home and were taken to Parramatta Police Station.

They were spoken to by investigators, before they were released pending further inquiries.

Police are investigating whether the shooting is linked to the ongoing Hamzy and Alameddine gang war, The Daily Telegraph reported.

It comes as detectives probe a separate shooting that left one person dead and a bystander injured last month.

Shady Kanj, 22, was struck by a bullet while a passenger in a car driving on Boundary Rd, Chester Hill in Western Sydney about 11pm on August 6.

Kanj is believed to be an associate of both the Hamzy and Alameddine gangs.

The driver travelled to Rhodes Avenue in nearby Guildford where he pulled over and yelled for assistance.

Paramedics were called and treated Kanj but he died from his wounds at the scene.

A second man who happened to be sitting in a parked car on Boundary Rd with his brother when the gunman opened fire was also shot.

Shady Kanj, 22, was shot and killed in Western Sydney on August 6 in what police say could be an escalation of gang violence (pictured)

The scene at Chester Hill on August 6 where a gunman opened fire on a car Kanj was a passenger in

He was watching sport on a mobile phone when a stray bullet hit him in the head - but he somehow survived.

He was rushed to Westmead Hospital and remains in a stable condition.

A senior police source, Homicide Squad Detective Superintendent Danny Doherty, told the publication the 25-year-old appeared to be an innocent bystander.

'It appears that he was sitting in the car watching sport on his phone and a stray bullet has grazed him. He is extremely lucky,' he said.

'I think his family and friends would be thankful he wasn't killed and the community at large. I know we are.'

Underworld sources told The Daily Telegraph that Kanj was close to members of the Hamzy group.

'The talk on the street is that his shooting is about the war... and it's gonna get worse,' one source said.

While Det Supt Doherty said Kanj was also an associate of the Alameddine gang.

He could not say, however, that the shooting was connected to any turf war between the groups.

'We can't say 100 per cent that's what the main motive. We also can't discount this could be an internal conflict between an organised crime network.'

The two crime networks have been have been feuding in recent months with a number of kidnappings and shootings.
Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has made a humbling apology for allowing wives and officials of the NRL into the state while the hotel quarantine program was paused for two weeks, saying it was the 'wrong decision'.

'I apologise, this was not the right thing to do when we had the pause,' she said at Friday's Covid press conference.

'It should not have happened, unfortunately it did happen, and I extend my apologies to the public about that.

'I understand that Queenslanders could see that while we were restricting the number of Queenslanders who could come in, it was not the right look... I accept that.'

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has made a humbling apology for allowing wives and officials of the NRL into Queensland while the state's hotel quarantine program was paused for two weeks. Pictured: NRL families arriving during Queensland's earlier intake in July

Last week Ms Palasazczuk announced the hotel quarantine program for arrivals from Covid hotspots NSW, Victoria and the ACT would be paused until Wednesday, September 8, because the number of people returning or relocating to the state had overwhelmed the system.

But the arrival of a chartered flight for the NRL into Brisbane on Tuesday afternoon from Sydney, a declared Covid hotspot, saw residents accuse Ms Palaszczuk's government of 'double standards' while Queenslanders could not return home due to the quarantine pause.

From Monday 680 additional hotel quarantine places will be offered for families trying to return home or relocate from Victoria and NSW, in addition to the 50 rooms available tomorrow.

She claimed the week's respite gained by pausing the hotel quarantine program had allowed the new spaces to become available.

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk talked up Queensland's lack of cases and relative freedom as she hit back at critics of her 'children at risk' comments on Friday

On Thursday she was similarly criticised after telling state parliament that Doherty Institute modelling predicted that 'even with 70 per cent of the population vaccinated, 80 people will die each day from Covid once the outbreak reaches six months after it started'.

'That is 2,240 who will die each month,' she said.

'She is selectively misusing the Doherty modelling,' Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt said yesterday. 'It breaches good faith and damages public confidence.

But on Friday Ms Palaszczuk stood by her statements.

'Let me say this to Queenslanders, my job is to keep you safe,' she said at Friday's Covid update.

'We have a double donut day, we have no cases, we have an open lifestyle, we can go to cafes and restaurants tonight, have hundreds of people gather in each other's homes and families can celebrate Father's Day this Sunday.'

She defended her comments about unvaccinated children being at risk if Queensland's borders are re-opened under the agreed national plan.

She defended her comments about unvaccinated children being at risk if Queensland's borders are re-opened under the agreed national plan

'It is not about being against a national plan,' Ms Palaszczuk said. 'We are all for a national plan.

'I wont be making decisions if I don't see detailed modelling.

'I'm asking very simple questions here, I want to see detailed modelling. and rather than picking fights and attacks, let's have a dedicated, decent conversation.'

Ms Palaszczuk further defended her remarks, saying national cabinet had agreed to do more work on the issue of childhood vaccination.

She cited evidence from the US about the number of children presenting with Covid and ending up in ICU.

The school, the Australian International Islamic College at Carrara, sent all students home on Thursday

Ms Palaszczuk is waiting for further modelling on what will happen to unvaccinated 0 to 12-year-olds if borders reopen as vaccination rates increase

'I do not want to have that happen here,' she said.

'That is why I'm saying very clearly ... let's have a conversation about it, and the prime minister himself and national cabinet, they agreed to go do some more work.'

Deputy Premier Steve Miles accused Scott Morrison of leading a 'pile-on' not seen since the last state election in criticising the Queensland premier.

'Scott Morrison has both his eyes on the election and no eyes on the outbreak ripping through Sydney right now,' Mr Miles said.

Meanwhile, a family at the centre of a coronavirus scare on the Gold Coast has tested negative to the virus, a school principal has told parents in a letter.

The family was ordered into hotel quarantine, with some of them unwell after reportedly returning from Melbourne without quarantining.

The Australian International Islamic College at Carrara was closed yesterday as a precaution but has since reopened, Principal Christine Harman informed the school's community.
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Prince William ensured the safe passage of a trapped Afghan soldier who he knew from Sandhurst to the UK after hearing of his plight.

The Duke of Cambridge, 39, decided to intervene after hearing that the officer, who he met during his training at the military academy in Berkshire, was trapped in Kabul with his family after the Taliban seized power earlier this month.

The royal's equerry naval officer Rob Dixon was able to contact personnel in the region and the former cadet, who is thought to have served in the Afghan national army, and his relatives were permitted to board a flight at Kabul airport to Britain.

The duke's intervention comes as Britain and America officially ended their military presence in Afghanistan this week - leaving behind hundreds of citizens and Afghan allies desperate to flee the country.

Prince William, 39, decided to intervene after he heard that an Afghan officer, who he met during his training at Sandhurst, was trapped with his family in Kabul. Pictured: William returning to Sandhurst, which he attended in 2006, in 2018

The officer in Afghanistan had previously worked closely with British troops and his role had left him and his family, which included women and children, in a vulnerable position within the country, The Daily Telegraph reports.

Following his rescue, former paratrooper Major Andrew Fox, said the duke's intervention was 'fully in line with what we get taught in the Army in terms of values'.

He told The Daily Telegraph: 'I myself got 2 Para to rush out into the crowd and grab someone for me.

'It's fully in line with what we get taught in the Army in terms of values, loyalty, respect for others, all that good stuff. We're trained to help where we can.

'The situation was so chaotic and was so, frankly, mismanaged, that people would do whatever they could to get out.'

Earlier this week, Britain and America officially ended their military presence in Afghanistan with the final US troops flying out from Kabul's airport.

And a night-vision image showed America's Major General Chris Donahue, commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, boarding a military transport as the last US soldier to leave Afghanistan after 20 years of war.

The RAF had made its last evacuation flight on Sunday to give US forces enough time to clear the ground ahead of the deadline set by Joe Biden, bringing to an end a deployment which began in the wake of September 11.

British and US troops help evacuate people out of Kabul, Afghanistan, after the Taliban seize power

Hundreds of people try to cross into Pakistan, at Spin Boldak, Afghanistan, this month

The Taliban held a press conference at Kabul airport on Monday, with spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid (centre) saying the west's retreat should serve as 'a warning' to all future invaders

The UK government helped fly some 15,000 people to safety, but stories have emerged of interpreters who helped the armed forces over the last 20 years and even people with British passports stranded behind Taliban checkpoints.

Brit ex-soldier is arrested by Taliban as his bid to evacuate 400 locals fails A former British soldier has been arrested by the Taliban while attempting to evacuate 400 Afghans, Charlotte Mitchell writes. Ben Slater, 37, was thrown in prison on Thursday morning and questioned regarding members of his 50 staff, most of whom are single women and had been staying in hotel rooms near a border checkpoint. The former member of the Royal Military Police runs a chain of NGOs in Afghanistan, and had been attempting to evacuate his staff over a land border after failing to secure spots for them and their families on the British airlift from Kabul. However, his mission failed after a coach carrying the staff was turned away at a land border. It is not clear which country the coach was attempting to cross into. Slater was released later on Thursday and told he could cross the border with one assistant, but that the rest of his staff had to remain in Afghanistan, The Telegraph reported. Slater told the paper that he will now try to secure visas for his staff from the UK or another Western country and called on the Foreign Office to help get them out. The incident comes amid concerns that the Taliban may disregard a pledge to allow people to leave the country. Advertisement

It is not known precisely how many people who were promised sanctuary in the UK were left behind.

Some 200 American passport holders are now thought to be living under Taliban rule, with an unknown number of Afghans promised sanctuary - thought to number in the thousands - also abandoned.

'There's a lot of heartbreak associated with this departure,' General Frank McKenzie, head of U.S. Central Command, said on Monday night. 'We did not get everybody out that we wanted to get out. But I think if we'd stayed another 10 days, we wouldn't have gotten everybody out.'

Shortly after US troops left the airport, images emerged of Taliban Badri 313 units - known as the group's 'special forces' - securing the airport while dressed in US-made kit and carrying American weapons - seizing more US helicopters, planes and vehicles in the process.

On Tuesday morning, senior Taliban figures including spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid gathered at the airstrip for a celebratory press conference - hailing the end of what they called 'western occupation'.

'Congratulations to Afghanistan... this victory belongs to us all,' Mujahid told reporters, saying the Taliban's victory is a 'lesson for other invaders and for our future generation. It is also a lesson for the world,' he added.

Reports suggest many are already fleeing through Pakistan to the east and Iran to the west. The US and UK are still working on arrangements to allow people to be evacuated from these neighbouring countries.

The departure of American troops means the conflict ends with the Taliban back in power and Afghans deeply uncertain of what the future holds.

In a statement, Biden said the world would be watching how the Taliban behaved.

'The Taliban has made commitments on safe passage and the world will hold them to their commitments,' he said, adding that negotiations continued to keep the airport open and ensure the delivery of humanitarian aid.

He added that he would address the nation on Tuesday and that his military chiefs had agreed the evacuation should not be extended beyond the deadline.

'Their view was that ending our military mission was the best way to protect the lives of our troops, and secure the prospects of civilian departures for those who want to leave Afghanistan in the weeks and months ahead,' he said.

REVEALED: More than 1,000 US citizens and Afghan allies were evacuated through a secret CIA base outside of Kabul during chaotic airlift

By GEOFF EARLE, Deputy U.S. Political Editor For Dailymail.com

As State Department personnel and military members were ferrying Americans and Afghans to the Kabul airport during the chaotic evacuation, the CIA oversaw an evacuation to get Afghan commandos and US citizens out of the country.

The effort use as an organizing point the CIA's secret Eagle Base  which was deliberately destroyed in an explosion just days before the last US troops left Afghanistan.

A U.S. Chinook helicopter flies near the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, Sunday, Aug. 15, 2021. After the fall of the Afghan government, the CIA oversaw an evacuation to get Afghan commandos and US citizens out of the country using a CIA base as a staging facility

It succeeded in getting at least 1,000 Afghan commandos and service members out of the country, Politico reported.

It all took place during a few frantic weeks in August around the time of the fall of the U.S. backed government in Kabul.

Some of the evacuees were flown between the base, housed in a former brick factory, and the Kabul airport located less than three miles away, according to the report after August 15th, when the government fell.

The military confirmed two instances of US troops going 'outside the wire' of the Kabul airport during the frantic last days before the US troop pullout, but generally sought to avoid giving detailed information about evacuation operations.

The Eagle Base, which also served as a staging area for the operations, was destroyed through a 'controlled demolition' just days before the final troop withdrawal, the New York Times reported.

In this Aug. 24, 2021, file photo provided by the U.S. Marine Corps, families walk towards their flight during ongoing evacuations at Hamid Karzai International Airport, in Kabul, Afghanistan. The CIA oversaw missions to get an estimated 1,000 Afghan commandos and family members out of the country

In this Aug. 16, 2021 file photo, U.S. soldiers stand guard along the perimeter at the international airport in Kabul, Afghanistan

Special operations Blackhawk takes off fast in Afghanistan

The facility was ensconced in 10-foot walls, was used for training Afghan commandos deemed to be the most effective fighters in an Afghan military that collapsed, and was located near a secret detention facility where an Afghan man died in CIA custody early in the war.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki during her briefing Wednesday revealed new details of efforts to get American and Afghans out, even while dodging a question about an estimated 100 Afghan workers for Voice of America, Radio Free Liberty, and Radio Azadi, the Afghan branch of the broadcast service.

'I think it's important to remember, again, 120,000 people made it out of the airport and the country, and our commitment to people who want to evacuate, once we leave: American citizens, journalists, Afghan partners who have stood by our side, is enduring and remains,' she said.

Without speaking to the fate of the journalists, she then spoke about 'some of the ways that we worked to get American citizens out,' including the 'muster points.' She said State officials would 'blast notifications through a variety of channels' to people who would then travel by bus into the airport in convoys or travel on foot.

She said there were 'multiple opportunities for each of these muster points at various times. 'We also talked people through one-on-one walking to the airport,' she said. She called it 'incredibly labor intensive.'

She said in 'limited cases' where people were 'trapped or in immediate danger' US security forces 'went beyond the wire, sometimes in a helicopter, to pick people up safely.' She said they were 'dangerous missions.'
He used his genius at maths to crack the Nazis' Enigma code, helping speed up the Allies' victory.

But before that, Alan Turing turned his mind to a less vital but potentially more profitable task  breaking the bank at Monte Carlo.

Almost a decade before his heroic efforts in the Second World War, he used equations to assess the chances of winning at roulette.

Turing's analysis has been unearthed in a letter written 88 years ago while he was a 21-year-old undergraduate at King's College, Cambridge.

He was prompted by tales of the successful gambling past of strip lighting inventor Alfred Beuttell, the father of a close school friend.

Almost a decade before his heroic efforts in the Second World War, Alan Turing used equations to assess the chances of winning at roulette at The Monte Carlo Casino (pictured)

He was prompted by tales of the gambling past of strip lighting inventor Alfred Beuttell, who told Turing he devised a 'Monte Carlo' method. Pictured: Roulette table at Monte Carlo casino

Beuttell told Turing he had devised his own 'Monte Carlo' method and lived off his casino winnings for a month on the French Riviera.

Turing put Beuttell's system to the test, working out the probabilities of winning after 150, 1,520, 4,560 and 30,400 spins.

His calculations showed it was possible to win 'an unexpectedly large sum' in the short term but the longer the gambler plays, the 'more remote his chances'.

Turing signed off: 'Regards to everyone and please don't feel there's any need to answer these ravings of mine.'

The seven-page handwritten letter, on King's College headed paper, was sent in February 1933 and has remained in the family until now.

It is being sold through London auctioneers Bonhams on September 15 with an estimate of 50,000.

Turing's analysis has been unearthed in a letter (pictured) written 88 years ago, which is now being sold through London auctioneers with an estimate of 50,000

Also being sold at auction is a photograph of Turing and Beuttell's son Victor with other boys and masters at Sherborne in 1930. It is valued at 4,000

Turing became lifelong friends with Beuttell's son Victor when they were pupils at Sherborne School in Dorset in the late 1920s.

They spoke on the phone the evening before Turing's suicide in 1954 following his prosecution for homosexual acts, then illegal in Britain.

The Queen granted him a posthumous pardon in 2013. Turing was played by Benedict Cumberbatch in the 2014 film The Imitation Game about the cracking of Enigma.

Matthew Haley, Bonhams head of books and manuscripts, said: 'From the letter you really get the sense that Turing was enjoying himself doing all these calculations.

'In a polite way it appears his conclusion was Beuttell's success was beginner's luck. It does underline Turing's fascination with probability... although I don't imagine Turing would have been at a roulette wheel in Monte Carlo.'

Also being sold is a photograph of Turing and Victor with other boys and masters at Sherborne in 1930. It is valued at 4,000.
Senior ministers are said to be increasingly embittered at the failure of Government experts to authorise the rollout of Covid vaccines to under-16s.

A Whitehall source said there was palpable frustration among Government figures with the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), which has so far not approved the jab.

Both Boris Johnson and Health Secretary Sajid Javid are said to be keen to get on with vaccinating secondary school children.

Ministers fear the new academic year will trigger a fresh wave of the virus in classrooms.

This means that without a jab, children could face more disruption to their education throughout autumn and winter.

But the JCVI, which is independent of Government, yesterday warned that a decision on the issue was finely balanced, with one senior committee member bristling at the idea that it should respond to political pressure.

Senior ministers, including Prime Minister Both Boris Johnson and Health Secretary Sajid Javid (pictured), are said to be keen to get on with vaccinating secondary school children but the Joint Committee on Vaccinations and Immunisations has yet to approve them for under-16s

Another said the committee would not be bounced into vaccinating younger children just because many other countries were now doing so.

France, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands and the US are among the nations now offering jabs to children aged 12 to 15. Norway yesterday followed suit.

UK medical regulators cleared the Pfizer jab for use on 12- to 15-year-olds in June, declaring it safe and effective in this age group.

The Moderna vaccine was also authorised last month.

Ministers had hoped to vaccinate children during the school holidays to prevent a repeat of the massive disruption seen in schools over the past 18 months.

However, with schools already going back this week and next, hundreds of thousands of pupils will be mixing for weeks before any rollout is approved by the JCVI  if it is approved at all.

Ministers fear the new academic year will trigger a fresh wave of the virus in classrooms

Last night one Whitehall source admitted: There is palpable frustration that this is taking so long. The jabs have been approved for months, other countries have been doing it safely for months  we are becoming an outlier.

In the meantime, we have missed the window of opportunity in the summer and the schools are going back.

Meanwhile, in a clear sign of the enthusiasm for the jab among teenagers, figures showed half of 16- and 17-year-olds have already had a vaccine dose in just four weeks.

It also emerged that the JCVI is highly likely to recommend booster jabs for millions of older adults in the next few weeks  but members were much more reticent about approving jabs for those aged 12 to 15.

So far, only younger teenagers with underlying health conditions can be jabbed. And the JCVI announced late on Wednesday that it was recommending a third dose for 500,000 people with very suppressed immune systems.

It came as the UK recorded 38,154 new cases and a further 178 deaths. Cases in Scotland have soared since schools returned last month, with infections among children now higher than ever.

Government Ministers had hoped to vaccinate children during the school holidays to prevent a repeat of the massive disruption seen in schools over the past 18 months (stock image)

Publicly, Downing Street insists the matter is purely for the JCVI. But while another Whitehall source said the JCVI had done a great job at the start of the vaccination programme, they acknowledged the length of time taken by the committee over children was frustrating.

Everything is in place to get this rolled out, the source said. We just need a decision.

Speaking at the weekend, Mr Javid said vaccinating all teenagers would solidify our wall of protection.

The move is also backed by Transport Secretary Grant Shapps, who has warned that countries like Malta are already insisting all over-12s must quarantine on arrival unless they have been fully vaccinated.

A Government source has predicted take-up among younger children would be as high as 16- and 17-year-olds, if and when the green light is given.

Yesterday however, the JCVIs deputy chairman Anthony Harnden told BBC Radio 4s Today programme: Theres many, many arguments for and against giving vaccines to 12- to 15-year-olds, and were deliberating on what we think as a committee is best for children.

And that is the key thing: whatever we decide, we will do it in the childrens best interests no matter what other people outside the committee think.

Professor Harnden said it was ultimately up to ministers to decide whether to vaccinate children, but added: We will give some very strong advice.

The medical director of Public Health England, Dr Yvonne Doyle, moved to reassure parents yesterday, saying schools are not the drivers of infection in communities.

She said: Therell be extra cleaning and hygiene, advice on ventilation (and) the testing is extremely important.

The Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies has warned it is highly likely that infection rates in schools will surge by the end of September, and has urged ministers to come up with a plan for coping.

Meanwhile, plans for the rollout of jabs to under-16s are well advanced  pending JCVI approval.

It is likely that both parents and children will be asked to give consent.

As a GP, I'd allow all three of my kids to have the vaccine

Comment by Dr Nighat Arif

Covid vaccines have been a remarkable success, but if we are to enhance public safety and return to normality, we must build on that achievement.

That means not only the provision of booster jabs to maintain their effectiveness  particularly in the face of new variants  but also, just as crucially, the extension of the programme to children.

At present, jabs are offered to those over 12 only if they are clinically vulnerable, but I strongly believe coverage should be extended to include a much bigger age range, including healthy youngsters, just as the US, Brazil, China and Germany are doing.

Based on hard evidence from around the world, the case for this policy is irrefutable.

For a start, it would reduce the seriousness of the diseases impact and the potential for long-term complications.

Pictured: Dr Nighat Arif who says she would vaccinate all three of her children

It is true that children are at the lowest risk from the virus, but my colleagues and I are now seeing growing numbers of cases of Long Covid in children  which can lead to months of chronic fatigue, breathlessness, chest tightness and painful headaches.

I am currently dealing with one patient, a 15-year-old boy who  until Covid struck  had only a mild form of asthma, and whose management involved regular medication and an annual check-up.

Now, after contracting the virus, he is facing a much more difficult immediate future. As his condition has worsened, he has been hospitalised with pneumonia and even put on a ventilator. If he had been vaccinated, it is unlikely any of this would have happened.

In addition to giving individual protection, the inoculation of children would cut the transmission of the disease to the wider community, helping to build defensive shields around families, schools and beyond, and reducing the risk of new variants developing.

That would be good news for everyone, especially the most vulnerable adults.

Vaccines for all are the best kind of preventative medicine and the surest route to the goal of herd immunity.

Indeed, I wish I could give them to my three children as a means of mutual protection in our home  a vital concern because my six-year-old son is highly vulnerable, having had a liver transplant.

But, like all under-12s and regardless of circumstances, he is ineligible at present.

There is far too much lurid, paranoid scaremongering about vaccines for children.

Ever since Edward Jenner conquered smallpox in the 18th century with the worlds first vaccine, the science of immunisation has been well explored and understood.

For the purpose of improving public health, we already safely administer a number of other vaccines to children from infancy, starting with the Rotavirus jab from just eight weeks, followed by the MMR at one year (with a booster at three years old) and then the flu nasal drops given annually from two.

So where is the logic in suddenly drawing a line at a Covid vaccine? Far from protecting children, misplaced anxiety about vaccines can have a devastating impact, as shown by the scare in the late 1990s over the MMR jab, when it was falsely linked to autism.

The fall in inoculations led to severe outbreaks of measles and mumps, the latter an illness which I thought had been largely eliminated in Britain, and which can have devastating side-effects and in rare cases cause death.

We cannot allow the same to happen with Covid. Nor is that what the wider public  more sensible than the anti-vaxxers  want.

One recent survey by the Office for National Statistics showed that 90 per cent of parents would definitely or probably agree to inoculate their child.

Apart from the worrying health implications of vaccine hesitancy, there are also the economic and social consequences.

A failure to use every possible medical resource against Covid means that we will have to resort to other methods to contain the disease.

In practice, that will require a return to draconian lockdowns and restrictions, thereby hurting the economy with all the knock-on effects that follow.

The disruption to our childrens education and social relationships has a profound impact on their life chances and, of course, their mental health.

As a society, we should be moving in precisely the opposite direction, towards greater freedom  and vaccines for children can help get us there.

We know vaccines protect lives and prevent severe disease. Lets extend their use.

Dr Nighat Arif is a GP in Buckinghamshire and a regular contributor to BBC Breakfast
Travelers were trapped on a train from New York to New Jersey in the dark without bathrooms or electricity for ten hours after tracks were flooded by Storm Ida.

NJ Transit's Train 3881 left New York's Penn Station at 7:43 p.m. on Wednesday and was bound for Trenton when it became disabled east of Newark International Airport around 8:30 p.m., a spokesperson for the transportation agency told CNN.

Passengers crammed into cars at one end of the train after three cars at the other end took on a few inches of water, according to NJ Transit. Just a few hours into being marooned, the train's air-conditioning and ventilation went with the electricity.

It was nearly six hours before the roughly 200 passengers on board received any relief, when cops arrived and opened the doors around 4 a.m. to give them water.

But they remained stranded until a rescue train was able to tow them to the Newark Airport station an hour later.

From there, the passengers were able to get on other trains - with several recounting to CNN that they didn't make it to their destinations until well after 7 a.m.

Ilia Rivera wrote in a post to social media that she had been stuck on the train since 7:43 p.m.

Travelers were trapped on a train from New York to New Jersey in the dark without bathrooms or electricity for ten hours after tracks were flooded by Storm Ida

Rivera noted that rescue crews had stopped near the train for hours but hadn't rescued the passengers

Rivera noted that a rescue train had finally arrived around 5:05 a.m., left, before she had to de-board at Newark International Airport

Twitter user Hue Hardon was also apparently on the train and wrote: ' The water is soooo high. Look at the picture. I can see ground to walk off the train but no word from the crew. No plan. No option to get out and walk home. On a train with no ventilation no lights.'

Camilla Akbari, 24, told the outlet she left the Big Apple to visit her mother in Princeton, New Jersey.

She said that, after she was trapped on the train, it took her another four hours to reach her mother's house - two spent on another train to Trenton and two in the car after her mom picked her up as they drove on flooded streets to Princeton.

On a normal day, the trip from Penn Station to Princeton takes just over an hour.

'We were literally and figuratively in the dark for hours,' Akbari told CNN, claiming that officials had given them false promises throughout the night.

She said agitated passengers started to smoke cigarettes and marijuana as others were on the brink of having panic attacks.

Akbari said she also started to panic and was shaking by the time the doors were opened around 4 a.m., adding that it has become easier to look back on now that she no longer remains stranded.

'I could tell I was shaking a little bit, there were tears in my eyes, just because I was so overwhelmed by the situation. So it was definitely frightening,' she said.

She added: 'It definitely was an adventure.'

A photo from NJ Transit shows flood waters receding from tracks in its system after the storm

A photo from NJ Transit shows the Oradell Bus Garage filled with water after the storm

DailyMail.com has reached out to Akbari and other passengers for more information and additional comment.

Akbari and other passengers recounted how they were told that the train had suffered a mechanical issue and they would need to wait for a rescue train that took hours to reach them.

Alexandra Patino, 30, was traveling from Queens to see her boyfriend in Edison, New Jersey - where she arrived around 7 a.m.

'The updates were just so terrible, and no one was really letting us know what was happening,' she said.

Ilia Rivera, 30, jumped on another train to Elizabeth, New Jersey and made it to her destination around 7 a.m. She told CNN that flood waters had risen almost as high as the train's windows.

'I'm sitting literally right next to the window, and I see the water at my level almost,' she said. 'I'm like, 'Am I going to have to swim out of here?''

Passengers and family members reacted to news of the stranded train on Twitter

Rivera noted that rescue crews had arrived hours before the rescue train had finally arrived but hadn't done anything to get the passengers off the train.

In a tweet around 3 a.m., NJ Transit said crews with the transportation agency and the Newark Fire Department were on scene and 'have been desperately trying to get the rescue vehicles to the train.'

'However, the water around the train is simply too high for a safe evacuation. The train is safest right now while first responders examine other options,' NJ Transit tweeted.

A spokesperson for NJ Transit told CNN: 'The decision to keep the customers on the train was the safest choice as the train cars were sufficiently elevated above the flood waters.'

Ian Wolsten, 27, was returning home to East Brunswick, New Jersey from work and finally made it home around 6:45 a.m. after getting on another train to its Metro Park stop, he told CNN.

'Once the power was cut off from the trains, it was absolutely helpless,' Wolsten said.

'It's one thing for it to be pitch black in there, because we're sleeping anyway, but there was no air conditioning and no ventilation, so you think with COVID, it's like, 'What the hell is going to happen if the air is not going anywhere?'

He added: 'It just turned concerning very quickly.'

Twitter user Hue Hardon was also apparently on the train and wrote, sarcastically: 'The water is soooo high. Look at the picture. I can see ground to walk off the train but no word from the crew. No plan.'

'No option to get out and walk home. On a train with no ventilation no lights,' Hardon tweeted.

Many others also took to Twitter to plea for help from NJ Transit as they were stuck on Train 3881.

NJ Transit had suspended all train services on Wednesday except for its Atlantic City Rail Line - though most train service has since resumed with significant delays.

'Customers should avoid travel unless it's absolutely essential,' the agency's website reads.

'NJ TRANSIT service will continue to be subject to significant delays, cancellations and detours as storm damage is assessed and necessary inspections are made.'

New Yorkers were also stuck overnight inside Metropolitan Transportation Authority subway stations across the Big Apple.

The subway system had flooded in 46 locations, leaving 15 to 20 subway trains stranded, said Janno Lieber - the acting chair of the MTA. Two of the MTA's Metro North commuter trains were also stranded.

Frank Dwyer, spokesman for the Fire Department of the City of New York (FDNY), told CNN that firefighters had to save hundreds of people from subway stations.

Beverly Pryce, a nurse, took an Uber from her home in the Queens borough of New York City to a bus station to try to get to work - but no buses were running.

She said she was stuck at the station until she made it onto a 7 train that took her to Times Square, where she arrived around 11:30 p.m. and had to stick out the night.

'I've never seen nothing like this,' she said. 'I didn't expect it to be this severe. I would not leave my house.'

Robert Hedglin left work in Manhattan around 9 p.m. and finally made it to his home in Queens early Thursday morning.

He told CNN that his train was stuck underground between two train stations for more than an hour where he was forced to get off.

Hedglin sat at a bar until 12:30 a.m., when he went to a diner because there were no cabs to get home. He finally was able to take a Lyft ride for $104.

'I'm exhausted, frustrated, but at least I got home safe. Some others were not as lucky,' Hedglin said.
GPs are holding 3.4million fewer face-to-face appointments a month compared with before the pandemic.

The shocking figures reveal the scale of the shift towards consultations held remotely.

There were seven million more appointments every month conducted over the phone in June this year when compared with the same month in 2019, before coronavirus struck.

The Alzheimers Society said virtual appointments do not work for people with dementia, while Labour, which analysed the NHS England data, said the shift increased the risk of serious illness being misdiagnosed.

GPs are holding 3.4million fewer face-to-face appointments a month compared with before the pandemic. The shocking figures reveal the scale of the shift towards consultations held remotely (stock image)

In June, 56.3 per cent of GP appointments were face-to-face  only slightly up on the 52.9 per cent in January when England was in lockdown.

The data also shows far fewer home visits are taking place, despite restrictions easing in May to allow up to six people to gather indoors.

In June 2019 there were 18,441,483 appointments conducted face-to-face by GPs in their surgeries, representing 79.7 per cent of the total number of consultations.

The proportion fell after March 2020, when the Covid pandemic took hold and lockdowns were imposed  and the figure is yet to recover 18 months on.

By June this year the number of face-to-face consultations stood at 15,033,172, down 3.4million on two years previously.

At the same time, the number of telephone consultations soared from 3,106,915 in June 2019 to 10,583,202 this year  an increase of almost 7.5million. The number of home visits fell in the same period, from 211,526 to 161,689  a drop of 49,837.

Labour said the figures could mean the elderly or disabled or vulnerable people are going without the support they need.

Jonathan Ashworth, Labours health spokesman, said: While online and telephone consultations work for some, for others it can mean missed diagnosis of serious illness.

In June, 56.3 per cent of GP appointments were face-to-face  only slightly up on the 52.9 per cent in January when England was in lockdown (stock image)

Its urgent ministers put forward an NHS rescue plan with the resources and staff to bring back face-to-face GP consultations quickly and safely so that everyone who wants one can get one.

Gavin Terry, head of policy at the Alzheimers Society, said: People with dementia have been worst hit by the pandemic and the reduction in health and social care services has had a terrible impact on them.

Virtual appointments and assessments just dont work for many of them. Its crucial face-to-face appointments are available to all  so dementia can be diagnosed as early as possible, helping people remain independent for longer.

It comes after the Mail revealed a postcode lottery for face-to-face consultations. The area with the worst record was South Sefton in Merseyside, where just 44.8 per cent of appointments are in person.

The Commons Library figures also showed less than half of patients in Dorset see their doctor on the same or next day that they ask to be seen.
The boy, 17, died in Blacktown on Wednesday

Police are investigating whether the death of a teenage boy in an alleged brutal brawl came about in 'postcode wars' between wannabe gangs in Sydney's west.

The boy, died on the streets of Blacktown about 10pm on Wednesday night after he and several others were allegedly stabbed.

Two teenage boys, both aged 15, were taken to Westmead Children's Hospital. One was in a critical condition on Friday morning.

Police believe about a dozen people were involved in the alleged deadly brawl.

Several were arrested in the following hours following an intense search via PolAir helicopter.

One adult, 21-year-old Panashe Karise, plus four 17-year-olds have been charged with a series of offences. A boy, 13, was also arrested, but has not been charged.

Overnight friends flooded social media with tributes the 18-year-old, an aspiring rapper.

One said 'fly high young king', another described him as a 'soulja' and several said 'long live Ollie'.

The death comes exactly four weeks after a 16-year-old boy was allegedly beaten to death inside a Doonside housing commission home, just kilometres away.

Superintendent Steve Eggington from Blacktown Police confirmed that 'postcode wars' were also a line of inquiry for detectives in this latest alleged incident.

'It's part of the investigation at the moment,' said Supt Eggington, who added the alleged violence was 'quite confronting'.

'It's tragic we're getting young kids involved in these types of incidents.'

Confronting video showed officers leading a young man from the scene, his hands in paper bags to preserve evidence.

During a line search on Thursday, officers allegedly found broken butcher's knives and batons scattered around the streets.

The crime scene stretched for about a kilometre, police said.

Police believe the brawl involved two different groups and are appealing for CCTV or any in-car video from witnesses.

Police performed a line search through the streets of Blacktown searching for evidence on Thursday

Police forensics and detectives discuss their search during the investigation on Thursday

Karise was charged with offences including affray, car owner not disclose identity of driver/passenger, driving motor vehicle while licence suspended, and not comply with the public health orders.

He was granted bail by Blacktown Local Court on Friday with strict conditions, including that he not go near or approach any prosecution witness or go within 1km of William St, Blacktown.

Karise is not to leave his home between 8pm and 6am.

The 17-year-olds were each charged with affray and failing to comply with the public health orders.

All four have been refused police bail. Two will appear in Parramatta Children's Court today, while the others will face court in the coming weeks.
Queensland Premier Annastacia is in a new relationship with Dr Reza Adib

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk is in a new relationship with a multi-millionaire Brisbane doctor who specialises in weight loss surgery and makes her 'very happy'.

Ms Palaszczuk has confirmed she is seeing Dr Reza Adib, the CEO of Brisbane Obesity Clinic, whose main visible extravagance appears to be a palatial riverfront home.

'He is a gorgeous man,' the state premier told The Courier-Mail.

'He is a very warm and caring, intelligent man with a great sense of humour, and we are just enjoying getting to know each other.'

Political sources said the pair's relationship had blossomed recently and the couple's romance went public on Friday.

Ms Palaszczuk was pictured with the dashing Dr Adib at the Caloundra Cup at the Sunshine Coast Turf Club on July 11, leading to speculation the pair were romantically linked.

In one photograph the father of two had his arm around the smiling premier as she leaned in towards him on the course rail. In another they were seated together at a table inside.

The twice-married Ms Palaszczuk unveiled a glamorous makeover late last month during one of her daily Covid-19 press conferences, raising speculation there had been other changes in her private circumstances.

The 52-year-old has previously said her personal life had fallen by the wayside as a result of her political career and that her busy schedule made looking for love almost impossible.

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk is dating the multi-millionaire Brisbane doctor, who specialises in weight loss surgery. Ms Palaszczuk was pictured with Dr Reza Adib at the Caloundra Cup at the Sunshine Coast Turf Club on July 11 (above)

The twice-married Ms Palaszczuk unveiled a glamorous makeover late last month during one of her daily Covid-19 press conferences, raising speculation there had been other changes in her private life. She is pictured with her new hairstyle and makeup

Dr Reza Adib is the CEO of Brisbane Obesity Clinic. A general and laparoscopic surgeon, he began his career at the Royal Brisbane Hospital in 1994 and established the Brisbane Obesity Clinic in 2004

'It's simply not true that we all need a partner to be fulfilled,' she said two years ago.

'It's lovely when it's the right person of course, but it is very possible to be single and very happy.'

Ms Palaszczuk's media chief Shane Doherty flatly denied any knowledge of his boss's relationship with Dr Adib on Friday afternoon.

'I don't know about the premier's private life and I'm not going to ask,' he told Daily Mail Australia. 'And I've never heard that name.''

Ms Palaszczuk has spoken of her unfilled desire to have children, which she attributed to suffering from endometriosis, a debilitating condition which can impact fertility.

Her severe case of endometriosis was diagnosed after a miscarriage with her second husband Simon Every, following an exploratory laparoscopy.

Dr Adib, a general and laparoscopic surgeon, began his career at the Royal Brisbane Hospital in 1994 and established the Brisbane Obesity Clinic in 2004.

Ms Palaszczuk is pictured with Dr Adib at the Caloundra Cup on July 11, with the images fuelling speculation the pair were romantically linked - a fact the premier confirmed on Friday

Dr Adib lives in a three-level, five-bedroom, five-bathroom mansion at Indooroopilly which property records show he bought for $6.25million a decade ago. The house is pictured

Brisbane Obesity Clinic's website boasts Dr Adib has performed more than 20,000 operations and more than over 5000 weight-loss procedures.

'Dr Adib has studied in Australia, England, Scotland, France and Austria,' the website states.

'This broad international background puts him in a unique position to understand and treat a wide range of people from a variety of backgrounds and environments.

'Our patients travel from all over Australia to be under Dr Adib's quality care, knowing they will achieve the best results.'

Dr Adib lives in a three-level, five-bedroom, five-bathroom mansion at Indooroopilly which property records show he bought a decade ago for $6.25million.

The landmark house is 'inspired by the grandeur of traditional 14th Century Italian Villas' and features 'the finest materials from around the world.'

'This lavishly regal home is the absolute pinnacle of building construction and design,' real estate marketing gushed when it was last sold.

'One of the first truly authentic Mediterranean style homes constructed in Brisbane, this expansive estate proudly stands on more than half an acre of some of the most prized riverfront land in Brisbane.'

Dr Adib's landmark house is 'inspired by the grandeur of traditional 14th Century Italian Villas' and features 'the finest materials from around the world'. The house is pictured

'This lavishly regal home is the absolute pinnacle of building construction and design,' real estate marketing gushed of Dr Adib's home when it was last sold. The house is pictured

Dr Adib does not have a strong social media presence and has rarely been in the news.

In June 2019 the Courier-Mail reported he had been trapped in a packed lift with retried NRL star Sam Thaiday at Doomben race course on Ladies' Oaks Day.

Dr Reza Adib's career 1994: Began surgical career at the Royal Brisbane Hospital as a surgical trainee 1996: Selected to join the Advanced Surgical Program 2000: Became a Fellow of The Royal Australasian College of Surgeons 2000 to 2004: Fellow of The Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh 2004: Established the Obesity Clinic in Brisbane 2016: Nominated as board member for Australian & New Zealand Metabolic and Obesity Surgery Society 2017: Nominated as co-chairman of the Wesley Hospital's Bariatric Centre of Excellence 2018: Bariatric Surgery Registry - Leading Contributor 2017 recognition 2018: Surgeon of Excellence Award - Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery, The Wesley Hospital Source: Brisbane Obesity Clinic Advertisement

Witnesses said Dr Adib and Thaiday were able to force the lift door open after ten minutes.

Ms Palaszczuk has been under increasing pressure over her state's handling of Covid, particularly the harsh border lockdowns keeping families apart.

Federal Labor has also distanced itself from Ms Palaszczuk's demands that children under 12 should be vaccinated before she opens her state's border.

On Friday she made a humbling apology for letting NRL players' wives and officials into her state while the hotel quarantine program was paused for two weeks, saying it was the 'wrong decision'.

Last month she copped criticism from Queenslanders for posting a selfie of her glamorous new hair and makeup look online while a pile of papers marked 'urgent' sat unattended in the background.

Ms Palaszczuk showcased her fresh look on August 25, shedding her typical natural appearance in favour of deep red lipstick and freshly curled locks.

Later that evening she she shared a selfie on Twitter featuring her makeover as she sat behind her office desk.

'Thanks for all the work you're doing, Queenslanders. Keep staying safe,' she wrote.

Social media users looking at the photo suggested the premier should deal with the files marked 'urgent' she had sitting on her desk rather than racking up 'likes' on the platform.

'Finish the work in the "Urgent" tray before taking your selfies,' one person said.

'You literally have work marked "Urgent". Really great time to stop and take a selfie and show off your nice little purse,' another wrote.

A third commented: 'Make sure you whack that two inches of make up before your selfie. I have not seen my son since March this year cause of these stupid lock downs. Miss him so much.'

Dr Adib's home was described as 'one of the first truly authentic Mediterranean style homes constructed in Brisbane, this expansive estate proudly stands on more than half an acre of some of the most prized riverfront land in Brisbane'

Ms Palaszczuk has previously said her personal life had fallen by the wayside as a result of her political career and the 52-year-old's busy schedule made looking for love almost impossible

Others praised Ms Palaszczuk for her revamped image and thanked her for running the state.

'Looking very glam there premier! And doing a bloody good job too,' one person complimented.

'I know this is off point but you look stunning!' another wrote. 'Looking very pretty and healthy,' said a third.

Ms Palaszczuk, who lives in a relatively humble home in Brisbane's south-west, was married to journalist George Megalogenis from 1996 to 1998 and Simon Every from 2004 to 2009.

She has spoken candidly of how the breakdown of her marriage to Mr Every - former chief of staff to onetime Labor senator Joe Ludwig - came after years of unsuccessful rounds of IVF treatment.

Ms Palaszczuk announced in February 2018 her split from partner of three years Shaun Drabsch, an infrastructure adviser who previously worked for Labor premier Peter Beattie.
Florida is reporting its deadliest peak in daily death rates since the start of the pandemic, surpassing previous coronavirus surges in the state, according to federal data published Thursday.

Data provided by the state to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reveals that at least eight days in August produced more daily deaths than during the last peak of the pandemic in August 2020.

The typical lag times in the reporting of deaths means the true toll of the pandemic can take weeks to emerge.

The data became available on Thursday after the state reported to the CDC more than 1,338 new deaths that occurred over several days or weeks.

The figures show the seven-day average in daily deaths reached 244 last month, as compared with their highest previous rate of 227 in August 2020.

The numbers for mid- to late August of this year could still rise as the Florida Department of Health reports more data to the federal government.

Dorah Cerisene, 9, gets tested for COVID-19 in North Miami, Florida on Tuesday. Florida schools are seeing a rise in COVID-19 cases, forcing teachers and students to quarantine

Florida health officials reported new data to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicating that the state last month experienced its deadliest peak in daily death rates since the start of the pandemic

The latest data indicates that case numbers peaked in August but are now on the downward swing

Florida has reported just under 3.3 million cases of COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic

Overall, 45,909 people have died in Florida, according to the CDC numbers

The state has also reported in increase in the number of daily tests administered over the last few weeks

As of late August, Florida reported that 63.2 percent of the population has received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. Overall, 52.2 percent of the population is fully vaccinated

Overall, 45,909 people have died in Florida, according to the CDC numbers.

The state has 87 percent of its seniors vaccinated and has raised its vaccination rate from 61 percent to 68 percent in the past month.

Hospitalizations hit record highs last month, with hospitals reporting census of over 7,000 more COVID-19 patients than they had in the previous peak.

Both hospitalizations and new cases leveled off and began dropping in the past week.

Last week the state reported infections among children and teenagers had increased by 28 percent over the week before with some children's hospitals noticing an uptick in admissions as well in the first few weeks back at school.

A dozen of the Florida's 67 districts, representing about half of the state's 2.8 million public school students, have defied Governor Ron DeSantis' executive order barring schools from requiring masks over parent objections.

A judge last week ruled that DeSantis did not have the authority to issue the order.

The DeSantis administration filed a notice of appeal Thursday.

On Tuesday, an elementary school in Sarasota was placed on a temporary, limited lockdown after a parent threatened to leave his job and confront an assistant principal for telling his children they couldn't come to school without being masked.

The Sarasota County is among the school districts requiring masks.

Christopher Kivlin was met by police officers outside Ashton Elementary School.

No charges were filed but he was ordered not to come back to the school without calling first and getting permission.

An incident report said Kivlin showed up to the campus saying the school was violating the law by not allowing his children to attend school.

Kivlin told television station WFLA that he had no intention of harming anyone but just wanted to talk to a school official.

He apologized for frightening anyone and said 'it was just emotions built up.'

'I found out after the fact that the school had to go into lockdown, I was like, "That's horrible",' Kivlin said.

'I feel like I might have scared other parents.'

Georgia, Kentucky, South Carolina and Tennessee all break winter 2020 COVID infection records as Delta variant causes surge in cases across the south

Georgia, Kentucky, South Carolina and Tennessee have all set new COVID-19 infection records - soaring past the previous highs recorded during winter 2020.

The grim figures indicate just how contagious the COVID Delta variant is, with the records also broken despite vaccines now being widely available.

Despite COVID shots offering substantial protection against serious illness in the case of an infection, hospitalizations are also up to.

More than 100,000 are now being recorded daily, as the United States weathers its latest COVID surge, amid fears that schools reopening could exacerbate the issue further.

Georgia is recording a record 10,840 new cases every day. Schools in the state have been slammed especially hard

Tennessee is averaging a record 9,912 new cases per day. The Volunteer state's Department of Health was recently exposed for undercounting total hospitalizations by over 5,000

Georgia is averaging 10,840 new cases per day, a 32 percent increase in daily cases over the past two weeks. The Peach State does not report cases daily.

Schools in the state have been hit especially hard by the virus, with thousands of students and staff having to quarantine in the opening weeks.

More than 23,000 people had to enter quarantine in Atlanta area schools after either testing positive for the virus or being exposed to it, with vaccines currently only available to students aged 12 and up.

Lamar County, around 50 miles south of Atlanta, suspended school for two weeks after so many staff members were quarantined that the schools could no longer function.

Democrats in the state have called to close down schools until the situation gets under control.

The state currently has 5,880 people currently hospitalized with the virus, which is also a record.

Only 52 percent of Georgia residents have received at least one shot of a COVID-19 vaccine, well behind the 62 percent national average.

The state has recorded 1.38 million cases and 22,000 deaths since the pandemic began in March 2020.

Tennessee is averaging 9,912 new cases per day, eclipsing a previous record set in December.

South Carolina is currently the state with the biggest COVID-19 outbreak, with one out of every 1,000 residents being infected with the virus. The state is also averaging a record 6,592 new cases every day

Kentucky is averaging a record 4,840 new cases per day. The state's poison control is reporting a surge in calls regarding misuse of the anti-parasite drug ivermectin

Cases have grown by nearly 80 percent over the past two weeks, though Tennessee also does not report cases daily.

The state has also been embroiled in controversy after recent reports the state's Department of Health underreported COVID-19 hospitalizations by over 5,000 over the last 14 months.

According to a report by The Tennessean, many of the unreported hospitalizations were from over the record winter surge where dozens of ICU patients when unrecorded every day.

Corrected figures show that the Volunteer State has recorded 29,694 hospitalizations from COVID-19 since the pandemic began.

Half of Tennessee residents have received at least one shot of a COVID-19 vaccine so far, which is also well below the national average.

In July, the state's top vaccine official, Dr Michelle Fiscus, stepped down under pressure from state leadership after accusations the Department of Health was attempting to undermine parents by offering the vaccine to minors.

State Republicans also attempted to abolish the Department of Health itself due to the accusations.

Tennessee suspended all vaccine outreach for minors in mid-July, a move Democrats say may hinder efforts to reach herd immunity against COVID-19.

Just over one million cases and 13,400 COVID-19 deaths have been recorded in Tennessee since the virus reached the state last March.

South Carolina is currently suffering the biggest outbreak of the virus of any state in the country.

One out of every 1,000 South Carolinians recorded a new COVID-19 case on August 31, the highest rate per capita in America.

New daily cases have increased by 53 percent over the past two weeks in South Carolina.

The Palmetto State, which also does not report cases daily, averaged a record 6,592 cases per day on September 1.

The state also reported 86 COVID deaths on Wednesday, the highest single day total since February.

Fifty-two percent of residents of the state have received at least one shot of a COVID-19 vaccine, also behind the national pace.

South Carolina has recorded 741,000 cases and 10,000 deaths over the past 17 months.

Kentucky is recording a record 4,840 new COVID-19 cases every day, another record as the state loses control of its virus situation just as winter approaches, amid fears colder weather could cause a further spiral.

Some Kentuckians are attempting to combat the virus using their own remedies, particularly using ivermectin, a deworming drug that has been mischaracterized as a potential COVID-19 treatment.

The state's poison control reports a swell in calls regarding ivermectin, as some are using dosages of the drug meant for animals like horses and cows to treat themselves at home.

Doses for animals are much larger than ones meant for humans. The drug is safe for human consumption if the correct dosage is taken, although experts warn there's no proof it helps with COVID.

Kentucky has a higher vaccination rate than the others at 57 percent.

Schools in the Bluegrass State have been slammed as well, with Berea Independent School District in central Kentucky even closing.

In Kentucky, 741,000 COVID-19 cases and 10,600 deaths have been recorded during the COVID pandemic.

Nationwide, 62 percent of Americans have received at least one shot of a COVID-19 vaccine and 52 percent are fully vaccinated.

The country is also averaging 166,000 new cases every day, and 18 percent increase over the past two weeks.

While cases are growing, they are growing at a smaller rate than before, which could be a signal that the Delta variant-fueled surge is coming to a close.

Hospitalizations still remain high as well though, with 101,000 people hospitalized with the virus every day and 78 percent of ICU beds in the entire country being occupied right now.

Since March 2020, the United States has recorded 39.5 million cases and 642,000 deaths from the virus.

The country leads the world in both categories.
Drinks containing less alcohol than a banana could be slapped with pregnancy warning labels under plans being considered by ministers.

The Government is set to launch a review into labelling rules and what can be legally described as 'alcohol-free'.

One proposal would see firms forced to put warnings on some drinks with tiny traces of alcohol, as low as 0.05 per cent.

This is less than that found in many popular foods, including bananas (0.3 per cent) and sourdough bread (0.5 per cent).

The Government is set to launch a review into labelling rules and what can be legally described as 'alcohol-free', which would affect 'low-alcohol' and 'alcohol-free' beers (stock image)

The move would affect trendy 'low-alcohol' and 'alcohol-free' beers, wines and spirits. These are popular with pregnant women, drivers and teetotallers.

Big brands such as Becks and Heineken now produce alcohol-free drinks alongside new firms.

The label proposal is understood to be driven by anti-alcohol campaigners who warn these products could act as a 'gateway' to higher alcohol alternatives.

Official guidance from the UK's chief medical officers says the safest approach is not to drink alcohol at all if pregnant or planning a pregnancy. But there is controversy over exactly what is a safe amount.

Drinks firms and reproductive health campaigners fear the 'nonsensical' labels will hit sales and cause anxiety among pregnant women.

There is currently no legal obligation for firms to put labels warning about the dangers of drinking alcohol while pregnant on their products.

Drinks firms and reproductive health campaigners fear the 'nonsensical' labels will hit sales of alcohol-free drinks and cause anxiety among pregnant women (stock image)

But most follow industry best-practice guidelines, which suggest putting a warning on drinks containing 0.5 per cent alcohol or higher.

Laura Willoughby, founder of Club Soda, which promotes safer drinking, said the idea of adding warnings to drinks with tiny amounts of alcohol was 'nonsensical'.

She said: 'The more illogical and confusing you make guidance, the more likely people are to ignore advice altogether... This move would cause unnecessary alarm and shame parents into cutting out products that will help them avoid full-strength alcohol.'

Clare Murphy, of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, said: 'The increasing policing of women's choices in pregnancy  in the absence of any evidence of harm to a baby  should worry us all... Proposals like this worsen anxiety around pregnancy which can absolutely jeopardise maternal and foetal health.'

A public consultation is due this year.
NSW has recorded its highest daily number of cases with 1,431 new infections and 12 deaths as Gladys Berejiklian warns the figure will skyrocket over the next two weeks.

Speaking at a press conference on Friday, the premier told residents to brace for higher case numbers and an increase in hospitalisations.

'As I have said previously, the best health advice I have is that we anticipate a peak in cases in the next fortnight,' she said. 'The next fortnight is likely to be our worst in terms of the number of cases.'

Despite the grim forecast the premier claimed the state was on track to begin reopening once it hit the 70 per cent vaccination target as soon as mid-October.

'In the past week more than 827,000 people in New South Wales have come forward to get vaccinated,' she said.

'This rolling average we have consistently seen in New South Wales gives us heart and hope that around the middle of October we will see 70 per cent of our adult population fully vaccinated.'

Earlier on Friday the premier told 2GB the state government was working on a road map to lift restrictions and that 'hope is just around the corner'.

NSW has recorded 1,431 new Covid-19 cases and 12 deaths as Gladys Berejiklian warns the worst is yet to come over the next two weeks

Speaking at a press conference on Friday, the premier warned case numbers would rise across the state

'We'll put the road map out so people will know exactly what life means at 70 per cent double dose,' she said.

'We'll have time to put that out, the public will know exactly what they can and can't do. But I don't want people who have chosen not to get vaccinated to whinge that they can't do certain things.'

'At 70 per cent double dose, only the vaccinated will be able to get a meal or go out and do things which others can't do, so I just want to make that very clear.'

Of the new deaths, the majority are residents from south-west Sydney. They include a woman in her 30s, three women in their 70s, a woman in her 80s, a man in his 80s, two men in their 70s, and a woman in her 60s.

A Blue Mountains man in his 90s, a south-east Sydney man in his 70s and a man in his 70s from Sydney's north are also among the new deaths.

The woman in her 30s has been identified as mother-of-four Jamila Yaghi.

Health officials said Ms Yaghi - who was not vaccinated - tested positive to Covid on August 31, but her condition rapidly deteriorated and she died in her home, in southwest Sydney, on Wednesday.

Local MP Julia Finn was among dozens of friends to pay tribute to the 'kind, loyal soul in the days after her death.

Ms Yaghi's family said she suffered a sudden cardiac arrest in her home and could not be revived.

'I'm absolutely shattered and broken,' one friend said after learning of her death.

'[She] had the most amazing heart and soul. She would bring laughter and joy in their lives and would forget her own grief! One of a kind.'

NSW hospitals are bracing for a surge in hospitalisations with September and October tipped to be their busiest months.

'I don't want people to be concerned by that because that is what is in our pandemic plan. That is what we have planned and prepared for,' Ms Berejiklian said.

'I want to make very clear that every day there are models that are presented from within the experts we have in NSW, but also externally from non-government organisations.'

Jamila Yaghi was among 12 people who were reported to have died from the virus during New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian's conference on Friday

Despite the grim forecast the premier claimed the state was on track to begin reopening once it hit the 70 per cent vaccination target as soon as mid-October

'And nobody is going to get the exact figure right, no one is going to get the exact day right, but I have been very open with the information I have.'

Hospitals are equipped with some 2,000 ICU beds and the same amount of ventilators, but frontline staff have warned there mightn't be enough nurses to staff the beds in a crisis.

The premier revealed that intensive care units may need to be expanded to cope with the surge in hospitalisations.

'Our hospital staff have been trained, redeployed, that is why we have taken a pause on some things because when you know you are going to get the worst caseloads or worst hospitalisation, you do have to make amends and pause, but it is only a temporary situation,' she said.

Ms Berejiklian has brushed aside criticism over her plans to reopen schools by October 25.

Reporters told the premier at least five schools a day were closing because of exposure to Covid-19 - even when fewer than five per cent of students were in class.

She was asked how the state government planned to keep schools open at full capacity.

NSW hospitals are bracing for a surge in hospitalisations with September and October tipped to be their busiest months

The premier previously told 2GB that the state government was working on a road map to lift restrictions and that 'hope is just around the corner'

'Firstly, teachers will be vaccinated and there will be a higher rate of vaccination in the adult population,' Ms Berejiklian said.

'We anticipate there will also be vaccination in 12 to 15-year-olds which doesn't exist currently.'

NSW Chief Psychiatrist Murray Wright gave tips on how students could cope with the ongoing lockdown.

'It goes without saying that children are every bit feeling the restrictions that we are all working under as much as us adults,' he said

'Quite often the things which are upsetting to our children are actually things that they have overheard, misunderstood or misinterpreted.'

'It is really important to try and have these conversations and to validate their distress, to acknowledge the things that they are missing out on.'

The new cases come as residents of Sydney's coronavirus hotspots are now allowed to exercise as much as they like outside of a curfew, after a one-hour limit was lifted.

But people living in the NSW local government areas of concern must still be at home by 9pm and cannot start going for jogs or walks before 5am.

Premier Gladys Berejiklian announced the easing of the exercise restriction on Thursday, the same day the state reached 70 per cent single-dose vaccination coverage of people aged 16 and over.

Premier Gladys Berejiklian announced the easing of the exercise restriction on Thursday, the same day the state reached 70 per cent single-dose vaccination coverage of people aged 16 and over

'Our hospital staff have been trained, redeployed, that is why we have taken a pause on some things because when you know you are going to get the worst caseloads or worst hospitalisation, you do have to make amends and pause, but it is only a temporary situation,' Ms Berejiklian said

More than seven million jabs have been administered in NSW to date.

The milestone all but guarantees NSW will soon reach double-dose vaccination for 70 per cent of the population, triggering a wider easing of restrictions for the fully jabbed.

The state reported 1288 new locally acquired COVID-19 cases in the 24 hours to 8pm on Wednesday - a new daily record - and seven deaths.

The death toll from the current outbreak, which began in June, is now at 107.

Ms Berejiklian said on Friday that eased restrictions would come into effect immediately upon hitting the 70 and 80 per cent jab goals.

However, there would be no additional easing of restrictions for Father's Day on Sunday.

Ms Berejiklian also said her government would next week release its detailed plans for the health system as COVID-19 cases accumulate in the coming months.

Premier Gladys Berejiklian announced the easing of the exercise restriction on Thursday, the same day the state reached 70 per cent single-dose vaccination coverage of people aged 16 and over (pictured, police checkpoint on Hume Highway at Chullora)

The milestone all but guarantees NSW will soon reach double-dose vaccination for 70 per cent of the population, triggering a wider easing of restrictions for the fully jabbed

October is likely to be the worst month for COVID-19 hospitalisations.

'Putting it up on the website, making it publicly available so every citizen feels comfortable that not only have we done the work and planning, we have the resources to take care of the public,' Ms Berejiklian said.

While the NSW health system can surge to 2000 ICU beds and an equivalent number of ventilators, unions and frontline healthcare staff have expressed concerns that staffing levels are not sufficient to manage this scenario.

Also from Friday, NSW residents will be able to hold and attend small weddings of up to five guests.

Meanwhile, seven men have been fined more than $30,000 for breaching public health orders by leaving Sydney and canvassing for work in the Lake Macquarie area.

NSW Police spoke with one of the arborists on Thursday after receiving a tip-off.

The man said the group had been working in the region during the week, returning to Greater Sydney on the weekends - including to local government areas of concern.

Greater Sydney has been locked down for almost ten weeks, with stay-at-home orders applying statewide for nearly three weeks

The 27-year-old company owner had a Service NSW permit to leave Sydney and go to regional NSW, but police said it contained untrue and inaccurate information.

Multiple public health order breaches at a Waverley construction site - including failing to wear masks - have also prompted $13,500 in fines.

Elsewhere, five schools in Sydney's west have been closed for deep cleaning and contact tracing after members of the school communities tested positive to COVID-19.

They are Glebe Public School, Pitt Town Public School, Cambridge Park Public High School, Merrylands Public School and Hamden Park Public School.

A social housing unit block in Camperdown in Sydney's inner west and another building in Wollongong have been locked down after some of the residents tested positive.

Greater Sydney has been locked down for almost ten weeks, with stay-at-home orders applying statewide for nearly three weeks.
A mother has issued a warning to the thief who stole her car and took it on a joyride with her five-month-old baby trapped in the back seat.

Police allege a teenage girl stole the white Mazda 3 from the family's garage at their Molendinar home on the Gold Coast at 4.20pm on Thursday.

Katherine had been getting ready to go out for dinner and had left her baby Jordan strapped into the rear child seat when the girl allegedly broke into the car.

Within an hour, baby Jordan was located safe and well inside the stolen vehicle, which was later found dumped at Carrara, 20km from the family home.

Relieved to finally be reunited with her infant son, his mother Katherine warned the young offender 'don't come back', after the brazen theft left the family in anguish.

CCTV footage from a nearby property shows the Mazda following a Toyota Corolla - that was also stolen, with police alleging two teenage girls had been working together.

CCTV footage from a neighbouring property (pictured) was used to help locate baby Jordan who was still inside the Mazda 3 when it was allegedly stolen by a teenage girl

After the family's emotional reunion on Thursday night, Katherine thanked police for acting quickly while issuing a fierce message to the teen offenders.

'Whoever took my son, I swear to God, don't come back,' she told The Courier Mail.

'It's very unsafe what they did, this is wrong.'

'Maybe when you grow up and become a parent you will understand,' she continued.

'I just hope they won't do it again or do it to any other family out there.'

Queensland Police are still searching for the teenage girl responsible and are urging members of the public to come forward with any information.

Anyone who may be able to assist police are urged to contact Crime Stoppers on 1300 333 000.
New 'anti-racism' guidance has been shared 'for white people' working within the national health service in a blog post on an official NHS website.

The NHS Leadership Academy, which prepares staff to take steps into more senior roles within the organisation, shared guidance for employees including recommendations to read up on 'white privilege' and ready themselves for political discussions at work.

In five new tips published by Aishnine Benjamin, the head of equality, diversity and inclusion at the Nursing and Midwifery Council, white members of staff are told they should not be defensive and that 'ignorance isn't an excuse.'

Employees were also advised to listen to the lived experience of staff who come from an ethnic minority background, and to 'work on your empathy'.

In a final word of ambiguous advice, staff are reminded to 'be uncomfortable'.

But some MPs have slammed the advice as typical 'woke nonsense', and warned public funds should not be spent on concepts that 'encourage division and resentment.'

Sir John Hayes, 63, MP for South Holland and the Deepings, says he will be writing to Health Secretary Sajid Javid to request he 'investigate' the advice, the Telegraph reports.

The NHS Leadership Academy, which prepares staff to take steps into more senior roles within the organisation, shared 'anti-racism' guidance 'for white people' working within the national health service

The 1,100 word blog post initially sees white staff singled out for the advice, before expanding to include 'general reads' and research on race in the United Kingdom.

Aishnine Benjamin advises the health service's employees to not 'be defensive' and says 'ignorance isn't an excuse' as she warns black and Asian people will have personal stories of racism.

She goes further to say: 'Work on your empathy. Visualise yourself in the other person's shoes.

'Discrimination is dehumanisation and the only way to see a person as human is to empathise with them.'

Former minister Sir John Hayes MP slammed the guide as 'woke nonsense' and said he will be writing to Health Secretary Sajid Javid to request he 'investigate' the advice

Other suggestions penned by Ms Benjamin ask staff to consider attending a Black history 'walk or tour' and using 'your power and privilege for the benefit of humanity.'

But not everyone has reacted positively to the tips, with former minister Sir John Hayes MP slamming the guide as 'woke nonsense.'

Mr Hayes, who chairs the Common Sense Group of over 50 Tory MPs, had particularly strong criticism for a concept that 'encourages division and resentment'.

He told the Telegraph: 'Of course it is true that the people who are prejudiced and discriminatory are wrong, but the idea of attributing that to one group, defining people as either the oppressors or the oppressed, is deeply insulting to non-white people and just as insulting to white people.

The five 'anti-racism' tips for senior white members of NHS staff In a blog post, Aishnine Benjamin, the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion lead at the Nursing and Midwifery Council, recommended five new anti-racism tips 'for white people' in the NHS. They are: 'Dont be defensive. This isnt personal and its not really about you. Everybody is at a disadvantage when our formal institutions perpetuate inequalities. 'Dont say "Im not political" to excuse yourself from this conversation. Right now, ignorance isnt an excuse. You cant unsee what you have seen. 'You dont have to be vocal but do "listen". Listening means being open to hearing what black and minority ethnic people are saying. Be open to their lived experiences (if they choose to talk about them). You would be hard pushed to find a black or Asian person that doesnt have a personal story of racism. 'Work on your empathy. Visualise yourself in the other persons shoes. Discrimination is dehumanisation and the only way to see a person as human is to empathise with them. 'Be uncomfortable.' Advertisement

'Try telling a lonely, elderly white person who has struggled during the pandemic that theyre privileged.'

Earlier this year, a landmark report urged the UK to look 'beyond race' and warned complaints about 'White Privilege' are counterproductive as it insisted where people live is more important for their life chances.

The Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities said racism is a 'real force' in Britain and must be tackled, while hailing the country's 'model' progress over recent decades.

But it said that 'geography, family influence, socio-economic background, culture and religion have more significant impact on life chances than the existence of racism'.

The report - which was criticised as an 'insult', 'whitewash' and 'disgraceful sham' by Labour MPs - said in terms of overall numbers white boys from low income families were the most disadvantaged.

It also hit out at the 'casual' use of the term 'institutional racism', saying there was little evidence to support the claims.

As well as condemning barbs about 'White Privilege', the report said the term 'racism' was often 'misapplied' to 'account for every observed disparity' - suggesting that firms should 'move away from' unconscious bias training.

Andrea Sutcliffe, the Nursing and Midwifery Council chief executive and registrar, said: 'At the NMC we value the diversity of health and care professionals and the public we serve.

'Were committed to standing against racism or any other form of discrimination and want to support better conversations and understanding of these issues for everyone.

'Thats what this personal blog seeks to do, particularly in sharing a wealth of helpful resources.'
Children will require the written consent of their parents before they receive a Covid vaccine as the Government's independent advisers discuss plans to jab those as young as 12.

Schools will need parents to provide written consent forms giving permission for their children to be jabbed as they prepare to roll out childhood immunisation programmes over the coming months.

The plans, which are being finalised by ministers, would see schools across the UK issuing consent forms to all parents and not vaccinating their children until they have been returned.

It comes after Health Secretary Sajid Javid last week told the NHS to start preparing to jab children as young as 12 as Sage committee scientists warned a 'large' Covid wave was likely to hit schools next month.

School will require parental consent before they vaccinate children under new plans being finalised by ministers

As the Government prepares to roll out vaccines for children, Professor Helen Bedford of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health said school nurses would not go ahead with a vaccine if they knew this was against a parent's wishes.

She told The Times: 'In practice, most [vaccinations] are given by school nurses and it's very unlikely, if you know for certain the parent doesn't want it, that you would go ahead. '

This week Sajid Javid said he was putting plans in place so the country was 'ready to hit the ground running' if the JCVI  the Government's independent advisers  gave the go-ahead to jab younger children.

The NHS has been told to start recruiting and training staff to go into schools to give pupils Covid jabs early next term, if they're approved.

Headteachers will be told to prepare space where the vaccines can be given or be ready to allow pupils time out of lessons to get the jab elsewhere.

It is the clearest signal yet that ministers expect the jab for younger children to be approved imminently.

It came as experts warned the Government to plan for a surge in infections at the end of September, following the return of children from the summer holidays. Their fears were detailed in a document from the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling, Operational sub-group (SPI-M-O).

Earlier this month, campaign groups hit back at the plans to push through the inoculation drive to school pupils, claiming that children could be 'peer-pressured' into making 'inappropriate' decisions.

NHS England bosses have already told trusts to be ready to expand the roll out scientists warned the virus will 'rip through schools' unless pupils are immunised before the new term.

Sajid Javid said he was putting plans in place so the country was 'ready to hit the ground running' if the JCVI gave the go-ahead to jab younger children

People queue to receive a dose of the Covid-19 vaccine at a mobile vaccination centre set up in Newcastle

Scientists have been at war for months over whether to push ahead with expanding the rollout, with some experts claiming it may be better for children to catch Covid and recover to develop natural immunity than to be reliant on protection from vaccines, which studies suggest wanes in months.

Parental rights organisation UsForThem, which was founded in May 2020 following the decision to close schools during lockdown, said it had been flooded with calls from parents worried they would have no say in vaccination.

Molly Kingsley, UsForThem's co-founder, told the Telegraph: 'Yes you have to ask for parental consent, but this begs the question of what is going to happen if consent is withheld?

'This is profoundly murky and it shatters any remaining trust parents have in the Government.

'It strikes me that given the uncertainty about whether a 12-year-old is competent to consent, there are serious liability issues for schools that press ahead with this on school premises.'

School leaders also voiced their concerns about how the rollout would go ahead without parental consent.

Steve Chalke, founder of a trust that runs 50 schools around the country, said children being allowed to override their parents' wishes would be 'highly contentious'.

And general secretary of the National Association of Headteachers Paul Whiteman said the responsibility to choose whether children should be vaccinated should not be in schools' hands.

It comes as figures showed Britain's daily Covid cases have flattened off over the past week, though hospitalisations and deaths are both still rising.

Department of Health chiefs posted another 38,154 positive tests yesterday, which was barely a change on the 38,281 which were recorded last Thursday. Infections were down slightly in England for the ninth day in a row.

Meanwhile, both hospitalisation and fatality figures  which lag several weeks behind cases because of how long infected people can take to fall seriously ill  are continuing on an upwards trend.

Some 178 lab-confirmed victims were added to the Government's official toll, up by a quarter on last week's figure of 140.

And 848 Covid patients were hospitalised on August 29, the most recent day UK-wide figures are available for. This was up by 4 per cent on the previous Sunday.

Given that infections have began to plateau across Britain as a whole over the past week, both hospitalisations and deaths are expected to follow suit soon.

But some scientists fear the return of millions of schoolchildren in England, Wales and Northern Ireland over this week and next will inevitably trigger an explosion in cases.

And 'Professor Lockdown' Neil Ferguson yesterday warned there would be a 'significant surge' in cases and 'to some extent' in hospitalisations because of schoolchildren going back.
Several San Diego families who managed to escape from Afghanistan after finding themselves trapped by the Taliban following President Joe Biden's chaotic US military withdrawal have spoken out about their harrowing ordeals, which for some entailed dodging bullets, being stopped at Taliban checkpoints and assaulted at Kabul airport.

Out of the eight families from the San Diego suburb of El Cajon that had become stranded in Afghanistan last month after traveling there over the summer to visit relatives, seven have been evacuated with the help of the local school district and Republican Rep. Darrell Issa, whose district includes El Cajon.

One family with three children in the El Cajon Unified School District remains trapped in the war-torn country, but Issa said he is working to try to get them out safely.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said about 6,000 Americans, mostly dual US-Afghan citizens, had been evacuated since August 14, but it is estimated that thousands remained.

Several evacuees joined Issa and school district officials to speak to reporters on Thursday for the first time since they returned to California.

Scroll down for video

Mohammad Faizi, center, speaks during a news conference Thursday in El Cajon, California. He and his family were visiting relatives in Afghanistan in August, and were forced to escape as the Taliban seized power

A father named Yousef, who asked that only his first name be used because he still has relatives in Afghanistan who could be at risk, said that when his wife and their four children boarded a July 15 flight in San Diego to attend her brother's wedding in Afghanistan, they were looking forward to a month of family gatherings. It was long overdue - the coronavirus pandemic prevented them from traveling earlier.

Their return ticket was August 15, two days before their children's school year began in El Cajon, California, which has a large refugee population.

Palwasha Faizi, 10, above left, stands behind her sister, Parwana Faizi, 7, and alongside her father, Mohammad Faizi. One of the girls said she was scared and cold while waiting for evacuation

But the Afghan-Americans found themselves dodging gunfire and trying to force their way into the crowds of thousands ringing the airport in Kabul after Afghanistan's government collapsed and the Taliban seized power.

Yousef's wife and children were among eight families from El Cajon who were trapped after US troops raced to evacuate Americans and allies and then left the country. Yousef had stayed in California during his family's trip.

Other parents described running with their kids as gunfire whizzed overhead and being blocked at checkpoints manned by Taliban fighters.

One father, who previously worked as a translator for the US military, said he was hit in the back by the Taliban while trying to enter the airport. With the help of a friend, he was able to find a different way into the airport. After waiting for more than 10 hours, the father managed to approach a US Marine and show him his American passport.

'They grabbed my hands and grabbed my family's hands,' he recalled his escape.

Mohammad Faizi, who attended the press conference with two of his five children, said that he also was stopped at a Taliban roadblock and questioned, reported KUSI.

'"Why are you guys leaving Afghanistan?"' Faizi said the Taliban asked him. '"Why are you guys not staying here with US?" I told them that's our country, that's my nation, we're leaving here.'

Faizi said his family spent days at the airport before finally boarding a plane. One of his daughters said she was scared and cold, reported 10News.

'We went to Uzbekistan, they took us to Uzbekistan, after they took us to Germany, after Germany New York, after New York finally we get home,' Faizi recounted.

A former US military translator said he was hit in the back by the Taliban while waiting to be evacuated from Kabul airport

One of the speakers at the press conference with Rep Issa in El Cajon on Thursday

The parents said they are grateful to be back but their children have suffered nightmares, and they worry about the family that was unable to get out, along with countless others still stuck there, including distant relatives.

Yousef said he felt helpless being in California, thousands of miles away, fearing the life they had built would come to a halt and his wife and children would be trapped in the country ruled by the Taliban. He, his wife and children are all U.S. citizens. They came to the United States on a special immigrant visa after Yousef worked for the U.S. government in Afghanistan.

After they failed to get into the airport on August 15, his wife and kids returned to their relative's home.

Yousef alerted his family from El Cajon that the US Embassy in Kabul was advising people not to go to the airport because of threats.

Eight hours later, suicide bombers set off explosions at the airport, killing 13 US troops and more than 170 others.

Rep Darrell Issa, a Republican, estimated that there are likely some 1,000 Americans still stranded in Afghanistan

In this image provided by the U.S. Marine Corps, evacuees wait to board a Boeing C-17 Globemaster III during an evacuation at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan on Monday

Yousef said Issa's team arranged a time for his family to go to the airport with an escort from U.S. authorities.

'It was like a situation room,' Yousef said of talking to Issa's team while navigating his family through the chaos from afar. 'I was sitting here talking to them. They were sending their locations and stuff like this.'

His family returned home Friday. The first thing he did was take them to IHOP, their favorite restaurant.

He hopes more of those happy moments will overtake the traumatic memories his kids hold. His 7-year-old son, his youngest, has been talking about the violence.

'They are talking about it, about the gunfire, and being scared of the Taliban, but we hope they forget all that' and return to their life as regular American kids, Yousef said.

But he asked people not to forget about so many others, including US citizens, green card holders and Afghans who are at risk because they helped the American government. He held in his hand a folder that he said contained the documents of 30 people who qualified for a special immigrant visa and should be in the United States but are still in Afghanistan, desperate to escape.

President Biden has said between 100 and 200 Americans were left behind when US troops completed their withdrawal August 31, many of them dual citizens. The State Department has given no estimate for others who hope to leave Afghanistan, including US green card holders and people who received the special visas because they helped Americans during the 20-year war.

Issa said on Thursday he believes the number to be much higher for US citizens and the others.

In this August 24 photo, families walk towards their flight during ongoing evacuations at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul

A U.S. Navy sailor fixes the broken shoe of a young Afghan evacuees after disembarking a flight from Kabul on arrival at Naval Air Station Rota, Spain, on Monday

He put the number of people who wished to get out of Afghanistan but were unable to at about 1,000, including 250 that his office has been in direct contact with and who are currently in hiding.

Many of the families he helped get back to California in the past week are green card holders. Some are US citizens.

'We're delighted to have these kids back in school and their parents united, but we also know that there's a lot more work to do,' Issa said.

More than 30 California children are known to be stuck in Afghanistan, including 27 students from San Juan Union School District, and three from the Sacramento School District.

The U.S. ended its evacuation efforts and withdrew its forces on Monday.
Double election loser Neil Kinnock will today come out to bat for Sir Keir Starmer.

Lord Kinnock  who lost to both Margaret Thatcher and John Major  said Sir Keir had the intelligence, maturity, resilience and courage to be a success as the partys leader.

But he warned Sir Keir must do more to restore relevance to Labours message, which has been battered by Jeremy Corbyn, if he wants to win an election.

Lord Kinnock  who lost to both Margaret Thatcher and John Major  said Sir Keir had the intelligence, maturity, resilience and courage to be a success as the partys leader

The endorsement is likely to be seen as a sign of desperation for Sir Keir, whose party is still trailing the Conservatives in the polls.

Lord Kinnock will urge Labour members to back Sir Keir at an event today following his comments, which appear in a foreword to a report by the Labour in Communications network into how the party needs to modernise to win the next general election.

It calls for engagement with big business, a greater role for mayors such as Andy Burnham and an end to internal issues.

But Tory MP Richard Holden said: If Sir Keir can only rely on Lord Kinnock for support, then it shows how divided and backward Labour remain.
Scott Morrison has slammed the Taliban as 'sickening' after a spokesman said Australian soldiers died in vain in Afghanistan.

Forty-one Australians lost their lives during the 20-year war in Afghanistan which began after the 9/11 terror attack on the World Trade Centre.

In an interview with 9News after the Taliban regained control of the country, spokesman Suhail Shaheen said Aussie troops had died 'in vain'.

Scott Morrison has slammed the Taliban as 'sickening' after a spokesman said Australian soldiers died in vain in Afghanistan

'They died in vain, they died in our country, they died occupying our country,' he said.

'If my country's forces go invade your country, occupy your country and they die, what would you say?

'Would you say they come here for something illegal? It was their right to invade your country? The same applies to my country, Afghanistan.'

Mr Morrison said the comments were offensive and false.

'It is sickening and untrue but I'm not surprised about a dishonourable statement from the Taliban,' he said on Friday.

'They should know that the world is watching them'.

The Prime Minister also said the Taliban, a radical Islamist group, would have to earn Australia's trust.

'At at this stage, the account is in deficit with any trust you could put in the Taliban,' he said.

Major Tim Glover, part of the 1st Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment guarding Kabul Airport last week while the West evacuated troops and citizens from Afghanistan

Earlier this week Foreign Minister Marise Payne also slammed the comments.

'I find that repugnant,' she told 2GB radio.

'I find those sorts of statements, which are dismissive of the contribution that Australia in this case, and the international community has endeavoured to make in Afghanistan over so many years, deeply disappointing.

'We will ultimately judge the Taliban and the regime it establishes on their actions, not just their words. There is a requirement for them to deliver in terms of the future of Afghanistan.'

Australia joined the war in Afghanistan in November 2001 after the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York, the worst terror attack in history.

The Taliban was accused of allowing terror group Al-Qaeda, which carried out the attack, to flourish.

The US-led coalition swiftly deposed the Taliban government before year's end, but western troops had stayed for 20 years since, dealing with lingering pockets of resistance and trying to train the local army.

At the peak of the war, Australia had 1,500 troops in Afghanistan and in total 39,000 Australian Defence Force personnel have been deployed on Operations SLIPPER and HIGHROAD.

Since the end of 2013, Australia has only maintained a small training force in Afghanistan rather than active combat troops.

In February the US said it would withdraw by May. The Taliban reclaimed control from the Afghan government over the weekend.
A black man who received a multi-million dollar settlement after being shot and paralyzed by a Florida deputy in 2013 has died, his attorney revealed Thursday.

Dontrell Stephens died Sunday from complications associated with his paralysis, said Jack Scarola, who represented the 28-year-old man in his civil suit against the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office.

Stephens had been hospitalized for three weeks before his death, dealing with bed sores and other issues, Scarola said. The lawyer did not give any other details on the cause of death.

Stephens was paralyzed from the waist down after being shot by Adams Lin, an Asian American deputy who claimed the then-20-year-old man had a gun as he was being handcuffed. Instead it was a cell phone Stephens was holding.

Attorney Jack Scarola says Dontrell Stephens (pictured), a Black man who received a multi-million dollar settlement after being shot, paralyzed by a Florida deputy in 2013, died Sunday

Palm Beach County Sheriffs Deputy Sgt. Adams Lin leaves the U.S. District Court in downtown Fort Lauderdale on Jan. 28, 2016. Lin shot and paralyzed Dontrell Stephens in September 2013

'Dontrell had a very sad and difficult life,' Scarola said.

'I hope that as a consequence of the resolution of his case that he had some relief. But whatever relief he had was very short-lived.'

A federal civil jury in 2016 had awarded Stephens $22 million after he sued, an amount Palm Beach Sheriff Ric Bradshaw refused to pay.

After years of negotiations, Bradshaw had offered Stephens $4.5 million, but the state Legislature went $1.5 million above that in 2020 and awarded a $6 million payment, which was approved by the governor.

Deputy Adams Lin pursued Stephens, then 20, in his patrol car after Stephens rode his bicycle across a busy road through traffic. Videotape from Lin's dashboard camera showed that when Stephens saw Lin behind him as he rode into a duplex's parking lot, he slowed his bike and hopped off.

Lin, an Asian American, testified at the 2016 trial that he thought Stephens was trying to run away and jumped out of his car to cut him off. The video shows that after Stephens hopped off his bike, he walked toward Lin.

The deputy is out of sight of the dash cam and Stephens, who was unarmed, is mostly out of sight when Lin opens fire four seconds after Stephens jumped off the bike. Stephens falls back into view with Lin close behind, still firing.

The jury took 3.5 hours to side with Stephens, ruling that Lin had violated Stephens' civil rights

Deputy Adams Lin pursued Stephens, then 20, in his patrol car after Stephens rode his bicycle across a busy road through traffic

Stephens arrives at the US Federal Courthouse in Fort Lauderdale on Feb. 1, 2016. Lin testified that 'the totality of circumstances' led him to believe he had drawn a gun on Sept. 13, 2013

Lin testified at the 2016 civil trial that Stephens put his left hand behind his back and flashed a dark object that he thought was a gun. The dash cam video, however, showed Stephens had his phone in his right hand and that his left hand was empty.

Stephens' attorneys argued that Lin must have pulled his gun almost immediately after leaving his car as he could not have opened fire so quickly otherwise.

The jury took three and a half hours to side with Stephens, ruling that Lin had violated Stephens' civil rights.

Prosecutors cleared Lin of criminal wrongdoing and he remains employed by the Palm Beach Sheriff's Office.
Elon Musk has declined to comment on Texas' restrictive new abortion law after Governor Greg Abbott said that the tech mogul supported the state's 'social policies.'

On Thursday, Abbott appeared on CNBC and insisted that companies would not quit the state over the controversial new law - which bans abortions once a heart beat can be detected, typically around six weeks.

He said: 'Elon had to get out of California because in part of the social policies in California. Elon consistently tells me that he likes the social policies in the state of Texas.'

The Tesla and SpaceX CEO - who moved from California to Texas last year - later tweeted a response to a clip of the interview, but stopped short of commenting directly on the law.

Musk wrote: 'In general, I believe government should rarely impose its will upon the people, and, when doing so, should aspire to maximize their cumulative happiness.

'That said, I would prefer to stay out of politics.'

Texas' new abortion law is the most restrictive reproductive rights legislation in the country.

Musk tweeted after Gov. Greg Abbott claimed that the billionaire approved of the state's social policies. Musk moved to Texas from California last year

Elon Musk declined to comment on Texas' restrictive abortion law on Thursday but hinted at his opposition of the heartbeat bill

Gov. Abbott said 'Elon consistently tells me that he likes the social policies in the state of Texas' when insisting that Texas' conservative social politics will drive business to the state

The law, known as the 'Texas Heartbeat Act', bans abortion once a fetal heartbeat can be detected - before many women even know they are pregnant.

It makes no exceptions for rape or incest and allows Texans report people, including Uber drivers, who help or take women to get abortions. The only exemption is if there is a danger to the woman's health.

In a highly unusual twist, enforcement will be done by private citizens, who can sue anyone they believe is violating the law.

Abbott spoke with CNBC on Thursday insisting that the law, which comes along with a recent series of polarizing bills, will not drive business away from Texas.

'You need to understand that there's a lot of businesses and a lot of Americans who like the social positions that the state of Texas is taking,' Abbott said.

He continued, 'This is not slowing down businesses coming to the state of Texas at all. In fact it is accelerating the process of businesses coming to Texas.'

Musk has already begun expanding his operations in his new home state.

The move from California is expected to save him billions of dollars in taxes as Texas has no personal income tax.

Meanwhile California has the highest personal income taxes in the country.

Musk has not shared his thoughts on politics but appears to contradict Abbott's claim that he 'likes the social positions that the state of Texas is taking.'

According to OpenSecrets.org, Musk donated to three anti-abortion Republican lawmakers and four Democratic lawmakers who support abortion rights, giving each $2,800 in 2020.

The Supreme Court formally refused to block the Texas law on Wednesday, less than a day after the law took effect in the southern state.

While similar laws have passed in a dozen Republican-led conservative states, all had been stymied in the courts.

The justices in a 5-4 vote denied an emergency request by abortion and women's health providers for an injunction barring enforcement of the new law which President Biden said 'blatantly violates Roe v. Wade'.

The law is the most dramatic restriction on abortion rights in the United States since the high court's landmark decision legalized abortion across the country in 1973.

Abbott signed the bill in May. It prohibits abortions once a fetal heartbeat can be detected, which is typically in the first six weeks and before most women suspect they are pregnant

University of Texas women rally at the Texas Capitol to protest the law on Wednesday

The university women gathered in Austin, Texas to decry the restrictive abortion ban

'In reaching this conclusion, we stress that we do not purport to resolve definitively any jurisdictional or substantive claim in the applicants' lawsuit. In particular, this order is not based on any conclusion about the constitutionality of Texas's law, and in no way limits other procedurally proper challenges to the Texas law, including in Texas state courts,' the court said in the unsigned order.

The five conservative justices backed the law Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Stephen Breyer, Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Justice Elena Kagan dissented.

Liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor called the court's order 'stunning,' saying her colleagues had 'opted to bury their head in the sand' over a 'flagrantly unconstitutional law engineered to prohibit women from exercising their constitutional rights.'

Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Stephen Breyer, Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Justice Elena Kagan dissented. The other justices - all appointed by Republican presidents - allowed the law to stand. From left: Justices Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh, Clarence Thomas, Elena Kagan, John Roberts, Neil Gorsuch, Stephen Breyer, Amy Coney Barrett, and Sonia Sotomayor

Texas state Rep. Donna Howard, center at lectern, stands with fellow lawmakers in the House Chamber as she opposes a bill introduced that would ban abortions as early as six weeks (May 2021)

Texas lawmakers wrote the law to evade federal court review by allowing private citizens to bring civil lawsuits in state court against anyone involved in an abortion, other than the patient.

Other abortion laws are enforced by state and local officials, with criminal sanctions possible.

After a federal appeals court refused to allow a prompt review of the law before it took effect, the measure's opponents sought Supreme Court review.

The law bans abortions once a fetal heartbeat is detected - sparking some women to scramble for 11th hour terminations before midnight.

The legislation, signed by Republican Governor Greg Abbott in May, prohibits abortions once a fetal heartbeat can be detected, which is typically in the first six weeks and before most women even know they're pregnant.

The law also allows private citizens, rather than government officials, to enforce the law by suing anyone involved in the procedure from an abortion clinic to someone driving a woman to a procedure appointment.

Biden promised to fight for women's constitutional rights enshrined under Roe v Wade.

'The Texas law will significantly impair women's access to the health care they need, particularly for communities of color and individuals with low incomes,' the president said.

He added: 'And, outrageously, it deputizes private citizens to bring lawsuits against anyone who they believe has helped another person get an abortion, which might even include family members, health care workers, front desk staff at a health care clinic, or strangers with no connection to the individual.'

The law forced many women throughout the state to flock abortion clinics to get the procedure done, with some only finding out they were pregnant in the past week.

Biden vowed that his administration would protect women's abortion rights, but he made no mention of the challenge at the Supreme Court, amid fears by activists that a more conservative bench was poised to uphold further restrictions on abortions.

Abortion providers who asked the Supreme Court to step in said the law would rule out 85 percent of abortions in Texas and force many clinics to close.

Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney, chairwoman of the Committee on Oversight and Reform, criticized the court's inaction.

'In refusing to intervene last night, the Supreme Court tipped the scales of justice in favor of one of the most draconian state abortion bans in history,' she said.

'[The law] strips away abortion access for most Texans.

'The Supreme Court has put the health and safety of Texans  especially people with lower incomes and people of color  in jeopardy.'
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis appealed a judge's ruling that said he exceeded his gubernatorial authority by barring schools from imposing mask mandates.

On Thursday, the governor's lawyers took their case to the 1st District Court of Appeal in Tallahassee.

Despite Florida's high infection and hospitalization rates, DeSantis has staunchly opposed any mask requirements and wants the appeals court to reverse last week's decision by Leon County Circuit Judge John Cooper.

Cooper's decision essentially gave Florida's 67 school boards the power to impose a student mask mandate without parental consent.

At least 10 Florida school boards voted to defy DeSantis, but Cooper's ruling was automatically stayed after the governor filed his appeal.

In his ruling last week, Cooper agreed with a group of parents who claimed in a lawsuit that DeSantis' order is unconstitutional and cannot be enforced.

Earlier this week, DeSantis expressed confidence that he will win the appeal and said the Parents Bill of Rights law gives parents the authority to oversee their children's education and health.

Cooper found, however, that the Bill of Rights law exempts government actions that are needed to protect public health and are reasonable and limited in scope - such as masking students to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in schools.

'It doesn't require that a mask mandate must include a parental opt-out at all,' Cooper said in an oral ruling Friday.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (pictured here on August 18 speaking at the opening of a monoclonal antibody site in Pembroke Pines, Florida) appealed last week's ruling that barred him from mandating schools allow parents to decide if their children should wear a mask

Leon County Circuit Judge John Cooper (left) ruled last week that DeSantis exceeded his gubernatorial authority by barring schools from imposing mask mandates

Those in favor of wearing masks say they're essential for children's safety

Anti-mask parents argue the government is overreaching by forcing their children to mask up

Forcing students to wear masks in schools has been a flashpoint for debate and pitted parents against each other during school board meetings throughout the state.

DeSantis and state education officials have threatened to impose financial penalties on school boards that adopt a mask requirement without a provision allowing parents to opt out.

So far, they have moved to withhold salaries for school board members in Alachua and Broward counties, two of the 13 school boards that represent over half of Florida's 2.8 million students.

Both school boards voted in favor mask mandates, and Broward County School Board told the Department of Education on Tuesday that it won't back down on its mask requirement.

Its policy, like that of most other districts, gives parents a medical opt-out for students.

The board said giving parents the unlimited right to send their kids to school without a mask would infringe on the rights of other parents who want their children to be safe.

In response, DeSantis said, 'Ultimately, we are just trying to stand with the parents. We think it's important that they are given the ability to opt out.'

Meanwhile, in Sarasota County, where another school mask mandate went into effect on Monday, hundreds of parents were seen lining up at a chiropractor to collect medical exemption forms for their children.

'We were in and out, came in, signed a clipboard and handed a sheet,' parent Paulina Testerman told WJBF-TV of the scene at Twin Palms Chiropractic.

'Nobody asked to see our children. The forms were pre-signed, there was a stack behind the counter, and they were just passed out.'

Chiropractor Dan Busch spoke with the ABC affiliate outside his attorney's office, saying that he had only provided exemptions to students and parents he met with personally.

'This is not a political thing. I am not an anti-mask person or an anti-vax person, but I am a pro-freedom, pro-choice person,' said Busch.

Busch said that any 'licensed health care physician' is qualified to provide medical exemptions, including chiropractors.

Florida health officials reported new data to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicating that the state last month experienced its deadliest peak in daily death rates since the start of the pandemic

The latest data indicates that case numbers peaked in August but are now on the downward swing

The mask debate comes at a time when the Sunshine state has been ravaged by the COVID-19 'Delta' variant.

By mid-August, more than 21,000 new cases were being added per day, compared to about 8,500 a month earlier.

The state said 16,820 people were hospitalized over the last week, down from a record of more than 17,000 the week before.

Florida Department of Health also reported its deadliest peak in daily death rates since the start of the pandemic, surpassing previous coronavirus surges in the state, according to federal data published Thursday.

Data provided by the state to CDC showed that at least eight days in August produced more daily deaths than during the last peak of the pandemic in August 2020.

The typical lag times in the reporting of deaths means the true toll of the pandemic can take weeks to emerge.

The data became available on Thursday after the state reported to the CDC more than 1,338 new deaths that occurred over several days or weeks.

The figures show the seven-day average in daily deaths reached 244 last month, as compared with their highest previous rate of 227 in August 2020.

Part of the issue is the low vaccination rate. About 63.2 percent of eligible Florida residents have received at least one dose of the vaccine, while 74.5 percent of eligible Americans have received the vaccine.

Florida has reported just under 3.3 million cases of COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic

Overall, 45,909 people have died in Florida, according to the CDC numbers

As of late August, Florida reported that 63.2 percent of the population has received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. Overall, 52.2 percent of the population is fully vaccinated

Pro-mask parents say masks are essential for children's safety, while anti-mask parents argue the government is overreaching by forcing their children to mask up.

DeSantis, who is eyeing a possible presidential run in 2024, has dismissed the recommendation from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that people wear masks.

In particular, he contends that masks are less essential for young people and carry some risks of their own for children.

But Cooper said the state's medical experts who testified during the trial that masking is ineffective in preventing COVID-19's spread are in a distinct minority among doctors and scientists.

He also said that while DeSantis frequently states that a Brown University study concluded masks are ineffective, the study's authors wrote that no such conclusion should be drawn.
An unvaccinated mother-of-four from southwest Sydney has died in her home just one day after she was diagnosed with Covid-19 - as case numbers hit another record high in NSW and 12 people died.

Jamila Yaghi one of the 12 who died with the virus in the 24 hours to Friday morning.

New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian announced the death toll in her press conference on Friday morning, and warned case numbers have yet to peak.

There are 979 in NSW hospitals with Covid, with 160 in intensive care, and 63 on ventilation.

'We anticipate a peak in cases in the next fortnight,' she said. 'The next fortnight is likely to be our worst in terms of the number of cases.'

Health officials said Ms Yaghi - who was not vaccinated - tested positive to Covid on August 31, but her condition rapidly deteriorated and she died of a heart attack in her home in south-west Sydney on Wednesday.

The Pfizer vaccine is available to any person over 16 who lives in one of the 12 local government areas of concern, or in the Sydney or Randwick LGAs.

Ms Yaghi told friends she had been feeling unwell for several days prior to her death, but they were still shocked to learn she deteriorated so quickly

Local MP Julia Finn was among dozens of friends to pay tribute to the 'kind, loyal soul in the days after her death.

Ms Yaghi's loved ones said she suffered a sudden cardiac arrest in her home and could not be revived.

'I'm absolutely shattered and broken,' one friend said after learning of her death.

'[She] had the most amazing heart and soul. She would bring laughter and joy in their lives and would forget her own grief! One of a kind.'

Ms Yaghi told friends she had been feeling unwell for several days prior to her death, but they were still shocked to learn she deteriorated so quickly.

Friends have recalled she often volunteered her time at a local community kitchen and was 'always helping others'.

Jamila Yaghi was among 12 people who were reported to have died with the virus during New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian's conference on Friday

Despite Ms Berejikilan's grim forecast of soaring case numbers, the state remains on track to reopen once the 70 per cent vaccination target is met in mid-October.

'In the past week more than 827,000 people in New South Wales have come forward to get vaccinated,' the premier said.

'This rolling average we have consistently seen in New South Wales gives us heart and hope that around the middle of October we will see 70 per cent of our adult population fully vaccinated.'

Of the new deaths, the majority are residents from south-west Sydney. They include a woman in her 70s, a woman in her 80s, a man in his 80s, two men in their 70s, two women in their 70s, and a woman in her 60s.

The premier previously told 2GB that the state government was working on a road map to lift restrictions and that 'hope is just around the corner'

Ms Yaghi's loved ones revealed she suffered a sudden cardiac arrest in her home and could not be revived

A Blue Mountains man in his 90s, a south-east Sydney man in his 70s and a man in his 70s from Sydney's north have also died with the virus.

NSW authorities worries about bush Covid surge - with 53 cases in 24h By Hannah Ryan for Australian Associated Press Daily COVID-19 case numbers have risen significantly in western NSW, with health authorities intensifying their calls for people to be tested. The Western NSW Local Health District recorded 53 new cases in the 24 hours to 8pm on Thursday, more than double the number seen the day before. Some 31 of those cases were in the town of Dubbo, which has had 537 cases. The Bourke local government area had 11 cases - its highest-ever tally - split between the town of Bourke and Enngonia, 100km away. Enngonia had just 148 residents at the time of the 2016 census, 45 per cent of whom were Indigenous. The Bathurst area had six new cases and Walgett two cases. Case numbers rose by seven in the majority-Aboriginal town of Wilcannia, in the state's far west. Some 87 people have now tested positive in a town whose population is under 1000. Health authorities are concerned that testing numbers are too low and there are cases not being picked up. "Testing remains pretty much where it has been, around about 4000 tests, which we know isn't really enough," Dubbo's local MP, Dugald Saunders, said on Friday. "We know that people who should be getting tested probably aren't." Nine of Dubbo's new cases were infectious in the community for at least two days, Western NSW LHD chief executive Scott McLachlan says. Mr McLachlan is calling on residents to take part in "Super Swab Saturday" and get tested on what's set to be a gloomy day of weather. Three residents of an aged care facility in Dubbo have tested positive after a staff member unknowingly worked while infectious. A second worker has also been infected. Of the staff at St Mary's Villa, 22 are fully vaccinated and 15 are partially vaccinated. Twenty-three residents are fully vaccinated and 12 are partially no vaccinated. There is no staff member or resident who hasn't received a dose. The residents are being cared for in the facility. In Wilcannia, four rapid testing machines will arrive over the weekend to help improve testing turnaround times. The machines can process 64 swabs a day on site, without needing to be transported to Broken Hill. Wilcannia's showground is now home to a camp for up to 70 workers from the RFS, army and police helping with the vaccination and health effort. Thirty mobile vehicles will be stationed at the Victory Park Caravan Park to allow people to isolate. Telstra has brought in a "Cell on Wheels" to Wilcannia to improve connectivity for the town as it endures this crisis. The number of people in hospital in the Western NSW LHD has also increased. Twenty patients are now in hospital. Six are in intensive care in Dubbo, and three are ventilated. Vaccination rates, however, are "skyrocketing" in Dubbo, Deputy Premier John Barilaro said on Friday. "They are doubling their first doses in over a week." The district has administered more than 16,000 doses in its vaccine hubs in the past few weeks, Mr McLachlan said. Elsewhere in NSW, 10 new cases were identified in the Hunter New England district. A case in the Upper Hunter LGA turned out to be a false alarm as the person actually lived in Sydney. The Illawarra had 13 new cases, including nine in Wollongong, two in Shellharbour and one in the Shoalhaven. There were eight cases on the Central Coast. Rural and regional NSW is in lockdown until at least September 10. AAP Advertisement

The death toll from the current outbreak, which began on June 16, is now at 107.

Ms Finn was disheartened to hear that Guildford and Merrylands remain areas of greatest concern and requested additional resources for the area from NSW Health.

The local politician said residents particularly need contact tracers to swiftly identify members of the community who require a test and prioritise their results to stem the spread of the virus.

'I dont want to see us left behind stuck in lockdown or with rolling business closures with continuing exposure to a deadly disease,' she said.

Medical staff have been warned to brace for a surge in hospitalisations in September and October.

The new cases come as residents in Sydney's coronavirus hotspots are now allowed to exercise as much as they like outside of a curfew, after the one-hour workout limit was lifted.

The highly criticised 9pm to 5am curfew will remain in place in local government areas of concern.

She lived in Guildford until recently, and local MP Julia Finn was among dozens of friends to pay tribute to the 'kind, loyal soul in the days after her death

The premier announced the easing of exercise restrictions on Thursday, the same day the state reached 70 per cent single-dose vaccinations in people aged 16 and over.

More than seven million jabs have been administered in NSW to date.

The milestone all but guarantees NSW will reach double-dose vaccination for 70 per cent of the population, triggering a wider easing of restrictions for the fully jabbed.

Ms Berejiklian also said her government would next week release a detailed plan to help the health system cope with eased restrictions and expected higher cases.

Hospitals are equipped with some 2,000 ICU beds and the same amount of ventilators, but frontline staff have warned there mightn't be enough nurses to staff the beds in a crisis.

Greater Sydney has been locked down for ten weeks, with stay-at-home orders applying statewide for nearly three weeks.
Queensland's chief health officer has snapped at reporters during a tense Covid-19 press conference in which she was asked what an acceptable number of deaths would be for borders to re-open, and whether she was going beyond her role by taking political decisions.

An admittedly 'upset' Jeanette Young fronted the podium at Friday's daily Coronavirus update after a week when the Palaszczuk government she advises had expressed reluctance to re-open borders at a 70-80 per cent vaccination rate as agreed by national cabinet.

The tense conference saw the chief officer appear irritated as a reporter grilled her on what threshold - as measured by deaths - she would recommend as sufficient to allow borders to re-open.

'Can you please remember who I am,' snapped Dr Young.

'I'm not comfortable with any deaths that are preventable. So that's why I want every single Queenslander who can be vaccinated to get vaccinated because that is the best protection, and that's why I've spent the last 19 months doing everything I can.

'That is what I've just spent the last 16 years of my life working on. So I don't want to see any deaths.'

Queensland's chief health officer Dr Jeanette Young (pictured) lashed out at reporters during the state's daily Covid-19 press conference on Friday

When Dr Young was accused of making political decisions instead of merely giving health advice, she fired back.

'I'm not making political decisions,' she said.

'I am making ... sorry you've got me quite upset now ... I do not want to see any death of a Queenslander that is preventable, whether it be due to smoking, due to obesity, due to high alcohol intake, due to accidents that could have been prevented due to road trauma.'

The Palaszczuk government had come into conflict with federal leaders and other states this week after the premier refused to commit to national plans for all state borders to re-open once vaccination coverage hits 70 per cent.

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk was hesitant about opening borders at 70 per cent, saying modelling indicated there would be 2,000 deaths a month from Covid at that vaccination threshold, and it should be higher.

The Palaszczuk government has been caught in a bitter back and forth with federal leaders over when its safe to reopen borders refusing to commit to national cabinets 70 per cent vaccination target (pictured, Queensland health workers)

Amongst the back and forth between state and federal government's Dr Young was asked if 2,000 per month was too many, and what would be the acceptable threshold for opening borders.

'When every single Queenslander has been given the opportunity to be vaccinated,' she replied.

'So it is up to individuals to choose whether they wish to protect themselves, and people make choices about a whole range of things every single day.

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk (pictured) denies 'scaremongering' about reopening the country to COVID-19

'So once every single Queenslander who is part of the vaccine rollout is eligible, which today is some 12 to 15 and all 16-plus, once they've had that opportunity, of course, then we make decisions.

'But I would not want to see the virus coming into Queensland without mitigating factors until that's happened.'

Queensland's vaccination coverage, which is currently 51.6 per cent for one dose and 32.9 per cent fully vaccinated, is the second lowest in the country.

Palaszczuk has signaled she could delay borders reopening once vaccination coverage is met due to her fresh concerns about unvaccinated children (pictured, residents talk to each other over Queensland's border barriers)

The Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk denies 'scaremongering' about the threat of Covid at the 70 per cent level, and said national cabinet was awaiting modelling on hospital capacity and children.

Ms Palaszczuk said the Doherty Institute modelling upon which the national re-opening plan was based showed that testing, tracing, isolation and quarantine measures as well as potential lockdowns will still be needed to contain the virus going forward.

She says Prime Minister Scott Morrison is seeking new modelling on the impact of opening up on unvaccinated children 12 and under.

She denies scaremongering about kids, who have a minuscule likelihood of becoming seriously ill from Covid, and said she wanted national cabinet to have an 'educated and responsible conversation' about the topic.

'This is about protecting Queenslanders, and having a conversation about what will we need to do,' Ms Palaszczuk told reporters on Friday.

'There's measures that other countries are putting in place. For example if the Delta variant is going rampant through a particular region or a city, the children in primary school wearing masks as a precaution. So what do we need to do.'

She said new modelling on hospital capacity was set to be presented to national cabinet on Friday afternoon.
Australia will get 4million doses of the Covid-19 Pfizer vaccine from the UK in a landmark swap deal negotiated by Scott Morrison and Boris Johnson.

Mr Morrison said the doses were 'on the tarmac' ready to leave London and would be distributed in the next few weeks, doubling the amount of vaccines arriving in Australia this month.

'This means from Downing Street to Down Under, we are doubling down on what the Pfizer doses are here in Australia,' Mr Morrison said before later adding 'thanks Boris, I owe you a beer'.

On Thursday Daily Mail Australia revealed Mr Morrison was on the cusp of clinching his third international vaccine deal after previous agreements with Poland and Singapore but was not expecting any help from US President Joe Biden.

Australia will get 4million doses of the Pfizer vaccine in a swap deal with the UK. Pictured: Scott Morrison and Boris Johnson in the UK in June

The vaccines will be distributed between the states and territories on a per capita basis and in return Australia will send 4million Pfizer doses to London in December to assist with the UK's booster program.

'It is a good deal because it makes the most of the doses that they have now, which we need. And the doses that we will have later that they will need,' Mr Morrison said.

'So this is just a good deal and it's a good deal between mates.

'I want to thank very, very much Prime Minister Johnson. He and I started discussing this some time ago,' Mr Morrison added.

'I want to thank him for his personal commitment to this. And his great friendship with Australia.'

The Prime Minister said the deal was also helped by his friendship with UK health minister Sajid Javid who was promoted to the role in June.

Mr Javid's predecessor Matt Hancock was sacked after he was caught on camera having an affair at work with his glamorous aide.

'I want to thank also health minister Sajid Javid who I have known for some time... and his ability to progress with Greg Hunt, our minister, and I thank Greg and all of his team,' Mr Morrison said.

'There's been some very late-night discussions and negotiations and legal work taking place, especially over the course of the past week, to bring this to conclusion.'

Luka Wain, 17, (right) and 15 year old brother Darcy receive their Pfizer vaccinations at the Royal Exhibition Building COVID19 Vaccination Hub in Melbourne on Thursday

Last month the government bought 1million Pfizer doses from Poland and secured 500,000 from Singapore in a swap deal.

The latest deal with the UK means there will now be 10million MRNA vaccine doses entering Australia this month, including 9million Pfizer and 1million Moderna in the second half of September.

'This means that every Australian will be able to come forward as early as possible to be vaccinated if they have not yet,' Health Minister Greg Hunt said.

So far 36 per cent of over 16s are fully vaccinated and 60 per cent have had one dose.

The announcement came two hours before a national cabinet meeting in which the state premiers planned to discuss beefing up hospital capacity to deal with increased numbers of Covid patients.

New South Wales recorded and all-time high 1,4131 cases on Friday and 12 deaths as Premier Gladys Berejiklian warned of higher numbers in coming weeks.

'The worst number of cases is likely to occur in the next fortnight,' she told reporters.

'Because after that time the number of vaccinations we've put into the community, especially in those local government areas of concern, will start having effect.'

On Friday morning Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk insisted she would stick to the national re-opening plan which allows Australia to live with Covid-19 when 70 per cent of over 16s are vaccinated.

She had previously come under fire for raising fears that children under 12, who cannot be vaccinated due to their age, would be vulnerable if she opened her borders - even though health experts say children normally only suffer a mild illness.

The Prime Minister has been scrambling to secure extra Pfizer from allies around the world after only initially ordering 10million doses in November last year.

Police patrol Sydney's Bondi Beach in 22C heat on Friday morning

America is described as Australia's most important ally but President Joe Biden has not handed Canberra a single Covid-19 vaccine.

The President has already donated more than 110million vaccines around the world - including 2.5million to Canada and 3.5million to Argentina - but his focus is on saving lives, protecting America's neighbours and assisting poor countries, meaning wealthy Australia is way down his donation list.

Shadow Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong said it was embarrassing that Australia had to ask allies for help.

'The fact that a country with Australia's resources has to go around asking other countries for vaccines is another sign that this is the biggest government failure in memory,' she told Daily Mail Australia.

'It all comes back to Mr Morrison doing too little, too late  failing to order enough vaccines last year - and it's Australians paying the price.'

The government initially ordered 10million Pfizer vaccines before upping this to 40million due to changing health advice around AstraZeneca.

Australia has ordered 85million Pfizer vaccines to arrive from early next year to act as booster shots.
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Four nursing home residents in Louisiana died and 14 were hospitalized after being evacuated during Hurricane Ida to a warehouse where conditions were later determined to be unhealthy and unsafe, state officials have said.

A total of 843 residents from seven nursing facilities - all operated by one owner - were moved to the Waterbury Companies warehouse in the town of Independence before Ida made landfall, Louisiana Department of Health spokesperson Aly Neel said.

Police said the warehouse had been set up to receive 300 to 350 people.

Neel said the health department received reports of people lying on mattresses on the floor, not being fed or changed and not being socially distanced to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, which is currently ravaging the state.

Details of the four senior residents' deaths are unknown due to state health inspectors being turned away from examining conditions at the warehouse facility

Fourteen nursing home residents needed hospitalization after staying in a poorly-conditioned warehouse during Hurricane Ida

The conditions of the warehouse where more than 800 senior residents stayed during Hurricane Ida were determined to be unhealthy and unsafe

Senior residents lying on air mattresses on the floor inside Waterbury warehouse, while other reports included that measures weren't put in place for social distancing

This comes as Louisiana was battered by the Category four hurricane which left at least 12 people dead, the New York Times reported.

President Joe Biden confirmed he is making a trip to the ravaged state on Friday to meet with governor Edwards and survey the damage.

'Governor Edwards encouraged me to come and assured me that the visit will not disrupt recovery efforts on the ground,' Biden said. 'That's what I wanted to be sure of. My message to everyone affected is: We're all in this together. The nation is here to help.'

Ida has left Louisiana in shambles, with 825,000 homes and businesses in the state currently without power, according to outage tracker PowerOutage.US

Many of those homes and business are expected to remain without power for weeks, CNN reported.

Louisiana is also experiencing a gas shortage with more than half the gas stations in Baton Rogue and New Orleans without fuel and over 30 percent in the entire state fuel-less.

At a Thursday briefing president Biden announced he would tapping into the America's emergency oil stockpile and releasing 1.5 million barrels of crude oil as Louisiana's gas crisis worsens.

Hurricane Ida was responsible for the deteriorating conditions in the warehouse, Neel said.

'We know that water did enter the building,' she said, adding that there were also problems with electricity generators.

Health officials said Thursday that they had launched an investigation into the facility.

When a large team of state health inspectors showed up on Tuesday to investigate the warehouse, the nursing homes' owner demanded that they leave immediately, Neel said.

Renetta Derosia and her sister Susan Duet came to the warehouse Thursday to check on their mother, Loretta Duet, who uses a wheelchair. Their voices choked with emotion, they questioned how their mother was treated.

'We're just getting word now how bad it was here,' Derosia said. 'We thought they would have been better taken care of. Had I known, I would have taken her with us.'

The sisters thought their mother, who had been living in a nursing home in Lafourche Parish, was being taken to another home with proper nursing beds when she was evacuated ahead of the hurricane, Derosia said.

Families who were blindsided by the news rushed to the site to get answers about their loved ones.

An upset relative told CBS News what happened was unacceptable.

'Of course they should be held accountable, everyone that was here that didn't help the people that needed help. When they could of made any kind of phone call,' the unidentified woman told reporters angrily.

Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards said he's 'grieved by the situation.'

'Were going to do a full investigation into whether these facilities, the owner of the facilities, failed to keep residents safe and whether he intentionally obstructed efforts to check in on them and determine what the conditions were in the shelter,' Edwards said.

Paramedics standby at a mass shelter next to a senior citizen who was crammed inside the Waterbury warehouse during Hurricane Ida

Wheelchairs lying next to the Waterbury warehouse, where senior citizens were kept in atrocious and disgraceful sanitary conditions during Hurricane Ida

Health officials identified the owner of the nursing homes as Bob Dean

One of the six of Dean's nursing facilities, Maison Orleans Healthcare Center, barely has more than one star out of five, the lowest possible rating, on Google and Medicare.gov

'And if warranted, we will take aggressive legal action against any responsible parties,' he added. 'I know people are anxious and tired, I'm asking people to be patient.'

Neel identified the owner of the nursing homes as Bob Dean.

The Medicare.gov website rates six of his seven nursing facilities with one star out of five, the lowest possible rating.

All of them are in Louisiana, named: River Palms Nursing, Rehab South Lafourche Nursing, Rehab Maison Orleans Healthcare Center, Park Place Healthcare Nursing Home, West Jefferson Health Care Center, Maison Deville Nursing Home and Maison DeVille Nursing Home.

The remaining nursing home gets two stars, still considered below average. Five of the nursing homes specifically got one star for 'quality of resident care,' under the ranking system.

Independence Police Chief Frank Edwards told WVUE-TV that the warehouse was set up to receive 300 to 350 people, but the number quickly ballooned to more than 800.

The police chief confirmed that some residents were on air mattresses on the floor, that trash receptacles were too small and that there were some issues with the restrooms.

A search and rescue team checks homes destroyed in the wake of Hurricane Ida on Thursday after the Category 4 storm left Louisiana in shambles

Emily Francois (pictured) walks through floodwaters beside her flood damaged home in Jean Lafitte on Wednesday following the aftermath of Hurricane Ida

A submerged car and destroyed homes remain in Grand Isle, Louisiana on Thursday in the wake of Hurricane Ida

All that remains of a Grand Isle home after Category 4 Hurricane Ida made landfall in Louisiana on August 29

He said generators at the warehouse also stopped working a couple of times, and that in general, 'conditions became unacceptable.'

'I would not have wanted my mother or grandmother to be in those type of conditions,' he said.

State health inspectors returned to the warehouse on Wednesday and began relocating residents.

Late Thursday, all had been evacuated and taken to hospitals, nursing homes and special needs shelters, said Dr. Joe Kanter, Louisianas chief medical officer.

'It was a Herculean task to get this many people out and to safety in such a short period of time,' Kanter said.

He said law enforcement officials were already onsite investigating.

Officials used ambulances and buses to transfer the residents, Neel said.

Early Thursday evening, 10 ambulances could be seen leaving the warehouse, located next to a water tower and about 50 yards from a railroad station.

A handful of wheelchairs were standing near the entrance to the warehouse.

Police Chief Edwards was hesitant to assign any blame, saying that it appeared as though 'everybody was doing the best they could under the circumstances.'

Louisiana's Governor John Bel Edwards said 'everybody was doing the best they could under the circumstances', refusing to blame the owner of the four residents' homes for putting up senior citizens in poor conditions

Betty Salisbury (pictured) helps clear her neighbor's yard in Hammond, Louisiana on Thursday in the wake of Hurricane Ida

A utility crew works to restore power in Albany, Louisiana as over 800,000 homes and businesses are left without power following Hurricane Ida

'I have no idea what the situation or circumstances were when they evacuated all of those people,' he said.

'They may have been prepared for two nursing homes and had six more in danger. Lets assume they had more to evacuate than they had planned for and they had to decide whether to move them to the facility they had or not evacuate them at all.'

But Sabrina Cox, who came to find out what happened to her aunt Bonnie Carenti, said someone should have called her family to let them know Carenti was at the warehouse.

She said her father lives five minutes away, and if the family had known, they could have done something to help.

'To see this on the news and not even get a call four days in?' Cox said. 'This is unacceptable. Elderly people should not be treated like this. Nobody should be treated like this.'
An Australian Paralympian set an astounding three world records in just an hour as she claimed a gold medal in Tokyo.

Over six jumps long jumper Vanessa Low broke the world mark three times in the women's T63 event, beginning with her second jump of 5.16m.

She then bettered the distance with jumps of 5.20m and 5.28m to claim the gold medal in the event by 14cm from Martina Caironi of Italy in the silver medal spot.

Over six jumps, long jumper Vanessa Low broke the world mark three times in the women's T63 event at the Tokyo Paralympic Games

Low's gold medal for Australia repeated her feat representing Germany in the T42 long jump at Rio 2016

Low, 31, previously competed for Germany before becoming an Australian citizen after she married fellow athlete Scott Reardon.

A double amputee above the knee after she was pushed into the path of a train as a 15-year-old, Low's gold medal repeated her feat representing Germany in the T42 long jump at Rio 2016.

Her husband gave an emotional interview to broadcaster Channel Seven after Vanessa's victory.

'There's no words actually. She's competed at Worlds for Australia but to see her in Australian colours at the Paralympic Games and seeing her so calm and collected doing what she does best, I'm proud,' he said.

'I'm a mess. I've never cried this much. It's so special. I don't have words.'

The Australian long jumper (centre) won the gold medal by 14cm from silver-medallist Martina Caironi of Italy (left) and Swiss jumper Elena Kratter with bronze (right)

Low is a double amputee above the knee after she was pushed into the path of a train as a 15-year-old

Low's husband Scott Reardon (right) competed in the men's 100m - T63 final on day 6 of the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games

Low was told she'd never walk again after her accident but told Olympics.com earlier this year she did not want to be confined to a wheelchair for life.

'I believe you can still have a really good life in a wheelchair,' she said, 'but for me reaching what was possible and trying to live a live that was what i imagined it to be was really important.

'When I picked up running everyone thought this was not going to work for me in the first place and I thought, if they are going be wrong about this, what else might they be wrong about?'

The Paralympics in Tokyo finishes this Sunday. Australia is currently eighth on the medal table with 18 gold, 25 silver and 27 bronze medals.
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The first rocket launched by private aerospace company Firefly has exploded just minutes after blasting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

Firefly was attempting to reach orbit with its Alpha rocket when the vehicle burst into a fireball above the Pacific Ocean about 2 minutes and 30 seconds after off.

The rocket launched from the SLC-2 complex at the base near Lompoc at 6:59 pm PT after they aborted their first attempted launch at 6 pm PT.

The company tweeted about the incident, 'Alpha experienced an anomaly during first stage ascent that resulted in the loss of the vehicle. As we gather more information, additional details will be provided.'

In a follow up message Firefly said, 'Prior to entering the countdown, the Range cleared the pad and all surrounding areas to minimize risk to Firefly employees, base staff, and the general public. We are continuing to work with the Range, following all safety protocols.'

Firefly Aerospace's first Alpha rocket suffered a catastrophic explosion on Thursday as they attempted to launch into orbit

The Alpha rocket was intended to reach supersonic speed seconds after take off but did not appear to hit the desired speed until minutes after lift off

The company tweeted about the explosion reporting that they 'experienced an anomaly during first stage ascent' and are gathering information to determine the cause of the failure

The Alpha rocket was launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California and exploded over the Pacific Ocean

Private aerospace company Firefly launched its first orbital Alpha rocket which exploded several minutes after lift off (credit: @ShumanProjects)

Firefly's Alpha rocket stood at 95 feet tall and was designed to launch up to 1,000 kilograms of payload to low Earth orbit which categorizes the rocket as a medium-lift launch

Footage of the explosion was caught in a live-stream by Everyday Astronaut, and dramatic pictures were tweeted out by observer Philip Shuman.

The Alpha rocket was intended to reach supersonic speed just seconds after take off, but appears to have taken minutes to break the sound barrier. Moments later, the rocket exploded.

Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer from the Center for Astrophysics, explained that while the spaceship exploded during the first stage burn, it reached MaxQ which will still provide the company with 'good data on the first stage engine.'

MaxQ is the condition when the rocket reaches maximum dynamic pressure. This critical stage will inform the design of the vehicle's structural load.

McDowell speculates that the initial failure occurred 2 minutes and 29 seconds into the launch 'when a puff of vapor is seen escaping the vehicle' which is followed by the fiery explosion 2 seconds later.

But he insist that 'it's premature to conclude that for sure.'

Company executives had previously stressed that the launch was primarily a test flight with the aim to record as much data as possible.

The day before the launch Firefly's chief operating officer, Lauren Lyons, echoed that sentiment. 'Our really big goal is to get Alpha to space. If we can get to orbit, even better,' she said according to Space News.

'Our goals are to collect as much data as we possibly can and take Alpha as far as it can go,' Lyons said.

Chief Executive Officer Tom Markusic said in an interview with Space News the same day that success would be collecting data.

Firefly had originally planned to launch their first Alpha rocket in December but 'ran into some problems' and eventually rescheduled for Sept. 2

The company plans to launch their Alpha rocket twice a month to enable customers to fly according to their schedule and to the orbit they desire

The medium-lift launch cost $15 million and failed to reach supersonic speed seconds after take off as was anticipated in the mission overview which was distributed before the launch

The company tweeted that the rocket 'experienced an anomaly during first stage ascent that resulted in the loss' claiming that they are gathering information about the failure

'It's a flight test, so getting data is success. The more data we get, the better,' he said.

Firefly's Alpha rocket stood at 95 feet tall and was designed to launch up to 1,000 kilograms of payload to low Earth orbit costing $15 million per launch. These metrics put the medium-lift launch classification alongside launches from Space X, Virgin Orbit, Rocket Lab and Relativity Space.

Firefly had originally planned to launch their first Alpha rocket in December but 'ran into some problems with readiness of the launch site,' according to Markusic.

They were also reportedly held back by a major delay from the supplier who provided the rocket's flight termination system.

Firefly has raised more than $175 million and is valued at over $1 billion adding the company to the list of unicorn companies.

Thursday's failed launch isn't the company's first defeat. The first iteration of Texas-based start-up, Firefly Space Systems, filed for bankruptcy. The company relaunched as Firefly Aerospace in May 2017 mainly thanks to Noosphere Ventures.

The aerospace company 'is committed to providing economical and convenient access to space for small payloads' and is working to address 'the market's need for flexible access to space,' according to their website.

They are one of several new commercial launch providers aiming to break into the growing small satellite launch market. The Firefly Alpha rocket was designed to target the growing market for launching small satellites into Earth's orbit.

Their rocket is intended to be 'the highest payload performance with the lowest cost per kilogram to orbit' to 'provide launch options for both full vehicle and ride share customers.' The company plans to launch these rockets twice a month to provide their customers with a flexible schedule and a choice of orbit, according to their site.

They have already been awarded commercial and civil government launch contracts from the likes of NASA and General Atomics.

Thursday's failure puts Firefly behind its competitors including major companies like Elon Musks' Space X and Jeff Bezo's Blue Origin and some lesser known companies. In this quick growing field, Firefly is struggling to catch up to their opponents.

Rocket Lab has been launching small payloads with its Electron booster since 2018. Virgin Orbit has launched two successful missions after beginning operational flights this year.

Astra reached space on a test flight last year but has yet to get a payload into orbit.

When launching news models, explosions are a risk that aerospace companies expect to take on.

Along with their many successful launches, Space X has recently recorded at least nine explosions with their SpaceX Starship, according to Space.com.
Remington has subpoenaed for the academic, attendance and disciplinary records for five kids who were shot dead in the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre after their families filed a lawsuit against the bankrupt gunmaker.

The subpoena was revealed in a court filing made by lawyers for the families of the five children seeking modifications to an order of protection in order to prevent the release of the records.

Remington also subpoenaed for the employment files of four educators who were killed during the horrific massacre, who are included in the lawsuit.

The nine families all lost family members when 20-year-old Adam Lanza shot and killed 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newton, Connecticut, on December 14, 2012.

They first filed the wrongful death lawsuit against Remington on December 15, 2014.

The case, which claims Remington recklessly marketed its Bushmaster Model XM15-E2S .223-caliber semiautomatic rifle, will go to trial this month.

Connecticut State Police Detective Barbara J. Mattson holds a Bushmaster AR-15 rifle, the same make and model used by Adam Lanza in the 2012 Sandy Hook School shooting

Veronique Pozner reacts with grief after learning that a gunman killed her son Noah at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, on December 14, 2012

Jackie Barden reacts with grief after learning that a gunman killed her son Daniel at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown

Law enforcement officers search outside Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut in 2012

The court filing, obtained by DailyMail.com, reads that 'there is no conceivable way' that the records requested by the gunmaker 'will assist Remington in its defense.'

Remington had requested records including the application and admission paperwork, attendance records, transcripts, report cards, and disciplinary records among other records for the students.

'The plaintiffs do not understand why Remington would invade the families' privacy with such a request. Nonetheless, this personal and private information has been produced to Remington,' the filing reads.

'The plaintiffs therefore move the Court to expand the categories of protected information to include private educational, employment and medical records and information.'

The filing notes that only one category in the current protective order protects information disclosed by the parents.

Meanwhile, 'the current protective order lists eight categories of protectable information. Seven of those eight categories are designed to protect Remington's proprietary business information from disclosure.'

The families are also seeking to delete protections for Remington's proprietary information that are 'now obsolete' because, as a lawyer for the gunmaker has conceded, the company 'no longer exists.'

Josh Koskoff, the lead attorney for the families, told the Connecticut Post on Thursday that he has 'no explanation' for why Remington wants the academic and disciplinary records.

'The only relevant part of their attendance records is that they were at their desks on December 14, 2012,' Koskoff said.

The subpoena was revealed in a court filing made by lawyers for the families of the five children seeking modifications to an order of protection in order to prevent the release of the records

Lawyers for the families filed another document on Thursday noting that Remington 'implemented a plan to dominate the firearms industry'

Thursday's court filing notes that the subpoenas filed by Remington were sent to the Newtown Public School District in mid-July - just weeks before each of the nine families were offered a $3.6 million settlement.

Also in July, lawyers for the families accused Remington of sending them 18,465 'random cartoon images' like icons emojis of ice cream bowls, Santa Claus and weight lifters as part of requested data.

'Each of these images was produced six times, three times as a PNG file and three times as an SVG file,' reads a July 2 filing.

Remington had also allegedly turned over 15,825 'random pictures' including people riding go-karts and racing dirt bikes, as well as 1,657 videos depicting gender reveals and ice bucket challenge videos.

Lawyers for the families claimed in court documents in July that lawyers for Remington had sent them random graphics including pictures of ice cream bowls and Santa Claus

One of the random images sent by Remington to lawyers for the families is pictured

Another such image included a depiction of a minion from the children's film Despicable Me sliced into filets with the caption: 'filet minion.'

Other images allegedly sent by Remington include a couple holding hands, left, and a farmer with a pitchfork

Another such image included a depiction of a minion from the children's film Despicable Me sliced into filets with the caption: 'filet minion.'

Through years of legal proceedings, Remington has claimed that it made and sold its weapons legally and so should not be held liable for the deaths of the children and teachers.
Families living in one of Sydney's Covid hotspots have received letters accusing them of breaching public health orders and demanding money not to report them.

The notes have been popping up in mailboxes over the past few days in Riverstone, which is part of the Blacktown local government area in the city's west.

'Please accept this letter as my formal complaint about the breach of Covid rules that I have witnessed from yourself and assumed family/friends entering and leaving your household,' the letters read.

'If I have not heard from you in relation to this matter, I will be contacting the local police to have you charged.

'The current infringement fine is $5,000 however if you wish to avoid this, I will take 10 per cent in good faith that you will learn your lesson and stop disobeying the stay-at-home orders.'

Families living in Riverstone have received letters accusing them of breaching Covid public health orders in a terrifying neighbourhood scam

The author gave the recipient a deadline for when they needed to hand over the $500 and said they were 'disappointed to see that you believe you are above the law'.

An email address is then given, with the author requesting cash only and telling the recipient to get in contact to arrange a place to make the payment.

'Please know I am doing this for your benefit and the 10 per cent will be donated to support our frontline workers,' the letter continues before signing off with 'Your friendly neighbour'.

A mother-of-two who lives in the area claims she saw the person behind the scam allegedly dropping off the note on Tuesday morning while hidden underneath a hoodie and mask.

'[These are] bogus letters circulating in our neighbourhood, threatening to report a household to the police for breaching Covid restrictions in exchange for money,' she told 7News.

NSW Police said they hadn't received any reports but were aware of the incident and are making inquiries.
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This is the terrifying moment New Zealand police shoot dead an 'ISIS-inspired' extremist who launched a knife attack in an Auckland supermarket, wounding six people.

Ten rapid-fire shots are heard in the footage, filmed on a phone from outside the supermarket's entrance, as frightened shoppers rush past.

A commotion inside the store can be seen as the camera pans past a trail of blood leading from the door of the Countdown supermarket in New Lynn, in the country's south.

The six injured were left fighting for life in hospitals across New Zealand's north island on Friday afternoon. Three of the victims were described as being in a 'critical' condition, with neck and chest wounds, after hero shoppers rushed to give first aid to the wounded.

The knifeman, a 32-year-old Sri Lankan man identified only as 'S' for legal reasons, is known to have posted a warning to 'Kiwi scums' on social media after receiving a formal warning from police over his disturbing internet searches and purchases.

On Friday, the man was followed by police from his home all the way to the supermarket where he grabbed a knife from a shelf and started the attack.

There had been fears of an imminent terror attack in the wake of the Taliban takeover and the chaotic departure of Western powers from Afghanistan, with extremists emboldened by the radical Islamists' return to power.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern revealed that the suspect was considered one of the nation's most dangerous extremists and had been watched 24/7 since 2016, adding she was 'gutted' he was able to carry out the attack despite being on the terror watchlist.

Six people were rushed to hospitals across New Zealand's north island on Friday afternoon while the knifeman died inside the Countdown supermarket in New Lynn

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern (right) revealed on Friday the 32-year-old Sri Lankan national (left) was considered one of the nation's most dangerous extremists and was watched 24/7 since 2016. He arrived in New Zealand in 2011

Due to suppression orders that are already in place, the prime minister says there is information about the man's identity (pictured) and past that cannot yet be revealed

Six people were left fighting for life in hospitals across New Zealand's north island on Friday afternoon while the knifeman died inside the Countdown supermarket in New Lynn

He arrived in New Zealand in 2011, but he had not committed sufficient crimes to be detained by authorities before the attack.

TERROR CONVICTIONS... HATED 'KIWI SCUMS' - BUT ALLOWED TO WALK FREE The knifeman who was shot dead in a Countdown supermarket on Friday was known to police and politicians for his extremist views, which were largely inspired by terror group, ISIS. The man, known only as 'S' due to High Court suppression orders, arrived in New Zealand in 2011 from Sri Lanka and was first placed on the terror watchlist in 2016 after authorities were alerted to extremist posts he made on social media. Some of the videos he shared online depicted war-related violence, a clear approval of violent extremism and pledging his support for ISIS, New Zealand Herald reported. He received an official warning from police but continued to post the material, including a comment which read: 'One day I will go back to my country and I will find kiwi scums in my country... and I will show them... what will happen when you mess with S while I'm in their country. If you're tough in your country... we are tougher in our country scums #payback'. 'S' reportedly told a worshiper at a mosque that he hoped to join ISIS in Syria and was detained at Auckland International Airport in 2017 after booking a one-way flight to Singapore. He spent a year in custody before pleading guilty to distributing restricted material, earning a supervision order in 2018. The day after he was released from prison, 'S' was arrested by counterterrorism police who followed him as he purchased a hunting knife. Internet search history reportedly found he'd researched how to kill 'non-believers'. Police hoped to prosecute 'S' under the Terrorism Suppression Act 2002, but it was determined that preparing a terrorist attack was not an offence under the legislation, given he had not carried out any attacks. He was prosecuted on lesser charges of possessing propaganda in support of ISIS. During his trial, 'S' reportedly told the jury: 'You're worried about one knife, I am telling you I will buy 10 knives. It's about my rights.' S had reportedly performed internet searches asking about the guidelines of 'lone-wolf mujahideen', knife attacks and prison conditions in New Zealand.Following his release from prison, he was kept under 24/7 surveillance by police, who followed him from his home to the store on Friday. Advertisement

'What happened today was despicable, hateful and wrong,' she said. 'It was carried out by an individual, not a faith or religion. He was gripped by violent and ISIS-inspired ideology that is not supported here.

'This was a violent attack. It was senseless. And I am so sorry that it happened.'

A surveillance team and special tactics group monitored the man at all times and plain clothes officers were able to shoot and kill him within 60 seconds of launching the attack after detectives were so close they 'heard' the commotion.

Due to suppression orders that are already in place, Ardern says there is information about the man's identity and details of his past criminal history that cannot yet be revealed.

She vowed to share any further details 'within the confines of the law' if the court lifted suppression orders in the wake of his death.

But Auckland's mayor Phil Goff said it is 'frustrating' that Ardern cannot reveal more details about the attacker.

Suppression orders are normally applied automatically under a statute or are ordered by a judge during a trial process.

Some people can argue for name suppression to protect their reputation, while it can also be granted because of ongoing court proceedings in which releasing their name could cause potential prejudice.

Suppression orders have to be lifted by a judge and still apply after death. It is not known why the order was applied to the attacker.

The prime minister said: 'He was known to our national security agencies, was of concern and was being monitored constantly. There are very few people that fall into this category.'

She reiterated that if the offender had committed a crime in the past that would have allowed authorities to put him in prison, 'that's where he would have been'.

'The reason he was in the community is because within the law we could not put him anywhere else. His past behaviour was, within the threshold of the law, not enough to put him in prison.'

The attack has stirred painful memories of the Christchurch mosque shootings in March 2019, New Zealand's worst terror atrocity, when a white supremacist gunman murdered 51 Muslim worshippers and severely wounded another 40.

Ardern said: 'The fact that he was in the community will be an illustration that we haven't succeeded in using the law to the extent we would have liked.

'I know that we've been doing everything that we could, so I was absolutely gutted.'

The 32-year-old offender reportedly landed himself on terror watchlists after twice buying hunting knives and being found to possess Islamic State propaganda videos, NZHerald reported.

After receiving an official warning from police over his internet search history and purchases, 'S' continued to consume extremist content online online and posted the following warning on social media:

'One day I will go back to my country and I will find Kiwi scums in my country... and I will show them... what will happen when you mess with S while I'm in their country. If you're tough in your country... we are tougher in our country scums #payback,' he wrote.

In May 2017, he was arrested at Auckland International Airport after booking a one-way ticket to Singapore.

A subsequent search of his apartment uncovered weapons and images of him posing with an air rifle and hunting knife, the New Zealand Herald reported.

He was held in custody without bail for more than a year and eventually pleaded guilty to distributing restricted material.

A High Court judge sentenced him to supervision in 2018 because of the amount of time he had already spent in prison.

The day after he walked free from prison in 2018, 'S' purchased yet another hunting knife. He was arrested again, but was not prosecuted under the liberal country's terrorism laws, which police, politicians and judicial officials have long criticised as not fit for purpose

On May 26, 2021, 'S' was back in court, where he was acquitted of possessing a graphic video and possession of an offensive weapon, the New Zealand Herald reported.

The video reportedly showed a prisoner being decapitated.

The court heard how he had performed internet searches asking about the guidelines of 'lone-wolf mujahideen', knife attacks and 'How to survive in the west a mujahid guide'.

'S' had reportedly told worshipers in his mosque that he intended to join ISIS.

He had also researched the case of ISIS supporter Imran Patel - the first person in New Zealand jailed for distributing extremist videos.

Police guard the area around Countdown LynnMall in Auckland after a violent extremist arried cout a terrorist attack on Friday

He was sentenced in July to one year of supervision to be served at a West Auckland mosque, the paper said.

Police had hoped to prosecute 'S' under the Terrorism Suppression Act 2002, but it was determined that preparing a terrorist attack was not an offence under the legislation, given he had not carried out any attacks.

He was prosecuted on lesser charges of possessing propaganda in support of ISIS.

During his trial, 'S' reportedly told the jury: 'You're worried about one knife, I am telling you I will buy 10 knives. It's about my rights.'

Justice Matthew Downs in his ruling acknowledged the dangers of 'lone wolf terrorist attacks' and appeared to suggest that New Zealand's current terror legislation was not fit for purpose.

'Terrorism is a great evil. 'Lone wolf' terrorist attacks with knives and other makeshift weapons, such as cars or trucks, are far from unheard of. Recent events in Christchurch demonstrate New Zealand should not be complacent,' he said.

'Some among us are prepared to use lethal violence for ideological, political or religious causes. The absence of an offence of planning or preparing a terrorist act ... could be an Achilles' heel.

He concluded: 'It is not open to a Court to create an offence, whether in the guise of statutory construction or otherwise. The issue is for Parliament.'

Justice Downs' concerns were echoed by an inquiry into the Christchurch attacks.

Police and security agencies in the country have long complained that they are constricted by New Zealand's counterterrorism legislation.

The Labour government proposed new anti-terror powers in April, which officials said were partly prompted by the judgement in the case of 'S'.

The Counter-Terrorism Legislation Bill passed its first reading in May and is currently with the country's select committee before a second reading is held.

The proposed legislation would criminalise preparing to launch a terrorist attack, update the legal definition of a terrorist act and criminalise 'wider forms of material support for terrorist activities or organisations'.

Ardern reiterated several times on Friday afternoon that the Countdown attack was the work of 'an individual, not a faith'.

Disturbing footage of the attack was shared online, showing customers running to safety as at least 10 police units swarmed the surrounding streets.

'Holy f**k. Oh my God... Someone is in there with a knife, somebody has been stabbed,' a woman said in the footage

A witness said people were 'running out, hysterically, just screaming, yelling, scared' as an elderly man laid injured on the floor and a middle-aged woman was stabbed in the shoulder.

One bystander video taken from inside the supermarket records the sound of 10 shots being fired in rapid succession.

The offender was reportedly acting 'like a lunatic' and indiscriminately lunging at anybody in his path, the witness said.

Another woman said she heard police ordering the offender to surrender before five gunshots rang out.

Two officers were involved in shooting him dead.

The three victims who remain in a critical condition were rushed to Auckland City hospital along with a fourth person in a serious condition.

At least 10 police units were quickly on the scene and surrounded the shopping precinct before the knifeman was shot dead

Roads near the area have been blocked by officers, who are still investigating

One victim in a stable condition was taken to Waitakere Hospital while another was rushed to Middlemore Hospital.

Two of the victims were rushed straight into emergency abdominal surgery.

At least 20 frantic Countdown customers fled to safety at nearby Unichem Pharmacy, which was already brimming with about 45 patients waiting to get their Covid jab.

Customers fled the supermarket and witnesses reported chaotic scenes as police shot the knifeman dead

Staff immediately locked the doors and called for help.

'It wasn't a nice scenario. Everyone was pretty shocked and worried, but everybody is fine,' a staff member said.

At least 10 police units were quickly on the scene and surrounded the shopping precinct before the knifeman was shot dead.

The Masjid e Bilal mosque, just five kilometers away from the supermarket, is also surrounded by armed police and is believed to form part of the police investigation.

Kiri Hannifin, Countdown supermarket's general manager of safety, released a statement on Friday afternoon stating her 'heart was heavy knowing what our team and customers have witnessed'.

'We are particularly devastated that something like this has happened again in one of our stores. It's difficult to comprehend and the events of today leave our whole team in deep shock,' she said.

Just four months ago, four customers were stabbed in a random attack at a Dunedin Countdown on the nation's south island.

A 42-year-old alleged offender was arrested at the time and remains before the courts.

'The safety of our team, and our customers, is always our priority, and this is at the heart of our COVID-19 response as well. We will cooperate with the Police in any way we can to understand what's happened, and at this point we're unable to provide any further details.'

Auckland is currently in a strict lockdown as it battles an outbreak of the coronavirus. Most businesses are shut and people are generally allowed to leave their homes only to buy groceries, for medical needs or to exercise.

The store will be closed until further notice.
A veteran Connecticut State Police sergeant was found dead on Thursday after his cruiser was washed away by floodwater from the remnants of Hurricane Ida.

Sgt. Brian Mohl, 50, was working on a midnight shift in the town of Woodbury when the storm brought torrential rains across the Northeast, sparking flash flood alerts.

At 3:30am, Mohl radioed for help saying that his cruiser was being swept away near Jack's Bridge, over the Weekepeemee River, state police Col. Stavros Mellekas said.

'Troop L received an emergency call from the sergeant that his vehicle was in swift water and that he was in distress. That was the last they heard of him.' Mellekas said at a press briefing on Thursday afternoon.

Rescue crews scrambled to help but could not locate the cruiser or Mohl.

Troopers tried contacting him, and even pinged the sergeant's cell phone to find out his location but were unable to find him.

'We sent all assets right away with the fire departments, dive teams  everything you could imagine,' Mellekas said.

Sgt. Brian Mohl, a 26-year veteran of the Woodbury department Connecticut State Police

Sgt Brian Mohl (center) with his wife Susan (left) and one of his three children, Samantha (right)

Once the water from the heavy flooding started to go away, state law enforcement began a search of the area on the ground and in the air.

Nine fire departments, six boats, three helicopters were involved in the operation.

Police choppers located Mohl's vehicle 'mostly submerged' in the river after daybreak, but the missing sergeant was not inside.

He was found in the river about an hour later and brought ashore, but was pronounced dead at hospital.

Janet Morgan, Woodbury's Fire Chief, said it was difficult to locate Mohl, mentioning that there are 47 known spots where flooding can occur in the area.

'We had people out in the area knowing where the floods were and recording that to the [police department].'

'Up until midnight, we didn't have any flooding, and then it just took off,' she added.

Mohl was a 26-year veteran of the department, and was assigned to Troop L in Litchfield, 15-miles away from Woodbury.

'It's just a tragedy,' Mellekas said.

'Every line of duty death is heartbreaking and the loss of Sgt. Mohl is no different.'

Susan (left) and Brian Mohl (right), who had 26 years of service in the Woodbury department prior to his unexpected death on Thursday

Governor Ned Lamont (pictured) also expressed his condolences at a press conference, saying 'As a trooper, you go out and you look and you try to rescue others  take care of them'

'He was outside, in the middle of the night, in horrendous conditions, patrolling the Troop L area. He was doing a job he loved and he was taken much too soon,' Colonel Mellekas added.

The Officer Down Memorial Page has reported 31 line of duty deaths caused by drowning since 2010, including Mohl's recent death.

The sergeant joined the State Police training academy in November 1994 and graduated in June 1995 before being assigned to Troop A in Southbury.

He was then promoted to sergeant in May 2000 and held the rank in different areas of Connecticut until his death, Connecticut State Police said in a statement Thursday evening.

Trooper First Class Pedro Muniz said the sergeant's unexpected death is a tough time for Mohl's family and and his fellow troopers at Connecticut State Police.

'We just ask that everybody keep us and the family in their thoughts and their prayers as we endure this tough time right now,' Muniz said.

Mohl is survived by his wife, Susan, and three children  Brian Mohl Jr. (14), Samantha Ganem (24) and Peter Ganem (28)  as well as two brothers who are members of the New York State Police, Maj. George Mohl and Sgt. Scott Mohl.

U.S. Representative Jahana Hayes and Governor Ned Lamont also expressed their condolences at a press conference and ordered the flag to be lowered in Mohl's honor.

'I was telling everybody "'stay safe, stay home, let's ride out this storm.'" That's not what you do as a trooper,' Lamont said. 'As a trooper, you go out and you look and you try to rescue others  take care of them.'
Australians will be allowed on overseas holidays even if some state borders are still closed when 80 per cent are vaccinated, Scott Morrison confirmed on Friday.

The Prime Minister said once Australia reaches the vaccination target he will allow international travel to restart for any state that wants it.

Covid-free Queensland and Western Australia have threatened to keep their domestic borders closed beyond that threshold but Mr Morrison said this would not affect overseas holidays for people in states living with Covid-19.

Australians will be allowed on overseas holidays even if some state borders are still closed when 80 per cent are vaccinated, Scott Morrison confirmed. Pictured: Sydney passengers before lockdown

In a press conference on Friday he was asked: 'Can you envision opening [international travel] to a state like NSW when they get above 80 per cent and not waiting for states who don't want to open?'

'Yes. I can. Well the national plan sets out that very clearly,' Mr Morrison replied.

It means that an Australian in Sydney or Melbourne may be allowed to London or New York before Perth or Brisbane.

The national re-opening plan allows international travel once 80 per cent of over-16s are fully vaccinated against Covid-19.

On Thursday Health Minister Greg Hunt revealed that bio-security laws banning outbound travel have been extended until December 17.

But Daily Mail Australia understands the laws could be removed early if 80 per cent are vaccinated before then.

The Prime Minister said once Australia reaches the 80 per cent vaccination target he will allow international travel to restart for any state that wants it

Australians will be allowed to travel overseas once 80 per cent are fully vaccinated

Aussies have been banned from leaving the country for holidays since March 2020 and anyone returning must pay up to $2,800 for two weeks of hotel quarantine.

Departure exemptions can be granted to people leaving for more than three months or for approved work or compassionate reasons.

On current vaccination rates, 80 per cent would be reached by mid-November, but overseas experience indicates rates slow and plateau past 60 per cent after those eager to get jabbed have had their shots.

Once the rate is hit, returning Australians will be able to quarantine at home for a week instead of two weeks in a hotel and will have no quarantine requirements if coming from a travel bubble country which may include the US, UK or Singapore.

Mr Morrison also announced that Australia will get 4million doses of the Covid-19 Pfizer vaccine from the UK in a landmark swap deal negotiated with Boris Johnson.

The Prime Minister said the doses were 'on the tarmac' ready to leave London and would be distributed in the next few weeks, doubling the amount of vaccines arriving in Australia this month.

'This means from Downing Street to Down Under, we are doubling down on what the Pfizer doses are here in Australia,' Mr Morrison said before later adding 'thanks Boris, I owe you a beer'.

On Thursday Daily Mail Australia revealed Mr Morrison was on the cusp of clinching his third international vaccine deal after previous agreements with Poland and Singapore but was not expecting any help from US President Joe Biden.

Australia will get 4million doses of the Pfizer vaccine in a swap deal with the UK. Pictured: Scott Morrison and Boris Johnson in the UK in June

The vaccines will be distributed between the states and territories on a per capita basis and in return Australia will send 4million Pfizer doses to London in December to assist with the UK's booster program.

'It is a good deal because it makes the most of the doses that they have now, which we need. And the doses that we will have later that they will need,' Mr Morrison said.

'So this is just a good deal and it's a good deal between mates.

'I want to thank very, very much Prime Minister Johnson. He and I started discussing this some time ago,' Mr Morrison added.

'I want to thank him for his personal commitment to this. And his great friendship with Australia.'

The Prime Minister said the deal was also helped by his friendship with UK health minister Sajid Javid who was promoted to the role in June.

Mr Javid's predecessor Matt Hancock was sacked after he was caught on camera having an affair at work with his glamorous aide.

'I want to thank also health minister Sajid Javid who I have known for some time... and his ability to progress with Greg Hunt, our minister, and I thank Greg and all of his team,' Mr Morrison said.

'There's been some very late-night discussions and negotiations and legal work taking place, especially over the course of the past week, to bring this to conclusion.'

Luka Wain, 17, (right) and 15 year old brother Darcy receive their Pfizer vaccinations at the Royal Exhibition Building COVID19 Vaccination Hub in Melbourne on Thursday

Last month the government bought 1million Pfizer doses from Poland and secured 500,000 from Singapore in a swap deal.

The latest deal with the UK means there will now be 10million MRNA vaccine doses entering Australia this month, including 9million Pfizer and 1million Moderna in the second half of September.

'This means that every Australian will be able to come forward as early as possible to be vaccinated if they have not yet,' Health Minister Greg Hunt said.

So far 36 per cent of over 16s are fully vaccinated and 60 per cent have had one dose.

The announcement came two hours before a national cabinet meeting in which the state premiers planned to discuss beefing up hospital capacity to deal with increased numbers of Covid patients.

New South Wales recorded and all-time high 1,4131 cases on Friday and 12 deaths as Premier Gladys Berejiklian warned of higher numbers in coming weeks.

'The worst number of cases is likely to occur in the next fortnight,' she told reporters.

'Because after that time the number of vaccinations we've put into the community, especially in those local government areas of concern, will start having effect.'

On Friday morning Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk insisted she would stick to the national re-opening plan which allows Australia to live with Covid-19 when 70 per cent of over 16s are vaccinated.

She had previously come under fire for raising fears that children under 12, who cannot be vaccinated due to their age, would be vulnerable if she opened her borders - even though health experts say children normally only suffer a mild illness.

The Prime Minister has been scrambling to secure extra Pfizer from allies around the world after only initially ordering 10million doses in November last year.

Police patrol Sydney's Bondi Beach in 22C heat on Friday morning

America is described as Australia's most important ally but President Joe Biden has not handed Canberra a single Covid-19 vaccine.

The President has already donated more than 110million vaccines around the world - including 2.5million to Canada and 3.5million to Argentina - but his focus is on saving lives, protecting America's neighbours and assisting poor countries, meaning wealthy Australia is way down his donation list.

Shadow Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong said it was embarrassing that Australia had to ask allies for help.

'The fact that a country with Australia's resources has to go around asking other countries for vaccines is another sign that this is the biggest government failure in memory,' she told Daily Mail Australia.

'It all comes back to Mr Morrison doing too little, too late  failing to order enough vaccines last year - and it's Australians paying the price.'

The government initially ordered 10million Pfizer vaccines before upping this to 40million due to changing health advice around AstraZeneca.

Australia has ordered 85million Pfizer vaccines to arrive from early next year to act as booster shots.

Residents are seen exercising outdoor at Parramatta park in Sydney on Friday
Dr. Anthony Fauci said on Thursday that the United States is 'keeping a very close eye' on the Mu variant of COVID-19 but it is 'not an immediate threat.'

Fauci, the chief medical advisor to the president, was asked about the strain at a White House briefing on COVID-19 after it was added to the World Health Organization's 'variant of interest' list on Monday.

The Mu variant, also known as B.1.621, 'has a constellation of mutations that indicate potential properties of immune escape,' according to the weekly pandemic bulletin published by the WHO.

'Yes, we certainly are aware of the Mu variant. We're keeping a very close eye on it,' Fauci said on Thursday.

Dr. Anthony Fauci said on Thursday that the United States is 'keeping a very close eye' on the Mu variant of COVID-19 but it is 'not an immediate threat'

He added that the Mu variant is 'not at all even close to being dominant' as the Delta variant maintains its 99% dominance among coronavirus infections.

'Even though it has not - in essence - taken hold to any extent here, we always pay attention to - at all times  variants,' Fauci said.

'This variant has a constellation of mutations that suggest that it would evade certain antibodies, not only monoclonal antibodies, but vaccine and convalescent serum- induced antibodies,' Fauci said.

'But there isn't a lot of clinical data to suggest that. It is mostly laboratory, in-vitro data. Not to downplay it, we take it very seriously.'

Fauci added that vaccines are still 'quite effective' against COVID-19 variants.

'Bottom line, we're paying attention to it, we take everything like that seriously - but we don't consider it an immediate threat right now,' Fauci said.

During the press briefing, Fauci also said it is 'likely' that Americans will need to get a third dose of vaccine to be considered fully vaccinated against COVID-19.

Fauci said a final determination would be made by the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The U.S. is preparing for boosters for all Americans who received the mRNA vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna between five and eight months after their second dose, pending approval by the FDA.

A map shows the total number of COVID-19 infections and deaths in the United States since the start of the pandemic

A graph shows the number of coronavirus deaths in the United States each day since the start of the pandemic

A graph shows the number of coronavirus deaths in the United States each day in August and September

A graph shows the number of coronavirus infections in the United States each day since the start of the pandemic

A graph shows the number of coronavirus infections in the United States each day in August and September

A map shows the percentage of people in each state that have been vaccinated so far

The U.S. is still studying whether a booster dose of the single-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine will be needed.

A formal determination of the third dose for 'full vaccination' would have broad implications for schools, businesses and other entities with vaccine mandates put in place amid surges in COVID-19 numbers caused by the Delta variant.

Impacts from the newly defined Mu variant could further impact the necessity for booster shots and mandates to get them.

The Mu variant was first identified in Colombia in January 2021, and has since spread to 39 countries across the world with at least 4,500 cases tied to the variant as of August 29, according to the WHO.

The WHO noted that the prevalence of Mu variant cases has increased in Colombia to 39% and in Ecuador to 13%.

There were just under 4.4 million new cases of COVID-19 reported and just over 67,000 new deaths reported worldwide for the week of August 23 to August 29, according to the WHO.

The number of total cases globally since the start of the pandemic has reached 216 million and the total number of deaths sits just under 4.5 million.
Former Roman Catholic Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, 91, pleaded not guilty Friday to sexually assaulting a 16-year-old boy during a wedding reception in Massachusetts nearly 50 years ago.

McCarrick is the only U.S. Catholic cardinal, current or former, to ever be criminally charged with child sex crimes. The victim hasn't been identified.

The once-powerful American prelate was expelled from the priesthood for sexual abuse in 2019.

He walked into suburban Boston's Dedham District Court wearing a COVID-19 mask and hunched over a walker.

'Shame on you!' a protester shouted. Others held signs as the disgraced Cardinal made his way inside the courthouse.

Former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, left, arrives at Dedham District Court, Friday, Sept. 3, 2021, in Dedham, Massachusetts after he was charged with sexually assaulting a teenage boy 50 years go

Former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick is the first and only current or former Cardinal to be criminally charged with a child sex crime

McCarrick sits in a car as he leaves the courthouse after his arraignment on Friday

He did not speak during the hearing, where bail was set at $5,000. The judge ordered McCarrick to stay away from the victim and have no contact with minors.

McCarrick's attorney, Katherine Zimmerl, said after the court appearance that they are 'looking forward to addressing the allegations in court' and would have no other comment.

The next hearing was set for Oct. 28.

McCarrick, who now lives in Dittmer, Missouri, was charged with three counts of indecent assault and battery on a person over 14, according to court documents.

He can still face charges in the case because he wasn't a Massachusetts resident and had left the state, stopping the clock on the statute of limitations.

Protestors shouted, 'Shame on you,' as the ex-Cardinal walked into the courthouse. They held signs like this one that read 'Ordained and Betrayed'

Stephen Sheehan, left, and Skip Shea hold signs during a news conference outside Dedham District Court following the arraignment of former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick on Friday

'Today's arraignment provides hope for many clergy sex abuse victims and survivors that justice will prevail, truth will be told and children will be kept safe,' the victim's lawyer Mitchell Garabedian said.

Garabedian has represented dozens of others who allege they were abused by clerics.

'My client, in coming forward, has shown an enormous amount of courage, and hes ready to see this trial through the end,' he said.

McCarrick's fall began in 2017 when a former altar boy came forward to report the priest had groped him when he was a teenager in New York.

The next year, the Archdiocese of New York announced that McCarrick had been removed from ministry after finding the allegation to be 'credible and substantiated,' and two New Jersey dioceses revealed they had settled claims of sexual misconduct against him in the past involving adults.

Pope Francis defrocked McCarrick in 2019 after a Vatican investigation determined he sexually abused minors, as well as adults.

A two-year internal investigation into McCarrick found that three decades of bishops, cardinals and popes downplayed or dismissed reports of sexual misconduct.

Correspondence showed they repeatedly rejected the information outright as rumor and excused it as an 'imprudence.'

The investigative findings released last year pinned much of the blame on Pope John Paul II, who appointed McCarrick archbishop of Washington, D.C., despite having commissioned an inquiry that confirmed McCarrick slept with seminarians.

In the Massachusetts case, authorities began investigating McCarrick after Garabedian sent a letter to the district attorneys office alleging the abuse, according to the court records.

McCarrick (right) and his lawyer Katherine Zimmerl (left) head into the courthouse and pass news cameras and protestors

The man told authorities during an interview in January that McCarrick was close to his family when he was growing up and that the abuse started when he was a young boy.

The man said that during his brother's wedding reception at Wellesley College in June 1974 - when he was 16 - McCarrick told him that his father wanted him to have a talk with McCarrick because the boy was 'being mischievous at home and not attending church.'

The man said that the two of them went for a walk around campus and McCarrick groped him before they went back to the party.

The man said McCarrick also sexually assaulted him in a 'coat room type closet' after they returned to the reception, authorities wrote in the documents.

The man told investigators that before leaving the room, McCarrick told him to 'say three Our Fathers and a Hail Mary or it was one Our Father and three Hail Marys, so God can redeem you of your sins,' according to the report.

He also described other instances of sexual abuse by McCarrick over the years, including when the man was an adult, according to the court records.

Ordained as a priest in New York City in 1958, McCarrick ascended the church ranks despite apparently common knowledge in the U.S. and Vatican leadership that 'Uncle Ted,' as he was known, slept with seminarians.

The case against McCarrick and other Catholic clerics is especially raw in Boston, where the global priest sex abuse scandal first was exposed.

The case against McCarrick (pictured) and other Catholic clerics is especially raw in Boston, where the global priest sex abuse scandal first was exposed

McCarrick arriving for a meeting on the eve of the start of a conclave on March 11, 2013 at the Vatican - six years before he was defrocked in 2019

Reporting by The Boston Globe's Spotlight team helped break open the scandal in the Archdiocese of Boston in 2002.

The reporting uncovered how dozens of priests in the archdiocese had molested and raped children for decades while church higher-ups covered it up and shuffled abusive priests from parish to parish.

A movie about the Globe's reporting, 'Spotlight,' won the 2016 Academy Award for best picture.

McCarrick became one of the most visible Catholic Church officials in the U.S. and even served as the spokesman for fellow U.S. bishops when they enacted a 'zero tolerance' policy against sexually abusive priests in 2002.

Cardinal George Pell was convicted of sexual abuse in his native Australia, but his conviction was ultimately thrown out.

And French Cardinal Philippe Barbarin was convicted but later acquitted of charges that he covered up for a notorious pedophile priest.
Interstate relatives of a soldier who lost his life in a truck rollover south of Townsville are pleading with the Queensland government for an exemption to attend his funeral.

Craftsman Brendon Payne died alongside Warrant Officer Second Class Ryan Leslie when their vehicle rolled over on a public road near the Townsville Field Training Area on Monday.

Family members in COVID-19 hotspots are seeking exemptions to attend Craftsman Payne's funeral, but Queensland has a hard border with NSW, the ACT and Victoria barring travellers from those areas.

Relatives of Craftsman Brendon Payne, who lost his life in a truck rollover near Townsville, have pleaded with the Queensland government to be able to attend his funeral

'You just can't believe it, it's just so dumbfounding,' Craftsman Payne's NSW-based grandmother Denise told Nine Network on Friday.

'I reckon it would be really, really hard ... knowing he was being buried and we couldn't be there.

'Please Annastacia (Palaszczuk) will you let my daughter and I come to Queensland for my grandson's funeral.'

Craftsman Payne's grandmother, and his aunt Leanne, say they are fully vaccinated and would travel from Newcastle to Brisbane directly to minimise any risk to the community.

Interstate relatives that live in Covid-19 hotspots fear they will miss Craftsman Payne's funeral if they are asked to undertake hotel quarantine

They fear they will miss the funeral altogether if asked to undertake hotel quarantine.

'We're not asking to go up for a holiday, we just want to bury our boy. We're not asking to go and stop at restaurants, meals and stop anywhere,' Leanne said.

Meanwhile, federal Member for Herbert, Phillip Thompson, has personally offered to drive the family from the border to the funeral and back, then undertake two weeks of quarantine.

Mr Thompson, a defence veteran, says he's willing to do whatever it takes to get the family to the funeral.

Federal Member for Herbert, Phillip Thompson, has personally offered to drive the family from the border to the funeral and back, then undertake two weeks of quarantine (stock image)

'I'm asking for the premier to give an exemption to one of Australia's most brave, who put themselves in harm's way, whether that is here in Australia or on operation,' he said.

'We can't have Australian soldiers who have tragically died, their families be treated so poorly.

'We're asking the premier to support us and allow (the family) to travel into Queensland to bury their loved one.'

Craftsman Payne, 29, joined the army in March 2020, served for one year and five months and was a member of the Royal Australian Electrical and Mechanical Engineers.

Warrant Officer Leslie, 40, served for 22 years and two months and was also a member of the electrical and mechanical engineers.
Leading Australian telco provider Telstra has sent anti-vaxxers into meltdown by changing how its network name appears on customers' mobile phones to 'Telstra #LetsVaxx'.

Other Telstra users praised the company for encouraging Australians to get the jab amid surging Covid-19 cases and lockdowns in NSW and Victoria.

Telstra CEO Andrew Penn said the change was made so the Telco can help drive Australia out of the pandemic.

Anti-vaxxers have been left outraged after Telstra changed its network name to #LetsVaxx (pictured, a Telstra retail branch in Sydney)

How the vaccination message appears for iphone users with Telstra accounts appears across Australia

'This is a global emergency and to beat this we need to come together... I urge Australians to get vaccinated as soon as possible,' he said.

'Australians getting vaccinated will make an incredible difference  we can help protect each other, lessen the financial hardship on families, and reduce the toll on our well-being caused by the uncertainty and isolation from rolling lockdowns.'

The telco is also offering 'Plus Points' for customers who are fully vaccinated, which will see some users given $3500 in credit - easily covering many Australians' annual mobile phone bills.

But Telstra's jab push has angered the anti-vaccine crowd, with some threatening to boycott the company altogether.

'Can you please delete the 'Letsvaxx' from my phone please, otherwise I will close my account,' one disgruntled customer said.

'Get this #LetsVaxx propaganda off my phone. Enough with the non stop fear mongering jabs the only way out BS,' another said.

'Long time Telstra customer about to say ta ta - looking for a new carrier today. I don't support any business that advocates irreversible experimental jabs with no long term safety data,' a third person tweeted.

Telstra said the change will not be reversed.

Others threw their support around the network change and said they were proud to be with the provider.

'Just noticed this and I love this little #LetsVaxx message! Come on people, listen to Telstra, health professionals and science and let's get out of this madness,' one woman tweeted.

'Proud to be a customer of Telstra who is getting behind the vaccination drive,' commented another.

Telstra told customers the move is aimed at 'encouraging people who want to receive the vaccine to do so'

One enraged customer tweeted Telstra should cease the 'non stop fear mongering jabs'
A joyful toddler and his relieved mother have been reunited in heartwarming scenes after being separated for eight weeks by Queensland's hard border closure.

Dominique Facer's three-year-old son Memphis Francis beamed as he ran and jumped into her arms on the tarmac at Brisbane's Archerfield Airport on Friday.

Memphis was left stranded on his grandparents' cattle station in the NSW Riverina region more than 1,500 kilometres away from his family home in Hervey Bay.

The family's heartbreaking story sparked a national outcry on Thursday, prompting Queensland health officials to grant an exemption to bring Memphis home.

BREAKING: The moment three-year-old Memphis was reunited with his mum in Brisbane. The toddler was stranded in NSW due to Queensland's strict border rules before the state government allowed him to enter with an exemption. https://t.co/3D6Pq5q8J7 #7NEWS pic.twitter.com/f0GtbfwNEN  7NEWS Sydney (@7NewsSydney) September 3, 2021

Desperate mum Dominique Facer finally gets to hug her three-year-old Memphis after being separated from her boy for eight weeks by harsh Queensland Covid border restrictions

Memphis (pictured) was left stranded for eight weeks due to the Covid outbreak in Sydney

Finally charity Angel Flight Australia stepped in to help fly the young toddler back home, where he will have to spend the next 14 days in isolation.

The happy three-year-old hugged his mother and both wept tears of joy when they were finally reunited.

'He has been watching dinosaurs since 3am and said 'oh I am going home today',' Ms Facer said before the emotional reunion.

'We are going to be a family again.'

Memphis is pictured with his grandparents Mark and Alex on their cattle station in NSW

Ms Facer said she planned to reward little Memphis with his favourite dinner: chips with chicken nuggets.

She said he would also be keen to spend time with the family's horse and with his four wheeler.

His dad would also want to spend plenty of time pushing him on a a swing he built for Memphis and his little sister Paisley, she said.

Angel Flight Australia, which organises non-emergency flights, has helped reunite three families during the pandemic.

It helped Melbourne woman Anna Coffey reunite with her dying father in June and in August it organised for Daniel Cioffi to get from Brisbane to Adelaide to see his dying mother.
The EU is planning a 5,000 strong 'rapid response' reaction force for military interventions in the wake of the chaotic evacuation of Afghanistan.

Calls have grown for the 27-nation bloc to develop its own joint military capability to respond quickly to crises in the wake of the chaotic scenes at Kabul airport after the Taliban seized power.

EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell said: 'Afghanistan has shown that deficiencies in our strategic autonomy come with a price and that the only way forward is to combine our forces and strengthen not only our capacity but also our will to act.

The EU is planning a 5,000 strong 'rapid response' reaction force for military interventions in the wake of the chaotic evacuation of Afghanistan. Pictured: Taliban fighters in Kabul

'If we want to be able to act autonomously and not be dependent on the choices made by others, even if these others are our friends and allies, then we have to develop our own capacities.'

Among the propositions is a plan, first aired in May, to set up a 5,000-strong force as part of a review of the EU's overall strategy due to be presented in draft form in November.

But the proposal is yet to gain EU-wide support, and there are major doubts over whether there is the political will to engage such a force. The bloc, for instance, never used a system of so-called battlegroups it set up in 2007.

A rapid reaction force is seen as more likely now that Britain has exited the bloc.

Britain, one of Europe's main military powers alongside France, had been sceptical of collective defence policy.

'The EU and its Member States must carry greater weight in the world - to defend our interests and values and to protect our citizens,' European Council President Charles Michel wrote in an online post.

'The chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan forces us to accelerate honest thinking about European defence.'

Slovenian Defence Minister Matej Tonin - whose country holds the EU's rotating presidency and hosted the meeting at the state-owned Brdo Castle estate northwest of the capital Ljubljana - estimated that a rapid response force could number '5,000 to 20,000' personnel.

EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell (pictured) said the EU should 'combine our forces' and 'develop our own capabilities'

He called for a new system that would see troops from 'willing countries' dispatched in the name of the EU if just a majority of member states agreed, rather than the unanimity required for the battlegroups.

In Washington, President Joe Biden's administration indicated it would welcome such a force, which comes after years of US pressure on NATO allies to share more of the burden by boosting military spending.

'We continue to believe that a stronger, more capable Europe is in our shared interests,' State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters.

'When the democracies that make up the EU stick together, they constitute a tremendous force for a stable and open international order.'

But he said that the European Union and NATO should coordinate to 'avoid duplication and potential waste of scarce resources'.

German Defence Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer said the lesson from Afghanistan was that Europe must be able to 'act more independently' to be a credible actor.

But she insisted 'it is very important that we don't act as an alternative to NATO and the Americans'.

She appeared to push back against the idea of a standing force, saying on Twitter that 'coalitions of the willing' among member states could come together to tackle future crises.

Latvian minister Artis Pabriks said the bloc needed to show it had the 'political will' to use any force if the plan was to lead anywhere.

He noted that the battlegroups programme has been around for over a decade as part of the EU's common defence policy, but asked, 'Have we ever used it?'

Debate has raged for decades over what role Brussels should play on defence. EU member nations - most of which are also NATO allies - have often been reluctant to agree on moves to integrate military capabilities.

Ambitions on common defence have gathered steam in recent years in part due to the exit from the bloc of Britain, which was opposed to anything that might lead to a European army or dilute support for NATO.
An ISIS-inspired terrorist who was shot dead by police after going on a stabbing rampage in an Auckland shopping centre had earlier made chilling threats about giving 'payback to Kiwi scums' - but was let off with just a police warning.

Six people have been left fighting for life in hospitals across New Zealand's north island on Friday afternoon while the knifeman was shot dead within 60 seconds by police inside the Countdown supermarket in New Lynn, in the city's south.

Three of the victims were described as 'critical' with neck and chest wounds.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern revealed on Friday the 32-year-old Sri Lankan national, known only as 'S' for legal reasons, was considered one of the nation's most dangerous extremists and was watched 24/7 since 2016.

He arrived in New Zealand in 2011 but only became known to police in 2016 after posting 'staunchly anti-Western and violent' material on Facebook including footage depicting war-related violence, the NZ Herald reported.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern revealed on Friday the 32-year-old Sri Lankan national (pictured) was considered one of the nation's most dangerous extremists and was watched 24/7 since 2016. He arrived in New Zealand in 2011

Six people were left fighting for life in hospitals across New Zealand's north island on Friday afternoon while the knifeman died inside the Countdown supermarket in New Lynn

Police let him off with a warning but he continued to be active online.

'One day I will go back to my country and I will find kiwi scums in my country ... and I will show them ... what will happen when you mess with S while I'm in their country. If you're tough in your country ... we are tougher in our country scums #payback',' S wrote on Facebook.

A year later in 2017, S was detained at the Auckland International Airport when travelling on a one-way ticket to Singapore.

Police allege he told worshippers in his mosque that he intended to join ISIS.

A large hunting knife had been found in his apartment when searched by police along with a photo of him holding an air rifle and other images glorifying violence.

S was held in custody for a year and eventually pleaded guilty to charges of distributing restricted material.

The day after he was released in August, 2018 he bought another hunting knife and was arrested again.

When police again searched his home they found more disturbing footage including a video of Islamic State cutting a prisoner's throat.

Prosecutors tried to charge S last year under the Terrorism Suppression Act 2002 but a High Court ruled it was not considered an offence under the act to plan a terrorist attack.

He was prosecuted on lesser charges and found guilty of possessing propaganda-style material supportive of Islamic State, before being sentenced to one year of supervision to be served at a mosque.

Ms Ardern described Friday's attack as 'despicable'.

'What happened today was despicable, hateful and wrong,' she said. 'It was carried out by an individual, not a faith or religion. He was gripped by violent and ISIS inspired ideology that is not supported here.'

'ISIS INSPIRED' TERRORIST'S CRIMINAL PAST The knifeman who was shot dead in a Countdown supermarket on Friday was known to police and politicians for his extremist views, which were largely inspired by terror group, ISIS. The man, known only as 'S' due to High Court suppression orders, arrived in New Zealand in 2011 from Sri Lanka and was first placed on the terror watchlist in 2016 after authorities were alerted to extremist posts he made on social media. Some of the videos he shared online depicted war-related violence, a clear approval of violent extremism and pledging his support for ISIS, New Zealand Herald reported. He received an official warning by police but continued to post the material, including a comment which read: 'One day I will go back to my country and I will find kiwi scums in my country... and I will show them... what will happen when you mess with S while I'm in their country. If you're tough in your country... we are tougher in our country scums #payback'. 'S' reportedly told a worshiper at a mosque that he hoped to join ISIS in Syria and was detained at Auckland International Airport in 2017 after booking a one-way flight to Singapore. He spent a year in custody before pleading guilty to distributing restricted material, earning a supervision order in 2018. The day after he was released from prison, 'S' was arrested by counterterrorism police who followed him as he purchased a hunting knife. Internet search history reportedly found he'd researched how to kill 'non-believers'. Police hoped to prosecute 'S' under the Terrorism Suppression Act 2002, but it was determined that preparing a terrorist attack was not an offence under the legislation, given he had not carried out any attacks. He was prosecuted on lesser charges of possessing propaganda in support of ISIS. During his trial, 'S' reportedly told the jury: 'You're worried about one knife, I am telling you I will buy 10 knives. It's about my rights.' Advertisement

Six people were rushed to hospitals across New Zealand's north island on Friday afternoon while the knifeman died inside the Countdown supermarket in New Lynn

Customers fled the supermarket and witnesses reported chaotic scenes as police shot the knifeman dead

A surveillance team and special tactics group monitored the man at all times and plain clothes officers were able to respond in 60 seconds when he launched his rampage.

It is understood the man obtained a knife from within the store.

Ms Ardern reiterated that if the offender had committed a crime in the past that would have allowed authorities to put him in prison, 'that's where he would have been'.

'The reason he was in the community is because within the law we could not put him anywhere else. His past behaviour was, within the threshold of the law, not enough to put him in prison.'

S had reportedly performed internet searches asking about the guidelines of 'lone-wolf mujahideen', knife attacks and prison conditions in New Zealand.

Disturbing footage of the attack was shared online, showing customers running to safety as at least 10 police units swarmed the surrounding streets.

A witness told Stuff people were 'running out, hysterically, just screaming, yelling, scared' as an elderly man laid injured on the floor and a middle-aged woman was stabbed in the shoulder.

Due to suppression orders that are already in place, the prime minister says there is information about the man's identity (pictured) and past that cannot yet be revealed

The offender was reportedly acting 'like a lunatic' and indiscriminately lunging at anybody in his path, the witness said.

Another woman said she heard police ordering the offender to surrender before five gunshots rang out.

Two officers were involved in shooting him dead.

The three victims who remain in a critical condition were rushed to Auckland City hospital along with a fourth person in a serious condition.

One victim in a stable condition was taken to Waitakere Hospital while another was rushed to Middlemore Hospital.

Two of the victims were rushed straight into emergency abdominal surgery.

At least 20 frantic Countdown customers fled to safety at nearby Unichem Pharmacy, which was already brimming with about 45 patients waiting to get their Covid jab.

At least 10 police units were quickly on the scene and surrounded the shopping precinct before the knifeman was shot dead

Staff immediately locked the doors and called for help.

'It wasn't a nice scenario. Everyone was pretty shocked and worried, but everybody is fine,' a staff member said.

At least 10 police units were quickly on the scene and surrounded the shopping precinct before the knifeman was shot dead.

Roads in and out of the area were blocked off and helicopters are circling nearby.

Kiri Hannifin, Countdown supermarket's general manager of safety, released a statement on Friday afternoon stating her 'heart was heavy knowing what our team and customers have witnessed'.

'We are particularly devastated that something like this has happened again in one of our stores. It's difficult to comprehend and the events of today leave our whole team in deep shock,' she said.

'The safety of our team, and our customers, is always our priority, and this is at the heart of our COVID-19 response as well. We will cooperate with the Police in any way we can to understand what's happened, and at this point we're unable to provide any further details.'

The store will be closed until further notice.
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The 'cruel' and 'immoral' leak of top secret plans to be enacted when the Queen dies is expected to be formally investigated by the Government amid growing anger at Buckingham Palace.

'Operation London Bridge' is only shared with a small group of people and reveals that all Whitehall flags must be lowered to half mast within ten minutes followed by a TV address and UK tour by Prince Charles and a pre-planned memorial service at St Paul's Cathedral for ministers that will be made to look 'spontaneous'.

The Royal Family's website will be replaced with an all-black page with a short statement confirming Her Majesty's death. All GOV.UK websites will have a black banner added.

It sets up a potentially uncomfortable meeting for the Prime Minister tomorrow, as Boris and Carrie Johnson will be meeting Her Majesty this weekend at Balmoral despite courtiers mounting concerns over Covid. It will also be the first time their 16-month-old son, Wilfred, meets the monarch.

Buckingham Palace has declined to comment - but an royal insider said officials are 'not happy', adding: We are not talking about this. It is a matter for the Government.

Royal expert Angela Levin said: 'I think it is awful and cruel to release the top-secret plans about the Queen's death. Where are our morals?'

The ten-day plan was leaked to POLITICO after being updated during the coronavirus pandemic with the day she passes away being called 'D-Day'.

It was first hatched in the 1960s but has never been published in such granular detail. But there is no suggestion that Her Majesty, 95, is in poor health and there are major questions about how documents so sensitive could be made public.

In more embarrassment for the Government, Operation Spring Tide, the closely-guarded plan for Prince Charles' accession to the throne, was also included in the leak. It does not include details of his coronation, which could be several months later.

The Cabinet Office could now launch a formal investigation within days into who leaked the paperwork, with Cabinet Secretary Simon Case, who previously worked for Prince William, expected to make the decision next week, according to The Mirror.

Today's leak reveals the first person outside Buckingham Palace to be told the sad news will be the Prime Minister, who will be telephoned by the Queen's Private Secretary, before a 'call cascade' to members of the cabinet, members of the privy council and senior figures including in the Armed Forces, who plan gun salutes across the country hours later.

They will all be given the same scripted message: 'We have just been informed of the death of Her Majesty The Queen. Discretion is required'.

The royal household will then issue an 'official notification' delivering the sad news to the public via the TV and press including confirmation that Her Majesty's funeral will take place ten days later at Westminster Abbey before being buried in the family crypt next to her beloved Prince Philip at Windsor Castle.

Before that her body will lie in state for three days in the Palace of Westminster, which will be open 23-hours-a-day for members of the public to file through to pay their respects.

Cabinet Office documents show that the Government is in a flap about ensuring that all flags are lowered to half-mast within ten minutes to avoid inflaming 'a wave of public anger'. One briefing suggests that contractors are being considered solely to do the job.

The Department for Transport has also warned that London will be 'full' for the first time in history, with trains and buses packed with people flooding into the capital to mourn the Queen and then line the streets for the funeral. Hotels and B&Bs will also be full.

The updated 'Operation London Bridge' also contains plans for social media and has been updated for the internet age.

Any tweets and retweets by Government department social media accounts and ministers will have to be signed off by spin doctors first to keep an iron grip on messaging about the Queen at a sensitive time. And no public statements by senior MPs is permitted until the Prime Minister speaks first, probably in a Downing Street address in the hours after her death.

Here is a day-by-day breakdown of 'Operation London Bridge':

The top secret plans for the Queen's death, known as Operation London Bridge first started in the 1960s, has been updated since the pandemic began and now leaked via Whitehall

The coffin is carried into St George's Chapel during the funeral of Prince Philip. The Queen will also have the same journey after a state funeral at Westminster, before being buried in Windsor

Operation Spring Tide, the closely-guarded plan for Prince Charles' accession to the throne, was also included in the leak. Charles will address the nation on the day his mother dies, the plan says

Operation Spring Tide: Plans for how Charles to accede to the throne A leak of secret arrangements for when The Queen dies - codenamed London Bridge - has also shed light on how her son and heir Prince Charles will accede to the throne. Details of Operation Spring Tide, revealed for the first time today, show how the Prince of Wales will be proclaimed as the new monarch before going on a tour of the United Kingdom before returning to London for his mothers funeral. On the day of The Queens death, plans, published today by Politico, suggest Charles will first hold an audience with the Prime Minister as the nation goes into a period of mourning. That same evening at 6pm, he will deliver a broadcast to the nation, expected to be partly to pay tribute to his mothers years of public service. At 10am the next morning the Accession Council, made up of senior ministers, civil servants and Commonwealth leaders, will meet at St. James Palace to proclaim King Charles the new sovereign. Attendees are expected to wear morning dress with no decorations. A proclamation of King Charles accession will then be read at St. James Palace and the Royal Exchange in the City of London. Charles will then hold another audience with the Prime Minister and other Cabinet members at 3.30pm. Three days after the monarchs death, King Charles will receive the motion of condolence at Westminster Hall. After this he will embark on a tour of the United Kingdom, visiting all three devolved nations where he will attend services. Charles will start his tour in Scotland, visiting the devolved parliament and a service at St Giles Cathedral in Edinburgh. The next day he will move onto Northern Ireland to receive another motion of condolence at Hillsborough Castle, before a service at St Annes Cathedral in Belfast. During the Kings time outside of London, the government will go into overdrive for preparing The Queens funeral, practising the procession through Westminster and also details of the service. The King will make the final stop of his tour in Wales with a visit to the Welsh parliament and a service at Liandaff Cathedral in Cardiff. He will arrive back in London ahead of the tenth day since the monarchs death, when the state funeral is planned to take place. The Queens burial in Windsor Castle will take place later. The natural progression after this is for King Charles to hold his coronation. This detail was however not included in the leak of plan, but could much like with The Queens following the death of her father, be several months later. Advertisement

D-Day

The Prime Minister will be informed by phone call and message that the Queen is dead. It is not clear if the code: 'London Bridge has fallen' will be used by Buckingham Palace but this has been the rumour since the plan was first drawn up in the 1960s.

A 'call cascade' will begin, informing politicians and civil servant s in order of seniority, starting with the cabinet, the cabinet secretary and the Privy Council.

There is a script that should not be diverted from, with the individual being told: 'We have just been informed of the death of Her Majesty The Queen. Dscretion is required'. The call will then be ended.

Only then will an 'official notification' delivering the news to the public -likely to be to the Press Association and the main UK broadcasters. It may also confirm plans for the queen's funeral, likely to be held 10 days following her death.

An email will also be sent to ministers and civil servants saying: 'Dear colleagues, It is with sadness that I write to inform you of the death of Her Majesty The Queen'.

Immediately all flags on Whitehall and across state buildings should be lowered to half mast. No 10 Downing Street has said it is concerned that they don't have a full time 'flag officer' - meaning there are certain hours of the day where the flag could be difficult to lower. A contractor could be used in those periods, documents say.

Parliament will be recalled the devolved legislatures in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland will adjourn.

The Royal Family's official website will turn black with a short announcement confirming the Queen's death. Government websites will also be turned black with special, already designed banners.

Official Twitter, Facebook and Instagram accounts will also turn black and all tweets paused other than those already agreed - but there will be silence until the Prime Minister at the time speaks publicly first.

The PM will speak in Downing Street on live TV to give the first tribute to Her Majesty.

He or she will then go to see the new King, Prince Charles, who will address the nation himself at 6pm to coincide with the main evening news bulletins.

The Prime Minister and the most senior cabinet ministers will then go to a service of remembrance at St Paul's Cathedral. Despite being pre-planned it should be made to look 'spontaneous,' according to the official documents leaked to POLITICO.

D-Day +1

10am

The Accession Council  formed of all Privy Counsellors, Great Officers of State, the Lord Mayor and City Civic party, Realm High Commissioners and certain senior civil servants  will be convened at St James's Palace, close to Buckingham Palace.

They will proclaim King Charles the new sovereign. All men will be expected to wear morning dress or lounge suits with black or dark ties. No medals or decorations can be worn.

An official will be filmed reading the proclamation that Britain has a new monarch - simulataneously the same message will be read at the Royal Exchange in the City of London, next to the Bank of England.

At Midday, MPs will give tributes in the House of Commons, lead by the Prime Minister.

And at 3.30pm the Prime Minister and the cabinet will go to Buckingham Palace will have an audience with the new King Charles - but no spouses will be allowed.

D-Day +2

Wherever the Queen's body rests, it will now be returned to Buckingham Palace, where her coffin will be in the Throne Room. There will be an altar, the pall, the Royal Standard, and four Grenadier Guards, their bearskin hats inclined, their rifles pointing to the floor, standing watch.

There are different plans depending on where the Queen was when she passes away.

If she was at Sandringham in Norfolk, her body will be carried to London on the Royal Train - it will arrive at St Pancras Station in London, where her son Prince Charles, the PM and Cabinet Ministers waiting.

If Her Majesty is at Balmoral in Scotland, the Plan A, known as Operation Unicorn, will begin.

The Royal Train will be sent to Aberdeenshire to convey her coffin back to London, again to St Pancras.

If this is not possible officials will switch to Operation Overstudy, meaning the coffin will be taken to London by plane from Aberdeen Airport. This is likely to land at London Heathrow or RAF Northolt.

Her Majesty spends most of her time at Windsor Castle, where she has been in a covid bubble since the start of the pandemic. If she dies there then her body will be moved to the capital by car.

Another day of tributes in the House of Commons is expected as well as the devolved parliaments.

D-Day +3

The new King Charles will begin a tour of the UK.

It will begin with a visit to Westminster Hall in the Houses of Parliament, where MPs will give a 'motion of condolence'.

His next stop will be Edinburgh to visit the Scottish parliament followed by a memorial service at St. Giles Cathedral in Edinburgh.

The queue stretching beyond Lambeth Bridge which was opened by King George for his funeral in 1952 - the last time a British monarch died

D-Day +4

King Charles will then fly to Northern Ireland, where members of the devolved parliament will give another motion of condolence, this time at Hillsborough Castle, the residence of the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, and the official residence of the monarch while in Northern Ireland.

He will then attend a service at St. Anne's Cathedral in Belfast.

Meanwhile in London the first rehearsal of the procession of the Queen's coffin from Buckingham Palace to the Palace of Westminster via The Mall will take place, known as Operation Lion.

D-Day +5

The Queen will leave Buckingham Palace and carried to the Palace of Westminster to lie in state.

The procession will be the first great military parade. A similar slow march for the Queen Mother in 2002 involved 1,600 personnel and stretched for half a mile. The route is thought to hold around a million people.

A memorial service will be held when she arrives.

The Queen Mother's was allowed to lie in state in Westminster, with Her Majesty doing the same in the event of her death

D-Day +6 to D-Day +9

Three days of the Queen lying in state begins, called Operation Feather.

Her coffin will sit on a dark catafalque - a decorated wooden framework supporting the coffin of a distinguished person during a funeral or while lying in state - to make it easier for the public filing through to see the coffin.

The first people to visit will be VIPs, who will be given timed slots to pay their respects.

Then the public will be able to walk through with the room only close for one hour each day.

Meanwhile Charles will fly to Wales for the final leg of his UK tour. He will visit the Welsh parliament before a memorial service at Llandaff Cathedral in Cardiff.

And there will be huge amounts of planning going on in the royal household and in Whitehall, especially ensuring heads of state, VIPs and dignitaries have arrangements to head to the UK for the funeral on Day 10.

The Department for Transport, Home Office and Border Force have plans in place for the number of Britons and foreign tourists expected to go to London in this period.

Transport for London will also be involved to ensure Tube and bus provision is sufficient.

More than a million people could arrive, meaning London's hotels, public transport and public spaces will be 'full', one document says. Police leave will be likely be cancelled but there are concerns about the number of stewards required and where to find them.

D-Day +10

The day of the Queen's funeral. It will be a 'Day of National Mourning' - although will not be an official bank holiday. If it falls on a week day it will be left to employers to decide if staff can have the day off, but there will be no diktat ordering it.

Her Majesty will be moved to the state funeral held at Westminster Abbey, culminating in a two minutes' silence across the nation at midday.

She will then be taken to St George's Chapel at Windsor Castle, where she will be buried in the King George VI Memorial Chapel next to her beloved husband Prince Philip.

It is not known when Prince Charles' coronation will be held. But his mother the Queen was crowned 16 months after King George VI died.

There has been speculation that Charles could choose to become King George VII - using his middle name as a tribute to his grandfather - but Clarence House said recently that 'no decision has been made'.
Boris Johnson is facing a Tory backlash over his plan to hit tens of millions of people with a manifesto-busting tax rise to pay for a long-awaited overhaul of social care.

The Prime Minister is expected to announce as early as next week that National Insurance will be increased to tackle the crisis  breaking a 2019 Tory election manifesto promise.

But he will say that in return, the Government will place a limit on the amount individuals have to pay for support in old age and protect them from having to sell family homes to settle the bills.

Tory MPs immediately slammed the plan as they said it would be a 'massive mistake' to break a manifesto pledge and warned it will 'go down badly' with voters.

They said increasing taxes is 'not the action of a Conservative government' and raising National Insurance would be 'unfair' on younger generations which would be disproportionately affected.

Mr Johnson is already facing a Cabinet war over the proposal, with the Prime Minister, Health Secretary Sajid Javid and Chancellor Rishi Sunak all said to be at odds over how much to hike the levy which is paid by an estimated 25 million people in work.

Meanwhile, at least five Cabinet ministers have said they will oppose any increase in the tax, according to The Times, warning that the young should not shoulder the cost of social care for older people.

Number 10 is said to favour a one per cent rise, adding about 500 to the annual NI levy on a high earner, but the Treasury wants to push it to 1.25 per cent, taking 600 more from someone on 60,000.

Mr Javid has reportedly pushed for a two per cent rise, arguing a one per cent increase would raise only 10billion which he believes is not enough.

Justice Secretary Robert Buckland today insisted that 'no final decisions have been made' but he did not reject the claim that National Insurance will be increased.

Former health secretary Jeremy Hunt said the social care funding crisis 'can only' be solved through the tax system but he cautioned against hiking income tax or national insurance.

And his former close aid-turned-biggest critic Dominic Cummings branded tax increases 'a big policy and political blunder, if you value the Conservative Party winning the next few elections'.

Labour slammed the Government for the amount of time it has taken to come up with a social care plan and blasted the suggestion of a 'manifesto-breaking tax rise that would hit working people and businesses hard'.

Health Secretary Sajid Javid reportedly pushed for a two per cent hike to National Insurance o fund social care

Who pays National Insurance and how much would a 1% increase generate? National Insurance contributions, widely known as 'NICs', are the UK's second biggest tax after income tax. The system was introduced as part of the first state benefit system in 1911 and then revamped after the Second World War. The levy is expected to generate almost 150billion for the Treasury in 2021/22, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, amounting for approximately 20 per cent of all tax revenue. The money generated is used to pay for state benefits, like the state pension. It is paid by employees and the self-employed on the money they earn and by employers on the earnings of their workers. An estimated 26million people pay National Insurance. However it is a direct tax on those who work. Payments end when people retire and start drawing their state pension, meaning that pensioners would be unaffected by the move. A one per cent increase on the value of National Insurance would add a three-figure hit to the annual payments by all but the lowest paid, according to analysis by accountancy firm Blick Rothenberg. No NI is paid on earnings below 10,000. Those earning that sum would pay an additional 4 per year. Those on 15,0000 would have to cough up an additional 54 a year, while those on 25,000 - below the UK's average wage, would pay an extra 154. The figure rises to 254 for those on a 35,000 salary, 404 for those on 50,000 and 654 for those on 75,000. A typical worker who earns 1,000 a week pays no National Insurance on the first 184 in their pocket. They then pay 12 per cent, about 94, on the earnings between 184 and 967, and then two per cent on the remaining earnings above 967. That means the National Insurance payment for the week is just under 95, according to Treasury estimates. The Office for Budget responsibility says for the financial year 2019-20 NICs raised 145 billion for the exchequer - 17.5 per cent of all tax income and equivalent to 5,100 per household. This figure was up from 56.9billion 20 years previously in 1999/2000. But it has remained fairly constant as a percentage of GDP over that same period, ranging between 5.3 per cent and 6.8 per cent. Advertisement

The Conservative Party's 2019 general election manifesto gave a cast iron commitment not to raise taxes.

It said: 'We promise not to raise the rates of income tax, National Insurance or VAT.

'This is a tax guarantee that will protect the incomes of hard-working families across the next Parliament.'

Tory backbenchers fear they will face a massive backlash from the public if Mr Johnson goes ahead with the plan to now hike National Insurance.

Mr Johnson said in his first speech as premier on July 24, 2019 that 'we will fix the crisis in social care once and for all with a clear plan we have prepared to give every older person the dignity and security they deserve'.

He has faced sustained criticism from his political opponents and campaigners for failing to bring forward the plan.

The announcement of the social care plan is believed to have been pencilled in for next Tuesday.

But the final details have yet to be signed off and could still be changed amid ongoing Cabinet disagreements.

The plan will fulfil Mr Johnson's Downing Street pledge to solve the crisis but increasing taxes to pay for the overhaul will represent a massive political gamble.

A Government spokesman said last night: 'We are committed to bringing forward a long-term plan to reform the social care system and we will set out proposals this year.'

Mr Javid has reportedly been pushing for a two per cent rise - more than double other estimations - in National Insurance payments.

Mr Javid is 'concerned' that current projections of 10billion being raised by a one per cent increase would not be adequate to solve the crisis, according to The Times.

His comments are understood to be part of plans to back the NHS with 'billions more in funding', with NHS leaders warning hospitals also need huge sums to deal with a backlog of delayed operations.

Sources close to the Health Secretary denied he had pushed for a two per cent hike but declined to say if he is pushing for more than one per cent.

Paul Johnson, the director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies think tank, told MailOnline that increasing National Insurance would be a 'very poor' way of funding social care reform.

He said: 'I think I agree with absolutely every other commentator which is this is just about the worst possible way of paying for social care because it only affects workers, only affects people under pension age, it is much less progressive than income tax.

'It is just a very poor way of funding it.'

The Daily Telegraph reported last night that the cap on care costs could be far higher than previously thought, in order to save the Treasury billions.

It could be between 60,000 and 80,000, meaning pensioners will still face huge outlays before the state steps in to cover their costs.

Mr Buckland would not be drawn this morning on the proposals but said the PM's plan will be published 'very soon'.

He told Sky News: 'If you remember, in our manifesto we talked about nobody having a monopoly of wisdom and making sure that any reforms will be resilient for the long term.

Office for Budget Responsibility forecasts suggest National Insurance contributions could approach 150billion in 2021/22

Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak are said to be at odds over how much to hike National Insurance, with five Cabinet ministers opposed to any increase

'This isn't just a change for a Parliament, this has got to be a generational change.

'As you would expect even though we have had lots of other challenges through the past two years work has been going on in the relevant departments to bring forward and develop the necessary policies that will deal with the challenge that we all face with regard to social care and I am pretty sure that we will hear very soon more details as to those proposals.'

Asked if he accepted that hiking National Insurance would break a Tory manifesto pledge, he said: 'Well, I think it would be idle of me to speculate as to specific tax or national insurance proposals.

'As I have said, the work is going on, no final decisions have been made and we will work as quickly as possible in order to get that certainty that I think so many people have been looking for fo so long.'

Writing in The Telegraph, Mr Hunt said 'we can only solve the problem through the tax system' but cautioned against hiking National Insurance or income tax.

He said an increase to income tax would feel 'very un-Conservative after the progress in reducing it during the Eighties' while a hike to National Insurance would 'disproportionately' target young people.

The current chairman of the Health Select Committee said he therefore favoured introducing a new 'health and care premium'.

Mr Hunt told the BBC's Radio 4 Today programme the 'eye-watering' sums required are far bigger than what the Chancellor 'can find down the back of a Treasury sofa'.

'I'm really arguing that we need to bite the bullet and say there has to be a tax rise of some sort,' he said.

Labour has savaged the Government's handling of the social care crisis and said asking young people to pay more tax to pay for the overhaul is 'short-sighted'.

Bridget Phillipson, shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, said: 'After 11 years of Conservative mismanagement, the NHS is in crisis with more than five million people waiting for treatment and a broken social care system.

'Boris Johnson still hasn't come forward with the plan for social care he promised over two years ago, and instead they're proposing a manifesto-breaking tax rise that would hit working people and businesses hard.

Public sector net debt was at 2.2trillion at the end of July this year, according to the Office for National Statistics

Government borrowing has surged to record levels during the coronavirus crisis as ministers have scrambled to prop up the UK economy

'Labour has been calling for proper investment for our NHS and social care system, but hitting low earners, young people and business is as short-sighted as this Conservative government's management of our NHS.'

The Government is looking to overhaul social care at a time when public sector finances are under massive strain because of the coronavirus crisis.

Public sector net debt was above 2.2trillion at the end of July this year, according to the Office for National Statistics.

That represents about 98.8 per cent of Gross Domestic Product, the highest ratio since the 99.5 per cent recorded in March 1962.

Monthly Government borrowing is now down considerably on what was recorded in 2020 during the worst of the pandemic but levels this year are still significantly above normal.
Kenneth Wells (pictured) broke into Violet Brown's home before raping her

A man has pleaded guilty to the horrific rape of a 71-year-old woman in her own home more than 40 years ago.

Violet Brown, who lived alone, was woken by the sound of Kenneth Wells, now 63 but then aged 23, breaking into her house and then walking into her bedroom.

Wells raped Ms Brown and locked her inside before fleeing the property in Collingbourne Ducis, Wilts.

She was forced to wait until morning before calling her neighbours and the police for help.

Wells was arrested shortly after the incident and remained the prime suspect, but there was never enough evidence to lead to a charge.

He was arrested at his home address in Salisbury on June 29, 2021, and subsequently charged with burglary, rape and false imprisonment.

Wells, from Salisbury, Wilts., appeared at Salisbury Crown Court on Wednesday and pleaded guilty to burglary, rape and false imprisonment in the early hours of November 6, 1980.

Last summer officers from the Major Crime Team reopened the cold case and re-examined the original investigation.

After a detailed re-investigation, and using the latest in DNA technology, they were able to confirm a direct match between the evidence recovered from the original scene and Wells.

Sadly, Ms Brown died in February 1996, at the age of 87, without seeing her attacker brought to justice.

Wells, of Verona Road, Salisbury, Wilts., appeared at Salisbury Crown Court (pictured) on Wednesday and pleaded guilty to burglary, rape and false imprisonment in the early hours of November 6, 1980

Senior Investigating Officer Detective Chief Inspector Darren Hannant, from the Major Crime Investigation Team, said: 'There is no doubt that this horrendous attack had a lasting impact on Ms Brown, who had to live with the memory of this traumatic incident for the rest of her life.

'She was never comfortable in her own home after the attack and moved out a short time later. The effect on her quality of life was significant.

'Despite the fact that she is no longer alive, she has been at the forefront of all of our minds throughout this investigation, and we have been determined to crack this case to finally ensure the man responsible was arrested and convicted.'

Wells has been remanded in custody ahead of his sentencing on Friday, October 1.
A Japanese brokerage firm has banned its staff from smoking, even while working from home.

Nomura, the country's biggest investment bank, has asked its local staff to give up smoking during the working day in a move labelled as 'intrusive'.

More than half of the company's staff in Japan are currently working from home due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Nomura announced the move in an internal memo on Tuesday, saying in a statement the following day that the new policy - introduced without plans for monitoring or punishment for rule breakers - will improve employee health and the workplace environment.

But some staff thought there might be another motive, telling the Financial Times that the new rule, which takes effect in October, effectively scraps cigarette breaks, requiring smokers to use their lunchtime to light up.

Previously, regular cigarette breaks were part of the work culture - and were often resented by non-smokers as paid time off to which they are not entitled.

Nomura, the country's biggest investment bank, has asked its local staff to give up smoking during the working day in a move labelled as 'intrusive' [Stock image]

The new policy requests that any smoker who must have a cigarette during office hours not return to their desk for 45 minutes afterwards.

The company said this is intended to reduce bad smells and any risk of residual smoke, the FT reported.

Spokesman Yoshitaka Otsu told the Japan Times that the rules will be based on mutual trust and confirmed there is no punishment for breaking them.

The memo is the latest step in Nomura's anti-smoking efforts and also included notice that the company will close all smoking rooms in its Japanese buildings by the end of December.

This will place further restrictions on staff who smoke as Tokyo and other cities move to ban smoking in some public spaces and on pavements.

Tokyo also banned most indoor smoking ahead of this summer's Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Nomura's clamp down on smoking among its staff is not unique among Japanese firms, with retailer Aeon and drinks manufacturer Dydo Drinco having introduced similar steps.

Snacks maker Calbee banned smoking during working hours in 2018 and the following year food producer Ajinomoto Co. introduced a similar policy that applies to remote workers as well as office staff.

Employees at SoftBank are banned from smoking during working hours regardless of where in the world they are based and the conglomerate's news Tokyo headquarters do not have any smoking rooms, the Financial Times reported.

Nomura, which has a key advisory relationship with Japan Tobacco, aims to slash the percentage of staff who smoke from 20 per cent in March 2020 to just 12 per cent by 2025, the paper said.

The moves by private firms and cities come as smoking rates in Japan continue to fall. In 2019, the percentage of Japanese men who smoke fell below 30 per cent for the first time since the second world war.

However a March poll by the National Cancer Center Japan revealed that around two in every 10 smokers said their cigarette consumption had increased while working from home.

Respondents said this was partly due to a lack of smoking restrictions, the Japan Times reported.

In May, research suggested that smoking rates around the world had reached an all-time high with 1.1billion people addicted to tobacco.

Researchers found rates have actually decreased since 1990 but population growth has meant the total number of smokers has risen by 10 per cent.

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates the number of smokers globally is 1.3billion but rates are finally on a downward trend.

The analysis offered no year-on-year breakdown but warned that actual number of smokers has clearly increased over the past 30 years.
Jeremy Hunt today urged ministers to 'get on' with a mass booster Covid vaccine programme

Jeremy Hunt today urged ministers to 'get on' with a mass booster Covid vaccine programme and not wait on their advisors to sign off on the plans.

The former health secretary said the situation in Covid-ravaged Israel should serve as a warning sign that even highly-immunised countries are vulnerable to another wave.

Britain's Covid vaccine advisory panel has hinted that it will give the go-ahead to boosters for 'millions' but is yet to formally make the recommendation or decide who will be eligible.

Boris Johnson last night appeared to jump the gun and get hopes up as he told elderly Britons and patients with underlying conditions to prepare for their third doses this autumn.

It may be weeks before the final details of the booster programme are set out by the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI).

At the moment only 500,000 people with very weak immune systems are being invited to come forward for a third Covid vaccine.

But Mr Hunt urged the Government to press ahead with a wider programme and not wait a moment longer, adding: 'In a pandemic I think even a few days can make a big difference.'

He told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: 'If you look at what's happened in Israel, they have a higher vaccination rate even than us  80 per cent of adults  and they have found a Delta variant does lead to increased hospital admissions, but two weeks after they introduced boosters those admissions started to go down again.

'I understand why scientists are taking their time but I think in a pandemic politicians can also read the rooms and see the direction of travel.

Israel is recording the highest infection rate in the world and deaths and hospitalisations have risen sharply in the past month - despite 80 per cent of adults being vaccinated with two doses.

The country has been offering booster jabs to people over the age of 60 since July, and the scheme has helped to curb rising hospital admissions.

It came as official data showed Scotland's weekly Covid cases have nearly trebled in the fortnight after schools went back after summer there

There are fears the rest of the UK will be hit with a similar bang in cases now that classes are resuming this week.

While Israel is seeing record case numbers, the jab is still offering protection against severe illness with Covid deaths running at about half of the level of the second wave, even though fatalities have been rising sharply since last month. There is now growing pressure for Britain to roll out a booster vaccine programme like Israel is doing

Britain's independent vaccine advisory panel, said it was waiting on more evidence that these people would benefit from another dose and claimed that the 'vast majority' of Britons still had high protection  despite the UK's cases trending in the same direction as Israel's

Israel has been offering booster jabs to people over the age of 60 since July and has managed to curb rising hospital admissions in the age group as a result. Professor Eran Segal, a mathematician at the country's Weizmann Institute, tweeted today that hospitalisations had started to fall just two weeks after the top-up campaign started. This graph shows how Covid hospitalisations have started to level off in Israel just two weeks after its booster programme began. When the drive was started hospitalisations were doubling every week. Predictions suggested this would continue (green line). But just two weeks after the jabs were given out actual hospitalisations have slowed (blue line)

'So I think we should just get on, not wait for that advice, get on with a booster programme.'

The NHS had originally been instructed to start giving boosters to up to 32million people from Monday, but ministers are still waiting for the JCVI to sign off the programme.

Israel is now the world's Covid hotspot: Cases soar despite country's trail-blazing vaccine roll-out Israel has become the Covid capital of the world despite leading the charge on vaccines, in a clear warning sign that Britain, the US and other highly-immunised nations are still vulnerable to another wave. Stats compiled by Oxford University-backed research team Our World in Data shows there were a record 1,892 Covid cases per million people in Israel on Wednesday  nearly 0.2 per cent of the entire population in a single day. That was significantly higher than second worst-hit Mongolia, where the rate was 1,119 per million, and double the figures for Kosovo (980), Georgia (976) and Montenegro (909), which rounded out the top five. The figure only looks at one day's worth of tests and Israel's high rate is thought to have been driven up by a huge testing push ahead of schools reopening there. But the country has consistently reported some of the highest infection rates in the world since mid-August amid an unprecedented third wave, despite being one of the most vaccinated nations in the world. For comparison, 522 people per million in the UK tested positive yesterday and the figure was closer to 595 in the US. It suggests protection gained from vaccines is starting to buckle in the face of the highly-transmissible Delta variant. While Israel is seeing record case numbers in its fourth wave, the jabs are still protecting against severe illness with Covid deaths running at about half of the level of its second wave, even though fatalities have risen sharply in the last month. Israel has been offering booster jabs to people over the age of 60 since July, and data suggests the scheme has helped to curb rising hospital admissions. The country has since expanded the top-up drive to everyone over 12 who has already had two doses. Advertisement

Mr Johnson said last night: The priorities now are the older generation going into autumn and winter, and we have always said there would be a booster programme in September  in this month  and we are going ahead with that.

What I would also say is 16 to 17-year-olds are eligible, they have been approved, they are a very important group for potential transmission ... It is very encouraging to see more and more 16 to 17-year-olds taking the jab, but we need to go faster with those.

He added: I would just urge everybody who hasnt yet had a jab to go and get one.

Members of the JCVI said many millions are likely to get third jabs, including the elderly, clinically vulnerable and healthcare workers.

But they are yet to decide which age groups should be included and whether patients should mix and match vaccines, for example receive a Pfizer jab after two first doses of AstraZeneca.

The JCVI is facing mounting political pressure to speed up its decision-making. MPs and scientists have warned there is no time to lose in boosting the immunity of the vulnerable and elderly with the threat of a resurgence of coronavirus in the winter.

They are pointing to the situation in Israel, where the case rate is currently the highest in the world, but where over-12s are being offered third doses  helping to curb hospital admissions.

However, the JCVI say they need to see initial findings from the Cov-Boost study, due next week.

The trial by University Hospital Southampton has looked at nearly 3,000 Britons to test their immune response to third doses.

Yesterday Professor Anthony Harnden, deputy chairman of the JCVI, said a decision might take weeks. I think its highly likely that there will be a booster programme, he said. Its just the question of how we frame it.

On Wednesday it was announced that third doses will be offered to half a million people with severely weakened immune systems, who were not sufficiently protected by two doses.

The decision was made separately to deliberations over boosters, which top up someones immune response.

Yesterday Professor Peter Openshaw, a member of the New And Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group, said the JCVI should not wait too long to make a decision.

He said: If we wait for everything [studies] to report before making a judgment, we may well be past the time when we should have been making a decision.

Meanwhile, senior ministers are said to be increasingly embittered at the failure of Government experts to authorise the rollout of Covid vaccines to under-16s.

A Whitehall source said there was palpable frustration among Government figures with the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), which has so far not approved the jab.

Both Boris Johnson and Health Secretary Sajid Javid are said to be keen to get on with vaccinating secondary school children.

Ministers fear the new academic year will trigger a fresh wave of the virus in classrooms.

This means that without a jab, children could face more disruption to their education throughout autumn and winter.

France, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands and the US are among the nations now offering jabs to children aged 12 to 15. Norway yesterday followed suit.

UK medical regulators cleared the Pfizer jab for use on 12- to 15-year-olds in June, declaring it safe and effective in this age group.

The Moderna vaccine was also authorised last month.

Ministers had hoped to vaccinate children during the school holidays to prevent a repeat of the massive disruption seen in schools over the past 18 months.

It came as official data showed Scotland's weekly Covid cases have nearly trebled in the fortnight after schools went back after summer there There are fears the rest of the UK will be hit with a similar bang in cases now that classes are resuming this week

However, with schools already going back this week and next, hundreds of thousands of pupils will be mixing for weeks before any rollout is approved by the JCVI  if it is approved at all.

Scotland's Covid cases soared by two and a half times after schools went back, official figures suggested today in a clear warning sign to the rest of the country.

Office for National Statistics weekly surveillance estimated 69,500 Scots or one in 75 people were infected with the virus on any given day in the week to August 27, up 170 per cent in a fortnight.

In England infections have plateaued but remain stubbornly high with the ONS estimating 766,100 people had Covid last week or one in 70, barely a change from the previous seven-day spell.

Experts fear these infections will start to spiral as children return to classrooms this week and next. There are concerns these will then spill over into older age groups, who are vulnerable to the virus.

Boris Johnson today sought to extend his Covid powers by another six months, in an attempt to clear the way for the country to be plunged into further restrictions and yet another lockdown this winter.
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The mother of a victim of a British terrorist who was part of an Islamic State cell nicknamed 'the Beatles' called on one of its members today to reveal where the remains of her son are located after he pleaded guilty.

Diane Foley, the mother of James Foley, 40, who was the first of four American hostages to be killed, came face-to-face in a US federal court yesterday with Alexanda Amon Kotey as he admitted multiple charges.

She said she hoped Kotey's cooperation with the US authorities would extend to telling the family members of the cell's doomed captives where their loved ones' remains are, and whether anyone else was involved in the plot.

Kotey, 37, who grew up in West London but left for Syria in 2012, conspired to abduct and behead Western hostages for ISIS and was one of the gang nicknamed 'the Beatles' by their captives due to their British accents.

The cell of militants - said to be made up of ringleader Mohammed Emwazi, known as Jihadi John, Aine Davis, El Shafee Elsheikh and Kotey - was allegedly responsible for the brutal killings of a Western and Japanese captives.

Kotey pleaded guilty to eight counts including conspiring to murder four American hostages - journalists Mr Foley and Steven Sotloff and aid workers Peter Kassig and Kayla Mueller. The charges Kotey admitted were:

Four counts of hostage taking resulting in death;

Conspiracy to commit hostage taking resulting in death;

Conspiracy to murder US citizens outside of the US;

Conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists - hostage taking and murder - resulting in death;

Conspiracy to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organisation resulting in death.

Diane Foley (centre), the mother of slain ISIS hostage James Foley, stands alongside the parents of slain ISIS hostage Kayla Mueller, Carl Mueller (third from right) and Marsha Mueller (second from right) and family members of two other slain ISIS hostages, following the guilty pleas by Alexanda Kotey, outside the the US District Court in Alexandria, Virginia, yesterday

Alexanda Kotey (left), 37, pleaded guilty to conspiring to murder four US hostages, including James Foley (right), 40

Ms Foley was among the family members of the American victims who were in court in Alexandria, Virginia, to hear details of the charges and watch Kotey plead guilty. He now faces spending the rest of his life behind bars.

Asked if there was any way in which he could make amends, Ms Foley told BBC Radio 4's Today programme this morning: 'I don't know, that's up to him. I didn't get any indication that he was interested in that.

'But I would hope that in time that he might, just because of the extent of the evil that he has committed. I don't know any soul that could live with that, but that's just my opinion.

'All of us would like to know where the remains of our children are. Also I would very much like to know if other people are still living who also were involved.

Kotey also admitted conspiring to murder Steven Sotloff (left) and aid workers Peter Kassig (centre) and Kayla Mueller (right)

Diane Foley (right), the mother of slain American hostage James Foley, speaks alongside the parents of other murdererd hostages following the guilty pleas by Alexanda Kotey outside the US District Court in Alexandria, Virginia, yesterday

'These are two people (Kotey and Elsheikh) who were quite involved with the hostage taking and torture of our son Jim and Peter (Kassig), Kayla (Mueller) and Steven (Sotloff).

Who are the ISIS Beatles? Mohammed Emwazi - Jihadi John Emwazi was one of the most prominent members of the so-called ISIS Beatles and was regularly seen carrying out executions in their horrific beheading videos. He took part in the barbaric beheadings of British aid workers David Haines and Alan Henning and US journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff and US humanitarian worker Peter Kassig. The terrorist, who was born in Kuwait and grew up in Queen's Park, West London, was charged with 27 counts of murder and five counts of hostage taking in November 2014. He was killed in a Hellfire missile drone strike in Syria in 2015. Aine Lesley Davis - Paul Davis was born Aine Leslie Junior Davis in 1984 to Fay Rodriquez, and is believed to have spent the early years of his childhood in Hammersmith where his mother lived. He was one of 13 children his father had by four different women. The former tube driver, who has drug-dealing and firearms convictions to his name, converted to Islam while in prison. In 2014 his wife, Amal el-Wahabi, was convicted of funding terrorism after she persuaded a friend to try and smuggle 16,000 in cash in her underwear to him. Davis was captured by Turkish security officials in 2015 and was later found guilty of being a senior member of a terrorist organization and was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison. Alexanda Kotey - Ringo Kotey, 36, was born to a Ghanaian father and a Greek Cypriot mother and grew up in Shepherd's Bush, London. Before his radicalization, he is thought to have worked as a drug dealer before converting to Islam in his early 20s. In 2012, he left for Syria where the US claims he was involved in beheadings and known for administering 'exceptionally cruel torture methods', including electronic shocks. He is also accused of acting as an ISIS recruiter who convinced a number of other British extremists to join the terror group. Kotey was captured in Syria while trying to escape to Turkey in 2018 and was held in a US military center in Iraq. The British Government wanted him tried in the US, where officials believe there is a more realistic chance of prosecution than in the UK. He was extradited last year and was charged with a number of terror offences. Yesterday, he pleaded guilty to multiple charges including conspiring to murder four US hostages. El Shafee Elsheikh - George Born in Sudan, Elsheikh, 32, grew up in West London and is the final member of the four British terrorists who fled to join ISIS. He has been linked to the killings of a number of hostages after heading to Syria to join the extremist group. He was captured along with Kotey when they tried to flee to Turkey in 2018 and has since been transported to the US where he now faces charges relating to terrorism and beheading Western hostages. Advertisement

'However I think there may well be others who might still be living. I hope he might have some answers for the poor Mueller family to find out about their daughter Kayla, and for John Cantlie, I would just hope part of this bargain is that Kotey would be forthcoming in talking to our government, your government and any of us who want to speak to him.'

Talking about what it was like to be in court, Ms Foley added: 'It was rather chilling to be there, because it was the first time we've ever seen him in person.

'Just the fact that he was pleading guilty to all eight counts was quite amazing really, and it really brings me to want to thank your Scotland Yard and our FBI and our Department of Justice for putting together such a strong case that he would feel it necessary to plead guilty today.

'So we are grateful for the work of all the good people, and of course the Syrian Democratic Forces who actually arrested Kotey and Elsheikh.

'So we're very grateful for the work of all the good people on both sides of the Atlantic in this regard.'

Asked if Kotey looked at her in court, Ms Foley said: 'Briefly, briefly. He knew we were present. We were introduced and he knew we were there.

'It was pretty matter of fact from his point of view. He had obviously made up his mind this was his best chance of getting home to the United Kingdom at some point.

'He just felt it was what he needed to do. So I'm glad that he did in fact plead guilty, and it is my hope that he will spend the rest of his life behind bars without ever having parole. I almost think, to be honest, a quick martyrdom is too easy a way out of what he has committed. I was always against the death penalty.

'But I do feel accountability is essential to anyone who kidnaps or unjustly detains our citizens, otherwise our countries can never hope to deter this horror of hostage taking. This step in accountability was essential.'

And asked about the effect on her of an ISIS affiliate becoming resurgent in Afghanistan after the fall of Kabul to the Taliban, Ms Foley said: 'Very sobering, so sobering, to think that the horror of this terrorism is continuing. It certainly hasn't stopped, and I fear there is a potential for much more hostage taking.

'They love to use the horror of that to frighten us, manipulate other governments and raise funds for their evil works. So I'm very sobered by that, very sad.'

The slayings by 'The Beatles' - who were responsibile the killings of Britons Alan Henning and David Haines - sparked outrage and revulsion around the world after being broadcast in graphic detail.

Yesterday, Kotey attended a two-hour change of plea hearing in Alexandria and pleaded guilty to eight charges.

They were four counts of hostage taking resulting in death, conspiracy to commit hostage taking resulting in death, conspiracy to murder United States citizens outside of the United States, conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists - hostage taking and murder - resulting in death and conspiracy to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organisation resulting in death.

Kotey has agreed to fully co-operate with authorities as part of his plea agreement, the court was told.

Kotey addressed the court to outline his involvement in the atrocities. He was repeatedly interrupted by District Judge TS Ellis who told him his statement was more suitable for the sentencing hearing.

In a prepared summary, he said he left the UK for Syria in August 2012 alongside Emwazi.

He said he left in order to 'engage in the military fight against the Syrian army forces of president Bashar Assad'.

Kotey said when he departed the UK he held 'the belief and understanding that the Islamic concept of armed jihad was a valid and legitimate cause and means by which a Muslim defends his fellow Muslim against injustice'.

He admitted his role in capturing hostages and said when his involvement in that came to an end, he worked in ISIS's recruitment division, as a sniper and in the terror group's 'English media department'.

Kotey said while working for ISIS he came into contact with Mr Henning, Mr Haines and Mr Cantlie, a British war correspondent who disappeared in 2012 and who remains missing.

He told the court: 'Upon the orders of the Islamic State senior leadership, I, along with others, opened up channels of negotiation with the authorities, families and representatives of those captured and held by the Islamic State.

'This involved me visiting the detention facilities where the foreign captives were being held and interacting with them in every capacity that would further the prospects of our negotiation demands being met.'

Kotey said while working for ISIS he came into contact with Alan Henning (left), David Haines (centre) and John Cantlie (right)

Kotey (left) and El Shafee Elsheikh (right) speak during an interview at a security centre in Kobani, Syria, in March 2018

Kotey said his job would be to 'extract' contact details for loved ones of those taken hostage.

How the ISIS Beatles evaded justice June 11, 2018: Then Home Secretary Savid Javid authorised the sharing of 600 witness statements gathered by the Metropolitan Police under a 'mutual legal assistance' agreement in a letter to then US Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Mr Javid wrote to Prime Minister Boris Johnson, indicating that 'significant attempts' had been made to obtain assurances, but that the time had arrived to accede to the request for information without seeking any assurance. He acknowledged that there was a serious risk that Elsheikh and Kotey would, if prosecuted and convicted, face execution as a direct result of UK assistance. June 20: Mr Johnson replied on: 'On a balanced assessment of the key risks... I agree that as this is a unique and unprecedented case, it is in the UK's national security interests to accede to an MLA request for a criminal prosecution without death penalty assurances for Kotey and Elsheikh'. July 26: Elsheikh's mother Maha Elgizouli gets a High Court injunction to stop any further material from being handed over. November: Ms Elgizouli urges the Crown Prosecution Service to carry out a review if there really is insufficient evidence for him to be charged and tried in the UK. By now the material handed over by the UK is returned to it by the US. January 2019: The High Court rejects a challenge by Ms Elgizouli over the UK government's decision to share evidence with American authorities. March 2020: The mother's appeal sees the decision overturned again and the Supreme Court blasts the UK Government's 'unlawful' decision to bow to US pressure to share evidence on the so-called ISIS Beatles without receiving assurances the suspects would be spared the death penalty. August 19: The US says they will no longer seek the death penalty for the pair, sparking hope justice will be served. August 26: The Supreme Court rules they can now be sent to the US. October 7: Elsheikh and Kotey are transported to the US. September 2021: Kotey pleads guilty to eight charges including conspiracy to murder four US hostages January 2022: Elsheikh is scheduled to stand trial March 4: Korey is due to be sentenced Advertisement

The terrorists would then demand the release of Islamic prisoners held by the West or large sums of money in return for the hostages' freedom.

Kotey said: 'I had no doubt that any failure of those foreign governments to comply with our demands would ultimately result in the indefinite detention of those foreign captives or their executions. '

He said he was not physically present at any of the killings of the Western captives.

Kotey was captured alongside Elsheikh in Syria in 2018 by the US-supported Syrian Democratic Forces while trying to escape to Turkey.

Details of Kotey's plea agreement were read out in court, revealing the Briton has agreed to fully co-operate with the US government.

He will provide 'full, complete and truthful' evidence to not only the US but all foreign governments.

Kotey will provide all relevant documents, meet with victims' families if they wish to do so and voluntarily submit to a lie detector test.

However, the terrorist will not be compelled to give evidence in court against co-defendant Elsheikh, the hearing was told.

As part of the plea agreement, Kotey could be transferred to the UK after spending 15 years behind bars in the US in order to face justice in the country of his birth.

The court was told Kotey would plead guilty in the UK and would likely be handed a life sentence for the deaths of hostages including Mr Henning and Mr Haines.

However, if he is not given a life term, Kotey will complete his life sentence handed down in the US, either in America or in the UK.

Prosecutor Dennis Fitzpatrick, of the United States Attorney's Office read out the evidence against Kotey, outlining his role in the atrocities, including subjecting the hostages to brutal treatment.

They were terrorised with mock executions, shocks with tasers, physical restraints and other brutal acts.

Speaking outside court yesterday, Raj Parekh, Acting US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, said: 'Kotey has been afforded due process and in the face of overwhelming evidence, he made the independent decision to plead guilty to his crimes. He has agreed to spend the rest of his life in prison.'

Kotey and Elsheikh were brought to the US last year to face charges on the condition they would not be given a death sentence.

Last year, Mike Haines, the brother of Mr Haines, told the Independent he was 'really glad' they would not face the death penalty.

He said last October: 'The death penalty or execution in some other country would just be such a recruitment coup for Isis and their like. We know their system of recruitment uses them as martyrs and promotes them as heroes.'

While Kotey has now pleaded guilty, there was no update on Elsheikh, who is scheduled to stand trial in January.

Speaking outside court in Alexandria yesterday, Raj Parekh, Acting US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, said Kotey had 'agreed to spend the rest of his life in prison' and that 'he made the independent decision to plead guilty to his crimes'

The US District Court in Alexandria, Virginia, is pictured yesterday ahead of the plea hearing involving Kotey

Emwazi was killed by a US drone strike in 2015 while Davis is serving a sentence in a Turkish jail.

Former aircraft engineer and humanitarian Mr Haines, 44, from Perth in Scotland, was beheaded in Syria in 2014 after being held prisoner for 18 months.

Cab driver-turned-aid worker Mr Henning, 47, from Lancashire, was also beheaded in 2014 after being captured by extremists in Syria.

Kotey and Elsheikh had taken part in and been arrested during a demonstration outside the US embassy in London in 2011 in support of the 9/11 attacks.

They travelled to Syria the following year. Kotey will be sentenced on March 4 next year.
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz deleted a tweet that appeared to show the Taliban hanging a man from a helicopter in Afghanistan after it was debunked by fact checkers.

The video, which was tweeted out by a self-described comedian with over 73,000 followers and also shared by Texas Rep. Dan Crenshaw, was captioned, 'Taliban hanging someone from a helicopter in Kandahar.'

It was seen by many viewers as a public Taliban execution as they continue to take over in the country as American forces leave for the first time in 20 years.

The video, which was tweeted out by a self-described comedian with over 73,000 followers and also shared by Texas Rep. Dan Crenshaw, was captioned, 'Taliban hanging someone from a helicopter in Kandahar'

Fact checkers from both the Associated Press and Reuters debunked the video, which has since been retweeted and quote-tweeted almost 7,000 times.

'The video shows a Taliban fighter attempting to hang the Taliban flag on a tall flagpole on Sunday, according to two Kandahar residents who watched it happen,' the AP said.

'The man hanging from the chopper was alive and could be seen moving in the video.'

Fact checkers from both the Associated Press and Reuters debunked the video, which has since been retweeted and quote-tweeted almost 7,000 times

'What appears to be a zoomed in version of a viral video of a man dangling from a helicopter in Afghanistan shows him moving and waving,' Reuters added.

'This closer-up video, along with other photos that show a similar helicopter and a similar harness, dispel the popular narrative circulating online that the scene shows a man hanged by the Taliban.'

They also noted that a local radio station has said that this was a planned maneuver by the Taliban.

Reuters reported that a local radio station has said that this was a planned maneuver by the Taliban

Cruz, a Republican, deleted but did not apologize for the inaccurate tweet in a correction written on August 31.

'It turns out the post I shared w/ a video of Taliban 'hanging a man' from a helicopter may be inaccurate. So I deleted the tweet,' Cruz wrote on Twitter on Tuesday.

'What remains accurate is: The Taliban are brutal terrorists; We left them millions in US military equipment, including Black Hawk helicopters.'

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz deleted a tweet that appeared to show the Taliban hanging a man from a helicopter in Afghanistan after it was debunked by fact checkers

Fellow Texas Republican Rep. Dan Crenshaw also shared the tweet with the video and caption, quote-tweeting it to say, 'In what f---ing world was it a good idea to just hand over a country to these people.'

Crenshaw has not deleted or corrected the tweet as of Friday morning.

Both Cruz and Crenshaw have been critical of President Joe Biden's pull out from Afghanistan, ending a 20-year military occupation started in the wake of September 11, 2001.

Crenshaw also reacted to the video but has not deleted or corrected the tweet as of Friday morning

Crenshaw called on Biden to 'resign in disgrace' after the president's speech regarding the end of the war on Tuesday.

'If we needed more proof that Biden has no shame, no dignity, no ability to lead, it was in his speech today,' Crenshaw tweeted on Tuesday.

Cruz criticized multiple facets of the Biden agenda on a podcast with Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel Tuesday.

Biden on Tuesday said the troop withdrawal from Kabul that left 13 US service members dead was an 'extraordinary success'

'What we see with Biden, whether in Afghanistan or whether on our southern border, is radical extremism combined with manifest incompetence,' he said.

Biden on Tuesday said the troop withdrawal from Kabul that left 13 US service members dead was an 'extraordinary success' and blamed Donald Trump and local soldiers for the mess in Afghanistan and the Taliban takeover.

A defiant Biden said the operation couldn't have been done in a 'more orderly manner' and 'respectfully disagreed' with critics who said he should have started the evacuation sooner to avoid the chaos.

The president also hailed the 120,000 people they have gotten to safety in 'one of the biggest airlifts in history', vowed to keep working to get Afghan allies out and said the State Department had reached out to stranded Americans 19 times since March asking if they wanted to leave.
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Tory MPs today joined a growing backlash against continuing border chaos at Heathrow overseen by Grant Shapps and Priti Patel, with arrivals forced to wait for four hours as pregnant women, pensioners and young children wilted in the queue - while a dysfunctional British Airways operation left planes queuing for empty gates.

The latest pictures taken yesterday showed snaking lines of frustrated passengers waiting to enter the UK, in scenes that are now wearily familiar due to Border Force failing to tackle an issue that has been going on all summer.

There have also been widespread complaints about British Airways operations at Terminal 5, with passengers reporting lengthy delays to disembarkation and luggage pick up.

British Airways said it had no operational disruption at Heathrow today. It said Heathrow Airport Limited was in charge of the airport itself, adding that BA was not the only airline with flights to and from Terminal 5.

Today ex-Tory leader Iain Duncan-Smith called the scenes at arrivals 'madness', telling MailOnline: 'We are going to achieve the worst of all worlds by having people close together who may have Covid. The whole thing is chaotic and we still haven't fully opened up yet. We don't seem to have a plan for how we are going to manage that.

'If it carries on like this Heathrow will cease to be a hub airport and Britain will be left in the backwash as an irrelevant country. Having already jabbed such a large percentage of the population we have to get on with things.'

James Gray, MP for North Wiltshire, asked: 'What the hell is going on? This is totally unacceptable and I find it deeply embarrassing that the United Kingdom in the 21st century cannot get people into Britain faster than this.'

The latest bout of queueing chaos began on Sunday and has been repeated every day this week. But the Home Office - which has repeatedly pinned the problem on understaffing - has maintained an unapologetic stance despite widespread fury from the public and senior travel industry figures.

A spokesman said earlier this week that travellers would 'need to accept' increased wait times due to high summer demand and the need to check Covid documents.

It comes as fire engines flooded the runway at Gatwick Airport this afternoon after an EasyJet plane suffered a hydraulics problem.

The captain told passengers hydraulics fluid had spilled onto the runway and needed to be hosed off. This left passengers on the jet, from Split in Croatia, stranded onboard while they waited for the operation to finish.

'It sounded like the wheels wouldn't come down,' a passenger told MailOnline. 'As soon as we landed the plane came to a halt on runway and loads of fire engines appeared.'

Pictures taken yesterday showed snaking lines of frustrated passengers waiting to enter the UK, (left) as e-gates were hardly used

Under pressure: Home Secretary Priti Patel - who oversees border force - and Grant Shapps, the Transport Secretary

One passenger tweeted yesterday: 'Chaos at Heathrow airport Terminal 4. Four hrs waiting to go through immigration. Families with children, pregnant ladies & old folks everyone had to wait. Is that human?'

A second wrote: 'Passport control at Terminal 5: Empty e-gates. Yet families with kids under 12 have to queue for 2 hours. Two desks open to UK citizens, kids and babies are screaming #disgrace.'

Fire engines flood Gatwick runway after hydraulics fluid spills from EasyJet plane Fire engines flooded the runway at Gatwick Airport this afternoon after an EasyJet plane suffered a hydraulics problem. The captain told passengers hydraulics fluid had spilled onto the runway and needed to be hosed off. This left passengers on the jet, from Split in Croatia, stranded onboard while they waited for the operation to finish. 'It sounded like the wheels wouldn't come down,' a passenger told MailOnline. 'As soon as we landed the plane came to a halt on the runway and loads of fire engines appeared.' The passenger later added: 'We weren't stranded on there long but the noise as they tried to put the wheels down when we came into land was alarming. It took a lot longer than normal and was really laboured and screechy.' The extent of the disruption to other flights is not yet clear. Gatwick Airport said: 'Gatwick's runway was temporarily unavailable between 1530 and 1543 while the runway was inspected and treated following a small leak of hydraulic fluid from an easyJet aircraft  EZYA396 from Spilt. The runway became available again shortly after and flights are operating as normal.' A picture taken by a passenger showed a fire engine next to the plane as it hosed hydraulic fluid off the runway Advertisement

The Home Office disputed this figure, with a spokesman citing Border Force statistics that the lengthiest queue at Terminal 5 yesterday was 1 hour 15 mins.

Under-12 cannot use e-gates due to limitations with the facial recognition technology, meaning families with young children have to use manned desks.

Today Mr Duncan-Smith, the former Tory leader, urged the government to come up with a new solution to the chaos, saying Border Force could remove the need to spend time processing Covid paperwork by introducing sniffer dogs trained to detect Covid.

'The NHS has already done phase one of a trial for medical detection dogs, which has shown they are already almost at the level of a PCR test when it comes to Covid,' he said.

'That would indicate who has it immediately, at which point they can be taken out of the queue and sent for a full PCR.

'But the NHS, having done the first phase of the trial, has now refused point blank to do the second phase at airports. We are seeing these queues now but this trial has been completed months ago.

'They could easily by now have dogs deployed at airports very accurately detecting Covid but the NSH has failed to complete the trial.'

North Wiltshire MP James Gray called for Border Force officials to be hauled in front of a select committee.

He told MailOnline: 'People coming into the country who aren't British must have had the most appalling experience.

'Someone needs to get a grip of this. I'd like to know how many people Border Force has altogether, how many are self-isolating and how many people are on the rota at peak times?

'People know when flights are coming in so it can't be acceptable that there are only two guards on duty.

'We need to get Border Force in front of the select committee and the government to do a review of Border Force per se.

'And the ridiculous carry on with e-gates is farcical. E-gates have been around now for years. Why haven't we sorted it?'

An image taken by a second passenger yesterday. The latest bout of queueing chaos began on Sunday and has been repeated every day this week

Two passengers who were caught up in the queues at Heathrow yesterday shared their anger on Twitter. The Home Office disputed first figure, with a spokesman citing Border Force statistics that the lengthiest queue at Terminal 5 yesterday was 1 hour 15 mins

Departures at Heathrow Terminal 2 this morning, where there were large queues for the check-in desks

Heathrow's summer of queuing chaos: So when WILL the government get a grip? May 17 - Passengers flying into the UK faced 'bedlam' at the border with some facing a three hour wait at the Heathrow passport gates. Travellers told MailOnline how they were 'terrified of catching Covid' while being crammed into the airport's border hall this morning. July 12 - Passengers said they had 'never seen anything like' the queues at Heathrow Terminal 5 as officials blamed the scenes on staff having to self-isolate. A passenger said: 'Total chaos at security at Heathrow airport T5 this morning. Never seen anything like it.' July 20 - 90-minute queues were seen at arrivals after the government failed to update Passenger Locator Forms ahead of its 'Freedom Day' rule changes - resulting in double-jabbed Britons being rejected at e-gates. August 2 - Queues of passengers stretched the entire length of Terminal 5. Officials again blamed staff having to self-isolate. A spokesman quoted figures showing that one in four Border Force guards were reported to be off sick with Covid or self-isolating. 29 - Three-hour waits were reported at passport control. A day later the Home Office risked fury as it said passengers 'need to accept' the risk of delays at peak times. 30 - One passenger describes the immigration process in Terminal 2 as 'incompetent and ridiculous', adding that he was forced to wait for more than five hours with 'no water, no bathroom' 31 - One traveller wrote on Twitter that a queue for families with children had lasted three hours. September 1 - Pictures and video from around midday showed long snaking lines of travellers packed closely together with no social distancing, as some aired themselves with leaflets in an attempt to stay cool. 2 - Yet more chaos with waits of up to four hours. Advertisement

On Wednesday, journalist Guy Faulconbridge compared the scenes that met him after touching down in the UK to the dying days of the Soviet Union.

He tweeted a picture taken two hours into the queuing process, with hundreds of people still in front of him in the line.

On Tuesday, one traveller wrote on Twitter that a queue for families with children had lasted three hours.

Another described the wait for families as 'shameful', adding that the UK 'must be the only country which treats families worse than adults'.

On Monday a passenger said the immigration process in Terminal 2 was 'incompetent, ridiculous', adding that he was forced to wait for more than five hours with 'no water, no bathroom'.

This morning there were mixed reports from Heathrow, with one passenger saying the border at Terminal 5 was 'completely clear' while another reported a half an hour wait to get to a desk.

Heathrow tweeted that Border Force is 'currently experiencing some delays as they conduct additional spot checks to ensure passenger compliance with the UK Government's latest entry requirements'.

It went on: 'Waiting times at the border have on occasion been unacceptable and we have called on the UK Government to address the problem as a matter of urgency.'

Yesterday, travel firms told MailOnline the length queues were damaging to Britain's image and risked putting off future visitors.

Clive Wratten CEO of the Business Travel Association (BTA), described the scenes as 'very worrying'.

He said: 'As the world continues to open up safely, it is essential that there is enough staff and support at all points of a journey.

'The travel experience needs to be as frictionless and consistent as possible to give all travellers the confidence they need to return in large numbers.'

Jacqueline Dobson, President of Barrhead Travel, which describes itself as the UK's leading independent British travel agents, said: 'From a visitor perspective, arriving into Heathrow is the first impression many will get of the UK  and first impressions matter.'

The issue has been exacerbated by a shortage of Border Force agents and many going into self-isolation for Covid.

But earlier this week a senior Tory MP insisted the issues should have been addressed 'a long time ago'.

'This has been a constant problem throughout the pandemic and I appreciate the Home Office may have had difficulties recruiting to the Border Force but that is not a new problem,' the MP told MailOnline.

'They should have addressed this a long time ago. It adds to travel uncertainty and it is not good for the travel industry or the travelling public. The Border Force needs to be better organised.'

There have also been widespread complaints about British Airways operations at Terminal 5 and the management of the airport as whole, with passengers reporting lengthy delays to disembarkation and luggage pick up. Pictured: T2 departures

On Wednesday, journalist Guy Faulconbridge compared the scenes that met him after touching down in the UK to the dying days of the Soviet Union

A Home Office spokesman said: 'Our utmost priority is protecting the safety and health of the public and we will never compromise on security, and on ensuring passengers are compliant with the current health measures, which means passengers will need to accept an increase in the time taken to cross the border.

'The rollout of upgrades to our eGates to automate checks for health requirements is ongoing, with many eGates already in operation and more to be added over the coming months to increase automated checks on passengers at airports.

'However, for safeguarding reasons families with children under the age of 12 are not permitted to use the eGates.

'Where there are high volumes of families with young children, such as over the summer holidays, Border Force may dynamically deploy resources to frontline desks instead and we continue to flexibly deploy our staff to make the process as smooth as possible.'
Britain has bailed out Australia by giving the country 4million doses of Pfizer's Covid vaccine in a landmark deal.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the doses were 'on the tarmac' ready to leave London and would be distributed in the next few weeks, doubling the amount of vaccines arriving in the country this month.

It has struggled with its vaccine rollout and is scrambling to secure extra jabs from allies around the world after only initially ordering 10million doses in November last year.

Half a million Pfizer doses yesterday landed in Australia after it secured a swap deal with Singapore.

Australia has one of the slowest vaccine rollouts among wealthy countries, with just 36.4 per cent of people over the age of 16 fully vaccinated, according to the Australian Immunisation Register.

The countrys two most populous states  Victoria and New South Wales  are in lockdown and counting on getting their residents vaccinated to contain the outbreak of the Delta variant, which began in Sydney in mid-June.

Face masks are mandatory in all public indoor places  including shops, offices, and common areas of apartment buildings  and outdoors unless exercising.

Those over 18 who do not wear or carry a face mask can be slapped with a $500 (268) fine, with $80 (43) and $40 (21) penalties in place for younger age groups.

Australia will return the same 'overall volume of doses' before the end of the year, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) said.

Health Secretary Sajid Javid said the agreement will share doses 'at the optimum time to bolster both our countries' vaccination programmes'.

The arrangement will allow the UK to better align timings of vaccine supply with future need, including for any booster programme or extension of the rollout to younger teenagers, the DHSC said.

Mr Morrison said: 'This means from Downing Street to Down Under, we are doubling down on what the Pfizer doses are here in Australia.

'Thanks Boris, I owe you a beer.'

Britain has bailed out Australia by giving the country 4million doses of Pfizer's Covid vaccine in a landmark deal. Pictured: Australian High Commisioner to the UK and Health Secretary Sajid Javid sign off on the deal

Australia's two most populous states  Victoria and New South Wales  are in lockdown and counting on getting their residents vaccinated to contain the outbreak of the Delta variant. Graph shows: Covid cases in Victoria

Israel is now the world's Covid hotspot: Cases soar despite country's trail-blazing vaccine roll-out Israel has become the Covid capital of the world despite leading the charge on vaccines, in a clear warning sign that Britain, the US and other highly-immunised nations are still vulnerable to another wave. Stats compiled by Oxford University-backed research team Our World in Data shows there were a record 1,892 Covid cases per million people in Israel on Wednesday  nearly 0.2 per cent of the entire population in a single day. That was significantly higher than second worst-hit Mongolia, where the rate was 1,119 per million, and double the figures for Kosovo (980), Georgia (976) and Montenegro (909), which rounded out the top five. The figure only looks at one day's worth of tests and Israel's high rate is thought to have been driven up by a huge testing push ahead of schools reopening there. But the country has consistently reported some of the highest infection rates in the world since mid-August amid an unprecedented third wave, despite being one of the most vaccinated nations in the world. For comparison, 522 people per million in the UK tested positive yesterday and the figure was closer to 595 in the US. It suggests protection gained from vaccines is starting to buckle in the face of the highly-transmissible Delta variant. Advertisement

Daily Mail Australia yesterday revealed Mr Morrison was on the cusp of clinching his third international vaccine deal after previous agreements with Poland and Singapore but was not expecting any help from US President Joe Biden.

The vaccines will be distributed between the states and territories on a per capita basis and in return Australia will send 4million Pfizer doses to London in December to assist with the UK's booster program.

Mr Morrison said: 'It is a good deal because it makes the most of the doses that they have now, which we need. And the doses that we will have later that they will need.

'So this is just a good deal and it's a good deal between mates.

'I want to thank very, very much Prime Minister Johnson. He and I started discussing this some time ago.

'I want to thank him for his personal commitment to this. And his great friendship with Australia.'

Australia's Prime Minister added the deal was also helped by his friendship with Health Secretary Sajid Javid.

He said: 'I want to thank also health minister Sajid Javid who I have known for some time... and his ability to progress with Greg Hunt, our minister, and I thank Greg and all of his team.

'There's been some very late-night discussions and negotiations and legal work taking place, especially over the course of the past week, to bring this to conclusion.'

Following the announcement of the agreement with Australia, Mr Javid said: 'Vaccines have built a strong wall of defence in the UK and we want to support nations around the world in recovering from Covid-19 and improving access to vaccines.

'Our agreement with Australia will share doses at the optimum time to bolster both our countries' vaccination programmes.

'By working with international partners to coordinate the rollout of life-saving vaccines, we will protect more people from this awful virus and save lives.'

The first batch of 292,000 doses to Australia is due to be shipped shortly.

Australia will get 4million doses of the Pfizer vaccine in a swap deal with the UK. Pictured: Scott Morrison and Boris Johnson in the UK in June

New South Wales declared a record 1,290 new cases as the nation struggles to contain the highly contagious Delta variant of the coronavirus, with over 1,300 nationwide

A man was filmed being arrested in George's Hall, in the Canterbury-Bankstown LGA in Sydney's Covid hit south-western suburbs, for not wearing a face mask

Covid infections soar in Australia's most populous states New South Wales, on Friday reported its deadliest day of the pandemic with 12 fatalities and a record 1,431 new infections. The state government predicted the daily death toll will peak next month if the pace of vaccination is maintained. The state government plans to triple the number of intensive care unit beds and staff in October when the number of Covid patients are expected to peak, New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian said. She expects 70% of the population aged 16 and older in her state will be fully vaccinated by mid-October. The outbreak that began in Sydney in June has spread to Melbourne, Australias second-most populous city and the capital of Victoria state. Victoria reported 208 new infections in the last 24 hours and a single death. New South Wales and Victoria are in lockdown and see increased vaccinations as the only way to safely ease pandemic restrictions. The Australia Capital Territory still hopes that its lockdown will stamp out delta. The rest of Australia remains virtually free of the virus. Advertisement

Last month the government bought 1million Pfizer doses from Poland and secured 500,000 from Singapore in a swap deal.

The latest deal with the UK means there will now be 10million MRNA vaccine doses entering Australia this month, including 9million Pfizer and 1million Moderna in the second half of September.

'This means that every Australian will be able to come forward as early as possible to be vaccinated if they have not yet,' Health Minister Greg Hunt said.

So far 36 per cent of over 16s are fully vaccinated and 60 per cent have had one dose.

The announcement came two hours before a national cabinet meeting in which the state premiers planned to discuss beefing up hospital capacity to deal with increased numbers of Covid patients.

New South Wales recorded and all-time high 1,4131 cases on Friday and 12 deaths as Premier Gladys Berejiklian warned of higher numbers in coming weeks.

'The worst number of cases is likely to occur in the next fortnight,' she told reporters.

'Because after that time the number of vaccinations we've put into the community, especially in those local government areas of concern, will start having effect.'

This morning Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk insisted she would stick to the national re-opening plan which allows Australia to live with Covid when 70 per cent of over 16s are vaccinated.

She had previously come under fire for raising fears that children under 12, who cannot be vaccinated due to their age, would be vulnerable if she opened her borders - even though health experts say children normally only suffer a mild illness.

The Prime Minister has been scrambling to secure extra Pfizer from allies around the world after only initially ordering 10million doses in November last year.

The US is often described as Australia's most important ally but President Joe Biden has not handed Canberra a single Covid-19 vaccine. Pictured: UK PM Boris Johnson, Scott Morrison and US President Joe Biden at the G7 summit in the UK in June

The US is seen as Australia's most important ally but President Joe Biden has not handed Canberra a single Covid vaccine.

The President has already donated more than 110million vaccines around the world  including 2.5million to Canada and 3.5million to Argentina  but his focus is on saving lives, protecting America's neighbours and assisting poor countries, meaning wealthy Australia is down his donation list.

Shadow Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong said it was embarrassing that Australia had to ask allies for help.

'The fact that a country with Australia's resources has to go around asking other countries for vaccines is another sign that this is the biggest government failure in memory,' she told Daily Mail Australia.

'It all comes back to Mr Morrison doing too little, too late  failing to order enough vaccines last year  and it's Australians paying the price.'

The government initially ordered 10million Pfizer vaccines before upping this to 40million due to changing health advice around AstraZeneca.

Australia has ordered 85million Pfizer vaccines to arrive from early next year to act as booster shots.
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The SNP have warned the British Government that they will reject any attempt to keep Britain's nuclear submarines north of the border in the event of an independence vote.

It emerged this week that the Ministry of Defence has considered the possibility of leasing its existing nuclear sites in Western Scotland from the Scottish Government if the nation were to vote to break away from the UK.

The suggestion was reportedly dubbed a 'Nuclear Gibraltar' by insiders, in what was a nod to Britain's territory on the southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula, which is bordered by Spain.

The UK's four nuclear submarines, armed with Trident missiles since 1996, have been based at HMNB Clyde at Faslane since 1968. A secondary base at Coulport, less than ten miles away, is where missiles are routinely stored.

Around 6,500 people are employed at Faslane, with a further 200 at Coulport. But ministers are said to have drawn up plans to move the vessels to naval bases in the US or France in the event of the break-up of the Union.

According to the Financial Times, the MoD has also considered moving the home of the nuclear submarines to France of even the US. It is also possible that they could move to the Royal Navy's Devonport base in Plymouth.

But the SNP's defence spokesman Stewart McDonald said the nuclear bases in Scotland would be removed 'at pace' after an independence vote and defiantly added at the country 'will not be home to nuclear weapons'.

And, speaking today on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, the SNP's deputy leader at Westminster said the suggestion of keeping the Faslane and Coulport bases was an 'absolute non-starter'.

Kirsten Oswald also said the possibility of the weapons moving to France was 'somewhat unlikely'.

However, Nicola Sturgeon's SNP is committed to joining Nato if Scotland does become independent, despite its members' collective agreement on the need for a nuclear deterrent.

When challenged by interviewer Nick Robinson if the SNP would change its total opposition to nuclear weapons in order to join the organisation, Ms Oswald simply said: 'We don't support nuclear weapons'.

The SNP have warned the British Government that they will reject any attempt to keep Britain's nuclear submarines north of the border in the event of an independence vote. The Royal Navy's HMNB Clyde base at Faslane in Western Scotland

However, Nicola Sturgeon's SNP has firmly rejected the possibility of Britain leasing its existing bases from a newly-independent Scottish government. The party's deputy leader at Westminster said the suggestion was a 'non-starter'

According to The Times, Mr McDonald said: 'An independent Scotland will not be home to nuclear weapons.

'Their removal will be one of the most important tasks a newly independent Scotland will face, and capitals across Europe will be looking to Edinburgh for assurance that we will be a reliable and trustworthy partner.

'Safety and security will be the top principle that informs the process of the departure, which will happen at pace.'

His comments were followed this morning by Ms Oswald, who was equally unequivocal.

'The notion of some kind of some kind of UK nuclear base remaining in Scotland when we are independent is an absolute non-starter so that is neither realistic nor something that is going to happen,' she said.

'I do think it is also somewhat surprising that one of the other suggestions was that the nuclear arsenal should be moved to France, which also strikes me as somewhat unlikely.

'I think that, you know, overriding all of that for us is that nuclear weapons are not welcome in Scotland.

'What the UK government should be doing is to look much more carefully at removing nuclear weapons altogether.

The SNP's Kirsten Oswald also said the possibility of the weapons moving to France was 'somewhat unlikely'

'They are neither militarily useful nor morally defensible and they cost an extraordinary amount of money when we are looking at the UK Government looking at things like removing the 20 Universal Credit uplift. The priorities are all wrong.'

However, when asked by Mr Robinson about how an independent Scotland would be a member of Nato whilst maintaining its opposition, she only repeated her party's position and said it would be 'incredible' to think it would change.

'We don't support nuclear weapons, there is no place for nuclear weapons in Scotland. We have a longstanding and unequivocal opposition to nuclear weapons, both in principle but also in terms of their location in Scotland.

'I'm sure your listeners may understand why this is something that is of real significant importance to people in Scotland, given that this nuclear arsenal is just a few miles down the river from our biggest and most popular city.

'What I'm saying is that our policy has not changed. We do have a policy position where we support being a part of Nato but I think that it would be slightly incredible to think that we would be changing our position in terms of our opposition to nuclear weapons.'

The politician added that a newly-independent Scottish government would look to get the issue of the nuclear bases' removal 'agreed' with the British Government and 'moved on as quickly as possible'.

According to the FT, the MoD's first and preferred option would be to relocate the submarines to the Royal Navy base at Devonport in Plymouth.

The UK's nuclear submarines, now armed with Trident missiles, have been based at HMNB Clyde at Faslane in western Scotland since 1968. Above: Trident nuclear submarine HMS Victorious on patrol near Faslane in 2013

In James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me, the secret agent - then played by Roger Moore - was briefed about submarines at Faslane

Senior officials said had been briefed on the contingency plans, which they said showed the difficult choices potentially ahead.

According to analysis written by the Royal United Services Institute, which was written ahead of the first Scottish independence referendum in 2014, the costs of a move to Devonport - which is the largest naval base in Western Europe, could cost between 3billion and 4billion.

If Britain's nuclear weapons were to move to the US, a likely location would reportedly be Kings Bay, in Georgia. It is the current base for the US Navy Atlantic fleet of Trident submarines.

This option is said to be preferred by the Treasury because it would be the least expensive.

However, basing Trident outside Britain may make it more difficult to defend the country's sovereignty in the event of a military threat.

If the submarine base were to be moved to France, it was reported that the vessels would go to the home of the French nuclear fleet, at Ile Longue in Brittany in the north of the country.

The first and preferred option would reportedly be to relocate the submarines to the Royal Navy base at Devonport in Plymouth

If Britain were to move its nuclear submarines, they could be based in Brittainy, northern France, or even the US

While HMNB Clyde at Faslane is the home base of the submarines themselves, the Royal Naval Armaments Depot at Coulport is responsible for storing, processing and maintaining missiles when they are not loaded on submarines.

The Royal Navy's association with Faslane - which lies on the eastern shore of Gare Loch - stretches back as far as the First World War.

It was in the loch that the steam-propelled HMS K13 sank in 1917 after her engine room flooded during sea trials.

In the Second World War, large jetties and a railway were built at Faslane to accommodate arrivals of troops and supplies on large ships from across the Atlantic.

After the conflict ended in 1945, the base was used to break up old navy vessels. The last battleship to be scrapped in Britain, HMS Vanguard, was taken apart at Faslane in 1962.

The base was also used as a home for submarines.

If the submarine base were to be moved to France, it was reported that the vessels would go to the home of the French nuclear fleet, at Ile Longue in Brittany in the north of the country. Above: French marine officers on top of the 'Le Vigilant' nuclear submarine at Ile Longue in 2007

If Britain's nuclear weapons were to move to the US, a likely location would reportedly be Kings Bay, in Georgia. It is the current base for the US Navy Atlantic fleet of Trident submarines

But its long and controversial link with nuclear weapons began in 1968, after navy chiefs and politicians had made the decision that the UK should have its own lethal deterrent amid the threats posed by the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

On May 10, 1968, after the Polaris Sales Agreement with the US - which allowed Royal Navy submarines to carry lethal UGM-27 nuclear missiles - the new nuclear base at Faslane came into being.

Then known as HMS Neptune, it was opened by the Queen Mother. Later that year, the first patrol was carried out by the HMS Resolution, which was launched in 1963 and was the first of the four Resolution-class submarines.

The following year, the UK had committed to the policy which remains in place today - Continuous At Sea Deterrence (CASD).

Whilst details were top secret when the operation first began, it is now public knowledge that any one of four nuclear submarines are guaranteed to be deployed at any given time.

The second submarine used for the Polaris programme was HMS Renown, which was launched in 1964. It was followed by HMS Revenge in May 1965 and HMS Repulse in June of that year.

Faslane's long and controversial link with nuclear weapons began in 1968, after navy chiefs and politicians had made the decision that the UK should have its own lethal deterrent amid the threats posed by the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Above: The base in 1967

On May 10, 1968, after the Polaris Sales Agreement with the US - which allowed Royal Navy submarines to carry lethal UGM-27 nuclear missiles - the new nuclear base at Faslane came into being. Later that year, the first patrol was carried out by the HMS Resolution (above), which was launched in 1963 and was the first of the four Resolution-class submarines

In 1969, the UK committed to the policy which remains in place today - Continuous At Sea Deterrence (CASD). Above: Faslane in the 1980s

The Resolution-Class submarines and their Polaris missiles began to be phased out in 1992, when the first of the four Vanguard submarines were built. They were set to carry the new Trident system, which is still in place today.

The four submarines carrying Trident missiles are HMS Vanguard, HMS Victorious, HMS Vigilant and HMS Vengeance.

Each missile carried on the submarines has warheads which are more powerful than the bombs dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima in World War Two.

The reasoning behind basing the UK's nuclear weapons at Faslane was centred around the fact it is deep, easy to navigate and offers easy access to the North Atlantic.

However, the decision to place nuclear weapons on UK territory met fierce opposition from anti-nuclear campaigners. Hundreds of protests have taken place in the decades since the weapons arrived.

The decision to place nuclear weapons on UK territory met fierce opposition from anti-nuclear campaigners. Hundreds of protests have taken place in the decades since the weapons arrived. Above: Anti-nuclear demonstrators march through Edinburgh in 2006

Anti-nuclear campaigners hold banners and placards outside Her Majesty's Naval Base, Clyde, on October 25, 2020 in Faslane

A permanent protest site alongside the base, known as Faslane Peace Camp, has been occupied continuously since the early 1980s

A permanent protest site alongside the base, known as Faslane Peace Camp, has been occupied continuously since the early 1980s.

In April this year, Extinction Rebellion activists chained themselves to giant plant pots during a protest outside the site.

In 2016, MPs backed the renewal of the Trident system. It is expected to cost more than 30billion and delivery of the new fleet is not expected until the early 2030s.

It will mean that when the Vanguard submarines leave service, they will have operated for at least ten years beyond their expected operational life.

Critics have also previously argued that the cost of building, arming running and repairing four new nuclear submarines over their 40 years of operational life could be more than 100million

The MoD said on Wednesday: 'The UK is strongly committed to maintaining its credible and independent nuclear deterrent at HM Naval Base Clyde, which exists to deter the most extreme threats to the UK and our Nato allies.

'There are no plans to move the nuclear deterrent from HM Naval Base Clyde (Faslane), which contributes to Scotland's and the wider UK's security and economy, and its supporting facilities are safe for local communities.'

A Scottish Government spokeswoman previously said: 'The Scottish Government firmly oppose the possession, threat and use of nuclear weapons and we are committed to the safe and complete withdrawal of Trident from Scotland.'
A four-year-old girl has tested positive to Covid-19 in Queensland just hours after the state reported no new cases.

The girl is a close contact of an infected truck driver, 46, from Logan in Brisbane's south, who triggered an outbreak alert earlier this week in the Sunshine State.

The child returned a positive result for the virus on Friday afternoon.

She goes to The Boulevard Early Learning Centre at Mt Warren Park, and children, staff and visitors have been urged to get tested immediately and then quarantine at home for 14 days.

A four-year-old girl in Queensland tested positive for Covid-19 on Friday (stock image)

Hours before the positive test, the Queensland government had declared the state had zero Covid cases (pictured, premier Annastacia Palaszczuk)

The learning centre is also used for after school care by children who attend nearby Windaroo State School.

In a concerning development, the truck driver is believed to have been infectious in the community since August 27.

He had travelled from Sydney to Queensland and then back to NSW before his positive Covid result.

There are also two new close contact exposure sites  Stylish Nails at the nearby Beenleigh Marketplace, between 10.30am and 11.35am on Monday, and Total Tools Beenleigh, between 9.20am and 10am last Sunday.

Queensland Health has meanwhile urged anyone across the state yet to receive a Covid-19 jab to get vaccinated.

The youngster attends The Boulevard Early Learning Centre at Mt Warren Park, (pictured) with children, staff as well as visitors urged to get tested immediately before then quarantining at home for 14 days

'The vaccine is the best way to protect against severe Covid-19 disease and is a critical step in combatting the virus,' the statement read.

'We will only reach vaccination targets and a pathway out of the pandemic if people come forward and get vaccinated.

'We continue to enhance access to the vaccine through increased capacity, extended hours and pop up clinics for at risk communities.'
Resettling Afghan refugees in Britain will cost UK taxpayers more than 2.5billion over the next ten years under 'Operation Warm Welcome', a report has claimed.

The leaked document suggests the Treasury needs to 'urgently' confirm more funding for councils before they can begin making offers to house the refugees.

The UK has already evacuated more than 15,000 people from Afghanistan since August 13, including 8,000 Afghans who had worked with UK armed forces.

Ministers have called on councils to offer support, with more than 100 coming forward to help families find homes and 2,000 places already confirmed.

So far 400million has been put forward to resettle Afghans, but another 557million could be needed over the next three years, according to the report.

A member of Heathrow security staff gives a thumbs up to refugees arriving from Afghanistan at London Heathrow Airport on August 26 as thousands of people fled Kabul last month

Refugees from Afghanistan arrive on a evacuation flight at Heathrow Airport on August 26

The 'Afghan Resettlement: Domestic Support Offer and Funding Requirements' paper was discussed by Ministers on Wednesday and revealed by BBC News today.

One of the two main schemes is the existing Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (ARAP) for Afghans who worked with the UK government.

What our Afghan allies will get in Britain under the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy Indefinite leave to remain, including the right to work immediately and the option to apply for British citizenship.

The immediate right to send children to school, with councils given 12million to create new places.

Access to a new 'portal' where members of the public will be able to share offers of housing, work and donations.

Immediate access to NHS services, along with help registering with a local GP.

Help with getting a national insurance number and finding accommodation.

The offer of an immediate Covid vaccine. Advertisement

And a new Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme (ACRS) was launched last month for Afghan citizens identified as most at risk, such as women and girls.

The current figures are said to be based on 5,000 Afghans arriving under ACRS annually, capped at 20,000 people, at a cost of 715million.

In addition to this there would be 5,000 arriving under the UK Resettlement Scheme each year, costing 1.65billion.

And then there would be 7,000 arriving under the ARAP scheme in the current 2021/2022 year at a cost of 190million.

The document said councils should receive 20,520 per person over three years, as well as 3,200 for healthcare funding and further cash for education.

There should also be 15million funding per year to 'international partners' to help with resettlement, reported the BBC.

The costs are expected to hit 187million in 2021/2022 and 975million over the course of the current spending review period up until 2024/2025.

A Ministry for Housing, Community and Local Government spokesman told MailOnline today: 'Thanks to the efforts of nearly a third of Britain's councils and vital delivery partners, hundreds of Afghan nationals who have worked alongside our Armed Forces and diplomats in Afghanistan, risking their lives supporting us, have already been warmly welcomed to the country.

'We are calling on all councils who have not yet come forward with a firm offer of support to help our Afghan friends and their families as they build a new life here in safety.

'Councils in England, Scotland and Wales will have access to a share of an additional 5million to help them provide the necessary housing and support to Afghans who have worked for this country in Afghanistan, but who now face threats of persecution or worse.'

Refugees from Afghanistan arrive on a evacuation flight at Heathrow Terminal 4 on August 26

A refugee has his fingerprints taken after arriving on a flight at London Heathrow on August 26

On Wednesday, the Home Office confirmed Afghans who worked with the British government and military will be able to move to the UK permanently.

By numbers: How much resettling the Afghan refugees will cost UK 2.5billion : Total cost of resettling Afghan refugees in Britain over the next ten years

: Total cost of resettling Afghan refugees in Britain over the next ten years 715million : Cost of 5,000 Afghans arriving under the Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme (ACRS) annually, capped at 20,000 people

: Cost of 5,000 Afghans arriving under the Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme (ACRS) annually, capped at 20,000 people 1.65billion : Cost of 5,000 arriving under the UK Resettlement Scheme each year

: Cost of 5,000 arriving under the UK Resettlement Scheme each year 190million : Cost of 7,000 arriving under the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (ARAP) scheme in the current 2021/2022 year

: Cost of 7,000 arriving under the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (ARAP) scheme in the current 2021/2022 year 400million : Funding already put forward to resettle Afghans

: Funding already put forward to resettle Afghans 557million : How much could be needed to resettle Afghans over the next three years

: How much could be needed to resettle Afghans over the next three years 15million : Funding per year to 'international partners' to help with resettlement

: Funding per year to 'international partners' to help with resettlement 20,520 : How much councils should receive per person over three years Advertisement

The department announced the decision as it revealed more details of how its plan, dubbed Operation Warm Welcome, to help Afghans rebuild their lives in the UK would work.

Former Afghan staff and their family members eligible for the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (Arap), which prioritises relocation to the UK for current or former locally employed staff who have been assessed to be under serious threat to life, will be given immediate indefinite leave to remain as opposed to only five years' temporary residency as previously permitted.

Those who have already been relocated in the UK with temporary residency can now upgrade their immigration status for free, allowing them access to permanent jobs with unrestricted rights to work.

All arrivals are being offered the coronavirus vaccine. So far more than 700 arrivals have left quarantine and received their first dose of the jab.

The Government has also pledged:

12 million to help enrol children in schools quickly, to help with transport, specialist teachers and English language support;

3 million will go towards helping families access healthcare and register with a GP;

5 million so councils can provide housing support;

Funding for up to 300 undergraduate and postgraduate scholarships for Afghans at UK universities and adults will also be able to access English language courses free of charge;

Liaison officers to help families get in touch with councils and other services they may need, as well as help them find accommodation and get a National Insurance number;

An online 'portal' so offers of support, such as jobs, accommodation and donations of clothing and toys, can be registered.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson said: 'We owe an immense debt to those who worked with the Armed Forces in Afghanistan and I am determined that we give them and their families the support they need to rebuild their lives here in the UK.

US soldiers stand inside the Kabul Airport wall on August 26 as hundreds of people gather near an evacuation control checkpoint

Hundreds of people, some holding documents, gather near an evacuation control checkpoint at Kabul Airport on August 26

'I know this will be an incredibly daunting time, but I hope they will take heart from the wave of support and generosity already expressed by the British public.'

UK aid to boost shelter and sanitation facilities for fleeing Afghans Shelters and sanitation facilities for those who have fled Afghanistan will be provided as part of a 30million UK aid package. Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said the 'life-saving' supplies are intended to help those Afghans who have 'left everything behind' to reach neighbouring countries. It is expected that 10million will be made available immediately to humanitarian organisations, such as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), to despatch supplies to the Afghan borders. Countries predicted to experience a significant increase in refugees will also receive 20million to help with processing new arrivals and to provide essential services and supplies. Pakistan, Tajikistan, Iran, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan are among the countries where Afghans are expected to flee in their tens of thousands following the Taliban takeover. Prime Minister Boris Johnson last month announced an increase in aid to Afghanistan to 286 million, amid a policy to cut spending on overseas assistance. Advertisement

Victoria Atkins, who has been appointed Afghan Resettlement minister, said: 'The stability of indefinite leave, the security of access to healthcare and the opportunity of education are the foundation upon which those resettled to the UK can build.'

The Government is still developing the Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme, to take in up to 20,000 refugees who were forced to flee their home or face threats of persecution from the Taliban.

As many as 5,000 could arrive in the first year and will also be offered permanent residency. Some 200million has been committed to the scheme so far.

Also this week, the leader of Stoke-on-Trent City Council called for a national debate to address why around two-thirds of local authorities have not stepped up to help Afghan refugees.

Conservative Abi Brown, whose authority recently withdrew from the national asylum dispersal scheme, said Stoke-on-Trent and the wider Staffordshire area are planning to welcome and resettle around 25 families from Afghanistan.

But she questioned why around 66 per cent of other councils have not put themselves forward to help those fleeing the Taliban, despite many having lower numbers of asylum seekers than Stoke-on-Trent.

Ms Brown said: 'The Government have outlined the Operation Warm Welcome and Stoke-on-Trent, along with our colleagues in Staffordshire, are one of the one in three councils who have said that we will accept Afghan refugee families under that scheme.

'Our position as a local authority is that we have been part of asylum dispersal for 20 years and we recently withdrew from the scheme.

'An area like Stoke-on-Trent that has been taking asylum seekers for a very long time - one in 250 of our residents are asylum seekers today - can find, albeit a very small amount, space to take a few more.

'And yet our colleagues elsewhere in the country, who aren't part of asylum dispersal... they still say 'No, sorry, we can't take anybody'.'
An NHS psychiatrist who watched sickening and illegal pornography featuring animals has been allowed to carry on treating vulnerable patients.

Dr Mansur Butt, 49, from Warrington, admitted having bestiality material on his phones but said he only watched it because he was interested in his patients perversions and not for his own sexual pleasure.

A full GMC ruled that the behaviour of the doctor, who has worked extensively across Manchester and Liverpool, amounted to misconduct but stopped short of saying he should no longer be allowed to practice.

NHS psychiatrist Dr Mansur Butt, pictured, downloaded animal pornography on his mobile phone which was later seized by police

Police decided against prosecuting Dr Butt, pictured, but reported him to the General Medical Council who launched an investigation into his professional conduct

And today Dr Butt told Mail Online that he had actually reported himself to police after watching the extreme porn by mistake.

Dr Butt, who is also a DJ, poet and sometime media pundit, was subject of a misconduct hearing in Manchester in February and March which examined whether he had misconducted himself and whether he should be allowed to continue working in medicine.

The tribunal heard that on January 25, 2018, police had raided Dr Butts home, seizing two Samsung mobile telephones and a memory card.

The written evidence showed: The media found on Dr Butts electronic devices included extreme pornographic imagery showing bestiality. The possession of such material is an illegal act.

'Dr Butt admitted that he was in possession of what was described as "extreme images", and described how this was for "educational purposes" in a research capacity in his role as a Psychiatrist. Dr Butt denied having a sexual interest in such material and was not sexually aroused by the pictures.'

Police decided not to prosecute the doctor but instead referred him to regulatory body the GMC.

The tribunal ruled in his favour, explaining in a written judgement: There was insufficient suitable expert evidence as to whether each of the unique 22 videos were viewed and if so, how often.

They accepted he wasnt viewing the material for pleasure: Dr Butt has no sexual interest in bestiality or bestiality imagery. He does not find such material sexually arousing.

In his professional practice it is not unforeseeable that he would encounter patients with sexual perversions and it was therefore reasonable that he had a professional interest in such matters, insofar as is necessary as a general adult psychiatrist.

In the modern era it is not uncommon for busy professionals to use various devices to undertake electronic communication or to undertake research in whatever pockets of time are available. As such, the Tribunal was satisfied that his explanation for using his mobile telephone to look for articles was reasonable.

Dr Butt told MailOnline he was looking for research material around 'sexual perversion' though he was not looking specifically for bestiality

Today Dr Mansur Butt defended his conduct. He told Mail Online: 'It was on my mobile device.

'I was looking for research material around sexual perversion, which is part of my job, but not specifically bestiality.

'I read a few articles and when I clicked one link suggested by Google, I think it was a malicious link, pop-ups began running in the background, which I struggled to shut down because as I stopped one, another popped up.

'Eventually, I managed to shut my phone down.

'I was fully assessed by a forensic psychologist in detail and they did not find any concerns about me having preferences for any such thing.

'After going through all the painstaking proceedings and finally being able to get my mind off it, every time I look back it is a horrible experience, although it was my error of judgement, it is not pleasant to keep looking back.'

He added: 'The tribunal listened to both sides and they couldnt find any evidence that I had ever searched for any such key words, downloaded or repeatedly view any such material.'

He said all his electronic devices were forensically analysed by the police, who found nothing.

He added: 'It was a one-off and beyond my control.

'When it happened, I volunteered the information to the police and my employer.'

Dr Butt qualified as a doctor in Pakistan in 1999 and has been working in the UK since 2004. Hes a member of the Royal College of Psychiatrists and has studied at the University of Manchester.
Gangs of thugs wielding metal bars massed outside Love Island star Kem Cetinay's new restaurant in Romford before launching into a huge brawl.

The two groups were seen in dramatic footage on Saturday night rushing at each other armed with the weapons.

It was so alarming police were called, but the yobs managed to escape before they arrived.

Restaurant Array is owned by Kem, 26, who has recently appeared on Celebrity Masterchef.

The violent scenes exploded on Saturday night in what appeared to be an organised meet to fight.

Diners could be seen by their cars looking on in horror as the brawling began.

Violence exploded outside Love Island winner Kem Cetinay's new restaurant at the weekend

The Romford eaterie, named Array, is owned by the reality star, 26, who won back in 2017

Police went to the scene to investigate the fight but the culprits had fled by then

It is not clear what had sparked the incident, or if the location was significant.

The restaurant is owned by Kem who won Love Island with ex-girlfriend Amber Davies back in 2017.

He was one of the breakout stars of the series and has maintained his fame since it aired.

This year's winners Liam Reardon, 22, and Millie Court, 24, have even visited the restaurant on a date.

A Met Police spokesman said: 'Police were called at approximately 00:45hrs on Sunday, 29 August to reports of a disturbance involving a large group of people in Shepherds Hill, Romford.

'A witness reported one of those involved was in possession of a metal bar.

'Officers attended but those involved had left.

This year's winners Liam Reardon, 22, and Millie Court, 24, visited the restaurant on a date

The restaurant is owned by Kem who won Love Island with ex-girlfriend Amber Davies in 2017

'No reports of any injuries; no arrests.'

Kem and Amber have recently fronted a new six-part series about mental health on ITV2.

The network partnered with charity CALM (Campaign Against Living Miserably) to open up the conversation surrounding well-being on the show named The Full Treatment.

The series was part of ITV's drive to address mental health in the wake of three suicides linked to its flagship show Love Island.

Sophie Gradon, 32, and Mike Thalassitis, 26, both took their own lives after appearing on the reality dating programme, while host Caroline Flack, 40, died by suicide in February last year - the day after hearing she would be prosecuted for allegedly attacking her boyfriend Lewis Burton, 27.
Yakuza gang members have been ordered not to use their guns 'in public' after an infamous crime boss of a rival gang was sentenced to death by hanging in what is believed to be the first death sentence for a Yakuza kingpin in Japan.

Satoru Nomura, head of the Kudo-Kai crime syndicate, was sentenced to death on Tuesday 21 August for murders committed by members of his gang as long ago as 1998.

The unprecedented decision by the Tokyo judge was a watershed moment in Japan, where gang membership is not illegal and the Yakuza operate openly.

The sentence prompted Yamaguchi-gumi, the countrys biggest crime organisation and Kudo-kai rival based in Kobe, central Japan, to issue an order banning their members from public use of guns.

It comes at a time when membership numbers in the Yakuza are particularly low after years of mounting pressure from Japanese law enforcement, stricter regulation and the pandemic have stunted the crime syndicate's growth.

But many believe the order against guns is simply a ploy to provide gang members with legal footing so they can claim they have worked to reduce violence in future cases.

Satoru Nomura, head of the Kudo-Kai crime syndicate, was sentenced to death on Tuesday 21 August for murders committed by members of his gang as long ago as 1998 in an unprecedented judgment

A horde of law enforcement officers entered the crime kingpin's home as yet more officers stood guard

Recent years have proved difficult for Japan's organised crime network after the number of yakuza members dropped to a record low of 25,900 last year, compared to 80,900 members in 2010 according to figures provided by the National Police Agency.

The dramatic fall in membership is startling for the yakuza, who for years were able to operate with an incredible degree of freedom compared to the far shadier operations of developed crime syndicates in the UK.

It is not illegal under Japanese law to take a gang membership, and syndicates are able to operate from public offices while running legitimate businesses as well as criminal enterprises simultaneously.

However, Japanese authorities have steadily been working to reduce the influence of the yakuza across the nation, and police departments in six different regions of Japan were granted power last year to arrest known gang members for minor offences such as loitering and even gathering in large groups.

Japanese authorities have also targeted the legitimate side of the yakuza's business operations by publicly naming companies, organisations and individuals who are known to enter deals with the crime syndicate, thereby causing business partnerships to crumble and cutting the syndicate's profits.

The legal offensive by Japanese authorities has certainly dented the yakuza's profits and ability to operate freely, but there are fears that mounting restrictions will simply cause crime bosses to double down on their criminal operations and boost their willingness to enact violence.

Gang membership is not a crime in Japan and members are easily identifiable by their conspicuous tattoos. Many members are missing parts of their fingers, which are cut off as punishment for transgressions

Nomura, 74, denied accusations he had masterminded the violent assaults for which he was sentenced to death. Kudo-kai is often described as Japan's 'most violent' yakuza gang.

According to Japanese broadcaster NHK, there was no direct evidence that Nomura had ordered the attacks.

However, in handing down the sentence, the judge said that the gang operated under such strict rules that it was unthinkable that attacks could have been carried out without its leader's authorisation.

The trial revolved around attacks carried out by Kudo-kai members between 1998 and 2014. During that time, a former head of a fishing cooperative was shot and killed, and three others - including a nurse and former police officer - were injured by shooting or stabbing.

When the sentence was delivered, Nomura reportedly told the judge: 'I asked for a fair decision... You will regret this for the rest of your life,' in a sinister warning of retribution.

Japan police arrest at the scene of the crime a Yakuza gangster who shot Nagasaki major and anti-nuclear activist Iccho Ito in front of main train station in Nagasaki city, Nagasaki province, 17 April 2007. Despite the blatant murder, the gang member was not sentenced to death

Defence lawyers for Nomura plan to appeal the ruling, according to Kyodo news agency. Nomura's number two, Fumio Tanoue, fell just short of the death sentence but was jailed for life.

The yakuza grew from the chaos of post-war Japan into multi-billion-dollar criminal organisations, involved in everything from drugs and prostitution to protection rackets and white-collar crime.

With more than 100 inmates on death row, Japan is one of few developed nations to retain the death penalty, but the sentencing of Nomura is thought to be the first time a yakuza boss has been committed to death row.

Public support for capital punishment remains high despite international criticism, including from rights groups.
Princess Charlene of Monaco is in a stable condition after being rushed to a hospital following a collapse at her South African lodge on Wednesday night.

The royal, 43, was admitted under an alias to the Netcare Alberlito Hospital after the 'medical emergency' caused by complications from an infection she contracted in May.

A foundation set up in her name said in a statement on Friday: 'Her Serene Highness Princess Charlene of Monaco was rushed to hospital by ambulance late on Wednesday night after collapsing due to complications from the severe ear, nose and throat infection she contracted in May.

'Her medical team is currently evaluating her but have confirmed the princess is stable.'

The hospital refused to confirm what procedures or checks were carried out citing confidentiality legislation, but a source said she had been admitted as a VIP patient and treated on a separate floor to other patients.

Charlene was last seen in Monaco in January and has been in her home country of South Africa for months.

In May, she fell ill with a 'serious sinus infection' and two weeks ago she underwent a 'four-hour operation under general anaesthesia'.

It comes after Prince Albert of Monaco finally reunited with his wife last week after three months apart as his family flew out to be with her while she recovers from the mystery operation.

Princess Charlene of Monaco was admitted to hospital after a medical emergency in South Africa this week, it has been revealed

The royal, 43, was admitted under an alias to the Netcare Alberlito Hospital (pictured) in northern Durban on Wednesday night

She was last seen in Monaco in January and has been in her home country of South Africa for months after contracting a 'serious sinus infection'. Pictured in South Africa in March

Nicole previously said that after Albert married his wife Charlene, the royal distanced himself from his son (pictured, Charlene with Albert in South Africa last week)

He is facing growing calls to reveal whether his marriage is on the rocks after he attended a ball alongside his former mistress and their love child.

In May, the Royal Palace of Monaco announced that Princess Charlene was unable to leave her native South Africa after having contracted an ear, nose and throat infection.

The former Olympic swimmer was in South Africa to raise awareness about rhino poaching according to the Palace's statement: 'During a trip to the African continent as part of a wildlife conservation mission, Princess Charlene contracted an ear, nose and throat infection that does not allow her to travel.'

Meanwhile, recent images emerged online showing Albert's former mistress Nicole Coste and their love child Alexandre Grimladi-Coste, 18, attending Monaco's Red Cross Ball alongside in July, during Charlene's leave of absence from the country.

The absence of Charlene, which has involved missing a string of high-profile events, has led to speculation around the state of her marriage after news emerged that Albert is facing a paternity suit over a love child born in the early years of their relationship.

Charlene and Albert reunited last week for the first time in months after Albert and their children flew to South Africa, but photographs of the pair embracing were branded 'awkward' by a body language expert.

In recent weeks, lifestyle magazines across Europe have speculated feverishly that the royal couple could be headed for divorce.

French magazine Madame Figaro stating the images 'failed to convince the Monegasques' amid reports Charlene is looking for a house in Johannesburg.

Prince Albert of Monaco is facing growing calls to reveal whether his marriage to Princess Charlene is on the rocks after he attended a ball alongside his former mistress Nicole Coste and their love child during his wife's extended stay in South Africa (pictured, left Prince Albert at the Red Cross Ball in July 2021, and right, Nicole Coste at the event)

Images have now emerged online showing Albert and Nicole's love child Alexandre (right) attending the ball alongside Prince Albert

According to The Telegraph, the magazine asked: 'How long can she remain away from her children, her duties?'

'How long will the fight against rhinoceros poaching remain the Princess of Monaco's top priority?

'How long will Albert II of Monaco go on bearing this affront, which is becoming ridiculous?'

Historian Philippe Delorme said that 'lots of people got the impression it was an arranged marriage' between Charlene and Albert, adding: 'Albert chose a wife who resembled his mother, and Charlene clearly felt very ill at ease in this Grace Kelly role they wanted her to play'

In photographs shared online, Nicole can be seen wearing an elegant purple gown to the event with dangling diamond earrings, while the son she shares with Prince Albert (right) opted for a blue suit

In May 2005, just before he was enthroned as Prince of Monaco, Albert confirmed he was the biological father of Alexandre, 18, whose mother was Nicole, a former Air France flight attendant from Togo (pictured together in 2002)

Former Olympic swimmer Charlene reportedly tried to flee Monaco for her native South Africa on three separate occasions before the royal wedding after discovering Albert had allegedly fathered a love child - his third - while they were together. She was seen in floods of tears on her wedding day in 2011 (pictured)

The couple recently reunited for the first time in months after Albert and their children flew to South Africa, but photographs of the pair embracing were branded 'awkward' by body language expert Judi James

'Why DOES the Prince of Monaco refuse to see our son?' Fashion designer who had a child with Albert claimed it was 'impossible' for Alexandre to see his father after he married Princess Charlene Nicole's relationship with Albert began as a chance encounter on an Air France flight from Nice to Paris in 1997. Speaking in an interview in 2014, Nicole said: 'I always served in First Class so I was accustomed to dealing with VIPs. When I saw Albert our eyes met and I knew this was different. There was definitely an aura around him and we hit it off immediately. 'I found him attractive with a twinkle in his eye. 'He asked for my mobile telephone number. I didn't write it on a napkin but on proper paper from the First Class cabin. I think he knew I wasn't intimidated by him, that I felt comfortable in his presence. 'I was charmed but no, it wasn't love at first sight. That came later. Albert called me and asked me to come to Monaco for the weekend. It all seemed very natural and I bought my own ticket and stayed with him at his private apartment. I remember thinking, 'Oh, this is nice.' ' Nicole, whose father was a merchant in Togo, West Africa, admitted she was excited and flattered by the attention. 'I think he was attracted by my softness, but I was determined not to be a plaything. I needed him to respect me. So when we slept together we cuddled up but didn't have sex. 'I was determined that we wouldn't make love until we got to know each other better. Albert respected that. I was no gold-digger. If anything, I bought him gifts.' Indeed, Nicole had already demonstrated her mettle when she left Africa at just 15. One of five children, she was determined to make a better life for herself and so travelled to Paris to study. She said: 'I didn't expect to fall for Albert. I recall waking up in the night and realising that I had fallen in love with him.' Their liaison became the best-kept secret among Monaco society. Although they both attended red carpet events and mixed with socialites and celebrities, the majority of Albert's subjects knew nothing of the relationship. 'It is not my fault I fell in love with a Prince,' Nicole said. Inevitably, however, their initial passion waned and the relationship petered out. But in its final days, Nicole discovered she was pregnant. 'When I first broke the news to Albert he was fine about it,' she said. 'He said I should keep the baby and promised to support me.' However, months later the Prince's enthusiasm waned. 'I think Palace officials had got to him, possibly pointing out future inheritance problems.' When Alexandre was born Albert provided a generous financial allowance for Nicole and her son and moved them into an exquisite villa on the French Riviera. Though Alexandre's birth scandalised Monegasque society, initially Albert was a loving father. Nicole has said that she taught the Prince how to change his son's nappies. 'Albert and his son shared an affectionate, natural father/son relationship with trips and pirate-themed birthday parties,' she revealed. 'The Prince was proud of his son, often cuddling him warmly. 'Despite the end of our relationship a boy needs his father and I wrote to Albert saying this was not about money. Our son needs a father with whom he can talk, who will pay regular visits  not one who appears and disappears.' In 2005 Albert announced he was the father but decreed his illegitimate son would not inherit the throne. He did, however, vow that Alexandre would be cared for financially. When Albert met and then became engaged to South African swimmer Charlene Wittstock in 2010, his interest in his son waned. Nicole felt sidelined and snubbed by society friends who feared they would offend the new Princess-to-be if they consorted with her. Many criticised Nicole in public, dubbing her 'audacious' for demanding recognition and rights for her son. She also caused anger by being pictured strolling with her son in the Monaco sunshine on the eve of Albert and Charlene's wedding in 2011. 'I was fed up being a secret,' she said. 'After the wedding I suffered because some socialites stopped inviting me to events if they thought the Prince and Princess would be there. They thought it would cause embarrassment. 'There is so much vicious gossip in Monaco. It is a beautiful place but also a small world. Too many are afraid of appearing disloyal to the Crown. 'Once I was invited to a yacht party during the Grand Prix and some guests questioned why I was there. The guests said, 'Prince Albert and Princess Charlene might sail into port and come on board for a drink. It would be awkward if she is here'.' Nicole previously said that after Albert married Charlene, the royal distanced himself from his son. She said: 'The truth is that, I'm sorry to say, Albert hasn't seen Alexandre since a brief visit last September. It has become impossible since he married that girl. 'I suppose as a new wife, how would one feel? But she should think about my innocent child. 'I don't want to attack her but I think it is just jealousy and I don't know why. I have been through hell in my fight for my son's name and future.' Advertisement

And according to The Times, French royal commentator Stephane Bern has stated Charlene rarely stayed in the royal palace with Albert while living in Monaco and instead lived in a flat over a luxury chocolate shop.

He pointed out that in Charlene's absence, Albert had allowed Nicole, an air hostess with whom he had an affair, to attend the Red Cross ball.

The son who was born of that affair, Alexandre, 18, also attended the event in July.

In May 2005, just before he was enthroned as Prince of Monaco, Albert confirmed he was the biological father of Alexandre, whose mother is Nicole, a former Air France flight attendant from Togo.

Neither Alexandre nor his half sister Jazmin can claim the throne of Monaco, according to negotiated financial agreements.

The line of succession instead favours Prince Jacques and Princess Gabriella, who have just turned six, and who frequently appear in their parents' social media posts.

Nicole previously said that after Albert married Charlene, the royal distanced himself from his son.

She told the Mail On Sunday in 2014: 'The truth is that, I'm sorry to say, Albert hasn't seen Alexandre since a brief visit last September. It has become impossible since he married that girl.

'I suppose as a new wife, how would one feel? But she should think about my innocent child.

'I don't want to attack her but I think it is just jealousy and I don't know why. I have been through hell in my fight for my son's name and future.'

The mounting speculation about the couple's marriage comes days after Charlene shared professional photographs of her reunion with Prince Albert online, saying she was 'thrilled' to have her family back.

Last week, she shared a series of photos cuddled up with her kids in South Africa with the caption: 'I am so thrilled to have my family back with me (Gabriella decided to give herself a haircut!!!) Sorry my Bella I tried my best to fix it,' referring to her daughter's choppy fringe.

However a body language expert told FEMAIL Princess Charlene showed 'no emotional bond' towards her husband Prince Albert in the images.

Judi James said that rather than being the loved-up reunion photo one would expect of a couple surrounded by split rumours, the royals' poses suggested 'no signs of connection between awkward-looking Albert and Charlene'.

Albert and six-year-old twins Jacques and Gabriella will stay with former Olympic swimmer Charlene while she recovers, the palace previously announced, although it is not clear how long their stay will be, but the princess will not return to Monaco until at least the end of October.

Charlene has been in South Africa since at least March, with media reports suggesting she is looking for a house there.

The prince, who already supports two illegitimate children, is alleged to have been in a relationship with a Brazilian woman which resulted in a daughter in 2005.

The claim, which his lawyers dismissed as a 'hoax', is particularly painful as he was dating Charlene at the time, having met in 2000.

However, Charlene has publicly supported her husband, and the palace have reiterated she is only in South Africa because she's unable to fly.

On August 13, the Monaco palace released a statement saying Charlene was to undergo surgery.

It read: 'Princess Charlene will undergo an operation today, Friday, August 13, for four hours under general anaesthesia.

On June 3, Charlene shared photograph of her family on safari in South Africa as her twins and husband flew to South Africa to celebrate her niece Avia's fifth birthday.

In a snap showing the last time they were seen together, Albert, Jacques and Gabriella, were joined in an open top car by Charlene's brother Sean Wittstock, 37, and his children. She captioned it with a simple heart emoji.

In earlier snaps, the family gathered around a birthday cake with Sean, his wife Chantell, 34, their eldest son Raigen, 7, and the birthday girl.

'Happy 5th Birthday, Aiva! Love, Auntie Charlene,' she wrote.

'Prince Albert and their children, Crown Prince Jacques and Princess Gabriella will join her during her recovery period.'

The princess will not return to Monaco until at least the end of October.

Princess Charlene, who has been well enough to conduct interviews from South Africa and has been seen out and about, has used the time to promote her anti-poaching initiative, Chasing Zero

Charlene's last formal engagement was on January 27 when she joined Albert for the Sainte Devote Ceremony in Monte Carlo. She has not been seen at home since.

Instead she has been keeping followers updated through social media posts and media interviews, in which she has spoken candidly about missing her children and described her husband as 'her rock'.

Speaking to South Africa Radio 702's host Mandy Wiener last week, the royal said: '[It's] very frustrating, terribly frustrating. I can't wait to get back to them, I can't wait to see my children.'

Charlene revealed: 'It's the longest period I've actually been away from Europe, let alone my children, but I'm FaceTiming them most days and they've been here and will be returning to see me again after my procedure.

'It's an amazing opportunity [to be here] but I'm very sad I can't be with my children this summer in Europe.'

She added that she was initially only supposed to be in her native South Africa for ten to 12 days for a conservation trip with her Princess Charlene of Monaco foundation.

However, the royal had a problem 'equalising her ears' and was told by a doctor that she was suffering from a serious sinus infection.

'It's taken time to address the problem that I'm having,' explained Charlene. 'I cannot go into full detail, but I cannot force healing so I will be grounded in South Africa until the end of October.

'The reason being I cannot fly above 3,000 metres otherwise I'll have a problem with my ears.

'I feel well, I feel good, it's just obviously a waiting game for me, but I've had a great opportunity to understand a little bit more about South Africa, the environment, the needs and it's been wonderful to be back in South Africa, and I think at this time it's crucial that people are aware of certain things via my foundation.'

Charlene joined the video interview from bush country in the KwaZulu-Natal region.

She has also shared videos released by the Monaco royal palace to mark her and Albert's 10th wedding anniversary, which took place in July. The couple spent the milestone thousands of miles apart.

But royal sources have suggested the princess has 'no plans' to return soon.

A palace source told Paris Match: 'The Princess has, for the time being, in reality, no intention of returning.'

The separation is also affecting Charlene's relationship with the people of Monaco.

Stephane Bearn uses an impeccably sourced piece in the latest Paris Match to discuss the torturous separation.

He describes subjects in Monaco becoming increasingly angry about their runaway Princess, as they criticise everything from Charlene's mood swings to her appearance.

'In Monaco, since the departure of Charlene, tongues have loosened,' Mr Bearn writes.

'In the whirlwind of a hard-nosed court, her fine shine is rubbing off. Her sad looks are regarded as haggard.

'Disappointed Monegasques talk about her anger, her whimsical moods, which are as changeable as her hair.'

The family flew out to be with Princess Charlene in South Africa as she recovers from a mystery operation

Charlene, 43, who was last seen in Monaco in January, shared professional photographs of their reunion on Instagram (pictured). She joked her daughter Gabriella (left) had given herself a haircut

Mummy's boy: Princess Charlene poses with her son Jacques, who is heir to the Monaco throne. She said she was delighted to be back with her family. The family were last together at the start of June, when Albert and the children flew out to South Africa to be with Charlene

Play time! Twins Jacques and Gabriella climb a tree in one of the photos shared on Instagram. Albert and six-year-old twins Jacques and Gabriella will stay with Charlene while she recovers, the palace previously announced, although it is not clear how long their stay will be

Last Monaco outing together: Charlene and Albert were last pictured together at an official event together in January at the Sainte Devote Ceremony in Monaco. Albert has made a few visits to South Africa since

Last seen together: Albert and the twins paid a brief visit to South Africa in early June (pictured), the Palace has confirmed, but they otherwise keep in touch via video link. They are pictured with Charlene's brother brother Sean Wittstock, 37, and his son Raigen, seven, and daughter Aiva, five

The former Olympian, 43, has not been seen in Monaco since January and has spent the last few months holed up in her native South Africa while she receives treatment for a 'serious sinus infection' she developed while on a solo visit trip to the country (pictured)

How Charlene and Albert made solo outings in South Africa and Monaco during seven months apart January 27 - Charlene is pictured with Albert for the Sainte Devote Ceremony in Monaco. March 18 - Charlene is pictured at the memorial for the late Zulu monarch, King Goodwill Zwelithini at the KwaKhethomthandayo Royal Palace in Nongoma, South Africa April 2 - Charlene posts an Instagram picture of herself, Albert and their twins Jacques and Gabriella for Easter. It is unknown where the image was taken. May 8 - Albert, Jacques and Gabriella attend a Grand Prix event in Monaco without Charlene May 10 - Albert attends Monaco Gala Awards in Monaco without Charlene May 18 - Charlene shares her first picture from her conservation trip in South Africa June 1 - Prince Albert II, Jacques and Gabriella attend event at Oceanic Museum in Monaco June 3 - New photos emerge of Charlene on her conservation trip June 5- Charlene puts on a united front as she shares a photo with her family to mark her niece's fifth birthday with her brother's family and Albert and the twins in South Africa June 7 - Albert and the twins attend the World Rugby Sevens without Charlene June 17 - Prince Albert attends Red Cross Summer concert in Monte Carlo with his sister Princess Caroline of Hanover June 18 - Prince Albert appears alone Monte Carlo TV Festival June 24 - Charlene's foundation releases a statement saying the royal is unable to travel and is undergoing procedures for an ear, nose and throat infection July 2 - Charlene and Albert mark their 10th anniversary separately. 'This year will be the first time that I'm not with my husband on our anniversary in July, which is difficult, and it saddens me,' Her Serene Highness Princess Charlene said in a statement. July 3 - Albert appears with glamorous niece Charlotte Casiraghi at the 15th international Monte-Carlo Jumping event, which is part of the Longines Global Champions Tour of Monaco, July 27 - Prince Albert attends Olympics alone in Tokyo August 13 - Charlene undergoes a four-hour operation. The reason is not announced August 25 - Charlene shares photos of Prince Albert, Gabriella and Jacques visiting her in South Africa August 31 - Speculation mounts in the media about couple's relationship Advertisement

Referring to the couple's twins, who until now have remained in Monaco with their nannies, Mr Bearn writes: 'The Palace had to invoke a suffering Princess so often that the Monegasques today find it hard to believe.

'By crying wolf, the mother of Jacques and Gabriella would have discredited and isolated herself.'

During her trip, Charlene also debuted a dramatic new shaved hairstyle.

She showcased the 'French crop' hairdo - featuring a longer strip on top of the head and dramatically shaved back and sides - in snaps shared on her charity's Instagram page in late May.

The royal first stepped out with a dramatic half-shaved head in December 2020 but has since gone even shorter and bolder with the cut.

Charlene and Albert's marriage has been plagued with rumours from the start.

The couple met at the Mare Nostrum swimming competition in Monte Carlo in 2000, announced their engagement in 2010.

Former Olympic swimmer Charlene reportedly tried to flee Monaco for her native South Africa on three separate occasions before the royal wedding after discovering Albert had allegedly fathered a love child - his third - while they were together.

Monaco officials were said to have coaxed her back by brokering a deal between the Prince and his reluctant bride, saying she could leave once she had provided him with a legitimate heir.

One source said at the time: 'Charlene will provide an heir, then if things don't go well, she will receive a generous divorce settlement once she's served a decent amount of time.'

Charlene was seen in floods of tears on her wedding day in 2011.

Just one year after their wedding, it was reported that Charlene was 'depressed' at her failure to provide her husband with a legitimate heir.

Her pregnancy was announced in May 2014, and in December that year she gave birth to twins Princess Gabriella and heir to the throne Prince Jacques.

In the 10 years since, Charlene has rarely spoken publicly of her experience.

In 2017, the Princess made an emotional return to Africa, where she spoke about how much the continent means to her.

'I am African and this is my heritage. It will always be. It's in my heart and in my veins,' she told Eyewitness News.

Last year she admitted life was 'very painful', saying: 'I have the privilege of having this life, but I miss my family and my friends in South Africa and I'm often sad because I cannot always be there for them.'

It's been a tumultuous start to the year for the royal, after news emerged that her husband is facing a paternity suit over a love child born in the early years of their relationship.

The 34-year-old claimant  who cannot be named for legal reasons  says she had a passionate affair with Albert, leading to the birth of their daughter  whose name is also classified  on July 4, 2005.

Albert received a handwritten letter from the child, who is now 15, in September last year reading: 'I don't understand why I grew up without a father, and now that I have found you, you don't want to see me.'

Legal papers were also filed, as lawyers for the claimant called on Albert to undergo a DNA test  just as he did before finally being identified as the father of two illegitimate children born in the 1990s and early 2000s.

In January, Charlene spoke publicly for the first time since the allegations, telling Point de Vue: 'When my husband has problems, he tells me about it. I often tell him, 'No matter what, no matter what, I'm a thousand percent behind you. I'll stand by you whatever you do, in good times or in bad.'

The mother-of-two went on to say she also often tells her husband she will 'protect him' and will 'always be by his side.'

Charlene, who was raised in South Africa and represented the country at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, travelled to Thanda Safari in KwaZulu-Natal in January to learn more about being done by the Princess Charlene of Monaco Foundation South Africa to help save rhinos from poachers.

The princess took part in conservation operations including rhino monitoring and tracking, deployment with the Anti-Poaching Unit, educational wildlife photography sessions, and a White Rhino dart and dehorning exercise.
Taliban co-founder Mullah Baradar will be soon be named leader of a new Afghan government the Islamist group said on Friday.

Baradar, thought to be aged 53, was one of the founding members of the group which founded the Taliban in 1994 after he fought with and commanded Mujahideen soldiers in Kandahar in the Soviet-Afghan war in the 1980s.

He will be joined by Mullah Mohammad Yaqoob, the son of late Taliban co-founder Mullah Omar - a close friend of Baradar - and Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanekzai, in senior positions in the government, according to an anonymous source in the Islamist group.

The announcement will come three weeks after the Taliban took control of the Afghan capital Kabul and repeated delays in their declaration of a leadership.

Afghanistan is teetering on the brink of economic collapse amid the Taliban takeover which took place during a severe drought that saw 40% of Afghanistan's wheat crops fail this year according to the World Food Programme.

Meanwhile, Afghanistan's main airline Ariana Afghan Airlines announced that flights to and from Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul will resume on Friday.

Mullah Baradar, thought to be aged 53, was one of the founding members of the group which founded the Taliban in 1994 after he fought and commanded Mujahideen soldiers in Kandahar in the Soviet-Afghan war in the 1980s

Meanwhile, Afghanistan's main airline Ariana Afghan Airlines announced that flights to and from Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul will resume on Friday, though Taliban forces are still in control of who is able to access the airport

With Kabul's airport remaining closed since August 31, many Afghans have attempted to flee over land but have been caught by the Taliban

While the Taliban have spoken of their desire to form a consensus government, a source close to the militant movement said the interim government now being formed would consist solely of Taliban members.

'All the top leaders have arrived in Kabul, where preparations are in final stages to announce the new government,' one Taliban official told Reuters, on condition of anonymity.

It would comprise 25 ministries with a consultative council, or shura, of 12 Muslim scholars according to another source, while Haibatullah Akhunzada, the Taliban's supreme religious leader, will focus on religious matters and governance within the framework of Islam.

All the sources expected the interim government's cabinet to be finalised soon but differed over exactly when, with some saying it would be settled later on Friday while others felt it would take until the middle of next week.

A senior manager of Ariana Afghan Airlines said they had received permission from the Taliban to recommence flights from Kabul airport now that their leadership setup is almost finalised.

'We have received a green light from the Taliban and aviation authorities and plan to start flights today,' airline manager Tamim Ahmadi told AFP reporters on Friday.

'We have received a green light from the Taliban and aviation authorities and plan to start flights today,' airline manager Tamim Ahmadi said on Friday

The new government will swiftly be confronted with a variety of challenges including impending economic collapse following the Taliban's takeover on August 15 and severe hunger due to a drought which has been ongoing in the country for months.

Well before the Taliban took power, many Afghans were struggling to feed their families amid severe drought and millions could now face starvation.

Mary-Ellen McGroarty, World Food Programme country director in Afghanistan, said: 'In the current context there are no national safety nets.

'Since August 15, we have seen the crisis accelerate and magnify with the imminent economic collapse that is coming this country's way.'

Afghanistan's economy has for years been reliant on millions of dollars of foreign aid alongside its meagre GDP, but much of Afghanistan's assets have been frozen by the US after the Taliban's takeover.

The administration of U.S. President Joe Biden has no plans to release billions in Afghan gold, investments and foreign currency reserves, and it is doubtful that many world leaders will be happy to formally recognise a new Afghan government led by the Taliban.

A severe drought has ravaged Afghanistan's crops and has resulted in widespread hunger, a situation which could quickly descend into national famine as foreign aid to the country is restricted amid the Taliban's takeover

The World Food Programme said that 40% of Afghanistan's wheat crops failed this year due to the drought

Meanwhile, the Taliban are being forced to repel rebel forces in the Panjshir Valley who are putting up a bitter fight despite the Taliban having swept to power across most of the country.

Several thousand fighters of regional militias and remnants of the government's armed forces have massed in the rugged valley under the leadership of Ahmad Massoud, the son of former Mujahideen commander Ahmad Shah Massoud.

Efforts to negotiate a settlement appear to have broken down, with each side blaming the other for the failure.

In a small victory for Afghanistan's citizens, senior executives of Western Union and Moneygram International said on Thursday they would recommence money transfer services to the country after they were suspended when the Taliban took over.

It is hoped that such a move will encourage US and other Western aid programmes to recommence their distribution of aid packages to provide support to desperate Afghans.

Jean Claude Farah, Western Union's EMEA President, said: 'Much of our business involving Afghanistan is low-value family and support remittances that support basic needs of the people there, so that's the grounding that we have and why we want to reopen our business.

'We've engaged with the US government, which has conveyed that allowing humanitarian activities, including remittances, to continue are consistent with US policy.'

'All the top leaders have arrived in Kabul, where preparations are in final stages to announce the new government,' one Taliban official told Reuters, on condition of anonymity

The Taliban enforced a radical form of sharia, or Islamic law, when it ruled from 1996 to 2001.

But this time around, the movement has tried to present a more moderate face to the world, promising to protect human rights and refrain from reprisals against old enemies.

These claims have been largely refuted however by reports of escalating violence on the streets of Kabul, where civilians have been beaten and brutal punishments have been dished out to those who the Taliban identified as allies of the previous Western occupiers.
The widower and mother-in-law of a young mother who died following a horrific home birth have been accused of conspiring to protect the midwives charged with her manslaughter.

Nick Lovell and Brenda Lovell have defended the level of care provided by Gaye Demanuele and Melody Bourne while they assisted Nick's late wife Caroline Lovell with her home birth in January 2012.

Ms Lovell, 36, died just hours after the birth of her second daughter Zahra.

Both the Lovells have denied accusations from Demanuele's barrister Rishi Nathwani that they both planned to withhold the truth about what happened following the 36-year-old's death.

'That's not true. There's no conspiracy. That's not true,' Mr Lovell told the Melbourne Magistrates Court.

Caroline Lovell tragically died after the home birth of her second daughter Zahra in January 2012

Gaye Demanuele's (pictured) barrister Rishi Nathwani suggested in court Mr Lovell and his mother attempted to 'cover up' details surrounding the death of Caroline Lovell

Brenda Lovell also categorically denied any notion of a cover-up, saying she had been there to support her son and found the midwives to be a lifeline.

'There was no collusion. It was about looking after (the baby), it was about dealing with our grief as best we could,' she said.

Midwives Gaye Demanuele and Melody Bourne have been charged with manslaughter, allegedly as a result of gross negligence in their care of Ms Lovell.

Mr Lovell said he didn't know either of the women before they were hired to help Ms Lovell with her home birth, but knew Demanuele had previously assisted his sister to give birth.

Brenda Lovell admitted she was embarrassed at a conversation she'd had with Ms Lovell's mother Jade Markiewicz just days after Ms Lovell's death.

She said Ms Markiewicz had accused the midwives of 'something to do with the fact that Caroline had died'.

'She was not very kind to them and they were trying to support us. I think I asked Jade to leave my house and said they were very important people to us - the midwives - they were a lifeline,' she said.

Prosecutors argue Demanuele and Bourne were grossly negligent in caring for Ms Lovell.

It is alleged they had been given copies of her medical records, which showed complications including a postpartum haemorrhage during her first birth.

Paramedic Maree Daley said she had suspected the same occurred during the second birth, though ambulance records from the day suggest an amniotic fluid embolism caused Ms Lovell to go into cardiac arrest.

Bourne's barrister Robert Richter QC said there was nothing in the notes to indicate a postpartum haemorrhage.

Midwives Gaye Demanuele and Melody Bourne have been charged with manslaughter, allegedly as a result of gross negligence in their care of Ms Lovell (pictured)

Lovell had insisted on a home birth for her second child in 2012 after feeling disempowered during the hospital birth of her first daughter three years earlier

The court heard midwives Gaye Demanuele (pictured) and Melody Bourne were given Lovell's health records which showed complications during previous births

Ms Daley said she had thought at the time Ms Lovell might have had enough blood loss to indicate a haemorrhage, but she couldn't remember if she raised it with colleagues.

Mr Richter also criticised Ms Daley for throwing away a pocket notebook she had used at the time, accusing her of 'destroying the primary evidence'.

Ms Daley said she had transcribed what she believed to be the relevant parts of the notebook and hadn't appreciated in 2012 that the notebook would be relevant nine years later.

A committal hearing is set to continue for two weeks.
The BBC has partially upheld a complaint blasting it over suggestions made in a News At Ten report that Winston Churchill's attitude towards the Bengal Famine was motivated by racism.

The corporation admitted it fell short of its own impartiality guidelines by not offering up alternative views of Churchill's opinions on and actions with regards to the humanitarian disaster, which killed around three million people.

The offending broadcast was part of a series of reports 'looking at Britain's colonial legacy worldwide'.

Indian historian Rudrangshu Mukherjee of Ashoka University sparked outcry after he told BBC News at Ten in July last year that Churchill is 'seen as the precipitator of mass killing' due to his role in the 1943 famine.

Oxford University's Yasmin Khan also claimed that Churchill was 'prioritising white lives over Asian lives' by not sending aid to India, then a British colony, during the crisis.

A complainant argued that the report 'did not take proper account of the fact that Britain was engaged in a world war at the time; and it suggested the absence of effective action to alleviate the famine reflected racism on Churchill's part'.

The BBC's executive complaints unit (ECU) upheld this part of the complaint.

The comments were made amid a wider campaign to trash the war hero's legacy, with his statue defaced with the word 'racist' by Black Lives Matter protesters in London and civil servants calling for the Treasury's 'Churchill Room' to be renamed.

The BBC has partially upheld a complaint blasting it over suggestions made in a News At Ten report that Winston Churchill's attitude towards the Bengal Famine was motivated by racism

It states: 'This bulletin included one of a series of reports introduced as "looking at Britain's colonial legacy worldwide" which dealt with the Bengal famine of 1943 in which about 3,000,000 people are believed to have died.'

It added: 'A number of the interviewees in the report, suggested Churchill regarded Indians with a degree of disdain if not outright hostility, and the impression that this explained his behaviour was reinforced by the citation of a contemporary account reporting Churchill as having said Indians "breed like rabbits".

'It is hardly controversial to say Churchill on occasion expressed attitudes which many would now regard as evidence of racism, and the ECU thought it editorially justifiable to refer to the issue of racism in the context of a report focusing on Indian attitudes which run counter to the received view of Churchill.

'In the ECU's judgement, however, more exploration of alternative views of Churchill's actions and motives in relation to the Bengal famine was required to meet the standard of impartiality appropriate to a report in a news bulletin of this kind.

Rudrangshu Mukherjee of Ashoka University in India, said Churchill was seen as a 'precipitator' of mass killing' due to his policies

'This aspect of the complaint was upheld.'

The Bengal Famine was triggered by a cyclone and flooding in Bengal in 1942, which destroyed crops and infrastructure.

Historians agree that many of the three million deaths could have been averted with a more effective relief effort, but are divided over the extent to which Churchill was personally to blame.

Yogita Limaye, the BBC News India correspondent who led the report, said many Indians blamed him for 'making the situation worse'.

But historians suggested the report attributed too much of the blame onto Churchill when other factors were more significant.

Tirthankar Roy, a professor in economic history at the LSE, argues India's vulnerability to weather-induced famine was due to its unequal distribution of food.

He also blamed a lack of investment in agriculture and failings by the local government.

'Winston Churchill was not a relevant factor behind the 1943 Bengal famine,' he told The Times in July.

'The agency with the most responsibility for causing the famine and not doing enough was the government of Bengal.'

Churchill has been blamed for down-playing the crisis and arguing against re-supplying Bengal to preserve ships and food supplies for the war effort.

However, his defenders insist that he did try to help and delays were a result of conditions during the war.

They point out that after receiving news of the spreading food shortages he told his Cabinet he would welcome a statement from Lord Wavell, the new Viceroy of India, about how he planned to ensure the problems were 'dealt with'. He then wrote a personal letter urging the Viceroy to take action.

The historian James Holland also weighed into the row.

He said that Churchill faced immense difficulties supplying Bengal due to the amount of British resources tied up in the fight against the Japanese in the Pacific.

The corporation admitted it fell short of its own impartiality guidelines by not offering up alternative views of Churchill's views and actions with regards to the humanitarian disaster

'In light of the latest furore over the Bengal Famine and people wrongly still insisting it was Churchill's fault, here's this on the subject,' he tweeted.

'His accusers don't a) understand how the war worked, or b) that his hands were tied over use of Allied shipping.'

Sir Max Hastings, the military historian, accepted that Churchill's behaviour was a 'blot on his record' but argued it should be considered against his achievements in helping to defeat fascism.

The recent Black Lives Matter protests have seen a renewed focus on Churchill's legacy, including calls for his statue to be taken down from Parliament Square.

At one point the monument was even boxed in by London Mayor Sadiq Khan to protect it from vandalism during a weekend of demonstrations. Figures of Gandhi and Mandela were also encased with wooden sheeting, at a cost of 30,000.

Threats to the statue triggered a strong reaction from defenders of the national hero who pointed out that his greatest achievement was defeating racist, anti-Semitic fascism.

At the time, Boris Johnson criticised the calls as being the 'height of lunacy'. The Prime Minister said he would resist any attempt to remove the statue 'with every breath in my body'.

Churchill's legacy has been attacked in other quarters, with a group of civil servants recently complaining that they did not feel 'comfortable' with having a room in the Treasury named after him.

After the initial uproar caused by the BBC's broadcast, a spokesman for the corporation said: 'The item was the latest in a series looking at Britain's colonial legacy worldwide.

'The series includes different perspectives from around the world, in this case from India, including a survivor from the Bengal famine, as well as Oxford historian Dr Yasmin Khan.

'The report also clearly explained Churchill's actions in India in the context of his Second World War strategy.

'We believe these are all important perspectives to explore and we stand by our journalism.'
This is the emotional moment an Army veteran breaks down in tears after reaching the peak of Ben Nevis - just nine months after having his left leg amputated.

In a video shared online, Jon Hilton, 42, from Hull, can be seen climbing the peak of the UK's highest mountain as his wife, children and climbing team cheer him on.

Aided only by walking sticks, the father-of-three, who served for the Royal Engineers in Iraq, hugs the 'trig point' - a miniature column marking the peak - and breaks into tears.

He told the Mail Online: 'When I touched the trig point, it was like something out of Takeshi's Castle or Total Wipeout.

Emotional moment Jon Hilton, 42, hugs the 'trig point' marking the peak of Ben Nevis and breaks down into tears

Tears of joy as Jon is hugged by his wife Nikki after completing Ben Nevis climb

'And as soon as I touched it this wave of emotion came over me. I had achieved such a huge thing for me personally - I proved to myself that I can walk again.

'I know it sounds silly because I had been walking, but this really proved something to me.'

Ben Nevis measures 1,345 metres above sea level and took Jon 11 hours to climb up and back down again.

Jon left the armed forces in 2009 and had to have his left leg amputated below the knee in November due to a blood clot caused by surgery from an injury during his service.

But he suffered a nasty fall in December and landed on his stump, and it had to be amputated higher.

'I remember falling and the pain was indescribable,' he recalled, 'I broke a tibia, severed blood vessels and arteries - the bathroom where I fell looked like something out of a Saw movie.

In a video, Jon can be seen approaching the peak as his family and friends cheer him on

Cheers to that: Jon and his friends have celebratory beer after a gruelling day of climbing

'And to put it into perspective, I thought that was the worst pain I would ever experience - until I climbed Ben Nevis.'

The veteran of 15 years received his new leg on January 15 this year and set himself the challenge of climbing the three national peaks (Ben Nevis, Mount Snowdon and Scarfell Pike) for charity.

Upon reaching the top of Ben Nevis, Jon said he was feeling 'sheer and utter pain' due to the pressure that had been placed on his stump.

'Coming down was actually even more painful and by the end of it my stump just looked like a huge blister,' he added.

'But as I was walking down from the mountain, a 13-year-old girl put her hands together and told me: "Thank you, you inspire me", and I just burst into tears, it was the most incredible feeling.'

Jon completed the Ben Nevis climb with his three children, pictured left to right: Ryan, 20, Lauren 21 and Joshua 17

Jon left the armed forces in 2009 and had to have his left leg amputated below the knee in November due to a blood clot caused by surgery from an injury during his service

Jon has raised more than 7,000 for his four veteran charities so far, but has a goal of at least 13,000 on his GoFundMe page

Jon completed Ben Nevis on August 17 and battled through the pain to finish Snowdon on August 19.

But having completed Scarfell as an able-bodied climber and knowing it is the most challenging of the three, he knew he would be taking a great risk in attempting it too soon.

'I didn't want to risk having to be rescued and getting the rescue teams out,' he said, 'But I will complete Scarfell on October 9 - I just can't let it go, I can't let it beat me.'

The gruelling challenge is to help raise money for four veteran charities close to his heart - Blesma (The Limbless Veterans), SSAFA (the Armed Forces charity), Royal British Legion and Hull4Heroes.

Jon has raised more than 7,000 so far, but has a goal of at least 13,000 on his GoFundMe page.

He said the outpouring of support and well wishes has been overwhelming.

'I don't see myself as an inspirational person but if I inspire people I think that's great,' he said.

'The words people have told me have meant more than anything.

'PTSD sufferers and amputees told me they have been inspired by my videos and one woman who has been paralysed in a wheelchair for 20 years said she is now going to try physiotherapy after reading my story, it's such an incredible feeling.'

He added: 'I just want everyone to know that no matter your circumstances, you can challenge yourself, you can set yourself goals and you can achieve things.'
Andrew Neil will not return to GB News next week as expected, as speculation about a rift between him and the channel's top team continues to grow.

The veteran broadcaster, 72, who is chairman of the channel, announced less than two weeks after its launch in June that he was taking a break but would be back 'before the summer is out'.

Insiders had expected Neil to be back on air on Monday, September 6, but this prospect is now believed to be out of the question, according to The Times.

Despite the absence of the heavyweight, the channel's executives have pointed out that it has occasionally beaten Sky News in the ratings in recent weeks.

The videos on its Youtube channel have also amassed millions of views.

It comes as GB News announced today that political journalist Isabel Oakeshott will host her own weekly political show on the channel as part of a relaunch which is set to take place later this month.

Ms Oakeshott, who co-wrote an unauthorised biography of ex-Prime Minister David Cameron with former Tory party chairman Lord Ashcroft, said she was 'really excited' to be joining the venture.

The new show will feature alongside others fronted by current GB news political reporter Tom Harwood, along with presenter Gloria De Piero and political editor Darren McCaffrey.

Former UKIP leader Nigel Farage now also hosts his own show four nights a week after joining the channel in June.

His arrival led to a boost in the channel's viewers, with more than 100,000 tuning in to watch one of his first shows. This was said to be far ahead of Sky News's ratings at the same time.

There are claims that CEO Angelos Frangopoulos is keen to reposition the channel as more of a British Fox News-type service, with more opinionated Right-wing content.

Andrew Neil will not return to GB News next week as expected, as speculation about a rift between him and the channel's top team continues to grow. The veteran broadcaster, 72, who is chairman of the channel, announced less than two weeks after its launch in June that he was taking a break but would be back 'before the summer is out'

GB News said last month it was 'looking forward' to Neil's return but reportedly did not repeat the words when approached for comment today.

MailOnlline has approached the channel and Neil directly for comment.

There has been speculation for several weeks that Neil may quit the Right-leaning channel entirely after reports that he has fallen out with Mr Frangopoulos.

In July, Neil waded into a row caused by the suspension of presenter Guto Harri after he took the knee live on air.

Mr Harri then left the show entirely and his departure was followed by the resignation of senior executive John McAndrew.

In a rallying cry posted on Twitter, Neil then said: 'Start ups are fraught and fractious GB News is no exception.

'But the news channel is finding its feet and has a great future. Watch this space.'

Speculation about Neil's future is likely to rise further following news today that political journalist Isabel Oakeshott will host her own show on the channel

Former Sky News presenter Colin Brazier has been hosting Neil's show in his absence, while ex-ITV anchor Alastair Stewart was on air in the slot this week.

One employee who is sceptical that Neil will return told The Times that 'I won't believe it until I see it'.

They added: 'Hopefully he gets over himself and comes back - for the good of everyone.'

GB News's launch was plagued by technical problems such as poorly lit sets and crackling microphones, issues which Neil is understood to have regarded as shambolic.

It comes as GB News announced today that political journalist Isabel Oakeshott will host her own weekly political show on the channel. Ms Oakeshott, who co-wrote an unauthorised biography of ex-Prime Minister David Cameron with former Tory party chairman Lord Ashcroft, said she was 'really excited' to be joining the venture

A statement released today by GB News said Ms Oakeshott 'will present one of the channel's soon-to-launch daily political programmes, The Briefing PM, on Fridays

Despite there being no sign of Neil's imminent return to his own show, he did appear on Mr Farage's programme on August 20 to discuss the crisis in Afghanistan following the Taliban's takeover of the country.

A statement released today by GB News said Ms Oakeshott 'will present one of the channel's soon-to-launch daily political programmes, The Briefing PM, on Fridays.'

Ms Oakeshott has also been the political editor of the Sunday Times and the political editor-at-large for the Daily Mail.

Her other written works include White Flag? An examination of the UK's defence capability.

Ms Oakeshott's arrival follows that of Sky News' home affairs correspondent Mark White.

Explaining his switch yesterday, White said: 'When GB News first launched, it reported for a whole day from my home town in the Scottish Borders.

'I knew then that it was my kind of journalism, genuinely committed to listening to the voices and concerns of people right across the nation.'
Dominic Raab visited the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan today as he continued the battle to save his job amid an ongoing backlash over his handling of the UK's withdrawal from Kabul.

The Foreign Secretary was flown to the border in an Army helicopter and he said it was 'good to see the situation on the ground' and to 'understand what's happening'.

Mr Raab has undertaken a trip to the region, visiting Qatar and Pakistan, in a bid to bolster efforts to help British allies left behind in Afghanistan get out of the country.

The tour has allowed the Tory heavyweight to escape a wave of criticism in the UK after his political opponents claimed he had been 'missing in action' during the Afghanistan crisis.

He has been widely tipped to be sacked at Boris Johnson's next Cabinet reshuffle, although a shake up of the Prime Minister's top team is not believed to be imminent.

Mr Raab's visit to the border was followed by a press conference in Islamabad in which he ruled out handing international aid funding directly to the new Taliban regime.

The Foreign Secretary said the UK is not willing to put the group in charge of development spending and all efforts will go through humanitarian organisations.

Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab visited the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan today

Mr Raab was flown to the border in an Army helicopter and said it was 'good to see the situation on the ground'

Mr Raab has undertaken a trip to the region, visiting Qatar and Pakistan, in a bid to bolster efforts to help British allies left behind in Afghanistan escape the country

Mr Raab challenged the Taliban to create a 'safe and secure environment' to allow aid agencies to work and help Afghan citizens.

He said that will be an 'early test' for the group as he stressed that 'no one wants to see the economic and social fabric of Afghanistan collapse'.

Mr Johnson has doubled the UK's aid contribution to Afghanistan to 286million this year.

The Foreign Office has announced that 30million of that cash will be released to Afghanistan's neighbours to help people who want to leave the country following the withdrawal of UK and US forces.

Mr Raab has already ruled out formally recognising the Taliban regime for the foreseeable future and today he said the group will not receive aid funding from Britain.

He said: 'In terms of the aid, look, there are two areas of focus and again this comes back to some of the early tests for the Taliban.

'No one wants to see the economic and social fabric of Afghanistan collapse.

'I can't see how that would be in the interests of the Taliban, let alone ordinary Afghans, we certainly don't want to see that happen.

'So we would be willing, not to fund aid via the Taliban, but through the humanitarian organisations that operate inside Afghanistan.

'For that to happen there needs to be a safe and secure environment. So again, that is an early test for the Taliban but we are willing to make sure that we do our bit with the international community to fund the humanitarian agencies, the lifeline for ordinary Afghans.

'But there needs to be a safe and permissive environment for that.'

The tour has allowed the Tory heavyweight to escape a wave of criticism in the UK after his political opponents claimed he had been 'missing in action' during the Afghanistan crisis

Mr Raab today ruled out handing international aid funding directly to the new Taliban regime in Afghanistan. He is pictured alongside Pakistan's Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi

It came as Mr Raab again insisted the speed of the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan had taken the US, UK and NATO by surprise.

He said: 'The takeover I think it's fair to say was faster than anyone anticipated, not just the United Kingdom or Nato allies, but I was talking with our friends here.

'And I suspect the Taliban and ordinary Afghans were taken by surprise.

'I think there was a common widespread surprise at the speed with which the consolidation of power happened.'
A passer-by who came face to face with an ISIS-inspired terrorist during New Zealand's supermarket attack has told how he confronted the knifeman with a pole just seconds before he was shot dead by police.

Amit Nand said he saw a woman lying on the floor bleeding before confronting the attacker who stabbed six shoppers at a West Auckland supermarket on Friday afternoon.

'A lot of people were running my way saying run, just run out of the building,' he told The Project New Zealand on Friday night.

Amit Nand (pictured) has described the moment he came face-to-face with the Auckland terror attack knifeman as he confronted him with a pole

'Then I saw a lady laying on the floor there bleeding and she was like "help, help". And I thought to myself "I've got to do something" and then I saw the guy with the knife.'

He said the attacker had a large knife on him and was repeating 'Allah, Allah' as he lunged at shoppers at the Countdown supermarket in New Lynn Mall.

Another shopper at the supermarket had a pole and gave it to Nand, who grabbed it and told the terrorist to drop the knife he was wielding.

'I saw the guy with the knife and he's like "Allah, Allah" with the knife up,' Mr Nand said.

'I had another guy come in front of me and he was a cop and was like "I'm an undercover cop, step back step back, I'm going to shoot him".'

Nand stepped back and heard five shots. He said that by looking at him, he knew the terrorist wanted to kill people.

The man, who was shot dead by police, was a known threat risk since 2016 and was under 'constant police surveillance', Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said.

She described him as an 'Isis-inspired known threat.'

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern (pictured) said the knifeman was a known risk since 2016

He had previously been arrested for planning a 'lone wolf' knife attack and was under watch due to his extremist views and sympathies with Isis.

Before the attack, police were following the man as he walked to the shopping centre from his home. He then took a knife from a shelf and began his attack.

Police Commissioner Andrew Coster said the man was 'closely watched by surveillance teams and a strategic tactical team' during this time.

'The reality is when you are surveilling someone on a 24-hour basis it is not possible to be immediately next to them,' he said.

The knifeman was shot and killed by police within roughly 60 seconds of the attack starting.

Police were surveilling the man and shot and killed him within roughly 60 seconds of the attack starting

A total of six people were stabbed before the man was gunned down, three of whom are in a critical condition in hospital.

Two major abdominal cavity surgeries are reportedly underway, The New Zealand Herald reported.

While the man is not currently identified due to court suppression orders, a spokesperson for the prime minister said the government is seeking to lift these orders.

The knifeman, who's identity is currently unknown due to court suppression orders, is a Sri Lankan national who arrived in New Zealand in 2011

'This was a violent attack on innocent New Zealanders. It was senseless,' Ardern said.

'It was undertaken by an individual who was a known threat.'

'The terrorist is a Sri Lankan national who arrived in 2011.'

She said the terror alert level in the country will remain at medium.
A limousine company owner has been spared prison despite pleading guilty to criminally negligent homicide in a 2018 crash that killed 20 people in upstate New York in what was the worst transportation disaster in the U.S. in a decade.

Nauman Hussain, 31, will be free thanks to a deal made in exchange for his guilty plea even though the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) concluded that the crash was likely caused by his company's 'egregious disregard for safety' that resulted in brake failure.

The crash, which was also blamed on lack of state oversight by the NTSB, led to former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo signing limousine safety bills requiring more seatbelts in limousines and further licensing for drivers.

Nauman Hussain, 31, will be free thanks to a deal made in exchange for his guilty plea

Hussain faces five years of probation and 1,000 hours of community service.

His case had been delayed by the coronavirus pandemic and prosecutors wanted to avoid the emotional toll the trial would have on the families.

The hearing was held in a high school gymnasium to provide for social distancing among the many relatives, friends and media members attending.

Prosecutors and Hussain's lawyers also said the plea agreement assured a resolution in a case that would have faced an uncertain outcome if presented to a jury.

Seventeen family members and friends were killed, along with the driver and two bystanders in the crash

The case dates back to October 2018, when Axel Steenburg rented a 2001 Ford Excursion limousine for the 30th birthday of his new wife, Amy, from Prestige.

The party group, ranging in age from 24 to 34, included Axel's brother, Amy's three sisters and two of their husbands, and close friends.

En route to a brewery just south of Cooperstown, the limo's brakes failed on a downhill stretch of state Route 30 in Schoharie, west of Albany.

The case dates back to October 2018, when a man rented a 2004 Ford Excursion limousine [a similar model pictured above] for the 30th birthday of his new wife from Hussain's company

The vehicle blew through a stop sign at a T-intersection at over 100 mph (160 kph) and crashed into a small ravine near a popular country store.

Seventeen family members and friends were killed, along with the driver and two bystanders outside the store in what was the deadliest U.S. transportation disaster in a decade.

Steenburg and wife Amy had just tied the knot in June.

The limousine that crashed Saturday was headed to a brewery in Cooperstown, New York, to celebrate Amy Steenburg's 30th birthday. Amy was killed alongside her new husband Axel

Amy was a nurse for the state Justice Center for the Protection of People with Special Needs.

Her three sisters - Allison, Mary, and Abby - were also killed, as were two of their husbands and Axel's brother Rich.

Just days before the crash, Amy had uploaded a post gushing about Axel to Facebook which read: 'I love you more than words can say.'

'You are such an amazing man and entertain all my crazy ideas. Even when I move a couch just to move it back to the original place.'

Amy's three sisters - Allison, Mary, and Abby - were also killed. Pictured: Allison King (center) Abby Jackson (front left), Amy (front right) and Mary Dyson (back row, right)

Amy's sister Abigail and her husband Adam Jackson were parents to Archer, four, and one-year-old Elle.

A GoFundMe campaign was launched for the young girls after they lost both parents in the crash. It has since raised more than $100,000.

Mary, one of the four sisters killed in the crash, and her husband Rob Dyson left behind a three-year-old son.

The couple lived in Watertown, New York, where Mary - who served in the US Army from 2007 to 2013 - worked as an engineer.

Mary, one of the four sisters killed in the crash, and her husband Rob Dyson left behind a three-year-old son named Issac

Rich Steenburg, 34, was killed alongside his brother Axel. They both worked at GlobalFoundries, a semiconductor and manufacturing company.

Steenburg's wife Kimberly had planned to go to the birthday party, but canceled at the last minute because she wasn't feeling well.

Erin and Shane McGowan were one of two pairs of newlyweds in Saturday's tragic limo crash.

Erin and Shane McGowan were one of two pairs of newlyweds in Saturday's tragic limo crash

Shane, 30, and Erin, 34, had only just tied the knot in June after dating for three years.

McGowan was an administrative assistant at St Mary's Healthcare in Amsterdam.

She had recently been thinking of going back to school to become a billing administrator, according to her aunt Valerie Abeling.

Patrick Cushing, Erin's cousin, was killed in the crash alongside his girlfriend Amanda Halse.

Cushing, as the 31-year-old was lovingly called by friends, worked in the technology office of New York's state Senate.

On Monday Senate Leader John Flanagan described Cushing as an 'extraordinary' employee and 'wonderful young man'.

Cushing also played for Team USA Dodgeball, and his team said he was full of 'unconditional kindness' and the ability to 'make friends of his fiercest competitors'.

Patrick Cushing, Erin's cousin, was killed in the crash alongside his girlfriend Amanda Halse

The team plans to retire Cushing's number in his honor.

Halse, 26, worked as a waitress in Watervliet and was a 'very strong and independent person', according to sister Karina.

'She didn't like it when other people did things for her,' she added. 'She would be the one to initiate things.'

Karina, who had been texting with Amanda just as she was stepping into the limo, said the couple were 'two peas in a pod'.

Matthew Coons, a US Army veteran, was killed alongside his girlfriend Savannah Devonne

Matthew Coons, a US Army veteran, and his girlfriend Savannah Devonne were among the victims of Saturday's crash.

Coons had been a groomsman at Axel's wedding in June.

He lived with Savannah and his sister, a single mother with two daughters who he helped financially support.

Amanda Rivenburg, a friend of Amy's, spent the last seven years working for Living Resources, a New York nonprofit for people with disabilities.

Scott Lisinicchia, 53, was the driver behind the wheel of the 2001 Ford Excursion that crashed on Saturday. He is pictured here with his wife Kim

Scott Lisinicchia, 53, was the driver behind the wheel of the 2001 Ford Excursion.

'It hurts me to a core to have to bury my husband,' Lisinicchia's wife, Kim, wrote in a tribute on Facebook.

While Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Lisinicchia did not have the proper license to operate the vehicle at the time of the crash, his twin brother Keith came to his defense.

'It was a CDL (commercial driver license). I know that he always made sure that it was valid and was in order,' Keith said.

Cicero Richards, Lisinicchia's stepson, also branded Prestige Limousine's fleet of five cars as 'pieces of crap' and said Lisinicchia had been weary to take Saturday's job.

Brian Hough and his father-in-law James Schnurr were the two pedestrians who were killed during the limo crash on Saturday.

Loved ones of the victims were outraged as Hussain sat quietly at the defense table.

Loved ones of the victims were outraged as Hussain sat quietly at the defense table during a hearing that was held in a high school gymnasium to provide for social distancing

One spectator left the hearing, cursing and shouting, 'He killed 20 people,' before apologizing to the judge on her way out.

Schoharie County District Attorney Susan Mallery's office has said Hussain allowed passengers to ride in the limo despite having received 'multiple notices of violations' from the state and having been told repairs were inadequate.

State police said the vehicle should have been taken out of service because of brake problems identified in an inspection a month before the crash.

Attorneys from both sides of the case addressed the media after court was adjourned

Hussain had originally been charged with 20 counts each of criminally negligent homicide and second-degree manslaughter.

As Judge George Bartlett III prepared to accept the agreement keeping him out of jail, loved ones of the victims spoke of lives cut short, the holes left in their own and their frustration that the operator would avoid time behind bars.

'Every day I try to wrap my head around this impossible situation,' said Sheila McGarvey, whose 30-year-old son Shane McGowan and his wife, Erin, were passengers. 'I hate every day without him.'

She wished, she said, that a fraction of any money Hussain spent on lawyers would have been spent to fix the limo's brakes.

The vehicle blew through a stop sign at a T-intersection at over 100 mph (160 kph) and crashed into a small ravine near a popular country store

Hussain was accused of putting the victims in a death trap.

'My son, my baby boy, was killed in a limo while trying to be safe,' said Beth Muldoon, the mother of Adam Jackson, 34, who was killed along with his wife, Abigail King Jackson.

The couple, who with the others had rented the limo to avoid drinking and driving, had two small children.

Loved ones of the victims like Kevin and Sue Cushing took turns talking of lives cut short, the holes left in their own and their frustration that the operator would avoid time behind bars

Muldoon lamented the holidays and life milestones the parents will miss.

Hussain sat quietly as parents talked about their grief and anger. Defense attorney Joseph Tacopina said his client accepts responsibility for his actions and cried as the relatives spoke.

Hussain did not answer reporters' questions after the court proceeding.

Jill Richard-Perez talks to reporters about her son Matthew Coons who died in the crash

Under the deal, Hussain will be formally sentenced after an interim probation of two years.

The judge noted that Hussain's guilty plea could be used to buoy any lawsuits.

Lee Kindlon, an attorney for Hussain, has said his client tried to maintain the limousine and relied on what he was told by state officials and a repair shop that inspected it.

According to the plea agreement, Hussain had the 2001 vehicle serviced at a Mavis Discount Tire store multiple times in the two years before the crash, including twice for brake repairs.

The same shop also inspected the limousine, rather than the state Department of Transportation as required, the document said.

A telephone message left with Mavis Discount Tires' corporate headquarters in Millwood, New York, was not immediately returned.

Hussain, seen here being arraigned in 2018, did not speak after learning he would not serve jail time

Prestige repeatedly changed the listed number of seats and took other steps to skirt safety regulations, according to documents released by the NTSB.

The safety board said last fall that the state Department of Transportation knew of Prestige's out-of-service violations and lack of operating authority and that the state Department of Motor Vehicles failed to properly register the limousine, allowing Prestige to circumvent safety regulations and inspection requirements.

A civil case led by attorney Cynthia LaFace is still ongoing.
President Joe Biden appeared to have a moment of brain freeze on Thursday when telling an anecdote about his daughter's wedding, and forgot the name of a song that was played.

His comments came during a virtual event to celebrate the start of the Jewish High Holidays, which focused on recent anti-Semitic attacks, Afghanistan and the hope for renewed collaboration between people of different faiths.

Biden, a Roman Catholic, ended his remarks by calling on more religious collaboration, and spoke about his daughter Ashley's wedding to her Jewish doctor Howard Krein in 2012.

Pictured: Biden speaks during a virtual event on Thursday. President Joe Biden appeared to have a moment of brain freeze on Thursday when telling an anecdote about his daughter's wedding, and forgot the name of a song that played

'We wanted to have a co-confessional wedding,' Biden said. 'And we had a chuppah on the altar, and [...] it was co-officiated. Now, some of you aren't going to like this, but it was co-officiated by a Catholic priest as well as a Jewish rabbi.'

He then spoke about his favourite Catholic hymn, which Biden said he requested to be played at the wedding.

'I only asked one thing,' he said. 'There's a psalm-based, there's a hymn, my favorite hymn in the Catholic Church based on a psalm, and it's  it's a psalm that talks about life. And so, I asked if that psalm  that hymn in the Catholic Church.'

'And it says, "May He lift you up on Eagle's wings and bear you on the breath of dawn, and let the light shine upon you," et cetera, and  "and hold you in the palm of his hand."'

He went on to try to describe another song that was played, presumably when his daughter and her husband were lifted up onto chairs during the Hora dance - as is traditional during Jewish weddings.

Hava Nagila, a song, Jewish people have danced to for all joyous occasions since 1918 Hava Nagila, which means let's rejoice in Hebrew, is a traditional Jewish folk song that can be heard at every bar mitzvah and wedding while party guests perform the hora, a circle dance. The rhythmic humming, based on a verse from the Old Testament, builds to a crescendo and often the bride and groom, or bar mitzvah boy or girl, are placed on chairs and tossed in the air. The song was composed in 1918 to celebrate the Balfour Declaration, Britain's pledge to establish a national home for Jewish people in Palestine after its victory over the Ottomans in 1917. Abraham Zevi Idelsohn, a professor at Hebrew University, and Moshe Nathanson, are credited with creating the song, though there are competing claims as to the true composer. Advertisement

'And they played and  I'm my mind i going blank now. What's the song that is played where everybody is on the chair?' Biden added. 'I can't remember it. Anyway. And that's the song that was played.'

Biden was likely trying to name Hava Nagila, a traditional Jewish celebratory song sung and played at some weddings and Bar Mitzvahs.

During the same virtual event, Biden told Jewish leaders that he spent time at the Tree of Live synagogue in Pittsburgh.

The synagogue was the site of the October 2018 anti-Semitic massacre left 11 people dead - the deadliest attack on the Jewish community in the United States.

'I remember spending time at the, you know, going to the, you know, the Tree of Life synagogue, speaking with them,' Biden said.

However, Barb Feige, executive director of the Tree of Life since July 2019, told the New York Post that Biden did not visit the synagogue in the years after the attack.

On the second anniversary of the attack, Biden released a statement saying: 'When anti-Semitism is allowed to fester, it shreds the fabric of our communities and erodes our soul,' according to the Post.

Questions have been raised about Biden's mental faculty before, with Republicans in particular claiming that he is not up for the job as president.

America's oldest president has previously stumbled in interviews, when asking questions from the press, and during debates during his election campaign, earning him the nickname 'Sleepy Joe', pedalled by former president Donald Trump.

Mr Biden has previously suffered two brain aneurysms and a heart condition which makes the muscle beat too fast, causing dizziness and confusion.

A top cardiologist told the MailOnline late last month that both conditions are linked to memory difficulties and confusion, as well as dementia.

Ashley Blazer Biden, left, married Dr. Howard Krein, right, in Wilmington, Delaware on Saturday, June 2, 2012. Biden has said the wedding was co-officiated

Pictured: President Joe Biden pauses as he speaks about the bombings at the Kabul airport that killed at least 12 U.S. service members, from the East Room of the White House, Thursday, Aug. 26, 2021, in Washington

Dr Aseem Malhotra, an National Health Service (NHS) consultant in the UK, and expert in evidence-based medicine, said: 'Certainly there's a link [between the conditions and cognitive decline].

'But just as a doctor observing him, given his medical history and age, I'm worried about early onset dementia. I would be worried about anyone exhibiting issues with recall and memory at Joe Biden's age.'

Dr Amit Bajaj, an associate professor in speech science Emerson University in Boston Massachusetts, agreed that the reasons behind Mr Biden's increasing number of gaffes might be because of declining cognitive health in old age.

Just last week, the mother of a marine killed in the Kabul suicide blast that killed 13 U.S. military personnel, accused Biden of having dementia.

'My son was one of the Marines that died yesterday,' Kathy McCollum said in a radio interview on August 27 of her 20-year-old late son Rylee.

'[He was] getting ready to come home from freaking Jordan to be with his wife to watch the birth of his son. And that feckless, dementia ridden piece of c**p just sent my son to die.'

Mr Biden is known for his blunders and even referred to himself as a gaffe machine in 2018.

Just last month he forgot his reasons for running for president, and when he was newly elected he referred to his deputy as 'President Kamala Harris'.

Biden has experienced accidents since becoming President, including falling three times on one occasion in March while climbing up the stairs of Air Force One.

And last November he suffered hairline fractures in his food when playing with one of his dogs and had to wear a protective boot for weeks.

He also introduced his granddaughter as his deceased son Beau, who passed away from brain cancer in 2015.

And he confused Libya and Syria when at the G7 summit in June.

In July, former White House physician Ronny Jackson said Democrats should demand that Biden take the same cognitive test that was passed by Trump, 75.

Biden's comments on religion came as White House press secretary Jen Psaki snapped at a male Catholic TV reporter questioning how President Biden squares his abortion views with his faith, telling him: 'I know you've never been pregnant.'

Pictured: Then-Vice President Joe Biden (2nd L) walks with his daughter Ashley Biden (L), his wife Jill Biden (2nd R) and son-in-law Howard Krien (R) in Singapore, 2013 (file photo)

'Why does the President support abortion when his own catholic faith teaches it is morally wrong?' Owen Jensen, reporter for Catholic television network EWTN, asked the press secretary on Thursday afternoon.

'He believes it's a woman's right, it's a woman's body and it's her choice. It's up to a woman to make those decisions and a woman's decision to make with her doctor.'

'I know you have never faced those choices, nor have you ever been pregnant but for women out there who have faced those choices, this is an incredibly difficult thing the president believes that right should be respected.'

Psaki snapped after the Supreme Court refused to block one of the most restrictive abortion laws in the country, where terminating a pregnancy is illegal after 6 weeks' gestation.

Psaki was asked if the Supreme Court's 5-4 ruling came as a shock to the White House. 'You can never predict rulings. We certainly know the make up of the court,' she said.

The law, known as the 'Texas Heartbeat Act', bans abortion once a fetal heartbeat can be detected, which is normally after six weeks and before many women even know they are pregnant.

Biden, the second Catholic president, meets with Pope Francis. Some have pressed the president to square his views on abortion with his Catholic faith

It makes no exceptions for rape or incest and allows Texans to report people, including Uber drivers, who help or take women to get abortions. The only exemption is if there is a danger to the woman's health.

Biden vowed to directly challenge the Supreme Court, by ordering the agencies to apparently circumvent the ruling and 'ensure that women in Texas have access to safe and legal abortions as protected by Roe.'

He asked the White House to look at 'what legal tools we have to insulate women and providers from the impact of Texas' bizarre scheme of outsourced enforcement to private parties.'

Biden, the second Catholic president in US history, has been criticized by church officials in the past because his pro-choice stance goes directly against Catholic doctrine.

Biden will travel to Louisiana on Friday to get a first-hand look at the destruction wrought by Ida, which devastated the southern portion of the state and left 1 million people without power.

Hurricane Ida struck the Gulf coast last weekend and carved a northern path through the eastern United States, culminating with torrential rains and widespread flooding in New York, New Jersey and surrounding areas on Wednesday.
A father detained for 'killing a paedophile' who 'raped' his daughter aged just eight years old should not face a murder charge, insist Russians in a groundswell of support.

Alleged child sex attacker Oleg Sviridov, 32, kept mobile phone videos of his abuse of several children in Vintai village in the Russia's Samara region, according to law enforcement officials.

Rocket engine factory worker Vyacheslav M, 34, was drinking with his friend Sviridov, when he saw footage on the man's phone showing him raping Vyacheslav's daughter, now nine.

The father immediately confronted Sviridov, who ran away before Vyacheslav could act. The paedophile was a close friend of Vyacheslav's family and had baby-sat his daughter whom he sexually abused on multiple occasions.

Vyacheslav reported the rapes to local police who launched a manhunt for Sviridov.

But the distraught father managed to track down the alleged paedophile before the local police force and stabbed him to death.

The body of alleged paedophile Oleg Sviridov, 32, was found near Vintai village in Russia's Samara region after the father of a child he abused stabbed him to death

Vyacheslav M., 34, is the father of an eight year old girl who was allegedly raped by Sviridov, a friend of Vyacheslav

Sviridov (left) and Vyacheslav (right) were friends and Vyacheslav discovered evidence of his friend's crimes while they were drinking together

Vyacheslav later told police that Sviridov had 'stumbled on the knife during a quarrel' in a forest near the village, purporting that he had not intentionally murdered him with the blade.

The body of the alleged paedophile was found near the village on Thursday, more than a week after Vyacheslav had seen the abusive video.

Vyacheslav was detained following the discovery of the body and the case is under investigation.

Criminal cases have also been opened into the sexual abuse of three children filmed on Sviridov's mobile.

Police sources said that the deceased man's phone contained other sickening videos which showed violent rapes of other village girls, aged six and 11.

The videos indicated that the dead suspect had been abusing children for five years before Vyacheslav discovered the footage on his phone.

Rocket engine factory worker Vyacheslav reported the rapes to the police but tracked down his former friend before the police could find him

Vyacheslavis thought to have murdered Sviridov with a knife, despite telling police that Sviridov 'stumbled on the knife during a quarrel'

Villagers in Vintai and online commenters alike have demanded that Vyacheslav should not face a murder charge.

'He is not a murderer - he protected his daughter and our children too,' said one local.

'Everyone is on his side.'

Prominent TV journalist and former Russian presidential candidate Ksenia Sobchak told her followers: 'All parents are standing up for the paedophile's killer.'

Another commenter Anna Plekhanova said: 'If the crime is proven by video facts, then is the girl's father wrong?

'Any normal parent, mother or father, would have torn apart such a paedophile right on the spot.

'Protecting children is the direct responsibility of parents.'

Prominent TV journalist and former Russian presidential candidate Ksenia Sobchak told her followers: 'All parents are standing up for the paedophile's killer.'

The paedophile's body was discovered in a forest close to Vintai village

The videos show evidence that the paedophile was abusing kids in the village for up to five years (pictured: Vyacheslav and his family)

Yulia Salinder added: 'It's good that he killed the bastard because our law would have put him in jail for only eight years - or even less - and he would be out again.'

Vladimir Novikov said: 'It is necessary to introduce the death penalty for paedophiles or we will see the lynching of non-humans.'

Svetlana Katargina commented: 'The father can be understood.

'Such wild creatures have no place in this world and paedophilia cannot be cured.

'Perpetrators get out of jail and start to rape children again.'

Sviridov's mother said that her son had often been a babysitter for Vyacheslav's children and the two men had been long-time friends.

'I don't know how it got to this,' she said, referring to the rape of Vyacheslav's daughter.

'He must have been drunk. Most likely he was drunk. They left their children with him all the time.

'When he baby-sat these girls he came back home as normal, in a good mood.'
A former BBC journalist who claims she was sexually assaulted while working undercover as a model has given a statement to police.

Lisa Brinkworth, 53, posed as a model in a documentary for the Donal McIntyre Investigates series in 1998 and alleges she was assaulted by one of the world's biggest agents Gerald Marie.

French prosecutors revealed last year they were investigating allegations of rape and sexual abuse made against former agency boss Marie.

The claims, which Marie has strenuously denied, were made by 13 women  four of whom are British.

They say they were assaulted during the 1980s and 1990s while working with Marie, the former European head of Elite.

Former Daily Mail journalist Lisa Brinkworth (left), 53, who claims she was sexually assaulted by one of the world's biggest modelling agents Gerald Marie (right) while working undercover as a model has given a statement to police

Ms Brinkworth told the BBC: 'I would very much like to see justice for them. And particularly because they were just so young and powerless at the time.

'When it happened to me I was much older, I was working as a journalist, but when I think about them, at 16 or 17 in some cases, and completely powerless on their own with him, that's what gives me the drive to carry on.'

Marie issued a statement through his lawyer saying he 'refutes with dismay these false and defamatory allegations.

The statement said: 'He shall be withholding his eventual statements until speaking to the competent authorities.'

Ms Brinkworth says she was assaulted after a dinner with friends and Marie, when he pinned her down to a chair at a club

Ms Brinkworth alleges she was assaulted after a dinner with friends and Marie, when he pinned her down to a chair at a club.

Her colleague Mr McIntyre and others witnessed the assault but she did not report it at the time because it would have threatened her investigation, she said.

She said she was 'directed not to' at the time and she did not 'question that wisdom'.

Ms Brinkworth said: 'In retrospect, I wish I had. It's only recently when I decided to look at this again, and I started to investigate and I started to revisit this, and women were prepared to speak out.'

Elite Models sued the BBC after it released the documentary in 1999 and reached a settlement in which the broadcaster agreed not to air it again.

Ms Brinkworth said she feels 'responsibility' to the other girls who were allegedly assaulted and the settlement 'sort of halted progress'.

All the claims have now exhausted their statute of limitation under French law but Ms Brinworth's lawyer Anne-Claire Lejeune is arguing the fact she was prevented from seeking justice at the time means the statute should be paused.

A BBC spokesperson said: 'We take these matters very seriously and we know this is distressing for Lisa Brinkworth.

'We are doing everything we can to help Lisa pursue her complaint with the French authorities.

'Our lawyers have provided documents to the French investigators and to Lisa and we are in continuing discussions with Lisa and her lawyers on how we can help further as the legal process progresses. '

The claims, which Marie (pictured centre, with models during the Elite Agency fashion show at The Palace as part of Paris Fashion Week in 1996) has strenuously denied, were made by 13 women  four of whom are British

Businessman Omar Harfouch, who has worked with the agency, began assisting French authorities with their investigation earlier this year and has shed light on the culture he claims to have witnessed, according to the Sunday Times.

Mr Harfouch, who worked with Elite over three years, told the newspaper: 'I explained to the police, to help them in their investigation, how it worked.

'Gerald [Marie] and a few bookers from the agency had a board where they would write down who slept with the most women. The criteria for this competition was their ages.

'The younger they were, the more points, and the more virgins, the more points. At the end of each fashion week, they would compare their exploits.'

Harfouch, whose relationship with the agency ended acrimoniously, described Marie as a 'sexual predator' and said he often used 'vulgar' language when speaking about women.

Lebanese businessman Omar Harfouch has said he is helping detectives with the investigation and described Marie as a 'sexual predator' who used 'vulgar' language to talk about women

Ms Brinkworth told the Times she was 'so grateful' that Harfouch has spoken out and urged other executives to do the same.

American model and former face of Calvin Klein Carrie Otis, 51, has also accused Marie of raping her when she was 17 while working in Paris.

The former face of Calvin Klein first spoke out about her experience in an explosive memoir in 2011.

A spokeswoman for Elite World Group, which owns Elite's European agencies told the newspaper: 'Gerald Marie has never worked at Elite World Group. We find these alleged criminal acts egregious and abhorrent.'

Elite is now made up of two companies with US and European arms. Marie worked for the European company up to 2010.
Rapper Dizzee Rascal today denied headbutting his ex-girlfriend before pushing her to the floor during a row at her house.

The 36-year-old performer appeared in court under his real name, Dylan Mills, charged with assaulting Cassandra Jones at a property in Streatham, south London, in June this year.

Rascal, who was in the dock at Croydon Magistrates Court wearing a suit and tie, spoke only to confirm his name, address and to enter his not guilty plea.

The court heard the trial will involve evidence from several witnesses, including the complainant, her mother, Rascal and Rascal's manager who was phoned shortly after the incident.

Iskander Fernandez, representing the Mercury Prize winner, said: 'There's an extra witness: the defendant's manager will also give evidence. He received a phone call shortly after what took place.'

He added the rapper 'denies pushing his head into the complainant's head and denies pushing her to the floor'.

Dizzee Rascal real name Dylan Mills, arrives at Croydon Magistrates' Court today where he is charged with assault following an incident at a residential address in Streatham, South London

The British rapper, 36, whose real name is Dylan Mills, was arrested by police on June 8 on suspicion of common assault (pictured at a gig in Cornwall last month)

Chair of Magistrates Alan Hutchings adjourned the matter for trial to take place in February next year.

He said: 'You are granted bail with conditions to next appear on February 18, 2022, at 10am.

'If you do not come back to this court on that date and time you may be committing an offence where you could be fined or sent to prison.'

Mills' bail conditions include that he must not contact the complainant or her mother, directly or indirectly, nor go to the road where she lives, other than for purposes of contact through solicitors in consideration of childcare.

A Metropolitan Police spokesperson said: 'Dylan Mills, 36, of Sevenoaks, Kent, has been charged with assault after an incident at a residential address in Streatham on June 8.

'Officers attended and a woman reported minor injuries. She did not require hospital treatment.'

The rapper, who was awarded an MBE last year for services to music, won the Mercury Award for album of the year in 2003 with his first solo album, Boy in da Corner

Rascal, of Sevenoaks in Kent, was just 18 when his debut album, Boy In Da Corner, was released in 2003.

Since then he has become one of Britain's most successful acts and performed at the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic.

He has scored a string of number one singles, including Dance Wiv Me and Bonkers.

He released his latest album, E3 AF, in 2020 where in the same year he was awarded an MBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours for services to music.

Mills recently performed at the Boardmasters music festival alongside bands including The Kooks, Gorillaz and Foals.

His private life is little reported on - but it is believed that he has previously dated model Kaya Bousquet, who died in a high-speed car crash in 2008.

Mills has his own record label called Dirtee Stank and was able to win over new fans in March this year when he appeared on the Great British Bake-Off.
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Scotland's Covid cases soared by more than two and a half times in the fortnight after schools went back from the summer break, official figures showed today  in a clear warning sign to the rest of the country.

The Office for National Statistics' weekly surveillance report estimated 69,500 Scots, or one in 75 people, were infected with the virus on any given day in the week to August 27, up 170 per cent.

In England infections have plateaued but remain stubbornly high with the ONS estimating 766,100 people had Covid last week or one in 70, barely a change from the previous seven-day spell.

Experts fear infections could spiral as children returned to classrooms in England, Wales and Northern Ireland this week.

But the UK's vaccine advisory panel today said healthy children under the age of 16 do not need to be vaccinated against Covid.

The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) said the virus posed such a low risk to 12 to 15-year-olds that the benefit to their health would be marginal. They have told the Government to seek advice from elsewhere to determine whether a mass rollout in schools would have wider benefits, such as keeping classrooms open and avoiding future lockdowns.

Britain is becoming an international outlier with France, the US, Canada, Spain, Italy and the Netherlands all already administering jabs to over-12s. Last night Norway became the latest country to OK the move.

But some experts say letting children get Covid naturally is a better way to create immunity because the virus itself poses such a low risk to them, whereas the vaccines come with dangerous side effects in rare cases.

The spike in Scotland has also led to growing calls for No10's vaccine advisory body to recommend a mass booster campaign. But it could be weeks before it is signed off. Former Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt today urged ministers to sign off on boosters and not wait for their advisory panel's decision.

Meanwhile, in a worrying sign, Boris Johnson today sought to extend his Covid powers until March to cover a potential winter surge, which has opened the door to another lockdown.

The coronavirus reproduction number, or R value, in England is between 0.9 and 1.1, according to the latest Government figures. Last week, it was between 1.0 and 1.1. R represents the average number of people each Covid-positive person goes on to infect.

When the figure is above 1, an outbreak can grow exponentially but when it is below 1, it means the epidemic is shrinking. An R number between 0.9 and 1.1 means that, on average, every 10 people infected will infect between 9 and 11 other people.

The Office for National Statistics' weekly surveillance report estimated 69,500 Scots, or one in 75 people, were infected with the virus on any given day in the week to August 27. This was up 170 per cent in a fortnight and the highest number of Scots that were estimated to have been infected since the ONS started modelling the country's outbreak

In England infections have plateaued but remain stubbornly high with the ONS estimating 766,100 people had Covid last week or one in 70, barely a change from the previous seven-day spell (shown above)

The above charts show the percentage of people who would test positive for Covid in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland on any given day since the start of August. It reveals cases are surging in Scotland after the return of schools, but have plateaued in England  although they remain at stubbornly high levels

Across England, the ONS found that cases were surging fastest in the South West. The area has seen a spike in cases amid a staycation boom and the kickstarting of music festivals. The above graphs show Covid cases by region

The above graph shows estimated Covid cases by age group. It predicts that cases may have been rising in school age tchildren even before they went back to the classroom, and among 25 to 34-year-olds. There is also an uptick in the over-70s

The above map shows estimated Covid infection rates in the UK. Red indicates a higher infection rate, and yellow indicates a lower infection rate. The map suggests cases are highest around Northern Ireland and the North East

The ONS report also estimated Covid cases had risen in Wales, with 28,100 people or one in 110 being infected, but had fallen in Northern Ireland, with 28,700 or one in 65 being infected. Both see their schools reopen at the same time as those in England.

In England, the ONS estimated Covid cases may have slightly decreased among 12 to 24-year-olds in the week before schools went back  although this age group still had the highest infection rate overall.

They said around one in 35 people from school year 12 to age 24 are estimated to have Covid in the week to August 27.

Covid cases were also suggested to have risen slightly among over-70s, although the oldest age group still had the lowest infection rate. Around one in 170 people in this age group were estimated to have Covid in the week to August 27. The trend was uncertain for all other age groups.

Now Jeremy Hunt says UK should 'get on with Covid boosters' and NOT wait for JCVI decision Jeremy Hunt today urged ministers to 'get on' with a mass booster Covid vaccine programme and not wait on their advisors to sign off on the plans. The former health secretary said the situation in Covid-ravaged Israel should serve as a warning sign that even highly-immunised countries are vulnerable to another wave. Britain's Covid vaccine advisory panel has hinted that it will give the go-ahead to boosters for 'millions' but is yet to formally make the recommendation or decide who will be eligible. Boris Johnson last night appeared to jump the gun and get hopes up as he told elderly Britons and patients with underlying conditions to prepare for their third doses this autumn. It may be weeks before the final details of the booster programme are set out by the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI). At the moment only 500,000 people with very weak immune systems are being invited to come forward for a third Covid vaccine. But Mr Hunt urged the Government to press ahead with a wider programme and not wait a moment longer, adding: 'In a pandemic I think even a few days can make a big difference.' He told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: 'If you look at what's happened in Israel, they have a higher vaccination rate even than us  80 per cent of adults  and they have found a Delta variant does lead to increased hospital admissions, but two weeks after they introduced boosters those admissions started to go down again. 'I understand why scientists are taking their time but I think in a pandemic politicians can also read the rooms and see the direction of travel. Israel is recording the highest infection rate in the world and deaths and hospitalisations have risen sharply in the past month - despite 80 per cent of adults being vaccinated with two doses. The country has been offering booster jabs to people over the age of 60 since July, and the scheme has helped to curb rising hospital admissions. Advertisement

Across England Covid cases were estimated to have increased in the South West and the West Midlands, but dropped in London and the East Midlands.

Yorkshire and the Humber had the highest proportion of people of any region likely to test positive for coronavirus in the week to August 27, at around one in 55.

The East Midlands, eastern England and London had the lowest estimate, at around one in 85.

It comes Jeremy Hunt today urged ministers to 'get on' with a mass booster Covid vaccine programme and not wait on their advisors to sign off on the plans.

The former health secretary said the situation in Covid-ravaged Israel should serve as a warning sign that even highly-immunised countries are vulnerable to another wave.

Britain's Covid vaccine advisory panel has hinted that it will give the go-ahead to boosters for 'millions' but is yet to formally make the recommendation or decide who will be eligible.

Boris Johnson last night appeared to jump the gun and get hopes up as he told elderly Britons and patients with underlying conditions to prepare for their third doses this autumn.

It may be weeks before the final details of the booster programme are set out by the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI).

At the moment only 500,000 people with very weak immune systems are being invited to come forward for a third Covid vaccine.

But Mr Hunt urged the Government to press ahead with a wider programme and not wait a moment longer, adding: 'In a pandemic I think even a few days can make a big difference.'

He told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: 'If you look at what's happened in Israel, they have a higher vaccination rate even than us  80 per cent of adults  and they have found a Delta variant does lead to increased hospital admissions, but two weeks after they introduced boosters those admissions started to go down again.

'I understand why scientists are taking their time but I think in a pandemic politicians can also read the rooms and see the direction of travel.

'So I think we should just get on, not wait for that advice, get on with a booster programme.'

Israel is recording the highest infection rate in the world and deaths and hospitalisations have risen sharply in the past month - despite 80 per cent of adults being vaccinated with two doses.

The country has been offering booster jabs to people over the age of 60 since July, and the scheme has helped to curb rising hospital admissions.

It came as official data showed Scotland's weekly Covid cases have nearly trebled in the fortnight after schools went back after summer there

There are fears the rest of the UK will be hit with a similar bang in cases now that classes are resuming this week.

The NHS had originally been instructed to start giving boosters to up to 32million people from Monday, but ministers are still waiting for the JCVI to sign off the programme.

Mr Johnson said last night: The priorities now are the older generation going into autumn and winter, and we have always said there would be a booster programme in September  in this month  and we are going ahead with that.

What I would also say is 16 to 17-year-olds are eligible, they have been approved, they are a very important group for potential transmission ... It is very encouraging to see more and more 16 to 17-year-olds taking the jab, but we need to go faster with those.

While Israel is seeing record case numbers, the jab is still offering protection against severe illness with Covid deaths running at about half of the level of the second wave, even though fatalities have been rising sharply since last month. There is now growing pressure for Britain to roll out a booster vaccine programme like Israel is doing

Britain's independent vaccine advisory panel, said it was waiting on more evidence that these people would benefit from another dose and claimed that the 'vast majority' of Britons still had high protection  despite the UK's cases trending in the same direction as Israel's

Israel has been offering booster jabs to people over the age of 60 since July and has managed to curb rising hospital admissions in the age group as a result. Professor Eran Segal, a mathematician at the country's Weizmann Institute, tweeted today that hospitalisations had started to fall just two weeks after the top-up campaign started. This graph shows how Covid hospitalisations have started to level off in Israel just two weeks after its booster programme began. When the drive was started hospitalisations were doubling every week. Predictions suggested this would continue (green line). But just two weeks after the jabs were given out actual hospitalisations have slowed (blue line)

He added: I would just urge everybody who hasnt yet had a jab to go and get one.

Members of the JCVI said many millions are likely to get third jabs, including the elderly, clinically vulnerable and healthcare workers.

But they are yet to decide which age groups should be included and whether patients should mix and match vaccines, for example receive a Pfizer jab after two first doses of AstraZeneca.

The JCVI is facing mounting political pressure to speed up its decision-making. MPs and scientists have warned there is no time to lose in boosting the immunity of the vulnerable and elderly with the threat of a resurgence of coronavirus in the winter.

They are pointing to the situation in Israel, where the case rate is currently the highest in the world, but where over-12s are being offered third doses  helping to curb hospital admissions.

However, the JCVI say they need to see initial findings from the Cov-Boost study, due next week.

The trial by University Hospital Southampton has looked at nearly 3,000 Britons to test their immune response to third doses.

Yesterday Professor Anthony Harnden, deputy chairman of the JCVI, said a decision might take weeks. I think its highly likely that there will be a booster programme, he said. Its just the question of how we frame it.

On Wednesday it was announced that third doses will be offered to half a million people with severely weakened immune systems, who were not sufficiently protected by two doses.

The decision was made separately to deliberations over boosters, which top up someones immune response.

Yesterday Professor Peter Openshaw, a member of the New And Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group, said the JCVI should not wait too long to make a decision.

He said: If we wait for everything [studies] to report before making a judgment, we may well be past the time when we should have been making a decision.
The House Armed Service Committee voted late Wednesday for an amendment that would make women register for the military draft.

The bipartisan proposal received a vote of 35-24 and was spearheaded by Pennsylvania Democratic Rep. Chrissy Houlahan and Florida Republican Rep. Mike Waltz.

The term 'male citizen' would be struck from the current law and replaced with the non-gendered 'citizen.'

The House Armed Service Committee voted late Wednesday for an amendment that would make women register for the military draft

As the law currently stands, males ages 18 through 25 have to register for the Pentagon's Selective Service System or face legal penalties.

Houlahan, an Air Force veteran, argued during a markup session for the enormous National Defense Authorization Act, that including women would 'modernize' the military's Selective Service System.

'This policy isn't rushed or unnecessary,' she said. 'For decades our citizens, both women and men, have been trying to make this change. It's past time.'

She said it was a 'disservice' that women weren't included and said the Selective Service law, as written, is 'uncontitutional and discriminates based on sex.'

'This amendment clarifies that the purpose of selective service is bigger than just drafting combat replacements,' she argued. 'It ensures that the selective service system is able to provide the DOD with all of the sufficient numbers of personnel, with all of the skills necessary, in the event of a national mobilization, which means cyber, STEM, technical talents and others.'

The Senate passed a similar amendment in its defense bill earlier this summer.

'It is time we here in the Congress step up and do the same,' Houlahan urged. 'By reforming the selective service to be gender neutral-based registration, we draw on the talents of our entire nation in the time of a national emergency.'

Waltz, the first Green Beret to serve in Congress, asked his colleagues to envision the United States being hit by 'COVID on steroids or a massive cyber attack.'

The amendment was sponsored by Pennsylvania Democratic Rep. Chrissy Houlahan, an Air Force veteran, who argued it would 'modernize' the Pentagon's Selective Service System

Rep. Mike Waltz, a Republican from Florida, co-sponsored the amendment with Rep. Chrissy Houlahan

He said in this event, 'We need everybody.'

'We need man, woman, gay, straight, any religion, black, white brown,' Waltz argued.

Five Republicans joined 30 Democrats in voting for the provision.

Rep. Vicky Hartzler of Missouri wasn't one of them.

'This current system does not fence off anyone,' she said, pointing out that women were free to serve.

'But it seems like that this is an amendment - it's a solution in search of a problem,' she offered. 'There isn't a need right now.'

Rep. Jackie Speier, a California Democrat, said she was in favor of the move, though mentioned there are some who don't believe the nation still needs a Selective Service System.

The last time the draft was implemented was during the Vietnam War.

'It's time for us to recognize that fair is fair and we all have an obligation to serve our country in time of need,' Speier said.

The amendment will have to survive a conference committee - when differences between the House and Senate version of the defense bill are worked out - and then votes in the full House and Senate before it makes its way to President Joe Biden's desk.

In April, the Biden administration asked the Supreme Court not to take on a case that questioned whether the all-male draft was constitutional, arguing Congress should answer the question instead.

In June, the Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge to the all-male Selective Service registration, saying Congress should get more time to settle the matter.
A New Orleans 911 operator is facing arrest for allegedly hanging up on callers reporting emergencies without taking down their information or passing it on to first-responders.

The New Orleans Police Department on Thursday obtained a warrant for 25-year-old Precious Stephens on charges of malfeasance in office and interfering with an emergency communication.

If convicted of both charges, Stephens could face up to five-and-a-half years in prison and a fine.

Precious Stephens, a former 911 dispatcher from New Orleans, has a warrant out for her arrest on charges of malfeasance in office and interfering with an emergency communication

Stephens was fired from her job as a 911 dispatcher with the Orleans Parish Communication District (pictured) last week

Stephens has been fired from her job with the Orleans Parish Communication District. She has not been arrested as of Friday morning.

An investigation into Stephens was launched on August 23, when the dispatch center reported to the police that the woman had deliberately disconnected 911 calls without taking down necessary information, or relaying it to other dispatchers to summon help, reported Nola.com.

Stephens' suspected wrongdoing was uncovered when district officials listened back to some random 911 calls that she had responded to during her shifts on August 20 and August 21 for the purpose of quality control.

The district said in a statement that its own internal policies helped identify problems with Stephens, who was then referred to the police and terminated.

Officials with the district (pictured) say that Stephens is accused of hanging up on 911 callers without taking down their information, or relaying it to other dispatchers for help

Stephens was ousted from the 911 dispatch center just days before Hurricane Ida made landfall in Louisiana, causing widespread power outages, flooding, disabling water systems.

At least 13 deaths have been blamed on the storm in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.

Police are asking anyone with information on Stephens' whereabouts to call Crimestoppers at (504) 822-1111.
Chaos sparked by Extinction Rebellion's two-week campaign has needed over 2,000 officers to police.

Nearly 500 people have been arrested and 81 activists have been removed after gluing themselves to structures during the latest wave in London.

The Metropolitan Police said there had been a total of 480 arrests in the capital since the environmental group began its action dubbed the Impossible Rebellion on August 23.

Deputy Assistant Commissioner Matt Twist confirmed nearly 2,000 officers have been involved in policing the activists every day, adding that they had acted 'swiftly' when demonstrators caused 'serious disruption' to Londoners. There are around 32,000 police officers in London.

Today they disrupted Bank again and student Laura Amherst launched another topless protest - this time in front of Lloyds of London.

Mr Twist told Times Radio on Friday: 'It's not the numbers of protesters but it's the level of serious disruption that they're looking to cause, which is impacting on other Londoners.

'We've said right from the start, we know that Extinction Rebellion have the right to protest and the right to assemble.

'But what we also made clear is these are qualified rights and they have got to be balanced against the rights of the rest of London and Londoners, the people, the businesses, the communities who want to lawfully go about their business.

Topless student and Extinction Rebellion rebel Laura Amherst stands in front of a line of police

Chaotic Extinction Rebellion scenes unfolded at Tower Bridge with the police battling to win

A police office tussles with a demonstrator on the A4 outside the Natural History Museum

'Where we've seen cases of both very serious and totally unreasonable disruption looking to be caused, we have to take action and move in and make arrests.'

The protests have seen activists scaling the seven-storey Tower Place West building in the City of London, occupying both London Bridge and Tower Bridge and blocking roads across the capital.

Police were accused of heavy-handed tactics after officers could be seen using batons and dragging protesters from the top of a bus near London Bridge on Tuesday.

Defending the tactics, Mr Twist said: 'There's an overall strategy to deal with the protest, to facilitate the peaceful protest and try and work with the organisers to minimise the level of disruption.

Student Laura Amherst has regularly made topless protests and again did one outside Lloyd's

Extinction Rebellion demonstrators sit in the road as they protest at Bank junction today

Hundreds of Extinction Rebellion environmental movement demonstrators calling for action

The XR activists have been continuing to demonstrate in the heart of London at Bank today

'What we saw at London Bridge and what we saw at other locations on Sunday was an attempt outside the Science Museum to set up complex structures with complex lock-on devices to cause serious disruption to the public of London.

'And that's when officers are moving in and acting more swiftly to make arrests and try to lawfully remove the protesters.

'Over the 10 days we've made 480 arrests, we've removed 81 people who were glued on to structures, we've removed 52 people who were locked on to structures, and 31 of those from height.

'The important point is all of this takes a huge amount of time and resources and these resources are the same officers that are being obstructed from what we want them to be doing in their local boroughs, which is bearing down on violence.'
A Covid-infected prison officer who went to work for four days with symptoms of the virus has been linked to a growing outbreak at a regional jail.

The officer from Bathurst Prison in NSW's central west went to work for four days while symptomatic, sources at the jail told The Daily Telegraph.

Eleven people at the prison have been forced into isolation after being exposed to the virus.

The Prison Officers Vocational Branch union said the officer was following protocol at the jail and returned two negative Covid-19 tests before the third came back positive.

A Bathurst prison officer has been linked to a Covid outbreak in NSW prisons. Pictured is Bathurst Prison in the state's central tablelands

The union's chair Nicole Jess said the officer had not intentionally gone to work unwell.

She said he had been wearing a mask while escorting a Covid-positive inmate but the mask got wet due to the rain and became 'ineffective'.

'He had followed the protocols set down by the command post, including isolating and getting tested,' Ms Jess said.

'He had mild symptoms, but had had two negative Covid-19 tests and so returned to work.'

When his symptoms worsened, he got a third test that came back positive.

His infection follows reports last week that the state's Department of Community and Justice was considering making Covid-19 vaccinations compulsory, prompting backlash from anti-vaxxer staff wanting to fight the proposal.

Anti-vaxxers have called on other officers to join their campaign on 'how we might deal with the upcoming vaccine mandate' in a message on Telegram Messenger.

'Here we can discuss our issue with privacy and without being accused of misusing departmental email systems,' one member of the campaign wrote.

The officer went to work with mild symptoms after returning two negative tests before a third came back as positive

The infection follows Department of Community and Justice looking into making vaccines compulsory in prisons, prompting backlash from anti-vaxxer staff

Inmates have also been transferred out of Parklea jail to isolate them due to a Covid outbreak leads to a temporary lockdown of multiple prisons.

At least 112 people in Sydney prisons tested positive to the virus on Tuesday, including over 60 at Parklea jail.

Prison authorities have suggested using the minimum security Dawn De Loas correctional centre to accommodate inmates who need to be put into self-isolation.

These ideas were soon abandoned when the union raised concerns about its lack of security.
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Ex-Coronation Street actor Sean Ward was among ten people arrested today as a violent mob of anti-vaxxers battled with police in Canary Wharf.

Thee protesters battled with officers as they attempted to get through the doors of the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA)'s headquarters in east London.

Four officers were hurt as protesters tried to storm the HQ where Covid jabs were approved.

Soap actor Ward, who also starred in Doctors and Our Girl, was seen in video clips struggling with police officers who were attempting to detain him.

He was later pictured being walked away in handcuffs. It is not yet known what the 33-year-old has been accused of. The protest later moved on to South Kensington, with Scotland Yard confirming a total of ten arrests so far.

Earlier today he shared clips on his Instagram showing the anti-vaxxer protests as they moved through London. Ward had previously joined protests at studios where ITV and the BBC film.

A line of Scotland Yard officers guarded the entrance to the building in Canary Wharf, East London, to prevent hundreds of demonstrators getting inside.

The MHRA is a Government body regulating medicines, medical devices and blood components for transfusion - and is responsible for approving Covid-19 vaccines.

It is understood the campaigners travelled to the capital today to protest vaccinations for children.

However, officials at the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) confirmed this afternoon that they won't recommend jabs for healthy youngsters aged 12 to 15.

The officers were already in the area for a separate protest by Extinction Rebellion activists who have been holding two weeks of environmental demonstrations.

Later on, the force confirmed four Metropolitan Police officers had been injured in another protest by the anti-vaxxers in the South Kensington area of Central London.

A Scotland Yard spokesman said this afternoon: 'We have officers attending a demonstration outside a commercial building on Cabot Square in Canary Wharf. A number of officers are on scene, guarding the entrance to the building.

Ex-Coronation Street actor Sean Ward was arrested today after taking part in anti-vaccination protests in east London. A violent mob of were seen battling with police in Canary Wharf as they tried to force their way into the headquarters of the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA)

Anti-vaxxer protesters face off with police officers at Canary Wharf in East London today

Soap actor Ward, who also starred in Doctors and Our Girl, was seen in video clips struggling with police officers who were attempting to detain him. He was later pictured being walked away in handcuffs

Sean Ward played drug dealer Callum Logan (pictured) on Coronation Street from 2014 until his character was killed off in 2015

Demonstrators remonstrate with police officers in the demonstration in Canary Wharf today

Protesters scuffle with police officers during the protest outside the MHRA building today

Hundreds of protesters remonstrate with police officers today in Canary Wharf, East London

Protesters take part in a demonstration outside the MHRA offices in Canary Wharf today

'Officers also continue to attend a demonstration by a separate group in Canary Wharf along Bank Street. Arrests have been made and units remain on scene.'

The force later added: 'The group have moved off and travelled to the area around South Kensington. Public order officers are on scene.'

Scotland Yard then confirmed several police officers had been injured, saying: 'A number of protesters have become violent towards police. Four of our officers have been injured during clashes. This is unacceptable. We remain on scene.'

Last month anti-vaxxer protesters raided the former BBC News building at White City in West London, apparently unaware that the corporation vacated it in 2013.

And last week they occupied the headquarters of ITV News and Channel 4 News in the capital, chasing presenter Jon Snow into one of the building's side entrances.

Anti-vaxxer protesters gather outside the building in Canary Wharf, East London, today

Police officers stand guard outside the offices in Canary Wharf, East London, this afternoon

A line of police officers stand guard during the protest in Canary Wharf this afternoon

Anti-vaxxers scuffle with police at the London offices of Britain's medicines regulator today

The protesters battled with officers outside the offices of Britain's medicines regulator today

Scotland Yard spokesman said officers were guarding the building in Canary Wharf today

The protest in Canary Wharf today follows previous demonstrations in the capital last month

It comes as the Government has been urged to 'get on' with a coronavirus booster programme rather than waiting for advice from vaccine experts.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson appeared to confirm that a rollout will begin this month, saying older people are the priority as autumn and winter approach.

But the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) is yet to provide a recommendation on boosters, with a final decision still to be made.

Pressure is also mounting for a decision on jabbing 12 to 15-year-olds, something the JCVI has also not yet recommended.

The chaotic scenes were witnessed outside the headquarters in Canary Wharf, East London

Chaos outside the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency's headquarters

A line of Scotland Yard officers guarded the entrance to the building in Canary Wharf today

The officers were already in the area of Canary Wharf for a separate protest by another group

Scotland Yard said a 'number of officers are on scene, guarding the entrance to the building'

The latest Government figures show that as of September 1, 72 per cent of the total UK population had received one dose of a coronavirus vaccine.

According to separate figures compiled by Our World in Data, this would place the UK behind countries including the UAE, Spain and Ireland.

Figures from Public Health England show the majority of people in hospital with Covid are under the age of 50 and 73 per cent of those are unvaccinated.

The figures, largely unchanged from a fortnight ago, also show that 64 per cent of people aged under 50 who died with Covid had not had a jab.

Meanwhile nearly 500 people have been arrested and 81 activists have been removed after gluing themselves to structures in the latest fortnight of XR protests.

The Metropolitan Police said there had been a total of 480 arrests in the capital since the environmental group began its 'Impossible Rebellion' on August 23.

The protests have seen activists scaling the seven-storey Tower Place West building in the City, occupying both London Bridge and Tower Bridge and blocking roads.

Police have defended themselves after being accused of heavy-handed tactics, with officers seen using batons and dragging protesters from a bus near London Bridge.
The Pittsburgh synagogue where 11 worshippers were gunned down in a 2018 mass shooting is rejecting President Biden's claim he visited after the tragedy.

At a Thursday virtual event commemorating the Jewish High Holidays of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, Biden decried anti-Semitism and expressed sadness something like the Tree of Life synagogue shooting could happen in the US.

'I remember spending time at the - you know, going to the - you know, the Tree of Life Synagogue, speaking with the - just - it just is amazing these things are happening - happening in America,' he said.

But Tree of Life executive director Barb Feige said that never happened, according to the New York Post.

Feige, who assumed her role in July 2019, told the outlet that 'no,' the president didn't come before nor after stepping foot in the White House.

In October 2018 a man with an AR-15 carried out the attack during Saturday morning Shabbat services, killing 11 and wounding 6 people including Holocaust survivors. It was the deadliest attack on the Jewish community in US history.

Biden addressed rabbis at a virtual event marking the holidays of Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah

Star of David memorials line the outside of Tree of Life synagogue after a gunman with anti-Semitic beliefs killed 11 people in the deadliest attack on the American Jewish community in US history

The 46-year-old gunman actively espoused white supremacist and anti-Semitic beliefs on social media.

Last year Biden released a statement on the second anniversary of the attack, 'May the memories of those we lost be a blessing  and may we never stop fighting the scourges of anti-Semitism and gun violence.'

Former President Trump and first lady Melania payed respects at the Pittsburgh synagogue three days after the shooting. They were accompanied by his daughter Ivanka, Jared Kushner and Steve Mnuchin - all of whom are Jewish.

Biden's comments on Tree of Life come against the backdrop of historic spikes in attacks against Jews in the US.

Biden told the rabbis on Thursday that anti-Semitic attacks are 'a strike against the soul of our nation and the values which we say we stand for.'

'No matter its source or stated rationale, we have to and will condemn this prejudice at every turn, alongside other forms of hate,' he said.

Former President Trump and first lady Melania visited the site three days after the shooting

Biden commemorated the two year anniversary of the shooting in a statement last year

The second time Biden's memory failed him during the speech was a few minutes later, when he invoked his personal experiences with the Jewish faith in his daughter's wedding but couldn't exactly pinpoint the details.

As he was wrapping up remarks Biden called for renewed collaboration across faiths in the Jewish New Year.

'My daughter married a Jewish young man. And - you know, dream of every - every Catholic father that she marry a Jewish doctor,' the president joked.

'It was co-officiated. Now, some of you arent going to like this, but it was co-officiated by a Catholic priest as well as a Jewish rabbi,' he said of the wedding between Ashley Biden and Howard Krein in 2012.

Biden went on to describe his favorite Catholic hymn which he requested at the wedding - but was at a loss over the name.

'Theres a psalm based - theres a hymn - my favorite hymn in the Catholic Church based on a psalm, and its - its a psalm that talks about life. And - and so, I - I asked if that psalm - that hymn in the Catholic Church,' he said before listing off some lyrics.

He seemed to reference a second song but again failed to recall the name.

Pictured: Then-Vice President Joe Biden (2nd L) walks with his daughter Ashley Biden (L), his wife Jill Biden (2nd R) and son-in-law Howard Krien (R) in Singapore, 2013 (file photo)

Ashley Blazer Biden, left, married Dr. Howard Krein, right, in Wilmington, Delaware on Saturday, June 2, 2012. Biden has said the wedding was co-officiated

'And they played - and Im - my mind is going blank now.

'Whats the song that is played where everybody is on the chair? Everybody, you know - what - what - I cant remember it. Anyway. And thats the song that was played.

'So, you know, I dont know what the hell is going on here.'

Biden then finally remembered the first song - 'I just had one little favor  you know, just that they play 'On the Wi - On Eagles Wings.'

The president reined himself in and told the rabbis, 'I'm taking too much for your time.'

'really, honest to God, believe that we have a possibility - a possibility to make things so much better, and we just have to believe it,' he said.

Biden ended his address by telling his audience: 'I think the Jewish community is sort of the backbone of staying with whats right. And so, Im looking forward to continue to work with you. And again, happy holidays.'
The U.S. job market saw hiring slow to 235,000 jobs in August, a sharp drop off after two strong months with the Delta variant of the coronavirus to blame.

Still, President Joe Biden said it represented good news.

'What we're seeing is an economic recovery that is durable and strong. The Biden plan is working, we're getting results,' he said at the White House Friday morning.

The unemployment rate dropped to 5.2%, the Labor Department reported Friday, but the predictions for the job market failed to meet expectations by a significant margin.

'There's no question that the Delta variant is why today's jobs report wasn't stronger,' Biden said.

Economists surveyed by Dow Jones had been looking for 720,000 new hires.

Biden addressed the job numbers in a speech at the White House on Friday before heading to New Orleans to view the damage from Hurricane Ida.

President Joe Biden boasted that the economic recovery was 'durable and strong,' despite the jobs report falling below expectations

Biden used much of the speech to press Congress to pass his $3.5 trillion spending package, which moderate Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin told party members Wednesday they should take a 'pause' on, citing inflation concerns.

The Democrats need Manchin to vote yes to get the giant bill across the line using the process of reconciliation to bypass the Senate filibuster.

Biden argued the package was pivotal to the nation's longterm economic recovery, while talking about how the U.S. should pay for it: by taxing corporations.

'The fact of the matter is, it's about time they being to pay their fair share,' Biden said.

He cited how 55 of America's largest corporations paid zero in federal taxes.

'The irony of ironies is during the recession in the pandemic - you've heard me say this before, I apologize for repeating it - while the vast majority of Americans are struggling to hang on, the number of billionaires in America actually grew,' Biden said laughing.

'I want to hold here for just a second,' he continued. 'There have been so many records the stock market has hit under my presidency. Imagine if the other guy was here? "We're doing great, it's wonderful, the stock market is surging, it's gone up higher under me than anybody." But that doesn't mean that it's the best for the economy,' Biden said mocking former President Donald Trump.

He added that the 'stock market has hit 40 record highs just this year.'

Biden then returned to talking about the $3.5 trillion plan, noting how Republicans aren't supporting it and corporate lobbyists are seeking to derail it.

'Somebody's got to pay,' he said.

He said while lobbying efforts have been successful in the past, 'I don't think it's going to work with me.'

President Joe Biden is captured walking to the podium in the State Dining Room Friday to discuss the underwhelming job numbers

'To those big corporations that don't want things to change, my message it this: It's time for working families, folks who built this country, to have their taxes cut,' Biden said. 'And those corporate interests doing everything they can to find allies in Congress to keep that from happening, let me as president be perfectly clear: We're going to take them on, we're going to pass these measures.'

Biden argued the rich would still live comfortably.

'They are still going to have three homes and four homes if they want,' he said.

'But just pay a fair share,' he urged.

The president tied it back to the August jobs report, saying that Congress needed to 'finish the job, come through for the American people to ensure the economy continues to gain strength and stability as we move forward.'

The August employment report was expected to show another strong month for hiring, but Wall Street was also watching it for signs of how the Delta variant of the coronavirus has effected the economy.

The coronavirus has been a wild card for economists and the Delta variant has caused the case rate to soar around the country.

Many localities have re-issued mask mandates and other mitigation measures. Consumer spending and confidence have dropped as the case number rise. Dining numbers were down for August as were travel numbers, a notable stat during the summer vacation season.

Other indicators of life returning to normal have taken steps backward: many businesses have delayed returning to the offices while concert tours have been cut.

Republican Sen. Ted Cruz said '"Jimmy Carter 2.0" is an understatement,' about Biden, citing the 'disastrous jobs report, missing expectations by half a million'

Tennessee Republican Sen. Bill Hagerty tweeted about the 'disappointing jobs miss' after Biden's speech, indicating he was not supportive of Biden's $3.5 trillion spending bill

The August job number was the worst since January and it was also down significantly from July, when the economy added 943,000 jobs for an unemployment rate of 5.4%.

'Disappointing jobs miss and yet President Biden and the Dems remain hell-bent on spending trillions of dollars more and increasing hardworking Americans' dependency on the federal government,' tweeted Tennessee Republican Sen. Bill Hagerty after Biden's speech.

Sen. Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, pointed to the 'disastrous jobs report,' noting that it was 'missing expectations by half a million' saying '"Jimmy Carter 2.0" is an understatement' about Biden.

Florida Republican Rep. Greg Steube said, 'Biden is tanking the economy.'

The Federal Reserve is closely watching these numbers for signs of how COVID impacted hiring and activity as it considers when to start easing some of the extraordinary measures it put into place during the pandemic.

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, speaking at the central bank's Jackson Hole Symposium last week, said Fed officials agreed they should begin to taper their $120 billion-a-month bond buying program this year.

However, he gave the caveat that he'd like to see more progress in the labor market before such a move was made.

So officials will be watching this economic report and the next ahead of the Feds Sept. 22 meeting.
Businesses across the country are turning to teens as young as 14 to cope with a dire labor shortage, with one McDonald's in Oregon drawing attention with a huge banner touting the new policy.

The McDonald's franchise in Medford hung the banner after finding that raising the minimum wage to $15 didn't bring in many new applications, but opening the door to younger applicants did, operator Heather Coleman told Business Insider.

Other businesses nationwide are making similar moves, including a Burger King in Ohio that posted a sign reading: 'Hey Parents!!! Do you have a 14 or 15 year old? Do they need a job?? We will hire them!'

US federal law set the minimum working age at 14, with limits on working hours for those under 16 and prohibitions on hazardous jobs for anyone under 18. Some states have their own rules setting a higher minimum work age.

A McDonald's franchise in Medford hung this banner seeking workers as young as 14 after finding that raising the minimum wage to $15 didn't bring in many new applications

As the country suffers from a labor shortage, with a record 10.1 million job openings, more companies are turning to eager teenagers to fill jobs (file photo)

Federal rules allow 14-year-olds to do work such as office and clerical work, cooking with an electric or gas grill, cashiering, price marking and bagging.

A Burger King in Ohio is also seeking 14- and 15-year-olds

As the country suffers from a labor shortage, with a record 10.1 million job openings, more companies are turning to eager teenagers to fill jobs.

'They have the drive and work ethic. They get the technology. They catch on really quickly,' Coleman, the operator of the Oregon McDonald's, told Business Insider.

'There are always staffing issues, but this is unheard of,' she said.

In Texas, Layne's Chicken Fingers is paying teenage managerial workers $50,000 salaries to try and retain talent amid a huge staff shortage.

Garrett Reed, the CEO of Layne's Chicken Fingers which runs six restaurants across the Lone Star State has told the Wall Street Journal he was training 16- and 17-year-olds to run his new stores because he was so short on staff.

'We're so thin at leadership that we can't stretch anymore to open more locations,' he said. 'I've got a good crop of 16- and 17-year-olds, but I need another year or two to get them seasoned to run stores.

'The biggest challenge for small companies to grow right now is your labor force,' Reed said. 'We'd be growing at twice the rate if we had more people.'

A Texas fast food restaurant, Layne's Chicken Fingers, has promoted some teenage workers into managerial positions paying $50,000 due to a shortage workers in the labor market

Togi (right), an 11th grade student at Wakefield High School, is seen at work in a fast food restaurant in Arlington, Virginia in June. Many businesses are turning to teens for labor

Many business owners blame the labor shortage on generous federal unemployment benefits, which are set to expire on Monday, but there may be many others factors.

Economists say lack of child care facilities and fears of contracting the COVID-19 are contributing to an unwillingness to work, as well as the large number of people who took early retirement or sought to change careers during the pandemic.

Federal employment data reported on Friday showed that hiring grew much slower than expected in August, as the highly infectious Delta variant puts a dent in economic recovery.

Americas employers added just 235,000 jobs in August, far short of the big gains in June and July of roughly 1 million a month. Economists had predicted August job gains of 700,000.

Though hiring was weak tepid in August, the unemployment rate dropped to 5.2 percent from 5.4 percent in July, reflecting the low level of layoffs as desperate employers cling to their staff.

The labor participation rate, which measures how many people are either working or seeking work, remained flat at 61.7 percent in August from the prior month, still well below the pre-pandemic average of more than 63 percent.

The sectors of the economy where hiring was weakest were mainly those that require face-to-face contact with the public.

Hiring in a category that includes restaurants, bars and hotels, for example, sank to zero after those sectors had added roughly 400,000 jobs in both June and July.

With COVID cases having spiked this summer, Americans have been buying fewer plane tickets and reducing hotel stays.

Restaurant dining, after having fully recovered in late June, has declined to about 10 percent below pre-pandemic levels.

Still, many restaurants report being desperate to hire, and the risks of a public-facing job as the Delta variant surges may be discouraging applicants.
Jen Psaki has been slammed by conservative pundits after she snapped at a male reporter who asked how President Joe Biden squares his pro-choice abortion views with his Catholic faith.

Owen Jensen, a reporter for Catholic television network EWTN, quizzed Psaki on the Commander-in-chief's conflicting views during a White House Press Briefing on Thursday, following the Supreme Court's refusal to block a restrictive new abortion law in Texas.

'He [Biden] believes it's a woman's right, it's a woman's body and it's her choice. It's up to a woman to make those decisions and a woman's decision to make with her doctor,' Psaki stated.

She then turned personal, telling Jensen in a dismissive manner: 'I know you have never faced those choices, nor have you ever been pregnant but for women out there who have faced those choices, this is an incredibly difficult thing and the president believes that right should be respected.'

Several conservatives criticized Psaki's comment, claiming it implied that men should have no say in the abortion debate, despite expectation that they be hands-on fathers to their children.

Fr. Frank Pavone, a Catholic Preist, wrote: 'Jen Psaki is still using the tired old excuse for #abortion that men cannot get pregnant. Since when does that take away a man's responsibility to defend a child from violence?'

Ed Condon, the editor of Substack page The Pillar, similarly wrote: 'The fundamental premise of Jen Psaki's comments is that fathers have no intrinsic stake in the life of their children. It's also the fundamental premise of a society which views children as transferable commodities.'

Jen Psaki has been slammed by conservative pundits after she snapped at a male reporter who asked how President Joe Biden squares his pro-choice abortion views with his Catholic faith

Meanwhile, Brietbart editor Joel Pollack wrote: 'Telling a male reporter he can't ask a question about the president's views on abortion (has @JoeBiden never been pregnant, either, to the best of my knowledge) and religion was a real low point for Jen Psaki. It was bigoted and unprofessional. I hope she walks it back.'

Some other conservatives claimed Psaki was using language that was not 'gender-inclusive' as she stated abortion was a 'woman's right' and implied that those who identify as male cannot get pregnant.

In recent years, many on the left have attempted to usher in a more inclusive language to describe those who are pregnant. Recently, Democratic Rep. Cori Bush replaced 'pregnant women' with the term 'birthing people' to describe those who were expecting.

'I was told men can get pregnant and that they can chest feed,' pundit Katie Pavlich wrote beneath a clip of Psaki snapping at the male reporter.

Meanwhile, Newsmax contributor Jessie Jane Duff chimed: 'Jen Psaki and her ilk actually voiced their outrage that they can't kill another human being after its heart starts to beat. They are soulless ghouls. "Her choice to stop another human beings heartbeat" isn't quite as catchy as "My body my choice". And they know it.'

Pro-life advocate Lila Rose wrote: 'I've been pregnant, and it's *still* not my right, or anyone else's, to kill a baby. Being a woman or being pregnant does not give you license to kill. Women deserve better than abortion. The President's position is illogical, unscientific, immoral & 40 years wrong.'

However, there were many people who praised Psaki for her impassioned response to the male reporter

Psaki won praise from many on Twitter, with one calling her the best Press Secretary in modern history

However, there were many people who praised Psaki for her impassioned response to the male reporter.

'Jen Psaki really does get right to the point,' left-wing activist Charlotte Clymer cooed.

Congressional candidate and ex-Army Officer Mark Judson chimed in: 'While Jen Psaki is clearly amazing - the SHAME is that So. Much. of her time and energy has to be WASTED on these dirty, Right Wing Propagandists who attack America day in, and day out. Just ANOTHER way that RepubliQans betray America. They belong in Prison.'

Meanwhile, another expressed their admiration for the Press Secretary, stating: 'I will NEVER understand the arrogance of conservative men who believe they have the right to control, govern, and legislate the bodies of women. Jen Psaki continues to be the best White House Press Secretary in modern history. #PsakiBomb'.

Biden, the second Catholic president, meets with Pope Francis. Some have pressed the president to square his views on abortion with his Catholic faith

The tense exchange between Psaki and the male reporter came after the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that it would not block Texas' new restrictive law which will ban almost all abortions after six weeks.

The law, known as the 'Texas Heartbeat Act', bans abortion once a fetal heartbeat can be detected, which is normally after six weeks and before many women even know they are pregnant.

It makes no exceptions for rape or incest and allows Texans to report people, including Uber drivers, who help or take women to get abortions. The only exemption is if there is a danger to the woman's health.

Other right-leaning states - including Florida and South Carolina - may be the next to follow the newly-implemented bill.

Florida State Senator Wilton Simpson said in a Thursday statement that it could be 'worthwhile to take a look at the Texas law and see if there is more we can do here in Florida.'

Simpson was backed by Governor Ron DeSantis said, who said he'd mull a ban.

Texas Right to Live legislative director John Seago told Forbes that South Carolina was also considering an abortion bill.

Meanwhile, Psaki said agencies across the White House and Department of Justice were working quickly to determine 'what, if any, steps can be taken here to protect a woman's right to choose and access to healthcare for women in Texas.'

Other abortion laws are enforced by state and local officials, with criminal sanctions possible.

After a federal appeals court refused to allow a prompt review of the law before it took effect, the measure's opponents sought Supreme Court review.

Biden released a forceful statement Thursday directing the executive branch to undermine the Supreme Court after it refused to take up a case regarding Texas's restrictive new abortion law.

'The highest Court of our land will allow millions of women in Texas in need of critical reproductive care to suffer while courts sift through procedural complexities,' Biden wrote.

He added that the bill 'blatantly violates Roe v. Wade'.

Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Stephen Breyer, Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Justice Elena Kagan dissented. The other justices - all appointed by Republican presidents - allowed the law to stand. From left: Justices Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh, Clarence Thomas, Elena Kagan, John Roberts, Neil Gorsuch, Stephen Breyer, Amy Coney Barrett, and Sonia Sotomayor

Anonymous tip line for reporting Texas abortions launched under controversial new law is spammed by pro-choice activists Pro-choice activists on Thursday trolled en masse a Texas snitch web site designed to enable private citizens to report on women who have abortions as a restrictive and controversial new fetal heartbeat law went into effect. The website, prolifewhisteblower.com, has been inundated with pornographic images, Shrek memes, and other trolling messages designed to flood it with erroneous tips, according to MySA.com. 'I'm definitely sending in pictures of my menstrual cup dump outs when I get the opportunity in a couple weeks,' one Reddit user vowed. Others have pledged to send photos of their fecal matter and other unsavory images. The Supreme Court early on Thursday declined to block Senate Bill 8 (SB 8) which allows citizens to sue anyone they believe to be helping a woman obtain an abortion after six weeks of pregnancy. Most women discover they are pregnant between weeks four and seven of pregnancy, so pro-choice advocates say that the law in effect bans a majority of abortions. An anti-abortion group, Texas Right to Life, created a web site, prolifewhistleblower.com, that allows private citizens to provide tips on anyone suspected of helping a woman carry out an abortion beyond six weeks of pregnancy Advertisement

In an unsigned order earlier this week, the Supreme Court wrote: 'In reaching this conclusion, we stress that we do not purport to resolve definitively any jurisdictional or substantive claim in the applicants' lawsuit. In particular, this order is not based on any conclusion about the constitutionality of Texas's law, and in no way limits other procedurally proper challenges to the Texas law, including in Texas state courts'.

The five conservative justices backed the law Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Stephen Breyer, Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Justice Elena Kagan dissented.

Liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor called the court's order 'stunning,' saying her colleagues had 'opted to bury their head in the sand' over a 'flagrantly unconstitutional law engineered to prohibit women from exercising their constitutional rights.'

In her dissenting opinion on Wednesday Sotomayor accused the court's conservative majority of 'burying their heads in the sand.'

'The Act is clearly unconstitutional under existing precedents,' the Obama appointee wrote. 'The respondents do not even try to argue otherwise. Nor could they: No federal appellate court has upheld such a comprehensive prohibition on abortions before viability under current law.'

'Taken together, the Act is a breathtaking act of defianceof the Constitution, of this Court's precedents, and of the rights of women seeking abortions throughout Texas.'

Abortion rights supporters gather to protest Texas SB 8 in front of Edinburg City Hall on Wednesday

University of Texas women rally at the Texas Capitol to protest the law on Wednesday

A Texas law banning most abortions in the state took effect on Wednesday

Pro-choice activists urged the Supreme Court to intervene to ensure that women's protections are upheld
A food delivery worker who braved the fatal record floods that swamped New York City roads got made a measly $5 - including tip - after making the hour-long trip from Brooklyn to Astoria.

'Its a cruel joke. This is exactly why we protest and we organize  we need fair wages. These companies are getting richer and richer and were only earning $5 in these conditions,' Tono Solis, a member of the delivery worker labor collective Los Deliveristas Unidos, told The City.

In typical conditions, Grubhub delivery workers make a minimum wage of $2 per delivery - regardless of how much food is ordered - and it goes up depending on demand, The City reported.

On Wednesday, Solis said he made $115, including tips, for 9.5 hours of work.

Lazaro Morales, a Grubhub delivery worker, told The City he made $277, including tips, for 14 hours of work.

Morales called it 'the most horrible day ever on the job.'

'The clients are very inconsiderate: As long as they get their meal, they dont care about us,' he told The City.

Scroll down for video.

A delivery food worker fights through waist-high flood waters to bring food to someone in Brooklyn

The photographer - Twitter user 'Unequal Scenes' - is looking for this worker to donate money from media proceeds for his video

Throughout Wednesday night's historic storm, NYC food delivery workers slogged through flood waters to bring food to people

On top of customers' pathetic tips and companies' low wages, the storm damaged many workers' e-bikes, which is their only way to get around, and they have to use their own money to get them fixed.

Johnny Miller, a freelance photographer, captured a video of a delivery food worker slogging through waist-high flood waters to bring food to someone in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, that was seen 10.5 million times.

Miller is on a mission to find the identity of the worker and donate money to him from media proceeds from the video, which was posted on Miller's 'Unequal Scenes' Twitter account.

He tweeted the video at all the major food delivery apps to find the worker.

'Seeing this guy push his bicycle past these people in Mercedes to deliver Chinese food just turned my stomach,' Miller told The New York Times. 'Some of us have the privilege to not work during a disaster and some of us dont.'

A food delivery work on an e-bike fights through the same flood waters that is impacting a car

Food delivery workers battled these conditions for shifts that lasted up to 14 hours and made less than $300

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez shared the video on her Twitter account and said, 'Please do not be the person who orders delivery during a flash flood that the NWS (National Weather Service) has deemed a dangerous and life-threatening situation.

'It puts vulnerable people at risk. If its too dangerous for you, its too dangerous for them. Raid your cabinets or ask a neighbor for help.'
Republicans wrote a letter on Thursday demanding President Biden release the full, unedited transcript of his July 23 phone call with Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani where he pressured the leader to change the 'perception' on his fight.

'Your disturbing emphasis on perception, a term you used four times in the Reuters excerpts of the call with Ghani, over substance and truth demands scrutiny and accountability,' the letter read.

'We hereby request that you make the full, unedited and unredacted transcripts of your July 23 conversation with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani public so Congress can determine the degree to which you may have deliberately misled the American people leading up to and during this disastrously executed operation.'

Biden focused much of the call on Ghani's 'perception problem.'

'I need not tell you the perception around the world and in parts of Afghanistan, I believe, is that things are not going well in terms of the fight against the Taliban,' Biden said. 'And there is a need, whether it is true or not, there is a need to project a different picture.'

In a phone call transcript obtained by Reuters, Biden said the US would provide aid if Ghani could project to the world that he had a 'plan' for fighting the Taliban, while the Afghan army was being overrun.

'We will continue to provide close air support, if we know what the plan is,' Biden said.

'Im not telling you what that plan should precisely look like, youre going to get not only more help, but youre going to get a perception that is going to change in terms of how, um..... our allies and folks here in the States and other places think you're doing.'

'In the period leading up to the withdrawal, your administration made a series of false assurances to the American people and our allies regarding the situation on the ground,' the letter read. 'The contrast between your Administrations official spin and the reality on the ground revealed a bewildering lack of coherence, strategy, and fundamental transparency.'

Biden focused much of a July 23 call with Ashraf Ghani on the Afghan president's 'perception problem'

The letter was spearheaded by Rep. Claudia Tenney, left, and also supported by Conference Chair Rep. Elise Stefanik, right

The letter was spearheaded by Rep. Claudia Tenney, R-N.Y., and also signed by 26 other Republicans.

The demands for a full transcript are reminiscent of 2019 when Democrats demanded President Trump release the full transcript of his call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

That call led to his eventual impeachment, where Democrats determined he had improperly pressured Zelensky to investigate a political opponent, Biden, and his son Hunter.

Tenney, in a statement on the letter, again called for Speaker Nancy Pelosi to open impeachment proceedings, as Republicans have done with increasing frequency over Biden's handling of the Afghanistan withdrawal.

GOP leader Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has shut down any prospect of impeachment. 'I think the way these behaviors get adjusted in this country is at the ballot box,' he said.

In the call Biden pressed Ghani to bring together the government's most prominent figures for a press conference. 'That will change perception, and that will change an awful lot I think.'

Still, Biden expressed confidence that the US-trained Afghan security forces could fend off the Taliban, being much bigger in size and far more well-equipped.

'You clearly have the best military,' he told Ghani. 'You have 300,000 well-armed forces versus 70-80,000 and they're clearly capable of fighting well.'

The White House has since laid blame on the Afghan military for 'collapsing without a fight.'

Ghani, meanwhile, relayed a sense of urgency to the US president.

'We are facing a full-scale invasion, composed of Taliban, full Pakistani planning and logistical support, and at least 10-15,000 international terrorists, predominantly Pakistanis thrown into this,' Ghani said.

'We need to move with speed.'

Ghani told Biden he believed there could be peace if he could 'rebalance the military solution.'

The Afghan president fled the country, sending his government into collapse, three weeks later, and the Taliban subsequently took Kabul.

Biden promised diplomatic and economic support even after the military's withdrawal concluded.

'We are going to continue to fight hard, diplomatically, politically, economically, to make sure your government not only survives, but is sustained and grows,' said Biden.

The last US troops have now left Afghanistan, evacuating over 123,000 but leaving behind tens of thousands of special immigrant visa (SIV) applicants and somewhere around 100 Americans.

In the week before the evacuation's conclusion, over 170 died, including 13 US troops, in a suicide explosion claimed by ISIS-K.
Anti-Taliban fighters in Afghanistan's Panjshir Valley are engaged in bitter fighting to repulse 'heavy' assaults from a 'very well armed' Taliban, the group said Friday.

Efforts to strike a peace deal between the two sides have failed and the Taliban are keen to capture the last holdout province that has thus far prevented them from solidifying all-out control of the country since they took Kabul on August 15.

'The Taliban have a significant advantage,' said Nishank Motwani, an Afghan analyst based in Australia, saying the Islamists were emboldened by their recent victories.

'They are very well armed, and they have the psychological factor in their favour in that they precipitated the fall of the government so quickly.'

The Taliban seized an enormous arsenal of weapons and military kit that the now departed US provided to the defeated Afghan army, as well as the support of prisoners they freed from jails.

'The Taliban also have shock troops, including the use of suicide tactics,' Motwani added.

Fighters from the National Resistance Front (NRF), made up of anti-Taliban militia fighters and former Afghan security forces, are believed to have significant weapon stockpiles of their own in the valley around 50 miles north of Kabul, which has enabled them to engage in a heavily armed clash with the Islamists.

Fighters from the National Resistance Front (NRF), made up of anti-Taliban militia fighters and former Afghan security forces, are also understood to have significant weapon stockpiles in the valley around 50 miles north of Kabul

The National Resistance Front has managed to hold off the Taliban thus far in a heavily armed clash and are preventing the Taliban from solidifying total control of the nation

Afghan resistance movement and anti-Taliban uprising forces take part in a military training in the Panjshir province, the only remaining hold-out of anti-Taliban forces

The Taliban are attempting to breach the steep sides of the Panjshir Valley through the Khawak Pass in the northwest, through Golbahar in the south and from the Anaba district to the southeast

Under the leadership of Ahmad Massoud, son of a former Mujahideen commander, the NRF have been holding out in Panjshir Valley, a steep valley that makes attacks from outside difficult

On Wednesday, senior Taliban official Amir Khan Muttaqi issued an audio message to say their forces had surrounded the valley, calling on the people of the Panjshir to tell fighters to lay down their arms.

'Those who want to fight, tell them it is enough,' Muttaqi said.

But the NRF are continuing to engage the Taliban in a desperate attempt to prevent them from taking total control, as many Afghans are terrified of a repeat of the Taliban's harsh rule from 1996 to 2001.

Hours after their warning, Taliban forces launched renewed attacks including from the south of Panjshir from Kapisa, as well as from the Khawak pass to the west of the valley.

Both sides have claimed to have inflicted heavy losses on their rivals, though reports from the valley itself are scarce and communications amid the fighting and terrain are difficult.

The Taliban says the Panjshir valley is surrounded on all four sides and a rebel victory is impossible. The rebels say they will refuse to surrender.

The National Resistance Front (NRF), comprising an ethnic Tajik militia and former Afghan security forces, have vowed to defend the enclave as the Islamist group say they have it surrounded. Between 150,000 and 200,000 live in the valley.

Panjshir Valley (pictured as resistance fighters take up position on patrol, September 1, 2021) has a storied history of fighting in recent history, having been used as a stronghold against the Soviets in the 1980s, and again against the Taliban in the 90s

Pictured: A satellite map showing Panjshir Valley's proximity to Kabul, which was taken by the Taliban on August 15 amid the withdrawal of US and western forces from Afghanistan

Ali Maisam Nazary, a spokesman for the NRF who is in close contact with leader Ahmad Massoud, said there had been more attacks by Taliban forces overnight.

'There is heavy fighting in Panjshir,' Nazary said. 'He (Massoud) is busy defending the valley.'

Massoud is the son of the late guerrilla commander Ahmad Shah Massoud, dubbed the 'Lion of Panjshir' for holding out first against Soviet forces during the Soviet-Afghan War in the 80s and later the Taliban in the 90s.

In a statement on Wednesday, Massoud said that the Taliban had offered them 'one or two seats' in their new administration, but he had rejected the deal.

'The Taliban have chosen the path of war,' Massoud said, committing to fighting the Taliban at all costs, while another NRF fighter declared they 'are are ready to defeat [the Taliban] if they dare to invade,' despite being heavily outgunned and the Taliban controlling the overwhelming majority of the country.

Ahmad Massoud (left), leader of the Northern Alliance and son of 'the Lion of the Panjshir', says the Taliban 'have chosen the path of war'. Massoud was only 12 when his father, Ahmad Shah Massoud (right), was murdered by Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda network

The 70-mile-long valley surrounded by jagged snow-capped peaks offers Panjshir fighters a natural military advantage as defending units can use high positions to ambush attacking forces below.

But the conflict appears to be escalating according to Martine van Bijlert of the Afghanistan Analysts Network: 'Taliban forces have been massing around the entrance to the valley but have been hit in ambushes and have sustained casualties.'

Van Bijlert said that while the fighting thus far had seen both sides incur losses, the Taliban had called on more support from neighbouring provinces which could pose the Panjshir defenders' resolve to weaken.

Pictured: Afghan resistance fighters take up position during a patrol on a hilltop in Panjshir Valley, September 1, 2021

'Whereas both sides mainly seemed to be trying to hurt each other in order to strengthen their hand in negotiations without starting an all-out battle, according to the latest reports the Taliban are now summoning forces from other provinces.'

The Panjshir - mainly inhabited by ethnic Tajik people - has immense symbolic value in Afghanistan as the area that has resisted occupation by invaders in the past.

For Afghans opposed to the Taliban, the holdout province stands as a symbol to show the Taliban are not the welcome rulers of all Afghanistan, Motwani said.

'It gives hope to those Afghans who have lost almost everything in a blink of an eye.

'It is somewhere where people can go outside Taliban rule.'

Bismillah Mohammadi, Afghanistan's defence minister before the government fell last month, said the Taliban had launched a renewed assault on Panjshir on Tuesday night.

'Last night the Taliban terrorists attacked Panjshir, but were defeated,' Mohammadi tweeted Wednesday, claiming 34 Taliban were killed and 65 wounded.

'Our people should not worry. They retreated with heavy casualties.'

Residents and fighters in Panjshir, many of whom fought the Taliban when they were last in power from 1996 to 2001, offered a defiant message.

'We are ready to defend it till the last drop of our blood,' said one resident.

'Everyone has a weapon on their shoulder and ready to fire,' another said. 'From the youngest to the oldest, they all talk about resistance.'
A man has been charged after dramatic footage showed him throwing punches at police after they asked him why he wasn't wearing a mask.

The 41-year-old allegedly refused to answer questions from police officers carrying out Covid-19 compliance checks in Regent's Park in Sydney's west on Thursday night.

He is accused of locking himself inside his car, forcing officers to break the window to arrest him.

A 41-year-old man has been detained and charged with assaulting police after throwing punches at officers who smashed his car window when he allegedly locked himself inside

Footage of the incident has emerged showing the man yelling at officers before shoving them and throwing punches.

The man was subdued by multiple officers, before being detained and charged with assaulting police.

Witness Hassan Hamza said the man was being asked by police about why he wasn't wearing a mask before turning aggressive, 9News reported.

The crackdown on non-compliance comes as police hunt for a woman who is accused of spraying two officers with an unknown substance during a protest in far-north NSW.

A construction site in Waverly was also shut down on the spot as workers from hotspot LGAs were found allegedly not wearing masks and not carrying permits allowing them to work outside their LGA.

More than $13,000 worth of fines were handed out.

The man allegedly refused to answer police questions when he locked himself in his car, resisting arrest. Police smashed the window in order to make the arrest before the incident got physical, the man shoving and throwing punches at officers

Since August 16 when the NSW stay-at-home order was introduced, 17,340 penalty infringement notices (PINS) have been issued.

The total number of PINS issued since the pandemic began in March 2020 is approaching 40,000.

$1million has been collected since the start of the pandemic in fines, with more on its way with outstanding fines still pending.
Congressional Democrats are mounting a retaliation effort against the Supreme Court on Friday after it declined to take up a restrictive Texas abortion bill and allowed it to go into effect late Wednesday night.

Progressive squad member Rep. Rashida Tlaib introduced a bill to set an 18-year term limit on Supreme Court Justices and create a semi-annual nomination process that would give the Senate up to 120 days to confirm them.

Reps. Ro Khanna, Barbara Lee and Don Beyer are also leading the legislation, which was introduced on August 31.

The bill would allow the president to nominate justices in the first and third years of their term.

If Senators fail to weigh in on the nominee in the 120-day period, they would automatically be seated on the court.

In the latter half of former President Obama's second term, then-Majority Leader McConnell refused to allow a hearing for Obama SCOTUS pick Merrick Garland, citing the upcoming presidential election.

Current justices would be grandfathered into the new system. Newer justices forced to retire would be permitted to serve on lower courts.

It would also take power away from the president to appoint a new chief justice if the current person retires. Instead, the most senior justice would take the role.

A group of progressive lawmakers including Squad member Rep. Rashida Tlaib introduced legislation aimed at overhauling the Supreme Court nomination process

Reps. Ro Khanna, Barbara Lee and Don Beyer are also leading the legislation alongside Tlaib

Also, the Democrat-led Senate Judiciary Committee will open an investigation into the Supreme Court's refusal to take up the bill, committee chair Senator Dick Durbin announced Friday.

'This anti-choice law is a devastating blow to Americans' constitutional rightsand the Court allowed it to see the light of day without public deliberation or transparency,' Durbin said in the announcement.

'We must examine not just the constitutional impact of allowing the Texas law to take effect, but also the conservative Courts abuse of the shadow docket.'

Texas's two senators, John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, are on the committee.

Late on Wednesday night the Supreme Court handed down a 5-4 decision not to block the law from going into immediate effect.

The law, known as the 'Texas Heartbeat Act', bans abortion once a fetal heartbeat can be detected, which is normally after six weeks and before many women even know they are pregnant.

It makes no exceptions for rape or incest and allows Texans to report people, including Uber drivers, who help or take women to get abortions. The only exemption is if there is a danger to the woman's health.

Senator Dick Durbin announced his Judiciary Committee will probe the Supreme Court decision and blasted the court's 'shadow docket' decision-making

Both of the US senators from Texas, John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, are part of the committee investigating their state's abortion ban

Chief Justice John Robert's and the court's three liberal justices - Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Stephen Breyer - dissented.

Sotomayor and Kagan wrote blistering opinions condemning the court's 'shadow docket' and blasting the decision as 'flagrantly unconstitutional.'

In her dissenting opinion on Wednesday Sotomayor accused the court's conservative majority of 'burying their heads in the sand.

'The Act is clearly unconstitutional under existing precedents,' the Obama appointee wrote. 'The respondents do not even try to argue otherwise. Nor could they: No federal appellate court has upheld such a comprehensive prohibition on abortions before viability under current law.'

Justice Kagan, also appointed by ex-President Obama, accused the Supreme Court majority of only hastily reviewing the case and then only 'barely bothers to explain its conclusion.'

Kagan blasted the court's 'shadow-docket decisionmaking' which she claims is responsible for increasingly 'un-reasoned, inconsistent, and impossible to defend' rulings.

'Shadow-docket' decisions are handed down with little or no explanation from the majority justices and without advanced notice from the court, according to Vox.

Arguments from lawyers and long, detailed briefings heard in high-profile landmark decisions like Roe v. Wade are rare in shadow-docket cases. Justices usually discuss them amongst themselves on a shorter timeline than normal.

Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Stephen Breyer, Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Justice Elena Kagan dissented. The other justices - all appointed by Republican presidents - allowed the law to stand. From left: Justices Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh, Clarence Thomas, Elena Kagan, John Roberts, Neil Gorsuch, Stephen Breyer, Amy Coney Barrett, and Sonia Sotomayor

They are also usually announced late at night, typically on Fridays, when media immediate coverage is more infrequent.

Numerous shadow-docket court decisions have been wins for the Trump administration, including a 2020 ruling allowing then-President Donald Trump's border wall to be built and agreeing with a lower court's decision in favor of Trump's Remain in Mexico policy.

But Republican lawmakers are going after President Biden and House Speaker Pelosi for attempting to circumvent Texas' new law.

'For the second time in a month, Biden looks to defy and obstruct an order of the Supreme Court. First, to strip landlords of their property without due process of law. Now, to snuff out more babies heartbeats,' Rep. Dan Bishop said in a statement to DailyMail.com Friday.

Biden released a forceful statement Thursday directing the executive branch to undermine the Supreme Court after it refused to take up the case.

He ordered the White House Counsel's office to mount a response to the court's decision, guided by the Department of Health and Human Services and Department of Justice.

Biden vowed to directly challenge the Supreme Court, by ordering the agencies to apparently circumvent the ruling and 'ensure that women in Texas have access to safe and legal abortions as protected by Roe.'

He asked the White House to look at 'what legal tools we have to insulate women and providers from the impact of Texas' bizarre scheme of outsourced enforcement to private parties.'

Republican lawmakers accused him of abusing his power.

Biden released a forceful statement ordering HHS, DOJ and the office of White House Counsel to look into federal avenues to expand abortion access for Texas women

In response to the Supreme Court decision Speaker Pelosi said she would bring legislation protecting abortion rights to the House floor for a vote when they return in just days

'Just last week, Democrats were calling for the expansion of the court as a result of a ruling over the eviction moratorium that did not go in their favor. This week its because the court came down on the opposite side of their radical, pro-abortion agenda,' Kansas Senator Roger Marshall told DailyMail.com.

'Whether its a federal takeover of elections, eliminating the filibuster, or packing the court, Democrats will stop at nothing to rig our system of government in their favor because they cannot win on merit alone,' Marshall wrote.

Rep. Andy Biggs wrote in a statement to DailyMail.com, 'President Biden is the most anti-life President in modern history. He continues to betray Americas founding principles by refusing to protect the right to life. Now he has ordered the federal government to attack a state that seeks to protect that most precious right.'

'This abhorrent act by the Biden administration is inhumane and an abuse of power. I will continue to fight alongside the pro-life community to defend the rights of the most vulnerable in our society.'

Rep. Jim Banks told DailyMail.com that Biden is the 'most radically pro-abortion president in American history.'

GOP House lawmakers Andy Biggs (left and Jim Banks (right) criticized Biden for his threat to circumvent the Supreme Court and Texas state law

'His administration has pushed abortion on pro-life states and organizations and exported abortions abroad, violating conscience rights and costing countless unborn lives.,' the Congressman said in a statement.

The Women's Health Protection Act of 2021: Democrat-backed law for no time limits on abortions 'prior to fetal viability' Allows abortion nationwide without time limits 'prior to fetal viability' and even afterwards if the abortion provider deems the pregnancy would pose a risk to the patient's life or health Prohibits arbitrary requirements on abortion procedures and unnecessary tests Prohibits abortion providers from requiring in-person visits before the procedure if they aren't medically necessary Restricts abortion providers from giving the patient 'medically inaccurate information' during or after services Prevents states from issuing arbitrary credential requirements for medical facilities providing abortions Allows abortion providers to provide immediate services if they deem a delay would risk the patient's health Prohibits limits on what medically-approved drugs abortion providers can prescribe Advertisement

Banks added a prediction: 'On the bright side, this wont be the last abortion case the Supreme Court hears this year.'

Pelosi panned the Supreme Court as 'cowardly' in a Thursday statement and vowed Congress would take up the Women's Health Protection Act which would 'enshrine into law reproductive health care for all women across America.'

The bill would prohibit states from imposing arbitrary requirements on abortion providers and what procedures can be used if both are on par with normal health care standards. It also would allow abortion nationwide without time limits 'prior to fetal viability' and even afterwards if the abortion provider deems the pregnancy would pose a risk to the patient's life or health.

While the move was lauded by a number of progressives, several Republican lawmakers vowed to vote against such a measure.

'Congress must be a voice for the voiceless. I am appalled by Speaker Pelosis decision. We all should be,' Illinois Rep. Mary Miller wrote on Twitter.

Mississippi House lawmaker Michael Guest accused Pelosi of undermining states' rights.

'Speaker Pelosi has already announced her plan to undermine states rights and attack Texass new abortion law,' he said in a statement. 'I will vote against any bill that would undermine states rights and the pro-life movement.'

Rep. Billy Long of Missouri said the legislation 'must be stopped.'

Justice Breyer wrote, 'The very bringing into effect of Texass law may well threaten the applicants with imminent and serious harm.'

Biden, the second Catholic president in US history, has been criticized by church officials in the past because his pro-choice stance goes directly against Catholic doctrine.

Vice President Kamala Harris joined Biden in bashing the court's decision and called it a 'bounty law.'

'This decision is not the last word on Roe v. Wade, and we will not stand by and allow our nation to go back to the days of back-alley abortions. We will not abide by cash incentives for virtual vigilantes and intimidation for patients,' Harris wrote in a Thursday statement.

'We will use every lever of our Administration to defend the right to safe and legal abortionand to strengthen that right.'

Attorney General Merrick Garland reaffirmed the DOJ would take the matter up, stating: 'The Justice Department is deeply concerned about Texas SB8. We are evaluating all options to protect the constitutional rights of women, including access to an abortion.'

And members of Congress are also up in arms over the decision.

Progressive 'squad' members Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Cori Bush are leading calls to pack the Supreme Court after it declined to block the Texas abortion law in a 5-4 decision.

Ocasio-Cortez and Bush are leading renewed calls to expand the Supreme Court to tip its current conservative majority in the wake of the 5-4 ruling

Abortion rights supporters gather to protest Texas SB 8 in front of Edinburg City Hall on Wednesday

Ocasio-Cortez lashed out against the Supreme Court early Thursday morning over its refusal to block the law called on Democrats to 'abolish the filibuster and expand the court.'

In a Twitter post published just after midnight, the progressive lawmaker accused Republicans of overturning landmark case Roe v. Wade.

'Republicans promised to overturn Roe v Wade, and they have,' Ocasio-Cortez wrote. 'Democrats can either abolish the filibuster and expand the court, or do nothing as millions of peoples' bodies, rights, and lives are sacrificed for far-right minority rule.'

She added that it 'shouldn't be a difficult decision' for her colleagues.

Hillary Clinton invoked Roe v. Wade on Thursday and accused the Supreme Court of 'gutting' the 1973 case.

'Last night, the Supreme Court officially overturned five decades of settled law and permitted Texas' unconstitutional abortion ban to stand,' she wrote.

'Yes: They gutted Roe v. Wade without hearing arguments, in a one-paragraph, unsigned 5-4 opinion issued in the middle of the night.'

Cori Bush said the ruling embodied 'far-right extremism' on Wednesday.

'In the span of one week the Supreme Court forced 11 million households to face eviction and effectively overturned Roe v. Wade in the middle of the night.

'This is what far-right extremism looks like. We need to expand the court.'

The two squad members expressed outrage at the Supreme Court's ruling on Twitter

Biden tears into the Supreme Court for declining to block Texas abortion law in ruling that will 'unleashes unconstitutional chaos' The Supreme Court's ruling overnight is an unprecedented assault on a woman's constitutional rights under Roe v. Wade, which has been the law of the land for almost fifty years. By allowing a law to go into effect that empowers private citizens in Texas to sue health care providers, family members supporting a woman exercising her right to choose after six weeks, or even a friend who drives her to a hospital or clinic, it unleashes unconstitutional chaos and empowers self-anointed enforcers to have devastating impacts. Complete strangers will now be empowered to inject themselves in the most private and personal health decisions faced by women. This law is so extreme it does not even allow for exceptions in the case of rape or incest. And it not only empowers complete strangers to inject themselves into the most private of decisions made by a womanit actually incentivizes them to do so with the prospect of $10,000 if they win their case. For the majority to do this without a hearing, without the benefit of an opinion from a court below, and without due consideration of the issues, insults the rule of law and the rights of all Americans to seek redress from our courts. Rather than use its supreme authority to ensure justice could be fairly sought, the highest Court of our land will allow millions of women in Texas in need of critical reproductive care to suffer while courts sift through procedural complexities. The dissents by Chief Justice Roberts, and Justices Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan all demonstrate the error of the Court's action here powerfully. While the Chief Justice was clear to stress that the action by the Supreme Court is not a final ruling on the future of Roe, the impact of last night's decision will be immediate and requires an immediate response. One reason I became the first president in history to create a Gender Policy Council was to be prepared to react to such assaults on women's rights. Hence, I am directing that Council and the Office of the White House Counsel to launch a whole-of-government effort to respond to this decision, looking specifically to the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Justice to see what steps the Federal Government can take to ensure that women in Texas have access to safe and legal abortions as protected by Roe, and what legal tools we have to insulate women and providers from the impact of Texas' bizarre scheme of outsourced enforcement to private parties. Advertisement

The Supreme Court formally refused Wednesday to block a Texas law banning almost all abortions after six weeks, less than a day after the nation's most restrictive reproductive rights legislation took effect in the southern state.

The decision spurred outrage among pro-choice advocates and renewed long-running progressive calls to expand the Supreme Court to allow President Biden to tip the majority with more liberal justices.

Court-packing was a divisive topic in the 2020 election and used as a cudgel against Biden by former President Trump and other Republicans.

Other Democratic lawmakers are agreeing with Pelosi's move to take up the Women's Health Protection Act.

'Our liberty, our humanity, and our bodily autonomy are NOT up for debate. In light of Texas' draconian ban and the Supreme Court's inaction, our pro-choice majority Congress must pass The Women's Health Protection Act,' Rep. Ayanna Pressley, Bush and Ocasio-Cortez's fellow squad member wrote on Twitter.

A number of Democratic lawmakers called on Congress to act on a federal law protecting abortion access

Senator Amy Kolbuchar joined Ocasio-Cortez in invoking Roe v. Wade when she called for Congress to act.

'If you ever questioned where these five Justices would be, now you know. We must put Roe into law now. There is no time to lose,' Klobuchar wrote on Twitter.

Progressive Caucus Chair Rep. Pramila Jayapal struck a deeply personal note in response to the Texas law, sharing a 2019 New York Times op-ed in which she publicly revealed for the first time that she had an abortion.

'I decided I could not responsibly have the baby. It was a heartbreaking decision, but it was the only one I was capable of making,' she wrote after detailing an intense struggle in having her first child.

'These reproductive choices  especially in situations involving trauma, be it rape or a desperate prognosis for the baby  are deeply private and personal, and should be made only by the pregnant person.'

Progressive Senator Bernie Sanders wrote on Twitter Wednesday, 'This Supreme Court's refusal to overturn Texas' law banning abortion is outrageous. Women get to control their bodies, not politicians and not judges.'

Rep. Ilhan Omar posted a statement to Twitter on Thursday claiming 'Those saying Trump's far-right appointees would overturn Roe v. Wade were right.'

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki was asked about the ruling at a Thursday briefing by a reporter who asked about Biden's pro-choice stance despite his Catholic upbringing.

'I know you have never faced those choices, nor have you ever been pregnant but for women out there who have faced those choices, this is a difficult thing,' Psaki replied.

Psaki was also asked about Biden's Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court, which he convened by executive order in April to address the issue of court packing.

University of Texas women rally at the Texas Capitol to protest the law on Wednesday

'They're going to examine a range of questions about the future of the court, including term limits, including court expansion, and several additional topics,' she said.

She stated the Biden administration has not reached out to the commission since the Texas ruling but that Biden 'looks forward to reviewing their work when it's completed.'

While similar laws have passed in a dozen Republican-led conservative states, all had been stymied in the courts.

Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick lauded its passage as a' victory' shortly after midnight Wednesday morning

'This lifesaving legislation reflects Texas' pro-life beliefs and our continued commitment to protecting the most vulnerable,' he wrote.

The justices in a 5-4 vote denied an emergency request by abortion and women's health providers for an injunction barring enforcement of the new law which President Biden said on Wednesday 'blatantly violates Roe v. Wade'.

The law is the most dramatic restriction on abortion rights in the United States since the high court's landmark decision legalized abortion across the country in 1973.

'In reaching this conclusion, we stress that we do not purport to resolve definitively any jurisdictional or substantive claim in the applicants' lawsuit. In particular, this order is not based on any conclusion about the constitutionality of Texas's law, and in no way limits other procedurally proper challenges to the Texas law, including in Texas state courts,' the court said in the unsigned order.

Governor Greg Abbott signed the measure into law on Wednesday

The five conservative justices backed the law Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Stephen Breyer, Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Justice Elena Kagan dissented.

Liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor called the court's order 'stunning,' saying her colleagues had 'opted to bury their head in the sand' over a 'flagrantly unconstitutional law engineered to prohibit women from exercising their constitutional rights.'

Texas lawmakers wrote the law to evade federal court review by allowing private citizens to bring civil lawsuits in state court against anyone involved in an abortion, other than the patient.

Other abortion laws are enforced by state and local officials, with criminal sanctions possible.

After a federal appeals court refused to allow a prompt review of the law before it took effect, the measure's opponents sought Supreme Court review.

The law bans abortions once a fetal heartbeat is detected - sparking some women to scramble for 11th hour terminations before midnight.

The legislation, signed by Republican Governor Greg Abbott in May, prohibits abortions once a fetal heartbeat can be detected, which is typically in the first six weeks and before most women even know they're pregnant.

The law also allows private citizens, rather than government officials, to enforce the law by suing anyone involved in the procedure from an abortion clinic to someone driving a woman to a procedure appointment.

Biden promised to fight for women's constitutional rights enshrined under Roe v Wade.

'The Texas law will significantly impair women's access to the health care they need, particularly for communities of color and individuals with low incomes,' the president said.

He added: 'And, outrageously, it deputizes private citizens to bring lawsuits against anyone who they believe has helped another person get an abortion, which might even include family members, health care workers, front desk staff at a health care clinic, or strangers with no connection to the individual.'

The law forced many women throughout the state to flock abortion clinics to get the procedure done, with some only finding out they were pregnant in the past week.

Such was the case for a 21-year-old woman who spoke with Jezebel about her experience scrambling to get an appointment so she wouldn't have to travel out of state or continue with her pregnancy.

The woman, referred to only as Jen out of fear she would be targeted by anti-abortion activists, said she learned last week that she was eight weeks pregnant.

Jen, a sex worker and employee at a Texas donut shop, told the news outlet that she wouldn't be able to afford to schedule the procedure outside of Texas and, even if she could, would take an even bigger blow to her income from taking off work to do it.

Within the last week, she recalled being turned away from nearly every abortion clinic in her area as they were all fully booked.

A Texas law banning most abortions in the state took effect on Wednesday

Pro-choice activists urged the Supreme Court to intervene to ensure that women's protections are upheld

Abortion providers said the law would ban 85 percent of abortions and force many clinics in Texas to close

Jen finally scheduled an appointment at the Houston Women's Clinic and had her procedure done a few hours before Wednesday's deadline.

She told the news outlet, 'I know Texas is very conservative, and I figured there might be a lot of judgment and it might be a little hard, but I never seriously considered it that I wouldn't be able to get an abortion at all.'

When she got the clinic, she described the waiting room being at maximum capacity.

'They were going full throttle trying to get to everyone,' she said.

'Honestly, I would not have been able to go out of state - even the cost of the actual abortion dented my pocket a lot,' she said.

'The first appointment was $100 and the second one was $500 . . I'm just so happy I was able to do it the day before the ban and it's so sad that women here are going to have so much trouble now.'

Biden vowed that his administration would protect women's abortion rights, but he made no mention of the challenge at the Supreme Court, amid fears by activists that a more conservative bench was poised to uphold further restrictions on abortions.

Abortion providers who asked the Supreme Court to step in said the law would rule out 85 percent of abortions in Texas and force many clinics to close.

Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney, chairwoman of the Committee on Oversight and Reform, criticized the court's inaction.

'In refusing to intervene last night, the Supreme Court tipped the scales of justice in favor of one of the most draconian state abortion bans in history,' she said.

'[The law] strips away abortion access for most Texans.

'The Supreme Court has put the health and safety of Texans  especially people with lower incomes and people of color  in jeopardy.'

Texas state Rep. Donna Howard, center at lectern, stands with fellow lawmakers in the House Chamber as she opposes a bill introduced that would ban abortions as early as six weeks (May 2021)

Planned Parenthood is among the abortion providers that have stopped scheduling abortions beyond six weeks from conception.

At least 12 other states have enacted bans on abortion early in pregnancy, but all have been blocked from going into effect.

What makes the Texas law different is its unusual enforcement scheme.

Rather than have officials responsible for enforcing the law, private citizens are authorized to sue abortion providers and anyone involved in facilitating abortions.

Among other situations, that would include anyone who drives a woman to a clinic to get an abortion.

Under the law, anyone who successfully sues another person would be entitled to at least $10,000.

Abortion opponents who wrote the law also made it difficult to challenge the law in court, in part because it's hard to know whom to sue.

Texas has long had some of the nation's toughest abortion restrictions, including a sweeping law passed in 2013 that the Supreme Court eventually struck down but not before more than half of the state's 40-plus abortion clinics closed.

Lawmakers also are moving forward in an ongoing special session in Texas with proposed new restrictions on medication abortion.

This is a method using pills that accounts for roughly 40% of abortions in the U.S.

The Texas challenge seeks to prevent judges, county clerks and other state entities from enforcing the law.

A federal judge rejected a bid to dismiss the case, prompting an immediate appeal to the Louisiana-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which halted further proceedings.

Jen Psaki is slammed as 'bigoted and unprofessional' for telling a reporter he could not ask about abortion because he is a MAN Reporting by Andrew Court and Morgan Phillips Jen Psaki has been slammed by conservative pundits after she snapped at a male reporter who asked how President Joe Biden squares his pro-choice abortion views with his Catholic faith. Owen Jensen, a reporter for Catholic television network EWTN, quizzed Psaki on the Commander-in-chief's conflicting views during a White House Press Briefing on Thursday, following the Supreme Court's refusal to block a restrictive new abortion law in Texas. 'He [Biden] believes it's a woman's right, it's a woman's body and it's her choice. It's up to a woman to make those decisions and a woman's decision to make with her doctor,' Psaki stated. She then turned personal, telling Jensen in a dismissive manner: 'I know you have never faced those choices, nor have you ever been pregnant but for women out there who have faced those choices, this is an incredibly difficult thing and the president believes that right should be respected.' Several conservatives criticized Psaki's comment, claiming it implied that men should have no say in the abortion debate, despite expectation that they be hands-on fathers to their children. Fr. Frank Pavone, a Catholic Preist, wrote: 'Jen Psaki is still using the tired old excuse for #abortion that men cannot get pregnant. Since when does that take away a man's responsibility to defend a child from violence?' Ed Condon, the editor of Substack page The Pillar, similarly wrote: 'The fundamental premise of Jen Psaki's comments is that fathers have no intrinsic stake in the life of their children. It's also the fundamental premise of a society which views children as transferable commodities.' Jen Psaki has been slammed by conservative pundits after she snapped at a male reporter who asked how President Joe Biden squares his pro-choice abortion views with his Catholic faith Meanwhile, Brietbart editor Joel Pollack wrote: 'Telling a male reporter he can't ask a question about the president's views on abortion (has @JoeBiden never been pregnant, either, to the best of my knowledge) and religion was a real low point for Jen Psaki. It was bigoted and unprofessional. I hope she walks it back.' Some other conservatives claimed Psaki was using language that was not 'gender-inclusive' as she stated abortion was a 'woman's right' and implied that those who identify as male cannot get pregnant. In recent years, many on the left have attempted to usher in a more inclusive language to describe those who are pregnant. Recently, Democratic Rep. Cori Bush replaced 'pregnant women' with the term 'birthing people' to describe those who were expecting. 'I was told men can get pregnant and that they can chest feed,' pundit Katie Pavlich wrote beneath a clip of Psaki snapping at the male reporter. Meanwhile, Newsmax contributor Jessie Jane Duff chimed: 'Jen Psaki and her ilk actually voiced their outrage that they can't kill another human being after its heart starts to beat. They are soulless ghouls. "Her choice to stop another human beings heartbeat" isn't quite as catchy as "My body my choice". And they know it.' Pro-life advocate Lila Rose wrote: 'I've been pregnant, and it's *still* not my right, or anyone else's, to kill a baby. Being a woman or being pregnant does not give you license to kill. Women deserve better than abortion. The President's position is illogical, unscientific, immoral & 40 years wrong.' However, there were many people who praised Psaki for her impassioned response to the male reporter Psaki won praise from many on Twitter, with one calling her the best Press Secretary in modern history However, there were many people who praised Psaki for her impassioned response to the male reporter. 'Jen Psaki really does get right to the point,' left-wing activist Charlotte Clymer cooed. Congressional candidate and ex-Army Officer Mark Judson chimed in: 'While Jen Psaki is clearly amazing - the SHAME is that So. Much. of her time and energy has to be WASTED on these dirty, Right Wing Propagandists who attack America day in, and day out. Just ANOTHER way that RepubliQans betray America. They belong in Prison.' Meanwhile, another expressed their admiration for the Press Secretary, stating: 'I will NEVER understand the arrogance of conservative men who believe they have the right to control, govern, and legislate the bodies of women. Jen Psaki continues to be the best White House Press Secretary in modern history. #PsakiBomb'. Biden, the second Catholic president, meets with Pope Francis. Some have pressed the president to square his views on abortion with his Catholic faith The tense exchange between Psaki and the male reporter came after the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that it would not block Texas' new restrictive law which will ban almost all abortions after six weeks. The law, known as the 'Texas Heartbeat Act', bans abortion once a fetal heartbeat can be detected, which is normally after six weeks and before many women even know they are pregnant. It makes no exceptions for rape or incest and allows Texans to report people, including Uber drivers, who help or take women to get abortions. The only exemption is if there is a danger to the woman's health. Other right-leaning states - including Florida and South Carolina - may be the next to follow the newly-implemented bill. Florida State Senator Wilton Simpson said in a Thursday statement that it could be 'worthwhile to take a look at the Texas law and see if there is more we can do here in Florida.' Simpson was backed by Governor Ron DeSantis said, who said he'd mull a ban. Texas Right to Live legislative director John Seago told Forbes that South Carolina was also considering an abortion bill. Meanwhile, Psaki said agencies across the White House and Department of Justice were working quickly to determine 'what, if any, steps can be taken here to protect a woman's right to choose and access to healthcare for women in Texas.' Other abortion laws are enforced by state and local officials, with criminal sanctions possible. After a federal appeals court refused to allow a prompt review of the law before it took effect, the measure's opponents sought Supreme Court review. Biden released a forceful statement Thursday directing the executive branch to undermine the Supreme Court after it refused to take up a case regarding Texas's restrictive new abortion law. 'The highest Court of our land will allow millions of women in Texas in need of critical reproductive care to suffer while courts sift through procedural complexities,' Biden wrote. He added that the bill 'blatantly violates Roe v. Wade'. Advertisement

Texas abortion clinic terminated 67 pregnancies in just 17 hours as women raced to get procedure before new law went into effect Reporting by Mansur Shaheen A frantic scene formed at an abortion clinic in Fort Worth, Texas, as dozens of women congregated in a last ditch effort to get an abortion. Whole Womans Health (WWH) in Central Texas worked to terminate 67 pregnancies in 17 hours after an all-hands on deck approach to help women seeking care. The strictest abortion law in the nation went into effect at midnight, and many local women flocked to the clinic for their last chance to have the procedure in their home state while they still could. The frenzy occurred Tuesday night, August 31, after the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) had still not ruled on an emergency appeal to halt the law until further review. On Wednesday night, the SCOTUS ruled not to place a stay on the law, allowing it to go into effect while it undergoes judicial review. Whole Woman's Health Clinic in Fort Worth, Texas (pictured) performed 67 abortions in a matter of only 17 hours as many women arrived in a last ditch effort to get the procedure before a new restriction went into effect at midnight Amy Hagstrom Miller, founder of WWH, notified people via Twitter that her clinic would perform abortions up until the midnight deadline 'We have staff and doctors providing abortions in Texas - still at this hour - and they are all in to provide care until 11:59 tonight. Our waiting rooms are filled with patients and their loved ones. Right now,' Amy Hagstrom Miller, CEO and Founder of WWH wrote on the companies Twitter page. The 19th reports that the clinic was surrounded by both patients and protesters. Marva Sadler, an administrator at WWH, told the 19th that her staff that her team had to perform almost eight abortions an hour during the final hours in order to help everyone. Not everyone could get the procedure they wanted, though. One woman, The 19th reports, arrived for an abortion, telling the staff she was going to prison soon and did not want to deliver a child in jail. Texas law already required a woman to get a first appointment with a doctor to discuss the procedure 24 hours they actually got the abortion done. The new bill allows any woman who gets an abortion after six weeks to be sued by any private American anywhere in the country. Many women do not even know they are pregnant yet at six weeks (file photo) She was coming in for only her first appointment, though, and was unable to have the termination. The woman dropped to her knees, begging Sadler for help, according to the report, but the physicians were legally unable to help her. She was 12 weeks pregnant, meaning she would be unable to have the procedure done in Texas once the law went into place. Senate Bill 8, was passed by the Texas state legislature in May, and was set to go into place starting on September 1. It is a 'heartbeat' bill, that prevents a woman from getting an abortion after the fetus first has a detectable heart beat. This is generally at six weeks after the woman last experienced her menstrual period, a point where many women may not yet know they are expecting. Under the law, any private citizen, anywhere in the nation, could file a lawsuit of up to $10,000 against any Texas woman who received an abortion after six weeks. Anyone who is deemed to have assisted in the abortion process, from a doctor who performed or consulted with the woman about the procedure, a friend who gave the woman monetary or transportation assistance to get the abortion, or anyone else who in any way helped the woman. Abortion advocates filed an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) to prevent the law from taking effect pending judicial review. The SCOTUS declined the injunction by a 5-4 vote, with all three liberal justices on the bench and conservative Chief Justice John Roberts voting in favor, and five conservative justices ruling against. Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Stephen Breyer, Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Justice Elena Kagan dissented. The other justices - all appointed by Republican presidents - allowed the law to stand. From left: Justices Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh, Clarence Thomas, Elena Kagan, John Roberts, Neil Gorsuch, Stephen Breyer, Amy Coney Barrett, and Sonia Sotomayor Opponents of the law argue that it violate precedent set by Roe v. Wade, a landmark 1973 SCOTUS decision that ruled abortion bans violated a person's constitutional rights. The law is vague, they also argue, and who exactly can be sued is not formally laid out. Advocates for the bill argue that the law does not violate Roe v Wade, as the government itself is not banning abortion. Women will still be allowed to receive the abortion after six weeks, but doing so would open themselves and anyone involved to a private lawsuit. Texas is now the only state that has a law in place that could restrict a woman's right to an abortion before 20 weeks. Mississippi joins Texas as the only states with restrictions before 22 weeks. The law could still be struck down by the high court in the future, though it will still be in effect until any such decision is made. Advertisement
An ex-Army Major Apache pilot from Kentucky was sentence to life in prison without parole on Thursday for the murders a neighbor he thought was sleeping with his bigamist ex-wife and two others to stop a child rape court martial against him in 2015.

Christian Martin, 53, who served in the U.S. Army and National Guard, was found guilty by a Christian County Circuit Court jury of shooting Edward Dansereau and Calvin and Pamela Phillips in Pembroke, Kentucky on November 18, 2015.

Calvin, 59, was found shot dead in the cellar of his home just two weeks before he was due to testify against Martin in a court martial case where the 30-year military veteran was accused of child rape and assault of his stepson.

Martin, a former American Airlines pilot, appeared silent as Judge John Atkins read the verdict. Martin's attorneys indicted they would immediately file an appeal.

Christian County Circuit Court Judge John Atkins, right, sentenced Christian Martin, in orange, to life in prison without parole on Thursday for the murder of three in 2015

Christian Martin, who served in the U.S. Army and Coast Guard, worked as a pilot for an American Airlines subsidiary when he was arrested in 2019

Calvin Philips and Pamela Phillips, right, and Edward Dansereau were found shot and their corpses burnt in Pembroke, Kentucky, in 2015. Calvin was set to testify against Martin just two weeks before he was murdered. Martin believed Calvin was having an affair with his ex-wife

Martin also believed Calvin was having an affair with his ex-wife, Joan Harmon, who had also been married to another man while she was together with Martin, WSMV reported.

Prosecutors said Martin failed to burn Calvin's body in the cellar, leaving the home and returning later in the day, where he bumped into Pamela, 58, and Dansereau, 63.

Investigators said Pamela and Dansereau were shot for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

He then set an alarm for 1.10am the following morning and got up and drove the two bodies a few miles away in Pamela's car, before torching the vehicle, investigators added.

The charred remains of Pamela and Dansereau, were found hours later in a cornfield.

With Calvin no longer able to testify in the court martial case, Martin was only found guilty on charges of two counts of mishandling of classified material and two counts of assault of a child, he but was found not guilty on both charges of rape of a child and communicating a threat.

After the case, Martin moved to North Carolina, and began a career working for American Airlines subsidiary PSA in 2018, after being discharged from the military carrying out a 90-day jail sentence.

The gruesome triple murders went unsolved for more than three years until Martin was dramatically arrested at Louisville International Airport in May 2019 - just minutes before he was about to fly a plane.

Martin was convicted of all charges in the triple murder case in Hardin Circuit Court Wednesday, including three counts of murder, one count of arson in the first degree, one count of attempted arson, two counts of burglary in the first degree, and three counts of tampering with physical evidence.

During the trial, Martin continued to protest his innocence throughout his trial, taking the stand in June to slam the charges against him as 'stupid'

Martin in an undated military picture. In the court martial, he was found guilty of mishandling classified material and child assault, was discharged from the military and sentenced to 90 days in jail. He moved on to be a pilot for an American Airlines subsidiary

During the trail, Calvin denied all allegations against him, saying the charges he faced were 'stupid'

'Stupid. I didn't do it and the evidence shows I didn't do it,' Martin testified, reported WMSV.

'I didn't do anything like that at all. Like I said, all the evidence shows I didn't do anything with this. I'm not involved in this.'

His defense attorney Tom Griffiths argued there was forensic proof that the bullets that killed the victims did not come from the gun Martin owned.

He also noted there were no eyewitnesses, no DNA and no fingerprints.

The defense claimed evidence pointing to Martin could have been planted - possibly by his ex-wife who had access to his firearms.

Both the shell casing and the dog tags were found by family members of Calvin several months after the murders.

Harmon and her son both invoked the Fifth Amendment to avoid testifying in the trial.

Joan Harmon, right, accused Christian Martin of abusing her son. Martin had discovered Harmon was still married to another man when she married him

Martin in court in 2019. The murders took place just two weeks before Calvin was due to testify against Martin in a court martial case. The 30-year military veteran was accused of child rape and assault

In a 2016 interview with WSMV, Martin said he believed Harmon had been having a long-running affair with Calvin.

'Everyone in town knew what was going on while I was at work every day,' Martin said.

'They were together all day long, and they didn't really try to hide it or anything like that.'

But he said he was grateful to his neighbor as it helped him get out of his bigamist marriage.

Martin and Harmon's marriage was voided around three years prior to the murders, after he discovered she had already been married to another man before they wed.

Martin claimed his ex-wide warned him 'I will ruin your life' when they split.

Martin served in the Army Reserve from 1986 to 1990, on active duty from 1990 to 1993, then in the Army National Guard from 1993 to 2005.

He was on active duty again from 2005 serving as a Fort Campbell Major when he was dismissed in 2016.

He was hired as a Bombardier CRJ First Officer for American Airlines' PSA Airlines in January 2018.
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Sajid Javid suggested that ministers plan to press on with Covid vaccinations for children today despite the Government's jab experts deciding a mass rollout was not needed.

The Health Secretary and his counterparts in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have asked their chief medical officers to examine the 'broader' benefits of such a scheme, after the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation's decision.

It came as scientists and ministers clashed over whether the UK should be routinely vaccinating children against Covid.

The JCVI resisted growing pressure from senior ministers and scientists who urged it to follow the likes of the US, France, Spain, Italy, Canada, and the Netherlands, which are pressing ahead with the move.

The scientists said the virus posed such a low risk to children aged between 12 and 15 that the benefit to their health of immunisation would be marginal.

However, the JCVI has told the Government to seek advice from elsewhere to determine whether a mass rollout in schools would have wider benefits, such as keeping classrooms open and avoiding future lockdowns.

The UK's four chief medical officers will spend the next week weighing up whether vaccinating secondary school-aged children will have a broader benefit on society.

The ultimate decision for vaccinating children will lie with their parents and guardians, meaning they face a difficult choice if the Government decides to roll out the vaccine nationwide.

Mr Javid said: 'Along with health ministers across the four nations, I have today written to the Chief Medical Officers to ask that they consider the vaccination of 12 to 15 year olds from a broader perspective, as suggested by the JCVI.

'We will then consider the advice from the Chief Medical Officers, building on the advice from the JCVI, before making a decision shortly.'

The review will not consider any benefits adults may experience due to having children vaccinated, but will instead focus on areas outside the JCVI's remit, such as lost education time due to Covid-related absences, either through sickness or being sent home from school.

A decision is not expected for several days.

Britain's Covid outbreak continued to grow today as another 42,076 infections were registered, up nearly 11 per cent on last Friday. There were also another 121 Covid deaths, a 21 per cent jump in a week.

This graph shows the number of first doses dished out by age group. The NHS publishes age groups as periods of five years, and groups all those under 18 together. It shows more than 620,000 have already been inoculated among under-18s

Latest estimates from a symptom-tracking app suggested under-18s had the second highest number of Covid cases in the country (blue line). Only 18 to 35-year-olds had a higher number of Covid cases (orange line). That is despite schools in England, Wales and Northern Ireland only starting to go back this week. The data is from the ZOE Covid Symptom Study

Latest Public Health England data showed Covid cases are rising fastest among 10 to 19-year-olds (grey line) and 20 to 29-year-olds (green line). Approving Covid vaccines for 12 to 15-year-olds would likely help curb the spread of the virus in the age group, scientists in favour of the move add

It came as official data showed Scotland's weekly Covid cases have nearly trebled in the fortnight after schools went back after summer there There are fears the rest of the UK will be hit with a similar bang in cases now that classes are resuming this week

Scientists were at war over vaccinating children against Covid today. Professor David Livermore (left) says it is 'plausible' that immunity from natural infection could last longer for children. Dr Simon Clarke (right) said he would have no issue with children being vaccinated providing consent was sought from their parents. Some experts have said that vaccinating children will help avoid disruption to their education

Which 12 to 15-year-olds will now be offered a Covid vaccine? Healthy children under the age of 16 do not need to be vaccinated against Covid, the Government's vaccine advisory panel ruled today. The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) said the virus posed such a low risk to 12 to 15-year-olds that the benefit of vaccination to their health would be marginal. But they did recommend the jabs for 200,000 more children with chronic conditions that put them at greater risk from Covid. A total of 350,000 children aged 12 to 15 are now eligible for the vaccine. Children aged 12 to 15 who have the following conditions can now get a Covid vaccine: Haematological malignancy;

Sickle cell disease;

Type 1 diabetes;

Congenital heart disease;

Other health conditions such as poorly controlled asthma that mean a child is considered to be part of the 'Covid clinical risk group'. Advertisement

The JCVI did recommend the jabs for 200,000 more children with chronic heart, kidney, lung and neurological conditions in that age group. A total of 350,000 children aged 12 to 15 are now eligible for the vaccine.

The expert panel said that youngsters under 16 with severe conditions have a one in 10,000 chance of falling seriously ill with Covid compared to the one in 500,000 risk for healthy children.

It said that a very rare heart complication associated with the jabs meant the benefits of vaccination 'only marginally' outweighed the risks in healthy under-16s, but not enough to recommend a mass rollout.

The JCVI said it had investigated the extremely rare events of inflammation of the heart muscle, known as myocarditis, after Pfizer or Moderna vaccines.

While the condition can result in short periods of hospital observation, followed by typically swift recoveries, the JCVI has concluded the medium to long-term outcomes are still uncertain and more follow-up time is needed to get a clearer picture.

The decision comes exactly a week after the Department of Health and Social Care confirmed preparations were under way to ensure the NHS was ready to offer coronavirus jabs to all 12 to 15-year-olds in England from early September.

The department had said it wanted to be 'ready to hit the ground running'.

On Thursday, Education Secretary Gavin Williamson said he felt parents would find it 'deeply reassuring' to have a choice of whether their children should have a jab or not, adding that many people hoped they would be in a position 'of being able to roll out vaccinations for those who are under the age of 16'.

The Government has said if all 12 to 15-year-olds were to be offered a vaccine, parental or carer consent will be sought as it is in other school immunisation programmes.

Northern Ireland Health Minister Robin Swann said he agrees the issue of a wider rollout 'warrants further consideration'.

He said: 'It is entirely appropriate that our most senior medical advisers take forward this piece of work urgently. I look forward to seeing their considerations in the near future.'

Which countries are already offering jabs to 12 to 15-year-olds? The JCVI has resisted calls to recommend vaccines for healthy under-16s. While the move will irk Government ministers who were keen to go ahead with the plans to keep infection rates in schools low, some scientists applauded the panel for not bowing to political pressure and 'following the science'. But the country is at risk of becoming an international outlier as many other western nations have already started jabbing children. They include: Denmark, from August

France, from June 15

Parts of Germany, from August

Israel, from June 6

Italy, from August 11

The Netherlands, from July

Norway, from September

Poland, from June

Parts of Spain, from August

Sweden, from August

Switzerland, from July

The US, from May 10 Advertisement

Welsh Government Health Minister Eluned Morgan said she had asked the country's chief medical officer 'to provide guidance at the earliest opportunity on the clinical and wider health benefits of vaccinating this age group', while Scottish Health Minister Humza Yousaf said he had asked for the review to be conducted 'as soon as possible'.

Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL), said he is disappointed by the JCVI decision not to recommend jabs for all 12 to 15-year-olds.

He added that while they respect it, it could mean it is 'more difficult during the autumn term and beyond to guard against educational disruption caused by transmission of the virus'.

He said: 'We are therefore pleased that the door appears to have been left at least partially open as the government looks at wider issues including disruption to schools. The trouble is that time is pressing, the autumn term is upon us and we really do need a decision.'

Scottish Health Minister Humza Yousaf said: 'I have agreed with the other three UK Health Ministers to write a letter asking the four Chief Medical Officers to consider this latest guidance and explore whether there is additional evidence to suggest it would be beneficial to offer vaccination to all 12  15 year olds.

'We have asked for this further work to be conducted as soon as possible.'

The Health Secretary, Sajid Javid, has asked the NHS to put preparations in place to roll out vaccinations to 12 to 15 year olds, should it be recommended by the Chief Medical Officers.

If this group is offered the vaccine, parental or carer consent will be sought, just as with other school immunisation programmes.

The vaccination programme has so far provided protection to over 48 million people over the age of 16 across the UK - including over 48 million first doses and over 43 million second doses.

The latest data from Public Health England and Cambridge University shows vaccines have saved more than 105,000 lives and prevented 143,600 hospitalisations and 24 million cases in England.

Senior ministers were said to be increasingly embittered at the failure of Government experts to authorise the rollout of Covid vaccines to under-16s ahead of the decision from the JCVI.

A Whitehall source said there was 'palpable frustration' among Government figures with the JCVI. Both Boris Johnson and Health Secretary Sajid Javid are said to be keen to get on with vaccinating school children.

Scientists were at war over vaccinating children against Covid today. Professor David Livermore (left) says it is 'plausible' that immunity from natural infection could last longer for children but Professor Devi Sridhar (right) says the virus could rip through the country again

Ministers fear the new academic year will trigger a fresh wave of the virus in classrooms. This means that without a jab, children could face more disruption to their education throughout autumn and winter.

Last night one Whitehall source admitted: 'There is palpable frustration that this is taking so long. The jabs have been approved for months, other countries have been doing it safely for months  we are becoming an outlier.

In the meantime, we have missed the window of opportunity in the summer and the schools are going back.'

Meanwhile, in a clear sign of the enthusiasm for the jab among teenagers, figures showed half of 16- and 17-year-olds have already had a vaccine dose in just four weeks.

Scientists and ministers were at war today over whether the UK should be routinely vaccinating children against Covid ahead of the announcement from the JCVI.

Professor Hunter said today he was against vaccinating children, although he had faith that whatever decision the JCVI comes to will have been the most informed.

He told MailOnline: 'The issue around whether we should be vaccinating 12 to 15-year-olds is whether there is enough vaccine to go around people who are vulnerable worldwide.'

Professor Hunter added that as the direct benefit of vaccines to children was small because Covid is a mild illness for the overwhelming majority of them.

He said he would prefer to see the doses shipped to developing nations which are struggling to get first doses to vulnerable people.

And he raised doubts about whether it was ethical to vaccinate children against a mild disease in the first place.

'If we are going to be vaccinating these children it has got to be in their interest, not in ours,' he said.

'It is one thing to say have a vaccine to protect your health, but quite another thing to persuade you to have a vaccine to protect my health. One is entirely ethical and the other is dubious.'

Professor David Livermore, a medical microbiologist at the University of East Anglia, said last week that the world will need to live with Covid for years if not decades  so having a generation of children with natural immunity would help prevent cases spiralling later down the line.

He said natural infection could be a 'a better first step in the lifelong co-existence' with the virus than rolling out the jabs.

He added: 'There is no direct reason to vaccinate children and adolescents against Covid. They are extremely unlikely to suffer severe disease if infected.

'Rare but serious side effects have been associated with the vaccines, including blood clots and myocarditis. For older adults and the vulnerable, these are small hazards compared with those from Covid infection, and being vaccinated is obviously prudent.

'But for children the risk/benefit ratio is far less clear, and may reverse. The JCVI initially were against vaccinating children on this logic and have provided no clear reason for a change of view.

'Taking these three points together I can see no good reason to vaccinate under-18s, let alone 12-year-olds.'

But the move to jab healthy kids for Covid has been backed by several experts who warn that letting the virus rip through schools could result in more disruptions to education and force lockdown restrictions to be rolled back.

Dr Clarke told MailOnline: 'As long as the data that exists is that there is no greater harm from giving children jabs then children should get vaccinated, with the caveat that there is parental choice.

'There have been suggestions that the Americans, the Irish, care less about their children than we do  of course they don't. They are very sensitive about this issue as well.

'I see no evidence that there is a problem with vaccinating children.'

He said the decision not to inoculate children before they returned to school was a 'missed window of opportunity' because the jabs could have reduced transmission of the virus.

Britain has been accused of being sluggish to roll out the Covid vaccine to other age groups, as its vaccination drive fell behind other countries.

US regulators approved Pfizer's jab for 12 to 15-year-olds in May, and has already got at least one dose to 40 per cent (7million) of the age group.

The EU's regulator also gave the age group the green light to get the jab at the end of May, with many countries quick to start rolling it out.

France began inoculating 12 to 15-year-olds in June, and more than 40 per cent (2million) have already received a first dose.

Italy started rolling out jabs to the age group from July with the aim of inoculating them before schools return. The Netherlands also began rolling out the jabs to secondary school children in July.

Should the UK jab 12-year-olds? Experts say it's 'unethical' to vaccinate children to protect adults from Covid and claim kids may get 'better immunity' if they catch virus naturally  but others warn of school closures and lockdown curbs if we don't

Scientists and ministers were at war today over whether the UK should be routinely vaccinating children against Covid now that the majority of Western countries are doing so.

British advisers are resisting growing pressure to roll out jabs to healthy 12 to 15-year-olds despite the US, France, Spain, Italy, Canada, Norway and the Netherlands all pressing ahead with the move.

The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI)  an independent body which advises the UK Government on the Covid jab roll-out  claims it's still not clear if the benefits outweigh the risks.

Experts pushing back against the plans today argued that it would be 'ethically dubious' to jab children solely to protect adults, because Covid itself poses such a tiny risk to youngsters.

Others believe it is better for children to catch Covid and recover to develop natural immunity than to be reliant on protection from vaccines, which studies suggest wanes in months.

Professor Paul Hunter, an epidemiologist at the University of East Anglia, told MailOnline: 'It is one thing to say have a vaccine to protect your health, but quite another thing to persuade you to have a vaccine to protect my health. One is entirely ethical and the other is dubious.'

And Professor David Livermore, a medical microbiologist at the same university, said natural infection could be a 'a better first step in the lifelong co-existence' with the virus than rolling out the jabs.

But the move to jab healthy kids for Covid has been backed by several experts who warn that letting the virus rip through schools could result in more disruptions to education and force lockdown restrictions to be rolled back.

Dr Simon Clarke, a microbiologist at Reading University, told MailOnline today that he would feel comfortable vaccinating children so long as their parents consented.

He said the wider benefits to keeping schools open and infection rates low outweighed any small risks of side effects from the jabs.

And in a letter written to the Education Secretary today, a group of scientists said the wider effects curbs would have on children's learning, health and wellbeing meant it was 'reckless' to send secondary children to classes unvaccinated.

The JCVI is believed to be concerned about the small risk of heart inflammation in young people.

Children have only a small risk of becoming seriously ill with Covid and a vanishingly small chance of death, while the jabs are associated with rare cases of myocarditis in young people.

The JCVI said in July there was a risk of the heart inflammation in about one in 20,000 young people after being fully immunised with Pfizer's vaccine.

The Moderna jab, which works in a very similar way, is thought to carry the same risk.

The JCVI ruled against recommending the vaccine to healthy children then because the risk of dying from the virus for them is lower than one in a million.

A total of 259 children have been admitted to ICU with Covid in England since the pandemic began and all but 22 had underlying health issues. At least six children with no underlying health conditions have died from the virus.

Professor Hunter said today he was against vaccinating children, although he had faith that whatever decision the JCVI comes to will have been the most informed.

He told MailOnline: 'The issue around whether we should be vaccinating 12 to 15-year-olds is whether there is enough vaccine to go around people who are vulnerable worldwide.'

Professor Hunter added that as the direct benefit of vaccines to children was small because Covid is a mild illness for the overwhelming majority of them.

Covid cases in Scotland soared 170% in the fortnight after schools went back, official data shows  amid fears the rest of UK is next Scotland's Covid cases soared by more than two and a half times in the fortnight after schools went back from the summer break, official figures showed today  in a clear warning sign to the rest of the country. The Office for National Statistics' weekly surveillance report estimated 69,500 Scots, or one in 75 people, were infected with the virus on any given day in the week to August 27, up 170 per cent. In England infections have plateaued but remain stubbornly high with the ONS estimating 766,100 people had Covid last week or one in 70, barely a change from the previous seven-day spell. Experts fear infections could spiral as children returned to classrooms in England, Wales and Northern Ireland this week. The UK's vaccine advisory panel is being lobbied hard by ministers, politicians and some scientists to give the green light to rolling out the vaccine to 12 to 15-year-olds but it has so far resisted the calls. Britain is becoming an international outlier with France, the US, Canada, Spain, Italy and the Netherlands all already administering jabs to over-12s. Last night Norway became the latest country to OK the move. But some experts say letting children get Covid naturally is a better way to create immunity because the virus itself poses such a low risk to them, whereas the vaccines come with dangerous side effects in rare cases. The spike in Scotland has also led to growing calls for No10's vaccine advisory body to recommend a mass booster campaign. But it could be weeks before it is signed off. Advertisement

He said he would prefer to see the doses shipped to developing nations which are struggling to get first doses to vulnerable people.

And he raised doubts about whether it was ethical to vaccinate children against a mild disease in the first place.

'If we are going to be vaccinating these children it has got to be in their interest, not in ours,' he said.

'It is one thing to say have a vaccine to protect your health, but quite another thing to persuade you to have a vaccine to protect my health. One is entirely ethical and the other is dubious.'

Professor David Livermore, a medical microbiologist at the University of East Anglia, said last week that the world will need to live with Covid for years if not decades  so having a generation of children with natural immunity would help prevent cases spiralling later down the line.

He said natural infection could be a 'a better first step in the lifelong co-existence' with the virus than rolling out the jabs.

He added: 'There is no direct reason to vaccinate children and adolescents against Covid. They are extremely unlikely to suffer severe disease if infected.

'Rare but serious side effects have been associated with the vaccines, including blood clots and myocarditis. For older adults and the vulnerable, these are small hazards compared with those from Covid infection, and being vaccinated is obviously prudent.

'But for children the risk/benefit ratio is far less clear, and may reverse. The JCVI initially were against vaccinating children on this logic and have provided no clear reason for a change of view.

'Taking these three points together I can see no good reason to vaccinate under-18s, let alone 12-year-olds.'

And Professor Tim Spector, an epidemiologist at King's College London, told MailOnline vaccinating children would 'use up' Britain's supply of jabs designated for boosters for the clinically vulnerable this winter.

Professor Spector said while vaccinating would reduce cases 'in an ideal world', in the immediate term it could take up supply intended for booster shots to older, more vulnerable people who's own immunity from vaccines given earlier in the year may be on the wane.

He added: 'With vaccinating children you are going to reduce numbers of infections, but if you do that that means you use up your boosters and so you risk more deaths and hospitalisations at the other end of the spectrum.

'In the ideal world I would be in favour of doing both [booster shots for the elderly and vaccines for over-12s] but I definitely think we should be giving boosters to kids that have had natural infections.'

But an equal number of scientists say that vaccinating children would have indirect benefits to them, such as keeping them in education and avoiding future lockdowns which took a toll on young people's mental health.

A group of 12 scientists on Independent SAGE - a group which has attacked the Government for not being strict enough in controlling the virus - wrote to Education Secretary Gavin Williamson today to call for children to receive the vaccine for exactly that reason.

In the letter published in the BMJ they argued that policies in England mean there will soon be a large population who are 'susceptible' to the virus mixing in crowded spaces with 'hardly any mitigations'.

WHAT ARE THE PROS AND CONS OF VACCINATING CHILDREN? Pros Protecting adults The main argument in favour of vaccinating children is in order to prevent them keeping the virus in circulation long enough for it to transmit back to adults. Experts fear that unvaccinated children returning to classrooms in September could lead to a boom in cases among people in the age group, just as immunity from jabs dished out to older generations earlier in the year begins to wane. This could trigger another wave of the virus if left unchecked, with infection levels triggering more hospitalisations and deaths than seen during the summer. Avoiding long Covid in children While the risk of serious infection from Covid remains low in most children, scientists are still unsure of the long-term effects the virus may have on them. Concerns have been raised in particular about the incidence of long Covid  the little understood condition when symptoms persist for many more weeks than normal  in youngsters. A study released last night by King's College London showed fewer than two per cent of children who develop Covid symptoms continue to suffer with them for more than eight weeks. Just 25 of the 1,734 children studied  0.01 per cent  suffered symptoms for longer than a year. Cons Health risks Extremely rare incidences of a rare heart condition have been linked to the Pfizer vaccine in youngsters. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Protection (CDC) in the US  where 9million 12- to 17-year-olds have already been vaccinated  shows there is around a one in 14,500 to 18,000 chance of boys in the age group developing myocarditis after having their second vaccine dose. This is vanishingly small. For comparison, the chance of finding a four-leaf clover is one in 10,000, and the chance of a woman having triplets is one in 4,478. The risk is higher than in 18- to 24-year-olds (one in 18,000 to 22,000), 25- to 29-year-olds (one in 56,000 to 67,000) and people aged 30 and above (one in 250,000 to 333,000). But, again, this is very low. Britain's drug regulator the MHRA lists the rare heart condition as a very rare side-effect of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. They said: 'There have been very rare reports of myocarditis and pericarditis (the medical term for the condition) occurring after vaccination. These are typically mild cases and individuals tend to recover within a short time following standard treatment and rest.' More than four times as many hospitalisations were prevented as there were cases of myocarditis caused by the vaccine in 12- to 17-year-olds, the health body's data show. Jabs should be given to other countries Experts have also claimed it would be better to donate jabs intended for teenagers in the UK to other countries where huge swathes of the vulnerable population remain unvaccinated. Not only would this be a moral move but it is in the UK's own interest because the virus will remain a threat to Britain as long as it is rampant anywhere in the world. Most countries across the globe are lagging significantly behind the UK in terms of their vaccine rollout, with countries in Africa, Southeast Asia and South America remaining particularly vulnerable. Jabs could be better used vaccinating older people in those countries, and thus preventing the virus from continuing to circulate globally and mutate further, than the marginal gains to transmission Britain would see if children are vaccinated, experts argue. Professor David Livermore, from the University of East Anglia, has said: 'Limited vaccine supplies would be far better used in countries and regions with large vulnerable elderly populations who presently remain unvaccinated  Australia, much of South East Asia and Latin America, as well as Africa.' Advertisement

They said children have suffered 'significant harms' on their education and wellbing in the pandemic and added: 'Allowing mass infection of children is therefore reckless.'

Earlier school reopenings in Scotland and the US have shown that a lack of 'adequate mitigations' is likely to lead to the virus spreading among children, which could further disrupt learning with significant absences due to student and staff illness, they said.

'England's policies mean that we will soon have a large susceptible population with high prevalence of infection mixing in crowded environments with hardly any mitigations.'

Other signatories include members of the Parent SafeEdForAll group and the National Education Union.

UK medical regulators cleared the Pfizer jab for use on 12- to 15-year-olds in June, declaring it 'safe and effective in this age group'. The Moderna vaccine was also authorised last month.

Ministers had hoped to vaccinate children during the school holidays to prevent a repeat of the massive disruption seen in schools over the past 18 months.

However, with schools already going back this week and next, hundreds of thousands of pupils will be mixing for weeks before any rollout is approved by the JCVI  if it is approved at all.

Dr Clarke told MailOnline: 'As long as the data that exists is that there is no greater harm from giving children jabs then children should get vaccinated, with the caveat that there is parental choice.

'There have been suggestions that the Americans, the Irish, care less about their children than we do  of course they don't. They are very sensitive about this issue as well.

'I see no evidence that there is a problem with vaccinating children.'

He said the decision not to inoculate children before they returned to school was a 'missed window of opportunity' because the jabs could have reduced transmission of the virus.

SAGE adviser Professor Calum Semple, from Liverpool University, echoed the scientists views last week, saying that without vaccines children faced yet more 'disruption' to their education in the new academic year.

The Liverpool University expert told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: 'If you treat children the same way you do with adults, where if you have got double vaccination you no longer need to isolate, that would then allow us to have schools carrying on without such disruption.

'I think we need to look at vaccinating these children not just as an individual benefit but a benefit to the root, a benefit to the whole of society and school and the education system.'

Professor Devi Sridhar, a public health expert at Edinburgh University, said last week that children should get vaccines to stop the Delta variant 'flying through' schools as they reopen.

England's chief medical officer Professor Chris Whitty said in June that he backed vaccinating children to avoid any further disruption to their education.

Clinical studies show that vaccines cut the risk of the virus spreading between people, but real-world data suggests they may only reduce this by as much as half.

For comparison, jabs drastically cut the risk of someone being hospitalised or dying from the virus. This is already vanishingly small for children.

Other scientists are, however, more skeptical about offering vaccines to the age group.

A Whitehall source said there was 'palpable frustration' among Government figures with the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), which has so far not approved the jab.

Both Boris Johnson and Health Secretary Sajid Javid are said to be keen to get on with vaccinating secondary school children.

Ministers fear the new academic year will trigger a fresh wave of the virus in classrooms. This means that without a jab, children could face more disruption to their education throughout autumn and winter.

But the JCVI, which is independent of Government, yesterday warned that a decision on the issue was 'finely balanced', with one senior committee member bristling at the idea that it should respond to political pressure.

Another said the committee would not be bounced into vaccinating younger children just because many other countries were now doing so.

Last night one Whitehall source admitted: 'There is palpable frustration that this is taking so long. The jabs have been approved for months, other countries have been doing it safely for months  we are becoming an outlier.

'In the meantime, we have missed the window of opportunity in the summer and the schools are going back.'

Publicly, Downing Street insists the matter is purely for the JCVI. But while another Whitehall source said the JCVI had 'done a great job' at the start of the vaccination programme, they acknowledged the length of time taken by the committee over children was frustrating.

'Everything is in place to get this rolled out,' the source said. 'We just need a decision.'

Speaking at the weekend, Mr Javid said vaccinating all teenagers would 'solidify our wall of protection'.

The move is also backed by Transport Secretary Grant Shapps, who has warned that countries like Malta are already insisting all over-12s must quarantine on arrival unless they have been fully vaccinated.

A Government source has predicted take-up among younger children would be as high as 16- and 17-year-olds, if and when the green light is given.

Most Covid curbs have been lifted in schools in England, with children now only required to test themselves twice a week for the virus.

Only those that test positive for the virus will be sent home, but their peers and classmates will be allowed to stay in school providing they test negative. The change came after the 'bubble system' sent entire year groups home after just one positive test was detected.

Britain has been accused of being sluggish to roll out the Covid vaccine to other age groups, as its vaccination drive fell behind other countries.

US regulators approved Pfizer's jab for 12 to 15-year-olds in May, and has already got at least one dose to 40 per cent (7million) of the age group.

The EU's regulator also gave the age group the green light to get the jab at the end of May, with many countries quick to start rolling it out.

France began inoculating 12 to 15-year-olds in June, and more than 40 per cent (2million) have already received a first dose.

Italy started rolling out jabs to the age group from July with the aim of inoculating them before schools return. The Netherlands also began rolling out the jabs to secondary school children in July.

An earlier version of this story included outdated figures on child Covid hospital admissions and fatalities in England. There have been at least six Covid deaths among under-18s with no underlying conditions, not zero, as was previously reported.

The article also clarifies that the 259 Covid admissions among healthy children refers to intensive care units (ICUs). There have been almost 3,000 general Covid admissions involving healthy children in England.
Independent Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta leaked an audio file Thursday which appears to reveal alleged efforts to rig votes in Russia's upcoming parliamentary elections.

In the recording, a woman who is believed to be Zhanna Prokofieva, an adviser to Korolyov's mayor, said to workers at an election seminar that 'we are interested in a specific figure and a specific party - 4245% according to the party list.'

Though she did not specify the party in question during the recording, the woman reportedly told workers on several occasions that Vladimir Putin's 'United Russia' party should receive special 'services', such as information about hourly election turnouts.

The recording was made by an unnamed participant in a training session of election workers in the Moscow region city of Korolyov according to Novaya Gazeta.

It comes just weeks ahead of Russia's parliamentary elections on September 17 - a vital event as the elected parliament will remain beyond 2024 when Vladimir Putin is supposed to leave office in the next presidential election.

Zhanna Prokofieva is an adviser to the mayor of Korolyov and is supposedly the woman heard in the recording telling workers how to manipulate parliamentary votes

The parliament elected this year will sit until 2026 - this is a crucial timeframe as Vladimir Putin is supposed to leave his presidential office in 2024

Novaya Gazeta said three different individuals who listened to the recording identified the woman as Prokofieva, who left her position as head of the CEC's Korolyov office in 2016 after alleged corruption and a voting scandal in the parliamentary elections of the same year.

The woman in the recording explains how to prepare duplicate electoral lists in order to falsify votes and mislead observers and voters alike, as well as how to forge signatures.

Following the leak of the audio file, Russia's Central Election Commission (CEC) announced on Friday that a 'rapid response' team had been dispatched to study the recording.

'If the information is corroborated, then those involved will be inevitably punished with criminal liability, especially if it is is certified as a group conspiracy,' they said.

The CEC also declared it had attempted to contact the Prosecutor General, the Chairman of the Investigative Committee, the Governor of the Moscow region and the Chairman of the Moscow Region Election Commission to request that they 'urgently take all necessary measures' to prevent possible fraud in the election.

Last month, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe said it would not send observers to verify the voting process because Russia had imposed unacceptable restrictions on numbers.

Putin's United Russia party is struggling against historically low popularity ratings ahead of the election in its attempt to maintain a supermajority in Russia's Parliament or 'Duma'.

United Russia is struggling against historically low popularity ratings ahead of the election in its attempt to maintain a supermajority in Russia's Parliament or 'Duma'.

In 2018, Russia's government proposed a considerable increase in the retirement age for Russian citizens (for men from 60 to 65 and for women from 55 to 63), which was approved by Putin in October 2018 despite mass protests.

Then in 2020, the government's opposition leader and anti-corruption activist Alexey Navalny was poisoned and almost killed with nerve agent Novichok, before being after his return to Russia early this year following a month of recovery in a German hospital.

A series of Navalnys associates have been barred from taking part in the September 19 elections, while Golos, the leading organisation of what is a small number of election monitoring groups in Russia, had its operations severely restricted when it was placed on a list of 'foreign agents' by Russian authorities.

Meanwhile, the CEC previously declared it would run live-streams of polling stations, but came under criticism after it announced access to the streams would only be available to its own workers and the candidates and political parties taking part in the elections, effectively preventing an outside independent organisation to verify the process.
Uber is again delaying the reopening of its corporate offices as COVID cases continue to surge across the country.

Employees at the rideshare company were initially expected to return to offices on a part-time basis this month, before the date was pushed back to October.

But on Thursday, the company announced corporate workers will not be allowed back until next January, citing the highly-contagious Delta variant as cause for the delay.

Uber has now given a tentative office reopening date of January 10, 2022.

The news comes despite the fact company has mandated that all office employees are vaccinated. Uber has close to 10,000 corporate employees across the US.

Uber is again delaying the reopening of its corporate offices as COVID cases continue to surge across the country. An Uber office is pictured

Uber says employees will be able to work a 'hybrid model' when offices are eventually reopened. They will still be able to work from home at least two days of the week.

The announcement follows a similar one made by Google on Wednesday.

The tech giant declared that they have also pushed back office reopenings until January of next year in light of the Delta variant.

On Thursday, the United States reported more than 180,000 new COVID cases - a majority of which are the Delta strain. In recent weeks, the country has been seeing a number of infections similar to the pandemic's peak, which occurred last winter.

Last month, Uber caused controversy after CEO Dara Khosrowshahi stated the company would not require its drivers to get vaccinated against COVID-19 even though it has mandated the shot for its corporate office-based staff.

'When you get to the numbers in the hundreds of millions, which is what we're talking about as far as riders and drivers go, to put that responsibility, that kind of decision making power, on a company I don't think is right,' Khosrowshahi told CNBC at the time.

Instead of having the company mandate vaccines, Ubers boss said it would be better to keep encouraging drivers and riders alike to voluntarily get the shot.

We think that the push, which we completely support, should be for the government to get people vaccinated as quickly as possible so we can get back to life, he said.

'Based on circumstances were seeing now, we think the best path forward is for us and the government, and weve certainly played our part, to push vaccinations ... to really get the vaccination rates up, we think thats the best way forward.

However, Khosrowshahi said it was an 'easy call' to require vaccines for Uber's thousands of corporate staff.

'You're spending time together in an office, eight hours a day, 10 hours a day,' he stated.
California education authorities have uncovered a massive scam attempt involving thousands of federal financial applications made by fake college students.

On Thursday, U.S. education officials subsequently issued warnings to thousands of colleges and universities nationwide after over 65,000 scam applications were found, made by bot accounts.

The California Student Aid Commission discovered 105 of 116 colleges in the state's community college system had been targeted by the suspect applications.

Those included were Cerritos, Pasadena, Chaffey and eight of the nine campuses in the Los Angeles Community College District, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Alarm bells started ringing for California student aid official Patrick Perry when he began making a routine check of federal financial aid records, he told the Times.

He found that 60,000 more aid applications had been made by first-time applicants who were older than 30, earned less than $40,000 per-year, and were seeking to complete a two-year degree rather than a vocational certificate.

California Community College officials declined to tell the newspaper whether any of the fake students making fraudulent applications had received financial aid.

'I can't tell you whether any money has gone out or not, but my guess is probably not,' Perry said. 'I think we've caught it.'

California education authorities have uncovered a massive scam attempt involving thousands of federal financial applications made by fake college students. Pictured: The Los Angeles City College Student Union building is seen in Los Angeles, Thursday, Sept. 2, 2021

The surge in applications began in May and continued through to the middle of August, all of which shared the similar characteristics.

Student aid officials and colleges also found other red flags, including multiple applicants using the same phone number or address.

California's state community college system implemented new software to detect bots in July, and stricter measures have been introduced this month.

Colleges are now required to report the number of cases of suspected and confirmed registration fraud, as well as the confirmed number of incidents of financial fraud and its monetary value, according to the LA Times.

Colleges that give out funds to ineligible applicants are now required to return the funds to the U.S. Department of Education.

Speaking on Thursday, federal education officials said they wanted to give a national warning about the suspected fraud and remind colleges how to prevent it.

'Federal Student Aid is working with law enforcement partners and postsecondary institutions to stop the suspected financial aid fraud,' Federal Student Aid chief operating officer Richard Cordray, said in a statement.

'While the investigation is ongoing, our work includes determining what, if any, federal taxpayer dollars were disbursed and recovering those funds.

'We notified financial aid administrators at thousands of institutions across the country and recommended actions they can take to prevent fraud, as well as protect individuals. We also will take the necessary steps to prevent this type of suspected fraud in the future,' Cordray added.]

Speaking to the LA Times, Perry - director of policy, research and data for the California Student Aid Commission - recalled finding the fraudulent applications.

Officials detected more than 65,000 fake financial aid applications to California community colleges in what is believed to be a massive attempted financial aid scam

'We were kind of scratching our heads going, 'Did or didn't 60,000 extra older adult students really attempt to apply to community colleges here in the last few months?'' he said.

He alerted Community college officials in the state last week, with college and student aid officials going on to uncover what is thought to be one of the state's biggest financial aid scams.

Perry said that since uncovering the applications a week earlier, the number of suspected fraudulent had surpassed 65,000.

In July, it was announced that federal student aid officials would waive most verification requirements for aid applications for the 2021-22 academic year.

This was done 'in order to provide relief to students and colleges facing challenges resulting from the COVID-19 emergency,' they said at the time.

One such requirement that was waved was proof of income, which had been criticized as being a slow process that disproportionately impacts low-income families.

Pictured: Woman wearing a mask due to the Coronavirus Pandemic walks past Pasadena City. The California Student Aid Commission found that 105 of 116 colleges in the state's community college system had been targeted by the suspect applications, including Pasadena

Officials argued waiving such requirements is expected to help about 200,000 more students of color and those from low-income backgrounds to enroll in college.

Colleges are still required to get verification of identity, high school completion and educational purpose.

However, they suspended in-person submission of notary requirements and introduced other methods of flexibility due to the pandemic.

'This has been an exceptionally tough year,' Cordray said in a statement in July, announcing the changes to the financial aid application process.

'We need to ensure students have the most straightforward path to acquiring the financial aid they need to enroll in college and continue their path to a degree.

'Targeting verification to focus on identity theft and fraud this aid cycle, ensures we address immediate student needs, continue to protect the integrity of the Federal Pell Grant Program, and reduce barriers to access for underserved students.'

On Thursday, a reminder was posted by student aid officials that colleges are still required to verify a student's identity.
Former President Trump is 'about ready' to announce his run for the presidency in 2024, according to Rep. Jim Jordan.

'President Trump, he's going to run again,' the congressman said in a clip released by Undercurrent TV journalist Lauren Windsor.

'You think so?' another person in the conversation is heard saying. 'I know so, yeah, I talked to him yesterday,' Jordan said, speaking at a Dallas County GOP event in Iowa.

'He's about ready to announce after all of this craziness in Afghanistan,' the Ohio Republican continued.

Windsor teased Jordan's claim on Twitter before releasing the clip. After she tweeted Jordan's remarks, a spokesperson for the congressman claimed he didn't say that.

'Apparently Jim Jordan's spokesperson has claimed he did not tell me tonight that Trump is imminently announcing his run for 2024. We can't both be right. See for yourself, video coming tomorrow... stay tuned,' Windsor wrote before later releasing the full clip.

DailyMail.com has reached out to Jordan's office for comment.

Meanwhile, former Trump adviser Jason Miller said Thursday that he is nearly positive Trump will run again.

'I would say somewhere between 99 and 100%. I think he is definitely running in 2024,' Miller told Cheddar's J.D. Durkin.

'He's about ready to announce after all of this craziness in Afghanistan,' the Ohio Republican Rep. Jim Jordan said

'Let me put it this way, I think you'll be happy and I think a lot of our friends will be very happy,' Trump said on if he'd run again

'President Trump, he's going to run again,' the congressman said in a clip released by Undercurrent TV journalist Lauren Windsor

EXCLUSIVE-->



Jim Jordan: President Trump, he's gonna run again.

Pete: You think so?

Jordan: I know so. Yeah, I talked to him yesterday. He's about ready to announce after all of this craziness in Afghanistan... pic.twitter.com/Ndogdm7Ipl  Lauren Windsor (@lawindsor) September 3, 2021

The former president has remained elusive on his 2024 plans, and even claimed he wasn't 'legally' allowed to say whether he'd run.

But in August, he gave telling remarks to Fox News host Sean Hannity who asked if he'd run again.

'As the campaign finance laws are extremely complicated and unbelievably stupid, I'm actually not allowed to answer that question, can you believe it?' Trump said.

He continued: 'I'd love to answer it. But let me put it this way, I think you'll be happy and I think a lot of our friends will be very happy. But I'm not actually allowed answer it, it makes things very difficult if I do.'

He also teased a possible bid in an interview on 'The Truth with Lisa Boothe.'

'We won it twice. I've won it twice and now I have to win it again,' Trump said, again making false claims that he won the 2020 election. 'I guess if we're going to save the country, look ... I'll make a decision.'

Trump revealed earlier this week he would soon visit Iowa, home to the first-in-the-nation caucus.

'I would say somewhere between 99 and 100%. I think he is definitely running in 2024,' former Trump advisor Stephen Miller told Cheddar's J.D. Durkin

Former Trump adviser Jason Miller says he talked to Trump last night and its pretty clear that hes running in 2024.



I would say somewhere between 99 and 100%. I think he is definitely running in 2024. pic.twitter.com/tFQDor78Tv  Andrew Solender (@AndrewSolender) September 3, 2021

Trump appeared on the Todd Starnes Show where he boasted about the crowd size at his rallies in Alabama and Ohio.

'We're doing some more,' he said. 'We're going to Iowa. We're going to Georgia. We're going to some others.'

Other rumored would-be candidates have already made trips to Iowa this year, including former Vice President Mike Pence, former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

Republicans eyeing up a 2024 run are stuck in limbo until the former president makes his decision, as Trump is still favored to win the nomination in most polls of GOP voters.
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A knifeman with links to ISIS who went on a stabbing rampage injuring at least six people while screaming 'Allah Allah' will remain unnamed after a New Zealand judge imposed a gagging order protecting the jihadist and his family's privacy.

The attacker, identified only as 'S', was a 32-year-old Sri Lankan man who moved to the country in 2011, but was placed under 24/7 police surveillance having recently been released from prison on terror-related charges.

He was shot dead by armed police officers after injuring at least six people in a terror attack in a West Auckland supermarket on Friday afternoon.

The Islamist's identity will remain shielded under New Zealand's stringent privacy laws, after a High Court judge ruled the knifeman's family must have at least 24 hours to give his family an 'opportunity to seek a suppression order'.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern described 'S' as an 'ISIS-inspired known threat,' adding that he was 'under constant police surveillance' since 2016 as she is set to face a grilling over New Zealand's tepid anti-terror laws that let a known Islamist roam freely.

Despite fears 'S' was been planning a terror attack, courts previously ruled he could only be convicted of lesser charges of possessing ISIS propaganda, resulting in a menial jail sentence despite police knowing he was 'extremely dangerous' and 'very likely to carry out an attack'.

His six victims are tonight fighting for their lives in hospitals across New Zealand's north island. Three of those who received stab wounds were described as being in a 'critical' condition, with injuries to the neck and chest.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern (right) revealed on Friday the 32-year-old Sri Lankan national (left) was considered one of the nation's most dangerous extremists and was watched 24/7 since 2016. He arrived in New Zealand in 2011

Amit Nand (left) recalled how he confronted the knife-wielding terrorist, who Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern (right) said was a known threat risk 'under constant surveillance' with a pole

Six people were rushed to hospitals across New Zealand's north island on Friday afternoon while the knifeman died inside the Countdown supermarket in New Lynn

Legal experts have slammed New Zealand's flimsy anti-terror laws, which have allowed significant 'gaps' in legislature to sneak through.

Alexander Gillespie, a professor of law at the University of Waikato, said: 'This was apparent from the middle of last year, about the planning or preparation for a terror offence... if you're convicted of that then you can go to jail for up to seven years with the proposed new law coming through,' reports the New Zealand Herald.

It comes as a heroic shopper revealed how he attacked knife-wielding 'S' at a New Zealand supermarket with a pole just seconds before the terrorist was shot dead by police.

Amit Nand said he saw a woman lying on the floor bleeding before confronting the attacker who stabbed six shoppers at a West Auckland supermarket on Friday afternoon.

'A lot of people were running my way saying run, just run out of the building,' Mr Nand told The Project New Zealand on Friday night.

'Then I saw a lady laying on the floor there bleeding and she was like 'help, help'. And I thought to myself 'I've got to do something' and then I saw the guy with the knife.'

He said the attacker had a large knife on him and was repeating 'Allah, Allah' as he lunged at shoppers at the Countdown supermarket in New Lynn Mall.

Another shopper at the supermarket had a pole and gave it to Nand, who grabbed it and told the terrorist to drop the knife he was wielding.

'I saw the guy with the knife and he's like 'Allah, Allah' with the knife up,' Mr Nand said.

'I had another guy come in front of me and he was a cop and was like 'I'm an undercover cop, step back step back, I'm going to shoot him'.'

Nand stepped back and heard five shots. He said that by looking at him, he knew the terrorist wanted to kill people.

The shots can be heard in mobile phone footage captured from outside the supermarket's entrance as frightened shoppers rush past.

A commotion inside the store can be seen as the camera pans past a trail of blood leading from the entrance.

Mr Nand recalled how he grabbed tea towels and nappies from the shelves to try to stop the injured from bleeding out.

The six injured were left fighting for life in hospitals across New Zealand's north island on Friday night. Three of the victims were described as being in a 'critical' condition, with neck and chest wounds.

Two others were in a 'moderate' condition and another was in a 'serious' condition.

The knifeman is known to have posted a warning to 'Kiwi scums' on social media after receiving a formal warning from police over his disturbing internet searches and purchases.

On Friday, the man was followed by police from his home all the way to the supermarket where he grabbed a knife from a shelf and began his attack.

There had been fears of an imminent terror attack in the wake of the Taliban takeover and the chaotic departure of Western powers from Afghanistan, with extremists emboldened by the radical Islamists' return to power.

Ardern revealed that the suspect was considered one of the nation's most dangerous extremists and had been watched 24/7 since 2016, adding she was 'gutted' he was able to carry out the attack despite being on the terror watchlist.

Due to suppression orders that are already in place, the prime minister says there is information about the man's identity (pictured) and past that cannot yet be revealed

Six people were left fighting for life in hospitals across New Zealand's north island on Friday afternoon while the knifeman died inside the Countdown supermarket in New Lynn

Police Commissioner Andrew Coster said the man was 'closely watched by surveillance teams and a strategic tactical team' during this time.

'The reality is when you are surveilling someone on a 24-hour basis it is not possible to be immediately next to them,' he said.

The man arrived in New Zealand in 2011, but he had not committed sufficient crimes to be detained on a longterm basis before the attack.

TERROR CONVICTIONS... HATED 'KIWI SCUMS' - BUT ALLOWED TO WALK FREE The knifeman who was shot dead in a Countdown supermarket on Friday was known to police and politicians for his extremist views, which were largely inspired by terror group, ISIS. The man, known only as 'S' due to High Court suppression orders, arrived in New Zealand in 2011 from Sri Lanka and was first placed on the terror watchlist in 2016 after authorities were alerted to extremist posts he made on social media. Some of the videos he shared online depicted war-related violence, a clear approval of violent extremism and pledging his support for ISIS, New Zealand Herald reported. He received an official warning from police but continued to post the material, including a comment which read: 'One day I will go back to my country and I will find kiwi scums in my country... and I will show them... what will happen when you mess with S while I'm in their country. If you're tough in your country... we are tougher in our country scums #payback'. 'S' reportedly told a worshiper at a mosque that he hoped to join ISIS in Syria and was detained at Auckland International Airport in 2017 after booking a one-way flight to Singapore. He spent a year in custody before pleading guilty to distributing restricted material, earning a supervision order in 2018. The day after he was released from prison, 'S' was arrested by counterterrorism police who followed him as he purchased a hunting knife. Internet search history reportedly found he'd researched how to kill 'non-believers'. Police hoped to prosecute 'S' under the Terrorism Suppression Act 2002, but it was determined that preparing a terrorist attack was not an offence under the legislation, given he had not carried out any attacks. He was prosecuted on lesser charges of possessing propaganda in support of ISIS. During his trial, 'S' reportedly told the jury: 'You're worried about one knife, I am telling you I will buy 10 knives. It's about my rights.' S had reportedly performed internet searches asking about the guidelines of 'lone-wolf mujahideen', knife attacks and prison conditions in New Zealand.Following his release from prison, he was kept under 24/7 surveillance by police, who followed him from his home to the store on Friday. Advertisement

'What happened today was despicable, hateful and wrong,' she said. 'It was carried out by an individual, not a faith or religion. He was gripped by violent and ISIS-inspired ideology that is not supported here.

'This was a violent attack. It was senseless. And I am so sorry that it happened.'

A surveillance team and special tactics group monitored the man at all times and plain clothes officers were able to shoot and kill him within 60 seconds of launching the attack after detectives were so close they 'heard' the commotion.

Due to suppression orders that are already in place, Ardern says there is information about the man's identity and details of his past criminal history that cannot yet be revealed.

She vowed to share any further details 'within the confines of the law' if the court lifted suppression orders in the wake of his death.

But Auckland's mayor Phil Goff said it is 'frustrating' that Ardern cannot reveal more details about the attacker.

Suppression orders are normally applied automatically under a statute or are ordered by a judge during a trial process.

Some people can argue for name suppression to protect their reputation, while it can also be granted because of ongoing court proceedings in which releasing their name could cause potential prejudice.

Suppression orders have to be lifted by a judge and still apply after death. It is not known why the order was applied to the attacker.

The prime minister said: 'He was known to our national security agencies, was of concern and was being monitored constantly. There are very few people that fall into this category.'

She reiterated that if the offender had committed a crime in the past that would have allowed authorities to put him in prison, 'that's where he would have been'.

'The reason he was in the community is because within the law we could not put him anywhere else. His past behaviour was, within the threshold of the law, not enough to put him in prison.'

The attack has stirred painful memories of the Christchurch mosque shootings in March 2019, New Zealand's worst terror atrocity, when a white supremacist gunman murdered 51 Muslim worshippers and severely wounded another 40.

Ardern said: 'The fact that he was in the community will be an illustration that we haven't succeeded in using the law to the extent we would have liked.

'I know that we've been doing everything that we could, so I was absolutely gutted.'

The 32-year-old offender reportedly landed himself on terror watchlists after twice buying hunting knives and being found to possess Islamic State propaganda videos, NZHerald reported.

After receiving an official warning from police over his internet search history and purchases, 'S' continued to consume extremist content online online and posted the following warning on social media:

'One day I will go back to my country and I will find Kiwi scums in my country... and I will show them... what will happen when you mess with S while I'm in their country. If you're tough in your country... we are tougher in our country scums #payback,' he wrote.

In May 2017, he was arrested at Auckland International Airport after booking a one-way ticket to Singapore.

A subsequent search of his apartment uncovered weapons and images of him posing with an air rifle and hunting knife, the New Zealand Herald reported.

He was held in custody without bail for more than a year and eventually pleaded guilty to distributing restricted material.

A High Court judge sentenced him to supervision in 2018 because of the amount of time he had already spent in prison.

The day after he walked free from prison in 2018, 'S' purchased yet another hunting knife. He was arrested again, but was not prosecuted under the liberal country's terrorism laws, which police, politicians and judicial officials have long criticised as not fit for purpose

On May 26, 2021, 'S' was back in court, where he was acquitted of possessing a graphic video and possession of an offensive weapon, the New Zealand Herald reported.

The video reportedly showed a prisoner being decapitated.

The court heard how he had performed internet searches asking about the guidelines of 'lone-wolf mujahideen', knife attacks and 'How to survive in the west a mujahid guide'.

'S' had reportedly told worshipers in his mosque that he intended to join ISIS.

He had also researched the case of ISIS supporter Imran Patel - the first person in New Zealand jailed for distributing extremist videos.

Police guard the area around Countdown LynnMall in Auckland after a violent extremist arried cout a terrorist attack on Friday

He was sentenced in July to one year of supervision to be served at a West Auckland mosque, the paper said.

Police had hoped to prosecute 'S' under the Terrorism Suppression Act 2002, but it was determined that preparing a terrorist attack was not an offence under the legislation, given he had not carried out any attacks.

He was prosecuted on lesser charges of possessing propaganda in support of ISIS.

During his trial, 'S' reportedly told the jury: 'You're worried about one knife, I am telling you I will buy 10 knives. It's about my rights.'

Justice Matthew Downs in his ruling acknowledged the dangers of 'lone wolf terrorist attacks' and appeared to suggest that New Zealand's current terror legislation was not fit for purpose.

'Terrorism is a great evil. 'Lone wolf' terrorist attacks with knives and other makeshift weapons, such as cars or trucks, are far from unheard of. Recent events in Christchurch demonstrate New Zealand should not be complacent,' he said.

'Some among us are prepared to use lethal violence for ideological, political or religious causes. The absence of an offence of planning or preparing a terrorist act ... could be an Achilles' heel.

He concluded: 'It is not open to a Court to create an offence, whether in the guise of statutory construction or otherwise. The issue is for Parliament.'

Justice Downs' concerns were echoed by an inquiry into the Christchurch attacks.

Police and security agencies in the country have long complained that they are constricted by New Zealand's counterterrorism legislation.

The Labour government proposed new anti-terror powers in April, which officials said were partly prompted by the judgement in the case of 'S'.

The Counter-Terrorism Legislation Bill passed its first reading in May and is currently with the country's select committee before a second reading is held.

The proposed legislation would criminalise preparing to launch a terrorist attack, update the legal definition of a terrorist act and criminalise 'wider forms of material support for terrorist activities or organisations'.

Ardern reiterated several times on Friday afternoon that the Countdown attack was the work of 'an individual, not a faith'.

Disturbing footage of the attack was shared online, showing customers running to safety as at least 10 police units swarmed the surrounding streets.

'Holy f**k. Oh my God... Someone is in there with a knife, somebody has been stabbed,' a woman said in the footage

A witness said people were 'running out, hysterically, just screaming, yelling, scared' as an elderly man laid injured on the floor and a middle-aged woman was stabbed in the shoulder.

One bystander video taken from inside the supermarket records the sound of 10 shots being fired in rapid succession.

The offender was reportedly acting 'like a lunatic' and indiscriminately lunging at anybody in his path, the witness said.

Another woman said she heard police ordering the offender to surrender before five gunshots rang out.

Two officers were involved in shooting him dead.

The three victims who remain in a critical condition were rushed to Auckland City hospital along with a fourth person in a serious condition.

At least 10 police units were quickly on the scene and surrounded the shopping precinct before the knifeman was shot dead

Roads near the area have been blocked by officers, who are still investigating

One victim in a stable condition was taken to Waitakere Hospital while another was rushed to Middlemore Hospital.

Two of the victims were rushed straight into emergency abdominal surgery.

At least 20 frantic Countdown customers fled to safety at nearby Unichem Pharmacy, which was already brimming with about 45 patients waiting to get their Covid jab.

Customers fled the supermarket and witnesses reported chaotic scenes as police shot the knifeman dead

Staff immediately locked the doors and called for help.

'It wasn't a nice scenario. Everyone was pretty shocked and worried, but everybody is fine,' a staff member said.

At least 10 police units were quickly on the scene and surrounded the shopping precinct before the knifeman was shot dead.

The Masjid e Bilal mosque, just five kilometers away from the supermarket, is also surrounded by armed police and is believed to form part of the police investigation.

Kiri Hannifin, Countdown supermarket's general manager of safety, released a statement on Friday afternoon stating her 'heart was heavy knowing what our team and customers have witnessed'.

'We are particularly devastated that something like this has happened again in one of our stores. It's difficult to comprehend and the events of today leave our whole team in deep shock,' she said.

Just four months ago, four customers were stabbed in a random attack at a Dunedin Countdown on the nation's south island.

A 42-year-old alleged offender was arrested at the time and remains before the courts.

'The safety of our team, and our customers, is always our priority, and this is at the heart of our COVID-19 response as well. We will cooperate with the Police in any way we can to understand what's happened, and at this point we're unable to provide any further details.'

Auckland is currently in a strict lockdown as it battles an outbreak of the coronavirus. Most businesses are shut and people are generally allowed to leave their homes only to buy groceries, for medical needs or to exercise.

The store will be closed until further notice.
President Joe Biden once again on Friday ripped a new Texas abortion law that got a green light from the Supreme Court  calling its restrictions 'un-American' and saying the Justice Department was exploring options to undermine it.

Biden spoke at the White House, taking a single question on the hot button abortion topic as he prepared to head to Louisiana to view hurricane damage.

'The most pernicious thing about the Texas law, it sort of creates a vigilante system where people get rewards to go out and - anyway. And it just seems - I know this sounds ridiculous - almost unamerican what we're talking about,' the president said.

Biden also said he 'respects' but doesn't agree with people who believe life begins at conception, despite his Catholic faith opposing all forms of abortion.

'It just seems, I know this sounds ridiculous, almost un-American what we're talking about. Not to debate about, I respect people who think, who don't support Roe v. Wade. I respect their views. I respect those who believe life begins at the moment of conception and all. I respect that, don't agree, but I respect that. Not going to impose that on people,' Biden told reporters.

The Texas law deputizes private citizens to report women who get abortions and anyone who helps them to do so, even uber drivers.

Biden said he would speak more about the issue later Friday  after Democratic strategists said the abortion fight was appealing political ground after Biden has been hammered over the Afghanistan evacuation and the pandemic.

'There are possibilities within the existing law to have the Justice Department look and see whether there are things that can be done that can limit the independent action of individuals in enforcing in a federal system a state law,' Biden said  sketching out potential administration actions.

The White House has already said the Justice Department and other agencies are looking for what actions they can take to counter the law, which outlaws abortion at the time of a fetal heartbeat, about six weeks after conception.

Democrats are scrambling to find ways to counter the law, including a new bill in Congress, while Republicans have accused Biden of federal overreach by trying to undermine the Supreme Court decision.

Furious Senate Democrats are convening a Judiciary Committee hearing on such 'shadow' docket and progressive squad member Rep. Rashida Tlaib introduced a bill to set an 18-year term limit.

President Joe Biden called the abortion restrictions under new Texas law 'un-American'

University of Texas women rally at the Texas Capitol to protest Governor Greg Abbott's signing of the nation's strictest abortion law

Furious abortion rights groups have said many women at that point do not even know they are pregnant.

It was not immediately clear if the administration anticipated other agencies taking steps to get women access to abortion services outside the state of Texas.

The Catholic Church and the 'moral evil' of abortion The Catechism of the Catholic Church states: 'Since the first century the Church has affirmed the moral evil of every procured abortion. This teaching has not changed and remains unchangeable. Direct abortion, that is to say, abortion willed either as an end or a means, is gravely contrary to the moral law' In the magisterial document Donum Vitae (The Gift of Life) - the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith - affirmed that, 'The human being is to be respected and treated as a person from the moment of conception; and therefore from that same moment his rights as a person must be recognized, among which in the first place is the inviolable right of every innocent human being to life.' According to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, modern science has not changed the Church's constant teaching against abortion, but has 'underscored how important and reasonable it is, by confirming that the life of each individual of the human species begins with the earliest embryo'. The Church's principle is that each and every human life has inherent dignity, and thus must be treated with the respect due to a human person. Advertisement

'The Justice Department is deeply concerned about Texas SB8,' Attorney General Merrick Garland said. 'We are evaluating all options to protect the constitutional rights of women, including access to an abortion.'

White House deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said several federal agencies were examining options and noted Congress was also investigating what could be done.

'The President specifically tasked with Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Justice to see what steps the federal government can take to ensure that women in Texas have access to safe and legal abortions as protected by Roe, and what legal tools we have to insulate women and providers from the impact of Texas,' she said in a gaggle Friday in response to a question from DailyMail.com.

Biden's position on abortion has evolved over the years. A Roman Catholic, he told a Jesuit publication in 2015 that he he believes life begins at conception.

'I'm prepared to accept that at the moment of conception there's human life and being, but I'm not prepared to say that to other God-fearing, non-God-fearing people that have a different view,' he said.

Originally a supporter the Hyde Amendment, which for years has forbidden most federal abortion funding, particularly affecting low-income women in the Medicaid health program, Biden pledged during the 2020 campaign to submit a budget that would oppose it.

The Supreme Court, in a decision shortly before midnight Wednesday, allowed the law to remain in place while it is being litigated.

'Shadow' docket refers to 'a range of orders and summary decisions that defy [the Court's] normal procedural regularity.'

The Texas law, known as the 'Texas Heartbeat Act', bans abortion once a fetal heartbeat can be detected, which is normally after six weeks and before many women even know they are pregnant.

It makes no exceptions for rape or incest and allows Texans to report people, including Uber drivers, who help or take women to get abortions. The only exemption is if there is a danger to the woman's health.

In a twist, the Texas law bars state officials from actually enforcing it, which is by design to make it difficult to challenge in the courts.

Such a legal challenge would name state officials as defendants. Instead, the Texas law deputizes private citizens to sue anyone who performs an abortion or 'aids and abets' a procedure, such as the Uber driver.

Jen Psaki is slammed as 'bigoted and unprofessional' for telling a reporter he could not ask about abortion because he is a MAN Jen Psaki has been slammed by conservative pundits after she snapped at a male reporter who asked how President Joe Biden squares his pro-choice abortion views with his Catholic faith. Owen Jensen, a reporter for Catholic television network EWTN, quizzed Psaki on the Commander-in-chief's conflicting views during a White House Press Briefing on Thursday, following the Supreme Court's refusal to block a restrictive new abortion law in Texas. 'He [Biden] believes it's a woman's right, it's a woman's body and it's her choice. It's up to a woman to make those decisions and a woman's decision to make with her doctor,' Psaki stated. She then turned personal, telling Jensen in a dismissive manner: 'I know you have never faced those choices, nor have you ever been pregnant but for women out there who have faced those choices, this is an incredibly difficult thing and the president believes that right should be respected.' Several conservatives criticized Psaki's comment, claiming it implied that men should have no say in the abortion debate, despite expectation that they be hands-on fathers to their children. Fr. Frank Pavone, a Catholic Preist, wrote: 'Jen Psaki is still using the tired old excuse for #abortion that men cannot get pregnant. Since when does that take away a man's responsibility to defend a child from violence?' Ed Condon, the editor of Substack page The Pillar, similarly wrote: 'The fundamental premise of Jen Psaki's comments is that fathers have no intrinsic stake in the life of their children. It's also the fundamental premise of a society which views children as transferable commodities.' Jen Psaki has been slammed by conservative pundits after she snapped at a male reporter who asked how President Joe Biden squares his pro-choice abortion views with his Catholic faith Meanwhile, Brietbart editor Joel Pollack wrote: 'Telling a male reporter he can't ask a question about the president's views on abortion (has @JoeBiden never been pregnant, either, to the best of my knowledge) and religion was a real low point for Jen Psaki. It was bigoted and unprofessional. I hope she walks it back.' Some other conservatives claimed Psaki was using language that was not 'gender-inclusive' as she stated abortion was a 'woman's right' and implied that those who identify as male cannot get pregnant. In recent years, many on the left have attempted to usher in a more inclusive language to describe those who are pregnant. Recently, Democratic Rep. Cori Bush replaced 'pregnant women' with the term 'birthing people' to describe those who were expecting. 'I was told men can get pregnant and that they can chest feed,' pundit Katie Pavlich wrote beneath a clip of Psaki snapping at the male reporter. Meanwhile, Newsmax contributor Jessie Jane Duff chimed: 'Jen Psaki and her ilk actually voiced their outrage that they can't kill another human being after its heart starts to beat. They are soulless ghouls. "Her choice to stop another human beings heartbeat" isn't quite as catchy as "My body my choice". And they know it.' Pro-life advocate Lila Rose wrote: 'I've been pregnant, and it's *still* not my right, or anyone else's, to kill a baby. Being a woman or being pregnant does not give you license to kill. Women deserve better than abortion. The President's position is illogical, unscientific, immoral & 40 years wrong.' However, there were many people who praised Psaki for her impassioned response to the male reporter Psaki won praise from many on Twitter, with one calling her the best Press Secretary in modern history However, there were many people who praised Psaki for her impassioned response to the male reporter. 'Jen Psaki really does get right to the point,' left-wing activist Charlotte Clymer cooed. Congressional candidate and ex-Army Officer Mark Judson chimed in: 'While Jen Psaki is clearly amazing - the SHAME is that So. Much. of her time and energy has to be WASTED on these dirty, Right Wing Propagandists who attack America day in, and day out. Just ANOTHER way that RepubliQans betray America. They belong in Prison.' Meanwhile, another expressed their admiration for the Press Secretary, stating: 'I will NEVER understand the arrogance of conservative men who believe they have the right to control, govern, and legislate the bodies of women. Jen Psaki continues to be the best White House Press Secretary in modern history. #PsakiBomb'. Biden, the second Catholic president, meets with Pope Francis. Some have pressed the president to square his views on abortion with his Catholic faith The tense exchange between Psaki and the male reporter came after the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that it would not block Texas' new restrictive law which will ban almost all abortions after six weeks. The law, known as the 'Texas Heartbeat Act', bans abortion once a fetal heartbeat can be detected, which is normally after six weeks and before many women even know they are pregnant. It makes no exceptions for rape or incest and allows Texans to report people, including Uber drivers, who help or take women to get abortions. The only exemption is if there is a danger to the woman's health. Other right-leaning states - including Florida and South Carolina - may be the next to follow the newly-implemented bill. Florida State Senator Wilton Simpson said in a Thursday statement that it could be 'worthwhile to take a look at the Texas law and see if there is more we can do here in Florida.' Simpson was backed by Governor Ron DeSantis said, who said he'd mull a ban. Texas Right to Live legislative director John Seago told Forbes that South Carolina was also considering an abortion bill. Meanwhile, Psaki said agencies across the White House and Department of Justice were working quickly to determine 'what, if any, steps can be taken here to protect a woman's right to choose and access to healthcare for women in Texas.' Other abortion laws are enforced by state and local officials, with criminal sanctions possible. After a federal appeals court refused to allow a prompt review of the law before it took effect, the measure's opponents sought Supreme Court review. Biden released a forceful statement Thursday directing the executive branch to undermine the Supreme Court after it refused to take up a case regarding Texas's restrictive new abortion law. 'The highest Court of our land will allow millions of women in Texas in need of critical reproductive care to suffer while courts sift through procedural complexities,' Biden wrote. Advertisement

The Supreme Court, in a decision shortly before midnight Wednesday, allowed the law to remain in place while it is being litigated

Republican Governor of Texas Greg Abbott signed the nation's most restrictive abortion bill into law

Speaker Nancy Pelosi vowed to bring to the floor legislation that would codify abortion protections into law.

Pelosi's options to reverse the order are limited. Though she can try to move legislation through the House, it would run into a certain filibuster in the Senate, where Democrats hold only a 50-50 majority. A two-thirds vote is needed to shut down a filibuster.

She said when the House comes back, it will bring up Rep. Judy Chu's (D-Calif.) Women's Health Protection Act 'to enshrine into law reproductive health care for all women across America.'

White House press secretary Jen Psaki wouldn't say on Thursday whether or not Biden supported that legislation, saying the administration was still studying it.

Earlier this week, Biden vowed to directly challenge the Supreme Court, by ordering the agencies to apparently circumvent the ruling and 'ensure that women in Texas have access to safe and legal abortions as protected by Roe.'

He asked the White House to look at 'what legal tools we have to insulate women and providers from the impact of Texas' bizarre scheme of outsourced enforcement to private parties.'
The suspect in the senseless slaying of a Chase employee stabbed inside one of the bank's Chicago branches had previously been charged with attacking two other women in 2014 but found not guilty by reason of insanity, police officials said.

Jessica Vilaythong, 24, was talking to a fellow employee inside the bank when a man entered the building and spoke briefly with Vilaythong before stabbing her in the neck on Wednesday.

Vilaythong died from her injuries on Thursday, and Chicago officers apprehended a 35-year-old man who had been arrested for assaulting and robbing two 55-year-old women in Navy Pier in 2014.

Chicago Police arrested a suspect for the fatal stabbing of Jessica Vilaythong. The suspect was reported arrested in 2014 for assaulting and robbing two women in Navy Pier

Vilaythong was transported to a nearby hospital where she died from her injuries

The man had been found not guilty by reason of insanity and had been released into a mental health center in 2017, NBC 5 reports.

Police have not identified the suspect and said the investigation was still ongoing.

Witnesses said they saw the man brandish the bloody knife on the street following the attack, covered in blood.

'I saw a guy with a knife - a pretty big knife - with blood on it and he was running with a head of steam, and then, 30 seconds later, all the cops started coming then,' one witness told Fox 32.

Jessica Vilaythong was talking to a fellow employee at the Chase Bank at the corner of Dearborn Street when the man came up to her and stabbed her in the neck

Police arrived at the scene quickly and were able to apprehend a suspect nearby

A Chase bank spokesperson said in a statement, 'We are devastated by the passing of our colleague Jessica Vilaythong and extend our deepest sympathies to her family and loved ones during this incredibly difficult time.

'Jessica was a wonderful person and valued employee. She was extremely outgoing, passionate, hardworking, and quick to help clients. We will miss her greatly.'

The stabbing occurred just three days after a man was assaulted and robbed by two men just around the corner on N. State Street.

Edwin Barone, 55, was assaulted in front of a crowd of people who watched on as the two men beat him in the middle of the street.

'No body helped me,' Barone told Fox 21. 'I think it's terrible that people are so desensitized.'

Theft, murders, shooting incidents and sexual assaults continue to rise in Chicago

The crimes comes as theft, murders, shooting incidents and sexual assaults are all up in the Chicago, according to police statistics.

Thefts are up 10 percent over the same period last year, with 7,714 recorded in 2021 compared to 6,989 in 2020.

Murders meanwhile saw a 3 percent jump, with 524 recorded so far in 2021 compared to 510 in the same period last year.

Shootings also jumped with 2,344 recorded in 2021 compared to 2,159 last year, about a 9 percent increase.

Rapes saw the most dramatic spike of 25 percent, with 1,374 recorded in 2021 compared to 1,103 last year.
The new Texas law banning abortions after six weeks of pregnancy -- the strictest in the nation -- will not be enforced by the state government, but instead by private lawsuits.

The law that took effect Tuesday allows any private citizen to sue Texas abortion providers who violate the law, as well as anyone who 'aids or abets' a woman getting the procedure.

The statute, which survived a Supreme Court challenge, sets minimum damages of $10,000 per banned abortion, to be paid out to the first person to prevail in a suit over the procedure.

Abortion patients themselves cannot be sued, but the 'aiding and abetting' clause is broad, and might even apply to a cab driver who knowingly takes a woman to get a banned abortion.

Private citizens, not the government, will enforce the new Texas abortion ban through lawsuits. Texas governor Greg Abbott is seen above

Anti-abortion groups in Texas say they have lawyers ready to enforce the law through civil suits. Above, anti-abortion protesters support the new law in Austin

By handing off enforcement to private citizens, Texas avoided the legal pitfalls that doomed similar efforts in other states -- but critics say that the move amounts to a hack of the legal system.

'The most pernicious thing about the Texas law it sort of creates a vigilante system where people get rewards,' President Joe Biden on Friday. 'I know this sounds ridiculous. It's almost un-American what we're talking about.'

Known as the Heartbeat Act, the Texas law bans abortions after ultrasounds can detect a fetal heartbeat, which can occur as early as six weeks.

The abortion ban makes medical exceptions to save the life of the mother, but allows no exemptions for cases of rape or incest.

The new law allows anyone to bring a suit against abortion providers, regardless of whether they have been personally harmed.

It's a dramatic expansion of the concept of 'standing' and a reversal for Republicans, who are often proponents of tort reform to limit civil suits.

Before Republican Governor Greg Abbott signed the law in May, voters in Lubbock, Texas, approved an ordinance similarly intended to outlaw abortion in the city by allowing family members to sue an abortion provider.

Pro-abortion protesters hold up signs at a protest outside the Texas state capitol in Austin, Texas in May. Thousands of protesters came out in response to the new law

Several other states have employed similar tactics on highly charged cultural questions with tricky legal implications.

In Florida, student athletes can sue their school if transgender athletes are allowed to play girls and women's sports. And in Tennessee, students, teachers and employers can sue schools if they share a bathroom with a transgender person.

A Missouri law that took effect last week allows citizens to sue local law enforcement agencies whose officers knowingly enforce any federal gun laws. Police and sheriff's departments can face fines of up to $50,000 per occurrence.

Utah also took a similar strategy on pornography last year, passing a law that allows citizens to sue websites that fail to display a warning about the effects of 'obscene materials' on minors.

Still, experts say the Texas law goes much further, in allowing plaintiffs to bring suits without suffering any arguable personal harm.

'It's wide open,' David Coale, an appellate lawyer in Texas, told the Texas Tribune. 'That is a radical expansion of the concept of standing.'

The Whole Woman's Health clinic in Fort Worth, Texas is seen in a file photo. The new Texas law could affect thousands of women seeking abortions, though precise estimates are difficult

A tip line set up by Texas Right to Life in order to pursue lawsuits was flooded with prank responses from abortion supporters, and has now been shut down

Texas Right to Life, the state's largest anti-abortion group, launched a website to receive tips about suspected violations and said it has attorneys ready to bring lawsuits.

However, the tip line was quickly overwhelmed with prank responses from abortion supporters, and has been shut down.

The new Texas law could affect thousands of women seeking abortions, though precise estimates are difficult.

In 2020, Texas facilities performed about 54,000 abortions on residents. More than 45,000 of those occurred at eight weeks of pregnancy or less.

Some of those abortions still could have been legal under the new law, if they occurred before cardiac activity was detected.

Texas is one of 14 states with laws either banning abortion entirely or prohibiting it after eight weeks or less of pregnancy.

Laws in those states have all been put on hold by courts. Most recently, a court halted a new Arkansas law that would have banned all abortions unless necessary to save the life of the mother in a medical emergency.

Other states with blocked laws banning abortions early in pregnancy are Alabama, Georgia, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee and Utah.

The 6-3 Supreme Court ruling upholding the Texas law does not automatically block the court actions in the other states -- but it does show them how to re-write their laws to pass muster in the highest court.

'Essentially, the Supreme Court has now given other states a roadmap for circumscribing Roe vs. Wade,' said Steven Schwinn, a constitutional law professor at the University of Illinois Chicago.
Americans are deeply unhappy with President Joe Biden after the United States' disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan that left at least 100 Americans and thousands of Afghans who aided the US military behind in the Taliban-controlled country, a new poll released Friday finds.

Just 44 percent of Americans approve of Biden's job in office against 51 percent who disapprove, according to the ABC News/Washington Post survey.

The poll was conducted from August 29 until September 1 - bookending when the last US military jet departed Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul on August 30.

A breakdown of the numbers shows just 36 percent of Independent voters approving of Biden, while only 8 percent of Republicans think he's doing a good job.

His approval is still strong amongst fellow Democrats at 86 percent - though it's a steep drop to just 56 percent approving of his job in Afghanistan.

The 44 percent figure is a six-point drop from Biden's June approval numbers. His disapproval shot up by nine points since then.

Biden's disapproval fell to an all-time low in the final days of the US's withdrawal from Afghanistan

Biden promised earlier to get all Americans out, but according to officials after the withdrawal was completed, that didn't happen

Since August 14, when Afghanistan fell to the Taliban, US and coalition forces evacuated more than 123,000 people through the Kabul airport. Roughly 6,000 of them were Americans.

Monday's final evacuation flights marked the end of a 20-year war that cost Americans roughly $2 trillion.

More than three-quarters of people surveyed agreed the US needed to withdraw from Afghanistan, but 60 percent disagree with how Biden did it.

Only 30 percent approve of how he handled it.

A majority of people also think Biden shares blame for the ISIS-K-claimed suicide attack outside of the Kabul airport, which left 170 Afghans and 13 US servicemembers dead.

Fifty-three percent of Americans blame Biden for the devastating explosion - 38 percent say he shares 'a great deal of blame.'

Many worry the US is now in a less safe position, and 8 percent believe withdrawing made the country safer.

According to the poll nearly half of Americans 'lack confidence that the United States can identify and keep out possible terrorists in the ranks of Afghan refugees.'

More than half of people surveyed disapprove of Biden's handling of Afghanistan despite roughly three-quarters agreeing the US needed to end the conflict

US soldiers prepare to board a C-17 cargo plane in the final moments of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan

The US Marine Corps posted a photo to Twitter Sunday evening, of the flag flag-draped caskets of their fallen brethren killed in Thursday's suicide bomb attack in Kabul

Despite that, 68 percent of people support taking in thoroughly vetted refugees.t

Biden's approval numbers seven months into his term fall flat against two of the three other presidents who oversaw the war in Afghanistan.

His ex-boss, former President Obama, was viewed favorably by 54 percent of the country at this point in his term - a full 10 points above Biden. His disapproval was also eight points lower.

Against ex-President George W. Bush, Biden has an even wider gap of 11 points in approval ratings and 10 points in disapproval.

Biden still beats out former President Trump, whose approval to disapproval rating at this point in his term was 37 to 58.

But as far as Democrats go, Biden's approval is lower than six of his last predecessors.

On August 18 the president told ABC News he was committed to keeping troops in Afghanistan until every American who wanted to leave could.

'If there's American citizens left, we're gonna stay to get them all out,' Biden said.

But after the US withdrew from Kabul, US Central Command chief General McKenzie admitted to reporters Monday that 'We did not get everybody out that we wanted to get out.'

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that night that 'We believe there are still a small number of Americans, under 200 and likely closer to 100, who remain in Afghanistan and want to leave.'

Thousands of Afghan interpreters were also left, many who fear they have targets on their backs now that the Taliban run the country.

That includes an interpreter named Mohammed, who notably helped rescue Biden in 2008 when a Blackhawk helicopter he was in had to make an emergency landing in a remote Afghan valley during a snow storm.

Press Secretary Jen Psaki vowed the US would get him out but didn't elaborate on how.

Mohammed spoke to Fox & Friends on Thursday and told them he felt betrayed by the president he rescued.

'They left me and my family and like me, the other people left behind. But it's very scary, man, as we are under great risk,' he told the US media outlet.

When asked what message he has for Biden, he said: 'Hello, President, do not leave. Do not forget me and my family.'
Matthew Kaigle, 33, was wanted by Burlington police for slapping a construction worker and threatening to stab him

Vermont police are hunting for a 'violent' serial offender who was able to drive away from cops after being pulled over for assault because the two officers who stopped him were too scared to chase him.

Matthew Kaigle, 33, was wanted by Burlington police for slapping a construction worker and threatening to stab him.

The worker was a flagger who had tried to direct Kaigle's car along with other traffic.

He drove to a supermarket then returned, slapping the flagger and threatening to punch another construction worker.

He was wielding a hunting knife, according to the police, and threatening to stab both of the workers.

Kaigle - who has a lengthy rap sheet - then drove off, but police caught him up with him and pulled him over.

He refused to get out of the car and then drove away. The two cops were too scared to chase him so they let him drive away.

KAIGLE'S RAPSHEET Violating court orders

Felonies

Hate crime assault for punching and kicking a man in a park in August (he went to jail but was given a $2,500 bond)

Threatening to assault someone with a sledgehammer in July Advertisement

In a press release, Burlington Police Department said: 'Kaigle refused to exit his vehicle after being told multiple times he was under arrest.

'Officers did not pursue Kaigle due to his unpredictable and violent history.'

Now, the police department are hunting for him.

Kaigle's rap sheet includes arrests and convictions for violating court orders.

In July, he threatened someone with a sledgehammered then later that month, kicked and punched a man unconscious in a park in what police say was a hate crime.

He was arrested for that crime on August 1, but his bail was set at $2,500.

It's unclear whether he had to pay all of the bond or just ten percent of it to get out.

The police department said he had displayed 'many violent tendencies' towards other members of the public.

Anyone who sees him is asked not to approach him and instead call 802-658-2704.

The police department said he had displayed 'many violent tendencies' towards other members of the public.
The bizarre moments when a woman walked through a Miami airport wearing a bikini and a face mask - to be Covid safe - were caught in a Instagram video.

The video was posted by 'Humans of Spirit Airlines' and captioned, 'When you have a pool party at noon and a flight at 4pm.'

The mystery blonde strutting through the airport in a green bikini like a fashion week runway model has been viewed more than 11,555 times and liked about 1,000 times, as of noon Friday.

Scroll down for video.

This is a still of an Instagrammer's video of mystery blonde woman walking through a Miami airport in a green bikini with the caption, 'When you have a pool party at noon and a flight at 4pm'

The woman's sexy strut through the airport been viewed more than 11,555 times and liked about 1,000 times, as of noon Friday

It's unclear if this was a timed stunt or if the woman boarded the plane wearing her beach-ready attire

Spirit Airlines told The New York Post that the widely shared video is 'unverified' but not surprising.

'This account often falsely attributes photos and videos to Spirit Airlines,' the representative told The Post.

'The video could have been taken at any time or any place and it has no identifying characteristic of any airline. I checked, and we have no record of this on file.'

It's unclear if this was a timed stunt or if the woman boarded the plane wearing her beach-ready attire.

The video was said to be Spirit Airlines, but an airline representative told The New York Post that this Instagram account 'often falsely attributes photos and videos to Spirit Airlines'

But if she did, it would've violated Spirit's contract of carriage, The New York Post reported.

Spirit's contract could prevented people from boarding an airplane or even kicked off if they're 'barefoot or inadequately clothed' or if they're wearing clothing that is 'lewd, obscene or offensive in nature.'
The founder of Heck sausages says he wants to start employing prison inmates and Afghan refugees to overcome a 'post-Brexit labour shortage'.

Andrew Keeble has written to local MP and Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, calling for urgent action to tackle the staff crisis in food.

He has even called for the fast-tracking of Afghan refugees being processed to fill the void of workers.

Andrew Keeble has written to local MP and Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, calling for urgent action to tackle the staff crisis in food

And now he has launched a bid to recruit serving prisoners to train them in food production.

Mr Keeble said: 'We are trying to look at as many routes to employ people - whether it's local people, school leavers or giving serving prisoners skills in food production.

'There is no doubt that lots of prisoners, currently serving sentences, would make great drivers, butchers, bakers and chefs.

'Many other companies such as Timpson and Cook, take a similar approach.'

The firm, based in Bedale, North Yorkshire, is the UK's largest independent sausage and banger maker.

But it is facing staff shortages in September and said it urgently needs to fill roles across dispatch, distribution, and marketing.

Mr Keeble, who founded the firm, has previously raised concerns over the gap in the labour market for the food industry.

And he even fears the Christmas staple of pigs in blanket could be under threat as production could be cut by a third.

He said: 'The biggest issue in the food and supply industry is recruitment and retaining.

'British people don't see food as a destination career, but we've had people starting work for us straight from school, who we have trained up and are now heading up marketing and sales.'

The firm, based in Bedale, North Yorkshire, is the UK's largest independent sausage and banger maker

The firm has taken to training its own workers to distribute their sausages and bangers to customers to combat the sector's crippling shortage of hauliers.

Mr Keeble's son Roddy is now filling the gaps and driving up and down the country.

The bangers boss said: 'We've tried our regular haulier, we've tried outside hauliers, but there is no availability, they all just laughed at me when I said I wanted a lorry tomorrow night.

'It's getting that bad, that's the only way we can do it.

'Everyone has their view on why there are shortages but the truth of the matter is a huge amount of eastern European people have gone home and don't want to come back again - they feel unwelcome after Brexit, which is a shame.

'The Government needs to take urgent action. They need to get on top of issuing of settlement codes, we know there are people waiting to come to work in the UK.

'Why not fast track processing of refugees, if these guys want work, then we have it for them.'
Four people who died in a fiery private jet crash in Connecticut were identified Friday as a married Boston couple who were both doctors and two local pilots.

Police in Farmington said Courtney Haviland, 33, and her husband William Shrauner, 32, were passengers on the jet that crashed into a manufacturing company building Thursday morning shortly after takeoff from Robertson Airport in Plainville.

One of the two pilots killed in the wreck was named as Mark Morrow, 57, of Danbury, Farmington police Lt. Tim McKenzie said.

Morrow's wife, Dunja Morrow, told The News-Times in Danbury that her husband 'talked about flying every minute of his life.'

'Everything was about flying,' Dunja Morrow said through tears, adding that her husband was 'up to par' with Federal Aviation Administration rules and regulations.

Pilot Mark Morrow, 57, of Danbury has been pictured with his wife Dunja Morrow, right

Morrow was one of four people killed in a plane crash in Farmington on Thursday

Interstate Aviation, the company founded by the second pilot killed in the crash, released a statement on Facebook

Michael Morrow, their son, told the outlet that Mark Morrow had served as a flight instructor for decades and even taught him and his sister how to fly.

'He was a very avid teacher and just loved to share his passion with flying for anybody and everybody he could,' Michael Morrow said.

Family members described Morrow as 'gifted, mechanically' and said he could 'fix anything.' He had worked for private jet charter company ConnAir Corporation before COVID-19 and has been working freelance since then.

'Flying was his life. It was his love,' Michael Morrow said.

The other pilot was named as William 'Will' O'Leary, 55, of Bristol - whose father Bill O'Leary had managed the Robertson Airport on behalf of the town, according to a 2017 article from the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association.

Bill O'Leary also founded Interstate Aviation, an air charter service and flight school operating at the airport since 1971.

The younger O'Leary spent much of his time at the family's business where he learned to fly, until his father sold the business, The News-Times reported. His sisters continue to work in the office for the company.

O'Leary continued flying charter planes from the airport after the business was sold, and was described by Plainville Town Manager Robert E. Lee as 'very good at flying the jets in and out of Robertson.'

He was remembered by Robert Zirpolo, a former pilot for Interstate Aviation, as an 'accomplished pilot' and a a 'mild-mannered guy' who followed his father's footsteps.

'He wasn't a guy who made a lot of noise,' Zirpolo told The News-Times.

The airport has provided services to a number of celebrities in the past, including actor Matthew McConaughey, singer-songwriter Carly Simon and rapper 50 Cent, the Hartford Courant reported in 2007.

'We are devastated by the loss of our friends and family members today. Thank you all for you love and support,' Interstate Aviation wrote in a Facebook post.

The Robertson Airport in Plainville has a documented history of crashes, the Bristol Press noted in 2018.

Married Boston doctors Courtney Haviland, 33, and William Shrauner, 32, died in a private jet crash in Connecticut on Thursday. Their baby son was not with them at the time

That year, Burlington resident Donald Eckberg, 67, crashed a twin-engine Rutan Defiant plane into Plaineville's landfill around 10:30 a.m. after it flew over a nearby condo complex south of the Robertson Airport.

As of 2018, there had been 17 airplane crashes in Plainville since 1982 though only three of them involved fatalities, according to data from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) reviewed by the outlet at the time.

The NTSB had ruled that most of the wrecks were caused by either pilot error or a mechanical malfunction - or a combination of both factors, the Bristol Press reported.

Investigators with the NTSB were at the scene of the fiery crash Friday. The cause remains under investigation.

'The Farmington Police Department extends their deepest condolences to the friends and family of the four passengers who died in this tragic crash,' McKenzie said in a statement.

The wreckage of a business jet plane with four people on board, including two married doctors from Boston, is seen resting in Connecticut on Thursday

The Cessna plane crashed into a building at Trumpf Inc, a manufacturing company

The Cessna Citation 560X took off just before 10 a.m. on a flight headed to Dare County Regional Airport in Manteo, North Carolina, the FAA said. McKenzie said there appeared to be some type of mechanical failure during takeoff.

The jet contacted the ground a short distance from the runway and crashed into a building at Trumpf Inc. The impact set off chemical fires inside the building. Two employees suffered minor injuries, officials said.

DailyMail.com can now reveal that Haviland worked as a pediatrician at Massachusetts General Hospital after earning her medical degree from Weill Cornel Medical College of Cornell University.

Her husband, Shrauner, was a second-year cardiology fellow at Boston Medical Center.

Friends and family members have mourned the loss of doctors Courtney Haviland and her husband William Shrauner

A spokesperson for Boston Medical Center sent a statement to DailyMail.com, confirming the deaths of the couple.

'We are deeply saddened by the tragic loss of one of our cardiology fellows, Dr. Will Shrauner, and his wife, Dr. Courtney Haviland,' the statement read.

'Will, a second year fellow at Boston Medical Center, was well known as an outstanding educator, physician, colleague and friend to many. Our thoughts and prayers are with Will and Courtney's family and loved ones.'

Dr Haviland (left) worked as a pediatrician at Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr Shrauner (right), was a second-year cardiology fellow at Boston Medical Center

Haviland is pictured with her baby son, Teddy, during happier times

After also earning his medical degree from Cornell in 2016, he did his three-year residency at Brigham and Women's Hospital, followed by a cardiovascular disease research fellowship, which he completed last year.

The couple celebrated their fourth wedding anniversary in June. They had recently welcomed their first child, a son named Teddy.

One of Shrauner's siblings revealed in a Facebook post that the couple's son, Teddy, was not on the doomed flight with his parents and is safe.

Ben Shrauner wrote that his brother combined in himself the finest qualities of all of their siblings.

'Courtney was a perfect match for him,' he added. '[She was] smart, beautiful, witty, charismatic, and always fun to be around. Two really special people that are gone way too soon.'

The Thursday morning plane crash in Farmington, Connecticut sent flames into the sky

Two pilots and two passengers were confirmed dead by the afternoon, according to police

The plane reportedly crashed into the ground before sliding onto the factory building ahead

Gov. Lamont said 'insularly fires' broke out inside the Trumpf facility, where no one was hurt

The Cessna Citation 560X averages $2.5 million and can carry up to 10 passengers

Witnesses say the plane struggled to take off from the airport earlier in the day, according to reporter Caitlin Francis of WFSB. It hit the ground before eventually crashing into the factory building.

Photos from the scene show smoke billowing up as a mangled plane appears to rest next to the charred side of the building.

Cessna Citation 560Xs sell for as much as $2.5million, according to LibertyJet.com. The popular aircraft sits up to 10 passengers.

Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont thanked first responders at the scene and added that the plane probably had mechanical issues and hit a power line after taking off from the nearby airport.

'It's a chemical facility inside so there's a lot of other insularly fires going on. Our amazing first responders were here almost immediately, but there was not much to save in terms of the folks on the plane,' Lamont told WTNH.

'I'm feeling the tragedy. I'm feeling it's a state that's had a lot of loss recently.'

The plane crashed in the small town of Farmington about a mile down the road from an airport

A website for Trumpf describes the Farmington campus as a 'state-of-the-art training facility, where more than 25 full-time instructors teach hands-on classes for programming, maintenance, and equipment operation in a 48,000 sq ft fabrication shop.'

'The production of solid-state laser sources and flatbed laser-cutting machines is also carried out in the Farmington facility, to better serve the needs of customers in North America.'

Burke Doar, senior vice president at Trumpf, said in a video posted on Twitter that company officials were assessing the damage Friday and trying to get production of machine tools and lasers for customers back on track.

A spokeswoman for the company directed further questions to the Farmington Fire Department.

A witness at a nearby company, Image First, told WTIC-TV that they heard a loud explosion and ran out to see the smoke.

Farmington is located in Hartford County, about 10 miles southwest of the state capital of Hartford. The 25,000-person town is about two hours from Boston and three hours from New York City.
The daughter of an aid worker murdered by a British Islamic State cell in Syria has told how she will never forgive her fathers killers - after her uncle revealed he no longer hated them.

Bethany Haines spoke as one of the fanatics - Alexanda Kotey - pleaded guilty to eight charges, including conspiring to murder four American hostages - journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff and aid workers Peter Kassig and Kayla Mueller.

She said she welcomed the guilty plea but called on Kotey and another member of the cell, El Shafee Elsheikh, to provide information as to the whereabouts of her fathers body.

David Haines, 43, was captured in Syria during an aid mission in 2013 and beheaded the following year. His death was filmed in a grisly execution video.

In an interview last October, Mr Haines brother, Mike, said: Hate is the choice. We all have the power not to hate.

He told The Independent that he had started working in counter-extremism, adding: I knew I had to do something  my brothers murder was about hatred, it was about division.

Bethany Haines (pictured with father David) spoke as one of the fanatics - Alexanda Kotey - pleaded guilty to eight charges

British Islamic State (IS) group fighters Alexanda Kotey known as 'Jihadi Ringo' (left) and El Shafee Elsheikh known as 'Jihadi George' (right), posing for mugshots in an undisclosed location (2018)

They took my brothers life but if I could take someone away from a path of hatred and help them choose a different path, weve won.

However, Bethany told MailOnline today: My uncle and I have very different views and opinions.

'These two men took my dad away from me and took my sons grandad away from him. I will always hate them.

Kotey, 37, who grew up in West London but left for Syria in 2012, appeared in a U.S court for a plea hearing and was watched by the families of some of his victims via video link.

He and Elsheikh were flown to the US to face a string of charges last year.

Koteys guilty plea may save him from serving a lifetime behind the bars of one of Americas highest level prisons.

He will get the chance to return to the UK in 15 years if he sticks to the deal.

British aid worker David Haines, 43, was captured in Syria during a humanitarian mission in 2013 and beheaded the following year in grisly execution footage

Bethany (pictured left) said she was 'pleased with the plea hearing's outcome', but demanded answers as to where her father's remains are for closure

Bethany said: My family are really pleased with the outcome of the plea hearing.

'We are glad Alexanda Kotey has finally admitted his guilt and justice will be served.

Its been a hard few years and there will be hard times to come but my family and I would like to bring my Dad home to rest.

We ask Kotey and Elsheikh to please give us the closure we desperately need and tell us what happened and where my Dads remains are.

The IS gang was nicknamed 'the Beatles' by their captives and was made up of ringleader Mohammed Emwazi, known as Jihadi John, Aine Davis, Elsheikh and Kotey.

Emwazi was killed in a drone strike in Syria in 2015 while Davis was caught by Turkish authorities and later sentenced to more than seven years in prison.
President Joe Biden signed an executive order Friday that ordered a review of the classified documents related to the 9/11 terror attacks - with the promise of releasing more information to the public.

Biden had been told by nearly 1,800 Americans impacted by the terror attacks last month - including victims' family members, first responders and survivors - not to come to any of the 20th anniversary events unless he declassified documents that potentially show Saudi government links to the September 11, 2001 hijackers.

The order makes no mention of Saudi Arabia.

'When I ran for president, I made a commitment to ensuring transparency regarding the declassification of documents on the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on America,' Biden said in a statement. 'As we approach the 20th anniversary of that tragic day, I am honoring that commitment.'

'Today, I signed an executive order directing the Department of Justice and other relevant agencies to oversee a declassification review of documents related to the Federal Bureau of Investigation's September 11th investigations. The executive order requires the Attorney General to release the declassified documents publicly over the next six months,' Biden said.

The order itself says that 'the American people deserve to have a fuller picture of what their Government knows about those attacks.'

'The significant events in question occurred two decades ago or longer, and they concern a tragic moment that continues to resonate in American history and in the lives of so many Americans. It is therefore critical to ensure that the United States Government maximizes transparency, relying on classification only when narrowly tailored and necessary,' the document says. 'Thus, information collected and generated in the United States Government's investigation of the 9/11 terrorist attacks should now be disclosed, except when the strongest possible reasons counsel otherwise.'

Biden's move could spare him the embarrassment of being snubbed by victims' family members at memorial events, which will take place next Saturday in New York, D.C. and Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

Biden is expected to go to New York, but the White House hasn't made those plans official.

'My heart continues to be with the 9/11 families who are suffering, and my Administration will continue to engage respectfully with members of this community. I welcome their voices and insight as we chart a way forward,' Biden also said.

President Joe Biden signed an executive order Friday that ordered a review of the classified documents related to the 9/11 terror attacks - with the promise of releasing more information to the public

The Twin Towers are seen on fire minutes after commercial airplanes were crashed into them by Al Qaeda hijackers on September 11, 2001

Brett Eagleson, who lost his father Bruce in the Twin Towers attacks, and has been an advocate for the families, indicated they would stay skeptical until the documents are released.

'We think President Biden deserves credit where credit is due. He's the first president to publicly embrace and acknowledge the 9/11 community's struggle. We are cautiously optimistic that we will get the documents we need, however our guard is still up,' Eagleson told DailyMail.com Friday by phone.

'The Biden administration is asking that we trust that they will do the right thing. We are hopeful that come 9/11 we will see meaningful document production. If that is not the case, the families will be enraged,' Eagleson added.

The executive order cites a specific set of documents that are to be released by the 20th anniversary of the attacks, while other documents could be released within six months.

The group 9/11 Families United was supportive of Biden's move following the announcement.

'We are thrilled to see the President forcing the release of more evidence about Saudi connections to the 9/11 Attacks,' family member Terry Strada said in a statement from the group.

Strada's husband Tom was killed in the World Trade Center.

'We have been fighting the FBI and intelligence community for too long, but this looks like a true turning point,' Strada said. 'There is much more work to be done to secure justice for our murdered loved ones and to rectify the immense damage the 20-year shroud of secrecy has caused, but we now are optimistic that President Biden will be helping us achieve those goals.'

Strada also credited New Jersey Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez, who was pushing for passage of the September 11 Transparency Act, which if passed would have forced new disclosures.

'Sen. Menendez told us that Congress sometimes has to jolt the White House into action and were pleased that President Biden took notice,' Strada said. 'We all thank Sen. Menendez and the other senators for their leadership.'

Family groups had applied additional pressure to the government on Thursday, writing a letter to Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz asking him to probe the FBI's handling of 9/11 evidence.

The families allege that 'circumstances make it likely that one or more FBI officials committed willful misconduct with intent to destroy or secrete evidence to avoid its disclosure.'

The letter has the signatures of nearly 3,500 family members, first responders and survivors.

In the run-up to the executive order's release, 9/11 families were fearful Biden's executive order could be a potential letdown, just as they were wary of the president's move in early August signaling support of the Justice Department's move to conduct a 'fresh review' of the documents.

'As I promised during my campaign, my Administration is committed to ensuring the maximum degree of transparency under the law, and to adhering to the rigorous guidance issued during the Obama-Biden Administration on the invocation of the state secrets privilege,' the president said in a statement on August 9. 'In this vein, I welcome the Department of Justice's filing today, which commits to conducting a fresh review of documents where the government has previously asserted privileges, and to doing so as quickly as possible.'

Earlier that day, the United States Attorney of the Southern District of New York wrote to the judges overseeing the lawsuit the 9/11 families have filed against Saudi Arabia informing the parties that 'the FBI has decided to review its prior privilege assertions to identify additional information appropriate for disclosure.'

'The FBI will disclose such information on a rolling basis as expeditiously as possible,' the letter said.

In the aftermath of that announcement, Eagleson was skeptical as well.

'We appreciate President Biden acknowledging our families today as we pursue justice and accountability against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Unfortunately, however, we have heard many empty promises before,' Eagleson said in a statement to DailyMail.com.

Eagleson pointed out that the Department of Justice and the FBI have had three years to 'review' the files.

He said the agencies can 'act immediately to produce the documents including the unredacted 2016 FBI Review Report of the bureau's years-long investigation of Saudi government agents who "are known to have provided substantial assistance to" the hijackers, as well as phone records and witness statements.'

'Just today, the DOJ finally admitted that its investigation is actually closed, contrary to the bureau's prior claims about investigative status,' Eagleson said.

'We hope the Biden administration comes forward now to provide the information the 9/11 community has waited to receive for 20 years, so we can stand together with the president at Ground Zero on 9/11,' he added.

In his statement, Biden commiserated with the families saying, 'I know well the all-consuming grief of losing someone you love so suddenly.'

'I can only imagine the added pain these families have endured, spending 20 years pursuing accountability and justice,' the president added.

The family groups renewed the public push to have the 9/11-Saudi documents declassified after the federal government released an intelligence report in March that said Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman approved the killing of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

'I don't understand how our government can release the documents on the murder of one man two years ago but not the documents on the murder of 3,000 people 20 years ago,' Eagleson told Yahoo News then.

The families' lawyer, James Kreindler, told Yahoo that the release of the Khashoggi report gives his clients fresh leverage to demand the 9/11 documents be released too.

Those documents include a 2012 FBI report on the suspected links between Saudi government officials and the hijackers.

The 9/11 families hit a bump in the road during the last administration when Attorney General Bill Barr and acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell prevented the release of additional FBI disclosures that were sought as evidence in the civil lawsuit against the Saudi government.

In April 2020, Barr, Grenell and other Trump administration officials used last-minute court filings to stop the release, arguing that the disclosures would imperil national security.

They couldn't even reveal their justification for why the release could harm national security, because that could too, the officials argued, according to ProPublica's reporting.

Another lawyer for the families, Steven Pounian, told ProPublica at the time, 'The extraordinary lengths that they're going to here suggest that there must be some deep, dark secret that they're still trying very hard to hide after almost 20 years.'

'But who are they protecting?' Pounian asked. 'Something might be a Saudi government secret. But how can these be secrets that still need to be kept from the American people after all this time?'

The 9/11 Commission's 2004 report found that while 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis, investigators found no evidence of the Saudi government funding or approving the attack.

The 9/11 families first sued the Saudi government in 2003, but federal law at the time shielded the foreign government from lawsuits in American courts.

Congress overruled President Barack Obama's veto to change the law in 2016.
An Arizona father whose son had to quarantine after coming into contact with a COVID-positive student confronted the school's principal with zip ties and threatened to make citizen's arrest over the school's rules during a march captured on video.

The parent and a group of of other dads filmed their march to the Mesquite Elementary School's principal office after school administrators, following Health Department protocols, said one of their kids had to quarantine for a week after being exposed to a student who tested positive for COVID-19, Superintendent John Carruth confirmed to KOLD.com

The father, who called himself Reese in the video, claimed it was illegal for the school to force his son into quarantine then him and two other men confronted the school's principal, a live-stream of the march showed.

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An Arizona father (pictured) whose son had to quarantine confronted the school's principal with zip ties and threatened to make citizen's arrest over school's rules

A group of fathers recorded themselves 'confronting' principal Diane Vargo (pictured) after one of their sons was ordered to quarantine

A group of dads captured their march to the Mesquite Elementary School's principal office (school pictured)

'One of the other individuals, not the parent, brought flex cuffs with them to the front office when they entered the office and their demand was that quarantine was illegal and that if the child was not allowed to resume normal school that they would make a citizen's arrest,' Superintendent John Carruth told the Washington Post





The entire incident was captured on a livestream recorded by a man who identified himself as Kelly Walker, owner of Viva Coffee in Tucson.

Walker can be heard saying the men were planning on 'confronting' principal Diane Vargo for breaking multiple state laws that caused a 'major disturbance to a family,' and that they would call the sheriff on school officials if she didn't comply or even make a citizens arrest because school administrators had no right to 'take the law into their hands.'

The man behind the video has self-identified as Kelly Walker (pictured) owner of Viva Coffee in Tucson

Superintendent John Carruth (pictured) says he knows tensions are high but that the parents took things too far

In the livestream Walker says he is against quarantining 'heathy' children because it creates fear and 'denies them an education' and 'imposes on the lives of parents who have to work.'

At one point Kelly grabs several 'law enforcement zip ties' in his fist and shows them off to the camera.

'Were just coming in to talk first but our public officials need to know we mean business,' he says.

Once inside Vargo's office, the Post reports the men confronted her and told her 'If you insist on this, I'll have you arrested.'

'We're ready to make a citizen's arrest if necessary,' one of the men added.

'There will be no arrests here occurring on the Mesquite campus,' Vargo told the men, while insisting the school was following COVID protocols.

Carruth told the Post that after threatening to arrest her, Vargo told the three men to leave but the men refused so she left her office and called the police.

The men left the school grounds before Tucson Police Department officers arrived.

No one was hurt in the incident and the district is deciding whether or not to press charges against against the men.

Superintendent Carruth says he knows tensions are high but that the parents took things too far.

'We work really hard to try to resolve concerns that parents have and this has absolutely been a difficult and challenging 18 months and I understand when people become frustrated and understand when sometimes we can't come to a solution that's agreeable with everybody. But there is ways to resolve this that don't involve this and that just has no place on a school campus at all,' Carruth told KOLD.com

The incident comes as COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations among children are continuing to rise as the early stages of the new school year are struck by the Delta variant.

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) reports that 200,000 children tested positive for COVID-19 in the week of August 26, the second highest weekly total recorded during the pandemic.

Children also accounted for over 19,000 of the 812,000 hospitalizations recorded that week. While week-over-week totals did increase, it was at a much lower rate than the 50 percent increase from the previous week.
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If you wondered why New Orleans is predicted to be without power for so long after Hurricane Ida swept through, wonder no more.

DailyMail.com has obtained striking images that show, from just one toppled transmission tower, the extent of the work needed to bring electricity back to the Big Easy.

The 400-foot Entergy transmission tower collapsed Sunday in Bridge City as Hurricane Ida ripped through Louisiana. The tower is part of the system that carries power to New Orleans and the east bank of Jefferson Parish, with its power lines spanning 3,800 feet to another tower across the Mississippi River.

Exclusive DailyMail.com photos show the tower completely toppled on its side and laying in a muddy field, with the bottom part crumbled. The tower is tangled in its own wires that are now soaked in the river.

As of Friday, electricity was still not restored to many parts of New Orleans.

A 400-foot Entergy transmission tower collapsed Sunday in Bridge City after Hurricane Ida ripped through Louisiana

Exclusive DailyMail.com photos show the tower completely toppled on its side and laying in a muddy field, with the bottom part appearing to have crumbled

The tower provides power for New Orleans and the east bank of the parish and has left the city of New Orleans in the dark all week

Entergy Restoration Prioritization Branch Director Aaron Hill said that the tower is just one factor in the city-wide outage and they are still investigating the cause

Officials say a plan to get the power back on is in the works.

Helena Moreno, President of NOLA City Council, said Friday that power will be fully restored by September 8 for many New Orleans neighborhoods.

Entergy Louisiana CEO Phillip May said, 'All of those towers went through Hurricane Katrina without wavering.

But, he said, Ida brought 'much higher wind fields,' damaging them way more than in the 2005 tragedy.

Entergy Restoration Prioritization Branch Director Aaron Hill told WLBT earlier this week: 'Hurricane Ida was very powerful, and it impacted a lot more than one tower or one transmission line.'

Hill added that the tower is just one of many factors in the city-wide outage and they are still investigating the cause. He said that residents could still receive power if one tower is damaged.

Before and after satellite photos show the extent of the loss of power in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida

The storm left the entire city of New Orleans without power on Sunday and it still has not been restored in many parts

Hurricane Ida slammed into the Bayou State on Sunday as a Category Four hurricane with 150 mph winds and torrential downpours. It was the fifth strongest hurricane to make landfall in American history

All of New Orleans was left without electricity in the aftermath, with officials relying on generators to power the local hospitals, as more than one million reported power outages.

On Thursday, some electricity returned to parts of the city, but more than 900,000 people in the state are still in the dark, and do not know when their suffering will end.

Even as the power was slowly coming back on before dawn on Thursday along Bourbon Street and other parts of New Orleans, the widespread loss of electricity could be seen from space.

In Mississippi, the Associated Press reports, more than 300,000 people remained without electricity on Thursday.

And with water treatment plants overwhelmed by floodwaters or crippled by power outages, some places were also facing shortages of drinking water. About 441,000 people in 17 parishes had no water, and an additional 319,000 were under boil-water advisories on Wednesday, federal officials said.

Roughly 582,000 people were able to evacuate from New Orleans and the surrounding parishes in the three days before the storm, according to a tweet from Shawn Wilson, secretary of the Louisiana Department of Transportation, citing an analysis of cellphone and other technology ping data.

Many others who decided to ride out the storm left following official announcements that it may take weeks for electricity to be restored.

President Joe Biden tours a neighbourhood affected by Hurricane Ida in LaPlace, La., giving a hug to a child

President Joe Biden toured stunning hurricane devastation in LaPlace, Louisiana, getting a briefing at St. John Parish Emergency Operations Center

A vehicle is seen in floodwater on Wednesday as Jean Laffite Mayor Tim Kerner pleaded for help for his residents

Jean Lafitte was still flooded on Wednesday, preventing trucks with food and supplies from getting through

People wait in a long line in extreme heat to buy ice at Duplantier Ice Service as power continues to be out in most of the city

President Joe Biden flew to New Orleans Friday to view the power-less city amid a frantic recovery effort to clear debris and get the power on.

The president visited some of the hardest hit areas south of LaFourche, Louisiana where the Category 4 Hurricane made landfall and ripped through structures and devastated entire communities.

He took an aerial tour of some of the hardest hit communities, including Laffite, Grand Isle, Port Fourchon and Lafourche Parish, while touring a neighborhood in LaPlace and giving a speech.

Biden told the nation Thursday he had been closely monitoring the devastation caused by Hurricane Ida after the Category 4 Hurricane slammed into the Louisiana coast, bringing death and destruction on the way as it made its way up through Pennsylvania and New York.

'While the catastrophic flooding wasn't as severe as it was during Hurricane Katrina 16 years ago, Ida was so powerful that it caused the Mississippi River literally to change direction - the flow - change the flow temporarily,' Biden noted.

He said the 'good news' is that the $15 billion levee system put in place around New Orleans after catastrophic failures during Hurricane Katrina appears to have held.

'It held. It was strong. It worked,' he said. 'But too many people and too many areas are still unprotected and saw a storm surge and flooding that was devastating,' Biden said.

Jareth Palmisano surveyed the damage as he steers a boat through the Jean Lafitte Harbor on Wednesday

Some people brought their own containers and dollies to lug ice back home as water continues to be unusable

Oliver Morse, 13, (left) helps Conner McCoy put together sandwiches to be given to people for free as New Orleans residents continue to struggle in the aftermath of the storm

The first confirmed victim of the storm was a 60-year-old man who died in Louisiana on Monday after a tree fell on him in Prairieville, about 15 miles from Baton Rouge. Another victim died while attempting to drive his vehicle through the flooded streets of New Orleans.

Additionally, a Louisiana man was eaten by an alligator while wading through waist-deep floodwater in a shed outside their home, before he fell beneath the water. Authorities have not yet been able to locate him.

On Tuesday, two 19-year-olds working for a local electricity company in Alabama were electrocuted when trying to repair power lines.

And two others were killed Monday night when seven vehicles plunged into a 20-foot-deep hole near Lucedale, Mississippi, where a highway had collapsed after torrential rains.

Among the crash victims was Kent Brown, a 'well-liked' 49-year-old father of two, his brother Keith Brown said in a telephone interview on Tuesday. Keith Brown said his brother was in construction but had been out of work for a while. He didnt know where his brother was headed when the crash happened.

Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards says he expects the death toll to increase in the coming days.
Jacob Anthony Chansley, 33, pleaded guilty to a federal felony on Friday

The so-called 'QAnon Shaman' has pleaded guilty to his role in the US Capitol riot, and faces up to five years in prison.

Jacob Anthony Chansley, 33, on Friday pleaded guilty to obstructing a federal proceeding. The other five counts against him were dropped and he faces sentencing on November 17.

Though the charge carries a statutory maximum 20-year prison term, federal prosecutors plan to seek a penalty between 44 months and five years, while defense attorney Albert Watkins hinted that he would argue that Chansley should be freed on time served.

Friday's hearing was briefly interrupted when the public phone line was unmuted and someone could be heard shouting, 'freedom, freedom!'

At a press conference after the hearing, defense attorney Watkins reiterated his insistence that Chansley now disavows the QAnon conspiracy theory, and said his client wants to take responsibility for his actions.

'Today Jake made a monumental step toward doing right by our nation,' said Watkins, who argued that Chansley has mental health vulnerabilities and was seduced by Donald Trump to participate in the riot.

'He had a fondness for Trump that was not unlike the first love a man may feel for a woman,' said Watkins. 'Trump was very much like his first love.'

Chansley, of Phoenix, Arizona, was photographed inside the Capitol shirtless on January 6, wearing a horned headdress and heavily tattooed. He has been held without bond since his arrest shortly after the riot.

Chansley, who became the face of the Capitol riot due to his outlandish garb, now rejects the QAnon conspiracy theory, according to his attorney

Chansley is seen in a court sketch earlier this year. On Friday pleaded guilty to obstructing a federal proceeding and faces a potential sentence of five years

At a press conference on Friday, attorney Al Watkins argued that Chansley has mental health vulnerabilities and was seduced by Donald Trump to participate in the riot

Chansley had been a supporter of the QAnon conspiracy theory that casts Trump as a savior figure and elite Democrats as a cabal of Satanist pedophiles and cannibals.

In an earlier statement, Watkins asserted that Chansley 'has repudiated the `Q previously assigned to him and requests future references to him be devoid of use of the letter `Q.'

Watkins said that Chansley had faced 'a great deal of familial pressure not to take a plea' from family members who still embrace the dubious theory that Trump will resume the office of presidency imminently and pardon him.

'It was a really brave thing for him to do,' Watkins said of Chansley agreeing to plead guilty.

Watkins insisted that Chansley did not have violent or malevolent intentions when he joined the mob that stormed the Capitol.

Chansley himself was seen howling from the dias of the Senate president, where prosecutors say he wrote a threatening note to then-Vice President Mike Pence that read: 'It's Only A Matter of Time. Justice Is Coming!'

'In his heart and in his mind he was helping the president save the country,' said Watkins.

'Jacob Chansley did not have a plan...he was half naked, tattooed, on a winter day in DC,' the attorney said. 'Granted, he had the best costume of the day, he had the best look.

Trump loyalists gather in front of the U.S. Capitol Building on January 6, 2021 in Washington, DC. A pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol, breaking windows and clashing with police

Prosecutors said Chansley went into the Capitol carrying a US flag attached to a wooden pole topped with a spear, ignored an officer's commands to leave, went into the Senate chamber and wrote a threatening note to then-Vice President Mike Pence

While in detention, Chansley underwent mental examinations and was diagnosed by prison officials with transient schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression and anxiety.

Before entering the plea, Chansley was found by a judge to be mentally competent.

His lawyer Watkins said the solitary confinement that Chansley faced for most of his time in jail has had an adverse effect on his mental health and that his time under mental evaluation in Colorado helped him regain his sharpness.

'I am very appreciative for the court's willingness to have my mental vulnerabilities examined,' Chansley said before pleading guilty to a charge of obstructing an official proceeding.

Watkins noted that prosecutors had acknowledged Chansley was 'not a planner or organizer' of the riot.

Nearly 600 people have been arrested over the attack on the Capitol where Congress was meeting to certify Joe Biden's November victory over Trump. Earlier Trump had given a fiery speech falsely claiming his defeat was the result of fraud.

Watkins argued on Friday that not everyone who participated in the mob should be painted with the 'broad brush' of being labeled an insurrectionist.

'They are our countrymen, they are our relatives, they are the guy down the street,' he said. 'But for January 6, you would have had a beer with them.'

Chansley's mother Martha is seen above. Watkins said that Chansley faced pressure from his mother and grandfather not to take a plea, because they believe Trump will resume office

Chansley formerly vocally supported the QAnon conspiracy theory that casts Trump as a savior figure and elite Democrats as a cabal of Satanist pedophiles and cannibals

Chansley shot to worldwide infamy when he stormed the Capitol sporting face-paint, a fur hat and holding a Star-Spangled spear

While the charge carries both a maximum 20-year prison term and a fine of up to $250,000, prosecutor Kimberly Paschall indicated the maximum sentence the government was likely to request would be much shorter.

In the months before Friday's hearing, Senior U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth rejected multiple requests from Chansley for possible pre-trial release.

On Friday, Watkins asked the judge to allow Chansley to be released from prison pending a sentencing hearing, scheduled for November 17. The judge said he would consider this request.

In the meantime, Chansley remains in federal custody in Alexandria, Virginia.

A colorful and outspoken attorney, Watkins previously released a video that he says shows his client preventing a rioter from stealing a muffin from the U.S. Capitol on January 6, as well as a bizarre high school essay in which he describes his goals as a spiritual 'master'.

Watkins' defense motion contains a link to a YouTube video titled 'Jake Stops Muffin Stealing,' which appears to show Chansley clad in his distinctive fur-and-horns headgear yelling 'Hey, hey hey!' at a rioter entering a break room in the Capitol.

The court documents describe the video as showing Chansley 'thwarting a crime (theft) by yelling at another person in the Capitol who was attempting to steal a 'muffin' from a breakroom in the Capitol.'

Attached as an exhibit to a defense motion is an essay that Chansley wrote in high school, declaring his career choice was to be 'a Christ, a Buddha, or a Muhammad'

'It demonstrates and reinforces my client's long-standing status as a peaceful, non-violent person who sought to thwart a theft and support the need for those in the Capitol to be respectful of law enforcement,' Watkins said of the new video in a statement to DailyMail.com.

Chansley and his bulldog attorney Watkins have previously referenced the muffin theft intervention in interviews, but the new video is the first footage of the incident to emerge publicly.

'I also stopped people from stealing and vandalizing that sacred space, the Senate. Okay? I actually stopped somebody from stealing muffins out of the break room,' Chansley told 60 Minutes from behind bars in March.

'And I also said a prayer in that sacred chamber. Because it was my intention to bring divinity, and to bring God back into the Senate.'

The motion from Chansley's defense team also reveals that his spiritual aspirations emerged at an early age.

Attached as an exhibit to the motion is an essay that Chansley wrote in high school, declaring his career choice was to be 'a Christ, a Buddha, or a Muhammad, whichever you prefer to call it.'

'I chose this career because I know it is my soul's intent to get out of the illusion as well as to help others get out of the illusion,' he wrote in the 2005 essay, clarifying that by illusion he meant 'the physical world.'
A South Carolina school board member stormed out of a board meeting on re-imposing remote learning, claiming God should decide if students will be protected from COVID-19.

Barbara Crosby, an elected official who has been a Dorchester District 2 School Board member for over 13 years, could be heard voicing her objections in a video of the proceedings before leaving the meeting.

The disruption occurred after the board voted to move all schools in the Charleston-area district to virtual learning for a seven-day period starting Tuesday as COVID-19 cases continue to spike statewide.

'Now, I hope and pray our kids don't get deathly ill or we don't lose any children,' Crosby told WCSC anchor Raphael James in a video interview following Wednesday night's school board meeting.

'But you know what? That's not my -- that's up to God.'

When asked by James to clarify her stance on child COVID-19 safety, Crosby doubled down on her position to allow students to return to the classroom in spite of Coronavirus concerns.

'I said that's not going to be my decision. It's going to be -- I mean, God decides who lives or dies, right?'

Crosby, who was supported by about a dozen parents at Wednesday's board meeting, wanted to add an option to the meeting's agenda that would allow children to have in-school studies

Pictured: Wednesday evening's school board workshop where Crosby walked out on after not being allowed to vote against the district's mandate for virtual learning starting Tuesday

Crosby, who was supported by about a dozen parents at Wednesday's board meeting, wanted to add an option to the meeting's agenda that would allow children to have in-school studies.

'They should have put option D which is kids go back to school like they should be doing,' said parent Derek Clements, who backed Crosby's efforts to allow children back in the classroom.

'They don't care, they clearly don't care. They don't want to listen.'

Crosby had previously called for an end to COVID-related classroom restrictions during a Donald Trump rally in November.

The facts, however, appear to be stacked against Crosby and her supporters' calls for an end to COVID-19 classroom restrictions.

WCSC reports that 20 percent of the district's student body were out of school due to positive COVID-19 tests or contact with an infected person.

Pictured: Coronavirus deaths in South Carolina, with 10,743 deaths in the state overall and 261 deaths in Dorchester County, where Crosby is an elected official

Coronavirus Cases in South Carolina, with a total of 746,000 cases and 5,523 new cases reported in the state since yesterday

Roughly 5,085 students were absent due to COVID-related contact or infection as of Tuesday, August 31, according to Count on 2 News.

Of those students, 526 were out with positive Coronavirus cases, with another 4,449 students out of school to quarantine after contact with a confirmed case.

Meanwhile, 264 staff members lodged absences for the same reasons, according to the news outlet, with 75 staff members in the school district currently out of the classroom with a positive case, while 38 are quarantining due to contact with a confirmed case.

Another 37 staff members were absent 'due to COVID family-related issues,' the outlet reports.

As for the state, there have been a total of 746,000 cases of coronavirus, with 5,523 new cases alone reported since yesterday, and a total of 10,743 deaths from the virus since its onset in March 2020, according to the New York Times.

Crosby's video interview with WCSC, where she doubled down on her belief that God, and not her fellow board members, should decide whether children should be protected from COVID

Barbara Crosby, pictured, an elected official who has been a Dorchester District 2 School Board member for over 13 years

As of the 2010 census, the population for the county, which is included in the Charleston-North Charleston, SC Metropolitan Statistical Area, was 136,555.

The state topped the nation in COVID-19 new cases per 100,000 people, a Times report revealed on Thursday.

The school district is set to mandate the 7-day virtual learning period after Labor Day, with the hopes that the time off will 'enable many of the students and staff currently out of school due to COVID situations,' according to Gail Hughes, a Dorchester District 2 board member.

Board chairwoman Gail Hughes told Crosby' supporters that it would be illegal to change the agenda after it had already been approved.

'The ones who were here were one side of it, and that's okay,' Hughes said of Crosby's supporters.

'It was a board workshop where we gather information to try and make a decision. It was not a board meeting where we allow comments.'
A Florida man has been pictured scuffling with police trying to take his mugshot following his arrest on suspicion of DUI.

Nicholas Ruthenberg, 25, was taken into custody after he allegedly drove the wrong way down a Vero Beach street and crashed into another vehicle on Monday afternoon.

Ruthenberg fled from the scene on foot, but was soon apprehended by authorities and was taken to the Indian River County Sheriff's Office.

The driver of the other vehicle was taken to hospital with injuries.

Cops soon learned that Ruthenberg had gotten married just hours before the car crash, and figured he may have been drunk.

Ruthenburg - who is a registered Democrat - reportedly yelled 'All Hail Donald Trump' as he arrived at the Sheriff's Office and refused to pose for a mugshot.

Photos taken from inside the premises show handlers struggling to get him to hold still for the camera.

Nicholas Ruthenberg, 25, was pictured scuffling with police as they tried to take his mugshot in Florida on Monday

Ruthenberg returned a blood alcohol level reading of 0.0, and police subsequently asked him for a urine sample to 'determine the presence of chemical or controlled substances'.

At that point, he 'started to take his pants off and spread his buttocks', according to The Smoking Gun, who obtained a copy of the arrest report.

Ruthenberg then 'placed two fingers in his own anus' before cops quickly put him back in handcuffs.

An investigator concluded that Ruthenberg's erratic behavior 'was consistent with someone under the influence of some kind of stimulant'.

He was charged with DUI and leaving the scene of an accident causing serious bodily injury.

Ruthenberg was charged with DUI and leaving the scene of an accident causing serious bodily injury

Ruthenberg was released from jail on Wednesday after posting $2000 bond.

He and his bride tied the knot at the Indian River County Courthouse in Vero Beach.

Ruthenberg will return to the same courthouse for his arraignment, which is scheduled for October 1.
A Pennsylvania woman was sentenced to nearly two years in jail after pleading guilty to neglect and abuse after locking up her older sister, who has special needs, inside a wooden homemade cage, prosecutors said.

Leona Biser, 52, confessed to keeping her sister sister, Loretta Lancaster, 54, in a wooden cage with a filthy mattress laid out in the living room of their Vestaburg home, which was lined with feces and swarming with bugs and snakes.

Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro called the home a 'house of horrors' not fit for anyone to live in and which had no bathroom or running water.

'What Leona Biser did to her sister is unforgivable, but today's plea is a step towards justice,' Shapiro said in a statement on Thursday.

Leona Biser, 52, pictured blocking her face, pleaded guilty to charges of the neglect and abuse of her older sisiter, Loretta Lancaster, 54

Leona Biser was arrested in 2020 for keeping her sister inside a homemade wooden cage

Authorities said the home had no bathroom or running water and was lined with feces

Lancaster, who is said to have the mental capacity of an infant, was removed from the home and taken to the hospital in early 2020, where she was treated for a urinary tract infection and Rhabdomyolysis, a potentially life-threatening illness caused by the breakdown of muscle tissue.

The AG's office said Lancaster's condition has improved significantly and she has regained some mobility. She is also working with a speech therapist and getting the medication she needed that Biser had been allegedly withholding.

Adult Protective Services first went to the house in August 2019 when they discovered the horrendous conditions the pair were living in.

Police said they found Lancaster in a kneeling position inside the cage and that her nephew was kneeling beside her.

But it wasn't for another three months when the agent returned, this time bringing a doctor, and it was found that Lancaster was unable to even stand up or walk.

It then took a further three weeks before the Attorney General's office got involved and summoned an ambulance to take the woman to hospital according to WPXI,

Leona Biser was supposed to be caring for her dependent sister and said she was in a cage 'for her own protection.' Officials called the home a 'house of horrors'

As well as keeping her sister locked up in such deplorable conditions, Biser, pictured, is also accused of withholding her essential medication

Family members say things took a turn for the worse after the sister's mother had died in 2018

Family members say things took a turn for the worse after the sisters' mother had died in 2018.

The sisters' nephew, Anthony Gilpin, said Lancaster had the mental capacity of an infant, unable to communicate or use the bathroom by herself.

Gilpin claimed that the cage was put up for the woman's 'own safety' so that she didn't hurt herself.

Police said they found a baby's bottle that appeared to contain milk in the cage when they arrived.

'I don't want to believe it's true,' he said. 'Sometimes, people try to do what's best and take on too much and don't realize what they're doing until it's too late.'

When officers asked Biser about her sister's living conditions, she told them she kept her in 'an enclosure due to her constantly falling, and that in doing so prevented her from getting injured,' according to a police criminal complaint.

Biser's prison sentence will be followed by two years of probation.
Colombian authorities dismantled a drug trafficking ring which smuggled cocaine to the Unites States on charter and commercial flights, government officials said.

At least eight individuals were taken into custody during operations in Bogota, Choco, Meta and Valle del Cauca, the Attorney Generals Office of Colombia said Thursday.

The suspects were identified as Daniel Lopez, a pilot; Freiman Arango, an air traffic control operator; and Jhon Novoa, a middle man between the ring and foreign drug traffickers.

Aviation technician Jose Burgos and Luz Acevedo, who allegedly bribed authorities, were also nabbed.

Authorities confiscated two airplanes and half a ton of cocaine.

Colombian authorities confiscated two jets that were being used by drug traffickers to smuggle cocaine to the United States as well as Central America. In all, agents arrested eight people, including company named Aero Colombia which sold travel packages

Aside from confiscating two jets, Colombian authorities seized half a ton of cocaine

The Attorney Generals Office said that Luis Heredia, who was apprehended, was the general manager of a company named Aero Colombia, which sold travel packages.

They were all charged with trafficking and the manufacturing or possession of drugs.

Acevedo was the only suspect who accepted charges.

The criminal group shipped the cocaine on jets that flew out of clandestine airstrips and Reyes Murillo Airport in Nuqui, a Pacific coast city about 230 miles from Bogota.

A member of a drug trafficking ring was among eight individuals taken into custody, the Attorney General's Office of Colombia announced Thursday

A police officer approaches a member of a Colombia drug trafficking network that was dismantled this week. The group was formally accused Thursday of using commercial and charter flights to send massive loads of cocaine to the United States and Central America

The aircrafts were kept parked at Ernesto Cortissoz Airport in Barranquilla and specifically outfitted to keep the drug shipments concealed, officials said.

The planes were then dispatched down to Pacific coast town Choco and the Caribbean coast town of Sucre, where they were loaded with massive shipments that were bound for the United States and Central America.
A New Jersey woman has been found guilty of murder for strangling her girlfriend with an electrical cord and burying her body in a shallow grave, months after arranging to have her shot multiple times in a failed bid to kill her out of jealousy.

A Monmouth County jury on Friday convicted 38-year-old Jennifer Sweeney, from Tinton Falls, on charges of first-degree murder, first-degree conspiracy to commit murder, three related weapons offenses, second-degree desecration of human remains, and fourth-degree tampering with physical evidence in connection with the brutal killing of Tyrita Julius.

'The suffering endured by Tyrita Julius at the hands of someone who was supposed to care for her during the last several months of her life was unspeakable, and while todays verdict cant bring Tyrita back, we hope it offers some sense of solace and closure to her friends and family,' Prosecutor Lori Linskey stated.

Jennifer Sweeney, 38 (left), has been convicted of murder, conspiracy, desecration of human remains, evidence tampering and weapons charges in connection with the brutal killing of her girlfriend, Tyrita Julius, 41 (right)

Sweeney's accomplice, Andre Harris, 37, who had made a failed attempt to fatally shoot Julius in November 2015, took a plea deal and testified against Sweeney

The twisted saga began unfolding on the evening of November 24, 2015, when officers from the Linden Police Department were called a home in the 900 block of Middlesex Street in Linden on a report of a shooting.

Responding officers found Julius, 41, who had been shot eight times, sitting in her car, which had crashed into a utility pole not far from her home, reported ABC 7 NY.

The woman's 15-year-old daughter was seated in the front passenger seat of the car, having also sustained a gunshot wound.

Both Julius and her daughter were hospitalized and eventually recovered from their injuries.

The investigation into the shooting was still in progress when on March 9, 2016, Julius' mother reported her missing.

Sweeney had met Julius (left and right) through a motorcycle club. Harris testified that she suspected Julius of being unfaithful, and told him: 'If I can't have her, no one can'

Harris said in court that Sweeney had given him a gun and ordered him to shoot Julius, which he did in November 2015, injuring the woman and her daughter as they sat in a car (pictured)

Police learned that the night before, Julius had been with a woman, described as a friend from Tinton Falls, but failed to return home.

That friend was later identified as Sweeney, whom Julius had met through a motorcycle club. While Julius was recovering from being shot on her orders, Sweeney visited her in the hospital.

Julius was still recovering from her gunshot wounds in March 2016 when prosecutors said Sweeney strangled her to death with an electrical cord

It was not until more than six months after Julius' disappearance that police discovered her body buried in a three-foot-deep hole in the backyard of 37-year-old Andre Harris' home in Long Branch.

The victim had been strangled with an electrical cord and wrapped in two garbage bags, according to the authorities, as reported by Asbury Park Press.

In the course of a multi-agency investigation, detectives have determined that Harris was the gunman who shot Julius and her daughter in 2015.

Sweeney and Harris were arrested in August 2016 and charged in connection with Julius' murder and failed attempted murder, with a Monmouth County grand jury returning an indictment against each in December of that year.

Harris later reached a plea deal with prosecutors in exchange for a 16-year sentence in state prison and agreed to give testimony against Sweeney.

During Sweeney's murder trial, Harris testified that the defendant was a 'jealous lover' who suspected Julius of cheating on her. He also called her 'psychotic.'

In August 2016, Julius' body was discovered in Harris' backyard in Long Branch, New Jersey

He quoted Sweeney of telling him; 'If I can't have her, no one can.'

Harris accused Sweeney, whom he knew from high school, of threatening his life and the lives of his children if he did not shoot Julius with the gun she had given him.

Six months after the failed assassination attempt, Harris said Sweeney drove up to his house in Long Branch with Julius dead in her Jeep Cherokee, and forced him at gunpoint to help her dispose of the woman's body.

The defense attempted to paint the prosecution's star witness as a 'pathological liar,' but the jurors were not swayed.

Sweeney now faces up to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Her sentencing has been scheduled for November 19.
Republican Senator Pat Toomey, who is not seeking another term in office, urged his party not to nominate Donald Trump as its presidential candidate in 2024, calling his behavior in the aftermath of the 2020 election 'completely unacceptable.'

'I think that the future of our party is to be a party of ideas, and not to be a party about any one individual, and I think we will learn a lot from the next set of primaries,' he told CNBC at the Ambrosetti Forum in Italy on Friday.

'I think after what happened post-2020 election, I think the president's behavior was completely unacceptable, so I don't think he should be the nominee to lead the party in 2024,' he added.

Trump repeatedly and falsely claimed he won the 2020 election.

Toomey was one of seven GOP senators who voted to convict Trump in his second impeachment trial, in charges that the former president helped incite the January 6th riot at the Capitol, where his supporters tried to stop the certification of Joe Biden's victory. The entire Senate ultimately voted to acquit Trump.

Republican Senator Pat Toomey urged his party not to nominate Donald Trump as its presidential nominee in 2024

Donald Trump has not yet revealed his 2024 plans

The Pennsylvania senator was a staunch Trump ally earlier in the former president's administration.

He said he drifted from Trump because the former president moved away from conservative policies.

'It is President Trump who departed from Republican orthodoxy and conservative orthodoxy in a variety of ways. I stuck to the conservative views that I've had for a long time, he had a different point of view on matters such as trade and sometimes immigration and other things,' he said.

Trump has not revealed his 2024 plans but has said he is considering another run at the Oval Office.

The Republican field of those seeking the GOP nomination is expected become more clear after the 2022 midterm election.

Trump still holds significant sway in the Republican Party and his loyal tribe of MAGA supporters are expected to be a force in the GOP primary.

The former president has not been shy about going after those who have criticized him, including Rep. Liz Cheney, one of 10 House Republicans to vote for his impeachment.

Senator Pat Toomey arrives on the fifth day of the second impeachment trial in February 2021; he was one of seven Republicans who voted to impeach Trump

The entire Senate ultimately voted to acquit Donald Trump

Toomey announced in October he won't seek a fourth term in office, insulating him from a Trump-led primary challenge.

Trump announced on Wednesday he's endorsing Sean Parnell to replace Toomey. Parnell is a frequent guest on Fox News and a staunch Trump ally.

Parnell is one of more than half a dozen Republicans running in the primary for the GOP nomination.

The Pennsylvania Senate race is among the most competitive of the 2022 midterm elections.

Biden won Pennsylvania in the 2020 election after Trump won it in the 2016 contest.
A sales consultant, believed to be the first Brit convicted of being an Islamic State member, has been jailed for 12 years after being found guilty of using Bitcoin to help fund the terror group.

Hashim Chaudhary, 28, raised thousands of pounds before converting the money to Bitcoin to help free Daesh fighters from detention camps.

A court heard he was an 'active and prominent' member of IS and was found with publications featuring Osama Bin Laden when police raided his home.

Hashim Chaudhary, 28, raised thousands of pounds before converting the money to Bitcoin to help free Daesh fighters from detention camps

He also used Bitcoin to receive and transfer thousands of pounds, paying smugglers to liberate IS supporters from detention camps in Syria

During the dawn raid in November 2019, police also found IS propaganda videos showing that he had produced a 'call to arms' video distributed over the web.

Jurors were told Chaudhary, of Oadby, Leicestershire, mainly operated online and was able to 'promote violent jihad from the UK'.

He also used Bitcoin to receive and transfer thousands of pounds, paying smugglers to liberate IS supporters from detention camps in Syria.

Chaudhary was found guilty of seven offences under the Terrorism Act and is believed to be one of the first Brits to be convicted of being a member of IS.

A court heard he was a member of the terror group since 2016.

Following a trial at Birmingham Crown Court he was convicted of belonging to a proscribed organisation, dissemination of terrorist publications and entering into a terrorist funding arrangement.

Today Chaudhary was jailed for 12 years at the same court with an extended five year licence period.

Sentencing Judge Paul Farrer QC, said: 'I have to sentence you with a series of terrorist offences.

'Count 1 involves the membership of Islamic State between January 2016 and October 2020.

'The evidence shows that in late 2016 you travelled to the Middle East for approximately two-and-a-half months.

'In a social media conversation, you had in 2019, you said you had unsuccessfully attempted to get to Syria.

'I am satisfied you travelled to lend physical support to the IS cause - I conclude in late 2016, you became a member of that organisation. You swore your allegiance in 2019.

'You were a highly active member of the organisation. You were involved in organising the funding for the extraction of IS supporters from detention camps in Syria and their subsequent smuggling back to IS controlled areas.

'The extent of your activities is revealed by your Bitcoin trading. In 2018, you purchased just under 17,000 of Bitcoin of which 16,000 was transferred to unidentified sources.

'In 2019, you brought to transfer in excess of 35,000 worth of Bitcoin.

'You still claim that your action was motivated by that of a humanitarian consideration - I reject that.

Jurors were told Chaudhary, of Oadby, Leicestershire, mainly operated online and was able to 'promote violent jihad from the UK'

'I have no doubt your real motivation was to assist Islamic State in freeing supporters from detention camps.

'In September 2019, you transferred money from America and Sweden to an American IS member.

'In late 2019, you transferred money in order to secure the release of a Dutch IS member in Norther Syria.

'Your objective was to get her out of the camp before she and her children could be taken back to Holland.

'You were also involved in the creation of propaganda material undoubtedly intended to increase support for the organisation.

'In April of 2018, you translated a speech by Osama Bin Laden called 'On the Margin of Events' which allowed you to call to arms to those who oppose the Islamic State.

'Your conduct was likely to make a contribution towards terrorism.

'You are a highly intelligent individual, who, in the past has made a positive contribution to society - volunteering and charity work.

'But unfortunately, your actions demonstrate that you are a committed extremist. There is no reason to believe that you surrender these views lightly.

'I conclude that you are, and likely to remain a dangerous offender for the foreseeable future.

'It is impossible to assess how long you will remain a danger, but in my judgement the five-year maximum extension to your licence is necessary to protect the public.'

Prosecutor Simon Davis had earlier told the court Chaudhary formed a close alignment to IS and had used the money to fund further terrorism.

He said: 'The defendant had a close alignment with IS and was found to have a collection of publications, some featuring Osama Bin Laden - he was very active and prominent.

'He went to great lengths to source and edit publications and encourage others to post the publication on Archive.org to ensure its longevity on the internet.

'He had close connections to IS media.

'He received an approach from a 'sister' in Idlib, Syria, and a conversation took place about how to send money to Idlib.

'IS fighters were heavily reliant on multiple donations.

'In a conversation about funding Bitcoin, Chaudhary said 'I've been doing this for years and no one has been caught'.

'Money was likely to fund further terrorism - enabling ISIS to continue their activities from Idlib.

'It would have the obvious effect of raising morale of the members of the organisation, perpetuating the life of the organisation and enabling further terrorist activity to take place.

'Some 40,000 has been used for what the defendant claimed was 'humanitarian purposes'.

'There was a potential for radicalisation online, this was through Twitter, a Telegram account and Archive.org.

'Twitter soon removed this from their platform but Archive.org still had publications up online in January 2021 before taking them down.

'The Telegram account was also still up on June 2020 but was taken down in June 2021.'

Nawaz Hussain, defending, said: 'His membership of IS was clearly active but this wasn't someone of prominence.

'He raised money for charities for Oxfam to do some good, his motivations were to lend a hand to people who are suffering.

'He has an element of a saviour complex - being too intelligent for his own good. He is far removed from physical violence.

'His driving force was to release a woman from a camp, this was a humanitarian venture, which crossed into criminality.'
British troops 'ran towards explosions' during the suicide bomb attack at Kabul airport that killed at least 180 people, a senior Army officer has revealed.

Soldiers on the ground described a 'scene of chaos' at Hamid Karzai International Airport as they worked to secure the area alongside US forces and help treat casualties, including a baby, Brigadier James Martin explained.

Brig Martin, who leads the 16 Air Assault Brigade and commanded troops on the land mission, praised his troops and described it as pure 'serendipity' that no British forces were among the fatalities.

The senior officer also dismissed the notion that the American forces had kept the airport's gate open because British forces wanted to evacuate more people.

Brig Martin described the actions of his soldiers as 'one of the finest things I've seen' during Operation Pitting - the nation's largest evacuation since World War Two that saw over 15,000 people safely retrieved from the Taliban's clutches.

'They ran towards the explosion,' he explained.

'They provided immediate medical succour and support to the Afghan civilians that have been wounded.

'They provided Explosive Ordnance Disposal support to the Americans, and they provided a security perimeter so the Americans could withdraw their wounded, and their killed, with dignity and under a screen of safety.'

British troops 'ran towards explosions' during the suicide bomb attack at Kabul airport (pictured) that killed at least 182 people, a senior Army officer has revealed

Brigadier James Martin praised the reaction of his troops and described it as pure 'serendipity' that no British forces were among the fatalities

Leaked transcripts handed to Politico suggest Pentagon officials had predicted a 'mass casualty' attack at Kabul airport and warned that the Abbey Gate was the 'highest risk' in a meeting just 24 hours before 170 people and 13 US Marines were killed.

In a second conference call at 12pm last Thursday, American commanders set out plans to close the gate by that afternoon.

However, the decision was taken to allow Britain, based at the nearby Baron Hotel, to continue evacuating people through it.

Six hours later, an ISIS-K terrorist armed with a suicide vest killed himself and almost 200 others.

Describing the blast to Sky News, Brig Martin said troops 'immediately' recognised the explosion as a suicide bomb and darted to the front of Abbey Gate

The terrorist attack happened at about 6pm local time at the Abbey Gate on Thursday, August 26 - where thousands had gathered at the perimeter hoping to board a departing cargo plane.

Initially, the Pentagon said that there had been two suicide attacks, including at the Baron Hotel where the British were processing people.

The following day the US changed its account and said there had been only one, blaming 'garbled' intelligence from the scene.

And survivors have claimed that frightened soldiers protecting the airport may have opened fire in the aftermath, inadvertently adding to the death toll, which included two Britons and the child of a UK national.

Describing the blast to Sky News, Brig Martin said troops 'immediately' recognised the explosion as a suicide bomb and darted to the front of the gate.

And he also shared the devastating emotional toll that his soldiers have endured after watching Afghans crushed in large crowds during the fortnight long last-ditch operation.

'We heard the immediate bang of the explosion, I think we all knew immediately, I certainly knew immediately, what it was,' he said.

'Two to three seconds later, we were then hit by a wave of CS gas, which was effectively the vaporisation of the gas that the American soldiers were carrying.

'We then opened the gates and we began to provide that support and our soldiers moved towards the incident in order to secure themselves.

'But then to start helping with the process of dealing with casualties and supporting our UK, US, brethren.

The terrorist attack happened at about 6pm local time at the Abbey Gate on Thursday, August 26 - where thousands had gathered at the perimeter hoping to board a departing cargo plane

'There was emotions all the way through the operations.

'You can't see a young child, a baby, a woman crushed to death in front of you, and then you having to deal with the aftermath of that and the corpse, or provide medical attention to a baby that's been struck by a five millimetre ball bearing - you can't see any of that without being emotional.

'But our men and women are incredibly resilient, and incredibly professional, and the scenes of emotion were saved till after the event, till after they did their duty.'

Speaking to the Telegraph, Brigadier Martin asked: 'Did they [my troops] see some harrowing things? Did they see some wretched circumstances?

'Did they see some of the worst and best of humanity? Absolutely.'

The British Ministry of Defense declined to respond to allegations they were to blame for keeping the gate open, but said in a statement: 'Throughout Operation Pitting we have worked closely with the US to ensure the safe evacuation of thousands of people.

'We send our deepest condolences to the families of the US victims of the senseless attacks in Kabul & continue to offer our full support to our closest ally'.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken provided few details and dodged several questions on State Department efforts to evacuate Americans and Afghans out of the Taliban-controlled country in a lackluster press conference on the subject on Friday.

After his remarks Blinken met with US embassy staff from Kabul Friday afternoon and praised their 'resilience, dedication and professionalism' in a statement on Twitter.

Hours after the military left Kabul on August 30 Blinken admitted that between 100 and 200 US citizens who wanted to leave Kabul were left behind when the last C-17 jet lifted off the tarmac at Hamid Karzai International Airport.

Early on in the press conference Friday he said the US State Department issued 19 warnings to US citizens registered with the embassy in Kabul to leave the country - then appeared to blame them when he said many didn't want to leave right away.

He was asked about the status of those Americans today but would not say how many remained.

'We are in very regular contact with a relatively small number of American citizens who remain in Afghanistan and have indicated they are interested in leaving,' he said.

Blinken went out of his way to repeat that the State Department sent out warnings to those Americans it knew were in Kabul before the Taliban took over - seemingly blaming them for not taking the initiative to flee earlier.

Blinken offered numerous assurances over the US's 'diplomatic mission' to get Americans and Afghan allies to safety - but declined to say how many of each were still in Afghanistan

The Secretary of State met with staff from the US embassy in Kabul following his remarks

'For many months, going back to March, we issued 19 different notices to those registered with he embassy, as I said encouraging them and then urging them to leave Afghanistan,' he said.

He claimed those Americans were 'almost exclusively' residing there for years and were hesitant to leave when those warnings were issued and 'it's especially wrenching for them to make the decision about whether to leave or not.'

Blinken stressed the State Department was working with those US citizens based on their 'desire to leave' - implying some could have wanted to stay and live under Taliban rule, despite the world witnessing chaotic scenes at the airport in August as thousands attempted to flee.

He even quantified the number of times his department reached out to them during the evacuation - 55,000 phone calls and 30,000 emails over two weeks - but failed to mention a figure on how many didn't heed the warnings.

As he left the briefing a reporter shouted, 'So no American made it out? Is that what you're answering?'

But Blinken marched out of the briefing room without a word.

Blinken said on Monday that as many as 200 Americans could still be in Afghanistan actively trying to flee, after the US military ended its evacuation that day

A US military transport plane flies over relatives of a man killed by a US drone strike in Kabul

The Biden official told reporters the US was looking at possible routes by land to evacuate Americans and Afghan allies of the US military still stranded in Kabul.

Afghanistan's mountainous territory is infamous inhospitable and would likely pose a number of threats to those exiting - and without US military guard to guide them.

Earlier in the briefing he addressed the thousands of special immigrant visa applicants still stranded in Afghanistan, many of whom have targets on their backs for aiding the US military over its 20-year war.

He said the government was looking at 'alternative' application routes for those individuals so they wouldn't have to wait in the Taliban-ruled country, including potential third-country locations where they can wait in safety.

Blinken also thanked the US veterans working to help stranded Afghans and said the State Department was in contact with those groups on how to get them out.

'Helping these Afghans is more than just a priority for us, it's a deeply held commitment, and it's an ongoing one. We're going to do everything we can to keep it,' he said.

No American civilians were on the last five flights out of Kabul, military officials previously said

An image of the last soldier to leave Afghanistan after 20 years of a constant presence. With the military gone, Blinken said the US is engaged in a new 'diplomatic mission' to get people out

During the briefing Blinken was also asked about the number of SIV applicants left in Afghanistan.

Another State Department official revealed on Wednesday that 'the majority' of SIVs were left behind despite repeat promises from government officials up to President Biden himself that the US would do everything it can to get them out.

Blinken gave a roundabout answer in which he touted the 124,000 people evacuated by US-led flights and said efforts were currently underway to assess how many of the thousands of Afghans at US staging areas or safe haven locations across the Middle East and Europe were SIV applicants or other vulnerable Afghans.

He again declined to provide a specific number of how many people were abandoned.

'What I can tell you is this: of the roughly 124,000 people who have been evacuated, the vast majority - 75, 80 percent - are Afghans at risk. And of those, some significant number will be SIVs,' Blinken said.

He assured there was 'no deadline' to the diplomatic stage of the evacuation.
The White House said that the U.S. was unprepared to face future pandemics as President Joe Biden's top science advisor laid out a new $65 billion plan to get the nation ready.

Dr. Eric Lander, the White House director of Science & Technology Policy, said the U.S. needed to invest into the new plan as biological threats are expected to occur 'at an increasing frequency,' during a teleconference on Friday.

The plan focused on funding critical developments, such as vaccines, diagnostics, early warning systems and disease surveillance, as well as strengthening the nation's health system and global pandemic preparedness model.

'We need better capabilities because there is a reasonable likelihood that another serious pandemic that could be worse than COVID-19 will occur soon, possibly even within the next decade,' Lander said.

Eric Lander, the White House director of Science & Technology Policy, outlined President Joe Biden's administration's plan to combat future pandemic, saying the U.S. is not prepared

The White House's $65 plan focuses on virus study and detection and funding vaccination research, manufacturing and distribution. Pictured, a researched at the University of Pittsburgh beginning to work on COVID-19 vaccine research on March 28, 2020.

The coronavirus pandemic left hospitals across the U.S. overflowing with patients. Pictured, an overcrowded hospital emergency room in Houston, Texas

'And the next pandemic will very likely be substantially different than COVID-19. So, we must be prepared to deal with any type of viral threat.'

In the 27 page document titled, American Pandemic Preparedness: Transforming Our Capabilities, Lander also called to enhance the nation's real-time monitoring capabilities and make upgrades to personal protective equipment that could be used against a wide range of viruses.

The five pillars of pandemic preparedness Dr. Eric Lander, the White House director of Science & Technology Policy, laid out the five major pillars that would guide the U.S. through a future pandemic Pillar one: transforming our medical defenses, including improving vaccine, therapeutics, and diagnostics.

Pillar two: ensuring situational awareness about infectious disease threats, for both early warning and real-time monitoring.

Pillar three: strengthening public health systems, both in the U.S. and internationally, to be able to respond to emergencies, with a particular focus on protecting the most vulnerable communities.

Pillar four: building core capabilities, including personal protective equipment, stockpiles and supply chains, biosafety and biosecurity, and regulatory improvement.

Pillar five: managing the mission, with the seriousness of purpose, commitment, and accountability of an Apollo Program. Advertisement

The plan also proposed $15 billion to $20 billion in funding to jump-start the initiative and create a new 'mission control' office at the Department of Health and Human Services, which would be overseen by Congress.

The bulk of the plan focuses on spending a total of $24.2 billion to develop and test new vaccines for a range of viruses and make improvements to vaccine distribution and manufacturing efforts.

Another $11.8 billion would be spent on therapeutics, which would allow U.S. scientists to develop new antiviral drugs and ensure large-scale manufacturing capacity for antibody treatments.

Lander said that the COVID-19 pandemic had also exposed 'fundamental issues' with America's public health system and pandemic preparedness.

'We strongly believe that this mission is so important that it needs to be managed with the seriousness of purpose, commitment, and accountability of, well, President Kennedy's Apollo Program, overseen by a dedicated program office.'

The U.S. health system cracked under the weight of COVID-19 as more than 39 million cases have been reported so far. Hospitals around the nation were overflowing with patients at the height of the pandemic and some continue to struggle with the large volume caused by the delta variant.

More than 640,000 people have died in the U.S. so far due to COVID-19, John Hopkins University reported. Millions have died worldwide.

Lander said part of the problem involved a lack of coordination across federal, state and local governments.

In New York, a U.S. Navy hospital ship was called into Manhattan to tend to patients as hospitals in the city were filled with COVID-19 patients, but the boat went the mostly unused before being recalled by the federal government less than a month later.

Several state and local governments also pushed back against masking regulations, and the CDC was criticized for its confusing messages on the effectiveness of masks and the COVID-19 vaccines.

And in May, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the White House Chief Medical Advisor, defended people's right to not get vaccinated and spoke out against vaccine passports, fearing they could lead to a type of discrimination despite vaccines being the best way to combat COVID-19.

Lander said it was critical for the nation to work on a united means of communication to combat fear and misinformation over future pandemics.

White House officials said the government needed to do a better job to implement trust in vaccines and distribute them after the failings revealed by COVID. Pictured, a California woman getting a vaccine shot in August 2021

A bulk of the funding would go to the creation of new vaccines to combat pandemics. Pictured, researches in New Jersey studying COVID in 2020

The White House said early detection would be key to stopping future pandemics. Pictured, a researcher studying the coronavirus before it's major U.S. outbreak on February 28

Poor communication between governments was sited as one of the big failings when it came it COVID response. In March, NY received a Navy hospital boat, pictured, that went mostly unused before it was returned to the federal government less than a month later

Dr. Beth Cameron, the senior director for Global Health Security and Biodefense, said her office would be working closely with Lander and the president to quickly implement the plan for both the long-term and immediate future.

'Importantly, though, we continue to take stock of our full range of biodefense, pandemic readiness, and global health security needs, including capabilities, policies, and practices that we need to update and refresh, building on our lessons from COVID-19 and other outbreaks,' she said.

'COVID-19 has enumerated a number of challenges in our preparedness for a moderate pandemic, but we do need additional capabilities to be fully prepared for any biological event that comes our way, and that includes countering bioterrorism; countering the development and use of biological weapons; strengthening the Biological Weapons Convention; improving food security and food defense, zoonotic spillover events, and others.'

Officials told NBC that the $65 plan was a 'modest' investing when taking into account the $16 trillions in lost economic output the U.S. experienced due to the pandemic.

'If major pandemics similar to COVID-19, costing the U.S. roughly $16 trillion, occur at a frequency of every 20 years, the annualized economic impact on the U.S. would be $800 billion per year. Even for somewhat milder pandemics, the annualized cost would likely exceed $500 billion,' officials said.

The U.S. continues to experience a high surge in new cases due to the delta variant.

The CDC reported 161,387 new cases on Thursday, and 1,514 new deaths.
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President Joe Biden offered hugs and reassurances on Friday when he toured LaPlace, Louisiana, walking among downed trees, debris and power lines as he saw first hand the damage from Hurricane Ida.

Biden offered comfort and snapped selfies as he walked among the wreckage.

'I know you're hurting,' he said after meeting with families and visiting with a group that gathered on the corner of a street blocked off by security.

He stood in front of a one story home where a huge tree toppled on top of the roof, crushing the family mini van.

The street featured rows of houses with blue tarps on their roofs. Several huge trees were uprooted. Some had mattresses in their yards - after interior flooding that can ruin belongings.

Days after Hurricane Ida walloped the Louisiana coast and followed a path of destruction through the state, Biden came here to meet with local officials, tour the damage and take in aerial views as he flew over the area.

During his tour, Biden, wearing a face mask and baseball cap, became comforter-in-chief.

He placed a reassuring on the arm of one woman and even leaned on a bent stop sign during a neighborhood conversation, where he vowed to help residents rebuild, arguing his 'Build Back Better' agenda and his $3.5 trillion budget plan would help make it possible.

In a speech to residents, Biden rattled off the list of things the federal government was doing, including bringing in more generators to help those with power, opening up the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, and working with cell phone companies to get service restored.

'We're working around the clock, with the governor and the elected officials here until we can meet every need you all,' he said.

President Joe Biden tours a neighborhood affected by Hurricane Ida in LaPlace, La., giving a hug to a child

President Biden walked around a Louisiana neighborhood devastated by Hurricane Ida; joined by Governor John Bel Edwards and FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell

President Joe Biden rests his hand on a stop sign as he stopped to talk with residents

President Biden walks beside a massive, fallen tree as he toured hurricane damage

Biden takes a selfie with residents during his tour

Biden became comforter in chief, offering reassuring words that help was coming

Biden also blasted insurance companies for denying living assistance coverage for those who didn't fall under the mandatory evacuation order.

'Insurance companies are saying no, no, no, we won't pay you what we owe. Well we're putting as much pressure as we can,' the president said.

'No one fled this killer storm because they were looking for a vacation or a road trip,' he noted.

He argued even though evacuation orders were voluntary, people felt safer leaving.

'So, folks, they left their home because ... they felt that they had to flee the risk of death. There's nothing voluntary about that. And so I'm calling on private insurance companies - don't hide behind the fine print and technicality; pay what you owe your customers; cover temporary housing costs,' he said.

Later, Biden took an aerial tour of some of the hardest hit areas. He circled coastal communities in southeast Louisiana that bore the initial brunt of the storm, flying over Grand Isle, where Idas ferocious winds swept away homes and roofs.

In LaFourch Parish, he met with local leaders, joined again by Scalise. As the sun went down and temperatures finally dipped below the 80s, Biden met privately with officials in a building made of corrugated metal near Golden Meadow, one of Idas landfall locations.

As he flew over marshy areas already giving way to erosion and a rising Gulf, Biden, aboard Marine One, was trailed by press and aides flying aboard Ospreys.

Governor John Bel Edwards and FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell joined Biden on his neighborhood tour. Earlier the two joined the president for a briefing at one of the coordination centers, which Biden arrived at after driving through rows electric poles toppled by the storm.

Dozens of white line crews could be seen lining the road as his motorcade passed. Biden once again praised crews from 24 states he said had come to aid the relief effort. One lineman in a green safety jacket gave a one-finger salute to the motorcade as it passed, as DailyMail.com observed traveling with the president.

Biden saluted those crews in his brief remarks while pool cameras rolled, noting that people responded from across the country to help.

'You're not going to put up the same system  Build it better,' he said, talking about burying power lines even if it costs more to defray future costs.

'I just want you all focused on that as you take a look,' he said, with House Republican Whip Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) in the room. Not a single Republican backed his sweeping 'reconciliation' bill when Democratic leaders brought it up, while his infrastructure bill drew some Republican support in the Senate.

His pitch came hours after Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) published a searing op-ed called for a 'strategic pause' for the reconciliation bill  a posture that could imperil it.

'Take a look and see if what we're suggesting makes the most sense to you. Not whether it's not the money or not or too much. Does it make sense? Does it make sense?' Biden said.

Downed power lines are visible behind President Biden as he takes his tour

The neighborhood was fully of debris after Hurricane Ida came through

Biden chats with a group of residents

President Biden talks with residents impacted by Hurricane Ida

The neighborhood Biden toured was filled with down trees and debris

President Joe Biden toured stunning hurricane devastation in LaPlace, Louisiana, getting a briefing at St. John Parish Emergency Operations Center

He pointed to the Feds' $15 billion in levees after Hurricane Katrina, with a system that appears to have held and kept New Orleans mostly dry.

'That was a lot of money. Think how much money it saved?' Biden said.

He said his daughter Ashley, who went to Tulane, told him: 'What are you spending time talking to the governor of New York? Why are you not in Louisiana?'

New York also got slammed by the hurricane, and some locals fear they could lose the nation's attention.

Biden talked up $500 FEMA checks. Sometimes it's just what you need that moment that can make a difference,' he said.

President Joe Biden speaks with New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell (L) and Jefferson Parish President Cynthia Lee Sheng upon his arrival in New Orleans

Biden acknowledged he was pitching his program in the fallout of the storm. 'I realize I'm selling as I'm talking to you now,' he said. But he said his infrastructure proposal would provide good paying jobs.

His press aide, Karine Jean-Pierre, wouldn't provide specifics when asked if Biden had met with Manchin, who in a searing op-ed called for a 'strategic pause' for the reconciliation bill. Manchin has considerable leverage in the 50-50 Senate, and could stall the reconciliation package or use his sway to try to slash its bottom line.

On his stop, Biden visited some of the hardest hit areas south of LaFourche, Louisiana where the Category 4 Hurricane made landfall and ripped through structures and devastated entire communities.

His trip comes after Hurricane Ida pummeled Louisiana, before making its way through a swath of the country to cause massive flooding in the Northeast, causing further mayhem and killing dozens. The severe flooding stunned residents of Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York off guard  and could draw national attention away from hard hit coastal areas that took the initial brunt of the storm.

The trip will give Biden the opportunity to address the federal response and meet with local leaders  just days after he defended the chaotic evacuation from Afghanistan.

President Biden saw downed trees in the Cambridge neighborhood of LaPlace, La.

Biden addressed Louisiana residents in front of a large downed tree

President Biden, arriving in New Orleans, will take an aerial tour of some of the hardest hit communities, including Laffite, Grand Isle, Port Fourchon and Lafourche Parish

Dozens of white line crews could be seen lining the road as Biden's motorcade passed and one lineman in a green safety jacket gave a one-finger salute to the motorcade as it passed

A van sits in a ditch in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida

Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards, left, and White House senior adviser Cedric Richmond, right, joined President Joe Biden in the briefing

Homes destroyed in the wake of Hurricane Ida are shown September 2, 2021 in Grand Isle, Louisiana. Ida made landfall August 29 as a Category 4 storm near Grand Isle, southwest of New Orleans, causing widespread power outages, flooding and massive damage

He also took an aerial tour of some of the hardest hit communities, including Laffite, Grand Isle, Port Fourchon and Lafourche Parish.

Biden told the nation Thursday he had been monitoring the devastation caused by Hurricane Ida 'closely,' after the Category 4 Hurricane slammed into the Louisiana coast, bringing death and destruction on the way as it made its way up through Pennsylvania and New York.

'While the catastrophic flooding wasn't as severe as it was during Hurricane Katrina 16 years ago, Ida was so powerful that it caused the Mississippi River literally to change direction -- the flow -- change the flow temporarily,' Biden noted.

He said the 'good news' is that the $15 billion levee system put in place around New Orleans after catastrophic failures during Hurricane Katrina appears to have held.

'It held. It was strong. It worked,' he said. 'But too many people and too many areas are still unprotected and saw a storm surge and flooding that was devastating,' Biden said.

A search and rescue team drives through standing water while checking homes destroyed in the wake of Hurricane Ida on September 2, 2021 in Grand Isle, Louisiana. Ida made landfall August 29 as a Category 4 storm near Grand Isle, southwest of New Orleans, causing widespread power outages, flooding and massive damage

He pointed to 170 mile and hour winds he said were still unconfirmed by FEMA 'causing unimaginable damage, with debris and downed powerlines making roads impassable and slowing response efforts to save folks and property.'

Floods let to a series of deaths in the northeast as waters raged in Philadelphia and even Biden's hometown of Wilmington.

Homes destroyed in the wake of Hurricane Ida are shown September 2, 2021 in Grand Isle, Louisiana. Ida made landfall August 29 as a Category 4 storm near Grand Isle, southwest of New Orleans, causing widespread power outages, flooding and massive damage

Michael DiSimone, CEO of the Link Restaurant Group prepares meat to be barbecued to give to people for free as power continues to be out in most of the city after hurricane Ida ripped through the state in New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S., September 1, 2021

An official in Jefferson Parish says a transmission tower that provides power for New Orleans and the east bank of the parish has collapsed into the river near Bridge City. According to the parish's Emergency Management Director, cables strung across the Mississippi River

Biden ran into difficulties when he flew to Surfside Florida to view damage there earlier this summer after the tragic Champlain Towers South collapse. There was a shift on the rubble while Biden was at a hotel several blocks away, and the president visited a memorial wall rather than the disaster site itself.

During that visit, Biden met with local leaders including Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, his counterpart in a coronavirus feud.

'We're not going anywhere. Tell me what you need,' he told the assembled leaders, including DeSantis, who praised federal efforts.
Ministers are preparing a triple clampdown on second homes amid warnings that they are squeezing the life out of holiday hotspots.

Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick is planning a range of reforms that will give councils powers to ban the creation of new second homes if they are deemed to be damaging to the local community.

They would be able to impose such bans without having to first hold and win a local referendum on the issue.

Councils will also get new rights to insist developers build more starter homes, instead of focusing on properties likely to be attractive to 'incomers' seeking a holiday home.

Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick is planning a range of reforms that will give councils powers to ban the creation of new second homes. Pictured: St Ives Bay in Cornwall

And ministers are considering changing the rules to require owners of a second property to get planning permission before renting it out as a holiday let.

The moves, which will be included in planning legislation this autumn, are designed to provide respite to communities in areas such as Cornwall, the Lake District and the Cotswolds which have high concentrations of second homes.

But they will spark fears that buy-to-let investors could be squeezed out of legitimate investments in holiday areas. Latest Government figures suggest around half a million people have at least one second home in the UK.

A Government source insisted last night that ministers were 'not anti-second homes'.

But the source said there was a need to tackle the issue in areas where 'extremely high levels' of second-home ownership are blamed for pricing local people out of the housing market.

The most eye-catching change will give councils the right to take powers pioneered in St Ives in Cornwall to ban the sale of new-build properties as second homes.

But there are fears that buy-to-let investors could be squeezed out of legitimate investments in holiday areas. Pictured: Property signs outside houses in Stoke-on-Trent

In 2016, the popular seaside town became the first place in the country to ban new second homes following a local referendum on the issue.

The move has involved a ban on developers building new properties for the second home market in the town, where around a quarter of residential properties are second homes or holiday lets.

Q&A What is the problem? Only about half a million people own second homes in this country, but some areas such as Cornwall and the Lake District have very high concentrations. Critics claim a large number of holiday homes can price local people out of the housing market and damage services. Supporters say they bring vital income and point out that in many areas the owners of second homes pay council tax at the full rate. What is being proposed? Ministers are planning a series of reforms including making it easier for councils to follow the lead of St Ives, which banned the construction of new properties for use as second homes in 2016. Authorities in the Cornish seaside town had to win a local referendum on the issue, but the new proposals would let councils do it automatically. Will it work? One study by the London School of Economics found that the St Ives ban had backfired, with house prices rising even higher as the supply of new properties available for second homes dried up. But local councillors insist more time is needed to see the full effect. Could planning permission be needed to rent out properties as a holiday let? Yes. Currently people are free to rent out second homes on the holiday market. Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick is said to be 'open' to proposals that would require people to get planning permission for a 'change of use' before they could rent out their property as a holiday home. Advertisement

New homes can be sold only to people who can show they will be used as a primary residence. A legal challenge to the ban failed.

Under the proposals, councils would not have to win a local referendum on the issue of the kind staged in St Ives before imposing a ban on new second homes.

Critics say the results of the St Ives experiment have been mixed.

A 2019 assessment by the London School of Economics warned that the ban may have backfired, with developers choosing to build elsewhere, and locals facing even stiffer competition from those seeking to buy existing properties for second homes.

Study author Professor Christian Hilber said that restricting the number of second homes might have 'positive effects on amenities and affordability'.

But he added: 'This always comes at the cost of a significant adverse effect on the local economy.

'Any policy that succeeds in keeping second home investors away will hurt the local economy, mainly the tourism and construction sectors.'

Local councillors insist the policy needs to be given more time before a clear assessment can be made. In the meantime, several other local authorities are considering following the lead of St Ives.

Equally far-reaching could be the new proposal to require people to get planning permission to rent out a second home as a holiday let.

Ministers have not made a final decision on the idea, but Mr Jenrick is said to be 'open' to the proposal.

In areas which take up the idea, people wanting to let out a property for holiday purposes would have to apply to the council for 'change of use' permission.

The plan would affect both traditional lettings and newer forms like Airbnb. But it would not be applied retrospectively and would not apply to long-term rentals.

The moves come in response to complaints from some local authorities that high levels of second home ownership can create 'ghost towns' and villages, with too few people resident all-year to support local services.

Critics also complain that local people can be priced out of popular areas.

Ministers have already ended the automatic council tax discount for second homes, meaning that in many areas owners pay the rate in full.

But a Government source said ministers recognised that holiday homes could also generate vital income in areas where the economy is heavily reliant on tourism.
Dominic Raab left it to a junior minister to decide about the rescue of Afghan translators during his holiday.

The Foreign Secretary has defended continuing his stay in Crete as the Taliban advanced by insisting he was working tirelessly from his five-star beach resort.

But bombshell new details can be disclosed today of how the Foreign Office minister responsible for the Pacific had to be called in to give orders about the evacuation from Afghanistan.

The Foreign Secretary has defended continuing his stay in Crete as the Taliban advanced by insisting he was working tirelessly from his five-star beach resort

Despite Mr Raabs claim that he was working while on holiday, the paper was redirected to Lord Goldsmith

As the Taliban closed in on Kabul, officials sought direction from ministers on the scheme to rescue Afghans who worked for the British government.

In a submission on August 13  two days before the capital fell  diplomats requested clarity on how the rules should be applied in practice to those desperately trying to flee.

Despite Mr Raabs claim that he was working while on holiday, the paper was redirected to Lord Goldsmith.

The minister, who covers the Pacific and splits his time with the environment department, responded with his instructions on August 14.

The revelation that it was left to Lord Goldsmith to call the shots about the scheme to help Afghan translators will increase pressure on the beleaguered Foreign Secretary and will raise fresh questions about what exactly he did do on the weekend Kabul fell.

The Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy was established in April to help Afghans whose lives were at risk from the Taliban because they had worked for the British.

The revelation that it was left to Lord Goldsmith to call the shots about the scheme to help Afghan translators

It is understood the submission was made by officials to get ministerial sign-off on the precise details of how the eligibility criteria should be used in light of the rapidly deteriorating situation.

After it was drafted on the evening of August 13, further advice was sought from officials.

The next morning instead of going to Mr Raab to make a decision, it was sent to Lord Goldsmith at around 9am. He responded five hours later.

The Mail last month revealed that while on holiday, Mr Raab had been advised by senior officials to call his Afghan counterpart to seek help airlifting out of the country translators who worked for British troops.

But he failed to do this and the call was delegated to Lord Goldsmith  although it never ended up taking place.

Mr Raab finally flew back after Kabul fell, arriving back in the UK in the early hours of August 16. He has since admitted with hindsight he should have come back sooner.

But he has insisted it was nonsense that he was lounging on a beach or paddleboarding in the ocean on the final day of his holiday.

The sea wasnt open because it was a red flag, so no one was paddleboarding, he said.

The Foreign Secretary has insisted he was engaging with international partners in the days leading up to the Talibans seizure of Kabul, but the Foreign Office has been unable to provide details of any calls with his international counterparts.

The only public record of a conversation he had with a global partner while on holiday is from after the insurgents had entered the Afghan capital, when he spoke to his opposite number in Pakistan.

The Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy was established in April to help Afghans whose lives were at risk from the Taliban because they had worked for the British. Pictured, former Afghan interpreter Wazir, 31.

As Mr Raab was grilled by MPs this week, it emerged he went on holiday after his own department warned Afghanistan was on the brink.

A document, obtained by the Commons foreign affairs committee, had told of rapid advances by extremists which could lead to the fall of cities, collapse of security forces [and] the Taliban returned to power.

The Foreign Office assessment was produced on July 22  more than three weeks before Kabul fell.

Mr Raab, who is now on a diplomatic mission to Pakistan, refused 11 times to say exactly when he had gone on holiday.

A Foreign Office spokesman said last night: This was a straightforward decision which did not require Foreign Secretary approval and was therefore handled in line with the well used system across Whitehall of duty ministers, with a decision taken in under five hours.

Dominic Raab contradicts Boris Johnson on speed of Taliban takeover of Afghanistan

Even the Taliban were taken by surprise by the speed of its takeover of Afghanistan, Dominic Raab claimed yesterday.

In comments that contradicted Boris Johnson, the Foreign Secretary insisted there was common widespread surprise at the militant groups pace as it swept through the country and captured Kabul.

But the Prime Minister had said on Thursday that it had been clear for many months that the situation could rapidly change.

And Defence Secretary Ben Wallace claimed he argued in July that the game was up.

Kabul was taken by the Taliban on August 15 while Mr Raab was on holiday at the luxury Amirandes Hotel (pictured) in Crete and his assertion about the speed of the takeover contradicted the Prime Minister

Mr Raab, who is visiting Pakistan on a diplomatic mission to secure safe passage for the stranded Britons and Afghans, said yesterday: The takeover, I think its fair to say, was faster than anyone anticipated, not just the United Kingdom or Nato allies.

'And I suspect the Taliban and ordinary Afghans were taken by surprise.

The Foreign Secretary has previously said advice from the intelligence community and the military was that the capital was unlikely to fall this year.

He added it would instead see a steady deterioration from when foreign troops withdrew at the end of August.

However, Kabul was taken by the Taliban on August 15 while Mr Raab was on holiday at the luxury Amirandes Hotel in Crete and his assertion about the speed of the takeover contradicted the Prime Minister.

Mr Johnson said: I think its been clear for many months that the situation could go very fast and thats been part of the intelligence briefing.

There have also been suggestions the Afghan national defence force might hold on for longer. But logically you can see what happened.
Three Pacific Northwest schools went into lockdown Friday afternoon after anti-mask demonstrators tried to break into a Vancouver, Washington, high school during school hours.

Vancouver school officials locked down for the afternoon Skyview High School, Alki Middle School and Chinook Elementary in Clark County, located along the state's border with Oregon.

'The lockdown allows normal operations to continue inside the school,' district spokesperson Patricia Nuzzo said in a statement.

'All students and staff members remain safely inside. District resource officers are onsite to help maintain safety.'

Videos emerged on Twitter around 1pm local time on Friday purportedly showing Proud Boys and other far-right extremists as well as anti-maskers chanting 'USA USA USA' outside of Skyview High School.

Proud Boys and other far-right extremists as well as anti-maskers are seen demonstrating outside of a Washington state high school on Friday

Nuzzo said protesters have gathered outside the schools on Thursday and Friday to voice their anger with the state's mask requirements for staff and students.

Pictures of groups of protesters with large banners that read, 'Stop the mandate' - seemingly a call back to 'Stop the steal' rally cries during the January 6 Capitol riot - outside the school.

The Clark County Sheriff's Office didn't respond to DailyMail.com's calls and emails.

School board president Kyle Sproul said locking down the schools was the proper decision to ensure student safety.

'Regardless of ones stance on mask mandates, I think most parents in our community agree that protesting at our school campuses and disrupting the school day is not in the best interest of students,' Sproul told OPB.

Tweets showing pictures of the protest outside Skyview High School in Vancouver, Washington on Friday, which forced three district schools to go into lockdown

Two days earlier, a student's mother was reportedly arrested for trespassing on school grounds because her daughter refused to wear a mask in school, and her mother refused to leave after arguing with school officials.

Clark County has been hit hard over the last week by COVID-19 as schools reopened.

Over the last seven days, the county has seen 1,653 new cases - a 46.5 percent increase over last week, 76 hospitalizations - a 20.6 percent increase over last week, and 15 deaths - a 67 percent jump, according to the latest numbers by the CDC.

Only 61.4 percent of eligible state residents have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, which is more than 10 percent lower than the national average of 74 percent.
British troops were saved from almost certain death in the Kabul suicide attack by an 11th-hour decision, commanders revealed last night.

Based on intelligence about a threat from Isis-K fanatics, UK paratroopers were moved back a short distance which meant they avoided last week's airport blast by a matter of feet, while 13 US troops patrolling the same area were among the 182 killed.

Moments after surviving the attack at the Abbey Gate, British soldiers were able to form a protective cordon around the US Marines and rescue injured children.

In his first interview since arriving back in the UK, Brigadier James Martin, the Commanding Officer of 16 Air Assault Brigade, said: 'We were aware there was a credible threat and we had taken steps the previous evening to create a greater standoff between where a suicide bomber might appear and our people and civilians.

'I think that undoubtedly put us in a good position. I also think, ultimately, it saved lives. There is a degree of serendipity about this, that none of our people got hurt, but I mean, we are talking by feet.

'I imagine for some of our people, that is quite difficult to deal with.'

In his first interview since arriving back in the UK, Brigadier James Martin revealed UK paratroopers were moved back a short distance which meant they avoided last week's airport blast by a matter of feet

British troops 'ran towards explosions' during the suicide bomb attack at Kabul airport (pictured) that killed at least 182 people, a senior Army officer has revealed

Brigadier Martin, one of the most decorated officers in the British Army, was humbled by the response of his soldiers.

'We heard the bang and about three seconds later we felt the sting and that very distinctive smell of CS gas which hit us as the blast had vaporized some of the US stocks of CS,' he said.

'And then very quickly the gates were open, we were bringing in injured women and children. Our soldiers were running towards the explosion to provide first aid, explosive ordinance disposal support to our American brethren and to provide them with security to evacuate their wounded.

'When the bomb went off and shots were fired  they weren't necessarily fired by the enemy  our people ran towards the sound of the gunfire. I am exceptionally proud of how they undertook their duties that day.'

In the days before the attack, US aircraft circling over Kabul intercepted electronic messages about a suicide bomber targeting crowds and Western troops at the airport.

Lieutenant Colonel David Middleton, the Commanding Officer of 2nd Battalion, the Parachute Regiment (2 Para) said: 'We were very close to the explosion.

'We had, based on the intelligence beforehand, moved back to a more contained area.

'So if you looked at where our forces were laid out 24 hours earlier it would have been far more exposed.

'We knew the threat was there. We did our best to mitigate it.'

The troops  some only 18 or 19  are now being offered counselling to cope with what Lt Col Middleton described as the 'visceral' experience of the explosion and processing evacuees.

'What young soldiers, male, female, different cap badges, different colours, different creeds did, to save lives was really humbling,' he added.

Details of the UK's response to warnings of an attack come after a 'blame game' over whether the blast could have been prevented.

According to reports earlier this week, US commanders wanted to close the Abbey Gate  where thousands of desperate evacuees were queuing  hours before the terrorist struck.

Reports suggested they were persuaded by their British counterparts to keep it open, a move which made US troops more vulnerable.

The claims were denied by Boris Johnson and Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab but put more strain on the UK's relationship with the US.

Prince Charles, Colonel-in-Chief of the Parachute Regiment, has hailed the regiment as an 'outstanding credit to the country', expressing admiration and pride in its effort to lead the evacuation effort in Kabul.

'Betrayed by Biden... but I fight on in the valley that's my nation's last hope': Afghanistan's vice-president Amrullah Saleh gives a brave despatch while under siege from the Taliban in his snow-capped mountain stronghold

From Amrullah Saleh in the Panjshir Valley, Afghanistan

Amrullah Saleh, 48, is the former vice president of Afghanistan, who escaped Kabul as the Taliban advanced to join Ahmad Massoud and the National Resistance Front in the Panjshir Valley.

The remote, 70 mile long valley, bordered by high mountains, is a geographical stronghold and the last province in Afghanistan to hold out against the Taliban. After peace negotiations failed, battle has now been joined with each side claiming territorial gains and heavy casualties in the past 48 hours.

In a courageous and moving dispatch from the frontline, Saleh - whose leader, President Ashraf Ghani, fled Kabul for the UAE - reveals his anger at Afghanistan's betrayal by America but urges the West not to abandon his beloved nation.

Yesterday I attended the burial ceremony of two of the best commanders I ever knew who were killed last night.

The fighting here is heavy now, with casualties on both sides. The Taliban are using American munitions against us and Blackhawk helicopters are being flown in to reinforce their attacks.

I did not speak at the funeral, but others did. And when they asked the hundreds of mourners drawn from the communities of the Panjshir Valley - the last Afghan province resisting the Taliban - if they were prepared to continue fighting, a roar of support erupted.

The people are resolute. They - we - are united in defending our dignity, our land, our history, and our pride against the Taliban whose fighters have been amassing here in recent days.

The snow-capped mountains of this valley, some 90 miles north of the Afghan capital, Kabul, are majestic and there is a long history of successful resistance here.

It beats in the proud heart of every man, every woman, and every child.

Right now our entire focus is on ensuring the survival of this valley as the base against the Taliban who in recent months have over run this nation.

Survival does not necessarily mean defending each and every inch of the territory. It means ensuring that the enemy will never gain control here.

In a courageous and moving dispatch from the frontline, Amrullah Saleh reveals his anger at Afghanistan's betrayal by America but urges the West not to abandon his beloved nation

We know we are not alone. Other Afghans are with us - in the nearby Andarab Valley, in parts of Kapisa Province, and in pockets in Parwan. And we have contacts all over the country, particularly in northern and central Afghanistan.

Many fighters are flocking here to join the National Resistance Front (NRF) - anti-Taliban fighters, former Afghan security forces and ordinary Afghans who want to stop us returning to the rule of the Taliban.

For the Taliban have not won any hearts and minds. They have simply exploited the flawed policy of a fatigued American president  not necessarily the United States itself  and they are being micromanaged by Pakistan's notorious intelligence agency, the ISI.

The Taliban's spokesperson receives directions, literally every hour, from the Pakistani embassy.

It is the Pakistanis who are in charge as effectively a colonial power. But this is not going to last because they and their clients will not be able to erect a functioning economy or create a civil service.

They may have territorial control, but as our history has shown, control of land does not necessarily mean control over the people or stability. And I do not see Taliban having any idea about governance.

The betrayal of Afghanistan by the West is colossal.

The scenes at Kabul airport in recent days represented the humiliation of humanity, an embarrassment for any nation that has been involved in Afghanistan since the Taliban were routed by the US-led Coalition Force in the aftermath of the 9/11 atrocity.

The Americans may boast about evacuating some 123,000 people from the country (of whom 6000 were Americans), but there are 40 million of us.

Now, with the closure of the airport in Kabul, the Afghan exodus is continuing at the other border crossings and it is worse than it was during the Soviet occupation of the 1980s.

This is not only shameful for President Biden, it is shameful for the whole of Western civilisation.

'For 20 years, Western leaders promised not to stand on the Afghan constitution - and it is the spirit of that constitution I have carried in my heart here to the Panjshir Valley (pictured)'

Your politicians know that Pakistan is running the show.

They know al Qaeda is back in the streets of Kabul. And they know the Taliban have not reformed. They have been displaying their suicide vests in Kabul.

But there's still time for the West to save its reputation and credibility.

Biden was determined to end America's 'longest war' and would no longer countenance keeping even a few thousand soldiers in my country to support our own Afghan forces - despite our enormous sacrifices and the advice of his own generals.

It was a very artificial frustration and, I believe, for the purposes of electioneering. But the world over, the currency with which the Americans are paying is their credibility and standing.

And yet they have the capability to reverse this.

For 20 years, Western leaders promised not to stand on the Afghan constitution - and it is the spirit of that constitution I have carried in my heart here to the Panjshir Valley.

Now those of us gathered here are fighting to preserve the promise contained in it.

I call upon the West not only to give us moral and  where possible  material support, but also to use this opportunity to press for a political settlement with the Taliban, a settlement that has the backing of the Afghan people and the international community.

Morally, the West owes this to every Afghan. I'm not begging them to save me. I am asking them to save their face, to save their dignity, to save their reputation and credibility.

Why have I chosen to be here? Because I believe those politicians who leave their country in moments of crisis betray its very soil.

Prior to the collapse of Kabul, I was offered the chance to escape, but I found that invitation offensive. I was determined to shatter the notion that every Afghan leader is only good enough when he or she is in a protected environment.

I wanted to follow in the footsteps of my late leader, Ahmad Shah Massoud, known as the Lion of Panjshir, who fought the Soviets and the Taliban and prevented them from ever gaining control of the region.

He endured pain, frustration, and crises and yet he remained, with meagre resources, with his people.

Just days before 9/11 he was assassinated by Al Qaeda operatives masquerading as journalists. For me to flee would have amounted to a betrayal of his soul and his legacy.

Joe Biden was determined to end America's 'longest war' and would no longer countenance keeping even a few thousand soldiers in my country to support our own Afghan forces - despite our enormous sacrifices and the advice of his own generals

The night before Kabul fell, the police chief called me to say there was a revolt inside the prison and the Taliban inmates were attempting to escape.

I had created a network of non-Taliban prisoners. I called them, and they started a counter revolt on my orders within the prison.

Mob control units were deployed along with some Afghan special forces and the situation in the prison was controlled.

Around 8am the next morning, after grabbing a few hours' sleep I was woken by my guard, who informed me that many people were trying to contact me.

There were dozens of missed calls from family, friends, Afghan officials, fellow politicians and security authorities asking for guidance as the Taliban's advance became clear.

I tried to contact the Minister of Defence, the Interior Minister, and their deputies. But I could not find them.

I did find very committed officials in both ministries who reported to me how they are not able to deploy the reserves or the commandoes to the frontlines.

I then spoke to the police chief of Kabul, a very brave man whom I wish all the best wherever he is.

He informed me that the line in the east had fallen, two districts in the south had fallen, and the adjacent province of Wardak had fallen.

He asked for my help in deploying commandoes. I asked him if he could hold the front with whatever resources he had for an hour.

He told me he could. But in that one desperate hour, I was unable to find deployable Afghan troops anywhere in the city.

And the reason was clear. The Americans had promised close air support in the weeks before but now it was clear that it was a worthless assurance.

Whenever our troops confronted a concentration of the Taliban, the Americans would cite the Doha Agreement - negotiated with the Taliban - to say they could not strike them except in very limited circumstances.

These limitations made no sense as the Taliban marched onwards and served only to strengthen the notion among many that this fight was futile and useless. I was not able to assemble any troops to help the police chief. I called the Palace.

I messaged our National Security Adviser to say we have to do something. I got no response from anyone. And by 9am that morning of August 15, Kabul was panicking.

The Intelligence Chief had visited me the evening before. I had asked him about his plan should the Taliban storm Kabul. 'My plan is to join you wherever you go,' he said. 'Even if we are blocked by the Taliban, we do our last battle together.'

I could not find him now.

These politicians, I believe, betrayed the people. We told them for 20 years that we were engaged in a noble cause for their futures and that of generations to come. And the masses believed this and they stood by us. They gave us ovations and respect.

Then came a moment when the same people were pleading with their leaders to stand up for them. This was a moment of test.

They may say now that they would have become martyrs had they remained in Afghanistan. Why not? We need leaders to become martyrs.

They will say they would have been taken prisoner. Why not? We need leaders to serve as prisoners.

We need these leaders to experience the same suffering that the Afghan people are now being made to endure.

How could I see my people suffering, dying from hunger and thirst, walking barefoot, from a palace of safety and then sit behind a laptop screen and write about it?

Shall I expect the poorest of the poor people in the margins to be more strategic than I am, to be braver than I can demonstrate myself to be, to expect them to rescue the country while I just drop them a note on Facebook or Twitter?

Should I give a radio interview and then hope that these people will decode my messages and revolt? This is what some other leaders are hoping. They have gone.

They stay in these hotels and villas abroad. And then they call on the poorest Afghans to revolt. That's craven. If we want a revolt, the revolt has to be led.

I was deluged with emotional messages inviting me to flee, to be a coward for a while and then jump back into the fray if things stabilised.

That would have been shameful. Not a vein in my body was prepared to accept such a future.

Instead I sent a message to Ahmad Massoud, son of my mentor, the late Massoud. 'My brother, where are you?' He said: 'I'm in Kabul and planning my next move'. I told him I was also in Kabul and offered to join forces.

I then went through my home and destroyed pictures of my wife and my daughters. I collected my computer and some belongings. I asked my chief guard, Rahim, to place his hand on my Koran.

'Rahim, you have served me loyally and I'm very grateful to you,' I told him. 'Here is my last order to you. Put your hand on the Koran and promise not to disobey the order I am giving you.'

He promised three times with all purity.

'We are going to Panjshir and the road is already taken,' I told him. 'We will fight our way through. We will fight it together.

'But should I get injured, I have one request of you. Shoot me twice in my head. I don't want to surrender to the Taliban. Ever.'

And then we got into our convoy of a few armoured vehicles and two pickup trucks with guns mounted on them. The roads were jammed.

We crossed the northern pass with great difficulty because it has become a lawless territory. Thugs. Thieves. Taliban. We were attacked twice, but we survived. We fought our way with determination.

When we reached Panjshir, we got a message that the elders of the community had gathered in the mosque. I spoke to them for an hour and afterwards each of them rose in support.

Panjshir has been a tourist destination for 20 years. We had no military equipment, no ammunition here.

But that night I drew up a strategy to toughen the province's defences.

Then I received a call informing me that Ahmed Massoud was heading to Panjshir by helicopter. I felt a surge of hope course through me. We had our first meeting to strategise that night.

Has it been easy to take up resistance? Absolutely not. I'm in a difficult situation, no doubt. I'm not made of steel I'm a human being. I have emotions. I'm aware that the Taliban want my head. But this is history. And we are in the centre of the history.

As told to Kapil Komireddi, the author of Malevolent Republic: A Short History of the New India
Eleven House Republicans sent a letter threatening to 'pursue all legal remedies' if telecom companies comply with Democrats' subpoena for their phone records prior to Jan. 6.

The letter notes that Congress has no power to 'conduct investigations or issue subpoenas.'

'Additionally, Congress has no power to inquire into private affairs and to compel disclosure in order to expose for the sake of exposure,' the letter read.

On Monday, CNN reported that Democrats on the House Select Committee investigating Jan. 6, led by Chair Rep Bennie Thompson, are requesting telecoms companies preserve the phone records of Trump-aligned lawmakers and members of the Trump family.

Congress does have subpoena power, but cannot arrest and detain anyone to compel compliance. Additionally, the Supreme Court has ruled Congress cannot investigate someone purely to expose wrongdoing for political gain. Subpoenas must further 'legitimate legislative purpose,' according to the high court.

The letter was distributed to Amazon, AOL, Apple, AT&T, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Snap, T-Mobile, Twitter, U.S. Cellular Corporation, Verizon and Yahoo!, according to Forbes.

The committee has not made public the full list of names it is requesting, according to CNN.

Sources revealed a partial list, which included those in some way involved in the 'Stop the Steal' rally which preceded the riot.

As of now, the list includes Republican Reps. Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Jim Jordan of Ohio, Andy Biggs of Arizona, Paul Gosar also of Arizona, Mo Brooks of Alabama, Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina, Matt Gaetz of Florida, Louie Gohmert of Texas, Jody Hice of Georgia and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania.

The committee is also requesting preserved phone records of Ivanka Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, Lara Trump and Kimberly Guilfoyle, Don Jr.'s girlfriend.

The letter was signed by many of those on the list.

Reps. Boebert, left and Gohmert, right, are among those who signed a letter warning telecoms companies not to comply with a subpoena from the House committee investigating Jan. 6 for their phone records.

Greene threatened to 'shut down' companies that go along with the subpoena

Democrats on the House Select Committee investigating Jan. 6, led by Chair Rep Bennie Thompson, are requesting telecoms companies preserve the phone records of Trump-aligned lawmakers and members of the Trump family

Thompson has said he'll seek the phone records of several hundred people as part of the probe.

'As you are aware, your company has a legal obligation to protect the data of your subscribers and customers, and we are confident you will follow the law and not disclose their private and confidential records without a legal order to do so,' the lawmakers wrote.

'If you fail to comply with these obligations, we will pursue all legal remedies.'

Meanwhile, Greene threatened to 'shut down' companies that go along with the subpoena.

'If these telecommunications companies, if they go along with this, they will be shut down. And that's a promise,' she told Fox News' Tucker Carlson on Wednesday.

On Tuesday, House Minority Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., issued a similar warning to telecommunications companies on Tuesday not to turn over records to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the as Republicans would come for them once they were back in power.

He said complying would, 'Put every American with a phone or computer in the crosshairs of a surveillance state run by Democratic politicians.'

McCarthy claimed telecoms companies would be in breach of American law, although he offered no further details.

'If these companies comply with the Democrat order to turn over private information, they are in violation of federal law and subject to losing their ability to operate in the United States,' he wrote.

'If companies still choose to violate federal law, a Republican majority will not forget and will stand with Americans to hold them fully accountable under the law.'

Monday's letters were sent to communications giants such as Google and Microsoft as well as all major cellphone networks.

They included requests to secure messaging app Signal, and social media networks favored by conservatives including Parler.

'As Chairman Thompson previewed last week, the select committee today sent letters to 35 private-sector entities, including telecommunications, email, and social media companies, instructing them to preserve records which may be relevant to the select committee's investigation,' said a spokesperson.

'The select committee is at this point gathering facts, not alleging wrongdoing by any individual.'

It marked the third request for information, after previously asking federal agencies for data and social media companies for details of disinformation.

Last week it emerged that the committee had demanded former President Trump's mental health records.

'The Leftist 'select committee' has further exposed itself as a partisan sham and waste of taxpayer dollars with a request that's timed to distract Americans from historic and global catastrophes brought on by the failures of Joe Biden and the Democrats,' Trump said in a statement.

'Unfortunately, this partisan exercise is being performed at the expense of long-standing legal principles of privilege,' he continued. 'Executive privilege will be defended, not just on behalf of my Administration and the Patriots who worked beside me, but on behalf of the Office of the President of the United States and the future of our Nation.'

'These Democrats only have one tired trickpolitical theaterand their latest request only reinforces that pathetic reality.'

The House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack released a slew of documents related to the probe on Wednesday, including interest in Trump's mental health records.

Also requested from the White House was whether the former president considered using military force to remain as president after Joe Biden won the 2020 election.

The head of the committee fired off a series of sweeping demands for information on the last days of the Trump administration  with an effort to use photos, time stamps, and documents to recreate the day minute-by-minute.

Other requests demand any documents related to the Constitution's 25th Amendment for cases where the cabinet seeks to remove a president for being 'unable' to discharge the duties of the office.

The committee last week released a slew of documents related to the probe on Wednesday, including interest in Trump's mental health records.

Also requested from the White House is whether the former president considered using military force to remain as president after Joe Biden won the 2020 election.

The panel wants the Pentagon to hand over information on the use of the Insurrection Act, communications on 'the establishment of martial law,' and information on 'defying orders from the President.'

The requests also seek out detailed information about personnel changes at the Pentagon in the last weeks of the Trump administration, as Trump installed political loyalists and former Defense chiefs warned the military must stay out of politics.
She was one of the world's most brilliant classical musicians when multiple sclerosis cruelly struck.

Jacqueline du Pre, doyenne of The Proms, died in wheelchair-bound torment in 1987 aged just 42.

But now extraordinary claims have emerged about the cellist's death in a book by British actress Miriam Margolyes.

She recounts a startling confession from a London therapist who claimed she had helped the acclaimed musician with an assisted suicide.

Cellist Jacqueline du Pre (pictured) died in wheelchair-bound torment in 1987 aged just 42, with her cause of death being recorded as bronchopneumonia and multiple sclerosis'

Miss du Pre allegedly begged for a mercy killing when the debilitating disease ravaged her body.

Last night Miss du Pre's family and friends said the claims allegedly made by the therapist, who died in 1997, could not be true.

One said Miss du Pre could barely move or speak and would have been unable to ask anyone to 'put her out of her misery'.

In her prime, the Oxford-born musician's exuberant performances electrified the nation.

Playing a 1673 Stradivarius, she was regarded as one of the finest cellists the world had ever seen.

She married pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim, who is now music director of the Berlin State Opera.

But now extraordinary claims have emerged about the cellist's death in a book by British actress Miriam Margolyes (pictured in July 2009)

But in 1971, aged 26, she began to lose feeling in her fingers, before her genius was completely snuffed out by the vile disease.

Now an astonishing allegation has surfaced that she had begged for euthanasia and asked therapist Margaret Branch to give her a lethal injection. The therapist is said to have later confessed to another client, Miss Margolyes.

In her memoir, serialised in the Daily Mail today, the actress, who played Professor Sprout in the Harry Potter movies, said: 'She believed that it was the highest mark of love for Jacqueline that she could show, to release her from the horrors of her illness.'

An allegation has surfaced that she asked therapist Margaret Branch (pictured) to give her a lethal injection

She recalls how Miss Branch, whom she consulted in the 1980s, told her: 'I want to tell you something, and I don't want you to speak about it until after I'm dead.'

According to Miss Margolyes, Miss Branch told her: 'One day Jacqueline said to me, 'Margaret, if I wanted to kill myself, would you help me?' And I said, 'Of course I would'. Because I would.'

Then, it is claimed, the musician had phoned and said: 'I want to do it today. I've given my staff the day off. I want you to come over.'

Miss Margolyes says the therapist confessed: 'I had a key. I took along a syringe and the liquid ... she was in bed and we talked for a bit. Then I said, 'Are you absolutely sure that you want me to do this?'

'Jacqueline said, 'Yes. I am. And I can only trust you to do it for me'. I was a trained nurse during the war. I knew what to do.'

It is said Miss Branch  who was in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force in the Second World War and was involved with the French Resistance, according to her Times obituary  injected her and then left Miss du Pre's Kensington apartment, leaving the musician to pass away later when family and friends were in attendance.

The account was rejected yesterday by one of Miss du Pre's closest companions, Cynthia Friend, 81, who told the Daily Mail: 'I don't believe it for one minute. She was very special to me, and I had been staying there for a few nights with Ruth, her wonderful nurse.

But Miss du Pre's loved ones said the claims allegedly made by the therapist could not be true as Miss du Pre (pictured with the Queen Mother in 1979) could barely move or speak

'You couldn't leave Jackie on her own. She was totally bound to her wheelchair, and at the end her head was even strapped to that thing, because it was shaking and jumping, it was so terrible.

'I don't know when this lady is saying Jackie was well enough to say, 'I'd like to be put out of my misery', because Jackie couldn't speak at the end.

'There is no way she could have asked anybody. Ruth never left Jackie. There were a number of her close friends there at the end. I cannot imagine what Jackie would say, if she heard these things.'

Miss du Pre's death certificate shows that her cause of death was recorded by her GP as 'bronchopneumonia and multiple sclerosis'.

Yesterday Mr Barenboim said the story had 'absolutely nothing to do with the reality of Jackie's passing', and called it 'unverifiable'.

His spokesman said: 'The article is based on a book, which refers to an incident between two people, and the one person who can verify it is no longer with us. I don't see that it is newsworthy.'
A leak inquiry was under way last night to establish how full details of what will happen in the ten days after the Queens death came to be published on a news website.

There was said to be deep frustration at Buckingham Palace over what was widely seen as a hugely indiscreet and tactless confidentiality breach in Whitehall, particularly so soon after the death of the Duke of Edinburgh in April.

Official plans for the Queens death and funeral have long been in place and are frequently updated and rehearsed, but they have largely been treated with respectful discretion.

The Politico website claimed to have obtained the full extent of Operation London Bridge. Its report added: The Queen, who is 95 years old, is in good health by all accounts and there is no suggestion these plans have been revisited with any urgency.

A leak inquiry was under way last night to establish how full details of what will happen in the ten days after the Queens death came to be published on a news website

Royal officials declined to discuss the leak, making clear it was a matter for government. But one source with knowledge of the situation said: It is deeply troubling to have confidential documents of this nature leaked in their entirety. The [royal] household is understood to be deeply unhappy about what has happened.

Civil servants were last night trying to find out exactly which version of the plan has been leaked.

The fuller version with much more sensitive detail is less widely circulated, and, if it were established that it is in the public domain, the Cabinet Office is likely to launch a formal inquiry. Security around the documents may be reviewed.

Royal author Angela Levin said: I think it is awful and cruel to release the top-secret plans about the Queens death. Where are our morals? A previous version of Operation London Bridge was revealed by The Guardian in 2017.

There was said to be deep frustration at Buckingham Palace over what was widely seen as a hugely indiscreet and tactless confidentiality breach in Whitehall, particularly so soon after the death of the Duke of Edinburgh in April

The newly leaked documents include updated plans for a ten-day period of mourning between the monarchs death  on what is to be called D-Day  and a planned State funeral, Politico reported.

The Prime Minister, Cabinet and government will be informed, before a public announcement is issued through the Press Association news agency. Flags across Whitehall will be lowered to half-mast  the aim is to do so within ten minutes of the announcement.

The Royal Family website will have a black holding page, and government social media pages will adopt a black banner. The PM will hold an audience with the new king and, at 6pm, Charles will broadcast to the nation. Before the funeral at Westminster Abbey, Charles will tour the four UK nations in line with Operation Spring Tide, the plan for his accession.

The Department for Transport had raised concerns over pressure on Londons infrastructure as crowds arrive to pay their respects, the documents indicate.
Fears grow Queensland is on the verge of another snap lockdown after a four-year-old girl tested positive to Covid and 1000 families were forced into 14 days of quarantine.

The families are all considered potential contacts of the new case, a toddler who attended The Boulevard Early Learning Centre, with major concerns some of her contacts visited the busy Beenleigh Marketplace and the Stylish Nail Salon.

The young girl is connected to a 46-year-old Logan truck driver who also tested positive for the Delta strain of Covid earlier in the week.

Queensland's chief health officer Jeannette Young said on Saturday 962 of the families forced into isolation have children that attend Windaroo State School.

They are quarantining because 30 children from that school also attend the Boulevard Early Learning Centre for before and after-school care.

The other 100 families have children at the childcare centre.

While other states like NSW and Victoria have accepted that Covid-zero is out of reach, Queensland is holding its ground despite a four-year-old girl testing positive to the virus

Queensland's chief health officer Jeannette Young said on Saturday 962 of the families forced into isolation have children that attend Windaroo State School

Both The Boulevard Early Learning Centre and Windaroo State School have been closed for two weeks.

Meanwhile the infectious truck driver visited the Stylish Nail Salon at Beenleigh Marketplace on Monday morning.

Ms Young expressed disappointment that of eight customers and four staff present in the salon while the man was there, only one checked in using Covid tracing protocols.

'So please, anyone who is there last Monday morning, I need you to come forward and get a test and isolate until you get a negative result,' she said.

Queensland's health officials made it clear they were persisting with a Covid-zero strategy on Saturday and that a new lockdown is possible.

'Yes it is possible,' Ms Young said.

Charlotte Chimes (right) has posted a video satirically asking single NRL players to date her so she can get back to her home state of Queensland to care for her sick mum, Katrina (left)

'It depends, if we find cases who went to the Beenleigh marketplace, and have then since then been out in the community in an uncontrolled situation, then that would lead me to think that we need to consider a lockdown.'

While other states like NSW and Victoria have accepted that Covid-zero is out of reach, Queensland is holding its ground.

Earlier, infectious disease expert Dr Paul Griffin claimed the sunshine state is 'certainly in a precarious position' and if it wants to prevent any community transmission then a new lockdown is probable.

'I think if there are more cases then I think it's clear a lockdown will follow,' Director of Infectious Diseases at Brisbane's Mater hospital Dr Griffin said on Saturday.

He said in order to work, lockdowns have to be 'initiated fairly readily'.

'I think if our objective remain keeping cases at zero then any cases in the community represent a significant risk.'

Queensland recorded zero positive cases on Friday morning but later a four-year-old girl tested positive

A worker from Arrivederci Pizzeria is seen handing out free Pizza's to people in their cars at Park Road at Milton in Brisbane during the state's last lockdown which ended at the start of August

Meanwhile, the premier has issued a public apology to angry Queenslanders for letting NRL families into the state while refusing to let stranded residents return home.

Annastacia Palaszczuk spent this week defending the NRL arrivals, but on Friday conceded 'it shouldn't have happened' when Queenslanders in Covid-19 hotspots were banned from coming home.

Neighbours star Charlotte Chimes has called out the Queensland government for allowing NRL stars through its strict border lockdown, but not residents desperate to see sick family members.

The 27-year-old actress posted a video to her Instagram on Friday satirically asking if there were any single NRL stars who would date her so she can cross the Queensland border to care for her mother who is battling breast cancer.

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk relaxed restrictions a month ago but speculation is mounting she could throw the state into a new lockdown

Although Ms Chimes is a fully vaccinated Queensland resident, she is currently not allowed into the state to help look after mum, Katrina.

The premier recently imposed a two-week ban on interstate arrivals saying capacity at the state's quarantine hotels was stretched to the limit.

When a plane load of NRL players' wives, girlfriends and children, along with league officials, was allowed in on Monday, Queenslanders stranded interstate, and families who'd packed up homes to permanently move to the northern state, erupted in anger.

On Friday, the premier reiterated the entourage did not take up rooms in state quarantine hotels, and were put up elsewhere by the NRL. But she also accepted the optics weren't good.

'I apologise, it was not the right thing to do when we had the pause,' the premier said on Friday.

The ban on arrivals will begin to lift on Saturday when 50 newly available rooms in quarantine hotels will be filled.

There'll be a dramatic ramp up on Monday, when an additional 680 hotel quarantine rooms become available.

The premier has pleaded with everyone aged 16 and over to roll up their sleeves and protect themselves before the next cluster emerges.

'This is absolutely critical that we use this window of opportunity to get as many Queenslanders vaccinated so when the virus does get here, we are well prepared,' she said.

Motorists in Brisbane arrive for Covid tests as the state seeks to stop community spread of the virus

Queensland's vaccination coverage, which is currently 51.6 per cent for one dose and 32.9 per cent fully vaccinated, is the second lowest in the country.

Dr Young said she wanted every eligible Queenslander to have been offered a vaccine before the state reopens.

She took offence on Friday when asked what level of Covid-19 deaths she would be comfortable with.

The question was asked in the context of Doherty Institute modelling the federal government is relying on to open up the country. It details the deaths that can be expected under different pandemic scenarios.

'I'm a doctor - none,' she replied. 'Come on, can you please remember who I am?

'I'm not comfortable with any deaths that are preventable, so that's why I want every single Queenslander to be vaccinated, because that is the best protection.'

A Gold Coast family accused of making an illegal trip to Melbourne and back who initially refused to be tested has now relented.

Police Commissioner Katarina Carroll said officers were trying to track the family's movements through Melbourne and NSW.

'We will be investigating where they came from in Melbourne, but they also travelled through NSW. You can be assured that if there are any offences that they will be investigated.'
Head teachers yesterday warned it will be more difficult to guard against educational disruption after the Governments advisers ruled out jabs for over-12s.

The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) said the virus posed such a low risk to 12 to 15-year-olds that the benefit of a mass rollout would be marginal.

But Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said he was disappointed by the JCVIs decision.

Head teachers yesterday warned it will be more difficult to guard against educational disruption after the Governments advisers ruled out jabs for over-12s (stock image)

He said: We understand this decision has been made after making an assessment of the balance of risks and with all the available evidence, and we respect that decision.

Nevertheless, the upshot is that this would make it more difficult during the autumn term and beyond to guard against educational disruption caused by transmission of the virus.

But Mr Barton welcomed news that the door appears to have been left at least partially open as the Government looks at wider issues including disruption to schools.

The UKs four chief medical officers will spend the next week weighing up whether vaccinating secondary school aged children will have a broader benefit to society.

The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) said the virus posed such a low risk to 12 to 15-year-olds that the benefit of a mass rollout would be marginal (stock image)

Additional safety measures in schools will become more important if they decide not to agree to the jab, the countrys largest teaching union warned yesterday.

Kevin Courtney, joint general secretary of the National Education Union, said: Sadly, in taking away so many safety measures last term, without replacing them with others, the Government has left schools open to another rise in case counts  which will mean many children and staff missing school if they test positive.

The National Association of Head Teachers also called on ministers to improve ventilation in schools.

General secretary Paul Whiteman said: With the decision not to vaccinate younger teens now taken, ventilation continues to be a critical part of schools efforts to maintain a safe working and learning environment.

JEREMY HUNT: Fire up the boosters... or risk a catastrophe

Commentary by Jeremy Hunt for the Daily Mail

As autumn arrives, the picture on the Covid front looks troubled. Rates of infection remain high and hospitalisations and deaths from the virus are creeping upwards.

On one day this week, the total number of Covid fatalities hit 207, the first time the 200 barrier has been breached since March.

Against this backdrop, a key priority for the Government must be to avoid another lockdown. So soon after the return to normality this summer, reimposition of draconian controls would be a disaster, devastating the economy, wrecking businesses, costing the Treasury a fortune, undermining mental health and damaging education.

Nor is it likely the public would show the same levels of compliance as in the first lockdowns. Explosive unrest of the kind now afflicting Australia  where a heavy-handed crackdown has prompted widespread resistance  could be repeated here.

What Britain urgently needs is to give a renewed impetus to the vaccine programme by providing booster jabs to the adult population (stock image)

But there is an alternative to social restrictions. What Britain urgently needs is to give a renewed impetus to the vaccine programme by providing booster jabs to the adult population.

Without taking away any freedoms, such a policy would enhance public protection and form a powerful shield against the lethal spread of the disease.

Since it began last December, the vaccine programme has been a magnificent success. It is estimated to have saved more than 100,000 lives, cut hospitalisations and lessened the strain on the NHS.

But two problems have emerged recently. The first lies in Covids capacity for mutation, leading to more transmissible variants such as the Delta. The second is that, over time, the effectiveness of each jab wears off, even for people who have received two doses.

Last week the respected Zoe study, run by Kings College London, published a report that clearly spelt out this reality.

According to the studys findings, the effectiveness of the Pfizer vaccine fell over six months from 87 to 74 per cent, while for the AstraZeneca jab it dropped from 77 to 67 per cent.

Since it began last December, the vaccine programme has been a magnificent success. It is estimated to have saved more than 100,000 lives, cut hospitalisations and lessened the strain on the NHS (stock image)

Professor Tim Spector, who is in charge of the Zoe project, warns that in the worst-case scenario this winter, effectiveness could fall below 50 per cent for older and vulnerable people. We urgently need to make plans for vaccine boosters, he says.

Given that the peak of the British vaccine programme was six months ago, it now time to act.

That lesson is graphically reinforced by the experience of Israel, over 80 per cent of whose population has been double-vaccinated, an even higher level than here. Yet during the summer, Israel saw an exponential rise in infections and hospitalisations.

Israels government responded with a massive programme of booster jabs, starting with the most vulnerable. The effect was immediate, with the growth in infections suddenly slowing. The latest Israeli data shows people over 60 who received a third dose are now half as likely to be hospitalised as those who are double-vaccinated.

That emphasises how imperative it is that we act now, without hesitation or delay.

In Britain, every week is crucial if we are to avoid a winter catastrophe. Some experts, like Professor Neil Ferguson of Imperial College, have argued it was the delay in imposing the first lockdown in March 2020 that greatly worsened the Covid death toll.

But two problems have emerged recently. The first lies in Covids capacity for mutation, leading to more transmissible variants such as the Delta. The second is that, over time, the effectiveness of each jab wears off, even for people who have received two doses (stock image)

Given the scientific evidence we now have, the same vacillation cannot be repeated over boosters, especially as the NHS already has contingency plans to administer 32million of them and is already offering them to 500,000 people with severely suppressed immune systems.

It is clear that, by inducing a surge in antibodies, boosters work. We have the vaccines. So why doesnt the Government get on with the task? The answer is that ministers are awaiting a final recommendation from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), which wants to collect more data before giving its approval.

Professor Anthony Harden of the JCVI said in a BBC interview: What we dont want is to boost people and then find we have a new variant and we cant boost them again.

That is all very well in theory, but the nation faces a serious practical problem right now. The only solution is for the Government to overcome the hesitancy and order that the booster programme proceeds.

Ministers like to say they are following the science but in the end, this comes down to a political judgment about the urgent need to protect the public. Elected politicians are ultimately responsible for Covid policy.

Absolute certainty might be the goal of the scientists but it is rarely achievable in the political realm. The imperative of the moment demands a swift decision, otherwise I fear we risk another dreadful lockdown.

Jeremy Hunt is chairman of the health and social care select committee and was health secretary from 2012 to 2018
The knifeman who was shot dead in a Countdown supermarket on Friday was known to police and politicians for his extremist views, which were largely inspired by terror group, ISIS.

The man, known only as 'S' due to High Court suppression orders, arrived in New Zealand in 2011 from Sri Lanka and was first placed on the terror watchlist in 2016 after authorities were alerted to extremist posts he made on social media.

Some of the videos he shared online depicted war-related violence, a clear approval of violent extremism and pledging his support for ISIS, New Zealand Herald reported.

He received an official warning by police but continued to post the material, including a comment which read: 'One day I will go back to my country and I will find kiwi scums in my country... and I will show them... what will happen when you mess with S while I'm in their country. If you're tough in your country... we are tougher in our country scums #payback'.

'S' reportedly told a worshiper at a mosque that he hoped to join ISIS in Syria and was detained at Auckland International Airport in 2017 after booking a one-way flight to Singapore.

He spent a year in custody before pleading guilty to distributing restricted material, earning a supervision order in 2018.

The day after he was released from prison, 'S' was arrested by counterterrorism police who followed him as he purchased a hunting knife.

Internet search history reportedly found he'd researched how to kill 'non-believers'.

Police hoped to prosecute 'S' under the Terrorism Suppression Act 2002, but it was determined that preparing a terrorist attack was not an offence under the legislation, given he had not carried out any attacks.

He was prosecuted on lesser charges of possessing propaganda in support of ISIS.

During his trial, 'S' reportedly told the jury: 'You're worried about one knife, I am telling you I will buy 10 knives. It's about my rights.'
Amazon is getting ready to launch its own-branded TV sets in the U.S. next month, according to a media report.

The television set has been worked on for two years by the tech giant, according to Insider, which first reported the news.

The launch, involving teams from Amazon Devices and Lab126, has been in the works for almost two years, the report said, citing people familiar with the matter.

The TVs, which will be powered by voice assistant Alexa and will range between 55 and 75 inches, are currently designed and manufactured by third parties, one of which is TCL, the report added.

Amazon will launch its own-branded TV sets in the U.S. next month, according to a new report

The TVs will be powered by Alexa, range between 55-75 inches and be designed and manufactured by third parties, one of which is TCL

The news outlet cautioned that the new TVs could be announced next month, but there have been logistical issues that could impact the rollout.

Additionally, is working on another TV that it is designing inside the company, Insider reported.

Amazon has partnered with TV manufacturers such as Insignia and Samsung to sell Fire TV sets powered by its Alexa digital assistant in the past. However, these sets have had the manufacturers' branding on them.

In late 2020, Amazon launched an AmazonBasics TV in India, which sells for a price of around 35,000 rupees

In late 2020, Amazon launched an AmazonBasics TV in India.

This 55-inch Ultra-HD LED TV sells for a price of around 35,000 rupees, the equivalent of $479, according to Gadgets 360.

It's unclear if Amazon's domestic TV set would be priced at a similar amount.

Such a move would put Amazon in closer competition with other hardware makers, an area that Amazon has experience in.

Amazon released its first e-reader, the Kindle in November 2007, selling it for $399.

Since then, the company has expanded into tablets, set-top boxes, smart speakers, ear buds and a number of other devices, including microwaves.

DailyMail.com has reached out to Amazon with a request for comment for this story.
NASA's Perseverance rover has probably collected its first rock sample on Mars, NASA has revealed, although it admits it needs more evidence of the intact sample to call the operation a full success.

Data received late on Thursday from the rover indicated the Perseverance team has achieved its goal of successfully coring a Mars rock, NASA said.

But images from the historic event were 'inconclusive due to poor sunlight conditions', it added.

NASA knows the rover extracted a sample, thanks to a hole in the rock as seen in a new image, but whether the sample is intact in its titanium storage tube is another matter.

Perseverance's first effort to capture a sample earlier this month failed after the rock was too crumbly to withstand the robot's drill, but data indicates the process worked this time around.

The rover carries 43 titanium sample tubes, and is exploring Jezero Crater, where it will be gathering samples of rock and regolith (broken rock and dust) for future analysis on Earth.

More images taken under better lighting are expected back by Saturday.

In this image released by NASA, the drill hole from Perseverance's second sample-collection attempt can be seen in a rock, in this composite of two images taken on September 1, 2021 by one of the rover's navigation cameras

ROVER'S FIRST ATTEMPT FAILED DUE TO POWDERY ROCK NASA's Perseverance rover failed during its first attempt to collect a core of Martian rock, the agency revealed on August 6. The percussive drill, coring bit and sample tube processing all worked as intended, but data showed the sample tube was empty following extraction. Jennifer Trosper, project manager for Perseverance at JPL, said in a statement: The initial thinking is that the empty tube is more likely a result of the rock target not reacting the way we expected during coring, and less likely a hardware issue with the Sampling and Caching System.' Days later, NASA revealed the rock at this particular location was unusually soft and powdery, which was why the operation was not a success. Advertisement

'The team determined a location, and selected and cored a viable and scientifically valuable rock,' Jennifer Trosper, project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, said.

'We will work through this small hiccup with the lighting conditions in the images and remain encouraged that there is sample in this tube.'

NASA said the 'team is confident that the sample is in the tube'.

Perseverance's target was a briefcase-sized rock nicknamed 'Rochette' from a ridgeline that is half a mile (900 meters) long.

On August 6, Perseverance had drilled into much softer rock, and the sample crumbled and did not get inside the titanium tube.

The rover drove half a mile to a better sampling spot to try again.

Perseverance touched down on Mars' Jezero Crater  believed to be the home of a lush lakebed and river delta billions of years ago  on February 18 after a nearly seven-month journey through space.

It is tasked with seeking traces of fossilised microbial life from Mars' ancient past and to collect rock specimens for return to Earth through future missions to the Red Planet.

The rover's turret-mounted scientific instruments are able to determine chemical and mineral composition and look for organic matter, as well as better characterise the planet's geological processes.

In this image released by NASA, Perseverance rover shows a sample tube with its cored-rock contents inside; the bronze-coloured outer-ring is the coring bit, the lighter-coloured inner-ring is the open end of the tube, and inside is a rock core sample

Perseverance (pictured here on the Red Planet's surface) carries 43 titanium sample tubes that NASA hopes it will fill with rock

It uses a drill and a hollow coring bit at the end of its 7-foot-long (2-meter-long) robotic arm to extract samples slightly thicker than a pencil, which it stores under its belly.

NASA plans a mission to bring around 30 samples back to Earth in the 2030s, where scientists will be able to conduct more detailed analysis that might confirm there was microbial life.

However, Perseverance itself is not bringing the samples back to Earth  when the rover reaches a suitable location, the tubes will dropped on the surface of Mars to be collected by a future retrieval mission, which is currently being developed.

Currently, NASA and ESA plan to launch two more spacecraft that would leave Earth in 2026 and reach Mars in 2028.

The first will deploy a small rover, which will make its way to Perseverance, pick up the filled sampling tubes and transfer them to a 'Mars ascent vehicle'  a small rocket.

A multi-billion dollar project to bring back a piece of Mars to Earth will involve three separate launches and would only be successful as soon as 2031

This rocket will blast off  in the process becoming the first object launched from the surface of Mars  and place the container into Martian orbit, meaning it will essentially be floating in space.

At this point, the third and final spacecraft involved in the tricky operation will manoeuvre itself next to the sample container, pick it up and fly it back to Earth.

Providing its re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere is successful, it will plummet to the ground at a military training ground in Utah in 2031, meaning the Martian samples won't be studied for another 10 years.

Perseverance also made the journey to Mars equipped with a detachable 4-pound (1.8-kilogram) robotic helicopter called Ingenuity.

The copter has been performing a series of flights of increasing complexity on the Red Planet, starting with its maiden flight on April 19.
China could land its first astronauts on the moon as early as 2030, according to reports, under plans that would see it adapt its existing Long March 5 rocket.

The country had always planned to send humans to the lunar surface, but it was assumed it would be later in the 2030s, after multiple rover and probe missions.

The news comes as NASA's Artemis mission, to return humans to the moon by 2024, looks increasingly like it could face significant delays, with 2026 being touted as the earliest possible landing date due to problems with equipment and funding.

Reports suggest this slip in the Artemis timeline may have prompted the Chinese government to speed up its own plans to have humans walk on the lunar surface.

Chinese Academy of Engineering expert Long Lehao, someone thought close to the space program, confirmed there were plans to launch two rockets in 2030.

They would be adapted versions of the powerhouse of the Chinese space program, the Long March 5, with one launched to send a lunar lander to orbit the moon, and another to send a crew to meet the lander and descend to the surface.

The country had always planned to send humans to the lunar surface, but it was assumed it would be later in the 2030s, after multiple rover and probe missions

The news comes as NASA's Artemis mission, to return humans to the moon by 2024, looks increasingly like it could face significant delays, with 2026 being touted as the earliest possible landing date due to problems with equipment and funding

It was thought China would use the Long March 9 heavy lift rocket, currently in development, for future moon missions, but it is unlikely it will be ready by 2030.

Lehao, speaking at the 35th National Youth Science and Technology Innovation Competition, said the Long March 5 would be upgraded instead.

The new Long March 5DY isn't the only new development required to get Chinese astronauts to the moon, as they would also need a lunar lander to ascend to the surface and a spacecraft to return to Earth.

When the mission goes ahead the crew would transfer to the lander, go down to the surface and spend about six hours walking around, before returning to space in the lander, docking with the spacecraft and returning to Earth.

The six hours the crew will spend on the surface is a fraction of the 21 hours Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin spent in 1969 with the Apollo 11 mission.

China's lunar exploration project has garnered a lot of attention in recent years, with the Chang'e 5 probe returning 1731g of lunar soil to the Earth in December 2020.

The next Chinese moon mission, Chang'e 6, will return more samples to Earth, but from a different part of the lunar surface. It will include an orbiter and lander.

Chang'7 will also launch in 2024 to survey the surface of the moon, including an orbiter, lander, rover and mini flying prove to search the lunar south pole for resources.

If NASA is able to keep to its schedule and launch astronauts to the moon in 2024, they could be on the surface at the same time as the Chinese rover.

Reports suggest this slip in the Artemis timeline may have prompted the Chinese government to speed up its own plans to have humans walk on the lunar surface

Chinese Academy of Engineering expert Long Lehao, someone thought close to the space program, confirmed there were plans to launch two rockets in 2030

This, the plan to reach the moon by 2030 and competition over Mars adds fuel to the idea China and NASA are in a new space race, akin to the one that drove the early years of space exploration between the USSR and NASA.

Unlike that early exploration, China and NASA are looking to bring outside partners with them in their exploration of the solar system.

The US has a dozen signatories to the Artemis Accords - designed to create a 'standard of behaviour' for space exploration - including Australia, Italy, Japan, South Korea, and the UK. With ESA and JAXA partnering to build a lunar space station.

China has a deal with Russia to build a space station around the moon and a base on the lunar surface over the coming decades and is courting EU contacts.
Amazon plans to be more proactive about removing websites and services from its cloud computing platform AWS, which is used by the likes of Netflix, Fox, and ITV.

A new team of experts will monitor and remove websites and services in violation of its terms of service, including those promoting violence, Reuters first reported.

This is a move that is likely to renew the debate about how much power large technology companies should have to restrict free speech.

Amazon made headlines last week for shutting down a website hosted on AWS that featured propaganda from Islamic State that celebrated the suicide bombing that killed an estimated 170 Afghans and 13 US troops in Kabul.

It wouldn't remove a single message in a social media app, or a video on a website, but rather would remove the entire website from the internet.

Speaking to MailOnline, Jake More, cyber security specialist at ESET said: 'They own a powerful market share in server space which essentially means this new rule could censor the internet.'

It isn't clear how the firm will go in terms of removing content from major players like Netflix or Twitter, although Amazon made waves in January when it kicked 'free speech' social messaging app Parler off the platform after the US Capitol riot.

AWS's offerings include cloud storage and virtual servers and it counts major companies like Netflix, Coca-Cola and Capital One as clients.

It also hosts content for a number of media companies, including Reach PLC's websites, Twitter, Facebook and broadcasters such as the BBC and Fox.

Reuters reporting is wrong. AWS Trust & Safety has no plans to change its policies or processes, and the team has always existed,' An AWS Spokesperson said.

Amazon plans to be more proactive about removing websites and services from its cloud computing platform AWS, that is used by the likes of Netflix, Fox, and ITV

AWS: CUSTOMERS RANGE FROM CORPORATIONS TO INDIVIDUALS Individual users are the most likely to have their website removed by Amazon for violating their rules, but the terms and conditions extend to some of the world's largest firms. According to a 2020 report, Netflix is the largest single customer for AWS. The platform allows giants like Netflix to host their videos, services and systems remotely. In terms of monthly spend on cloud storage with AWS the big players are: Netflix: $19 million Twitch: $15 million LinkedIn: $13 million Facebook: $11 million Turner Broadcasting: $10 million BBC: $9 million Baidu: $9 million ESPN: $8 million Adobe: $8 million Twitter: $7 million Advertisement

Amazon has a 40 per cent share of the cloud computing market, with a wide range of companies using its data centres - from social media firms to broadcasters.

The decision to begin removing any content that violates terms of service, including those inciting violence, would make Amazon one of the most powerful arbiters of what type of content is allowed on the internet, experts predict.

AWS is the system behind websites like Twitter, Netflix and even some major news services - it hosts the code that allows users to interact with each other or watch TV.

Activists and human rights groups are increasingly holding not just websites and apps accountable for harmful content, but also the underlying tech infrastructure that enables those sites to operate - services like Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure.

AWS already prohibits its services from being used in a variety of ways, such as illegal or fraudulent activity, to incite or threaten violence or promote child sexual exploitation and abuse, according to its acceptable use policy.

Amazon first requests customers remove content violating its policies, or have a system to moderate content uploaded by users.

If the firm cannot reach an acceptable agreement with the customer, it may take down the entire website - as it did in the case of Islamic State and Parler.

As part of this change, Amazon plans to develop a new approach towards content that is deemed misinformation - further fuelling the concerns over free speech.

'Moderating and filtering online content always sounds proactive but the truth of it balances on a fine line between censoring the web and quashing free speech,' said Jake Moore of ESET.

'Whenever plans are put in place to remove content which violates the rules there can often be a backlash into what exactly is taken down.

'Clearly there is a problem with harmful content on the internet which largely will be hosted by Amazon being one of the big players but when stringent new rules are created, teething problems are inevitable.'

Part of the new rules will set out at which point Amazon would step in to tell a customer, like Twitter or Twitch, to tackle the spread of 'fake news'.

The new team within AWS does not plan to sift through the vast amounts of content that companies host on the cloud, but will aim to get ahead of future threats.

AWS's offerings include cloud storage and virtual servers and it counts major companies like Netflix, Coca-Cola and Capital One as clients

It isn't clearly how the firm will go in terms of removing content from major players like Netflix or Twitter, although Amazon made waves in January when it kicked 'free speech' social messaging app Parler off the platform after the US Capitol riot

WHAT IS AMAZON WEB SERVICE? AWS is a cloud computing service that gives customers a way of accessing databases, storage and servers. AWS owns and operates the hardware that is required to provide these services. Customers access what they need from AWS through a web application. Amazon's cloud computing option allows users to pay for the resources they need as they go - meaning they do not have to purchase servers that might not even be used to be safe. Additionally, the service allows developers to access exactly the infrastructure capacity they need so they do not end up having purchased too much or too little. The 'AWS Secret Region' is a subset with the capability to allow the 17 intelligence agencies to host, analyze and run applications on government data classified at the secret level. The service is air-gappedor shut offfrom the rest of the internet. Advertisement

This will include being aware of emerging extremist groups whose content could make it onto the AWS cloud, a source close to AWS explained.

Amazon is currently hiring for a global head of policy on the AWS trust and safety team, which is responsible for 'protecting AWS against a wide variety of abuse,' according to a job posting on its website.

Better preparation against certain types of content could help Amazon avoid legal and public relations risk as lawmakers increasingly look to pin responsibility on the company hosting content, not just on the user uploading it.

'If (Amazon) can get some of this stuff off proactively before it's discovered and becomes a big news story, there's value in avoiding that reputational damage,' said Melissa Ryan, founder of CARD Strategies, a consulting firm that helps organizations understand extremism and online toxicity threats.

Cloud services such as AWS and other entities like domain registrars are considered the 'backbone of the internet,' but have traditionally been politically neutral services, according to a 2019 report.

But cloud services providers have removed content before, such as in the aftermath of the 2017 alt-right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, helping to slow the organising ability of alt-right groups, the report revealed.

'Most of these companies have understandably not wanted to get into content and not wanting to be the arbiter of thought,' Ryan said.

'But when you're talking about hate and extremism, you have to take a stance.'

An AWS Spokesperson said: 'AWS Trust & Safety works to protect AWS customers, partners, and internet users from bad actors attempting to use our services for abusive or illegal purposes.

'When AWS Trust & Safety is made aware of abusive or illegal behavior on AWS services, they act quickly to investigate and engage with customers to take appropriate actions.

'AWS Trust & Safety does not pre-review content hosted by our customers. As AWS continues to expand, we expect this team to continue to grow.'
As if murder hornets and cicadas weren't enough, a new insect pest is threatening the U.S. - spotted lanternflies.

Agricultural officials are calling on people to squish, smash, swat or otherwise kill on sight the spotted lanternfly, an invasive species making its way west.

The multi-colored bug is known to devour nearly 70 types of fruits, trees and plants, leaving behind inch-long, putty-like egg masses and a sticky 'honeydew' resin often covered in toxic black mold.

Their clusters can damage trees and do tens of millions of dollars in damage to crops.

This summer, lanternflies have been reported in at least 13 states, including New York, Maryland, Virginia, Delaware, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Indiana, North Carolina, Rhode Island and West Virginia.

In response, state officials are resorting to insecticides, pruning infected trees and quarantining counties with known infestations.

However, they're asking citizens to do their part as amateur exterminators

'While we have crews working throughout the state to treat infestations of the spotted lanternfly, we are seeking the public's assistance by asking anyone who sees this pest to destroy it whenever possible,' New Jersey Secretary of Agriculture Douglas Fisher said in a statement.

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Pictured: A spotted lanternfly at a vineyard in Kutztown, Pennsylvania. The invasive species, which originated, has been detected in at least 13 states this year

The Spotted Lanternfly (Lycorma delicatula) is native to China but was first detected in the U.S. in 2014, in Pennsylvania's Berks County, according to the Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.

It feeds on a range of fruit and trees, including maple, oak and black walnut. The tree of heaven (Ailanthus altissima) is its preferred host and love nest.

It's not the trees that are at greatest risk, though. 'If allowed to spread in the United States, this pest could seriously impact the country's grape, orchard, and logging industries,' according to the USDA.

Almonds, apples, blueberries, cherries, peaches, grapes, and hops are just some of the crops being threatened.

Lanternfly clusters can damage trees and do tens of millions of damage to crops and plants

In Pennsylvania alone, the pernicious pest costs the state economy about $50 million a year and eliminates nearly 500 jobs, according to a 2020 study from Penn State.

Lanternflies can be spread great distances by unsuspecting individuals moving infested material 'or items containing egg masses,' according to the USDA. They also have been known to hitch rides on railcars.

Infestations are identifiable by thick clusters of the insects on tree trunks and branches.

Infestations were found in two sites east of Cleveland on August 26, according to the Ohio Department of Agriculture. The first documented case in the state was in October 2020 in Mingo Junction near the Pennsylvania border.

Spotted lanternflies excrete a sugary substance called honeydew which encourages the growth of a black mold that is harmful to plants

The spotted lanternfly was first reported in Pennsylvania in 2014. This year, infestations have also been reported in New York, Maryland, Virginia, Delaware, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Indiana, North Carolina, Rhode Island and West Virginia

New Jersey reported lanternflies in at least five counties on August 31, NJ.com reported, bringing the total number of counties under quarantine to 13.

The destructive bug's impact can be devastating: the Penn State report indicated that without an effective response, a larger statewide infestation could lead to $325 million in damages and wipe out 2,800 jobs.

Pennsylvania's $19 billion forest products industry is the nation's top producer of hardwoods, the Associated Press reported in 2020.

In Pennsylvania alone, the pernicious pest costs the state economy about $50 million a year and eliminates nearly 500 jobs, according to a 2020 study from Penn State

In response, experts are turning to insecticides, sticky traps, removing trees of heaven and quarantining areas with known lanternfly outbreaks.

'This thing is feeding on trees and those trees are worth a lot of money,' study co-author Jay Harper told the AP at the time . 'This is a call to arms.'

In New York City, the invasive plant-hopper was first discovered in July 2020.

The NYC Parks Department says the fly is 'a significant threat to a wide range of agricultural crops including walnut, grapes, hops, apples, blueberries, and stone fruits.'

'They'll reveal those red wings  that's how you know it's a spotted lanternfly,' a park ranger told ABC News. 'If you see them, we want you to identify it  and we want you to squish it!'

A young girl checks the sticky tape trap for spotted lanternflies. Agricultural authorities are asking residents to kill the bugs on sight

Beyond the direct ecological impact, areas with infestations could face bans on their exports due to fears of spreading the bug, Wayne Bender, who leads the Pennsylvania Hardwoods Development Council, told the AP last year.

In response, experts are turning to insecticides, sticky traps, removing trees of heaven and quarantining areas with known lanternfly outbreaks.

Members of the public are also encouraged to inspect outdoor furniture, trailers and vehicles for these invasive bugs.



Lanternflies, which can lay 30 to 50 eggs each time they breed in the fall, reach about an inch long at full size. Their bodies are black and yellow and, while they have gray, black, brown and red wings, they're more prone to hop than fly.

Lanternflies, which can lay 30 to 50 eggs each time they breed in the fall, reach about an inch long at full size.

Their bodies are black and yellow and, while they have gray, black, brown and red wings, they're more prone to hop than fly.

According to a 2019 study published in The Journal of Economic Entomology, spotted lanternfly infestations could potentially be predicted by measuring the average temperature in various regions.

The bugs preferred places where the driest quarter of the year had a temperature of between 19F and 45F.
Apple has indefinitely delayed the roll-out of controversial child safety features following a furious backlash from its users.

The contentious plans, revealed by the tech giant on August 5, involve scanning iPhones for child abuse images and reporting 'flagged' owners to the police.

It had planned to rollout the feature for iPhones, iPads, and Mac with software updates later this year in the US.

But Apple said on Friday it would take more time to collect feedback and improve the proposed features, after the criticism of the system on privacy and other grounds both inside and outside the company.

However, child protection agencies have expressed their disappointment regarding Apple's decision today, with one criticising the assumption that 'child safety is the trojan horse for privacy erosion'.

Apple has indefinitely delayed its plans for features intended to help protect children from predators

APPLE'S PLANS TO SCAN YOUR PHOTOS The new features, which will come with iOS 15, iPadOS 15, watchOS 8 and macOS Monterey later this year, will allow Apple to: 1. Flag images to the authorities after being manually checked by staff if they match images already flagged as child sexual abuse images by the US National Center for Missing and Exploited Children 2. Scan images that are sent and received by minors in the Messages app. If nudity is detected, the photo will be automatically blurred and the child will be warned that the photo might contain private body parts 3. Allow Siri to 'intervene' when users try to search topics related to child sexual abuse 4. Notify parents If a child under the age of 13 sends or receives a suspicious image, if the child's device is linked to Family Sharing. Advertisement

As of Friday, Apple's original statement announcing the plans on its website from last month now has a short but important amendment at the top.

'Previously we announced plans for features intended to help protect children from predators who use communication tools to recruit and exploit them and to help limit the spread of child sexual abuse material [CSAM],' it says.

'Based on feedback from customers, advocacy groups, researchers, and others, we have decided to take additional time over the coming months to collect input and make improvements before releasing these critically important child safety features.'

Apple plans to automatically scan iPhones and cloud storage for child abuse images and report 'flagged' owners to the police after a company employee has looked at their photos.

The new safety tools will also be used to look at photos sent by text messages to protect children from 'sexting', automatically blurring images Apple's algorithms could detect as CSAM.

The iPhone maker said last month that the detection tools had been designed to protect user privacy and wouldn't allow the tech giant to see or scan a user's photo album.

Instead, the system will look for matches, securely on the device, based on a database of 'hashes'  a type of digital fingerprint  of known CSAM images provided by child safety organisations.

As well as looking for photos on the phone, cloud storage and messages, Apple's personal assistant Siri will be taught to 'intervene' when users try to search topics related to child sexual abuse.

The new tools were set to be introduced later this year as part of the iOS and iPadOS 15 software update due in the autumn.

They were initially set to be introduced in the US only, but with plans to expand further over time.

Critics had argued the entire set of tools could be exploited by repressive governments looking to find other material for censorship or arrests.

If and when implemented, it would also be impossible for outside researchers to check whether Apple was only checking a small set of on-device content.

Apple's plans sparked a global backlash from a wide range of rights groups, with employees also criticising the plan internally.

Greg Nojeim of the Center for Democracy and Technology in Washington DC said: 'Apple is replacing its industry-standard end-to-end encrypted messaging system with an infrastructure for surveillance and censorship.'

Using 'hashes' or digital fingerprints, images in a CSAM database will be compared to pictures on a user's iPhone. Any match would then sent to Apple and, after being reviewed by a human, on to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children

HOW APPLE WILL SCAN YOUR PHONE FOR CHILD ABUSE PHOTOS The new image-monitoring feature is part of a series of tools heading to Apple mobile devices. Here is how it works: 1. User's photos are compared with 'fingerprints' from America's National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) from its database of child abuse videos and images that allow technology to detect them, stop them and report them to authorities. Those images are translated into 'hashes', a type of code that can be 'matched' to an image on an Apple device to see if it could be illegal. 2. Before an iPhone or other Apple device uploads an image to iCloud, the 'device creates a cryptographic safety voucher that encodes the match result. It also encrypts the image's NeuralHash and a visual derivative. This voucher is uploaded to iCloud Photos along with the image. 3. Apple's 'system ensures that the contents of the safety vouchers cannot be interpreted by Apple unless the iCloud Photos account crosses a threshold of known CSAM content,' Apple has said. At the same time Apple's texting app, Messages, will use machine learning to recognise and warn children and their parents when receiving or sending sexually explicit photos, Apple said. 'When receiving this type of content, the photo will be blurred and the child will be warned,' Apple said. 'As an additional precaution, the child can also be told that, to make sure they are safe, their parents will get a message if they do view it.' Similar precautions are triggered if a child tries to send a sexually explicit photo, according to Apple. Personal assistant Siri, meanwhile, will be taught to 'intervene' when users try to search topics related to child sexual abuse, according to Apple. 4. Apple says that if their 'voucher' threshold is crossed and the image is deemed suspicious, its staff 'manually reviews all reports made to NCMEC to ensure reporting accuracy' Users can 'file an appeal to have their account reinstated' if they believe it has been wrongly flagged. 5. If the image is a child sexual abuse image, NCMEC can report it to the authorities with a view to a prosecution. Advertisement

Security researcher Alex Muffett said Apple was 'defending its own interests, in the name of child protection' with the plans and 'walking back privacy to enable 1984'.

Muffett raised concerns the system will be deployed differently in authoritarian states, asking 'what will China want [Apple] to block?'

Matthew Green, a top cryptography researcher at Johns Hopkins University, also warned that the system could be used to frame innocent people by sending them seemingly innocuous images designed to trigger matches for child pornography.

That could fool Apple's algorithm and alert law enforcement.

'Researchers have been able to do this pretty easily,' Green said of the ability to trick such systems.

Other abuses could include government surveillance of dissidents or protesters. 'What happens when the Chinese government says, "Here is a list of files that we want you to scan for",' Green asked.

'Does Apple say no? I hope they say no, but their technology won't say no.'

'This will break the dam  governments will demand it from everyone,' Green said.

'The pressure is going to come from the UK, from the US, from India, from China. I'm terrified about what that's going to look like', he told WIRED.

Ross Anderson, professor of security engineering at Cambridge University, branded the plan 'absolutely appalling'.

'It is an absolutely appalling idea, because it is going to lead to distributed bulk surveillance of our phones and laptops', he said.

However, other experts welcomed Apple's plans. Dr Rachel OConnell, founder and CEO of verification consultancy Trust Elevate, called Apples child protections proposal 'a scalable solution that does not break encryption'.

'[It] respects user privacy while at the same time significantly bearing down on certain types of criminal behaviour, in this case terrible crimes which harm children,' she said.

'The idea that child safety is the trojan horse for privacy erosion is a trope that privacy advocates expound.

'This creates a false dichotomy and shifts the focus away from the children and young people at the front line of dealing with adults with a sexual interest in children, which often engage in grooming children and soliciting them to produce child sexual abuse material.'

Meanwhile, Andy Burrows, the head of child safety online policy at NSPCC, called Apple's decision 'an incredibly disappointing delay'.

'Apple were on track to roll out really significant technological solutions that would undeniably make a big difference in keeping children safe from abuse online and could have set an industry standard,' he said.

'They sought to adopt a proportionate approach that scanned for child abuse images in a privacy preserving way, and that balanced user safety and privacy.

Apple previously said: 'We want to help protect children from predators who use communication tools to recruit and exploit them, and limit the spread of Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM)'

'We hope Apple will consider standing their ground instead of delaying important child protection measures in the face of criticism.'

Apple had been playing defence on the plan for weeks, and had already offered a series of explanations and documents to show that the risks of false detections were low.

Apple boasted that 'the likelihood that the system would incorrectly flag any given account is less than one in one trillion per year'.

Craig Federighi, Apple's senior vice president of software engineering, told The Wall Street Journal in August that the AI-driven program will be protected against misuse through 'multiple levels of auditability'.

'We, who consider ourselves absolutely leading on privacy, see what we are doing here as an advancement of the state of the art in privacy, as enabling a more private world,' Federighi said.
NASA is vehemently denying the Russian claim that the International Space Station has suffered 'bad' cracks on the Zarya module.

'There are currently no issues impacting crew or normal International Space Station operations, and no new potential leak sites have been identified,' a NASA spokesperson told DailyMail.com via email.

'We are in regular coordination for station operations with all our international partners, including Roscosmos.'

On Monday, Vladimir Solovyov, chief engineer of Russian rocket and space corporation Energia, said 'superficial fissures' were discovered in some places on the Zarya module, also known as the Functional Cargo Block.

NASA is vehemently denying the Russian claim that the International Space Station has suffered 'bad' cracks on the Zarya module, DailyMail.com has learned

The chief engineer of Energia recently said 'bad' 'superficial fissures' were discovered on the module and could spread over time

'This is bad and suggests that the fissures will begin to spread over time,' Solovyov told Russian state-owned news agency RIA.

Solovyov added that a significant portion of the equipment on the ISS is aging, having previously warned there could be an 'avalanche' of broken equipment after 2025.

He did not provide further detail if the cracks had caused any air to leak, and there is no suggestion that any of the astronauts on board are in danger.

DailyMail.com has reached out to Roscosmos, Russia's space agency, with a request for comment.

It's unclear if Solovyov's comments were related to NASA's response earlier this month, in which it disputed a claim from Russian state news agency, TASS, that a NASA astronaut drilled a hole in the ISS three years ago.

Insiders from Roscosmos claimed that NASA astronaut Serena Aunon-Chancellor drilled a hole in the ISS in August 2018 to force an early return to Earth due to a psychological crisis.

Roscosmos conducted an investigation into the hole in 2019 and compiled a dossier on the incident, but reports claim it will not disclose its findings.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson recently tweeted that he fully supports Aunon-Chancellor, adding context to a tweet from Kathy Leuders, the head of NASA's human spaceflight program.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson tweeted that he fully supports NASA astronaut Serena Aunon-Chancellor, who was the subject of speculation in a report from Russian state news agency TASS that she drilled a hole in the ISS in August 2018 to force an early return to Earth due to a psychological crisis

Kathy Leuders, the head of NASA's human spaceflight program, also expressed support for Aunon-Chancellor

'NASA astronauts, including Serena Aunon-Chancellor, are extremely well-respected, serve their country and make invaluable contributions to the agency,' Leuders tweeted last month.

'We stand behind Serena and her professional conduct. We do not believe there is any credibility to these accusations.'

The Zarya module, also known as the Functional Cargo Block, was the first component launched for the ISS on November 20, 1998, according to the US space agency.

It is 41.2 feet in length, 13.5 feet in diameter and weighs 42,600 pounds.

The Zarya module, also known as the Functional Cargo Block, was the first component launched for the ISS on November 20, 1998, according to NASA. It is 41.2 feet in length, 13.5 feet in diameter and weighs 42,600 pounds

In March, two small cracks were sealed on the Zvezda module, which contains living quarters for two cosmonauts, according to Space.com.

In July, the ISS was thrown out of control when jet thrusters of the 22-ton Nauka research module inadvertently fired a few hours after it docked.

As a result of the inadvertent firing, NASA said the ISS backflipped and was left upside down, but the ISS's flight control team solved the issue.

TASS, another Russian state news agency, recently cited the claim from Roscosmos insiders that there were multiple holes drilled by someone unfamiliar with the module design and without proper support to ensure accurate drilling in low gravity.

The leak, a circular hole in the hull of the Russian Soyuz capsule as it joined the ISS, was the subject of headlines and speculation for months.

Claims of the cause have included a botched repair job by an engineer on Earth who drilled through the side of the spacecraft, issues in manufacturing and sabotage.

The hole in the Russian Soyuz spacecraft attached to the station was spotted on August 30, 2018, three months after it first docked, after crew spotted a decrease in air pressure, causing astronauts to rush to find the cause.

Just days prior to their return to Earth, the cosmonauts endured a grueling spacewalk that lasted almost eight hours to investigate the hole, using knives and shears to carve into the side of the space station itself.

The crew discovered a 2-millimeter (0.08 inches) hole which caused the leak and plugged it with epoxy and gauze.

NASA claimed the astronauts on board were never in danger of suffocation due to the 'lifeboat' spacecraft attached to the station to provide a return to Earth.

Later, images and further investigation revealed the hole had been made from the inside, ruling out space debris as the cause.

Cosmonaut Sergey Prokopyev and two other astronauts, the European Space Agency's Alexander Gerst and the aforementioned Aunon-Chancellor were on board when the hole was detected.

Dmitry Rogozin, Roscosmos' chief, said in June that Russia would abandon the ISS in 2025 unless the US lifts sanctions that prevent it from launching satellites, DailyMail.com reported previously.

In April, Rogozin made a similar threat, saying Russia would quit the project by 2025.

'We are beginning negotiations with our NASA partners, we are formalizing them now,' Rogozin had said at the time.

'It does not mean that the station will be scrapped and dumped into the ocean immediately after 2025. We will simply hand over the responsibility for our segment to the partners.'

Russia has been under sanctions by the US since its annexation of Crimea in 2014, a move that western governments have condemned as an illegal occupation.

President Joe Biden recently added to those sanctions for what he described as attempts to interfere in US elections, state-sponsored hacking and other issues.

Relations soured even further when Biden agreed with the description of Russian President Vladimir Putin as 'a killer,' to which the Russian president retorted it 'takes one to known one.'

Amid the deterioration in relations, Russia has been increasingly turning towards China for support - including in space.

The two countries recently announced a joint project to build a base on the moon, saying it will 'promote the peaceful exploration and use of space for all of mankind'.

The project was announced after Russia rejected a U.S. offer to join European partners in establishing their own base on the moon.
NASA is testing a new electric aircraft that can take off and land vertically, in the hope that by 2024 will be able to shuttle passengers across busy cities at 200mph.

The Joby Aviation vehicle could one day serve as an air taxi service for those in cities and surrounding areas, adding an alternative mode of transport for people and goods, according to the NASA team working in Big Sur, California.

The all-electrical 'flying taxi' can take off and land vertically and is a helicopter powered by six rotors designed to be as quiet as possible.

The 10 day study started on September 1, and will see officials from the NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center test its performance and acoustics.

The electrical vertical take off and landing (eVTOL) vehicle is the first in a number of aircraft that will be tested as part of NASA's Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) campaign to find future rapid modes of transport that could be approved for public use.

NASA is testing a new electric aircraft that can take off and land vertically, in the hope that by 2024 will be able to shuttle passengers across busy cities at 200mph

WHAT IS ADVANCED AIR MOBILITY? Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) is an aviation system that encompasses developing and deploying aviation in innovative ways not typically seen. This could include small flying drones to take parcels to remote locations, or aircraft to take single passengers across a city. The AAM National Campaign is managed by NASA's Advanced Air Mobility project. It plans to be a community catalyst for developing and validating system-level concepts and solutions for AAM. The AAM project is a part of the agency's Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate. Advertisement

NASA's goal is to collect vehicle performance and acoustic data for use in modelling and simulation of future airspace concepts, the agency explained.

The work will allow NASA aerospace engineers to identify gaps in current regulations and policies related to air travel in the US.

This data will feed into Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regulations, allowing for future AAM aircraft to be used as part of the National Airspace System.

The Joby light aircraft test is just one part of a multi-event campaign to advance airspace mobility in the US, NASA said, with others happening over several years.

'The National Campaign Developmental Testing is an important strategic step in NASA's goals to accelerate the AAM industry timeline,' said Davis Hackenberg, NASA AAM mission integration manager.

'These testing scenarios will help inform gaps in current standards to benefit the industry's progress of integrating AAM vehicles into the airspace.'

During this round of testing, NASA will collect data from Joby's eVTOL aircraft, which is intended to serve as a commercial passenger service in the future.

Analysing that data readies the AAM National Campaign to execute the first set of tests, known as NC-1, slated for 2022, with more complex flight scenarios and other industry vehicles than during this initial testing round.

As the Joby aircraft flies planned test scenarios, the NASA team will collect information about how the vehicle moves, how the vehicle sounds, and how the vehicle communicates with controllers.

'From day one, we prioritized building an aircraft that not only has an extremely low noise profile, but blends seamlessly into the natural environment,' said Joby.

NASA's goal is to collect vehicle performance and acoustic data for use in modelling and simulation of future airspace concepts, the agency explained

JOBY LIGHT AIRCRAFT Joby Aviation produce an all-electric helicopter that can travel up to 150 miles in a single journey. It can reach speeds of up to 200 miles per hour, according to the company. The firm hopes to get approval to operate the vehicle in the real world from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in 2023. They hope to begin operations in 2024, flying over busy cities. Aircraft Type: Normal category electric airplane that is capable of vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) Pilot Type: Commercial airplane pilot Seating: 5 - 1 pilot + 4 passengers Max Range: 150+ miles Cruise Speed: 200mph Wingspan: 38 feet Length: 21 feet Ceiling 15,000ft Motors: Six tiltable dual-redundant electric motor units Test Program: Over 1000 flights flown across various prototypes Advertisement

'We have always believed that a minimal acoustic footprint is key to making aviation a convenient part of everyday movement without compromising quality of life, and we're excited to fly with NASA, our longtime partners in electric flight, to demonstrate the acoustic profile of our aircraft.'

Future partners will fly similar scenarios to evaluate their vehicle readiness for use in real world scenarios over busy, densely populated cities.

The team will deploy the mobile acoustics facility and construct an array of more than 50 microphones to measure the sound profile of Joby's aircraft in different phases of flight to ensure it won't cause excessive noise pollution when in use.

'NASA's AAM National Campaign is critical to driving scientific understanding and public acceptance of eVTOL aircraft,' said JoeBen Bevirt, CEO of Joby Aviation.

'We're incredibly proud to have worked closely with NASA on electric flight over the past 10 years and to be the first eVTOL company to fly as part of the campaign.'

Another element of the testing will be to create a baseline for participation in future tests, according to NASA, which will also include flight safety and airworthiness processes required to participate in the campaign.

When fully integrated into the national airspace, AAM will provide an efficient and affordable system for passenger and cargo transportation, and other applications in the public interest, said NASA.

'This system could include aircraft like package delivery drones, air taxis and medical transport vehicles.'
Climate change is often associated with the Earth getting hotter, but a rise in greenhouse gasses is leading to chillier winters in the U.S. and Europe, according to scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Abnormal warming in the poles creates excess energy that causes the polar vortex phenomenon to weaken and split off into smaller 'sister' vortices that travel outside its typical arctic range, according to a new study in the journal Science.

A split in a polar vortex can give rise to both sudden and delayed effects, much of which involves declining temperatures and extreme winter weather in the U.S. and Northern and Western Europe.

The scientists believe a split vortex caused the cold snap in February that killed up to 700 people in Texas and left more than 3.5. million without electricity.

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Lowering temperatures in the arctic can cause dpolar vortices to weaken and split off, sending temperatures plummeting across the US in February, according to a new study out of MIT. Pictured: A snow-covered highway Jackson, Mississippi on February 15, 2021

'Despite the rapid warming that is the cardinal signature of global climate change, especially in the Arctic... the United States and other regions of the Northern Hemisphere have experienced a conspicuous and increasingly frequent number of episodes of extremely cold winter weather over the past four decades,' the authors wrote.

'Arctic change is likely an important cause of a chain of processes involving what they call a stratospheric polar vortex disruption, which ultimately results in periods of extreme cold in northern midlatitudes,' a band that includes 36 countries in North America, Europe, East Asia, and Central Asia.



The number of times the polar vortex has been disrupted and stretched south in a given year has more than doubled since the early 1980s, when satellite observations began.

Greenhouse gasses warm the icecaps, which can push the polar vortex out of its usual orbit high in the stratosphere above the North Pole

'We know when that temperature difference increases, that leads to more disruptions of the polar vortex,' MIT climatologist Judah Cohen, the report's lead author, told BBC News.

'And when it's weakened, that leads to more extreme winter weather, such as the Texas cold wave last February.'

WHAT IS THE POLAR VORTEX? The polar vortex is an atmospheric circulation pattern that sits high above the poles, in a layer of the atmosphere called the stratosphere. This structure can weaken as a result of abnormal warming in the poles, causing it to split off into smaller sister vortices that may travel outside of their typical range. The split higher up in the atmosphere could eventually cause a similar phenomenon to drip down to the troposphere  the layer of the atmosphere closest to the surface, where most of our weather takes place. A split in the polar vortex can give rise to both sudden and delayed effects, much of which involves declining temperatures and extreme winter weather in the Eastern US along with Northern and Western Europe. Advertisement

That month, temperatures plummeted across the U.S., reaching as low as -35 degrees Fahrenheit in the Midwest.

More than 212 million Americans were affected by the bitterly cold conditions, CNN reported in February.

The U.K. recently suffered its coldest winter in eight years on St Patrick's Day, the thermometer was a chilly 23 Fahrenheit, with snow and icy winds in the south.

The Met Office blamed the late freeze on a 2,000-mile-wide 'Arctic dome' of cold air blown in from Scandinavia.

The polar vortex normally keeps icy air trapped in the Arctic but warmer air weakens the vortex, allowing it to stretch and wander south.

Cohen says his team's findings, based on modeling and observations, could be used to predict future extreme winter-weather events and better prepare communities.

Co-author Chaim Garfinkel, an atmospheric scientist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said they also help dispel misconceptions about how climate change can impact temperatures.

'There has been a long-standing apparent contradiction between the warmer temperatures globally, however, an apparent increase in cold extremes for the United States and in northern Eurasia. And this study helps to resolve this contradiction,' Garfinkel told the BBC.

'In the past, these cold extremes over the US and Russia have been used to justify not reducing carbon, but there's no longer any excuse to not start reducing emissions right away.'
Apple's augmented-reality (AR) and virtual-reality (VR) headset will reportedly need to be wirelessly connected to another device for processing power, like a nearby Mac or iPhone.

The much-rumored device's integrated chip lacks capabilities found in other Apple processors, according to a report in The Information, similar to earlier iterations of the Apple Watch, which required users to keep their iPhones with them.

The helmet-like headset's AR feature will overlay computer-generated images onto the user's view of the real world, enhancing games and educational programs.

The VR feature fully immerses the user in a simulated environment.

According to the new report, the headset will have its own CPU and graphics processor and might have some basic standalone functionality.

A source familiar with the headset told the site that Apple's production partner, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, 'has struggled to produce the chip without defects and has faced low yields during trial production.'

They predict mass production of the device is at least a year away, contradicting the spring 2022 rollout predicted by TF International Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo earlier this summer.

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Apple's much-ballyhooed AR headset will need to be wirelessly tethered to another device, like an iPhone or a Mac book, to utilize its more advanced functions, according to a new report

According to The Information, Apple completed design work last year on the headset's system-on-a-chip, 'which isn't as powerful as the ones made for iPhones, iPads, and MacBooks.'

'It lacks the artificial intelligence and machine-learning capabilities, known as Apple's Neural Engine, which those devices include,' one source said.

That means a phone, tablet or laptop will do the heavy lifting 'to display virtual, mixed and augmented reality images.'

Sacrificing processing power will enable it to have longer battery life, the report said, and more energy for 'compressing and decompressing video,' and 'transmitting wireless data between the headset and the host.'

The helmet-like headset will lack 'the artificial intelligence and machine-learning capabilities, known as Apple's Neural Engine' of other Apple devices, similar to early iterations of the Apple Watch

Another person familiar with the project said the image sensor and display driver for the headset is 'unusually large'  close to the size of one of the headset's lenses  in order to 'capture high-resolution image data from a user's surroundings for AR.'

In a note to investors in June, Kuo said that a helmet-like head-mounted display from Apple, offering both virtual and augmented reality, would ship in the second quarter of 2022.

Apple has long been rumored to be developing its own pair of AR glasses. A 2019 patent (pictured) gives a glimpse into what it may be developing

'The device will provide a video see-through AR experience, so the lens is also needed, and Genius is also a key supplier,' Kuo wrote, according to 9to5Mac.

The new report didn't offer details on pricing for the headset, though Kuo has previously said it will cost approximately $1,000.

Others have suggested a price closer to Microsoft's mixed-reality HoloLens 2 headset, which retails for $3,500.

According to The Information's source, Apple's less cumbersome AR specs, Apple Glass, could debut in 2023.

WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN AR AND VR? Virtual reality is a computer-generated simulation of an environment or situation It immerses the user by making them feel like they are in the simulated reality through images and sounds For example, in VR, you could feel like you're climbing a mountain while you're at home In contrast, augmented reality layers computer-generated images on top of an existing reality AR is developed into apps to bring digital components into the real world

For example, in the Pokemon Go app, the characters seem to appear in real world scenarios Advertisement

In a 2020 video on Front Page Tech, technology analyst Jon Prosser said he had seen two prototypes for Apple Glass at the company's Cupertino officesone white and one black.

Both models, described as 'clean' and 'slick' in appearance, will be 5G-compatible, said Prosser, who is described by Apple Insider as an Apple leaker 'with sources throughout the company and supply chain.'

The AR eyepiece is reportedly not sunglasses but normal clear glasses that will display an interface on the inside of the lens  not unlike what's depicted in Apple's promo image.

Wearers would be able to simply use their gaze to select apps on the AR display, which would be similar to a smartphone homepage, rumors suggest.

Anyone facing an Apple Glass-wearing user will not be able to see the AR display, which will overlay digital images over the user's real-life surroundings.

According to Prosser, Apple Glass will have its own operating system, 'Starboard.'

Kuo previously claimed Apple Glass would not make an appearance before 2025, claiming the device has not yet reached the prototype phase.

In April, Apple CEO Tim Cook told Sway podcast host Kara Swisher that augmented reality is 'critically important to the company's future.

The company has been working on AR glasses for some time: A 2019 patent application suggests it's considering a 'Display Device' that uses a 'reflective holographic combiner' to more seamlessly blend objects rendered in the headset's display.

That would increase the depth-of-field and reduce the eyestrain and nausea often associated with AR and VR.
We all know money cant buy you love. But, my goodness, it can make you rude, lonely, unhappy, resentful, self-absorbed  and thoroughly unenviable.

And in case we need reminding just how impoverished the wealthy can be, its simply a question of tuning into the latest must-see TV series, The White Lotus.

This six-parter is now the most talked-about show, with a feel-good factor entirely generated by the ghastliness of its over-privileged characters, for whom spending 20,000 a night for a sea-view suite in Hawaii is like ordering an extra shot in their morning coffee.

In case we need reminding just how impoverished the wealthy can be, its simply a question of tuning into the latest must-see TV series, The White Lotus

They are so awful that you dont want to miss an excruciating minute. And while people have not been able to travel freely for the past 18 months, this HBO comedy drama  launched here on Sky Atlantic  makes the case for thinking you might be better off at home with the cat on your lap rather than be surrounded by this lot.

A group of entitled Americans arrive at their five-star hotel  actually the Four Seasons on the island of Maui  to be greeted by the gay Australian general manager and recovering addict, Armond.

Think Basil Fawlty, but funnier and better dressed, as he smiles at guests from one side of his mouth and with contempt from the other.

They include the Mossbacher family (four of them, plus a friend of one of the teenagers); Shane and Rachel, on a disastrous honeymoon; and the middle-aged Tanya who, upon arrival, needs a massage now, even though there are no slots until the next day.

Alexandra Daddario (pictured) stars as Rachel in the HBO show

This poses a problem for Armond and his team, who are under strict instructions to cater to a guests every demand. But, then, thats what is supposed to happen in five-star hotels across the world.

When people are paying thousands of pounds a night they expect to get exactly what they want and when they want it. And the tiniest mistake can become a huge issue, says a former general manager (GM) of a luxury hotel in the Caribbean.

Consider the case of the American who went on holiday in St Lucia with his wife and mistress, with neither knowing the other was there.

Fortunately, the property was large enough to keep the women in separate villas, while the guest raced between each room on resort buggies.

This six-parter is now the most talked-about show, with a feel-good factor entirely generated by the ghastliness of its over-privileged characters, for whom spending 20,000 a night for a sea-view suite in Hawaii is like ordering an extra shot in their morning coffee

The staff were fully briefed to do everything in their power to ensure there were no accidental meetings, says the hotel GM, who wishes not to be identified.

Meticulous itineraries of spa treatments, fitness activities and experiences were curated for each lady so the gentleman could manage their time and his.

One lady would sunbathe on the main beach, the other would be tucked away on the more private strip of sand at the opposite end of the property. A personal time manager was appointed to remind the gentleman which lady he should be seeing and where to meet her. By the end of the holiday, the man was a wreck and the staff were exhausted.

But demands must be met. At Dukes hotel, off Londons St Jamess Street, a regular guest from New York stays in The Duke of Clarence Suite, which starts at 1,249 a night. He is known to staff as a SAG (Special Attention Guest)  and for good reason.

Alcohol is to be removed from his minibar and replaced with prune juice and Mars bars.

Paradise lost: Sydney Sweeney plays the Mossbachers daughter

On the table, there must be a glass bowl with kiwi and dragon fruit in it, plus pomegranate in a separate container.

He requires a bowl of Jelly Babies, barbecue-flavoured crisps and, as a cigar smoker, an ashtray left on a particular corner of the balcony table. Another Dukes guest insists on all TVs being removed from his suite, only sparkling water in the minibar, and if any magazines or leaflets are on display well, it doesnt bear thinking about.

A GM friend of mine would rather forget the guest who, she says, holds the record for being the most demanding person I have ever had the misfortune to deal with.

Even before her arrival, this woman was making daily calls to outline expectations and itemise her requirements.

Hotel shows you have to check out Crossroads (1964-1988, and 2001-2003): Set in a motel in the Birmingham area, this soap was the favourite show of Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilsons wife, Mary. It starred Noele Gordon as kindly but brusque owner Meg, with Jane Rossington as her daughter Jill. Victoria Wood lovingly sent up its wobbly sets and wooden dialogue in Acorn Antiques. Fawlty Towers (1975-1979): One of the best-loved sitcoms of all time, and still repeated on BBC1 despite controversies over its gleeful lack of political correctness, this comedy set in a Torquay hotel was inspired when John Cleese (right) and his Monty Python chums stayed in a seaside B&B with an eccentric, irascible proprietor. The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2011): Based on a novel by Deborah Moggach, this movie starred a clutch of national treasures  including Maggie Smith, Celia Imrie, Penelope Wilton and Bill Nighy  as retired Brits who set up home in a hotel in Jaipur, India. A sequel followed in 2015, as well as a series of BBC1 reality shows with celebrities such as Miriam Margolyes and Bill Oddie. Hotel Babylon (2006-2009): Tamzin Outhwaite plays the general manager of a five-star hotel in London, where her staff cope with everything from bailiffs to terrorists. Max Beesley is the ambitious receptionist and Dexter Fletcher plays the put-upon concierge. The fourth series ended on a cliffhanger, and fans were outraged when it was then cancelled. The Night Manager (2016): John Le Carres novel became a spectacular one-off series starring Hugh Laurie as arms dealer Dicky Roper and Tom Hollander as his spiteful fixer. Their crime ring is infiltrated by a former special forces soldier, Jonathan Pine (Tom Hiddleston)  who is working as the night manager of a Cairo hotel. Christopher Stevens Advertisement

There was to be a bowl of Smarties, but blue only, a bottle of Dom Perignon opened no more than ten seconds before she stepped in the door of her villa, specific toys and free gifts for her toddler, truffles made from a specific exotic cocoa bean from South America, and the villa pool had to be set at a specific temperature  she brought her own thermometer to check.

I know first-hand how easy it is to become spoilt. After getting married for the second time, I whisked my wife off on a five-star trip to India, followed by a few days in a Maldives resort with over-the-water suites. At each hotel, we were handed a refrigerated towel to mop our brows, in what became a protracted ceremony.

Shamefully, at a hotel in Agra where we were staying to see the Taj Mahal, I complained the towel I was given was too cold. I cant believe you said that, my mortified wife said later.

But such are the unpleasant side effects of injecting yourself with too much luxury.

And what happens if youve saved up for years to stay in an absurdly expensive hotel and find yourselves trying to avoid an obnoxious family such as the Mossbachers? Paradise quickly becomes hell, but with comfier beds. Our stay in the Maldives coincided with that of four couples who were so loud, louche and drunk each night in the restaurant that we dreaded turning up for dinner.

Instead, we cowered in our room and ordered room service  even more expensive.

I feel sorry for the GM of a hotel on a private Seychelles island who was told by a guest, who hated the food, that she wanted tins of sweetcorn. There was none of the kind she wanted in the Seychelles. She wasnt happy. Threatening behaviour ensued before the GM managed to fly in a crate of the stuff from Dubai.

This strikes a chord with a GM friend who used to be in charge of a hotel in Paris. He often saw his role as being a peacemaker.

One day, a regular guest booked a top suite for him and his mistress. While they were at dinner his suspecting wife turned up at reception and asked for a key to the suite after showing her passport  as is normal practice, he said.

The wife waited in the room until they returned in the early hours, whereupon she started screaming and throwing things, waking up guests and causing pandemonium. Eventually I managed to persuade the woman to come to my office where I tried to calm her down. By the end of the night I felt more like a therapist than a hotel manager.

In The White Lotus, staff must make guests feel like the special chosen baby child of the hotel. But we know theres no consoling babies when they dont get what they want  especially when they dont know what they want. Whats more, even if you have all the money in the world, you have to take yourself with you on an expensive holiday.

Luxury is the enemy of observation, says travel writer Paul Theroux. A costly indulgence that spoils and infantilises you and prevents you from knowing the world. The White Lotuss money-no-object guests certainly bear testimony to that.
Hollywood actress Angelina Jolie says she hopes to empower children around the world with tools to 'fight back' for their rights with a book she has written with Amnesty International.

Know Your Rights and Claim Them - written with human rights lawyer Geraldine Van Bueren, one of the original drafters of the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child - aims to equip kids with the knowledge to safely challenge injustices.

'So many children are in harm's way across the world and we're simply not doing enough,' Jolie told Reuters in an interview.

Author: Hollywood actress Angelina Jolie says she hopes to empower children around the world with tools to 'fight back' for their rights with a book she has written with Amnesty International

On sale now: Know Your Rights and Claim Them - written with human rights lawyer Geraldine Van Bueren, one of the original drafters of the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child - aims to equip kids with the knowledge to safely challenge injustices

'These are their rights, decided years ago based on what would make them healthy, balanced, safe and stable adults.'

Jolie, special envoy for UN refugee agency UNHCR, said she hoped the book would also remind governments of their commitment to the global treaty enshrining children's civil, social, political and economic rights.

'We spent a lot of time blocking those rights, so this book is to help the kids have a tool book to say "these are your rights, these are things you need to question to see how far you, depending on your country and circumstance, are from accessing those rights, what are your obstacles, others that came before you and fought, ways you can fight."'

A good mommy: The Vogue favorite seen with Shiloh, Vivienne, Zahara and Knox in 2019; she has a total of six children

The Salt actress added: 'So it's a handbook to fight back.'

The mother-of-six said she put up the U.N convention in her home for her children, but was surprised to learn her own country, the United States, has not ratified it.

'That infuriated me and made me start to question what does that mean?' said the ex of Brad Pitt.

'So for each country, what is this idea of, you have the right to an education ... but then why is it so many children are out of school? Why is it the girls in Afghanistan are being harmed if they go?' she said.

The book addresses identity, justice, education and protection from harm, among other issues. It provides guidance on becoming an activist, being safe and a glossary of terms and organizations.

Her ex: Jolie and Brad Pitt are seen in 2015 in New York City; they are still working through a custody agreement of their five children under 18

Busy bee: The star of Salt and Tom Raider has also spoken up about Afghanistan

'Through the book, you have to find your own path forward, because we are very concerned about the safety of children. We don't want children just running around screaming for their rights and putting themselves in danger,' Jolie said.

The book is peppered with examples of powerful young voices from around the world, including Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai, climate activist Greta Thunberg and 15-year-old Palestinian journalist Janna Jihad.

'I was trying to ... show the world what Palestinian children face on a daily basis,' Jihad, who lives in the village of Nabi Salih, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, told Jolie and other young activists in a video call, attended by Reuters, where they discussed their campaign work.

More from her Instagram page: Jolie shared this image of daughter Zahara reading The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison on Friday with the caption: 'End of #summerreading. These are some of the favorites in our house. Would love to know yours'

Another little one: And her daughter Shiloh was seen looking at The Dark Lady by Akala

'It's really important to band together with other young people ... that's the way we will ever be able ... to make change,' added London-based Christina Adane, 17, who campaigns for a healthier food system.

The book is out in Britain on Thursday and for pre-order in other countries, with the aim of worldwide publication.

'We're going to find that some adults in some countries are going to block the book and the children will find it so I think that's how it's going to reach more children,' Jolie said.

'The children will make each other aware of it and they might even be a part of translating it and getting it to each other.' (Reporting by Rollo Ross in Los Angeles and Marie-Louise Gumuchian in London; additional reporting by Sarah Mills; Writing by Marie-Louise Gumuchian; Editing by Alex Richardson).

The actress can next be seen in the Marvel movie The Eternals with Salma Hayek.

New: The actress can next be seen in the Marvel movie The Eternals with Salma Hayek; seen on her EW cover from August
Dr. Dre is continuing his legal wrangling with his ex-wife Nicole Young after filing a lawsuit accusing her of 'embezzling' funds from his recording studio business.

The 56-year-old rapper and producer is suing Young, 51, for allegedly taking money out of accounts for his Recording One music studio in Los Angeles' Sherman Oaks neighborhood, according to legal filings obtained by The Blast.

Dre's lawsuit was filed after the judge overseeing his divorce ordered him in July to pay nearly $300,000 per month to his ex in spousal support for the foreseeable future.

Latest legal challenge: Dr. Dre, 56, is suing his ex-wife Nicole Young, 51, for allegedly 'embezzling' more than $350,000 from a recording studio account that both had access to, according to filings obtained by The Blast; both pictured in 2018

The legal filings indicate that Recording One was formed in 2015 to operate as a recording studio.

Both Dre (who was born Andre Young) and his then-wife were in charge of 'maintenance and control' of the studio assets, and Recording One claims that Young was in charge of writing charges and transferring money for the business.

The studio contends that she 'decimated' its bank accounts by withdrawing $353,571.85 in the early stages of her divorce from from Dre, which she filed for in June of 2020.

Amid the divorce proceedings, she was removed from the studio's trust.

Withdrawal: The studio contends that she 'decimated' its bank accounts by withdrawing $353,571.85 in the early stages of her divorce from from Dre, which she filed for in June of 2020; seen in 2015

In its filing, the studio argues that Young 'egregiously' failed to uphold her fiduciary interest by 'embezzling and stealing money from (the companys) bank account, and using the money for her own, personal obligations.'

Young could find herself in serious legal trouble if the studio's allegations are found to be true.

The business accuses her of violating Penal Code 496, which states: 'Every person who buys or receives any property that has been stolen or that has been obtained in any manner constituting theft or extortion, knowing the property to be stolen or obtained, or who conceals, sells, withholds, or aids in concealing, selling, or withholding any property from the owner shall be punished by imprisonment in county jail for not more than one year.'

Back in October, TMZ reported that the Los Angeles Police Department was investigating Young for the withdrawals, though she claims that she had a right to withdraw the funds because her name was on the account.

Sources claimed to The Blast that Young has already paid back the money, though that wouldn't necessarily absolve her of any potential legal wrongdoing.

Legal trouble? Young says she had a right to withdraw the funds, and sources say she already paid back the money, but the matter was referred to the LAPD in October; seen in 2015

In addition to the former NWA member's nearly $300,000 per month spousal support payments  which are almost as much as the amount Young is accused of embezzling  he will continue to pay for the couple's homes in Malibu and Pacific Palisades, as well as for her health insurance.

Young had initially requested $1.9 million per month, so he's only paying a fraction of that amount.

Young filed to divorce Dre in June 2020, citing irreconcilable differences.

She claimed in her filing that the musician and businessman threw her out of their home on April 2 of that year following 'a night of Andres alcohol-induced, brutal rage, which included, but was not limited to, his screaming at her to "get the f*** out."'

She also claimed that their marriage was 'earmarked by all types of abuse,' and she accused him of punching her and holding a gun to her head on multiple occassions.

Dre has denied all of the allegations of abuse, but he has been accused of abusing women multiple times throughout his career.

Contentious: Young filed for divorce in June 2020. She claimed that Dre threw her out of their house in April of that year and had previously abused her multiple times, which he denies despite having a documented history of abusing women; seen in 2014

In 1992, he pleased no contest to assaulting the rapper and journalist Dee Barnes.

She claimed that he assaulted her at a party by repeated slamming her head and body against a brick wall before attempting to throw her down a staircase and then kicking her in the ribs and hand.

She said he also grabbed her by the back of her hair and punched her in the back of her head.

While the assault went on, Dre's bodyguard allegedly pulled a gun on the crowd to prevent anyone from rescuing Barnes.
Ulrika Jonsson's 21-year-old daughter Bo has told how she has decided not to meet her biological father Markus Kempen for the first time after he reached out to her.

The Swedish TV star, 54, recently penned an article for the Sun about the anxiety she felt over a potential meeting between Bo and Markus, now that Bo is nannying in Corfu - which is where her biological dad is currently living.

Ulrika shared her heartache over her partner walking out shortly after their baby daughter Bo's life-saving heart operation during the emotional essay.

However Norland nanny Bo has since offered her own side of the story, as she detailed how she has never felt a longing to meet her father, after being adopted by Ulrika's husband, Brian Monet, who she felt a connection with and calls 'daddy'.

And she said that she's in 'floods of tears' after her mother's article, saying she's 'struggled to feel connected' to the idea of a relationship with her biological father.

Open letter: Ulrika Jonsson's 21-year-old daughter Bo has told how she has decided not to meet her biological father Markus Kempen for the first time after he reached out to her

She revealed she feels there is 'no space for Markus' in her life at the moment, but didn't rule out a future meeting for them when she feels ready.

Ulrika told Bo about her dad aged eight, however after already introducing her to her partners John and Lance, who acted as father figures, Bo admitted she struggled.

She said: 'I talk about having a 'biological' dad because it's just a genetic thing to me. I haven't been able to make a connection emotionally. I was a bit confused by Mum's explanation because of my age and I remember going off to play straight after as I didn't have anything to say.'

'How can you ever be prepared for being told you have a 'real' dad somewhere in the world, somewhere in your past or present?'

Throwback: The Swedish TV star, 54, recently penned an article for the Sun about she anxiety she felt over a potential meeting between Bo and Markus (pictured), now that Bo is nannying in Corfu - which is where her biological dad is currently living

Bo said she draws comparison from children being told they are adopted, but it isn't something she ever spoke about with her friends.

The professional nanny puts this down to having a strong support network growing up, as she admitted to feeling very 'settled' in her home life.

Bo revealed that her mum Ulrika would often check in to see if Bo wanted to talk about 'Marcus', however she confessed that she never did.

Career: However Norland nanny Bo (pictured) has since offered her own side of the story, as she detailed how she has never felt a longing to meet her father

Day job: Bo confessed she has sometimes wondered about her father leaving and the reason why - especially after choosing nannying as her career due to her love of children

She said: 'I just felt no connection and no real intrigue either which might sound strange but I believe it's because I had such a settled childhood that there was no real longing for that 'missing piece'. What I didn't ever do was ask Mum about their relationship and what happened  how and what went wrong.'

Bo was born with a congenital heart condition called Double Inlet Left Ventricle, which was diagnosed when Ulrika was pregnant. She has had one closed and two open-heart surgeries throughout her life so far.

She believes that going through this with just her mother due to the absence of Markus has given them an unbreakable bond.

Bo confessed she has sometimes wondered about her father leaving and the reason why - especially after choosing nannying as her career due to her love of children.

While at her latest post in Corfu, Markus reached out to ask if she wanted to meet him, however she has decided to decline the offer.

She explained: 'I don't have any angry feelings towards him because of anything he has done to me. But more because I feel he caused my mum so much pain, especially during all those worrying times when I was poorly. On this occasion, I've decided not to meet.'

Bo is not ruling out a meeting in the future but for right now is worried it could open a 'can of worms', as she struggles with the idea of meeting a man who caused her mother 'so much pain'.

Bo finished her essay by sweetly admitting she sees Brian as her 'daddy', as he has done so much more for her than many biological dads would do.

Worries: Speaking candidly in her article, Ulrika admitted her dread at Bo and Markus potentially meeting again as they are coincidently in the same country, revealing the union could 'open a can of worms'

She concluded: 'So there is no space for Markus in my life at the moment. But I know the day will come when we will meet and it makes me nervous and full of anticipation. But as long as I have Mum by my side, I think I'll be able to deal with it. I'm just not ready right now.

In a recent column, Ulrika opened up on the agonising time she split with then-partner Markus, who went to live abroad just weeks after Bo was born.

Speaking candidly in her article, Ulrika admitted her dread at Bo and Markus potentially meeting again as they are coincidently in the same country, revealing the union could 'open a can of worms'.

Discussing the time before Markus left, Ulrika said there were already 'fractures' in their relationship even before their daughter was born and told how there were 'red flags' when they unsuccessfully tried living together previously.

Of him leaving, she told how he stood 'outside the labour ward' smoking cigarettes and 'plotting his escape' while she struggled to give birth.

Upsetting: 'After her first operation at six days old, I was allowed to take her home. On the way, in the car, he announced he'd accepted a job abroad and would be leaving imminently'

She went on 'After her first operation at six days old, I was allowed to take her home. On the way, in the car, he announced he'd accepted a job abroad and would be leaving imminently.

'I sat in the back of the car, cradling my child - not ours. I knew she was chronically ill, might not survive future cardiac operations  and had just been abandoned by one half of her parents.'

Ulrika emotionally explained that the depression she soon developed was one of the 'deepest and darkest' times of her life, insisting that she fought 'relentlessly' for Markus 'to have a place in her [Bo's] life.'

The former Gladiators host went on consider Bo, who is working as a nanny in Greece, meeting her father for the first time in almost 21 years, with the Markus also in the same country currently.

Ulrika told of her 'anxiety' and 'concern' of them meeting without her present, fearing it could open a 'can of worms' for her daughter that she's not ready' to face.

She said: 'If she wants to meet him, I have always supported her and always will. It has been a discombobulated feeling of hope and fear these past few weeks... If he can enrich or enhance her life, who am I to stand in their way? I have never tainted her mind about her biological father.'

Ulrika is also mother to son Cameron, 26, with John Turnbull, daughter Martha, 17, with Lance Gerrard-Wright and son Malcolm, with ex Brian Monet.

Abandoned: 'I sat in the back of the car, cradling my child - not ours. I knew she was chronically ill, might not survive future cardiac operations  and had just been abandoned by one half of her parents'

Anxious: Ulrika told of her 'anxiety' and 'concern' of them meeting without her present, fearing it could open a 'can of worms' for her daughter that she's not ready' to face

Family: Ulrika is also mother to son Cameron, 26, with John Turnbull, daughter Martha, 17, with Lance Gerrard-Wright and son Malcolm, with ex Brian Monet

Ulrika has often been open about daughter Bo's heart condition and in April this year revealed that Bo - who has a congenital heart defect - was rushed to hospital.

The star nervously had to await test results for her ill daughter after she was admitted to hospital overnight, with Ulrika given hourly reports on her progress at the time.

Bo has been in and out of hospital over the years as a result of her condition - she was born with double inlet left ventricle defect, a congenital defect that affects the valves and chambers of the heart.

As a baby, she had to undergo life-saving surgery on her heart - but Ulrika did not reveal what had caused Bo to be hospitalised.

The previous month Ulrika hailed Bo as a 'warrior' as she went to get a health check up.

The TV presenter shared a series of snaps to her Instagram Stories of Bo lying down at the doctor's office as she received a liver scan.

The former Celebrity Big Brother star posted a photo of the pair sat together in the waiting room as she called Bo her 'CHD Warrior'.
He is the devilishly handsome actor who looks good in just about anything.

But when it comes to his personal style, Brad Pitt is happiest wearing his most comfortable of clothing.

'You get older, you get crankier, and comfort becomes more important. I think it's as simple as that,' Pitt, 57, told Esquire.

'You get older, you get crankier': Brad Pitt is happiest wearing his most comfortable of clothing

Describing his fashion sense, the actor said he preferred the 'simplicity' of clothing.

'If I have a style, it's no style,' he told the publication. 'I like monochrome, without it being a uniform. I like simplicity. I like the details in the stitching, the way it feels. If anything, that's the only divining rod I have.'

'I like the feel of a Lecia camera or the way a watch feels. I don't want to look ostentatious, but if you come close, you notice,' he said.

'I like how the lining feels. It's those details that are important to me. It's too exhausting to follow trends. And I despise billboards; I just don't want to be billboard.'

Coffee break: Brad's style is put on full display in the new campaign for De'Longhi, which sees him enjoying a freshly brewed cappuccino wearing a basic long-sleeve shirt and jeans

Order for Brad! The actor picked up a bag of fresh beans from the coffee shop in a campaign for De'Longhi

Brad's style is put on full display in the new campaign for coffee machine maker and appliance company De'Longhi, which sees him enjoying a freshly brewed cappuccino wearing a basic long-sleeve shirt and jeans.

The superstar, who is serving as the face of the company's Perfetto campaign, described himself as a 'serious' coffee drinker who enjoys numerous caffeine-infused beverages a day.

'I am a serious, professional, committed coffee drinker,' he said. 'Usually a three-cappuccino drinker in the morning, and depending on the work in the afternoon, I might switch over to an espresso.'

Nothing better! The actor savors his frothy, freshly brewed cappuccino in his luxurious home

Hitting the open road: The ad sees the actor riding by the beach on his motorcycle

Hello there! The actor orders a batch of his coffee beans at the cafe

Speaking of his decision to team up with De'Longhi, he said: 'It made sense to take a ride with De'Longhi. When you have confidence in your product, you don't have to shove it down people's throats. You can do it nicely.'

The ad, which was directed by La La Land's Damien Chazelle, shows the actor picking up a bag of fresh coffee beans before returning home on his motorcycle to brew them on his De'Longhi machine.

The actor sits outside, savoring his frothy cappuccino.

Speaking of the campaign with People, the actor said: 'I wanted to work with De'Longhi because I appreciated their approach for the campaignthey have confidence in their product and want to celebrate the artistry of their Italian heritage without overdoing it.

'Damien Chazelle's concept resulted in a beautiful productjust like their coffee machines, creating an indirect nod to the elegance, design and harmony that the brand naturally embodies.'

Back at it! After making his purchase, he heads back on his bike

Yum: Pitt brews the beans in his De'Longhi machine
Just weeks after dumping her ex Alexander Edwards after putting him on blast for cheating on her with at least 12 women, Amber Rose supported another ex, Wiz Khalifa.

The 37-year-old model took to her Instagram story on Wednesday night from back stage at Khalifa's concert at the Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Morrison, Colorado.

She brought her eight-year-old son Sebastian she shares with Wiz, who she was married to from July 2013 until she filed for divorce on September 2014.

Exes: Just weeks after dumping her ex Alexander Edwards after putting him on blast for cheating on her with at least 12 women, Amber Rose supported another ex, Wiz Khalifa

Son Sebastian: She brought her eight-year-old son Sebastian she shares with Wiz, who she was married to from July 2013 until she filed for divorce on September 2014. Amber Rose cheers on her son performing with dad Wiz Khalifa

The Instagram story videos started with her filming Sebastian backstage, as he got incredibly excited when his dad Wiz took the stage.

She turned the camera on Wiz, 33, who was seen shirtless with black leather pants as he performed at the legendary Colorado amphitheatre.

The model moved the camera back and forth from her ex to her son, who was jumping up and down as his father performed.

Wiz: She turned the camera on Wiz, 33, who was seen shirtless with black leather pants as he performed at the legendary Colorado amphitheatre

The next video she shared also featured her son, but this time he was holding a microphone, while still beaming with joy.

'Are you excited?' Rose asked her son, as he looked at the camera and said, 'Why wouldn't I?' as he could hardly contain his joy

The next brief video showed Sebastian on stage performing alongside his dad, captioned, 'My baby boy' with a heart-eyes emoji.

Excited: 'Are you excited?' Rose asked her son, as he looked at the camera and said, 'Why wouldn't I?' as he could hardly contain his joy

Baby boy: The next brief video showed Sebastian on stage performing alongside his dad, captioned, 'My baby boy' with a heart-eyes emoji

Both father and son sang along to the track, as Wiz motioned for Sebastian to join him at the front of the stage.

While they performed, Amber panned again to show the packed crowd at Red Rocks before the song came to an end.

'Give it up for my son,' Wiz said as the crowd cheered loudly for a smiling Sebastian, who waved to the crowd.

Father and son: Both father and son sang along to the track, as Wiz motioned for Sebastian to join him at the front of the stage

Give it up: 'Give it up for my son,' Wiz said as the crowd cheered loudly for a smiling Sebastian, who waved to the crowd

Wiz knelt down and gave his son a hug and a kiss on the forehead before they both walked backstage to a cheering Amber as the video came to a close.

The outing comes just weeks after Rose called out her ex Anthony Edwards for cheating on her with at least 12 other women.

Edwards ultimately copped to cheating, saying it's in his 'true nature' to be unfaithful to women.

Video: Wiz knelt down and gave his son a hug and a kiss on the forehead before they both walked backstage to a cheering Amber as the video came to a close

Called out: The outing comes just weeks after Rose called out her ex Anthony Edwards for cheating on her with at least 12 other women
Brokeback Mountain alum Jake Gyllenhaal enjoyed an al fresco meal with three guy pals during the 78th Venice International Film Festival in Italy on Thursday.

The 40-year-old Oscar nominee flashed a huge grin while catching up with his friends at a Venice eatery.

Jake (born Jacob) was not promoting any film during the film festivities, so he had time to kick back and savor his visit.

Kicking back: Brokeback Mountain alum Jake Gyllenhaal enjoyed an al fresco meal with three guy pals during the 78th Venice International Film Festival in Italy on Thursday

Gyllenhaal carried a camera while casually clad in a black T-shirt, khakis, and b&w sneakers.

On Wednesday night, the Spirit Untamed actor fist-bumped Oscar winner Rami Malek while posing for a picture with the kitchen staff of Ristorante Da Ivo.

Jake's ex-girlfriend Kirsten Dunst also happened to be dining at Da Ivo on Wednesday night, and she also happily posed with staffers.

Bromance: The 40-year-old Oscar nominee flashed a huge grin while catching up with his friends at a Venice eatery

Vacation: Jake (born Jacob) was not promoting any film during the film festivities, so he had time to kick back and savor his visit

Masked up: Gyllenhaal carried a camera while casually clad in a black T-shirt, khakis, and b&w sneakers

Gyllenhaal and the 39-year-old Emmy nominee famously dated from 2002-2004, but she now has two children with her Fargo leading man-turned-fiance Jesse Plemons.

Jake - who's been dating French model Jeanne Cadieu since 2018 - was joined at Da Ivo by his big sister Maggie and her husband of 12 years, Peter Sarsgaard.

On Thursday, the 43-year-old Oscar nominee and the 50-year-old Independent Spirit Award nominee glammed up to attend the Venice Film Festival.

Bravo! On Wednesday night, the Spirit Untamed actor fist-bumped Oscar winner Rami Malek (R) while posing for a picture with the kitchen staff of Ristorante Da Ivo

What a coincidence! Jake's ex-girlfriend Kirsten Dunst also happened to be dining at Da Ivo on Wednesday night, and she also happily posed with staffers

Former flames: Gyllenhaal and the 39-year-old Emmy nominee (pictured in 2003) famously dated from 2002-2004, but she now has two children with her Fargo leading man-turned-fiance Jesse Plemons

Family reunion: Jake - who's been dating French model Jeanne Cadieu since 2018 - was joined at Da Ivo by his big sister Maggie (2-L) and her husband of 12 years, Peter Sarsgaard (R)

Maggie's feature directorial debut The Lost Daughter - premiering Friday at the fest - features Peter, Dakota Johnson, Olivia Colman, Ed Harris, and Paul Mescal.

Her flick, based on Elena Ferrante's 2006 novella, starts streaming December 31 on Netflix.

Gyllenhaal rocked a red lip and wore a black silk gown featuring a matching cape as she emerged from her water taxi.

Still going strong! On Thursday, the 43-year-old Oscar nominee (L) and the 50-year-old Independent Spirit Award nominee (R) glammed up to attend the Venice Film Festival

Streaming December 31 on Netflix! Maggie's feature directorial debut The Lost Daughter - premiering Friday at the fest - features Peter, Dakota Johnson, Olivia Colman, Ed Harris, and Paul Mescal

Grazie! Gyllenhaal rocked a red lip and wore a black silk gown featuring a matching cape as she emerged from her water taxi

Just in time: The Best Summer Ever producer-stars - who are parents to daughters Ramona and Gloria - looked thrilled to escape Manhattan during Hurricane Ida

The Best Summer Ever producer-stars - who are parents to daughters Ramona and Gloria - looked thrilled to escape Manhattan during Hurricane Ida.

Meanwhile, Jake next plays demoted police officer Joe Baylor in Antoine Fuqua's thriller The Guilty, which hits limited US theaters September 24 before streaming on Netflix October 1.

The remake of Gustav Moller's 2018 Danish film of the same name also features Jake's brother-in-law Peter Sarsgaard, Ethan Hawke, Riley Keough, Paul Dano, and Bill Burr.
The much-anticipated Hulu limited series, The Dropout, which chronicles the rise and fall of Elizabeth Holmes and her company, Theranos, is in full swing in Los Angeles.

Amanda Seyfried plays the disgraced the Silicon Valley executive, who's accused of duping investors out of about $700 million to fund her medical tech company, including blood testing technology that didn't exist, that she founded when she was just 19.

On Thursday, the actress was spotted on set in Los Angeles, but she had not yet sat down in the make chair as part of her transformation into Holmes, who's trial is underway at a federal courthouse in San Jose, California.

Prep mode: Amanda Seyfried, 35, was spotted on set before her transformation into disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes for the Hulu series The Dropout in Los Angeles

Seyfried, 35, was dressed down in blue denim jeans, a grey-patterned sweater and her long blonde tresses pulled back into a loose bun.

She also looked to have kept her beauty makeup to a minimum, considering the job that the makeup staff has to do on a daily basis.

With COVID-19 still very much a danger, Seyfried wore a face mask over her mouth and nose nearly the entire time, with the occasional exception when needed and appropriate.

At one point on set, the actress stepped up her casual walk when she met up with a woman, who also followed health and safety protocols.

On the go: The actress, who kept it casual in her street cloths in blue denim jeans and a grey sweater, was hurried along behind the scenes

During her stroll, Seyfried also appeared to take some time to assess the upcoming scene, and a camera that was attached to a car.

She chatted with a couple of crew members, including a photographer, who looked to be putting the finishing touches on the plan the director had in store.

When in full makeup and costume for the series, Seyfried has been seen on set looking like Holmes, dressed in her signature business woman attire, consisting of a black turtleneck and red lipstick.

The limited series will also feature the likes of William H. Macy, Laurie Metcalf, Elizabeth Marvel, Utkarsh Ambudkar, Kate Burton, Stephen Fry, Michel Gill, Michael Ironside, Bill Irwin and Josh Pais.

The series is set to premiere on Hulu, as well as on the Disney+ content hub Star in international markets.

Preps: The actress chatted with crew members, including a photographer, that looked to be putting the finishing touches on the plan the director had in store for an upcoming scene

Trial underway in Northerna California: Seyfried is portraying Elizabeth Homes, who's accused of duping investors out of about $700 million to fund her medical tech company, Theranos, which includes blood testing technology that didn't exist

As Seyfried was doing preps for her work day on set, a jury of seven men and five women were selected and sworn in at the federal courthouse in Northern California, according to CNN.

One considered a rising star in business after becoming the world's youngest female billionaire in 2015, Holmes was indicted more than three years ago on a dozen federal fraud and conspiracy charges over allegations she knowingly misled investors, patients, and doctors about the capabilities of her company's proprietary blood testing technology.

She has pleaded not guilty and faces up to 20 years in prison.

Opening statements in the trial are set to begin Wednesday, September 8.

The trial, which has been delayed a few times due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the birth of Holmes' first child in July, is expected to last jut over two months.
After nine years of late-afternoon repeats, SBS has finally commissioned new episodes of cult quiz show Letters & Numbers.

The reboot will be hosted by comedian Michael Hing, replacing former ABC news anchor Richard Morecroft, who fronted the original show from 2010 to 2012.

Mathematician Lily Serna and dictionary expert David Astle are returning for the series.

Guess who's back! After nine years of late-afternoon repeats, SBS has finally commissioned new episodes of cult quiz show Letters & Numbers. Pictured (L to R): mathematician Lily Serna, host Richard Morecroft and dictionary expert David Astle

But unlike previous seasons, the contestants will now be celebrities.

The likes of Hamish Blake, Matt Okine, Merrick Watts, Jennifer Wong, Aaron Chen and Susie Youssef will feature across 12 hour-long episodes, reports TV Tonight.

Hing is a co-host of Triple J's drive-time show, and also presented SBS's ancestry series Where Are You Really From? in 2018.

New look: The reboot will be hosted by comedian Michael Hing (pictured in 2019), replacing former ABC news anchor Richard Morecroft, who fronted the original show from 2010 to 2012

Changes: Mathematician Lily Serna (right) and dictionary expert David Astle (left) are returning, but unlike previous seasons, the contestants on the new series will be celebrities

SBS's Director of Television and Online Content, Marshall Heald, said: 'Letters & Numbers has been entertaining Australian audiences for over a decade, and we're thrilled to bring it back to SBS in this new format.

'Celebrity Letters & Numbers brings together a large cast of comedic personalities for an evening of compulsive games that will have the whole family playing along.

'SBS aims to provide Australians with programming that entertains, educates and unites, and the revival of this cult quiz show is a testament to its dedicated fans. We cant wait for you to join us every Saturday evening.'

Despite only running for two years, Letters & Numbers has achieved cult status since its cancellation in 2012 due to its daily repeats on SBS.

Popular: Serna became a fan favourite during her years on Letters & Numbers

The show had an average audience of 130,000 when it was axed, and old episodes still get about 90,000 viewers in the late-afternoon time slot.

The program was based on the popular British quiz show Countdown and the French program Des chiffres et des lettres.

Since the last episode of Letters & Numbers was recorded, Morecroft has retired to the country and Serna has welcomed her first child.

In December 2019, Astle was appointed as host of the Evenings radio program on ABC Radio Melbourne, replacing Lindy Burns.
It was another day, another bikini for model London Goheen on Thursday.

The American beauty modelled a very sexy animal print swimsuit as she posed for a bathroom selfie.

The string bikini highlighted the brunette bombshell's very ample cleavage and ripped abs.

Wild thing! Model London Goheen showed off her very ample cleavage in an animal print bikini on Thursday

London also showed off her deep tan from her romantic getaway in Mexico with husband Reece Hawkins, and accessorised with some beaded bracelets.

It comes after London had fans doing a double take on Thursday when she posed in a nude optical illusion swimsuit which made her appear as though she was posing completely naked.

The itsy bitsy two-piece also barely covered her nipples.

Naked ambition? It comes after London had fans doing a double take on Thursday when she posed in a nude optical illusion swimsuit which made her appear as though she was posing completely naked

Her impressive rock-hard abs were also on display after the brunette gave birth to her baby Stone in March.

Earlier this month, London flaunted her trim post-baby body in a tiny black bikini while enjoying a romantic getaway with her husband Reece Hawkins in Mexico.

She shared a series of sexy pictures on Instagram.

Impressive: The American beauty's impressive rock-hard abs were also on display after the brunette gave birth to her baby Stone in March

Hot: Earlier this month, London flaunted her trim post-baby body in a tiny black bikini while enjoying a romantic getaway with her husband Reece Hawkins in Mexico

Followers praised the stunning influencer for her sizzling images.

'Hot mama,' wrote LA model Celeste Bright.

Too Hot to Handle star Francesca Farago said, 'Oh my f**king god'.

Much-needed holiday: London had been living it up in Mexico with Aussie influencer Reece after they welcomed their son in March

'So hot I die,' added another follower.

London had been living it up in Mexico with Aussie influencer Reece after they welcomed their son in March.

London gave birth to Stone on March 7 after a grueling 34-hour labour.

'We love you baby Stone and being your mama forever is going to be so much fun, I PROMISE,' she wrote in an Instagram caption.

Her partner Reece is already father to two children with his influencer ex-fiance Tammy Hembrow.

The former couple share son Wolf, five, and daughter Saskia, four.
They made a statement as they locked lips on the red carpet of the premiere for Penelope Cruz film Parallel Mothers.

And Adriana Lima turned heads with her new beau Andre Lemmers as they attended the Hublot X DJ Snake party at AccorHotels Arena in Paris on Thursday night.

The model, 40, could be seen kissing the hunk as they posed at the bash and she showcased her figure in a very busty strapless leather dress.

Pucker up: Adriana Lima turned heads with her new beau Andre Lemmers as they attended the Hublot X DJ Snake party at AccorHotels Arena in Paris on Thursday night

Adriana sizzled in the thigh-skimming LBD which she layered under a satin-lapelled blazer to keep off the chill.

The model slicked back her raven tresses for the outing and accentuated her features with black charcoal liner and a bold red lip.

She accessorised with a pair of large silver hoop earrings and matching bracelets as well as a chunky watch.

Adriana accentuated her endless pins with a pair of strappy black stilettos as she cosied up to her new beau before heading into the party.

Wow: The model showcased her figure in a very busty strapless leather dress at the star studded party

Meanwhile, her new film producer boyfriend Andre looked laidback in a open-collared white shirt under a plain black jumper.

He paired the monochrome top with a pair of grey chinos and completed the ensemble with some grey suede loafers.

The outing comes after Adriana and Andre made sure all eyes were on them as they put on a very public display of affection at the Venice Film Festival on Wednesday.

The Supermodel locked lips with her new hunk and turned heads in a strapless busty red gown as they attended the premiere for Penelope Cruz's new movie Parallel Mothers.

Loved-up: Adriana accentuated her endless pins with a pair of strappy black stilettos as she cosied up to her new beau before heading into the party

The Brazilian native boosted her already statuesque frame with a pair of towering heels and added gold accessories to her ensemble in the form of a bracelet and matching earrings.

The floor-length gown - which featured sultry cut out sections across the midriff - was completely covered in dazzling red sequins and featured a thigh-high slit up the leg.

The pair wrapped their arms around each other as they posed for pictures before entering the venue.
The Morning Show host Kylie Gillies has announced her beloved father Ron Mills has died, just weeks after celebrating his 91st birthday.

The 54-year-old revealed the news of his passing on Instagram, saying that the entire family was 'heartbroken' alongside a picture montage of happy memories.

'Our darling Dad,' Kylie began. 'A much-loved husband to my Mum for 57 years, and a Grandpa to four grandchildren who adored him.

Loss: The Morning Show host Kylie Gillies has announced her beloved father Ron Mills has died, just weeks after celebrating his 91st birthday

'We are heartbroken but thankful. You looked after us all for so long. Ron Mills 10.8.1930 - 31.8.2021.'

The devastating announcement comes just weeks after Sydney-based Kylie was forced to miss her father's 91st birthday celebrations, after being unable to fly to Hervey Bay in Queensland amid lockdown.

Kylie had instead acknowledged the day with a sweet throwback photo of her with her dad.

The TV anchor captioned the post: 'Happy 91st dearest Daddy. Not long now 'til we get you that telegram from the Queen.'

'Our darling Dad,' Kylie began. 'A much loved husband to my Mum for 57 years, and a Grandpa to four grandchildren who adored him'

Devastated: 'We are heartbroken but thankful,' Kylie added. 'You looked after us all for so long. Ron Mills 10.8.1930 - 31.8.2021'

She continued: 'Not socially distanced here in this pic ..but, yet again, border lockdowns are keeping us from all being together.

'I know Mum, Stacy and Julia spoiled you on your special dayas you deserve to be. Xxx from us all down south. Xx'.

While they hadn't been able to reunite on his birthday, Kylie luckily had been able to travel over to Queensland to spend time with him over the Christmas holidays.

She documented her nightmare last-minute rush to exit Sydney on December 20, as the New South Wales borders slammed shut.

Love: Kylie added that Ron had been married to her mum (pictured) for almost 60 years

Reunited: Kylie jetted out of Sydney at Christmas due to border closures, and caught 'the last flight' to Brisbane to be with her mum, dad and sister

Kylie said she had 'never packed so fast in her life' as she scrambled for a flight to Queensland to be with her mum, dad and sister, after an eruption of COVID-19 cases in Sydney meant state borders were closing rapidly.

Sadly, her husband Tony and their teenage sons, Gus and Archie, couldn't make it in time.

'As the border shuts in a few hours, I scrambled to get a flight into QLD,' she said, adding: 'I reckon I got the last ticket, on the last flight out tonight to Brisbane.'
He was a household name when he graced small screens across the country as Emmerdale's Declan Macey between 2010 and 2015.

However, Jason Merrells took to Twitter on Tuesday to make it known that he's angry after failing to land himself any acting gigs this year - and has blamed it on his age.

The soap star, 52, admitted he feels like 's**t' and 'so undignified' after expecting to bag himself some new work in 2021.

Angry: Emmerdale's Declan Macey, 52, said he feels 's**t' and 'so undignified' in a Twitter rant on Tuesday where he claimed his age has caused acting offers to dry up (pictured in 2016)

The Casualty actor claimed that his age had slowed down the demand for auditions as he took to his keyboard to complain about his receding career.

'Staring at phone that won't ring. Waiting on a job. 25-plus years doing this and it don't get easier,' Jason began.

'I know there are worse jobs, I've done some, but being 50 odd and still playing 'ooh pick me, pick me!' 4 or 5 times a year, (at least!) is s**t.

'Anyone who has a way of handling this without veering between violent Tarantino fantasies of taking out whole rooms full of execs, and forensic, eviscerating self-critical doubt - I take my hat off to you.'

Disappointed: The soap star, 52, admitted he feels like 's**t' and 'so undignified' after expecting to bag himself some new work in 2021 (pictured in the 2010s)

Upset: The Casualty actor claimed that his age had slowed down the demand for auditions as he took to his keyboard to complain about his receding career

A flurry of famous pals rushed to the comments section to motivate the Finding Alice actor, including Minder star Gary Webster who wrote: 'Form is temporary, class is permanent.

'Having worked with you on the coal face you are absolute class. I usually regard any time off as more time to spend with loved ones so it's a win, win.

'If I get it great my ego is stroked if I don't great I go for a drink with my son.'

Holby City actress Kaye Wragg added: 'As much as I love my time off with my kids and catching up, that doesn't pay the bills.

'I hear you-as a female 48yo - 50 next year- Not easier - but just quicker to recover for me - always hoping it's because something better is coming good luck - you're ace - don't think otherwise.'EastEnders star Tamzin Outwaite.

EastEnders star Tamzin Outwaite kindly called him a 'brilliant' and 'class actor' in an attempt to lift his spirits.
She hasn't held back from sharing a slew of sizzling snaps from her Italian getaway with her 17million followers.

And Demi Rose put on a very busty display in a black bodsuit as she sprawled across a vintage car for her latest photoshoot in Capri on Thursday.

The Instagram model, 26, told her followers the experiene was 'an Italian dream,' as she posed up a storm with rollers in her hair.

Wow: Demi Rose put on a very busty display in a black bodsuit as she sprawled across a vintage car for her latest photoshoot in Capri on Thursday

Demi chanelled vintage glamour in a pair of white cat eye sunglasses, as she perched on the back of a red convertible in the countryside.

The influencer beamed in the sunshine as she wrapped a silk scarf around her head with a Chanel bag on her lap.

She looked out at the stunning Capri vista with her chesetnut tresses swept up with a white claw clip as she flaunted her figure in the skintight dress.

The stunning snaps come after Demi shared a behind the scenees video from the shoot with her fans earlier on Thursday.

Chic: Demi chanelled vintage glamour in a pair of white cat eye sunglasses as she perched on the back of a red convertible in the Italian countryside

Glamour: The influencer beamed in the sunshine as she wrapped a silk scarf around her head with an enviable Chanel bag on her lap

The Instagram model oozed 40s style with the white cat-eye sunglasses shielding her eyes, and a slick of pillar box red lipstick on her full pout.

While sitting on a stone wall, Demi's hair stylist unravelled the rollers from her hair to reveal long voluminous curls.

Demi also showed off that she was riding around the island in a vintage style red convertible.

Views: She looked out at the stunning Capri vista with her chesetnut tresses swept up with a white claw clip as she flaunted her figure in the skintight dress

Glamourpuss: The stunning snaps come after Demi shared a behind the scenees video from the shoot with her fans earlier on Thursday

Demi has been modelling for the last eight years and credits her career for being a 'blessing' after being subjected to bullying when she was younger.

Speaking to Radio 1 Newsbeat, Demi previously revealed: 'I always wanted to get into modelling and when I eventually got there I classed it as a blessing because I grew up being bullied and didn't have many friends at all.'

In 2019, both of Demi's parents died, just seven months apart and the star said going into lockdown straight after their deaths was 'a time of reflection.'

Gorgeous: The Instagram model oozed 40s style with the white cat-eye sunglasses shielding her eyes, and a slick of pillar box red lipstick on her full pout

Glam squad: While sitting on a stone wall, Demi's hair stylist unravelled the rollers from her hair to reveal long voluminous curls

'Having to deal with my parents' house and selling their stuff - it was a really sad place for me.

'I wanted to go and travel but I had three months in London, which was a lot of facing what I had been through and was a time of reflection.'

Her latest shoot comes after she was seen teasing her OnlyFans page to her Instagram followers, after signing up to the X-rated content-sharing platform.

Behind the scenes: The model was preened to perfection by her glam squad

Demi told fans she was ditching her profile's subscription fee for a limited period.

OnlyFans is an online platform, known for its X-rated content, that allows public figure to charge fans a fee to their profile, where they often shares pictures and videos deemed too provocative for other social media sites.

Demi previously charged fans for access to her content - with costs ranging from $22.22 (16) a month or $119.99 (around 86) for six months.

She's not the only famous face who uses the platform, with celebrities including Bella Thorne, Cardi B and Danniella Westbrook signing up to the service.
She loves making a fashion statement.

And on Thursday, Ashley Benson was spotted with an armload of shopping bags after hitting up the chic Boohoo boutique in West Hollywood, California.

The actress, 31, was stylish with a rock and roll edge in a distressed white V-neck T-shirt with the sleeves bunched up at her shoulders.

On Thursday: Ashley Benson was spotted with an armload of shopping bags after hitting up the chic Boohoo boutique in West Hollywood

She paired this with black denim skinny jeans that were shredded at one knee.

The Pretty Little Liars star sported black suede ankle booties with silver buckles.

She also held on to what looked to be a black alligator skin Birkin bag which hung from her elbow.

Rock: The actress, 31, was stylish with a rock and roll edge in a distressed white V-neck T-shirt with the sleeves bunched up at her shoulders

Edgy: She paired this with black denim skinny jeans that were shredded at one knee

The starlet also accessorized with dark sunglasses, and she had a dark manicure.

Her highlighted dirty blonde hair hung straight down to her shoulders, parted at the middle.

Ashley arrived in her black Range Rover, and later emerged from the shop with a friend carrying at least two large black shopping bags brandishing the Boohoo brand.

Doing it up: Ashley later emerged from the shop with a friend carrying at least two large black shopping bags brandishing the Boohoo brand

Shopping excursion: Her highlighted dirty blonde hair hung straight down to her shoulders, parted at the middle

With a friend: Ashley also held on to what looked to be a black alligator skin Birkin bag which hung from her elbow

Boohoo is a trendy mens and womens fashion apparel brand that is often publicized on the Instagram page of brand ambassador Amelia Gray Hamlin.

Benson, meanwhile, has been seen modeling athleisure wear ensembles for the brand alo on her own Instagram.

On the acting front, Ashley is currently wrapping up work on three upcoming titles: Lapham Rising, Private Property and 18 & Over.

She also had a starring role in the crime thriller The Birthday Cake that was released in June.

She's here: Benson arrived for the shopping spree in her black Range Rover

Walking: Boohoo is a trendy mens and womens fashion apparel brand that is often publicized on the Instagram page of brand ambassador Amelia Gray Hamlin
Maggie Gyllenhaal put on a glamorous display on Thursday night as she travelled in style to a romantic dinner date with her husband Peter Sarsgaard via water taxi.

Cutting a stunning black silk gown, the actress certainly turned heads as she made her way to the high-end Ristorante Da Ivo.

The 43-year-old clutched a co-ordinating purse and wore a brown beaded necklace as she cruised through the City of Bridges.

What a pair! Maggie Gyllenhaal put on a glamorous display in a black silk gown as she headed to a romantic dinner with suave husband Peter Sarsgaard via water taxi in Venice on

Beauty: Cutting a stunning black silk gown, the actress certainly turned heads as she made her way to the high-end Ristorante Da Ivo

The Golden Globe winner had styled her beautiful brown tresses into beachy waves, which she wore in a side-parting.

Maggie kept her makeup to a minimum, having applied a touch of mascara to her fluttering eyelashes along with a shimmering cherry red to her pout.

Meanwhile, her talented husband looked ever-suave in a buttoned-down white shirt, which he wore beneath a navy blue suit jacket.

The silver fox had swept his luscious locks into a bouncing quiff and had recently trimmed his sleek beard.

Showstopping: The 43-year-old clutched a co-ordinating purse and wore a brown beaded necklace as she cruised through the City of Bridges

Out of this world: The Golden Globe winner had styled her beautiful brown tresses into beachy waves, which she wore in a side-parting

Incredible: Maggie kept her makeup to a minimum, having applied a touch of mascara to here fluttering eyelashes and a shimmering cherry red to her pout

Peter, 50, framed his face with a pair of black wayfarer shades and accessorised his ears with a pair of delicate silver rings.

Later in the evening, the canalside eatery shared a sweet photo to Instagram where the A-list couple posed with its staff for a happy group shot.

Squad: Later in the evening, the canalside eatery shared a sweet photo to Instagram where the A-list couple posed with its staff for a happy group shot

Maggie's star-studded directorial debut The Lost Daughter is set to premiere at the 78th Venice International Film Festival on Friday.

The upcoming film, based on the 2006 novel of the same name by by Elena Ferrante, will have its world premiere at the event.

The cast is led by Olivia Colman and Dakota Johnson and the movie tells the gripping story of Olivia's character Leda.

Dapper: Meanwhile, her talented husband looked ever-suave in a buttoned-down white shirt, which he wore beneath a navy blue suit jacket

Beaming: Maggie shot a dazzling smile towards an aide who helped her out of the boat

A college professor on a summer holiday at the seaside, she becomes obsessed with Nina (Dakota) and her young daughter as she watches them play on the beach.

Leda is reminded of the terror and confusion she felt in early motherhood as she watches the mother-daughter duo, as well as their extended family.

Reminded of the unconventional choices she made for her own daughter, Leda begins to unravel and becomes a prisoner of her own mind, unable to explain what's happened.

Upcoming: Maggie's star-studded directorial debut The Lost Daughter is set to premiere at the 78th Venice International Film Festival on Friday

Talented: The movie tells the gripping story of Olivia Colman's character Leda (pictured)

It was announced earlier this month that Netflix had acquired the rights to air The Lost Daughter.

On the news, Maggie said: 'Im thrilled to be working with Netflix again. They have supported so much of the work I am most proud of, and this is no exception.

'Netflix has consistently championed filmmakers that excite and inspire me and Im delighted to be included in that company.'

The film is scheduled for release on the streaming platform in December.
Joe Lycett's Got Your Back

Rating:

Nick Knowles's Big House Clearout

Rating:

To be fair, doing nothing is harder than it looks. 'Ah-ha,' says the Mail reader, 'finally Stevens knows whereof he speaks'  a barbed comment that I choose to ignore.

But, nonetheless, doing nothing is the role of sidekick Dr Mark Silcox, on Joe Lycett's Got Your Back (C4).

Dr Mark is a stand-up comedian, though he has a PhD in chemistry from Imperial College London, and his job is to sit stony-faced at his laptop, on the Dayglo set, under a barrage of Joe's quips and sneers.

As soon as he cracks a smile, the gag stops working. He usually only lasts about 15 seconds, and after that the premise of the show doesn't survive much longer . . .

Joe encouraged his Sewing Bee chum Patrick Grant to model a pullover with the slogan 'I just knit myself', which is a fair indication of the standard of wit throughout

It's meant to be a knockabout version of Watchdog, an hour-long sally into consumer affairs with plenty of comedy.

If either part of the format was strong, Joe might have a hit. But the endless toilet jokes aren't funny and the crusades are pathetic.

The 'taste test' comparison between Big Macs and Whopper burgers was embarrassing, a bit of juvenile filler that would be patronising on a children's channel.

And there seemed no point at all to a feature on the decline in the market for British woollens. Joe encouraged his Sewing Bee chum Patrick Grant to model a pullover with the slogan 'I just knit myself', which is a fair indication of the standard of wit throughout.

Lorraine Kelly was the guest presenter, reading out obscene text messages and forcing a smile at the jibes about daytime TV.

Why she stoops to bother with dross like this, it's hard to imagine. She can't need the money, or the exposure.

Joe's best effort was to challenge a snack manufacturer who paid just 7 compensation, after two brothers found a piece of plastic in their crisps.

It's meant to be a knockabout version of Watchdog, an hour-long sally into consumer affairs with plenty of comedy. If either part of the format was strong, Joe might have a hit. But the endless toilet jokes aren't funny and the crusades are pathetic

The firm agreed to make a 250 donation to charity. Much weaker was the attempt to track down the owners of a puppy farm in Ireland who were selling dogs at 1,500 each through the Pets4Homes website.

But Joe was more interested in making a Line Of Duty sketch with former AC12 star Craig Parkinson. Handing out a sheaf of papers to actors in dog costumes and waistcoats, Joe announced: 'PTO! That's an RSVP to a BYO BBQ that I'm having on NYE, BTW.' It was as close to a laugh as he got.

He did nothing to stop the puppy farmers  and now they know to simply keep themselves out of the photos of the animals they are selling.

Someone ought to check whether Nick Knowles was bought from a puppy farm. With his drooping mouth and saggy eye-bags, he looks like a bloodhound that's just heard bad news.

Standing in the front room of a family in Gloucestershire who are overwhelmed with clutter, on Nick Knowles's Big House Clearout (C5), he cleans his ear with a despondent finger. There was no need for such pessimism.

Childminder Sally's home needed a clearout, it's true. Her bedroom was piled so high with clothes and equipment that she had to climb over the bed to pull the curtains.

It's also true that she had 42 scented candles. That hardly makes her home a hoarder's den. Nick pulled gloomy faces at cupboards crammed with 1,000 toys  but then, she was a child minder.

Sally and her children were a lovely family, but this wasn't a clear-out . . . more like a thorough tidy-up. There's much worse to be found. If you ever saw my garage, you'd realise I do, indeed, know whereof I speak . . .

Resurrection of the night: Nish Kumar was fuming when BBC2 axed his Leninist-leaning topical satire, The Mash Report. The Beeb called it a 'difficult decision', though it's hard to see what's so difficult about axing a show no one watches. Now it's reborn as Late Night Mash (Dave). Happy, Nish?
Grant and Chezzi Denyer welcomed their baby daughter Sunday in February.

And on Thursday, the proud dad announced that he had captured his little girl's first words on camera.

In a video posted on the 43-year-old's Instagram page, the six-month-old is seen in a rocker and repeating the word, 'Dad'.

Major milestone: On Thursday, Grant Denyer announced his baby daughter Sunday's first words. In a video posted to his Instagram, the tot is heard saying 'dad'

Grant is heard giggling in the background of the video, before saying: 'Sundays first word!!! Oh my heart. Best early Fathers Day present EVER!'

'P.S sucked in @chezzidenyer we have a clear WINNER cause its VERY clear that its Dad shes saying,' he added.

The TV presenter then playfully suggested he was his child's favourite parent after she pronounced the word 'dad', before 'mum'.

Daddy's girl? The TV presenter then playfully suggested he was his child's favourite parent after she pronounced the word "dad", before "mum." Pictured, Chezzi and baby Sunday

What a gift! 'Sundays first word!!! Oh my heart. Best early Fathers Day present EVER!' Grant began his lengthy caption. Pictured, baby Sunday saying her first word

'Once a Daddys girl, always a Daddys girl. Sorry Chez, you cant beat true love or biology. Or at least you cant beat my intensive secret training sessions where we practiced it over and over,' he concluded.

Chezzi, 41, gave birth to the little one on February 10, and at the time she said: 'I never thought my heart could feel so full!'

The couple are also proud parents to their two older daughters, Sailor, 10, and Scout, five.

Sister act: The couple - who married in 2010 - are also parents to daughters Sailor (right), 10, and Scout (left), five

In June, the celebrity couple celebrated their first trip as a family of five.

At the time, both Grant and Chezzi shared sweet moments from their trip to snowy Mount Panorama on Instagram.

Chezzi also showed off the family's crafty skills by sharing a picture of a snowman they built in between time on the slopes.

'Spotted Olaf today... his nose was much bigger than I was expecting,' she captioned the photo.

The high-profile couple have been married since 2010 and currently reside in the New South Wales rural town of Bathurst.

Making memories! Grant and Chezzi Denyer have shared sweet moments from their snow trip to Mount Panorama with their daughters Sailor, 10, and Scout, five, and four-month-old Sunday
Thursday night's season finale of The Bachelor proved just how much chemistry Jimmy Nicholson had with his winning contestant Holly Kingston.

And the couple have since revealed they wasted no time consummating their relationship after shooting the last episode.

Kicking off their post-season media rounds on Friday, the lovebirds spoke to The Kyle and Jackie O Show about the first time they had sex.

Straight in the sack: The Bachelor's Jimmy Nicholson and Holly Kingston have revealed they wasted no time consummating their relationship after shooting the finale

'Where was your first night together? Where did you see each other nude, pleasure each other?' radio host Kyle Sandilands asked.

Holly, 27, admitted they'd hopped into bed straight after filming the final rose ceremony in Alice Springs.

'We had a nice little hotel room with some champagne set up, a cheese board a consent form  all the romantic stuff,' Jimmy, 31, said.

This was in reference to the paperwork all Bachelor contestants must sign before having sex.

In the bedroom: 'We had a nice little hotel room with some champagne set up, a cheese board a consent form  all the romantic stuff,' Jimmy said on The Kyle and Jackie O Show

It comes after Jimmy declared his love for Holly during Thursday's finale.

The hunky pilot ultimately chose Holly over Brooke Cleal, leaving the show's runner-up understandably heartbroken.

Standing in the Northern Territory's stunning outback, Jimmy revealed his final decision to an overwhelmed Holly.

Perfect match: The hunky pilot ultimately chose Holly over Brooke Cleal during Thursday's finale, leaving the show's runner-up understandably heartbroken

'Holly, when I think of a future with you, it's exciting, it's fun, it's passionate. You make anything we do incredible and you light up any room you're in,' he began.

'For me, love is getting home from a tough day at work together and cooking. It's me leaving a note on your pillow when I know I'm not gonna be there when you get home.

'It's having a fight, making up and growing from it. And I can't wait to experience all of these things with you.'

Overwhelmed: A relieved Holly admitted she was lost for words, after earlier breaking down in tears in the car on the way to meet Jimmy

He then gifted the marketing manager with a ring, which he explained represented his commitment to her and their relationship.

'I want you to know that I am in love with you and I can't wait to see what the future has in store for both of us,' he continued.

A relieved Holly admitted she was lost for words, after earlier breaking down in tears in the car on the way to meet Jimmy.

Put a ring on it: Jimmy gifted the marketing manager with a ring, which he explained represented his commitment to her and their relationship

'I've forgotten everything I was gonna say. Um... I love you,' she stammered.

The couple then shared a passionate kiss, cementing their relationship after a tumultuous journey.

'I take being in love really, really seriously. I've only been in love a couple of times in my life, and you can't compare it to any other feeling,' said Jimmy.
Jennifer Aniston is the next A-lister to venture into the beauty space.

The 52-year-old actress confirmed on Thursday that she will be launching her very own beauty brand LolaVie on Wednesday, September 8.

'Something's coming,' captioned Aniston, who shared a behind-the-scenes snapshot from a forthcoming campaign shoot with her nearly 38million Instagram followers.

Coming soon! Jennifer Aniston confirmed on Thursday that she will be launching her very own beauty brand LolaVie on Wednesday, September 8

The Friends alum also tagged the official LolaVie Instagram account, which currently has only three image uploads with the caption '09.08.2021'

One of them is a shot of Aniston sitting in a makeup chair with her back to the camera and her perfectly styled golden hair on full display.

Though Jennifer did not divulge any specific details about the brand and its products, LolaVie may be of the clean beauty realm.

Fans who visit the official website for LolaVie are greeted with an image of bamboo and lemons in test tubes.

'Something's coming,' captioned Aniston, who shared a behind-the-scenes snapshot from a forthcoming campaign shoot with her nearly 38million Instagram followers

'An application was filed to trademark the name LolaVie in the areas of face and body lotion, shower gel, candles and hair care in July 2019,' according to documents obtained by Page Six.

The name LolaVie may sound familiar to diehard fans of the star, being that it is what Jennifer called her very first fragrance back in 2010.

Jennifer has long existed in the beauty space due to the public's fascination with her seemingly ageless visage and physique.

The Along Came Polly actress co-founded Living Proof in 2012, but parted ways in 2016 after selling the successful haircare brand to cosmetics giant Unilever, as per WWD.

Trademarked: 'An application was filed to trademark the name LolaVie in the areas of face and body lotion, shower gel, candles and hair care in July 2019,' according to documents obtained by Page Six; Aniston pictured in 2019

Spokesperson: Jennifer has been the face of skincare brand Aveeno since 2013, a partnership the actress' rep excitedly confirmed in a statement to E! News at the time

She has also been the face of skincare brand Aveeno since 2013, a partnership the actress' rep excitedly confirmed in a statement to E! News at the time.

Whether or not Aniston will step away from her current beauty partnerships in wake of the launch of her own brand is unknown.

News of her forthcoming line came just one day after the blonde beauty shared a peek at her morning routine as she mixed up a delicious smoothie in her deluxe kitchen.

Jennifer looked svelte in a jeans and T-shirt combo as she boasted about the benefits of her frozen concoction after admitting she rarely indulges in sweets or treats.

Whatever it takes! Jennifer Aniston shared a peek at her morning routine as she mixed up a delicious smoothie in her deluxe kitchen on Instagram Wednesday morning

Aniston made her way around the kitchen like a seasoned professional chef as she built her perfect blend.

She noted that her 'favorite smoothie' has one cup of chocolate almond milk, two scoops of Vital Proteins Chocolate Collagen Peptides, cherries and bananas, a few drops of stevia, antioxidants and one cup of ice.

Aniston also likes to add 'spinach, pinch of cinnamon, matcha powder and a spoonful of almond butter' for her perfect smoothie.

The Morning Show actress recently admitted that her food habits can be a little 'annoying' with extreme self-control when it comes to abstaining from her own unhealthy food choices.

Rise and shine: The 52-year-old actress looked svelte in a jeans and T-shirt combo as she boasted about the benefits of her frozen concoction after admitting she rarely indulges in sweets or treats

Delish: She noted that her 'favorite smoothie' has one cup of chocolate almond milk, two scoops of Vital Proteins Chocolate Collagen Peptides, cherries and bananas, a few drops of stevia, antioxidants and one cup of ice

In the September issue of InStyle, Aniston was asked what she eats when she is stressed: ' A chip. Crunch, crunch, crunch.'

And then asked to clarify if she means just a single one, she confirmed: 'Usually. I'm good at that. I can have one M&M, one chip. I know, that's so annoying.'

The Friends star added she always drinks in moderation and is never tempted by 'exotic' cocktails.

Discussing her go-to drink, she told InStyle: 'A margarita  clean, no sugar  or a dirty martini. I only have two to three drinks, tops, and I don't do exotic.

Taste tester: Aniston also likes to add 'spinach, pinch of cinnamon, matcha powder and a spoonful of almond butter' for her perfect smoothie

'When someone asks, 'Would you like a cranberry-coconut-cucumber-spiced or hibiscus whatever?' No, I would not.

'But when I moved into my house, a few people got me tequilas of the month as housewarming gifts. I have a cellar of all kinds of spirits  you could come here and probably order anything you wanted to.'

Aniston has a massive home in Bel-Air, California that she snapped up in 2012 for $21million.

As far as exercise, she has a tried-and-true method.

'I had an injury last fall and I was only able to do Pilates, which I absolutely love. But I was missing that kind of sweat when you just go for it. I'm going back to my 15-15-15, which is a 15-minute spin, elliptical, run. And then just old school: I can chase myself around a gym. I need some kind of movement, even if it's just 10 minutes a day on a trampoline.'
She was dumped by Locky Gilbert during last year's season of The Bachelor.

But Steph Harper has well and truly moved on from the heartbreak, and is now dating Channel Seven presenter Kristian Gaupset.

'Steph and Kristian have been exclusive for almost four months and talk on the phone almost every day,' a source told Daily Mail Australia.

Locky who? Former Bachelor contestant Steph Harper (left) is dating 'hot' Channel Seven presenter Kristian Gaupset (right)

The couple are understood to be keeping their romance low-key after meeting in the NSW coastal town of Byron Bay.

Steph, a special needs teacher from Brisbane, was first linked to Kristian in July after she shared a cosy photo of the pair on Instagram.

'I've never understood the point of taking pictures of anyone until I met him,' she captioned the post.

Committed: 'Steph and Kristian have been exclusive for almost four months and talk on the phone almost every day,' a source told Daily Mail Australia

Back in June, the news reporter was flooded with messages from female admirers after his live cross from the snow in NSW went viral.

His Seven News segment was shared by a fan on TikTok and his good looks caught plenty of attention.

One woman wrote: 'Seven News just got a little bit more interesting.'

Loved up: The couple are understood to be keeping their romance low-key after meeting in the NSW coastal town of Byron Bay earlier this year. Pictured together in July

'Seven News just got a little bit interesting': Back in June, the news reporter was flooded with messages from female admirers after his live cross from the snow in NSW went viral

Living the dream: His Instagram account has pictures of him posing with Bentley cars, spending time at the beach and in the Channel Seven studio

'Who is thattttt I need to start listening to the news,' another commented.

'Haven't watched the news in six years but I think I'm about to break the cycle tonight,' a third said.

The commentary wasn't well received by Kristian, who replied: 'Y'all are creeps.'
The Block's Ronnie and Georgia Caceres enjoyed a rave review for their master bedroom this week.

But despite Neale Whitaker describing the room as 'one of the most beautiful master bedrooms I've seen in 11 years of judging The Block', it was a mistake in their walk-in wardrobe that ultimately let them down.

Shaynna Blaze was left aghast by the 'teeny tiny' size of the wardrobe, despite the grand room enjoying six-metre high ceilings and a large sleeping area.

Missing the mark: Ronnie and Georgia Caceres failed to impress the judges with their walk-in wardrobe on The Block this week, despite getting rave reviews for their master bedroom

'This is teeny-tiny. I'm fairly shocked,' Shaynna said. 'There's a little bit of hanging there, double hang here...' she continued, poking around in the wardrobe.

In the end, she summarised: 'This is probably not even enough for one person.'

Georgia disagreed, saying: 'I feel like a well-proportioned bedroom where you sleep and you spend all your time in, versus a place where you hang your clothes, is more important.'

Costly mistake: The WA couple made a huge mistake in that their walk-in wardrobe was just 'too small' - something that judge Shaynna Blaze just couldn't look past. Pictured, Ronnie and Georgia Caceres

The wardrobe caused them to place fourth out of the five teams overall.

Prior to the judge's inspection, rival contestant Tanya Guccione commented on the wardrobe saying: 'I'd need this just for myself.'

Speaking about the room as a whole, Mitch Edwards added: 'It's a little bit what I suspect of Ronnie. Big in stature, a bit small in the closet.'

Cheeky: Speaking about the room as a whole, Mitch Edwards added: 'It's a little bit what I suspect of Ronnie. Big in stature, a bit small in the closet'

They weren't the only ones who were slammed by the judges, with Kirsty Lee Akers and Jesse Anderson also copping backlash over the size of their walk-in wardrobe.

Host Scott Cam pointed out that certain drawers crashed into each other when opened at the same size, saying it was 'clearly a mistake'.

'If this is the space you had to work with, then they think you could've run 600ml deep wardrobes down one side and just provided shallower shelves on the other side,' he said.

Not right: They weren't the only ones who were slammed for lack of space, with Kirsty Lee Akers and Jesse Anderson also copping backlash over the size of their walk-in wardrobe (pictured)

Shortly after the episode aired, Ronnie and Georgia took to Instagram to share their disappointment that they didn't manage to land a win.

'I guess the proportions of our wardrobe played a significant role in our placing this week,' she said.

'Were excited to revisit this space when "re-do room" comes around, its only fitting we give "the best master bedroom in #theblock history" the wardrobe she deserves.'
Amanda Kloots returned to Broadway as the hit musical Waitress re-opened and paid tribute to her late husband, Nick Cordero.

Cordero originated the role of Earl when Waitress opened on Broadway in March 2016, with the beloved actor tragically passing in July 2020 from COVID-19.

Kloots, 39, was joined by family friend Zach Braff for the first performance since Broadway went dark due to COVID, and she even joined the cast on stage after the show.

Broadway return: Amanda Kloots returned to Broadway as the hit musical Waitress re-opened and paid tribute to her late husband, Nick Cordero

Amanda and Zach: Kloots, 39, was joined by family friend Zach Braff for the first performance since Broadway went dark due to COVID, and she even joined the cast on stage after the show

Kloots was wearing a sparkling burgundy suit from Genny, styled by Jean Ann Williams, with black pumps.

She had her blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail and was seen holding a black clutch in a shot on her Instagram story outside the Ethel Barrymore Theater.

She also shared a snap with Drew Gehling, who plays Dr. Pomatter in the hit Broadway musical.

Amanda's look: Kloots was wearing a sparkling burgundy suit from Genny, styled by Jean Ann Williams, with black pumps

Marquee: She had her blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail and was seen holding a black clutch in a shot on her Instagram story outside the Ethel Barrymore Theater

She was joined on the red carpet by Braff in a tie-less dark grey suit coat and pants with an unbuttoned light grey dress shirt.

It was revealed earlier this week by the official Waitress Instagram account that they will honor Cordero with a new menu, which will be used in every show from now on.

'This week, we honored the memory of our beloved cast member Nick Cordero,' the post began.

Red carpet pals: She was joined on the red carpet by Braff in a tie-less dark grey suit coat and pants with an unbuttoned light grey dress shirt

Menu tribute: It was revealed earlier this week by the official Waitress Instagram account that they will honor Cordero with a new menu, which will be used in every show from now on

'His wife, @AmandaKloots, visited the diner as we unveiled the sign featuring Live Your Life Pie,' referencing a song Cordero wrote and had just started to perform when he contracted COVID-19.

'This special pie name, and moment in the show, will be a permanent part of every Waitress production in the world,' the post concluded.

Kloots also took to Instagram to reveal that the show got a standing ovation... before the show even began.

Menu: 'His wife, @AmandaKloots, visited the diner as we unveiled the sign featuring Live Your Life Pie,' referencing a song Cordero wrote and had just started to perform when he contracted COVID-19

Pre-show standing O: Kloots also took to Instagram to reveal that the show got a standing ovation... before the show even began

'A standing ovation before the show even began! What a night! To see a Broadway show again tonight was unbelievable. Ive actually never seen a show like this one tonight. Im literally at a loss for words,' Kloots said in her Instagram post.

She also joined the cast on stage after the show, where she joked there may have been a 'record broke tonight for the most standing ovations.'

'To be here tonight is such a blessing to witness happen on this stage, incredible. You know Nick loved Broadway and he loved music and he loved acting. I think he'll be with me every day... but I think he'll be with y'all every night,' she said.

They closed out the night with the whole cast, and Kloots, singing Live Your Life as the audience clapped and sang along with them.
Fashion guru Sandra Moss is selling her glamourous Rose Bay home after 22 years and numerous renovations.

The sprawling house is up for auction on September 21.

Moss, best known for Pretty Girl Fashion and Rockmans, purchased the mansion in 1999 for $2.25 million. That figure has risen to $15 million in the price guide, according to Realestate.com.au.

So stylish! Fashion guru Sandra Moss has put her luxury Rose Bay home on the market with a $15 million dollar guide

'Its spectacular during the day but absolutely beautiful at night,' Moss said in an interview with the Wentworth Courier.

The property features four bedrooms, five bathrooms, modernised kitchen, a double garage, in-built pool, outdoor dining area and a picturesque backdrop of Sydney Harbour.

'This incredible residence offers the ultimate in luxury with versatile layout in Rose Bays best street,' says Ray White TRG principal and Luxe Listings star Gavin Rubinstein, who is selling the home with Noa Oziel.

Making some coin: She purchased the mansion in 1999 for $2.25 million. That figure has risen to $15 million in the price guide, according to Realestate.com.au

Inclusions: The property features four bedrooms, five bathrooms, modernised kitchen, a double garage, in-built pool, outdoor dining area and a picturesque backdrop of Sydney Harbour

The bathrooms, bedrooms and kitchen have all been rebuilt and upgraded.

The kitchen contains high-end European gas appliances and a stone marble island, while the bedrooms feature marble ensquites.

Two of the bedrooms also have walk-in wardrobes and balcony views of the harbour.

The most recent renovations include an old staircase that was taken out and substituted with a modern glass and stone version, with an Italian commercial-grade lift.

Contemporary: The bathrooms, bedrooms and kitchen have all been rebuilt and upgraded. The kitchen contains high-end European gas appliances and a stone marble island

'Its spectacular during the day but absolutely beautiful at night': The gorgeous harbour can be viewed from the balcony and through the giant windows in the interior of the house

The first home improvement made was the wall of glass put into the living and dining area that provides a constant panorama of Sydney and the ocean.

The property is a stone's throw away from Rose Bay and the local cafes and eateries.

Other inclusions are the gas fireplace, designer lighting, integrated sound, workshop and tiled floors.
Footage of Melbourne socialite Nadia Bartel appearing to snort white powder at a gathering was mentioned at Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews' daily coronavirus briefing on Friday.

When asked about the video, which was leaked online on Thursday but may have been recorded at an earlier date, Mr Andrews said he hadn't seen it but stressed that all Victorians should follow the rules during lockdown.

He did not accuse Ms Bartel of breaking the rules herself, and the journalist who asked the question did not mention her by name, only referring to a 'high-profile person appearing to breach Covid restrictions'.

Footage of Melbourne socialite Nadia Bartel appearing to snort white powder at a gathering was mentioned at Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews' daily coronavirus briefing on Friday

'I'm not sure which video you're referring to,' he said.

'I would urge everybody to do their very best to follow the rules, all of the time. I know it's tough, I know it's difficult,' he added.

'Beyond that, I don't tend to comment on footage that I haven't seen.'

The three-second video of Bartel, 36, appearing to snort white powder at a gathering began circulating on Thursday night after it was accidently uploaded to Instagram by Bartel's friend and business partner Ellie Pearson.

The fashion and beauty influencer snorts the powder off a $1.50 Kmart plate alongside two other women.

The three-second video of Bartel (left) appearing to snort white powder at a gathering began circulating on Thursday night after it was accidently uploaded to Instagram by Bartel's friend and business partner Ellie Pearson

Bartel snorts the powder off a $1.50 Kmart plate alongside two other women. The three-second video was accidently uploaded to Instagram by Bartel's friend Ellie Pearson last night

The clip begins with the fashion and beauty influencer leaning over the plate with a rolled-up banknote in her left nostril as she presses her right nostril. She then snorts the substance as the other two women watch on

A 'remorseful' Bartel issued an apology for the video on Friday evening, saying she took 'full responsibility' for her actions

Private and public gatherings are not permitted in Melbourne, where Bartel lives, under Victoria's statewide Covid restrictions.

She issued an apology for the video on Instagram on Friday evening.

'Hi everyone, I have let you all down by my actions. I take full responsibility and I am committed to taking all necessary steps to ensure I make better choices in future,' she wrote.

'To my family and friends, my business partners and the public health workers trying to keep us all safe, I am embarrassed and remorseful.

'I am truly and deeply sorry. I hope I can earn your forgiveness and, in time, your trust.'

She is the ex-wife of retired AFL star Jimmy Bartel (right), a Brownlow Medallist who spent his career with the Geelong Cats. The couple split in 2019 after five years of marriage

Jimmy spent Thursday and Friday with the former couple's two sons, Aston, five, and Henley, three, posting these updates on Instagram

Bartel had been pictured wearing the same outfit she had on in the video while picking up wine in Melbourne earlier on Thursday.

She was joined by Pearson, with whom she runs the Spray Aus fake tan company.

She donned a one-shoulder top from her fashion brand Henne, which she teamed with a pair of black skinny jeans.

Bartel had been pictured wearing the same outfit she had on in the video while picking up wine in Melbourne earlier on Thursday

She was joined by Pearson (right), with whom she runs the Spray Aus fake tan company

She donned a one-shoulder top from her fashion brand Henne, which she teamed with a pair of black skinny jeans

Bartel is a mother of two and entrepreneur who runs the fake-tan company Spray Aus and clothing label Henne.

She is the ex-wife of retired AFL star Jimmy Bartel, a Brownlow Medallist who spent his career with the Geelong Cats.

The couple split in 2019 after five years of marriage.

She carried a box of wine from TarraWarra Estate
Tori Spelling had her fans seeing double on Thursday evening when she and her hairstylist Laura Rugetti rocked matching ensembles.

The 48-year-old actress-turned-reality star looked chic in a dark denim jumpsuit that highlighted her hourglass figure, while Rugetti rocked an identical look.

The twinning blondes were seen at sunset as they headed to dinner at West Hollywood's upscale seafood restaurant Catch.

Twinning! Tori Spelling, 48, looked like she had a twin when she and her hairstylist Laura Rugetti wore matching denim jumpsuits to dinner at West Hollywood's Catch on Thursday evening

Tori's jumpsuit featured large breast and hip pockets and was zipped up her front to showcase her cleavage.

Her long platinum blond tresses were styled in gorgeous waves and cascaded down her chest while framing her heavily made-up visage.

The Beverly Hills 90210 star rounded out her striking ensemble with a cream-colored quilted Gucci handbag and short black cowboy boots.

Laura appeared to have on an identical jumpsuit, though it was tailored to fit her figure just as well.

Seeing double: The partially zipped up jumpsuit highlighted Tori's cleavage and hourglass figure. She wore her wave platinum locks over her chest and stood tall in black cowboy boots

Her blond has was a similar shade, though she wore it straight, and she changed out Tori's Gucci handbag in favor of a slim black quilted Yves Saint Laurent back.

In place of black boots, she wore cream-colored cowboy boots with gray toes.

The two pals affectionately held hands as they walked into the restaurant.

Tori had documented part of their transformation earlier in the day in her Instagram Stories.

She gave few details about why the two were dressing identically, though they may have been dressing up to film a project.

'Headed to work...': Tori had documented part of their transformation earlier in the day in her Instagram Stories

Letting loose: Once they arrived at a studio to complete their look, Nicole 'Snooki' Polizzi of Jersey Shore fame appeared, and the trio unwound with cans of High Noon hard seltzer

She reposted a video from her hairstylist that showed both in an SUV with their hair tied up in gray towels after a salon visit.

Once they arrived at a studio to complete their look, Nicole 'Snooki' Polizzi of Jersey Shore fame appeared, and the trio unwound with cans of High Noon hard seltzer.

On her main Instagram page, the Tori & Dean: Home Sweet Hollywood star shared a snap of herself and Snooki, who appeared to have joined them for dinner.

'My Messy Bestie actually we are the duo you never knew you needed. @snooki you might be my twin flame (but shorter) love the way we empower each other to be our authentic selves. Xo,' she affectionately captioned their photo.

Reality pals: On her main Instagram page, the Tori & Dean: Home Sweet Hollywood star shared a snap of herself and Snooki, who appeared to have joined them for dinner

Missing out from Tori's outing and her possible filming project was her husband Dean McDermott.

The two haven't been seen together much in recent months, which has helped fuel rumors of a potential split.

In June, Tori seemed to confirm that the couple's relationship was strained when she admitted on Jeff Lewis Live that they were no longer sleeping in the same bed  or even the same room.

'Right now my kids and dogs sleep in my bed,' she said when asked by Jeff if she and Dean were currently sharing the same bed.

'So he's in the guest room?' Lewis quizzed her.

'He's in a room,' Tori clarified.

MIA: Missing out from Tori's outing and her possible filming project was her husband Dean McDermott. They're embroiled in rumors of a split after she admitted the sleep in separate rooms and he was seen without his wedding ring; seen in 2019

She said the children and pets had begun sleeping with her when her husband traveled to Canada for six months to film the police comedy Pretty Hard Cases, and sop far they hadn't gone back to their previous arrangement

'Since he left - this is not good, you guys - but since he left, he was gone for six months filming in another country, they all stayed with me,' Tori said.

'So I currently still have four in the bedroom with me who have yet to go back to their rooms.'

In July, Dean, who married Tori in 2006, was seen for the first time without his wedding ring while stopping to pump some gas.
She moved from Sydney to Los Angeles last month to be with her new husband, millionaire Hollywood agent Patrick Whitesell.

And on Friday, Pia Whitesell confirmed her beloved sons Isaiah, 18, and Lennox, 14, had also made the move to LA with her, as she shared a picture while completing the school run.

Alongside an image with her face blanked out with a sad emoji, Pia, 37, wrote: 'School bus drop off.'

They're here! On Friday, Pia Whitesell (L) confirmed her beloved sons Isaiah, 18 (Centre) and Lennox, 14 (R) had also made the move to LA to live with her and her new husband Patrick Whitesell, as she shared a picture while completing the school run

She added the hashtag 'freshman', meaning it was her 14-year-old son Lennox who had been dropped off for his first day of school.

The Australian equivalent of a US freshman would be year 10, for 14-15 year olds.

Pia often shares adorable updates of her sons, who she shares with former partners, on social media.

Milestone moment: Alongside an image with her face blanked out with a sad emoji, Pia, 37, wrote: 'School bus drop off', before revealing Lennox was starting his first day as a freshman

Last month Pia officially confirmed she'd landed in the USA by sharing a photo of herself driving along Hollywood Boulevard.

Pia's sparkler was on display in the picture, as she held onto the steering wheel of her car.

In the comments section, Pia was quick to confirm she'd been adjusting to driving on the other side of the road in America.

She's landed! At the time, she officially confirmed she'd landed in the USA by sharing a photo of herself driving along Hollywood Boulevard

'Good to see you! x. Hows that right lane driving going??' one friend wrote, to which Pia candidly replied: 'The struggles!!!'

In July, Pia officially changed her name on Instagram to Pia Whitesell.

She announced her engagement to multimillionaire Patrick, 56, who is the executive chairman of the Endeavor Talent Agency, on November 28.

They tied the knot earlier this year.

The actress became a household name when she debuted on screen as cop Katarina Chapman on soap Home and Away in February 2015, later quitting in 2017.
Chrissy Teigen gave her 35.2 million Instagram followers an intimate look at some of the less-glamorous aspects of parenting two children on Thursday.

The 35-year-old model highlighted the difference between raising boys and girls in a hilarious photo featuring her three-year-old son Miles.

She was scrunched up on the floor while wearing jeans and a leather jacket while Miles  wearing nothing but underwear and socks  wrestled with her.

Boys and girls: Chrissy Teigen, 35, said on Thursday that her son Miles, three, kicks her in the face '6-8 times a day,' even though she's 'never been kicked in the face' by her five-year-old daughter Luna

Chrissy had a comical expression of pain on her face and held onto one of Miles' feet, as if he'd just kicked her.

'I've had a daughter for 5 years and have never been kicked in the face by her,' she wrote of five-year-old Luna.

'Miles kicks me in the face 68 times a day,' she wrote.

The post's comments were filled with parents who similarly dealt with rowdy boys and more peaceful girls.

'Life as a boy mom!! They keep me on my toes!! Or face!! Lol ,' wrote one user.

'Preach. My son has literally broken my nose,' wrote another.

One person even suggested that 'Miles needs to be disciplined' before he gave her a more serious injury.

Cute: Chrissy's Instagram posts from Tuesday also emphasized how well behaved her daughter was. She and Luna beamed while sitting together on a chair after getting dressed up for a wedding

Sharp dressed man: Miles seemed to be better behaved at the wedding, and he looked dapper in a black-and-white gingham suit

Looking good: His father sported a stylish coral-colored suit, which he wore with white leather shoes

All together now: The whole family posed outdoors, where they sat for the ceremony, as well as indoor in a lovely photo with the bride

Chrissy's Instagram posts from Tuesday also emphasized how well behaved her daughter was.

She and Luna beamed while sitting together on a chair after getting dressed up for a wedding.

'thank you for letting us bring our first time wedding guests, @ty_naomi!!! what a beautiful day ,' she wrote.

The wife of John Legend flaunted her toned legs in a lovely low-cut black dress with long sleeves, while Luna looked adorable in a grayblue floral print dress with a matching bow in her hair.

Miles seemed to be better behaved at the wedding, and he looked dapper in a black-and-white gingham suit.

His father sported a stylish coral-colored suit, which he wore with white leather shoes.

The whole family posed outdoors, where they sat for the ceremony, as well as indoor in a lovely photo with the bride.

Out in nature: The family appeared to have traveled from Los Angeles to Atlanta for the wedding, as they visited a drive-through zoo in photos posted later on Tuesday

Animal kingdom: Luna stood next to an inquisitive deer, while Miles saw a towering giraffe and an emu at its feet

The family appeared to have traveled from Los Angeles to Atlanta for the wedding, as they visited a drive-through zoo in photos posted later on Tuesday.

Lunda showed off a sweet smile while standing in a van with bars over the windows as they drove past what looked like an inquisitive deer.

Miles looked mesmerized in another picture as a giraffe towered over the vehicle and an emu stood down at its knees.

'Atlanta has likea lot of random s**t to offer lol,' the Bring The Funny judge joked.

Taking it easy: Chrissy has been keeping a low profile in recent months after bullying tweets she sent to reality star Courtney Stodden a decade earlier resurfaced

Chrissy has been keeping a low profile in recent months after bullying tweets she sent to reality star Courtney Stodden a decade earlier resurfaced.

Courtney, who came out as nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns, revealed that Chrissy had urged them to take a 'dirt nap,' a euphemism for dying, in public tweets.

They also claimed that the model had urged them to kill themself in direct messages.

Chrissy has returned to Instagram in recent weeks, though she has been silent on Twitter since June.
Contestants on The Bachelor must sign strict contracts before appearing on the Channel 10 dating show.

And now, Daily Mail Australia can reveal that Stevie Grey has become the second contestant to lose $5,000 after she breached hers.

A source at production company Warner Bros. said that Stevie, 29, was told last week that she wouldn't be getting her 'one-off bonus' after breaking her agreement.

Bachelor stars go rogue! The Bachelor's Stevie Grey, 29, (pictured) is set to lose $5,000 as she becomes the SECOND contestant to go rogue and 'break her contract'

According to the insider, Stevie told producers that she openly discussed being on the show with former contestants before she was officially announced.

Stevie told one of guys from Angie Kents season that she would be on the show and, then went she went back to producers and them that she told him,' the source said.

She thought she was doing the right thing by letting her producer know about it, but three months later it come back to bite her, they added.

What would Jimmy think? A source at production company Warner Bros. said that Stevie was told last week that she wouldn't be getting her 'one-off bonus' after breaking her agreement

It's a secret! Contestants must sign strict NDA's forbidding them from letting anyone, including close friends and relatives know anything about the show

Contestants must sign strict NDA's forbidding them from letting anyone, including close friends and relatives, know anything about the show.

A source close to Stevie said that she was 'livid' with the news but was 'more 'worried' about not getting her blue tick (of verification on Instagram).

'There's plenty of money to be made on Instagram with a blue tick. That is all she is worried about,' they said.

Sorry! The Brisbane-based hairdresser is the second contestant from Jimmy Nicholsons season to go rogue. Pictured: Steph Lynch

The Brisbane-based hairdresser is the second contestant from Jimmy Nicholsons season to go rogue and be told that they wouldn't receive the promised sum.

On Monday, Daily Mail Australia revealed that Steph Lynch wouldnt be getting her bonus payment after she was caught sharing photos and videos to her private Instagram account.

'Ssgl out tonight. Thanks for all ur love & support over the last month!' she wrote alongside a mirror selfie shared at about 12pm on the day of her last episode.

Steph's post was made almost nine hours before she was sent packing by Jimmy.

Sorry! On Monday, Daily Mail Australia revealed that Steph Lynch (pictured) wouldnt be getting her $5,000 payment after she was caught sharing content to a private Instagram

She also shared several videos from a viewing party at her home, which was attended by several friends, including Clare Lange from Locky Gilbert's season.

In one video, Stephanie could be seen laughing and screaming as she filmed her friends cheering as her dramatic exit played out on TV.

In another image, she and her pals proudly posed with their middle fingers up at a cardboard cut-out of Jimmy.

Stephanie was abruptly sent home after the 31-year-old pilot pulled her aside to get to the bottom of rumours she still had feelings for her ex-fiance.
Jimmy Nicholson declared his love for Holly Kingston in The Bachelor finale.

And on Thursday, the newly-minted couple revealed they are moving in together while doing their press rounds,

The 31-year-old pilot shared the exciting news on Mix 94.5's Pete, Matt and Kymba show in Perth.

Things are moving fast! The Bachelor's Jimmy Nicholson and Holly Kingston have revealed they are moving into together

'We're at my place, we watched it last night together and then we're moving in together in a month,' he said.

'We had a few rendezvous over the last three months and we've been able to spend a bit of time together, so yeah, no hesitations,' Jimmy added of their milestone moment.

While things appear to moving fast for the couple, Jimmy revealed that there was one contentious topic they were still debating over ahead of the move.

Milestone: The 31-year-old pilot shared the exciting news on Mix 94.5's Pete, Matt and Kymba show in Perth

Decisions: While things appear to moving fast for the couple, Jimmy revealed that there was one contentious topic they were still debating over ahead of the move. Jimmy said: 'She won't let me put my bloody motorbike in the living room which is a bit of a hot topic for us'

'Except, she won't let me put my bloody motorbike in the living room, which is a bit of a hot topic for us,' he shared.

Jimmy declared his feelings for Holly in the Bachelor finale after brutally breaking up with Brooke Cleal.

He told the brunette beauty: 'There was just too many unknowns for us,' before sending her home in tears.

End of the road: Jimmy declared his feelings for Holly in the Bachelor finale after brutally breaking up with Brooke Cleal (pictured here)

The pilot later declared his love for Holly, confessing: 'When I think of a future with you, it's exciting, it's fun, it's passionate. You make anything we do incredible and you light up any room you're in.'

He then gifted the marketing manager with a ring, which he explained represented his commitment to her and their relationship.

'I want you to know that I am in love with you and I can't wait to see what the future has in store for both of us,' he continued.
They recently returned from a brief stay at the luxury Amangiri resort in the Arizona desert.

And Christine Quinn and her husband Christian Richard continued the romance on Thursday as they stepped out for dinner in Beverly Hills.

Later in the evening, the 31-year-old Selling Sunset star took to Instagram to share some sizzling bikini snaps taken during her and Christian's desert getaway.

Dinner date: Christine Quinn and her husband Christian Richard stepped out for dinner in Beverly Hills on Thursday

Christine kept her toned figure concealed beneath a vibrant floral patterned robe for Thursday's dinner date.

She carried her essentials in a furry pink purse that matched perfectly with the feathery trim on the cuffs of her sleeves.

Quinn strolled beside her husband of nearly two years in a pair of platform aqua-toned mules.

Her flowing blonde hair was worn in a half up, half down style and adorned with tiny pink clips.

Eclectic: Christine kept her toned figure concealed beneath a vibrant floral patterned robe for her dinner date on Thursday

Christian locked arms with his wife while donning a loose fitting black t-shirt, a pair of dark green pants, and some slip-on shoes.

The retired tech entrepreneur and the glamorous realtor arrived to the South Beverly Grill in Christine's signature bright yellow Ferrari.

Though the pair appeared happy to be back in Los Angeles, Christine could not help but document every moment of her and Christian's recent trip to Arizona on social media.

Reminiscing: Later in the evening, the 31-year-old Selling Sunset star took to Instagram to share some sizzling bikini snaps taken during her and Christian's recent desert getaway

Wow! Christine, who welcomed her son Christian in May, slipped her astonishingly toned figure into a tiny lime green bikini

In two shots uploaded to her Instagram Story on Thursday, Quinn used the Amangiri resort's rustic exterior and picturesque skyline as her backdrop.

The star, who welcomed her son Christian in May, slipped her astonishingly toned figure into a tiny lime green bikini.

She had a patterned sarong tied loosely around her hips as she posed with one hand in her lengthy blonde hair.

Christine appeared to be wearing little to no makeup and rocked a bright white pedicure.

Luxe: Christine and Christian stayed at the luxury Amangiri resort, a destination frequented by several members of the Kardashian-Jenner clan in 2020

Though it's unclear exactly when the couple returned to Los Angeles, Christine was spotted out and about in the City Of Angels as early as Tuesday.

She has been busy filming scenes all around LA for the upcoming season of her hit Netflix reality series Selling Sunset in recent months.

As if the series needed anymore drama, Christine was notably absent from her co-star Heather Rae Young's recent bridal shower.

It was held at Fig & Olive on Sunday, August 29 ahead of her wedding to fellow reality star, Tarek El Moussa.

Busy bee: She has been busy filming scenes all around LA for the upcoming season of her hit Netflix reality series Selling Sunset; Christine pictured in May

MIA: As if the series needed anymore drama, Christine was notably absent from her co-star Heather Rae Young's (pictured) recent bridal shower, who is engaged to fellow reality star Tarek El Moussa

Quinn once compared Heather and Tarek's relationship to Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt, a claim the couple didn't take too kindly.

On Amanda Hirsh's Not Skinny But Not Fat podcast late last year, Tarek said: 'Christine has a big mouth. She said some s**tty things about us. And that's about it. We're not really interested in dealing with her nonsense.'

Quinn told US Weekly in March: 'I dont regret saying those things at all. I mean, at the end of the day, Im a comedian and you know, its a show. We all say silly things. I talked to her probably a week ago. Shes super sweet, were on great terms. Im really happy for them that theyre getting married.'
She's a single lady after ending her relationship with Emilio Vitolo Jr.

And Katie Holmes cut a relaxed figure on Thursday in a white tee and jogging bottoms for her solo outing in New York City.

The actress, 42, embraced off-duty fashion in her athleisure outfit as she strolled through the Big Apple.

Relaxed: Katie Holmes cut a relaxed figure on Thursday in a white tee and Champion jogging bottoms for her solo outing in New York City

Katie's T-shirt featured a scooped neckline and flashed a glimpse of her toned stomach.

Meanwhile her jogging bottoms from Champion skimmed her svelte waist and contrasted against her trendy white trainers.

Katie shrugged a rucksack over one shoulder and protected herself from the novel coronavirus with a face mask.

The actress tucked her brunette tresses back and wore cat-eye tortoiseshell shades.

Keep it casual: The actress, 42, embraced off-duty fashion in her athleisure outfit as she strolled through the Big Apple

In May, the Batman Begins star ended her relationship with chef Emilio, who heads the popular ItalianAmerican restaurant Emilio's Ballato in New York with his father, Emilio Vitolo Sr.

Although she and the restaurateur were nearly inseparable in late 2020 and early 2021, they decided to go their separate ways.

A spokesperson for Katie told Us Weekly that the two had parted 'amicably' and were 'still friends.'

Another insider who spoke to the publication added that their 'relationship fizzled.' 'They figured out theyre better off as friends. Theres no drama that went down with the breakup,' the source said.

According to them, Katie is now focused on prioritising her private and professional lives at the moment.

The romance 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.
Nadia Bartel has been visited by police after she was filmed breaking Melbourne's strict lockdown and snorting what is believed to be cocaine at a party on Thursday night.

Victorian police attended the 36-year-old AFL WAG's $3million inner-city residence on Friday evening, hours after the video was accidently uploaded to Instagram by Bartel's friend and business partner, Ellie Pearson.

Two plain clothes police officers were seen arriving at Bartel's home but were reportedly unable to make contact with her.

Nadia Bartel (pictured) was visited by police on Friday, after she was filmed breaking Melbourne's strict lockdown and snorting what is believed to be cocaine at a party on Thursday night, in a video which has gone viral

The officers rang the doorbell repeatedly to no answer, and were also seen making a phone call before leaving the property, the Herald Sun reported.

It comes as the Department of Health issued a statement saying it was 'liaising with Victoria Police in relation to the alleged incident'.

Bartel broke her silence and issued an apology over the incident on Friday evening.

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'Hi everyone, I have let you all down by my actions. I take full responsibility and I am committed to taking all necessary steps to ensure I make better choices in future,' she wrote in an Instagram post on Friday evening.

'To my family and friends, my business partners and the public health workers trying to keep us all safe, I am embarrassed and remorseful.

'I am truly and deeply sorry. I hope I can earn your forgiveness and, in time, your trust.'

Footage of Bartel snorting white powder off a plate at the gathering started going viral on Friday morning.

Breaking her silence in a post shared to Instagram on Friday afternoon, the 36-year-old mum of two wrote: 'Hi everyone, I have let you all down by my actions. I take full responsibility and I am committed to taking all necessary steps to ensure I make better choices in future'

The video was accidently uploaded to Instagram by her friend and business partner, Ellie Pearson. The pair are pictured together buying wine before the party. 'I'm just devastated,' Pearson told The Herald Sun on Friday evening

In the video, Bartel is seen snorting the powder off a $1.50 Kmart plate being held by a dark-haired woman, as a third woman displays a two-fingered hand gesture in the background.

Private and public gatherings are not permitted in Melbourne, where Bartel lives, under Victoria's Covid restrictions.

Nadia's apology - which includes an appeal for forgiveness from health workers - appears to confirm the gathering was held on Thursday evening.

Private and public gatherings are not permitted in Melbourne, where Bartel lives, under Victoria's Covid restrictions

Pearson, who filmed the viral clip, revealed she was remorseful over the incident.

'I'm just devastated,' Pearson told The Herald Sun on Friday evening.

Daily Mail Australia has contacted Bartel for comment.

The video was mentioned at Premier Daniel Andrews' daily coronavirus briefing on Friday.

In the viral video, Bartel snorts the powder off a $1.50 Kmart plate being held by a dark-haired woman, as a third woman displays a two-fingered hand gesture in the background

The clip begins with the fashion and beauty influencer appearing to lean over the plate with a rolled-up banknote in her left nostril as she presses her right nostril. She then snorts the substance as one of the women watches on

Mr Andrews said he hadn't seen the footage but stressed that all Victorians should follow the rules during lockdown.

'I would urge everybody to do their very best to follow the rules, all of the time. I know it's tough, I know it's difficult,' he said.

'Beyond that, I don't tend to comment on footage that I haven't seen.'

The video, which has been widely shared on social media, was mentioned at Premier Daniel Andrews' (pictured) daily coronavirus briefing on Friday. Mr Andrews said he hadn't seen the footage but stressed that all Victorians should follow the rules during lockdown

Meanwhile, Bartel has turned off comments on her Instagram posts after the

embarrassing video was leaked.

She has also updated her Instagram bio to remove any reference to her companies, Henne and Spray Aus, perhaps because they were being targeted by trolls.

Bartel has turned off comments on her Instagram after the embarrassing video was leaked

She has also updated her Instagram bio to remove any reference to her companies, Henne and Spray Aus. (Top: her current bio; bottom: how her bio used to look via an Instagram mirror site)

On Friday afternoon, Nadia's father visited her at her home in Melbourne and is understood to have stayed 30 minutes.

Nadia stayed inside her property as her dad parked his car and rang her doorbell.

Bartel refused to comment to reporters awaiting outside her residence as she let her father inside.

On Friday afternoon, Nadia's father (pictured) visited her at her home in Melbourne and is understood to have stayed 30 minutes

Bartel refused to comment to reporters awaiting outside her home

She is the ex-wife of retired AFL star Jimmy Bartel (right), a Brownlow Medallist who spent his career with the Geelong Cats. The couple split in 2019 after five years of marriage

Jimmy spent Thursday and Friday with the former couple's two sons, Aston, five, and Henley, three, posting these updates on Instagram

Bartel had been pictured wearing the same outfit she had on in the video while picking up a box of wine in Melbourne earlier on Thursday.

She was joined by Pearson, with whom she runs the Spray Aus fake tan company.

She donned a one-shoulder top from her fashion brand Henne, which she teamed with a pair of black skinny jeans.

Bartel had been pictured wearing the same outfit she had on in the video while picking up wine in Melbourne earlier on Thursday

She donned a one-shoulder top from her fashion brand Henne, which she teamed with a pair of black skinny jeans

Bartel is a mother of two and entrepreneur who runs the fake-tan company Spray Aus and clothing label Henne.

She is the ex-wife of retired AFL star Jimmy Bartel, a Brownlow Medallist who spent his career with the Geelong Cats.

The couple split in 2019 after five years of marriage.
She always manages to pull off a chic look.

And Lottie Moss still looked stylish as she stepped out in London's Notting Hill for a late night shopping trip on Thursday.

The model, 23, was fresh faced as she ran the errands in her local Sainsbury's while wearing an oversized green jumper and wide leg beige floaty trousers.

Relaxed: Lottie Moss still looked stylish while wearing a casual look as she stepped out in Notting Hill for a late night shopping trip on Thursday

Adding a touch of glamour to the ensemble, Lottie - who is the half sister of Kate Moss - carried a Christian Dior saddle bag in her hand, while the other held an orange Sainsbury's plastic bag.

Her long blonde locks were left in their natural curls which flowed behind her.

After buying her provisions she strutted down the London street in black fluffy sliders before entering a waiting taxi.

Quick shopping run: The model was fresh faced as made the errand while wearing an oversized green jumper and wide leg beige floaty trousers

Just the essentials: Adding a touch of glamour to the ensemble, Lottie carried a Christian Dior saddle bag in her hand, while the other held an orange Sainsbury's plastic bag

Beauty: Her statement long blonde locks were left in their natural curls which flowed behind her as she walked down the London street

Her relaxed number was a far-cry to the glitz and glamour which ensued the previous night at the GQ Awards - where she was seen leaving with newly single Ed Westwick.

Earlier this year, Lottie went public with with her romance with The Vamps Tristan Evans.

It was revealed at the end of July Lottie and Tristan were an item, after they were spotted getting up close and personal in Notting Hill.

He then spent the next evening cooking for her during a cosy night in together.

Returning home: After buying her provisions she strutted in black fluffy sliders before entering a waiting taxi

Contrast: Her relaxed number was a far-cry to the glitz and glamour which ensued the previous night at the GQ Awards where she was seen leaving with newly single Ed Westwick

Friendly: She was later seen chatting to a man on the street

Edgier than her usual type, Lottie has previously dated Made In Chelsea boys Alex Mytton in 2016 and Sam Prince, 24.

Meanwhile, Tristan got engaged to model Anastasia Smith in April 2018, after dating for four years, but by the autumn the pair had split, removing all pictures together from their social media profiles.

Anastasia is now engaged to another man.

Waited: She patiently stood at the side of the road waiting for her taxi to arrive

New romance: Earlier this year, Lottie went public with with her romance with The Vamps Tristan Evans

Getting serious: It was revealed at the end of July Lottie and Tristan were an item, after they were spotted getting up close and personal in Notting Hill

Last November The Vamps drummer told Attitude that 'there shouldn't be any boundaries,' when it comes to sexuality.

Around the same time, Lottie came out as pansexual.

The younger half-sister of Kate Moss told her Instagram followers: 'I'm pansexual so I don't really mind... any gender.'

'It kinda changes every day as well. It depends on who I meet.'

A pansexual person is attracted to someone or falls in love with them regardless of their biological sex or gender identity.

Budding love: He then spent the next evening cooking for her during a cosy night in together
Hayley Atwell paid homage to the iconic rock band Pink Floyd on Thursday by attending the grand opening of their exhibition.

The actress, 39, channelled her inner indie as she headed up to the Grand Opening Of The Pink Floyd Exhibition: Their Mortal Remains at the Vogue Multicultural Museum in LA.

The Captain America: The First Avenger star looked stunning as she donned a white denim jacket and a black PU leather maxi skirt for the event.

Indie chic: Hayley Atwell, 39, channelled her inner indie at the Grand Opening Of The Pink Floyd Exhibition: Their Mortal Remains at Vogue Multicultural Museum, LA on Thursday

Hayley's monochrome ensemble boasted cuffed sleeves on the stylish jacket and pleats along the skirt.

The star continued her stellar look with a pair of crisp white lace-up brogues as she stepped out onto the red carpet.

The brunette beauty styled her luscious locks into subtle waves and sported a soft glam makeup palette including a slick of cherry red lipstick.

Stunning: The Captain America: The First Avenger star looked stunning as she donned a white denim jacket and a black PU leather maxi skirt for the event

The performer opted for a few subtle accessories, including diamante stud earrings, a black leather watch and a co-ordinating black leather purse.

Hayley beamed as she was pictured at the exhibition alongside entrepreneur and friend Rembrandt Flores.

The exhibition boasts an audiovisual, musical journey which celebrates Pink Floyds place in history.

The exhibit runs from September 3rd until January 9th.

Beaming: Hayley beamed as she was pictured at the exhibition alongside entrepreneur and friend Rembrandt Flores

Her outing comes as she was recently spotted filming scenes in Birmingham's Bullring & Grand Central shopping centre alongside Tom Cruise.

The pair were surrounded by fans as they waved and posed up a storm.

Production on Mission: Impossible 7 began again at the end of last month after being paused and delayed multiple times due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The scenes are looking to be spellbinding if the shoot where Birmingham's New Street train station was transformed into Abu Dhabi airport were anything to go by.

Her co-star Tom has spent much of the last year in the UK filming for the acclaimed franchise and has been pictured filming action-packed scenes in the Yorkshire Moors in recent months.

Hayley portrays a character mononymously known as Grace in the series' final installment.
Victoria Beckham channelled her inner Posh Spice as she headed to a Miami bakery in a thigh-grazing black miniskirt on Thursday.

The fashion designer, 47, harked back to her girlband days as she teamed the number with a structured black blazer- a style evolution from alter-ego Posh's signature LBD Gucci dress.

Taking to Instagram, Victoria shared some sweet photos with daughter Harper, 10, and husband David, 46, at the new Tooth Fairy Bakery.

Sweet: Victoria Beckham channelled her inner Posh Spice as she headed to a Miami bakery in a thigh-grazing black miniskirt with daughter Harper, 10, on Thursday

Victoria oozed glamour as usual as she donned bright coral heels as she posed with friends in a later snap.

David also appeared in the picture looking very trendy in an oversized black shirt, straight leg trousers and was sporting a bleach blonde hair style.

Victoria captioned the post: 'The sweetest bakery in Miami and the most perfect shoot location! @toothfairybakery congratulations @davegrutman on another incredible launch!'.

Good times: Victoria oozed glamour as usual as she donned bright orange heels as she posed with friends in a later snap, while David looked trendy in a black outfit

The Beckham's have been enjoying some time in America, and Victoria has been documenting their trip on social media.

The former Spice Girl sported a strappy black bikini as she relaxed in the pool while posing for a series of selfies with Harper on Sunday.

On Saturday David enjoyed a fun-filled day at Tidal Cove Waterpark with Harper, whilst Victoria took on the role of 'designated videographer.'

In a series of buoyant videos Victoria shared on her Instagram story, the father-and-daughter looked as though they were having a whale of a time.

Cute! It comes after the former Spice Girl sported a strappy black bikini as she relaxed in the pool while posing for a series of selfies with Harper on Sunday

The squad then headed out for sushi with Harper's godfather and celebrity stylist Ken Paves.

'Sign language lessons with the best godfather @kenpaves!' Victoria gushed alongside a video of Harper enjoying herself.

Victoria's daughter had dressed up in a sweet ruffle-strapped dress for the meal and beamed at the camera in the footage.

Making a splash: David enjoyed a fun-filled day at Tidal Cove Waterpark on Saturday with Harper

Yum! The squad then headed out for sushi with Harper's godfather and celebrity stylist Ken Paves

The Spice Girls are alleged to be forming a reunion.

According to reports, the iconic group met in London on Tuesday to 'record pieces in front of the camera' for their upcoming online game, however Victoria was not in attendance - due to being in Miami - and 'doesn't want to be involved'.

Geri Horner, 49, Mel B, 46, Emma Bunton, 45, and Melanie C, 47, got together at Black Island Studios to work on the forthcoming project, which they are said to be 'excited' about.
He is an actor known for his dashing good looks and raven tresses.

But Antonio Banderas unveiled his freshly-dyed auburn hairdo on Friday as he arrived at the 78th Venice International Film Festival.

The silver screen star, 61, transformed his appearance after colouring the top section of his hair ahead of the exclusive event in Italy.

New look! Antonio Banderas unveiled his freshly-dyed auburn hairdo on Friday as he arrived at the 78th Venice International Film Festival

The sides of his haircut remained a natural salt-and-pepper colour, and Antonio sported a trimmed stubble.

He donned a navy polo shirt which he teamed with white trousers and trainers as he was seen standing on decking after departing a boat taxi.

The outing comes amid news that Antonio has joined the star-studded cast of Indiana Jones 5.

It was announced in July but with no clues as to the character the 61-year-old Spanish actor will play, Variety reported.

Ginger hue: He transformed his appearance after colouring the top section of his hair ahead of the exclusive event in Italy

Production on the highly-anticipated project is underway although star Harrison Ford, 79, is currently unable to film due to a shoulder injury he sustained on set.

Antonio has most recently been seen on screen in The Hitmans Wifes Bodyguard opposite Ryan Reynolds, Samuel L. Jackson and Salma Hayek.

He's most famous for voicing Puss In Boots in the Shrek animated franchise.

The actor first rose to prominence in Hollywood in the 1990s with roles in Philadelphia, Interview With The Vampire and Mask Of Zorro.

Keep it casual: He donned a navy polo shirt which he teamed with white trousers and trainers as he was seen standing on decking after departing a boat taxi

He is fitting in filming for Indiana Jones 5 alongside the thriller, The Enforcer, which is currently in production, and the true crime limited series, The Monster Of Florence, which he is executive producing as well as starring in.

Indiana Jones 5 started shooting at England's Pinewood Studios in June and has also been filming on location in the Scottish city of Glasgow which is doubling for 1960's Manhattan.

Also in the cast are British actor Toby Jones, Danish star Mads Mikkelsen, German actor Thomas Kretschmann and American actress Shaunette Renee Wilson.

Directed by James Mangold, the film is currently slated to be release in theaters on July 29 2022.
Ex On The Beach is set to return with a brand new series, with MTV bosses are currently casting for the show.

And fans can expect to see some familiar faces, with sources revealing to MailOnline that Too Hot To Handle's Francesca Farago has 'signed up' for the new series that is set to see Ex On The Beach's first lesbian couple.

The reality star's rumoured addition to the series comes after Love Island bosses ruled out a version of the much-loved ITV2 dating show featuring gay contestants.

Back onscreen: Too Hot To Handle's Francesca Farago has 'signed up' for the new series of Ex On The Beach that is set to see the show's first lesbian couple, sources have revealed

Ex On The Beach sees celebrity contestants jetting off overseas to live together in a luxury villa, while under the illusion they'll be finding love in the sun. On touching down, they're soon told that their former flames will be rocking up to surprise them.

Former seasons have seen a slew of celebs take part in the show, including Geordie Shore's Gaz Beadle, Charlotte Crosby and Marnie Simpson.

Ibiza Weekender's Jordan Davies and TOWIE's Megan McKenna featured on series three and four of Ex On The Beach, while last year's series, filmed in Marbella, saw the likes of Joey Essex and Love Island's Michael Griffiths and Ellie Brown sign up.

This time round, insiders claim Netflix star Francesca will be taking centre stage.

It's back: Ex On The Beach will be filming a new series of the hit dating show early next year

Blast from the past: Francesca could be reunited with exes Harry Jowsey and TOWIE star Demi Sims on the series that sees celebs confronted by their former flames

She first found fame on the first season of Too Hot To Handle, where she struck up a relationship with ex-boyfriend Harry Jowsey.

Since then, Francesca has made headlines thanks to her whirlwind relationship with TOWIE star Demi Sims.

Her addition to EOTB suggests that both Harry and Demi could potentially appear on the show as her exes.

Fans will no doubt be curious to see how Francesca would handle being confronted by a blast from the past, especially as insiders have teased EOTB will feature its first lesbian relationship.

Francesca opened up about her split with Demi in May and revealed she and ex-girlfriend Demi were 'not on good terms' following their break up. So much so, that the brunette beauty claims Demi ''blocked her, deleted her and told her to leave London' after they split.

Rumours she is due to appear on Ex On The Beach come after rival dating show Love Island ruled out the possibility of featuring gay contestants on the ITV2 series.

Former flame: Francesca found fame on Netflix's Too Hot To Handle where she struck up a romance with ex-boyfriend Harry Jowsey (pictured above)

Making headlines: Francesca and Demi (pictured left) enjoyed a whirlwind relationship that saw the pair move in together straight away

Awkward: Francesca claimed things 'didn't end on good terms' with ex-girlfriend Demi, suggesting an explosive reunion could be on the cards

Despite previously featuring a number of bisexual contestants, including Katie Salmon, Megan Barton Hanson and the late Sophie Gradon, channel boss Kevin Lygo told the Edinburgh TV Festival the hit show 'is about girls and boys coupling up',

He added 'we haven't yet found a way' to make Love Island more inclusive.

Lygo commented: 'Love Island is a particular thing, of course, it's about boys and girls coupling up.

'So if you wanted to do a gay version, or you wanted to widen it, it is discussed and we haven't yet found a way that would make it suitable for that show.'

This idea has been bounced around with ITV bosses, but they ruled out the possibility of having an LGBTQ+ show, with commissioner Amanda Stavri telling Radio Times in June: 'In terms of gay Islanders, I think the main challenge is regarding the format of Love Island.

Ruled out: As EOTB prepares to welcome its first lesbian couple, Love Island bosses ruled out a version of the ITV2 dating show with gay contestants

'There's a sort of logistical difficulty because although Islanders don't have to be 100 percent straight, the format must sort of give Islanders an equal choice when coupling up.'

The debate for an LGBTQ+ friendly version of Love Island has gone on for years, with the show producer Richard Cowles once saying that they would be open to a separate sexually-diverse spin-off.

ITV's Paul Mortimer then shut down the idea by stating that 'the format doesn't really allow it.'

Meanwhile, it's rumoured the new series of Ex On The Beach will take place in Colombia, South America.

TV insiders claim bosses have secured the exotic location in a bid to 'really ramp up' the next series of the show.

Bigger and better: EOTB is set to whisk its celebrity stars off to a luxury villa in Colombia, South America for its new series according to TV insiders (pictured above Joey Essex and ex Lorena Medina)

'Theyve found an incredible location in Colombia in South America and plan to fly out the eight single stars for filming in the New Year,' sources revealed to The Sun.

'Obviously a jaunt that far afield is going to attract bigger names than the idea of a two-week holiday in Spain so they have high hopes for the talent they want to sign up.'

They added that everything is 'dependent' on travel restrictions amid the coronavirus pandemic, but Ex On The Beach's new series has been given the 'green light' and casting is underway.

The insiders added: ' Ex On The Beach is all about scandal and explosive confrontations so the locals wont know whats hit them when the celebs finally arrive.'

So far, a return date and the final lineup for the series is yet to be confirmed.

MailOnline has reached out to a spokesperson for MTV.
Isabelle Huppert looked effortlessly stylish as she stepped out for the 78th Annual Venice Film Festival on Friday.

The French actress, 68, channelled biker chic in black trousers and a matching leather jacket which she paired with a white T-shirt as she headed into the Italian city.

Stepping off the water taxi, Isabelle strutted down the boardwalk in chic heeled boots, making her latest appearance at the star-studded festival.

Style: Isabelle Huppert, 68, channelled biker chic in a leather jacket and patent heeled boots as she stepped out for the 78th Annual Venice Film Festival on Friday

Isabelle's red locks were swept into a side parting and styled in soft Hollywood glamour waves while she opted for large chic sunglasses.

The 2021 Venice Film Festival is taking place from 1-11 September, and is considered one of the world's oldest awards ceremonies and one of the 'Big Five' events.

The star is known for portraying dastardly characters and she recently said she would like to play a Disney villain.

However, the actress would like to make any potential character a bit 'more lovable' if she appeared in film by the legendary studio.

Stunning: The French actress looked sensational in black trousers and a black leather jacket which she paired with a white T-shirt

She told Variety: 'Its scarier when you make them a bit more lovable and attractive and more manipulative instead of doing it like a classical villain.'

The jury of this year's festival is headed by Parasite director Bong Joon Ho, who said he is 'honoured to be woven into its beautiful cinematic tradition.

'As president of the jury  and more importantly as a perpetual cinephile  I'm ready to admire and applaud all the great films selected by the festival. I'm filled with genuine hope and excitement.'

The jury is also comprised of director Saverio Costanzo, actress Virginie Efira, star Cynthia Erivo, actress Sarah Gadon, documentarian Alexander Nanau, and director Chloe Zhao.

This year's festival has also invited two Afghan filmmakers, Sahraa Karimi and Sahra Mani, to discuss the Taliban's takeover of the country, with 'particular attention to the situation of filmmakers and artists,' in a panel taking place on 4th September.

Beautiful: Stepping off the water taxi, Isabelle strutted down the boardwalk in chic heeled boots

The topic of the panel will be 'the dramatic situation of Afghan filmmakers and artists in general, the need for the creation of humanitarian corridors and the guarantee of the granting of political refugee status, as well as concern for their future and the need to provide for their accommodation once they arrive in Europe.'

Oscar-winning Italian director Roberto Benigni, who helmed the acclaimed Life is Beautiful, will also be honoured with the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement.

In a statement he said: 'My heart is full of joy and gratitude. It is an immense honour to receive such an important recognition of my work from the Venice International Film Festival.'

This year's festival has also seen the grand return of its star-studded red carpet premieres, after last year's event was drastically scaled back due to the Covid pandemic.
Great British Bake Off fans went into meltdown on Thursday as they got their first glimpse at series 12 in a new teaser.

The Channel 4 show was filmed earlier this year with the contestants and crew placed in a COVID-safe filming bubble.

Now the show is set to return to screens, and although a launch date is yet to be confirmed, the British Bake Off Twitter account treated fans to a teaser.

'The world needs this!' Great British Bake Off fans went into meltdown on Thursday as the first teaser for series 12 was released

Cast: The Channel 4 show was filmed earlier this year in a COVID-safe filming bubble (L-R Paul Hollywood, Matt Lucas, Prue Leith and Noel Fielding)

In the clip, the camera hovered over trees before zooming in towards the famous white tent.

Gradually, the show's theme tune came in, with the camera continuing to pan over the grounds.

The clip was captioned: 'Loaf is in the air...The Great British Bake Off. Coming Soon.'

Judge Paul Hollywood, 55, then shared the video on Instagram, excitedly writing: 'Were back...! X'

Exciting times: Judge Paul Hollywood, 55, also shared the teaser video on Instagram, excitedly writing: 'Were back...! X'

Coming soon: In the clip, the camera hovered over trees before zooming in towards the famous white tent, and gradually, the show's theme tune came in

Taking to Twitter after the clip aired, fans couldn't contain their excitement, penning: 'The world needs this.'; 'Oh my god! How did you know today is my birthday???

'Oh thank god WE NEED YOU'; 'why must you tease us like this'; 'i have a mighty need to meet new lovely, funny bakers and more cake. always more cake. and chocolate. and macarons. #bakeoff

'Cant wait'; 'Thank god I absolutely love this show, look forward to watching every year cant wait'; 'All is right with the world when bake off is on'.

Series 12 of Bake Off was filmed earlier this year when the cast and crew formed a secure bubble at Down Hall, an established country house hotel in Hertfordshire.

The six-week takeover at the luxe hotel was to avoid staff and stars getting pinged.

According to reports in The Sun, judges Paul and Prue Leith, 81, alongside hosts Matt Lucas, 47, and Noel Fielding, 48, joined staff at the bar most nights.

Paul's girlfriend, barmaid Melissa Spalding, also stayed for two weeks, according to crew members.

Actor-come-host Noel and his wife, radio DJ Lliana Bird, 40, reportedly organised an 'indie festival' for staff.

Alongside partying into the early hours, comedian Matt hosted a quiz, with chef Paul trading whipping up meals for showing off with nunchucks.

To ensure minimal COVID risk, hundreds of the show's workers had no choice but to remain on site once they arrived in early June.

One source said: 'Some nights we all went to the hotel bar and there was music playing and we carried on partying.'

Rules were reputedly adhered to by the Bake Off team during filming.
She's been a fixture of this year's festival with her stylish ensembles.

And Maggie Gyllenhaal nailed androgynous chic in an oversized navy suit as she stepped out during the Venice Film Festival on Friday.

The 43-year-old actress wowed in the ensemble which was complete with a waistcoat embellished with gold buttons and wide leg suit trousers.

Looking good: Maggie Gyllenhaal, 43, nailed the androgynous look in an oversized blazer as she stepped out during the Venice Film Festival on Friday

Maggie kept the look casual by opting for black leather sandals, which revealed a perfect black pedicure to match.

By way of accessorising, the Donnie Darko star slung an elegant vintage Hermes bag over her shoulder and framed her face with oversized black sunglasses.

Her short brown bob revealed gold earrings which dangled from her lobes, matching the buttons on her jacket.

Maggie's star-studded directorial debut The Lost Daughter is set to premiere at the 78th Venice International Film Festival on Friday.

Fashion forward: The actress wowed in the ensemble which was complete with a waistcoat embellished with gold buttons and wide leg suit trousers

The upcoming film, based on the 2006 novel of the same name by Elena Ferrante, will have its world premiere at the event.

The cast is led by Olivia Colman and Dakota Johnson and the movie tells the gripping story of Olivia's character Leda.

A college professor on a summer holiday at the seaside, she becomes obsessed with Nina (Dakota) and her young daughter as she watches them play on the beach.

Leda is reminded of the terror and confusion she felt in early motherhood as she watches the mother-daughter duo, as well as their extended family.

Reminded of the unconventional choices she made for her own daughter, Leda begins to unravel and becomes a prisoner of her own mind, unable to explain what's happened.

Looking good: By way of accessorising, the Donnie Darko star slung an elegant vintage Hermes bag over her shoulder and framed her face with oversized black sunglasses

Upcoming: Maggie's star-studded directorial debut The Lost Daughter is set to premiere at the 78th Venice International Film Festival on Friday

It was announced earlier this month that Netflix had acquired the rights to air The Lost Daughter.

On the news, Maggie said: 'Im thrilled to be working with Netflix again. They have supported so much of the work I am most proud of, and this is no exception.

'Netflix has consistently championed filmmakers that excite and inspire me and Im delighted to be included in that company.'

The film is scheduled for release on the streaming platform in December.

The jury at this year's event is headed by Parasite frontman Bong Joon Ho, who said he is 'honoured to be woven into its beautiful cinematic tradition.

'As president of the jury  and more importantly as a perpetual cinephile  I'm ready to admire and applaud all the great films selected by the festival. I'm filled with genuine hope and excitement.'

Talented: The movie tells the gripping story of Olivia Colman's character Leda (pictured)

The jury is also comprised of director Saverio Costanzo, actress Virginie Efira, star Cynthia Erivo, actress Sarah Gadon, documentarian Alexander Nanau, and director Chloe Zhao.

This year's festival has also invited two Afgan filmmakers, Sahraa Karimi and Sahra Mani, to discuss the Taliban's takeover of the country, with 'particular attention to the situation of filmmakers and artists,' in a panel taking place on 4th September.

This year's festival has also seen the grand return of its star-studded red carpet premieres, after last year's event was drastically scaled back due to the Covid pandemic.

Last year's occasion saw a significantly smaller number of guests in attendance, will all red carpet arrivals required to adhere to social distancing, with temperature checks and mask wearing mandatory at the event.

Despite its return, this year's festival is still adhering to strict Covid guidelines, following a rise in cases in Italy.

Public access to the red carpet is banned, and more than 10 testing stations have been set up.

All attendees must show proof of a negative test or vaccination to enter a screen, and masks are required indoors.
She's known for displaying her top notch style in bright dresses on television.

And Charlotte Hawkins, 46, looked radiant in nude leather dress as she arrived at the Global Radio studios in London's Leicester Square on Friday.

The Good Morning Britain presenter's dress boasting a flattering neckline, and displaying her slender pins through the skirt's front split.

Top notch style: Charlotte Hawkins, 46, looked radiant in a nude leather dress as she arrived at the Global Radio studios in London's Leicester Square on Friday

Her outfit's short sleeves left her arms exposed to the late summer air as she walked through the UK capital's West End.

She wore a pair of open-toed high heel shoes in the same shade as her dress and carried the strap of her grey bag in her hand.

The sunlight shone on the broadcaster's loosely curled blonde hair, giving her an angelic appearance as she smiled at onlookers.

Making the most of herself: The Good Morning Britain presenter's dress boasting a flattering neckline, and displaying her slender pins through the skirt's front split

Charlotte, who hosts Classic FM's Smooth Classics at Seven on Sundays, shared an adorable snap of herself with her daughter Ella, six, on Instagram on Thursday as they enjoyed afternoon tea.

The broadcaster, who shares Ella with her businessman husband Mark Herbert, could be seen smiling in the picture as she wore a cream blouse with lace detail across the front.

Ella wore a brightly coloured striped dress and gave a broad grin for the camera as Charlotte took a selfie of the pair.

Fashion forward: Her outfit's short sleeves left her arms exposed to the late summer air as she walked through the UK capital's West End

The mother-daughter duo could be seen with tiered cake stand on the table in front of them, with some sweet treats and a drink sitting on the top plate.

Charlotte captioned the post: 'Afternoon tea selfie! As its coming to the end of the summer holidays we thought wed have a girls outing to celebrate in style you just cannot beat an afternoon tea.'

Television star Charlotte took to Instagram earlier this year when she was forced to isolate away from Ella and husband Mark amid a Covid scare.

Family time: Classic FM host Charlotte shared an adorable snap of herself with her daughter Ella, six, on Instagram on Thursday as they enjoyed afternoon tea

She detailed her heartache at having to spend 10 days away from her loved ones, writing on the social media site: 'I can't tell you how hard I found it having to self-isolate for ten days & how relieved I am it's over and all is OK.

'Not being able to be near this special one... not being able to hug her was heartbreaking, but not knowing whether I had Covid or not meant I needed to keep my family safe.'

She went on: 'I'm so relieved I escaped it & tested negative, I know so many others haven't been as lucky.

'Sending love to all those going through it right now, & thinking of all those facing a tough time at the moment who can't hug their loved ones.

'It makes you so thankful for what you have. If you're able to, hug them close tonight! [sic]'
Zendaya arrived at the photo call of her film Dune in a leggy white shirt dress in Venice during the Film Festival on Friday.

The actress, 25, who takes on the role of Timothee Chalamet's on-screen lover in the movie, looked every inch the fashion maven as she was joined by the cast for the event.

Zendaya's co-star Rebecca Ferguson, 37, rocked a black embroidered minidress which she teamed with chunky wedges.

Stepping out in style: Zendaya arrived at the photo call of her film Dune in a leggy white shirt dress in Venice during the Film Festival on Friday

Zendaya elevated her height with black Louboutin stilettos and shrugged a black blazer over her statement dress.

The Greatest Showman star teased a glimpse of her cleavage as she opted to go braless in the shirt-style garment.

She wore her curly hair in a swept-over side parting and accentuated her natural beauty with a polished make-up look.

Leggy: Zendaya's co-star Rebecca Ferguson, 37, rocked a black embroidered minidress which she teamed with chunky wedges

Working it: The actress, 25, who takes on the role of Timothee Chalamet's on-screen lover in the movie, looked every inch the fashion maven as she was joined by the cast for the event

Designer: Zendaya elevated her height with black Louboutin stilettos and shrugged a black blazer over her statement dress

Making an arrival: The women waved as they arrived at the event via a water taxi

Finishing items: The Spider Man star decorated her fingers with stylish gold rings and opted for a nude pink manicure

The women waved and blew kisses as they arrived at the event via a water taxi.

The action-packed sci fi movie is an adaptation of Frank Herbert's beloved 1965 novel of the same name. The film is due out in theaters on October 22.

A synopsis of the film reads: 'A mythic and emotionally charged heros journey, Dune tells the story of Paul Atreides, a brilliant and gifted young man born into a great destiny beyond his understanding, who must travel to the most dangerous planet in the universe to ensure the future of his family and his people.

'As malevolent forces explode into conflict over the planets exclusive supply of the most precious resource in existencea commodity capable of unlocking humanitys greatest potentialonly those who can conquer their fear will survive.'

Gorgeous: Zendaya wore her curly hair in a swept-over side parting and accentuated her natural beauty with a polished make-up look

Racy: The Greatest Showman star teased a glimpse of her cleavage as she opted to go braless in the shirt-style garment

Timothee plays central character Paul, while Zendaya takes on the role as his on-screen lover Chan.

Their romance blossoms during a frightening war on her desert planet Arrakis which is mined for precious resources. Rebecca plays Lady Jessica.

Javier Bardem's Stilgar, Stellan Skarsgard's The Baron, Sharon Duncan-Brewster's Liet Kynes, Dave Bautista's Beast Rabban, David Dastmalchian's Piter De Vries, Charlotte Rampling's Reverend Mother Mohiam, Chang Chen's Dr. Yueh and Stephen McKinley Henderson's Thufir Hawat are also in the movie.

Strike a pose: Zendaya tucked her lengthy tresses behind her ear as she worked her best angles in front of a Venice Film Festival promotional banner

Plenty to smile about: She appeared in high spirits during the event

Latest role: Rebecca plays the role of Lady Jessica in the action sci-fi movie

Here they come: The cast arrived at the photo call ahead of the film's premiere

Helping hand: Zendaya was assisted off the boat

The story is set in a far-distant future in the midst of several civilizations spread across the galaxy, centering on one family in particular, the Atreides family.

The family, lead by Duke Leto Atreides, becomes the new stewards for the dangerous desert planet Arrakis.

While the desert planet is sparsely populated and filled with deadly creatures, it is also quite important.

Revealing: She held onto her dress once more which boasted a plunging neckline

Central role: Timothee plays central character Paul and looked every inch the leading man

United: The trailer for the highly anticipated feature film Dune was released recently and in the clip, Timothee's Paul Atreides and Zendaya's Chani share a kiss

Hollywood star: The actor made quite an entrance as he was swarmed by fans

Arrakis is the only source of 'melange,' which extends ones life and greatly enhances mental capacities, and is a necessity for space travel and navigation.

Frank Herbert's book has been a hot property in Hollywood for decades.

There was a previous adaptation of the novel in 1970 by filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky, though it never got off the ground.

The filmmaker's attempt to bring this ambitious novel to live was chronicled in the 2013 documentary Jodorowsky's Dune.

Make an impression: He signed autographs for his adoring supporters

Cool: Josh Brolin looked dapper in a blue grey suit and a white shirt which he left partially unbuttoned

Smile and wave: The men gave a wave to cameras as they made their arrival

Film: Javier Bardem appeared in a good mood as he also attended the photocall

The 2021 Venice Film Festival takes place from 1-11 September, and is considered one of the world's oldest awards ceremonies and one of the 'Big Five' events.

The jury is headed by Parasite frontman Bong Joon Ho, who said he is 'honoured to be woven into its beautiful cinematic tradition.

'As president of the jury  and more importantly as a perpetual cinephile  I'm ready to admire and applaud all the great films selected by the festival. I'm filled with genuine hope and excitement.'

Style: He donned a navy shirt and black bomber jacket

Here he is: Oscar Isaac was also seen arriving for the photocall

Sci-fi: The story is set in a far-distant future in the midst of several civilizations spread across the galaxy, centering on one family in particular, the Atreides family

High spirits: Timothee looked effortlessly stylish as he got off the boat

The jury is also comprised of director Saverio Costanzo, actress Virginie Efira, star Cynthia Erivo, actress Sarah Gadon, documentarian Alexander Nanau, and director Chloe Zhao.

This year's festival has also invited two Afgan filmmakers, Sahraa Karimi and Sahra Mani, to discuss the Taliban's takeover of the country, with 'particular attention to the situation of filmmakers and artists,' in a panel taking place on 4th September.

The topic of the panel will be 'the dramatic situation of Afghan filmmakers and artists in general, the need for the creation of humanitarian corridors and the guarantee of the granting of political refugee status, as well as concern for their future and the need to provide for their accommodation once they arrive in Europe.'

Oscar-winning Italian director Roberto Benigni, who helmed the acclaimed Life is Beautiful, will also be honoured with the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement.

Duo: He was all smiles as he stood next to his co-star Rebecca

Strike a pose: The cast gathered for a group photo (pictured L-R Javier, Zendaya, Rebecca Canadian director Denis Villeneuve, Timothee , Oscar and Josh)

Join forces: The group put on a united front
She is set to take centre stage in new movie The Lost Daughter alongside Olivia Colman.

And as fans prepare for the highly-anticipated release of the upcoming film, Dakota Johnson was seen reuniting with her co-star and the movie's director Maggie Gyllenhaal at the 78th International Venice Film Festival on Friday.

The actress, 31, had all eyes on her as she made a stylish arrival to a scheduled photocall for The Lost Daughter, where she was seen sharing a sweet moment with her fellow leading ladies, as she rocked up wearing a smart blazer jacket with just a lacy bra underneath.

Fancy seeing you here: Dakota Johnson reunited with Maggie Gyllenhaal and Olivia Colman as they attended a photocall for new movie The Lost Daughter at Venice Film Festival on Friday (pictured above R-L)

A confident Dakota opted for a risque fashion choice as she attended the annual film festival pairing her tailored Gucci jacket with a sheer bra underneath.

She left her double-breasted blazer open to reveal her lacy lingerie underneath, while simultaneously flashing a glimpse at her incredibly honed stomach.

Dakota further emphasised her enviable frame with a pair of complementing high-waisted trousers and finished off her look with strappy stiletto heels.

She wore her long brunette locks down in a tousled style, with her trademark bangs framing her face.

Close: The trio of actresses were seen sharing a sweet moment together as they wrapped their arms around each other while posing for pictures ahead of their movie's screening

Leading lady: Dakota stars as one of the film's leading roles and stunned on her arrival to the photocall as she opted for an all-black outfit

Beauty: The movie talent opted for a risque wardrobe choice as she paired together a tailored Gucci blazer with a sheer, lacy black bra underneath

Gorgeous: Dakota left her double-breasted blazer jacket open to tease a look at her lingerie underneath as well as her enviable stomach

Stunning: Dakota paired her outfit with a pared back beauty look and wore her long brunette locks down in tousled waves

Chic: She further highlighted her incredibly toned frame with a pair of high-waisted trousers and strappy stiletto heels

High spirits: Dakota flashed a smile as she posed solo for waiting photographers

Pretty: The much-loved star left her trademark bangs down to frame her face

Centre stage: Dakota commanded attention as she stopped by the scheduled photocall

Covering up: Dakota was seen sporting a black face covering at times

Masking up: The star made sure to adhere to Covid-19 protocols as she made her way in front of the press board for the photocall

The movie talent opted for a pared back beauty look for the photocall, as she arrived sporting natural looking make-up that highlighted her flawless skin and included a nude-hued lip.

Dakota was in high spirits as she joined award-winning actress Olivia, 47, who stars alongside in The Lost Daughter, and filmmaker Maggie, 43, who directed the upcoming movie.

The trio displayed their close bond as they cosied up for photographs together, with all three stars smiling alongside each other and sharing a sweet moment together.

Elegant: Maggie stunned in a chic ensemble that paired together a gold buttoned blouse and longline blazer

Beaming: The Dark Knight actress couldn't hide the smile from her face as she arrived

Fashionista: Maggie paired her outfit with flared trousers and ditched heels for chic flats

Stand out from the crowd: Olivia Colman decided to ditch the all-black memo and opted for a smart white collared blouse and patterned trousers

Finishing touches: The award-winning star finished off her look with grey sling-back heels

Having a ball: She was seen enjoying a joke with her close friend and director Maggie

Energetic: The close women couldn't contain their excitement as they reunited in Venice

Care to share? The women were seen laughing as they caught up mid photoshoot

Sweet: Olivia and Maggie proved how strong their bond is offscreen with their sweet display

Chatting as they posed for pictures, Olivia, Maggie and Dakota were seen laughing and in high spirits.

Seeming to take style notes from Dakota, Maggie - who is the sister of actor Jake Gyllenhall - also opted for an all-black outfit for her latest appearance in Venice.

The Dark Knight star, who wrapped her arms around her movie's stars, put on a chic display as she paired together a gold buttoned blouse with flared trousers and a longline blazer jacket.

She wore her chopped locks in curls that were styled over to one side and sported a glam make-up look.

Triple threat: Olivia, Maggie and Dakota were all smiles ahead of their film's premiere

Three's a crowd: The trio were joined by Maggie's husband Peter Sarsgaard who also stars in upcoming movie The Lost Daughter

Suave: Peter cut a dapper figure in a dark two-piece suit and patterned shirt

Reservations: Maggie revealed at the festival she had her reservations about casting her partner in her directorial debut

Surprised: Maggie revealed her actor husband 'surprised her at every turn' on set

Olivia, meanwhile, stood out from her actress pals as she opted for a smart white collared blouse, patterned over-sized trousers and an elegant suede, grey sling-back court shoe.

The Lost Daughter is Maggie's directorial debut and stars Dakota and Olivia in the lead roles.

The movie - based on the 2006 novel of the same name by Elena Ferrante - follows the story of Olivia's character Leda, a college professor on a summer holiday at the seaside.

Leda becomes obsessed with a woman named Nina (played by Dakota) and her young daughter as she watches them play on the beach. She's then reminded of the terror and confusion she felt in early motherhood as she watches the mother-daughter duo, as well as their extended family.

Exciting: The Lost Daughter is Maggie's directorial debut and stars Dakota and Olivia in the lead roles as Nina and Leda respectively

Must watch: The movie is based on the 2006 novel of the same name by Elena Ferrante

Release: It was announced last month that Netflix had acquired the rights to air The Lost Daughter with the film scheduled for release on the streaming platform in December

Star-studded cast: The Lost Daughter follows the story of a college professor who becomes obsessed with a young woman and her daughter (pictured Olivia and Dakota in the film)

Reminded of the unconventional choices she made for her own daughter, Leda begins to unravel and becomes a prisoner of her own mind, unable to explain what has happened.

It was announced last month that Netflix had acquired the rights to air The Lost Daughter with the film scheduled for release on the streaming platform in December.

Also in attendance was Alba Rohrwacher, who stars in The Lost Daughter, and she was seen rubbing shoulders with her co-stars.

The movie boasts a stellar cast with Normal People actor Paul Mescal, Jessie Buckley, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Jack Farthing and Peter Sarsgaard - Maggie's husband - joining Dakota and Olivia onscreen.

On casting her husband in her directorial debut, Maggie said while speaking at the festival that she had reservations, but her partner 'surprised her at every turn', reports Deadline.

Time to shine: Also in attendance was Alba Rohrwacher who also stars in The Lost Daughter

Festival fever: Alba was seen posing for photographs sporting a black face covering

Photo ready: Ditching the mask, the actress looked stylish in a smart black pinafore dress, white shirt and boots

Gang's all here: Olivia, Maggie, Dakota, Peter and Alba represented the movie's stellar cast

New move: Maggie spoke of moving from acting into directing and revealed she was inspired to make the move while playing a porn director named Candy in TV series The Deuce

Candid: The actress turned filmmaker claimed that she saw directing as a 'better' job

Maggie revealed: 'To be completely honest, there was a moment when I thought maybe its not such a great idea to have Peter play the object of desire with an exquisite, gorgeous, intelligent young actress.

'I felt that way for around six weeks. Then something exploded in my mind and I thought, "youre so bourgeois". Ive been with Peter since I was 23 and I know he loves me and I thought, "there isnt anyone who could play that part like he could". Peter did exactly what I thought he would do. He surprised me at every turn.'

She also spoke of moving from acting into directing and revealed she was inspired to make the move while playing a porn director named Candy in TV series The Deuce.

Meanwhile, prior to the star-studded photocall in Venice, Dakota, was seen showing off her unique fashion credentials as she channeled the '70s while heading out in the Italian city.

Movie magic: Dakota showed off her unique fashion credentials as she wore quirky orange 70s-style sunglasses as she arrived at the Hotel Excelsior ahead of the premiere

Star power: The actress was spotted heading into the Hotel Excelsior in the Italian city

She stepped out sporting a pair of quirky orange-tinted shades and a silky black jacket with silver detailing, as she arrived at the Hotel Excelsior ahead of the The Lost Daughter's festival premiere.

The hotel is famed for hosting the Venice Film Festival since 1932.

The event takes place in Venice ahead of the city's film festival which is due to run from 1 September until 11 September.

Venice Film Festival is considered one of the three biggest festivals in the film world, alongside Berlin and Cannes and annually draws in the biggest names in Hollywood and across the globe.

While major events across the world were forced to cancel due to the coronavirus pandemic, Venice Film Festival still went ahead with its 77th festival in 2020 albeit with a 'restrained format'.
She's been on a break from filming for the Netflix reality show.

But it was back to work for Selling Sunset's Christine Quinn as she filmed with a glamorous new cast member on Manhattan beach in LA on Thursday.

The star, 31, cradled her son Christian, three months, and was joined by what appears to be a glamorous new cast member.

Gorgeous: Christine Quinn, 31, cradled her baby son Christian as she enjoyed a picnic on Manhattan beach in LA on Thursday

Christine carried her essentials in a furry pink purse that matched perfectly with the feathery trim on the cuffs of her sleeves.

Little Christain was in a baby blue jumpsuit and matching hat to protect his head from the LA sun.

Christine was joined by what appeared to be a new cast member on Selling Sunset.

The beauty wore a flowing backless white dress which donned a plunging neckline and balloon sleeves.

New cast? The star cradled her newborn son Christian and was joined by what appears to be a new glamorous cast member

Stunning: The unnamed member donned glamorous cat eye sunglasses which were embellished in rhinestones

The unnamed member donned glamorous cat eye sunglasses which were embellished in rhinestones.

She carried her baby who wore an adorable pink floral dress and matching hat.

Christine recently returned from a brief stay at the luxury Amangiri resort in the Arizona desert with her husband Christian Richard.

The blonde beauty took to Instagram to share some sizzling bikini snaps taken during her getaway.

Reminiscing: It comes after Christine took to Instagram to share some sizzling bikini snaps taken during her and Christian's recent desert getaway

Wow! Christine, who welcomed her son Christian in May, slipped her toned figure into a tiny lime green bikini

In two shots uploaded to her Instagram Story on Thursday, Quinn used the Amangiri resort's rustic exterior and picturesque skyline as her backdrop.

The star, who welcomed her son Christian in May, slipped her astonishingly toned figure into a tiny lime green bikini.

She had a patterned sarong tied loosely around her hips as she posed with one hand in her lengthy blonde hair.

Christine appeared to be wearing little to no makeup and rocked a bright white pedicure.

Luxe: Christine and Christian stayed at the luxury Amangiri resort, a destination frequented by several members of the Kardashian-Jenner clan in 2020

Though it's unclear exactly when the couple returned to Los Angeles, Christine was spotted out and about in the City Of Angels as early as Tuesday.

She has been busy filming scenes all around LA for the upcoming season of her hit Netflix reality series Selling Sunset in recent months.

As if the series needed anymore drama, Christine was notably absent from her co-star Heather Rae Young's recent bridal shower.

It was held at Fig & Olive on Sunday, August 29 ahead of her wedding to fellow reality star, Tarek El Moussa.

Busy bee: She has been busy filming scenes all around LA for the upcoming season of her hit Netflix reality series Selling Sunset; Christine is pictured in May

MIA: As if the series needed anymore drama, Christine was notably absent from her co-star Heather Rae Young's (pictured) recent bridal shower

Quinn once compared Heather and Tarek's relationship to Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt, a claim the couple didn't take too kindly.

On Amanda Hirsh's Not Skinny But Not Fat podcast late last year, Tarek said: 'Christine has a big mouth. She said some s**tty things about us. And that's about it. We're not really interested in dealing with her nonsense.'

Quinn told US Weekly in March: 'I dont regret saying those things at all. I mean, at the end of the day, Im a comedian and you know, its a show. We all say silly things. I talked to her probably a week ago. Shes super sweet, were on great terms. Im really happy for them that theyre getting married.'
Elton John appeared to be enjoying his luxurious Italian getaway as he headed headed out for lunch with his husband David Furnish on Friday.

The music legend, 74, looked in full holiday mode in a black floral shirt with matching shorts as he shaded from the sun wearing his iconic orange tinted sunglasses.

The gaggle of friends all looked relaxed as they stepped off Elton's luxury boat and into a restaurant in the village of Nerano.

Holiday mode: Elton John appeared to be enjoying his luxurious Italian getaway as he headed headed out for lunch with his husband David Furnish and a group of pals on Friday

Elton's typically loud outfit was paired with comfortable bright white trainers as he donned a black face mask to adhere to the Covid restrictions.

His husband David also looked fashionable in a patterned silk shirt and a straw hat.

The accessories didn't stop there, as he further shaded from the sun in brown lensed sunglasses.

Stylish as always: The music legend looked in full holiday mode as he slipped into a black floral shirt with matching shorts while from the sun with his iconic orange tinted sunglasses

Conversation: Elton and his husband David chatted in the restaurant surrounded by a group of friends

Joining the group of friends for their sun drenched lunch was Queer Eye's Antoni Porowski, who also looked summery in a patterned shirt and yellow shorts.

Their holiday comes after Sir Elton revealed acclaimed show It's A Sin made him realise 'how lucky he was' to escape the AIDS crisis in the 1980s.

He praised the Russell T Davies-penned Channel 4 drama and spoke of his plans to invite the cast round to his house for dinner, in a candid chat with Will Manning on The Official Big Top 40.

It's A Sin follows a group of friends throughout the eighties as their life of hedonistic partying is infiltrated by the emergence of the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

Famous friends: Joining the group of friends for their sun drenched lunch was Queer Eye's Antoni Porowski, who also looked summery in a patterned shirt and yellow shorts

Candid: The holiday comes after Sir Elton revealed acclaimed show It's A Sin made him realise 'how lucky he was' to escape the AIDS crisis in the 1980s (pictured 2020)

Sir Elton said he 'dearly loved' lead star and Years & Years frontman Olly Alexander and added: 'When I come back to England which is going to be soon, I'm going to have a dinner for all the cast of It's A Sin at our house because I love that programme so much.

'It changed my it didn't change my life but it made me realise how lucky I was to escape all that and to be reminded of what happened. And so Russell T Davies and the cast are going to come to dinner and we're going to have a laugh.'

In 2012, Sir Elton revealed he should be dead from Aids like his friends Freddie Mercury or Rock Hudson.

Close bond: The iconic musician praised the Russell T Davies-penned Channel 4 drama and spoke of his plans to invite the cast round his house for dinner (pictured with lead star Olly Alexander in May)

Acclaimed: It's A Sin follows a group of friends throughout the eighties as their life of hedonistic partying is infiltrated by the emergence of the HIV/AIDS pandemic

The rock superstar told the International AIDS conference in Washington DC that his years as a drink and drugs addict put him at high risk of contracting HIV. He has now been sober for more than 30 years.

He said: 'This young man hit absolute rock bottom. His life was a mess, he was spiralling out of control. He should have died. To be honest, he nearly did.

Inspirational Sir Elton set up the The Elton John AIDS Foundation in 1992 to support innovative HIV prevention, education programs, direct care and support services to people living with HIV.

He said: 'It changed my it didn't change my life but it made me realise how lucky I was to escape all that and to be reminded of what happened. And so Russell T Davies and the cast are going to come to dinner and we're going to have a laugh' (pictured 1976)
Lila Moss paid tribute to her father Jefferson Hack as she attended his 50th birthday party on Thursday evening.

The model - who Jefferson shares with ex Kate Moss - wowed in a crop top and hotpants as she took to the stage to make a speech for her dad.

Also among the attendees was Lady Mary Charteris, who was sure to document the occasion on Instagram.

Proud daughter: Lila Moss, 19, paid tribute to her father Jefferson Hack as she attended his 50th birthday party on Thursday evening

Alongside a slew of snaps, she penned: 'Beautiful speeches . Heavenly people . It was so fun celebrating you last night @jeffersonhack . Happy Birthday xxxxx'

Lila looked perfectly at home on the stage as she read her speech from her phone, smiling for the audience.

Also making a speech was legendary photographer Rankin, who also presented the Dazed Media co-founder with a portrait he'd taken of his friend in their younger years.

Icon: Jefferson was surrounded by his friends and loved ones as he held a party to celebrate his 50th birthday on Thursday evening

Dressed to party: Also among the attendees was Lady Mary Charteris, who was sure to document the occasion on Instagram

Jefferson and Kate - who dated from 2001-2004 with Lila being born in 2002 - have an amicable relationship and would ensure their daughter spent a regular amount of time with each of them in her childhood.

Back in 2016, Jefferson admitted that despite Lila having two famous parents, she found them both to be 'deeply uncool'.

Speaking to the Sunday Times Magazine, he explained his daughter keeps himself and her model mother rooted in the 'real' world.

Old friends: Also making a speech was legendary photographer Rankin, who also presented the Dazed Media co-founder with a portrait he'd taken of his friend in their younger years

Birthday boy: Lady Mary shared snaps from the bash, which saw Jefferson presented with a giant chocolate cake

Despite her mother's status as a bonafide British icon, thanks to her status in the fashion industry, and Jefferson's own achingly cool CV, Lila - wouldn't label her parents as cool.

'She thinks me and her mum are deeply uncool,' he explained. 'I dont think her music tastes are cool  Capital radio and Justin Bieber. She keeps me real.'

While Lila still has a good relationship with both parents, she is often seen out with mum Kate as she is signed to her modelling agency.
Beverley Turner was pictured for the first time since her ex-husband James Cracknell married Jordan Connell.

Olympian James, 49, tied the knot for a second time with American financier Jordan, 36, in a ceremony in Chelsea last Friday.

And a week on, This Morning presenter Beverley, 47, failed to raise a smile as she left a swimming session in West London on Friday.

Out and about: Beverley Turner, 47, cut a glum figure as she was seen for the first time since her ex husband James Cracknell remarried

Beverley's 'Happy' slogan jumper was a stark contrast to her stony-face as she left the swimming pool in a navy blue adidas jogging bottoms and grey ballet flats.

Despite her poker-face, the television personality, who has three children with James, posted a picture with her boyfriend James Pritchett, 32, following the wedding and wrote: 'Huge congratulations from us both to James Cracknell who gets married today to a wonderful woman who makes him happy.'

In a video from Cornwall, where she was on holiday, Beverley admitted declaring 'my ex-husband got married today' is 'quite a strange thing to say'.

Newlyweds: Double Olympic gold medal rower James Cracknell married for the second time last week, to American financier Jordan Connell, who is 13 years his junior

Glum? A week on, This Morning presenter Beverley, 47, failed to raise a smile as she left a swimming session in West London on Friday

Ironic: Her 'Happy' slogan jumper was a stark contrast to her stony-face as she left the pool

Beverley Turner, 47, was among first to congratulate her ex-husband on his wedding day (pictured) alongside a picture from a beach in Cornwall with her own younger lover James

But she said she was 'totally OK with it', adding: 'I'm happier now than I have been for many years and I know James is happier now than he has been for many years  and a big part of that is Jordan, his wife.'

She went on: 'You never have divorced parents as something that you're totally fine with.

'I just wanted to say that, but the other thing, I know that lots of people who are part of the brain injury world do follow me, even if you are in the darkest bits of those journeys - which you might be now - you do see the sun again at some point.'

Casual: She paired the sweatshirt with navy blue adidas jogging bottoms and grey ballet flats while walking down the street

Sporty: Beverley slung a huge pink and purple rucksack over her shoulder, and held her purse and car keys in her left hand

The past decade or so has often been turbulent for Cracknell.

In 2010 he nearly died when he was hit by a truck as he cycled across America. He suffered a severe brain injury which dramatically changed his personality, leaving him with epilepsy, a short temper and a lack of empathy.

Beverley helped nurse him back to health but previously said: 'A formerly quiet man, he couldnt stop talking but certainly stopped listening.

'I had my silent screams in the shower so the children wouldnt hear.'

They divorced after 17 years in 2019  the same year that Cracknell met his new wife while he was reading for a masters in human evolution at Peterhouse College, Cambridge, and she was studying at the universitys Judge Business School.
They isolated separately on their return to the UK from Majorca following their Love Island win nearly two weeks ago.

And Millie Court, 24, and Liam Reardon, 22, enjoyed a cosy walk together on Friday after they were reunited earlier this week.

Welshman Liam took to his Instagram Stories to give his one million followers a glimpse at his stroll with Millie, with the pair walking hand-in-hand as they headed out for the afternoon.

Back together: Millie Court, 24, and Liam Reardon, 22, enjoyed a cosy walk together on Friday after they were reunited earlier this week, walking hand-in-hand as they headed out

Liam opted for a grey hoodie with colourful logos dotted across it which he teamed with a pair of denim jeans.

Millie wore a top with a funky orange and brown pattern with a white jacket over the top.

She styled the look with a pair of blue jeans as she walked hand-in-hand with her reality star beau.

Happy couple: The pair have shared a slew of snaps on both of their Instagrams since returning to the UK, with the couple looking delighted to be in one another's company again

The pair have shared a slew of snaps on both of their Instagrams since returning to the UK, with the couple looking delighted to be in one another's company again after adhering to coronavirus travel restrictions and quarantining separately for 10 days following their return from Spain.

Millie showed off her chic style in a chocolate brown tube top and trouser suit as she stepped out with Liam for dinner at Array Essex in Romford this week.

The star, who chose to split her 50,000 prize with Liam when they were announced as the winners of this year's Love Island, showed off her flat stomach as she stood in front of Liam in an Instagram snap.

Young love: Welshman Liam took to his Instagram Stories to give his 1 million followers a quick glimpse at his stroll with Millie

Liam wore a brown and white shirt which he left open at the collar and a pair of trousers in the same pattern.

The couple chose to isolate far away from one another after they returned from the show as Millie headed home to her family and Liam stayed in a hotel in East London.

But Liam has been sure to keep the romance alive in the build up to their reunion and has been shown on social media sending Millie large flower arrangements.

Staying close: Millie wore a top with a funky orange and brown pattern with a white jacket over the top on the couple's walk

Taking to Instagram to share the bouquet last week, Millie wrote: 'I could cry. Liam organised a surprise delivery to me. You are the cutest. I love you.'

While on Love Island, Millie cheekily told statuesque Liam as they got to know each other: 'I dont think Ive ever met someone who is 66 and I find that extremely fit.'

The reunion comes after Liam and Millie discussed their future plans on This Morning last week as they embark on a long-distance relationship between Essex and Wales.

Keeping it casual: Liam opted for a grey hoodie with colourful logos dotted across it which he teamed with a pair of denim jeans

Admin assistant Millie revealed she and Chloe Burrows, 25, will be moving in together, while bricklayer Liam admitted that he's not going back to work after becoming a reality star, and instead will turn to flipping properties.

Speaking live from Essex to Eamonn Holmes and Ruth Langsford, Millie said of Liam: 'I'm really missing him. I regret saying I'd go home, I wish I was with him...'

Explaining their time out of the villa, Liam said: 'It's been overwhelming and so far we've done every step together so being a part now is difficult. I'm looking forward to the quarantine being over so we can be back together again.'

Date night: Millie showed off her chic style in a chocolate brown tube top and trouser suit as she stepped out with Liam for dinner at Array Essex in Romford this week

Of his feelings about Millie and what attracted him, Liam confessed: 'She's absolutely amazing and I find our personalities are on par, our sense of humour We're the exact same people you know?

'She is obviously absolutely amazing to look at and the way I feel about her, I've not felt like that about anyone else before you know? I want to look at her all day.

'Of course. I'm very grateful she gave me a second chance and I still want to make that up to her and I'll be doing that on the outside, when I'm given the chance out of quarantine.

'But we are boyfriend and girlfriend. We do love each other, but I'm still going to keep showing her what she means to me.'
She's been paired with Joshua, an insurance worker from West London, after first meeting at the altar.

And Amy Christophers has put her voluptuous curves on display at her viewing party to celebrate the launch of the new series of Married At First Sight at Yaz's restaurant in Essex on Thursday.

The former glamour model-turned-sports-journalist, 34, looked stunning in a busty gold silk midi dress.

Wow! Amy Christophers has put her voluptuous curves on display at her viewing party to celebrate the launch of the new series of Married At First Sight on Thursday

The brunette beauty looked like a golden goddess in the silky ensemble, which featured corset-style panelling, off-the-shoulder sleeves and a cheeky thigh slit in the skirt.

Amy stepped out in a pair of shiny gold heeled sandals, while she styled her luscious locks over to one side in a glamorous curled hairstyle.

The reality star looked glamorous as she posed for pictures with a full face of makeup including bold eyebrows, fluffy eyelashes and nude lipstick.

Golden goddess: The brunette beauty looked like a golden goddess in the silky ensemble, which featured corset-style panelling, off-the-shoulder sleeves and a cheeky thigh slit

Glamour model: Amy put her glamour model days to good use, offering a sultry gaze to the camera as she posed for pictures

She kept her look glitzy with a slew of sparkly accessories including pearl hair pieces and sparkly drop earrings.

Amy put her glamour model days to good use, offering a sultry gaze to the camera as she posed for pictures.

The star was in good company at the watch party, being joined by celebrity pals Love Island's Aaron Simpson, Ex On The Beach star Michael Griffiths, Too Hot To Handle star Robert Van Tromp and her Married At First Sight co-star Alexis Conomoux.

Good company: The star was in good company at the watch party, being joined by celebrity pals Love Island's Aaron Simpson (right), Ex On The Beach star Michael Griffiths (centre), Too Hot To Handle star Robert Van Tromp (left) and her Married At First Sight co-star Alexis Conomoux (right)

Laughter: The group had a fun time at her viewing party in Essex

Stellar arrivals: Amy was surrounded by stellar celebs including reality stars Robert and Aaron

Married At First Sight UK viewers have questioned the show's matchmakers after they paired 26-year-old 'player' groom Josh with Amy who's ready to settle down.

Last night on the E4 programme, 'ex player' Josh, who was 'a bit sceptical about marriage as a whole' until 'completing the single life', appeared to get cold feet when waiting for his bride for an hour after a water issue at her hotel caused her to be late.

And the situation went from bad to worse when he revealed his age to his wife, Amy, who seemed to be more eager to settle down and take the marriage seriously, said viewers.

Uh oh! Married At First Sight UK viewers have questioned the show's matchmakers after they paired 26-year-old 'player' groom Josh with Amy who's ready to settle down

Fans questioned the experts decision to pair unsure Josh with Amy after she revealed she had suffered a series of tragedies in recent years - including her mother having a stroke and nearly dying, the death of her unborn twins and being dumped by her fiance.

Amy left viewers feeling emotional when she opened about her devastating ordeals, explaining that she almost had everything she'd ever dreamed of when she fell pregnant with twins two years ago.

The happy news came a year after her fiance suddenly walked out on her, abruptly ending their engagement in 2018.

Questionable choice: Fans questioned the experts decision after she revealed she had suffered a series of tragedies in recent years

Sad ordeal: Amy has been rocked by her mother having a stroke and nearly dying, the death of her unborn twins and being dumped by her fiance.

Amy met someone new a year later, but the relationship fizzled out before she discovered she was expecting - however the 34-year-old's happy ending never happened.

She recalled: 'I got pregnant with twins. One died, and I had to medically terminate the other one due to complications.'

'That absolutely broke me. The two things I want is marriage and babies and I was so close to having both of those things and it didnt work out.

'For me the last straw was my mum having a stroke and she nearly died, that was a big eye opener and made me realise as an only child, when my mum goes, who do I have? I want that support system,' she added.

Relationship gurus Paul C. Brunson, Mel Schilling and Charlene Douglas matched Amy with fitness fan Josh, but cracks began to show when Amy realised their eight year age-gap.
She recently confirmed she's set to welcome a baby boy with her fireman husband Jason Carrion.

And Roxanne Pallett, 38, revealed on Friday that she often worries about her FDNY hero partner, 35, when he's out saving lives in death-defying rescues.

The former Emmerdale star wrote to MailOnline: 'I wait. I pray. I remind myself he's the strongest and smartest man I've ever known. He will be okay. He is okay. I tell myself this a lot.'

'I wait and pray: Roxanne Pallett revealed on Friday that she often worries about her FDNY hero partner when he's out saving lives in death-defying rescues

Reflecting on how her husband's heroic job has changed her life, Roxanne said: 'The last two years have humbled me to an extreme.

'From being a girl who stood on a red carpet poised with her hand fixed to her hip and a lame smile forced on her face in a vacuous vault of validation within showbiz, to now being a woman who stands on our front porch hoping to God that her husband's next shift will deliver a safe return for everyone involved.

'I glance at my phone while he's out there and to my relief there's always messages from him every hour which fills me with reassurance. But when it goes quiet, that's when I pause and pray to God that everything is okay.

'The horror stories my husband brings home to me are like something out of an action film, yet there's no director yelling 'cut' and these heroes aren't given a stunt double, nor the same paycheck or amount of acclaim as action stars like Will Smith or Tom Cruise.'

'He's the strongest and smartest man I've ever known': The former Emmerdale star's husband Jason Carrionworks for the New York City Fire Department

Roxanne sweetly admitted: 'My husband proudly wears a small heart shaped Union Jack on his FDNY helmet to keep me close. He tells me that the little notes I tuck into his bag are sources of encouragement which are kept proudly inside his firehouse locker next to my picture.'

Of their homelife, the soap star explained that when Jason arrives home 'disheveled' and 'sweating' from 24 hours without sleep after tackling burning buildings - he still finds time to make her feel special.

She gushed that her firefighter beau regularly picks her up pastries from a bakery on his way home 'as though he's just done a simple day at an office'.

Seizing any opportunity she can to support him in return, Roxanne said: 'I run him a bath and put his favourite WWE channel on whilst I cook him dinner. I know he will need an hour just to simmer and reboot. It's later that he will begin to open up and confide in me, spilling out the details of what he witnessed that day.

'The gym in our home is his sanctuary. Not only to maintain his stamina and physical strength for the job, but also as a mental therapy to release the horrors of what he's had to endure whilst out there. I look at him and he's a constant reminder to me that a measure of a man is based on his effort to help others, without credit.

'The horror stories my husband brings home to me are like something out of an action film': Roxanne remains supportive by running her husband baths and cooking him dinner

'I can always tell when it's been a heavy run on the truck or engine for my husband, not only from his voice being husky from the smoke inhalation or the bruised markings on his face from the mask - but from the look in his eyes when he walks in and embraces me extra tightly. These heroes never clock out of their job. Even when they step out of the 30lb bunker gear and wash the city dirt off their face, they still carry the images from their rescues.

'And even on deflating days where there's been no 'save' - I remind him that he is heroic far beyond the sirens, the smoke and the bunker gear. He is heroic because he is one of those very few in life who steps up when others step back. And that makes him my hero - every day.'

Jason was raised by a single mother on welfare support in a one bedroom rented flat in Brooklyn and pushed through adversity to join the Fire Academy after facing a gruelling boot camp.

Of his journey, Roxanne said proudly: 'Despite admitting that the years following his mother's untimely death were the worst time of his life, he maintained the courage to face daily trauma out there on the frontline putting others first.

'As he packs his bag [to go to work] and pulls me in for a kiss I breathe him in, holding on to that moment for just a second longer because I know this goodbye, like all the ones before, is something that I can't take for granted.'

The soap star candidly revealed they part ways by Jason telling her he loves her, while she replies 'be careful' before squeezing his hand in a final farewell.

'My hero every day': The soap star gushed that her firefighter husband has humbled her from her days in the showbiz limelight as she praised him for his selfless public service

Roxanne's reflection on her husband's career comes as she remembers the sacrifices made by the New York City Fire Department ahead of the twenty years anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks.

Jason's firehouse faces the World Trade Center where the attack took place in 2001: 'Little did I know that two decades later I'd be married to one of those FDNY heroes - New York's Bravest,' Roxanne gushed.

'The walls inside the firehouse are adorned with uplifting pictures, supportive mementos and precious torn and tattered reminders from that torturous morning of September 11th,' she said. 'If these walls could talk, they'd have some extraordinary stories.'

'The very landscape that held those heartbreaking images of destruction and damage, 20 years ago on September 11th. I, like many, remember being muted with shock and disbelief as those vivid moments unfolded on tv news screens. 343 firefighters lost their lives that day, some of whom weren't even on duty, but saw the tragedy unfold and ran in to help.

'There's something extraordinary about this 'FDNY brotherhood'. I felt it from the moment my husband brought me to his firehouse to meet his fellow firefighters when we began dating. They have such a generous aura, a strong but serene presence about them, it's almost like an original scent they all share and a unique language they all speak.

In memory: Jason's fire station is decorated with tributes to the 343 firefighters killed in the line of duty during the 9/11 attacks in New York two decades ago

'Beneath the prestigious uniform, even when off duty, they instantly step forward for you and run towards danger or mess, while others would instinctively hesitate or turn the other way. They all share the same components from the haunting early mornings to the frantic nights, sometimes 24 hours on the job with no sleep and constant sirens keeping them in an alert state of being ready for the unknown. I count many of these incredible heroes as friends now as they're our extended family.'

And Roxanne and Jason are set to welcome a new addition to their family as they announced they're expecting a baby boy last month.

Roxanne moved stateside after marrying Jason in January last year, two months after their engagement, before revealing their baby news earlier this year and the actress has been making the most of NYC's eateries to indulge her cravings.

On her delightful news, a thrilled Roxanne said: 'Our hearts melted when we found out. We can't wait to cuddle him! I'd always spiritually seen myself having a little boy so it's beautiful for that dream to come true...

'J is so excited, he's having adorable conversations with my tummy and kissing my bump constantly to feel him kick. And yes we've got a collection of cute little fireman outfits awaiting him so he can look just like daddy.'

Visit www.fdnyfoundation.org to support the official non-profit organization of the New York City Fire Department where donations promote awareness, training and support of members of the FDNY.
Amanda Kloots appeared on Instagram Friday morning to acknowledge what would have been her fourth wedding anniversary with her late husband Nick Cordero.

The 39-year-old dancer married the Broadway actor in 2017. Cordero was 41-years-old when he lost his battle with COVID-19 in 2020.

'Happy 4th wedding anniversary to us!' the blonde beauty wrote underneath the post which started with a minute-long video outtake from their September 3 nuptials.

In memoriam: Amanda Kloots appeared on Instagram Friday to acknowledge what would have been her fourth wedding anniversary with her late husband Nick Cordero

Looking back: The 39-year-old dancer married the Broadway actor in 2017

'Our wedding was one of the best days of my life and I'll never ever forget it,' she continued.

'I'll never forget our first look, our first kiss as husband and wife and our first dance.'

The post has over 94,000 likes from Amanda's 675,000 Instagram followers.

'You'll always be my husband, my angel now, but always the love of my life. Here's to us,' the TV personality concluded, adding a red heart emoji.

Reflecting: After the video, the co-host of the daytime show The Talk added several professional images from her wedding

Spreading positivity: 'You can only learn to love by loving,' the mom-of-one told followers in a 'positive thought of the day' message shared atop a stunning photo of the couple on their wedding day

After the video, the co-host of the daytime show The Talk added several professional images from her wedding.

So far the post has over 2,000 supportive comments from fans and friends.

Former co-host Sharon Osbourne dropped in to leave a single red heart emoji and no words.

The mom-of-one also went to Instagram Stories to continue the tribute.

Sentimental: 'You'll always be my husband, my angel now, but always the love of my life. Here's to us,' the TV personality concluded, adding a red heart emoji

Well-received: The post has over 94,000 likes from Amanada's 675,000 Instagram followers

'You can only learn to love by loving,' she told followers in a 'positive thought of the day' message shared atop a stunning photo of the couple on their wedding day.

They posed on a rooftop with the New York City skyline behind them.

Thursday night Kloots returned to Broadway as the hit musical Waitress re-opened and paid tribute to her late spouse. She was joined by family friend Zach Braff for the first performance since Broadway went dark due to COVID, and she even joined the cast on stage after the show.

Cordero originated the role of Earl when Waitress opened on Broadway in March 2016.

It was revealed earlier this week by the official Waitress Instagram account that they will honor Cordero with a new menu, which will be used in every show from now on.

Paying tribute: She was joined by family friend Zach Braff for the first performance since Broadway went dark due to COVID, and she even joined the cast on stage after the show
Clemence Poesy looked effortlessly chic as she stepped out for the opening ceremony of the 47th Deauville American Film Festival in Normandy on Friday night.

The French actress, 38, put on a stylish display in a black slip which she layered underneath a sheer black long-sleeved midi dress.

She showcased her lithe physique in the all-black ensemble as she attended the screening of Tom McCarthy's acclaimed film Stillwater.

Stylish: Clemence Poesy looked effortlessly chic as she stepped out for the opening ceremony of the 47th Deauville American Film Festival in Normandy on Friday night

Clemence stood confidently with her head held high as she posed for cameras before heading into the screening.

The film star's slinky dress blew in the wind on the breezy red carpet as she stood tall in a pair of strappy black stilettos.

She wore her goldden tresses in a neat bob, which she tucked behind her ears to showcase her glitzy diamond earrings.

Clemence showcased her natural beauty as she kept makeup to a minimum for the opening night of the film festival.

Stunning: The French actress, 38, put on a stylish display in a black slip which she layered underneath a sheer black long-sleeved midi dress

Clemence was joined at the event by Dylan Penn who put on a leggy display in a thigh-skimming tassled black dress.

The model looked flawless as she strutted onto the red carpet in a pair of black suede heels and toted a matching bedazzled clutch.

She let her caramel tresses cascade around her shoulders in loose beachy waves and accessorised with a chunky diamond neclace.

Meanwhile, actress Celeste Brunnquell kept things casual in a pair of white linen trousers and a black short-sleeved shirt for the Stillwater premiere.

Work it: Clemence was joined at the event by Dylan Penn who put on a leggy display in a thigh-skimming tassled black dress

Confidence: The model looked flawless as she strutted onto the red carpet in a pair of black suede heels and toted a matching bedazzled clutch

Laidback look: Meanwhile, actress Celeste Brunnquell kept things casual in a pair of white linen trousers and a black short-sleeved shirt for the Stillwater premiere

Stillwater stars Matt Damon and Camille Cottin and was met with rave reviews at the Cannes Film Festival.

Matt reportedly teared up during a five minute standing ovation following the premiere screening of Stillwater in France.

According to Twitter, Matt - an Oscar-winning writer as well as actor - became overwhelmed with emotion at the overwhelming positive reaction to the film.

He stars as a man who travels from Oklahoma to France to help his estranged daughter, who is in prison for a murder she says she didn't commit.

Camille plays the character Virginie, a French woman who aids him in his mission, while Abigail plays the role of Matt's daughter, Allison.
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Olivia Colman was a vision as she hit the red carpet at Venice Film Festival on Friday night for the premiere of The Lost Daughters.

The actress, 47, looked typically chic in a silver and black velvet suit as she joined her co-star in the movie Dakota Johnson and the project's director Maggie Gyllenhaal for the star-studded event.

The Crown star had her sense of style on display in the tailored number which featured a shiny lapel with statement buttons and trendy shoulder pads.

Beauty: Olivia Colman (centre) was a vision as she hit the red carpet at Venice Film Festival on Friday night for the premiere of Lost Daughters with showstopping Dakota Johnson (right) and Maggie Gyllenhaal (left)

She completed her look with a pair of glitzy silver shoes, a dark blue satin clutch and dramatic De Beers earrings as she put on a confident display for the cameras.

The British star wore her short brunette hair swept back and opted for a glamorous makeup look complete with a light pink lip.

Meanwhile Dakota, 31, looked incredible in a plunging silver gown which featured glitzy tassels over the sheer flowing skirt.

The see-through material was embellished with colourful jewels and the inbuilt belt showed off her incredible figure while she wore her dark tresses in tousled waves over her shoulders.

Maggie, 43, opted for a sophisticated look, wearing a high neck navy velvet floor length dress over a white shirt as she posed with her leading ladies and her supportive brother Jake who wore a white suit.

Together: The actress, 47, looked typically chic in a silver and black suit as she joined her co-star in the movie Dakota and the project's director Maggie for the star-studded event

Star: She completed her look with a pair of glitzy silver shoes, a dark blue satin clutch and dramatic De Beers earrings as she put on a confident display for the cameras

Commanding attention: Meanwhile Dakota, 31, looked incredible in a plunging silver gown which featured glitzy tassels over the sheer flowing skirt

Friends: The Lost Daughter is Maggie's directorial debut and stars Dakota and Olivia (pictured together) in the lead roles

Lovely: Maggie, 43, opted for a sophisticated look, wearing a high neck navy velvet floor length dress over a white shirt as she posed with her leading ladies

The Lost Daughter is Maggie's directorial debut and stars Dakota and Olivia in the lead roles.

The movie - based on the 2006 novel of the same name by Elena Ferrante - follows the story of Olivia's character Leda, a college professor on a summer holiday at the seaside.

Leda becomes obsessed with a woman named Nina (played by Dakota) and her young daughter as she watches them play on the beach. She's then reminded of the terror and confusion she felt in early motherhood as she watches the mother-daughter duo, as well as their extended family.

Plot: The movie - based on the 2006 novel of the same name by Elena Ferrante - follows the story of Olivia's character Leda, a college professor on a summer holiday at the seaside

Stylish: Olivia had made a name for herself most recently starring as The Queen in Netflix's The Crown

Glam: The see-through material was embellished with colourful jewels and the inbuilt belt showed off her incredible figure while she wore her dark tresses in tousled waves over her shoulders

Amazing: The movie boasts a stellar cast with Normal People actor Paul Mescal, Jessie Buckley, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Jack Farthing and Peter Sarsgaard - Maggie's husband - joining Dakota and Olivia onscreen

Crew: Alberto Barbera, Director Maggie Gyllenhaal, Olivia Colman, Dakota Johnson and Alba Rohrwacher at the event on Friday

Reminded of the unconventional choices she made for her own daughter, Leda begins to unravel and becomes a prisoner of her own mind, unable to explain what has happened.

It was announced last month that Netflix had acquired the rights to air The Lost Daughter with the film scheduled for release on the streaming platform in December.

Also in attendance was Alba Rohrwacher, who stars in The Lost Daughter, and she was seen rubbing shoulders with her co-stars.

Work it: Dakota posed for photographers upon arrival at the premiere of the film on Friday night

Plan: It was announced last month that Netflix had acquired the rights to air The Lost Daughter with the film scheduled for release on the streaming platform in December

Upcoming: On casting her husband in her directorial debut, Maggie said while speaking at the festival that she had reservations, but her partner 'surprised her at every turn', reports Deadline

Close: Peter Sarsgaard and his wife Maggie looked loved up as they stepped out on the red carpet together

Romance: Sarsgaard began a romantic relationship with actress Maggie Gyllenhaal, the sister of his close friend Jake Gyllenhaal, in 2002

The movie boasts a stellar cast with Normal People actor Paul Mescal, Jessie Buckley, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Jack Farthing and Peter Sarsgaard - Maggie's husband - joining Dakota and Olivia onscreen.

On casting her husband in her directorial debut, Maggie said while speaking at the festival that she had reservations, but her partner 'surprised her at every turn', reports Deadline.

Maggie revealed: 'To be completely honest, there was a moment when I thought maybe its not such a great idea to have Peter play the object of desire with an exquisite, gorgeous, intelligent young actress.

Sweet: In April 2006, Maggie (pictured) and Peter announced their engagement, and on May 2, 2009, they married in a small ceremony in Brindisi, Italy

Stylish ladies: Olivia put her arm around Dakota as they posed for the cameras at the film festival together

Big event: The city's famous film festival is due to run from 1 September until 11 September

Pals: Dakota put on an animated display with Alessandro Michele who rocked a bright orange suit

Pose: Dakota stood for pictures with Luca Guadagnino at the event who looked suave in a dark suit

Commanding attention: Dakota made sure all eyes were on her as she made her way along the red carpet

Support: The trio held hands as they stood for pictures together at the premiere

Kind: Jake Gyllenhaal was every inch the supportive brother as he attended the premiere for his sister Maggie's movie on Friday

Handsome: Jake wore his curly locks swept back off his handsome face and sported a smattering of stuble across his chiselled features

Stylish: Alessandro looked great in the orange suit which had a double-breasted design, which he teamed with shiny black shoes

Siblings: Nightcrawler star Jake sweetly held Maggie's hand as they walked the red carpet together at the screening for the film she has written and directed

Unique: Alba Rohrwacher showed off her quirky sense of style in a long black skirt

Revealing: Aida Yespica showed off some leg in a daring thigh-split gown

Pink: Cristina Fogazzi aka Estetista Cinica and Mauro Marcolin attended the red carpet event together

'I felt that way for around six weeks. Then something exploded in my mind and I thought, "youre so bourgeois". Ive been with Peter since I was 23 and I know he loves me and I thought, "there isnt anyone who could play that part like he could". Peter did exactly what I thought he would do. He surprised me at every turn.'

She also spoke of moving from acting into directing and revealed she was inspired to make the move while playing a porn director named Candy in TV series The Deuce.

The city's famous film festival is due to run from 1 September until 11 September.

Venice Film Festival is considered one of the three biggest festivals in the film world, alongside Berlin and Cannes and annually draws in the biggest names in Hollywood and across the globe.

While major events across the world were forced to cancel due to the coronavirus pandemic, Venice Film Festival still went ahead with its 77th festival in 2020 albeit with a 'restrained format'.

Striking: Dakota looked elegant in her dress and opted for a glamorous makeup look with a darker pink lip

Youthful: Olivia looked glowing on the night opting for a natural makeup look that showed off her pretty features
Angeline Jolie and Salma Hayek are co-starring in the Marvel film The Eternals.

And the two Hollywood veterans proved on Friday that they have become fast friends as the Oscar-winning Maleficent actress, 46, was seen with the Frida star during her 55th birthday celebrations.

The ex of Brad Pitt even participated as the Hollywood beauty let her face be pushed into a white cake while her pals chanted 'Mordida.'

Pals: Angeline Jolie and Salma Hayek are co-starring in the Marvel film The Eternals together. And the two Hollywood veterans proved on Friday that they have become fast friends

Fun: The Oscar-winning Maleficent actress, left, was seen with the Frida star, right, during her 55th birthday celebrations

Mordida - which means 'bite' in Spanish - is a Mexican tradition at birthday parties.

Usually the person who is having the birthday gets their hands pulled back while their face is pushed into the cake, which is typically a fluffy and creamy tres leches.

The guests yell Mordida! over and over.

And Angelina was seen doing some of the pushing herself as her hand was on Salma's back.

Jolie was dressed in all black with black high heels with her long brunette hair worn down as she joined in the chant.

Hayek was in blue with boots and a long necklace and her dark hair down.

Really? Jolie was stunned when the Hollywood beauty let her face be pushed into a white cake while her pals chanted Mordida

Bite: Mordida - which means 'bite' in Spanish - is a Mexican tradition at birthday parties

The family chanted Mordida as Hayek gets nervous for the dunk but seems prepared as she holds her locks back.

'My brother @hayekstudio and me trying to teach Angie how to do the mexican mordida @angelinajolie Mi hermano sami y yo ensenandole a #anjelinajolie como se hace la mordida!' wrote the mother-of-one in her caption.

Angie and Salma have a big movie to promote this fall.

Up for it: Usually the person who is having the birthday gets their hands pulled back while their face is pushed into the cake, which is typically a fluffy and creamy tres leches, while the guests yell Mordida! over and over

Almost there: Jolie was dressed in all black with black high heels with her long brunette hair worn down as she joined in the chant

The Eternals comes out on November 5, 2021.

Directed by Chloe Zhao, the film has an ensemble cast with Jolie and Hayek joined by Kit Harrington, Richard Madden and Gemma Chan.

The Eternals is an action movie about a race of immortal beings with superhuman powers who have secretly lived on Earth for thousands of years, reunite to battle the evil Deviants.

Strong lady: Angelina has her hand on Salma's back as she pushes the star's face into the cake, nose and all

Oy! In this image Salma has a mouth of cake after biting the dessert; her family pushed her face into the cake

Dressed down: Hayek was in blue with boots and a long necklace and her dark hair down

Shocked: Angelina covered her face with her hands as she laughed during the Mordida ritual

Hilarious: The Hollywood pinup stars have a good laugh after the Mordida game ends

Their big film: The Eternals comes out on November 5, 2021. Directed by Chloe Zhao, the film has a big ensemble cast with Jolie, far left, and Hayek joined by Richard Madden, center, and Gemma Chan, far right

Jolie plays Thena and Hayek is Ajak.

This post comes the same day Angelina released her new book, Know Your Rights and Claim Them, written with human rights lawyer Geraldine Van Bueren, one of the original drafters of the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

The tome aims to equip kids with the knowledge to safely challenge injustices.

'So many children are in harm's way across the world and we're simply not doing enough,' Jolie told Reuters in an interview.

Author: Also on Friday, Jolie said she hopes to empower children around the world with tools to 'fight back' for their rights with a book she has written with Amnesty International

'These are their rights, decided years ago based on what would make them healthy, balanced, safe and stable adults.'

Jolie, special envoy for UN refugee agency UNHCR, said she hoped the book would also remind governments of their commitment to the global treaty enshrining children's civil, social, political and economic rights.

'We spent a lot of time blocking those rights, so this book is to help the kids have a tool book to say "these are your rights, these are things you need to question to see how far you, depending on your country and circumstance, are from accessing those rights, what are your obstacles, others that came before you and fought, ways you can fight."'

A good mommy: The Vogue favorite seen with Shiloh, Vivienne, Zahara and Knox in 2019; she has a total of six children

The Salt actress added: 'So it's a handbook to fight back.'

The mother-of-six said she put up the U.N convention in her home for her children, but was surprised to learn her own country, the United States, has not ratified it.

'That infuriated me and made me start to question what does that mean?' said the ex of Brad Pitt.

'So for each country, what is this idea of, you have the right to an education ... but then why is it so many children are out of school? Why is it the girls in Afghanistan are being harmed if they go?' she said.

More from her Instagram page: Jolie shared this image of daughter Zahara reading The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison on Friday with the caption: 'End of #summerreading. These are some of the favorites in our house. Would love to know yours'

Another little one: And her daughter Shiloh was seen looking at The Dark Lady by Akala

The book addresses identity, justice, education and protection from harm, among other issues. It provides guidance on becoming an activist, being safe and a glossary of terms and organizations.

'Through the book, you have to find your own path forward, because we are very concerned about the safety of children. We don't want children just running around screaming for their rights and putting themselves in danger,' Jolie said.

The book is peppered with examples of powerful young voices from around the world, including Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai, climate activist Greta Thunberg and 15-year-old Palestinian journalist Janna Jihad.

'I was trying to ... show the world what Palestinian children face on a daily basis,' Jihad, who lives in the village of Nabi Salih, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, told Jolie and other young activists in a video call, attended by Reuters, where they discussed their campaign work.
Selling Sunset stars Christine Quinn and Davina Potratz put on a fashion show as they stepped out for lunch in Hollywood on Friday.

The luxury real estate agents looked glamorous in short skirts and heels that showed off their toned legs.

Christine and Davina have been busy filming scenes for the hit Netflix show's fourth season, which is expected to be released later this year.

Stylish: Selling Sunset stars Christine Quinn and Davina Potratz put on a fashion show as they stepped out for lunch on Friday

Quinn, 31, wore a multi-colored long-sleeved crop top that had an optical illusion pattern. The new mom bared a sliver of her taut midriff in a miniskirt that matched her top.



The blonde beauty's long wavy tresses fell almost to her waist. She held a small rainbow-print alligator handbag and a pair of hot pink plastic shades.

Christine accessorized with several chunky rings, a watch with an orange leather strap and gold earrings.

Eye-catching: Quinn, 31, wore a multi-colored long-sleeved crop top that had an optical illusion pattern

The Playboy South Africa cover star sported neon green pumps as she walked arm in arm with her costar. She paused to lean her head on Davina's shoulder and close her eyes with a smile.

Davina rocked a white double-breasted coat dress with gold buttons and flap pockets. The dress had a deep V neckline that accentuated the television personality's ample cleavage.

The stunning German-Native American model wore her long brunette locks down and smiled widely as she strolled with Quinn.

Chic: Davina rocked a white double-breasted coat dress with gold buttons and flap pockets

She added more flair to her ensemble with a pair of glitzy gold pumps. Davina carried an aqua blue square box bag and she accessorized with dangly gold earrings and oversized rings.

In July 2021, Davina told Express.co.uk that fans would find the new season very entertaining.

She said, 'What I can tease is that we have bigger, better houses, new cast members, changing dynamics, avant-garde fashion, more babies and next-level drama that we know you love.'

In what may be an indication of the drama to come, Christine was notably absent from her co-star Heather Rae Young's recent bridal shower, which was attended by all of the other Selling Sunset ladies including Davina.

It was held at Fig & Olive on Sunday, August 29 ahead of her wedding to fellow reality star, Tarek El Moussa.

Busy bee: She has been busy filming scenes all around LA for the upcoming season of her hit Netflix reality series Selling Sunset; Christine is pictured in May

MIA: As if the series needed anymore drama, Christine was notably absent from her co-star Heather Rae Young's (pictured) recent bridal shower

Celebrating: Davina did attend the bridal shower which was held at the Fig & Olive restaurant on Sunday, August 29

Quinn once compared Heather and Tarek's relationship to Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt, a claim the couple didn't take too kindly.

On Amanda Hirsh's Not Skinny But Not Fat podcast late last year, Tarek said: 'Christine has a big mouth. She said some s**tty things about us. And that's about it. We're not really interested in dealing with her nonsense.'

Quinn told Us Weekly in March: 'I don't regret saying those things at all. I mean, at the end of the day, I'm a comedian and you know, it's a show. We all say silly things. I talked to her probably a week ago. She's super sweet, we're on great terms. I'm really happy for them that they're getting married.'
She recently starred in the drama film Flag Day alongside her award-winning father Sean.

And Dylan Penn looked every inch the leading lady as she took to the red carpet at the 47th Deauville American Film Festival in Normandy on Friday night.

The 30-year-old actress put on a leggy display in a thigh-skimming tasselled black dress as she attended the screening of Tom McCarthy's acclaimed film Stillwater.

Work it: Clemence was joined at the event by Dylan Penn who put on a leggy display in a thigh-skimming tasselled black dress

Dylan looked flawless as she strutted onto the red carpet in a pair of black satin heels and toted a matching bedazzled clutch.

She let her caramel tresses cascade around her shoulders in loose beachy waves and accessorised with a chunky diamond neclace.

The actress accentuated her endless pins in the pointy-toed stilettos, which featured an eye-catching peerspex heel.

Dylan looked upbeat as she smized at cameras before heading into the screening and accentuated her natural beauty with a brush of blusher and light pink lipstick.

Confidence: The model looked flawless as she strutted onto the red carpet in a pair of black satin heels and toted a matching bedazzled clutch

Finishing touch: She let her caramel tresses cascade around her shoulders in loose beachy waves and accessorised with a chunky diamond neclace

Out and about: Dylan looked upbeat as she smized at cameras before heading into the screening

Gorgeous: She accentuated her natural beauty with a brush of blusher and light pink lipstick and painted her short nails black for the outing

Dylan placed a collection of black feathers into her tousled tresses as she added a boho chic twist to her chic ensemble.

The star kept things covid-safe as she sported a black protective face mask as she made very way into the screening venue.

Keeping her essentials close to hand, the daughter of Sean Penn rummaged through her clutch to find her phone.

Festival vibes: Dylan placed a collection of black feathers into her tousled tresses as she added a boho chic twist to her chic ensemble

Safety first: The star kept things covid-safe as she sported a black protective face mask as she made very way into the screening venue

Stillwater stars Matt Damon and Camille Cottin and was met with rave reviews at the Cannes Film Festival.

Matt reportedly teared up during a five minute standing ovation following the premiere screening of Stillwater in France.

According to Twitter, Matt - an Oscar-winning writer as well as actor - became overwhelmed with emotion at the overwhelming positive reaction to the film.

He stars as a man who travels from Oklahoma to France to help his estranged daughter, who is in prison for a murder she says she didn't commit.

Camille plays the character Virginie, a French woman who aids him in his mission, while Abigail plays the role of Matt's daughter, Allison.

Taking calls: Keeping her essentials close to hand, the daughter of Sean Penn rummaged through her clutch to find her phone
Kathryn Hunter is from McMinn County and holds a bachelor's degree in Forest Resource Management from the University of Idaho and a Master of Forestry from Yale University. She has worked with the USDA Forest Service locally as well as living and working in natural resource management and protected area conservation in eight foreign countries.
Stacia Mac, the Atlanta-based manager of Jamaicas Queen of Dancehall Spice, was forced to fire shots at multiple armed intruders who invaded her ATL mansion recently, which ultimately forced them to flee the scene.

Mac, 40, who is also the mother and manager of rapper Polo G, took to Instagram on Thursday (September 2) to recount the frightening experience in a post that was later removed by the social media platform. She revealed that the armed men broke down her basement door and entered the premises.

Mac uploaded the frightening clips from her surveillance cameras which confirmed that the men were holding guns. She subsequently opened fire, which was enough to cause the group of men to run out of the home.

I recently had an attempted break-in at my home, she revealed. At least three men attempted to break in (youll hear the assailant on camera say yall ready?! ) In real time on my camera I witnessed as an intruder kicked in my basement door. While multiple intruders flocked to other entry points of my home. I began to open fire upon them, she wrote.

The celebrity manager said her family is safe thankfully but wants culprits found. She is offering a $10,000 reward for anyone that can provide information regarding the identity of any of the intruders.

My family is safe, by Gods grace. In this situation you have only two choices; Fight or flight. I refused to be a victim in my home! I will not rest until I know WHO is responsible, she continued.

In several posts shared on social media about the incident, many commended Mac on her bravery. Spice responded to her statement regarding the shooting saying, I Began to open fire Yesssss AS YOU SHOULD . Im sooo glad youre safe. God is in Control.

As a result of the dreadful incident, her rap star son Polo G is not taking any chances and has hired 24-hour security at the Atlanta home to protect his mother and family. He is said to have hired 24 hour permanent armed guards to help keep his family safe as well. The rapper purchased the estate as a gift to his mom just 7 months ago in February.

Stacia Mac is the founder of ODA Management, an entertainment company. She recently included a new endeavor titled House Of Legends and announced a new partnership with Geffen Records.

In this new partnership, Mac will seek out emerging talent and help distribute and promote their music under the Geffen Records umbrella, owned by Universal Music Group. Mac will work closely with Geffen Records General Manager, Lee LHeureux, who has overseen the labels growth development and executive expansion.

When I got into management with Polo G, I always knew I wanted to grow but also understood the importance of timing. ODA Management grew into ODA Records and Im so excited to now launch a new company in partnership with Geffen Records. Ive long been committed to developing talent and this serves as another platform for me to do so with independent artists. Lee and his team are incredible partners who bring tremendous expertise and are equally committed to nurturing creators. Im confident this partnership will be fruitful.

ODA Management (Only Dreamers Achieve) was founded by Mac in 2018, in conjunction with her son Polo Gs decision to pursue a career in entertainment. She quickly steered his career toward not one, but two platinum albums, as well as chart-topping singles and billions of streams. Additionally, she helped Polo G create and launch his own record label ODA/Capalot Records in partnership with Columbia Records.

Other ODA Management clients include Asian Doll and TBaby.
BERKELEY, Calif. (AP)  Apple is indefinitely delaying plans to scan iPhones in the U.S. for images of child sexual abuse following an outcry from security and privacy experts who warned the technology could be exploited for other surveillance purposes by hackers and intrusive governments.

The postponement announced Friday comes a month after Apple revealed it was getting ready to roll out a tool to detect known images of child sexual abuse. The tool would work by scanning files before they're uploaded to its iCloud back-up storage system. It had also planned to introduce a separate tool to scan users encrypted messages for sexually explicit content.

Apple insisted its technology had been developed in a way that would protect the privacy of iPhone owners in the U.S. But the Cupertino, California, company was swamped criticism from security experts, human rights groups and customers worried that the scanning technology would open a peephole exposing personal and sensitive information.

Based on feedback from customers, advocacy groups, researchers, and others, we have decided to take additional time over the coming months to collect input and make improvements before releasing these critically important child safety features, Apple said in an update posted above its original photo-scanning plans.

Apple never set a specific date for when the scanning technology would roll out, beyond saying it would occur some time this year. The company is expected to unveil its next iPhone later this month, but it's unclear if it will use that event to further discuss its change in plans for scanning the devices in the U.S.

The intense backlash to the scanning technology was particularly bruising for a company that has made personal privacy a marketing mantra. Apple contends it is more trustworthy than other major technology companies such as Google and Facebook that vacuum up information about people's interests and location to help sell digital ads. Apple CEO Tim Cook is known to repeat the catchphrase Privacy is a fundamental human right.

The photo scanning technology was a really big about-face for Apple," said Cindy Cohn, executive director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, one of the most vocal critics of the company's plans. If you are going to take a stand for people's privacy, you can't be scanning their phones."

Cohn applauded Apple for taking more time to reassess its plans and urged the company to talk to a broader range of experts than it apparently did while drawing up its scanning blueprint in its typically secretive fashion.

Matthew Green, a top cryptography researcher at Johns Hopkins University and another outspoken critic of Apple, also supported the delay. He suggested the company talk to technical and policy communities and the general public before making such a big change that threatens the privacy of everyones photo library.

You need to build support before you launch something like this, Green said. This was a big escalation from scanning almost nothing to scanning private files.

When Apple announced the scanning technology last month, Green warned that the system could be used to frame innocent people by sending them seemingly innocuous images designed to trigger matches for child pornography. That could fool Apples algorithm and alert law enforcement.

Not long after Green and privacy advocates sounded warnings, a developer claimed to have found a way to reverse-engineer the matching tool, which works by recognizing the mathematical fingerprints that represent an image.

Apple traditionally has rejected government demands for data and access to devices that it believes are fishing expeditions or risk compromising the security of its customers or devices.

In a highly publicized act of defiance, Apple resisted an FBI demand in 2016 that the company crack the code protecting an iPhone used by one of the killers during a mass shooting in San Bernardino, California. It argued at the time that it would be opening a digital backdoor that could be exploited by hackers and other unauthorized parties to break into devices. In that instance, Apple was widely praised by civil rights and privacy groups.



O'Brien reported from Providence, Rhode Island. AP Business Writer Kelvin Chan contributed to this story from London.
NICOSIA, Cyprus (AP)  Cyprus will start giving COVID-19 booster shots to people over 65, those with weakened immune systems irrespective of age and health care professionals, the health minister said Thursday.

Michalis Hadjipantela said the shots will be given to those who are eligible once a six-month period elapses from the time they completed their vaccination.

Earlier Thursday the European Unions infectious diseases agency urged countries to push ahead with their primary vaccination programs and played down the need for booster shots.

Hadjipantela said expanding the booster shot program to include other age groups will depend on the recommendations of a medical advisory committee.

Cyprus has ample vaccine stocks to cover booster shot needs, Hadjipantela has told the Associated Press.

The east Mediterranean island nation follows countries such as France which on Wednesday became the first big EU country to start administering booster shots of COVID-19 vaccine to people over 65 and those with underlying health conditions. Spanish health authorities are considering similar action.

The delta variant has swept through Cyprus in recent weeks, pushing infection rates to their highest since the start of the pandemic. But the virus spread has abated and Hadjipantela said the health care system is holding up well as admissions appear to be dropping.

Official statistics show that as of the end of August 74.2% of Cyprus adult population was fully vaccinated, while 78.6% had received at least one shot.

___

Follow all of APs pandemic coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic, https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-vaccine and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak
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For Release: Friday, September 3, 2021

DEC and Adirondack Land Trust Announce Addition of 250 Acres to Forest Preserve on Moxham Mountain

Acquisition Increases Public Access and Recreational Opportunities

The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) and Adirondack Land Trust today announced the addition of 250 acres to the Forest Preserve on Moxham Mountain between Minerva, Essex County and North Creek, Warren County. The acquisition will increase public access to the south side of Moxham Mountain for hiking and rock climbing.

"Working with partners like the Adirondack Land Trust, New York is protecting the Adirondack Forest Preserve for future generations while providing visitors with new opportunities for recreation. The addition of 250 acres on Moxham Mountain is a great example of how land conservation leverages environmental and economic benefits for New Yorkers and visitors alike," said DEC Commissioner Basil Seggos. "DEC partnerships with land trusts are vital to achieving our conservation goals, and we look forward to continuing to work together to protect and enhance our shared environment."

"The Adirondack Land Trust has always focused on how protected lands can benefit communities," said Adirondack Land Trust Executive Director Mike Carr. "We are proud to partner with DEC and the Town of Chester to help conserve a beloved local landmark. This is an example of how a small but strategic land purchase can have wider impact and protect New York's collective investment in the Forest Preserve."

The Adirondack Land Trust purchased much of the south face of Moxham Mountain in 2019 from the Brassel and Zack families and the Brassel estate for $160,000. On Aug. 6, the land was transferred to New York State for addition to the Forever Wild Forest Preserve, in accordance with the family's wishes. DEC and the Student Conservation Association opened a northside trail to Moxham's 2,418-foot summit in 2012, as part of the Vanderwhacker Mountain Wild Forest. The current 2.7-mile trail climbs 1,152 feet and offers more solitude than some of the Adirondacks' popular peaks.

"The town of Chester looks forward to this opening up more public access to Moxham Mountain. This is right in line with our comprehensive recreation master plan, and it affords the public more opportunity to access Moxham and the surrounding area," said Chester Town Supervisor Craig Leggett.

"This exceptional Adirondack landmark will remain forever undeveloped and beautiful, and eventually accessible to those who want to enjoy its unique terrain. Moxham's cliffs command attention and challenge hikers to reach the top, where they can enjoy views of Gore Mountain and the Hudson River to the south and the High Peaks to the north," said Mary Brassel Zack, who grew up in the Adirondacks and now lives in Pennsylvania, and whose parents bought the land in the 1950s.

The mission of the Adirondack Land Trust is to forever conserve the forests, farmlands, waters, and wild places that advance the quality of life of communities and the ecological integrity of the Adirondacks. The land trust has protected 26,710 acres since its founding in 1984. To learn more, visit the Adirondack Land Trust website (leaves DEC's website) or contact info@adirondacklandtrust.org, (518) 576-2400.

Photos Courtesy of the Adirondack Land Trust (leaves DEC's website).


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Since the A K Rajan commission had found out that NEET was detrimental to students from poor and rural backgrounds gaining medical admission, a committee of secretaries, headed by the Chief Secretary, was formed to come up with a solution.  DC file photo

Chennai: The State government would promulgate an Act indicating the need for elimination of NEET for admission to medical courses and obtain the Presidents assent to it, Health Minister Ma Subramanian said on Thursday.

In the policy note for his department, presented in the Assembly, Subramanian mentioned that the State had been consistently opposing NEET and recalled the steps taken by the DMK government after it took over in May.

Since the A K Rajan commission had found out that NEET was detrimental to students from poor and rural backgrounds gaining medical admission, a committee of secretaries, headed by the Chief Secretary, was formed to come up with a solution.

Based on the committees recommendation, the government has decided to promulgate the Act, which would ensure social justice and protect all vulnerable student communities from being discriminated against in medical admissions, the policy note said.

Participating in the debate on the demand for grants for the department, AIADMK member A Govindasamy said that during the AIADMK regime 11 new medical colleges were started in the State, besides obtaining permission for AIIMS.

Subramanian replied the permission for AIIMS was given for many States in the country and the institutes had almost come up in all the other States, whereas in Tamil Nadu nothing more than a brick was laid.

Even that brick was taken away by Udhayanidhi Stalin during the election campaign, said the Health Minister, adding that necessary follow up had been done by the DMK after it assumed power, resulting in a team inspecting the site and initiating work for the project.

The AIADMK had no right to take any credit for the AIIMS project in Tamil Nadu, Subramainian said, also pointing to the State standing first in wastage of Covid-19 vaccine during the AIADMK rule and standing first in vaccination in DMK rule.

Subramanian, who made 110 announcements relating to the health department, said Rs 4280 core, recommended for the State by the 15th Finance Commission would be spent on developing hospitals at various levels across the State, starting from public health centres to peripheral hospitals, and converting them all into Goodlife for All centres.

In Chennai, 13 new urban PHCs would be opened at a cost of Rs 75 lakh each and to strengthen the 108 Ambulance Service, 188 new vehicles would be added to the existing fleet.

The Chief Ministers comprehensive Medical Insurance Scheme would continue for another five years with an allocation of Rs 1,248.29 crore for this year. All accredited journalists and their families would be included in the scheme as the income ceiling has been removed.

Envisaging the expansion of health care facilities in all government facilities, starting from medical college hospitals to PHCs, the government had announced a slew of schemes aimed at developing medical infrastructure with a view to caring for people of all ages, starting from newborns to the elderly.

Geriatric care centres will be set up in all district headquarters hospitals to treat dementia and doctors would be appropriately trained with the help of specialists and suicide prevention facilities would be opened by roping in NGOs for counselling.

With a view to eradicating tuberculosis (TB) by the year 2025, the government proposed to buy 10 x-ray equipment filled vans to do the screening at a cost of Rs 7 crore and for special children, 16 hospitals would be equipped with sensory therapeutic facilities at a cost of Rs 2.24 crore.

Among the many other new things proposed for the State are first frozen red blood storage unit at the Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital in Chennai at a cost of Rs 3.75 crore, building urban community health centres, establishing tobacco control cell and providing battery car with stretcher facility in 24 medical college hospitals at a cost of Rs 1.30 crore.

Some of the unconventional areas on which the health department will focus on include setting up internet addiction centres to counsel children in all government hospitals, cognitive rehabilitation day care centres and launching a campaign to prevent the reuse of used cooking oil.

The policy note gives due importance to alternative systems of medicine. A Siddha Medical University would come up near Chennai to promote education of other Indian systems of medicine like homeopathy, Unani and so on.

Among the challenges identified in the policy note were sustaining the achievements made in vital health indicators and addressing the rise in mortality and morbidity due to non-communicable diseases, ageing, lack of mental health, climate change, Covid-19 and other communicable diseases.
Bengaluru: Senior Congress leader and Leader of Opposition in Karnataka Assembly Siddaramaiah on Friday urged the state government to withdraw its decision to implement the new National Education Policy (NEP).

He claimed the intention behind the NEP is to indoctrinate students with the idea of communalism through education, and that it alsoinfringes upon the autonomy of states over education and universities.

The former Chief Minister was responding to a letter written by the office of Minister of Higher Education C N Ashwath Narayan informing about the implementation of the new National Education Policy and seeking an appointment with the Leader of Opposition to discuss the same.

"It is to be noted that the government has already decided and inaugurated to implement the said policy from the current academic year, without any discussion with the students, teachers, education experts or opposition. It is not correct to call for discussion now after inaugurating the implementation," Siddaramaiah said in his letter to Narayan.

Noting that policy change in matters like education and health are not small issues, he said detailed deliberations should have been initiated democratically before drafting such issues with wide implications.

"India has a high student to teacher ratio which should come down for the benefit of students. Also the government allocation for education as a percentage of GDP is very low. The NEP also recommends the allocation to education to be at 6 per cent of GDP. So then Karnataka should allocate about Rs 1.08 lakh Crore," he added.

Pointing out that there are many objections and concerns about NEP, Siddaramaiah said it violates federal arrangements and infringes upon the autonomy of States over education and universities.

"It promotes privatisation leading to inequality and social injustice. The intention is to indoctrinate students with the idea of communalism through education. NEP is unscientific and will push lakhs of students to darkness," he was quoted as saying in a release by his office, sharing the contents of the letter.

Further, suggesting that the government should have discussed and debated these issues before the implementation, the Congress Legislature Party leader said, NEP decides the future of many students shaping their next 70-80 years.

"Education is a tool for social elevation for many marginalised sections. Has BJP implemented NEP to prevent this elevation of social status among marginalised sections?" he asked.

"If there has to be a debate about NEP in good spirit, I urge the government to withdraw the implementation of NEP immediately and we will come for discussion about that. If, after deliberations, NEP is found to be good, we will support the government to implement NEP.

Otherwise, the government will have to take the burden of pushing lakhs of people to misery," he added.
Mumbai: The Bombay High Court on Thursday issued notice to the NIA and Maharashtra government in a petition filed by Gautam Navlakha for keeping him under house arrest pending trial in the Bhima Koregaon-Elgar Parishad caste violence case. The 70- year-old has sought to be transferred out of Taloja Central Prison, citing the lump in his chest and great hardship owing to the alleged denial of basic medical and other necessities in the prison.

During hearing of the petition counsel Yug Mohit Chaudhry and advocate Payoshi Roy on behalf of Navalakha informed the division bench of Justice S.S. Shinde and Justice N.J. Jamadar that Navlakhas health is not in good condition and he had a lump in his chest. They requested that he be taken to a private hospital where his sister is a nurse.

However, there was no mention of shifting Navlakha to a private hospital and hence court adjourned the hearing.

On demand of shifting Navlakha to a private hospital Additional Solicitor General (ASG) Anil Singh, representing the National Investigation Agency (NIA) probing the case, pointed out to the court that there is no mention about moving Navlakha to a private hospital in the petition and added government hospitals are good.

ASG Singh also said that if at all the petitioner wants to go for a check-up, he can go to Tata Memorial Centre Advanced Centre for Treatment, Research and Education in Cancer.

The court also noted that shifting Navalakha to a private hospital was not mentioned in the petition and hence directed advocate Chaudhry to make an application for the same.

Advocate Chaudhry agreed for Navlakha to be taken to Tata Hospital and also to make changes in the petition.

The bench directed the NIA and the State to file their replies to the petition and adjourned the hearing to September 27. Before adjourning the matter the bench had also asked the respondents to inform the bench during the afternoon session if Navalakha could be taken to a private hospital or not.

In the afternoon, the Maharashtra Government through public prosecutor Sangeeta Shinde informed the bench that Navlakha would be taken to Tata Hospital at Kharghar on September 3.
Nellore: In a contempt of court case, the Andhra Pradesh High Court sentenced several IAS officers for jail for one week to one month and imposed fines ranging from Rs. 1,000 to Rs. 1 lakh on Thursday. They had failed to pay compensation for a land acquisition several years ago, even after the high court had ordered for the payment.

The court of Justice Battu Devanand sentenced principal secretary to Revenue, Manmohan Singh, for 4 weeks jail and imposed a fine of Rs. 1000. Similarly, principal secretary to Finance, SS Rawat, was sentenced to one month jail and a fine of Rs. 2,000.

Former collector of Nellore, Revu Muthyala Raju, was asked to pay Rs. 1000 as fine and was sentenced to jail for two weeks. A fine of Rs. 2,000 was imposed on former collector of Nellore Seshagiri Babu and present collector Chakradhar Babu.

However, the court deferred implementation of the order for four weeks to enable the officers to file an appeal on the judgment.

The officers landed in trouble because of the inordinate delay in paying a compensation of Rs. 39 lakh in relation to acquisition of three acres of land at Kanupuru Bit-II belonging to one Tallapaka Savithramma at Venkatachalam in SPSR Nellore district. The land was part of 10 acres acquired by the government in 2015 to construct a building for the National Institute for the Mentally Handicapped at Venkatachalam.

The high court had directed the government to pay compensation for the land within three months. This was not done. The woman approached the court in February 2017, after she failed to get the payment or a proper response from revenue officials for two years.

Surprisingly, again, officials failed to implement the order for almost a year, forcing the woman to file a contempt case in 2018.

The names of principal secretary, revenue, Manmohan Singh, principal secretary, finance, SS Rawat, then CCLA (chief commissioner, Land Administration) Anil Chandra Puneta, former district collectors of Nellore, Muthayala Raju, Seshagiri Babu and the present collector Chakradhar Babu, then RDO Haritha and tehsildar Somla Banvath had been included as respondents in the contempt case.

The court served notices to the officers, directing them to file counters. Justice Battu Devanand directed all the officials to be present before the court.

Meanwhile, officials made payment to Savithramma on March 3 this year. Taking a serious view of the paying of compensation for a land four years after the acquisition, the court observed that this is still a fit case to punish officials for contempt of court.

The court observed that top officials of Revenue and Finance and collectors of Nellore from time to time were responsible for the inordinate delay in paying the compensation.
Hyderabad: Restrictions on inter-state movement of ethanol in Telangana have affected the growth of ethanol industry in the state. The government has been receiving big investment proposals to set up ethanol industries in the wake of the Centres policy to achieve 20 per cent ethanol-petrol blending by 2025.

At present, petrol is being sold with 10 per cent ethanol which is E10 while the target is to reach E20 by 2025.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently advanced the countrys target of 20 per cent ethanol blending in petrol by five years to 2025, from 2030.

The Centre is encouraging ethanol-petrol blending to reduce its fuel import bill, to help farmers earn extra income and ethanol being less polluting than fuels.

Ethanol blending will also help solve the problem of agricultural waste as well as sugar prices plummeting due to excess production, therefore providing security to sugarcane farmers.

In the previous fiscal, 87 per cent of the ethanol used for Indias ethanol blending programme was produced using sugar.

Official sources said the restrictions on inter-state movement of ethanol due to non-implementation of the amended provisions of Industries (Development & Regulation) Act, 1951 by all the states is the other big challenge.

Only 14 states figure in the list of those that have implemented the amended provisions.

Telangana is among the states such as Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, West Bengal, Odisha and Kerala, which are yet to implement the amended provisions.

Sources said the TS government has received proposals to set up four ethanol units with a total investment of RS 4,000 crore. These include public sector oil companies HPCL, BPCL and IOC besides a private firm Dhatri.

The state government has decided to allot land for these firms in Nalgonda and Siddipet districts.

With paddy, wheat and maize production reaching record levels in Telangana, ethanol industry sees huge potential for this industry in Telangana. Ethanol can be produced from the agriculture waste of these crops.

Sugarcane production is significantly high in undivided Nizamabad district.

The issue of restrictions on inter-state movement of ethanol came up for discussion in the recent cabinet sub-committee meeting chaired by industries minister KT Rama Rao. He promised to resolve this issue fast to tap the huge potential for ethanol industry in Telangana.

The Centre had last year set a target of 10 per cent ethanol blending in petrol by 2022 and 10 per cent ethanol blending in diesel by 2030. In 2020-21, oil marketing companies (OMCs) raised the proportion of ethanol blended in petrol to 8.5 per cent from 5 per cent the previous year. The procurement of ethanol by OMCs almost doubled to 332 crore litres from 173 litres the previous fiscal.
Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao, who is on a visit to Delhi since September 1, met Prime Minister Narendra Modi at his residence on Friday evening. (Photo: Twitter@TelanganaCMO)

HYDERABAD: Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao, who is on a visit to Delhi since September 1, met Prime Minister Narendra Modi at his residence on Friday evening. The Chief Minister arrived at Modis residence at 5 pm and left at 5.50 pm.

In his 50-minute-long meeting with the Prime Minister, Rao submitted a charter of 10 demands. He met Modi after a gap of nearly nine months. He last met Modi in Delhi on December 12 last year.

Rao is likely to meet Union home minister Amit Shah on Saturday. The wish list submitted by the Chief Minister to Modi includes review of IPS cadre to Telangana by allotting more IPS officers keeping in view the increase in districts from 10 to 33, onetime grant-in-aid of Rs 1,000 crore for Warangal Textile Park, development of Hyderabad-Nagpur industrial corridor, setting up of Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas in new districts, additional funds for PMGSY to lay roads in rural areas, funds to lay roads in LWE (left wing extremism) affected areas, upgradation of PMGSY, sanction of IIIT in Karimnagar, establishment of IIM in Hyderabad and establishment of Tribal University.

Rao sought increase in IPS cadre from the existing 139 to 195 stating that prior to the creation of new districts in Telangana, there were just 9 police districts and 2 police commissionerates in Telangana, which have now been increased to 20 police districts and 9 police commissionerates and to head these new districts and commissionerates, there was an urgent need to allot more IPS officers.

Rao brought to the notice of Modi that Telangana currently had nine Navodaya Vidyalayas in Ranga Reddy, Asifabad, Warangal (Urban), Nagarkurnool, Nalgonda, Siddipet, Khammam, Karimnagar and Kamareddy, which were sanctioned by the Centre earlier as per its policy of one Navodaya Vidyalaya for one district, when Telangana had 10 districts.

With the increase in districts to 33 now, Rao said 21 districts in Telangana lacked Navodaya Vidyalayas and sought sanctioning of the same. Rao informed Modi that the Telangana government was developing world-class integrated Kakatiya Textile Park in Warangal over an extent of 2,000 acres. He said Rs 1,600 crore was required to develop infrastructure facilities and sought a Rs 1,000 crore grant from the Centre.

The Chief Minister urged Modi to instruct the ministry of education to take steps to establish Tribal University in Telangana as mandated under AP Reorganisation Act, 2014, for which 200 acres was already identified near Warangal.

Rao reminded the Centre's policy of establishing one IIM in each state but no IIM had been sanctioned for Telangana on the ground that there was Indian School of Business (ISB) in Hyderabad. The Chief Minister said ISB was a private institution and ordinary students could not afford to study in ISB due to exorbitant tuition fee etc. He offered to provide land toIIM on University of Hyderabad campus as more than 2,000 acres was available on the campus allotted by the state government. Rao sought establishment of an IIIT in Karimnagar under PPP model as per the Centre's policy to set up IIITs in each state.

He also urged Modi for upgradation of 4,000 km roads in rural areas from 3.75 metres lane to 5.5 metres bituminous pavement under PMGSY. Apart from seeking to bear entire burden of laying roads in Naxal-affected areas instead of asking states to share at the ratio of 60:40 with the Centre, the Chief Minister also requested additional funds under PMGSY to improve road connectivity in the backward areas of Telangana as mandated in the AP Reorganisation Act, 2014.

The Chief Minister urged Modi to sanction Hyderabad-Nagpur and Warangal-Hyderabad industrial corridors on the lines of Delhi-Mumbai industrial corridor to give a fillip to industrial development and employment generation in less developed region of the country.
Private life insurer HDFC Life Insurance Friday said it will acquire Exide Life Insurance from Exide Industries in a deal worth Rs 6,687 crore.

The board of directors of HDFC Life Insurance Company (HDFC Life), Exide Industries and Exide Life Insurance Company approved the transaction involving the sale of Exide Life Insurance to HDFC Life, HDFC Life said in a release.

HDFC Life will acquire 100 per cent stake in Exide Life Insurance from Exide Industries via issuance of 8,70,22,222 shares at an issue price of Rs 685 per share and a cash payout of Rs 726 crore aggregating to Rs 6,687 crore.

The process for merger of Exide Life into HDFC Life will be initiated on completion of the acquisition, the insurer said in the release.

The closure of the proposed transaction will be subject to approval by relevant regulators including the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI), Competition Commission of India (CCI), National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT), stock exchanges and approval by the shareholders of HDFC Life and Exide Industries.

This is a landmark transaction, first of its kind, in the Indian life insurance space. It would enhance insurance penetration and further our purpose of providing financial protection to a wider customer base, HDFC Life Chairman Deepak Parekh said in the release.

HDFC Life Managing Director and CEO Vibha Padalkar said the amalgamation can result in value creation for customers, employees, shareholders and distribution partners.

It gives us an opportunity to realise synergies arising out of complementary business models, and further bolster our proprietary distribution network, she said.

The proposed transaction will give customers access to a wider bouquet of products and service touch points.

Exide Life has a strong foothold in South India, especially in tier 2 and 3 towns.

The release said a good quality, predominantly traditional and protection-focused business, will augment the existing embedded value of HDFC Life by approximately 10 per cent.

The embedded value of Exide Life, as on June 30, 2021, is Rs 2,711 crore and has been reviewed by Willis Towers Watson Actuarial Advisory LLP, it said.
Nearly four decades after disbanding and vowing never to get back together, Swedish superstars ABBA on Thursday announced a musical comeback with a new album and a London show featuring their performances captured by digital avatars.

ABBA notched up over 400 million album sales over 50 years despite parting ways in 1982 and resolutely resisting all offers to work together again -- until now.

"We have made a new album with ABBA!" the band's Bjorn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson announced via a video presentation in London, delivering the news fans have waited decades for.

The pop maestros had a string of hits in the 1970s and early 1980s after winning Eurovision in 1974 with "Waterloo".

But on Thursday, Ulvaeus and Andersson put an end to the suspense, following hints that something was in the pipeline.

After the video announcement, both men appeared in person, dressed in black, for a presentation of the forthcoming album.

"The album is in the can now, it's done," said Andersson, describing the group's return to the studio, against the spectacular backdrop of the view from the top of London's ArcelorMittal Orbit tower.

"It's been 40 years, or 39, it was like no time had passed. It was quite amazing," he said.

"We've done as good as we could at our age.

The pair looked relaxed and described their reunion as very friendly.

"No imagination could dream up that: to release a new album after 40 years and still be the best of friends", said Ulvaeus.

"It's the most fun thing you can do: to write songs," he added.

The album will come out on November 5, the musicians said, with the show expected in May 2022.

The now septuagenarian stars of pop classics such as "Dancing Queen", "The Winner Takes It All" and "Take a Chance on Me", last recorded new music together in the 1980s.

British radio presenter Zoe Ball, hosting the interview, said: "This is huge: yes ABBA are back together officially."

She hailed this as "one of the biggest reunions ever".

The presentation came after the group -- Anni-Frid Lyngstad, 75, Agnetha Faltskog, 71, Ulvaeus, 76, and Andersson, 74 -- announced on Twitter last week: "Thank you for waiting, the journey is about to begin."

The Swedish pop icons had announced they were returning to the studio in 2018, saying: "We all four felt that, after some 35 years, it could be fun to join forces again and go into the recording studio."

Two new songs -- "I Still Have Faith in You" and "Don't Shut Me Down" -- were played in London Thursday, featuring the band's characteristic sound.

Acknowledging their age, the musicians said they were not trying to imitate contemporary stars.

"We're not competing with (Canadian rapper) Drake and all those other guys," said Andersson.

The musicians also described the process of being transformed into digital avatars using hologram technology for a new show set to launch in London next year.

They described how they were photographed in leotards to create the avatars for the show called "ABBA Voyage" which will play at a theatre being built close to the presentation venue in east London's Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.

"We looked ridiculous," said Andersson.

He said the show will feature the group as "digital characters" in 1979 when they were "in their prime". They will look "perfectly real", he said.

The show is "technically immensely complicated, the screen, the sound, all the lights", he added.

It will feature 22 songs, mostly the group's classic hits, and last 90 minutes, the musicians said, with tickets going on sale later this month.

The group broke up in 1982 by which time both of the quartet's married couples were divorced.

They long steered clear of a reunion despite their music's enduring popularity, fuelled by a hit compilation album in 1992, the "Mamma Mia" musical and later spin-off films starring Meryl Streep, Colin Firth and Pierce Brosnan.

"There is simply no motivation to regroup. Money is not a factor and we would like people to remember us as we were," Ulvaeus said in a 2008 interview.

According to Celebrity Net Worth, each member of Abba is worth between $200-300 million. In 2000, they turned down a $1 billion offer to perform a 100-show world tour.

"They're very independently wealthy so I don't think it's because of the money," Swedish Abba expert and author of several books on the group Carl Magnus Palm said of their comeback in a comment to AFP.

"I think they're genuinely excited by the possibilities of this."
The latest installment of Money Heist opens with a reasonably satisfying episode, titled 'The End of the Road', which piques the curiosity of the audience and sets the stage for what is to follow. It starts off where Part 4 had ended and highlights what happens when The Professor is captured by his foe Sierra, a development that spells trouble for Salva's vigilantes.



Sticking to the basics

Money Heist, unlike Dark, is not really a high-concept show as the core theme--the clash between the underdogs and the system-- is as old as the hills. In fact, it formed the basis of Breaking Bad, a show about an out-of-luck teacher who enters the drug trade after being diagnosed with cancer, which premiered in 2008. Money Heist worked despite this limitation mainly because of the complex dynamics between its protagonists. Raquel, for example, started out as The Professor's foe but ended up falling for him. She ultimately joined his gang under the name Lisbon, a moment which took fans by surprise.

The opening episode of Money Heist Part 5 Volume 1 delivers the goods as it plays to this strength and highlights the equations between various characters through telling sequences. A scene in which Tokyo discusses her past with Lisbon is a highlight of the episode as it is quite emotionally gripping.



Impressive flashback sequences



Berlin sacrificed his life in Part 2 to save his friends. The character, however, remained an inseparable part of the narrative as he appeared in several engaging flashback scenes.

Not surprisingly, his influence is felt in Money Heist Part 5 Volume 1 as he appears in a couple of flashback sequences that highlight a different side of his personality. His conversations with a family member, who acts as a foil to the popular character, add depth to the narrative. There is a distinct possibility that his 'past' will be an integral part of the show in the coming episodes.

The ultimate underdog

It is no secret that one can cheer for an underdog only if he or she goes up against a formidable foe. A vast section of the audience, for example, rooted for Tyrion Lannister in Game of Thrones as the 'half man' had to deal with several intimidating challengers--right from the heartless Tywin to the manipulative Cersei. This is exactly why Sierra, the ruthless inspector with her own way of working-- proved to be the proverbial surprise package of Money Heist Part 4. She came across as the ultimate vigilante who gave even The Professor, a master manipulator, a run for his money. The character shines in the new season as her scenes with The Professor have come out well.

Alvaro Morte at his best

Alvaro Morte was able to do justice to bring The Professor to life on the big screen because of his ability to internalise the character and bring out his vulnerabilities. He excels in his scenes with Najwa Nimri's Sierra and emotes with his eyes like a pro. The likes of Pedro Alonso (Berlin) and Itziar Ituno (Lisbon) also shine in their respective roles.

Missed opportunities

Hellsinki emerged as the dark horse of Part 4 because of his tender yet complex equation with Nairobi. The physically imposing yet emotionally vulnerable character does not get too much scope in Money Heist Part 5 Volume 1. The likes of Arturo and Denver too aren't really the focal points of the episode. These issues, however, may count for nothing in the long run if the remaining episodes live up to expectations.
The European Union on Thursday backed calls for a legally binding international agreement to reduce plastic pollution, during a UN-hosted conference in Geneva.

A German official said some 75 nations were already supporting a draft resolution circulated at the meeting, but warned that it could be years before an agreement is put in place.

France's minister in charge of biodiversity Berangere Abba said if the world failed to act there would be "more plastic in the oceans than fish" by 2050.

The UN Environment Programme, which is hosting the conference, has said the planet is "drowning in plastic pollution", with about 300 million tonnes of plastic waste produced every year.

Since the 1950s, roughly 8.3 billion tonnes of plastic have been produced with around 60 per cent of that tossed on landfills or into the natural environment.

Millions of tonnes ends up in our oceans, with the debris causing the deaths of more than a million seabirds and over 100,000 marine mammals each year.

More than 1,000 representatives from 140 countries and numerous NGOs participated in the Geneva meeting.

The draft text, presented Thursday by Peru and Rwanda with the support of the European Union, its member states and seven other countries, called for the creation of an intergovernmental negotiating committee to draft an agreement.

The text singles out the importance of microplastics -- the tiny fragments that have been detected in every ocean and even at the bottom of the world's deepest trench.

The aim should be "promoting a circular economy and addressing the full life-cycle of plastics from production, consumption and design to waste prevention, management and treatment", the draft text said.

The proposed resolution is due to be discussed during the United Nations Environment Assembly in Nairobi next year.

The declaration already has firm support from 25 countries and provisional commitment from 50 more, German environment official Jochen Flasbarth told a press conference.

"Twenty-five plus 50 before we have even started is pretty good," he said.

"It's very difficult to predict how long the negotiations will take. I think it will not be in months but rather in a few years to see a convention come into force."
New Zealand police on Friday shot dead an Islamic State-inspired attacker after he injured six people in a supermarket knife rampage, despite round-the-clock surveillance by undercover officers.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said she was "gutted" the man, a Sri Lankan national, had managed to carry out his "hateful" assault even though he was on a terror watchlist.

She said the man, who arrived in New Zealand in 2011, entered a shopping mall in suburban Auckland, seized a knife from a display before going on a stabbing spree.

Six people were wounded, three critically, in the 60 seconds before surveillance officers opened fire.

Terrified shoppers fled for the exits and video footage shot by bystanders showed men running toward the incident before a barrage of shots rang out.

The attack has stirred painful memories of the Christchurch mosques shootings in March 2019, New Zealand's worst terror atrocity, when a white supremacist gunman murdered 51 Muslim worshippers and severely wounded another 40.

"What happened today was despicable, it was hateful, it was wrong," Ardern said after the latest attack.

"It was carried out by an individual, not a faith, not a culture, not an ethnicity. He alone carries the responsibility for these acts."

Asked about the man's motivations, she said "it was a violent ideology and ISIS-inspired", using an acronym for the Islamic State jihadist group.

Ardern said she was limited in what she could publicly reveal about the attacker because he had been before the courts previously and was the subject of court suppression orders.

She said the government was seeking to have the orders lifted so the New Zealand public could have a greater understanding of the situation.

Ardern said the man had been in prison but authorities had to release him as there was no legal reason to keep him in custody.

"The fact that he was in the community will be an illustration that we haven't succeeded in using the law to the extent we would have liked," she added.

Ardern said she was devastated a known terror risk had managed to carry out an attack, saying all aspects of the incident would be reviewed.

"I know that we've been doing everything that we could, so I was absolutely gutted," she said, describing her feelings upon learning about the stabbings.

Ardern would not disclose exactly how many other terror suspects were under surveillance in the community, saying only "there are very few people who fall into this category".

Police Commissioner Andrew Coster said authorities were confident the man was acting alone and there was no further known danger to society.

He acknowledged there would be questions about how an attack occurred in front of his officers but defended their actions.

"I'm satisfied, based on the information to me, that the staff involved not only did what we would expect in this situation, they did it with great courage," Coster said.

"The reality is that when you're surveilling someone on a 24-7 basis, it's not possible to be immediately next to them at all times."
Turkey on Friday joined a host of other countries in fining Facebook's ubiquitous WhatsApp messaging service for failing to sufficiently protect user data.

The 1,950,000-lira ($235,000, 200,000) penality was imposed after months of confusion over whether WhatsApp had introduced its controversial new data sharing rules in Turkey.

WhatsApp unrolled a policy change earlier this year that allowed it to collect more personal data -- including phone numbers and location -- for everyone who agreed with its new terms of service.

It offered users no other option besides dropping the service outright.

Also Read  WhatsApp finally fixes 'Out-Of-Bounds' data exposure vulnerability

It then delayed imposing the change in Turkey after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's media office moved its communications to a local equivalent to WhatsApp called BiP.

Erdogan's government and WhatsApp have since issued contradictory statements about whether the new data rules had been applied in Turkey.

Turkey's Personal Data Protection Authority (KVKK) said it was fining WhatsApp because it no longer offered users "free will".

"Persons are forced to give consent to the contract as a whole, thereby trying to exclude express consent," the ruling said.

The decision came one day after Ireland -- which houses the European headquarters of Facebook -- fined WhatsApp 225 million for similar data offences.

Moscow fined the two services and Twitter in August for failing to store data of Russian users on local servers.
Suhail Shaheen, the spokesman of the Taliban political office in Doha, has said that the group has the right to raise its voice for Muslims anywhere, including in Kashmir, Geo News reported.

In a Zoom interview with BBC Urdu, Shaheen also said that the Taliban do not have a policy to raise arms against any country.

"We have this right, being Muslims, to raise our voice for Muslims in Kashmir, or any other country," he said, as per Geo News.

According to Shaheen: "We will raise our voice and say that Muslims are your own people, your own citizens. They are entitled to equal rights under your laws."

To a question on the Haqqani network, the spokesperson said there is "no such group" and they are "part of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan".

Read | Short on money, legal and otherwise, Taliban faces a crisis

On Sunday, in an interview with Geo News, Shaheen had said that Washington will "have no right to attack Afghanistan" after August 31, when the withdrawal of its troops its complete.

The US had launched a drone strike against a Daesh attack "planner" in eastern Afghanistan, a day after a suicide bombing at Kabul airport killed 13 US troops and scores of Afghan civilians, according to a news wire.

Responding to a question if the US had carried out the drone strike with the Taliban's consent, Shaheen had said the Taliban-led government will stop any such attack in Afghanistan after August 31, Geo News said.

Earlier on August 19, Shaheen, in an interview with China's CGTN television, had said that China could contribute to the development of Afghanistan in the future.
Anti-Taliban fighters in Afghanistan's Panjshir Valley said on Friday they were battling to repulse "heavy" assaults, as the Islamists seek to capture the last holdout province defying their rule. Taliban co-founder Mullah Baradar will lead a new Afghan government that could be announced soon, sources in the Islamist group said on Friday.
Flash flooding caused by the remnants of Hurricane Ida killed at least 44 people in the New York area overnight into Thursday, including several who perished in basements during the "historic" weather event officials blamed on climate change.

Record rainfall, which prompted an unprecedented flash flood emergency warning for New York City, turned streets into rivers and shut down subway services as water cascaded down platforms onto tracks.

"I'm 50 years old and I've never seen that much rain ever," said Metodija Mihajlov whose basement of his Manhattan restaurant was flooded with three inches of water.

"It was like living in the jungle, like tropical rain. Unbelievable. Everything is so strange this year," he told AFP.

Hundreds of flights were cancelled at LaGuardia and JFK airports, as well as at Newark, where video showed a terminal inundated by rainwater.

"We're all in this together. The nation is ready to help," President Joe Biden said ahead of a trip Friday to the southern state of Louisiana, where Ida earlier destroyed buildings and left more than a million homes without power.

Flooding closed major roads across New Jersey and New York boroughs including Manhattan, The Bronx and Queens, submerging cars and forcing the fire department to rescue hundreds of people.

Read | Biden says Ida, wildfires show 'climate crisis' has struck

At least 23 people died in New Jersey, Governor Phil Murphy told reporters.

"The majority of these deaths were individuals who got caught in their vehicles," he said.

A state trooper died in the neighboring state of Connecticut.

Thirteen died in New York City, including 11 who could not escape their basements, police said. The victims ranged from the ages of two to 86.

"Among the people MOST at risk during flash floods here are those living in off-the-books basement dwellings that don't meet the safety codes necessary to save lives," lawmaker Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted.

"These are working class, immigrant, and low-income people & families," she added.

Three also died in the New York suburb of Westchester, while another four died in Montgomery County outside Philadelphia in Pennsylvania, a local official confirmed.

Ida blazed a trail of destruction north after slamming into Louisiana over the weekend, bringing severe flooding and tornadoes.

"We're enduring an historic weather event tonight with record-breaking rain across the city, brutal flooding and dangerous conditions on our roads," New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said late Wednesday.

State emergencies were declared in New York and New Jersey while the National Weather Service issued its first-ever emergency flash flood warning for New York City, urging residents to move to higher ground.

"You do not know how deep the water is and it is too dangerous," the New York branch of the National Weather Service (NWS) said in a tweet.

The NWS recorded 3.15 inches (80 millimeters) of rain in Central Park in just an hour -- beating a record set just last month during Storm Henri.

The US Open was also halted as howling wind and rain blew under the corners of the Louis Armstrong Stadium roof.

See pics | Hurricane Ida brings flash floods in New Jersey

New Yorkers woke to clear blue skies Thursday as the city edged back to life, but signs of the previous night's carnage weren't far away: residents moved fallen tree branches from roads as subway services slowly resumed.

By Thursday evening, around 38,000 homes in Pennsylvania, 24,000 in New Jersey and 12,000 in New York were without power, according to the website poweroutage.us, a significant decrease from earlier in the day.

It is rare for such storms to strike America's northeastern seaboard and comes as the surface layer of oceans warms due to climate change.

The warming is causing cyclones to become more powerful and carry more water, posing an increasing threat to the world's coastal communities, scientists say.

"Global warming is upon us and it's going to get worse and worse and worse unless we do something about it," said Democratic senator Chuck Schumer.

In Annapolis, 50 kilometers from Washington, a tornado ripped up trees and toppled electricity poles.

The NWS warned the threat of tornadoes would linger, with tornado watches in effect for parts of southern Connecticut, northern New Jersey, and southern New York as Ida tracked north through New England.

A tornado struck the popular tourist destination Cape Cod, Massachusetts on Thursday evening.

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Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan on Friday described China as a "role model" for the developing countries to address poverty, saying Beijing's high economic growth has brought 800 million people out of penury.

Prime Minister Khan was speaking virtually at a forum on the 20th Anniversary of Juncao Assistance and Sustainable Development Cooperation being held in Beijing, according to a statement by his office.

He said Juncao technology, which is famed as "magic grass", is two Chinese characters meaning "mushroom" and "grass", is one such way that helps small-scale farmers to develop low-cost and commercial-scale mushroom cultivation.

The particular breed of grass was discovered by Chinese scientists to be an economical and environment-friendly substitute for timber, traditionally used as a substrate for growing mushrooms.

China is a role model for developing countries in poverty alleviation, he said, adding that its stellar growth brought 800 million people out of poverty over the last four decades.

He said the achievement of food security, and improved nutrition, have become an even greater challenge for developing countries. Sustainable ways of achieving economic recovery, growth and development are critical during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Khan said Chinas leadership role in climate change is also highly appreciated and commended Chinese President Xi Jinping's vision of a prosperous, clean and beautiful world and initiative to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060.

The Prime Minister said poverty alleviation and tackling climate change are his governments key priorities.

Khan expressed his commitment to international cooperation aimed at poverty alleviation, sustainable growth and addressing climate change, saying that COVID-19 has triggered an economic meltdown and extreme poverty rose last year for the first time in over 20 years.

We have launched a wide ranking social safety programme Ehsaas with an objective of uplifting marginalised people, eradicating poverty and supporting vulnerable households, he said.

He said Pakistan, being one of the most climate vulnerable countries, fully supports international efforts to combat this scourge.

We are progressing towards a clean and green Pakistan. We have already planted a billion trees as part of our ten billion tree project as part of one of the most ambitious efforts to expand and restore forests, he said.
New Yorkers mopped up flooded homes and businesses and began removing fallen debris from crushed cars Thursday as they counted the cost of record rainfall that caught much of the Big Apple by surprise.

Under piercing blue skies that belied the carnage of just a few hours earlier, shocked residents surveyed the damage of a chaotic night that left at least nine people dead in the city and killed several more in outlying areas.

"I honestly feel heartbroken," said Marcio Rodrigues, at his destroyed car repair shop in the New York suburb of Mamaroneck, where several clients' cars were ruined.

"This was my dream. And I feel like I lost it all right now," he told AFP, crying.

A short distance away, electrical contractor Jim Lanza's ground-floor office was full of mud after water rose 7-feet high.

"It's pretty devastating," he said, adding that the water took about seven hours to recede.

Also read: At least 24 dead after Ida causes flooding in 3 US states

Nearby, Jeannsie Silva Barrios recalled a sleepless night as the owner of her house pumped water from her basement.

"I was really scared. My husband had to wake up at like four o'clock in the morning just to see the water, how it was going," she said.

A few miles south, on Manhattan's Upper West Side, Jonas Sigle eyed the wreckage of his car outside his home.

"A ten-ton tree just fell on my car. My car's crushed. It's totalled," he told AFP.

"Wow, this was just unbelievable," said his neighbour, Michael Price.

Record rainfall of 3.15 inches (80 millimetres) fell in Central Park in just an hour, breaking a record set last month during Tropical Storm Henri.

Nearby, Metodija Mihajlov inspected the basement of his restaurant, which was flooded with three inches of water late Wednesday.

"When the rain started to get bad, my guys called me and we decided to close the restaurant and turn off the electricity and everybody left," he said.

"I've never seen that much rain ever," added the 50-year-old. "It was like living in the jungle, like tropical rain.

"Luckily nothing was damaged. As soon as the rain stopped the water drained away," Mihajlov told AFP.

The flooding reignited memories of Hurricane Sandy, a more powerful storm that knocked out power for much of Manhattan and flooded subways in 2012.

Many residents posted videos on social media that showed water cascading down stairs and into apartments.

In Brooklyn, Rebecca Stronger was mopping up water from the basement and first floors of her veterinary clinic.

"We all show up, we all clean and we all get our job done," she told AFP.

Stronger said she expects more storms in the future as the surface layer of oceans warms due to climate change.

"Of course. Everybody knows (about) climate change. The world is exploding on so many different levels. I expect it to happen a lot," she added.

The New York Police Department said nine people had died, eight of them trapped in basements and one in a car.

They were aged between two and 86 and were found mostly in flooded locations in Queens.

"Our hearts ache for the lives lost in last night's storm," tweeted Mayor de Blasio, who declared a state of emergency late Wednesday.

"Please keep them and their loved ones in your thoughts today. They were our fellow New Yorkers and to their families, your city will be there for you in the days ahead," he added.
As Taliban commanders exchange their guns for the reins of power, some 38 million Afghans can do little but hold their breath and wait to see how their latest conquerors will rule.

That uncertainty, also palpable in foreign capitals from Washington to Beijing, is compounded by the deep contradiction between the groups record of extremism and brutality during its prior reign, from 1996 to 2001, and its promises of moderation today.

History may offer a few clues. The Taliban are, depending on how one counts, something like the sixth or seventh rebel group to take over a country in the modern era. And while no two are exactly alike, certain patterns have emerged in how rebels rule.

Also read: Taliban close to forming new government in Afghanistan

Some learn to govern effectively, even to modernise, while others collapse in chaos or renewed war. Some grow crueler in power, lashing out at their subjects in fear and insecurity. Others moderate, though mostly in search of legitimacy and foreign aid.

But all seem to share a few traits:

A tightly bureaucratic authoritarianism, albeit sometimes allowing a degree of political opening. A focus on controlling or coercing elements of society seen as tied to the old order, sometimes through staggering violence. And a quest for foreign support and recognition as they strain to overcome the pariah status that tends to greet militants who shoot their way into power.

Those habits have a common purpose: consolidating authority. It is almost always the paramount concern for rebel rulers, who tend to understand that seizing a government building is not the same as becoming a government.

That yearslong process, civil war scholar Terrence Lyons has written, is shaped as much by the victors need for postwar legitimacy and power consolidation as it is by the nature of victorious insurgent groups: hardened, disciplined and ideological.

Rebel governance

Insurgents who seize power tend to quickly convert themselves into a very specific kind of government: party-based authoritarianism.

Think of Chinas Communist Party, a one-time rebellion that took power in 1949. It is tightly unified, with rigid internal hierarchies and a practised hand at bureaucratic organising but little tolerance for dissent.

Rebels choose this model for the simple reason that its how theyre already organised.

A successful rebel group is simultaneously a political party, a military organisation and a business, Lyons wrote in a study on how rebels govern.

Also read: Short on money, legal and otherwise, Taliban faces a crisis

In power, the discipline and cohesion of rebel groups often make their governments more stable and pragmatic than other types of authoritarianism, perhaps even longer-lived.

They tend to express ambivalence, if not hostility, toward democracy, Lyons found, even as they claim to represent popular liberation. And their experience in the zero-sum contests of war can lead them to see peacetime competition  elections, protests, dissent  as a threat.

After taking power over China, Mao Zedong invited intellectuals, journalists and others to critique the new government. But, apparently taken aback, he jailed or killed many who had taken up his offer.

Still, while rebel governments capacity for violence can be vast, years of hiding out in villages and mountain passes leaves them keenly aware of the value of cultivating popular support.

Many continue this practice in power, especially those who represent a particular ethnic or religious group, like the Taliban, and may wish to put the others at ease.

The rebels who seized Uganda in 1986 offered amnesty to supporters of the old order. Ethiopian militants who took power in 1991 hosted peace and stability committees across the country in an attempt to show that they intended to represent everyone. In 1994, when ethnic Tutsi militias took control of Rwanda amid a genocide of their kin, they promised reconciliation and a pan-ethnic unity government.

All three held elections, albeit mostly for show, and allowed a degree of political freedom, within tightly controlled limits.

But make no mistake: Insurgents, as a rule, cling to office with an authoritarians iron grip, guarded and perhaps paranoid about losing the power they fought so hard to win.

Purges and mass exodus

Rebel governments tend to organise much of their early rule around fears of being rejected by the public, undermined by holdovers from the previous government, even confronted by a rebellion of their own.

In response, they will often seek to control, coerce and even violently purge whole social classes seen as aligned to the old order, which may still hold sway over the culture, economy and governing bureaucracy.

One of Maos first acts was purging rural landowners, an economically powerful group considered to be right wing.

His forces rounded up thousands, encouraging local villagers to root out any left. Many were sent to forced labour camps or beaten to the death on the spot. Mao estimated the death toll at 2 million, though some historians put the number at 200,000.

The violence of Maos campaign is unusual, but the scale is not.

On taking power in 1959, Cubas revolutionaries made clear that they saw the middle and upper classes, which had largely backed the old government, as enemies. About 250,000 people fled. Their exodus permanently altered Cuban society.

The Taliban have said they wish to avoid this in Afghanistan, warning of a brain drain if its educated middle class flees. The group did not stand in the way as tens of thousands were evacuated over the past two weeks but has said it wishes to work with those who remain.

Since the extremes of the Cold War, when insurgents easily won superpower blessing for mass murder, rebels have learned to cater to the expectations of the international community.

Uganda has made a show of moderation and inclusion that, while superficial, averted the worst fears of postwar recrimination.

Seeking recognition

The quest for legitimacy, to persuade subjects at home and governments abroad to treat insurgents as a rightful government, typically involves seeking public acknowledgment from social and religious leaders, even the wars losers.

Accounts of the Talibans advance toward Kabul have included such scenes: local leaders or strongmen greeting the group in a show of acceptance.

But much of rebels focus is often abroad. Recognition from foreign powers can bring legitimacy and aid  essential for rebuilding after civil war  and stave off the threat of isolation.

Rwandan and Ugandan rebel leaders sat down with Western diplomats even as their forces still fought for control, promising to do as told.

The Talibans diplomatic outreach has been almost obsequious, praising even long-hostile governments such as Indias. For the group that harboured al-Qaida, international acceptance is unlikely to come easily.

Others have arguably confronted chillier receptions. It took Maos government 22 years to secure United Nations recognition and several more to win over the United States.

The episode is instructive. Though Mao oversaw a world power, the weaknesses inherent in rebel rule created a need for recognition deep enough that he radically altered his foreign policy to get it.

Internationally reviled and facing a potentially devastating economic crisis, the Talibans need may be even greater.

Barnett R. Rubin, an Afghanistan scholar, wrote this spring that the groups quest for recognition and eventual eligibility for aid provides some of the most important leverage that other actors have over them.

Still, Chinas government changed only in the ways that the world demanded of it. As President Richard Nixon landed in Beijing in 1972, his hosts were overseeing one of the longest-running political purges in modern history. The inclinations and habits of their rebel origins still held.

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Taliban co-founder Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar will lead the new government in Afghanistan, sources within the movement have said, as the Islamist militant group works to finalise its leadership team after sweeping to victory in a 20-year war.

Here are some details of individuals named by sources as being senior members of the new administration. Their exact roles have yet to be confirmed, as have their appointments.

Haibatullah Akhundzada

The Taliban's supreme leader will guide the new government, focusing on religious matters and governance within the framework of Islam, a Taliban source said.

Akhundzada, a low-profile legal scholar, took over after his predecessor, Mullah Akhtar Mansour, was killed in a US drone strike in 2016.

He has been identified by the United Nations as the former chief of the hardline justice system imposed by the Taliban when it ruled Afghanistan between 1996 and 2001.

After his appointment as leader, he moved carefully to unify the movement, replacing senior officials in an attempt to consolidate power, heal internal divisions and stem defections to rival groups like Islamic State.

Read | Taliban, Afghanistan flags wave side by side at 'unity' cricket match

One of his sons died carrying out a suicide attack on an Afghan military base in Helmand in 2017.

Akhundzada had not made any public comment since the fall of Kabul and rumours have circulated that he died some time ago.

Abdul Ghani Baradar

Baradar was once a close friend of the Taliban's reclusive original leader Mullah Mohammad Omar, who gave him his nom de guerre "Baradar", or "brother".

He served as deputy defence minister when the Taliban last ruled Afghanistan.

Following the fall of the Taliban government, Baradar served as a senior military commander responsible for attacks on coalition forces, a U.N. sanctions notice said.

He was arrested and imprisoned in Pakistan in 2010. After his release in 2018, he headed the Taliban's political office in Doha, becoming one the most prominent figures in peace talks with the United States.

Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai

Stanikzai - Baradar's deputy in Doha - trained as a military cadet in India, graduating in 1982.

Classmates said he liked to go on weekend hikes and swimming in the Ganges river, and showed little inclination for Islamist radicalism.

"There were no signs of any radical or extremist thoughts," said D.A. Chaturvedi, a retired Indian army major general who was a classmate of Stanikzai's.

Read | China is our most important partner, says Taliban

A second classmate who declined to be named said Stanikzai was an average cadet who blended in well with the Indian recruits.

After graduating, Stanikzai fought in the Soviet-Afghan war and served as the Taliban's deputy foreign minister. A fluent English speaker, Stanikzai helped set up the Doha political office, and has been one of the group's key emissaries to foreign diplomats and media.

Mullah Mohammad Yaqoob

Son of the Taliban's co-founder Mullah Omar, Yaqoob had originally sought to succeed his father in 2015. He stormed out of the council meeting that appointed Mullah Akhtar Mansour as leader, but was eventually reconciled and was named deputy to Akhundzada on Mansour's death.

Still in his early 30s and without the long combat experience of the Taliban's main battlefield commanders, he commands the loyalty of a section of the movement in Kandahar because of the prestige of his father's name.

He was named as overall head of the Taliban military commission last year, overseeing all military operations in Afghanistan.

Although considered a relative moderate by some Western analysts, Taliban commanders said he was among the leaders pressing the military campaign against the cities to be stepped up in the weeks before the fall of Kabul.
NATO's secretary general called on Russia on Friday to be open about its "Zapad-2021" military exercises and the troop numbers involved as alarm grows in Poland, the Baltics and Ukraine about Moscow's intentions.

Previous "Zapad", or West, exercises along the border that Russia shares with NATO have been on a vast scale, according to allied officials, who say Moscow has habitually underreported their size despite international rules.

"Russia should behave in a predictable and transparent way," NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told Reuters.

The main phase of the exercises is due to start on Sept. 10.

The Zapad manoeuvres, which follow a Russian military buildup on Ukraine's borders this year, heighten the risk of an accident or miscalculation that could touch off a crisis, NATO officials have said.

"What we have seen before is that the numbers of troops participating in the exercises significantly exceed the numbers announced," Stoltenberg said, urging Moscow to meet its obligations under the Vienna Document, an international agreement governing military exercises in Europe.

According to a tally by NATO Review, an allied magazine, Russia deployed between 60,000 and 70,000 troops in Zapad-2017 but only declared 12,700 personnel.

Russia, which will join forces with Belarusian troops, says it is within its rights to exercise on its territory and is clear about the numbers involved.

Belarus's defence ministry said in August the exercises would be held at training grounds in both Russia and Belarus and will be based on a scenario where the two countries are under attack.

"The reality is that since the end of the Cold War, Russia has never opened an exercise for mandatory inspections," Stoltenberg said. "So we will be vigilant."

Western experts believe the large-scale operations, using drones, missiles and new weapons, allow Russia to practice for any all-out war with the United States in Europe. NATO says it is a defensive alliance and is not looking for any conflict.

Tensions are also high on the Belarus-NATO border after Minsk began pushing migrants into Lithuania to put pressure on the European Union, Western officials say, in response to EU sanctions on the Belarusian government.

"Belarus is weaponising migration," Stoltenberg said. "We decided to deploy a team of experts to Lithuania next week, to help Lithuania face the hybrid activities by the regime (of President Alexander Lukashenko).
The Pentagon has said it has seen no evidence to corroborate reports that there were Pakistan nationals along with the Taliban fighters in Afghanistan.

I have not seen anything to corroborate that report, Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby told reporters at a news conference on Thursday when asked about the reported allegations by former Afghanistan president Ashraf Ghani that Pakistan had sent between 10,000 to 15,000 of its men along with the Taliban to capture Kabul and Afghanistan.

As we said before, Pakistan has a shared interest in the safe havens that exist along that border, and they, too, have become -- and have been victims of terrorist activity," Kirby said.

"And I mean, I think that's something that we all share in common here is helping each other and not become victims to those kinds of attacks from that part of the world, he added.

Meanwhile, a key Congressional committee has unanimously adopted an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act seeking a report from Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on the security of Pakistans nuclear arsenal.

Also read: Taliban close to forming new government in Afghanistan

The amendment moved by Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney was adopted by House Armed Services Committee by a voice vote on Wednesday.

It seeks a report from the Defense Secretary on the vulnerability of the nuclear arsenal of Pakistan to seizure or control.

This includes considerations of known extremism among personnel of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence and the possibility of terror threats from Afghanistan.
The Taliban may announce their cabinet Friday, sources said, with a sceptical world watching for clues on whether the new regime will keep its promises to Afghanistan -- particularly for women -- while facing enormous economic hurdles.

The announcement, which two Taliban sources told AFP could come after Friday afternoon prayers, would take place amid deep mistrust of the Islamists as they shift gears from insurgent group to governing power, days after the United States fully withdrew its troops and ended their 20-year war.

The West has adopted a wait-and-see approach to engagement with the Taliban going forward, but there were some signs of unfreezing as Western Union announced it was restarting money transfers, and Qatar said it was working to reopen the airport in Kabul -- a lifeline for aid.

Meanwhile, the British and Italian foreign ministers were both headed to Afghanistan's neighbours in coming days to discuss refugees still hoping to escape Taliban authority.

China, however, may be taking a more proactive stance. A Taliban spokesman tweeted early Friday that the foreign ministry in Beijing had promised to keep its embassy in Afghanistan open and to "beef up" relations and humanitarian assistance.

The Taliban has pledged a softer rule than their harsh 1996-2001 regime, which also came after years of conflict -- first the Soviet invasion of 1979, and then a bloody civil war.

That first regime was notorious for its brutal and violent interpretation of Islamic law, and its treatment of women, who were forced behind closed doors, banned from school and work and denied freedom of movement.

Now, all eyes are on whether the Taliban can deliver a cabinet capable of managing a war-wracked economy and honour the movement's pledges of a more "inclusive" government.

Speculation is rife about the makeup of a new government, although a senior official said this week that women were unlikely to be included.

In the western city of Herat, some 50 women took to the streets Thursday in a rare, defiant protest for the right to work and over the lack of female participation in the new government.

"It is our right to have education, work and security," the demonstrators chanted in unison, said an AFP journalist who witnessed the protest.

"We are not afraid, we are united," they added.

Also read: Short on money, legal and otherwise, Taliban faces a crisis

Herat is a relatively cosmopolitan city on the ancient silk road near the Iranian border. It is one of the more prosperous in Afghanistan, and girls have already returned to school there.

One of the organisers of the protest, Basira Taheri, told AFP she wanted the Taliban to include women in the new cabinet.

"We want the Taliban to hold consultations with us," Taheri said. "We don't see any women in their gatherings and meetings."

Among the 122,000 people who fled Afghanistan in a frenzied US-led airlift that ended on Monday was the first female Afghan journalist to interview a Taliban official live on television.

Speaking to AFP in Qatar, the former anchor for the Tolo News media group said women in Afghanistan were "in a very bad situation".

"I want to say to the international community -- please do anything (you can) for Afghan women," Beheshta Arghand said.

Women's rights were not the only major concern in the lead-up to the Taliban's announcement of a new government.

In Kabul, residents voiced worry over the country's long-running economic difficulties, now seriously compounded by the militant movement's takeover.

"With the arrival of the Taliban, it's right to say that there is security, but business has gone down below zero," Karim Jan, an electronic goods shop owner, told AFP.

In one spot of bright news, Western Union announced it was restarting money transfer services to the country.

Many Afghans rely on remittances from relatives abroad to survive.

The United Nations warned earlier this week of a looming "humanitarian catastrophe" in Afghanistan, as it called to ensure that those wanting to flee the new regime still have a way out.

Italian foreign minister Luigi Di Maio was due to visit Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Qatar and Pakistan from Friday in a bid to assist Afghan refugees, his government said, while British foreign minister Dominic Raab was to head to the region next week.

Qatar's foreign minister said on Thursday the Gulf state is working with the Taliban to reopen Kabul's airport as soon as possible.

"We are working very hard (and) we remain hopeful that we will be able to operate it as soon as possible," said Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani.

"Hopefully in the next few days we will hear some good news," he told a news conference in Doha.

A Qatari technical team flew into Kabul on Wednesday to discuss reopening the airport, the first plane to land there since the evacuations.

Turkey said Thursday it was also evaluating proposals from the Taliban and others for a role in running the airport.

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A court in Indore in Madhya Pradesh on Friday granted 14 days to the police to file a charge sheet against a bangle seller who was assaulted by a mob last month for allegedly touching a minor girl inappropriately and also hiding his identity.

Taslim Ali (25) was thrashed by a mob in Govind Nagar area here on August 22, a video of which went viral on social media, and he was arrested on August 25 for allegedly sexually harassing a 13-year-old girl as well as for alleged Aadhaar Card forgery.

On Friday, Judge Pavas Srivastava of the Special Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act court granted police 14 days to file a charge sheet after they said they needed more time to complete the probe.

The court also extended the judicial remand of Ali till September 19, which has been set as the next date of hearing. Police had also arrested four people for hitting Ali, a resident of Hardoi in Uttar Pradesh.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Uttar Pradesh is joining the race for the votes of 'prabuddha varg' (read Brahmins) in the state ahead of the Assembly elections.

The Bahujan Samaj Party and Samajwadi Party are already racing ahead with 'prabuddha varg sammelans' and both parties have promised to install statues of Lord Parshuram, the Brahmin sage.

The BJP's 'prabuddha varg sammelans' will be organised between September 5 and September 20 across all districts.

Party state general secretary and in-charge of the conventions, Subrat Pathak said the sammelan should not be read as the one driven by caste factor only. "It is mainly meant to connect with the intellectual classes who may happen to be from any caste," he explained.

Read | No one will die of hunger in Uttar Pradesh: Yogi Adityanath

Pathak, who is a party MP from Kannauj, accused the Opposition of keeping caste at the core of their conventions.

"That is not the case with the BJP. Our aim is to reach out to the intellectual classes and inform them about the ideology and policies of the party," he said.

Prominent leaders who will address these sammelans include Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath (Varanasi), Radha Mohan Singh (Prayagraj), Swatantra Dev Singh (Ayodhya), Sunil Bansal (Lucknow) and Keshav Prasad Maurya (Kanpur).

These leaders, in their speeches, will underline the fact that the BJP takes care of all castes irrespective of their numbers. They will also attempt to dilute the Opposition campaign that the ruling party and the government is pursuing an anti-Brahmin agenda.

The BSP, in particular, has been blaming the BJP for targetting innocent Brahmins.

The BJP, on the other hand, has been strengthening its outreach to OBCs and playing the backward caste with a vengeance.

It is noteworthy that in 2013 the Allahabad high court while hearing a PIL filed by one Motilal Yadav, had banned events by political parties in the state on the basis of caste. Hence, these conventions are being called 'prabuddha varg sammelans', instead of Brahmin sammelans.

Brahmins constitute 13 per cent of the population and are considered as major opinion makers in Uttar Pradesh.
A five-judge bench of the Calcutta High Court on Friday said former Chief Justice of this court Manjula Chellur will oversee the functioning of an SIT formed by it to probe alleged post-poll violence cases other than rape and murder.

The bench had, in its judgement on August 19 on a batch of PILs seeking an independent probe into incidents of violence after the Assembly elections in West Bengal, directed the CBI to investigate all alleged cases of heinous crimes like rape and murder.

The bench, headed by Acting Chief Justice Rajesh Bindal, said Justice (retd) Chellur will oversee the functioning of the SIT formed by it to probe into other post-poll violence cases in the state. The Special Investigation Team included Suman Bala Sahoo, Soumen Mitra and Ranveer Kumar, all IPS officers of the West Bengal cadre.

The bench had directed that the SIT would be entitled to take assistance of any other police officer or any institution or agency for carrying out a fair investigation into the cases.

The bench, also comprising justices I P Mukerji, Harish Tandon, Soumen Sen and Subrata Talukdar, had said that both the investigations would be monitored by the high court and ordered the CBI and the SIT to submit their status report before it within six weeks from August 19.

The West Bengal government has appointed ten IPS officers to assist the SIT.
The tram rattled along College Street, passing dozens of bookstalls and announcing itself with the quaint chime of a bell. A gentle breeze from its open windows and antique ceiling fans cut the humid summer heat.

Sounds and smells from the streets wafted in  fresh fish splayed out on the sidewalk, the muezzins call to prayer  as the tram passed vegetable wagons and ornate colonial buildings.

You get all the flavours of Calcutta here, so its the best way to travel, said a medical student, Megha Roy, riding the tram with two friends. She used the Anglicized version of Kolkata, which residents deploy interchangeably with its current spelling and pronunciation.

The three friends had jumped onboard spontaneously, with no clear idea of where the tram was going or when it was scheduled to get there. But it didnt really matter. The ride itself was an unexpected treat.

Its like a fairy tale, Roy said.

But in reality, Kolkatas trams  the first in Asia and the last still operating in India  are in trouble.

In recent years, hit by natural disasters and official neglect, the citys tram system has become little more than a nostalgia ride, its passengers more often looking for a lark than an efficient trip home.

And authorities say that while trams should remain a part of the transit mix, buses and the citys metro system better serve 21st-century riders in the city of some 15 million people.

The tram system, built in 1881, was instrumental in Kolkatas growth into one of the worlds most populous cities, cutting the path for the development of a metropolis on the move.

We grew up as a city with the tramways, said Aranda Das Gupta, some of whose earliest memories are of the tram rolling past his great-grandfathers bookstore, which opened just five years after the tram first arrived. Its the heritage of Kolkata.

A few committed riders are fighting hard to preserve that heritage.

Pointing to cities from San Diego to Hong Kong, they say light rail is being reevaluated globally and argue that Kolkatas 140-year-old system makes sense for a city struggling with pollution and overcrowding.

In an age of growing concerns about climate change, the emission-free trams, powered by overhead electric lines, are a better option than diesel-fueled buses and private cars, activists say. The trams were briefly pulled by horses, an experiment that ended in less than a year after too many horses succumbed to the heat.

Scientifically, economically, environmentally, there is no reason to convert the tramways for buses, said Debasish Bhattacharyya, president of the Calcutta Tram Users Association.

But the scene at one tram stop suggested commuters may feel differently. Fewer than a half-dozen people were waiting for the tram, while nearby, hundreds were piling onto buses that sagged under the weight of so many passengers, belching black plumes of diesel exhaust as they careened over the trams tracks and onto the street.

Admittedly, neither speed nor punctuality are hallmarks of the trams, which must contend with a melange of traffic on their routes: trucks, buses, cars, vintage yellow Ambassador taxis, rickshaws manual and electric, pedestrians, herds of goats and the occasional cow.

Nobody knows when the next car will come, Bhattacharyya said. They say this is the control room, but nothing is controlled; everything is scattered, he said, gesturing to a hub of the tram system in central Kolkata.

Rajanvir Singh Kapur is the managing director of the public enterprise that oversees the tram and bus system. His office is perched on the third floor of the stately Calcutta Tramways headquarters building, little changed in outward appearance since the 1960s, when the company  now known as the West Bengal Transport Corp.  was a huge employer of organised labour that spawned some of the eras powerful leftist leaders.

Also read: Tram to become art gallery in Kolkata

Kapur said Kolkata used to be a public transit-oriented city, long run by the Left Front, an alliance of communist and left-leaning parties that, he joked, made it into the Cuba of India.

But, he said, the citys trams  a relic of the British Raj repurposed for a postcolonial era  could not keep up with the pace of development.

As a result, cyclone-battered electrical lines have gone unrepaired. Tracks have been dug up to build underground metro lines. And traffic police have cancelled routes, saying the tram takes up too much space on Kolkatas crowded streets.

In the view of Bhattacharyya, authorities are trying to relegate the tram service to history when it still has plenty of life left.

In recent years, the Calcutta Tram Users Association has plastered posters across Kolkata and messages across Facebook demanding the trams be saved and speaking out against what Bhattacharyya described as a culture of car worship.

Inside the tram systems control room, employees worked the phones to coordinate trips. The system has become so haphazard that there is no longer a functioning timetable.

At present, in my view, its dying, said a control room officer who requested anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to reporters.

Nothing is here. You cannot compare what we had with what we have now, he said, looking out wistfully through the big picture windows at palm trees swaying over an active tram line  and an empty commuter parking lot.

Aboard a tram crawling along Lenin Sarani, one of central Kolkatas main thoroughfares and named in honor of the Russian revolutionary, Sumit Chandra Banerjee, a ticket taker, said he looked forward to mandatory retirement when he turned 60 in October.

Tram service is very poor, but once upon a time, the tram was one of the best, he said, turning to pull a white rope to sound the bell for a stop. Now, poor tram, poor service, the number of trams cut, he said, crossing his forearms into an X shape.

Monthly tickets have disappeared, but at 7 rupees a ride  about 9 cents  it is still one of the cheapest ways to get around.

In the Shyambazar tram terminus, ticket takers, accountants and conductors escape the midday heat to drink tea in a room framed by portraits of Hindu gods and prominent Bengalis, like philosopher and poet Rabindranath Tagore.

While the tramways are no longer the megaemployer they once were, government jobs are still highly coveted in Kolkata and across India since the private economy has fallen short of meeting the great demand for safe and decently paid work.

Six tram routes remain operational in a system that used to resemble a bicycle wheel. Now most of the spokes have been broken off, leaving vast swaths of the city uncovered by tram lines.

But to preservationists, whats left of the trams  as much a Kolkata institution as the universities the steel carriages trundle past, or the citys cantilever bridge  must be saved.

If they announce the discontinuation of tram service, there will be public unrest, Bhattacharyya predicted.

So instead of any sudden shutdown of service, he argued that authorities are allowing the system to disappear quietly, by failing to make critical repairs.

Many of Kolkatas urban landmarks  from cinemas and bookstores to museums and hospitals  were built near the tracks. One of those institutions was Das Gupta Books, founded in 1886.

Aranda Das Gupta, the shops fourth-generation managing director, called the tram a beautiful journey, while acknowledging that it takes maximum time.

Nowadays, he said, people want to move fast.
The Nitish Kumar government in Bihar has expressed strong displeasure over one of the state's universities dropping the thoughts of socialist ideologues Ram Manohar Lohia and Jayaprakash Narayan from its postgraduate course in political science. The governments disapproval was conveyed by Education Minister Vijay Kumar Chaudhary who, on Thursday, summoned the authorities of the Jayaprakash Narayan University in Saran district.

I was appalled when I read the report on Wednesday morning. I made calls to the department's additional chief secretary and officials of the Directorate of Higher Secondary, who had no idea. By that time, I also received a call from the chief minister, who sounded upset," Chaudhary told reporters.

The minister said he learnt from officials of the varsity that changes were effected in syllabi in accordance with recommendations of an experts committee in 2018, which was set up after the new education policy came into force. The government, however, maintains that any such change should not have been brought in without taking the administration into the loop. Socialism has been a unique ideological stream in Indian politics, and Bihar has been one of its main laboratories. Moreover, the state has strong sentiments for JP who was a son of the soil," Chaudhary said.

Notably, both Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and his arch-rival Lalu Prasad owe their entry into politics to the JP movement of 1974. Prasad, a former CM himself, had also shared a clipping of the newspaper report on his Twitter handle, dubbing it as an attempt to saffronise education in Bihar  an allusion to the BJP sharing power.

Chaudhary was also asked about the reported inclusion of the thoughts of RSS ideologue Deen Dayal Upadhyay in the curriculum. Our contention is that no politically relevant thinker should be excluded from the syllabus. We do not think there is any point in objecting to anybodys inclusion," he said. The minister also said he looked forward to take up the matter with Governor Fagu Chauhan, who is the Chancellor of all state universities.

Officials in my department have also been directed to check up with other state universities and intervene suitably if similar changes have been proposed in the curricula there," Chaudhary said.
National Aerospace Laboratories (NAL) has said its new generation (NG) aircraft Hansa made its maiden flight on Friday. NAL designed and developed the plane under the aegis of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR).

The aircraft took off from the airport of Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) at 2:09 PM and flew at an altitude of 4,000 feet. Hansa gained a speed of 80 knots before it made a successful landing after about 20 minutes, said a press release from NAL.

Captain Amit Dahiya flew the plane and expressed happiness by saying the flight parameters were found normal and it was a textbook flight, according to the release. The features of Hansa-NG are a glass cockpit with cabin comfort, high efficient digitally controlled engine, electrically operated flaps, long endurance, low acquisition and operating cost.

CSIR-NAL has received 72 letters of intents from various flying clubs and the aircraft would be certified within the next four months before it gets inducted into Service, the release said. The flight was monitored in telemetry by senior officers and scientists and engineers from Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), Centre for Military Airworthiness & Certification (CEMILAC) and CSIR-NAL, the release said.

Dr Shekhar C Mande, Secretary, DSIR, and Director-General, CSIR, congratulated the NAL team. He said the successful flight was a result of the efforts of the CSIR-NAL design team, flight test crew and DGCA with support from Aircraft and Systems Testing Establishment (ASTE). He said CSIR-NAL has already identified a private partner and series production of Hansa would start soon.
Though the Taliban is preparing to announce its government in Kabul, India on Thursday remained non-committal on recognising the new dispensation in Afghanistan, notwithstanding its recent engagement with the leadership of the militant organisation.

It's not a matter of yes and no, Arindam Bagchi, the spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), said when journalists asked him if India would recognise the new Afghan Government that the Taliban would announce soon.

We are not aware of any detail or nature of what kind of government could be formed in Afghanistan.

Also read: Modi may visit US as Biden planning to host him, others for Quad Summit to move on from Afghanistan fiasco

He also played down the recent meeting between New Delhis envoy to Doha, Deepak Mittal, and Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanekzai, the head of the Talibans political office in the capital of Qatar.

Let us just treat the Doha meeting for what it is...Its just a meeting. These are very early days, said the MEA spokesperson.

He apparently sought to drive home the point that Mittal-Stanekzai talks in the capital of Qatar on Tuesday should not be construed as a prelude to India recognising the Talibans return to power in Afghanistan and the new government the militant organisation was planning to announce soon.

Also read: Taliban and Afghan rebels claim heavy casualties in fighting over valley

Mittals meeting with Stanekzai was New Delhis first publicly acknowledged engagement with the Taliban in 22 years.

Prime Minister Narendra Modis government on August 26 told the leaders of the political parties that India would decide on its engagement with the new regime in Afghanistan after taking into account whether it would be born out of an inclusive and broad-based power-sharing arrangement or solely run by the Taliban.

Also read: Taliban rule likely to be fragile and unstable

Bagchi on Thursday said that New Delhis priority was to evacuate Indian citizens, who were still stranded in Afghanistan. He said that Mittal conveyed to Stanekzai New Delhis concerns over the possibility of the territory of Afghanistan being used for terror attacks in India and received a positive response.

Our main, primary and immediate concern is that the Afghan soil should not be used for anti-Indian activities or terror activities. This is our focus, the MEA spokesperson told journalists in New Delhi.

New Delhi earlier signalled that it might recognise a new regime in Kabul with participation from the Taliban, if it was an inclusive dispensation with representation of all communities of Afghanistan, respected the aspirations of the children and voices and rights of women and promised not to allow anyone to use the country to export terror to other countries in the region and beyond.

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With the poll season closing in, Congress has reoriented its campaign around employment and the economic mess in the country.

Five senior leaders on Friday launched a scathing attack on Centre's National Monetisation Plan in five major cities and Rahul Gandhi linked the issue with loss of jobs, and warning youths that Modi government is "harmful for employment".

Senior Congress leaders Mallikarjun Kharge, P Chidambaram, Ajay Maken, Rajiv Shukla and Shashi Tharoor highlighted the issue through press conferences in Hyderabad, Mumbai, Raipur, Jaipur and Srinagar. After Rahul Gandhi began it in Delhi last week, senior party leader Mukul Wasnik went to Guwahati to raise the issue. Sachin Pilot raised the issue in Bangalore, while Milind Deora, Bhupesh Baghel and Digvijaya Singh will go to Cochin, Lucknow and Patna respectively.

"The Modi government is harmful for employment. It does not promote or support any kind of business or employment not belonging to friends and instead is trying to snatch jobs from those who have them," Gandhi alleged in a Hindi tweet on Friday, latching on to reports about the rise in the unemployment rate in the country in August.

Sharing screenshots of media reports that cited data compiled by the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) to claim that over 15 lakh people in the country lost their jobs in August, as well reported incidents of suicides of unemployed youths in different parts of the country, Gandhi said, "the biggest national issue is employment to which there are some solutions --- do not sell public sector units, public sector banks, give financial aid to MSMEs, think about the nation and not about friends, but the central government does not want to resolve the issue."

Gandhi also said the country is talking about "friend-monopoly," with the hashtag "IndiaOnSale" on Twitter. Congress Communication department chief Randeep Surjewala accused the Prime Minister of remaining committed to the welfare of his "crony friends".

Congress has been repeatedly accusing the government of allegedly seeking to benefit its few corporate friends. On Friday, Gandhi said acerbically in his Hindi tweet "issued in public interest" that a pretense of self-reliance is expected from the people of the country.

Former Union finance minister P Chidambaram hit out at the government over Centre's National Monetisation Pipeline (NMP) and asked the government to "reveal" the objectives behind it and posed 20 questions to the government. The BJP has trashed the allegations.
A survey in five states headed for Assembly elections early next year predicted bad news for the Congress as it may lose power in Punjab where AAP may emerge as the single-largest party while BJP is likely to win Uttar Pradesh, Goa, Manipur and Uttarakhand.

The ABP-CVoter survey predicted BJP returning power to Uttar Pradesh, Manipur, Uttarakhand and Goa while Punjab could be headed for a hung Assembly but AAP having a huge advantage needing a couple of seats.

For Congress, it is likely to be relegated to third position in Goa while falling behind AAP in Punjab, which is the only state it is ruling among the states that are going to polls next year.

Read | BJP joins race for Brahmin votes in Uttar Pradesh

BJP is predicted to return comfortably in the politically crucial Uttar Pradesh but may lose around 50 seats from the 2017 polls when it baged 312 seats while Samajwadi Party is likely to double its seats from 47. The survey predicted BJP winning 259-267 seats while SP is likely to win 109-117 seats.

The BSP, which won 19 seats, could win only 12-16 seats while Congress may see further decline in the state with just 3-7 seats as against seven won in 2017. Other parties may win 6-10 seats.

In Punjab, AAP appears to have made huge inroads with the survey predicting an increase in seats by more than double -- 51-57 seats -- in an Assembly of 117 seats where the half-way mark is 59.

Congress, which is facing an internal fight between Chief Minister Amarinder Singh and party state chief Navjot Singh Sidhu, is likely to be relegated to second position with 38-46 seats from 77 seats in 2017 polls while Akali Dal may increase its tally (16-24 seats) from the current 15.

Read | Congress constitutes panel to study matters related to caste census

Uttarakhand, where the Congress hopes to return to power, may also go the BJP way for the second time though it may lose some seats in the state where it changed two Chief Ministers in a span of tremonths recently.

In a House of 70, the BJP is likely to win 44-48 seats (57 in 2017), while Congress may win 19-23 seats (11 in 2017). AAP may win up to four seats while others could bag up to two seats.

BJP may return to power with majority in electorally fragile Goa with 22-26 seats in an Assembly of 40. Congress stares at the possibility of being relegated to the third position (3-7 seats) after AAP, which is predicted to win four to eight seats, while others may win 3-7 seats. In the 2017 polls, Congress had emerged as the single largest party but defections helped the saffron party retain power.

Manipur could also return BJP to power, this time with absolute majority with 32-36 seats. Like in Goa, Congress had emerged the single largest party but political manouevering helped BJP snatch power. Congress is likely to win 18-22 seats while NPF is predicted to win 2-6 and others 0-4 seats.

ABP-CVoter poll survey

Uttar Pradesh (403 seats)

BJP -- 259-267

SP -- 109-117

BSP -- 12-16

Cong -- 3-7

Others -- 6-10

Punjab (117 seats)

AAP -- 51-57

Cong -- 38-46

Akali Dal -- 16-24

Uttarakhand (70 seats)

BJP -- 44-48

Cong -- 19-23

AAP -- 0-4

Others -- 0-2

Goa (40 seats)

BJP -- 22-26

AAP -- 4-8

Cong -- 3-7

Others -- 3-7

Manipur (60 seats)

BJP -- 32-36

Cong -- 18-22

NPL -- 2-6

Others -- 0-4
The Supreme Court on Friday pulled up the West Bengal government for filing repeated pleas for permission to appoint its own Director General of Police without the involvement of the Union Public Service Commission.

A bench of Justices L Nageswara Rao, B R Gavai and B V Nagarathna said such applications are an "abuse of the process of law" and that it is not expected from a state government.

The court also pointed out that the state had filed similar application in past too which was rejected. "We will be very frank... don't file repeated applications," the bench told senior advocate Sidharth Luthra, appearing for the State.

In its plea, the Mamata Banerjee government sought to have complete freedom to select DGP and questioned UPSC's role in the process, saying law and order and police fell under the State's domain.

Since the bench refused to entertain the application of the West Bengal government, Luthra sought permission to withdraw the application.

The apex court allowed his plea and granted him permission to implead in the main case relating to the police reforms.

Advocate Prashant Bhushan, appearing for retired IPS officer Prakash Singh, said the apex court's judgement passed 15 years ago on police reforms remained unimplemented in most of the States. He asked the court to fix the main matter related to compliance of the apex court's directions.

The court agreed to consider the main matter in October.

In its application, the West Bengal government contended that involvement of UPSC in selection of DGP of a state was not permissible under the Constitution and was against the federal structure. The UPSC has neither the jurisdiction nor the expertise to consider and appoint the DGP of a state, it said, adding the State has autonomy and ultimate power of superintendence over police officials.

It questioned apex court's landmark judgement on police reforms in the Prakash Singh case in 2006, saying the verdict erred legally and constitutionally by assigning the UPSC the task of selecting a panel of three officers for the post of a State DGP.

In the judgment, the top court had assigned a key role to the UPSC in selecting DGP to stop the States from selecting a regime sensitive police officer to the top post. It had also granted the DGPs a fixed tenure of two years irrespective of their age of retirement.


In a satellite town of Senegal's capital Dakar, 25-kilo sacks of onions are piled up on pavements, ignored by passers-by.

The West African country is in middle of a supply glut, with prices plummeting and heaps of the pungent vegetables left to rot by the roadside. Farmers are in despair.

"I'm going to give some to the local women," says farmer Diongue Masseye, 71, gazing despondently at his onions.

He is standing inside a 450 square metre (5,000 square foot) warehouse in Bambilor, an onion-producing town about 30 kilometres (20 miles) northeast of the capital Dakar, where his unsold produce has started to sprout.

Gloomy farmers -- who produce about 450,000 tonnes of onions a year -- blame the problem on increased foreign competition and a lack of storage capacity.

But the government also argues that farmers have overproduced this year, flooding the market with onions and depressing prices.

Masseye said prices had nearly halved. A 25-kilo sack of onions fetched the equivalent of about 13 euros ($15) a few months ago, he said, but are now worth about seven euros ($8).

The bulbous vegetable is a lifeline to many in the nation of 16 million people, where it is a key ingredient in the national fish-and-rice dish, Thieboudienne, as well as Yassa chicken.

Amadou Abdoul Sy, the director of Senegal's market regulation agency, said some 200,000 farmers are employed in the onion sector.

"Everyone is producing at the same time," he told AFP, explaining the glut.

Senegal's onion sector has long been plagued by problems. Almost a third of the crop is lost every year, Sy said.

The UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation noted in a 2018 report that the use of low-quality seeds by Senegalese farmers contributes to the problem.

Often, producers also harvest their onions too early to try to get ahead of the competition, leaving the vegetables wet. This leads to significant losses and makes onions difficult to store, the FAO said.

Consumers are shying away from the damaged goods.

Trader Daouda Mbaye, in a market in village in western Senegal, demonstrated sacks of poor-quality onions and said buyers were more interested in other vegetables.

But to the dismay of local farmers, many people will buy imported onions.

The president of Senegal's onion producers association, Boubacar Sall, said the government suspended onion imports in January in a bid to help struggling locals.

But foreign-owned farms in Senegal are still producing onions, he explained. They are often larger than Senegalese farms and have better storage facilities.

The onion farmer is calling for legislation that will protect small producers who fall "prey to unfair competition" from larger ones.

Lack of storage facilities are a chronic problem in Senegal, according to farmers, where a warm climate means vegetables quickly go bad.

For Masseye, the 71-year-old farmer, the government should have provided refrigerated store rooms to ease pressure on producers.

But Amadou Abdoul Sy, the director of the market regulation agency, said that producers themselves are partly to blame.

He said government authorities had asked farmers to sell their goods at different times in order to stop a supply glut.

"They were not listened to," Sy said.

While farmers are unhappy, some consumers are pleased.

Astou Ndiagne, a housewife in Bambilor, flashed a mischievous smile when asked about the lower prices. "This is allowing us to save money," she said.
Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla called on United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday during which they discussed bilateral ties, regional and global issues including the current situation in Afghanistan.

This was the first high-level discussion between the officials of the two countries after the American withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan on August 31.

Discussions touched on bilateral ties and the situation in Afghanistan, Ministry of External Affairs Spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said in a tweet after the meeting.

Foreign Secretary @harshvshringla called on US Secretary of State @SecBlinken. Discussions touched on bilateral ties and the situation in Afghanistan. pic.twitter.com/pKP3zn7LvV  Arindam Bagchi (@MEAIndia) September 2, 2021

Shringla, who arrived in Washington a day earlier from New York, had a series of meetings throughout Thursday, including with his American counterpart Deputy Secretary Wendy Sherman.

Excellent interaction this morning with Blinken and Sherman, tweeted Indias Ambassador to the US Taranjit Singh Sandhu, who attended the meetings along with Shringla at the Foggy Bottom headquarters of the State Department.

Shringla and Sherman discussed a broad range of shared priorities, including continued coordination on Afghanistan, strengthening Indo-Pacific cooperation through the Quad, addressing the climate crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic, and preparations for upcoming dialogues, such as the 2+2 Ministerial, said State Department Spokesperson Ned Price.

Also read: India non-committal on recognising new Afghan govt that Taliban is planning to announce soon

The two diplomats agreed to remain closely coordinated on shared goals and priorities to deepen the US-India partnership, Price said in a readout of the meeting.

The US-India relationship is defined by our shared democratic values. I look forward to continuing to coordinate closely on global challenges, tweeted Uzra Zeya, Under Secretary of State for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights, after the meeting.

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The Delta-led coronavirus surge and the rampant destruction it caused in the second wave are still afresh in people's minds, amidst this, a new variant of interest could dampen progress registered so far.

The World Health Organization has said that it is closely monitoring the new coronavirus "variant of interest" Mu, warning that the new variant shows signs of possible resistance to vaccines. Mu - also known by its scientific name as B.1.621 - was first identified in Colombia in January 2021, and since then, there have been "sporadic reports" of cases and some larger outbreaks in South America and Europe, the UN health agency said in its weekly bulletin on the pandemic on Tuesday.

But will vaccines be able prevent more variants? Most Covid vaccines target the spike protein of the virus, which it uses to enter our cells. Our vaccines expose our bodies to a part of the virus, commonly the spike protein, so our immune system can learn to fight the virus off if it encounters it. If a variant has significant changes in the spike protein, this may decrease the effectiveness of our vaccines. The WHO said preliminary evidence suggests the 'Mu' variant could partially evade the antibodies we get from vaccination. But because this data is from lab studies, we cant be sure how the variant will actually play out in the population.

South African scientists are also closely monitoring the development of another new variant. The potential variant of interest, C.1.2, was first detected in the country in May this year. C.1.2 has since been found in China, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mauritius, England, New Zealand, Portugal and Switzerland as of August 13, they said. However, C.1.2, is not yet a variant to follow, nor a variant of concern, according to the classification of the World Health Organization.

The Lancet Infectious Diseases journal in a new study found that people infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus after receiving one or two Covid-19 vaccine doses have significantly lower chance of severe disease or hospitalisation than unvaccinated individuals. Researchers also found that the odds of experiencing long Covid -- illness lasting 28 days or more after a positive test -- were reduced to half for people who received two vaccine doses.

As India combats a spike in daily Covid-19 cases with Kerala driving this surge, preliminary results of Bengaluru's serosurvey, which was launched by municipal authorities in early August, show that over 75% of the sample population in the city have antibodies for Covid-19. The preliminary findings appear to show that vaccinations are inducing an appropriate antibody response in people. At the same time, despite the small sample size, the high seroprevalence score also suggests that a sizable percentage of the citys population had been infected during the second wave.

After Kerala's situation, the Centre sounded caution and said that mass gatherings should be discouraged and full vaccination should be a prerequisite to attend such gatherings. The government urged people to get jabs and follow Covid-appropriate behaviour, especially during the festive season. The Centre said that 39 districts in the country reported over 10 per cent weekly Covid positivity rate in the week ending August 31 while in 38 districts, it was between 5 and 10 per cent.

With the number of Covid-19 cases in Kerala, the Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya on Wednesday asked his counterparts from Karnataka and Tamil Nadu to increase the pace of vaccination in the bordering districts to contain the inter-state spread.

While reviewing the epidemic situation following the Kerala surge, Mandaviya in a telephonic conversation with the two state ministers discussed strategies that need to be followed in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka  two states bordering Kerala  so that the number of new cases doesn't flare up.

India said it will resume exports of Covid-19 vaccines only after its own interests are taken care of as a recent surge in immunisations raised hopes of foreign sales that have been barred since mid-April.

In a bid to make booking for vaccination slots more convenient, Google will allow users to get more information about vaccine availability and appointments for over 13,000 locations in the country across its three products - Search, Maps and Assistant - starting this week.

Meanwhile, the Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) on Wednesday granted permission to Hyderabad-based Biological E Limited to conduct phase 2/3 clinical trials of its 'Made in India' Covid-19 vaccine on children aged between 5 and 18 years with certain conditions, sources said. This comes as several Indian states reopen schools for children with Covid protocols.
The changes made in the English undergraduate literature syllabus of Delhi University (DU) are yet another attempt to take politics to the classroom, to shape academic narratives in partisan ways and to ensure that students see, hear and read only what the authorities want them to. This is done by both exclusion and inclusion--exclusion of what the authorities do not want students to study, and inclusion of what authorities think they should. The Oversight Committee of the university has removed from the syllabus Mahasweta Devis short story Draupadi and the works of two Tamil Dalit writers, Bama and Sukirtharani, which were replaced with the writings of an upper caste writer, Ramabai. The department has also been told to replace Chandrabati Ramayana with Tulsidas. The changes speak a language now known to pervade academia.

The DU Registrar has said that the changes were made so that the literary content does not hurt the sentiments of any individual. He said that the language used in Mahasweta Devi story, which is about the gangrape of a tribal woman in custody, was not acceptable, and it would make students hate the military. Bama is a novelist and Sukirtharani a poet, and both of them have made important contributions to Dalit and womens writing. Chandrabatis Ramayana is a retelling of the epic from Sitas point of view by a 16th century woman poet in whats presently Bangladesh. The Oversight Committees aversion to these writers is self-explanatory because their positions do not belong to the ideology that it might want to promote in the university. A pushback against power by a tribal woman, assertions of identity by Dalits and women, and other versions of the Ramayana than the one the authorities favour, are anathema for such a mindset. Womens narratives and perspectives perhaps appear especially dangerous to the Committee.

The decisions were taken without consulting the Academic Council, whose members have protested against the arbitrary changes and termed the Committees action maximum vandalism. The English department was consulted apparently, and the Committee chairman said in effect that one does not need a PhD to take such a decision. But the implications should be evident. Literature exposes students to the complex human condition, opens up their minds and makes them aware of the various versions and realms of reality. It holds a mirror to society, echoing many voices and presenting many narratives. To deny the diversity of such stories to students and to give them only an authorised version of reality is wrong, as it limits their thinking, imagination and experience. A censored and sanitised syllabus without suffering Dalits, questioning Sitas, and custodial rapes will only show them an unreal world. Instead, students should be encouraged to question, not to accept, to imbibe everything and to exclude nothing.
Although marital rape has been criminalised in over a hundred countries, India remains one among the 30-odd countries yet to do so. According to UN Women, one out of every three women across the world is subject to physical or sexual violence by an intimate partner. The pandemic has further exposed the fault lines of gender parity, with the lockdown periods witnessing a rise in the incidence of domestic violence.

When the Indian Penal Code was written by the British rulers in the 19th century, women were not entitled to any rights independent of their husbands. Entrenched in Victorian values, the 161-year-old law treats women as subservient chattel, with one of the exceptions to the offence of rape provided under Section 375 of Indias criminal code stating that sexual intercourse or sexual acts by a man with his own wife, the wife not being under 15 years of age, is not rape.

By virtue of this exemption, a husband is granted immunity for sexual intercourse with his wife against her will. This outrageous flaw surviving in Indias rape law has escaped meaningful scrutiny since its inception in the 1860s. While the legal status of women began to change with the passage of statutes and reforms, the archaic colonial-era provision on marital rape stands even today.

In a recent milestone judgement that reignited the debate on marital rape, the Kerala High Court ruled that a husband's licentious disposition disregarding the autonomy of the wife is marital rape, albeit such conduct cannot be penalised, it falls in the frame of physical and mental cruelty...In modern social jurisprudence, spouses in marriage are treated as equal partners, and husband cannot claim any superior right over wife, either with respect to her body or with reference to individual status. Treating wife's body as something owing to the husband and committing sexual act against her will is nothing but marital rape.

Subsequently, the Chhattisgarh High Court took a step backward and observed that Exception II of Section 375 of the IPCmakes it clear that sexual intercourse or sexual act by a man with his own wife, the wife not being under 18 years of age, is not rape. In this case, complainant is legally wedded wife, therefore, sexual intercourse or any sexual act with her by the husband would not constitute an offence of rape, even if it was by force or against her wish. Therefore, charge under Section 376 of the IPC framed against the husband is erroneous and illegal.

Also read: Sexual act between husband and wife not rape even if by force or against her wish: Chhattisgarh HC

A court in Maharashtra also went strictly by the book and granted anticipatory bail to the applicant while observing that although it was the wifes grievance that the applicant, her husband, had forcible sexual intercourse with her which left her paralysed, he cannot be said to have committed an illegal thing, simply because the applicant was her husband.

In 2013, the Justice J S Verma Committee recommended the removal of the exemption for marital rape, noting that a marital relationship between the perpetrator and victim cannot serve as a valid defence against the crimes of rape or sexual violation. The three-member panel, which was set up to suggest amendments to Indian criminal laws, also opined that the relationship between the accused and the complainant is not relevant to the inquiry into whether the complainant consented to the sexual activity, and the fact that the accused and victim are married or are in any other intimate relationship is not to be regarded as a mitigating factor justifying lower sentences for rape.

Regrettably, the parliamentary panel which deliberated on the amendments to Section 375 of the criminal code observed that outlawing marital rape could place the whole family under stress and result in more injustice, while failing to consider that marital rape itself fractures a marriage. The State should have no interest in conserving disintegrated and decaying familial relationships.

The Supreme Court and various High Courts have in recent years taken strides to acknowledge gender discrimination in situations where the law thwarted deviation from traditional sex roles. The continued existence of the marital rape exemption, however, freezes and further entrenches married women in the role of sexual objects aligned to their husbands' desires. Indias marital rape law nurtures a man's sexual entitlement to a woman within a contract of marriage and the contemporary justifications for the exception manifestly display an underlying compliance to the ideology of female servitude and inferiority. The exemption eliminates a married woman's bodily autonomy in one of the most intimate and private of all human interactions.

The modern rationales in support of the exception, though divergent in structure from their 1860s forerunners, upholds the same ideals of an androcentric society and are rooted in the treatment of women as chattel. Promoting and favouring reconciliation, preserving the institution of marriage, and extinguishing evidentiary barriers and deficiencies are some of the present-day recipes sustaining the ancient 19th century potion for women's subjugation.

A man's forceful sexual possession of his unwilling wife is an exercise of unchecked power. The laws silent sanction for this exercise of power serves as a dangerous encouragement for the continued violent subjugation of women in society. Neither can marriage be a defence against rape nor can it imply a blanket irrevocable consent.

The time is ripe, if not long overripe, to discard the peculiar notion that women who enter into marital relationships with men impliedly consent to sexual intercourse, or that a wife who on one occasion consents to sexual intercourse is forever so bound. In any case, a rapist remains a rapist, irrespective of his relationship with the survivor.

(The writer is a Bengaluru-based lawyer)
By Alexandra Stevenson,

As Afghans pay surging prices for eggs and flour and stand in long lines at the bank, money changers like Enayatullah and his underground financial lifeline have found themselves in desperate demand.

Enayatullah  his family name withheld  holds down a tiny point in a sprawling global network of informal lenders and backroom bankers called hawala. The Taliban used hawala to help fund their ultimately successful insurgency. Many households use it to get help from relatives in Istanbul, London and Doha, Qatar. Without cash from hawala, economic life in whole swaths of Afghanistan would come to a crashing halt.

That is now a very real possibility. Foreign aid has dried up. Prices are surging. The value of the afghani currency is tumbling. The countrys $9.4 billion in reserves have been frozen.

Also read: Taliban rule likely to be fragile and unstable

And hawala will not be enough, said Enayatullah, adding that peoples need for money has become so desperate in the last week he raised his commission to 4% per transaction, about eight times his usual rate. The system is now struggling with a lack of money, leading the Taliban and dealers themselves to rein in activity to preserve cash.

The demand, Enayatullah said, is too much.

The Taliban won the war in Afghanistan and an economic crisis may be their prize. They have been cut off from the international banking system and from the countrys previous funding sources, like the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the US government. Foreign aid makes up nearly half of economic output.

Without other sources of money, millions of Afghan people could lose the gains they made, in fits and starts, over the past two decades. Already, drought conditions have created a real risk of hunger.

We have conflict. We have war. This is another misery, said Shah Mehrabi, a board member of Afghanistans central bank. You will have a financial crisis and it will push families further into poverty.

Long before Afghanistan had formal institutions like banks, it had the hawala system. Millions of Afghans, shut out from formal banking, used it to send and receive remittances, as have migrant workers and others around the world.

The system functions on the premise that people want to send equivalent amounts of money between two locations. Loans and transfers are recorded on ledgers, but money does not have to change hands. Those features make it useful for evading taxes, paying bribes and laundering ill-gotten gains.

Hawala was a necessity under the Taliban-led Afghanistan of two decades ago, before the US invasion in 2001, when money from illicit sources greased the countrys financial wheels. In addition to hawala, opium from the countrys vast poppy fields and smuggling brought the country money from the rest of the world, offsetting weak trade. As insurgents, the Taliban funded themselves by taxing smuggled goods like televisions and fuel, in transactions often financed through hawala and through the drug trade.

Also read: Taliban and Afghan rebels claim heavy casualties in fighting over valley

But the Afghanistan of 2021 is a country transformed. The economy, though its growth has been unsteady over the past decade, is five times the size it was in the early 2000s. Once scarce in most places, electricity is now widely available. Smartphones and internet access are common.

Foreign money helped. Over the two decades, the United States spent more than $145 billion on reconstruction activities in Afghanistan, according to the US government. Much of it was used to build the Afghan security forces, but funds also went toward large-scale infrastructure projects and an economic support fund. More than three quarters of the Afghan governments $11 billion annual public expenditures was paid for by donor funding.

The Taliban will be hard-pressed to make up that shortfall.

Since taking over Afghanistan, the Taliban have said they will stop production of opium. But for the hawala system to work, Afghanistan must ultimately find sources of hard currency to lubricate the lines of credit that would snake back into the country. With exports in 2019 of about $870 million  mostly carpets, plus figs, licorice and other agricultural products  Afghanistan has little to offer on a large scale that is as lucrative as opium.

Also read: Modi may visit US as Biden planning to host him, others for Quad Summit to move on from Afghanistan fiasco

The Taliban could see support from governments like Pakistan, Iran and China that might have their own reasons for keeping relations with Afghanistan warm. Trade has already started up again with Iran, said David Mansfield, an independent consultant and an expert on rural Afghanistan, citing satellite imagery of fuel tankers and transit trucks moving across the border. He has estimated that during its insurgency, the Taliban was able to raise more than $100 million a year from informally taxing goods from Iran and southern Afghanistan.

Even if the Taliban raised several multiples more than that, it would mean a return to the minimalist state like the 1990s.

Economic crisis, humanitarian disaster, more refugees, Mansfield said. The other side of this is we have an Afghan population in the past 20 years who have seen some degree of transformation. Their livelihoods have improved.

The hawala system, though central to life in Afghanistan, will not be enough on its own. While many hawala transactions exist only on ledgers, they are ultimately backed by cold, hard cash often held by hawala dealers called hawaladars. In Afghanistan, say experts, hawaladars regularly use the local currency, the afghani, to buy American dollars from Afghanistans central bank, a transaction that can help stabilise the afghanis value.

But the central bank cannot access its reserves held abroad, and basic financial life in Afghanistan has gone awry. The price of flour has jumped more than 10% over the past week, while sugar and eggs are roughly one-fifth higher, said Mehrabi, citing data from the central bank.

Also read: India non-committal on recognising new Afghan govt that Taliban is planning to announce soon

Under the Taliban and its new central bank governor, the countrys 12 state-owned and commercial banks were ordered to open their doors Sunday. Since then, lines of people waiting to withdraw money snake around corners, interrupted only by side streets and driveways. Limits have been placed on how much each person is allowed to withdraw.

The new banking rules do not allow businesses to withdraw cash from their bank accounts, so salaries and bills are paid by transfers between accounts and also subject to limits. Many civil servants from the previous government have lost their jobs, as have the many people who were employed by the US military and other foreign governments, nonprofit organizations and media companies.

When Pashtany Bank opened its doors for the first time in nearly two weeks Sunday, depositors were already waiting at the doors, said Ahmad Javed Wafa, its chief executive, who is currently in Istanbul. His bank will accommodate the daily demands of customers as long as the central bank, which stores much of its cash, can continue to make deliveries, Wafa said. But at some point the central bank will run out of cash.

Though the Taliban have kept a wary eye on hawala dealers since taking over, they may reach a deal to secure trade in exchange for new funding channels.

The informal economy, Wafa said, is the only source for the Taliban to survive.
By David Brooks,

You may think you understand the difference between seeing something and imagining it. When you see something its really there; when you imagine it, you make it up. That feels very different.

The problem is that when researchers ask people to imagine something, like a tomato, and then give some of them a just barely visible image of a tomato, they find that the process of imagining it is hard to totally separate from the process of seeing it. In fact, they use a lot of the same brain areas.

And when you stop to think about it, that makes some sense. Your brain is locked in the pitch-black bony vault of your skull, trying to use scraps of information to piece together the world. Even when its seeing, its partly constructing whats out there based on experience. It turns out, reality and imagination are completely intermixed in our brain, Nadine Dijkstra writes in Nautilus, which means that the separation between our inner world and the outside world is not as clear as we might like to think.

We grew up believing that imagining and seeing describe different mental faculties. But as we learn more about whats going on in the mind, these concepts get really blurry really fast.

This is happening all over the place. Over the centuries, humans have come up with all sorts of concepts to describe different thinking activities: memory, perception, emotion, attention, decision-making. But now, as scientists develop greater abilities to look at the brain doing its thing, they often find that the activity they observe does not fit the neat categories our culture has created, and which we rely on to understand ourselves.

Let me give you a few more examples:

Reason/Emotion: It feels as if the rational brain creates and works with ideas, but that emotions sweep over us. But some neuroscientists, like Lisa Feldman Barrett of Northeastern University, argue that people construct emotions and thoughts, and there is no clear distinction between them. It feels as if we can use our faculty of reason to restrain our passions, but some neuroscientists doubt this is really whats happening. Furthermore, emotions assign value to things, so they are instrumental to reason, not separate from or opposed to it.

Observation/Memory: Observation feels like a transparent process. You open your eyes and take stuff in. In fact, much or most of seeing is making mental predictions about what you expect to see, based on experience, and then using sensory input to check and adjust your predictions. Thus, your memory profoundly influences what you see. Perceptions come from the inside out just as much, if not more, than from the outside in, the University of Sussex neuroscientist Anil Seth has observed. The conversation between senses and memory produces what he calls a controlled hallucination, which is the closest we can get to registering reality.

Understanding/Experiencing: Understanding seems cognitive; you study something and figure it out. Experience seems sensory; you physically live through some event. But Mark Johnson, now a professor emeritus in the University of Oregons Department of Philosophy, points out that there is no such thing as disembodied understanding. Your neural, chemical and bodily responses are in continual conversation with one another, so both understanding and experiencing are mental and physical simultaneously. When faced with a whole person, Joe Gough, a Ph.D. student in philosophy at the University of Sussex, writes, we shouldnt think that they can be divided into a mind and a body.

Self-control: We talk as if theres a thing called self-control, or self-regulation, or grit. But the Stanford psychology professor Russell Poldrack tells me that when you give people games to measure self-control in a lab, the results do not predict whether they will be able to resist alcohol or drug use in the real world. This suggests, Poldrack says, that what we believe is self-control may really be a bunch of different processes.

Jordana Cepelewicz recently had an excellent essay on this broad conceptual challenge in Quanta Magazine. You realise that neither the term decision-making nor the term attention actually corresponds to a thing in the brain, the University of Montreal neuroscientist Paul Cisek told her. She also reported that some in the field believe that the concepts at the core of how we think about thinking need to be radically revised.

That seems exciting. Ive long wondered if in 50 years terms like emotion or reason will be obsolete. Some future genius will have come up with an integrative paradigm that more accurately captures who we are and how we think.

I love how holistic the drift of research is. For a while, neuroscientists spent a lot of time trying to figure out what region of the brain did what function. (Fear is in the amygdala!) Today they also look at the ways vast networks across the brain, body and environment work together to create comprehensive mental states. Now there is much more emphasis on how people and groups creatively construct their own realities, and live within their own constructions.

Ive often told young people to study genetics. That will clearly be important. But Im realising we all need to study this stuff, too. Big, exciting changes are afoot.
With more than two billion active users, WhatsApp is the most used messenger app in the world. Any minor security glitch can have devasting impact on many people.

In 2019, a report emerged that several government agencies had hired Israeli-company NSO Group to spy on activists and journalists. The former had used the Pegasus tool to install spyware inside the targeted people's phones via WhatsApp.

The company patched soon after the discovery of the loophole in the messenger app and now, security experts at Check Point Research (CPR) have averted another disaster. They discovered 'Out-Of-Bounds' read-write vulnerability in WhatsApp.

It was found in WhatsApp image filter functionality. This would have hackers create an image laced with malicious code for remote execution via WhatsApp. It can be programmed to get triggered when a user opens an attachment.

The security loophole was only known to the CPR experts and was duly alerted to WhatsApp in November 2020. However, the Facebook-owned company took its own sweet time to finally fix it.

"The issue, which has been patched and remains theoretical, would have required complex steps and extensive user interaction in order to exploit and could have allowed an attacker to read sensitive information from WhatsApp memory," Check Point Research experts said.

WhatsApp recently rolled out the new software patch v2.21.1.13 to WhatsApp for Android and Webdesk versions.

If you haven't updated your WhatsApp, do it now. You can manually do it by going to App Store >> type WhatsApp >> tap on the Update button.

Get the latest news on new launches, gadget reviews, apps, cybersecurity, and more on personal technology only on DH Tech.
Within a few days after a college girl was gang-raped by a group of men near Chamundi Hill, another case of sexual assault of a girl, a nun, was reported in the city, on Friday.

In a swift action, the city police arrested the suspect within a few hours of the incident. According to the police, the survivor and the suspect were known to each other for a few months and the police suspect personal revenge to be the motive behind the incident.

The incident was reported in a hostel in R S Naidu Nagar. The suspect gained entry into the room when the girl was alone and sexually assaulted her. She sustained multiple injuries as she tried to resist. The girl is undergoing treatment in a hospital.

DCP Pradeep Gunti said a case under Section 376 of the IPC has been registered and it is yet to be ascertained whether it is a case of rape or an attempt to rape. We are waiting for the victims statement and medical report, the officer said.

Fingerprint experts and the dog squad visited the spot.
Foyle MP, Colum Eastwood, has accused the British Foreign Office of turning a deaf ear to the plight of Derry resident Muhammad Kharotai.

The SDLP leader was speaking after hearing of the abduction of Muhammad's sister Sama in Afghanistan.

Mr Kharotai has been living in Derry since 2011 after the Taliban's murder of his father  a government official  prompted him to flee his homeland.

However, other members of his family were unable to get out and following the recent takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban, they have been living in a tent inside a refugee camp where 19-year-old Sama was subsequently abducted.

Mr Eastwood has made a plea to the British Government to step up their efforts and help the Kharotai family but to no avail.

He said: We've been speaking to the British Government's Foreign Secretary's office, the Home Secretary's office, the Defence Secretary's office for I think almost two weeks now and those calls have fallen on deaf ears.

I'm hearing the same story from MPs across the board and it's just devastating. They should have known this was coming. They were not prepared at all and women like Muhammad's family have been left in a dangerous and difficult position.

But it's if they didn't know this was coming. I don't understand how given they had a deal done with the Taliban 18 months ago, how they were not preparing to get vulnerable people out long before now.

We provided phone numbers and everything to the Foreign Office and nothing was done. It was very difficult two weeks ago, it was very difficult a week ago. It seems even more difficult today because the fact is they have left these people on their own.

We can debate the rights and wrongs of what happened in Afghanistan 20 years ago  I have a very strong view on that. But the British and American governments have left those people after invading and have left those people at the mercy of the Taliban and now we're seeing ISIS there as well. It is an impossible position.

Muhammad's family have been living in a tent in Kabul, his four sisters and his mother. I just can't imagine what Muhammad is going through today.

I know that there are many cases like this and many emails haven't even been responded to by the Foreign Office.

So if the Foreign Office are telling us they are doing everything they can, I just don't believe them, frankly. They haven't been doing what they should have been doing over the past number of weeks.

They were not prepared. They did not have the resources in place. They were not ready for what was clearly coming and they have left those people in harm's way.

In response, a Foreign Office spokesperson said: Britain and our international partners are all committed to ensuring that our citizens, nationals and residents, employees, Afghans who have worked with us and those who are at risk can continue to travel freely to destinations outside Afghanistan.

We have been clear that the Taliban must allow safe passage for those who want to leave.
A County Derry man has been arrested after more than seven million cigarettes were seized from a lorry trailer stopped near Toome.

The operation, involving the PSNI and Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC), happened on Monday August 30.

HMRC have said the find of suspected counterfeit cigarettes was worth an estimated 3m in lost duty and taxes.

The man, who is 28 and from Magherafelt, was later released on bail.

Steve Tracey, assistant director of HMRC's fraud investigation service, said the sale of illegal tobacco costs the UK "around 1.9bn a year".

"This is theft from the taxpayer and undermines legitimate traders," he added.

PSNI Ch Insp Mervyn Seffen explained that the joint operation sends a "powerful message to those engaged in this type of criminality that they will be detained and brought before the courts".

"Those trading in illicit cigarettes can be involved in other organised criminality which brings misery and harm to local communities," he said.
Saira Banu, diagnosed with acute coronary syndrome and still in ICU, refuses permission for angiogram procedure

Veteran actor Saira Banu, admitted to the Intensive Care Unit of a hospital here, has been diagnosed with a heart problem and doctors are keen on an angiogram procedure but she has refused permission, a hospital doctor said on Thursday. The 77-year-old Padosan actor, who lost her husband Dilip Kumar in July, was admitted to the Hinduja Hospital, a non-COVID-19 facility, in Khar on August 28 following breathlessness, high blood pressure and high sugar.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Cinema Chapter (@cinemachapter)

Yesterday, her cardiac tests happened and she has been diagnosed with acute coronary syndrome, a Hinduja Hospital doctor told PTI. Doctors suggested a CAG (coronary angiogram), but Saira Banu has refused to undergo the medical procedure, the doctor said.

"Once she gives her consent, doctors can perform an angiography."

According to the doctor who is attending on her, Saira Banu is also battling depression after Dilip Kumar's death. She doesn't sleep much. She wants to go home. The actor might be discharged from the ICU and moved to a room soon.

Her husband and screen icon Dilip Kumar died on July 7 at the age of 98 after a long ailment. The couple, who acted together in several films, including "Sagina" and "Gopi", got married in 1966. Saira Banu made her acting debut opposite Shammi Kapoor in the 1961 film Junglee and went on to appear in movies such as Bluff Master , Jhuk Gaya Aasman , Aayi Milan Ki Bela , Pyar Mohabbat , Victoria No. 203 , Aadmi Aur Insaan , Resham Ki Dori , Shagird and Diwana .
Sidharth Shukla's autopsy shows no signs of internal or external injuries, viscera samples sent for chemical analysis: Reports

Sidharth Shuklas autopsy was conducted by a team of three doctors at Cooper Hospital in Mumbai after he was brought in dead to the hospital on the morning of September 2, Thursday. The television star had reportedly died of a heart attack at home before he could make it to the hospital.

News is now coming in that the doctors have found no external or internal injuries on Sidharths body during the postmortem according to NDTV sources. The report also claims that Sidharth viscera samples have been sent for chemical analysis post which the doctors will be able to ascertain the cause of death. The doctors will conduct a histopathology (a laboratory study of diseases of tissues) after the cause of death is certain.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Bollywood Pap (@bollywoodpap)

Various reports suggest that Sidharth had complained about feeling uneasy the previous night and did not wake up the next morning after he went to bed.

Several celebrities and well wishers of the family arrived at Sidharths residence after the news of his death broke out on Thursday morning. Actor Varun Dhawan, Gauahar Khan, Aly Goni, Jasmin Bhasin, Rashami Desai, Vishal Aditya Singh, Deevoleena Bhattacharjee, Asim Riaz, Rahul Mahajan were among those who visited.

The late actor is survived by his mother and two sisters.
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The number of women in the U.S. construction industry topped 1 million in April for the first time in history.



By ALEXANDRA OLSON

AP Business Writer

NEW YORK  Bethany Mayer didn't want to go back to work after learning that a fellow ironworker insinuated that women like her didn't belong there.

Jordyn Bieker, an apprentice sheet metal worker in Denver, said she felt uncomfortable that her foreman asked her pointed questions about being gay.





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SEATTLE (AP)  Due to a surge in COVID-19 cases, King County is reinstating outdoor mask mandates for large events and strongly encouraging people to wear masks in other outdoor settings when they can't remain 6 feet apart.

In a statement Thursday Public HealthSeattle & King County said as of Sept. 7 there will be a requirement for facemasks for outdoor events of 500 or more people. The directive applies to both vaccinated and unvaccinated people age 5 and older.





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By JENNIFER SINCO KELLEHER

Associated Press

HONOLULU  A 24-year-old Illinois woman submitted a fake COVID-19 vaccination card to visit Hawaii with a glaring spelling error that led to her arrest: Moderna was spelled Maderna, according to court documents.

In order to bypass Hawaii's 10-day traveler quarantine, she uploaded a vaccination card to the state's Safe Travels program and arrived in Honolulu Aug. 23 on a Southwest Airlines flight, the documents said.





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By The Associated Press

From the Great Wall to the picturesque Kashmir valley, Asia's tourist destinations are looking to domestic visitors to get them through the COVID-19 pandemic's second year.

With international travel heavily restricted, foreign tourists can't enter many countries and locals can't get out. In the metropolis of Hong Kong, glamping and staycations have replaced trips abroad for at least some of its 7.4 million residents.





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SEATTLE  The Terri Ann, at 1331 Terry Ave., sold for nearly $6.3 million, according to King County records.

The seller was the Evarone family, which had owned the property for decades.





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ADA [ndash] Graveside Services for Delbert Gene Wallis, 96, of Byng, was 10 a.m. Monday, Sep. 13, 2021, at Rosedale Cemetery, David Gray officiated. Mr. Wallis passed away Friday, Sep. 10, 2021, at his home. He was born March 13, 1925. He retired from Ideal Cement. Survivors are his three so
Where are the best places to shop? Who gives the best haircut? Who cooks the best burger? Vote today for "Best of the Eagle-Tribune."

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Sebastian - Mr. Leonard "Lenny" James Despensa, 78, died September 3, 2021 at Cleveland Clinic - Indian River Hospital in Vero Beach, FL. He was born December 24, 1942 in New York, New York and lived in Sebastian, Florida since 2018, after moving there from Methuen, MA. Leonard was a veteran
The East Valley Children's Theatre is marking its 25th anniversary this year and has a full season of colorful, entertaining productions lined up at the Mesa Arts Center.
EBRD invests 16 million in LHV Groups issuance of senior preferred bonds

Total issuance volume of 100 million

LHV Group to support green financing in Estonia

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) has invested 16 million in a 100 million senior preferred bond issuance by LHV Group, combining support for capital market development with green financing in Estonia.

LHV Group is the largest domestic financial-services group in Estonia, providing banking, asset management, and insurance services. The company is listed on the Tallinn Stock Exchange and operates through digital channels, with a 10 per cent share of the Estonian lending market.

The EBRD investment builds on the Banks strong commitment to the development of capital markets in the Baltic states. The investment also seeks to increase green financing in Estonia, enabling LHV Group to support new green projects in the coming years, in line with the EBRDs strategy.

Melis Ekmen Tabojer, EBRD Director for EU Banks and Structured Finance in the Financial Institutions group, said: We are very happy to support a digital domestic financial-services group with its inaugural senior preferred bond issuance, which will support the transition to a green economy in Estonia.

Madis Toomsalu, Chief Executive Officer of LHV Group, commented: We are very happy to see the EBRD among the investors who are helping us deliver accessible financing to the Estonian economy. LHV is a fast-growing financial group supporting Estonian small and medium-sized enterprises and retail customers in thinking big and fulfilling their plans for a better future.

The EBRD has invested in the Baltic states since they regained their independence. To date, the Bank invested 2.5 billion in 291 projects in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania combined. In Estonia alone, the EBRD has committed 768 million through 96 projects.
By James Ward, PA

Taoiseach Micheal Martin said there has been melodrama and over-dramatics in the reaction to the Katherine Zappone controversy.

Mr Martin has brushed off suggestions that Tanaiste Leo Varadkar and Minister for Foreign Affairs Simon Coveney should resign over the affair amid claims it was overshadowing the work of Government.

He said it was not comparable to the controversy which saw former Fianna Fail minister for agriculture Barry Cowen resign last year.

Barry Cowen resigned as minister for agriculture last year. Photo: Brian Lawless/PA

He said: I dont think the situations are comparable. Minister Coveney has already written to the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, saying he wants to go before them again to fully address any issues that still arise or need to be addressed.

And answer any queries that the members of that committee have in relation to the appointment of Katherine Zappone.

I was surprised early this morning, listening to the debate that somehow people have forgotten the core reason behind the decision.

The fact that something is a distraction on its own doesnt merit any action of the sort youre suggesting.

After reading from his speech at the time of Mr Cowens dismissal, the Taoiseach said the difference was that the former minister was not prepared to address the allegations publicly.

It is my view that Deputy Cowen had an obligation to come before the house he said.

Earlier, Mr Varadkar said he will not consider his position amid ongoing controversy over Ms Zappones appointment as UN special envoy, a role she has since turned down.

Cowen interview

Mr Cowen told RTEs Morning Ireland on Thursday: I was told that this issue was dominating the public domain and was getting in the way of Government business. Some would argue this is getting in the way of Government business too.

The Taoiseach, however, said it was time for balance and perspective, with the country facing bigger challenges in terms of Covid-19 and the housing crisis.

He said: Im very clear about this. I think theres a bit of melodrama and over-dramatics about the whole thing. Thats where Im personally coming to this issue from.

He added: The bottom line was I asked the minister in my Cabinet to go before the Dail, to clarify issues of significant importance that we raised.

The minister decided he wasnt going to do that, he wanted to go another way. Its not directly comparable to this.

The Taoiseach suggested that some journalists wanted to let the story run.

I dont think its at the scale that you think its at. I genuinely dont he added.
Tributes have been paid following the death of Pat Hume, the widow of former SDLP leader John Hume.

Mrs Hume died on Thursday evening.

Her death comes just over a year after that of her Nobel Peace Prize-winning husband John. His death led to a flood of tributes from around the world.

Born in Derry, she and John married in 1960 and had five children. A teacher for 25 years, she left the profession to manage her husbands constituency office and was a point of contact for the many local families who went to her for help and support.

A statement from the Hume family said: We are heartbroken to announce the death of Pat Hume at home in Derry earlier this afternoon after a short illness.

Pat died as she lived  surrounded by family, peacefully and generous to the end.

Pat spent some days in the hospital in the days preceding her death and she saw first-hand the outstanding work that healthcare workers do, and the pressures that they are facing due to Covid.

She would prioritise public health at all times. Funeral arrangements will be announced in due course which will adhere to Covid guidance. The wake will be restricted to family only.

The family paid tribute to the medical staff who had cared for their mother in her final days.

Mrs Hume had worked alongside her husband for several decades, from the beginning of the civil rights movement in the 1960s through until after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998.

She was awarded the Irish Red Cross Lifetime Achievement award in 2018 and a foundation honouring her and her husbands peace and reconciliation work was launched last year.

Tributes

Current SDLP leader Colum Eastwood paid tribute to Mrs Hume, saying that without her, there would have been no peace process in Ireland.

Mr Eastwood added: The compassion, integrity and immense fortitude that defined her incredible character breathed life into our peace over the course of a long campaign that, at times, must have looked like it would never bear fruit. Pat never gave up faith.

Without Pat Hume, there would have been no peace process in Ireland, thats the simple truth.



The compassion, integrity and immense fortitude that defined her incredible character breathed life into our peace. Thank you for everything, Pat.https://t.co/q2cuJ88UUA  Colum Eastwood (@columeastwood) September 2, 2021

Pat was, of course, Johns guiding light. She was his constant companion, sharing the road and easing the burden in the most difficult of times. When they came under public pressure and attacks on their home for doing what they knew was right, she remained his rock.

The scale of his achievement was made possible by the depth of her love. But she was, in her own right, a fierce champion for peace and justice.

Pat holds a special place in the hearts of the people of Derry. She would have done anything for them and, in return, they loved her.

Our city is in mourning tonight for a woman who showed us unconditional compassion and support every day of her life. We all live in an Ireland that she nurtured, at peace with itself and free to set its own destiny. It is an incredible legacy that will never be forgotten.

My thoughts are with Pats children Aine, Therese, Aiden, John and Mo, her beloved grandchildren and their wide circle of friends at this incredibly difficult time.

Deeply saddened to learn of the death of Pat Hume, wife of the late John Hume.



Alongside her husband, Pat made it her lifes work to bring peace and stability to this island  showing huge resilience and courage along the way.



My deepest condolences to all of the Hume family.  Micheal Martin (@MichealMartinTD) September 2, 2021

Taoiseach Micheal Martin said: I wish to extend my deepest condolences to the Hume family on the death of their beloved mother, Pat.

A devoted wife of Nobel prize winner, the late John Hume, she was his partner in family life and in political life.

Pat and John worked side by side for decades, she was his trusted adviser at key political moments and his anchor in their beloved Derry.

I want to recognise the tremendous contribution Pat made in their lifes work for peace and stability on this island and her resilience and courage on the path to peaceful change.

Her love and care for John and their family and her commitment to helping the community and people of Derry means she will be much missed.

Former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton said Mrs Hume was a gracious, determined force behind the achievement of peace in Ireland.

Pat Hume was a gracious, determined force behind the achievement of peace in Ireland. She and her husband John both made the world a better place and set an example for us all. Sending my condolences to her family. https://t.co/cAC9IYrobq  Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) September 2, 2021

Mrs Clinton and her husband Bill made several visits to Derry, with their first visit in 1995, shortly after the IRA ceasefires.

President Michael D Higgins said Pat Hume had made an extraordinary contribution to life on this island and beyond.

He added: The life of Pat Hume was one of total commitment to community, to the possibilities of peace, to the measures of non-violence that were necessary to assert, vindicate and achieve the results of civil rights.

While her support of the work of her late husband and Nobel Prize recipient, John Hume, was an exercise in solidarity, a partnership in courage, endurance and fortitude, her personal contribution was unique, immense and important in its own right.

Pats personal contribution as teacher, mother, in conditions of conflict, political adviser, constituency secretary and consoler of the victims of oppression from so many sources, was extraordinary in every sense.

"That life of Pat Hume was one of total commitment to community, to the possibilities of peace, to the measures of non-violence that were necessary..."



Statement by President Michael D. Higgins on the passing of Pat Hume:https://t.co/cyFKI8wLTb  President of Ireland (@PresidentIRL) September 2, 2021

DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson said that Pat Hume had lived a unique life.

He said: My deepest sympathies to the Hume family on the death of Pat Hume. A unique life well lived and no one who met John left the conversation without knowing Pat. A lovely lady.

Sinn Fein president Mary Lou McDonald, said she had been left deeply saddened by the news.

She added: I extend my deepest condolences to her family and friends. She will be sadly missed by her children, extended family and friends, colleagues and the people of Derry.

I am deeply saddened to hear of the passing of Pat Hume today. I extend my deepest condolences to her family and friends. She will be sadly missed by her children, extended family and friends, colleagues and the people of Derry. Ar dheis De go raibh a hanam.  Mary Lou McDonald (@MaryLouMcDonald) September 2, 2021

Alliance Party leader Naomi Long said Mrs Humes dedication to peace was total.

She said: Very sorry to hear Pat Hume has passed away  an absolute lady, warm & friendly, always encouraging. Her dedication to peace was total as was her dedication to John esp. in his latter years.

Ulster Unionist leader Doug Beattie tweeted: Although we never met I am saddened by the death of Pat Hume. My thoughts are with her family.

Bishop of Derry Donal McKeown said Pat Hume was small in stature, but a colossus in Irish history.

He added: She was the rock behind the man who rightly has been credited as the architect of our current peace.

In the course of that long and challenging journey towards the peace we enjoy today Pat was brave, courageous and uncompromising, yet she was always gentle and profound in respect for other people and their opinions.
There are just over two months until the next election date in Michigan. The last election for some communities was a month ago. Did you vote? Do you know who the candidates were? There was also an election in May for some communities. Many people had no idea.

Voter turnout in presidential years is often relatively high (in the November 2020 Election, voter turnout in Michigan was 71%). Turnout in off-year elections, especially for a May or an August in Michigan is pitiful. Overall we are lucky if we eclipse 15% of registered voters. That means that 85% of registered voters choose not to show up to make their voice heard.

As an election official, people feel compelled to confess their voting-related sins to me. Often, people I barely know will tell me that they forgot to vote, or that they chose not to vote because they did not know the candidates, or that they did not even know there was an election. Voting is a right, and the choice not to vote in a contest is a voters right as well. However, these voters are not simply seeking absolution.

What they and I know, deep down, is that every single election is important. These elections include when local school boards get elected. They are when your city council members, your mayor, and your local city clerks are elected. Your local and county government are making decisions every day that often affect you far more than the abstract policies being passed in Congress.

If you have strong feelings about ensuring that students wear masks in schools, or not, then you should have no excuse for sitting out when your local school board members are on the ballot. If you are concerned about making sure your county parks are clean and well-maintained places to enjoy, then make sure you vote when your county commissioners are on the ballot. If you care about adequate funding to schools, roads, etc., find out when your county, city, township, or school district has ballot initiatives up for a vote.

The easiest way to do this is to sign up for your local clerks Permanent Absent Voter Ballot Application List so that you are mailed an application for a ballot for every election.

The public are just now understanding how much these local officials and initiatives affect their lives. For better or worse, people are more aware than ever what their local School Board Member believes and how they vote. In recent days, especially, local elected officials are coming under such intense scrutiny, that they are fearing for their lives and some are choosing to resign their offices rather than live in fear of being attacked for their votes on what are often volunteer boards and commissions. No one should feel unsafe in their job, elected officials included.

The result of the resignations that we see amongst local elected officials means just one thing: more elections. It is crucial that people get out and vote so that we get the school board members, city, township, and county officials that are representative of their districts. 15% of registered voters making these decisions simply will not do anymore. As we have seen lately, these offices are far more important and deserving of the publics attention at the ballot box than that.

The voters that come to me are not merely seeking absolution, but also the penance as well. Please take the time to get to know the candidates and the proposals and make a plan to vote. Every election deserves our collective attention.

Should you wish to confess your election sins, or need to find out more about your next election, feel free to contact me and I will be more than happy to assist. You can follow me on Twitter @BarbByrum.
Effingham, IL (62401)

Today

Thunderstorms during the evening will give way to cloudy skies after midnight. Low 62F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 100%..

Tonight

Thunderstorms during the evening will give way to cloudy skies after midnight. Low 62F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 100%.
Chip Minemyer is the editor of The Tribune-Democrat and TribDem.com, and CNHI regional editor for Pennsylvania, Maryland, Ohio, West Virginia and North Carolina. He can be reached at 814-532-5091. Follow him on Twitter @MinemyerChip.
Washington, MO (63090)

Today

Thunderstorms - some locally heavy downpours are possible, especially late. Low 63F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 90%..

Tonight

Thunderstorms - some locally heavy downpours are possible, especially late. Low 63F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 90%.
Polling expert discusses potential of online voting

An expert in elections and polls believes the Isle of Man could be a trailblazer when it comes to electronic voting.

Some have suggested moving to an online system could boost voter turnout, although there have been concerns over hacking.

Professor Sir John Curtice from the University of Strathclyde has accurately predicted the outcome of four Westminster elections.

He feels whilst the size of the Island could be used to trial such a move, a number of other factors need to be considered.

Ideally what you would do if you were going to really prove whether [electronic voting] makes a difference to turnout or not is that you would do the election electronically in one half of the island and not in the other half and then see what difference it makes; but that may be quite difficult to swallow, Professor Curtice said.

However, he admitted a rise in turnout would not necessarily be as a result of a move to online voting.

Amendments to election law have been promised in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Critics claim such a move would be fraught with technical issues as well as becoming the target of hackers.

There are currently no plans to move to an electronic voting system.

Professor Sir John Curtice spoke to Local Democracy Reporter Chris Cave:



Media

Curtis IV
Commonly known as the Dark Blue Book, the document presents the financial outturn of the accounting period for the year ended 31 March 2021.

Central Government accounts show an overall surplus of 137.3m compared to a deficit of 221.7m in 2019/20.

The change to a surplus position is primarily due to unrealised gains on investments of 233.8m which have occurred due to a recovery in the stock market. This is in sharp contrast to the previous year which witnessed unrealised losses on investments of 123.5m.

Group accounts include transactions and balances in respect of the two non-revenue funded statutory boards (Manx Utilities Authority and Isle of Man Post Office) in addition to Government-owned companies, namely Radio Manx Limited, Laxey Glen Mills Limited, Isle of Man Film Limited, Isle of Man Film DOI Limited, Isle of Man Steam Packet Group Limited and the Isle of Man Meat Company Ltd.

These accounts showed an overall surplus of 140.7m compared to a deficit of 231.4m in 2019/20..

The Dark Blue Book can be viewed and downloaded by visiting the Government Accounts page of the Isle of Man Government website.
China's second largest e-commerce platform JD.com will stop selling up to 86 games following a crackdown on gaming that limits children to three hours per week, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) has reported. Popular titles being removed from its platform include FIFA 21, The Last of Us 2 and Super Mario Maker 2.

Earlier this week, China's National Press and Publication Administration (NPAA) regulator issued an edict limiting gaming for kids under 18 to three hours of gaming per week. They're only allowed to play now for an hour every Friday, Saturday, Sunday and on statutory holidays, marking some of the governments strictest measures since a blockade on new approvals back in 2018.

The new rule has a few gaping holes, notably that officials won't be able to monitor unlicensed games not officially in the system. It's difficult to see how officials would monitor offline gameplay, as well.

However, it's still a big shift in JD.com's strategy, as SCMP has noted. The company announced that it would ban any game that violates China's constitution or national security laws. That also includes games that might promote vulgarity, pornography, gambling and violence. (It's hard to see how some of those games like FIFA 21 and Super Mario Maker 2 violate those rules.)

Previously, JD.com allowed sales of certain games that straddled or crossed those lines, banning them only when they stirred up controversy. Other firms have sold banned games using code titles, changing the name of Resident Evil 2: Remake to First Day on the Job at the Police Station: Remake, for example.

The new strategy may be due in to stepped up government enforcement, with Guangdong regional officials arresting 54 parallel importers in April and confiscating $11.9 million worth of smuggled consoles, according to the report.
Enid, OK (73701)

Today

Partly cloudy with a slight chance of thunderstorms overnight. Low near 65F. Winds ESE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 30%..

Tonight

Partly cloudy with a slight chance of thunderstorms overnight. Low near 65F. Winds ESE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 30%.
Enid, OK (73701)

Today

Some clouds and possibly an isolated thunderstorm late. Low around 65F. Winds ESE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 30%..

Tonight

Some clouds and possibly an isolated thunderstorm late. Low around 65F. Winds ESE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 30%.
Taryn Manning never thought doing the movie "Karen," can have a horde of real-life offended "Karens" onto her case. She revealed that she's feeling the wrath of the "Karens."

Taryn Manning says she has been "attacked by white women" who felt betrayed by her. The group said "betrayed her own race" by doing the movie, or worse, taking on the lead role in her upcoming film, "Karen."

"I was, kind of, taking it on head first and, like, responding to people, you know, 'I'm so sorry you feel that way,'" she said in a clip of her Mr. Warburton magazine interview for the September fall fashion issue that Page Six was able to exclusively obtain.

"I was attacked a lot by white women who felt that I had betrayed my own race," the Arizona-born actress, shared directly, not mincing words.

ALSO READ: James Wan's 'Malignant' Looks To Redefine Horror: Newest Trailer with Exclusive Interview Released

To recall, "Karen" is the now-infamous term, or nickname that society is using to brand specifically white women who have a tendency to exhibit intolerant, manager-calling and racist behaviors. Unfortunately, having such a common name used to brand such annoying behaviors caused a conundrum. Many women who have unfortunately this name, made fun of their plight, but some, whose names are not Karens, felt offended because they felt "attacked."

In the already controversial movie, Manning's character, Karen White, makes microaggressions against her new neighbors. There was even a scene where she's threatening to call the manager on a black patron for doing nothing but just be at the same restaurant at her and...laughing.

At present, Manning preferred closing off her personal Instagram's comments section and making her Twitter account private. It is unclear if this is a direct result of the movie's backlash, or if she's really just a private person.

Some of the harsh remarks the movie already received so far included a tweet that read "more mainstream antiwhite racism. im sure there's no relationship between this and the countless unprovoked beatings we see of white people in the streets." This was made when the trailer was launched.

Another critic wrote, "It's just a tactic to further divide us. This movie is damaging and irresponsible."

Manning, 42, also told Mr. Warburton's interviewer, psychologist Dr. Elizabeth Lombardo, that Internet trolls who are attacking her and the film should think twice. She said they need to "tread really lightly," because their behaviors are truly unacceptable. "You can't just act that way."

There's a reason in the first place why she took on the movie, and this is not to just place "white women" in the bad light.

"A lot of people aren't taking it well, but it's something that needs to be brought to the forefront so we can start to change humanity, really," she said.

The movie will be dropping on September 4, Friday.

ALSO READ: Mike Richards Fired from Both 'Jeopardy!' and 'Wheel of Fortune' as Executive Producer After Quitting Hosting Stint
Trill Impact fund raises 900m from Nordea, AP funds

Nordea Asset Management (NAM) and Sweden's AP pension funds are among investors to have contributed to a 900 million

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Thursday, September 2, 2021

Welcome to September and Labor Day Weekend. I don't know what your holiday plans are but I'm going to stock up on toilet paper. For some reason the resurgence of COVID-19 has put us into TP panic mode again. There are shortages of toilet paper again and I do not know why. This virus does not make you poop. It does a lot of nasty things but Constant Poop Syndrome, is not one of them.

Plus, between the fever, headache, shortness of breath, and nausea that COVID brings, who has the time to poop? You don't need more toilet paper. Save your money and go get vaccinated.right after you enjoy this week's Friday Funnies.

I JUST WANT TO KNOW WHY?

I understand most things, but occasionally an idea will just jump to the front of the stupid line. Such is the case of the Milk Crate Challenge. The concept is to stack plastic milk crates to form a pyramid of six steps up and six steps down. When you reach the apex, you are about ten feet off the ground and standing atop a very shaky tower. This is when the fun happens.

The person on top will most likely fall and injure themselves, but occasionally, the climber will make it up and down the tower without falling. This person is known as the king of the stupid.

The current king said that he will increase the challenge by climbing the milk crates, while eating a Tide pod, and piercing his own nose at the same time. Long live the Kingalthough that is unlikely.

"CALL FOR BEN DOVER"

If you have ever watched the Simpsons, you know that Bart has a running gag where he calls Moe's Tavern and asks for different people. He would ask for Seymour Butts or Hugh Jass. In Henrico County, Virginia, that prank was pulled on the local school board.

At a recent school board meeting, a list of names submitted for public comment was read aloud by board member Roscoe D. Cooper III. He read the list of people, who were to be given a chance to speak. If they didn't respond, he went on to the next name on the list. He then read them all (I saw the video) including the names of Phil McCracken, Eileen Dover, Suk Mahdik, Ophelia McCaulk, Wayne Kerr, and Don Kedick. The man never laughed or even cracked a smile.

I've seen this guy before. He was in the front row center at my last show.

STRANGE BUT SADLY TRUE

An amazing record was set this week by eight Ukrainian strongmen. The body builders tied ropes to a fully loaded Soviet-made cargo plane weighing 628,300 pounds, and pulled it 14 feet in a minute and 14 seconds. It was declared a record by Ukraine's national record book, and, of course, they plan on submitting the feat to Guinness.

Once again I must ask, what good is this skill? Is it being practiced in case a plane gets stuck in the mud? Or maybe the goal is to get the plane going fast enough down the runway so the pilot can pop the clutch and start it. In any event, I wish the strongmen the best of luck at their next carnival or fair.
From: Susan Allan -- The Marriage Forum Santa Barbara , CA Thursday, September 2, 2021

Texas women become Third World Citizens overnight as The Supreme Court allows Abortion Ban, opening door for increased Domestic Violence for Texas women who seek out-of-state abortions. Republican governor, Greg Abbott of Texas, has enacted Senate Bill 8 barring abortion once a fetal heartbeat is detected, at around 6 weeks, without exceptions for rape or incest. Now, women in Texas, like slaves, have no rights over their own physical bodies and health! From now on, Texas women will seek the same dangerous illegal abortions that their grandmothers found; "back alley" abortions performed by unqualified individuals. For the first time since 1973 when Roe v Wade was passed by the Supreme Court, a state has banned most abortions! Separation of church and state, the fundamental Constitutional right, has been revoked in Texas collapsing under the Supreme Court's majority of pro-lifers who ruled 5-4 against blocking this Texas law. The most punitive aspect of this horrific law is the elimination of abortion freedom for victims of rape and incest as well as the newest cruel twist, citizens' rights to sue those seeking or abetting abortion. Anyone involved in abortion procedures after six weeks of pregnancy is liable to multiple lawsuits. Any women and any caregiver, friend, or family member who assists with an abortion, including traveling to and from the medical care or supplying the funds can be sued for up to $10,000 including attorney fees! This new ban turns neighbors against one another similar to the Third Reich's reward system for informants! Now anti-abortion vigilantes can add desperate women to their list of bounty hunting murders and rapists. Now secrecy is the new way of life for so many women in Texas as it has been in Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and as it is again in Afghanistan! Domestic Violence has been one of my specialties for 22 years; here is what YOU Need to DO NOW if you think you may be pregnant in Texas, IF there is ANY chance that you do not want to deliver. PARTNERS of VIOLENT HUSBANDS and BOYFRIENDS often BELIEVE that their PARTNER is UNLIKELY to become VIOLENT UNTIL THEY DO! Here are my 7 Top Tips: Leave Texas ASAP if you think you MAY need an ABORTION- do not attempt to have an abortion in Texas! Keep any PREGNANCY secret in case you decide to terminate it. When you leave town for an abortion in another state, someone may block your departure so be SILENT and SECRETIVE. You MUST hide your TRAVEL and your pregnancy from EVERYONE as a partner wishing for more children may become violent if your plan to abort is known. TRAVEL ALONE to an out-of-state abortion to prevent a friend who drives you or even accompanies from being sued for helping you! Place a secret LOCK CODE on your PHONE if you live in Texas, deleting all text messages relating to these issues EMAILS leave a footprint on a computer so avoid emailing about abortion if you live in Texas or are communicating with someone who does. I offer a complimentary 1-hour telephone session to schedule email susan@susanallan.org and find a completely private place for your call. Domestic Violence is OFTEN triggered by these DISAGREEMENTS: CHILDREN: The number of children in a family is often disputed. Never argue; instead hide your birth control pills and pay cash for the prescription which you get from a doctor unknown to your partner. Other methods of birth control are too easily discovered so this is an additional an urgent challenge for women in Texas. MONEY: Spending money for birth control is often blocked as well as unexplained travel; therefore, keep your own carefully hidden money PREPARE in SECRET: When Texas barred most abortion procedures amid the Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020, the number of patients who traveled out of state for care jumped nealry 400% ABSENCE FROM HOME: The average trip to an abortion clinic in Texas was 12 miles, it will now become 248 miles one-way, nearly 500 miles round-trip, according to The Guttmacher Institute. Know that anyone who lies for you is vulnerable to being sued. In the past, women throughout the US could visit a doctor and have a secret abortion because they held dominion over their own body; not anymore! Before September 2nd any woman in Texas could ask friends and family to help with the cost and travel for abortions. She could find support for post-op recovery; now each woman is alone, opening the door to domestic violence if a right-to-life husband or boyfriend learns his partner doesn't want to continue the pregnancy. Abortion "Bounty Hunters" may surface and quickly multiply. I offer a complimentary 1-hour telephone session to schedule email susan@susanallan.org and find a completely private place for your call. Susan Allans Heartspace The Marriage Forum Inc. 805-695-8405 818-314-1200 http://www.heartspacesolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Testimonials.pdf Nonviolent Communication expert Certified Mediator The Divorce Forum Dating, Marriage, Reconciliation, Peaceful no-court Divorce, Avoiding Domestic Violence http://www.heartspacesolutions.com https://www.youtube.com/user/susanallan2001 275 videos https://www.facebook.com/susanallanheartspace


Denver, COKevin Schewe, author of Bad Love Medicine, the fourth installment in the Bad Love Gang series, was featured on the Dr. Pat Radio Show. Part history lesson, part sci-fi adventure, Schewe's engaging Bad Love Gang (based on his own friends in high school) once again set out to save historythis time, by stopping the Nazis from creating a time machine of their own. Bad Love Medicine takes readers from the deep-space beauty of Planet Azur back to a WWII Europe riddled with danger and espionage, bringing the time traveling heroes face-to-face with one of history's greatest villainsAdolf Hitler himself.

Dr. Pat Baccili's show, called Talk Radio to Thrive By! is the "New Main Stream" in talk radio bringing energizing and powerful interviews with renowned leaders in the field of human potentialdelivered with a fresh attitude and mass appeal. As Dr. Pat says, "We talk about everything from sex to spirituality with a vibration that honors the dignity of the human spirit."

Dr. Pat is always clever with her guest introductions, and this was no exception: "Welcome to our Good News Segment. Are you ready to dance in the street a little bit, do you think maybe you're looking at your life and you're not quite sure what's going on, have you read about what could happen when you take the world of sci-fi and put 'em together with some of the best soundtracks on the planet, starting out with one of my favorite, Love Child. When you think about all of these ideas that go on in one's mind, and you attempt to figure out, 'How do I create some of the most incredibly interesting, nail biting, edge of your seat storytelling to talk about what? To talk about how we look at the world from the eyes of Dr. Schewe with his new book Bad Love Medicine."

The first topic of conversation was the popular songs which Schewe has spread throughout all four of the Bad Love Gang books. Dr. Pat is a big music fan, and so they first talked about the notion that there is the perfect song for every situation. Primarily derived from the 1960s and 1970s, a song will pop up either by chance, be called up a certain memory or purposely played to highlight what the characters are experiencing at that time. Chronological soundtracks can be found at the beginning of each book and Kevin Schewe encourages readers to listen to the songs while reading the book. Bad Love Gang soundtracks can also be found on Spotify.

Expert Click Radio  Kevin Schewe, Author of 'Bad Love Medicine,' Featured on the Dr. Pat Radio Show

In Bad Love Strikes, the Gang discovered The White Hole Project, a time machine created by President Franklin Roosevelt in case the atomic bomb failed. In the exciting sequel, Bad Love Tigers, the gang used the White Hole Project to travel back to 1945 to thwart Russian spies and protect the secrets of Area 51. In Bad Love Beyond, the gang traveled not just through time but through space as well to learn the reason behind Blue Nova One's mysterious visit to earth. Now, in Bad Love Medicine, the gang has a two-fold mission: reunite a love-struck couple (while saving one of them from a future fate of cancer) separated by time and stop the Nazis from creating a time machine of their own.

Schewe continues to draw accolades for his screenplay based on the first book in the series, Bad Loves Strikes. The screenplay recently drew its 5th award in Munich, Germany at the New Wave Short Film Festival where it was chosen as a Special Jury Screenplay Selection. His screenplay has also won the Prix Royal Paris Silver Screenplay Award, the South Florida International Film Festival for Best Original Screenplay for Young Adults, the L.A. Film Awards Best Sci-Fi Screenplay, and a Gold Script Writing Award for Sci-Fi Adventure from the Depth of Field International Film Festival. "Great writing needs to be savored and rewarded," say the Prix Royal judges.

"If history was taught this way in school, everyone would be a scholar and educating ourselves not only about our accomplishments but the horrors of the past that should awaken and give insight to the path of a better future. A rare gem!" David Holladay, MD, 5-Stars

"Skillful writing (both historical and fantastical), a zesty sense of humor, an appreciation for pop culture, and the ability to create memorably entertaining characters combine to make this an immensely impressive noveland experience! Very highly recommended." Grady Harp, Amazon Top 100 Reviewer, 5-Stars

Watch the Bad Love Medicine Book Trailer





Readers of all ages will love Bad Love Medicine, which also contains a soundtrack to guide you on your journey. Schewe, a lifelong WWII aficionado, has spent years researching the topics included in his books, including the nuclear physics behind the time and space travel, which makes the story that much more immersive. "These stories just come to life in such an organic way," says Schewe. "They combine my childhood memories with my love of history, music, military aviation, WWII, science fiction and time travel."

Whether you're a history aficionado, a time-travel buff, a sci-fi lover, or are just in need of a fun book to cheer you up, Bad Love Medicine is the adventure you've been waiting for. Grab your copy today!

About Kevin Schewe: Kevin L. Schewe, MD, FACRO, is a board-certified cancer specialist who has been in the private practice of radiation oncology for over 34 years. He is an entrepreneur, having founded Elite Therapeutics and Bad Love Cosmetics Company, LLC. He also serves as Chairman of the Board of a small, publicly traded, renewable energy and animal feed company called VIASPACE, Inc.

A long-time history buff, Schewe is the author of the Bad Love Book Series, a young adult sci-fi adventure that spans much of early 20th century history. The series includes titles such as Bad Love Strikes, Bad Love Tigers, Bad Love Beyond, and the newest in the series, Bad Love Medicine. His series has garnered international critical acclaim, including the Wishing Shelf Book Award Red Ribbon. He has also adapted Bad Love Strikes into a feature-length screenplay, earning him multiple accolades, including Best Original Screenplay for Young Adults from the South Florida International Film Festival, Best Sci-Fi screenplay from the LA Film Awards, and a Gold Script Writing Award for Sci-Fi Adventure from the Depth of Field International Film Festival.

You can connect with Kevin Schewe through his website KevinSchewe.com or on his Instagram, @realkevinschewe

Bad Love Medicine, ASIN: B098TN6GKC, Broken Crow Ridge Publishing, July 6, 2021, available on Amazon and www.jancarolpublishing.com in ebook and paperback, 258 pages. Be sure to watch the exciting book trailers for the first three books here: https://bit.ly/BadLoveStrikes-Trailer and https://bit.ly/BadLoveTigers_Trailer and https://bit.ly/BadLoveBeyondTrailer

Media Contact: For a review copy of Bad Love Beyond, or previous books in the series, or to arrange an interview with Dr. Kevin Schewe, contact Scott Lorenz of Westwind Communications Book Marketing at scottlorenz@westwindcos.com or by phone at 734-667-2090. Follow Lorenz on Twitter @abookpublicist
From: Peggy Sands Orchowski -- Immigration Expert Washington , DC Friday, September 3, 2021

The Face and Politics of REFUGEES Are Changing By Margaret Orchowski For the past year or so, the face of "refugees" in the press has been "Latinos" fleeing gang violence and government corruption in their Central American homelands. But that perception changed in August. The face of refugees now is desperate Afghani families fleeing certain torture and death. But who are really refugees? Legislators have to pay close attention to legal definitions such as immigrant, migrant, asylee and refugee when they make laws. There are clear differences the media and public should know. Migrants are those populations (human and animal) that move from one area to another, within or between nation states.

are those populations (human and animal) that move from one area to another, within or between nation states. Immigrant is the term used for people who seek to move permanently from their home country to another. Every sovereign nation state makes their own laws stating who can immigrate there, who can't and how those laws are to be enforced. Each year the U.S. gives out over 1 million new permanent immigration permits - Legal Permanent Residency (aka: green cards), and over 2 million legal temporary non-immigration permits. Only those with green cards can choose to apply for US citizenship after five years continuous residency; most don't. The biggest source of illegal (aka: unauthorized, undocumented) immigration are people over-staying one of the dozens of temporary permits: student, skilled/unskilled workers, visitor, business, clergy, entertainers and the like.

is the term used for people who seek to move permanently from their home country to another. Every sovereign nation state makes their own laws stating who can immigrate there, who can't and how those laws are to be enforced. Each year the U.S. gives out over 1 million new permanent immigration permits - Legal Permanent Residency (aka: green cards), and over 2 million legal temporary non-immigration permits. Only those with green cards can choose to apply for US citizenship after five years continuous residency; most don't. The biggest source of illegal (aka: unauthorized, undocumented) immigration are people over-staying one of the dozens of temporary permits: student, skilled/unskilled workers, visitor, business, clergy, entertainers and the like. Asylees are people who come to another country (usually a neighboring country) seeking temporary refuge from unlivable conditions in their own homeland usually due to war or natural disaster. Internationally, asylum is recognized as a temporary designation and asylees are expected to return home. Openly seeking a better job, social benefits  a better life - is not usually an acceptable claim for asylum; some 90 percent of asylum applications in the U.S are denied for that reason, But many deniees just stay on illegally hoping for eventual amnesty. It is only a misdemeanor.

are people who come to another country (usually a neighboring country) seeking temporary refuge from unlivable conditions in their own homeland usually due to war or natural disaster. Internationally, asylum is recognized as a temporary designation and asylees are expected to return home. Openly seeking a better job, social benefits  a better life - is not usually an acceptable claim for asylum; some 90 percent of asylum applications in the U.S are denied for that reason, But many deniees just stay on illegally hoping for eventual amnesty. It is only a misdemeanor. Refugee is an international category developed by the United Nations to designate individuals who seek to change permanent residency to another country because they can document they face permanent mortal danger if they stay in their homelands. Refugees usually are required to make their claims, be vetted and housed in temporary camps or shelters before they are allowed to settle in a country that accepts them. The United States grants refugees a green card within a year if they meet certain conditions. Every country handles refugees differently, as is their right. The differences in these migration categories are not nuclear science. But politically they are fraught. Immigrant activists, reporters and editors often conflate the terms immigrant, refugee, asylee and migrant into one dramatic, sympathetic and simple (click bait) label: "refugee". That label has been applied for years to the tens of thousands of migrants surging illegally over the southern border even though the vast majority are not qualified for asylum not less refugee status. The confusion undermines the entire system for legitimate asylees and refugees., President Biden raised the cap of legal vetted refugees to around 100,000 last spring; but he didn't implement it due to the pandemic. At the same time, the 2020 order for certain temporary protected status (TPS) asylees to return home was halted only temporarily by one federal court judge and will come up again. On August 25, the Supreme Court confirmed that all migrants coming into the U.S. from Mexico and seeking asylum, must return to Mexico while their claims are considered. Even DACA  Obama's 2012 executive memo known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals -- has been declared unconstitutional by a federal court. Immigration has become a major issue in the coming German and French elections this year. It will most likely be again a major issue in the U.S. 2022 midterm elections. Immigration issues caused both Brexit and Donald Trump to win in 2016. It is important to know the legal terms, not just the spin. # # # # # We cant know where were going if we dont know where weve been. Vice President of the Brookings Institution Darrell West wrote in recommending Peggy Sands Orchowskis books "The Law That Changed The Face of America: The Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965" and "Immigration and the American Dream: Battling the Political Hype and Hysteria" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2015 and 2008 respectively). Peggy is a credentialed Senior Congressional journalist in Washington DC. She is available for interviews, article assignments and speaking engagements about immigration porchowski@hotmail.com


A San Antonio consignment shop accused by a company headed by attorney Martin Phipps of selling stolen goods is suing it for defamation.

Too Good to be Threw Inc. on Monday filed a countersuit against Phipps Holy Spirits LLC, which does business as Paramour, the swanky rooftop bar above his law firms offices.

The shop alleges Holy Spirits defamed it and acted with malice or was negligent in describing the shop as a fence receiving and selling stolen goods. Phipps company said in a June 30 complaint that Too Good to be Threw sold hundreds of articles of clothing stolen from his company.

On ExpressNews.com: Martin Phipps company behind S.A.s Paramour bar accuses consignment shop of selling stolen goods

Edward Bravenec, Too Good to be Threws lawyer, said describing someone as a fence is like calling them a thief.

My clients have been in business 40 years, he said. They have an excellent reputation. Its the first time theyve ever been accused of taking stolen property.

The store is seeking unspecified damages from Holy Spirits.

Gabe Ortiz, Phipps law partner, said Too Good to be Threws action is completely without merit. Holy Spirits filed a motion Friday to dismiss the countersuit.

Phipps is part of the legal team representing Bexar County in litigation against opioid manufacturers and distributors.

He was arrested Feb. 8 by San Antonio police on suspicion of telephone harassment, a Class B misdemeanor, for repeatedly contacting a woman to whom he was briefly married. He was freed on bail. Phipps criminal defense lawyer has disputed the allegations. The case is pending.

In its lawsuit, Holy Spirits says Phipps one-time girlfriend, Caroline Duesing, pilfered the clothing that was consigned to Too Good to be Threw.

Duesing, through her attorney, has denied stealing the clothing.

She consigned a nominal amount of Mr. Phipps no-longer used clothing at his direction, Dallas lawyer Theodore C. Anderson said in a July email. She also consigned some of her own clothing. At best the items were a few hundred dollars in value, he said.

Phipps and Duesing dated for more than four years. The relationship ended in late 2019, Anderson said.

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Holy Spirits dropped any mention of Duesing in an amended lawsuit filed in late July. The complaint says an employee consigned the allegedly stolen clothing.

An exhibit filed with the amended lawsuit listed more than 150 items that Too Good to be Threw allegedly sold without Holy Spirits authorization. They included mens pants, shirts and suits, as well as blouses, skirts and dresses.

Holy Spirits seeks damages ranging from $250,000 to $1 million.

In its motion to dismiss, Holy Spirits says it has absolute immunity for statements made during a judicial proceeding, so Too Good to be Threw is barred from any recovery on its defamation claim.

Bravenec, the stores lawyer, responded that Holy Spirits implied it or said that the shop was a fence outside of the lawsuit.

Ill just have to change our pleadings to make that clear, Bravenec said.

Too Good to be Threw also said Holy Spirits lawsuit is barred because the clothing in question was consigned more than two years ago. The statute of limitations for conversion and negligence claims is two years, the store said in its action.

pdanner@express-news.net
A San Antonio human resources executive is so distressed over an anonymous package she received at her office that shes suing the gag gift company that allegedly had it delivered to her.

Janelle Plummers lawsuit doesnt describe what was in the package, other than to say they were offensive items that were highly inappropriate and humiliating, especially in an office setting. She opened the package in front of colleagues.

Witty Yeti, the Charlotte, N.C., company allegedly behind the package, didnt respond to a request for comment Thursday.

Witty Yetis bills itself on its website as Your Source for Mischief & Mayhem, selling various gifts  some sexual in nature and not suitable for work.

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Since 2012, we have been spending way too much time thinking about ways to prank each other and then figuring out how to bring those pranks to a wider market, its website adds.

Plummer says the package she received has led her to fear for her and her familys safety.

Also named as a defendant in the complaint is the person who placed the order with Witty Yeti and paid to have it delivered to Plummer. That person is only identified as John Doe because Plummer doesnt know the senders name.

Plummer is terrified that defendant Doe, the sender of the offensive package, will escalate his or her harassing actions and cause physical harm to plaintiff and/or her family, the lawsuit says.

She is suing Witty Yeti and Doe for intentionally inflicting emotional distress and negligence, seeking less than $250,000  not including statutory and punitive damages and penalties. The suit was filed last week in state District Court in San Antonio.

Elizabeth Assunto Germany, an attorney for Plummer, said she did not have authorization from her client to divulge the contents of the package. Germany also wouldnt say where Plummer works. A LinkedIn account for a woman named Janelle Plummer shows she has worked for four years at Brake Check.

Plummers counsel reached out to Witty Yeti multiple times to learn Does name, but the suit says the company refused to provide it.

pdanner@express-news.net
Free or affordable COVID-19 testing can be hard to find in San Antonio these days.

The main reason? More residents are seeking tests right now.

On Thursday, testing company Curatives website showed zero availability that day and the next two days. By Friday morning, the website showed slots available at seven kiosks, with slots at three kiosks on Saturday.

Data from the San Antonio Metropolitan Health District show a sharp increase in demand. After the number of weekly tests administered dipped to 8,673 from July 3 to 9, it increased to 72,717 the week of Aug. 21 to 27.

That was the highest total since mid-January, when more than 79,000 tests were done in one week during the second major wave of cases.

At that time, Metro Health was receiving test results from 17 labs. Now its 12.

Miranda Gottlieb, Curatives vice president of marketing, said in a statement the company has modified operating hours during extreme heat to ensure the safety of its field operations staff at testing sites. She said high demand for testing nationwide has also affected operating hours at select locations temporarily.

Gottlieb said Curative administered 13,800 tests, with patients collecting their own samples, across its 10 sites in San Antonio from Aug. 22 to 29. Appointments can only be made online at curative.com.

On ExpressNews.com: August among deadliest months of COVID pandemic

Another provider, Center of Advanced Wellness, offers walk-up testing until 3:30 p.m. most days, though people are advised to bring a chair and umbrella to prevent heat exhaustion while they wait.

Theres a drive-up spot called Yes No COVID that runs every day from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. with no appointment needed.

Many of these providers, including major pharmacy chains such as CVS and Walgreens, offer tests with zero out-of-pocket cost through patients health insurance or a federal program for the uninsured.

Still, same-day or even next-day appointments nearby can be tough to find.

The citys website lists other local sites offering COVID-19 rapid tests and PCR tests, but those providers charge a fee. Consumers will pay $100 to $305 per visit at these clinics.

Dr. David Gude, chief operating officer of Texas MedClinic, said it administers about 750 COVID-19 tests each day. Last year, the business, which operates more than a dozen urgent care clinics, did about 1,000 tests a day.

Were near capacity for what we can do, he said. Our staff is getting tired. You can only go at 110 for so long before burning out the engine.

Texas MedClinic isnt participating in the federal program that covers uninsured patients. Its also not taking co-payments at the time of service for patients who are insured.

What patients end up being billed, Gude said, depends on their insurance providers. Every insurance company seems to be doing that differently.

On ExpressNews.com: San Antonio doctors warn over-the-counter coronavirus tests can be tricky

Theres another COVID-19 test thats not included in Metro Healths numbers  the at-home option, which was approved for emergency use by the FDA in April and can be used for children as young as 2.

BinaxNOW Rapid COVID19 Antigen Self Tests are among the handful of kits being sold at major retailers  including CVS, Walmart, Sams Club and Walgreens  for as little as $19.88.

The kit comes with nasal swabs for two tests that should be administered at least 36 hours apart, with results available in 15 minutes.

CVS Health spokeswoman Tara Burke said the home tests are the chains top-selling item.

Were experiencing high demand for over-the-counter testing products and are working with our suppliers to meet that demand. In the event that any of our stores experience a temporary shortage, we will resupply them as quickly as possible, she said in an email.

Walmart is also seeing a significant demand and working with suppliers to get more at-home COVID-19 tests, spokeswoman Lauren Willis said.

The sharp increase in testing coincides with the start of the school year and a spike caused by the delta variant.

The current positivity rate is 10.6 percent, which means 1 in 10 COVID-19 tests reported to Metro Health are coming back positive. In early August, the positivity rate reached 21.4 percent.

Local nonprofit Community Labs stopped administering coronavirus tests at community centers in June as the overall number of visitors started to decline and shifted its focus solely to in-school testing.

Since its founding last September, the nonprofit has conducted free, quick-turnaround coronavirus tests. Community Labs is currently testing in 11 area school districts at more than 300 campuses.

Spokeswoman Mary Ullmann Japhet said on Friday that if called on by Metro Health, Community Labs could be prepared to conduct public testing within a week.

Anita Kurian, assistant director of Metro Healths Communicable Disease Division, said the city is looking into adding more testing sites.

laura.garcia@express-news.net
Its been nearly four years since San Antonio received an exceedingly rare designation as a UNESCO Creative City of Gastronomy  one of only two such cities in the United States and 36 in the world.

In those four years, the citys World Heritage Office has overseen efforts to capitalize on the designation, which honors a citys cultural heritage as it relates to food.

So far, theres not much to show: a long list of goals, a staff of three people and a minuscule budget of about $75,000.

Tucson, Ariz., the only other U.S. city to receive the UNESCO designation, leveraged the distinction seemingly overnight to forge an identity as a global culinary destination.

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A blitz of investment led to new restaurants, breweries, food trucks, coffee shops and more. Chefs across the city were galvanized to cook traditional dishes with native ingredients. Signs promoting the designation popped up all over town, declaring Tucson as having the best 23 miles of Mexican food in the U.S.

Paul Stephen /Staff file photo

Here, most San Antonians are still unaware of their citys honor. In February, the World Heritage Office conducted a survey of about 900 San Antonians, and less than a third had heard of the designation.

The initiatives carried out by the World Heritage Office have not resulted in many noticeable changes to how restaurants do business or whats on their menus. There have been few public events and not a single sign posted to challenge Tucsons audacious claim.

The office faces challenges, starting with the pandemic, which has left the citys dining industry shaky. The office depends on volunteers, nonprofit organizations and other city departments to carry out its City of Gastronomy initiatives, and herding those tribes in a common direction has proved difficult. The glacial pace of the citys bureaucracy hasnt helped.

That first four years, youre doing a lot of figuring out how this all works, World Heritage Office director Colleen Swain said. Its about getting our feet on the ground, establishing some basic parameters and figuring out how you move forward.

The office, established in 2016, the year after San Antonios colonial-era Spanish missions were named a UNESCO World Heritage Site, has a lot of freedom in deciding what to do with the City of Gastronomy laurel. The designation celebrates the wide confluence of cultures, including American Indians, Spaniards, Canary Islanders, Mexicans, Germans and others over the last 13,000 years, who left an indelible mark on our food heritage.

As part of the application for the designation, the World Heritage Office listed several goals to be completed before the end of 2021. Among the most ambitious:

Complete a $12 million redevelopment of Maverick Plaza at La Villita to build three restaurants and a demonstration kitchen, all showcasing San Antonios culinary history.

Establish a trio of culinary trails  essentially curated lists  highlighting the best tacos, barbecue and margaritas at restaurants in the San Antonio area.

Launch a film contest featuring submissions from young independent filmmakers focused on topics such as sustainable food production, benefits of local food, urban farming or other aspects of the culinary arts.

Create a culinary exchange program in which local chefs serve as ambassadors for San Antonios food traditions at local, national and international events. The city would host chefs from other Cities of Gastronomy to participate in events here.

To date, two of those goals have been accomplished. The Chef Ambassador Culinary Exchange Program sent seven San Antonio chefs to Cities of Gastronomy in Asia and Europe between 2018 and 2020 to cook at food festivals and other events. The exchange program has hosted one chef here.

The film contest recognized a San Antonio-filmed documentary about a small, family-run restaurants COVID struggles. The film was entered in the 2021 Organization of World Heritage Cities International Video Production Competition.

The two most public-facing goals, Maverick Plaza and the culinary trails, have yet to materialize.

Despite that, Mayor Ron Nirenberg remains bullish on what the designation could mean for the city.

Matthew Busch /Contributor file photo

The UNESCO City of Gastronomy designation puts us in rare air, and we now are backing it up with new restaurants and great chefs starting to do their thing, Nirenberg said in an email. It is still relatively new, and we had a two-year start when the pandemic dropped right in the middle of it.

Although theres little for San Antonio residents to see so far, key players in the citys food world say the World Heritage Office has laid a valuable foundation over the past four years.

Steve McHugh owns two restaurants here and was planning to open a German beer hall at the new Maverick Plaza but has since pulled out of the project. He isnt currently active in any City of Gastronomy efforts but sees the designation as a valuable asset  even if most San Antonians are unaware of it.

He believes the UNESCO brand is stronger abroad and sees the designation as a way to promote San Antonios food culture on an international scale. McHugh said he believes the designation is helpful in inspiring restaurateurs from outside the city to invest in San Antonio as they look to expand into new markets.

Jason Dady, who owns five restaurants here, sits on the City of Gastronomy culinary advisory committee, a group of 20 members from every corner of San Antonios food community. He thinks the designation will give San Antonio a leg up in competing for conventions against cities such as Las Vegas, New York or Orlando, Fla.

Dady also believes an overnight transformation like Tucsons isnt a realistic expectation in San Antonio, which already had a well-established food scene and a robust tourism economy.

Ronald Cortes / Contributor

Everybody wants immediate results, and thats just not the way it works. Theres not going to be a bright shining star to gaze at right away, Dady said. I think what youre going to see in the next four years is all the seeds that have been planted come to fruition.

Accomplished

In 2018 and 2019, the City of Gastronomy advisory group selected eight Chef Ambassadors, seven of whom traveled for the Culinary Exchange Program to China, South Korea, Turkey, Italy and Thailand. It was a diverse group, including 2M Smokehouse pitmaster Esaul Ramos, who went to South Korea, and Aldacos owner Blanca Aldaco, who visited Turkey.

Their goal was to showcase the culinary traditions of San Antonio within UNESCOs Creative Cities Network leading to increased global awareness of the citys unique food traditions.

This year, the advisory group selected a panel of six chefs who will be tapped as opportunities pop up over the next two years.

James Canter, who owns catering outfit Guerrilla Gourmet, traveled to Shunde, China, and came away inspired to operate a zero-waste kitchen. While in China, Canter was served a meal that started with a single large carplike fish. Every edible bit of the fish was steamed, wok-fried and simmered into nine distinct and delicious dishes.

Canter took that spirit and translated it to South Texas. These days, when he makes barbacoa grilled cheese sandwiches, for example, the juices left behind become broth for simmering greens and the clarified fat is used for griddling slabs of Texas toast.

It was inspiring to see them utilize this fish in so many ways and manners, Canter said. As a business owner, its all about trying to get the most out of your product for the money you spend.

The #FilmSA Contest launched in 2017 as a partnership between the World Heritage Office and the San Antonio Film Commission. With the new gastronomy designation, the contest evolved to include a City of Gastronomy category for food-focused films.

In May, Evan Materne and Amadeo Rivas won $1,000 and an entry in the Organization of World Heritage Cities International Video Production Competition, which will announce winners in November. Their short documentary was about the near South Side restaurant Marias Cafe and its business struggles during the pandemic. Stories about the documentary aired on local television stations, boosting business for the restaurant.

It reminded people were here and really made a big difference for us, said Leslie Beza, daughter of Marias owner Maria Beza and a longtime employee of the restaurant.

The World Heritage Office has launched initiatives beyond the initial set of goals.

In 2018, it partnered with the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center to create the San Antonio UNESCO Creative City of Gastronomy Tamal Institute, an educational series bringing a how-to element to the annual La Gran Tamalada at Market Square.

Through the institute, the World Heritage Office paid to host Mexico City chef Raul Traslosheros, a corporate chef and tamal expert. During La Gran Tamalada, he gave a lecture about tamales from different parts of Mexico and how theyre made.

During the pandemic, the program went online only as a series of free videos.

Swain said the main reason San Antonio hasnt seen as many chefs visit here is that the city focused on sending chefs abroad during the programs first year so her team could learn how the exchange program works. By the time they were ready to start hosting more chefs, the pandemic made international travel nearly impossible.

In February, the office spearheaded a pilot program dubbed Eat on the Street, which allows restaurants outside downtown to use parts of streets and sidewalks as outdoor seating in response to COVID-19. Downtown already has a Sidewalk Cafe Permit program.

Ronald Cortes / Contributor

Other cities launched similar programs early in the pandemic to help restaurants.

Here, the program began a year into the pandemic, and only two sites have signed on. One near the St. Marys Strip was shared by Golden Wat Noodle House, which closed permanently July 31, and Cullums Attagirl Ice House. The second site is a parking lot at 125 Lamar St. benefiting multiple restaurants and food trucks.

The Eat on the Street program has funding to place one site in each of the citys 10 council districts through Sept. 30. The programs beneficiaries receive $5,000 from the World Heritage Office to pay for outdoor tables, chairs, fencing and other improvements, which the businesses can keep. The city provides movable traffic barricades, road barrels, signage and other equipment.

Billy Calzada /Staff photographer

The pilot program gives restaurant owners 180 days to decide whether they want to make the setup permanent. If so, they must negotiate an agreement with the citys Public Works Department over rent for the citys right of way and other details.

In Boulder, Colo., officials closed several stretches of road in popular dining districts through its On-Street Patio Dining program, which will run through October. In Boston, several hundred restaurants are taking advantage of the citys Outdoor Dining Pilot Program, which will run until at least the end of the year.

The San Antonio program, although much smaller, did help business at Attagirl Ice House. Owner Chris Cullum said he nearly tripled his seating capacity at the tiny East Mistletoe restaurant with four extra picnic tables.

It gives me a sense of comfort, for sure, Cullum said of the program. Its really great being supported by the city. Its also peace of mind moving forward with whatevers happening with COVID. We know we can weather the storm.

Billy Calzada /Staff photographer

Not accomplished

Still unrealized is the ambitious redevelopment plan for Maverick Plaza at La Villita. The $12 million project initially was set to be completed this year with three restaurants: a Mexican spot from chef Johnny Hernandez, a German beer hall from McHugh and an eatery focused on the native ingredients of Texas from Elizabeth Johnson, chef and owner of Pharm Table.

The pandemic interfered with that vision, and McHugh and Johnson pulled out of the project.

Matthew Busch /Contributor file photo

Hernandezs Grupo La Gloria is overseeing development of the restaurants at the site and is footing most of the $12 million tab by pitching in $7.6 million. An additional $4.4 million comes from the citys Inner City Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone revenue.

Work on the project finally began in August, and Hernandez said it likely will continue into 2023. He said hes looking for two additional operators to open restaurants representing the cultures that earned the city its designation.

The establishment of culinary trails highlighting restaurants serving tacos, barbecue and margaritas has the potential to be one of the most engaging City of Gastronomy initiatives, for locals and tourists alike. A website and a mobile app would showcase destinations along the trails. Diners could sample the best bites and sips the city has to offer, as judged by the City of Gastronomy culinary panel.

But the project was sidelined, first by the pandemic-driven closure of restaurants, then by a lack of staff to run it. The World Heritage Office has just hired a project manager to kick-start the project.

Paul Stephen /Staff file photo

City vs. nonprofit

In San Antonio, the City of Gastronomy designation is managed by a municipal office instead of a dedicated nonprofit, a structure with strengths and drawbacks. Fundraising, Swain said, is the biggest challenge.

The World Heritage Office has an annual budget of $1.4 million; City of Gastronomy initiatives receive less than a quarter of that. After employee salaries and overhead are accounted for, only about $75,000 is left for programming and advertising.

That doesnt leave much to pay for signs around the city, banners in the airport or ads on TV highlighting the designation.

We always knew the city of San Antonio cannot fund all of this, Swain said. Were still figuring out how to raise the corporate money we need to support this.

In Tucson, the designation is managed by a nonprofit called Tucson City of Gastronomy with a budget of nearly $100,000 from public and private funds and donations.

The nonprofits lone paid employee, executive director Jonathan Mabry, said managing the designation through a nonprofit has several advantages. A nonprofit enjoys greater eligibility for grants, has an easier time attracting sponsorships and donations, is more visible in the community and is less likely to become embroiled in political squabbles, he said.

The impact of the designation in Tucson is hard to understate. In the years since receiving the honor in 2015, that Sonoran Desert city has gone from barely a blip on foodies radars to a culinary destination sought out by travelers around the world.

An early project was a certification program for restaurants and other food businesses that adhere to the City of Gastronomy principles, such as preserving food culture, using local ingredients and a commitment to sustainability. Certified businesses receive a large decal to display in their windows.

The enthusiastic use of ingredients native to Tucson is particularly noticeable in restaurants. The Tucson City of Gastronomy nonprofit has published a Baja Arizona Artisanal Food Products guide steering readers to items such as prickly pear jelly, beers brewed with mesquite, salsa made with chiltepin chiles and more. It stages free workshops for restaurants and other business interested in using heritage ingredients.

In San Antonio, Swain has faith the designation will play a key role in promoting the city as a global culinary destination. Taxpayers can feel assured its worth it in the long run, she said.

I think there really is a lot of benefit for our city. Its about leveraging this designation for social and economic change, and that includes sustainability, the food system, preservation of culinary heritage and pride in community, she said.

pstephen@express-news.net | Twitter: @pjbites | Instagram: @pjstephen
(The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.)

Charles Kurzman, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

(THE CONVERSATION) Al-Qaida was planning two sets of terrorist attacks on the United States in 2001. On Sept. 11, 2021, as Americans commemorate and mourn the lives lost that Tuesday morning 20 years ago, it is important to remember the second plot as well  the attacks that didnt happen.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the organizer of the 9/11 operation, originally envisioned simultaneous attacks on the East Coast and the West Coast of the United States. He bragged about having had dozens of recruits to choose from.

But the numbers were smaller than he expected. Several people dropped out of the plot and could not be replaced. Ultimately al-Qaida could find only 19 sufficiently trained militants who were willing to die for the cause. As a result, the West Coast plot had to be canceled.

As strange as it may sound, revolutionary Islamist groups suffer from recruitment problems as any other organization does. Myresearch on Islamist terrorism has found that al-Qaida and its rival offshoot, the Islamic State group, have long had chronic difficulties replenishing their ranks.

These groups complain about their recruitment problems frequently. We are most amazed that the community of Islam is still asleep and heedless while its children are being wiped out and killed everywhere and its land is being diminished every day, al-Qaida wrote in one of its online publications in 2004. It is a sentiment that the group has repeated over many years.

The Islamic State group has also expressed disappointment in Muslims lack of militancy. In June 2017, for example, it published an article in an online magazine criticizing Muslims who drag the tail of shame by remaining safe in your homes, secure with your families and wealth instead of joining the revolutionary movement. The problem, according to a November 2017 article in the Islamic States online daily newspaper, is love of life and hatred of death, a disease of weakness whose final result will be the supremacy of the enemy over the Muslims.

Democracy, not revolution

Love of life is only one of the militants recruitment problems.

According to social science surveys, the bulk of the worlds 1.8 billion Muslims find these groups abhorrent. Most Muslims support policies that encourage or enforce Islamic piety, but they dont support revolutionary violence. A large majority of Muslims support democratic elections, which the revolutionaries consider un-Islamic.

Democratic thought has deep roots in Islamic tradition, including the nahda renaissance of Arab intellectuals in the 19th century, mass pro-democracy moments in the early 20th century in the Ottoman Empire and Iran, and the Arab Spring movement that started in late 2010.

Islamist militants such as al-Qaida and the Islamic State group view democratic efforts as a threat and have repeatedly targeted pro-democracy Muslim scholars and activists for assassination. For instance, Muhammad Nu'man Fazli, a cleric in Afghanistan, was among the recent victims of this sort of violence. His mosque outside Kabul was bombed by the Islamic State group in May 2021 during a cease-fire between the Taliban and the Afghan government, specifically because of his support of democracy, according to a statement in the Islamic State groups newspaper.

The worlds governments have made it very hard for people to find and join militant groups. There are few safe places for training, and the ones that do exist are typically in remote areas that are hard to reach, such as the mountains of northwest Pakistan, the deserts of eastern Mali, the forests of the Lake Chad basin and northern Mozambique, and the islands of the southern Philippines.

Even online, militants must constantly seek new methods to avoid detection. Every message they send or receive risks exposing them to arrest or drone attack.

Competing for recruits

Nationalist groups like Hamas, Hezbollah and the Taliban are also trying to recruit Islamic extremists. Like al-Qaida and the Islamic State group, these movements also aim to impose an austere version of Islamic law, at least partly through force of arms. But their ambitions are primarily local, as opposed to the global agendas of al-Qaida and the Islamic State group.

The nationalists and globalists may cooperate at times  most notably, the tense alliance between the Taliban and al-Qaida in the years leading up to 9/11. Still, they are fundamentally rivals when it comes to recruitment, and the nationalists are far more successful in drawing on trusted local networks.

In Afghanistan today, the Taliban have tens of thousands of militants among their recruits, according to U.S. government estimates. The Islamic State groups regional branch, often referred to as ISIS-K, has approximately 1,000 fighters, and al-Qaida has fewer than 1,000.

Twenty years after 9/11, al-Qaida has never found enough recruits to carry out its second wave of mass-casualty attacks on America. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, only a dozen people in the United States were convicted in the years after 9/11 for links with al-Qaida, and none were involved in large-scale plots.

The Islamic State group has organized or inspired several dozen attacks in the United States, but the numbers fell off sharply in the middle of 2015, when the Turkish government closed its border with Syria. And those were do-it-yourself operations involving small arms, homemade explosives, vehicles and knives, averaging 14 fatalities per year. The Islamic State group has never mobilized enough militants in the West to destroy the White House, Big Ben, and the Eiffel Tower, by Allahs permission, as it threatened to do in 2015.

Al-Qaida and the Islamic State group remain serious about targeting the United States. But the good news for Americans, on this anniversary of 9/11, is that militants face a recruitment bottleneck  a mundane organizational problem that afflicts these very unconventional organizations.

[Like what youve read? Want more? Sign up for The Conversations daily newsletter.]

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article here: https://theconversation.com/al-qaida-islamic-state-group-struggle-for-recruits-166808.
Officials have identified the body of a man found in a remote wilderness area of Oregon as a missing San Antonio man.

Kirk Edward Jones, 35, was found by a hunter on Aug. 28 in the Sky Lakes Wilderness Boundary in Jackson County, Oregon, about five hours south of Portland. He was last seen in San Antonio on June 2.

Authorities had not been able to positively ID Jones until after an autopsy was completed Thursday. The Jackson County Sheriff's Office, however, did believe it was Jones because it found his 2017 Yamaha motorcycle weeks earlier about a mile from where the body was discovered.

On ExpressNews.com: Husband arrested in missing wife's death, two years after her disappearance

Adam Lewis, a sheriff's spokesperson, said authorities had to use dental records to ID Jones because his body had been badly decomposed.

Authorities do not know how Jones died. A Oregon State Police forensic pathologist said the autopsy was not able to determine a cause of death, adding that there was no sign of foul play where the body was found.

"We really don't know what happened," Lewis said "It could have been a number of things that caused his death."

Jones' mother filed a missing persons report with San Antonio police on June 7 after friends and family hadn't heard from him in several days. According to the missing persons report, Jones had not paid his rent and his phone was turned off.

Both the San Antonio Police Department and the sheriff's office said they don't know of any connections Jones may have had in Oregon or why he was in the state.

On ExpressNews.com: These 4 San Antonio kids have been missing for more than 20 years

Lewis said the area where Jones was found is expansive and remote with much of its 114,000 acres consisting of untouched land. The sheriff's office often searches the area for missing people, Lewis said.

The path from the motorcycle to where the body was discovered is a strenuous hike on a ridge line in a heavily wooded area that is inaccessible by vehicle, Lewis said. Deputies needed to be lowered into the area from a helicopter.

Now Playing: Jackson County Sheriff's deputies had to helicopter into the remote Oregon wilderness to retrieve the body of missing San Antonio man Kirk Jones. A spokesperson for the department said the area is not accessible by vehicle and investigators had to use the helicopter to fly in to collect evidence and transport the body. Video: San Antonio Express-News

Search and rescue crews searched the area numerous times after Jones' bike was found, Lewis said.

"It is unfortunate because maybe if we had been able to find him sooner, we may have more answers into his death," Lewis said. "It's a mystery still."

The only personal items found with Jones were his motorcycle helmet, a jacket, a backpack, tools and water.

taylor.pettaway@express-news.net
RAVENA, N.Y.  A Texas-based construction firm will pay $420,000 and provide other relief to settle a lawsuit brought by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which sued over what it said were racist and discriminatory conditions when the firm was performing construction work here in 2016.

According to the EEOCs lawsuit, CCC Group of San Antonio, which does heavy construction, violated federal law when white supervisors and employees were regularly making racist comments to Black employees, including remarks over a company radio channel.

One supervisor, according to the lawsuit, attempted to snare an employee with a noose and another told an African American employee that for Halloween, You dont even have to dress up. I will dress in white and put a noose around your neck and well walk down the street together.

The EEOC further charged that one white employee bragged that his ancestors had owned slaves. Another told a Black employee he walked funny because slaves used to walk with a bag on their shoulder picking cotton.



The government filed the lawsuit in U.S. Northern District Court after failing to reach a pre-litigation settlement through the EEOCs conciliation process.



The three-year consent decree entered by Judge Frederick J. Scullin provides for $225,000 in monetary damages for a Black former employee who the EEOC alleged was targeted by racist abuse and threatened with a noose.

The decree also provides that CCC Group will distribute $195,000 among six other Black employees who worked for CCC Group in 2016 and who the EEOC alleged were subjected to racial harassment by white supervisors and co-workers.



The deal also requires CCC Group to conduct company-wide training for employees and managers to educate attendees about harassment and discrimination issues in the construction industry. CCC Group must also conduct a lessons learned presentation for all their business unit managers that focuses on the EEOC complaint, the decree, and the anti-harassment training.

Additionally, CCC Group will have to appoint an EEO manager, responsible for ensuring that the company complies with the decree and with federal laws prohibiting employment discrimination. Among other duties, the EEO manager must promptly investigate internal complaints of discrimination, promote employee anti-harassment trainings, and visit CCC Group worksites to meet with employees to discuss EEO issues.

CCC Group will also provide periodic reporting to the EEOC regarding any future allegations of racial harassment. Finally, the decree bars CCC Group from employing or contracting with two white supervisors who served as foremen for CCC Group on the Ravena worksite and who the EEOC alleged harassed Black employees.



The allegations of racial harassment in this case were especially vicious, said Jeffrey Burstein, regional attorney for the EEOCs New York District Office. We are pleased that CCC Group has agreed to take steps to make its workplaces safer and more respectful, including by conducting training and appointing a senior manager who will focus on ensuring that CCC Group complies with the decree and with federal law.



Employers must take immediate and effective steps to prevent and eradicate the kind of racial harassment that was alleged in this case, said Judy Keenan, director of the New York District Office. This decree ensures that CCC Group will compensate the skilled and experienced construction workers who were victimized by the harassment in Ravena, and also make significant internal changes to protect its current and future workforce.

rkarlin@timesunion.com  518-454-5758  @RickKarlinTU
WASHINGTON  After fact checkers debunked it, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz deleted a tweet earlier this week in which hed shared a viral video that appears to show a man dangling from a helicopter in Afghanistan.

It turns out the post I shared w/ a video of Taliban hanging a man from a helicopter may be inaccurate. So I deleted the tweet, Cruz wrote on Twitter Tuesday. What remains accurate is:

The Taliban are brutal terrorists.

We left them millions in US military equipment, including Black Hawk helicopters.

The original video, which has since been retweeted and quote-tweeted almost 7,000 times, was captioned, Taliban hanging someone from a helicopter in Kandahar, and many viewers interpreted it as a public Taliban execution.

The video now appears on Twitter with a flagged message beneath it that reads, This media is presented out of context. The fact-checking teams at both Reuters and The Associated Press have said the man was alive and attempting to hang a flag.

What appears to be a zoomed in version of a viral video of a man dangling from a helicopter in Afghanistan shows him moving and waving, the Reuters Fact Check Twitter accounted tweeted. This, along with other photos of a similar scene, dispel the online narrative that he was hanged by the Taliban.

A video of a man dangling from a helicopter in Afghanistan showed a failed attempt to hang a Taliban flag. It didnt show a public execution, as many social media users claimed. Here are the facts, the AP Fact Check account tweeted.

The account that tweeted the video and caption, @Holbornlolz, is a self-described comedian with more than 73,000 followers.

Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas, also shared the tweet with the video and caption, quote-tweeting it to say, In what f***ing world was it a good idea to just hand over a country to these people.

The tweet was still up on Crenshaws account by the time of publication.

I get it. You saw this post and just like me you are fired up about the Taliban re-taking Afghanistan, Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., wrote in response to Crenshaw's tweet. But multiple sources have debunked your claim. We have to be the adults. Please take this post down, Dan. Lets all be better.

Cruz and Crenshaw have been highly critical of the Biden administrations handling of the situation in Afghanistan.

If we needed more proof that Biden has no shame, no dignity, no ability to lead, it was in his speech today, Crenshaw tweeted on Tuesday. He should resign in disgrace.

What we see with Biden, whether in Afghanistan or whether on our southern border, is radical extremism combined with manifest incompetence, Cruz said Tuesday on a podcast with Ronna McDaniel, chair of the Republican National Committee.
Juli Winters likes to chat with patients while cleaning the emergency room at Texas Vista Medical Center, but the man in the room at the end of the hall was so sick with COVID-19 that he couldnt speak.

Even under the plastic surgical gown that usually makes her sweat, Winters felt chills. When she finished cleaning, she stepped into the hallway and made the sign of the cross.

Hes blue, she said.

Winters, 58, has worked in hospitals for almost 40 years. She can sense when a patient wont pull through. She paused for a moment, then added: Its sad, but its the truth.

OPINION: Fresh takes on timely topics, delivered to your inbox

She never knows what each day will bring. Whether shell end up cleaning the rooms in the emergency department 53 times or 20. Whether the hospital will have another housekeeper on staff in the ER to help her or if shell be solely responsible for the two lobbies, the doctors lounge and nurses station, the medical supply room, eight bathrooms and more than two dozen patient rooms.

Jessica Phelps /San Antonio Express-News

Lately, its been so busy with COVID-19 patients that the hospital on the Southwest Side has run out of rooms, so she must also clean as many as a half-dozen hospital beds lining the ER hallways.

Armed with gloves, mops and bleach, Winters and her co-workers have labored alongside nurses and doctors in the battle against COVID-19 for the last 18 months.

But for the most part, the billboards and advertisements praising health care heroes have featured the higher-paid doctors and nurses, posing in scrubs and white coats.

Winters sanitizes every surface of the emergency room thats touched by patients. She changes bed sheets, scrubs feces thrown on walls by patients in psychiatric crises, empties containers full of used needles and wipes blood from the floor. On rare occasions, shes cleaned the refrigerated trailer used to store bodies.

Pay starts at about $9.35 per hour.

Her team members have the hardest job in the hospital as far as physical demands, said Evan Bircher, the regional vice president of operations at HHS, the staffing company that employs Winters. And youre probably the lowest-paid person at the hospital.

HHS contracts with Texas Vista and other hospitals to provide nonclinical employees. In parallel with a nursing shortage caused by pandemic burnout, the company is facing a lack of housekeeping workers. HHS has about 31 people cleaning Texas Vista, about nine short of ideal staffing.

Low-wage workers  particularly women  were dealt the pandemics worst economic blows, often losing income when they were forced to care for children and sick relatives at home.

We have people that have lost upwards of six family members, so they have to be home because they dont have that support system anymore, said Mycah Rex, director of Texas Vistas environmental services department, which oversees cleaning and infection control.

The hospitals housekeepers didnt receive hazard pay, but when doctors and nurses are slammed with patients, Winters is the one who sometimes notices the unanswered call button. She brings patients blankets when theyre cold, puts socks on their feet when they cant reach down on their own and sometimes sits with them and holds their hands when loved ones cant be there.

I wouldnt want somebody to neglect me, Winters said. Housekeepers are often patients only interaction with someone who isnt there to draw blood, take their vitals or talk about their prognosis.

We take the time to listen, she said.

Sometimes, Winters said, a patient asks: Do you think Ill make it?

Thats scary, she said. Because its like, Youre asking a housekeeper, baby.

Shell promise to find a nurse, only to hear the patient say: No, he didnt answer.  So Im going to ask you.

Patients start pouring in

Winters alarm rings at 3:20 a.m. She dresses in scrubs and packs a lunch, umbrella, change of clothes and Tylenol  shell need it for what could be another 14 hours until she returns home again. In the dark, she walks a mile to her bus stop.

Winters usually arrives at the hospital around 6 a.m., an hour before her shift. She starts by calling a nurse supervisor to find out how many patients are in the hospital  thats how many beds she and her co-workers will have to clean. She stocks her cart with toilet paper, rags, trash bags, disinfectant and gloves, then begins her rounds in the ER.

In the hallway, Winters stopped at a trash can that was emptied by a colleague finishing up the night shift. The plastic liner was slightly loose.

Jessica Phelps /San Antonio Express-News

This is what you call half-assed, Winters said. She took off the lid, retying the bag so it fit snugly around the top of the can.

Although she stands 5 feet, 1 inch tall, Winters is a commanding presence in Texas Vistas ER. Some of her co-workers call her New Orleans because of her booming voice and thick Cajun accent. She isnt afraid to call down the hall to the nursing station to ask why a chair is out of place or why the door to a patients room isnt closed all the way.

In ERs, even the housekeepers work under pressure, with the possibility that tragedy could strike anytime. Winters thrives in that environment, and before Hurricane Katrina shuttered Charity Hospital in New Orleans in 2005, she oversaw cleaning in its ER. There, she said, housekeepers were well paid, but it still had its fair share of turnover because it was depressing to be around so many gunshots.

Paramedics wheeled in children, men and women at all hours. To this day, Winters said, she may have a hard time reading words on a computer screen, but she can spot a speck of blood down the hall.

Winters moved from Louisiana to San Antonio after losing a home to flooding for the fifth time. Shes worked at Texas Vista for three years. There, until the pandemic struck, things were much slower.

Even in its early days, many people avoided ERs. But the pace began to pick up this summer, Winters said, when people whod delayed medical care for much of the pandemic started pouring in. Then came the delta variant, which brought with it a new wave of COVID-19 patients.

On the busiest days, when rooms in the ER are full, Winters has cleaned hallway beds a couple dozen times over the course of a shift, she said. Another new phenomenon is her dailies  the rooms she must clean once a shift. They house patients who are being held in the ER, sometimes for days, because there arent rooms open on the general floor.

Sometimes Winters ends up cleaning the rooms of people she knows. While Winters was wiping down the sink in a room recently, the patient recognized her.

You dont look the same without your red hair, the woman said.

Winters said shed shaved off her hair the year before for cancer awareness month and that when it grew back, it came back white instead of red.

Jessica Phelps /San Antonio Express-News

Winters chuckled: And I aint coloring it.

Double burden

Winters likes to make her co-workers and patients smile, so she often wears novelty earrings to work. She has pairs in the shape of toilet paper rolls and studs made of screws, she says, for screw COVID.

Under her scrubs, she wears a brace on each knee and a hernia belt around her waist. Every hour and a half, she pops a Tylenol. In the fanny pack she keeps on at all times, she carries gabapentin, for nerve pain on the worst days.

Housekeeping is punishing work. Its heaving bags of linens down hallways, lugging boxes of cleaning supplies and bending on achy knees to wipe bodily fluids off the floor.

During the pandemic, its become even more grueling because each room with a COVID-19 patient must be sterilized from top to bottom whenever they leave. For Winters and the other housekeepers, that means lifting the mop high overhead, sweating under a plastic surgical gown, while they push it across the wall to sanitize every inch.

In San Antonio, the typical pay for a housekeeper, including those who work at hospitals and hotels, is about $11.42 per hour, according to federal data  less than the estimated $15- to $30-per-hour wage needed to afford a two-bedroom apartment.

Some of them take on extra jobs, including Winters, who sometimes cleans homes for co-workers and patients she meets in the hospital.

At Texas Vista, about 70 percent of employees across all departments are women, many of whom have children or elderly relatives to care for at home.

So often, caregivers are people that find themselves working in hospitals, and they assume caregiver identities in their extended families as well, said Jon Turton, president of Texas Vista Medical Center.

They kind of have a double burden on them, he said.

Extra eyes and ears

With the clinical staff stretched thinner than ever, housekeepers like Winters have become extra eyes and ears for doctors and nurses.

Jessica Phelps /San Antonio Express-News

On a recent trip to the supply closet, Winters noticed through the hospital room blinds that a patient was shifting around in bed. She thought it was strange: The patient, whod been there a while, had always lain still.

Winters peered into the room and realized the breathing machine, which had delivered the patient livesaving oxygen, had been disconnected.

Help! Winters screamed as the patient began thrashing in the bed. Monitors beeped. Nurses ran into the room to refasten the device.

One of the nurses, Hipolito Mojica, said of Winters: She gave the patient a fighting chance.

Shes part of our team, he said. We dont consider her just a housekeeper.

marina.riker@express-news.net
San Antonios space architect wants to make the city a space construction hub  and thats just one of Sam Ximenes ideas.

From moon bases to space stations, the San Antonio native is at work designing the next chapter of space exploration. When hes not doing that, hes helping young people get interested in space, science and technology.

His latest creation? A space station that looks like something out of 2001: A Space Odyssey. On a recent afternoon, he was in his companys sparse conference room at the San Antonio Museum of Science and Technology reviewing renderings of a circular spacecraft with sleek spires.

He calls it a Celestial Aligning Bernal Sphere, and images of the craft set against spacescapes look like frameable art.

On ExpressNews.com: San Antonio firm is working on moon launch pads for NASA

Its the latest design by a San Antonian whos always working on the next idea.

Ximenes is founder and chief executive of space architecture firm Exploration Architecture, or XArc, as well as a space construction company called Astroport. Hes also founder and board chair of the WEX Foundation, an entity focused on space education for middle and high schoolers.

There are a million architects in this world ... space architects you can count on two hands, said David Monroe, founding chair of the museum. Hes just a really, really unique person, because he thinks in another dimension than most of us do.

With roots on the citys South Side and in Floresville, his family heritage is grounded in agriculture, service, social justice and civil rights. His ancestors served as Floresville sheriff, helped clear the way for Hemisfair Park and ran a South Side restaurant.

His uncle Vincente, a World War II Army Air Corps veteran, became a civil rights activist and leader with the American GI Forum  a Hispanic veterans and civil rights organization. President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed him the third commissioner of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

William Luther /William Luther

Another uncle, Edward, was a doctor who served in World War II. Texas Gov. John Connally appointed him to the University of Texas Board of Regents in 1967. He was the first Hispanic appointed to the position and helped bring the UT system to San Antonio. Today, a street and parking lot at the University of Texas at San Antonio bear his name.

His aunt helped introduce bilingual education in the area, and yet another uncle was a contractor at Kelly AFB. Ximenes father, Waldo, was an Air Force judge advocate who became a federal judge.

One of five siblings, Ximenes was born at Fort Sam Houston. His fathers service kept the family on the move  Laredo, California, Spain, Germany and the Philippines.

I wouldnt have it any other way because it taught me how to adapt quickly, how to make friends quickly, how to leave friends quickly and how to know that you still have friends around the world, he said. And the ability to understand other cultures and other viewpoints  its been a tremendous learning experience.

A self-described bookworm, he became interested in technology by way of James Bond books and movies.

On ExpressNews.com: San Antonio company working with military, SpaceX to move cargo anywhere in world in an hour or less

Ximenes graduated high school in the Philippines and returned to Texas to study architecture at Texas A&M.

Since middle school, I always wanted to be an architect, he said. I thought I wanted to do it because I wanted to build my own house  which I havent done.

After college, Ximenes spent time in Lake Tahoe, working first with a hot air balloon company and then for the city, overseeing art installations in public buildings. Four years later, he got restless and took off in his Datsun 240Z.

He spent two years in Cuernavaca, Mexico, working in a womens shoe factory. His job was to turn scraps into a product. So, I designed a line of toys for them, he said.

Next, he found himself designing street furniture in Hamburg, Germany, in the early 80s. In those pre-Internet days, he was intrigued by a video advertising kiosk he saw at a train station.

It just struck me that videos the next thing so I went and contacted that company, he said. And I convinced them to let me go to America and try and sell this concept.

The idea brought him back to San Antonio, where he incorporated his first company  Video Point Corp. of America.

We ended up getting a contract with the New Orleans Worlds Fair in 1984 to set up these kiosks, he said. Wayfinding kiosks.

The deal couldve changed the trajectory of his life, but few attended the fair and his company went bankrupt.

"Concept: XArc / WHD; Illustrations: Will Hosikian"

On ExpressNews.com: This is not SpaceX property - this is my property: SpaceX looks to recast South Texas town as Starbase

That was my first business failure, but you learn from failure, he said.

Hoping to return to architecture, he wrote a paper about how humans could be oriented aboard space stations. A journal published it, and the success deepened his interest in the infrastructure of space.

Ximenes found some professors who were starting a space architecture program at the University of Houston. It was the precursor of the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture, or SICSA.

There were three of us in the first official space architecture class, he said.

After earning his masters degree he worked at several companies, first designing lunar bases and then interiors for the International Space Station.

As a concept designer, Ximenes relies on engineers to move his concepts from art to reality.

They turn it into something that actually works, he said.

Larry Toups, who retired from NASA and now is an adjunct professor at SICSA, has known Ximenes since they both studied at the University of Houston.

He has a vision of how you can look to the future, and how you solve some of the engineering and technical challenges required for going to places such as the moon or Mars, said Toups, who serves as an advisor for Astroport.

On ExpressNews.com: UT San Antonio moon rock researchers seeking the ideal recipe to build lunar bases

Along his path, Ximenes has experienced the ups and downs of space contractor life: A layoff when the federal government canceled a contract. A swerve into business development in an adjacent industry. Moves across the country. Then, a job with a Houston company in 2004.

It was the year aerospace engineer Burt Rutan won the $10 million Ansari X-prize for creating a spacecraft that could fly to space twice in two weeks. The next year, Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Group, teamed up with Rutan to create spaceship company Virgin Galactic.

Today, some see Rutans victory as the start of the billionaire battle for the stars between Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Branson.

The company Ximenes worked for at the time played a role in Virgin Galactic: It helped design the terminal-hangar facility at Spaceport America, N.M., the companys headquarters.

Things were moving fast in the space business, and in 2007 Ximenes stood up his own space architecture firm, XArc. I could see commercial space business coming up, he said. So I decided, well, Im going out on my own this time to position myself for that work.

The U.S. Transportation Command, which moves military personnel and equipment around the world, is working with Ximenes XArc and SpaceX to develop rapid transportation through space capabilities.

"Concept: XArc / WHD; Illustrations: Will Hosikian"

The government is looking at vertically landing rockets to haul gear and people anywhere in the world in an hour or less. Ximenes team is helping to develop ground support infrastructure for rocket landing areas.

The money is going to be in the hardware development and the technology development because we dont have a lot of stuff right now, he said. And theyre still trying to understand all these ways to use building materials on the moon and whatnot.

The realization led to his space construction firm, Astroport, in 2020. In May, NASA awarded the company a contract to research construction of lunar landing pads using robots and molten moon dust. Astroport collaborates with UTSA and the University of Adelaide Australia.

On ExpressNews.com: Making space habitable: UTSA takes part in NASA project to build safe place for astronauts to call home

Ximenes nonprofit WEX Foundation, named for his father Waldo E. Ximenes, exposes middle and high schoolers to space exploration. Its received several NASA grants since its launch in 2009, and Ximenes estimates its programs have influenced more than 50,000 students.

Its been really a godsend because it is really about the next generation, he said. Its not about me and how am I going to get to space because Im not going to get there.

Jim Perschbach, CEO of Port San Antonio, said Ximenes work in space is groundbreaking.

But the thing that impresses me most is ... what hes doing here, and by that, I mean, the WEX Foundation, he said. He is taking time out of his daily work, out of his research programs, to work with kids on the same type of work that he is doing for the folks who really are doing space exploration.
More than 20 years ago, filmmaker Kevin Willmott saw an old, black and white photograph of a trial in San Antonio that had disturbing echoes to recent racial protests and unrest.

The photo, taken in 1917, showed soldiers from the U.S. 24th Infantry on trial, surrounded by white soldiers armed with rifles fixed with bayonets inside of what is now Fort Sam Houstons Gift Chapel. News reports said it was the largest murder trial in American history at that time.

In December 1917, the soldiers went on trial for their alleged involvement in the Houston Riot of 1917. Thirteen men were sentenced to death. The next day at dawn, they were hanged upon a quickly constructed gallows at Salado Creek and buried in unmarked graves at Camp Travis, then adjacent to Fort Sam Houston.

Willmott recalled the striking photo brought up memories of growing up in Junction City, Kansas, where soldiers assigned to nearby Fort Riley lived in his community.

I saw the faces of my neighbors in that photograph, Willmott said.

That photo of a long-buried event inspired Willmott to make the historical film, The 24th, based on the events 104 years ago. The San Antonio African American Community Archive and Museum will present the film Friday night as part of its Black History Film Series at 8:30 p.m. at the Arneson Theater, 418 Villita St. The film features Trai Byers, Aja Naomi King, Mykelti Williamson and Thomas Haden Church.

Willmott will be the guest speaker on a panel, which will include Bexar County Buffalo Soldiers member Billy Gordon and San Antonio award-winning writer and director Cedric Thomas Smith.

The event is free. Tickets can be reserved at bit.ly/saaacamthe24th.

The film is based on the story of the all-Black 24th Infantry assigned to Houston to protect the construction of Fort Logan, a training camp for white soldiers headed to fight in France. When the soldiers arrived, they expected to train for combat but instead had to confront racial insults and violence from the white community.

According to the Handbook of Texas, on Aug. 23, 1917, a riot broke out after police officers arrested a Black soldier for interfering with the arrest of a Black woman. An inquiry by one of 12 Black military policemen sparked an exchange of words. The white policemen hit the soldier and fired shots at him. The white policemen caught him and took him to the police station. Rumors of the soldiers death prompted a group of soldiers to march to try and free their comrade. After the two-hour mutiny, 16 white people and four Black soldiers were dead.

Jerry Lara /Staff photographer

Dr. Martin Luther King said a riot is the language of the unheard, Willmott said. Thats what happened to the soldiers. When people break, theres no rhyme or reason to it. These were trained soldiers, and even they had a difficult time. We need to understand why these things happen.

Claudia Espinosa, community curation director at the museum, said the nonprofits mission is to collect, preserve and share African American heritage in the San Antonio region.

This is African American education here in San Antonio, she said. Our goal is to help educate the community on whats going on, especially whats going on with critical race theory going on in Texas right now. We want to make sure were keeping the history alive of African Americans.

A part of that history is the old picture that stayed with the filmmaker over the years.

That photograph is something that is a part of San Antonios and Texas history, Willmott said. I hope that San Antonio will embrace this history.

Gordon said years later, the NAACP and other groups fought for the mens remains to be buried at Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery. It was an honor they were all afforded  the men were not discharged from the military before their deaths.

A retired Air Force master sergeant, Gordon stopped at the national cemetery at 1520 Harry Wurzbach Road on Thursday morning to pay his respects to the 13 soldiers. He knelt in the green grass and placed a miniature flag at each headstone. He hoped the film would show people the type of racial treatment and weight that soldiers had to bear until the military integrated in 1947.

It saddens me to see what happened to these men, he said. It couldve happened to me if I would have been in the military then. Its like a Greek tragedy.

vtdavis@express-news.net
The Defense Department wanted you to see the images of the final flag-draped coffins leaving Kabul last week  and then it didnt.

On Aug. 27, the military released eight images from the somber procession honoring the 13 service members killed by a suicide bombing near the Abbey Gate at Hamid Karzai International Airport the day before.

The ramp ceremony was the last chance for those on the ground to honor the dead as they left the war zone.

The photos show young Marines in helmets and body armor carrying the silver transfer cases holding their lost friends. The red, white and blue stands out against the sea of tan camouflaged uniforms. The pallbearers look tired, mournful, resolute. Military members line the road and pay their respects.

On the C-17, Marines kneel and bow their heads over the fallen. The 13 transfer cases line the floor of the aircraft.

On ExpressNews.com: Lingle: As Afghanistan falls, memories haunt

One photo shows two Marines with their arms around one another. Theyre looking away from the camera. One Marines hand rests on the top of his buddys helmet.

These eight images encapsulate the war. Young volunteers thrown into a no-win situation. Theyre patriots carrying an unimaginable weight amid perilous conditions. They joined a long list of people ensnared by fumbled foreign policy and an apathetic nation. Despite the rhetoric and chaos, they fought side by side and took care of each other.

Sadly, the Department of Defenses handling of the images echoes another hallmark of the two-decade war  an insidious, pervasive and bureaucratic curation of the information the public saw from the war zone.

1st Lt. Mark Andries, HOGP / Associated Press

War efforts, like any institution, have a baked-in desire to keep themselves going. Its hard to maintain support when the public sees and understands the true costs. So, we see a variety of policies and approaches to shield us from realities on the ground. More often than not, the government wrapped these measures in sound reasoning, like respecting the families of the fallen and operational security.

The efforts also resulted in vast over-classification of information, so the public often got some of the basic facts, but details providing nuance and context were unavailable.

The end result is small sleights of hand such as what happened to the eight photos from Kabul. You see, after releasing the photos, DOD removed them from the Defense Visual Information Distribution Service, or DVIDS, the official repository of military imagery.

Lisa Lawrence, a DOD spokesperson, acknowledged the photos removal and said they were posted in error.

On ExpressNews.com: Lingle: Public was indifferent to a war made abstract

The move follows an old script that often veils the truth and departs from the militarys stated public affairs doctrine of maximum disclosure, minimum delay.

DOD banned media coverage of transfer ceremonies from 1991 through 2009. The change allowed families to determine whether media could cover the fallens arrival to Dover AFB in Delaware. It forbade media coverage of ceremonies at any location while en route to Dover.

Local commanders also often put additional restrictions on military photographers, for example.

More than a half-dozen times, on the Bagram flight line, I saluted flag-draped transfer cases of the dead as their friends carried them onto C-17s. At every ceremony, hundreds of people, including the most senior generals and State Department officials, stood to honor the fallen under the bright Afghan sun. A band played hymns. Chaplains provided comfort. After the jets ramp closed, we all walked away silently. And the families of those lost would never get to see any of it because photography was banned.

1st Lt. Mark Andries, HOGP / Associated Press

Many of us thought that if we were killed, wed want our families to see how our brothers and sisters honored us as we left Afghanistan.

On ExpressNews.com: Lingle: Vets in House loyal to a lie, not to their oath

Other coalition countries, including Australia, Canada and New Zealand, did not have such restrictions.

Its rare to see such images here. We should be thankful to Marine 1st Lt. Mark Andries, the photographer who captured those photos, and whomever released them to the world.

Perhaps the DOD and politicians didnt want these stark photos to bookend the war. Maybe they preferred images of troops helping Afghans, or that green night-vision snapshot of the final soldier, a general, boarding the last plane out.

Its tough to understand whats really going on in a war-torn country on the other side of the world. The problem is compounded when the information is carefully shaped. These photos leave the question: Would we have stayed in Afghanistan as long as we did if we had a better understanding of what was going on?

Regardless, the pictures from the Kabul ramp ceremony remind us of the immeasurable costs of war and serve as a warning against the government veiling the truth.

brandon.lingle@express-news.net
One afternoon, when I was in the seventh grade at Our Lady of Perpetual Help, everyone in my class was given a strange and horrible paperback book. Its glossy pages had pictures neither we nor our parents had been warned about: images of dead babies.

The book was about abortion, a word Id never heard, and while I dont remember its title or whod written it, these many years later I still remember a picture of what looked like a trash bag full of dead babies.

I question the wisdom and purpose of sharing such graphic images with 12-year-olds, especially without their parents consent, and I dont know if the book had the long-term effect on me that the nuns wanted.

Of all the columns, editorials and stories Ive written over the years none has been about abortion. I doubt if Ive even written the word abortion before now. More than all the other emotional and controversial topics, abortion is the most personal, with consequences that may last for years.

Because I believe the decision to have an abortion is so personal and that such a personal decision should be left to pregnant women, Im pro-choice. But I reject the cookie-cutter caricatures of what it means to be pro-choice and pro-life.

On ExpressNews.com: 'Reproductive terrorism': Twitter reacts to Texas' new restrictive abortion law

While there are many in the pro-life movement who want to have control over the bodies of women over which they should have no control, I know many who identify as pro-life who are moved out of genuine concern for the lives of children. Their concern doesnt stop at birth but is supportive of programs that enhance the quality of childrens lives.

I dont know anyone who identifies as pro-choice who is pro-abortion. I dont know anyone who likes, looks forward and cant wait to suggest to a girl or woman that she have an abortion. Behind every decision to have an abortion are painful considerations and looking ahead to the consequences.

But it must be a choice, and it must be a choice made by the pregnant woman.

Texas new abortion law, SB 8, banning the procedure after six weeks of pregnancy  a time span during which most women dont know theyre pregnant  is unspeakably intrusive and cruel on different levels. There are no exceptions for rape or incest, and there is no consideration for fetuses who will be born with an illness resulting in a short and pain-filled life.

In the most personal, emotional and painful decisions individuals and families must make, the state has intervened to make it for them.

The same state that wont enact mask mandates to protect a 15-year-old girl in school now mandates that the same 15-year-old carry the child of her rapist to term. Who has a right to force that decision on one already victimized?

The law allows private citizens to sue anyone  including people they dont know and have no connection to  who aids or abets an abortion in the state. The plaintiff would recover legal fees and $10,000 were they to win. The Texas Legislature has created an incentive, a cottage industry, for neighbors to spy on neighbors and strangers to snoop on strangers.

As dark as SB 8 is, it became darker when, just before midnight Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to block it.

Just like that  not in October at the start of a Supreme Court term or in the frenzied final days in June. While many of us slept, the court, essentially, rendered Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision protecting a womans right to have an abortion, invalid for women in Texas.

On ExpressNews.com: Commentary: Abortion bill snubs ethics questions

SB 8 and the Supreme Court remind us that some of us are privileged in not having to live by the restrictions forced on others. They also remind us that, as a society, we continue to harbor an unhealthy obsession with a womans uterus and what she can and cant decide about her body.

Male privilege is never, for a second in our lives, having to worry about our reproductive rights being compromised or denied by legislatures and courts.

Male privilege is having an unregulated reproductive organ.

cary.clack@express-news.net
When I read the stunning news from the Texas Legislature this week, I was outraged.

I saw state Rep. Diego Bernals Handmaids Tale dystopian reference about the state of womens health here and posted an Under his eye GIF. What is happening now is an injustice.

While I expected this, I also, perhaps naively, hoped for a better outcome. I am angry. I am afraid for our state and countrys future. These are dark times, and like so many Texans, I am weary.

I wonder if these are the kinds of laws that Texans who voted for the Republicans now in power support. Is this what they envisioned? Or did this happen because so many in Texas dont vote?

Do most Texans truly want it to be easier to carry guns  without training or a license  than to vote? Surely, they see the headlines screaming about gun deaths. They must remember the horrific mass shootings in our state.

And they should want every eligible Texan to have easy access to voting, shouldnt they? Past generations fought and died for our right to vote.

Do Texans want the state to weaponize abortion for all women at six weeks, before they know they are pregnant? Even for women impregnated by rape or incest? Creating a bounty-hunter vigilante system more restrictive than any other  and calling it the heartbeat bill when it shows no love for women  is heartless.

The conservative-majority U.S. Supreme Court voted 5-4 Wednesday to refuse to block the law, functionally overturning Roe v. Wade, which has been upheld for half a century. In her dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote the decision ignored the Constitution, precedents and rule of law.

This law will force women who cant afford to travel out of state to try dangerous methods of abortion or carry unwanted pregnancies. It will affect women of color more severely  no big surprise there.

The restrictive abortion law is one of many laws that go too far. This isnt conservative.

The Texas GOP, on so many issues, appears focused on retaining power at any cost, even if it means outright hypocrisy about intrusive and expansive government. Consider other issues this year:

Why would our so-called leaders sue school districts desperately trying to keep students and teachers alive during a pandemic? The delta variant is tightening its grip. Students and teachers are dying. Schools are closing. This is no longer our grandparents virus.

Why would they control what teachers can teach about our history? Our state is making history now, and its utterly shameful. Learning about our state and countrys past  good and bad  would hopefully keep future leaders from repeating similar atrocities.

Why would Gov. Greg Abbott focus more on building an uber-expensive wall at the border than on fixing our vulnerable power grid, whose failure left millions in the dark during Februarys winter storm and led to the deaths of hundreds?

Abbott, indicted Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick are proud of protecting the right to life, but for some reason protecting life ends at birth. Arent Texans ashamed of having the highest number of uninsured people in the country? What about our historically underfunded child protective system? Or inequitable bail system? What about discrimination against people and children who are LGBTQ?

These policies dont end in Texas. This is only the beginning. What happens in Texas cascades to other GOP-led states.

Do most Texans, regardless of political affiliation, agree with these values and policies? Is gerrymandering to blame? Apathy? Both?

For the disconsolate, be angry and sad, but dont be idle. We must keep pushing forward.

It begins and ends at the ballot box. Will this motivate Texans to learn about the issues and the candidates? Will they care enough to get involved? Or will Texans acquiesce?

I hope they dont go along to get along. I pray instead they lead or join a movement for change  even when, especially since, it is more difficult to vote.

I hope they prove that Texas is about everyones rights and human dignity. Thats the Texas I want to live in. Thats the Texas we all deserve.

Nancy.Preyor-Johnson@express-news.net
Two lawsuits have been filed against the state over the GOP priority elections bill passed this week that is awaiting Gov. Greg Abbotts signature. Both allege that it violates various federal laws and the U.S. Constitution.

The sweeping bill, which passed in the House and Senate on Tuesday, bans drive-thru and 24-hour voting, creates new requirements for assistants to voters with special needs and grants greater access to partisan poll watchers, among other provisions.

Both lawsuits were filed in federal court and request that a judge block the law from going into effect.

Republicans have defended the law as necessary to prevent voter fraud and bolster voter confidence. Renae Eze, a spokeswoman for Abbott, who is one of several state officials named in both suits, did not respond directly to a question about the suits but said the bill will solidify trust and confidence in the outcome of our elections.

Protecting the integrity of our elections is critical in the state of Texas, which is why Gov. Abbott made election integrity an emergency item during the regular legislative session and worked to ensure its passage by calling special session after special session, Eze said.

One of the suits was filed in federal court in San Antonio by Harris County Elections Administrator Isabel Longoria and a host of civil rights groups including the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU and the Anti-Defamation League Austin. It argues that the limitations in the bill unduly burden voting rights and intentionally discriminate against Texas minority voters.

SB1 is the latest chapter in Texass long, well-documented history of discrimination against Latino and Black citizens in the voting and electoral processes, the suit states, adding that the bill will cause irreparable harm to plaintiffs and citizens of Texas more broadly.

TEXAS TAKE: Get political headlines from across the state sent directly to your inbox

The plaintiffs allege that the law was enacted at least partly with a racially discriminatory intent in violation of the 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution.

They also say the new requirements for those assisting voters, such as a new form they must fill out and the addition of language in their oath that specifies that it is taken under penalty of perjury, violate the Americans with Disabilities Act and Voting Rights Act.

In addition to making voting more difficult for all voters, SB 1 is aimed directly at Latinos and Asian Americans with specific provisions that cut back on assistance to limited English-proficient voters, Nina Perales, MALDEF vice president of litigation, said in a statement.

The suit also takes issue with a provision that prevents local election officials from sending out mail ballot applications to those who do not request them, making it a state jail felony. The provision violates the free speech rights of Longoria and other officials, plaintiffs argue.

SB 1s anti-solicitation provision accordingly chills Ms. Longoria from encouraging eligible and potentially eligible voters to submit applications to vote by mail by threatening her with severe criminal penalties and onerous fines for engaging in such speech, the suit states.

Longoria could also be impeded when merely giving truthful advice in response to questions from individual voters because it could be seen as soliciting the person to request an application.

The second suit was filed in federal court in Austin by OCA-Greater Houston, League of Women Voters of Texas, REVUP-Texas, Texas Organizing Project and Workers Defense Action Fund.

That suit makes many of the same arguments and challenges new requirements that voters must provide the number of either their Texas drivers license, election identification certificate or personal ID card on their mail-in ballot applications. And those numbers must match the number they supply on the envelope containing their voted ballot. If they do not match, the ballot will be rejected.

That is a violation of the Civil Rights Act, the plaintiffs argue, because the omission or error on the application or carrier envelope is not material in determining whether the individual named on that application or carrier envelope is an eligible voter.

Both suits posed concerns about measures within the bill meant to penalize vote harvesting, defined in the bill as an in-person interaction with one or more voters, in the physical presence of an official ballot or a ballot voted by mail, intended to deliver votes for a specific candidate or measure.

That language is too vague, the plaintiffs argue, and could hinder the work of community-based organizations that conduct nonpartisan voter turnout activities and ordinary interactions between citizens.

taylor.goldenstein@chron.com
WASHINGTON  Michael Migl opened the Amsterdam Co. Coffeehouse in Houston in September and has spent the last year trying to keep his fledgling business afloat through wave after wave of the seemingly endless COVID pandemic.

On top of the pandemic, Migl had to close the shop for a week during the February freeze. Hes had to tweak hours repeatedly and cut staff, down to seven from a peak of about a dozen.

And just as things seemed to be looking up again for Migl and other Texas restaurant owners, the delta variant hit, sending the state into another wave of COVID cases and taking yet another major swipe at business as many diners are yet again wary of eating indoors.

Its just been a roller coaster, Migl said. Now with this delta variant, you see things going down. Theres week to week, your numbers are all over the place. It looks like a heartbeat when you look at your sales, its up and down, up and down.

We just cant get any kind of happy medium, any kind of regular flow of anything, he said.

Thats been the case for restaurant owners across the state, including thousands who had hoped to get help from a COVID relief program set up through the American Rescue Plan that offered grants to struggling eateries. But the $28.6 billion program for restaurants, bars, cafes and caterers ran dry in the summer after more than 362,000 establishments requested $75 billion in the first three weeks.

COVID UPDATE: The pandemics next stage is endemic COVID. Heres what to expect.

Texas had the third most unmet need in the nation. Of the $4.5 billion requested, restaurants in the state only received $1.7 billion. More than 18,400 Texas restaurants applied and just more than 6,400 restaurants received grants. The Texas Restaurant Association is stepping up lobbying efforts to convince Congress to add funding to the program for another round of grants  an idea that has bipartisan support but nonetheless has so far failed to get traction.

There are multiple bills in Congress that would add funding to the program, though they would do so in different ways.

Texas Republicans have lined up behind a GOP-backed proposal that would add $60 billion to the program by rescinding unspent money from other COVID relief programs. It would also eliminate provisions of the program that gave preference to minority owned businesses. U.S. Reps. Brian Babin, R-Woodville, Beth Van Duyne, R-Irving, Pete Sessions, R-Waco, and Kay Granger, R-Fort Worth, are among the 68 co-sponsors of the legislation.

Babin called it common-sense legislation to repurpose unspent money to help replenish the RRF so that restaurants can receive the assistance they need to keep their doors open and continue to serve.

Theres no reason that this necessary legislation shouldnt be passed by Congress immediately, he said.

TEXAS TAKE: Get political headlines from across the state sent directly to your inbox

Texas Democrats, meanwhile, have signed onto a bill with much broader support. That bill, which boasts 213 co-sponsors, would simply add $60 billion in new spending to the program. It has the backing of nine Texans: U.S. Reps. Lizzie Fletcher, Sheila Jackson Lee and Al Green of Houston, Lloyd Doggett, and Joaquin Castro of San Antonio, Vicente Gonzalez of McAllen, Filemon Vela of Brownsville, and Marc Veasy of Fort Worth.

Dining out is a part of our way of life in Houston, Fletcher said. I fought to include targeted assistance for restaurants in the American Rescue Plan, but it is clear that there is still great need.

Going to be a rough couple of months

A group of senators in August tried to pass a bill that would add $48 billion to the program unanimously, but that effort was blocked by U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican who argued restaurants are suffering not because of COVID, but because of shutdown orders by Democrat governors. Texas has not had restrictions on businesses since last year.

This is a man-made phenomenon, Paul said. If you reward a man-made phenomenon, you get more of it.

Its unclear exactly where Congress will go from here on the effort, though one of the bills could get rolled into the annual appropriations process or tucked into a $3 trillion spending package Democrats hope to pass later this year.

Restaurant owners in Houston and San Antonio say the help is needed now as much as it was at any other point in the pandemic.

A National Restaurant Association survey found 60 percent of adults have changed their use of restaurants because of the Delta variant; 19 percent have stopped going out and 37 percent said theyve ordered takeout or delivery instead of dining in a restaurant.

San Antonio chef-restaurateur Johnny Hernandez said sales at all of his restaurants, which include La Gloria, Burgerteca and The Fruteria, had dropped about 30 percent over the last couple of weeks of August  and thats on top of what is typically the slowest time of the year as students head back to school.

Whats really hurting us now is this resurgence, he said. People are scared now.

Hernandez said he put in four applications for revitalization grants for his restaurants within hours of the system going live. Two got grants and two did not.

Were having to rebuild and I think thats what those funds are for, he said. Weve increased our labor to prepare for what we thought was really getting this behind us and now were like oh hell, what do we do now? Were going to need to start cutting labor again.

Its going to be a rough couple months, Hernandez said.

Tracy Vaught, who co-owns Houstons H-Town Restaurant Group, had a similar experience with the grants. Several of her restaurants receive help, but Hugos was left hanging when the fund ran dry.

Vaught said a year and a half of COVID has made it virtually impossible to plan ahead.

I cant really look at my numbers like I used to because my payroll is crazy with overtime and higher rates of pay and my food costs are crazy because protein prices are so high and I cant open for lunch because people arent back in their offices, Vaught said. Its almost like reading a foreign language  I dont even understand where I am.

ben.wermund@chron.com
Less than 45 minutes after Gov. Greg Abbott announced last month that he tested positive for COVID-19, state Rep. Jasmine Crockett was online and tweeting a response  or, rather, a jab at the governors coronavirus politics.

Whats appropriate: Thoughts and prayers???, Crockett, D-Dallas, wrote on Twitter. OR hopefully theres an ICU bed if you need one since youve not allowed locals to try to control this thing and they are running outta beds OR can we finally now allow mask mandates??? ABBOTT has contracted COVID, yall.

A little more than a half-hour later, a GOP colleague, Rep. Jeff Leach of Plano, replied: What a disgusting, callous, cold-hearted response from Tik-Tok Star Jasmine Crockett.

From these real-time bitter interactions to breaking news  not to mention the viral moments, fundraising pitches and memes  state government is more online than ever. These days, if youre not tracking #TxLege, youre not tracking the Texas Legislature.

I don't think you can understand everything about Texas politics by just being in the Capitol, nor by being on the hashtag, but I think it can be a really instructive place, said Jessica Shortall, a political strategist and advocate who is a consistent presence in the #TxLege feed.

Over the past several months, and especially over the nearly six weeks that Democrats fled the state to stall a controversial elections bill, lawmakers social media was alive and thriving even when the chambers were at a standstill. The online environment has also given rise to increased animosity between members, as legislators across the aisle openly attacked and made fun of each other on Twitter and other social media platforms. Sometimes, Democrats even targeted members of their own party.

The online shift isnt just qualitative  it can be measured, too.

Elyse Yates, the director of strategy for the communications firm Digital Advance, compiled an analysis of legislators tweets over the past year. Data show the number of tweets increased as the regular session began  and then skyrocketed at the end, when Democrats held their first walkout, and continued into the special sessions.

Though the first walkout and the special sessions spanned roughly three months, the number of tweets that legislators posted during that time  more than 37,000  was only about 10,000 posts shy of the total for the five-month spring legislative session. Even so, the spring numbers included an unusual spike in online activity in mid-February, during the states crippling freeze.

That means lawmakers were posting nearly 100 more tweets a day after the first Democratic walkout than they were before it.

Across all the sessions, Democrats tweeted far more than their Republican counterparts, though GOP lawmakers had more overall exposure, likely due to their higher combined follower counts. (The analysis includes Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who both have hundreds of thousands of followers.)

From June 1 to Sept. 1, Texas Democrats tweeted more than 24,000 times, twice as much as the Republicans. Still, Republicans tweets could have been viewed up to 473 million times, compared to Democrats 336 million, according to Yates analysis of impressions, which refer to the number of times a tweet could have been viewed. Thats calculated by summing up all the follower counts of everyone who retweeted the post.

Social media  Twitter and Facebook, specifically, when you're talking about politics  are still two main channels for politicians and wannabe politicians ... to engage with the public in a raw, and then probably more importantly, very fast way, Yates said.

The online nature of the Legislature lately could be beneficial for the public, in that social media is an accessible tool for almost everyone, experts say. At times, lawmakers also tip off journalists to breaking news or legislative updates through their online accounts.

Remember when stories started circulating in mid-July that a few of the quorum-busting Democrats had left D.C. to go on a European vacation? The news originally broke through a tweet from Rep. Briscoe Cain, a Deer Park Republican.

But negative interactions have also exploded across the #txlege hashtag, as politicians openly fight with each other. Its not a recent trend, growing as former President Donald Trump expressed his affinity for Twitter  but it is a marked change overall for an institution that has at least attempted to present an air of civility and bipartisanship in the past.

For example: After Cain made a video last month talking about state Rep. Gene Wu, D-Houston, the latter posted a thread blaming Democrats quorum break on Cains unmitigated incompetence in handling the elections bill during the regular session. Cain, in turn, called him a delusional sociopath.

At the start of the second special session, Rep. Jared Patterson, R-Frisco, tweeted Wild West throwback Wanted signs of his Democratic counterparts with tailored captions. (For Rep. Jon Rosenthal, D-Houston: He may be found pretending to be an electricity expert or losing the 2022 general election.)

We talk about their policies generally, but we dont go after them individually, said Rep. Crockett, the Dallas Democrat. Until they come after us.

The same philosophy hasnt always applied within the House Democratic Caucus.

Word use evolved from leadership to fight

After three quorum-breaking Democrats defected and restored quorum in the House in mid-August  helping Republicans who had been planning to jumpstart the session as soon as they returned  a handful of their caucus colleagues publicly chastised them. State Rep. Ana-Maria Ramos of Richardson lamented on Twitter that the returning Democrats hadnt notified the caucus of their plans, though we were literally on caucus calls for two hours this morning.

I think friendships have been severed, said state Rep. Lyle Larson, R-San Antonio, a moderate who contributed little to the drama besides a few simmer-down tweets. I think that the partisan divide is as strong as I've seen it in the last 10 years, and a lot of it resonates from some of the visceral tweets that were exchanged between leadership of both the House Republican and Democratic parties.

The animosity online can spread to the House floor, Larson said. Its been evident in debates throughout the special and regular sessions, as Republicans pursued more red-meat legislation than they have in years.

If somebody has been nasty to you on Twitter, or belittling or condescending or racist or sexist on Twitter, and you see them the next day in the chamber, it's almost like (youre) a family or at work, said Jim Henson, the director of the Texas Politics Project and a longtime legislative observer. It's the same dynamic, and it affects people's relationships.

Its also clear in the words that legislators use online. Yates analysis included word clouds across the sessions  while some of the most-used terms in the winter and spring were leadership, communities, children, pandemic and opportunity, that attitude changed swiftly during the summer special sessions. Then, words like democracy, fight, freedom, border and quorum were the top picks.

Still, the back-and-forth between legislators is just a modicum of the activity on Twitter and other social media platforms. Crockett, who is very active online, said that tweets, at times, can serve as a replacement for news releases to journalists, while Instagram helps engage the non-political crowd and Facebook involves older constituents.

By and large, most legislators use their social media outlets to tout their own policy stances and make pitches for their re-election campaigns.

Some lawmakers have also started building up a followings on TikTok, the video-sharing app widely popular among teens and young adults. Crockett and Cain appear to be the only Texas legislators with active accounts there  though some others may follow heading into election season  and they used the site to document the quorum break.

For Crockett, that meant sharing videos shed kept from Democrats first quorum break in May, posting a clip of legislators hiding out together as Unks Walk It Out played in the background. (She hasnt posted to the account, which has 26,000 followers, since mid-July, citing an app glitch that wont allow her to use viral audios.)

Cain, meanwhile, had been using a host of viral songs to accompany videos of himself posting sarcastic signs documenting the Democrats D.C. escape. His most popular video, with 680,000 views, is a brief clip set to Billy Joels We Didnt Start the Fire. It was day 17 of Democrats quorum break, his sign said, because they would have surrendered at the Alamo.

Cain, whose TikTok account has 5,000 followers, called it a great way to explain legislation and provide updates.

Social media is not for everyone, though. House Speaker Dade Phelan is relatively offline, and both Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick use their platforms more as avenues to share news than break it or interact with others. They are the main decision-makers in the Legislature.

Yates estimates that about 98 percent of Texas legislators have a Twitter account, though there are some  mostly older, tenured members of the Legislature, who dont use it very often. And they might be better off for it, some would argue, since they stay out of the very public-facing drama that can overshadow legislative action.

State Rep. Greg Bonnen, R-Friendswood, who maintains an intermittent presence online, summed up his stance at an early August press conference:

There are 181 people in the state of Texas who are elected by their constituents and given the privilege to represent them and to participate in writing the laws of the state of Texas. And that happens here at the Texas Capitol. The debate and the votes take place on the floor of the Texas House of Representatives and not on Twitter.

Until they dont.

cayla.harris@express-news.net
The former President and CEO of the Etihad Aviation Group, James Hogan, and the former Serbian Minister for Finance and Economy, Mladjan Dinkic, have held talks with the Slovenian Ministry for Infrastructure, according to the daily Danas. The duo are believed to have discussed potential solutions for Slovenias lack of air connectivity, which has been an ongoing issue since the countrys former national carrier, Adria Airways, declared bankruptcy in late September of 2019. Mr Hogan is acting in the capacity of Founder and Executive Chairman of the Knighthood Capital consultancy company, while Mr Dinkic, who was instrumental in Etihads takeover of Jat Airways and its subsequent rebranding into Air Serbia, is today a Managing Partner at the Belgrade-based MD Solution.





Talks with the Ministry for Infrastructure, which is responsible for Slovenias aviation sector, took place this Tuesday. According to the daily, the talks were conducted by the State Secretary in charge for aviation. The Ministry has also previously held talks with LOT Polish Airlines, Air Serbia and Croatia Airlines in a bid to overcome the countrys poor air connectivity, which has been further compounded by the coronavirus pandemic. During the first seven months of the year, Ljubljana Airport reached just 12% of its pre-pandemic traffic from 2019. Plans to establish a new national airline using European Union Covid-19 recovery funds were dropped earlier this year following the blocks objections.





The Slovenian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Economic Development and Technology, Zdravko Pocivalsek, said last month the government was looking into ways to fill the void left by Adria. If we want to have better air connectivity in Slovenia, we will have to do something in this sector and find a way forward to enable progress, in cooperation with a private stakeholder. Currently, we do not have a national carrier, and air traffic is severely affected by the pandemic, Mr Pocivalsek said.








BEIJING (AP)  U.S. climate envoy John Kerry came to China this week seeking to press the worlds largest emitter of greenhouse gases to do more in the global effort to hold down the rise in temperature.

What he got was renewed demands for Washington to change its stance toward China on a host of other issues from human rights to Taiwan, the self-governing island that China claims.

The back and forth underscores a divide between the worlds two largest emitters that is complicating chances for a breakthrough agreement on carbon reduction goals at COP26, a United Nations conference to be held in Glasgow, Scotland, in November.

Both sides agree that climate is an area of joint interest, but while the U.S. says they should cooperate despite their differences, China says the U.S. cannot expect cooperation while also attacking it on other issues.

The U.S. side wants the climate change cooperation to be an oasis of China-U.S. relations, Foreign Minister Wang Yi told Kerry. However, if the oasis is all surrounded by deserts, then sooner or later, the oasis will be desertified.

Kerry told reporters in a conference call at the end of his visit that his mandate is limited to climate, but that he would convey the Chinese concerns to President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

The U.S. envoy, himself a former secretary of state, discussed climate with Chinese counterpart Xie Zhenhua in the city of Tianjin, about 100 kilometers (65 miles) southeast of Beijing. But Chinese state media focused on his three video meetings with Wang and two other senior officials, reinforcing China's objections to America's approach to the overall relationship.

They were quite pointed in talking about the difficulties that it presents, Kerry said. They wanted the message to be heard. And it was, that there's great concern in China about this.

Chinese officials intended to make clear to the Biden administration that it is impossible to gain Chinas cooperation on climate change while maintaining anti-China stances on major issues, said Shi Yinhong, professor of international relations at Beijings Renmin University.

Kerry also held video meetings with top foreign policy adviser Yang Jiechi and Senior Vice-Premier Han Zheng, one of seven members of the ruling Communist Partys all-powerful Politburo Standing Committee and head of a committee drawing up a plan to reach China's emission reduction targets.

China positioned itself as a leader on promoting renewable energy and reducing carbon emissions after former President Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from the 2015 Paris climate accord. China is a world leader in producing solar panels and wind turbines for renewable energy.

However, its climate policies have come under increasing scrutiny following Bidens decision to rejoin the Paris agreement and set a goal of cutting up to 52% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 2030  double the previous target  vaulting the U.S. into the top tier of countries on climate ambition

The sides have identified the climate crisis as an area for possible cooperation, but this weeks meetings offered little indication of progress.

Kerry told Han that there was no way for the world to solve the climate crisis without Chinas full engagement and commitment.

China is the worlds largest emitter, producing an estimated 27% of global greenhouse gases, followed by the United States. China obtains roughly 60% of its power from coal and is opening more coal-fired power plants, while also committing to reducing its use of the fossil fuel.

The official Xinhua News Agency quoted Han as telling Kerry that China had made huge efforts in tackling climate change and achieved remarkable results.

China hopes the American side will create the appropriate circumstances for jointly tackling climate change based on the spirit of the conversations between their leaders, Xinhua quoted Han as saying.

China has set a target of generating 20% of its total energy needs from renewables by 2025, reducing total emissions starting from 2030 and becoming carbon-neutral by 2060.

Kerry is pushing China and other countries for more ambitious efforts to keep rising temperatures to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) over pre-industrial levels.

He said that Chinese officials had raised concerns about U.S. actions they see as harmful to overall emissions-reduction efforts, notably U.S. sanctions on solar panels that the Biden administration believes China produces with the forced labor of ethnic minorities.

Those matters were up to Biden and Blinken, Kerry said, but I will certainly pass on to them  the full nature of the message that I received from these three leaders.

___

Moritsugu, The Associated Press news director for Greater China, has covered Asia for more than 15 years.
PHOENIX (AP)  An Arizona man who sported face paint, no shirt and a furry hat with horns when he joined the mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 pleaded guilty Friday to a felony charge and wants to be released from jail while he awaits sentencing.

Jacob Chansley, who was widely photographed in the Senate chamber with a flagpole topped with a spear, could face 41 to 51 months in prison under sentencing guidelines, a prosecutor said. The man who called himself QAnon Shaman has been jailed for nearly eight months since his arrest.

Before entering the plea, Chansley was found by a judge to be mentally competent after having been transferred to a Colorado facility for a mental health evaluation. His lawyer Albert Watkins said the solitary confinement that Chansley faced for most of his time in jail has had an adverse effect on his mental health and that his time in Colorado helped him regain his sharpness.

I am very appreciative for the courts willingness to have my mental vulnerabilities examined, Chansley said before pleading guilty to a charge of obstructing an official proceeding.

U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth is considering Chansleys request to be released from jail while he awaits sentencing, which is set for Nov. 17.

Chansley acknowledged in a court record to being one of the first 30 pro-Trump rioters to stream into the Capitol building. He riled up the crowd with a bullhorn as officers tried to control them, posed for photos, profanely referred to then-Vice President Mike Pence as a traitor while in the Senate. He wrote a note to Pence saying, Its only a matter of time, justice is coming. He also made a social media post in November in which he promoted hangings for traitors.

The image of Chansley with his face painted like the American flag, wearing a bear skin head dress and looking as if he were howling was one of the first striking images to emerge from the riot.

Chansley is among roughly 600 people charged in the riot that forced lawmakers into hiding as they were meeting to certify President Joe Bidens Electoral College victory. Fifty others have pleaded guilty, mostly to misdemeanor charges of demonstrating in the Capitol.

Only one defendant who pleaded guilty to a felony charge has received their punishment so far. Paul Hodgkins, a crane operator from Florida who breached the U.S. Senate chamber carrying a Trump campaign flag, was sentenced in July to eight months in prison after pleading guilty to obstructing an official proceeding.

Chansley's lawyer said his client has since repudiated the QAnon movement and asked that there be no more references to his past affiliations with the movement.

After the hearing, attorney Watkins told reporters that Chansley was under pressure from family members not to plead guilty because they believed Trump would be reinstated as president and would pardon him. Watkins said Chansley previously felt like Trumps message spoke to him and that his clients fondness for Trump was akin to a first love.

The man had long been a fixture at Trump rallies. Two months before the riot, he appeared in costume and carried a QAnon sign at a protest alongside other Trump supporters outside an election office in Phoenix where votes were being counted.

His attorney has said Chansley believed like other rioters that Trump called him to the Capitol, but later felt betrayed after Trumps refusal to grant Chansley and others who participated in the insurrection a pardon.

After spending his first month in jail, Chansley said he re-evaluated his life, expressed regret for having stormed the building and apologized for causing fear in others.

Chansley twice quit eating while in jail and lost 20 pounds (9 kilograms) until authorities gave him organic food.

Watkins has characterized the spear Chansley carried as an ornament and disputed that his clients note to Pence was threatening.
EL CAJON, Calif. (AP)  When Yousef's wife and their four children boarded a July 15 flight in San Diego to attend her brother's wedding in Afghanistan, they were looking forward to a month of family gatherings. It was long overdue  the coronavirus pandemic prevented them from traveling earlier.

Their return ticket was Aug. 15, two days before their children's school year began in the San Diego suburb of El Cajon.

But the Afghan Americans found themselves dodging gunfire and trying to force their way into the crowds of thousands ringing the airport in Kabul after Afghanistan's government collapsed and the Taliban seized power.

Yousef's wife and children were among eight families from El Cajon who were trapped after U.S. troops raced to evacuate Americans and allies and then left the country. Yousef, who had stayed in California during his family's trip, asked that only his first name be used because he still has relatives in Afghanistan who could be at risk.

All but one of the families got out with the help of the Cajon Valley Union School District and Republican Rep. Darrell Issa, whose district includes El Cajon, a city with a large refugee population. The families had traveled on their own over the summer to see relatives and were not part of an organized trip.

Several of the families, accompanied by Issa and school officials, spoke to reporters Thursday for the first time since they returned, recounting their harrowing experiences.

The parents described running with their kids as gunfire whizzed overhead. One father said he was beaten by the Taliban. They said they were blocked at Taliban checkpoints.

They said they are grateful to be back but their children have suffered nightmares, and they worry about the family that was unable to get out, along with countless others still stuck there, including distant relatives.

My kids are now safe at home right now thanks to God and all of you, Yousef said.

But he asked people not to forget about so many others, including U.S. citizens, green card holders and Afghans who are at risk because they helped the American government. He held in his hand a folder that he said contained the documents of 30 people who qualified for a special immigrant visa and should be in the United States but are still in Afghanistan, desperate to escape.

President Joe Biden has said between 100 and 200 Americans were left behind when U.S. troops completed their withdrawal Aug. 31, many of them dual citizens. The State Department has given no estimate for others who hope to leave Afghanistan, including U.S. green card holders and people who received the special visas because they helped Americans during the 20-year war. Issa said he believes the number to be much higher for U.S. citizens and the others.

Many of the families he helped get back to California in the past week are green card holders. Some are U.S. citizens.

We're delighted to have these kids back in school and their parents united, but we also know that there's a lot more work to do," Issa said.

Yousef said he felt helpless being in California, thousands of miles away, fearing the life they had built would come to a halt and his wife and children would be trapped in the country ruled by the Taliban. He, his wife and children are all U.S. citizens. They came to the United States on a special immigrant visa after Yousef worked for the U.S. government in Afghanistan.

After they failed to get into the airport on Aug. 15, his wife and kids returned to their relative's home.

Yousef alerted his family from El Cajon that the U.S. Embassy in Kabul was advising people not to go to the airport because of threats.

Eight hours later, suicide bombers set off explosions at the airport, killing 13 U.S. troops and more than 170 others.

Yousef said Issa's team arranged a time for his family to go to the airport with an escort from U.S. authorities.

It was like a situation room," Yousef said of talking to Issa's team while navigating his family through the chaos from afar. I was sitting here talking to them. They were sending their locations and stuff like this."

His family returned home Friday. The first thing he did was take them to IHOP, their favorite restaurant.

He hopes more of those happy moments will overtake the traumatic memories his kids hold. His 7-year-old son, his youngest, has been talking about the violence.

They are talking about it, about the gunfire, and being scared of the Taliban, but we hope they forget all that" and return to their life as regular American kids, Yousef said.
BRUSSELS (AP)  The European Union and drugmaker AstraZeneca said Friday that they reached a deal to end a damaging legal battle over the slow pace of deliveries of the companys COVID-19 vaccines.

The European Commission, which is the EUs executive branch, said AstraZeneca made a firm commitment to deliver a total of 300 million doses by March next year, as agreed under the advance purchasing agreement the two sides signed a year ago. About 100 million doses have already been supplied.

The settlement involves the Anglo-Swedish vaccine-maker providing 135 million doses by the end of this year plus a further 65 million doses in the first quarter of 2022. The EUs 27 member countries will be given regular delivery schedules and discounts if supplies are delayed.

AstraZeneca was seen as a key pillar of the EUs vaccine rollout, and the court tussle over delivery obligations further tarnished the companys image after its shots were linked to very rare cases of blood clots. The commission insists it has no issue with the quality of the firms vaccines.

The AstraZeneca shot is also a linchpin in the global strategy to get vaccines to poorer countries. It is cheaper and easier to use than rival vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna and has been endorsed for use in over 50 countries. U.S. regulators are still evaluating the vaccine.

In June, a Belgian court ruled that AstraZeneca had committed a serious breach of its contract with the 27-nation bloc. The company said at the time that the ruling showed it fully complied with its agreement with the European Commission.

The executive vice president of AstraZeneca's BioPharmaceuticals Business Unit, Ruud Dobber, said Friday that he was very pleased that we have been able to reach a common understanding which allows us to move forward and work in collaboration with the European Commission to help overcome the pandemic.

Dobber said in a statement that the company is fully committed to manufacturing the vaccine "for Europe following the release for supply of more than 140 million doses to date at no profit." He added that the company also would work with the commission to support COVAX, the global vaccine-sharing program.

AstraZeneca said that, along with its partners, it has supplied more than 1.1 billion doses of vaccine to over 170 countries, and that approximately two-thirds have gone to low- and lower-middle-income countries.

The EU had claimed from the beginning that it launched an emergency legal procedure against AstraZeneca simply to secure the vaccine doses that EU member countries were promised. It accused the company of acting in bad faith by providing shots to other countries, notably former EU member Britain, and argued that it should have used its production sites in the U.K. to help fill the EUs order.

But AstraZeneca argued that the challenges of producing and delivering the vaccine couldn't have been foreseen during a once-in-a-century pandemic, and that its U.K. sites were primarily meant to be used to service its contract with the British government.

The advance purchasing agreement also foresaw an option for the delivery of an extra 100 million doses, which the commission has since declined to take up.
A group of election security experts on Thursday called for a rigorous audit of the upcoming recall election for California's governor after copies of systems used to run elections across the country were released publicly.

Their letter sent to the secretary of state's office urges the state to conduct a type of post-election audit that can help detect malicious attempts to interfere.

The statewide recall targeting Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, set for Sept. 14, is the first election since copies of Dominion Voting Systems' election management system were distributed last month at an event organized by MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, an ally of former President Donald Trump who has made unsubstantiated claims about last years election. Election offices across 30 states use the Dominion system, including 40 counties in California.

Election security experts have said the breaches, from a county in Colorado and another in Michigan, pose a heightened risk to elections because the system is used for a number of administrative functions  from designing ballots and configuring voting machines to tallying results. In the letter, the experts said they do not have evidence that anyone plans to attempt a hack of the systems used in California and are not casting blame on Dominion.

However, it is critical to recognize that the release of the Dominion software into the wild has increased the risk to the security of California elections to the point that emergency action is warranted," the experts wrote in their letter, which was shared with The Associated Press.

The eight experts signing the letter include computer scientists, election technology experts and cybersecurity researchers.

Jenna Dresner, a spokeswoman for Secretary of State Shirley Weber, said the 40 counties in California using Dominion employ a different version of the election management system that meets various state-specific requirements. She outlined numerous security measures in place to protect voting systems across the state. That includes regular testing for vulnerabilities, strict controls on who has access, physical security rules and pre-election testing to ensure that no part of the system has been modified.

California has the strictest and most comprehensive voting system testing, use, and requirements in the country, and it was designed to withstand potential threats, Dresner said in a statement to the AP.

The security experts want California counties using Dominion's election management system to do what's known as a risk-limiting audit, which essentially uses a statistical approach to ensure that the reported results match the actual votes cast. California also uses paper ballots, which makes it easier to verify results.

The letter said differences between the leaked Dominion software images and the versions used in California are relatively minor. The experts said thousands of people now have blueprints to the underpinnings of Dominion's election management system, including some who may have access to voting equipment.

That increases the risk of undetected outcome-changing cyber-attacks on California counties that use Dominion equipment and the risk of accusations of fraud and election manipulation which, without rigorous post-election auditing, would be impossible to disprove, the letter states.

A majority of voters are expected to cast mail ballots during the recall, returning them through the U.S. Postal Service or by drop boxes in their counties.

California law already requires counties to hand-count ballots from a random sample of 1% of the precincts after an election. Although the state has conducted a pilot program with risk-limiting audits, Dresner said state law does not currently allow one for the recall election. Its not clear whether that could be changed with less than two weeks to go before the election.

Among those signing the letter was Harri Hursti, a voting technology expert who was at the Lindell event in South Dakota. Hursti said he received three copies of the Dominion election management system  one an image of the system used in Antrim County, Michigan, and the other two from Mesa County, Colorado. In a sworn declaration filed in federal court in Georgia, Hursti said the copies were later made available for online download.

He said the release gives hackers a practice environment to seek vulnerabilities in the system and a road map to avoid defenses. All hackers would need is physical access to the systems because they arent supposed to be connected to the internet.

Philip B. Stark, a professor of statistics at the University of California, Berkeley, who also signed the letter, likened it to the difference between a bank robber having a blueprint of a vault and having an exact replica of the vault to practice attacks.

Thats what this is, he said. They basically have an exact copy of the thing theyre trying to break into.

Experts say attacks could create technical problems that can cause machines to malfunction, manipulate ballot design or even target results.

A Dominion representative said the company was aware of reports about the unauthorized release of the system images and had reported it to authorities. The company said federal cybersecurity officials dont view the breach as significantly increasing the risk to elections.

But Stark said the sheer number of people who now have access to the information makes this breach especially serious. While its possible the information already was in the hands of the Russians or other adversaries, there had been considerable expense and legwork involved in getting it, he said. Now thats not the case.

What this has done on some level is democratized access to the information that would be needed to make a cyberattack on Dominion systems, Stark said.

Compounding the threat is a finding by voting technology specialist J. Alex Halderman that even a voter has enough physical access to implant malware, Stark said.

So if you have someone who can do the technical work of devising a cyberattack, then it could actually be deployed by a voter, by an insider, by a vendor, by whoever, he said. Its just really multiplied the number of people who are in a position to do harm to our elections by a very large factor.

Halderman, director of the University of Michigans Center for Computer Security and Society, made those observations after examining Dominion voting equipment used in Georgia as an expert witness in a long-running lawsuit challenging the use of those machines.

The release of the system images follows an effort by Republicans to examine voting equipment that began soon after the November election as Trump challenged the results and blamed his loss on widespread fraud, even though there has been no evidence of it.

___

Cassidy and Brumback reported from Atlanta.
IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP)  A group of parents of disabled students filed a lawsuit Friday seeking to strike down Iowa's law banning schools from requiring masks, arguing it endangers their health and denies equal access to education.

The lawsuit, backed by the American Civil Liberties Union and disability rights organizations, adds to the legal pressure facing the law as virus cases and hospitalizations climb in Iowa to their highest levels since last winter.

The U.S. Department of Education launched investigations this week into whether the Iowa law and similar measures in four other Republican-led states illegally discriminate against students with disabilities or health conditions.

A Council Bluffs mother of twin boys has filed a state lawsuit challenging the measure, and a judge has scheduled a hearing next week on whether to grant a temporary injunction blocking its enforcement.

The lawsuit filed Friday in federal court in Des Moines involves children who are too young to be vaccinated and have disabilities that make them susceptible to potentially severe COVID-19 cases, including a rare organ disorder, cerebral palsy and asthma.

Their parents argue the law effectively excludes them from in-person learning in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Rehabilitation Act.

Prohibiting schools from taking reasonable steps to protect the health of their students forces parents to make an impossible choice: their child's education or their child's health, said Susan Mizner, director of the ACLU's Disability Rights Program, which has filed a similar lawsuit in South Carolina.

The lawsuit names Gov. Kim Reynolds, Iowa Department of Education Director Ann Lebo and several school districts as defendants, including those in Des Moines, Davenport, Ankeny, Waterloo and Iowa City. The plaintiffs said they would seek a temporary restraining order seeking to block enforcement of the law as soon as possible.

At a news conference Thursday, Reynolds defended the law and said the states rising number of cases was no cause for panic. She said the risk of serious illness among children is minimal and called their low rate of hospitalization encouraging.

Asked what she would tell parents who are concerned about unvaccinated children with chronic health conditions feeling unsafe in classrooms, Reynolds noted they can enroll in online-only options instead. She said she has heard from more parents of children who have had severe reactions to masks and believe they impede their learning.

Parents understand and know the health of their children. They are the best person to decide that course of action for their children, she said.

Mizner said at a news conference Friday that some remote learning options now feature pre-recorded lessons in which students do not have interaction with live teachers. She said that was a lesser service than classroom learning and particularly inappropriate for disabled students who benefit from more hands-on interaction.

Under the law passed on the final day of the legislative session in May, school boards and superintendents cannot require students and employees to wear masks. Mask wearing must be optional, and anecdotal reports suggest it is limited in many schools.

The law conflicts with guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which recommends universal mask wearing for students and teachers in the classroom. The CDC issued the guidance in light of the rapid spread of the highly contagious delta variant of COVID-19.

The legal challenges come as 500,000 students have started classes in recent days in Iowa. Clusters of infections involving children and educators, and potential exposure among their colleagues, are already disrupting some schools.

Iowa is averaging about 1,200 confirmed COVID-19 cases per day over the last week, and roughly a quarter of those are among those age 17 and under. About 5% of Iowa patients hospitalized with confirmed COVID-19 infections as of Wednesday were age 17 or below.

Unlike last fall, schools are barred by law from offering a hybrid schedule or temporarily moving to online-only classes without having to make up the time later.

Citing that new reality, the Newton school district reported that 29 students and eight employees were absent from an elementary school Wednesday due to COVID-19 and other illnesses but that in-person classes would go on without changes.
RICHMOND, Va. (AP)  Almost instantly after most abortions were banned in Texas, Democrats were decrying the new law as unconstitutional, an assault on women's health that must be challenged. But the reaction from many Republicans on the other side hasn't been nearly as emphatic.

Though some in the GOP are celebrating the moment as a long-sought win for the anti-abortion rights movement, others are minimizing the meaning of the Supreme Court's Wednesday midnight decision that allowed the bill to take effect. A few are even slamming the court and the law.

Or dodging.

Im pro-life, said Republican Glenn Youngkin, a GOP candidate for governor in increasingly Democratic Virginia, where the only open governor's race in the nation is coming up in November. When pressed on the Texas law by a reporter, he quickly noted that he supports exceptions in cases of rape, incest and where the mothers life is in danger  exceptions notably not included in the new law.

The mixed reactions illustrate the political risks for the GOP as their anti-abortion allies begin actually achieving goals they have long sought. Americans are hardly of one mind on the issue, and loudly defending the nation's toughest curbs  in Virginia or political battlegrounds like Georgia, Arizona or Florida  in next year's midterm elections won't be hazard-free.

It is going to be a very motivating issue for women who havent typically been single-issue pro-choice voters, said Republican pollster Christine Matthews. That includes suburban women and independents in swing House districts and competitive governors races who in past elections didnt believe Roe v. Wade was truly under threat, Matthews said.

The new Texas law represents the most significant threat yet to the Supreme Courts 1973 decision establishing the right to an abortion. Surveys suggest that ruling still has broad support  69% of voters in last year's elections said Roe v. Wade should be left as is, compared with just 29% saying it should be overturned, according to AP VoteCast, a poll of the electorate.

Democrats and abortion-rights advocates, who have sometimes been frustrated by voters taking access for granted, vowed Thursday to use the moment to wake people up. They promised to go after not just GOP candidates and office holders who support the Texas measure and others like it but also corporations that support them. Some reignited calls to end Senate filibuster rules to give abortion access a better chance at passage in Congress.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the House would soon vote on codifying Roe v. Wade into law, though chances in the Senate are all but nil.

Virginia's Democratic gubernatorial nominee Terry McAuliffe already has been making abortion a key issue. He points to secretly recorded video in which Youngkin tells a woman posing as an abortion opponent that he supports defunding Planned Parenthood but can't talk about it publicly because as a campaign topic, sadly, that in fact wont win my independent votes that I have to get.

On Thursday McAuliffe warned that if Youngkin wins and Republicans take over the state House theres a good chance that we could see Virginia go the way of Texas.

The Texas law prohibits abortions once medical professionals can detect cardiac activity, usually around six weeks and often before women know they're pregnant. Rather than be enforced by government authorities, the law gives citizens the right to file civil suits and collect damages against anyone aiding an abortion.

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, a Republican, tweeted that she wanted her office to compare her state's laws with the new Texas one "to make sure we have the strongest pro-life laws on the books in SD.

But such views were hardly universal in her party.

In South Carolina, Republican Gov. Henry McMaster this year signed a restriction requiring doctors to perform ultrasounds checking for cardiac activity and prohibiting abortion if it's found, unless the pregnancy was caused by rape or incest, or the mothers life was in danger.

Asked Thursday if he would support a Texas-style bill, such as one without exceptions for rape and incest, McMaster said he viewed South Carolinas law as superior.

Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine called the Texas law extreme and harmful.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell downplayed the Supreme Court's action as a highly technical decision."

Indeed, the conservative-majority court did not rule on the constitutionality of the Texas law. The justices instead refused to block its implementation and issued a brief statement saying the decision in no way limits other procedurally proper challenges to the Texas law, including in Texas state courts.

The justices' role ensures that the court's makeup will be part of the revived political debate. Liberal lawmakers backed by advocates who helped power President Joe Biden to office want to expand the number of justices to rebalance power.

Democrats can either abolish the filibuster and expand the court, or do nothing as millions of people's bodies, rights and lives are sacrificed for far-right minority rule, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., wrote on Twitter.

While a majority of American support Roe v. Wade, abortion opponents have typically been more likely to let the issue determine their votes. According to AP VoteCast, just 3% of voters in the 2020 presidential election called abortion the single most important issue facing the country, but they leaned resoundingly toward Republican President Donald Trump, 89% to just 9% for Democrat Biden. In a separate question, 18% of voters called Supreme Court nominations the single most important factor in their presidential votes. Those voters leaned toward Biden by a relatively narrow margin, 53% to 46%.

A June poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that most Americans think abortion should be limited after the first trimester, but about 6 in 10 said it should usually be legal in the first three months of pregnancy. More than 8 in 10 said it should be legal in cases of rape or incest.

The poll found that younger adults are especially likely to support legal abortion. Sixty-three percent of those under age 45 said abortion should usually be legal, compared with 51% of those 45 and older. Still, even young adults support some limits on abortion based on the time of pregnancy, with majorities across all age groups saying most abortions should be illegal by the third trimester.

___

Emily Swanson in Washington and Meg Kinnard in Houston contributed to this report. Burnett reported from Chicago.
SUGAR LAND, Texas, Sept. 2, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Noble Corporation (NYSE: NE, "Noble" or the "Company") today provided an update on the Noble Globetrotter II ultra-deepwater drillship and the personnel onboard. As previously reported, the vessel encountered severe weather during Hurricane Ida. Noble management is in frequent communication with the ship's crew and is working to facilitate additional transport for some crew members to shore, as may be needed, as well as replacement personnel to support marine operations. A small number of crew members were treated for minor injuries. The living quarters of the vessel continue to operate normally with food service, climate-control, water, power, and internet systems functional. The vessel's helideck is fully operational and teams are working through logistical challenges across the Gulf Coast region to resume normal levels of transportation to and from shore.

Initial findings from the ship's ongoing condition assessment confirm that several riser joints and the lower marine riser package separated from the rig during the storm and sank to the seabed. Efforts are underway to locate and recover that equipment, and the Company believes that, if necessary, it can replace any missing or damaged equipment promptly. Additionally, one of the ship's cofferdams in the moonpool area sustained damage during the weather event. The damaged cofferdam does not compromise the stability or structural integrity of the rig nor the safety of personnel onboard. The vessel successfully secured the well and detached from the blowout preventer in place on the well as part of its departure procedures.

Noble provided a force majeure notice to its customer in accordance with the governing drilling services contract. The contract does not contain a right of termination for force majeure. The Company does not expect any impact to its previously issued preliminary 2022 financial guidance and, at this time, is unable to estimate the impact on its 2021 guidance. Noble has insurance coverage for property damage with a $10 million deductible.

Noble holds the safety of everyone aboard our vessels as the highest priority. We will continue to work closely with the Noble Globetrotter II's personnel and their families to provide all necessary support as we all recover from the aftermath of Hurricane Ida.

About Noble Corporation

Noble is a leading offshore drilling contractor for the oil and gas industry. The Company owns and operates one of the most modern, versatile, and technically advanced fleets in the offshore drilling industry. Noble and its predecessors have been engaged in the contract drilling of oil and gas wells since 1921. Currently, Noble performs, through its subsidiaries, contract drilling services with a fleet of 24 offshore drilling units, consisting of 12 drillships and semisubmersibles and 12 jackups (including the four that are subject to an agreement to sell to ADES), focused largely on ultra-deepwater and high-specification jackup drilling opportunities in both established and emerging regions worldwide. Noble is an exempted company incorporated in the Cayman Islands with limited liability with registered office at P.O. BOX 309, Ugland House, S. Church Street, Grand Cayman, KY1-1104. Additional information on Noble is available at www.noblecorp.com.

Forward-looking Disclosure Statement

This communication includes "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act and Section 21E of the Exchange Act. All statements other than statements of historical facts included in this communication, including those regarding the effect of the storm, condition and repair of the Noble Globetrotter II, transportation to and from the vessel, impact on the drilling contract for the vessel, equipment retrieval, repair and replacement, impact on 2021 and 2022 guidance, other financial impact, and condition of the crew are forward-looking statements. When used in this report, or in the documents incorporated by reference, the words "anticipate," "assume," "believe," "could," "estimate," "expect," "intend," "may," "might," "plan," "project," "should," "shall" and "will" and similar expressions are intended to be among the statements that identify forward-looking statements. Although we believe that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are reasonable, we cannot assure you that such expectations will prove to be correct. These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date of this communication and we undertake no obligation to revise or update any forward-looking statement for any reason, except as required by law. We have identified factors, including, but not limited to, uncertainties regarding availability of repair facilities, current limited knowledge of the condition of the rig, potential undiscovered or unreported personal injuries, availability and performance of repair facilities, actions by our customer, regulatory authorities and other third parties, uncertainties relating to our emergence from bankruptcy, the effects of public health threats, pandemics and epidemics, such as the ongoing outbreak of COVID-19, and the adverse impact thereof on our business, financial condition and results of operations (including but not limited to our growth, operating costs, supply chain, availability of labor, logistical capabilities, customer demand for our services and industry demand generally, our liquidity, the price of our securities and trading markets with respect thereto, our ability to access capital markets, and the global economy and financial markets generally), the effects of actions by, or disputes among OPEC+ members with respect to production levels or other matters related to the price of oil, market conditions, factors affecting the level of activity in the oil and gas industry, supply and demand of drilling rigs, factors affecting the duration of contracts, the actual amount of downtime, factors that reduce applicable dayrates, reset of dayrates under the commercial enabling agreement with our client for rigs operating in Guyana, operating hazards and delays, risks associated with operations outside the US, actions by regulatory authorities, credit rating agencies, customers, joint venture partners, contractors, lenders and other third parties, legislation and regulations affecting drilling operations, compliance with regulatory requirements, violations of anti-corruption laws, shipyard risk and timing, delays in mobilization of rigs, hurricanes and other weather conditions, and the future price of oil and gas, that could cause actual plans or results to differ materially from those included in any forward-looking statements. These factors include those "Risk Factors" referenced or described in the Company's most recent Form 10-K, Form 10-Q's, and other filings with the Commission. We cannot control such risk factors and other uncertainties, and in many cases, we cannot predict the risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results to differ materially from those indicated by the forward-looking statements. You should consider these risks and uncertainties when you are evaluating us.

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SOURCE Noble Corporation
Petrol pumps across the UK are now offering greener E10 petrol following years of lobbying by the farming industry.

The new form of cleaner petrol, which was rolled out from 1 September, is seen as a stepping stone toward delivering greener fuel for the public.

According to the government, the move will cut transport emissions by the equivalent of taking 350,000 cars off the road each year.

Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said: "Every journey matters as we drive forward the green industrial revolution, which is why the rollout of E10 is so important.

"Itll help us cut road greenhouse gas emissions and meet our ambitious net zero targets."

E10 is a type of petrol that contains 10 percent renewable bioethanol, which is made from wheat or sugar beet.

Its rollout will support the increased production of biofuels at two bioethanol plants in the north-east of England.

The move is excepted to provide job opportunities in the local area, with the plants providing around 200 skilled jobs directly.

It will also support the wider local economy, including the agriculture sector that supplies the feed-wheat needed to run the plants.

One of the plants, which is run by Vivergo Fuels Ltd, was forced to cease production in September 2018 due to a difficult trading environment and delays in the implementation of E10.

The NFU said the move to E10 was good news for both the farmers who supplied the bioethanol plants and the overall green agenda.

The union's crops board chairman Matt Culley said: It will play an important role in delivering the green agenda, especially as it may be some years before we are able to make a countrywide shift to fully electric vehicles.

"British growers have the ability to deliver more renewable fuel for the nation, alongside continuing to produce the countrys larder staples.

"We should do all we can to maximise that potential to help drive green growth across the economy.

Farmers have also been urged to check if their vehicles and machinery are E10 compliant following a move to the grade.
The government must agree equivalency conditions on food, welfare and environmental standards as part of a trade deal with New Zealand, industry groups say.

Trade talks between the UK and New Zealand have intensified this week in the hope an agreement could be reached in a matter of days.

According to reports, tariff cuts on New Zealand's agri-imports including dairy, lamb and beef could be included in the trade deal.

It follows heated discussions around the UKs first significant post-Brexit trade deal with Australia, which farmers criticised government for failing to protect their standards.

But the current negotiations with New Zealand are taking place behind closed doors, leaving worries that such issues are being side-lined.

The RSPCA said a lack of transparency about the trade deal talks had set 'alarm bells' about animal welfare protections in the UK.

Chief executive Chris Sherwood said: We have already seen in the UKs first post-Brexit trade deal with Australia that government is willing to sacrifice our hard-won animal welfare standards to get a deal.

"If we do not set a line in the sand that makes any import of food equivalent to our welfare standards as a condition of this deal, we are sending a clear signal to the rest of the world that we are willing to accept cheap imports.

"We need to send a message to the British public and the rest of the world, which is waiting in the wings to trade with us, that we will not sell out our standards or our farmers for a quick deal.

It comes as MPs who sit on the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Select Committee (EFRA) called for 'proper parliamentary scrutiny' on future trade agreements.

The committee highlighted the 'distress and concern' within the farming community following the announcement of the UK-Australia trade deal.

Parliamentarians also urged the government to clarify details of the Trade and Agriculture Commission (TAC), which was set up to scrutinise new free trade agreements.

The TAC's creation had provided the British farming sector with reassurance that the government would engage with farmers' concerns about the potential weakening of the UKs high standards when sealing deals.

But in a recent letter to International Trade Secretary Liz Truss, the MPs said the TAC's recommendations were being 'ignored' and 'left to gather dust'.

EFRA urged the government to respond to the TAC's key recommendations 'without delay', and to appoint a Chair and members that would 'scrutinise' FTAs before the parliamentary summer recess at the latest.

Despite these concerns, Ms Truss said the UK and New Zealand were committed to striking 'a modern, liberalising agreement'.

She said it would forge closer ties between "two island democracies that believe in free and fair trade".

"I am pushing UK interests hard in areas like services, mobility and investment, and want a deal that cuts tariffs on our exports, makes it easier for our service providers to sell into New Zealand, and delivers for consumers here at home.

"We have intensified negotiations and moved closer to an agreement that works for both nations."
A programme aiming to ensure Scottish agriculture becomes a fairer and more inclusive industry for women has been launched.

The Scottish government-funded Be Your Best Self programme encourages more women take on senior roles in agricultural organisations.

The scheme, which is accessible to everyone, also aims to ensure farm succession is not determined by gender.

Participation in the personal development programme commences in October 2021, and applications for 2022 are now live.

The programme follows a successful pilot run in 2019-2020 and will support up to 200 women over the next two years.

NFU Scotland's head of policy Gemma Cooper urged women in Scottish agriculture to consider applying to the scheme.

It is fantastic to see Scottish government further invest in the development of women in agriculture in Scotland," she said.

"From personal experience, this is an excellent programme and one that any woman working in Scottish agriculture should consider.

Investment such as this can only be a positive thing for industry and for organisations such as NFUS as it will help ensure that talented individuals are enabled to progress."

The 2021 course is already full but applications for 2022 are now open.

More details and the application form can be found on the Scottish government's website.
Future regulation of genetic technologies could support the rapid and safe introduction of beneficial new crop varieties, a new report has suggested.

Genetic innovation may create opportunities to transform agri-food systems through nutritionally healthier crop varieties that have greater disease resistance, the Regulatory Horizons Council said.

The expert committee's report, which issued recommendations to government, suggested that genetic changes could help chemical use and greenhouse gas emissions fall.

This in turn would improve climate resilience and contribute to more sustainable agricultural systems, the Council's report explained.

The British Society of Plant Breeders (BSPB), the representative body for the UK plant breeding industry, welcomed the report.

"This report recognises the benefits of genetic technologies and supports the proposals set out in the recent Defra consultation to take simple gene edited crop varieties  which could have occurred in nature or through conventional plant breeding  out of the scope of existing genetically modified organism (GMO) regulation," BSPB CEO, Samantha Brooke said.

"We are now anticipating an announcement from Defra detailing how this research and innovation can progress in the future.

However, alongside a commitment to better regulation, Ms Brooke said that plant breeders had concerns about the hiatus in research funding between early-stage genetic research and its application in commercial breeding programmes.

This gap was first identified 17 years ago in a BBSRC review of crop science and was backed up earlier this year by a UKRI review published by professor Jane Langdale of the University of Oxford," she said.

"It shows that a fragmented research and development pipeline in plant genetics still remains a significant barrier to innovation, and major opportunities to exploit advances in our understanding of plant science are being lost.

The contribution of plant breeding was highlighted earlier this year in a May 2021 study by HFFA Research GmbH which concluded that, since 2000, improved varieties have accounted for two-thirds of the productivity gains in UK arable crops.

Without plant breeding over the past 20 years, the study found that crop yields would be 19% lower, and 1.8 million hectares of additional land would be needed in other parts of the world to meet the UKs food needs.

The study said this would place additional pressure on scarce global resources, causing more than 300 million tonnes of additional greenhouse gas emissions.
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.
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Saira Banu had been admitted to the hospital on August 28 after she complained about feeling breathless. Due to her breathlessness and facing high blood pressure and high sugar, the 77 year old actress was shifted to the Intensive Care Unit.



The actress has been diagnosed with a heart problem and doctors suggest an angiogram procedure. However the doctor attending the actress has spoken to a national daily and informed that Saira Banu ji has refused permission for any medical procedure. According to the doctors statement, the actress has been diagnosed with acute coronary syndrome due to which they have suggested a CAG (coronary angiogram). "Once she gives her consent, doctors can perform an angiography, said the doctor to the daily.





Whats more the doctor even informed that the senior actress is also facing depression as she lost her husband and megastar Dilip Kumar, She doesn't sleep much. She wants to go home, revealed the doctor.







Dilip Kumar and Saira Banu got married in 1966 and stayed together for decades. The actor passed away on July 7th, 2021 at the age of 98. After spending years together and having her life revolved around her husband, Saira Banus condition cannot even be imagined for the void her husband has left behind.





Saira Banu whos still in the ICU, might be discharged soon to a normal room. The actress is admitted at Hinduja Hospital in Mumbai.


Sunny Leone and Daniel Weber letting their hair down in the Maldives. Sunny and Daniel left for Maldives earlier this week with their kids Nisha, Asher and Noah. The actress is surely having a blast on the beach as shes seen posing with the crystal clear beach in the background. In her latest post Sunny surely soars the temperatures as she poses in a monokini. Shes seen in a bright monokini, lying on the beach like a French painting and her caption rightly states  no filter needed here!!



Sunny Leone is not just having a blast at the beach, but shes also making sure to take care of her three kids and her husband whos apparently not well. Daniel Weber shared a lovely click on his social media where hes seen holding Sunny in his arms and updates us that he has been on his bed for the last two days while his dearest wife Sunny takes charge. Daniel even promises that he will make it up to her next time. Sweet!

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Sunny Leone (@sunnyleone)

Sunny Leone recently visited the Bigg Boss OTT house and was seen sharing the stage with host Karan Johar. On the show she agreed shes a hands-on-mommy and has her husband Daniels support, and jokingly added that hes usually in his chaddis at times. Sunny and her wicked sense of humour. The actress will next be seen in a multilingual film titled Shero.
HONG KONG, Sept 2, 2021 - (ACN Newswire) - The office of the future must be an inspiring physical space that facilitates communication, cooperation and collaboration in order to encourage employees to come into the office, according to the latest case study by The Executive Centre ("TEC"), the leading premium flexible workspace.Modern technology and globalised communication systems have allowed us to become a more agile and mobile workforce, and these trends have accelerated with the COVID-19 pandemic. The workforce culture today is increasingly championing flexible working practices as the Future of Work, leading to a shift for multinational corporates towards adopting a flexible work culture through an extensive review and analysis of their portfolio and employee needs.The case study reviews the learnings and provides a roadmap for other organisations that realise the value of flexibility but find it challenging to create an architecture to empower change.One of the key learnings is that for companies to successfully transition towards flexible working practices, they need to understand their business requirements and priorities first, as there is no one-size-fits-all solution. They must also interview and collaborate with their employees extensively, conduct research to make informed decisions, seek external consultations from multiple industry partners, and understand where their operations need to be geographically and how the occupants will use that space. While the company approach must be tailored, there were three factors that all companies should consider in their workplace strategy: Physical, Digital and Social.-- Physical transformation: As people will be coming into the workplace to perform activities that they cannot do at home, office design will become one that facilitates communication, cooperation and collaboration.-- Digital transformation: With an increasing demand to work flexibly and remotely, technology and digitalisation of workflows will play a pivotal role in enabling day to day productivity.-- Social transformation: As the office will become a place where employees choose to work from, greater incentives will be needed to attract people into the office.For its Greater Bay Area location, one of TEC's clients realised it required private office spaces and meeting rooms in a CBD location which would allow for multiple business units to operate, and a flexibility to scale up or down as their business needs changed. The Executive Centre's flexible workspace solution gave them the ability to mitigate their risks and reduce costs while remaining in the heart of Guangzhou's central business district."As a solution, flexible workspaces provide ready to use, fully furnished and serviced workspaces for the headcount that's needed at hand. This ability to scale up or down or move locations at relatively short notice is a highly intelligent way for companies to address their workspace requirements," said Paul Salnikow, Founder & CEO of The Executive Centre.See the full case study from the below link for more insights and best practices The Executive Centre's Future of Work collaboration.https://business-reporter.co.uk/2021/08/23/why-the-future-of-work/.About The Executive CentreThe Executive Centre (TEC) opened its doors in Hong Kong in 1994 and today boasts over 150+ centres in 32 cities and 14 markets. It is the third largest serviced office business in Asia with annual turnover in excess of US$237 million.The Executive Centre caters to ambitious professionals and industry leaders looking for more than just an office space - they are looking for a place for their organisation to thrive. TEC has cultivated an environment designed for success with a global network spanning Greater China, Southeast Asia, North Asia, India, Sri Lanka, the Middle East, and Australia, with sights to go further and grow faster. Each Executive Centre offers a prestigious address with the advanced infrastructure to pre-empt, meet, and exceed the needs of its Members. Walking with Members through every milestone and achievement, The Executive Centre empowers ambitious professionals and organisations to succeed.Privately owned and headquartered in Hong Kong, TEC provides first class Private and Shared Workspaces, Business Concierge Services, and Meeting & Conference facilities to suit any business' needs.For more information please visit www.executivecentre.comPress EnquiriesFinsbury Glover HeringSheena Shah / Crystal ChowSheena.Shah@fgh.com / +852 3166 9855Crystal.Chow@fgh.com / +852 3166 9838Source: The Executive CentreCopyright 2021 ACN Newswire . All rights reserved.
Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - September 2, 2021) - GoviEx Uranium Inc. (TSXV: GXU) (OTCQB: GVXXF) ("GoviEx" or "Company") announces that it has appointed Isabel Vilela as Head of Investor Relations and Corporate Communications, effective immediately.

Ms. Vilela brings with her over ten years of experience in investor relations, having previously worked as head of Investor Relations for Hochschild Mining plc and Cookson Group plc, as well as a wealth of experience in ESG, corporate communications and public relations.

Ms. Vilela will build on GoviEx's current Investor Relations program to grow and diversify the Company's shareholder base as well as to enhance its communications with shareholders and stakeholders, and will be actively engaged in the ongoing development of GoviEx's ESG management programs. Isabel will work closely with the management team to further develop the company's internal and external communications with a focus on strategy, branding, social media presence and investor communications.

Ms. Vilela will report to Daniel Major, CEO, and will be based in the UK. In conjunction with her appointment and pursuant to the Company's stock option plan, Ms. Vilela is eligible to be granted a total of 500,000 stock options after completion of a standard three month probationary period. The options will be priced once granted and will be subject to vesting provisions.

Commenting on the appointment, Daniel Major, CEO, said: "We are extremely pleased to welcome Isabel to the GoviEx Team. Her experience and insights make her ideally suited to support the continued development of our investor relations program and goals. As we advance our uranium projects in a strengthening uranium market, it is a great time to bolster our investor relations program and ensure best practice to drive shareholder value."

Ms. Vilela added, "I'm delighted to be joining GoviEx at this unique and exciting time. I look forward to assisting GoviEx to communicate the Company's strategic initiatives and performance drivers to the financial community and its key stakeholders."

Ms. Vilela has no direct or indirect interest in GoviEx other than as an employee of the Company.

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

About GoviEx Uranium

GoviEx is a mineral resource company focused on the exploration and development of uranium properties in Africa. GoviEx's principal objective is to become a significant uranium producer through the continued exploration and development of its flagship mine-permitted Madaouela Project in Niger, its mine-permitted Mutanga Project in Zambia, and its other uranium properties elsewhere in Africa.

Information Contacts

Isabel Vilela

Head of Investor Relations and Corporate Communications

Tel: +1-604-681-5529

info@goviex.com

www.goviex.com

Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

This news release may contain forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable securities laws. All information and statements other than statements of current or historical facts contained in this news release are forward-looking information.

Forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties concerning the specific factors disclosed here and elsewhere in GoviEx's periodic filings with Canadian securities regulators. When used in this news release, words such as "will", "could", "plan", "estimate", "expect", "intend", "may", "potential", "should," and similar expressions, are forward- looking statements. Information provided in this document is necessarily summarized and may not contain all available material information.

Forward-looking statements include those in relation to, (i) that Ms. Vilela will build on GoviEx's current Investor Relations program to grow and diversify the Company's shareholder base as well as to enhance its communications with shareholders and stakeholders.

Although the Company believes the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, it can give no assurances that its expectations will be achieved. Such assumptions, which may prove incorrect, include the following: (i) that the current uranium upcycle will continue and expand; (ii) that the integration of nuclear power into power grids world-wide will continue as a clean energy alternative and increase as dirty carbon baseload is taken off-line; and (iii) that the price of uranium will remain sufficiently high and the costs of advancing the Company's mining projects will remain sufficiently low so as to permit GoviEx to implement its business plans in a profitable manner.

Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations include (i) a regression in the uranium market price; (ii) inability or unwillingness to include or increase nuclear power generation by major markets; (iii) potential delays due to COVID-19 restrictions; (iv) the failure of the Company's projects, for technical, logistical, labour-relations, or other reasons; (v) a decrease in the price of uranium below what is necessary to sustain the Company's operations; (vi) an increase in the Company's operating costs above what is necessary to sustain its operations; (vii) accidents, labour disputes, or the materialization of similar risks; (viii) a deterioration in capital market conditions that prevents the Company from raising the funds it requires on a timely basis; and (ix) generally, the Company's inability to develop and implement a successful business plan for any reason.

In addition, the factors described or referred to in the section entitled "Risks Factors" in the MD&A for the year ended December 31, 2020, of GoviEx, which is available on the SEDAR website at www.sedar.com, should be reviewed in conjunction with the information found in this news release.

Although GoviEx has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results, performance, or achievements to differ materially from those contained in the forward- looking statements, there can be other factors that cause results, performance, or achievements not to be as anticipated, estimated, or intended. There can be no assurance that such information will prove to be accurate or that management's expectations or estimates of future developments, circumstances, or results will materialize. As a result of these risks and uncertainties, no assurance can be given that any events anticipated by the forward-looking information in this news release will transpire or occur, or, if any of them do so, what benefits that GoviEx will derive therefrom. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements in this news release are made as of the date of this news release, and GoviEx disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise such information, except as required by applicable law.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/95493






Paulette Liu

BANGKOK, Sept 3, 2021 - (ACN Newswire) - The Asia-Pacific Housing Forum's Innovation Awards recognize and celebrate innovators and disruptors in the affordable housing sector. Startup and scaleup companies, policymakers and advocates, architects and engineers are invited to submit sustainable and practical solutions for affordable housing."The Asia-Pacific region faces complex housing challenges, compounded by rapid urbanization, natural and human-made disasters, the negative effects of climate change, and persistent poverty and inequality," said Luis Noda, Asia-Pacific vice president of Habitat for Humanity. "We need everyone working together and every possible creative solution that is locally adapted to address the housing deficit.""The recognition allowed us to expand our circle of influence, created more awareness about our advocacy in the community and open more opportunities to help others," said Paulette Liu, president of SKILLS and a 2019 Innovation Awards winner.The Innovation Awards (visit aphousingforum.org/innovation-awards) underscores the importance of strategic collaboration, specifically by multiple sector partnerships that foster innovations. The Awards are organized by Habitat for Humanity in collaboration with the Hilti Foundation, Whirlpool and the European Union-funded SWITCH-Asia SCP Facility.There are three award categories: ShelterTech, Public Policies, and Inspirational Practices. The ShelterTech category seeks technology innovations (product & services) led by the private sector; while the Policies category promotes innovative public policies across all government levels to help reduce the housing deficit while taking into consideration specific needs of minorities, vulnerable and marginalized populations. The third category recognizes practices from public or public-private partnerships that contribute to improved communities and settlements and increased access to affordable housing for the most disadvantaged segments of society.A special Sustainability Award, sponsored by the SWITCH-Asia SCP Facility, will be given to the innovator who will score highest in showcasing scalable solutions for sustainable housing, regardless of the category. The EU and its SWITCH-Asia Programme recognize the critical importance of the housing sector to sustainable consumption and production, and promote sustainable housing and buildings as part of their support for green, circular economies in its 24 target countries in Asia."For Asian countries to achieve more sustainable consumption and production in the housing and building sector, it is vital that we heed diverse experiences and adapt these to local realities. The SCP Award will showcase one solution that is particularly inspiring, and we are looking forward to supporting its winner in connecting with EU SWITCH-Asia stakeholders," said Zaida Fadeeva, Team Leader of the SCP Facility.The top 12 finalists will get to present their ideas in front of a jury panel and the public during the virtual Innovation Awards Grand Premiere on December 1. Winners will be announced on December 8, 2021 during the Asia-Pacific Housing Forum. Each winner will receive a trophy and a US$ 5,000 cash prize. Deadline for submission is September 12, 2021.The Forum, with the theme "Building forward better for inclusive housing," includes program tracks on resilient cities and communities, innovative housing solutions and technologies, sustainability in the housing sector, and financing affordable housing. It includes a training course on land tenure and markets and a youth congress that will highlight the need for decent, affordable housing and the ways in which the youth can contribute to addressing the housing challenge.Register for complimentary access to the fully virtual Asia-Pacific Housing Forum at aphousingforum.org.About Habitat for HumanityDriven by the vision that everyone needs a decent place to live, Habitat for Humanity began in 1976 as a grassroots effort and has since grown to become a leading global nonprofit working in more than 70 countries. In the Asia Pacific region since 1983, Habitat for Humanity has supported millions of people to build or improve a place they can call home. Through financial support, volunteering or adding a voice to support affordable housing, everyone can help families achieve the strength, stability and self-reliance they need to build better lives for themselves. To learn more, donate or volunteer, visit habitat.org/asiapacificAbout EU SWITCH-Asia ProgrammeLaunched in 2007, the SWITCH-Asia programme is the largest European Union-funded programme promoting Sustainable Consumption and Production (SCP) supporting 24 countries in Asia and Central Asia. The programme has funded around 130 projects, supporting over 500 Asian and European non-for-profit partners, about 100 private sector associations and 80.000 Asian MSMEs. The SCP Facility, one of SWITCH-Asia Components, aims at strengthening the implementation of SCP policies at the national level, facilitating the coordination of all components of the programme through information sharing. In addition, it carries out analyses on the results of the pilot projects and supports dialogue with stakeholders.The EU and its SWITCH-Asia programme have recognised the critical importance of the housing sector to sustainable consumption and production or SCP, and the construction, housing and buildings cluster is a major pillar of EU policy and SWITCH-Asia activities. It is highlighted as part of the green transition in the flagship EU Green Deal (2019) and the Circular Economy Action Plan (2020). To stimulate further green innovations, the EU has also put forward legislation including its Construction Products Regulation. As the housing and building stock in Europe is not expected to grow as dynamically as in Asia, one of the focus areas for the EU is the renovation of existing buildings for increased energy efficiency, through its "Renovation Wave" strategy (2020), which prioritises social housing. In the SWITCH-Asia programme, several national assignments focus on implementing SCP principles in the buildings sector, including in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Kyrgyzstan.Media contact:Maetavarin Maneekulpan+66-2260-5820mae@tqpr.comSource: Habitat for Humanity InternationalCopyright 2021 ACN Newswire . All rights reserved.
BEIJING (dpa-AFX) - The services sector in China dropped into contraction territory in August, the latest survey from Caixin revealed on Friday with a services PMI score of 46.7. That's down sharply from 54.9 in July and it falls beneath the boom-or-bust line of 50 that separates expansion from contraction. Chinese services companies signaled a renewed fall in business activity during August, as rising COVID-19 case numbers at home and abroad impacted operations and demand. Notably, it was the first time that output and new work had fallen since April 2020. At the same time, companies reported a slight reduction in workforce numbers, which contributed to a sustained rise in outstanding business. Prices data meanwhile highlighted a softer rise in input costs, while prices charged fell slightly due to efforts to secure new business. In line with the trend for business activity, total new orders received by Chinese services companies fell midway through the third quarter. Thought only slight, it marked the first fall in sales for 16 months. Survey respondents often mentioned that the pandemic had dampened customer demand. New export business was meanwhile broadly unchanged for the second month running. The survey also showed that the composite index fell to 47.2 in August from 53.1 in July. 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.
Almere, The Netherlands

September 3, 2021

ASM International N.V. (Euronext Amsterdam: ASM) today announces that it will host its Investor Day on 28 September, 2021, in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.



The event will be held at the Renaissance Koepelkerk in Amsterdam on 28 September, 2021, starting at 2:00 pm CET. Due to COVID related restrictions and safety precautions the number of seats will be limited. Registration is mandatory; institutional investors and analysts interested in attending the event in person are requested to contact us at: investor.day@asm.com .

At the Investor Day ASM's management will provide an update on the company's strategy, long-term growth opportunities and how we create value through innovation. Other topics include an in-depth review of the company's products and markets, its financial performance as well as new sustainability initiatives. Presenters will include Benjamin Loh, CEO, Paul Verhagen, CFO, and other members of ASM's senior management team. A more detailed agenda will be available closer to the event on our company's website and at: https://investorday.asm.com .

The presentations and Q&A can also be followed through a live webcast after pre-registering at: https://investorday.asm.com . The webcast will start at 2:00 pm CET and conclude at approximately 5:15 pm CET. Institutional investors and analysts who are unable to attend our event in person can participate in the Q&A through a conference call, in addition to following the event through the webcast. For further information about this conference call please contact us at: investor.day@asm.com .



About ASM International

ASM International NV, headquartered in Almere, the Netherlands, its subsidiaries and participations design and manufacture equipment and materials used to produce semiconductor devices. ASM International, its subsidiaries and participations provide production solutions for wafer processing (Front-end segment) as well as for assembly & packaging and surface mount technology (Back-end segment) through facilities in the United States, Europe, Japan and Asia. ASM International's common stock trades on the Euronext Amsterdam Stock Exchange (symbol ASM). For more information, visit ASMI's website at www.asm.com .

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements: All matters discussed in this press release, except for any historical data, are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. These include, but are not limited to, economic conditions and trends in the semiconductor industry generally and the timing of the industry cycles specifically, currency fluctuations, corporate transactions, financing and liquidity matters, the success of restructurings, the timing of significant orders, market acceptance of new products, competitive factors, litigation involving intellectual property, shareholders or other issues, commercial and economic disruption due to natural disasters, terrorist activity, armed conflict or political instability, changes in import/export regulations, epidemics and other risks indicated in the Company's reports and financial statements. The Company assumes no obligation nor intends to update or revise any forward-looking statements to reflect future developments or circumstances.

CONTACT

Investor and media contact:

Victor Bareno

T: +31 88 100 8500

E: victor.bareno@asm.com





Attachment
Winner generously offers to split prize with competitor

LONDON, Sept. 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- ACORD, the global standards-setting body for the insurance industry, today announced the results of its 2021 ACORD InsurTech Innovation Challenge London. Winner Intelligent AI provides a 360-degree view of risk, with over 300 datasets (including AI, IoT, Satellite, NatCat and Open Data) to create a Digital Twin of Risk for any global property portfolio or assets.

Since 2015, the ACORD InsurTech Innovation Challenge (AIIC) has brought together insurance innovators and start-ups with the potential to change the industry for the better. The winners of this year's events in London (September 2) and New York (September 14) are awarded an array of prizes, promotional tools and industry exposure opportunities.

Intelligent AI received a cash prize of $10,000 and will be featured in an ACORD-promoted webinar to present their innovation. In an unprecedented gesture, Anthony Peake of Intelligent AI offered to split the cash prize with Nigeria-based runner-up SOSO Care.

"I'd like to thank ACORD and the AIIC judges for this great opportunity. We have had a fantastic first year at Intelligent AI and are excited for the future. We think real-time data and digital twins are going to be an industry game-changer for both insurers and commercial customers," shared Anthony Peake, CEO, Intelligent AI. "I also would like to recognize my fellow participants and the runners-up in the AIIC London competition. I was particularly moved by the presentation from Nonso Opurum and his work to bring affordable healthcare to Africa, and am pleased to extend half the cash prize to SOSO Care, as it is such a good cause."

"On behalf of ACORD, I want to thank our amazing panel of judges, our sponsors, and all ten companies who shared their innovations with us," said Chris Newman, Managing Director - Global, ACORD. "The ACORD InsurTech Innovation Challenge has been supporting the future of the industry since 2015, and we are excited to continue to do so with this year's winner. Intelligent AI offers an exceptionally relevant use case for the industry right now. Their presentation demonstrated the art of the possible in what can be done with data in the insurance commercial lines space."

"All ten start-ups who shared their innovations with us offered a unique lens and vision for the future of the insurance industry," said Judge Chair Sabine VanderLinden, CEO and Managing Partner, Alchemy Crew. "From companies focused on open banking for insurance to microinsurance providers, all looked at insurance in new ways. We were very impressed by their ingenuity and their commitment to shaping the future of the industry."

The runners-up were:

SOSO Care , a Nigeria -based, low-cost health InsurTech that aims to enable millions of people to access care across over 1,000 hospitals nationwide using cash or recyclables as premium.

, a -based, low-cost health InsurTech that aims to enable millions of people to access care across over 1,000 hospitals nationwide using cash or recyclables as premium. Previsco, an organisation that offers technology to provide real time, actionable flood forecasts and warnings at an individual property level.

Other finalists included:

Caura , a payment platform for cars to manage tolls, city charges, MOTs, vehicle tax and insurance.

, a payment platform for cars to manage tolls, city charges, MOTs, vehicle tax and insurance. distriBind Ltd. , which provides automated data exchange for any insurance transaction.

, which provides automated data exchange for any insurance transaction. Ignatica , a cloud-based platform to create, test and launch end2end digital insurance products and policies in real-time and run products at less than half the operating costs of legacy systems.

, a cloud-based platform to create, test and launch end2end digital insurance products and policies in real-time and run products at less than half the operating costs of legacy systems. Jove Insurance , an InsurTech platform that provides flexible and embedded insurances for the self-employed and SMEs.

, an InsurTech platform that provides flexible and embedded insurances for the self-employed and SMEs. OKO , which provides insurance to farmers in emerging countries/markets and delivers instant claims settlement.

, which provides insurance to farmers in emerging countries/markets and delivers instant claims settlement. Sustema , which analyses corporate behavior using publicly available data to improve the underwriting performance of commercial insurers.

, which analyses corporate behavior using publicly available data to improve the underwriting performance of commercial insurers. Wenalyze, a data analytics platform that leverages open data sources to enable commercial insurers to better assess the risks of their SME clients, automate their underwriting process and reduce loss ratios.

Judges for this year's AIIC included:

Sabine VanderLinden (Judge Chair), CEO and Managing Partner, Alchemy Crew

(Judge Chair), CEO and Managing Partner, Alchemy Crew Louise Day , Director of Operations, IUA

, Director of Operations, IUA Matthew Grant , Co-Owner and Partner, InsTech London

, Co-Owner and Partner, InsTech London Nicole Kellenberger , Global System & eAdmin Lead, Swiss Re

, Global System & eAdmin Lead, Swiss Re James Livett , Associate Director, LIIBA

, Associate Director, LIIBA Aidan O'Neill , CEO, DOCOsoft

, CEO, DOCOsoft Helene Stanway, Head of Market Engagement and Adoption for Data, Future at Lloyd's

Intelligent AI, along with both runners-up SOSO Care and Previsco, will also have the opportunity to present their pitch at a VIP Showcase at a 2021 ACORD virtual conference. To learn more about ACORD InsurTech Innovation Challenge, visit http://www.acordchallenge.org/.

About ACORD

ACORD (Association for Cooperative Operations Research and Development) is the global standards-setting body for the insurance and related financial services industries. ACORD facilitates fast, accurate data exchange and efficient workflows through the development of electronic standards, standardized forms, and tools to support their use. ACORD engages thousands of insurance and reinsurance companies, agents and brokers, software providers, financial services organizations and industry associations in more than 100 countries. ACORD maintains offices in New York and London. Learn more at www.acord.org/.

CONTACT: Beth Jarecki

beth@lpendragonus.com

Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/631946/ACORD_Logo.jpg
Oscillate Plc - Interim Results For The Six Months Ended 31 May 2021

3 September 2021

Oscillate PLC (Formerly known as DiscovOre PLC)

("Oscillate"or the "Company")

Interim Results For The Six Months Ended 31 May 2021

Burns Singh Tennent-Bhohi, Chairman's Statement

I am pleased to present the interim results for Oscillate plc (AQSE: MUSH) for the period ending 31 May 2021. Of most significance, and a defining moment for the Company during the period, was the completion of a 3,500,000 brokered placing led by the Company's broker, Peterhouse Capital, and serial entrepreneur Chris Akers. In conjunction with this financing, the Company announced its intention to adopt a broader investment policy to include medical psychedelics, and the Board welcomed a new officer in Narisha Ragoonanthun, as Jeremy Ross resigned from the Board of Directors.

In the months to follow, the Company has been focusing heavily on creating and developing a premier alternative health investment issuer that can offer investors a unique blend of optionality.

Importantly, as the Company enters this emerging category of investment, a great degree of attention has been placed on ensuring that potential investment opportunities offer the ability to generate material value, but also credible alignment, as the Company builds important foundations that can position Oscillate to build a broad audience in a market with limited access in direct market exposure.

In July 2021, Oscillate completed its legal opinion, thereby enabling it to lawfully invest in the medical psychedelics industry and positioned as one of the first listed investment issuers within U.K. capital markets permitted to invest in opportunities consistent with the legal opinion.

Investment Positions & Commercial Activity Post 31 May 2021:

IGRAINE PLC (AQSE: KING)

28 June 2021

No. of Shares Held: 21,312,460

As a % of the Enlarged: 24.64%

About Igraine:

Chairman, Professor Sir Christopher Evans OBE

Professor Sir Christopher Evans is a renowned scientist and highly successful entrepreneur with numerous prestigious awards and medals for his work over the last 30 years during which time he has built more than 50 medical companies from start-up and floated 20 new medical businesses on stock markets in six different countries.

He has created 11 successful academic spin-outs and companies worth over $2.4 billion, and has raised $2.6 billion from disposals. He directed the raising of approximately $450 million for Merlin Biosciences Funds and $2.6 billion from disposals, including the sale of BioVex Group, Inc. to Amgen Inc. and Piramed Limited to Roche Group. Through Merlin Ventures Limited he co-founded and advised Biotech Growth Trust plc. Arakis Limited, one of the companies developed by Chris Evans, was sold to Sosei Co. Ltd for $187 million. Chris Evans has founded notable companies such as Chiroscience, Celsis, ReNeuron, Vectura, Biovex and Merlin Biosciences Ltd. Appointed an OBE in 1995 for services to medical bioscience, he was knighted in 2001 for services to bioscience and enterprise. Latterly he was founder of Arix Bioscience plc (LSE: ARX), of the oncology specialist Ellipses Pharma Limited, and of Excalibur Healthcare Services Ltd.

The Business:

Igraine targets innovative technologies and discoveries using an extensive network of scientific, industry, and academic contacts, including eminent scientists and key opinion leaders. Its network also enables it to pursue relationships with pharmaceutical companies which are both a potential source of innovative opportunities and potential acquirers.

The team has developed relationships over many years with leading universities and other academic and research institutions globally and maintains close working relationships with premier professional advisers and fund managers.

Igraine works with institutional and individual investment partners and has a formal co-investment agreement with Excalibur Healthcare Services Ltd.

Igraine has invested in Excalibur Medicines Ltd ("EML"), a subsidiary of Excalibur Healthcare Services Ltd. EML has secured exclusive rights to and owns the COVID-19 patents on a drug, AZD1656, which is being developed as a potential therapeutic for diabetics suffering from COVID-19.

As there are very few new therapeutics in development for COVID-19 and associated virally transmitted diseases (most research is in combining existing treatments), this has the potential to be highly attractive to big pharma and biotech buyers. Further, if the trials are successful, it is likely the drug will be effective for the general population in COVID -19 and in other respiratory diseases.

Developments Intended by the Company's Financial Year-End:

Excalibur Medicines Limited, a subsidiary of Excalibur Healthcare Services Ltd., announced that the clinical team will report on the ARCADIA trial in September.

Excalibur Medicines Ltd ("EML") has secured exclusive rights to and owns the patents on a drug, AZD1656, which is being developed as a potential therapeutic for people with diabetes suffering from COVID-19. The ARCADIA trial which took place across 31 sites was completed in July this year.

The research project was arranged and structured by Professor Sir Chris Evans, Chairman and CEO of Excalibur Healthcare Services, through its subsidiary, Excalibur Medicines Ltd. Sir Chris worked closely with Professor John Martin and his team at St George Street, a UK-based biomedical research charity, which secured the initial project and permission to run the trial from AstraZeneca.



The aim of the ARCADIA trial is to determine whether AZD1656 improves clinical outcomes in diabetic patients hospitalised with COVID-19. The World Health Organisation's (WHO) 8-point Ordinal Scale for Clinical Improvement will be used as the standard methodology for measuring patient outcomes. As at date of publication, 156 patients have been recruited and have completed treatment. The data is now being assessed and it is the intention of EML to seek a sale of the drug, a license or partnership deal as soon as possible after the data is published.

Igraine plc secured a 2% Equity Interest in Excalibur Medicines Ltd ("EML"), consistent with the terms of the co-investment agreement entered with Excalibur Healthcare Services.

SIRGARTAN THERAPEUTICS:

13 July 2021

Period of Exclusivity (Ongoing)

About Sirgartan:

Sirgartan is developing a novel glutamatergic therapy that could make a significant difference in the treatment of obsessive-compulsive disorder ("OCD"), a debilitating and common mental illness, and is then looking to augment it with a psychoactive compound as a co-therapy.

Sirgartan is an early-stage, pre-revenue therapeutics company aiming to transform the treatment landscape for patients with OCD and other related disorders through the development of an innovative glutamatergic therapy. The company was established in 2020 with the mission of improving treatment options for OCD, a field which has historically been underfunded and seen limited innovation.

Sirgartan has identified an obtainable market opportunity of >300M for the treatment of OCD patients in the EU5 countries of France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the UK. Following penetration of key EU5 markets, it plans to launch the product in other geographies for OCD and pursue steps for label expansion to other indications.

Developments Intended by Company's Financial Year-End:

Conclude period of exclusivity with Sirgartan. An update on Sirgartan will be made by the Company in the near term as to current developments under the existing period of exclusivity.

PSYCH CAPITAL LIMITED

20 August 2021

No of Shares Held: 30,000,000

As a % of the Enlarged: 10.4%

About Psych Capital:

Psych Capital was created by a group of professionals who are focused on disruptive healthcare solutions that are rapidly becoming accepted in developed communities, which includes the recent rush to legalise the use of medicinal cannabis as the world begins to absorb and educate the true benefits of alternative drug application and interpretation.

Psych Capital is focused on leveraging its experienced team that were early innovators in the medicinal & recreational cannabis industry, and have developed a global network to replicate their success in the burgeoning medical psychedelic sector.

The company is focused on identifying, funding, and building future British and European leaders across psychedelic science and healthcare.

To date, Psych Capital has successfully advanced its business plan via, inter-alia:

The creation of a global audience through its PSYCH data and content platform that covers 80 countries, worldwide, reaching over 30,000 users ranging from investors to journalists and regulators to scientists.

The development of an Investor Network that has engaged 7,000 qualified investors, making Psych Capital one of the world's largest psychedelic investor databases - and the largest of European and Asian Investors.

The drafting and publication of 'Psychedelics as Medicine Report', which has been accessed and read by over 60,000 people since its initial release in mid 2020 - (download report here)

Established a number of corporate partnerships and investment opportunities.

Developments Intended By Company's Financial Year-End:

Psych Capital is currently focused on seeking admission to a recognised investment exchange in the U.K. via an Initial Public Offering ("IPO") over the coming months.

OSCILLATE PLC - OTCQB LISTING

The Company has submitted all exchange-related documentation and continues to work with its sponsor/counsel in seeking its inter-listing on the OTCQB market, thereby allowing direct market access in its securities to the North American Market.

CLOSING STATEMENT

In what continues to be a highly active period for the Company, I am delighted to see the strong support of both existing and new shareholders. It is rare for companies in the public market arena to have such a high concentration of register support, and for that the Board is excited and humbled.

Having established a strong pool of assets that provide foundational depth for the Company, Oscillate will be continuing its commercial discussions with businesses with active operations in the medical psychedelics space that are seeking expansion and growth capital to further develop existing operations.

My co-directors and I consider this to be a critical theme as we look to provide our shareholders and interested investors with optionality spread across critical components within the medical psychedelics industry, provided they are consistent with the Company's legal opinion. We view the future outlook for the Company with real optimism.

Burns Singh Tennent-Bhohi

Chairman, Oscillate plc

The Directors of the Company accept responsibility for the content of this announcement.

Enquiries:

Company

Oscillate PLC

Burns Singh Tennent-Bhohi/ Conrad Windham

Telephone: 020 3778 1106

Corporate Advisor

Peterhouse Capital Limited

Guy Miller & Mark Anwyl

Telephone: 020 7220 9796

Income Statement for the 6 months ended 31 May 2021

31 May 2021

Unaudited

30 November 2021

Audited

31 May 2020

Unaudited    Administrative expenses (272,252) (121,421) (54,890) Investment gains/ (losses) 5,086 222,057 - Fair value movement (23,525) - - Other Income - 73 72 Profit/(loss) before taxation (290,692) 100,709 (54,818) Taxation - - - Profit/(Loss) for the period (290,692) 100,709 (54,818) Basic earnings per share (0.004) 0.003 (0.002) Diluted earnings per share (0.003) 0.002 (0.002)

Balance Sheet as at 31 May and 30 November

31 May 31 May 30 November 2021 2020 2020 Unaudited Unaudited Audited Assets    Non-current assets Investments 89,950 38,574 89,950 Current assets Trade and other receivables 31,898 13,810 3,756 Investments 146,103 - 199,687 Cash and cash equivalents 3,201,385 55,028 23,288 3,379,386 68,838 226,731 Creditors: amounts falling due within one year (20,766) (53,678) (77,420)

Net current assets

3,358,620 107,412 149,311

Total Assets less current liabilities 3,448,570 53,734 239,261 Capital and reserves Called up share capital 1,228,309 1,210,810 1,210,810 Share premium account 4,935,050 1,150,383 1,452,549 Other reserves 29,753 239,369 29,753 Profit and loss reserve (2,744,542) (2,546,828) (2,453,581) Total equity 3,448,570 53,734 239,261

Statement of Changes in Equity as at 31 May and 30 November
- The fuel company Preem is investing heavily in rapid charging and has signed an agreement with Recharge to install hundreds of rapid chargers at Preem's stations throughout the country.

STOCKHOLM, Sept. 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Preem is now developing its stations together with the leading charging operator Recharge. Preem's stations will initially be equipped with four to eight charging points that will have an output of 150 kW up to 300 kW, which enables considerably faster charging.

"This is part of Preem's renewable transition and our strategy to offer more environmentally efficient forms of energy at our stations. By offering up to eight charging stations at our stations, we can meet the future growing demand for vehicle charging," says Patrik Johansson, Head of Station Operations at Preem.



The roll-out will take place first along major highways and at Preem's manned stations. The ambition is to annually equip 15-25 stations with rapid chargers and for Preem to take the position as a leading energy supplier along our roads for both light and heavy traffic.



"Preem has long been a strategic partner and we are very pleased that we are now taking our collaboration to the next level. Recharge's goal is for charging to be simple and easily accessible. With leading charging solutions in accessible locations with a good level of service, we improve everyday life for electric vehicle drivers," says Maria Brant, head of Recharge Sweden.



The work of installing the charging stations will begin as soon as possible. The investment includes both charging for cars at Preem's manned stations and for trucks at Preem's Saifa facilities.



Preem installed its first charging stations in 2009. The collaboration with Recharge began in 2013, and in 2014, the first joint charging stations were built along strategic routes in Sweden.



For more information, please contact:

Preem Press Office

press@preem.se

+46 (0)70-450 10 01



This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com



https://news.cision.com/preem-ab/r/preem-invests-heavily-in-rapid-charging,c3409527



The following files are available for download:



https://news.cision.com/preem-ab/i/laddstation-recharge,c2950579

Laddstation Recharge
LONDON (dpa-AFX) - The EU and AstraZeneca have reached an agreement which guarantees the delivery of the remaining 200 million COVID-19 vaccine doses by AstraZeneca (AZN.L, AZN) to the EU. Under the settlement agreement, AstraZeneca will deliver 135 million additional doses by the end of 2021 and the remaining doses by the end of March 2022. The agreement will end the pending litigation before the Brussels Court. Commissioner for Health and Food Safety Stella Kyriakides said: 'Today's settlement agreement guarantees the delivery of the remaining 200 million COVID-19 vaccine doses by AstraZeneca to the EU.' 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.
Hytera, a global leading provider of Professional Mobile Radio (PMR) solutions, has signed a new contract worth USD 30 million to provide the entire integrated communication solutions with systems, equipment, terminals and services for Shenzhen Metro Line 12.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210903005134/en/

Hytera Signed USD 30 Million Contract with Shenzhen Metro Line 12 To Provide Integrated Communication Solutions (Photo: Business Wire)

In the last few years, Hytera has supported five metro lines (Line 6, 7, 9, 10 and 11) in Shenzhen with its TETRA and PDT on-board systems plus a host of value-added services of secure radio communications to improve dispatching and operation efficiency.

Lines 7, 9, and 11 cover 107 kilometers with 68 stations, which each plays an important role in the public transportation of Shenzhen's urban districts. Line 11, in particular, serves as both the airport line and the Guangzhou-Shenzhen intercity rail line. Hytera provides a complete 800M TETRA digital trunking solution including DIB R5 base stations, on-board mobile radios and handheld radios, as well as a 400M PDT station management system, which enables effective communication, dispatching and voice recording across the control center, train drivers, and station operation staff.

As the first metro lines with full coverage of 5G signals in China, Lines 6 and 10 cover a length of 78.7 kilometers with 47 stations, including the busiest metro interchange stations in Shenzhen. The objective is to cover as wide an area as possible and also provide easy connections to other metro lines, railway stations and surrounding cities. Hytera applied both 800M TETRA solution and 400M PDT solution to provide reliable voice and data communication across control centers, station operators, train drivers and maintenance personnel, allowing individual and group voice calls with on-board terminals and handheld radios.

These solutions have improved both the management for the metro system operators as well as the services offered to the public.

At present, Hytera's communication solutions for transportation have served more than 10 cities in China. As one of the local high-tech enterprises in Shenzhen, Hytera will make greater effort to contribute to Shenzhen's construction of metros, railways, transportation, airports and other city infrastructures.

For more information about Hytera transportation solutions, please visit: https://bit.ly/2VcZ2ar

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210903005134/en/

Contacts:

Lingran Tao

Lingran.Tao@hytera.com
BRUSSELS/FRANKFURT/PARIS (dpa-AFX) - Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. (SMI, SIUIF.PK) said the company and Lin-Gang FTZ Administration plan to establish a joint venture company focusing on the production of integrated circuit foundry and technology services on process nodes for 28 nanometer and above. SMIC will be responsible for the operation and management of the Joint Venture. It will be based in the Shanghai Lin-Gang Pilot Free Trade Zone. SMIC said its investment will be approximately $8.87 billion. The registered capital of the Joint Venture company will be $5.5 billion, of which SMIC proposes to contribute no less than 51% and an investment entity designated by Shanghai Municipal People's Government will contribute no more than 25%. The parties will jointly seek for third-party investors. Lin-Gang FTZ Administration is a directly dispatched agency of the Shanghai Municipal People's Government. 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.
JONA (dpa-AFX) - Swiss building material company Holcim AG (HCMLY.PK, HCMLF.PK) announced Friday its strategy to become nature-positive by restoring and preserving biodiversity and water. The company is delivering a measurable positive impact on biodiversity by 2030 based on the Biodiversity Indicator Reporting System or BIRS developed in partnership with International Union for Conservation of Nature or IUCN. The company commits to replenish freshwater in water-risk areas by 2030 and targets to lower water intensity across all product lines. Holcim's positive impact on biodiversity is based on transformative rehabilitation plans and measured by a science-based methodology developed in partnership with the IUCN. The company said it targets to replenish freshwater in water-risk areas while lowering water intensity across all its product lines. Holcim will also accelerate the deployment of solutions such as Hydromedia and green roof systems for more liveable urban environments. Holcim is the first in construction sector to commit to measurable positive impact on biodiversity with transformative rehabilitation plans. Eva Zabey, Executive Director, Business for Nature, said, 'Implementing Holcim's nature strategy can drive scalable change both within the building materials sector and industry as a whole. We need all businesses to rapidly step up their actions and commitments to protect and restore the ecosystems on which we all rely to create healthy and resilient societies.' Holcim said it will continue to develop and deploy its nature-based approach across its products and solutions. 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.
PHC Holdings Corporation (headquarters: Minato-ku, Tokyo, Japan, President CEO: John Marotta, hereafter PHCHD), a leading global life science, diagnostics and medical device company, has today announced the appointment of William (Bill) Donnelly and Ivan Tornos as independent external directors, effective September 3, 2021. Both bring significant expertise and executive-level experience at global medical device and life sciences companies.

Mr. Donnelly joins the board with almost 25 years' experience in the laboratory equipment industry. Mr. Donnelly was most recently the Executive Vice President responsible for Finance, Supply Chain, Manufacturing and IT for Mettler-Toledo. Prior to becoming Executive Vice President, he held various senior executive positions, including Group CFO and as a Global Business Leader for one of Mettler-Toledo's Divisions. Prior to this he was Chief Financial Officer at Elsag Bailey Process Automation, a market leader in industrial instrumentation and systems for the process control industry. He started his career working as an auditor for Price Waterhouse for 10 years. He is currently an Independent Director of Ingersoll Rand and PST, as well as the Board Chair for John Carroll University.

Mr. Tornos joins the board with almost 25 years' experience in the medical device industry. Mr. Tornos is currently the Chief Operating Officer at Zimmer Biomet, responsible for overseeing all global businesses and leading the global operations, clinical and medical education, and global R&D functions. Mr. Tornos joined Zimmer Biomet in 2018 as Group President, Orthopedics and was later Group President, Global Businesses and the Americas, before becoming COO earlier this year. Prior to joining Zimmer Biomet, Mr. Tornos was Worldwide President of the Global Urology Group, Medical, and Critical Care Divisions at Becton Dickinson Interventional. He has also held global senior leadership positions in commercial, business development and operations for Covidien International, Baxter International, Johnson Johnson and Bausch Lomb.

John Marotta, President, CEO and Chairman of the Board of Directors for PHCHD said, "I am thrilled to have Bill and Ivan join the PHC Holdings Board of Directors. These are two exceptional industry leaders who will add vast experience and capabilities to our board. We are a global company and have set out to add individuals to our board who have deep expertise and diverse perspectives that can help with all aspects of our business. Bill and Ivan's industry knowledge and strategic guidance will be immensely valuable to the future success of the PHC Group."

Hiro Hirano, Co-Head of Private Equity for KKR Asia and CEO of KKR Japan Limited, and member of the Board of Directors for PHCHD, added, "We are excited about the addition of Bill and Ivan to the PHC Holdings Board of Directors. We have worked to assemble a board with a range of experiences in operational and financial disciplines, and these additions take the board a key step forward in expanding our capabilities. We believe we have the right mix of global leaders who can support the next chapter in the evolution of our business."

The addition of these new independent external directors follows the recent appointment of Mr. Alan Malus and Ms. Kyoko (Kay) Deguchi in July 2021.

John Marotta added, "Diversity is a high priority for PHC Holdings and all of our operating companies. As we continue to evolve in our journey of diversity and inclusion, we will further evolve our Board of Directors as a part of this initiative."

About PHC Holdings Corporation

PHC Holdings Corporation is a global healthcare company with subsidiaries including PHC Corporation, Ascensia Diabetes Care, Epredia, and LSI Medience Corporation. Committed to its corporate mission that states, "We contribute to the health of society through our diligent efforts to create healthcare solutions that have a positive impact and improve the lives of people," the company develops, manufactures, sells and services solutions across diabetes management, healthcare solutions, life sciences and diagnostics. The PHC Group's consolidated net sales in FY2020 were 306 billion yen with global distribution of products and services in more than 125 countries.

www.phchd.com

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210903005161/en/

Contacts:

Media Contact:

Joseph Delahunty

PHC Holdings Corporation

+41-79-422-9286
VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / September 3, 2021 / Sativa Wellness Group Inc. (CSE:SWEL)(OTC PINK:SCNNF) ("Sativa Wellness" or the "Company") announced today that Sativa Wellness Group Inc., formerly Stillcanna Inc., (the Company), further to the completion of its recommended share-for-share exchange offer for Sativa Group plc which was implemented by means of a court-sanctioned scheme of arrangement under Part 26 of the Companies Act 2006, and which became effective on 3 September 2020, the Company has duly confirmed in writing to the Panel on Takeovers And Mergers ("Panel") in the UK in accordance with the requirements of Rule 19.6(c) of the City Code on Takeovers and Mergers ("Code").

Excepting for the Board changes detailed in Regulatory Information Service announcements dated 29 January 2021, 4 February 2021 and 28 April 2021, the Company has confirmed to the Panel that it has complied with its post-offer statements of intent made pursuant to Rules 2.7(c)(iv) and 24.2 of the Code, as originally detailed in Sativa Group plc's Rule 2.7 announcement of 3 June 2020 and Sativa Group plc's Scheme Document published on 22 July 2020 ("Scheme Document").

Pursuant to Rule 19.6(b)(i) of the Code, the Company notes that the Board changes announced on 29 January 2021 and 4 February 2021, differ from the Company's intentions outlined in paragraph 7 ("Board, management, employees, benefits and locations") of the Scheme Document, where it stated, inter alia, that the Company's intention was for Henry Lees-Buckley, Jason Dussault, Jonathan Waring, Angus Kerr and Joseph Colliver to be directors of the Company. The board changes were prompted by Geremy Thomas, partly to implement a vision of a broader wellness business, who at the time held approximately 25.9% of the Group's issued share capital.

The directors of the Company accept responsibility for the contents of this announcement.

The Q2 2021 Financial Statements are available under the Company's profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com.

The Directors of the Company accept responsibility for the contents of this announcement.

On behalf of the Board of Directors,

Marc Howells

Chief Executive Officer

Sativa Wellness Group Inc.

+44 (0) 20 7971 1255

enquiries@sativawellnessgroup.com

www.sativawellnessgroup.com

Anne Tew

Chief Financial Officer

Sativa Wellness Group Inc.

+44 (0) 20 7971 1255

enquiries@sativawellnessgroup.com

www.sativawellnessgroup.com

Neither the Canadian Securities Exchange nor its Market Regulator (as defined in the policies of the Canadian Securities Exchange) accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. This news release contains certain "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation and may also contain statements that may constitute "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the safe harbor provisions of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such forward-looking information and forward-looking statements are not representative of historical facts or information or current condition, but instead represent only the Company's beliefs regarding future events, plans or objectives, many of which, by their nature, are inherently uncertain and outside of Sativa's control. Generally, such forward-looking information or forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "plans," "expects" or "does not expect," "is expected," "budget," "scheduled," "estimates," "forecasts," "intends," "anticipates" or "does not anticipate," or "believes" "plan is" or variations of such words and phrases or may contain statements that certain actions, events or results "may," "could," "would," "might" or "will be taken," "will continue," "will occur," "will be achieved" or "shortly."

Although Sativa believes that the assumptions and factors used in preparing, and the expectations contained in, the forward-looking information and statements are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on such information and statements, and no assurance or guarantee can be given that such forward-looking information and statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such information and statements. The forward-looking information and forward-looking statements contained in this news release are made as of the date of this press release, and Sativa does not undertake to update any forward-looking information and/or forward-looking statements that are contained or referenced herein, except in accordance with applicable securities laws.

SOURCE: Sativa Wellness Group Inc.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/662453/Sativa-Wellness-Group-Announces-Response-to-the-UK-City-Code-on-Takeovers-and-Mergers-Rule-196C-Confirmation-With-Respect-to-Stated-Post-Offer-Intentions-With-Regard-to-Sativa-Group-Plc
Ranya Adkinson, Kelly Rhynehart and Erica Buccafusca to bolster RMF's Sales Department as company prioritizes support for local representatives

BLOOMFIELD, NJ / ACCESSWIRE / September 3, 2021 / Reverse Mortgage Funding LLC (RMF) today announced the appointment of Ranya Adkinson as the company's National Marketing Support Lead of the Distributed Retail channel. RMF also announced the promotion of Kelly Rhynehart to Distributed Retail Workflow Administrator and the promotion of Erica Buccafusca to Distributed Retail Relationship Management Team Lead. The newly created roles at RMF are a commitment by the company to enable local representatives to lead the industry in reverse mortgage production.

Adkinson brings more than 20 years of communications and marketing experience to RMF. Prior to joining the company, she worked for New American Funding as Regional Marketing Manager. At RMF, Adkinson will work directly with sales leaders and the head of marketing to support the company's local loan specialists and to expand self-generated business in the retail channel. As part of this new role, Adkinson will devise sophisticated business plans and marketing strategies for local representatives in all 50 states.

Rhynehart has been at RMF for more than 7 years. She will apply her project management capabilities nationwide to ensure RMF's sales staff have the proper processes in place to operate efficiently and effectively and meet the growing needs of customers. Buccafusca has been at RMF for more than 6 years. Her can-do attitude and professionalism have been essential to empowering the success of RMF's loan specialists. In this new role, she will continue to help loan officers provide a white glove customer experience.

"It's such an exciting time for the reverse mortgage industry and we as a company are fully committed to educating customers, real estate professionals and financial planning professionals about the benefits of reverse mortgages," says David Peskin, President of RMF. "As the reverse mortgage industry breaks monthly production volume records, we remain committed to providing a superior customer experience. Supporting our local loan specialists, enhancing our service levels and creating innovative outreach programs are essential to expanding RMF's growth as a company."

RMF recently announced it has lowered the minimum age requirement to 55+ in certain states for its propriety reverse mortgage product Equity Elite. The company also recently announced its expansion into Hawaii, an important milestone for the company which is now approved to offer an array of products in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

To learn more about Reverse Mortgage Funding, please visit ReverseFunding.com.

About Reverse Mortgage Funding LLC

Established in 2012, Reverse Mortgage Funding LLC (NMLS ID #1019941) is one of the nation's largest GNMA issuers of reverse mortgages and a recognized industry thought leader. RMF focuses on originating, acquiring, investing in, and managing reverse mortgage loans and securities backed by reverse mortgage loans. The company is headquartered in New Jersey, with corporate offices in New York and California and field offices throughout the U.S. RMF is a wholly owned subsidiary of Reverse Mortgage Investment Trust Inc. (RMIT), a specialty finance company in the reverse mortgage sector. In 2020, RMIT became part of the Starwood Capital Group, a global private investment firm and an innovator in non-agency mortgages, helping grow the industry into the success it is today. This relationship will afford RMF the unique ability to develop new product lines and create strategic partnerships within the Starwood family of companies.

# # #

Not for consumer use. This material has not been reviewed, approved or issued by HUD, FHA or any government agency. The company is not affiliated with or acting on behalf of or at the direction of HUD/FHA or any other government agency.

2021 Reverse Mortgage Funding LLC, 1455 Broad Street, 2nd Floor, Bloomfield, NJ 07003, 1-888-494-0882. Company NMLS ID: #1019941. For licensing information, go to: www.nmlsconsumeraccess.org. Arizona Mortgage Banker License #0927682; Licensed by the Department of Financial Protection and Innovation under the California Residential Mortgage Lending Act; Loans made or arranged pursuant to a California Financing Law license; Georgia Mortgage Lender Licensee #36793; Massachusetts Mortgage Lender License ML1019941; Licensed by the New Jersey Department of Banking & Insurance; Licensed Mortgage Banker-NYS Department of Financial Services -in-state branch address 700 Corporate Blvd, Newburgh, NY 12550; Rhode Island Licensed Lender. For California consumers: For information about our privacy practices, please visit https://www.reversefunding.com/privacy. Not all products and options are available in all states. Terms subject to change without notice. Certain conditions and fees apply. This is not a loan commitment. All loans subject to approval. L3973-Exp092022

Media Contact:

Tyler Bryant

Tbryant@interdepence.com

(813)951-4169

SOURCE: Reverse Mortgage Funding, LLC

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/662583/Reverse-Mortgage-Fundings-Corporate-Team-Expands-to-Support-Local-Sales-Representatives-as-Demand-for-Reverse-Mortgages-Swells
Data from the dedicated, stand-alone, ambulatory blood pressure trial will be the focus of a virtual podium presentation

Efficacy in patients with 'dry' overactive bladder, based on a post-hoc analysis of the pivotal EMPOWUR trial, will be the topic of a virtual poster presentation

Urovant Sciences, Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sumitovant Biopharma Ltd., updates its news release originally issued August 18, 2021, to highlight the company's participation at the 2021 annual meeting of the American Urological Association, which will now be an all-virtual event:

Urovant Sciences today announced key data for GEMTESA (vibegron) 75 mg will be presented during the 2021Annual Meeting of the American Urological Association (AUA2021) taking place virtually September 10-13. GEMTESA was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of overactive bladder (OAB) in adults with symptoms of urge urinary incontinence (UUI), urgency, and urinary frequency.

The AUA21 virtual podium presentation will examine new clinical trial data on the effect of GEMTESA on ambulatory blood pressure in OAB patients. A separate virtual poster presentation will demonstrate its efficacy in patients with 'dry' overactive bladder (without urinary leakage), based on a post-hoc analysis of data from the pivotal EMPOWUR study.

"We are eager to share new data and analyses that support the unique safety and efficacy profile of GEMTESA in overactive bladder," said Cornelia Haag-Molkenteller, MD, PhD, EVP and Chief Medical Officer at Urovant. "We believe that GEMTESA can help meet the needs of the estimated 30 million Americans who suffer from the bothersome symptoms of this condition. We also look forward to robust scientific exchanges during the conference."

Data on GEMTESA will be featured in two virtual presentations at the conference:

Abstract PD66-11 by Michael A. Weber, MD, professor of medicine at Downstate College of Medicine of the State University of New York, Brooklyn, NY, titled, "Effects of Vibegron on Ambulatory Blood Pressure in Patients with Overactive Bladder: Results from a Double-Blind Study." This podium presentation will take place on Monday, September 13, during a virtual session from 1:00 to 3:00 p.m. PDT. Abstract MP63-15 by David Staskin, MD, associate professor of urology, Tufts University School of Medicine, and director, Center for Male and Female Pelvic Health, St. Elizabeth's Medical Center, Boston, titled, "Vibegron for the Treatment of Patients with Dry Overactive Bladder: A Subgroup Analysis from the EMPOWUR Trial." This virtual poster presentation will take place on Monday, September 13, between 10:30 and 11:45 a.m. PDT.

Abstracts are available on the Journal of Urology website and will be published in the journal on September 1.

In addition, Urovant has provided an unrestricted educational grant to support:

A virtual CME Symposium will be held on Sunday, September 12, from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. PDT: "New Treatment Strategies and Considerations in OAB to Improve Patient Outcomes." The symposium will be chaired by Roger Dmochowski, MD, MMHC, FACS; with Benjamin M. Brucker, MD and Alan J Wein, MD, PhD (Hon), FACS as faculty.

About GEMTESA

GEMTESA is a prescription medicine for adults used to treat the following symptoms due to a condition called overactive bladder:

urge urinary incontinence: a strong need to urinate with leaking or wetting accidents

urgency: the need to urinate right away

frequency: urinating often

It is not known if GEMTESA is safe and effective in children.

IMPORTANT SAFETY INFORMATION

Do not take GEMTESA if you are allergic to vibegron or any of the ingredients in GEMTESA.

Before you take GEMTESA, tell your doctor about all your medical conditions, including if you have liver problems; have kidney problems; have trouble emptying your bladder or you have a weak urine stream; take medicines that contain digoxin; are pregnant or plan to become pregnant (it is not known if GEMTESA will harm your unborn baby; talk to your doctor if you are pregnant or plan to become pregnant); are breastfeeding or plan to breastfeed (it is not known if GEMTESA passes into your breast milk; talk to your doctor about the best way to feed your baby if you take GEMTESA).

Tell your doctor about all the medicines you take, including prescription and over-the-counter medicines, vitamins, and herbal supplements. Know the medicines you take. Keep a list of them to show your doctor and pharmacist when you get a new medicine.

What are the possible side effects of GEMTESA?

GEMTESA may cause serious side effects including the inability to empty your bladder (urinary retention). GEMTESA may increase your chances of not being able to empty your bladder, especially if you have bladder outlet obstruction or take other medicines for treatment of overactive bladder. Tell your doctor right away if you are unable to empty your bladder.

The most common side effects of GEMTESA include headache, urinary tract infection, nasal congestion, sore throat or runny nose, diarrhea, nausea and upper respiratory tract infection. These are not all the possible side effects of GEMTESA. For more information, ask your doctor or pharmacist.

Call your doctor for medical advice about side effects. You may report side effects to FDA at 1-800-FDA-1088.

Please click here for full Product Information for GEMTESA.

About Urovant Sciences

Urovant Sciences is a biopharmaceutical company focused on developing and commercializing innovative therapies for urologic conditions. The Company's lead product, GEMTESA (vibegron), is an oral, once-daily (75 mg) small molecule beta-3 agonist for the treatment of adult patients with overactive bladder (OAB) with symptoms of urge urinary incontinence, urgency and urinary frequency. GEMTESA was approved by the U.S. FDA in December 2020 and launched in the U.S. in April 2021. GEMTESA is also being evaluated for the treatment of OAB in men with benign prostatic hyperplasia. The Company's second product candidate, URO-902, is a novel gene therapy being developed for patients with OAB who have failed oral pharmacologic therapy. Urovant Sciences, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sumitovant Biopharma Ltd., intends to develop novel treatments for additional urologic diseases. Learn more about us at www.urovant.com.

About Sumitovant Biopharma Ltd.

Sumitovant is a global biopharmaceutical company with offices in New York City and London. Sumitovant is the majority shareholder of Myovant (NYSE: MYOV) and wholly-owns Urovant, Enzyvant, Spirovant, and Altavant. Sumitovant's promising pipeline is comprised of early-through late-stage investigational medicines across a range of disease areas targeting high unmet need. Sumitovant is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sumitomo Dainippon Pharma. For further information about Sumitovant, please visit https://www.sumitovant.com.

About Sumitomo Dainippon Pharma Co., Ltd.

Sumitomo Dainippon Pharma is among the top-ten listed pharmaceutical companies in Japan, operating globally in major pharmaceutical markets, including Japan, the U.S., China, and the European Union. Sumitomo Dainippon Pharma is based on the 2005 merger between Dainippon Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd., and Sumitomo Pharmaceuticals Co., Ltd. Today, Sumitomo Dainippon Pharma has more than 7,000 employees worldwide. Additional information about Sumitomo Dainippon Pharma is available through its corporate website at https://www.ds-pharma.com.

To read our news release, visit urovant.com/news-releases.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210903005082/en/

Contacts:

Urovant Sciences

Mary-Frances Faraji

1 908 334 7693

maryfrances@jeffwintonassociates.com

media@urovant.com

Sumitovant Biopharma

Maya Frutiger

Vice President, Corporate Communications

media@sumitovant.com
VANCOUVER, BC, Sept. 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Surge Battery Metals Inc. (the "Company" or "Surge") (TSXV: NILI) (OTCQB: NILIF) (FRA: DJ5C) is pleased to announce that it has begun a fall exploration program at the BC Nickel Properties in Northern British Columbia, in conjunction with its exploration property partner, Nickel Rock Resources (TSXV: NICL). The Option Agreement with Nickel Rock Resources was originally announced in a news release dated July 8, 2021, and subject to TSXV Approval, Surge will own an 80% interest in the Hard Nickel 4 and Nickel 100 Claims, with Nickel Rock Resources Inc. retaining the remaining 20% interest.

About the Nickel 100 Group

Mineral Occurrences

The claims of the Nickel 100 Group (part of the "Nickel Project") cover 18 BC MINFILE chromite occurrences, some of which are reported to be mineralized with nickel, platinum-palladium group and other rare, highly valuable elements.

History

Nickel-cobalt mineralization has not been well-explored, but the presence of awaruite has been documented. Geologist, Ms. Ursula Mowat completed a preliminary field work program over the area of the Nickel 100 claim group in 2004, and confirmed the presence of elevated nickel, cobalt and chromium values in rocks and stream sediments. Ms. Mowat is the recipient of the 2015 H.H. "Spud" Huestis Award for Excellence in Prospecting and Mineral Exploration, granted by the Association of Mineral Exploration in British Columbia ("AME BC"). AME BC is both - a large and successful industry association representing the mineral exploration industry in British Columbia .

About the Hard Nickel 4 Property

The Hard Nickel 4 Property is immediately adjacent and southeast of the FPX Nickel Baptiste Deposit, and consists of a mineral claims held originally by Nickel Rock Resources Inc. (now a 20% interest holder in the project). The exploration stage project is in the Takla Lake area of central British Columbia , partially adjacent to FPX Nickel Corp.'s Decar Nickel Project.

, partially adjacent to FPX Nickel Corp.'s Decar Nickel Project. The Decar Nickel Project is an advanced project targeting awaruite, a nickel-iron alloy mineral, hosted by serpentinized ultramafic intrusive rocks of the Trembleur Ultramafic Unit within the Permian to Triassic age Cache Creek Complex.

All the claim groups of the Nickel Project are partially underlain by variably serpentinized ultramafic intrusive rocks of the Trembleur Ultramafic Unit. Metallic mineralization discovered to date on the project includes nickel, cobalt, and chromium, and some of the nickel mineralization occurs as the nickel-iron alloy awaruite, and as sulphide minerals including heazlewoodite, bravoite and siegenite.

The principal target on the project is nickel occurring as awaruite, but at the exploration stage all other styles of mineralization should be considered.

Systematic, ground-based exploration work began within the area of the claims now covered by the Nickel Project under the direction of Ms. Ursula Mowat , P.Geo. in 1987, continuing intermittently until 2012. This work established the presence of elevated nickel, cobalt and chromium values in rocks, soils, and stream sediments.

, P.Geo. in 1987, continuing intermittently until 2012. This work established the presence of elevated nickel, cobalt and chromium values in rocks, soils, and stream sediments. The area of the claim groups of the Nickel Project were included in Geoscience BC's QUEST and QUEST-West projects, including multiparameter regional geophysical surveys, and regional stream sediment reanalyzes and data compilations between 2008 and 2009.

R. Britten's technical paper "Regional Metallogeny and Genesis of a New Deposit Type - Disseminated Awaruite (Ni3Fe) Mineralization Hosted in the Cache Creek Terrane", published in 2017 in Economic Geology should be utilized as an interim mineral deposit model or profile for the Nickel Project.

The Nickel Project is worthy of phased, systematic exploration programs designed and implemented to delineate areas with known or high probability metallic nickel mineralization, and to discover new areas of similar mineralization.

Proposed 2021 Work Program

The 2021 Work Program by the Company consists of the following exploration work.

The proposed work program consists of trenching, surface exploration, drone magnetic surveys, back pack drilling and exploration activities to support drilling and trenching such as soil sampling, rock sampling, prospecting, and geological mapping.

The Company estimates that this proposed work program will include CAD$200,000 in exploration expenditures spent over the fall and early winter of 2021 with additional mining exploration work scheduled for the spring-summer season of 2022. Analyzing the results from the 2021 work program will allow Surge management to plan the 2022 work program leading into the spring of calendar 2022.

Mr. Greg Reimer, Surge President & CEO states: "The Company has decided to partner with Nickel Rock Resources on these properties because we believe that these mineral claims are of a high value to our shareholders. To joint venture these two mineral claims with a credible exploration partner in the region is extremely valuable and we can take advantage of not only their current $600,000 flow-through exploration program, but also the work being done by nearby FPX Nickel Corp (TSXV: FPX) on the world-renown Baptiste Nickel Deposit. By doing so, we have the ability to extract some immediate value from these claims, improve our working capital position, focus our exploration efforts and continue to draw shareholder value. Currently, Surge has over CAD$4 million in working capital, and this 2021 work program is well financed and leaves significant room for a 2022 future work program."

Mr. Greg Reimer continues, "We believe that this joint venture/option transaction and exploration focus is squarely in the best interest of the shareholders, and are excited to have active multiple exploration work programs being conducted in this area of British Columbia."

Qualified Person

Jeremy Hanson, P.Geo., a qualified person as defined by NI 43 - 101, is responsible for the technical information contained in this release. Readers are cautioned that the information in this press release regarding the property of FPX Nickel Corp is not necessarily indicative of the mineralization on the property of interest.

About Surge Battery Metals Inc. surgebatterymetals.com

The Company is a Canadian-based mineral exploration company active in the exploration for nickel-iron alloy and Copper in British Columbia and lithium in Nevada. Nickel Rock Resources Inc. is a Canadian based exploration company whose primary listing is on the TSX Venture Exchange. The Company's maintains a focus on exploration for high value battery metals required for the electric vehicle (EV) market.

Nevada Lithium Claims

The Company owns a 100% interest in 38 mineral claims located in Nevada. The Northern Nevada Lithium Project is located in the Granite Range about 34 line- km southeast of Jackpot, Nevada, about 73 line-km north-northeast of Wells, Nevada. The target is a Thacker Pass or Clayton Valley type lithium clay deposit in volcanic tuff and tuffaceous sediments of the Jarbidge Rhyolite package. The project area was first identified in public domain stream sediment geochemical data with follow up sediment sampling and geologic reconnaissance.

Caledonia Project, Vancouver Island, BC

The Company has entered into a Property Option Agreement to acquire a 100% interest in 7 mineral claims known as the Caledonia, Cascade and Bluebell, subject to a NSR between 1-2%. Located in the Nanaimo Mining District of northern Vancouver Island. The claims are 7 km north-west of BHP's past producing Island Copper mine which was responsible for extracting 345 million metric tonnes @ 0.41% Cu, 0.017% Mo, 0.19 g/t Au, and 1.4 g/t Ag. During its prime operating period the Island Copper mine was Canada's third-largest copper producer. The Caledonia, Cascade and Bluebell claims area lies within a 50-kilometer-long copper belt northwest of the Island Copper mine.

British Columbia Nickel Project

Hard Nickel 4 and Nickel 100 Claims

The Company has entered into an Option Agreement with Nickel Rock Resources to acquire an 80% interest in 6 mineral claims in the Mount Sidney Williams area (Hard Nickel 4) covering 1863 hectares immediately south of and adjacent to the Decar Project and the Mitchell Range area (Nickel 100) covering 8659 hectares, located in Northern British Columbia. Three of the claims are subject to 2% NSR, including the Hard Nickel 4 claim and the two southernmost claims of the Nickel 100 claims. The acquisition is subject final TSXV Approval.

On Behalf of the Board of Directors

"Greg Reimer"

Greg Reimer, President & CEO

604-428-5690

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 which include, but are not limited to, comments that involve future events and conditions, which are subject to various risks and uncertainties. Except for statements of historical facts, comments that address resource potential, upcoming work programs, geological interpretations, receipt and security of mineral property titles, availability of funds, and others are forward-looking. Forward-looking statements are not guaranteeing future performance and actual results may vary materially from those statements. General business conditions are factors that could cause actual results to vary materially from forward-looking statements.

Surge Battery Metals Inc.

1220 - 789 West Pender Street

Vancouver, BC, Canada V6C 1H2

604- 428-5690

www.surgebatterymetals.com

info@surgebatterymetals.com

Image: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1607982/Surge_Battery_Metals_Update.jpg
A real game-changer in potato desiccation

AACHEN, Germany, Sept. 03, 2021, the new hybrid electric solution for alternative crop desiccation and weed management, has been voted the most innovative new technology in potato production by potato

professionals worldwide. In addition to the Audience Award, NUCROPwon the silver medal at the Potato Europe Innovation Awards out of 30 entries. Both prizes were presented on 1 September 2021 in Lelystad, the Netherlands.

Developed by the German startup crop.zone and brought to farmers across Europe in cooperation with Australian crop protection specialist Nufarm, the hybrid electric desiccation and weed control solution uses a conductive liquid and electric power to destroy unwanted plants and weeds.

"We're very excited about both awards," says Dirk Vandenhirtz (https://stats.newswire.com/x/html?final=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cubGlua2VkaW4uY29tL2luL3ZhbmRlbmhpcnR6Lw&hit%2Csum=WyIzN253YW0iLCIzN253YW4iLCIzN253YWoiXQ), CEO of crop.zone. "With this new technology, we're helping farmers meet the increasing demands of sustainable agriculture."



Nufarm offers the NUCROP solution to farmers throughout its distribution network of channel partners in the agricultural sector. Developed by crop.zone, the technology behind NUCROP combines an organic liquid activator with an electric treatment. This combination allows fast, economical desiccation treatment for your potatoes.

The current application width of 12 m will increase in the future to allow even faster and more reliable treatment. "As a traditional crop protection company, we're pleased to be able to offer growers this new, sustainable, and highly effective solution starting this year. NUCROP complements our chemical and biological crop protection portfolios and offers an alternative solution, especially in crops for which proven chemical treatments are no longer available.

We began offering NUCROP to farms in France, Germany, BENELUX, and the UK this year. We're delighted it won two prizes, which shows that it is one of the most innovative technologies in potato cultivation on the market today," says Hildo Brilleman, Regional General Manager EuMEA at Nufarm.

Media contact

crop.zone GmbH

Pascalstr.55

52076 Aachen

mob. +49 (172) 8772286

usa +1 (919) 251-6320

de +49 (2408) 5980-333

ch +41 (44) 585 34 88

Related Files

EN_NUCROP_PotatoEurope.pdf

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crop.zone sweeps the PotatoEurope Innovation Awards and wins two prizes

A real game-changer in potato desiccation Dirk Vandenhirtz CEO crop.zone and Hildo Brilleman, Regional General Manager EuMEA at Nufarm

This content was issued through the press release distribution service at Newswire.com.

Attachment
Oceans of Energy is planning to deploy a 3 MW off-shore floating PV array in the North Sea.Netherlands-based start-up Oceans of Energy has announced it will deploy a 3 MW off-shore floating PV array off the Belgian coast in the North Sea. The plant, which the company describes as a full-scale demonstrator, will be co-located with an unspecified wind farm. "This project will bring the cost to 0.15 per kWh," a company spokesperson told pv magazine. "In future projects, we expect to deliver clean energy everywhere in the world for less than 0.05 per kWh." The project is being developed under the ...

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.
Eckert Ziegler Radiopharma GmbH has successfully submitted an amendment to their Drug Master File (DMF) to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for GalliaPharm. Their proprietary Ge-68/Ga-68 generator from now on will additionally be available in sizes of up to 100 mCi with a shelf-life of 12 months or for a maximum of 700 elutions. Gallium-68 from GalliaPharm is used for the preparation of diagnostic imaging drugs in Positron Emission Tomography (PET).

"With the development of generators with higher Ge-68 activity and the amendment of our DMF, we are responding to the increasing demand for Ga-68 based diagnostics in the United States," explained Dr Harald Hasselmann, Eckert Ziegler Executive Director and responsible for the Medical segment. "The soon to be available preparations for imaging of prostate cancer as well as upcoming novel Ga-68 drugs and their theranostic pair, mostly labeled with Lu-177, allow Eckert Ziegler to strongly support the trend towards higher activity generators and we are currently working to provide comprehensive solutions to the healthcare providers and their patients."

"Higher activity GalliaPharm generators will enable nuclear medicine institutions and radiopharmacies across the United States to prepare their Ga-68 PET imaging products with the same flexibility as they are used to, while being able to offer the procedures to a greater number of patients and with an expanded service area," added Jay Simon, General Manager of Eckert Ziegler Radiopharma, Inc. in Wilmington, MA. "Users can obtain additional doses from a single generator elution and are at the same time able to significantly increase the number of daily elutions. Both will contribute to enhanced medical care and assure the supply to American patients."

GalliaPharm is mainly used in combination with tracer kits for diagnosis of neuroendocrine tumors and prostate cancer. Gallium generators offer a low-cost alternative for the radiolabeling of biomolecules with Gallium-68 in PET, an imaging examination method used to detect the presence or absence of diseased tissue. PET imaging is primarily used in the diagnosis of cancer, cardiology or neurology. Radioisotopes such as Fluorine-18 can be used alternatively but require investments of millions of dollars in large-scale equipment (cyclotrons). The Ge-68/Ga-68 generator on the other hand, is an easily transportable, small system that is much more cost-efficient, leading to cost reductions for nuclear medicine providers while increasing flexibility.

About Eckert Ziegler Radiopharma GmbH

Eckert Ziegler Radiopharma GmbH is a wholly owned subsidiary of Eckert Ziegler Strahlen- und Medizintechnik AG and part of Eckert Ziegler's Medical business segment. The company is specialized in the field of nuclear medicine and molecular imaging, providing radiopharmaceuticals and radiochemicals for diagnosis, treatment and research purposes. With GalliaPharm and Yttriga, sterile Yttrium-90 chloride solution, Radiopharma GmbH provides two core pharmaceutical products for diagnosis and therapy. Moreover, the company offers development and contract manufacturing services.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210903005193/en/

Contacts:

Your Contact:

Eckert Ziegler Medical

Jan Schopflin, Head of Marketing

Tel.: +49 (0) 30 94 10 84-252

jan.schoepflin@ezag.de

www.medical.ezag.com
Liquid Laundry Scent Boosters Emerge as Top Choice with Sales Predicted to Grow at 11.8% CAGR through 2031

A recent study conducted on the laundry scent boosters market by Fact.MR offers insights into key growth drivers, trend, opportunities, and challenges impacting the market. The report highlights key factors propelling the laundry scent boosters demand outlook in terms of use case, fragrance, form, claim, packaging, and sales channel

NEW YORK, Sept. 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- As per the survey by Fact.MR, the global laundry scent boosters market is estimated to total a valuation of US$ 497 million in 2021. Driven by the growing consumer awareness about maintaining hygiene, the market is projected to surpass a valuation of US$ 1.3 billion through 2031.

Historically, the market registered a growth of 8.2% between 2016 and 2020. Consumers across the globe are increasingly becoming concerned about keeping their clothes clean, especially with the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. Driven by this, the sale of laundry scent boosters is likely to rise at a CAGR of 9.2% over the forecast period 2021 to 2031.

Consumers around the world have become more willing to adopt new ways of laundry cleaning. This has presented impressive opportunities to the market players. Focus on innovations is therefore at all-time high. For instance, some of the leading manufacturers are including active ingredients to offer higher quality of scent boosters. Driven by these trends, the sales of liquid laundry scents are expected to increase by 11.8% CAGR through the assessment period.

Request a report sample to gain comprehensive insights at

https://www.factmr.com/connectus/sample?flag=S&rep_id=477

As per Fact.MR, online sales channels are poised to expand at an impressive CAGR of 12.8%, accounting for nearly 23% of the sales in 2021. Expansion of e-commerce in emerging economies such as India, China, Brazil, and others, will help online sales channels contribute nearly 29% of the global sales by the end of the assessment period.

"Leading laundry scent boosters companies are shifting their focus towards new product development with innovative fragrances. They also are using natural ingredients to meet the changing consumer preference in favor of organic products," says a Fact.MR analyst.

Key Takeaways from Laundry Scent Booster Market Survey

The global demand for laundry scent boosters is forecast to register a year-on-year (YoY) growth of 8.7% between 2020 and 2021.

The U.S. is expected to lead North America market, accounting for sales revenue of nearly US$ 163 million over the assessment period.

market, accounting for sales revenue of nearly over the assessment period. The laundry scent boosters market in the U.K. is estimated to hold the highest share in Europe , expanding at a healthy CAGR of 7.6% through 2031.

, expanding at a healthy CAGR of 7.6% through 2031. The Germany market is projected to contribute a revenue share of more than US$ 42.5 million in 2021, growing at a CAGR of 8.2% by the end of the next decade.

market is projected to contribute a revenue share of more than in 2021, growing at a CAGR of 8.2% by the end of the next decade. Based on form, the liquid laundry scent booster is anticipated to account for 63% of the market share.

Key Drivers

Rising concerns regarding health and hygiene among global population is spurring the sales of laundry scent boosters.

Growing number of working women is expected to help driving the growth of the market.

Key Restraints

Lack of acceptance among low-income consumers in the emerging economies is hampering the sales of laundry scent boosters.

Presence of substitutes such as scented detergents is posing a challenge for the market growth.

To gain in-depth insights of Laundry Scent Booster Market, request methodology at

https://www.factmr.com/connectus/sample?flag=RM&rep_id=477

Competitive Landscape

Leading players are focusing on introducing new products with different fragrances to expand their product portfolio and entering into strategic mergers, collaborations, and acquisition with other industry player to increase their sales across various regions. For instance,

In 2020, Firmenich, one of the largest fragrance and taste companies headquartered in Switzerland , introduced its new product line for laundry care. It is the world's first laundry care fragrances infused with AI (artificial intelligence) with human creativity.

, introduced its new product line for laundry care. It is the world's first laundry care fragrances infused with AI (artificial intelligence) with human creativity. Gain, a leading laundry detergent manufacturer, announced introducing new laundry care product, Original Fireworks In-Wash Scent Booster. The company states that fragrance in the clothes can last up to 12 weeks in storage.

Some of the leading market players operating in the laundry scent boosters market profiled by Fact.MR are:

Kyowa Kirin, Inc.

Pfizer Inc.

GlaxoSmithKline plc.

AbbVie Inc. (Allergan plc)

Merck & Co., Inc.

Bausch Health Companies Inc.

Novartis AG

Ono Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd.

Camurus AB

Heron Therapeutics, Inc.

More Valuable Insights on Laundry Scent Booster Market

Fact.MR, in its new report, offers an unbiased analysis of the global laundry scent boosters market, analyzing forecast statistics through 2021 and beyond. The survey reveals growth projections on in laundry scent boosters market with detailed segmentation:

By Use Case:

In-wash Laundry Scent Boosters



After-wash Laundry Scent Boosters



By Fragrance:

Floral Laundry Scent Boosters



Fresh Laundry Scent Boosters



Apple Laundry Scent Boosters



Lavender Laundry Scent Boosters



Linen Laundry Scent Boosters



Vanilla Laundry Scent Boosters



Wood Laundry Scent Boosters



Others



By Form:

Laundry Scent Booster Beads



Laundry Scent Booster Crystals



Laundry Scent Booster Pacs



Laundry Scent Booster Liquid



Laundry Scent Booster Sprays



Laundry Scent Booster Powder



By Claim (% demand assessment):

No Artificial Additives



Biodegradable



Cruelty-free



Recyclable



Natural



Vegan



Paraben-free



By Packaging Type:

Laundry Scent Booster Bottles



Laundry Scent Booster Tubs



Laundry Scent Booster Sachets/Pouches



By Sales Channel:

Offline Sales of Laundry Scent Boosters



Modern Trade





Convenience Stores





Discount Stores





Multi Brand Stores





Mom and Pop Stores





Drug Stores





Independent Retailers





Other Sales Channels



Online Sales of Laundry Scent Booster



Company Websites





Third-party Online Sales

Key Questions Covered in the Laundry Scent Booster Market Report

The market survey also highlights projected sales growth for laundry scent boosters market between 2021 and 2031

The report offers insight into laundry scent boosters demand outlook for 2021-2031

Laundry scent boosters market share analysis of the key companies within the industry and coverage of strategies such as mergers & acquisitions, collaborations or partnerships, and others

Laundry scent boosters market analysis 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

Explore Fact.MR's Coverage on the Consumer Goods Domain -

Laundry Cleaning Product Market- The focus on extending the shelf life of materials, particularly for high-value clothes, has increased in recent years, boosting the laundry cleaning products market. As a result, there is a growing desire for better, more versatile laundry cleaning products that are gentle on textiles and yarns. The increased need for laundry cleaning products that prevent microbe-caused staining and deterioration of textiles has gained traction. Manufacturers are relentlessly pursuing enhanced formulas to support these behaviors in the laundry cleaning products industry.

Laundry Dryer Sheets and Bars Market- The laundry dryer sheets and bars market's competitiveness has become more intense as the number of businesses has grown. This has resulted in a boom of innovation in terms of new products and services. With the increased availability of public laundry facilities, the use of dryer sheets and bars has increased in the market. With people's increasing reliance on artificial scents, they want to wash their garments with extra aromas. People are also employing laundry dryer sheets and bars that come in various fragrances as their awareness of body odor and scents grows.

Fragrances Market- Growing consumer awareness of personal hygiene, as well as the availability of a diverse product range in retail stores, are two major reasons driving fragrances demand. Deodorants are also becoming more popular as a result of their features, such as ease of use and long-lasting effects. The popularity of fragrances is being fueled by a slew of social media blogs from all around the world. Customers' purchase decisions are likely to be influenced by innovative marketing strategies adopted by well-known brands, hence influencing market growth.

About Fact.MR

Market research and consulting agency with a difference! That's why 80% of Fortune 1,000 companies trust us for making their most critical decisions. We have offices in US and Dublin, whereas our global headquarter is in Dubai. While our experienced consultants employ the latest technologies to extract hard-to-find insights, we believe our USP is the trust clients have on our expertise. Spanning a wide range - from automotive & industry 4.0 to healthcare & consumer goods, our coverage is expansive, but we ensure even the most niche categories are analyzed. Reach out to us with your goals, and we'll be an able research partner.

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Fast and accurate testing labs at international terminals offer a new solution, as airports continue to be a focal point in the global spread of COVID-19

SHENZHEN, China, Sept. 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- From April to August, 2021, BGI's COVID-19 testing lab has helped 5,500 Chinese travelers safely fly out of the Addis Ababa Bole International Airport. In April, BGI set up the "Huo-Yan" laboratory, a COVID-19 testing lab, at the airport for passengers flying to China in cooperation with Ethiopia Airlines. Since then, the lab has contributed to around five consecutive months without a single flight suspension on the route.

The pre-flight testing procedures pioneered at the lab present an option for reducing the pressure of containment measures at destinations.

The lab provides quick, accurate nucleic acid polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing and antibody testing services to passengers at the Airport. The lab can test up to 400 samples within three hours and 5,000 samples per day, reducing inconvenience for departing and transiting at the Airport.

The lab helps reduce imported cases. Passengers are required to quarantine first. They are not allowed to board until obtaining negative results for both a COVID-19 nucleic acid PCR test and an antibody test.

Since the start of operations at the lab, the number of outbound positive cases found on arrival has sharply decreased. To date, no flights have been suspended between Ethiopia and China, making this the only direct flight from the African continent to China that has been continuously operating during this period.

"From April 21 to August 31, the laboratory has provided testing services for more than 5,500 passengers on 19 flights to China," said Chen Songheng, the head of the "Huo-Yan" laboratory in Ethiopia.

BGI has built more than 30 "Huo-Yan" laboratories with partners in over 80 countries and regions. By providing one-platform solutions with accurate, efficient testing, the labs play a vital role in contributing to the global fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.

BGI leads innovative development in genomics and life sciences. Through its integrated model, it incorporates industry development, education and research in compliance with international bioethical protocols. It applies frontier multi-omics research findings to areas including medicine, healthcare and resource conservation, and provides cutting-edge proprietary life science instruments and devices, technical support and solutions to revolutionize the current healthcare system towards precision medicine and healthcare.

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1608026/The_Huo_Yan_laboratory_Addis_Ababa_Bole_International_Airport_Ethiopia.jpg

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WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Kraft Heinz Co. (KHC) disclosed, in a regulatory filing on Friday, that it agreed to pay a $62 million civil penalty to settle an investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission into accounting policies, procedures and internal controls. The company said it does not admit or deny findings in the administrative order issued by the SEC. It agrees to cease and desist from violations of specified provisions of federal securities laws. The company noted that it recorded an accrual for the full amount of the penalty in the second quarter of 2021. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - September 3, 2021) - Rio Verde Industries Inc. ("Rio Verde" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that it has entered into an arrangement agreement (the "Arrangement Agreement") on August 26, 2021 with its wholly-owned subsidiaries, 1319472 B.C. Ltd., 1319651 B.C. Ltd., 1319732 B.C. Ltd., 1319735 B.C. Ltd., 1319738 B.C. Ltd., 1319741 B.C. Ltd., and 1319743 B.C. Ltd. (each a "RV Sub"; collectively, the "RV Subs") pursuant to which the parties intend to complete a court approved statutory plan of arrangement under the Business Corporations Act (British Columbia) (the "Plan of Arrangement"). Additionally, the Company is pleased to announce that it has received an interim order from the Supreme Court of British Columbia (the "Court") on September 1, 2021 (the "Interim Order"), which provides for, among other things, the holding of the special meeting (the "Meeting") of shareholders of the Company (the "Shareholders") to approve the Plan of Arrangement. The Interim Order also set out other conditions that must be met for the Company to apply for a final order of the Court (the "Final Order") to approve the Plan of Arrangement.

Meeting Details

The Meeting will be held on October 4, 2021 at 4:00 p.m. (Eastern Standard Time) at 1 Adelaide Street East, Suite 801, Toronto, Ontario, M5C 2V9. Shareholders will be asked to consider and vote upon a special resolution approving the Plan of Arrangement. Only Shareholders of record at the close of business on August 26, 2021 will be entitled to vote at the Meeting. The Plan of Arrangement is subject to Shareholder approval of not less than 66 2/3% of the votes cast at the Meeting.

Board of Directors' Recommendation

Following consultation with the Company's financial and legal advisor, the board of directors (the "Board") approved the Plan of Arrangement, concluding that it is in the best interest of the Company and the Shareholders. The Board recommends that Shareholders vote in favour of the Plan of Arrangement at the Meeting. In reaching this conclusion, the Board considered, among other things, the benefits to the Company and the Shareholders, as well as the financial position, opportunities and outlook for the future potential and operating performance of the Company and the RV Subs.

Final Order

The Arrangement is also subject to the receipt of the Final Order of the Court, which the Company will seek after the Company receives the required approval of the Shareholders at the Meeting. The hearing in respect of the Final Order is currently anticipated to take place on October 8, 2021 at 9:45 a.m. (Pacific Standard Time).

On behalf of the Board of Directors

Binyomin Posen

Chief Executive Officer, & Director

T: 416 481 2222

E: bposen@plazacapital.ca

No recognized securities exchange accepts responsibility for the adequacy of this press release, which has been prepared by management of the Company.

Cautionary Note Regarding Forwarding-Looking Statements

All statements in this press release, other than statements of historical fact, are "forward-looking information" with respect to the Company within the meaning of applicable securities laws. Forward-looking information is frequently characterized by words such as "plan", "expect", "project", "intend", "believe", "anticipate", "estimate" and other similar words, or statements that certain events or conditions "may" or "will" occur. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, included herein, including without limitation, statements regarding the expected timeline and date of the hearing to obtain the Final Order; the completion of the Plan of Arrangement; the Meeting; the ability of the Company to obtain Shareholder approval; the hearing to obtain the Final Order; the ability of the Company to obtain a Final Order; the anticipated benefits of the Plan of Arrangement; the ability of the Company to satisfy, in a timely manner, the other conditions to closing of the Plan of Arrangement; and the Company's plans to explore certain acquisition targets are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are based on the opinions and estimates at the date the statements are made, and are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual events or results to differ materially from those anticipated in the forward-looking statements. There are uncertainties inherent in forward-looking information, including factors beyond the Company's control. There are no assurances that the business plans described in this news release will come into effect on the terms or time frame described herein. The Company undertakes no obligation to update forward-looking information if circumstances or management's estimates or opinions should change except as required by law. Although the Company believes that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on forward-looking statements since the Company can give no assurance that such expectations will prove to be correct. These statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results or events to differ materially from those anticipated in such forward-looking statements, including the risks, uncertainties and other factors identified in the Company's periodic filings with Canadian securities regulators, and assumptions made with regard to the following: the Company's ability to complete the proposed Plan of Arrangement on the terms and conditions contemplated, or at all; the Company's ability to secure the necessary Shareholder approval; the Company's ability to obtain the Final Order; the estimated costs associated with the Plan of Arrangement; the timing of the Meeting; and the general stability of the economy. For a description of the risks and uncertainties facing the Company and its business and affairs, readers should refer to the Company's Circular, Management's Discussion and Analysis and other disclosure filings with Canadian securities regulators, which are posted on www.sedar.com.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/95519
IUCN World Conservation Congress

Regulatory News:

Pernod Ricard (Paris:RI):

Press Release Paris, 3 September 2021

On the occasion of the CEO Summit, in the presence of French President Emmanuel Macron, Christine Lagarde, President of the European Central Bank and Bruno Oberle, Director General of the IUCN, Alexandre Ricard, Chairman and CEO of Pernod Ricard, announced a new partnership with the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). This announcement coincides with the IUCN World Conservation Congress, which for the first time will be held in Marseille, France, from 3 to 11 September. Through this collaboration, Pernod Ricard becomes the first corporate partner to support IUCN's "Agriculture and Land Health Initiative".

The initiative strives to build a shared vision through a discussion platform, which brings together around tangible projects public and private sector actors including governments, NGOs, companies, land managers, scientists and experts who all share a single objective: build commitments for accelerated action towards sustainable agriculture. They will also join forces to promote and highlight the scientific and economic benefits of sustainable agriculture, encouraging decision makers to adopt this approach on a wider scale.

For Pernod Ricard, this partnership is first and foremost a continuation of a longstanding commitment to nature. Over half a century ago, in 1966, its founder created the Paul Ricard Oceanographic Institute in response to pollution in the Mediterranean Sea. A genuine observatory of the Oceans, today it continues to fight for the protection of marine ecosystems, combining scientific research with awareness-raising initiatives.

All of Pernod Ricard's iconic brands take their character from natural ingredients (wheat, barley, agave, sugar cane, grapes) and the terroirs where they are grown. As part of its 2030 Sustainability and Responsibility roadmap, 'Good Times from a Good Place', the Group is committed to nurturing every terroir and its biodiversity and responding to the challenges of climate change to ensure quality ingredients now and for generations to come. To do this, Pernod Ricard has been working with farmers, suppliers and partners to develop sustainable and regenerative agriculture practices and biodiversity conservation programmes, including in the vineyards of Cognac and Champagne, as well as in India, New Zealand and Ireland, among others. By becoming the first company to join this new global initiative, Pernod Ricard is committing to accelerating the transition to sustainable agriculture as a way of addressing climate change and biodiversity loss. This initiative will take a multi-stakeholder approach to help build ambitious commitments to sustainable agriculture, share best practices and monitor our collective impact.

"All our products are closely connected with nature they take their character, their identity and their quality from the terroirs where they are grown. Biodiversity is an essential element to the equilibrium of these ecosystems. Valuing, protecting and conserving it so that we can pass on healthy terroirs to future generations is therefore not only a moral and civic obligation but also a necessity for the future of our Group. That is why we are both proud and honoured to be more actively involved alongside the IUCN in order to demonstrate the importance of agriculture that is more respectful of the land and its ecosystems."said Alexandre Ricard, Chairman and CEO of Pernod Ricard.

About Pernod Ricard

Pernod Ricard is the world's No 2 in wines and spirits with consolidated sales of 8,824 million in FY 2021. Created in 1975 by the merger of Ricard and Pernod, the Group has undergone sustained development, based on both organic growth and acquisitions: Seagram (2001), Allied Domecq (2005) and Vin&Sprit (2008). Pernod Ricard, which owns 16 of the Top 100 Spirits Brands, holds one of the most prestigious and comprehensive brand portfolios in the industry, including: Absolut Vodka, Ricard pastis, Ballantine's, Chivas Regal, Royal Salute, and The Glenlivet Scotch whiskies, Jameson Irish whiskey, Martell cognac, Havana Club rum, Beefeater gin, Malibu liqueur, Mumm and Perrier-Jouet champagnes, as well Jacob's Creek, Brancott Estate, Campo Viejo, and Kenwood wines. Pernod Ricard's brands are distributed across 160+ markets and by its own salesforce in 73 markets. The Group's decentralised organisation empowers its 18,500 employees to be true on-the-ground ambassadors of its vision of "Createurs de Convivialite." As reaffirmed by the Group's strategic plan, "Transform and Accelerate," deployed in 2018, Pernod Ricard's strategy focuses on investing in long-term, profitable growth for all stakeholders. The Group remains true to its three founding values: entrepreneurial spirit, mutual trust, and a strong sense of ethics, as illustrated by the 2030 Sustainability and Responsibility roadmap supporting the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), "Good times from a good place." In recognition of Pernod Ricard's strong commitment to sustainable development and responsible consumption, it has received a Gold rating from Ecovadis. Pernod Ricard is also a United Nations' Global Compact LEAD company. Pernod Ricard is listed on Euronext (Ticker: RI; ISIN Code: FR0000120693) and is part of the CAC 40 and Eurostoxx 50 indices

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210903005288/en/

Contacts:

Contact Pernod Ricard

Emmanuel VOUIN Head of Group External Engagement

+33 (0)1 70 93 16 34
Establishing a base for entrepreneurs from cafes, subways and campuses

Supporting for scale-up in collaboration with large companies and open innovation

Expanding its start-up territory by securing a base in Vietnam,

"Try Everything" Global Startup Festival will be held September 15th

SEOUL, KOREA / ACCESSWIRE / September 3, 2021 / With its goal of becoming a global top 5 start-up city set in 2019, the Seoul Metropolitan Government(SMG) declared that it would fully support startups with innovative technologies. It has announced and promoted seven projects, including creating a technology startup infrastructure, nurturing talent in technologies, investing in each growth stage, and expanding globally.

Startup city Seoul is drawing attention in the global startup ecosystem. This is thanks to Seoul's strong infrastructure and active startup support policies, which produced 7 of the 15 unicorns in Korea (privately held startup companies valued at more than US $1 billion). This has enabled Seoul's startup ecosystem to grow strong quickly.

Starting with the establishment of the New Technology Startup Center in Deungchon-dong, Seoul in 1995, the Seoul Metropolitan Government also created the Seoul Bio Hub (Hongneung), the Seoul Startup Hub (Mapo), virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) centers (Sangam), an ITBTGreen technology (GT) center, a nanotechnology (NT) center (Magok), a fintech hub (Yeouido), an IT convergence center (Guro, Gasan), and AI and big data hubs (Yangjae), with a startup asset in every corner of Seoul. In addition, investing in infrastructure gave birth to 13,414 companies in the city, from a total of 32 incubation facilities.

These companies have contributed to national economic development by generating nearly 5 trillion Korean Won (US $4.2 billion) in sales. Now, these startups have dreams of growing into unicorns by drawing a cumulative investment of KRW 853 billion ($725 million). While economic growth slows and the number of high-quality jobs decreases, startups are creating jobs and adding value, bringing dynamic change to a variety of industries.

In addition, an innovation growth fund created between 2018 and 2019 to revitalize investment in startups saw contributions of KRW 32 billion ($27 million) from the Seoul Metropolitan Government, close to KRW 280 billion ($240 million) from the Korean government fund, and KRW 497 billion ($423 million) from private venture capital funds. By 2022, the fund plans to create and invest KRW 350 billion ($298 million) in startup funds, KRW 315 billion ($268 million) in the 4th industrial revolution funds such as AI/NT, 300 billion won ($255 million) in bio-funds, and about KRW 1.4 trillion ($1.2 billion) in Internet of Things (IoT) and blockchain-related industries.

In particular, the Seoul Metropolitan Government is creating and expanding an investment-friendly environment to participate as LPs in currently operating the funds for global VCs who are interested in promising startups in Seoul, and to help them adapt to the unfamiliar Seoul investment ecosystem. To expand the startup network, the Seoul government is reviewing various support measures, such as preparing programs in connection with the Seoul Startup Hub.

Thanks to these efforts, Startup Genome, an institution that analyzes the global startup ecosystem, evaluated the value of the startup ecosystem in Seoul at KRW 47 trillion (US $40 billion), which would put Seoul in the top 20 startup ecosystem globally, in its the 2020 Global Startup Ecosystem Report (GSER).

In particular, the report highly evaluated Seoul's strong R&D capabilities and large number of patent applications. These factors make the city an Asian technology innovation hub. Due to active investment of the Seoul government in AI, fintech, and life sciences, the ranking is expected to go up further this year

Hwang Bo-yeon, the deputy mayor for Economic Policy department, said, "We will make Seoul a startup city that can compete with global startup cities, and a city that supports steady growth beyond the startup phase and into the medium-sized company level. We will more than triple the number of unicorns in Seoul from seven at present via step-by-step, customized startup support policies."

By expanding startup contact points, now entrepreneurs in all demographics can think about starting a business

Startup Seoul is evolving from its role of providing business space and government funding to helping with due diligence service, technology commercialization, providing business connections with large corporations, and supporting overseas expansion. Seoul, the capital of Korea, has literally positioned itself as a large startup accelerator.

The biggest characteristic of startup acceleration delivered by the Seoul Metropolitan Government is that it has densely established startup bases throughout Seoul. There are a total of 49 establishments, including a startup incubator, a prototype factory, and an exchange space for startup information (the Seoul Startup Cafe). This number is greater than the number of any franchise companies. (The total number of Popeyes fried chicken outlets, a global franchise company, is now 39 in Korea.) The Seoul government not only provided space throughout the city, it specialized by taking advantage of the characteristics of each base. For example, the Seoul Fintech Lab is located in Yeouido, Korea's Wall Street. Also, the Seoul Bio Hub in Hongneung, is near pharmaceutical and bio research complexes, while the Seoul Food Startup Center is located in Gil-dong, where food culture is developed. These centers provide benefits for startups by having offices there and running relevant startup programs.

Seoul Startup Cafes also operate in shared offices in 11 locations in Seoul so that the citizens can get involved in starting a business. From subway stations to underground sidewalks and buildings located near stations, advantageous spots are secured in terms of expanding the contact points of startups. In March, the SMG started an event called the Seoul Startup Cafe Challenge (linked to discovering ideas and accelerating follow-up) to spread the startup culture that had been shrinking due to COVID-19 and help increase the success rate of startups' founding. Previously, the focus was on getting people interested in entrepreneurship, but now the emphasis has been to put that interest into practice.

Entrepreneurship is also being encouraged among university students. The SMG has designated 34 universities in Seoul (54 in Korea) as Campus Towns and providing comprehensive support for young entrepreneurs in a variety of forms from technical advice to legal/accounting, prototyping, online advertising, marketing, and web/app development consulting. Currently, 646 startup teams are active in Campus Towns alone, and 1,000 teams are expected to receive support by the end of the year. This means that anyone from members of general public who were not interested in starting a business, to college students with rich ideas but minimal capital can easily start a business in every corner of Seoul.

The Seoul Metropolitan Government is also transferring its capacity to incubate startups accumulated in Seoul to overseas markets. A good case in point is the establishment of a base in Vietnam, the Seoul Startup Hub Ho Chi Minh, and fueling the enthusiasm of Korean entrepreneurs who want to start a business in Vietnam. In May, the SMG established an office at the Vietnamese National Startup Support Center, a representative start-up support facility in Ho Chi Minh City. It is operating an accelerating program in cooperation with 25 organizations such as the Ministry of Science and Technology of the municipal government under the main provinces of Vietnam and university innovation centers. Expanding additional bases in other countries is now under consideration. This provides other opportunities for startups dreaming of entering the global market, even with the looming threat of COVID-19.

To achieve scale-up via open innovation with large companies

In July 2017, CEO Han Yun-chang of Korean startup Cochlear.AI, who created a company only with audio artificial intelligence (AI) technology, could not imagine that a single piece of paper submitted to the Seoul Metropolitan Government would increase the company's value as much as it has. The paper was an application for the Connected Car Startup Hackathon, which was organized by Mercedes-Benz Korea and the Seoul Business Agency (SBA), a startup support organization under the Seoul Metropolitan Government in December 2019. Until just before Han applied, he was skeptical of how much the government-hosted event would actually help his business.

CEO Han's company placed second in the hackathon, giving him an unexpected opportunity to visit the headquarters of Daimler Germany AG, the parent company of Mercedes Benz Korea. In February of the following year, he went to Germany to introduce the company (IR) to Daimler executives and received a sheet of paper shortly thereafter. The paper was a proposal and contract for Mercedes Benz to apply Cochlear.AI's audio AI technology. The technology development project with Daimler that started this way came to fruition in the first half of this year.

"It was all thanks to the Connected Car Startup Hackathon that a small Korean startup without any references was able to conduct business with a global company. From Daimler's point of view, it must not have been easy to make a business proposal to a startup that with no reference in Korea, a distant land. In a way, I think the Seoul Metropolitan Government has become our guarantor and lifted all barriers to entry. After we made references with the SMG and Daimler, many companies have inquired about further inquired about cooperation, and investment companies made offers before we even reached out to them," said Han.

Likewise, the SMG is also promoting a project to encourage scaling-up or overseas expansion in connection with large companies so that startups can go through early challenges and get on a growth trajectory. This project is referred to as an "open innovation" strategy to match technological alliances between startups with innovative technologies and large corporations that need to secure future opportunities or create new businesses. In addition to Mercedes-Benz, the SMG has signed a business agreement for joint discovery and development of startups in a broad framework with 20 large corporations, including Procter & Gamble, a Korean distribution giant, Binggrae, OB Beer, and a steel manufacturing company. This year, it plans to match more than 130 startups with large companies and ultimately support their global expansion.

Turn crisis into opportunity with preemptive support during the pandemic

In the midst of the pandemic, Seoul's preemptive start-up support policy stood out. Last August, when venture capital (VC) funds temporarily dried up, the Seoul Metropolitan Government prepared a policy to support 100 promising startups with a growth promotion comprehensive package worth 10 billion won (US $8.5 million). Individual companies that received support of up to KRW 100 million ($85,000) were able to invest in areas such as commercialization, R&D, employment, and market development without facing a liquidity crisis.

Apptest AI, a startup that provides AI-based app testing services, benefited from the growth promotion comprehensive package. By participating early on as a technology partner of Samsung Electronics and Hyundai Motors, it is now possible for Apptest to supply solutions to the world. Jaejoon Hwang, CEO of Apptest AI, said, "While thinking about how to expand the product line for large corporate clients, we received funds from the growth promotion comprehensive package and were able to develop new products on time," he said.

Secure contact points with global investors with Try Everything

Starting with Tech-Rise in 2019, SMG has held an annual event called Try Everything since 2020 to create an opportunity to introduce Startup City Seoul to the world. Try Everything is an event where promising startups, investors, and accelerators from around the world gather.

Last year, a total of 33,450 people (online) attended despite COVID-19, and Alphabet (Google's parent company) Chairman John Hennessy, a global VC, Tim Draper, and Alibaba's founder Ma Win appeared as speakers. In all, 237 global startup ecosystem experts from 10 countries, including the U.S., China, France and Canada, along with 45 investment companies, participated in the event under strict quarantine conditions.

Try Everything, which will be held at Shilla Hotel in Seoul this year, has expanded in scale this year, and more than 400 organizations, including global startup experts from more than 15 countries, global conglomerates, VC/Acc organizations, and startup-specialized institutions, will participate in the event. The event includes about 80 startup programs focused on global expansion, lasting from August 1st to September 30th, in all regions of Seoul. In particular, as it is a stage prepared for startups, an online meet-ups will take place so that investment discussions between startups and investors can take place on a regular basis. The main event will be held online and offline for three days from September 15th to 17th, and everyone can participate from both the official website and YouTube (Try Everything 2021).

Media Contact:

Company/Organization: TRY EVERYTHING OPERATIONS BRANCH

Contact: KIM TAE YOON

Telephone: +82-10-6859-9406 / +82-2-6929-0061

E-mail: ty.kim@gleeduck.com / ask@tryeverything.or.kr

Website: www.tryeverything.or.kr

Address: Seoul Venture hub, 21, Baekbeom-ro 31-gil, Mapo-gu,Seoul,Republic of Korea

SOURCE: Try Everything Operations Branch

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/662719/Seoul-Rises-as-a-Global-Startup-City-Start-up-Friendly-Policies-and-Innovative-Technology-Drive-Rapid-Growth
DGAP-News: Steinhoff International Holdings N.V. / Key word(s): Miscellaneous

Steinhoff International Holdings N.V.: - ADDITIONAL SUPPORT FOR GLOBAL LITIGATION SETTLEMENT IMPLEMENTATION AND AN UPDATE ON IMPLEMENTATION PROCESS



03.09.2021 / 17:25

The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.





STEINHOFF INTERNATIONAL HOLDINGS N.V. - ADDITIONAL SUPPORT FOR GLOBAL LITIGATION SETTLEMENT IMPLEMENTATION AND AN UPDATE ON IMPLEMENTATION PROCESS

Steinhoff International Holdings N.V. ("SIHNV" or the "Company", together with its subsidiaries, "Steinhoff" or the "Steinhoff Group") and the former South African holding company for such subsidiaries, Steinhoff International Holdings Proprietary Limited ("SIHPL"), provide the following updates regarding support for their global litigation settlement proposal and its implementation.

Steinhoff refers to SIHPL's section 155 proposal, originally published on 19 January 2021 and as amended on 16 February, 23 March, and 11 August 2021 (the "S155 Proposal"). Steinhoff also refers to the Dutch composition plan, originally published on 15 February 2021, as subsequently amended on 23 March, 15 June, and 11 August 2021 (the "Composition Plan").

Additional Support for Global Litigation Settlement

SIHNV and SIHPL report the following updates on support for the proposed global settlement:

- Lender consent obtained in relation to Consent Request No.3: As reported in its announcements on 16 July 2021 and 11 August 2021, SIHNV required the consent under the existing finance documents for the revised terms to the global settlement proposal set out in those announcements. On 20 August 2021, Steinhoff distributed "Consent Request No.3" to the facility agents under the relevant Steinhoff finance documents. In summary, Consent Request No.3 sought consent from lenders for the following:

- Request 1: Approval of amendments to the terms of the global litigation settlement proposal to include the terms as announced by Steinhoff on 16 July 2021 and 11 August 2021.

- Request 2 : Approval of the SIHPL finance documents required to be entered into as part of the SIHPL settlement terms to have effect following "Settlement Effective Date" (as defined in the S155 Proposal and Composition Plan), including the new S155 Settlement Note to be issued by SIHPL and the SIHPL Intercreditor Agreement both as described in the S155 Proposal.

- Request 3: Approval of an outline of the steps to be taken in connection with the Settlement Effective Date.

- Request 4: Approval of the amendments required to the SIHNV "Contingent Payment Undertakings" to support the establishment of the Committee of Representatives ("SoP Committee") appointed under the SoP proceedings (as to which, see the 28 May 2021 Steinhoff press release).

Steinhoff has now obtained the necessary approvals and confirms that Consent Request No.3 has been approved by the requisite majorities of financial creditors in respect of each of the consents requested.

- Support of certain SIHPL Contractual Claimants: SIHNV refers to its previous announcements in respect of the proposed settlement terms in respect of the contractual claims against SIHPL by (i) Business Venture Investments No 1499 (RF) (Proprietary) Limited ("BVI"), and (ii) certain current and former Pepkor Holdings Limited ("PPH") managers, being Charl Andre Cronje, Jacobus Hauptfleisch du Toit, Annamie Hansen, Leon Marius Lourens, Estelle Ann Morkel, Jacobus Francois Pienaar, Johan Samuel Van Rooyen and Johan Daniel Wasserfall (together, the "Cronje 7").

The 27 July 2020 Steinhoff announcement outlined SIHPL's proposal that settlement consideration with respect to the BVI and Cronje 7 be entirely in the form of PPH shares at ZAR13.5 per share, provided each claimant agreed to a lock up restriction of three years regarding the sale of such shares from the Settlement Effective Date. The settlement proposals for the BVI and Cronje 7 were subsequently varied and restated in Steinhoff's 11 August 2021 announcement and as set out in the S155 Proposal.

On 31 August 2021, the BVI and Cronje 7 confirmed their irrevocable support of the S155 Proposal subject to the following commercial terms:

(a) an increase in the amount to be acquired by Steinhoff Africa Holdings Proprietary Limited ("SAHPL") of the loan owed by BVI to Pepkor Trading Proprietary Limited by an equivalent in ZAR of EUR 21,200,000 (in addition to the ZAR equivalent of EUR 10,000,000 previously announced) and on the basis previously announced, such payment by SAHPL to be made directly to Pepkor Trading Proprietary Limited, an indirect wholly owned subsidiary of PPH;

(b) payment of EUR500,000 in respect of costs incurred by BVI and the Cronje 7 in connection with their High Court actions against SIHPL and other members of the Steinhoff Group; and

(c) such terms being conditional on the occurrence of the Settlement Effective Date before 31 December 2021.

Update on Scheme Implementation Processes

- SoP Committee Process: Today, the supervisory judges in the Dutch SoP proceedings opened the creditors' meeting to discuss the claims as submitted in the procedure and to consider the Composition Plan. In the meeting, the supervisory-judges (rechters-commissarissen) decided to adjourn the meeting until Wednesday 8 September 2021 at 13.30 CET. At that adjourned meeting there will be a further session in which the SoP Committee will most likely conclude by casting its vote on the Composition Plan. Assuming there is a positive decision supporting the Composition Plan on 8 September 2021, the outcome will then need to be considered by the Dutch Court in a subsequent confirmation hearing.

- S155 Creditors Meetings: The creditors' meetings in the SIHPL S155 process will take place on Monday, 6 September 2021.

Further Information

Further updates will be provided as and when appropriate.

Claimants will be able to review additional information and submit their claim details on the following website: www.SteinhoffSettlement.com.

The Company has a primary listing on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and a secondary listing on the JSE Limited.

Stellenbosch, South Africa

3 September 2021
Arsenopyrite-bearing quartz-carbonate veins intersected in hole J-21-020, drilled 460 m from any previous hole and 1,100 m from high-grade discovery hole J-21-011

Jupiter's expanded, 4,300 m Phase I program now complete, with assays pending for 13 of 21 holes and evidence of mineralizing system encountered in all 21 holes

Drilling now underway on intrusion-related Valley gold target, Rogue property.

VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / September 3, 2021 / SNOWLINE GOLD CORP. (CSE:SGD)(OTCQB:SNWGF) (the "Company" or "Snowline") is pleased to provide an update on its exploration activities on its flagship Einarson and Rogue projects. Holes J-21-020 and J-21-021, the final two holes of an expanded 4,300 m phase I drill program on Einarson's Jupiter zone, intersected sulphide-bearing quartz-carbonate veins in a 460-metre step-out testing what may be a parallel structural corridor (Figure 2). Assay results from these holes are not anticipated for some time due to laboratory back-logs, but the Company recognizes the presence of such mineralization to be a significant positive indication of the potential of the Jupiter zone.

"With such a big step-out, we were swinging for the fences," said Scott Berdahl, CEO and Director of Snowline. "While we don't yet have assays for these holes, it's starting to look a bit like a home run. This hole hit similar veins, alteration and gold pathfinder minerals to those of our recent J-21-011 discovery hole some 1.1 km to its south. It is almost as good as we could hope for. This caps off a very successful Phase I drill program at Jupiter, with exciting intervals already in hand and most assay results still forthcoming. We look forward to returning to Jupiter next year"

Hole J-21-020, drilled at an azimuth of 250 and dipping -50, encountered multiple zones of arsenopyrite and pyrite including a 9.2 m zone of trace to high concentrations of arsenopyrite from 101.5 m to 110.7 m downhole, with abundant quartz veining from 106.5 m to 110.0 m (Figures 1, 3 & 4).

Hole J-21-021 was drilled from the same pad as J-21-020, also at an azimuth of 250, but with a steeper dip of -75. It encountered a similar zone of quartz veining from 98-105 m depth with abundant pyrite, but it lacked obvious occurrences of arsenopyrite.

Jupiter is thought to represent an epizonal orogenic gold system. It is one of nine target zones prospective for orogenic and/or Carlin-style gold mineralization currently recognized on Snowline Gold's 70%-owned, district-scale Einarson project. Adjacent projects Rogue and Ursa are prospective for intrusion-related gold and sediment-hosted gold and base metal deposits. No resources nor reserves have been calculated on any of these targets, and while current results are encouraging, they do not guarantee that economically viable ore bodies will be encountered at Jupiter or elsewhere. Readers are cautioned that without assay results, the true significance of the intersections reported herein is uncertain.

ROGUE PROJECT DRILLING

A 600-metre, phase I drilling program has commenced at the Valley zone on the Rogue project, located south of Einarson (Figure 5). This drilling targets intrusion-related gold mineralization in sheeted veining and gold-bearing structures within and around a newly-discovered intrusion thought to belong to the prolific Tombstone plutonic suite.

Snowline CEO Berdahl continued, "With the drill now turning on the first-ever drill test of the Valley zone, we're optimistic that further discovery awaits Snowline Gold this season."

QUALIFIED PERSON

Information in this release has been prepared and approved by Scott Berdahl, P. Geo., Chief Executive Officer of Snowline and a Qualified Person for the purposes of National Instrument 43-101.

ABOUT SNOWLINE GOLD CORP.

Snowline Gold Corp. is a Yukon Territory focused gold exploration company with a seven-project portfolio covering >90,000 ha. The Company is exploring its flagship 72,000 ha Einarson and Rogue gold projects in the highly prospective yet underexplored Selwyn Basin. Snowline's project portfolio sits within the prolific Tintina Gold Province, host to multiple million-ounce-plus gold mines and deposits including Kinross' Fort Knox mine, Newmont's Coffee deposit, and Victoria Gold's Eagle Mine. Snowline's first-mover land position provides a unique opportunity for investors to be part of multiple discoveries and the creation of a new gold district.

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD

Scott Berdahl, MSc, MBA, PGeo

CEO & Director

For further information, please contact:

Snowline Gold Corp.

+1-778-650-5485

info@snowlinegold.com

CAUTIONARY NOTE REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

This news release contains certain forward-looking statements, including statements about the Company reviewing its newly acquired project portfolio to maximize value, reviewing options for its non-core assets, including targeted exploration and joint venture arrangements, conducting follow-up prospecting and mapping this summer and plans for exploring and expanding a new greenfield, district-scale gold system. Wherever possible, words such as "may", "will", "should", "could", "expect", "plan", "intend", "anticipate", "believe", "estimate", "predict" or "potential" or the negative or other variations of these words, or similar words or phrases, have been used to identify these forward-looking statements. These statements reflect management's current beliefs and are based on information currently available to management as at the date hereof.

Forward-looking statements involve significant risk, uncertainties and assumptions. Many factors could cause actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially from the results discussed or implied in the forward-looking statements. Such factors include, among other things: risks related to uncertainties inherent in drill results and the estimation of mineral resources; and risks associated with executing the Company's plans and intentions. These factors should be considered carefully, and readers should not place undue reliance on the forward-looking statements. Although the forward-looking statements contained in this news release are based upon what management believes to be reasonable assumptions, the Company cannot assure readers that actual results will be consistent with these forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this news release, and the Company assumes no obligation to update or revise them to reflect new events or circumstances, except as required by law.

SOURCE: Snowline Gold Corp.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/662713/Snowline-Gold-Intersects-Promising-Quartz-Sulphide-Veins-in-460-Metre-Step-Out-at-Jupiter-Commences-Phase-I-Drilling-at-Valley
Article L233-8-II of the French Commercial Code

Article 223-16 of the General Regulations of the AMF (French Financial Markets Authority)

Regulatory News:

ABIONYX Pharma (Paris:ABNX):

Market: Euronext Paris, Compartment C

ISIN code: FR0012616852

Date Number of shares

outstanding Total voting rights Total gross (1) Total net (2) August 31, 2021 24 642 664 24 642 664 24 368 559

(1) The total number of gross (or "theoretical") voting rights is used as the basis for calculating threshold crossings. In accordance with Article 223-11 of the AMF General Regulations, this number is calculated on the basis of all shares to which voting rights are attached, including those for which voting rights have been suspended.

(2) The total number of net (or "exercisable at a Shareholders' Meeting") voting rights is calculated without taking into account shares for which voting rights have been suspended. It is released in order to ensure that the public is properly informed, in accordance with the recommendation made by the AMF on 17 July 2007.

About ABIONYX Pharma

ABIONYX Pharma is a new generation biotech company that aims to contribute to health through innovative therapies in indications where there is no effective or existing treatment, even the rarest ones. Thanks to its partners in research, medicine, biopharmaceuticals and shareholding, the company innovates on a daily basis to propose drugs for the treatment of renal and ophthalmological diseases, or new HDL vectors used for targeted drug delivery.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210903005332/en/

Contacts:

NewCap

Investor relations

Louis-Victor Delouvrier

abionyx@newcap.eu

+33 (0)1 44 71 98 53

NewCap

Media relations

Nicolas Merigeau

abionyx@newcap.eu

+33 (0)1 44 71 94 98
Data From Their OTT/CTV Platform and Proprietary Header Bidding Solution Cite Publisher Revenue Gains in H1

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Omnichannel ad tech platform and ad server Smaato published its H1 2021 Trend Report, celebrating that their publishers have not only recovered from the pandemic, but rallied.

The report demonstrates ad spend spiked on the platform in 2021 and global eCPMs are up 7.4% YOY. Not only has the industry's digital adoption trend been reflected on Smaato's platform, Smaato's own data also supports the acceleration of OTT/CTV spend, a shift toward header bidding solutions and the importance of contextual targeting in their latest report.

Smaato's publisher monetization options run the gamut, and with the change in user behavior here to stay, the focus on experiences across channels seems to be paying off. As one of the only OTT/CTV platforms to offer dynamic ad breaks and bidding by ad pod, ad slot and auction type, Smaato reports higher eCPMs for ad podding, offering more evidence that delivering experiences delivers results.

Alongside Smaato's built-in Dynamic Ad Insertion (DAI) and Server Side Ad Insertion (SAI) capabilities for OTT, publishers can include platform, genre, series, season, and even episode information in the bid request.

"Advertisers know what they're bidding on, and publishers can see which ad pods, which ad slot and even which episode drives the highest revenue," says Smaato General Manager Matthew Deets. "The win-win comes down to personalizing the experience for the end user."

Another highlight in H1 is Smaato's in-app header bidding solution. Smaato's Unified Bidding is built into their SDK. The report cites publishers using Unified Bidding outperformed the traditional waterfall. In June of this year alone, Unified Bidding in the Smaato SDK outperformed both Android and iOS SDK integrations for won auctions by up to 10x.

"When you look at the data, it's clear how a feature-rich platform focused on user experiences makes an impact on the bottom line," says Deets. "Now that Smaato has joined forces with Verve Group, we can only boost our ability to create personalized experiences for users to drive revenue for publishers."

Download Smaato's H1 Trend report for more of the latest industry trends, insights and data from the Smaato platform.

Smaato's digital ad tech platform is the only omnichannel ad server and monetization solution with controls to make monetization simple. Publishers can bring their first-party data and manage all inventory in one place. Marketers get access to the highest-quality inventory so they can reach audiences around the world and on any device. Headquartered in San Francisco, Smaato is part of Verve Group, a Media and Games Invest (MGI) company, with additional offices in Hamburg, New York, Beijing, and Singapore. Learn more at http://www.smaato.com.

Carrie Pittman

marketing@smaato.com

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spending-on-the-smaato-digital-ad.png

Spending on the Smaato Digital Ad Tech Platform Rallies in 2021

Indexed Ad Spending on the Smaato Platform Evidence of Publisher Comeback in 2021
Strong organic growth and outperformance in the automotive market

Current Operating Income (COI) of 9.8% of sales

Net income of 6.6% of sales

Improvement of liquidity and financial structure ratios

Net Sales Current operating income Shareholders' equity Cashflow from

operating activities 193.7 m 19.1 m

(i.e. 9.8% of sales) 131.0 m 7.9 m

In million euros S1 2021 S1 2020 Net sales 193.7 84.0 Ebitda 28.9 8.3 Current operating income 19.1 1.4 Operating income 18.8 0.6 Net income Group share 12.7 -1.4 Cashflow from operating activities 7.9 8.5 Net financial debt 101.6 70.1 Equity 131.0 73.4

Revenues for the first half of 2021 reached 193.7m, up 130% compared to the first half of 2020 (+52% in organic growth).

Sales in the Automotive Division are up 55% at constant perimeter and exchange rates to the end of June 2021 (46% on a reported basis).

At constant perimeter and exchange rates, the two main businesses performed as follows:

 The "Protection Systems" business grew by 70%, confirming the DELFINGEN Industry Group's strategic positioning as a key player in the transition to sustainable mobility with hybrid and electric vehicles.

 The "Fluid Transfer Tubing" business grew by 32%, despite the shortage of electronic chips that brought several customer plants in North America to a standstill.

 The "Logistics and assembly services" business was down 55%, following the sale of the Tangiers site in December 2020.

Sales in the Industrial Market increased by 40% at constant exchange rates (+30% on a reported basis):

 Drossbach North America sales rose by 60% (+46% on a reported basis);

 The "Electrical and Thermal Insulation" business grew by 34% (+24% on a reported basis);

 The "Technical Straps and Belts" activity grew by 4% (same variation in published data).

Sales from the Schlemmer perimeter, which will be fully integrated as of January 1, 2021, amounted to 73.6 million at the end of June, representing 38% of the Group's total sales. The level of activity is higher than expected at the time of the acquisition.

The effect of exchange rates on sales was a negative 7.5 million.

Profit from recurring operations amounted to 19.1m in the first half of 2021 (or 9.8% of revenues), mainly impacted by:

 The full integration of the ex-Schlemmer entities, earnings accretion ;

 The increase in the price of the main raw materials (4.0m);

 The adaptation of cost structures

Other operating results include a loss of 2.6m on the sell off of the "technical straps and belts" activity, achieved on June 26, 2021, and a profit of 2.6m relating to the agreement by the US administration to waive the repayment of a PPP loan granted in 2020 to address the covid crisis.

Net financial expense was 1.6 million, compared with 1.8 million in the first half of 2020.

Net income (group share) was 12.7 million, compared to 1.4 million in the first half of 2020.

Net financial debt amounted to 101.6 million at June 30, 2021, compared to 103.7 million at December 31, 2020. Investments amounted to 6.3m, while working capital requirements increased by 17.5m. The Gearing is 78% compared to 96% at June 30, 2020, the leverage ratio is 1.79 compared to 2.98 at June 30, 2020.

In a market context that remains volatile (variability of demand, shortage of materials and components, soaring purchase prices, logistical difficulties, development of the COVID crisis in Asia, etc.), The DELFINGEN Industry Group is doing its utmost to adapt the management of its operations in order to strengthen its leadership as a privileged partner of its customers by offering a unique service and quality.

Under these conditions, DELFINGEN expects a lower performance in the second half of 2021 than in the first half. Barring a more unfavorable market environment, sales in 2021 are expected to reach 360 million with an operating margin of 8%.

The development of hybrid and electric engines, as well as the connectivity of cars, makes the electrical wiring the real nervous system of the vehicle. DELFINGEN's mission is to protect it by providing more innovative solutions with higher added value.

*source: IHS

"Safe Harbor" statement

Although DELFINGEN's management believes that these forward-looking statements are reasonable as of the date of this document, investors are cautioned that forward-looking statements are subject to numerous factors, risks and uncertainties, many of which are difficult to predict and generally beyond DELFINGEN's control, that could cause actual results and events to differ materially from those expressed or implied in the forward-looking statements.

DELFINGEN, a global leader in protection

and routing solutions for electric and fluid on-board networks

WWW.DELFINGEN.COM

EURONEXT Growth Paris

Code ISIN: FR 0000054132

Mnemonique: ALDEL Next release: November 5, 2021

Publication: Third Quarter 2021 Revenues

Contact: Mr. Christophe Clerc: +33 (0)3.81.90.73.00

------------------------

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LAS VEGAS, NV / ACCESSWIRE / September 3, 2021 / Virtual Medical International, Inc. (OTC:QEBR), a wellness company in the hemp-derived CBD sector, today announced four new appointees to its Board Of Directors.

Virtual Medical International operates in the business of medical-grade CBD oil production and distribution and is in the process of finalizing agreements to complete acquisitions in this sector. These acquisitions will include CBD-related products and farming operations related to the harvesting and processing of such products.

Anthony Moore, the Company's Chairman of the Board, commented, "We are thrilled to welcome Kenneth, Aubrey, Chene, and Daniel to our Board of Directors. Together, they bring decades of experience in areas critical to an emerging public company in the health and wellness sector; clinical and functional medicine, corporate finance, and securities law."

Larson Elmore, CEO and Director of the Company, went on to say, "I am eager to begin working with this team. We are all committed to establishing VMI as a trusted leader in the wellness sector, and I know their insight will be invaluable as we prepare to execute our business plan."

Kenneth Denos, Director and General Counsel

Mr. Denos is an expert in securities law and investment advisory. As Chairman of Acadia Law Group, he oversees the operations of a consumer and corporate finance law firm with more than 6,000 clients around the world; is a founder and principal of Outsize Capital Ltd., an international corporate finance advisory firm based in London; and currently serving as Director of Equus Total Return, Inc. (NYSE: EQS), a non-diversified, closed-end management investment company.

He has worked in the private equity and advisory industry for his entire career and has served as a principal and/or advisor to private and public companies and funds in the Middle East, Europe, Africa, and North America. Mr. Denos earned dual Bachelor of Science degrees in Business Finance and Political Science, as well as an MBA and a JD from the University of Utah.

Dr. Aubery Oliver, Director

Dr. Oliver is a Functional Medicine Physician, treating patients and lecturing on preventive, regenerative, complementary, and alternative health. He has been a strong advocate for youth empowerment throughout his 30+ year career and has developed many programs that support vulnerable and disenfranchised children. He practices bioenergetics therapy which helps many find alternatives to surgery and pharmaceutical therapy, and can reverse a variety of disorders.

Dr. Oliver has spent the last 15-years in Jamaica developing novel therapies, nutraceuticals, and product formulations to address a variety of conditions. He currently serves on the board of Eternal Farms, one the largest growers of sacramental Ganja with over 12000 acres of land, and has served on the advisory board of Mydicine Brands Inc. (OTC: NLBIF) (CSE: NLB), and as the Director of Research and Development, Nassential, Ltd., London, U.K.

Dr. Daniel Reshef Director

Dr. Daniel Reshef is an Executive Director with substantial clinical experience and demonstrated history of strategic work in the pharmaceuticals industry. Skilled in Immuno-Oncology, Oncology, Biomarkers, Epidemiology, Vaccines, Ophthalmology, and Clinical Pharmacology. He is Board Certified in Ophthalmology and has also had considerable success in numerous entrepreneurial ventures over the past 20 years.

Throughout his career, he has amassed extensive experience in clinical, industry, and public health settings, technical skills, project management and data quality. Currently serving as Head of Therapeutic Area at Takeda Pharmaceuticals, has also worked at Roche, Genentech and served as Therapeutic Area Lead - Immune Oncology at Bristol-Myers. Dr. Reshef earned his MD from Hadassah Medical School Jerusalem, Israel, and his MPH and PhD in Epidemiology from Johns Hopkins University.

Chene Gardner, Director, CFO

Mr. Gardner is the founder and President of Chene C. Gardner & Associates, Inc., a company that specializes in assisting public entities with their filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. He also serves as CFO of Acadia Law Group with Mr. Denos.

Before forming his company, Mr. Gardner he held Financial Controller positions for several companies, including MCC Global NV, an international investment advisory firm based in London. He began his career as an auditor with Deloitte & Touche LLP, serving clients in the banking, manufacturing, and retail industries. He earned his Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Accounting from Weber State University.

About Virtual Medical International

Virtual Medical International's business model is designed to help consumers improve the health and quality of their lives by making available an array of high-quality, CBD-centric products consistent with a healthy lifestyle. To that end, Virtual Medical formed Amsterdam Cafe as a wholly-owned subsidiary to become a comprehensive, vertically integrated organization within the CBD whole health sector, with plans to acquire and open CDB Stores across the U.S.A. and Europe.

For further information:

Contact:

Larson Elmore

Phone: (216) 345-4567

Email: lelmore@virtualmedicalinternational.com

Forward-Looking Statements

Legal Notice Regarding Forward-Looking Statements in this news release that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties. Forward-looking statements are based on current facts and analyses and other information that are based on forecasts of future results, estimates of amounts not yet determined, and assumptions of management. Forward-looking statements are generally, but not always, identified by the words "expects", "plans", "anticipates", "believes", "intends", "estimates", "projects", "aims", "potential", "goal", "objective", "prospective", and similar expressions or that events or conditions "will", "would", "may", "can", "could" or "should" occur.

Actual results may differ materially from those currently anticipated due to a number of factors beyond the reasonable control of the Company. It is important to note that actual outcomes and the Company's actual results could differ materially from those in such forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially include misinterpretation of data, the Company's ability to raise financing for operations, breach by parties with whom we have contracted, and the possible inability to maintain qualified employees or consultants.

SOURCE: Virtual Medical International

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/662753/Virtual-Medical-International-Expands-Its-Board-Of-Directors-Welcoming-Experts-In-Functional-And-Clinical-Medicine-Accounting-Financial-Markets-And-Securities-Law
BRUSSELS (dpa-AFX) - The Switzerland stock market closed weak on Friday, in line with most of the markets across Europe, as uncertainty about the pace of global economic recovery due to surging coronavirus cases weighed on sentiment. Save for a few minutes at the start, the benchmark SMI was down in the red today. The index ended the session with a loss of 80.62 points or 0.65% at 12,351.84, recovering some ground from the day's low of 12,296.12. Among the stocks in the SMI, only Alcon, Swisscom and ABB managed to close on the positive side. All the three stocks closed with marginal gains. Richemont declined 2.5%, Swatch Group ended 1.8% down and Novartis shed 1.28%, while Sika, Lonza Group, Geberit and Zurich Insurance Group lost 1 to 1.1%. Credit Suisse and UBS Group both ended lower by about 0.5%. Swiss Re, Swiss Life Holding and Holcim shed 0.5 to 0.8%. Roche Holding declined marginally. In the Mid Price Index, Temenos Group shed 3.63%. Dufry declined nearly 3% and Tecan Group ended lower by 2.65%. Straumann Holding, Julius Baer, Flugahfen Zurich, Sonova and AMS lost 1.25 to 1.85%. Logitech and Cembra Money Bank gained 1.35% and 1.1%, respectively. BB Biotech and VAT Group posted modest gains. According to Swiss health officials, Switzerland is being hit by a fourth wave of the coronavirus with a 'very worrying' rise in infections. The country reported 3,106 new cases in the last 24 hours, more than a 7-day average of 2,531. 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.
After a Texas District Court ruled to allow smokable Hemp in Texas, GGII will aggressively pursue Master Distributors to capitalize on the $400 million per year in potential sales. Texas is the second-largest populous state in the USA and first in Convenience Store count. GGII wants to be first-to-market selling Hemp, Herb, CBG, and CBD Cigarettes, Hemp Blunts, and other smokable hemp products, furthering GGII's goal of Disrupting Tobacco.

What are the top 5 reasons why Texas selling smokable Hemp is essential?

Texas has a potential of $400 million in yearly sales of smokable Hemp Texas is the second-largest territory in population in the USA Texas has over 15,000 convenience stores that are now open to selling smokable Hemp, including Hemp CBD Cigarettes GGII's wholly-owned subsidiary, Hempacco, already has a distributor in Houston, Texas GGII can place their HempBox vending machines in smoke shops and supermarkets in Texas, selling their Hemp blunts, CBD Cigarettes, and other smokable hemp products

San Diego, California--(Newsfile Corp. - September 3, 2021) - Green Globe International Inc. (OTC Pink: GGII) ("GGII") reacts swiftly perusing Master Distributors in Texas after the 261st District Court ruled to allow the sale and distribution of Smokable Hemp in the State of Texas, furthering GGII's wholly-owned subsidiary, Hempacco, Co. Inc., the mission of Disrupting Tobacco.





Texas Opens Hemp CBD Cigarettes 1



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"Texas' ban on smokable Hemp was thrown out Monday in a watershed decision that opens the nation's second-largest state to a hemp market that could generate $400 million in annual sales by 2025," according to Hemp Industry Daily.

"This is one of the most important legal decisions for the future of smokable hemp and hemp CBD cigarettes," said Sandro Piancone, CEO and Chairman of GGII. "This not only opens the state of Texas for our products, but it also sends a clear message to other states that are thinking of making smokable Hemp illegal in their state. We landed our first distributor in Texas eight months ago but had to wait on the courts to decide before we could open for business. GGII and Hempacco will follow the law in every state because we're confident that the Hemp Bill will prevail as the law of the land," concluded Sandro Piancone.





Texas Opens Hemp CBD Cigarettes 2



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GGII's wholly-owned subsidiary, Hempacco, Co. Inc., is in the business of Disrupting the $1 Trillion Tobacco industry with smoking alternatives, including smokable hemp products line Hemp CBD Cigarettes and Hemp Blunt rolling paper. Hempacco has a Research and Development department and a manufacturing plant in San Diego where they manufacture high-speed machine-made hemp cigarettes using their intellectual property. GGII also owns Real Stuff Cigarettes and partners with other companies to develop and launch different hemp cigarette brands. Hempacco and its joint venture partners can start shipping their hemp cigarettes to the state with the Texas news.

Forward-Looking and Cautionary Statements

This news release may include forward-looking statements including opinions, assumptions, estimates, the Company's assessment of future plans and operations, including but not limited to information concerning a potential combination with Hempacco and the timing thereof. When used in this document, the words "will," "anticipate," "believe," "estimate," "expect," "intent," "may," "project," "should," and similar expressions are intended to be among the statements that identify forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements are founded based on expectations and assumptions made by the Company. Forward-looking statements are subject to a wide range of risks and uncertainties. Although the Company believes that the expectations represented by such forward-looking statements are reasonable, there can be no assurance that such expectations will be realized. Any number of important factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements including, but not limited to regulatory and third party approvals not being obtained in the manner or timing anticipated; the ability to implement corporate strategies; the state of domestic capital markets; the ability to obtain financing; changes in general market conditions; industry conditions and events; and other factors more fully described from time to time in the reports and filings made by the Company with OTC Markets Group, Inc. or the securities regulatory authorities. Except as required by applicable laws, the Company does not undertake any obligation to publicly update or revise forward-looking statements. We intend that all forward-looking statements be subject to the safe-harbor provisions of relevant securities laws and considered 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.

# # #

About Green Global International Inc. (GGII) :

Green Blog International, or ggii, is Disrupting Tobacco's nearly $1 Trillion industry with herb and hemp-based alternatives to nicotine cigarettes by manufacturing and marketing consumer goods, including CBG and CBD Hemp cigarettes. The Company owns and licenses intellectual property, has conducted extensive research and development, and is engaged in manufacturing and selling smokable Hemp brands, including The Real Stuff Hemp Smokables. Hempacco Co., Inc.'s operating segments include joint-venture private label agreements and sales, Intellectual Property licensing, and the development and sales of inhouse brands using patented counter displays as well as six hundred Kiosk vending machines called HempBoxes.

Add Your Name to The Hempacco Investor Email List

To be added to GGII - Hempacco's investor email list to be kept apprised of all upcoming IR activities, please subscribe using this link: https://newsroom.newsfilecorp.com/lists/8020/490, or for additional information, please call Investor Relations Partners at 323-380-4500.

You can purchase The Real Stuff Hemp Cigarettes by clicking here or copy-paste https://www.realstuffsmokables.com to your browser and get free samples of our Hemp Blunts. Wholesale distributors and retailers get wholesale pricing by calling (775) 473-1201.

Company Contact:

Founder Sandro Piancone or

Investor Relations

IR@hempaccopackaging.com

Here are other Press Release headlines from GGII - Hempacco:

Green Globe Intl. - Hempacco Licenses Hemp Cigarette Manufacturing Technology to CBD Cigarette Company

Green Globe Intl. Chairman, Dr. Stuart Titus, to Serve as Panelist at 7th CBD Outlook Conference

Green Globe Intl. Signs LOI to Acquire Patent to Make Marijuana Paper

Green Globe Intl. - HempBox Vending Partners with Industry Giant SUZOHAPP to Rollout HempBoxes Across Its Network

Green Globe Intl. - Hempacco Partners with the Pelican Group to Rollout HempBoxesTM Nationwide

Green Globe Intl. - Hempacco Appoints Industry Veteran Dr. Stuart Titus as Chairman of The Board of Directors

GGII Announces 20 Billion Share Reduction in Issued and Outstanding Common Stock

GGII Green Globe - Hempacco to Be Featured in New Hemp and Cannabis Documentary Debuting at Sonoma Film Festival

GGII Green Globe - Hempacco Announces New Initiative to License Their Technology to Manufacture Cannabis Cigarettes

GGII Green Globe - Hempacco Receives Purchase Order for 250,000 packs of CBD Hemp Cigarettes from Ace & Axle, The Largest in Company History

GGII Green Globe - Hempacco launches CalivibesDelta8.com & Signs Joint Venture Agreement to launch Calivibes Delta8 Hemp Cigarettes with a 50% Ownership Stake

GGII Green Globe - Hempacco to Produce a Portfolio of Flavored Hemp Paper Wraps or Hemp Blunts, with the First Order of $230,000

GGII Green Globe - Hempacco Files Patent Application for Cigarette Filter Infusion Technology for Cannabis, Tobacco, Herb, and Hemp Cigarettes, Furthering Their Mission of Disrupting Tobacco

Green Globe - GGII Licenses Patent for Terpene Spraying Technology from Open Book Extracts, Furthering their Mission of Disrupting Tobacco

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/95544
WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Crude oil prices drifted lower on Friday, pushing the most active crude futures contract to a weak close, amid worries about demand after data showed a much smaller than expected increase in U.S. non-farm payrolls growth in the month of August. The U.S. Labor Department's closely watched monthly employment report showed non-farm payroll employment rose by 235,000 jobs in August after soaring by an upwardly revised 1.053 million jobs in July. Economists had expected employment to jump by about 750,000 jobs compared to the spike of 943,000 jobs originally reported for the previous month. West Texas Intermediate crude oil futures ended down by $0.70 or about 1% at $69.29 a barrel. Despite today's loss, WTI Crude futures gained 0.8% in the week. Brent crude futures were down $0.55 or 0.74% at $72.48 a barrel a little while ago. Oil prices moved higher earlier in the session on reports saying a slow recovery for the U.S. Gulf Coast export and refining hub from the impact of Hurricane Ida could result in a drop in oil stockpile. Recent data from Energy Information Administration showing oil stockpiles in the U.S. dropped by over 7 million barrels last week contributed as well to oil's uptick earlier in the day. A report from Baker Hughes said the number of active U.S. rigs drilling for oil dropped by 16 at 394 this week. The total active U.S. rig count, which includes those drilling for natural gas, also fell by 11 to stand at 497, the report said. 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.
FORT LAUDERDALE, FL / ACCESSWIRE / September 3, 2021 / Swisher Hygiene Inc. (the "Company") today announced that it will make a second and final distribution of approximately $2.096 million to its stockholders of record as of September 13, 2021, payable September 17, 2021, at the rate of $0.1185 per share of its outstanding common stock, $.001 par value.

As previously reported in a Current Report on Form 8-K, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC") on August 31, 2021, the Company, on August 31, 2021, filed a motion with the Court of Chancery of the State of Delaware (the "Delaware Court") seeking the Delaware Court's approval to make a second and final distribution to the Company's stockholders (the "Second and Final Distribution"). On September 2, 2021, the Delaware Court granted the Company's motion.

Following the Delaware Court's approval of the Company's request for a Second and Final Distribution, on September 3, 2021, the Company's Board of Directors considered and approved a final distribution to the Company's stockholders of record as of September 13, 2021, of approximately US$2.096 million, calculated at the rate of US$0.1185 per share of the Company's outstanding common stock, $.001 par value ("Common Stock"), payable on September 17, 2021 (the "Payable Date"), and payable in US dollars. Canadian stockholders of the Company will be paid in Canadian dollars converted at the prevailing exchange rate determined by the Company's transfer agent, TSX Trust Company.

Because this is the Company's final distribution, immediately following the transfer of the full amount of the Second and Final Distribution to the Company's Transfer Agent, the Company will have no remaining assets. At the conclusion of its winding up and liquidation, the Company intends to terminate the registration of its Common Stock with the Securities and Exchange Commission and thereafter file with the Delaware Court a motion to terminate the Company's existence.

The Company believes the Second and Final Distribution announced today will, for U.S. federal income tax purposes, be considered a liquidating distribution and be treated as a return of capital made pursuant to the Company's winding up and liquidation. As such, for U.S. federal income tax purposes, U.S. holders of our common stock generally will recognize a capital gain or loss equal to the difference between the amount of cash distributed to the U.S. holder and its adjusted tax basis in the Company's common stock. Because this is the Company's Final Distribution, any gain or loss generally will be recognized in the stockholder's current tax year.

Stockholders should consult their own tax advisors for tax advice in connection with the winding up and liquidation. We have not requested a ruling from the U.S. Internal Revenue Service or any other tax authority with respect to the anticipated tax consequences of our winding up and liquidation, and we will not seek an opinion of counsel with respect to the anticipated tax consequences of any liquidating distributions.

In the event any stockholder wishes to update its mailing address or does not receive a distribution as expected and wishes to have a check reissued, it should contact the Company's Transfer Agent, TSX Trust, by email at tmxeinvestorservices@tmx.com, or by telephone 1-866-600-5869 (in North America) or 416-342-1091 (International). Failure by such stockholder to contact the Transfer Agent on or prior to the fifth anniversary of the September 13, 2021 record date for the distribution will result in forfeiture of any entitlement to payment of the distribution that would otherwise be payable to such stockholder.

Cautionary Statement on Forward-Looking Information

All statements other than statements of historical fact contained in this press release constitute "forward-looking information" or "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the U.S. federal securities laws and the Securities Act (Ontario) and are based on the expectations, estimates and projections of management as of the date of this press release unless otherwise stated. All statements other than historical facts are, or may be, deemed to be forward looking statements. The words "plans," "expects," "is expected," "scheduled," "estimates," or "believes," or similar words or variations of such words and phrases or statements that certain actions, events or results "may," "could," "would," "might," or "will be taken," "occur," and similar expressions identify forward-looking statements.

Forward-looking statements are necessarily based upon a number of estimates and assumptions that, while considered reasonable by the Company as of the date of such statements, are inherently subject to significant business, economic and competitive uncertainties and contingencies. All of these assumptions have been derived from information currently available to the Company including information obtained by the Company from third-party sources. These assumptions may prove to be incorrect in whole or in part. All of the forward-looking statements made in this press release are qualified by the above cautionary statements. The forward-looking information set forth in this press release is subject to various assumptions, risks, uncertainties and other factors that are difficult to predict and which could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in the forward-looking information. The Company disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements to reflect subsequent events and circumstances, except to the extent required by applicable law.

About Swisher Hygiene Inc.

Swisher Hygiene Inc. closed on the sale of its U.S. operations on November 2, 2015 and since then has had no remaining operating assets. On Friday, May 27, 2016, the Company filed a Certificate of Dissolution. Pursuant to the Plan of Dissolution, and under Delaware law, the dissolution of the Company was effective as of 6:00 p.m. Eastern Time on May 27, 2016. Under Delaware law, the dissolved corporation is continued for three (3) years from the date on which the Certificate of Dissolution was filed, unless extended by direction of the Court of Chancery, to enable the Company's directors to wind up the affairs of the corporation, including the discharge of the Company's liabilities and to distribute to the stockholders any remaining assets. The Court of Chancery has extended the Company's corporate existence several times, most recently through December 31, 2021. As noted above, however, with the Second and Final Distribution the Company has no remaining assets or known liabilities, and it is expected that its existence will be terminated by order of the Delaware Court prior to December 31, 2021.

For Further Information regarding stockholders' distributions, Please Contact the Company's Transfer Agent:

TSX Trust Company

Email: tmxeinvestorservices@tmx.com

Telephone 1-866-600-5869 (in North America) or 416-342-1091 (International)

Investor Contact :

Garrett Edson, ICR

Phone: (203) 682-8331

SOURCE: Swisher Hygiene Inc.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/662791/Swisher-Hygiene-Inc-Announces-Second-and-Final-Distribution-of-Approximately-2096-Million-to-its-Stockholders-of-Record-as-of-September-13-2021-Payable-September-17-2021-at-the-Rate-of-01185-Per-Share
PENTICTON, BC / ACCESSWIRE / September 3, 2021 / EastWest Bioscience Inc. ("EastWest" or "Company") (TSXV:EAST), reports that it is adding self-storage to its already diverse revenue streams through a new subsidiary, 1290185 B.C. LTD, ("185"), which is an early stage company intending to build high-quality self-storage facilities across Western Canada.

EastWest recognizes that its Penticton facility is currently grossly under utilized and believes that, due to increasing demand in the BC interior, self-storage will be an efficient use for the facility. Further, the Company recognizes that it does not have the in-house expertise to operate a self-storage facility and it is therefore obtaining the required resources to carry out its plan to monetize its existing facility. EastWest will provide further details as the self-storage facility is completed, anticipated for Q4 2021.

Rodney Gelineau, President and CEO of EastWest commented, "We are excited to enter into this growing and lucrative line of business. Self storage demand has increased substantially over the past decade and we feel we are ideally positioned to add this diversified business line to our growing offering of consumer-driven businesses."

About EastWest Bioscience Group

EastWest Bioscience is a vertically integrated wellness company with a multitude of business units and assets that allow for seed-to-sale supply chain management. We source our raw material, process, manufacture, test, brand, market, and distribute our products to our customers in Canada, the United States, and beyond. The Company owns and operates retail and manufacturing subsidiaries.

The Company's retail subsidiary is the award winning, Canadian, natural health retail franchise - the Sangster's Health Centre's - with over 40 years of legacy in the health and wellness industry. Sangster's goal is to provide natural choices through quality products and educated advice for a healthy lifestyle. Sangster's Health Centres occupies a unique position in the industry, the stores provide vast knowledge and safe natural remedies for the prevention and treatment of disease and ailments. Sangster's introduction and development of over 202 exclusively labeled products (vitamins, mineral, herbs, proteins, natural body care and organic foods) catapulted Sangster's name and product into a large number of Canadian households. From a solid base in Saskatchewan, Sangster's has become a national brand name with franchise stores located across Canada.

Orchard Vale Naturals is the Company's manufacturing arm that is certified with a Health Canada Site License and has GMP Certified NHP Manufacturing capabilities. Orchard Vale Naturals specialize in custom blends and production runs of all sizes, small to large, for top-quality products with quick turnaround times. Orchard Vale Naturals operate out of the 34,000 sq Health Canada licensed facility in Penticton, British Columbia that is owned by EastWest Bioscience and is the Head Office for all its Canadian operations.

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS OF

EASTWEST BIOSCIENCE INC.

"Rodney Gelineau"

Co-Founder, Chief Executive Officer and Director

For Further Information:

Company Website: www.eastwestbioscience.com

Contact: Rodney Gelineau on 1-800-409-1930 or investors@eastwestscience.com

NEITHER THE TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE NOR ITS REGULATION SERVICES PROVIDER (AS THAT TERM IS DEFINED IN THE POLICIES OF THE TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE) ACCEPTS RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ADEQUACY OR ACCURACY OF THIS RELEASE.

CAUTIONARY STATEMENT REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING INFORMATION: This news release includes certain "forward-looking statements" under applicable Canadian securities legislation. Forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements with respect to the matters disclosed herein. Forward-looking statements are necessarily based upon a number of estimates and assumptions that, while considered reasonable, are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors which may cause the actual results and future events to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such factors include, but are not limited to: general business, economic, competitive, political and social uncertainties; and delay or failure to receive board, shareholder or regulatory approvals. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. The Corporation 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: EastWest Bioscience Inc.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/662636/EastWest-Bioscience-Adds-Self-Storage-to-its-Penticton-Facility
FREEHOLD, NJ / ACCESSWIRE / September 3, 2021 / The case of State of New Jersey v. Franklin Horton in the Monmouth County, New Jersey Superior Court, concerning first and second and fourth degree charges on alleged sexual assault of an underage girl was issued a schedule order for an acquittal petition hearing on Sep. 15, 2021, before successor-bench, Judge Torregrossa-O'Connor. This criminal proceeding follows the recusal of the original judge, and prosecutor; and state agency, Division of Family Youth & Family Services (DYFS), closing the (parallel) administrative action against the defendant amid criminal trial process.

However, after three years since the grand jury indictment in the case of State of New Jersey v. Horton (Monmouth Co., N.J. Supr. Ct., Crim. No. 18003427) , this month's upcoming hearing will highlight the defendant arguments to confront the lack of equal rights protection and due process rights in general, as delay of a having jury trial (in any instance) also denies the public any resolution to the case- be it incarcerating a dangerous sex offender in the community, or acquitting an innocent Black man.

If convicted, the defendant, Franklin Horton, a 68-year-old African-American landscaper from West Long Branch, N.J., stands to spend 25 years to life in prison. But presently it has been more than three years since Horton was originally arrested, indicted, and jailed.

Court papers show that the State v. Horton allegations were (first) raised by the uncle of the alleged victim around six months after her thirteenth birthday in 2018. The court record shows that the underage Caucasian girl told DYFS (child protective services) that she was 13 when the initial sexual encounter with Horton occurred. But subsequently, the grand jury hearing testimony from this same victim 'led' the court on belief that the alleged aggravated-assault occurred before her thirteenth birthday.

About Robert Peterson & Fields Associates PC

Robert Peterson & Fields Associates is a lobbying firm that serves community advocates for civil rights awareness, and foreign and public policy matters of public interest.

Supporting Media Source(s): State of New Jersey v. Franklin Horton (Petition for Judgment of Acquittal, Aug. 9, 2021, filed by Defense Attorney, Albert N. Kapin (view legal document)

Contributing Writer: Kaylen Jackson (freelance writer)

Media Contact: publicaffairs@rpflegal.com

SOURCE: Robert Peterson & Fields Associates PC



View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/662787/Acquittal-Petition-Hearing-Is-Scheduled-in-NJ-Sexual-Assault-Case-State-v-Horton
Herzliya, Israel and Calgary, Alberta--(Newsfile Corp. - September 3, 2021) - Innocan Pharma Corporation (CSE: INNO) (FSE: IP4) (OTCQB: INNPF) (the "Company" or "Innocan"), is pleased to announce that it has conducted a recent experimental study of its CBD-loaded liposome technology (LPT) on large animals that demonstrated a similar pharmacokinetic profile as was demonstrated in a previous small animal study. This result is expected to bring the Company closer to clinical trials in humans.

Pharmacokinetics (PK) determines the profile of drug concentrations in the blood as a function of time from the moment that it was administered thus indicating drug efficacy.

Prolonged release of Cannabidiol (CBD) from the Liposomes injected subcutaneously to a large animal showed continuous blood concentrations of CBD over a long time. Similar to what was found previously in small animals studies and is considered a good predictor to the expected exposure in humans. The data obtained suggests that Innocan's LPT platform may be suitable for human therapeutic applications.

The continuous exposure to CBD-in blood for a long time post local administration, seems to be superior to orally administered CBD in two aspects: it will all allow a single administration instead of daily administration and it will overcome- the low (10-20%) oral bioavailability of CBD. The superior PK of the CBD in LPT may enable to achieve controlled concentration of CBD in the blood leading to a better clinical outcome.





Figure 1: CEO Iris Bincovich and Prof. Chezy Barenholz at the Laboratory of Membrane and Liposome Research in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem

To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/6922/95564_76118b2c8450cae2_002full.jpg

Prof. Chezy Barenholz of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem said, "the preliminary results of prolonged exposure to CBD in a large animal following the injection of CBD-loaded liposomes will bring us closer to a human clinical study." Barenholz added, "such results serve as a better predictor to human PK profile. The "jump" from a small animal model to a large animal model is immensely meaningful in the development of the LPT platform for humans."

"Innocan, slowly and surely, is being positioned as a world-leader in turning CBD into a treatable pharma solution, due to our scientific breakthroughs and innovation," said Iris Bincovich, CEO of Innocan Pharma and added, "we believe that the pharma market looks up to us, as we keep on disrupting this emerging yet unsaturated market."

The Company also announces that it yesterday granted an aggregate of 4,150,000 options under its option plan to directors, officers and employees and service providers at an exercise price of $0.59 CDA for a 5-year term.

Innocan's relationship with The Hebrew University

Innocan Pharma Ltd., a wholly owned subsidiary of the Company, has entered into a worldwide exclusive research and license agreement with Yissum Research and Development Company ("Yissum"), the commercial arm of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, with respect to the design, preparation, characterization and evaluation of hydrogels containing CBD (or other cannabinoids) loaded liposomes. The research and development initiative is led by Professor Chezy Barenholz, head of the Membrane and Liposome Research Department at The Hebrew University, which is the inventor of over fifty-five patent families, two of which underlie Doxil, an FDA-approved drug for breast cancer treatment. This unique liposome platform technology may have a wide range of applications, such as epilepsy, pain relief, inflammation and central nervous system disorders. A patent was filed covering this technology on October 7, 2019.

About Innocan

Innocan Pharma is a pharmaceutical tech company that focuses on the development of several drug delivery platforms containing CBD. Innocan Pharma and Ramot at Tel Aviv University are collaborating on a new, revolutionary exosome-based technology that targets both central nervous system (CNS) indications and the Covid-19 Corona Virus using CBD. CBD-loaded exosomes hold the potential to help in the recovery of infected lung cells. This product, which is expected to be administered by inhalation, will be tested against a variety of lung infections.

Innocan Pharma signed a worldwide exclusive license agreement with Yissum, the commercial arm of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, to develop a CBD drug delivery platform based on a unique-controlled release liposome to be administered by injection. Innocan Israel plans, together with Professor Barenholz, to test the liposome platform on several potential conditions. Innocan Israel is also working on a dermal product that integrates CBD with other pharmaceutical ingredients as well as the development and sale of CBD-integrated pharmaceuticals, including, but not limited to, topical treatments for the relief of psoriasis symptoms as well as the treatment of muscle pain and rheumatic pain. The founders and officers of Innocan Israel each have commercially successful track records in the pharmaceutical and technology sectors in Israel and globally.

For further information, please contact:

For Innocan Pharma Corporation:

Iris Bincovich, CEO

+972-54-3012842

info@innocanpharma.com

Lytham Partners, LLC

Ben Shamsian CPA | Vice President

Direct: 646-829-9701; Cell: 516-652-9004'Shamsian

shamsian@lythampartners.com

NEITHER THE CANADIAN SECURITIES EXCHANGE NOR ITS REGULATION SERVICES PROVIDER HAVE REVIEWED OR ACCEPT RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ADEQUACY OR ACCURACY OF THIS RELEASE.

Caution regarding forward-looking information

Certain information set forth in this news release, including, without limitation, information regarding research and development, collaborations, the potential for treatment of conditions and other therapeutic effects resulting from research activities and/or the Company's products, requisite regulatory approvals and the timing for market entry, is forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable securities laws. By its nature, forward-looking information is subject to numerous risks and uncertainties, some of which are beyond Innocan's control. The forward-looking information contained in this news release is based on certain key expectations and assumptions made by Innocan, including expectations and assumptions concerning the anticipated benefits of the products, satisfaction of regulatory requirements in various jurisdictions and satisfactory completion of requisite production and distribution arrangements.

Forward-looking information is subject to various risks and uncertainties which could cause actual results and experience to differ materially from the anticipated results or expectations expressed in this news release. The key risks and uncertainties include but are not limited to: general global and local (national) economic, market and business conditions; governmental and regulatory requirements and actions by governmental authorities; and relationships with suppliers, manufacturers, customers, business partners and competitors. There are also risks that are inherent in the nature of product distribution, including import / export matters and the failure to obtain any required regulatory and other approvals (or to do so in a timely manner) and availability in each market of product inputs and finished products. The anticipated timeline for entry to markets may change for a number of reasons, including the inability to secure necessary regulatory requirements, or the need for additional time to conclude and/or satisfy the manufacturing and distribution arrangements. As a result of the foregoing, readers should not place undue reliance on the forward-looking information contained in this news release concerning the timing of launch of product distribution. A comprehensive discussion of other risks that impact Innocan can also be found in Innocan's public reports and filings which are available under Innocan's profile at www.sedar.com.

Readers are cautioned that undue reliance should not be placed on forward-looking information as actual results may vary materially from the forward-looking information. Innocan does not undertake to update, correct or revise any forward looking information as a result of any new information, future events or otherwise, except as may be required by applicable law.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/95564
Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia--(Newsfile Corp. - September 3, 2021) - Aranjin Resources Ltd. (TSXV: ARJN) (the "Company" or "Aranjin Resources") is pleased to announce the closing of the acquisition of the Sharga Copper Project (the "Sharga Project" or "Project"). The Company has acquired the Project through the purchase of all of the issued and outstanding equity interests in the Mongolian company that is the 100% owner of the Sharga Project.

As consideration for the acquisition, the Company paid a total of US$1.5 million in cash in instalments and obligated issue 30 million common shares in instalments, provided the issuance would not result in the vendor owning over 9.9% of the issued and outstanding common shares of the Company. At the closing, the Company issued 26,653,822 to the vendor representing 9.9% of the issued and outstanding common shares on an undiluted basis. The balance of 3,346,178 common shares will be issued when the issuance will not result in the vendor owning more than 9.9% of the issued and outstanding common shares, The vendor is an arm's length party to the Company. The common shares issued pursuant to the acquisition are subject to a statutory hold period of four months and one day in accordance with applicable securities laws.

As previously announced, the cash portion of the purchase price was financed through a $1,814,400 unsecured convertible debenture financing. The debenture has a term of 12 months and bears interest at a rate of 15% per annum to be accrued and paid at maturity in cash, or at the option of the Company, in common shares. The principal amount of the debenture is convertible at anytime time during the term into common shares of the Company at a price of $0.055 per share.

About the Sharga Project

The following information about the Sharga project is derived from the technical report entitled "Technical Report on the Sharga Project, Govi-Altay Aimag, Mongolia" dated July 31, 2021 prepared for the Company by Lamzav Khurelbaatar (AIPG), an independent Qualified Person as defined in National Instrument 43-101 - Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects (the "Sharga Report"). The full text of the Sharga Report is available on SEDAR under Company's profile, which can be accessed at www.sedar.com.

The Sharga Project is located in the Gobi Altai region of western Mongolia and is comprised of one Mineral Exploration Licence covering over 9,000 hectares. The project is approximately 1030 km west of Ulaanbaatar and 44 km west of Altay City.

The project is characterized by Metasedimentary Proterozoic rock composed of two distinct metamorphic rock suites: (i) dominant Riphean (Mesoproterozoic) formations of metasedimentary and metavolcanics rocks exposed on 80% of the project area developed in Island arc (the Lake zone) environment (ii) subordinate lower Proterozoic siliceous marble, gneiss and amphibolites of the cratonal (Zavkhan craton) terrain observed in northern part of the license area. Two terrains have tectonic boundary welded by Khantaishir ophiolitic formation. Mesoproterozoic rocks are overlain by various younger formations from Devonian to Jurassic age. Mesoproterozoic (below described as Riphean formations) classified into several formations. Mesoproterozoic rocks consists epidote-chlorite-quartzite orthoschist (formed from andesite-basalt), quartz-chlorite-sericite and chlorite-sericite orthoschist (formed from dacite, andesite-dacite and andesite), chlorite-quartz-plagioclase, quartz-chlorite and epidote-chlorite orthoschists (formed from felsic lava-breccia), and variety of schistose volcanic rocks such as rhyolite, dacite, rhyodacite, andesite-dacite and andesite-basalt. Paleozoic formations represented by middle Devonian Tsagaanshoroot formation's red, brownish, pinkish, white colored argillite, aleuvrolite, sandstone, limestone, conglomerate, basalt and andesite and Jurassic Jargalant formation's grey, yellowish, brownish colored conglomerate, gravelite, sandstone, aleuvrolite, carbonaceous shale, coal layers. Intrusive rocks of lower Devonian Numrug complex consist two phases and in project area seen rocks only from second phase - biotite, biotite-hornblende granites.

Main alteration and sulphide assemblages in the project indicate possible deposition of volcanic hosted massive sulphide (VMS) type of Cu-Zn (Au, Ag) mineralization of Kuroko VMS type in the Maikhan Ulaan Uul deposit and West, East and North Sharga prospects.

Exploration work conducted in 2019 by a prior owner of the Sharga licence, Gobi Exploration LLC, defined four high grade copper targets and extensive electromagnetic anomalies typical of volcanic hosted massive sulphide mineralization . Prior work included 74 rock chip samples, five diamond core drill holes totaling 300 metres (with three holes totaling 98 m drilled on a placer gold prospect), 77 drill core samples , 921 line kilometres of ground magnetics and 40 line kilometres of Transient Electro Magnetic (TEM) surveys.

A single diamond core drill hole was completed into two of the better electromagnetic anomalies. The most favourable results from the core samples assayed include:

East Sharga Discovery (one drill hole to 172.5 metres depth)

SHD001 - 37.8m at 0.95% copper, 1.37g/t gold and 6.8g/t silver from 132.6 metres

West Sharga Discovery (one drill hole to 50 metres depth)

SHD002 - 11m at 0.15% copper and 0.12g/t gold from 28 metres.

True thickness of intersected mineralization in the West Sharga drill holw is estimated at 6.3m. It is not possible to determine the true thickness of East Sharga intersection due to vertical dipping of drill hole.

The analytical work was done at SGS-IMME Mongolia laboratory located in Ulaanbataar, Mongolia. The laboratory Certificate of accreditation (ISO/IEC 17025:2017) expires in 16 December 2024. SGS-IMME Mongolia is an inspection, verification, testing and certification laboratory and part of SGS Global, which is accredited in many countries worldwide and independent of the Company, vendor and the property.

The QP recommended further exploration work be completed on the project in two phases. The first phase recommendations include:

20 m ground magnetic survey to determine the shape, geological and structural features of the mineralized massive sulphide and quartz veining zones. TEM survey on the Aguit, North, West and East Sharga to determine sulphide ores distribution in depth. Structural mapping of Mesoproterozoic rocks to reveal ore controlling structures. Rockchip sampling of new mineralized zones revealed during mapping.

The estimated budget for the first phase of the recommended work program is US$146,500 and is expected to commence in September 2021.

Depending on results of the first phase, the Sharga Report recommends following up with 3000m of diamond drilling in 15 holes.

The scientific and technical information in this press release has reviewed and approved by Lamzav Khurelbaatar (AIPG), a independent Qualified Person as defined in National Instrument 43-101 - Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects.

Early Warning Disclosure

Steppe Gold Ltd. ("Steppe") acquired the $1,814,400 unsecured convertible debenture pursuant to the Sharga Project financing. Prior to the acquisition of the debenture Steppe did not own or exercise direction or control over any securities of the Company. Following the acquisition of the debenture Steppe owned or exercised direction or control over a $1,814,400 unsecured convertible debenture exercisable into 32,989,090 common shares of the Company. Assuming conversion of the debenture in full, Steppe would own 32,989,090 common shares or 10.92% of the issued and outstanding common shares on a partially-diluted basis. The debenture was acquired by Steppe for investment purposes, and depending on various factors including, without limitation, market and other conditions, increase or decrease its beneficial ownership, control or direction over common shares or other securities of the Company, through market transactions, private agreements, treasury issuances, exercises of convertible securities or otherwise. Steppe has also prepared an early warning reporting in accordance with the requirements of National Instrument 62-103 - The Early Warning System and Related Take-Over Bid and Insider Reporting Issues that will appear under the Company's profile on www.sedar.com. The foregoing information was provided by Steppe Gold Ltd.

On behalf of the Board

Matthew Wood

Chairman

Aranjin Resources Ltd.

+976 7732 1914

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/95594
QUEBEC, QC / ACCESSWIRE / September 3, 2021 / NuRAN Wireless Inc. (" NuRAN " or the " Company ") (CSE:NUR) (OTC PINK:NRRWF) (FSE:1RN) is pleased to announce the entry into an employment agreement (the " Employment Agreement ") with Questus Consulting Ltd. (" Questus "), a company controlled by Jim Bailey, Chief Financial Officer of the Company. Pursuant to the terms of the Employment Agreement, the Company will pay Questus a fixed fee of $20,833.33 per month (the " Fee ") in consideration of certain management consulting services provided Questus including managing the financing and banking functions of the Company and overseeing the procedures for internal controls and management of continuous disclosure filings of the Company. Under the terms of the Employment Agreement, Questus will be entitled to receive options of the Company under the Company's equity compensation plan at the discretion of the Board and was issued a performance warrant to acquire a total of up to 1,600,000 common shares of the Company (the " Performance Warrant ") based on the Company reaching certain successful milestones in strategic planning, growth, increased revenue and achievement of operation targets and subject to the completion of a minimum of four months of continued employment from the date of the Employment Agreement. In the event of a change of control of the Company and pursuant to the terms and conditions of the Employment Agreement, whereby more than 50% of the outstanding voting shares of the Company are acquired by a person or persons, acting jointly and in concert, Questus is entitled to payment in the amount equivalent to 12-months of the Fee, incentive compensation pursuant to the incentive compensation plan and the vesting of all of Questus' unvested stock options under the Company's stock option plan. The Employment Agreement does not have a predetermined term.

"Since joining the company in September 2020, Jim has been instrumental in the financial re-engineering of NuRAN Wireless. With his London England home base and his extensive international network, Jim will lead the charge in securing the necessary fund to deploy the NaaS business model. The company is extremely please to solidify Jim's position within the organization. "Stated Francis Letourneau, CEO of NuRAN Wireless Inc.

About NuRAN Wireless

NuRAN Wireless is a leading supplier of mobile and broadband wireless infrastructure solutions. Its innovative radio access network (RAN), core network, and backhaul products dramatically drop the total cost of ownership, thereby creating new opportunities for established, as well as emerging mobile network operators. Indoor coverage, isolated rural communities, offshore platforms and ships, NuRAN Wireless helps its customers reach everyone, everywhere.

Additional Information

For further information about NuRAN Wireless: www.nuranwireless.com

Francis Letourneau, Director and CEO

info@nuranwireless.com

Tel: (418) 264-1337

Frank Candido

Investor relations

Frank.candido@nuranwireless.com

Tel: (514) 969-5530

Cautionary Statement: Neither the Canadian Securities Exchange nor its Market Regulator (as defined in the policies of the Canadian Securities Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Forward Looking Statements:

This news release contains forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of words such as, "expects", "is expected", "anticipates", "intends", "believes", or variations of such words and phrases or state that certain actions, events or results "may" or "will" be taken, occur or be achieved. Forward-looking statements include those relating to the Company reaching the milestones pursuant to the Performance Warrant. Forward-looking statements are not a guarantee of future performance and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from the results projected, expressed or implied by these forward looking statements. Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in forward-looking information, there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that such information will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements, such as the uncertainties regarding include risks such as the uncertainties regarding the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak, and measures to prevent its spread, risks relating to NuRAN's business and the economy generally; NuRAN's ability to adequately restructure its operations with respect to its new model of NaaS service contracts; the capacity of the Company to deliver in a technical capacity and to import inventory to Africa at a reasonable cost; NuRAN's ability to obtain project financing for the proposed site build out under its NaaS agreements with Orange and other telecommunication providers, the loss of one or more significant suppliers or a reduction in significant volume from such suppliers; NuRAN's ability to meet or exceed customers' demand and expectations; significant current competition and the introduction of new competitors or other disruptive entrants in the Company's industry; NuRAN's ability to retain key employees and protect its intellectual property; compliance with local laws and regulations and ability to obtain all required permits for our operations, access to the credit and capital markets, changes in applicable telecommunications laws or regulations or changes in license and regulatory fees, downturns in customers' business cycles; and insurance prices and insurance coverage availability, the Company's ability to effectively maintain or update information and technology systems; our ability to implement and maintain measures to protect against cyberattacks and comply with applicable privacy and data security requirements; the Company's ability to successfully implement its business strategies or realize expected cost savings and revenue enhancements; business development activities, including acquisitions and integration of acquired businesses; the Company's expansion into markets outside of Canada and the operational, competitive and regulatory risks facing the Company's non-Canadian based operations. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward looking information. Other factors which could materially affect such forward-looking information are described in the risk factors in the Company's most recent annual management's discussion and analysis that is available on the Company's profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com .

SOURCE: NuRAN Wireless Inc.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/662805/NuRAN-Wireless-Announces-New-Employment-Contract-with-Chief-Financial-Officer
Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - September 3, 2021) - Xigem Technologies Corporation (CSE: XIGM) (OTCQB: XIGMF) (FSE: 2C1) ("Xigem" or the "Company"), a technology provider for the emerging remote economy, today announced that it has entered into a debt settlement agreement with an arm's length creditor whereby the Company will settle outstanding payables totalling $200,000 through the issuance of 952,381 common shares of the Company (each a "Share") at a deemed price of $0.21 per Share (the "Debt Settlement").

The Shares will be subject to a four-month hold period in accordance with applicable securities laws. All share issuances are subject to applicable regulatory approval, including the approval of the Canadian Securities Exchange.

The Company also announced the recent exercise of certain warrants at an exercise price of $0.07 per common share of Xigem (the "Warrants"). To date, 2,275,000 Warrants have been exercised for gross proceeds of $159,250.

About Xigem Technologies Corporation

Established in Toronto, Ontario, Xigem is positioned to become a leading technology provider for the emerging near trillion-dollar remote economy, with software capable of improving the capacity, productivity, and overall remote operations for businesses, consumers and other organizations. iAgent, the Company's patented technology, will provide organizations, businesses and consumers with the tools necessary to thrive in a vast array of remote working, learning and treatment environments while the Company looks to aggregate a portfolio of innovative technologies capable of disrupting traditional business models.

www.xigemtechnologies.com

Instagram: @xigemtechnologies

Twitter: @XigemTech

Facebook: @xigemtechnologies

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/xigem-technologies

CAUTIONARY NOTE REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

This news release may contain certain "forward-looking information" and "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of applicable securities legislation. All information contained herein that is not historical in nature may constitute forward-looking information. Xigem undertakes no obligation to comment on analyses, expectations or statements made by third-parties in respect of Xigem, its securities, or financial or operating results (as applicable). Although Xigem believes that the expectations reflected in forward-looking statements in this news release are reasonable, such forward-looking statement has been based on expectations, factors and assumptions concerning future events which may prove to be inaccurate and are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties, certain of which are beyond Xigem's control. The forward-looking information contained in this news release is expressly qualified by this cautionary statement and is made as of the date hereof. Xigem disclaims any intention and has no obligation or responsibility, except as required by law, to update or revise any forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

Neither the Canadian Securities Exchange nor its Market Regulator (as that term is defined in the policies of the CSE) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

SOURCE: Xigem Technologies Corporation

On behalf of the Company:

Brian Kalish, Chief Executive Officer

For further information:

Phone: (647) 250-9824 ext.4

Investors: investors@xigemtechnologies.com

Media: media@xigemtechnologies.com

Instagram: @xigemtechnologies

Twitter: @XigemTech

Facebook: @xigemtechnologies

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/xigem-technologies

www.xigemtechnologies.com





To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/95603
Plantible, a San Diego CA-based food-tech/biotech company, raised $21.5M in Series A funding.

The round was led by Astanor Ventures with participation from Piva Capital, CJ CheilJedang, Good Friends, Bradley Horowitz (SVP of Product at Google), Trevor Martin (Founder of Mammoth Biosciences) and Chris Bryson (Founder of Unata), Vectr Ventures, Lerer Hippeau, eighteen94 capital (Kellogg Companys venture capital fund), FTW Ventures and Unshackled Ventures.

The company intends to use the funds to build its first commercial facility to launch and commercialize its product in 2022.

Founded in 2018 by Tony Martens and Maurits van de Ven, Plantible has developed a vertically integrated agricultural platform to produce Rubi Protein() from Lemna, more commonly known as duckweed. The natural, plant-based protein emulates the functional characteristics of widely used animal-based proteins and enables food companies to match the taste and texture of animal-based products with more sustainable plant-based ingredients.

Over the past year, the company has scaled its production capacity by 150x by building out a small pilot plant and hired 11 more people, bringing the team to a total of 16.

FinSMEs

02/09/2021
Trinity Hunt Partners, a Dallas, TX-based growth-oriented middle-market private equity firm, closed Trinity Hunt Partners VI, at $460m.

Investors include a diverse group of insurance companies, pension funds, endowments and foundations, consultants, fund of funds, family offices, and high-net-worth individuals.

Fund VI will continue to deploy the firms thematic investment strategy, focused on partnering with small-cap companies in business, healthcare, and consumer services subsectors where there is an opportunity to drive transformational growth.

Co-founded by Senior Partners Pete Stein and Dan Dross and led by Blake Apel, who was recently promoted to Managing Partner, Trinity Hunt Partners is a private equity firm with over $775m of committed investor capital. The firm employs a research-driven investment process to identify leading businesses in attractive services sectors. Its investment teams 115+ years of combined private equity experience combined with proven value creation toolkit positions Trinity to collaboratively partner with management teams to drive long-term value.

FinSMEs

03/09/2021
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Fontana Unified School District will be partnering with Chaffey Joint Union High School District and Rialto Unified School District to host the Inland Empire Regional Virtual College and Career Fair.
Lots of activities for families are planned at San Bernardino County's regional parks during Labor Day weekend. (Contributed photo by San Bernardino County)
(Meredith/CNN) -- Alaska Airlines announced that unvaccinated employees will no longer receive special COVID pay if they are exposed to or contract the virus and need to take time off.

Instead, these employees will need to use regular sick leave or vacation time if they have it. Otherwise, it will be unpaid time off, The Seattle Times reported.

Those who are not vaccinated will also be required to attend "a vaccine education program," while a "testing protocol" is to be brought in as "another layer of safety."

Meanwhile, any new staff joining Alaska Airlines and its subsidiary Horizon Air are required to be fully vaccinated before they are brought on board, the airline said.

The Seattle-based airline is also rewarding employees who can prove that they've been fully vaccinated against COVID-19. Employees who submit proof by Oct. 15 will get a $200 bonus.

Around 75% of its 20,000 or so employees are already vaccinated, according to the airline, which has recognized that it has "more work to do" when it comes to increasing vaccination rates amongst workers.

The move comes after United Airlines became the first major US airline to implement a vaccination mandate last month.

"We know some of you will disagree with this decision to require the vaccine for all United employees," the airline said in an email to staff.

"But, we have no greater responsibility to you and your colleagues than to ensure your safety when you're at work, and the facts are crystal clear: everyone is safer when everyone is vaccinated."

Southwest Airlines, American Airlines and Delta Air Lines have all confirmed that they will not be mandating vaccination shots.

The-CNN-Wire &  2021 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. All rights reserved.
SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- An unvaccinated San Francisco mother lost her unborn baby after getting sick with COVID-19 this month.

Nancy Mejia should be soothing her newborn's cries, instead she's wiping her own tears and planning a funeral.

"To leave your baby at the hospital, it's very, very sad. I have memories of feeling my baby when she would move in me," said Mejia.

Last week, Mejia arrived at San Francisco General Hospital and found out her baby girl had died. Two days later at 8 months pregnant, she gave birth to her stillborn daughter, Sara Ximena.

"The truth is I feel guilty about what happened," said Mejia's husband, Mario de Paz, who got sick with COVID-19 at the beginning of August.

de Paz ended up in the hospital but thought his initial symptoms were side effects from his first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, which he got around the same time. So he went home to his wife and three-year-old son, who both got very sick.

"If I could go back in time, I would have gotten vaccinated sooner," said de Paz.

The CDC has urged pregnant women to get the COVID-19 vaccine. But, like 75% of pregnant women in the U.S., Mejia was unvaccinated. After she lost the baby, she got her first shot.

Mejia said her baby was extremely healthy before she contracted COVID and went to all her prenatal appointments.

In order to determine the baby's cause of death, doctor's told Nancy an autopsy would be needed. But Mejia feels like it was her COVID infection. "Everything was fine until I got a fever, cough, and chills."

She has some advice to pregnant women: "To the mothers who are not vaccinated, get the vaccine."

de Paz still has some COVID symptoms and has been unable to work at his restaurant job all month. They've organized a GoFundMe to pay for their daughter's burial.
(CNN) -- Virginia is moving ahead with its plans to remove the statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee from its capital city following a pair of rulings Thursday from the state's Supreme Court.

The court is allowing the state to begin the "complex" multi-day process of taking down the 12-ton statue, which is the last Confederate statue on Richmond's historic Monument Avenue and has been at the center of intense national debate.

Gov. Ralph Northam's office said Thursday that "no action on the statue is expected this week," citing "several logistical and security concerns," as well as street closures.

Northam, a Democrat, had announced plans to remove the Lee statue back in June 2020, amid nationwide protests for racial justice, but was met with legal challenges.

A group of Richmond residents sued, arguing that an 1890 deed and a 1889 General Assembly joint resolution prohibits the governor from directing the removal of a state monument from state property. The plaintiffs also claimed property rights to enforce the deeds, saying it requires Virginia to perpetually keep the Lee statue in place.

In its opinion, Virginia Supreme Court disagreed, saying that all the plaintiffs' claims were without merit and dissolved injunctions the lower court imposed.

Another lawsuit brought by Virginia resident William C. Gregory, identified as the great-grandson of two parties and signatories to the 1890 deed, argued that removal of the statue also violates the deed, in which Virginia, having been transferred the land the statue sits on, agreed to "faithfully guard and affectionately protect it." He claimed that as an heir, he has the legal right to compel Virginia to keep the Lee Monument where it is.

The state's high court, however, found that Gregory "has no property right, related to the Lee Monument, to enforce against the Commonwealth," and agreed with the lower court that he "failed to articulate a legally viable cause of action" against Northam.

Removal of the statue had been in limbo until the Supreme Court's rulings on Thursday.

Northam hailed the rulings and said pulling down the statue would help move the state and Richmond "into a more inclusive, just future."

"Today it is clearthe largest Confederate monument in the South is coming down," Northam said in a statement Thursday.

The Department of General Services, which was directed by Northam to take down the statue, said Thursday that it is "moving swiftly" following the court's decision, but that it is an "extremely complex removal that requires coordination with multiple entities to ensure the safety of everyone involved."

A date for the removal will be announced at a later time, the department added.

Northam had previously said that the statue, once removed, would be put in storage while the department works with the community "to determine its future."

The-CNN-Wire

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[This unedited press release is made available courtesy of Gamasutra and its partnership with notable game PR-related resource Games Press.]

Renowned painter Chris Berens' collaborated with CD PROJEKT RED and Cook and Becker to create a stunning Witcher painting and limited edition art print.









The painting is by known Dutch painter





The painting 'No Gods Nor Masters' measures 86 x 60 cm / 34 x 24 inch and is sold via art gallery





Cook and Becker's Maarten Brands. "Chris Berens succeeded in transferring the core game experience of The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt to canvas, and added his iconic style and working method to the mix, creating an art piece that is unique in both content and execution."





About Chris Berens

Berens famously learned his trade by painting over copies of classical art, which helped him establish a painting technique very much his own: after selecting a composition, he tags on smaller paintings, pours on paints and varnish, and then cuts away from the canvas what isn't needed. The resulting imagery has clear signs of the work put into it (visible as scar-like tears and scratches), and yet every scene seems to float, as Berens' technique gives his work a distinctly opaque quality.





In an interview with Chris Berens, the Dutch master (1976) explains his love for The Witcher thus: "To me, the Witcher is very much about the connection we have to nature and the respect nature commands. Whenever a village is plagued by an otherworldly creature, they count on a Witcher to solve their problem for a few coins. Importantly, they fear him and respect him for this, in equal parts, for his ability to cross into this other realm is something well out of their reach."





'No Gods nor Masters' is available to purchase here: 'No Gods nor Masters' is an official The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt artwork made in collaboration with CD PROJEKT RED, and shows Geralt of Rivia entering a forest clearing full of creatures from the world of the Witcher, while Ciri floats in the center with the Wild Hunt in pursuit.The painting is by known Dutch painter Chris Berens , best known for his otherworldly rendering of subjects. Heavily influenced by Dutch masters like Vermeer, Rembrandt, and Jheronimus Bosch, as well as academic artists like Ingres or Bouguereau, his art has an amazing surrealistic and mesmerising quality that is still quintessentially modern.The painting 'No Gods Nor Masters' measures 86 x 60 cm / 34 x 24 inch and is sold via art gallery Cook and Becker. www.cookandbecker.com ). Also on sale are limited edition museum-grade art print reproductions in the same size, as well as a smaller size. All prints come with an artist-signed certificate of authenticity, but prints ordered before Sep 16, 2021 will be hand-signed by the artist as well.Cook and Becker's Maarten Brands. "Chris Berens succeeded in transferring the core game experience of The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt to canvas, and added his iconic style and working method to the mix, creating an art piece that is unique in both content and execution."Berens famously learned his trade by painting over copies of classical art, which helped him establish a painting technique very much his own: after selecting a composition, he tags on smaller paintings, pours on paints and varnish, and then cuts away from the canvas what isn't needed. The resulting imagery has clear signs of the work put into it (visible as scar-like tears and scratches), and yet every scene seems to float, as Berens' technique gives his work a distinctly opaque quality.In an interview with Chris Berens, the Dutch master (1976) explains his love for The Witcher thus: "To me, the Witcher is very much about the connection we have to nature and the respect nature commands. Whenever a village is plagued by an otherworldly creature, they count on a Witcher to solve their problem for a few coins. Importantly, they fear him and respect him for this, in equal parts, for his ability to cross into this other realm is something well out of their reach."'No Gods nor Masters' is available to purchase here: https://www.cookandbecker.com/en/artwork/3060/no-gods-nor-masters-the-witcher-3-chris-berens.html
Fourteen people were arrested and 1,400 pounds of pot were seized in Lebanon in connection to two large scale marijuana grows last week.

The Linn Interagency Narcotics Enforcement team searched two neighboring properties at 39030 and 39038 Griggs Drive on Aug. 27 at 5:00 p.m. The LINE team seized 1,400 pounds of processed marijuana, 9,116 marijuana plants, 12 firearms and over $6,000. Sixty-one large greenhouse structures were destroyed on site.

Albany Police Department Lt. Juston Alexander said that illegal outdoor marijuana grows are much more of a significant problem in Southern Oregon, but over the past few years theyve been migrating north.

This is the biggest outdoor grow weve dealt with in recent history on private property, Alexander said.

The LINE team became aware of the grows thanks to concerned citizens, according to a news release. APD, Drug Enforcement Administration, Benton County Sheriffs Office, Lebanon Police Department and Linn County Sheriffs Office assisted LINE in the searches.
Brown also noted that working with the center will be far easier than the complicated process by which law enforcement and first-responders must admit individuals to the hospital or the jail

The goal is a short turnaround, she said, saving time for the police and EMTs.

I would love that, said Benton County Undersheriff Greg Ridler, who was on hand for the event.

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The centers patient area will use the 4,000-square-foot ground floor of the building in space currently occupied by the Board of Commissioners and county staffers. The second floor of the building, currently used for information technology operations, will serve as administration and staff offices.

The commissioners and IT will locate to the new county building on Southwest Research Way.

This is a great concept, said DeFazio, who applauded county officials for being able to put the project together on such a short timeline.

This is incredible gift to the community and I will do my best to support this.
Australian producer LUUDE delivers an emotive dance release for his new EP, 6AM!

After signing to Sweat It Out earlier this year, he releases a five-track EP showcasing his production versatility while soundtracking a vibrant and eventful, dance-filled night out.

I wanted it to be a record that can be listened to through the stages of a day and night," he said. "I was writing most of it through lockdowns so I was just writing tunes that felt like being out. Wanna Stay just has a loose fun energy about it - feels like a bunch of mates getting rowdy in the pub - which is how most nights in Australia start, 'Butters' and 'Arms' get a bit more late night club focused, which is generally where most nights lead - then Bridgewater and Glenorchy are those emotional kick on tunes for when you're feeling it at 6AM - so it's all stages of the night.

Listen to 6AM below!
Pat Loughney, right, cared for his wife, Candy, in their home until she became ill after eating medicated soap. Candy is one of 280,000 Pennsylvanians over the age of 64 living with Alzheimers disease, the most common cause of dementia.
Gillette, WY (82718)

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Mostly clear. Low 49F. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph..

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Entourage holds exclusive rights to sell, market and distribute Boston Beer-branded and licensed non-alcoholic cannabis beverages produced by Altheas subsidiary Peak Processing

Company also enters into supply agreement with Peak to provide cannabinoid-rich input biomass to Peak to formulate and manufacture the cannabis beverage products in Canada

Global cannabis beverage market is estimated to reach US$2.8 billion by 2025 after growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 17.8 per cent from 2019 to 2025



TORONTO, Aug. 31, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Entourage Health Corp. (formerly WeedMD Inc.) (TSX-V:ENTG) (OTCQX:WDDMF) (FSE:4WE) (Entourage or the Company), a Canadian producer and distributor of award-winning cannabis products and brands, announced today that its subsidiary and licence holder WeedMD RX Inc. has signed agreements with BBCCC, Inc., a subsidiary of the The Boston Beer Company, Inc. (NYSE: SAM) (BBC), and Ontario-based Peak Processing Solutions (Peak), a subsidiary of Althea Group Holdings Ltd (ASX:AGH), to launch a new portfolio of non-alcoholic cannabis-infused beverages in Canada, with production commencing in Q4, 2021.

Under the terms of the five-year development, supply, manufacturing, sales and marketing agreements, BBC and Peak will develop the beverages with Entourages cannabinoid-rich input biomass processed at Peaks Windsor, Ontario facility. Entourage will be the exclusive distributor of the cannabis-infused beverages in Canada leveraging Entourages expansive local sales and marketing network.

The cannabis market is constantly evolving and with a growing base of consumers seeking consumption alternatives, were excited to partner with Boston Beer and Peak to elevate our offerings with Canadian-made, cannabis-infused beverages developed by one of North Americas most iconic craft beer brands, said George Scorsis, Interim CEO and Executive Chair of Entourage. We are proud to expand into another consumer vertical with award-winning partners of well-known products that will focus on all segments including the emerging self-care market. Our collective industry expertise coupled with extensive cannabis research and advanced branding strategies will lay the foundation for new product collaborations and further market expansion opportunities at scale. Our strong industry presence, sales force and reputation for consistently delivering award-winning brands in Canada makes this an ideal collaboration.

"Since the early days of medical access, Entourage has cultivated accessible, quality-produced cannabis that is considered a benchmark in a regulated market  and they truly exemplify what we look for in our suppliers, said Paul Weaver, Head of Cannabis at BBCCC Inc. This partnership is further strengthened by Peak Processing Solutions, with the talent and systems in place to ensure every drink is prepared with the highest care and excellence. We are excited to work with Entourage and Peak to bring best-in-class beverages to Canadian consumers.

Peak Founder and President, Gregg Battersby added: The team at Peak are delighted to partner with two industry leaders in Entourage Health and The Boston Beer Company to develop what promises to be an exciting range of cannabis-infused beverages. This collaboration is further validation of Peaks significant and unique capabilities in the Cannabis 2.0 space, and the latest in a growing list of strategic and innovative partnerships.

Cannabis Beverage Market

The Cannabis 2.0 market represents a strategic market opportunity given that products within the category yield a substantial price premium in the Canadian adult-use market compared to dried flower and cannabis oils (Reference: Nurturing New Growth; Canada Gets Ready for Cannabis 2.0, Deloitte). Cannabis beverages are also appealing to new-to-cannabis consumers as an alternative to traditional alcohol beverages, many of whom are also using the products for self-care or wellness reasons.

According to Deloittes recently issued Cannabis Report, cannabis non-combustibles and health-and-wellness products now represent the industrys greatest long-term growth potential. (Reference: Deloitte 2021 Cannabis Consumer Report). As more cannabis-infused products become available via mainstream consumer goods, greater appeal is expected from a larger base of consumers with varied cannabis-intake preferences.

The beverage market has already seen significant transformation over recent years through innovation and e-commerce growth. A recent report by Million Insights estimates the cannabis beverage market will grow at a CAGR of 17.8 per cent from 2019 to 2025 to reach US$2.8 billion. (1) The report found this growth is being driven by a range of factors, including the rise of the health and wellness movement and the preference for cannabis beverages among millennials.

Transaction Summary & Strategic Benefits

Under the terms of the supply and manufacturing agreement, Entourage will supply, on an exclusive basis, all cannabis input materials required by Peak to manufacture BBC-branded, non-alcoholic cannabis-infused beverages.

BBC and Entourage also entered into a sales and marketing agreement under which Entourage will license certain newly-developed brands from BBC and leverage its national sales force and sales licences to market, distribute and sell the products in Canada with the support of BBCs deep brand-building expertise.

Strategic Benefits:

Branded Craft Beverage Expertise: With its extensive experience, top-tier status and global success in launching craft beers, ciders, hard iced teas and hard seltzers, Boston Beer recently created a Canadian subsidiary, BBCCC, Inc. to focus on formulating non-alcoholic cannabis beverages in Canada. BBCCC Inc. is entering this key market while continuing to gauge the regulatory environment in the U.S. for future expansion opportunities. With innovation at its core, Entourage looks to expand its consumer offerings and diversify into new markets with new innovative, third-party-branded products.



With its extensive experience, top-tier status and global success in launching craft beers, ciders, hard iced teas and hard seltzers, Boston Beer recently created a Canadian subsidiary, BBCCC, Inc. to focus on formulating non-alcoholic cannabis beverages in Canada. BBCCC Inc. is entering this key market while continuing to gauge the regulatory environment in the U.S. for future expansion opportunities. With innovation at its core, Entourage looks to expand its consumer offerings and diversify into new markets with new innovative, third-party-branded products. Robust Ontario-based Operations: Peak has one of the first large-scale independent processing facilities of its kind, specialising in the manufacturing and distribution of cannabis-infused beverages, concentrates, topicals and other Cannabis 2.0 products. Peak and Entourage have a long history of working together in developing hydrocarbon extract of freshly harvested and frozen cannabis biomass to produce live resin formulations of renowned Entourage cultivar, Pedros Sweet Sativa. This partnership represents a natural progression and evolution of Peak and Entourages relationship and is a testament to the success of this association.

Peak has one of the first large-scale independent processing facilities of its kind, specialising in the manufacturing and distribution of cannabis-infused beverages, concentrates, topicals and other Cannabis 2.0 products. Peak and Entourage have a long history of working together in developing hydrocarbon extract of freshly harvested and frozen cannabis biomass to produce live resin formulations of renowned Entourage cultivar, Pedros Sweet Sativa. This partnership represents a natural progression and evolution of Peak and Entourages relationship and is a testament to the success of this association. Strengthened Distribution Capabilities: Entourage will leverage its expansive and efficient cultivation and distribution network to manage production, market and sell the new cannabis beverage products. The Company has a robust and established infrastructure with distribution reach to approximately 95% of the Canadian cannabis retail market. Additionally, Entourage is continuously and successfully meeting emerging industry demand with its ever-expanding medical cannabis portfolio and rapidly growing retail footprint. The Company is strategically ready to test the entry of cannabis-infused beverages in the self-care and medical markets.

Visit Entourage Healths newly launched website here. To access our corporate video, visit us here and to access our latest investor presentation and corporate deck here.

About Entourage Health Corp.

Entourage Health Corp. (formerly WeedMD Inc.) is the publicly traded parent company of WeedMD RX Inc. a licence holder producing and distributing cannabis products for both the medical and adult-use markets. The Company owns and operates a 158-acre state-of-the-art greenhouse, outdoor and processing facility located in Strathroy, ON as well as a fully-licensed 26,000 sq. ft. Aylmer, ON processing facility, specializing in cannabis extraction. With the addition of Starseed Medicinal, a medical-centric brand, Entourage has expanded its multi-channeled distribution strategy. Starseeds industry-first, exclusive partnership with LiUNA, the largest construction union in Canada, along with employers and union groups complements Entourages direct sales to medical patients. In July 2021, Entourage signed a definitive agreement to acquire craft cultivator CannTx Life Sciences Inc. which operates out of its state-of-the-art micropropagation and specialty extraction facility in Guelph, Ontario. Upon the expected closing in late summer 2021, craft brand Royal City Cannabis will be added to Entourages elite product portfolio. The Company maintains strategic relationships in the seniors market and supply agreements with Shoppers Drug Mart as well as eight provincial distribution agencies where adult-use brands Color Cannabis and Saturday Cannabis are sold. Entourage is also the exclusive Canadian producer and distributor of award-winning U.S.-based wellness brand Marys Medicinals sold in both medical and adult-use channels.

About the Boston Beer Company

The Boston Beer Company, Inc. (NYSE: SAM) began in 1984 brewing Samuel Adams beer and the Samuel Adams brand is currently recognized as one of the largest and most respected craft beer brands. Our portfolio of brands also includes Truly Hard Seltzer, Twisted Tea, Angry Orchard Hard Cider, and Dogfish Head Brewery as well as other craft beer brands such as Angel City Brewery and Coney Island Brewing. Boston Beer formed BBCCC, Inc. in Toronto, ON in 2021 to as a separate subsidiary to explore the non-alcoholic cannabis beverage space. To learn more, please visit www.bostonbeer.com

About Althea Group Holdings

Althea Group Holdings Ltd (ASX:AGH) is a global leader in the manufacturing, sales and distribution of cannabis-based medicines and recreational cannabis products. AGH services these sectors via two distinct business units. Althea, the companys pharmaceutical business, offers a comprehensive range of cannabis-based medicines which are made available to patients via prescription. Peak Processing Solutions, AGHs recreational cannabis business, produces legal cannabis products purchased by adult consumers in retail stores. To learn more about Althea, please visit: www.althea.life. For more information on Peak, please visit www.peakprocessing.com

For more information, please visit us at www.entouragehealthcorp.com

Follow Entourage and its brands on LinkedIn

Twitter: Entourage, Color Cannabis, Saturday Cannabis & Starseed

Instagram: Entourage, Color Cannabis , Saturday Cannabis & Starseed

For further information, please contact:

For Investor Enquiries:

Valter Pinto

Managing Director

KCSA Strategic Communications

1-212-896-1254

entourage@kcsa.com

For Media Enquiries:

Marianella delaBarrera

SVP, Communications & Corporate Affairs

416-897-6644

marianella@weedmd.com

Forward Looking Information This press release contains "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation which are based upon Entourage's current internal expectations, estimates, projections, assumptions and beliefs and views of future events. Forward-looking information can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "expect", "likely", "may", "will", "should", "intend", "anticipate", "potential", "proposed", "estimate" and other similar words, including negative and grammatical variations thereof, or statements that certain events or conditions "may", "would" or "will" happen, or by discussions of strategy. Forward-looking information in this press release includes, but is not limited to, information in respect of the manufacture and distribution of cannabis-infused beverages pursuant to the development, supply, manufacturing, sales and marketing agreements entered into by the Company and the prospects thereof.

The forward-looking information in this news release is based upon the expectations, estimates, projections, assumptions and views of future events which management believes to be reasonable in the circumstances. Forward-looking information includes estimates, plans, expectations, opinions, forecasts, projections, targets, guidance or other statements that are not statements of fact. Forward-looking information necessarily involve known and unknown risks, including, without limitation, risks associated with general economic conditions; adverse industry events; loss of markets; future legislative and regulatory developments; inability to access sufficient capital from internal and external sources, and/or inability to access sufficient capital on favourable terms; the cannabis industry in Canada generally; the ability of Entourage to implement its business strategies; the COVID-19 pandemic; competition; crop failure; and other risks.

Any forward-looking information speaks only as of the date on which it is made, and, except as required by law, Entourage does not undertake any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. New factors emerge from time to time, and it is not possible for Entourage to predict all such factors. When considering this forward-looking information, readers should keep in mind the risk factors and other cautionary statements in Entourages disclosure documents filed with the applicable Canadian securities regulatory authorities on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. The risk factors and other factors noted in the disclosure documents could cause actual events or results to differ materially from those described in any forward-looking information.

Third Party Information This press release includes market and industry data that has been obtained from third party sources, including industry publications. The Company believes that the industry data is accurate and that its estimates and assumptions are reasonable, but there is no assurance as to the accuracy or completeness of this data. Third party sources generally state that the information contained therein has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable, but there is no assurance as to the accuracy or completeness of included information. Although the data is believed to be reliable, the Company has not independently verified any of the data from third party sources referred to in this press release or ascertained the underlying economic assumptions relied upon by such sources

NEITHER THE TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE NOR ITS REGULATION SERVICES PROVIDER (AS THAT TERM IS DEFINED IN THE POLICIES OF THE TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE) ACCEPTS RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ADEQUACY OR ACCURACY OF THIS RELEASE

___________

1 https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/cannabis-beverages-market-size-to-expand-at-17-8-cagr-by-2025--owing-to-increase-in-sale-of-cannabis-infused-drinks--million-insights-301247061.html
Not for distribution to U.S. newswire services or for dissemination in the United States

TORONTO, Sept. 02, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Giyani Metals Corp. (TSXV:EMM, GR:A2DUU8) ("Giyani" or the "Company") is pleased to announce the appointment of environmental, social and governance (ESG) consultant, Marion Thomas as Vice President, (VP) ESG, effective today.

Robin Birchall, CEO of the Company, commented:

This appointment strengthens Giyanis commitment to our ESG strategy and will help accelerate our ESG programs and solutions. Marion brings a depth of African experience in working as a sustainability specialist for leading global environmental consulting firms, representing clients on environmental permitting and compliance audits, along with rehabilitation and specialist studies. Marion will be instrumental in the completion of the Companys K.Hill Project environmental and social impact assessment (ESIA). We are very excited by this addition to our team and look forward to her contribution to the development of Giyani and our stakeholder engagement activities.

VP, ESG Appointment

Marion has over 30 years of environmental and social experience across large-scale, natural resources, agriculture, and industrial sector projects. She has completed numerous ESIAs in compliance with international standards (World Bank, International Finance Corporation Performance Standards and Equator Principles), environmental and social reviews, audits, environmental and social management plans, waste and tailings management plans, site decommissioning and closure plans, and stakeholder engagement. Mrs. Thomas has worked across Africa, Asia and Europe, including projects in Botswana.

She is also a qualified engineering geologist by training, with an MSc in Engineering Geology from the University of Pretoria, South Africa, an MSc in Geology from the University of the Free State, South Africa and a BSc (Hons) in Geology Queen Mary College, University of London. Mrs. Thomas is a Chartered Environmentalist (CEnv), a Fellow of the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining (FIMMM), a Registered Professional Natural Scientist (Pri.Sci.Nat.), and a member of the Institute of Waste Management of South Africa (IWMSA).



Grant of Stock Options

The Company has granted an aggregate of 1,200,000 Options to certain directors, officers and consultants of the Company in accordance with the Company's current Stock Option Plan. Each Option is exercisable into one common share (a "Share") of the Company at a price of CAD0.48 per Share for a period of five years from the date of grant, being today. A total of 633,334 Options vest immediately. The remaining options shall vest as follows:

166,666 shall vest in two equal tranches on September 2, 2022 and September 2, 2023;

150,000 options shall vest fully on February 16, 2022; and

250,000 options shall vest in three equal tranches; 1/3 shall vest on January 26, 2022; 1/3 shall vest on July 26, 2022; and 1/3 shall vest on July 26, 2023.



About Giyani

Giyani is a mineral resource company focused on becoming one of Africas first low-carbon producers of high-purity electrolytic manganese precursor materials, used by battery manufacturers for the expanding electric vehicle market, through the advancement of its manganese assets in the Kanye Basin in south-eastern Botswana, (the Kanye Basin Prospects) through its wholly-owned Botswana subsidiary Menzi Battery (Pty) Limited. The Companys Kanye Basin Prospects consist of 10 prospecting licenses and include the past producing Kgwakgwe Hill mine and project, referred to as the K.Hill Project, the Otse manganese prospect and the Lobatse manganese prospect, both of which have seen historical mining activities.

The Company is currently undertaking a feasibility study on the K.Hill Project, following an updated preliminary assessment report announced on 12 April 2021 with a post-tax NPV of USD332 million and post-tax IRR of 80%, based on a development plan to produce around 891,000 tonnes of high-purity manganese sulphate monohydrate over a 10 year project life.

Additional information and corporate documents may be found on www.sedar.com and on Giyani Metals Corp. website at https://giyanimetals.com/.

On behalf of the Board of Directors of Giyani Metals Corp.

Robin Birchall, CEO

Contact:

Robin Birchall CEO, Director

+44 7711 313019

rbirchall@giyanimetals.com

Judith Webster

Corporate Secretary and Investor Relations

+1 416 453 8818

jwebster@giyanimetals.com

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange (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 news release.

The securities described herein have not been registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "U.S. Securities Act"), or any state securities laws, and accordingly, may not be offered or sold to, or for the account or benefit of, persons in the United States or "U.S. persons," as such term is defined in Regulation S promulgated under the U.S. Securities Act ("U.S. Persons"), except in compliance with the registration requirements of the U.S. Securities Act and applicable state securities requirements or pursuant to exemptions therefrom. This press release does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any of the Company's securities to, or for the account of benefit of, persons in the United States or U.S. Persons.

Forward Looking Information

This press release contains "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation. All statements in this news release, other than statements of historical fact, that address events or developments that Giyani expects to occur, are "forward-looking statements". Forward-looking statements are statements that are not historical facts and are generally, but not always, identified by the words "expects", "does not expect", "plans", "anticipates", "does not anticipate", "believes", "intends", "estimates", "projects", "potential", "scheduled", "forecast", "budget" and similar expressions, or that events or conditions "will", "would", "may", "could", "should" or "might" occur. Specific forward-looking statements and forward-looking information herein includes completion of receipt of TSXV approval for the private placement and completion of the private placement.

All such forward-looking statements are based on the opinions and estimates of the relevant management as of the date such statements are made and are subject to certain assumptions, important risk factors and uncertainties, many of which are beyond Giyani's ability to control or predict. Forward-looking statements are necessarily based on estimates and assumptions that are inherently subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results, level of activity, performance or achievements to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. In the case of Giyani, these facts include their anticipated operations in future periods, planned exploration and development of its properties, and plans related to its business and other matters that may occur in the future. This information relates to analyses and other information that is based on expectations of future performance and planned work programs.

Forward-looking information is subject to a variety of known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which could cause actual events or results to differ from those expressed or implied by the forward-looking information, including, without limitation: inherent exploration hazards and risks; risks related to exploration and development of natural resource properties; uncertainty in Giyani's ability to obtain funding; commodity price fluctuations; recent market events and conditions; risks related to the uncertainty of mineral resource calculations and the inclusion of inferred mineral resources in economic estimation; risks related to governmental regulations; risks related to obtaining necessary licenses and permits; risks related to their business being subject to environmental laws and regulations; risks related to their mineral properties being subject to prior unregistered agreements, transfers, or claims and other defects in title; risks relating to competition from larger companies with greater financial and technical resources; risks relating to the inability to meet financial obligations under agreements to which they are a party; ability to recruit and retain qualified personnel; and risks related to their directors and officers becoming associated with other natural resource companies which may give rise to conflicts of interests. This list is not exhaustive of the factors that may affect Giyani's forward-looking information. Should one or more of these risks and uncertainties materialize, or should underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those described in the forward-looking information or statements.

Giyani's forward-looking information is based on the reasonable beliefs, expectations and opinions of their respective management on the date the statements are made, and Giyani does not assume any obligation to update forward looking information if circumstances or management's beliefs, expectations or opinions change, except as required by law. For the reasons set forth above, investors should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information. For a complete discussion with respect to Giyani and risks associated with forward-looking information and forward-looking statements, please refer to Giyani's financial statements and related MD&A, all of which are filed on SEDAR at www.sedar.com.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Sept. 02, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Abacus Mining & Exploration Corporation (Abacus or the Company) (TSXV: AME) wishes to announce that it has decided not to renew the lease on its Jersey Valley epithermal gold property in Nevada.



The Company has reviewed in detail the results of a drill program completed earlier this year. The drilling tested several prominent geophysical targets further along strike and at slightly greater depth than historic drill holes. Although similar gold and silver values were intersected in the new drilling, each of the targets weakens considerably along strike.

The Company also considered geochemical pathfinder elements within the new drilling, and compared to a typical epithermal system, these are weak to absent. The Company tested the systems to approximately 300 metres vertical depth and considers any potential at depth to have limited economic viability.

Targets to the east within a skarn system have also been adequately tested by past drilling, which returned only weakly anomalous precious metal values. The Company thus considers all targets fully tested and will return the property to the vendors.

The Company has additional properties of merit in Nevada. The Willow copper-molybdenum porphyry property is in the Yerington copper camp, southeast of Reno. Drilling by the Company in 2018 intersected a key intrusive rock unit that hosts all known porphyry Cu-Mo deposits at Yerington. This rock unit was not previously known to exist on the Companys property, and it represents a significant new discovery. The target is large and robust, and it remains essentially untested. The Company started a new drilling program on this prospective property in early July, and the program is progressing well.

Abacus also holds a 20% ownership interest in the Ajax copper-gold porphyry project, located near Kamloops, British Columbia., which is managed by base metal major KGHM Polska Miedz S.A., who hold the remaining 80%. The Ajax Project contains significant quantities of copper and gold, within a NI 43-101 Proven and Probable Mineral Reserve of 426 Mt at 0.29% Cu, 0.19 g/t Au and 0.39 g/t Ag. Contained metal is in the order of 2.7 Bil lbs Cu, 2.6 Moz Au and 5.3 Moz Ag. *

The technical information in this news release has been reviewed and approved by Paul G. Anderson, M.Sc., P.Geo., a Qualified Person within the meaning of National Instrument 43-101.

* Wardrop Engineering Inc. 2012. Ajax Copper/Gold Project, Kamloops, British Columbia  Feasibility Study Technical Report. Doc. No. 1054610300-REP-R0004-02. January 2012.

On Behalf of the Board,

ABACUS MINING & EXPLORATION CORPORATION

Paul G. Anderson, P.Geo.

President and CEO

About Abacus

Abacus is a mineral exploration and mine development company currently focused on copper and gold in B.C. and Nevada. The Companys main asset is a 20% ownership interest, together with KGHM Polska Miedz S.A. (80%), in the proposed copper-gold Ajax Mine located southwest of Kamloops, B.C., which has undergone a joint provincial and federal environmental assessment process. On December 14, 2017, a decision was made by the B.C. Minister of Environment and Climate Change Strategy and the Minister of Energy, Mines and Petroleum resources to decline to issue an environmental assessment certificate for the Project. KGHM have recently reopened an office in Kamloops, B.C. to facilitate First Nation, community and governmental engagement in order to advance the project towards a potential resubmission of the environmental application.

Abacus also holds an option on the Willow copper-gold property located near Yerington, Nevada in which it can acquire up to a 75% ownership interest, and the contiguous Nev-Lorraine claims subject to a ten-year lease agreement.

For the latest reports and information on Abacus projects, please refer to the Companys website at www.amemining.com.

Forward-Looking Information

This release includes certain statements that are deemed forward-looking statements. All statements in this release, other than statements of historical facts, that address events or developments that Abacus expects to occur, are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are statements that are not historical facts and are generally, but not always, identified by the words expects, plans, anticipates, believes, intends, estimates, projects, potential and similar expressions, or that events or conditions will, would, may, could or should occur. Although the Company believes the expectations expressed in such forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, such statements are not guarantees of future performance and actual results may differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause the actual results to differ materially from those in forward-looking statements include changes to commodity prices, mine and metallurgical recovery, operating and capital costs, foreign exchange rates, ability to obtain required permits on a timely basis, exploitation and exploration successes, continued availability of capital and financing, and general economic, market or business conditions. Investors are cautioned that any such statements are not guarantees of future performance and actual results or developments may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are based on the beliefs, estimates and opinions of the Company's management on the date the statements are made. Except as required by applicable securities laws, the Company undertakes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements in the event that management's beliefs, estimates or opinions, or other factors, should change.

Neither 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.
English Lithuanian

The leading tour operator in the Baltic States Novaturas has supplemented long-haul holiday destinations program with new exotic countries - Mauritius, Zanzibar, Mexico, and Cuba.

"Holiday season in exotic countries usually includes the winter-spring months. Last year, due to pandemic restrictions, the choice of exotic holiday destinations was minimal. With most countries revoking and easing quarantine restrictions, additionally next to the usual exotic holiday destinations we have added such countries as Mexico, Cuba, Zanzibar, and Mauritius. We are also waiting for the popular Southeast Asian countries Thailand and Vietnam and the island of Bali to be fully open to travelers as well, says Audrone Keinyte, head of Novaturas group.

During more than 20 years of operations, the company applies different ways of organizing trips, depending on the type of holidays offered. Trips are organized by both charter and regular airline flights. The company emphasizes that the most optimal option for exotic destinations are regular airline flights. "This is a long-established operation model that helps us manage potential risks and be flexible. Our aim is to ensure long-haul connecting flights with the lowest possible waiting time, and they are covered by guarantees of various risks, which is especially important at the moment. At the same time, such model also meets the expectations of our travelers - this way we can offer not only the largest supply of exotic destinations, various holiday durations, flights periods, combined leisure tours, but also can offer new destinations to our travelers every season, says A. Keinyte.

The long-haul holiday season, depending on the market, starts in the last months of this year and will last until April 2022. Flights are planned to Thailand, Vietnam, Bali, Mexico, Cuba, Seychelles, Mauritius and Zanzibar. The nearest scheduled flights are to one of the most popular island states in the Caribbean - Cuba. Travelers also have the possibility to fly to Mauritius, Mexico and the Seychelles later this year.

About Novaturas Group

AB Novaturas Group is the largest tour operator in the Baltic States, offering summer and winter package holidays in more than 30 destinations worldwide and more than 100 sightseeing routes. In 2019, the group served more than 293 thousand customers.
Dublin, Sept. 03, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "Endoscopy Guidewire Market Forecast to 2028 - COVID-19 Impact and Global Analysis by Type (Monofilament, Coiled, Coated); Core Material (Stainless Steel, Nitinol); Application (Diagnostics, Therapeutic), and Geography" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.



According to this report the market was valued at US$ 1,192.04 million in 2021 and is projected to reach US$ 1,749.60 million by 2028; it is expected to grow at a CAGR of 5.6% during 2021-2028. The report highlights the trends prevailing in the market, and drivers and deterrents pertaining to the market growth. The growth of the market is mainly attributed to the key factors such as the rising prevalence of diseases requiring endoscopy and favorable government initiatives. However, risk of infections caused due to endoscopy and high cost of endoscopy procedures & equipment restrain the market growth. On the other side, the rising patient preference for minimally invasive procedures offer lucrative opportunities for the growth of the market during the forecast period.

Endoscopy is a procedure, which helps doctors or physicians to view and operate internal organs and vessels of the body. As this is a minimally invasive procedure, it is preferred on a large scale for diagnosis and treatment of various diseases and medical conditions. Endoscopy can be performed on different internal body organs with the help of specialized instruments. Endoscopy is preferred in diseases or medical conditions such as cancer and gastrointestinal disorders. In recent years, there has been a substantial rise in cancer cases and other diseases needing endoscopy.

For instance, the American Cancer Society estimates about 26,560 new cases (16,160 in men and 10,400 in women) of stomach cancer in the US by 2021. Endoscopy procedure is highly preferred during the detection and treatment of various indications, such as ulcers, liver & kidney diseases, and chronic joint symptoms, which have increased significantly in recent years due to various environmental factors and change in the individual's lifestyle in developing economies. With an increase in these medical conditions, the demand for endoscopy procedures is expected to increase the adoption of endoscopy guidewire devices in the coming years.

Olympus Corporation, Steris plc. CONMED Corporation, Boston Scientific Corporation, Merit Medical Systems Inc., Medtronic, Cook Medical LLC, Medorah Meditek Pvt. Ltd., and Hobbs Medical Inc are among the prominent players operating in the Endoscopy Guidewire market. These players are focusing on product development and innovation to sustain their positions in the market. For instance, in May 2019, Olympus Corporation., among the technology leader in designing and delivering innovative solutions for medical and surgical procedures, launched its RevoWave Endoscopic Guidewire and the CleverLock Guidewire Locking Device. in the US market.

Reasons to Buy

Save and reduce time carrying out entry-level research by identifying the growth, size, leading players and segments in the endoscopy guidewire market.

Highlights key business priorities in order to assist companies to realign their business strategies.

The key findings and recommendations highlight crucial progressive industry trends in the global endoscopy guidewire 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. Endoscopy Guidewire Market - Key Takeaways



3. Research Methodology



4. Global Endoscopy Guidewire 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 (MEA) - PEST Analysis

4.2.5 South and Central America (SCAM) - PEST Analysis

4.3 Expert Opinions



5. Endoscopy Guidewire Market - Key Market Dynamics

5.1 Market Drivers

5.1.1 Rising Prevalence of Diseases Requiring Endoscopy

5.1.2 Favourable Government Initiatives

5.2 Market Restraints

5.2.1 Risk of Infections Caused Due to Endoscopy and High Cost of Endoscopy Procedures & Equipment

5.3 Market Opportunities

5.3.1 Rising Patient Preference for Minimally Invasive Procedures

5.4 Future Trends

5.4.1 Development of Endoscopic Robotic Systems

5.5 Impact analysis



6. Endoscopy Guidewire Market - Global Analysis

6.1 Global Endoscopy Guidewire Market Revenue Forecast and Analysis

6.2 Global Endoscopy Guidewire Market, By Geography - Forecast and Analysis

6.3 Market Positioning of Key Players



7. Endoscopy Guidewire Market Analysis - By Type

7.1 Overview

7.2 Endoscopy Guidewire Market Revenue Share, by Type (2021 and 2028)

7.3 Monofilament

7.3.1 Overview

7.3.2 Monofilament: Endoscopy Guidewire Market- Revenue and Forecast to 2028 (US$ Million)

7.4 Coiled

7.4.1 Overview

7.4.2 Coiled: Endoscopy Guidewire Market- Revenue and Forecast to 2028 (US$ Million)

7.5 Coated

7.5.1 Overview

7.5.2 Coated: Endoscopy Guidewire Market- Revenue and Forecast to 2028 (US$ Million)



8. Endoscopy Guidewire Market Analysis - By Core Material

8.1 Overview

8.2 Endoscopy Guidewire Market Revenue Share, by Core Material (2021 and 2028)

8.3 Stainless Steel

8.3.1 Overview

8.3.2 Stainless Steel: Endoscopy Guidewire Market- Revenue and Forecast to 2028 (US$ Million)

8.4 Nitinol

8.4.1 Overview

8.4.2 Nitinol: Endoscopy Guidewire Market- Revenue and Forecast to 2028 (US$ Million)



9. Endoscopy Guidewire Market Analysis - By Application

9.1 Overview

9.2 Endoscopy Guidewire Market Revenue Share, by Application (2021 and 2028)

9.3 Diagnostics

9.3.1 Overview

9.3.2 Diagnostics: Endoscopy Guidewire Market- Revenue and Forecast to 2028 (US$ Million)

9.4 Therapeutic

9.4.1 Overview

9.4.2 Therapeutic: Endoscopy Guidewire Market- Revenue and Forecast to 2028 (US$ Million)



10. Endoscopy Guidewire Market - Geographical Analysis



11. Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic on Global Endoscopy Guidewire Market

11.1 North America: Impact Assessment of COVID-19 Pandemic

11.2 Europe: Impact Assessment Of COVID-19 Pandemic

11.3 Asia-Pacific: Impact Assessment of COVID-19 Pandemic

11.4 Rest of the World: Impact Assessment of COVID-19 Pandemic



12. Industry Landscape

12.1 Overview

12.2 Growth Strategies Done by the Companies in the Market, (%)

12.3 Organic Developments

12.3.1 Overview

12.4 Inorganic Developments

12.4.1 Overview



13. Company Profiles

13.1 Olympus Corporation

13.1.1 Key Facts

13.1.2 Business Description

13.1.3 Products and Services

13.1.4 Financial Overview

13.1.5 SWOT Analysis

13.1.6 Key Developments

13.2 STERIS plc.

13.2.1 Key Facts

13.2.2 Business Description

13.2.3 Products and Services

13.2.4 Financial Overview

13.2.5 SWOT Analysis

13.2.6 Key Developments

13.3 CONMED Corporation

13.3.1 Key Facts

13.3.2 Business Description

13.3.3 Products and Services

13.3.4 Financial Overview

13.3.5 SWOT Analysis

13.3.6 Key Developments

13.4 Boston Scientific Corporation

13.4.1 Key Facts

13.4.2 Business Description

13.4.3 Products and Services

13.4.4 Financial Overview

13.4.5 SWOT Analysis

13.4.6 Key Developments

13.5 Merit Medical Systems Inc.

13.5.1 Key Facts

13.5.2 Business Description

13.5.3 Products and Services

13.5.4 Financial Overview

13.5.5 SWOT Analysis

13.5.6 Key Developments

13.6 Medtronic

13.6.1 Key Facts

13.6.2 Business Description

13.6.3 Products and Services

13.6.4 Financial Overview

13.6.5 SWOT Analysis

13.6.6 Key Developments

13.7 Cook Medical LLC

13.7.1 Key Facts

13.7.2 Business Description

13.7.3 Products and Services

13.7.4 Financial Overview

13.7.5 SWOT Analysis

13.7.6 Key Developments

13.8 Medorah Meditek Pvt. Ltd.

13.8.1 Key Facts

13.8.2 Business Description

13.8.3 Products and Services

13.8.4 Financial Overview

13.8.5 SWOT Analysis

13.8.6 Key Developments

13.9 HOBBS MEDICAL INC

13.9.1 Key Facts

13.9.2 Business Description

13.9.3 Products and Services

13.9.4 Financial Overview

13.9.5 SWOT Analysis

13.9.6 Key Developments



14. Appendix



For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/kb8kcj
Dublin, Sept. 03, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "2021 Middle Eastern Power Rental Market With Covid-19 Impact" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The Middle Eastern Power Generation Rental market research report includes market size, growth rates, vertical end user split, competitive market share data and revenue forecasts from 2020-2027 for Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, Kuwait, Oman, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, and the rest of the Middle East with COVID-19 impact.

The study is a comprehensive analysis including market share splits by fuel type (diesel-based and gas-based), output power (50-300 KVA, 300-500 KVA, 600 KVA-1MW, and >1MW), application (prime, continuous, and standby), end user group (construction, oil & gas, utilities, data centers, others) and rental provider.

Furthermore, profiles of key companies, growth drivers, restraints, challenges, and quotations from industry participants are also included in this analysis of the temporary power opportunity.

The Middle Eastern Power Rental Market is in the growth stage. The market is highly competitive, with a large number of local companies holding a major portion of the market share.

The market is projected to experience a steady growth rate during the forecast period (2020-2027). The market is expected to be driven by increasing construction activity, a resurgence of the events industry, and regional economic development.

This study aims to provide a detailed analysis of the Middle Eastern Power Rental Market along with competitive intelligence for the year 2020. The market numbers included in this report represent revenues generated by companies operating in the Middle Eastern Power Rental Market. The base year for the study is 2020 and the forecast period is from 2020 until 2027.

This study captures the following information on Middle Eastern Power Rental Market:

Market Size, Growth Rate, Revenue Forecasts (2020-2027)

Growth Drivers & Restraints

Market Data

Quotes by Key Industry Participants

Market Share Analysis

Market Trends

Companies Featured:

Aggreko plc

Al Faris Group

Al-Bahar (Mohamed Abdulrahman Al- Bahar) (CAT Caterpillar Inc.)

Altaaqa Alternative Solutions Company Ltd. (Altaaqa)

Atlas Copco

Rental Solutions and Services Ltd. (RSS)

SES SMART Energy Solutions

Sudhir Rentals and Byrne Equipment Rental

The Kanoo Group

Key Topics Covered:

I. Research Scope

II. Market Definitions

III. Methodology

IV. Middle Eastern Power Rental Market: Executive Summary

a. COVID-19 Impact

b. Competitive Factors

c. Middle Eastern Rental Market: Market Drivers and Impact

d. Middle Eastern Power Rental Market: Market Challenges and Impact

e. Middle Eastern Power Rental Market: Market Trends

f. Middle Eastern Power Rental Market: Market Trends - Power Projects

V. Market Data

a. Revenue Forecast, Total Market, 2020-2027

b. Revenue Forecast, General Rental 2020-2027

c. Revenue Forecast, Power Projects, 2020-2027

d. Market Share by Country, General Rental, Middle East, 2020

e. Market Share by Revenue, General Rental, Middle East, 2020

f. Market Share by Revenue, by Fuel Type, Middle East, 2020

g. Market Share by Revenue, by Generator Size, Middle East, 2020

h. Market Share by Revenue, by Application, Middle East, 2020

i. Market Share by Revenue, by End User, Middle East, 2020

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/lq76aa
HONG KONG, Sept. 03, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Recently, TickerWin, the leading market research firm, has released a research report "VIYI Algorithm, with Leading Customized Central Processing Algorithm Services, Its Annual Revenue Increased by 176.8%". The central processing algorithm service is a service based on a series of algorithms including analytical algorithms, recommendation algorithms and acceleration algorithms, which can empower downstream industries with higher demand for data analysis and computing power optimization, and apply to internet advertising, internet game applications, finance, retail, logistics and other industries. In view of huge downstream demands, the overall market of central processing algorithm services is huge. Major players in the central processing algorithm service industry include digital marketing service providers, online game service providers and algorithm solution service providers.



With the rapid development of the computer industry and the internet industry and the increase of internet penetration rate in China, the number of internet users and internet data in China have increased significantly. The internet industry is the largest application industry for central processing algorithm services, and internet applications' demand for computing power are increasing.

According to the report,VIYI Algorithms, Inc. ("VIYI Algo"), a Cayman Islands exempted company operating in China, announced that it would go public through a merger with Venus Acquisition Corporation, a special purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC). In connection with the transaction, VIYI algorithms is valued at $400 million. Upon completion of the transaction, Venus will be renamed MicroAlgo Inc. The listing merger will be completed in the third quarter of 2021.

VIYI is dedicated to the development and application of bespoke central processing algorithms. VIYI provides comprehensive solutions to customers by integrating central processing algorithms with software or hardware, or both, to streamline their digital services for end-users or technological development purposes, thereby helping them increase the number of customers, improve end-user satisfaction, achieve direct cost savings, reduce power consumption, and achieve technical goals. The range of VIYI's services includes algorithm optimization, accelerating computing power without the need for hardware upgrades, lightweight data processing, and data intelligence services. VIYI's ability to efficiently deliver software and hardware optimization to VIYI's customers through bespoke central processing algorithms serves as a driving force for VIYI's long-term development.

Revenues

VIYI's total revenues increased by approximately RMB 196.6 million, or 176.8%, from approximately RMB 111.2 million for the year ended December 31, 2019, to approximately RMB 307.8 million (USD 47.2 million) for the year ended December 31, 2020, due to an increase of approximately RMB 38.6 million (USD 5.9 million) in central processing algorithm service revenue, and an increase of approximately RMB 158.0 million (USD 24.2 million) in intelligent chips and services revenue. Approximately 78.6% of the increase in intelligent chips and services revenue was due to the acquisition of Fe-da Electronics.

VIYI generates revenues when VIYI completes its performance obligation to deliver related services based on the specific terms of the contract, which are commonly based on a specific action, e.g., cost per impression ("CPM") for online display. Over 90% of VIYI's contracts with these customers are based on the CPM charging model. Revenues generated from mobile games include royalty payments from licensee operators of VIYI's mobile games and fees collected from game developers for using VIYI's game portal. VIYI's central processing algorithm services revenue increased by approximately RMB 38.6 million, or 34.7%, from approximately RMB 111.2 million for the year ended December 31, 2019, to approximately RMB 149.8 million (USD 23.0 million) for the year ended December 31, 2020. This increase was primarily attributable to the rise in the number of impressions as a result of improvement from VIYI's algorithm solution.

Intelligent chips and services revenues include revenues generated from the resale of intelligent chips. VIYI generates revenues when the control of products is transferred to customers, as evidenced by customers' signed acceptances. VIYI also generates revenues from software development. VIYI designs software for central processing units based on customers' specific needs. Revenues from software development are recognized over time during the development period.

VIYI started generating revenue from the resale of intelligent chips and related software development in September 2020 and also through our acquisition, which amounted to approximately RMB 158.0 million (USD 24.2 million) for the year ended December 31, 2020. VIYI expects that as the demand for custom optimizations by way of VIYI's proprietary algorithms grows, VIYI's intelligent chips and services revenue will continue to grow. For semiconductor application solutions related to algorithm optimization, VIYI plans to combine algorithm optimization application demand scenarios, provide corresponding central processing algorithm solutions to meet market demand, and promote the application and popularization of algorithm optimization technology in the semiconductor field.

Market leader in cutting edge technology protected by intellectual property rights

The CIC Reports indicates that VIYI is the market leader in terms of the quantity of intellectual property. As of May 25, 2021, VIYI owns 370 proprietary intellectual property rights, which include 273 copyrights of which 270 are software copyrights, 37 patents, 23 registered trademarks, 18 exclusive rights for the layout design of integrated circuit, and 19 domain names. The large quantity of intellectual property at VIYI's disposal as compared to VIYI's competitors exemplifies VIYI's commitment to research and development and long-term development.

VIYI leverages its fixation on staying in the forefront of technological development to help customers explore solutions and needs that are yet to be identified. VIYI then provides proprietary central processing algorithm solutions to meet those needs.

Competition

There are other companies addressing various aspects/verticals of the central processing algorithm service market in the PRC. The central processing algorithm service market is highly fragmented and evolving. With respect to VIYI's central processing algorithm services, VIYI competes against other companies engaged in similar services like VIYI.

VIYI believes the principal competitive factors in VIYI's market are:

 service and products features and functionality;

 capability for customization, configurability, integration, security, scalability, and reliability;

 quality of technologies and research and development capabilities;

 ability to innovate and rapidly respond to customer needs;

 the breadth of use cases supported;

 diversified customer base;

 relationships with key participants in VIYI's customers' industry verticals;

 sufficient capital support;

 platform extensibility and ability to integrate with emerging technologies such as AI and cloud computing; and

 brand awareness and reputation.

VIYI believes it competes favorably on the basis of the above factors; however, VIYI expects competition to intensify in the future. VIYI's ability to remain competitive will largely depend on the quality of its applications, the effectiveness of VIYI's sales and marketing efforts, the quality of VIYI's customer service, and VIYI's ability to acquire or develop complementary technologies, products, and businesses to enhance the features and functionality of VIYI's applications.

China's increased demand for central processing algorithm services in internet advertisement and the online game industry.

Effective central processing algorithm solutions can empower downstream industries experiencing high demand for data analysis and computing power optimization, which applies to internet advertising, internet game applications, finance, retail, logistics, and other industries. Because of huge downstream demands, the overall market of central processing algorithm services is enormous.

According to the CIC Report, revenue of central processing algorithm services derived from internet advertisement and online gaming alone has grown from RMB 2.2 billion in 2016 to RMB 6.9 billion in 2020, representing a CAGR of 32.7%. This market is expected to maintain a rapid growth trend, expanding at a CAGR of 15% during the period from 2020 to 2025. VIYI believes that its position as an industry leader in a fast-growing market with favorable industry trends will greatly benefit VIYI in achieving sustainable and rapid growth in the future.

About TickerWin

TickerWin is a leading market research firm in Hong Kong. They have built a proprietary research platform in the financial markets. TickerWin focuses on emerging growth companies and paradigm shifting companies. TickerWin has a team of professionals with a proven track record in market research reports, industry analysis and financing trend analysis. For more information, please visit: https://tickerwin.com.





Contacts

Terry Chan, Head of Research Dept

TickerWin Market Research

E: terry.chan@tickerwin.com

W: https://tickerwin.com

A: 12A, 22/G, Sheung Wan Municipal Services Building, 345 Queen's Road Central, Hong Kong
West Des Moines, Iowa, Sept. 03, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- GuideOne Insurance announced the election of Michael Hughes, former President of Business Insurance, Liberty Mutual, to the Boards of GuideOne Mutual Holding Company and GuideOne Insurance Group, Inc., effective August 19, 2021. Hughes will serve a three-year term.

Hughes brings more than 30 years of experience as an insurance leader in a variety of underwriting and executive roles. After 29 years at The Hartford, Hughes joined Safeco as head of underwriting for commercial lines. Later at Safeco, Hughes was the Executive Vice President in charge of Commercial and Personal lines. When Liberty Mutual acquired Safeco, he became the President of Safeco. Hughes played a significant role in the integration with Liberty Mutual by managing the employee culture and relationships with their distribution partners. After the integration, he became the President of Business Insurance, and led the commercial lines businesses of several other Liberty Mutual acquisitions. Throughout his career, Hughes has proven his expertise in the underwriting, distribution and organic growth elements of an expanding insurance business. Hughes earned his Bachelor of Business Administration degree in Risk Management, Insurance and Actuarial Studies from St. Johns University.

GuideOne President & Chief Executive Officer, Jessica Snyder, said, We are thrilled to welcome Mike to the GuideOne Board of Directors. His vast industry knowledge and experience in business integrations make him a tremendous resource for GuideOne as we continue to identify strategies for sustainable success in the future.

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About GuideOne Insurance

GuideOne Insurance was founded in 1947 with a commitment to social responsibility. That tradition continues today, as the company proudly protects the people who strengthen our communities. GuideOne Insurance serves churches, nonprofit organizations, small businesses and educational institutions. We provide commercial property and liability, business owners policies (BOP), workers compensation, commercial auto, and many other liability needs. Through GuideOne National, our Specialty E&S carrier, we serve three industry verticals: infrastructure, construction and energy.

Rated A- (Excellent) by industry analyst A.M. Best, GuideOne is licensed in all 50 states through a network of distribution partners who serve more than 51,000 members. GuideOnes corporate headquarters are located in West Des Moines, Iowa.

Attachment
Austin, Texas, Sept. 03, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Texas Alliance of Energy Producers has gathered an impressive list of speakers for its Annual Conference, to be held Sept. 14-15 at the Hotel Drover in Fort Worth, Texas. The following professionals, representing a broad spectrum of the oil and gas industry as well as institutions that impact it, will address the audience during the main conference on Wednesday, Sept. 15:

Vicente Gonzalez , U.S. Congressman (Texas 15 th District); Founder and Chair, House Democrat Oil and Gas Caucus

, U.S. Congressman (Texas 15 District); Founder and Chair, House Democrat Oil and Gas Caucus Christi Craddick , Chair, Texas Railroad Commission

, Chair, Texas Railroad Commission Chris Wright , CEO, Liberty Oilfield Services

, CEO, Liberty Oilfield Services Mike Howard , CEO, Howard Energy Partners

, CEO, Howard Energy Partners James Taylor , President, Heartland Institute

, President, Heartland Institute Gregory Wrightstone , Executive Director, CO2 Coalition

, Executive Director, CO2 Coalition Helen Currie , Chief Economist, ConocoPhillips

, Chief Economist, ConocoPhillips Mattie Parker, Mayor of Fort Worth

Conference attendees will hear these speakers discuss a wide range of topics, including global economic trends, defensive measures against federal overreach, regulatory updates, policy initiatives, and positive energy stories from two successful CEOs. Fort Worth Mayor Mattie Parker, newly elected as the youngest mayor of a major American city, will close the program by discussing the role of cities in promoting economic opportunity.

This speaker line-up includes some of the best and brightest minds for shaping oil and gas messaging, regulation, and economic policy, said Jason Modglin, President of the Texas Alliance of Energy Producers. They recognize the unparalleled value Texas independent producers bring to their local regions, the state, and the nation. Our agenda marks a strong return to in-person events for the Alliance and its members.

The Conference begins on Tuesday, Sept. 14 with an Oil Patch Reception and Exhibition. For more details, registration and sponsorships, visit https://texasalliance.org/event/texas-alliance-annual-conference/.

About the Texas Alliance of Energy Producers

Founded in 1930, the Texas Alliance of Energy Producers is the most knowledgeable and effective statewide oil and gas association in the nation. The Alliance provides a voice for sound U.S. energy policy for nearly 3,000 members. These individuals and organizations  from small independents to publicly traded companies  are the driving force behind the U.S. energy renaissance. For more information, visit https://www.texasalliance.org/ and @TexasAllianceEP.

Attachment
Washington, D.C., Sept. 03, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- A video released today by the New Civil Liberties Alliance dives into a lawsuit brought by charter boat captains, including Allen Walburn, who has been chartering deep-sea fishing vessels in Naples, FL, for the past 42 years. Captain Walburn operates one of approximately 1,300 federally permitted charter boats that take customers fishing and sightseeing off the coasts of Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas. The captains and owners of these boats are all part of a class-action lawsuit brought by NCLA, a nonpartisan, nonprofit civil rights group.

The lawsuit challenges a Final Rule issued by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the U.S. Department of Commerce, and the National Marine Fisheries Services (NMFS). The rule requires Gulf of Mexico for-hire charter vessel owners to install hardware and software on their boats approved by NMFS that provides GPS tracking information to the government. They must submit electronic fishing reports that include intrusive and proprietary business information to protect fisheries.

The rule is unconstitutional, unauthorized, and wholly disproportionate to any plausible conservation purpose. The 24-hour GPS tracking of all charter boats without any suspicion of wrongdoing is a violation of the Fourth Amendments prohibition against unreasonable searches. The permanent installation of GPS-tracking devices on charter boats constitutes a taking in violation of the Fifth Amendment. And by requiring charter-boat operators to purchase and provide the government data from these unwanted devices$3,000 per unitthe Final Rule exercises power that Congress did not and could not have granted the agencies.

Last month, NCLA filed a motion asking the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana to award summary judgment and enjoin the application of the Final Rule against charter boat captains operating in the Gulf of Mexico.

Excerpts from the video:

I dont know of anybody else in our country that is required to have a monitoring device attached to their personal equipment 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and has to notify the federal government of their use of the equipment and the intent of the use of the equipment. Were upset about this because Big Brother is intruding into our business, in essence putting an ankle bracelet on all the charter boat operators in the Gulf of Mexico.

 Captain Allen Walburn, Owner, A&B Charters Inc.

The whole reason you have this regulation is to protect the fisheries. They have to have a permit to fish and to take people out on charter boats. And the government has an interest in making sure that they fish correctly. All fine. But there is no relationship between watching you 24 hours a day and checking which fish you took in.

 John J. Vecchione, Senior Litigation Counsel, NCLA

For more information visit the case page here.

ABOUT NCLA

NCLA is a nonpartisan, nonprofit civil rights group founded by prominent legal scholar Philip Hamburger to protect constitutional freedoms from violations by the Administrative State. NCLAs public-interest litigation and other pro bono advocacy strive to tame the unlawful power of state and federal agencies and to foster a new civil liberties movement that will help restore Americans fundamental rights.

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Washington, Sept. 03, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Today, U.S. Small Business Administration Administrator Isabella Casillas Guzman released the following statement to commemorate Labor Day:

Labor Day is a time to honor the unending strength, creativity and determination of the American workers who are the backbone of our nation. Our workers  which include the 61.2 million employed by our nations 32 million small businesses  keep our communities safe and vibrant and our economy strong. They have demonstrated inspiring resilience over the past year and a half and are leading the way as our country recovers and rebuilds from a global pandemic. There is one group of workers in particular that Id like to recognize for their incredible dedication and commitment over the past 18 months, and thats the mission-driven federal workforce at the U.S. Small Business Administration. These dedicated civil servants continue to go above and beyond to ensure our nations entrepreneurs have the tools, resources and support they need to recover and rebuild. I couldnt be more proud to lead them.

###

About the U.S. Small Business Administration
DALLAS, TX, Sept. 03, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Puration, Inc. (OTC Pink: PURA) today announced the company has broken ground on its new Farmersville Hemp Brand Facility. The company last week, broke ground clearing land to establish a construction pad for the planned facility. The company intends to publish photos with an update on the construction plans next week.

PURA recently published a comprehensive update on its progress in the execution of the companys strategic transition to focus fulltime on its new Farmersville Hemp Brand business model. The update covers the rolls that Alkame Holdings, Inc. (OTC Pink: ALKM) and North American Cannabis Holdings, Inc. (OTC Pink: USMJ) play in the transition plan, in addition to an update on PURAs business relationship with PAO Group, Inc. (OTC Pink: PAOG). See the update at:

PURAs Farmersville Brands Update

Since the update, PURA and PAOG have subsequently resolved to unwind the previously executed sale of PURAs cannabis cultivation business to PAOG. The decision to unwind the transaction has been carefully and painstakingly considered and does not waiver the two companies commitment to continue working together strategically under PURAs Farmersville Hemp Brand business model. The cultivation operation is based in North Texas and the facility experienced a catastrophic event last February when a severe winter storm hit Texas . All existing inventory was lost as a result of the storm substantially impacting the value of the operation. After attempts to salvage the inventory and potentially even modify the purchase transaction, the two parties finally decided the best approach was to unwind the transaction and allow PURA to internally rebuild the business with plans to revisit a possible future transaction. In the meantime, the transaction will be unwound and application for an issuance of PAOG shares to PURA shareholders in conjunction with the transaction will be withdrawn.

PURA plans to issue the Farmersville Hemp Brand Facility construction update referenced above next Thursday, September 9, 2021.

For more information on Puration, visit http://www.purationinc.com

Contact:

Puration, Inc.

Brian Shibley,

info@aciconglomerated.com

+1 (800) 861-1350

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 Alkame will achieve significant sales, the failure to meet schedule or performance requirements of the Company's contracts, the Company's liquidity position, the Company's 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. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.
NEW YORK, Sept. 03, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Uoni, a home cleaning solutions provider and the maker of Uoni Global robotic vacuums, is today announcing its support of the ASPCA (The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) as an ASPCA Business Ambassador. Uoni is committed to raise awareness about the ASPCAs lifesaving work to protect, care for, and rescue animals across the United States.

More homes than ever before have discovered the joy of having a pet companion, particularly during the past year when so many people have been isolated due to the pandemic. According to the ASPCA, approximately 23 million American households have acquired a pet since the beginning of the pandemic. The unconditional love provided by a pet and the incentive for pet parents to be more active is just a few of the mental and physical health benefits of owning a pet.

Along with all the positives of having a pet in your home, the constant chore of cleaning up pet hair and food crumbs around the house can be a struggle for pet owners. Pet hair accumulates daily, so keeping up with it is particularly daunting for busy pet parents. If someone spends one hour each week vacuuming their home, that is like working overtime for a week without pay each year! And the day after you vacuum, the pet hair starts to accumulate.

The Uoni robot vacuum cleaner model V980 Plus+ sets the standard with several advanced features, like its self-emptying function and LIDAR navigation, that have improved the performance and convenience of robot vacuum cleaners.

Uoni V980 Plus+ with Self-Emptying Dustbin - When the robot finishes cleaning, it will return to the charging base, and the dust box will be automatically cleaned up with the help of the high-power dust collection function. Pet parents may find that other robots stop before they are finished if the dust bin becomes full of pet hair. Simply replace the dust bag when it is full. As it can go up to a month without needing to be cleaned, an orange light will flash rapidly to remind you to replace the bag.

Smarter Laser Navigation - Advanced LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) navigation with 24 sets of sensors enables the robot to move through your home and effortlessly clean without bumping into furniture.

4 in 1 Sweep, Vacuum, Mop, and Dump - Some robot vacuum makers have separate robots for mopping. The Uoni V980 Plus robot can sweep, vacuum, and mop, so whatever the task is, the robot will take care of it for you. And the self-emptying feature will keep the vacuum from having to wait for a person to clean the dustbin out before it can continue to vacuum.

Voice/Remote Control - Uoni works with voice control devices like Alexa & Google Assistant. Start a cleaning cycle with your voice. You can schedule cleaning with the Uoni Robot app, use the remote control or push the button on the robot.

Uoni Global robotic vacuums is a proud supporter of the ASPCA and its mission to save and protect vulnerable and victimized animals. To learn more about the ASPCAs lifesaving work to help animals, visit www.aspca.org.

About Uoni

Uoni is an advanced home cleaning solutions provider that focuses on smart home cleaning appliances. Inspired by the values of traditional Japanese workmanship and with a strict adherence to the spirit of "Japanese ingenuity," the company combines the natural purity of traditional handiwork with the exquisite beauty of modern craftsmanship. Uoni utilizes its own strength in technological research and production to solve usage, cleaning, storage, and other daily household problems through sophisticated design and cutting-edge technology. For more information about Uoni, please visit  www.uoni.com.

About the ASPCA

Founded in 1866, the ASPCA (The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) was the first animal welfare organization to be established in North America and today serves as the nations leading voice for vulnerable and victimized animals. As a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit corporation with more than two million supporters nationwide, the ASPCA is committed to preventing cruelty to dogs, cats, equines, and farm animals throughout the United States. The ASPCA assists animals in need through on-the-ground disaster and cruelty interventions, behavioral rehabilitation, animal placement, legal and legislative advocacy, and the advancement of the sheltering and veterinary community through research, training, and resources. For more information, visit www.ASPCA.org, and follow the ASPCA on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Media Contact:

Email: marketing@hbmka.com

Photos accompanying this announcement are available at

https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/0bc03f21-0458-4ed7-b206-3ca844c84699

https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/d6bdf6fd-2e63-4522-86a1-f3c9a54792cd
LAS VEGAS and VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Sept. 03, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- TAAT GLOBAL ALTERNATIVES INC. (CSE: TAAT), (OTCQX: TOBAF), (FRANKFURT: 2TP), (the Company or TAAT) is pleased to announce that it has started to operate out of its new facilities in the Las Vegas, Nevada area, providing significant additional operational space and production resources in combination with its original facility on West Post Road. In a press release dated July 16, 2021 , the Company announced that its preparation tasks for the new facilities were still on schedule for a launch in the following month, in line with the Companys business objectives for domestic and international activities already underway. Since then, TAAT has announced new purchase orders for distribution in the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Australia amounting to more than CAD $1,600,000 in total value (in press releases dated August 20, 2021 and August 27, 2021 ), in addition to distribution of TAAT in seven new U.S. states in just a two-month period (in an August 17, 2021 press release). Still in just its third full calendar quarter of retail availability, global demand for TAAT has grown steadily over the course of 2021 as the Company has diligently coordinated strategic launches in a wide range of markets.



A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/d020d1ba-84ea-45c3-a3e4-e1adf939fddd

Readers using news aggregation services may be unable to view the media above. Please access SEDAR or the Investor Relations section of the Companys website for a version of this press release containing all published media.

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/7e910156-c14e-45dc-adb9-32da3b9ea2ee

Readers using news aggregation services may be unable to view the media above. Please access SEDAR or the Investor Relations section of the Companys website for a version of this press release containing all published media.

Additionally, samples of TAAT with an advanced formulation of Beyond Tobacco using reconstituted material were recently sent to tobacco wholesalers in the United States, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Germany, Poland, France, and Switzerland. The general consensus among the tobacco wholesalers who received these samples was overwhelmingly positive with regard to the similarity of the products user experience compared to that of a tobacco cigarette. Based on anecdotal feedback from smokers aged 21+ and TAAT retailers, as well as survey responses from consumer research conducted earlier this year (detailed in the Companys April 14, 2021 press release), the Company identified several opportunities to enhance the user experience of TAAT by using reconstituted material in Beyond Tobacco. The advanced formulation was developed with the objective of making improvements to include the following:

Flavour combinations to generate a taste and smell resembling actual tobacco to a greater degree;

Higher production velocity, thus increasing the overall efficiency of the Companys manufacturing processes in its new facilities;

Significantly lower weight of each TAAT stick, approximately matching the weight of a typical tobacco cigarette;

Adjusted burning rate to ensure smokers aged 21+ who use TAAT will finish each stick with approximately the same puff count as a standard tobacco cigarette of the same length; and

Cutting the base material differently to ensure each TAAT stick consistently burns to completion without prematurely extinguishing.



The reconstituted formulation of Beyond Tobacco is now ready for production, which is set to begin this quarter.

TAAT Chief Executive Officer Setti Coscarella commented, With so many new international opportunities on the horizon, our facility expansion is a very important part of our growth strategy as we go into our second year of operations in which we expect TAAT to be launched in several new markets. With an abundance of feedback about TAAT from smokers aged 21+ who have sampled the product since it first launched in Ohio in Q4 2020, our advanced formulation of the Beyond Tobacco base material has made the user experience even closer to that of smoking a tobacco cigarette. Samples of TAAT with this advanced formulation have been sent to tobacco wholesalers across Europe, and based on their sentiments we are very confident that there will be even more TAAT placements in European markets in the near future.

On behalf of the Board of Directors of the Company,

TAAT GLOBAL ALTERNATIVES INC.

Setti Coscarella

Setti Coscarella, CEO and Director

For further information, please contact:

TAAT Investor Relations

1-833-TAAT-USA (1-833-822-8872)

investor@taatglobal.com

THE CANADIAN SECURITIES EXCHANGE (CSE) HAS NOT REVIEWED AND DOES NOT ACCEPT RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ACCURACY OR ADEQUACY OF THIS RELEASE, NOR HAS OR DOES THE CSES REGULATION SERVICES PROVIDER.

About TAAT Global Alternatives Inc.

The Company has developed TAAT, which is a tobacco-free and nicotine-free alternative to traditional cigarettes offered in "Original", "Smooth", and "Menthol" varieties. TAAT's base material is Beyond Tobacco, a proprietary blend which undergoes a patent-pending refinement technique causing its scent and taste to resemble tobacco. Under executive leadership with "Big Tobacco" pedigree, TAAT was launched first in the United States in Q4 2020 as the Company seeks to position itself in the $814 billion1 global tobacco industry.

For more information, please visit http://taatglobal.com .

References

1 British American Tobacco - The Global Market

Forward-Looking Statements

This news release contains forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation. Often, but not always, forward-looking information and information can be identified by the use of words such as plans, expects or does not expect, is expected, estimates, intends, anticipates or does not anticipate, or believes, or variations of such words and phrases or state that certain actions, events or results may, could, would, might or will be taken, occur, or be achieved. Forward-looking information in this news release includes statements regarding the anticipated performance of TAAT in the tobacco industry, in addition to the following: Potential outcomes from the operations of the new TAAT facilities in Las Vegas, potential performance and reception of the advanced Beyond Tobacco formulation, potential outcomes relating to initial feedback from tobacco wholesalers in Europe who recently received TAAT samples with the advanced Beyond Tobacco formulation. The forward-looking information reflects managements current expectations based on information currently available and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that may cause outcomes to differ materially from those discussed in the forward-looking information. Although the Company believes that the assumptions and factors used in preparing the forward-looking information are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on such information and no assurance can be given that such events will occur in the disclosed timeframes or at all. Factors that could cause actual results or events to differ materially from current expectations include: (i) adverse market conditions; (ii) changes to the growth and size of the tobacco markets; and (iii) other factors beyond the control of the Company. The Company operates in a rapidly evolving environment. New risk factors emerge from time to time, and it is impossible for the Companys management to predict all risk factors, nor can the Company assess the impact of all factors on Companys business or the extent to which any factor, or combination of factors, may cause actual results to differ from those contained in any forward-looking information. The forward-looking information included in this news release are made as of the date of this news release and the Company 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 required by applicable law.

The statements in this news release have not been evaluated by Health Canada or the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. As each individual is different, the benefits, if any, of taking the Companys products will vary from person to person. No claims or guarantees can be made as to the effects of the Companys products on an individuals health and well-being. The Companys products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.

This news release may contain trademarked names of third-party entities (or their respective offerings with trademarked names) typically in reference to (i) relationships had by the Company with such third-party entities as referred to in this release and/or (ii) client/vendor/service provider parties whose relationship with the Company is/are referred to in this release. All rights to such trademarks are reserved by their respective owners or licensees.

Statement Regarding Third-Party Investor Relations Firms
Caledon, Ontario, Sept. 03, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- CardioGenics Holdings Inc. (OTC PINK: CGNH) (the Company)announced today that its subsidiary, CardioGenics Inc. (CardioGenics), has entered into a license agreement with Covidgenics Corp., a private company located in Ontario, which grants to Covidgenics an exclusive 10-year global license of the Companys proprietary technology for its QL Care Analyzer and paramagnetic beads.



Under the terms of the license agreement, CardioGenics will receive (a) a royalty equal to 40% of Net Sales in connection with any products developed and commercialized by Covidgenics under the license (Licensed Products), (b) payments equal to 40% of any non-royalty income from Licensed Products, and (c) 22,500,000 ordinary shares of Covidgenics (the Covidgenicsshares).

In order to provide the Companys shareholders an opportunity to participate directly in any increased value that may develop from Covidgenics further development efforts, the Company intends to issue to its shareholders, as a dividend, the Covidgenicsshares received by CardioGenics under the license agreement, subject to compliance with all applicable laws.

CardioGenics Holdings intends to deliver the Covidgenics shares to its shareholders on a pro rata basis according to their holdings as of a record date of September 13, 2021. No fractional shares will be issued. The shares distributed to CardioGenics Holdings shareholders will be held, in the shareholder name, at Covidgenics.

About CardioGenics Holdings Inc.

The Company is focused on technology and products targeting the immunoassay segment of the In-Vitro Diagnostic testing market. It has developed the QL Care Analyzer, a proprietary point-of-care immuno-analyzer, which will be capable of running 200+immunoassay diagnostic tests, such as cardiovascular diagnostic tests. As part of its core proprietary technology, the Company has also developed a proprietary method for silver coating paramagnetic microspheres (a fundamental platform component of immunoassay equipment), which improves instrument sensitivity to light.

Safe Harbor Forward-Looking Statements:

This press release may contain forward looking statements that are based on current expectations, forecasts, and assumptions that involve risks as well as uncertainties that could cause actual outcomes and results to differ materially from those anticipated or expected, including statements related to the amount and timing of expected revenues related to our financial performance, expected income, distributions, and future growth for upcoming quarterly and annual periods. Actual results and the timing of certain events could differ materially from those projected in or contemplated by the forward-looking statements.

Words such as estimate,project,predict,will,would,should,could,may,might,anticipate,plan,intend,believe,expect,aim,goal,target,objective,likely or similar expressions that convey the prospective nature of events or outcomes generally indicate forward-looking statements. You should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of this press release.

For Further Information:

Dr. YahiaGawad  ygawad@cardiogenics.com
TUCSON, Ariz., Sept. 03, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- On Sept 7, the Pima County Board of Supervisors will consider a proposal to mandate that all healthcare workers in Pima County licensed by the State of Arizona, and their direct support staff, be vaccinated against COVID-19. The original deadline for beginning the vaccination process was Sept 1. Employers of the workers would be required to file compliance documents with the Department of Health. The consequences for noncompliance have not yet been spelled out.

The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) submitted written testimony objecting to the proposal to violate the fundamental human rights of all citizens associated with healthcare by forcing them to take an injection without voluntary informed consent.

AAPS notes that all the COVID-19 injections are experimental, and that studies are not scheduled for completion before the end of 2022. The only FDA-approved product, which is generally unavailable here, is Comirnaty made by BioNTech in Mainz, Germany. The manufacturer is required to conduct post-marketing studies of adverse effects including myocarditis, with a 5-year follow-up.

The Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson (Janssen) vaccines are only available under an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA), AAPS notes, and are supposed to be fully voluntary.

Many workers have had COVID-19 and are thus already immune, and the majority are at low risk of a poor outcome if they are infected. They may therefore judge that the risks of the vaccine outweigh any benefit, AAPS states. Also, the vaccine may not prevent transmission.

Patients in Pima County are already reporting difficulty in accessing medical care of any kind, AAPS reports. If personnel are diminished because of declining to accept the COVID product or because of vaccine-related disability or death, tremendous preventable death and suffering will occur.

The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons has represented physicians in all specialties since 1943. Its motto is omnia pro aegroto, everything for the patient.
EDMONTON, Alberta, Sept. 03, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Adam OBrien, a director of Bitcoin Well Inc. (formerly Red River Capital Corp.) (the "Company") today announced that he has filed an early warning report (the "Early Warning Report") under National Instrument 62-103  The Early Warning System and Related Take-Over Bid and Insider Reporting Issues in connection with the closing of the previously announced Qualifying Transaction (the Qualifying Transaction) (as defined by Policy 2.4 of the TSX Venture Exchange (the TSXV)).



The Qualifying Transaction was completed by way of three cornered amalgamation, pursuant to which, among other things, the Company issued approximately 156,364,320 common shares in the capital of the Company (the Common Shares) to the shareholders of 1739001 Alberta Ltd. (Old Bitcoin Well), at a deemed price of $0.25 per Common Share.

Upon completion of the Qualifying Transaction, the Company had a total of 162,879,500 common shares (the Common Shares) issued and outstanding on a non-diluted basis, with approximately 96% of the Common Shares held by Old Bitcoin Well shareholders and approximately 4% of the Common Shares held by former Red River Capital Corp. shareholders. 76,037,374 Common Shares are held in escrow pursuant to a TSXV - Tier 2 Surplus Escrow Agreement and 25,567,413 Common Shares are held in escrow pursuant to a TSXV  Tier 2 Value Escrow Agreement.

As part of the Qualifying Transaction, Mr. OBrien acquired ownership and direction or control over an aggregate of 73,242,815 Common Shares.

As a result of the Qualifying Transaction, Mr. OBrien has ownership and control over 44.97% of the issued and outstanding Common Shares

Prior to the completion of the Qualifying Transaction, Mr. OBrien did not, directly or indirectly, own any securities of the Company. Mr. OBrien does not currently have any plans to acquire or dispose of additional securities of the Company. However, Mr. OBrien may acquire additional securities of the Company, dispose of some or all of the existing or additional securities he holds or will hold, or may continue to hold his current position, depending on market conditions, reformulations, and / or other relevant factors.

The Companys head office address is located at 10142 -82 Avenue N.W,, Edmonton, Alberta T6E 1Z4.

A copy of the Early Warning Report filed by Mr. OBrien will be available under the Company's profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com.

Contact Information

For investor information, please contact:

Bitcoin Well

10142 82 Avenue NW

Edmonton, AB T6E 1Z4

bitcoinwell.com

Adam OBrien, Founder & CEO

Mandy Johnston, CFO

Tel: 1 888 711 3866

ir@bitcoinwell.com

For media queries and further information, please contact:

Karen Smola, Director of Marketing

Tel: 587-735-1570

k.smola@bitcoinwell.com
A Coast Guard Air Station Cape Cod helicopter crew medevacs a fisherman from the fishing vessel Andrea A, 110 miles south east of Nantucket, Massachusetts, Sept. 2 2021. The fisherman was reported to be suffering from loss of feeling in his legs.
Skyline of Oahu, Hawaii, taken from top of Diamond Head. Gov. David Ige is cautioning would-be visitors against coming to Hawaii until at least Nov. 1. (Yun Gao/Dreamstime/TNS)
Afghan evacuees arrive in Indianapolis Thursday, as 1st Cavalry Division soldiers watch. Hoosiers will host the Afghans at Camp Atterbury, near Edinburgh, as they begin their safe resettlement to the United States. The division soldiers along with Indiana National Guard soldiers will provide transportation, temporary housing, medical screening and logistics support as part of Operation Allies Welcome.
MONGO [mdash] Ida Mae Christner, 94, Mongo, died at her home Sept. 9. Mrs. Christner was born July 28, 1927, in Topeka, to Martin W. and Lovina (Yoder) Yoder. Living her lifetime in LaGrange County, she was a homemaker and loved to cook and bake. She was a volunteer for many years at Miller'
Virginia Department of Forensic Science Achieves 15,000th DNA Data Bank Hit

First-of-its-kind data banks innovations have revolutionized forensic science

RICHMONDGovernor Ralph Northam today announced the Department of Forensic Science reached its 15,000th DNA Data Bank hit. This is a significant milestone in the history of the Data Bank, which was created in Virginia in 1989.

A hit occurs when a DNA profile from an unsolved crime is a match with a DNA profile from an offender or another crime scene in the DNA Data Bank. This ability to link previously unsolved crimes to an offender, arrestee, or another case in the Data Bank provides law enforcement with investigative leads, often in cases that have gone cold.

Each of the 15,000 hits has meant answers and justice for people impacted by a crime, said Governor Northam. The databank has led to convictions as well as exonerations, helping make our communities safer. This milestone is a testament to the innovative spirit in Virginia and our investments in science and technology.

The Department of Forensic Science has been a pioneer in the use of DNA technology, said Secretary of Public Safety and Homeland Security Brian Moran. They were the first state laboratory to offer DNA analysis to law enforcement agencies, and the first to create a Data Bank of previously convicted sex offenders. I am proud of them for reaching this milestone of 15,000 cases. Because of this accomplishment, the Department of Forensic Science was able to assist in solving numerous previously unsolved crimes and help secure a myriad of criminal convictions, as well as exonerations.

Since the Data Bank was created in 1989, legislation has been passed to broaden the types of crimes for which DNA samples are collected. The Data Bank receives the samples of any person convicted of a felony offense, including juveniles 14 years of age or older who have been adjudicated delinquent of felony offenses. Samples are also collected from persons convicted of other specified misdemeanor offenses, and persons arrested for any violent felony or certain burglary offenses.

When a charge against a person arrested for a qualifying offense is dismissed, or the person is acquitted, the Department of Forensic Science will destroy the sample and associated records. Their record will remain if there is another arrest or conviction that would otherwise require that the persons sample remain in the Data Bank. There are currently over 480,000 offender and arrestee samples in the Data Bank.

DNA technology used for the DNA Data Bank has advanced over the years with the addition of robotics to increase efficiency, and the expansion of the number of areas of DNA analyzedfrom 8 loci to 20 locito enhance sample selectivity, said Department of Forensic Science Director Linda Jackson. Each month, our dedicated Data Bank staff analyze the over 1,000 offender and arrestee samples received, typically within two to three weeks. We are proud of the role the Data Bank plays in providing investigative leads to help bring justice in these cases.

The Department of Forensic Science is a nationally accredited forensic laboratory system, established by Virginia law to provide forensic laboratory services to the Commonwealths state and local law enforcement agencies, medical examiners, Commonwealths Attorneys, fire departments, and state agencies in the investigation of any criminal matter. Department of Forensic Science scientists provide technical assistance and training, evaluate and analyze evidence, interpret results, and provide expert testimony related to the analyses of physical evidence recovered from crime scenes.

More information about the Department of Forensic Science can be found here.

More information about the DNA Data Bank can be found here.

# # #
It's a special weekend for Dutch motorsport. After 36 years of absence, the Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort is officially back on the Formula 1 calendar. The so called "Orange Army" is present in abundance this weekend.

There will be no lack of support for Max Verstappen this weekend. The stands will turn bright orange. At tracks like Austria, Hungary and Spa-Francorchamps we can see the big crowds of Dutch Verstappen fans for a couple of years now, but to see the sea of orange at Zandvoort is still special.

Lots of fans present

Around 70,000 race fans are present at the circuit each day, with the majority obviously coming for Verstappen. During the free practice sessions the cheering crowd could be heard clearly. There was a long queue at the entrance to the circuit, but the atmosphere was excellent and the weather was good too.
It has been a great summer. One for the books, really. One in which I experienced all the th
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Chevron USA, a subsidiary of Chevron Corporation, and Bunge North America, a subsidiary of Bunge Limited, announced a memorandum of understanding (MOU) of a proposed 50/50 joint venture to help meet the demand for renewable fuels and to develop lower carbon intensity feedstocks.

Upon finalization of the joint venture, Chevron and Bunges partnership would establish a reliable supply chain from farmer to fueling station for both companies. Bunge is expected to contribute its soybean processing facilities in Destrehan, Louisiana, and Cairo, Illinois, and Chevron is expected to contribute approximately $600 million in cash to the joint venture.

Through the joint venture, the two companies anticipate approximately doubling the combined capacity of the facilities from 7,000 tons per day by the end of 2024. The joint venture would also pursue new growth opportunities in lower carbon intensity feedstocks, as well as consider feedstock pretreatment investments.

Under the proposed joint venture arrangement, Bunge will continue to operate the facilities, leveraging its expertise in oilseed processing and farmer relationships to manage origination and marketing of meal and plant-based oil. Chevron would have offtake rights to the oil to use as renewable feedstock to manufacture diesel and jet fuel with lower lifecycle carbon intensity, in addition to providing market knowledge and downstream retail and commercial distribution channels.

The creation of the proposed joint venture is subject to the negotiation of definitive agreements with customary closing conditions, including regulatory approval.
LG Chem and Korean biodiesel producer and exporter Dansuk Industrial will form a joint venture to build Koreas first next-generation hydro-treated vegetable oil (HVO) plant. LG Chem signed a Heads of Agreement (HOA) for the establishment of the HVO joint venture on 2 September at the Dansuk Industrial headquarters in Siheung, Gyeonggi-do, in the presence of executives from both companies, including Kug Lae Noh, President of the Petrochemicals Company, and Seung-Wook Han, CEO of Dansuk Industrial.

The two companies will sign the definitive agreement in the first quarter of next year and aim to complete the construction of the production plant by 2024. This is the first time that an HVO plant will be built in Korea, and this plant is one of 10 new plants at the Daesan Complex recently announced by LG Chem.

HVO is a next-generation bio-oil produced through hydro-treatment of vegetable raw materials such as waste cooking oil and palm by-products. It has superior non-freezing properties even at low temperatures, so it can be used not only for vehicles but also for aviation fuel and petrochemical raw materials. If biodiesel is the first-generation bio-fuel for vehicles, HVO is a technologically advanced second-generation bio-fuel.

In particular, due to global renewable energy policies and mandatory use of eco-friendly jet fuel and diesel, the global market demand for HVO is expected to grow from 6 million tons in 2020 to 30 million tons in 2025, at an average annual growth rate of more than 40%.

This cooperation was formed due to alignment of interest between LG Chem, which is focusing on expanding bio-balanced products that contribute to carbon emission reduction and securing eco-friendly raw materials, and Dansuk Industrial, which is trying to expand its business to the next-generation biofuel market.

When a joint venture is established, LG Chem will prepare a base for supplying raw materials used to produce bio-SAP (high absorbent resin), ABS (high value synthetic resin), and PVC (polyvinyl chloride) through internalization of HVO. LG Chem is planning to expand its ISCC Plus international certified products, which are a representative means of proving sustainability of eco-friendly bio products, to more than 30 products by the end of this year.

Dansuk Industrial will enter the HVO business using its first-generation biodiesel export capability and will be able to expand its bio-energy product portfolio to high value-added products centered on next-generation bio-fuels such as jet fuel.

Dansuk Industrial currently operates a first-generation biodiesel business based on a stable domestic supply and demand system for raw materials such as waste cooking oil.

Dansuk Industrial is the only company in Korea that can simultaneously export biodiesel to both the US and Europe as it has preemptively acquired various eco-friendly international certifications.
Despite the impact of a global pandemic altering every aspect of life and changing how students attended school, Sweetwater County School District No. 2s students are performing higher than the state average.

The Wyoming Department of Education released the 2020-2021 WY-TOPP results last week. A gap exists between the 2018-2019 and 2020-2021 school years due to testing being canceled during the coronavirus pandemic. Despite that, the district made gains in the percentage of students testing at proficient or advanced levels in math, English language arts and science.

Overall, the districts percent of students testing proficient or above on the math portion of the test grew by two percentage points, from 60.4% in 2018-2019 to 62.3% in 2020-2021. This growth comes as the states average dropped by two percentage points, from 50.8% to 48.0%. Both percentages were higher than the data recorded for the states virtual students, with 27.4% testing proficient or advanced in 2018-2019 and 21.9% in 2020-2021.

For Craig Barringer, superintendent of the district, the math scores show the districts teachers are dedicated to helping students succeed. Barringer said math is a subject that is very sequential in terms of how it is learned and problems can develop if a student doesnt have a full grasp on a mathematical operation before learning a new one.

Were happy with the fact weve made gains, he said.

Math scores also saw a large boost in ninth and 10th grades between the two tests. In 2018-2019, 34.09% of ninth graders and 39.91% of 10th graders tested at proficient or advanced, both of which are lower rates than the state averages of 40.38% and 45.2% respectively. In the 2020-2021 tests, 61.31% of ninth-grade students and 53.55% of 10th-grade students achieved proficient or advanced levels, beating the state averages of 41.75% and 44.7%

In language arts, the district slightly grew the level of proficient and advanced students, with 61.1% in 2018-2019 and 61.3% in 2020-2021. The percentages are higher than the states average, which also saw slight growth through the pandemic from 54.7% to 55.0% between the two tests. The states virtual averages declined during this same period, from 48.5% to 43.1%.

Barringer, who recently completed his 13th month as superintendent, said he isnt aware of what specifically led to the growth in math scores or what maintained language arts scores because he started shortly after the pandemic closed schools, but he thinks the positivity and willingness to help students helped keep them engaged while they were forced to learn in a virtual environment. Barringer said one of the main fears the district had during last years WY-TOPP testing was that the time spent out of the classroom would result in some score declines.

Barringer also cited the declines for the states virtual students as evidence backing up the idea that students do better in the classroom as they have a more structured environment and face-to-face interaction with teachers and other classmates.

While the results are great, Barringer also admits there are places to improve. In the middle school language arts tests, the number of students testing at proficient and advanced levels drops significantly between the seventh and eighth grades. During the 2018-2019 year, 67.57% of seventh graders achieved a proficient or advanced level while 59.31% of eighth graders hit those levels, testing slightly lower than the state average of 60.72%. In 2020-2021, the same drop can be seen with 60.2% of seventh grade students hitting proficient or advanced while 54.76% of eighth graders tested at those levels, again coming in lower than the state average for eighth grade language arts at 60.65%. Science scores, which are only tested at the fourth, eighth and 10th grades, are also an area Barringer wants to improve.

Barringer said with science, the district is working with the University of Wyoming and meeting with science teachers to refine how science is taught in the district. He said the district is also looking at how they can improve the scores with individual student groups throughout the district.

He also said the district plans to bring a consultant into Lincoln Middle School to help assess why eighth grade scores decline and implement potential solutions to improve the scores.
Green River Police Department reports for Aug. 24

At 9:11 a.m., officers responded to a report of found property at the police department. Officers met with an individual who turned in a wallet that was found on Interstate-80. Officers were able to contact the owner and return the property. Officers completed a report of the incident.

At 10:14 a.m., officers responded to an emergency school safety drill at Green River High School. The drill was completed successfully.

At 10:13 p.m., officers responded to a report of a dog fight. Officers met with an individual who reported they were outside with their dog when a stray dog came running at them and started attacking their dog near the intersection of East Teton Boulevard and Bridger Drive. The individual attempted to pull the dogs apart, and was bitten by the unknown dog. The area was searched for the aggressor dog, but it was not able to be located at the time the report was completed. The case is still under investigation.

Aug. 25

At 9:27 a.m., officers responded to a report of vandalism on West Teton Boulevard. Officers met with an individual who reported eggs had been thrown against the back of their residence by an unidentified individual. Officers completed a report of the incident.

At 10 a.m., officers responded to a report of an emergency school safety drill at Harrison Elementary School. The drill was completed successfully.

At 12:57 p.m., officers responded to a report of vandalism on New Mexico Street. Officers met with an individual who reported damage to their truck. Officers met with the individual who caused the damage, which was found to be caused without malicious intent. Officers completed a report of the incident.

At 4:26 p.m., officers responded to a report of a citizen assist on East 2nd North Street. Officers met with an individual who reported harassment through Facebook. Officers completed a report of the incident.

At 5:25 p.m., officers responded to a report of found drugs on Crossbow Drive. Officers collected several items of paraphernalia, booked the items in for destruction and completed a report of the incident.

Aug. 26

At 9:12 a.m., officers responded to an emergency school safety drill at Monroe Elementary School. The drill was completed successfully.

At 9:14 a.m., officers responded to an emergency school safety drill at Washington Elementary School. The drill was completed successfully.

At 3:03 p.m., officers responded to a report of a hit-and-run collision on North Center Street. Officers met with an individual who reported finding damage to their vehicle that had been parked and unoccupied. Officers completed a report of the incident.

At 6:27 p.m., officers responded to a report of a disturbance. Officers met with the individuals involved in a verbal dispute and completed a report of the incident. The GRPD did not release the address officers responded to.

At 8:13 p.m., officers responded to a report of domestic battery that occurred prior to law enforcement being contacted. The parties involved in the altercation were already separated and officers met with the individuals individually. Officers completed a report of the incident. The GRPD did not release the address officers responded to.

At 8:22 p.m., officers responded to a report of a larceny on Logan Street. Officers met with an individual who reported items missing and completed a report of the incident. The case is still under investigation.

Aug. 27

At 7:38 a.m., officers responded to a report of vandalism on Scotts Bottom Road. Officers met with an individual who reported finding damage to their construction equipment. Officers completed a report of the incident. The case is still under investigation.

At 10:48 a.m., officers responded to a report of illegal dumping at 175 Scotts Bottom Road. Officers met with an individual that was disposing of yard waste near Scotts Bottom. Officers advised the individual of the city ordinance and completed a report of the incident.

Aug. 28

At 4:05 p.m., officers responded to a report of found property at FMC Park. Officers met with an individual who turned over a debit card that was found. Officers attempted to contact an owner, booked the card in for safekeeping and completed a report of the incident.

At 8:57 p.m., officers responded to a report of domestic violence. Officers met with the individuals involved in a verbal dispute and completed a report of the incident. The GRPD did not release the address officers responded to.

At 11:17 p.m., officers responded to a report of vandalism at Western Wyoming Community Colleges Green River Center. Officers met with an individual who reported finding vulgar words spray painted in the dirt and on signs. Officers completed a report of the incident.

At 11:25 p.m., officers made contact with subjects in a parked vehicle on College Way and immediately smelled the odor of marijuana coming from the car. Officers subsequently issued the driver, Chelsea Andersen, 19, of Green River, a citation for alleged unlawful possession, plant form less than 3 ounces. Officers completed a report of the incident.

Aug. 29

At 9:03 p.m., officers responded to a report of a possible assault at FMC Park. Officers met with an individual who reported they were walking their dog when several dogs, not on leashes, began to run towards them. They advised they yelled at the dogs and the owner gained control of the dogs. The individual reported an altercation then occurred with the dogs owner. Officers met with the owner of the dogs and completed a report of the incident.

Aug. 30

At 2:44 a.m., officers responded to a report of a physical domestic dispute. Officers met with the individuals involved in a physical altercation. Officers were unable to determine who instigated the fight as it appeared to be a mutual effort. The parties were separated and officers completed a report of the incident. The GRPD did not release the address officers responded to.

At 10:26 a.m., officers responded to a report of a citizen assist on East 3rd North Street. Officers met with a property owner who requested a previously evicted tenant be issued a trespass warning. Officers met with the individual, issued the trespass warning, and completed a report of the incident.

At 7:20 p.m., officers and animal control officers responded to a report of an owner claiming their dog had been shot on South 5th West Street. Officers met with the dog owner who reported their dog had left their property, then when the dog returned home it had a gunshot-like injury, possibly caused by a pellet gun. Officers observed the injury and the dog appeared to be okay. No suspects have been identified at the time the report was completed.

Aug. 31

At 1:28 a.m., officers conducted a traffic stop on a vehicle for a headlight violation. Officers met with the occupants of the vehicle and ascertained one of the individuals was a juvenile and in violation of curfew. Officers contacted a parent, then issued the juvenile, 15, of Green River, a citation for an alleged curfew violation and completed a report of the incident. The GRPD did not disclose where the traffic stop took place.
Elective surgeries at Memorial Hospital of Sweetwater County are canceled until further notice as a result an overwhelming influx of COVID-19 positive patients.

In addition, the hospital, its clinics and the emergency room have no rapid COVID-19 tests to offer. The tests are in short supply nationwide as a result of the increase in cases.

We are at a critical juncture in Sweetwater County, said Deb Sutton, MHSC Public Information Officer. The hospital is treating and admitting more and more COVID-19 cases every day. There has been an incredible surge in cases nationwide. We are not an exception. This comes at a time when MHSC, like other U.S. hospitals, is facing a nursing shortage, as well as limited access to bed availability in regional centers for higher levels of care.

We are at the very unfortunate point where the acuity of the patients combined with a lack of available beds in other facilities has caused us to make the difficult decision to cancel all elective surgeries, said MHSC Chief Medical Officer Melinda Poyer. Emergencies must take priority.

It is a day-by-day, moment-to-moment situation based on bed availability both here and in a four-state area, she said. Complicating the issue is the lack of ICU bed space available in regional health centers offering higher levels of care. ICUs in our region are frequently overcapacity. This fluctuates daily.

It becomes a serious problem when MHSC needs to transfer a patient who has had an acute heart attack, a stroke, a head injury or some other major trauma, Poyer explained.

Emergency MHSC Incident Command meetings over the weekend painted an alarming picture, Sutton said. The IC team has reviewed the pandemic plan it has in place should the hospital need more inpatient bed space, in the ICU or otherwise.

In the last few days, almost everyone who tests positive in the emergency room are unvaccinated, said Dr. Phillip Najm, MHSC Emergency Medical Director with University of Utah Health. The sickest people presenting to the ER with COVID-19 are unvaccinated.

The nine ICU beds MHSC has available were all full as of Sunday night, Sutton said. MHSC is in step with much of the nation with about 98 percent of inpatients unvaccinated and suffering with COVID-19.

General Surgeon Dr. Brianne Crofts said many of the severe COVID-19 cases and deaths seen in recent days are largely preventable. The difference between last year and this year is there is now a vaccine available.

However, the healthcare providers will continue to fight the battle against all medical emergencies, she said. By getting vaccinated, you are helping the healthcare system and your community. Please help us by getting vaccinated, so we can take care of everyone, regardless of their medical emergency. This current crisis is preventable.

A decrease in COVID-19 cases would dramatically help reduce the lack of bed availability for higher acuity patients many hospitals now face.

One MHSC ER physician, recently reached out to 31 hospitals in a four-state area in an effort to place a critical patient.

MHSC also is getting calls from other hospitals inquiring about its bed availability, said Emergency Services Director Kim White, the hospitals incident commander.

We had a hospital in Texas calling us for beds, White said. How many hospitals are there between here and Texas must they have called before they got to Sweetwater Memorial?

The situation also raises concern when pediatric patients are presenting in the emergency room with respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), which area healthcare providers area seeing earlier this year than they have in the past. Unlike last year, influenza also is expected to increase along with COVID-19 as a result of the lack of mask wearing and reluctance to socially distance.

Please understand, those who are vaccinated can still become sick with this virus and its delta variant, Sutton said. However, they are at a much lower risk of being hospitalized or dying. Staying healthy enough to not become an inpatient is the immediate goal here.

Rapid COVID-19 tests

Rapid tests  those offering results in about 45 minutes  are not currently available at MHSCs Emergency Room and Sweetwater Walk-In Clinic as a result of the marked surge in cases communitywide.

Swab: Anyone in need of a COVID-19 swab should instead go to the drive-thru swabbing station at the hospitals main entrance at 1200 College Drive. The station is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday. To speed up processing, please make an appointment at curative.com. There still may be a waiting line. However, with much of your information already in the system, it will speed up the process. For more on this and COVID-19 vaccine availability, go to sweetwatermemorial.com and click on Coronavirus Update.

Vaccine: Everyone 12 and older can get a COVID-19 vaccine during the hospitals COVID-19 vaccine drive-thru offered from 3-5 p.m. every Wednesday at the same place the swab station operates.

The doctors, nurses, therapists, techs, and staff in every department are exhausted. The worker shortage has affected most departments in the hospital. Many are working extra shifts, Sutton said. Please get vaccinated. Wash your hands often. Wear a mask. Maintain a social distance of six feet or more.
ROCK SPRINGS (Wyoming News Exchange)  The Western Wyoming Community College Board of Trustees approved a 30-day mask mandate at a special board meeting on Wednesday.

The decision was made after hearing recommendations from Dr. Kim Dale, the president of Western, and updated COVID-19 statistics from Dr. Jean Stachon, the Sweetwater County public health officer.

As of Aug. 25, there are four total confirmed positive COVID-19 cases among the student body with six students currently in quarantine. Among Western staff members, two have tested positive and five are currently in quarantine.

Its delicate balance in keeping students safe and giving them a great experience, Dr. Dale said.

Dr. Stachon said that Sweetwater County ranks the third highest in the state when it comes to the COVID-19 delta variant, adding that the Wyoming Department of Heath tracks these particular cases. She added that most of the variant cases are with younger people.

The board of trustees also approved a testing requirement among the students and faculty. Over the next few weeks, a survey will be conducted to find out how many students and staff members have been vaccinated. The survey is voluntary and the individual may remain anonymous.

Yadi Vicencio, the president of the student government association, said she had talked to about 280 students during Welcome Week while looking for a consensus. She said students were willing to do whatever it takes to continue in-person instruction, and that includes wearing masks.

Out of all the Mustangs she talked to, she said no one was against a mask mandate.
Josie Odell, 9-year-old daughter of Scott and Joni Odell, former residents of Sweetwater County, has been honored as one of the brightest students in the world by the The Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth (CTY). She is the granddaughter of Marlene and Tim Merchant of Green River.

Josie, as a home-schooled third grader now living in Anchorage, Alaska, was honored for exceptional performance on the SAT, ACT, or similar assessment as part of the CTY Talent Search. Josie earned High Honors in both the verbal and quantitative tests, being among the top tier of Talent Search testers.

Nearly 19,000 students from 84 countries joined CTY in the 2020-21 Talent Search year, but less than 20 percent of CTY Talent Search participants qualified for CTY High Honors Awards. Josie will now be participating in CTY's online and summer programs throughout her education, being a part of a community of engaged learners with other bright students from around the world.

"We are thrilled to celebrate these students," Virginia Roach, CTY's executive director said. "In a year that was anything but ordinary, their love of learning shined through, and we are excited to help cultivate their growth as scholars and citizens throughout high school, college, and beyond."

The Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth has been a global leader in gifted education since 1979. CTY is focused on recognizing academic talent in exceptional K-12 students and supporting their growth with courses, services, and resources specifically designed to meet their needs.
A plane approaches to land at the Greater Green River Intergalactic Spaceport while people look at aircraft during Spaceport Days. Star photo by Hannah Romero

While the Greater Green River Intergalactic Spaceport hasn't received any extraterrestrial visitors lately, it has welcomed pilots and travelers from all over.

During the annual Spaceport Days event last weekend, both local pilots and pilots from around the state flew in to the spaceport on Saturday morning.

Bob McAdams, a Green River local since 1986, arrived at the spaceport in his Titan Tornado Super Stretch, a kit plane that he and his wife Debbie built in their garage. The Titan Tornado is the third plane Bob and Debbie have built since they started in 1997. The Titan is made of fiberglass and aluminum, and has almost 800 hours of flight time on it. Bob said he enjoys flying around the area and has flown to Colorado, and he especially enjoys using his plane for photography.

Vladimir Karpsyev also stopped in at the spaceport, coming from Dutch John, Utah, where he is currently working for the U.S. Forest Service. Vlad built his plane 10 years ago, and loves to fly to new places. In addition to flying to every US state except Hawaii, Vlad has flown to Russia, Mexico, the Bahamas and Canada. Vlad was excited to stop in at the second spaceport he's visited, especially since there are only three in the United States. He said he heard about the event through social media and hopes to come back with more pilot friends next year.

This year's Spaceport Days had a good turnout according to Green River Public Works Director Mark Westenskow, who oversaw the event. Within the first hour Saturday morning, six pilots had flown their planes in and more than two dozen people had gathered.

Pilots chatted together, families and kids took a close-up look at the planes and everyone enjoyed free breakfast burritos and Spaceport goodies funded by a grant from the Wyoming Aeronautics Division. The free hats, t-shirts and stickers featured a 48U logo - the spaceport's federal designation. Some designs also included an alien spaceship.

"We try not to take ourselves too seriously," Westenskow said.

The airstrip outside of Green River was opened in 1963, but its official designation as a spaceport wasn't until the summer of 1994.

At that time, a comet was expected to collide with Jupiter and the Green River City Council passed a resolution stating "a spirit of neighborly sympathy motivates us to tender an offer of sanctuary to our possible fellow residents of this solar system," offering the "emergency aircraft landing field" for use by any residents of Jupiter displaced by the comet. This resolution stated the airstrip should be officially designated as the "Greater Green River Intergalactic Spaceport," and was signed by the mayor at the time, George A. Eckman.

Continuing the spirit of having fun, the city has embraced some of the attention having an officially designated "spaceport" can bring. Westenskow said people from all over come by because they're curious what the spaceport is. Recent visitors included people from Florida and Oregon and a man who works for NASA. The city has started to discover the tourist aspect of the spaceport and make changes, like adding a new sign with the spaceport's name that people can use for selfies.

Despite the fun aspects, the work being done to improve the airstrip is taken seriously. Because the spaceport is officially recognized as an aviation facility, it was decided it should be safe, according to Westenskow.

The airstrip provides an alternative for local pilots, a spot for anyone needing to make an emergency landing and a training ground for groups including military, first responders and aviation groups.

With the benefits the spaceport adds to the community, the goal is to continually make it more safe and usable for anyone who wants or needs to land there, Westenskow said. The projects at the spaceport are usually small, but gradual improvements continue to be made.

"Last year we had quite a lot of work done," Westenskow said. The biggest improvements in 2020 occurred when the Wyoming National Guard came to the spaceport to do training that included work on the airstrip. Westenskow said it was a "great mutual benefit project."

The city also received a grant from the Wyoming Department of Transportation Aeronautics Division last year to help buy edge markers for the airstrip, which was an important safety improvement, according to Westenskow. Smaller projects have continued this year, including adding a navigational aid, a new windsock and a new segmented circle that pilots can see more easily from the air.

Hannah Romero Archer Tissue takes a look inside Bob McAdam's Titan Tornado plane during Spaceport Days.

Most of the projects done at the spaceport are funded by grants from the Wyoming Aeronautics Capital Improvement Plan, Westenskow explained. Although the facility doesn't qualify for federal funding, it does qualify for state funding, and most of the grants provide a 90-10 or 80-20 match because they're related to navigation or safety. Most of the projects can also be completed with a local match and labor from city staff members so little to no money is spent, according to Westenskow.

Future project ideas at the spaceport include putting a better fence around the facility. Westenskow is also hopeful the National Guard will be able to return and do more training projects.

"We'll make little improvements to it to make it more safe and more viable," Westenskow said.
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GREENWICH  A massive overnight storm battered Greenwich, stranding motorists, forcing the evacuation of a local nursing home, closing major roads and leaving many homeowners with 10 feet of water in their basements.

Emergency workers and repair crews spent Thursday cleaning up the remnants of Hurricane Ida, which dumped 6 inches of rain or more on Greenwich and pushed the towns first responders to the limit.

Things are settling down now, Deputy Fire Chief Tom Zack said as a clear blue sky replaced the dense thunderhead clouds that unleashed torrential rain hour after hour on Wednesday and overnight into Thursday morning.

But that was a powerful, powerful storm, Zack said.

First Selectman Fred Camillo said was consulting with the towns legal department and expected to declare a state of emergency in Greenwich on Friday morning.

The declaration, Camillo said, would follow in the wake of Gov. Ned Lamonts declaration of a state of emergency for Connecticut. It could make the town as well as its residents eligible for funds to help repair damage or cover other losses from the storm.

A lot of people were devastated by this storm, Camillo said late Thursday afternoon. In the Byram area, we had 8 inches of rain in nine hours. Thats unprecedented. Thats a lot of damage. Some people lost everything in their basements and their garages due to flooding.

Camillo also praised the police, fire, Greenwich Emergency Medical Service, Parks and Recreation and the Department of Public Works, whose crews worked throughout the night in the storm.

At about 11:30 p.m. Wednesday, the Regal Care rehabilitation center on King Street was without power and was forced to evacuate, Camillo said. GEMS transported 46 patients, taking 44 to the nearby Greenwich Woods skilled nursing center and two to Greenwich Hospital to receive medical care.

Representatives for Regal Care could not be reached for comment. Excessive water at the facility prompted the move to evacuate, Zack said.

The assisted care facility was also experiencing significant leaks in the roof and flooding within patient areas, officials said. Greenwich police and fire, GEMS, Connecticut Department of Public Health and the Transportation Association of Greenwich responded to help.

The transfers were handled safely, Camillo said, and once it was safe to go back to the privately run facility, the patients would return.

Stranded drivers

Firefighters made numerous rescues that involved stranded motorists, some with water up to the dashboard, Zack said. The storm waters came up so quickly, drivers got stuck before they could take evasive action, he said.

Also, many homeowners called about flooded basements, with water 10 to 15 feet deep and above the electrical panels, Zack said. The fire department received over 200 calls for help, and at the height of the storm Thursday morning, had to prioritize calls that involved public safety, he said.

While every part of town took a hit from the remnants of Hurricane Ida, Byram and neighborhoods along the Byram River were particularly impacted, officials said.

A large dock in the Byram River broke loose, according to police, resulting in significant damage to a number of boats.

About 550 residents and businesses were without power Thursday morning, with about 380 still in the dark by late afternoon, according to Eversource. No major fires or injuries were reported.

The police department said it responded to 355 calls for service, including seven medical calls.

There were a lot of emergencies, Capt. Mark Zuccerella said. We were pulling people out of cars left and right, and getting people out of flooded areas. Our officers were waist-high, chest-high, in water.

A number of people who were pulled from stranded cars, or flooded homes, were temporarily sheltered in the Public Safety Complex in central Greenwich until they could secure transportation or alternate accommodations from the Red Cross.

The 911 emergency-call system was so overloaded that the calls rolled over to neighboring towns, Zuccerella said. Greenwich dispatchers also took calls from other towns in the region as well, as part of the communications backup plan in region.

Flash flooding

According to Camillo, between 4 and 7 inches of rain fell throughout town during the storm, with as much as 8 inches in the Byram River in just under nine hours. According to the National Weather Service, 7.65 inches of rain was recorded in Greenwich and 5.72 inches in Old Greenwich.

These flash flood events when you have so much rain in such a short period of time are extremely dangerous and can be life-threatening, as we saw last night, he said. Its another reminder that were all at the mercy of Mother Nature.

Early on, West Putnam Avenue was closed near Pemberwick Road as was Hillside Road at Putnam Avenue near Greenwich High School. A total of 18 roads were closed as of Thursday afternoon, according to Greenwich police.

Town crews were out checking infrastructure in town on Thursday, including the Pemberwick Dam.

The rapids were going really hard even after the water receded at the dam, Camillo said. You could really see the force of the water, he said.

The Public Safety Complexs lobby was open for anyone who needed shelter. Camillo said he visited the complex at about 12:30 a.m. and met with people who were stranded there for a few hours before roads were passable.

He said he was out on Verona Drive in Riverside when a call came in of a car stranded in the middle of the road, with water up to the door handle. The driver got out safely, and the road was closed off before any more vehicles drove into the water, Camillo said.

Cleanup continues

Greenwich Public Schools had to cancel what would have been only its second day of classes due to the damage. But GPS Director of Communications Jonathan Supranowitz said the schools were expected to be back in session on Friday.

Camillo spent much of the day responding to calls and emails from residents about storm damage as well as touring locations with damage. His office had calls coming in faster then we could respond to them, he said, and he planned to continue checking on damage into Thursday night and Friday as well.

Our heart goes out to everybody and were going to be here to offer as much assistance as possible, Camillo said.

The amount of damage varied around town, Camillo said. The Pemberwick area along the Byram River was particularly hard hit, with some residents getting 4 feet of water in their basements, he said. And the intersection of Hillside Road and East Putnam Avenue right near Greenwich High School was closed early Thursday, causing problems.

Flooding was also reported along Valley Road in Cos Cob.

Camillo also noted the long hours worked by many town workers before, during and after the storm, with many getting only a few hours of sleep.

I cant thank the GPD, the GFD, the volunteers, the Parks and Rec and DPW crews and GEMS and the Fleet Department, for keeping the vehicles going, enough, Camillo said. They worked around the clock.
SEATTLE (AP)  Due to a surge in COVID-19 cases Washington states most populous county is reinstating outdoor mask mandates for large events and strongly encouraging people to wear masks in other outdoor settings when they cant remain 6 feet apart.

In a statement Thursday Public Health  Seattle & King County said as of Sept. 7 there will be a requirement for facemasks for outdoor events of 500 or more people. The directive applies to both vaccinated and unvaccinated people age 5 and older.

The recommendation for outdoor masks when people are unable to socially distance from non-household members is also for people 5 and up regardless of vaccination status.

With high rates of disease spread, and our health care system straining to keep up, it is time to take additional steps to keep ourselves and our communities safe, the health agency said.

The state Department of Health reported 4,393 new coronavirus cases and 32 new deaths on Thursday, The Seattle Times reported.

The seven-day rolling average of daily new cases in Washington has climbed over the past two weeks from 3,023 new cases per day on Aug. 18 to 4,029 new cases per day on Wednesday, according to data collected by Johns Hopkins University.

King County, which includes Seattle, is home to about 2.2 million people. Just last week County Executive Dow Constantine had boasted that King County had one of the highest vaccination rates of any large county in the U.S. As of Monday more than 73% of people 12 and older had received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, according to the Department of Health website.

In its statement the county health agency noted the regions high vaccination numbers but said there are still approximately 750,000 people in King County who remain unvaccinated and susceptible to COVID-19.

That number includes children under 12 who are not yet eligible for COVID-19 shots.

Health officials said vaccinated people were at a much lower risk of catching and spreading the disease then unvaccinated people, but the risk is not zero.

This week state health officials said the delta strain of the COVID-19 virus is filling hospitals at an alarming rate and continuing to strain health care workers. There are now about 1,500 COVID-19 patients in the state's hospitals.

Layering multiple prevention strategies, including wearing a well-made and snug-fitting face mask when in crowed outdoor locations, is a necessary precaution at this time to limit COVID-19 spread and preventable cases, hospitalizations, and deaths, said King County health officer Dr. Jeff Duchin.

As of last week people in Oregon, regardless of vaccination status, were once again required to wear masks in most public outdoor settings.
SPRINGFIELD, Mass. (AP)  Leaders at a Massachusetts hospital group swamped by a new wave of COVID-19 patients are appealing to the public to help handle the latest outbreak.

Springfield-based Baystate Health has 18% of the states cases but just 5.5% of the states hospital beds, leadership said Thursday.

There were just four patients with the coronavirus in Baystate's four hospitals on July 4, but that had surged to more than 100 at one point this week, President and CEO Dr. Mark Keroack said. It had dropped to 89 as of Thursday.

Baystate operates hospitals in Springfield, Greenfield, Westfield and Palmer.

We are appealing to the community to help us," he said. Everyone in the community has a role to mitigate the effects of this crisis and to help us be there for everybody who needs us.

Baystate officials are speaking with local governments, boards of health, employers and venues, including the The Big E, about mask and vaccine mandates.

Hampden County, where Springfield is located, has just a 52% vaccination rate, compared to 66% for the state as a whole. Three-quarters of Baystate's hospitalized COVID-19 patients are unvaccinated, he said.

The surge in coronavirus patients is straining the entire system, which like many hospitals, is understaffed, he said.

___

BROADWAY IN BOSTON

Broadway in Boston on Friday joined several others arts and cultural organizations in the city requiring patrons to show proof of vaccination to attend a performance.

The rule in response to rising coronavirus case counts is in effect until Dec. 31.

It applies to Hadestown, which opens Nov. 2 at the Citizens Bank Opera House and the ongoing Blue Man Group show at the Charles Playhouse.

The unvaccinated may provide proof of a negative COVID-19 test taken within 72 hours of the performance, or an antigen test within 24 hours.

Masks will also be required for all audience members, employees, crew, and vendors.

As conditions change, we may need to change our protocols based on public health guidelines and applicable law," the organization said.

Tthe Boston Symphony Orchestra and Boston Ballet announced proof-of-vaccination policies earlier this week.
Marianas students interested in attending U.S. military academies can submit an application by Dec. 10 for the school year beginning fall 2022.

Applications are available through Northern Marianas Del. Gregorio Kilili Camacho Sablans office. You can submit an application online at sablan.house.gov, and at the congressional district offices in Saipan, Tinian and Rota. Completed applications should be delivered to any of the district offices by Dec. 10.

To be eligible, you must be a U.S. citizen, between 17 and 23 years of age, unmarried, and have no dependents.

Sablans office will host virtual information sessions about the service academies and nomination process at 3:30 p.m. Sept. 16 and Oct. 14. To join, call the Saipan district office at (670) 323-2647.

Free informational sessions are also available for high school and college groups upon request.

For more information, contact the congressional office at (670) 323-2647, email kilili@mail.house.gov, or visit sablan.house.gov.

Highly qualified applicants will be able to demonstrate a well-rounded record of academic excellence, physical fitness, leadership, and service. While a congressional nomination is a requirement for four of the five service academies, final decisions are made by the academies admissions officials.

For the school year starting in the fall of 2022, three slots are open at the Military Academy in West Point, New York; two at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland; and one at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado. In addition, one Marianas student is eligible for admission to the Merchant Marine Academy in Kings Point, New York.

The Coast Guard Academys admissions process is competitive nationwide and does not reserve vacancies per state, nor does it require a congressional nomination; however, Congressman Sablan may submit letters of recommendation.
In collaboration with the American Medical Center, the Guam Department of Education will be hosting a Covid-19 Vaccination Outreach on Sept. 18 from 10 a.m.-4 p.m. at the Tiyan High School gymnasium. This outreach is available to students 12 years or older. For information, email info@gdoe.net.
Two doctors suing the government of Guam to be able to provide medication abortions using telemedicine were granted a motion for a preliminary injunction in the District Court of Guam Friday.

Chief Judge of the District Court of Guam Frances M. Tydingco-Gatewood sustained the plaintiffs objections to a magistrate judges report and recommendation that abortions on Guam werent unduly burdened by an in-person requirement for physicians under Guam law.

The ACLU, on behalf of two Hawaii-based doctors, sued government of Guam officials, challenging the part of Guams abortion law that requires information about abortions be provided in person. The ACLU said doctors can give that information to patients through live video conference.

The doctors, Shandhini Raidoo and Bliss Kaneshiro, live in Hawaii but are Guam-licensed and board certified OB-GYNs.

A medication abortion is when a patient self-administers two doses of medication to end a pregnancy up to 10 weeks into the pregnancy, according to the U.S. Food and Drug administration.

Under Guam law, either the physician or another qualified person providing the abortion must provide in-person information at least 24 hours before the abortion is set to occur.

The doctors in Hawaii say that the in-person mandate prevents them from being able to give necessary information via telemedicine.

The last doctor on the island performing abortions retired in 2018. No known abortions have taken place on Guam since that time, according to the report.

On April 23, Federal Magistrate Judge Heather Kennedy recommended against a preliminary injunction for the plaintiffs.

The magistrate judge stated in the report that access to abortions on Guam was not unduly burdened by the in-person information requirement.

As the court finds that plaintiffs are not likely to succeed on the merits, it similarly concludes that the balance of equities and the interest of the public do not weigh in favor of granting the preliminary injunction, Kennedy wrote.

Erroneous

However, in her ruling Friday, Tydingco-Gatewood said that the ruling was based on erroneous reasonings.

Tydingco-Gatewood found that the information required to be given to a woman seeking abortion at least 24-hours prior to the procedure can be provided via live, face-to-face video conferencing, and defendants have not shown any real justification or benefits of the in-person requirement. Meanwhile, the burdens imposed by the in-person requirement are substantial.

The chief judge sustained all objections, modified the report and recommendation and granted the motion for a preliminary injunction.

The preliminary injunction will be issued later, the judge wrote.
As hearings for two bills to limit the power of the governor to mandate vaccinations commenced Friday evening, and anti-vaccine mandate protesters stood outside, Speaker Therese Terlaje noted that there were more than 20 people at the Guam Congress Building to testify.

Bill 180 would require the Legislature to vote on any order from the governor that mandates vaccines for government of Guam workers, or the patrons or employees of private businesses. Any order from the governor that establishes citations or fines for those who violate an executive order would also require a vote from senators to be approved. It was introduced by Sen. James Moylan.

Bill 176, introduced by Sen. Frank Blas Jr., would ensure that any vaccine to be mandated must be unconditionally approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration.

Michael Rudolph of Sinajana said he agreed with the intention of both measures, but felt that they did not go far enough.

Weve been under public emergency for about a year and a half. Now, after that length of time, it is no longer an emergency. It is a way of life that must end. The governor is sitting atop a mountain of federal cash to be used to bolster our rehabilitation from the effects of this virus, Rudolph said. The argument that the health care system needed to be protected from being overwhelmed was now invalid, as Gov. Lou Leon Guerrero should have already established a satellite facility for Guam Memorial Hospital, he said.

GMH Administrator Lilian Posadas was in opposition to both measures. We are fighting a battle here, an invisible battle with the virus. To fight amongst each other, because, again, a few people think that their rights, their freedom, their individual rights are being impacted. Its not about individual rights, its about our communal responsibility, or communal duty to protect the health and the safety of our island, she said.

A body of evidence showed that COVID-19 vaccines were effective, she said, and the bills were in complete opposition to healthcare workers on the front lines, who were increasingly strained.

Clare Baza Calvo testified in support of both measures.

She shared her experience fighting her own medical ailments, the solution to which was not a singular treatment.

There wasnt enough discussion around holistic approaches to health, and forcing someone to get a vaccine was a violation, she said.

To think that we can just eat and drink chemical-laden, highly processed foods, sit indoors void of nature and movement yet get this vaccine and somehow be less susceptible to this virus and have a superior immune system is delusional and it goes against the very definition of health and wellness, Calvo stated.

Chief Stephen Ignacio of the Guam Police Department appeared on behalf of his agency, in opposition to Bill 180. With nearly 50 employees of GPD testing positive, Ignacio said his department had been impacted, with off-duty officers having to come in to work recently to augment the shifts of those who tested positive.

I have had officers who have worked seven days straight 12 hours a day or longer for over a year doing tasks related to this pandemic, he said. It was the duty of the executive branch to work to contain the virus, he stated.

Toniyoung De Gracia came in support of both measures. She wasnt there to debate the science, she said, but stated that recent executive orders to mandate vaccines had to be stopped, as they were discriminating and forced people to turn against each other.

An official announcement made by the governor, stating that were fighting a pandemic of the unvaccinated, thats publicly putting a target on us and insinuating that were some kind of an enemy or wrong for making a choice for what we feel is best, she said.
Corrections & Clarifications: this story has been updated to properly reflect a statement by Dr. Anne Pobutsky in the 12th paragraph.

With multiple mitigation efforts in place and a more accessible treatment option for those who have already gotten COVID-19, the spike in local cases should begin to dip in coming weeks, Chima Mbakwem of the Department of Public Health and Social Services said Friday.

Monoclonal antibody treatment, which is an injection of lab-grown antibodies meant to fight a COVID-19 infection, had already been in use at Guam Memorial Hospital, Public Health Director Art San Agustin said. Between five and seven people were administered the treatment at GMH on Thursday, and Guam Regional Medical City started offering it on Friday, according to information was shared during an oversight hearing for Public Health on Friday.

Mbakwem, the chief public health officer for the agency, stated the treatment was meant for those who got COVID-19 and were either unvaccinated or had underlying conditions from having to be hospitalized. He said it could also be used as a preventative measure for those who were in close contact with a positive case. The current treatment using an intravenous drip took an hour and required a nurse to administer, but a faster way of administering the antibodies through under the skin injections was on the way. That would take only 10 minutes and could be administered by an emergency medical technician or any medical worker. Both require an hour of observation afterward.

Mbakwem said that he had just spoken with the U.S. Health and Human Services before the hearing.

So we have a team that can set up four different sites on the island coming in from (Health and Human Services). So were working on identifying hard structures where they can have the treatment, he said.

Public Health already started to identify high-risk individuals who tested positive. Zenia Pecina, who is Public Healths associate administrator for the Bureau of Family Health and Nursing Services said 26 were identified and opted for the treatment at the Tiyan Testing Center by 1 p.m. Friday.

Clinics could also begin to order and administer the treatment on their own, without Public Healths input, Mbakwem said. With an increased demand for testing at clinics, immediate administration of the treatment could be possible.

The Food and Drug Administration has granted emergency use authorization for a number of monoclonal antibody treatments.

Vaccine effectiveness

The goal of vaccinations has shifted from herd-immunity to herd-protection  keeping people out of the hospital and preventing deaths  according to Territorial Epidemiologist Anne Pobutsky. The number of hospitalizations for COVID-19, which was 55 as of Thursday night, shot up following the August spike in cases. But the number of people in intensive care, nine people, was only slightly higher than in January, she said.

Current vaccines were designed to deal with the original strain of the virus, she said, not the delta variant or others, but the vaccines were still working.

Theres a lot of people in the hospital, but theyre not all in the ICU. Theyre not having severe illness, theyre going to the hospital because theyre scared and theyre sick, Pobutsky stated.

All but one of the deaths this year were unvaccinated, she said, and without the high rate of vaccination, the island would likely have seen another 50 deaths this year.

Mbakwem said that the spike in positives was also influenced by Public Health ramping up testing in response to the delta variant. Daily testing was now in place, instead of several times a week he said. Public Health also was making more of an effort to target people who had symptoms, but may not have tested positive through a rapid antigen test.

Information sharing

Speaker Therese Terlaje still wasnt satisfied with the amount of information that Public Health was sharing publicly about COVID-19 cases.

During an oversight hearing last October, she had questioned policy decisions such as the shut down of certain businesses. Public Health data about where cases were spreading wasnt clear enough at the time, she said. Information on how the governor was creating executive orders still wasnt available a year later, she said. If provided, it could help people make informed decisions about how to deal with the pandemic.

If you want to bring the public along, you bring them along every single day. You give them the data every day that you are presenting to other people, she said.
Guam residents can expect rainy weather through the weekend as a tropical disturbance passes south of the island, according to the National Weather Service.

The Guam Weather Forecast Office is monitoring a weak tropical disturbance south of Guam, near 10 degrees north latitude and 145 degrees east longitude.

This broad disturbance is generating showers and thunderstorms across Chuuk and Pohnpei.

Showers are expected to spread to the Marianas this weekend.

The disturbance is forecast to move slowly west Friday through Saturday, and another disturbance is expected near Guam by Sunday, posing no direct threat other than rainy weather.

For Guam, relatively drier weather and gentle trade winds were forecast for Friday, with showers expected to increase Friday night and going into Saturday as a surface trough with the disturbance approaches.

Bouts of scattered showers and isolated thunderstorms at times are expected through the weekend.

The wettest period is expected to be Saturday night into early Sunday.

Brief but gusty winds, from an east to southerly direction, are possible late Saturday into early Sunday morning.

Although no major impact is expected for the Marianas from the activity in the region, the Offices of Guam Homeland Security and Civil Defense urge residents to stay up to date with the latest information and prepare for a rainy weekend.

Those living in flood-prone areas should take action; clear drainage areas and unblock clogged storm drains in your area to minimize flooding.
The Project Gutenberg eBook of To Sup With the Devil, by Myron I. Scholnick

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org . If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.

Title: To Sup With the Devil

Author: Myron I. Scholnick

Release Date: September 3, 2021 [eBook #66209]

Language: English

Produced by: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TO SUP WITH THE DEVIL ***

To Sup With The Devil By Myron I. Scholnick Henry and George were spending a friendly

evening together, talking pleasantly over their

wine glassesabout a very unpleasant subject! [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from

Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy

January 1954

Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that

the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

The two men sat across from each other in soft leather chairs. Flames from the fireplace before them licked upward and shadows danced on walls and ceiling. The corners were in complete darkness.

"I say, George, this wine is exceedingly good," one of the men poured rich red liquid from a large decanter into his goblet.

"Yes, Henry, it's quite good. Much better than brandy," answered George, swallowing hard and rolling his head.

"Yes, yes," said Henry, sighing deeply, his lips and chin stained from the beverage. "Yes. Yes. Nothing like good wine. Nothing like it."

"As I was saying," smiled George.

"Oh yes," Henry nodded, setting his goblet on the table and leaning forward in his seat. "Do continue with your story. You were telling me about how you met the Devil last week, and had an interesting chat with him." He winked mischievously.

George shook his head vigorously. "And I most certainly did. Yes. Met the Devil and had an enjoyable chat. He's a splendid chap, you know. Not at all like those pictures you see of him. No horns or red monkey outfit. He dresses most conservatively; wears a black suit. And he has nice gray hair." George patted his head. "Nice gray hair."

Henry poured himself another cup of wine and sipped it slowly. "But what did you talk about? I mean you have nothing in common at all."

"Oh no?" George shrugged. "But we do. We have much in common. I admire the Devil and told him so. And he said that he would be glad to have me come and work for him."

"Work for him?"

"Yes. He wants me to go with him to his headquarters."

"But his headquarters are in ... a ... well you know."

"I know, but I still want to go. He said he would make me a demon or a ghoul or something."

"Horrid, don't you think?"

"No, not at all." George gulped down the last of his wine. "Quite pleasant if I may say so. Quite a change from the market and speculation and," he snorted loudly, "those damn commodities that I lost so heavily on yesterday. No, I think I'd enjoy seeing things as a demon or a ghoul or something."

"What do you see?"

"Oh you know. Graveyards, coffins and corpses...."

Henry laughed. "Oh, that's amusing. Most amusing."

George smiled tightly. "And you see the dead in Hell, the fire and brimstone, and you hear their cries of anguish and it's quite pleasant."

"Then why don't you go with the Devil and be done with it?"

"But I am going to go, Henry."

"Then go!"

"But I must do something first. It's a sort of qualification."

"Yes?"

"I must kill someone."

"But that's most naughty, old boy, isn't it?"

"Not when you have a good reason."

Henry held up the decanter and looked at the small amount of wine that was left. He shook his head sadly. "But who's going to be your victim?"

"You," answered George.

"Me?" said Henry, smiling.

"Yes, you."

"Are you mad?"

"No."

Henry stopped smiling and his face grew a trifle pale. He suddenly had the sickening feeling that George wasn't kidding him any more. "But why me?"

George pulled a small revolver from his breast pocket. "I have it from what I believe to be a thoroughly reliable source that while I was out of town last week you were out with my wife."

Henry's jaw dropped. "Why that's absurd!"

George pulled back the safety catch on his gun. "I heard you were out with my wife in a parked car on a dark and lonely road. I heard you were doing things with my wife in a parked car on a dark and lonely road."

Sweat glistened on Henry's forehead. "Me out with your wife? That's preposterous! And you know it! Now put down that gun! Do you hear me? Put it down!"

"No, I don't hear you," smiled George, pulling the trigger. "I don't hear you at all."

A small hole appeared between Henry's eyes and he slipped from his chair to the floor. What was left of his goblet of wine spilled on his shirt front.

George looked at his dead friend for a moment then pocketed his gun. "How did I do?" he called out to a dark corner of the room.

A tall, heavy-set man in a black suit stepped out of the darkness, walking towards the fireplace. His silver hair sparkled in the dancing light. "Fine, my friend, fine."

George sighed contentedly. "And now you'll let me go with you?"

"Now I'll let you come with me to Hell," said the Devil. "And I'll make you a demon or a ghoul," he grinned, "or something."

George was breathing heavily and the nostrils of his thin nose were quivering. "Well, what are we waiting for? Let's go!"

The Devil smiled. "There is no hurry my friend. Calm yourself. Here, let us drink some wine." He picked up the decanter and poured what was left into two cups. He handed one to George.

"To our future," said the Devil, drinking quickly.

"To our future," said George, sipping the wine, looking a bit perplexed.

The Devil's eyes bored into George. "What is wrong, my friend? You look puzzled."

"Well, I was just wondering," said George. "You know, just aimlessly wondering."

"What about?" asked the Devil.

"Well, I guess I shouldn't ask, but ... but Henry was such a good friend ... are you positive that you saw my wife with him in that parked car last week?"

The devil shrugged, a shrewd grin pulling at his lips. "I could be wrong about that. You'd never forgive yourself, would you? Wouldn't that be Hell!"

And George, realizing suddenly for the first time that it was, screamed long andheatedly.

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TO SUP WITH THE DEVIL ***
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Village of Flat Rock sets third town hall meeting

The Flat Rock Village Council will hold a town hall meeting for the village community from 6:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 9, in the parish hall of St John in the Wilderness Episcopal Church, 1895 Greenville Highway. Masks will be required, and seating will be distanced.

This will be the third town hall meeting of the Council and is a way to help village residents become more involved with their local government and talk with their elected leaders.

Our earlier town halls were well attended, Mayor Nick Weedman said. Weve had a chance to have extensive discussions on issues like traffic concerns, how to allocate the American Rescue Plan funds the village has received, and other topics of interest with those attending. Meeting in the evening lets us have conversations in a more informal setting and at a time that allows those unable to come to day-time council meetings to attend.

Each meeting follows a format of brief introductions by village officials and then an extended time for attendees to provide input and ask questions on topics that are important to them. Future town hall dates and locations will be announced on the village website (villageofflatrock.org) and Facebook page.
City Council considers annexation reimbursements to rural fire departments

Hendersonville City Council is considering a plan to reimburse rural fire departments for lost tax revenue when the city annexes property covered by those fire departments.



The council began discussing the plan Thursday at its regular meeting after hearing a presentation from City Manager John Connet that calls for the city to reimburse fire departments for five years for revenue lost due to annexation.

The city came up with the plan after council member Jeff Miller said he met with two Henderson County Commissioners about their concerns over tax revenue lost to the rural fire departments when the city annexes property covered by those departments.

This is what came from it, Miller said of the meeting.

Miller said he and the commissioners decided on paying the rural departments for their lost tax revenue for five years because that was a requirement in the past when cities forced annexation.

This is how it had been mandated it was dealt with in the past, he said. Its not just arbitrary. When one of the commissioners said that was how it used to be handled. I was like, OK.

The reimbursement to the fire departments would be determined by multiplying the values of the properties annexed by the city times the rural fire district tax rate. The property values would be determined at the time of annexation, according to information Connet presented the council. The amount each fire department would receive depends on each fire districts tax rate and the value of the annexed property.

Some reimbursements could be as high as a few thousand dollars a year for five years while others would be less than $100 a year for five years.

The reimbursement would be part of the citys mutual aid agreements with the four fire departments that surround Hendersonville. Those departments include Blue Ridge, Mountain Home, Valley Hill and Dana fire departments.

Council members said they would like to think about the plan before making a decision and asked the city staff to bring the matter back to their October meeting.
City eyes Dogwood parking lot options

The idea of turning the Dogwood parking lot into a park is not the only use on the table.

The Hendersonville City Council heard from its staff Thursday night that developers are eyeing the prime downtown location and may be willing to buy the land for a hotel or other use. In August, the council discussed developing a park that would include a splash pad water feature at the parking lot. But on Thursday City Manager John Connet and City Attorney Angela Beeker reported on possible private development of the property. The options included a typical bid process for a developer, a downtown development project, a redevelopment project and an economic development project.

The city is moving ahead with construction of parking deck that once completed will make the Dogwood lot  between Church and Washington streets and Fifth and Sixth avenues  available. The different options would give the council various degrees of control over the development of the property and would require a developer pay fair market value for the property.

Mayor Pro Tem Jerry Smith said he would like the city to have the property appraised to determine its fair market value. He said he also wanted to see plans for what a park on the property would look like.

I still believe a park is the best use of the property, he said.

Council member Lyndsey Simpson said she also would like to see a park at Dogwood. The city has approved plans for two hotels in town and it does not need three, she said.

But council member Jennifer Hensley said that while she likes the idea of a park, she also thinks economic development might be the best use of the property.

Mayor Barbara Volk said she thought the council should not make decisions about the parking lot until later.

Were still so up in the air. We still have time, she said.

Connet said he would work with the citys staff to come up with a basic concept plan for a park on the property.

Connet also showed the council a conceptual plan for Edwards Park. The plan includes the putt-putt course that the council plans to relocate from Boyd Park to make way for a new Fire Station 1. It also includes a public art area, a concession stand, a pavilion and a playground.

In June, the council adopted a resolution authorizing an agreement that involves swapping 25 acres of the city-owned Berkeley Park for the county-owned Edwards Park property at Five Points. Under the agreement, the city would get the property containing scout cabins plus a $100,000 payment from the Henderson County School Board. The school system would get the Berkeley Park land and the historic Berkeley Spinners stadium. City Council members, School Board members and city and school system administrators have been negotiating the swap for months.
AN environmental campaigner from Henley who was arrested at a demonstration nearly two years ago has finally been cleared.

Police have told Ed Atkinson that they will not be taking any action against him and have agreed to delete their records of the incident.

Mr Atkinson, 59, of Queen Street, was arrested while taking part in the Extinction Rebellion demonstrations in London in October 2019.

He sat in the road to help block Whitehall but claims the Metropolitan Police officers acted unlawfully.

I still have no regrets and I stand by what I did, he said. It feels like I have closure now.

Mr Atkinson and his wife Maggie, 66, were among several people from the Henley area who attended the demonstration and were both dressed as bees to highlight the threat of their extinction from climate change.

The protest was part of a long-running mass civil disobedience campaign by XR in central London to highlight the climate and ecological emergency.

Thousands of people attended, despite a city-wide ban on protests, and shut down parts of Westminster. Hundreds were arrested for refusing to comply with police orders.

Some campaigners glued themselves to government buildings and Prime Minister Boris Johnson called them unco-operative crusties.

Mr Atkinson was warned and then arrested for failing to comply with a Section 14 notice, which allows the police to place conditions on public assemblies if they fear serious disruption would be caused.

He was taken to Brixton police station but was not charged before being released under investigation.

He had still not been charged after six months, which is the usual time limit for offences of this type.

Mr Atkinson claims his arrest was unlawful because of the way the police exercised their powers.

He said: A Section 14 notice was issued the following week and a number of Extinction Rebellion protesters were arrested. This was challenged in court and two senior judges ruled that the decision to impose the ban was unlawful.

The ban used to arrest me was not covered by his judgement but the legal opinion is that the same issues apply and if my case was challenged in court the same judgement would be made.

This conclusion is supported by the fact that the Metropolitan Police then ceased to charge Extinction Rebellion arrestees with failure to comply with notices. I can only

conclude that my arrest was unlawful.

The Met told him that its decision not to take any action against him was not an admission of liability.

Mr Atkinson defended XR, saying it was upholding a long-running tradition of people being willing to break the law in a peaceful manner to drive change.

His grandmother, Kate Le Lacheur, was arrested as part of the Suffragette movement a century ago.

He also argues the demonstration was justified because governments around the world are not doing enough to tackle climate change.

Mr Atkinson said: The report that came out from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change at the end of July shows that we were right.

The climate emergency is desperate but there is still hope for action to make it less awful. The level of action required is nothing like what western governments are delivering at the moment.

We should have taken action years ago and that is why action is desperately needed now. The action being taken across the world is woefully inadequate.

The Atkinsons, who have two daughters, Emily, 31, and Rosie, 29, and a two-year-old granddaughter, have been foster carers since 2003 and were concerned that Mr Atkinsons arrest might prevent them from looking after children.

He said: There was no immediate harm being done but social services were keen to see the end of it. We have another grandchild on the way and they are another big reason why we do this. Their future really worries us.

Mrs Atkinson avoided arrest at the demonstration in case it affected their eligibility to look after children. It was for no other reason, she said. The local authority takes a parental responsibility for those children and then delegates that to us.

We love what we do and it is all about purpose. They were still happy for us to keep doing it. They trust us and theyve been very understanding.

Mr Atkinson added: They are rightly concerned that people who have had brushes with the law should not be associated with the children. They understand that peaceful protest is not a danger to the children but they were worried about the procedures. They were absolutely delighted when the six months went by without me being charged and having my record deleted is another layer of reassurance.

Extinction Rebellion has now begun more protests in London but the Atkinsons say they cant attend because of their fostering duties.

Mr Atkinson said: We hope we dont have to campaign forever and that governments will start to listen. They are beginning to wake up but they are only just starting.

Matt Twist, deputy assistant commissioner of the Met, said: Like everyone else, Extinction Rebellion has the right to assemble and the right to protest.

However, these rights are qualified and are to be balanced against the rights of others. They do not have the right to cause serious disruption to Londons communities and prevent them going about their lawful business.
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Anderson, IN (46016)

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Thunderstorms early, then cloudy skies after midnight. A few storms may be severe. Low 64F. Winds WNW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 90%..

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Thunderstorms early, then cloudy skies after midnight. A few storms may be severe. Low 64F. Winds WNW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 90%.
Anderson, IN (46016)

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Thunderstorms likely, especially this evening. A few storms may be severe. Low 64F. Winds W at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 90%..

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Thunderstorms likely, especially this evening. A few storms may be severe. Low 64F. Winds W at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 90%.
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Press Release

3 September 2021

Hospitality leaders edyn announce new acquisitions supported by a 195m multi-asset debt facility with Blackstone Real Estate Debt Strategies, BREDS, in partnership with travel and leisure sector specialist, KSL Capital Partners.

The deal will support edyns continued expansion across Europe with lifestyle aparthotel brand Locke and newly launched serviced apartment brand Cove.

Five schemes comprising 859 units will open in London, Cambridge and The Hague, with the latter the first outside the UK to open under edyns Cove brand.

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London - Extended stay hospitality pioneers edyn today announce it has secured a 195m multi-asset debt facility with BREDS in partnership with an affiliate of KSL Capital Partners through its European Capital Solutions platform (KSL ECS).

The agreement will help secure edyns continued expansion of its portfolio into Europe, which includes lifestyle aparthotel brand Locke, and newly launched serviced apartment brand, Cove.

The facility contributes to the funding arrangements on five projects comprising 859 units across The Hague (Cove  Centrum), London (Bermonds Locke, Buckle Street Studios, Cove  Landmark Pinnacle) and Cambridge (Turing Locke/Hyatt Centric).

The arrangement underscores edyns rapidly expanding presence across Europe, which includes seven new Locke openings this year in the UK, Ireland, and Germany; plus, two new Cove openings in Canary Wharf and the Liverpool ONE development.

Earlier this week, edyn announced it had acquired a project in The Hague which will be the first scheme to operate under its newly launched Cove brand in mainland Europe. Formerly a 118-key hotel, the asset will be converted to 121 serviced apartments, and is expected to open in March 2022.

edyns recent signing with Chalegrove to operate 162 Cove serviced apartments in the Landmark Pinnacle development in Canary Wharf, London, also forms part of the deal with Blackstone and KSL. Cove  Landmark Pinnacle will open this November and occupy the first 10 floors of the 75-storey residential building.

Turing Locke/Hyatt Centric, built in the sustainable new district of Eddington in Cambridge, is due to open next month. It will become the eleventh Locke aparthotel in Europe, comprising 180 keys, with studio and one- and two-bedroom apartments, a restaurant, cocktail bar, coffee shop, retail space, co-working facilities, meeting rooms and an event space. Buckle Street Studios by Locke will open this October, comprising 103 keys over a 12-storey new development adjacent to the first Locke, Leman Locke, which opened in 2016.

Todays announcement underscores Brookfield-owned edyns proven resilience over the past 18 months and the positive outlook for the extended stay sector  which is benefitting from a shift in traveller demand to favour stylish, spacious and flexible self-contained accommodation. Both Locke and Cove are well positioned to capitalise on this evolution as edyn grows across Europe.

Merzak Kaddour, Investment Director at edyn, said: We are pleased to partner with Blackstone and KSL whose experience, sector knowledge and capability to transact across multiple jurisdictions made them the ideal funding partner for this transaction."

The pandemic reaffirmed that edyns products and strategy are meeting the growing demand for high-quality aparthotels and extended stay facilities. We are excited to push forward with our European growth and look forward to a prolonged working relationship with two of the most highly respected and well-established players in the sector.

Steve Plavin, Senior Managing Director, Blackstone Real Estate Debt Strategies, commented: We are delighted to support edyn as they continue to successfully expand across Europe. Providing financing to edyn, a top sponsor in the extended stay and hospitality sector, with a great lending partner in KSL, is a fantastic business for our debt platform.

Hal Shaw, Partner and Head of European Capital Solutions at KSL, added: KSL ECS is pleased to partner with edyn and Blackstone to help facilitate the next phase of edyns expansion as the Company continues to build upon its track record of leadership and innovation within extended stay hospitality.

JLL acted on behalf of edyn as debt advisor.
During the pandemic, Tamara Greenfield watched her salary get cut again and again until she was making 40 percent less than she was pre-shutdowns. But her job working as a talent recruiter for a tech company was stable, and she felt lucky to just be employed.

Once vaccines were being doled out, she started feeling a little more optimistic. The 47-year-old Plano woman set her LinkedIn account to show she was searching, and within a day she had about 15 inquiries in her inbox. After about three months of looking, she had three job offers.

For job searchers like Greenfield, the economic recovery had an unexpected perk: bargaining power. Employers have been scrambling to bring workers back after trimming budgets and staff during the pandemic. Now, to coax people, theyve been adding sweeteners such as signing bonuses, flexible work-from-home schedules and better pay.

WORKER SHORTAGE: Unemployment benefits only one piece to labor shortage puzzle

Job growth is typical coming out of a recession, said Patrick Jankowski, an economist at the Greater Houston Partnership, a business-financed economic development group. A 10-year long expansion followed the Great Recession. Overall, he says its another indication the economy is bouncing back.

No one would be bringing on employees if they expect their sales to falter, Jankowski said. This means they see potential.

It is a drastic change from a year and a half ago. Job openings have nearly doubled since March 2020, and are at an all-time high of 10 million, according to Department of Labor data. As more positions are becoming available layoffs plummeted 40 percent in June year-over-year.

Staffing firm executives said theyre seeing more people quitting their jobs in search of better opportunities. In April, the rate of people leaving their employment increased 2.8 percent, the highest level the Department of Labor has on record. In June, it was a 2.7 percent increase.

Not only are job openings higher than ever, but employers are not hiring at the pace to match the open positions, Department of Labor data shows. Economists and recruiters say there are numerous reasons why workers may not want to return to work ranging from the decision to retire early to health concerns. This means people on the hunt for a job are desperately in demand, and those job seekers can use that to their advantage.

Pushing back

When it comes to negotiating, job candidates arent naive about the dire need for workers, said Mike Kahn an executive senior partner at Lucas Group, a national staffing firm with offices in Houston.

Theyre pushing back and asking for more because candidates realize there is a shortage as well, Kahn said. Now people have more of a choice because theyre getting actively recruited.

When Greenfield looked at the offers she received, she picked one where she would be able to do personally meaningful work. Her husband was diagnosed with cancer two years ago, uses a wheelchair and utilizes home health care services.

One thing that was important to me is that I really wanted to work for a company that put good into the world, she said. This is an opportunity that's way bigger than what I had in front of me in my previous employer.

She also had the ability to pick a job that was flexible to her lifestyle and schedule. Shes now able to work from home and the office. One of the other jobs she was interviewing for was going to be fully in-office, which made her uneasy since the Delta variant is spreading and her husband is immunocompromised.

The pandemic is not over, Greenfield said. I wasn't ready to be chained to an office.

During the interview process, however, her current employer was slow to come to a decision. Kahn from Lucas Group, the firm that recruited Greenfield to the home health care company, called his client to tell them she had other offers and if they didnt act fast they could end up losing her.

Greenfields situation isnt a one-off. Employers need to move a lot faster in the hiring and interviewing process, Kahn said. Too many times some employers he works with waited too long, and the candidate they wanted was snatched up by another firm.

He said companies are also fighting harder to hang onto their current employees, and giving more counter offers than he has ever seen.

COMING BACK: Galvestons tourism industry picks up post pandemic,but businesses can't find workers

Higher pay and bonuses arent just reserved for desk jobs. Restaurants and even fast food places are upping their minimum wage. In May, McDonalds announced plans to raise hourly wages for more than 36,500 employees at company-owned restaurants by an average of 10 percent. Landrys offered a signing bonus of $250 during a hiring effort in the spring.

Atlas Restaurant Group, a Baltimore-based company that owns Loch Bar and Ouzo Bay in River Oaks, announced in August plans to raise its minimum wage to $15 an hour from $12 this month. The company is also offering a $250 bonus to all new employees who remain with the company for more than 90 days.

The restaurant group was able to return to its prepandemic staffing levels, but is raising wages to remain competitive with other businesses, Alex Smith, its founder and CEO, said. During the pandemic, many of Atlas employees left hospitality and went into other industries such as construction or sales, he said.

It's about bringing people back into the hospitality industry, Smith said. Its saying Hey look, you can start out with a living wage here and the upward mobility is great.

Raises and signing bonuses may be a bit more of a challenge for operations that arent as large as Atlas or Landrys.

Julie Knapp, director of Human Resources for Becks Prime Restaurants, the Chocolate Bar and Agnes Cafe & Provisions said that its much more difficult for smaller operations to compete with those kinds of offers.

Those types of rewards are really tricky for a company our size, she said. The Landry's of the world are much more set up to be able to do kind of broad-sweeping, across-the-board enticements like that.

More than money

Knapp said it hasnt been unusual to see employees quit after only a day or two and find they went somewhere else down the street for higher pay. But for some workers it doesnt just come down to the number on their pay stub when they are weighing the pros and cons of each job offer.

Aidan Barrow, of south Houston, has worked in the service industry eight years, and he is no stranger to pulling a double shift, working odd hours and having little say in his schedule. Benefits of any kind were often scarce when looking at restaurant job listings.

The 23-year-old had to temporarily stop working at restaurants during the pandemic because of a lack of openings. He worked a couple of sales jobs, but the serving industry is where his passions lay. When he decided to get back into it though he wanted to pick an employer that respected his time off the clock.

On HoustonChronicle.com: Third of employees expect to continue working at home

I feel like a lot of businesses downfall is high turnover, Barrow said. So, I want to be somewhere where people enjoy working.

During his search Barrow got three offers, and he ultimately picked a manager position at Becks Prime, a hamburger chain with locations in greater Houston, Dallas and the Austin area. He wanted to pick a workplace where he wouldnt burn out. They allowed him to pick what days he gets off, provided pay time off and life insurance -- all perks that are rare in the service industry, Barrow said.

I wanted to pick something that could be permanent, Barrow said, and where I feel comfortable.
Exxon Mobil has borrowed 1.5 million barrels of crude oil from the U.S. strategic petroleum reserve to fuel recovery efforts in hurricane-ravaged Louisiana.

The Energy Department said its crude loan to Exxons Baton Rouge refinery will help alleviate logistical issues moving crude around southeast Louisiana and ensure the region has access to fuel while they recover from Hurricane Ida. Exxon, which will replace the crude it borrowed, is in the process of starting up its Baton Rouge refinery, which did not suffer significant damage from the storm but is waiting on utilities such as power to be restored. Since August 23, Exxon has provided more than 260,000 barrels or nearly 11 million gallons of fuel to southeast Louisiana.

Due to crude oil transportation issues created by Hurricane Ida, Exxon Mobil has requested up to 1.5 million barrels of crude oil, the company said in a statement. Our main focus has been to restore fuel production to supply gasoline and diesel needed in the local Louisiana market, and the Strategic Petroleum Reserve release is an important step in achieving that goal.

HURRICANE RECOVERY: Challenges remain as refineries, pipelines open after Ida

Oil companies are continuing to assess the condition of their offshore and Louisiana refineries and petrochemical plants in the aftermath of the Category 4 hurricane over the past weekend. The most significant damage to oil and gas facilities appears to be in Port Fouchon, where Ida made landfall on Sunday. Port Fouchon is a key oil and gas transportation hub along the Gulf and is home to the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port, the only U.S. deepwater port capable of loading very large crude carrier ships.

BP said its onshore assets in Port Fourchon and Houma were damaged by Ida and will require repairs. In the meantime, the British oil major said it will temporarily relocate its shore base and heliport to other locations.

BP is waiting on facility inspections and power to its midstream and downstream facilities. The companys offshore platforms appear to have no damage, but will remain shut down until further confirmation.

Royal Dutch Shell said it observed damage to its West Delta-143 offshore facilities during a flyover. The Hague-based oil major said it will send workers to the facilities to do a closer inspection. The facilities serve as the transfer station for all of its oil and gas production from its Mars project in the Gulf of Mexico to onshore crude terminals.

Shells other offshore platforms appear to have no damage, but remain shut down until workers can be deployed to conduct additional inspections. About 80 percent of Shells production in the Gulf remains offline. Shell is the largest offshore producer in the Gulf.

Gulf Island Fabrication, a Houston oil-field service company, said its Houma facilities suffered wind damage and has significant debris. The company started cleanup and restoration efforts, which is expected to take one week. However, reopening manufacutring operations is still dependent restoring power and other utilities to Houma, the company said.

Many of our employees suffered significant damage to their homes and we continue to encourage them to focus on the well-being of their families, Gulf Island CEO Richard Heo said in a statement. We are working to assist our employees who have experienced damage or have otherwise been displaced by the storm and plan to coordinate volunteers to support recovery and cleanup efforts in Houma and the surrounding areas.

Chevron on Thursday said it will donate $3 million to support relief and recovery efforts in Louisiana. The American Red Cross, Catholic Charities and Team Rubicon will each receive a $500,000 donation to support relief efforts in Jefferson, Lafourche, Terrebonne, St. Charles, Orleans, Plaquemines and St. Tammany parishes. The remaining $1.5 million will be distributed across local organizations focused on disaster relief.

In addition, the company will match qualifying donations to hurricane relief efforts made by employees and retirees, as well as provide financial contributions to organizations where employees volunteer. Chevron has been producing oil and gas in Louisiana and the Gulf of Mexico for more than 80 years.
Editors note: Houston Chronicle restaurant critic Alison Cook eats many meals that often dont immediately make it to full review format. Here, she shares her favorite dishes from recent outings, at places well worth a visit.

The last gasp of summer calls for a stash of the vivid organic popsicles made by Houstons Kicpops, a delivery and special-events company that also supplies dedicated freezers to retail markets in Houston, Austin and Dallas.

I first fell in love with the sumptuous Lemon Cream Kicpop (and yes, a popsicle can be sumptuous) when I scored one at Canary Cafe, a coffee shop, cafe and market in Lindale Park. Ever since, Ive pined after one of their haunting Blackberry Lavender pops, too. So when I ran into a Kicpop freezer at the Asch Building Market in the Heights, I jumped.

The Blackberry Lavender flavor was as evocative as I remembered  a distillation of a summer meadow, all dark fruit and blossoms.

Some people shy from floral flavors in their food, objecting that they are reminded of soap. I feel the sunshine and hear the buzzing of bees.

Theres a Texas twist to the Kicpops flavor palette, including a Mango Tajin pop with a gentle, savory edge of salt and red chile; and a delicate Watermelon Agave flavor thats the cool essence of refreshment.

Canary Cafe , 4928 Fulton, 832-301-3712; Asch Building Market, 825 Studewood

Cheese enchiladas from Rays Mexican Restaurant in Katy

These old-fashioned Tex-Mex cheese enchiladas saved me from despair on a recent Saturday night, when various mishaps and unexpected developments prevented me from obtaining the dinner I had planned on. I was already out in the Energy Corridor, and I remembered that Brett Jackson, pitmaster at Bretts BBQ Shop in Katy, swears by the enchiladas at Rays on Mason Road.

When I got there, the restaurant was packed, and there was no outdoor seating. So I ordered to go and made myself a nest outside on an overflow bench, under a big old oak tree, with mariachi music filtering out from the dining room. One of the citys nicest young men brought me my meal, complete with a frozen margarita  and I set it up on a little end table.

The cicadas buzzed. The tart, smooth margarita slush slipped down easily. And the enchiladas  complete with melty orange cheese of which I would rather not know the provenance, and a tan chili gravy of the sort I usually dont countenance  tasted like heaven to me in the moment.

These are the real old-school Tex-Mex deal, with all that that implies. Sometimes the heart just wants what it wants.

Rays Mexican Restaurant , 870 Mason, Katy, 281-392-6681

Mushroom Ravioli and Macarpone Cheese Sauce by Casetta Cucina

Ive been enjoying the fresh-frozen pasta made by Houstons Casetta Cucina ever since I brought home a sack of spaghetti alla chitarra from the Kickin Kombucha Market and Taproom near me.

So when I spied some plump, round mushroom ravioli that had been delivered that very day at the Asch Building Market in the Heights, I grabbed them  along with a tub of mascarpone sauce in an adjacent refrigerator case.

Minimal effort, maximal impact. I do cook the Casetta pasta a tiny bit longer than the 40-60 seconds recommended on the label, counting from when they bob to the top of your potful of boiling water. I just taste until Im persuaded theyre ready.

I loved the contrast of the potent, earthy, mushroom umami with the delicate mascarpone cream, barely tinged with nutmeg. With a glass of white wine, that was supper sorted.

Casetta also sell its pastas and sauces at the Urban Harvest Farmers Market in River Oaks, the Memorial Villages Farmers Market and the Heights Mercantile Farmers Market.

Asch Building Market, 825 Studewood, 713-505-1447

Sweet Grass Dairy Green Hill soft-ripened cheese from Houston Dairymaids

The first time I tasted one of Sweet Grass Dairys cows milk cheeses was at One Flew South, the excellent Georgia-focused bar and restaurant in the Atlanta airport.

Im from a dairy state, Vermont, and I remember being impressed with the quality that came from the farm in Georgias southwest corner, not far northeast of Tallahassee. I never forgot it. So when I spotted a round of the farms soft-ripened double-cream cheese recently, I splurged and bought one all for myself.

It did not last very long. The first night, I let it come to temperature, ripped apart a crusty baguette, and dined solely on cheese and bread, with a glass of white wine. This is one of those bloomy-rind cheeses where you really want to eat the rind to get the full effect of the cheese cave. The tang and salt and satin, the rich butterfat against the mushroomy, slightly astringent rind  its reminiscent of an American version of Camembert.

If you pick one up at the Dairymaids retail shop, grab a baguette and ask them to recommend a bottle of wine to go along.

Houston Dairymaids , 2201 Airline, 713-880-4800

alison.cook@chron.com
The White Oak Bayou Greenway and MKT Trail will soon be connected.

The city announced Thursday that the two trails will be linked by an 850-foot connection, which was described as one of the last critical pieces needed for the trail systems.

On HoustonChronicle.com: Where you can find Houstons best shaded walking trails

Councilmember Abbie Kamin said the project creates safe access and greater connectivity between two popular trails in her district, according to a news release. Carol Haddock, Houston public works director, said the connection is progress toward creating a safer and equitable transportation network for all users.

The new MKT Spur will branch off from the MKT trail north of White Oak Bayou toward the east, connecting it to the White Oak Bayou Trail, which currently dead-ends under Studemont.

In June, board officials announced repairs to the MKT Bridge along the Heights Hike and Bike Trail at a cost of $193,000.

When the projects are completed, walkers, runners and cyclists will be able to safely cross under Studemont and use 17 miles of connected hike-and-bike trails along the greenway.In the meantime, runners and riders should continue to detour along the White Oak Bayou Greenway and Heights Boulevard.

On HoustonChronicle.com: East End residents, organizers work toward bikeability in Second Ward

Construction is estimated to begin in the fall and be completed by early 2022. To find more information about construction details and detours, visit engagehouston.org.

julie.garcia@chron.com

twitter.com/reporterjulie

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Montgomery County public health officials this week issued another grim report: Infections among children and the number of ICU patients are both at record highs.

Cases have skyrocketed since mid-July, surpassing levels seen during the January peak and swamping the health care system of the growing county north of Houston where just short of half the population remains unvaccinated.

Dr. Jason Knight, chief medical officer at Houston Methodist The Woodlands Hospital, said the situation in hospitals remains very challenging.

The influx of COVID-19 patients has strained and stretched the resources of hospitals across the county, he said. Each day, the emergency room is overwhelmed with patients who need a bed  enough of them to fill a brand new hospital.

Theyre lined up and down hallways, theyre sitting in chairs, theyre sitting in our waiting rooms, said Knight, also a practicing emergency physician. Weve treated strokes in hallways. Weve given blood transfusions in hallways. We are using literally every kind of makeshift space we can use to provide care to patients.

Public health officials on Friday reported a record 12,374 active cases, up more than 1,000 in two days. Before this week, the previous record was set in mid-January when there were 10,774 active cases.

The number of cases among children under 12 on Wednesday also reached an all-time high. There were 2,174 cases among that age group in August, a handful more than the first seven months of the year combined.

In the last two weeks, the number of patients in general and isolation beds in Montgomery County hospitals has plateaued just below 300, according to the Southeast Texas Regional Advisory Council. Still, this week there were 110 patients with COVID-19 in ICUs  more than at any point during the pandemic.

Hospital staff members are doing their best to care for all patients, despite challenging conditions, Knight said. Hospitals need more nurses and respiratory therapists, he said. Some health care workers have been infected by COVID-19 from their children who catch it in the classroom, exacerbating the existing staffing shortage. The reopening of schools, many of which lack public health mitigation measures, has contributed to rampant community spread, Knight said.

Packed hospitals and increased call volume have also strained EMS resources, according to a statement from EMS Chief James Campbell. The average turnaround time for paramedics to get a patient into the hospital has doubled from half an hour to more than an hour, he said. Some ambulances have waited outside emergency departments for more than four hours.

County commissioners last month authorized a $9 million contract to hire 130 nurses for surge staffing in hospitals. The county has also approved American Rescue Plan Act funds for medical supplies, vaccination supplies and personal protective equipment. The Woodlands is home to the regions only state-sponsored monoclonal antibody infusion center, where demand is high, commissioners said.

County Judge Mark Keough, a Republican, said his top concern is making sure hospitals and EMS have what they need to respond to any emergency.

At this time the best defense against COVID symptoms and hospitalizations is a vaccination, Keough said. We also urge residents to exercise personal responsibility and take action based off the known guidelines to ensure the safety of their family and themselves.

Noting a dip in the test positivity rate, Keough said he believes the virus is starting to slow down, though it could be weeks before hospitalizations and case counts mirror that trend.

It's hard to say, but with all information we have available we are seeing indications that it has slowed down and we are approaching or have already approached our peak, Keough said.

Hospital beds are full of more young adults and children infected with the virus than in prior pandemic surges. Now, most of the vaccinated folks seeking hospital treatment are older people with a host of pre-existing medical problems. Roughly 92 to 94 percent of ICU patients are unvaccinated, Knight said.

Some patients tell doctors they wish they would have gotten the vaccine, Knight said. But others sick with COVID-19 disparage nurses and doctors, arguing with them about vaccines or pandemic conspiracy theories, he said. Its not uncommon for nurses to break down in tears on their shift.

We have more deaths in our hospital this past month than weve ever had before  a lot of them are preventable, the physician said. Its incredibly sad when youre telling some 30-year-old spouse and a 2-year-old and a 4-year-old that theyre going to grow up without their mom.

The Texas Department of State Health Services reported on Friday that more than 53 percent of the county was fully vaccinated. The rate falls short of neighboring Harris and Fort Bend counties, both led by Democrats, where 60 percent and 71 percent of their respective populations are fully inoculated. Still, the rate far surpasses counties east of Montgomery near the Louisiana border. In Texas, more than 57 percent of residents have had two shots.

If more people were vaccinated, local public health officials believe the highly transmissible delta variant and potential waning vaccine efficacy would have still created an uptick in cases.

But our hospitals would not be in the crisis situation that they are facing today, Willingham said. The vast majority of patients in hospitals in Montgomery County are unvaccinated, but the fact of the matter is, we cant look backward. We can only focus on the present.

After vaccines became widely available earlier this year, county health officials administered more than 150,000 doses at drive-thru events, Willingham said. They sent doses to physicians and pharmacies that needed them.

County staff went to nursing homes, community centers and at-risk communities to offer vaccines, Willingham said. The department launched a social media campaign to dispel vaccine hesitancy and inform people that the shots are safe and effective.

We continue our push to answer residents questions and provide medical direction, Willingham said in the written statement. But, ultimately, ones health care is a personal decision.

Knight, the emergency physician, urged residents to get vaccinated, practice social distancing, wash their hands and wear masks. Jurisdictions where schools have mask mandates and more residents are vaccinated are experiencing lower infection rates.

Meanwhile, in Montgomery County, Knight said he there is a general resistance against masks and vaccines and that the community is paying the price for those decisions.

Unfortunately, that individual freedom is causing a lot of people to die that dont need to die, Knight said.

The case count in Montgomery County has plateaued.

It could go either way, depending on the decisions people in the community make, Knight said.

anna.bauman@chron.com
This Labor Day weekend brings back another No Refusal initiative to crack down on impaired drivers in Fort Bend County.

On HoustonChronicle.com: Houston-area nonprofits join to help people affected by Hurricane Ida

The Fort Bend County District Attorneys Office and local law enforcement will carry out the policy that focuses on drivers impaired by alcohol or other substances, according to a news release.

Law enforcement will be out looking for impaired drivers the nights of Friday through Sunday, Sept. 3-5.

Labor Day is an opportunity to honor the American worker, the backbone of our democracy and economy, said District Attorney Brian Middleton, in the release. But we will be working hard to keep the holiday safe for our families, and encourage those who plan to drink, to also plan for a ride home before they become impaired.

Attorneys from the District Attorneys Office will be ready to write search warrants that will allow local judges to authorize a blood draw from drivers who have shown evidence they are intoxicated. Once a warrant is obtained, nurses will be available to draw blood.

Upheld by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, blood search warrants are a legal way to gather evidence in DWI cases from arrested suspects who refuse to take a breath or blood test.

On HoustonChronicle.com: Fulshear Church of Christ breaks ground on future home

A grant from the Texas Department of Transportation funds the No Refusal initiative in Fort Bend County.

tracy.maness@hcnonline.com
Finding a forklift to help deliver supplies to Louisianans affected by Hurricane Ida weighed on Jason Baudoins mind Wednesday morning as he discussed relief efforts.

On HoustonChronicle.com: Lone Star Flight Museum to open exhibit honoring those killed in 9/11

The senior director of operations for Attack Poverty, a Stafford-based nonprofit, had been focused on engaging partners to help since last weekend. The Category 4 hurricane made landfall Sunday.

While Baudoin did not come up with a forklift, Supply Bridge Ministries Founder Nick Doherty found a will and a way to load consumable necessities of food, water and hygiene products into an 18-wheeler donated by Katy-based Eurmove. He and his team used a pallet jack, some steep ramps and a lot of muscle to move pallets onto the truck. It left Wednesday afternoon, bound for a church in LaPlace, Louisiana, a community hit hard by the storm.

Louisianans supported Houstonians four years ago during and after Hurricane Harvey, and Baudoin said Attack Poverty wants to extend past its regular local influence to walk alongside its neighbors to the east.

So coming from that place, its all in your heart that you really have to be part of something whenever you know exactly how someone is feeling because theyre going through it right now, Baudoin said.

Supply Bridge began in Katy a few months after Harvey and works to stockpile supplies, ready to move them where needed when disaster strikes, one truckload at a time based on needs and how much is donated. The supply drives usually take a week. With the help of nonprofits Children Like Loni and Kaleidoscope Ministries, this one came together in just two days.

Its a good way for the community to plug in to an organization when individually they may be struggling to figure out how to help with disaster relief, Doherty said. By pulling resources from various organizations and various communities together, we can help them plug in to a greater relief effort.

On HoustonChronicle.com: Ride to Rosenberg Car Show gears up for vehicles, music and food trucks

He said people in other places often forget about a disaster within a week or two. As the focus shifts to other news; they stop donating, even though the need may still be great.

Attack Poverty strives to end generational poverty through its work with under-resourced communities. Its disaster recovery arm supports people with home repairs, spiritual and emotional health, and providing for other basic needs.

By Wednesday morning, five area church partners had committed to set up collection points where their members could bring donations of items like bottled water, diapers and personal protective equipment to help keep people healthy during the continued pandemic. Baudoin works on the logistics of getting the supplies into the hands of people that need them through local partners in the impacted areas.

So instead of us just collectively sending something to some massive distribution center, we want to continue to build and help that organization thats been affected by the storm to be able to serve as that point, Baudoin explained. Its a very trusted, local piece of the community.

Baudoin said the Louisiana partners have been serving their communities for years and will continue to be there. In the aftermath of a storm, they have food and items like tarps available for people who have been coming to them for years and others they have never met.

Supply Bridge Ministries and Attack Poverty have worked together on a few projects. During the pandemic, they have fed around 1,200 to 1,500 people a week on average, Doherty said. He explained that it is better when nonprofits combine efforts rather than trying to compete.

On HoustonChronicle.com: Fulshear Church of Christ breaks ground on future home

When you work together as nonprofits, you can make such a bigger impact and its not a competition, he said. Were all trying to serve the community. And so when you partner and you do things like that, it makes life so much easier, supporting the community a lot easier.

To learn more or to donate to the relief work, visit www.attackpoverty.org or www.supplybridgeministries.org.

tracy.maness@hcnonline.com
LAPLACE, La. (AP)  Giant trees knocked sideways. Homes boarded up with plywood. Off-kilter street signs.

Less than a week after Hurricane Ida battered the Gulf Coast, President Joe Biden walked the streets of a hardhit Louisiana neighborhood on Friday and told local residents, I know you're hurting, I know you're hurting.

Biden pledged robust federal assistance to get people back on their feet and said the government already had distributed $100 million directly to individuals in the state in $500 checks to give them a first slice of critical help. Many people, he said, don't know what help is available because they can't get cellphone service.

Residents welcomed Biden's presence, one of them drawing a sign with his last name and a heart for the dot on the i. They laughed and posed for selfies.

More formally, Biden met with state and local officials in LaPlace, a community between the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain that suffered major wind and water damage and was left with sheared-off roofs and flooded homes.

I promise were going to have your back, Biden said.

He also took a flyover tour of pummeled areas including Lafitte, Grand Isle, Port Fourchon and Lafourche Parish, where Parish President Archie Chaisson said 25% of the homes in his community of 100,000 were gone or had catastrophic damage.

The president later met privately with Gov. John Bel Edwards, House Republican Whip Steve Scalise, who is from Louisiana, and local officials including Chaisson.

The devastation was clear even as Air Force One approached New Orleans, with uprooted trees and blue tarps covering shredded houses coming into view. The road to LaPlace exhibited power-line wood poles jutting from the ground at odd angles.

Trips to natural disaster scenes have long been a feature of U.S. presidencies, moments to demonstrate compassion and show the public leadership during a crisis. They are also opportunities to hit pause, however temporarily, from the political sniping that often dominates Washington.

In shirtsleeves and boots, Biden was welcomed at the airport by Edwards, a Democrat. Several Republicans, including Sen. Bill Cassidy and Rep. Scalise, were also on hand.

Edwards said Biden has "been a tremendous partner, adding that he intended to keep asking for help until the president said no.

In the aftermath of Ida, Biden is focusing anew on the threat posed by climate change and the prospect that disaster zone visits may become a more regular feature of the presidency. The storm has killed at least 14 people in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, and at least 48 in the Northeastern U.S.

The president has pointed to that destruction to call for greater public resolve to confront climate change. His $1 trillion infrastructure legislation intends to ensure that vital networks connecting cities and states and the country as a whole can withstand the flooding, whirlwinds and damage caused by increasingly dangerous weather.

At Fridays briefing with local officials, Biden insisted the infrastructure bill and an even more expansive measure later on would more effectively prepare the country.

It seems to me we can save a whole lot of money, a whole lot of pain for our constituents, if we build back, rebuild it back in a better way, Biden said. I realize Im selling as Im talking.

Sen. Cassidy tweeted later that in his conversation with Biden, "we spoke about the need for resiliency. We agreed putting power lines beneath the ground would have avoided all of this. The infrastructure bill has billions for grid resiliency.

Past presidents have been defined in part by how they handled such crises.

Seemingly casually, Donald Trump lobbed paper towels to people in Puerto Rico after a hurricane, generating scorn from critics but little damage to his political standing. Barack Obama hugged New Jersey Republican Gov. Chris Christie in 2012 after Superstorm Sandy, a brief respite from partisan tensions that had threatened the economy. George W. Bush fell out of public favor after a poor and unprepared response to Hurricane Katrina, which swamped New Orleans in 2005.

Scientists say climate change increases the frequency of extreme weather events  such as large tropical storms, and the droughts and heatwaves that create conditions for vast wildfires. U.S. weather officials recently reported that July 2021 was the hottest month recorded in 142 years of record-keeping.

Biden's nearly eight-month-old presidency has been shaped in part by perpetual crises. The president went to Texas in February after a cold winter storm caused the state's power grid to fail, and he has closely monitored the wildfires in Western states.

Besides natural disasters, the president has had to contend with a multitude of other challenges. He is searching for ways to rescue the 100-200 Americans stuck in Afghanistan after the longest war in U.S. history ended a matter of days ago. He is also confronting the delta variant of the coronavirus that has plunged the country into an autumn of uncertainty only months after he declared independence from the disease at a July 4 celebration on the White House lawn.

Ida was the fifth-most powerful storm to strike the U.S. when it hit Louisiana on Sunday with maximum winds of 150 mph (240 kph), likely causing tens of billions of dollars in flood, wind and other damage, including to the electrical grid. The storm's remnants dropped devastating rainfall across parts of Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey on Wednesday, causing significant disruption to major cities.

___

Associated Press writers Melinda Deslatte in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Christina Larson and Darlene Superville in Washington contributed to this report.
RICHMOND, Va. (AP)  Almost instantly after most abortions were banned in Texas, Democrats were decrying the new law as unconstitutional, an assault on women's health that must be challenged. But the reaction from many Republicans on the other side hasn't been nearly as emphatic.

Though some in the GOP are celebrating the moment as a long-sought win for the anti-abortion rights movement, others are minimizing the meaning of the Supreme Court's Wednesday midnight decision that allowed the bill to take effect. A few are even slamming the court and the law.

Or dodging.

Im pro-life, said Republican Glenn Youngkin, a GOP candidate for governor in increasingly Democratic Virginia, where the only open governor's race in the nation is coming up in November. When pressed on the Texas law by a reporter, he quickly noted that he supports exceptions in cases of rape, incest and where the mothers life is in danger  exceptions notably not included in the new law.

The mixed reactions illustrate the political risks for the GOP as their anti-abortion allies begin actually achieving goals they have long sought. Americans are hardly of one mind on the issue, and loudly defending the nation's toughest curbs  in Virginia or political battlegrounds like Georgia, Arizona or Florida  in next year's midterm elections won't be hazard-free.

Now Playing: A deeply divided Supreme Court is allowing a Texas law that bans most abortions to remain in force, for now stripping most women of the right to an abortion in the nation's second-largest state. (Sept. 2) Video: Associated Press

It is going to be a very motivating issue for women who havent typically been single-issue pro-choice voters, said Republican pollster Christine Matthews. That includes suburban women and independents in swing House districts and competitive governors races who in past elections didnt believe Roe v. Wade was truly under threat, Matthews said.

The new Texas law represents the most significant threat yet to the Supreme Courts 1973 decision establishing the right to an abortion. Surveys suggest that ruling still has broad support  69% of voters in last year's elections said Roe v. Wade should be left as is, compared with just 29% saying it should be overturned, according to AP VoteCast, a poll of the electorate.

Democrats and abortion-rights advocates, who have sometimes been frustrated by voters taking access for granted, vowed Thursday to use the moment to wake people up. They promised to go after not just GOP candidates and office holders who support the Texas measure and others like it but also corporations that support them. Some reignited calls to end Senate filibuster rules to give abortion access a better chance at passage in Congress.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the House would soon vote on codifying Roe v. Wade into law, though chances in the Senate are all but nil.

Now Playing: As a strict abortion ban takes effect in Texas this week, clinics in neighboring states are fielding a growing numbers of calls from women desperate for options. (Sept. 2) Video: Associated Press

Virginia's Democratic gubernatorial nominee Terry McAuliffe already has been making abortion a key issue. He points to secretly recorded video in which Youngkin tells a woman posing as an abortion opponent that he supports defunding Planned Parenthood but can't talk about it publicly because as a campaign topic, sadly, that in fact wont win my independent votes that I have to get.

On Thursday McAuliffe warned that if Youngkin wins and Republicans take over the state House theres a good chance that we could see Virginia go the way of Texas.

The Texas law prohibits abortions once medical professionals can detect cardiac activity, usually around six weeks and often before women know they're pregnant. Rather than be enforced by government authorities, the law gives citizens the right to file civil suits and collect damages against anyone aiding an abortion.

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, a Republican, tweeted that she wanted her office to compare her state's laws with the new Texas one "to make sure we have the strongest pro-life laws on the books in SD.

But such views were hardly universal in her party.

In South Carolina, Republican Gov. Henry McMaster this year signed a restriction requiring doctors to perform ultrasounds checking for cardiac activity and prohibiting abortion if it's found, unless the pregnancy was caused by rape or incest, or the mothers life was in danger.

Asked Thursday if he would support a Texas-style bill, such as one without exceptions for rape and incest, McMaster said he viewed South Carolinas law as superior.

Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine called the Texas law extreme and harmful.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell downplayed the Supreme Court's action as a highly technical decision."

Indeed, the conservative-majority court did not rule on the constitutionality of the Texas law. The justices instead refused to block its implementation and issued a brief statement saying the decision in no way limits other procedurally proper challenges to the Texas law, including in Texas state courts.

The justices' role ensures that the court's makeup will be part of the revived political debate. Liberal lawmakers backed by advocates who helped power President Joe Biden to office want to expand the number of justices to rebalance power.

Democrats can either abolish the filibuster and expand the court, or do nothing as millions of people's bodies, rights and lives are sacrificed for far-right minority rule, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., wrote on Twitter.

While a majority of American support Roe v. Wade, abortion opponents have typically been more likely to let the issue determine their votes. According to AP VoteCast, just 3% of voters in the 2020 presidential election called abortion the single most important issue facing the country, but they leaned resoundingly toward Republican President Donald Trump, 89% to just 9% for Democrat Biden. In a separate question, 18% of voters called Supreme Court nominations the single most important factor in their presidential votes. Those voters leaned toward Biden by a relatively narrow margin, 53% to 46%.

A June poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that most Americans think abortion should be limited after the first trimester, but about 6 in 10 said it should usually be legal in the first three months of pregnancy. More than 8 in 10 said it should be legal in cases of rape or incest.

The poll found that younger adults are especially likely to support legal abortion. Sixty-three percent of those under age 45 said abortion should usually be legal, compared with 51% of those 45 and older. Still, even young adults support some limits on abortion based on the time of pregnancy, with majorities across all age groups saying most abortions should be illegal by the third trimester.

___

Emily Swanson in Washington and Meg Kinnard in Houston contributed to this report. Burnett reported from Chicago.
Misinformation, fears of side effects and distrust of government have fueled hesitancy to COVID-19 vaccines among minority communities in Houston, according to a report released by a Houston nonprofit on Thursday.

The 12-page report from Houston In Action was developed through seven listening sessions held between April and July.

This report is a culmination of the work of numerous Houston in Action member organizations who are dedicated to ensuring communities of color and low-income communities have the tools and information they need to get vaccinated, Houston In Action Executive Director Frances Valdez said in a statement. The pandemic has, no doubt, magnified the systemic failures of a healthcare system that has left vulnerable communities behind.

On HoustonChronicle.com: Harris County extends $100-for-vaccine program, citing 'tremendous response'

It echoes what community leaders have said throughout the pandemic: That many Black and Hispanic Texans remain skeptical of vaccinations because of misinformation and historic government mistreatment, but that such fears can be overcome through outreach from trusted sources.

[Getting vaccinated means] mostly depending on the government, but not everyone is comfortable with that, one participant  described in the report as a young Black male  responded. Are you going to take a chance and trust government or trust conspiracy theories, but knowing the risks, I made the tough decision.

The report also found financial and language barriers had contributed to lower vaccination rates among immigrant, refugee and international communities, members of which also cited real and perceived fears of having to provide identification or other information to obtain a vaccine.

On HoustonChronicle.com: COVID hospitalizations are slowing, but is the Houston region in a plateau?

Vaccination rates among Black and Hispanic Texans have continually lagged behind those of white and Asian communities.

According to census data, Black and Hispanic people account for 13 and 40 percent of the states overall population respectively. Yet Black people account for only 7.7 percent of fully vaccinated Texans, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services, while Hispanic Texans account for only 32 percent.

robert.downen@chron.com
A group of 26 evacuated Afghan families, including journalists and other staffers employed by the New York Times in Afghanistan, arrived in Houston earlier this week, according to Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston.

A chartered plane, paid for by the New York Times, brought the group of more than 120 Afghans safely to Houston from Mexico, where they had initially been evacuated to. Half of the new arrivals are children.

The group escaped from Afghanistan on Aug. 19 and remained in Mexico until they were cleared to come to the United States. Before entry to the U.S., the group was offered counseling, received COVID-19 testing and medical screenings.

The New York Times reported that as of Thursday, one of the 124 in the group had not yet received clearance from U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials to exit the airport.

A Catholic Charities spokesperson said the resettlement agency will be providing furnished apartments to the Afghan evacuees and offering counseling, English lessons, job support and will help them enroll their kids in local schools.

The New York Times will assist the Afghans with their immigration cases, according to Catholic Charities.

The group is allowed entrance into the U.S. through humanitarian parole, which is a temporary protection that excludes them from the vast majority of public benefits that Afghan Special Immigrant Visa holders and refugees receive.

Special Immigrant Visas are for Afghans or Iraqis who worked with the U.S. military and completed the required visa process. Some Afghans who were in the Special Immigrant Process, but faced processing delays, are coming in as parolees.

Houstons five refugee agencies are anticipating a proposed 3,000 parolees to arrive by the end of March, according to Kerry Spare, YMCA International Services in Houston refugee program coordinator. The anticipated number of parolees coming to Houston is triple the total number of refugees, from all countries, that were resettled in Texas in 2020.

To manage the influx of parolees, who will come in without much government funding, Houstons five refugee agencies are asking for additional private financial contributions and other donations such as mattresses, furniture and affordable housing.

An estimated 50,000 Afghan parolees are headed to cities nationwide.
On a sunny early August afternoon, the line wrapped around the block as hundreds of Houstonians lined up to get help with rent and other costs worsened by the pandemic.

At a union hall in north Houston, nonprofit workers and Harris County officials counted over 400 people applying for two local programs providing rent relief and direct assistance to households.

Now, the direct assistance fund has been expanded.

The Harris County Recovery Assistance program will randomly select eligible households throughout the fall to receive $1,500 for any urgent expenses brought on by the pandemic. The program originally accepted online applications from July 28 to Aug. 11, but overwhelming demand led the county to announce it would double the available funds to $60 million, enough for 40,000 households, according to a news release.

Online applications are being accepted through Sunday, Sept. 12 at harriscountyrelief.org.

Even at $60 million, the countys direct assistance fund is a fraction of the size of the Houston-Harris County Emergency Rental Assistance Program, or ERAP, a $195.5 million program that pays landlords overdue rent accrued during the pandemic.

But residents have struggled with other costs like groceries, utilities, health care and child care, prompting the county in July to launch the direct assistance fund.

Weve seen an overwhelming need for continued, direct assistance to help families meet their basic needs, said Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo in the release. While a $1,500 payment will not lift a family out of poverty, it can help someone stay healthy and housed. We also know from experience that when struggling families receive financial assistance, they put that money back into the economy.

Eligible applicants must be adults belonging to a household making less than 60 percent of the area median family income, or no more than $33,000 for one person and $47,520 for a family of four. The household must have at least one adult with U.S. citizenship, legal permanent residency, refugee status or another qualified non-citizen status, such as a special immigrant visa.

Those who applied in July or August will be automatically considered for the additional funds. But the second application window will give time for more community outreach, according to the release.

Memorial Assistance Ministries, FIEL Houston, the East Harris County Empowerment Council and Humble Area Assistance Ministries will serve as navigators who can help residents apply for direct assistance, while other groups including the Chinese Community Center can help with the county's rent relief program.

The $30 million boost to the countys direct assistance fund, which uses money from the American Rescue Plan Act, come as state and local governments across the country struggle to disburse $46.5 billion Congress earmarked this year for pandemic rent assistance. States and municipalities have distributed only $5 billion of that aid, or 11 percent, The Associated Press reported.

The city and countys Emergency Rental Assistance Program, which will take applications until it exhausts its $195.5 million budget, had by Aug. 30 disbursed $180 million on behalf of 48,000 households. Landlords enrolled in the program cannot evict tenants for nonpayment of rent as long as the tenants apply for assistance.

The rent payments, along with the direct assistance fund, have helped some Houston families avoid losing their homes after a pandemic eviction moratorium imposed in August by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was scrapped by the U.S. Supreme Court on Aug. 26, although thousands of evictions in Harris County have occurred despite the ban.

charlie.zong@chron.com
A new report outlines alternatives to holding large numbers of people in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facilities across the country, arguing there are more cost-effective and humanitarian approaches that still hold migrants accountable.

The Migration Policy Institute think-tank found immigrant detention was not only costly, running the federal government about $144 per detainee per day, but also endangers detainee safety and health.

These detention facilities have been cited for poor living conditions, poor sanitation, lack of access to health care, mental health risks, said the institutes research director Randy Capps. Thats been highlighted during the pandemic with major COVID outbreaks.

Excluding those who pose a community security risk, the report recommends most detainees be released and held accountable to show up to their court dates through case management, legal representation and community supervision. The report estimated supervised release for most individuals would cost the federal government around $4 to $38 per day  just a fraction of detention costs.

RELATED: A more humane ICE? Biden looks to Harris County Sheriff Gonzalez for reform

Freeing people from congregate care settings also puts them at less of a risk for contracting disease, like COVID-19.

Nationally, nine detainees died due to COVID-19, including one in the Houston area, according to ICEs official count. Advocates, however, say that number is likely low. More than 26,000 people have been infected at detention centers nationwide, including more than 11,000 detainees in Texas. Nearly 600 COVID-19 cases are under isolation in facilities across the state, according to ICE data.

Because of health risks and stricter border policies during the pandemic, ICE went from detaining a record high number of people to a record low.

Undocumented immigrants are held in detention facilities under civil, not criminal, charges, often to ensure theyll show up for their immigration court case. Often reports of court no-shows are used to justify the use of detention.

However, the report found an Obama-era case management pilot program led to a 99% compliance rate for court proceedings and ICE check-ins. That program leveraged community organizations and case managers to make sure families facing deportation showed up in court. The program cost around $38 per family per day, but was ended by the Trump administration in 2017.

ICE does currently use some alternatives to detention, often through ankle GPS monitors, home visits and reporting over the phone, which the report found successful when support was comprehensive.

Weve done a lot of work expanding our ATD (alternatives to detention) along the southwest border to look at ways to deploy it along the border so that individuals who are entering the country and seeking asylum can be enrolled, said Claire Trickler-McNulty, program evaluation assistant director at ICE.

Immigrants are being held in 24 detention centers across Texas, more than any other state. Most end up in these facilities either after being apprehended by border officials or from ICEs cooperation with local law enforcement officers. ICE is currently detaining more than 23,000 people nationally.

Detainees held on immigration charges are in facilities for violating civil, not criminal law, though some immigrants in ICE detention may have a criminal background, which can range from a traffic incident to assault.

Capps, the Migration Policy Institutes report author, admitted transforming ICE would be a massive undertaking.

These are big changes were talking about. They require cultural change. DHS (Department of Homeland Security) and ICE were really designed to be law enforcement agencies, really focused on deterring, using punishment through this penal criminal justice system model and were recommending a shift to a more service or case management oriented model, Capps said.

If confirmed, Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez may be leading ICE that direction. After being tapped to head the agency in the spring, he testified about his approach to the role before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committee in mid-July.

Immigrant advocates have expressed hope Gonzalez would limit the use of detention, but under the Biden administration the number of people held in ICE detention centers has increased from COVID-related lows.

Elizabeth.Trovall@chron.com
This article was updated on Sept. 7, 2021, with details from Firefly Aerospace on what caused the rocket's explosion.

An Austin rocket company's test flight did not go as planned Thursday, with the Alpha rocket flipping itself upside down in midair and then exploding.

Firefly Aerospace conducted its first test flight of the Alpha rocket Thursday from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

Prior to liftoff, mission control confirmed that "The pointy end is up and the flamey end is down," according to Tim Dodd, who is known on social media as the Everyday Astronaut. Dodd streamed Firefly's launch attempt.

But unfortunately, the flamey end did not stay down. A video shared by Jack Beyer with nasaspaceflight.com shows the rocket starting to wobble. Then it began rotation, with the flamey end up and the pointy end down. That's when the rocket exploded.

On Twitter, Firefly Aerospace said one of the four Reaver engines in the first stage of its rocket shut down about 15 seconds into flight. The other three engines continued to propel the rocket upward, but the climb rate was slow and the vehicle struggled to maintain control. The other three engines were able to compensate at subsonic speeds, but control is more challenging in supersonic flight (supersonic is one to five times faster than the speed of sound).

The vehicle then tumbled out of control, and the flight was terminated -- the rocket did not explode on its own. It was told to explode. Rockets are equipped with this safety feature so a flight can be ended if a rocket loses control.

"We acquired a wealth of flight data that will greatly enhance the likelihood of Alpha achieving orbit during its second flight," the company said. "In short, we had a very successful first flight."

Firefly is developing the Alpha rocket to carry small satellites into space.
This is an opinion piece from the San Francisco Chronicle. To read opinions from the Houston Chronicle Editorial Board, click here.

On Wednesday, the heartbeat bill took effect in my home state of Texas, banning abortions after six weeks of pregnancy. Considering that most women dont learn of theyre pregnant until just around this time  compounded by delays in getting appointments, making travel and financial arrangements to seek necessary reproductive health care  abortion has essentially just been outlawed in Texas.

Just add it to the list of asinine and harmful public policies that live and thrive there.

As a teacher in Texas, I am allowed to ban guns in my classroom, except for concealed weapons. This year, the Texas Legislature eliminated the requirement to attain a license or permit to own a weapon in the Lone Star State. You have to be permitted to dig a pool in your backyard, to operate a plumbing company, to drive or to cut hair in Texas.

But to own and operate a firearm? Nah.

I cannot require my students to wear a mask to protect themselves or others from COVID-19. Our states governor, Greg Abbott, expressly forbade mask mandates, as well as COVID-19 vaccine mandates  even though vaccine passports for measles, mumps and rubella, among other diseases, are still required for children to enter public schools.

The cognitive dissonance required to believe that regulating womens uteruses is reasonable, but not facial coverings for all, is maddening, but admittedly not surprising for those of us who grew up here.

I imagine the reality of Texas reactionary politics must be hitting the wave of new residents from California pretty hard right about now. According to some estimates, San Francisco alone lost over 185,000 residents during the pandemic, many of whom left for Texas. And I certainly get why my home city of Austin, specifically, would seem a desirable choice for those leaving the Bay area. Austins comparatively affordable housing market and the keep-Austin-weird-liberal-hippie vibe sounds ideal, in theory.

I am curious what this influx of new voters will mean to the state ballot box. Will they help push the recently purple state into blue territory?

The battle for the future of Texas will be fascinating. But I have no intention of sticking around to find out how it goes.

After the way my home state handled the pandemic and the snowpocalypse blackout this winter, it has become abundantly clear that public health and safety  life, if you will  is not the primary objective of the people running this state.

Ive decided to take my chances in California, thank you.

I recently saw a Twitter meme about moving in the United States as a doomed decision between one natural or man-made disaster over another. Would you rather suffer hurricanes or tornadoes, red-state gerrymandering or blizzards, earthquakes or abortion bans, wildfires and smoky skies or COVID spikes?

The fact is that were all trying to survive the apocalypse. If youre not storing water in your garage, you should be.

For me, staying in Texas  with its abortion laws and COVID malfeasance and failing power grid and political shenanigans  meant teaching four courses on four different campuses with inconsistent or nonexistent masking policies, no social distancing and no COVID-reporting procedures. All this for $32,000 and no job security as an adjunct community college professor.

Or I could pack my family and move across the country for a six-figure, tenure-track gig in Northern California.

It wasnt a very tough choice.

Driving through the Western deserts on our way out here, I thought about how hard it was to leave behind those we love. Everyone for generations in my family  my grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins, nieces, nephews  lives in Texas. When I went to college in New York City, someone there asked me if everyone in Texas had a horse. I said no, even though my dad had kept a horse in the backyard for a while before the grass turned to mud and he realized it was a bad idea.

Texas pride is real, as transplants will soon discover. Christmas trees decorated in University of Texas Longhorn burnt orange, barbecue wars, taco trucks, and enough lakes and rivers to float in for a lifetime.

But how will these new arrivals stomach the politics, the hypocrisy, the sexism, the blatant racism, the Christian fundamentalism and the gun terror?

Ive given up on my beloved but toxic home state  at least for now. But Ill admit that the separation has been painful.

Despite its politics largely agreeing with mine, California hasnt been a miraculous safe haven to escape to. My new home has been shrouded by smoke several times already in the month since weve arrived. As I write this, the Lassen fire is burning across the road from my front yard. Im still not sure if well be evacuating.

It aint easy making a new home, wherever you moved during the course of this pandemic. Texan or not, we all need to take care, whether that means staying to fight or fleeing for your life.

Jennifer Sapio teaches online at the University of Texas in the department of rhetoric and writing, and at Redwood High School in Marin County.
Think of Texas and one of the first things to come to mind is its unique shape  those iconic curves that we stamp, brand and mold onto anything we can think of, from tortilla chips to cutting boards to extravagant hotel swimming pools.

You can add one more to the list that youll never find among the kitsch at Buc-ees: a Texas-shaped coat-hanger.

The connotation of the image being shared widely on social media is chilling, and its symbolism isnt lost on anybody who lived through, or at least has read about, a time when women didnt have access to safe, legal abortion and so were forced to seek out alternatives via pill bottles, back alleys, Mexican border towns and yes, crudely improvised DIY devices.

Its a world many Texas women are fortunate to have never known, until now.

The Texas Legislature has effectively banned abortion in Texas, taking us back to 1973 before the landmark Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade legalized the procedure nationwide. The law affects abortions after 6 weeks, when an embryo is about the size of a lentil. A heartbeat can be detected although many women dont yet know theyre pregnant. There are no exceptions in the law for victims of rape or incest.

Proponents of the law are celebrating their achievement, claiming they have rid Texas of the ravages of abortion, as Gov. Greg Abbott put it in a tweet. Other activists use the word violent to describe a medical procedure that, 88 percent of the time, is done in the first trimester, and around 40 percent of the time isnt really a procedure at all but a set of pills. Women often describe an early abortion as a heavy period.

Texas will always defend the right to life, Gov. Greg Abbott trumpeted on Twitter after the law took effect this week.

Always? Tell that to the women who are still dying in childbirth in Texas. Tell it to the children we let die and suffer abuse in foster care. Tell it to the 1.4 million Texans who dont have health insurance because lawmakers refuse to expand Medicaid.

Texas routinely ranks near the bottom in child welfare. Lawmakers just passed a law letting people carry a handgun without any training or a permit. As the deadly, highly contagious delta variant surges in our state, the governor refuses to protect Texans with a simple mask requirement and is actively blocking local governments trying to do so, including public school officials who are responsible for keeping millions of children safe.

Texas leaders wont force anyone to wear a harmless mask, but theyll force a woman to carry the offspring of a man who rapes her? Such cases are rare but even one is an unconscionably cruel mandate.

How is it that Texas provides more protection for an unborn embryo than for an 8-year-old who risks COVID infection every day hes forced to attend school with unmasked classmates?

It is the most cynical calculation for Abbott and Republican lawmakers: They are willing to risk a childs life in the name of individual liberty but they have no problem trampling a womans individual liberty to protect an embryo no bigger than a grain of rice.

This day was a long time in coming  and a long time in fighting.

For years, anti-abortion activists in the Texas Legislature have tried to erode womens access to the procedure with every clever strategy they could think of: forcing women to submit to vaginal ultrasounds, requiring the burial of fetal remains, burdening clinics with nitpicking regulations on the width of clinic hallways. State Sen. Wendy Davis famously fended off one bill to ban abortion after 20 weeks but the assaults on womens rights continued as Republicans gained firm control of both the Texas House and Senate.

This time, theyve outdone themselves, and undone the shreds of abortion protections women in Texas had left. The six-week abortion ban is accompanied by a method of enforcement so Machiavellian, it would make Vladimir Putin proud.

The law basically deputizes ordinary citizens to spy and tattle on their fellow citizens if they have reason to believe the person is guilty of aiding and abetting an abortion in Texas. That means everyone from the doctor performing the abortion to the person who gave the patient a ride to the clinic. The law allows the tattlers  some call them bounty hunters  to sue the alleged offenders and win up to $10,000 in damages. Even if theyre wrong in their claims, they are legally protected from defamation claims.

Despite the dubious legal grounds for such lawsuits  usually, someone bringing a lawsuit in Texas is required to have been harmed directly  the mere existence of the law is enough to intimidate many abortion providers and supporters into shuttering their operations this week.

Unlike other glaringly unconstitutional anti-abortion provisions passed by Texas lawmakers, advocates arent sure whom to sue to fight the law because it technically isnt administered by Texas officials.

The fact that the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the law to go into effect  minus the votes of Chief Justice John Roberts and the liberals who dissented  is a troubling harbinger of whats to come when the court takes up the deeper issue of the laws constitutionality.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is vowing to prioritize a type of federal remedy but the chances of it passing both chambers are unclear.

The only thing clear today is that in the State of Texas, land of personal freedom, women have lost jurisdiction of our bodies. Those who need abortions, many of them mothers caring for other children, will have to leave the state to have the procedure. Hit hardest will be the low-income women who dont have the money to travel, and some, faced with no other option, may resort to unsafe methods to end pregnancies.

This is the world we read about in books, never imagining it would re-emerge as our reality. Barring a federal remedy, the only option for Texans who support a womans right to choose is to fight for another reality. Get mad, get organized, get to the polls.
Regarding I will die before I get vaccinated: FDA approval only strengthens skepticism for some Houstonians, (Aug. 25): As a high school student in the final years before I go out into the real world with real independence, there is nothing I hate more than COVID. I despise wearing masks, I despise social distancing, I despise all the little tedious rules that stop me from having a full high school experience and education. That said, I still follow the rules, I wear my mask when required, I try to be cautious about the number of people Im surrounded by; Im a typical rule-abiding citizen doing whatever it takes to eliminate COVID easily, including getting vaccinated.

The vaccine isnt just some shot that the government wants you to take; it helps solve the problem that everybody wants to fix. Out of all the vaccine stories Ive heard, from my friends to family, to just word on the street, I have never heard anything about the vaccine being detrimental to someones health. You cant tell me that the horribleness of the vaccine outweighs $100. If you are refusing the vaccine indefinitely, the only thing I can think is that you are immature and stubbornly idiotic.

Evan Banchs, Houston, junior in high school

After reading and analyzing this article, it is evident that Jennifer Bridges name is being tarnished for exercising her freedom of choice. I believe everyone should be entitled to their own beliefs and have freedom of choice when it comes to these types of things. The fact that this nurse was fired for refusing to get the vaccine is absolutely crazy. Even if she works in health care, she is still protecting herself and others by wearing a mask to be safe. Even if she is refusing the vaccine, they never said she wasnt abiding by COVID regulations and following procedures. This is not logical in my opinion. I believe she shouldnt be fired and can have her own choice to do what she wants.

Ryan Droubi, Houston, junior in high school

Biden and Afghanistan

Regarding Biden pays respects to US troops killed in Afghanistan, (Aug. 29): Congratulations to President Biden. He wanted the withdrawal out of Afghanistan to coincide with the 20th anniversary of 9/11 as a symbolic moment. Well he got his wish; an unprecedented intelligence and leadership failure punctuated with additional American deaths and no doubt more to come.

Carole Paul Vesely, Houston

President Joe Biden blames his predecessor for sticking him with an agreement to exit Afghanistan that he couldnt get out of. That same predecessor stuck Biden with a pipeline agreement that he canceled on day one.

Mike Farrell, Conroe

Texas Bullion Depository

Regarding, The Texas Bullion Depository, sold as a gold mine for taxpayers, could end up costing millions, (Aug. 27): What a boondoggle. The whole creation of this project reeks of shortsightedness and lack of proper research. If the state had exercised their due diligence, more sophisticated heads would have prevailed preventing the projects implementation. The awarding of the contract to a private firm to run the precious metals depository smacks of political cronyism when one views the political donations that were made. All the state has to show for it is a $20 million bailout tab to purchase the facility at this time. No wonder our citizenry loses confidence in our leaders when their hard-earned monies are spent in such a frivolous manner. If this had occurred solely in the private sector, many folks would be out of a job  and rightfully so. Gov. Abbot signed the original bill to create the depository. Lets send the governor, along with all those who supported it, a bill and show our displeasure at the ballot box.

Chris Brown, Houston

Revisiting Joanne King Herrings work

Regarding Joanne King Herring's 'heart is just breaking' over Afghanistan, (Aug. 25): Thank you for Amber Elliotts well-done article on Joanne King Herring. I was a reporter at Channel 2 when Joanne brought her noon show, The Joanne King Show, to KPRC. Always appreciated her kindness. The news from Afghanistan has brought her dedication to the people of that region very much to my mind. I have gone to my bookcase and retrieved her memoir, Diplomacy and Diamonds: My War from the Ballroom to the Battlefield. It was an interesting read in 2011, and worth another look from todays perspective.

Susan Wright, Houston
Our state Legislature passed House Bill 20, which will prevent social media companies from moderating user-generated content on their platforms. When it reaches the desk of Gov. Greg Abbott, he should veto the unconstitutional legislation.

While HB 20 includes exemptions for monitoring illegal activity, the regulation of censorship practices will make digital forums more vulnerable to illegal content such as pornography, cyber-terrorism and fraud. Not only is the law likely to crumble under a legal challenge that will be costly to taxpayers, it also violates core tenets of our Constitution and a 25-year-old federal statute. This legislation should not reach Abbotts desk.

The legislation targets social media companies right to moderate content created and posted by others. If signed into law, it would prohibit social media platforms from using many of the moderation practices that are designed to keep the platforms free and safe, including by blocking harmful content and misinformation. HB 20 would deal a severe blow to our online ecosphere by penalizing social media companies for removing some of that content. In the process, the law will violate the First Amendment rights of social media companies.

If HB 20 becomes law, taxpayers will also bear the significant financial burden of litigating the constitutionality of this unconstitutional law. The price of litigation to defend this misguided law could cost Texas upwards of $1 million. Florida recently authorized its lawyers to spend as much as $280,000 defending a similar content-moderation law which a federal district court quickly found unconstitutional. That case is on appeal to the 11th Circuit so the states fees are mounting daily. And if the state ultimately loses, the plaintiff tech trade groups can make Florida pay their attorneys fees, too. In addition there would be significant costs associated with administering such a social media censorship law (even if it were to be found constitutional). To monitor and carry out the states administrative responsibilities for a content-moderation law, Utah estimated almost $90,000 annually. Iowas annual cost estimate exceeded $700,000  and both figures undoubtedly would be low for a state the size of Texas. Texas taxpayers should not have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions, on something that has no constitutional basis.

Tech companies, which provide good-paying American jobs, will also face costly consequences if HB 20 becomes law. As private businesses, they will have to adjust by raising the cost of services and eliminating filters for illegal and other questionable content, both of which will adversely affect consumers. Social media companies will moderate content less frequently, chilled by the prospect of liability to multiple individual users and the increased costs of monitoring risky content and of defending against the inevitable flood of lawsuits HB 20 encourages.

Nonetheless, the most troubling cost of Texas content moderation legislation is its disregard for the U.S. Constitution. HB 20 rides roughshod over private actors First Amendment right to free speech by dictating how and what American tech companies can host and by punishing those that exercise their clearly established First Amendment editorial rights. The bill finds its authority in classifying social networks as common carriers  generally defined as public or private entities that transport goods or people from one place to another, for a fee (think railroads, telecommunications services and airlines). Common carriers are neutral conduits. Social media companies are not, as they are explicit in their content moderation rules, including removal of violent or racist content. The common carrier classification in HB 20 has no precedent in American jurisprudence. If signed into law, HB 20 will cost taxpayers money to defend a law that will not hold up in court and will violate our Constitution and statutes based on untenable reasoning.

Ostensibly, HB 20 appears to put the cost burden on tech companies; however, the real cost falls on Texans who will suffer from this unsound, unconstitutional legislation. Social media companies will be forced to front the fees to comply with the content moderation mandates and to circumscribe their moderation practices  Texans will both pay more money and lose critical online protections. I encourage state lawmakers and Abbott to reconsider the costly and irresponsible censorship laws being considered.

Leatherbury, the director of the First Amendment Clinic at the SMU Dedman School of Law and co-head of the appellate practice group at Vinson & Elkins, regularly represents publishers, broadcasters and social media companies.
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NORTH ADAMS, Mass.  MassDevelopment awarded a $10,000 grant to the North Adams Chamber of Commerce to transform the Center Street parking lot at 55 Veterans Memorial Drive into a seasonal public dining corridor dubbed Mohawk Plaza.

The grant is part of the agency's Commonwealth Places COVID-19 Response Round: Resurgent Places, the first round of which awarded $224,965 in funding for 21 placemaking projects last year. In December 2020, another $390,000 in funding was made available for a second round.

"Before this pandemic, the vibrant centers of our cities and towns were not only a driving force behind the strength of local economies, they were the places where we gathered to dine, to shop, and to be entertained, and the Commonwealth Places program is one way that we can help these areas bounce back stronger than ever," said Housing and Economic Development Secretary Michael Kennealy, who serves as chair of MassDevelopment's Board of Directors. "The Baker-Polito administration continues to support downtowns and town centers through various economic recovery programs, and these Resurgent Places grants are providing non-profit community organizations with the resources to activate public spaces, boost economic activity, and support an equitable recovery."

Funds will be used to add outdoor seating, a sidewalk surface mural, wayfinding signage, ambience lighting, and landscape work.

The North Adams Chamber of Commerce will also crowdfund this summer and fall; if the organization reaches its $7,850 goal it will receive an additional $7,850 matching grant from MassDevelopment.

The funds are awarded through MassDevelopment's special Commonwealth Places COVID-19 Response Round: Resurgent Places, which was made available specifically to assist local economic recovery efforts as community partners prepare public spaces and commercial districts to serve residents and visitors.

"Amazing things can happen when communities reimagine underutilized public spaces, such as North Adams Chamber of Commerce's vision for a parking lot steps away from the city's Main Street," said MassDevelopment President and CEO Dan Rivera. "MassDevelopment is pleased to help the organization create Mohawk Plaza, a space that will increase foot traffic downtown, provide additional outdoor dining, and reinvigorate a prime public way."
The Adams Street Fair presents checks to Adams emergency services personnel. The Selectmen meet Wednesday at Town Hall. PreviousNext

Adams Officials Approve Coal and Grain Park Project



The town is moving forward to create a park at the old Hoosac Valley Coal & Grain site but there isn't enough grant funding to study the building.

ADAMS, Mass.The Select Board on Wednesday approved plans for the proposed Coal and Grain Park on Cook Avenue. The park, which is part of a package deal with low-income housing grants and funded by federal Community Development Block Grants (CDBG), has been in the works since 2017.

"I think this is just another step in the right direction," said Selectman Joseph Nowak while the Board deliberated during the public hearing. "I hope we can get what we're looking for."

The proposed park will abut the Ashuwilticook Rail Trail and will have as one of its central features the Coal and Grain Elevator building. The historic building was used to store coal and grain, but now sits as a relic off Columbia Street.

The park will cost $411,000, including more than $30,000 for an accessible ramp that connects to the rail trail. Selectman Richard Blanchard expressed concern about this cost, especially in light of the Department of Community Development's recent realization that it had access to only $800,000 in grant funding.

Previously, the department thought the town would be eligible for $1.35 million in grant funding. "We're back to the drawing board," said the department's director, Eamonn Coughlin, at the time.

Before it learned of the reduced funding, the department had planned on incorporating the historic building more directly into the park's design. In order to do that, however, a study would have to be done of building's stability. The cost of this study was incorporated into the higher grant budget but was scrapped when the budget was updated.

Blanchard said he would have preferred for the $30,000 spent on the ramp  which is not an Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requirement  to be spent on determining whether the building was stable. He said he examined the structure recently from the outside and noted that there were holes in the sides that could cause safety hazards.

Despite this minor pushback, all members of the board unanimously voted in favor of the CDBG proposal. It also includes $240,000 for housing unit rehabilitation; $56,000 for staff costs; and $51,000 for administrative costs like accounting and oversight.

The board also invited representatives of the Adams Street Fair to present oversized checks to emergency services personnel. The Fire Department, Police Department, the Forest Wardens and ambulance service all received checks of $850.

Joseph Martin, chairman of the fair, told the town and the Selectmen, "from the bottom of our hearts, we thank you."

In other business:
The Port of Shelton continues to grow and expand and Executive Director Wendy Smith and Port Commissioner Dick Taylor talk about the progress with Jeff Slakey. They are working on new CERB funding and the company that makes Squirrel Suits is coming to the Port.
On August 28, journalists in the Philippines commemorated one year since ABS-CBN was forced to close 53 regional radio and television stations. The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and its affiliate, the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP), urge the Philippine government to bring back ABS-CBN.

On July 10, 2020, the Philippine House Committee on Legislative Franchises, responsible for granting and renewing broadcasting networks franchises, voted to deny ABS-CBNs franchise renewal. As a result, ABS-CBN began shutting down operations that required a legislative franchise on August 28, 2020, retrenching 11,000 media workers and closing 53 regional ABS-CBN stations that broadcast in six languages.

Media workers marked August 28, lighting candles and holding a social media protest using the hashtag #IbalikAngABSCBN (#BringBackABSCBN).

The NUJP said: While it is true that the network and some of its programming are still available online, the loss of regional stations hampers the flow of information to and from areas outside the capital.

In some cases, this may mean fewer eyes and voices to act as a check on government. In others, this could mean the loss of access to information on typhoons and disaster preparations  It also means thousands of our colleagues who have lost their jobs or have had to make do with lower pay, NUJP added.

The IFJ said: The closure of regional ABS-CBN stations and the rejection of ABS-CBNs franchise renewal last year was a devastating blow to press freedom and labour rights in the Philippines. Politicians should not have the ability to regulate which media organisations are allowed to broadcast or render thousands of media workers jobless. The IFJ stands in solidarity with former and current ABS-CBN employees and calls on the Philippine government to grant ABS-CBN a legislative franchise license.
Concerns for the state of press freedom and freedom of expression in Afghanistan are escalating following the Taliban militants takeover, as mounting attacks and threats against Afghan media and journalists coincide with the United States departure from the country on August 31. The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and South Asia Media Solidarity Network (SAMSN), urge the SAARC national governments and international communities to provide a safe haven to Afghan journalists seeking help.

Members of the Taliban Badri 313 military unit take a position at the airport in Kabul on August 31, 2021, after the US has pulled all its troops out of the country to end a brutal 20-year war -- one that started and ended with the hardline Islamist in power. Credit: WAKIL KOHSAR / AFP

The United States withdrew its remaining troops from Afghanistan on August 31, with the Taliban cautioning the US to  be ready to face the consequences if the nations stay was extended beyond August 31. Following the USs withdrawal in the aftermath of an ISIS-K suicide bombing on August 26, that killed more than 175 people including 13 US service members and three Afghan journalists, the situation for media workers on the ground is reportedly extremely challenging. Hundreds of journalists and their families are desperate and without passports, visas or funds to survive, according to IFJ sources.

The IFJ and its affiliates alone have logged more than 2,000 requests for assistance from media workers attempting to flee the country, seek refuge or request financial support. Those journalists who had reported critically about the Taliban, or those from ethnic communities, have fled to neighbouring countries including Pakistan. More than 90 media outlets have reportedly closed during this period. Similarly, on August 26, the Taliban arrested Pakistani journalist Abdul Mateen Achakzai and his photographer Muhammad Ali, of Khyber News TV, in Kandahar for reporting without permission. Another Pakistani journalist Iqbal Mengal was also reported missing but was later traced to Kabul after being arrested.

Despite assurances from the Taliban for a private, independent and free media, their present actions and historical evidence proves otherwise. Afghan journalists who fear for their safety and security under the Taliban, recall that during the previous Taliban regime (1996-2001), the press was heavily controlled and independent journalism was almost impossible. The Taliban has a history of targeting journalists and restricting media coverage. This outflux of media workers encapsulates a fear among journalists that their work will not be possible under Taliban rule. With the Talibans takeover, the profession of more than 7000 journalists and media workers will be affected while 248 television networks, 438 radio networks, 1,699 printing presses and 119 news agencies may face significant setbacks. Furthermore, the future of female journalists is at severe risk, with many fearing they will be forced to completely abandon their work.

The SAMSN urges the SAARC countries to support Afghan journalists by providing them emergency visas, offering asylum, providing refuge and calling on the global community to extend every help possible in these most desperate times.

The SAMSN said: Reiterating its solidarity with the Afghan Independent Journalists Association (AIJA), the Afghanistan National Journalists Union (ANJU) and all journalists and media workers in Afghanistan, the SAMSN, a coalition of media union in South Asian countries,urges the Taliban regime to respect the independence and freedom of the media and ensure the absolute safety and security of all journalists and media workers.

TheSAMSN leadership also urges all its members to contribute to the special Afghanistan Solidarity Fund within the IFJ Safety Fund to channel further support and is encouraging those who can to make a donation.

The IFJ said: Journalists in Afghanistan are in need of crucial support at this critical juncture in history. Therefore, the IFJ urges the SAARC governments to provide necessary supports including visas, safe houses and other logistical measures at this time of severe humanitarian crisis.
Advocating for decent, affordable, and sustainable housing for Filipino families, top building solution company Holcim Philippines, Inc. forged a commitment to support Habitat for Humanity Philippines socialized housing projects.

In a virtual agreement signing, Holcim Philippines committed to providing 68,800 bags of general purpose cement Holcim Excel to construct homes and community facilities under the Bignay Maunlad Socialized Housing Project in Valenzuela City and the San Carlos Housing Project in Negros Occidental. These housing projects will benefit over 500 low-income families.

Present at the MOA signing were Holcim Philippines Senior Vice President and Chief Sustainability Officer Zoe Sibala, Vice President and Head of Communications Cara Ramirez, and Habitat Philippines Chief Operating Officer Lili Fuentes.

Our vision of a world where everyone has a decent place to live aligns with Holcim Philippines goal to build greener, smarter, and sustainable communities. This partnership is a testament to how working together for the same purpose can intensify our efforts and multiply our impact. We are grateful to partner with Holcim Philippines in improving the lives of Filipino families through housing, said Fuentes.

Holcim Philippines has been a steadfast partner of Habitat Philippines in building and empowering communities. In 2017, Holcim Philippines donated 142 tons of cement to help construct 47 houses for the Matigsalug-Manobo Tribe at the Marilog District, Davao City. They also donated over Php100,000 to distribute hygiene and sanitation kits to families affected by Typhoon Rolly in the Bicol Region.

Championing decent housing for all, Holcim Philippines participated in the 2017 and 2019 Asia-Pacific Housing Forum in Manila, a biennial conference spearheaded by Habitat Philippines that tackles housing issues and solutions. This year, Holcim Philippines has committed to becoming one of Habitat Philippines significant partners in staging the first virtual Philippines Housing Forum in November.

We are excited to continue supporting Habitat Philippines in constructing decent and resilient homes for Filipinos. Putting up affordable homes is a key focus area in our commitment help build progress in the country. This partnership will help us better understand how we can make a bigger impact in constructing these homes through our expertise innovative and sustainable building materials, said Sibala.
PLDT and its wireless unit Smart Communications, Inc. (Smart) call on the public and private sector to work together towards the improvement of the countrys Internet connectivity, to help hasten the countrys economic recovery from the pandemic.

Present during the Womens Economic Empowerment webinar are, from top right: University of the Philippines Public Administration Research and Extension Services Foundation, Inc. (UPPAF) Regulatory Reform Support Program for National Development (RESPOND) Gender Specialist Jeanne Frances I. Illo; PLDT First Vice President and Head for Regulatory and Strategic Affairs Atty. Aileen Regio; CSEE Metro Naga PESO Manager Florencio Tan Mongoso, Jr.; Anti-Red Tape Authority (ARTA) Secretary and Director General Atty. Jeremiah B. Belgica; UPPAF RESPOND Chief of Party Dr. Enrico L. Basilio; Supervising GAD Specialist Pamela C. Susara; and Engr. Leo C.L. Urbiztondo, Jr., PECE Director for the Government Digital Transformation Bureau under the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) (not in photo).

In the recent Womens Economic Empowerment webinar held by the University of the Philippines Public Administration Research and Extension Services Foundation, Inc. (UPPAF), PLDT First Vice President and Head of Regulatory and Strategic Affairs Atty. Aileen Regio highlighted the important role that PLDT and Smart play in the countrys transformative journey and economic recovery, especially amid the pandemic.

We understand that telecommunications and connectivity play a critical role in stimulating the growth of the modern economy. Telecommunications has become even more critical at this point in time when COVID-19 has continued to plague our country, Atty. Regio said. Fast and resilient connectivity will likewise be instrumental in the light of our recovery from COVID-19 as well as the recovery of the Philippine economy. Strong and robust connectivity and telecommunications service are also crucial, so that we can finally achieve our aspirations towards a digitally transformed government.

According to Atty. Regio, it is important that the public and private sector work together towards the improvement of the countrys Internet connectivity to support a more inclusive business industry such as the micro-small-medium enterprises as well.

On behalf of PLDT and SMART, I just want to give this assurance and commitment to support the government in its efforts to introduce pro-investment telecommunications policies, including all measures that will speed up the rollout of telecommunications infrastructure in the country. This is even more true today as we face this unfamiliar crisis that has changed the way we live, Atty. Regio said. When both the public and private sectors collaborate, we believe that we can realize our common objective of having a world-class telecommunications service in the country; thereby, improving government processes and systems and uplifting the lives of our countrymen.

During the session, Anti-Red Tape Authority Secretary and Director General Atty. Jeremiah B. Belgica also shared the efforts of the government when it comes to regulatory reforms to improve connectivity and citizens access to government services. According to Atty. Belgica, the governments efforts are geared towards creating more efficient systems that are accessible to Filipinos.

Engr. Leo C.L. Urbiztondo, Jr., PECE Director for the Government Digital Transformation Bureau under the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT), shared the DICTs efforts to address the connectivity challenges faced by local government units, businesses and citizens. These include the National Broadband Plan, which helps accelerate the deployment of fiber optic cables; Free WiFi for All; and the enhancement of government connectivity support through the National Government Data Center.

PLDT and Smarts relentless push to provide connectivity for all is aligned with the groups long-standing commitment to help the Philippines attain the UNs Sustainable Development Goals, particularly SDG #9: Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure.
If theres a silver lining to the lockdown, its that it accelerated the growth of e-commerce in the Philippines. NielsenIQ stated that online shopping transactions have grown over 325% during this period, and theres no end in sight. More and more Filipinos are turning to the digital economy to build a business.

Unfortunately, while there are many resources about e-commerce in general, there are precious few specific to the Philippines. Starting an e-commerce business in the United States or other western markets is, of course, different from doing so in the Philippine context. There are nuances to every aspect of doing business here, and e-commerce is no exception.

It is this gap that inspired the editorial team of Bookshelf PH to write The E-Hustle: What the Countrys Best Digital Leaders Can Teach You About Launching and Growing Your Online Business. The book features insights from the leaders who built the e-commerce infrastructure in the Philippines, including logistics, payments, and distribution channels; top online brands; and subject matter experts in relevant skills.

Featured leaders include:

Steve Sy - Founder and CEO of Great Deals E-Commerce Corporation

Charles Ryan Sy - President and CEO of Dropify

Dannah Majarocon - Managing Director of Lalamove PH

Martha Sazon - President and CEO of GCash

Dino Araneta - Founder of QuadX

Martin Yu - Director of Shopee Philippines

Nina Ellaine Dizon-Cabrera - CEO of Colourette Cosmetics

Kim Lato - CEO of Kimstore

Ben Wintle - Founder and CEO of Booky

Ace Gapuz - CEO of Blogapalooza

Hiyasmin Neri-Soyao - Co-Founder and CEO of Shoppertainment LIVE Inc.

Francis Plaza - Co-Founder and CEO of PayMongo

Mario Domingo - Founder of Neural Mechanics Inc. and DARC Labs

Agnes Gervacio - CEO of MDI Novare

Zen Han - Vice President for National Sales of OPPO Philippines

Stefano Fazzini - Co-Founder and CEO of MetroMart

Michael McCullough - Founder of KMC Solutions

Rather than tap each business leader on a general discussion of ecommerce, each interviewee was asked to focus on their particular expertise. Ace Gapuz, the CEO of Blogapalooza, for example, shared her expertise on how brands can leverage influencer marketing to enhance their ecommerce capabilities. She gave a high-level overview of how to choose the right influencers, set goals, and execute campaigns - all again within the specific context of the Philippines, the social media capital of the world.

Kyle Nate, the production editor of The E-Hustle, was proud to gather this caliber of experts for the book.

There is no map to e-commerce, no guide that says you are here and tells you how to go the distance. But there are principles, strategies, and tactics that cut across different contexts, and the leaders here share exactly those: You can apply what they learned often through trial-and-error to your own circumstances, fast tracking your personal growth, and in extension, that of your business, said Nate.

Joining Nate are co-authors Mio Borromeo, Pancho Dizon, and Monica Padillo; managing editor Ada Ortega; and layout artist Josephine Daluz and cover artist Katrina Dela Cruz. Globe CEO Ernest Cu contributed the foreword discussing the rise of e-commerce in the Philippines, while Senator Risa Hontiveros contributed the afterword focusing on the need for more entrepreneur-friendly legislation in the space.

While the book abounds with actionable insights and information, the confidence it inspires may be its biggest selling point.

Many Filipinos will be embarking into e-commerce for the first time, starting their business during the pandemic. This prospect can of course be intimidating. By learning about the success stories in The E-Hustle, I think theyll be more inclined toward optimistic thinking when the going gets tough: If they can do it, I can, too, said Ortega.

The E-Hustle is available in both physical and eBook copies for order here: bit.ly/TheE-Hustle
If you haven't yet received Covid-19 relief for your small business, there's still plenty of money available, Isabel Guzman, the Small Business Administration chief, told Yahoo Finance this week.

"We still have billions of dollars in relief in our Covid EIDL program," said Guzman, referring to the Economic Injury Disaster Loan program, a low-interest loan (currently set at a maximum of $500,000) for businesses affected by the coronavirus.

While many Covid-19 relief programs--including the Paycheck Protection Program, the Restaurant Revitalization Fund, and the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant--have ended, the SBA's EIDL program is currently still available for small businesses struggling during the pandemic. As of August 19, the SBA has approved more than 3.8 million EIDLs, worth $259 billion. Congress appropriated $50 billion for EIDL to support up to $367.1 billion in lending authority.

Additionally, SBA is still making debt relief payments to help hard-hit businesses into certain SBA-backed loans, including the agency's flagship working capital loan product: the 7(a) loan program. New borrowers between now and the end of the month will get three months of payment relief, up to $9,000 per month. Those loans also include a temporarily higher guarantee of 90 percent, from 75 to 85 percent, depending on the size of the loan. The higher guarantee reduces the risk banks take on when making small business loans, which should make them easier to get.

But you better act fast, as these programs won't last. The SBA's debt relief efforts are due to expire at the end of the month, or until funds run out. Lynn Ozer, president of MultiFunding--a small-business loan adviser based in Ambler, Pennsylvania--also expects the Covid EIDL program to sunset on December 31, or when funds run out.

"We stand ready to support our small businesses with whatever programs we have," said Guzman, noting that they're the best shot some businesses have at economic recovery.
For many of us, September is the other January. Even though I haven't been in a classroom myself for many years, September still has the back-to-school atmosphere of new notebooks, sharp pencils, and a fresh start. Each year, September's Labor Day holiday marks the end of summer and the return to the workday routines.

This Labor Day, however, is different from previous Labor Days. It will be a particularly important milestone: The next day, September 7, feels like it will be a day of reckoning. The pandemic period isn't over, of course. The Delta variant's great virulence has caused many workplaces to adjust, yet again, their expectations for a return to in-person work. But after Labor Day, when the holiday weekend is over and the kids are back in school, for many businesses the "next normal"--whatever that may look like, and however it may continue to evolve--will begin.

Given these extraordinary circumstances, I have a proposal. Each year, Labor Day celebrates the contributions of workers. This year, I suggest we use Labor Day as an opportunity to consider our own labor, our own companies, and our own work lives.

Many of us spend a big chunk of our lives engaged with work. Whether you're an entrepreneur, an executive, or self-employed, navigating shifting remote and hybrid models and the press of deadlines and to-do lists make it hard to step back to take a wider view.

We all need some kind of reminder to reflect.

I propose that we use Labor Day as this reminder. It's a chance to ask big, uncomfortable questions: "Should I give employees the flexibility to work remotely in new cities?" "Should I start a new business?" "Should I take the leap into entrepreneurship?" "Do I need more training?"

And the biggest question of all: "What do I want from life, anyway?"

It's also a chance to consider how small changes might boost happiness, morale, and productivity on teams, like offering stipends to perk up home office spaces, enhanced benefits around childcare and fitness, or even flower or meal kit deliveries to show appreciation. Sometimes, small changes give a surprisingly big boost in productivity, focus, and energy. And this year, Labor Day holds more weight than it has in recent memory: A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reshape our lives, starting with work.

The massive disruption of the pandemic shutdown in 2020 gave many people a chance to ask big questions. While change brought tremendous hardship and suffering, it also opened up new possibilities. For some, enhanced unemployment benefits meant the opportunity to pursue self-employment. Others got a taste of a life with more flexibility, without the hassle of a daily commute or grueling work travel, and in the comfort of sweatpants. This kind of forced re-consideration probably comes just once in a lifetime. It's up to employers to meet this moment--to retain, and attract, top talent.

I've spent years researching practical ways we can make our lives happier, healthier, more productive, and more creative. And I use myself as a guinea pig, testing every idea on myself. In the course of everyday life, it's hard to find the time or energy to ask ourselves big questions. So, as part of my investigations into happiness, I've become a champion of using major holidays as a catalyst for re-evaluation.

We can use January 1 to identify changes in the upcoming year, Valentine's Day to celebrate our sweethearts, the Fourth of July to ask ourselves how we could better live up to our country's highest ideals. While we could reflect on these aims at any time during the year, I find that what can be done at any time is often done at no time.

This year, Labor Day can remind us to pause--to review what we've learned from this pandemic period, and to reflect on what we want from our work lives going forward. For business owners and entrepreneurs, Labor Day can be a time to refine our career goals, to make sure we get the energy and satisfaction that comes from working toward the life we really want.

Research shows--and I've certainly found this to be true in my own life--that periodically taking time to reflect, set goals, identify problems, and weigh solutions helps us to achieve our aims. Sure, it's a good idea. But who can remember to do it? Labor Day can be that reminder.
Kristen Stewart is set to play Princess Diana in a new film.

According to Deadline, the actor will portray Diana in Spencer, a forthcoming movie by Pablo Larrain (the filmmaker behind Neruda and Jackie).

The film will reportedly centre on a decisive weekend in Dianas life, during which she questions her marriage to Prince Charles and decides to step away from life at the palace.

Production is scheduled to begin in 2021, according to Deadline.

Kristen is one of the great actors around today, Larrain told the website of Stewart.

To do this well, you need something very important in film, which is mystery. Kristen can be many things, and she can be very mysterious and very fragile an ultimately very strong as well, which is what we need.

The combination of those elements made me think of her. The way she responded to the script and how she is approaching the character, its very beautiful to see.

I think shes going to do something stunning and intriguing at the same time. She is this force of nature.

Stewart rose to international fame when she starred in the Twilight saga beginning in 2008.

Her recent films include Seberg, Charlie's Angels, and Underwater.
Fans have been piling praise on the first image of Kristen Stewart as Princess Diana in the forthcoming biopic Spencer, calling the resemblance between the pair uncanny.

The American actor is seen in the image gazing pensively, head tilted, from behind a small black veil attached to her hat. Her hair is cut in a blonde bob to match the late Princess of Waless hairstyle.

Reacting to the picture on Twitter, one fan wrote: Kristen Stewart as Princess Diana is breathtaking and for a moment I actually thought it was Diana. The resemblance here is uncanny.

Another added: That really took me a second, to see that was Kristen Stewart in the photo and not Diana.

Oh my god Kristen Stewart as Diana is too good, said a third.

Principal photography has begun on Spencer. The film, directed by Pablo Larrain (whose credits include Jackie and Neruda), focuses on a decisive weekend in the life of Diana.

During that weekend, Diana spends the Christmas holiday with the royal family at the Sandringham estate in Norfolk, and decides to leave her marriage to Prince Charles, according to a synopsis released by production company Neon.

Along with Stewart, the cast includes Timothy Spall, Sally Hawkins, and Sean Harris.

Stewart described Spencer in a statement as a dive inside an emotional imagining of who Diana was at a pivotal turning point in her life.

It is a physical assertion of the sum of her parts, which starts with her given name, Spencer, she added.

It is a harrowing effort for her to return to herself, as Diana strives to hold onto what the name Spencer means to her.

The film is currently scheduled for release in autumn 2021.
The first image of Kristen Stewart as Princess Diana in the upcoming biopic Spencer has been unveiled.

The American actor is seen in the image gazing pensively, head tilted, from behind the small black veil attached to her hat. Her hair is cut in a blonde bob reminiscent of the late Princess of Waless hairstyle.

Principal photography has begin on Spencer. The film, directed by Pablo Larrain (whose credits include Jackie and Neruda), focuses on a decisive weekend in the life of Diana.

Kristen Stewart as Princess Diana in the upcoming biopic Spencer (NEON)

During that weekend, Diana spends the Christmas holiday with the royal family at the Sandringham estate in Norfolk, and decides to leave her marriage to Prince Charles, according to a synopsis released by production company Neon.

Filming will take place in the UK and in Germany. The film is currently scheduled for release in autumn 2021.

Along with Stewart, the cast includes Timothy Spall, Sally Hawkins, and Sean Harris.

Stewart described Spencer in a statement as a dive inside an emotional imagining of who Diana was at a pivotal turning point in her life.

It is a physical assertion of the sum of her parts, which starts with her given name; Spencer, Stewart added of the film.

It is a harrowing effort for her to return to herself, as Diana strives to hold onto what the name Spencer means to her.
The house used as a filming location for Buffalo Bills house in The Silence of the Lambs is now available to rent.

Located in Fayette County, Pennsylvania, the house is a four-bedroom with enough room for a maximum of eight guests.

It has been updated with nods to the 1991 film (itself adapted from Thomas Harriss 1988 novel of the same name), Rolling Stone reported.

Bufallo Bill, portrayed in the Jonathan Demme film by Ted Levine, is a serial killer wanted by the FBI.

Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster), a young trainee at the bureau, seeks the help of Dr Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) himself an imprisoned serial killer, over the course of the investigation.

Rentals start at $695 per night for a group of up to four people. Prices vary based on the total number of guests and the date of the stay.

The property was reported by People to have sold for $290,000 (209,500) in February this year.

Current owner Chris Rowan explains on the propertys website that he decided to purchase it after finding out it was up for sale in October 2020.

I was immediately intrigued, Rowan writes. ...The gears started turning  and turning .. and turning. It became an obsession in less than 24 hours. Its literally all I was thinking about.
Reviewing ABBAs comeback singles in the Daily Telegraph last night, a fellow critic said the opening bars of Dont Shut Me Down cruelly exposed the wobbly vocals of 71-year-old Agnetha Faltskog. Although he has written often about how much he hates the bands formulaic Euro drivel, hes a smart reader of the scene. So Im surprised he didnt realise that this was precisely the stuff that would move fans the most; that where he heard cruelty and wobbles, we would hear bravery in the face of frailty, loaded with intense emotion.

This has been ABBAs USP all along. Theyve been the worlds favourite plucky underdogs, dancing through the tears and shimmering through their shyness. They should never have broken out of Sweden, but they did. Using their performance of Waterloo at the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest like a wrecking ball, theyve been the goofy, glorious gift that has  against the odds  kept on giving.

Born in 1975, Im one of many fans to have discovered the band after they broke up in 1982. It was their divorce ballads that I played most as a child. God, I loved their sad songs! Aged around eight, I would sit alone in my bedroom, in my Wonder Woman leotard, and allow my spirit to plunge and soar with the agony and ecstasy of The Winner Takes it All (1980) and The Day Before You Came (1981).

As the desperate synth flutes fluttered around Faltskogs vocal, Bjorn Ulvaeus lyrics seemed to dangle a key to adulthood that fascinated and frightened me: I must have lit my seventh cigarette at half past two/ And at the time, I never even noticed I was blue/ I must have kept on dragging/ Through the business of the day/ Without really knowing anything/ I hid a part of me away Its funny, but I had no sense of living without aim/ The day before you came.

When my own parents divorced a couple of years later, and when a school teacher gave me a peculiar little lecture on why my family situation didnt sit comfortably with his religious principles, I turned up the ABBA in my head and tuned him out.  I apologise/ If it makes you feel bad/ Seeing me so tense/ No self-confidence

ABBA fell from mainstream playlists in my late teens. But the release of compilation album ABBA Gold in 1992 was gamechanging. Initially it was bought by my parents generation. But kids my age soon began pinching their CDs and taking them to university with us. Although not prominently displayed on our shelves, Gold gradually became the reboot button for every flagging party. Youd have a few friends whod throw themselves into the songs with abandon. Your cooler mates allowed themselves off the sofa for an ironic bop to SOS.

The trend for guilty pleasures was just beginning and Id suggest the release of ABBA Gold was at the heart of it. Todays youth  roaming freely between musical genres online  might not realise how tribal music was back in the 1990s. But loads of my straight, male friends from that time really didnt feel allowed to let girly, synthetic pop into their hearts. They wore plaid shirts, carried battered guitars and quoted Dylan lyrics  even though the poor mans wobbly vocals were so cruelly exposed on so many of his records.

But in the gay clubs of the era, ABBA songs were on from the minute the doors opened. It was there I found my love of the dance floor, twirling under the lights and miming every line to Gimme Gimme Gimme! (A Man After Midnight) and Dancing Queen. The songs  and all those deliriously daft dance routines  came out of the closet along with my friends. Private passions were finally celebrated under bright lights; pain was openly acknowledged and transcended. Wed known these songs since we were kids and the keys theyd dangled before so many of us were now unlocking doors. Without really knowing anything/ I hid a part of me away Agnetha and Frida sounded like they understood. And the way they sang together projected strength and solidarity. You want to wear silver platform boots and a crocheted hat? they seemed to say. Then you go, girl!

No surprise, then, the two films that made a feature of ABBA music in 1994 were both about the power of friendship in the face of cultural adversity. The best scenes of Muriels Wedding and Priscilla Queen of the Desert use camp, karaoke performances of Waterloo and Mamma Mia to show the characters bonding and telling the world that theyre not afraid to be themselves. Friendship is also the theme of the pioneering hit musical Mamma Mia!. You go to see it with your mates. You sing along with them. You throw your arms around them. You know the songs are goofy and a bit clunky  like you all are inside  but the piano glissandos, soaring synths and easy-stomp beats guide you through. You can miss every note  like Pierce Brosnan  or display the minimal dancing skills of Cher in the sequel and still style it out. By this time, all the boys who once wore plaid shirts had been to enough office karaoke parties to realise that singing ABBA duets brought out more workplace solidarity than picking up a guitar and plucking Neil Young B sides. If ABBA were a cruise ship band then it was all hands on deck.

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This shift had been evident as early as 1996, when John Lydon got promoters to play Dancing Queen before Sex Pistols came on stage for their 20th-anniversary gig. Lydons plan had been to remind their audience how terrible pop music had become pre-punk. The plan backfired when the crowd broke into a spontaneous, arm-waving boogie.

When I had coffee with Bjorn Ulvaeus in 2019, he told me a bit about the ABBA Voyage project. He told me about how wonderful it felt being back in the studio with old friends like old times. He and Benny Andersson have been close ever since their first meeting in 1966 when we went out into a park and sat under some big oak trees singing Beatles songs together until the sun came up. So it was a kind of romance. But theyve, understandably, been more distant from their ex-wives. Although things are amicable, Agnetha has spoken in interviews about not knowing about Ulvaeuss rumoured health problems. Last night, Ulvaeus admitted to worrying, five minutes before Agnetha and Frida arrived in their studio, about whether the women could still sing.

That tension between long-term affection and detachment adds a powerful frisson to the two new tracks. As the group sang, at a rare get-together in 2016: Gloomy moods and inspiration/ Were a funny combination. But its wonderful to have them back. We dont need them to match the energy and ambition of their glory days. Because these mature tracks are a glorious victory lap. We dont mind if they walk it. We dont mind if Agnetha and Frida dont want to do talk shows to promote it. As Ulvaeus told me back in 2019, I just want to make people laugh and cry and dance and sing. He still has faith in us.
A damning new report has highlighted the ongoing prevalence of sexual harassment and abuse in the music industry, as the UK begins to see the return of live music.

The Musicians Union released its findings today (3 September) and called on the government to help spark industry-wide change to protect musicians and other industry members.

The report, which includes case studies and testimony from ex-employees and freelancers of assault, ill-treatment and sexual harassment, follows months of vocal campaigning by musicians such as Rebecca Ferguson and Lily Allen.

The findings of an MU survey released in October 2019 had previously revealed that almost half (48 per cent) of musicians have experienced sexual harassment at work, while almost two thirds (61 per cent) felt at risk due to their employment as freelancers. Ninety per cent of the MUs members work in a freelance capacity.

One anonymous case study described experiencing constant sexual harassment, both inside and outside of work.

I was regularly groped and touched inappropriately, she said. Outside the workplace, my manager would often send me lewd, explicit photos or videos of himself. I never felt safe.

She added: Like many of the other survivors I know, Im still traumatised by my experiences. When you choose to work in the music industry its often because you have a real love of the arts. You want to be surrounded by passionate, creative people  not entering a workspace where you worry you may be assaulted by your employer.

Its unacceptable that so many artists, musicians, employees, and freelancers have suffered abuse at work and that many have left the industry as a result, said Naomi Pohl, deputy general secretary of the MU.

With more women stepping forward to share their experiences, its vital the industry adopts a zero-tolerance approach to ensure everyone in the creative arts is protected as they return to work.

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Lily Allen pictured in January 2020 (Getty Images)

Lily Allen alleged that she was sexually assaulted in 2016 by a music industry executive in her 2018 autobiography, My Thoughts Exactly.

Speaking on The Next Episode podcast in 2019, she said she had told a chief executive at her former record label, Warner Music, about the assault but believed the man responsible was still working for the company.

She said she believed her career had been f***ed with as a result of her claim.

In a response at the time, Warner Music said: We take accusations of sexual misconduct extremely seriously and investigate claims that are raised with us. Were very focused on enforcing our Code of Conduct and providing a safe and professional environment at all times.

Former X Factor contestant Rebecca Ferguson called for an overhaul of the music industry back in April, after claiming to know of industry bosses grooming teenage boys who were confused about their sexuality, as well as other instances of sexual assault.

What we are talking about here is injustice. An imbalance of power and people using their power and their position to abuse people with less power. Its not good enough! We need to be able to call these things out for what they are with no fear, or it will never change.

We have future generations to think about; there is a huge responsibility on all of us working in the creative arts to create a better and safer environment for the youth, she said in a statement accompanying the MU report.

We have normalised abuse for too long and it needs to stop! I support the musicians union and I hope that 2022 is the year that adequate legislation is introduced to protect people working within the creative industries.

Ferguson claimed to have been warned against providing a comment for the report as she had been booked by the people involved in this case in the past.

To that I say, let me be compromised, she said. I will always speak out against abuse and stand up for people who are suffering injustice and the rest of the industry needs to grow a backbone and do the same, stand up and speak out against abuse! Because if we all stand together, it will stop!
Lorraine Kelly has branded the Lifetime film about Prince Harry and Meghan Markles departure from royal life hideous.

Released in the US on 6 September, Harry & Meghan: Escaping The Palace dramatises the events that led to the Duke and Duchess of Sussex stepping down from their royal duties and their subsequent tell-all interview with Oprah Winfrey.

Hosting Lorraine on Thursday (2 September), Kelly and correspondent Ross King discussed the trailer, which was first released in July.

Unable to hide her disdain for the project, Kelly said while biting her lip: Oh god love them, that looks hideous.

Laughing with King, she continued: It really does. As if their lifes not insane enough, theyve got that! What a blinking shame.

Escaping the Palace is the networks third film inspired by Meghan Markle and Prince Harry.

The first, Harry & Meghan: A Royal Romance, was released in 2018 and was a dramatisation of the couples early romance.

The second, Harry & Meghan: Becoming Royal, came out in 2019 and was inspired by the pairs first few months as a married couple.

Escaping the Palace stars Jordan Dean and Sydney Morton as the royal couple.
 Close UK will not recognise Taliban, Dominic Raab says

Even the Taliban was surprised by the speed at which they took over Afghanistan last month, foreign secretary Dominic Raab claimed while speaking at a press conference in Pakistan.

I think there was a common widespread surprise at the speed with which the consolidation of power happened, he told reporters in Islamabad, adding I suspect the Taliban and ordinary Afghans were taken by surprise.

Mr Raab has maintained that the the pace of the Talibans takeover of Kabul was unpredictable, despite being warned in July that the extremist group could return to power as a result of foreign troops vacating the country.

Meanwhile, experts have warned that millions of pounds worth of British arms exported to Afghanistan could end up in the hands of the Taliban and terrorist groups in the region.

Katie Fallon, a coordinator for the Campaign Against the Arms Trade (CAAT), called on the government to urgently investigate which end users now have control over these military goods, which amount to 151m worth of weapons, ammunition and other equipment since 2008.

Labour has similarly pointed to the risk that of British weapons falling into the hands of the Taliban or the Afghan affiliate of Islamic State, Isis-K. There is a clear risk of high-tech equipment falling into the hands of the Taliban, or worse, Isis-K and other terror groups, shadow defence secretary John Healey said.

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Dozens of Afghan women stood face to face with Taliban fighters in a rare protest on Thursday to demand their right to work and seek education as the Islamist group is set to announce a new government.

The women, clad in burqa and headscarf, took to rally on streets of western city of Herat holding banners and posters while chanting dont be afraid, we are together.

No government is stable without the support of women, a poster read as they attempted to march toward the office of the governor of Herat while Taliban fighters stood guard.

The women demanded more inclusivity, fearing similar restrictions to those of the previous Taliban regime from 1996 to 2001. Back then, the Taliban forced women to wear burqas, shut down schools, prevented them from working and enforced strict punishment like whipping or stoning if women went out in public with a man.

The Taliban this time had given assurances that they will allow women to work and pursue education as per Sharia law. But one of its senior leaders told the BBC in an interview that women will have no cabinet-level positions in the new government.

The protest came as the Taliban is poised to announce a new government in Afghanistan on Friday after seizing power from previous government led by Ashraf Ghani.

An Afghan woman protester (3L) speaks with a member (R) of the Taliban during a protest in Herat (AFP via Getty Images)

The women at the demonstration reportedly said that the group had not changed and they are already seeing signs of its potential repressive rule.

Mariam Ebram, who took part in the protest on Thursday, said she and her colleagues were asked to return when they reached their office and when they went to meet the Taliban officials in the city they received no answers, according to Al Jazeera.

After weeks of trying to engage with the Taliban at all levels, the women decided to make their voices heard publicly, Ebram said.

We tried talking to them, but we saw that other than the Taliban of 20 years ago, there was no one there. There was no change.

Taliban has been sending mixed messages since its first news conference on womens rights.

Beheshta Arghan, a reporter who interviewed a Taliban spokesperson after they seized power this month, fled Afghanistan because she feared the Taliban like other citizens of the country.

A Taliban representative also asked women to stay at home and not leave for offices as their fighters are becoming more acclimatised to their presence in public. But they again asked the female workers last week to join their post at the Ministry of public health.

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A former British soldier was arrested by the Taliban as he tried to evacuate 400 Afghans over a land border to a third country, The Telegraph has reported.

Ben Slater, a former soldier in the Royal Military Police and CEO of Nomad Concepts Group, an Afghanistan-based consultancy, has been trying to evacuate his 50 staff members and their families from the country since the Taliban seized control last month.

As he was unable to secure UK visas for his staff members ahead of the end of the UKs air evacuation mission in Kabul, Mr Slater launched an operation to take them out of the country over a land border instead.

The 37-year-old, who used to work as a bodyguard to British ambassadors abroad, hired a coach which brought him and 400 Afghans to a land border, where they waited for two days in a hotel near the checkpoint.

On Thursday morning, however, Mr Slater was arrested by the Taliban. He was subsequently thrown in prison and questioned about his staff, many of whom are single women, staying alone in hotel rooms, a practice that is at odds with the Talibans rules for women.

By the end of the day, Mr Slater had been released from prison, and told that he would be permitted to cross the border with one assistant. The rest of his staff and their families were forced to return to Kabul as they had not been granted UK visas, nor had their passage into a third country been successfully negotiated.

The former soldier said that he would do all that he could to secure visas for his group  either from the UK or another western country  pleading for the foreign office to act on their behalf.

The final blow to the op is that the UK are only granting myself and one of my executive assistants over the border today, and they havent even suggested they are going to issue the visas for some or the rest of my group, he told The Telegraph.

Its a complete disaster really. Its disgusting. Its beyond horrible.

The ongoing concern is for the welfare of those who travelled to the border with Mr Slater, particularly the women.

Already, the Taliban have urged women and girls to stay home, in what they say is a temporary policy intended to protect them from untrained fighters who could mistreat women. The group has also said that although women and girls will be permitted to work and attend same-sex schools, they will still require a male escort for longer trips.

These policies echo mandates from the last Taliban regime in the late 1990s, which forbade women from working and attending school, and prevented them from leaving the house without a male guardian.

Mr Slaters former colleague CJ Adams-Richardson told The Independent: were not quite sure what the implications of Slats actions are, and whats going to happen with regards to the women.

Ms Adams-Richardson, who served in the British Army, said that she was concerned about the repercussions of Mr Slaters actions, specifically his traveling with women, due to his status as a westerner and a man, but added, but thats Ben all over  hes a humanitarian.

The Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office was contacted but was not immediately available for comment.

The Independent has launched a petition urging the UK government to be more ambitious in its plans to take in Afghan refugees following the Taliban seizing power and withdrawal of western troops. Afghans are now facing a similar plight. You, our readers, have already shown your strength of feeling in letters and on social media. Heres a chance to have your voice heard by adding your signature. We thank you for your support. To sign the petition click here
Emal Ahmadi hasnt slept since Sunday.

Unable to walk or eat, he weeps uncontrollably. His toddler was killed after a US drone incinerated a car inside a residential compound in a working-class neighbourhood Khwaja Burgh, on the outskirts of Kabul.

Malika, meaning queen in Arabic, was his queen. Distraught, he asked: Can America give me back my Malika? in a phone call with The Independent.

For the Ahmadis, the Sunday afternoon was like any other. Cousins, friends and families of different age groups were mingling in the family courtyard, playing pranks and watching videos.

The eldest, Zemari, 40, had just returned from work after dropping off his colleagues. He was employed as an engineer at the US based nonprofit NEI foundation. His oldest son Zameer, 20, was keen to park his Toyota Corolla in the driveway, so he obliged. Some cousins lined up to cheer them at the buildings entrance.

It was 5pm Kabul time when the missile hit. It instantly killed Zemari and nine other family members. His three sons Zameer, 20, Faisal and Farzad, 10, died.

Zemaris siblings Emal and Ramal Ahmadi and their wives survived the attack - but their children, Armin,4, Benjamin, 3, Ayat, 2, and Malika, 3 were killed.

The Ahmadis (The Ahmadi Family)

After the incident, everything was a blur, surviving family members said, adding that they had no time to flee.

In video footage, seen by The Independent, neighbours are seen frantically running just metres away from the raging flames, with extinguishers and buckets filled with water trying to douse the cars flames.

Senior U.S. military officials said the drone strike hit an Islamic State target and weakened the extremists ability to further disrupt the final phase of the US withdrawal and evacuation of thousands of people from Afghanistan.

Army Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on Wednesday that at least one of those killed in the drone strike was an Islamic State "facilitator."

The Ahmadi family has been outraged by such remarks.

There were no rockets or suicide bombers, said Emal.

"If the car was filled with explosives like the Americans say, why didnt these cylinders explode," he asked.

He also pointed to a shoddily constructed brick wall near the gutted car. "How could the wall still be standing if this car had been full of explosives?"

The Ahmadis and links to the US.

Members of the Ahmadi family, from the historic wine-making Kapisa province in northeastern Afghanistan, worked for the US allied firms for more than a decade.

As seen by The Independent, references for visas and P2 referrals from their employers and supervisors, past and present, show that they were facing threats from the Taliban and were in danger.

Describing him as a humble and compassionate employee, NEI president and CEO Steven Kwon said he was shocked and devastated by the passing of his colleague.

Zemari Ahmadi in happier times (NEI)

He said that Mr Zemari was well respected by colleagues internationally and was a strong advocate of womens rights.

Mr Zemari had dropped off his colleagues and headed home to an evening meal with his family - a drive he routinely did for the past eight months.

After the Taliban took control of the capital, Kwon said Mr Zemaris fears for his familys security grew. In documents viewed by The Independent, Kwon had started processing Zemaris P2 papers for his family of six.

We are asking the international community to know that we are not terrorists - that is all Ramin Yousufi, whose two-year-old niece, Sumaya died in the drone attack

P2 is used for immediate evacuation, while Special Immigration Visa is slower and provides financial support for resettlement.

Mr Kwon said that in the sixteen years that he had known and worked with Mr Zemari, he had never demonstrated any anti-US feelings or shown any passion for politics.

Mr Emal (Mallikas father) worked with the U.S. based private military contractor DynCorp (2013- 2014).

He was in a nearby bazaar when the missile struck. Mallikas charred body was strewn among the mangled body parts and broken metal and was only discovered the following day. The bodies were transported to Wazir Akbar Khan governmental hospital.

Afghan residents and family members of the victims gather next to a damaged vehicle inside a house, day after a US drone airstrike in Kabul on August 30 (AFP via Getty Images)

Zemaris daughter was due to marry her fiance Ahmad Nasser, 30, who worked as a guard with the US Armed forces in Afghanistan but was more recently employed by the Afghan National Army. He died the day before his wedding.

A fortnight ago, the US forces wrote a recommendation letter asking the authorities to approve his Special Immigration Visa. The couple were due to travel to the US after their wedding.

The letter, signed by Timothy Williams, his supervisor, and viewed by The Independent, described Nassers services as superb. Despite the threats his dedicated service has not wavered, it read.

The grave danger that Nasser and his family faced was directly linked to his commitment to American and NATO forces, Williams wrote.

Jamshid Yousufi, was visiting his Ahmadi cousins with his two-year-old daughter Sumaya, who was also killed. She was a genius, said her uncle, Ramin Yousufi. adding, She loved bicycles.

Mr Ramin is determined to explore every possible avenue to make his voice heard. They should know we are not IS-K members, he said.

The United States has carried out at least two drone strikes against the group since the IS-K attack on Kabul airport. Biden said his administration will continue to retaliate with its over the horizon counter-terrorism capability.

Are the US drone strikes lawful ?

Over the horizon is simply a new term coined for an old programme, Jennifer Gibson Reprieves project lead for extrajudicial killings said.

It is the same US drone programme that has been run in secret and without accountability in multiple countries for over a decade now.

This incident is emblematic of what has been happening in Afghanistan, Yemen, Pakistan and Somalia, for the last decade, said Ms Gibson.

Drones may be precise, but the intelligence rarely is Jennifer Gibson, Reprieves project lead for extrajudicial killing

The Bush White House drafted the Authorisation for the Use of Military Force Act (AUMF) in the week after the 9/11 attacks. Human rights groups have argued the programme is deeply flawed and has wiped out entire families.

During Obamas presidency, the U.S. drone war massively expanded. Airstrikes killed more than 3,340 civilians in Afghanistan between 2009 and the first nine months of 2020, reported by the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA). Figures are scant after 2020 because officials feared such reports would interfere with the Afghan peace talks.

Drones may be precise, but the intelligence rarely is, said Ms Gibson. More than the legality, she said the targeted killings of ten innocent people raises questions about the proportionality of the strike. The U.S. seems to have had no idea the children and family were in the vicinity. It begs the question of just how good the intelligence they acted upon was. Analysts warned that the risk of civilian casualties during drone strikes could grow now that the US no longer has on-the-ground intelligence.

Ms Gibson said history has shown us that US investigations arent robust.

Its a bit like marking your own homework. They dont speak to eyewitnesses, and they dont engage with evidence collected from NGOs, journalists and other independent sources. In the rare cases where they do respond to claims of civilian casualties, they simply reiterate that they killed militants without giving any explanation to the families left behind.

Emal Ahmadi - Malika's father (The Ahmadi family)

An exasperated and weary, Mr Ramin said, The US committed a crime. We dont have any hope for justice. They did several attacks and killed people but there has been no response until now. We are asking the international community to know that we are not terrorists - that is all, he added. After the funeral on Monday, which his colleagues attended, Kwon said.

The world should know the truth. Zemari was buried in the middle of his children, but honour should be restored to his wife and daughter who survived. 

Muslim Shirzad contributed to this report

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Thousands of people gathered in Bangkok to call for the resignation of prime minister Prayuth Chan-ocha ahead of a no-confidence vote.

Protests against the leader have gathered steam since late June as university students who sought his removal last year returned with broader support from other political groups and people angered by a worsening coronavirus situation.

Speaking in parliament on the last day of a house censure debate, in which politicians challenged Mr Prayuth and five ministers over their handling of the crisis, the premier said he would neither resign nor call a snap election.

Even though Thailand is not the best at handling Covid-19, it isnt the worst, he told parliament on Friday.

He added: We have handle it to the best our ability by all those concerned.

A big rally is planned for Saturday when parliament is due to hold the no-confidence vote over his governments handling of the pandemic.

The vote is expected to go the prime ministers way because of his coalitions clear majority in the house.

Former army chief and 2014 coup leader, Mr Prayuth and his ministers have rejected the oppositions allegations of corruption, economic mismanagement and a bungled coronavirus response.

Thailands Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha (Sakchai Lalit/AP)

The overwhelming majority of Thailands 1.24 million cases and 12,374 deaths came after April, following a year of successful containment.

It has since been hit by the Alpha and Delta variants and has struggled to get hold of enough vaccines.

Activists vowed to defy a coronavirus ban on big gatherings and stage street protests daily until Mr Prayuth leaves office.

People have died from his failure to deal with Covid-19, from his complacence, arrogance and from not listen to peoples voices, making it difficult for people to live, student activist Wanwalee Thammasattaya said.

Police revealed more than 600 people face protest-related charges for various violations in July and August.

Additional reporting by Reuters
The US and China have reached a sticking point less than two months before the consequential United Nations climate summit in Glasgow.

Beijing pushed back on calls from Washington to make more public and ambitious pledges to tackle its carbon emissions, saying that the US government cannot expect cooperation in this area while remaining strongly opposed to China on other issues like human rights.

China already has its own plans and road map for achieving its climate goals, Chinese leaders told US climate envoy John Kerry this week, according to a report in the South China Morning Post (SCMP).

The stalemate between the two superpowers  and the worlds largest polluters  comes in the final weeks before COP26, the UN conference to be held in the UK this November.

The climate talks are widely seen as crucial to hopes of keeping global heating within a safe limit of 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.

After the US exited the Paris Agreement  the international accord to keep global heating within safe limits  during the Trump administration, China took a more prominent role on climate issues on the world stage.

The superpower is a world leader in producing solar panels and wind turbines for renewable energy, and is outstripping the US in the electric vehicle market.

During a climate summit at the White House earlier this year on Earth Day, Chinas President Xi Jinping was the first global leader to speak after Mr Biden.

Mr Kerry negotiated the 2015 Paris Agreement as President Obamas secretary of state and has a long-standing relationship with his Chinese counterpart, Xie Zhenhua, who he met with this week in Tianjin.

In a joint statement on the climate crisis in April, the US and China committed to continued discussions in the run-up to COP26, and after the summit, to establish firm plans to reduce emissions this decade.

While both nations agree that the climate crisis must be tackled, China says the US cannot expect to work on the issue in isolation. For example, the US government has imposed sweeping sanctions on Hong Kong and Chinese officials over Beijings crackdown on the city with sweeping national security legislation.

The US side wants the climate change cooperation to be an oasis of China-U.S. relations, Foreign Minister Wang Yi told Mr Kerry, according to the Associated Press. However, if the oasis is all surrounded by deserts, then sooner or later, the oasis will be desertified.

Following the virtual meeting with the Chinese foreign minister, a US State Department spokesperson said Secretary Kerry had affirmed that the US remains committed to cooperating with the world to tackle the climate crisis, which must be addressed with the seriousness and urgency that it demands, and encouraged China to take additional steps to reduce emissions.

Mr Kerry also had video meetings with top foreign policy adviser Yang Jiechi and Senior Vice-Premier Han Zheng, one of seven members of the ruling Communist Partys all-powerful Politburo Standing Committee and head of a committee drawing up a plan to reach Chinas emission reduction targets.

Mr Kerry told Mr Han that there was no way for the world to solve the climate crisis without Chinas full engagement and commitment.

After the meetings, Mr Kerry said that while his mandate is focused on climate, he would convey Chinas concerns to President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

President Biden announced in April a new US target to achieve up to a 52 per cent reduction from 2005 levels of greenhouse gas pollution in 2030. He has promised to set the country on a path to net-zero emissions by no later than 2050.

The target is non-binding but nevertheless symbolically important, and gives the US a renewed position of credibility from which to press other nations to increase their goals.

China has pledged to be carbon neutral by 2060 and promised that coal use will start to decline after 2025  despite the country currently generating nearly two-thirds of its power from the fossil fuel.

The US produces around 15 per cent of global carbon dioxide emissions that are cooking the planet. China produces about 28 per cent.

The bilateral talks come as the US experiences severe impacts linked to the climate crisis including prolonged wildfires in the US West and catastrophic flooding and tornadoes from Hurricane Ida in the East.

Dozens of people have also been killed this summer in China when catastrophic flooding hit a number of major cities.

Wires contributed to this report. This article and headline have been updated
Greenpeace and German environmental NGO Deutsche Umwelthilfe (DUH) will take legal action against Volkswagen, BMW, Daimlers Mercedes-Benz, and gas and oil firm Wintershall Dea if they do not step up their policies to tackle climate change, they said on Friday.

The cases would be modelled on one brought against Royal Dutch Shell in the Netherlands last year arguing the companys lack of climate action constituted a failure in its duty of care to citizens, which led to a court ruling in May mandating the company to reduce its CO2 output by 45 per cent from 2019 levels by 2030.

Greenpeace and DUH demand that the automakers stop producing combustion engine cars by 2030 - earlier than the 2035 effective ban proposed by the EU in July - and that Wintershall Dea refrains from exploring any new oil and gas fields from 2026.

These deadlines are necessary to meet the goals of the Paris climate accords and German climate law, the NGOs argue.

They set a deadline of a few weeks for the companies to respond to their demands. Should they fail to do so, the NGOs will file lawsuits in German courts, they said.

Daimler and BMW said they were committed to the goals of the Paris climate accords and were already on the path to climate neutrality.

Wintershall DEA and Volkswagen were not immediately available for comment.
There is a certain fascination in watching events you have experienced and reported on become history, with everything neatly interpreted and the still open arguments set out on the printed page. The demise of the Soviet Union has to be a classic case. Over the past 30 years, dozens of explanations have been offered for the Soviet collapse, from the unsustainability of the planned economy, to the cost of trying to keep up with US arms spending, to the nationalist aspirations unleashed when censorship was relaxed, to the sheer inhumanity of Soviet communism.

If there is still debate about why the Soviet Union collapsed, however, there is almost no debate about when. The red flag with the hammer and sickle that had flown over the Kremlin was lowered for the last time on the evening of 25 December 1991, shortly after President Mikhail Gorbachev had announced his resignation on TV. In its place was hoisted the Russian tricolour, and that, for the history books, is when the USSR reached its end.

Yet it is not quite as simple as that. You could argue, for instance, that the seeds of the Soviet demise were sown as soon as the USSR was formed by the Bolshevik government in 1922; that in its beginning was its end. Or you could say that it effectively ended with Khrushchevs denunciation of Stalin in the 1956 secret speech, which threw aside many of the principles that had governed the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. It was then, by the way, that Crimea was transferred to the jurisdiction of Ukraine.
As his new film Parallel Mothers took the Venice Film Festival this week by storm, Pedro Almodovar did not fight shy of telling the world his own country must confront the ghosts of the civil war.

Parallel Mothers touches on the story of Janis, a photographer played by Penelope Cruz, who is determined to find the remains of her great-grandfather, who was executed by forces loyal to the dictator General Francisco Franco for opposing the nationalist regime.

Spanish society has an enormous moral debt to the families of the disappeared, Almodovar told journalists.
A New Zealand cinema employees repeated expletive-riddled attempts to record a voicemail message alerting customers of its temporary closure have gone viral.

The unknown staff member of Movie Max Cinemas in the South Island city of Timaru made multiple attempts to record a temporary closure voicemail message for callers, but instead succeeded in recording a colourful message expressing his frustrations with the technology.

Callers to the cinema were initially greeted with the words: Hello and thank you for calling Movie Max Digital Cinemas Timaru. We are currently closed until - before the employee descends into a tirade of profanities - Ah, f*ck you.

After three attempts and numerous expletives, he finally gets it right  but the unsuspecting caller is confronted with his failed efforts and colourful language for almost an entire minute.

A clip of the recording, which was shared on Twitter to widespread delight with the heading, Movie Max in Timaru New Zealand is having A DAY, later provided an update claiming that local mayor Nigel Bowen had to call the cinema owner to let them know about the administrative error.

Thankfully, he took the incident in good humour, saying: At the moment we need a bit of lighthearted relief. Everyone is a bit cooped up with the current lockdown, so people are enjoying having a bit of a laugh.

One Twitter user described the employee as a legend, stating that he deserved a pay rise, while another said he couldnt forsee being in the region in the next 10 years but, if he was, he would definitely visit the cinema - and phone ahead to hear what the voicemail has to say about opening hours, too.

Another user on the social media platform even went as far as emailing the cinema, imploring the manager not to fire the employee for his error, saying, literally every single person screws up at work sometimes, adding that it had brought a lovely bit of very human humour to my day.

New Zealand is currently in a level three lockdown, with bars and restaurants closed for the foreseeable future.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said on Thursday: The important thing is we are starting to see some positive trends in the numbers  the rolling day average of cases is declining  we are seeing fewer cases that are infectious in the community.

Around 85 per cent of New Zealanders are reported to support the approach, according to local polling.
Molly Mae Hague has opened up about her new role as creative director of fast fashion firm Pretty Little Thing, but has remained silent on the issue of employee welfare in the supply chains of the multimillion-pound company.

The former Love Island contestant announced her new appointment last month, attracting criticism for her involvement in the fast fashion brand that was found to be paying garment workers in Leicester just 3.50 per hour following a 2020 investigation by The Sunday Times.

In an Instagram story posted on Thursday, the influencer answered a series of questions including one enquiring what her new role actually involves.

So basically I have creative input/lead within multiple areas of the brand eg marketing, buying, influencers, she began.

Its a 24/7 role sharing ideas, coming up with incredible new concepts, having input on shoots, events, you name it.

Molly-Mae Hague on Instagram (Instagram/mollymae)

While she didnt directly reference the numerous criticisms levelled at her regarding staff pay at suppliers of the firm, she added that she had been enlightened to things she aimed to address.

Seeing everyones reactions to the announcement of my role actually enlightened (sic) to a lot of things I wanted to get started with straight away within PLT, she said.

Ive read EVERYTHING. We have SO many amazing things coming.

And when pressed on The Sunday Times findings in an interview with Radio 1 Newsbeat on Friday, the 22-year-old chose not to comment.

Pretty Little Things CEO John Lyttle said the company has a clear strategy to make 20 per cent of its autumn range sustainable but did not expand on what this constituted.

Hague added: Im excited to be a creative director - Im not an influencer any more and people can see that, its become a lot more than that.

Boohoo, the parent firm for Pretty Little Thing, said it was grateful for The Sunday Times investigation exposing sweatshop conditions at some of their suppliers factories following publication of the report.

In a statement, it said:  We are grateful to The Sunday Times for highlighting conditions, which, if they are as described by the undercover reporter, are totally unacceptable and fall woefully short of any standards acceptable in any workplace.

Boohoo are keen and willing to work with local officials to raise standards because, we are absolutely committed to eradicating any instance of non-compliance and to ensuring that the actions of a few do not continue to undermine the excellent work of many of our suppliers in the area, who work tirelessly to provide good jobs and good working conditions.

An independent review of the claims found that although Boohoo did not intentionally profit from the poor working practices, the firms monitoring of some suppliers was inadequate.

Allison Levitt QC said the fast fashion chain knew about serious issues with the welfare of factory workers in Leicester in December 2019, but were slow to address this.

She also identified weak corporate governance in its monitoring of supply chains, leading to the establishment of the companys Agenda for Change programme, which is aimed at raising standards in its supply chains and improving worker welfare.

The Independent has approached Pretty Little Thing for comment.
Kristen Stewart has said that Princess Diana was desperate for connection, describing her as being so generous with her energy.

The Charlies Angels star was speaking at a Venice Film Festival press conference on Friday ahead of the much anticipated world premiere of Pablo Larrains Spencer, in which she portrays the former royal.

There are some people that are endowed with an undeniable penetrating energy, the actor said.

I think the idea of somebody being so desperate for connection and somebody whos able to make other people feel so good, feeling so bad on the inside, and being so generous with her energy.

I look at her, the pictures and fleeting video clips, and I feel the ground shakes and you dont know whats going to happen,

She added: I just think that we havent had very many of those people throughout history. She really sticks out as a sparkly house on fire.

In response to a question about Dianas legendary style, The Happiest Season actor replied that it didnt really matter what she was wearing. She was someone who used clothes as armour but was so constantly available and visible.

She couldnt hide, she wore her heart on her sleeve and that, to me, is the coolest thing she did.

The film, which portrays Diana over a weekend during Christmas at Sandringham where she chooses to end her marriage to Charles is expected to cause controversy for its depiction of a swearing, masturbating princess.

Stewart told reporters that theres nothing salacious about our intention, however.

She said: The really sad thing about her is that as normal and casual and disarming in her air [as she was], immediately she also felt so isolated and lonely.

She made everyone else feel accompanied and bolstered by this light and all she wanted was to have it back.

Spencer also stars The Shape of Water actor Sally Hawkins, veteran British actor Timothy Spall, and Poldark villain Jack Farthing.

On her role as the Peoples Princess, Stewart said: Everyone feels like they know her. Thats whats beautiful about her, that shes accessible. You feel like youre friends with her, like she was your mother.

But ironically she was the most unknowable person In the imagining of these three days we wanted that to really come to a head.

Spencer is due for UK release on 5 November.
Monacos Prince Albert has said that his wife, Princess Charlene, is ready to come home after spending more than three months in South Africa.

The princess and mother of two went to South Africa in May to raise awareness of rhino poaching.

In an interview with South Africas 702 radio station in July, the princess explained that her trip was initially meant to be 12 days long but was extended because of health complications.

Unfortunately, I had a problem equalising my ears and I found out through the doctors that I had a sinus infection, and quite a serious one. So, its taking time to adjust with this problem that I am having.

I cannot force healing so I will be grounded in South Africa until the end of October. I cannot fly above three thousand metres otherwise I will have a problem with my ears. I feel well, I feel good. Obviously, its a waiting game for me, she said at the time.

In a new interview with People magazine, Prince Albert said his wifes return to Monaco rests on doctors permission, but that she is eager to come home.

Shes ready. Shes jokingly said that shes ready to stow away on a ship to come back to Europe, he said.

I know shes said possibly late October, but that was before this most recent round of appointments. Im pretty sure we can cut that time frame a little short.

His comments come after reports that Charlene was rushed to hospital by ambulance on Wednesday, 1 September after collapsing due to complications from the infection she contracted in May.

The Princess Charlene of Monaco Foundation told Tatler: Her medical team is currently evaluating her but have confirmed the princess is stable.

On 13 August, Charlene underwent a four-hour operation to treat her condition, according to a statement from the Monegasque royal palace, which was seen by Tatler.

Prince Albert and their children will join her during her recovery period, the palace added.

Albert and the couples twin children, Princess Gabriella and Jacques Honore Rainier, 6, visited Charlene in South Africa last week.

Albert told People that Charlene is in good spirits since her latest surgery and was delighted to spend time with their children.
An abrupt slowdown in hiring shows that the Delta variant of Covid-19 is having a significant impact on the US economy, in addition to its impact on the health of the nation.

Just 235,000 jobs were added in August according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, coinciding with the startling increase in coronavirus cases and deaths across much of the South and Midwest.

Economists had been hoping for an increase of three times that number, with 725,000 new hires forecast.

The unemployment rate nevertheless fell from 5.4 per cent in July to 5.2 per cent. One year ago unemployment stood at 8.4 per cent.

Speaking at the White House on Friday morning, President Joe Biden argued that despite the impact of the Delta variant on the economy, what were seeing is an economic recovery that is durable and strong.

While I know some wanted to see a larger number today, and so did I, what weve seen this year is continued growth, month after month, he adds.

Theres no question the Delta variant is why the jobs report isnt stronger, says the president laying out the progress made to date in fighting both the virus and the economic damage it has caused. He then urged Congress to continue to take steps to pass the next steps of his economic and infrastructure agenda.

Since April 2020, when unemployment peaked in the initial economic shutdown sparked by the arrival of the pandemic on American shores in the preceding month, 17 million jobs have been gained back.

To reach the pre-pandemic number of jobs, a further 5.3 million new hires would have to take place to reach the 152.5 million jobs recorded in February 2020.

This looked like a near-term possibility, with 962,000 jobs added in June and another 1.05 million in July, hence the disappointment of the August numbers, even as the July figures were revised upwards.

Average monthly employment gains this year of 586,000 jobs show how much of a miss this was, with employment in retail declining over the month by 29,000 jobs.

Further to that was a loss of 42,000 jobs in food services and drinking places indicating either a slowdown in trade as concerns about the coronavirus return or as a result of the wave of resignations as employees seek better opportunities and better pay. Many businesses are struggling to find staff to fill vacant roles where they exist.

While leisure and hospitality has been a big driver of job growth in recent months as Americans begin to travel and go out again, in August new hiring was flat, and the overall number employed in the sector remains 10 per cent down on pre-pandemic levels.

Daniel Zhao, chief economist for employment review site Glassdoor, notes that the number of Americans working remotely actually increased in August as companies pull back from reopening plans in the response to the Delta variant.

A resurgence in remote work is likely to delay the economic recovery even more for central business districts reliant on corporate office workers, he notes.

Mike Bell, global market strategist at JP Morgan Asset Management, writes that the sensitivity of the leisure and hospitality sector to Covid, along with the recent drop in consumer confidence, adds to the sense that the economy is not yet fully free from the clutch of Covid.

Though Mr Bell notes that this near term hit from the latest Covid wave will, most likely, only slightly delay the recovery.

There were significant gains in professional and business services (74,000), transportation and warehousing (53,000), manufacturing (37,000), education and health services (35,000), information (17,000), and financial activities (16,000).

In addition to the drop in retail employment, 8,000 jobs were lost in government, 1,300 in utilities, and 3,000 in construction.

After the release of the jobs report the New York stock market opened slightly lower as Wall Street waits for clues as to how the Federal Reserve might respond to the latest economic data.
A British mum who sexually abused her children and even urinated in their drinks was caught by the FBI, a court heard.

The woman in her 20s boasted of urinating in the childrens juice cups and exchanged sick fantasies with paedophiles on the internet.

Oxford Crown Court heard the mum-of-two who cannot be named for legal reasons was snared in an FBI sting last summer, with the file passed to the UK authorities.

She was also found to have exchanged messages with a paedophile since jailed for more than a decade after an investigation by the Metropolitan Police.

Jailing her for six years on Thursday, Judge Nigel Daly said: I find this behaviour quite impossible to comprehend.

As you will appreciate, anything that appears on the internet will in all probability remain there forever and you have subjected your own infant children to this very real possibility.

Prosecutor Lisa Goddard told the court that accounts belonging to the Oxfordshire woman were identified in a sting operation by the FBIs child exploitation team last May and June.

The woman said she was living with her two children and urinating in cups and making them drink it.

An undercover FBI officer, posing as a paedophile, exchanged messages with the mum that betrayed the womans disturbing sexual interest in her own and other children.

She claimed it would be hot to see a man be sexually aroused by the children and sent a naked image of herself with a babys foot touching her bottom.

Ms Goddard read another message from the defendant to the undercover officer in which she said she needed to marry a paedophile.

The woman was also found to be swapping messages with a paedophile later caught in a Met Police probe. She appeared to be arranging for her children to be abused by the man, although she told him: I dont really want them in pain or anything.

Police arrested her last summer and seized two phones on which were found 377 indecent images and videos of children in the most serious category including films showing the rape of babies. She had 313 images in category B and 191 in category C.

Also found on a phone was an app designed to hide image and video files.

The woman, who admitted sexual assault on a child under 13, sexual activity with a child, possession of an extreme pornographic image and making and distributing indecent images of children. She had no previous convictions.

Mitigating, James Reilly said his client was remorseful. She had had a troubled childhood, during which she was raped by an uncle, and had also been abused by a partner.

She wants to get as much help as she can and try to move on, he said. She wanted to teach English to adults in the future.

Mr Reilly added his client hopes when they are older her children will seek her out. He said: That is the one thing that keeps her going. She no longer had custody of the children.

Judge Daly imposed a sexual harm prevention order, which will run indefinitely. The woman will remain on the sex offender register for life.

SWNS
A man has been found guilty of harassment after sending hundreds of abusive and threatening emails to Sir Keir Starmer and Emily Thornberry.

David Knott, 46, from Islington, had denied two counts of harassment against staff members of the Labour leader and his local MP. He is due to be sentenced on 1 October at Westminster Magistrates Court.

Representing himself in court, Knott was accused sending an excessive number of abusive emails to Mr Starmer and Ms Thornberry between December 2019 and February this year.

The court heard Knott, who was convicted at Westminster Magistrates Court on Thursday, often used profanities in his communication with the staff and threatened to protest outside their constituency offices multiple times.

District Judge Alexander Jacobs said the emails, which were related to an ongoing casework matter about housing, went over a line that must never be crossed.

He told Knott: I believe you are well aware your language was abusive and should not have been used.

Any reasonable person would have known the number of emails and the language used would have caused harassment.

Jennifer Gatland, prosecuting, told the court that Knott had accused staff members of being incompetent to the point of illegality and that many of them were rambling and incoherent.

The court heard that a cease and desist letter was sent to Knott - but the emails continued.

A witness statement by a member of Sir Keirs staff said the persistent threat of messages made them feel extremely anxious.

I found the language and tone of the emails distressing and they made me very concerned, the statement read.

A member of Ms Thornberrys staff added in a witness statement: I was very offended and distressed with the abusive language sent many times during a day.

Knott told the court he was trying to complain about noise from ongoing London Underground work by his apartment which left him and his late quadriplegic partner sleepless for six months.

He said: I spent four years trying to get a response from these people - my MPs treatment of me is absolutely disgusting.

Im working class and I used the words as an expression of the torture I have suffered.
The government has refused an asylum amnesty for more than 3,000 Afghans who have already reached the UK and are awaiting decisions on their claims.

Critics have accused ministers of leaving them in a nightmarish limbo, while pledging to support people fleeing the country through a separate resettlement scheme.

The Home Office told The Independent it had frozen the consideration of applications from Afghan asylum seekers who are already in the UK, having deleted key guidance used by decision-makers.

Nick Thomas-Symonds, Labour's shadow home secretary, said: It is staggering that the Home Office have still not updated their guidance over two weeks after they withdrew it leaving thousands of Afghans stuck in our asylum system in limbo.

The government need to  urgently  outline why there has been that delay and what they are going to do to rectify it  there cannot be continuing uncertainty for those Afghans stuck in the asylum system.

Sign our petition urging the government to take in more Afghan refugees by clicking here

Until 16 August, the day after the Taliban seized control of Kabul, official security guidance used by officials said there was no general risk of harm in Afghanistan and the proportion of the population affected by indiscriminate violence is small.

It meant that asylum seekers had to prove that they were personally at risk through their individual circumstances, because the general security situation was not considered dangerous enough to grant them protection in Britain.

Several MPs have joined calls by humanitarian groups for an amnesty for those who are already in the UK, but the government confirmed its refusal on Friday.

While it is not considered that an amnesty is appropriate, the Home Office can provide reassurance that no one who is at risk of persecution or serious harm in Afghanistan will be expected to return there, a Home Office spokesperson said.

Given the complex situation in Afghanistan, enforced returns of those who have been refused asylum and who have exhausted all rights of appeal are currently paused while we consider the situation.

Official figures show that by the end of June, there were 3,064 Afghan asylum applications awaiting an initial decision and a further 149 under review. The vast majority had already been waiting for more than six months.

The Home Office has not yet replaced the country policy and information notes used to decide cases, which it said was no longer relevant to the current situation.

 Priti Patel urges Afghans not to flee to UK and instead wait for safe routes

It is drawing up new guidance that will incorporate revised assessments on security and the risk of persecution.

When processing restarts, each one will still be considered on its individual merits, despite the deteriorating conditions in Afghanistan giving rise to questions over how and when it could be safe to return people there.

The government has repeatedly said it will send asylum seekers who enter the UK irregularly back to European countries such as France that they passed through on their way to Britain.

However, no agreements have been struck with EU countries to allow returns and several nations have told The Independent they would not sign one.

The government has also been accused of misleading migrants with a website that claims to offer them reliable information but concealed its government links, until they were exposed by The Independent.

Ministers are pushing ahead with laws that would criminalise all asylum seekers who cross the English Channel on small boats, or arrive without official permission.

Campaigners have called for ministers to scrap the Nationality and Borders Bill, which would also make it easier to jail migrants for steering boats.

The Independent has launched a petition urging the UK government to be more ambitious in its plans to take in Afghan refugees following the Taliban seizing power and withdrawal of western troops. Afghans are now facing a similar plight. You, our readers, have already shown your strength of feeling in letters and on social media. Heres a chance to have your voice heard by adding your signature. We thank you for your support. To sign the petition click here
Thousands of Afghans evacuated to Britain in recent weeks are set to be placed in temporary hotel accommodation for an indefinite period as local councils say they have been left in the dark about how they can help.

Charities warn that the mental health of already traumatised people is likely to suffer as a result of the use of hotels, and that this will be exacerbated by the lack of information given to them about when and where they will be permanently housed.

The lack of clarity was causing unnecessary worrying and anxiety, to new arrivals, said one charity working with refugees.

Rosalind Ereira, founder of Solidarity with Refugees, said she spoke to an Afghan former interpreter on Thursday morning who told her he was in the last day of quarantine with his pregnant wife and children, but that they had not been given any information on their next step.

They have been told nothing at all and are just waiting to be told what happens next. His wife is due to give birth soon so they want to feel settled. Its all very opaque, she said.

Louise Calvey, head of services and safeguarding at Refugee Action, said the charity has yet to receive any clarification from the Home Office on what support will be available in hotels, raising concerns that families would not have access to these vital services.

When contacted by The Independent, the government could not confirm whether Afghan children would be able to access education in hotels.

Ms Calvey also sounded the alarm about the psychological impact this would have on families. We worry people are going to be in hotels for a very long time. We have significant concerns about the potential for hotel accommodation to compound damage caused by trauma, particularly if theres no information on how long theyre likely to be there and what their ultimate destination is, she said.

A major issue is going to be access to health and therapeutic support. We know thats really difficult, even in permanent accommodation. What support has the Home Office put into place around that?

The UK has evacuated around 14,000 people from Kabul under Operation Pitting since 13 August, along with roughly 1,000 British troops  who have been included in the governments evacuation figures.

Among those evacuated are more than 8,000 Afghans who worked for the UK and their families, who will be resettled under the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (ARAP), and some 5,000 British nationals.

The remaining evacuees consist of around 300 UK government staff, 1,000 non-Afghan foreign nationals whom Britain agreed to help, and an unknown number of highly vulnerable Afghans, such as female judges and sportswomen, according to the Ministry of Defence.

The Home Office said on Wednesday that it has so far secured permanent housing for 2,000 Afghans, meaning homes have not yet been found for 6,000 ARAP arrivals. They are expected to be temporarily housed in holding hotels until properties are procured for them.

The department has said that the vulnerable Afghans evacuated who are not eligible under the ARAP programme will fall under the new Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme (ACRS). Local councils say the process of securing homes for this cohort has not yet begun  so they are also likely to be housed in temporary hotel accommodation.

Most evacuated Afghans are still completing a 10-day quarantine in hotels, but charities warn that they have not been informed about what will happen to them after this period of isolation ends.

Ms Calvey, who assisted with supporting arrivals at a UK airport last week, said most of those she had come across were desperate for information about when and where they would be placed in a permanent home, but that they had received no information from the Home Office.

Its causing unnecessary worrying and anxiety. Theyve got enough on their plates. Weve asked the Home Office to send information so we can inform people, but it isnt communicating, she added.

Home Office minister Victoria Atkins, who is overseeing Operation Warm Welcome  the plan for resettling people under ARAP  has said the government is working with more than 100 UK councils to meet the demand for housing, with more than 2,000 places so far confirmed.

But councils say they have not received information from the Home Office on what is needed and how they can help, slowing down the already challenging process of procuring permanent homes.

Cllr David Rouane, of South Oxfordshire District Council, which offered one permanent home for the ARAP scheme earlier this year and would now like to offer more, said: Many councils are ready to help but we are in the dark about what it is precisely that government wants us to provide.

It is not just about housing, we need to ensure that we get the wrap-around care right, matching schooling and health care in a long-term support package. We also need to engage with local partners including the third sector who have so much to offer.

To do this we need detail not headlines, involvement not directive, and long-term commitment rather than short-term headlines.

Shadow home secretary Nick Thomas-Symonds called on ministers to show leadership and offer clear guidance on housing for newly arrived Afghans.

All those placed in hotels must be given appropriate information and support, and the suitability and safety of such accommodation must be fully assessed. Then plans must be put in place to help people move on to suitable accommodation as soon as possible, he said.

The Independent has launched a petition urging the UK government to be more ambitious in its plans to take in Afghan refugees following the Taliban seizing power and withdrawal of western troops. Our Refugees Welcome campaign backs calls by charities for Downing Street to re-settle those who fear for their lives under the Taliban regime.

A government spokesperson said: A significant cross-government effort is under way to ensure Afghans arriving in the UK receive the support they need. Our focus has been rightly on getting people out of Afghanistan, but we have been simultaneously working round the clock to stand up support with local authorities and ensure we have accommodation for those arriving.

We have made 5m available to local authorities to support in housing costs. Arrivals will have to stay in hotels upon arrival to complete mandatory quarantine and we aim to move them into long-term accommodation as soon as possible.
Four police officers were injured during clashes in London on Friday after anti-vaccine protesters attempted to storm the headquarters of the government agency responsible for bringing Covid vaccines to the UK public.

Metropolitan Police officers blocked the anti-vaxx crowd from entering the headquarters of the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) in Canary Wharf.

The force said protestors had become violent which was  unacceptable.

Scotland Yard tweeted: We have made 10 arrests while policing this protest group. They originally gathered at Canary Wharf and then travelled to South Kensington.

Local councillor for Canary Wharf, Andrew Wood said leaflets were being circulated about the vaccination of children.

The police have been here all week because we were expecting Extinction Rebellion, so most of the police and securitys been outside the banks, he said.

So whether the anti-vaxxers realised this or not the police were ready for a protest, its just that it was anti-vaxxers not Extinction Rebellion who turned up this afternoon.

The protest took place as the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation said it could not recommend all 12-15 year-olds get the jab.

The advisers said that, while there was a marginal benefit to healthy 12-15 year-olds in receiving the vaccine, it was insufficient to call for universal inoculation of this age-group.

Last week, anti-vaccine protesters infiltrated the London headquarters of ITN, the company that produces ITV News and Channel 4 News.

Additional reporting by PA
Geronimo the alpacas distraught owner has accused government officials of hiding from her how he was killed and how they tortured him on his final journey, calling for them to resign.

Helen Macdonald said giving her the truth about how her animal died was the very least officials should do after four years of mentally abusing her, during her prolonged legal battle to save him from being put down.

She said the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) was still ignoring her, leaving her not even knowing how Geronimo died, after government vets bungled his transportation.

Ms Macdonald, herself a veterinary nurse, said she felt let down by her own profession over the worst case of cruelty she had ever seen in her entire career.

In scenes that horrified animal lovers worldwide, police officers and vets went onto the farm without notice on Tuesday, capturing the frightened animal and forcing him into the back of a trailer as he made loud distress calls.

Experts said Geronimo was gasping for air because the government vets failed to use a headcollar so his breathing was obstructed, and he was incorrectly tied up. Where, when and how he died remains a mystery. The Independent has asked Defra for the details.

Defra had refused to allow a third test on the animal after two highly disputed tests suggested he had tuberculosis, insisting he be killed as part of the governments TB eradication plan.

Ms Macdonald, who has also called for environment secretary George Eustice to quit, said: Weve expressly asked for all the circumstances of his removal and what happened to him afterwards, and theyre ignoring us.

Somebody knows what they did to him. I dont know whether he died in the trailer, whether he was shot or what. They wont tell me. Its the least they could do after what they did to him.

They had no idea what they were doing and tortured him. They didnt ask for help  they were cruel beyond words and incompetent. They should be struck off. Im going to find out who they are.

I want to know every single detail. Unless these people are dragged out by their hair, I dont know how were going to find out, and thats just unforgivable.

In an official complaint to the government on Wednesday, the British Alpaca Society also called for those who led the operation to be suspended immediately for gross misconduct and animal abuse.

If Geronimo arrived at his final destination still alive and not strangled or suffocated, how can we be sure he was humanely euthanised? the society wrote.

The lack of knowledge as to the correct way to handle alpacas was startling and totally inexcusable...

It is also well documented that alpacas sit down when being transported, yet Geronimo was tied up like a horse.

There is no excuse for these actions. The correct information is in the public domain, yet whoever led this repulsive exercise yesterday simply hadnt bothered to find out the proper techniques.

A planned protest outside Defras offices on Wednesday is expected to draw hundreds of demonstrators.

Ms Macdonald added: Theyve been abusing me for four years, forcing me through court cases, and now they wont even do me the courtesy of telling me how he suffered in his last moments. Its outrageous.

She said: someone needs to hold them to account because I cant rest until I know.

And it was a vet who did it  my own profession, for Christs sake.

She said it was too early to know what action she would take, adding: This is beyond anything that anyone should have to endure.

A crowdfunding appeal set up during her four-year court battle to fund the legal costs has raised more than 36,000.

The Independent has asked Defra to respond to the claims, in particular why it has not responded to Ms Macdonald, and why her own vet was barred from attending the post-mortem examination as an observer.

The department said removal operations were carefully planned and conducted, and included consideration of Geronimos welfare, but did not respond specifically to the claims of keeping her in the dark.

It said her vet was stopped from observing the post mortem examination for health and safety, Covid-19 and site security reasons.
The UK could see a mini heatwave next week in the fallout from tropical storm Ida.

September will get off to a warm start, with temperatures up to 28C predicted for early next week.

But forecasters have warned the balmy weather could also bring thunderstorms as the remnants of Hurricane Ida draw up a lot of warmth and rain, before conditions turn more autumnal for the rest of the month.

Many places will enjoy cloudy but dry weather over the weekend, although there could be isolated showers in the far south on Sunday and outbreaks of rain in Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Temperatures will be in the low to mid-20s in most parts, with highs of 24C predicted for both days.

The mercury will begin to climb from Monday, when there will be plenty of sunny spells around.

Forecasters are predicting a maximum temperature of 26C in the southeast and low 20s elsewhere for the start of the working week.

Met Office spokesman Stephen Dixon said Tuesday is when it will start to get a bit warmer as most places enjoy warm, sunny spells.

He told The Independent: Tuesday is where we are likely to see the best of the heat with highs of 28C in the southeast, 27C in Nottingham, 23C in South Wales and 24C Aberdeen.

That theme continues until Wednesday, when there will be a 28C high in Bristol, 27C in London, Manchester and Birmingham, and mid-20s in Scotland, although Glasgow could see 26C.

Late on Wednesday theres a risk of some thundery rain moving into the southwest later in the day, but beyond that it will largely be a fine dry day.

UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 3 September 2021 Demonstrators from Animal Rebellion and Nature Rebellion protest in Trafalgar Square in London. PA UK news in pictures 3 September 2021 South Africa's Ntando Mahlangu (centre) wins the Men's 200 metres T61 Final ahead of second placed Great Britain's Richard Whitehead at the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games PA UK news in pictures 2 September 2021 A young common seal on the beach at Horsey Gap in Norfolk, as hundreds of pregnant grey seals come ashore ready for the start of the pupping season. PA UK news in pictures 1 September 2021 Goldfinches fighting over food in a garden in Strensham, Worcestershire PA UK news in pictures 31 August 2021 Gold Medallist Sarah Storey of Britain celebrates on the podium Reuters UK news in pictures 30 August 2021 Extinction Rebellion protesters hold a a tea party on Tower Bridge in London EPA UK news in pictures 29 August 2021 A police office tussles with a demonstrator on Cromwell Road outside the Natural History Museum during a protest by members of Extinction Rebellion in London PA UK news in pictures 28 August 2021 Members of the British armed forces 16 Air Assault Brigade walk to the air terminal after disembarking a Royal Airforce Voyager aircraft at Brize Norton, Oxfordshire POOL/AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 27 August 2021 Fabio Quartararo crashes during a MotoGP practice session at the British Grand Prix, Silverstone Circuit Action Images via Reuters UK news in pictures 26 August 2021 An Extinction Rebellion activist holds a placard in a fountain surrounded by police officers, during a protest next to Buckingham Palace in London Reuters UK news in pictures 25 August 2021 Gold Medallist Great Britains cyclist, Sarah Storey, celebrates after winning the Womens C5 3000m Individual Pursuit Final at the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games. It was her 15th Paralympic gold Reuters UK news in pictures 24 August 2021 A demonstrator dressed as bee during a protest by members of Extinction Rebellion on Whitehall, in central London PA UK news in pictures 23 August 2021 Former interpreters for the British forces in Afghanistan demonstrate outside the Home Office in central London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 22 August 2021 Police officers form a line in front of the entrance to the Guildhall, London, where protesters have climbed onto a ledge above the entrance during an Extinction Rebellion stage a protest PA UK news in pictures 21 August 2021 People take part in a demonstration in solidarity with people of Afghanistan, in London Reuters UK news in pictures 20 August 2021 People zip wire across the sea from Bournemouth pier towards the beach. PA UK news in pictures 19 August 2021 Supporters of Geronimo the alpaca gather outside Shepherds Close Farm in Wooton Under Edge, Gloucestershire PA UK news in pictures 18 August 2021 Former Afghan interpreters and veterans hold a demonstration outside Downing Street, calling for support and protection for Afghan interpreters and their families PA UK news in pictures 17 August 2021 Military personnel board the RAF Airbus A400M at RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire, where evacuation flights from Afghanistan have been landing Reuters UK news in pictures 16 August 2021 Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer takes part in a minute's silence at Wolverhampton police station for the victims of the Plymouth mass shooting last week PA UK news in pictures 15 August 2021 2Storm, a ten-metre tall puppet of a mythical goddess of the sea created by Edinburgh-based visual theatre company Vision Mechanics, makes its way alongside the seafront at North Berwick, East Lothian, during a performance at the Fringe By The Sea festival PA UK news in pictures 14 August 2021 A woman and two young girls look at floral tributes in Plymouth where six people, including the offender, died of gunshot wounds in a firearms incident PA UK news in pictures 13 August 2021 Forensic officers in the Keyham area of Plymouth where six people, including the shooter, died of gunshot wounds in a firearms incident on Thursday evening PA UK news in pictures 12 August 2021 Children ride horses in the River Eden in Appleby, Cumbria, during the annual gathering of travellers for the Appleby Horse Fair PA UK news in pictures 11 August 2021 Stella Moris (left) reacts after talking to the media outside the High Court in London, following the first hearing in the Julian Assange extradition appeal, n London, following the first hearing in the Julian Assange extradition appeal. The US government has won the latest round in its High Court bid to appeal against the decision not to extradite Julian Assange on espionage charges PA UK news in pictures 10 August 2021 Students react after they receive their A-Level results at the Ark Academy, in London Reuters UK news in pictures 9 August 2021 The final athletes from Great Britain arrive home including Jason Kenny, Laura Kenny and Katie Archibald (front left-right) at Heathrow Airport, London following the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games PA UK news in pictures 8 August 2021 Great Britain's Laura Kenny during the closing ceremony of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games at the Olympic stadium in Japan PA UK news in pictures 7 August 2021 People from the Glasgow Southside community take part in the Govanhill Carnival, an anti-racist celebration of pride, unity and the contributions immigrants have made to the community in Govanhill, at Queen's Park, Glasgow PA UK news in pictures 6 August 2021 Chijindu Ujah of Britain, Zharnel Hughes of Britain, Richard Kilty of Britain and Nethaneel Mitchell-Blake of Britain celebrate winning silver as they pose with Asha Philip of Britain, Imani Lansiquot of Britain, Dina Asher-Smith of Britain and Daryll Neita of Britain after they won bronze in the women's 4 x 100m relay during Olympic Games Day 14 Getty UK news in pictures 5 August 2021 A protester places flowers on a photograph of an executed man during a demonstration organised by supporters of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) to protest against the inauguration of Iran's new president Ebrahim Raisi in central London AFP via Getty UK news in pictures 4 August 2021 England's Joe Root looks on as India's KL Rahul doesn't make it to a catch during day one of Cinch First Test match at Trent Bridge, Nottingham PA UK news in pictures 3 August 2021 Great Britain's Laura Kenny and Jason Kenny with their silver medals for the Women's Team Pursuit and Mens Team Sprint during the Track Cycling at the Izu Velodrome on the eleventh day of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games in Japan PA UK news in pictures 2 August 2021 Great Britains Charlotte Worthington competes during the Womens BMX Freestyle Final at the Tokyo Olympics PA UK news in pictures 1 August 2021 EPA UK news in pictures 31 July 2021 James Guy, Adam Peaty and Kathleen Dawson celebrate winning the gold medal in the mixed 4x100m medley relay final at the Tokyo Olympics AP UK news in pictures 30 July 2021 Great Britain's Bethany Shriever and Kye Whyte celebrate their Gold and Silver medals respectively for the Cycling BMX Racing at the Ariake Urban Sports Park on the seventh day of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games in Japan PA UK news in pictures 29 July 2021 Team GB's Mallory Franklin during the Womens Canoe Slalom Final on day six of the Tokyo Olympic Games. She went on to win the silver medal Getty UK news in pictures 28 July 2021 Canoers on Llyn Padarn lake in Snowdonia, Gwynedd. It was announced that the north-west Wales slate landscape has been granted UNESCO World Heritage Status PA UK news in pictures 27 July 2021 A view of one of two areas now being used at a warehouse facility in Dover, Kent, for boats used by people thought to be migrants. PA UK news in pictures 26 July 2021 A woman is helped by Border Force officers as a group of people thought to be migrants are brought in to Dover, Kent, onboard a Border Force vessel, following a small boat incident in the Channel PA UK news in pictures 25 July 2021 Vehicles drive through deep water on a flooded road in Nine Elms, London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 24 July 2021 Utilities workers inspect a 15x20ft sinkhole on Green Lane, Liverpool, which is suspected to have been caused by ruptured water main PA UK news in pictures 23 July 2021 Children interact with Mega Please Draw Freely by artist Ei Arakawa inside the Turbine Hall at the Tate Modern in London, part of UNIQLO Tate Play the gallery's new free programme of art-inspired activities for families PA UK news in pictures 22 July 2021 Festivalgoers in the campsite at the Latitude festival in Henham Park, Southwold, Suffolk PA UK news in pictures 21 July 2021 A man walks past an artwork by Will Blood on the end of a property in Bedminster, Bristol, as the 75 murals project reaches the halfway point and various graffiti pieces are sprayed onto walls and buildings across the city over the Summer PA UK news in pictures 20 July 2021 People during morning prayer during Eid ul-Adha, or Festival of Sacrifice, in Southall Park, Uxbridge, London PA UK news in pictures 19 July 2021 Commuters, some not wearing facemasks, at Westminster Underground station, at 08:38 in London after the final legal Coronavirus restrictions were lifted in England PA UK news in pictures 18 July 2021 A view of spectators by the 2nd green during day four of The Open at The Royal St George's Golf Club in Sandwich, Kent PA UK news in pictures 17 July 2021 Cyclists ride over the Hammersmith Bridge in London. The bridge was closed last year after cracks in it worsened during a heatwave Getty

The hot spell of weather would have to see a daily maximum temperature reached consistently for three days in a row before it is classed as a heatwave.

This threshold varies across different parts of the UK, with a maximum temperature of 28C set for London, 27C for the Midlands, East Anglia and the home counties, 26C in Lincolnshire across to Cheshire and down to Dorset, and 25C in Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales and most of northern and southwest England.

The warm start to September isnt likely to last long, as conditions are expected to become more autumnal as the month progresses.

There is a signal towards the end of next week of some more unsettled conditions bringing some more widespread rain, said Mr Dixon.

The conditions for the middle towards the end of September are for that autumnal trend to continue with some unsettled spells of weather and some showery rain although there is a trend towards the end of September for some more settled weather, particularly in the south.

Temperatures throughout that period are likely to be around average.
The Duke of Cambridge has helped an Afghan officer get his family out of Afghanistan on a UK-bound plane following the Talibans takeover of the country, it has emerged.

The man, who was a fellow Sandhurst officer cadet with Prince William, is believed to have served with his countrys national army and been integral to the British military operation in Afghanistan, according to the Daily Telegraph.

His role meant his family of more than 10 people, who were reportedly eligible for evacuations, were potentially at risk from reprisals by the Taliban.

Williams intervention came after witnessing chaotic scenes outside Kabul airport as thousands of people attempted to get through the gates and onto evacuation flights.

The Telegraph reported that the duke asked his equerry, Lieutenant Commander Rob Dixon, to make calls on his behalf to help the Afghan officer and his family access the airport, as they were unable to get past the airport crowds to board a plane to the UK.

When asked about the incident, Kensington Palace declined to comment.

William joined the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst as an officer cadet after graduating from St Andrews University and was commissioned as an Army Officer in December 2006.

He later served with the RAF as a search and rescue helicopter pilot.

More than 8,000 former Afghan staff and their family members eligible under the Afghan relocations and assistance policy were among the 15,000-plus people evacuated by the UK since 13 August.

However, there are fears that thousands of Afghans who helped British efforts in the nation and their relatives have been left behind in the country.

Foreign secretary Dominic Raab told the Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday that he could not give a definitive answer for how many people in Afghanistan who were eligible for UK settlement were unable to leave.

Mr Raab said that he believed the number was in the low hundreds, as he admitted that some of those left behind included guards who had secured the British embassy in Kabul.

We wanted to get some of those embassy guards through, but the buses arranged to collect them, to take them to the airport, werent given permission to enter, Mr Raab told the committee, adding that this was a reflection of the conditions on the ground.

On Thursday, the Cabinet minister raised the possibility that evacuations could resume from Kabul airport in the near future following talks in Qatar.

Mr Raab said that he had good conversations with Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani about the workability of evacuations resuming from the airport for UK nationals and Afghans who worked with Britain.

Additional reporting by PA
Cabinet Office chiefs have reportedly launched an investigation into the leaking of official plans for the immediate aftermath of the Queens death.

The masterplan is said to lay out how the new King Charles will embark on a tour of the UK and give a broadcast to the nation.

The detailed arrangements, known by the codename London Bridge, were published by the Politico website.

It reported that the UK parliament and the devolved legislatures in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland will adjourn.

It also described Operation Spring Tide, the plan for Charless accession to the throne.

A government source said the Cabinet Office had started an investigation into the leak, according to TheTelegraph online.

The newspaper quoted the source as saying: If it turns out to be an old version that was widely circulated and does not include the most sensitive material, it might go no further than that - but if its a fuller version that is only circulated to, say, 10 people, then the Cabinet Office will launch a formal inquiry.

Buckingham Palace declined to comment.

Royal aides are likely to be frustrated at the information appearing in the public domain, especially coming five months after the death of the Duke of Edinburgh. The queen, 95, is in good health, by all accounts.

Elements of the plans will have been circulated to specific organisations, such as local government, charities and the military, to brief them on their roles in the arrangements.

Under the plans, in the hours following the Queens death a call cascade will take place, informing the prime minister, the cabinet secretary and the most senior ministers and officials.

The plans include gun salutes, a national minutes silence, a broadcast to the nation by King Charles, a state funeral and a service of remembrance. the prime minister and his cabinet will see the Queens coffin at a London station.
A parliamentary committee has launched an inquiry into Britains withdrawal from Afghanistan after the catastrophic fall of Kabul.

A cross-party group of MPs on the Foreign Affairs Committee will grill ministers and top officials on evacuation efforts and planning carried out for the Taliban takeover.

Foreign secretary Dominic Raab has come under pressure over his recent holiday in Crete, and an intelligence warning from July which suggested the Taliban could advance rapidly across Afghanistan.

Committee chair Tom Tugendhat thanked Mr Raab for his appearance in parliament earlier this week, but said big questions remain about the governments handling of the crisis.

The fall of Kabul is a catastrophe for the Afghan people and for the reputation of those nations that were committed to its success  our hasty withdrawal leaves a country in an acute humanitarian and human rights crisis, said the Conservative MP.

Mr Tugendhat added: While I thank the foreign secretary for appearing in front of the committee at late notice, big questions remain, and this inquiry hopes to provide some much-needed clarity. Lessons need to be learnt and the decisions the UK makes in the coming months will be crucial.

The parliamentary inquiry  expected to last for several months  will scrutinise the nature of the governments engagement with the Taliban and what ministers are doing to stop the country becoming a safe haven for terrorist groups.

MPs will also examine the human rights impact of the Taliban takeover, probing ministers on plans to support those most at risk inside Afghanistan  particularly women and girls.

As part of our Refugees Welcome campaign, The Independent has launched a petition urging the UK government to be more ambitious in its plans to take in Afghan refugees.

Influential Tory MP Tobias Ellwood, who chairs the defence select committee, has called for a full public inquiry in Britains involvement in Afghanistan  saying the time was right to examine the entire mission as well as what went wrong with the withdrawal.

Stewart McDonald, the SNPs defence spokesperson, backed Mr Ellwoods call for an inquiry along the lines of the one carried by John Chilcot into Britains role in Iraq. If we are all committed to getting this right, thats the kind of thing that surely needs to happen, he said.

Grilled by MPs on the committee on Wednesday, Mr Raab said UK intelligence predicted a steady deterioration after the troop withdrawal  but the assessment was that it was unlikely Kabul would fall this year.

But Mr Tugendhat pointed to a 22 July document from Mr Raabs own department called a principal risk register  which appeared to warn Afghanistan could fall to the Taliban much sooner than the UK had previously predicted.

The Foreign Office said it was wrong and misleading to suggest the document was at odds with our detailed assessments of the situation in Afghanistan or our public position throughout the crisis.

The foreign secretary also claimed on Friday that the speed at which the Afghan government fell surprised the Taliban. Speaking in Pakistan, Mr Raab said: I suspect the Taliban and ordinary Afghans were taken by surprise. I think there was a common widespread surprise.

Meanwhile, Mr Tugendhat has warned that the end of the evacuation operation in Afghanistan was only the beginning of a new stage of chaos which could see the US and China drawn into conflict.

He said Beijing could use the American withdrawal as an opportunity to flex its muscles militarily, leading to the danger of confrontation in a flashpoint like Taiwan and the South China Sea.
Dominic Raab has begun a two-day visit to Pakistan in an effort to secure safe passage for Britons and Afghans with ties to the UK who remain stuck in Afghanistan.

The foreign secretary insisted there was common widespread surprise  even among the Taliban  at the speed in which the militants took over the country.

Speaking in Islamabad, Mr Raab said: I suspect the Taliban and ordinary Afghans were taken by surprise. I think there was a common widespread surprise at the speed with which the consolidation of power happened.

Mr Raab is under pressure over a Foreign Office document from 22 July  issued weeks before his recent holiday in Crete  which suggested that the Taliban could advance rapidly across Afghanistan.

The foreign secretary also insisted that UK aid funding aimed at reaching people in Afghanistan would not go directly to the Taliban.

We would be willing not to fund aid via the Taliban, but through the humanitarian organisations that operate inside Afghanistan  for that to happen, there needs to be a safe and secure environment, said Mr Raab.

The foreign secretary visited the Afghan border crossing at Torkham in northeast Pakistan to see the situation on the ground and met members of the team supporting the current crisis response.

The Foreign Office announced a 30m UK aid package for Afghan refugees fleeing to neighbouring countries  with 10m going to relief efforts coordinated by bodies such as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

Countries predicted to experience a significant increase in refugees will also receive 20m to help with processing new arrivals and to provide essential services and supplies.

Mr Raab said Pakistan and the UK had a shared interest in creating a stable and peaceful future for Afghanistan  and spoke again about forming a coalition to act as a moderating force on the group.

He said it would not have been possible to evacuate 15,000 people from Kabul without some cooperation with the Taliban. We do see the importance of being able to engage and having a direct line of communication, he said.

The foreign secretary said on Thursday that evacuations may be able to resume from Kabul airport in the near future and expressed a need for direct engagement with the Taliban.

More than 8,000 former Afghan staff and their family members eligible under the British governments Afghan relocations and assistance policy (Arap) were among the 15,000-plus people evacuated by the UK after 13 August.

But thousands of Afghans who helped British efforts in the nation, as well as their relatives and other vulnerable civilians, are feared to have been left behind.

As part of our Refugees Welcome campaign, The Independent has launched a petition urging the UK government to be more ambitious in its plans to take in Afghan refugees following the Taliban seizing power.

Mr Raabs comments in Pakistan came after the former cabinet secretary Sir Mark Sedwill warned on Thursday that the UK and its allies still had no coherent plan to deal with the looming refugee crisis.

Sir Mark said the emergency airlift over the past two weeks cant and shouldnt conceal that overall we do not yet have a coherent policy and plan in place to deal with refugee flows out of Afghanistan.

The Conservative MP Tom Tugendhat, chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, warned that the end of the evacuation operation in Afghanistan was only the beginning of a new stage of chaos.

The justice secretary, Robert Buckland, said he was working to help more female judges in Afghanistan get out of the country. So far we have managed to get nine female judges here to the UK, he told Sky News on Friday.

Mr Buckland said: A lot of these judges were responsible for administering the rule of law, and quite rightly they are fearful for the consequences from the rise of the Taliban.

The cabinet minister added: Im making sure that my officials are working hand in glove with the Foreign Office to identify as many as possible  and communicate with them to establish how to get safe passage for these very vulnerable people.

But local councils in the UK have said they have been left in the dark about how they can help, as thousands of Afghans evacuated to Britain in recent weeks are set to be placed in temporary hotel accommodation for an indefinite period.

Cllr David Rouane, of South Oxfordshire District Council, said: Many councils are ready to help, but we are in the dark about what it is precisely that government wants us to provide.
Millions of pounds worth of British arms exported to Afghanistan could end up in the hands of Taliban and terrorist groups in the region, campaigners have warned.

Figures collated by the Campaign Against the Arms Trade (CAAT) show the UK has sent weapons, ammunition and other military equipment worth 151m to Afghanistan since the beginning of 2008.

Despite the drawdown of UK forces over the past decade, arms have continued to be exported for use by Afghan soldiers, Afghan police and British troops who remained in the country until the final withdrawal at the end of August.

The UK approved 22m in munitions export licenses to Afghanistan during 2020, despite US government signing a withdrawal agreement with the Taliban last February.

Katie Fallon, a coordinator for CAAT, said the UKs short-sighted approach to arms export licensing will leave a brutal scar on the lives of Afghan civilians, women, and children in particular, for decades to come.

The anti-arms campaigner added: The government needs to urgently investigate which end users now have control over these military goods, and why the arms export licensing criteria in place have utterly failed to account for what was clearly a very high risk.

Labour also pointed to the risk that British-made weapons could end up being sold on to terrorist groups, as military leaders warn that the Afghan affiliate of Islamic State, Isis-K, poses a threat to Britain.

There is a clear risk of high-tech equipment falling into the hands of the Taliban, or worse, Isis-K and other terror groups, said shadow defence secretary John Healey  adding that the prevention of illegal arms sales would have to be part of the strategy in dealing with Afghanistan.

The Labour MP added: While they may not have the technical skills to operate many of these weapons systems, the black market value could be a significant source of income to fuel their operations.

Some 72m worth of explosives were licensed for export to Afghanistan since 2008, along with 24m-worth of armoured vehicles, guns worth 4.4m and ammunition worth 2.8m.

Trevor Taylor, expert at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), told Politico that UK and US weapons in Afghanistan could boost the Taliban  but said Islamist militant groups may struggle to use more technical items. The Taliban have obviously got their hands on a chunk of material, he said.

CAAT claimed the government had not been careful enough with export licensing risk assessments for Afghanistan in recent years.

Either the government is incapable of applying their own regulations and accurately evaluating risk, or the criteria as written do not allow for even the most modest consideration of the long-term consequences of exporting weapons to a deeply unstable country, said Ms Fallon.

A government spokesperson said the Department for International Trade had revoked all relevant arms export licenses to remove Afghanistan as a permitted destination.

The UK takes its export control responsibilities very seriously and operates one of the most robust and transparent export regimes in the world, the spokesperson added. We continue to monitor the situation closely and keep our licenses under constant review.

A Ministry of Defence (MoD) spokesperson added: As part of our withdrawal we have been recovering equipment but at all times have prioritised the safe evacuation of people over equipment. The Ministry of Defence did not leave any weapons, ammunition or sensitive IT in Kabul following [the evacuation operation].

Meanwhile, as part of our Refugees Welcome campaign, The Independent has launched a petition urging the UK government to be more ambitious in its plans to take in Afghan refugees.
Boris Johnsons government has been urged to get on with a Covid vaccine booster programme rather than waiting any longer for advice for his scientific advisers.

The prime minister appeared to confirm that a rollout of third jabs will begin this month  but the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) is yet to give its formal recommendation.

Former health secretary Jeremy Hunt warned that just a few days could make a big difference to infection levels  urging ministers to plunge ahead with the programme rather than wait for the JCVI decision.

I understand why scientists are taking their time, but I think in a pandemic politicians can also read the rooms and see the direction of travel, said the Tory MP, chair of the health select committee. We should just get on, not wait for that advice  get on with a booster programme.

The JCVIs deputy chairman Professor Anthony Harnden said earlier this week that it is highly likely there will be a booster programme, but a final decision has not been made.

He said his panel of experts is awaiting the results of a Cov-Boost study looking at different vaccines to see what immune responses they give and whether jabs can be mixed and matched in a booster programme.

Prof Harnden said there had been was very complicated modelling and data analysis, adding experts do not want to jab people too soon and then be unable to do so again if a new variant emerges.

Experts criticised Mr Hunts call for a political decision on a booster programme, warning the prime minister to wait for the JCVIs recommendation.

Dr Doug Brown, chief executive of the British Society for Immunology (BSI), said: As with all decisions around vaccine use, its critical that the evidence around Covid vaccines, including whether additional doses are needed or not, is robustly scrutinised by the experienced experts from the JCVI.

Sir Andrew Pollard, who chairs JCVI but does not sit on the Covid vaccine committee, said scientists decisions should not be bound by short term political expediency.

He added: Advice can be modified at any time when new scientific advice emerges  such a change is not bound by political ideology or opinion, but an appropriate response to the science.

Professor Saul Faust, chief investigator of the Cov-Boost study, said he found it hard to understand the pressure coming from politicians.

The UK is the only country in the world who commissioned urgent research to inform booster decisions, and the trial timelines have always been set to report next week for the decision making.

Ministers have also heaped pressure on government scientists for a decision on jabbing 12 to 15-year-old children, as pupils return to secondary schools in England.

The JCVI is understood to have held a debate on the issue on Thursday. Reports suggest the JCVI had pretty good news from data in the US showing the vaccines pose an even smaller risk to children than previously thought.

Education secretary Gavin Williamson said he hoped the JCVI would approve an expansion in the rollout to under 16s very soon  insisting there was capacity to carry out a booster programme and jabs for 12 to 15-year-olds at the same time.

A group of leading international scientists said allowing mass infection of children is reckless and all over-12s should be offered the vaccine as soon as possible.

In an open letter published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), they warned: Englands policies mean that we will soon have a large susceptible population with high prevalence of infection mixing in crowded environments with hardly any mitigations.
Boris Johnsons government is preparing for a battle over the renewal of emergency Covid legislation giving No 10 the power to impose another lockdown if cases surge this winter.

The prime minister is set for a clash with anti-lockdown Conservative MPs, who claim the country must learn to live with the virus without handing the government draconian powers indefinitely.

But in a sign No 10 is considering the possibility of fresh restrictions in the months ahead, the government said it wanted to retain these powers in case they are needed through the winter.

MPs will vote next week on whether to keep the Coronavirus Act, the sweeping emergency powers brought in back in March 2020 which must be renewed every six months.

Former Brexit minister David Davis said the legislation contains some of the most draconian powers ever introduced in the UK.

The Tory MP added: Thankfully, the crisis point of the pandemic has passed. It is now time to roll back the extensive powers unwisely handed over to the state.

Fellow Tory MP Mark Harper, who leads the Covid Recovery Group (CRG) of backbench sceptics, is firmly opposed to another extension  arguing that the time for strict regulations had passed.

Our vaccine rollout has been a huge success. We have seen a dramatic and welcome fall in people suffering from serious disease and death from Covid as a result, Mr Harper told the Financial Times.

The CRG chairman added: We are going to have to learn to live with this virus. What justification can there be for extending these measures?

Former health secretary Matt Hancock said in March this year that he hoped it would not be necessary to renew the emergency regulations again in the autumn.

But the government said it was necessary to extend the legislation  which allows the closure of venues and lets the police force those suspected of having Covid into isolation  until March 2022 in case more restrictions were needed this winter.

Ministers also fear that allowing the powers to expire would hamper the governments ability to protect renters from eviction during the pandemic.

MPs voted by 484 to 76 to extend the law for six months earlier this year. Despite protests about draconian detention powers, only 36 Tory MPs and 21 Labour MPs voted against it.

The CRG of anti-lockdown sceptics expects a greater number of rebels from the Tory backbenchers to next week, but Labour is expected to back its renewal.

A government spokesperson said: We will allow temporary powers in the Coronavirus Act to expire wherever possible, as we have at previous review points.

However, it would be irresponsible to allow all temporary provisions to expire. Doing so would remove the governments ability to protect renters from eviction, give sick pay to those self-isolating from day one, and direct schools to reopen where needed, for example.

The British public would expect us to retain these powers in case they are needed through the winter.
A collapse in the numbers of people signing up for transport and warehousing apprenticeships has driven the current delivery crisis, causing empty shelves in supermarkets and shortages at fast-food chains, Labour has claimed.

The party released figures showing that entrants on transportation apprenticeships have fallen by almost half (49 per cent) since 2015-16 and by a massive 83 per cent for warehousing and distribution.

Shadow minister for green and future transport Kerry McCarthy blamed the government for failing to ensure the supply of new drivers in an industry facing the ticking time-bomb of a rapidly ageing workforce, with the average person behind the wheel of an HGV now 55 years old and fewer than 1 per cent aged under 25.

With drivers reaching retirement at a rate of 6,000 a year and others leaving the profession early, the current crisis can be expected to worsen unless urgent action is taken to attract more young people onto apprenticeships, she said.

Recent weeks have seen major chains including Nandos, McDonalds and Greggs blame distribution problems for shortages preventing them from serving popular items to customers, while the boss of Iceland supermarkets has warned that the supply chain crisis could cancel Christmas.

The Road Haulage Association says the UK is around 100,000 drivers short, with Brexit and Covid blamed for worsening chronic labour shortages in the industry.

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In July, ministers announced a short-term relaxation to limits on drivers working hours and said measures were being taken to increase the throughput of HGV driving tests in response to the crisis, after the pandemic led to a 30,000 fall in the number of drivers getting their heavy goods licences last year.

But the government has resisted industry calls for a relaxation of immigration rules to try to attract back some of the thousands of drivers from EU countries who have left the UK since Brexit.

On Friday Labour accused the government of failing to ensure adequate supplies of home-grown drivers, pointing to figures showing that numbers of trainees in key apprenticeships were falling long before the impact of the virus and EU withdrawal was felt.

Numbers on transportation operation and maintenance courses fell from 16,620 in 2015-16 to 8,430 in 2020-21, while starts on warehousing and distribution roles declined from 14,860 to 2,500 over the same period.

The shortage of drivers is now visible on a daily basis through empty shelves in shops and closures on our high streets, said Ms McCarthy.

But these stats show things are likely to get even worse, as the government has failed to encourage young people into the industry to replace retiring drivers. This is completely unsustainable.

It is increasingly clear that the government does not have a plan to address a national crisis that is grinding our economy to a halt.

With only 3,000 vocational driving tests being taken a week, she warned it will be months before the huge shortage in drivers is filled. And she said it was dangerous to rely on longer hours for drivers to keep the supply chain moving.

Labour has called on the government to work with the Migration Advisory Committee to determine whether HGV driving should be designated a skills-shortage profession under the immigration points system, to allow the recruitment of more foreign drivers.

A government spokesperson said: As driver shortages across Europe demonstrate, this is a widespread problem caused by a range of factors, including an ageing workforce.

Most of the solutions are likely to be driven by industry, with progress already being made in testing and hiring, and a big push towards improving pay, working conditions and diversity.

We recently announced a significant package of measures, including plans to streamline the process for new drivers to gain their HGV licence, and increased capacity for HGV driving tests.
Lithuania on Friday recalled its ambassador to China following the Baltic countrys decision in July to allow self-governing Taiwan to open an office in its capital under its own name.

The Foreign Ministry said Ambassador Diana Mickeviciene had been recalled from Beijing for consultations following the Chinese government statement on August 10.

Last month, China recalled its ambassador to Lithuania and told the Baltic nation to immediately rectify its wrong decision, take concrete measures to undo the damage, and not to move further down the wrong path.

The statement referred to potential consequences for Lithuania if it allowed the office to open but gave no details.

The Lithuanian Foreign Ministry expressed regret over Chinas action and stressed that while respecting the one China principle, it stands ready to develop mutually beneficial ties with Taiwan, just as many other countries in the world do.

China says Taiwan is part of its territory and doesn't have the right to diplomatic recognition, although the island maintains informal ties with all major nations through trade offices that act as de facto embassies, including in the United States and Japan. Chinese pressure has reduced Taiwans formal diplomatic allies to just 15.

Taiwan and Lithuania agreed in July that the office in the capital, Vilnius, set to open this fall, will bear the name Taiwan rather than Chinese Taipei  a term often used in other countries in order not to offend Beijing.

On Friday, the Lithuanian ministry said that diplomats from the European Union -- of which Lithuania is a member  expressed solidarity with Mickeviciene. The deputy EU ambassador to China, Tim Harrington, shared a joint photo on Twitter on Friday as dozens of EU diplomats gathered to demonstrate solidarity with their Lithuanian counterpart as she left Beijing and wished she could return soon, the ministry said.

Lithuania said its embassy in Beijing continues to operate as usual.
The death of Pat Hume, the widow of former SDLP leader and Nobel Peace Prize-winner John Hume, has sparked widespread tributes from political figures including Hillary Clinton and Michael D Higgins.

Hume passed away at the age of 83 following a short illness on Thursday, just over a year after the death of her husband.

She was hailed a colossus in Irish history, having worked alongside John from the beginning of the civil rights movement in Londonderry in the 1960s, through the Troubles until after the Good Friday Agreement was signed in 1998.

She was awarded the Irish Red Cross Lifetime Achievement award in 2018 and a foundation honouring the couples peace and reconciliation work was launched last year.

Her family said Hume died as she lived  surrounded by family, peacefully and generous to the end.

Ms Clinton, who walked across Derrys Peace Bridge with the Humes shortly after the IRA ceasefires while visiting the city as Americas first lady with her husband Bill in 1995, sent her condolences to the family.

Pat Hume was a gracious, determined force behind the achievement of peace in Ireland, Ms Clinton said.

She and her husband John both made the world a better place and set an example for us all. Sending my condolences to her family.

Irish president Michael D Higgins said Pat Hume had made an extraordinary contribution to life on this island and beyond.

He added: The life of Pat Hume was one of total commitment to community, to the possibilities of peace, to the measures of non-violence that were necessary to assert, vindicate and achieve the results of civil rights.

While her support of the work of her late husband and Nobel Prize recipient, John Hume, was an exercise in solidarity, a partnership in courage, endurance and fortitude, her personal contribution was unique, immense and important in its own right.

Pat and John Hume meet former US president Bill Clinton in Derry in 2010 (Julien Behal - WPA Pool/Getty Images)

Pats personal contribution as teacher, mother, in conditions of conflict, political adviser, constituency secretary and consoler of the victims of oppression from so many sources, was extraordinary in every sense.

DUP leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson said that she had lived a unique life.

My deepest sympathies to the Hume family on the death of Pat Hume, he said. A unique life well-lived and no one who met John left the conversation without knowing Pat. A lovely lady.

Sinn Fein president Mary Lou McDonald, said she had been left deeply saddened by the news.

She added: I extend my deepest condolences to her family and friends. She will be sadly missed by her children, extended family and friends, colleagues and the people of Derry.

Alliance Party leader Naomi Long said Mrs Humes dedication to peace was total, adding: Very sorry to hear Pat Hume has passed away  an absolute lady, warm & friendly, always encouraging. Her dedication to peace was total as was her dedication to John esp. in his latter years.

Marrying in 1960 after meeting at a dance, the couple would raise five children together. Working alongside her husband for decades, Pat was often credited as running operations on the ground and manning her husbands constituency office in Foyle.

Pat Hume and Derry City mayor John Boyle standing with US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Derrys Peace Bridge in 2019 (Charles McQuillan/Getty Images)

According toThe Irish Independent, she is recalled as the person who held the Hume family together through the darkest days of violence, and someone who was at times left alone to face down intimidation and threats while her husband travelled the world seeking support for peace in Northern Ireland.

The paper quoted John Humes long-time political colleague Brid Rodgers as saying: Pat was a very astute political thinker and he depended on her for advice  she was always there. It was a great partnership, he always knew Pat would tell him exactly what she thought.

In recent years, she was a carer for her husband during his battle with dementia.

Bishop of Derry, Donal McKeown, said Pat Hume was small in stature, but a colossus in Irish history, adding: She was the rock behind the man who rightly has been credited as the architect of our current peace.

In the course of that long and challenging journey towards the peace we enjoy today Pat was brave, courageous and uncompromising, yet she was always gentle and profound in respect for other people and their opinions.
Deprived of their preferred food source  the bananas, peanuts and other goodies brought in by tourists now kept away by the coronavirus  hungry monkeys on the resort island of Bali have taken to raiding villagers homes in their search for something tasty.

Villagers in Sangeh say the gray long-tailed macaques have been venturing out from a sanctuary about 500 meters (yards) away to hang out on their roofs and await the right time to swoop down and snatch a snack.

Worried that the sporadic sorties will escalate into an all-out monkey assault on the village, residents have been taking fruit, peanuts and other food to the Sangeh Monkey Forest to try to placate the primates.

We are afraid that the hungry monkeys will turn wild and vicious, villager Saskara Gustu Alit said.

About 600 of the macaques live in the forest sanctuary, swinging from the tall nutmeg trees and leaping about the famous Pura Bukit Sari temple, and are considered sacred.

In normal times the protected jungle area in the southeast of the Indonesian island is popular among local residents for wedding photos, as well as among international visitors. The relatively tame monkeys can be easily coaxed to sit on a shoulder or lap for a peanut or two.

Ordinarily, tourism is the main source of income for Balis 4 million residents, who welcomed more than 5 million foreign visitors annually before the pandemic.

The Sangeh Monkey Forest typically had about 6,000 visitors a month, but as the pandemic spread last year and international travel dropped off dramatically, that number dropped to about 500.

Since July, when Indonesia banned all foreign travelers to the island and shut the sanctuary to local residents as well, there has been nobody.

Not only has that meant nobody bringing in extra food for the monkeys, the sanctuary has also lost out on its admission fees and is running low on money to purchase food for them, said operations manager Made Mohon.

The donations from villagers have helped, but they are also feeling the economic pinch and are gradually giving less and less, he said.

This prolonged pandemic is beyond our expectations, Mohon said, Food for monkeys has become a problem.

Food costs run about 850,000 rupiah ($60) a day, Mohon said, for 200 kilograms (440 pounds) of cassava, the monkeys' staple food, and 10 kilograms (22 pounds) of bananas.

The macaque is an omnivore and can eat a variety of animals and plants found in the jungle, but those in the Sangeh Monkey Forest have had enough contact with humans over the years that they seem to prefer other things.

And theyre not afraid to take matters into their own hands, Alit said.

Frequently, monkeys wander into the village and sit on roofs, occasionally removing tiles and dropping them to the ground. When villagers put out daily religious offerings of food on their terraces, the monkeys jump down and make off with them.

A few days ago I attended a traditional ceremony at a temple near the Sangeh forest, Alit said. When I parked my car and took out two plastic bags containing food and flowers as offerings, two monkeys suddenly appeared and grabbed it all and ran into the forest very fast.

Normally, the monkeys spend all day interacting with visitors  stealing sunglasses and water bottles, pulling at clothes, jumping on shoulders  and Alit theorizes that more than just being hungry, theyre bored.

Thats why I have urged villagers here to come to the forest to play with the monkeys and offer them food, he said. I think they need to interact with humans as often as possible so that they do not go wild.

___

Karmini reported from Jakarta Associated Press writer David Rising in Bangkok contributed to this report.
The 28-year-old Fulbright semi-finalist didnt expect the response he got after tweeting a photo of his paltry meal as an Afghan refugee at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas. Hamed Ahmadi posted the picture  showing two small pieces of chicken, a few slices of fruit and bread  to prove to people that life as a refugee was neither glamorous nor coveted.

Instead, responses included taunts and demands that he be more grateful or go back to Afghanistan.

The point of that tweet was not ... to be complaining, to be very critical, Mr Ahmadi told The Independent. I was just describing a situation of Afghan refugees that are in the situation that they never really wanted to be in.

I had a pretty good job back in Kabul. I had a decent life. I had my family, he said, adding: I was forced to flee Afghanistan ... if I had more space [on Twitter], I would have added more explanation  because I wanted to say that this is the refugee life. And we need to be patient.

Further details about Mr Ahmadis own story would very likely silence any detractors or trolls claiming that Afghan refugees are only after a better life.

The journalist and scholar, who spent the past five years in Kabul with his parents and siblings, did not want to flee Afghanistan  and certainly didnt want to leave his family behind.

Hamed Ahmadi, front, joins other evacuees from Afghanistan after the Taliban took control back of the country (Hamed Ahmadi)

His brother died two months ago as a special ops fighter with the Afghan National Defence Forces combatting the Taliban. Another sister died last year of Covid. Still another sister, who is pregnant, is currently in hiding from the Taliban because she had been a member of the Afghan police force, he said.

Mr Ahmadis own social media presence as a blogger working with foreign NGOs, however, left him in peril as the Taliban retook control of his country.

I used to travel to different provinces of Afghanistan and interview people and cover day-to-day stories of Afghans at the grassroots level  and how they ... resolve their conflicts, he told The Independent. Basically, most of the stories were about how people approach conflicts and peace-building at the community level.

He added that he felt he needed to leave his home because he felt that I was in danger, because I had a very strong social presence. I had a very bold social media appearance when I was doing my job. I was going to these unsafe provinces back in Afghanistan and also unsafe villages.

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I had a lot of pictures doing jobs with Americans, with Germans, so I was kind of in danger  because you cannot trust the Taliban. They definitely claim that theyre not posing any threat to Afghans who worked with international NGOs and foreigners ... but we hear stories that theyre seeking reprisals and revenge, especially [against] journalists. That was an active threat for me. So I couldnt just simply sit and see whats going to happen to me.

Mr Ahmadi was helped out of the country by the American NGO hed worked with previously. He and other fellows waited three days to get allowed through the airport, then made it onto a US military plane. They went to Qatar, then Germany, then DC, then Texas.

Hes always dreamed of coming to the US and had repeatedly tried through impressive academic channels  but never wanted to first arrive like this.

I was so excited about coming to the United States as a student, he said. But now, trust me  Im not that excited ... to be in the United States because of this whole situation. Everything happened so fast, and I dont really feel like Im in my dream country.

That sense of surrealism and dashed dreams is compounded by multiple other factors. Hes worrying about family and future while grateful to be safe as he shares tiny meals with thousands of other refugees with inadequate toilet facilities and sleeping arrangements in makeshift military tents.

A spokesman for Fort Bliss told The Independent that the base was responsible only for infrastructure - providing the arms and back emergency facilities were built on - but did not keep lists of refugee names or numbers. He directed queries to federal agencies, with the State Department also declining to give specifics.

Due to the complicated nature of these evacuations and to protect the privacy and security of the arriving Afghans, we are not providing specific numbers at locations on arrival times/airports/carriers, housing locations, processing timelines, or onward destinations, a spokesperson said.

More than 100,000 Afghans have been helped out of the country and US military installations are currently housing an estimated 30,000, CBS reported earlier this week.

Mr Ahmadi told The Independent that he and others are giving interviews, personal histories and biometric information as US authorities try to clear them for longer stays in the country.

People are uncertain, he told The Independent. People are confused a little bit about the process. Theyre uncertain about their future. My friends are very educated people; they have worked with international organisations ... these are the top people that came here in this camp  but you can see the uncertainty when they talk about their future in the United States.

He said that fluent English speakers with advanced degrees from Afghanistan are struggling  let alone people who are not educated [and] just had the chance, they got lucky and came here. They have not worked with Americans or foreigners or any international NGOs before. They just got lucky and they speak zero English.

Everyone misses their stranded families back in Afghanistan, he said, while worrying nonstop.

I have mixed feelings sometimes, he said. I feel that sometimes I had the privilege of fleeing Kabul ... and then I feel guilty [about] leaving everyone behind who are really in danger.

His tweet about meals on base may have earned him attention, but food is pretty low on his list of worries, Mr Ahmadi said, as he re-evaluates his life view while still hoping for a better future.

My field was peace studies and conflict resolution, he told The Independent. Now that the government collapsed and the Taliban took over ... Im not hopeful about Afghanistans future, at least [over the next] 10 years.

He wants to get a job in America, continue his studies and build a new life  but his experience has left him seriously disillusioned when it comes to peace and conflict resolution.

I cannot see a point of where I should study that field again, he said.
Up to 100,000 Afghan refugees have been scattered around the world in the aftermath of the Taliban takeover, plunged into anxiety and fear and facing bureaucratic hurdles that could leave them stranded for years.

In the two weeks between the Taliban taking control of Afghanistan and the 31 August deadline for the US to complete the evacuation of both civilians and its soldiers, around 123,000 individuals were flown out. The US said its own aircraft had carried 79,000 people, including 6,000 Americans and more than 73,500 third-country nationals and Afghan civilians.

Yet campaigners say that while this mad-dash scramble may have saved huge numbers of lives, it has cast tens of thousands of individuals into uncertain futures.

Up to 20 countries, ranging from Albania to Uganda, have agreed to house some Afghans on a temporary basis while their documentation and legal status is assessed. Those working with refugees say there are reports of some people having no idea of their destination when they board a plane, and that some are still unsure even when they land.

Recently, a former four-star US marine general, James Hoss Cartwright, urged the international humanitarian community to focus immediately on establishing places where refugees can live when they move from the USs temporary staging locations. He said they may be there for a decade.

 Boris Johnson visits Afghanistan crisis centre

The hard thing is to get people focused on the longer-term refugee population. Theyre not in a place where they can stay, theyre not in a place where theyre going to get settled, he said at an event organised by the Atlantic Council in Washington DC.

The general, who served as vice chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and is a scholar at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, added: They are going to have to be in place for five to 10 years. Its going to take that long to sort out the refugee status.

In the drama of the USs final evacuation from Afghanistan, an act that ended a 20-year military occupation, much media attention has focused on the deaths of 13 US troops, and more than 100 Afghans, killed in a suicide bomb attack in the very final days. There has also been criticism of US president Joe Biden for leaving behind up to 200 American citizens and potentially tens of thousands of Afghans who had worked with the US or with other allied governments.

Indeed, already under pressure from Republicans, Mr Biden has often sought to emphasise the blocks he is putting in the way of ordinary Afghans coming to the US.

Planes taking off from Kabul are not flying directly to the United States, Mr Biden said last month. At these sites ... we are conducting thorough security screening for everyone who is not a US citizen or a lawful permanent resident.

There has been much less focus on the very basic question of what will happen now to the 100,000 or more Afghans who were flown out, either to the US or to third countries.

Robyn Barnard, an immigration expert at Human Rights First, told The Independent there was concern about having people processed outside of the US.

Were urging the government to not leave people in these countries for visa processing, because some of the processing times can stretch into many years, she said.

Rather, her organisation is urging Mr Biden allow refugees to enter the US on so-called parole, and to process their applications there.

Many of the people in these countries are pretty vulnerable and shouldnt be left to languish in other countries when they have support here, and theres a large community of Afghan Americans to support them, she said.

Kosovo is one of of three Balkan nations that has agreed to house refugees (AFP via Getty)

One of the countries that has accepted several hundred refugees, including a number of Afghan journalists, is Mexico, where one of the groups helping them is the International Rescue Committee (IRC).

Speaking from Mexico City, Raymundo Tamayo, the IRCs country director for Mexico, said his group was telling refugees they should expect to be there for anywhere between 12 and 18 months before they are in a position either to move on or to apply for residency in Mexico.

He said the people he spoke to were tired, and grateful to be there, but also concerned about friends and family still in Afghanistan. Mexico has a long history of welcoming evacuees and asylum seekers when conflict has hit the hardest, he said.

Last month, as the US flew its final evacuation mission, America, along with 98 other countries, said it was prepared to offer safe harbour to Afghans. So far, the list of nations that have actually taken people or given a firm commitment to provide visas numbers less than 20, and is made up of Albania, Australia, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Spain, the UK, the US, Canada, Uganda, Rwanda, Mexico, Germany, France, Iran, Pakistan, Spain and Tajikistan.

Some, such as Spain and France, have agreed to accept fewer than 100 families.

Britain has evacuated 8,500 Afghans, most of whom had worked with UK forces and have been resettled under the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (ARAP). The government says it plans to accept an additional 5,000 vulnerable Afghans in the next year, and 20,000 in the long term, under a separate programme that has not yet started.

Meanwhile, The Independent has launched a campaign urging the government to be more generous.

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The US is reportedly housing 20,000 Afghan evacuees in five states  Virginia, Wisconsin, New Mexico, New Jersey and Indiana  with another 40,000 overseas.

A number of countries, including Australia, Switzerland and Turkey, have made clear they do not want to accept thousands of Afghans. Some, including Austria, China and Russia, have said they will not accept any whatsoever.

The Soviet Union launched its own, bloody occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s. But Vladimir Putin said he would not open the countrys borders, and would not accept militants showing up here under cover of refugees.

In some of the countries where refugees have arrived, including Uganda, some locals have expressed concerns about the alleged threat presented by people fleeing decades of war. In the United States, Republicans have sought to weaponise the issue to attack Mr Biden.

The influential Fox News broadcaster Tucker Carlson, who some believe could run for the presidency in 2024, has claimed America is facing an invasion.

The US state department did not answer specific questions as to how long processing visas would take, or whether people were told where they were being flown to.

The Biden administration has demonstrated, in the face of significant challenges, its sacrosanct commitment to the thousands of brave Afghans who have stood side by side with the United States over the course of the past two decades, a spokesperson said in a statement, adding that it was escalating its processing of so-called SIV visas for those most at risk.

This week the state department admitted that the vast majority of Afghans who had worked for the US as interpreters or in other roles, and were eligible for such visas, were still in Kabul.

Rina Amiri, a former adviser to the late Richard Holbrooke, who was himself a special adviser to Barack Obama on Afghanistan and Pakistan, has been seeking to raise awareness of the plight of Afghans who are now stranded everywhere.

Mexico has agreed to take several hundred Afghans, including a number of journalists (Getty)

Ms Amiri, a senior fellow at New York Universitys Centre for International Cooperation, said friends had been calling her, asking how they could help. She said she advised them to start calling anyone in government or business or philanthropy who could help.

She said this entrepreneurial, grassroots effort had linked regional experts with people with enough spare money to charter a plane, as well as government officials.

One friend started calling people she knew and tried to find countries that would take people, she said. She had no luck with Greece, but Spain agreed to take 40 families.

Ms Amiri said many were leaving Afghanistan with nothing. She was hearing from people getting on planes not knowing where they were going, or even where they had landed.

A major challenge, she said, was to counter a simplistic perception in the west of Afghanistan being an utterly poor country. The truth, she said, is that it has a sizeable middle class, and those people fleeing with just a bag previously had homes, cell phones, televisions.

Of the effort to help those people, she said she was immensely moved by individuals and organisations and people who have just stepped up and mobilised because they are horrified by whats happening out there.

She added: Ive never seen anything like this anywhere. And it both breaks your faith in institutions, and restores your faith in humanity.
When Yousef's wife and their four children boarded a July 15 flight in San Diego to attend her brother's wedding in Afghanistan they were looking forward to a month of family gatherings. It was long overdue  the coronavirus pandemic prevented them from traveling earlier.

Their return ticket was Aug. 15, two days before their children's school year began in the San Diego suburb of El Cajon.

But the Afghan-American family found themselves dodging gunfire and trying to force their way into the crowds of thousands ringing the airport in Kabul after Afghanistan's government collapsed and the Taliban seized power.

Yousef's wife and children were among eight families from El Cajon who found themselves trapped after U.S. troops raced to evacuate Americans and allies and then left the country. Yousef asked that only his first name be used because he still has family in Afghanistan who could be at risk.

All but one of the families got out with the help of the Cajon Valley Union School District and Republican Rep. Darrell Issa, whose district includes El Cajon, a city with a large refugee population. The families had traveled on their own over the summer to see relatives and were not part of an organized trip.

Several of the families, accompanied by Issa and school officials, spoke to reporters Thursday for the first time since they returned, recounting their harrowing experience.

The parents described running with their kids as gunfire whizzed overhead. One father said he was beaten by the Taliban. They said they were blocked at Taliban checkpoints.

They said they are grateful to be back but their children have suffered nightmares, and they worry about the family that was unable to get out, along with countless others still stuck there, including distant relatives.

My kids are now safe at home right now thanks to God and all of you, Yousef said.

But he asked people not to forget about so many others, including U.S. citizens, green card holders and Afghans who are at risk for helping the American government. He held in his hand a folder that he said contained the documents of 30 people who qualified for a special immigrant visa and should be in the United States but are still in Afghanistan, desperate to escape.

President Joe Biden has said between 100 and 200 Americans were left behind when U.S. troops completed their withdrawal Aug. 31, many of them dual citizens. The State Department has given no estimate for the number of green card holders nor the number of Afghans who remain who helped the U.S. government during the 20-year war and were recipients of a special immigrant visa to come to the United States.

Issa said he believes the number to be much higher for U.S. citizens and the others. Many of the families he helped get back to California in the past week are green card holders. Some are U.S. citizens.

We're delighted to have these kids back in school and their parents united, but we also know that there's a lot more work to do," Issa said.

Yousef said he felt helpless being in California, thousands of miles away, fearing the life they had built would come to a halt and his wife and children would be trapped in the country ruled by the Taliban. He, his wife and children are all U.S. citizens. They came to the United States on a special immigrant visa after Yousef worked for the U.S. government in Afghanistan.

After they failed to get into the airport on Aug. 15, his wife and kids returned to their relative's home.

Yousef alerted his family from El Cajon that the U.S. Embassy in Kabul was advising people not to go to the airport because of threats.

Eight hours later, suicide bombers set off explosions at the airport, killing 13 U.S. troops and more than 170 others.

Yousef said Issa's team arranged a time for his family to go to the airport with an escort from U.S. authorities.

It was like a situation room," Yousef said of talking to Issa's team while navigating his family through the chaos from afar. I was sitting here talking to them. They were sending their locations and stuff like this."

His family returned home Friday. The first thing he did was take them to IHOP, their favorite restaurant.

He hopes more of those happy moments will overtake the traumatic memories his kids hold. His 7-year-old son, his youngest, has been talking about the violence.

They are talking about it, about the gunfire, and being scared of the Taliban, but we hope they forget all that" and return to their life as regular American kids, Yousef said.
A former Georgia prosecutor who handled the case of Ahmaud Arbery, a Black man who was gunned down while out jogging, was indicted on Thursday for using her position to shield the two accused men from being charged.

Former Brunswick judicial circuit district attorney Jackie Johnson was charged with misconduct on a felony count for violating her oath of office and hindering a law enforcement officer.

Ms Johnson was charged with showing favour and affection toward one of the accused in the investigation, who had worked in her office till 2019, reports said. She has also been indicted for interfering with police officers at the scene, by issuing orders against the arrest of the man who shot down Arbery.

Ms Johnsons indictment followed a probe by Georgias attorney general Chris Carr, after a video showing the accused chasing and killing Arbery and the delay in charging them sparked high-voltage protests nationwide.

The US Department of Justice investigated Arberys killing as a possible hate crime.

Greg and Travis McMichael, the accused father and son, both white, chased 25-year-old Arbery in their neighbourhood outside the coastal city of Bruncswick in February 2020 and shot him dead.

They were captured in a video by their neighbour William Roddie Bryan, who joined the chase in shooting Arbery with a shotgun at close range.

The McMichaels claimed Arbery was a burglar and shot him for allegedly attacking Travis.

The two were not charged with any crime and were free for more than two months, until cellphone video of the shooting surfaced online, prompting severe public backlash against what was seen as a racial hate crime.

Stating that the case was not closed after Ms Johnsons indictment, Mr Carr said: While an indictment was returned today, our file in not closed, and we will continue to investigate in order to pursue justice.

Arberys family took to Facebook to laud the indictment. Wanda Cooper Jones, Arberys mother said: Former DA Jackie Johnson... Indicted!!! JusticeForMyBaby!!!!

Cooper Joness attorney Lee Merritt said prosecutors must be held accountable when they interfere with investigations in order to protect friends and law enforcement.

The case was handed to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation by the states governor Brian Kemp.

Prosecutors said an unarmed Arbery was jogging in the neighbourhood and was shot by Mr Travis. No evidence suggests Arbery committed a crime, they added.

The McMichaels and Bryan were charged with murder and other crimes in May 2020 and now face a trial this fall.

Soon after the shooting, Greg McMichael, who worked as an investigator in Johnsons office till 2019, called the prosecutor and left her a voice message, according to the evidence in pretrial hearings.

Jackie, this is Greg. Could you please call me as soon as you possibly can? My son and I have been involved in a shooting and I need some advice right away, according to the call recording in the public case file. Greg McMichaels phone records, however, do not show her calling him back.

Ms Johnson previously maintained she did not do anything wrong and immediately recused herself from the case due to the involvement of a former employee.

She went on to fight her re-election for Brunswick district attorney, but lost to independent candidate Keith Higgins. She blamed her loss on the controversy surrounding Arberys killing. Shortly after, she said people will understand that her office did what it had to under the circumstances.

(With additional inputs from agencies)
U.S. climate envoy John Kerry came to China this week seeking to press the worlds largest emitter of greenhouse gases to do more in the global effort to hold down the rise in temperature.

What he got was renewed demands for Washington to change its stance toward China on a host of other issues from human rights to Taiwan the self-governing island that China claims.

The back and forth underscores a divide between the worlds two largest emitters that is complicating chances for a breakthrough agreement on carbon reduction goals at COP26, a United Nations conference to be held in Glasgow, Scotland, in November.

Both sides agree that climate is an area of joint interest, but while the U.S. says they should cooperate despite their differences, China says the U.S. cannot expect cooperation while also attacking it on other issues.

The U.S. side wants the climate change cooperation to be an oasis of China-U.S. relations, Foreign Minister Wang Yi told Kerry. However, if the oasis is all surrounded by deserts, then sooner or later, the oasis will be desertified.

Kerry told reporters in a conference call at the end of his visit that his mandate is limited to climate, but that he would convey the Chinese concerns to President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

The U.S. envoy, himself a former secretary of state, discussed climate with Chinese counterpart Xie Zhenhua in the city of Tianjin, about 100 kilometers (65 miles) southeast of Beijing. But Chinese state media focused on his three video meetings with Wang and two other senior officials, reinforcing China's objections to America's approach to the overall relationship.

They were quite pointed in talking about the difficulties that it presents, Kerry said. They wanted the message to be heard. And it was, that there's great concern in China about this.

Chinese officials intended to make clear to the Biden administration that it is impossible to gain Chinas cooperation on climate change while maintaining anti-China stances on major issues, said Shi Yinhong, professor of international relations at Beijings Renmin University.

Kerry also held video meetings with top foreign policy adviser Yang Jiechi and Senior Vice-Premier Han Zheng, one of seven members of the ruling Communist Partys all-powerful Politburo Standing Committee and head of a committee drawing up a plan to reach China's emission reduction targets.

China positioned itself as a leader on promoting renewable energy and reducing carbon emissions after former President Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from the 2015 Paris climate accord. China is a world leader in producing solar panels and wind turbines for renewable energy.

However, its climate policies have come under increasing scrutiny following Bidens decision to rejoin the Paris agreement and set a goal of cutting up to 52% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 2030  double the previous target  vaulting the U.S. into the top tier of countries on climate ambition

The sides have identified the climate crisis as an area for possible cooperation, but this weeks meetings offered little indication of progress.

Kerry told Han that there was no way for the world to solve the climate crisis without Chinas full engagement and commitment.

China is the worlds largest emitter, producing an estimated 27% of global greenhouse gases, followed by the United States. China obtains roughly 60% of its power from coal and is opening more coal-fired power plants, while also committing to reducing its use of the fossil fuel.

The official Xinhua News Agency quoted Han as telling Kerry that China had made huge efforts in tackling climate change and achieved remarkable results.

China hopes the American side will create the appropriate circumstances for jointly tackling climate change based on the spirit of the conversations between their leaders, Xinhua quoted Han as saying.

China has set a target of generating 20% of its total energy needs from renewables by 2025, reducing total emissions starting from 2030 and becoming carbon-neutral by 2060.

Kerry is pushing China and other countries for more ambitious efforts to keep rising temperatures to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) over pre-industrial levels.

He said that Chinese officials had raised concerns about U.S. actions they see as harmful to overall emissions-reduction efforts, notably U.S. sanctions on solar panels that the Biden administration believes China produces with the forced labor of ethnic minorities.

Those matters were up to Biden and Blinken, Kerry said, but I will certainly pass on to them  the full nature of the message that I received from these three leaders.

___

Moritsugu, The Associated Press news director for Greater China, has covered Asia for more than 15 years.
A friend described Michele Thiesen as gentle, a pacifist. Her crimes were nonviolent. But under a California law instated during the tough-on-crime 1990s, she served nearly three decades in prison before being released last week.

Theisen landed behind bars for 27 years after stealing a VCR.

In the middle of the night in 1994, court documents say, she broke into a home through a kitchen window. She thought the place was empty, but it wasnt, and she ran  VCR in tow  when she heard someone call out from upstairs.

Her criminal history also includes petty theft, drug charges, prostitution, and another burglary arrest.

Thiesen, who is Canadian but was arrested in California, was sentenced under the states Three Strikes law, which sharply increases sentencing requirements for defendants who have been convicted of a prior serious or violent felony. When Thiesen was sentenced for the burglary, the law mandated she receive at least 25 years to life to account for her previous crimes. She was sentenced to 40 years to life.

Milena Blake, Thiesens lawyer and a staff attorney at the Three Strikes Project at Stanford Universitys law school, said Thiesens story is a classic example of someone caught up in the law, which is not unique to California but is particularly firm in the state.

She had an alcoholic father who suddenly died when she was 17, and she turned to drugs to sort of self-medicate, and that was that, Ms Blake said. Once youre hooked on heroin, its an expensive drug to support.

Though the law was amended in 2012 to soften it somewhat, Ms Blake said Thiesen would still face at least 25 years to life in prison if she had been arrested for the same crime this year.

A decade after the laws enactment, Californias Legislative Analysts Office reported that people sentenced under the Three Strikes law made up more than a quarter of Californias prison population. As of 2019, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation found that more than 40,000 people in custody had been sentenced under Three Strikes.

In the laws original iteration, the third strike could be any felony. Ms Blake said this stipulation is how many three strikers ended up saddled with lengthy prison sentences.

There are people who would possess less than a sugar packet of drugs and be sentenced to 25 to life, she said.

Ms Blake said some of the other third strikes shes seen include stealing three bottles of shampoo from a Ralphs supermarket, stealing beer steins from a storage unit, taking a bike from an open garage, possession of meth residue, stealing a slice of pizza, and walking out of Costco with a bottle of stolen liquor. All faced at least 25 years to life, and many faced 40.

The states Three Strikes Law was adopted in 1994 after high-profile crimes drew public outrage, including the murder and kidnapping of 12-year-old Polly Klaas the year before. Richard Allen Davis, who snatched Klaas from a slumber party, had a long criminal history that included kidnapping and assault convictions. The case garnered calls for a more robust system to stop repeat offenders.

Ms Blake said the law was born out of a feeling that people needed to learn their lesson or risk having punishments ratcheted up. She called it draconian.

The problem is that it doesnt work, MS Blake said. It doesnt discourage crime  its just expensive. People are in prison until theyre old, and old prisoners are expensive.

The US Supreme Court upheld the law in 2003 in a 5-4 decision, arguing that it does not necessarily lead to unconstitutionally cruel and unusual punishment.

In the majority opinion, Justice Sandra Day OConnor wrote that the case at hand reflected a rational legislative judgment, entitled to deference, that offenders who have committed serious or violent felonies and who continue to commit felonies must be incapacitated.

Former California Secretary of State Bill Jones, one of the laws main authors, applauded the court for its decision.

Our goal in California is to have no more victims, Mr Jones said in a statement to the Associated Press after the ruling. The courts decision today ensures that repeat murderers, robbers, rapists and child molesters will be off our streets as soon as they commit an additional felony.

In prison, Ms Blake says, Thiesen committed her time to self-improvement. She took advantage of numerous educational activities, addiction services, ethics trainings, and more. Guards wrote letters of support for her release.

I read a lot of prison files, and its pretty unusual to have a guard letter of recommendation for getting out, Ms Blake said. Its their job to keep her in and, theyre like, She would be fine to come out, Thats pretty remarkable.

Jennifer Leahy, a friend of Thiesens from prison, said Thiesen was like a big sister to her. Leahy said Thiesen was focused on creating a safe place for people to exist and committed to talking through problems.

She always finds the solution thats going to cause the least amount of harm or disruption, Leahy said. Thats her pathway, to walk softly in the world. Shes gentle in nature and in spirit.

Leahy, who is now Fresno States programme director for Project Rebound, a reentry programme for the formerly incarcerated, said shes seen a lot during and since her time in prison, but nothing floors her as much as what happened to Theisen.

The womans been incarcerated for how long? And she has never even been in a fight, Leahy said. Its just so striking and startling and shocking that they would put, I mean, the millions of dollars that have been wasted incarcerating Michele.

In 2019, Thiesen got a recommendation for resentencing from Californias secretary of corrections, which Blake said fewer than 100 people had received at the time. To be granted this recommendation, the secretary had to conclude that Theisen had changed as a person and would be a positive asset to the community, according to the penal code.

A judge ruled last year to resentence Theisen to 25 years to life, making her immediately eligible for parole because shed already served 25 years.

After a concerted effort to show the parole board how much Thiesen had changed, she was deemed eligible for release, though it wasnt clear whether she would be deported to Canada.

Blake and Leahy both waited outside the correctional centre last Tuesday, hoping to pick Theisen up, but she was taken into ICE custody. Blake said the wait time until Theisen can return to her siblings in Canada is expected to be about 90 days, though theyre hoping to work with the Canadian consulate to speed the process.

Leahy waved to her longtime friend as she watched her climb in the ICE van. She plans to visit her in Canada as soon as possible.

Blake said Theisen isnt worried about the three-month wait. Shes been waiting decades for this moment, after all.

The Washington Post
Power could be restored to most of the New Orleans area by next week, but thousands of residents who have been stranded at home will likely continue to endure temperatures reaching 100 degrees Fahrenheit or higher over the next several days.

Electricity and gas provider Entergy, which powers the city and surrounding Louisiana parishes, has pledged to restore service to the area by 8 September  10 days after Hurricane Ida left the region in the dark and damaged thousands of homes. But officials have stressed that the timeline could change.

Roughly 950,000 homes and businesses powered by Entergy were impacted, and more than 1 million people across the state in parts of Mississippi were left without power.

Initial damage assessments this week revealed more than 14,000 electrical poles were damaged or destroyed, more than 2,200 transformers were damaged, and 155 transmission structures were destroyed, according to Entergy subsidiaries Entergy Louisiana and Entergy New Orleans

More than 700,000 Entergy users are powerless as of 3 September, according to a map from PowerOutage.us, which aggregates outage reports across the US. More than 850,000 people are without power across the state, according to the map.

All of southeast Louisiana is under a heat advisory, with heat index values forecast up to 105 degrees Fahrenheit (40C), according to the National Weather Service.

Five days after the storm made landfall, crews restored power to roughly 225,000 customers, according to Entergy.

Power flickered on in parts of the French Quarter this week, and power started to return to other parts of the city in neighbourhoods near critical services like hospitals and care centres.

New Orleanss Central Business District is expected to be powered on 3 September, according to Entergy. The suburbs of Metairie and Kenner in neighbouring Jefferson Parish are expected to be back online on 7 September, with power restored to the rest of the metro area  including the West Bank for both Orleans and Jefferson parishes  on 8 September.

Power could return to the Baton Rouge metro area by 4 September, followed by Gonzalez, parts of Ascension Parish, Denham Springs and Chalmette and parts of St Bernard and Plaquemines parishes on 7 September.

The timeline noticeably does not include some of the hardest-hit parts of the state, including coastal Grand Isle, where Ida brought violent floods and brute-force winds of up to 150mph or higher, as well as LaPlace, where fast-moving water trapped residents in their homes and attics.

Lower-lying area in St John the Baptist and St Charles parishes will require more of a rebuild than repairs, Entergy officials said on Friday.

Rural areas outside the metro area face an uncertain length of time in the dark.

We understand the extreme difficulty of living without power, and hope that these estimated times of restoration can help customers better plan and prepare for the coming days, and for those in the hardest-hit areas, weeks ahead, Entergys Rod West said in a statement.

Entergy is under renewed scrutiny in Idas wake, exposing lingering issues that residents and regulators have criticised in the aftermath of other storms, including lack of upgrades to strengthen its power grid and lines for more severe storms in the midst of the growing climate crisis, and its reluctance to move to renewable sources.

Members of the New Orleans City Council, which regulates Entergy New Orleans, have vowed to investigate power failures following Idas aftermath.

Entergy previously said its controversial gas-fired power plant in New Orleans East  built in the face of opposition from members of the community, environmental concerns and the objection of some members of city government  would be vital for circumstances exactly like the destruction seen during Ida, when the transmission system that feeds the region with power generated from outside the city is offline. That didnt happen.

The utility did generate a limited amount of power from that facility this week, and it connected the area to a national grid through a line in Slidell, roughly 30 miles away from the city across Lake Pontchartrain.
A British member of an Isis cell that was nicknamed the Beatles and was notorious for its brutal kidnapping and beheading of hostages, has pleaded guilty in an American court.

Alexanda Kotey, 37, pleaded guilty to federal charges of hostage-taking resulting in death, conspiracy to commit murder against US citizens abroad, and conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists.

Reports said that family members of many of the victims killed by the cell of British jihadis  nicknamed the Beatles because of their accents  were in court to watch the proceedings in Alexandria, Virginia.

Alexanda Kotey, an avowed member of Isis, pleaded guilty today to all charges that were brought against him in the United States for his participation in a horrific hostage-taking scheme that resulted in the deaths of four US citizens, as well as the deaths of British and Japanese nationals, in Syria, acting United States attorney and one of the lead prosecutors on the case, Raj Parekh, said in a statement. He has agreed to spend the rest of his life in prison.

Mr Parekh added: The four American victims in this case  James Wright Foley, Kayla Jean Mueller, Steven Joel Sotloff and Peter Edward Kassig  were journalists and humanitarian aid workers, pillars of courage and kindness on the front lines of a perilous conflict.

 Isis 'Beatles' member El Shafee Elsheikh on group's name: 'I don't think John Lennon would like it much'

They risked their lives to shine a light on the darkest corners of the globe and to help others most in need. The values that they personified to the very end are the antithesis of those embodied by the terrorist organisation that murdered them.

Kotey and fellow alleged Beatle El Shafee Elsheikh initially pleaded not guilty at a hearing last October. But in a move that indicated the British-born extremist had done a plea deal with prosecutors, he pleaded guilty to each of the charges levelled at him.

The New York Times reported that as family members of four of the cells victims sat in silence in the federal court, which has been frequently used to try terror and espionage cases, Kotey spoke without apparent emotion as he detailed his crimes.

He said he had always known that the hostages would be killed if the US government did not meet their ransom demands, which he emailed to their families. If they did not meet those demands, it would ultimately result in either indefinite detention of those foreign captives or their execution.

Reports said that as part of the plea deal, Kotey must meet with the family members of the murdered hostages if they wish to talk to him. After he has served 15 years in the US, the UK will be allowed to try him.

Britain has accused the cell of being involved in the deaths of several other hostages, including Alan Henning, a British taxi driver who was delivering aid, and Scottish aid worker David Haines, as well as two Japanese nationals.

The Washington Post reported that Kotey pleaded guilty to charges including hostage-taking resulting in the deaths of four Americans. and conspiring to support the terrorists who killed American, British and Japanese hostages.

In a statement after the hearing, Diane Foley, mother of James, said the plea had arrived on the anniversary of Sotloffs death.

She said she was grateful to all involved in apprehending Alexanda Kotey, investigating his brutal crimes against humanity, and making the strong case for his direct culpability in the death of her son as well as the deaths of Mueller, Sotloff, Kassig and and countless other innocents.

She added: This accountability is essential  if our country wishes to ever deter hostage taking. I would like to use this moment to beseech our government to prioritise the return of all US nationals kidnapped or wrongfully detained abroad. Attacks on journalists are at an all-time high and our US hostage crisis is a silent epidemic, which few are aware of.

Kotey was captured in Syria by a Kurdish-backed militia in 2018, along with Elsheikh, reportedly as they sought to escape to Turkey as western and Kurdish forces confronted Isis and started to retake land that the extremists had taken in Syria and Iraq to establish a so-called caliphate.

Another member of the cell  Mohammed Emwazi, better known as Jihadi John  was killed in an airstrike in 2015 in Syria.

The fourth member of the group, Aine Davis, has been held in Turkey on terrorism charges.
Here are the APs latest coverage plans, top stories and promotable content. All times EDT. For up-to-the minute information on APs coverage, visit Coverage Plan at https://newsroom.ap.org.



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VIRUS OUTBREAK-IDAHO HOSPITALS  Intubated COVID-19 patients fill the intensive care unit of St. Lukes Hospital in Boise Idaho, where the governor this week mobilized the National Guard to help overwhelmed medical centers and authorities warned that people seeking help may soon be turned away because theres simply no room. Even relatives of people who have died during the pandemic are sometimes reluctant to talk because COVID-19 and the efforts to fight it are so polarizing in this deeply conservative state. By Rebecca Boone. SENT: 1,130 words, photos.

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TOP STORIES

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TROPICAL WEATHER-ATLANTIC  The cleanup and mourning continues as the Northeast U.S. recovers from record-breaking rainfall from the remnants of Hurricane Ida At least 46 people in five states died as storm water cascaded into peoples homes and engulfed automobiles, overwhelming urban drainage systems never meant to handle so much rain in such a short time. UPCOMING: 460 words, photos, videos by 6 a.m. With IDA-VIGNETTES  Ida: Narrow escapes, deadly delays and a husbands sacrifice.

HURRICANE IDA  Louisiana officials launched an investigation into the deaths of four nursing home residents who had been evacuated to a warehouse ahead of Hurricane Ida, as state residents struggling in the wake of the storm sought financial relief and other help amid small signs of recovery. By Rebecca Santana, Melinda Deslatte and Janet McConnaughey. SENT: 750 words, photos, videos. Also see PHILANTHROPY-HURRICANE-IDA and HURRICANE-IDA-ENVIRONMENTAL-HAZARDS below.

HURRICANE IDA-BIDEN  President Joe Biden is calling for greater public resolve to confront climate change and help the nation deal with the fierce storms, flooding and wildfires that have beset the country. The president is making a sojourn to Louisiana to get a firsthand look at the devastating impact of Hurricane Ida. By Josh Boak and Darlene Superville. SENT: 890 words, photos. UPCOMING: 990 words after 1:10 p.m. arrival in Louisiana.

NEW-ZEALAND-SUPERMARKET-TERROR-ATTACK  New Zealand authorities say they shot and killed a violent extremist after he entered a supermarket and stabbed and injured six shoppers. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern described the incident as a terror attack. She said the man was a Sri Lankan national who was inspired by the Islamic State group. She said he was well known to the nations security agencies and was being monitored around the clock. By Nick Perry. SENT: 390 words, photos.

VIRUS OUTBREAK  The start of a new school year in many northern hemisphere nations comes as the highly infectious delta variant drives a new surge in coronavirus cases  especially among children, who are the least likely age group to have been vaccinated. By Jill Lawless. SENT: 1,070 words, photos.

SEPT 11-A DIFFERENT MEDIA  Before social media and with online news in its infancy, the story of Sept. 11 terrorist attacks unfolded primarily on television. The news media has changed in the ensuing 20 years, and some experts believe the same story would feel even more chaotic and terrifying if it broke today. By Media Writer David Bauder. SENT: 2,080 words, photos. An abridged version of 1,180 words is also available. Also see SEPT. 11-A LIFE CHANGED below.

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WHAT WE'RE TALKING ABOUT

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YANKEES-STERLING FLOOD  Spanish broadcaster pulls Yankees announcer Sterling from flooding car. SENT: 370 words, photo.

CHINA-TV-CRACKDOWN  China bans men it sees as not masculine enough from TV. SENT: 400 words, photos.

DALLAS SCHOOLS-DATA BREACH  Breach exposed Dallas student, parent, teacher personal data. SENT: 310 words.

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MORE ON THE VIRUS OUTBREAK

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VIRUS OUTBREAK-AFRICA-YOUTHS  Young people across Africa are battling an economic downturn caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. SENT: 850 words, photos. With VIRUS-OUTBREAK-THE-LATEST.

VIRUS OUTBREAK-FLORIDA-SCHOOL MASKS  Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has appealed a judges ruling that the governor exceeded his authority by ordering school boards not to impose strict mask requirements on students to combat the spread of the coronavirus. SENT: 450 words, photo.

VIRUS-OUTBREAK-AUSTRALIA  Britain is rushing 4 million Pfizer doses to Australia, where authorities are scrambling to bolster supplies of that COVID-19 vaccine and protect the population against a rapidly spreading outbreak of the delta variant. SENT: 500 words, photo.

VIRUS OUTBREAK-NORTH KOREA  North Korea says leader leader Kim Jong Un has ordered officials to wage tougher anti-coronavirus campaigns with our style epidemic prevention system." SENT: 530 words, photo.



WASHINGTON

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ABORTION-POLITICS  Republicans, wary of political backlash, werent nearly as emphatic as Democrats after most abortions were banned in Texas. SENT: 1,040 words, photos. With ABORTION-FLORIDA  Florida governor might support abortion ban like Texas law.

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NATIONAL

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SEPT. 11-A LIFE CHANGED  Twenty years ago, Jack Grandcolas' life changed when his pregnant wife and 43 others were killed when al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked United Flight 93 and crashed it into a Pennsylvania field. SENT: 860 words, photos, video.

WESTERN WILDFIRES  Fire crews took advantage of decreasing winds to battle a California wildfire near popular Lake Tahoe and were even able to allow some people back to their homes but dry weather and a weekend warming trend meant the battle was far from over. SENT: 610 words, photos.

WESTERN WILDFIRES-PRICE GOUGING  As fearful residents packed up belongings and fled a raging wildfire burning toward Lake Tahoe's California-Nevada border, some encountered an unexpected obstacle: scattered incidents of price gouging. SENT: 930 words, photos.

PHILANTHROPY-HURRICANE-IDA  Following Hurricane Ida, mutual aid networks sprang into action to supplement the more established relief services from federal and local governments. By Business Writers Haleluya Hadero and Glenn Gamboa. SENT: 1,180 words, photos.

ELECTION-SECURITY-CALIFORNIA-RECALL  A group of election security experts call for a rigorous audit of the upcoming recall election for Californias governor after copies of systems used to run elections across the country were released publicly. SENT: 1,060 words, photos.

HURRICANE-IDA-ENVIRONMENTAL-HAZARDS  Federal and state agencies say they are responding to reports of oil and chemical spills resulting from Hurricane Ida following the publication of aerial photos by The Associated Press. SENT: 810 words, photos.

AMERICAN HOSTAGES-BEHEADINGS  A British national admitted in a federal courtroom near Washington, D.C., that he played a leadership role in an Islamic State scheme to torture, hold for ransom and eventually behead American hostages. SENT: 740 words, photos.

DEFROCKED CARDINAL-CHARGED  Defrocked Cardinal Theodore McCarrick is scheduled to be arraigned on charges that he sexually assaulted a teenage boy during a wedding reception in Massachusetts in the 1970s. SENT: 480 words, photo.

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INTERNATIONAL

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JAPAN-POLITICS  Amid growing criticism of his handling of the pandemic, Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga says he wont run for the leadership of the governing party later this month, paving the way for a new Japanese leader after just a year in office. SENT: 630 words, photos.

AFGHANISTAN-TALIBAN-MEDIA  Afghanistans most popular private television network has voluntarily replaced its risque Turkish soap operas and music shows with tamer programs tailored to the countrys new Taliban rulers. SENT: 1,060 words, photos. With AFGHANISTAN-IMMIGRANT-FAMILIES  California families relay harrowing escape from Afghanistan; AFGHANISTAN-THE LATEST.

EL SALVADOR-AFTER THE DELUGE  The president of El Salvador's response to the 2020 Atlantic hurricane season was marred by politics, disrespect for the rule of law and a lack of understanding of complex problems. SENT: 2,290 words, photos, video.

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BUSINESS/ECONOMY

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ECONOMY-JOBS REPORT  A stretch of robust hiring over the past few months may have slowed in August at a time when the delta variants spread has discouraged some Americans from flying, shopping and eating out. By Economics Writer Christopher Rugaber. SENT: 700 words, photo. UPCOMING: 130 words after 8:30 a.m. release, then expanded.

COLLECTIBLE FRENZY  Gamers and hobbyists say there's been a breakdown in the collectibles community, as a growing number of collectors see only dollar signs instead of seeing the joy and nostalgia that these items brought them over the years. By Business Writer Ken Sweet. SENT: 1,600 words, photos. An abridged version of 880 words is also available.

FINANCIAL-MARKETS  Asian stock markets rose as investors awaited U.S. hiring data some appear to hope will be weak enough to persuade the Federal Reserve to postpone winding down economic stimulus. By Business Writer Joe McDonald. SENT: 400 words, photos.

APPLE-APP STORE CHANGES-EXPLAINER  Apple has recently eased some longstanding restrictions that helped make its App Store into a big moneymaker for the company. By Technology Writers Michael Liedtke and Matt OBrien. SENT: 700 words, photo.

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SPORTS

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WEEKEND PREVIEW  No team has lost its opening game and reached the Bowl Championship Series title game of the College Football Playoff. By College Football Writer Ralph D. Russo. SENT: 750 words, photos.

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A McDonalds restaurant in the US is resorting to hiring children as fast-food companies across the country face staffing shortages.

The branch in Medford, Oregon, put up a banner outside the restaurants that reads: Now hiring 14 & 15 year olds.

Store operator Heather Coleman told Insider the move was a first in her familys 40-year history of operating McDonalds franchises.

She said: There are always staffing issues, but this is unheard of.

Opening the door to 14- and 15- year olds had brought in about 25 new applications in two weeks, she said.

The young workers have been a blessing in disguise, Coleman said. They have the drive and work ethic. They get the technology. They catch on really quickly.

In the US, the minimum age for working in non-agricultural sectors is 14 but laws can vary by state.

According to Oregons labour department, children aged 14 and 15 cannot work school hours and are limited to three hours on any school day.

It comes as employers in the US struggle to fill jobs to meet strengthened consumer demand, posting a record-high number of openings.

A growing number of companies have loosened restrictions on hiring out of desperation. Drug store chain CVS announced earlier in August it would no longer require a minimum high school degree to fill entry-level spots at its stores.

Meanwhile, Amazon has stopped testing job seekers for marijuana.

Hiring younger workers could be a smart strategy to tackle the staffing crisis. Its really tough times for staffing, why wouldnt you try to figure out how to hire people? Kalinowski Equity founder Mark Kalinowski told Insider. Over time well get back to normal.
Bogus reports, Shrek memes and porn have become the instruments of a coordinated attack for pro-choice social media users to thwart a Texas pro-life whistleblower website that has been soliciting information on people seeking abortions.

Pro-choice TikTokers and Reddit users have been bombarding a digital tip-line made by anti-abortion group Texas Right to Life, after the state passed an extreme law restricting access to abortions after six weeks of pregnancy and fining those found to have done so.

The Texas Right to Life website reads: Any Texan can bring a lawsuit against an abortionist or someone aiding and abetting an abortion after six weeks. And those proved to be violating the law can be fined a minimum of $10,000.

The Guardian reported that even though the website was launched a month ago, TikTokers and Reddit users started sending false reports to them only when the bill was enacted by the state.

In fact, one TikTok user said he submitted 742 fake reports claiming the states governor Greg Abbott got illegal abortions. Encouraging others to crash the website, he said: It would be a shame if TikTok crashed the ProLifeWhistleBlower website.

Another user said: Wouldnt it be so awful if we sent in a bunch of fake tips and crashed the site? Like, Greg Abbotts b**t stinks.

Several others sent Shrek memes to the website and others claimed to have sent porn.

Two methods to fill the website with bogus tips were created by a hacktivist who goes by the name Sean Black.

Mr Black, whose handle on TikTok is @black_madness21, created a Python script and an iOS shortcut for users to send multiple reports in a day. He calls himself a regular college student from North Carolina.

The script uploaded about 300 entries before the site blocked his IP address, Mr Black said in a TikTok video.

He said: But then I started thinking, What if I made this a bit easier for everybody. So he created iOS shortcut users of Apple devices can download that automatically fills in the sites form, he said. It picks a random Texas city, county and zip code and fills in and submits the form.

On Twitter, thousands welcomed Mr Blacks contribution. Gotta love the kid, said one user.

The website, however, has since seemingly removed the field that pro-choice users have been using to attach and upload media files.

Nancy Cardenas Pena, a director for the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Justice in Texas, said she was blocked by the Texas Right to Life group after she tweeted about it.

On Thursday, US president Joe Biden lashed out at the Supreme Courts decision to not block the law. He also directed federal agencies to do what they can to insulate women and providers from the impact.
Turn on your television.

Those words were repeated in millions of homes on Sept. 11, 2001. Friends and relatives took to the telephone: Something awful was happening. You have to see.

Before social media and with online news in its infancy, the story of the day when suicide terrorists killed 2,996 people unfolded primarily on television. Even some people inside New Yorks World Trade Center made the phone call. They felt a shudder, could smell smoke. Could someone watch the news and find out what was happening?

Most Americans were guided through the unimaginable by one of three men: Tom Brokaw of NBC News, Peter Jennings of ABC and Dan Rather of CBS.

They were the closest thing that America had to national leaders on 9/11, says Garrett Graff, author of The Only Plane in the Sky, an oral history of the attack. They were the moral authority for the country on that first day, fulfilling a very historical role of basically counseling the country through this tragedy at a moment its political leadership was largely silent and largely absent from the conversation.

On that day, when America faced the worst of humanity, it had three newsmen at the peak of their powers.

Brokaw, Rather and Jennings were the kings of broadcast news on Sept. 11, 2001. Each had anchored his networks evening newscasts for roughly two decades at that point. Each had extensive reporting experience before that.

The three of us were known because we had taken the country through other catastrophes and big events, Brokaw recalled this summer. The country didnt have to, if you will, dial around to see who knew what.

Each man was in New York that morning and rushed to their respective studios within an hour of the first plane hitting the World Trade Center at 8:46 a.m.

It was clear that it was an attack on America, says Marcy McGinnis, who was in charge of breaking news at CBS that day. You want the most experienced person in that chair because they bring so much.

Its hard to convey the confusion and anxiety they stepped into. The unbelievable was happening.

The country needed some sort of stability, some sort of ground, says David Westin, ABC News president at the time. Where are we? Whats going on? How bad can this get? It needed some sense of theres some things we do know and some things we dont know. But this is how we go forward from here.'

Those are usually duties handled by politicians who take to the airwaves at the first sign of a wildfire, hurricane, pandemic or some other disaster. Yet government leaders, including President George W. Bush, were kept out of sight for much of the day until it was clear the attack was over.

Each anchor exhibited particular strengths that day.

Brokaw, author of the just-published The Greatest Generation, about those who fought World War II, was instantly able to put the event into context: We were witnessing history, he explained, and not just news.

He called it a declaration of war on the United States and said day-to-day life had changed forever. Looking back, Brokaw says it was his primary job to give viewers more than they could see for themselves onscreen.

Throughout my career, I was constantly trying to think, Whats the big picture here? he says. I think that was especially true that day.

Rather would tap his foot on the brakes, reminding those watching to distinguish between fact and speculation. He told viewers that the word of the day is steady, steady.

Emotions and tensions were high that day, Rather told The Associated Press recently. In order to cut through the noise, to help calm the panic, you have to be clear, concise and transparent. People will know exactly where they stand and can assess for themselves.

Surprisingly few false reports slipped through in those early hours, most prominently that a car bomb had exploded at the State Department in Washington. One group falsely claimed responsibility for the attack.

Jennings was the consummate anchorman. He skillfully weaved all of the elements  eyewitness accounts, expert analysis, fast-breaking bulletins and what viewers saw with their own eyes  into a compelling narrative.

Thats what he was born to do, says Kayce Freed Jennings, widow of the ABC anchorman, who died of lung cancer in August 2005. He was in a zone. He was a great communicator and, perhaps, great communication was the most important thing he could offer that day.

Each of the anchors, trained in the old school, kept emotions in check. The exception was Jennings, whose eyes were moist when the camera returned to him following a report by ABCs Lisa Stark.

He revealed that he had just checked in with his children, who were deeply stressed. So if youre a parent and youve got a kid in some other part of the country, call em up, he advised.

At first, talk of casualties was kept at a minimum. No one knew.

That changed when the second tower imploded, still the mornings most breathtaking moment. The anchors prepared viewers for the worst. The loss of life is going to be high, Rather said.

Its going to be horrendous, Brokaw told viewers. The damage is beyond what we can say.

Were all human, Brokaw said this summer, even those of us who are journalists who spend our lives trying to put things into context and add to the viewers understanding. We have to be both empathetic and help the viewer through what they are seeing.

That night, after more than a dozen hours on the air, Brokaw returned to an empty apartment, his wife and family out of town and unable to get back. He poured himself a drink and took a phone call with the news that a family friend had died, unrelated to the attacks.

For 40 minutes, he sat on the edge of his bed and cried.

Brokaw stepped down from NBC Nightly News after the 2004 election. Now 81 and ailing, he keeps busy writing books but seldom appears on television. Rather left CBS News after the fallout from a 2004 story about Bushs National Guard service. Now 89, hes an energetic tweeter about politics and the media.

Theres one other thing the men appeared to have in common.

Freed Jennings says she doesnt believe Jennings ever went back to look at tapes of his performance that day. That wasnt his way, she says. Brokaw says he hasnt, mostly because hes afraid hed spot a mistake that would eat at him. Rather hasnt either, and his reason is simplest.

Living through the day once was enough.

___

David Bauder covers media for The Associated Press. Follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/dbauder
President Joe Biden asked for the Justice Department to limit people from acting as vigilantes because of Texass abortion law that came into effect this week.

The president answered a question from a reporter about the law after making remarks about the state of the economy before heading to Louisiana.

Mr Biden said he had been and continued to be a strong supporter of Roe v Wade, the Supreme Court decision that protects a right to an abortion. He also denounced the creation of a vigilante system created by the Texas law that would allow anyone in the United States to sue someone who aids and abets an abortion and would reward them with $10,000 and additional legal fees if successful.

And it just seems, I know this sounds ridiculous, almost un-American, Mr Biden said. The president said it was different from people who oppose the Supreme Courts 1973 decision.

The US Supreme Court decided against granting an emergency request to block the law, which would ban abortion as soon as foetal heart tones can be detected, which is usually six weeks into pregnancy and before most people know they are pregnant.

The president said he was not certain but that he was told there were possibilities within the existing law to have the Justice Department see what can be done to limit the independent action of individuals enforcing the law.

I dont know enough to give you an answer yet, he said. I have asked it to be checked.

Mr Biden denounced the law, particularly the ability to sue, earlier this week.

And, outrageously, it deputises private citizens to bring lawsuits against anyone who they believe has helped another person get an abortion, which might even include family members, healthcare workers, front-desk staff at a health care clinic, or strangers with no connection to the individual, he said.
Florida plans to begin issuing $5,000 fines for any business, school or government agency that requires customers or visitors to show proof they have been take the coronavirus vaccine.

The state's Republican Governor Ron DeSantis signed a bill earlier in the year banning vaccine passports and used his executive power to prohibit schools from enforcing mask mandates on students.

He also used his executive power to end all local emergency mandates requiring indoor masking in businesses.

Mr DeSantis has pushed back against coronavirus mitigation efforts for practically the entirety of the pandemic, often on the grounds that they hurt businesses. However, critics says the fines the state will issue against businesses if they choose to require vaccines will impede on their ability to conduct business as they wish.

The state will begin issuing the fines on 16 September. It does not apply to employers who require their staff to be vaccinated.

Cruise lines are also exempt from the fines thanks to a court order blocking the law specifically for that industry.

The Orlando Sentinel reported that the state's Agriculture Commissioner, Nikki Fried, who is the state's only elected Democrat and hopes to replace Mr DeSantis as governor, pushed back against the fines.

Governor DeSantis is retaliating against Floridians who are trying to protect themselves and their communities from COVID-19, Ms Fried said in a statement to the publication. This not only goes against common sense  its also an insult to the free market principles that he claims to champion.

Florida has been one of the hardest-hit places in the country by the Delta variant of the coronavirus. The US Department of Health and Human Services has reported that more than 15,000 patients are hospitalised in the state, up from 1,800 in June.

In August, the state recorded more coronavirus cases than at any other point in the pandemic.

Further, more than 10,000 students were isolated or quarantined within the state's first week of school. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children's Hospital Association, a fifth of new coronavirus cases is occurring in children.

Nearly 46,000 Floridians have died from Covid-19 since the pandemic hit the US in January 2020.

A judge in the state recently struck down his executive order banning schools from enforcing mask mandates as unconstitutional. The governor has appealed the ruling and will now be reviewed by the 1st district court of appeals in Tallahassee.

In the meantime, Mr DeSantis and the Florida Department of Education have moved on their threat to withhold the salaries of school administrators whose districts defy his unconstitutional executive order.
Dr Anthony Fauci has said the Mu variant of Covid-19 is not presently a being viewed as threat to the US.

President Joe Bidens senior medical adviser spoke at a press briefing, elaborating on the different threats brought by the Delta and Mu strains of Covid. The latter was identified last week by the World Health Organization, which said it had appeared in 39 countries and described it as a constellation of mutations that indicate potential properties of immune escape.

Dr Fauci said: As we certainly are aware of the Mu variants were keeping a very close eye on it. It is seen here, but it is not at all even close to being dominant as you know, the Delta is more than 99 per cent dominant.

The Delta variant was first identified in India at the beginning of 2021. Since then, it has quickly made up nearly all of US Covid cases. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, it is much more lethal and contagious compared to its variant predecessors.

We always pay attention to, at all times, variants. This variant has a constellation of mutations that suggests that it would evade certain antibodies, not only monoclonal antibodies, Dr Fauci said. But vaccine and convalescent serum induced antibodies.

But remember, even when you have variants that do diminish somewhat the efficacy of vaccines, the vaccine still are quite effective.

The Delta variant presents more risk to unvaccinated people, as it increases your chances of being hospitalised or dying after becoming infected with the virus. Concerns have been voiced about nationally low rates of vaccination, particularly in areas such as Texas, Georgia and Louisiana. However, since the Food and Drug Administration gave full approval to the Pfizer vaccine, rates are said to be rising.

According to CDC data, the rate of infection among those not vaccinated is five times higher than in those who are vaccinated. Along with this, it showed one per 100,000 vaccinated people are hospitalised with covid. As for the unvaccinated, the rate is 24.9 per 100,000.

Vaccinated elderly people have proved more vulnerable to breakthrough infections compared to their younger vaccinated counterparts, according to the data. Sixty-four was the median age for a vaccinated breakthrough case. For the unvaccinated, the median age was 49. The Delta variant is believed to have contributed to this.

However, in light of these findings, the Biden administration is awaiting FDA approval to begin a booster shot programme. Under the proposal, fully vaccinated people will be entitled to a third dose of a Pfizer vaccine. First preference will be given to senior citizens, healthcare workers and others, according to reports.

Dr Fauci concluded his response by saying, Bottom line, were paying attention to it, we take everything like that seriously, but we dont consider it an immediate threat right now.
Jacob Chansley, the so-called QAnon shaman who became the face of the US Capitol riots with his horns and bearskin outfit, is likely to plead guilty in a hearing scheduled for Friday, according to his lawyer.

Albert Watkins confirmed through a press release that a hearing had been set for Friday morning for the "horn donning, fur-wearing, tattoo chested, Jacob Chansley".

The accused, a supporter of the QAnon conspiracy theory, has been charged with six federal crimes, including felonies for civil disorder and obstructing official proceedings. However, it has not been clarified on what charges Mr Chansley is expected to plead guilty to.

Mr Chansley is accused of taking part in the riot where supporters of former president Donald Trump stormed up Capitol Hill and clashed with police, as Congress convened a session to validate Joe Biden's presidential election victory. At least 5 people died and 100 police officers sustained injuries during or after the attack.

So far more than 535 people have been arrested for participating in the riots, while the FBI is still hunting for 300 more suspects.

The QAnon conspiracy theory regards Mr Trump as the saviour of America and the Democrats as a coterie of satanist paedophiles and cannibals.

His attorney asserted that Arizona-based Mr Chansley has been found to be suffering from mental disorders and now "has repudiated the Q previously assigned to him and requests future references to him be devoid of use of the letter Q".

"The path charted by Mr Chansley since 6 January has been a process, one which has involved pain, depression, solitary confinement, introspection, recognition of mental health vulnerabilities, and a coming to grips with the need for more self-work," the news release read.

Since his arrest in January, Mr Chansley's attorneys have pushed for his release from prison several times, but the judge has repeatedly ruled that he is too dangerous for release.

Meanwhile, another prominent suspect from the riots Doug Jensen was sent back to prison on Thursday, after he was caught violating his release agreement to access the internet to watch false conspiracy theories about the presidential election.

Additional reporting by agencies
The violent extremist fatally shot in an Auckland supermarket on Friday after he stabbed six people, was a known Isis sympathiser who had been held in the past for allegedly planning a lone wolf knife attack.

New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern said that the 32-year-old Sri Lankan national  who has only been identified as S for legal reasons  was inspired by Islamic State and was well known to the nations security agencies.

Ms Ardern said she had personally been briefed on the man in the past but there had been no legal reason for him to be detained.

"Had he done something that would have allowed us to put him into prison, he would have been in prison," she said.

According to media reports, the man had been considered a threat to public safety since 2016, after he twice bought large hunting knives and consistently posted content advocating violence. He was reportedly released from custody in 2018 and was under surveillance by the law enforcement bodies, including an armed tactical team, and national security agencies.

In fact, the Crown sought to prosecute the attacker under the Terrorism Suppression Act 2002 last year, according to the NZ Herald. But a High Court judge ruled against it, saying that preparing a terrorist attack in itself was not an offence under the law.

He was, however, charged for other offences including possessing a graphic video depicting a prisoner being decapitated and possession of an offensive weapon. The court sentenced him to one year of supervision.

Youre worried about one knife. I am telling you I will buy 10 knives. Its about my rights, he was quoted as saying during his trial.

His internet history also revealed alarming searches. These included safety and security guidelines for lone-wolf mujahideen, dress of Islamic State, a help book for Isis operatives to evade detection by the security and intelligence agencies of the west, and prison clothes and food in New Zealand, said the NZ Herald report. He also looked up the case of Imran Patel, the first New Zealander to be jailed for distributing extremist propaganda.

The man first went to New Zealand about 10 years ago and appeared on the radar of security agencies almost five years later, in 2016, when he posted staunchly anti-western and violent material on Facebook. Upon scrutinising his social media posts, the police found he advocated violent extremism. He also expressed support for the Isis terrorist involved in the Paris attacks in November 2015 and Brussels bombing in March 2016.

Despite being given a formal warning by the police, he continued posting violent content. He was held by the police at Auckland international airport in May 2017 after he booked a one-way ticket to Singapore. During a search of his apartment, the police allegedly found material glorifying violence, including images of him posing with an air rifle and a large hunting knife kept under his mattress, according to the Herald.

He was then kept in custody for more than a year and pleaded guilty to charges of distributing restricted material. A high court judge sentenced him to supervision in 2018.

But on 7 August 2018, the day after he was released from custody, the man went to buy a hunting knife. He was immediately held by the counterterrorism unit which was surveilling him.

This time, though, the prosecutors sought charges under the Terrorism Suppression Act, which were denied by the High Court.
Britain is sending four million doses of Pfizer's Covid vaccine to Australia in a bid to boost its faltering inoculation programme.

Australia has one of the slowest jab rollouts among wealthy countries, with just 36.4 per cent of people over the age of 16 having had both jabs, according to official figures.

Scott Morrison, Australia's prime minister, announced the move at a press conference in Canberra, saying the shots will arrive over the coming weeks.

It comes just days after Australia secured around 500,000 doses of Pfizer's vaccine from Singapore.

The plane is on the tarmac now. It will be leaving tomorrow, Mr Morrison said.

Those doses will be coming over the course of the next few weeks, which will see us double the Pfizer doses that we have during September."

The deal comes hours after Boris Johnson, the UK prime minister, said his country needs to go faster with the vaccination of 16 to 17-year olds, despite a strong uptake within the age group.

Mr Morrison has been criticised for his handling of the pandemic after more lockdowns were announced in July.

The countrys two most populous states, Victoria and New South Wales, are in lockdown and counting on getting their residents vaccinated to contain the outbreak of the Delta variant which began in Sydney in mid-June.

Australia was initially lauded around the world for its tough stance on preventing Covid transmission as it closed borders and banned travel.

Australia on Friday recorded its biggest one-day rise in Covid infections, with 1,657 new cases and 13 deaths reported in the previous 24 hours.

Additional reporting by Reuters
The soft-spoken, short, balding 63-year-old German who turned himself into a carbon copy of Angela Merkel to quietly drift to the top of voter surveys has become  rather improbably  the favourite to become the countrys next chancellor after the elections on 26 September.

Olaf Scholz, Germanys dour finance minister and vice-chancellor in the current grand coalition government, and his often quarrelsome centre-left Social Democratic Party (SDP), are at the opposite end of the countrys political spectrum to Merkels rival conservative Christian Democrats (CDU), even though they were forced into two consecutive loveless power-sharing arrangements.

Even without charisma, Scholz has nevertheless pulled a rabbit out of the hat by convincing a growing share of German voters that he is the natural heir to Merkel  instead of his even more colourless opponent Armin Laschet, who is the standard-bearer from Merkels CDU party. The still-popular 67-year-old chancellor is retiring unbeaten after four election victories and 16 years in power.

The SPD, fed up with being a junior coalition partner to the conservatives, has unexpectedly moved ahead of the CDU in opinion polls for the first time in 15 years and is now projected to win about 22-25 per cent of the vote in three weeks time, compared with 20-22 per cent for the conservatives. The Greens are forecast to win about 17 per cent of the vote. A centre-left coalition led by the SPD together with the pro-environment Greens and pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) is now seen as the most likely outcome.

If Scholz had any sense of humour he might be able to squeeze out a smile about the way he has been imitating Merkels political style all the way down to her hand gestures, says Gero Neugebauer, a political scientist in Berlin who knows the humourless Scholz well. Hes beating Merkels party into the ground right now by using her own weapons against them. Hes putting the voters asleep by talking calmly and quietly about stability, continuity, security and about ideas that generally appeal more to conservative voters. His strategy is just dont rub anyone the wrong way  just like Merkel did again and again.

If Scholz had any sense of humour he might be able to squeeze out a smile about the way he has been imitating Merkels political style all the way down to her hand gestures Gero Neugebauer, political scientist in Berlin

Scholz has indeed taken a page from Merkels proven playbook with his deliberately bland campaign  promising little more than stable pensions, fair rents, a higher minimum wage and more for climate protection. His dont rock the boat campaign has struck a chord with trepidatious German voters with their deep aversion to change, who have in general been satisfied with the way the country has been run under Merkels right-left grand coalition made up of her conservatives and Scholzs SPD for 12 of the last 16 years.

It has been an era of unprecedented prosperity for Germans despite the waves of turmoil ranging from the global financial crisis, the near collapse of the eurozone, the Syrian refugee crisis, Brexit, the Covid-19 pandemic and the debacle of the Afghanistan withdrawal.

Its an alarm clock that should wake us all up to get out there and fight. Weve got to take the gloves off Friedrich Merz, a leader in the CDU

Reflecting that seemingly insatiable yearning for stability and a wariness towards charismatic leaders following the unparalleled turbulence from the Nazi era and the Second World War, Merkel is the third conservative post-war German chancellor to win four terms.

Scholz is out there doing a copyright piracy act, pretending that hes up to inheriting the job from Merkel, but hes just an imitation, says Friedrich Merz, a leader in the CDU who was beaten by Laschet for the party leadership. We havent done a very good job ourselves in recent weeks and the weak polls are the result. Its an alarm clock that should wake us all up to get out there and fight. Weve got to take the gloves off.

Scholz, whose candidacy was at first laughed about in Berlin as a long shot when he first announced it a year ago, has rather incredibly managed to move into the lead in all major voter surveys after lifting the party by about 10 percentage points from a distant third at around 15 per cent in the polls. He has skilfully positioned himself as the only candidate in the race who can claim the mantle of governing as the most senior SPD minister in Merkels government during that golden era  even though he has been rather undistinguished as finance minister.

Hard act to follow: the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, smiles before she receives the World Health Organisations Global Leadership Award (Reuters)

Hes got a decent reputation as a political administrator, as finance minister and his main achievement may be that there arent any scandals in his past or skeletons in his closet, says Neugebauer. Hes dropped the usual left-leaning language and wont be caught dead talking about social justice or ideas that appeal to the partys left wing. Hes kept them silent for now.

Scholz, who has been uncharitably nicknamed Scholz-o-mat over his penchant for spouting rapid-fire monotone answers in a machine-like way, scored well with voters in a major TV debate earlier this week with a series of Merkel-style calm, collected and mild-mannered answers. Incredibly, he even once invoked Merkels name in the middle of the debate for his cause by saying: The wish of the chancellor and me is that it should be possible. It came during an exchange about whether all train travellers should have to prove they are either vaccinated, have a negative coronavirus test result, or have recovered from the disease. Laschet took a different position, saying it would be logistically impossible to control millions of train travellers every day.

Armin Laschet, top candidate of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (EPA)

An exasperated Laschet, the state premier of North Rhine-Westphalia who has no political experience outside the state, at one point even accused Scholz of trying to sound like Frau Merkel. Scholz retorted with one of the best quips of the evening: I sound like Olaf Scholz.

Scholz launched his campaign with the slogan Most people know who I am, which eerily echoes Merkels own You know me chant from her previous runs. He was recently even photographed for the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper, wordlessly copying Merkels rhombus-shaped hand gesture.

It was all evidently a bit too much this week for Merkel, who broke her silence after largely staying out of the campaign, blasting Scholz by name for refusing to rule out a future coalition with the far-left Linke party  which because of its opposition to Nato has until now been ostracised from any federal government.

There is a massive difference between me and Olaf Scholz when it comes to Germanys future, Merkel said in Berlin. With me as chancellor, there would never be a coalition with the Linke.

Scholz shrugged off the attacks, responding on Thursday as Merkel might have herself: Ive been working together happily and successfully with the chancellor for many years now. In these difficult times, I believe its important to work together politically to move forward. And I think thats exactly what were going to do.
As a member of the Hazara minority in Afghanistan Azim Kakaie would have had no access to higher education under the Taliban Instead, over the past two decades he turned a love for aviation into an air-traffic control job in Kabul, he said Thursday.

Kakaie was working at the airport as the swift takeover by the Taliban engulfed Kabul last week. He had to board an evacuation plane before his family could join him. This week he became the first Afghan refugee to arrive in Utah since the withdrawal of U.S. troops.

I had to abandon everything that I had made in 34 years of my life. Start from zero, he said.

Kakaie boarded a plane quickly because he was already at the airport, but his wife had to try for days, enduring beatings from Taliban fighters at checkpoints that blocked her from the airport, he said. Finally, on the fourth day she was able to get through along with two other relatives  just 30 minutes before a devastating suicide bombing killed 13 U.S. troops and more than 160 Afghans.

Those young American heroes, he said. That is going to be in my heart for the rest of my life.

Shes now in Germany, along with her mother and his brother, who hope to join him in Salt Lake City He landed late Wednesday night in Utah's capitol, where the jagged mountains and desert climate reminded him of home. Hes looking forward to building a life in the U.S. and finding a job, but he's still concerned for his family back home, including his mother.

Im worried a lot. I cannot say when I am by myself, how much I cry. I dont know whats going to happen. Thats the only time that Im deep under pressure, he said.

The U.S. and its coalition partners have evacuated more than 100,000 people from Afghanistan since the airlift began Aug. 14, including American citizens and many Afghans who helped the U.S. during the 20-year war.

About 200 Afghan refugees are expected to eventually be resettled in Utah, where there is already an Afghan community of a few thousand people, said Aden Batar, director of migration and refugee services for Catholic Community Services in Utah.

The resettlement effort has public support from Republican Gov. Spencer Cox, who cited the historical migration of members of the conservative states predominant faith, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as he asked the Biden administration to send refugees there.
A large number of archaeological artefacts reported missing by Iraqi authorities have been seized in Oslo, Norwegian police have said.

The objects are presumed to be cuneiform tablets from ancient Mesopotamia, and were seized during a search of a collectors house in southeast Norway.

Several witnesses were questioned but there have been no criminal charges, a police spokesperson told Reuters.

In total, almost 100 objects of significance to the global cultural heritage have been seized, a statement by the Norwegian National Authority for Investigation and Prosecution of Economic and Environmental Crime (Oekokrim) read.

They are now being examined by experts to determine their authenticity and, if possible, establish their provenance.

The police did not provide any details as to how or when the artefacts may have arrived in Norway. They are the subject of a restitution request from Iraqi authorities to the Norwegian Ministry of Culture.

A restitution procedure has been initiated, but an expert review must first be carried out to determine the origin and authenticity of these objects and the Iraqi authorities must document their request, prosecutor Maria Bache Dahl told Agence-France-Presse.

Earlier this month, more than 17,000 looted ancient artefacts recovered from the United States and other countries were handed over to Iraq, in what described as the largest recovery in the history of the country.

The majority of the artefacts dated back 4,000 years to ancient Mesopotamia and were handed over to the Culture Ministry in large wooden crates. A few were displayed but the ministry said the most significant pieces will be examined and later displayed to the public in Iraqs National Museum.

Speaking in a joint conference with Iraqs PM Mustafa al-Kadhimi, Culture Minister Hasan Nadhim told reporters: Theres still a lot of work ahead in this matter. There are still thousands of Iraqi artefacts smuggled outside the country.

Iraqs antiquities have been looted throughout decades of war and instability since the 2003 US-led invasion.

Iraqs government has been slowly recovering the plundered antiquities since. However, archaeological sites across the country continue to be neglected owing to lack of funds.

Iraq is the site of ancient Mesopotamia, a region home to many ancient civilisations. The Cuneiform is considered one of the worlds oldest writing systems, developed by the ancient Sumerians.
A crippling fuel crisis in Lebanon, causing rolling power cuts and cutting water access to millions, has sparked a diplomatic spat with the US over potential sanction violations and prompted the United Nations to promise $10 million in fuel aid.

The cash-strapped country is in the grips of one of the worst economic collapses in modern history according to the World Bank.

Grounded in decades of chronic mismanagement and corruption, the crisis has seen the local currency lose 90 percent of its value since 2020 while food prices have quintupled in the same time frame.

Dwindling foreign reserves and rampant smuggling has meant that the state has been unable to secure enough fuel to run its power stations leaving most households struggling with just two or three hours of mains power a day.

That has also impacted the countrys waste treatment and water supply: the UN has warned that four million people will imminently lose access to safe water.

A diesel shortage, meanwhile, has meant the generators citizens rely on in place of mains power are also unable to operate for most of the day.

All of this has meant hospitals have to close wards, reduce services, switch off air cooling systems despite the searing summer heat and at some points beg online for supplies warning that they would have to turn off ventilators and dialysis machines.

On Wednesday the United Nations allocated $10 million to fight the fuel crisis, $6 million of which will be used to support 65 hospitals in Lebanon primary healthcare centres, dispensaries and medical cold chain storage.

The rest will help with a public water supply and wastewater treatment systems, supporting families that have been increasingly relying on private water trucking which is becoming unaffordable and unsafe.

But the escalating fuel crisis has also sparked a diplomatic row. The US has warned Lebanon against accepting a shipment of fuel from Iran which would violate US sanctions imposed on Tehran after former President Donald Trump pulled America out of a nuclear deal between Iran and world powers in 2018.

A delegation of four US senators visiting Lebanon this week warned the import of the Iranian oil could have "severely damaging consequences.

Hezbollah, a heavily armed group founded by Irans Revolutionary Guards in 1982, announced the controversial supply deal from Iran last month.

Monitoring website Tankertrackers.com said on Friday at least two tankers are making their way to Lebanon with one due to reach the Suez Canal in a few days. The website has not released the name of the vessels involved. Hezbollah has not said where they would dock.

The countrys energy minister Raymond Ghajar said that he had received no request for fuel to be imported from Iran - implying Hezbollah had bypassed the state with the move.

The Independent repeatedly reached out to Ghafar for comment but received no reply.

The visiting Democrat senators warned it could severely impact relations with the west and said that, instead of looking to Iran, America would help Lebanon overcome fuel shortages.

The US has said it is in talks with Egypt, Jordan and the World Bank to help find solutions to the energy crisis including potentially transmitting electricity via the Syrian grid. The Lebanese presidency confirmed last month Washington had decided to help through this plan.

A delegation from Lebanons caretaker government is set to visit Syria on Saturday in the highest-level visit in years as a first step.

That said, American sanctions on Damascus are still a complicating factor.

The US has also vowed support for Lebanons US-backed army whose salaries have lost more than 90 percent of their value because of the collapse of the Lebanese lira.

Lebanon's President Michel Aoun heads a meeting at the presidential palace in Baabda (via REUTERS)

The senators pushed for the immediate formation of a Lebanese government that can begin urgent reforms, unlocking international aid. Lebanon has been leaderless since the cabinet resigned in the chaotic aftermath of a massive explosion at Beirut port last August.

"It is inexcusable that in the middle of this life-threatening crisis, the political leaders in Lebanon have refused to make the tough choices in order to form a government," Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut told reporters at the end of the two-day visit.

He said Lebanon needs a government that can negotiate with the International Monetary Fund.

Piling further pressure on the country is shortages of petrol, which has had the knock-on effect of strangling transportation of food and goods causing further misery.

People queue in front of a bakery, in the neighbourhood of Nabaa in the Lebanese capital Beirut's southern suburbs (AFP via Getty Images)

Petrol station queues in Lebanon are now so long, one privately owned petrol station chain this week launched an app where drivers can book an appointment to refill their tanks to save time.

It is not uncommon to see kilometre-long queues of cars by the petrol taps, where drivers park overnight to save a place.

The lines are so long they frequently clog up main roads and motorways with deadly consequences: several people have been killed and injured this year as at night, drivers do not see the stationary cars.

This week Wookood petrol station chain launched a new online booking service that its owner told local media would mean people would only need to queue for 10 minutes.

They now run two petrol queues, those who have not booked a slot and those who have.

The Central Bank has blamed petrol shortages on hoarding and smuggling to Syria because petrol is so heavily subsidized at great cost to the state which is running low on foreign reserves. Last month they partially lifted subsidies.

A source within the Central Bank told The Independent on Friday they expected subsidies to be slashed even further by the end of this month, seeing prices skyrocket with knock-on effects.

Everything is still subsidized at 8000 lira to the dollar rate when in reality on the black market the true value is more like 19,000 lira to the dollar, the source said.

We will have to see the situation by September but its unsustainable. I dont think diesel will be subsidised by the start of October, for petrol we will have to see.
Nasas latest Mars rover Perseverance successfully collected its first perfect rock sample that will be returned to Earth for further study about signs of ancient microbial life on the Red Planet.

News of the collection comes after the rovers first attempt to drill out a rock sample was unsuccessful last month after the sample mysteriously went missing.

The main objectives of Nasas 2020 Mars mission and Perseverance are to look for signs of ancient microbial life on the planet, characterise its geology and past climate and pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet.

It is said to be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith  broken rock and dust  and bring it back to Earth.

As part of this mission, the rover had earlier dug into the Martian surface last month and attempted to extract some soil, but when engineers checked what Perseverance had extracted, there was nothing there.

The space agency later discovered the soil was unusually soft and not strong enough to make a sample.

They said the fragments the rover attempted to extract were stuck in the hole and didnt get inside the collection tube.

In its reattempt to extract pieces of the Red Planet, Nasa chose the rock Rochette, located on a ridge called Citadelle near the Jezero Crater on Mars, where the rover landed in February.

The crater in the Martian northern hemisphere is believed to have been home to a river delta billions of years ago, and the site is thought to potentially hold evidence of ancient life.

Nasa reasoned that the Citadelle ridge, capped with a layer of rock that is seemingly resistant to wind erosion, could endure the pressure of drilling.

There are potentially older rocks in the South Seitah region ahead of us, so having this younger sample can help us reconstruct the whole timeline of Jezero, Vivian Sun, one of the missions scientists at NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, had said in a statement last week.

In the new attempt, Nasa added an extra step for the rover in its sampling process.

Using a camera for confirming that the sample tube is filled, the rover paused for the team on Earth to review the image and double check if the snagged rock is present.

We have a sample! Ive never been more happy to see a hole in a rock, Perseverance chief engineer, Adam Stelzner, noted in a tweet on Thursday.

The drilled out sample, slightly thicker than a pencil, is held in one of the 42 remaining titanium tubes aboard the rover and Nasa hopes to collect about 35 such samples from the Martian surface as part of the Perseverance mission.

It is hoped that a subsequent Nasa mission in coordination with the European Space Agency would send spacecraft to Mars to collect these sealed samples and return them to Earth for in-depth analysis.
British Airways passengers flying short haul from Gatwick should notice no difference when a new, lower-cost subsidiary is in operation.

BA insists travellers will continue to benefit from the same full standard of service that they currently receive.

Since the coronavirus pandemic began, BA has grounded all domestic and European flights from Gatwick.

Last week the airline confirmed it is in talks with unions about an independent offshoot  leading to speculation about the likely size and shape of the operation.

Michael OLeary, chief executive of Ryanair, dismissed the plan as doomed to fail. He said that BAs previous attempts at low-cost subsidiaries had failed, and questioned why its sister airlines, Aer Lingus and Vueling, were not involved.

Now British Airways has issued a remarkably honest briefing  revealing that its Gatwick short-haul operation was unprofitable over the course of the last decade, even at the peak of flying in 2019.

The statement reads: Whilst many sectors have now returned to some form of normality, the pandemic continues to have a huge impact on aviation.

Continuing travel restrictions mean that British Airways is not currently flying any short-haul flights from Gatwick and looking beyond this, we know the competitive environment will be even tougher than it was pre-pandemic.

Whilst we want to restart flying short-haul from Gatwick, we will only do this if we have a competitive and sustainable operating cost base.

It is understood that the British Airline Pilots Association (Balpa) is broadly supportive, and is consulting its members on the plan.

Initially up to 17 Airbus A320 aircraft would be based at Gatwick, with plans to increase the fleet over the next three or four years.

In the summer of 2019, around 25 short-haul planes were deployed at the airport.

Gatwick dreams: British Airways check in area at South Terminal, currently out of use (Nick Morrish/British Airways)

The BA announcement makes clear: From a customer experience perspective the new airline will be British Airways branded.

Alongside this British Airways is in parallel running a process of evaluating alternatives for the London Gatwick slots.

We believe that our proposals for an independent subsidiary will enable us to both maintain the British Airways customer experience and be competitive in this environment.

Before the Covid crisis, BA was the second-largest airline at Gatwick  but a long way behind easyJet, whose main base is at the Sussex airport.

British Airways is currently sharing the North Terminal with easyJet and all other airlines. The South Terminal, where BA is normally based, is likely to remain closed until spring 2022 as a cost-saving measure.
The man who became known as the QAnon Shaman, Jacob Chansley, has pleaded guilty today to one count of obstruction of an official proceeding. He has also asked, through his lawyer, that everyone stop referring to him as the QAnon Shaman. Mr Chansley, a long-avowed and practicing Shaman, has repudiated the Q previously assigned to him and requests future references to him be devoid of use of the letter Q, his attorney Albert Watkins said before Fridays hearing, later referring to his client as non-violent, peaceful and possessed of genuine mental health issues.

It may disappoint some people to hear that Chansley has disavowed such an inarguably funny nickname, but there are plenty out there  the Yellowstone Wolf, for instance, which has been mentioned before by kinder supporters than the ones who named him the QAnon Shaman; or the Star-Spangled Spanner, perhaps, or the Antlered Anti-Masker, or any number of other ridiculous puns circulating on the internet right now. Theres also Jake Angeli, which is the name he calls himself.

Whatever you want to call him, Chansley has become the subject of huge public fascination ever since he was pictured storming the US Capitol on January 6th. Wearing a horned fur hat, American flag face-paint and no shirt, he was photographed wandering the halls of the most hallowed building in Washington DC, his face twisted into a roar. We will remove them from office, one way or another, he said on camera about the Democratic politicians he was apparently seeking out, before entering the building with fellow rioters. He quickly became the face of the storming of the Capitol.

Chansleys own lawyer is a character in his own right, with his own strong views on people like Chansley. A lot of these defendants theyre all f**king short-bus people, Watkins said to Talking Points Memo in a past interview. These are people with brain damage But theyre our brothers, our sisters, our neighbors, our coworkerstheyre part of our country. These arent bad people, they dont have prior criminal history. F**k, they were subjected to four-plus years of goddamn propaganda the likes of which the world has not seen since f**king Hitler. If Republicans thought Hillary Clinton calling Trump supporters deplorables was bad, then wait til they hear about this guy. With friends like these, who needs enemies?

The line of Watkins clients defense seems to have been: everyone here became temporarily insane due to the words of Donald Trump, and now they shouldnt be held responsible for anything they did in his name. Of course, Watkins might need to read into what happened to the German people who took in the goddamn propaganda of f**king Hitler then pleaded that they were just following orders. Its historically not a very successful get-out-of-jail-free card.

Chansleys fellow rioters havent gotten off very easily after becoming brief media stars, either. Florida crane operator Paul Hodgkins, pictured wandering the same halls as Chansley and walking round the Senate wearing a TRUMP 2020 T-shirt and carrying a Trump flag, was sentenced to eight months in federal prison and two years of supervised release in July. He said that he was truly remorseful and regretful for his part in the riot, and that it was a foolish decision that hurt the country I love.

Robert Palmer, who was pictured on the Capitol steps spraying police officers with a fire extinguisher and then throwing it at them, is pleading guilty to a felony offense of assaulting an officer and faces five years in prison; his attorney said he is apologetic.

Arkansas resident Richard Barnett, who was photographed in Nancy Pelosis office during the riot, had a meltdown in court while crying, Its not fair, when he was told he must stay in pre-trial detention and await sentencing. But maybe he got confused about what the American flag actually stands for while attempting to overthrow a democratic election. Welcome to justice for all, Mr Barnett. Youre probably gonna hate it.
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.
Afghanistan's future is uncertain with Taliban militants at the helm of country's important institutions. With the US gone and Ashraf Ghani-led government on the run, the liberal institutions that were set up in the country over the last 20 years are in danger of being subdued and eventually closed.

Since Taliban took charge of Afghanistan's cities, universities and schools have remain largely shut. For starters, the Taliban want education to be in sync with Islamic scripture. Women are worried that they may no longer be allowed to practice their profession and that academic institutions may no longer cater to them.

Reuters

Is science a lost cause in the new-old Afghanistan?

The Taliban have not announced draconian policies from their 90s era and have instead claimed that women would be allowed to participate in certain roles. But fear is a powerful tool of insurgents around the world, and it has seeped down to academics. A Nature report explains how science in Afghanistan could become a lost cause, with further research in the country under jeopardy.

Also read: How Taliban Took Over Afghanistan With The Help Of Basic Technology

Besides the obvious threat of persecution, many researchers fear they would lose their funding now that Taliban are in charge. Science and religious fundamentalism barely gel well, unless the science caters to weapon development and fear-mongering.

The New York Times/Kiana Hayeri

The Taliban urged all officials to continue working, but fear got in the way. When the Taliban controlled the country for four years between 1996-2001, a conservative version of the Islamic Sharia law was imposed which clipped the wings of free speech.

Gains made over two decades under threat

When the regime was overthrown in 2001, international funding for research and university development poured into the country. Now, there are multiple factors playing into potential degradation of the situation.

For starters, most researchers and academicians with professional training have fled the country or are attempting to escape because they fear for their lives. This brain drain will kill the potential of meaningful research in the country. Most researchers also worry about their safety owing to some of the work that they have done over the last two decades which may not sit well with the Taliban.

Also read: Afghanistan: Taliban Seize Sophisticated Biometric Devices Built By US, Putting Countless Lives In Danger



For instance - a study exploring the scope of safe abortion techniques will never be accepted by the Taliban and they could also harm those involved in such studies.

Attauallah Ahmad, a scientist from the Kateb University in Kabul told Nature that all "achievements we had over the past 20 years are all at great risk". When most academicians arrived in Kabul in early 2000s, they found a dismal culture of research.

Reuters

Kenneth Holland, who is currently a dean at India's OP Jindal Global University told Nature that when he arrived in Kabul in 2006, "almost no research" was being done at universities.

What happens next for academicians in Afghanistan?

Since 2010, scores of public and private universities have been set up in Afghanistan. But the future of these institutions looks uncertain.

In fact, student enrollment in colleges jumped exponentially in ten years. In 2001, there were 8,000 students in universities. By 2018, the number had jumped to 170,000 according to a UNESCO report. But things aren't looking so well right now.

AP

Also read: Picture Of Young Girls Studying In An Alleged Secret School In Afghanistan Is Heartbreaking



Most researchers are now seeking asylum overseas. Scholars at Risk (SAR), an organisation in New York City told Nature that just in August alone, they have received 500 applications from Afghanistan. Many research projects are expected to be at odds with how the Taliban perceive Sharia law.

Do you think Afghanistan's academic future is at risk under the Taliban? What do you think international community should do to help them out? Tell us below and for the latest updates of Afghanistan and the future of science in the country, keep reading Indiatimes.com.
Taliban commander Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar is all set to become the head of the new Taliban government in Afghanistan.

Baradar will be joined by Mullah Mohammad Yaqoob, the son of late Taliban co-founder Mullah Omar, and Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanekzai, in senior positions in the government.

AP

While they will head the government, Haibatullah Akhunzada, the Taliban's supreme religious leader, will focus on religious matters and governance within the framework of Islam.

AP





For many years Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar was the head of the Taliban's government in exile, based in Doha .

AFP

The leader's public profile has been largely limited to the release of annual messages during Islamic holidays.

Abdul Ghani Baradar was raised in Kandahar -- the birthplace of the Taliban movement.

Like most Afghans, Baradar's life was forever altered by the Soviet invasion of the country in the late 1970s, transforming him into an insurgent.

He was believed to have fought side-by-side with the one-eyed cleric Mullah Omar.

Reuters

The two would go on to found the Taliban movement in the early 1990s amid the chaos and corruption of the civil war that erupted after the Soviet withdrawal.

Following the Taliban's collapse in 2001, Baradar is believed to have been among a small group of insurgents who approached interim leader Hamid Karzai with a letter outlining a potential deal that would have seen the militants recognise the new administration.

Reuters

Arrested in Pakistan in 2010, Baradar was kept in custody until pressure from the United States saw him freed in 2018 and relocated to Qatar.

This is where he was appointed head of the Taliban's political office and oversaw the signing of the withdrawal agreement with the Americans.
Scientists have discovered a new species of whale with four legs that lived on our planet roughly 43 million years ago.

Robert Boessenecker

Also Read: Scientists Find Billion-Year-Old Fossil That Can Unlock Mystery Of Animal Evolution

This discovery was based on a partial fossil of the creature that was discovered in Egypts West Desert. The creature was named Phiomicetus Anubis as the skull looked similar to that of an ancient jackal-headed god of Death, Anubis.



The discovery of the creatures gives researchers a better understanding of how the mammal transitioned from his life on ground to becoming a sea creature. The fossil is actually the earliest whale fossil to be found in Africa.

The fossil comes from the Protocetidae which is essentially a group of extinct whales that fall in the middle of their transition from amphibian to fully aquatic.

Reuters

Also Read: Largest Animal Ever To Walk On Earth Has Probably Been Found In Argentina

According to the researchers, during its lifetime, the four-legged whale would actually have been the topmost predator.

Researchers reveal that until now, whales of this period have largely remained a mystery, but the fossil offers some clarity.

It is estimated to have weighed more than half a tonne and measured around 10 feet long. The fossil was excavated from the Eocene rocks in the Fayum Depression in the Western Desert that was once believed to be covered by the sea.

The fossil has been under study by researchers at the Mansoura University Vertebrate Paleontology Centre in west Egypt, where it would undergo further research.

Reuters

Also Read: Indian Scientists Find A Rare, 157 Million Year Old Dinosaur Fossil In Gujarat's Kutch Desert

Abdullah Gohar, lead author of a paper on the discovery published in the journal Proceedings, said in a statement to Reuters, Phiomicetus Anubis is a key new whale species, and a critical discovery for Egyptian and African palaeontology.

For more news on science discoveries and tech, keep visiting Indiatimes.com, and what do you think of these ancient four-legged whale species? More proof of evolution?
A fisherman man named Sudarshan Sardar was rescued from the jaws of a tiger by fellow villagers on Thursday morning in a forest below Sunderbans Tiger Reserve (STR) area.

The 33-year-old fought with the tiger for 20 minutes before the villagers, who had accompanied Sardar to the journey, rescued him.

Wikipedia

Four fishermen with licence, led by Sardar of Sonaga village in Gosaba, went to the Kapura river close to Jhila forest. Around 7 am, a tiger jumped on the boat anchored on the river bank and attacked Sardar.



The fisherman was rushed to the Gosaba block hospital and was then referred to the NRS Medical College and Hospital in Calcutta, where he is reportedly stable.



Telegraph India

This is different from other cases of man-and-animal conflict, where fishermen venture into these areas without proper permits, said a forest official to Telegraph India. He added that Sardars medical costs would be borne by the state government.



Sources said that Sardar and others had ventured into the deeper part of the river to fish for crabs with a permit.



Wildlife Wing

This is the second tiger attack in the region in less than two weeks.
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Northern Virginia recorded its 200,000th COVID-19 case on Friday, although the region continues to fare better than the rest of the state during the latest surge, which may be starting to level off, according to new data.

Data also indicate that more than 10 million vaccine doses have now been administered to Virginians, surpassing a key milestone in a state with 8.6 million residents.

With 2.3 million residents, Northern Virginia is the largest of the state's five health regions but currently has the lowest seven-day average of new cases, 419.6 per day, according to data from the Virginia Department of Health.

That remains the highest level since mid-April, but the average increased just slightly from 413 a week ago and is below all four other regions of Virginia:

Eastern: 834

Southwest: 755

Northwest: 716

Central: 635

In Fairfax and Arlington counties and the city of Alexandria, the number of new cases reported over the week ending Friday actually declined slightly from the prior week.

Statewide, the largest growth this week was seen in the Southwest and Northwest regions, as Virginia posted over 4,000 cases a day both Thursday and Friday for the first time since Feb. 6. The state's seven-day average is 3,359.3 cases a day, the highest level since Feb. 11. It is more than triple the average on Sept. 3, 2020, of 1,012.7 cases a day - before any vaccine was available. Northern Virginia's new case average is 71.5% above its level on the same date last year.

Hospitalizations for treatment of the virus have continued to increase, rising another 17.7% this week to 1,892 patients being treated statewide for COVID-19, as of Friday, according to the Virginia Hospital and Healthcare Association. Although that is still well below the January peak of over 3,200 patients, hospitalizations had fallen as low as 195 on July 5. In addition, it has surpassed the first peak in hospitalizations, 1,625 on May 8, 2020. The number of hospitalizations is 67% higher than it was on the same date in 2020.

The Virginia Health Department changed its COVID-19 dashboards last month and is no longer providing the number of hospitalizations by health district.

Deaths have continued to rise as well, following the summer surge. The health department reported 130 new COVID-related deaths this week, the most since the week ending April 9. The number of deaths per week was as few as 23 in late July, just as the Delta variant began spreading rapidly. Throughout the pandemic, deaths have been a trailing indicator, often starting to rise three to four weeks after an increase in cases.

In Northern Virginia, only nine new deaths were reported this week: six in Fairfax County and three in Prince William County.

Updated data on selected outbreaks across the state shows just one new outbreak close to Northern Virginia: at the Merit School of Parkridge in Stafford County, which reported nine positive cases to the health department on Aug. 17. A previous outbreak at Fauquier County Public Schools is now pending closure, which means no new cases have been reported in 14 days.

Updates to the health department's dashboard showing the number of breakthrough infections were not available Friday morning. Between Jan. 17 and Aug. 21, 3,344 infections had been reported in fully vaccinated people in Northern Virginia, resulting in eight deaths. Statewide, over 10,000 such infections had been reported, a small percentage of the nearly 350,000 overall cases reported in that time.

The health department says the data show that unvaccinated people are 13.3 times more likely to develop COVID-19 than fully vaccinated individuals and are 18.4 times more likely to die from COVID-19.

The pace of vaccinations statewide continue to rise slightly and is now at 16,400 a day, according to the state's vaccination dashboard. It was as low as 11,000 a day in early July but had been as high as 86,000 a day in late March.

As of Thursday, over 9.99 million vaccine doses have been administered to Virginians, with 68% of the adult population and 56.9% of the total population now fully vaccinated. Based on trends, it appears that when the dashboard is updated Friday it will show over 10 million vaccines administered to Virginians.

The state's average positivity rate for diagnostic tests remains above 10%, at which point experts believe the spread of the virus is out of control and not all cases are being captured. Northern Virginia positivity rates remain significantly below the state level, however, and in fact the rate fell in almost all of the region's health districts over the past week.

LATEST COVID-19 DATA

New Cases/Deaths (Seven days ending Friday, Sept. 3)

Northern Virginia: 2,937 new cases (up from 2,891 prior week); 9 new deaths (down from 12 prior week)

Statewide: 23,515 new cases (up from 20,572 prior week), 130 new deaths (up from 122 prior week)

Statewide Testing: 163,016 PCR diagnostic test results (up from 156,119 prior week)

Overall Totals

Northern Virginia: 200,175 cases, 2,434 deaths

Statewide: 778,167 cases, 11,899 deaths

Statewide Testing: 8.64 million PCR diagnostic tests (11.73 million when including antibody and antigen tests)

Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children (MIS-C) cases: 83 (including 14 in Fairfax, 11 in Prince William, two in Loudoun and Alexandria and one in Arlington). Two new cases statewide this week.

*Provided by Virginia Department of Health. The health department's COVID-19 data is updated each morning (Monday through Friday) by 10 a.m. and includes reports by local health agencies before 5 p.m. the previous day.

Statewide Hospital Data (as of Friday, Sept. 3)

Hospitalizations: 1,892 (up from 1,608 on Aug. 27)

Peak Hospitalizations: 3,209 reached Jan. 13

Patients in ICU: 466 (up from 411 on Aug. 27)

Patients Discharged: 62,952 (1,276 this week)

*Provided by Virginia Hospital and Healthcare Association

For updated national and international COVID-19 data, visit the Johns Hopkins University coronavirus dashboard.

Editor's note: InsideNoVa is providing regular COVID-19 updates every week. For daily reports, visit the Virginia Department of Health COVID-19 dashboard.
Ivermectin, a drug approved by the FDA to treat intestinal diseases and roundworms in humans, has become popular among vaccine skeptics as alleged alternative treatment for COVID-19, despite a lack of evidence that its effective in treating the disease. Some people are ingesting a version of the drug intended for horses, which is poisonous to humans.
The full panel of 15 appellate judges in Richmond has narrowly upheld a former northern Virginia high school students appeal to have her lawsuit against the school system reinstated after an alleged sexual assault on a band trip.

The narrow 9-6 decision from the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Monday prompted a pair of rare, written dissents from two judges who say the decision vastly expands the liability that school systems face under Title IX, the law that bans sex discrimination in public education.

Dissenting judge J. Harvie Wilkinson wrote that reinstating the lawsuit will only further contribute to the dramatic loss of control that states and localities are able to exercise over their own school systems.

Judges dissent all the time when they hear cases, but it is rare to dissent on whats called an en banc petition, in which the losing side on a ruling from a normal three-judge panel asks the entire circuit to take up the case.

The case stems from a complaint by a female Oakton High School student about how administrators responded to her claims of an assault on a 2017 band trip.

At a 2019 trial in federal court in Alexandria, the school systems lawyers argued that no assault took place. They said evidence showed that the girl was ambivalent about her participation in the conduct and really became upset only after learning the male student had a girlfriend.

The female student, identified in court only as Jane Doe, testified that she tried to block the male students hands from groping her while they huddled under a blanket and that she at one point pulled her hand away from his genitals only to have him grab it and put it back.

She acknowledged that she never told him no and she didnt try to get up and walk away. But she was adamant she didnt consent.

Its pretty simple. I never said yes to him doing any of that to me, she testified.

The boy who committed the alleged assault was not punished.

The jury in Alexandria found that she had been assaulted but ruled in favor of the school district after determining that had received proper notice of the alleged assault.

Earlier this year, a divided three-judge panel reinstated the lawsuit. On appeal, the judges focused less on whether she was assaulted and more on whether the school system could be held liable for a single alleged assault when there had been no prior notice of a problem.

The dissenting judges said it stretches Title IX beyond its intent to hold the school district liable for an alleged assault under the circumstances described in the lawsuit.

Regretfully, we now leave the Supreme Court as the only possible venue for review of this important legal issue that will implicate educational institutions across the country, dissenting judge Paul Niemeyer wrote.

Judge James Wynn, writing for the majority, said that a school may be held liable when it makes a student vulnerable to sexual harassment by their peers, such as by failing to respond appropriately after learning of an initial incident of sexual assault. In other words, schools do not get `one free rape.

In a statement, Fairfax County Public Schools lawyer said John Foster said Mondays ruling is under review, but did not say definitively whether the school system would appeal to the Supreme Court.

Copyright 2021 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Abuse Molestation Virginia K 12
SCOR announced changes to its group executive committee, which aim to facilitate the reinsurers next phase of strategic development.

SCOR said all the changes were made with internal promotions.

The following group executive committee members continue to serve in their current capacity:

Ian Kelly , as group chief financial officer

, as group chief financial officer Jean-Paul Conoscente , as chief executive officer of SCOR Global P&C

, as chief executive officer of SCOR Global P&C Brona Magee, as deputy chief executive officer of SCOR Global Life.

The following group executive committee members have expanded responsibilities:

Francois de Varenne , CEO of SCOR Global Investments, will oversee an enlarged area of leadership including investments, technology, budget, group project office and group corporate finance. In his new role, he will be in charge of the groups transformation.

, CEO of SCOR Global Investments, will oversee an enlarged area of leadership including investments, technology, budget, group project office and group corporate finance. In his new role, he will be in charge of the groups transformation. Claire Le Gall-Robinson, group general secretary, responsible for governance, sustainability, legal and compliance functions, is appointed group chief sustainability officer. In addition to her existing responsibilities, she will be in charge of human resources, communications and hub operations in this new and expanded role.

The following group executive committee members have new responsibilities:

Frieder Knupling , previously group chief risk officer, is appointed CEO of SCOR Global Life, succeeding Paolo De Martin, who has decided to pursue a new direction in his career, having successfully served as CEO of SCOR Global Life since 2014.

, previously group chief risk officer, is appointed CEO of SCOR Global Life, succeeding Paolo De Martin, who has decided to pursue a new direction in his career, having successfully served as CEO of SCOR Global Life since 2014. Romain Launay , previously group chief operating officer, is named deputy CEO of SCOR Global P&C and CEO of Specialty Insurance.

, previously group chief operating officer, is named deputy CEO of SCOR Global P&C and CEO of Specialty Insurance. Fabian Uffer, previously group head of Risk Modelling, in charge of the groups internal model, succeeds Frieder Knupling as group chief risk officer and joins the group executive committee.

The breadth of global experience, the diverse backgrounds, the strong expertise, the knowledge of the industry and the leadership qualities of the members of this renewed group executive committee give me a high degree of confidence in our ability to successfully pursue SCORs development, commented Laurent Rousseau, CEO of SCOR.

These internal promotions bear witness to the depth of SCORs talent pool and the strong competencies of our rising leaders. I am confident that this new organization will ensure managerial continuity while reflecting the strategic importance of transformation and sustainability for the group, Rousseau continued.

I have shaped this group executive committee  both the members and the allocation of responsibilities  with a view to ensuring that we will work and act as one team to execute SCORs strategy and, together with our more than 3,000 employees, write the next chapter of SCORs success story.

Biographies

Jean-Paul Conoscente, an American and French citizen, is a graduate of the University of California Berkeley (Master of Science in Structural Engineering) and the Ecole des Travaux Publics, Paris (diploma in civil engineering). He started his career in earthquake engineering in California and then in catastrophe modelling as the European head of the modelling firm EQECAT. He subsequently held several senior positions with Aon Benfield as a reinsurance broker in London and Paris, and then with AXA Re in Paris as the global head of Property. In 2008, he joined SCOR in New York as chief underwriting officer for the Americas for SCOR Global P&C. Conoscente helped transform SCORs team and portfolio in the Americas before taking on the role of CEO of SCORs P&C U.S. operations in 2016, then CEO of Reinsurance globally in 2018. In 2019, he was appointed CEO of SCOR Global P&C and member of the group executive committee.

Ian Kelly, a British citizen, is a fellow of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants. Having begun his career with Prudential, he subsequently joined the London-based life reinsurance department of the Gerling Group, which later became Revios UK, holding the role of chief accountant. Following the acquisition of Revios by SCOR, he was appointed chief financial officer of the UK operations in 2007. In 2009, Kelly was appointed director of General Accounting and Group Reporting, with responsibility for the consolidation of financial reporting of the SCOR group. Kelly strengthened his strategic, regulatory and financial experience within SCOR with his appointment as head of Group Financial Planning and Analysis in 2011. Maintaining responsibility for the financial planning of the group, Kelly was named head of Investor Relations in 2016 before being appointed group chief financial officer and member of the group executive committee in 2020.

Frieder Knupling, a German citizen, has been a member of SCORs group executive committee since 2010, serving first as deputy CEO of SCOR Global Life, then as deputy group chief risk officer and finally as group CRO. Before this, he held various actuarial, risk and finance roles at SCOR, Revios and Gerling Global Re. He holds academic degrees in mathematics and physics, and a doctorate in economics. He is a fellow of the Deutsche Aktuarvereinigung (DAV).

Romain Launay, a French citizen, is a graduate of the Ecole Polytechnique, of the Ecole des Mines de Paris and of the Centre des Hautes Etudes de lAssurance. Having occupied various positions at the French Ministry for Economy and Finance between 2004 and 2009, he became adviser to the prime minister in 2009. He joined SCOR in February 2012 as senior adviser to the chairman and CEO, before being appointed group general secretary in May 2014. In February 2016, Launay was appointed group chief operating officer.

Claire Le Gall-Robinson, a French citizen, is a lawyer admitted to the Paris and New York Bars and a graduate of Harvard Law School (Master of Laws) and the Paris II- Pantheon Assas University (corporate and tax law). She practiced for more than 17 years in leading U.S. law firms Sullivan & Cromwell LLP and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP. Prior to joining SCOR in 2016 as group general secretary, she was a partner of the UK law firm Gowling WLG. She has taught at the Sciences Po Law School since 2010. In March 2021, she was appointed to SCORs group executive committee.

Brona Magee, an Irish citizen, holds a bachelors degree in actuarial and financial studies from University College Dublin. From 2006 to 2011, she worked for Transamerica International Reinsurance Ireland, which was acquired by SCOR in 2011. She was CFO for SCOR Global Life Reinsurance Ireland from 2011 to 2013. In 2013, she moved to the United States to take the position of CFO, Americas, at SCOR Global Life and in 2015 was promoted to deputy CEO, Americas. In February 2017, she returned to Dublin and became chief actuary for SCOR Global Life. She was appointed head of Client Solutions and a member of SCOR Global Lifes executive leadership team in November 2017. In September 2018 she was appointed deputy CEO and head of Global Markets for SCOR Global Life and became a member of the group executive committee. Magee is a fellow of the Society of Actuaries in Ireland.

Fabian Uffer, a Swiss citizen, started his career in 2003 as a life actuary in the insurance industry at Allianz Suisse. He subsequently worked at a startup company named CelsiusPro and developed a weather derivative pricing engine. In 2009 Uffer joined SCORs P&C Risk Management department. He then transitioned to group financial modelling and risk analysis, where he held various positions including head of Risk Modelling. In 2021 he was appointed chief risk officer. Uffer studied at the University of Waterloo and holds a masters degree in mathematics from the ETH Zurich. He is a fully qualified actuary of the Swiss Association of Actuaries.

Francois de Varenne, a French citizen, is a graduate of the Ecole Polytechnique and a civil engineer of the Ponts et Chaussees. He holds a doctorate in finance and graduated as an actuary from the Institut de Science Financiere et dAssurances (ISFA). de Varenne joined the Federation Francaise des Societes dAssurances (FFSA) in 1993 as manager of Economic and Financial Affairs. In London, beginning in 1998, he served as insurance strategist with Lehman Brothers, vice president for asset management solutions, and structured transactions specialist in insurance and reinsurance companies at Merrill Lynch and then at Deutsche Bank. In 2003, he became managing partner of Gimar Finance & Cie. He joined the group in 2005 as director of Corporate Finance and Asset Management. In September 2007, he was named group chief operating officer. In October 2008, de Varenne was appointed CEO of SCOR Global Investments.

Photo credit: SCOR

Topics Reinsurance Leadership
India unveiled a data-sharing system that could revolutionize investing and credit, giving millions of consumers greater access and control over their financial records and expanding the potential pool of customers for lenders and fintech companies.

Regulators agreed to allow banks, pension funds, tax authorities, insurers and other finance firms to pool together customer information  once the user consents  to make transactions smoother. If the system works, firms will be able access large amounts of data within seconds to assess the creditworthiness of a small business, recommend a wealth management product for an individual, or tailor an insurance policy for a family.

The Account Aggregator system, years in the planning, was formally introduced on Thursday. Its an ambitious approach that combines privacy protection with credit reporting. Heres how it works:

On one side are Financial Information Providers, such as banks, tax authorities and telecom operators, which possess financial information about people and businesses and can provide it in a standardized format

On the other are Financial Information Users, such as non-bank lenders and fintech firms, which seek data held by FIPs but have thus far had to deal with a cumbersome and costly process to access it

In the middle are account aggregators, who are working as intermediaries to smooth the flow of data and reduce the time required to process information

The approach could be a game changer in a country where millions of underprivileged individuals and small businesses are denied loans because they lack collateral and the relatively young credit-rating system covers only a tiny fraction of the population. It could expand the potential pool of customers for lending startups such as NeoGrowth Credit Pvt and Lendingkart Technologies Pvt as well as technology giants including Amazon.com Inc. and Facebook Inc. that are expanding in Indias fintech market via products such as loans to small businesses.

The Account Aggregator model will help in the democratization of data and shift the power over data accessibility and usage to owners of data rather than the holders of data, said Rajeshwar Rao, deputy governor of the Reserve Bank of India, speaking at the launch.

Rathanlal Jain, who owns a tiny store selling party supplies such as festoons and decorations in Bangalores swarming Nagarathpet commercial neighborhood, is among the beneficiaries.

The 30-year-old businessman gave his consent for the system to grant Lendingkart access to his bank statements. The startups algorithms crunched 10,000 variables on the information to determine that Jain was eligible for credit. Nearly 600,000 rupees ($8,210) came swiftly into my bank account without any collateral, said Jain.

Lendingkart has processed more than 2,000 loan applications like Jains via the new system in the past weeks and approved a third of them. Without the new system, accessing and processing the customer data would have been significantly more laborious and time-consuming.

Over 120,000 customers approach us each month for credit but just over 10% of them are able to provide us the digital financial data to process their applications, said Deepesh Goel, head of strategy at the Bangalore-based startup. The Account Aggregator system could bridge the data gap and make nearly 90% of businesses eligible to seek digital credit.

The system lets users pull together all kinds of financial data  starting with bank statements but eventually even mobile bill payments, tax filings and retirement fund balances  that they can then choose to share instantly and temporarily in pursuit of loans, investment products or even insurance. The countrys gargantuan goods and services tax system is expected to come onto the system to provider users and businesses financial data.

Indias newly established digital rules and practices lay the groundwork for the data-sharing system. The central bank now requires financial data to be reported in a standard, machine-readable format, which means its easier to automatically slice and share.

Most countries have a framework of data laws and privacy laws and recognize the individuals right over their data, but the challenge has been to operationalize the rights over data, said Siddharth Tiwari, Asia head at the Bank for International Settlements. In India, were looking at the worlds first open, revocable, granular digital consent-based system where the user is empowered to decide who can look at their banking and other financial data.

A crucial benefit for less affluent individuals is the potential access to loans without collateral. The new system could help a person prove his creditworthiness with information such as past financial transactions, coupled with already available parameters like location of the person or company, and the segment a business operates in.

World Bank data shows that over a quarter of the planets individuals with bank accounts save money in the formal financial system, but only about 10% are able to borrow from the same system without tangible collateral, said Tiwari.

Its not even an emerging market or developing country problem, he said. The borrowing challenge bogs even high-income countries.

The AA system is the starting point for consent architecture that starts with financial services but can be equally applied to health-care data and jobs data, said Nandan Nilekani, co-founder of Infosys Ltd., who has been involved with the countrys Aadhaar digital identity and UPI financial-backbone projects.

Its a transformative initiative, Nilekani said at the launch. No other country in the world has developed such thorough data-sharing framework that can be deployed to cover over 50 million businesses and over a billion people.

With assistance from Suvashree Ghosh.

Photo: Pedestrians walk past stores at a wholesale market in the Old Delhi area of Delhi, India, on Saturday, July 1, 2017. Photographer: Anindito Mukherjee/Bloomberg

Copyright 2021 Bloomberg.
This edition of International People Moves covers appointments at Swiss Re, Zurich Insurance and Everest Re Group subsidiary, Mt. Logan Re.

A summary of these new hires follows.

AXA XLs Coletti Joins Swiss Re as Head of New Central Cyber U/W Team

Swiss Re announced plans to create a central cyber underwriting team, which will be led by John Coletti as head of Global Cyber.

Maya Bundt, the current head of Cyber Solutions, has decided to take on a newly created role at the Swiss Re Institutes Cyber Centre of Competence.

The central cyber underwriting team will assume global responsibility for Swiss Res underwriting and product development activities in the cyber space. By creating more dedicated cyber capabilities, Swiss Re aims to further strengthen its client offering as well as its position as a thought leader in the market.

Coletti will join Swiss Re from from AXA XL, where he has served as the chief underwriting officer for cyber since 2012. He is a respected leader in the cyber insurance market and was one of the pioneers in this dynamic line of business.

With his expertise, Coletti will help Swiss Re to address the complex nature of cyber risk, including important industry issues such as ransomware and risk aggregation. He will report to Gregory Schiffer, head of Global Specialty, and will be responsible for Swiss Res global cyber business, which includes portfolio ownership, global underwriting activities as well as cyber product development.

***

Zurich Promotes Mantero to Group Chief Strategy Officer

Zurich Insurance Group has appointed, Paolo Mantero, currently chief financial officer Commercial Insurance, to the role of group chief strategy officer, effective Jan. 1, 2022. He will report to Mario Greco, group chief executive officer.

He will oversee all strategy resources globally and further strengthen coordination and collaboration between Group, regional and country offices to help ensure a solid outline and a consistent execution of the strategy. Mantero joined Zurich in 2016 as head of the group CEO office.

A successor to Mantero in his commercial insurance role will be announced in due course.

Mantero succeeds Giovanni Giuliani, who will become chief executive officer of Zurich Italy, reporting to Alison Martin, CEO EMEA & Bank Distribution, subject to regulatory approval. Giuliani has successfully shaped and overseen execution of Zurichs strategy since 2016, modernizing and simplifying the organization through the launch of numerous innovative initiatives.

With a career spanning 25 years in global business roles, Giuliani brings extensive experience and knowledge to his new role.

***

Everest Names Citigroups Modin President of Mt. Logan Re as Whiting Retires

Everest Re Group Ltd. announced the appointment of John Modin as president of Mt. Logan Re Ltd., effective Sept. 30, 2021.

Modin joins Mt. Logan from Citigroup where he was a managing director in the financial services group and head of Insurance Solutions. He has over 30 years of experience in the financial services, insurance linked securities (ILS) and insurance markets and earlier in his career was the chief financial officer of PXRE and Enterprise Re, after starting his career as a CPA at KPMG.

Modin succeeds David Whiting, current president of Mt. Logan, who is retiring after a career in the Bermuda reinsurance market spanning nearly 45 years. Whiting will remain with Mt. Logan until the end of 2021 to assist Modin with the transition.

A subsidiary of Everest Re Group, Mt. Logan is a Bermuda-registered Class 3 insurer which offers alternative capital markets the opportunity to gain exposure to a diversified pool of reinsurance risks through collateralized reinsurance products. Mt. Logan has been in operation since 2013 and had approximately $1 billion of assets under management as of June 30, 2021.

Topics Cyber AXA XL Swiss Re
Conservation-minded corn farmers who split apply nitrogen will soon have another option for insurance coverage, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) says.

Beginning in crop year 2022, the Risk Management Agency (RMA) will offer the Post Application Coverage Endorsement (PACE) in certain states for non-irrigated corn, providing coverage for producers who use this practice that is considered better for natural resources and saves money for producers.

To split-apply nitrogen, growers make multiple fertilizer applications during the growing season rather than providing all of the crops nitrogen requirements with a single treatment before or during planting. The PACE will provide payments for the projected yield lost when producers are unable to apply the in-season nitrogen application.

RMA Acting Administrator Richard Flournoy said in a media release that the agency is able to offer the PACE thanks to the cooperation of our partners, including the Illinois Corn Growers Association, National Corn Growers Association, Ag-Analytics Technology Company and Meridian Institute.

Split application of nitrogen can lead to lower input costs as well as helps prevent runoff or leaching of nutrients into waterways and groundwater. This is because it is used in more targeted amounts over multiple applications, rather than one large application.

This new crop insurance option builds upon RMAs efforts to encourage use of conservation practices, including cover crops. For example, RMA recently provided premium support for producers who planted cover crops to help offset impacts from the pandemic. Meanwhile, RMA recently updated policy to allow producers with crop insurance to hay, graze or chop cover crops at any time and still receive 100% of the prevented planting payment. This policy change supports use of cover crops, which can help producers build resilience to drought.

The Federal Crop Insurance Corporation Board approved the PACE recently, and RMA will share additional details later this year. The sales closing date for the endorsement will be the same as the producers underlying corn policy.

RMA staff are working with AIPs and other customers by phone, mail and electronically to support crop insurance coverage for producers. Farmers with crop insurance questions or needs should contact their insurance agents about conducting business remotely (by telephone or email).

Crop insurance is sold and delivered solely through private crop insurance agents. A list of crop insurance agents is available at all USDA Service Centers and online at the RMA Agent Locator.

Source: USDA

Topics Agribusiness
An automotive steel manufacturer in Ohio faces more than $222,000 in proposed penalties for continuing to expose workers to amputations, other hazards at its Canton facility, federal workplace safety officials say.

OSHA placed Republic Steel in its Severe Violator Enforcement Program after citing the company for one repeat, seven serious and three other-than-serious safety violations. OSHA has proposed $220,399 in penalties.

Responding to a complaint of unsafe working conditions, federal safety inspectors found a Canton automotive steel mill did not install adequate machine guarding, implement lockout/tagout measures or train workers on safety procedures, all of which exposed workers to amputation hazards, according to the workplace safety administration.

OSHA determined the company did not train workers to operate cranes and forklifts adequately, failed to repair damaged cranes and follow safe electrical work practices, and exposed workers to slip and fall hazards.

Republic Steel was cited for similar machine safety hazards in 2017.

Based in Canton, Republic Steel manufactures steel bars and other products for use in machinery, cars, trucks and other vehicles. The company, a subsidiary of Grupo Simec of Guadalajara, Mexico, employs more than 2,000 workers.

The company has 15 business days from receipt of its citations and penalties to comply, request an informal conference with OSHAs area director, or contest the findings before the independent Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission.

Source: OSHA

Copyright 2021 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Workers' Compensation Ohio
What is life worth? asks Washington lawyer Kenneth J. Feinberg (Michael Keaton) in the opening scenes of the based-on-a-true-story drama Worth, while writing the question on a blackboard for a room full of law school students.

To Feinberg, its not a trick question or a moral one. Its a calculation. There are legal parameters and predictions of future earning power that dictate the answer.

The answer is a number, he says. And thats the job.

In Sara Colangelos Worth, which premieres Friday on Netflix, Feinbergs formulas are dramatically tested in extraordinary tragedy. After Sept. 11, Feinberg is among those brought to Washington to advise on compensation for the families of the victims. The idea floated is that Congress, for the first time, should create a fund for the families affected. Its done partly out of genuine compassion for a horrific loss  government-sponsored charity as one calls it  and partly to avoid an avalanche of civil suits that could cripple the airline industry. Its national mourning plus business interests.

And its that collision that Colangelo intelligently mines in Worth, a somber procedural about the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund that details the complicated messes that result when government bureaucracy meets human lives that arent so neatly computed.

The movie is based on Feinbergs own thoughtful account of his experience, his 2005 book What Is Life Worth? Seeing a way to serve his country, Feinberg, a mediator who had resolved the Agent Orange class-action suit, took the job pro bono, knowing full well that weighing the value of janitors alongside CEOs would be a thankless task. In Worth, he takes a grateful call from President George W. Bush, who says he wouldnt wish the job on his worst enemy.

Feinberg has two years to figure out who deserves what  a steep assignment considering his staff begins without a simple list of the victims. I doubt that many, in the aftershocks of Sept. 11, were closely following the fund, or that still more would think its administration would make a riveting movie. When Sept. 11 has turned up in film, audiences havent often followed. Not-entirely-accurate thrillers (Zero Dark Thirty) have found more attention than denser tales that weed through the complicated aftermath (The Report).

But arriving almost exactly on the 20-year anniversary of Sept. 11, Worth is a well-acted, humanistic film that takes a humble path to a historical trauma. Capturing how individual lives are shaped, warped and maybe manage to claw out something good in a dehumanizing bureaucracy might not seem the stuff of movies. (Though one of the great films, Akira Kurosawas To Live, does just that.) Yet Worth builds its case steadily, gently grappling with life and death, value and money in America. It doesnt go as deeply as it could into the moral implications of the entire enterprise. But Colangelo (The Kindergarten Teacher) and screenwriter Max Borenstein (who has penned most of the recent Godzilla films) are attuned to the many soulful dimensions of the story.

Feinbergs principal opponent is Charlie Wolf (Stanley Tucci), a widower who vehemently disagrees with Feinbergs calculations. But everything that comes at Feinberg is an argument, in some form, that families dont fit formulas. His aim to bring an objective, clinical calculus to inherently personal and emotional losses is gradually ground down by the many family members that push their way through his door, including a Staten Island firefighters widow (Laura Benanti, terrific). Sooner than their boss does, members of Feinbergs legal team  Amy Ryan and the especially good Shunori Ramanathan come to the conclusion that nothing about death and grief can be impersonal.

But as good as the supporting cast is, Keaton holds the movie together. Like many of his best roles, its a subtly smart performance resistant to the films inclinations to sentimentality. A story about the victims of Sept. 11 maybe ought not to focus on a lawyer dispensing the cash. But Keaton  a truly great actor in his responsiveness to those around him  makes a compelling, initially tone-deaf listener to the stories that filter through Worth.

Worth, a Netflix release, is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association of America for some strong language and thematic elements. Running time: 118 minutes. Three stars out of four.

Copyright 2021 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Profit Loss
AM Best has assigned a Financial Strength Rating of A- (Excellent) and a Long-Term Issuer Credit Rating of a- (Excellent) to startup Next Insurance US Co., headquartered in Palo Alto, California. The outlook assigned to these ratings is stable.

The ratings agency said its ratings reflect Next US balance sheet strength, which its analysts assess as very strong, as well as its adequate operating performance, limited business profile and appropriate enterprise risk management.

AM Best said the ratings also reflect Next US strongest level of projected risk-adjusted capitalization, as measured by Bests Capital Adequacy Ratio, and a sound business plan that is expected to take advantage of the sizable small- and medium-size business market. Under the business plan, the company will seek to build a geographically diversified book of business that will be sourced through direct channels, independent agents and partnerships through an affiliated agency, AM Best said.

On Second Thought, Insurtech Next Insurance Thinks Agents Have a Role After All

Insurtech Next Insurance Ditching Agency Model to Become a Carrier

The company uses an online platform that leverages artificial intelligence and machine learning. AM Best said it believes that the companys existing relationships and distribution channels will be fundamental in gaining the projected scale in the market.

The ratings also consider the execution risk inherent in start-up organizations and the potential challenges management faces to execute on the business plan. While the companys innovative platform and existing relationships are anticipated to meet projections effectively, the scaling of operations may present challenges in gaining traction and achieving the planned profitable results, AM Best said.

Next began as a managing general agency in 2016 and became a carrier in 2018, targeting small and medium businesses. Since 2016, it has raised $881 million in funding.

Next Insurance Funding Hits $881M After Latest $250M Round

Next has made some acquisitions, including AP Intego, a Massachusetts-based digital agency providing affinity small commercial insurance products, and Juniper Labs, a provider of alternative open data and underwriting technology, with a goal of improving its workers compensation offering.

Depending on state and line of business, Next issues policies by either Next Insurance US Company, which is also rated A Exceptional by Demotech, or by State National Insurance Co., rated A by AM Best.

Topics InsurTech Tech AM Best
inmates at a northwest Arkansas jail said they werent told a medication they were given to treat COVID-19 was actually an anti-parasite drug that federal health officials have warned should not be used to treat the coronavirus.

Three inmates at the Washington County jail told The Associated Press they didnt know they were being given ivermectin until its use at the facility was revealed last week. The American Civil Liberties Union of Arkansas, which on Sept. 1 repeated its call for the practice to end, said its also heard similar complaints from inmates.

The inmates comments contradict assertions by the sheriff and the jails physician that the use of the drug was voluntary. The drugs use at the jail has prompted an investigation by the state Medical Board.

They were pretty much testing us in here is all they were doing, seeing if it would work, said William Evans, an inmate who said he was given the drug for two weeks after he tested positive for COVID-19.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved ivermectin for use by people and animals for some parasitic worms and for head lice and skin conditions. The FDA has not approved its use in treating or preventing COVID-19 in humans.

The drugs manufacturer, Merck, said in February that it had found no evidence that ivermectin is an effective treatment for patients with COVID-19.

The American Medical Association, the American Pharmacists Association and the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists have called for an immediate end to prescribing and using the drug to treat the coronavirus outside clinical trials.

Washington County Sheriff Tim Helder, a spokesperson for his office and jail physician Dr. Rob Karas did not respond to calls or emails. Karas last week released a lengthy statement defending the use of ivermectin, saying he had been prescribing the drug to inmates and patients at his clinics since late last year.

Edrick Floreal-Wooten, an inmate, said he was given ivermectin at the jail after he tested positive on Aug. 21.

I asked what are they, and theyd just tell me vitamins, Floreal-Wooten said. With me being sick and all of us being sick, we thought that they were there to help us. I never thought they would do something shady.

Floreal-Wooten said he refused to take the drug last week after seeing a news article about ivermectin being prescribed to inmates.

Asked whether he would have taken the drug had they told him at the outset it was ivermectin, he responded: Never. Im not livestock. Im a human.

The ACLU said it has also heard from several inmates who say they were told the drug was vitamins or steroids.

In a letter to Helder, the ACLU said some inmates are prepared to file a lawsuit to halt the drug from being prescribed. The group said it was unconscionable that inmates werent informed they were being given the drug.

They have a right to know what they are being given, ACLU of Arkansas Executive Director Holly Dickson said. This is not a right they forego by virtue of being locked up.

Before the jails ivermectin use was revealed, the state Medical Board told Karas last month that it received two complaints against him over a post on his clinics Facebook page where he said he didnt believe face masks decreased the spread of viruses, according to documents released under a Freedom of Information Act request.

Karas told the board in written responses last week that his opinions were based on his 20-plus years of experience and review of the literature through the years.

Pharmacy prescriptions for ivermectin have jumped nationwide this summer, and health officials in Arkansas and other states have issued warnings after seeing a spike in poison control center calls about people taking the animal form of the drug to treat COVID-19.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last week sent an alert about the trend to doctors. The CDC said there is not good evidence that ivermectin is effective at preventing or treating COVID-19, and that the government has not authorized it to be used against the coronavirus.

Despite the warnings, Republican lawmakers in Arkansas and other states have touted the drug as a potential treatment for COVID-19.

Dr. Jose Romero, Arkansas secretary of health, wouldnt say whether he thought it was appropriate for the inmates to be prescribed ivermectin but said using any drug off-label would require an agreement between the physician and the patient.

I dont know what agreement has been made, Romero told reporters at a news conference this week. Romero said the Arkansas Health Department doesnt endorse its use for COVID-19.

Copyright 2021 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics COVID-19 Drugs
Photos show what appears to be a miles-long oil slick near an offshore rig in the Gulf of Mexico after Hurricane Ida, according to aerial survey imagery released Sept. 1 by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and reviewed by The Associated Press.

The government imagery, along with additional photos taken by the AP from a helicopter on Aug. 31, also show Louisiana port facilities, oil refineries and shipyards in the storms path where the telltale rainbow sheen typical of oil and fuel spills is visible in the water of bays and bayous.

Both state and federal regulators said that they had been unable to reach the stricken area, citing challenging conditions in the disaster zone.

The NOAA photos show a black slick floating in the Gulf near a large rig with the name Enterprise Offshore Drilling painted on its helipad. The company, based in Houston, did not respond to requests for comment by phone or email.

Aerial photos taken by NOAA also show significant flooding to the massive Phillips 66 Alliance Refinery along the bank of the Mississippi River, just south of New Orleans. In some sections of the refinery, rainbow sheen is visible on the water leading toward the river.

Asked about reports of levee failures near the refinery, Phillips 66 spokesman Bernardo Fallas said there was some water in the facility and stressed that operations were shut down in advance of the storm. Asked Tuesday about potential environmental hazards emanating from the facility, Fallas referred a reporter to a statement on the companys website saying its response is focused on ensuring the safety and well-being of our employees and our surrounding communities.

After the AP sent Phillips 66 photos showing extensive flooding at its refinery and what appeared to be petroleum in the water, Fallas conceded by email that the company could confirm it had discovered a sheen of unknown origin in some flooded areas of Alliance Refinery.

At this time, the sheen appears to be secured and contained within refinery grounds, Fallas said. Clean-up crews are on site. The incident was reported to the appropriate regulatory agencies upon discovery.

Fallas did not respond when asked whether the leak was reported after the AP sent the company photos four hours earlier.

Phillips listed the Alliance Refinery for sale last week, before the storm hit, citing poor market conditions.

All told, seven Louisiana refineries remained shuttered. Combined, they account for about 9% of all U.S. refining capacity, according to the U.S. Energy Department. Some refineries on the Mississippi River reported damage to their docks from barges that broke loose during the storm.

Jennah Durant, spokesman for the Environmental Protection Agency, said that the agency had received no reports of significant spills or other environmental threats after the Category 4 storm made landfall on Aug. 29 at Port Fourchon with 150 mph (240 km/h) winds

Three days after the storm moved through, Durant said that no EPA personnel had yet deployed to the devastated region south of New Orleans. Asked if EPA staff had been reviewing the aerial photos taken by federal aircraft over the disaster zone, Durant said the imagery had not been provided to the agency.

The aerial imagery reviewed by the AP is readily available to the public on the NOAA website.

After the AP sent photos of the oil slick to EPA, agency press secretary Nick Conger said the National Response Center hotline operated by the U.S. Coast Guard had received 26 calls reporting leaks or spills in the storm zone but none had warranted an EPA response.

Conger reiterated that any person or organization responsible for a sizable release or spill of pollutants is required to notify the federal government.

The AP also provided photos of the oil slick to the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources, which regulates offshore drilling in state waters. Spokesman Patrick Courreges confirmed the agency had received an informal report of petroleum sheen in the waters south of Port Fourchon but said regulators currently dont have capabilities to get out there yet.

The U.S. Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, which regulates offshore oil and gas platforms, announced before the hurricane arrived that about half of the 560 staffed rigs in the Gulf had been evacuated. Those crews had only started to trickle back out by Sept. 1, and it was unclear whether the Enterprise Offshore rig was staffed.

The bureaus public affairs staff did not respond after the AP sent photos of the black slick in the Gulf and asked if there were any reports of a spill.

Both state and federal environmental regulators said the emergency response to Ida had been hampered by blocked roads, washed-out bridges, electrical outages and a lack of communications. Both telephone landlines and mobile phone service in much of the region remained offline.

I think most agencies are kind of caught up in the whole fog of war thing at the moment, with far more places we need to be than we can be, Courreges wrote in an email. Its not as easy to respond to things right now.

Port Fourchon, which took a direct hit from the storm, is the primary service hub for hundreds of oil and gas rigs offshore. The port also contains oil terminals and pipelines that account for about 90% of the oil and gas production from the Gulf.

Photos taken by the AP from a chartered helicopter, as well as the NOAA imagery, show extensive damage to the sprawling facility, including sunken vessels, collapsed structures and more than a dozen large, overturned fuel storage tanks.

Idas winds, equivalent to an EF3 tornado, peeled the roofs off large steel buildings in the harbor and toppled metal light poles. Trucks, cranes and shipping containers were piled into jumbled heaps.

Chett Chiasson, the executive director of Greater Lafourche Port Commission, told the AP that the companies based at Port Fourchon were entering what would likely be a lengthy recovery phase. A top priority, he said, will be clearing roads and removing sunken vessels so boats can safely navigate the harbor.

Associated Press Investigative Reporter Michael Biesecker reported from Washington. AP reporters Matthew Daly in Washington and David Koenig in Dallas contributed.

Copyright 2021 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Energy Oil Gas
An Arizona Supreme Court ruling rejects a major part of a Tucson hospitals lawsuit accusing a pharmacy chain of negligence and seeking compensation for care provided to opioid-addicted patients.

The justices ruled this week that Tucson Medical Center cant sue CVS Health Corporation for alleged negligence through distribution of opioids.

The 2018 lawsuit said CVS was part of a conspiracy of drug manufacturers and others who promoted the use of opioids and fueled the national opioid epidemic, causing huge losses for hospitals.

The court agreed with CVS, saying that state and federal law dont create a legal duty for pharmacies to hospitals under the facts underlying the case and that the medical center can only resort to filing liens against the addicts to try to recover costs of uncompensated care.

The justices recognize the tremendous costs imposed by the opioid crisis on society generally, and hospitals specifically. The human costs are tragic. However, it is for Congress and the legislature, not the courts, to create methods to alleviate those costs, Justice Clint Bolick wrote.

The case now returns to trial court for consideration of claims  not considered in the appeal decided Wednesday  alleging public nuisance and unjust enrichment.

Copyright 2021 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Lawsuits Arizona
A police captain on the Hawaii island of Kauai has filed a lawsuit alleging his police chief discriminated against him for being Japanese American, including an episode when the chief squinted his eyes, bowed repeatedly and said he couldnt trust Japanese people.

The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Honolulu last week names Police Chief Todd Raybuck, Kauai County, the Kauai Police Department, the Kauai Police Commission and multiple unnamed individuals to be determined.

The police commission in April suspended Raybuck without pay for five days for making discriminatory comments after an investigation found he mocked people of Asian descent.

The plaintiff in the lawsuit, 55-year-old Paul Applegate, is part Japanese and has worked for the police department since 2000.

His lawsuit alleges multiple instances of Raybuck  who became Kauais police chief in 2019 after he retired from 27 years as a police officer in Las Vegas  squinting his eyes at Applegate and mocking Asians.

The lawsuit alleges the department internally announced a white officer had been selected as assistant chief of the administrative and technical bureau even though no formal selection process had taken place. When Applegate applied for the job anyway, Raybuck interviewed him one-on-one even though prior department practice called for two people to conduct such interviews.

When Applegate met with Raybuck afterward to discuss the selection process, criteria and scoring, the lawsuit said the chief mocked the appearance of Japanese people.

Chief Raybuck proceeded to squint his eyes and repeatedly bow to plaintiff, stating that he could not trust Japanese people because they do not always tell the truth, the lawsuit said. He then stated that the Western culture `tells it like it us, whereas the Japanese culture says yes, yes, yes to your face even when they think the persons idea is stupid.

Alden Alayvilla, a spokesperson for Kauai County, said the county was unable to comment because of pending litigation. Coco Zickos, a spokesperson for the police department and Raybuck, said neither could comment because of pending litigation.

The lawsuit said Applegate filed complaints with the Kauai Police Commission, the county and the Hawaii Civil Rights Commission.

When the police commission suspended Raybuck, the police department said the chief would be required to complete Equal Employment Opportunity anti-discrimination training and cultural sensitivity training.

The department didnt provide details about the violations found by the commissions investigation, only the dates: Nov. 13, 2019 and July 29, 2020. These dates correspond with episodes detailed in Applegates lawsuit.

Raybuck said in a statement upon his April suspension that he values and appreciates diversity in the workplace and community.

I accept responsibility for my comments and will continue to use this experience to expand my cultural awareness and increase my knowledge and understanding of different cultures, he said.

Applegates lawsuit said Raybuck continued to discriminate after returning from his suspension. The lawsuit said Raybuck denied Applegates request to be temporarily assigned with pay to an assistant chief position while an assistant chief was temporarily assigned to the chiefs office. Other officers were treated differently, the lawsuit said.

The lawsuit said that in June, Raybuck brought three individuals on to his command staff, all of them white.

The lawsuit seeks damages and attorneys fees.

Copyright 2021 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Lawsuits Law Enforcement
A lawyer for a Dublin man, who is charged with causing the death of a Limerick student on a Greek island, said his client will be fully contesting the accusation.

Greek police, and the public prosecutors office on Naxos, refused to release the name of the accused, who is aged 20. He is charged with causing lethal bodily harm to Niall OBrien, 22, from Castletroy, Co Limerick, in the town of Chora, Ios, on August 30.

Its alleged the two men became involved in an altercation resulting in Mr ONeill sustaining a fatal head injury.

The accused was charged before a Public Prosecutor and Judicial Investigator on Naxos island yesterday and conditionally released on 8,000 bail, which must be lodged by September 15. As part of his bail conditions the accused must sign on once a month at the Greek Embassy in Dublin.

The offence against the accused carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison, explained his lawyer Alexis Anagnostakis. Speaking after his clients court appearance, Mr Anagnostakis said it was not up to him to disclose his clients name and that he would not do so because of personal data.

The public prosecutors office was asked for the accuseds name. A spokeswoman for the prosecutor said they would not release the accuseds name. The office did not give a reason.

Mr Anagnostakis said his client would be contesting the charge and that, in his opinion, the evidence against him was weak.

I appeared with him in front of the investigating judge; we stated our position against the accusation, and the judge and the investigating prosecutor unanimously felt there was no reason to detain him until the trial, Mr Anagnostakis said.

In my opinion, the accusation against my client (is) weak, and his family would like to extend their condolences (to the victims family) over the tragedy, but, it was not their sons fault. The charge was lethal bodily harm, which brings about a penalty of up to 10 years in prison, added Mr Anagnostakis.

An informed legal source in Greece said it could take a number of years before the matter goes to trial. There is an accumulation of cases in the Greek criminal justice system, which is partly Covid-related, they explained.

Mr OBrien was one of a group of 20 who were holidaying on Ios ahead of starting their fourth-year studies in Financial mathematics at the University of Limerick when he died last Monday morning.

Mr OBriens family, some of whom have travelled to Greece in recent days, are liaising with The Kevin Bell Repatriation Trust to arrange to fly his remains home for burial. A source said they were hopeful the body could be repatriated this weekend, and that arrangements would be made for a funeral next week.

A talented sportsman, Mr OBrien played hurling with Broadford in south-east Clare; soccer with Aisling Annacotty AFC in Limerick; and golfed competitively with Casteltroy Golf Club. He was due to start a part-time bar position at the golf club next week.

A tribute released by the club Thursday, read: Niall was part of the Irish Junior Foursomes team in 2016, holing the winning birdie putt on the first play-off hole to win the Munster title.

Niall was a very popular and well-liked member of the club who was due to commence work in the club bar next week after he returned from his trip to Greece. We are devastated that Niall will no longer be able to join us, and the tragedy of his untimely death has deeply affected all of us.

Mr OBrien is survived by his parents Ann and Mike, and brothers Cian, Eoin, and Alan.
Protesters gathered outside Green Party headquarters in Dublin on Friday to protest against the partys response to comments made in a WhatsApp group by Limerick TD Brian Leddin.

A small crowd gathered outside the partys Suffolk Street offices to condemn Mr Leddins comments and to demand sanctions against the TD.

It was reported this week that Mr Leddin had apologised for some comments he made in a WhatsApp group that had been set up in 2017.

Mr Leddin, who chairs the Oireachtas Environment and Climate Action Committee, acknowledged that some of the language in the WhatsApp group had been inappropriate and said that he had apologised to a female councillor for a comment he had made about her.

Mr Leddin also said that he had since left the WhatsApp group.

Laura Fitzgerald and her daughter Inessa join activists picketing outside Green Party headquarters in Dublin (Brian Lawless/PA)

Earlier this week, Green Party leader Eamon Ryan said that it was correct that Mr Leddin had apologised.

The party has not yet confirmed whether Mr Leddin will be sanctioned for his comments.

Protesters handed in a letter to the partys offices addressed to Mr Ryan.

Deputy Leddin has shown himself not fit to be a TD. We also reminded you that he is chair of a Dail committee, a paid and prestigious position that the Green Party executive and you as leader have implicitly illustrated you are happy for him to continue to hold," the letter said.

How low can Green Party TDs go before they are sanctioned?

Protesters also objected to comments by Mr Leddin reported in the Limerick Leader newspaper this week in which he rejected calls that he should resign.

I made one comment which can be considered derogatory. It was about somebody I had a personal relationship with.

My thinking wasnt divorced from the fact I had a personal relationship with that person which ended quite badly.

Ive apologised to Ms ODonovan. I dont believe that what Ive done should require me to stand down from politics, Mr Leddin said.

Former TD Ruth Coppinger attended the protest.

She said that she wanted to know why the Green Party was still happy to have Mr Leddin in their party ranks.

A stand has to be taken against so-called casual misogyny, she said.

Harper Cleves speaks as activists picket outside Green Party headquarters (Brian Lawless/PA)

Brian Leddins defence is that he actually didnt say some of the worst things.

But he stayed silent. He stayed a member of the WhatsApp Group. If youre a public representative you should take a stand, condemn the action and leave the group.

Hes not fit to be a TD for the Green Party, who claims to be progressive.

We would expel someone from our party for engaging in that sort of behaviour.

They have actually taken no action whatsoever, except a half-hearted apology.

Harper Cleves, an activist with the Rosa Socialist Feminist Movement group, was one of the organisers of the protest.

This is the kind of language and rapport accepted in the Green Party.

If it were up to me, I dont think someone who has these kinds of values should be an elected representative for a party that tells people that they have progressive values on the issue of gender equality.

If I were a Green Party leader, Id say you have to step down from office.
Police in the UK have drained a lake as part of the investigation into the disappearance of university chef Claudia Lawrence.

North Yorkshire Police confirmed that the pond at Sand Hutton Gravel Pits had been drained and that searches at the site may last a number of days.

Detectives believe Ms Lawrence  who lived in the Heworth area of York and worked at York University  was murdered, although no body has ever been found.

The 35-year-old was last seen on March 18, 2009.

Officers have conducted two investigations and questioned nine people in relation to her disappearance and suspected murder, but no charges have ever been brought.

Police officers searching the land at Sand Hutton Gravel Pits near York in connection with the disappearance of missing university chef Claudia Lawrence (Mark Brickerdike/PA)

North Yorkshire Police said the investigation team were managing inquiries in relation to a number of emerging lines of investigation.

Pictures and video put out by the force showed teams officers searching the undergrowth with sticks in an area of woodland near to the scene.

Detective Superintendent Wayne Fox said: I thank the public for the positive responses and new information received in support of the current phase of the investigation.

Our focus is on finding Claudia and bringing those responsible for her disappearance and suspected murder to justice.

A statement put out by the force said: North Yorkshire Police can confirm that a pond at Sand Hutton Gravel Pits has been drained as part of the ongoing investigation into the disappearance and suspected murder of Claudia Lawrence.

Officers remain at the site and the searches that began last week are continuing and we expect to be at the site for a number of days.

Last week Mr Fox thanked the public for the positive responses and information received in support of the current phase of the investigation.

He did not disclose what information prompted the search activity 12 years after Ms Lawrence went missing.

Ms Lawrences father, Peter, died earlier this year without knowing what happened to his daughter (Dominic Lipinski/PA)
Interview Why Beijing Backs Myanmar Junta While Holding out Olive Branch to NLD

Chinas President Xi Jinping, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and President U Win Myint in Naypyitaw, January 2020.

A July 21 letter sent by the Communist Party of China (CPC) to the central executive committee of the National League for Democracy (NLD) circulated online recently. The letter thanked the NLD for its congratulations on the CPCs centenary.

In early August, during a virtual meeting between the junta-appointed foreign minister U Wunna Maung Lwin and Chinas ambassador to Myanmar, Chen Hai, the ambassador referred to the State Administration Council (SAC), the governing body of the military regime, as the Myanmar government but also voiced concerns over the regimes plan to dissolve the NLD.

Many Myanmar people are puzzled why China is against the dissolution of NLD, despite the junta-appointed Union Election Commission saying the NLD must be dissolved.

Political analyst Dr. Hla Kyaw Zaw, who is based in Chinas Yunnan Province, talked recently to The Irrawaddy about Chinas policy towards Myanmar.

While China has recognized the SAC, it has also indicated that it doesnt want the NLD to be disbanded. What does China mean by that?

The letter sent to the NLD conveys the Chinese governments message to the SAC that the [NLD must not be disbanded] if the SAC wants Beijing to recognize it [as the government of Myanmar] and to continue to implement previous agreements [on Chinese investments in Myanmar]. China wants to see stability in Myanmar because it is concerned about its interests in the country.

Beijings strategic ambitions, the Belt and Road Initiative, can progress only when Myanmar is stable. And China knows that it cannot rely only on the Myanmar military to achieve stability in the country. So, together with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Beijing is pushing for inclusive dialogue between all parties in Myanmar.

China has raised concerns about the NLD because the party enjoys the support of the Myanmar people, despite being accused [by Myanmars military] of electoral fraud in the 2020 election. By protecting the NLD, Beijing is trying to touch the hearts of the Myanmar people. While anti-China sentiments are growing in Myanmar, it sends a message that China notices and respects the wishes of the Myanmar people.

The NLD sent a message to the CPC to congratulate it on its centenary. And the CPC replied thanking the NLD for its message. To what extent does that reflect current relations between the CPC and the NLD?

The CPC has departed from its usual routine lately. Its ideology is no longer that of a conventional communist party. In the past, the CPC engaged with other parties based on the ideology of social class. But, now, it has departed from ordinary communist philosophy. The party said it is searching for and inventing a Marxism for the 21st Century. It engages with all the parties around the world.

[Under the NLD government] China invited not only the NLD leaders to events in China but also the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) leaders. It invited all and exchanged political views. It tried to show them how changes can be introduced peacefully in this globalized age. The CPC focuses on pragmatism rather than theory. So it engages with the NLD and the USDP, as well as the ethnic parties. It uses soft power to improve its position on the international stage. So China developed good relations with the NLD, and the NLD also tried to improve ties with Beijing.

Why has the CPC changed?

The situation has changed a lot. In the past, Marxism was about the proletariat: industrial workers and farmers fighting capitalism. But capitalism has become globalization now. To join the globalized world, one has to join the capitalist system. Thats why China joined the World Trade Organization, because the global order is controlled by capitalists. As the US and Europe controls the global order, it joined them to reap profits. But when Beijing distributes profits in China, it distributes them based on socialism.

In January 2021, Chinas President Xi Jinping said in a speech to the Davos Agenda event that China protects capitalism more than the capitalists do. Globalization has significantly boosted production and if the [profits from production] can be shared properly and systematically for the people, it is beneficial to the majority. China is attempting to replace capitalist globalization with socialist globalization. It is incorporating useful things from capitalism to create wealth for its people.

What about the CPCs relationship, if any, with the parallel National Unity Government (NUG) which is largely comprised of NLD members? To what extent will the CPCs relationship with the NLD influence the Chinese government?

Chinas government can only function under the leadership of the CPC. All the important policies are laid down by the CPC. The CPC is the key to the foreign policies of Chinas government.

Is it likely that Beijing will engage with the NUG?

I think both sides are still waiting. The NUG is seemingly reluctant to engage with China because it mainly relies on the US and other western powers for support. And China seemingly does not want to make the SAC feel uneasy. China, if possible, wants to take a neutral position as it wants to intervene impartially in conflicts between the military regime, the NLD and the other forces in Myanmar. China may engage with the NUG if the NUG gets stronger and more capable.

How will the SAC view the relationship between the CPC and the NLD?

Of course, the SAC will not like it. But my view is that the SAC needs to buy time considering the realities facing it. Thats why it has nodded to the five-point consensus proposed by ASEAN. There have been delays in the ASEAN envoys planned trip to Myanmar. The military has never liked the NLD. But, for the time being, it wont disband the NLD. It will keep the party alive as China has raised concerns.

The NLD has fought the military since 1990. They have endurance. A party will cease only when it is ruined by the party members. Any party will be able to mobilize anytime if there are people who have faith in it. As long as there is injustice, a disparity between rich and poor and a lack of democracy in Myanmar, parties that have public support will continue to exist. The NLD will continue to exist even if not under the same name.

The SAC and the NUG will compete to place someone in the position of Myanmars ambassador to the United Nations (UN) at the upcoming UN Credentials Committee. Who do you think China will support?

China has taken different approaches at the UN, depending on the time and situation in Myanmar. It is not consistent. Before 2011, during the time of the State Law and Order Restoration Council and the State Peace and Development Council in Myanmar, China used its veto at the UN to protect the then military regime. It understands that Myanmar people have negative views towards China because of that. It was aware of the need to engage with Myanmar people and so it started to engage with different groups, including the NLD.

This time, China will also take a neutral position at the UN so as not to upset the SAC or the Myanmar people. If there is a majority view among the countries at the UN meeting, China might to choose to agree with them or else it will stay neutral.

Both China and the US back the ASEAN consensus on tackling the Myanmar crisis. But there are tensions between the US and China over the South China Sea. Will the crisis put Myanmar at the center of the China-US clash?

Myanmar is trapped in the geopolitical struggle between China and the US. Since the February 1 coup, some independent Chinese analysts have claimed that western countries were behind the ousting of the NLD government because it was too close to Beijing. Some have said that when western countries took back the honorary titles given to Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and criticized her over the Rohingya issue, that encouraged the military to stage the coup. Other analysts have said that anti-China sentiment is growing in Myanmar because the military is deliberately encouraging the public to hate China rather than the junta. Myanmar could end up trapped between the China and US in the same way that the Ukraine is trapped between the European Union and Russia. For example, since the Rohingya issue, China has said that the US is deliberately disrupting its Kyaukphyu deep-sea port project in Rakhine State.

But it is important for Myanmar not to be trapped in conflicts between superpowers. Myanmar people have now fully understood that Myanmar will never develop so long as it remains under military rule. Thats why people are saying they have to crush the military.

My view is that everyone should take their fair share of responsibility by taking up arms or by staging protests. We need to form an allied force that includes all the parties that dont like the Myanmar military. No party can be left behind. It is the responsibility of all to isolate the military.



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Burma Hong Kong Energy Firm Ditches Two Myanmar Projects

A CNTIC-VPower vessel imports LNG to power stations in Yangon. / VPower

VPower, a Hong Kong-listed power generation company, has announced that it is pulling out of two projects in Myanmar.

The company, which has a stake in nine power plants across Myanmar, said it will not be renewing the contracts for power stations in Kyaukphyu Township, Rakhine State, and Myingyan Township in Mandalay Region.

Each project can produce 200 megawatts and the contracts expired in March and June. The company said the decision came after it faced challenging times amid post-coup turmoil since February.

Deputy permanent secretary U Soe Myint of the junta-controlled Electricity and Energy Ministry declined to disclose details, saying the ministry was still discussing details with the company.

[Foreign companies] entered Myanmar market expecting an influx of FDI [foreign direct investment] because of economic reforms in Myanmar. But there cant be demand now and they are therefore leaving the country, a director of an electricity provider in Myanmar told The Irrawaddy on condition of anonymity.

While cash shortages caused by the banking crisis following the February coup have created huge problems for foreign companies, the ministry is short of funds to pay electricity suppliers, he said.

In electricity supply contracts, there are terms and conditions such as specifying the units the supplier has to provide and the buyer has to buy in a certain period. But now, the military council cant afford to buy additional units and cant even pay for the units it has purchased, he said, he said.

As part of the wider civil disobedience movement against the military regime, Myanmars consumers have withheld payments to the junta, including taxes and utility bills.

The ousted National League for Democracy government invited bids in 2019 to address the electricity shortage during Myanmars hot season when hydropower plants cannot run at full capacity. Hydropower is Myanmars main source of energy.

The joint venture between VPower and the state-owned China National Technical Import and Export Corporation (CNTIC) won three projects worth US$800 million with a combined capacity of 900 megawatts.

They include the 150-megawatt plant built near the Kyaukphyu deep-sea port project, which is a crucial part of Chinas Belt and Road Initiative, and the 400-megawatt gas-powered plant in Thaketa and 350-megawatt power plant in Thanlyin, which are both in Yangon.



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Myanmar Ceasefire Agreement is Void: KNU Concerned Group

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Burma Myanmar Ceasefire Agreement is Void: KNU Concerned Group

KNU Concerned Group leader Naw Zipporah Sein / The Irrawaddy

Ethnic Karen leaders have announced that the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement (NCA), signed between the government and ethnic armed groups, is no longer valid due to the military coup.

Led by Naw Zipporah Sein, a former vice chairwoman of the Karen National Union (KNU), the KNU Concerned Group (CG) was formed in 2017 and includes former KNU leaders and engages in Karen political and human rights issues.

To review the NCA, the military after its coup unfairly arrested protesters, politicians and journalists and committed extrajudicial killings. So we can assume that the NCA is null and void, Naw Zipporah Sein told The Irrawaddy.

She said the NCA was designed by Myanmars military as part of the 2008 Constitution to force ethnic revolutionary organizations to give up their arms.

In its statement, the CG said it would support the parallel civilian National Unity Government (NUG) in administrative, military and diplomatic matters.

The CG said it shared the NUGs objectives for equality and self-determination for ethnic groups and a federal union.

It urged the ethnic armed groups and Peoples Defense Forces to work together to defeat the military dictatorship and establish a federal, democratic union.

KNU leader General Saw Mutu Sae Poe in May backed talks with Myanmars military regime and said he would stick to the NCA. A month later, Saw Johnny, the chief of staff of the Karen National Liberation Army, the KNUs armed wing, seconded the KNU leaders stance and said he would follow the NCA framework.

The NCA was originally signed between eight ethnic armed groups, including the KNU, and President U Thein Seins quasi-civilian government on Oct. 15, 2015.



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Burma Myanmar Junta Backs Beijing in Spat With US Over Origins of Coronavirus

Myanmar military chief Snr-Gen Min Aung Hlaing (left) and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Naypyitaw in January 2021, one month before the coup.

Amid the growing salvo of words between the US and China over the investigation into the origin of the coronavirus, Myanmars military regime is standing with Beijingits biggest supplier and donor of coronavirus vaccines and one of its sole defenders at the UN.

Myanmars Health Ministry said on Wednesday night that the search for the origin of the coronavirus should be conducted scientifically, and solely for the purpose of finding treatments.

The search should not blame or put political pressure on other countries, it said in a statement.

It also urged countries to step up cooperation in the fight against new variants of the virus and called on vaccine-producing countries to trade with, support and provide assistance to other countries, especially developing countries, to promote vaccine production.

The statement doesnt say specifically who is blaming or putting political pressure on whom. However, it would be an easy guess for anyone following Beijing-Washington relations.

Naypyitaws show of support for its powerful northern neighbor came after the release of a declassified summary of the US intelligence report on the origin of the coronavirus last week.

Tracing the origin of the pandemic, which has so far killed more than 4.5 million people worldwide, has been a thorny issue for US-China relations. The two sides have pointed fingers at each other. Some in the US have said the deadly virus was leaked from a lab in Wuhan in China, while some in China have claimed it originated from an American military base in Maryland.

In March a WHO joint study reported that it was extremely unlikely the virus had been released in a laboratory accident. However, given the limited access allowed to the study team during their visit to Wuhan, the report left many people unimpressed. Chinese authorities insisted there would be no more follow-up investigations. Following this, President Joe Biden ordered Americas intelligence services in May to report on the pandemics origin in 90 days, by late last month.

In a summary of the report, its authors said that without help from China, the true origin of the virus cant be determined. Biden said Washington and its allies will push China for answers, earning a furious response from Beijing.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said on Monday that the intelligence assessment was a political report that runs counter to science and a false report that smears China with fabricated pretenses like those used by the US to deceive the international community when alleging that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.

The spokesperson also questioned why the US asked intelligence agencies rather than scientists to investigate the virus origins.

The US should also explain this. Why is it so obsessed with the lab leak theory despite the clear lack of scientific evidence? Even after its intelligence community went out in full force and failed to find any evidence, the US still clings to the lab leak theory. If this is not political manipulation, how is it defined otherwise? he asked.

Wang asked why the US had seen the largest number of both COVID-19 infections and deaths despite having the most advanced medical equipment and technology in the world.

Despite being accused of hiding the origin of the pandemic, China has launched vaccine diplomacy in many parts of the world, especially in Southeast Asia, by donating and supplying its homegrown Sinopharm and Sinovac vaccines to other countries.

So far, Myanmar has received 7.6 million doses of vaccine from China. The Chinese Embassy in Myanmar said last week that of the total, 2.9 million doses were donated while the rest were purchased by Myanmar.

The Southeast Asian country is still reeling from a third wave of COVID-19. In July alone, 6,000 people dieda record breaking monthly death toll since the outbreak was first reported in the country last year.

Myanmar has mainly relied on jabs from India and China. Originally, it was agreed that the country would receive 27 million doses of vaccine from COVAX, a UN-backed initiative to vaccinate the worlds most vulnerable populations. But since the coup in February, the shipments have been stalled. Another factor was that India became unable to export the amount it previously agreed to sell, as it was hit hard by the delta variant at home. Since then, China has become a lifeline for the regime when it comes to vaccines.

The Myanmar regimes Wednesday attempt to show solidarity with Beijing on the COVID investigation may be a sign of gratitude for Chinas assistance on vaccines. Or the junta may simply have wanted to please its northern neighbor in return for the protection that Beijing (along with Russia) has provided it on the Security Council by vetoing critical resolutions by the West. So far, China and Russia are the only countries that have engaged with the regime, which desperately seeks recognition from other countries as Myanmars rightful caretaker government but is shunned by Western nations.

On the other hand, it could also just be following its powerful neighbors request to voice which side it is on. If that is the case, regime leader Min Aung Hlaing wouldnt think twice about doing so, as the US has been a nemesis for past and present Myanmar military rulers, given Washingtons long support to the countrys democracy movement. It should also be noted that the juntas statement came in the wake of a quiet visit to Myanmar by the Chinese special envoy for Asian affairs. The Chinese Foreign Ministry said the two sides exchanged views on the political landscape in Myanmar and China-Myanmar cooperation on combating COVID-19.

It remains to be seen whether China gets other countries that received its vaccines to follow Myanmars lead. If it happens, it may be one of Beijings tactics to counter the American push to trace the coronavirus origins by generating a collective voice to denounce the US for politicizing, as they say, the issue.



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Burma Myanmar Junta Soldiers Shoot Dead Pregnant Woman

Ma Ei Thwe Moe, 27, who was five months pregnant, was shot dead. / CJ

A pregnant woman died on the spot after being shot by junta soldiers on Wednesday night.

The 27-year-old victim, Ma Ei Thwe Moe, was five months pregnant. She had just picked up her husband, who had been fishing, and was returning to their home in a village in Mon States Paung Township when the incident happened, a relative told The Irrawaddy.

Junta forces patrolling in the area reportedly opened fire on the couple after they saw the light from the couples flashlight.

The victims husband, Ko Min Nay Lwin, was also shot and severely injured and hospitalized.

Ma Ei Thwe Moe had worked as a teacher until a year ago and was the mother of a four-year-old daughter. Her unborn child was also a girl and a funeral was held for both victims.

Killings, arrests and torture by regime forces continue to be reported daily across the country, as the junta escalates its crackdown on dissidents and supporters of the shadow National Unity Government.

On Tuesday, Ko Min Htet Ko and Ko Lu Aye, the older son and younger brother of Ayeyarwady Blood Donor Association Chairman U Ko Ni, were shot at their home in Myingyan Township, Mandalay Region by Pyu Saw Htee militia trained and armed by the military regime.

Pyu Saw Htee members reportedly came to their house to kill U Ko Ni, but were unable to find him and so shot the people they saw. During the attack, U Ko Nis son Ko Min Htet Ko was shot in the stomach. He died later that night at Myingyan hospital. U Ko Nis younger brother, Ko Lu Aye, was injured in the shooting.

Also on Tuesday, Ko Than Soe Aung, a 25-year-old living in Myo Thit Gyi Ward in Myitkyina Township, Kachin State, was shot while riding his bike by junta soldiers guarding a branch of the Myawaddy Bank, the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP) reported. He was on his way to retrieve his fishing net and died in hospital.

At least 1,043 people, including children, youths, students, bystanders, protesters, politicians and resistance fighters, have been killed by the junta since the February 1 coup, according to the AAPP. Over 7,700 people have been arrested.



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Burma Myanmar LGBTQ Makeup Artist Swaps Beauty Salon for Border Hideout and Revolution

May Oo, a gay celebrity makeup artist, at an anti-regime protest in Yangon in February 2021. / Supplied

Until the military takeover on Feb. 1, cosmetics, fashion and beauty design were the most important parts of May Oos daily life.

For more than a decade, he loved to visually transform peoples appearance through his skills. His passion turned him into one of Yangons most highly sought-after makeup artists. His customers included celebrities and family members of high-ranking military officials.

Its the profession I really love and I see it as a creative art, said May Oo, who is gay.

But the military takeover that toppled the elected government led by Daw Aung San Suu Kyis National League for Democracy (NLD) has turned his life upside down.

As a supporter of the NLD government, the 33-year-old opposed the coup.

We cant accept it. The military stole power from the elected civilian government, which we voted for, May Oo said.

Like millions of others, he joined the anti-coup campaigns that have sprung up across the country and which range from banging pots and pans at night to marching in daily street protests to calling on civil servants to strike. At the same time, he disseminated information on the anti-regime protest movement known as Myanmars Spring Revolution via his own social media page, which has 770,000 followers, awing his customers with pictures of him shouting anti-regime slogans via a bullhorn at the front of a protest column.

In March, May Oo refused to do the makeup for well-to-do families planning to attend a junta-organized religious ceremony in Naypyitaw, at which the junta conferred titles on wealthy persons.

However, he had to pay a price for his activism.

An arrest warrant was issued by the regime for incitement. Soldiers raided his apartment and took everything including his computer and makeup boxes. They also destroyed everything in the whole room, he recalled. Luckily, he managed to evade arrest.

After the juntas crackdowns against protesters intensified in late March, he was forced to go into hiding in April, partly because of his involvement in protests and for providing support to crackdown victims and their families.

As of Sept. 2, the junta had killed 1,043 civilians and arrested a total of 7,768, of whom 6,132 are still detained. In addition, during their raids, junta troops have looted and destroyed property.

While in lockdown during the first and second waves of COVID-19 in 2020, May Oo was able to continue his work, including providing training to amateur artists. He had trained amateurs and young talents in his profession since 2017, when he opened the May Oo Magic Beauty school, as well as leading a makeup team. His salon employed 12 full-time staff and some 60 part-time artists before the coup.

Now the makeup artist lives a very different life in a place where he feels safe on the border. (He declined to provide details for security reasons.) He once received some weapons training like other young people determined to topple the regime through armed resistance. But he found that his hands, familiar only with makeup brushes, were not good with guns. Since then May Oo has devoted his time and energy to other activities, like raising funds for the movement.

I know my strength is not [in military activities], so I choose to support this revolution in whatever way I can. I just see myself as a pillar to help the revolution be victorious, he explained.

May Oo admitted that he cant help but take off his hat to the young women he has seen seriously engaging in military training, adding that seeing them left him with mixed feelings.

Im sure they never thought they would go through such a hard life. But they see that nothing is more important than ousting the regime. So, they feel immune to all the misery and difficulties they are facing. I feel sad for them but at the same time I feel happy [for the country], he said.

As a gay man who is open about his sexuality, his hopes when voting for the NLD in the November 2020 election were simple: He wanted a government that would respect human rights, including those of the LGBTQ community, which has long faced discrimination in Myanmar.

The NLD is the only party which respects the rights of minorities and marginalized groups. As an LGBTQ person, we have seen improvements and dignified treatment under the NLD government, he said.

He told The Irrawaddy that from his point of view, physical and verbal abuse of LGBTQ people decreased under the civilian government. For a long time, we were insulted for our sexual orientation; but after 2015, we felt less discriminated against, and there were opportunities for makeup artists to choose the path they want.

LGBTQ people are subject to official persecution and discrimination under Section 377 of the Penal Code as well as the Police Act. People who engage in same-sex acts can be punished with up to 10 years in prison. The push for legislative change got under way under the NLD government and the LGBTQ community had high hopes for it.

I have suffered discrimination as a gay person since my younger days. I dont want to experience it again, he said.

It has now been nearly five months since May Oo went into hiding. He said sometimes he feels regret, especially when he sees people having fun on Facebook.

That feeling doesnt last long, though, because I comfort myself with knowing I have done nothing wrong and am taking a stand on the right side, he said.

Asked if he missed his former life as a makeup artist, he said yes and no. He misses it when he thinks of what his life was like in the past.

But when I think about tomorrow under this current situation, I no longer miss it at all, because you cant guess what will happen next. Its exciting [to see] what the future will hold for me.



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Myanmar Military Struggling to Recruit New Officers
Burma Myanmar Military Struggling to Recruit New Officers

Coup leader Senior General Min Aung Hlaing attends a graduation ceremony at the Defence Services Academy. / Military website

The Myanmar military is struggling to recruit new officers, as far fewer people apply to the countrys military academies following the juntas coup and subsequent brutal crackdowns on anti-regime protesters.

The shortage of new officer recruits is a further blow to the military, which has seen more than 1,500 personnel, including a hundred officers, defect from the army following the military takeover in February.

On Thursday, the regime announced in junta-controlled media that it has extended the deadline for applications to the academies for the second time, after the deadline was initially extended in August, supposedly because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

However, a former army captain with knowledge of the application process said that the extension was because there were only around 100 applicants so far for the countrys three military academies.

Around 100 people have submitted applications this year to join the military academies. Most of the candidates are from military families, said Captain Lin Htet Aung, an army defector and founder of Peoples Embrace, a Facebook group set up to encourage soldiers to desert their units and join the resistance against the military regime,

Prior to the coup, Myanmars three military schools  the Defence Services Academy, Defence Science and Technology Academy and Defence Services Medical Academy  each attracted some 12,000 applicants annually. Only around ten percent of candidates were normally accepted each year, said Capt. Lin Htet Aung.

He added that the steep fall in applicants is a consequence of the coup, referring to the militarys subsequent lethal crackdowns on the Myanmar people, as well as the looting and destruction of civilians property. As of Thursday, 1,043 people have been killed by the junta since the coup, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners.

There used to be many young people who wanted to become military officers and heroes. But now no one wants to join the military because of the coup, said the captain.

Another former captain, Nyi Thuta, who defected from the army in March, said that [under the regime] people are ashamed to attend the Defence Services Academy or to join the military.

He is a co-founder of the People Soldier group, which provides help to striking soldiers, as well as persuading military personnel to desert and join the Civil Disobedience Movement.

Currently, five to 10 soldiers are defecting from the military daily, according to the Peoples Soldier group.



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Burma Myanmar Regime Transfers Political Prisoners Out of Yangon

Daw Ni Ni May Myint (left) and Daw Chit Chit Chaw (right).

Around 30 political prisoners who were detained in Yangon and convicted by court-martial for incitement for alleged anti-regime activities were moved from Insein Prison in Yangon to other jails around Myanmar, according to their lawyers.

They were transferred a few days ago. I heard they were sent to Thayet Prison [in Magwe Region], Thayawady Prison [in Bago Region] and Myingyan Prison [in Mandalay Region]. But we dont know who they are, said a Yangon lawyer helping the detainees in Insein.

U Chan Aye Kyaw, a Correctional Department spokesman, declined to disclose details.

Relatives can ask Insein Prison by letter about prisoners, such as where they were tried, where they are now and their health conditions, he said.

There were reports that former National League for Democracy (NLD) lawmaker Daw Ni Ni May Myint and unsuccessful 2020 candidate Daw Chit Chit Chaw were among those transferred outside Yangon.

The two were detained on May 12 in Yangon and sentenced to three years for incitement under the colonial-era Penal Code, said Daw Ni Ni May Myints husband.

I heard my wife was moved to Thayet Prison, but we have not yet been informed by the prison authorities. Daw Chit Chit Chaw was moved to Myingyan Prison. I heard around 30 political prisoners charged with incitement were moved out of Insein. And all of them are women, he said.

He said he last had contact with Daw Ni Ni May Myint in early August.

NLD candidates Daw Ni Ni May Myint, Daw Chit Chit Chaw and U Min Aung were detained by the Arakan Army on the campaign trail on October 14 last year in Taungup Township, Rakhine State. They were released on January 1 this year after 79 days in detention.

Transferring political prisoners outside Yangon was a practice used by previous military regimes, said a lawyer.

In the past, political prisoners were also sent outside Yangon. Family members then have difficulties visiting them, he said.

By Sept. 2, 1,043 people, including children, had been killed by the junta since the February coup, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners. The organization said 6,132 people were under detention, of whom 260 have been sentenced to prison terms and 26 have been given the death sentence.



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UK Slaps Sanctions on Notorious Crony of Myanmar Junta

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News UK Slaps Sanctions on Notorious Crony of Myanmar Junta

Myanmar tycoon and longtime military crony U Tay Za in 2014. / The Irrawaddy

In its latest move to limit the Myanmar juntas access to financial and economic resources, the UK government has imposed sanctions against Myanmar tycoon U Tay Za and his businesses for providing financial support and arms to the military.

Notorious arms broker and long-time military crony U Tay Za is the founder and chairman of the Htoo Group and runs a large business network including banks, airlines and hotels. He has lived in Singapore for years and his connections with Myanmars present and past regimes are known to be deep.

In May, U Tay Za joined a Myanmar military delegation on a trip to Russia, where the generals discussed more than 20 megadeals including procurement of arms and military hardware.

The UKs Foreign Office said in a statement on Thursday that U Tay Za is associated with the military through his extensive links with the former and current junta regimes and has provided support for serious human rights violations in his role in assisting the military to procure arms.

It said the UK would freeze all UK assets held by Htoo Group and U Tay Za, and ban him from entering the country. The sanctions will also prevent others from providing funds or economic resources to the tycoon and his companies.

UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said the new sanctions came as The military junta has shown no signs of halting its brutal attack on the people of Myanmar.

Along with our partners, the UK will continue to restrict the juntas access to finance and the supply of arms used to kill innocents, including children, and target those who support the juntas actions, he said.

The statement added that U Tay Za contributed funds to the 2017 military campaign against the Rohingya, which has been labeled genocide, in western Myanmar, citing a report issued by a UN fact-finding mission in 2019.

In 2008, U Tay Za was placed on the United States Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) sanctions list for providing support to the previous junta, including the purchase of military equipment and aircraft, according to a statement at the time.

He is also believed to be close to U Aye Ko, another arms broker for the military, who was behind the assassination plot against Myanmars UN Ambassador U Kyaw Moe Tun.

Following the military coup on Feb. 1, in which the military overthrew Myanmars elected civilian government, the UK and other Western nations have imposed targeted sanctions against the military, it associates and military-linked businesses, and called for the restoration of democracy in the country.

From February to June, the UK issued six separate announcements imposing sanctions on Myanmar generals and the militarys businesses, including military-linked gemstone, pearl and timber companies. Sanctions have also been imposed against the juntas governing body, the State Administration Council.

From Feb. 1 to Sept. 2, the junta has killed more than 1,000 people and arrested over 7,700, with more than 6,100 remaining in detention, according to advocacy group the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners.

In June, the UK also urged in a UN General Assembly Resolution that UN member states prevent the flow of arms to Myanmar.

The UK said the new sanctions follow the G7 countries commitment to ensure that the supply of arms and technical assistance to Myanmar is halted.

Under the UKs presidency, the G7 continues to call for a return to democracy, an end to the violence and the immediate adoption of ASEANs 5-point consensus on Myanmar, including the release of State Counselor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and other political prisoners, it added.



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Myanmar Junta Backs Beijing in Spat With US Over Origins of Coronavirus

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Myanmar Junta Under Pressure to Pardon Ultra Nationalist Monk U Wirathu
If there is a bright spot to recent tragic events in the world, it is seeing the compassion that individuals, companies and organizations display when they offer assistance to those in need.

After the tower collapse at Surfside, the Key Biscayne Community Foundation and the Global Empowerment Mission both stepped forward to help. The two organizations shared a table at the Family Assistance Center, where they dispensed basic necessities and $1,500 Visa gift cards to affected families.

Helping people who were impacted and basically had lost everything was satisfying work but left me emotionally distressed, says KBCF Executive Director Melissa McCaughan White, who spent two weeks at the assistance center immediately after the collapse. I would get home and just want to crawl under the sheets and cry.

Key resident Ines Lozano has taken a more focused approach to helping. Her non-profit, Flying High 4 Haiti, sponsors a small school in Ile-a-Vache, an island off the southwest peninsula of Haiti.

I have been traveling there three times a year since 1990. We were able to build a six-room school and hire eight teachers in a remote village that is lacking all modern conveniences, including paved roads and running water. The people there live a tranquil existence far removed from the violence that plagues many other parts of Haiti.

The Global Empowerment Mission was founded in 2011 by former Key resident Michael Capponi. I knew Capponi when he was a teenager on the Key in the 1980s, when riding his bicycle around the island seemed the most important thing in his life. He later moved to Miami Beach and became a successful nightclub promoter and owner, and then a highly respected building contractor for high-end luxury homes.

One of his friends describes the scene at Capponis home during the heyday. Celebrities, musicians, business peopleanyone you could think of might be there.

I recently met with Capponi at the 30,000 square foot warehouse in Doral that serves as GEMs headquarters. GEM, originally named the Haiti Empowerment Mission, started off by focusing on humanitarian work in Haiti but has since expanded to work globally.

Name any catastrophe around the world in the past five years, I was on the scene within 48 hours, recounts Capponi.

I asked Capponi why the shift to humanitarian work. Sometimes destiny just hits you so hard that you are forced to re-evaluate your lifes priorities. I gave up the glitz lifestyle to focus 100% on helping others. Thats all I do now. He says the skills he acquired in the business world serve him well in his new vocation. Promoting a non-profit is not that different from promoting an event at a club.

While I was visiting with Capponi, a Lyft driver arrived at the warehouse toting several boxes of flyers. Capponi opened the boxes and carefully inspected the flyers, commenting on the print job and paper quality. The flyers listed homes and apartments that were being made available to impacted families, at no cost, by GEM in partnership with the Alexander Team at Douglas Elliman Real Estate.

I looked over one of the flyers and realized that Capponi was right. The flyer resembled a promotional piece that one might see for a hot band at a trendy night club.

Except this was a flyer designed to help people in need.
Ithaca, NY (14850)

Today

Clear this evening then becoming mostly cloudy after midnight. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 67F. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Clear this evening then becoming mostly cloudy after midnight. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 67F. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph.
Equinix announced that it has extended into the strategic Indian market, following the completion of the acquisition of the India operations of GPX Global Systems (GPX India). The US$161 million all-cash transaction includes a fibre-connected campus in Mumbai with two data centres.

Equinix said its expansion into India will unlock opportunities for Indian businesses expanding internationally and for multinational corporations pursuing growth and innovation in the Indian market.

With the upcoming 5G rollout in the country, companies can get ahead in the digital era with Equinix and benefit from the ability to accelerate their evolution from traditional to digital businesses by rapidly digitising and scaling their infrastructure, easily adopting hybrid multi-cloud architectures and interconnecting with more than 350 international brands and local companies in India, the company says.

Equinix India will be led by managing director Manoj Paul, with more than two decades of experience he will leverage his insights into the local data centre industry to support the digital transformation journeys of businesses in India.

Equinix says the key highlights are:

From the acquisition, the two new International Business Exchange (IBX) data centres in Mumbai, dubbed Equinix MB1 and MB2, form a network-dense data centre campus with more than 350 international brands and local companies, including the world's leading cloud service providers (CSPs), global networks, content delivery network (CDN) providers, all local carriers, 170 internet service providers (ISPs) and five internet exchanges.

Home to the digital infrastructure of numerous global organisations, the two data centres in Mumbai provide an initial 1,350 cabinets, with an additional 500 cabinets to buildout. The facilities will add more than 90,000 square feet of colocation space to Platform Equinix when fully built.

Equinixs Mumbai campus offers a cloud-dense environment and direct access to major cloud services, including AWS Direct Connect, Google Cloud Dedicated Interconnect and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure FastConnect. It also hosts key internet exchanges such as AMS-IX India, Extreme IX, Mumbai IX-DECIX, National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI) and Bharat IX, allowing ISPs, carriers, CDNs and large enterprises to exchange internet traffic.

Equinix plans to introduce a full range of interconnection and digital infrastructure services, including Equinix Connect, Equinix Internet Exchange, Metro Connect, Equinix Fabric and Network Edge, in the new data centres upon the completion of the business integration. This will enable customers in India to connect in real time, directly and privately, to more than 10,000 companies, including more than 1,800 networks and 3,000 cloud and IT service providers, through Platform Equinix for increased performance, security and scale.

According to Frost & Sullivan, India is anticipated to become a US$2 trillion digital economy by 2030, growing at a 21% compound annual growth rate (CAGR). It also forecasts that 40% to 50% of Indian businesses will be taking a containerised hybrid multi-cloud approach for deploying applications by 2025. Digitalisation and cloud adoption in India will be further accelerated by the upcoming rollout of 5G and ICT policy reforms of the government. The expansion of Platform Equinix will enable Indian businesses, as well as multinationals with a presence in India, to harness a trusted platform to bring together and interconnect the foundational infrastructure they need to power their success.

Current customers at GPX India will now be able to access Platform Equinix capabilities worldwide. For example, OPPO, a leading global smart device brand, has deployed in MB2 and is leveraging Zenlayers IP transit and IP peering services to support its critical IT operations in India, including the OPPO App Market Store, local official website, and end-user data. Todays announcement will further support OPPOs omni-channel strategy in India and its global expansion ambitions as it can easily replicate its digital infrastructure with Equinix in India to anywhere via Equinixs global platform.

Over the years, Equinix has supported India-based partners, including HCL Technologies, Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services and Wipro, in deploying their customers digital infrastructure at Equinix IBX data centres outside of India.

Appointed as Managing Director of Equinix India, Manoj Paul has over 25 years of extensive experience in IT and telecom infrastructure. Prior to Equinix, he led the India operation of GPX India, helping it to emerge as Indias most prominent carrier-neutral and cloud-dense data centre. Before joining GPX India, Paul spent 11 years with Bharti Airtel Ltd, where his last role was Chief Operating Officer (Enterprises) for the Western region.

Globally, Equinix has more than 230 data centres across 65 metros and 27 countries, providing data centre and interconnection services for more than 10,000 of the world's leading businesses, including more than 50% of Fortune 500 companies. Today, Equinix operates 49 IBX data centres in Asia-Pacific across 13 metros in Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Korea and Singapore.

In connection with this transaction, J.P. Morgan, Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas and Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu India LLP were advisors to Equinix and KPMG and Kanga & Co were advisors to GPX.

Frost & Sullivan vice president & global program leader ICT Nishchal Khorana said, Digital adoption in India has become a strategic priority for the government as well as enterprises.

"Indian governments initiatives for building a self-reliant India are expected to further catalyse digital adoption. Digital will play a pivotal role as enterprises aim to transform their business models and strengthen competitiveness.

"With Equinixs proven global experience, it has the potential to offer immense value for enterprises in India as they accelerate their digital journey, Khorana concluded.

Equinix Asia-Pacific president Jeremy Deutsch said, India presents enormous opportunities for digital leaders in Asia-Pacific.

"Bringing Platform Equinix to India not only solidifies Equinix's position as the leading digital infrastructure provider in Asia-Pacific, but also provides a new option to local enterprises and multinationals operating in India to interconnect and manage their digital infrastructure in Mumbai.

"We believe our global expertise and unique interconnection ecosystem will continue to empower businesses in India, Deutsch said.

Equinix India managing director Manoj Paul said, Extending Platform Equinix to India with the addition of two world-class, highly interconnected data centres provides a platform for additional expansion across the country, and I am excited about the opportunities ahead for Equinix.

"With the global footprint of Equinix and the industrys largest ecosystem, we are well-positioned to be a critical part as well as a driving force of the digital revolution in India, helping businesses to leap forward domestically and globally, Paul concluded.
Professional services company Accenture is partnering with the University of South Australia to launch an academy to promote business education literacy and improve digital skills among students.

The Innovation Academy in Digital Business will combine Accentures global practice and expertise with UniSAs leadership in business education and research.

The Innovation Academy, which will launch in 2022, will deliver bespoke innovative curriculum and training programs. It will address known and emerging skills gaps and foster Australias strategic growth areas.

The Innovation Academy will offer a Bachelor in Digital Business program, which will leverage real-world Accenture material and case studies. It will also offer another program which will focus on the upskilling and reskilling of established workforces in leading-edge digital business practices.

The Innovation Academy will educate a new breed of business professionals, informed by best practice and insight from Accenture. Our students will be gaining invaluable skills, as well as learning from the best, UniSA vice chancellor professor David Lloyd says.

Focused on the intersection between technology and business, the professional development component of the Academy will offer real-time, academically-moderated, practical upskilling programs featuring tailored digital business training modules.

Built around UniSAs innovative Q-Credit assessment system, Academy learners will graduate with recognised tertiary qualifications, and highly employable and in-demand credentials, Accenture says.

The Academy will give students real-world applicability to their studies as well as contributing to upskilling by developing talent that is equipped for the technology-driven future, Accenture operations lead Australia and New Zealand concludes Jordan Griffiths.

Enrolment for the new online Bachelor in Digital Business program will be live in mid-2022.
Billing itself as "crypto without the crazy", Cabital says "Cabital Earn is an innovative new investment opportunity that helps you earn sensible returns from crypto assets without unreasonable risks and costs", and the company has just secured new funding.

Cabital, a digital assets institution, has announced raising US $4 million in its seed funding round.

Cabitals successful seed round was led by SIG, Dragonfly, and GSR, increasing the firms valuation to $40 million.

The company says the funding will "support its growth ambitions in Europe, help onboard senior talent and further develop its proprietary digital wealth management platform. Previously, Cabital has raised $3 million in an angel round of funding.

To capture the immense opportunities across Europe, Cabital advises it will add SEPA (Single Euro Payments Area) to its list of payment methods, allowing customers to seamlessly move between euros and crypto by the end of Q3.

While some firms require up to 1,000 as a minimum deposit and only allow users to buy cryptocurrencies with euro, Cabital says it wont require a minimum and maximum deposit amount and will allow its customers to make deposits in euro, as well as withdraw their earnings in euro.

The company explains this will enable customers in the European Union to on-ramp with EUR into digital assets and off-ramp with cryptocurrencies into EUR, making Cabital "not only a trusted on-and-off ramp solution but also the digital wealth management platform of choice for Europeans."

In addition, we're told "Cabital does not issue any native tokens and thus our customers avoid any hidden fees associated with staking platform tokens, as well as they avoid market volatility risks. Still, Cabital offers up to 12% APY on savings in cryptocurrencies by sharing up to 80% of their investment income with customers."

Raymond Hsu, Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer, said: Today, Cabital crossed an important milestone in our journey to build an alternative and safe financial industry. Our purpose is to simplify investing in the crypto world for everyday investors, with a product thats simple, secure, and sensible.

"Regardless of whether youre a new or an experienced investor, we help you get more out of your digital assets to get you closer to your life goals sooner. Cabitals successful seed round is a testament that we are in the right business, with the right product and the right strategy, and we will continue to deliver on our promise of helping more people across the world reach their financial goals.

Lu Guo, SIGs Partner, said: Weve decided to lead Cabitals seed round of funding as we see a massive surge in crypto investment. As cryptocurrency is now coming into the mainstream, Cabital is proposing new investment opportunities for crypto-wealth management products, which will meet regulatory compliance standards while maintaining strong leadership in this growing market thats increasingly globalised.

So, what is Cabital's main product?

The company says it is called "Cabital Earn, a cryptocurrency wealth management platform that enables customers to acquire higher returns on their investments in cryptocurrencies of up to 12% APY. Customers can subscribe to flexible and fixed-term savings plans in USDT, BTC, and ETH.

"Cabital removes the complexity of the user directly participating in DeFi, where users have to constantly track and move their assets across different initiatives (while being wary of scams and fraud) to maximise their returns. Instead, the customer just has to put their crypto assets with Cabital, and Cabital lends these assets to major DeFi platforms with well-established TVL (total value locked) and extensive audit history, such as AAVE and Curve.

"At the same time, Cabital ensures the lowest risks possible through multilateral analysis of all available investment options combined with additional checks by experienced investors, lawyers, engineers, and financial analysts whove worked with major banks and tech companies. Cabital proceeds with investing only when a project passes all quantitative and qualitative tests and gets approval from the expert team. Thanks to that, Cabital can combine the high yield of crypto with low risks and efficient strategies associated with major financial institutions."

What about security?

Cabital explains it is protected by Fireblocks, which it says is "one of the most secure wallet solutions in the industry," with more than 500 institutions such as Revolut, eToro, and Crypto.com relying on Fireblocks' infrastructure, meaning it secures more than $1 trillion in digital assets.

Even in the event of an attack, we're told access to Cabitals wallet is protected by an algorithm that calculates the key to unlock Cabitals assets on Fireblocks, and authorisation is needed to move the asset.
GUEST INTERVIEW: In business since 1993, the company says it invented the concept of distributed agile, and knows how to "harness the power of global teams to deliver software excellence at scale," helping clients to "create their own path to digital fluency and to build organisational resilience to navigate the future", and we spoke to Heiko Gerin to learn more.

Thoughtworks will soon celebrate three decades in business, and bills itself as a "leading global technology consultancy that integrates strategy, design and software engineering to enable enterprises and technology disruptors across the globe to thrive as modern digital businesses."

With ongoing digital disruption, Thoughtworks has been leveraging its vast experience to improve its clients ability to respond to change; utilise data assets to unlock new sources of value; create adaptable technology platforms that move with business strategies; and rapidly design, deliver and evolve exceptional digital products and experiences at scale.

It is sophisticated and mature digital transformation by a company that has lived and breathed this ethos for decades, by a company that takes pride in privacy, freedom and security to heart, and the company's portfolio of skills and capabilities is testament to this, whether it is customer experience, product and design, data and AI, enterprise modernisation, platforms and cloud, and more.

With over 10,000 Thoughtworkers in 17 countries, the company offers "cross-functional teams of strategists, developers, data engineers and designers to bring over two decades of global experience to every partnership."

The company even lists 49 clients on its roster, from Atlassian and REA group, through to PayPal and Walmart, from Daimler to Bosch, Hipages to Myob, Simon and Shuster to Whirlpool, from BP to Credit Suisse to Sephora to Xero and dozens more.

Thoughtworks also produces its bi-annual publication Technology Radar, now in its 24th edition, which is billed as "An opinionated guide to technology frontiers". The notable guide explores the emerging trends shaping the future of software development and business strategy..

So, with the company's XConf annual technology conference on Monday, September 13 and Tuesday, September 14, with this year's theme being "the expanding impact of hostile tech", it was a great opportunity to speak with Heiko Gerin, the Head of Engineering, Australia at Thoughtworks to learn more about the company, its ethos, its customers, the conference and more.

The video interview is embedded directly below, after which is a summary of the topics we spoke about to whet your appetite to watch, so please take a look, and read on!

I started by introducing Heiko, welcoming him to the program, and asking him to explain Thoughtworks to us in 2021.

Heiko explained the types of companies Thoughtworks are fortunate to call customers around the globe, and the types of solutions it has helped those companies implement.

We then spoke about XConf, Thoughtworks annual technology event, and this year's theme of "the expanding impact of hostile tech", followed by Thoughtworks' approach to security and privacy.

Heiko explained that the extremely popular booked out day 1 workshop is also being held on day 2, due to popular demand, as well as highlighting some of the other speakers.

I then pivoted to my questions about Heiko's memory of his first computer, a bit about his own history in the world of tech, what a day in the life of the Head of Engineering in Australia is like, how he sees Thoughtworks and the industry evolving over the next couple of years through to 2030, great advice Heiko has received in life, and his final message to iTWire viewers and readers, and to Thoughtworks current and future customers and partners.

So, please watch the video interview above!

The Thoughtworks XConf conference is brought to you live and online and is free to attend. Save your virtual seat today by registering here.

About Thoughtworks

Thoughtworks is a global technology consultancy that integrates strategy, design and engineering to drive digital innovation. We are 10,000+ people strong across 48 offices in 17 countries. Over the last 25+ years, weve delivered extraordinary impact together with our clients by helping them solve complex business problems with technology as the differentiator.
Global networking products manufacturer Juniper Networks in 2008 incorporated a flawed algorithm from the NSA in its NetScreen devices, even though the company was aware of the flaw that was suspected to provide a backdoor.

The claim was made on Thursday, by the news agency Bloomberg, which said this was done because the US Department of Defence insisted on it and some future contracts for Juniper were tied to the use of this algorithm.

The news agency claimed this bit of information was a significant new detail that explained why Juniper used the NSA code, which later led to its own systems being breached.

Democrat Senator Ron Wyden last year pushed for the NSA to disclose whether it was still planting backdoors in commercial products, but the spy outfit maintained silence, even though it has changed its rules on such acts.

{loadposition sam08{The Bloomberg report also claimed a Chinese group which is called APT 5 had hijacked the NSA code in 2012 and changed it to be able to decrypt data traversing VPN networks using NetScreen devices.

Two years after that, APT 5 added another backdoor that gave the group direct access to NetScreen products, Bloomberg claimed.

The reporter who wrote the story, Jordan Robertson, is well known for putting out another yarn in 2018, along with compatriot Michael Riley, claiming that tampered servers, with additional chips on the mainboards, had been sold to companies like Amazon and Apple.

A deluge of denials followed publication of this story, some couched in very strong language. But Bloomberg never issued any correction or even a clarification.

Earlier this year, Riley and Robertson came up with a similar tale, claiming that servers made by an American company, Super Micro Computer, had been tampered with, resulting in data being leaked to China.

No other news outlets have followed up on these two stories; normally, a story that is of significant news value is followed up and other outlets use their own sources to file their own versions.

Last year, Juniper responded to a query from Wyden and other Congress members, blaming the hack on a nation-state team.

A third claim made by Bloomberg in Thursday's story was that Juniper detected both the intrusions by APT 5 but failed to understand the significance or comprehend that they were related. Riley was cited as having contributed to the story, as also another Bloomberg staffer, Christopher Cannon.
Attacks on SolarWinds software in July were possible because the company had compiled some dynamic link libraries without Address Space Layout Randomisation, Microsoft claims in a security brief.

The attacks  unrelated to the major SolarWinds breach which was publicised by security firm FireEye in December last year  were staged through Solarwinds' Serv-U Managed File Transfer and Serv-U Secure FTP products.

The brief, written by the Microsoft Offensive Research and Security Engineering team, said the Microsoft Threat Intelligence Centre had attributed the attacks to a group known as DEV-0322 which was claimed to be of Chinese origin.

It said the MSTIC had sent data to the MSORSE team that indicated a new vulnerability in the SSH component of the FTP product was being exploited.

After investigation, the team concluded that the flaw was due to the way Serv-U initially created an OpenSSL AES128-CTR context.

The team also found that the attackers were using dynamic link libraries which had been compiled without ASLR, a mitigation feature that has been available since 2006.

The brief included a detailed breakdown of the SSH implementation in SolarWinds products.
Finnish telecommunications equipment vendor Nokia has pulled the plug on its participation in the US-backed Open Radio Access Network Alliance [corrected], a grouping that aims to develop software for running 5G networks, according to a report on the Asia Times website.

Set up 18 months ago by the Trump administration to counter the dominant position enjoyed by Chinese equipment vendor Huawei Technologies  which the US claims is a security threat  the Open RAN coalition aims to avoid the use of proprietary components, including those used by Nokia and Ericsson, in favour of generic parts and software.

American economist David P. Goldman wrote that the reason behind Nokia's exit was the move by the US to place three of its (Nokia's) Chinese suppliers on a sanctions blacklist meant for companies deemed to be a national security threat to the United States.

He said the three firms  Inspur, Kindroid and Phytium  played no major role in the world telecommunications market.

"Phytium manufactures chips, Inspur makes computer servers and related products and Kindroid is a subsidiary of Kyland Technologies, a manufacturer of Ethernet switches and industrial controls," Goldman said.

"It is unlikely that any of these companies provide technology to Nokia that the Finnish giant cant find elsewhere. But Nokia has an important interest in China and may not want to offend Beijing by breaking ties with Chinese companies at Washingtons behest."

Contacted for comment, a Nokia spokesperson said: "Nokia's commitment to O-RAN and the O-RAN Alliance of which we were the first major vendor to join, remains strong.

"At this stage we are simply pausing technical activity with the Alliance as some participants have been added to the US entities list and it is prudent for us to allow the Alliance time to analyse and come to a resolution."

Nokia was recently granted about a 10% share of new contracts for 5G base stations by China Mobile. And prior to that China Unicom awarded the Finnish firm a similar share of contracts.

Ericsson, the other big player in the 5G space, lost out on new contracts after Sweden decided to exclude Huawei from bidding for 5G business in the country.

"Nokia was the immediate beneficiary," Goldman pointed out. "Last year Chinese industry analysts dismissed Nokias Chinese efforts as inferior to those of its Swedish competitor, but the tide of political fortune favoured the Finnish company.

"That gives Nokia another reason to tread carefully with Chinese authorities.

"Nokia also employs 10,000 researchers at its Shanghai Bell subsidiary, formerly the China arm of Alcatel and Lucent, whose telecommunications units were acquired by Nokia. Nokia Shanghai Bell is a joint venture with China Huaxin."

He said the 5G market in China dwarfed anything in the rest of world, noting that by the end of 2020 China had put up about 700,000 5G base stations, about 70% of the global total. The US, in sharp contrast, had only erected 50,000.

"China will build another one million [5G base stations] during 2021, providing 5G service to all cities with populations of 250,000 or more," Goldman said.

"Huawei has about three-fifths of Chinas 5G infrastructure market and appears to suffer from no constraints in semiconductor availability for the buildout."

Ericsson opted not to join the Open RAN project, but Nokia got onboard. Earlier this year, technologist and inventor Dr Henry Kressel, who is also a private equity investor, poured cold water on the Open RAN endeavour, saying it was unlikely to develop anything in the short term to replace products from Huawei.

Dr Kressel said it would be short-sighted to expect anything of substance to emerge from the project  which has been set up by big American and international firms to "accelerate open standards for RAN and promote a network ecosystem based on more diverse, secure, compatible and competitive elements"  in the next seven years.
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Ray Ploof, 61, passed away in his home in Jacksonville, TX, Wednesday, August 25, 2021. He was born in Burlington Vermont August 20, 1960. Ray was a member of Central Baptist Church. He was a talented machinist who worked in maintenance. He was well loved by everyone he met. Left to cherish 
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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.
Alexander has reported on courts and crime since June 2021. A fan of all things outdoors, he came to Teton County after studying journalism at Northwestern University.
Joplin, MO (64801)

Today

Isolated thunderstorms early, then mainly cloudy overnight with thunderstorms likely. Low near 65F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 100%..

Tonight

Isolated thunderstorms early, then mainly cloudy overnight with thunderstorms likely. Low near 65F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 100%.
Reporter

Susan covers the towns of Somers and Ellington. She joined the JI in May 2021 and graduated from Skidmore College. She recently completed docent training for the Wadsworth Atheneum and hopes to start giving tours some time next year.
Opinion Columnist

Chris Powell has worked for the Journal Inquirer since 1967, first as a reporter, then as an editor, and now as a columnist. He was managing editor from 1974 until retiring from that position in 2018.
Five presidential conversations, including a chaotic one with its most formidable critic. This was a momentous achievement for Colombias Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), the institution tasked with truth-finding, just a few months before the end of its three-year term this November and the unveiling of its final report.

Especially significant but telling was its turbulent meeting, on the 16th of August, with Alvaro Uribe. The twice elected president (2002-2010) who spearheaded opposition against the 2016 peace deal with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrilla, and who still does not recognise the transitional justice system stemming from it. Again, this time, he stressed this at least three times during almost four hours of conversation.

On the terrace of Uribes country house

Only three months before the end of the TRCs mandate and after months of attempts, Uribe finally acquiesced to sit down with three commissioners to discuss aspects of his administration. It was a reversal for someone who in the past described its commissioners as biased, cheerleaders of human lefts and even pro-FARC.

Although his predecessors Cesar Gaviria (1990-1994) and Ernesto Samper (1994-1998) had already spoken to the TRC over the past two years, it was probably another interview which ended up nudging Uribe. Two months ago, Juan Manuel Santos (2010-2018)  his defence minister and chosen heir turned into political nemesis  appeared before the TRC, asked victims of extrajudicial executions carried out by army officers for their forgiveness and detailed the corrective measures he took as top security sector leader.

Just like Andres Pastrana (1998-2002) three days ago, Santos first read his prepared remarks from a lectern, surrounded by banners with the TRCs logo, and then sat down to discuss additional queries raised by TRC chairman Father Francisco de Roux.

Instead, Uribe asked the TRC to come to his home turf for what was initially meant to be recorded and released later on, but ended up being live-streamed. They sat down on the terrace of Uribes country house on the outskirts of his native Medellin, overlooking a lawn where his grandchildren were occasionally seen speeding across the screen, with horses neighing and dogs barking heard in the background.

Uribes truth

Despite the pastoral setting, the conversation was anything but idyllic. During its first hour and a half, Uribe shared with the TRC his vision of Colombias recent history, criss-crossing from one issue to another and always referring to the 62-point agenda that he had submitted to the commission.

Some of his comments were personal, like when he described his pain after hearing that his father, cattle rancher Alberto Uribe, had been murdered by FARC rebels during a kidnapping attempt in their farm in 1983. Or when he related having escaped a kidnapping attempt by the Peoples Liberation Army (EPL) guerrilla in 1988.

The rest of the time, Uribe defended his administration. He explained that he chose his running mate Francisco Santos, a journalist and anti-kidnapping advocate, because of his standing in human rights circles. He contended that under his watch Colombia volunteered to become the first country whose record was examined by the UN Human Rights Council. He touted his governments success in curbing homicides, kidnappings and even lesser known crimes such as oil theft. He reminded the TRC of his successful negotiation with paramilitary groups, of his efforts to liberate FARCs kidnapped victims and, in general, of the sorry state of affairs the country was in when he was elected in 2002.

First part of the meeting between the Colombian Truth and Reconciliation Commission and Alvaro Uribe at his home near Medellin.  Comision de la Verdad

He also harked back to his time as lawmaker and governor of Antioquia in the 1980s and 1990s, defending his whistle-blower rewards as an effective security sector policy, his peace facilitation commission and his protection of left-wing regional politicians at a time when their party, the Patriotic Union, was being exterminated.

And he stressed some traits of his character. He name-checked seven former rebels who worked with him after abandoning the armed struggle, as proof of his commitment to reconciliation. In general, he showed few misgivings about his time in office, only expressing regret about having posited that civilian informants should be provided guns and having dismissed false positive victims.

A tense exchange

After Uribes presentation, the three TRC commissioners took turns to ask him why it took so long for the Colombian state to dismantle illegal links between paramilitary groups and segments of the army, or why so many men in arms persisted even after successful negotiations with thousands of paramilitaries and guerrillas.

These were broader queries they hoped would lead to reflections on the contexts that enabled many crimes to flourish. At every attempt, Uribe tersely interrupted them and responded in his characteristic piecemeal style, breaking questions down into snippets about specific events and largely avoiding the bigger picture.

Uribe stressed that he respected Father de Roux as a person and a priest, but considered the TRC and the rest of the transitional justice system illegitimate. He doubled down on his claim that Colombia never suffered an internal armed conflict, but a terrorist threat fuelled by drug trafficking. He expressed his soreness over being labelled a paramilitary by critics and decried political stigmatisation in Colombia  while using heavy-handed language to speak of human rights NGOs that use human rights as masks and suggesting that one indigenous organisation has links to the drug trade. Youve been biased all your life, Uribe told commissioner Lucia Gonzalez, a former museum director, fellow Medellin native and friend of his wife, at one point.

During one particularly tense exchange, Uribe interpreted the commissioners questions as an attack against him. I see you judging, rather than listening and clarifying, he told them. This is not an accusation. Help us as Colombians understand so that this may never happen again, De Roux tried to calm him, as a flock of thick-knees squawked loudly in the background. Instead of seeing it as something adversarial, you could say Im going to contribute to the clarification of everything that occurred so we may all understand.

Uribe on false positives

Tension kept building up. It finally exploded when they touched upon the thorniest issue: civilians murdered by military officials between 2002 and 2008 and unlawfully passed off as rebels killed in combat, a tragedy that became euphemistically known as false positives. The Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP), the judicial arm of the transitional justice system, recently established that 6.402 such homicides occurred during Uribes period and deemed them as war crimes and crimes against humanity in its first indictments against army officers.

Uribe contended that his government acted as soon as the first complaints emerged, insisting that body counts were never an army policy, and that successful military operatives like the one that rescued presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt without firing a shot proved this. He denied that pressure from above helps explain why false positives spiked across the country, as the JEP established. It is the fault, he stated, of the criminally incapable who commit crimes to fake results. I demanded results with accountability and respect for human rights, he insisted.

The former president listed a number of corrective measures dating back to 2005  although the brunt of them matched the decisions between 2007 and 2008 that finally led to a 92% drop in these crimes, as detailed two months earlier by his erstwhile cabinet member Santos  whose name Uribe didnt mention even once. The commissioners questions on why corrective actions took so long incensed Uribe, who hinted the TRC had chosen to believe his successor. These processes took time, he replied. When the TRC chairman said he never mentioned Santos, Uribe snapped back: You dont have to Father, its enough with saying that things were solved in 2008.

As De Roux tried, once more, to centre the conversation on the contexts that enabled extrajudicial executions to take place, Uribes eldest son interjected from behind the camera. Santos was treated like a king!, Tomas Uribe shouted three times, before clashing with Lucia Gonzalez over a 2017 tweet, in which she celebrated FARC renouncing violence and becoming a political party. This quickly became what national media outlets chose as the headline of the entire conversation.

Second part of the meeting between the TRC and Alvaro Uribe.  Comision de la Verdad

Many of the more interesting moments faded into oblivion, such as when commissioner Leyner Palacios asked Uribe to embrace the TRCs future recommendations for the sake of impoverished communities like his. I hope you commit to them not because of what has happened, but what may continue happening. As political leaders, you must rethink yourselves and avoid remaining anchored in your positions, because this is leading to a prolongation of war, the Afro-Colombian leader and survivor of one of FARCs most infamous massacres told him, as Uribe listened attentively.

This country will need a general amnesty

Towards the end, Uribe tried to explain his opposition to the 2016 peace deal, to the transitional justice and to non-prison sentences for serious crimes that he considers as nothing short of impunity.

This country will need a general amnesty, almost a clean slate, he reflected, arguing that youngsters cannot understand why the theft of a bicycle can lead to a prison sentence while several former FARC rebels are lawmakers in Congress. Army officers should be judged in a different tribunal than the JEP to avoid their equation with former guerrillas, Uribe added, echoing an idea he has long championed.

In the ensuing days, the former president unveiled a more detailed plan for his party to present in Congress. In a mishmash of proposals, he offered to extend legal benefits to those convicted for ordinary crimes, to lift restrictions on those barred from public service and to open the doors of transitional justice to former paramilitaries who are now part of organised crime rings. Uribe, probably aware that this would not meet national and international justice standards, backtracked on calling it a general amnesty and on including mass atrocities, now dubbing it a bill to overcome legal asymmetries, to curb FARCs privileges.

Its not the first time Uribe flirts with the idea of a general amnesty. In October 2018, soon after his protege Ivan Duque became president, the then senator tried to obtain support for a reform of the transitional justice that would free state agents who had been in prison for five years, without having to tell the truth or acknowledge their responsibility. When someone replied that hed have to extend the same legal benefits to the FARC, he agreed. But ultimately the deal fell through, after fellow senator and former FARC member Carlos Antonio Lozada told him they preferred to stick to the peace deal.

In the end, even if the Uribe interview made headlines for the wrong reasons and the former president insisted that the commission is illegitimate, getting him to sit down brought the TRC one step closer to its goal of listening to all sectors of Colombian society.
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The author is the head of Citis Emerging Markets Economics Department

It is often heard that China now accounts for about one-third of global GDP growth. This is true, but the more interesting statistics are: in the 10 years before the pandemic, China accounted for nearly half of global investment growth on averagein fact, 47%.

Since investment spending supports the dynamics of global trade and global commodity demand, Chinas huge role in shaping the global investment cycle means that any economy that is open or dependent on commodities becomes dependent on China. This is true for Germany and Brazil.

But Chinas dominance in the global investment cycle is coming to an end, not so much because the country will reduce investment, as it is because the United States and Europe are working to increase investment.

In principle, this should be good news for global growth. However, because economic nationalism is an important reason for the West to pay more attention to capital expenditures, the world economy will not get the benefits it deserves from the emergence of new sources of investment expenditures. This is all about the economics of self-reliance.

In recent years, Chinas dominance in the global investment cycle stems from two trends, both of which stemmed from the 2008 financial crisis.

First, Chinas response to the crisis is to stimulate the economy by increasing infrastructure and real estate spending, ensuring that its economy remains heavily dependent on such activities.

At the same time, the austerity measures taken by Western governments in response to the crisis have meant that investment spending has fallen, because usually this kind of postpable thing is the first victim of any governments efforts to control spending. At least in Europe, investment spending in the private sector has also been exceptionally weak and has continued to decline over the past decade.

However, investment spending is expected to achieve GDP growth in the future because it reflects the efforts of the economy to provide transportation infrastructure or purchase the machinery and buildings needed to produce goods and services.

From this perspective, if China is excluded, the investment/GDP ratio in the rest of the world today is lower than before the financial crisis, which is frustrating.

Its obvious that this state of affairs is about to change, for example, from the recent approval of the U.S. Senate Infrastructure Investment and Employment Act. This promised approximately $550 billion in additional federal investment in roads and bridges, water infrastructure, and the Internet.

at the same time, European Recovery and Recovery Fund It resonates strongly with the American plan. Both are aimed at upgrading infrastructure, especially to achieve the diversification and security of the supply chain, but also in a way that supports climate change goals.

Western governments new enthusiasm for investment spending is partly a response to years of neglect, and is clearly driven by how cheap borrowing is today. But it is also affected by competition with China.

In the United States, the White Houses June report The 250-page analysis on Building a Resilient Supply Chain aims to reduce the U.S.s vulnerability to supply chain disruptions in four areas: semiconductors, high-capacity batteries, active pharmaceutical ingredients, and key minerals and materials.

The report believes that the deficiencies in all these areas are partly the result of inadequate US manufacturing capabilities, so it is clear that the geographically dispersed supply chain is no longer supported by US policymakers as it used to be.

Behind the United States pursuit of self-reliance is a national will to free the economy from its dependence on nemesis China.

In fact, it is not only the West that will increase investment to improve self-reliance. In China itself, policy decisions are now being influenced by its dual cycle strategy, which is Beijings response to what it considers to be a more hostile external environment and the emergence of technological nationalism. Therefore, the strategy needs to continue to favor investment expenditures in the semiconductor, artificial intelligence, quantum computing, biotechnology, and automotive and aerospace industries.

In theory, more investment activities should make us more optimistic about growth. But if all of these investments are inward-looking and aim to replace global trade rather than complement global trade, then it will be difficult to get excited about the new global investment push.
BATON ROUGE, LA  Gov. John Bel Edwards has received word that FEMA has approved his request to activate the Transitional Sheltering Assistance (TSA) program that will provide much needed temporary housing for thousands of Louisianans who have been displaced by Hurricane Ida.

I am extremely grateful to Pres. Biden and FEMA for activating the Transitional Sheltering Assistance Program, which is going to bring much needed temporary housing for the survivors of Hurricane Ida, said Gov. Edwards. Because of the storms extensive damage, thousands of our citizens are displaced and this program will provide them with critical short term housing as they recover and rebuild their lives. Housing was at a critical shortage before the storm and that problem has been exacerbated as a result of the widespread damage. I want to encourage everyone who needs assistance to apply immediately.

The TSA program is for eligible survivors with a damaged dwelling address within the federally designated parishes of Ascension, Assumption, East Baton Rouge, East Feliciana, Iberia, Iberville, Jefferson, Lafourche, Livingston, Orleans, Plaquemines, Pointe Coupee, St. Bernard, St. Charles, St. Helena, St. James, St. John the Baptist, St. Martin, St. Mary, St. Tammany, Tangipahoa, Terrebonne, Washington, West Baton Rouge, and West Feliciana.

They are eligible to stay in hotels in the following states: Louisiana, Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Florida, Mississippi, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Texas.

TSA-eligible applicants must find and book their own hotel rooms. The list of participating hotels will be posted on DisasterAssistance.gov, under the link Transitional Sheltering Assistance Program or you can get it by calling the FEMA helpline at 800-621-3362. For TTY, call 800-462-7585. For 711 or Video Relay Service (VRS), call 800-621-3362.
LAFAYETTE, LA - Second Harvest Food Bank Feeding Acadiana continues to respond to the impact of Hurricane Ida on South Louisiana. Working from our 215 E Pinhook warehouse and base of operations, our staff and volunteers have worked tirelessly to deliver more than 100,000 pounds of food, water, and disaster supplies into Vermillion, Lafourche, Terrebonne and other areas slammed by this Category-4 storm.

In the days since Ida passed, our Lafayette team has distributed just a massive amount of food and supplies across the region trying to recover, said Regional Director, Paul Scelfo. But there is so much need, and we are just getting started.

Nowhere is that need greater than in Houma, where Second Harvest rushed in aid to the Diocese of Houma-Thibodaux and the United Houma Nation, Scelfo said.

They really got the brunt of the storm, which is now on record as the second-strongest storm to ever hit Louisiana. The Chief of the United Houma Nation, who works for the Fire Department has spent all week rescuing tribal members trapped in their homes. Theyve rescue as many Tribal Elders and people with disabilities as they could from out the suns heat.

During the emergency distribution at the Diocese of Houma-Thibodaux, Father Michael Champagne of St. Theresa Food Pantry, located in St. Martinville, said his church was picking up ice, water, and disaster supplies to take to people in Shriver. Theres so much hurt down here, he said. Massive destructions, mobile homes destroyed, shrimp boats upside down. And hit even harder down south, no food, no water.

On Thursday, Sept 2, Second Harvest Feeding Acadiana also delivered and distributed a total of 114,000 pounds of food and supplies across Lafourche, St. Martin, and other areas of the Bayou region. Much of the aid came by way of Feeding America food bank partners in Texas.

Lafayette is the perfect staging point for so much of the outpouring of support coming in from Texas and other areas, according to Scelfo. The offers of help from the San Antonio Food Bank and the Houston Food Bank were so quick and put thousands of pounds at our doorstep faster than we could have ordered it.

How to help Second Harvest respond to Hurricane Ida:

Funds: A monetary gift is the most efficient way to support our response to this emergency. Go to [no-hunger.org/ida]no-hunger.org/ida to make a tax-deductible donation. Every $1 raised will help us provide 4 meals to someone impacted by this latest South Louisiana emergency. Monetary donations also help fuel up our fleet of transportation to make these emergency distributions possible.

Food, water, disaster supplies: Donations of non-perishable food, especially proteins, are greatly appreciated. Bottled water and cleaning supplies will also be in high demand. Donations can be dropped off Monday-Friday between 8am-4pm at 215 E. Pinhook Rd, Lafayette, La. (And as long as weather permits, we will also have after-hours drop-off bins in front of our facility)

Volunteer: There are many volunteer opportunities following a disaster. Register now at: [no-hunger.org/volunteer]no-hunger.org/volunteer
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The expansive rules mandate that all employers with more than 100 workers require them to be vaccinated or test for the virus weekly. Workers at health facilities that receive federal Medicare or Medicaid also will have to be fully vaccinated.
KBS2's highly rated romance comedy-drama "Police University" starring Cha Tae Hyun, B1A4 Jinyoung, and f(x) Krystal released a new behind-the-scenes video of episodes seven and eight on September 2.

The newly released behind-the-scenes video highlights the perfect combination and synergy of the actors in the romance comedy drama series.

B1A4 Jinyoung, Krystal, Yoo Youngjae, and Lee Dal Become 'Police Avengers' in 'Police University'

In the latest episode of the Monday and Tuesday drama "Police University", Jinyoung, Krystal, Youngjae, and Lee Dal struggled to rescue Cha Tae Hyun, their professor, who was arrested for illegal bribery.

The four promising actors created scenes that draw attention by releasing an exclusive behind-the-scenes video of episodes seven and eight that flaunts the actors' perfect synergy.

Jinyoung, Krystal, Youngjae, and Lee Dal showed off their unmatched visuals which stole the eyes of the viewers. The four actors made the filming set their runway, bursting into laughter that was held during filming.

Actors Youngjae and Lee Dal were considered as the drama's iconic duo and mood maker, who continuously boast quality acting performance even in rehearsals. During filming, the two show off breath-taking acting with their cues and hilariously thrilling ad-libs.

On the other hand, Cha Tae Hyun and Song Jin Woo display their professionalism as veterans as the two film their scenes seriously with a high quality performance.

Lee Jong Hyuk and Hong Soo Hyun also enjoy their leisure time as they comfortably wait for their parts. Though as soon as the camera rolls, the two, together with Cha Tae Hyun, demonstrate perfect teamwork and irreplaceable moments, and the ability to make the production staff laugh with their zealous antics.

Finally, supporting actor Chu Young Woo displays his charisma in the drama. However, when he's not filming, he shows off his simple charm that is much different from his character.

The refreshing and talented cast of the romance comedy drama raised curiosity and anticipation as to what kind of acting performance the actors have yet to show.

'Police University' Episode 9 Spoilers and Release Date

The much-awaited ninth episode of the romantic comedy drama series is expected to highlight the dynamics of Jinyoung, Krystal, Youngjae, and Lee Dal as well as the reunification of the two detectives Cha Tae Hyun and Song Jin Woo.

Lee Jong Hyuk, Hong Soo Hyun, and Cha Tae Hyun's blossoming friendship is also expected to flourish in the succeeding episodes.

The masterpiece of a drama was written by screenwriter Min Jung and directed by filmmaker Yoo Kwan Mo.

YOU MIGHT BE INTERESTED IN: KARA Han Seung Yeon Reveals Her Thoughts on Her First Lead Role in Horror Comedy Film 'Show Me The Ghost'

"Police University" episode nine is slated to air on Monday, September 6 on KBS2.

It is also available for international streaming on Viu.

Check out the ninth episode preview here:

Follow KDramastars for more Kdrama, KMovie, and celebrity news updates!

KDramastars owns this article.

Written by Elijah Mully.
Lee Se Young exudes elegance as she transforms into an admirable court lady in the upcoming K-drama "The Red Sleeve Cuff" opposite 2PM's Junho.

In the latest still cuts released by MBC, the 28-year-old beauty stuns in a fancy light pink hanbok with neatly braided hair, gazing into the abyss.

Meanwhile, the second teaser showed the "Doctor John" star being a hardworking court lady as she sits inside the library.

Lastly, the third still cut illustrates her independent and adventurous side as she runs into the lush and scenic field while holding her skirt with a bright smile.

Lee Se Young is 2PM Junho's Beloved in 'The Red Sleeve Cuff'

Lee Se Young is set to take the role of Seong Deok Im in MBC's historical drama "The Red Sleeve Cuff" alongside male lead star 2PM's Junho.

Prior to this, the broadcast network introduces the K-pop star's character as he puts on the royal robe portraying Crown Prince Yi San, the King's direct descendant, and eldest grandson.

The Red Sleeve Cuff Release Date and What We Know So Far

Helmed by PD Jung Ji In, who directed Victory for Tomorrow and Let's Hold Hands Tightly and Watch The Sunset, and penned by Jung Hae Ri, the upcoming historical drama is based on the famous novel of the same name.

Set in the 18th century, it follows the forbidden love between the King and his royal concubine.

In the drama, the Crown Prince is eager to become the wise and respectable King whose priority is the nation's welfare.

Unfortunately, his father's tragic death left Yi San with emotional trauma. This raises the question of how the future King will rule the nation and fight for his love after meeting the court lady Seong Deok Im.

Lee Se Young and 2PM Junho's new drama illustrates the romance between King Jeongjo and royal concubine Sung Deok Im, who wants to live freely and independently.

Following the release of captivating teasers, The Red Sleeve Cuff is set to air in November through MBC.

Production Team Praises 2PM's Junho and Lee Se Young for Their Impressive Acting Skills

While the fans wait for the premiere of the upcoming K-drama, the production team shared their insights regarding the lead stars.

According to a Korean media outlet, a representative from the drama explained that Lee Se Young suits her character, giving a "three-dimensional" perspective for her role.

"She is creating three-dimensional and attractive characters by moving back and forth. Viewers will also fall in love with Lee Se Young's charm that will captivate Lee Jun Ho in the play."

The same goes for the male lead star who plays the Crown Prince turned King of the Dynasty.

In a separate report, a representative noted that the 31-year-old South Korean heartthrob had improved his acting skills by "doing his best to analyze his character to create his own Yi San."

Moreover, this is also his first drama after being discharged from the military.

2PM's Junho's last series is the 2019 mystery thriller drama Confession, while Lee Se Young is the MBC's sci-fi fantasy Kairos.

KDramastars owns this article.

Written by Geca Wills
Namoo Actors is setting the record straight regarding the issue between Moon Chae Won and the agency.

Rumor sparked that the "Flower of Evil" star is leaving the management without renewing her contract.

Moon Chae Won Plans on Not Renewing Her Contract with Namoo Actors?

It came after Star News cited that the actress informed the agency that she has no intention of renewing her contract, which is set to expire in early October.

To recall, the 34-year-old beauty has been with Namoo Actors for five years since September 2016.

After signing with one of the most sought-after management agencies in South Korea, Moon Chae Won managed to land in several notable dramas like the Korean remake of "Criminal Minds," historical movie "Feng Shui" and the top rating K-drama "Flower of Evil."

Moon Chae Won Agency Reacts to Issue

Amid the rumors, Namoo Actors released a statement to address the issue. According to Joy News 24, the management is still in talks regarding the status of her contract.

"The expiration of the contract with Moon Chae-won has not been decided. We are currently discussing the renewal of the contract," Moon Chae Won's agency explained as obtained by the outlet.

Namoo Actors is among the respectable talent agencies in the country that houses some of the biggest names in the industry.

Among its talents are Hallyu star Park Min Young, Song Kang, Girls' Generation's Seohyun, "The Devil Judge" star Ji Sung and more.

Moon Chae Won Comeback in Small Screen with 'Flower of Evil'

Moon Chae Won returned to the small screen after her two-year hiatus in showbiz.

Interestingly, the actress made a roaring comeback with her thriller crime K-drama "Flower of Evil," where she played a homicide detective Cha Ji Won.

In the drama, she portrays the dotting wife to Lee Joon Gi's character Baek Hee Sung, a loving husband and father who secretly hides his true identity, even to Ji Won.

The couple managed to establish a happy and almost perfect family not until his wife uncovered his secret.

"Flower of Evil" is a reunion project with Moon Chae Won and Lee Joon Gi, who both starred in the 2017 K-drama "Criminal Minds," where they took on the role of highly trained National Criminal Investigation's (NCI) profilers.

Prior to the drama's premiere, the actor lauded the 34-year-old beauty's work ethic, including being focused and detailed to her work.

"She's an actress who really thinks about her role until she can interpret the emotions. That's why she helps me out and makes me feel more inspired about the emotional aspects when we work together," he explained, as cited by a Korean media outlet.

Moon Chae Won's New Movie 'We Grow Up'

Now, Moon Chae Won is set to appear in an upcoming movie, "We Grow Up," alongside "Temptation" star Kwon Sang Woo.

Interestingly, this is also her movie comeback after starring in "Feng Shui."

On the other hand, she is also active on social media and recently shared her team up with Ralph Lauren and Marie Claire Korea.

KDramastars owns this article.

Written by Geca Wills
Actors Lee Honey and Lee Sang Yoon showed the exhilarating pleasure of living a double life in the newest video teaser for the forthcoming fantasy romantic comedy-drama series "One the Woman" that was released on September 3.

Lee Honey and Lee Sang Yoon, who will portray characters who are madly in love with each other, perfectly showed the amazing and unique combination of the lead stars.

Lee Honey and Lee Sang Yoon Experience a Rush of Adrenaline in Living a Double Life in New Drama

In the forthcoming drama, Lee Honey will take on the role of prosecutor Jo Yeon Joo who unfortunately lost her memories, and is now pretending to be Kang Mi Na, an heiress to a Korean conglomerate who looks exactly like her.

On the other hand, Lee Sang Yoon will play the role of Han Seung Wook, a third generation conglomerate who has a tragic past.

In the third video teaser, the two veteran actors displayed the exhilarating pleasure of defying fate as they live a double life.

The video teaser begins with Han Seung Wook arriving at the airport and going straight to their house, which looks very extravagant. It is safe to say that the newcomer has lived a very comfortable life. However, he has a dark secret and a mission he needs to accomplish to prove himself.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: Lee Honey Shows Off Two-Tone Charms in New Character Poster in Upcoming Drama 'One the Woman'

Then, Han Seung Wook attends a burial ceremony with indifference and a cold gaze, raising curiosity.

In the following scene, the man wishes to see Kang Mi Na, who in her house loses deep in her tracks as she chooses a dress.

Interestingly, Jo Yeon Joo, who possesses the same face, clothes, and body walks behind Kang Mi Na, causing confusion.

Han Seung Wook, who's currently confused, becomes suspicious. As the video teaser ends, Han Seung Wook engages in a heated argument with Han Yeong Sik, played by Jeon Kook Hwan. Meanwhile, Jo Yeon Joo hides her identity with a scarf and obnoxious sunglasses.

Curiosity and expectations are getting hotter and hotter, anticipation of the acting performance that the two actors will show increases.

The production team of "One the Woman" shared that the new drama will bring a refreshingly new story with twists and turns that were never seen before.

'One the Woman' Premiere Date and Where to Stream

"One the Woman" is written by screenwriter Kim Yoon and directed by director Choi Young Hoon. It will take over the weekend Friday and Saturday time slot that was previously occupied by the hit drama series "Penthouse."

"One the Woman" premieres for the first time at 10:00 p.m. on September 17 on SBS.

It will also be available for international streaming on the online streaming platform Viki and Viu.

Follow KDramastars for more Kdrama, KMovie, and celebrity news updates!

KDramastars owns this article.

Written by Elijah Mully.
MEDFORD, Ore.  With healthcare workers at southern Oregon hospitals working overtime in response to the ongoing surge in COVID-19 patients, some members of the community have stepped up to show their appreciation with deliveries of snacks, notes, and other gifts.

Those have included gift cards delivered by Dutch Bros Coffee, a plethora of snacks and hand-written notes gathered by SALON 7 in Medford, a van filled with snacks from Workspace, and meals provided by Cynthia's Sweet Home.

With the amount of appreciation gifts gathering steam over the past month, the Asante Foundation wants the community to know how they can best help support healthcare workers.

"We've been so fortunate to receive some generous donations from the community, and we're continuing to work with the community to show our support for these healthcare workers when they're showing up when we need them most," said Christian Gold Stagg, development director at the Asante Foundation.

Gold Stagg said that ready-to-eat, individually wrapped food items are a good option for healthcare workers right now.

"Folks are working long hours, they're having to put on a lot of PPE, take that on and off to take breaks  it's short break times, if any," said Gold Stagg. "So having those quick, nourishing, tasty foods is so important."

Notes of appreciation and signs of support are also great, Gold Stagg said, and they are being distributed across all three Asante hospitals.

People can also donate to the COVID-19 Compassion Fund on the Asante Foundation's website. The fund was launched in March of 2020, and is intended to help the hospital system meet needs related to COVID-19 preparedness, response, and patient and employee support.
JACKSON COUNTY, Ore.  This week, investigators from a group of Jackson County agencies and the state of Oregon served a series of search warrants targeting two suspected black market marijuana grow operations  one near Gold Hill and another near Eagle Point.

The Jackson County Sheriff's Office said that the raids ultimately uncovered about 15,000 pounds of processed marijuana, more than 20,000 uncultivated plants, five guns, and almost $650,000 in cash.

Investigators from the Jackson County Illegal Marijuana Enforcement Team (IMET) conducted the first raid just after 7 a.m. on Tuesday morning at a property in the 10000-block of Old Stage Road near Gold Hill. Here, the Sheriff's Office said, detectives found bags of cash totaling $643,524, five firearms, and forged identification. In a storage room, detectives found 10,000 pounds of processed marijuana that had been weighed, separated, and packaged for distribution.

RELATED: Man's death precipitated raid on massive Josephine County marijuana grow

JCSO said that the operation had no permits to grow or process marijuana for any commercial purpose.

At the site, investigators detained 58 workers, arresting just one man. JCSO identified the suspect as 33-year-old Hernan Sanchez Villalobos, a citizen of Mexico and the owner of the property. He was jailed on charges for alleged marijuana trafficking, possession of forged identification, and money laundering.

Just before 8 a.m. on Wednesday, IMET served another search warrant at a suspected black market grow in the 1000-block of Meridian Road near Eagle Point. Detectives reported discovering 20,199 plants spread throughout 102 greenhouses, as well as 5,000 pounds of processed marijuana.

RELATED: State officials to begin testing hemp in southern Oregon for illegal marijuana

Investigators detained 53 workers, interviewing them before releasing them. While the property did have a license from the Oregon Department of Agriculture to grow hemp, JCSO said that it was "not permitted to grow or process marijuana for recreational or medical purposes."

"While regulatory agencies investigate permitted cannabis operations, IMET is focusing on the black-market marijuana trade in the Rogue Valley. Oregon State Police (OSP), Medford Area Drug and Gang Enforcement (MADGE) detectives, and JCSO deputies assisted with both operations," the Sheriff's Office said.
MEDFORD, Ore.  Hundreds of healthcare professionals have signed onto a brief statement urging members of the southern Oregon community to get the COVID-19 vaccine and trust their counsel. As of Thursday evening, about 445 doctors, dentists, nurse practitioners, and other medical staff had signed onto the letter.

The letter is similar to one circulated earlier this week by healthcare workers in Siskiyou County, though considerably more succinct. It reads:

You trust us to care for you. You trust us to care for your parents and your children. Please trust us when we encourage you to get vaccinated against Covid-19. It is safe, effective, and may save your life or the life of someone you love. Weve been vaccinated, and hope you will too.

The project was spearheaded by Dr. Ryan Hungerford, a physician with Southern Oregon Internal Medicine at Rogue Valley Physicians. Hungerford told NewsWatch 12 that he expected about 100 doctors to sign on in support when he started circulating it on Tuesday. Instead, it quickly doubled that number, then quadrupled it.

Coronavirus Watch: Asante Three Rivers still slammed with the sheer number of COVID-19 patients

Hungerford said that fellow doctors comprise about 90 percent of the names on his statement of vaccination support, with other medical professionals making up the remaining names.

While he initially had humble prospects for the letter, Hungerford now says that he can hardly think of a local doctor not signed onto the list.

The list was not intended to be a petition, and it was neither a response to other initiatives or a position on the vaccination mandates for healthcare workers. Instead, Hungerford said, he just wants people to make a medical decision with medical information, not bias. In his view, many people seem to be making vaccination decisions without the advice of a medical expert, though they may be patients of himself or his colleagues.

"The present health care crisis in our community continues and even worsens, largely due to low vaccination rates, and local physicians are striving to reach out to our community and make an impassioned plea to roll up the sleeve for a covid vaccination," Hungerford said in a statement. "Our hope is that some who may yet still be on the fence might be persuaded knowing that their doctor(s) have also been vaccinated and are encouraging this."

According to data from the Oregon Health Authority, vaccination rates tend to be quite high among healthcare professionals, broadly tracking level of training and experience. Dentists have a vaccination rate of 95 percent, followed by physical therapists with 89 percent, medical doctors at 88 percent, physician assistants and osteopaths at 84 percent, and nurse practitioners at 80 percent.

By comparison, just over 66 percent of Oregon's total adult population is fully vaccinated against COVID-19. Jackson County has a vaccination rate of 60 percent, and Josephine County is at 54 percent.
OLENE, Ore.  For the second time this week, law enforcement officers in Klamath County raided a purported "hemp" grow that the Sheriff's Office says was being used to cultivate marijuana for the black market.

Deputies searched a grow in the 13000-block of Crystal Springs Road near Olene on Wednesday. According to the Sheriff's Office, the property owner had leased the property to someone for "what was supposed to be a licensed commercial hemp operation." But the investigation found no evidence of licenses for hemp or marijuana.

The grow consisted of roughly 11,000 marijuana plants, the Sheriff's Office said.

With drought continuing to be an issue of widespread emergency in Oregon this year, the Sheriff's Office said that this grow operation included "substantial" diversion of water from the Lost River. Officials estimated that this amounted to 1.5 million gallons, or 4.6 acre-feet of water.

The Sheriff's Office said that prosecution is under consideration once the investigation is complete.

Like a similar statement from Klamath Falls Police Department earlier this week about two more illegal grow raids, the Sheriff's Office pointed to the recent passage of House Bill 3000, which allows law enforcement more flexibility in cracking down on illegal grows. With this grow, the Oregon Department of Forestry lent heavy equipment to help destroy the plants and infrastructure.

KCSO and partners with the Basin Interagency Narcotics Enforcement Team (BINET), have been tracking numerous operations for several weeks," Sheriff Chris Kaber said. "Recent legislative changes have made it easier to obtain warrants to destroy illegal growing operations. Earlier this week KCSO participated in an operation with BINET that took down three illegal grow sites of over 22,000 plants.

According to the agency, there has been a growing trend of growers coming into the area and leasing property for "purposes that appear legal and offer large sums of money." Ultimately, property owners may be held responsible for the damage and clean-up needed after law enforcement destroys a grow operation.
SALEM, Ore.  Oregonians got their first chance to glimpse the state's potential political landscape on Friday, as the state House and Senate Committees on Redistricting released their proposals for new Congressional and legislative districts ahead of a series of virtual public hearings on the topic.

Results from the 2020 US Census rewarded Oregon's population growth with a sixth US Congressional district. In addition to changes to the 30 Senate and 60 House districts at the state legislative level, those results necessitated a redrawing of the district boundaries.

While Oregon Democrats control both chamber of the state legislature and could have redrawn the districts almost unilaterally, Democratic leaders agreed to draw equally from both parties on the redistricting committees in exchange for assurances from Republicans that they would not block legislation.

Ordinarily the deadline for redistricting would have fallen on July 1, but with the Census delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic, lawmakers successfully pushed for a delay until September 27. Now, with the rough drafts produced, a series of 12 virtual public hearings will be held from September 8 through 13.

There has been an impressive amount of public engagement throughout the redistricting process thus far, said Senator Kathleen Taylor, chair of the Senate Committee on Redistricting. We remain committed to fairness, transparency and following the law as we continue to hear from members of the community and finalize electoral maps.

Under the two proposals from the redistricting committees, Oregon's 2nd Congressional District  which currently comprises all of eastern and most of southern and central Oregon, represented by US Rep. Cliff Bentz  will remain by far the largest district by landmass in the state. However, both proposals include significant changes to its borders brought on by the addition of a sixth district.

Under "Plan A," District 2 would gain the rest of Josephine and part of Douglas County, taking them from Rep. Peter DeFazio's District 4. But District 2 would lose Hood River, Jefferson, and part of Deschutes County to District 3, including the city of Bend.

Under "Plan B," District 2 would retain all of the north-central Oregon counties, but would lose Josephine and part of Jackson County  including Medford and Central Point. They would join District 4 instead.

The location of the new District 6 differs by proposal, but it appears roughly in the northwestern part of the state. In Plan A, it covers Polk, Yamhill, and parts of Marion, Clackamas, and Washington counties. In Plan B, it covers most of Clackamas and Marion counties.

In 2020, a group calling itself "People Not Politicians" championed a ballot measure that would have removed the redistricting process from lawmakers and put it in the hand of a bipartisan commission. The push ultimately faltered amid the pandemic after the Supreme Court blocked a lower court ruling that would have given the group more time to gather signatures.

People Not Politicians, still lobbying against the current redistricting process, released a statement on Friday expressing wariness of the lawmakers' proposals.

There is no amount of technical savvy or sophisticated mapping software that removes the inherent conflict of interest that exists when partisan legislators are given the benefit of drawing their own electoral linesthe fox is guarding the henhouse, '' said Norman Turrill, chair of People Not Politicians. Oregon voters should be choosing their politicians, not the other way around.
PROSPECT, Ore.  The Jackson County Sheriff's Office said on Thursday that the months-long search for missing Texas man Kirk Jones is now at an end. Remains found in the Sky Lakes Wilderness over the weekend are now confirmed to be his body.

The search the 35-year-old Jones has been a mystery since the very beginning, when the Texas man's motorcycle was inexplicably discovered near Prospect in June. His family in San Antonio had seen him just days before his disappearance, and said that he hadn't shared any plans for traveling to Oregon  nor did he know anyone in the area.

Search and rescue (SAR) teams scoured the areas around Prospect and where Jones' bike was discovered, with no sign.

RELATED: Mother of Texas man who disappeared pleads for help after motorcycle discovered in Jackson County

Ultimately, the Sheriff's Office said, Jones' body was discovered by bow hunters deep within the Sky Lakes Wilderness Area on Saturday. Due to the remote location and rough terrain, the SAR team "short-hauled" in a deputy medical examiner detective into the area via helicopter to find Jones' body.

Along with the body was Jones' motorcycle helmet, jacket, and backpack. The location was on a ridgeline about 1.5 miles east/northeast of where Jones' bike was found on June 13.

A positive scientific identification confirmed that the body was Jones' on Thursday. According to the Oregon State Police forensic pathologist, his cause and manner of death is undetermined. However, foul play is not suspected.
Kenosha City Council Ald. Anthony Kennedy has withdrawn his sponsorship of the city mask mandate, citing a lack of support from the rest of the city council, meaning the proposal will not go before the council on Wednesday.

On Monday, the City Councils Public Safety and Welfare Committee declined reinstating a citywide mask mandate, voting 5-0 against the proposal after around 100 people packed the meeting hall, overflowing into the hallway of the Municipal Building. That negative recommendation would have accompanied the proposal when it went before the full council.

Most who turned out Monday spoke in opposition to the mask mandate revival during both public comments and a public hearing held prior to the vote. The meeting lasted nearly three hours.

The city previously had a mandate that required anyone over the age of 5 to wear a mask while inside public places and businesses in the city. That mandate expired May 26. The updated mandate sought in Kennedys proposal would have remained in effect through March 31, 2022.

Kennedy voiced his frustration with resistance to the proposal, saying that  while he wanted to continue pushing for a city mask mandate he lacked support on the council and didnt want to subject himself or staff to the vitriol of the public.
Who do masks protect: the wearer, others, or both?

We've known for some time that masks help prevent people from spreading the coronavirus to others. Based on an analysis of existing information, a new study contends that masks may also protect mask wearers from becoming infected themselves.

Different masks (according to a Duke University study) ... block viral particles to varying degrees. If masks lead to lower "doses" of virus being inhaled, then fewer people may become infected, and those who do may have milder illness.

Researchers in China experimented with hamsters to test the effect of masks. They put healthy hamsters and hamsters infected with SARS-CoV-2 (the COVID-19 coronavirus) in a cage, and separated some of the healthy and infected hamsters with a barrier made of surgical masks. Many of the "masked" healthy hamsters did not get infected, and those who did got less sick than previously healthy "maskless" hamsters...

(R)esearchers have studied doses of flu virus and found that people who inhaled a higher dose of flu virus were more likely to get sick and experience symptoms. Observations of coronavirus outbreaks in processing plants and on cruise ships also support the idea that masks may help protect mask wearers.

Without more research, we can't be certain that masks protect the wearer. But we do know they don't hurt, and that they protect others.

 Harvard Medical School, Aug. 9, 2021
The visit of newly installed Prime Minister Naftali Bennett of Israel to the United States could not be more timely. On August 27, he met at the White House with President Joe Biden. The photo op handshake between the two is especially important right now.

The security of Israel along with regional stability are sustained United States foreign policy priorities. The interests of our two nations have not always coincided, yet the partnership endures.

Prime Minister Bennetts statement in the Oval Office is of self-evident importance, and is worth quoting at length:

I bring with me a new spirit, a spirit of good will, a spirit of hope, a spirit of decency and honesty, a spirit of unity and bipartisanship, of folks who  harbor very different political opinions, even opposing, yet we all share the deep passion to work together to build a better future for Israel. Biden reciprocated the warm words.

For twelve years, Bennetts predecessor Benjamin Netanyahu was in office. The intense nationalism of that leader led to aggressive annexation of territory, confrontational policies, and difficult relations with the U.S. and other allies. Netanyahu currently is on trial for corruption, which appears to mark the end of his long turbulent political career.
Hopkinsville, KY (42240)

Today

Partly cloudy skies early then becoming cloudy with periods of rain late. Low 68F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 80%..

Tonight

Partly cloudy skies early then becoming cloudy with periods of rain late. Low 68F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 80%.
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By now, many of you would have read my article, Who needs scientists? Its not like we listen to them anyway. So, let me tell you another fiction story. But, first, I need to give you some background to this story.

Many of you would know about the theory of evolution by natural selection and how it explains the diversity we see today. Its an excellent idea, and there are some fascinating observations that can be deduced from this hypothesis. For example, those species that do not adapt to their surroundings will become extinct as time passes. Organisms that adapt to their environment tend to survive and produce more offspring. The keyword is tend, so that means not everyone will make it, even if they adapt. This points to a reality we, as the human species, try to make sense of: Why do good people die? I honestly dont know. But I do know that some people became martyrs through no choice of their own, as their death brought change.

So, listeners, here is a story for you:

Once upon a time, in a place far away, there lived a man called Charles Darwin. He was a proper British chap with an interest in science. He was seen as a heretic in his time, as his ideas were seen as controversial. Ah, but as it happens in history, these controversial individuals are the history makers, and people eventually come to believe their words.

Charles was an adventurous young man. He sailed the seven seas searching for new and exciting adventures. He explored nature, plants, animals, and fossils in South America and in the Pacific Islands. Charles had a lot of time on his hands and wasnt on Instagram, Facebook, or Reddit, as he wrote a bestselling book, On The Origin of Species.

He knew nothing of genes and DNA at that time, but he saw that traits could be passed to the next generation.

You see, Charles Darwin chose the name natural selection to contrast artificial selection or selective breeding, which humans control. Darwin had a similar approach, a Laissez-faire philosophy, a free-market type of approach, that opposes government intervention.

So, readers, let us look at viruses and natural selection. The virus is a living organism; though it doesnt have a brain, it knows it wants to survive. Im going to tell you a tale. Some call it folklore, but only time will tell the truth.

Once upon a time, far away, there was a busy city called Wuhan. The storytellers say there was a laboratory leak, or perhaps freak of nature (mutation) occurred. The point is, for the sake of this story, it doesnt matter.

Back in 2019, one of the fiercest viruses was detected. The scientists called it SARS-CoV-2. You know those scientists are always trying to make stuff up and complicate things. The rest of the world knows it as coronavirus, the Vid, or COVID for short. COVID is a lethal virus determined to live and reproduce in wild abandon in their unsuspecting human hosts. Please note, corona shouldnt be compared to Corona beer. However, alcohol should not be consumed if you have the Vid as it weakens the immune system of unsuspecting humans.

You see, the Vid was sneaky. It knew that it just had to get a few viruses particles in the unsuspecting human host to cause total mayhem. A COVID party is like a college house party gone loco. Vids sole mission is to invade the host, replicate, and mutate to escape detection from the Zombie COVID vaccine.

Meanwhile, back in Wuhan, China, the original COVID Menace virus laughs out loud and says, You pathetic humans. Viruses havent changed their playbooks. You simple humans, do you ever learn? Instead, you choose to defy science.

You see, George Santayana, in The Life of Reason, said, Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. So, as its been humans downfall, we tend not to learn from the past.

You see, doing nothing is a choice, and often it has deadly consequences, but we will save that story for another day.

Back to the story.

Unless we find a superhero to save the day, the Vid will take over the world, one human at a time. The Vid can be lethal, and it has no conscience and will overtake the human protective (immune) system. Alas, all is not lost. The Vid is fearful of its arch-nemesis, the Zombie COVID vaccine. So, the Vid quickly devises a scheme to evade detection and destruction. The system is the tried, tested, and true method of mutation.

Meanwhile, back in Wuhan, China, the original COVID Menace virus laughs out loud and says, You weak, pathetic fool (humans). We will fight until the bitter end.

However, there are a few brave voices that dare tout science. Obi-Wan Kenobi asks, Whos the more foolish: the fool or the fool who follows him? However, the crowds of people injecting bleach and eating Ivermectin, in their delirious stupor, cry out, You cant tell me what to do. Its my choice, and it doesnt affect anybody.

Qui-Gon Jinn comforts Obi and says, The ability to speak does not make you intelligent. Then Darvin comes to the scene and says, Humans, remember natural selection. Do you really want to test my theory?

The crowds cried out, What are you talking about, Darwin?

Darwin clears his voice and says, It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.

So, Darwin says to Obi, Well, you know what you need to do to fight Menace COVID? Obi responded with a resolute, Yes. Qui-Gon Jinn chimes in and tells Obi, Im not testing you, Obi-Wan. Life tests you! Every day it brings you new chances for triumph or defeat. And if you pass the test, it doesnt make you a Jedi. It makes you human.

Then, out of nowhere, Anakin Skywalker says to Obi-Wan Kenobi, Goodbye, old friend. May the force be with you. Then he disappears into the night.

So, the moral of this story, nature has a method that has been around for millennia. Nature can be cruel, but its impartial. It responds to the situations that are thrust on it. With that being said, they all lived happily ever after  or did they?

Tomi Mitchell is a family physician.

Image credit: Shutterstock.com
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I am sitting in a hospital room in Birmingham, Alabama. My 87-year-old father lies in a bed, frail, thin, and weak. This once physically strong and imposing man is a shell of who he was, of who he will always be in my mind  a larger-than-life Ranger infantry officer. A man who served two combat tours in Vietnam  my hero. I, too, wanted to be like him. That is why I chose to go to West Point. My father is the single most influential person in my life.

The naturalness of his dying is slowly progressing. I understand this. It is very hard to watch and I can do nothing about it. He cannot walk. He cannot even stand alone with a 4-point walker. He can no longer do the 100 push-ups and 100 bar dips that was his daily norm to the age of 80. The facade of immortality is gone. My heart breaks and I grieve.

He grieves as well. The realization that he may never walk again nor return to his home, work on his beloved cars, or build another remote control plane, begins to set in. What can you say and do in times like this? As the only doctor in the family, they look to me for answers to questions and help with decisions. At times, I feel resentful as I want to be his son, not his doctor, but most of the time I am grateful I can help.

Out of this comes an unexpected blessing  an opportunity to have a special one-on-one time with him. We talk about anything and everything. I learned things about him I never knew. He spoke of the hardships growing up in the Great Depression; of, as a five-year-old, walking 5 miles to the nearby airport to watch the biplanes take off and land. Occasionally he would be paid five cents to sweep the hangar floors. With that, he would buy a Coke and nurse it throughout the day. If he was really lucky, he could get a Moon Pie with it! He talked about how his mother would make fruitcakes in September, wrap them in cheesecloth, and keep them on top of the icebox until Christmas. To this day, he loves fruitcakes! What surprised me most was how close I came to losing my father in combat during his two tours in Vietnam. Gods protection was readily apparent. I sat there amazed, humbled, and thankful.

Sadly, it often takes an unpleasant event to bring people together so these stories can be shared. As physicians, patients will reach out to us in their time of grief, pain, or fear. They, too, need someone to hear their stories. We become that someone and in doing so we acknowledge their humanity. We ultimately become their storytellers and they become a part of who we are as a person, as a human being, who one day will face our own mortality and need someone to listen to our stories.

Andy Lamb is an internal medicine physician. He can be reached at Bugle Notes.

Image credit: Shutterstock.com
EUGENE, Ore. -- Currently, many businesses and venues in Western Oregon require proof of vaccination to enter, but are any of them worried about whether all the vaccine cards are real?

To verify vaccination, individuals -- such as those who will attend this weekend's Ducks game at Autzen Stadium -- are asked to provide an identification card with a physical vaccine card or a photo of the card.

However, there is not a widely available public system in place to check the legitimacy of vaccination cards. As of now, Gov. Kate Brown has indicated she will not pursue the idea of vaccine passports that could access digital information.

RELATED: WILL OREGON IMPLEMENT VACCINE PASSPORTS?

Jason Davis, a spokesperson for Lane County Public Health, said they have a digital system called Alert which can check who has been vaccinated and where. However, this is not a system available at universities, businesses and other venues.

I think at this point, the fact that forging a vaccine card is considered fraud and punishable by a significant fine or jail time should discourage folks from using photoshop, said Davis.

Sessions Music Hall, an indoor live music venue in Eugene, is planning to reopen their doors for live music for the first time in 18 months.

"There was a moment in the fall when we thought we could do some socially distanced shows but then the surge happened," owner Danny Kime said. "Then we had to go back and forth with canceling and rescheduling. So we're just excited to be back."

The venue will officially be holding live music with guests on Saturday night. Concert attendees will need to provide proof of vaccination. Sessions Music Hall said they're encouraging community members to show proof through digital apps to verify legitimacy.

"Instead of bringing a physical card, use an app like Bindle or Clear," marketing manager Nate Hensen said. "Those apps actually take the process of verifying the vaccine internally and attendees can just present their phone with their vaccine verification."

Hensen and Kime said there have been concerns people do not provide legitimate vaccination cards. Therefore, they are training their staff to be able to identify fake vaccination cards.

"We just ask people in our community to have integrity," said Kime. "Please respect us and our venue. This is a business decision that we didn't take lightly."

The Hult Center for the Performing Arts, across the street from Sessions Music Hall, is also requiring proof of vaccination or a negative COVID-19 test to attend any of their performances effective Sept. 1.

Rich Hobby, marketing manager at the Hult Center, said during the pandemic they were doing outdoor shows and just started getting back into indoor programming about five months ago.

"As we are heading into fall, we are welcoming full capacity shows," Hobby said.

Those wanting to watch a performance can bring in a physical vaccination card or show a picture of it on their phone with a valid ID.

"There might be concern overall of a very small minority trying to possibly [fake cards]," Hobby said. "But the main purpose of us rolling out these policies is for the health and safety of our patrons so there's a certain level of due process where we can serve that but at the end of the day if someone is going to counterfeit something like that, it's gonna be a wait and see."

MORE: WHERE COULD OREGON SEE VACCINE MANDATES?

Public university students heading back to campus for fall will also have to provide proof of vaccination through an online school portal.

University of Oregon and Oregon State University officials said they're not concerned students will provide illegitimate information.

"We see no evidence of Oregon State students violating measures of safety or presenting proof of vaccines that may be bogus," OSU spokesperson Steve Clark said.

Clark said there's indication students are being honest from the mass vaccination clinics at Reser Stadium that took place a couple months ago.

"I recall out of more than 65,000 people in Benton County, approximately 90,000 participated in those clinics and many of those were students," Clark said.

UO provided a statement to KEZI, saying: "Health services staff are individually reviewing all student vaccine cards that are submitted and potentially rejecting cards or asking for the information to be re-uploaded if there is any reason to doubt their authenticity. To be clear, the forms and processes for submitting information to comply with our vaccination requirement are secure and HIPAA compliant and individual students vaccination status is kept confidential."

MORE: SEEKING A VACCINE EXEMPTION? OSU, UO REQUIRING EDUCATIONAL MODULE FIRST

Eugene Police and the Lane County Sheriff's Office said there have currently been no arrests linked to producing or selling fake vaccination cards. But those caught for these crimes can potentially face charges of forgery.

Oregon Health Authority also gave a statement to KEZI, saying: "We hope that Oregonians will not lie or cheat and put others at risk by forging a vaccine record if they arent vaccinated. With over 1,000 hospitalizations and record case counts, we all have a role to play to stop the Delta variant from further spreading. To save lives at this moment of crisis, we're counting on every Oregonian to take preventive measures so we can protect one another right now."
LANE COUNTY, Ore. -- In just a few days, schools will be back in session in Lane County.

Eugene School District 4J had their school board meeting on Wednesday night, and officials said there are about 960 students enrolled in the two online learning options the district is offering. That leaves about 130 students on the waiting list, they said.

Board members said the priority right now is making sure they have enough staff to accommodate all of these students.

One Eugene mom, Whitney Wilmarth, is sending her children back to school in the 4J district. She said she did consider the online learning option for her children, but she ultimately decided the best thing to do for her kids was send them back to the classroom.

RELATED: 4J parents must request distance learning for students by Aug. 23

"My thing was if they go back to school and then it closes and again -- how much of an impact is that going to have on them because they've been looking forward to it so much. So that's where my hesitation was," said Wilmarth.

Wilmarth went on to say she is excited for her kids to get back to in-person learning, and her kids are excited to have a teacher again.

And with the move to in-person learning, there might be some worry from parents about how classrooms are being cleaned.

With this in mind, Springfield Public Schools is set to reopen this fall with a new disinfection technology. They're the first district in Oregon to adopt hospital grade UVC disinfection technology with the Company R-Zero.

The technology known as the Arc works to eliminate 99.9% of surface and air pathogens from classrooms and buildings.

It only takes about seven minutes for the Arc to clean an area like a classroom, ensuring students and staff will return to a safe learning environment the next day.

Operations Officer Brett Yancey said he is thrilled the district can use the Arc this year.

"When we found it and we had done the research, we had figured out quickly this was going to meet the needs that we have in our district and it's meeting the needs right now in hospitals and other school districts. And so it really was a good match for us," said Yancey.

Yancey also said this technology will be used by the district beyond the pandemic, as it kills all germs.

But even with these new technologies, there might still be some anxiety from parents about sending their kids back.

Diane Palmer, a Eugene grandparent, helps take care of her grandchildren frequently. She told KEZI 9 News while online learning was hard, it helped her know her grandkids were safe. And while she and their parents talk to them about any concerns they may have about going back to school, she said with most of her grandkids all going to different schools, this gives her a lot of anxiety about possible COVID-19 infection.

"That's a lot of exposure to a lot of staff, of families, even if it was one school it would sort of be a smaller group, and children are coming in from different schools to the middle schools, so it's just more of a worry," said Palmer.

Despite these anxieties, Palmer said she is confident her grandkids are ready to go back.
EUGENE, Ore. -- Lane County Public Health's Dr. Patrick Luedtke is warning people against consuming ivermectin -- an anti-parasite medicine most commonly used for horses and other livestock -- in an attempt to treat or prevent COVID-19.

"We've seen an increase in poison control calls for somebody who says, 'I took ivermectin,' or 'My dog got into it and he or she is sick,'" Luedtke said.

Luedtke said some people who've taken ivermectin, meant for animals, have reported experiencing side effects.

"It can cause you know, some pretty significant upset, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, stomach pain, it can last for a few days," Luedtke said.

Ivermectin has not undergone enough studies to prove it's effective against COVID-19 or safe for human consumption in the same way it's given to animals, Luedtke said.

Nonetheless, feed stores throughout Lane County are either sold out of the product or have put policies in place to prevent people without livestock from buying it.

"I've been having to dig a little bit deeper and make sure that they actually have horses or whatever livestock that they're going to use it on because I really don't want anybody to get hurt. We just want people to be safe here," said Violet Douglass, manager of Diess Seed & Feed in Eugene.

Douglass said the store has recently received between six and eight calls every day from people inquiring about ivermectin.

In the past, misuse of animal medications similar to ivermectin has forced those using them properly to get a prescription from a veterinarian. Douglass said she's concerned something similar could happen with ivermectin if the trend continues.

"We are only allowed to sell, label is the law, so if this is only for horses we can only sell it to people to use on horses," Douglass said. "We can't recommend they use it on anything else."

The ivermectin craze started recently as social media rumors, right-wing commentators on television, and even a website where some doctors give medical advice, spread misinformation about the product.

The Food and Drug Administration has released a warning against the misuse of ivermectin; however, one doctor in Roseburg released a blog post advocating for it's use against COVID-19. Read more about the blog post, and the warning from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, HERE.
SHEDD, Ore. -- With Oregon facing historic drought conditions this summer, many farmers are seeing below-average yields on several crops this year.

Much of the state has been under extreme or exceptional drought conditions this summer. The extreme high temperatures and lack of precipitation causes the soil to dry up, making difficult conditions for crops to grow.

RELATED: OREGON BATTLES HISTORIC DROUGHT CONDITIONS

One of the hardest hit crops is tall fescue, a type of grass seed, causing concern about a possible worldwide grass seed shortage.

"Across the board, fescue in general was down. Mine was probably about 45% is what I figure this morning, well, between 45% and 50% off on yields," said Denver Pugh, a farmer in Shedd.

Pugh has been a farmer for 24 years, but he said he's never seen anything like the conditions this season.

"There is not going to be near enough supply of seed to supply all the markets that are wanting seed," Pugh said.

According to the Oregon Seed Council, the state produces about 600 million pounds of grass seed every year, which counts for a significant portion of the world's product.

Pugh said this year's low yields will drive price of products that require grass seed up.

"You're going to see higher prices, especially coming to the stores for the consumer end of things," Pugh said. "You'll see higher, especially lawn prices, turf prices those are going to go up high, probably considerably."

Regardless of what future seasons look like, Pugh said those working in the agriculture industry will survive and persist.

"I'm sixth generation and I'm not the only sixth generation or multi-generational farmer out there," Pugh said. "We've been doing this for quite a while. We know how to prepare for the future and I think we'll get by, but it's going to be pretty tight."
SPRINGFIELD, Ore. -- A police chase in Springfield on Thursday ended with a motorcyclist crashing into a rock and being rushed to the hospital, authorities say.

It started at about 1:30 a.m. when an officer saw Darren Carson, 52, riding a motorcycle west near the 1800 block of Centennial Boulevard. Police say the officer saw Carson commit several traffic violations and tried to pull him over near the intersection of 16th and J streets.

Thats when police say Carson sped off, headed south on 16th Street through the McKenzie-Willamette Medical Center parking lot and back onto 16th Street. The officer followed him east on Main Street.

When Carson went to turn left onto 14th Street, he wasnt able to make the turn and drove up on the curb and crashed, police said.

Medics took Carson to RiverBend Hospital with serious injuries, where he was cited.

Police said the motorcycle was reported stolen out of Eugene.
EUGENE, Ore.  PeaceHealth will soon be bringing in more National Guard members to help out at its area hospitals.

The first wave of helping hands arrived at the end of August to RiverBend Hospital in Springfield, and now a second group will be arriving on Friday, in addition to the current group.

PeaceHealth officials say they will also be at University District Hospital in Eugene and the Cottage Grove Community Medical Center.

RELATED: NATIONAL GUARD DEPLOYS TO RIVERBEND HOSPITAL

We welcome each of these service members and offer our sincere thanks for the support they are providing our physicians, nurses and allied support teams, who are working so hard at our hospitals at such a critical time in the pandemic, said Alicia Beymer, chief administrative officer.

National Guard members will be helping temporarily in nonclinical roles through Sept. 30, PeaceHealth added. At RiverBend, their roles include data entry, food services assistance, cleaning beds and delivering supplies. In Eugene, Guard members will be helping with food services and in Cottage Grove, they will be assisting environmental services.

PeaceHealth said they have plans to bring in additional service members to Peace Harbor Medical Center in Florence.
SWEET HOME, Ore. -- A teenager is being charged in the death of his passenger in a crash near Sweet Home this summer, according to Linn County Sheriff Jim Yon.

Tyler Lobdell, 18, was arrested Thursday and taken to the Linn-Benton Juvenile Detention Center on a charge of second-degree manslaughter. He was 17 at the time of the crash, Yon said.

RELATED: TEEN KILLED IN FATAL CRASH NEAR SWEET HOME

It happened just after midnight on July 17 on Crescent Hill Road near the intersection of Highway 228. Lobdell had reportedly been headed north in a 1996 blue Ford Explorer when he lost control while going downhill. He ended up in the oncoming shoulder and overcorrected, causing his vehicle to roll down an embankment about 85 feet from the road, Yon said.

Passenger Kolby Keenon, 18, was killed. He had reportedly not been wearing a seatbelt and had been ejected from the vehicle. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

Yon said Lobdell, who was wearing a seatbelt, sustained minor injuries and was taken to Lebanon Community Hospital after the collision.

The day of the crash, authorities said they were investigating it as being potentially alcohol related.
EUGENE, Ore.  A surging Delta variant, wildfires and higher gas prices are just a few of the issues facing drivers ahead of the Labor Day weekend.

Still, Marie Dodds with AAA Oregon said it will be a busy travel weekend, but likely not as busy as Memorial Day or the Fourth of July.

The big reasons for that, of course, is we're seeing a surge in COVID cases due to the Delta variant, Dodds said. That's making a lot of folks think twice about traveling.

This year, AAA did not conduct its usual scientific survey to find out exactly how many travelers are expected. Dodds said the data takes several weeks to gather, and the results would have likely changed by the time the survey was completed.

It's really tough to put an exact number on how many people will be traveling, because when you have things line up like they have for Labor Day, people tend to wait until the very last minute, Dodds said.

Some AAA members said they are waiting until Friday or even Saturday morning before hitting the road. For Oregonians, the Oregon coast is the top destination, followed by Central Oregon, Las Vegas, Washington and California. Around 93% of people are expected to head by car to their destination.

Drivers will also be paying the most expensive gas prices for the Labor Day holiday in seven years. The average in Oregon is $3.87 per gallon. However, prices locally are settling down and even starting to drop in some cases.

Dodds said its also important to be aware of wildfire activity around the northwest.

Don't assume that it's business as usual, because we do see a lot of closures and impacts, Dodds said.

Indeed, the Oregon Department of Transportation issued a similar advisory this week.

Debris cleanup from last Septembers devastating wildfires has complicated the holiday and summer road picture. Work continues in key corridors connecting the Willamette and Umpqua Valleys to Central Oregon and the coast, the agency said in a news release.

Wildfire impacted routes include Highway 138 in Douglas County, Highway 22 in the Santiam Canyon, Highway 18 east of Lincoln City, and Highway 126 along the McKenzie River. There are also around 30 active fires in the state.

Labor Day is also an especially deadly time because of drunk or impaired driving. Eugene Police and other law enforcement agencies have announced extra patrols for DUIIs.

For more information on Oregon roads, check tripcheck.com
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There sits a little bit of Kilkenny on Long Island at a site now known as Hempstead House.

Heres the catch, or the hook, to be more accurate - the mansion on the site was originally intended to be a replica of Kilkenny Castle.

The reasons behind this fact are fascinating. The story of those who built it even more so.

Howard Gould was the third son of railroad tycoon Jay Gould, who was argued to be the the most infamous of all the of all the robber barons.

Robber baron is a derogatory term originally applied to certain wealthy and powerful 19th century American businessmen.

Their practices often included exerting control over natural resources, influencing high levels of government, paying subsistence wages, squashing competition by acquiring their competitors to create monopolies and raise prices, and selling stock at inflated prices to unsuspecting investors.

Born into the immense wealth of his father Howard Gould wanted for nothing and aimed for status amongst his peers.

(Above: Howard Gould sitting at his desk on Niagara, a personal steam yacht, built in 1898)

It is reported that in 1898, Howard Gould married Katherine Clemmons to at least in-part anger his father, who had reduced his inheritance by $5 million.

Katherine Clemmons was also known by her stage name Katherine Dayan and was known for her off-stage antics and temperamental personality. She was even rumored to have had an affair with Buffalo Bill.

In 1900, Howard and Katherine purchased a 300-acre estate at Sands Point, Long Island and began construction on what they envisioned as Americas finest stately home.

To achieve this, it had to be striking, unique, something different, and in 1904 the Goulds employed Kilkenny native and well-known Irish architect James Francis Reade to draw a survey of Kilkenny Castle so that it could be replicated at Sands Point.

Once they had their Kilkenny Castle survey in their hands they hired Abner Haydel of Philadelphia to draw up the plans for what they intended to be the largest mansion in America.

That's when the trouble began...

Haydel had submitted more than 19 designs to the Goulds by 1907 only to have each one rejected by Katherine and as a result he quit and successfully sued the Goulds for his time.

With over $1.7million spent already, the Goulds still had no castle to show for it.

This led to a huge falling out between Howard and Katherine.

They parted ways in 1907 before engaging in one of the most boisterous separation trials in American history up to that point, citing misunderstanding over the construction of Castle Gould for their strife.

Gould was ordered to pay $36,000 per year in alimony (over $1million today), the largest alimony settlement ordered up to that time.

Needless to say, this was a huge blow for the construction of Castle Gould but Howard pressed once again with construction under architectural firm Hunt & Hunt.

After two more years and a cost of $1million, Gould finally had his castle, less Kilkenny than was envisioned, but still striking nonetheless.

He moved to Europe in 1917 and sold the Marble city-inspired estate to mining magnate Daniel Guggenheim and his family for only $600,000.

The Guggenheims immediately renamed the estate to Hempstead House, as it is still known today, and it later underwent a huge $10million renovation.

In 1971, Nassau County took over a 128acre portion of the estate from the Federal Government to be used as a nature preserve.

It has also been the setting for many feature films, including Scent of a Woman, Malcolm X, Great Expectations and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Fans of hit television shows Gotham, Dare Devil, The Americans, Boardwalk Empire may also have got a glimpse of Hempstead.

Remnants from Haydels designs (right side of main photo above), based on his survey of Kilkenny Castle, still remain and if you squint your eyes at certain parts of Hempstead House today, you will almost certainly feel a lot closer to the Nore than to the Gold Coast.
An opportunity has been launched for Kilkenny businesses to avail of a free energy audit as part of an Interreg North-West Europe (NWE) Development Project called CANCap.

Many Irish businesses are examining their options to improve sustainable measures, reduce energy bills move towards carbon neutrality. Businesses that avail of the CANCap support will begin to transition to a low carbon economy and contribute towards the Governments Climate Bill promise to half emission by 2050.

Offered by 3 Counties Energy Agency (3cea), the free audits aim to assist SMEs, in specific industries, to improve sustainable measures and reduce energy bills by addressing deficiencies and incorporating renewable energy practices. The Climate Active Neighbourhoods Capitalisation Project (CANCap) free energy audit is available to SME, businesses with fewer than 50 employees in the Southeast region, including within Kilkenny from the following sectors:

- Nursing homes and healthcare providers

- Food producers, farm foods plants

- Convenience grocery stores and supermarkets

- Office blocks and property management companies

Businesses that are interested in exploring the free energy audits offered can visit https://3cea.ie/cancap- offers-free-energy-reports- for-irish-smes/ and express their interest by filling out the enquiry form. Some terms and condition apply.

Alexandra Hamilton, Senior Energy Engineer with 3cea said:

The energy audit will include a walk-through of the building with one of our engineers to see how and where you currently use energy. They may have a camera, meters or other equipment to conduct the survey, but it will not be disruptive, and staff can go about their day as usual. We will make our recommendations for where to save energy across the business. 3cea are registered with SEAI to deliver energy audits across the South East, and we will always highlight any grants or supports available to deliver the projects after the audit is complete.

Following completion of a free energy audit, the business will receive an energy usage report. 3cea will advise on how to reduce energy bills and develop sustainable energy practices that will meet the daily objectives of the business more efficiently. Companies may qualify for further grant assistance should they wish to carry out upgrades such as solar panels, energy-efficient heating or cooling systems, insulation, or upgrade to LED lighting.

Under the SEAIs Better Energy Communities (BEC) grant scheme commercial businesses can avail of up to 30 per cent of the costs of energy upgrades up to 2M maximum grant per company. The BEC also offers community groups and not-for-profits up to 50 per cent grant assistance for sustainable improvements.

3cea are inviting businesses to attend a free information webinar that will be held on 21st September 2021 from 1-2 pm, hosted via Zoom, and presented by 3cea Senior Engineer, Alexandra Hamilton. The invitation is also extended to Voluntary and Community Groups, Sports Clubs and those living in local authority housing in County Kilkenny who may also benefit from substantial grand assistance.

Businesses and community groups across Kilkenny considering energy upgrades will learn more about the savings, how to go through the funding process, the benefits and grant opportunities available to them.

This is a great opportunity for businesses and communities groups, individuals and sporting clubs to reduce energy usage and costs, lower their CO2 emissions and make a very positive impact on climate change. I would encourage anyone considering energy upgrades to attend our information evening on September 21st to find out more. Ms Hamilton added.

Businesses, communities and individuals who wish to register online may do so via:https://www.eventbrite.ie/ e/information-session-on- energy-grants-supports-for- organisations-tickets- 167741863429
Cistercian monks who established a woollen mill alongside their monastery in Graignamanagh in the year 1204 could never have predicted that in the year 2021 a mill on the same site would be producing beautiful, high quality textiles.



The mill was already almost 600 years in existence when it came into the stewardship of the Cushen family - and today the Cushens are marking the involvement of six generations of their family with the mill.



Cushendale Woollen Mills is one of only two traditional wool mills still operating commercially in Ireland. It is a real blend of the ancient skills of wool milling and blanket weaving with a modern family business, reaching out to bring their wares to the wider world.



The Covid lockdown was probably not the first pandemic the mill has seen in its long existence, but this one presented an opportunity for the Cushen family to look inward and develop the business for a new generation.



Miriam Cushen is the sixth generation of her family to run the business, with her husband Trevor Ging. They are working closely with her parents Philip and Mary as the business transitions to having its first woman at the helm.

Above: Mary and Philip Cushen



Six Generations

Sylvester Cushon (the spelling of the family name has changed over the centuries) was the first of the family to run the woollen mill - in 1778. His son Patrick, born in 1824, took over from him, before handing on the business to his son, Philip (born 1859). Another Patrick (born1899) handed the mill down to another Philip - Miriams father.



Philip collaborated with the Kilkenny Design Workshops in the 1960s and brought new designs, colours and fibres into the business.

The recent developments by Miriam and Trevor have echoed this - developing new and bold product ranges while still appealing to traditional tastes. They have also taken advantage of lockdown to expand the small front-of-mill shop space and they have created a beautiful, spacious new showroom that perfectly displays their products.



Vertical Mill

Watching Philip Cushen operate the mill apparatus that dates from 1890 visitors to the business were transported back in time, when they gathered to celebrate the business.

Cushendale Woollen Mill is one of only two vertical mills in the country, meaning they collect fleece and transform it into textiles under the one roof.



Over the past 12 months a lot of work has been done, Miriam said at the relaunch celebration. She thanked builder John Burke, who almost moved in at one stage, he was here day and night in the space that didnt have an even wall or floor! Eric Phillips, from Bennettsbridge, creates fine furniture and woodwork, and he crafted the beautiful furniture for the new showroom. His craftmanship is immaculate and showcases our products, Miriam said.



Mill Family

In developing the space and designs Miriam worked with brand team Aad from Dublin. They understood the business and really helped us to represent what we are, Miriam said.

The business is run by a family, but those that work in the mill are like a family too, Miriam said, thanking the team we have here making the amazing textiles - Jim, Thomas, Dorota, Sarah and Kathleen. We are privileged to do what we do and we couldnt do it without the team.



Miriam had a special word for her parents Philip and Mary. Without their tenacity and resilience over the years, and the people before them, Miriam acknowledged she wouldnt be able to stand in the showroom as the sixth generation of the Cushen family to lead the business. She also thanked her husband, Trevor, who retired from the army and is now found front of house at the mill and, she said, they have never sold as many blankets!

Above: Cushen family - Miriam and her husband Trevor Ging, parents Mary and Philip - with the Cushendale Woollen Mills staff. All PICTURES: Vicky Comerford



Guest of honour, on the day, was retail consultant Eddie Shanahan. His encouragement, support and positivity, along with numerous Zoom calls over lockdown, pushed them forward to pursue the new developments, Miriam said.

Being a small part of this wonderful project means a lot to me, Mr Shanahan said. He said positivity and passion can achieve so much and that had combined with the dedication of one very special local family who are taking the skills of the past and presenting them in todays marketplace.

Phenomenal

After working with himself and the Aad brand team Cushendale Woollen Mills is now presenting a fresh, blended image with new designs, a new website, a new shop and mill experience that will draw more people to Graignamanagh, he said.

Mr Shanahan had special words of admiration for Philip and Mary Cushen, who, he said, kept Cushendale on track through the decades when so many big names disappeared from the marketplace.



Mairead ODwyer, from Kilkenny Tourism, said it was a phenomenal achievement to keep a business going for six generations.

Kilkenny has recently been named as a World Crafts Council Craft City and Region and Cushendale Woolen Mills has made a major contribution to this, she said. Theres nothing visitors appreciate more than getting out into the country and they love to meet the makers of the crafts.

Remarking on the vibrancy of the colours of the blankets, dyed on-site, Ms ODwyer said Cushendale Woollen Mills would be recommended to visitors to Kilkenny, along with all the attractions in Graignamanagh.

You can check out Cushendale Woollen Mills on https://cushendale.ie/
Glanbia Ireland (GI) has entered into legal negotiations with Kilkenny Abbey Quarter Development Partnership aimed at reaching agreement on a lease at the Abbey Quarter development in Kilkenny.

It is intended that Glanbia Ireland will be the anchor tenant in the Brewhouse building at the heart of the Abbey Quarter from next year and that this will become Glanbia Irelands new headquarters.

The proposed arrangement is intended to facilitate the consolidation and expansion in Kilkenny of Glanbia Irelands operations in one, central hub.

Reacting to the announcement, councillor Pat Fitzpatrick noted that Glanbia's decision is a 'huge vote of confidence' in Kilkenny and commended Kilkenny County Council and Glanbia for commitment in coming to an agreement.

"It has been a great week in Kilkenny from a jobs perspective and this latest announcement is another much-needed boost to our local economy as we look forward to the future," he added.

Welcoming the news, Deputy John Paul Phelan said he has no doubt that Glanbia Irelands global reputation would act as a magnet to attract other tenants to the Abbey Quarter development: Glanbia Irelands investment in the Abbey Quarter would play a massive role in realising the vision for this historic site as a hive of innovation in the heart of Kilkenny City, Deputy Phelan commented.

Glanbia Ireland once again demonstrating its bricks and mortar commitment to Kilkenny - by establishing its headquarters at this historic site - would hugely enhance both our Citys and the Quarters attractiveness to other commercial investors.

The planned move to Abbey Quarter by Glanbia Ireland will have no impact on Glanbia plc, which maintains its headquarters on the Kilkenny ring road. Glanbia Ireland will also maintain its existing office facilities outside of Kilkenny, including Citywest in Dublin. The new Glanbia Ireland Innovation Centre and a small number of other business functions will remain in situ at Ballyragget, alongside existing operations.

Above: Abbey Quarter external view

The proposed new Glanbia Ireland headquarters is expected to be ready for occupancy from the second quarter of next year. It is intended that it will have capacity for over 300 employees and is being designed as a flexible, collaborative office to support blended working, with particular emphasis on collaboration space for cross-functional teams.

The office building will be LEED Gold accredited and will incorporate sustainable design and materials, in line with Glanbia Irelands carbon reduction goals as set out in its recently-launched Living Proof sustainability strategy.

Glanbia Ireland wants to continue to develop its relationship with Kilkenny and contribute to the continued growth and development of the local economy.
ALBERT LEA, Minn.  A man pulled over for speeding is now pleading guilty to possession of over 100 pills of molly.

Carl Dickelo Gipson, 46 of Albert Lea, was arrested on July 26, 2020, and charged with second-degree possession of a hallucinogen and fifth-degree possession of marijuana.

The Freeborn County Sheriffs Office says Gipson was spotted going 71 in a 55 mph zone and pulled over. The arresting deputy says the stem from a marijuana bud could be seen sitting in Gipsons ashtray and that led to a search that found 170 pills of MDMA, also known as molly, and a baggie with powder residue that tested positive for meth.

Court records show Gipson had previous drug convictions in 2005 and 2008. He is scheduled to be sentenced on November 19.
ROCHESTER, Minn. - Earlier today, Abinash Virk, M.D. from Mayo Clinic gave her insight on how to keep kids safe and healthy as they return to school - especially for those who are too young to receive the COVID-19 vaccine amid delta outbreaks.

"I think it's very scary for kids, themselves," said Dr. Virk. "But also for family members."

Rochester Public Schools are requiring masks in their buildings as the 2021-2022 school year begins, but some parents are still hesitant about if their kids will remain healthy.

Dr. Virk answered a very important question for parents: how do we keep our kids safe?

"For maximum protection, you could ask your children to wear a mask," said Dr. Virk. "Of course, that's not easy and it's not easy for children - especially the younger ones. If they are okay wearing a mask, they could wear a mask - particularly if they are in the class itself. Hand hygiene is helpful. And again, avoiding big gatherings would be helpful. But it is challenging when we are not able to provide them the vaccine yet."

With lessened social distancing and masking guidelines, is there a spike in COVID cases in our future?

"You know based on the fact that the children are - especially below 12 years of age - are not vaccinated and many may not be wearing a mask and they are in person, I think there is a likelihood that we will have an increase in transmission in our communities after school starts. Again, we will be monitoring this very closely as we go forward," said Dr. Virk.

The vaccine is only FDA-approved for those 12 and over, although there are ongoing clinical trials to make the vaccine available to those younger than 12.

The Pfizer vaccination trial is the closest, so far.

After data from the trial is compiled - which is expected near the end of September - it will then be presented to the FDA. The FDA will then decide if it will approve the shots for younger children.

"By the end of this year, we should have a large portion of children between five months and twelve years of age getting offered vaccinations," said Dr. Virk.

Dr. Virk said there is no reason to believe there is going to be a problem for the children once the vaccine is FDA-approved.
ROCHESTER, Minn.  Mayor Kim Norton is encouraging residents to join the Fall Fit City Challenge.

Rochester is one of 32 communities across the country taking part in the program where people tack the time they spend moving on a dedicated app. When the challenge ends on October 15, the ward with the most tracked time will win a party at a local park.

Rochester is already an incredibly active city with a great public trail system, which includes over 100 miles of trails, and numerous parks and recreation opportunities. It is my hope that this program encourages people to get out and explore the city, says Mayor Norton. As Americas City for Health, this initiative supports what we try and focus on as a community.

The Fall Fit City Challenge is a national initiative founded by the National Forum for Heart Disease and Stroke Prevention. Rochester is the only community in Minnesota taking park.
OLMSTED COUNTY, Minn. - A semi rollover on Highway 63 in Olmsted County caused traffic issues in southeastern Minnesota.

The Minnesota DOT said it happened at the bottom of the ramp from Highway 52 southbound.

The ramp was closed along with all Highway 63 southbound traffic until about 1:30 p.m.

 TRAFFIC ALERT - Semi rollover on Hwy 63 southbound at bottom of ramp from Hwy 52 southbound. Ramp closed and all Hwy 63 southbound lanes closed and detoured. Avoid this area if possible. Check https://t.co/MEmqELpVHX or the Mn511 app for traffic updates. #OlmstedCounty #rochmn pic.twitter.com/A5ZGzPHN5x  MnDOT District 6 (@mndotsoutheast) September 3, 2021

und lanes.
WASHINGTON (AP)  At least 50,000 Afghans are expected to be admitted into the United States following the fall of Kabul as part of an enduring commitment" to help people who aided the American war effort and others who are particularly vulnerable under Taliban rule, the secretary of homeland security said Friday.

Tens of thousands of Afghans have already made it through security vetting and arrived in the U.S. to begin the process of resettlement. Exactly how many more will come and how long it will take remain open questions, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said as he outlined the effort.

Our commitment is an enduring one, he told reporters. This is not just a matter of the next several weeks. We will not rest until we have accomplished the ultimate goal.

Mayorkas and other Biden administration officials are providing the most detailed look to date at what began as a frantic and chaotic effort to evacuate U.S. citizens, permanent residents and Afghans before the Aug. 30 withdrawal of American troops and the end of the country's longest war.

Jack Markell, former governor of Delaware, will serve as coordinator of what the White House is calling Operation Allies Welcome. He will work alongside the National Security Council, Domestic Policy Council, DHS, and other federal agencies to ensure vulnerable Afghans who pass screening and vetting reviews are safely and efficiently resettled here in the United States, said Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House principal deputy press secretary. The appointment is expected to run through the end of the year.

Nearly 130,000 were airlifted out of Afghanistan in one of the largest mass evacuations in U.S. history. Many of those people are still in transit, undergoing security vetting and screening in other countries, including Germany, Spain, Kuwait and Qatar.

Mayorkas said there have been some evacuees who have been stopped at transit countries because of derogatory information, though he provided no details. It is unclear what happens to any Afghans who don't make it through the security screening at the overseas transit points, though the secretary said the U.S. is working with its allies to address the issue.

More than 40,000 have arrived in the U.S. so far. Mayorkas said about 20% are either U.S. citizens or permanent residents. The rest are people who have received or are in the process of receiving what's known as a Special Immigrant Visa  for those who worked for the American military or NATO as interpreters or in some other capacity  and Afghans considered particularly vulnerable under Taliban rule, such as journalists and employees of nongovernmental organizations.

We have a moral imperative to protect them, to support those who have supported this nation," said Mayorkas, who as a child came to the U.S. as a refugee from Cuba with his family.

While he said the U.S. expected to admit at least 50,000 Afghans, he suggested there was no set limit or a specific time frame.

Our mission is not accomplished until we have safely evacuated all U.S. citizens who wish to leave Afghanistan or lawful permanent residents, all individuals who have assisted the United States in Afghanistan, he said. This effort will not end until we achieve that goal.

Though the U.S. airlift has ended, Taliban officials have said they would allow people with valid travel papers to leave, and they may feel compelled not to backtrack as they seek to continue receiving foreign aid and run the government.

Most of the Afghans who have arrived in the U.S. are being housed on military bases around the country, receiving medical treatment, assistance with submitting immigration applications and other services aimed at helping them settle in the country.

There were more than 25,000 Afghan evacuees at eight bases with capacity for twice as many, said Air Force Gen. Glen VanHerck, who heads U.S. Northern Command.

So far, few have tested positive tested positive for COVID-19 and there have been no security problems, but VanHerck said the military has designated an officer to act as a mayor of the emerging communities.

Im building eight small cities, were going to have challenges, he told reporters at the Pentagon.
Farm organizations are discussing priorities in preparation for potential House and Senate Agriculture Committee hearings on the farm bill next spring.
Crews out of St. Charles grabbed critical supplies with them and headed to New Orleans and surrounding communities.
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Kokomo, IN (46901)

Today

Scattered thunderstorms early, then cloudy skies after midnight. A few storms may be severe. Low 61F. WSW winds shifting to NNW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 40%..

Tonight

Scattered thunderstorms early, then cloudy skies after midnight. A few storms may be severe. Low 61F. WSW winds shifting to NNW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 40%.
FILE - In this Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2020 file photo, District Attorney Jackie Johnson campaigns for reelection on St. Simons Island, Ga. Johnson, a former Georgia prosecutor was indicted Thursday, Sept. 2, 2021 on misconduct charges alleging she used her position to shield the men who chased and killed Ahmaud Arbery from being charged with crimes immediately after the shootings.
In this 2004 June file photo, Greek composer Mikis Theodorakis attends a press conference in front of the landmark Acropolis hill in backround, in Athens, Greece. EPA-Yonhap



Renowned Greek composer Mikis Theodorakis, who scored the 1964 classic film "Zorba the Greek" and was an icon of resistance to the former military junta, died in Athens on Thursday aged 96.



A prolific talent and political maverick, Theodorakis was adored in Greece for his inspirational music and defiance during the junta that ruled from 1967-74.



Following the news of his death, the Greek flag was flown at half mast at the Acropolis on Thursday, while parliament observed a minute's silence.



He was best-known around the world for his film title scores which also included "Z" in 1969 and "Serpico" in 1973.



His work ranged from operas to choral music and popular songs, providing a soundtrack to the life of his country.



In recent years, he suffered heart problems for which he had been hospitalized.



Greek Culture Minister Lina Mendoni said "today we lost a part of Greece's soul.



"Mikis Theodorakis, our Mikis, the teacher, the intellectual, the radical passed away."



President Eikaterini Sakellaropoulou hailed him as a "pan-Hellenic personality" who was also "a universal artist, an invaluable asset of our musical culture.



"He was given a rich and fruitful life that he lived with passion, a life dedicated to music, the arts, our country and its people, dedicated to the ideas of freedom, justice, equality and social solidarity".



"Mikis Theodorakis is now passing into eternity," said Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, announcing three days of national mourning.



"His voice was silenced and with him the whole of Hellenism was silenced," he told a cabinet meeting.



"Mikis enriched Greek music, enriched world music," Greek-French director Costa Gavras told Sputnik website. "He was a very special Greek."



His body will lie in state during for three days in the Cathedral of Athens from Tuesday until Thursday.



The funeral will take place on Thursday afternoon, his family said.





Relatives and friends escort the coffin of Greek composer Mikis Theodorakis outside of his home in Athens, Greece, Sept. 2. Reuters-Yonhap
Kendallville, IN (46755)

Today

A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible early. Cloudy skies. Low 59F. Winds NNW at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible early. Cloudy skies. Low 59F. Winds NNW at 5 to 10 mph.
Angola, IN (46703)

Today

A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible early. Mostly cloudy. Low 58F. Winds NNW at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible early. Mostly cloudy. Low 58F. Winds NNW at 5 to 10 mph.
PORTLAND, OR (KPTV) - A group of doctors and nurses that normally respond around the world to help in natural disasters is doing what they can to stop the spread of COVID-19 in Oregon.

On Thursday and Friday, Medical Teams International is on the Oregon coast to offer free services in a mobile clinic. Medical Teams International is known for their response to areas around the world that need help in times of crisis and natural disasters.

Over the last few weeks, the COVID-19 pandemic has wreaked havoc on the state's health care system, so Medical Teams International are setting up mobile clinics to help stop the spread. They're hoping by offering both free dental care and COVID vaccinations in one spot that it will encourage more people to get vaccinated.

"Normally, it takes a couple of weeks to get things together but we are small, nimble and agile, and thats what we do at medical teams is respond," said Cindy Breilh, Executive Director of Medical Teams International. "We're here to join in the fight to end COVID and to get our country back on its feet, and really to prevent people from getting seriously sick. This is a life-saving effort."

Clatsop County, which is only 56 percent vaccinated, recently experienced an outbreak of cases and asked Medical Teams International to respond with a mobile clinic. Thursday, they are set up at the Columbia River Maritime Museum in Astoria until 2 p.m. On Friday, the team will be at Jewell School in Seaside from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Medical Teams International plans to host upwards of 20 vaccine clinics in Oregon and Washington to get more people vaccinated against the coronavirus.
PORTLAND, OR (KPTV) - Portland pediatricians are warning parents that more kids are getting sick from the more contagious Delta variant of COVID-19. This comes as children across the Portland-Metro area headed back to school this week.

Hospitals around the Portland area have seen an increase in pediatric cases of COVID-19 severe enough to need hospitalization. That tracks with numbers from the Oregon Health Authority, which show a steady increase in cases of COVID-19 involving kids.

Pediatricians say the kids they see in the hospital are also showing up with more severe symptoms, suggesting that the Delta variant is making them sicker than previous versions of COVID-19.

Dr. Malaika Little is a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Randall Childrens Hospital. She says the Delta variant is much worse for children.

Portland pediatrician asks parents to look for certain signs as children return to school PORTLAND, OR (KPTV) - As parents send their kids back to school this fall, many are wondering what they can do to keep them healthy, especiall

Were seeing more in the hospital, more severe disease is being reported. And there does appear that it is more transmissible, so kids are getting it easier. I still think its most likely coming from unvaccinated adults the majority of the time, Dr. Little, said.

She says the majority of kids shes seen in the hospital generally do recover quickly, but that kids with underlying conditions are struggling more with COVID-19. One bit of good news, she says it looks like the mortality rate in pediatric cases has not increased significantly.
(BARNARD, Mo.) A rural Missouri school district canceled classes due to COVID-19 cases and exposures this week.

In a statement posted online, South Nodaway School District Superintendent Dustin Skogulund said the district had decided to cancel classes Thursday and Friday after at least a quarter of the schools total population, 39 students and 3 staff members, were out due to quarantines or illness.

This decision was not made lightly and we apologize for any inconvenience or burden families must bear as a result of this closure, however, it is our belief that students are best served educationally through in-person learning and we hope to reschedule these days of school when more students are able to be present, said Skogulund.

The superintendent said staff would use the long weekend to sanitize and clean the schools for when class returned on Sept. 7.

Additionally, Skogulund said when students returned, they would be in masks. According to the statement, the district was implementing a 10-day temporary mask mandate to prevent more illness and quarantines in the schools.

The state does not require mask-wearing in K-12 schools, instead, it leaves that decision up to each individual school district. But districts forgoing mask mandates face stiffer quarantine requirements when a student or teacher tests positive.
DILLON, Mont.  The small town of Dillon looks to double in size welcoming everyone from around the region for "Montana's Biggest Weekend" and looking to give a much-needed economic boost from last years limited 2020 pandemic rodeo.

This will be the 65th annual Dillon Jaycees Rodeo, but the rodeo itself has hosted people from around the state much longer than a century; hence the nickname "Montana's Biggest Weekend."

William Hampton, the 2021 rodeo chairman, said he hopes the event can give the community a much-needed, end-of-the-summer economic boost to small businesses as crowds from around the region pour thousands of dollars into the local economy.

Were bringing you know 10,000 people to town for the weekend so hopefully that really helps out those businesses that are kind-of you know just on the edge of not doing great but doing okay, Hampton said.

This is the Dillon Jaycees biggest fundraiser of the year as all funds go right back towards helping the community through their scholarships for kids and several other community projects and events.

In 2020, the Dillon Jaycees worked with the Beaverhead County Health Department roping off seating areas by 10-50 people an area with six feet of separation, limiting spectators and canceling most all of their events besides the Labor Day PRCA rodeo last year.

This year they will have their annual Sunday night concert featuring the Eli Young Band at 8:30 p.m. along with the carnival and all food vendors being back.

The rodeo kicks things off with their "ranch rodeo" at 6 p.m. on Sept. 3 showcasing the local ranchers.

Starting on Sept. 4 at 7:30 p.m. and Sept. 5 at 2 p.m. the rodeo festivities will start and Slack competitions begin Sept. 5 at 7:30 a.m.

More information and how to get tickets to Montanas Biggest Weekend can be found here.
BILLINGS - Billings Public Schools Superintendent Greg Upham held an information update on COVID cases in the school district via a Facebook live stream on Thursday.

Upham says the county school district superintendents meet weekly with RiverStone Health to stay up-to-date on the status of COVID cases in the county.

According to the latest update, the number of cases in schools is now 144, a sharp increase from previous weeks. Roughly 25% of this week's confirmed cases in Yellowstone County are in school-aged children, according to RiverStone Health.

One 5th grade classroom was also quarantined recently, Upham said, after four of 26 students tested positive for COVID-19.

In lieu of contact tracing, SD2 is partnering with St. John's United to provide free COVID testing for students, staff, and family members in the home. If you're interested in getting tested, you can schedule your test at covidtest.stjohnsunited.org.

In addition to the testing, Upham says the district will send a notification email or letter when there's an active case in a classroom or other group setting to inform those whose child may be a close contact.

Billings Public Schools still require masks to be worn in classrooms. Parents who would like to opt out of having their child wear a mask are required to enroll in online learning. The deadline to sign up is Friday, Sept. 3.

When it comes to lifting the mask mandate, however, Upham says he is staying in contact with local health officials and monitoring criteria, such as the county's daily case count and cases per school. Once these numbers begin to trend in a better direction and level out, Upham says he will discuss lifting the mandate.
BILLINGS - The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Wednesday, they are denying a request to stop a Texas state law that bans abortions after six weeks of gestation. That's before many women even know they're pregnant.

The law also allows citizens to sue anyone who helps a woman obtain an abortion.

Rights groups see the law as a direct challenge to Roe vs. Wade, the landmark decision legalizing abortion.

The request to freeze the law came from the Texas Abortion Providers who say this is one of the strictest laws in the nation.

We spoke with Montana Planned Parenthood CEO Martha Stahl, who tells us the ruling from the Supreme Court only affects Texas law, not the abortion laws here in Montana.

However, Stahl did mention states could choose to adopt the new law.

"But that doesn't mean that automatically every state is going to have a six week ban or 15 week ban. It basically opens the door to state legislators to put regulations and obstacles in front of people having abortions as they wish, as long as they're sort of within the confines of what the supreme court has said is constitutional," she said.

Stahl says Planned Parenthood clinics in Montana will stay open and are ready to see patients.
U.S Customs and Border Protection specialists seized 350 pounds of packaged meat from an El Paso resident attempting to cross at the Paso Del Norte border crossing.

The foreign meats were spotted by a CBP officer upon an initial inspection of the U.S citizen's Honda Odyssey. They were sent for a secondary inspection where 31 rolls of bologna and 2 rolls of turkey ham concealed under blankets, under the seats, center console, and inside a duffel bag were discovered.

The individual was issued a $1,000 civil penalty after admitting the meats were for resale in the U.S. CBP destroyed the contraband.

With the recent detection of the African Swine Fever in the Dominican Republic, it is important that no pork products are brought into the U.S., CBP El Paso Director of Field Operations Hector Mancha said. Pork products have the potential to introduce foreign animal diseases that can be detrimental to our agriculture industry.
What was your favorite memory from summer 2021? Did you have a song of the summer you kept on constant repeat?
Stephane Deneve has been engaging St. Louis Symphony Orchestra audiences for years.

Known for his wit, warmth, exuberant curiosity and unlimited appetite for music that spans genre and time, the SLSO music director of three seasons has been appearing in acclaimed regular performances with the orchestra since 2003, including a wide repertoire in close collaboration with the orchestras musicians, todays top composers and resident artists.

Now, with a recent contract extension through SLSOs 2025-26 season, the French-born conductor, who previously served as chief conductor of Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra and music director of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, looks forward to continuing to ignite the SLSO in enriching lives with the power of music through artistic excellence, educational impact and community connections, and to increasing access for all.

St. Louis is my musical home, and I am truly over the moon to deepen my relationship with this wonderful community in the years to come, says Deneve, the 13th music conductor in the SLSOs more than 140-year history. I feel such a special connection to this city and to the fantastic musicians and staff of the SLSO. I look forward with great enthusiasm to making music  to inspire, to comfort, to challenge, to bring joy  and continuing to develop together with the SLSO, who are not only among the worlds most outstanding musicians but also are generous, warm-hearted and passionate people.

St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, slso.org
CERNOBBIO, SEP 3 - Last year saw the biggest global health and economic crisis ever seen, the annual Ambrosetti Forum heard on its opening day Friday. "2020 marked the deepest global crisis ever seen by our generation," said Valerio De Molli, managing director and managing partner of The European House Ambrosetti, kicking off the annual brainstorming session. "The collapse in global GDP was 32 times worse than the worst previous crisis, while Italy's 8.9% GDP contraction was the fourth worst in the 150 years of Italian history." As well as its economic impact, "the social consequences of the pandemic were enormous and asymmetrical, said De Molli. Women and young people were the categories that suffered the most, he said. He said some 47 million women around the world risk falling below the poverty line. The Ambrosetti Forum organized by The European House - Ambrosetti, a consulting firm - is an annual international economic conference held at Villa d'Este, in the Italian town of Cernobbio on the shores of Lake Como. Since its inception in 1975, the Forum has brought together heads of state, ministers, Nobel laureates and businesspeople to discuss current challenges to the world's economies and societies. (ANSA).
ROME, SEP 3 - Italy has reached its target of vaccinating 60% of its under-19 population, sources said Friday. That is a total of over 2.7 million young people. Some 1.8 million of the age bracket are without any dose. COVID Commissioner Francesco Figliuolo had set a target of a minimum of 60% of students vaccinated in order to return to school in person and in safely. Meanwhile a legal dispute between the EU and AstraZeneca was settled Friday. The company will deliver its remaining contractually obliged doses. "AstraZeneca is effective, safe and important," said a European Commission spokesman. "Several member states need it for their vaccination campaigns". The EU had sued the pharma giant for failing to meet its deliveries on time. (ANSA).
ROME, SEP 3 - The assassination by Cosa Nostra of Carabinieri General and Palermo Prefect Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa ushered in a "quality leap" in the fight against the Sicilian Mafia which has reaped major successes, President Sergio Mattarella said ahead of Saturday's 39th anniversary of the killing. On 1 May 1982, Dalla Chiesa, who had won acclaim in fighting the Red Brigades domestic terrorists, was appointed as prefect for Palermo to stop the violence of the Second Mafia War. He was murdered in Palermo on 3 September 1982, on the orders of bloody late Mafia boss Salvatore 'the Beast' Riina. He and his second wife Emanuela Setti Carraro were in an Autobianchi A112 driven by her, when a number of gunmen on motorbikes and a car forced the car off the road where it crashed into a stationary vehicle. The gunmen opened fire and Dalla Chiesa was killed along with his wife and their escort agent, Domenico Russo. Mattarella said "their barbaric murder was one of the gravest moments in the attack on institutions by organized crime but, at the same time, it ended up accentuating still more an unbridgeable gap between the wounded city and the Mafia that continued to want to decide its destiny with intimidation and death". Mattarella said "the national community in its entirety, albeit struck and shaken, succeeded in reacting to that hateful challenge by strengthening itself with the same determined and lucid energy which Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa had already showed in his work against criminal and terrorist organizations, during his brilliant career in the Carabinieri. "Despite the brevity of his work in Palermo, the sacrifice of Prefect Dalla Chiesa and his ideal heritage helped direct many of the choices that, in the subsequent years, enabled a quality leap in the action of fighting phenomena of mafia infiltration of the economy and the public administration. "More incisive norms and powers of coordination gave fresh vigour to the strategies of combatting organized crime and strengthened the confidence of the public apparatus that was fighting it; while, in civil society, there grew a feeling og active citizenship, harbinger of a culture of rights counterposed to the logic of belonging and privilege. "In recalling that extreme sacrifice, I renew to the Dalla Chiesa, Setti Carraro and Russo families my feelings of closeness and participation, on mt part and that of the whole country," said Mattarella, who lost his elder brother Piersanti, the Sicilian regional council chair, to the Mafia in January 1980. Senate Speaker Elisabetta Casellati said Dalla Chiesa was "a symbol of the fight against the Mafia". House Speaker Roberto Fico said "the Mafia feared his courage, and this patrimony must be closely guarded". Maria Falcone, sister of Giovanni Falcone, a Mafia prosecutor assassinated in 1992, said Dalla Chiesa's death had "not been in vain". The murder of Falcone and, two months later, of his friend and colleague Paolo Borsellino, spurred a reaction by the Italian State which has curbed the power of the Sicilian Mob, with a string of bosses including the late Riina and the late Bernardo Provenzano being arrested over the years. Trapani superboss Matteo Messina Denaro is one of the few major figures still at large. (ANSA).
GENOA, SEP 3 - Italian DIGOS security police and postal police are probing death threats from anti-vaxxers against Liguria's centre-right Governor Giovanni Toti on social media chat rooms, sources said Friday. The probe is part of a broader inquiry into threats made by anti-vaxxers on Telegram against politicians, journalists and health officials and experts. The threats against Toti included: "You're the next one on the list", "Doing away with you isn't enough", "You too against the wall" and "You will be killed". Premier Mario Draghi on Thursday voiced "solidarity" with those who had fallen victim to the "odious violence" of anti-vaxxers. Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio, health officials and journalists have received repeated death threats because of their pro-vax stances. "I want to express full solidarity to all those who have been subjected to violence on the part of anti-vaxxers, a particularly hateful and cowardly violence when it is directed against those who are in the media and those in the front line against the pandemic," Draghi said. Italian anti-vaxxers posted death threats against 5-Star Movement (M5S) bigwig Di Maio in Telegram chat rooms on Tuesday. "Another rat to be executed", "we need lead", and "you must die", were some of the messages. Postal police have started examining illegal activities of anti-vaxxers on the Telegram portal, in their threats against pro-vaccine officials and journalists. Interior MInister Luciana Lamorgese said Wednesday the government will beef up measures to protect people against Web-based hate after the spate of attacks. Rightwing leaders like the League's Salvini have said that while they condemn violence, they understand the anti-vaxxers' anger and no one should be forced to get the COVID jab - which Draghi has said will be made compulsory. There have been a number of violent protests and other incidents involving anti-vaxxers in Italy recently. On Sunday night a top virologist, Matteo Bassetti, was accosted by a 46-year-old man who has been cited for issuing serious threats. The man reportedly came across Bassetti in the street and started following him, filming him on his phone and shouting at him: "You're going to kill all of us with these vaccines and we're going to make you pay". Meanwhile in Rome Monday, a video journalist from La Repubblica daily was attacked by a protester at an anti-Green Pass sit-in outside the Education Ministry. And a pro-Green Pass teacher received a bullet in the mail. Threatened anti-Green Pass protests including a train blockade flopped Thursday as anti-vaxxers were put off by a massive police presence at rail stations across the country. (ANSA).
CASERTA, SEP 3 - Shots were fired Thursday night against a centre named after an Italian priest gunned down by the Camorra in 1994 in his home town near Caserta where the clan that forced mafia writer Roberto Saviano into police protection held sway. The shots were fired at Don Diana's Home, named after Father Peppino Diana, killed by the notorious Casalesi clan in their fief of Casal di Principe. Police said they had appeared to have been fired from another which was once owned by a local mobster and is set to be turned over to socially useful purposes. Don Diana first started defying the Camorra, and the Casalesi, In the mid-1980s, when he set up a welcome centre for African immigrants in Campania to stop them from being recruited by the Camorra in a direct challenge to their business practices. At Christmas 1991, he published a letter urging his parishioners to shun the Camorra. The letter entitled "For the love of my people I will not stay silent", called on the church to resist the Camorra's rule, which he called "a form of terrorism". He also denounced the Casalesi clan's business practices: "Extortion that has left our region with no potential for development; kickbacks of 20 per cent on construction projects; illegal drug trafficking, which has created gangs of marginalised youth and unskilled workers at the beck and call of criminal organisations." In 1994 he testified in an investigation of ties linking the Camorra, politicians and businessmen after the Government's decision to suspend the local council in Casal Di Principe because of its links to the Camorra. He had threatened to stop administering sacraments to camorristi, refusing to marry them. He also sided with the newly elected mayor of Casal di Principe, who was trying to prevent firms connected to the Camorra from tendering for public contracts. On March 19, 1994, he was shot twice in the head in the Church of San Nicola di Bari in the town of Casal di Principe while preparing to offer a Mass for the feast of Saint Joseph. He was 35. In his bestselling 2006 Camorra exposee Gomorrah, writer Saviano, who personally knew Father Diana, dedicated a chapter to the priest. The title of the book comes from a letter by Diana, "time has come to stop being a Gomorrah." "He decided to take an interest in the dynamics of power and not merely its corollary suffering," Saviano wrote. "He didn't want merely to clean the wound but to understand the mechanisms of the metastasis, to prevent the cancer from spreading, to block the source of whatever was turning his home into a gold mine of capital with an abundance of cadavers." On March 20, 2014, Pope Francis gave a speech urging the mafia to change their ways and repent, and threatened them with excommunication. After the speech, he donned a priestly ceremonial garment once worn by Diana. Saviano, 41, has been living in round-the-clock police protection since he denounced the Casalesi in Gomorrah, which was turned into a Cannes-winning film and later a hit TV series. (ANSA).
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo.  The sewer operator for a Lake of the Ozarks village who deliberately ran untreated sewage into the Lake has pleaded guilty to two misdemeanors in Federal Court.

Brian Scheiter on Thursday, Sept. 2 pleaded guilty to violating the federal Clean Water Act through an illegal discharge, and through failing to report it. On the first count, Scheiter could face up to a year in prison and a fine of between $2,500 and $25,000; on the second, six months in prison and up to $10,000.

The agreement states, in part, Scheiter negligently discharged a pollutant, namely sewage water, from a point source into a water of the United States, namely Lake of the Ozarks[.] The agreement notes Scheiter was a Class A Wastewater Operator  the highest level of certification  and he deliberately ran sewage through a pipe and other means into a tributary that fed into Lake of the Ozarks.

In January of 2020, LakeExpo, in a joint investigation with KY3, broke the story that Scheiters actions in 2019 were being investigated by the Missouri Department of Natural Resources (DNR). A whistleblower spoke on-the-record about witnessing the deliberate dumping of untreated sewage onto a hillside trench that led to Lake of the Ozarks. The whistleblower, Brandon Mitchell, said when he confronted Scheiter about it, Scheiter became angry and refused to make any changes.

Days after LakeExpo and KY3 broke the story, Scheiter conducted another large waste dump at one of the village sewage plants, and the DNR conducted another investigation.

As public outcry grew, the city board of trustees  facing public pressure  moved Scheiter out of the Public Works Director role, and outsourced its wastewater management to a local company, Lake Ozark Environmental. Later in 2020, the DNR confirmed the village was taking the right steps to improve their wastewater system and avoid another incident like this one.

View LakeExpo's full coverage, below:

Related coverage:
MILWAUKEE COUNTY  Milwaukee area law enforcement are still trying to piece together what happened Friday morning following overlapping reports that involved a possible active shooter threat at a Walmart, two stolen vehicles, two crashes, one person possibly kidnapped and concluded with an armed man being shot and killed by law enforcement officers, Milwaukee Sheriff Earnell Lucas said during a press conference Friday morning.

Lucas said that, before 8 a.m., an armed man commandeered a vehicle and its driver and directed him (the driver) to a Walmart store. The two entered the store, obtained some items then left. Later, at a service station, they stopped and the original driver of the vehicle was able to go inside and ask for the clerk to call 911, before the two again left in the vehicle.

They then went to another Walmart store, where the driver told a clerk to call the police. A call for a possible active shooter went out, with multiple law enforcement agencies responding.
ATHENS, Greece (AP)  Europes top human rights body on Friday called on Greeces parliament to withdraw articles included in draft legislation that would impose heavy penalties on nongovernmental organizations that carry out unsanctioned rescue operations of migrants at sea.

The Council of Europes human rights commissioner, Dunja Mijatovic, said in a statement that the proposed changes would seriously hinder the life-saving work carried out by NGOs.

Greeces center-right government has toughened border controls since taking office two years ago and has promised additional restrictions in response to the ongoing crisis in Afghanistan. It has recently extended a border wall along its frontier and installed a high-tech surveillance network.

Under draft legislation currently being debated in parliament, members of charities involved in rescue operations conducted without coast guard permission could be jailed for up to a year and fined 1,000 euros ($1,190), with the NGOs facing additional fines. The bill is also aimed at simplifying and speeding up deportation procedures.

Mijatovic said some of the measures in the bill had been toughened after a period of public consultation for the draft legislation had ended.
DELAVAN, WI - Come out to Lake Lawn Resort at 2400 Geneva St., Delavan on Wednesday, September 22nd between 1:00PM and 4:00PM for the Fall Job Fair hosted by the Lake Geneva Regional News, Southeastern Wisconsin Workforce Development Board, and Equus Workforce Solutions.

Meet with representatives from local companies who are hiring for jobs like administrative work, manufacturing, healthcare, and much more!

Pre-register as a job seeker to receive email updates and information about the event AND be entered to win a $25 gift card!

To sign-up to have a booth at the Job Fair, call Nick Iacona at 262-631-1790 or email nick.iacona@lee.net.

Job Seeker Preparation Tips:
Milledgeville, GA (31061)

Today

A few passing clouds, otherwise generally clear. Low 67F. Winds light and variable..

Tonight

A few passing clouds, otherwise generally clear. Low 67F. Winds light and variable.
Three siblings plus four different breeds of livestock makes for one busy fair week. But Taylor, Landon and Levi Wrye enjoy all of the busyness of their week at the Centre County Grange Fair.
As we pray to God, turning our lives over to his wisdom and plan for us, we can ask for those things that lift us up, as we turn from negative emotions that drain hope from us.
Everything You Need to Know About Buying at Produce Auctions
Xiaomi is all set to launch the Redmi 10 Prime smartphone and new Redmi TWS earbuds in the country today. The Chinese brand will announce the prices of both devices at noon through a virtual launch event. The company has teased both the devices on its social media platforms ahead of the launch. The launch event will be streamed online via Redmi's YouTube channel and social media accounts. You can watch the event in the video below:

There have been many speculations and rumours around Redmi 10 Prime and Redmi true wireless earbuds. However, exact specs, prices and availability details will be revealed during the launch event. Xiaomi Redmi 10 Prime To Get 6,000 mAh Battery & Reverse Wired Charging: Report.

Redmi 10 Prime (Photo Credits: Xiaomi)

If the latest reports are to be believed, the Redmi 10 Prime could be a rebranded variant of the Redmi 10 that went official globally last month. The latter gets a starting price of $179 (around Rs 13,300) for the 4GB + 64GB variant, going up to $219 (around Rs 16,600) for the 6GB + 128GB model. The handset could be priced in a similar price bracket in India.

Redmi 10 Prime (Photo Credits: Redmi)

The upcoming Redmi 10 Prime is confirmed to get a MediaTek Helio G88 SoC, 6000 mAh battery, a hole-punch display design, adaptive refresh rate, and more. Do note, exact specifications will only be revealed during the launch event. If the handset comes as a rebranded model of Redmi 10, it will get a 6.5-inch FHD display with a 90Hz refresh rate, up to 6GB of RAM, up to 128GB of onboard storage, 50MP quad rear cameras, an 8MP front camera, 18W fast charger with 9W reverse wired charging and MIUI 12.5 based on Android 11.

SUPERSTAR LAUNCH OF THE YEAR!  Did you like my RAPPER avatar? There's so much more waiting on the other side!  Let's just say, with the #AllRoundSuperstar #Redmi10Prime the SPOTLIGHT is unavoidable.  You don't want to miss this  https://t.co/GaAGOunk3I pic.twitter.com/GI1ygMOBDK  41 73 61 2 37 23 (@hawkeye) September 3, 2021

Xiaomi will also launch the new Redmi true wireless earbuds today alongside the Redmi 10 Prime. It will get a Qualcomm chipset, aptX Adaptive codec, dual drivers, Bluetooth v5.2 connectivity, Quick Pair support and more. These specifications are very much similar to the Redmi AirDots 3 Pro, which were launched in China. The same earbuds were introduced globally as the Redmi Buds 3 Pro.

As for pricing, the Redmi AirDots 3 Pro is priced at CNY 299 (roughly Rs 3,400) in China. In global markets, the earbuds cost $59.99 (around Rs 4,500). We can expect similar pricing for the new Redmi TWS earbuds in India.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Sep 03, 2021 11:25 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).
Authorities arrested an Illinois woman in Hawaii after seeing that her COVID-19 vaccination card is actually a fake one. The court document stated that her vaccine proof had misspelled Moderna, one of the most efficient vaccines up to date against the novel coronavirus.

ABC News reported that instead of showing the correct name of the COVID-19 medicine, her card shows the word "Maderna," which authorities quickly found suspicious. Right now, many U.S. residents are trying to fake their vaccination proofs since they don't want to have the actual jabs.

Anti-vaxxers usually use fake COVID-19 vaccine cards: individuals who don't believe in the vaccine or believe that these medicines can contain microchips.

On the other hand, some pro-vaccine people are still relying on fake vaccination cards just to visit their loved ones who live far away. But, government officials highly suggest avoiding counterfeiting COVID-19 vaccine cards since it could lead to further infections.

Illinois Woman Uses Fake Vaccination Card

Authorities in Hawaii explained that the 24-year-old woman tried to bypass the state's 10-day traveler quarantine. They added that she uploaded a vaccination card to Hawaii's Safe Travels program.

READ MORE: California Teacher in Viral TikTok Video Caught Telling Students to Pledge to Pride Flag Instead of U.S. Flag

"Airport screeners found suspicious errors ... such as Moderna was spelled wrong and that her home was in Illinois but her shot was taken at Delaware," said Hawaii Attorney General Investigation Division's Special Agent Wilson Lau.

Aside from the suspicious vaccine proof, authorities confirmed that her travel information is incorrect since it includes Waikiki Holiday Inn, but didn't include a reservation number.

On the other hand, the inn's assistant manager also confirmed that they don't have the woman's name on the reservation list. Because of this, Lau and other investigators tried to find the woman who was caught on Aug. 28. Authorities explained that they were able to capture the violator because of her distinctive tattoo.

Other Fake COVID-19 Vaccine Card Cases

The Illinois woman is just one of the fake vaccination cases that various countries are trying to prevent. NPR reported that counterfeited vaccine copies are also offered by the Instagram user AntiVaxMomma.

New York investigators confirmed that the IG account sells their fake proofs for $200 each. If you are one of the individuals who want to have your own vaccine card as soon as possible, the best thing you can do as a U.S. resident is to avoid patronizing these sellers.

QUARTZ reported that if you are caught using counterfeited COVID-19 vaccination card, you could be imprisoned for 20 years, as well as a charge of $250,000.

READ NEXT: Major Drug Bust: 47 Charged in Bust of Cocaine, Meth Pipeline From California to Western Pennsylvania
A former Georgia District Attorney (DA) was indicted on Thursday by a grand jury for allegedly showing favor to the men accused of killing Ahmaud Arbery last year.

Jacquelyn Lee Johnson was indicted on charges of violation of oath of public officer and obstruction of a police officer, Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr announced.

Johnson was the Brunswick Judicial Circuit district attorney when Arbery, a 25-year-old Black man, was shot in February 2020, NBC News reported.

READ NEXT: Three Georgia Men Indicted in Killing Ahmaud Arbery

Ex-District Attorney Criminally Charged Over Ahmaud Arbery's Case

The indictment comes after Ahmaud Arbery's mother, Wanda Cooper-Jones, filed a civil lawsuit earlier this year, accusing Jacquelyn Lee Johnson of attempting to cover up her son's murder.

According to the indictment, the former DA failed to discharge her duties as district attorney when she "showed favor and affection" to one of the murder suspects, Greg McMichael, during the investigation into the shooting death of Arbery.

Johnson also allegedly failed "to treat Ahmaud Arbery and his family fairly and with dignity" by using her past work as motivation to shield the three men from charges.

Greg McMichael reportedly worked as a police officer before. He had also worked as an investigator in the office of Jacquelyn Lee Johnson during her tenure until his retirement in 2019.

The former DA was accused of directing police officers at the scene not to place suspect Travis McMichael under arrest. She also allegedly failed to disclose that she had sought Waycross Judicial Circuit District Attorney George Barnhill's assistance on the case before assigning him to it.

The indictment underscored that Johnson's actions were contradicting to the laws of the state where she served. If convicted, Jacquelyn Lee Johnson will face up to six years of imprisonment.

The violation of oath of public officer carries one to five years imprisonment, while obstruction and hindering a law enforcement officer can be sentenced up to 12 months.

"We thank the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and the Glynn County Grand Jury for their hard work. While an indictment was returned today, our file is not closed, and we will continue to investigate in order to pursue justice," Carr said.

Carr added that their office is committed to ensuring those entrusted to serve will carry their duties ethically and honestly. Carr's Prosecution Division has presented evidence to a Glynn County grand jury over several months that resulted in Johnson's indictment.

Ahmaud Arbery's Killing

Ahmaud Arbery was fatally shot and killed while out for a jog in Brunswick City on February 23, 2020. Arbery was accused of being one of the burglars in a series of local break-ins.

Reports said suspects Gregory McMichael and his son Travis McMichael, armed with guns, confronted the victim, prompting him to run.

Arbery ran past the truck of another suspect, William "Roddie" Bryan Jr., who struck the victim with the side of his truck. After seeing the McMichaels pursuing Arbery in a pick-up truck, Bryan joined the chase.

Eventually, the three men caught up with Ahmaud Arbery, and three shots were fired. The McMichaels were arrested and charged with murder and aggravated assault in May 2020.

Bryan, who has recorded the killing, has been charged with felony murder and a criminal attempt to commit false imprisonment. The three suspects pleaded not guilty to federal hate crime charges last May.

READ MORE: Lawmaker Says Ahmaud Arbery Was Murdered for Being Black

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Written By: Joshua Summers

WATCH: 1 Year After Shooting Death Of Ahmaud Arbery, His Mother Speaks Out - From TODAY
President Joe Biden is facing another round of criticism after he decided to help Tajikistan secure a portion of its border with Afghanistan despite the ongoing crisis at the U.S. border.

In a press release Wednesday, the U.S. Embassy in Dushanbe said it has launched a project to construct new facilities for a Border Service detachment along the Tajik-Afghan-Uzbek border. The embassy said it would allow Tajikistan's border troops to deploy more quickly in response to threats in the region.

Joe Biden's decision to secure the border of Tajikistan, while the U.S. southern border is still in turmoil due to the thousands of migrants coming into the country daily disappointed the border agents who worked in the front lines.

The agents said the U.S. southern border is still not secure. Border sources who spoke to Fox News in anonymity noted that the Biden administration's priorities were misplaced.

One senior border official said it was "just too bad" that the Biden administration is getting serious about border security in another country, while there were nearly a million encounters at the southern border.

One agent said the move was like "a slap in the face." Another border agent noted that Joe Biden has already destroyed Afghanistan, so the borders do not need to be open.

READ NEXT: Hundreds of Migrants Expelled From U.S. to Mexico Are Now Stuck in Limbo in Guatemala

Republicans Disappointed Over Joe Biden's Move to Strengthen Tajikistan Border

Republicans were also quick to criticize the president's move. Republican Representative Paul Gosar tweeted that Joe Biden's decision to secure the Afghanistan-Tajikistan border but not the U.S.-Mexico border "is preposterous."

Were hitting levels of America last that shouldnt even be possible. Biden securing the Afghanistan-Tajikistan border but not the U.S.-Mexico border is preposterous. https://t.co/JKiaVgRxVA  Rep. Paul Gosar, DDS (@RepGosar) September 2, 2021

Representative Jim Jordan tweeted that the Biden administration secured the Tajikistan border, but not the southern border. In another tweet, Jordan said the southern border is still wide open for illegal immigrants.

The Biden Administration secured the Tajikistan border. But not the southern border of the United States.



Cant make it up. https://t.co/EXZwXLl8fr  Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) September 2, 2021

The Daily Mail reported that even U.S. immigration think tanks and groups also criticized Joe Biden's move. Mark Krikorian, executive director of Center for Immigration Studies, said, "maybe Tajikistan can spare a few border guards to send to Texas."

Jake Bequette, who is running for Arkansas Senator John Boozman's Senate seat, said Joe Biden "cares more" in securing the border of Tajikistan than "the border here at home."

According to the embassy, the new facility will be built in Tajikistan's southwestern tip. It will replace an outdated detachment and allow border guards to deploy forces more quickly to border areas.

In its statement, the embassy said the first phase of the project would focus on the facility's design. The project is scheduled to break ground in early 2022. Tajikistan has pledged to accept 100,000 Afghan refugees escaping from the Taliban.

The embassy noted that since 2002, the U.S. government has provided over $300 million in security-sector assistance to Tajikistan, and renovated or rebuilt 12 border outposts, nine border checkpoint facilities, and three training centers for border guards.

Migrants in the U.S. Southern Border

The U.S. has already recorded hundreds of thousands of migrant encounters across the southern border. In mid-August, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said around 212,672 migrants were encountered at the southern border in July.

The record marked a 13 percent increase over the 188,000 migrant encounters in June. The DHS secretary further noted that 95,788 of the more than 212,000 encounters were expelled through the Title 42 heath protection by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

READ MORE: Pres. Joe Biden Is Trying to Cover up Poor Conditions at Texas Migrant Facilities, Sen. Ted Cruz Says

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Written By: Joshua Summers

WATCH: Ted Cruz Blasts Biden Administration for Border Crisis - From KENS 5: Your San Antonio News Source
A Colombian mom and her 11-year-old daughter were found dead in an Arizona desert late last month after crossing the U.S. border from Mexico.

Temperatures reached highs of 102 degrees at the time. So authorities believed that the Colombian migrants died from heat exhaustion as they attempted to cross into the U.S. from Mexico.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection confirmed that the Colombian migrants were found dead on the Sonora Desert near Yuma, Arizona by the officers who responded to a 911 call on August 26. Officials also found a second child, who was next to his mom's body, still alive.

The Colombian migrant was identified as Claudia Marcela Pena and her late 11-year-old child daughter as Maria Jose Sanchez. The Daily Mail reported that the three-year-old boy who survived was Cristian David Morales. He was transferred to an Arizona hospital after he was found. The toddler is now being cared for by social services in California.

According to the family of the Colombian migrants, the three were abandoned by "coyotes" or human smugglers who took them across the U.S.-Mexico border. Pena and her kids traveled from Colombia to make the illegal crossing to be reunited with her husband Victor Morales in Florida.

READ NEXT: Asylum Seekers in U.S. Could Soon Apply via Mobile Phone as Biden Administration Expands Online Asylum Registration System

Colombian Migrant, Daughter Died in Arizona Desert

The bodies of Pena and her daughter were discovered after the Colombian mom made a desperate call to 911, which she made moments before they succumbed to the heat.

Authorities said Pena told the 911 operator to help them, saying she's going to pass out. In the background, Pena's daughter can be heard asking for food.

The operator asked the Colombian migrant to send her location using the WhatsApp messaging service. However, her phone went dead before she could do so.

Hours later, after 911 officials in Mexico contacted U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the Colombian migrants' bodies were found as well as the toddler who survived.

Somerton Cocopah Fire Dept. Battalion Caps. Louis Carlos told DailyMail.com that the three-year-old boy was a "little lethargic" when the border agents discovered the Colombian migrant family.

The agents handed the toddler over to paramedics after driving through the rugged terrain. Officials said there were no signs of violence found on the migrants' bodies.

The Consulate of Colombia in Los Angeles said they were coordinating with the family of the Colombian migrants in the U.S. and those in the South American country.

Migrants in the U.S. Southern Border

The U.S. has already recorded hundreds of thousands of migrant encounters across the southern border. In mid-August, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said around 212,672 migrants were encountered at the southern border in July.

The record marked a 13 percent increase from the 188,000 migrant encounters in June. Mayorkas noted that 95,788 of the more than 212,000 encounters were expelled through the Title 42 heath protection by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

READ MORE: U.S. Eyeing at Land Routes to Evacuate Stranded Americans, Afghan Allies in Afghanistan

This article is owned by Latin Post

Written By: Joshua Summers

WATCH: Arizona Artist Honors Migrants Who Died in Desert Crossings - From PBS NewsHour
California lawmakers on Thursday advanced a bill that would restrict the use of rubber bullets and chemical irritants during protests.

Based on the bill, there would be statewide standards in using the weapons that harmed peaceful protesters sometimes. A similar bill filed in the wake of widespread public demonstrations over racial injustice last year has already died.

California Supports Peaceful Protests

According to the Associated Press, the bill introduced by Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez would bar law enforcement agencies from using kinetic projectiles, chemical agents, or tear gas to break up a peaceful demonstration.

It would also prohibit police officers from aiming rubber bullets, foam rounds, and beanbags at someone's head, neck, or other considered vital areas.

The bill would also require training of the officers to use less-lethal weapons only when someone is at risk of death or serious injury. This is to bring dangerous and unlawful situations under control safely.

READ NEXT: Major Drug Bust: 47 Charged in Bust of Cocaine, Meth Pipeline From California to Western Pennsylvania

Controlling Usage of Rubber Bullets and Chemical Irritants in California

The bill that passed the Senate, 26-10, is now on its way to the Assembly for its final vote. Under the bill, law enforcement officers would still have to give verbal warnings and try to de-escalate the situation first as part of tactics.

Departments would also have to report any use of the weapons, which could still be used in state prisons and county jails. Police earlier argued that weapons are needed to prevent violence and are often better than the alternatives.

Even Senator Jim Nielsen, who previously headed the state parole board, objected to the progress made on the bill and said that the move would be an assault on law enforcement. Nielsen added that the bill would take the handcuffs off criminal offenders and put them on law enforcement professionals.

Senator Lena Gonzalez, who carried the bill in the Senate, responded to Nielsen's point that there had been serious injuries. Gonzalez noted that many individuals had lost an eye due to these projectiles used by the police.

The same bill died without a Senate vote in the waning hours of last year's legislative session. Meanwhile, the latest bill was among several reforms advancing in the Legislature as it rushed to complete its work by September 10.

One bill heading to the desk of California Gov. Gavin Newsom would set standards for when officers must intervene when they believe another officer is using excessive force.

Another bill waiting for his signature would expand on a law requiring the disclosure of police misconduct records. Another measure awaiting final action in the Assembly would limit the use of gang sentencing enhancements to the most serious offenses.

READ MORE: 'Unknown Hazards' at Hiking Trail Where California Family Was Found Dead Closed to the Public

This article is owned by Latin Post

Written by: Jess Smith

WATCH: Police Use of Bean Bag Rounds and Rubber Bullets Under Scrutiny- From CBS 8 San Diego
The sentencing of Emma Coronel Aispuro, the wife of Sinaloa Cartel boss Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, is being delayed at least a month.

According to ABC 7, the reason for the delay was not explicitly disclosed in the newly filed court documents. The documents only said that since "other obligations" have come to light "in the interim and the nature of this case," parties believe that additional time is needed to adequately prepare for sentencing.

ABC 7 legal analyst Gil Soffer said the "language" in the court documents was "too vague," showing that "they're not willing to tell us exactly what the reason is right now."

Soffer further noted that the "long stretch of time" indicates that the government is interested "in any "cooperation" that Emma Coronel Aispuro could offer.

However, Jeffrey Lichtman, the New York City attorney of El Chapo's wife, denied that such a deal was the cause of delay. Lichtman told ABC7 news investigation unit I-Team that they were "working on financial issues." Lichtman noted that the delay in sentencing happens in about 95 percent of all federal sentences.

The attorney of El Chapo's wife did not discuss the details of what financial matters may have affected the sentencing procedure. But Emma Coronel Aispuro could be fined up to $10 million. She could also face 10 years to life in prison.

El Chapo's wife was due to be sentenced in two weeks if it has not been delayed.

READ NEXT: Emma Coronel Aispuro, Wife of Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman Pleads Guilty to Drug Charges in U.S., Faces Potential Life Sentence

El Chapo's Wife Could Avoid Life Sentence

Citing a Mexican news magazine, Daily Mail reported that sources from the U.S. Department of Justice claimed that El Chapo's wife is willing to provide valuable details to the prosecutors.

The 31-year-old former beauty queen could avoid spending the rest of her life in prison if she decides to tell the "modus operandi" of her husband's sons, who reportedly share control of the Sinaloa Cartel with Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada.

Zambada reportedly took control of the Sinaloa Cartel since El Chapo was arrested.

As part of her cooperation, the California-born Emma Coronel Aispuro could be sentenced to five years in prison. She could also regain custody of her twin daughters and be placed in the U.S. Federal Witness Protection Program.

Emma Coronel Aispuro and the Sinaloa Cartel

El Chapo's wife has been in U.S. federal custody since February when she was arrested at Dulles International Airport in Virginia.

Emma Coronel Aispuro has pleaded guilty in June to helping her husband run the multibillion-dollar drug empire. The former beauty queen admitted to conspiring to distribute heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, and marijuana for several years.

El Chapo's wife also pleaded guilty to a money-laundering conspiracy charge and transacting with a foreign drug trafficker.

At the guilty plea hearing, prosecutor Anthony Nardozzi said Emma Coronel Aispuro played a role in the trafficking of over 450,000 kilos of cocaine, 90,000 kilos of heroin, 90,000 kilos of marijuana, and 45,000 kilos of methamphetamine.

Sinaloa Cartel is considered to be one of the most powerful drug-trafficking syndicates in the world.

READ MORE: Mexico Boxing Legend Julio Cesar Chavez Says He Demanded Cocaine From El Chapo, Other Notorious Drug Lords at 1992 Party

This article is owned by Latin Post

Written By: Joshua Summers

WATCH: 'El Chapo' Guzman's Wife Emma Coronel Sentencing Mysteriously Delayed - From ABC7 Chicago
Colombia's Navy announced Wednesday that one of their operations resulted in the seizure of 1.8 tonnes of cocaine being transported onboard a semi-submersible vessel in the south Pacific.

According to GCaptain, the Navy said the drug operation prevented the trafficking and consumption of over 44.5 million doses of cocaine in neighboring countries.

The drugs, distributed by the "Bloque Occidental Alfonso Cano" of the militant group Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), were valued at around $60 million.

Colombia's Navy Seizes Packages of Cocaine

The drug seizure was led by the marines in Colombia and was carried out with intelligence coming from the Navy. Based on the report of Colombia's Navy, the semi-submersible type naval device was intercepted when the suspects tried to remove it through an area of estuary in the north of the department of Narino.

After noticing the presence of authorities, the Navy said the drug traffickers threw themselves into the water and fled through an area of estuaries, abandoning a speedboat in that way.

Individuals, who were manning the low-profile boat, jumped into the water as soon as they noticed the authorities and fled into a mangrove area.

Colombian Rear-Admiral Orlando Cubillos Chacon, commander of the Poseidon task force against drug trafficking, said the drug traffickers abandoned the semi-submersible loaded with the cocaine and the speedboat that appeared to be escorting them.

After the inspection conducted by Colombia's Navy in the 17-meter-long naval vessel, authorities found 90 sacks containing several rectangular packages.

The said packages were then transferred to the Tumaco Coast Guard Station dock, where the Technical Investigation Corps of the Prosecutor's Office carried out the approved preliminary identification test of the items inside the packages.

After the test came out, it was positively identified as cocaine. Last month, the Colombian navy intercepted more than $200 million worth of merchandise that also belong to the "Bloque Occidental Alfonso Cano."

More than 5.8 tons of narcotics, three speedboats, and three semi-submersible naval devices have been confiscated in that operation. Colombian authorities also destroyed laboratories used by the drug syndicate in producing the cocaine.

READ NEXT: Colombia Coast Guard Seizes 5.4 Tonnes of Cocaine Worth $185 Million

Another Semi-submersible Vessel With Tons of Cocaine Seized in Colombia

Colombia's Navy has also intercepted a semi-submersible vessel off the Pacific Coast last month and seized two tons of cocaine during the drug bust.

Colombian authorities found 102 sacks with 2,039 packages of cocaine inside the 15-meter vessel off the coast of southwest Colombia. The vessel was reportedly heading towards Central America.

Individuals onboard the craft were seen in footage lining up against a wall. Officials said that two Colombian nationals and a foreigner had been arrested. By capturing smugglers off Colombia's waters, it reduces the flow of drug-laden vessels heading to nearby countries such as the U.S.

READ MORE: Costa Rican Authorities Seize 4.3 Tons of Colombia-Produced Cocaine; Drug Bust Considered 2nd-Biggest in Costa Rican History

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Written by: Jess Smith

WATCH: Colombian Authorities Seize Millions in Cocaine - From NowThis News




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Laurel, MS (39440)

Today

Showers this evening, becoming a steady rain overnight. Potential for heavy rainfall. Low 68F. Winds E at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall around a half an inch..

Tonight

Showers this evening, becoming a steady rain overnight. Potential for heavy rainfall. Low 68F. Winds E at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall around a half an inch.
Irish Water has finally solved a problem unsafe water supply in Laois nearly a year since it came into force.

The utility has announced that, following consultation with the Health Service Executive (HSE), the Boil Water Notice impacting customers supplied by The Strand Public Water Supply has been lifted with immediate effect and the water is safe to drink.

The supply serves the area around Ballickmoyler in east Laois not far from Carlow and Kildare. Estates in the Arles and Killeen villages were left without a safe drinking supply.

Irish Water said the notice was issued on Friday 13 November 2020 as a precautionary measure to protect public health following a review of disinfection processes at the plant. It said the review was completed as part of Irish Waters National Disinfection Programme and identified issues with the treatment process which compromised the disinfection process. Irish Waters drinking water compliance and operational experts worked to resolve the situation as quickly and as safely as possible.

The company added that following a number of satisfactory water samples and an audit of the treatment plant, the Boil Water notice was lifted.

John Gavin works with Irish Water.

Irish Water acknowledges and understands the impact of this boil water notice on the 6 customers affected in The Stand area and we sincerely regret any inconvenience caused. We are grateful to the media, elected representatives and members of the public who shared the information and for customers patience while we worked to improve water quality. Irish Waters priority is the provision of safe, clean drinking water and safeguarding that water supply for the future is a vital focus, he said.

Irish Water came in for stinging criticism at Laois County Council in April 2021. Councillors Ben Brennan, Aisling Moran and Padraig Fleming questioned why it was taking so long to restore the supply and also challenged the firm over money already spent.

Irish Water added that if customers have any queries regarding this Boil Water Notice and the lifting of it they should contact Irish Water directly on our customer care helpline, open 24/7, on 1800 278 278.

The company said it continues to work at this time with its Local Authority partners, contractors and others to safeguard the health and well-being of both staff and the public and to ensure the continuity of critical drinking water and wastewater services.
Climate change and climate action is set to be brought into the classrooms of Portlaoise schools thanks to a new a new collaboration led by Midlands Science.

Laois County Council and energy provider, Energia have teamed up Midlands Science on the outreach education programme designed to create awareness of what is happening with the climate and how to take action against it..

The project also advances the unique role being played by Portlaoise through its designation as Irelands First Low Carbon Town.

The event was launched at Scoil Bhride in Portlaoise where Siobhan Burke is the Green School team leader and Muriel Wall-Coughlan is Principal.

Stephanie Curry, Marketing Executive, Energia, Suzanne Dempsey, Environmental Awareness officer, Laois County Council, Pauline Nally, Business Development Executive, Midlands Science also helped get the campaign off the ground with with students from Scoil Bhride.

Jackie Gorman is CEO of Midlands Science.

"The Climate Action Plan is Irelands roadmap to becoming a climate neutral economy and resilient society by 2050. Becoming a climate resilient society will help us to cope with the impacts of a changing climate. Young people care about the environmental crisis and climate action because it is their future which will be impacted by the worse effects of climate change.

"Midlands Science is delighted to team up with Energia and Laois County Council in providing a number of science education workshops over the coming months with the help of Declan Holmes from Science Ireland. A transformational shift in the way our society and economy operate is needed and students are more likely to change their behaviours and encourage their parents to join them if they better understand the science of climate change.

"These workshops will teach them more about climate and environmental impact, but it will also be interactive and include brainstorming and teamwork opportunities on certain aspects of climate change education," she said.

Portlaoise was designated as Irelands first Low Carbon Town under both the National Development Plan  Ireland 2040 and the Climate Action Plan 2019. As a designated Decarbonisation Zone Portlaoise Town must deliver a range of climate mitigation, adaptation and biodiversity measures driven by Laois County Council to address local low carbon energy, greenhouse gas emissions and climate needs to contribute to national climate action targets.

At a minimum, these outcomes must be capable of meeting the Governments targets for carbon emissions reductions specifically an average 7% per annum reduction in overall greenhouse gas emissions from 2021 to 2030 (a 51% reduction over the decade).

Midlands Science says one of the main ways of delivering these targets is by supporting and encouraging behavioural change so this outreach programme is essential to engage with younger generations and through their involvement the message can permeate through to parents and grandparents and the wider community as our youth are incredibly motivated and effective communicators of climate action.

Amy O Shaughnessy, Marketing Acquisition & Sponsorship Manager for Energia said,

At Energia we are partnered with communities and business all across Ireland to make sustainable improvements that benefit the local environment, and also contribute toward the goals of Irelands national Climate Action Plan. We believe that local action makes a national difference, and as such are delighted to partner with Midland Science and Laois County Council, two organisations that are as committed as we are to positive change.

"At Energia, we supply 100% green electricity, with a clear focus on innovation and technology that is evident across our renewable developments and smart home solutions. This partnership is very much in line with the support we provide communities, and we look forward to assisting our partners and the pupils of Portlaoise in further understanding climate action and in making their own positive changes, she said.

Midlands Science is a not for profit company which works to create greater interest in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering & Maths) education and skills among students, teachers and members of the public in the Midlands (Laois, Offaly, Longford and Westmeath).

More about them here.
An action is to take place outside the Department of the Taoiseach on Monday as part of a national protest organised by local employment service workers.

SIPTU and Forsa members, working in Local Employment Services (LES) and Job Clubs, have today announced the details of a national day of protest, Monday 6th September.

This summer, SIPTU and Forsa launched the Our Community is Not for Sale campaign to oppose the privatisation of these community services. The campaign has received widespread support indicating that clients and the general public do not support the privatisation of these services.

Community Division Organiser, Adrian Kane, stressed that members will highlight the decision by the Minister for Social Protection Heather Humphreys, to change the tendering process for the provision for these essential community services. If allowed to proceed this process will result in the full transition of these services to for profit providers.

Phase one of this process has already resulted in job losses and the refusal by the Government to get to grips with this growing crisis which cannot be left unchallenged.

"The reality is that these workers have, very successfully, been providing these essential public services for over 25 years. After all those years of loyal service they have been left with no other option but to take to the streets to fight for their jobs and livelihoods.

Mr. Kane also flagged that constant calls from SIPTU and Forsa representatives for an urgent meeting with the Minister have largely been unanswered. "This is not acceptable or sustainable. What is needed now is a genuine stakeholder forum to agree a fair way forward.
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There is huge interest in this weekend's Drive-In Ceili in Clane, which is being run to raise funds for the Little Way Cancer Centre.

This unique event takes place this Sunday at Clane GAA with members of the Shamrock Star Ceili Band are making a much anticipated return to the stage.

"The idea for the fundraiser emerged after three family members Margaret Brereton, Darren Brereton and Declan

Aungier came together and released the Shamrock Star Ceili Band CD," said a Little Way Cancer Centre spokesperson.

"Due to the phenomenal success of the CD and with the assistance of Clane GAA they will host Kildares first Drive in Ceili. The afternoon will see a host of traditional musicians playing some well-known Irish ceili tunes. The afternoon will be a trip down memory lane for those in attendance as members of the original Shamrock Star will be on stage reliving some of those lively ceili sessions of the past."

Musicians playing on the day will include three of the original Shamrock Star band members - Peter Gordon on guitar, and Ducks Moran and Dinny Moran on accordion. Other musicians on the day will include Declan Aungier on accordion, Zak Moran on drums and Alan and Darren Brereton.

All proceeds from the event will be donated to the Little Way Cancer Support Centre in Clane.

"The centre has been in operation for the last 18 years in Kildare providing emotional and practical support to clients and their families who may be affected by cancer. Its through the generosity of the public and fundraising initiatives such as the Drive-In-Ceili that we can offer our services free of charge to those affected by cancer," said the spokesperson.

"All funds raised go directly into the delivery of our services to our clients. The last eighteen months has been a difficult time for charities and we were delighted to be able to reopen our doors in June of this year. We sadly lost our co-founder Evelyn McKee in March of this year to cancer and having left such a wonderful legacy for the people of Kildare.

"As we look to the future we are committed to ensuring that these services will continue and as we emerge out of the pandemic that we will build on the solid foundations laid by Evelyn McKee and continue to provide cancer support services

based on our client needs and their wellbeing.

"We are thankful to Clane GAA who have kindly offered their club facilities however there will be a limited number of car spaces so to avoid disappointment arrive early. Gates will open at 2pm with the musicians going on stage at around 3pm for an afternoon filled with music and memories."

The entrance fee will be 10 per person per car with admittance free for children.

"If the sun shines please bring a travel chair so you can sit beside your car and listen to the music. We are so thankful to the people of Kildare for always supporting us as without them we would not be able to do what we do. The Little Way are also so grateful to the musicians and their family for coming together and fundraise for us by putting on a wonderful afternoon of live traditional music that will surely have us all tapping our feet," she added.

For enquiries about the event please contact Dearbhail Maloney, Little Way Cancer Support, Unit 2/3 Village Centre, Clane

Email: clane@little-way.org

Contact: 045 902996
Did you tune in to see Ballinamore's Megan OConnor on RTE2's Glow up Ireland last night.



Megan impressed the judges with her first challenge and not only won the fashion editorial challenge and got an editorial photoshoot with Celebrity Fashion Designer Colin Horgan for Stellar magazine but Megan will also be the make up artist for Horgan during London Fashion Week 2022!

Megan seemed to struggle in the second challenge and had to remove her make up a few times, but she pulled off the amazing look in time and got much praise from the judges.

Next week the nine remaining make up artists are challenged to rummage through a selection of pre-owned or upcycled objects for a sustainable Tik Tok challenge. Ireland's biggest beauty influencer Keilidh Cashell will be the guest judge this week.





Guest judge is Keilidh Cashell (@KeilidhMUA)  Irelands Biggest Beauty Influencer with over 600k followers on Instagram, 2 million on Tik Tok and creator of KASH Beauty.

In the world of Tik Tok you have to create multiple videos every month  and often have to grab inspiration where you can find it. In this fun Prop Grab challenge (with a nod to sustainability) our remaining nine MUAs are given three minutes to rummage through a selection of pre-owned or upcycled objects in the Rediscovery Centre in Ballymun to find something that they can integrate into their Tik Tok look, before creating a video that shows: a transition, an elevated look and crazy creativity all within a 60 second timeframe.

The winner of this weeks challenge receives the full collection to date of KASH Beauty products and gets to record a TikTok video with Keilidh herself which will go live on the night of transmission.

This weeks creative challenge is called the Two Faced Challenge  social media can show your good and bad traits  the make up artists are asked to create a half and half look that shows the judges and viewers both their good and bad sides.

The two judges putting the 10 make up artists through their paces will be industry professionals Cathyanne Mac Allister and Emma O Byrne.

There was plenty of online support for Ballinamore's Megan and she took to social media to thank everyone for their lovely comments.

And just like that, episode 1 is over Cannot get over how lovely all of you humans are being!!! #GlowUpIRL  Megan O'Connor (@Megan94__) September 2, 2021

The show is back on next Thursday on RTE2 at 9.35pm - we can't wait!
FOUR community groups have been nominated by Limerick City and County Council to compete in this years Pride of Place competition.

Tournafulla Community Council, Draw Out Limerick, Lough Gur Development Cooperative Society and Woodlawn Park Residents Association nominated as this years entries for Limerick.

The Irish Public Bodies (IPB) Pride of Place 2021 awards are presented in association with Co-operation Ireland.

This year marks the 19th anniversary of the all-island competition which is run in conjunction with local authorities north and south. It aims to recognise and celebrate the vital contributions that communities make to society along with generating awareness, respect and inclusion for every facet of society.

Traditionally each participating group holds a festival day showcasing its work and its impact on the community for the visiting judging panel.

However due to Covid restrictions, it was not possible this year to arrange visits to communities by the judges. While all judging took place virtually in 2020, a mix of virtual and face-to-face meetings with project promoters is the format adopted this year.

Limerick welcomed the judges on Monday to meet with representatives of two of the projects: Woodlawn Park Residents Association and Draw Out Limerick. Judging of the Lough Gur Development Co-operative Society and Tournafulla Community Council projects took place via online meetings on Tuesday.

Congratulating the four Limerick groups, Mayor of the City and County of Limerick Cllr Daniel Butler said: These four groups are wonderful advertisements for the community spirit that exists across the city and county. The purpose of the competition is to acknowledge the work being done by communities all over the island of Ireland, recognising endeavours of local people to create civic pride and make their communities great places to live. I think these four Limerick projects demonstrate how people can come together to shape, change and improve the daily lives of people in their communities. They also demonstrate real partnership with the council and show that all sections of the community can be included.

Four local projects have been entered in the 2021 Pride of Place competition by Limerick City and County Council



Tournafulla Community Council, @DrawOut, Lough Gur Development Cooperative Society and Woodlawn Park Residents Association have been nominated as this years entries  Limerick Council (@LimerickCouncil) September 2, 2021

Eileen Humphreys, Urban and Rural Community Development at Limerick City and County Council said: The efforts and actions of communities are particularly relevant taking into account the challenges that presented over the last 18 months with Covid-19. Each of the nominated projects shows tremendous community spirit, offering support to people in their communities that need it, bringing together different sections of the community including young and older people and taking innovative responses to maintain and grow their projects. There is no doubt that the four groups nominated to Pride of Place this year will do Limerick proud and I wish them the very best of luck.

The 2021 winners are expected to be announced at a ceremony either this winter or early in 2022.
MORE than 30 additional cases of Covid-19 have been reported in Limerick, new figures show.

According to provisional data, collated by the Department of Public Health Mid West, a total of 34 cases were reported in Limerick during the most recent 24-hour period.

The figure is considerably lower than the 108 cases which were reported on Wednesday. 42 cases were reported on Tuesday while 96 were reported in Monday. A total of 550 cases have been reported in Limerick over the last eight days.

Nationally, 1,414 cases new cases have been reported by the National Public Health Emergency Team this Friday evening.

As of 8am today, 353 Covid-19 patients are hospitalised, of which 55 are in ICU.

Separately, The Department of Public Health Mid-West says strong mitigation measures preventing Covid-19 are effective in breaking chains of transmission in the school setting and community.

Public Health Mid-West has a strong Schools Team, led by a Specialist in Public Health Medicine with support from the Department of Education, and will support and advise schools where necessary.

Dr Mai Mannix, Director of Public Health Mid-West, said: I would like to acknowledge the Trojan work of pupils, parents, and school staff for all their efforts in making their school a safer place since the start of the pandemic. Its clear that they have shown immense leadership over what has been a very challenging 18 months.

As a parent of a pupil, I understand the worry and concern among parents for their children returning to school. They are our world and we want what is best for them, and we can achieve that by helping them be as protected as possible, both inside and outside the school setting"

Dr Mannix added: "A large number of outbreaks among children of school-going age that we have managed have been linked to activity outside the school setting. This included birthday parties, house parties, large social gatherings indoors and outdoors, play dates, car-pooling, and social contact at break times. What we find is that when a number of social clusters occur, this can cause onward transmission in the school setting. Knowing this is all the more important amid a high incidence of COVID-19 in the community."

The Department of Public Health Mid West says the considerable uptake in the Covid-19 vaccine among those who are eligible, should play a significant role in protecting a large proportion of the population in the coming months.
FUNERAL arrangements have been announced for the young Limerick student who was killed earlier this week while on holidays in Greece.

Niall O'Brien, 21, from Monaleen, Castletroy died following an alleged altercation in the early hours of Monday morning at a holiday resort on the island of Ios where he had been holidaying.

Following the repatriation of his remains, Niall will repose at his parents' residence (Monaleen Park) between 3pm and 7pm this Sunday.

His Funeral Mass will take place at 3.30pm on Monday (September 6) at Our Lady help of Christians Church, Milford with burial afterwards in the grounds of St Peter's Church, Broadford, County Clare - click here for live-stream of the Funeral Mass.

For those wishing to pay their respects, Niall's Funeral cortege will leave the family home at approximately 3.10pm on Monday on the way to the church.

Family flowers only. Donations, if desired, to the Kevin Bell Repatriation Trust.

Niall is survived by his parents Mike and Anne; brothers Cian, Eoin and Alan; grandparents Basil and Rita Boyce; uncles and aunts; cousins and large circle of friends.
THE deafening noise in Croke Park when Limerick and Cork marched behind the Artane Band reflected what it meant to cheer on the players in person again.

As the saying goes, Nothing beats being there. If watching last years All-Ireland final at home on TV was tough for supporters then imagine what it was like for the parents and loved ones of players. Over the years they have probably missed a handful of matches between them.

It is a remarkable achievement for Doon GAA Club to have four players on the panel and possibly five if Tommy Hayes didnt get injured. Many clubs would be delighted to have one. There are now 11 All-Ireland medals between Darragh ODonovan, Richie English, Pat Ryan (Simon) and Barry Murphy.

Mike Ryan, chairman of Doon GAA Club, said their success didnt just start in 2018.

This has been going on for the last 10 / 12 years since these boys joined the U-14 academy and all the way up along. Their parents brought them to training in UL or Rathkeale  and its an hour back to Rathkeale  every Saturday. It takes a bit of organising and the parents have to do all that. Those players have had bad days and hard luck days but you have to take them to get the glory ones, said Mike.

Nobody sees those car journeys, James ODonovan training the boys in the ball alley to sharpen their touch, the mountains of muddy gear that needs to be washed or the tears after minor disappointments. So the photo captures the joy of glory days like Sunday week.

Mike said the club is immensely proud of Darragh, Richie, Pat and Barry.

They are extremely well grounded guys. You could walk into Doon any day of the week and they would talk away to anybody. There are no airs and graces.

Richie and Darragh are involved with the U-13 team. Barry and Pat are involved with the U-17 team. They are all giving their time back to the club

All the young lads are in awe of them. There is no such thing as anyone missing training! said Mike.

He says to have multiple All-Ireland winners, an All-Star and a potential All-Star in Darragh, training youngsters is incredible for them.

Darragh, Richie, Pat and Barry were back in training too on Thursday night as they get ready for Patrickswell on Sunday.

Win, lose or draw their parents will be there in the stand.
One of the largest banks in India believes investors can safely hold onto their sovereign debt as yields arent poised to rise soon, even with some policy makers starting to talk about tightening.

Investors shouldnt worry about surprise losses and can keep their positions for now, as record low rates and an abundance of cash should help eke out more profit in coming quarters, Ashish Parthasarathy, treasurer at HDFC Bank Ltd., the countrys biggest lender by market value, said in an interview.

The veteran banker is staying bullish even after a schism appeared among Reserve Bank of India members last month about how long ultra-easy policy can remain. Markets globally are becoming edgier about a tapering of asset purchases after comments on normalizing policy from central bankers, including some at the European Central Bank.

In India, we are just not in an accommodative mode, we are in a super-accommodative mode," said Parthasarthy, whos worked in trading for more than three decades. Every central bank, including India, wants to see sustainable growth and will ignore larger inflationary pressures."

Hes sticking with this view even after minutes from the RBIs latest board meeting revealed division. Yields on 10-year government bonds jumped to 6.26%, the highest in more than a year, in the days after the release. Theyve since pulled back to 6.19%.

HDFC Banks treasury, which manages over 5 trillion rupees ($68 billion), has been spreading out its bets across the yield curve, Parthasarathy said. Medium- to longer-tenor bonds look more attractive than shorter-maturity notes.

The Mumbai-based bank doesnt rule out any further downside in 10-year yields, he said. That puts it at odds with the consensus for benchmark yields to inch up toward 6.33% by year end, from 6.2% now.

This has been one of the easiest times to run a bank treasury as we can hold for a long time. You know that money is going to be easy, liquidity is going to be available, and any reversals will be slow and steady," Parthasarathy said.

Here are more of his views:

On government borrowing: Revenue collection is good. If the government manages to meet disinvestment targets, they wont need to borrow more this year, and they might move into next year with cash balances. Bonds will benefit from that."

Advice to rupee borrowers: Companies which need money in an up to five-year tenor have an advantage in borrowing now, as we have reached the bottom of the interest-rate cycle."

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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New Zealand police on Friday shot dead an Islamic State-inspired attacker after he injured six people in a supermarket knife rampage, despite round-the-clock surveillance by undercover officers.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said she was "gutted" the man, a Sri Lankan national, had managed to carry out his "hateful" assault even though he was on a terror watchlist.

She said the man, who arrived in New Zealand in 2011, entered a shopping mall in suburban Auckland, seized a knife from a display before going on a stabbing spree.

Six people were wounded, three critically, in the 60 seconds before surveillance officers opened fire.

Terrified shoppers fled for the exits and video footage shot by bystanders showed men running toward the incident before a barrage of shots rang out.

The attack has stirred painful memories of the Christchurch mosques shootings in March 2019, New Zealand's worst terror atrocity, when a white supremacist gunman murdered 51 Muslim worshippers and severely wounded another 40.

"What happened today was despicable, it was hateful, it was wrong," Ardern said after the latest attack.

"It was carried out by an individual, not a faith, not a culture, not an ethnicity. He alone carries the responsibility for these acts."

Asked about the man's motivations, she said "it was a violent ideology and ISIS-inspired", using an acronym for the Islamic State jihadist group.

- Officers' 'great courage' -

Ardern said she was limited in what she could publicly reveal about the attacker because he had been before the courts previously and was the subject of court suppression orders.

She the government was seeking to have the orders lifted so the New Zealand public could have a greater understanding of the situation.

Ardern said the man had been in prison but authorities had to release him as there was no legal reason to keep him in custody.

"The fact that he was in the community will be an illustration that we haven't succeeded in using the law to the extent we would have liked," she added.

Ardern said she was devastated a known terror risk had managed to carry out an attack, saying all aspects of the incident would be reviewed.

"I know that we've been doing everything that we could, so I was absolutely gutted," she said, describing her feelings upon learning about the stabbings.

Ardern would not disclose exactly how many other terror suspects were under surveillance in the community, saying only "there are very few people who fall into this category".

Police Commissioner Andrew Coster said authorities were confident the man was acting alone and there was no further known danger to society.

He acknowledged there would be questions about how an attack occurred in front of his officers but defended their actions.

"I'm satisfied, based on the information to me, that the staff involved not only did what we would expect in this situation, they did it with great courage," Coster said.

"The reality is that when you're surveilling someone on a 24-7 basis, it's not possible to be immediately next to them at all times."

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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ISLAMABAD : Afghanistans neighbors have closed their land borders to people trying to flee its new Taliban rulers, trapping tens of thousands of people who are eligible to resettle in the US and other countries but were unable to enter the airport in Kabul before the international airlift ended.

None of Afghanistans airports are currently open, though Qatar has begun efforts to restore flight operations in Kabul. This means that the few at-risk Afghans who managed to leave overland were trafficked out or used fake documents.

The U.S. estimates that the majority of Afghan interpreters and others who had applied for visas to flee the country were left behind after Augusts international evacuation effort transported more than 120,000 people from Kabul, a senior State Department official said.

In Kabul on Thursday, the Taliban started preparing for the official inauguration of their government that is expected in coming days. Thousands of white flags of the Talibans Islamic Emirate are being manufactured, according to footage on social media. In the Panjshir valley north of Kabul, the only part of the country not under Taliban control, fighting continued between the Taliban and resistance militias.

In previous stages of Afghanistans more than four decades of wars, starting with the 1979 Soviet invasion, Pakistan took in millions of refugees, many of whom never left. Now, it isnt willing to accept any more. The other major sanctuary, Iran, isnt letting them enter either, and neither are Central Asian states.

More than half a million Afghans were displaced from their homes this year in fighting between the Taliban and the former Afghan government, according to the United Nations. The Taliban completed their military takeover by entering Kabul on Aug. 15, after a lightning conquest of the rest of the country.

The U.N. called this week for the neighboring states to open their borders, and for countries outside the region to provide more resettlement places for Afghans. That is a tough sell, particularly in Europe, where anti-immigrant sentiment has become a major political issue in the wake of the 2015 Syrian refugee influx.

European interior ministers meeting this week said that they didnt want to see large-scale illegal migration and that they would bolster support to Afghanistans neighbors to ensure that those in need receive adequate protection primarily in the region." However, the European Union and some member states said they were open to welcoming some at-risk Afghans as part of an international resettlement program.

The U.S. State Department said that those wanting to apply for refugee status should make their way out of Afghanistan first, adding, We recognize that it may be difficult for Afghans to obtain a visa to a third country or find a way to enter a third country." The special immigrant visas" for interpreters and others who worked closely with the U.S. is a separate program, and its application processes are still being worked out following the closure of the embassy in Kabul.

The U.K. has said it would offer asylum to up to 20,000 Afghans over the next five years, in addition to those airlifted out last month.

I had my legal life in Kabul for the last 20 years. Then I was forced to cross the border illegally," said a man who worked for contractors to the U.S. government, the U.N. and directly for the Afghan government, making him a likely target for the Taliban. I dont know what will come next for me."

The man, who belongs to the Hazara ethnic and religious minority that was persecuted in the Talibans last period in power in the 1990s, hid in Kabul for a week after the group entered the capital. On finding the mayhem at Kabul airport too dangerous, and getting no response from Western embassies, including the U.S. and Canadian missions, he took a bus south to Kandahar with his wife and three children, where he found a people smuggler who got the family into Pakistan.

The Taliban say they will allow Afghans with valid passports and visas to travel out of the country. So far, the countrys passport offices remain closed. The embassies of all Western nations and India have shut down and their diplomats have left the country.

The countrys economic meltdown following the Taliban takeover, with food, fuel and cash running out, could soon push even larger numbers of Afghans to try to escape, aid workers say.

When the airlift and the media frenzy are over, the overwhelming majority of Afghans, some 39 million, will remain inside Afghanistan. They need us," Filippo Grandi, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, said this week. They must be able to exercise their right to seek international protection, and borders must be kept open for them for this purpose."

The UNHCR says there hasnt been a significant increase in the numbers crossing the Pakistani or Iranian borders from Afghanistan over the past couple of weeks. It warns that Iran and Pakistan, together home to almost 90% of past registered Afghan refugees, will struggle financially to cope with more.

Pakistan already hosts 1.4 million registered Afghan refugees, though believes the true number to be around 3 million.

The country helped evacuate more than 9,000 Afghans and foreigners from more than 20 nations in the second half of August, mostly by air, but almost all of them simply transited through. Pakistan says it is working to help bring stability to Afghanistan, so that a refugee exodus can be forestalled.

We are the country that has the greatest number of Afghan refugees right now. It is very clear that we would not like to have more," said Asim Ahmad, spokesman for Pakistans Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The closest crossing point to Pakistan from the Afghan capital, going east to Torkham, is closed to Afghans, other than in exceptional cases such as medical emergencies. The other main crossing point, south from Kabul at Chaman, is open but only to those who have documents to show they live close to the border and therefore can benefit from longstanding special arrangements for border areas.

Locals estimate that several thousand Afghans have been smuggled across Chaman over the last couple of weeks, paying up to $90 a person. Afghans are also paying hundreds of dollars for taxi rides within Afghanistan to reach the border crossing, and from the border to the nearest major Pakistani city, Quetta, with fares hiked up to 10 times the normal.

Afghans who made the journey said that entering Pakistan via Chaman was an easier option than going to other countries. Nevertheless, some queued for two days at the border amid a crush of people and were still turned away, even after paying traffickers.

Pakistan says that no new refugees have arrived in recent weeks. The UNHCR says it has been approached by some Afghans in Pakistan for asylum, but couldnt give numbers. Those unofficially in Pakistan say they want help from the U.S. and other nations to move on.

Entering Iran is an even tougher option, despite an announcement from Tehran that it would set up camps on its side of the border. Only those with visas or other travel documents can get across, according to the UNHCR.

A 23-year-old engineering student at Kabul University said he and friends paid a smuggler $200 each to cross into Iran from the adjacent Afghan province of Nimroz. They were taken to the border, where hundreds were crossing. They ran across with Iranian guards shooting in the air and demanding they stop, but they kept going, meeting the smuggler again on the other side. For the next 24 hours, they had no food or drink. It took six days to arrive in Tehran, where they have to be on the constant lookout for authorities searching for illegal arrivals.

I was a good student with nice dreams at Kabul University. Now, I am an Afghan laborer in Tehran and cant go out, cant study, cant be counted as a real human being," he said. I am heartbroken."

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A woman's death in Leavenworth, Kansas on Jan. 9, 2020 is now considered the first recorded death from COVID-19 in the U.S.

The first recorded death from COVID-19 in the U.S. occurred a month earlier than previously thought: A Kansas woman's death certificate was recently amended to say she died from the disease in January 2020, according to news reports.

The 78-year-old woman, Lovell "Cookie" Brown, died on Jan. 9, 2020 in Leavenworth, Kansas, several weeks before the first cases of COVID-19 were identified in the U.S., according to The Mercury News . Initially, Brown's death certificate said she died of a stroke and chronic obstructive lung disease. But in May 2021, her doctors quietly updated the certificate to add "COVID-19 pneumonia" as a cause of death, The Mercury News reported.

That makes Brown the first documented COVID-19 death in the United States. Until recently, the first known COVID-19 death in the U.S. was thought to have occurred on Feb. 6, 2020, in a woman living in San Jose, California, Live Science previously reported .

Related: How deadly is the coronavirus delta variant?

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) official page for COVID-19 death counts now lists five COVID-19 deaths that occurred in January 2020. Brown's was identified as the first, according to The Mercury News. The Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE) also lists a single COVID-19 death in the state on Jan. 9, 2020, two months earlier than the next reported COVID-19 death in the state, according to local news outlet WIBW .

Exactly why Brown's death certificate was changed, or what evidence led to listing COVID-19 as a cause of death, is unknown. Until this week, Brown's family did not know about the change, although they had long suspected that their relative may have died from COVID-19, according to The Mercury News.

Before her death, Brown had experienced symptoms of headache, fever, diarrhea and body aches, and on Christmas Day 2019, her family remembered Brown saying that her favorite foods tasted bland, The Mercury News reported. When she began gasping for air, Brown was rushed to the hospital, where she spent a week in the ICU before her death.

Brown had not traveled internationally before her death, her family told The Mercury News. Her main trips out of the house were for appointments for diabetes and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) , the newspaper reported.

Dr. Thomas Fulbright, a physician at Providence Medical Center in Kansas City, Kansas, who certified Brown's amended certificate, told The Mercury News that he could not talk about Brown's case or the reasons for the certificate change because of patient privacy laws.

The KDHE told WIBW that the person who died on Jan. 9, 2020, was not tested for COVID-19 because testing "was not widely available at that time." Indeed, a test for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, could not have been conducted in January 2020 because the virus genome sequence was not publicly released until Jan. 10, according to the CDC . The KDHE did not say whether COVID-19 testing was conducted at a later date, such as testing of stored tissue samples.

Originally published on Live Science.
The 1,600-year-old wooden idol was found in a bog in County Roscommon in the west of Ireland. It seems to have been deliberately broken in two. (Image credit: John Channing/Archaeological Management Solutions)

A 1,600-year-old pagan idol, made from a wooden pole carved from an oak tree, has been unearthed in a bog in western Ireland.

Archaeologists say the idol dates to the very late stage of pagan Ireland, only about 100 years before the conversion of the Irish to Christianity during the mission of St. Patrick in the fifth century.

The idol appears to have been broken in two  a common practice with sacrificial objects, perhaps signifying that it was "dead" and could no longer be used  and deliberately deposited in the bog, maybe as a substitute for a human sacrifice or " bog body ," according to the archaeologists.

Related: 25 cultures that practiced human sacrifice

The excavations show that the site in the rural area of Gortnacrannagh, in County Roscommon, was considered a pagan holy place for thousands of years, Eve Campbell, an archaeologist at Archaeological Management Solutions who led excavations at the site, told Live Science.

"It was a sacred bog, a place that would have been special or important for several thousand years, from the late Neolithic all the way through to the early medieval period," she said. "People came and deposited objects, like our idol, into the wetland  essentially a fen [a strip of marshy land] along a river."

Image 1 of 5 The idol was made from the trunk of an oak tree and carved with a head  now mostly rotted away  and horizontal notches that may represent ribs. (Image credit: John Channing/Archaeological Management Solutions) Image 2 of 5 Archaeologists have constructed a replica of the wooden idol as it would have looked before it was deposited in the bog and rotted away. (Image credit: Eve Campbell/Archaeological Management Solutions) Image 3 of 5 Although about a dozen pagan wooden idols have been found in Ireland, at 8 feet (2.5 m) long this is the largest. (Image credit: John Channing/Archaeological Management Solutions) Image 4 of 5 Similar pagan wooden idols have been found throughout northwest Europe, and the new discovery dates from only about 100 years before Ireland converted to Christianity. (Image credit: John Murphy/Archaeological Management Solutions) Image 5 of 5 Most of the pagan wooden idols found throughout northwest Europe date from the Bronze Age between about 3,500 and 2,500 years ago, but the oldest discovered so far is about 12,000 years old. (Image credit: John Murphy/Archaeological Management Solutions)

Pagan idol

The idol is about 8 feet (2.5 meters) tall and pointed at the lower end so it could stand upright in the ground, Campbell said. The top end was carved into the shape of a human head, but that has now mostly rotted away. Nine horizontal notches carved along the idol's body may have represented its rib cage.

Similar wooden idols have been found throughout Northwest Europe, including the 12,000-year-old Shigir idol , which was found in Russia in 1890.

A dozen such idols have now been found in Ireland alone, often dating to the northern European Bronze Age (from about 3,500 to about 2,500 years ago), but the recently discovered object appears to be both the largest and the newest of these; radiocarbon dating shows it was made from the trunk of an oak tree that was felled in the fourth century.

"One of the really exciting things about the idol is its late date, because it's at the very end of the Iron Age, and it's on the verge of Ireland becoming Christianized," Campbell said. "So, in that sense, it's given us an interesting insight to the kinds of practices that people were engaging in on the eve of Christianization."

Other objects the archaeologists have found at the site include several different sets of human remains  mostly skull fragments, but in one case, an entire skull without the jawbone. These bones were likely carried from burials elsewhere and deposited in the fen or bog, she said.

The archaeologists also found hundreds of animal bones, suggesting the site was frequently used for animal sacrifices; a ritual dagger made of iron ; many pieces of pottery; and the remains of a trackway and a wooden platform that once extended into deeper water, presumably so that people could safely access it from the shore, Campbell said.

The site was a strip of marshy land beside a river from about 5,000 years ago until it was drained in medieval times; the latest archaeological excavations were made head of road construction in the area. (Image credit: John Channing/Archaeological Management Solutions)

Sacred site

The team found the wooden idol almost a year ago, but the discovery was kept secret as archaeologists carefully excavated around it and removed it.

"When we found the object, we knew it was something important," Campbell said. "But we had to keep it quiet until the site was finished."

Wood rots quickly when it is exposed to the air, so the idol is now undergoing a lengthy conservation process at University College Dublin.

"The idol was found in the very beginning of the excavation, and so we've had a year to finish excavating the rest of [the site]," she said. "We're now in a position to make everything public."

After three years of conservation, the idol will go on display at the National Museum of Ireland. Campbell and her colleagues also have made a wooden replica showing the idol as it would have appeared before its head and body rotted away.

The replica idol will go on display at a museum in the nearby village of Tulsk dedicated to the archaeological sites at Rathcroghan, about 3 miles (5 kilometers) from the bog where the idol was found. Those sites are the remains of what is thought to be a royal Irish settlement that lasted from more than 5,000 years ago, during the Neolithic, until about 1,600 years ago, during the Iron Age.

Campbell said it's likely that the sacred site at Gortnacrannagh was a part of the complex of ancient sites at Rathcroghan. "They definitely would've been contemporaneous to some extent, and trying to understand the link between the two is something that we're definitely very interested in," she said.

Originally published on Live Science.
The Failed Promise

By Robert S. Levine

Norton. 312 pp. $26.95

- - -

Robert S. Levine's "The Failed Promise: Reconstruction, Frederick Douglass, and the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson" opens with an extraordinary scene not often recorded in history books. On Oct. 24, 1864, seven months before the end of the Civil War, thousands of Black people in Nashville marched carrying torches in a parade to Andrew Johnson's residence at the state capitol. Johnson, then the military governor of Tennessee, announced to the crowd that he was declaring freedom for Black people in Tennessee, a border state not covered by President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation.

Johnson, who was brimming with ego, proclaimed "freedom, full broad and unconditional, to every man in Tennessee." In the same breath, Johnson, who was known for his fiery oratory and would soon become Lincoln's vice president, railed against the brutal rapes of thousands of Black women by their enslavers. "Your wives and daughters shall no longer be dragged into a concubinage, compared to which polygamy is a virtue, to satisfy the brutal lusts of slaveholders and overseers," he shouted, pledging that Black women and their bodies would remain sacred.

The crowd erupted in cheers for freedom.

Johnson then evoked the Book of Exodus, promising that soon Black people would find a Moses to lead them into a promised land. The crowd began shouting, "You are our Moses!" Johnson responded by explaining that they should seek a Black Moses, saying, "Your Moses will be revealed to you." Levine writes that the crowd shouted again, "We want no Moses but you!" Johnson folded: "Well, then . . . humble and unworthy as I am, if no other better shall be found, I will indeed be your Moses, and lead you through the Red Sea of war and bondage, to a fairer future of liberty and peace."

They could not have known the hypocrisy that would later come as Johnson betrayed them and their descendants, setting the country on a trajectory of racism and racial terror still felt today.

Levine captures the political climate that set the stage for the Civil War, covering Lincoln's waffling and eventual decision to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, as well as his assassination and the brutal aftermath of terrorist attacks on Black people. The book shows how Johnson, who became president after Lincoln was killed, reneged on political promises and removed Union troops from the South. These troops had provided the only protection Black people had against barbaric former enslavers who could not accept their freedom.

Levine is the author or editor of several historical narratives and biographies, including "The Lives of Frederick Douglass," "Martin Delany, Frederick Douglass, and the Politics of Representative Identity" and "Frederick Douglass and Herman Melville: Essays in Relation." In "Failed Promise," he turns his scholarly research toward explaining the parallel lives of Johnson and Douglass, and provides a vivid account of the Reconstruction period after the Civil War. Levine shows that Johnson "turned out to be the absolutely wrong president for his times" and illuminates the life of Douglass, who is portrayed as a fierce critic.

Levine recalls an encounter between Douglass and Johnson at the White House, after Lincoln delivered his second inaugural address on March 4, 1865. Lincoln had invited Douglass to the inauguration. During a reception afterward, the president greeted him as "my friend Douglass" and asked him what he thought of his speech. Douglass responded, "Mr. Lincoln, that was a sacred effort."

During that reception, Douglass exchanged an uncomfortable glance with Johnson, and what he later wrote about the encounter proved prescient. Douglass was standing with a Black woman named Louise Tobias Dorsey "when Mr. Lincoln touched Mr. Johnson and pointed me out to him. The first expression which came to his face, and which I think was the true index of his heart, was one of bitter contempt and aversion. Seeing that I observed him, he tried to assume a more friendly appearance, but it was too late. . . . His first glance was the frown of the man; the second was the bland and sickly smile of the demagogue. I turned to Mrs. Dorsey and said, 'Whatever Andrew Johnson may be, he certainly is no friend of our race.' "

Levine gives amazing insight into Douglass's life, personality and political acumen. There are no known recordings of his speeches, but reading this book I could "hear," for the first time, the power of his anti-slavery addresses. Douglass, who had been enslaved until he was 20 years old, demonstrated his eloquence "with a voice, as one observer described, of 'terrific power, of great compass, and under most admirable control.' " His range was formidable. He was able to appeal to different audiences, Levine writes, and was "known as an excellent mimic who could do comical impressions of proslavery southerners." The Black abolitionist William G. Allen wrote in 1852 that "in versatility of oratorical power, I know of no one who can begin to approach the celebrated Frederick Douglass." As Allen put it, Douglass "touches chords . . . which vibrate music now sweet, now sad, now lightsome, now solemn, now startling, now grand, now majestic, now sublime."

In this book, Douglass emerges fully as the intellectual and moral force pushing Lincoln to free Black people - all Black people. Levine reminds the reader of the moral indecisiveness of Lincoln, who has come to be known as the great emancipator. And while that is true, he did not free enslaved Black people merely to free them but to save the Union. "Douglass had been enraged by Lincoln's August 1862 statement to Horace Greeley, the editor of the New York Daily Tribune, that 'if I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it.' "

Levine deftly exposes how Johnson moved after the assassination to unravel any progress that Black people had made during Reconstruction under Lincoln. The new president promised amnesty for former Confederate leaders, and under his watch, Black Codes, which later evolved into Jim Crow laws, were quickly enacted, restraining the newfound freedom of Black people.

Levine's prose is often beautiful, but even more beautiful is his reliance on the truth of history. "Republicans had hoped for a fundamental transformation of southern society that would bring equal rights to the freedpeople," the author writes. "But that was not part of Johnson's vision. He wanted the former Confederate states to be quickly readmitted to the Union after setting up new state governments, and he had no problem with former Confederate leaders being part of those governments. All he asked was that the states ratify the Thirteenth Amendment, offer some sort of statement about their regret for seceding (even though he believed no state truly had seceded), and repudiate their war debts."

Levine argues that racism clearly was behind the president's deceit: "Johnson may have conceived of himself as a leader for African Americans, but that did not mean he regarded Blacks as equal to whites in the way of people like [Charles] Sumner and [Thaddeus] Stevens."

Johnson's betrayal cost thousands upon thousands of Black people their lives in the era of racial terror that was to come. "Mississippi became the first of several ex-Confederate states to adopt Black Codes," Levine writes, "laws that disempowered African Americans by sharply restricting their mobility and legal rights." In Mississippi, Black people were barred from owning or renting land, bearing arms, or even meeting at night. Black people were arrested as vagrants and forced to work on chain gangs, in an approximation of plantation slavery.

Sumner was horrified by Johnson, observing, "What could you expect from an old slave-master & an old democrat?" He implored the president to change his policies toward states that had seceded, arguing that the new system "abandons the freedmen to the control of the ancient Masters."Stevens, who believed that Southerners were "a conquered people" and the South "a conquered territory," joined in writing urgent letters to Johnson, contending that the "restoration" of rebel states would "greatly injure the country."

Levine explains that Johnson was a con man who had orchestrated a con job on the country. On Feb. 19, 1866, Johnson vetoed an extension of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, known as the Freedmen's Bureau, whose agents were posted throughout the South to distribute food, clothing and medical assistance to the more than 4 million newly freed Black people. "The bureau also offered some police protection for the freedpeople," Levine writes. "It was, in many respects, a radical agency that challenged the racial hierarchies and exclusions that had been central to slave culture." Levine argues that Johnson "either didn't care about or was willfully blind to the harm done by the southern Black Codes and various forms of anti-Black violence."

After his impeachment in 1868, Johnson was portrayed in Black and Radical Republican newspapers as the "demented Moses of Tennessee." Levine explains that he was "the white president who promised to be the leader of Black people and turned out to be their oppressor." Johnson, the author writes, was a "president for whom Black lives did not matter."

Johnson and his deceit turned back the hope inspired by the Emancipation Proclamation and gave rise instead to an enduring culture of violence and discrimination against Black people. "The Failed Promise" is an important book for anyone on a quest to deeply understand the racism in America's history, the villains who propelled it and the heroes who fought against it.

- - -

DeNeen L. Brown, who has reported for The Washington Post for more than 35 years, is an associate professor at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland.
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In Dune, Denis Villeneuves droolingly anticipated, eye-bogglingly vast adaptation of Frank Herberts 1965 cult sci-fi novel, the characters fly around in airplanes that have three sets of wings, all of which flap very fast. The planes look like insects, and the film suggests thats one way that a flying machine, in another planetary sphere, might have evolved. On Earth, we styled our airplanes after birds. In Dune, theyre modeled on bugs, which gives them a fluttery malevolence.

Dune, a majestically somber and grand-scale sci-fi trance-out, is full of lavish hugger-mugger  clan wars, brute armies, a grotesque autocrat villain, a hero who may be the Messiah  that links it, in spirit and design, to the Star Wars and Lord of the Rings films, though with a predatory ominousness all its own. The desert-planet architecture, which is bigger than huge, is sandstone Mayan. The spaceships are like floating rocks the size of cities. And the cinematic style is Lawrence of Arabia meets Triumph of the Will meets the most visionary cologne commercial that Ridley Scott never made. (The movie is more than a little enthralled with the clockwork imagery of fascism.) Dune is out to wow us, and sometimes succeeds, but it also wants to get under your skin like a hypnotically toxic mosquito. It doesuntil it doesnt.

Heres one useful definition of a great sci-fi fantasy film. Its one in which the world-building is awesome but not more essential than the storytelling. In the first two Star Wars films, those dynamics were in perfect sync; they were, as well, in The Dark Knight and the Mad Max films. Blade Runner, in its way, is an amazing movie, but its world-building packs more punch than its transcendental neo-noir noodlings.

Viewed in that light, Dune is a movie that earns five stars for world-building and about two-and-a-half for storytelling. If you stack it up next to David Lynchs disastrously confounding 1984 adaptation of Dune, it can look like a masterpiece. (Most of the story now makes sense.) And for an hour or so, the movie is rather mesmerizing, throwing off seductive glints of treachery as it presents the tale of Paul Atreides (Timothee Chalamet), the gifted scion of the House Atreides, whose father, Duke Leto Atreides (Oscar Isaac), is leading what looks to be an opportunity, though one thats fraught with peril.

For 80 years, the forbidding desert planet of Arrakis has been presided over by the Harkonnen, who ruled with an iron fist as they controlled production of the valuable spice thats embedded in the sand and the air. (In the book, the spice, called melange, is a metaphor for oil and also for drugs. Here its a glittery abstraction.) Now, the emperor has ordered the Harkonnen to leave Arrakis and has placed the House Atreides in charge. They arrive like a newly occupying army. But theyre being set up as patsies.

Villeneuve works hard to to stay true to the conspiratorial sprawl of Herberts sand-planet dream, even as he streamlines the book down to its most playable scenes. Chalamet, tall and skinny, with a quizzical innocence under his cloud of curls, resembles a willowy version of Edward Scissorhands, and he plays Paul as an untested hero with abilities he scarcely understands. Theyre inherited from his mother, Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson), an acolyte of the mystic matriarchal sect the Bene Gesserit, who wants to put him in touch with his inner cosmic savior.

There are good scenes like one in which Paul learns to speak to his mother telepathically; or receives a lesson from Isaacs warmly protective but all-too-vulnerable Leto, who speaks to him about the human choices encoded within destiny; or gets put through a primal test by his aunt, Gaius Helen Mohiam (Charlotte Rampling)  those names! Yes, theyre as annoying as the ones in the George Lucas prequels  who asks him to place his hand in a box of pain and withstand it. (Hed better; if he fails, shell stab his neck with a lethal needle.) Stellan Skarsgard, nearly unrecognizable as Baron Vladimir Harkonnen, whos like a floating homicidal Jabba the Hutt crossed with Henry VIII crossed with Fat Bastard, sets the plot in motion, reclaiming Arrakis by trying to kill off just about everyone in the movie who most holds our attention.

His success rate is a bit disarming. The hand-to-hand combat scenes in Dune have a flash of originality. Instead of lightsabers, the characters hit each with other weapons that reduce their bodies to electromagnetic freeze frames. Its exciting to see Duncan Idaho, played by Jason Momoa as the films sexy-loyal-bruiser Han Solo figure, take on a small army of enemies.

Yet where is all of this going? Dune keeps foreshadowing the moment when Paul will embed himself with the Fremen, the indigenous desert people of Arrakis who have a more organic relationship to the perilous landscape, and to the spice, than any of their rulers, but live in a state of ragged guerrilla oppression. Theyre waiting for someone to liberate them, and Paul would seem to be that figure, since its prophesied by half a dozen interchangeable flash-forwards to his interface with Chani (Zendaya), a Fremen warrior-protector who is shot like some sort of desert princess.

Dune opens with a title that reads Dune Part I, and theres a standard but rather presumptuous promise embedded in those words: that after 2 hours and 35 minutes, well be so hooked by this saga that well be hungry for Part II. That, in a way, is the promise of every franchise. But the trouble with Dune is that it feels, at different points, like just about every other franchise. Over the decades, more than a few movies have been sprung from the DNA of Herberts universe, like (for instance) the opening act of Star Wars. And theres a reason its the films first part; the desert is an awfully barren setting for sci-fi. (Star Wars starts slow and arid on purpose, all to set up the revelation of its kinetic second half.) Dune is rich with themes and visual motifs, but it turns into a movie about Chalamets Paul piloting through sandstorms and hooking up with the rebels of the desert, who in this movie are a lot more noble than interesting.

The giant sandworms, who are protectors of the spice and burrow through the desert like a sinister underground tornado until they reveal themselves (theyre like monster nostrils that suck in everything in front of them), are good for a moment or two of old-fashioned creature-feature awe, but what, really, do they have to do with anything? Dune makes the worms, the dunes, the paramilitary spectacle, and the kid-savior-tests-his-mettle plot immersive  for a while. But then, as the movie begins to run out of tricks, it turns woozy and amorphous. Will Part II really be coming? It will if Part I is successful enough, and that isnt foregone. Its hard to build a cliffhanger on shifting sands.

Reviewed at Venice Film Festival (Out of Competition), Sept. 3, 2021. MPAA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 155 MIN.

Production

A Warner Bros. Pictures release of a Legendary Pictures, Villeneuve Films, Warner Bros. production. Producers: Denis Villeneuve, Mary Parent, Cale Boyter, Joe Caracciolo Jr. Executive producers: Herbert W. Gains, Joshua Grode, John Harrison, Brian Herbert, Kim Herbert, Tanya Lapointe, Byron Merritt, Richard P. Rubenstein, Jon Spaihts, Thomas Tull.

Crew

Director: Denis Villeneuve. Screenplay: Jon Spaihts, Denis Villeneuve, Eric Roth. Camera: Greig Fraser. Editor: Joe Walker. Music: Hans Zimmer.

With

Timothee Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, Oscar Isaac, Josh Brolin, Stellan Skarsgard, Jason Momoa, Zendaya, Charlotte Rampling, Dave Bautista, Javier Bardem, Sharon Duncan Brewster, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Chang Chen, David Dastmalchian.

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Thanks in part to his work with auteurs Benoit Jacquot, Claire Denis and Stephane Brize, Vincent Lindon had long become something of a festival-world habitue, a sturdy and reliable fixture on the international circuit. But even with well over two decades red carpet experience, nothing could quite prepare the French actor for what he cheekily calls this years grand slam.

Its crazy and strange and totally wild, Lindon tells Variety, reflecting on an ongoing festival tour that kicked into high gear when he and his Titane director Julia Ducournau were called back for Cannes closing ceremony to receive the Palme dOr, and which will continue with the actor launching Brizes Another World in Venice and Thierry de Perettis Undercover in San Sebastian.

If that wasnt enough, hell then hit the New York Film Festival, among others, to show off the Palme dOr, and  if industry whispers are to be believed  will start the cycle anew in early 2022 should his upcoming Denis project be selected in Berlin.

This was absolutely not calculated, he says with a laugh. In my wildest dreams I could never have imagined it.

Beyond the frequent flyer points the actor might accrue, this banner tour will have the additional effect of solidifying the 62-year-olds status as one of French cinemas leading stars and  given the relatively limited number of slots afforded to Gallic productions in A-list competitions  as one of his industrys most prominent ambassadors.

While that is not necessarily a position the actor ever imagined himself filling, he does relish the opportunity to meet his public on more neutral ground. Im fed up with those who know me too well, he explains. I cannot think too hard about who I am or what I do or how I come off.

If I have one strength, its a lack of self-conscience, Lindon continues. I couldnt explain the way that I work, because even if I tried to, just hearing myself speak would send me off balance. Id lose my ease.

And that unguarded naturalism  what the actor calls his insouciance  is precisely what inspired filmmakers like Brize, de Peretti, and Ducournau to conceive of their projects with Lindon in mind.

My characters are me, says Lindon, because who else can they be? They have my eyes, my mouth, my brow, my voice, so it feels odd to differentiate what is acting and what is not. When I eat in a film I do so as I would in real life; that is why the filmmakers hired me!

For Another World, Lindons fifth outing with Brize, the longtime collaborators looked to expand on what has become their pet approach, surrounding the leading man with a cast of non-professional actors in films that explore tensions between labor and capital in a globalized system.

Here, Brize wanted to paint a fuller picture, Lindon says. The film is half about a mans work life, and half about his personal life. It shows that two are inextricable. When things go poorly on one side that carries over to the other; we see a man caught between his doubts, and how that shapes his relationship with his wife and son.

As if to further test that permeable divide between reality and fiction, Brize cast actress Sandrine Kiberlain to play off Lindon as the characters soon-to-be ex-wife  a casting choice that takes on additional resonance knowing that both actors were indeed married to one another for many years. While the actor understandably prefers to keep his personal life off the table, his films thematic concerns cant help but invite the comparison.

Because as Lindons international profile has grown, so too have those of this screen-partner Kiberlain, whose own directorial debut, A Radiant Girl, premiered in Cannes earlier this summer, and of the couples daughter, Suzanne Lindon, whose debut feature Spring Blossom received the 2020 Cannes label and was one the few French titles to play last years Toronto Film Festival.

And if the actor prefers to focus on his own career path, he cant help but think of family when reflecting on his recent fortune. My father would always tell me, even if you have no chance of winning the lottery, you still might as well buy a ticket, says Lindon.

If a million dont win, theres always someone out there who does. Thats exactly what happened.

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Amidst all the horrors of a war-torn decade that she would largely like to forget, one memory stands out for Kosovar filmmaker Kaltrina Krasniqi: the day her mother surprised the family with a VHS player. We were so, so excited, she tells Variety. We really didnt believe until she opened it that it was true.

Beginning with the break-up of the former Yugoslavia in 1991 and ending with the conclusion of the bloody Kosovo War in 1999, Krasniqi and her family spent much of the 90s holed up in their apartment, occasionally venturing out to the 007 video club across the street to rent movies. It wasnt really safe to be out, she says. We spent the entire decade using that VHS player to watch films.

It was the start of the directors love affair with cinema, and the first step on a journey that this week takes her to the Venice Film Festival for the world premiere of her feature debut, Vera Dreams of the Sea, which bows in the festivals Horizons section.

It caps a breakout year for the budding Kosovar film industry, which began with Blerta Bashollis feature debut, Hive, winning three awards, including the Grand Jury Prize, at the Sundance Film Festival. Another first-time filmmaker, Norika Sefa, followed that triumph by taking a special jury prize in Rotterdam for Looking for Venera. And in Cannes, French-Kosovar actress-turned-director Luana Bajrami, known for her breakthrough role in Celine Sciammas Portrait of a Lady on Fire, bowed her directorial debut, The Hill Where Lionesses Roar, in the Directors Fortnight section.

Under any circumstances it would be considered a remarkable year for a country of two million that only opened its first film school 20 years ago. But against the backdrop of a devastating war whose aftershocks can still be felt, the rise of the Kosovar film industry is one of the unlikeliest success stories in world cinema today.

Its a rise largely being led by women, who in recent years have begun seizing on the opportunity to bring their own lives and stories to the screen. In the past, says Krasniqi, we were not seeing ourselves and our stories in films, noting that women in Kosovar cinema had long been relegated to supporting roles. After the war, however, female filmmakers began to rewrite the script. Being treated as a second-class citizen all of your life gives you access to particular types of stories.

Vera Dreams of the Sea centers on a middle-aged woman whose husbands sudden suicide leaves the ownership of the familys village home in question. A parade of menacing relatives seeks to stake their own claims. Mysterious underworld figures emerge. Soon the woman, played by Teuta Jegeni Ajdini, is forced to confront the gender biases and inequities of a legal system that continues to privilege men.

Written by Doruntina Basha, it is a movie that was partly inspired by Krasniqis mother, who divorced her husband in the 1980s and spent four years fighting a court battle to keep the property that was rightfully hers. In the end, she was forced to abandon the fight when it proved too costly for her to continue. For Krasniqi, the story is emblematic of how the women of her mothers generation had to negotiate their freedom on an everyday basis.

Much has changed in the years since, with the disastrous war of the 1990s exacting an incalculable physical and psychological toll on a country that is still trying to pick up the pieces. In many cases, it was women who were left to rebuild, after thousands of men were either killed or went missing during the war.

Theyve made steady gains in Kosovo since  including at the highest reaches of government, where the president and nearly 40% of Parliament are women  something Krasniqi credits to the sacrifices made by her mothers generation.

Our society has gone through some seriously dramatic changes in a very short amount of time. I cant imagine a life where I would have to negotiate my freedom at every step, she says. For me to feel as I feel, to be as free and independent as I am, that is the war my mother fought.

That war has allowed a younger generation of women to find their voices through film and bring their own experiences to the screen. Hive is based on the true story of a war widow who fights against the stubbornly patriarchal attitudes of her village in her search for independence. In Looking for Venera, a young woman grappling with her budding sexuality tries to find herself in a small town where a girl is expected above all else to protect the family name. And The Hill Where Lionesses Roar tells the story of three free-spirited young women struggling to imagine a future beyond the stifling traditions of their homeland.

Though their stories are rooted in contemporary Kosovo, theyve struck a chord at a time when the wider movement for gender equality has brought more and more womens voices to the fore. Women and other marginalized groupshave always been sidelined, says Krasniqi. Patriarchy was not invented in the Balkans.

Arben Zharku, the former director of the Kosovo Cinematography Center, notes that the industrys sudden success is in fact testament to a decade-long effort to lay a foundation that allows those filmmakers to flourish. The KCC has been instrumental in giving the small domestic industry international reach, establishing partnerships with the likes of Pragues FAMU film and TV school, the EAVE producers workshop, the Les Arc Film Festival, and the Rotterdam Lab to boost education and training opportunities for all Kosovar filmmakers. Its not that we thought we should support women more or less, says Zharku. It just comes naturally, if you build a good system.

For their part, Kosovar filmmakers are looking to build on that framework, with efforts underway to establish a directors association to lobby on the industrys behalf. Its a small community, and I think were connecting even more now, says Hive director Basholli, who worked as A.D. on Blerta Zeqiris The Marriage and Sefas Looking for Venera. Its not like a competition. I think were just happy for each others successes, and were trying to help each other and push each other to go forward.

What is the most beautiful thing about now is that we really had a golden year of cinema, adds Sefa. Its our moment. We should not let it go.

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As a chef, Julia Child made no claims for herself as an innovator: Her mission was not to create new recipes, but to interpret and archive age-old French ones in ways the average American home cook could tackle without fear. Given her dual priorities of traditionalism and accessibility, then, she might well have appreciated Julia, a bright, cheerful, audience-friendly overview of Childs life and legacy that steers fastidiously clear of any unexpected insight or information on a well-documented subject.

Docmaking duo Julie Cohen and Betsy West previously scored an Oscar nomination for RBG, a similarly upbeat, uncomplicated portrait of another iconic American woman, and  save for the addition of much butter-varnished gastroporn photography  they havent significantly changed the recipe here. Theres nothing especially wrong with that: Child was a broadly entertaining public personality, and the film is broadly entertaining in turn, zipping through her eventful, rather inspiring life story  from sheltered youth to late-blooming sensualism to unlikely middle-aged celebrity  at a lively pace, full of attractive asides about evolving food culture from the past to the present. That approach, peppered with talking-head contributions from culinary personalities like Ina Garten and Andre Cointreau, will go down particularly well with mature, nostalgic audiences when Sony Pictures Classics releases the film on Nov. 5.

But its a little disappointing that anyone with even a working knowledge of Child is unlikely to emerge from Julia having learned anything new  or at least, nothing more surprising than a couple of tasteful nude photos from the Child archives. Cohen and West hold their subject in palpable esteem and affection, but their perspective is scarcely more probing than Nora Ephrons fictionalized 2009 comedy Julie & Julia, in which Meryl Streeps full-bore performance gave many younger audiences their first sense of Childs eccentric screen presence.

Oddly, and somewhat pointedly, Ephrons film, and the bestselling book on which it was based, are entirely ignored in the docs discussion of Childs cultural impact. Dan Aykroyds fruity Child impression for Saturday Night Live, on the other hand, rates multiple mentions. (Child herself was a big fan, we are told.) Indeed, the most interesting passages of Julia cover the gradual creation of her much-parodied television presence, beginning spontaneously (and in her late forties) with the low-budgeted limitations of public educational broadcasting, before being honed into a more polished, knowingly comedic act by the time she graduated to the likes of Good Morning America.

Before we get to that, however, the film offers a rundown of her pre-celebrity life, as interviews with friends and next-generation family members add a little intimacy to otherwise standard-issue biographical tone. (The film was chiefly drawn from Bob Spitzs authoritative biography Dearie: The Remarkable Life of Julia Child.) Cohen and West touch tactfully on the extreme wealth of her family, which Child herself downplayed  one interviewee tartly notes that Child and her mother alike had no need of learning to cook  while her father John McWilliams emotional remoteness and rigidly Republican politics are also stressed.

It was joining the Office of Strategic Services during the Second World War, the film suggests, that was the making of Childs hitherto unadventurous life. Ensuing travels awakened her fascination with international culture and cuisine  and introduced her, while in Ceylon, to her future husband Paul, a politically liberal, artistically-minded civil servant who successfully converted the younger, conservatively raised woman to his pleasure-seeking way of living.

A spell of living in France cued Childs enrolment at the Cordon Bleu, and the rest is history  though the doc sort of treats it that way, dutifully filling in the details of her early culinary career and the painstaking writing of her seminal, name-making volume Mastering the Art of French Cooking, without doing much to enliven it  save for quickfire recipe vignettes, richly shot by Claudia Raschke, that walk us through the basics of making a sole meuniere, or a boeuf bourguignon, the Child way. (The secret, and its no secret, tends to be industrial quantities of butter.)

Away from the kitchen, much of the film is consumed with her and Pauls lifelong misfit romance, supplemented with extracts from their correspondence, ornamentally handwritten on screen. (Such flourishes, along with Rachel Portmans somewhat over-present score  heavy on obvious accordion cues whenever the action turns to France  lends the film a general air of cuteness.) The chosen quotes are more colorful than revealing, though it is amusing to read Pauls prescient observation, shortly after their initial meeting, of her slight atmosphere of hysteria, giggling wildly, which gets on my nerves.

Any closer-to-the-bone insights into her private life, meanwhile, are not on the menu  unsurprising, perhaps, given the involvement of multiple family members as producers, though certain intriguing threads are only tentatively pulled. Its hinted that Child, content as a homemaker even after her career eclipsed her husband, wasnt an overt believer in feminism, but was firmly pro-choice. Its mentioned, too, that she held homophobic beliefs prior to becoming an AIDS activist in the 1980s, before the subject is swiftly dropped in favor of further generic food is love appraisals from her acolytes. Julia offers us glimpses of a complex, brittle personality beneath the robust persona, but is either too cautious or too genuinely besotted with the latter to pry it out.

Reviewed online, Venice, Sept. 1, 2021. (In Telluride, Toronto film festivals.) Running time: 95 MIN.

Running Time: Running time: 95 MIN.

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Production

(Documentary) A Sony Pictures Classics release of CNN Films presentation of an Imagine Documentaries, Storyville Films production. Producers: Betsy West, Julie Cohen, Sara Bernstein, Justin Wilkes, Holly Siegel. Executive producers: Brian Grazer, Ron Howard, Michael Rosenberg, Amy Entelis, Courtney Sexton, Bob Spitz, Alex Prudhomme, Oren Jacoby.

Crew

Directors: Julie Cohen, Betsy West. Camera: Claudia Raschke. Editor: Carla Gutierrez. Music: Rachel Portman.

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A new $929,500 grant from the National Institutes of Health will fund a four-year research project at Texas A&M International University that looks at body composition among Hispanics.

TAMIU president Dr. Pablo Arenaz said that this particular grant sets a historic precedent at the university.

While the university has received NIH funding in the past, this is our first NIH research grant, Arenaz said. This is a true distinction and sets a precedent as we move forward with other research proposals that could attract additional NIH research funding. This measurably elevates the research profile of the university and our faculty, and has the potential to have profound implications on research in this area.

The project director and principal investigator for the grant is Dr. Brett Stephen Nickerson, an assistant professor at the College of Nursing and Health Sciences. Nickerson said he believes the research will help to advance research in body composition for Hispanics.

This NIH-funded research will involve evaluating the validity of a rapid four-compartment model. A traditional four-compartment model is currently the most accurate way to measure body composition but is only available in research settings. A rapid four-compartment model, which uses imaging and bioimpedance analysis, is more accurate than evaluations conducted via stand-alone methods.

Through this model, well be able to get a much more accurate and detailed analysis of body composition than the widely used Body Mass Index measurement, Nickerson explained. Specifically, it may be useful in clinical visits for determining whether Hispanics have recommended or excessive body fat. This research will also allow us to determine if outlined assumptions employed in current body composition methods are violated when testing a Hispanic population. This may have implications on future research by identifying whether new equations are needed when were assessing the body composition of Hispanic adults.

Nickerson, who holds a Ph.D. in exercise physiology from the University of Alabama, was selected as TAMIUs 2020 University Scholar of the Year. He has developed two algorithms that can be used for accessing body composition of Hispanic adults. He has 55 peer-reviewed publications, 29 as first author, primarily in the area of body composition, his area of expertise.

His research in body composition is breaking new ground by studying the differences in fat-free mass characteristics like density, hydration, mineral and protein between Hispanic Whites and non-Hispanic Whites. Nearly all currently existing body composition models are based upon non-Hispanic populations. Nickersons work evaluates the accuracy of various assumptions employed in body composition testing for Hispanic adults.

His selection as University Scholar of the Year especially commended his mentorship of TAMIUs undergraduate students in his research, some winning regional and national recognition by professional kinesiology associations.

For additional information, contact the TAMIU Office of Public Relations, Marketing and Information Services by email at prmis@tamiu.edu, phone at 956-326-2180, or visit the offices in the Sue and Radcliffe Killam Library, Room 268.

University information is also available at tamiu.edu and through the universitys social channels on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube.
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP)  A small group of Afghan women protested near the presidential palace in Kabul on Friday, demanding equal rights from the Taliban as Afghanistan's new rulers work on forming a government and seeking international recognition.

The Taliban captured most of the country in a matter of days last month and celebrated the departure of the last U.S. forces after 20 years of war. Now they face the urgent challenge of governing a war-ravaged country that is heavily reliant on international aid.

The Taliban have promised an inclusive government and a more moderate form of Islamic rule than when they last ruled the country from 1996 to 2001. But many Afghans, especially women, are deeply skeptical and fear a rollback of rights gained over the last two decades.

The protest in Kabul was the second women's protest in as many days, with the other held in the western city of Herat. Around 20 women with microphones gathered under the watchful eyes of Taliban gunmen, who allowed the demonstration to proceed.

The women demanded access to education, the right to return to work and a role in governing the country. "Freedom is our motto. It makes us proud, read one of their signs.

A Taliban fighter ventured into the crowd at one point, but witnesses said he was angry at the bystanders who had stopped to watch the demonstration and not the protesters themselves.

We are concerned about the issues of human rights in Afghanistan, notably on the rights of women, U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Friday. It is imperative that women have the right to work, to work in a safe environment, and those are some of the issues that have been brought to the attention of our interlocutors in Kabul and elsewhere.

The Taliban have said women will be able to continue their education and work outside the home, rights denied to women when the militants were last in power. But the Taliban have also vowed to impose Sharia, or Islamic law, without providing specifics.

Interpretations of Islamic law vary widely across the Muslim world, with more moderate strains predominating. The Taliban's earlier rule was shaped by Afghanistan's unique tribal traditions, under which women are not to be seen in public. Those customs endure, especially in the countryside, even during 20 years of Western-backed governments.

A potentially more pressing concern for the Taliban is the economy, which is mired in crisis. Civil servants haven't been paid for months, ATM's have been shut down and banks are limiting withdrawals to $200 per week, causing large crowds to form outside them. Aid groups have warned of widespread hunger amid a severe drought.

The Taliban said Western Union, which halted service after the militants entered Kabul last month, will resume transfers, which may help Afghans to receive cash from relatives living abroad. But most of Afghanistan's foreign reserves are held abroad and frozen while Western nations consider how to engage with the Taliban, putting pressure on the local currency.

There was no immediate comment from Western Union on the resumption of service.

Meanwhile fighting has been brutal in the Panjshir Valley, north of the capital Kabul, a last holdout against the Taliban sweep. Late on Friday celebratory gunfire erupted in the capital as rumors circulated that the Taliban had captured the valley, which was being defended by former vice president Amrullah Saleh and Ahmad Massoud, the British-educated son of Ahmad Shah Massoud, who was killed in a suicide bombing just two days before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in America.

But Afghanistan's popular TOLO TV carried a message from Saleh who said the fighting had been intense and fighters on both sides had died but he was still in the Panjshir Valley and he would stay to defend it.

The staccato of gunfire throughout the capital lasted nearly 15 minutes prompted the Taliban's spokesman and head of its cultural and information commission Zabihullah Mujahid to warn his rank and file against wasting their ammunition.

Avoid aerial firing, instead thank the God, Mujahid tweeted.

Meanwhile, the Taliban say they want good relations with all countries, even the United States, and have held a string of meetings with foreign envoys in recent days in the Gulf nation of Qatar, where they have long maintained a political office.

Western nations are expected to demand the Taliban live up to their promises to form an inclusive government and prevent Afghanistan from being a haven for terrorist groups. They may also press the Taliban on women's rights, though that could be a harder sell for the group's hard-line base, which is steeped in Afghanistan's deeply conservative, tribal culture.

Ahmadullah Muttaqi, a spokesman for the Taliban's cultural commission, said a senior official from the United Arab Emirates flew into Kabul's international airport on Friday to meet with Taliban officials, without naming him. Afghanistan's TOLO TV reported that the aircraft was also carrying 60 tons of food and medical aid.

Sher Mohammad Stanikzai, a senior Taliban official based in Qatar, recently met with British and German delegations, according to the Taliban, which said another official, Abdul Salam Hanafi, had a phone call with Chinese deputy foreign minister Wu Jianghao.

Most Western embassies were evacuated and shuttered in the days after the Taliban rolled into Kabul on Aug. 15. The Taliban have urged diplomats to return.

Taliban political leaders have gone on TV to say the world has nothing to fear from them. But many Afghans, as well as Western nations that spent two decades fighting the group, remain deeply skeptical.

Tens of thousands of Afghans fled the country after the Taliban takeover in a massive U.S.-led airlift out of Kabul international airport. The scenes of chaos, from Afghans clinging to military aircraft as they took off before falling to their deaths, to a suicide bombing that killed 169 Afghans and 13 U.S. service members, marked a bitter end to America's longest war.

The Taliban assumed control of the airport after the last American forces flew out and are now working to restore operations with technical experts from Qatar and Turkey. The Taliban say they will allow free travel for anyone with proper documents, but it remains to be seen whether any commercial airlines will offer service.

Officials from Pakistan International Airlines have met with Afghanistan's still-independent civil aviation administration. But Abdullah Hafeez, a spokesman for the airline, said it will take some time to clean up the debris and restore normal operations.

There is still a lot of work to be done before international flights can come into the airport, he said.

______

Associated Press writer Tameem Akhgar in Istanbul, Turkey and Edie Lederer at the United Nations contributed to this report.
A man who was in the country illegally was arrested after authorities discovered he had more than 300 rounds of .40 and 5.56 caliber ammo, according to an arrest affidavit filed on Monday.

Edgar Sanchez-Garfias was charged with being a migrant in possession of ammunition.
After almost more than six weeks after major vaccination drives were done in efforts to vaccinate people with the Pfizer vaccine in Nuevo Laredo, the city is ready to see a second push to get people to get vaccinated with the second dose of the vaccine starting next week.

During late Julys vaccination drives, thousands of people spent hours in line waiting, as more than 106,336 first doses of the Pfizer vaccine were administered. Many returned home afterwards without getting a shot.

This time around, the municipal government has planned to change things. They instead will focus on vaccinating only those who got the first dosage already. Though the vaccine drives will not be held until next week, the Pfizer vaccines have already arrived at the city, as stated by the local government, and local health officials from Laredo have voiced their optimism that this will help vaccinate many people from the neighboring sister city.

The municipal president, Arturo Sanmiguel Cantu, reported that from September 7-12, it is contemplated to apply the second dose of the COVID vaccine to people between 18 and 39 years old, said the Nuevo Laredo Municipal Government in a statement.

The new dates for the second dosage of the vaccine were announced at the meeting of the Municipal Health Committee in which directors of public and private hospitals participated, and the mayor was informed of the arrival of the new Pfizer vaccines by Sept. 2.

The new batch of vaccines comes six weeks after the first doses were administered to Nuevo Laredoans. This is considerably more time than the recommended three weeks in which it is recommended to get the second dose.

Although it is not ideal to wait so long, City of Laredo Health Director Richard A. Chamberlain states that it is still important to get fully vaccinated even if the recommended time has passed. This is especially true in places like Mexico which still depend on other countries like the United States to get their share of the vaccines.

Although it is not recommended, it is OK to miss your interval second dose date, Chamberlain said. What is most important is to become fully vaccinated. This does not reduce the effectiveness again, what is most important is to become fully vaccinated, receive both doses.

As officials in Laredo continue to push for the international bridges to reopen to the sister city, it is even more important for Nuevo Laredoans to get their second doses and become fully vaccinated as soon as they can.

More Information See More Collapse

City of Laredo Health Authority Dr. Victor Trevino agrees that while the typical two-dose regiment is ideal, having one dose or a mixed mRNA dose is in line with CDC guidelines in areas where vaccines are scarce.

There is a severe vaccine shortage in Nuevo Laredo, and we are doing everything we can to administer this life-saving vaccine, Trevino said. With the help of Rep. Henry Cuellar; Mayor Pete Saenz; Licenciado Eduardo Garza, who is the president of COMCE; the governor of Nuevo Leon; City of Nuevo Laredo Mayor-Elect Carmin Lilia Canturosas; Tesoro Medical Care, P.A. and the Mexican and U.S. Aduanas, a private and public bi-national partnership has been created.

Trevino continues to ask for the public to get vaccinated on both sides of the border, because ultimately it is the only way in which the pandemic will be under control.

Because our communities are intertwined, our success in this pandemic depends on each other, Trevino said. We will continue to work toward regional immunity, because it is vital that we vaccinate the most vulnerable on both sides of the border.

According to Trevino, there has already been a public-private binational partnership created to reach regional immunity between both regions, and countries, that he hopes is achieved fully. This would help make sure the virus does not become a larger problem.

We know that it is not medically recommended to have a highly-vaccinated community next to a community that does not have similar access to vaccines, especially with a closed bridge, Trevino said. This disparity can result in the introduction of variants that could pose challenges to the immunity established by the vaccines.

The local government of the city of Nuevo Laredo has seen a rise in cases recently, and their recorded death death total has risen to 828. It is due to this, that the municipal president continues to ask people to continue social distancing, to not go out if they feel sick and to stay home as much as possible.

The municipal government continues to worry about the increase in positive cases of COVID in the city, and I highlight the importance of maintaining the sanitary measures recommended by the Ministry of Health to reduce the rate of infections, Cantu said.

Chamberlain states that amid the growing threat of COVID-19 along the border, he remains committed to working with the sister city in efforts to ensure that the health of all people is maintained.

We continue to help Nuevo Laredo to the best of our resource abilities on the U.S. side of the border, Chamberlain said. Vaccines are not allowed to be crossed over the international border, as per DSHS (Texas Department of State Health).

According to Trevino, to avoid any policies that would go against sanitization laws, the city helps implement donated vaccines and apply them to Mexican nationals at the ports of entry.

The goal is to achieve the necessary regional immunity needed to defeat this virus, Trevino said. In this aspect, the fates of our communities are intertwined.

jorge.vela@lmtonline.com
3 1 of 3 Courtesy /U.S. Border Patrol Show More Show Less 2 of 3 Courtesy /U.S. Border Patrol Show More Show Less 3 of 3





Twelve migrants were arrested in separate cases as part of combined law enforcement efforts, according to the U.S. Border Patrol.

The first case was reported on Tuesday afternoon, when agents responded to a report of a suspicious pickup inside a ranch west of Encinal. Agents attempted to pull over the vehicle to no avail. A pursuit ensued eastbound on Texas 44 with the assistance of the Texas Department of Public Safety and Encinal Police Department.
Lockport, NY (14094)

Today

Scattered thunderstorms this evening becoming more widespread overnight. Low 64F. Winds SW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 80%..

Tonight

Scattered thunderstorms this evening becoming more widespread overnight. Low 64F. Winds SW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 80%.
World Suicide Awareness Day is on Friday, September 10 and that is also the date that two Tarmonbarry men, Eddie Coffey and Johnny Rhatigan, will conclude their Beauty to Beast fundraiser in aid of the Athlone & Midlands Samaritans.

The pair have refrained from shaving or cutting their hair since December 31 last and after 252 days the bearded and long haired beasts will reappear as beauties during an eagerly anticipated shave off event at the Shannon Bar, Tarmonbarry.

Eddie and Johnnys main motivation for undertaking the Beauty to Beast challenge is that it might save just one life and in turn save one family from having to go through the horror of life after a suicide.

Eddies wife, Liz (nee Casey), explained that her husband and friend took on Beauty to Beast fundraiser in memory of her late brothers Willie and Paddy Casey and Frankie Lane.

Liz candidly explained, I was the youngest child of six, and 32 years ago last June, my 15 year old brother, Willie took his own life tearing our family apart and sending us all into a new unknown horror we now called life.

We did manage a lot of happy years and made happy memories. My wonderful Mum & Dad (Ann & Liam Casey) from Rathowen, Co Westmeath, tried their best to make our lives happy.

Unfortunately we were hit with the sudden loss of our Dad in 2004 when he went to work driving his lorry one morning never to return, his poor heart had finally given up. Thankfully he was not driving at the time but he had pulled into a layby and we had a small search party looking for him, it was actually with the help of the wonderful broadcaster Gerry Ryan and his staff he was found so quickly as Gerry (RIP) issued a plea live on radio and a passing driver found his lorry."

At the beginning of last year, Lizs family was hit by tragedy once again.

But without any doubts our greatest family tragedy unfolded on Sunday January 26, 2020, when the news was broken to us that our second brother (Paddy, Edgeworthstown), my poor mothers final son, had also taken his life.

We could not believe that this man who lit up the room when he walked in, the same man who was loved so dearly by his mum, sisters, wife and children and so many wonderful friends had made the choice to make us relive this horror.

Liz said the idea to organise the fundraiser came about during a lockdown get together.

She said they were with family friends Johnny Rhatigan and Patricia Lane. They had also suffered a tragic loss themselves on January 2, 2020, when Patricias wonderful brother Frankie Lane from Derrahaun, Kenagh, sadly decided it was time to leave this world.

Liz revealed, We were still in our deepest grief. We wanted to do something that would try and stop another family going through the horror of life after suicide. It was hard to come up with an idea that was Covid friendly but with a bit of discussion we decided on the Beauty to Beast.

Along with her wonderful strong mother Ann Casey and her beautiful sisters Josephine Casey (Limerick), Kathleen OShaughnessy (Legan) and Annemarie Wilson (Rathowen), Liz says that every day they think fondly of their fallen brothers.

I was only seven years old when Willie passed so I cannot speak from my own memories, but from speaking with my older sister Josephine she tells me he was a gentle soul who never gave cheek and always gave a good energy.

He was a funny boy but in his own very quiet way, he was kind and very gentle and had a great love for animals, he was very good at school and had so much potential for a bright future, which unfortunately living in rural Ireland in the 1980s he could not see.

We can only guess his reasons as no note was left and as bad as the mental health system may be now, Im sure it was not something he would ever have heard of. As a family his cause of death and death in general was not spoken about, he was just gone, it was a taboo subject.

Liz outlined that her brother Paddy was a fun-loving, kind and caring son, brother, father, husband, nephew, and uncle.

He was surrounded by so many wonderful friends and seemed to be living his best life. He pretty much always seemed happy and had a laugh that was infectious. He was my rock, my family and his family's rock. You could always depend on him and his pure love.

It was a complete shock to us all that he decided to leave this world. We had no signs he left no letter and we have no answers.

I still lay awake some nights thinking about the whys, the lack of answers might be the hardest thing to deal with. You think you know someone inside and out it feels like you have lost the person and the past relationship you had.

He knew too well what a suicide does to a family as it was in fact him that found Willie 32 years ago and its heart-breaking to think where his head must have been at in those final moments to put us all through all this again.

Liz wished to express a massive thank you to each and every person who supported the Casey family through these tragedies.

Most importantly I would like to send a massive thank you to the first responders who deal with this on a daily basis but never get the thanks they deserve. The Gardai and ambulance crew helped us through one of the hardest days of our lives and I need to say thank you.

Liz concluded, My one true wish is to get people talking about suicide, to help them understand that the darkness they are currently living in only temporary that there is help out there and that so many more people care about them that they will ever know, everything can be changed with a little help.

We hope that by our efforts, maybe some extra money will be raised for our local Samaritans, but more importantly to help show someone who is currently in turmoil that there is help available, that they are loved and life is worth living.

You can follow the progress of the Beauty to Beast fundraiser on Facebook @beautytobeast2021 and can make a donation via https://www.idonate.ie/Beautytobeast.

Athlone & Midlands Samaritans

Athlone and Midland Samaritans have been providing emotional support to anyone experiencing feelings of distress or despair since it opened its doors in 1992. It has over 80 volunteers who come from all walks of life and who commit to keeping the helpline available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.We can be reached by calling Freephone number 116 123 or by email jo@samaritans.org. You can also visit our centre at 3, Court Devenish, Athlone 2pm - 10pm Monday to Saturday.
A new book on the wetland archaeology site at Edercloon, Co Longford, has just been published by Transport Infrastructre Ireland (TII).

The site was on of the archaeological sites that were excavated on the route of the N4 Dromod-Roosky Bypass back in 2006 and the results of the Edercloon excavations have just been published by TII in a book entitled Between the Meadows: the archaeology of Edercloon on the N4 DromodRoosky Bypass (TII Heritage 11) by Caitriona Moore.

The bog in the townland of Edercloon, Co Longford, first came to archaeological attention in 1964, when a local farmer discovered a prehistoric stone axe that retained a portion of its original wooden handle.

Forty-two years later, during test excavations in advance of the construction of the N4 DromodRoosky Bypass, the preservative peat of Edercloon relinquished further ancient secrets in the form of a large network of wooden trackways and numerous artefacts.

This proved to be one of the most remarkable archaeological complexes ever excavated in Irelands wetlands.

Evidence for human activity at Edercloon extends back almost 6,000 years, when the first narrow track of branches and twigs was laid down on the wet bog surface. This practice would continue for four millennia as further structures were built and wheel fragments, spears, and vessels were deposited among them.

The story of Edercloon is not limited to the sites and objects submerged within the peat, however, it is also the account of an evolving landscape. Volcanic ash, ancient pollen, microscopic organisms, deep accumulations of peat, beetles wings, and the wood of the trackways themselves have been the subject of specialist palaeo- environmental studies.

Their findings greatly enhance and explain much about the archaeological tale recounted in Between the Meadowsthe discovery of a potentially unique wetland ritual complex that was the focus of sustained activity over millennia.

Author, Caitriona Moore studied archaeology at University College Dublin and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1996 and a Master of Arts degree in 2009.

She has worked on a wide range of archaeological projects across Ireland and specialises in the archaeology of wetlands, ancient woodworking and wooden artefacts. Caitriona is a Managing Director with Archaeology and Built Heritage Ltd.

Between the Meadows: the archaeology of Edercloon on the N4 DromodRoosky Bypass was released in August of this year and is available via the TII website at www.tii.ie in digital format. A hardcopy can be purchased at www.wordwellbooks.com.

A new book on the wetland archaeology site at Edercloon, Co Longford, has just been published by Transport Infrastructre Ireland (TII).

The site was on of the archaeological sites that were excavated on the route of the N4 Dromod-Roosky Bypass back in 2006 and the results of the Edercloon excavations have just been published by TII in a book entitled Between the Meadows: the archaeology of Edercloon on the N4 DromodRoosky Bypass (TII Heritage 11) by Caitriona Moore.

The bog in the townland of Edercloon, Co Longford, first came to archaeological attention in 1964, when a local farmer discovered a prehistoric stone axe that retained a portion of its original wooden handle.

Forty-two years later, during test excavations in advance of the construction of the N4 DromodRoosky Bypass, the preservative peat of Edercloon relinquished further ancient secrets in the form of a large network of wooden trackways and numerous artefacts.

This proved to be one of the most remarkable archaeological complexes ever excavated in Irelands wetlands.

Evidence for human activity at Edercloon extends back almost 6,000 years, when the first narrow track of branches and twigs was laid down on the wet bog surface. This practice would continue for four millennia as further structures were built and wheel fragments, spears, and vessels were deposited among them.

The story of Edercloon is not limited to the sites and objects submerged within the peat, however, it is also the account of an evolving landscape. Volcanic ash, ancient pollen, microscopic organisms, deep accumulations of peat, beetles wings, and the wood of the trackways themselves have been the subject of specialist palaeo- environmental studies.

Their findings greatly enhance and explain much about the archaeological tale recounted in Between the Meadowsthe discovery of a potentially unique wetland ritual complex that was the focus of sustained activity over millennia.

Author, Caitriona Moore studied archaeology at University College Dublin and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1996 and a Master of Arts degree in 2009.

She has worked on a wide range of archaeological projects across Ireland and specialises in the archaeology of wetlands, ancient woodworking and wooden artefacts. Caitriona is a Managing Director with Archaeology and Built Heritage Ltd.

Between the Meadows: the archaeology of Edercloon on the N4 DromodRoosky Bypass was released in August of this year and is available via the TII website at www.tii.ie in digital format. A hardcopy can be purchased at www.wordwellbooks.com.
Junior Eurovision is back!

After a year that we all want to put behind us, the singing competition for kids aged 9-14 from all across Europe, could be the breath of fresh air we need.

The search for Ireland's entry for 2021 is on and on 19th December the new Irish star will grace the stage and sing their hearts out for the nation.

It will be up to the judges Niamh Ni Chroinin and Fiachna O Braonain who will choose that lucky person that will represent us in Paris later in the year, along with guest judges Niamh Kavanagh, Brian Kennedy, Mickey Joe Harte, Jedward, Lesley Roy and Linda Martin, with new show presenter Louise Cantillon.

So, does your child have the voice of an angel?

Do you know someone who can hit those notes?

Or are you someone who knows they can rock the audience at this years Eurovision?

If so, head over to the TG4 website for more information on how to apply, and you could be on your way to Eurovision stardom!
President Michael D Higgins has led the tributes to Pat Hume who died on Thursday.

There will be so many people who will hear of the passing of Pat Hume with great sadness," said President Higgins.

"Their hearts will go out to her family and close associates.

"Their sadness, however, may I believe be helped as they recall Pats extraordinary contribution to life on this island and beyond.

"That life of Pat Hume was one of total commitment to community, to the possibilities of peace, to the measures of non-violence that were necessary to assert, vindicate and achieve the results of civil rights.

"While her support of the work of her late husband and Nobel Prize recipient, John Hume, was an exercise in solidarity, a partnership in courage, endurance and fortitude, her personal contribution was unique, immense and important in its own right.

"Pats personal contribution as teacher, mother, in conditions of conflict, political adviser, constituency secretary and consoler of the victims of oppression from so many sources, was extraordinary in every sense.

"The care, compassion and consistent support she gave was exemplary and without a hint of exclusion.

"It was an honour to address the John and Pat Hume foundation last June and to have the opportunity of recognising the contribution of John and herself to the Peace Process.

"Pats work, like that of John, will always have an indelible place in the minds of all Irish people, in particular those courageous people, of all dispositions, who sought a principled peace as an alternative to violence in any form, who worked day and night for a future that would be inclusive of the best of values.

"Sabina and I and our family, I know, will be but a few among the many who will wish to offer our condolences to her children, wider family, friends and the people of Derry and beyond in whose hearts she will always hold a place.

"Siochan siorrai do a anam lamhach, uasal croiuil.
Don't pack away the summer gear just yet as revised weather forecasts are predicting warm weather pushing up from Spain and France with temperatures reaching as high as 27 degrees in Ireland next week.

According to the Weather Alerts Channel, temperatures are forecast to hit 25 to possibly 27 degrees in some areas.

Sunshine is also predicted along with the warm air.

While short-term forecasts are predicting a dip in temperatures and some rain over the weekend, there have been much more positive forecasts for next week.

Typically, there was a short Indian summer as children returned to schools this week, but now it looks like the good weather hasn't gone away just yet.

The warm weather is set to stretch into the middle of next week, at the very least.

Meanwhile, Met Eireanns weather report for the month of August shows it was a mostly mild and changeable month.

There was some heavy rainfall and thundery showers at the start of the month.

It became mostly dry and settled from the 22nd up to the end of the month as high pressure built to the north of Ireland, blocking any active weather fronts from approaching.

A lot of warm sunny weather followed between August 23 and 28, especially in the west, but as the high pressure moved slightly to the northwest of Ireland towards the end of the month, cloud, mist and night-time fog become more common.
School & Education, Local News

By Chris Boyle Published: September 03 2021

Directs Department of Health to institute universal mask requirement in all schools.

Governor Kathy Hochul has announced a new, comprehensive plan to help ensure a safe, productive return to schools this fall in the midst of rising COVID-19 numbers fueled by the Delta variant. As part of this plan, Governor Hochul has directed the New York State Department of Health to institute a universal mask requirement in all schools, public and private, as determined necessary at the discretion of the Commissioner. The Department of Health will issue the requirement through regulatory action established by the Public Health and Health Planning Council.

Governor Hochul will also pursue options to mandate vaccines for school employees or require weekly testing in the absence of vaccines, and will continue to work with the Department of Health, education stakeholders and the Legislature on establishing the mandate.

"As Governor, my priorities are now the priorities of the people of New York - and right now that means fighting the Delta variant," Governor Kathy Hochul said. "My number one priority is getting children back to school and protecting the environment so they can learn safely. I am immediately directing the Department of Health to institute universal masking for anyone entering our schools, and we are launching a Back to School COVID-19 testing program to make testing for students and staff widely available and convenient. We are also working to require vaccinations for all school personnel with an option to test out weekly, and we are going to accomplish all of this by working in partnership with all levels of government."

To help ensure testing is available to students as they return to school, Governor Hochul is using $335 million in federal funds to launch a new COVID-19 Testing in Schools Program in partnership with local health departments and BOCES in New York State outside of New York City. In addition, New York City has received $225 million directly to initiate a COVID-19 Testing in Schools Program there, for a total of $585 million in federal funding in New York State to support these programs.

Governor Hochul also launched an additional back-to-school COVID-19 testing program in partnership with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Rite Aid and BioReference to make testing more widely available for New York State public school students before the start of the 2021-2022 school year.

Testing appointments will be available to New York students in grades K-12 at the 115 Rite Aid drive-through locations. Students are required to pre-register online and schedule a time slot for testing. Students aged 17 and under must have parental or legal guardian consent and be accompanied by a guardian at time of testing in the drive- through. Digital results will be delivered to parents for students to bring to school. COVID-19 testing is voluntary and will be provided at no cost to the student's family nor to the school district.

In addition to these new testing programs, New York State has available more than 4.3 million child-sized clothed face masks, about 10 million adult-sized clothed face masks and almost 55 million non-surgical face masks to provide to students and teachers in schools across the state.

State Health Commissioner Dr. Howard Zucker said, "Our highest priority is helping to ensure the health and safety of our students and educators as we work together to combat COVID-19. Since early July, COVID-19 cases in New York have risen 10-fold and 95 percent of sequenced positive cases were confirmed to be Delta variant. Based on incidence and prevalence, our findings demonstrate the necessity of layered prevention strategies, including this mask requirement. While a simple measure of prevention, requiring masks now is crucial for protecting the health of our children and ensuring we can get our students back in their schools this fall."

Commissioner of Education Dr. Betty A. Rosa said, "Since the onset of the pandemic, the health and safety of our students, teachers, and school personnel has been our top priority. With the increase in COVID variant cases around the state, Governor Hochul's action, taken after consultation with educators, demonstrates her commitment to the health and wellbeing of our students and the importance of keeping our schools open. The State Education Department supports a consistent application of masking requirements in schools, easing the return to school with a common line of defense against the spread of the COVID variant. I look forward to continuing our collaboration with Governor Hochul in support of our shared focus on expanded educational opportunity for all New Yorkers."

Board of Regents Chancellor Lester W. Young, Jr. said, "The Board and I applaud Governor Hochul for supporting and protecting students and teachers alike with a statewide mask mandate for schools. We must do everything in our power to limit the transmission of COVID in our schools so students continue to receive in-person instruction throughout the school year. Requiring students, teachers and staff to wear masks is the right thing to do for all New Yorkers."
Community, Charity & Cause

By Chris Boyle Published: September 03 2021

It was a pleasure to have this opportunity to recognize Joel and thank him for his efforts to bring his positive message to the next generation, Drucker said.

Nassau County Legislator Arnold W. Drucker (D  Plainview) recognized retired Plainview schoolteacher and author Joel Rauch on Thursday Aug. 19 for his philanthropy and generosity to the Mid Island Y JCC. Rauchs book, What Would I Be, is a story about children making choices through a variety of different animals to help teach self-esteem and self-worth.

Legislator Drucker presented Mr. Rauch with a Nassau County Citation for writing the book and dedicating a portion of its proceeds toward supporting the Mid Island Y JCC.

Not only will Joels book deliver key resources to the Mid Island Y JCC, I am hopeful that the message contained within its pages will positively impact our community by touching the hearts of young readers, Legislator Drucker said. It was a pleasure to have this opportunity to recognize Joel and thank him for his efforts to bring his positive message to the next generation.
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Arc Minerals Ltd - copper and cobalt explorer in Zambia - Delays results for the half-year ended June 30. The results will be released by October 31. Under AIM rules, companies normally have to release interim results within three months of the end of the period, but they can now extend that by a month under temporary Covid-19 measures.

Current stock price: 3.35 pence

Year-to-date change: down 14%

By Ivan Edwards; ivanedwards@alliancenews.com

Copyright 2021 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
President Energy PLC - energy company with assets focused primarily in South America - Says conditional farm-out agreement has been made at Pirity Concession in Paraguay and term of exploration concession will now expire September 12, 2023. Areas can be converted into exploitation licence if a discovery is made in the mean time. "We continue to proceed step by step," says Chair Peter Levine. "Whilst the necessary regulatory approval is yet to be satisfied, we consider this is only a matter of time before approval is granted given the provenance of the proposed Farminee."

President Energy inks farm-out deal at its Pirity concession in early June with "substantial Northern Hemisphere state-owned energy company". President to farm out 50% stake in Pirity.

Current stock price: 1.90 pence

Year-to-date change: up 5.6%

By Josie O'Brien; josieobrien@alliancenews.com

Copyright 2021 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
(Alliance News) - The following is a round-up of updates by London-listed companies, issued on Thursday and not separately reported by Alliance News:







i-nexus Global PLC - Coventry-based business management software - Plans to issue GBP600,000 convertible bonds to build on pipeline momentum, and because cash flow is typically weaker in winter. Detailed proposals will be published in "a matter of weeks". Wins three contracts in recent months and has two more contracts near completion. These are the first new contracts won in over nine months. But pick-up in sales up to July was slower than anticipated, meaning the monthly operating cost base has dropped to GBP270,000 from GBP360,000. Operating performance has been restored to breakeven from June onwards, on an earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation basis.







KR1 PLC - investor in companies in the blockchain industry - Invests USD500,000 in a seed funding round for the Exponent project, in return for a to-be-determined amount of XPN token. "Exponent is an open-source platform that equips strategists with the necessary tools and infrastructure to bring quantitative trading to decentralised finance," KR1 says. KR1 further announces on Wednesday that it contributed 5,000 kusama coins, worth around USD2.0 million, to the Moonriver crowdloan campaign. "Moonriver is a community-led Ethereum-compatible smart contracts platform," KR1 says.







Xtract Resources PLC - copper and gold miner in Mozambique, Zambia and Australia - Drilling at the Bushranger copper-gold project in New South Wales shows pyrite mineralisation and associated copper sulphides, and chalcopyrite mineralisation. "These two holes will be modelled and the continuing phase 2 drilling programme will focus on open pit extensions and further testing of this newly emerging zone," Executive Chair Colin Bird says.







Ariana Resources PLC - gold miner in Turkey and Australia - The Kiziltepe mine, 24%-owned by Ariana, makes revenue of USD16.2 million in the first half of 2021. 7,941 ounces of gold produced and sold. Production in July and August remains on target for the year.







Black Sea Property PLC - property developer in Bulgaria - Receives permission to rebuild the Ivan Vazov office building in central Sofia, after a long approval process. Construction work planned to start in early October.







By Ivan Edwards; ivanedwards@alliancenews.com

Copyright 2021 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
3rd September 2021 For immediate release

Directorate ChangeJardine Matheson Holdings Limited (the 'Company') announces that Alex Newbigging will leave the Jardine Matheson Group (the 'Group') on 31st December 2021 to relocate to the United Kingdom with his family and pursue other interests. Accordingly, he will step down from the Board of the Company as of that date.Alex has had a long and distinguished career with the Group. He assumed his current role as Chief Executive of Jardine International Motors in 2019 to oversee the Group's automotive interests across Southeast Asia and China. Prior to this role, Alex was the Group Managing Director of Jardine Cycle & Carriage for seven years, and before that, the Chief Executive of Jardine Engineering Corporation for four years. Alex joined the Group in 1995, and in addition to Hong Kong and Singapore, has held roles with various Group businesses in Malaysia, the Philippines and Australia.Most recently, Alex has played a key role in the transfer of the Group's Zung Fu Mercedes-Benz automotive dealership business in the Chinese mainland to Zhongsheng Group ('Zhongsheng') - an important transaction to strengthen the Group's strategic partnership with Zhongsheng, a leading automotive distribution group in China. Ben Keswick, Executive Chairman, said:"We are grateful to Alex for the contributions he has made over the years as the leader of several of our businesses and as a member of the Board. We wish Alex and his family all the best, and we look forward to continuing our longstanding friendship."

- end -

For further information, please contact:Investor and media enquiries:Jonathan LloydJardine Matheson Limited (852) 2843 8223Brunswick Group LimitedSunitha Chalam (852) 3512 5050This and other Group announcements can be accessed through the internet at www.jardines.com.
MANISTEE COUNTY  Nowadays, children  and adults  have all sorts of options when it comes to finding ways to spend their free time.

Some may worry that with video games, smartphones and computers being prominent in young people's lives they may be inclined to remain inside instead of going fishing. Since anglers under the age of 17 need not purchase a fishing license, it is difficult to gauge whether fishing is more or less popular amongst youngsters. However, Kevin Hughes, president of the Manistee County Sport Fishing Association, said if the turnout for the MCSFA's annual Kids Fish event is any indication, wetting a line is still a popular option for area youth.

"We've been holding fairly steady. Doing Kids Fish is one thing we really take pride in because that's one of our things: We want to get the youth involved," Hughes said. "Our numbers have been fairly steady. I was in the school business, and the child-age population of the county is down. For us to stay steady is pretty good, because the whole child population is down."

Kids Fish is a community outreach program put on by the Sport Fishing Association for kids 12 and younger held at Man Made Lake. Hughes said exposing children to the joys of fishing is an issue of great importance to the group.

"We're trying to do our best. It's just tough," he said. "Unfortunately, some of these kids are from single-parent homes and just don't get that influence from the grandma and grandpa and the mom and the dad taking them out. We're doing whatever we can to try to help them get out as much as we can with our activities."

Amy Wojciechowski, executive director of the Armory Youth Project, created the Fish On program this summer to give students an opportunity to fish.

"Because I love to fish, I wanted to share that love with the kids," she said in a previous interview with the News Advocate.

According to statistics from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the number of paid fishing license holders in the state has remained steady, as well. The number gradually climbed from 1.09 million in 2016 to as high as 1.11 in 2020 before a slight dip back to 1.08 million thus far in 2021.

Hughes said the Manistee County Sport Fishing Association works with the Sunset Shoreline Strutters chapter of the National Wild Turkey Federation to instill a love of the outdoors in children because, whether they are toting a fishing rod or a rifle, it is important kids get outside.

"When we do the Kids Fish we get a lot of local support from different businesses in town. We do a joint venture with the Wild Turkey Federation," he said. "They're trying to get kids into hunting, too. Our Kids Fish day, they're one of our major underwriters  the Wild Turkey Federation's local chapter. They're in the same position; they're trying to get kids hunting and fishing and doing outdoor stuff."

The coronavirus pandemic created a surge in interest in outdoor recreation activities, and the Michigan Department of Natural Resources reported a significant uptick in new fishing customers  people who purchased a fishing license after having not owned one in five or more years  in 2020. There were 237,681 new customers in 2020, up nearly 43% from 2019's 166,630 new customers.

In recent years the Manistee County Sport Fishing Association launched Fun Fish, a weekly summertime event in which anglers fish the county's inland lakes in a friendly competition. Hughes said it is a great opportunity for parents to take their little ones fishing.

"We fish Bear Lake, Manistee Lake, Portage Lake and the back waters and all that. ... We really encourage moms and dads to bring kids on that," he said. "We try to do that weekly throughout the summer. We have one per week. We take the kids out and a lot of the guys bring their kids along with them for the Fun Fish nights."

Hughes said there are numerous benefits one can derive from fishing. If children don't take up the sport, there will be no one to pass it down to the next generation. Hughes said it would be a shame if kids are unable to give fishing a try.

"It teaches patience  some days the fish aren't biting the greatest. You have to be patient, you have to get up early and stick to it," he said. "It's something that's important to us: trying to develop an early love for fishing. Some kids never get to go to find out if they like it or not."

SEE ALSO:

Salmon season heats up in Benzie, Manistee counties

Sizable salmon: Manistee man catches 37-pound fish

Teen reels in record-setting Chinook salmon near Ludington

Armory Youth Project's fishing program one of many new offerings for Manistee students

Manistee event draws families in support of getting kids out fishing
The Copa America champions played with a man advantage after 32 minutes when defender Venezuelan Adrian Martinez was sent off after a harsh tackle on Messi.

Lautaro Martinez opened the scoring in first-half stoppage time, assisted by Giovanni Lo Celso. Joaquin Correa doubled the lead in the 71st minute from the edge of the box after a quick exchange with Messi and Lautaro. Angel Correa netted the third from close range three minutes later.

Argentina's victory was clinched when Soteldo scored for the hosts from the spot.

"Today we had a great first half and they were down one," Lautaro said. "After we scored we managed to work with more gaps so we could bring the three points home."

Had Argentina lost at Venezuela it would have been overtaken by Ecuador, who beat Paraguay 2-0 hours earlier. Felix Torres scored the first goal in the 88th minute with a header. Michael Estrada netted his in added time. Argentina has 15 points and Ecuador 12 in third place.

Ecuador will host Chile in the next round, while sixth-place Paraguay is to take on fifth-place Colombia, which has nine points after securing a 1-1 draw with Bolivia in the altitude of La Paz.

Roger Martinez's goal in the 69th minute gave Colombia the lead before Fernando Saucedo's blast from outside the box leveled for eighth-place Bolivia in the 83rd minute.

Also on Thursday, Peru and Uruguay drew 1-1 in Lima. The hosts opened the scoring with Renato Tapia in the 24th minute with a bicycle kick. But Giorgian de Arrascaeta kept the Uruguayans in contention with a goal in the 29th minute, despite the absence of injured Luis Suarez and Edinson Cavani, who was not released by Manchester United.

In other matches Sunday, Uruguay will host Bolivia. Peru will take on Venezuela.
Robert Elton Rector, 84 yrs of Wilburton, Ok passed away at His home in Wilburton, Ok on Friday, September 3, 2021. Memorial Services will be on Friday, October 1, 2021 at 2 pm at the Waldrop Funeral Home Chapel in Wilburton, Ok Officiating will be Mr. Jay Caudill. Services are under the dir
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"As people continue to seek information related to the pandemic to manage their lives around it, we remain committed to finding and sharing authoritative and timely information across our platforms," said Hema Budaraju, Director, Google Search, in the statement.The information will automatically show up when users search for vaccine centers near them, or in any specific area across Google Search, Maps and Google Assistant.In addition to English, users can also search in eight Indian languages -- Hindi, Bengali, Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada, Gujarati and Marathi.Google will continue to partner closely with the CoWIN team to extend this functionality to all vaccination centers across India, the company said.The company has also been working closely with the Rapid Risk Response team at the Union Health Ministry that is tracking misinformation using social media listening tools across regions and languages, and countering it with science-based messaging on vaccines and pandemic response overall.Shortly after the first phase of vaccination commenced, the company had rolled out knowledge panels in Google Search that show up queries relating to Covid vaccine.This information is sourced from the Health Ministry, and provides answers to the commonly asked questions, displays real-time statistics around vaccination, and provides links to the Health Ministry website for additional local resources.Source: IANS
Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan had once called late actor Sidharth Shuklashareef after he danced with his on-screen daughter, Sana Saeed.

In 2013, SRK appeared on the dance reality show Jhalak Dikhhla Jaa season 6, where Sidharth Shukla was also a participant.

A video from the show has now surfaced on the internet in which SRK teased Sidharth while he interacted with Sana Saeed, who played the role of his daughter in the 1998 film Kuch Kuch Hota Hai.

In the video, SRK went on the stage after she performed with Sidharth and separated both of them and looked at them with surprise.

After hugging Sana on stage, he told Sidharth, "Tum shareef ho maine note karliya hai. Tumne zada mere saamne toh badtameezi nahi ki (You are a gentleman that I have noted. You have not resorted to any insolent behaviour in front of me)."

Sidharth bowed in front of SRK and acknowledged the compliment. He also participated in the show but was eliminated in the 11th week.

Sidharth Shukla passed away on Thursday at the age of 40 after suffering a cardiac arrest.

Sidharth was cremated today at the Oshiwara crematorium in the presence of his family members and close friends. The late actors mortal remains were taken from Cooper Hospital to the cremation ground on Friday noon in a decorated ambulance.
Meridian, MS (39302)

Today

Rain likely. Potential for heavy rainfall. Low 67F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall around a quarter of an inch..

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Rain likely. Potential for heavy rainfall. Low 67F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall around a quarter of an inch.
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AG Nessel Files Amicus Brief In Support Of Federal Firearm Regulations

AG Nessel Files Amicus Brief In Support Of Federal Firearm Regulations

Attorney General

Media contact: Lynsey Mukomel 517-599-2746

Public inquiries: 517-335-7622



September 3, 2021

LANSING - Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel today joined a coalition of 18 attorneys general in filing an amicus brief supporting federal laws restricting the commercial sale of handguns to persons under the age of 21. In the brief, filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, the coalition argues that such restrictions protect residents from the harmful effects of gun violence, as well as promote the safe use of firearms.

The coalition filed the brief in Hirschfeld v. Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms, Tobacco, and Explosives, a lawsuit challenging federal statutes and regulations that bar 18-to-20-year-olds from purchasing handguns from federally licensed dealers. The plaintiffs argue that such restrictions violate the Second Amendment, and a three-judge panel agreed, holding that the federal laws are unconstitutional. The federal government is now asking the full court to rehear the case.

"Preventing people under the age of 21 from legally obtaining firearms is common sense regulation," Nessel said. "If the legal age for drinking is 21, so should it be for possessing weapons - plain and simple."

In its brief, the coalition explains that the decision is the first to strike down an age-based restriction on the sale or access to firearms, breaking with the decisions of multiple other federal courts. The coalition argues that age-based restrictions on the sale of firearms are presumptively lawful regulatory measures and that such restrictions are reasonably tailored to the governmental interest in public safety.

More specifically, the coalition argues that the court should rehear the case because:

The decision could raise meritless questions about the constitutionality of state laws nationwide that protect public safety by limiting young people from accessing firearms. States have long exercised their governmental prerogative to implement measures that regulate the sale and use of firearms for individuals under the age of 21. Nearly every state, as well as the District of Columbia, has determined that imposing age-based restrictions on the sale or use of firearms is necessary to promote public safety and curb gun violence within its borders. The coalition argues that the panel decision will raise needless questions about the constitutionality of these laws.

States have long exercised their governmental prerogative to implement measures that regulate the sale and use of firearms for individuals under the age of 21. Nearly every state, as well as the District of Columbia, has determined that imposing age-based restrictions on the sale or use of firearms is necessary to promote public safety and curb gun violence within its borders. The coalition argues that the panel decision will raise needless questions about the constitutionality of these laws. The decision endangers public safety by eliminating an important safeguard against the scourge of gun violence. The coalition argues that the federal restrictions at issue in this case serve an important public safety purpose, and if the decision remains in place, it will remove a common sense tool to protect against increased gun violence.

Joining Attorney General Nessel in the brief are the attorneys general of California, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington.
AG Nessel Joins Bipartisan Coalition Calling on Congress to Clarify First Step Act, Apply Fair Sentencing Reforms to Low-level Drug Offenses

AG Nessel Joins Bipartisan Coalition Calling on Congress to Clarify First Step Act, Apply Fair Sentencing Reforms to Low-level Drug Offenses

Attorney General

Media contact: Lynsey Mukomel 517-599-2746

Public inquiries: 517-335-7622



September 3, 2021

LANSING - Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel joined a bipartisan coalition of 25 attorneys general urging Congress to amend the First Step Act and extend critical resentencing reforms to individuals convicted of the lowest-level crack cocaine offenses.

The coalition, which sent a letter yesterday to Congress, is calling on legislators to take this needed step in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's recent decision in Terry v. United States, which held that certain mid-level and high-level crack cocaine offenders could seek resentencing under the law, but low-level offenders were not eligible.

"It is fundamentally unfair to allow for the resentencing of a high-level crack cocaine offender while not doing the same for a low-level offender," Nessel said. "In light of the Supreme Court's decision, I am joining my colleagues in calling on Congress to clarify that the relief provided by the First Step Act applies to all individuals convicted of crack cocaine offenses."

The First Step Act - the result of landmark criminal justice reform legislation - passed Congress with strong bipartisan support in 2018. One key reform acknowledged injustices caused by the earlier crack cocaine vs. powder cocaine sentencing regime. That now-discredited regime punished users and dealers of crack cocaine much more harshly than users and dealers of powder cocaine.

In 2010, Congress had passed the Fair Sentencing Act to reduce the disparity between sentences for crack cocaine and powder cocaine. However, the law did not help the many people sentenced for crack cocaine offenses before 2010 who remained in prison. The First Step Act then included a provision that made previous drug sentencing reforms retroactive, allowing those serving harsh sentences imposed under the former federal law to seek relief.

U.S. Senators Richard J. Durbin, Charles E. Grassley, Cory A. Booker, and Mike Lee-the drafters of the First Step Act-confirmed in an amicus brief that the sentencing relief was intended to apply to all crack cocaine offenders sentenced before 2010. Nevertheless, in Terry v. United States, the Supreme Court concluded that while the First Step Act clearly authorized certain mid- or high-level crack cocaine offenders to seek resentencing, it failed to extend relief to the lowest-level offenders.

In today's letter, the attorneys general urge Congress to close that gap and clarify that the sentencing relief provided by the First Step Act extends to all individuals convicted of crack cocaine offenses under the earlier regime, including the lowest-level offenders. They argue that there is no reason that only these low-level offenders should continue to serve sentences informed by now-discredited standards and that they should have an opportunity to seek a second chance.

Joining Attorney General Nessel in sending this letter are the attorneys general of California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Guam, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin.
Information on Flint XRF Scanners

Information on Flint XRF Scanners

On September 2, 2021, the Detroit Free Press ran a news story regarding the use of an XRF scanner on Flint residents. The article referenced efforts undertaken by MIOSHA to ensure that use of the XRF Scanner was done in accordance with MIOSHA's rules and regulations, but unfortunately may have left some readers with the misunderstanding that use of the XRF scanner exposed individuals to radiation at dangerous or unsafe levels, which is not accurate.

Therefore, the Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity and MIOSHA thought it would be helpful for the public to have access to the entirety of MIOSHA's response to questions that the Detroit Free Press posed. Below please find MIOSHA's entire September 1, 2021, pre-publication response to the Detroit Free Press. Please also see below a link to a document that outlines MIOSHA's role in regulating uses of XRF devices in the State of Michigan. We hope you find this information helpful.

Pre-publication statement provided to the Detroit Free Press on September 1, 2021

"As an initial and general matter, there was no indication from MIOSHA's inspections that an individual operating these machines or having the machine used on them was exposed to radiation at dangerous or unsafe levels. MIOSHA's regulation of x-ray devices like the ones at issue is a collaborative one aimed at getting devices registered consistent with the applicable laws and rules. The rules require machines to be registered with MIOSHA, but they clearly say that a registration does not constitute an approval by MIOSHA for any particular activity. These rules also require registration of machines before they are used, but that does not always happen. When confronted with those situations, MIOSHA works with the registrant (who may not have been aware of the registration requirements) to get them into compliance with the applicable rules.

Persons registering new devices must select what they consider to be the appropriate use category for the machine, and they are not required to indicate that a machine will be used on humans. MIOSHA is not bound by the registrant's selection and if a subsequent inspection establishes that a different category was more appropriate, MIOSHA can reissue the registration and include registration conditions.

It is true that MIOSHA may issue fines or pursue criminal actions if a person violates the rules. But as indicated on MIOSHA's website, it has been found to be more efficient to work with registrants to ensure the proper registration and the safe use of their x-ray machines without the need to issue civil penalties or pursue criminal action. During the inspections at issue, MIOSHA did not discover any facts that caused it to deviate from this collaborative, get-into-compliance approach. Again, MIOSHA did not conclude that an individual operating these machines or having the machine used on them was exposed to radiation at dangerous or unsafe levels.

The use of these particular machines was novel, but MIOSHA's review and inspection of the machines and their use was consistent with its normal regulatory activities. The novel nature of the machines did lead to more-than-typical communication with the registrant about the machines on topics like how they were being used, how much radiation they emitted, and ways that additional safeguards (or registration conditions) could be implemented. MIOSHA ultimately required additional safeguards but did not conclude that anyone was endangered by the use of the machines prior to the implementation of those additional safeguards. For example, MIOSHA immediately required the use of finger or wrist radiation monitors for employees because that is a requirement of an existing rule for users of handheld XRF units. For machine types and uses that are not specifically covered by its rules, MIOSHA will propose registration conditions for that specific use and will generally give registrants an opportunity to comment on the conditions. MIOSHA will consider a registrant's comments, but is not bound by them when ultimately issuing registration conditions.

MIOSHA did not conclude that the registrant was being misleading about the amount of radiation being emitted. Rather, there was communication about the different ways such emissions can be measured and MIOSHA explained the proper form of measurement under the applicable rules. And, MIOSHA does not administer the certificate of need program in Michigan. The goal of Michigan's Certificate of Need (CON) program is to protect healthcare customers from excess or low-quality healthcare services and the costs associated with them. The devices used by Napoli Shkolnik is not a service covered under the CON program.

MIOSHA did not order that the machines stop being used following its initial visit to the facility because there were no indications that any individuals were being exposed to high or dangerous levels of radiation, and that course of action would not be consistent with MIOSHA's radiation safety regulation practices. Generally, MIOSHA gives registrants time to take corrective action and, if necessary, MIOSHA may reinspect a facility to determine whether compliance was achieved. The aim here was to ensure compliance; not the issuance of orders to stop using the machines.

When it became aware of the use of these particular machines, MIOSHA took steps to ensure it acted promptly and in a manner consistent with its prior regulation of x-ray machines. The novel nature of the use of the machines caused MIOSHA to be deliberate in its review and inspections, which explains why the process was ongoing for several months."

To view the document that outlines MIOSHA's role in regulating use of XRF devices in the State of Michigan, please click on the following link: "MIOSHA Radiation Safety Section Inspection Authority Related to XRF Devices and Regulation."
Sept. 3, 2021

Anglers urged to step up prevention efforts during salmon season

Invasive New Zealand mudsnails have been detected at the mouth of Shanty Creek, a tributary of the Grass River in Antrim County. The snails were found during routine monitoring in May by the Grass River Natural Area Stream Watch project and confirmed through DNA analysis by Oakland University in August.

New Zealand mudsnails were first discovered in the United States in Idaho's Snake River in 1987. Since then, the snails have spread throughout the western states and into areas of the Great Lakes by attaching themselves to boats, waders and equipment. The Grass River is now the sixth river system in Michigan known to be infested by the mudsnails. Their discovery in the Pere Marquette River in August 2015 signaled the first detection in a Michigan inland waterway. In 2016, populations were confirmed in the Boardman and Au Sable rivers. By 2017, the invasive snails were found in the Upper Manistee and Pine rivers.

Michigan's salmon season, which peaks in September and October, draws thousands of anglers to Michigan's premier rivers.

"This is a time when people are likely to visit multiple rivers and streams over a few days," said Lucas Nathan, Michigan Department of Natural Resources aquatic invasive species coordinator. "If they are not cleaning equipment thoroughly each time, there is a potential to introduce New Zealand mudsnails into new waters."

What harm can a snail do?

This brown to black, one-eighth-inch long mudsnail, a native of New Zealand, is considered invasive and is prohibited in Michigan due to the environmental harm it can cause to rivers, streams and lakes. Because the snail reproduces by cloning (females develop complete embryos without fertilization), a single snail can start an entire population.

One snail can produce over 200 young in a year. Since few natural predators or parasites of this species exist in North America, their numbers grow rapidly each year. In some locations in western states, researchers have documented snails reaching densities of 300,000 per square meter. With that many mudsnails, food for other stream invertebrate populations can become scarce. Fish that feed on native invertebrates like mayflies and caddisflies may find it more difficult to forage in rivers invaded by New Zealand mudsnails. Fish will consume New Zealand mudsnails, but due to the snail's thick shell, equipped with a tightly closing "hatch" called the operculum, they are difficult for fish to digest, offer the fish little nutritional value and can be excreted alive. Substituting mudsnails for native food sources can reduce the growth, condition and ultimately the abundance of key sport fish including trout.

What is being done?

Since the initial detection, the DNR and Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy have incorporated mudsnail monitoring into their standard sampling procedures, increasing the potential for early detection in several rivers and streams each year.

Volunteers across the state, like those with the Grass River Natural Area Stream Watch, conduct regular monitoring of streams and rivers through the Michigan Clean Water Corps, or MiCorps, to determine stream health and look for invasive species. Other partners, including universities and cooperative invasive species management areas also engage in annual monitoring.

Emily Burke, conservation and education specialist with Grass River Natural Area, Inc., said she was able to identify New Zealand mudsnails while sampling Shanty Creek thanks to invasive species identification training provided by the CAKE (Charlevoix, Antrim, Kalkaska and Emmett) CISMA in the spring. "The Michigan Invasive Species Grant Program has been instrumental in fostering the development of CISMAs across the state, creating a network of local invasive species resources," Nathan said. "At the same time, the grant program supports research efforts like Oakland University's New Zealand mudsnail project, which has raised awareness among anglers, trained citizen scientists and developed an important partnership with Trout Unlimited, which helped to initiate the New Zealand Mudsnail Collaborative." Following Burke's report, a team from Oakland University conducted monitoring on 15 sites in the Grass and Elk rivers but found no additional infestations. Local and state partners will continue to monitor the area and use outreach opportunities like Aquatic Invasive Species Awareness Week to educate the public about preventing the spread of New Zealand mudsnails and other harmful species.

What can you do?

The most important means of prevention is practicing good recreational hygiene. After a visit to one of Michigan's lakes, rivers or streams, be sure to clean, drain and dry your boat, trailer and equipment before heading to a new destination.

The New Zealand mudsnail's small size requires careful examination and cleaning of places where plants, mud or debris can be found on poles, nets, waders, boots, buckets, kayaks, canoes and flotation devices. Anything that has been in the water or at the water's edge should be inspected before it is packed or loaded.

The NZMS Collaborative offers these simple steps for cleaning boots and waders:

Stomp and inspect as soon as you leave the water to remove attached debris.

as soon as you leave the water to remove attached debris. Brush waders, soles and laces to loosen remaining debris and mud.

waders, soles and laces to loosen remaining debris and mud. Spray boots and waders thoroughly with a disinfecting agent.

boots and waders thoroughly with a disinfecting agent. Rinse after 20 minutes.

after 20 minutes. Dry waders thoroughly before next use.

The short video, New Zealand Mudsnail Ecology and Fishing Gear Decontamination in Michigan, available at NZMSCollaborative.org, provides a demonstration of this cleaning technique as well as information on how to identify the invasive snail.

Additional information on New Zealand mudsnail, including how to report a suspected discovery of the snail, can be found at Michigan.gov/Invasives.

Michigan's Invasive Species Program is cooperatively implemented by the Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy, the Department of Natural Resources, and the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development.

/Note to editors: Accompanying photos are available below for download. Suggested captions and credit information follow:

Map: Invaded river systems in Michigan, to date. Red dots indicate locations with confirmed presence of New Zealand mudsnails. Map courtesy of Jeremy Geist, Trout Unlimited.

Debris: New Zealand mudsnails are visible on this woody debris near the mouth of Shanty Creek. Photo courtesy of Emily Burke, Grass River Natural Area, Inc.

Mudsnails: A closer view of mudsnails is shown./
Gov. Whitmer Proclaims September as Hispanic Heritage Month

Gov. Whitmer Proclaims September as Hispanic Heritage Month

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

September 1, 2021

Contact: Press@Michigan.gov

Gov. Whitmer Proclaims September as Hispanic Heritage Month

LANSING, Mich. -- Governor Whitmer is celebrating Michigan's Hispanic population by proclaiming September 2021 as Hispanic Heritage Month.

"Michigan's Hispanic and Latino residents are an essential part of our state's cultural and economic fabric," said Governor Whitmer. "I am proud to proclaim September as Hispanic Heritage month and celebrate alongside a community filled with rich tradition as we continue to ensure that Michigan is a welcoming and inclusive place for all."

"Governor Whitmer's proclamation establishing September as Hispanic Heritage Month is very exciting! Michigan's Hispanic population is dedicated to building Michigan's future, and we are honored to have a Month of official celebration," said Jesse Venegas, Chair, Michigan Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. "We will take this opportunity to continue to celebrate the contributions of Hispanics in Arts, Sciences, Labor, Agriculture, Business, and Civil Rights. The Hispanic and Latino community in Michigan is woven with many threads from many nations and cultures, but we all stand together as Michiganders! Adelante!"

"The West Michigan Hispanic Chamber of Commerce applauds the efforts of our state government to proclaim September Hispanic Heritage Month," said Guillermo Cisneros, President and CEO, West Michigan Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. "This is a great recognition from our government to the hundreds of thousands of Latinos that are in Michigan contributing to the economy and making an impact in the community."

"Hispanic/Latinos have a long history of contributions in all areas, cultural, economics, art, science, and technology to this great state of Michigan," said Monica Reyes, Executive Director, Great Lakes Bay Hispanic Leadership Institute. "It is only fitting that we celebrate the generations of Hispanic Latino families that continue to contribute and enrich our state beyond measure."

The month of September recognizes and celebrates the contributions of Hispanic and Latinos in Michigan and the United States. Michigan's Hispanic and Latino population has grown from 2010 to 2020, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. According to the 2020 U.S. Census, Hispanics and Latinos make up 5.6% of the state's residents, up from 4.4% in 2010.

View the full proclamation here.

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A year like no other forced all of us to change and redirect  terms that all of us are so tired of hearing  including our brewery friends. For some, opportunity lay beyond those pivots, and City Built Brewing in Grand Rapids took a chance, and created a whole lineup of beautiful, award winning labels for their beer that have been turning heads, as well as taste buds in West Michigan.

In March, City Built was awarded first place by USA Today readers for best beer label for their vibrant, multi-layered beauty that they created for their Czech pilsner beer named Prague Underground. In a similar poll for the national publication, they were also named the third best brew pub.

Where we started to get steam, and started to get attention, was when we hired Kyle DeGroff Design, said City Built owner Edwin Collazo, of hooking up with the designer in December 2019. I had heard of Kyle, because he had done murals. We got connected, and I sent him a note. I thought it would be really cool to have a conversation, and share more with him about City Built.

City Built had seen some of DeGroff designs, and was interested in working with them, no matter the cost. The companys designs scratched an itch that the brewery didnt know that they had, according to Collazo.

Collazo didnt really know DeGroff, he just knew of him after seeing some of his art, specifically the mural that he had created out of bottle caps at the HopCat in Grand Rapids located on the Beltline at Knapps Corners.

Let me tell you, that mural is a thing of absolute beauty and inspiration. Stunningly gorgeous, it features thousands and thousands of colorful bottle caps, all artistically arranged along a wide expanse of wall, to create a centerpiece for the restaurant. Hard to believe that he underestimated the mural by several hundred thousand bottle caps, according to Collazo.

His math was a little off, Collazo explained with a laugh.

Youd never guess it when you see it in person.

Collazo reached out to the artist, and they started talking right before COVID. Once the pandemic hit, and City Built had to switch up their brewery model to incorporate take-out, and move all the beer into cans, Collazo knocked on DeGroffs door until he was introduced.

It went from us hoping we could do one or two new brands a month, to we just produced an entire line up of brands, Collazo said.

Lucky for the brewery, DeGroff had been working with fellow local artist Elliot Chaltry for BarFly, the parent company to HopCat. During the pandemic shutdown, BarFly allowed Chaltry to freelance a bit, and he brought his knowledge of special printing techniques to City Built.

It was super gracious for them to allow him to do this, Collazo said, giving a nod of thanks to Barfly.

Chaltry creates eye popping designs by layering colors and a slight metallic sheen to the label, giving it a 3-D quality that you cant miss.

The technique employs layering up to 6 layers of ink, that a local printer develops along with the art, to create what Collazo calls a varnish. The first time I saw cans with these labels on them, I literally stopped in my tracks. They truly are vibrant, with a bit of shine that catches your eye.

City Built typically comes to the artists with a beer name, and a storyline, and then lets them run with their ideas.

The art just kind of lends itself to be more dimensional, Collazo said.

And while the art might lend itself to this, it took a local printer to really push the printing process to create the layering process.

Together, DeGroff and Chaltry ended up doing about 30 different pieces of art for City Built beers.

It was kind of a perfect storm in my opinion, said Steph Harding, brand manager for City Built Brewing. It started pre-COVID. Then the shutdown, and all of a sudden we didnt have a lot of time. But this line happens.

Theres a hidden mickey on each label to find. Look for a third eye somewhere on each one. This is a theme that Collazo was interested in exploring.

People are just drawn by faces, he said. Thats just psychology.

As pretty as a label might be, it doesnt really matter if the liquid inside the can or bottle isnt good. Thankfully, City Built puts just as much effort into the beer inside as they do on the outside. The lineup here is constantly changing thanks to head brewer Rob Qualis, and you are not going to find these beers in distribution, so youll need to make a pilgrimage to the westside of Michigan to visit their pub in Grand Rapids. You wont regret it. Snuggle into a open booth, or grab a chair by one of the sunny windows overlooking Monroe Street. That Prague Underground, the beer that won that big national award, has nothing to hide behind, and is top-notch quality. The Monroe Weisse combines just the right amount of tropical fruits with a slightly sour beer base, for a refreshing little brew. And the seltzer here is one of my favorites in the state, with a nice neutral base without any off-flavors, and the ability to add natural fruity flavors to it for a low-calorie refresher. In addition to their own brews to be found at City Built, look for collaborations between them and other area breweries as well.

The brewery features a Puerto Rican inspired menu, with dishes like yuca fries, bori balls, or a loaded beer cheese dip known as "queservesa picadillo." Dont miss the uber popular tacos, there are multiple styles to choose from, Im a big fan of the shrimp diablo. Currently on the weekends, there is a special pop-up menu happening, featuring Cajun and Creole cuisine under the moniker Le Grande Zombie.

After your visit, grab a few four packs of these gorgeous beers to take home with you. They are award winners, inside and out.

Its almost a bigger deal for a small brewery like us to create all of these unique labels, said Collazo.

These really have to hit the mark, Harding added. Its more of a risk. A big brewery, people might just drink the beer regardless. Here, it might be buying a beer because of a cool label. That cooler might be filled with delicious beer, but people might purchase based on a cool label. And then say, wow this beer is really good too. Label decisions are really more risky.

People have said that the label is really cooler than the beer, Collazo said with a laugh. You have to woo them. It was good fortune that things happened the way that they did. Go get seduced by City Built, the label might draw you in, the beer will keep you coming.

If you go:

City Built Brewing Company

820 Monroe Ave NW STE 155

Grand Rapids, MI 49503

(616) 805-5755

More info: https://citybuiltbrewing.com/ or Facebook
MANISTEE COUNTY  With more than half of Michigan school districts implementing universal masking policies based on mandates from their local health department, Manistee County parents may be wondering if a similar mandate will be coming to their child's school.

Not at this time, according to the District Health Department #10, which covers Manistee County.

In a statement released Friday, health officials said they will leave any mask mandates up to individual schools, districts and child care facilities based on local data, case trends and potential impacts to families and students.

There are 45 different local public health departments throughout Michigan, and each one must evaluate the situation within the unique communities they serve to determine appropriate actions to take, DHD #10 health officer Kevin Hughes said in the statement.

Hughes pointed out that such decisions wouldn't be made by just the health department.

These decisions are not taken lightly and involve numerous stakeholders, including each jurisdictions governing entity, before a health officer makes the decision to issue any public health advisories or mandates," he said. "We understand that this may be frustrating to many, but it really does involve several key stakeholders outside of the health department for a mandate to successfully be enforced.

DHD #10 still recommends residents follow the guidelines set by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention:

 Universal indoor masking by all students, staff, teachers, and visitors of K-12 schools regardless of vaccination status;

 Maintain least 3-feet physical distance between students within the classrooms;

 Perform screening tests;

 Frequent handwashing;

 Proper indoor ventilation; and

 Respiratory etiquette, such as covering coughs and sneezes.

"DHD #10 continues to provide guidance to schools within the 10-county jurisdiction through weekly conference calls, toolkits and other resources to assist them during this challenging time," the statement said. "The community will be notified immediately if something changes, and mandates can successfully be enacted."

On Aug. 27, the Benzie-Leelanau District Health Department issued a public health order requiring universal masking in grades K-12 for all school districts within the departments two-county jurisdiction of Benzie and Leelanau counties.

Local public health departments have a duty to protect the publics health, said Lisa Peacock, Benzie-Leelanau health officer, in a news release. After thoughtful consideration, we took this action due to several key factors, with the number one goal of helping schools maintain in-person learning in a safe and healthy environment.

In Manistee County, Manistee Area Public Schools is requiring masks. Bear Lake Schools, Kaleva Norman Dickson Schools, Onekama Consolidated Schools, CASMAN Academy and Manistee Catholic Central recommend masks for staff and students.
MORLEY  Honoring the military in its many forms can be an incredibly powerful and meaningful act, no matter how its done.

On Aug. 29, staff at Moe-Z-Inn Bar & Grill, in Morley, were able to appreciate the gesture of an anonymous patron who bought beers to honor fallen soldiers in the aftermath of the United States withdrawal from Afghanistan.

The man, who chose to remain nameless, purchased 13 beers from the restaurant to commemorate the lives of the soldiers who lost their lives in violence in the Afghanistan withdrawal.

Jenna Salazar, a waitress at Moe-Z-Inn, said seeing such a gesture was comforting because she has personal connections to military service.

The man came into Moe-Z-Inn and ordered 13 12 ounce Bud Lights for the 13 fallen soldiers, Salazar said. He was very quiet about it and asked to set a wooden flag that was hanging up on the table, and myself and a coworker put the drinks on the table, and I shook his hand, told him thank you and that I appreciated it a lot because my boyfriend is in the army right now, and its nice to see people honoring our fallen military and currently serving military.

He was very quiet about the whole thing, but that act of kindness wont be forgotten, she added. Im glad someone stepped up. I was thinking about doing the same thing that day or talking to my boss about doing something like it and Im glad someone got to do it.

According to reporting from the Associated Press, on Aug. 26, two suicide bombers and gunmen attacked crowds of Afghans flocking to Kabuls airport, transforming a scene of desperation into one of horror in the days following an airlift for those fleeing the Taliban takeover. The attacks killed at least 60 Afghans and 13 U.S. troops, Afghan and U.S. officials said.

The Moe-Z-Inn bar is not the first place that the gesture of purchasing beers to honor the fallen soldiers has been seen. The Morley American Legion Post #554 followed suit with the act and posted a tribute of its own to its Facebook page.

Salazar said she sees the gesture as one of respect for the military and hopes that more people will support troops and veterans.

I think buying the 13 beers symbolizes that the 13 families that the military personnel came from are supported and seen and that the American people are grateful for what the military is doing, Salazar said. Its horrifying imagining what these families are going through, my heart goes out to them. I think its amazing that the community is showing support to these heroes and their sacrifices. Our country needs to support our military in Afghanistan 100% and continue to make effort to get American soldiers home.

It made me smile and almost tear up just thinking about the 13 people not going home but grateful that I live in a country where we can come together and honor them, she added. I think the display is a very positive thing, it helps people take a minute and honor the lost soldiers. It may not be a lot, but its something.

Salazar said continued support for the military and veterans is important, and that there are many ways to make a difference.

I think people can continue honoring the military and fallen soldiers by just showing support, donating where you can, Salazar said. The weight that these families and soldiers carry, fallen soldier or not, is tremendous, and sometimes all they need to hear is thank you or show that they are support. The American people see and hear the families of these soldiers and they will not be forgotten, we stand with them and they have our support.
NICOSIA, Cyprus (AP)  Meteorologists in Cyprus said Friday that August was the east Mediterranean islands hottest month since the recording of temperatures began 38 years ago.

The Meteorological Department of Cyprus said the average high temperature last month was 39.8 degrees Celsius (103.6 F), eclipsing the previous record of 39.7 degrees Celsius (103.5 F) that was set in July 2020.
MEXICO CITY (AP)  Mexico has faced immigration pressures from the north, south and within its own borders in recent weeks, putting it in an increasingly difficult position.

Thousands of migrants continue to cross its southern border, the United States sends thousands more back from the north and there's the renewed prospect of the U.S. making asylum seekers wait in Mexico for long periods of time.

President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said Thursday the strategy of containing migrants in the south was untenable on its own and more investment is needed in the region to keep Central Americans from leaving their homes.

But the groups of migrants walking north from southern Mexico in recent days have mostly been Haitians, a group that would not be addressed by the president's proposed tree planting and youth employment programs in Central America.

MEXICO'S SOUTHERN BORDER

Protests among the thousands of mostly Haitian migrants stuck in the southern city of Tapachula have intensified in recent weeks. Many have been waiting there for months, some up to a year, for asylum requests to be processed.

Mexicos refugee agency, which handles the applications, is overwhelmed. It was already behind and the pandemic slowed things even more. So far this year, more than 77,000 have applied for protected status in Mexico, 55,000 of those in Tapachula. Haitians account for about 19,000 of those applicants.

Tapachulas shelters are full, leaving many asylum seekers to live in unsanitary conditions while they wait. Without the ability to work, many have few options.

Frustrated by the delay and their living conditions, some began to organize in groups of hundreds. Last Saturday, several groups began walking out of Tapachula headed north. The groups have so far been dispersed and-or detained by Mexican authorities, sometimes with excessive force.

MEXICO'S NORTHERN BORDER

Concern has been growing in northern Mexico since the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the restart of the controversial program that made asylum seekers wait in Mexico while their cases are processed. The Trump-era policy called the Migrant Protection Protocols, but better known as Remain in Mexico, led to more than 70,000 asylum seekers waiting, mostly in dangerous Mexican border cities.

The Biden administration ended the program earlier this year and said it would appeal the court decision even as the Department of Homeland Security takes steps to comply. On the ground, asylum seekers trying to enter the U.S. have been frozen out. Shelters in northern Mexico fear they could soon be overwhelmed again by returned asylum seekers. The Mexican government has not said how it will respond.

Meanwhile, the U.S. government continues the rapid removal of migrants under a pandemic-related authority invoked by the Trump administration. So far this year, the U.S. government has made 674,000 expulsions under that Title 42 authority.

U.S. EXPULSIONS TO SOUTHERN MEXICO

The U.S. government is also flying thousands of migrants from other countries to southern Mexico, where Mexican authorities drive them to remote locations on its border with Guatemala and drop them off. The idea is to reduce returns by making it more difficult for migrants to reach the U.S. again. Mexico is similarly moving migrants detained in the north to its southern border, said Dana Graber Ladek, Mexico chief for the International Organization for Migration, a part of the United Nations system.

Alejandra Macias, from the nongovernmental organization Asylum Access Mexico, says those are illegal transfers because they dont screen for people at risk. The IOM has expressed concern about the flights as well, because people are dropped off sometimes at night, sometimes without knowing exactly what they are doing or where they are, said Graber Ladek.

MEXICAN GOVERNMENT ACTIONS

President Lopez Obrador went along with the tough immigration policies of the Trump administration and has expressed willingness to continue cooperating with the Biden administration.

Defense Secretary Luis Cresencio Sandoval said last week that the main objective of the armed forces and National Guard is to detain all migration and cover the northern border, the southern border with soldiers.

But on Thursday, the president sounded frustrated with the migrant containment strategy, which lately has drawn widespread criticism. He said he would write a letter to Biden insisting the U.S. government invest in his proposed development projects to help people in Central America and southern Mexico feel less need to migrate  though so far, U.S. officials have been unenthusiastic about the specific plans.

His government has promised to issue thousands of work visas and welcome asylum seekers. But it was the military that received more budget support, while the refugee agency saw its budget reduced.

We are overflowing with an absolutely unusual avalanche, above all of Haitians, said Andres Ramirez Silva, head of the Mexican Commission for Refugee Assistance.

Others say the problem goes beyond an increase in asylum applicants. The Roman Catholic Church said the government lacks a clear immigration policy and strategic planning. It faults a mismanagement of resources, militarization of immigration policy and a lack of coordination between factions in government that push for containment and those that prioritize human rights.

POSSIBLE FIXES

To clear the backlog in Tapachula, Mexicos refugee agency wants to offer new options to Haitians  the second largest migrant group behind Hondurans  that would allow them to travel outside the state of Chiapas and find legal work.

Ramirez Silva says these migrants dont meet all the requirements to win asylum, but they do need protection because they cant be returned to a country amid a political and humanitarian crisis.

He said not everyone in the Mexican government agrees with that approach, but he does have the support of United Nations agencies. Graber Ladek said they are working with the Mexican government to facilitate the granting of temporary immigration permits until officials can develop other ideas that wouldnt be limited to one nationality.
MARSEILLE, France (AP)  French President Emmanuel Macron opened a global summit on biodiversity on Friday, saying the world needs to act promptly and decisively to safeguard the Earth's natural resources.

There is no vaccine for a sick planet," he warned.

In remarks at the World Conservation Congress in the southern city of Marseille, on Frances Mediterranean coast, Macron also promised an EU-wide initiative to curb pesticide overuse, which damages ecosystems. He called for better protection of the high seas, which largely dont fall under any national jurisdiction but are threatened by overfishing and other human activities.

Macron urged world leaders and institutions to safeguard biodiversity as they work to curb climate change and support human welfare. We must reinvent our trade policies so that they are coherent with our climate and biodiversity policies, he said.

The conference, held every four years, focuses on urgent action needed to protect wildlife. Thousands of people are set to attend the event, both in person and virtually, amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Several recent studies have shown that many of the planet's ecosystems are severely strained by global warming, deforestation, habitat degradation, pollution and other threats.

Oceanic shark populations have dropped by 71% since 1970. More than half of all bird of prey species worldwide are declining in population  and 18 species are critically endangered. Warming temperatures and melting ice are projected to imperil 70% of Emperor penguin colonies by 2050, and 98% by 2100.

Speaking to reporters, Macron announced the creation of a new global event meant to protect the high seas  which cover about half the planet's surface. The One Ocean Summit will be organized in France in coming months in coordination with the United Nations, he said.

When we talk about oceans, 60% of these areas do not fall under a (national) jurisdiction, Macron stressed.

The summit will aim at creating an international ocean law, he said. Because otherwise, some nations do whatever they want in the high seas and may destroy biodiversity and at the same time may also make choices which, from a geopolitical point of view, are bad.

On Friday morning, Macron and other conference participants, including European Council President Charles Michel, took a boat to Calanques National Park, a marine reserve near Marseille known for its blue waters topped by high white cliffs.

Macron said he wants to extend the French parts of the Mediterranean Sea under very high protection," which implies a ban on fishing. They now represent a very small area.

We see that when we protect well, we succeed in regenerating species, regenerating biodiversity, Macron said after his boat trip to the Calanques reserve, which is home to dolphins, fin whales, turtles and a variety of fish. Its coastal area also includes 1,600 plant species and 25 protected bird species.

Nature does a lot for us. But if we destroy nature, we will destroy the many ways it enhances human life, said Stuart Pimm, an ecologist at Duke University.

The conference is hosted by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, made up of 1,400 private and government entities.

Macron wants to follow the path started at the One Planet Summit in January, which led 70 countries to commit to protecting at least 30% of the worlds land and oceans over the next decade to halt species extinction and combat climate change.

The conference runs until Sept. 11. Topics include links between climate change and biodiversity loss, and the ethics of genetic enhancement to increase species' chances of survival.

With changing temperatures, we are seeing kelp move, sea otters move, seals move, said Stuart Sandin, a marine biologist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego.

U.S. weather officials recently reported that July 2021 was the hottest month in 142 years of record-keeping. A U.N. report released in June examined ways in which climate change was exacerbating the loss of biodiversity.

Talks at the Marseille conference are also meant to inform the U.N.s global climate summit, the COP26, scheduled in November in Glasgow, Scotland.

____

Corbet reported from Saulieu, France. Larson reported from Washington, D.C.
Gray wolves are native to Michigan, once present in all 83 counties before nearing eradication in 1960 as a result of persecution, habitat loss and predator control programs. The comeback of the wolf in Michigan is a remarkable wildlife success story, according to the Michigan Department of Natural Resources.

The most recent survey of gray wolves, conducted between December 2019 and March 2020, by the Michigan DNR counted a minimum of 695 wolves, compared to only 20 wolves in 1992.

State and federal protection of wolves enabled successful recovery of the species throughout the western Great Lakes Region, according to the Michigan DNR

And, Michigan isnt the only state to see its gray wolf population increasing, according to the Wildlife Society.

Wildlife researchers in California are celebrating this month after a single gray wolf was caught on camera wandering in the Kern County region.

The California Department of Fish & Wildlife said this is the first known wolf to return to the Central Coast in more than 100 years.

The wolf had a long journey, crossing 18 counties and several major highways before its radio collar stopped transmitting a signal.

The wolf finally showed up on a wildlife camera at a ranch in southwestern Kern County a few weeks ago, according to NewsChannel 3.

Check out the clip of the wolf below.

Historically, intensive eradication efforts and declining numbers of prey caused the wolf decline in the western Great Lakes area. Bounties paid for dead wolves began during the 1800s. By 1838, wolves were eliminated from the southern portion of Michigan. And, by 1960, wolves were also gone from most of northern Michigan, except Isle Royale, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Michigan protected the wolf in the 1970s, giving the gray wolf endangered species classification. Perhaps the most important factors leading to wolf recovery in the Midwest were the Endangered Species Act prohibitions that made killing and harming wolves illegal and the act's requirement that a recovery plan be prepared. Wolves also rebounded because their primary prey, white-tailed deer, were doing well, according to USFWS.

Since the winter of 1993-1994, the Michigan wolf population has been above 100, achieving the goal in the recovery plan. With this consistent expansion in numbers and range, the gray wolf population is healthy and recovered in the western Great Lakes region, according to USFWS.

The Michigan Wolf Recovery and Management Plan, created in 1997 and revised in 2008, recommends a minimum of 200 wolves in the Upper Peninsula. The goal of Michigan's DNR is to ensure the wolf population remains viable and above a level that would require either federal or state reclassification as a threatened or endangered species.

Federal delisting criteria required a combined Michigan/Wisconsin population of 100 wolves for five consecutive years for delisting to occur. The Michigan/Wisconsin combined population has exceeded 100 wolves every year since 1994, and currently numbers more than 1,000 wolves. The Michigan Wolf Recovery and Management Plan defined a viable population as 200 animals for five consecutive years to allow removal from the state endangered species list. The Michigan wolf population has exceeded 200 animals for more than a decade, according to USFWS.

In light of this significant recovery of the wolf population, it was announced on Oct. 29, 2020, that gray wolves were going to be removed from the Endangered Species Act. Since that announcement, news stories and press releases have been filled with quotes from various officials, lawyers, activists and politicians.

For example, the Michigan and Oregon attorneys general say the federal government improperly delisted gray wolves.

They filed a joint amicus brief in litigation against the USFWS, which alleges the federal government improperly removed the gray wolf from the endangered species list.

Dana Nessel in Michigan and Ellen Rosenblum in Oregon say the federal decision did not properly account for a lack of recovery across wolves historic range and, instead, cut the species into segmented populations in order to remove protections.

"By delisting the gray wolf nationwide, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service abandoned its obligation to protect endangered gray wolves wherever they are found. Turning cooperative federalism on its head, the service weaponized our effective wolf recovery in the Great Lakes region against wolf populations struggling to recover in other states, Nessel said in a statement. The facts are clear here: the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service can only use Michigans successes in Michigan, not nationwide. Where wolves remain endangered, they must remain listed.

Previously, wolves could only be legally killed in defense of human life in Michigan. Since the delisting of the gray wolf, farmers and ranchers in Michigan's Upper Peninsula are now able to shoot wolves that pose a threat to their dogs or livestock, which is something they had argued for, according to Wolf.org.

Wildlife advocates have fought fiercely against delisting, arguing that federal protection is needed to keep states from allowing hunts.

Nessel and Rosenblum filed their brief in an ongoing case against the wildlife service, the U.S. Interior Department, brought by Defenders of Wildlife, Wildearth Guardians and Natural Resources Defense Council.

Nessel accused the federal government of weaponizing successful state-led efforts to rehabilitate the gray wolf population in the Great Lakes region. In Michigans Upper Peninsula, the population has remained stable at about 700 wolves for several years, according to MLive.

Wolves officially came off the endangered list on Jan. 4, but the decision was quickly put under review by the Biden administration. The wolves remain delisted at this point.

To learn more about wolves and wolf management in Michigan, visit Michigan.gov/Wolves.
LANSING, Mich. (AP)  The Supreme Court's 5-4 decision to let a Texas ban on most abortions remain in force  at least for now  prompted warnings and cheers from advocates in Michigan who noted the state still has a 90-year-old ban on the books if Roe v. Wade is overturned.

Even before the Texas case arrived at the high court, the justices had planned this fall to hear a major case from Mississippi, which wants to enforce an abortion ban after 15 weeks of pregnancy.

Here in Michigan, we face an especially dangerous threat. Because we have a pre-Roe law banning abortion on the books, access to abortion in Michigan would be in danger if the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, Dr. Sarah Wallett, chief medical officer for Planned Parenthood of Michigan, said in a statement.

It is unclear whether the 1931 law, which dates to the 1800s, automatically would take effect if the landmark 1973 U.S. Supreme Court precedent were overturned. The law makes it a felony to use an instrument or administer any substance with the intent to procure the miscarriage of a woman unless necessary to preserve her life.

Genevieve Marnon, legislative director for Right to Life of Michigan, said: When Roe is overturned, Michigan will be an abortion-free state, and we are hopeful that will take place next year after the (Mississippi) case is heard. She said it would not make sense to mirror Texas' law in Michigan because it still allows abortions until medical professionals can detect cardiac activity, usually around six weeks.

Democrats' attempts to repeal the 1931 law have been blocked in the Republican-controlled Legislature.

We must read the writing on the wall. We cannot trust that a majority of the justices on this U.S. Supreme Court will put the law before their own radical politics, and we must act now to protect access to abortion health care in Michigan, Senate Democrats said in a statement.

Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who is up for reelection next year, has vowed to veto GOP-proposed abortion restrictions, including a bill that would prohibit a common second-trimester procedure. She called the Supreme Court's decision potentially catastrophic for the right to choose.

State Attorney General Dana Nessel, a Democrat, has said the high court's conservative majority will probably overturn Roe and that she will not enforce Michigan's abortion ban, drawing criticism from Republicans. One local prosecutor, Democrat Eli Savit in Washtenaw County, tweeted Thursday that we will never, ever prosecute any person for exercising reproductive freedom.

Initially, GOP legislators appeared to be generally mum on the ruling. Rep. Beau Lafave, of Iron Mountain, did tweet that leaving in place Texas' ban is wonderful news.

An option on both sides could be to organize a ballot initiative, though strategists said it was too early to say, in part because of uncertainty over what the justices will do next.

___

Follow David Eggert at https://twitter.com/DavidEggert00
SAN DIEGO (AP)  A federal judge ruled Thursday that the U.S. government's practice of denying migrants a chance to apply for asylum on the Mexican border until space opens up to process claims is unconstitutional.

U.S. District Judge Cynthia Bashant's ruling has no immediate impact but could prevent the government from limiting entry for asylum-seekers because it says it lacks resources. It could also bring relief to some of the tens of thousands of people who put their names on unofficial waiting lists in Mexican border towns.

Bashant, who was appointed by President Barack Obama, ordered the Justice Department and plaintiffs led by Los Angeles-based advocacy group Al Otro Lado to recommend next steps by Oct. 1.

The practice of capping how many people can claim asylum at U.S. land crossings with Mexico, known as metering, began in 2016 under President Barack Obama when large numbers of Haitians appeared at the main crossing to San Diego from Tijuana, Mexico. It expanded across the border in 2018 under the Trump administration, spawning often-dubious waiting lists that varied sharply by Mexican border city.

The U.S. stopped accepting all asylum-seekers at border crossings in March 2020, with few exceptions, under pandemic-related authority known as Title 42. The Trump administration first invoked the authority to prevent spread of the coronavirus, and the Biden administration extended it. The judge asked both sides to explain the impact of Title 42 on her ruling.

Waiting lists continue to grow. They had more than 18,600 names in eight Mexican border cities in May, more than half in Tijuana, according to a report by the Strauss Center for International Security and Law at the University of Texas at Austin. Waiting lists peaked at nearly 27,000 names in August 2019.

The judge found in a 45-page ruling that the practice violated constitutional rights to due process under the law and a federal law requiring officials to screen anyone who shows up seeking asylum.

The judge, ruling in a lawsuit filed nearly four years ago, unequivocally backed criticisms that U.S. officials did not monitor the waiting lists, which were subject to fraud and corruption, and that asylum-seekers were exposed to grave physical danger while waiting in Mexico. Those who sued the government felt vindicated.

The Court properly recognized the extensive human costs of metering, including the high risk of assault, disappearance, and death, when Customs and Border Protection officers flout their duty to inspect and process asylum seekers and force them to wait in Mexico, said Melissa Crow, an attorney for the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The Justice Department declined to comment.

President Joe Biden called metering disastrous during his campaign, but it is unclear if he still holds that opinion or if courts may force him to adopt the practice anyway. Last week, the Supreme Court ordered the administration to reinstate Trump's Remain in Mexico policy to make asylum-seekers who had already entered the United States and received court dates to wait in Mexico for hearings in U.S. immigration court.

Metering was one of the Trump administration's main responses to the United States becoming the world's top destination for asylum-seekers. Officials said migrants weren't being denied rights to seek asylum, just being forced to wait until there were resources to process their claims.

In Piedras Negras, Mexico, a restaurant owner managed the waiting list for those wanting to seek asylum at the crossing to Eagle Pass, Texas. In Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso, Texas, a migrant shelter registered asylum-seekers by writing numbers on their arms in black ink and later by giving them wristbands. In San Luis Colorado, on the Arizona border, a migrant managed the list and appointed a successor when their turn came to claim asylum in the United States.
WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP)  New Zealand authorities were so worried about an extremist inspired by the Islamic State group that they were following him around the clock and were able to shoot and kill him within 60 seconds of him unleashing a knife attack that wounded six people Friday at an Auckland supermarket.

Three of the shoppers were taken to Auckland hospitals in critical condition, police said. Another was in serious condition, while two more were in moderate condition.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern described the violence as a terror attack. She said the man was a Sri Lankan national who was inspired by the Islamic State group and was well known to the nation's security agencies.

Ardern said she had been personally briefed on the man in the past but there had been no legal reason for him to be detained.

Had he done something that would have allowed us to put him into prison, he would have been in prison, Ardern said.

The attack unfolded at about 2:40 p.m. at a Countdown supermarket in New Zealands largest city.

Police Commissioner Andrew Coster said a police surveillance team and a specialist tactics group had followed the man from his home in the suburb of Glen Eden to the supermarket in New Lynn.

But while they had grave concerns about the man, they had no particular reason to think he was planning an attack on Friday, Coster said. The man appeared to be going into the store to do his grocery shopping.

He entered the store, as he had done before. He obtained a knife from within the store, Coster said. Surveillance teams were as close as they possibly could be to monitor his activity.

Witnesses said the man shouted Allahu akbar  meaning God is great"  and started stabbing random shoppers, sending people running and screaming.

Coster said that when the commotion started, two police from the special tactics group rushed over. He said the man charged at the officers with the knife and so they shot and killed him.

A bystander video taken inside the supermarket records the sound of 10 shots being fired in rapid succession.

Coster said there would be questions about whether police could have reacted even quicker. He said the man was very aware of the constant surveillance and they needed to be some distance away for it to be effective.

Ardern said the attack was violent and senseless, and she was sorry it had happened.

What happened today was despicable. It was hateful. It was wrong," Ardern said. It was carried out by an individual. Not a faith, not a culture, not an ethnicity. But an individual person who is gripped by ideology that is not supported here by anyone or any community."

Ardern said the man had first moved to New Zealand in 2011 and had been monitored by security agencies since 2016. She said authorities are confident he acted alone.

Ardern said legal constraints imposed by New Zealand courts prevented her from discussing everything that she wanted to about the case, but she was hoping to have those constraints lifted soon.

Some shoppers in the supermarket tried to help those who had been wounded by grabbing towels and diapers and whatever else they could find from the shelves.

To everyone who was there and who witnessed such a horrific event, I can't imagine how they will be feeling in the aftermath, Ardern said. But thank you for coming to the aid of those who needed you when they needed you.

Auckland is in a strict lockdown as it battles an outbreak of the coronavirus. Most businesses are shut and people are generally allowed to leave their homes only to buy groceries, for medical needs or to exercise.

Sri Lanka's government expressed shock and sadness over the attack attributed to a person of Sri Lankan origin.

Sri Lanka condemns this senseless violence, and stands ready to cooperate with New Zealand authorities in any way necessary, its Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Extremist ideology is rare in New Zealand, and Ardern said only a tiny number of people would be subject to such intense surveillance.

In 2019, a white supremacist gunned down worshippers at two Christchurch mosques, killing 51 people and injuring dozens more. After pleading guilty last year, Brenton Tarrant was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The killings sparked changes to gun laws in New Zealand, which has now banned the deadliest types of semi-automatic weapons.

Among those to condemn the attack Friday were members of the Al Noor mosque in Christchurch, which was at the center of the mosque attacks two years ago.

We stand with the victims of the horrible incident, said Gamal Fouda, the imam of Al Noor. We feel strongly the pain of terrorism, and there are no words that can convey our condemnation of such a horrible act.
Local haunts must have emptied Wednesday as those hoping to receive a zombie makeover exceeded filmmakers expectation of turnout for extras. Showing up to be part of the film, Followers, some locals were able to strike an item from their bucket list, while others kept their heads low as they played hookey from work.

I think my boss will definitely know now that I wasnt really sick today, said Rita DeShay, of Midland, who was part of the second to last day of shooting Followers. Nope, I just wanted to get my zombie fix.

Movie actress and assistant producer, Briana Boyle, said more people showed up than they expected. She also noted she is ready to close filming so the crew can move onto editing, bringing them closer to seeing the film on screen. Filming was scheduled to close on Thursday.

Professional actor and Sanford native Chris Krause, who lived in New York for several years, returned home during the pandemic. Then the flood hit, and he was inspired to make a movie. He recently put out a call for extras and many answered, piling into the Veterans Park Wednesday to be on the movie set. Krause has opted to share the profits with Sanford, to help with recovery.

Midlander Derek Schweigert is a huge 80s zombie movie fan.

I think its interesting to be part of the shoot, he said.

Victoria Cox and husband, Tom, are seasoned extras.

Weve done films before, she said, citing Real Steel, Batman vs Superman, Street Boss (the first movie they had their names in the credits) and others.

The two military veterans said they enjoy the atmosphere and meeting so many people by taking part in the extra endeavor.

For aspiring screen writer McKenna Herkel, of Midland, who has dropped eight scripts, this is a chance to be involved. Also, she said Krause is giving her screenwriting tips.

Dominic Stonerock, of Sanford, said the filming in the village is a positive thing.

I dont think this is going to affect Sanford in a bad way, he said. It will bring money to the area. Hopefully it will bring tourism also.

Stonerock, who is homeless, said the flooding didnt really impact him. His uncle, however, wasnt unscathed. He had to completely rebuild.

Its cool shooting in a park that I grew up walking in, Stonerock said.

Sarah Creasman, of Midland, brought her daughter, Noah, 17, because she wanted her daughter to have the experience. She said Noah used to sneak to watch the popular zombie show, The Walking Dead.

I thought it would be too scary for her when she was younger, but it wasnt, Creasman said.

Eight-year-old Alexis Hudson is a huge fan of The Walking Dead and got her older sister Rebecca, 13, both of Midland, into the show.

Before I watched The Walking Dead, I hated zombies, Rebecca said.

Christine Barcia, from Bay City and now of Midland, said she always wanted to try being an extra. So, when the physical therapist heard about the chance, she was immediately on board.

The love of horror movies drew in Heather Robbin, of Midland. She said her favorite zombie movie is Shaun of the Dead.

For Carl Ordiway, of Midland, this was a chance to take something off his bucket list: Being an Extra in a Movie.

Krause was slated to shoot his last scene Thursday night at his parents Sanford home, with the Jerome Township Fire Department on standby. He said he will quickly move into editing and then marketing. He and his crew hope to have the editing completed by October.

Krause describes Followers as a film in the vein of Get Out meets The Walking Dead. "In a world where the infected target their victims based on the color of their skin, would you help those most at risk...or stand back and be a Follower?" He said it explores the feeling of what you do when you feel you no longer know the people you love and it tries to examine what turns someone into a follower.
LOWELL TOWNSHIP, Mich. (AP)  A western Michigan man fatally shot his 3-year-old son before taking his own life, authorities said Thursday.

Deputies conducting a welfare check Wednesday at a in Lowell Township hgome found the bodies of 32-year-old Derek Thebo and his son, Dylan Thebo, the Kent County Sheriffs Office said.

The Kent County Medical Examiners Office said both were shot to death. Dylan's death was ruled a homicide and his father's death was deemed a suicide.

WOOD-TV reports court records show the 3-year-olds mother had a personal protection order against Derek Thebo earlier this year. It was filed on March 8 and officially terminated on March 22.

Lowell Township is just east of Grand Rapids.
Sometimes, circumstances dont turn out the way we plan. We may face disappointments and unfair situations. People can insult and mistreat us. Or, there are stumbling blocks in our path and we experience an apparent failure. And tears fall from our eyes in sadness.

But rather than getting depressed and discouraged, could it be that God wants to do something better, bigger and brighter in your future? Is it possible that you are being led in another direction for a reason, to bring you more peace, joy or protection?

Did God look down the road and see that a particular venture or person in your life would not be in your best interest, so He intervened and now youre making a slight detour to your destiny?

No matter the circumstance, remain secure in the knowledge that God loves you and He is with you. Thus, rest in His care, timing and sovereign purpose, for His word says:

 I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you. Genesis 28:15

 I know the plans I have for you. Plans to prosper you and not harm you, and plans to give you hope and a future. Jeremiah 29:11

 Trust in the Lord with all your heart; listen for His voice in everything you do, He will keep your paths straight. Proverbs 3: 5,6

 Do what is right and good in the Lords sight, so that it may go well with you and you may go in and take over the good land that the Lord promised on oath to your forefathers. Deuteronomy 6:18

Awhile ago, a friend of mine told me a fictional story about a wise king who conducted an experiment. The king placed a large rock in the middle of the road, and then he hid behind a tree in the wooded area nearby watching intently. Curious, the king wanted to observe if anyone would make an effort to remove the huge stumbling block from the road.

Time passed, and some of the kings shopkeepers came by, and simply walked around the stone. A few more minutes elapsed and, in the distance, the king heard people complaining. Some merchants, as they approached the stone, blamed the king for not keeping the roads clear. But, none of them tried to remove the big stone.

Another group drew closer, they saw the barrier and turned around and went in another direction.

Next, a farmer boy walked along the road, carrying a basket of vegetables. The boy approached the rock and with immediacy, he put down his basket and tried to remove the stone from the road. The king watched in awe, as the farm boy tried again and again to push the large rock out of the way.

Finally, the boy succeeded. And as he bent down to pick up his basket of vegetables, the farm boy noticed a wallet lying in the road where the rock had been placed.

Just then, the king appeared from behind the tree and said, This wallet is for you. Wide-eyed, the boy was startled. Continuing, the king declared, The wallet contains gold coins, and I put it there for the person who removed the large rock from the road. Take this gold, and you and your family will live comfortably for the rest of your lives. The king had a better, bigger and brighter plan for the person who would persist with the right attitude, for obstacles can present opportunities to improve your condition.

Therefore, dont despair or be shaken by temporary setbacks. One thing that I have learned in my own life is that Gods plans for us are far better than any plans we can make on our own. And perhaps, the challenge youre coping with transpired so you could dream bigger, be happier, go further, and make a greater impact for others. I believe that everything happens for a reason, wrote a reader via email, God works in mysterious ways.

Somewhere, I read that a certain type of flower must be gathered in the dark of the night to bring forth its most pleasing scent and the greatest perfume within its petals. As with the fragrant flowers, something lovely and beneficial is being brought about in the momentary darkness. Remember, your future is better, bigger and brighter than these transient, challenging times.

You have so much to offer. God hasnt taken you this far on your journey to give up on you now. Theres more for you to achieve. Hence, with steadfast faith, wake up each morning and say, God is taking care of me, God is holding me in the palm of His hand and God is directing my steps.

Be at peace, spend time in prayer, and stay thankful for all of your blessings. Listen to your still, small voice. Let your instincts guide you. And keep reaching for your highest and best, boldly looking with hope and confidence to the future. There are great relationships to form, exciting places to visit, creative goals to accomplish, and greater opportunities to come for you to release your full potential.

God does things in such a remarkable way, that before long you will look back and see how beautifully He orchestrated confusing situations, and youll say with wonder, Thats only something God could have done!

Trust Him. Move forward. And believe in Gods better, bigger and brighter plans. This is a new day. And there are new dreams, new joys and new blessings ahead!

Email Catherine Galasso-Vigorito at cgv@anewyouworldwide.com. To order a copy of her new book, The Open Window, 8 Weeks to Creating an Extraordinary Life, visit www.anewyouworldwide.com or bookstores nationwide. Like me on Facebook! Follow Catherine on Instagram @Catherinegalassovigorito.
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Joel Christensen, Brandeis University

(THE CONVERSATION) On the outskirts of Grapevine, Texas, a town about 5 miles northwest of the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, theres a memorial dedicated to the 33 airline flight crew members who lost their lives in the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. When I stumbled upon the monument several years ago with my family, I experienced contrary emotions: sadness inspired by the memorials stark figures, mixed with anger over how the attacks quickly became a pretext for U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Now, as U.S. soldiers leave behind uncertainty and violence in Afghanistan, I look back on Americas past 20 years with two sets of eyes.

As the first-year graduate student who stood smoking a cigarette in Washington Square Park at 8:45 a.m. on Sept. 11, 2001  less than a mile from the World Trade Centers Twin Towers and where the sound of the jet engines final roar mixed in with a Tuesday mornings bustle  I feel visceral sorrow and remorse.

Today, as a scholar of Greek literature who studies narrative and memory, I see how this collective trauma shaped U.S. actions and has affected Americans vision of their identities and shared history  a feedback loop that is reflected in the myths and histories of ancient Greece.

Twenty years is still recent history for many, so memories of the 9/11 attacks may still be too raw to easily reflect on and learn from. Thats why looking for parallels in ancient stories of destruction and loss can help in understanding how shared trauma can shape the stories a nation tells itself, and the decisions that get made in response.

What is collective trauma?

Collective trauma is a term that describes the shared experience of and reactions to a traumatic event by a group of people. That group may be as small as a few people or as large as a whole society.

The 9/11 attacks shattered collective American confidence in its safety and sense of place in the world. Americas collective efforts to learn to live with that trauma partly explain why there is a Sept. 11 memorial in a Texas town thousands of miles from where the attacks took place. It also demonstrates that collective tragedies can shape the world views of individuals who were not present at the event.

The traumatized group may go through shared stages of grief, from disbelief to anger. The further the group gets from the traumatizing event itself, the closer it moves to social memory, a concept historians use to describe how groups of people come to share a consistent story about past events. This narrative can be manipulated to reflect or enforce values in the present.

My studies of ancient Greek history suggest to me that this is what happened in the U.S. after the attacks. There are myths and histories of the ancient world that describe how, in the wake of the destruction of cities, societies created cultural memories that helped them find reasons for rushing into war. These episodes have parallels to the U.S. in the early 21st century.

Reshaping history via stories

In the spring of 2002, I attended a New York University conference called Saving the City, where speakers were asked to consider such stories. One of the histories we focused on involved Athens after the Persian army invaded Greece  for a second time  in 480 B.C. and burned the temples, groves and homes of the Athenians. The attack was in part vengeance for a past military loss, and also a punishment for Athens meddling in Persian affairs in Asia Minor. As with New York on Sept. 11, the attackers targeted an icon: the first version of the Athenian Parthenon.

In the wake of this collective trauma, as the scholar Bernd Steinbock argues, narratives of city destruction became popular in Athenian storytelling and art. In some of these stories, cities that had committed offenses against the gods then suffered at the hands of international armies that formed to set them right.

Athenians told one another these stories as they raised troops and a navy to harry the Persians in Asia Minor. Athenian political rhetoric was shaped by the specter of Persian invasion and the threat of re-invasion, the glory of victory and the casting of Athens as a force for freedom and justice in the world. This rhetoric justified imperial expansion, violence and eventually the murder and enslavement of the citys own allies..

That led to the Peloponnesian War, a destructive 27-year conflict with Sparta that ended with Athens being conquered again in 404 B.C.

Rhetoric and calls to arms

In 2001, Americans were still in the early days of their collective trauma when talk pivoted to the rhetoric of war. Analogies were made to shared cultural or national stories from the past: The terrorists were evil-doers, President George W. Bush said soon after the attacks, and fighting them was a new crusade. September 11 was the Pearl Harbor that made it OK to invade Afghanistan.

By early 2002, Bush was telling the nation that Iran, Iraq and North Korea  the axis of evil  were threats to the United States, although they had not been implicated in the Sept. 11 attacks. His administration would soon use its claim that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction as a Gulf of Tonkin moment to justify the U.S. invasion of Iraq  a reference to the 1964 event that spurred greater American military involvement in the Vietnam War.

As I listened to this sort of political rhetoric at the time, the language of Greek myth and poetry helped me understand how political speech capitalizes on memory to create shared realities and justify use of violence. I spent that first year of graduate school in New York City studying the language and politics in Homers epic, the Iliad. The storys thousand ships from different cities sailing east, with a bumbling fool at their head, to punish the Trojans seemed an awful lot like the fractious coalition of the willing  Bushs term for the military alliance he assembled to invade and occupy Iraq.

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Collective trauma and imperialism

Rome provides another example from ancient history of the relationship between collective trauma and justifications for imperial pursuits.

The city of Rome fought and won its first war with the powerful city of Carthage  located in what is today Tunisia  between 264-241 B.C., and its second between 218-201 B.C. Rome then imposed a hefty war indemnity on Carthage, which helped it acquire territories that laid the foundation for a pan-Mediterranean empire.

These two victories ended any significant threat that Carthage may have posed, but Roman culture remained obsessed with war. According to the military leader and author Pliny the Elder, the statesman Cato the Elder used to shout I think Carthage must be destroyed at every meeting of the Roman Senate. Rome went on to fight a third war with Carthage, besieging and destroying the city between 149-146 B.C.

I cant think of this anecdote without remembering how Bush agitated for invading Iraq over 10 years after his fathers invasion of the country. Or that just a handful of years after Bushs 2002 axis of evil speech, a presidential candidate sang bomb bomb Iran to the tune of a Beach Boys pop hit.

These and other accounts from ancient Greece and Rome suggest that over history, collective trauma has often created an opportunity for leaders to use social memory  a cultures shared stories  to create justifications for lashing out at the world, careless of any new damage it may cause.

As individuals and nations, we dont act because of what we suffer, but often because of the stories we tell about it.

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BRIDGEPORT - A Connecticut nurse is accused of purchasing a fake COVID-19 vaccination card from a New Jersey woman who called herself the AntiVaxMomma on Instagram.

Adrianna Avila, 32, of Raven Road in Trumbull, was taken into custody at her home by Trumbull Police and U.S. marshals on a fugitive from justice warrant. It is unclear what Avila did with the card.

New York authorities stated that Avila is among 13 people, all involved in the medical profession, who purchased fake COVID-19 vaccination cards. In addition, Avila is also accused of paying to be illegally entered into the New York medical database as someone who had been vaccinated.

During her arraignment hearing Thursday afternoon, Avila told Superior Court Judge Kevin Doyle she was agreeing to waive extradition to New York. New York State Police immediately took custody of her.

Avilas lawyer for the hearing, Assistant Public Defender Anne Marie Kindley, declined comment.

Avila is a registered nurse on active status, according to the state Department of Consumer Protection. Neither state records nor court records indicate where she works.

Avila is charged in New York court papers with fifth-degree conspiracy, second-degree criminal possession of a forged instrument and first-degree offering a false instrument for filing.

On Tuesday Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. filed charges against 15 people he alleged are involved in the fake vaccination card conspiracy.

According to court documents and statements made in the Manhattan court, beginning in May, Jasmine Clifford, a self-described entrepreneur with several online businesses, advertised forged Centers for Disease Control and Prevention COVID-19 vaccination cards through her Instagram account, @AntiVaxMomma.

Vance said Clifford charged $200 for the falsified cards and accepted payment through CashApp or Zelle. For an additional $250 fee, a co-conspirator, who works at a medical clinic in Patchogue, N.Y., would enter the individuals name into the New York medical database as having received COVID-19 vaccinations, he said.

In total, Clifford sold approximately 250 forged COVID-19 vaccination cards, Vance stated.

Vances office did not respond to calls and emails for comments on Avilas arrest.
NEW DELHI (AP)  The death of a top separatist leader in disputed Kashmir and the ensuing crackdown on public movement and communications by Indian authorities have highlighted the turmoil seething just below the surface in the region.

Here's a closer look at what Syed Ali Geelani meant to Kashmir and why problems still roil the region two years after India revoked its semi-autonomy and declared it a federal territory.

WHY HAS THIS DEATH STRUCK A RAW NERVE?

For many in the region, Geelani was the face of Kashmiri resistance against India. To his detractors, he was a hard-liner responsible for stoking tensions in the region, a charge he had denied.

Geelani was part of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference, a conglomerate of various Kashmiri political and religious groups that was formed in 1993 to spearhead a movement for the regions right to self-determination.

He never wavered from his position as a devoted proponent of the merger of Kashmir with Pakistan. This stance put him at odds with other moderate separatists who wanted to engage with New Delhi and local politicians who favored Indian rule in the region with internal autonomy.

Soon after the 91-year-old's death late Wednesday, authorities quickly clamped down, blocking internet and mobile phone services and restricting public movement out of fear of anti-India protests. Geelanis family said his body was snatched away by authorities and discreetly buried without their consent.

Geelani's death is expected to be a potential setback to the larger separatist movement in Kashmir, as his supporters may find it hard to find a successor with such towering popularity.

WHAT IS THE STATUS OF KASHMIR?

A flashpoint between India and neighboring Pakistan, both of which claim the region in full but rule only parts, Kashmir has been wracked with tensions for years.

In 1989, Kashmiri activists launched an armed revolt against Indian rule. Most Muslim Kashmiris support the rebel goal that the territory be united either under Pakistani rule or as an independent country.

New Delhi accuses Pakistan of sponsoring Kashmiri militants, a charge Pakistan denies. Tens of thousands of civilians, rebels and government forces have been killed in the conflict.

In 2019, hostilities peaked when Prime Minister Narendra Modis government stripped the region of its semi-autonomy and took direct control of the region amid a harsh security clampdown and communications blackout.

Anticipating a massive backlash and protests, authorities flooded the region  already among the worlds most militarized  with soldiers, and arrested thousands of young people, activists and pro-freedom Kashmiri leaders. Even pro-India politicians who favored Kashmirs semi-autonomous status within the framework of the Indian constitution were also detained for opposing the decision, but were later released.

By scrapping its statehood and separate constitution, India also removed inherited protections on land and jobs and opened up the region to Indians from outside to permanently settle, buy land and hold government jobs there.

The government said such a move would spur investment and bring more development to Kashmir. But critics and many Kashmiris fear this could dilute the regions demographics.

WHAT HAS HAPPENED IN THE LAST TWO YEARS?

The situation on the ground remains tense.

India's August 2019 move deepened anti-India sentiment in the region. Armed militancy has continued to grow and gunfights between Indian forces and rebels have become more frequent. Even though many of those arrested two years ago have since been released, some remain in detention.

The move also dealt a blow to Kashmir's economy, which was then hit once again by lockdowns to curb the spread of the pandemic.

The region has since remained without an elected government and under the direct control of New Delhi.

Last year, India held local elections, calling it a vital grassroots exercise to boost development and uproot corruption. An alliance of pro-India politicians who favor self-governance in Kashmir but oppose New Delhis recent policies won the election. They have since reiterated their demand that the 2019 decision be reversed.

Later in June, in an effort to counter criticism, Modi held a meeting with pro-India politicians from the region. The government dubbed it as an opening to strengthen the democratic process in the region, but the alliance leaders said they did not get any concrete assurances from Modi.

The regions separatist movement has also been impacted in the last two years.

Among those detained in 2019 were numerous top separatist leaders. With many of them still behind bars, the movements presence on the ground has taken a hit.

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This story has been updated to correct that Syed Ali Geelani was 91 when he died, not 92.

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Associated Press writer Ashok Sharma contributed to this report from New Delhi.
CANAAN, Vt. (AP)  The school district in the Vermont town of Canaan is believed to be the only district in the state not to require students and staff to wear masks as suggested by the Agency of Education.

The board in the district that abuts the Canadian border and New Hampshire voted 5-1 last month to reject the states recommended COVID-19 prevention measures, chiefly the use of face masks as school resumes.

But the board is recommending mask wearing. Masks will be required on school buses.

Canaan School Board Chair Dan Wade said the board is not against mask wearing, but members had questions about enforcing a requirement.

Wade tells the Caledonian Record he said he contacted the Vermont School Boards Association and asked if we can actually enforce it and that was a very questionable point at that time and the answer was no, I dont think we can. 

Canaan Superintendent Karen Conroy said they have been promoting vaccinations and an anonymous survey found that 86% of those who responded were vaccinated.

She said that as she walked through the school Thursday all of my elementary classroom teachers were wearing masks but the majority of students are not, based on their parents choice.

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NUMBERS

On Friday, the Vermont Department of Health reported 96 new cases of the coronavirus, bringing the statewide total since the pandemic began to just over 28,700.

There were 31 patients in the hospital with COVID-19, including 11 in intensive care.

The state reported one additional fatality, bringing the statewide total since the pandemic began to 280.

The seven-day rolling average of daily new cases in Vermont has risen over the past two weeks from 111.43 new cases per day on Aug. 18 to 148.29 new cases per day on Sept. 1.

The Associated Press is using data collected by Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering to measure outbreak caseloads and deaths across the United States.
COLCHESTER  First Selectwoman Mary Bylone imposed a town-wide mask mandate for indoor buildings earlier this week in response to the states surging infections of the delta variant.

The rule went into effect at noon on Monday, according to a declaration on the towns website.

The First Selectman has determined that in order to slow the spread of the Delta variant, protect our residents and those visiting, and conducting business within our communities, it is right and proper and consistent with good public health practices to follow the current CDC guidelines on wearing masks or face coverings in indoor settings regardless of vaccination status, it read.

The message further stated that the mandate will remain in effect until Oct. 29, though Bylone said Thursday the deadline could be either cut short or extended depending on the spread of the virus.

Like many other local leaders in eastern Connecticut, Bylone had said she was hesitant to impose a local mask mandate after Gov. Ned Lamont granted municipalities the authority to do so early last month. Larger cities, such as Stamford, Bridgeport and New Haven, were quick to take action on their own.

Bylone told Hearst Connecticut Media last month that she had no intention of mandating anything in the community, after she ordered that face coverings be worn in Town Hall and other public buildings.

Since then, case rates in Colchester and most other municipalities in the state have surged into the red zone defined by the states Department of Public Health. Colchester reported 12 active cases of the virus as of the latest state report released Thursday. That was down from 16 the previous week.

So many towns now are in the red-alert area, Bylone said Thursday. Stuff did not stabilize.

Bylone said she hoped the mandate would heighten awareness, and help avoid the need for stricter regulations, such as closing businesses. The majority of residents were wearing masks indoors anyway, she added.

Other towns in the region, including Salem, have imposed their own local mask mandates as well.
WASHINGTON  President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden visited injured U.S. troops at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Thursday night.

There are 15 Marines at the hospital in Bethesda, Maryland, just outside Washington, who were wounded in an Aug. 26 suicide bombing at the Kabul airport. The attack occurred as the U.S. government was arranging evacuations of Americans, Afghans and allies before the nearly two-decade war in Afghanistan officially ended Aug. 31.

Eleven Marines were also killed in the attack, as well as one Army solider and one Navy corpsman. Biden traveled to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware on Sunday to witness the return of their remains to U.S. soil in a solemn dignified transfer.

One of the wounded Marines was in critical condition. Three were in serious condition and 11 in stable condition.

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WASHINGTON  Air Force Gen. Tod Wolters, head of U.S. European Command, said Thursday that so far only one individual evacuated from Afghanistan is being retained in Germany for problems getting through security screening.

Speaking to Pentagon reporters, he said that as far as he knows, the person in custody is not of a high threat.

Right now, he said, about 58 individuals triggered additional security checks and processing as they arrived at the way stations in Europe, and needed additional checks. But he said he expects they will all eventually be cleared.

Afghan evacuees are being flown to several locations across the Middle East and Europe, including Germany, Italy and Spain. Wolters said 155 flights have landed in Europe, with about 38,000 people. He said they go through biometric and biographical screening when they arrive, before they are shown to their sleeping quarters. They are screened again when they leave, and again when they arrive in the U.S.

He said there have been few issues with COVID-19 cases, and most of the people requiring some type of medical attention have been pregnant women.

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WASHINGTON  A Marine Corps spokesman says that of 15 Marines wounded in the Aug. 26 suicide bombing at the Kabul airport, one is in critical condition. Three are in serious condition and 11 are in stable condition.

All 15 are at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland. No names were provided.

A Marine Corps spokesman, Maj. Jim Stenger, said Thursday that the conditions of the 15 were as of Tuesday morning. In addition to the 15 wounded, 11 Marines were killed in the attack, along with one Army soldier and one Navy corpsman.

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UNITED NATIONS -- The United Nations says its Humanitarian Air Service is resuming air operations in Afghanistan to enable 160 aid organizations to continue activities in the countrys provinces.

U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Thursday that the air passenger service, operated by the Rome-based U.N. World Food Program, is linking the Pakistani capital of Islamabad with Mazar-i-Sharif in the north and Kandahar in the southeast.

He said the food program reports that three flights already have taken place to Mazar-i-Sharif since Sunday and that efforts are being made to step up those operations as soon as possible.

In addition, Dujarric said, a cargo airbridge is being established to transport non-food items such as medical and other emergency supplies to where they are needed the most.

He said the Humanitarian Air Services domestic passenger service needs $18 million and the cargo airbridge needs $12 million to continue operations.

From 2002 to 2021, the U.N. Humanitarian Air Service in Afghanistan served more than 20 destinations in the country, Dujarric said. It will seek to return to these locations once security and funding permits.

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ISTANBUL - Turkey's foreign minister says his country is evaluating plans to reopen Kabuls airport.

Mevlut Cavusoglu told reporters on Thursday in Ankara that Hamid Karzai International Airport could be reopened in two stages for military flights and later for commercial flights.

Now there are requests from the Taliban and some countries to cooperate with us. Were evaluating all of this, Cavusoglu said at the news conference with Dutch Foreign Minister Sigrid Kaag.

Turkey has been operating the airport for six years before the American pullout and the Taliban's resurgence. Those leaders, along with Qatar's, have been in discussions about the reopening. Kaag said the Netherlands wanted to help with technical matters or security at the airport.

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ROME  Italian Premier Mario Draghi says diplomats are trying to locate Afghans who fled from their homeland to Iran and other nations bordering Afghanistan.

Draghi said Thursday that fortunately many Afghans had escaped, but his country wants to locate those who worked with Italy.

Before Italy ended its airlift from Kabul on Aug. 27, it had evacuated nearly 5,000 Afghans who had worked with the Italian military during its 20-year-deployment in Afghanistan as well as their families and others deemed at risk now under Taliban rule.

Draghi didnt say how many Afghans his country was seeking. He added that Afghans who have already reached Italy are immediately being given refugee status and praised Italian communities integrating them into local society.



KABUL, Afghanistan  A Taliban media spokesman has tweeted a picture of Qatar military aircraft on the ground at the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Afghanistan.

Ahmadullah Muttaqi posted the photo on Thursday. In Kabul, meanwhile, the roar of aircraft overhead could be heard.

It was the first air activity in the capital since Monday when the last U.S. evacuation flight left the Afghanistan, bringing to an end to Americas longest war. In interviews on Tuesday at the airport Taliban officials said they hoped to get the civilian airport up and running within days and the military portion sometime later.

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TIRANA, Albania --- The Albanian government says another group of 37 Afghans evacuated from Kabul has arrived in the country.

A statement from the Foreign Ministry said the group arrived early at dawn on Thursday from Kiev, Ukraine. They were taken to university campus accommodation in the capital, Tirana, where they will stay before moving to hotels.

Albania has accommodated most of the 644 Afghans it is temporarily hosting in hotels.

The government has said it may house up to 4,000 Afghans temporarily, before they travel on to countries for longer-term settlement.

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MORE ON AFGHANISTAN:

 Afghans face hunger crisis, adding to Talibans challenge

 Biden defends departure from forever war, praises airlift

 UN chief urges countries to help Afghans in hour of need

 Victorious Taliban focus on governing after US withdrawal

 New Taliban rulers face tough economic, security challenges

 Analysis: War is over but not Bidens Afghanistan challenges

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 Find more AP coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/afghanistan

___

HERES WHAT ELSE IS HAPPENING:

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates  The United Kingdoms Foreign Secretary says that although the U.K. wont soon recognize the Talibans government, there is an important scope for dialogue with Afghanistans new rulers.

In a joint press conference in Doha with his Qatari counterpart, Dominic Raab said he supported engagement with the Taliban to test the groups wide-ranging promises. He cited the Talibans pledges to protect freedom of travel for Afghans and foreigners, to form an inclusive government and, significantly, to prevent international terrorist groups from using the war-scarred country as a base.

Raab said: In all of these areas, we will judge them by what they do, not just by what they say.

Diplomatic recognition would prove critical in allowing the Taliban to access development aid and loans from international financial institutions as the group confronts an economy in free fall.

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DUBAI, United Arab Emirates  Qatars Foreign Minister says there is still no clear indication of when the Kabul airport will resume normal operations, but that the Gulf Arab state is evaluating the situation with Afghanistans new Taliban rulers.

In a joint press conference in Doha with his British counterpart, Mohammad bin Abdulrahman Al Thani said Qatar remains hopeful that we will be able to operate (the airport) as soon as possible, without giving a timeline or elaborating on Qatars role in providing technical assistance. He said Qatar is working with the Taliban to identify what are the gaps and the risks of having the airport back up and running.

Kabuls international airport has been closed to normal traffic since Aug. 16, when the Taliban took control of Kabul. Military flights and evacuations continued until Aug. 31, when U.S. forces quit the country and left the runway without air traffic controllers.

Al Thani also urged the Taliban to live up to its promise to allow Afghans and foreigners to leave the country freely once the airport reopens.

Qatar sent a technical team to Kabul airport on Wednesday to assess the operations. The tiny sheikhdom, which facilitated talks between the U.S. and the Taliban, has played an outsized role in American efforts to evacuate tens of thousands of people from Afghanistan.

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UNITED NATIONS  The president of the U.N. Security Council says the U.N.s most powerful body will not take its focus off Afghanistan this month and the real litmus test for the new Taliban government will be how it treats women and girls.

Ambassador Geraldine Byrne Nason of Ireland said Wednesday that the protection and promotion of human rights for women must be at the very heart of our collective response to the crisis.

Under the Talibans previous rule from 1996 to 2001, women were not allowed to go to school, work outside the home or leave homes without a male escort. Though they faced many challenges in the countrys male-dominated society after the Talibans ouster, Afghan girls were not only educated but over the last 20 years women increasingly stepped into powerful positions in numerous fields including government, business, health and education.

Bryne Nason said: My question is, will the Taliban be different, and thats the real question. We havent seen any evidence of that.

She said the international community has clout because whatever form of government emerges in Afghanistan needs international support -- and human rights and respect for international law are red line issues.
DEBARK, Ethiopia (AP)  As they bring war to other parts of Ethiopia, resurgent Tigray fighters face growing allegations that they are retaliating for the abuses their people suffered back home.

In interviews with The Associated Press, more than a dozen witnesses offered the most widespread descriptions yet of Tigray forces striking communities and a religious site with artillery, killing civilians, looting health centers and schools and sending hundreds of thousands of people fleeing in the past two months.

In the town of Nefas Mewucha in the Amhara region, a hospitals medical equipment was smashed. The fighters looted medicines and other supplies, leaving more than a dozen patients to die.

It is a lie that they are not targeting civilians and infrastructures, hospital manager Birhanu Mulu told the AP. He said his team had to transfer some 400 patients elsewhere for care. Everyone can come and witness the destruction that they caused.

The war that began last November was confined at first to Ethiopias sealed-off northern Tigray region. Accounts of atrocities often emerged long after they occurred: Tigrayans described gang-rapes, massacres and forced starvation by federal forces and their allies from Amhara and neighboring Eritrea.

Thousands of people died, though the opaque nature of the war -- most communications and transport links have been severed -- means no one knows the real toll.

The Tigray forces retook much of their home region in a stunning turn in June, and now the fighting has spilled into Amhara. Angered by the attacks on their communities and families, the fighters are being accused of targeting civilians from the other side.

The United States, which for months has been outspoken about the abuses against Tigrayans, this week turned sharp criticism on the Tigray forces.

In Amhara now, we now know that the (Tigray forces have) ... looted the warehouses, theyve looted trucks and they have caused a great deal of destruction in all the villages they have visited, the head of the U.S. Agency for Economic Development, Sean Jones, told the Ethiopian Broadcasting Corporation.

He called the Tigray fighters very aggressive. USAID, which feeds millions throughout Ethiopia, has seen Tigray forces looting and emptying some of its warehouses, he said.

While the U.S., United Nations and others urge all sides to stop the fighting and sit down to talks, those on the ground believe theres no peace to come. Many Ethiopians outside Tigray support the federal governments war effort, and as Tigray forces advance, families heed recruiting drives and send loved ones for military training. Ethiopias government says millions have answered the call.

Our children are living in terror. We are here to stop this, said Mekdess Muluneh Asayehegn, a new Amhara militia recruit. Propping a gun on a full plastic sack, she lay on the ground and practiced sighting.

But the consequences of the call to war are already coming home.

As we came here, there were lots of dead bodies (of defense forces and civilians) along the way, said Khadija Firdu, who fled the advancing Tigray forces to a muddy camp for displaced people in Debark. Even as we entered Debark, we stepped on a dead body. We thought it was the trunk of a tree. It was dark. We came here crying.

It is not clear how many people in Amhara have been killed; claims by the warring sides cannot be verified immediately. Each has accused the other of lying or carrying out atrocities against supporters.

Shaken, the survivors are left to count bodies.

In the town of Debre Tabor, Getasew Anteneh said he watched as Tigray forces shelled and destroyed a home, killing six people.

Getasew helped carry away the dead. I believe it was a deliberate revenge attack, and civilians are suffering.

In recent interviews with the AP, the spokesman for the Tigray forces Getachew Reda said they are avoiding civilian casualties. They shouldnt be scared, he said last month. Wherever we go in Amhara, people are extending a very warm welcome.

He did not respond to the AP about the new witness accounts, but tweeted in response to USAID that we cannot vouch for every unacceptable behavior of off-grid fighters in such matters.

The Tigray forces say their offensive is an attempt to break the months-long blockade of their region of some 6 million people, as an estimated 400,000 face famine conditions in the worlds worst hunger crisis in a decade. The situation is set to worsen dramatically, the U.N. said Thursday.

The fighters also say they are pressuring Ethiopias government to stop the war and the ethnic targeting that has seen thousands of Tigrayans detained, evicted or harassed while the prime minister, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, has used words like cancer and weeds to describe the Tigray fighters.

Ethnic Amhara, more than half a million now displaced, say innocent people have been killed as Tigray forces move in.

Ive witnessed with my own eyes when the (Tigray forces) killed one person during our journey, said Mesfin Tadesse, who fled his home in Kobo town in July. His sister was pleading with them when they killed him for no reason.

Zewditu Tikuye, who also fled Kobo, said her 57-year-old husband was killed by Tigray fighters when he tried to stay behind to protect their home and cows. He wasnt armed, she said. Now she shelters with her six children in a small house with 10 other people.

Others seek shelter in schools, sleeping in classrooms as newcomers drenched from the rainy season arrive. They squat in muddy clearings, waiting for plastic plates of the spongy flatbread injera to be handed out for the latest meal.

And as earlier in Tigray, people in Amhara now watch in horror as the war damages religious sites in one of the worlds most ancient Christian civilizations.

On Monday, the fourth-century Checheho monastery was hit by artillery fire and partially collapsed.

This is very brutal, said Mergeta Abraraw Meles, who works there as a cashier. He believes it was intentionally targeted by the Tigray forces. They had come peacefully, he said, but then lashed out after facing battlefield losses.

In the rubble of the monastery was a young boy, dead.

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Cara Anna in Nairobi, Kenya contributed.

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This version corrects the name of the hospital manager.
The startling tactic by Remingtons demand for the personal records of five pupils and four adults murdered in the 2012 Newtown school shooting is not legally improper, and it could be a sign that the now-bankrupt gunmaker is inching closer to a settlement on the families liability case.

Or it could simply be a move to further antagonize the families as they ponder possible multi-million-dollar offers to end their attempt to hold the gun industry accountable.

State lawyers with experience in liability cases said Friday that while unsavory and possibly inflammatory in the families long-running attempt to hold Remington liable for marketing the AR-15-style rifle used in the school attack that killed 20 first-graders and six adults, its within the rights of the defendants.

In fact, personal information could be an indicator of the lifetime earning power of the children and adults that would be calculated at trial or in settlement negotiations over the allegations that the once-iconic arms manufacturer recklessly marketed its Bushmaster XM-15.

What is it youre thinking youll find in first-grade records? asked David Golub, a veteran Stamford attorney. There is not going to be anything in a school record that is going to have a meaningful effect. It really feels like a tactic with the company saying Look, you dont want to settle? Were going to do this kind of discovery. Its just unnecessary, probably.

But Golub said that the Remington request, including kindergarten and first-grade attendance, report cards and disciplinary records, along with personnel records of the four adult school employees, stop short of true courtroom hardball. They could have, for instance subpoenaed a surviving sibling and brought them into a deposition where they could be asked what kind of kid their brother was, Golub said in a phone interview.

Rosemarie Paine, a New Haven trial attorney, wondered Friday what the point of trying to obtain the personal information of children so young.

As a plaintiffs lawyer, if this type of request were filed, I would want to consider the defendants objectives in making this demand and also my clients reaction to this demand, Paine said in a phone interview. I cant help but think my clients would feel that this was intrusive and unnecessary, and as a lawyer I question the usefulness of the information sought pertaining to first graders records of attendance and discipline.

Remington claimed it was not the companys fault, but the actions of the 20-year-old gunman who shot himself to death in the school after first killing his mother in their Newtown home, then driving to the school, where he went on a murderous rampage. While Remington relied on federal protections from liability, the state Supreme Court ruled in 2019 that the nine families could go after the gun maker through the states Unfair Trade Practices Act.

After the U.S. Supreme Court sent the case back to state Superior Court, Remingtons four insurers are now battling the families, but two  Ironshore and James River  have offered the survivors $3.6 million each to settle, while Chubb and Swiss Re have not.

Courts calculate both the loss of earnings and the less-exact loss of the enjoyment of life, in reaching cash awards for fatal liabilities.

Last week, Josh Koskoff, the lawyer for the families, filed a motion to extend certain protections for the families from the attempt to gather the personal files from Newtown schools, charging that it was an attempted invasion of privacy from a defunct corporation.

The traditional allegation in wrongful-death cases is that you destroyed ones ability to enjoy life, Golub said. A defendant is allowed to, say, look at the educators work records, but with school kids, its stupid. Remington made these very public offers of compromise. They are trading signals back and forth. This is not discovery.

Note: Earlier versions of this article indicated that all four insurers have offered multimillion-dollar settlements.
Venice, FL (34285)

Today

Thunderstorms this evening followed by occasional showers overnight. Low 74F. Winds E at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 90%..

Tonight

Thunderstorms this evening followed by occasional showers overnight. Low 74F. Winds E at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 90%.
The U.S. Coast Guard on Thursday called off its search for five missing crew members from a helicopter that fell off an aircraft carrier into the sea, while the Navy continued its search efforts as of Friday.

The incident occurred at about 4:30 p.m. Tuesday when an MH-60S Seahawk belonging to Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron 8, based at Naval Air Station North Island, California, was conducting routine operations on the USS Abraham Lincoln about 60 nautical miles off the coast of San Diego. Something caused the helicopter to fall off the deck of the ship and plummet into the water.

On Wednesday, Lt. Sam Boyle, a Navy spokesman, declined to say what may have caused the accident, citing an ongoing investigation.

Read Next: Lawmakers Try to Ban Dishonorable Discharges for Troops Who Refuse Mandatory COVID-19 Vaccines

Hours after the incident, the service announced that one of the helicopter's crew members had been rescued. But since Wednesday morning, the Navy's Third Fleet has offered no new details on the incident except to say "search and rescue efforts are ongoing for the five crewmembers."

A spokesman for the Coast Guard's 11th District in San Diego confirmed that the service had suspended search efforts Thursday morning.

The squadron the helicopter belonged to said "all affected family members have been notified" following the incident Tuesday. As of early Friday afternoon, the Navy had not released any information regarding the missing crew members.

In addition to the missing helicopter crew, the incident injured five sailors aboard the aircraft carrier. Two were taken ashore for treatment while the other three "had minimal injuries," the Navy said Wednesday.

-- Konstantin Toropin can be reached at konstantin.toropin@military.com. Follow him on Twitter @ktoropin.

Related: Safety Report Urges Aviators to Show 'Moral Courage' and Recognize Shortcomings
The House Armed Services Committee voted Wednesday to expand registration for the Selective Service System, commonly known as the draft, to include women, a move that brings the requirement one step closer to becoming law.

As part of the debate on the fiscal 2022 defense policy bill, committee members voted 35-24 to require all Americans ages 18 to 24 to register for the draft, not just men.

Air Force veteran Rep. Chrissy Houlahan, D-Pa., proposed the measure, saying the current system is unconstitutional because it discriminates based on gender.

"This amendment clarifies women make up over 50% of the population, and not including them is not only a disservice to these women but to our nation as a whole," Houlahan said. "It ensures that the Selective Service System is able to provide the DoD with personnel and the skills it needs, including cyber, STEM [science, technology, engineering and mathematics] and technical talent."

Read Next: Sailors and Marines Have 90 Days to Get Vaccinated or Face Punishment

While expanding the draft may face opposition from conservatives when the bill is considered by the entire House, it has a significant chance of becoming law, since the Senate Armed Services Committee's version of the legislation also contains the measure.

Both bills now face floor votes, followed by a conference to reconcile differences between the two versions, and then a final vote.

Florida Republican Rep. Mike Waltz, a former Army Green Beret, co-sponsored the amendment and was joined by three Republicans -- Reps. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, Jack Bergman of Michigan and Patrick Fallon of Texas -- in voting for the amendment.

"If we have a national emergency that makes us have to go back to the draft -- we're talking COVID on steroids, a cyber attack ... and we need everyone, man, woman, gay, straight, black brown, and we need everybody on deck, it's that bad -- what this is seeking to do is at least have a framework established," Waltz said.

The committee's approval follows recommendations by the National Commission on Military, National and Public Service last year that Selective Service registration be extended to women.

Since restrictions on women serving in combat arms were lifted in 2015, lawmakers -- as well as plaintiffs in a lawsuit over the constitutionality of male-only registration -- have argued that women should need to register.

Earlier this year, the Supreme Court decided against hearing a case on the issue, with the justices agreeing with the U.S. solicitor general's argument that Congress, not the courts, should decide the matter.

Last year, lawmakers introduced the provision in the House, but it never made it past committee.

Some legislators have proposed that the Selective Service System be abolished because the nation eliminated the draft in the early 1970s. Sens. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and Ron Wyden, D-Ore., have sponsored legislation to kill the system, calling its $25 million annual cost a waste of taxpayer dollars.

House Republicans who opposed Houlahan's amendment said it is simply unnecessary. Rep. Vicky Hartzler, R-Mo., has confidence that women would volunteer to serve in a national emergency.

"This current system doesn't fence off anyone. Anyone ... can step up now to serve our nation, but this amendment is a solution in search of a problem," Hartzler said.

The proposed $740 billion defense bill, which includes a $24 billion boost proposed by Republican committee members, was approved by a 57-2 vote. California Democrats Reps. Ro Khanna and Sara Jacobs voted against it.

-- Patricia Kime can be reached at Patricia.Kime@Monster.com. Follow her on Twitter @patriciakime

Related: After Outcry from Female Vets in Congress, Pentagon Revives Committee on Women in Service
WASHINGTON  U.S. military bases housing Afghanistan evacuees are building their own city-type leadership organizations to deal with sanitation, food and other challenges as the numbers of Afghans coming into the U.S. grows.

Air Force General Glen VanHerck, who heads U.S. Northern Command, said there were more than 25,000 Afghan evacuees being housed at the eight bases as of Friday. He acknowledged there have been problems as the bases grapple with language, cultural and other issues.

He told Pentagon reporters that he's "building eight small cities, were going to have challenges. He said the bases have designated a military officer as a mayor to be in charge of a couple dorms or housing units and an Afghan counterpart who can communicate about any ongoing issues. He said Northern Command has asked the Defense Department for additional linguists who are fluent and can speak with the Afghans.

The U.S. military will eventually be able to house as many as 50,000 Afghanistan evacuees at the eight bases around the country and wont likely need to tap additional facilities, said VanHerck, who is also the head of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD),

Afghans at the bases are divided, with single males and single females in separate housing, and families walled off in their own sections where possible to provide privacy.

So far, he said, there have been few problems with evacuees testing positive for COVID-19, and he has heard of no serious security problems.

A defense official said the number of Afghans at each of the eight bases will fluctuate over time, but as of Friday the approximate totals were: Fort McCoy, Wisc., 8,800; Fort Bliss, Texas, 6,200; Fort Lee, Va., 1,700; Joint Base McGuireDixLakehurst, N.J., 3,700; Holloman Air Force Base, N.M., 650; Marine Corps Base Quantico, Va., 800; Fort Pickett, Va., 3,650 and Camp Atterbury, Ind., 65.
KABUL, Afghanistan  It felt like hell itself had opened up, said Ramal Ahmadi, who was watching cartoons with his nephew when a U.S. drone slammed into his family's courtyard where just moments before there had been a noisy celebration to greet the family's oldest brother.

The last thing Ahmadi remembers was the sound of his brother's car horn announcing his arrival and the squealing of the children. He says his mind is not right since that day.

Sunday's U.S. drone strike killed 10 members of his family, six of them children, Ahmadi said.

Senior U.S. military officials said the drone strike hit an Islamic State target and weakened the extremists' ability to further disrupt the final phase of the U.S. withdrawal and evacuation of thousands of people from Afghanistan. Three days before the drone strike, an ISIS suicide bomber had attacked a crowded gate at Kabul airport, killing 13 U.S. service members and 169 Afghans.

Army Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Wednesday that at least one of those killed in the drone strike was an Islamic State facilitator.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki acknowledged the reports of civilian casualties on Thursday and said they were being investigated. Previously, American officials have noted that subsequent explosions resulted from the destruction of the vehicle and may have caused additional casualties.

But an enraged Ahmadi family is demanding proof  and disputes that the car was carrying explosives.

They have to give us answers. Is our blood so worthless, we don't even get an explanation? Ahmadi asked.

Analysts warned that the risk of civilian casualties during drone strikes will only grow, now that the U.S. no longer has on-the-ground intelligence.

Inside the courtyard of the family home, Emal, another Ahmadi brother, recently picked through the twisted ruins of the devastated hulk of the Toyota Corolla. Inside was a blood-soaked child's shirt.

He said some family members, including children, were in the car when it was hit. He contended that if there had been a bomb in the vehicle there would be far more damage to the courtyard and house. He pointed to two undamaged gas cylinders tucked away in a corner of the courtyard.

If the car was filled with explosives like the Americans say, why didn't these cylinders explode," asked Emal. He also pointed to a shoddily constructed brick wall nearby the gutted car. How could the wall still be standing if this car had been full of explosives?

But American officials, including some who watched the strike in real-time on video feeds, said the U.S. had been watching the car for several hours and saw people loading explosives into the trunk.

The compound in Kabul's Khoja Boghra neighborhood was home to four Ahmadi brothers and their families  25 people in all. The roads that weave through the middle-class neighborhood pass homes hidden behind high walls and gates.

For the Ahmadis, the accusation that their family was involved with the Islamic State group is a devastating one.

If you have proof I say go ahead kill me but show me the proof, said Emal, whose 3-year old daughter Malika was among the dead.

Their oldest brother, Zamarai, and a nephew Nasir Haideri  both of whom were killed in the strike  had worked for U.S. government-allied firms and had applied for special immigrant visas granted to Afghans with such ties to the U.S. They were being processed at the time of the strike.

Emal said 30-year-old Nasir, who was to have been married just days after the strike, had dreamed of going to America.

The surviving brothers showed the commendation letters the relatives had included in their submissions for the visas.

Emal, who has also applied for one of the visas, said he struggled to understand why the family compound was struck. They have such high technology they can see an ant on the ground, but they couldn't see a yard full of children? he asked.

Milley said Sunday's strike was based on good intelligence, including a review of video. We monitored that through various means and all of the engagement criteria were being met," he said. "We went through the same level of rigor that weve done for years and we took a strike.

Psaki pushed back against the idea that a lack of solid on-the-ground intelligence is hampering the United States. She said that there are many countries where the U.S. has no military presence on the ground, but we can still prevent terrorist groups from metastasizing and posing threats.

But Douglas London, who served as the CIAs counterterrorism chief overseeing the region before retiring in 2019, said the strike and resulting deaths really illustrates our handicap by having no presence on the ground to collect the best quality and most timely intelligence.

Not having U.S. or long-trained Afghan partner forces on the ground also foreclosed other possibilities, like potentially stopping the car before it entered a crowded residential area, he said.

A strike in a congested area would have been the last choice we would have made, said London, author of the forthcoming book, The Recruiter: Spying and the Lost Art of American Intelligence.

___

Associated Press writers Lolita C. Baldor and Nomaan Merchant in Washington contributed to this report.
Lockdowns, layoffs and economic hardship came to define the job market during the global COVID-19 pandemic. Many were forced to change the way they live and work. Military members, who intend to separate in the years to come, might be understandably nervous watching events unfold. They werent alone.

A study commissioned by the StrataTech Education Group found that 59% of all Americans considered attending a trade school during the pandemic. They, like many, were looking for a stable career that would help them recover from the economic downturn that followed.

Skilled trades not only offer both stability and an income starting at more than $40,000 per year, above the annual U.S. median income of $34,248, according to the 2020 Census. Its also an area that is experiencing a severe labor shortage, which is an opportunity for those planning to leave the military. Any military members interested in a skilled trade can start with one of these five programs.

1. IBEW Veterans Electrical Entry Program (VEEP)

It never has been easier for military members to transition to a civilian job as a fully qualified and licensed electrician. The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers will train separating veterans and place them into one of around 300 apprenticeship programs across the United States. Once there, they get right to work.

The VEEP program starts with filling out an application, which includes telling the program where they want to be located. VEEP coordinators will find a spot to place the veteran close to their desired location. The candidate will attend a free, seven-week pre-apprenticeship program in Anchorage, Alaska. Then, they are sent to work their new jobs.

2. UA Veterans in Piping

The United Association is the union of plumbers, fitters, welders and service techs. The unions Veterans In Piping (VIP) program offers free training for active-duty service members to train into one of the unions represented career fields.

After completing an apprenticeship in heating, ventilation, air conditioning and refrigeration (HVAC-R), welding or fire protection, journey workers can go on to earn certification and even instructor training. The UA Veterans in Piping program is open only to transitioning service members.

3. SMART Heroes

In August 2017, organized labor in the sheet metal industry recognized a lack of workers going into the field began SMART Heroes, an effort to enlist transitioning service members to work in sheet metal. (SMART stands for sheet metal air, rail and transportation.) They developed a free seven-week training program for veterans that ends with an opportunity for employment at any of 148 apprentice programs.

In that short time, trainees will receive a full years apprenticeship in general sheet metal, welding, HVAC service, system test, adjust, balance and building information modeling. The program is currently being offered at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state and at Fort Carson in Colorado Springs, Colorado, but is open to all transitioning military personnel. To get started, fill out the SMART Heroes contact form.

4. Workshops for Warriors

Workshop for Warriors was founded by Navy veteran Hernan Luis y Prado of San Diego in 2008. He was looking to address what he calls the silver wave of experienced manufacturing workers who will soon retire without a younger generation of skilled tradespeople to replace them.

The Workshops for Warriors program is structured like military technical training; 16 weeks long for nine hours a day, five days a week. At the end of the training course, it places graduates in a machining or welding fabrication job with partners like SnapOn, Google or SpaceX. The program currently has a 95% placement rate. The only caveat for the program is that its not free -- but is covered by the Post-9/11 GI Bill.

5. Utility Worker Military Assistance Program (UMAP)

The Utility Workers Union of America works in areas like power, water, gas, and health and safety. In 2012, it launched an initiative to recruit, train and place veterans in utilities jobs through a free, seven-month training program that ends with job placement.

UMAP not only has programs to provide the training to veterans and guard and reserve members; its also a SkillBridge-eligible program. This means transitioning service members currently on active duty can join the program during the last six months of their military careers while earning military pay and benefits. To sign up for the program or learn more, visit the UMAP website.

-- Blake Stilwell can be reached at blake.stilwell@military.com. He can also be found on Twitter @blakestilwell or on Facebook.

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The Dodgers have released right-hander Yaisel Sierra, as first reported by Francys Romero of Las Mayores (Twitter link). Hed been pitching with the teams Triple-A affiliate in Oklahoma City.

While Sierra may not be a recognizable name for some, he was at one point a highly sought-after international free agent. Sierra defected from Cuba in 2015 and established residency in the Dominican Republic, at which point he was declared an international free agent. Because of his professional experience in Cuba, he was exempt from international bonus pools and able to sign with the highest bidder. Both the Cubs and Marlins were reported to have made offers, but the Dodgers landed Sierra by signing him to a six-year, $30MM Major League contract in Feb. 2016.

Obviously, that deal looks regrettable in retrospect. The now-30-year-old Sierra has yet to pitch in the Majors and has scarcely pitched above the Double-A level. He tossed 16 1/3 innings with the OKC Dodgers this season but was clobbered for 25 runs on 36 hits (six homers) and 12 walks. Sierra did punch out 18 batters in that time, but he also threw a staggering 11 wild pitches in those 16 1/3 frames. Overall, he has an 8.36 ERA in 37 2/3 Triple-A innings and a 5.43 ERA in just 179 total minor league innings.

Sierra was just one of many high-profile Cuban defectors to sign large deals with the Dodgers as they flexed their financial might in what was, at the time, a far less-restricted international market. While clubs still had international bonus pools for international amateurs, the penalties for exceeding those pools was a dollar-for-dollar tax and a temporary ban on signing players for more than $300K in subsequent international periods. The qualifications for a player to be considered a professional rather than an amateur were also less stringent than they are presently, which was important in the case of players like Sierra due to the fact that professional players are exempt from bonus pools (hence his Major League deal and $30MM guarantee).

Sierra, Yadier Alvarez, Hector Olivera, Alex Guerrero, Erisbel Arruebarrena, Yusniel Diaz and Yasiel Puig all agreed to signing bonuses or Major League contracts that promised them $15MM or more with the Dodgers, who came away with little to show for that spending spree. Puig, of course, paid dividends as the teams primary right fielder for several years. Diaz was the centerpiece of the trade that netted the Dodgers Manny Machado back in 2018. The rest of that pricey group, however, hasnt panned out in the manner the Dodgers hoped.

The Dodgers certainly werent the only team spending aggressively in this arena, but they definitely led the charge, likely contributing to the much more restrictive guidelines for international free agents in the 2017-21 collective bargaining agreement. Currently, players must have at least six years of professional experience and be at least 25 years of age to be exempt from international bonus pools. Further, bonus pools for amateur signings are now hard-capped.

Additional changes to international free agency has been an oft-discussed topic in recent years. Talk of an international draft hasnt been as prominent of late given the other topics expected to be on the table in this offseasons collective bargaining negotiations, but its certainly still possible that well see some alterations to the regulations regarding teams paths to talent acquisition on the international market once a new CBA has been finalized.
Dark shadows twist their way across the red rocks of Moab, the only light coming from the waxing moon. The dry grasses shush together, soundin
The Manti-La Sal National Forest announced that work began on a series of projects along the Geyser Pass Road on Aug. 30. The road has been cl
Diego Alphonso Dias, known in the bank as DAD, was truly paternal.

He was a veteran in the bank and the head of finance, having risen from the lowly rank of OBC (office slang meaning ordinary bloody clerk  no offense intended to anyone) to this elevated position by dint of sheer hard work, meticulous attention to detail and a benign personality.

The entire Goanese staff looked up to him as a father figure and he, in turn, dispensed wisdom and empathy to all and sundry.

Unfortunately, despite his many excellent qualities and skills, he knew absolutely nothing about foreign exchange except to tally the daily profit figure, which had to land at his desk at 10am sharp every morning.

Yet, in the absence of any other suitable candidate (because no one else knew anything about forex either) he had been made the boss of the foreign exchange dealing room where my partner and I toiled.

A word of explanation.

We had been shoved into the dealing room without any training. We were completely clueless about the intricacies of the forex market.

Actually, it did not matter much because our bank was a minnow in the forex market, just covering sundry merchant transactions. A $100,000 deal was a landmark because our usual transaction size was $25,000.

One day this changed, though we were unaware of it when it happened.

My partner was sitting at the telex machine and I was slouching over an old magazine  a typical boring day with nothing happening.

Hey, come here, quick, he said.

I ran to the telex and saw this exchange of messages between our sister bank in Dubai and my partner.

Hi hi, friends, Pound Rup please,  Dubai wrote.

Hi hi friends, 6.3450-80. (Note: those were the days of indirect rates, Rs100 = X units of foreign currency.)

OK one pound yours.

One Pound? GBP1.00? (My partner was evidently perplexed.)

Yes, GBP 1.00, was the reply.

My partner looked at me. I nodded.

OK, one Pound mine at 6.3480. (Note: With indirect rates, you would Buy Hi  sell Lo.)

"Thanks very much for the deal. (Was there a hint of sarcasm in my partner's next comment?)

Tx, bi.

My partner and I looked at each other. One Pound? Was he joking?

Lets ask Dad.

We went to seek Dads wisdom.

Dad looked at the telex printout for a long time, sighed, and looked at us.

Must be a joke, Sir, my partner said.

Yes, I agree. Just ignore it, Dad replied.

So, we ignored the whole matter, did not write a deal ticket and naively plodded through another hum-drum day.

Next morning there was a yell of consternation from the telex machine where my partner was checking the overnight messages.

Oh My God!!

It was a confirmation message from Dubai.

We confirm having sold to you GBP1,000,000 (GBP one million) at 6.3480 value DDMMYY. Settlement through etc etc.

We were completely flabbergasted. Did one pound mean one million pounds?

Fortunately, the pound had strengthened a little against the rupee overnight, and we made a nice windfall profit in covering the position.

Then I called a forex broker with whom we had a good rapport.

Hey, Shashi, what does one pound mean?

Why, one million Pounds, of course was the reply.

And one dollar, does it mean one million dollars?

Yes what was the puzzled reply.

I quickly put the phone down. It would not do to display ignorance, especially to a broker, because the story would go through the market like wildfire.

Yes, we were very, very lucky that day.

But beware, if your boss is as ignorant as you are, trouble looms ahead, unless you are really lucky.
We had mentioned in previous weeks closing report that Nifty, Sensex move would depend on global reaction to US Fed meeting. The major indices rallied this week and ended with major gains.

The trend of the major indices in the week is given in the table:

On Monday, the indices opened higher and made huge gains. On the NSE, there were 1,424 advances, 612 declines and 90 unchanged.

Bharti Airtel board approved capital raise of up to Rs 21,000 crore by issuing equity shares of face value of Rs 5 each as rights issue.

Larsen & Toubros construction arm won a slew of orders in India and abroad for its various businesses.

L&T Finance Holdings is in advance talks to sell its mutual fund arm to HSBC, after a long delay.

Axis Bank begun issuing tier-1 debt securities under a Rs 35,000-crore debt raise plan.

Burger King India entered into discussions to acquire a controlling stake in PT Sari Burger Indonesia, which manages and operates Burger King brand in Indonesia.

On Tuesday, the indices opened higher and continued its rally. On the NSE, there were 969 advances, 965 declines and 81 unchanged.

SRF board approved bonus issue of equity shares in the proportion of 4 shares of Rs. 10 each for every one share.

Telecom firm Bharti Airtel clarified the reports on likely investment by Google into the company as speculations.

L&T concluded the divestment of its 100% stake in three hydroelectric power plants in Uttarakhand for a consideration of 1,001.50 crores from Renew Power.

Kotak Mahindra Bank sold 20 crore shares in Airtel Payments Bank Ltd amounting to 8.57% stake to Bharti Enterprises for around Rs 294 crore.

On Wednesday, the indices opened higher but suffered a minor correction. On the NSE, there were 942 advances, 1,061 declines and 5 unchanged.

Bharat Heavy Electricals won six orders worth Rs 10,800 crore from NPCIL involving the setting up of four units of 700 MWe at Gorakhpur, Haryana and another two at Kaiga, Karnataka.

Vedanta announced a first interim dividend of Rs 18.50 per share.

Shoppers Stop sold its Crossword Bookstores to franchisee Agarwal Business House at a gross business valuation of Rs 41.62 crore.

Equitas Small Finance Bank (SFB) has tied up with Google Pay to enable the latters users to book fixed deposits with the bank on Google Pay app in under 2 minutes without having to open a bank account.

NCC has received one new order for Rs 877 crore from a state government agency.

On Thursday, the indices opened higher and closed with huge gains. On the NSE, there were 1,287 advances, 630 declines and 88 unchanged.

Aditya Birla Group (ABG) chairman Kumar Mangalam Birla met with Telecom Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw. The meeting comes at a time when the government is planning some relief measures for the telecom sector.

Automobile manufacturer Mahindra and Mahindra will observe seven 'No Production Days' in September due to the supply shortage of semiconductors.

Shares of Morepen Laboratories surged nearly 11% after it announced to transfer its medical devices business to a wholly owned subsidiary.

Just Dial board has approved the allotment of 2.12 crore equity shares of the company of face value of Rs 10 each fully paid-up by way of preferential allotment on a private placement basis for cash consideration to Reliance Retail Ventures at a price of Rs 1,022.25 per equity share aggregating to Rs 2,165 crore.

On Friday, the indices opened higher and closed with decent gains. On the NSE, there were 1,024 advances, 956 declines and 86 unchanged.

Aditya Birla Group (ABG) chairman Kumar Mangalam Birla met with Telecom Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw. The meeting comes at a time when the government is planning some relief measures for the telecom sector.

Automobile manufacturer Mahindra and Mahindra will observe seven 'No Production Days' in September due to the supply shortage of semiconductors.

Shares of Morepen Laboratories surged nearly 11% after it announced to transfer its medical devices business to a wholly owned subsidiary.

Just Dial board has approved the allotment of 2.12 crore equity shares of the company of face value of Rs 10 each fully paid-up by way of preferential allotment on a private placement basis for cash consideration to Reliance Retail Ventures at a price of Rs 1,022.25 per equity share aggregating to Rs 2,165 crore.
Traders on the National Stock Exchange (NSE) are a worried lot currently. They are spooked by the increasing frequency of freak trades on the NSE derivatives segment (many of which have coincidentally happened on a Friday) leading them to be afraid of Freaky Fridays.

Last week, Moneylife had covered about the alarming frequency of freak trades on NSE and also shared a cheatsheet to protect against such freak trades

What happened today?

Today, the 37100 put options of Bank Nifty was trading at Rs448 and within a a fraction of a second suddenly hit a high of Rs1921 -- a spike of almost 4X and then in moments it came back to 448..

This is the sixth such incident in the last two months. Traders have tried drawing the regulators attention by writing several emails to the Exchange and capital market regulator, trending a hashtag on this topic on Twitter, conducting a No Trading Day on 1st September but to no avail.

One angry trader told Moneylife This shows the lethargy on the side of the regulator and the Exchange and also their audacity. Where is the accountability? It makes my blood boil to see all those screenshots from people who have lost. Many of them are not rich and are trading out of a capital of Rs 1 -2 lakh, and imagine them losing Rs60000 within moments and that too when it is not their fault. It is daylight robbery. You can be the best trader in the world but because of this freak trade you can go bankrupt in split seconds. Stock market is becoming akin to gambling because of this and the regulator is obviously sleeping at the wheel. They have turned a deaf ear to all requests - retail traders, brokers association, ANMI, commodity brokers association came together to make a request to the regulator and despite all these collective requests, the freak trade scene continues.

He added that if this continues, traders will look to find a way to trade other markets. They will get frustrated, lose their faith in the Indian equity markets and start trading somewhere else, he said.

Within minutes of the freak trade, Twitter was flooded with screenshots from traders who lost large chunks of money. Many of them tagged Moneylife in their desperate distress SOS tweets requesting us to look into the matter.

This is similar to what happened on 20th August when around 2.18pm, suddenly there was a freak trade whereby 16,450 call options which was trading at Rs80 suddenly traded at Rs800 that too with a huge volume of over six lakh quantity within a minute.

Traders had kept stop losses at Rs120-Rs200 and all of these stop-losses got triggered and they couldnt understand the reasons. All this happened within a minute and this was not even recorded on the charts; so when they went back and checked the charts, the candle had not even reached Rs200 levels leaving traders totally perplexed. The stop-losses could have triggered a domino effect. This freak trade made retail investors lose a lot of money; many have lost over Rs10 lakh.

This has also given rise to many memes over the terrible plight of traders.

How traders losing money in freak trades without realising.



Freak trade

37100PE @SEBI_India pic.twitter.com/ycMLbFH3lE  Nilesh Kadam (@NileshTrader) September 3, 2021

While brokers are raising questions about the frequency of such trades, some even suggested that it could be more than a coincidence.

Interestingly, like one market expert pointed out the market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has been focusing only on manipulation in the cash market segment and penny stocks on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) while such highly unusual price movements are becoming frequent on the NSEs derivative segment and, more often than not, even go unreported.

Traders also point out that media houses and mainstream media are ignoring this issue completely.

Given the opaque style of functioning of NSE and the Exchange being the favoured exchange of SEBI, it is likely that the Exchange will go scot-free once again. However, it is high time the market regulator seeks a clarification from NSE about the increasing frequency of these freak trades and the action being taken by the Exchange to address the issue.
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Sayre, PA (18840)

Today

Partly cloudy this evening with more clouds for overnight. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 66F. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Partly cloudy this evening with more clouds for overnight. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 66F. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph.
OCKLAWAHA [mdash]Elizabeth Lynn Keigans, 55, of Ocklawaha, formerly of Moultrie, died Wednesday, August 18, 2021 at her home. Born on December 20, 1965, in Moultrie, she was the daughter of the late Joe Ellis Keigans, Sr. and Ruby Lynette Conger Keigans. She is survived by her daughter, Cara
Major stock indexes on Wall Street closed mostly lower Friday, though a rally in Big Tech companies nudged the Nasdaq to another all-time high.

The S&P 500 fell less than 0.1% a day after notching a record high. The benchmark index still managed its second straight weekly gain. Losses in financial, industrial and utilities companies outweighed gains in technology stocks and other sectors of the S&P 500. Energy prices mostly fell. Gold and silver rose. Treasury yields were mixed.

Stock indexes' uneven finish followed a government report showing that U.S. employers created far fewer jobs than expected last month. The report led investors to question whether the delta variant is starting to impact economic growth.

Investors are saying, looks like this transition from reopening to a reopened economy is going to take a little bit longer, said Tom Hainlin, national investment strategist at U.S. Bank Wealth Management.

The S&P 500 slipped 1.52 points to 4,535.43. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 74.73 points, or 0.2%, to 35,369.09. The Nasdaq composite rose 32.34 points, or 0.2%, to 15,363.52, its third straight gain. The technology-heavy index also posted a weekly gain.

The indexes moves were mostly muted ahead of a long holiday weekend. U.S. stock markets will be closed Monday for Labor Day.

Investors focused Friday on a key barometer of economic health: the Labor Department's monthly snapshot of hiring by nonfarm companies. The report found that Americas employers added just 235,000 jobs in August, a surprisingly weak gain after two months of robust hiring, at a time when the coronavirus' highly contagious delta variants spread has discouraged some people from flying, shopping and eating out.

The August job gains fell far short of the big gains in June and July of roughly 1 million a month. Those gains followed widespread vaccinations that allowed the easing of many pandemic restrictions.

Technology stocks did particularly well last year during the pandemic, so it was unsurprising to see traders move back into those investments again. Broadcom and NetApp each rose 1% or more.

Travel companies took some of the heaviest losses. Carnival Corp. slid 4.4% for the biggest decline in the S&P 500. Rival Royal Caribbean fell 4.2%. Las Vegas Sands, Marriott International and Wynn Resorts also fell.

Friday's weak jobs report could actually benefit stock investors over the longer run. The Federal Reserve has indicated it might begin winding down its bond purchases of $120 billion a month that pump money into the financial system until they have more data that the U.S. recovery is on solid footing. The report may help prompt Fed policymakers to delay those plans.

Bond yields moved higher. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note rose to 1.32% from 1.30% the day before.
ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP)  A British national admitted Thursday evening in a federal courtroom near the nation's capital that he played a leadership role in an Islamic State scheme to torture, hold for ransom and eventually behead American hostages.

Alexanda Anon Kotey, 37, pleaded guilty to all eight counts against him at a plea hearing in U.S. District Court in Alexandria. The charges include hostage-taking resulting in death and providing material support to the Islamic State group from 2012 through 2015.

He admitted guilt in connection with the deaths of four American hostages  journalist James Foley, journalist Steven Sotloff and aid workers Peter Kassig and Kayla Mueller  as well as European and Japanese nationals who also were held captive.

Kotey is one of four Islamic State members who were dubbed the Beatles by their captives because of their British accents. He and another man, El Shafee Elsheikh, were brought to the U.S. last year to face charges after the U.S. assured Britain that neither man would face the death penalty.

Elsheikh is still scheduled to go on trial in January. A third Beatle, Mohammed Emwazi, also known as Jihadi John, was killed in a 2015 drone strike. A fourth member is serving a prison sentence in Turkey.

The plea deal sets a mandatory minimum sentence of life without parole. After 15 years, though, he would be eligible to be transferred to the United Kingdom to face any possible charges there.

In the plea deal , he admits that life is an appropriate sentence in the United Kingdom as well. If he were to receive a sentence of less than life there, the deal requires that he serve the rest of his life sentence, either in the United Kingdom if that country will do so, or be transferred back to the U.S. to serve the life term.

The deal also requires him to cooperate with authorities and answer questions about his time in the Islamic State group. He would not, though, be required to testify at Elsheikh's trial.

The deal also requires him to meet with victims' families if they request it.

Kotey gave a somewhat detailed account of his time in Islamic State when U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis asked him to explain in his own words what he had done.

He said he traveled to Syria to engage in a military fight against the Syrian forces of Bashar Assad and that he eventually pledged allegiance to Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

I accept I will be perceived as a radical who holds extremist views, he said.

He acknowledged that he had participated in capture-and-detain operations to kidnap Foley and other Western hostages and that he led efforts to extract ransoms.

He described the acts of violence that were inflicted on the hostages as a necessary part of keeping them in line and persuading Western governments to pay ransom.

In the years after the hostages had been killed, he said he filled multiple roles within the Islamic State, including as a sniper and as director of a special forces training camp.

Prosecutor Dennis Fitzpatrick said at Thursday's hearing that Kotey, Elsheikh and Emwazi were all friends at a young age in London, where they became radicalized.

In a statement, Raj Parekh, acting U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, who is also a member of the prosecution team on the Kotey and Elsheikh cases, said the case has always been focused on the victims and their families.

"Their resilience, courage, and perseverance have ensured that terror will never have the last word. The justice, fairness, and humanity that this defendant received in the United States stand in stark contrast to the cruelty, inhumanity, and indiscriminate violence touted by the terrorist organization he espoused, Parekh said.

Mueller also was raped by the Islamic State's leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, according to the indictment. Al-Baghdadi was killed by U.S. forces in Syria in 2019.

Kotey and Elsheikh were captured in Syria in 2018 by the U.S.-supported Syrian Democratic Forces while trying to escape to Turkey.

Family members of all four victims attended Thursday's hearing and stood outside the courthouse afterward with prosecutors. They will have an opportunity to speak at Kotey's formal sentencing on March 4.

James Foley's mother, Diane, said she was grateful for the conviction and praised prosecutors for obtaining a detailed account of Kotey's culpability.

This accountability is essential if our country wants to discourage hostage-taking," she said. Diane Foley also called on the U.S. government to prioritize the return of all Americans being held abroad.
Local officials had expected reactions to the Supreme Court decision allowing a new Texas law that bans abortions once medical professionals can detect cardiac activity.

The Associated Press reported that of the 54,000 abortions performed in 2020, around 45,000 occurred at 8 weeks of pregnancy or less. Some of those abortions still could have been legal under the new law, if they occurred before cardiac activity was detected, the AP reported.

Disappointing is how Midland County Democratic Party Chair Cathy Broadrick described the Supreme Court ruling. She told the Reporter-Telegram that she had a friend in school whose sister died of a backroom abortion. It is a shame we are going back to those days.  You dont stop abortion by making it illegal. You stop it by giving women affordable health care.

Viability of Life

Judy Rouse, executive director of The Life Center, told the Reporter-Telegram that the decision was part of the cooperation of science and law to prove the viability of life.

According to the Rouse, The Life Center will still advocate life-affirming abortion alternatives through counseling, parenting education, adoption education and other life choices.

A person with a stressful pregnancy needs to understand their rights and the outcomes of their choices, Rouse stated.

The Associated Press reported that courts have blocked other states from imposing similar restrictions, but Texas law differs significantly because it leaves enforcement up to private citizens through civil lawsuits instead of criminal prosecutors.

The key difference is the enforcement mechanism, the AP wrote. The Texas law relies on citizens suing abortion providers over alleged violations. Other states sought to enforce their statutes through government actions like criminal charges against physicians who provide abortions.

Rouse said the new law does protect the women, because they cannot be sued.

Her health is our priority, Rouse said.

Heartbeat is a sign of a living

Michael Banschbach of ProLife Midland, offered the following when asked for a comment about the decision.

In 1973, the Supreme Court invented the right to an abortion, since the Constitution contains no such right. In his opinion of the court, Associate Justice Harry Blackmun wrote that We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins  the judiciary, at this point in the development of man's knowledge, is not in a position to speculate as to the answer. While disingenuous at the time, it is even more so 50 years later, after all the advances in medicine and ultrasound technology. With the passing of the Texas Heartbeat Act, and the Supreme Courts unwillingness to use its authority to block the law from taking effect, the state and federal government are effectively confirming that the detection of a heartbeat is clearly a sign of a living, growing child that has rights in the womb.

An extreme new law

Planned Parenthood of Texas stated Thursday that the average one-way driving distance for pregnant Texans seeking an abortion will increase 20-fold, from 12 miles to 248 miles, according to research from the Guttmacher Institute.

The organization also stated that abortion will remain an option for the few Texans who happen to know theyre pregnant by six weeks or have the money and flexibility to secure the transportation, child care, lodging, and time off from work it takes to leave the state.

This will have a particularly severe impact on the communities that already bear the brunt of Texass pre-existing web of medically unnecessary abortion restrictions: people of color, people with low incomes, young people, and people in rural areas without options, a news release stated.

Lives will be saved

A case is still proceeding in the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, though the timing of future action is unclear, the AP reported.

I celebrate the lives that will be saved by this legislation, said Bishop Michael J. Sis, Diocese of San Angelo. I hope it will continue to stand despite further legal challenges that may come. I believe the 1973 Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade was a tragic mistake, because the most fundamental human right is the right to life. When we face the situation of an unplanned pregnancy, we are typically struggling to deal with two things  a crisis and a child. While the abortion industry would seek to resolve the situation by eliminating the child, we prefer to accept the child and assist with the circumstances of the crisis.

Like Rouse recommended pregnant women can call The Life Center, Sis stated in an email that hundreds of pregnancy and parenting support programs and adoption services in our state provide practical resources to women and families facing the challenges of unplanned pregnancies.

I recommend that people facing an unplanned pregnancy contact the Texas Pregnancy Care Network at www.texaspregnancy.org or 877-345-7734 to find help in their local Texas community, Sis wrote. Here in the Permian Basin, The Life Center stands ready to help through their centers in Midland, Odessa, Andrews and Big Spring.
Timothy Joel Murr, Passed away on August 23rd, 2021 at the age of 67. Funeral services will be at Keefeton Free Will Baptist Church on Saturday, September 18th, 2021 at 2pm.
A federal judge on Thursday dismissed a lawsuit from environmental advocates challenging the permits to build I-73.

Judge Bruce Howe Hendricks ruled against the S.C. Coastal Conservation League, which had argued that the project would needlessly destroy hundreds of acres of wetlands when cheaper, more environmentally sound alternatives are available.

"We respect the courts decision," said Catherine Wannamaker, a senior attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center, which represented the plaintiff. "However, nothing in the courts ruling solves the major hurdle facing I-73, which is the exorbitant projected cost and the lack of funding to pay for it. This highway proposal remains a boondoggle while South Carolinas roads and highways are in critical need of repair and upgrade, and that is where taxpayer money should be directed.

Proponents of the project have maintained the road would serve as a hurricane evacuation route and lead to more businesses coming into the Grand Strand. Local business and government leaders celebrated the court's decision.

Todays order is a colossal win for Myrtle Beach, Horry County and the entire state of South Carolina, said Karen Riordan, president and CEO of the Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce, in a news release. I-73 is a public safety and economic development necessity for South Carolina. The project is well-vetted and thats why the Federal Government issued a permit authorizing construction in June 2017. The project has now withstood the scrutiny of the U.S. District Court.  We will remain committed to this project that so many area residents and businesses see as a lifeline for the Grand Strand.

Filed in 2017, the lawsuit asserted that I-73, which is planned to link Myrtle Beach with Interstate 95, would destroy farmland, forest areas, streams, and wetlands, and fragment valuable wildlife habitat.

Homes, businesses and churches would also be affected, the lawsuit argued, raising concerns about the impact on air quality and increased noise stemming from I-73, concerns which the Coastal Conservation League maintains were not adequately studied.
LAS VEGAS  Nevada hospitals are seeing a severe shortage of nurses and some northern Nevada hospitals are nearly out of staffed beds for patients, state health officials said Thursday.

Nevada had a shortage of nurses even before the pandemic, when each wave of cases and crush of hospitalizations left nurses demoralized and drove some to leave the profession.

Nevada, like other states, is struggling to attract traveling nurses to help bolster their staffs.

Dr. Chris Lake with the Nevada Hospital Association said Thursday the issue has been compounded by the number of people who are unvaccinated and end up in the hospital or intensive care unit.

About 53% of all eligible Nevadans are fully vaccinated.

Lake said northern Nevada has been further squeezed by the major wildfire bearing down on South Lake Tahoe, which prompted the citys hospital to evacuate dozens of its patients to nearby hospitals.

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MORE ON THE PANDEMIC:

 J&J vaccines made in Africa will stay in Africa

 EU agency says to focus on vaccines first not booster shots

 12 million French children back to school, wearing masks

 What can employers do if workers avoid COVID-19 vaccines?

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 Find more AP coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic and https://apnews.com/hub/coronvirus-vaccine

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HERES WHAT ELSE IS HAPPENING:

ATLANTA  U.S. states with high COVID-19 vaccination rates are protecting children from hospitalization, according to an analysis by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Cases, emergency room visits and hospitalizations are much lower among children in communities with higher vaccination rates, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said Thursday at a White House briefing.

In August, the hospitalization rate among children was nearly four times higher in states with the lowest vaccine coverage compared to states with high coverage, Walensky said.

The hospitalization rate in unvaccinated adolescents was nearly 10 times higher in July than among fully vaccinated adolescents, Walensky said, citing a second study. Both papers are set to be published Friday in the CDCs Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

Children under age 12 are not yet eligible for the shots. Vaccination of adults and teens slows the spread of the virus in a community, making it less likely a child will catch it from someone close to them.

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OFALLON, Mo.  Children are making up an increasing number of patients filling Missouri hospitals during the summer COVID-19 surge, and some doctors worry that the return to school will lead to more illnesses.

The fast-spreading delta variant combined with low vaccination rates across Missouri to create a new wave of the COVID-19 outbreak that began in June and still persists. One difference this time: Children are more prone to get sick.

The number of children in the St. Louis region hospitalized with COVID-19 reached a record 31 on Wednesday before dipping slightly to 27 on Thursday. Ten of the sick children, ages 18 and under, remain in intensive care units.

In the Kansas City area, Childrens Mercy Hospital reached its capacity on Monday. Dr. Barbara Pahud, director of research for infectious diseases, urged parents to have their kids take precautions as they return to school, including vaccinations for those 12 and older.

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ANCHORAGE, Alaska  Alaska officials are hoping a weekly lottery prize will encourage more people to get vaccinated against COVID-19.

The Alaska Chamber and state officials announced Thursday that they will offer $49,000 each for one newly vaccinated adult and one youth weekly through Oct. 30. The younger winners will receive their winnings through an Alaska educational savings plan, where the money is invested for their education. Their parents or guardians will also receive $10,000 cash, if they are also vaccinated.

The Anchorage Daily News reports that people who were vaccinated before Thursday wont be left out. There will be a one-time prize of $49,000 awarded to an adult and to a young person who rolled up their sleeves earlier.

Funding for the $1 million campaign came from federal CARES Act funding, through the state health department.

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HONOLULU  Hawaii will be strictly enforcing gathering rules over the Labor Day holiday weekend as the state goes through a record surge of coronavirus cases, officials said.

State law enforcement officials said that anyone planning to gather for parties should reconsider, the Honolulu Star-Advertiser reported.

To those individuals organizing or publicizing these gatherings  stop it, said Jason Redulla, chief of the state Division of Conservation and Resources Enforcement.

Last weekend a party of about 300 to 400 people was broken up at an Oahu beach. No one has been cited for breaking local COVID-19 restrictions, which allow no more than 25 people to gather outdoors, but several people received citations for having audio equipment and generators without a permit.

Organizers could still face consequences.

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WASHINGTON  Dr. Anthony Fauci says it is likely Americans will need to get a third dose of vaccine to be considered fully vaccinated against COVID-19.

Fauci spoke at a White House briefing, saying a final determination would be made by the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. However, the nations top infections disease expert says his professional experience leads him to believe a third dose of mRNA vaccines will be required to provide long-term protection against the coronavirus.

The U.S. is preparing for boosters for all Americans who received the mRNA vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna between five and eight months after their second dose, pending approval by the FDA. The U.S. is still studying the need for a booster dose of the single-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

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ROME  Italian Premier Mario Draghi called COVID-19 vaccine opponents cowardly for threatening or harassing Italian ministers, governors, journalists and doctors.

I must express my full solidarity to those who have been the target of violence, hate, by the so-called no-vaxers, Draghi said at a news conference in Rome on Thursday. This violence is particularly hateful, cowardly when used against those who are providing information and to persons on the front line of fighting the pandemic.

Italy requires doctors, nurses and other health care workers to be vaccinated. Teachers and other school personnel need a Green Pass, which certifies they have received at least one vaccine dose, recovered from COVID-19 in the last six months or tested negative in the previous 48 hours.

Recently at a Green Pass protest, a TV journalist was yanked by her hair by a demonstrator, and at a separate rally, a newspaper reporter was repeatedly punched in the face by a school attendance taker.

An infectious disease specialist in Genoa has reported to police dozens of threats to him and his family.

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SEATTLE  Washington states most populous county is reinstating outdoor mask mandates for large events and encourages people to wear masks in other outdoor settings when not 6 feet apart.

The Public Health office of Seattle & King County says starting Sept. 7, there will be a requirement for masks for outdoor events of 500 or more people. The directive applies to both vaccinated and unvaccinated over age 5. King County, which includes Seattle, is home to about 2.2 million people.

Last week, more than 70% of people 12 and older had received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. The county health agency noted the regions high vaccination numbers but says, there are still approximately 750,000 people in King County who remain unvaccinated and susceptible to COVID-19.

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BUENOS AIRES, Argentina  Few places in the world have soccer fans more passionate than those in Argentina.

Its been 20 months since the government banned spectators at stadiums. Theyll finally get their chance next week when Argentina plays a World Cup qualifier against Bolivia.

President Alberto Fernandez has approved spectators for the match, though fans can fill only 30% of the 70,000-seat Monumental Stadium.

Argentina has registered 5.1 million cases and more than 110,000 confirmed deaths.

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PRISTINA, Kosovo  Kosovar authorities on Thursday sent mobile teams around the country to make the coronavirus vaccine available to the Roma, Ashkali and Egyptian minorities.

The Health Ministry called on the people to get vaccinated. Shots were given to 900 people in those communities, who make up about 2% of the countrys 1.8 million population.

Some 300,000, or about 17% of the population, are fully vaccinated. The government postponed the start of school due to the recent surge of the daily virus cases. On Thursday, there were 1,612 new cases and 32 confirmed deaths.

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MARSEILLE, France  Twelve million children in France are back to school and wearing masks.

They must wear a mask from age 6 because of rules aimed at slowing down the spread of the delta variant of the coronavirus. France is averaging about 17,000 confirmed cases each day, down from more than 23,000 in mid-August.

French President Emmanuel Macron visited a primary school in the southern city of Marseille. He was greeted with a fist bump by children and teachers. He praised it a victory to open school, saying we must continue to live, educate and learn with the virus.

Macron urged teenagers to get the vaccine, open to those 12 and older. Schools are organizing vaccinations for those who want to get the shot. More than 63% of people aged 12-17 have received at least one shot, and 47% are fully vaccinated.

Along with other European countries, many in France are concerned the end of the summer break will bring a new surge in cases in schools and other locations.

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BRUSSELS  The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control is urging countries to ramp up primary coronavirus vaccine programs and downplayed the need for booster shots among the general public.

The EUs infectious diseases agency says approved vaccines are currently highly effective in limiting the impact of COVID-19. But the agency says extra doses should be considered for people with weak immune systems.

On Wednesday, France became the first large EU country to give booster shots to people over 65 and those with underlying health conditions amid the spread of the delta variant. Spanish health authorities are considering similar action.

Many countries are struggling to administer first doses of COVID-19 vaccines, and the World Health Organization had called for a moratorium on boosters. It also urged governments to donate vaccines to needy countries.

The European Commission said Thursday the bloc has enough shots on order should boosters be broadly required.

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NICOSIA, Cyprus  Cyprus will begin administering booster shots against COVID-19 to people over 65, those with weakened immune systems and health care professionals.

Cypriot Health Minister Michalis Hadjipantela made the announcement on Thursday after the European Unions infectious diseases agency urged countries to focus on their primary vaccination programs and downplayed the need for booster shots.

Hadjipantela says booster shots will be given to those who are eligible once a six-month period elapses from the time they completed their vaccination. He says expanding the booster shot program to include other age groups will depend on the recommendation on a committee of medical experts.

The minister says Cyprus has the second-lowest COVID-19 mortality rate behind Finland among all EU member states. Currently 74% of Cyprus adult population is fully vaccinated, while 78% has received at least one shot.

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KAMPALA, Uganda  The African Unions COVID-19 envoy says vaccine doses produced by a plant in South Africa will no longer be exported to Europe after the intervention of South Africas government.

Strive Masiyiwa told reporters Thursday that South African drug manufacturer Aspen, which has a contract with Johnson & Johnson to assemble the ingredients of its COVID-19 vaccine, will no longer ship vaccine doses out of the continent and that millions of doses warehoused in Europe will be returned to the continent.

That arrangement has been suspended, he said, adding that J&J doses produced in South Africa will stay in Africa and will be distributed in Africa.

He said the issue had been corrected in a positive way, with Aspens arrangement with Johnson & Johnson changing from a contract deal to a licensed arrangement similar to the production in India of the AstraZeneca vaccine. Masiyiwa said the Aspen product will be African branded.

Johnson & Johnson was criticized heavily for shipping doses to countries in Europe, which have already immunized large numbers of their people and have even donated vaccines to more needy countries.

Africa has fully vaccinated under 3% of its 1.3 billion people. Vaccine production within the continent is seen as key to meeting the stated target of vaccinating 60% of the people.

The continent has reported more than 7.8 million cases, including 197,150 confirmed deaths.
PhilL Magakoe/AP

PARIS (AP)  Monacos Princess Charlene is in reassuring condition after being suddenly hospitalized with complications from a serious sinus infection, the principalitys palace said Friday.

Princess Charlene, a former Olympic swimmer who has been on an extended stay in her home country of South Africa, suffered an unspecified malaise overnight Wednesday, the palace said. Earlier, palace officials said she was in stable condition.
Nearly 60 schools have been put on probation or listed as not recognized by the Illinois State Board of Education for failing to follow a statewide mask mandate in schools.

Some locally elected school boards have since complied, but a parents rights group says it is government overreach.

This comes as a measure filed at the statehouse would give ISBE the ability to revoke a schools recognition status for not following COVID-19 rules signals to some that the governor and ISBE don't have that authority without legislative approval.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker ordered all schools to mandate masks after many local school boards made masking optional.

Hes been adamant ISBE will punish schools that dont comply. Pritzker says the move is meant to slow the spread of COVID-19 and its variants.

Publicly listed through the ISBE website, 59 schools didnt comply and were placed on probation or listed as not recognized, potentially threatening state funding for those schools. If they comply, the state can restore recognition.

As of Friday, 40 schools were listed as still on probation or not recognized.

Awake Illinois Founder Shannon Adcock said private schools and locally elected school boards, big and small, are being coerced by the state.

And its wrong, Adcock said. Its just created such a disillusionment among the Illinois citizenry about what were up against.

State Rep. Edgar Gonzalez Jr., D-Chicago, filed House Bill 4135 on Friday to give ISBE the authority to revoke the standing of a district for not following health rules during times of disaster declared by the governor. Gonzalez couldn't be reached for comment on Monday.

State Rep. Tim Butler, R-Springfield, said Gonzalezs bill signals to him that ISBE doesnt have the authority to punish schools for not following the mandate.

I think this is an admission, at least upon Rep. Gonzalez that the governors executive order doesnt have the force of law when it comes to this particular thing, Butler said. If hes introducing legislation to make it law, then the executive order doesn't have the force of law. Look, these decisions need to be made locally in my opinion.

ISBE didnt return a message seeking comment about HB4135 or Butlers comments.

For Adcock, Gonzalezs bill also seems to be an admission.

The Illinois State Board of Education does not in fact have the power to revoke recognition status of schools [over COVID orders], Adcock said. So theyre trying to retroactively cover their bases, cover their tracks.

Adcock said the measure also seems to nearly mirror of House Bill 2789, which passed the House April 22 just after 11 p.m. By the time it got to a hearing in a Senate committee, more than 16,700 people and organizations filed witness slips opposing HB2789.

Gonzalezs HB4135 has yet to be assigned to a committee.
BLUFFS  Village board members have passed a resolution and ordinance that will allow them to accept an American Rescue Plan Act grant that may help fund the new water tower, Mayor Linda Sapp said.

The village is set to receive an estimated $89,000 over a two-year period.

The American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 is designed to spur economic recovery as the nation tries to return to normal following the pandemic-related lockdown.

The resolution ensures the money will not be given to anyone with a conflict of interest or anyone already employed by the village. The ordinance allows the village to participate in the American Rescue Plan Act.

Board members also passed a resolution declaring three properties a nuisance and authorizing abatement for the village. The houses are dilapidated and abandoned, Sapp said. Notices will be sent out to the properties owners.

Bluffs police Chief Patrick Johnson addressed the board about the villages speed limit signs and the issue of motorists not slowing down fast enough as they enter the community.

The village wanted to put up another speed limit sign or draw attention to the current sign so motorists approaching the village would know the speed limit is about to change. But an employee of the Illinois Department of Transportation with whom Johnson spoke said neither is an option, Johnson said.

Adding a flashing light to the current sign would take away from the value or purpose of what a flashing light is supposed to represent and how it is supposed to be used, Johnson said he was told. Adding another sign also is not possible, he said.

Johnson intends to ask someone with IDOT to come to the community to look at the signage and, if possible, offer a solution, he said.

If that doesnt work, Sapp said she will contact state Rep. C.D. Davidsmeyer, R-Jacksonville, about the situation.
AP

Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul is supporting federal regulations against the commercial sale of firearms for those under age of 21.

Raoul, along with 17 other attorneys general, filed a brief supporting prohibitions that are being contested in the lawsuit Hirschfeld v. Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms, Tobacco and Explosives. The lawsuit challenges a federal statute that prevents those from 18 to 20 years old from buying handguns from federally licensed dealers.
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP)  Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has appealed a judge's ruling that the governor exceeded his authority by ordering school boards not to impose strict mask requirements on students to combat the spread of the coronavirus.

The governor's lawyers took their case Thursday to the 1st District Court of Appeal in Tallahassee. DeSantis wants the appeals court to reverse last week's decision by Leon County Circuit Judge John C. Cooper, which essentially gave Florida's 67 school boards the power to impose a student mask mandate without parental consent. Cooper's ruling was automatically stayed by the appeal.

DeSantis, a Republican, said at a news conference earlier this week that he is confident the state will win on appeal by linking the mask mandate order to the Parents Bill of Rights law. That law, the governor said, reserves for parents the authority to oversee their children's education and health.

Cooper found, however, that the Bill of Rights law exempts government actions that are needed to protect public health and are reasonable and limited in scope  such as masking students to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in schools.

It doesnt require that a mask mandate must include a parental opt-out at all, Cooper said in an oral ruling Friday.

DeSantis and state education officials have threatened to impose financial penalties on school boards that adopt a mask requirement without a provision allowing parents to opt out.

So far, they have moved to withhold salaries for school board members in Alachua and Broward counties. Those are two of the 13 school boards representing over half of Florida's 2.8 million students that have voted for mask mandates in defiance of the governor's order.

Ultimately, we are just trying to stand with the parents, DeSantis said. We think its important that they are given the ability to opt out.

In his ruling last week, Cooper agreed with a group of parents who claimed in a lawsuit that DeSantis order is unconstitutional and cannot be enforced. The issue has triggered intense and divisive school board meetings around the state, pitting parents who say masks are essential for children's safety against those who call orders to wear them government overreach.

DeSantis has dismissed the recommendation from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that people wear masks. In particular, he contends that masks are less essential for young people and carry some risks of their own for children.

But Cooper said the states medical experts who testified during the trial that masking is ineffective in preventing COVID-19s spread are in a distinct minority among doctors and scientists. He also said that while DeSantis frequently states that a Brown University study concluded masks are ineffective, the studys authors wrote that no such conclusion should be drawn.
Krispy Kreme

If you have at least one COVID-19 vaccine shot, you're entitled to two free doughnuts at Krispy Kreme.

The company is running the promotion through Sept. 5.
GUATEMALA CITY (AP)  Guatemalan officials confirmed Friday they are trying to arrest a fired anti-corruption prosecutor whose ouster led the United States to reduce cooperation with the Central American nation's legal system.

The arrest warrant for Juan Francisco Sandoval was confirmed by the spokesman for the prosecutor's office, Juan Luis Pantaleon, a day after Attorney General Consuelo Porras said on Twitter that he was under investigation for allegedly leaking confidential information, among other allegations.

Later Friday, Pantaleon said the attorney general's office was launching an investigation into alleged bribes that President Alejandro Giammattei had received from Russian businessmen, following media reports about the alleged bribes.

There is an investigation regarding the issue on information released in media interviews and publications, said Pantaleon, adding that he was referring to reports that a person linked to a Russian businessman had given money to Giammattei inside a carpet.

Sandoval, who said he had been investigating Giammattei for the same reason, as well as other senior officials, was fired on July 23 and fled to the United States, saying he feared for his safety.

Sandoval responded to Porras by accusing her of leading a strategy to criminalize and persecute all the people who have contributed for years to strengthening justice and combating corruption and impunity.

He accused her of meddling in the probe into suspected bribery of the president involving a major port. No charges have been filed in that case.

Sandovals ouster led the U.S. government to say in July that it had lost confidence in Guatemalas commitment to battling corruption and it temporarily suspended cooperation with the Attorney Generals Office.

Many Guatemalans, too, staged street protests in recent weeks accusing the government of quelling attempts to root out corrupt officials.

Suspicions were fed on Thursday when the country's top court issued a ruling that could keep some corrupt officials out of prison. The Constitutional Court overturned a law that had barred those sentenced for corruption to terms of five years or less from paying a fine instead of serving time behind bars.

It applies to convictions for crimes by public servants and those in the courts involving charges including fraud, bribery, passive embezzlement, abuse of authority and influence trafficking.

Among potential beneficiaries of the decision is one of the court's justices, Nester Vasquez, who has been accused by the Office of the Special Prosecutor Against Impunity of manipulating the election of judges to other

Vazquez was included in a recently published U.S. list of allegedly corrupt officials in the region, along with former President Alvaro Colom, who was accused of involvement in fraud and embezzlement.

In 2019, then-President Jimmy Morales forced out a U.N.-backed anti-corruption mission that had worked with local prosecutors to root out graft and had led to the imprisonment of several senior officials, including former President Otto Perez Molina.

On Friday, the former head of that U.N. mission, Ivan Velasquez, issued a statement of solidarity with Sandoval, "whom the corrupt Guatemalan prosecutor Consuelo Porras ordered captured.

Sooner rather than later, the people will restore the state of law and the corrupt of all sorts will pay for their misdeeds.
A new ice cream and treats shop has opened in Jacksonville.

Bolts, at 1225 W. Morton Ave., sells hand-dipped ice cream, homemade fudge, candies, craft sodas and gourmet popcorn.

Brett Bettis, 23, owns Bolts.

Born and raised in Jacksonville, Bettis attended Lincoln Land Community College and then the University of Illinois Springfield before transferring to MacMurray College. When MacMurray closed, he finished his remaining one semester at Illinois College, studying business administration.

Owning his own business has always been a dream, he said, and he landed on the idea of a dessert shop.

The treats come in many different flavors. Fudge is available in flavors such as lemon pie, dark chocolate, orange creamsicle and cotton candy, while ice cream flavors feature names such as Superman and Fat Elvis.

Superman is made up of cherry, vanilla and blue moon ice creams while Fat Elvis is made of peanut butter and banana.

Bettis named the dessert shop for his dog, Bolt, who was rescued from PAWS, an animal rescue organization in Jacksonville.

PAWS had been part of a mission last year to rescue many animals from a breeding facility in Adams County. Bolt was one of the dogs rescued and the last one PAWS had available for adoption from that rescue when Bettis found him, Bettis said.

Bolt, a white German shepherd, is doing good these days, Bettis said. He cant get enough treats and Bettis made him the shops CEO  constantly eating officer  for a reason, he said.

He was very lovable at first, Bettis said. As soon as we got our picture from adopting, he just jumped right up on the couch and was practically laying on me.

Bolt was ready to be adopted, Bettis said, noting that the dog also loves other people.

Bolts picture is displayed in the shop alongside pictures of pets who belong to employees of the shop. All animals pictured at the shop are considered part of the executive board, Bettis said.

Since some of the animals came from PAWS, Bettis has a small donation jar set up for customers who want to donate to the organization, he said.

Bolts is open from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Saturday and from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday.
An official appointment has not been made by the South Jacksonville Board of Trustees to replace former mayor Tyson Manker after the item was left off the action items of the agenda for Thursdays meeting.

However, the board announced it is tentatively going to appoint Trustee Mike Broaddus to act as village president at another meeting.

The board discussed the appointment in a closed session, but Trustee Tom Jordan made the announcement at the end of the meeting.

We are mostly in agreement that we will be selecting Mike Broaddus as the pro tem, Jordan said.

Trustee Stacy Pinkerton said not everyone was in agreement.

Broaddus appointment  if approved by the board  follows the resignation of Mayor Tyson Manker, who resigned in August after taking a leave of absence.

Mankers resignation followed a series of turbulent days that included Illinois State Police being asked to investigate whether his posting of audio from a closed-door trustees meeting violated the law and a former trustee filing an ethics complaint against him.

His leave of absence began on Aug. 9 and he tendered his resignation to the board on Aug. 26.

Broaddus was appointed to the board in June following the resignation of former Trustee Jason Hill. Prior to his appointment, Broaddus had just retired as an officer from the South Jacksonville Police Department  where he served as an officer for 17 years.

Broaddus said if he appointed his goals will remain the same as they are now  to help the village move forward.

Im honored and looking forward to healing the village and helping things get back to normal, Broaddus said. Broaddus said he wants to work on better communication between the board, employees and the community, as well as trust and cooperation.

I think the main thing will be to get things back to normal, work on drawing more businesses, restaurants and stores to the village, Broaddus said. Id like to work on a balanced budget.

Once appointed, he will hold the position until the next municipal election. The person elected will then fulfill the remainder of Mankers term.

Once an the appointment is made, an appointment will need to be made to fill the vacant trustee position.
David J. Phillip | AP

Illinois is sending around 160 National Guard members to Louisiana to help with relief efforts in the wake of Hurricane Ida.

The storm made landfall Sunday in Louisiana as a Category 4 hurricane, causing extensive damage.
So what can the plight of a little cafe tell you about the state of the American economy and the changing face of work? A lot, as it turns out.

The other week, the bistro where my family and I have been grabbing brunch every Sunday since the start of the pandemic announced that it would be shuttering on weekends, and shifting to a more limited, weekday schedule. The reason was a familiar one: The owner couldnt find the staff they needed to both function effectively and to keep themselves and their current staff from being ground into dust from the punishing pace.

The news was heartbreaking, if entirely unsurprising. Employers across the nation are struggling with a labor shortage so profound that one Alabama pizzeria vowed to hire literally anyone just to keep the doors open, according to Business Insider.

Business leaders have falsely blamed the crisis on generous pandemic unemployment benefits, arguing that theyre a disincentive to return to the labor force. Study after study has proven this is not the case. Instead, more seismic forces are at work.

In April of this year, a staggering 4 million people quit their jobs, in a phenomenon thats come to be called The Great Resignation, Vox reported.

Its not that people dont want to work, but rather its that, after an earth-shattering 16 months that have seen hundreds of thousands of our family members, friends, and neighbors die at the hands of an implacable and indiscriminate foe, theres just a genuine question of whether grinding it out for 4o hours a week at a job with substandard pay, low benefits, and little work-home balance is really worth it.

Increasingly, the answer is a resounding No.

Hospitality and leisure workers, who staff restaurants, bars, and hotels, and who had to bear the brunt of pandemic-induced rage for low wages and little dignity, are leading that exodus. In April, the sector lost more than 740,000 people.

In the midst of the pandemic, workers across industries discovered something: When they werent tethered to desks or jobs, there was time for something miraculous: Family and community, the hobby theyd been putting off learning, the time to retrain and search for new, and more fulfilling, work.

Admittedly, not everyone had this luxury, working parents had to scramble to find child care, or balance the demands of remote work against acting as their childrens homeroom teacher.

The shift was particularly hard for low-income workers. Frontline workers didnt have the luxury of stepping back at all.

Even so, We have changed. Work has changed. The way we think about time and space has changed, Harvard Business School professor Tsedal Neeley told NPR. Having been given time and space and flexibility by the pandemic, workers now crave and demand it, she told NPR.

And then, something else happened, because of unprecedented, direct payments from the federal government  as much as $3,200 each  the number of Americans in poverty began to fall, according to Vox, from 12.8% in 2018 to 8.5%. Thats based on projections that researchers at Columbia University made in March.

Separate research by the Urban Institute, also cited by Vox, projected that 2021 poverty will be about 7%, nearly cutting the 2018 rate in half.

The Biden White Houses child tax credit program, monthly payments of up to $300 per child to American families, is similarly expected to lift millions of children out of poverty. Republicans argue against such largess, saying it perpetuates the welfare state.

It is hard to deny the bottom line reality: When you give people money, they are less poor, happier, and more likely to inject that money back into the economy. In fact, economists expect economic growth of about 7% this year, and 4.9% in 2022, fueled by the stimulus and vaccines, Reuters reported.

Good policy choices drive down poverty. And American workers, by now accustomed to the flexibility of the post-pandemic economy, and the regular flow of stimulus checks, are unlikely to want to backtrack on that.

But it cant end there. To help both employers and workers, Washington and Harrisburg need to step up and do a couple of things.

One of them is finally making the wealthiest Americans, who grew even richer during the pandemic, pay their fair share.

We also need to stop tying health coverage and other benefits to employment. The United States stands nearly alone in tying health coverage and other key benefits to work.

The pandemic proved that everything we know about work is wrong. And theres no stepping back from it now.

John L. Micek is editor in chief of The Pennsylvania Capital-Star in Harrisburg, Pennsylvani. He can be reached at jmicek@penncapital-star.com.
To the editor:

Hope is thin. Despair thick, like blood.

 Viet Thanh Nguyen (Vietnamese-American writer)

On Sept. 11, 2001, America was shockingly attacked by a ruthless cabal of terrorists unattached to any governmental entity. A limited and precise response was mounted by CIA and Special Forces to the mountain vastness of Afghanistan where the terrorists were trained. Within a year they were routed from their bastions, killed or driven into the wilderness.

Then, improvidently, our leaders decided to invade the rest of Afghanistan, which is about the size of Texas, some of the most forbidding terrain on earth, peopled by fierce, anti-modernist tribesmen. That task would require a major military effort.

We spent the next 20 years trying to subdue and control the country, to somehow modernize it, expending blood and trillions of dollars. Overwhelming superiority in armament and resources were of no conclusive avail. All we could accomplish was a continuous standoff, punctuated by perpetual resistance and violence.

We installed a proxy state in Kabul of exiled Afghans and employed thousands of others, mostly from the few larger towns. That made them automatic enemies of the resisting tribesmen. A low-grade civil war ensued (the bitterest kind of war).

Four successive American presidents realized the Afghan mission was failing. But for political reasons (voters hate contemplating retreat), they couldnt bring themselves to do the practical, rational or merciful thing  get the hell out. Locked in hopeless stasis, we kept paying the piper in lives, treasure and despair.

Finally, the fourth president had enough and commenced a very problematic withdrawal. Our side in the civil war was ineffectual and weak, so chaos and collapse inevitably has accompanied our retreat. We have struggled to not only airlift from peril our own people, but also thousands of Afghans who were compromised in our service.

Some Americans are angry or nonplussed by how unseemly it all looks. A desperate evacuation too reminiscent of the one from Saigon in 1975. Americans these days even turn pandemics and mask-wearing into politically partisan issues, so it shouldnt surprise this has gone partisan viral. And all the world watches Americans fail one more test of character.

We should have learned by now you cant invade a large foreign country you know nothing about, thousands of miles away, presume to take it over against entrenched resistance, and think you can evacuate the place after 20 years in order and with some semblance of honor.

Richard Nelson

Jacksonville
LAGOS, Nigeria (AP)  Authorities have rescued five girls who were among 73 schoolchildren abducted this week in northwest Nigeria and reunited them with their parents, police said Thursday.

Zamfara police spokesman Mohammed Shehu did not say how the five students from the Government Day School in Kaya had been freed, except saying only that it happened while authorities were searching for the abducted students.

A statement added that the girls have been medically checked at the hospital, debriefed by the police and reunited with their families.

The 73 students were abducted from their school on Wednesday by gunmen, prompting the Zamfara government to shut down all primary and secondary schools in the state.

More than 1,000 schoolchildren have been kidnapped from schools in Nigeria since December, and UNICEF says some 200 are believed to still be in captivity.

Some of those who have been released in the past months were reported to have been let go only after their parents managed to pay ransoms demanded by their abductors.

By CHINEDU ASADU

Associated Press
Lithuania recalls Beijing ambassador over China-Taiwan spat View Photo

VILNIUS, Lithuania (AP)  Lithuania on Friday recalled its ambassador to China following the Baltic countrys decision in July to allow self-governing Taiwan to open an office in its capital under its own name.

The Foreign Ministry said Ambassador Diana Mickeviciene had been recalled from Beijing for consultations following the Chinese government statement on August 10.

Last month, China recalled its ambassador to Lithuania and told the Baltic nation to immediately rectify its wrong decision, take concrete measures to undo the damage, and not to move further down the wrong path.

The statement referred to potential consequences for Lithuania if it allowed the office to open but gave no details.

The Lithuanian Foreign Ministry expressed regret over Chinas action and stressed that while respecting the one China principle, it stands ready to develop mutually beneficial ties with Taiwan, just as many other countries in the world do.

China says Taiwan is part of its territory and doesnt have the right to diplomatic recognition, although the island maintains informal ties with all major nations through trade offices that act as de facto embassies, including in the United States and Japan. Chinese pressure has reduced Taiwans formal diplomatic allies to just 15.

Taiwan and Lithuania agreed in July that the office in the capital, Vilnius, set to open this fall, will bear the name Taiwan rather than Chinese Taipei  a term often used in other countries in order not to offend Beijing.

On Friday, the Lithuanian ministry said that diplomats from the European Union  of which Lithuania is a member  expressed solidarity with Mickeviciene. The deputy EU ambassador to China, Tim Harrington, shared a joint photo on Twitter on Friday as dozens of EU diplomats gathered to demonstrate solidarity with their Lithuanian counterpart as she left Beijing and wished she could return soon, the ministry said.

Lithuania said its embassy in Beijing continues to operate as usual.
The Latest: New Zealand has 1st virus death in over 6 months

The Latest: New Zealand has 1st virus death in over 6 months View Photo

WELLINGTON, New Zealand  New Zealand reported its first coronavirus death in more than six months on Saturday, while the number of new cases continued to trend downward.

Health authorities said the woman who died was in her 90s and had underlying health problems.

Authorities reported 20 new community cases, all in the largest city of Auckland.

New Zealand remains in lockdown as it tries to eliminate an outbreak of the delta variant that began last month.

New cases in the outbreak have steadily fallen from a peak of more than 80 each day. New Zealand has so far escaped the worst of the pandemic and has reported just 27 coronavirus deaths since it began.

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MORE ON THE PANDEMIC:

 US booster plan faces complications, some may miss Sept. 20 start

 Parents of disabled kids sue over Iowa ban on mask mandates

 Idaho hospitals nearly buckling in relentless COVID-19 surge

 U.S. hospitals hit with nurse staffing crisis; some travel for more pay

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 Find more AP coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic and https://apnews.com/hub/coronvirus-vaccine

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HERES WHAT ELSE IS HAPPENING:

MADRID  Spain is tweaking its travel entry rules from next week to require vaccination certificates from U.S. tourists, adjusting to recent European Union advice on stricter rules due to growing anxiety over coronavirus contagion in the U.S.

The European Councils decision earlier this week to remove the U.S. from a safe list of countries for nonessential travel also came amid unanswered calls from European officials for reciprocity in travel rules. Despite the EUs move to open its borders to U.S. citizens in June, the U.S. didnt allow EU tourists in.

Spain, a major tourism destination, is among a handful of EU countries that has announced steps to adjust its entry rules to the Councils recommendation.

The country published Friday the new guidelines on its official gazette, also removing Israel, Kosovo, Lebanon, Montenegro and North Macedonia from the safe list.

Under the rules, U.S. tourists will no longer be admitted from Monday, Sept. 6, unless they can show proof of being fully vaccinated at least 14 days before their trip. Unvaccinated children under 12 traveling with vaccinated adults are also allowed in the country.

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SACRAMENTO, Calif  Hospitals in the heart of Californias Central Valley are running out of beds in their intensive care units because of an influx of coronavirus patients.

State officials announced Friday that hospitals in the 12-county San Joaquin Valley region have had fewer than 10% of staffed adult ICU beds for three consecutive days.

The news triggered special rules that require nearby hospitals to accept transfer patients.

If ICU capacity falls to zero, hospitals statewide must also accept transfer patients.

California is averaging 27.9 newly confirmed cases per 100,000 people, down from 33.1 last month. But hospitalizations have continued to increase, with 8,766 patients.

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NASHVILLE, Tenn.  As hospitalizations, deaths and COVID-19 case numbers continue to climb in Tennessee, health experts on Friday pleaded with the public to get vaccinated and continue to wear a mask.

In a letter distributed by the Tennessee Hospital Association, a group of chief officers and chief nursing officers stressed that the latest surge of the virus outbreak is taking a deep toll on the states frontline workers and wreaking havoc on families who have lost loved ones to the virus.

As of Friday, there were nearly 1,395 new cases per 100,000 people in Tennessee over the past two weeks, which ranks third in the country for new cases per capita. One in every 134 people in Tennessee tested positive in the past week, according to researchers from Johns Hopkins.

Meanwhile, 42.1% of the population is now fully vaccinated against the virus.

Gov. Bill Lee told reporters earlier this week that the vaccine was the key tool to overcoming the outbreak. But he said he had no plans to change the states current pandemic mitigation strategy.

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IOWA CITY, Iowa  Parents of disabled students have filed a federal lawsuit seeking to strike down Iowas law banning schools from requiring masks, arguing it endangers their health and denies equal access to education.

The lawsuit is backed by the American Civil Liberties Union and disability rights organizations. Coronavirus cases and hospitalizations are climbing in Iowa to their highest levels since last winter.

Iowa is averaging about 1,200 confirmed cases per day in the last week, and roughly a quarter of those are among ages 17 and under. About 5% of Iowa patients hospitalized with confirmed COVID-19 infections on Wednesday were age 17 or below.

Gov. Kim Reynolds defended the law at a news conference, saying it lets parents choose whether their students should wear masks. She says those who feel unsafe in classrooms can enroll in online-only programs.

Unlike last fall, schools are barred by law from offering a hybrid schedule or temporarily moving to online-only classes.

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CONCORD, N.H.  New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu is hospitalized with flu-like symptoms after testing negative three times for the coronavirus.

Governor Sununu is being evaluated by Portsmouth Hospital this morning as a precautionary measure to determine the cause of the flu-like symptoms he has been experiencing this week, Chief of Staff Jayne Millerick said in a statement.

On Wednesday, Sununu said he tested negative hours after his office said he wasnt feeling well, postponed an Executive Council meeting and began isolating. Sununu is vaccinated, receiving the Johnson & Johnson vaccine on April 10.

He took a trip to Kentucky on Monday to see how officials in that state are handling a surge in cases.

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ATLANTA  A nurse staffing crisis is forcing many U.S. hospitals to pay top dollar to get reinforcements to handle the crush of COVID-19 patients this summer.

The problem, health leaders say, is twofold: Nurses are quitting or retiring, exhausted or demoralized by the crisis. Many are leaving for lucrative temporary jobs with traveling-nurse agencies that can pay $5,000 or more a week.

In Texas, more than 6,000 travel nurses have flooded the state to help through a state-supported program. But the same time 19 travel nurses started work at a hospital in the northern part of the state, 20 other nurses there gave notice theyd be leaving for a traveling contract, said Carrie Kroll, a vice president at the Texas Hospital Association.

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WASHINGTON  President Joe Bidens plan to start delivery of booster shots by Sept. 20 for most Americans who received COVID-19 vaccines is facing complications that could delay the availability for those who received the Moderna vaccine, administration officials said Friday.

Biden announced last month that his administration was preparing to administer boosters to provide more enduring protection against the coronavirus, pending approvals from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration. He recommended boosters eight months after the second shot.

However, those agencies are awaiting critical data before signing off on the third doses, with Modernas vaccine increasingly seen as unlikely to make the Sept. 20 date.

According to one official, Moderna produced inadequate data for the FDA and CDC to approve the third dose of its vaccine. The FDA has requested additional data that is likely to delay those boosters into October. Pfizer is further along in the review process, with an FDA panel review on boosters on Sept. 17.

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MADISON, Wis.  Wisconsins $100 reward program for those receiving the COVID-19 vaccine will be extended two weeks until Sept. 19.

Democratic Gov. Tony Evers says extending the incentive will give an opportunity for more people to get vaccinated. The program began Aug. 20 and was originally scheduled to end Monday.

Between Aug. 20 and Sept. 1, more than 65,000 people received their first dose. Evers launched the program amid a spike in cases across the state caused by the more infectious delta variant. The level of new cases and hospitalizations are at a level not seen since January.

On Aug. 22, the day before Evers announced the program, the seven-day average of vaccinations in Wisconsin was 8,360. That grew to 9,712 as of Wednesday. More than 3 million people are fully vaccinated in Wisconsin, about 52% of the total population. Among adults age 18 and over, more than 62% are fully vaccinated.

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NEW YORK  There will be celebrations and somber reflections as American Jews observe the upcoming High Holy Days. There also will be disappointment as rabbis once again cancel or limit in-person worship due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The chief culprit is the quick-spreading delta variant of the coronavirus. Its surge has dashed widespread hopes that this years observances, unlike those of 2020, could once again fill synagogues with congregants worshipping side by side. One rabbi in Florida has decided to hold only virtual services for the holy days.

Other synagogues are offering a mix of in-person and virtual offerings. Temple Beth El, in Augusta, Maine, will require masks inside the synagogue. Workers also erected a big tent in the yard for an outdoor service Sept. 7.

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BOISE, Idaho  Intensive care beds are full of unvaccinated coronavirus patients at a hospital in Boise, Idaho, and doctors are bracing for the need to conserve scarce resources for the patients most likely to survive.

At St. Lukes Boise Medical Center, the view in every direction is heartbreaking. In one room, a pregnant woman in her second trimester relies on an artificial breathing machine. Down the hall, a nurse cries as she recounts the waves of anger and grief that fill her days.

Idaho is among the nations lowest in vaccination rates, and experts warn new infections could number 30,000 a week by mid-September.

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ROME  Italy officials say theyd consider making COVID-19 vaccination mandatory, but for now theyre generally pleased at the publics turnout for shots.

On Friday, 71% of those in Italy age 12 and older have been fully vaccinated. The government says its confident it will meet its target of having 80% of the eligible population vaccinated by the end of September.

Health Minister Roberto Speranza says the government wants this number to grow even more and is weighing whether to extend the Green Pass requirements to other situations. The pass indicates a person has at least one vaccine dose, recovered from COVID-19 in the last six months or tested negative for the illness in the last 48 hours.

Its needed to dine indoors, access gyms, attend concerts or travel on domestic flights or train, ferry or bus between Italys regions. School teachers and other personnel need a Green Pass to access school premises. Vaccination is required for health care workers.

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BRUSSELS  The European Union and drugmaker AstraZeneca say they reached a deal to end a legal battle over the slow deliveries of the companys COVID-19 vaccines.

The European Commission says AstraZeneca made a firm commitment to deliver a total of 300 million vaccine doses by March. The commission says it involves the pharmaceutical company providing 135 million doses by the end of this year plus another 65 million doses in the first quarter of 2022. Around 100 million have already been supplied.

The EU accused AstraZeneca of acting in bad faith by providing shots to other countries, notably former EU member Britain. It argued the company should have used its production sites in the U.K. to help fill the EUs order.

AstraZeneca says, along with its partners, it has supplied more than 1.1 billion doses of vaccine to more than 170 countries and approximately two-thirds have gone to lower-income countries.

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JOHANNESBURG  South Africas Health Minister Joe Phaahla says the government will let businesses decide whether to make vaccinations mandatory for employees and clients.

He says restaurants, bars, grocery stores and other businesses must set their own policies on deciding if patrons must be vaccinated. He says the government plans to encourage people to get inoculated, with incentives such as allowing soccer matches and music concerts for vaccinated people.

Currently, such public gatherings are not permitted under COVID-19 restrictions. More than 13 million South Africans have received at least one vaccine dose, including 5.7 million who are fully vaccinated.

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LONDON  Children across Europe are going back to school after 18 months of pandemic disruption.

But in many countries, there are concerns of a new surge in infections from the highly infectious delta variant of the coronavirus.

Unlike the U.K., Italy and Spain are maintaining social distancing and masks for students and staff. Italy also requires teachers to show proof of vaccination or a recent negative coronavirus test, along with Turkey and Greece.

In France, where students headed back to school Thursday, face masks must be worn by pupils 6 and up.

Britain, which lifted nearly all pandemic restrictions on business and socializing in July, has among the highest coronavirus rates in Europe, with upward of 30,000 new cases each day. Hospitalizations and deaths remain far lower than during previous surges, thanks to an inoculation campaign that has seen nearly 80% of people over 16 fully vaccinated.

By The Associated Press
CAIRO (AP)  Egypts president held talks in Cairo on Thursday with the King of Jordan and the president of the Palestinian Authority aimed at reviving the Middle East peace process and strengthening a ceasefire that halted the Israel-Hamas war.

Egypts Abdel Fattah el-Sissi, King Abdullah II of Jordan and the Palestinian Authoritys Mahmoud Abbas discussed the elusive two-state solution to the conflict with Israel, according to a statement from el-Sissis office. The three leaders said the Palestinians have a right to an independent state, with East Jerusalem as its capital. Israel staunchly opposes such a plan.

We very much welcome the meeting of these three leaders, U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said. We hope it will lead to a positive outcome and a regain of traction of diplomacy in the IsraeliPalestinian conflict.

Relations remain tense, even though Israels new coalition government, which includes an Arab party for the first time, has sought to keep things calm after the deadly war in May. Hamas responded to weeks of tensions in east Jerusalem by firing rockets, which triggered a withering Israeli assault on Gaza.

At least 260 Palestinians were killed during the conflict, including 67 children and 39 women, according to the Gaza health ministry. Hamas has acknowledged the deaths of 80 militants. Twelve civilians, including two children, were killed in Israel, along with one soldier.

Egypt, which has played a key mediation role between Israel and Hamas over the years, mediated a truce. In recent weeks, stakeholders have stepped up their diplomatic efforts aimed at preventing another military outburst in the region. The office of Israeli Prime Minister Neftali Bennett has recently said that he will be visiting Egypt soon to hold talks with el-Sissi.

Last week after Bennett met with U.S. President Joe Biden in Washington, Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz met with Abbas in Ramallah. Those talks signaled a possible shift after the near-complete breakdown in communication between Abbas and Israeli leaders in recent years.

The meeting was followed by the Israeli announcement of a series of gestures aimed at strengthening the Palestinian Authority, including plans to loan $150 million to the cash-strapped autonomy government in the occupied West Bank.

Last month, Egypts intelligence chief Abbas Kamel paid a rare visit to Israel to discuss conditions for a long-lasting cease-fire deal between Israel and the Hamas. Kamel had also travelled to the West Bank to meet with Palestinian President Abbas, whom the U.S. and Israel would like to bolster in his rivalry with Hamas.

In Thursdays talks, the Egyptian and Jordanian leaders also renewed their support of Abbas warning against the dangerous repercussions of the expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and the demolition of Palestinian houses and the confiscation of land properties, read the statement. On his part, el-Sissi stressed that the establishment of a Palestinian state requires the unification of all Palestinian factions, added the statement.

The Islamic militant group has controlled Gaza since ousting Abbas forces in 2007, a year after it defeated his Fatah party in Palestinian parliamentary elections.

By NOHA ELHENNAWY

Associated Press
The Latest: UN chief to hold meeting on Afghanistan funding View Photo

UNITED NATIONS  The United Nations chief will convene a ministerial meeting in Geneva on Sept. 13 to seek a swift scale-up in funding to address the growing humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan, where nearly half the countrys 38 million people need assistance.

U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric made the announcement Friday and said Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will also appeal for full and unimpeded humanitarian access to make sure Afghans continue to get the essential services they need.

Dujarric said the U.N. appeal for $1.3 billion for 2021 to help more than 18 million people is just 40% funded, leaving a $766 million deficit.

Afghanistan faces a looming humanitarian catastrophe, the U.N. spokesman said. One in three Afghans do not know where their next meal will come from. Nearly half of all children under the age of 5 are predicted to be acutely malnourished in the next 12 months.

Earlier Friday, Dujarric said the secretary-general is very grateful for the generosity of Denmark, Kazakhstan, North Macedonia, Pakistan, Poland, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and the United States for making available facilities and transport for the temporary relocation of U.N. staff in Afghanistan.

Dujarric announced Aug. 18 that about 100 of the U.N.s 300 international staff were being moved to Kazakhstan to work remotely because of security concerns.

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WASHINGTON  U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken says he will travel to Qatar and Germany to visit U.S. diplomats and troops along with Afghans who were evacuated from Kabul amid the scramble to withdraw American troops from Afghanistan.

Blinkens visit to Qatar will coincide with the first stop of a tour of Persian Gulf allies by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.

Blinken told reporters Friday he will visit the Qatari capital of Doha and the U.S. military base in Ramstein, Germany, starting this weekend to thank U.S. personnel for their work in completing the pullout Monday.

The State Department says Blinken has no plans to meet representatives of the Taliban while in Doha, where the group that now controls Afghanistan has an office and which had been the site of failed peace talks with the former Afghan government. Blinken will see Qatari officials and visit with Kabul embassy staffers who are based in Doha since the U.S. closed its diplomatic mission in Afghanistan. Qatars permission for the United States to temporarily house Afghan evacuees at al-Udeid air base was a key to facilitating the Kabul airlift.

In Germany, in addition to visiting Ramstein, Blinken will meet with German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas and participate in a virtual meeting with the foreign ministers of roughly 20 other nations with interests in Afghanistan.

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WASHINGTON  U.S. military bases housing Afghanistan evacuees are building their own city-type leadership organizations to deal with sanitation, food and other challenges as the numbers of Afghans coming into the U.S. grows.

Air Force General Glen VanHerck, who heads U.S. Northern Command, said there were more than 25,000 Afghan evacuees being housed at the eight bases as of Friday. He acknowledged there have been problems as the bases grapple with language, cultural and other issues.

He told Pentagon reporters that hes building eight small cities, were going to have challenges. He said the bases have designated a military officer as a mayor to be in charge of a couple dorms or housing units and an Afghan counterpart who can communicate about any ongoing issues. He said Northern Command has asked the Defense Department for additional linguists who are fluent and can speak with the Afghans.

The U.S. military will eventually be able to house as many as 50,000 Afghanistan evacuees at the eight bases around the country and wont likely need to tap additional facilities, said VanHerck, who is also the head of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD),

Afghans at the bases are divided, with single males and single females in separate housing, and families walled off in their own sections where possible to provide privacy.

So far, he said, there have been few problems with evacuees testing positive for COVID-19, and he has heard of no serious security problems.

A defense official said the number of Afghans at each of the eight bases will fluctuate over time, but as of Friday the approximate totals were: Fort McCoy, Wisc., 8,800; Fort Bliss, Texas, 6,200; Fort Lee, Va., 1,700; Joint Base McGuireDixLakehurst, N.J., 3,700; Holloman Air Force Base, N.M., 650; Marine Corps Base Quantico, Va., 800; Fort Pickett, Va., 3,650 and Camp Atterbury, Ind., 65.

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WASHINGTON  The U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security says the government expects to admit more than 50,000 people into the country from the Afghanistan airlift.

Alejandro Mayorkas suggested Friday that figure could climb in what he called an unprecedented evacuation. Mayorkas told reporters during a news conference that the U.S. has brought more than 40,000 people into the country from Afghanistan since the fall of Kabul last month.

About a quarter of those who have come so far are U.S. citizens or permanent residents. The rest, he said, include people who have received the special immigrant visas for Afghans who worked for the U.S. or NATO as interpreters or in some other capacity. Also included in this group are people who have applied but not yet received the visa and those considered vulnerable under Taliban rule.

That last group includes women, children, and members of civil society, Mayorkas said.

The secretary, who came to the U.S. as a refugee from Cuba as a child with his family, spoke proudly of the evacuation effort and said the number of people admitted could exceed 50,000.

He said all those entering the U.S. are undergoing security screening and vetting in a number of transit points, where they are tested for COVID-19 and offered a vaccine.

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WASHINGTON  The Pentagon says Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin will visit Persian Gulf allies to thank them for their cooperation in the evacuations from Afghanistan.

Spokesman John Kirby said Austin will depart Sunday and visit Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

He said the Pentagon chief will reaffirm U.S. defense relationships in the region. He also will visit with U.S. service members.

Qatars permission for the United States to temporarily house Afghan evacuees at al-Udeid air base was a key to facilitating the Kabul airlift. It will be Austins first visit to the Gulf since President Joe Biden announced in April that he was ending U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan.

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DUBAI, United Arab Emirates  A Qatari jet carrying the Gulf countrys special envoy for counterterrorism and conflict resolution has arrived in Kabul.

A Qatari official with knowledge of Fridays visit said officials would discuss efforts at an inclusive government and the resumption of civilian commercial operations at the airport. The official addded that Qatar continues to work closely with nations whose embassies relocated to the Qatari capital of Doha from Kabul in past days. Those countries include the United States, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Japan part of an effort to provide safe corridors and freedom of movement for those still in Afghanistan.

No further details were provided.

Mutlaq bin Majed Al Qahtani, the Qatari envoy who landed in Kabul, said his nation remains an impartial mediator and has engaged with all sides. Qatar has hosted Taliban political leaders for years, as well as unsuccessful attempts at peace talks between the militant group and the U.S.-backed government before its collapse.

Al Qahtani said in a statement to The Associated Press that Qatars priority with the Taliban includes guaranteeing a peaceful transfer of power and ensuring an inclusive and effective government is formed to serve the Afghan people.

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PRISTINA, Kosovo  Kosovos government says that the number of Afghan evacuees who had worked with NATO, and their families arriving in the country has reached 467.

The first group of 111 Afghans arrived in the country on Sunday.

Interior Minister Xhelal Svecla on Friday met with international organizations to discuss the current situation and needs on the temporary housing of the Afghan citizens in Kosovo.

Svecla said that NATO has assisted in their accommodation so far and called for assistance from the organizations despite their support for dignitary accommodation to make their stay easier in the country.

Kosovo has said it may temporarily shelter up to 2,000 Afghans while they process documentation on their final destination to the United States.

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COPENHAGEN, Denmark  Denmarks foreign minister says the country will not recognize any Taliban government.

Jeppe Kofod told Danish broadcaster DR on Friday that leaders there are concerned about ensuring that the progress we have made through two decades of efforts in Afghanistan can be sustained.

The most immediate priority, Kofod said, is ensuring that everyone on the countrys evacuation list can leave Afghanistan in good order.

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KABUL, Afghanistan  A few dozen protesters have gathered outside the presidential palace in Kabul, urging the countrys new Taliban leadership to uphold womens rights achieved under Western patronage and include women in the upcoming government.

At one gate on Friday, around a dozen women held up small printed pages urging for A heroic Cabinet with the presence of women. The protestors chanted slogans asserting human rights and saying they did not want to return to the past.

A document circulated by protesters demanded that Afghan women are granted full rights to education, social and political contributions in the countrys future, and general freedoms including that of free speech.

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MORE ON AFGHANISTAN:

 US defends strike that Afghan family says killed innocents

 Qatar says its not clear when Kabul airport will reopen

 Those left in Afghanistan complain of broken US promises

 Afghans face hunger crisis, adding to Talibans challenge

 Biden defends departure from forever war, praises airlift

 UN chief urges countries to help Afghans in hour of need

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 Find more AP coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/afghanistan

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HERES WHAT ELSE IS HAPPENING:

WARSAW, Poland  A government official says that Poland will temporarily host some 500 Afghan evacuees who had worked for NATO in Afghanistan.

Michal Dworczyk said Friday that the Afghans will remain in Poland for up to three months before moving on to other countries. Depending on their choice, up to 50 persons will be able to settle in Poland. However, Poland has not been a popular destination in Europe for migrants.

Dworczyk, a top aide to Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, said on Radio RMF FM that the first group of some 250 persons would arrive Friday from the NATO air base in Ramstein, Germany.

Separately, Poland has evacuated some 1,300 people from Kabul, mostly Afghanis, who had worked with Polands military and diplomatic mission, and their families and said it is taking responsibility for them.

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KABUL, Afghanistan  The Taliban say Western Union will resume its operations in Afghanistan, opening a rare conduit for foreign funds to flow into the cash-strapped country.

The groups s cultural commission spokesman, Ahmadullah Muttaqi, announced the move Friday. The American financial services giant had halted operations in Afghanistan when the Taliban took power in the capital on Aug. 15.

The opening will be especially welcomed by Afghans with foreign relatives abroad. Hundreds of people have been lining up daily outside Afghan banks to withdraw cash. Withdrawals have been limited to $200 per week and cash machines arent working. The overcrowding means that not everyone manages to obtain money on a given day.

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WASHINGTON  President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden visited injured U.S. troops at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Thursday night.

There are 15 Marines at the hospital in Bethesda, Maryland, just outside Washington, who were wounded in an Aug. 26 suicide bombing at the Kabul airport. The attack occurred as the U.S. government was arranging evacuations of Americans, Afghans and allies before the nearly two-decade war in Afghanistan officially ended Aug. 31.

Eleven Marines were also killed in the attack, as well as one Army solider and one Navy corpsman. Biden traveled to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware on Sunday to witness the return of their remains to U.S. soil in a solemn dignified transfer.

One of the wounded Marines was in critical condition. Three were in serious condition and 11 in stable condition.

The Associated Press
Nurse pleads guilty in sex assault of incapacitated woman View Photo

PHOENIX (AP)  A former Arizona nurse has pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting an incapacitated woman about three years ago at a long-term care facility where she later gave birth.

Nathan Sutherland also entered a guilty plea Thursday to a charge of abuse of a vulnerable adult stemming from his treatment of the woman. The plea agreement calls for a sentence of 5 1/4 to 10 years in prison on the sexual assault conviction and lifetime probation on the other conviction. Sentencing is scheduled for Nov. 4.

The pregnancy was discovered in December 2018 when an employee at the Hacienda Healthcare facility in Phoenix was changing the garments of the then-29-year-old victim and noticed the patient was in the process of delivering a child. Employees told police that they had no idea the woman was pregnant.

Police have said Sutherlands DNA matched a sample taken from the womans son. The victims mother is the boys guardian.

The surprise birth triggered reviews by state agencies, highlighted safety concerns for patients who are severely disabled or incapacitated and prompted the resignations of Haciendas chief executive and one of the victims doctors.

It led to a lawsuit from the victims parents that alleged Sutherland had cared for their daughter on hundreds of occasions from 2012 through 2018, despite promises from the state  which contracts with companies like Hacienda to provide services to people with developmental disabilities  that only women would tend to her. An expert on behalf of her family has said many of Sutherlands encounters with the patient occurred overnight, when fewer staff members and visitors were around.

Lawyers for the family also said Hacienda missed dozens of signs that the woman was carrying a baby, pointing out that she had gained weight, had a swollen belly and missed menstrual periods in the months before the child was born. They said the victim, who has a feeding tube and whose nutrition was reduced in response to her weight gain during the pregnancy, delivered the boy while severely dehydrated and without pain medications.

The victim lived at Hacienda for 26 years, until the childs birth. Her medical conditions stem from a brain disorder that caused motor and cognitive impairments and vision loss. She was also left with no functional use of her limbs.

Sutherland, a licensed practical nurse, was fired by Hacienda after his arrest and has since given up his nursing license.

A judge has approved a $15 million settlement against a doctor who cared for the woman for 26 years while she lived at Hacienda Healthcare. The doctors insurer has argued it has no obligation to pay that amount.

The state of Arizona, which contracts with companies like Hacienda to provide services to people with developmental disabilities, settled last summer for $7.5 million.

In a statement, Perry Petrilli, chief executive of Hacienda Healthcare, expressed relief over Sutherlands guilty pleas.

We have cooperated in every way possible with law enforcement and investigators  and now we hope the judge will sentence Sutherland appropriately given the severity of his crimes, Petrilli said. As ever, our hearts are with the victim and her family. May these final steps in the legal process help them find peace.

By JACQUES BILLEAUD

Associated Press
Ex-Cardinal McCarrick, 91, pleads not guilty in sex assault View Photo

DEDHAM, Mass. (AP)  Former Roman Catholic Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the once-powerful American prelate who was expelled from the priesthood for sexual abuse, pleaded not guilty Friday to sexually assaulting a 16-year-old boy during a wedding reception in Massachusetts nearly 50 years ago.

McCarrick, 91, wore a mask and entered suburban Bostons Dedham District Court hunched over a walker. Shame on you! a protester shouted.

He did not speak during the hearing, at which the court entered a not guilty plea on his behalf, set bail at $5,000, and ordered him to stay away from the victim and have no contact with minors.

McCarrick is the only U.S. Catholic cardinal, current or former, ever to be charged with child sex crimes.

His attorney Katherine Zimmerl said afterward that they are looking forward to addressing the allegations in court and would have no other immediate comment. Another hearing was set for Oct. 28.

McCarrick, who lives in Dittmer, Missouri, faced three counts of indecent assault and battery on a person over 14, according to court documents. He can still face charges because he wasnt a Massachusetts resident and had left the state, stopping the clock on the statute of limitations.

An attorney for the accuser said after the hearing that his client has shown enormous amount of courage by coming forward and is ready to see this trial through the end.

Todays arraignment provides hope for many clergy sex abuse victims and survivors that justice will prevail, truth will be told and children will be kept safe, said Mitchell Garabedian.

The Associated Press generally doesnt identify people who report sexual assault unless they agree to be named publicly, which the victim in this case has not done.

The case against McCarrick and other Catholic clerics is especially raw in Boston, where the global priest sex abuse scandal was first exposed.

Anne Barrett Doyle, co-founder of the online research database BishopAccountability.org, said McCarricks case marks a new phase in the global struggle to hold abusive clergy accountable.

The world is witnessing what was unimaginable 20 years ago: a powerful cardinal forced to answer to child sexual abuse charges in a suburban courtroom, she told reporters.

Susan Renehan, who said she was sexually assaulted by another priest as a girl and came to the courthouse to see McCarricks arraignment, called the charges just a crumb for victims who themselves never got justice, but still a cause for celebration.

So many lives have been ruined, and nobody seems to care in the Catholic Church, she said.

Ordained as a priest in New York City in 1958, McCarrick ascended the church ranks despite apparently common knowledge in the U.S. and Vatican leadership that Uncle Ted, as he was known, slept with seminarians.

McCarrick became one of the most visible Catholic Church officials in the U.S. and even served as the spokesman for fellow U.S. bishops when they enacted a zero tolerance policy against sexually abusive priests in 2002.

His fall began in 2017 when a former altar boy came forward to report the priest had groped him when he was a teenager in New York.

The next year, the Archdiocese of New York announced that McCarrick had been removed from ministry after finding the allegation to be credible and substantiated, and two New Jersey dioceses revealed they had settled claims of sexual misconduct against him in the past involving adults.

Pope Francis defrocked McCarrick in 2019 after a Vatican investigation determined he sexually abused minors, as well as adults.

A two-year internal investigation found that three decades of bishops, cardinals and popes downplayed or dismissed reports of sexual misconduct. Correspondence showed they repeatedly rejected the information as rumor and excused it as an imprudence.

The findings released last year pinned much of the blame on Pope John Paul II, who appointed McCarrick archbishop of Washington, D.C., despite having commissioned an inquiry that confirmed McCarrick slept with seminarians.

In the Massachusetts case, authorities began investigating McCarrick after Garabedian sent a letter to the prosecutors office alleging the abuse, according to the court records.

The man told authorities in January that McCarrick was close to his family when he was growing up and that the abuse started when he was young.

The man said that during his brothers wedding reception at Wellesley College in June 1974, when he was 16, McCarrick told him his father wanted him to have a talk with the priest because the boy was being mischievous at home and not attending church.

They took a walk around campus, the man said, and McCarrick groped him before they went back to the party. The man said McCarrick also sexually assaulted him in a coat room type closet after they returned to the reception, authorities wrote in the documents.

The man told investigators that before leaving the room, McCarrick told him to say three Our Fathers and a Hail Mary or it was one Our Father and three Hail Marys, so God can redeem you of your sins, according to the report.

He also described other instances of sexual abuse by McCarrick over the years, including when the man was an adult, according to the court records.

Cardinals outside the U.S. have faced prosecution. Cardinal George Pell was convicted of sexual abuse in his native Australia, but his conviction was thrown out. And French Cardinal Philippe Barbarin was convicted but later acquitted of charges that he covered up for a pedophile priest.

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Associated Press writer Nicole Winfield in Rome contributed to this report.

By ALANNA DURKIN RICHER

Associated Press
Ahmaud Arberys family: Indicting ex-prosecutor a `huge win View Photo

SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP)  Ahmaud Arberys parents on Friday praised the indictment of a former Georgia prosecutor on charges of misconduct in response to their sons killing, calling it a very huge win.

A grand jury in coastal Glynn County indicted former Brunswick Judicial Circuit District Attorney Jackie Johnson on Thursday on charges of violating her oath of office and obstructing police. State prosecutors alleged that she used her position to delay arrests of the white men who chased and killed Arbery, a 25-year-old Black man.

Johnson was the countys top prosecutor when Arbery was fatally shot last year, and one of the armed men who pursued him had worked for her as an investigator.

Yesterday was a very huge win, Wanda Cooper Jones, Arberys mother, told reporters in a video news conference Friday. Im speechless. Unfortunately, Ahmaud is not here with us today. But losing Ahmaud, it will change some things here in the state of Georgia.

Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr, a Republican, sought the indictment after requesting an investigation of possible misconduct by local prosecutors who failed to bring charges in the killing.

Father and son Greg and Travis McMichael armed themselves with guns and gave chase in a pickup truck on Feb. 23, 2020, after they spotted Arbery running in their neighborhood just outside the port city of Brunswick.

A neighbor, William Roddie Bryan, joined the chase and took cellphone video of Travis McMichael fatally shooting Arbery at close range with a shotgun as Arbery fought back with his fists.

The McMichaels told police they thought Arbery was a burglar and that Travis McMichael shot him in self-defense. No arrests were made in the shooting until more than two months later, after the cellphone video leaked online, sparking a national outcry, and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation took over the case. The McMichaels and Bryan are now jailed as they await trial on murder charges.

Johnson has insisted she did nothing wrong, saying she immediately recused her office from handling the case because Greg McMichael had been an employee.

Still, Arberys parents and their attorneys have long accused the ex-district attorney of trying to help the young mans killers avoid prosecution.

Aint no man or woman above the law, and it was a great day when they arrested Jackie Johnson, Marcus Arbery Sr., the slain mans father, told reporters.

Johnson did not immediately return phone messages seeking comment. It was not immediately known if she had an attorney to represent her. None was listed in the case record of the court where the indictment was filed.

Johnson would face one to five years in prison if convicted of violating her oath of office. The obstruction charge is a misdemeanor, punishable by up to a year in jail.

The indictment says Johnson violated her oath by showing favor and affection to Greg McMichael and failing to treat Ahmaud Arbery and his family fairly and with dignity. It also says she obstructed police by directing that Travis McMichael should not be placed under arrest.

She should spend time in prison, said Lee Merritt, an attorney for Arberys mother. Her actions are not just acts of negligence, but she actively worked to cover up the murder.

Atlanta defense attorney Andrew Fleischman, who isnt involved in the case, said the things Johnson is accused of doing in the indictment may show favoritism and poor judgment, but they dont appear to be crimes.

I absolutely hate the way Jackie Johnson used her discretion, said Fleischman, an appellate attorney who has represented clients prosecuted by Johnsons office. But to say that using your discretion in a way another prosecutor disagreed with is a violation of your oath, that seems a bridge too far.

Johnson told The Associated Press in May 2020 that Glynn County police contacted two of her assistant prosecutors on the day of the shooting. She said it was the officers who represented it as burglary case with a self-defense issue.

Our office could not advise or assist them because of our obvious conflict, Johnson said.

She called a neighboring prosecutor, Waycross Judicial Circuit District Attorney George Barnhill, to advise police. Carr, the state attorney general, appointed Barnhill to take over the case involving Arberys shooting a few days later. Carr said last year that Johnson never told him she had already involved Barnhill in the case and that Barnhill had already told police he saw no grounds for arrests.

Johnson blamed the controversy over Arberys death for her election defeat last year after a decade as top prosecutor for the five-county circuit in southeast Georgia. She was defeated by independent candidate Keith Higgins, who had to collect thousands of signatures to get on the ballot.

By RUSS BYNUM

Associated Press
1 arrest after clash over Arizona schools COVID mandates View Photo

TUCSON, Ariz. (AP)  The father of an Arizona elementary school student was arrested after he and two other men showed up to the campus with zip ties, threatening to make a citizens arrest on the school principal over a COVID-19 quarantine, school officials said Friday.

Diane Vargo, principal of Mesquite Elementary School in Tucson, said the parent came to her office Thursday with his son in tow. The father was upset the child would have to isolate and miss a school field trip because of possible exposure to someone with COVID-19. She said two other men also barged in.

One was carrying military, large, black zip ties and standing in my doorway. Vargo said she tried to de-escalate the situation while explaining the school had to follow county health protocols.

I felt violated that they were in my office claiming I was breaking the law and they were going to arrest me, a visibly shaken Vargo said in a video statement released by the Vail Unified School District. Two of the men werent parents at our school, so I felt threatened.

In a video posted on social media, Vargo can be heard calmly asking them to leave. One of them replies they arent leaving because theyre not going to let her control the situation.

The principal called Tucson police.

School officials said the man arrested was the father. Vargo said they are pursuing charges against the other two men.

The arrest is the latest in a number of confrontations in schools around the country over virus-related rules.

School district officials commended Vargos handling of the situation.

The principal through training and her own personality did an excellent job of making sure that tensions didnt escalate, District Superintendent John Carruth told The Associated Press.

Considering the threats, Carruth said the decision to call police was appropriate.

Most people, while frustrated by the continuing impacts of the pandemic, are still supportive of each other and the school system, he said.

The tactics are escalating but I wouldnt say there is a broader need to raise concern, he said. The solution and the lesson and the silver lining in this (incident) is it calls attention to the need for all of us to seek to listen with the intent to understand.

Dr. Francisco Garcia, Pima Countys chief medical officer, declined to comment on the incident.

We are still in the process of contemplating what our next steps are in terms of our individual response to that family in terms of their adherence to staying at home, Garcia said.

This wasnt the first virus-inspired confrontation involving the Tucson area school district, which is 130 miles (209 kilometers) south of Phoenix.

In April, the district board ended a study session and then canceled a regular meeting after dozens of parents protested the districts refusal to lift its mask mandate. Sheriffs deputies were summoned to help keep order after parents, many not wearing masks, pushed their way into the boardroom.
PETALUMA, Calif. (AP)  A former police officer in Northern California faces trial in November on misdemeanor charges of assaulting a Black woman last summer.

The case against Lance Novello, a 19-year veteran of the Petaluma Police Department, marks the citys first public reckoning since the killing of George Floyd led to calls for greater law enforcement oversight, the Santa Rosa Press-Democrat reported Thursday. It comes as a race and policing committee is scheduled to make recommendations to the Petaluma city council.

Sonoma County prosecutors alleged Novello assaulted Elizabeth Cole, a Black student at Santa Rosa Junior College, in July 2020. He was charged with battery and assault by a police officer and faces up to a year in jail, a $10,000 fine and the prospect of losing the right to bear arms if convicted.

Novello, who was named the citys Officer of the Year in 2016, was placed on paid administrative leave during an investigation. He retired two days after charges were filed.

Officials have not disclosed details about the incident and the city of Petaluma has not released body camera footage of the incident.

Sonoma County prosecutors and and a spokesperson for Novellos lawyers declined to comment on the specifics of the case.

Police Chief Ken Savano said he couldnt discuss details because the case is ongoing.

The way we responded to this situation, not only as a police department, but as a city, demonstrates and shows an example of how we maintain the trust and confidence of the public we serve, Savano said.

Im confident that when more of the details of this situation come out, that the public will see that we did what they expect us to do in terms of how we handled this, he added.

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This story has been corrected to reflect that the alleged incident did not occur at a protest.
PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. (AP)  Twenty years later, Jack Grandcolas still remembers waking up at 7:03 that morning. He looked at the clock, then out the window where an image in the sky caught his eye  a fleeting vision that looked like an angel ascending. He didnt know it yet, but that was the moment his life changed.

Across the country, it was 10:03 a.m. and United Flight 93 had just crashed into a Pennsylvania field.

His wife, Lauren, was not supposed to be on that flight. So when he turned on the television and saw the chilling scenes of Sept. 11, 2001, unfolding, he was not worried for her. Then he saw the blinking light on the answering machine.

Lauren had left two messages that morning, as he slept with the phone ringer off in the bedroom. First, with good news that she was taking an earlier flight from New Jersey home to San Francisco. Then she called from the plane. There was a little problem, his wife said, but she was comfortable for now. She did not say she would call back, Grandcolas recalls. She said: I love you more than anything, just know that. Please tell my family I love them too. Goodbye, honey.

That moment I looked over at the television and there was a smoldering hole on the ground in Pennsylvania. They said it was United Flight 93, said Grandcolas, 58. Thats when I dropped to the ground.

All 44 people on board were killed. Lauren was 38 years old and three months pregnant with their first child. She had traveled East to attend her grandmother's funeral in New Jersey, and then stayed a few extra days to announce the pregnancy  a little good news to lift the spirits of her parents and sisters after burying their grandmother," Grandcolas said.

Flight 93 was the fourth and final plane to be highjacked on Sept. 11 by four al-Qaida terrorists on a suicide mission aimed at the Capitol in Washington, D.C. Passengers and crew members used seatback phones to call loved ones and authorities and learned of the first two attacks, on the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. Realizing their hijacking was part of a broader attack, they took a vote to fight back and try to gain control of the plane. It was a heroic act that spared countless more lives.

What they did was amazingly dramatic, Grandcolas said. It was a selfless act of love to conquer hate.

Outlines of the plan were relayed in phone calls and captured on the cockpit voice recorder, though many families will never know the specific roles their loved ones played.

Grandcolas believes that Lauren was involved. A hard-charging advertising sales consultant with a big heart and a zest for life, Lauren was athletic and outgoing and trained as an EMT because she wanted to be able to help people in crisis situations.

Lauren was a doer, she was not going to sit there idly, he said. He imagines her taking part in the planning of how to wrest control of the plane, gathering intelligence and knowing that time was running short. She would have been tapping her watch to say, We've got to do something fast.'"

For years, Grandcolas bristled at the term 9/11 anniversary. An anniversary is something to celebrate. But the 20th anniversary is an important one, Grandcolas said, adding that he plans to travel to Pennsylvania to visit the Flight 93 National Memorial for the first time since 2003.

Grandcolas attended the first two annual memorials at the Pennsylvania crash site and then stopped, finding it too painful. Instead, in years thereafter, he would spend Sept. 11 doing things Lauren loved, like going for a bike ride or a quiet walk on the beach.

Every year its a gut punch, he said in an interview near his home in Pebble Beach, Calif. We will live with the scars the rest of our lives.

Grandcolas struggled with depression and survivors guilt in the aftermath of the tragedy. With the help of therapy, he came to see Laurens message from the plane as meant to reassure him and her family and to let us know that she was OK with what was transpiring. That unworldly image he saw in the sky the morning of Sept. 11 took on new meaning as he healed: It didn't dawn on me until later that the vision was Lauren." He would hear her voice in times of struggle, telling him to get up and keep living his life.

Grandcolas eventually remarried and moved out of the home he and Lauren had bought in San Rafael, California. Today, hes semi-retired from his career as an advertising executive. He is writing a book about the grieving process that will be a tribute to his unborn child. It will be published in April, when the child would have turned 20.

On the 20th anniversary, Grandcolas finds himself thinking back to how the country came together after 9/11, which he sees as a stark contrast to the division plaguing America today.

This country was united from sea to shining sea, and today, maybe now, would be a good time to let the divisiveness drop, he said.
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP)  Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said Thursday he might support enacting a law that would ban abortion when a fetal heartbeat can be detected, much like a Texas law that the U.S. Supreme Court allowed to take effect.

The Republican governor told reporters that he wants to pass stronger laws against abortion, but he doesn't know enough about the Texas ban to definitively say he would support a similar bill in Florida.

What they did in Texas was interesting and I havent really been able to look enough into it, DeSantis said at a West Palm Beach news conference when asked about the Texas law. I am going to look more significantly at it.

The Texas law that took effect Wednesday bans abortions once medical professionals can detect cardiac activity, usually around six weeks and before many women know theyre pregnant. But instead of the ban being enforced by the state, it allows private citizens in state court to sue providers and anyone involved in facilitating abortions  such as someone who drives a woman to a clinic. Any person who successfully sues would get $10,000 or more.

The court by a 5-4 vote denied an emergency appeal from abortion providers and others that sought to block the laws enforcement. The court said it was not ruling on the laws constitutionality or blocking further challenges. DeSantis said until the court gives a final ruling, I wouldn't read too much into it.

Republican legislative leaders say they are already preparing anti-abortion bills for the next legislative session, which begins in January. Florida Senate President Wilton Simpson told WFLA-TV that includes a fetal heartbeat bill.

When the Supreme Court goes out and makes a decision like this, it clearly is going to send a signal to all the states that are interested in banning abortions or making it more restrictive to have an abortion in their state, its certainly going to make us take a look at those issues, Simpson told the Tampa station.

Florida House Speaker Chris Sprowls said in a statement that he plans to push for more anti-abortion legislation, but stopped just short of supporting a fetal heartbeat bill.

In Florida, we agree that killing an innocent human being with a beating heart is wrong. It is why we have worked every session to strengthen protections for unborn babies, including those for unborn children with disabilities last session, and it is why I am confident that those who share this moral view in the Florida House will continue the fight, Sprowls said.

But Florida's Senate Democratic leader, Lauren Book, said her party would fight any such measures despite being in the minority in both houses.

Book, who has publicly discussed surviving sexual abuse as a child, said in a statement that any bill emulating the Texas ban would send a clear message to me, and to other survivors of sexual assault, that we do not matter.

These kinds of measures are draconian, cruel and have no place in modern society, she said.
JACKSON, Miss. (AP)  A Mississippi man freed after nearly 23 years in prison filed a lawsuit Friday against the district attorney who prosecuted him six times in the killings of four people at a small-town furniture store.

Curtis Flowers was released in December 2019, about six months after the U.S. Supreme Court tossed out the conviction and death sentence from his sixth trial, which took place in 2010. Justices said prosecutors showed an unconstitutional pattern of excluding African American jurors in the trials of Flowers, who is Black.

The lawsuit filed Friday also names as defendants three investigators who worked with Montgomery County District Attorney Doug Evans. The county is not named as a defendant.

The suit says Evans and the investigators engaged in misconduct, including pressuring witnesses to fabricate claims about seeing Mr. Flowers in particular locations on the day of the murders" and ignoring other possible suspects.

The Associated Press left a phone message for Evans in his office Friday seeking a response to the lawsuit. The call was not immediately returned.

The lawsuit does not say how much money Flowers is seeking, leaving that decision to a jury.

Curtis Flowers never should have been charged, one of his attorneys, Rob McDuff of the Mississippi Center for Justice, said in a news release Friday.

McDuff said the killings were clearly the work of professional criminals" and Flowers, who was 26 at the time, had no criminal record.

The prosecution was tainted throughout by racial discrimination and repeated misconduct," McDuff said. This lawsuit seeks accountability for that misconduct.

In March, a judge ordered the state of Mississippi to pay Flowers $500,000 for wrongful imprisonment  the maximum under a state law that allows up to $50,000 a a year for 10 years. The did not preclude Flowers from suing the district attorney and investigators, his attorneys said.

Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch said in September 2020 that Flowers would not be tried a seventh time because prosecutors no longer had credible witnesses and evidence was too weak for another trial. Fitch took office in January 2020 and took control of the case after Evans stepped away from it.

Four people were shot on July 16, 1996, in the Tardy Furniture store in Winona. They were owner Bertha Tardy, 59, and three employees: 45-year-old Carmen Rigby, 42-year-old Robert Golden and 16-year-old Derrick Bobo Stewart. Tardy, Rigby and Golden died at the scene, and Stewart died about a week later.

Relatives of some of the victims have maintained their belief that Flowers is the killer. Attorneys for Flowers say he is innocent.

Flowers was convicted four times in the slayings: twice for individual slayings and twice for all four killings. Two other trials involving all four deaths ended in mistrials. Each of his convictions was overturned.

The 2019 Supreme Court ruling came after American Public Medias In the Dark investigated the case. The podcast recorded jailhouse informant Odell Hallmon in 2017 and 2018 recanting his testimony that Flowers had confessed to him. Hallmons story of the confession had been key evidence in later trials, but he told the podcast on a contraband cellphone from behind bars that his story was a bunch of fantasies, a bunch of lying.

The podcast also presented an analysis finding a long history of racial bias in jury selection by Evans, and found evidence suggesting another man may have committed the crimes.

After the June 2019 Supreme Court ruling, Flowers was moved off death row at the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman and taken to a regional jail. He remained in custody because the original murder indictment was still active, and a judge released him on bail that December.

Winona sits near the crossroads of Interstate 55, the major north-south artery in Mississippi, and U.S. Highway 82, which runs east to west. It is about a half-hours drive from the flatlands of the Mississippi Delta. Among its 4,300 residents, about 54% are Black and 41% are white.

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Follow Emily Wagster Pettus on Twitter at http://twitter.com/EWagsterPettus.
The accomplishments of Plainview ISD over the course of the past three years has exceeded the expectations of the districts board members.

Under Superintendent H.T. Sanchez, the district has successfully passed a bond allowing for some long-awaited new construction and renovations across the district; has successfully started a grow-your-own educator program; has launched more partnerships creating a more robust career and technical education program; and its built partnerships with universities providing more opportunities for students to earn college credits.

Hes done so much, said Board President Sylvia De La Garza, who has been a member of the school board since at least 2008, according to the districts website.

Those accomplishments are just a few of the many reasons the school board nominated Sanchez for Superintendent of the Year for Region 17, she said. And the Texas Association of School Boards recently recognized Sanchez as one of five finalists in line for the title of Superintendent of the Year.

To be considered, candidates must first be nominated by their school board then go through a vigorous interview process, said Sanchez. All superintendents across the state are eligible. To become a state finalist, they must first be named Superintendent of the Year for their region (there are 20 across Texas) and the competition is narrowed from there. The further they advance, the more intense the candidate interviews become.

A news release about the recognition states that candidates are chosen based on strong leadership skills, dedication to improving educational quality, the ability to build effective employee relations, student performance and commitment to public involvement in education.

The top five finalists for 2021 include besides Sanchez include: Courtney Hudgins, East Bernard ISD (Region 3); Mark Estrada, Lockhart ISD (Region 13); Samuel Wyatt, Rankin ISD (Region 18); and Jeanette Ball, Judson ISD (Region 20).

The winner will be announced at the Texas Association of School Administrators | Texas Association of School Board Convention in late September. The winning superintendent and the finalists will receive awards at the convention.

Sanchez has been an administrator for 19 years and joined Plainview ISD in 2018 after serving as superintendent of a district in Arizona and in an interim superintendent capacity with an Odessa district prior to that.

When the recognition came up, De La Garza said the board unanimously approved the idea of nominating Sanchez. There was never any question about submitting his name. It was a small token of appreciation from the board. She mentioned the board wants to keep him as long as hell stay.

Sanchez signed a contract extension back in April  the third hes been granted in as many years since he arrived. His contract is currently set to expire in 2025.
Any environmentally conscientious hiker knows that hitting the trail during muddy, wet conditions can possibly have adverse erosive effects on the trail. Whenever someone steps on the soggy, muddy ground, it dislodges the trails surface which leaves it susceptible to displacement. This doesnt, though, mean you necessarily have to avoid hiking altogether in wet conditions - only that you should follow certain precautions in regard to what trails you hike and how.

Trails with a lot of sand like the Great Island Trail in Massachusetts are a great choice during transitional rainy seasons. Another option is hiking old railbeds  which were built to withstand heavier traffic. If you do plan to hike in the mountains, look for a south-facing, rocky trail or one that has been reinforced for heavy use. Websites and groups like The Appalachian Mountain Club, The Hiking Project, and Alltrails are great resources to help you find a suitable trail.

While hiking, stay in the center of muddy trails as much as possible and utilize as many rocky surfaces available. You'll want to walk on trail edges and avoid the center (where puddles and mud are more prevalent) to help keep your feet dryer. However, that won't actually do anything to minimize loosening the side soil, which can lead to potentially damaging erosion. So, since youll likely be stepping into some pretty deep puddles, youll want to have footwear that performs well while being repeatedly submerged in water.

Salomon Outline Hike Mid Gore-Tex

Salomon Women's OUTline Mid GTX W Hiking Boots, Black/Magnet/Green Milieu, 7.5 Salomon amazon.com $149.95 Shop Now

I love my Salomon Fastpacker boots because theyre lightweight, durable, and waterproof with a sole that provides great traction in mud. Alas, like so much of my favorite gear, they are out of stock in most places. The Outline Gore-Tex boot is a great substitute.



They have a grippy rubber outsole with a lug pattern that works well on mud. Theyre very lightweight (as many Amazon reviewers attest) and provide exceptional breathability. The fit is akin to that of running shoes which allow for flexibility when navigating uneven, puddle-strewn trails.

Scarpa Rush Mid GTX

SCARPA Women's Rush Mid GTX Waterproof GORE-TEX Shoes for Hiking and Trail Running - Black/Provence - 8 SCARPA amazon.com $178.95 Shop Now

Scarpa trekking shoes are extremely lightweight and waterproof with the kind of traction you need in muddy conditions. A relatively new addition to the Scarpa family, the Rush hiking boot features an all-synthetic upper that provides support and flexibility. The sole is manufactured out of what Scarpa calls SuperGum rubber  a compound that provides grippy traction in all conditions while also being quite durable.

U.S. Army Jungle Boots

B Belleville Arm Your Feet Men's BURMA 901 V2 Lightweight Jungle/Tropical Boot B Belleville Arm Your Feet amazon.com $177.29 Shop Now

If youre looking for a boot specifically made for trekking in jungles for months on end, you cant really go wrong with U.S. Army jungle boots. Belleville makes the 901-V2 for the military and, like most everything these days, you can purchase your very own pair on Amazon.

These are tall boots (8) with both medial and lateral drainage perforations so water wont pool in the bottom. The upper is unlined for breathability and the insole is puncture-resistant  both great things when youre on a multi-day jungle trek.

Be aware, these boots are definitely not for everyone though as they do not have any cushioning around the ankle and are not known for being lightweight.

More for you 12 household items you need to replace more often than you think

No matter what boot you find is right for you, excessively muddy conditions often call for the use of trekking poles. I never would have made it through the Borneo jungle without my REI Co-op Carbon Exp Vario Trekking Poles  which are, of course, no longer available. The MSR DynaLock Foldable Carbon poles are a great alternative though  lightweight, foldable, and adjustable.
MIAMI (AP)  A Florida man has been convicted of lying to get a low-interest COVID-19 relief loan.

Willie Curry, 58, pleaded guilty Monday in Miami federal court to wire fraud in connection with his fraudulent application to the U.S. Small Business Administration, according to court records. He faces up to 20 years in prison at his Nov. 17 sentencing.

According to a plea agreement, Curry applied for an Economic Injury Disaster Loan with the SBA in June 2020. He falsely claimed that Will Curry Computers was established in 2015 and had annual gross revenues of approximately $755,416, a cost of goods sold of approximately $170,664, and 10 employees. Prosecutors said Curry actually established the business in 2020, and it had minimal revenues or costs of goods sold and no employees.

Curry actually worked full-time as a network manager for Miami-Dade County and suffered no loss of salary from the COVID-19 pandemic, investigator said.

Based on the Curry's fraudulent application, the SBA disbursed a $10,000 advance and then $150,000 in loan proceeds to Currys listed financial institution, which later returned the money to the SBA.

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Follow AP coverage of the pandemic at https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak.
FRANKLIN, Wis. (AP)  Police shot and killed a man Friday outside a Wisconsin Walmart after he allegedly kidnapped a man, carjacked a vehicle and stole another vehicle as officers were closing in on him.

The Milwaukee County Sheriff's Office, the Franklin Police Department and the Oak Creek Police Department issued a joint statement saying the incident began early Friday morning when a 31-year-old man kidnapped another man in Milwaukee.

They visited three stores, including a Walmart in suburban Franklin. The kidnapping victim told store personnel there that he needed help. Someone from the Walmart called police and said there was an active shooter there, the statement said.

Multiple deputies and officers from the two departments converged on the area. As officers closed in the suspect abandoned his vehicle and stole another one, the statement said.

A chase ensued on Interstate 94 with speeds reaching 110 mph. The suspect exited the freeway and crashed in a Franklin parking lot. He then stole another vehicle at gunpoint and engaged an Oak Creek officer in an armed confrontation." The statement did not elaborate.

The chase continued until the suspect hit another vehicle just up the street from the Franklin Walmart. He climbed out of the vehicle holding a gun. Four deputies, one Franklin officer and four Oak Creek officers opened fire, killing him, the statement said. Franklin Police Chief Rick Oliva told reporters during a news conference on Friday morning that there were indications the suspect pointed his weapon at officers but he didn't elaborate.

None of the deputies or officers were hurt and no one else who was involved has reported any physical injuries, the statement said.

Authorities said the suspect is from Milwaukee but have not released his name.

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This story has been corrected to show the events leading up to the shootings began Friday morning, not Monday morning, based on updated information from the police.
WASHINGTON (AP)  President Joe Biden on Thursday pledged robust federal help for the Northeastern and Gulf states battered by Hurricane Ida and for Western states beset by wildfires  with the catastrophes serving as deadly reminders that the climate crisis has arrived.

These extreme storms, and the climate crisis, are here, Biden said in a White House speech. We must be better prepared. We need to act.

The president said he will further press Congress to pass his nearly $1 trillion infrastructure bill to improve roads, bridges, the electric grid and sewer systems. The proposal intends to ensure that the vital networks connecting cities and states and the country as a whole can withstand the flooding, whirlwinds and damage caused by increasingly dangerous weather. Biden stressed that the challenge transcends the politics of a deeply divided nation because of the threats posed by the storms and fires.

Its a matter of life and death and were all in this together, the president said.

Scientists say climate change increases the frequency of extreme weather events  such as large tropical storms, and the droughts and heatwaves that create conditions for vast wildfires. U.S. weather officials recently reported that July 2021 was the hottest month ever recorded in 142 years of record-keeping.

Ida was the fifth-most powerful storm to strike the U.S. when it hit Louisiana on Sunday with maximum winds of 150 mph (240 kph), likely causing tens of billions of dollars in flood, wind and other damage, including to the electrical grid. The storm's remnants dropped devastating rainfall across parts of Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey on Wednesday, causing significant disruption to major population centers.

The storm has killed at least 13 in the Gulf Coast region and at least 46 in the Northeastern U.S.

More than 1 million homes and businesses in Louisiana and Mississippi remained without power after Ida toppled a major transmission tower and knocked out thousands of miles of lines and hundreds of substations. New Orleans was plunged into total darkness; power began returning to parts of the city Wednesday. Biden is set to visit Louisiana on Friday to survey some of the damage and meet with government officials there.

Biden said the flooding in Louisiana was less than the region experienced 16 years ago during Hurricane Katrina, crediting federal investments in the area's levee system.

We know that there is much to be done in this response on our part," Biden added. "We need to get power restored. We need to get more food, fuel and water deployed.

He said he was receiving hourly updates on the disaster response and outlined efforts by the federal government to ease recovery efforts, including by making satellite imagery available to utility companies and waiving some regulatory requirements.

At Bidens request, the Energy Department said it was releasing 1.5 million barrels of oil from the nations Strategic Petroleum Reserve to ensure a steady fuel supply in the Gulf region, where sunken vessels are blocking key supply lines along the Mississippi River. The oil will be used by ExxonMobil at its Baton Rouge refinery. The company has agreed to replenish the strategic reserve, which is used as an emergency stockpile, within three months.

The president also scolded insurers who are declining to pay for the costs of damage or hotel stays for people who had to evacuate their homes.

Don't hide behind the fine print and technicalities, Biden warned the insurers. Do the right thing and pay your policyholders what you owe them.

Biden said separately that the Pentagon was assisting with ongoing firefighting operations in California against the Caldor fire.

Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards suggested Biden's Friday visit would be crucial for the president to understand the destruction by seeing the widespread damage for himself.

Theres nothing quite like visiting in person, Edwards told reporters Wednesday following a briefing with local elected officials in Jefferson Parish, which took direct blows from Ida. When you see it for yourself, it is just so much more compelling.

Asked what type of assistance he planned to request from Biden, Edwards said, Quite frankly, the list is going to be very, very long. But he said a priority would be for a housing program to help people rebuild.

The White House says Biden has held several conference calls with governors and local officials to discuss preparations and needs after the storm, and has received briefings from Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator Deanne Criswell.

FEMA had sent tons of supplies, including generators, tarps and other materials to the region before the storm, and federal response teams are working on search and rescue.

Biden's trip Friday to the Gulf region will cap a difficult stretch for the president, who oversaw the chaotic exit of the U.S. military from Afghanistan after a 20-year engagement. That included the deaths of 13 U.S. service members helping evacuate more than 120,000 Americans, Afghan allies and others fleeing life under Taliban rule.

As Ida bore down on the Gulf Coast on Sunday, Biden was at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware to witness the return of the remains of the 13 U.S. servicemen and women who were killed in suicide bombing last week at Afghanistan's airport in Kabul, where the evacuations were taking place.

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Associated Press writers Melinda Deslatte in Baton Rouge, La., and Christina Larson and Matthew Daly in Washington contributed to this report.
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP)  A bipartisan police reform package was signed into law Thursday by North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, emphasizing success of enacting provisions from a task force he commissioned following George Floyd's murder over panel recommendations left out.

Backers of the legislation, which received near unanimous approval from the General Assembly, say it will rid departments of derelict officers and give mental health assistance to others on the force. The provisions address law enforcement shortcomings during a time of national focus on racial inequity and the deaths of Black residents at the hands of police, such as Floyd last year in Minneapolis.

Law enforcement groups and state House members also made recommendations contained within the new law.

We need to strive every single day to make sure that our criminal justice system works free of bias and racial discrimination. And we know that too often it falls short, the Democratic governor said in a bill-signing ceremony outside the Executive Mansion. Two things that I would want to say about the signing of this legislation. Number one, this is an important step. But number two, there is more to do.

The new law creates a public database to determine whether an officers certification has been suspended or revoked. The state also will develop a confidential database that contains critical incident information about when an officer has been involved in a case resulting in death or serious injury. Local agencies also will be required to collect internal data on when officers discharge weapons or are subject to citizen complaints.

Officers and sheriff's deputies will receive psychological screenings and mental health strategies and training on ethics, the use of force and minority sensitivity.

After the protest following Floyd's death, we knew we had an opportunity to make our criminal justice system fairer and better at keeping people safe, said Attorney General Josh Stein, who co-led Coopers task force with Supreme Court Justice Anita Earls. Today, we are meeting that opportunity.

A change to how police body camera footage can be reviewed by family members also was inserted into the bill in direct response to the aftermath of the fatal shooting in April of Andrew Brown Jr. by Pasquotank County sheriffs deputies.

At the ceremony, Cooper also signed two House bills that matched identically some language in the omnibus Senate bill. One addresses mental health training requirements. The other makes it an officers duty to report excessive force by a colleague and to intervene when they see it. They were recommended last year by a bipartisan House study committee.

Republican Rep. John Szoka of Cumberland County, who attended the ceremony, said this week these and other House bills "are important first steps to improve and support North Carolina law enforcement agencies.

Absent are Cooper task force recommendations that for now lack broader consensus, like eliminating cash bail for nonviolent criminal suspects and reinstituting a now-repealed 2009 law addressing racial bias in capital punishment cases. One civil rights group called the Senate legislation a missed opportunity to address systemic racism within the criminal legal system.

Stein, also a Democrat, pitched Thursday a task force recommendation to decriminalize the possession of small amounts of marijuana. He said a disproportionate percentage of those convicted of such crimes are not white, even as white and Black residents in North Carolina use marijuana at the same rate.

Cooper said the task forces work is not over. Kerwin Pittman, a task force member and Raleigh criminal justice activist, said the new laws speak to the truth that all lives in North Carolina cannot matter until ensuring the lives of Black people and those in other marginalized groups matter.

But these laws are not the end-all and be-all for reimagining public safety in the state of North Carolina and creating that more equitable system, Pittman said.
WASHINGTON (AP)  President Joe Biden on Thursday blasted the Supreme Court's decision not to block a new Texas law banning most abortions in the state and directed federal agencies to do what they can to insulate women and providers from the impact.

Hours earlier, in the middle of the night, a deeply divided high court allowed the law to remain in force. It is the nation's biggest curb to abortion rights since the court announced in its landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that women have a constitutional right to abortion.

The court voted 5-4 to deny an emergency appeal from abortion providers and others but also suggested that their order likely wasn't the last word and other challenges can be brought.

Biden said in a statement that his administration will launch a whole-of-government effort to respond to this decision and look at what steps the federal government can take to ensure that women in Texas have access to safe and legal abortions as protected by Roe."

Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement that the Justice Department was deeply concerned about the Texas law and evaluating all options to protect the constitutional rights of women, including access to an abortion.

Biden, who has come under pressure from Democrats to expand the size of the Supreme Court, has ordered a review of the court that is due next month.

The Texas law, signed by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott in May, prohibits abortions once medical professionals can detect cardiac activity, usually around six weeks and before many women know theyre pregnant.

The law is part of a broader push by Republicans nationwide to impose new restrictions on abortion. At least 12 other states have enacted bans early in pregnancy, but all have been blocked from going into effect.

The high court's order declining to halt the Texas law came just before midnight Wednesday. The majority said those bringing the case had not met the high burden required for a stay of the law.

In reaching this conclusion, we stress that we do not purport to resolve definitively any jurisdictional or substantive claim in the applicants lawsuit. In particular, this order is not based on any conclusion about the constitutionality of Texass law, and in no way limits other procedurally proper challenges to the Texas law, including in Texas state courts, the unsigned order said.

Chief Justice John Roberts dissented along with the court's three liberal justices. Each of the four wrote a statement expressing disagreement with the majority.

Roberts noted that while the majority denied the request for emergency relief the courts order is emphatic in making clear that it cannot be understood as sustaining the constitutionality of the law at issue.

Separately, the justices are planning to tackle the issue in a major case when they begin hearing arguments again in the fall. That case involves the state of Mississippi, which is asking to be allowed to enforce an abortion ban after 15 weeks of pregnancy.

The vote in the Texas case underscores the impact of the death of the liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg last year and then-president Donald Trump's replacement of her with conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett. Had Ginsburg remained on the court there would have been five votes to halt the Texas law.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor called her conservative colleagues' decision stunning.

Presented with an application to enjoin a flagrantly unconstitutional law engineered to prohibit women from exercising their constitutional rights and evade judicial scrutiny, a majority of Justices have opted to bury their heads in the sand, she wrote.

Texas lawmakers wrote the law to evade federal court review by allowing private citizens to bring lawsuits in state court against anyone involved in an abortion, other than the patient. Other abortion laws are enforced by state and local officials, with criminal sanctions possible.

In contrast, Texas' law allows private citizens to sue abortion providers and anyone involved in facilitating abortions. Among other situations, that could include anyone who drives a woman to a clinic to get an abortion. Under the law, anyone who successfully sues another person would be entitled to at least $10,000.

Justice Elena Kagan wrote that the law was patently unconstitutional, and Justice Stephen Breyer said a woman has a federal constitutional right to obtain an abortion during the first stage of pregnancy.

However, anti-abortion groups cheered the courts action.

This is the most significant accomplishment for the pro-life movement in Texas since Roe v. Wade, said John Seago, legislative director for Texas Right to Life, the states largest anti-abortion group. We had the Supreme Court that is allowing the strongest bill weve ever passed to go into effect. And that is unheard of.

Kristan Hawkins, the president of Students for Life of America, said in a statement that her group was celebrating this decision for what it is, baby steps in the right direction toward the obvious conclusion that Roe is fatally flawed and must go.

But Nancy Northup, the head of the Center for Reproductive Rights, which represents abortion providers challenging the law, vowed to keep fighting it.

Right now, people seeking abortion across Texas are panicking  they have no idea where or when they will be able to get an abortion, if ever," she said.

Texas has long had some of the nations toughest abortion restrictions, including a sweeping law passed in 2013. The Supreme Court eventually struck down that law, but not before more than half of the states 40-plus clinics closed.

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Associated Press writer Paul J. Weber in Austin, Texas, contributed to this report.
BELLE CHASSE, La. (AP)  Life in Louisianas Plaquemines Parish is a mix of frustration and a little adventure since Hurricane Ida, with cowboys wrangling loose cattle on a highway, residents navigating alligator-infested floodwaters to get home and thousands waiting in long lines for gas and food.

On the plus side, no one died during the Category 4 storm in this narrow spit of soggy land southeast of New Orleans. On the down side, thousands of homes are damaged, many lack power and water and no one is sure when things will get back to normal.

Its getting worse, Gail Rudolph said Wednesday as she sat in a pickup truck near where dozens were lined up outside a closed grocery store waiting for it to open.

Chris Vanhoosier stood in line for an hour to fill up a few 5-gallon cans with gas.

Were waiting for the water to come back on. We lost a generator, so once that gets back on well do a little bit better, he said.

Just a few miles down the road, toward the tip of Louisianas boot-shaped coast, it was like a scene from the Old West as wranglers on horseback used ropes to catch a black cow that got loose in the storm. After about 15 minutes of work, they finally shooed it into a corral set up on a highway.

There are a couple hundred more out there, said one of the cowboys.

Still further south, past oil refineries that line the Mississippi River bank, Ben Tucker rode in a boat with his nephew, Robert Singlemen, and Michael Restock to check out his fish camp house at Myrtle Grove Marina for the first time.

Navigating slowly through flooded fields past alligators, snakes and hundreds of dead nutria, they found a neighborhood of about 70 flooded homes, many of which were missing siding and the contents of first-floor garages and carports, which were inundated by storm surge from Ida.

Mud was everywhere, and only a little of it was washed away by an afternoon thunderstorm. Tuckers fishing equipment was scattered everywhere and the benches near his dock were gone. But the main floor of the house, which stands on stilts, was remarkably dry and the roof seemed fine.

All in all, Tucker said, things could be a lot worse.

Its here. It survived. It aint the prettiest, but well be back, he said.

Next-door neighbor Gayle Lawrence, who rode out Ida with her husband in the neighborhood, which is built along canals, fretted over the loss of two cars, refrigerators and most everything else in their garage, filled with marsh grass and stinking, dead fish.

The house is solid, it didnt even move. But when the water came up it destroyed everything, she said.

The entire lower part of the parish remains under a mandatory evacuation order, and the town of Belle Chasse is under a voluntary evacuation order. In one area, workers are cutting through a levee to let water drain back toward the gulf, officials said. Water service is spotty because of power failures and local government offices are closed until next week.

Parish President Kirk Lepine urged residents who fled Ida to stay away a while longer until roads can be cleared, power restored, dead livestock removed and more.

We do want to see your smiling face. We want you to come home. But not right now, he told a news briefing.

Louisiana calls itself a sportsman's paradise, and Plaquemines gets a lot of credit for the nickname. Skilled taxidermists can do a good business in this parish of 23,000 people preparing all the mounted fish and deer heads that hang on walls in residents' homes. They're sometimes beside paintings of crabs, shrimp and other coastal delicacies.

The houses that some residents call fish camps are a lot like the big, nice houses that line so much of the Gulf Coast. Refinery and oil industry workers in the area make enough money to have a good life with a little extra to spare for boats, hunting gear, top-quality fishing poles and more. It's a place where it's easy to forget the problems of the world.

It's just great. The water is just serenity. It's like you're on an island except when a hurricane comes, said Lawrence, 79, who retired to Plaquemines Parish with her husband Warren. We talked about selling when this was coming through, but we can't do that.

Tucker, who works for a road-building company and lives in the New Orleans suburb of Gretna, might quit the parish some day, but it's hard to imagine when. The fishing is good, the beer is awfully tasty when it's cold on a hot day and hurricanes, like alligators, come and go.

As long as it's more fun than work, I'm all in, he said.
HONOLULU (AP)  A 24-year-old Illinois woman submitted a fake COVID-19 vaccination card to visit Hawaii with a glaring spelling error that led to her arrest: Moderna was spelled Maderna," according to court documents.

In order to bypass Hawaii's 10-day traveler quarantine, she uploaded a vaccination card to the state's Safe Travels program and arrived in Honolulu Aug. 23 on a Southwest Airlines flight, the documents said.

Airport screeners found suspicious errors ... such as Moderna was spelled wrong and that her home was in Illinois but her shot was taken at Delaware, Wilson Lau, a special agent with the Hawaii attorney general's investigation division, wrote in an email to a Delaware official who confirmed there was no vaccination record for the woman under her name and birth date.

The email is included in documents filed in court. She was charged with two misdemeanor counts of violating Hawaii's emergency rules to control the spread of COVID-19. She had been in custody on $2,000 bail until a judge released her at a hearing Wednesday and scheduled another hearing in three weeks, according the public defender's office.

State Public Defender James Tabe, whose office represented her at hearings this week, declined to comment on her case, noting it's not clear if she'll hire her own attorney or apply to have a public defender represent her.

The voicemail at a number listed for her in court documents was full Wednesday. She didn't immediately respond to a text message from The Associated Press.

In addition to the suspicious card, authorities determined that the travel information she provided listed she would be staying at a Waikiki Holiday Inn but didn't include a reservation number and return flight information, court documents said.

An assistant manager at the hotel confirmed to Lau that she didn't have a reservation. Lau said in the court document that he tried to call the number she listed, but her voicemail was full. He said he emailed her and didn't get a response.

Lau said he searched for her on Facebook and found a photo showing a distinctive tattoo on her left hip area.

The tattoo helped authorities find her at a Southwest Airlines counter when she was trying to leave Honolulu on Aug. 28, the court document said. She showed her ID and vaccination card to Lau, who informed her she was being arrested for falsifying vaccination documents.

Other visitors to Hawaii have been arrested for fake vaccination cards, including a father and son from California, who appeared in court via Zoom Wednesday and waived their rights to a jury trial.

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This story corrects the day of the week of the legal hearings to Wednesday.
A roundup of some of the most popular but completely untrue stories and visuals of the week. None of these are legit, even though they were shared widely on social media. The Associated Press checked them out. Here are the facts:

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Helicopter videos show Taliban attempt to hang flag, not execution

CLAIM: Video of a man dangling from a helicopter in Kandahar, Afghanistan, shows the Taliban performing a public execution.

THE FACTS: Footage of a man suspended from a helicopter in Afghanistan sparked outrage online this week as social media users, politicians and news outlets alike falsely claimed it showed the Taliban killing someone in a public display. The Taliban are now hanging people from our left-behind helicopters and flying them around for all to see one Twitter user wrote Monday in a post shared nearly 6,000 times. This is on every single Biden voter. The video does appear to show the Taliban using a Black Hawk helicopter that was previously used by the Afghan military, according to the markings on the aircraft. However, it shows not a killing, but a Taliban fighter attempting to place a flag on a tall flagpole at the Kandahar governors office on Sunday, according to Saadullah Wolesmal and Farid Ahmad Yousuni, two residents of Kandahar who watched the scene as it played out. Wolesmal said the pole was a remnant of the Afghan government, and Afghanistans black, red and green flag was previously affixed to it. A Taliban fighter was suspended from a helicopter and tried to affix the Talibans white flag to the pole. He did not succeed, Wolesmal and Yousuni said. A close analysis of videos from the scene shows that the man dangling from the helicopter was hanging from a harness, not from his neck, and could be seen waving his arms. Footage from additional angles circulating on social media confirms the man was suspended near a flagpole that matches the poles at the Kandahar governors office.

 Associated Press writer Ali Swenson in Seattle contributed this report, with additional reporting from Associated Press writer Tameem Akhgar in Istanbul.

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Schools in Ohio suburb arent vaccinating kids without parental consent

CLAIM: Schools in the Dayton, Ohio, suburb of Kettering are vaccinating children for COVID-19 without notifying parents or requesting their consent.

THE FACTS: The claim spread by Twitter users  including Ohio U.S. Senate candidate Josh Mandel  this week is bogus and first circulated before students had returned to classes in the district. "You guys, this is Dayton, Ohio, this is Kettering Schools, a female narrator says in a false, widely circulating TikTok video. Every parent needs to see this, you need to be aware, because your kids are not safe. The narrator shows a clip of an Aug. 11 livestream video from InfoWars, a right-wing website that has spread numerous COVID-19 conspiracy theories. The clip features part of an interview with a caller who claims his brothers daughter got vaccinated at school without her fathers knowledge or consent. The caller says his brother lives in Kettering, Ohio. The claim is unequivocally false, said Scott Inskeep, the Kettering City Schools superintendent. No one in our schools has or EVER would allow ANY minor student to be vaccinated in our schools without the expressed permission of the childs parent or legal guardian, Inskeep said in a statement. When we held our student vaccine clinics last spring, a parent or guardian had to accompany their minor child to the clinic or the vaccine was not administered. Furthermore, this radio program appears to have aired on August 11, the day before we had ANY students in school. The nearby district of Dayton Public Schools also issued a statement on social media denying claims that it had forced vaccinations on students. It specifically countered social media rumors that any students were taken out of class to be vaccinated on Aug. 13. This is false, the statement read. DPS is not currently in session so students are not yet in class, and at no point would the district force student vaccinations. COVID-19 vaccines are available for anyone 12 and older in Ohio. Children under 18 who are not emancipated are required to have parental consent for any vaccine, according to the Ohio Department of Health. Mandels campaign team did not respond to an emailed request for comment.

 Ali Swenson

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Post makes false claim about FDA approval for Pfizer's shot

CLAIM: There is currently no FDA-approved vial of COVID-19 vaccine available in the U.S.

THE FACTS: Following the U.S. Food and Drug Administrations full approval of Pfizers COVID-19 vaccine last week for those 16 and over, posts online are misrepresenting the announcement to falsely claim the vaccine still lacks formal approval. One Instagram post acknowledged the Comirnaty vaccine had received FDA approval, but made the false claim that the only available doses are Pfizer vials that are still just under emergency use authorization. In fact, Comirnaty is the brand name Pfizer is using to market its COVID-19 vaccine and there is no distinction between the two. In December, the FDA granted Pfizers vaccine emergency use authorization based on a study of 44,000 people 16 and older who were followed for two months. During public health emergencies, the FDA can issue emergency use authorizations for products that prevent, treat or diagnose a disease. After Pfizer submitted six months of follow up safety data, the FDA granted full approval for those 16 and older to use the vaccine, now marketed as Comirnaty. The formulation used in the FDA-approved Comirnaty vaccine is identical to the shot that previously received emergency use authorization. "Its the same vaccine, Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, vice dean for public health practice and community engagement at Johns Hopkins University and former FDA deputy commissioner, told the AP. There is only one vaccine. Sharfstein said since some people were waiting for the FDA to grant full approval, last weeks announcement should encourage more vaccinations. Pfizer was already using the Comirnaty name on its vaccine vials and packaging before the vaccine received full approval for people 16 and older on August 23. Pfizer announced in December that it was marketing the vaccine in the European Union under that brand name. A Pfizer news release at the time said the name Comirnaty, represents a combination of the terms COVID-19, mRNA, community, and immunity, to highlight the first authorization of a messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccine, as well as the joint global efforts that made this achievement possible with unprecedented rigor and efficiency  and with safety at the forefront  during this global pandemic. Pfizers COVID-19 vaccines remain under emergency use authorization for teenagers ages 12 through 15, and for immunocompromised individuals receiving a third dose, until Pfizer submits its application and safety data for those groups.

 Associated Press writer Beatrice Dupuy in New York contributed this report.

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Video of Pelosi supposedly caught on hot mic was manipulated

CLAIM: After President Joe Biden offered to answer questions during a virtual meeting, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was caught saying, We dont want him to talk.

THE FACTS: The video clip that appears to show the awkward moment was actually manipulated and was first shared online with a label identifying it as satire. The clip was taken from a video of a March 3 virtual session of the House Democratic Caucus Virtual Issues Conference, where Biden discussed his legislative priorities. Pelosi addressed Biden on a virtual screen. After concluding his remarks, Biden said: And Im happy to take questions if thats what you  Im supposed to do, Nance. Whatever you want me to do. In the manipulated video, a voice that sounds similar to Pelosis, can be heard saying, Am I on? No, we dont want him to talk. The voice was added to the video. In the actual video, Pelosi did not respond and the screen that showed her cut to a photo of Biden. The original video ends shortly after that. A comedian and voice actor who performs under the name Michael Clive created the altered video as political satire. But some social media users then shared his video without the satire label. Yes, thats me, imitating Nancy Pelosi but that Twitter version has been edited, Clive, who also uses the name Michael Kaminski, told The Associated Press in an email. The original is labeled satire at the end. In March, social media users shared a clip from the same event falsely claiming that the feed was cut off so Biden couldnt answer questions. The video feed that was uploaded online does end after Biden's introductory remarks, but that is because the event was closed to the press during the question and answer period. Biden did take questions, including one about systemic racism and the child tax credit, the AP reported.

 Associated Press writer Arijeta Lajka in New York contributed this report.

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Shell oil platform did not break loose during Hurricane Ida

CLAIM: The Shell-operated deep water oil platform known as the Mars/Olympus platform has broken loose following Hurricane Ida and is now free within the Gulf of Mexico.

THE FACTS: A Facebook account dedicated to sharing weather updates from members of the public, Mississippi Weather Network, erroneously posted on Aug. 29 that the platform had broken loose during the storm but then retracted the post later that day when the information could not be verified. An update on the Facebook page notified readers that page administrators had taken the post down until further information can be verified by the oil company(ies) in question or U.S. government officials. The update reads: We may not always get it right, but we never purposefully get it wrong to mislead anyone." Though the inaccurate post about the storm damage had been taken down, social media users continued sharing screenshots of it. The U.S. Coast Guard conducted a flyover on Aug. 29 that revealed no oil platforms had broken loose, according to an agency statement. Shell also performed its own flyover the next day and confirmed that its Mars, Olympus and Ursa platforms were all intact and on location. About 300 offshore platforms were evacuated ahead of Ida, leading to a pause of 80 percent of the gulfs oil and gas production, according to the U.S. Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement.

 Beatrice Dupuy

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Biden didnt fall asleep during meeting with Israeli Prime Minister

CLAIM: Image shows President Joe Biden sleeping during high-level talks with a foreign head of government.

THE FACTS: In the days following Biden's Aug. 27 meeting with Israeli Minister Naftali Bennett, the false claim appeared on social media despite news coverage showing Biden was awake and engaged. A widely shared post on Facebook shows an image of Biden at the meeting with his head down and his eyes appear to be closed. Under the screenshot, the image says, Watch: Joe Biden Caught *Sleeping* During High-Level Talks with Foreign Head of Government. But image is misleading and the description is false. During a 14-minute video taken during the meeting, Biden does not fall asleep. He looks down at his lap several times, including when hes listening and reading from his notepad. The image is captured in one of these moments. The two leaders met to discuss a range of topics, including COVID-19 and Irans nuclear capabilities. It was the first face-to-face meeting between the two men since Bennett was sworn-in as prime minister in June.

 Associated Press writer Terrence Fraser in New York contributed this report.

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Animals didnt escape zoo in NJ storm

CLAIM: Images show that a variety of wild animals were loose in South Orange, New Jersey, on Thursday after they escaped overnight from the Turtle Back Zoo amid Hurricane Ida flooding.

THE FACTS: Lions, crocodiles, penguins and gorillas did not roam the streets of South Orange, New Jersey, despite a hoax that was circulating widely the morning after severe flash flooding in the area. Breaking: Reports of escaped animals circulate throughout South Orange, New Jersey after the TurtleBack Zoo (@TurtleBackZoo) is severely flooded, a Twitter account impersonating CNN wrote early Thursday morning. Local authorities advise all South Orange residents to stay home until the animals are returned back to their homes. The post, which was accompanied by images of animals seemingly wandering loose on city streets, spread to Instagram and Facebook later Thursday. But reverse-image searches prove that the images are old. A photo of a pack of lions wading into a street appeared in reports about Indias Gujarat region in 2019. A photo of penguins gathering on a dark, slick sidewalk hails from South Africa and has circulated online since 2013. A photo of a crocodile stalking toward cars is from coastal Australia in 2019. And an image of an ape-like creature standing in a street has appeared online since 2014, when it sparked both skepticism and bigfoot theories after it was shared in a Facebook group for residents of Anaheim Hills, California. The Turtle Back Zoo in West Orange, New Jersey, confirmed the reports were fake Thursday morning, writing on Twitter that zoo staff secured the animals indoors before the downpour. We appreciate everyones concern about our animals and staff during the storm, the tweet read. Staff stayed through the night to monitor. There was no loss of power and all of our animals and animal areas weathered the storm well and remain safe and secure within the facility.

 Ali Swenson

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COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP)  South Carolina's highest court on Thursday tossed out a school mask mandate in the state's capital city, saying it contradicts a state budget measure aimed at preventing face covering requirements.

State Attorney General Alan Wilson had sued the city of Columbia after its City Council passed the ordinance requiring masks at elementary and middle schools. City leaders said the mask requirement, which carries a $100 violation fine, was meant to protect children too young to be approved for the coronavirus vaccine.

But Wilson argued the city's mask rule conflicts with the budget requirement that went into effect July 1 and bans school districts from using appropriated funds to require face coverings.

On Thursday, the state Supreme Court sided unanimously with the attorney general. The Columbia ordinance is written so that the burden of enforcing the mask rule falls on school employees, all of whom have an obvious connection to state-appropriated funds," wrote Justice John Kittredge.

That means school employees have to choose between violating state or city laws, the opinion reads.

The City has made clear that every school employee is in the crosshairs, Kittredge wrote. Simply put, whether intentionally or inadvertently, the City threatens all school personnel with far-reaching and unknown legal liability unless all school personnel ensure obedience to the ordinances.

Attorneys for Columbia had argued days prior that city and school authorities could draw from separate pots of money, such as local funds, to enforce mask-wearing. They also claimed the legislature overstepped constitutional boundaries by putting the mask rule  a policy unrelated to state finances  in the budget, which aims to raise and spend money.

The Court emphasized what weve been saying all along, that we are not arguing mask policy, we are arguing the rule of law," Wilsons office said in a statement.

Both the court and Wilson have emphasized the legal debate does not touch on whether masks themselves are effective or whether they should be required.

The Columbia effort put Mayor Steve Benjamin, a Democrat, at odds with Republican Gov. Henry McMaster as well as the GOP-controlled Legislature, which recently barred such policies for all public schools.

In a statement provided to AP, Benjamin said Thursday the citys stance "is the same now as it was before we enacted our emergency ordinance requiring masks in our elementary and middle schools: we will always act to preserve and protect the health and safety of our children.

This is a sad day for children in South Carolina, Benjamin added. What is even sadder is the people who have been elected to protect them, who should always and only act to keep them healthy, educated and alive, wont fight for them. With record numbers of our children falling ill to this deadly virus, we pray for our children.

In a tweet by his office, McMaster said the court had reached a sound conclusion and urged those eligible for vaccinations to get the shots.

A parents right to decide whats best for their child is now definitively protected by state law," the tweet reads.

The budget provision by lawmakers took effect July 1, when the state was averaging less than 150 COVID-19 cases a day. Now the state is seeing more than 5,000 new cases daily, and deaths are spiking as hospitals become strained at a time when children return to school and vaccinations lag.

The court's ruling comes as thousands of students and staff are quarantined across South Carolina. Health officials have already tracked more than 3,000 school-related COVID-19 cases this semester, and schools across the state have had to move to virtual learning to try to staunch outbreaks.

Some school districts had implemented mask mandates in defiance of the budget requirement, though many waited for the outcome of Thursday's court ruling.

The state is also facing a legal challenge in federal court, where disability rights groups and parents of children with disabilities represented by the ACLU sued last month to reverse the state ban on mask mandates.

The federal Department of Education has also opened a civil rights probe into South Carolina and four other Republican-led states with similar bans on school mask mandates, saying the policies could amount to discrimination against students with disabilities or health conditions.

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Meg Kinnard contributed to this report.
Among the recent laws to go into effect is an expansion of Texas' medical marijuana program, which now includes patients with post-traumatic stress disorder and cancer of all stages. It's also helping one trailblazing San Antonio doctor continue his work in the community.

Dr. Ray Altamirano is the brains behind Casa Salud Family Medicine Clinic, what he calls his "passion." When hes not working his main job at a local emergency room, Dr. Altamirano is at Casa Salud, which follows a direct-care model that helps non-insured patients receive medical care for a low, flat cost. Under this type of model, patients pay cash to be seen, removing insurance companies from the equation.

Whether a patient is insured or not, Dr. Altamirano says patients ultimately pay less and his clinic receives more money, since there is no insurance company to take a cut of the bill.

Since opening the clinic in 2018 on the Southside, the first of its kind south of Highway 90, Dr. Altamirano has charged patients a flat $100 fee, even if a patient requires lab work. Its part of my nature to be non-traditional, the proud Southsider and Harlandale graduate says.

Though that may be a lot of money to low-income patients who may not have $100 to spare, the physician says the reality is that the medical care could cost hundreds more in many cases. It also means no surprise fees when insurance companies recalculate costs.

Dr. Altamirano also raises money for patients as well. The physician has a bit of an artistic side, creating paintings under the moniker of Amar Es Vivir, which translates to love is life. He has some of the paintings hanging at Casa Salud and has sold others, donating profits to a fund that patients can tap if theyre unable to pay the $100 fee.

Its part of what I do, he admits. Its allowed me to combine my passions of art and medicine.

Dr. Ray Altamirano

Now, with the latest update to the Texas Compassionate Use Program through HB1535, Dr. Altamirano can help even more people.

September 1 brought the inclusion of PTSD and cancer at all stages to the program, which allows Texans to use low-THC cannabis, now available up to one percent, double the amount allowed previously.

Dr. Altamirano says he is one of about 14 doctors in San Antonio that can provide medical marijuana, which patients can access through his Good Earth MMJ Clinic, the only provider of its kind on the Southside. He also says most other doctors are pediatricians, providing an alternate route of care for babies and children with more severe conditions.

Given that San Antonio is Military City U.S.A., Dr. Altamirano says hes eager to help adults with PTSD, especially veterans.

Theres a large demographic of people that this is going to help, he says. I want this to be an option for people.

Since the addition of PTSD, Altamirano says his clinic has gotten a flood of calls from individuals eager to get the care they want and need. The doctor admits that hes more liberal than most doctors when it comes to medical marijuana, especially in a state where the registry for this use is hyper-regulated. Patients will need to provide proof of PTSD, or one of the other conditions like multiple sclerosis or epilepsy, in order to qualify.

Im not here to qualify just anyone who wants it, the doctor says. Im here to qualify who I really think I could help.

Dr. Altamirano also hopes that patients who have not considered medical marijuana before, whether because of the stigma or something else, will reconsider.

At the end of the day, Im a scientist, he says. I want to see what helps people. I need to advocate for my patients who could benefit from something else.

Since medical marijuana is not covered under insurance, Good Earth also follows a direct-care model. Dr. Altamirano says hell charge $220 for an initial visit, plus $100 for a follow-up appointment every three months, during which the doctor will track the effects on the patient and make changes if needed. If the care is working, Dr. Altamirano says patients would only need to recertify for the use once a year.

When it comes down to it, Dr. Altamirano says embracing medical marijuana use in Texas is about compassion and empathy.

Were not here to get you high, Dr. Altamirano says. Were here to get you well.
WASHINGTON - Top federal health officials have warned the White House that the Biden administration's plan to begin offering booster shots to most Americans later this month may have to be limited initially, with third shots made available only to people who had received the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, according to people familiar with the matter.

Janet Woodcock, acting commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, and Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told White House coronavirus coordinator Jeff Zients on Thursday that their agencies may not be able to approve a more expansive coronavirus booster plan that they, along with other top doctors across the administration, endorsed last month.

Woodcock and Walensky told Zients they may be able to approve and recommend booster shots only for people who received the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. The people familiar with the discussion spoke on the condition of the anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

The New York Times first reported the warnings.

Last month, President Joe Biden announced his administration would begin offering booster shots for all Americans beginning the week of Sept. 20 pending approval from the FDA. Americans were told they should plan to get a third shot eight months after they received their second dose of Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccine. Biden said people who received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine would probably need a booster shot as well, but officials would need more time to analyze data.

Now, Woodcock and Walensky, who have faced criticism for endorsing a plan before FDA approval, have warned that their agencies may need more time to make a determination about recommending boosters for people who received the Moderna vaccine. The FDA has only partial data on Moderna and Johnson & Johnson boosters.

"We always said we would follow the science and this is all part of a process that is now underway," Chris Meagher, a White House spokesman, said in a statement. "We are awaiting a full review and approval by the FDA and a recommendation by the [CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices]. When that approval and recommendation are made, we will be ready to implement the plan our nation's top doctors developed so that we are staying ahead of this virus."

The FDA declined to comment.
Two dating companies are trying to help women affected by Texas' new abortion restrictions.

Whitney Wolfe Herd, CEO of Austin-based Bumble, and the CEO of Dallas-based Match Group are creating relief funds to help women seeking abortion care outside the state, according to NBC News.

The Texas law that bans abortions after six weeks of pregnancy went into effect Wednesday, September 1. The law does not make exceptions for rape or incest. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to block the law on Wednesday.

Austin-based Bumble, the second-most downloaded dating apps in the U.S., announced via Twitter on Wednesday, September 1, it would launch a fund to support people trying to access abortion services in Texas.

"Bumble is women-founded and women-led, and from day one we've stood up for the most vulnerable," the tweet stated. "We'll keep fighting against regressive laws like #SB8."

Bumble told Business Insider that it would give the funds to organizations supporting women's reproductive rights.

The next day, Match Group CEO Shar Dubey, who operates Match.com, the largest dating site in the country, told employees Thursday, September 2, that she has set up a fund for workers affected by the new legislation, according to NBC News. The Dallas-based company's fund will help cover costs for workers and their dependents who need to travel out of state in order to have an abortion.
One San Antonio H-E-B store is testing out some changes to its curbside service.

Early morning Wednesday, September 1, I traveled to the only store using recyclable cardboard boxes to replace plastic bags for a limited time as part of H-E-B's new curbside pickup option. It wasn't too far from me as it's the location at Culebra and Loop 1604.

I first picked up on this H-E-B news through my Nextdoor social app, where local Bianca Aparicio shared details about her experience with the program.

H-E-B confirmed it launched the program at the store, stating it's "continually testing new ways to serve" its customers. It's unclear how long it will run, but a partner at the store tells me he thinks it might stick as many customers seem to like it.

3 1 of 3 Priscilla Aguirre, MySA.com Show More Show Less 2 of 3 Bianca Aparicio Show More Show Less 3 of 3





From my experience, I can see why.

As I watched customers receive their boxes, no one's trunk was filled with more than two. The boxes are spacious and not too bulky. My $50 worth of groceries fit in two perfectly. My paper towels, however, were on the side and placed separately.

In the Nextdoor post, which garnered more than 15 comments, Brittany Hawkins pointed out how she doesn't mind if all stores go the bagless route. She wrote she's "tired of them putting a single item or two per bag."

"The less bags the better," Hawkins commented.

As an avid H-E-B customer, I've noticed they separate products into several bags. In the boxes, my cold items were separated in one box and my pantry products in another. It's also worth noting H-E-B no longer allows customers to bring reusable bags for curbside orders. However, customers are able to use reusable totes inside the store.

One downfall is you will have to make multiple trips from your car to your home, which wasn't the case with plastic bags. My family and I still try to load as many on our arms to avoid going back to our car (I've mastered 15).

Aparicio tells MySA she can see the pros and cons of the program, especially for those who can't lift boxes to their door easily.

My boxes were light enough for me to hold by using just one arm, and Aparicio says hers were easy for her to lift as well. Aparicio did add, however, she was worried about the process as she uses a cane to walk. While she was able to get to the door without her cane, she mentioned she wished it didn't take several trips.

I use the reusable H-E-B bags when I go grocery shopping, so I won't miss the plastic bags. For my boxes, I plan on saving them because I move a lot, and they will come in handy one day.

As consumer habits change and environmental concerns over plastic grow, cities and businesses are trying to navigate the use of plastic.

In 2013, the City of Austin issued a single-use bag ban ordinance for retail businesses. In 2018, the Texas Supreme Court ruled that the bag ban violates state law and stopped the order, as the court did to the City of Laredo when officials tried enforcing it.

According to the City of Austin website, a 2015 study showed there was a 75 percent reduction in the number of plastic bags in the litter composition.

Many in the Nextdoor comments are comparing H-E-B's program to Costco or Sam's Club, neither of which offers bags. Instead, customers have the option to put them in discarded produce boxes.

H-E-B launched Curbside in 2015, now offering more the option at more than 250 stores across Texas. In July, H-E-B ranked first for its curbside efforts during the coronavirus pandemic by Ipsos, a global research firm. The company conducted the mystery shopping study to rank nationwide brands on their fulfillment of online orders for pickup.

In May, the grocery chain also began offering free curbside pickup at all H-E-B stores in Texas, nixing the $4.95 curbside pickup fee in orders with a minimum purchase of $35. Additionally, H-E-B started allowing customers to use their SNAP EBT accounts to pay for food on curbside and delivery orders in December 2020.
On his 13th day working in San Antonio, Mike Ramseys voice booms  its only slightly muffled by his face mask  across his downtown office. Hes talking fast, over the noise of traffic on West Houston Street nine stories below.

Last year, when the same stretch of Houston Street was still a ghost town because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Ramsey was leading the workforce development department at St. Petersburg College in Florida.

Ramsey is now responsible for rolling out the four-year, $200 million Ready to Work job-training initiative that voters approved by a 3-1 margin last November. The city of San Antonio hired Ramsey last month to run its newly formed Workforce Development Department, which will oversee the program.

Ramsey, a Louisiana native, is friendly and self-assured, and his thundering laugh cuts through conversation. He was a high school teacher in Florida before he led career and workforce education for Hillsborough County Public Schools in Tampa Bay. He also served in the Navy in the 1990s.

Now, Ramsey is in a tough spot. Though he only arrived in South Texas in mid-August, he has had to answer why the first year of the job training effort  called Train for Jobs SA  has fallen short.

Ramsey, however, is optimistic about Ready to Works prospects.

On ExpressNews.com: Rollout of San Antonio's $200 million job training effort pushed to 2022

Wave of layoffs

After the pandemic struck San Antonio and threw about 150,000 workers out of their jobs, Mayor Ron Nirenberg scrapped plans to revamp public transit in the city. Instead, he focused on launching a job-training program to help unemployed workers in San Antonio not only find work but also better-paying jobs than theyd had before.

San Antonio lags in educational attainment. In Bexar County, 28 percent of people 25 and older hold bachelors degrees or higher, compared with 32 percent in Harris and Dallas counties and 52 percent in Travis County, according to the U.S. Census.

And the median household income in Bexar County  about $59,000  trails the statewide median of $64,000. Households in Fort Worth and Austin bring in median incomes of $70,000 and $80,000, respectively.

Nirenberg said 10,000 San Antonians would get help from Train for Jobs SA in the first year, which didnt happen.

Ready to Work is the successor program to Train for Jobs. Out-of-work residents will be able to pursue bachelors and associate degrees through Ready to Work. Nirenberg said 40,000 San Antonio families would get a new economic start though the larger, four-year program.

Train for Jobs was funded with $65 million from the city, and it was designed to be a short-term initiative that provides months-long training courses to get workers new credentials and quickly back into jobs. Train for Jobs started a year ago and had placed 467 participants in new jobs as of mid-August. Nearly 3,100 people had either enrolled in or completed some training by then.

Thats far from 10,000 gainfully employed workers.

When you set a specific target like 10,000 jobs, people are going to hold you to that, said Sonia Rodriguez, a leader of the grassroots advocacy group COPS/Metro. Theres some lack of clarity around what are general targets versus hard, measurable ones.

COPS/Metro has tracked the citys development of the job-training initiative since its inception in spring 2020. The group has called for the city to bring in more outside expertise from successful workforce-development programs around the country to help craft Ready to Work.

You have to do your homework first, said Virginia Mata, another COPS/Metro leader. Because this could become a national model for so many major cities, so were setting the path here.

Ramsey contends the first-year results were positive  considering city staffers developed a novel, large-scale job training program in a matter of months that provided training for thousands of residents.

We were all wearing masks  everyone was afraid to go back out into public  so you had a lot of hesitancy from individuals who may have been laid off or may have had kids at home, Ramsey said.

Theres no road map to develop a job-training program amid a pandemic, he said. So its easy to point fingers and say, Look how many people got placed and how much money was spent. But its apples to oranges based upon what workforce development initiatives actually look like during a time when youre not in the middle of a pandemic.

Fresh start

The city of San Antonio planned to transition from Train for Jobs to Ready to Work this month. But officials pushed the start of Ready to Work to early 2022 so the city would have more time to contract with outside organizations to help run the program.

In December, the city plans to award three contracts to nonprofits to implement Ready to Work, market the program and evaluate how workers fare after they complete training.

Once its rolled out, Ramsey will be overseeing one of the largest worker-training efforts a U.S. city has ever undertaken with taxpayer funding.

In November, San Antonio voters approved a -cent sales tax that will generate about $40 million annually for SA Ready to Work.

In the first year, 60 percent of Ready to Work participants will be able to train for occupational certificates and credentials. The other 40 percent can pursue college degrees.

Ramseys department is working to help trainees find the right career and then connect them with local employers who  the hope is  will pay them more than they were making before training.

So far, the median pay for the nearly 500 workers who have gotten hired after going through Train for Jobs is $14 an hour, below the municipal governments minimum wage of $15 per hour.

Ready to Works longer-term training is expected to help workers get jobs that pay more compared with shorter training courses, Ramsey said.

A big piece of that is making sure that the training programs are aligned to higher-paying jobs, he said.

Greater: SATX, formerly known as the San Antonio Economic Development Foundation, is creating a database of jobs available in San Antonio, and training providers will be able to access it to tailor their training.

The city has maintained the $15 wage target for the workforce development initiatives  which it, so far, has failed to meet  since it began the job-training push in spring of 2020. But it has shifted its goals for other aspects of the program.

The initial target of training 50,000 workers over the five-year effort was cut to 37,000, including 5,000 next year, city officials said in May. Ramsey declined to say what his goal is for the number of workers he wants to see complete training and get a job.

I dont want to get caught up in Well, how many people is that, Mike? because Im still evaluating that. I dont want to give an aspirational number that we wind up not hitting, Ramsey said. Were going to do our best to make sure we have a solid foundation and that this program is going to be sustainable.

Ramsey said the goal for Train for Jobs was to get 50 percent of trainees placed into jobs. So far, about 51 percent of the 911 workers who have finished training have gotten jobs.

On ExpressNews.com: San Antonio hires new director to lead the city's $200 million job training program

Nationwide, job training is typically provided through local workforce development boards, such as Workforce Solutions Alamo in San Antonio. But training programs through state and federal agencies have generally underperformed. Roughly a third of adult U.S. workers who went through government-funded job training in 2019 landed jobs, according to the Department of Labor.

I believe were going to greatly exceed that, Ramsey said.

Project Quest  which COPS/Metro established in the mid-1990s  is a San Antonio-based training program viewed as a nationwide gold standard for local workforce development. The program has placed 90 percent of its participants into jobs, mostly in health care, that pay more than four times what participants previously earned.

It costs $10,500, on average, over nearly two years to get a Project Quest participant through training and into a job.

Ready to Work will provide $4,000 to $6,000 for each participant annually, depending on how much they need for tuition, emergency assistance and other expenses.

It costs real money to help people get from unemployment to a decent-paying job, said Heath Prince, a workforce and education researcher and director of the Ray Marshall Center at the University of Texas at Austin.

Prince didnt fault the city for not hitting its 10,000-trainee target. He said the city could ramp up to train that many workers annually in a couple of years.

Its disappointing only 3,000 have been trained so far, but theres nothing typical about the last year weve gone through, Prince said. And 10,000 is a good start. I dont think its overly ambitious given the number of people who lost their jobs because of the pandemic.

Despite the rocky first year for the citys worker training initiative, Ramsey is confident Ready to Work will be a success when its rolled out next year.

Were going to help your family members, your neighbors, the people you know who live in your community, achieve economic stability, he said. Five years from now, this program will be a model for other cities to follow.

diego.mendoza-moyers@express-news.net
Yves here. Now that we have far too many billionaires, demonstrating how wonderful monopoly profits can be, the officialdom in the West is rather late in waking up to the seriousness of the problem. And unlike a one party state, they cant take our answer to Jack Ma and put him under indefinite house arrest pour decourager les autres.

Matt Stoller believes continuing supply chain disruptions will keep monopolies in the hot lights:

Were going to have a fun experiment with monopolies and shortages. https://t.co/LbCYOY6lDP  Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller) August 28, 2021

By Julia Conley. Originally published at Common Dreams

Government watchdog Public Citizen led dozens of organizations on Thursday in calling on Congress to pass several pieces of legislation to rein in the power of powerful tech companies like Facebook, Amazon, and Googlebills that represent the interests of a majority of Americans, polls show.

The groupswhich also included Jobs With Justice, the Center for Popular Democracy, and New York Communities for Changesaid Congressional leaders should pass six bills that were carefully crafted to address the abusive practices of the Big Tech companies following a two-year investigation by the House Judiciary Committee.

After conducting 10 hearings and 240 interviews and pouring over 1.3 million documents, the committee compiled a 450-page report concluding that Apple, Amazon, Google, and Facebook each possess significant market power over large swaths of our economy and that there is a clear and compelling need for Congress and the antitrust enforcement agencies to take action that restores competition, improves innovation, and safeguards our democracy.

America has a monopoly problem, the groups said Thursday in their letter (pdf). Reining in these companies is an essential first step to reverse the damage of concentrated corporate power throughout our economy.

The groups cited research (pdf) showing how Amazon now controls over 35% of e-commerce in the U.S.forcing other sellers to rely on Amazon to reach their own customers and laying waste to a once diverse marketplaceand detailing Facebook and Googles attacks on the free press by diverting ad revenue away from publishers and into their own pockets.

The companies also worsen wage stagnation by stifling competition, the groups said. In the case of Apple and several other tech firms, the companies required employees to sign no poach agreements guaranteeing they wouldnt work for competitorsleaving the workers with little leverage in negotiating their pay, as the companies didnt have to worry about them leaving for other large firms.

To bring urgently needed change and accountability to these companies and an industry that most Americans agree is already doing great harm to our democracy, the groups said, Congress must pass:

The American Innovation and Choice Online Act (H.R. 3816), to promote innovation and competition by prohibiting dominant Big Tech platforms from anti-competitive discrimination;

The Ending Platform Monopolies Act (H.R. 3825), to give government enforcers the ability to break up or separate certain parts of the businesses that create conflicts of interest;

The Platform Competition and Opportunity Act (H.R. 3826), to prevent the most problematic mergers and acquisitions, such as those that include competitors, potential or nascent competitors, or will enhance or maintain the companys market power;

The Augmenting Compatibility and Competition by Enabling Service Switching (ACCESS) Act (H.R. 3849), to require Big Tech platforms to allow users to take their data with them if they decide to leave;

The Merger Filing Fee Modernization Act (H.R. 3843), to authorize much-needed funding for antitrust enforcement agencies; and

The State Antitrust Enforcement Venue Act (H.R. 3460), to make it easier for state attorneys general to bring a federal antitrust suit rather than having a defendant seek to move a case to a more favorable venue.

Americans support taking action against these companies, said the groups. Recent polling found that 57% of Democrats and Republicans and 61% of Independents believe that Big Tech companies should be broken up.

We are proud to support this important legislative package and encourage all members of Congress to vote for its swift passage, they added.
Your humble blogger has gotten many agitated e-mails from CalPERS beneficiaries whove never before written to me about a hit piece targeting the pro-transparency, pro-accountability board candidates, Margaret Brown and Tiffany Emon-Moran, who are running in the election now underway. These voters are upset about the false content, the misrepresentation of its sponsors, and the fact that a third party somehow got their names and addresses.1

It is bizarre that SEIU, which is behind the mailers, would oppose protecting worker pensions by having a strong and effective board, as CalPERS Sacramento sister CalSTRS does. And CalSTRS beneficiaries have been rewarded with better financial returns and a curious absence of scandals.

It also seems even odder that SEIU2 would be threatened by the prospect of a labor negotiator and financial fraud investigator like Emon-Moran on the board. But the mailer focuses on Margaret Brown, who as a current board member, has gotten under the skin of the staff and the power faction on the board by opposing misconduct small and large, ranging from board members pre-signing blank expense reimbursement forms to opposing large and indefensible increases in health and long-term health care premiums, as well as CalPERS hare-brained private equity new business model which fortunately collapsed under its own contradictions.

SEIUs hammer Terry Brennand has tried to dirty up Brown for acting as a safety harasser. Oh, and acting like a boss when she actually was the boss. No, I am not making that up.

Brown was a senior manager of school construction programs, which included everything from plan approvals, obtaining financing, and overseeing construction sites. She had an impeccable record for on time and on budget completion.3

On one project in the Dougherty Valley, some of the men sported roomy clothes, including baggy pants. Thats a safety hazard because loose-fitting garments can get caught in equipment and have caused severe injury and even death. Brown used an accident on another site to remind the hip-hop-falling-off-pants fashionistas to wear something more workplace-suitable, calling their attention to one workman present for wearing jeans that actually fit.

This employee happened to be one of ten who were later laid off in a downsizing. He joined with two others who had warned up repeatedly for other infractions like regularly showing up late. They tried unsuccessfully to get their jobs back by accusing the school district and Brown of being not a safety harasser but a s** harasser, even though the filing contained no s** allegations, just Brown supposedly being mean by doing things like not buying them cameras. Only employees in lower-level jobs photographed work progress and were therefore entitled to have their own equipment, which was expensive in 2004. Oddly none of these plaintiffs had volunteered to be demoted to get their keenly-desired photo devices.

Needless to say, Brown was removed from the case as a defendant because there was no there there.4

Its funny that the flier failed to mention other things Brown did to promote workplace safety like insisting on wearing steel-toed boots on site (one manager kept trying to get away with loafers without having them be custom made steel-toed loafers) and having an escort walking next to vehicles driven on school property during school hours, as required for student safety. And if she caught anyone on the site not wearing a hard hat, shed hand them jer stylish pink construction hat to wear. Theyd quickly go and replace it with their issued equipment. But the tar and feathers brigade doesnt want voters to understand what really happened.5

Its also funny that this shadowy, nameless astroturf groups would smear Brown for safety enforcement in the construction industry, when thanks to the prevalence of overconfidence, workers can and too often do wind up maimed, paralyzed, or dead when they cut corners. But misrepresenting a good managerial trait is more useful to them than going after actual s** harassment right under their noses. From a 2019 post:
Dolphins Alert Rescue Crew To Save a Lost Swimmer Who Was Stranded at Sea for 12 Hours MyModernMet (David L)

The 2021 Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards Have Just Announced Their Finalists, And Here Are 40 Of The Funniest Photos Bored Panda (Kevin W, furzy)

Going up: Birds and mammals evolve faster if their home is rising Phys.org (Kevin W)

Ghostly Satellite Image Captures the Arctic Losing Its Soul Atlas Obscura (Chuck L)

Californias massive wildfires are doing something no wildfire has ever done before Salon (David L)

Hurricane Ida Reversed the Course of the Mississippi River Gizmodo (Chuck L)

High-speed German train inches its way through floods Boing Boing (resilc)

Climate crisis likely creating extreme winter weather events, says report Guardian

US attorney details illegal acts in construction projects, sealing the fate of the nuclear renaissance Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (guurst). I would not be so confident about outcomes, but an important development nonetheless.

#COVID-19

China?

Old Blighty

New Cold War

Putin calls for launch of regular cargo shipments via northern sea route next year Reuters

Syraqistan

Imperial Collapse Watch

Why I Wont Support Spending Another $3.5 Trillion Joe Manchin, Wall Street Journal

Californias State Pension Invests Millions in Chinese State-Owned Companies Free Beacon (JR). A conservative rag, but the key point is CalPERS thought Chinese stocks were a one way bet, and now investors like Soros are whinging, presumably from pain. And also, per Kevin W, also made the San Joaquin Valley Sun, so getting around.

What the Texas abortion law means for Roe v. Wade The Hill

Supreme Court Rejects Injunction of Texas Abortion Law . . . Media Erupts With Roe Obituaries Jonathan Turley (Chuck L)

Judge launches search for leaker in huge case pitting 9/11 families against Saudi Arabia Florida Bulldog

New York City declares state of emergency after record rainfall BBC

EXPLAINER: How Ida can be so deadly 1000 miles from landfall Associated Press (David L)

Click through, many many clips (Tom H):

Our infrastructure is not ready for climate change, a thread from tonight. 28th St. subway station pic.twitter.com/uYemJKB8yg  Brian Kahn (@blkahn) September 2, 2021

Tennessee this time (dk):

Timelapse video shows catastrophic flooding in Waverly on Aug. 21. Video provided by Michael Phillips was originally 12 mins long, but is sped up 6x. pic.twitter.com/ZJmTs9AxH7  Josh Breslow (@JoshBreslowTN) September 2, 2021

Our Famously Free Press

Meet The Censored: Ivermectin Critic David Fuller Matt Taibbi

Owning The Bulls (By Losing Money) Heisenberg Report (resilc)

Former Deutsche Bank Executive on Green Investments: The Sustainability Propaganda Got Completely Out of Control Der Spiegel

GM, Ford halt some production as chip shortage worsens Associated Press

Guillotine Watch

Class Warfare

Antidote du jour (Dr. Kevin):

And an anti-antidote. But this got enough views that the stupid people will hopefully fry too. Harassing gators is against the law.

Another bonus (guurst):

Higher consciousness is spreading & is affecting everything.  pic.twitter.com/6A1lezyOlR   _  (@gawjus_g) August 29, 2021

See yesterdays Links and Antidote du Jour here.
My position with Nashville Post has evolved since 2000 when I began work with the now-defunct The City Paper. TCP became a Post sister pub in 2008 (when I began some Post work) and folded in 2013. I have worked mainly with the Post since late 2011.

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(Natural News) New Zealand recorded its first death linked to the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine after a woman suffered heart muscle inflammation as a side effect, says the health ministry. This is the first case in the country where death came in the days following the vaccination.

The vaccine monitoring panel attributed the womans death to myocarditis, a known side effect of the Pfizer vaccine. The board said that the myocarditis was probably due to vaccination, although other medical issues cannot be ruled out, which may have influenced the outcome after the vaccination.

Myocarditis is an inflammation of the heart muscle, limiting its ability to pump blood and cause changes in heartbeat rhythms.

Pfizer also said that it recognized that there could be reports of this illness after vaccination, although it insisted that such side effects were rare. The company said that it takes adverse events associated with its vaccine very seriously.

However, they also added: The benefits of vaccination with the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine continue to greatly outweigh the risk of both COVID-19 infection and vaccine side effects, including myocarditis.

Regulators in the United States, the European Union, and the World Health Organization have all said that mRNA vaccines from Pfizer and BioNTech as well as those by Moderna are associated with rare cases of myocarditis or pericarditis (inflammation of the lining around the heart), but that the benefits of the shots outweigh any risks.

The risk of myocarditis was 18.5 per million doses given among people aged 18 to 24 after their second dose, and 20.2 per million for the same age group for Moderna recipients.

Symptoms of myocarditis include new-onset chest pain, shortness of breath, and abnormal heartbeat. It is important that those who experience these symptoms in the first few days after vaccination seek medical attention as soon as possible. (Related: Cardiologist says no case of COVID-19 vaccine-induced myocarditis is mild.)

New Zealand has provisionally approved the use of the Pfizer/BioNTech, Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca vaccines; however, the Pfizer vaccine remains to be the only one approved for public rollout. There had been over three million doses given so far, mostly for individuals over 50.

Board to ensure investigation outcome is made public

The Pfizer vaccine is highly effective in protecting against serious illness and death from Covid-19, and we remain confident about using it in New Zealand, said Dr. John Tait, chair of the Covid-19 Vaccine Independent Safety Monitoring Board (CV-ISMB).

He also added that the board would ensure that the outcome of its investigation will be widely available for others to learn from. He noted that it would be published to increase scientific knowledge about vaccine-induced myocarditis.

Further, the board advised the Ministry of Health to ensure healthcare professionals and consumers remain vigilant and aware of the signs of myocarditis and pericarditis.

In the U.S., there had been no deaths reported for young adults who developed myocarditis after being given mRNA vaccines; however, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recorded 2,574 cases of myocarditis or pericarditis.

Some people will experience side effects following vaccination, said Dr. Bryan Betty, medical director of the Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners, as with any other medication.

Professor James Ussher of the University of Otago said that this was one of the first deaths of its kind following the mRNA vaccines. Hundreds of millions of doses of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines have been administered globally. To date, the vast majority of cases of myocarditis following vaccination with the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines have been mild, with resolution of both symptoms and inflammation with anti-inflammatories, he said.

Get more news and updates on Pandemic.news.

Sources include:

MercuryNews.com

Stuff.co.nz
(Natural News) More than a million people across Louisiana are without power on Tuesday, with reports indicating that it could take weeks for the electricity to come back on.

Thousands of miles of transmission lines were damaged in the wake of Hurricane Ida, a Category 4 hurricane that raised questions about how New Orleans and other coastal areas across the state are prepared for natural disasters.

Energy provider Entergy Corp has been surveying the damage and found that the hurricane has knocked out at least 207 transmission lines spanning 2,000 miles. Rod West, the groups president of utility operations, said that the area is being surveyed for damages and that it could take at least three weeks to restore electricity in New Orleans. He also said that some transmission towers need to be replaced due to significant wind damage.

West noted that the damage to the transmission system is more severe than Hurricane Katrina. Moreover, some of Entergys power plants also sustained damage, although West noted that it would not hinder energy production.

Entergy said in a statement: The damage from Hurricane Ida has eliminated much of the redundancy built into the transmission system, which makes it difficult to move power around the region to customers.

A grid damage assessment will give officials a better understanding regarding power restoration in the following days.

The energy crisis indicates that a humanitarian crisis in the region is imminent.

Mayor orders citywide curfew

New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell and police superintendent Shaun Ferguson held a press conference at the City Hall regarding a citywide curfew to prevent mass looting and an increase in crime. (Related: In the middle of a hurricane, what do city dwellers LOOT? Sneakers, of course)

Cantrell told reporters that a citywide curfew will be enforced and that the New Orleans Police Department has deployed an anti-looting task force with the National Guard members to protect business districts.

Several social media accounts showed people looting businesses after the hurricane ravaged the city, knocking out its power lines.

Tens of thousands of New Orleans residents have evacuated the metro area ahead of Hurricane Idas landfall. They have been asked not to return to the city until further notice due to the widespread power outages.

Hurricane Ida exposes grid power weakness

This is the second year in a row that Entergys power lines suffered extensive damages from hurricanes and storms. As anger and frustration build in the city and southern Louisiana, energy experts questioned whether the company did enough to protect its lines and equipment from extreme weather conditions.

Entergy reported that Hurricane Ida put 216 substations and more than 2,000 miles of transmission lines out of service. A conductor on one transmission lone fell from an Entergy tower into the Mississippi River near Avondale, Louisiana. Further, there have been numerous posts online of transmission and distribution towers fallen on the ground.

Robert McCullough, an energy consultant who runs McCullough Research in Portland, Oregon, noted: Their vintage equipment didnt stand up to Laura (2020), and I suspect the same report for Ida.

Gov. Edwards expressed some frustration with the pace at which Entergy is restoring power, as well. Im not satisfied with 30 days. The Entergy people arent satisfied with 30 days. Nobody whos out there needing power is satisfied with that. But I am mindful that we just had the strongest hurricane  at least tied for the strongest  that the state has ever experienced, he said.

The financial costs of storms are putting a toll on Entergy: in addition to the repairs it is making due to the damages Ida caused, the companys equipment was also damaged in three hurricanes in 2020 and a winter storm earlier in the year. Restoration costs in the state relating to the storms would total around $2.1 billion.

Read more about the damage caused by Hurricane Ida at Climate.news.

Sources include:

ZeroHedge.com

NYTimes.com
(Natural News) At first, it seemed like people in some parts of the world, America included, might actually have a choice when it came to the COVID-19 vaccine. Although many of us feared that mandates would eventually be imposed, the worst thing that happened to those who didnt get the vaccine initially was being ridiculed by leftist politicians and celebrities on social media. It was a small price to pay, many felt, for exercising their health freedom and avoiding the dangerous side effects of these vaccines.

But now, its a far different story. Americans are still technically free to decline the jab, but they may have to give up a lot to practice that right  including their jobs, kids and even their lives.

No jab, no job

Workplace vaccine mandates have been coming from every corner lately, affecting hospital workers, airline workers, retail workers and many other industries. Big names like Kaiser Permanente, Walmart and Disney are all requiring at least some segments of their employee population to be vaccinated.

Some are even throwing in some cash in an attempt to sweeten the deal, as though people who are scared of dying from the vaccine could be swayed to gamble with their lives for $100. Some experts say health insurance discounts are coming for those who get jabbed; companies like Delta Air Lines are already raising health insurance premiums for unvaccinated workers by $200 per month in addition to the workers shouldering the cost of required weekly COVID-19 tests. And its all about to get much worse thanks to the FDAs full approval of the Pfizer vaccine, which gives such mandates more legal weight.

Some unvaccinated parents cant see their kids

For those whose employers are being more reasonable about this and the self-employed, American society has found another way to bully people into getting vaccines: the prospect of losing their children.

Some people are being ordered to get a COVID-19 vaccine in order to see their kids. This was illustrated by a recent case in Texas, where a couple going through a divorce was ordered by a judge to get the vaccine. Chris Staley said that the vaccine was listed as one of the judges requirements for him to be allowed visitation with his kids, even though none of them have underlying health issues. His lawyer told him he should get the vaccine to avoid upsetting the judge; the attorney later withdrew from the case.

In another case, a Chicago judge barred a woman from seeing her 11-year-old son under partial parental custody simply because she has not been vaccinated for COVID-19. The woman, who said her doctor advised against the vaccine because of past adverse vaccine reactions, was surprised as the hearing was meant to be about child support and expenses. In addition, her ex-husband had not raised her lack of vaccination as a concern. Apparently, the judge simply took it upon himself to impose this requirement.

Unvaccinated patients denied organ transplants

It may sound dramatic, but some people could pay for refusing the vaccine with their lives  the very lives they are trying to protect by not getting the jab. The University of Washington Medical Center recently refused a life-saving heart transplant for a 64-year-old patient because he wouldnt get the vaccine. Given the link between these vaccines and heart problems and blood clots, it makes sense that a man on a waiting list for a heart transplant wouldnt want to take a chance with it, but his doctors apparently dont subscribe to the do no harm philosophy.

This isnt an isolated incident; UMass Memorial Health Center denied a 37-year-old father of three a life-saving kidney transplant from his own wife because he hadnt been vaccinated.

What does it say about these vaccines that people essentially have to be threatened with losing something precious to them in order to be willing to get jabbed?

Sources for this article include:

SGTReport.com

CNBC.com

MyNorthwest.com

USAToday.com
(Natural News) Lithium has been the backbone of electric vehicle (EV) batteries for some time now. But scientists are now looking to magnesium  touted to be a better replacement for lithium  to power the EVs of tomorrow. However, there are certain issues with using magnesium for EV batteries, so scientists are working to overcome these roadblocks.

One main issue that made magnesium a viable replacement for lithium is the limited supply of the latter. The Atacama Desert in Chile is one of the places in the world that is rich in lithium. But the process of extracting lithium has damaged the desert environment and has negatively affected the deserts indigenous residents.

On the other hand, sourcing magnesium is a much easier endeavor. The United States Geological Survey describes magnesium as the [eighth] most abundant element  [and] the third most plentiful element dissolved in seawater. The element and its compounds are also found in well and lake brines and bitterns. Bitterns refer to the liquid left behind when saltwater evaporates.

Obtaining magnesium for the batteries is a viable task, but utilizing it for EV batteries is another problem. According to the Department of Energy (DOE), magnesium-based battery anodes can store five times more energy compared to graphite anodes in lithium-ion batteries. Rechargeable batteries based on magnesium  have the potential to extend electric vehicle range by packing more energy into smaller batteries, it adds.

But magnesium ions had difficulty moving through solid material, which gave lithium ions over it. Furthermore, a 2017 study found that magnesium batteries have the potential to degrade even before their first charge-up. The DOE said these unforeseen chemical roadblocks have slowed scientific progress on the topic of magnesium batteries.

However, the Energy Department persisted with its research on magnesium batteries even though many parties pulled out due to lack of interest. (Related: Can magnesium batteries revolutionize battery technology?)

Solving the magnesium problem using nanocrystals and sulfur

In 2018, the DOEs research on magnesium batteries encountered a key development. A study funded by the department described nanocrystal formation on the magnesium anode. The researchers behind the study found that these extremely tiny magnesium crystals on the battery anode played a role in improving the magnesium batterys performance.

The study authors acknowledged the unique operating mechanism of magnesium anodes that allowed magnesium batteries to charge and discharge quickly at freezing temperatures. Upon closer scrutiny of the anode, they found a highly functional solid electrolyte interphase (SEI) that allowed magnesium to continuously move throughout the battery without causing damage. (Related: Tiny disorganized crystals may hold the key to new magnesium battery energy storage technology.)

Later, researchers from Tohoku University (TU) in Japan pushed magnesium battery research even further. They proposed the use of liquid sulfur/sulfide composites for the cathode  the batterys negative terminal  to match the magnesium anode. Manufacturers of lithium-ion batteries often used transition metal oxides for their batteries cathodes.

The TU researchers published their findings last July 2021 in the Journal of Materials Chemistry A. They acknowledged the limitations of common sulfur-based cathodes in their study. These limitations included low electronic conductivity and sluggish magnesium diffusion in solid magnesium-sulfur compounds. However, their use of liquid sulfur/sulfide composites appeared to have overcome these difficulties.

The study authors said the materials for the cathodes can be spontaneously produced through electrochemical oxidation of metal sulfides such as iron sulfide in an ionic liquid electrolyte. The process yielded liquid sulfur embedded in the iron sulfide material that can conduct energy. The resulting material exhibited a highly stable performance as a cathode for magnesium batteries.

Despite the important discovery, the TU researchers said there is much more work to be done with magnesium rechargeable batteries (MRBs). Lead study author Dr. Kohei Shimokawa said: We need electrolytes that are compatible with both the cathode and anode materials because the ionic liquid [electrolyte] used in this work passivates the magnesium metal anode.

Shimokawa continued: In the future, it is important to develop new, electrochemically stable electrolytes to make MRBs more practical for widespread use. He ultimately remarked that their work would boost the improvement of sulfur-based materials for achieving high-performance next-generation batteries.

NewEnergyReport.com has more articles about magnesium batteries for electric vehicles.

Sources include:

CleanTechnica.com

USGS.gov

Energy.gov

Tohoku.ac.jp

Pubs.RSC.org
(Natural News) A new Israeli study has confirmed that natural immunity from a previous Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) infection can offer more protection than getting two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine.

The study was conducted by a team of Israeli researchers from Tel Aviv University and Maccabi Healthcare Services. It was done long after the post-vaccine delta variant of COVID-19 became the dominant coronavirus strain in Israel and had begun wreaking havoc in one of the worlds most vaccinated nations.

Fully vaccinated people several times more likely to get COVID-19

For this study, the researchers looked at more than 800,000 people, some of whom had received both doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine and never had coronavirus and others who were unvaccinated people who had recovered from previous COVID-19 infections. (Related: GREAT NEWS: Natural immunity to coronavirus is comprehensive and DURABLE  study.)

The researchers found that fully vaccinated people were several times more likely to experience a breakthrough COVID-19 infection than people with natural immunity to the coronavirus.

According to the study, fully vaccinated individuals who had no prior exposure to the coronavirus were 5.96 times more likely to get infected with the delta variant compared to those with natural immunity. They were also 7.13 times more likely to experience COVID-19 symptoms. These symptoms include coughing, developing a fever and experiencing shortness of breath.

After three months, this risk in fully vaccinated individuals increases. They become 13.06 times more likely to get infected, and 27.02 times more likely to experience COVID-19 symptoms.

This study demonstrated that natural immunity confers longer-lasting and stronger protection against infection, symptomatic disease and hospitalization caused by the delta variant of SARS-CoV-2, compared to the [Pfizer-BioNTech] two-dose vaccine-induced immunity, read the study.

The study authors stated that their research is the largest real-world observational study that compared the immunity supposedly given by the COVID-19 vaccines with natural immunity gained from previous coronavirus infections.

Our large cohort, enabled by Israels rapid rollout of the mass vaccination campaign, allowed us to investigate the risk for additional infection  either a breakthrough infection in vaccinated individuals or reinfection in previously infected ones  over a longer period than thus far described.

The Israeli researchers admitted that their study has some limitations. Firstly, they only looked at the lack of effectiveness of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines. More studies have to be conducted to analyze natural immunity when compared with people who take other COVID-19 vaccines.

Secondly, while the researchers controlled for factors such as age, sex and region of residence, there may be differences in how often these groups follow pandemic protocols instituted by public health authorities. These include wearing masks and practicing social distancing.

Despite these limitations, the study could have serious effects on COVID-19 policy if so-called public health experts are willing to listen to the science.

Scientists laud Israeli study for confirming power of natural immunity

Multiple noted scientists have already come out to support the findings of the Israeli study.

Its a textbook example of how natural immunity is really better than vaccination, said Dr. Charlotte Thalin, a physician and immunology researcher for the Karolinska Institute and the Danderyd Hospital in Sweden. To my knowledge, its the first time [this] has really been shown in the context of COVID-19.

The study demonstrates the power of the human immune system, wrote journalist Meredith Wadman, writing for Science Magazine. But she also cautioned unvaccinated people against intentionally seeking to get infected and said that people should still get vaccinated.

We continue to underestimate the importance of natural infection immunity  especially when [infection] is recent, wrote Dr. Eric Topol, a physician and scientist working for Scripps Research.

Ross Clark, a columnist for British magazine Spectator, believes that this study proves mandating COVID-19 vaccines for children is unnecessary.

We might be wasting our time trying to foist jabs on the young when they may have gained better, stronger immunity to Covid through natural infection, Clark wrote. Perhaps it is better to simply allow them to be infected on the grounds theyre highly unlikely to come to serious harm but are more likely to gain lasting immunity from the disease that way.

Learn more about how natural immunity is better than the supposed immunity acquired through getting vaccinated by reading the latest articles at Vaccines.news.

Sources include:

DailyMail.co.uk

medRxiv.org

WesternJournal.com

Spectator.co.uk
(Natural News) Former ambassador turned conservative author, pundit and political activist Alan Keyes has brought his show Lets Talk America to Brighteon.TV.

In his debut episode, he talks with the Health Ranger Mike Adams as well as Bob the Plumber about how the American people are being fooled by the government with its fraudulent vaccine approval.

Watch the full episode below.

Timing of vaccine approval is suspect

Going into the show, Keyes and his guests discuss the recent approval of the Pfizer vaccine, known as Cominarty.

Specifically, he points out the suspicious timing of the approval, right alongside the Biden administrations disastrous withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan.

You can help us to think through, including for example, this ploy that the [FDA] has now come forward and decided that they can approve the vaccine, Keyes states. This vaccine and it seems to me that for the bad guys it comes in the nick of time, in order to try to counter the impression being created by the facts, which is interesting enough.

Meanwhile, Bob the Plumber points out that many experts have also raised questions about whether the decision was actually about health.

More from more and more prominent people who actually know what theyre talking about coming forward to raise questions about whether this is really about even our health, he says. Or whether the whole enterprise doesnt have some other nefarious purpose.

Adams then raises the fact that Israel is seeing a massive surge of infections, despite having the majority of the population vaccinated.

Its now 80 percent vaccinated there, and yet theyre having record infections and hospitalizations among vaccinated people, he points out.

COVID-19 vaccine isnt a vaccine at all

Going into the vaccine itself, the three then discuss how they do not actually stop people from catching COVID-19.

Specifically, Adams points out how even Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Rochelle P. Walensky has admitted that the vaccine neither prevents infection nor transmission. Rather, it only actually stops the symptoms of the disease. However, the CDC and FDA (Food and Drug Administration) have covered this up through clever naming.

The FDA says it was approved to prevent COVID-19, says Adams. But you see, theres a very interesting logic trick in this COVID-19 is not the name of the infection or the virus or the transmission. COVID-19 is the name given to the symptoms.

As Adams points out, the name of the virus behind these symptoms is SARS-CoV-2.

So in effect, the FDA is saying that this vaccine prevents symptoms, but it does not prevent transmission or infection.

With this in mind, Adams asks the question of whether or not the vaccine really is a vaccine.

But despite this, many predominantly Democratic states have embraced the vaccines approval to start implementing various mandates. (Related: Anthony Fauci expects a flood of vaccine mandates once COVID-19 vaccines get full approval.)

The blue states and blue cities announced what Im calling the mass slaughter of their own workers, the city employees, Adams said. The leaders in states like New Jersey, New York and California have now ordered first responders, firefighters, city workers, teachers, school principals, even the janitors at the schools, they all have to take this deadly vaccine now

As for why, Adams points out that many experts believe that the vaccines and COVID-19 is a global depopulation experiment.

Bob the Plumber seconds this, pointing out how many healthcare workers have quit their jobs and walked away after realizing this as well.

For more on how this vaccine is doing more harm than good, watch the full episode on Brighteon.TV.

Sources include:

Brighteon.com

NaturalNews.com
(Natural News) It is bad enough that Joe Biden committed treason by leaving Americans behind in Afghanistan, but now were learning he and that countrys president were well aware the security forces would not hold up against the Taliban, but told the world something different.

According to a published report this week, Biden and Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, a former college professor whom the U.S. essentially installed as that countrys leader, discussed as early as July the impending takeover of the country by the Taliban, though Biden has been telling any reporter who will listen there was no way to know the Afghan military would crumble ahead of the Taliban advances.

The UKs Daily Mail reported:

President Joe Biden wanted the now-departed Afghan president to create the perception that his government was capable of holding off the Taliban  an indication he knew it was only a matter of time before the US ally fell to the Islamic group even while reassuring Americans at home that it would not happen.

In the last phone call between Biden and his Afghan then-counterpart Ashraf Ghani, the American president said they needed to change perceptions of the Talibans rapid advance whether it is true or not, according to excerpts published on Tuesday.

That phone call took place July 23, many weeks before the fall of Kabul, but on Tuesday Biden said (again) he had no idea that the Taliban would take over the country again so quickly.

The assumption was that more than 300,000 Afghan national security forces that we had trained over the past two decades, and equipped, would be a strong adversary in their civil wars with the Taliban, Biden told Americans in an address earlier this week.

That assumption that the Afghan government would be able to hold on for a period of time beyond military drawdown turned out not to be accurate, he added. But I still instructed our national security team to prepare for every eventuality, even that one. And thats what we did.

So, we were ready when the Afghan security forces, after two decades of fighting for their country and losing thousands of their own, did not hold on as long as anyone expected, he said.

That appears to be a bald-faced lie.

Just a month before Kabul fell to the Taliban, Ghani was pleading with the Biden regime for more air support and for money to pay his army, which had not had a raise in pay in 10 years.

According to a transcript leaked to Reuters, both leaders discussed the potential collapse while Biden himself was working the political spin angle.

I need not tell you the perception around the world and in parts of Afghanistan, I believe, is that things are not going well in terms of the fight against the Taliban, said the U.S. leader, who was installed in the White House much in the same way the U.S. installed Ghani.

And there is a need, whether it is true or not, there is a need to project a different picture, Bide added, even as Taliban fighters were capturing one district and provincial capital after another, as Washington and Kabul quibbled over tactics.

Months before, Biden was telling Americans everything was under control and that a smooth transition out of the country was going to happen.

Then  it didnt.

I dont think anybody anticipated that, Biden told ABC News last week.

In April, when he announced the U.S. was finally leaving Afghanistan, he said: Well do it responsibly, deliberately, and safely. And we will do it in full coordination with our allies and partners, who now have more forces in Afghanistan than we do.

And the Taliban should know that if they attack us as we draw down, we will defend ourselves and our partners with all the tools at our disposal, he added.

Obviously, the Taliban werent concerned about Biden any more than the Iranians, North Koreans, Russians or Chinese are concerned about him.

What a disgrace.

Sources include:

DailyMail.co.uk

NationalSecurity.news
(Natural News) Over a year ago, it was considered conspiracy theory to suggest that covid vaccines were a never-ending mRNA program, requiring routine booster shots and periodic updates to human cells. After all, an effective vaccine should generate robust memory B cells that last longer than three weeks. But with Pfizer and Modernas mRNA vaccines, a second dose was conspicuously required after just three weeks. If the vaccine science failed in less than a month, how many doses would ultimately be required for people to consider themselves safe and fully protected?

These mRNA spike protein experiments are NOT vaccines and DO NOT save lives

An effective vaccine should augment an antibody response that doesnt wane every year, let alone every two to three months. Yet, this is exactly what was discovered in the hasty clinical trials for covid vaccines. Antibodies quickly dropped off after the first shot, and there was no measurement of T-cell immunity, which is one of the most important measurements for assessing immunity against coronaviruses.

An effective vaccine would definitely not require three to four doses each year, but this is exactly where the covid vaccine fraud is headed today. Moderna even admitted their vaccine is an operating system designed to program humans and hack their biological functions for perpetual mRNA updates. Israel is already requiring a third dose of spike protein mRNA in order for people to consider themselves fully vaccinated. Israelis who got the first two doses are NO longer allowed in public spaces, because their Green Pass vaccine passport is now expired. The United States government is also pushing for a third dose after Dr. Fauci and the Biden regime pressured the FDA to fraudulently approve the vaccine and mandate its use. Longstanding FDA scientists who regulate biologics, Dr. Marion Gruber and Dr. Philip Krause, have resigned over the political pressure and coercion.

After the ashes of fraud, coercion and abuse settle, it will be even more clear: Covid vaccines are a never-ending mRNA subscription, requiring annual boosters (or bi-annual) and software updates to an enslaved population that is being disabled, hospitalized and killed at a rate never seen before in the history of vaccine science.

People are being subjugated and forced into a never-ending subscription of pharmaceutical dependence

When vaccine manufacturers were racing to develop a vaccine for covid-19, governments promised the population that they could have their freedom back, without the threat of future lockdowns, if everyone collectively consented to this experiment. Governments have resorted to totalitarian force to coerce people to comply.

Most people who lined up for the first and second shot did NOT truly consent to the experimental program, for their livelihood and civil liberties were threatened from the onset. The true definition of consent is a personal decision that is made without any outside threats of coercion, bribery, fraud or duress. All of these violent tactics, including discrimination and segregation, have been illegally used to force a large number of people to participate in this vaccine SCAM.

Whether people realize it or not, their (uninformed) consent for covid vaccines is actually an agreement to a lifetime subscription to mRNA injections. This lifetime subscription could include two to six covid vaccines per year. Dr. Fauci, who is financially tied to the experiment, wants to begin a third dose for people just five months after their second dose. This lifetime subscription could include monthly mRNA injections to keep an updated version of the spike protein circulating in the persons blood. This idea has actually been proposed to combat long covid.

This pharmaceutical dependency program is a steady revenue stream for the medical system, as it now oversees thousands of new cases of blood clots, pericarditis and myocarditis in young people. The FDA recently approved a new drug to combat blood clots in adolescents. This vaccine injury (blood clots) will continue to rise as adolescents are forced into the experiment.

This pharmaceutical dependency program will ensure routine hospital visits for people who no longer have a functioning immune system, who are now cursed to suffer through vaccine-induced antibody dependent enhancement and increased susceptibility to infections.

This pharmaceutical dependency program could last a decade or longer, as the vaccinated are trained to dismiss their natural immune system and forgo the strategies that keep their body healthy and in shape. For many people, especially the unhealthiest among us, this lifetime subscription wont last long at all, because the side effects of this vaccines are sickening, disabling, and killing off the population at a rate twenty to thirty times greater than traditionally developed vaccines.

Sources include:

AlexBerenson.com

NaturalNews.com

NaturalNews.com

NaturalNews.com

NaturalNews.com

ChildrensHealthDefense.org

NaturalNews.com

NaturalNews.com

NaturalNews.com

FDA.gov

JournalofInfection.com

SWPRS.org
(Natural News) Real Deal Report (RDR) host Dean Ryan called on Americans to stand up to the Biden administrations medical tyranny. During an Aug. 24 RDR episode posted on Brighteon TV, he remarked that the Food and Drug Administrations (FDA) full approval of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine served to prop up the fake administration. Together with his co-hosts Kristen Meghan and Lisa Duffy, Ryan urged people to stand up for their freedom.

According to Ryan, the insane and fraudulent full approval of the Comirnaty vaccine from Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech only served to divert attention away from President Joe Bidens weakening rule. He added that the approval was a last-ditch move to boost Bidens tanking approval ratings. The Biden puppet masters [want] to roll out the medical martial law, and this is what they want, Ryan said.

The RDR host noted that the FDAs approval of Pfizers Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccine is part of a bigger plan to suppress peoples freedoms. [The vaccine is] a means to control population [and] to suppress the massive uprising and this sovereignty movement that we saw in Brexit and under the Trump administration, Ryan remarked.

Furthermore, Ryan pointed out that Biden was not the only weak figure in the current administration. Vice President Kamala Harris also showed signs of weakness during her recent visit to Southeast Asia. She reportedly suffered from symptoms of Havana syndrome following her trip to Singapore. The syndrome, which was first reported by a U.S. diplomatic staff member assigned in Cuba in 2016, delayed her flight to Vietnam for three hours.

Despite the delay, Harris pushed through with her Vietnam trip. U.S. Embassy in Hanoi Spokeswoman Rachael Chen confirmed the anomalous health incident the vice president suffered. Symone Sanders, Harriss chief spokeswoman, added that the vice president was well  and looking forward to meetings in Hanoi. Sanders added that the incident had nothing to do with the vice presidents health.

When asked for comment, Meghan said radio frequency attacks would be impossible given that presidential aircraft have capabilities to block such attacks. She added that the symptoms of Havana syndrome, such as headaches and dizziness, are similar to the symptoms of prolonged mask-wearing. Incidentally, both Biden and Harris advocated for Americans to mask up.

People worldwide are standing up, one protest at a time

Ryan also reported that around 200 protesters stormed the studios of ITV in central London. The protesters gathered on the afternoon of Aug. 23 to oppose vaccine passports and mandatory vaccination for children. They also heckled and hurled abuses at Channel 4 veteran news anchor Jon Snow.

A spokeswoman for ITN, ITV and Channel 4s parent company, confirmed the incident. She continued: News organizations have provided a vital source of information during the pandemic. The abuse of journalists because of their reporting on [the] coronavirus is a worrying development.

However, Duffy described the protests as a very good start. She added: Two hundred isnt a lot, but we could do better. [You] got to start somewhere. According to Duffy, the protesters went for the jugular with their protest at the ITV headquarters and heckling of Snow.

She also pointed out that Googles U.K. headquarters was located near the television studio. Theyre going for  Google, social media and the lying mainstream media. [The] people are awake, theyre aware and they know. We just need more people to stand up, Duffy added.

Ryans Scottish co-host ultimately called on people to just stand up against the medical tyranny of governments around the world. Duffy said: These people are going to knock you down at every opportunity because theyre terrified of losing the power and the control that they got over you. You just [got to] keep standing back up again and fighting. [I] dont mean physically fighting, just fighting by  speaking your truth.

Meghan concluded the show by agreeing with Duffys sentiments on the matter. Its time to be mad and angry  but again, attack it through an administrative setting because we must stand up now, she said. Meghan added that many people were unmasked and enjoyed the taste of freedom. Thus, the overlords sought to throw back the rope as a reminder for the free people: Dont enjoy it too much. Now that you are our slaves and we are your masters, dont get too excited.

There was, in fact, another protest in London this past weekend over vaccine passports, with a much bigger turnout that the mainstream media did not cover. MedicalTyranny.com has more news about people standing up against medical martial law in the U.S. and the U.K.

Sources include:

Brighteon.com

Deseret.com

News.Sky.com
(Natural News) The government of Israel has changed the definition of fully vaccinated to mean a person who has received three doses of the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccine.

We are updating what it means to be vaccinated, said Dr. Salman Zarka, Israels coronavirus czar.

The Israeli government is also coercing people into getting the COVID-19 booster doses. It is doing this by saying those who do not get the boosters will face restrictions on dining out, traveling and on other activities. (Related: Israel warns vaccine passport will expire in six months if residents dont get COVID-19 booster dose.)

Lawmakers in the Middle Eastern country claim without evidence that getting everybody three doses of the COVID-19 vaccine is the only way to avoid another economically devastating coronavirus lockdown.

I dont want to impose a lockdown and I will avoid a lockdown at all costs, said Minister of Health Nitzan Horowitz. Everything is open  but we need masks and we need vaccines.

Israel had one of the fastest mass vaccination programs in the world. This quickly propelled the country into becoming one of the worlds most vaccinated countries. But this did not prevent new COVID-19 cases from appearing, and by early June the number of new coronavirus infections in Israel started surging again.

Data published by the Israeli government showed that the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, the main COVID-19 vaccine the country uses, was just 16 percent effective at preventing symptomatic infection for people who were fully vaccinated early in the year.

Despite the evidence showing the vaccines do not help prevent new COVID-19 cases, the Israeli government is still pushing through with plans to vaccinate as many people as possible and to give the fully vaccinated an additional dose of the vaccine.

As of Aug. 31, 62.4 percent of Israel has received at least two doses of the COVID-19 vaccine. Another 5.7 percent of people have received just one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. No clear data is available regarding how many Israelis have received a booster dose. But Israeli officials claim over two million out of Israels population of 9.3 million have already received a third dose.

Israelis fear additional vaccination requirements could hurt the economy

Business owners in Israel are afraid that the additional COVID-19 vaccination requirement will result in unnecessary complications with their businesses.

Their main concern is how the change in vaccination status will affect holders of vaccine passports, known as the green pass. Israeli officials recently announced that holders of the green pass must get a third dose or risk their pass expiring.

Roy Shadur, a 5o-year-old restaurant owner in the city of Ramat Gan, said his customers have been dwindling since the green pass was instituted. This is because his customers prefer to order in rather than get the required vaccinations or negative COVID-19 tests for their children who are not yet eligible to get a green pass.

Its just the part that hurts, without the medicine, said Shadur.

Why are we the first country to do this? asked Tovatel Magen, 28, who works at a cafe in Jerusalem and disagrees with the booster doses. They are doing experiments on us.

If another lockdown were to occur, it is estimated that at least one out of every four small and medium-sized businesses in Israel will be significantly affected. This is according to Oded Chen, a top Israeli lawyer and expert in the field of insolvency and bankruptcy.

If restrictions are reintroduced, Chen said the expected debt value in businesses will reach an additional four billion Israeli New Shekels ($1.24 billion).

A lot of the businesses whose debt values will increase most likely barely survived the latest lockdown and are already operating at a deficit, and another lockdown could cause them to shut down completely.

In 2020 alone, around 24,000 debt and legal aid cases were opened, nearly 10,000 of which were related to bankruptcy and insolvency.

Learn more about the mass vaccination situation in Israel by reading the latest articles at Vaccines.news.

Sources include:

WSJ.com

CNBC.com

OurWorldInData.org

JPost.com
(Natural News) As Australians suffer under the heavy boot of another government-imposed total lockdown, the Mount Druitt Police Area Command in Sydney held a Wear It Purple Day pride event in celebration of the Cult of LGBT.

Circulating photos show law enforcement officials densely packed inside a building in direct violation of their own orders not to congregate. They ate cake and cupcakes and partied it up while the people were confined to their homes under threat of punishment.

The superspreader event caught the attention of the independent media, which pointed out the blatant hypocrisy of police officers and their administrative staff violating their own rules to celebrate homosexuality and transgenderism.

Mt. Druitt is located in the City of Blacktown LGA  an area with one of the highest rates of Covid cases since Sydneys second wave delta outbreak began in mid-June, reported the Daily Mail.

While emergency services are technically exempt from the lockdown rules that prevent large gatherings, this exemption is intended for work-related purposes, not a celebration of sexual deviancy.

Happy Wear It Purple Day, the department proudly posted to its Facebook page. Follow your rainbow and start the conversation, it ironically added in contrast to government orders telling people not to engage in conversation with each other, even while wearing a mask.

Hilariously, Dr. Kerry Chant, the chief health officer of New South Wales (NSW) and the person who wrote the Facebook message, had just previously given a speech telling Australians to avoid close contact in offices, which is exactly what the Wear It Purple Day crowd was doing with its LGBT celebration.

Make sure you are not sharing the tea room, you are wearing masks, you have four-metre density and make sure you do not attend when you have symptoms, Chant hypocritically told the public.

Celebrating gayness comes with extra privileges that nobody else gets

Aussie grandparents were even told to avoid seeing their own children and grandchildren this time under any circumstances  unless, of course, they work for the local police department and want to celebrate gay pride.

Maybe if they all just agreed to meet under the auspices of celebrating LGBT, which is apparently more important than stopping a pandemic, then it would be OK, joked Summit.news about this ridiculous display of hypocrisy.

Now that word has gotten out about the event, the NSW police force is trying to save face by claiming that it is conducting an internal review to determine if there were any breaches of Public Health Orders at the Wear It Purple Day event.

In Sydney, the rules for non-LGBT celebrators just so happens to be extra strict compared to those in other parts of Australia. Fully vaccinated people are allowed extra freedom in Sydney, which includes being able to leave home for an hour of recreation on top of their exercise hour.

Perhaps everyone in the Sydney area needs to self-identify as something on the rainbow spectrum and hold a coming out ceremony at the local police station. Then they can gather freely without restrictions, apparently.

We already learned during the BurnLootMurder (BLM) rioting that the virus is woke, so this is no surprise, joked one commenter at Summit.news.

Apparently unnatural exchanges of bodily fluids are not risky behavior for virus transmission either  as long as you keep your mask on during whatever grotesque sex act you engage in.

Others noted that at one time in history they would have wanted to visit, or even live, in Australia  but no longer now that the country has succumbed to total medical fascism with special exemptions for the Cult of LGBT.

The latest news about Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) tyranny can be found at Fascism.news.

Sources for this article include:

Summit.news

NaturalNews.com
(Natural News) A Michigan doctor testified before Michigan House, giving full support for House Bill 4471, which prohibits businesses from requiring vaccinations as a condition for employment.

Dr. Christina Parks delivered her expert analysis on the subject, saying that its unethical for the government to mandate vaccines that dont prevent transmissions of COVID-19 but actually appear to be weakening the human immune system. She stated: This is extremely complex science that has been oversimplified in the media to basically take away our freedom of choice.

Parks discussed how the shot does not attenuate symptoms related to the delta variant, saying that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is blaming anti-vaxxers for the limitations of the vaccine.

She stated that the CDC needs to be transparent and tell parents that even though the vaccines are preventing severe diseases in their children, it is not preventing transmission because the community has created a whole class of asymptomatic carriers who are actually spreading the disease. (Related: Washington makes COVID-19 vaccination mandatory for employment in schools, targeting all teachers and staffers.)

Michigan House Bill 4471

The 2021 House Bill 4471, introduced by Rep. Sue Allor prohibits employers from requiring their employees to get a vaccination for flu, tetanus, diphtheria, pertussis or COVID-19, or treating any employee who refused the shot any different than those who do, including making him or her wear a face mask

State representative Daire Rendon, one of the 17 lawmakers sponsoring the bill, said that she wants to protect the civil rights of Michigan workers by giving them the freedom to choose.

If I were to summarize the bill, I would say this is basically a persons bill of rights. For you to decide whats good for your body and if my employer put off by my not having the vaccination, thats a shame, she said.

Governor Gretchen Whitmers office released a statement in response to HB 4471, which stated that the governor supports businesses who make the decision to protect their workforce and would veto any legislation that prevented them from doing so.

The bill is still under consideration and must make it out of committee before moving forward.

COVID vaccination mandates may be illegal

The question of whether or not employers can mandate their workers to get vaccinations should be addressed, not only for employees but also for the drive to vaccinate enough of the population to create herd immunity.

A large fraction of the U.S. population is still reluctant to get vaccinated; some of them are even employees of healthcare organizations. Most of these healthcare organizations havent mandated vaccination for their workers. Until recently, all employer vaccine mandates such as flu shots have been focused on fully approved vaccines.

Legal experts are also divided on the legality of requiring vaccination with a vaccine that has been authorized only for emergency use only.

The federal governments authority to mandate vaccinations is limited; the Pubic Health Service Act authorizes the secretary of Health and Human Services to adopt quarantine and isolation measures to stop the spread of diseases, but there had been no mention of vaccine mandates thus far. General vaccine mandatesare generally within the purview of state and local governmentswith the federal government playing a supporting role, it stated.

State mandates usually require that healthcare workers be offered certain vaccines, and some of this required documentation of employee vaccination status, but the report didnt say whether any of the states require workers to be vaccinated.

Some private employers also required their workers to get vaccines such as flu shots in healthcare settings, but states may prohibit vaccine mandates as a condition for employment. Instead, the report noted that it should be required that employees have the ability to opt out of any vaccinations.

Read more news and updates regarding COVID-19 vaccination mandates at Pandemic.news.

Sources include:

InfoWars.com

Detroit.CBSLocal.com

WebMD.com
(Natural News) Because our government is being run by left-wing tyrants, Joe Bidens military has ordered all personnel to get a COVID-19 vaccine or face disciplinary action that would include removal from their service branch, but two members who have already had the virus and have natural immunity are bucking what they view as an unlawful order and are fighting back, in court.

According to the Childrens Defense Fund, the two members have filed legal action on behalf of themselves and the other 220,000 personnel who also have had the illness and now have natural immunity, a suit that comes on the heels of new research proving that natural immunity works best to fend off even the delta variant better than any of the three approved vaccines.

The lead plaintiffs in the lawsuit, Staff Sergeant Daniel Robert and Staff Sergeant Holli Mulvihill, allege U.S. Sec. of Defense Lloyd Austin ignored the DODs own regulations and created an entirely new definition of full immunity as being achievable only by vaccination, the organization reports in a press release.

According to the lawsuit, the militarys existing laws and regulations unequivocally provide the exemption the plaintiffs seek under Army Regulation 40-562 (AR 40-562), which provides documented survivors of an infection a presumptive medical exemption from vaccination because of the natural immunity acquired as a result of having survived the infection, the release continues.

Specifically, that section of Army Regulations reads:

General examples of medical exemptions include the following  Evidence of immunity based on serologic tests, documented infection or similar circumstances.

So it seems that, on the surface, certainly, the Pentagon has violated its own regulations by ordering all Army personnel, at least, to get vaccinated even if theyve recovered from the coronavirus, not to mention putting all service members in danger.

The lawsuit notes that retired Adm. Brett Giroir, a pediatrician and the former assistant secretary for Health and Human Services, noted in an Aug. 24 interview with Fox News that natural immunity, its very important.

There are still no data to suggest vaccine immunity is better than natural immunity, he continued, adding: I think both are highly protective.

But no matter; Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, a former defense contractor executive and retired four-star Army general, followed his orders and issued a directive that all of the U.S. armed forces would have to be vaccinated.

And he wrote, specifically, Those with previous COVID-19 infection are not considered fully vaccinated.

So in other words, the Biden regime doesnt really care about the science  it cares about feeding big pharma for new donations to its political minions and forcing compliance for the sake of compliance.

In his memo, plaintiffs are alleging that the SECDEF created a new term and concept that runs afoul of and directly contradicts DoD regulations as well as long-standing immunology best practices, medical evidence and medical science regarding the COVID-19 virus specifically.

Natural immunity appears to confer longer lasting + stronger protection against SARS-CoV-2 infection, symptomatic disease and hospitalization from the Delta variant compared to Pfizer-BioNTechs two-dose vaccine-induced immunity.https://t.co/VECtpj7485  Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) August 31, 2021

The plaintiffs also allege in their lawsuit that Lloyd, who has no medical training and is not a physician, changed the Defense Departments regulation without giving a scintilla of evidence to support the alteration. They also say that the defense secretary made the change to the regulation without subjecting it to the normal rule making processes, which violates the Administrative Procedures Act.

They raise critical issues that courts must resolve  on medical exemptions for natural immunity, and whether the clinical trials serving as the basis for Pfizers licensure were sufficient, said Holland.

Sources include:

LifeSiteNews.com

NaturalNews.com
(Natural News) New evidence has surfaced to show that New York attorney general Letitia James illegally targeted a pro-life pastor and his flock in Brooklyn for their protest activities against legalized baby murder.

With the help of her two Democrat predecessors, James paid to have hidden cameras set up to spy on Rev. Kenneth Griepp and his flock. She also, using taxpayer dollars, sent undercover operatives to surveil them.

This illegal spying campaign has been going on since 2017, reports indicate. James continues to target and harass Griepp and his Church at the Rock, despite a federal appeals court unanimously ruling that they have the right to gather if they so choose.

The Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decided to dismiss a claim by James for a preliminary injunction against the protesters because she failed to establish a likelihood of success on the merits as to most claims.

It may be particularly appropriate to reconsider whether there were violations, the appellate court explained.

James sued Griepp and his flock in an attempt to silence them from making their voices heard against the legalized murder of unborn children. It ultimately failed because Griepp continued to counsel women outside of abortion clinics in obedience to his calling from God.

The political powers have rejected God in this sphere of life, Griepp told the Washington Free Beacon. We rejoice in the persecution. Does that make it easier? No. But it does allow us to understand that this is part of following the Lord.

Pro-abortion extremists falsely accused Griepp of harassing women

According to the New York attorney generals office, Griepp and his fellow pro-life activists were overcrowding and threatening women outside of the Choices Womens Medical Center in Queens.

This claim is unsubstantiated as the group was merely providing counseling services, which explains why James office refused a request for further comment.

To try to make a case against her targets, James spent unknown amounts of taxpayer dollars infiltrating the sidewalk events in an attempt to prove some kind of harassment. This, too, failed.

It looks to all the world that this is a targeting of pro-life activists who happen to be persistent and effective, says Stephen Crampton, senior counsel for the Thomas More Society, a nonprofit religious liberty firm that is representing Griepp.

So, the dirty work here is done by the state and not the clinic itself.

Fake vice president Kamala Harris did much the same thing while holding the title of attorney general in California. Harris is guilty of launching a political witch hunt against pro-life journalist David Daleiden, whose hidden cameras uncovered undeniable evidence of illegal black market activity within the abortion industry.

Xavier Becerra, Harris successor, who now holds the title of secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) under fake president Joe Biden, filed 15 felony charges against Daleiden in 2017 alone.

For years, Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry have been cultivating patronage relationships with powerful pro-abortion politicians in law enforcement leadership roles in order to silence and persecute pro-life voices while also obstructing justice in investigations of abortion crimes, Daleiden told the Free Beacon.

Americans are waking up to this corrupt abortion industrial-political complex, and the facts will continue to come out about how some of the most powerful so-called public servants in the country have abused their power to shield special-interest abortion businesses from any criticism or scrutiny.

As for Griepp, the baby murderers targeting him are livid that his free speech rights are being protected by the courts. These abortionists are confident, though, that women will continue to get abortions regardless of Griepps counseling efforts.

The latest news about the lefts obsession with murdering children can be found at Abortions.news.

Sources for this article include:

FreeBeacon.com

NaturalNews.com
(Natural News) Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) believes that the reason the establishment continues to oppose the use of ivermectin for treating the Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) is because of widespread hatred of Trump.

As you may recall, the former president pushed older pharmaceutical remedies like ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) at a time when the medical establishment as a whole wanted people to mask up and wait for a vaccine. Consequently, those remedies remain off limits to this very day, despite their extensive track record of safety and effectiveness.

The hatred for Trump deranged these people so much that theyre unwilling to objectively study it, Paul is quoted as saying. They will not study ivermectin. They will not study hydroxychloroquine without the taint of their hatred for Donald Trump.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which glowingly approved ivermectin for human use back in 1996, is now claiming in mockery that the drug is only for horses and cows.

Seriously, yall, the agency snarled on Twitter at people who choose to take ivermectin for the Chinese Virus. Stop it.

If the FDA wants people to stop taking ivermectin, then why did the agency claim back in 1996 that the drug is safe and effective? Does the FDA have amnesia? Is it a schizophrenic organization? You decide.

Depriving patients in need of HCQ and ivermectin is genocide

According to Paul, the FDA is treating ivermectin the same way it treated HCQ, pretending as though it never approved these substances for human use. Suddenly, because Trump promoted them, the FDA is claiming that they are dangerous and not to be used.

Meanwhile, actual science shows that both ivermectin and HCQ, when used carefully under the supervision of a trained medical professional, can eradicate the Chinese Virus without the need for dangerous drug injections and a lifetime of mask-wearing.

An Ohio judge, it is important to note, recently ruled that a hospital must prescribe ivermectin to a Wuhan Flu patient who requested it but was denied by medical personnel who appear to be afflicted with Trump Derangement Syndrome, or TDS.

Perhaps this case will set off a chain reaction that results in medical facilities in other states likewise being forced to prescribe what a patient asks for, even if it is politically incorrect to do so because of Trump.

In the Ohio case, the patients family doctor, Dr. Fred Wagshul, fully supports the lawsuit, arguing that the hospital in question is defying science by refusing evidence-based medicine to a patient in need.

If we were a country looking at another country allowing those [Covid-19] deaths daily  we would have been screaming, Genocide!' Wagshul told the Ohio Capital Journal.

Wagshul also believes that the FDA is conspiring with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to deny patients of lifesaving Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) treatments in order to force them into taking deadly injections instead.

Im over 70 and proof positive that Ivermectin, whether it was the reason I recovered so quickly or not, does not do damage, wrote one commenter at Headline USA.

I personally think any doctor who refuses to provide a prescription EARLY IN DIAGNOSIS, if that patient dies should be charged with malpractice. It would also be interesting to see how many doctors used HCQ or Ivermectin when THEY or their FAMILY got the virus. If they took it themselves and refused to give to patients, they should be charged with MURDER if even one patient dies.

Another commenter, aged 80, responded to this comment in agreement, noting that after catching the Chinese Virus back in December experienced mild flu symptoms and nothing more.

The latest news stories about Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) tyranny and oppression can be found at Fascism.news.

Sources for this article include:

HeadlineUSA.com

NaturalNews.com
(Natural News) Former Graham County, Arizona, Sheriff Richard Mack gained national attention after he challenged the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act of 1993. The erstwhile sheriff shared a number of miracles that happened in his life during the debut episode of the eponymous Sheriff Mack Show on Brighteon.TV. During the show, he told co-host Sam Bushman that these miracles played a role in his participation in the lawsuit against the Brady Act.

In particular, Mack shared three instances that occurred in his life that eventually led him to pursue a path defending the Constitution. The first instance was when he met his wife Dawn, who was brought up in a very constitutional home. They studied the Constitution together as a family. It was part of their family conversations at dinner and I had to catch up, Mack said.

The former Graham County sheriff admitted that he knew very little about the Constitution, thus he had to catch up with his in-laws. But despite this difficulty, he did not regret the experience. [If] I had not been in that home, I would not have learned about the Constitution, he told Bushman.

Another miracle he cited came while he was an officer at the Provo Police Department in Utah. The department hired Mack as a full-time officer in 1979. Three years later in 1982, he served a stint as an undercover narcotics officer  something he described as life-changing. The clean-cut undercover officers were much more reliable than those who  drink, smoke and party, he said of the experience.

Mack returned to patrol duty after his stint in the narcotics division. The departments numbers-oriented approach caused him to become disillusioned as it turned policing into a race to reach targets instead of a duty to uphold public safety. He realized his mistake one day while writing a violation ticket for a lady, believing that he could have handled it differently. I was so discouraged and ashamed of what Ive become, just a ticket writing numbers guy without feeling, Mack said.

The Constitution opened Macks eyes to what he should be fighting for

The next day, he visited the office of the Provo city clerk and asked for a copy of the oath he swore to uphold. He reviewed the oaths and came upon a realization. Article Six of the U.S. Constitution requires each of us in public service at federal, state and local levels to swear an oath to the Constitution. The Founding Fathers put that in  so that we would perpetuate liberty, Mack told Bushman.

The sheriff wanted to quit his law enforcement job as he saw no resemblance of the Constitution in the things they did in the police department. However, a training facilitated by conservative author and professor W. Cleon Skousen served as the third miracle he encountered. According to Mack, Skousens two-day training on the Constitution for law enforcement officers totally converted [him] to the Constitution.

Mack continued: I was totally convinced, and I took another oath while I was sitting there [and] listening to this great man. I swore to myself and to God that I would never be on the wrong side again. With that oath, he dedicated himself to upholding the Constitution. Mack left the police force, ran for sheriff in his hometown of Arizona and won.

The sheriffs dedication to the Constitution later came into play when he joined other plaintiffs in challenging the Brady Act. Alongside lawyers representing the National Rifle Association, they argued that it was unconstitutional for the federal government to mandate local sheriffs to conduct background checks on Americans purchasing firearms.

The legal challenge by Mack and the other plaintiffs made it to the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1997, the highest court of the land ruled in favor of Mack and his fellow plaintiffs. The Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision that the Brady Acts questionable provision was indeed unconstitutional.

Mack served as Graham County sheriff from 1988 to 1997. When his tenure as sheriff ended, he established the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA), which aimed to educate Americans on the Constitution. The group also sought to educate sheriffs and officers of the peace regarding the limitations of their powers.

The sheriff concluded his interview with Bushman by saying: If we get just a third of the [more than 3,000] sheriffs [in the U.S.] to one simple thing  keep their oath of office  we take back America tomorrow, county by county, one good sheriff at a time.

Liberty.news has more articles about Richard Mack and other sheriffs that uphold the Constitution.

Sources include:

Brighteon.com

NBCNews.com

CSPOA.org
(Natural News) In the latest episode of the Stew Peters Show on Brighteon.TV, conservative firebrand Stew Peters talks to biotech analyst Karen Kingston regarding the recent approval of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)  and its possible impact on Americans.

Kingston, a former Pfizer employee, said the FDAs approval will end Pfizer and BioNTechs reign of impunity, as this will finally hold them accountable for vaccine-related injuries and deaths.

That is to me, a red flag that Pfizer knows game over, checkmate, said Kingston. They are already going to be held accountable for intentionally harming the American people.

Keeping people in the dark

The FDA approved the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine for the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) on August 23, making it the first approved COVID-19 vaccine in the country. The vaccine, now marketed as Comirnaty, is available for individuals aged 16 years and older. It also continues to be available under emergency use authorization (EUA) for adolescents aged 12 to 15, as well as for administration as a booster for people with weakened immune systems.

According to Kingston, the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines that were granted EUA did not conform to the guidelines set by the FDA during production. But with the approval in place, Pfizer and BioNTech must now submit their final content labeling and report any deviations, complaints and adverse events associated with the approved products.

When the vaccines were initially made available under EUA, these important procedures were not followed. The quality of the vials and the consistency of the ingredients were also not checked. In addition, expiration dates were also continually extended.

Those safety strategies, those safety protocols that were put in place, were thrown out the window, Kingston said.

The FDA approval means that Pfizer and BioNTech must now be transparent regarding any deviations in their vials  something they werent required to disclose to the public before the approval.

So if Pfizer has had any deviations in their vaccines, theres a lot of damning information they have to report.

If Pfizer has not been honest with the American people and with the FDA in regards to whats in these vials, they have 14 days to come clean.

When pressed by Peters on whether Pfizer was less than honest with their reporting on whats in their vaccines, Kingston noted that the lack of transparency when it comes to the side effects was suspicious. For one, the diversity of adverse effects, which range from heart inflammation to severe blood clotting, is something that does not make sense.

The diversity of these adverse events are not consistent with a consistent product, said Kingston.

She also added that the lack of a website for the vaccine  especially one that contains a statement regarding FDA approval and a package insert for review  is also unusual. (Related: Pfizer will NOT mandate covid vaccines for its own employees wonder why?)

Ive been doing this for over 20 years [and] Ive launched multiple products. So going back 20 years ago, weve always had the website locked and loaded, ready to go at least six months ahead of time, literally, sometimes a year ahead of time.

Protecting their interests

Pfizer and BioNTech are keeping everyone in the dark on the specifics of the approval because theyre afraid of the lawsuits that will be brought against them once this information goes public, says Kingston. Whats even worse, she adds, is that the drug maker has been shilling their products, not to people, but to government institutions like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health, and mainstream media.

[Pfizer and BioNTech] have been misleading [the] American people to line themselves up, and unfortunately, in some cases, to line themselves [up] with their children to be injected with an unapproved experimental biological agent, she added.

Watch the full episode here.

The Stew Peters show airs weekdays at 6:00 p.m. on Brighteon.TV.

Sources include:

Brighteon.com

FDA.gov
(Natural News) The veterans community has rallied around a Marine Corps lieutenant colonel who was relieved of command after posting to social media a rebuke of senior officers for how they handled Afghanistan.

(Article by Susan Katz Keating republished from JustTheNews.com)

Marine Lt. Col. Stuart Scheller on Thursday posted a video he recorded in the aftermath of the deadly Kabul airport bombing that killed 11 Marines, one Army Green Beret, and one Navy corpsman, along with scores of Afghans. In the video, Scheller wore his service uniform while issuing an extraordinary public challenge to his chain of command. Scheller calmly addressed the camera in what became a viral video that got him booted out of the Marine Corps on Friday.

While some veterans remarked privately that Scheller had set a bad example to younger service members, others hailed him as a courageous leader who had the courage to speak up.

Supporters quickly organized a grass roots campaign to reinstate Scheller. One man whose social media account identifies him as retired from Marine Force Recon, a special operations unit, asked people to take action on Schellers behalf, asking that he be reinstated.

Heres the public affairs office for the United States Marine Corps, wrote Anthony Slate on LinkedIn. I suggest we the people contact the Marine Corps and let them know how we feel on the matter!!!!! Slate posted contact numbers for Headquarters Marine Corps, along with social media contact information.

Scheller reported Friday on social media that he has been inundated with messages offering support for his decision to speak out  a post that brought thousands of comments, shares, and likes in addition to the more than 30,000 shares of his original video.

In that viral video, the longtime Infantry officer addressed top military leaders.

I want to say this very strongly, Scheller said. I have been fighting for 17 years. I am willing to throw it all away to say to my senior leaders: I demand accountability.

He named Marine Corps Commandant Gen. David H. Berger, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley.

Im not saying we need to be in Afghanistan forever, but I am saying, did any of you throw your rank on the table and say, Hey, its a bad idea to evacuate Bagram Airfield, a strategic airbase, before we evacuate everyone? Scheller said. Did anyone do that? And when you didnt think to do that, did anyone raise their hand and say, We completely messed this up?

After the video went viral, Scheller on Friday posted an update on his personal Facebook page.

To all my friends across the social networks, he wrote. I have been relieved for cause based on a lack of trust and confidence as of 14:30 today.

My chain of command is doing exactly what I would do if I were in their shoes.

Added Scheller: America is still the light shining in a fog of chaos. When my Marine Corps career comes to an end, I look forward to a new beginning. My lifes purpose is to make America the most lethal and effective foreign diplomacy instrument. While my days of hand to hand violence may be ending, I see a new light on the horizon.

Supporters including Slate offered advice to parents of military-aged children.

I suggest if you have a Son or daughter whos about to join I would have them hold off as the generals in charge do not care about your kids life and will waste it like Biden does our fellow Marines in Afghanistan??!!!

The Marine Corps did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Just the News.

Read more at: JustTheNews.com and Collapse.news
(Natural News) On the latest episode of Lawfare on Brighteon.TV, conservative attorney Thomas Renz discusses the human cost of the measures medical facilities have enacted to supposedly deal with Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) patients.

As part of this, he talks to Michell Tavares, a dear friend who recently lost her father to the hospital protocols that he was placed on in the name of stopping the spread of the disease.

You can watch the full episode below.

Tavares father went in for diabetes, but was treated for COVID-19

Talking about her fathers case, Tavares clarifies that he did not go into the hospital for COVID-19. Rather, he had to go because of diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA) a complication of his diabetes where his body started producing high levels of blood acids called ketones.

So he went in with the DKAm she explains. He had a high glucose of 869.

However, instead of treating her father for diabetes, Tavares says that the hospital immediately classified him as a COVID-19 case.

That was the first thing they do, and this is part of the problem, she said. I think that you know in the first walk in every assumption is COVID as if nothing existed before COVID.

I call it a lazy diagnosis, doctors have become too lazy, she adds.

Beyond that, Tavares explained that the hospital staff kept pushing to put her father on a ventilator. This was despite it being against her fathers wishes.

It was it was a ventilation argument for two days starting off with the emergency department and then I said its against his wishes.

In addition, she explains that he was not in any serious life-or-death situation that would need a ventilator.

It was not to the point of Oh my gosh, his lungs are going to collapse and he needs a ventilator.

Cases similar to Tavares happening all over the U.S.

Tavares experience isnt unique and that similar instances of patients suffering because hospitals treated them as COVID-19 cases were happening all over the country.

Since losing her father, shes gotten in touch with others around the country whove had similar experiences.

What I found after coming forward was a flood of other families coming forward that had family members went through the same thing and died, she says. Or family members who were in their suffering the same situations.

According to Renz, hospitals single-minded focus on COVID-19 is hurting people who dont have the disease. He explains how patients with other ailments are being treated as COVID-19 patients the moment they have any symptom associated with the latter, regardless if it is the cause. (Related: Two bombshell interviews: John Moore reveals military knowledge of civilization-ending global event, while attorney Thomas Renz warns of coming tidal wave of vaccine mandate lawsuits.)

Theyre coming in with symptoms that arent COVID, being told its COVID, and they immediately push ventilation, he says. Even if theres evidence of something similar to COVID, they arent testing for things like bacterial pneumonia.

Tavares concurred, again drawing from her experience with her fathers hospitalization. Saying that patients like her father were being put through COVID-19 protocols regardless of whether or not they had the disease.

But what made things worse, according to her, was the fact that patients families were not allowed to go in.

This is important for anyone being admitted to hospital because, as Renz points out, one of the top five causes of death in the U.S. is due to hospital error without families being there to oversee it.

That is a huge huge problem, confirms Tavares.

Sources include:

Brighteon.com

MayoClinic.com
(Natural News) Dr. Michael Yeadon, a former vice president and chief scientist for allergy and respiratory research at drug giant Pfizer, has issued an urgent warning about how Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) vaccines should not be administered to children.

After the government of the United Kingdom recently announced that school children between the ages of 12 and 15 years will soon be injected for the Fauci Flu without their parents knowledge or permission, Yeadon took to social media to sound the alarm about this medical mass murder.

Yeadon says there is no measurable risk from SARS-CoV-2 in children, and no benefit whatsoever to getting injected. Stabbing children with mystery mRNA chemicals is not only dangerous, he says, but also an exercise in mass genocide.

Proceeding with this plandemic scheme, Yeadon further warned, WILL ONLY RESULT IN PAIN, SUFFERING, LASTING INJURIES AND DEATH, he emphasized in all caps in a social media post.

It was nearly a year ago to the day that Yeadon announced the plandemic to be over, even before Donald father of the vaccine Trump started aggressively pushing his Operation Warp Speed jabs.

Yeadon would have been right had the injections never been administered to anyone. Now that they have, though, variants are reportedly spreading like wildfire thanks to the injected, who are believed to be shedding mutated forms of the virus onto others.

This extraordinary abuse of innocent children in our care can be classified in no other way than MURDER, Yeadon stated plainly about the U.K.s push to mass inject school children for the China Flu.

The Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) has never been about a virus or public health, Yeadon added. Its wholly about control, totalitarian and irreversible control at that, and theyre nearly there.

How many children in the U.K. will die from experimental gene therapy injections?

Great Britain is just days away from the nightmare scenario that Yeadon is warning about coming true. On September 6, school children between the ages of 12 and 15 will be vaccinated with or without parental consent.

Even though there have been tens of thousands of reported deaths from the jabs just in the U.S. alone, the U.K. government has decided that in order to flatten the curve, children will need to have their DNA permanently altered with experimental Big Pharma drugs at warp speed.

[A]ll of the gene-based vaccines cause our bodies to manufacture the virus spike protein & that spike protein triggers blood coagulation, Yeadon warns. The next most common type of adverse events are neurological.

Compared to any other previous vaccine  even though these are not technically vaccines, just to reiterate  Chinese Virus jabs are around 60 times more likely to kill you. As for thromboembolic events like pulmonary embolisms, those who get jabbed are more than 400 times more likely to develop one.

These events are serious, occur at a hideously elevated level & are at least as common in young people as in elderly people. The tendency is that younger people are having MORE SEVERE adverse events than older people, Yeadon says.

There is literally no benefit whatsoever from this intervention. As stated, the children are unquestionably NOT AT RISK  Children rarely even become symptomatic & are very poor transmitters of the virus. This isnt theory. Its been studied & it pretty much doesnt happen that children bring the virus into the home.

Yeadon is guaranteeing that perfectly healthy British children will die from the jabs, all needlessly thanks to government tyranny. Americans had better not let the same thing happen here, because it is surely coming.

The latest news about Chinese Virus injection tyranny can be found at ChemicalViolence.com.

Sources for this article include:

LifeSiteNews.com

NaturalNews.com

Archive.is
Echo, a superb lyrebird is now a famous creature because of its ability to mimic different types of sounds, from vehicle horns to chainsaws to jackhammers.

The Mimicking Bird

Surprisingly, Echo who is a resident lyrebird at Sydney's Taronga Zoo has been caught completely mimicking a crying child with tonsil rattling, ear-splitting, and screams.

The impersonation of this seven-year-old male lyrebird might not give the most peaceful zoo sound most parents would desire. How the bird was able to perfectly mimic the hair-raising cry isn't clear, as the zoo is presently shut down because of the ongoing lockdown in Sydney.

Leanne Golebiowski who is the unit supervisor of birds at the zoo said about one year ago Echo started trying out crying snippets.

Golebiowski said: "I can only assume that he picked it up from our guests. Obviously he has been working on his craft during lockdown. But this concerns me, as I thought the zoo was a happy place for families to visit!"

Adding that there are two more sounds Echo makes at the moment and he learned them newly. The first is the power drill sound which is frighteningly accurate and the second is the sound of their fire alarm. Golebiowski said the bird even has the 'evacuate now' announcement mastered.

Also Read: Can Birds Help Humans in Predicting the Future?

Sounds Lyrebird Mimick

La Trobe University's Dr. Alex Maisey said wild lyrebirds closely imitate a diverse array of sounds as part of their courtship display. Maisey said they must possess an extraordinary memory to be capable of reproducing a lot of sounds.

"They also have their own particular songs that go with dance moves. If you're a strong male lyrebird who gets lots of food in your territory, then, in theory, you'd be able to put lots of time into practising [calls] and attract more mates, "Maisey said.

Maisey also said there is a possibility Echo must have listened to so many babies crying in order to make his mimicry perfect.

Although lyrebirds mimicking chainsaws and car alarms have been recorded, Maisey says it is rare for wild lyrebirds to be capable of mimicking human sounds.

Some animals have human sounds in their collection, no doubt, but generally, it is very uncommon.

Lyrebirds Pass on Calls to Younger Generation

Naturally, calls of the birds are mechanical-sounding and can be confused as being of human origin, Maisey said. In a zoo environment, since there are so many sounds the birds would hear, it would be difficult for them not to mimic some of the sounds, Golebiowski said.

In their natural environment, older male lyrebirds transfer calls to younger generations. A population of lyrebirds in the 1930s was brought to Tasmania from Healesville in Victoria.

For generations, the lyrebirds that were transferred kept on mimicking eastern whipbird's whip-crack song, and this song are not heard on the island state.

Female lyrebirds are also good at mimicking, but they make use of their calls for different reasons.

Related Article: Study: Birds Have the Ability to Change Their Culture to Become More Efficient

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After the what remains of Hurricane Ida hit the region on Wednesday, at least 43 people were killed in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut.

According to the authorities, fifteen individuals have died in New York, including thirteen in New York City. The majority were discovered at residences in Queens and Brooklyn and varied in age from 2 to 86. The city's medical examiner will establish the official causes of death later, according to the department.

Rabbi Shmuel Dovid Weissmandl, another casualty, was murdered when he was stranded by flooding at the Tappan Zee Bridge on his way home from Monsey, N.Y.

New Jersey Casualties

Gov. Philip D. Murphy said that at least 23 persons were killed in New Jersey. According to a spokesperson from Elizabeth, four individuals were found dead in an apartment complex in Elizabeth, across the street from a flooded firehouse.

According to a town spokesperson, two persons were unfortunately killed in Hillsborough, New Jersey, after being stuck in their automobiles. Additionally, according to authorities, two persons were slain in Bridgewater Township, New Jersey.

Mayor Hector C. Lora reported one man was found dead in Passaic, N.J., after being trapped in a car in rapidly rising floods, while Mayor Henri Schepens said a corpse was discovered inside a pickup truck in Hunterdon County, N.J.

Pennsylvania Casualties

According to Pennsylvania officials, four individuals died in Bucks and Montgomery counties north of Philadelphia. At least three of them drowned.

On the other hand, at least one person, a Connecticut state police officer, died after floods washed his car away in Woodbury.

Related Article: Over 100 Crew Member Stranded on Drillship as Hurricane Ida Devastates the Waters



Death Toll from Devastating Hurricane

Three of the deceased in New York City were discovered on 64th Street in Woodside, Queens: a 2-year-old kid, a 48-year-old woman, and a 50-year-old man.

Choi Sledge, who lives on the third floor, said she received a panicked call about 9:30 p.m. from a lady in the basement flat, whom she identified as Mingma Sherpa.

"She says, 'The water is pouring in right now,' and I tell her, 'Get out!" "Get to the third floor!" says the narrator. Mrs. Sledge remembers something.

"The water flowing in through the window is the last thing I hear from them.' And that was the end of it." According to her, Ms. Sherpa's spouse, Lobsang Lama, and their son, Ang, were the other two persons that perished.

An 86-year-old lady from Glendale, Queens, was the city's oldest known casualty.

According to the authorities, 11 of the 12 city residents who perished due to the storm lived in basement flats, a frequent and often illegal component of homes in Queens' densely packed districts.

Also Read: Storm Anxiety: How to Handle Extreme Weather Phobias During Hurricane Season

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Last week, a Syrian power station began leaking oil, and the disaster is currently en route to Cyprus. As it expands across the Mediterranean, the impact on marine ecosystems and populations may be disastrous.

According to Syrian state news agency SANA, the spill began on Aug. 23 when a breach burst in a tank packed with 15,000 tons of gasoline at the Baniyas power facility.

Satellite imagery analysis by Orbital EOS shows that the spill encompasses 309 square miles (800 square kilometers), an area the size of New York City. The leak looked to be just 10 square miles in satellite photos last week, so it's considerably more than first anticipated (26 square kilometers).

Cyprus officials anticipated the slick to hit their coasts on Wednesday, but it narrowly avoided the island due to a shift in winds. Nevertheless, Cyprus, Turkey, and Israel continue to check their coastlines for evidence of pollution.

Slowly Dispersing

According to the Guardian, the slick appeared to have dispersed somewhat on Wednesday. Nonetheless, it left clots of oil on the bottom. Crews are cleaning them up, but the Mediterranean Sea's unique ecosystems might still be harmed. Around 17,000 distinct kinds of animals call the ocean home, accounting for up to 18% of all marine species on the planet.

The World Wildlife Federation's Mediterranean Marine Initiative issued a statement saying, "WWF is very worried about the oil spill that happened in Syria around a week ago." "This avoidable disaster will have immediate and long-term consequences for the area's coastal ecosystems and vulnerable communities."

Related Article: After A Month of Nonstop Coastal Cleanup, Israel Oil Spill Emergency Finally Declared Over



Economic Impact

Residents around the Mediterranean are concerned about the economic impact of the oil leak. For example, it might have a significant impact on fishing and tourism.

"People did not need this; it is already difficult to make a life here, and this has undoubtedly damaged the lives of many families, causing them to lose their income," an unnamed Baniyas resident told CNN.

Insufficient Response

They also said that the Syrian government is failing to address the situation's seriousness adequately. In addition, the country is undergoing an economic crisis due to the conflict, the rapid devaluation of its currency, and the consequences of the Covid-19 shutdowns.

"The government simply dispatched crews with sponges and water hoses; they are not equipped to cope with this." "You can't clean the sea with sponges," a local explained.

Turkish Assistance

Turkish environmental officials and those in Turkish-occupied Northern Cyprus are deploying resources to assist in controlling the spill.

"This is not only an issue that affects Northern Cyprus," Cemaliye Overel Ekinci, the chamber of environmental engineers in Northern Cyprus, told the Guardian. "With the south, we should work together."

Massive oil leaks occured in the eastern Mediterranean Sea for the second time this year. An oil tanker spilled off the coast of Israel in February, leaving the tar and other hazardous chemicals on the Israeli and Lebanese beaches. Scientists have also raised the alarm about a ship that is dangerously near to dumping its oily cargo off the coast of Yemen. The leaks show that the hazards of burning fossil fuels aren't limited to climate change; oil, gas, and coal may also cause environmental damage.

Also Read: Marine Bacteria Found Capable of Biodegrading Diesel and Oil: Can it Clean Up Oil Spills?

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Before a critical Opec conference, Iraq's finance minister, one of the founding members of the global oil cartel Opec, issued an unusual plea to fellow oil producers to shift away from fossil fuel reliance and toward renewable energy.

Ali Allawi, Iraq's deputy prime minister, urged oil producers to seek "an economic rejuvenation based on ecologically sound policies and technology," such as solar electricity and even nuclear reactors, to lessen their reliance on fossil fuel exports.

"To stand a chance of minimizing the worst consequences of climate change, the world has to radically transform the way it produces and uses energy, burning less coal, oil, and natural gas," he wrote alongside Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency. Livelihoods would be lost, and poverty rates will rise if oil earnings begin to fall before producer countries have properly diversified their economies."

OPEC Meeting

Ministers from the 13 Opec member states will meet virtually on Wednesday to discuss possible output cuts as oil prices fluctuate. Opec had agreed to raise output as nations recovered from the Covid-19 epidemic, but sluggish markets have led some to propose that the rise be halted.

Last month, US President Joe Biden made a contentious appeal for Opec to raise oil output, even more, keep oil prices from increasing and help the US economy recover. But, unfortunately, his appeal was turned down.

Fuel Step Up

In an unprecedented step for the fossil fuel companies, the Opec summit may also address the climate problem ahead of the crucial UN climate negotiations, known as Cop26, set for Glasgow in November.

According to Allawi and Birol, current oil price instability, fueled by the pandemic, is merely the beginning of troubles for producers. The climate issue will not only need a shift away from oil, but it will also have a particularly negative impact on the Middle East and North Africa, where increasing temperatures are already causing severe problems.

Related Article: Entirety of Europe Could Face a Staggering Natural Gas Crisis This Winter



According to the International Energy Agency's (IEA) recent global roadmap to net-zero by 2050, global oil demand is expected to fall from more than 90 million barrels per day to fewer than 25 million barrels per day by 2050, resulting in a potential 85 percent drop in revenues for oil-producing economies.

Economic Turmoil

According to Allawi and Birol, economic hardship and rising unemployment risk causing greater discontent and instability in a region with one of the world's youngest and fastest-growing populations.

Investing in renewables, particularly solar electricity, is an alternative to dependent on increasingly volatile oil prices. They added, "The energy industry might play a role here by utilizing the region's tremendous potential for generating and supplying clean energy."

Iraq is a founding member of the cartel, including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Venezuela, Nigeria, and several other African oil-producing countries. In addition, Russia and a few minor producers are included in the Opec+ alliance.

Most have been antagonistic to demands for action on climate change, while some have dismissed climate science, and Saudi Arabia, in particular, has often obstructed UN climate discussions.

Paris Agreement

The International Energy Agency (IEA) cautioned in May that if the world remains below 1.5 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial levels, as laid forth in the Paris Agreement - to which all Opec members are signatories - all new oil drilling must end this year.

When asked about the findings, Saudi Arabia's energy minister, Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, said at an Opec meeting in June, "I would have to voice my perspective that I feel it is a sequel to [the] La La Land movie..." But, "What makes you think I should take it seriously?"

Oil Productions

Saudi officials have toyed with climate action in the past, claiming, for example, that the nation might eventually power itself with solar energy. However, no one has urged that oil shipments be halted.

Some oil producers, on the other hand, have chosen a more dovish attitude. For example, Oman, no longer an Opec member, looks at hydrogen as a future low-carbon fuel. The UAE also focuses on hydrogen and renewable energy and has just opened a new nuclear power plant. Other nations in the area with significant renewable energy programs include Egypt, Morocco, and Jordan.

"More than at any other time in history, significant adjustments to the economic model in resource-rich nations are unavoidable," Birol, one of the world's leading energy economists, told the Guardian. Countries in the region have made energy transition initiatives. There are encouraging attempts [among oil producers], but attaining net-zero emissions would need far bolder steps and much larger international coordination, as it has for many other nations across the world."

Also Read: LNG Exports from Australia to China Hits Record Breaking Numbers



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British wildlife campaign groups say tourists taking pictures with seals are disturbing and causing damages to their health.

UK's seal conservation groups have launched a petition encouraging the government to prohibit chasing, feeding, touching, or disturbing a seal in England and Wales, already having over 17,000 signatures.

Volunteers Patrol Beaches to Discourage the Act

Volunteers have begun to patrol certain beaches in British so they can stop tourists from disturbing the animals or even going too close to them. Yorkshire Seal Group's Matt Barnes is particularly worried about the colonies of the county.

He said: "On our coast, there have been 67 seal disturbances this month but the true figure will be higher. Each time a seal is disturbed, it means it is not resting or tending its pups. We have some of the country's most run down seals here in Yorkshire."

He also said most of the seals have severe calorie deficits due to the constant disturbance during their resting time and they feel stressed.

Also Read: WATCH: Smart Seal Hops on Tourist Boat to Escape Hungry Orcas

Effect of Visitor's Disturbance on Seals

Matt Barnes said they are exhausted since they are awakened from their sleep all the time. The current laws are for dolphins and whales but seals are the most susceptible.

Local police forces and the RSPCA have supported the campaign and also warned that seals can respond in an aggressive manner when threatened.

Richard Fussey from Humberside Police warned that seals cannot be predictable when they may appear quite compliant. Adding that they will respond on feeling out of fear. If they think they are been threatened, the animal can bite from some distance away.

"Our message is, 'Observe, don't disturb'," Geoff Edmond, from the RSPCA, added.

The petition also mentioned dog attacks, saying that seal sightings are rising across the country, leading to more often and at times lethal interactions between people and their pets.

Sightseers vs. Seals

Sally Butler from a volunteer group called Friends of Horsey Seals on the Norfolk coast, said sightseers needed to stay not less than 10m (33ft) away from the animals.

She was disturbed that a lot of people had frightened the pregnant females and it could make them miscarry their babies. She said it is just common sense that people should stay far back as possible.

They've got signs up all over, but people don't seem to be getting the message, she said. Butler said she even sighted a seal chasing a photographer after they came close to take a photo. She said now the matured females are quite heavily pregnant and they will begin to give birth.

Butler said also said: "The males are getting quite testosterone-filled and you can see them fighting at the water's edge, so it is really stupid to get anywhere near them. And for people to put their children in that situation is just unbelievable."

Related Article: A Hidden 'Breeding Cave' of the World's Rarest Seals Found in Cyprus

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An international research team studied Indonesia's ancient supervolcano and they discovered such volcanoes stay active and dangerous for thousands of years following a super-eruption.

This gave experts the need for a second thought of the way these possible catastrophic events are projected.

Supervolcano eruption

Martin Danisik, a lead Australian author from the John de Laeter Centre located at Curtin University and also an associate professor said supervolcanoes frequently became active several times with tens of thousands of years as intervals between the great eruptions but what took place during the period when it is dormant wasn't known.

Danisik, an Associate Professor said gaining knowledge of those prolonged dormant periods will determine what researchers search for in young erupting supervolcanoes to assist them in projecting future eruptions.

Danisik, an Associate Professor said: "Super-eruptions are among the most catastrophic events in Earth's history, venting tremendous amounts of magma almost instantaneously. They can impact global climate to the point of tipping the Earth into a 'volcanic winter', which is an abnormally cold period that may result in widespread famine and population disruption."

Also Read: Yellowstone Supervolcano Records 72 Earthquakes Last Month: Is Eruption Imminent?

Understanding Future Threat of Unavoidable Super-eruption

Danisik also said that knowing how supervolcanoes work is crucial for understanding the potential threat of an unavoidable super-eruption, which takes place one time every 17,000 years.

Associate Professor Danisik said the researchers carried out an investigation on the fate of magma remaining after the Toba super-eruption that occured 75,000 years ago, with the use of the minerals feldspar and zircon, containing independent records of time centered on the gathering of gasses helium and argon as memory boxes in the volcanic rocks.

With the use of these statistical inference, geochronological information, and thermal modeling, researchers showed that magma kept on oozing out within the caldera, or deep depression which the eruption of magma created, for about 5000 to 13,000 years following the super-eruption.

Then the covering of hardened left-over magma was moved up like the shell of a giant turtle, Associate Professor Danisik said.

Eruptible Magma

Danisik said the discoveries challenged already known knowledge and eruption study, which usually has to do with searching for liquid magma beneath a volcano to assess potential hazards. And they must now put into consideration that eruptions can take place even when no liquid magma is discovered under a volcano - the idea of what is 'eruptible' needs to be evaluated again.

Danisik said: "While a super-eruption can be regionally and globally impactful and recovery may take decades or even centuries, our results show the hazard is not over with the super-eruption and the threat of further hazards exists for many thousands of years after."

He added that understanding when and how eruptible magma piles up, and the magma's state before and after this type of eruptions, is critical for knowing about supervolcanoes.

Researchers from Oregon State University led the study.

Related Article: Experts: Supervolcano in Alaska is 'Active' and Hazardous, Should be Closely Monitored

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Rep. Clay Higgins, R-La., and other members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus call for the removal of President Joe Biden over the close of war in Afghanistan, at the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, Aug. 31, 2021.
TOKYO (AP)  Amid growing criticism of his handling of the pandemic, Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga said Friday he wont run for the leadership of the governing party later this month, paving the way for a new Japanese leader after just a year in office.

Suga told reporters that heading Japans pandemic response and campaigning to lead his governing Liberal Democratic Party at the same time divided his energies. I have decided not to run for the party leadership elections, as I would like to focus on coronavirus measures, Suga told reporters who rushed to his office after the news broke.

Suga has faced criticism and nosediving public support over a coronavirus response seen as too slow and limited and for holding the Olympics despite the publics health concerns. His hope of having the Olympic festivities help turn around his plunging popularity was also dashed.

He said he had put all his energy into important issues including the virus response since he took office.

But doing both takes enormous energy and I have decided that I should just choose one or the other, he said. As I have repeatedly said, protecting peoples lives and health is my responsibility as prime minister, and thats what I will dedicate myself to.

The Liberal Democrats and their coalition partner have a majority in parliament, meaning whoever wins the Sept. 29 party vote is virtually guaranteed to become the new prime minister.

The official start of the party campaign is Sept. 17. Candidacy requires factional support largely controlled by party heavyweights, and their choices may not match those favored in public opinion surveys.

Two Cabinet ministers in former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's government have come out as potential candidates: dovish former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida, currently seen as a top contender, and former Interior Minister Sanae Takaichi, who shares Abe's rightwing ideology.

Current Vaccinations Minister Taro Kono also expressed interest on Friday, saying he will make a final decision after consulting fellow lawmakers. Former Defense Miniter Shigeru Ishiba, a favorite in media surveys, and Seiko Noda, former gender equality minister, also reportedly have expressed intentions to run.

Kishida has criticized Suga's handling of the pandemic and recently proposed a series of virus measures, including more funding, a pledge to secure more hospital beds and creation of a health crisis management agency to centralize pandemic measures.

Kono, the son of the longest-serving lower house speaker and grandson of a former deputy prime minister, is a political blue blood and has served as foreign and defense ministers. He regularly communicates on social media and is popular among younger voters.

Suga's decision is largely seen as a political move so the party can have a fresh leader before national elections later this year. The lower house term ends in late October and elections must be held by late November.

Suga took office last September after Abe resigned due to health problems, to fill in the remainder of Abe's term.

The son of a strawberry farmer from Japan's northern prefecture of Akita, Suga enjoyed support ratings as high as 70% early in his tenure because he was seen as a leader from the common people rather than blue-blood political families like Abe.

Suga introduced a series of pragmatic measures, including digital transformation of the economy, administrative reforms and a pledge to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, but his support ratings slid quickly over his coronavirus measures as Japan's outbreak grew.

His downfall started late last year when he bumbled a travel promotion campaign as the pandemic was worsening. He was forced into declaring a state of emergency in January and has since repeatedly expanded and extended the emergency measures, most recently until Sept. 12. In the latest media surveys, his support ratings have declined to around 26%.

Being forced to live under restrictions, people have become increasingly frustrated and their dissatisfaction is nearing its peak, and that's the biggest reason causing Suga's administration to end," the Mainichi newspaper commented.

The emergency has largely focused on requests for eateries to close early and not serve alcohol, while requests for people to stay home and social distance have largely been ignored.

Suga has been criticized for presenting an overly optimistic outlook on the pandemic and for not sending convincing messages to the people to instill a sense of crisis. His vaccine-dependent policies also exposed people to risk while the vaccination campaign faced delays.

Although the pace of new cases in Tokyo has somewhat slowed, experts say a resurgence can occur any time and the health care system is under severe pressure with hospitals filled with serious cases and tens of thousands of sick people recovering at home.

I hope this wont create a vacuum, as it's a crucial time" for the virus situation, said Dr. Shigeru Omi, the government's top medical adviser. He urged officials to strengthen the country's medical system and accelerate tests and the vaccine rollout.

Problems are mounting, said Masakazu Tokura, chairman of the Japan Business Federation, a powerful business lobby. Delays in the coronavirus measures are unacceptable."

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The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army Gen. Mark Milley, says its possible the U.S. will coordinate with the Taliban on any future counterterrorism strikes in Afghanistan against Islamic State militants or others


100,000 people see Dippy at Norwich Cathedral 100,000 people see Dippy at Norwich Cathedral

More than 100,000 people have enjoyed visiting the Natural History Museums Dippy the dinosaur since he took up residence in Norwich Cathedrals Nave in July.
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NEW YORK (AP)  Landing a waitressing job or bartending gig at a Lost Dog Cafe in Northern Virginia had never been easy.

Help Wanted signs were a rarity, and half the chain's staff stuck around for at least 10 years. The onset of the pandemic made job prospects even worse when Lost Dog had to temporarily shut down indoor dining.

But as vaccinated patrons rushed back to eat out and once-loyal workers moved onto new opportunities, the business began struggling in May to fill the roughly 20% in vacancies on its service staff.

To address the shortage, it did something it hadn't done before: look to people without experience. It also started recruiting workers under 18.

Lost Dog is one of a growing number of companies that, in a desperation for hired hands, is loosening restrictions on everything from age to level of experience. Drug store chain CVS announced earlier in August it would no longer require a minimum high school degree to fill entry level spots at its stores. This year, it also plans to end its GPA requirement of 3.0 when it recruits on college campuses. Meanwhile, Amazon has stopped testing job seekers for marijuana.

The changing standards may have helped boost hiring this summer, even as many companies complained they couldn't find all the workers they need. Employers added a hefty 940,000 jobs in both June and July, lowering the unemployment rate to 5.4%.

On Friday, the government will release figures for August, and economists forecast they will show another 750,000 jobs were added that month, with unemployment falling to 5.2%. Some analysts worry job gains will come in lower because of the delta variant, but are optimistic about hiring in the fall.

The trend to relax the rules started about three years ago when the labor market started to tighten. It accelerated this past spring when employers were caught flat-footed as Americans enthusiastically emerged from months of pandemic lockdowns, eager to shop and dine again. At the same time, workers were reevaluating their jobs and whether the long hours were worth the paycheck.

The perfect storm led to record job openings, which increased to 10.1 million in June from 9.2 million in May at a rate of 6.5%  the highest since the Labor Department started tracking the numbers two decades ago. People voluntarily leaving their jobs increased to 3.9 million from 3.6 million in May.

Employers dangled incentives like higher hourly wages and extra bonuses but still had trouble filling openings. Data from various sources show that they are now more willing to let go of some restrictions that in the past have shut out certain populations from the workforce.

Job-hunting platform ZipRecruiter, which scrubs 16 million job postings of all types of work, says the percentage of jobs requiring a bachelors degree fell from nearly 15% in 2016 to just over 11% in 2020. But that figure dropped even more drastically to 7% from January to June of this year. For the percentage of job listings requiring no experience, the figure went from roughly 9.2% in 2016 to 14.3% in 2020, and jumped again to 18.6% for the first six months of this year.

Experts say many of the restrictions were artificial barriers that perpetually kept out low-income workers, particularly people of color. Education requirements, for instance, tend to favor white workers over Black. Compared with 47.1% of white adults, just 30.8% of Black adults have earned some form of college degree, according to the Educational Trust, an educational nonprofit.

Delta Air Lines says 95% percent of its jobs in customer service no longer require a four-year college degree, up from 78% back in the first quarter of 2020. Ashley Black, director of equity strategies at Delta, said the move was not directly because of any labor shortages; rather, it was about finding the right talent for the job and the organization.

Traditional hiring processes are highly subjective and can have multiple barriers that complicate access to economic opportunities for any potential talent," Black said. Still, this disproportionally impacts people of color. Without being able to easily and credibly assess skills, implicit bias can shape the recruiting and hiring processes.

Sarah White, a restaurant consultant and area manager for three independently owned and operated locations of The Lost Dog Cafe franchise, says the relaxed requirements have opened doors for job prospects who might have not been previously considered.

We get locked in these ideas of what the job looks like, White said. Now, we are getting people we wouldnt have hired before. And they have been some of the most amazing employees. It would have been our loss.

Karen Rosa, 32, started out as a server at the Lost Dog Cafe last September but then became a bartender without any experience. She says she can now pull in a steady $600 to $700 a week. She says her server's income was more volatile.

They gave me a chance," she said. "They were very helpful.

But there are downsides, too. White says shes been so desperate at times shes had to hire some servers who have bad attitudes and have actually scared away customers.

We dont have anyone to wait on them, but we are also losing them because they get service but its from someone that I wouldnt want serving them, she said.

Daniel Schneider, professor of public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, says that the difficulties of finding good workers like servers underscores a lie that this is not skilled labor.

Not just anyone can step into these roles, he said. These are skilled jobs, and they should be compensated accordingly.

Companies say theyre making up for the lack of experience by doing a better job with training. Lost Dog now trains cooks on different types of menu items every day and also posts cocktail recipes on the back of the bar rail where customers cant see them. CVS just opened two new workforce innovation and talent centers in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, where it works with faith-based and community organizations to find, train and place workers in jobs such as pharmacy technicians and customer service workers.

No one can predict whether companies will go back to tightening requirements when they're flush with lots of job applicants again.

Brad Hershbein, senior economist and communications Advisor at W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, said employers may still offer leeway on academic credentials but desperate moves like hiring people with bad attitudes will go away.

"Employers may decide there are other ways of actually screening employees that are more effective than looking at key words on their resume or do they pass this education or experience requirement, Hershbein said.



AP Business Writers Alexandra Olson in New York and Christopher Rugaber in Washington contributed to this story.

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NORWALK  City roadways were flooded, hundreds were without power and one roof partially collapsed as Ida ripped through the city early Thursday.

The storm produced 7.5 inches of rain in Norwalk, resulting in a historically significant event, city spokesperson Josh Morgan said.

The storm caused a portion of the UPS Customer Center facilitys roof to collapse, Morgan said. There were no injuries at the facility, which is located on Martin Luther King Drive in South Norwalk.

More than 40 incidents were reported to the city during the storm, mostly of flooding in roadways, Morgan said. Some trees and tree limbs fell as well, he said.

We inspected our public properties this morning and all parks and beaches are open, Morgan said Thursday. No swimming though, due to the high amount of rain.

The water will be tested again before swimming will be permitted, Morgan said.

The city advised motorists to avoid driving through water-covered roadways and use extra caution as there may be debris in the roadway, Morgan said.

Multiple roads were closed during the storm due to flooding, but all reopened on Thursday, Morgan said.

Norwalk Police received about 190 calls for service between 5 p.m. Wednesday and 7:30 a.m. Thursday, Sgt. Sofia Gulino said.

From the calls we received, I do not see any that required medical attention beyond response to accidents or routine medical calls, Gulino said.

While more than 1,000 Norwalk outages were reported early Thursday morning, they were mostly all resolved by nightfall, Eversource reported.

In the storms aftermath, small branches and trees were scattered across the streets and sidewalks in South Norwalk on Thursday morning.

A large tree broke over the side of a concrete wall along on Knorr Street just around the corner from the South Norwalk Boat Club. On the same wall, three hoses from separate houses hung to pump water out of their respective backyards. More water trickled out of the small holes at the base of the wall.

Water settled outside the WB Mason building on Woodward Avenue, creating small ponds in the front yard. Up the street, parts of the Woodward were still covered in water and Lawrence Avenue was completely under water coming off Woodward. The street dried up around the corner.

The storm caused significant flooding in parts of Connecticut and widespread power outages, while also shutting down Metro-North and backing up traffic for miles on Interstate 95 southbound near the New York border on Thursday morning.
Health officials warn people not to take a drug meant for livestock to ward off or treat Covid-19
New Zealand police have shot and killed an ISIS supporter who injured at least six people in a supermarket "terrorist attack" in the Auckland suburb of New Lynn on Friday, authorities say.

"This afternoon at approximately 2:40 p.m., a violent extremist undertook a terrorist attack," said Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern in a news conference Friday afternoon. "This was a violent attack, it was senseless, and I am so sorry it happened."

Ardern added that the man was a Sri Lankan national, a "supporter of ISIS ideology," and a "known security threat." He was under constant surveillance by multiple government agencies, and security personnel were able to shoot and kill him within 60 seconds from the start of the attack, she said.

The attacker obtained a knife within the store and used it to stab shoppers before police shot him, said New Zealand Police Commissioner Andrew Coster, who described him as a lone actor. The man died at the scene.

Videos posted online showed panicked shoppers running out of the LynnMall Shopping Centre and looking for cover as the situation unfolded.

Six people have been injured, emergency crews said, with three in critical condition. Heavily armed police and ambulances remain at the scene, and authorities have cordoned off the surrounding streets.

The attacker came to New Zealand in 2011 and became a person of interest in October 2016, authorities said.

Ardern did not publicly share the man's identity, saying he had faced court in the past and suppression orders prevented officials from releasing certain information about him.

The Prime Minister added that she had been "personally aware" of him before the attack, and authorities were monitoring him because they could not keep him in prison.

"I acknowledge this situation poses questions about whether police could have acted faster or done more," Coster said. "I am confident we have done everything we can within the law ... we were doing everything we could to monitor him. The fact we were able to react within 60 seconds shows that."

Auckland was already under a Level 4 lockdown, the country's most stringent level, due to surging coronavirus cases -- meaning most shops are closed and most people must stay home. Supermarkets remain open as an essential service.

Countdown, the supermarket chain that owns the LynnMall location, said in a statement it was "devastated" by the attack.

"Our hearts are heavy knowing what our team and customers have witnessed and been through," the statement said.

New Zealand has been on alert for attacks since a white supremacist gunman killed 51 people at two mosques in the city of Christchurch on March 15, 2019.

Ardern, asked if the Friday attack could have been revenge for the 2019 mosque shootings, said it was not clear. The man alone who was responsible for the violence, not a faith, she said.

"It was hateful, it was wrong. It was carried out by an individual, not a faith," Ardern said. "He alone carries the responsibility for these acts."

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The conference room at the Champaign-Urbana Public Health District in Champaign is full of first-contact employees calling people infected with COVID-19 to get a list of contacts that the employees pass on to tracers. Health district Administrator Julie Pryde said they have hired over 80 people since the pandemic began.
University of California San Diego School of Medicine will receive $2.6 million to expand its existing Program in Medical Education (PRIME) on healthy equity, and launch a new PRIME program focused on Native American health. The funding is part of a larger $12.9 million budget to fund all UC PRIME programs, approved in the new California state budget by Governor Gavin Newsom on July 12.

Alec Calac, Alexandra Pryor, Sofia Aedo, and Katherine Garcia were the first students to participate in the Tribal Ambulatory Healthcare Experience, a new course at the UC San Diego School of Medicine.

UC PRIME is a collection of medical school programs designed to support medically underserved populations and address the growing shortage of health care providers in California. Most PRIME students are from communities underrepresented in medicine, and often go on to practice medicine in underserved areas.

UC San Diego will use the funds towards student financial support and program development, starting as early as fall 2021. Class sizes in the School of Medicine will also increase from 134 to 140 students, with the first cohort of the program on Native American health joining in fall 2022.

PRIME-Health Equity is now fully funded

"The goal of the PRIME-Health Equity program is to help educate and promote physician leaders who will provide competent and compassionate care to underserved and vulnerable populations, and address health inequities in the community, state and nation," said Maria Rosario (Happy) Araneta, PhD, MPH, professor in the Department of Family Medicine and dean of Diversity and Community Partnerships at UC San Diego School of Medicine, and professor in the Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Human Longevity Science.

PRIME-Health Equity medical students study the family, community, cultural and sociopolitical influences on health, and learn strategies for developing community-based intervention programs. They also participate in hands-on training through the school's Student-Run Free Clinic, and lead the Doc-4-A-Day outreach program at local middle and high schools.

Students typically complete the program in five years, including four years of medical education and one year completing a master's degree in a related field such as public health. While the program previously funded only the one year of master's studies, the new budget will instead allow for substantial scholarships throughout the four years of medical education.

I intentionally selected PRIME-Health Equity for my medical education because I hoped to learn ways to serve communities that have historically been and continue to be excluded from exceptional medical care." Cecilia Rangel-Garcia, MD, a recent graduate of the program

In alignment with the PRIME mission, Rangel-Garcia recently moved back to Fresno to care for her community while completing a residency in psychiatry.

"Exceptional medical care takes the whole person into account  their background, community, family, school, work experience and more," said Rangel-Garcia. "Through PRIME-Health Equity, I was exposed to providers who are doing this work to appropriately care for and support these communities."

New PRIME program on Native American health

The state budget also provides funding for two new PRIME programs focused on the needs of Native American and Black communities. UC San Diego School of Medicine was selected to host the program on Native American health in partnership with UC Davis, with each school hosting six students funded by this program per year.

"UC San Diego was built on the unceded territory of the Kumeyaay Nation," said Michelle Daniel, MD, professor of clinical emergency medicine and vice dean for medical education at UC San Diego School of Medicine. "As a land-grant institution, we have an obligation to promote greater inclusion of American Indian students in medicine, and support the health care of our local tribes."

"The PRIME funding will significantly expand our current efforts to address, and hopefully reduce, the relative shortage in physicians who provide health care to Native populations across the different environments where they reside," said Matthew Allison, MD, MPH, professor and chief of the Division of Preventive Medicine at UC San Diego School of Medicine, and member of the Chickasaw Nation. "Importantly, this program will provide specialized training on the unique needs of Indigenous citizens."

PRIME-Health Equity medical students visit Daniel Calac, MD, at the Indian Health Council in 2019.

Students in the new program will enroll in a curriculum similar to the PRIME-Health Equity program, with additional opportunities to shadow physicians at local Indian health clinics and run the Native Doc-4-A-Day program.

"All of the leg work for this started more than two years ago," said Luis Castellanos, MD, MPH, clinical professor of medicine and director of PRIME-Health Equity at UC San Diego School of Medicine. While drafting the proposal for the new program, UC San Diego students and faculty were already hard at work recruiting Native American students and developing courses on Native American health care. "Thanks to these efforts, we have been accepting the most Native American students across all UC medical schools. This made us competitive and poised to receive these funds."

California is home to the largest American Indian and Alaskan Native population, with San Diego County having the highest number of Indian reservations in the country. Yet less than 1 percent of the state's medical students identify as American Indian or Alaskan Native.

"To my knowledge, I am the first medical student from a tribe in California in our school's history," said Alec Calac, MD-PhD student, national president-elect of the Association of Native American Medical Students and member of the Pauma Band of Luiseno Indians. "I know my representation is important, and I have worked tirelessly to bring attention at the state and national level to our continued underrepresentation in the physician workforce. The past three years have been transformative regarding our community engagement, and our representation in the student body has increased 300 percent since 2018."

According to Kama Guluma, MD, clinical professor of emergency medicine and associate dean for admissions and student affairs, UC San Diego School of Medicine is "committed to removing barriers to the recruitment, retention and advancement of talented American Indian medical students, and seeks to always respect their heritage."

"I could not be more excited and hopeful for the expansion of funding to PRIME and I look forward to welcoming future colleagues into this family," Rangel-Garcia said.
From tele-monitoring patients with diabetes to using artificial intelligence to prevent sepsis, the newly launched Center for Health Innovation at UC San Diego Health will seek to develop, test and commercialize technologies that make a real, measurable difference in the lives and wellbeing of patients.

Every U.S. hospital has common challenges to address in continuously improving patient experience, outcomes and safety: this is where our efforts will focus. Basically, we're taking real-world problems, such as diabetes and hypertension, and using our insights to address these conditions with what will one day become safe patient-centered technologies." Patty Maysent, CEO, UC San Diego Health

The Center for Health Innovation at UC San Diego Health will seek to develop, test and commercialize technologies that make a real, measurable difference in the lives of patients.

Similar innovation centers are housed at UCSF, Washington University, Cleveland Clinic, Mayo Clinic and New York University. The new Center for Health Innovation will be located on the La Jolla campus of UC San Diego. Collaborators will include the UC San Diego Design Lab, Qualcomm Institute and Jacobs School of Engineering.

"What's unique about our center is that we are partnering with another global institution, Techna Institute, to leverage and integrate best practices in research and patient care," said David Brenner, MD, vice chancellor, UC San Diego Health Sciences. "This dedicated hub of innovation at UC San Diego Health will benefit our patients and also patients in a variety of community and academic settings."

The Center for Health Innovation is modeled after the University Health Network's (UHN) Techna Institute, jointly located within the organization's hospital sites and at the University of Toronto. In partnership with others, the institute has designed numerous products now used in hospitals and clinics, including advanced digital therapeutics that optimize the care of chronic conditions through algorithm-based decision-making, an image-guided GammaKnife for bed-side treatment and the use of human factors engineering methods to ensure not only the safety of products and services, but to also improved user experience.

"Our Techna Institute has had great success in improving health outcomes, efficiency and both patient and provider experience through various projects that integrated research and technology development within our hospitals," said Kevin Smith, DrPhil, president and CEO, University Health Network, Canada's largest academic health sciences center. "We are pleased to work with peer institutions to help them replicate that approach, as shortening the interval between technology development and implementation in the health system accelerates the transformation of health care in a way that better serves patients."

"Doctors, nurses and medical teams know best where there are existing technology gaps in patient care. Our in-house teams of clinicians and scientists will innovate solutions that lead to things like lower blood pressure with longer term goals, like reduced number of hospitalizations and a longer life," said Christopher Longhurst, MD, chief information officer, UC San Diego Health. "With our proximity to the health and biotech sector as well as the cross-border region, the number of collaborative opportunities are immense."

UC San Diego Health and TECHNA Institute first collaborated on CA Notify, a smartphone-based system built on Google-Apple exposure notification technology, to help quell the SARS-CoV-2 surge. It is estimated that 1 in 3 California residents over the age of 18 now uses CA Notify.

"COVID-19 created a crisis where remote monitoring of patients, including video visits, had to become a new standard of care. The lessons learned from this time period will bring new technologies to bear for patients with both chronic and emergent conditions," said Parag Agnihotri, MD, chief medical officer, Population Health Services, UC San Diego Health.

Initial projects for the new center will focus on refining the virtual visit experience for patients with technologies like wearable sensors that can monitor chronic conditions. The goal is to focus on older adults, high-risk patients with diabetes and hypertension and patients in hard-to-reach geographies.
One in every 10 kids under the age of 14 live with a chronic health condition.

These conditions  which can include heart disease, diabetes and asthma  affect many areas of a child's life and, in some cases, can lead to hospitalizations that last days, weeks or even months.

A big data study from UNSW Sydney and University of Sydney has used data from Australia's standardized school assessment, the NAPLAN, to find out just how much children hospitalized with chronic illness are falling behind.

The findings in more than 300,000 children, published today in Archives of Disease in Childhood, paint a stark picture.

"Our results show that although one in 20 children may miss the NAPLAN test, this was double (10 per cent) for those hospitalized with a chronic condition," says co-senior author of the study Raghu Lingam, a professor in pediatric population health at UNSW Medicine & Health and pediatricians at Sydney Children's Hospitals Network.

"Nearly 40 per cent of the most severely affected children  that is, those that were hospitalized more than seven times or more than 15 days  didn't even take the NAPLAN test.

"Those children hospitalized with a chronic condition that did sit the NAPLAN test were at a 30-60 per cent increased risk of not meeting national minimal standards."

The research is the first large-scale population study to look at how children hospitalized with chronic illness perform compared to their peers. The research team behind the study are part of the Kids to Adults Chronic Illness Alliance (K2A Alliance), a national group of over 200 researchers, clinicians and parents looking at ways to improve the lives of children with chronic illness.

The researchers analyzed data from a population group of all children born in NSW between 2000 and 2006, with a focus on their NAPLAN results when they were in grades 3, 5 and 7. While the available dataset only included results from public schools (over 300,000 children in total), it still accounted for about two thirds of students in NSW.

Around 16-18 per cent of students in these grades had been hospitalized with a chronic condition before their scheduled NAPLAN tests, which the team identified using a combination of routine birth records and hospital admission records.

Alarmingly, the more hospital admissions or bed-days a child had  regardless of their type of chronic condition  the poorer their academic performance.

The team also found that children hospitalized with mental health or behavioral conditions had the highest risk of poor academic performance compared to other chronic conditions.

These results show that there's a significant proportion of children in NSW who are facing this challenge. Up until now, we haven't known how many there are and what the impact is for them." Dr Joanna Fardell, co-lead author, senior research fellow at UNSW and neuropsychologist at Westmead Hospital

Prof. Lingam says he hopes the findings lead to broader change and support for these students.

"We all knew this was happening, but the weight of the numbers is huge from a policy and practice perspective," he says.

"Being able to put a numeric to this shows that we really do need to have additional support for these children and young people with chronic illnesses."

Participation matters

The NAPLAN test  which children in grades 3, 5, 7 and 9 need to sit annually  measures students' academic skills in reading, writing, spelling, numeracy, grammar and punctuation.

Co-senior author of the study Professor Natasha Nassar, pediatric epidemiologist and chair of translational childhood medicine at the University of Sydney, says that while the NAPLAN isn't the be all and end all, it does give a population level and standardized view of how well children are performing over time.

"The NAPLAN gives us a snapshot of how those children are going and lets us look at how their educational trajectories develop over time," she says.

"These trajectories are really predictive of later life outcomes, and can predict whether they complete school, get a job, how they interact in society and even their health and wellbeing."

According to Dr Fardell, the NAPLAN may be even more valuable for students who need to spend time in hospital.

"For these kids that are vulnerable, participation in school and standardized assessments is even more important," she says.

"It's an opportunity to be part of a community, and to be part of a normal developmental process."

Finding more support

Currently, children with physical or behavioral disabilities receive support from government and schools to help their access to education, via Schools for Specific Purposes, access to specialist support teachers and tailored learning and support programs and resources.

But children hospitalized due to chronic illness often fall through these support gaps.

"There is no standardized model of care or policy related directly to children with chronic illness," says Dr Fardell.

"While there's support in place for children identified as having a disability, there is this whole other population that just aren't being served under the current set of policies and support structures."

The researchers say they hope to build on this research with more population and intervention-based studies  this way, they can learn more about the students that need help while also finding the best ways to support them.

Dr Nan Hu, co-lead author of the paper and research fellow at the UNSW School of Women's and Children's Health, says integrated interventions will go a long way in helping these students.

"We need to offer more help to those children affected with chronic conditions  in particular, those who are hospitalized," he says.

"This should include integrated interventions that incorporate health, education, and psychological support, especially as children hospitalized with mental health or behavioral conditions are at the highest risk of performing below the basic academic requirements."
Humans still seem to be better than technology when it comes to the accuracy of spotting possible cases of breast cancer during screening, suggests a review published online in The BMJ today.

The researchers say there is currently a lack of good quality evidence to support a policy of replacing human radiologists with artificial intelligence (AI) technology when screening for breast cancer.

Breast cancer is a leading cause of death among women worldwide and many countries have introduced mammography screening programmes to detect and treat it early. But examining mammograms for early signs of cancer is high volume repetitive work for radiologists, and some cancers are missed.

Previous research has suggested that AI systems outperform humans and might soon be used instead of experienced radiologists. Yet a recent review of 23 studies highlighted evidence gaps and concerns about the methods used.

To address this uncertainty, the UK National Screening Committee commissioned a team of researchers from the University of Warwick to examine the accuracy of AI for the detection of breast cancer in mammography screening practice.

The researchers reviewed 12 studies carried out since 2010 involving data for 131,822 screened women in Sweden, the United States, Germany, the Netherlands and Spain.

Overall, the quality of the methods used in the 12 studies was poor and their applicability to European or UK breast cancer screening programmes was low.

Three large studies involving 79,910 women compared AI systems with the clinical decisions of the original radiologist. Of these, 1,878 had screen detected cancer or interval cancer (cancer diagnosed in-between routine screening appointments) within 12 months of screening.

The majority (34 out of 36 or 94%) of AI systems evaluated in these three studies were less accurate than a single radiologist, and all were less accurate than the consensus of two or more radiologists, which is the standard practice in Europe.

In contrast, five smaller studies involving 1,086 women reported that all of the AI systems evaluated were more accurate than a single radiologist. But the researchers note that these studies were at high risk of bias and their promising results are not replicated in larger studies.

In three studies, AI used as a pre-screen to triage which mammograms need to be examined by a radiologist and which do not screened out 53%, 45%, and 50% of women at low risk but also 10%, 4%, and 0% of cancers detected by radiologists.

The authors point to some study limitations such as excluding non-English studies that might have contained relevant evidence, and they acknowledge that AI algorithms are short lived and constantly improving, so reported assessments of AI systems might be out of date by the time of study publication.

Nevertheless, use of stringent study inclusion criteria together with rigorous and systematic evaluation of study quality suggests their conclusions are robust.

As such, they say: "Current evidence on the use of AI systems in breast cancer screening is a long way from having the quality and quantity required for its implementation into clinical practice."

They add: "Well designed comparative test accuracy studies, randomised controlled trials, and cohort studies in large screening populations are needed which evaluate commercially available AI systems in combination with radiologists in clinical practice."
How can government slow the spread of COVID-19 in the U.S.? Look to America's unique epidemic engines: jails and prisons in America.

Extremely high rates of incarceration in the U.S. undercut national public health and safety. The overcrowded, tight quarters in jails fuel constant risks of outbreaks. Add to that the daily movement of 420,000 guards in and out of the facilities and 30,000 newly released people who are likely to inadvertently carry the virus back to communities.

A new study from Northwestern Medicine, Toulouse School of Economics and the French National Centre for Scientific Research found the best way to address this public safety threat is through decarceration (i.e., reducing the number of people detained in jails).

"If we can immediately stop jailing people for minor alleged offenses and begin building a national decarceration program to end mass incarceration, these changes will protect us from COVID-19 now and will also benefit long-term U.S. public health and pandemic preparedness," said first author Dr. Eric Reinhart, an anthropologist of public health and resident physician in the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.

The study evaluated the association of jail decarceration and government anti-contagion policies with reductions in the spread of SARS-CoV-2 in the U.S. It will be published Sept. 2 in the journal JAMA Network Open.

It is the first study to link mass incarceration systems to pandemic vulnerability and international biosecurity (i.e., systems for protecting against disease or harmful biological agents). In a pandemic, amplification of COVID-19 spread by one country spills over into other nations such that mass incarceration in the U.S. is a threat not only to Americans but also to global public health at large.

Although many prior studies have documented that high incarceration rates are associated with harm to communitywide health, this study of 1,605 U.S. counties is the first to show that decarceration is associated with community-wide public health benefits.

U.S. jails, prisons are 'infectious disease incubators'

The U.S. incarcerates people at seven times the average rate among peer nations such as France, Canada, Germany, England, etc., and holds almost 25% of the world's incarcerated population. Due to crowded conditions with poor healthcare, U.S. jails and prisons have effectively become infectious disease incubators in which at least 661,000 cases of COVID-19 have been documented since the pandemic began.

Reinhart said this is due in large part to the 55% weekly turnover rate in U.S. jail populations, which means crowds of people-;totaling approximately 650,000 each day, 75% of whom are awaiting trial and 25% of whom are serving short sentences for minor offenses-;are being detained in cramped spaces, and then most are released back to their communities shortly thereafter. While detained, their chances of contracting SARS-Cov-2 increase dramatically, and when they return home, many unknowingly carry the virus back to their friends, family and neighbors.

"The majority of these people should never have been taken to jail in the first place," Reinhart said. "There is no plausible public safety justification for their detention in a large proportion of cases, and a significant percentage of those jailed will never be convicted of the alleged crimes for which they were detained. Furthermore, no oneregardless of whether they have in fact committed a crimeshould be subjected to the high risk of coronavirus infection imposed by the poor conditions in these facilities.

"The high rate at which people are cycled between communities and unnecessary short-term stays in jails is creating epidemiologic pumps that drive more and more infections in both jails and communities. This jail churn effectively produces epidemic machines that seed outbreaks both in and beyond jails, undermining public safety for the entire country."

'A natural experiment'

The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in large-scale releases of inmates, with many jails decarcerating at rates between 20-50%, Reinhart said.

We used this exceptional historical episode during the pandemic to ask, 'What were the consequences of this large-scale jail decarceration?' It provided an opportunity for a natural experiment. Pandemic-era decarceration wasn't associated just with benefits for people who were released but also for everyone in the community. No study has ever been able to show this before, largely because we haven't previously seen a real-world scenario with such sudden large-scale decarceration along with a well-documented meanslike Covid-19 casesto trace its implications for communities." Dr. Eric Reinhart, First Author

The 1,605-county analysis from Reinhart and his co-author Daniel Chen of the Toulouse School of Economics and The World Bank encompassed 72% of the total U.S. population to provide one of the most fine-grained large analyses of anticontagion policies to date (jail decarceration along with 10 policies), including mask mandates, school closures, stay-at-home orders and more.

Reinhart and Chen estimated that an 80% reduction in U.S. jail populationsa level of decarceration achievable simply by pursuing alternatives to jail detention for those detained for non-violent alleged offenseswould have been associated with 2% reduction in daily COVID-19 case growth rates. This effect size was eight times larger in counties with above-median population density, including large urban areas, and was considerably larger when Reinhart and Chen considered not just changes in jail populations but also estimated jail turnover.

"Although this may sound like a small number," Reinhart said, "because daily growth routes compound over time, even just a 2% reduction in daily case growth rates in the U.S. from the beginning of the pandemic until now would translate to the prevention of millions of cases. And, if on top of that, you factor in prison-related spread and the contribution of over 400,000 jail and prison guards to COVID-19 cases in their home communitiessomething we didn't have access to data to trackthen the contribution of the U.S. carceral system to overall COVID-19 cases in the U.S. has clearly been enormous," he said.

Nursing home visitation bans were associated with the largest reduction (7.3%) in COVID-19 case growth rates of all the policies Reinhart and Chen analyzed, followed by school closures (4.3%), mask mandates (2.5%), prison visitation bans (1.2%), and stay-at-home orders (0.8%).

Reinhart suggested these results also carry policy lessons not just for immediate anticontagion measures but also for broader public investments to improve conditions in schools and nursing homes.

As COVID-19 cases are again increasing around the world in connection with the delta variant, Reinhart believes this study's findings "contain useful evidence for informing maximally effective policymaking to protect the public," he said.

Jail-linked disease spread and racial disparities

Reinhart and Chen's recent related study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences focused on the ways in which what they call "carceral-community epidemiology" how health in jails and prisons is always interconnected with health in broader communitiesparticularly affects U.S. communities of color. Black and Latinx neighborhoods endure the highest rates of policing and incarceration, so when jails amplify disease in communities, this especially affects these racialized groups, Reinhart said.

"Our prior research showed that this jail-community spread of coronavirus likely accounts for a substantial proportion of the racial disparities we have seen in COVID-19 cases across the U.S.," Reinhart said. "Ultimately, this also harms all U.S. residents regardless of race, class or partisan affiliations, as disregarding the health of marginalized people inevitably causes harmalbeit unevenlyto everyone else in a society too."
An analysis of more than 20,000 individual medical records suggests that a form of heart valve disease thought to be relatively benign during pregnancy may put women at risk for serious bleeding, high blood pressure, organ damage and other complications during childbirth, according to research from Johns Hopkins Medicine.

In a report on the study, published online Aug. 24 in the American Journal of Cardiology, researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine found that pregnant women with a history of regurgitant or "leaky" heart valves, as well as those with narrowed or stenotic valves, are up to 100 times more likely to experience cardiac complications such as heart failure at the time of delivery compared with women without heart valve disease.

Although relatively rare among pregnant women in the United States, heart valve disease causes complications such as premature labor and heart failure in up to 10% of women giving birth each year.

The study leaders say their findings suggest that heart and obstetrical experts should increase attention to assessing risk in all women with a history of any type of heart valve disease before and during pregnancy.

The heart's four valves  mitral, tricuspid, pulmonic and aortic  keep blood flowing in the correct direction. Most risk-assessment guidelines focus on any degree of stenosis, or narrowing and tightening of valves that reduces blood flow and causes extra strain on the heart.

This new analysis found that maternal complications, such as fluid buildup in the lungs, heart rhythm problems or heart failure, occur just as often in women with regurgitant heart valve disease, a type of valve lesion long thought to be low risk and marked by incomplete closure of a valve, leading to leakage and backward blood flow.

"Our study focused on something that perhaps doesn't get a lot of attention," said Erin Michos, M.D., M.H.S., director of women's cardiovascular health and associate professor of medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, who was the senior author of the study. The new study's results, she says, call for an increase in screening women for all types of valve disease before and during pregnancy.

Anum Minhas, M.D., M.H.S., lead author of the study and the chief clinical and research fellow in the Division of Cardiology at Johns Hopkins Medicine, says their study was inspired by experiences with women who had a history of severe valvular disease and the relative lack of up-to-date research about the value of current assessment tools.

Unfortunately, so much of women's health practices has been dominated by individual experiences and experts saying they believe something to be true rather than based on evidence." Anum Minhas, M.D., M.H.S., Study's Lead Author

For the new study, the Johns Hopkins research team used data from the 2016-2018 National Inpatient Sample, a large government-funded dataset of hospital admissions, to compare demographics, medical conditions, and obstetric and cardiovascular complications during the time of delivery.

From a total of about 11.2 million delivery hospitalizations across 48 states and the District of Columbia, 20,349 women had a documented history of valvular heart disease. Among the findings with implications for better assessing risks during delivery, the researchers report that most women with valvular disease were older and had a higher prevalence of underlying medical conditions such as high blood pressure and diabetes compared with women without valvular disease. For example, 5.1% of women with valvular disease had hypertension, or high blood pressure, compared with less than 1% of women without valvular disease.

Among obstetric and fetal complications, preeclampsia, a potentially dangerous pregnancy complication caused by high blood pressure, was 90% more common, and placental abruption, when the placenta detaches from the womb causing poor oxygen flow to the baby, was 30% more common in women with valvular heart disease, compared with women without. The results also found that the risk of hemorrhaging during delivery was 40% more likely among those with any form of heart valve disease. Overall, the research team found that mitral valve regurgitation was the most common form of valve disease among the women in the study, affecting 45% of those with disease, followed by mitral stenosis (26%).

"Our findings suggest significant obstetric and cardiovascular complications are associated with regurgitant valves, challenging our current way of thinking that regurgitant valves are benign," said Minhas. "The data tell us that we really can't assume that women who have leakier heart valves are going to be OK during pregnancy. They should get the same amount of attention that women with valve stenosis get."

Michos says that in addition to the need for revising risk calculators for pregnant women to include a history of leaky valves, the findings suggest that women with any form of cardiovascular disease may benefit from specialized care from a cardio-obstetric team. Minhas said the next step in this study would be to confirm the findings by identifying and following women with valvular disease during pregnancy to see whether they have cardiovascular and obstetric complications.

This work was supported by National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute training grant T32HL007024, the Amato Fund for Women's Health research, and the Lou and Nancy Grasmick Endowed Research Fellowship.

Other scientists who conducted the research include Faisal Rahman, Nicole Gavin, Ari Cedars, Arthur Jason Vaught, Sammy Zakaria, Jon Resar, Stefano Schena, Steven Schulman, Di Zhao and Allison G. Hays from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

Jon Resar reports grants from Abbott Vascular Inc., Medtronic Inc. and Boston Scientific Corp. All other authors have no disclosures or conflicts of interest.
A new study by researchers at Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS) in New York City presented today at the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS) 2021 annual meeting could help physicians better manage patients who experience debilitating stiffness after they undergo knee replacement surgery.

Stiffness after knee replacement surgery, or total knee arthroplasty (TKA), is a rare but frustrating complication, affecting between 1% and 7% of patients who receive the artificial joints. "Why some people and not others experience limited range of motion after TKA is unknown," said Ioannis Gkiatas, MD, PhD, an orthopedic surgeon at the University of Ioannina, in Greece, and the first author of the new study who also recently completed a research Complex Joint Reconstruction fellowship at HSS.

The goal of the study was to see if we can help physicians predict how patients will do following the revision surgery, using information gathered before and after the procedure, to shape their postoperative treatment plans." Dr. Ioannis Gkiatas, MD, PhD, Orthopedic Surgeon, University of Ioannina, Greece

The work was conducted under the supervision of Peter K. Sculco, MD, hip and knee surgeon at HSS, who is leading a large, ongoing study of patient outcomes after revision TKA for reduced range of motion after index TKA.

For the study, Drs. Gkiatas, Sculco and their colleagues followed 19 men and women who underwent revision TKA at HSS to try to improve stiffness in patients with prior TKA. Patients underwent range of motion testing before the procedure and at six weeks, six months and one year after the operation.

A healthy knee has a wide range of motion -; from full extension (0 degrees) through the sitting position (90 degrees) to kneeling (approximately 140 degrees). All patients gained some mobility after the revision surgery, with the average improvement being approximately 28 degrees of motion. Most of the benefit appeared to occur in the first six weeks after the operation, then gradually tapered off over time.

The researchers found that patients with the least restricted mobility experienced the greatest gains from the revision surgery. Patients who could bend their affected knee more than 82 degrees before TKA revision had an 80 percent chance of maintaining that level of mobility, or gaining flexibility in the joint, after the operation and throughout the follow-up period.

However, two-thirds of patients whose range of motion was less than 64 degrees before surgery experienced regression in that mobility across all time points of the study and never attained the 82-degree threshold.

"Although 82 degrees doesn't seem much more than 64 degrees, for the patient it's a significant difference. With 82 degrees you can perform the basic activities of everyday life," Dr. Gkiatas said. "With these new data, if at six weeks a patient reaches 82 degrees of motion in their knee, we can say they have an 80 percent chance of at least maintaining this range of motion one year after surgery." The results of this study provide surgeons with the information needed to educate patients with stiff TKA on expected range of motion outcomes after revision surgery. Less than 60 degrees being a poor prognostic finding. In addition, when patients return to the office for their six-week appointment after revision TKA, and have less than 82 degrees of motion, additional pharmacologic or manual knee manipulation treatments should be implemented as this patient is at a high risk for range of motion regression and inferior clinical outcome at one-year post-revision.
BioSimulytics (www.biosimulytics.ai), a University College Dublin (UCD) spin-out company, today announced that it has secured 595k in initial seed funding from a number of strategic angel investors and Enterprise Ireland.

The NovaUCD-headquartered company has developed a novel software solution, using artificial intelligence, to digitize key steps in how new drug molecules are designed and developed to transform the success rates of new drug development.

BioSimulytics has developed a novel software solution, using a powerful combination of AI, machine learning, computational chemistry, quantum physics and high-performance computing (HPC), to drive smarter, faster, and more cost-effective R&D processes in the design and development of new drugs. The company's software enables the pharma industry to advance potential molecules to approved medicines quicker and with a much greater probability of success.

BioSimulytics, which has already secured its first commercial contract with a major pharma company in Europe, and signed evaluation agreements with several others for industrial evaluation, will use the funding to support the growth of its product development team and client base and plans to complete a Series A funding round within the next 18-24 months.

In the pharma industry it can take between US$2-3 billion and over a decade to bring new drug molecules, which are manufactured in their solid-state crystal structure, to market with only a very limited (~1%) chance of success.

One of the complicating factors in the drug development process is polymorphism, the ability of a compound to exist in more than one stable crystalline structure. Drug molecules are complex compounds which can have hundreds of stable structures, and a polymorph may change to a more thermodynamically stable form hours, weeks and even years later depending on conditions.

Different drug polymorphs can have different properties such as solubility, toxicity, and efficacy. It is therefore vital for pharma companies to fully understand the polymorphic landscape of their drug molecules, required also for regulatory compliance and patent protection, and to have absolute certainty about identifying and reproducing the most stable crystal structure of any new drug before bringing it to market for patient use.

Experimental techniques which are the current state-of-the-art for identifying the most stable polymorph of a new drug molecule, are slow and arduous manual processes, which can take 6 months or more to complete and with potentially uncertain results.

BioSimulytics' unique software solution only requires the basic 2D structure of a molecule to accurately predict the full polymorphic landscape of that molecule and to rank the most stable crystal structures of the molecule, within a matter of weeks. This provides pharma companies with far greater accuracy and certainty in the development process of new drugs, avoiding potentially very costly mistakes such as those cases in recent decades where polymorph problems have forced the pharma companies involved to pull their drugs from the market resulting in multi-million US dollar losses.

BioSimulytics was founded in 2019 by Professor Niall English, Dr Christian Burnham, and Peter Doyle as a spin-out from the UCD School of Chemical and Bioprocess Engineering following the completion of Enterprise Ireland Commercialisation Funding.

Speaking from NovaUCD Peter Doyle, CEO, BioSimulytics said, "We are delighted to have secured this seed funding which will help us to expand our team here in Ireland and grow our client base in the EU and US markets."

The successful development of COVID-19 vaccines over the last 18-months demonstrates the powerful role that new digital AI and HPC-based technologies play in dramatically transforming the pharma value chain. BioSimulytics' goal is to be a key player in this rapidly expanding global market within the next few years." Peter Doyle, CEO, BioSimulytics

He concluded, "As a follow-on to this seed round we plan to complete a multi-million euro Series A funding round within the next 18 to 24 months following the full industrial validation of our technology."

Alan Hobbs, Manager, High Potential Start-Ups (Life Sciences and Industrial) at Enterprise Ireland said, "BioSimulytics is a great example of a world-class High Potential Start-Up driving innovative solutions to support the design and development of new drugs and we are delighted to support the company and to be part of this investment round."

"We wish Peter and all the team every success with this exciting new phase of development for the company and look forward to continuing to work with them to achieve their ambitious plans for the future."

BioSimulytics was the overall winner of the 2019 UCD VentureLaunch Accelerator Programme run by NovaUCD. In addition, the company was a finalist in the 2020 The Institution of Chemical Engineers (IChemE) Global Awards, widely considered as the world's most prestigious chemical-engineering awards.
The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) has been awarded a five-year $3.2 million grant from the Cancer Prevention & Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT). The money will go toward work at The Center for Innovative Drug Discovery (CIDD), a joint venture between the university and UT Health San Antonio, and a place where UTSA continues to make important contributions to the fight against cancer.

The CIDD will use its new CPRIT funding to develop strategies and technologies to target cancer-related proteins previously considered 'undruggable'. An innovative method they will develop is the Proteolysis-Targeting Chimeras (PROTAC) platform. Stanton McHardy, UTSA associate professor of chemistry and athe CIDD director, explains that part of what makes this approach effective is its ability to promote degradation of the targeted cancer protein and kill the cancer cell.

Obviously cancer is a major medical burden to our society. Our ultimate goal is to discover the next generation of tangible, pre-clinical cancer therapeutics and advance our programs and drug candidates to a stage where they can be developed into clinical therapies to treat cancer." Stanton McHardy, UTSA associate professor of chemistry and the CIDD director

This joint venture between UTSA and UT Health has two facilities. The first, which is located at UTSA and led by McHardy, is the Medicinal Chemistry and Synthesis Core Facility. The second is the High-Throughput Screening Facility (HTSF) at UT Health, where Matt Hart is the director. Hart is also Associate Professor/Research in the Department of Biochemistry and Structural Biology at UT Health San Antonio.

UTSA's Doug Frantz, the Max and Minnie Tomerlin Voelcker Distinguished Professor of Chemistry is a CIDD co-founder.

"To be selected for the CPRIT grant, we proposed a focused and resource-intensive core facility to offer CIDD collaborators and clients a one-of-a-kind capability in Texas, providing PROTAC design, synthesis and screening, an approach that is applicable to multiple types of cancers and cancer targets," McHardy said.

The new grant is the second from CPRIT awarded to CIDD. The organization received a five-year $4.6 million grant from CPRIT in 2016 to grow and support The center's cancer research portfolio of small molecule drug discovery programs.

That funding enabled CIDD to establish 59 new cancer drug discovery programs. The Center also executed research on triple-negative breast cancers, ovarian cancers, oral cancers, brain cancers (Glioblastomas), liver cancers and childhood cancers. CIDD leaders also collaborated with Texas-based cancer researchers and institutions, securing more than $34 million in funding for collaborative cancer grants.

McHardy said the CIDD's intent is to provide a diverse array of core facilities and expertise to facilitate the translation of basic scientific discoveries into tangible pre-clinical candidate drugs that can be further developed into clinical therapies for human disease.

In addition to making important contributions toward treating cancer, the CIDD is having an enormous impact on UTSA students by providing a distinctive research-and-learning platform where they can learn pharmaceutical-industry concepts and techniques used in drug discovery.

"Ultimately, this has provided a 'lab to career' transition for our UTSA students, who are being employed by leading pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies," McHardy said.

McHardy and Frantz also credit The Max and Minnie Tomerlin Voelcker Fund for supporting CIDD's drug discovery and educational missions through substantial philanthropic gifts over the past 10 years.

"This latest award from CPRIT to the CIDD is a testimony of how we have been able to leverage these gifts to catalyze additional financial support through various state and federal funding agencies to further the return on their initial investments in our faculty and students," said Frantz.
Stephanie Eisenbarth, MD, PhD, has been named chief of Feinberg's Division of Allergy and Immunology in the Department of Medicine, and director of the newly formed Center for Human Immunobiology.

Stephanie Eisenbarth, MD, PhD, the associate chair of research in the Department of Laboratory Medicine and assistant director of the Clinical Pathology Residency Program at Yale University, has been named chief of Feinberg's Division of Allergy and Immunology in the Department of Medicine and director of the newly formed Center for Human Immunobiology, effective January 2022.

I am thrilled to be joining the allergy and immunology community at Northwestern and looking forward to building a new center focused on advancing our understanding of the immune system." Stephanie Eisenbarth, MD, PhD

Eisenbarth is an internationally renowned immunologist whose research focuses on how dendritic cells, B-cells and T-cells interact to induce antibody responses. She is supported by grant funding from the National Institutes of Health and numerous foundations for her work studying genetic factors in allergy and translational immunology. She is a member of the American Society of Clinical Investigation and numerous other professional associations, serves as the associate scientific advisor for the journal Science Immunology, and has published many peer-reviewed papers, editorials and review articles in journals including Science, Nature, Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, Immunity, Journal of Experimental Medicine and more.

"The Department undertook a rigorous and comprehensive national search to find the next leader for the Division of Allergy and Immunology. Dr. Eisenbarth's scientific accomplishments, her passion for education and training, and her clinical focus in food allergy made her an exceptionally strong candidate. We are thrilled that the opportunity offered here resonated with her. Her energy, her vision, and her brilliance will have a huge impact on the division, in the department, and across the entire university," said Douglas Vaughan, MD, chair and Irving S. Cutter Professor of Medicine.

Eisenbarth received her medical degree and PhD from Yale University in 2003 and 2005, and completed a residency and fellowship in clinical pathology in the Department of Laboratory Medicine at Yale-New Haven Hospital. She is board certified in clinical pathology and has been honored for her research by the Academy of Clinical Laboratory Physicians and Scientists, the National Blood Foundation, the Hartwell Foundation and numerous other prestigious organizations.

In addition to her considerable research output, Eisenbarth has been honored widely for her education and mentoring activities, including delivering dozens of invited lectures and teaching in several prominent national courses. Her academic service work includes editorial committees, faculty committees, national educational committees, and honorary societies, as well as study section membership with the National Blood Foundation, National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, and National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, among others.

Work from Eisenbarth's laboratory has advanced understanding of what induces anaphylactic reactions in those with food allergy, findings that may have important implications for altering and tracking the inappropriate immune response to food allergens. Other research from the Eisenbarth laboratory has led to the identification of how antibody responses to transfused red blood cells, pathogens and vaccination occur.

Eisenbarth's husband, Adam Williams, PhD, a distinguished scientist in the field of RNA biology and immunology who is currently an assistant professor at the Jackson Laboratory, will be also be joining Northwestern as an associate professor of Medicine in the Division of Allergy and Immunology.

Eisenbarth will succeed Robert Schleimer, PhD, the current chief of Allergy and Immunology and the Roy and Elaine Patterson Professor of Medicine, who will be stepping down to rejoin the faculty.

"We are the beneficiaries of the remarkable leadership of the Division provided by Dr. Schleimer over the last two decades. Bob has done a masterful job in building the division, and it is recognized as one of the premier units in the country. His success and his visionary stewardship made it possible for us to recruit a new chief of the caliber of Dr. Eisenbarth," Vaughan said.
A new study shows during the first 5 months of vaccine rollout in the USA, vaccination rates were lowest in low-income, ethnic rich, and racially mixed neighborhoods, despite having the highest COVID-19 mortality.

COVID-19 Vaccination. Image Credit: Prostock-studio/Shutterstock.com

Addressing the limited data availability on COVID-19 vaccine equity in the US

Published in the JAMA Health forum, new findings by Drs Adam Sacarny and Jamie R. Daw, demonstrate that unequal vaccination rates across US cities were largely correlated with socioeconomic factors.

The authors examined how equitable vaccine receipt was during the first 5 months when the vaccine for COVID-19 was implemented nationally. This data is often lacking on a national level due to largescale spatial and temporal factors impeding the precision of differences in data collection.

In response, the authors of the present study gathered data covering 40.8 million residents of the 9 largest cities in the USA. Data was then refined on a neighborhood level, using zip codes as identifiers, from which was then collected mortality rates and vaccination data.

Overall, 1127 neighborhoods were analyzed with an average vaccination rate of 42.3%.

Examining the differences in vaccination rate across socioeconomic factors

Neighborhoods with high vaccination rates were predominantly composed of White and Asian people and had a lower proportion of Black and Hispanic or Latino people. Economically, neighborhoods with high vaccination rates had higher mean incomes, lower poverty rates, and higher 4-year college completion rates.

From a historical perspective, the amount of COVID-19 death rates (from the first COVID-19 deaths through April 13, 2021) were lowest in neighborhoods with the highest vaccination rates despite the fact these neighborhoods had older adults who are at higher risk.

In summary, of the 863 neighborhoods that experienced mortality from COVID-19, the 209 highest death rates accounted for half of all historical COVID-19 deaths but only 26% of all vaccinations.

Addressing the discrepancies in vaccine equity and its future implications

The authors emphasize the importance of vaccine equity and highlight those socioeconomic drivers of vaccinations may represent a threat at a nationwide level. This is particularly true due to the high levels of mortality in vulnerable neighborhoods.

However, several limitations of the study are important to consider. Data collected on vaccination and death rates may not be exact since issues related to the supply and demand of vaccines were not used in the analysis. Moreover, data may not be as applicable across other major US cities, and care has to be applied when extrapolating from this data.

Nonetheless, the authors conclude that inequities in vaccination rates are most likely reflective of several causes ranging from the underinvestment in public health among segregated communities to the unequal access to healthcare services. In turn, this drives a distrust in marginalized groups, and the findings of this study highlight those further efforts are required to ensure adequate vaccination equity.
Researchers at Case Western Reserve University have developed an online tool to help medical staff quickly determine which COVID-19 patients will need help breathing with a ventilator.

The tool, developed through analysis of CT scans from nearly 900 COVID-19 patients diagnosed in 2020, was able to predict ventilator need with 84% accuracy.

That could be important for physicians as they plan how to care for a patient-;and, of course, for the patient and their family to know. It could also be important for hospitals as they determine how many ventilators they'll need." Anant Madabhushi, Donnell Institute Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Case Western Reserve

Next, Madabhushi said he hopes to use those results to try out the computational tool in real-time at University Hospitals and Louis Stokes Cleveland VA Medical Center with COVID-19 patients.

If successful, he said medical staff at the two hospitals could upload a digitized image of the chest scan to a cloud-based application, where the AI at Case Western Reserve would analyze it and predict whether that patient would likely need a ventilator.

Dire need for ventilators

Among the more common symptoms of severe COVID-19 cases is the need for patients to be placed on ventilators to ensure they will be able to continue to take in enough oxygen as they breathe.

Yet, almost from the start of the pandemic, the number of ventilators needed to support such patients far outpaced available supplies-;to the point that hospitals began "splitting" ventilators-;a practice in which a ventilator assists more than one patient.

While 2021's climbing vaccination rates dramatically reduced COVID-19 hospitalization rates-; and, in turn, the need for ventilators-;the recent emergence of the Delta variant has again led to shortages in some areas of the United States and in other countries.

"These can be gut-wrenching decisions for hospitals-;deciding who is going to get the most help against an aggressive disease," Madabhushi said.

To date, physicians have lacked a consistent and reliable way to identify which newly admitted COVID-19 patients are likely to need ventilators-; information that could prove invaluable to hospitals managing limited supplies.

Researchers in Madabhushi's lab began their efforts to provide such a tool by evaluating the initial scans taken in 2020 from nearly 900 patients from the U.S. and from Wuhan, China-; among the first known cases of the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.

Madabhushi said those CT scans revealed-; with the help of deep-learning computers, or Artificial Intelligence (AI)-; distinctive features for patients who later ended up in the intensive care unit (ICU) and needed help breathing.

The research behind the tool appeared this month in the IEEE Journal of Biomedical and Health Informatics.

Amogh Hiremath, a graduate student in Madabhushi's lab and lead author on the paper, said patterns on the CT scans couldn't be seen by the naked eye but were revealed only by the computers.

"This tool would allow for medical workers to administer medications or supportive interventions sooner to slow down disease progression," Hiremath said. "And it would allow for early identification of those at increased risk of developing severe acute respiratory distress syndrome-;or death. These are the patients who are ideal ventilator candidates."

Further research into 'immune architecture'

Madabhushi's lab also recently published research comparing autopsy tissue scans taken from patients who died from the H1N1 virus (Swine Flu) and from COVID-19. While the results are preliminary, they do appear to reveal information about what Madabhushi called the "immune architecture" of the human body in response to the viruses.

"This is important because the computer has given us information that enriches our understanding of the mechanisms in the body against viruses," he said. "That can play a role in how we develop vaccines, for example."

German Corredor Prada, a research associate in Madabhushi's lab who was the primary author on the paper, said computer vision and AI techniques allowed the scientists to study how certain immune cells organize in the lung tissue of some patients.

"This allowed us to find information that may not be obvious by simple visual inspection of the samples," Corredor said. "These COVID-19-related patterns seem to be different from those of other diseases such as H1N1, a comparable viral disease."

Eventually, when combined with other clinical work and further tests in larger sets of patients, this discovery could serve to improve the world's understanding of these diseases and maybe others, he said.

Madabhushi established the CCIPD at Case Western Reserve in 2012. The lab now includes more than 60 researchers. Some were involved in this most recent COVID-19 work, including graduate students Hiremath, Pranjal Vaidya; research associates Corredor and Paula Toro; and research faculty Cheng Lu and Mehdi Alilou.
At LECOs ASMS breakfast seminars, Jean-Francois (Jef) Focant, Head of the Department of Chemistry and Director of the Organic and Biological Analytical Chemistry group at the University of Liege, Belgium, discussed using the Pegasus BT 4D and Pegasus GC-HRT 4D for GCxGC-TOFMS on the breath of asthma patients to enhance treatments for asthma.*

Image Credit: LECO Corporation

Before plunging into the blood and sputum, Jef initially informed the audience of the importance of optimizing your data.

For each clinical project that Jef's group evaluates, three "pillars" typically make up the project.

First, samples must be acquired. Then, the samples must be passed through a mass spectrometer for separation and detection. Finally, the resulting data must be treated in the appropriate manner to produce useful and intelligible results.

Image Credit: LECO Corporation

While Data Treatment was previously the smallest of the pillars, developments in LECO's technology mean that a vast amount of data is created. Thus, it has become crucial to break this data up and make it more manageable.

"Because when we go to the hospital and we speak with our colleagues, they don't really care if I start to tell them 'Oh, the modulation period was 4 seconds, the acquisition speed was 250 hertz...' they say 'Yes, yes,' because they are polite, but they just don't give a sh** to that. They just want to know: is it a positive sample or a negative sample?"

In relation to patient care, reducing false negatives or false positives is vital when providing the appropriate treatment. Each of the three pillars plays a key role in this process.

All results start with obtaining a sample. There are various ways of obtaining a sample from an asthmatic patient, but several are considered to be "invasive" procedures, such as collecting blood or sputum, bronchial brushings, bronchoalveolar lavage and bronchial wall biopsies.

On the other hand, collecting breath condensates in a Tedlar bag is a fairly rapid and painless technique to acquire a patient sample. Whats more, it is relatively simple to explain to a patient that they just need to blow into the bag provided.

Once the sample has been acquired and transported to the lab, LECO's Pegasus BT 4D can separate and identify the hundreds of thousands of elements contained within the sample.

Yet, it is during this phase where many people go wrong.

[Y]ou have to be sure that you can use good data. It's, again, a drawback of GCxGC and TOFMS because the instruments are so good that you can end up having poor modulation efficiency, bad peak shape, and still the system will give you some information. But it will be more difficult for the system to give you good information. So having good peak shape, good peak intensity, good separation is always very important." Jean-Francois (Jef) Focant, Head of the Department of Chemistry and Director of the Organic and Biological Analytical Chemistry group, The University of Liege, Belgium

Image Credit: LECO Corporation

Once the data has been processed, applications of statistical treatments can commence. Prior to testing asthma patients, Jef's group initially ran some experiments using a test group of lung cancer patients and another control group.

Firstly, they wanted to determine if breath condensates were feasible when determining a patients health. The initial data treatments did exhibit some separation between the groups, but they produced three distinct groups rather than just two.

They were able to establish that the detection of environmental VOCs had also occurred amid the cancerous VOCs, and the three groups identified the three different times of the year in which samples were taken. While indeed a captivating statistic, this was not the desired outcome as intended.

Image Credit: LECO Corporation

Image Credit: LECO Corporation

Utilizing different classification methods, Jef was able to condense the 1350 features identified into two sets: 27 with Fisher Ratio and 17 with Random Forest, of which 7 overlapped.

From there, Jef was able to divide the samples into two clear-cut groups, those positive for lung cancer and those negative for lung cancer.

Using the high-resolution Pegasus GC-HRT 4D on the samples, Jef could further identify the specific compounds he was utilizing as markers.

Image Credit: LECO Corporation

As illustrated above, the marked peak first appears to be Benzeneacetaldehyde, with a library match score of 871.

However, the high-resolution mass spec enabled Jef to observe that the mass accuracy was a measly 271.15 ppm, whereas the next result, likely Benzene, with a similarity of 827, had an improved mass accuracy of -0.23 ppm.

By applying the two instruments in tandem, Jef was able to acquire significantly better chemical information from his data.

Therefore, Jef was able to use this experience and effectively use it in an asthma breathprint study.

Over the past decade, there has been a 200% increase in asthma cases, affecting 14% of children under the age of 18 and over 334 million people globally.

It is a problem that is on the increase, and yet 20% of asthma patients are prescribed the wrong medicine.

There are two primary phenotypes for asthma: neutrophilic and eosinophilic. Neutrophilic asthma is typically caused by pollutants and infections and as such can be treated with antibiotics, while allergens are responsible for triggering eosinophilic asthma which is usually treated with corticosteroids.

Consequently, antibiotics are ineffective for the treatment of eosinophilic asthma and corticosteroids do nothing for neutrophilic asthma.

As previously stated, a vast number of the methods used to diagnose asthma are usually invasive, offering a 67-72% rate of accuracy.

Jef's group rose to the challenge of taking breath condensates from asthmatic patients to see if GCxGC-TOFMS could generate a more feasible diagnosis.

To find out more about Jefs group results, watch the complete breakfast seminar recording from this year's ASMS here.

Notes:

*This statement has not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.

About LECO Corporation

In 1936, the Laboratory Equipment Company introduced the first rapid carbon determinator to the American iron and steel industry. Today, 75 years later, LECO is recognized globally as a leader in innovative analytical instrumentation, mass spectrometers, metallography and optical equipment, and consumables.

LECO's broad selection of innovative instrumentation incorporates trendsetting automation, easy-to-use software, and the latest technologies into ergonomic designs. This results in instruments that are fast, accurate, and user-friendlyallowing you to increase productivity by achieving a level of throughput that was once unobtainable for many lab managers.

Our four diverse product lines offer you analytical solutions in five different market areas, meeting objectives for a wide variety of applications and scientific techniques. These market areas are described below.

Inorganic Analysis

Determinators for carbon, sulfur, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen used for metal and inorganic analyses; glow discharge spectrometers for bulk and/or quantitative depth profile analysis.

Organic Analysis

Determinators for carbon, sulfur, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen; analyzers for fat, protein, ash/moisture, mercury, and calorific value.

Microstructural Analysis

Metallographic sample preparation equipment; macro and microindentation hardness testers; microscopes; image analysis and management systems; optical accessories.

Separation Science (Mass Spectrometry)

Fast GC-TOFMS and LC-TOFMS systems with ChromaTOF software dedicated to a wide variety of organic applications; GCxGC-TOFMS and GCxGC FID/ECD systems offer increased separation power.

Ceramics

Crucibles, ladles, stopper rods, nozzles, kiln furniture, and pressed refractory shapes for the foundry and investment casting industry.

Sponsored Content Policy: News-Medical.net publishes articles and related content that may be derived from sources where we have existing commercial relationships, provided such content adds value to the core editorial ethos of News-Medical.Net which is to educate and inform site visitors interested in medical research, science, medical devices and treatments.
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Partly cloudy this evening with thunderstorms becoming likely overnight. Low 69F. Winds SW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70%..

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Partly cloudy this evening with thunderstorms becoming likely overnight. Low 69F. Winds SW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70%.
David E. Carroll, 70, passed away Saturday, September 11, 2021 at Clark Memorial Hospital. He retired as a maintenance supervisor at Colgate. David was a Veteran of the United States Marine Corps during the Vietnam-Era. He was an avid outdoorsman. He loved his bourbon, cigars, and most of al
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(Newser)  The operator of a limousine company was spared prison time Thursday in a 2018 crash that killed 20 people when catastrophic brake failure sent a stretch limo full of birthday revelers hurtling down a hill in upstate New York. Loved ones of the dead excoriated Nauman Hussain, 31, as he sat quietly at the defense table during a hearing that was held in a high school gymnasium to provide for social distancing among the many relatives, friends, and media members attending, the AP reports. Hussain, who operated Prestige Limousine, had originally been charged with 20 counts each of criminally negligent homicide and second-degree manslaughter in what was the deadliest US transportation disaster in a decade.

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But under an agreement for Hussain to plead guilty only to the homicide counts and spare families the uncertainties and emotional toll of a trial, he faces five years' probation and 1,000 hours of community service. His case was delayed by the coronavirus pandemic. Before Judge George Bartlett III accepted the agreement, loved ones of the victims took turns talking of lives cut short, the holes left in their own, and their frustration that the operator would avoid time behind bars. "Every day I try to wrap my head around this impossible situation," said Sheila McGarvey, whose son Shane McGowan, 30, and his wife, Erin, were passengers. "I hate every day without him." She wished, she said, that a fraction of any money Hussain spent on lawyers would have been spent to fix the limo's brakes.

Hussain was accused of putting the victims in a death trap. "My son, my baby boy, was killed in a limo while trying to be safe," said Beth Muldoon, the mother of Adam Jackson, 34, who died with his wife, Abigail King Jackson. The couple, who with the others had rented the limo to avoid drinking and driving, had two small children. One spectator left the hearing, cursing and shouting, "He killed 20 people," before apologizing to the judge on her way out. Hussain sat quietly as parents talked about their smothering grief and anger. Defense attorney Joseph Tacopina said his client accepts responsibility and cried as the relatives spoke. Under the deal, Hussain will be formally sentenced after an interim probation of two years. The judge noted that Hussain's guilty plea could be used to buoy any lawsuits. (Four sisters were among those killed.)
(Newser)  One of the dozens of people who died in flooding caused by the remnants of Hurricane Ida was killed on his way home from watching his daughter compete in a college volleyball match. Donald Allen Bauer, 65, had left DeSales University, which was hosting Moravian University, the school his daughter attends, when he was caught in floodwaters about 10 miles south. His wife managed to escape the SUV, but Bauer's body was found inside the vehicle Thursday morning, LeHigh Valley Live reports.

In a similar story out of New Jersey, a 70-year-old man died after his car got stuck in two feet of water, NorthJersey.com reports. "The water was rising 6 to 8 inches every 2 to 3 seconds," the local fire chief says, and rapidly reached a depth of 8 feet. "I have never seen rain like this." His wife and son were rescued from the vehicle.

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In Connecticut, a state trooper's cruiser was swept away by floodwaters, the Hartford Courant reports. Sgt. Brian Mohl, a 26-year veteran, was working a midnight shift. He called for help, but his body was found hours later, outside the vehicle.

The New York Times has a devastating look at how Ida "turned basement apartments into death traps." At least 11 people died after water rushed into their below-ground units, filling them up completely as the torrents kept residents from getting out or rescuers from getting in. The city is suspected of having tens of thousands of the illegal units, and advocates say this tragedy illustrates that something must be done.

The Times also has more on the victims who have been identified, including a 2-year-old boy, here.

(Read more flooding stories.)
(Newser)  A flight bringing Afghan evacuees to the US had a heartbreaking aftermath Wednesday night when a 9-month-old girl aboard the plane died soon after landing in Philadelphia. The baby and her father had evacuated Afghanistan to Germany, and during the flight from Germany to the US she suffered a medical emergency, the details of which are not clear, ABC News reports. She was unresponsive when the C-17 military transport plane landed, and emergency medical personnel met the plane and took her and her father to the hospital, where she was pronounced dead, CBS News reports. It is the first known death of an Afghan evacuee on US soil.

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The US had admitted almost 24,000 at-risk Afghans by Tuesday, and as of Thursday, more than 36,000 remained at military bases overseas awaiting security screenings and processing. The Philadelphia airport processed 3,654 evacuees who arrived between August 28 and September 1; Virginia's Dulles International Airport is also assisting with the evacuations. The Philadelphia Police Department's special victims unit will investigate the death due to the child's age, and the city's medical examiner's office will determine the cause of death. "Our thoughts and prayers are with the parents and family," says a Defense Department spokesperson. (Read more Afghanistan stories.)
(Newser)  The "mu" coronavirus variant is now officially a "variant of interest"and scientists naming COVID variants are now halfway through the Greek alphabet. The mu variant, also known as B.1.1621, was given the designation this week by the World Health Organization. The WHO warned that the variant has a "constellation of mutations that indicate potential properties of immune escape," meaning it could be a threat to people with immunity due to vaccination or earlier infection, the CBC reports. The WHO says the virus was first detected in Colombia in January and is most prevalent in that country, where it accounts for almost 40% of cases.

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The WHO says mu has been detected in 39 countries worldwide, but it only accounts for 0.1% of COVID cases in globally. In the US, where the delta variant is believed to make up 99% of COVID cases, Dr. Anthony Fauci says the mu variant is not an "immediate threat," the New York Times reports. "Bottom line, we are paying attention to it, he said Thursday. "We take everything like that seriously, but we don't consider it an immediate threat right now." (The WHO is also concerned about a new variant found in South Africa.)
(Newser)  Politico says it has obtained the British government's plans for dealing with an event that hasn't happened in almost 70 yearsthe death of a reigning monarch. The leaked plan, called "Operation London Bridge," describes the day of Queen Elizabeth II's death as "D-Day" and the following days as D+1, etc. The plan says the government website and social media sites will immediately show a black banner and stop publishing non-urgent content. It says that on D-Day, the prime minister will meet the new King Charles, who will address the nation at 6pm. According to the plan, the queen's coffin will be brought to Buckingham Palace on D+2 and her funeral will be held in Westminster Abbey on D+10. Charles will tour the nation in the days before the funeral.

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On D+5, a procession will bring the coffin to the Palace of Westminster, which will be open to the public for 23 hours a day for the following three days, according to the plan. VIPs will be given time slots to view the coffin. The leaked documents also set out the concerns of various government departments, with the Department for Transport expressing worries that there could be serious overcrowding in London if large numbers of people decide to travel there for the funeral, the Guardian reports. Politico notes that the plans appear to be up-to-date, with mention of the pandemic, but there is no sign they "have been revisited with any urgency."

The queenwhose husband, Prince Philip, died in Aprilturned 95 this year and is believed to be in good health. Yahoo reports that the British media has long had plans in place for dealing with the monarch's death. Newsreaders will be expected to wear black outfits, and the blue lights that alert radio station DJs to national tragedies will be switched on, signaling that they should switch to "inoffensive music" ahead of a major announcement. (Read more Queen Elizabeth II stories.)
(Newser)  A California woman is facing two felony charges after allegedly punching a flight attendant, who was left bloodied with three broken teeth. Vyvianna Quinonez of Antelope is charged with assault resulting in serious bodily injury and interfering with a flight crewwhich could mean up to 20 years in prison following a Southwest Airlines flight from Sacramento to San Diego on May 23. Around the time of landing, the flight attendant, identified as "SL," had instructed Quinonez, 28, to "fasten her seat belt and stow her tray table" and to "wear her face mask properly," the charging document reads, per the Sacramento Bee.

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Quinonez refused, then pushed the woman, according to the document. A video filmed by another passenger, obtained by the Bee in May, then shows a woman police identified as Quinonezwith a mask covering her mouth but not her nosestanding and throwing several punches, striking the flight attendant on the cheek. A man then jumped between the two women as blood was seen streaming from a cut below the flight attendant's eye. The cut required four stitches, according to the filing. It adds three of the woman's teeth were chipped, two of which had to be replaced with crowns.

The passenger who filmed the video and shared it with law enforcement told the Bee the pair had been arguing throughout the flight. She described the flight attendant as "very rude and unprofessional" and said she'd heard the passenger tell the flight attendant not to touch her three times, per KTXL. Her video begins with a woman seated next to Quinonez telling the flight attendant, "We are gonna sue you." Escorted off the plane and then banned from the airline, Quinonez told authorities she'd acted in self-defense. She's to appear in San Diego court on Sept. 17. She's also facing charges in state court, where she's to appear Sept. 10, per the AP. (Read more assault stories.)
(Newser)  Two companies behind some of the most popular dating apps in the US are stepping up to help Texans access abortion services in response to a new law that opponents say will block about 85% of abortions. Austin-based Bumble, led by CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd, said this week that it was launching a fund "supporting the reproductive rights of women and people across the gender spectrum who seek abortions in Texas," which will benefit organizations including Fund Texas Choice, per CNN. "Bumble is women-founded and women-led, and from day one we've stood up for the most vulnerable. We'll keep fighting against regressive laws like #SB8," the company added.

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Meanwhile, Shar Dubey, CEO of Dallas-based Match Groupwhich owns Match.com, Tinder, Plenty of Fish, OkCupid, and Hingesaid she was creating a fund to help employees and their dependents who need to travel out of state for abortions. "I immigrated to America from India over 25 years ago" and "am shocked that I now live in a state where women's reproductive laws are more regressive than most of the world, including India," Dubey wrote in an internal memo, per Forbes. "Surely everyone should see the danger of this highly punitive and unfair law that doesn't even make an exception for victims of rape or incest," she added.

Texas' new lawwhich the Supreme Court allowed to stand for nowbans abortion after an ultrasound detects a fetal heartbeat. That's assumed to be around six weeks of pregnancy, before most would even know they're pregnant. However, the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has previously argued that there is no true heartbeat at that stage and an ultrasound would instead detect the flickering of tissue within an embryo, which would ultimately develop into a fetus' heart, as it is "electronically induced" by the ultrasound machine.

A PerryUndem poll released this week found two-thirds of workers with college educations would refuse a job in a state that bars abortions after six weeks of pregnancy. But Texas Gov. Greg Abbott told CNBC on Thursday that the state's abortion regulations and voting laws are "accelerating the process of businesses coming to Texas," per the Dallas Morning News. He suggested CEO Elon Musk moved Tesla's operations from California to Texas because of its social policies. "In general, I believe government should rarely impose its will upon the people," Musk responded, adding he "would prefer to stay out of politics." (Read more abortion stories.)
(Newser)  The Movie Max cinema in Timaru, New Zealand, is currently closed until COVID restrictions move to Level 2and an employee's expletive-laden attempt to communicate that information in a voicemail message has given his country a good laugh at a tough time. In his first three efforts, the man got partway through the message, which starts "Hello and thank you for calling Movie Max Digital Cinemas, Timaru. We are currently closed until..." before trailing off with "Oh, f--- me" or "Oh, for f---'s sake," the Guardian reports. He nailed it on the fourth try, but accidentally uploaded the failed attempts as well.

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In a reply to a Facebook message, the cinema said it was "rectifying" the issue and added a facepalm emoji. Nigel Bowen, mayor of the South Island town, said the message was replaced after he notified the cinema. "At the moment we need a bit of lighthearted relief," Bowen said. Social media users urged the cinema not to fire the employee, the New Zealand Herald reports.

"Probably got Movie Max Timaru more attention than ever before," one wrote. "Free popcorn for that man!" Another wrote: "This is the greatest cinema message ever left for the public. Give that dude a damn raise." Most of New Zealand is currently in Alert Level 3, the second-highest on the scale, but Auckland, epicenter of the country's delta variant outbreak, is still in a Level 4 lockdown. (Read more New Zealand stories.)
(Newser)  A former British soldier in Afghanistan who has been trying to get hundreds of people, including his employees, out of the country ended up being thrown in jail by the Taliban after the group was turned back at a land border. Ben Slater says he brought a busload of staff members and their families to the border and they stayed in a hotel near a border checkpoint for two days while he tried to arrange the exit. He says on Thursday morning, he was arrested and Taliban members questioned him about female staff members being in hotel rooms without husbands, the Telegraph reports.

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Slater, a former member of the Royal Military Police who ran a company in Kabul before the Taliban takeover, says he was later released, but British authorities have now told him he can cross the border with only one assistant. He says his staff members are entitled to visas but British authorities are dragging their feet. "I got everyone where they need to be, paid the money, got things done and I just need people now to get that bloody gate open," Slater says, per Sky News.

Slater describes his employees as "mainly women working in the sectors that are not too popular with the new regime" and says they are desperate to escape. "Its a complete disaster really," he says. "It's disgusting. Its beyond horrible." After Britain's airlift effort from Kabul ended, British authorities urged citizens and eligible Afghans to make their way to the UK via land crossings to third countries, but Slater and other critics say the government failed to make arrangements with Afghanistan neighbors Pakistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan that would allow them to cross. (Read more Afghanistan stories.)
(Newser)  The Supreme Court made what could be one of its most consequential decisions in years this week by allowing Texas' restrictive abortion law to stand. But those interested in the reasoning of the five majority justices are out of luck. The court issued the unsigned ruling through what's commonly known as its "shadow docket," meaning the justices acted quickly, without oral arguments or lengthy deliberations, and did not provide the usual explanation for the decision. The increased use of the tactic of late is drawing attentionand plenty of criticism.

The tradition: The shadow docket has been typically used for emergency matters such as stays of execution, when the court must move fast. "There's nothing inherently sinister about that," writes Adam Serwer at the Atlantic. But he notes that over the past few years, particularly in the Trump administration, the court has used the tactic more and more to make "major changes to American law without the scrutiny or attention that comes with holding oral arguments or writing major opinions."

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Kagan's beef: In her dissent on the Texas decision, Elena Kagan spoke out against the practice. "The majoritys decision is emblematic of too much of this Courts shadow docket decisionmakingwhich every day becomes more unreasoned, inconsistent, and impossible to defend," she wrote, per Bloomberg.

In her dissent on the Texas decision, Elena Kagan spoke out against the practice. "The majoritys decision is emblematic of too much of this Courts shadow docket decisionmakingwhich every day becomes more unreasoned, inconsistent, and impossible to defend," she wrote, per Bloomberg. Immigration, etc: Before the Texas case, the court has used the shadow docket recently on everything from immigration to voting laws to pandemic-related laws, notes the New York Times, and almost always with the conservative majority holding sway. The analysis by Charlie Savage suggests one reason is that lower courts appear to be more willing than ever to issue opinions that apply to the entire country in politically volatile cases. The government then files an emergency appeal, which puts the case in the Supreme Court's hands.

Before the Texas case, the court has used the shadow docket recently on everything from immigration to voting laws to pandemic-related laws, notes the New York Times, and almost always with the conservative majority holding sway. The analysis by Charlie Savage suggests one reason is that lower courts appear to be more willing than ever to issue opinions that apply to the entire country in politically volatile cases. The government then files an emergency appeal, which puts the case in the Supreme Court's hands. The politics: University of Texas law professor Stephen Vladek tells the Atlantic that the Trump administration sought 41 "emergency relief" rulings from the courtie, under the shadow docketcompared to a total of eight total under the Obama and Bush administrations. Trump almost always won, and the tilt toward shadow docket rulings that favor conservatives has continued under the Biden administration.

University of Texas law professor Stephen Vladek tells the Atlantic that the Trump administration sought 41 "emergency relief" rulings from the courtie, under the shadow docketcompared to a total of eight total under the Obama and Bush administrations. Trump almost always won, and the tilt toward shadow docket rulings that favor conservatives has continued under the Biden administration. The politics, II: Democratic Rep. Jerrold Nadler, chair of the House Judiciary Committee, had this to say after the Texas decision: Because the court has now shown repressive state legislatures how to game the system, the House Judiciary Committee will hold hearings to shine a light on the Supreme Courts dangerous and cowardly use of the shadow docket."

Democratic Rep. Jerrold Nadler, chair of the House Judiciary Committee, had this to say after the Texas decision: Because the court has now shown repressive state legislatures how to game the system, the House Judiciary Committee will hold hearings to shine a light on the Supreme Courts dangerous and cowardly use of the shadow docket." From both sides: There is "no avoiding the sense that the justices had abdicated some responsibility," writes analyst Joan Biskupic at CNN. NYU law professor Melissa Murray tells the Atlantic: I think its clear that it has become a shadowy way to effect substantive decisions in cases where the Court, in the light of day, would be more reluctant to move aggressively. The Times notes that criticism isn't only from the left and/or center, with conservative justice Neil Gorsuch faulting the rushed process in an immigration ruling that went former President Trump's way last year.

(Read more US Supreme Court stories.)
(Newser) 

Americans are stepping up for the widow and unborn child of one of the Marines killed last week in Afghanistan. Two separate fundraisers on behalf of the late Rylee McCollum of Wyoming have raised more than $850,000. The 20-year-old's wife, Jiennah, is in her third trimester. One GoFundMe account , specifically for the child expected to arrive this month, had raised more than $630,000 as of Thursday, reports People . The second GoFundMe account is for Jiennah and was set up by her mother. McCollum's "sacrifice ... will not be forgotten," the description of the first fundraiser reads. "Anything you can provide to aid them would be appreciated more than we can express. Bless."

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A clothing company called the Breach Supply set up the first fundraiser for McCollum, who had been on his first-ever deployment. He was manning a checkpoint near the airport in Kabul when a suicide bomber killed him, 12 other service members, and more than 100 civilians, per the AP. "My heart is incredibly heavy today, in the wee hours of the morning my beautiful daughter got that knock on her door that no military spouse wants to get," Jill Crayton wrote on the fundraiser for her daughter. "Her strong, handsome, incredibly brave husband of less than a year was one of the 13 Marines that gave his life yesterday in Kabul."

(Read more uplifting news stories.)
(Newser)  Less than 3 minutes after launching on its inaugural flight Thursday evening in California, Firefly's unmanned rocket started to flip end over end, doing cartwheels in the sky. It then exploded mid-air, CNBC reports. Space Force officials had told the company to destroy Alpha once the weirdness started so it couldn't fall to Earth and cause injuries, per CNN. No one was hurt in the explosion, though there were reports of debris hitting the ground. The Federal Aviation Administration and the Space Launch Delta 30 unit at Vandenberg Air Force Base are conducting investigations. For now, Firefly's 100-foot Alpha rocket is grounded.

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The Texas company said it's working with investigators to figure out what went wrong so it can try again. Despite the disaster, Firefly said in a statement that the mission achieved "a number of" its objectives, citing booster ignition, liftoff and supersonic speed. Alpha gathered "a substantial amount of flight data," the company said. Had the launch succeeded, Firefly would have become the third US company to reach orbit with a rocket designed to deposit bunches of tiny satellites in spaceafter Rocket Lab and Virgin Orbit. Scores of competitors are working on similar plans, however, to build cheap, lightweight rockets for regular trips to orbit.

One of them, Astra, had a similar catastrophe last week in trying to launch a 43-foot rocket. That attempt ended in an explosion over the coast of Alaska. SpaceX has endured explosions this year, even. Firefly, which said its rocket "experienced an anomaly," wants to send up two single-use Alpha rockets each month, per Gizmodo. Each mission would cost $15 million. Although it was a test flight, Alpha carried technical and nontechnical items, including DNA samples, photos, and personal items. The company took them aboard at no charge as part of the Dedicated Research and Educational Accelerator Mission. (Read more rocket stories.)
Master Sgt. Melissa Branch, the Alaska Army National Guard state religious affairs noncommissioned officer, poses for a photo at the Alaska National Guard Armory on Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska, Aug. 26, 2021. Branch, who was serving in the Marine Corps at the time when 9/11 happened, was stationed at the Navy Annex building next to the Pentagon in Washington and was there when the American Airlines Flight 77 struck the Pentagon during the terrorist attack that sparked a 20-year-long war. (Edward Eagerton)
Marine Corps Veteran Timothy Davis strengthens his legs in physical therapy to get ready for his new prosthetic
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U.S. President Joe Biden and other officials attend the transfer of remains of fallen service members at Dover Air Force Base in Dover, Delaware, on Sunday after 13 members of the U.S. military were killed in Afghanistan last week. Saul Loeb/Getty Images/TNS
TDT | Manama

The Daily Tribune  www.newsofbahrain.com

School bells in the Kingdom are getting ready to ring next week to welcome back students after a long hiatus, as data suggested infections were stabilising and fatalities are falling. The National Medical Taskforce for Combatting the Coronavirus (COVID-19) had announced that, based on COVID-19 positivity rates, Bahrain would adopt the Green Alert Level starting today. Meaning, students could attend in-person lessons by adhering strictly to social distancing measures. In preparation, the public schools in Bahrain are implementing a comprehensive plan to create an ideal environment for students to return to their classes. The plan, reportedly, is to allow half of the students in a school to take in-person classes twice a week and then move them online as the rest of the students come to school. Schools will also, reportedly, remain closed on a day each week for deep cleaning. In a report carried by GESS, Rasha Al Najjar, the Assistant Principal of Al Hekma International School, Bahrain, said the majority of the parents opted for both remote and hybrid models.

Learn with traffic light

The Ministry of Education has also launched an updated backto-school guide by including the COVID-19 traffic light alert system for the 2021-22 school year. Accordingly, remote learning will be in force for all age groups at the Red Alert level. At the Orange, Yellow and Green levels, parents could choose for either in-person or remote learning. Under the Green Alert Level, 100% of students could attend in-person lessons adhering to the social distancing of at least half a metre. Maximum capacity will be reduced to 50% during the Yellow Alert Level and 30% during the Orange Alert Level, respectively, with consistent use of social distancing of at least 1-metre.

Trained teams ready

Education ministry had also called on schools to set up trained teams, outlining procedures for teaching, learning, preschool levels and special education. Schools are now holding daily meetings and discussions to develop schedules for in-person and online classes. Works are also ongoing to prepare lessons, activities and digital lessons in all subjects.

Safety first

Mustafa Bahjat, the Director of Wadi Al-Sail Elementary Preparatory School for Boys, said, The school administration has taken comprehensive measures to ensure security and safety of students, according to plans set for each stage. Preparation of school facilities, organising classes according to a protocol approved by the ministry, maintenance of air conditioning and internet are taken care of for the smooth functioning of classes, he said. The school, he said, is also preparing and distributing flyers to raise awareness among parents and students.

We miss them

Batoul Ahmed of Al-Diyeh Elementary Preparatory School for Girls said, We miss them very much. We miss their voices at the corridors of the schools, their classroom discussions and creativity. Batoul said she looks forward to implementing more student activities and establishing a school news agency. Ahmed Bucheery, an English Language teacher, said, We had held meetings and are closely following up everything related to welcoming back students. Digital lessons, school schedules, class arrangements are on the prime list. Ahmed Aref, a Coordinator of the Fields Department, said, Since returning to work, we have implemented a comprehensive plan to provide educational service in a model environment. Al Najjar told GESS that the Education Ministry had provided schools with the freedom to plan on reopening. She points out that it will be a combination of remote learning, hybrid and face-to-face instruction in most schools.

67,000 students

More than 67,000 students had registered for in-person classes in Bahrain for this academic year. This represents 47% of the total students at government schools, authorities had said. Schools in the Kingdom had closed doors to in-person classes last year in February, following the COVID-19 outbreak. Even though schooling resumed later in October on a smaller scale, classes went online later.

Saudi students are back

In neighbouring Saudi Arabia, students are already back at school. Reportedly, around 6 million students had returned to classes in Saudi Arabia this week for the first time since the pandemic. Children older than 12 have to show they are vaccinated before they can return. Pupils have to keep their distance during the day - the children sit far apart on blue tables.

Israel students going back

on Wednesday Israel said they are reopening schools this Wednesday with mask requirements and mandatory COVID-19 testing. Students under 12 - the minimum age to receive the vaccine - must present their teachers with a parents note confirming they performed a rapid test at home and received a negative result. Beyond the first day, such testing is not mandatory. But officials call for further testing before or after the Jewish holidays, where large family gatherings are regular. The first of those festivals is on Sept. 6 and the last on September 30.

The Ministry of Education has started training public school students to use Microsoft applications and avail technical support through the ministrys portal.
CLAY COUNTY  Through joint efforts with the Clay County Sheriffs Office and Missouri Attorney General Office, Christopher Meagher, proprietor of Metro Restoration, was arrested on consumer fraud charges filed in 2019 by the Missouri Attorney General in Clay, Jackson and Platte counties.
BRIDGEWATER  With rushing water blocking their path, volunteer firefighters couldnt reach a 89-year-woman trapped in her house.

But her neighbors could.

Two neighbors rescued the woman on Wednesday night from the South Main Street building that once was a gristmill and later a paper-making and printing museum. The rescue came as the remnants of former Hurricane Ida swept through the area, causing significant flooding throughout the state.

Neighbors were in there helping her get to a safer location in the house, and eventually were able to assist her outside safely to their house, said Josh Murphy, chief of Bridgewater Volunteer Fire Company.

He talked to the neighbors on the phone as he saw water spill from nearby Wewaka Brook onto the property and into the house.

It was something I had never seen before at that location, he said.

It was one of many instances of flooding across the state as the remnants of Hurricane Ida walloped the state.

There was just so much water last night, Murphy said.

A couple of roads were closed in Bridgewater on Thursday morning, with some fallen trees and minor washouts on streets, First Selectman Curtis Read said.

The flooding at what Read called the iconic Red Mill on South Main Street appeared to be the most severe. A video posted by the Brookfield Volunteer Fire Company showed water rushing down to the house and firefighters on a nearby road.

Its incredibly scary, Read said.

Matt Denning, the homeowner and womans son, was in New York City for work when his wife called him about the flooding. He left the city at 12:15 a.m. in an Uber and hit flooding along the way.

I think the car I was in was actually floating at one point, he said.

He got home around 3 a.m., checked out the damage and went to bed. He and his immediate family live in a house nearby.

Were all tired, said Denning, who was shoveling muck at the house on Wednesday afternoon while the waterfall still flowed.

His mother has dementia and doesnt remember what happened, he said.

Im glad she doesnt remember, he said.

The Brookfield Volunteer Fire Company planned to use its ladder truck to rescue the woman. Newtowns underwater search and rescue team were on standby at the boat launch in case those crews were needed instead, Murphy said.

The neighbors, however, shared a driveway with the house and could access it when firefighters could not, he said.

Murphy said he wasnt sure how the neighbors managed to get the woman out of the house. The neighbors couldnt be reached for comment.

From what I could gather from being on the phone with them, it was pretty difficult because she was 89 and Im sure there was three feet of water in the house, he said.

The house had power, but the neighbors didnt know the layout to move around, he said.

But they did say the water was going down, so it would be more manageable, Murphy said. They made a second attempt at it.

Armed with pitchforks and shovels, Denning and his family started cleaning up the debris and mess in the morning. Rugs and furniture are ruined, but they still need to sift through their photo albums and Dennings fathers artwork.

Im just really glad the building did not collapse, he said.

Denning said hes upset that the flume attached to the waterwheel was washed away.

This is really a historic sort of landmark, Denning said. People drive by and like to see that.

Denning said he believes the structure was built in 1796 as a gristmill. Around 1920 it was owned by a famous Broadway director, who built a cabin on the property where a Hollywood actress lived.

In 1950, engineer Elmer Garrett purchased the building, installed the waterwheel and opened a paper-making and printing museum where school children toured, Denning said.

He purchased it from the Garrett family in November 2000 and has used it as his pottery studio. He and his immediate family live in a house nearby.

After Hurricane Irene, water flooded the structure, Denning said.

But nothing even close to this, he said.
REDDING  A former teacher has been hired as the new assistant superintendent and principal for Joel Barlow High School.

The Region 9 school board voted unanimously on Wednesday evening to appoint Mario Almeida as the new head of school and assistant superintendent. Almeida has served as the principal at Rocky Hill High School for 13 years and was selected from a pool of 26 candidates.

He takes over for Gina Pin, who retired in June from the dual role after 36 years as an educator in Connecticut.

Almedia said hes honored to take the job.

I look forward to working with the faculty, students and the Joel Barlow community as a whole, he said in a statement.

Almedias appointment comes a week after Easton-Redding-Region 9 school districts named Jason McKinnon as its new superintendent.

Dr. Almeida is an excellent communicator and has a reputation in his community for creating a positive school climate, McKinnon said in a statement. I look forward to working with Dr. Almeida and all stakeholders in Region 9.

Almedia has undergraduate and doctoral degrees from Central Connecticut State University, as well as an advanced degree in education administration from the University of Connecticut.

He previously served as the assistant principal at Manchester High School, the assistant director at Manchester Regional Academy and an assistant principal at Windham High School. He taught seventh and eighth grade social studies from 1998 to 2004 at Illing Middle School in Manchester.

Joseph Erardi, the former Newtown superintendent from the JE Consulting firm, facilitated the search.

Of the 26 candidates screened, a search committee interviewed seven candidates and selected four to advance to finalist interviews with the school board and advisory stakeholders, including parents, staff, and school and central office administrators.

We are excited to have Dr. Almeida join us at Joel Barlow, Todd Johnston, Region 9 school board chair, said in a statement. His experience and leadership will help us navigate the start of school under COVID-19 protocols, close the gap as a result of remote learning, and encourage the teachers creativity to get us to the next level of learning and vision of the Barlow graduate as we come out of the pandemic.
More than 24 hours after Ida left Connecticut, the Danbury area is still dealing with the water and damage left behind.

A few hundred people in the region were still without power Friday morning, including 124 in Danbury, 52 in Southbury, 45 in Bridgewater, 44 in New Milford, 30 in Newtown, 26 in Ridgefield, and 23 in Brookfield.

Redding had about 25 percent of its town without power Thursday orning, but only 17 were without electricty as of Friday at 8:30 a.m. It was expected 11 of those homes - in the Diamond Hill area - would regain power by early afternoon Friday.

Thousands in Connecticut, including in the Danbury area, were without power for some of the day Thursday.

Some roads also remained closed in the area. In New Milford, Route 7 was reopened to one lane in each direction, according to highway foreman Mike Boucher. Cross Road remained closed but should be ready to open by the end of the weekend. River Road remained closed, but should reopen early next week.

Reddings Great Pasture Road and Sherman Turnpike were closed Friday morning still due to wires being down. All other roads in town were back open, the towns police department reported.

Gov. Ned Lamont, who declared a state of emergency in the state this week, was planning to visit Redding Friday to review flooding and the conditions following Ida.

The school districts in the area were planning to be open Friday, albeit some on a two-hour delay. Some planned for a two-hour delay Thursday, but buses were unable to complete their routes due to the standing water in the road, closing many of the districts.
BEIJING (AP)  E-commerce giant Alibaba Group said Friday it will spend $15.5 billion to support President Xi Jinpings campaign to spread Chinas prosperity more evenly, adding to pledges by tech companies that are under pressure to pay for the ruling Communist Party's political initiatives.

Alibaba said it will invest in 10 projects for job creation, care for vulnerable groups and technology innovation. Its 100 billion yuan ($15.5 billion) pledge includes 20 billion yuan ($12.5 billion) for a fund to cut income inequality in the companys home province of Zhejiang, south of Shanghai.

Alibaba and other Chinese tech giants including games and social media service Tencent Holdings Ltd have announced plans to invest in social welfare, technology development and other ruling party priorities in response to pressure to align with Beijings political and economic plans.

Xis common prosperity campaign calls for spreading the benefits from Chinas economic growth more widely and narrowing one of the worlds widest gaps between an elite with more billionaires than the United States and the poor majority in the 1.4 billion population.

We firmly believe that if society is doing well and the economy is doing well, then Alibaba will do well, CEO Daniel Zhang said in a statement.

Beijing has launched anti-monopoly, data security and other crackdowns on internet industries since late 2020 in an effort to tighten control over companies the ruling party worries might be too big and independent.

The ruling party tolerated a widening gap between China's rich and poor as the economy boomed over the past three decades. Xi, who took power in 2012, has called for renewing the party's original mission, which includes eradicating poverty, raising incomes and directing investment toward strategic technology and other initiatives.

Tencent promised 50 billion yuan ($7.7 billion) last month for common prosperity initiatives in health care, education and rural development. That doubled the companys spending on corporate social responsibility.

Another e-commerce company, Pinduoduo Inc., promised last month to spend $1.5 billion on agriculture and other rural development projects.

Alibaba reported a profit of 45.1 billion yuan ($7 billion) in the quarter ending in June.

Founder Jack Ma, who stepped down as chairman in 2019, has long been one of Chinas most prominent charitable donors. His foundation shipped medical supplies to Africa during the coronavirus pandemic and has given to education, health and environmental causes.
OTTAWA, ON, Sept. 3, 2021 /CNW Telbec/ - The Canadian Museums Association (CMA), along with 11 provincial and territorial museums associations representing over 2,000 museum and heritage institutions, are calling on federal political parties to commit to updating Canada's 30-year-old national museum policy.

The CMA and its provincial and territorial counterparts issued an open 2021 election letter to all party leaders that describes the unique role of museums in today's Canada.

"From the awakening of a national consciousness based on Indigenous truths rather than colonial myths, to the need to reinvent an economy and lifestyle fueled by plentiful carbon, the shifting sands of change challenge our sense of what it means to be Canadian and demand reconciliation not only between peoples, but with our own sense of being.

"In the midst of this uncertainty and upheaval, museums  among the institutions most trusted by Canadians  provide the solid ground from which, together, we can map a way forward," the letter reads.

Recent public opinion survey data conducted on behalf of the associations demonstrates the high level of support enjoyed by museums and the value Canadians place on them:

80 percent of respondents believe that museums are a highly credible source of information

85 percent think museums improve quality of life in a community; and

75 percent consider museums a very important part of Canadian society.

A new national museum policy is required to reflect the transformative role that museums play.

The letter states that the pandemic brought to light the economic fragility of the sector and that a new long-term partnership with the Government of Canada is needed to put the sector on a more sustainable footing.

"We want to establish a long-term partnership with government that leverages and strengthens the social, economic, and cultural value of museums. A policy framework supported by predictable long-term funding is essential to making this happen," the signatories write.

Accompanying the open letter is a questionnaire asking party leaders to share their vision for Canada's museums prior to election day.

A copy of the open letter is available on the CMA website by clicking here.

About the CMA

The Canadian Museums Association (CMA) is the voice for Canada's vibrant museum community, from small, volunteer-driven organizations to cherished national institutions, and for the millions of Canadians whose lives are enriched by museums. We advocate for public policies and support, we build skills across the profession, and we establish and inspire connections to strengthen and sustain museums. https://www.museums.ca/

SOURCE Canadian Museums Association

For further information: Media Contact: Rebecca MacKenzie, Director, Communications, Canadian Museums Association, [email protected], (778) 829-9925

Related Links

www.museums.ca


SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP)  Ahmaud Arbery's parents on Friday praised the indictment of a former Georgia prosecutor on charges of misconduct in response to their son's killing, calling it a very huge win.

A grand jury in coastal Glynn County indicted former Brunswick Judicial Circuit District Attorney Jackie Johnson on Thursday on charges of violating her oath of office and obstructing police. State prosecutors alleged that she used her position to delay arrests of the white men who chased and killed Arbery, a 25-year-old Black man.

Johnson was the county's top prosecutor when Arbery was fatally shot last year, and one of the armed men who pursued him had worked for her as an investigator.

Yesterday was a very huge win, Wanda Cooper Jones, Arbery's mother, told reporters in a video news conference Friday. Im speechless. Unfortunately, Ahmaud is not here with us today. But losing Ahmaud, it will change some things here in the state of Georgia.

Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr, a Republican, sought the indictment after requesting an investigation of possible misconduct by local prosecutors who failed to bring charges in the killing.

Father and son Greg and Travis McMichael armed themselves with guns and gave chase in a pickup truck on Feb. 23, 2020, after they spotted Arbery running in their neighborhood just outside the port city of Brunswick.

A neighbor, William Roddie Bryan, joined the chase and took cellphone video of Travis McMichael fatally shooting Arbery at close range with a shotgun as Arbery fought back with his fists.

The McMichaels told police they thought Arbery was a burglar and that Travis McMichael shot him in self-defense. No arrests were made in the shooting until more than two months later, after the cellphone video leaked online, sparking a national outcry, and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation took over the case. The McMichaels and Bryan are now jailed as they await trial on murder charges.

Johnson has insisted she did nothing wrong, saying she immediately recused her office from handling the case because Greg McMichael had been an employee.

Still, Arbery's parents and their attorneys have long accused the ex-district attorney of trying to help the young man's killers avoid prosecution.

Ain't no man or woman above the law, and it was a great day when they arrested Jackie Johnson, Marcus Arbery Sr., the slain man's father, told reporters.

Johnson did not immediately return phone messages seeking comment. It was not immediately known if she had an attorney to represent her. None was listed in the case record of the court where the indictment was filed.

Johnson would face one to five years in prison if convicted of violating her oath of office. The obstruction charge is a misdemeanor, punishable by up to a year in jail.

The indictment says Johnson violated her oath by showing favor and affection to Greg McMichael and failing to treat Ahmaud Arbery and his family fairly and with dignity. It also says she obstructed police by directing that Travis McMichael should not be placed under arrest.

She should spend time in prison," said Lee Merritt, an attorney for Arbery's mother. "Her actions are not just acts of negligence, but she actively worked to cover up the murder.

Atlanta defense attorney Andrew Fleischman, who isn't involved in the case, said the things Johnson is accused of doing in the indictment may show favoritism and poor judgment, but they don't appear to be crimes.

I absolutely hate the way Jackie Johnson used her discretion, said Fleischman, an appellate attorney who has represented clients prosecuted by Johnson's office. "But to say that using your discretion in a way another prosecutor disagreed with is a violation of your oath, that seems a bridge too far.

Johnson told The Associated Press in May 2020 that Glynn County police contacted two of her assistant prosecutors on the day of the shooting. She said it was the officers who represented it as burglary case with a self-defense issue.

Our office could not advise or assist them because of our obvious conflict, Johnson said.

She called a neighboring prosecutor, Waycross Judicial Circuit District Attorney George Barnhill, to advise police. Carr, the state attorney general, appointed Barnhill to take over the case involving Arbery's shooting a few days later. Carr said last year that Johnson never told him she had already involved Barnhill in the case and that Barnhill had already told police he saw no grounds for arrests.

Johnson blamed the controversy over Arberys death for her election defeat last year after a decade as top prosecutor for the five-county circuit in southeast Georgia. She was defeated by independent candidate Keith Higgins, who had to collect thousands of signatures to get on the ballot.
WEST HAVEN  You might know Paulies name.

In every Connecticut town he passes through, more and more people do.

Paul Veneto, a former flight attendant of 30 years from the Boston area, has been pushing an airline beverage cart from Logan Airport to ground zero in New York City on foot since Aug. 21. The journey, known as Paulies Push, is 220 miles long and is scheduled to end when he arrives at the former site of the twin towers on Sept. 11, 2021, the 20-year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

Veneto passed through West Haven this week, where he was greeted by a crowd waiting just for him. Mayor Nancy R. Rossi greeted Veneto, and his cart at the base of the Kimberly Avenue bridge near Elm Street.

Veneto said his purpose is to honor the airline crew members who died on that day in 2001, with whom he flew all the time and whom he calls first responders and heroes. His mission has made national and local headlines, which has brought increasingly larger groups to wait for him at stops on his route during each leg of the trip.

I feel like Ive accomplished already what I set out to do by bringing attention to the memories of his former colleagues, he said.

As he connects with people across Connecticut, Veneto is finding that many people already support his mission of seeing the flight crews of the four hijacked planes as fallen heroes.

One of those who met Veneto in West Haven was Steve Spooner, a Old Lyme resident and United Airlines pilot for 21 years based out of New York.

Spooner said that, although the attack was devastating for much of the world, there is a community of airline personnel that experienced that devastation in a unique way.

A few days later we had to put our boots back on and go back to work and fly airplanes, he said.

On the Saturday following the attack, Spooner said he was already in the air flying to London.

That was not an easy thing to do, but the work needed to be done and we did it, he said.

Spooner has three daughters, all of whom were born after the attack; he brought them to meet with Veneto. He said he tells them his story, but he wanted them to hear the stories of others.

I hope our younger generations can understand it  maybe not to the level of us that lived it did, but can certainly understand it and hear the stories of those that didnt survive that day, and those that did survive the aftermath of living through it, he said.

Veneto, who is 62, began training for this journey in October 2020. By this week, almost two weeks into his journey, he had traveled over 14 miles on the day alone.

We all watched that happen: the enormity of that day, everybody was in shock, he said. Dont forget the beginning of the day, when crew members were trying to survive on those airplanes and trying to protect people.

Because of his training  beginning with stamina and breathing before moving onto pushing the beverage cart for long distances before pushing it in real-life urban conditions with traffic and potholes  he said he has felt fine.

Ive made it through a hurricane when I left Boston, I made it through this storm the other day. When I started out I knew there was nothing going to stop me from getting this beverage cart to ground zero, he said. Im prepared mentally, physically and now Im just getting the job done.

Although Venetos primary focus is on honoring the fallen flight crews, he believes his journey also has some additional resonance for people with addiction. Veneto said it was not long after the attack that he developed an addiction to opiates. On Sept. 11 when Veneto arrives at his final destination it will be his sixth anniversary of sobriety.

Its a perfect storm for me, he said.

Veneto said his approach to pushing his beverage cart for miles daily is similar to that of working through recovery: one day at a time.

brian.zahn@hearstmediact.com
NEW HAVEN  The Connecticut Supreme Court will consider the $20 million bond set for Qinxuan Pan, the man accused of killing Yale graduate student Kevin Jiang, as part of its term next week.

Officials with the Connecticut judicial branch announced Thursday a petition from Pan to have his bond reviewed  the second proffered during the case  would be heard at 2 p.m. Sept. 8.

William Gerace, Pans attorney, filed the initial motion for Pans bail to be reviewed in June. He has said the $20 million bond, believed to be a record in the state, is too high to be reasonable  an amount tantamount to no bond at all.

In response to that initial motion, the state Supreme Court ordered Judge Brian Fischer, who set the bond, to articulate his reasoning or hold a hearing to establish the evidence on which he based it.

Fischer did so by the courts July 15 deadline, citing Pans flight from the area in February after the killing, which prompted a nationwide manhunt; the slaying itself; Pans financial resources; his use of a false name; his connection to China; and the likelihood that he would flee the country, among other factors.

Judge Gerald Hamon then affirmed Pans bond at $20 million on July 28, saying he also believed Pan was an acute flight risk, among other factors. Fischers choice of bail was appropriate, he said.

In their announcement, judicial branch officials noted Harmon cited the seriousness of the charged crime, the strength of the states case, the defendants lack of ties to Connecticut, his flight and his familys assistance therewith, the $19,000 in cash found with him during his apprehension, and his mental health, among other factors.

Pan subsequently filed the second petition, arguing that Fischer did not comply with the Supreme Courts initial order in articulating the facts of the case, and, regardless, that his bond is unconstitutional in that it is disproportionately high, he has limited financial resources and no international ties, and he has indicated that he is amenable to residing in Connecticut and being subject to electronic monitoring and/or house arrest if released on bond.

Jiang was shot to death on Lawrence Street in the citys East Rock neighborhood Feb. 6.

5 things we know about Qinxuan Pans arrest and the killing of Kevin Jiang

Those who knew Jiang have described him as a person of faith and energy, including his parents, speaking during his funeral at Trinity Baptist Church in New Haven.

City police obtained a warrant charging Pan with Jiangs slaying in late February. The department had named him as a person of interest in the case Feb. 10.

Pan, formerly a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was not arrested until May 13 in Montgomery, Ala., following a search by U.S. marshals and others.

Zion Perry, Jiangs fiancee, also attended MIT as an undergraduate student, graduating in 2020 with a degree in biological engineering.

Pan was living in Malden, Mass., on the day he allegedly drove to New Haven and killed Jiang.

Affidavit: The guns, cars and DNA that led police to arrest Qinxuan Pan in slaying of Yale grad student.

william.lambert@hearstmediact.com
NEW HAVEN  A Yale University School of Medicine employee is charged in connection with her alleged theft of millions of dollars in computer hardware from the school, according to federal authorities.

Jamie Petrone-Codrington, 41, of Naugatuck, is charged on a federal criminal complaint with wire fraud, mail fraud and money laundering offenses, federal authorities said in a statement.

Petrone-Codrington turned herself in to law enforcement authorities Friday and appeared before U.S. Magistrate Judge Robert M. Spector in New Haven. She is free on a $1 million bond, federal authorities said in the statement.

Petrone-Codrington has been employed by the Yale University School of Medicine, Department of Emergency Medicine, since about 2008 and most recently served as the director of finance and administration for the Department of Emergency Medicine, federal authorities said.

As part of her job responsibilities, Petrone-Codrington had authority to make and authorize certain purchases for departmental needs as long as the purchase amount stayed below $10,000, the statement said. Beginning at least as early as 2013, Petrone-Codrington engaged in a scheme whereby she ordered, or caused others working for her, to order millions of dollars of computer hardware from Yale vendors using Yale Med funds and arranged to ship the stolen hardware to an out-of-state business in exchange for money.

Petrone-Codrington also allegedly falsely represented on Yale forms and in electronic communications that the hardware was for specified Yale Med needs, such as particular medical studies, and she broke up the fraudulent purchases into orders below the $10,000 threshold that would require additional approval, federal authorities said in the statement.

The out-of-state business, which resold the computer hardware to customers, paid Petrone-Codrington by wiring funds into an account of a company in which she is a principal, federal authorities said in the statement.

Yale spokeswoman Karen Peart said Petrone-Codrington, an administrative employee of the medical school, no longer is employed by Yale.

Yale alerted federal law enforcement authorities to evidence of (allegedl) criminal behavior and has cooperated fully with their investigation, Peart said in an email. Yale is grateful for the swift action of the FBI and the U.S. Attorneys Office. The university is working to identify and correct gaps in its internal financial controls.

The investigation is being conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation with the assistance of the Yale Police Department. The case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney David E. Novick.
Aimee Krauss, the director of the West Hartford-Bloomfield Health District, is responsible for two towns with some of the highest vaccination rates in the state. But when cases started climbing in July and August, both towns decided to implement mask mandates.

Both West Hartford and Bloomfield do have a good vaccination rate. We are pushing to make it a better rate, Krauss said. Nevertheless, masking is the best mitigation measure we have regarding this virus.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated guidance regarding indoor masking on July 28, recommending that vaccinated individuals wear masks in specific settings. Currently, all counties in Connecticut meet the CDCs transmission criteria for indoor masking.

Earlier this month, Gov. Ned Lamont decided not to enact a statewide mask mandate. Instead, he allowed each of Connecticuts 169 towns and cities to enact their own mask mandates, citing differential vaccination coverage across the state as a key reason why more localized rules were necessary.

But a CT Mirror analysis of the most recent state data from last week showed that higher vaccination rates do not necessarily correspond with lower rates of new cases on the town level, suggesting that the two are somewhat independent. The weak correlation raises the question of how strongly vaccination rates should be factored into decisions regarding other disease mitigation strategies like masking.

The governors policy has also received some pushback from local leaders who argue that the approach is less effective and confusing, but its one that Connecticut is committed to for the time being.

The governors current approach, from a policy perspective, is what were trying to stick with for now, given that we have seen a flattening of the key metrics, said Josh Geballe, the states chief operating officer.

Twenty-five towns have imposed some form of mask mandate so far, according to The Hartford Courant.

The Connecticut Department of Public Health did not respond to written questions.

Vaccination rates are a reasonable starting point in thinking through that decision, said Saad Omer, epidemiologist at the Yale School of Public Health. But at a mayor level, I would be looking at your case trajectory.

Vaccines work  but high town vaccination rates dont guarantee low case rates

Two things can be true at once: COVID vaccines are effective at reducing the risk of symptomatic disease, severe illness and death, even against the highly contagious delta variant that is currently dominant in the United States; and a high town-wide vaccination rate is no guarantee of low case rates.

Connecticut updated its tracking of vaccine breakthrough cases in August and is now matching positive cases with immunization records. Since the state has been more active about tracking breakthrough cases, the numbers have jumped in recent weeks, but the risk of contracting COVID after full vaccination is five times lower than before vaccination. The CDC recommends that vaccinated individuals get tested if they are symptomatic or have been exposed to the virus.

Statewide data from the Connecticut Hospital Association presented at the governors press conference two weeks ago show that unvaccinated individuals are five times more likely to be hospitalized for COVID than their vaccinated counterparts and 10 times more likely to need intensive care.

Unvaccinated individuals are five times more likely to die of the virus than vaccinated individuals, state data show.

But municipalities that have relatively high vaccination rates may still see high case rates. Hypothesizing as to why is complex. To start with, We have substantial fractions of the population that are not even eligible for vaccine, said Ted Cohen, an epidemiologist at the Yale School of Public Health. And as detailed census tract level data show, even in communities with relatively high vaccination rates, we still have substantial pockets of unvaccinated individuals.

Were not close to whatever would be considered a theoretical sort of herd immunity threshold, he said.

Second, vaccines reduce the relative risk of infection from a baseline  a vaccines efficacy rate represents the extent to which that baseline level of risk is reduced. When a community experiences an outbreak, the baseline level of risk increases for everyone, irrespective of their vaccination status, though the extent to which risk increases is dependent on vaccination and an individuals underlying health conditions.

And third, people change their behavior in response to perceived risk, Omer said. As case rates increase, more individuals may seek out vaccinations, changing the relationship between the variables. Connecticut has reported increases in vaccination rates as the delta variant has taken hold, as has the rest of the United States.

All of which is to say that a crude analysis on the town level comparing vaccination rates and case rates cant be extrapolated to question the value of vaccination as a whole, he said.

Two communities with high vaccination rates and case rates, two diverging paths

Though vaccination rates and case rates on the town level might be weakly related, the governors decision to cede control to local leaders about how and when to impose mandates may actually improve the likelihood that people will mask up, Omer said.

If you are sort of running in first gear all the time, people dont comply with it, Omer said. So some agility actually helps you have good net compliance if you ease up on things  when it is slightly, somewhat safer to do so.

On the other hand, the efficacy of masking as a public health strategy is compromised when enacted in a piecemeal fashion, especially in a state as small as Connecticut, said Matthew Hart, West Hartfords town manager.

Under the governors leadership, were much better off than other states, Hart said. But we were somewhat surprised that the governor was leaving this decision to the individual towns because the virus, as we know, doesnt respect municipal boundaries.

West Hartford approached the Capital Region Council of Governments in an effort to impose a mask mandate regionally, Hart said.

West Hartford adopted a phased approach to its mask mandate, first starting with a request to local businesses that they put one in place with the understanding that the town might impose a mandate if cases continued to rise. When West Hartford asked businesses to voluntarily impose mask mandates, some argued that the town had abdicated its responsibility to enforce a mandate, Hart said.

In Orange, on the other hand, health director Amir Mohammed has not recommended that the town enact a mask mandate.

The majority of local businesses in Orange have already put policies in place on masking, looking at practices in schools and the fact that Orange requires those in town buildings to mask up, he said.

Connecticut generally has a high level of mask usage compared to other states, and Mohammed argues that a mandate would do little to shift the numbers at this point.

What would make a difference is to convince or educate our folks who have remained unvaccinated, he said. We have to look at what has really been the critical element of protecting ourselves.

In Orange, contact tracing has shown that the majority of those getting infected have been unvaccinated, Mohammed said. Increasingly, people from the same household are all falling sick together, a trend that Mohammed attributes to the delta variants contagiousness.

Masking is kind of a secondary priority for me, he said.

Its sort of a reasonable theoretical assumption that unvaccinated individuals would benefit from high overall vaccination rates in their town, but its not enough to keep them protected, Cohen said.

Mask wearing is an activity that prevents not only infection of the person wearing a mask but transmission to others, Cohen said. We need multiple layers of protection at this point against the sort of strains with the properties that delta has.
MINNEAPOLIS (AP)  A man charged with attempted murder after firing at Minneapolis police officers in the chaotic protests that followed George Floyds death has been acquitted of all charges against him.

Jaleel Stallings argued self-defense during his July trial, testifying that he fired at the unmarked white van after he was struck in the chest with what turned out to be a nonlethal rubber bullet fired by police.

Stallings, 29, testified that he thought he was being attacked by civilians, had been struck by a bullet and was potentially bleeding out, his attorney, Eric Rice, told The Associated Press on Friday. Court documents show that after Stallings was hit, he fired three shots toward the van as a warning, then took cover. He surrendered when he realized he had fired at police. No officers were hit.

Stallings case drew new attention this week when an online digital news outlet, Minnesota Reformer, reported on his acquittal and examined the case in depth. The Reformer published body camera footage of his arrest that shows Minneapolis SWAT officers punching and kicking Stallings as he lay on the ground.

A booking photo of Stallings taken after his arrest shows visible facial injuries. Rice said Stallings testified he had a suspected eye socket fracture, bruising and cuts. Court documents say he also had labored breathing after the arrest, which Rice said was likely due to the impact of the rubber bullet to his chest.

Rice said hes not aware of any pending investigation or discipline for the officers, but requested such information if it existed and believes it should have been disclosed as part of trial discovery.

When asked if the officers were being investigated or disciplined for use of force, Minneapolis police spokesman John Elder said he cant release any information because the matter is under internal review.

Stallings is now seeking the courts permission to allow him to release body camera footage that became public evidence during trial, after a prior order in the case restricted dissemination of videos. A hearing on that issue is scheduled for later this month.

Stallings May 30, 2020, arrest made headlines during a time of unrest in Minneapolis, which included the burning of a police station, in the days after Floyds death. He was charged with two counts of second-degree attempted murder, multiple counts of assault and other charges. His case got added attention when the Minnesota Freedom Fund, a local nonprofit group, paid $75,000 in cash to get him released on bail.

According to court documents in his case, when Stallings realized he had fired at police officers, he immediately put his gun on the ground and lay face down, with his hands on the ground. A pretrial order from Judge William Koch said Stallings was motionless for 20 seconds and posed no obvious threat before Officer Justin Stetson and Sgt. Andrew Bittell approached him. The order says Stetson began kicking and punching Stallings in the head and neck, and Bittell began kneeing and punching him in the stomach, chest and back.

The judge found that Stetson and Bittell violated Stallings' Fourth Amendment rights during the arrest and that their actions were objectively unreasonable.

Officer Stetson and Sergeant Bittell allowed their anger and/or fear to overtake their faculties and they beat Mr. Stallings for nearly 30 seconds before attempting to place him in handcuffs, Koch wrote. The video evidence does not support their testimony Mr. Stallings was resisting arrest in any way, instead he surrendered to their authority.

The new attention on the case comes just months before Minneapolis voters will be asked to weigh in on a ballot question that would eliminate the police department and replace it with a new Department of Public Safety that would use a more comprehensive public health approach.
Saul Flores/Hearst Connecticut Media

MILFORD - Harborside Middle School, closed Thursday because of flooding inside the building, will be reopening Friday, according to Superintendent Anna Cutaia.

Flood waters inundated several areas of the city after the remnants of Hurricane Ida moved through the state overnight Wednesday into Thursday.
MADISON, Wis. (AP)  Two Wisconsin counties on Friday rejected a subpoena issued by a Republican lawmaker seeking ballots, voting machines and other material related to the 2020 presidential election, saying it was not valid.

State Rep. Janel Brandtjen, chairwoman of the Assembly Elections Committee, issued subpoenas to election clerks in Milwaukee and Brown counties on Aug. 6 ordering them to appear before her committee at noon on Tuesday with the requested material.

But attorneys for both counties said in separate letters to Brandtjen on Friday that the subpoena was not valid because it was not signed by Assembly Speaker Robin Vos or the Assembly's chief clerk, as required by law. Milwaukee County Attorney Margaret Daun said the county would comply with any legally issued subpoena and noted it will have participated in seven reviews of the election.

Milwaukee Countys elections are transparent and fair, Milwaukee County Clerk George Christenson said in a statement. Reviews done since the election, including a canvass of the vote, audit and recount ordered by former President Donald Trump, have upheld the results and shown there was no fraud or irregularities, Christenson noted.

Brown County Attorney David Hemery also said Brandtjen had not provided any details about how the cost of her request would be covered or what steps would be taken to ensure the security of all the information she requested, including ballots and voting machines.

Brandtjen issued a statement that did not directly address the countys rejection of the subpoena.

With the overwhelming amount of questionable election activity in Green Bay and Milwaukee, it is clear that a thorough investigation of the physical ballots, equipment and other election materials is warranted," she said. "Both Brown and Milwaukee counties need to be aware that they are bound by statute to preserve all election materials for twenty-two months.

While Vos refused to sign Brandtjen's subpoena, he has said he would sign subpoenas sought by former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman, who is leading a separate investigation ordered by Vos. Gableman has yet to issue any subpoenas.

In addition to the Gableman investigation and Brandtjens subpoenas, the nonpartisan Legislative Audit Bureau is also reviewing the 2020 election. That review was also ordered by Republicans. Both are expected to be completed by the fall.

Republicans have questioned numerous aspects of the 2020 election but have produced no evidence of widespread fraud. President Joe Bidens win over Trump by just under 21,000 votes in Wisconsin has withstood recounts in Milwaukee and Dane counties and numerous state and federal lawsuits filed by Trump and his supporters. To date, only two people out of 3.3 million votes cast have been charged with election fraud.
NORWALK  A portion of the UPS Customer Center facilitys roof on Martin Luther King Drive collapsed early Thursday during the height of Idas torrential rain, a city official said.

The roof of the UPS store located at 190 Dr. Martin Luther King Drive collapsed around midnight, city spokesperson Josh Morgan said. No injuries were reported.
As customary, there will be celebrations and somber reflections as American Jews observe the upcoming High Holy Days  their faiths most important period. There also will be deep disappointment, as rabbis once again cancel or limit in-person worship due to the persisting COVID-19 pandemic.

The chief culprit is the quick-spreading delta variant of the coronavirus, dashing widespread hopes that this years observances, unlike those of 2020, could once again fill synagogues with congregants worshipping side by side and exchanging hugs.

Im crushed emotionally that were not able to be in-person, said Rabbi Judith Siegal, whose Temple Judea in Coral Gables, Florida, will hold only virtual services for the holy days as the pandemics upsurge buffets South Florida.

For many rabbis, this is our favorite time of the year  were extroverts who love to be with people, Siegal said. We really miss being able to be together.

Instead, Siegal and her staff are filling the synagogues sanctuary with cardboard cutouts of congregation members, including children and pets.

At many synagogues, such as The Temple in Nashville, Tennessee, there will be a mix of in-person services, including indoor and outdoor options, and virtual offerings for people staying home. In many cases, plans keep changing with the approach of Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, which starts the evening of Sept. 6, followed by Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, on Sept. 15-16.

Theres an asterisk by everything, said The Temples senior rabbi, Mark Schiftan. Were not even sending out more than very tentative information about Yom Kippur because thats too far out.

At Temple Beth El in Charlotte, North Carolina, Rabbi Asher Knight and his staff have planned meticulously for holiday services, requiring advance registration for congregants whether they want to participate in person or online.

Everyone attending in person must wear a mask, and vaccinations are mandatory for all those 12 and over.

Everything we do leads to the preservation of life, Knight said.

Another Temple Beth El, in Augusta, Maine, also will require masks inside the synagogue. But workers have erected a big tent in the yard for an outdoor service Sept. 7.

The ability to see people face to face is wonderful, whatever way they choose to come, Rabbi Erica Asch said. But theres a little bit of sadness that we cant all be together the way wed like.

At Valley Beth Shalom, a Conservative synagogue in Los Angeles serving about 10,000 people, no unvaccinated worshippers will be allowed on the campus during the holy days. That includes all children under 12 because they're ineligible for vaccinations, a decision Rabbi Noah Farkas called the saddest thing we did this year.

All of us were hoping this holiday season was going to be a do-over from 2020, Farkas said. After all the pain, all the distancing, I was hoping we could shake it off and everyone could come back and give each other hugs. Thats not going to happen."

Amy Asin, who directs the Union for Reform Judaisms Strengthening Congregations initiative, said many rabbis feel similar disappointment.

Theres been an incredible amount of resilience over the past 18 months, and now there are very serious levels of exhaustion, she said.

Another emotion  sorrow  pervades the 2,000-strong congregation at the Shul of Bar Harbour, an Orthodox synagogue in Surfside, Florida, the city where 98 people died when a condominium collapsed in June. Rabbi Sholom Lipskar estimates that 40% of those killed were Jewish, including perhaps a dozen or more who were active in the Shul community.

Theres no question that this tragedy, and its lingering pain and anguish, is part of the community at this point, Lipskar said. At same time, recognizing who we are as Jewish people, we have learned to live with the most extraordinary adversity."

God has blessed us, he added. We are here, we are alive, we have a purpose in life. Were going to look to a new year. Theres a very big sense of power and renewal.

Lipskars synagogue is one of about 1,100 across the U.S. affiliated with the Hasidic organization Chabad-Lubavitch. Chabad's media relations director, Rabbi Motti Seligson, said the synagogues will host in-person High Holy Days services, many of them outdoors, following guidelines from local medical authorities.

For those who choose to pray at home, Chabad is distributing a booklet containing Rosh Hashana prayers.

In some communities, pandemic worries are compounded by concerns over possible incidents of antisemitism during the High Holy Days, which overlap with the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

A Jewish volunteer group, Community Security Services, has been promoting free webinars for New York-area Jews aimed at increasing security awareness. The threat against Jews in NY has reached record levels," an online ad warned. "The hatred and violence is impacting all of us.

"Whats striking about the threats is that they come from the left and right of the ideological spectrum," said Evan Bernstein, national director of Community Security Services.

We have to be keenly aware of that and not think its only coming from one particular group," he said.

Security experts are concerned by white supremacists, pro-Palestinian activists and people embracing conspiracy theories blaming Jews for the pandemic, said Mitch Silber, who heads a regional security initiative on behalf of New York-based Jewish organizations.

The Jewish community in the U.S is facing what may be the most diverse sets of threats weve ever seen, Silber said.

With more services and events being held outdoors due to the pandemic, security experts say those might be more vulnerable to attacks and are offering advice on minimizing potential dangers.

But for the Chabad Jewish Center of St. Charles County, in greater St. Louis, holding services and events such as study groups outdoors has been essential during its short time in existence, having been founded in 2019 shortly before the pandemic hit.

Weve never had services indoors for high holidays, Rabbi Chaim Landa said. Were going into the second year of this, but this is all we know thus far.

Last year 120 people participated in the centers Rosh Hashana observance in a park, and this year it's preparing for 200 people.

Were open for the high holidays, Landa said. Our calling is to be there at these important times.

___

Associated Press religion coverage receives support from the Lilly Endowment through The Conversation U.S. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
Niagara Falls, NY (14301)

Today

Showers and scattered thunderstorms. Low 64F. Winds WSW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 60%..

Tonight

Showers and scattered thunderstorms. Low 64F. Winds WSW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 60%.
The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board said it has handed over a 19-year-old candidate in the 2021/2022 Unified Tertiary and Matricu...

The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board said it has handed over a 19-year-old candidate in the 2021/2022 Unified Tertiary and Matriculation Examination to the police for investigation over what it described as result tampering.

According to the boards Registrar, Prof Ishaq Oloyede, who briefed journalists at JAMBs headquarters in Abuja on Friday, the candidate, Chinedu John, had claimed he scored 380 in the examination conducted in June was surprised to receive 265 from the board after the results were released.

He said following alleged alteration of the UTME score, the candidates father, John Ifenkpam, approached an Enugu-based lawyer, Ikeazor Akaiwe, who wrote to JAMB for another opportunity for the boy to retake the examination and demanded N1 billion as damages.

According to Oloyede, the lawyer said the N1 billion was to cover for the physical and emotional trauma the boy had been through from being offered two separate scores.

The candidate was said to have claimed that his UTME scores from 2019 till 2021 had been altered by the board, thereby denying him the opportunity to study his desired course  medicine.

On Friday, the candidate, his father and lawyers travelled to Abuja from Enugu state following an invitation from the management of the board led by the Oloyede.

Initially, the boy was given few minutes to come clean in a closed session with his father and lawyers about the results he was parading but insisted that his original score from the examination was 380.

After going back and forth, the board tendered evidence to counter the claim by John and his legal representatives.

At the Friday meeting, documentary evidence tendered by the board showed that John actually scored 265 and not the 380 he had claimed.

Oloyede accused the candidate of alteration, adding that he will be handed over to the police for investigation and subsequently prosecuted.

The registrar said John was among 11 eleven other candidates who allegedly forged their results that the board would prosecute.

He said the original result issued to him would be withdrawn pending investigation.

Oloyede said, We have 11 of them who tampered with their results. Two of them are already being prosecuted. The remaining ones we are going to withdraw their results and prosecute them. The main purpose is to sanitise the system, including our own staff.

There was never any communication of 380 with this boy. Because this boy has accused JAMB, we are going to withhold his result until the investigation is concluded. We are going to request that our interactions with him be subjected to the public.

His lawyer, Ikeazor, appealed to the board to instead give room for further investigation.

I will not stand against investigation. Let there be investigation but what I will not agree to is to prejudge him, he said.

Earlier, John had said, The result I have been receiving is not the result I am entitled to. I wrote the first JAMB in 2019.

The first time, they sent 328 and later, I saw 278 when I checked it. I printed it. I couldnt meet up for admission that year. I wanted to study medicine and surgery at the University of Ibadan.

In 2020, the same thing happened. I scored 343, but by the time I went to the portal to print, I saw 306. I used the 306 and it gave me admission in UI. But because I didnt have Further Mathematics, I had to forfeit it.

I decided to leave Medicine and Surgery for them in 2021 so I picked Petroleum Engineering. In 2021, JAMB issued me two results. I saw 380 the first time I checked and then the second time, I saw 265.

But the boards Public Relations Officer, Fabian Benjamin, claimed that the candidate confessed to the crime.

He said The candidate who was paraded for forging the Boards result has confessed after the Board discovered that he saved his sisters number on his phone as 55019 and used the phone to send the fake result to his phone.

When he sends such results, they come as 55019.

He pleaded for mercy that he had to do that when the result he got was not up to what could give him his desired programme.
Tokumbo, the ex wife of Big Brother Naija Season 6 housemate, Boma Akpore, has reacted to the ongoing controversy surrounding her ex-hus...

Tokumbo, the ex wife of Big Brother Naija Season 6 housemate, Boma Akpore, has reacted to the ongoing controversy surrounding her ex-husband.

Recall that Boma has been trending on all social platforms after his escapades with the female contestants in the Big Brother House, especially Tega, who is married with a kid.

He has also received a lot of bashing online after his altercation with Angel on Thursday evening.

The 34- year-old made himself an object of criticism after he referred to Angel as a mentally ill patient and called her a bastard.

He went on to berate her, stating that her biggest achievement is BBNaija.

His actions has since generated a lot of backlash from viewers at home, even fellow housemates who have been evicted from the show.

However, his ex-wife Tokunbo while reacting to the controversies surrounding her ex husband in a post via her Instagram story stated that God has finally vindicated her.

She hinted that Boma is a wolf in sheeps clothing, adding that time is all it takes for a persons true color to show.

When God said vengeance is mine, he means it! Leave it to Him.

Things will always come to light. Wolves in sheep clothing cant hide for long.

Dont be fake, your true character will one day come out where the world will see it.

Anyways, back to me receiving my blessings. God is so kind and good to me, she wrote.

Boma allegedly got married to Tokumbo, but unfortunately, their marriage crashed after six years.

The reason for their split has not yet been fully ascertained.
The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has threatened to sue the Department of State Services (DSS) for smashing the car windscreen...





The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has threatened to sue the Department of State Services (DSS) for smashing the car windscreen of Prof. Abdulkadir Mohammed.

The operatives also destroyed the side mirror of the car.

Chairman of the Ahmadu Bello University (ABU) chapter of the union, Prof. Rabiu Nasiru, considered the violence by DSS operatives as an unwarranted assault.

Nasiru said the union has resolved to sue the secret police if the agency failed to repair the damaged car.

He made the declaration at a news conference he addressed on Friday in Zaria, Kaduna State.

He said Prof. Abdulkadir Mohammed, the Kano Zonal Coordinator of the union, was assaulted while on a union assignment.

He said that the news conference was aimed at calling the attention of concerned authorities and the general public to unwholesome activities of some personnel of the DSS.

Prof. Nasiru said that operatives of the DSS assaulted Prof. Mohammed while he was travelling to Katsina in his vehicle along Hadejia Road by-pass in Kano.

His fault, if any, was that he drove in the front of a motorcade being escorted by the DSS.

The incident occurred on Aug. 18 at about 2 p.m. on Hadejia Road bye-pass Kano, and the attack was perpetrated by men of the DSS in a Hilux vehicle belonging to Kano State Government House.

Besides the physical assault, they also smashed the windscreen and broke the side mirror of Mohammeds car in a show of force for no just cause, Nasiru said.

ASUU called on the leadership of the DSS to take punitive measures against the officers involved as they portrayed the organisation in a bad light.

Nasiru further demanded that the DSS should promptly make the personnel responsible for the shameful act repair the damaged car of the victim with immediate effect to avoid facing legal action.

However, he appealed to the National Assembly to reorganise the DSS or review the provisions of Section 315 of the 1999 Constitution that incorporated the 1986 Decree 19, issued by the military.

He said that the review would ensure that the organisation conformed to democratic tenets and the rule of law.
Governor, Aminu Bello Masari has said the Katsina State Contributory Healthcare Management Agency (KTSCHMA), which he signed into law two ye...





Governor, Aminu Bello Masari has said the Katsina State Contributory Healthcare Management Agency (KTSCHMA), which he signed into law two years ago, will tame the catastrophic health care expenditure taking a toll on public servants in the state.

Governor Masari made the disclosure during the official flag-off of the scheme on Thursday.

The Governor said the bill establishing the scheme which he signed into law on December 27, 2018, has over 260,000 enrollees in the Formal Sector Program and the states 53,241 vulnerable population would be covered under the Basic Healthcare Provision Fund (BHCPF).

Governor Masari at the event reiterated his resolve to achieve universal health coverage for all residents of Katsina with no one left behind in accessing healthcare.

He said his administration will continue to work assiduously to provide a credible and sustainable mechanism for the pooling of resources to finance healthcare provisions in both formal and informal sector programs.

Ladies and gentlemen, the primary purpose of Katsina State Contributory Healthcare Management Agency is to significantly reduce catastrophic Healthcare expenditure among the population of Katsina State residents. Such will be feasible by ensuring adequate and sustainable funding that will be efficiently and equitably used to provide quality health services and ensure financial risk protection for all Katsina State residents. This is in line with the national drive for achieving universal health coverage, Governor Masari said

The Chairman of the board, board, Ismaila Isa Kaita, commended the Governor for his foresight and assured that the agency would do all that is needful for the agency to thrive and achieve its set goals and objectives.
Among the many creative people whose lives have been disrupted are writers  from those who are established to those who want to begin literary careers.

The Jefferson Parish Library has online solutions for the hundreds of writers in the area seeking to polish their skills.

One of the best library resources is the streaming service Kanopy, which can be found by going to the librarys website, then to the digital content bar at the top. Scroll down the page and click on Kanopy.

Patrons will find the following free Great Courses that focus on the craft of writing.

How to Write Best Selling Fiction

Screenwriting 101

Building a Better Vocabulary

Writing Great Fiction

Utopian and Dystopian Literature

Secrets of Mystery and Suspense

Creative Thinkers Too Kit

Writing Great Essays

English Grammar Boot Camp

How to Publish Your Book

How Great Science Fiction Works

Another Great Course about writing  Great American Short Stories  can be found on the librarys second streaming service, Hoopla, which can be accessed by going to the librarys website under the heading digital content.

Hoopla also has hundreds of eBooks and audiobooks for writers. The following six digital titles can be checked out as if they were traditional library books.

"Writing Fiction" by Helena Smith

"The Writing of Fiction" by Edith Wharton

"Writing Fiction" by Janet Burroway

"101 Fiction Writing Prompts" by Kate Krake

"Writing Amazing Fiction" by Patricia Renard Scholes

"How to Write Best Selling Fiction" by James Scott Bell

There are also thousands of books at the fingers of any patron, because any author knows that the best way to become a good writer is to read the work of others. Always, always, always read.

NEWSBANK: With schools back in session, it's a good time to remind young patrons about the homework help section on the Jefferson Parish Library website and school project resources including NewsBanks Access World News and ResearchRocket. To access these resources, patrons should go to the librarys website, then click on Databases, then go down the left-hand side of the page to find NewsBank.
The vast majority of New Orleans remained sweltering in the post Hurricane Ida blackout Thursday, but through the day more restaurants and neighborhood bars opened their doors. Heres what I found around town on the fourth day after Ida.

Restaurants that were able to get back cooking were not open in any conventional capacity. But if they had food on hand and the prospect of using it, many found a way. Some were selling plates and drinks to resume some kind of revenue. Others were dishing out what they had for free, and partnering with others in the hospitality community to do it.

A faulty generator prevented Blue Oak BBQ in from reopening, but the Mid-City smokehouse teamed up with chefs Aaron Sanchez and Miles Landrem of Johnny Sanchez for a community feeding event, with free barbecue sandwiches and tacos from the Johnny Sanchez food truck in the parking lot.

Across town, Live Oak Cafe had only reopened from its 2020 COVID closure last week, yet chef Clare Leavy was still feeding the neighborhood, giving away plates of Southern comfort food and selling drinks from the bar.

Its been a jigsaw puzzle of prepping the most perishable items to keep supplying meals, but at least we can do something, she said.

She hopes to be able to continue this for another day or two if the power does not come back sooner.

In the French Quarter, Palm & Pine has been doing much the same, handing out boxed meals through the front window.

Most of the restaurants cooking again have been small mom-and-pops, operating with family, a handful of staff or, sometimes, just the proprietor working alone.

Theyre juggling generators, perishable food, shelf-stable staples and the crucial currency of water, ice and gas.

This is survival mode, not for the faint of heart, said Alvi Mogilles at her familys McHardys Chicken & Fixin.

The Seventh Ward institution has been open by generator power but Friday could be the end of their gas supply. Her son Rahman Mogilles manned the fryers in the blisteringly hot kitchen, serving a line of customers that they allowed inside one at a time for COVID safety.

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Just around the corner on Bayou Road, the Jamaican restaurant Coco Hut was selling plates of curried shrimp with lamb chops or salmon through the front door.

We did OK in the storm and right now we just dont have lights, but Ive never been big on air conditioning anyway, allowed the chef/owner, a woman known to all as Mother Nature.

Beaucoup Eats got back open without electricity, but the gas stoves are running in the very hot, dark kitchen, where owner Lakesha Reed is preparing much of her regular menu. On Thursday the roster included ribs, salmon, chicken wings and smothered greens and sweet potatoes.

The restaurant sits across Canal Street from the VA Hospital, and Reed has seen a steady stream of customers, including many doctors and nurses working long shifts and seeking some nourishment.

Theyre just thanking us for being open, Reed said. We cant get deliveries yet for more food, but were working with what we have and then well see about maybe hitting the road to find more.

Across town at Dunbars Creole Cuisine on Earhart Boulevard, the lights came back on Wednesday, one of the patches of the city to get power back. Frank Jones, the long-time cook at the multi-generation Creole soul restaurant, was cleaning up while the family owners remained out of town. Their own homes were still blacked out.

It revealed another complexity for restaurants - even when power is restored many of the people who make them tick remain evacuated and resupplying kitchens emptied out from the blackout is an uncertain prospect right now.

+5 A New Orleans culinary school rapidly transforms as a hub of Hurricane Ida food relief Classes were on hold at the New Orleans Culinary & Hospitality Institute after Hurricane Ida, but the downtown culinary school offered a v

Larger restaurants were trying to mitigate cascading issues, checking in with staff and assessing damages.

After sending a few truckloads of food to the convention center to feed National Guard personnel there, a group of Commanders Palace managers were on to tasks like getting trash service to haul away what they couldn't give and maintaining the generators that are keeping the landmark restaurants vast wine cellar intact.

The rambling, historic property that Antoines Restaurant calls home weathered the storm well, CEO Rick Blount said, and with electricity back on in the French Quarter he and a handful of managers were cleaning up and assessing how to go forward.

Weve cleared out all the food, theres not even the proverbial jar of pickles in the fridge now, he said, noting that was a relief after a much different post-Katrina clean up. But we have plenty of alcohol. Maybe well open the bar first.

+3 New Orleans music club that fed thousands in the pandemic gets cooking again after Ida The stage inside the New Orleans music venue the Howlin Wolf was dark and quiet after Hurricane Ida cut the areas power supply. But on the s

+7 New Orleans restaurants give away food, find ways to get cooking after Hurricane Ida On day two after Hurricane Ida tore through the region, more people began trying to refresh their supplies of food, water, ice. They found man
As widespread suffering continued five days after Hurricane Ida ransacked southeast Louisiana, President Joe Biden walked through storm-ravaged LaPlace on Friday while residents tossed rotting insulation and mold-infested furniture into the streets. He promised that the United States wouldnt forget them or their River Parishes community.

I know you're hurting. I know you're hurting, Biden said as he walked past giant oak trees toppled by the storms 135 mile-per-hour winds.

Watch a replay of Biden's remarks in the player below. Can't see the video? Click here.

The president said $500 in immediate payments would be made to those affected by the Category 4 storm, most of whom are living without power and water, if they applied for disaster assistance through the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The president also promised swift aid to the state, which has been battered by a string of natural disasters and is still waiting for significant help to rebuild after Hurricane Laura more than a year ago.

But on Friday, signs of federal help remained scarce in some of the neighborhoods hit worst by fierce rain, racecar-fast winds, and flash flooding. Hurricane Ida has killed at least 13 people in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, and 48 in the Northeastern U.S.

"FEMA is invisible. They're just a name, said Albert Lewis, a 71-year-old Navy veteran, responding to his landlord, who handed him his safety deposit and told him that he had to leave the Colony Drive apartment complex wrecked by Ida.

Lewis said hed like to stay in a hotel room with air conditioning and running water. But at his age, it's impossible to figure out the FEMA website.

Hours later, Biden drove past Lewis' apartment complex in his presidential motorcade, and promised federal relief will be equitable for those hardest hit. The president said FEMA representatives would go door-to-door to help survivors without cell service or internet sign up for federal relief, repeating a promise made on Tuesday by FEMAs top brass.

But several residents in the area said theyve seen no signs of government workers.

Biden arrived at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport around noon Friday. Gov. John Bel Edwards, U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy, New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell and other local officials spoke with the president before he boarded a helicopter and headed to St. John the Baptist Parish.

In the evening, Biden traveled by Marine 1 helicopter over the devastated communities of Lafitte, Grand Isle and Port Fourchon. In Galliano, he met with Jean Lafitte Mayor Tim Kerner Jr., Grand Isle Mayor David Camardelle and Lafourche Parish President Archie Chaisson, who said 25% of the homes in his community of 100,000 were gone or had catastrophic damage. By 6:30 p.m., he was en route back to New Orleans.

But the devastation was clear even as Air Force One approached New Orleans, with uprooted trees and blue tarps covering shredded houses coming into view. The road to LaPlace exhibited power poles jutting from the ground at odd angles.

At the St. John the Baptist Parish operations center in LaPlace, Biden was briefed by local officials.

The president said he understood the frustration about the lack of power was working with power management companies. He also called for greater public resolve to confront a warming climate. He insisted his $1 trillion infrastructure bill and an even more expansive measure later on would ensure that vital networks connecting cities, states and the country as a whole can withstand the flooding, whirlwinds and damage caused by increasingly dangerous weather.

It seems to me we can save a whole lot of money, a whole lot of pain for our constituents, if we build back, rebuild it back in a better way, Biden said. I realize Im selling as Im talking.

Sen. Cassidy tweeted later that in his conversation with Biden "we spoke about the need for resiliency. We agreed putting power lines beneath the ground would have avoided all of this. The infrastructure bill has billions for grid resiliency.

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Back on Cambridge Drive in LaPlace, Patrick Williams helped David Jefferson, a fellow member of the Zulu Social Aid & Pleasure Club, siphon a foot of water out of his sunken living room as the Secret Service began cutting off access to the neighborhood in anticipation of the presidential visit.

Jefferson rode out hours of the storm inside the house with the winds blowing "like a freight train" outside. He escaped through the floodwaters in his SUV once the worst was over.

"It's something to see. That's the only way you can really believe what took place," Jefferson said.

Jefferson, a band teacher at East St. John High School, saw the president's visit as an opportunity to speed up construction of a back levee planned to prevent surges from Lake Pontchartrain before another storm.

"Hopefully he can help them to put that levee back there," he said. "We don't know if it'll be three years before another good one comes through."

Wearing a baseball cap and a mask, Biden greeted a family in front of a house covered by a giant blue tarp and surrounded by downed trees. He hugged them and shook hands with a Yassani Nova, an 11-year-old wearing a Rugrats t-shirt.

Im going to remember this my whole life, Nova said later.

Other residents nearby also seemed consoled by Biden's visit, with one holding a sign that read, "Thanks 4 checking on us," with his last name and a heart drawn over the "i." They laughed and posed for selfies.

The president then walked down to talk with 13-year-old Legend Taylor and his grandfather Larry Snyder, 74. The familys open garage was full of gas containers, propane tanks and trash cans.

He told me that he grew up in a place like this," Taylor said. "And just because you grow up in a place like this doesnt mean you cant become what you want.

Down the block, Rhonda Cammon, 67, sat on the edge of her porch, hoping that Biden's visit meant more food and water was on its way. Exactly nine years ago, she said, President Barack Obama walked down the exact same street after Hurricane Isaac ravaged the neighborhood.

"I just pray that it doesn't take too long," Cammon said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

CORRECTION: David Camardelle's name was misspelled in earlier versions of this story.
If you hear a loud boom in Harahan this afternoon, don't be alarmed  it's part of a "controlled demolition," Louisiana State Police reports.

The aim is to knock down a transmission tower that is partially holding up some fallen lines that cross the river. The lines are blocking river traffic, and once the tower is down, crews will be able to clear them.

State Police's Emergency Services Unit evacuated nearby residents, according to reporting from the Gambit. Police closed Jefferson Highway between Brookhollow Esplanade and Crislaur Avenue Friday afternoon and warned the public to avoid the area. River Road is also closed.

"In order to safely remove the electrical conductor from its attachment points on the structure (river crossing tower) small explosive charges will be placed on the conductors and detonated. Once complete, with the conductors freed from the structure, the conductor will be removed from the Mississippi River thus allowing maritime traffic to resume," a letter the Entergy distributed to residents Friday explained.
Rev. Haywood Johnson Jr. has already watched his community of Ironton in lower Plaquemines Parish rebuild twice after storms. Hurricane Katrina dealt a devastating blow in 2005, followed by Isaac's flooding in 2012.

Ahead of Hurricane Ida, almost everyone fled, anxious about what the Category 4 storm would bring Sunday.

Ida didn't hold back. An 8-foot wall of water easily swept over the meager 3 to 6 feet of levee protection on Ironton's marsh side. It pushed some of the unelevated houses off their foundations. At others, the water just forced its way through, leaving bedrooms and bathrooms exposed.

In the community's two cemeteries, the surge carried several coffins and stone tombs from their resting places, knocking them into each other as they floated around the town. Residents will have to examine the tombs, some unmarked, to figure out where they belong. It's a process they went through after Katrina, Johnson said, and it restarts a grief process.

"It's really disturbing," said Johnson, who pastors St. Paul Missionary Baptist Church. "You're trying to put your relative to rest. That's where the healing happens. This knocks the scab off, and you have to heal again."

Four days after Ida roared through, as much as 3 feet of water was still pooled Thursday across Ironton, rendering it inaccessible by car or truck. Little could be done to recover the dead until the water drains back into Barataria Bay.

Plaquemines Homeland Security Director Patrick Harvey said water levels in the parish were comparable to Isaac. After that storm, it took at least two weeks to gain full access to Louisiana 23.

Established in the 1800s, Ironton was settled by freed slaves who worked at the St. Rosalie plantation just up the Mississippi River. The bodies of some of the largely Black communitys first residents lie in the cemeterys tombs, providing a connection to its origin.

Johnson said there's no question whether Ironton residents will return to rebuild again, despite inadequate levee protection. The recovery, he said, will start with his church, where Ida destroyed the first floor with at least 10 feet of water.

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The church is the beacon of the community, and once the church is rebuilt, people will come home, said Johnson, an Ironton native. Thats my task.

Beyond Ironton on Thursday, piles of marsh grass and other debris covered roads and property in Myrtle Grove, Wood Park and other communities outside the levee system. Some docks splintered against the surge, and yards were caked in a couple inches of mud. The bloated bodies of dead nutria littered the ground, and displaced cattle and horses wandered the highway.

Parish officials said they have drained water from 7 miles of the 18-mile stretch of the highway between the Phillips 66 oil refinery at Alliance to West Pointe a la Hache. They did so by making 6-foot-wide cuts in the unfinished federal levee.

Still, it was unclear when the water brought by Ida's surge would fully recede, and when residents might be able to return to check on their property without using an airboat.

Sheriff Jerry Turlich said Plaquemines must be methodical when it punches holes in the levee. Create too many or dig too deeply, and contractors might not be able to plug the holes before the next storm threat.

Parish President Kirk Lepine said officials were working with the Louisiana National Guard to deliver packaged meals and water to the few residents who didn't evacuate from the lower end of the parish, which remains under a mandatory evacuation order. With the highway submerged, Ida has put communities such as Port Sulphur, Empire and Venice on their own island. Lepine had yet to be able to make it down to see how that area fared.
Oil refineries and petrochemical plants have been flaring at full blast in Louisiana's "chemical corridor" along the Mississippi River since Hurricane Ida, and the 15 of the state Department of Environmental Quality's air monitoring stations are out of service.

The department has set up mobile trailers containing equipment to sniff out chemicals in the air and take samples from the ground and water near two of the disabled monitoring stations:

At the Shell Norco petrochemical complex in St. Charles Parish, where numerous flares have been pumping out a mix of black smoke and steam since Ida hit Sunday

Near the Chalmette and Valero refineries and other petrochemical plants in St. Bernard Parish.

The other monitoring stations that are down are at Carville, New Orleans City Park, Dutchtown, French Settlement, Garyville, along Interstate 610 in New Orleans, in the Irish Channel in New Orleans, Kenner, Madisonville, Marrero, Meraux, St. Rose and Thibodaux.

"They are powered by electricity," which is still down in most of those areas, agency spokesperson Greg Langley said Thursday.

Flaring can result of a mix of issues at a particular plant, said Brian Johnston, administrator of air permits for the agency.

"A flare is essentially a safety device," he said. "It's typically designed to burn off large volumes of hydrocarbon gases as a plant starts up or shuts down, or if there's a malfunction or upsets. It's designed to safely combust the gas."

Some of the plants have their on electric co-generation units that provide them with the electricity to continue operating even after a hurricane such Ida knocks out commercial power. Others are entirely dependent on the electric grid - and run into trouble when electricity is not available.

+4 Reports of environmental problems caused by Hurricane Ida begin to trickle in Information about potential environmental threats caused by Hurricane Ida have been slow in coming, but initial reports to the Coast Guard's N

"Why we're seeing a lot of black smoke is because one of the primary methods to keep a flare from smoking is to apply steam to the flare tip," Johnston said. That lets gases burn with less black smoke and also creates less particulate matter, itself a pollutant.

Under federal and state regulations, the flares are required to meet standards of opacity, or the amount of blackness seen in the flare release, Johnston said. In some cases, the standard is zero, while some plants are allowed an opacity level of no higher than 20 percent.

That means plants producing black smoke after Ida are violating those regulations, But enforcement is likely to be minimal. During past storms, the state has agreed with company officials that the higher emissions were the result of an "act of God" such as a hurricane or other weather event.

"The black smoke looks scary and it implies that combustion is not as efficient as it should be, but that's not really the case," Johnston said. "They may emit more particulate matter than a nonsmoking flare, but the impact on the flare's ability to destroy hydrocarbons is minimal.

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"There shouldn't be any cause for alarm," he said.

Meanwhile, the agency fielded another 36 Ida-related reports of environmental issues on Wednesday, including including reports by Hilcorp Energy of incidents involving 11 of its oil and gas wells in a variety of coastal locations, most involving spills or evidence of sheens caused by oil releases.

Witt O'Briens LLC, a company that responds to oil and gas incidents, reported that three unnamed facilities were knocked down by Ida at locations in state waters in the Gulf of Mexico.

The Phillips 66 Alliance Refinery reported, "Refinery flooded; found heavy oil in floodwater."

Similar reports made to the U.S. Coast Guard's National Response Center have not been added to the agency's online public database, which has not been updated since the day Ida made landfall.

Copies of the individual reports are available to the public only through a federal Freedom of Information Act request, to which the agency has 20 days to respond.

The Department of Environmental Quality has begun "rapid needs assessments" in partnership with the State Police. Two-person teams had conducted 90 site visits as of Wednesday afternoon, with nine teams working Wednesday and 11 teams focusing on Terrebonne and Lafourche parishes on Thursday.

The teams go to permitted facilities in a door-to-door sweep to look for spills or release of hazardous material, and also report to other state officials when they discover other concerns not directly related to their environmental assessments.

Langley said no significant issues had been discovered during the visits through Wednesday afternoon.

Individual reports on each site visited are eventually to be posted online in the department's public database.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency also has begun environmental assessments across the state.

"EPAs ASPECT aircraft  the agencys airborne real-time chemical and radiological detection, infrared and photographic imagery platform  was activated today to support the state of Louisiana. ASPECT is generating data on a list of priority sites identified by the state of Louisiana," said Maggie Sauerhage of EPA's Office of Science Advisor Policy and Engagement.

"As of Sept. 1, EPA had completed assessments for 24 of 25 Superfund sites on the National Priorities List in Louisiana and Mississippi with no documented releases or impacts to the environment," she said. On Thursday, "EPA Region 6 & 7 mobile labs were deployed in response to a FEMA Mission Assignment for mobile drinking water lab support in Louisiana. Two EPA drinking water and wastewater subject matter experts were also deployed on September 1 to assist FEMA and Louisiana."
Two nurses who worked inside the Tangipahoa Parish warehouse where more than 800 nursing home residents have now been rescued from squalid conditions say they are haunted by the scenes they witnessed after Hurricane Ida, as elderly people called out for help, the air conditioning quit and toilets overflowed.

Louisiana Department of Health officials announced Thursday that they had opened an investigation after seven nursing homes with 843 residents evacuated to the warehouse in Independence for the storm. Four of the nursing home residents died, while LDH rescued more than 800 of them. Dozens were hospitalized.

The patients came from seven nursing homes owned by Baton Rouge developer Bob Dean. The nursing homes are: River Palms Nursing and Rehab in Orleans Parish, South Lafourche Nursing and Rehab in Lafourche Parish, Maison Orleans Healthcare Center in Orleans Parish, Park Place Healthcare Nursing Home in Jefferson Parish, West Jefferson Health Care Center in Jefferson Parish, Maison DeVille Nursing Home in Terrebonne Parish and Maison DeVille Nursing Home of Harvey in Jefferson Parish.

+14 At remote Louisiana warehouse, nursing home evacuees lay in waste, calling out for help After spending six days in a fetid warehouse with overflowing toilets and piled-up trash, four nursing home residents died and nearly 800 more

Both nurses who spoke to The Advocate | The Times-Picayune work for South Lafourche Nursing and Rehab. They spoke on the condition of anonymity, saying they feared retribution from administrators in Deans nursing home network. Both said they felt strongly that the conditions in the warehouse were inhumane, and that the public needed to know what happened inside.

Both also said Dean needed to face consequences for putting hundreds of vulnerable, elderly people in such dire circumstances.

Dean did not immediately return messages Thursday from The Advocate | The Times-Picayune. But he told WVUE-TV on Thursday that, we only had five deaths within the six days and normally with 850 people, youll have a couple a day, so we did really good with taking care of people.

The nurses  who said Dean was not present at the warehouse where they were working  saw things differently.

As soon as they arrived at the warehouse, the nurses said they tried to segregate residents from South Lafourche Nursing and Rehab from the others, as they worried about COVID spreading rapidly through the masses of people inside. They said the warehouse had 10 to 12 showers, four lavatory sinks and a group of port-a-potties, while there were mattresses on the floor for most residents.

+8 4 nursing home residents dead after Hurricane Ida, 700+ rescued from facility under investigation Four Louisiana nursing home residents have died and several hundred more have needed rescuing after seven nursing homes sent more than 800 pat

The nurses said they were worried about their South Lafourche residents picking up infections from residents of the other nursing homes.

Our whole purpose was not to get anything their residents had, one nurse said. You could tell the other nursing home residents were neglected  they were so neglected. They would yell at us, Please help me, Im thirsty, I need to be changed, Ive been full of shit for the past two hours. The hardest thing we had to do was keep walking and not help them. That was one of the hardest things I ever had to do.

The other nurse described similar conditions.

They were laying on the floor, in feces, and the blowup mattresses were flat, she said. Youd walk past them and theyd say, Help me, help me. I ended up vomiting twice because the smell was so bad.

She said they improvised their own bathroom to keep the South Lafourche nursing home residents from having to share with so many others. They placed a bucket underneath a shower chair with a hole in it, filled the bucket with cat litter and would spray it down with bleach after each use.

+3 Baton Rouge nursing home owner Bob Dean has drawn regulators' ire on numerous occasions Bob Dean, the Baton Rouge developer whose Louisiana nursing home empire is at the center of controversy after four residents died after being 

Parts smelled like nothing but feces and urine, said one nurse. I watched people lie in their own feces. People slept on the cement floor.

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As the hurricane hit, the nurses described rainwater coming into the warehouse and a rush to mop it up as quickly as possible. One said about 100 residents were transported mid-storm  via an outdoor, covered walkway  from one section of the warehouse to another where residents were already grouped, making the crowding inside even more of a concern.

There werent enough mattresses to go around, and they said some residents slept in their chairs.

After the storm, the air conditioner went out, making it even more unbearable, they said. Trash also piled up. The scene was grotesque.

It looked like a landfill  the trash, the dirtiness, one nurse said.

Conditions werent much better for staff than for residents. The nurses said they had no designated lodgings. They described sleeping in vehicles outside and relieving themselves outside because the indoors was so revolting.

Residents were getting dehydrated in the suffocating heat, and though the nurses said there was enough water and enough linens, other crucial supplies  like oxygen  were in short supply. As the days dragged on and they grew more and more worried, the nurses said they tried to get as many of them as possible picked up by Tangipahoa Parish emergency medical technicians and taken to the hospital.

The nurses said they hoped the paramedics would take note of the rapidly deteriorating conditions inside the warehouse, and sound alarm bells.

My heart is for these people; this was not right, one of the nurses said. We tried. We did the best we could with what we had. They had to know that.

LDH investigators visited the facility five times before they made the call to shut it down, evacuate the patients and open an investigation. Nursing home management kicked the inspectors off the premises when they visited Tuesday. LDH officials said that nursing home management also never told them that the situation was growing worse, and that they needed help.

+18 On the scene: Nursing home residents rescued from warehouse where 4 died after Ida evacuation Nursing home residents were still being evacuated from a warehouse Thursday afternoon in Independence after four of them died and hundreds wer

One of the nurses said she was relieved when LDH announced that they were shutting the place down.

She went back to a home that had been destroyed by Hurricane Ida. But the nursing home residents were still occupying most of her mental space.

I dont know if I can go back and be a nurse again, and thats what hurts me the most, she said. I lost my house and I still cant even comprehend it compared to what I just went through.

The other nurse said as grim as the situation was inside the warehouse, evacuating it was also devastating, because residents thought they were going home when they were loaded onto the bus. Instead, they were bound for other shelters and nursing homes, where many of their families still have not been able to reach them.

I told them, were not going home, but hopefully were gonna see each other real, real soon, she said. And they started crying.

Editor's note: This story was changed on Sept. 3 to correct the station that Bob Dean spoke with.
After spending six days in a fetid warehouse with overflowing toilets and piled-up trash, four nursing home residents died and nearly 800 more were rescued, while state officials said they were opening an investigation and families pushed for answers about their loved ones whereabouts.

The scene all played out at a warehouse in Independence known as Waterbury Companies, where seven nursing homes all owned by the same Baton Rouge businessman sent 843 residents before Hurricane Ida to ride out the storm. The longer they stayed, the worse things got: several officials who entered the facility or worked there during the storm described the elderly living in inhumane conditions, some calling out for medicine, others stuck in diapers full of feces.

Louisiana Department of Health investigators had checked on the facility several times since the group was evacuated there, but they got kicked off the premises when they went to inspect the site Tuesday. By Wednesday, LDH officials started trying to move patients out of the warehouse, which continued into Thursday. By late Thursday afternoon, the warehouse was down to seven nursing home residents still waiting to be rescued.

Were really concerned, were really upset and were really focused on making sure that all of these residents are moved to safe places where they can get adequate access to essential services, said Aly Neel, a spokesperson for the Louisiana Department of Health. "We will be taking action against these nursing facilities, and will be making appropriate referrals to law enforcement.

The patients who were brought to the facility came from seven nursing homes. They are: River Palms Nursing and Rehab in Orleans Parish, South Lafourche Nursing and Rehab in Lafourche Parish, Maison Orleans Healthcare Center in Orleans Parish, Park Place Healthcare Nursing Home in Jefferson Parish, West Jefferson Health Care Center in Jefferson Parish, Maison DeVille Nursing Home in Terrebonne Parish and Maison DeVille Nursing Home of Harvey in Jefferson Parish.

All seven homes are owned by the same man: Bob Dean, known for nursing home ownership and real estate business across Louisiana. Dean did not immediately return messages Thursday.

But his nursing homes have come under intense criticism in the past, including for hurricane evacuation problems. In an echo of this weeks events, two New Orleans-area residents died in 1998 after being evacuated for Hurricane Georges to a Baton Rouge warehouse in a bus that lacked air conditioning, an episode that drew criticism but little in the way of punishment from state regulators.

At the time, Dean was cited for failing to file required evacuation plans in advance of Georges. LDH officials could not immediately say whether Dean had filed the required plans for the seven nursing homes before Ida.

This is a wakeup call for the state to tighten up accountability for those plans, and not warehouse hundreds of people in a building, piled up in a huge room with insufficient staff to care for them, said Brian Lee, of Families for Better Care, an advocacy group.

Im glad its being investigated. There needs to be accountability for everyone on this. Our families deserve better than this.

+18 On the scene: Nursing home residents rescued from warehouse where 4 died after Ida evacuation Nursing home residents were still being evacuated from a warehouse Thursday afternoon in Independence after four of them died and hundreds wer

Of Deans seven nursing homes, six received one-star ratings from the federal Medicare Nursing Home Compare site, which compiles ratings of up to five stars. The ratings are based on violations documented during federal inspections, staff-to-patient ratios and quality-of-care measures such as the number of pressure sores and emergency department visits patients had.

Over the years, state health inspectors have written up Dean-owned facilities for horrific failings, some of which were described in a 2005 series from The Times-Picayune. One disabled man drowned in a whirlpool after staffers did not check on him for more than two hours. Another resident was hospitalized with more than 500 fire ant bites after the insects had infested her bed. An aide screamed after seeing ants coming in and out of the woman's nose and into her eyes, the newspaper reported, citing inspection reports.

Through a corporate entity, Dean owns the warehouse where the 800-plus nursing home residents were evacuated to in advance of Hurricane Ida.

Nurses who worked inside the warehouse before, during and after the storm described being haunted by what they had witnessed.

They were laying on the floor, in feces, and the blowup mattresses were flat, said one nurse from South Lafourche Nursing and Rehab, who asked that her name not be published because she feared retribution from administrators in Deans nursing home network. Youd walk past them and theyd say, Help me, help me. I ended up vomiting twice because the smell was so bad.

She and another nurse described conditions in the warehouse growing increasingly dire as the air conditioner stopped working and the 800-plus elderly residents were all in close contact despite concerns about COVID spreading easily through such a facility.

Both nurses lost their homes in Hurricane Ida. But they said they cannot stop thinking about the warehouse.

I dont know if I can go back and be a nurse again and thats what hurts me the most, one of the nurses said. I lost my house and I still cant even comprehend it compared to what I just went through.

It can be difficult on residents as well as nursing home operators to evacuate a frail population under stressful conditions. But not doing so can also be perilous. Dozens of nursing-home residents died in St. Bernard and Orleans parishes after Hurricane Katrina, when the operators decided to hunker down instead of leaving.

On Thursday, as nursing home residents continued to be rescued, some were carried out in stretchers and others slumped over in wheelchairs. About half a dozen ambulances were lined up outside.

Neel said the state ordered the evacuations from the warehouse, first transporting the most medically vulnerable, like dialysis patients.

Meanwhile, families grew more and more desperate for news about their loved ones once they saw news stories about the nursing home residents inside of the warehouse. Several families who contacted The Advocate | The Times-Picayune said they had received no updates about the conditions of their loved ones since they had evacuated.

+8 4 nursing home residents dead after Hurricane Ida, 700+ rescued from facility under investigation Four Louisiana nursing home residents have died and several hundred more have needed rescuing after seven nursing homes sent more than 800 pat

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Among them was Lisa Thibodaux, who said her grandmother is a resident of Park Place Nursing Home. She said that staff informed her last week that they were moving her to Tangipahoa Parish.

They made it sound like they were taking her to a farm, said Thibodeaux, 53. And it was a hurricane-proof building, and they had all the medical supplies they needed.

She has been trying to reach the nursing home for days, but no one has answered the phone. On Thursday, it didnt ring at all.

State officials said that most patients were moved to a special needs shelter at LSU-Alexandria.

Dr. Joe Kanter, the states top health official, said more than 50 patients have been sent to North Oaks Hospital in Hammond over the past two days. He said some patients arrived covered in urine and feces, and the staff didn't know the patients' medical history or medications.

"We dont think they wouldve died had the storm not happened and they werent evacuated," Kanter said, explaining why the coroner classified the three deaths as storm-related.

LDH emphasized, though, that the deaths are still under investigation.

The Department of Health has advised anyone looking for information on the conditions of their loved ones to contact 2-1-1.

Three of the four deaths at the facility have been classified as "storm related" by the coroner. Definitive causes of death are not yet available. Names and information about the deceased have not been released yet.

Tangipahoa Parish President Robby Miller said he was notified when the patients were set to be transferred from the nursing homes to the backup location in Independence. He was told the facility was designed to hold between 200 to 400 people.

We were always told it was going to be 300 or so, he said. It turned into 800-plus. When the city realized how many were coming, they started getting concerned.

Over time, Miller said his office began to hear reports about substandard conditions and started to feed the information to LDH, the State Fire Marshals Office and other agencies with potential jurisdiction.

As reports came out about it, we started pushing it up higher and more often in every one of our update calls, Miller said. Trying to make sure the state understood what was happening. It came in just too late.

In a warehouse with over 800 patients, its unlikely that four deaths will be the final toll, said Dr. Jennifer Avegno, director of the New Orleans Health Department, referencing similar situations in other disasters.

Deans nursing homes have been written up a number of times in recent years.

Over a dozen violations related to patient health at River Palms show that there were issues with hygiene, resulting in patients who went without bathing and had long fingernails with dark-colored material underneath on both hands, according to the inspection report. There were also errors in dispensing treatment and unsanitary conditions in both the bathrooms and kitchen, including expired food, dirty kitchen appliances and dusty fans in the food prep area.

Another inspection report from 2019 shows South Lafourche Nursing & Rehab had eight violations related to patient health. One resident complained she went without a shower for five days. An inspector found another patients catheter was a month past due for changing. A blind resident fell to the floor when the strap of the mechanical lift ripped from the seam, placing the patient in immediate jeopardy, according to a complaint report, because the straps were not checked regularly.

Facilities in an immediate jeopardy situation are at risk of losing government funding.

At Maison Orleans Healthcare Center, patients got pressure ulcers, indicating a lack of physical therapy to increase blood flow, at nearly four times the rate of the national average in 2019. About 5% of patients got a flu shot who needed one compared to around 80% in other facilities.

During a 2021 visit, staff at Park Place Healthcare in Jefferson Parish told federal inspectors they no longer had enough employees to shower people regularly. One residents hair was matted and smelled of urine, according to the report.

At West Jefferson Health Care Center, an inspection report dated Nov. 6, 2020, found that staff could not explain why a cognitively impaired resident had two black eyes and a bruised and swollen lip. The injuries were not reported or investigated, nor did the patient receive a neurological check as required.

A February 2020 report from Maison DeVille in Houma noted 13 health inspection violations, many related to basic infection prevention practices. A nurse incorrectly wiped a patient from back to front, which can spread bacteria and cause urinary tract infections. The nurse used the same washcloth to wipe down a catheter.

A second Maison DeVille facility in Harvey received nine violations related to emergency preparedness in October 2020, including a lack of testing for fire alarm and sprinkler systems. The average number of violations in Louisiana is less than one.

Staff Writers Gordon Russell and Blake Paterson contributed to this report.
Stephanie Mancuso had been worried sick that her husband, just weeks out of cervical neck fusion surgery, might injure himself again in the push to clear debris from their Destrehan home in the wake of Hurricane Ida.

But she and several other lucky residents of St. Charles Parish got a pleasant surprise Thursday when a crew of about 50 fraternity brothers from Louisiana State University's Pi Kappa Alpha showed up to help clear downed trees and other debris scattered during the storm.

+5 Hurricane Ida battered St. Charles Parish school facilities, complicating return to classrooms Students in the St. Charles Parish Public School System had been back in the classroom for less than a month while navigating a resurgence in 

The brothers got to Mancuso's Asphodel Drive home about 3 p.m., where about 15 students raked and gathered branches, picked up shingles and moved a wind-battered playset to the curb.

"We feel incredibly thankful and just so blessed," Mancuso said. I cried on and off all day. This beautiful gift of service meant so much to our family."

The fraternity was in Destrehan and Luling, in part, because of brothers who are from those neighborhoods, including Ben Lirette, whose family lives in Ormond. Lirette put up a post on Facebook letting residents know they would be in the area Thursday and received an overwhelming number of requests, more than 40, he said.

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"We're all in this together to just help everybody out," said chapter President Casey Harless, 21.

The students were able to clear about eight houses, including the residence of a state National Guard member who is away helping with Hurricane Ida recovery and couldn't be home to clean his house.

The students have plans to meet up with a fraternity chapter in Lafayette and head to Houma on Saturday.

"We're just helping where we can. One day, it could be you," Esten Fuselier, 19, said.
Neisha Perrilloux sat in 93 degree heat outside her powerless, storm-damaged apartment on Thursday trying to catch a breeze and wishing she were anywhere but LaPlace.

Six people are sweating the nights out in her two-bedroom apartment on Calais Street. Hurricane Ida wrecked her mothers house. And Perrilloux is increasingly worried about how to get her medicine after a brain surgery in April. She had a message for President Joe Biden before his Friday visit to the disaster zone.

We need help ASAP, Perrilloux said. As soon as he gets on the flight going back to where he sleeps.

Exhausted residents made similar pleas for help as they lined up for ice or toured their ravaged homes on Thursday. By press time, the White House hadnt announced an itinerary for Bidens visit, but parish officials said he was scheduled to tour St. John the Baptist.

Biden is expected to land at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport around lunchtime Friday. After meeting with state and local officials, he is expected to drive with Gov. John Bel Edwards to visit areas affected by Hurricane Ida.

In St. John, basic necessities were still hard to come by on the fourth day after the calamitous storm. Parish President Jaclyn Hotard warned that some wont return soon. Water service was briefly restored in LaPlace on Wednesday, but by Thursday, it was cut off after leaks were discovered.

Meanwhile, Ida destroyed all of the parishs electrical substations. There is still no timeline for power restoration.

Every piece of critical infrastructure as it relates to electricity has been damaged in St. John, Hotard said at a press conference Thursday. It will be a lengthy amount of time before we can get that restored.

Thousands of residents left when the parish ordered a voluntary evacuation the day before Idas landfall. But as the initial shock of the storm began to wear off, housing has emerged as a major problem.

Hotard has asked residents who evacuated not to return aside from quick damage assessments. Yet two people in interviews Thursday described being forced back to St. John the Baptist Parish after running out of cash.

Perrillouxs mother, Lenore, was one of them. She went to Mississippi ahead of Hurricane Ida, but had to return to LaPlace soon after the storm because she didnt have money for a hotel. She cant stay at her house, which has lost much of its roof.

If we had money, do you think we would be sitting here? asked her daughter. Its horrible.

Parish officials bused dozens of people to a state shelter in Alexandria on Tuesday. Hotard has asked anyone who feels theyre in imminent danger due to their housing conditions to call 911.

In some corners of the parish, persistent communication problems mean that residents havent heard about water and food distributions. On the east bank, distributions are concentrated along Airline Highway and oriented toward car owners.

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Enrique Ventura, 68, doesn't drive or speak English. With his niece translating, he said nobody has visited his apartment complex on Colony Drive to offer water or food since Ida tore the roof off his building on Sunday.

Ventura and his wife fled to another apartment with a roof. At night, some of the six people crowded inside sleep on a still-dampened floor, swatting away mosquitos.

Ventura said he would like to go somewhere thats better than here. Where they got water and lights and food.

Parish officials are trying to assist residents who either cant leave or dont want to. Troops manning distribution sites in Reserve and Vacherie handed out ice, water and military rations to hundreds of drivers.

Outside the Regala Gym in Reserve, some drivers kept their windows down, despite the heat advisory, in a desperate bid to conserve gas by keeping the air conditioning off.

Sherry Stevens, 35, said her four children and mother, all crowded into a friends house, pass around a wet towel around at night to cool down. Theyre desperate to find a hotel somewhere nearby. She said shed gotten the runaround from FEMA and the Red Cross.

Everybodys depressed, said another driver waiting for ice, Pernell Austin, 25. I ain't slept last night.

Even evacuees who own their own homes are beginning to feel the financial strain of staying elsewhere. Neshelle Nogess, 51, evacuated to a hotel and took her first quick tour of her home in the Cambridge Place neighborhood on Thursday. She discovered that a tree had crashed into her back patio, and the home had several feet of water damage.

Nogess said she was worried that insurers will deny short-term relocation costs like hotel rooms to homeowners because the parishs evacuation order was voluntary, not mandatory.

Biden, in remarks Thursday, urged insurance companies not to hide behind the fine print."

No one fled this killer storm because they were looking for a vacation or a road trip, Biden said.

That was all too clear to Nogess, who had to be evacuated by boat after Hurricane Isaac flooded her house in 2012.

We paid our premiums, she said.
Bob Dean, the Baton Rouge developer whose Louisiana nursing home empire is at the center of controversy after four residents died after being evacuated to an Independence warehouse, has come under fire at least once before for running afoul of hurricane evacuation protocols.

Regulators have also repeatedly dinged his homes for subpar and sometimes shocking conditions, including one resident drowning and another found covered in fire ants.

In an episode with close parallels to the news that unfolded Thursday, during Hurricane Georges's approach in 1998, residents of three of Dean's New Orleans-area nursing homes were evacuated to a warehouse he owned in Baton Rouge.

They were transported in a bus that lacked air-conditioning. Two residents died during or shortly after the journey  an 86-year-old woman who lived at Maison DeVille in Harvey, who suffered a heart attack, and a diabetic patient who went into a coma after being given orange juice, according to a lawsuit filed at the time.

Dean had not filed required documents with the state Department of Health spelling out his evacuation plan, nor did he file them with Jefferson Parish officials.

The warehouse where patients were relocated, the Lyceum Dean in the 100 block of Third Street in Baton Rouge, violated the fire code, city fire officials said. They found the building lacked various safety systems, including a sprinkler system, fire alarms and emergency lights.

Baton Rouge emergency medical technicians had gone out to the building after receiving seven calls reporting heat-related health issues for residents.

The state Department of Health fined Dean $1,500 after the botched Georges evacuation, saying that the lack of a disaster plan was a contributing factor" in the death of the 86-year-old.

Dean appealed the fine, and state administrative judge reduced it to $1,000, finding that Dean Enterprises was not responsible for the patients death, but saying the company should have filed a plan.

Back in 1998, the operators of Deans nursing homes said they were following a playbook they had used in 1992s Hurricane Andrew, when they also took residents to the Lyceum Dean.

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It wasnt until after Hurricane Georges that state regulators began enforcing requirements that evacuation plans be filed by all nursing homes. It's not clear whether Dean filed the documents for the seven nursing homes that evacuated to the warehouse in Independence last week.

Dean did not immediately return phone messages Thursday.

Dean's nursing homes routinely receive poor ratings from the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, or CMS, which posts those scores publicly.

Several of his homes featured prominently in a 2005 Times-Picayune investigation of Louisiana nursing homes. The series noted that during the previous six years, five patients in Dean-owned facilities had died because of subpar care, according to inspection records. Three of those deaths occurred at Maison Orleans II, a home Dean owns in New Orleans East.

State health inspectors wrote up Dean-owned facilities for some horrific failings. One disabled man drowned in a whirlpool after staffers did not check on him for more than two hours. Another resident was hospitalized with more than 500 fire ant bites after the insects had infested her bed. An aide screamed after seeing ants coming in and out of the woman's nose and into her eyes, the newspaper reported, citing inspection reports.

In that case, the home was fined $900 for failing to have an effective pest-control regimen.

More recently, amid the coronavirus pandemic, The Times-Picayune and The Advocate reported that Maison Orleans, a Dean-owned home, had apparently underreported the number of its patients who died after being infected with COVID-19.

+2 Some Louisiana nursing homes are undercounting coronavirus deaths, coroner data reveals At least eight residents of the Maison Orleans nursing home in Uptown New Orleans have died from the coronavirus  according to records provid

Through most of the pandemic, the state health department has posted various coronavirus data from nursing homes on its website, including the number of confirmed cases at each home and the number of infected patients who eventually died. The information is self-reported by the homes.

As of September 2020, the Orleans Parish Coroner's Office had catalogued eight deaths of Maison Orleans residents from COVID. But the facility's operators were acknowledging just three deaths to state regulators, even though the eight deaths had occurred months earlier.

Maison Orleans was also one of the slowest nursing homes to ramp up testing of residents and staff for COVID, which was ravaging nursing homes at the time, according to state data. As of June 17, 2020, the facility's operators had yet to test a single resident or staffer, despite federal orders more than a month earlier mandating universal testing in nursing home, records show.
Hurricane forecasters on Friday afternoon were tracking a tropical disturbance that's heading for the Gulf of Mexico. It has a 30% chance of developing into at least a tropical depression.

Update: Tropical disturbance could reach Louisiana next week

It's too soon to tell if it could post a threat to Louisiana. However, it could mean an increase in moisture and rainfall along portions of the northern Gulf Coast next week, regardless of development, according to the National Weather Service in Lake Charles.

Forecasters also are tracking Hurricane Larry, which is strengthening in the Atlantic. It does not pose any immediate threat to land, other than rip tides.

Here's what to know about the tropics as of 1 p.m. Friday.

Disturbance heading for the Gulf of Mexico

A tropical disturbance is expected to reach the Gulf of Mexico late this weekend, according to the National Hurricane Center.

As of 1 p.m., the disturbance was over portions of Central America and the southern Yucatan peninsula. It's expected to move northwest during the next day or two, bringing heavy rains to these areas.

Once it reaches the Gulf, forecasters said, it is expected to move northwest to north early next week. It's too soon to tell where it could go. However, forecasters said unfavorable weather conditions "could limit significant development."

The shaded area on the graphic is where a storm could develop and is not a track. The National Hurricane Center releases a track when a tropical depression forms or is about to form.

The categories, in order of increasing strength, are tropical depression, tropical storm and hurricane (categories 1 through 5).

Read the full advisory.

Hurricane Larry in the Atlantic

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Hurricane Larry is expected to start strengthening soon in the Atlantic, forecasters said.

As of 10 a.m., it was about 1,090 miles west of the southernmost Cabo Verde Islands and about 1,410 miles east of the Leeward Islands.

It's moving northwest at 16 mph.

Larry has winds of 90 mph, making it a strong Category 1 hurricane. Additional strengthening is forecast during the next few days, forecasters said, and Larry is forecast to become a major hurricane this weekend.

Swells generated by Larry are expected to reach the Lesser Antilles on Sunday.

Read the full advisory.

Next available name

The next available name is Mindy. Systems are named when they strengthen into tropical storms.

Storms Ana, Bill, Claudette, Danny, Elsa, Fred, Grace, Henri, Ida, Julian, Kate and Larry formed earlier this season. Elsa, Grace, Ida and Larry strengthened into hurricanes.

Last year, there were so many storms that forecasters ran out of names and had to use the Greek alphabet. It's only the second time in recorded history that the Greek names had been used.

Things have changed for this season. If needed, forecasters will use a list of supplemental storm names instead of the Greek names.

Storm categories

On the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale, the wind categories are:

Tropical storm: 39 to 73 mph

Category 1 hurricane: 74 to 95 mph

Category 2 hurricane: 96 to 110 mph

Category 3 hurricane (major hurricane): 111 to 129 mph

Category 4 hurricane: 130-156 mph

Category 5 hurricane: 157 mph and higher

Don't miss a storm update this hurricane season. Sign up for breaking newsletters. Follow our Hurricane Center Facebook page.
Pres. Joe Biden is visiting Louisiana Friday to see the aftermath of Hurricane Ida in the region.

He arrived at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport around noon Friday. He met with Gov. John Bel Edwards and local officials before getting on a helicopter and heading to Reserve in St. John the Baptist Parish.

+30 Photos: President Biden tours Louisiana communities devastated by Hurricane Ida President Joe Biden visited south Louisiana on Friday, Sept. 3, 2021, to tour the damage caused by Hurricane Ida.

Biden will go to the Emergency Operations Center in St. John the Baptist Parish and tour a neighborhood in LaPlace. He plans to give a speech while he's there.

Next, he'll do an aerial tour of Lafitte, Grand Isle, Port Fourchon and Lafourche Parish.

After, he will meet with community leaders in Galliano. Friday night, he'll fly out of Lafourche back to New Orleans. From New Orleans, he'll fly to Philadelphia and then Delaware.

Reporters from The Times-Picayune and The Advocate will be covering the presidential visit. Check back throughout the day for updates.

+4 For Louisiana's Hurricane Ida recovery, Joe Biden pledges 'all the assistance thats needed' President Joe Biden on Thursday said his administration was ready to provide all the assistance thats needed" in response to a massive wildf

Biden's schedule for Louisiana visit

Here's Biden's official schedule released by the White House for Friday, Sept. 3. All times are Central.

8 a.m. Biden receives the president's daily brief

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9 a.m. Biden delivers remarks on the August jobs report in the State Dining Room

9:30 a.m. Biden departs the White House enroute to Joint Base Andrews

9:50 a.m. Biden departs Joint Base Andrews enroute to New Orleans

12:10 p.m. Biden arrives at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport

12:40 p.m. Biden leaves New Orleans for Reserve

1:15 p.m. Biden gets briefing from local leaders at St. John Parish Emergency Operations Center in LaPlace

2:35 p.m. Biden tours neighborhood in LaPlace and delivers remarks

3:55 p.m. Biden flies out of Port of South Louisiana Executive Regional Airport to do aerial tour of hard-hit communities, including Lafitte, Grand Isle, Port Fourchon and Lafourche Parish

4:40 p.m. Biden arrives at South Lafourche Leonard Miller Jr. Airport in Lafourche Parish

5 p.m. Biden meets with local leaders from impacted communities in Galliano.

Editor's note: A previous version of this story incorrectly said the White House did not release specific times for the visit. The story has been updated with the times. We regret the error.
Entergy plans to restore power to metro New Orleans by Wednesday, pledging to have completed its restoration work 10 days after Hurricane Ida took down all the transmission lines that provide power to the area, according to a timeline released Friday morning.

Related: Entergy timeline for each New Orleans neighborhood

The power went out during the Category 4 hurricane for much of the region after the utility company had "catastrophic" damage to its grid. Some people have been without power in southeast Louisiana since Sunday morning.

Entergy said preliminary assessments were completed Wednesday and suggested much of the area could have power restored by early next week.

Timeline for New Orleans, Jefferson

Here's the timeline Entergy released for power restoration:

Chalmette, St. Bernard and upper parts of Plaquemines - Sept. 7

Metairie/Kenner - Sept. 8

West bank - Sept. 8

Algiers - Sept. 8

New Orleans East - Sept. 8

Orleans Parish - Sept. 8

In a press release, Entergy referred to the timeline as the "estimated times for complete restoration."

The dates are preliminary and could change, the company said. Some of these areas are already having their power restored.

Some individual cases may take longer "due to unique circumstances," Entergy said in a statement. Customers with damage to their meter, meter pan or weatherhead will need repairs to those items prior to Entergy re-energizing their structure.

Preliminary timeline for southeast Louisiana

Here's the complete timeline Entergy released Friday morning, which includes Baton Rouge. The names in the chart are "general descriptions of Entergys local network," Entergy said.

Cities and towns within those networks in some cases will see power earlier than those dates, the company said.

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"Please note that these estimates are subject to change as we complete our assessments and continue with restoration work in the affected areas," Entergy said. "We will issue updates to these estimates as we learn more."

How long for restoration to Grand Isle or other places?

The timeline does not include restoration estimates for the hardest hit areas, such as Grand Isle or LaPlace.

Specific restoration times for the coast and areas in the immediate path of the storm "are continuing to be developed and will be released in the coming days," Entergy said.

Live update Friday morning from Entergy

Entergy is having a live update at 9:30 a.m. Friday. Follow along in the module below.

Can't see the module? Click here.

Power restoration started earlier this week

New Orleans and Jefferson, St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes went completely dark during Ida, when strong winds took eight transmission lines offline, including one whose massive tower collapsed on the bank of the Mississippi River.

It took until Wednesday before the first homes and businesses in the area got any power back at all, after the utility was able to provide a limited amount of power through the New Orleans Power Station in Michoud and reconnect the region to the national grid through a line going through Slidell. That reconnection brought about 11,500 customers back online.

Since then, the company has primarily been focused on bringing high priority sites back online such as hospitals, Sewerage & Water Board facilities, police and fire stations and New Orleans' Central Business District, where many of the hotels hosting the line workers brought in to assist in the restoration are staying. Those efforts led to small areas near those sites getting power throughout the day Wednesday and Thursday, though more than 700,000 customers remain without power.
On the fourth day after New Orleans and its suburbs were plunged into darkness during Hurricane Ida, the heat index hit 106 degrees, people sweltered as they lined up for water and ice, and city officials were scrambling to give residents an option to escape on buses with little promise about where they would be headed other than that the air conditioning would work.

Throughout it all, executives with two Entergy affiliates couldnt give residents, business owners or city leaders even a rough sense of how long it would be until more than a fraction of the power was restored.

The extended and near-total outages came after Entergys eight transmission lines into the region went down in Idas devastating winds, leaving the city cut off from its power supplies on the rest of the national grid. Power began to be restored early Wednesday when the utility managed to stand up the New Orleans Power station in Michoud and a transmission line from Slidell that was brought back up and then bolstered with another line from the west sometime before Thursday morning.

But it was not clear how much power could be provided through those methods.

While hospitals, some Sewerage & Water Board facilities, police and fire stations and the Caesars Superdome had been electrified by Thursday morning, most residents were still left powerless.

Entergy New Orleans President and CEO Deanna Rodriguez said in a conference call with the media Thursday morning that it would take at least until the end of the day before the company could provide even a general timeline that residents could use to decide whether to tough out the heat or leave.

Philip May, President and CEO of Entergy Louisiana, said after workers checked lines and systems Thursday the utility would have a better sense of where things stand.

We are still very much in the assessment process, May said. In terms of being able to provide specific restoration times, today will be critical for getting the data we need to provide restoration times.

By press time, no more specifics had been provided to the public.

The lack of clear information left residents with little guidance as to whether it would make more sense to try to tough it out for a few more days without power, book hotels out of town for a few days or prepare for an extended evacuation of weeks or more.

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"That has been my biggest frustration all the way through, what were getting is PR, spin...were not getting information," said Alliance for Affordable Energy Executive Director Logan Burke, whose organization has been a long-time critic of Entergy New Orleans.

There were some signs of positive movement: Entergy New Orleans made progress getting critical infrastructure onto the grid and off of generators, including the University Medical Center, Childrens Hospital and Tulane University Medical Center in New Orleans, Ochsners main campus across the parish line on Jefferson Highway and St. Bernard Parish Hospital in Arabi.

Neighborhoods around those locations also got power back, as did the French Quarter and Central Business District. It was not clear how many additional customers had their power restored since Wednesday morning, when the utility said about 11,500 out of 200,000 had working lights.

The utility also said it had made progress bringing back a transmission line that connects it to the St. Charles Power Station, which has the capacity to provide about 75% of New Orleans needs. The New Orleans East power plant, by contrast, can only provide about 10% of the power typically used in the city.

New Orleans residents refreshing Entergys outage map  which changed little throughout the day on Thursday  were also told that it was unreliable and was between 45 minutes and an hour behind reality. That's because Entergy, along with much of southeast Louisiana, was having trouble with its AT&T service.

Beyond the uncertainty of how long it could take to restore enough power to the region as a whole, May and Rodriguez warned that it would be some time for crews to repair damage caused by Ida preventing power from getting to individual homes and businesses.

A text from Entergy New Orleans late in the afternoon said the utility had identified 837 poles and 288 transformers that needed repair before electricity could be fully restored.

Among the list of priority sites rattled off by Entergy executives was the Superdome, which had its exterior lights shining Wednesday night. Rodriguez said the stadium was repowered because of its potential use as a shelter for residents.

But Mike Hoss, a spokesperson for Superdome management firm ASM Global, said the company had not requested power. There also had been no discussions about using either the Superdome or the Smoothie King Center as shelters.

He suggested the power might be back because the stadium is located in the Central Business District, and hotels were a priority to house the 20,000 line workers Entergy is bringing into the area to help with restoration.

Hoss said the Superdome would be running with the minimal power necessary in the storms aftermath and noted that the LED lights on its exterior use relatively little power.
Nevada May Anderson (87) passed away peacefully at home in Norman early in the morning on Saturday September 11 2021. A service for mom will be held on a later date.
Politics Reporter

Reese Gorman covers politics and the COVID-19 pandemic for The Norman Transcript. He started as an intern in May of 2020 and transitioned into his current position as a staff writer in August of 2020.
July and August are big travel timesespecially after so many vacations got canceled last year. So this month, Lycoming Critics Corner takes up the venerable category road movies.

Here are 12 such storiessix+six, in honor of Americas legendary Route 66, from Chicago to L.A.

Almost Famous (2000)

Cameron Crowe landed a well-deserved Oscar for his screenplay to this comical charmer about an 11-year-old prodigy who wheedles his way into a writing assignment for Rolling Stone magazine. Said gig has young William traveling round the country with the fictitious rock band Stillwater, pursued by anxious phone calls from his tough-talking mother (Frances McDormand). This acclaimed film co-stars Kate Hudson, Anna Paquin, Billy Crudup and (briefly) Philip Seymour Hoffman; Jimmy Fallon is almost unrecognizable in an early role.

Rated R for language and sexuality.

Chef (2014)

The accomplished actor-director Jon Favreau (Iron Man I and II, plus the live-action Jungle Book & Lion King) doesnt always write his own films. But he took up the pen for this winsome winner about a talented chef who has a public meltdown and thereafter hits the road in a food truck in order to lie low for a while; and then this tripfrom Florida to L.A.winds up enabling Chef Carl (Favreau) to reconnect with his pre-teen son.

Laced with luscious food footage and a tasty soundtrack, Chef is a bona fide crowd-pleaser. Co-starring Scarlett Johansson, John Leguizamo, Oliver Platt, Dustin Hoffman, Sofia Vergara and in a terrific cameo, Robert Downey Jr.

Rated R for language.

Green Book (2018)

Winner of the Academy Award for Best Picture, this sleeper fires on every cylinder. Loosely based on actual events, it stars Viggo Mortensen as a burly and somewhat bigoted nightclub bouncer hired to drive a black pianist on a concert tour of the American Southin 1962, at the very height of the civil rights era.

Equal parts buddy movie, travelogue, musical tribute, nostalgia piece and indictment of racism, Book features an Oscar-winning performance from Mahershala Ali as pianist Don Shirley. (His playing, however, was done by keyboard virtuoso Kris Bowers, whose hands were spliced into Alis concert footage.)

Rated PG-13 for racial epithets, some language and mature subject matter.

Harry and Tonto (1974)

After entertaining generations as Ed Norton on TVs The Honeymooners, Art Carney grabbed a late-career Oscar playing Harry Coombesa role turned down by Cary Grant, James Cagney and Laurence Olivier. Harrys an aging widower who, forced to vacate his Manhattan apartment, hits the road with his cat, dropping in on his three children and also connecting with a cross-cultural cast of kooky characters.

Directed by Paul Mazursky (An Unmarried Woman, Moscow on the Hudson), the film is wistful, funny and utterly without an agendaexcept to paint a portrait of mid-seventies America  and maybe make us fall in love with Harry too.

Rated R for language, and brief nudity & sexuality.

Read more On the PULSE

About the author Smith is a writer, speaker and teacher in Central Pennsylvania. His fourth book, "The Best Movies You Never Saw," is due out this summer. More info is available at josephwsmithiii.com -- or robbwhitefan@gmail.com.




If youre providing at-home care for an ailing loved one, youre not alone.

According to AARP, there are more than 53 million unpaid caregivers in the U.S. That means, one in five Americans provide care for a loved one. We are seeing the rise of the sandwich generation in which those in their 40s and 50s are now not only supporting their own children but providing care for their aging parents.

Family caregivers across the United States are dealing with a wide range of health issues, including:

Long-term physical ailments

Memory problems (Alzheimers or dementia)

Emotional or mental health issues

The specific kind of care your loved one needs depends on their physical and mental health. Here are some common caregiving tasks you may need to take on  along with some tips on how best to help.

Assisting with Daily Living

Almost all caregivers assist family members with the activities of daily living such as housekeeping, preparing meals, managing medicines, and shopping. This kind of care also may include help with bathing, using the toilet, getting dressed, walking, getting up from a chair or bed, and eating. While these tasks may not be particularly complex, providing them day in and day out can be demanding  and sometimes draining. Its okay to ask for help.

To lighten your load, reach out to other family members or friends to do an occasional errand or task. If possible, ask someone you trust to spend a few hours with your loved one so you can take a break. If need be, consider getting part-time help from a home care service.

Caregivers are often responsible for transporting a family member to the doctor or other medical appointments. But your assistance can go beyond providing a ride.

Ask your loved one if you can sit in when they talk to the doctor. It can be a great opportunity to gather information that will help you be a more effective caregiver. For instance, you can ask the doctor for more clarity on your loved ones medical condition  and how it will affect ongoing care needs. You can request detailed instructions for taking a prescribed medicine or other ways you can provide support. And you can encourage your family member to ask questions or share information.

Performing Medical and Nursing Tasks

More than half of caregivers are performing at least some medical or nursing tasks, according to the report. Those duties can include giving injections, cleaning and dressing wounds, and managing incontinence (lack of bowel and bladder control).

In these situations, you may receive some instruction or training from the health care professionals involved in your family members care. If you have questions, be sure to ask for more information.

If you dont feel able to carry out certain tasks yourself, ask if its possible to arrange for a visiting nurse. A visiting nurse can come into the home to handle more complex tasks like cleaning and dressing wounds or giving intravenous fluids.

Assisting with Mobility Challenges

If your family member is having trouble getting up and down or moving around, they may need a mobility aid such as a cane, walker, or wheelchair. You may need to encourage them to use these aids  and show how to use them correctly.

Falls are the number one mobility problem that older people face. Each year, 30 million older adults experience a fall, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. You can help prevent falls by making your loved ones living space safer. Be sure the space has good lighting. Avoid area and throw rugs, especially in bathrooms and kitchens. Install grab bars in the bathroom, and railings on both sides of stairways.

Managing Medical Care

One of your biggest roles will be coordinating the care your loved one receives from doctors and other professional care providers. You also may be the designated family contact person for that health care team. Find out if your family member must sign a release form before their doctors and health facilities will share information with you. Once youre in the loop, keep a notebook of all doctors comments and instructions, and test results, plus questions you have. Take that medical diary with you to each appointment.

Help is Available

Managing an aging family members health care can be overwhelming. Before the stress becomes too much, consider consulting with a geriatrician. A geriatrician is a doctor who specializes in treating older people with multiple medical conditions and can help tailor a holistic health care plan that best meets your loved ones goals.

Its also important to consider long-term plans including living options for your loved one. There are many different types of living options for the elderly, with varying degrees of care. Its important to consider your loved ones general health, mobility, mental capabilities, and specific activities they may need help with as they grow older.

It also is important to consider their interests, social life, and other factors that will be impacted by where and how they want to live. It all starts with a conversation. You and your loved one can plan so you dont have to make a hurried decision during a crisis. Planning for an elderly loved ones future can ease the move to a senior living facility.

Support is only a phone call away. To connect with a geriatrician for assistance with your family members health care needs, call 570-321-3771 or visit UPMC.com/SeniorCommunities




Camp Hill, Pa. -- Twenty years ago, 40 passengers and crew members of American Airlines Flight 93 showed immense bravery to stop a terrorist attack. To honor their courage, PCN is providing special programming during Pennsylvania's Neighborhood: Somerset County, with live coverage of the 20th Anniversary Memorial from Shanksville.

From Sept. 10 to 11, viewers can hear from first responders, elected officials, and community members who were unexpectedly thrust into the spotlight because of terrorist acts. PCN will tour the Flight 93 National Memorial site and take a look at how the region has memorialized that fateful day.

On Sept. 11, PCN will go live at 9:45 a.m. from Shanksville for the Flight 93 20th Anniversary Memorial. Following the memorial, the network will have all-day programming on Flight 93.

Highlights will include:

Live coverage of the 20th anniversary memorial

Flight 93 Hero Award Ceremony and interview

Flight 93 National Park Service ranger tours

Interviews with public officials including Gov. Tom Wolf, Sen. Bob Casey, former Gov. Mark Schweiker, and Sen. Jay Costa

The Friends of Flight 93 Speaker Series

For more information about PCN's Sept. 11 programming, visit pcntv.com/September-11.
Williamsport -- Frank J. Fedele, 74, of Williamsport passed away on Sept. 1, 2021 at UPMC Susquehanna.

Frank was born in Albany, N.Y. on Nov. 6, 1946, a son of the late Louis J. Fedele and Margaret E. Bellott. He was a 1964 graduate of Williamsport High School and went on to earn his Associate Degree. Frank was a U.S. Army Veteran

Surviving are his wife, Suzanne M. Revak-Fedele - they celebrated their 43rd wedding anniversary on April 8, 2021 - a brother, Ronald L. Fedele of Muncy and many cousins.

He was the owner of F.J. Fedele Insurance Agency. Frank was multi-talented, he was a published journalist and poet, an artist, his specialty was drawing caricatures. Frank was also a talented actor and vocalist, performing at the Community Theater League and singing with the Susquehanna Valley Choral, the Williamsport Civic Chorus. In addition, he was owner and proprietor of Theatrixs Inc., as well as the founder of Boomer Legends.

The family will receive friends at Crouse Funeral Home & Cremation Services, 133 E. 3rd St. Williamsport on Friday, Sept. 3, 2021 from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. If you are unvaccinated, please wear a mask, masks will be available at the door.

A Mass of Christian Burial will be celebrated at St. Joseph the Worker Parish, 702 W. 4th St., Williamsport, Saturday, September 4, at 10 a.m. with his pastor, Rev. David W. Bechtel officiating, followed by burial in Resurrection Cemetery with full military honors.

Frank was a cat lover, so please, in lieu of flowers, the family respectfully suggests memorial contributions be made in Franks name to, Lycoming Animal Protection Society (LAPS), 195 Phillips Park Dr., South Williamsport, PA 17702.

Crouse Funeral Home & Cremation Services has been entrusted with handling arrangements. Please visit www.crousefuneralhome.com to sign a register or share a memory.




La Fayette, GA (30728)

Today

Partly cloudy skies early will give way to cloudy skies late. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 66F. Winds light and variable..

Tonight

Partly cloudy skies early will give way to cloudy skies late. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 66F. Winds light and variable.
Rome, GA (30161)

Today

Partly cloudy skies this evening will give way to occasional showers overnight. Low 69F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 40%..

Tonight

Partly cloudy skies this evening will give way to occasional showers overnight. Low 69F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 40%.
Jason Frenz of Strasburg walks up from the boat landing along the Shenandoah River at Strasburg Park on Thursday morning. The river crested at 10 feet in Strasburg, so Hurricane Ida turned out not to be a major event in the northern Shenandoah Valley.
3 Floyds Distillery, the offshoot of the acclaimed 3 Floyds Brewing, signed a statewide distribution deal.

The artisan distillery reached an agreement with South Bend-based Republic National Distributing Co. to distribute its spirits at retail locations across the Hoosier State.

"In the weeks to come, the entire 3 Floyds Distilling spirit lineup will be invading the shelves of liquor stores, restaurants and establishments in which you (responsibly) sip cocktails," 3 Floyds Distillery posted on social media. "Thats right  Divine Rite, Busthedd, Wight VVitch, Oude Boatface and Blanq Reavers will be readily available to our neighbors and supporters across the state."

After years of construction, 3 Floyds, the largest craft brewery in Indiana that's won internationally acclaim for its "not normal" craft beers, opened a distillery next door to its now-closed brewpub in 2019.
CEDAR LAKE  Like many other Region school districts this week, Hanover Community School Corp. is adding a mask mandate.

At a special board meeting Thursday night, the Return to Learn plan was revised to make masks mandatory for all students and staff in the school setting. They will be optional at outdoor events, such as recess, and the policy will be revisited each quarter, or as needed.

A letter addressed to Hanover families from Superintendent Mary Tracy-MacAulay said, Decisions must be made to ensure a safe environment. The districts efforts need to align with guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Indiana Department of Health, Indiana Department of Education and Lake County Health Department, it said.

The revisions to the Return to Learn plan also comply with Gov. Eric Holcombs executive order from earlier this week. Adding a mask mandate will prevent asymptomatic close contacts from needing to quarantine, per the new guidelines.

The mask mandate and other revisions go into effect Tuesday, according to the district website.
GARY  A person of interest in a Gary woman's death last month was arrested Thursday in Chicago on an Illinois parole violation, police said.

Orlando Burgos was apprehended by Chicago police without incident, taken to Chicago police District 1 headquarters and immediately transferred to the Stateville Correctional Center in Crest Hill, Illinois, Gary police Cmdr. Jack Hamady said.

The Gary police Violent Crimes Division and Lake County/Gary Metro Homicide Unit had been searching for Burgos since Aug. 24, when he fled from officers and a SWAT team was called to the Colfax Mobile Homes park in the area of West 36th Avenue and Colfax Street.

Police eventually entered a mobile home Burgos was seen entering, but discovered he had fled out the back of the home. An infant found alone inside the home was reunited with a parent, police said.

Burgos is a person of interest in the death of Sheri Richardson, 54, who was beaten Aug. 19 at the mobile home park and died Aug. 24 at Methodist Hospitals Southlake Campus, according to police and a coroner's release.

Authorities were working with the Lake County prosecutor's office to secure a murder charge against Burgos in connection with Richardson's death, Hamady said.
CROWN POINT  The Lakes of the Four Seasons Property Owners Association could avoid further criminal prosecution after a judge accepted a pretrial diversion agreement Wednesday.

If the gated community complies with the terms of the agreement for 12 months, Lake County prosecutors agreed to dismiss the case.

The agreement caps an investigation that first came to light in November 2018, when Indiana State Police raided the security building at the main entrance to the subdivision near Winfield.

At the time, a source told The Times search warrants were being served as part of an investigation into allegations that Four Seasons security workers weren't reporting drunken driving and other traffic offenses to local authorities.

Lake County prosecutors charged the property owners association and two of its security workers in December with impersonation of a police officer, a level 6 felony. Prosecutors dropped charges against the two security workers in July "in the interest of justice," records show.

Defense attorney Steven Mullins, who represented the association and both security workers, told Lake Criminal Court Judge Salvador Vasquez that Lakes of the Four Seasons is now in compliance with state law regarding security guard licensing.
CHESTERTON  The sound of a bullet firing and debris hitting her face woke a sleeping woman in her Chesterton apartment late Wednesday.

The man who police said negligently fired a handgun into his neighbor's apartment now faces a charge of Level 5 felony criminal recklessness, according to the Chesterton Police Department.

Around 10:05 p.m. Wednesday police were called to the 100 block of North Fifth Street, said Chesterton spokesman Kevin Nevers.

A woman had reported she was sleeping in her bedroom when a "loud popping sound" and "debris hitting the left side of her face" woke her up. When she turned on her light, she saw wood from her closet door "spread across the room."

After discovering a bullet-shaped hole in the drywall, she called 911.

She found her two children in their living room, who were also alarmed by the noise, police reported. No one was injured.

Police recovered the bullet from the woman's apartment.

Officers investigated and spoke to a 22-year-old resident who lives in an adjacent apartment, who began to admit he had "negligently discharged his firearm and didnt know what to do, Chesterton police said.
EAST CHICAGO  Emiliano Perez, the former East Chicago fire chief who was elected president of the City Council earlier this year, announced his resignation from the council in a Facebook post Friday.

Immediate attempts to reach Perez on Friday were unsuccessful.

In the Facebook post, which was published at 4:52 a.m., Perez said he was resigning because he and his family recently had purchased a forever home and would be moving out of the city in the next several months. He was resigning immediately, he wrote, because in todays political climate I thought it to be the right thing to step down now.

Perez, who held one of the nine-member councils three at-large seats, wrote that he moved to East Chicago in 1985 and began working as a firefighter eight years later. Perez went on to serve as fire chief and later worked as the chief of staff for Mayor Anthony Copeland.

Fellow Councilman Terence Hill said he was caught off-guard when he heard news of Perezs resignation Friday but wished his now-former colleague well.
"The goal is to keep students well and in school," the newsletter said.

Students did what was asked of them last year "without complaining and thrived under the conditions," the newsletter said, so the district is confident they can do it again this year to get through the increase in spread.

As part of the Brickie Forward plan, similar to what many schools have called a Return to Learn plan, the school city has what it calls the Top 5.

Universal masking is No. 1 followed by knowing the COVID-19 symptoms, self-screening and communicating with the school, practicing good hygiene and quarantine procedures. The website states a school nurse can explain the rules for the specific student and staff situations about when its OK to come back in person.

The new executive order Holcomb signed Wednesday requires K-12 institutions to continue contact tracing, but modifies quarantine parameters for people who adhere to the recommended COVID-19 protocols.
For children under 12 who can't get the vaccine, the risk of COVID-19 is as high now as its ever been.

The governor's executive order will protect more children.

Holcomb was also vocal about what the grownups in this state have to do.

He urged those who can to get vaccinated.

That is having an adverse effect on others, not just potentially yourself, but others and our economy and our kids education, Holcomb said. So, I would just ask to think beyond yourself.

He also had a message for those skeptical of the vaccine and the virus itself.

To the skeptics or unbelievers or deniers, I would just plead to look at the facts, to look at the numerical data that shows we can all stay safe if you get vaccinated, Holcomb said.

People continue to get sick and die from COVID-19. More and more children are falling ill and ending up in hospitals across the state.

In times like these, we need leaders who are unafraid to say and do what's right.

Gov. Holcomb deserves credit for his recent executive order and for being willing to tell some people what they dont want to hear  but need to hear.
BERLIN  A decade-long dispute over a portrait of Max Liebermanns wife, painted by the German Impressionist himself, and confiscated by the Nazis from her home here in 1943, has been settled with a financial payment to the artists heirs.

In a joint statement with the heirs, the Georg Schafer Foundation, which came to own the 1930 portrait and two other works from Liebermanns collection, said an anonymous private donor agreed to pay an undisclosed amount to the heirs in compensation for the three works.

The settlement aims to treat the historical facts truthfully and with dignity and solve the dilemma between applicable law on the one hand and moral claims and justice on the other, the statement said. It includes an agreement that the provenance of the works will be clearly displayed in the Georg Schafer Museum in Schweinfurt in northern Bavaria, which houses the foundations collection.

Max Liebermann, a Jewish Berliner, was ousted from his position as honorary chairman of the Academy of Arts in Berlin after the Nazis seized power in 1933. He painted the portrait of his wife, Martha, five years before his death in 1935.
As the 1970s dawned, the Beach Boys were in crisis.

The quintessential American rock band of the 60s, whose sun-kissed harmonies and string of girls-cars-and-surf hits soundtracked the myth of California as paradise, had lost its lock on the charts. Brian Wilson, its leader, was withdrawn and unstable after an attempt at a super-ambitious album, Smile, collapsed in 1967. Facing irrelevance, the band even considered changing its name, to simply Beach.

When you put out a record and its not successful like youre used to, you start questioning yourself, the vocalist Mike Love said recently. Are you doing things right? What do we need to change?

What the Beach Boys did next is the focus of a new boxed set, Feel Flows: The Sunflower & Surfs Up Sessions, 1969-1971. In purely commercial terms, the bands first two albums of the 70s were duds. Sunflower (1970) stalled at No. 151 on the Billboard chart, a new low. Surfs Up (1971) fared better, at No. 29, thanks to its semilegendary title song. Neither contained any hits.

Yet in 135 tracks, most of them previously unreleased, Feel Flows makes a compelling case for this as a crucial but underexamined period of Beach Boys history, a time of experimentation and reinvention that highlighted the talents of the entire band. Along with the 1973 album Holland, it may have been the Beach Boys last truly progressive phase, before a mid-decade veer into nostalgic conservatism.
Penny Dreadful Seasons 1-3 (Sept. 16)

The Tony-winning playwright and Oscar-nominated screenwriter John Logan created this ingenious Showtime series, mixing up a tasty stew of Victorian-era monsters, mythology and literary flourishes. Eva Green is a marvel  scary, funny, entertainingly self-aware  as a monster hunter whose adventures in late 19th century London intersect with the worlds of Dracula, Frankenstein, The Picture of Dorian Grey and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, as well as various gunslingers, werewolves and alienists. Those who know the characters and the books they inhabit will eagerly devour the references and intersections, but even newbies can latch on easily to the shows dark humor, intricate narratives and copious gore.



Stream it here.

The Grandmaster (Sept. 26)

Mainstream audiences who have discovered the charismatic Hong Kong actor Tony Leung Chiu-wai by way of Marvels Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings would be wise to queue up this 2013 martial arts drama, one of the actors many collaborations with the dazzling director Wong Kar-wai. Leung stars as Ip Man, master of the Southern Chinese kung fu style known as Wing Chun, who trained a young Bruce Lee. But Wongs film is less a biopic than a Lee-style adventure, filled with stunningly photographed fight sequences and action set pieces. Netflix is streaming the films U.S. version, which is shorter and simplified but less impressive. Still, even in this truncated form, The Grandmaster is an overwhelming experience.



Stream it here.

Air Force One (Sept. 30)

Get off my plane! growled Harrison Ford in this 1997 action extravaganza that, put simply, is Die Hard on the presidents airplane. Ford plays President James Marshall, who is en route from Moscow to the White House when a band of terrorists hijack Air Force One, taking his family and staff hostage. But Marshall is a combat vet and decides to back up his no negotiating with terrorists rhetoric with action. The director Wolfgang Petersen knows how to direct claustrophobic action (his breakthrough film was Das Boot), and Ford is a sturdy anchor, retaining credibility even in the scripts sillier moments. Gary Oldman, meanwhile, has a blast, chewing up copious amounts of scenery as the leader of the hijackers.



Stream it here.

Evil Season 1 (Sept. 30)

With the second season of this supernatural drama migrating from CBS to Paramount+, its not too surprising that the first year is leaving Netflix to join it. Katja Herbers, Mike Colter and Aasif Mandvi star as three assessors for the Roman Catholic Church, almost like a Ghostbusters team for possessions, sent to determine the validity of such encounters. But Evil isnt just another Exorcist rip-off; it has a classy pedigree, coming from the pens of Robert and Michelle King, the team behind The Good Wife and The Good Fight. It is lifted by its uncommonly intelligent dialogue and pointed characterizations  and then it delivers the genre goods.



Stream it here.

Kung Fu Panda (Sept. 30)

Its forgivable to assume that this 2008 family favorite was DreamWorkss transparent attempt to recreate the success of Shrek: a potentially franchise-starting, computer-animated feature, rife with pop culture references and built around the personality of a comic superstar. And those assumptions arent wrong. But Kung Fu Panda is enjoyable in spite of its unmistakable formula, primarily because of the incalculable charisma of its star, Jack Black; he is simultaneously funny, cuddly, sympathetic and inspiring as a slapstick-prone panda who must fulfill his destiny as the Dragon Warrior. (The first sequel also leaves Netflix on Sept. 30.)



Stream it here.
While Mr. Simons, 83, who stepped down as chairman of the $55 billion firm last year, supported Hillary Clinton in that race, Mr. Mercer, 75, has donated tens of millions of dollars to Republican candidates and political action committees. He also reportedly invested $10 million in Breitbart News, and was a key supporter of Stephen K. Bannon, who was Breitbarts chairman before becoming Mr. Trumps chief strategist.

The billions in payments to the I.R.S. will be made by current and former investors in a small group of Renaissance funds, but principally its Medallion fund. Those investors include seven people who were members of the firms board between 2005 and 2015, as well as their spouses. Mr. Simons will make a payment of $670 million on top of his obligation as part of that group, according to the letter.

Renaissances board ultimately concluded that the interests of our investors from the relevant period would be best served by agreeing to this resolution with the I.R.S., rather than risking a worse outcome, including harsher terms and penalties, that could result from litigation, Peter Brown, the firms chief executive, wrote.

The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg reported the settlement earlier Thursday.

Renaissance is best known for pioneering a data-intensive form of stock trading called quantitative strategy, which has been adopted by many other hedge funds and trading platforms on Wall Street. The settlement centers on the firms Medallion fund, which manages about $15 billion, mostly for employees and former employees of the firm and their family members.

Mr. Simons founded the firm in 1982. Once the head of the math department at Stony Brook University on Long Island, he was a code-breaker for the U.S. military during the Vietnam War. He stepped down from the firms day-to-day operations in 2010, handing the reins to Mr. Mercer and Mr. Brown as co-chief executives.
In one of the most expensive housing markets in the world, they have offered low-income New Yorkers, including many working-class families who work in restaurants and hotels, affordable places to live. The basement apartments also provide some extra income for small landlords, many of whom are also immigrants.

In most places if you have a house and your basement is big enough, most people are renting out their basements, Ms. Seecharran said.

This week, however, as rain inundated New York, harrowing scenes played out in those basements.

Deborah Torres, who lives on the first floor of a building in Woodside, Queens, said she heard desperate pleas from the basement apartment of three members of a family, including a toddler, as floodwaters rushed in. A powerful cascade of water prevented anyone from getting into the apartment to help  or anyone from getting out. The family did not survive.

At a home in Forest Hills, Queens, floodwater burst through a glass sliding door into a basement apartment, pinning Darlene Lee, 48, between the apartments steel front door and the door frame. The property manager, Patricia Fuentes, heard Ms. Lee screaming for help, as others tried to free Ms. Lee while the waters rose. But they could not save her.

There have been longstanding problems with regulating such apartments. The law governing these apartments is complex, and includes rules that say a basements ceilings must be at least 7 feet 6 inches high and that living spaces must have a window. The city must approve apartments with a certificate of occupancy before they can be rented.

Between January 2011 and Tuesday, the city had received more than 157,000 complaints involving illegal conversions. Illegal conversions include basements that have been made into residential units, but also single-family homes that have been altered into multifamily buildings, and units that have been converted into short-term rentals.
In New York City, the storms toll reflected not just an ancient and inadequate drainage system but entrenched inequality: At least 11 of the 13 people who died in the city perished in basement apartments, most of them in Queens, in immigrant-heavy neighborhoods that had weathered the worst of the citys coronavirus outbreak. Across the borough, tens of thousands of people unable to afford the citys exorbitant rents seek shelter in underground dwellings that often skirt or ignore safety and building codes.

As night fell Wednesday and the skies split open, New Yorkers phones lit up with a series of increasingly urgent advisories  warnings of flash floods and tornadoes, culminating in a flash flood emergency, something the National Weather Service had never issued for New York City, warning of severe threat to human life. The imperatives were potentially confusing: Do not leave your home. Get to higher ground.

By then, the streets and basements were filling up.

In Woodside, Queens, Choi Sledge received a frantic call at 9:30 p.m. It came from inside the house, from a woman who lives in the basement apartment.

She said, The water is coming in right now, and I say, Get out! Get to the third floor! Ms. Sledge said.

The bodies of the woman, her husband and her toddler son were found in the basement. The buildings certificate of occupancy showed that the basement had not been approved for residential use.

Those who survived were shaken. In Cypress Hills, Brooklyn, Ricardo Garcia, 50, was awakened by a surge of water that he said exploded through the door of his basement apartment and in moments was up to his knees, then his waist, then his chest. He banged on the door and woke a roommate, Oliver De La Cruz, 22, who trembled as he examined the water stains that reached to the ceiling of his ruined room.
Why does Mickey Mouse want to destroy civilization?

OK, thats probably not what Disney executives think theyre doing. But the Walt Disney Company, along with other corporate titans, including ExxonMobil and Pfizer, is reportedly gearing up to support a major lobbying effort against President Bidens $3.5 trillion investment plan  a plan that may well be our last chance to take serious action against global warming before it becomes catastrophic.

To say what should be obvious, the dangers of climate change are no longer hypothetical. The extreme weather events weve recently seen around the globe  severe drought and forest fires in the American West; intensified hurricanes, catastrophic flooding in Europe; heat waves pushing temperatures in the Middle East above 120 degrees  are exactly the kinds of thing climate scientists warned us to expect as the planet warms.

And this is just the beginning of the nightmare  the leading edge of a wave of disasters, and a harbinger of the crisis heading our way if we dont act quickly and forcefully to limit greenhouse gas emissions.

What can be done to avoid catastrophe? Many economists favor broad-based incentives to limit emissions, such as a carbon tax. Theres an interesting, serious economic debate over whether thats really the best policy, or at any rate whether emissions taxes would be a sufficient policy on their own. As a practical matter, however, that debate is moot: Carbon taxes, or anything like them, wont be politically feasible any time soon.
WASHINGTON  When Democrats won control of the House, Senate and White House, antiwar progressives saw a glimmer of hope that they might achieve one of their long-sought ambitions: cutting the Pentagons sprawling budget.

Instead, the Democratic-controlled Congress is on track to increase the military budget by roughly $24 billion more than what President Biden had requested, after over a dozen moderate Democrats on the House Armed Services Committee joined Republicans on Wednesday in pushing through a measure to substantially raise the cost of the annual defense policy bill.

We are ending our longest conflict of 20 years, but more than ever, the world is watching what we do here today, said Representative Elaine Luria, Democrat of Virginia and a Navy veteran, who pressed for the increase. The presidents budget  I have been saying ever since it was released that it does not do enough.

The 42-to-17 vote capped a week in which a skeptical Congress  led by members of the presidents own party  sharply questioned Mr. Bidens foreign policy as he brought a chaotic end to the war in Afghanistan and offered a new vision of American leadership that shuns ground wars in favor of economic and technological competition.
ALEXANDRIA, Va.  A member of a notorious cell of four British Islamic State members who tortured Western hostages pleaded guilty on Thursday in a federal courtroom filled with family members of the groups American victims, some of whom were beheaded for propaganda videos seen around the world.

Alexanda Kotey, 37, was part of an ISIS cell of four Britons called the Beatles  a nickname given by their victims because of their accents  and known for their extreme brutality.

The group kidnapped and abused more than two dozen hostages, including the American journalists James Foley and Steven J. Sotloff in 2014, both of whom were beheaded in propaganda videos. Another two Americans were also killed: Peter Kassig and Kayla Mueller.

As families of all four victims sat silently in the courtroom on Thursday, Mr. Kotey recounted calmly and without emotion his crimes and his involvement in the hostage-tasking schemes. He said he knew what would happen to the hostages if their governments did not fulfill the ransom demands, which he had emailed to the families.
Covid-19: Biden Pledges $2.7 Billion to Help Create Arsenal of Vaccines for the World The money will go toward ramping up production of critical supplies necessary to manufacture Covid-19 vaccines.

The White House, amid calls to step up its global Covid response, says it will invest $2.7 billion in vaccine production. Image President Biden in February during a tour of a Pfizer plant in Kalamazoo, Mich. Credit... Doug Mills/The New York Times The White House, under pressure to do more to address the global coronavirus pandemic, said Thursday that it will invest $2.7 billion to ramp up domestic production of critical vaccine components as part of President Bidens push to make the United States the arsenal of vaccines for the world. The money will go to firms doing business in the United States that make supplies necessary for vaccine production, including lipids, bioreactor bags, tubing, needles and syringes, officials said. It will come from funds appropriated by Congress through the American Rescue Plan, the $1.9 trillion economic stimulus package Mr. Biden signed into law in March. This new investment will further expand domestic vaccine manufacturing capacity, helping the U.S. deliver on its commitment to be the arsenal of vaccines for the world and preparing America for future vaccination efforts, said Jeffrey D. Zients, Mr. Bidens coronavirus response coordinator, who announced the effort during a briefing with reporters. Details, however, were scant. The Department of Health and Human Services is in the final stages of awarding contracts for the work, and will make announcements in the coming weeks, according to a White House official who was not authorized to speak publicly about the investment. Neither the official nor Mr. Zients could provide an estimate of how many doses the investment would yield. But Mr. Zients said that investing in the supply chain would also create thousands of good paying American jobs. Mr. Biden has already either donated or pledged about 600 million vaccine doses to other countries  a small fraction of the 11 billion that experts say are needed to slow the spread of the virus worldwide. His administration has also taken steps to expand coronavirus vaccine manufacturing in the United States and India, and is supporting production in South Africa and Senegal to expand access to locally produced vaccines in Africa. But the president has come under increasing criticism in recent weeks from global health advocates and experts who say he is nowhere near fulfilling his arsenal promise. That criticism grew after the administration announced last month that it was recommending booster doses for all Americans  even before the Food and Drug Administration had a chance to weigh in on whether such doses are necessary. Worldwide, 81 percent of shots that have been administered have been in high- and upper-middle-income countries, according to the Our World in Data project at the University of Oxford. Only 0.4 percent of doses have been administered in low-income countries. Tracking Coronavirus Vaccinations Around the World More than 5.76 billion vaccine doses have been administered worldwide, equal to 75 doses for every 100 people. Activists have been calling for the Biden administration to ramp up vaccine manufacturing around the world as well as in the United States. They also want the administration to press major vaccine makers to share their recipes and technical know-how with other companies  a process known as tech transfer, which Thursdays announcement did not address. Major investments in urgent vaccine manufacturing are desperately needed, and after todays announcement, still far more is needed to make the billions of doses lacking to end the pandemic, said Peter Maybarduk of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, which has proposed a $25 billion investment to retrofit manufacturing facilities around the world, with the goal of making 8 billion doses of mRNA vaccine in one year. Congress put a total of $16.05 billion in the American Rescue Plan this year, in two separate tranches, that could be used to procure and manufacture treatments, vaccines and tools for ending the pandemic. But in an analysis released last week, the AIDS advocacy group PrEP4All found that all told, the administration had spent $145 million  just $12 million of it from the American Rescue Plan  to expand vaccine manufacturing. James Krellenstein, a founder of PrEP4All and the author of the analysis, said Thursday that the $2.7 billion does seem like a very significant investment in the vaccine supply chain. But he questioned whether there is adequate capacity to make drug substance  the core ingredients of the vaccines  and whether the fresh investment would actually spur major vaccine manufacturers like Pfizer and Moderna to make more doses. Its kind of like there is a massive cake shortage right now, and instead of making more bakeries, we are making more flour and assuming more cakes will be baked, he said. The question I have is, does the Biden administration have any plans to make more bakeries?

The W.H.O. lists Mu as a variant of interest. Image A Covid-19 patient in Bogota, Colombia, in May. The World Health Organization said the Mu variant, responsible for many cases in Colombia, has the potential to evade immunity provided by vaccines. Credit... Vanessa Jimenez/AFP  Getty Images The World Health Organization is monitoring a new coronavirus variant called Mu  known by scientists as B.1.621  and has added it to the list of variants of interest because of preliminary evidence it can evade antibodies. Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the top U.S. infectious disease expert, said the United States was also monitoring the new variant, which was first identified in Colombia in January and now makes up 39 percent of all cases there. The W.H.O. says the variant has the potential to evade immunity provided by vaccines and antibodies, and because of that, it was listed as a variant of interest on Aug. 30. Still, Dr. Fauci said it is not at all common in the United States, where the highly contagious Delta variant makes up 99 percent of all Covid-19 cases. He said the new variant has a constellation of mutations that suggests it would evade certain antibodies, but there is so far very little clinical data supporting that conclusion. Dr. Fauci added that vaccines are still quite effective against variants with similar characteristics. Bottom line, we are paying attention to it, he said. We take everything like that seriously, but we don't consider it an immediate threat right now.

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Hawaii is facing an oxygen shortage amid a record surge in virus cases. Image Outside the emergency room at The Queens Medical Center in Honolulu last week. Credit... Caleb Jones/Associated Press The authorities in Hawaii are struggling to transport tanks of oxygen from the mainland as the states hospitals grow increasingly strained by new coronavirus infections. Medical authorities are asking people to postpone elective surgeries and the states 223 I.C.U. beds have dwindled to 16 available, said Hilton R. Raethel, the president and chief executive of the Healthcare Association of Hawaii. The most critical point for Hawaii that weve experienced during this entire pandemic is right now, he said. Since July 1, Hawaii has been battling its highest surge in virus infections and hospitalizations, with the seven-day average of reported cases reaching 884 on Tuesday, according to a New York Times database. The seven-day hospitalization average peaked at 427 on Monday. Health experts say the surge is driven by the highly contagious Delta variant and low vaccination rates. Though Hawaii has seen droves of tourists coming to the islands  so many that the states governor last week asked them to stay away  Mr. Raethel said that around 95 percent of hospitalized patients are unvaccinated residents, not tourists. These hospitalized patients are also largely the reason for a huge surge in requests for medical oxygen. The demand is up 250 percent since August began, the association said in a statement. The state authorities turned to the mainland for help, but encountered challenges. An international shortage has limited the number of liquid oxygen tanks that the state can order, Mr. Raethel said. It also takes up to a month to ship the tanks in boats across the Pacific. (Liquid oxygen is highly flammable and dangerous to transport by plane.) If New York runs out of oxygen, you ship it in from New Jersey or put it on a truck, he said. Even Alaska can drive it across the border from Canada or Washington. The state currently has 10 tanks, Mr. Raethel said, and each carries up to 3,500 gallons of liquid oxygen. The state authorities have requested assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and other agencies as it tries to increase its oxygen supply, the association said. Mr. Raethel said he believes the state will weather the crisis without running out of oxygen. In addition to canceling elective surgeries, FEMA has approved the purchase of three oxygen generators, the authorities have asked shipping companies to speed up deliveries and the state has identified a few tanks that can carry liquid oxygen instead of other gases. Living in Hawaii is wonderful when things are going well, he said. But its really challenging when you have logistical concerns. In hospitals, I.C.U.s are equipped with specialized equipment and trained staff who can treat critically ill patients. Experts say maintaining existing standards of care for the sickest patients may be difficult or impossible at hospitals with more than 95 percent I.C.U. occupancy, and throughout the pandemic, hospitals have been forced to improvise solutions when I.C.U. space and staffing have dwindled.

Drug-resistant infections have increased in hospitals during the pandemic. Image An ICU nurse spoke to another nurse through glass from the room of a patient on a ventilator with complications due to Covid-19 at Baxter Regional Medical Center in Mountain Home, Ark., in July. Credit... Erin Schaff/The New York Times At the height of the pandemic, doctors and nurses made furious efforts to protect themselves with gowns and masks and scrambled to save the lives of the severely ill Covid-19 patients with ventilators. But these efforts, among other life saving measures, had a side effect: drug-resistant infections have increased in hospitals. The development, reported on Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, came about in part because drug-resistant bacteria thrived on reused protective equipment, intravenous lines and medical equipment like ventilators. Drug-resistant infections have in recent years become a gnawing, sometimes deadly, problem. The threat has grown as various germs  notably bacteria and fungi  have mutated and developed defenses that allow them to resist medications and thrive; the germs prey in particular on older patients and the immunocompromised, limiting drug options to counter infections or, in extreme cases, leaving no effective treatments. Immense efforts have been made in recent years to slow the growth of these noxious microbes that, increasingly, resist treatment by various classes of medicines. In the second half of 2020, though, sometimes these efforts went terribly wrong, with so much focus on stopping transmission of Covid-19, according to a commentary that accompanies the new study by the C.D.C. The authors wrote that the practices best known to stop the spread of drug-resistant infections were ignored or subverted in the face of a larger threat. Drug-resistant bloodstream infections at hospitals rose 47 percent in the last three months of 2020 compared to the same period a year earlier. That was a sharp change in momentum. In the first three months of 2020, such infections had fallen nearly 12 percent compared to the same period a year earlier, reflecting heightened efforts at the time to stop the spread. Similar trends showed up with regard to infections traced to ventilators, which rose 45 percent in the fourth quarter of 2020 over the previous year. During the same period, infections from one bacterium  methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA rose 34 percent after having fallen in the first quarter of 2020 as compared to the same period a year earlier.

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The last U.S. diplomat to leave Kabul has tested positive for the virus. Image Ambassador Ross Wilson at a news conference at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul in late July. Credit... Reuters Ross Wilson, the charge daffaires of the U.S. Embassy in Kabul who helped manage the evacuation from the Kabul airport, has tested positive for the coronavirus, according to a person familiar with his condition who was not authorized to speak on the record. Politico broke the story on Wednesday, and quoted Mr. Wilson as saying he had been vaccinated. Mr. Wilson was one of a number of officials who continued operating in the country as Taliban fighters swept into the capital, prompting the evacuation of around 123,000 people. The last American diplomat to depart Kabul, he continued working at the airport to process the paperwork of Afghans who wanted to leave for two weeks after the embassy shut down on Aug. 15. Mr. Wilsons condition on Friday was not immediately clear.. In the rush to complete the evacuation, military and diplomatic officials have scrambled to put in place a system for screening those airlifted out of the country for the virus. Many have arrived in the United States. Pentagon officials have said that they established temperature checks and other Covid protocols at the airfield in Kabul. Last week, the White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, said that all evacuees would also be tested and offered vaccines upon arrival. With regards to Covid, the Afghans coming from the Middle East into our locations that we have stood up are all being tested, actually, multiple times, Gen. Glen D. VanHerck, the commander of the North American Aerospace Defense Command, said last week. Of those who arrived last week, roughly one out of 1,200 had tested positive, he said. Addressing the evacuation efforts on Monday, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken thanked Mr. Wilson, whom he credited for exceptional, courageous work during a highly challenging time. Mr. Blinken also acknowledged the heavy toll that the pandemic had taken on Afghanistan, where vaccines have been scarce and a summer surge just months ago badly strained the countrys hospitals. Lara Jakes contributed reporting.

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North Korea refuses nearly 3 million doses of Covid-19 vaccine. Image Receiving hand sanitizer before entering a school in Pyongyang, North Korea, in June. Credit... Kim Won Jin/Agence France-Presse  Getty Images SEOUL  North Korea has declined an offer of 2.97 million doses of the Sinovac vaccine, saying they should be sent to countries with worse outbreaks instead, a spokesperson for UNICEF, the United Nations agency for children, said on Wednesday. The shipment of vaccines was funded by the global vaccine-sharing initiative called Covax that distributes shots to lower-income countries. North Korea said that the vaccines may be relocated to severely affected countries, the spokesperson said. Having a decrepit public health system, North Korea shut its borders in January 2020 and declined other international aid, for fear that outside help might bring in Covid-19, which could overwhelm its public health system and damage an economy that was already struggling under international sanctions. The country continues to maintain that it has no virus cases, but outside health experts are skeptical. UNICEF, which helps deliver the shots on behalf of Covax, said that North Koreas public health ministry turned away the shipment citing the limited global supply of Covid-19 vaccines and continuing virus surges elsewhere. The North has said it will continue to communicate with Covax facility to receive Covid-19 vaccines in the coming months, the U.N. agency added. A spokesperson for Gavi, the nonprofit leading Covax, said that it was continuing to work with the North Korean authorities to help respond to the pandemic. Before declining the Sinovac vaccines, North Korea was expected to receive nearly two million doses of the AstraZeneca shot by the middle of this year for a population of about 25 million, according to a report by Covax from February. North Korea never accepted this shipment. It has also attempted to steal Covid-19 vaccine technology by hacking international pharmaceutical companies, including Pfizer Inc., a South Korean lawmaker said earlier this year after a briefing by government intelligence officials. Such attempts were part of numerous cyber-hacking activities initiated daily by North Korea, Ha Tae-keung, a lawmaker affiliated with the opposition People Power Party, told South Korean reporters in February. Mr. Ha, who provided no further details, spoke after he and other lawmakers were briefed by senior officials from the National Intelligence Service during the closed-door briefing. The National Intelligence Service declined to confirm Mr. Has comment, citing its policy of not confirming information from closed-door parliamentary briefings. Choe Sang-Hun contributed reporting.

Heres what life is like for families with children under 12, when vaccines arent an option. Image Students returned to in-person learning last month at Normont Elementary in Los Angeles. Credit... Allison Zaucha for The New York Times As the United States confronts its worst moment of the pandemic since the winter, there is a group of 48 million people who do not have the option of getting a vaccine: children under 12. Because a vaccine is not yet authorized for young children, and may not be for some time, their families are left in a particularly difficult position heading into this school year. Waiting for a vaccine for the under-12 set has started to feel like waiting for Godot, said Dana Gilbert, 49, of Minneapolis. Her 11-year-old son was born prematurely and has special needs, and a family doctor advised that he not return to school in person until a vaccine is available. Her plan is to wait out the clock: Keep him at home until a vaccine is authorized for emergency use, or until he turns 12 next year, whichever comes first. The timeline for a vaccine for children under 12  initially expected by this fall  appears to have slowed, as officials consider safety, effectiveness and dosage. Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nations top infectious-disease expert, recently indicated that a vaccine could become available to young children hopefully by the mid, late fall and early winter. Shots for children ages 5 to 11 are expected first; children as young as six months may have to wait longer. In interviews, many parents of children under 12 described feeling increasingly desperate, angry and backed into a corner as they reluctantly send their children into the classroom this fall  or resort to drastic actions to keep them safe. Others are less worried, but equally frustrated as they head into another school year marked by pandemic rules. In some cases, mandates are being applied most stringently to young children not eligible for a vaccine. It doesnt feel like there are any good options at this point, said Adina Ellis, 45, who tossed and turned in bed for hours the night before school started this week in Washington, D.C., racked with indecision about whether to send her 6-year-old son, Cassius. On the first day of school, Ms. Ellis rose before dawn, sat on her front porch with her husband and made a game-time decision, she said, to drop her son off at school. Watching him walk up the steps, carrying a Hot Wheels backpack, some part of her became resigned to the possibility that he may get infected. That thought will haunt me for as long as hes going to school unvaccinated, she said.

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New York City resumes most virus testing following Idas hit, but some vaccination sites remain closed. Image A mobile vaccination site set up in Brooklyn in July. Credit... Spencer Platt/Getty Images Mobile coronavirus testing sites in New York City were reopening on Thursday as the area worked to recover from the flooding caused by the remnants of Hurricane Ida. Some vaccination sites also remained closed or with delayed openings, the citys alert system said. The city urged people seeking vaccinations to call ahead or check on its vaccine finder website before heading out, particularly as public transportation remains limited. Overall, public and private city hospitals reported minimal storm damage and relatively normal operations as they dealt with both storm-related problems and the pandemic. Our facilities sheltered some community members through the storm, and today our social workers are connecting any patients affected with relevant community resources, said Chris Miller, a spokesman for the citys public hospital system. A Northwell Health spokeswoman said some elective surgeries in Manhattan were being postponed because of staffing issues caused by public transportation problems, but that all of its hospitals were open. The city is still dealing with a virus surge caused by the Delta variant, with an average of about 1,800 cases per day. Hospitalizations, however, have remained well below previous peaks. About 885 people are currently hospitalized in New York City for Covid-19, according to state data, compared to more than 12,000 in the spring of 2020. All city-run virus testing sites will also be closed for Labor Day, the city announced, unlike earlier in the pandemic, when testing sites remained open on major holidays. Adam Shrier, a spokesman for the citys Test and Trace Corps, said the rainfall had prevented one city-run testing site, at St. James Recreation Center on Jerome Avenue in the Bronx, from opening on Thursday. But other sites were open as usual, and by noon on Thursday the citys fleet of more than 40 mobile testing units was operational, Mr. Shrier said. Our staff are going above and beyond to continue their critical work with minimal disruption, as they have through inclement weather several times before, Mr. Shrier wrote in an email. It is our priority to provide no-cost, convenient testing options to patients across the city, a mission that is more important than ever as New Yorkers recover from the impact of this storm.

Amtrak will require vaccination or a negative coronavirus test for its workers. Image Amtrak requires all customers and employees to wear face masks. Credit... Shafkat Anowar/Associated Press Amtrak will require all its employees to be vaccinated against coronavirus as the highly contagious Delta variant continues to concern public health officials. Rail service employees must be fully vaccinated by Nov. 1 or submit a weekly negative coronavirus test. As of Oct. 4, new hires must show proof of vaccination before their first day of employment. Amtrak requires all customers and employees to wear face masks, regardless of vaccination status or state and local laws. The company joins a heap of others that have mandated inoculation in the workplace. Other transportation companies and agencies, including Frontier Airlines and New Yorks Metropolitan Transportation Authority, also announced mandatory vaccination for their workers. Delta Air Lines said it would impose a $200 monthly surcharge on employees who had not been vaccinated as of Nov. 1. Amtrak has catered mostly to leisure travel during the pandemic, said a spokesman for the rail service. Many business travelers, on which it relies, are still working from home while their companies settle on return-to-office plans. Amtrak provided 16.8 million customer trips in 2020, a decrease of 15.2 million passengers from the year before. Ridership continues to improve, said the Amtrak spokesman, with levels rising to 65 percent of what they were in 2019.

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Sept. 11 lawyer in quarantine after yet another virus case threatens to delay Guantanamo Bay proceedings. Image Camp Justice at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, seen on Aug. 29, is where military commissions are held for detainees of the United States who are charged with war crimes. Credit... Alex Brandon/Associated Press GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba  A key defense lawyer in the long-delayed Sept. 11 attacks proceedings was in quarantine Thursday after he was exposed to the coronavirus, potentially setting back the efforts once again. Guantanamo, a base of 6,000 residents that sits behind a Cuban minefield, has managed to prevent an outbreak of the virus through quarantine, testing and closures. But Walter Ruiz, the defense attorney, was with his client, a Saudi prisoner, Mustafa al-Hawsawi, for 90 minutes on Wednesday when guards abruptly ended the meeting. Mr. Ruiz and Mr. Hawsawi were wearing masks, but a medical official ordered Mr. Ruiz confined to his quarters because someone who sat near him on a Navy plane to the base on Tuesday was infected. Mr. Ruiz, who tested negative before and after his arrival, was to be tested again on Friday. At issue is whether he would be released from quarantine in time for a closed conference Saturday at Guantanamos courtroom between the judge, Air Force Col. Matthew McCall, and case lawyers. Prosecutors are seeking the death-penalty in the five-man case and, by law, Mr. Ruiz must be present to represent Mr. al-Hawsawi. Colonel McCall, who is the fourth judge assigned to preside in the Sept. 11 trial since 2012, has scheduled nine days of mostly administrative hearings to start Tuesday. More than 100 people, including family members of victims of the attacks, are scheduled to arrive on Saturday for the hearings, the first since the start of the pandemic. It will also be the first court hearing since February 2020 with Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who is accused of being the plot mastermind, and four other men who are accused of being accomplices in the attacks that killed 2,976 people in New York, Pennsylvania and at the Pentagon 20 years ago. Before the pandemic, defense lawyers were beginning to call witnesses to contest potential trial evidence as tainted by torture. Since then, court related travel was halted and the judge who was presiding at the time abruptly retired. Then, in July, the base recorded seven cases of the virus in a few weeks and added day-of-travel tests. Three people tested positive in the month of August, she said, resulting in the quarantine of at least 10 people through contact tracing. Base health officials also increased mask requirements, consistent with Department of Defense policy. Visitors who arrived last month were told to wear them at all times indoors and also outdoors within six feet of other people. At the court however, earlier this week, a Navy judge in a different war crimes case waived the mask requirement and presided for two weeks with no mask, and many of the legal teams followed suit. Cmdr. Hayes C. Larsen, the judge, called it a personal decision because of robust screening measures in getting everyone safely to the island. The inconsistent masking so troubled another capital defender in the Sept. 11 case, Cheryl Bormann, that she sought emergency permission Wednesday night to participate remotely from a new satellite court for the Guantanamo proceedings near the Pentagon. The judge denied the request, noting that Ms. Borman refused to certify that her client, Walid bin Attash, could be adequately represented with her essentially participating by video conference.

Federal jobless aid, a lifeline to millions, reaches an end. Image Before the pandemic, Evan Ocheret, a professional oboist in Philadelphia, made a living as a freelancer. Credit... Hannah Yoon for The New York Times Unemployment benefits have helped stave off financial ruin for millions of laid-off workers over the last year and a half. After this week, that lifeline will snap: An estimated 7.5 million people will lose their benefits when federally funded emergency unemployment programs end. Millions more will see their checks cut by $300 a week. The cutoff is the latest and arguably the largest of the benefit cliffs that jobless workers have faced during the pandemic. Last summer, the government ended a $600 weekly supplement that workers received early in the crisis, but other programs remained in place. In December, benefits briefly lapsed for millions of workers, but Congress quickly restored them. This time, no similar rescue appears likely. President Biden has encouraged states with high unemployment rates to use existing federal funds to extend benefits, but few appear likely to do so. And administration officials have said repeatedly that they will not seek a congressional extension of the benefits. The politics of this cliff are different in part because it affects primarily Democratic-leaning states. Roughly half of states, nearly all of them with Republican governors, have already ended some or all of the federal benefits on the grounds that they were discouraging people from returning to work. So far, there is little evidence they were right: States that cut off benefits have experienced job growth this summer that was little different from that in states that retained the programs. In the states that kept the benefits, the cutoff will mean the loss of billions of dollars a week in aid when the pandemic is resurgent and the economic recovery is showing signs of fragility. And for workers and their families, it will mean losing their only source of income as other pandemic programs, such as the federal eviction moratorium, are ending. Even under the most optimistic forecasts, it will take months for everyone losing aid to find a job, with potentially long-term consequences for both workers and the economy. I have no idea what Im going to do once these benefits stop, said Amanda Rinehart, who is considering borrowing money from her grandmother or selling blood plasma to feed herself and her son. Evan Ocheret is considering giving up his career in music. Mr. Ocheret, 32, is a professional oboist in Philadelphia. Before the pandemic, he cobbled together a living as a freelancer. Without unemployment benefits to fall back on, he isnt sure how he will get by. He has signed up for computer coding courses to give him another option  one that he doesnt want to take. I hate to stop doing the thing I love, Mr. Ocheret said. But if things dont start to improve, I may have to do something different.

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Vice President Kamala Harris added, We will not stand by and allow our nation to go back to the days of back-alley abortions.

The first election that could test Democrats capacity to energize voters over abortion rights comes on Sept. 14 in California, where voters will determine the fate of Gov. Gavin Newsom, who faces a recall effort. Mr. Newsom warned on Twitter that the Texas abortion ban could be the future of CA if the recall were successful.

In Virginia, Democratic candidates for the states three statewide offices and House of Delegates pounced on the issue on Thursday. Former Gov. Terry McAuliffe, who is running to recapture the office in November, said the fight for abortion rights would help motivate Democratic voters who might be complacent after the party captured full control of state government in 2019 and helped Mr. Biden win the state last year.

We are a Democratic state. There are more Democrats, Mr. McAuliffe said. But this is an off-off-year, and getting Democrats motivated to come out, thats always the big challenge.

Eyeing 2022, the Democrats Senate campaign arm has signaled it will use abortion rights as a cudgel against Republicans running in states like Florida, New Hampshire, Nevada and North Carolina. Democrats planning campaigns for governor next year are preparing to brand themselves as the last line of defense on abortion rights, particularly in states with Republican-controlled legislatures.

People are now waking up to the fact that the battle will now be in the states, and they recognize that the only thing, literally the only thing standing in the way of Pennsylvania passing the same ban that Texas just passed, is the veto pen of our Democratic governor, said Josh Shapiro, the Pennsylvania attorney general, a Democrat who has said he expects to enter the race to succeed Gov. Tom Wolf. Ive given up on the politicians in Washington. I dont think we can count on them anymore.
When the Supreme Court declined late Wednesday to block a severely restrictive Texas abortion law, it was fulfilling the long-held ambitions of a series of committed Republican presidents, senators and conservative activists who worked unceasingly for years to cement a reliable anti-abortion majority on the court.

The decision confirmed the worst fears of reproductive rights activists, who had long warned that conservatives were moving aggressively to put in place a court majority that would upend abortion rights. And it showed the success of a carefully orchestrated master plan that required deep coordination among the conservative legal community, the White House and the Senate, combined with the willingness of Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky to play confirmation hardball.

Mr. McConnell, the court-focused Republican leader, denied one Democratic president the right to fill one Supreme Court seat and then raced to fill another with a G.O.P. nominee before a subsequent Democratic president could. Both decisions transformed the ideological makeup of the court and made this weeks decision possible, with the court facing an opportunity to act more definitively against abortion rights this fall.

This has been the crux of our political strategy for decades, said Mallory Quigley, the vice president for communications at the conservative Susan B. Anthony List. It has been to elect pro-life presidents, pro-life senators and put in these pro-life legislators so they could nominate and confirm pro-life Supreme Court justices.
TOKYO  Less than a year after becoming prime minister of Japan, Yoshihide Suga said on Friday that he would not seek re-election as the head of its governing party, raising the prospect of a return to the revolving-door leadership that once characterized the top office of the worlds third-largest economy.

Mr. Suga, 72, assumed the prime ministership after Shinzo Abe, Japans longest-serving prime minister, resigned in August 2020 because of ill health. But Japans struggles with the coronavirus left Mr. Suga deeply unpopular, and his decision on Friday makes him a rare leader of a large, developed country to resign in large part because of the pandemic.

The son of a strawberry farmer and a schoolteacher from the countrys rural north, Mr. Suga had been a behind-the-scenes operator in the governing Liberal Democratic Party, which has dominated Japanese politics for decades. A deeply uncharismatic leader who struggled to connect with the public, he often looked uncomfortable as a public-facing leader.

In the end  with coronavirus cases hitting record highs, hospitals turning away patients and a vaccination campaign still straining to catch up with other rich countries  he apparently decided he had no viable path to remaining prime minister.
But even as West struck first, Donda, named for the rappers late mother, was still being updated the morning of its release, with additional versions of multiple songs added to the track list. West claimed on Instagram that his record company had put my album out without my approval and that it had initially blocked a track featuring Manson and DaBaby. (Jail Pt. 2, with appearances by both, is now included on the album. Def Jam, his label, declined to comment.) Additional collaborators slated to be on the album, including Chris Brown and Soulja Boy, expressed their own discontent with the finished product.

Yet even amid the scheduling bumps, mixed reviews and nontraditional weekend release  which left West two fewer days of sales and streams than a standard Friday drop  Donda is on pace to debut at No. 1 on the Billboard chart with one of the biggest opening weeks of the year. According to Def Jam, Donda had 180 million streams in its first 24 hours.

Image The cover of Drakes Certified Lover Boy.

Based on Drakes streaming dominance  he was the first artist to hit 50 billion streams on Spotify, by at least one count  Certified Lover Boy is all but certain to reign as one of the years biggest releases. And although Drakes first-week sales will not be finalized until Sept. 13, precluding a direct repeat of the West vs. 50 Cent chart face-off of 2007, fans have been eager to compare the two new works, commercially and artistically, in line with the pairs latest stoking of their own long-simmering rivalry. (The rappers record labels share a parent company in Universal Music Group.)

After Drake appeared to poke fun at Wests age on a guest verse for a Trippie Redd track last month  Drake is 34 and West a decade older  West posted a text exchange online in which he wrote, You will never recover. I promise you, and included an image of Joaquin Phoenix as the Joker. (West also uploaded a screenshot of what appeared to be Drakes Toronto address before deleting it. Drake seemed to respond with multiple photos of himself laughing.)

Listeners on Friday were quick to notice Drakes apparent ripostes to West. Give that address to your driver, make it your destination/Stead of just a post out of desperation, he raps on the track 7am on Bridle Path.
A powerful storm kills dozens in northeastern U.S.

The remnants of Hurricane Ida killed at least 43 people in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Connecticut and left more than 150,000 homes without power. States of emergency were still in effect as of midday yesterday, as officials sought to get a handle on the damage. Here are the latest updates and photos from the storm.

At least 11 people were found dead in basement apartments in New York City. These residences are often illegal and lack basic safety features, like more than one way to get out  but for many immigrants, they are a vital source of shelter.

Speaking from the White House, President Biden said the damage showed that extreme storms and the climate crisis are here, constituting what he called one of the great challenges of our time. Overlapping disasters in the U.S. have laid bare a stark truth: The country is not ready for the extreme weather brought by climate change.

Details: Central Park recorded more than three inches, or about eight centimeters, of rain in a single hour on Wednesday night, smashing previous records. The downpour paralyzed the city, with cascades of water pouring into subway stations and shutting down much of the system for hours.
1. Job gains in August were expected to be low  but not this low. Blame the Delta variant.

Employers added 235,000 jobs last month, far below economists expectations of a gain of 725,000. The slowdown contrasted with huge gains recorded earlier this summer  962,000 jobs were added in June and 1.05 million in July  and showed that the Delta variant of the coronavirus is hurting hiring.

The U.S. lost about 28,500 retail jobs in August. Leisure and hospitality positions, which had been a major driver in job growth in recent months, barely rose  a clear slowdown in industries that require face-to-face interaction with the public.
Apples small change

On an Apple device, the one thing you cannot do in Netflixs app is subscribe to Netflix. A message on the apps home screen explains this and encourages new users to return when youre a member. Its up to them to figure out how to do that.

This confusing setup is an effort to comply with Apples rules banning apps on its platform from directing users to make purchases elsewhere, and avoiding Apples 30 percent commission. But its likely to change soon. Apple announced on Wednesday that it would allow some apps, like Netflix and Spotify, to direct their users to payment methods outside of the App Store. Thats the second concession to app developers that Apple has made in the past week, suggesting its part of a deliberate campaign. To what end?

Analysts who track Apple said that these changes wont significantly affect the tech giants $20 billion App Store business. Rather, The Timess Kellen Browning and Daisuke Wakabayashi report, the moves are a strategic retreat, an effort by Apple to repel threats that would be more damaging to its bottom line. (Apple declined to comment.)

Apple is under pressure from regulators around the world who have accused it of exerting too much control over developers who sell products in its App Store. The South Korean Parliament on Tuesday passed a bill that would ban app stores from forcing developers to use only their proprietary payment systems. Apple also faces antitrust investigations in the U.S., the E.U., Britain and India. And it is awaiting the verdict in a lawsuit brought by Epic Games, which sought to avoid Apples commissions altogether.
Theres a running gag about honeydew on the Netflix animated series BoJack Horseman. In a string of jabs, the hapless melon is trodden on as garbage fruit, cantaloupes dumb friend.

Not without good reason. Who hasnt bitten into a bland, watery cube of honeydew from the top of an airport fruit cup filled mostly with underripe melon?

But sinking your teeth into truly ripe, devastatingly sweet melon can be an ethereal eating experience. Its a small but mighty pleasure that can be expanded even further by turning your next honeydew or cantaloupe into dessert. Melons arent often used in sweets, but they should be. Cream and sugar actually fortify what honeydew and cantaloupe already have going for them: Their flesh is creamy when ripe, where the juicy edges by the seeds are so tattered that they seem almost milky and full of fat.

Whether its jade-tinged honeydew dripping with cool nectar or orange cantaloupe thats ripened to honeyed creaminess, melons are, in many parts of the world, a nexus of late-summers bounty.
In the pantheon of Marvel superheroes, theres Spider-Man and Iron Man and Captain America and  Shang-Chi?

Admittedly one of the lesser known players in the comic companys roster, Shang-Chi, a.k.a. the Master of Kung Fu, wasnt even familiar to many of the creators that Disney and Marvel Studios hired a couple of years ago to bring the character to cinematic life.

Destin Daniel Cretton, the director of Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, which premieres Friday, had never even heard of the character when he was growing up. Nor had the Canadian actor Simu Liu (Kims Convenience), who plays Shang-Chi in the film.

When the screenwriter David Callaham, a longtime Marvel fan, was first approached about the project and told it would feature an Asian superhero, he figured it had to be Amadeus Cho, a.k.a. the Korean American Hulk, who made his first comic-book appearance in 2005. When Callaham learned it would be Shang-Chi, I said, I dont know what that is.
In a 1984 ruling in favor of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, who had sued the Christian Dior fashion house for using a Jackie-look-alike model in an advertising campaign, Justice Greenfield said her privacy had been trampled. Then he dipped into Othello: Who steals my purse steals trash, he quoted, but he who filches from me my good name robs me of that which not enriches him, and makes me poor indeed.

Upholding New York Citys so-called pooper-scooper law in 1979, Justice Greenfield reflected on the three categories of people in the world: those who love dogs, those who despise dogs and that tiny fragment of the population which apparently does not care one way or another about dogs and devotes its attention to problems of lesser impact like nuclear destruction, economic disaster, overpopulation and the pernicious influence of pornography.

He took such care in writing his opinions, and took on so many complex cases, that he was sometimes slow in issuing decisions. Prompted by unhappy litigants, the state Commission on Judicial Conduct filed a complaint against him in 1988 for taking too long to decide certain cases, one of which was delayed by nine years. In a rare rebuke, the commission reprimanded him, but the Court of Appeals overturned that reprimand in 1990.

He often worked evenings, weekends and holidays and volunteered for difficult cases, the court said. There is no suggestion that he was not devoting his full time and energies to his judicial activities. The court concluded that Justice Greenfield had been overly optimistic with respect to his management abilities. The problem was alleviated by administrative changes and a reduction in his caseload.

One of the things that defined him was that he valued the written word, and he labored over his decisions, Mark Greenfield said in a phone interview. Any slowness, he added, was not unrelated to the fact that he took his time and wanted to get it just right.
The death toll from the remnants of Hurricane Ida grew on Friday with the announcement of two more deaths in New Jersey, bringing the total number of lives lost to 46 across four states hit that were hit by the storm Wednesday evening.

Authorities fear the toll will increase further: Gov. Phillip D. Murphy of New Jersey said at least six people were still missing in the floods. This was a deadly and dangerous storm, and we continue to face its aftereffects, he said at a morning news conference. The dead include 25 people in New Jersey, 16 in New York, four in Pennsylvania and one in Connecticut.

In New York City, where 13 people died, most of whom were trapped in flooded basement apartments, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced on Friday that going forward, when flash floods were forecast, the city would go door-to-door in neighborhoods with high concentrations of such apartments and evacuate residents.
[For the latest updates on fallout from Hurricane Ida in the New York region, go here.]

How the storm highlighted a shadow world of basement apartments

Most of the New Yorkers who lost their lives were found inside basements. Tens of thousands of people, many of them immigrants or low-income residents, seek shelter in underground dwellings that are often not legal residences and do not meet safety or building regulations.

Annetta Seecharran, the executive director of the Chhaya Community Development Corporation, a group that works on housing issues for low-income South Asian and Indo-Caribbean New Yorkers, said because of the need for affordable housing in New York City, people would continue to seek homes in basements. And because so many of the units are illegal, tenants might be reluctant to seek help or complain of unsafe conditions for fear of losing their home.

What we know about the people who died

Fifteen people are known to have died in New York, most of whom were found in Queens and Brooklyn. At least 23 people were killed in New Jersey, four people died north of Philadelphia and one in Connecticut.

One victim, Rabbi Shmuel Dovid Weissmandl, was killed after being trapped by floodwaters while driving home to Mount Kisco, N.Y.

In a Queens home where three were found dead, Choi Sledge, who lives on the third floor, said she received a frantic call around 9:30 p.m. from a woman in the basement apartment, whom she identified as Mingma Sherpam.

She said, The water is coming in right now, and I say, Get out! Get to the third floor! Mrs. Sledge recalled.

The last thing I hear from them is, The water coming in from the window. And that was it.
This was not part of any previous playbook, but weve got to literally change the whole way of thinking, he said. Because as good as some of the projections are, they cant always keep up with weather.

Anger seemed particularly palpable in Queens, where 12 people perished as water gushed into subterranean spaces, leaving residents to drown in their own homes. Many of those basement apartments were illegal, according to the citys Department of Buildings.

It is unacceptable that we did not prepare for Ida with the same rigor that we did for Henri, and that is a failure on the citys part, said Francisco Moya, a city councilman from Queens. No one should have been driving, trying to escape the storm or stuck at work because of dangerous flooding, and no one should be at home getting flooded not knowing when the water will stop or what to do, and risk losing their life.

The destruction and human toll in the New York region seemed especially striking considering that Ida had already blown through the Gulf Coast, hitting New Orleans on Sunday with far stronger winds but with fewer deaths.

The city issued official warnings early Wednesday morning, when the citys Office of Emergency Management cautioned that the remnants of Ida could cause flash flooding. The city said it also activated its flash flood emergency plan, which involved cleaning out clogged catch basins. It put its downed-tree task force on alert.

State transportation officials were dispatched to clear culverts and other drainage systems of debris, according to the governors office, with inspections and patrols to assess rising waters. An array of equipment  from chain saws to hand tools  was deployed, as well as pumps and generators.

By Wednesday evening, the predictions had grown more dire. New Yorkers were warned of tornadoes and urged to move to higher ground. Calls to the citys 911 emergency system and 311 help line began to surge around 8 p.m., according to city officials.
The university said she owed $7,000 from a semester she spent there in the spring of 2009, when she was 19. She said that she was unaware she owed money, and that her bill now stands at more than $20,000 because of interest and collection fees. She filed a motion to get the default judgment overturned, saying she would have appeared in court had she known she was being sued. The judge ruled against her, and she is appealing.

A SUNY Fredonia spokesman said in an email that the university couldnt comment on individual cases but that its student accounts office tries to contact students to resolve unpaid bills with payment plans, to avoid sending them to the attorney generals office.

The amount I owe is more than the amount I make per year, said Ms. Summers, 31, who works as a teaching assistant while she pursues a career in film. I worry about it all the time. I lose sleep over it.

Advocates say that Ms. Summerss experience echoes those of other students overwhelmed by debt.

In cases where students have fallen behind, youre adding interest and fees on top of that, said Anna Anderson, a lawyer at Legal Assistance of Western New York. On top of the original amount owed, as well as the interest and fees added by the college, the attorney generals office can charge interest of up to 9 percent, more than twice the rate of federal student loans. According to court records, some students have seen their debt balloon by 40 percent or more in less than two years.

Youre asking a student who had trouble paying their bills in the first place  maybe it was health issues or family issues or job loss  to pay more than they owed originally.

Before the moratorium during the pandemic, the pace of lawsuits brought against SUNY students had been steadily increasing. From 2008 to 2012, the state filed an average of 1,250 lawsuits against students each year, according to data obtained through a Freedom of Information Law request. From 2018 to 2020, however, the average grew to 3,000 a year.

The increased pace of lawsuits has dovetailed with the rise of tuition at SUNY colleges. At the same time, student loans and grants have covered less of the cost of attending. Total cost of attendance at four-year SUNY colleges for in-state students currently averages more than $26,000 per year.
In California, a resident can sign up with a company called OhmConnect and earn discounts on their power bills by responding to signals of distress on the electric grid. You might get a text from OhmConnect at 4 p.m., for example, and respond by going around the house turning off lights and unnecessary appliances. That reduction would be measured at your electric meter, and you would get points from the company that could be turned into cash or rewards like gift cards.

Less demand at your house and thousands of others would free up power to meet demand elsewhere on the grid. It sounds better than firing up another gas-burning power plant, no? Better yet, this kind of grid management has the potential to get even smarter.

Nicole Raven is a busy mother of three living in Kingsburg, Calif. Its located in the arid Great Central Valley, and scorching summers are the norm. She and her husband bought a house a few years ago and before they even moved in, got an electric bill for $600. We were like, Oh my gosh, she recalled.

They installed a solar power system to generate some of their own electricity, but wanted to go further. On Facebook, she tripped across a link to sign up for OhmConnects service. The company promised that she would be paid for saving money during grid emergencies. I called people to see if it was real, she said. All I heard was good reviews.

The company, founded in 2014, gave the couple a smart thermostat to install on their air-conditioner, linking it to OhmConnects computers so the company could automatically turn the temperature up a couple of degrees. The Ravens got smart plugs to install on power-hungry devices. Ms. Raven even put one on her refrigerator, which lets the company shut off power to the fridge for an hour or so at a time. Refrigerators are well-insulated and stay cold for many hours, so she has not found it to be a problem.

And she has been astonished by the money she can make conserving power when the company declares an OhmHour, its term for stress on the grid. In a hot streak, when we get two OhmHours in a week, I can make $140, Ms. Raven said. Its unreal. She makes the choice whether to let the company manage her power consumption. If we have people over and its 110 outside, I can override it, she said.

Where is OhmConnect getting the money to pay her? By aggregating the savings of many thousands of customers and selling that abated electrical demand into the California power market, just the way the owner of a gas-fired power plant would sell kilowatt-hours of generated power into the market. Since the company declares OhmHours only when the grid is stressed and power prices are high, it can be paid handsomely for suppressing demand.
In a word, phonics. About one in four words is spelled in an illogical way, and the phonics teacher stirs these words into the curriculum gradually, like little Sno-Caps into ice cream. But the ice cream itself is learning what sounds the letters stand for.

Scientific investigators of how children learn to read have proved repeatedly that phonics works better for more children. Project Follow Through, a huge investigation in the late 1960s led by education scholar Siegfried Englemann, taught 75,000 children via the phonics-based Direct Instruction method from kindergarten through third grade at 10 sites nationwide. The results were polio-vaccine-level dramatic. At all 10 sites, 4-year-olds were reading like 8-year-olds, for example.

Crucially, the method works well with poor as well as affluent children. Just a couple decades ago, the method was still kicking serious butt where it was implemented. In Richmond, Va., the mostly Black public school district was mired in only a 40 percent passage rate on the state reading test until the district started teaching the phonics way, upon which in just four years passage rates were up to 74 percent.

However, there is a persistent disconnect between the world of reading science and the world of people teaching children to read. Only 15 percent of programs training elementary-school teachers include actual instruction on how to teach children to read. There remain people who favor the whole word method, or a combination of whole word and phonics, or even no particular method at all.

One idea has it that the focus should be less on teaching children how to decode letters into sounds and words than on something titled literacy in a more abstract sense, fostering childrens interest in books and story lines with a dash of multicultural awareness as well. (Since the 1990s an influential strain of this approach has been called Balanced Literacy.) Once, way back, a graduate student of anthropology told me he was studying literacy, sharing with me a certain knowing look. But I didnt know what he assumed I did until years later. He meant fostering this holistic and ethically oriented conception of reading over the mere dry business of just teaching children how to read words. While that mystery was revealed to me with time, I remain puzzled by the fact that he, although not British, pronounced it litracy.

But the fact remains that phonics, and especially the Direct Instruction method pioneered by Englemann, works. With all children. You have children say the letters sounds in sequence  b, ih, g  and then tell them to say it fast. After a little while, they catch on that the three sounds are to be run together as big, that word that they already know. Ive seen that light go on for children  it is nothing less than a magical moment. True litracy on your lap.

There is a racial angle to this. It has now been 25 years since a media dust-up in Oakland, where the school board proposed to increase Black childrens reading scores by presenting them with lessons and materials in their home dialect, Black English, using it as a bridge to standard English by starting them with what they knew.
Americans did not seem to stream back to work in July when federal unemployment benefits in some states became less generous. Studies found at most a modest increase in employment in states that abandoned the programs, Ben Casselman of The New York Times reported on Aug. 20.

As we head into Labor Day weekend and the Sept. 6 expiration of extra federal benefits in the states that have still been paying them, its worth taking a closer look at this puzzle. An Aug. 21 study by economists at Goldman Sachs sheds some light on whats going on.

First, some background. The idea that generous benefits to the unemployed have kept people from taking jobs has been a Republican talking point for months, and it makes some sense. It stands to reason that if you can earn more money on unemployment than you can from working  which has been the case for many people  you may choose to sit on the couch.

The Aug. 20 report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics on state and local employment in July seemed to undermine that narrative by showing that employment didnt increase more in states that ended the extra federal benefits than in states that continued them. As my Opinion colleague Paul Krugman wrote, if there was any effect, it wasnt strong enough to cut through the statistical noise.
Then came the years after Sept. 11. The specter of torture, like the treatment of detainees at black sites and the detentions at Guantanamo, crystallized a moral sensibility according to which it mattered most to dissidents within George W. Bushs administration as well as a growing chorus of critics outside not where war went and how long it lasted but whether the laws governing the conduct were respected.

In the wake of the release of the Abu Ghraib photos in April 2004, humanitarian concern helped remove the bug of torture and other indignities from the program of endless war, thereby rebooting it: After all, a critique of a war focused on its egregious conduct can lead to a different and improved version of that war, rather than its end. That is precisely what happened.

In the first years of his presidency, Barack Obama capitalized on the emphases of the years just before. After running as a peace candidate in 2008, he promised in his critical first months to treat prisoners well and earned plaudits for doing so. His administration deleted noxious memos permitting torture and left the ones permitting war.

But it is easier not to mistreat prisoners if you no longer capture them. Mr. Obama vastly expanded the war on terror in scope, taking it beyond the two countries on which Mr. Bush had focused to more than 10, relying on drone strikes and special forces raids. He also went beyond Mr. Bush in formalizing a humane framework for endless war, announcing in policy that it was not the brutal war of the past but one corrected by the new sensibility.

Astonishingly, Mr. Obama even went beyond what the new laws of war required, promising never to strike off battlefields if there was any risk of collateral damage, a standard that was revealing of a new moral sensibility even if it was  like so many such rules  never adhered to in practice.

In his Nobel Peace Prize address at the end of his first year as president, Mr. Obama offered an almost metaphysical case for America fighting forever, while promising to do so humanely: We must begin by acknowledging the hard truth: We will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes, he explained. But its humane conduct was a source of our strength.

To a striking and unanticipated extent, the humanization of American might is something even President Donald Trump was forced to retain. True, he called in 2016 to bring back waterboarding, but to the extent that he tried, he was held in check. (He better bring his own bucket, Michael Hayden, the former director of the C.I.A., remarked.) And while Mr. Trump decreased transparency around drone strikes and loosened top-down authority, other humane requirements largely remained in place.
Consider mandatory arrest laws, which require the police to make an arrest whenever they suspect an act of domestic violence. As many Black and Latina feminists predicted in the 1980s, when these policies began to be implemented, such laws increased the incidence of domestic violence against women of color; numerous studies have shown that retaliatory violence after arrest is linked with poverty, unemployment and drug and alcohol use  factors that disproportionately afflict Black and Latino communities. Indeed, male joblessness is linked with domestic violence against women the world over. But poor abused women cannot, as a rule, turn to the state to employ their partners or for the money those women would need in order to be able to leave their partners. Instead, they can only ask that their partners be locked up, which many are understandably reluctant to do. Mandatory arrest laws were born out of a concern for womens safety. But they have sometimes had the effect of making marginalized women worse off and have served as a cover for the deep conditions  poverty and precarity  that make certain groups of women especially vulnerable to violence.

The law has its limits on campus, too. The Office for Civil Rights, which administers Title IX, does not publish racial statistics for allegations of Title IX violations. Title IX requires schools to appoint officers to protect students from discrimination on the basis of sex but not from discrimination on the basis of race, sexuality, immigration status or class. Thus, as a matter of Title IX law, it is of no concern that, during at least two recent academic years, the small minority of Black students at Colgate University, an elite liberal arts college in upstate New York, have been disproportionately targeted for sexual violation complaints and that no notes are kept on where else this might be happening.

Given the lack of data, we cannot know for certain that Title IX disproportionately affects marginalized groups, but there is good reason to think that it might. Janet Halley, a professor of law at Harvard, has spent years documenting the unseen costs of campus sexual harassment policies, including accusations that unfairly target men of color, undocumented immigrants and L.G.B.T.Q. students. How can the left care about these people when the frame is mass incarceration, immigration or trans positivity, she asked, and actively reject fairness protections for them under Title IX?

So, we must ask: Would legally recognizing consensual faculty-student relationships as sex-discriminatory make campuses fairer for all women, for queer people, for immigrants, for the precariously employed, for people of color? Or would this bring with it unintended consequences, to be suffered by some of the people already most marginalized in our universities? In a context in which more and more academic labor is performed by adjuncts on low pay and with no job security, which university teachers could we expect to be targeted by such a legal change? Could such a change be leveraged to undermine academic freedom? And would the young people, usually women, involved in consensual relationships with their professors end up better off?

In considering these questions, it is perhaps instructive to return to one of the few times that U.S. courts have been asked to rule on whether faculty-student relationships can be penalized: a 1984 case called Naragon v. Wharton. Kristine Naragon, a graduate student instructor at Louisiana State University, had a romantic relationship with a 17-year-old freshman student  also a woman  whom she wasnt teaching. At the time, L.S.U. did not have a ban on faculty-student relationships, but the school decided not to renew Ms. Naragons teaching duties after the freshmans parents demanded that the administration intervene. Meanwhile, L.S.U. declined to penalize a male professor in Ms. Naragons department who was having a live-in affair with an undergraduate woman whose work he had the responsibility of grading. The court ruled in L.S.U.s favor, finding that by punishing Ms. Naragon but not the male professor, the school had not been motivated by homophobia.

None of this is to say that we cannot use the law, and Title IX specifically, to make university campuses more equal. But it is to recommend caution. It is not enough for us to think about what, as a matter of principle, the law should say; we must also think about what, in practice, the law will be used to do and against whom. The law is a powerful tool, but it can also be blunt. It is also not the only tool available.

Rather than look to the law, professors might look to themselves. Graduate students tend not to receive much instruction in how to teach  much less in how to negotiate the strong feelings (of desire and elation but also of anger, frustration and disappointment) that can charge the classroom. Likewise, we rarely discuss what to do about the fact that teacher and student are not just abstract intelligences but embodied creatures. Writing about her experience as a new professor, the Black feminist bell hooks observed: No one talked about the body in relation to teaching. What did one do with the body in the classroom?
Mr. Valentin is among the thousands of renters who streamed into Manhattan as rents plunged last year, getting a rare opportunity to live in neighborhoods that would ordinarily have been out of reach, like the Village, Chelsea and the Lower East Side. But now, as workers and students stream back into the city in huge numbers, landlords are rapidly raising rents as pandemic leases expire, signaling what may be the end to a brief moment where rents felt attainable.

The market has shifted and it is a very strong landlord-friendly market, said Gary Malin, the chief operating officer of Corcoran. A year ago, many apartments languished on the market for weeks and landlords doled out months of free rent to get anyone in the door. By contrast, this summer, there are more tenants in the marketplace now than Ive ever seen at any one moment, Mr. Malin said.

But the recovery is not an even one. Renters are racing to desirable neighborhoods, sparking bidding wars in places like the West Village. But areas farther out, or far from parks or open spaces, are still lagging. All of this is shadowed by growing concern about the Delta variant and what it might mean for the citys recovery.

In July, new Manhattan lease signings were up 54.7 percent from a year ago, according to a Douglas Elliman market report, which also found that rent concessions were down 7.6 percent. But rents overall are still down. In July, the median rent in Manhattan was $3,208 a month, down 3.4 percent from a year ago, and down 10.8 percent from 2019, when it was $3,595 a month, according to Jonathan J. Miller, the president of Miller Samuel Real Estate Appraisers and Consultants and the author of the Douglas Elliman report.

This market is one of the most polarized, fragmented and segmented markets Ive ever tracked, Mr. Miller said. And as a result its very hard to apply a brush-stroke comparison.
Helping a lone orphan survive and get back to the wild can be important for endangered populations, said Shifra Goldenberg, a behavioral ecologist with the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance. But being raised by humans also carries costs for solo animals, Dr. Goldenberg said. Youre meeting their needs, but theyre not learning from animals of their species.

Dr. Goldenberg is working with the elephant conservation efforts in northern Kenya to monitor orphans that have rejoined the wild. She says its not always obvious how successful a rehabilitation and release has been. For example, will the calf survive to adulthood? Does it know how to find food and avoid snakes? Years later, will it produce offspring?

But getting wild herds to adopt orphans isnt a human invention, Dr. Goldenberg said. The elephants do it naturally. In a 2009 paper, researchers analyzed the DNA of elephants in northern Kenya and found that herd members werent always related. Elephants in about 20 percent of herds were actually nonrelatives who acted exactly like families, Dr. Goldenberg said.

They can integrate with other families, she added, as long as the family is receptive to them.

Nania might have a chance to join not just any family of wild elephants, but her own.

Only about 40 wild elephants pass through Deux Bales. The team from the International Fund for Animal Welfare figured that Nanias family was probably among them. To find out, in 2019 they began collecting samples from heaps of elephant dung. They shipped 17 test tubes to the University of Washington in Seattle in October 2020.

There, Sam Wasser, a conservation biologist, analyzes elephant DNA in his lab. Usually, the samples come from ivory seizures. He and his colleagues sequence the DNA from little pieces of each tusk to figure out where the poached elephants lived and track the ivory traffickers. It can be heavy work, Dr. Wasser said. Using the same tools to potentially help a living elephant reunite with her family really is a breath of fresh air, he said.
Relatives urged me to not be fussy, to take what I could while I could. They gave me sacred verses to recite and asked holy men to check if anyone had cast the evil eye on me. At family functions, people said they were praying for me. (Well, Id think, youre not praying hard enough.) The pressure became so heavy that I began to consider a man I didnt like but thought might make a good husband.

My father said, If you put two people together long enough, theyll eventually fall in love.

I wondered if this was true until, while on a family holiday at a game reserve, I heard our guide tell us about a male and female cheetah who refused to interact despite being kept in the same enclosure for years.

And then, at 24, it happened: I met a man in graduate school who was worldly and confident and spoke boldly about social justice, and I felt drawn to everything about him. This was the feeling I had anticipated for so long, the crack of lightning.

I wrote him letters, baked for him and imagined a future in which I could take down the blue box, put out the tea set and place the warm hat on his head. But as years passed, he remained noncommittal. The man I tried to give my heart to did not seem to want it, until, eventually, he married someone else.

And suddenly I was 30 and alone.

This reality stunned me so much that for a long time I couldnt leave the house. I was ashamed for holding so much hope. I tried to keep my dreams small after that; I only kept what could fit in my hands.

My parents were deeply disappointed but did not try to coerce me into marrying. They didnt know what to do with me; I barely knew what to do with myself. The box on the shelf remained untouched. My mother had long stopped buying things to fill it. And love, the idea of it, the great flicker of it, dimmed.
Follow our live updates on the Recall Election and Elder and Newsom.

As Californias Sept. 14 election over whether to recall Gov. Gavin Newsom draws closer, unfounded rumors about the event are growing.

Here are two that are circulating widely online, how they spread and why, state and local officials said, they are wrong.

Rumor No. 1: Holes in the ballot envelopes were being used to screen out votes that say yes to a recall.

On Aug. 19, a woman posted a video on Instagram of herself placing her California special election ballot in an envelope.

You have to pay attention to these two holes that are in front of the envelope, she said, bringing the holes close to the camera so viewers could see them. You can see if someone has voted yes to recall Newsom. This is very sketchy and irresponsible in my opinion, but this is asking for fraud.
On GitHub, a website for sharing and collaborating on software code, another programmer, Jonathan Diaz, released a script and posted a link on Thursday to a new app, Pro-Life Buster, which allowed people to automatically spam the Texas website with bogus tips. The developer wrote that the script was a way to push back against the law because it was no ones business to know about peoples abortions.

By Thursday evening, the app showed that 1,000 new reports had been shared.

Mr. Diaz said the app existed to flood the site with authentic-looking, but fabricated, data. The goal is to waste these peoples time and resources so that they wake up and realize this effort is not worth their time, he said Friday.

These techniques, known as hacktivism, have become increasingly prevalent. Last year, TikTok teens and fans of Korean pop music inundated a rally website for former President Donald J. Trump with fake registrations  and then never showed up, leaving thousands of seats conspicuously empty. Anonymous, the loose hacking collective, has protested policies from the Vatican, the C.I.A. and others by flooding their websites with junk traffic to try to force them offline.

Kim Schwartz, a spokeswoman for Texas Right to Life, denied that the groups website had been overwhelmed with false reports. We knew this would happen, and we were prepared, she said. Activists have been trying to spam and take down the site for a week and failed.

Even so, the groups website appeared to periodically buckle on Thursday and drop under the load of reports, according to screenshots posted to Reddit and other sites. Separately late Friday, a judge in Travis County, Texas, granted a temporary restraining order against Texas Right to Life, blocking it from suing Planned Parenthood and enforcing the abortion restrictions.

To stem the flood of automated reports to its website, Texas Right to Lifes administrators have added a new version of a Captcha, a program that tries to filter real human responses from automated computer reports.

But some hacktivists persisted. One posted a screenshot on Reddit of a fake report that pointed to some of Marvels Avengers as abortion seekers. On Twitter, people posted screenshots of other fake tips. One user sarcastically reported that he wanted to retroactively abort his 30-year-old son who apparently wouldnt leave the house.
The researchers have a hypothesis about why. They also tracked billions of communications  email, chat and calendar data  among information employees at a dozen large global companies over recent years. They found that while working remotely, individual workers were more productive than before, and communicated more with people at different levels of the company and with close colleagues. But they communicated 21 percent less with their weak ties. Perhaps the video game developers lost the benefit of asking a co-worker from a different department to test a prototype, for example, or of running into someone from marketing and brainstorming ideas for selling a new game.

I do think eventually technology will help here, but the stuff thats widely available today just doesnt do it, said Mr. Waber, co-founder of Humanyze, a workplace analytics company started at M.I.T. Media Lab, where he got a Ph.D. It probably would be fine if those initial water cooler conversations happened remotely. Its just less likely they would.

Mr. Dimon observed something similar at JPMorgan Chase. Performing jobs remotely is more successful when people know one another and already have a large body of existing work to do, he wrote. It does not work as well when people dont know one another.

Other studies back up the importance of meeting in person at the outset of a relationship. In one, scientists examined what happened when labs at a university in Paris were temporarily moved to new locations during asbestos treatment. Working in a new building, with people who worked on different things, increased the probability of collaboration  even after the teams moved back to their original locations.

Within a field, its not going to be as hard to meet people, said Matt Clancy, who studies the economics of innovation at Iowa State University and has written about this research. The harder part is when you dont know theyre there, you dont know theyre valuable to meet, you dont know their work exists and is important.

Meeting in person is important for strong ties, too  but again, it seems to be the initial conversations that matter, not necessarily being together 40 hours a week year-round.

Kristie McAlpine, who researches organizational behavior at Rutgers, studied 99 teams at a large tech firm, and compared teams in which people had greater flexibility  so they were in the office together less often  with those that did not. Being in different places led to less spontaneous communication, both small talk and work conversations  and consequently, to less idea generation, she found. However, when she looked at later stages of projects  after ideas had been formed, when people were carrying them out  she did not find that it mattered as much whether people were in the same place.
WASHINGTON  Top federal health officials have told the White House to scale back a plan to offer coronavirus booster shots to the general public this month, saying that regulators need more time to collect and review all the necessary data, according to people familiar with the discussion.

Dr. Janet Woodcock, the acting commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, and Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky, who heads the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, warned the White House on Thursday that their agencies may be able to determine in the coming weeks whether to recommend boosters only for recipients of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine  and possibly just some of them to start.

The two health leaders made their argument in a meeting with Jeffrey D. Zients, the White House pandemic coordinator. Several people who heard about the session said it was unclear how Mr. Zients responded. But he has insisted for months that the White House will always follow the advice of government scientists, wherever it leads.

Asked about the meeting, a White House spokesman said on Friday, We always said we would follow the science, and this is all part of a process that is now underway, adding that the administration was awaiting a full review and approval of booster shots by the F.D.A. as well as a recommendation from the C.D.C.
The criminal case began to unfold in December 2018, when a woman at an Hacienda HealthCare facility in Phoenix who cannot talk or walk gave birth to a boy, much to the surprise of staff members at the facility, which specializes in long-term care of people with intellectual disabilities.

In the weeks that followed, the investigation became the main focus of the Phoenix Police Department, its chief said at the time, and led to questions about the companys operations and conduct. The companys former chief executive resigned shortly after the arrest, and the facility became the focus of not only police investigations, but also investigations by the Arizona Department of Health Services and investigations by the state into Medicaid fraud.

The state Attorney Generals Office eventually found that former officers with Hacienda improperly allocated funds, inflated expense reports and practiced improper billing, resulting in an overpayment of almost $11 million from the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System to the facility.

The case also led to a lawsuit filed by the victims parents claiming that despite promises from the state that only women would tend to their daughter, Mr. Sutherland had cared for her on hundreds of occasions from 2012 through 2018, The Arizona Republic reported.

The woman had been in the same condition, unable to communicate or move, since entering the nursing home in 1992, when she was 3 years old, according to medical records. The familys lawyer could not be immediately reached for comment.
Some have arrived with completed visa applications in recognition of their service alongside the U.S. military. Those people, and their families, will become permanent residents and could earn citizenship.

But the vast majority of the refugees are being granted what is known as humanitarian parole, which allows them to live in the United States for a fixed period, in most cases two years. They may be required to apply for asylum and will get help to find a home in the United States while they wait for their cases to be processed.

Officials said they were considering asking Congress to pass legislation that would provide all of the refugees with legal status, much the way lawmakers did for Cubans in the 1960s and Vietnamese refugees in 1975.

As of Thursday, more than 26,100 Afghans fresh off planes had been shuttled to a cavernous room near Dulles, including 3,800 on Wednesday alone. Officials said the arriving evacuees were usually there for less than a day for processing  and in some cases out in an hour or two  surrounded by the sound of crying babies and exhausted-looking people.

During a tour on Thursday evening of the hangar-size facility, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken was told that many people arrived dehydrated and in need of medical care; several women have given birth since they arrived in the United States, including one who had triplets on Wednesday. Additional interpreters have been sent to the center to make up for a shortage of staff who spoke Dari or Pashto when it first opened on Aug. 22.

Children ran throughout the maze of hallways between curtained-off rooms where people slept, covered with blue blankets. Seeing three children standing off to one side, Mr. Blinken stopped, crouched down and introduced himself.

Welcome to America. My name is Tony, he said, tapping his chest. Nice to meet you.

Jennifer Steinhauer contributed reporting.
WASHINGTON  President Biden flew to the New Orleans area on Friday to tour the damage wrought by Hurricane Ida, part of an effort to demonstrate his commitment to the federal governments storm response even as his administration remains enmeshed in other pressing matters from the coronavirus surge to the aftermath of his Afghanistan withdrawal.

Mr. Biden landed in Louisiana shortly before 1 p.m. local time, shook hands with a bipartisan group of elected officials from the state and boarded a helicopter for a multistop tour of the storms damage.

He landed northwest of the city, in Reserve, La., along the banks of the Mississippi, and then traveled by motorcade to St. John the Baptist Parish Emergency Operations Center in LaPlace, where he received a briefing from officials on the ground. Along the drive, Mr. Biden passed miles of downed power lines and crews of workers repairing them.

In the meeting, according to a pool reporter, Mr. Biden acknowledged the difficulties in reconnecting power to consumers across the region, while praising the crews working on the ground. Youve got to be frustrated about the restoration of power, he said, and I understand.
WASHINGTON  Making good on a campaign promise, President Biden directed the Justice Department and other federal agencies on Friday to oversee the review and declassification of documents related to the F.B.I.s investigation into the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

In an executive order, Mr. Biden instructed Attorney General Merrick B. Garland to publicly release the declassified documents over the next six months.

When I ran for president, I made a commitment to ensuring transparency regarding the declassification of documents on the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on America, Mr. Biden said in a statement released before the 20th anniversary of the attacks next week. We must never forget the enduring pain of the families and loved ones of the 2,977 innocent people who were killed during the worst terrorist attack on America in our history.

For years, families of the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks have pushed the federal government to reveal more information about any Saudi involvement in financing the attacks.
WASHINGTON  Americas war in Afghanistan is over, but the fight over the Talibans finances is only beginning.

The fate of billions of dollars of international reserves and foreign aid represents its own set of politically and legally fraught decisions as the world comes to grips with what Afghanistan will look like under Taliban rule. The stakes are extraordinarily high, as millions of Afghans face the prospect of becoming collateral damage from a stranglehold of sanctions on the Taliban that remain in place, threatening to sink an economy that the United States has spent two decades trying to prop up.

With a humanitarian crisis looming, the Biden administration is reviewing how to tailor that web of sanctions so that aid can continue to reach the Afghan people. The challenge is how to let donor money continue to flow without further enriching the Taliban, which the United States considers a terrorist organization. Experts say that such a situation, in which a group deemed to be terrorists takes over an entire country, is without precedent and poses a complex test for the United States sanctions program.

This is a new world, said Adam M. Smith, a senior sanctions official in the Obama administrations Treasury Department. I cant think of any case in which a terrorist group thats already designated became the power in charge of a full country.
The couple had backpacked in the Himalayas, ridden camels through the Gobi Desert and checked off Burning Man, even creating their own hashtag, an amalgamation of their first names: #jellonadventures.

So a day of hiking in the Sierra National Forest, even with the demanding switchbacks and triple-digit heat, would not have been unusual for Jonathan Gerrish and Ellen Chung, husband-and-wife transplants from San Francisco who had recently become parents to a little girl, Miju, during the coronavirus pandemic.

But the trek would be the familys last: Search teams found all three of their bodies on Aug. 17, one day after the family was reported missing not far from Yosemite National Park. The familys dog, Oski, an Aussie-Akita mix, was also found dead.

More than two weeks later, investigators are still confounded by what caused their deaths. Teams in hazmat suits had already combed the area for clues. On Saturday, the U.S. Forest Service closed trails and recreation sites near where the bodies were found.
A team dispatched to the area reported back that two hippopotamuses had also died. Everyone was panicking, she said.

The government warned people not to eat the fish, and took samples of the water to be tested in laboratories in Kinshasa, Congos capital. A week later, the results came back. The water sample contained heavy metals  nickel and iron  and its pH levels were off, according to the minister.

Its practically acid, she said. It sucks the oxygen out of the water. Theres no life there anymore.

Researchers at the Congo Basin Water Resources Research Centre at the University of Kinshasa called the pollution of the Kasai river basin an unprecedented environmental and human disaster. In a report released in mid-August, they said they had been tracking the spill from its source in the provinces of Lunda Norte and Lunda Sul in Angola since July 15, and that it took 15 days to reach the city of Tshikapa, at the confluence of the Tshikapa and Kasai rivers. It said that two million people were at risk.

The immediate consequences of the disaster so far, the report said, included water pollution, poisoning and loss of aquatic fauna and flora, waterborne diseases for riparian communities, the disruption of fishing and navigation activities, and lack of access to domestic water services.

It warned that the pollution could spread downstream to the section of river that flows through the vast metropolis of Kinshasa, one of Africas most populous.

Ms. Bazaiba said she was hoping the voluminous waters of the Congo River  second only to those of the Amazon  would dilute the pollution by the time it reached the capital, adding that the waters were beginning to clear.
GUATEMALA CITY  Guatemalan prosecutors have opened an investigation into allegations that Russian citizens paid a bribe to the nations president, Alejandro Giammattei, a spokesman for the attorney generals office said Friday.

The inquiry arose out of information publicized in media reports, said the spokesman, Juan Luis Pantaleon, who noted that it began on Wednesday, so investigators are in the first stages of their work on the case.

The announcement follows a New York Times report last month that described explosive testimony by a witness who said he had personally delivered a rolled-up carpet filled with packages of cash to the presidents home.

Guatemalas top anti-corruption prosecutor had begun to look into the allegations with a small team of investigators, determining that the witness had likely stumbled upon a plot by a Russian-backed mining company to bribe the president for the right to operate part of a key port. But just weeks after their inquiry began, the prosecutor, Juan Francisco Sandoval, was abruptly dismissed by the attorney general and fled to the United States with the evidence he had compiled.
They are also eager to leave. This week, after evacuation flights from Kabul ended, there were reports of hundreds of people massing at border crossings with Iran and Pakistan.

Its because the country is collapsing, said Astrid Sletten, a foreign aid worker who has remained in Kabul. And everybody has a sister or daughter, and wondering what it is going to be like to be living under a Taliban regime.

She added: I think some people are literally saying Id rather die than live in a Taliban regime.

Despite Taliban pledges that no punishment would be exacted on anyone, many Afghans question the ability of the Taliban leadership to control their battle-hardened fighters.

Former government officials, aid workers and diplomats say Taliban leaders have barely managed to keep their well-armed rank-and-file in check. And there is deep uncertainty about when even that relative restraint will end.

On Friday, an uneasy calm settled on Kabul, four days after the Taliban took over and the last American forces left. Afghans waited for the Taliban to announce its new government.

In Kabul, the few women venturing out have been able to wear head scarves, rather than the face-covering burqa the Taliban imposed during its previous rule, and several dozen protested outside the palace, demanding the inclusion of women in a new government.

The Talibans leaders are still talking about showing inclusiveness. But they have made clear in filling lower-ranking positions so far that they are choosing from among their own.
TOKYO  When Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga announced on Friday that he would not seek re-election as head of Japans governing party, the decision created an unexpected opening to replace him.

Mr. Suga leaves the Liberal Democratic Party facing its biggest crisis in over a decade. Japans vaccine rollout started slowly. Coronavirus case counts are at their highest levels of the pandemic. The economic recovery has been tepid. And the government has failed to articulate a clear path forward.

The public is angry about the way that Covid-19 and its economic effects have been handled, said Michael Cucek, an assistant professor of Asian studies at Temple Universitys Japan campus.

Theres little chance that the L.D.P. will lose power, but it is almost certain to see its majority diminished, he said. That means that as the party decides who will replace Mr. Suga, the priority is finding someone who can stanch the bleeding. The new leader will be a shoo-in to become the next prime minister.
According to the intelligence report, Mr. Alay and Mr. Dmitrenko met the two men in Barcelona for a strategy session to discuss the independence movement, though the report offered no other details.

Mr. Alay denied any connection to Tsunami Democratic. He confirmed that he had met with Mr. Sumin and Mr. Lukoyanov at the request of Mr. Dmitrenko, but only to greet them politely.

Even as the protests faded, Mr. Puigdemonts associates remained busy. His lawyer, Mr. Boye, flew to Moscow in February 2020 to meet Vasily Khristoforov, whom Western law enforcement agencies describe as a senior Russian organized crime figure. The goal, according to the report, was to enlist Mr. Khristoforov to help set up a secret funding channel for the independence movement.

In an interview, Mr. Boye acknowledged meeting in Moscow with Mr. Khristoforov, who is wanted in several countries including Spain on suspicion of financial crimes, but said they only discussed matters relating to Mr. Khristoforovs legal cases.

By late 2020, Mr. Alays texts reveal an eagerness to keep his Russian contacts happy. In exchanges with Mr. Puigdemont and Mr. Boye, he said they should avoid any public statements that might anger Moscow, especially about the democracy protests that Russia was helping to disperse violently in Belarus.

Mr. Puigdemont did not always heed the advice, appearing in Brussels with the Belarusian opposition and tweeting his support for the protesters, prompting Mr. Boye to text Mr. Alay that we will have to tell the Russians that this was just to mislead.
In some cases, people have received debit cards in the mail from a different state, but with their own names on it. In those cases, its possible something went awry with the criminals scheme, Ms. Velasquez said. The card may have been intended to be delivered to an address where an accomplice could retrieve it.

Despite the continuing legal offensive, thieves continue to devise new ways to trick people and state unemployment systems. Theyre not giving up, Ms. Velasquez said.

In August, the Federal Trade Commission warned of a new phishing scheme in which victims receive text messages, purportedly from their state work force agency, asking them to click on a link to verify or update information by providing personal information like Social Security numbers.

The texts have targeted people in multiple states, including Wisconsin, Rhode Island, Minnesota and Illinois, the commission said. The information can be used to steal jobless benefits or used in other identity-based fraud, like opening bank or credit card accounts.

Here are some questions and answers about identity theft and unemployment fraud:

What should I do if I receive an unsolicited debit card or benefits letter?

The Federal Trade Commission recommends reporting the fraud by contacting the state agency that sent the letter or card. Then, follow the agencys instructions. Youll probably be directed to file a police report with your local department and submit a copy to the state work force agency. The F.T.C. also suggests informing your employer. Keep copies of the documents you submit and any responses you receive.

The federal Labor Department has published a list of state work force agencies, so you can be confident you are calling or emailing a legitimate office. The department also suggests filing a complaint with the National Center for Disaster Fraud at the Justice Department.

Can freezing my credit files help?

The F.T.C. recommends freezing your credit if you are the victim of unemployment identity fraud. Its a good idea to do that even if you havent been a victim, Ms. Velasquez said. Given the large number of data breaches in recent years, she said, its likely that at least part of your personal information has been compromised. People really should understand that their identity credentials are out there, she said.
Were seeing a broader selection of very interesting wines because of this warming, said Dave Parker, founder and chief executive of the Benchmark Wine Group, a large retailer of vintage wines. Were seeing regions that historically were not that highly thought of now producing some excellent wines. The U.K., Oregon, New Zealand or Austria may have been marginal before but theyre producing great wines now. Its kind of an exciting time if youre a wine lover.

The rising temperatures have certainly hurt some winemakers, but in some wine-growing areas the heat has been a boon for vineyards and the drinkers who covet their wine. Mr. Parker said growing conditions for sought-after vintages in Bordeaux used to come less frequently and sometimes only once every decade: 1945, 1947, 1961, 1982, 1996 and 2000. They were all very ripe vintages, because of the heat. But in the last decade, with temperatures rising in Bordeaux, wines from 2012, 2015, 2016, 2018, and 2019 are all sought after  and highly priced.

And then, there are the wines from previously overlooked regions.

What Id say is, currently, there hasnt been a better time for wine collectors, said Axel Heinz, the estate director of Ornellaia and Masseto, two of Italys premier wines. The vintages and wine have become so much better. And for us, the changes over the past 20 years have put a focus on many growing regions that collectors werent interested in before, like Italian and Spanish wine.

(Still, he said, his vineyards are not immune to the negative effects of climate change, with increased risk of spring frosts and hail.)

Yet for all the romance attached to making wine, its essentially farming. So while winemakers have been reaping the benefits of higher temperatures, the grape growers have had to adapt in ways that are going to affect prices as well as the types of grapes. (And of course, vineyards are sometimes integrated, so the grape growers and the winemakers are all part of the same operation.)
But it took several more years for the federal government to make it a national holiday  when it served a greater political purpose. In the summer of 1894, the Pullman strike severely disrupted rail traffic in the Midwest, and the federal government used an injunction and federal troops to break the strike.

It had started when the Pullman Palace Car Company lowered wages without lowering rents in the company town, also called Pullman. (Its now part of Chicago.)

When angry workers complained, the owner, George Pullman, had them fired. They decided to strike, and other workers for the American Railway Union, led by the firebrand activist Eugene V. Debs, joined the action. They refused to handle Pullman cars, bringing freight and passenger traffic to a halt around Chicago. Tens of thousands of workers walked off the job, wildcat strikes broke out, and angry crowds were met with live fire from the authorities.

During the crisis, President Grover Cleveland signed a bill into law on June 28, 1894, declaring Labor Day a national holiday. Some historians say he was afraid of losing the support of working-class voters.

There were many political advantages at that moment to provide recognition for Labor Day, said Joshua B. Freeman, a distinguished professor of history at Queens College and the City University of New York Graduate Center.

But it wasnt the only workingmans holiday on the table. Starting in 1884, the labor movement had called for strikes and protests on May 1 to push for an eight-hour workday. That would-be holiday was called May Day, and its now celebrated around the world, though its not officially recognized in the United States.

You might blame the Haymarket affair. On May 4, 1886, a bomb went off at a demonstration in Chicagos Haymarket Square in support of an eight-hour workday and against police killings of protesters. The authorities opened fire in response, and seven officers and four protesters were killed.
Case 1:20-cr-00239-TSE Document 89 Filed 09/02/21 Page 14 of 15 PagelD# 385 to commit any additional federal, state, or local crimes, or intentionally gives materially false, incomplete, or misleading testimony or information, or otherwise violates any provision of this agreement, then: a. The United States will be released from its obligations under this agreement. The defendant, however, may not withdraw the guilty plea entered pursuant to this agreement. b. The defendant will be subject to prosecution for any federal criminal violation, including, but not limited to, perjury and obstruction of justice, that is not time-barred by the applicable statute of limitations on the date this agreement is signed. Notwithstanding the subsequent expiration of the statute of limitations, in any such prosecution, the defendant agrees to waive any statute-of-limitations defense. c. Any prosecution, including the prosecution that is the subject of this agreement, may be premised upon any information provided, or statements made, by the defendant, and all such information, statements, and leads derived therefrom may be used against the defendant. The defendant waives any right to claim that statements made before or after the date of this agreement, including the Statement of Facts accompanying this agreement or adopted by the defendant and any other statements made pursuant to this or any other agreement with the United States, should be excluded or suppressed under Fed. R. Evid. 410, Fed. R. Crim. P. 11(f), the Sentencing Guidelines, or any other provision of the Constitution or federal law. Any alleged breach of this agreement by either party shall be determined by the Court in an appropriate proceeding at which the defendant's disclosures and documentary evidence shall be admissible and at which the moving party shall be required to establish a breach of this Plea Agreement by a preponderance of the evidence. 20. Nature of the Agreement and Modifications This written agreement constitutes the complete plea agreement between the United States, the defendant, and the defendant's counsel. The defendant and the defendant's attorney acknowledge that no threats, promises, or representations have been made, nor agreements reached, other than those set forth in writing in this Plea Agreement or any associated documents 14
Case 1:20-cr-00239-TSE Document 90 Filed 09/02/21 Page 6 of 13 PageID# 392 15. Emwazi attempted to fly to Kuwait again on August 20, 2012 and was stopped by British port authorities. Emwazi was traveling to Kuwait with his father, who initially denied Emwazi was his son and claimed Emwazi was a friend. Emwazi was carrying a document showing he had changed his name to Mohammed al-Elayan. Emwazi was stopped and not allowed to travel to Kuwait. Within 10 days after this failed effort to leave London, the defendant and Emwazi left London for the last time and successfully traveled to Syria to provide personnel and services to Islamic jihadist causes. Their trip from London to Syria lasted two months. 16. Emwazi was killed in a US military airstrike on or about November 12, 2015. As a result of that event, the defendant narrated a tribute to Emwazi that ISIS published in Dar al Islam, a French online propaganda publication produced by the Islamic State (see also ( 14 above). The Dar al-Islam narration is an accurate history of the defendant's emigration to Syria with Emwazi (abu Muharib). For instance, the defendant narrates: Abu Muharib and I only made the decision to leave after having achieved all we could in terms of preparation. From our point of view, our main problem was being able to leave the United Kingdom without being detected by the border police, given that our names had been passed to them and that we would be arrested at the point of leaving the country. We therefore had to avoid the airports, railway stations, ports and every other official mode of transport ... 17. Further, the defendant narrated, [W]e were now starting to get tired, my asthma started and Abu Muharib's old knee injury was starting to hurt him, especially after walking for hours in rocky mountains. In fact, the defendant has an asthma condition which he reported to the U.S. military in October 2019. 18. ISIS also eulogized Emwazi in issue 13 of Dabiq, the English language version of the terrorist organization's online propaganda operation. The narration refers to Emwazi's companion in hijrah. This companion is the defendant as reflected in this passage: Abu Muharib together with his companion in hijrah carefully and secretly made their departure, utilizing every means available to them. Depending upon Allah alone for 6
Stillwater, OK (74078)

Today

A few passing clouds. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 67F. Winds light and variable..

Tonight

A few passing clouds. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 67F. Winds light and variable.
Stillwater, OK (74078)

Today

Some clouds. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 67F. Winds SE at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Some clouds. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 67F. Winds SE at 5 to 10 mph.
Julie Pace

The Associated Press names Julie Pace to lead its worldwide news operation as executive editor and senior VP. Pace succeeds Sally Buzbee, who joined the Washington Post as executive editor in June and is the third consecutive woman to hold the APs top editorial spot. She has been with the organization since 2007, most recently serving as Washington bureau chief. In that position, Pace has worked to expand the APs fact-checking operation. She says that her focus will be to take all of the fantastic journalism that we do across formats and think of ways we can make it more digital-friendly, to make it more social-friendly. AP president Gary Pruitt said that Pace has a vision for APs future that is in line with our long-standing values but also forward-thinking.

Twitter introduces Super Follows, which the company calls a new way for people to earn monthly revenue by sharing subscriber-only content with their followers. It has also recently introduced Tip Jar, which allows Twitter users to send and receive tips, and Ticketed Spaces, in which hosts can charge users to join a live space. Super Follows lets creators set a monthly subscription fee of $2.99, $4.99 or $9.99 a month, giving their Super Followers access to content not available on the creators public feed. To set up a Super Follows subscription, creators need to have at least 10,000 followers, be 18 years old, be in the US and follow Twitters Super Follows Policy. Twitter says that it also has plans to add extra features, such as Super Follows-only spaces, newsletters and different subscription tiers.

The "Murrow Microphone"

Photo: Mike Freedman

The National Press Club will commemorate the recent donation of items from Edward R. Murrow's personal archive at a Sept. 14 event. The event will also celebrate the loan to the NPC of the historic microphone used by Mr. Murrow for his World War II CBS Radio Network broadcasts from London. It will include comments from Murrow's son, Casey Murrow, as well as from journalist Marvin Kalb, the last correspondent personally hired by Edward R. Murrow at CBS News. Donated items that will be on display include historic photographs, Murrow's briefcase and his poker chips. Photographs with the Murrow Microphone will be permitted, and members are welcome to share them via social media. The 6:30 p.m. event will be in the clubs Murrow Room and is limited to 75 attendees.
Yumi

Clevenger-Lee

QuEST Global appoints Yumi Clevenger-Lee as global chief marketing officer. Clevenger-Lee comes to QuEST from Nestle Waters North America, where she served as executive VP and chief marketing officer, with responsibility for a $4.5B portfolio of 16 brands. Before that, she was director of marketing for the Latin America region of Cereal Partners Worldwide, the partnership between Nestle & General Mills. At QuEST, Clevenger-Lee will be responsible for marketing strategy, brand positioning, advertising and corporate communications. She is known as a passionate brand builder who has been instrumental in developing strategies that have helped organizations accelerate growth, said QuEST Global chairman and CEO Ajit Prabhu.

Elizabeth Woo

Poxel biopharmaceutical company hires Elizabeth Woo as senior vice president, investor relations, public relations and corporate communications. Based in the Boston area, Woo will also work closely with members of the companys Lyon, France-based leadership team. She previously served as senior vice president, investor relations and corporate communications at Flex Pharma, and was vice president, investor relations at Biogen. Woo has also advised, through her investor relations consulting practice, privately held and publicly traded biotech companies. Elizabeth has a long history of working with the biotechnology financial community and a strong track record of raising the visibility to help build successful biopharmaceutical companies in the US, said Poxel CEO Thomas Kuhn.

Lindsey Irvine

Benchling, a software company focused on the biotech industry, appoints Lindsey Irvine as chief marketing officer. Irvine comes to Benchling from Salesforce, where she spent eight years, most recently as global CMO of MuleSoft, the companys data integration unit. She has also served as director of strategy and partnerships at the National Institutes of Health, where she launched public-private partnership initiatives with Google, Microsoft and Intel. "Lindsey brings a wealth of expertise in cloud and the enterprise from Salesforce, where she helped them deliver transformational products and solutions to customers around the world," said Benchling CEO and co-founder Sajith Wickramasekara. "Her impressive track record of developing and leading world-class teams through rapid growth is exactly what Benchling needs at this point in our journey.
Dan Darling

The National Religious Broadcasters group today whitewashed the firing of senior VP-communications Dan Darling after he expressed support of getting COVID-19 vaccinations during an Aug. 2 appearance on MSNBC's "Morning Joe."

The group issued a statement to say it has neither a policy nor official position on the vaccines. It prefers to take positions on issues of direct interest to its members, as if the potential life-and-death choice about the COVID-19 shot does not impact its audience of 141M people.

"While individual NRB members have wide-ranging views on the subject, the association has not weighed in on the question of the personal choices being made with respect to vaccines, because this is outside the scope of NRBs public policy engagement," it said in the statement.

And here is where the NRB gets loopy.

"NRBs neutrality on vaccines and other Covid-19-related mandates should not be interpreted as neutrality, or a lack of concern, about their impact on religious liberty.

"We have seen, and the Supreme Court has confirmed, that many Covid-19 mandates have treated religious people and institutions in an unequal manner."

The executive committee unanimously adopted the following motion:

After review, The Executive Committee affirms in every particular the administrative actions taken by the CEO in the termination of [the dismissed employee].

The committee then took a cheap shot at the media coverage of the Darling affair.

The Committee considers the runaway media narrative that developed in the aftermath of the dismissal to have been inaccurate, incomplete, and almost incomprehensible given the objective facts of the situation."

It vowed to move forward speaking with one voice on issues related to Christian communicators ability to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ through every medium available.

My hunch is that Jesus would have taken the COVID-19 vaccine (though The Almighty really did not need one) to encourage his followers to follow suit so they wouldn't spread the Delta variant.

If a pitcher strikes out 18 guys during a game, announcers do not rush to interview the poor slob who earned a Golden Sombrero (four whiffs). They rush to talk to the pitcher.

Similarly, Congressman Ruben Gallego (D-AR), a former Marine who served in Iraq, wants to know why cable TV gives high-profile platforms to former generals who were responsible for waging Americas forever war in Afghanistan.

They are wearers of the Golden Sombrero for their puffing up non-existent US progress in Afghanistan

We heard time and again from these Generals that Afghanistan was turning the corner. Same generals are out there claiming the outcome could have been different. Please stop listening to Petraeus and McMaster to start, Gallego tweeted.

The Phoenix Democrat told Politico:

The biggest frustration is the fact that the D.C. media elites dont see what we see. They see these guys as heroes and as these all-knowing geniuses when we know better. But nobody listens to us because we dont have the gold-star lapels.

Gallego also took aim at think tanks, who distorted our nation-building boondoggle.

Combat ops only ended because the Taliban had agreed to stop attacking us because we agreed to pull out. This is the problem with think tankers, they forget that the enemy has a vote when it comes to warfare. he tweeted.

Guys like Gallego deserve more cable TV facetime than the generals and think tankers.
THE mother of murdered Offaly man Mark Loughlin's two children has been convicted of assaulting a woman 18 months before his death.

After evidence was given of an alleged love triangle, Tullamore District Court heard that Deanna Gill, 22, of 58 Mirena Court, Athy, Co Kildare, intends to appeal a three-month suspended sentence imposed on her for assaulting Julia Mooney in Edenderry on July 22, 2019.

Ms Gill was also found guilty of breaking Ms Mooney's glasses during the incident at JKL Street in the Co Offaly town.

During a hearing before Judge Catherine Staines, Ms Gill alleged that Ms Mooney was in a relationship with Mr Loughlin while she was pregnant with the man's child, a claim the other woman denied.

Judge Staines convicted Ms Gill, who was eight months pregnant at the time of the assault, after hearing she broke the other young woman's glasses and hit her twice in the face.

Ms Mooney told the court Ms Gill stormed up to her when she was sitting in the passenger seat of a car with her boyfriend and opened the door.

The accused slapped her on the face and threw her glasses on the ground.

She came back in to hit me twice but I put my hands up to try and stop her, said Ms Mooney.

She said Ms Gill accused her mother of ringing the guards about her and added: I told you I'd kill you.

Ms Mooney said it cost her 200 to get new glasses and added that her mother had called the guards previously because Ms Gill was threatening her at her house.

She described the accused as very angry and said she would have gone hell for leather for her if she wasn't heavily pregnant.

Garda Niall Eogan, who said the incident occurred at 10.25pm, told the court there was CCTV footage of the incident from two cameras, one at the Golden Fries premises and another at Fit Squad gym.

Judge Staines did not admit the CCTV as evidence because the gardai had not brought the camera owner to court.

In cross-examination, defending solicitor Michael Byrne (Aonghus McCarthy Solicitors) put it to Ms Mooney that she was in an intimate relationship with Ms Gill's deceased boyfriend at a time when the accused was pregnant.

I wasn't with him while they were together, replied Ms Mooney.

When Mr Byrne asked if she had further contact with Mr Loughlin last December, Ms Mooney said she could not remember.

In her evidence, Deanna Gill said she was in Edenderry on July 22, 2019 to pick up a Chinese takeaway from the Peking but prior to that she had heard Ms Mooney had been going around a pub in Derrinturn saying I want to go out with Yob. The late Mark Loughlin's nickname was Yob.

Ms Gill said she saw the other woman in the car and asked her what she was saying about Mark and also said to Ms Mooney: You were told he was with me.

Ms Gill denied hitting Ms Mooney and said that while she took her glasses off and threw them on the floor of the car, they did not break because she did not throw them hard enough.

I said something to her boyfriend like 'I hope you know what your girlfriend is doing', Ms Gill added.

She said Ms Mooney was with Mr Loughlin three or four weeks after she had his baby and added that she had his phone to prove she texted him.

Replying to Sergeant James O'Sullivan, Ms Gill said she was kind of angry when she took Ms Mooney's glasses off and added: I wanted to hit her but I didn't hit her.

Convicting Ms Gill of assault, Judge Staines said she accepted Ms Mooney's evidence that she had been assaulted.

The judge also noted that hearing the prosecution had been delayed for so long because on one occasion a warrant had to be issued for Ms Gill after she had not attended in court.

In victim impact evidence Judge Staines heard Ms Mooney's nose had been marked because of the assault and she was still afraid to go back into Edenderry.

Also, that day in the courthouse corridor before the hearing, the victim felt intimidated when the accused was having a video chat with a woman they both knew and said she would call over to where Ms Mooney lived.

Appealing for leniency, Mr Byrne said the crime was uncharacteristic for his client and was committed in the context of her belief that her boyfriend was having a relationship with the injured party.

Her children were now aged two years and 10 months and along with significant health difficulties, she was in dire financial straits following the demise of her partner earlier this year.

Judge Staines said the accused had not shown remorse and noted that because she had pleaded not guilty, the injured party had to come to court and have matters of a very personal nature put to her.

Asked by Judge Staines to make an apology, Ms Gill stood up briefly and said she was sorry.

The judge ordered that 300 be paid from the court poor box to Ms Mooney to compensate her for her glasses and the upset she had suffered.

Hearing that Ms Gill had one previous conviction for drugs possession, Judge Staines imposed the three-month suspended sentence but on the instructions of Mr Byrne, she fixed recognisances for an appeal.

The judge told Ms Mooney that she will have to give her evidence again when the appeal is heard in the Circuit Court.

Mark Loughlin, Greenwood Park, Edenderry, died at Naas General Hospital on Sunday, January 3 last after being found with severe injuries on a roadside at Allenwood South, Co Kildare.

Gardai believe Mr Loughlin was assaulted after a collision between a car and a van in the early hours of the morning.

Last April gardai said they arrested eight individuals, including six men, one woman and one male juvenile, in connection with their investigation into the murder of Mr Loughlin.

Those detained were later released without charge and at the time gardai said a file would be prepared for the Director of Public Prosecutions.
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Angelique Hamilton is ready to prove she is Fab Over 40. The Jacksonville, Florida native is competing in New Beauty Magazine's competition for women over 40 which celebrates a woman's beauty at any age. The contest attracted over 1,000 participants. Funds raised by the competition will benefit the National Breast Cancer Foundation, Inc., which provides early detection and diagnosis resources and support to people living with breast cancer. This year's 
North Hollywood, CA  Those looking for an A-list smile in Hollywood are turning to A-Dental Center for simply, stunning results. At Dr Fadi Elzayats practice, fixing smiles is an everyday occurrence, thanks to their highly customized lnvisalign aligners, a new high-tech way that adjusts your smile without using braces. And thanks to their dedication to a gentle, personalized service for each patient, the W Magnolia Blvd, North Hollywood dental 
On August 1, 2021, the Hoodu officially launched their startup in India & Southeast As,Hoodu, which allows small businesses to quickly and simply create their Merchant & Prodiver App powered with all the necessary tools needed to manage ecommerce on WhatsApp. Founded in September 2020 by Ramesh Kumar & Visagan, the retail-SaaS company raised Undisclosed seed funding from Singapore & Malaysia.The company has a team of 50 people. Hoodu providing a multi-service application with 
New Zealand-based company Annabelles, is selling Indian Khat, branding it as Vintage Indian Daybed, for over Rs 41000.

Indian Khats used for resting and sleeping is a common sight in India, especially in rural areas. Its very difficult to find a house that doesnt have a Khat. The cost of a medium size Khat is about 800 rupees.

A New Zealand-based company, Annabelles, is selling it for about 41000 rupees. The lightweight bed, which could be carried on ones head, even finds mention in Moroccan scholar Ibn Battutas travelogues, who was very impressed with its simple design, writes The Better India.

It adds, After designer Guccis kurta priced at Rs 2.5 lakh and Zaras checked skirt, which was essentially the Indian lungi, one can only imagine what item of everyday use in India the foreigners may fancy next and package with a pretty marketing spin on it. We perhaps await another turmeric latte phenomenon. Your guess is as good as ours. The company has branded it as One-of-a-kind and Original.
"Education is the most powerful weapon, which you can use to change the world."Nelson Mandela.

Current Macaulay Education System Vs Gurukul Education System

One of the universities in the USA surveyed successful personalities in various fields to find out the reasons behind their success. It was surprising to note that whatever they have achieved academically (Doctor, Engineer, Lawyer, Arts, Commerce, science graduate, Chartered accountants, MBA or any other degree) contributed just 13% in their success, and the big balance number 87% is what?? The answer is "Life Management", and nobody teaches us how to manage it neither at home nor in school. The New Education Policy is focusing on both aspects of our life.

What is "Life Management?"

It means managing ourselves in different situations that include managing ups and downs in life, difficult and stressful situations, anger and fear management, material and spiritual growth by ethical means, leadership qualities, discrimination between Dharma and Adharma, our responsibility towards society and country, nurturing environment. Unfortunately, most of us have never been taught in the right manner by any faculty of society.

The focus of most parents, schools is to secure good grades/marks in the exam and finish the education to get a degree of any kind. We have never given importance to significant aspects of life like managing the mind, character building, building a positive attitude, maintain equanimity in all situations, right thinking and actions towards society and country. Sharpening and developing intellect through creativity, research, and innovation, understanding ego through spiritual techniques, and improving memory. So what happens? It's become difficult for many people in society to handle success effectively for the long term; at the same time, failures are even more difficult to handle, resulting in mental issues, badly affecting confidence, loosing hope, mainly in our youngsters.

Mind management is a complex subject; when we encounter success, it elevates our EGO, takes us away from the ground and subtle reality, affecting our relationship with our near and dear ones. We all have experienced that "Success is directly proportional to criticism". The more successful you are, the more you are criticized. Many people in society will put you down, insult you, throw mud on your character and so on if the mind is weak, then it isn't easy to sustain success for a longer period. So how to handle constructive and destructive criticism??

Why is Mind Management so important?

Your state of mind (weak or strong) decides the course of action. A weak mind will never channel your energy for higher purposeful goals. A strong mind will always look for different opportunities in difficult situations with joy to reach higher goals.

Since childhood, our mind is programmed so that challenges, difficulties, problems are not good, keep away from these situations, and false notion is created in our mind that only academic studies can keep you away from these situations, so study hard. Let me clear you first education/studies are very important, don't ignore it, but it will stop difficulties, ups and downs in life is a big joke on our youths.

Let them understand life is a mixture of good and bad, right and wrong, happiness and sadness, positives and negatives, hero and villain, success and failure, opportunities and difficulties, peace and disturbance, everything is complimentary. The problem is that we always ensure to put in subtle mind that one part of life which we face is good and the other part is bad and can be avoided. How can we avoid the part that brings out inner potentials that we inherit but never realized, that makes us strong, experienced, creative, innovative, shows how important our life is and improves our managing skills? You will agree that we learn to live life only after we face difficulties in life.

Gurukul System:

It was more widespread during the Vedic age, where students were taught various subjects and how to live a cultured and disciplined life.

The importance of the Gurukul system in present times: -

The focus of Gurukuls was significantly on imparting learning to the students in a natural surrounding where the disciples lived with each other with goodwill, humanity, love, and discipline. The important teachings were in subjects like language, science, mathematics through group discussions, self-learning etc. Not only this but the focus was also given on overall personality development through arts, sports, crafts, singing, various technical and managerial skills, leadership qualities, many other skills that developed their intelligence and critical thinking. Activities such as yoga, meditation, mantra chanting etc., generated positivity and peace of mind and made them fit physically, mentally and socially. It was also mandatory to do daily responsibilities independently with a motive to impart practical skills in them. All these helped in the personality development and increased their confidence, sense of discipline, intellect and mindfulness that is necessary even today to face the ecosphere that lay ahead.

"Success is never final, and failure is never fatal. It's courage that counts." It was one of the themes of the Gurukul Education system.

New National Education Policy:

NEP 2020 is basically focused on developing the overall personality of each student. If implemented candidly by all schools, colleges and universities, it will surely develop upcoming generations as everyone expects to be. The confidant, energetic, joyful, committed, research and innovation-oriented, multi-talented youths will bring back glory to our great nation. We will excel economically and in many other sectors, such as sports, innovation, space research, social health, defence, educating the world on different dimensions, and environmental protection.

Implementation of the National Education Policy should become a national mission and priority for every country citizen. Government and government authorities, Management team, Teachers, Parents, Students and every section of society should join hands and coherently work towards the implementation part of it to revivify the future of our upcoming generations and our great nation.

NEP should not be seen with a political point of view that who will benefit if implemented in time with quality; it is the millions of our young generation that will reap the benefits out of it.


Separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani expired at his home in Srinagar on Wednesday night and Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan declared a day for official mourning on his death.

New Delhi: India on Thursday (September 2) declined to comment anything immediately on Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan's

declaring a day of official mourning on the death of separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani.

"I don't have an immediate comment on this. It is his (Imran Khan's) statement. They had given him 'Nishan-e-Pakistan', their wish, what can I say," said MEA spokesperson Arindam Bagchi at a media briefing.

Geelani, 92, expired at his home in Srinagar on Wednesday night.

During the day, Imran Khan said, "The Pakistan flag will fly at half-mast and we will observe a day of official mourning." Of course, Pakistan's Prime Minister's announcement makes it more clear that the so-called separatist movement always had the backing of Pakistan.

To a question on the resumption of the air bubble with Bangladesh, the MEA spokesperson said talks are underway, and proposals are being discussed.

Mr Bagchi also said the evacuation exercise from Afghanistan has remained halted since the past few days and would resume once the Kabul airport became operational. "Currently, Kabul airport is not operational. We will resume our operation to evacuate people from Kabul as soon as the airport service will resume," he said.

Answering questions, he said it would be imperative to take Indian diplomat Deepak Mittal's meeting with the Afghan representative at Doha on August 31 as 'just a meeting', and there was no need for mere speculation."Let's take the Doha meeting for what it is; ...it is just a meeting. These are still very early days," Mr Bagchi remarked.


Secunderabad-based College of Defence Management (CDM), which trains defence officers for senior leadership roles, has recommended inclusion of ancient Indian texts such as Kautilyas Arthashastra, Thirukkural and Bhagavad Gita into the current military training curriculum, reported News18.com.

It has also suggested setting up an Indian Culture Study Forum.

Indian Culture Club should be set up, which would offer access to available research material on ancient Indian texts and the available online repository as well as organise panel discussions and guest lectures on the relevant topics, the report said.

Since the Bharatiya Janata Party-led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi has come to power in 2014, there has been a lot of emphasis on the Indianisation of the defence forces, from military equipment and weapons systems to culture and themes.

News18.com reported In 2016, the Army War College, Mhow, had also published a combat paper, which drew instances from the Mahabharata and Arthashastra and stated that the strategic thoughts and art of war found in the texts were also relevant in todays context as well.

The ancient Indian texts are relevant for leadership, warfare and strategic thinking.
Recently attacking the BJP government in Manipur, Jairam said that Urea given to the State were diverted to 'Poppy' cultivation.

Imphal: Fury against senior Congress leader and former union minister Jairam Ramesh for his alleged derogatory comment towards the people of Manipur. Recently attacking the BJP government in Manipur, Jairam said that Urea given to the State were diverted to 'Poppy' cultivation. Reacting strongly to his comment, the student body of Manipur Thadou Students' Association (TSA) condemned the remarks and demanded a public apology from the senior Congress leader.

Jairam Ramesh was recently in Manipur to review the Congress party's election preparations in the State. Attacking the ruling Party, Ramesh tweeted that, "BJP's 'Vikas' in Manipur is getting TWICE the supply of Urea it needs and yet farmers complain of shortage! Why? Because Urea has been diverted to hill areas in Manipur, where poppy is being grown for opium in large areas in the last 4 years. The State Govt is fully complicit in this."

TSA opposed the derogatory statement by the Congress leader, and in a statement the student body TSA said it was really unfortunate that a National leader of a National party like Congress would make such a statement which has hurt the sentiment of the hill people by accusing and implicating them as 'Poppy Cultivators'.

The student association added that the Poppy cultivation in the State had started during the early 2000s when the Congress-led SPF Government was in power, and the Congress government then didn't take any steps to control poppy cultivation and anti-social activity until Chief Minister N Biren launched 'War on Drugs' in 2018.

The statement also added that Poppy and Paddy cultivation season does not coincide, and Urea cannot be stored for a long time.

In addition to this, Urea is distributed through concerned DCs and agriculture offices only. Hence, there is no question of diverting the fertiliser to the hills or other areas in poppy cultivation.

Meanwhile, BJP spokesperson M Kikon said that "Congress should send experienced organisational leaders and not amateurs for election work. Former minister makes an irresponsible statement and hurts the sentiments of the hill people in Manipur. This should show how deep his foot has gone in his mouth."
Science and Technology Minister Dr. Jitendra Singh on Friday (September 3) said that India has the potential to become global hub of green hydrogen in near future. Speaking at the International Climate Summit 2021 in New Delhi, Dr. Singh said, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has accorded highest priority to clean and green energy.

He said, with the rapid introduction of biofuels, renewable energy and green Hydrogen, India is well poised to take a leadership role towards Carbon neutrality. He reiterated the commitment of the government to achieve Net Zero level by 2050.

The Minister said, Government is already encouraging adaptation of Hydrogen fuels and technology for the mobility sector and many industries like Steel, Cement, and Glass Manufacturing Industries have started using Hydrogen for heating requirements.

(AIR)


Ladakh Union Territory administration has announced snow leopard as its state animal and black-necked crane as its state bird.

New Delhi: The Ladakh Union Territory administration on Thursday (September 2) announced snow leopard as its state animal and black-necked crane as its state bird.

Speaking to ANI, Ladakh MP Jamyang Tsering Namgyal said, "Ladakh Union Territory administration has announced snow leopard as its state animal and black-necked crane as its state bird."

According to Namgyal, the black-necked crane is found in eastern Ladakh's high-altitude wetlands and marshes.

"It is mostly listed as Near Threatened on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) red list. These birds arrive in Ladakh in March for breeding and migrate by October end or early November," he said.

Earlier, the Department of Information and Public Relations Leh tweeted and informed about the decisions.

"The Administration of Union Territory of Ladakh declares 'Snow Leopard' & 'Black Necked Crane' as the State Animal & State Bird respectively of UT Ladakh," the department tweeted.

The decision comes after the Centre abrogated Article 370, which gave special status to the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir, and bifurcated the region into two territories- Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh on August 5, 2019.

Courtesy: ANI
Prajna Pravah All India Convenor J Nandakumar has called for a probe into the mysterious death of Malayalam poet Kumaranasan to check whether it was a planned murder for exposing the Malabar Hindu Massacre. Kumaranasan had written a poem titled Durravastha in Malayalam that had exposed the cruelty committed by Jihadis during the Anti-Hindu massacre of 1921. J Nandakumar was speaking at a program organised by Janam TV on the topic Malabar Islamic State and Hindu genocide.

Kumaranasan was sent by Sree Narayana guru to understand the situation in Malabar. Seeing the ruthless atrocities committed on Hindus, Kumaranasan wrote a poem that was opposed by the Islamists. Islamists had asked Kumaranasan to withdraw the poem back then, but the post gave them a befitting reply that he wrote what he saw there in Malabar. J Nandakumar also slammed the tendency to whitewash Malabar Hindu Massacre and called this an anti-national act.

There are multiple questions being raised about the death of Kumaranasan. He died on 1924 January 16, when the boat on which he was travelling sunk in the river. Kumaranasan was a good swimmer, but he couldnt survive. There is historical evidence to suggest that Kumaranasan had received death threats from Islamists of the Malabar region for exposing their Jihadi agenda through his poem.
Punjab Gau Sewa Commission chairperson Sachin Sharma said that the government should take action considering the Allahabad High Court's remarks on declaring cow as the national animal.

Chandigarh: Punjab Gau Sewa Commission chairperson Sachin Sharma, on Thursday (September 2), welcomed the advice of the Allahabad High Court, in which the Court has asked the union government to declare cow as the national animal.

According to a statement from Information and Public Relations Department, Punjab, presiding over a meeting of the commission in this regard, Sharma said that the legal experts also believe in the cow's importance being unparalleled and, as per the holy scriptures, the cow is a symbol of Indian culture and devotion.

Referring to the letters written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on August 5, 2020, and June 15, 2021, asking him to consider cow as national animal-like Nepal, he asked the Modi government what action has been taken so far on the appeal. He lamented that no attention had been paid to those letters, and no concrete law has been enacted so far to stop the cruelty against bovine, the statement said.

"The Chairman alleged that the Central government had, in fact, completely forgotten the importance of the cows and no Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) activist has done anything meaningful for the welfare of cows," the statement read.

Sharma said that the government should take appropriate action in light of the Allahabad High Court's remarks. "I believe any religious act, performed on a land where Gaumata is disrespected, cannot succeed," he stated.

On Wednesday, the Allahabad High Court observed that cows are an integral part of the Indian culture and suggested the Central government give fundamental rights to the animal and declare it as the national animal.

The Court's observations came as a single bench of Justice Shekhar Yadav heard the bail application of Javed, who was arrested under the Cow Slaughter Act in Uttar Pradesh. The court rejected the bail application.

Courtesy: ANI
Pointing at the large scale atrocities committed by the TMC after Bengal state elections, Congress MP Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury on Thursday wrote a letter to West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee expressing concern over Trinamool Congress workers' atrocities in Murshidabad.

Chowdhury, in the letter, said that TMC workers had "vandalised and looted" houses owned by Congress party workers in broad daylight on 2nd September.

"I do like to flag your kind attention to the violence and atrocities committed by the ruling party's workers in broad daylight today when houses of Congress party workers were vandalised and looted much to the concerned of us."

The Congress MP also mentioned that the incidents of looting and violence were witnessed by the local police administration. It is imperative that these miscreants are dealt with immediately, added Chowdhury.

"You will be surprised to know that the entire looting and violence took place in the full glare of local police administration. Under this situation, which has been prevailing over that area, calls for immediate administrative action against these miscreants," he added.

"You are requested to intervene in this matter in order to stem the deteriorating law and order situation in a particular area and ensure justice to those victims as well,' he added further.
You can live amicably with a religion whose principle is toleration. But how is it possible to live peacefully with a religion whose principle is I will not tolerate you? How are you going to have unity with these people? Certainly, Hindu-Muslim unity cannot be arrived at on the basis that the Muslims will go on converting Hindus while the Hindus shall not convert any Madan (Mohammedan).  Sri Aurobindo , Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, Part II, Chapter 3, July 2, 1923 (Recorded by A B Purani)

In a landmark move, a Government-Appointed panel has recommended the deletion of the names of Mopilah (the Muslims of Malabar region in Kerala) rioters from the dictionary of freedom fighters. This recommendation has opened up a chapter hitherto pushed under the carpet either in the name of freedom struggle or a peasants rebellion. Not surprisingly, the communist regime in Kerala - that is, into mega centenary celebrations of what they called Mopilah Rebellion - along with the historians nurtured with the same ideology, are disturbed with the recommendation.

The incidents of the Malabar Massacre of Hindus occurred in 1921 as a part of the Khilafat movement. Since then, multiple reports and books have talked about the gruesome atrocities incurred on Hindus in the name of the freedom struggle. The authentic accounts penned by eminent personalities ranging from Congress leaders like K Madhavan Nair and C Keshavan Nair to Home-Rule league leader Annie Besant and Dr B R Ambedkar has drawn the common conclusions: 1. the Mopilah Riot was part of the Khilafat Movement, and not the freedom struggle; 2. It was a fundamentalist movement focused on religious conversion. Thousands of people were murdered, hundreds of women raped, lakhs of people were displaced, and hundreds of temples were desecrated. All this was followed by Ali Musaliar, an Islamic preacher, and his Islamic militia announcing an Islamic state In Malabar on August 22, 2021. The barbaric atrocities are celebrated by Communists, who have no aversion to violent means, as a freedom struggle.

If it was a freedom struggle, why the widespread attacks on Hindus and temples? Why was no British authority attacked, barring the looting of few properties? Suppose the Communist justification of peasants revolt is accurate; how can they whitewash the fact that the Mopilah were wealthy merchants of Malabar having deep connections with the West Asian nations for the trade of timber and spices? Remember, none of the slogans raised by the rioters was in favour of the national freedom struggle or anti-British in content.

What happened in Malabar was not an exception. All over Bharat, we experienced the systematic nurturing of ideas around what Sri Aurobindo called the making of separate political entity an organised separate political power. In the 1920s, a series of riots took place attacking non-Muslims. The intention of Gandhiji may be of taking the Muslims along in the freedom struggle. But what started under the Congress umbrella quickly deviated from it and took the shape of a cold-blooded pogrom. Fanatics like the Ali brothers and Abdul Bari gave inflammatory speeches and put restoration of the Caliphate in Turkey above the goal of Swaraj. The support for the freedom movement became conditional. Among the ordinary Bharatiya Muslims, who had no clue about the position of Caliph, the ideas of Pan-Islamism got traction. In a way, Khilafat germinated the idea of Pakistan.

Interestingly, the Amir of Afghanistan was the only external power the Bharatiya Muslims could look up to. Hence, the Khilafat leadership systematically spread the rumour in the Malabar region of Afghan attack from the North-West side, which never happened. But an Islamic State was formed in Malabar in August 1921.

Now cut to August 2021. In the same Malabar, we are witnessing joyous celebrations after the Taliban taking over Kabul. How can we forget that the same Taliban decimated the entire Hindu-Buddhist civilisation in its earlier rule from 1996-2001 and was designated as a terror outfit by the United Nations. The idea of the Caliphate, the Global Islamic Rule, is still a guiding force to the fundamentalist Muslims, represented by forces like the Taliban. The Khilafatis and Mopilah rioters had the same inspiration. Commemorating Mopilas is like celebrating the Taliban. Hence, getting rid of that freedom struggle and peasants rebellion tags ascribed to Mopilas is essential.
Rallies and processions will also be held, and Friday sermons will be offered for unity, progress and prosperity of the Muslim Ummah.

Islamabad: Pakistan's Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) chairman Siraj-ul Haq has announced to celebrate thanksgiving and prayer on Friday (September 3) across the country on the withdrawal of US troops in Afghanistan, Pakistan's vernacular media reported.

Siraj-ul Haq said that after the withdrawal of US and NATO forces from Afghanistan, the responsibilities of the Afghan Taliban have increased as the country has turned into a dilapidated structure after a long war.

On Friday, millions of Muslims in masjid and madrasas across the country will celebrate at the request of Amir Jamaat-e-Islami, according to Jasarat, Daily Asas.

The rallies and processions will also be held, and Friday sermons will be offered for unity, progress and prosperity of the Muslim Ummah, Jasarat, Daily Asas reported.

The reconstruction of Afghanistan requires a long time, hard work, and capital, and the international community must move forward. He said that "conspiratorial elements want to push devastated Afghanistan back to civil war, but I am sure they will fail, by the grace of Allah Almighty".

The United States forces left Afghanistan on Tuesday morning, marking the end of a chaotic and messy exit from America's longest war.

The situation in Afghanistan has been deteriorating after the Taliban seized control of the war-ravaged country. On August 15, the Afghan government fell soon after President Ashraf Ghani left the country.

Courtesy: ANI
Kotli, Rawalkot airbases are in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir and are 100 km from Srinagar.

Pakistan Air Force (PAF) has reopened two airbases, Kotli and Rawalkot, which are barely 100 kms from Srinagar. The two air bases, close to the Line of Control (LoC), are in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir. The two airbases had been closed for years.

According to Times Now News, over a hundred air defence troops have been moved to Kotli airbase, which will be under the Pakistan Army's 3 PcK brigade, part of the 23 Division. Rawalkot airbase, which was closed four years, will come under 2 PcK Brigade of 12 division.

The reopening of both Kotli and Rawalkot is a precautionary measure, as is the deployment of small numbers of F-16 fighters in different airfields all over the country. PAF's 403 Squadron helicopters has moved to Shamsi, where communication and radar networks are being readied.

The reopening of PAF facilities so close to the LOC is a threat, while the strengthening of the base in Shamsi in Balochistan and the construction of a new army cantonment near the PAF base in Jacobabad, Sind, is a sign of growing unrest in those provinces. The Pakistan government has acquired 26,000 acres for a new PAF base in Nasirabad, Balochistan.
Joan Ruth (Geurts) Thompson, passed away at the Wesley Acres Health Center in Des Moines Iowa on September 8, 2021, at the age of 86 years. Joan was born on January 14, 1935, to Floris W.A. and Sophia (Vos) Geurts. Joan graduated from Pella High School with the class of 1953 and resided in D
It was 16 July when the delegation from Romes Central Council of the Saint Vincent de Paul Society, led by its President, Giuliano Crepaldi, in cooperation with the Societys national federation, arrived in Addis Abeba, capital of Ethiopia, inspired by the desire to make the humanitarian project I love Ethiopia a reality. Born out of a request by the Fathers of the Congregation of the Mission and the Daughters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul in Ethiopia and based on the objectives of welcome and solidarity and on those courageous challenges faced daily by the Saint Vincent Society, even during the pandemic, the programme is aimed toward a land in need of humanitarian interventions to face the grave economic situation and the health emergency, which involves the children of Ethiopia. Sister Hiwot Zewde of the confraternity of the ...

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What loftier vocation can there be for politics than that of serving the common good and placing the welfare of the community before our personal advantage, Pope Francis told participants in the Meeting of the International Catholic Legislators Network whom he received in audience in the Clementine Hall on Friday, 27 August. The following is the English text of the Holy Fathers words.

I am sorry for not speaking to you while standing, but I am still in a time of post-operative recovery and need to remain seated. Please excuse me.

Honourable Ladies and

Gentlemen,

I am pleased once more to meet with you, lawmakers and political and civic leaders from various nations, at this critical moment in our history  a critical moment. I thank Cardinal Schonborn and Dr Alting von Geusau for their kind words of greeting and introduction. I am also happy that His Holiness Ignatius Aphrem II, Patriarch of the Syro-Orthodox Church, is present with us.

From its founding in 2010, the International Catholic Legislators Network has accompanied, supported and promoted the work of the Holy See, bearing witness to the Gospel in the service of your individual countries and the international community as a whole. I am grateful for your love for the Church and for your readiness to cooperate in her mission.

Our gathering today takes place at a very troubled moment in time. The Covid-19 pandemic continues to rage. Although significant progress has been made through the creation and distribution of effective vaccines, much work remains to be done. There have been more than 200 million confirmed cases and 4 million deaths due to this terrible scourge, which has caused immense economic and social devastation.

As a result, your work as lawmakers and political leaders is more important than ever. Charged with serving the common good, you are now being challenged to direct your efforts to the integral renewal of your communities and of society as a whole. This entails more than simply combatting the virus or seeking to return to the status quo prior to the pandemic; that would be a setback. No, it demands confronting the deeper causes that the crisis has laid bare and aggravated: poverty, social inequality, widespread unemployment, and the lack of access to education. Brothers and sisters, we never emerge from a crisis the same: we will emerge either better or worse. Moreover, we do not emerge from a crisis by ourselves: we must either emerge together or we will not be able to emerge from it at all.

In an age of upheaval and political polarization, legislators and politicians in general are not always held in high esteem. Yet what loftier vocation can there be than that of serving the common good and placing the welfare of the community before our personal advantage? That must always be your goal, for a good politics is indispensable for universal fraternity and social peace (Fratelli Tutti, 176).

In our age particularly, one of the greatest challenges confronting us is the administration of technology for the common good. The wonders of modern science and technology have increased our quality of life. It is right to rejoice in these advances and to be excited by the immense possibilities that they continue to open up before us, for science and technology are wonderful products of a God-given human creativity (Laudato Si, 102). At the same time, left to themselves and to market forces alone, without suitable guidelines provided by legislative assemblies and public authorities guided by a sense of social responsibility, these innovations can end up becoming a threat to the dignity of the human person.

This has nothing to do with curbing technological advances. By means of policies and regulations, lawmakers can protect human dignity from whatever may threaten it. I think, for example, of the scourge of child pornography, the misuse of personal data, attacks on critical infrastructures such as hospitals, and the spread of false information on social media, among other issues. Prudent legislation can guide the development and application of technology in the service of the common good. Brothers and sisters, I heartily encourage you, therefore, to make every effort to undertake serious and in-depth moral reflection on the risks and possibilities associated with scientific and technological advances, so that the international laws and regulations governing them may concentrate on promoting integral human development and peace, rather than on progress as an end in itself.

Legislators and political leaders naturally reflect the strengths and weaknesses of the people they represent; each has his or her own specific gifts to offer in service to the welfare of all. The involvement of citizens in the various sectors of social, civic and political life remains essential. All of us are called to foster the spirit of solidarity, starting with the needs of our weakest and most disadvantaged brothers and sisters. If we are to heal our world so harshly tried by the pandemic, and build a more inclusive and sustainable future in which technology serves human needs without isolating us from one another, we need not only responsible citizens, but also capable leaders inspired by the principle of the common good.

Dear friends, may the Lord enable you to become a leaven for the renewal of minds, hearts and spirit, witnesses of political love (cf. Fratelli Tutti, 180ff.) for the most vulnerable, so that, in serving them, you may serve him in all that you do.

To you, your families and your work, I cordially impart my blessing. And I ask you, please, to pray for me. Thank you.
Ottumwa, IA (52501)

Today

Some clouds this evening will give way to mainly clear skies overnight. Low 53F. Winds light and variable..

Tonight

Some clouds this evening will give way to mainly clear skies overnight. Low 53F. Winds light and variable.
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MASON COUNTY A Ludington man has been charged with the death of an infant who died in 2019.

Craig David Overla, formerly of Ludington, was arraigned on Aug. 31 in Mason County's 79th District Court on one count of open murder, one count of felony murder and one count of child abuse first-degree; he is also charged as a habitual offender 4th degree.
GRAND RAPIDS  Six professionals representing the Manistee County Child Advocacy Center attended the 11th annual conference of the Children's Advocacy Centers of Michigan, held Monday and Tuesday in Grand Rapids.

Manistee County Sheriff's Office Deputy Alex Schajter; Christina Thompson, MCCAC forensic interviewer; Chelsea Medacco, MCCAC outreach specialist/advocate; Kelli Petit, trauma therapist; Ludington Police Department Det. Mikki Hecko; and Little River Band of Ottawa Indians Department of Public Safety Sgt. Matthew Umlauf attended the two-day event at the DeVos Place Convention Center.
MANISTEE COUNTY  The following calls were made to the Michigan State Police Cadillac Post for Manistee County incidents from Aug. 22-28. All calls may not be reported.

Aug. 22

 A 42-year-old man and a 37-year-old woman were arrested for receiving and concealing stolen property at 8:30 a.m. on the 14000 block of Woods Trail in Springdale Township.

 A 51-year-old woman was arrested for a bench warrant at 8:30 a.m. on the 14000 block of Woods Trail in Springdale Township.

 A vehicle-deer accident was reported at 1 p.m. on Preuss Road in Canfield Road in Filer Township.

Aug. 23

 An attempted larceny of a four-wheeler was reported at 2 p.m. on the 3000 block of Peacock Road.

 A civil dispute was reported at 9 p.m. on the 18000 block of Coates Highway in Dickson Township.

Aug. 24

 Troopers conducted an assault investigation at 11000 block of Glover Lake Road in Pleasanton Township.

Aug. 25

 Troopers conducted a fraud investigation at noon on the 1000 block of Lakeshore Road in Manistee.

 A person was reported as being suicidal at 9:29 p.m. on the 2000 block of Carty Road in Stronach Township.

 Larceny was reported at 10:03 p.m. on the 17000 block of Ridgeway Drive in Springdale Township.

Aug. 26

 Assault was reported at 12:08 a.m. on the 17000 block of Rice Road in Cleon Township.

 A personal protection order violation was reported at 10:30 a.m. on the 17000 block of Cherry Park Drive in Springdale Township.

 Malicious destruction of property was reported at 12:55 p.m. on the 8000 block of Aura Street in Kaleva.

 A neighbor dispute was reported at 1:10 p.m. on the 3000 block of Maple Drive in Norman Township.

 A 61-year-old woman was arrested on a bench warrant on Marilla Road near Benton Road in Marilla Township.

 A 54-year-old man was reported at 6:59 p.m. for leaving the scene of a crash on River Road.

 A two-vehicle property damage crash was reported at 8 p.m. on Lake Street near Virginia Street in Bear Lake.

Aug. 27

 A 29-year-old man was arrested for operating without insurance at 5:30 p.m. on Maple Road near South County Line Road in Filer Township.

 Malicious destruction of property was reported at 6:20 p.m. on the 9000 block of Alkire Road in Pleasanton Township.

 A vehicle-deer accident was reported at 9:30 p.m. on U.S. 31 near Nine Mile Road in Bear Lake Township.

Aug. 28

 A family dispute was reported at 3:02 a.m. on the 12000 block of Johnson Road in Dickson Township.

 A family dispute was reported at 4:10 p.m. on the 2000 block of Chippewa Highway in Manistee Township.

 Troopers conducted a well-being check at 6:10 p.m. on the 140000 block of Wuoksi Avenue in Kaleva.

 A vehicle-deer accident was reported at 9:27 p.m. on Faylor Road near M-115 in Springdale Township.

 A 57-year-old man was arrested for domestic violence at 10:11 p.m. on the 15000 block of Harlin Road in Cleon Township.
TUCSON, Ariz. (AP)  The father of an Arizona elementary school student was arrested after he and two other men showed up to the campus with zip ties, threatening to make a citizen's arrest on the school principal over a COVID-19 quarantine, school officials said Friday.

Diane Vargo, principal of Mesquite Elementary School in Tucson, said the parent came to her office Thursday with his son in tow. The father was upset the child would have to isolate and miss a school field trip because of possible exposure to someone with COVID-19. She said two other men also barged in.

One was carrying military, large, black zip ties and standing in my doorway. Vargo said she tried to de-escalate the situation while explaining the school had to follow county health protocols.

I felt violated that they were in my office claiming I was breaking the law and they were going to arrest me, a visibly shaken Vargo said in a video statement released by the Vail Unified School District. Two of the men weren't parents at our school, so I felt threatened.

In a video posted on social media, Vargo can be heard calmly asking them to leave. One of them replies they aren't leaving because they're not going to let her control the situation.

The principal called Tucson police.

School officials said the man arrested was the father. Vargo said they are pursuing charges against the other two men.

The arrest is the latest in a number of confrontations in schools around the country over virus-related rules.

School district officials commended Vargo's handling of the situation.

The principal through training and her own personality did an excellent job of making sure that tensions didnt escalate, District Superintendent John Carruth told The Associated Press.

Considering the threats, Carruth said the decision to call police was appropriate.

Most people, while frustrated by the continuing impacts of the pandemic, are still supportive of each other and the school system, he said.

The tactics are escalating but I wouldn't say there is a broader need to raise concern," he said. The solution and the lesson and the silver lining in this (incident) is it calls attention to the need for all of us to seek to listen with the intent to understand.

Dr. Francisco Garcia, Pima County's chief medical officer, declined to comment on the incident.

We are still in the process of contemplating what our next steps are in terms of our individual response to that family in terms of their adherence to staying at home, Garcia said.

This wasn't the first virus-inspired confrontation involving the Tucson area school district, which is 130 miles (209 kilometers) south of Phoenix.

In April, the district board ended a study session and then canceled a regular meeting after dozens of parents protested the districts refusal to lift its mask mandate. Sheriff's deputies were summoned to help keep order after parents, many not wearing masks, pushed their way into the boardroom.
SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. (AP)  Better weather has slowed the growth of the huge California wildfire near Lake Tahoe resort communities, authorities said Friday.

The Caldor Fire remained only a few miles from the city of South Lake Tahoe, which was emptied of 22,000 residents days ago, along with casinos and shops across the state line in Nevada, but no significant fire activity occurred since Thursday , officials said.

Tim Ernst, an operations section chief, said fire officials were cautiously optimistic thanks to a lot of hard work by firefighters over the past two weeks.

The nearly 333-square-mile (862-square-kilometer) fire was not making any significant advances and was not challenging containment lines in long sections of its perimeter, but Ernst said the risk is still out there with some areas that remained hot.

Residents on western and northern sides of the fires were allowed back home by Friday afternoon, but fire officials said they don't have a specific timeline for repopulating South Lake Tahoe. Utility companies have to make sure power is restored, fire crews will have to remove hazardous trees and other threats to power lines, and roadways have to be cleared of debris.

Jake Cagle, another operations section chief, said fire and law enforcement officials are evaluating the issue in meetings several times a day to determine when to lift evacuation orders.

Its all based on fire behavior. For now, things are looking good. On that contingent, were getting close," he said.

The fire had been driven northeast on a course leading to South Lake Tahoe for days by southwestern winds, but that pattern ended this week. Calmer winds and increased humidity Thursday and Friday helped crews increase containment of the blaze to 29%.

Very positive trends with regards to weather," said Dean Gould, a U.S. Forest Service administrator. Thats huge for us. Lets take full advantage of it while we have this window.

With the fire growing at the smallest rate in two weeks, he said, Things are clearly heading in the right direction for us."

Amid the positive outlook, incident meteorologist Jim Dudley warned that the air mass in the Sierra Nevada drains downslope every night and then sloshes upslope during the day and that the region's terrain of ridges and deep canyons can create winds that go in squirrely directions.

Just because we dont have red flag wind conditions across the fire, the wind threat is still there and its all localized, he warned.

The fire  which began Aug. 14, was named after the road where it started and raged through densely forested, craggy areas  was still considered a threat to more than 30,000 homes, businesses and other buildings ranging from cabins to ski resorts.

Residents who were forced to flee South Lake Tahoe earlier this week remained evacuated along with people across the state line in Douglas County, Nevada.

The resort area can easily accommodate 100,000 people on a busy weekend but was eerily empty just before the Labor Day weekend.

The wildfire dealt a major blow to an economy that heavily depends on tourism and was starting to rebound this summer from pandemic shutdowns.

It's a big hit for our local businesses and the workers who rely on a steady income to pay rent and put food on their table, said Devin Middlebrook, mayor pro-tem of South Lake Tahoe.

He said the shutdown will also hurt the city, as it gets most of its revenue to pay for police and fire services, as well as road maintenance, from hotel taxes and sales taxes.

Friday's forecast called for lighter winds but also extremely dry daytime weather, with a warming trend through the weekend as high pressure builds over the West, fire officials said.

More than 15,000 firefighters were battling dozens of California blazes that have destroyed at least 1,500 homes. One blaze, the Dixie Fire, was about 65 miles (105 kilometers) north of the Caldor Fire. It is the second-largest wildfire in state history at about 1,350 square miles (3,496 square kilometers) and is 55% contained.

California has experienced increasingly larger and deadlier wildfires in recent years as climate change has made the West much warmer and drier over the past 30 years. Scientists have said weather will continue to be more extreme and wildfires more frequent, destructive and unpredictable. No deaths have been reported so far this fire season.

___

Nguyen reported from San Francisco. Associated Press writer John Antczak in Los Angeles contributed to this report.
Midland County added 55 new COVID-19 cases and one death between Thursday, Sept. 2, and Friday, Sept. 3.

COVID-19 numbers reported from Sept. 2-3

Midland County: 55 cases and one death were added; pandemic total is 7,414 cases, 730 probable, 100 deaths and three probable deaths.

Bay County: 26 cases and one death were added; pandemic total stands at 11,142 cases, 716 probable, 350 deaths and 15 probable deaths.

Gladwin County: 19 cases were added; pandemic total stands at 2,065 cases, 406 probable, 58 deaths and four probable deaths.

Isabella County: 48 cases were added; pandemic total stands at 5,723 cases, 998 probable, 97 deaths and five probable deaths.

Saginaw County: 84 cases and one death were added; pandemic total stands at 21,448 cases, 1,485 probable, 617 deaths and 21 probable deaths.

The state added 4,448 cases and 20 deaths between Thursday and Friday. Overall, Michigan is at 951,192 cases and 20,367 deaths.

Recovered

According to the Midland County Health Department website, which was updated Aug. 30, 7,160 Midland County individuals have recovered from COVID. The state reported that as of Aug. 27, a total of 882,059 persons have recovered.

Testing

Midland Countys seven-day rolling positivity rate on Sept. 1 was listed at 11.4%, and Gladwin County's was listed at 15.7%. Our 12-county region is listed at 11.8% and Michigan is at 9.1%.

MidMichigan Health statistics

As of Aug. 30, MidMichigan Medical Center in Midland was listed as having a 81% bed occupancy, with 18 COVID patients and two in the ICU. MidMichigan Medical Center in Gladwin was listed as having a 32% bed occupancy, with no COVID patients and none in the ICU.

Both medical centers reported having at least 15-30 days worth of personal protection equipment (N95, surgical masks, gowns, gloves and eye protection) on hand.

Schools

Below is a report provided by Midland Public Schools on the presence of COVID-19 in local schools. The Daily News doesn't have readily available access to reports from Bullock Creek, Meridian or Freeland school systems.

As of Thursday, Sept. 2, MPS reported 104 staff/students are in quarantine, 127 staff/students are close contacts to an individual who was confirmed COVID-19 positive and 52 staff/students are currently tested positive for the virus. Schools with one or more staff/student confirmed positive for COVID-19 as of Thursday include Dow High, Midland High, Jefferson Middle, Northeast Middle, Adams Elementary, Central Park Elementary, Chestnut Hill Elementary, Plymouth Elementary, Siebert Elementary and Woodcrest Elementary.

Midland County vaccinations

The Michigan COVID-19 Vaccine Dashboard lists Midland's completed vaccine rate is 64.6%, while CDC data and the New York Times vaccine tracker show Midland is closer to 50%. The Midland County Health Department refers to the Michigan COVID-19 Vaccine Dashboard data. Currently, the vaccines are not authorized to be given to those under age 12.

Midland County Health Department is hosting a weekly walk-in vaccination clinic from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. every Tuesday on the second floor of the Midland County Services Building, 220 W. Ellsworth St., Midland.

The health department will also host a clinic from 6 to 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 8 at Dow High School.

Future COVID-19 vaccine clinics in Midland County are listed at www.co.midland.mi.us/HealthDepartment/COVIDVaccineInformation.aspx. Those with questions may call 989-832-6380 or email MCDPH@co.midland.mi.us.
LANSING, Mich. (AP)  It was a valuable piece of paper. But now it's worthless.

The Michigan Lottery said no one stepped forward with a winning ticket worth $201,144 in a Fantasy 5 game from 2020.
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (AP)  A biomedical research center in Grand Rapids has agreed to pay $1.1 million to settle a federal investigation that began when authorities in 2020 discovered research samples in the luggage of a Chinese scientist arriving at the Detroit airport.

The government accused the Van Andel Institute of failing to disclose a foreign component of federally sponsored research.

Full disclosure is essential, not only in validating scientific research but also in the intense competition for scientific funding from the federal government, U.S. Attorney Andrew Birge said in a statement released Wednesday.

The National Institutes of Health, or NIH, said grant recipients must disclose and obtain approval if a significant part of a government-funded project is performed outside the U.S., even if foreign researchers don't receive any NIH money.

The scientist who was stopped at the airport was a former Van Andel Institute employee who worked at the Harbin Institute of Technology in China, the government said. He had nine blotter papers and a vial of liquid.

The government alleged that the Van Andel Institute also didn't do enough to investigate earlier samples from China.

The institute said staff members are required to meet federal compliance rules.

We recognize the importance of the transparency and detailed reporting required of federal research funding recipients, said Jana Hall, chief operations officer. We have greatly enhanced our compliance environment since 2019 and will continue to do so."
The following list includes recent reports from the Midland County Sheriffs Office and the Midland Police Department. Compiled by reporter Andrew Mullin.

Monday, Aug. 30

7:24 p.m.  Deputies made contact with a 45-year-old Porter Township male who reported his 40-year-old Midland wife was threatening him, and he wished to pursue charges. Deputies contacted the female, who denied making the threats. A report was completed and forwarded to the Midland County Prosecuting Attorneys Office for review.

6:44 p.m.  Officers responded to a vehicle crash on Ashman Street.

6:07 p.m.  Officers responded to a two-vehicle crash on Princeton Court.

4:24 p.m.  Deputies responded to the Midland County Jail for a 38-year-old combative inmate. The inmate was secured by jail staff, and deputies cleared without incident.

2:30 p.m.  A 20-year-old Jerome Township male was cited for driving an unregistered vehicle, along with no insurance, after a traffic stop in Jerome Township. A report will be forwarded to the prosecutor's office.

2:08 p.m.  Officers responded to a three-vehicle crash in the area of East Ellsworth and Rodd streets.

1:18 p.m.  An animal control deputy received a complaint of a stray dog that had been found by a person who was now refusing to give the dog back to the owner. The deputy contacted the finder and the dog was returned to the owner.

1:05 p.m.  A 43-year-old female reported her 24-year-old son threatened her life. Deputies made contact at the residence. The son denied making any statements. The son agreed not to have further contact with his mother.

9:38 a.m.  Officers responded to an obstruction of justice on Eastlawn Drive.

8:54 a.m.  Deputies assisted Derby Police Department of Connecticut with a fraud investigation at a Jasper Township location. The suspect created a false name that was not associated to the Jasper Township residence.

8:23 a.m.  Officers responded to a two-vehicle crash on West Wackerly Street.

4:00 a.m.  A 41-year-old female reported her 47-year-old husband was yelling at her and calling her names. The male left prior to our arrival and no assault occurred. Deputies stood by while the female packed a bag and left for the night.

12:49 a.m.  Deputies were dispatched to a Lee Township location regarding a vehicle driving reckless. The deputies located the vehicle on a Lee Township roadway and attempted to initiate a traffic stop for a traffic violation. The suspect vehicle failed to stop, and the deputies pursued the vehicle into Porter Township. The pursuit was terminated, and the deputies were later dispatched to a Porter Township location reference the vehicle in the ditch. Deputies located the 21-year-old Edenville Township male driver at the scene, and he was arrested for operating while intoxicated; fleeing and eluding; resisting and obstructing; and warrants out of Midland County. The male was transported and lodged at the Midland County Jail. A report was forwarded to the prosecutor's office for review.
I'm writing today to raise awareness and hopefully encourage citizen engagement on an issue that doesn't always grab headlines like the battle for a new Jeopardy host. It's not flashy, but roads and water infrastructure are the lifeblood of any people, and while we're blessed with an excellent team at the Bay County Road Commission, the staff can only do so much with the funding they are given. We need revenue to build for the future and we need it now. The good news is that the necessary support exists already in the form of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill (BIB) that recently passed the Senate and has a new date for a vote in the House of Representatives on Sept. 27. However, we all know that there are zero guarantees in politics, certainly not when they come from Washington. Momentum is promising, but I and many others find the delay concerning. Our community needs help. Citizens from our region need to reach out to their members of congress as soon as possible and make their voice's heard.

What's at stake, you ask? Let me break down the once-in-a-lifetime community investment we are discussing. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill, which passed the Senate with strong support from both major parties, contains about $7.3 billion in investments over the next five years for Michigan roads and an additional $563 million specifically for Michigan bridge repair and replacement. Most Michiganders would agree that our local roads and bridges could use the new investment. Apart from the considerable investments in transportation, the BIB will make significant investments in water infrastructure to protect against droughts and floods, replace lead lines, and modernize our water systems to protect citizens against lead or harmful chemicals such as PFAS. These landmark investments come with the benefit of creating thousands of middle-class jobs over the next decade.
Director of Content and Operations

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.
Abuja, Nigeria (PANA) - Nigerias Northeast Development Commission (NEDC) has handed over 1,000 units of two-bedroom bungalows to Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in Borno State, an official source said here Friday
Juba, South Sudan (PANA) - South Sudanese authorities have arrested civil society activists and a politician, besides closing down a radio station and an academic think-tank in response to calls for peaceful protests, Amnesty International said on Friday
Photo: (Photo : PHILIPPE LOPEZ/AFP via Getty Images)

Hong Kong actor Tony Leung, 59, is a sought-after superstar in Asia who has avoided playing father roles in his career for a personal reason. However, in the upcoming Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) offering, "Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings," the actor is the villainous dad to the titular superhero character played by Canadian-Chinese actor Simu Liu.

Speaking with GQ, Leung said that he used to reject offers for father roles because he didn't have a good relationship with his dad. He said that he avoided feeling and internalizing how to be a dad in his work since it would remind him of his father's treatment.

The internationally-acclaimed actor admitted that he had a lonely childhood, prompting him to pursue mostly solitary hobbies like reading, visiting museums, or biking by himself. He learned early on that he cannot depend on other people for his happiness, so he grew up with only a few friends and a fragile relationship with his father.

Read Also: Gold Star Father of Marine Killed in Kabul Blast Detail 'Unpleasant' Meeting With Biden

Hiding His Emotions

Leung said in an interview with The Guardian in 2004 that he comes from a broken home. He revealed that his father walked out on his family when Leung was only six years old.

The actor said he used to be a very active and naughty child, but he stopped talking and withdrew from people when his father left. This was in the 1960s when the stigma of a broken family filled kids like him with shame.

Leung said that he became very good at hiding his emotions, which fueled his love for acting because this kind of work allowed him to express his feelings. When the offer to do a Marvel movie landed on his lap, Leung said that the father role greatly appealed to him because he saw a character who didn't know how to love himself.

"I can imagine someone like him who is an underdog, who is a failure of a father," Leung told GQ. "On the one hand, he's a bad father, but on the other, I just see him as someone who loves his family deeply."

Marvel boss Kevin Feige said that they wanted Leung for the role of Wenwu because the studio knows he could play a "well-rounded tragic figure" with superiority. They also love that Leung has never worked in a Hollywood set until "Shang-Chi," so he became this "mythical figure" known for his award-winning movies outside of the U.S.

Feige said that they had high expectations from Leung, and he surpassed all of these expectations. An early review from The Atlantic stated that the latest MCU film is worth watching just for Leung's performance because while he is the villain, the actor also made his character very sympathetic.

What is Shang-Chi About?

Shang-Chi is the first martial arts superhero film in the MCU and has been drawing comparisons, in terms of cultural significance, to the "Black Panther." More than half of the cast and crew have East Asian backgrounds, including the director, Asian-American Destin Daniel Cretton.

At the heart of "Shang-Chi" is a father-son story and a family's recovery from grief. It also revolves around the origins of a future member of the Avengers. The movie is set to premiere in U.S. theaters on September 3 and will also hit Disney+ for streaming in October.

Related Article: Tim McGraw Doesn't Harbor Anger for Famous Dad He Didn't Know Until He Was 11
Photo: (Photo : Damien MEYER / AFP)

An aging professor at the University of Georgia (UGA) has decided to resign his job right in front of his students after one of them ignored the face mask rule. Choosing his health over his career, Irwin Bernstein, 88, who teaches psychology as a retire-rehire professor, said that he did not feel comfortable teaching with an unmasked student.

Bernstein's abrupt resignation appeared on the university's paper, The Red & Black. According to the report, the professor had written a "no mask, no class" policy on the blackboard and explained to the students that he was vulnerable to COVID-19 as he suffers from hypertension and type 2 diabetes.

One student walked into class without a mask, and the professor asked her to take a spare face mask at the administration office. A classmate handed the unnamed student an extra face mask, but she refused to wear the protective covering properly.

Read Also: Fourth Stimulus Check: Residents of These States May Expect Relief Money

With her nose still exposed, the professor prodded the student to fix her mask. She told Bernstein that she had difficulty breathing with a face mask on. But as a dad with four asthmatic children, the professor didn't notice any distressing signs from her. After a few more pleas that were ignored, Bernstein announced in class that he was not going to risk his life, packed up his stuff, and then walked out.

Two COVID Positive Students

Before the incident, Bernstein was informed by the psychology department head that he could not impose a "no mask, no class" policy. However, after learning that he had two students down with the virus, he decided that his class of 25 must mask up.

Bernstein confirmed that he left his job in an email statement, saying that he was no longer willing to risk his life in this pandemic. He has done his part for his country as a former serviceman with the U.S. Air Force.

The professor told People that he has been receiving messages from both sides of the argument. While some agreed with his decision and showed their support, Bernstein also said he had received disturbing emails from students and colleagues who did not like his face mask rule.

UGA has moved the students from Bernstein's class to a new section, and while the school said it "strongly encourages" the students to wear a face mask or get vaccinated, there is still no universal face mask rule in the institution. Instead, Greg Trevor, the university's Associate Vice President for Marketing & Communications, said they would give students incentives to protect themselves.

No Plans to Work Anymore

Meanwhile, Bernstein said that he would spend the rest of his retirement staying at home, and he has no plans to find work. As a retiree, the elderly professor doesn't have any financial needs.

However, he said that he feels bad about how his final day at the university ended. Bernstein noted that COVID had made a public issue too political. He also expressed sadness that younger, healthy people do not realize that the elderly population with comorbidities is at great risk from this deadly virus.

Related Article: Florida ER Doctor Fired for Offering Mask Exemption Letters to Parents of School Kids
Dr. Anton Uselmann has just joined Apple Inc. as a Product Design Engineer  Special Projects, which in this case is likely referring to Project Titan. Uselmann came to Apple from Mercedes where he spent close to four years as a "Development Engineer, Steering System." Previous to that, Uselmann worked at Porsche for close to 6 years as a "Function Developer, Steering Systems." His background adds more intrigue to Apple's secretive project.

This has been a huge year in new major hires for Project Titan. In February, Apple hired Dr. Manfred Harrer. His LinkedIn page finally revealed, that officially, he joined Apple in April 2021, well after the news had broken in February. Then in June, we reported that Apple had hired Ulrich Kranz, a former senior executive at BMW AGs electric car division, to help lead its own vehicle efforts. Apple's latest hire was first reported on by MacRumors today.

In addition to Patently Apple reporting on 109 Project Titan patents to date, a stream of rumors continue to surface with most of them sounding more like wild guesses. There was the wild rumor about Kia was in talks with Apple, with others covering LG and Magna and one pointing to Toyota from Digitimes today. Even Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has taken a few stabs at predicting when the Apple Car would be coming to market.

Apple's patents and their major hires have been the best indicators about the depth this project really has. Apple has certainly created a great cover of rumors of them talking to everyone in the industry so as to confuse and lead journalists off course. We'll have to patiently await an official word from Apple, which is likely still years away. Until then, expect more rumors to feed the frenzy.
In the holy month of Ramadan, president Joe Biden of the United States offered the Taliban Pashtun Muslims of Afghanistan something they were long fighting for -- an unconditional withdrawal of foreign forces from their land.

To add insult to the injury of thousands of Americans who laid down their lives following the twin tower attacks of 2001 and subsequently for fighting the forces of Osama bin Ladens Al-Qaeda, the Biden administration set the painful Sept-11 as the day of completion. Later, it was revised.

The withdrawal proposal was brewing for quite some time in the US foreign policy circles. In fact, the news of having a negotiated settlement with the Talibans had leaked out during the first term of the Obama administration when Mrs. Hillary Clinton was the Secretary of State. Then the Trump administration took it forward, also to win over the White votes. Overcoming the hesitation that it might appear as a surrender to the Taliban, Trump announced the troop withdrawal before the Christmas of 2020. Now, president Biden, the political opponent of Donald Trump, put a stamp of approval on his rivals policies and decided to execute it.

In the global geo-strategic planning of the United States, it might make sense for them to exit Afghanistan where they see threat from Al-Qaeda and Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) diminished, although their rivals like Iran, Russia, Turkey and China would be on the lookout to dig their heels deeper. Pakistan will continue to play a double-faced deceitful role. The US didnt want to stay bogged down in the mountainous terrain fighting the Talibans forever. Joe Bidens national security adviser said Americans would like to prepare for the fight of 2021 rather than of 2001.

Whatever Biden and his security team might say, it was an unconditional retreat already decided before the Afghan government and its security forces collapsed. The Talibans strategy to wait it out succeeded because they knew the watch could be on the US side but the time was on theirs.

In addition to affecting the geo-politics of the region, the US withdrawal will give the Talibans a green light to come back with a vengeance. Their animosity against the minorities like the Taziks, Hajaras, Uzbekis and the Shia Muslims would keep the civil war in Afghanistan going.

The Talibans, with upper hand in man and fire power, will not cooperate in establishing a democratic form of government sharing reasonable power with all other ethnic groups or sects. The Talibans have also never concealed their intentions. As one senior Taliban commander told The Washington Post in the Spring of 2021, This fight is not to share power. This war is for religious purposes in order to bring an Islamic government and implement Islamic law.

Ms Farahnaz Forotan, a former Afghani TV journalist who escaped to the United States for fear of reprisal in her own country wrote in the New York Times around the same time, "The Talibans notions of religion, politics and governance are based on a combination of a very orthodox interpretation of Islam, Shariah law and tribal values. The Emirate they established in Afghanistan in the 1990s, which they are now seeking to establish again, barred women and girls from most jobs and forbade us to continue our education at schools and colleges, turning us into prisoners in our homes."

The Talibans considered it was the sacred duty of their Islamic government to safeguard Muslim society from corruption and moral decadence that was caused by the presence of women in public space. They want to reduce us to bearing children," said Farahnaz.

It didnt need an international relations expert to prophesy that the return of the Talibans in Afghanistan would adversely influence the Hindu-Muslim relations in India, unless both the Hindu and the Muslim communities worked hard to distance themselves from the Taliban and their ideology. They will have to assert and proclaim their Hindustani identity and thwart attempts on the part of the extremist Islamists to hold any influence on them..

Theres a pattern of religious persecution in Afghanistan-Pakistan region. In early 2001, the Taliban almost eliminated the Bamiyans Buddhist population, bombed the gigantic pre-Islamic statues and destroyed their artefacts. A year ago, in the month of March, Islamist suicide bombers armed with guns attacked a Sikh Gurdwara (Har Rai Sahib) in Kabul and killed 25 attendees. Next day, the cremation procession of the Sikhs was also attacked. The Hindus who once constituted a sizable population of Afghanistan had already migrated out of the country en masse. After the Talibans re-occupation, all the Counsel offices and Embassy are closed.

As Afghanistan comes once again under the Taliban control, it should be incumbent on the Islamic and Muslim majority countries to put pressure and keep the Taliban in check. Muslims, non-Muslims and women are all their victims.

India and the Hindus will have genuine reasons to be extra alert as the Talibans and their allied terrorist organizations export terrorists across the border too.

Dr. Binoy Shanker Prasad hails from Darbhanga and currently resides with his family in Dundas, Ontario (Canada). A former UGC teacher fellow (at JNU) in India and Fulbright scholar in the USA, he has taught politics and authored conference papers, articles and chapters on Bihar in previously published books in the United States, India, and Canada.

Dr. Prasad administers a Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/OverseasBihari and has sponsored Aware Citizenship Campaign at a micro-level in his home-town.
Total Petroleum Ghana PLC (Total Ghana) on Friday, 20th August 2021 marked in style the 3rd anniversary of the Troxi Club dubbed Troxi @ 3 a loyalty scheme for commercial drivers since its launch in July 2018.



At the grand event organised in Kumasi, the Top 3 Troxi Club winners traditionally known as TROXI HENE from the 3 main categories under the Troxi scheme i.e., Trotro, Taxi and Motor were rewarded for accumulating the highest volume in fuel purchases with their Troxi card.



Mr. Kofi Nti from Obuasi immerged TROXI HENE for Trotro category. He received an amount of GH300 Troxi card top-up, a 55 SHARP LED TV, a hamper of TotalEnergies lubricants, car care products and a solar lamp along with packages from Star Assurance.



Mr. Moses Gmayidin from Accra who immerged TROXI HENE for Taxi Category took away an amount of GH300 Troxi card top-up, a 4-BURNER GAS COOKER WITH OVEN, a hamper of TotalEnergies lubricants, car care products and a solar lamp along with packages from Star Assurance.



Mr. Raymond Ibrahim Agana from Tamale was TROXI HENE for Motor Category. He took home an amount of GH300 Troxi card top-up, a TABLE-TOP FRIDGE, a hamper of TotalEnergies lubricants, car care products and a solar lamp along with packages from Star Assurance.



Speaking at the event, the Retail Network Manager, Mr. Emmanuel Benning, cited that the solid bond between Total Ghana and its cherished commercial drivers and riders over the years has led to the companys continuous effort to support them with various initiatives such launching the Troxi Club which provides relief through savings on fuel and lubricant maintenance cost.



He explained further that the three-year journey has seen an annual average of 50,000 members grabbing various rewards and gifts in addition to the instant discount on every purchase made by members. Driver Unions whose members are active Troxi Club members have benefitted from the Inter-Union Competition introduced in 2019; some include Asesewa Union Office renovation, canopy construction for Legon Trotro Union, construction of Akosombo Union Office, renovation of the 37-Station Union office amongst several others.



Adding to the above support, the company donated essential COVID-19 protective materials to commercial drivers and riders such as Veronica buckets, Nose masks, hand sanitizers, liquid soaps, tissue towels amongst other items during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Ghana.



To bring value and convenience to the Troxi members as well as the public, Total Ghana partnered with Star Assurance to sell Motor Insurance at the companys service stations to customers with free fuel upon initial registration of the insurance package.



The Card and E-Business Manager, Ernest Asiaw Yaw Duodu revealed that the testimonial from drivers prove that Troxi Club is the number one loyalty scheme that has the interest of commercial drivers and riders at heart.



He stated that drivers with the Troxi loyalty card can purchase products and pay for all other services at any of the companys service station across the country with amazing benefits such as an increase in discount from 2 to 4 pesewas per litre on fuel and 5% lubricant discounts on every purchase. Also, Total Ghana offers drivers with up to



GH 6,000.00 free accident insurance cover along with an additional free Gh 3,150.00 Insurance Cover for COVID-19.



Furthermore, he mentioned that the top 300 drivers receive free fuel each month as an added incentive to do more.



Free fuel is also given based on points recorded every quarter to members who meet their set target per each TROXI CLUB category  i. e. Trotro, Taxi and Motor. An additional end of year THANK YOU bonus of 2 pesewas per litre is given back to all members for every litre purchased in the year.



ABOUT TOTAL PETROLEUM GHANA PLC



Established in 1951, Total Petroleum Ghana PLC (Total Ghana) is part of the global TotalEnergies Group, which is the fourth largest publicly traded integrated international Oil and Gas Company in the world with presence in over 130 countries.



The companys operations in Ghana have spanned over 65 years and has a wide retail of 258 network service stations across the country with activities spanning the Network, Aviation, Bitumen and Mining businesses.



The company provides expertise on engine performance and reduction in fuel consumption with the use of premium quality fuels guaranteed to ensure a smooth ride, lubricants with a new vision of performance in response to the high demand and technological trends, and car care products.



Total Petroleum Ghana PLC is the first Oil Marketing Company with an electronic card payment system in Ghana. The electronic card, TotalEnergies card, continues to enjoy widespread demand from many major companies, individuals as well as commercial drivers in Ghana for its security, flexibility, and the convenience it affords the user.



Total Petroleum Ghana PLC is the first Oil Marketing Company (OMC) to be ISO 9001:2015 certified in Ghana. Its high regard for quality, standards, achievements, and safety has propelled it to the forefront of the Ghanaian Petroleum Industry.



For further information and inquires, Kindly contact us on 0302 611530 / 0302 61155 / 0302 611556

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The written papers of this year's West Africa Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) for the second batch of final-year free senior high school students began smoothly throughout the country yesterday.

The examination began with Oral English with the observance of the COVID-19 safety protocols.



A total of 446,321 final-year SHS students are writing the 2021 WASSCE for school candidates across the country.



Even though the examination began on August 16, 2021 with practicals, yesterday, all the candidates took the paper which began at 8.30a.m.



The Daily Graphic visited some examination centres in Accra yesterday including Accra Academy, Accra High, St Thomas Aquinas and at the centres were Veronica buckets with tissue paper, soap and hand sanitiser.



Candidates, invigilators and supervisors were also seen in face masks.



They are made up of 221,437 males and 224,884 females from 965 public and private second cycle institutions.



The 2021 WASSCE statistics available to the Daily Graphic indicate that the public schools are 651 while the private ones are 314.



A total of 763 supervisors are at the 763 centres to invigilate the examination.



Accra Academy



At Accra Academy, an Assistant Headmaster, Mr Odame Adjei, told the Daily Graphic that a total 1,077 candidates were due to write the examination at the school.



According to him, the examination took place in five groups in order to accommodate all the candidates.



He said the fourth group was yet to record an absentee, adding that, everything had been smooth so far.



Some of the candidates who were part of the third group, said they did not have any problem with the audio for the examination.



Accra High



At the time of the visit to the Accra High School, the second batch of candidates had finished writing the paper.



As they entered the examination hall, they were searched thoroughly by invigilators.



An Assistant Headmistress, Ms Monica Botchway, said 1,146 candidates had registered for the examination.



However, she said there was one absentee.



Two candidates of the school: Prince and Felix, confirmed that the examination had been smooth.



WAEC



The Head of Public Affairs of the West African Examinations Council (WAEC), Mrs Agnes Teye-Cudjoe, said the council had not received any adverse report from any part of the country as far as the examination was concerned.



Reports from across the country show that everything is going on well, she emphasised.









Source: graphiconline.com









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Director-General of the GES, Prof Kwasi Opoku-Amankwa has cautioned candidates writing the West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) against engaging in examination malpractices.



He warned the students and teachers against the practice saying there were consequences that came with such acts.



I encourage the candidates not to indulge in examination malpractices to save themselves from all unforeseen embarrassment, trauma and anxiety and I believe this time round, the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) would be vigilant and ensure a hitch-free examination, he said.



Prof Opoku-Amankwa, in a special message to wish the candidates well in the examination was hopeful that the invigilators, supervisors and all those who had a role to play to ensure it is devoid of cheating would conduct themselves in a manner that would make this years examination hitch-free.



He expressed gratitude to the heads and management of the various schools, the teaching and non-teaching staff, parents and all partners for their respective roles culminating in the commencement of the examination.



Even though the examination began on August 16, 2021, with practicals for a section of the candidates, today, all of them are taking the paper which begins at 8.30 am.



He assured the candidates that whatever that they would encounter in the examination hall would not be different from what they had been taught over the years.



Remedial materials



Ahead of the 2021 WASSCE, the GES distributed over 446,954 remedial materials to final-year senior high school (SHS) students in preparation for the examination.



The remedial materials contained packs of past questions from 2015 to 2020 and a guide on how to answer them as well as the chief examiners reports to help guide the candidates ahead of the WASSCE.



In addition to the booklets, the GES presented 140 digital recordings of lessons in Core Mathematics, English Language, Integrated Science and Social Studies to the schools.



The Core Mathematics has 30 lessons, English Language, 40 lessons and Social Studies, 30 lessons.



Prof. Opoku-Amankwa, said the distribution of the items formed part of the governments intervention to assist second-cycle schools.







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Three teacher unions have called for a smooth conduct of this years West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) for school candidates devoid of malpractices.

According to them, stakeholders including invigilators, supervisors, candidates, parents, teachers and officials of the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) should all collaborate to ensure the sanctity, credibility and integrity of the examination which begins with Oral English throughout the country tomorrow, September 1, 2021.





The General Secretary of the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT), Mr Thomas Musah, the President of the National Association of Graduates Teachers (NAGRAT), Mr Eric Carbonu and the Presdent of the Coalition of Concerned Teachers-Ghana (CCT-Gh), King Awudu Ali, made the call in separate interviews with the Daily Graphic on Monday.



Candidates



A total of 446,321 final-year SHS students are writing the 2021 WASSCE for school candidates across the country.



They are made up of 221,437 males and 224,884 females from 965 public and private second cycle institutions.



The 2021 WASSCE statistics available to the Daily Graphic indicate that the public schools are 651 while the private ones are 314.



The examination, which began with the project work last Monday, will have the written papers taking off on September 1, 2021.



A total of 763 supervisors will be at the 763 centres to invigilate the examination.



GNAT



Mr Musah congratulated the candidates and wished them a successful examination.



We are aware that the going has been tough, arduous and tempestuous, yet as the saying goes  when the going gets tough, the tough keeps going. Again, no lasting glory is won without struggle. That Ghanaian students have withstood all odds and gone through the system shows the zeal and resilience in them, and we congratulate them for these sterling qualities, he said.



He said the time had come for candidates to make themselves, their teachers, parents and all stakeholders proud and expressed the hope that they would live up to the task since they had to safeguard their future by excelling.



NAGRAT



Wishing the candidates well, Mr Carbonu, for his part, said it was the expectation of NAGRAT that this years WASSCE would be conducted in an atmosphere of peace devoid of examination malpractices.



We also take the opportunity to encourage all our teachers administering the examinations to conduct themselves professionally.



We also call on the officials of WAEC to ensure that security is adequately provided for both students and teachers during the examination, he said.



CCT-Gh



Mr Ali, who also wished the candidates the best in the examination, expressed the hope that they would come out with flying colours.



As a yearly ritual, we would caution that they desist from any form of examination malpractice that has the tendency of getting their papers cancelled. But the most important thing is about our teachers. It is the wish of every teacher to see his/her student pass, he said.









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Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia has been highly commended by the new National Lands Commission Chairman Mr. Alex Quaynor for his active efforts in ensuring a digitized operational framework is being put in place for the Lands Commission.



The new Chairman for the Commission, in an address at the swearing-in of a 25-member National Lands Commission board by President Akufo-Addo at the Jubilee House, yesterday, September 1, also expressed his gratitude to Vice President Bawumia for his unrelenting efforts that have led to the realization of the feat and transformation of the Lands Commission.



Your Excellency Mr. President, the commitment of the Vice President of the Republic of Ghana, Dr. Bawumia in bringing the Plan Project to its present stage for implementation must be acknowledged, Mr. Alex Quaynor said.



He maintained that Vice President Bawumia must be commended for his unrelenting efforts in ensuring Ghana is not left out of the global digital age.



The digitization of the Lands Commission will remove the bottlenecks associated with registration of land in Ghana and the process of acquiring a land title certificate.



The goal is to process land title within 30 days. It would also boost the mortgage market in Ghana.

Source: Peacefmonline.com/Ghana









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Egypt says it plans to produce more than one billion doses of China's Sinovac Covid vaccine a year.



Health Minister Hala Zayed told reporters that under a deal with the Chinese firm, a factory in the capital, Cairo, would make more than 200 million doses a year for the local needs.



Another factory will produce five times as many for export, mainly to African countries.



So far, only 7.5 million people in Egypt, out of a population of more than 100 million, have received at least one dose.

Source: BBC









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Minister of Lands and Natural Resources, Samuel Abu Jinapor, on Thursday, September 2, 2021, inaugurated the new Governing Board of GIADEC.



The Minister charged the members to give meaning to President Akufo-Addos vision of a Ghana Beyond Aid by delivering on GIADECs mandate of developing an Integrated Aluminium Industry (IAI) in Ghana.



As much as I recognize that a lot of work is being done in respect to the Presidents vision of developing an Integrated Aluminium Industry in Ghana, we have to begin to move from plans, strategies, proposals or what we intend to do to what we have done in respect to the vision of an IAI he said.



He added that what the Ghanaian people are looking for ultimately is that we have this industry planted here in Ghana.



Mr. Abu Jinapor was, however, full of praise for the Chief Executive Officer of GIADEC, Mr. Michael Ansah for establishing a strong foundation for the takeoff of the IAI, two years since the Corporation began operations.



Chairperson for the newly constituted Board, Dr Tony Oteng Gyasi, on his part, expressed his gratitude and that of the team to the President for the confidence reposed in them.



He pledged the commitment of the Board in steering the affairs of GIADEC towards the realization of a fully operational Integrated Aluminium Industry.



The Board will be chaired by Dr Tony Oteng Gyasi, with members including Mr. Michael Ansah, CEO of GIADEC, Mr. Martin Kwaku Ayisi, Minerals Commission Representative, Mr. Humphrey Ayim Darke, Association of Ghana Industries representative, Hon. George Mireku Duker, Representative from the Ministry of Lands & Natural Resources.



Other Members are Hon. Abena Osei-Asare, Ministry of Finance Representative, Ing. Dr Benjamin Ofosu Adoo, Representative from the Integrated Aluminium Industry, Mr. Jaezi Orleans-Lindsey Esq., Presidents Nominee, Dr Henry Benyah, Presidents Nominee, Nana Adutwumwaa Dokua, Okyenhemaa, Presidents Nominee and Nana Amampene Boateng Twum II (Nyinahinhene), Presidents Nominee.

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Moderate to heavy rains swept across the country from the early hours of yesterday, but with minimal destruction and no casualties.

Kwahu Tafo in the Kwahu East district in the Eastern Region recorded the highest amount of rainfall, 129 millimetres (mm), while the Airport area in Accra recorded the lowest of 26mm, according to figures gathered by the Ghana Meteorological Agency (GMA) as of 2 p.m. yesterday.



Koforidua in the Eastern Region recorded 39.6mm of rainfall, while Bubuashie in Accra (Accra Academy), Navrongo in the Upper East Region and Kpandai in the North East Region recorded 40mm each.



While Accra was spared its perennial flooding after such downpour, as a result of the extensive dredging of storm drains around the city, in the Upper East Region, the downpour left in its trail uprooted trees and collapsed buildings around Zaare, a suburb of the Bolgatanga municipality, Binaba and Zebilla.



Moving storm



According to a meteorologist at the Central Analysis and Forecast Office of the GMA, Mr Joshua Asamoah, the storm emanated from the eastern part of Nigeria and moved across Benin and Togo before reaching Ghana last Wednesday night and persisted for hours until yesterday.



The rainstorm, which the GMA had forecast last Wednesday morning, was heaviest in the Eastern Region, with Kitase and Aburi recording 78mm and 70mm, respectively, the second and the third highest rainfall.



"It was basically the entire country. It started just about midnight, around 11.30 p.m. and 12 midnight in the eastern part of the country, the North East and the Northern regions, parts of the Oti Region and then few areas in the Eastern Region," Mr Asamoah said.



Later, the rain drifted to the western side of the country, watering the Savannah, Upper West, Bono East, Bono and Ahafo regions, and then to the south, felt in the Volta and the Greater Accra regions, he said.



The meteorologist said before noon yesterday, most parts of the country had experienced the rains, and as of the time of filing this report about 3 p.m., it was still raining in the northern part of the country, with cloudy conditions in the south.



Forecast for north



Mr Asamoah said rains were still expected over the northern part of the country, which is in its rainy season, while the southern part of the country was having its minor rainy season.



"The northern parts are still in their rainy season, so it's possible that they are going to get some rains, but it's not going to be every day. Because we are in September, they are gradually exiting from their major rainy season. The rains will subside in September and October before we enter the dry season in December, he explained.



According to the weather analyst, the southern part of the country was now entering its minor rainy season, to be experienced in September, October and November.



So this is like the onset of the rains for southern Ghana, but the intensity of the rains will reduce with latitude as the months go by. For now, the northern parts are getting the heaviest of rainfall," he pointed out.



Upper East Region



The rainstorm, which swept through almost the entire Upper East Region, started about 2 a.m. yesterday and ended after about five hours.



Besides the fallen trees and buildings in the Bolgatanga municipality, Binaba and Zebilla, parts of the region also experienced power outages, with many residents unable to continue their sleep because of the associated scare.



However, power was restored in some parts of the region hours after the storm.



The Upper East Regional Director of the National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO), Mr Jerry Asamani, told the Daily Graphic that the organisation had not completed listing the number of houses affected, as officials were still on the ground to help resolve issues related to the rainstorm.



The NADMO also liaised with the relevant institutions to cut trees that had fallen across roads with chainsaw machines to free traffic.



Tanzui



Some of the residents shared varied sentiments about the storm and its attendant inconvenience.



A grocery shop operator at Tanzui in the Bolgatanga municipality, Mr Baba Yakubu, said he could not sleep when the rainstorm started because he was worried he could lose his shop and all the items in it.



No casualties



The Greater Accra Regional Director of NADMO, Mr Archibald Kobina, told the Daily Graphic that no casualties were recorded after the rains.



He said there was no destruction to property in the region as the flood waters receded shortly after the downpour.



That, he said, was due to the many interventions of the government, such as the construction of drains in areas such as Ablekuma, Mallam and Adentan municipalities and regular desilting.



Dredge Masters



The Operations Manager of Dredge Masters Ltd, Mr Sena Kofi Adiepena, told the Daily Graphic that flooding in Accra had reduced due to efforts by the government to maintain storm drains and desilt rivers and lagoons during both the dry and the rainy seasons.



Under the Accra Sanitary Sewer and Stormwater Drainage Alleviation Project, he said, Dredge Masters had, since 2016, undertaken maintenance dredging works on some selected drains in the capital city that were prone to flooding to keep them at their original design capacity.



He said similar works were being carried out in the Odaw River and the Lower and Upper Korle lagoons to rid them of debris and rubbish, which had built up in them due to human activities.



The rate of siltation or the build up of rubbish and debris in these drains reduces their design capacities, so the volumes of water that they can take also reduce, he said.



Mr Adiepena explained that the continued desilting had significantly maintained the capacity of the drains to contain the volumes that run through them during heavy rains.



Meanwhile, a Daily Graphic team that monitored the flooding situation in some flood-prone areas, such as Odawna, the Graphic Road, Adabraka, Kaneshie and around the Kwame Nkrumah Interchange, did not encounter flooding at those places, in spite of hours of downpour.



The team saw workers in the rain dredging the Odaw River and the South Kaneshie storm drain which flows into the Odaw River.



The Odaw River drain begins at the Caprice bridge at Alajo and runs 10 kilometres to the edge of the Korle Lagoon, from where the river enters the sea.









Source: graphiconline.com









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1. This is a Rejoinder triggered by your publication of 24th August 2021, titled LIGHTHOUSE BROUHAHA, IMANI LAWYER KOFI BENTIL EXPOSED OVER $12 M SETTLEMENT DEAL in which my name was mentioned. I hope that this Rejoinder would set the records straight.



2. I am moved to send this rejoinder to bring clarity to what transpired in a Mediation Committee I put together to secure an out-of-court settlement in the case between the Lighthouse Chapel and the ex-pastors of the Lighthouse Chapel. And, to help clarify some points raised in your publication. Such sensitive issues need to be properly verified for accuracy before being published.



3. It is particularly sad that my efforts at settlement which were conducted in an atmosphere of trust and confidentiality between men of God, had been LEAKED into the public space and erroneously misapplied out of context. Such leakages, negatively impacts on Christian counselling and frustrates persons of goodwill who sacrifice to secure peace in such circumstances.



4. I have a personal relationship with the Managing Partner of Lex Praxis Incorporated, Lawyer Kofi Bentil spanning a period of over 30 years. Indeed, I have been a Pastor to him, and quite close to his family.



5. I called Lawyer Kofi Bentil myself to enquire about this case which was likely to adversely affect the whole body of Christ. He responded and attended to my call.



6. I had a discussion on the issues, and Lawyer Kofi Bentil explained his position (and that of his clients) to me clearly. I called Bishop Dag Heward -Mills and informed him that I had spoken to Lawyer Kofi Bentil (who was then with me). I explained to Bishop Dag Heward -Mills that I called the Lawyer to find ways of seeking an out of court settlement.



7. Bishop Dag Heward -Mills said to me that he didnt know exactly what the ex-Pastors were actually looking for, and so I should find out from them and inform him.



8. I therefore informed Lawyer Kofi Bentil that Bishop Dag Heward-Mills had asked me to mediate and revert. Lawyer Kofi Bentil responded that out of reverence for me and our long association, he would cooperate with the mediation process.



9. I suggested to Bishop Dag Heward - Mills that I would include other concerned Bishops of the Apostolic Fellowship of which Bishop Dag Heward -Mills is a member. Bishop Dag Heward -Mills agreed and so 2 other Bishops (Bishops Tackie Yarboi and Titi Offei) were added to assist me in the process.



10. These Bishops and I engaged Lawyer Kofi Bentil and his clients over almost one (1) month where we sought to understand the issues at stake and give the necessary advice in our bid to settle the matter out of court.



11. I confirm that Lawyer Kofi Bentil and the six ex pastors agreed to settle the matter out of court if Lighthouse Chapel International would sit with them and hear out their grievances and accept to compensate them.



12. At all material times, I had to report to Bishop Dag Heward -Mills and update him on proceedings which I did as part of my duty whilst observing the confidentiality expected of us as senior clergymen, into whose hands the parties had entrusted this process.



13. As part of the settlement process, we insisted that Lawyer Kofi Bentil should give us an idea of the compensations and other reliefs they wanted in figures. Lawyer Kofi Bentil resisted that request and said they had deliberately omitted monetary figures in their claims because it could easily be misconstrued. He further added that this case was not just about money, but about justice and bringing reforms to the lighthouse church.



14. However, Lawyer Bentil later gave us an idea of a possible figure which according to him was modelled around one of the churchs documents. This figure which came up was $12m. This was communicated to Bishop Dag Heward-Mills not as a formal request from the Ex- Pastors, but as a calculation of a possible outcome. Lawyer Kofi Bentil further stated that both parties could meet to agree mutually on some figures if goodwill prevailed at subsequent meetings between the two parties.



15. Subsequently, upon reflection, I personally invited Lawyer Kofi Bentil to my office and asked if he will consider forgetting his calculations for financial settlement and submit to a settlement as between Christians. I offered to arrange so that we the mediating Bishops will see to the restoration of the relationships between the parties so as to stop the animosity between them. Lawyer Kofi Bentil agreed and confirmed that if we could expand the college of mediating Bishops, and invite Lighthouse and their lawyers, he will meet them without precondition for financial settlement to seek an amicable resolution of the matter. This was made known to the mediating Bishops. This new position was communicated to Bishop Dag Heward Mills.



16. Bishop Dag Heward Mills expressed his willingness to meet the ex-pastors as a father to resolve the issues but was not sure how much would be enough to satisfy them if he had to agree to Lawyer Kofi Bentils proposal since they want money so much. Bishop Dag Heward Mills further stated that for this meeting with the ex-pastors and the expanded mediating committee proposed by Lawyer Kofi Bentil to be possible, Lawyer Kofi Bentil had to unilaterally withdraw the case from court. I communicated this to Lawyer Kofi Bentil in the presence of Bishop Tackie Yarboi and he refused the suggestion of Bishop Dag Heward Mills. At this stage, I deemed the mediation process to have broken down.



17. Let me add at this juncture, that at the insistence of Bishop Dag Heward -Mills, I solely attended the meetings held with Lighthouse Chapel International. However, I duly briefed my fellow Bishops before and after these meetings. Let me also state that, at all material times, my meetings at the Lighthouse Chapel International were held with Bishop Dag Heward Mills and at times with a lady Lawyer at the Bishops office. At no time did Rev. Kwesi Dei who narrated the story to your paper ever sit in our meetings.



18. In conclusion,



a. I wish to confirm that I have not communicated any FORMAL FINANCIAL DEMAND from the ex-Pastors of Lighthouse church as published by this newspaper. All matters discussed were part of the settlement process, and no formal deal or conclusion was arrived. I am surprised that such vital information was withheld as your report inconsistently concludes.



b. I also confirm that I have received consistent assurances from Lawyer Kofi Bentil that he and his clients are ready to settle this matter out of court.



c. This is a matter not between just church members but Men of God, and I believe as the Bible says, if the elders of the church are called, this matter can be settled without the court coming in.



d. Unfortunately, the matter is already in court, and the court has suggested that the parties seek an out of court settlement. It is therefore not necessary for the social media war to continue. I think we should redirect our energies towards finding a lasting solution to this matter out of court as the Bible requires and preserve the integrity and sanctity of the Body of Christ. No church or human institution is perfect, but as the Body of Christ, we should not allow such matters to degenerate in this manner.



e. I am calling upon the Body of Christ, to sit with the parties and resolve this matter amicably. I will continue to hold myself ready to be part of any such process. I hope my name and good intention will not be made part of any war of words or accusations.





Rt. Rev Dr Anyani Boadum

Founder/General Overseer, Jesus Generation Ministries.



Cc:

Faith Chambers,

16th Kojo Thompson Avenue,

Adabraka, Accra

Source: Peacefmonline.com/Ghana









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Leading Global ICT Company, Huawei has donated an ultramodern intelligent Video Conferencing Facility to Ghanas Ministry of Communications to facilitate effective remote communication and meetings as well us support its activities and operations to aid the Ministrys digital transformation agenda.



The donation which took place on Friday, August 20, 2021, at the Ministry of Communication Office Complex saw the unveiling of a fully installed video conferencing facility with all the needed accessories to facilitate clear interaction between the ministry staff and stakeholders in any virtual session.



Receiving the items on behalf of the Ministry, Mrs. Ursula Owusu Ekuful (MP), expressed gratitude to Huawei for their continuous support of the sector and Ghana's digitalization drive. We are pleased to have Huawei as the Strategic ICT Partner of the Government of Ghana and as the Ministry at the forefront of Ghanas digital transformation drive, we will continue to engage with Huawei to leverage on their wealth of global expertise to develop our ICT Infrastructure and skills of the citizenry to make Ghana the ICT Hub for the Sub-Region.



Managing Director at Huawei Ghana, Tommy Zhouwei said; As a responsible corporate citizen, Huawei is actively participating in Ghana's digital strategy, promoting the development and prosperity of the digital economy, and contributing to the realization of the vision of a "Ghana Beyond Aid.



Under the guidance of the Ghana Government's development strategy, Huawei continues to work with partners to introduce cutting-edge ICT technologies and actively participate in Ghana's ICT infrastructure development and this donation is a testament to our commitment towards a Smart Ghana. 



Mr. Zhou added that, through the donation, Huawei hopes to support the activities of the Ministry, at the same time aiding the fight against COVID-19 by reducing physical meetings while promoting remote communications and interactions between the Ministry and stakeholders.

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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Following the recent killings at Ejura in the Ejura-Sekyedumase Municipality leading to violent protests, the Commission for Civic Education (NCCE) with support from the Ministry of National Security has engaged various youth groups to mend strained relations and promote peace.



It was to identify security gaps within the densely populated farming community, build bridges and synergies for development.



The sensitisation workshop on violent extremism brought together a number of experts including the judiciary on the consequences of violent activities.



The Director of the NCCE for Ejura-Sekyedumase Municipality, Mr Dujing Jacob Japiong, said the only thing that could stall development was conflict urging the youth including political parties to bury the past and forge ahead.



He said much as the death of Ibrahim Mohammed Kaaka was painful, he cannot be brought back to life.



"It is the reason I urge you all to learn from what has happened and allow the law to work," he told the youth.



Mr Japiong called on them to be law-abiding and live in harmony with each other to make progress.



He urged the youth to refrain from acts that have the tendency to derail the peace that the "good people of Ejura are currently enjoying".



"See yourselves as one people devoid of your religious or political affiliations. Peaceful coexistence is a shared responsibility and all must be involved in the peacebuilding process," he said.



Magistrate



On his part, the Ejura municipal magistrate, His Worship Divine Kwaku Ahaidu who spoke on grievance handling procedures following the Public Order Act 1994 (Act, 491) said people are grieved when they feel marginalised.



"When government officials misuse public funds and are not prosecuted, job opportunities are not fairly distributed, justice is delayed or denied; the youth will be grieved," he said.



The magistrate, therefore, urged the state to be fair in its distribution of national resources and try to carry along the marginalised groups with it to avoid conflicts.



He called on the Police to alienate themselves from political issues and the youth to not allow themselves to be used to wreck the nation.



Mr Ahiadu urged the youth to be willing to inform the security agencies about suspicious activities that could plague the country into chaos.



He called for alternate dispute resolutions to smaller issues since they were less expensive, efficient and promoted cooperation.



Anger



The former Ashanti Regional Director of NCCE, Mr Wilson Raphael Arthur, said people could get angry sometimes but when it gets to the extreme, it could become dangerous for any society.



"They do so to compensate their extreme anger by activities that makes them violent, which constitute violent extremism, creating an atmosphere of terror," he said.



Mr Arthur called for regular engagement with the youth to gauge their mood and take proactive actions.



Nifahene



Nana Nifahene from the Ejura Traditional Council blamed the recent disturbances on the indifference on the intolerance among people of Ejura.



According to him, apart from religious and tribal differences among them, political differences also played a major role.



"Naming ceremonies could even be turned political and could escalate to another level," he said.



The Nifahene called for frequent engagements and negotiations to protect the peace.









Source: graphiconline.com









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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The body of a British journalist killed by armed robbers while on a reporting trip to Ghana is being repatriated on Wednesday.



Syed Taalay Ahmed, 31, from Hartlepool in north-east England worked for the UK-based Muslim Television Ahmadiyaa International network.



Mr Ahmed leaves behind a wife and two children.



The young journalist was filming a documentary when armed robbers ambushed him and his crew, as they travelled on a major highway last week.



According to his employer, the documentary was meant to highlight the charity works conducted by the Ahmadiyya Muslim community.



Ghanaian police say theyve killed two suspects and arrested four others. They also recovered weapons and stolen items from the robbers.



The police said in a statement that the gang was suspected of being behind several other violent attacks.



Ghana has a reputation for being relatively safe, but highway robberies are becoming increasingly common across the country.









Source: Graphiconline.com









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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General Secretary of the largest opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), Johnson Asiedu Nketia, has described as a curtain-raiser the violent clash that happened among members of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) at a funeral ground in Suhum in the Eastern Region last weekend.



According to the Chief Scribe of the NDC, the clash didn't come to him as a surprise as the ruling NPP is reaping the bad seeds they have sown in their members over the years, thinking that they are untouchable and above the laws of the country.



Speaking on Okay FMs 'Ade Akye Abia' Morning Show, General Mosquito as he is popularly called noted that the NPP have trained their members to use only violence to seek political power with the assurance that they can get away with the law.



What happened in Suhum did not come to me as a surprise because we reap whatever we sow. We have done a lot of interviews about the violent nature of the NPP where they have trained their members to use violence to wrestle power and also encourage their people to break the law and get away with it because they are NPP members," he noted.



He held the view that it is not enough for the communication machinery of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) to disassociate the party from the Suhum clash and ask the police to investigate the incident as the party [NPP] is known for going behind the scene to free their members who break the law.



He insisted that the Suhum clash is a party-related issue that was exhibited at the funeral ground; thus, the clash bothers on factions in the party whose members are clashing due to internal power struggle.



He, however, was convinced that nothing good will come out of this Suhum clash as many serious crimes have been committed by party members leading to the death of innocent Ghanaians but nothing good came out after police investigations.



I have said that if you pamper your children to go wayward, they will one day rebel against you. What we are witnessing is the prelims; the main show is yet to start. It is unfolding, it has not started yet," he indicated.



Watch video below





The free-for-all fight among members of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) in the Suhum constituency left two persons injured.



The Partys Lower West Akyem Communications Officer, Bernard Kwesi Amoani, was allegedly slashed with a cutlass on his forehead by the driver of the Suhum MP.



Another victim, Alexander Odei, sustained injuries on his lips during the chaos which ensued on Saturday, August 28.



According to an eyewitness, the violent attacks happened at the funeral grounds of the late father of one of the partys communicators, known as Opare.



It was between supporters of the Member of Parliament, Kwadwo Asante, and a Presidential staffer, Frank Asiedu Bekoe, popularly known as Protozoa.



The followers of Mr Asante allegedly made slanderous statements against Protozoa, who is seeking to contest the MP in the partys next primaries.



One of the followers of the presidential staffer, popularly known as Big Deal, allegedly took a microphone at the funeral grounds to announce and place on record that they have been prevented from greeting the MP.



Infuriated by the turn of events, the supporters of the MP allegedly unleashed attacks on him, leading to the fisticuffs.

Source: Daniel Adu Darko/Peacefmonline.com









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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New Patriotic Party (NPP) Member of Parliament (MP) for Akuapem North Constituency in the Eastern Region, Nana Ama Dokua Asiamah Adjei has described as unfortunate allegations by the minority caucus in parliament that President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo always travel in style.



NDCs North Tongu MP, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, has claimed President Akufo-Addo hired another luxurious aircraft on his recent foreign trips to the UK and Germany are unsubstantiated.



According to the NDC legislator, the trips on the hired jet cost the state 14,000 per hour and a cumulative 3.46 million.



Reacting to the allegation on her Facebook wall, the Deputy Trade and Industry Minister, quoted Oscar Wilde by saying The cynic knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. This quote attributed seem to make sense, even today.



Adding that As we interrogate the cost of a project, and everything including travels, let us sometimes, assess the value and benefits derived or to be derived from same. Not every benefit can be quantified in monetary terms.



She, however, noted that the president recent trips have been more beneficial to the state.



To mention a few, the President's travels have resulted in the many opportunities including the Synohydro deal which part of the amount received is being used to construct interchanges in Tamale and Takoradi as well as the construction and asphalting of inner-city roads. Specifically, the travels and the negotiation skills of the President helped in



1. United States of America's, tech giant, Google chose Ghana in the whole of Africa to establish its AI Research and Development Centre.



2. Similarly, in April 2021, the social media network, Twitter, announced its presence in Africa with the establishment of its continental headquarters in Ghana.



3. In April 2021, Ghana was chosen as the location for Germanys West African Centre for Global Health and Pandemic Prevention. This will be one of the 8 similar centres Germany will be building all the overworld. 



4. Last amongst the many, the President, H.E. Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, embarked on a trip to Germany. While in Germany, the President met with the Pfizer vaccine manufacturers in an attempt to convince them to help Ghana establish a vaccine manufacturing plant in Ghana.



On the same trip, the President used his influence to secure Ghana, 1.5 million doses of the AstraZeneca Vaccines. This is a shot in the arm of government as it focuses on vaccinating about 20 million Ghanaians by the end of the year.



Background



Earlier this year, Okudzeto Ablakwa stirred controversy when he alleged that President Akufo-Addo hired a private jet at the cost of 2.8 million on his travels to France, Belgium and South Africa at the expense of tax-burned Ghanaians.



He filed a question, and Parliament summoned Defence Minister, Dominic Nitiwul, to answer questions on the cost and why Ghanas own presidential jet was not used.



The Minister justified the presidents decision to rent the aircraft, arguing that the capacity of the presidential aircraft can no longer carry the presidents entourage.



He told the House that regarding the cost incurred on the trip, the Finance Minister is best to provide those details.

Not satisfied with this answer, Mr Ablakwa filed another question to summon the Finance Minister to speak to the cost.

Ken Ofori-Atta appeared before Parliament and noted that questions on the cost and travels of the president will be best answered by the National Security Ministry.



Although the nation is yet to be provided with answers regarding the cost, the former Deputy Education Minister is making another allegation.



On Tuesday, the North Tongu lawmaker, in a post on his Facebook page, called for a national policy on presidential travels akin to what pertains in other jurisdictions.



For his recent travels to the UK on the 27th of July, 2021, to attend the Global Education Summit and last weeks state visit to Germany, he blatantly refused to travel on the presidential jet.



Instead, he opted for another top of the range VIP luxury charter jet specifically known to industry players as the Boeing 737-900ER BBJ3, he alleged.



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 General Secretary of the largest opposition National Democratic Congress(NDC), Johnson Asiedu Nketia, has disclosed that he has been cautioning his good friend, President Nana Addo Dankwah Akufo-Addo about his leadership style.



According to him, he has been advising him on some of the bad policies his government has introduced which has kept the public talking about him.



Speaking on Okay FM's 'Ade Akye Abia' programme, he explained that he has so many ways of advising the President on some of his bad policies and leadership style.



"I sometimes even do so at funeral grounds where we both occasionally meet."



"I remember him telling me at a funeral to stop mentioning his name too much, and I also told him that we sometimes get disappointed at some of the things he does," he humorously said.



"President Akufo-Addo and I have been very good friends spanning from our days in parliament as parliamentarians. We members on the other side were his close friends but that does not influence our work as friends."



Recalling his days with him in the same party, Mr Asiedu Nketia noted that they were once both party members of the People's Movement for Freedom and Justice where they both fought against the injustice that was been perpetuated by the then Military government.



"We were also both members of the UNC, so it is his best interest when I advise him as President."



"But in all of this we have been fighting to deepen the democracy we have been enjoying so Akufo-Addo should not think that he can rule against the freedom of speech and injustice we all fought for," he added.



Watch video below





The Peoples Movement for Freedom and Justice (PMFJ) was formed on January 27, 1978 in opposition to plans for a Union Government by the Acheampong Regime.In uniting against military oppression, the leaders came from opposite ends of the political spectrum. They included Komla Gbedema, Gen.(Rtd) Akwasi Afrifa and William Ofori-Atta.The United National Convention (UNC) was a centrist political party in Ghana during the Third Republic (19791981).In the elections held on 18 June 1979 UNC presidential candidate William Ofori Atta won 17.4%[1] of the vote and the party won 13 of 140 seats in the National Assembly

Source: Isaac Kwame Owusu/Peacefmonline/[email protected]









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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Former Governor of the Bank of Ghana (BoG), Dr. Kwabena Duffuor says the country is in crisis.



According to the owner of defunct UniBank, the country is endowed with massive natural resources but has been unable to exploit them to the benefit of the people.



Speaking at a forum organised by the Institute for Financial Services Ghana (IFS), the former Finance Minister, under the erstwhile President Mills government, charged government and all other stakeholders, to ensure a change in the current narrative or future generations will not forgive its leaders.



The narrative should change immediately, otherwise our children will not forgive us. Our natural resources endowment can change this country, if we decide to use them efficiently and honestly, we are not doing that, he stressed.



We cannot disagree that Ghana is a very wealthy nation but Ghanaians are poor, thats where the problem is. Why are we poor but we are sitting on wealth, so what do we do?, he queried.



Dr Kwabena Duffuor asked what the clergy and the media in particular, are doing to change the narrative and put Ghana on the path of prosperity, so that Ghanaians can reap the benefits of the natural resources.



So the clergy, what are you doing? The media, what are you doing? Ghana is in crisis.



Dr. Kwabena Duffuors defunct UniBanks license was revoked by the Bank of Ghana, together with five other banks to form the new consolidated Bank Ghana.



The Bank of Ghana revoked the licenses of a total of nine banks in its bid to clean up the sector.





The BoG cited various reasons including, capital adequacy ratio crisis, poor corporate governance, overexposure to related parties among others.



The shareholders of the bank have been in court challenging the decision of the Bank of Ghana to revoke the licenses and recently petitioned Parliament on the matter.



Parliament set up a committee chaired by First Deputy Speaker, Joseph Osei Wusu to look into the petition and present a report to the House.

Source: myjoyonline.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 throne speech is delivered during the opening of the second session of the 41st Legislature Monday, Nov. 21, 2016 at the Manitoba Legislative Building. The Manitoba government announced today it is recognizing the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation as a day of observance to encourage reflection and meaningful discussions about the impacts of residential schools. THE CANADIAN PRESS/David Lipnowski
Maj.-Gen. Dany Fortin arrives to be processed at the Gatineau Police Station in Gatineau, Que., on Wednesday, Aug. 18, 2021. Maj.-Gen. Dany Fortin's lawyers are fighting a federal attempt to quash their client's lawsuit over his removal as head of Canada's vaccine distribution campaign. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang
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The new four-bedroom house in Charlotte, North Carolina, was Crystal Marie and Eskias McDaniels' personal American dream, the reason they had moved there from pricey Los Angeles.

A lush, long lawn, 2,700 square feet of living space, gleaming kitchen, and a neighborhood pool and playground for their son, Nazret. All for $375,000.

Pre-qualifying for the mortgage was a breeze: They had high credit scores, earned roughly six figures each and had saved more they would need for the down payment.

But two days before they were supposed to sign, in August 2019, the loan officer called Crystal Marie with bad news: The deal wasn't going to close.

"It seemed like it was getting rejected by an algorithm," she said, "and then there was a person who could step in and decide to override that or not."

She was told she didn't qualify because she was a contractor, not a full-time employee  even though her co-workers were contractors, too. And they had mortgages.

Crystal Marie's co-workers are White. She and Eskias are Black.

"I think it would be really naive for someone like myself to not consider that race played a role in the process," she said.

Black mortgage applicants in Charleston denied twice as often as White borrowers Black mortgage applicants in the Charleston area are twice as likely to be denied as White borrowers with similar qualifications, according to a new analysis of federal lending records. But there's a local effort being made to change that.

An investigation by the data-driven journalism nonprofit The Markup  with story and data distributed by The Associated Press  found that lenders in 2019 were more likely to deny home loans to people of color than to White people with similar financial characteristics. That was true even when controlled for newly available financial factors that the mortgage industry has in the past said would explain racial disparities in lending, the analysis found.

Holding 17 different factors steady in a complex statistical analysis of more than 2 million conventional mortgage applications for home purchases reported to the government, it was found that, in comparison to similar white applicants, lenders were:

80 percent more likely to reject Black applicants

70 percent more likely to deny Native American applicants

50 percent more likely to turn down Asian/Pacific Islander applicants

40 percent more likely to reject Latino applicants

These are national rates.

When cities and towns were examined individually, disparities were found in 90 metros spanning every region of the country. Lenders were 150 percent more likely to reject Black applicants in Chicago than similar White applicants there. Lenders were more than 200 percent more likely to reject Latino applicants than White applicants in Waco, Texas, and to reject Asian and Pacific Islander applicants than White ones in Port St. Lucie, Fla. And they were 110 percent more likely to deny Native American applicants in Minneapolis.

"Lenders used to tell us, 'It's because you don't have the lending profiles; the ethno-racial differences would go away if you had them,' " said Jose Loya, assistant professor of urban planning at UCLA who has studied public mortgage data extensively and reviewed The Markup's methodology. "Your work shows that's not true."

The American Bankers Association, The Mortgage Bankers Association, The Community Home Lenders Association and The Credit Union National Association all criticized the analysis.

In written statements, the ABA and MBA dismissed the findings for failing to include credit scores or government loans, which are mortgages guaranteed by the Federal Housing Administration, Department of Veterans Affairs and others.

Government loans have different thresholds for approval, which bring people into the market who wouldn't otherwise qualify, but generally cost buyers more. Even the Federal Reserve and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the agency that releases mortgage data, separate conventional and government loans in their research on lending disparities.

It was impossible to include credit scores in the analysis because the CFPB strips them from the public version of the data  in part due to the mortgage industry's lobbying, citing borrower privacy.

While home lending decisions are officially made by loan officers at each institution, they are largely driven by software, most of it mandated by a pair of quasi-governmental agencies.

Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were founded by the federal government to spur homeownership and now buy about half of all mortgages in America. As a result, they essentially set the rules from the very beginning of the mortgage-approval process.

They require lenders to use a particular credit scoring algorithm, Classic FICO, to determine whether an applicant meets the minimum threshold to be considered for a conventional mortgage in the first place, currently a score of 620.

Launched more than 15 years ago based on data from the 1990s, Classic FICO is widely considered detrimental to people of color because it rewards traditional credit, to which they have less access than White Americans. It doesn't consider, among other things, on-time payments for rent, utilities and cellphone bills  but will lower people's scores if they get behind on those bills and sent to debt collectors. Unlike more recent models, it penalizes people for past medical debt after it's been paid.

Yet Fannie and Freddie have resisted a stream of plaintive requests since 2014 from advocates, the mortgage and housing industries, and Congress to allow a newer model. They did not respond to questions about why.

The approval process also requires a green light by Fannie or Freddie's automated underwriting software. Not even their regulator, the FHFA, knows exactly how they decide, but some of the factors the companies say their programs consider can affect people differently depending on their race or ethnicity, researchers have found.

For instance, traditional banks are less likely than payday loan sellers to place branches in neighborhoods populated mainly by people of color. Payday lenders don't report timely payments, so they can only damage credit.

Gig workers who are people of color are more likely to report those jobs as their primary source of income, rather than a side hustle, than White gig workers. This can make their income seem more risky.

Considering an applicant's assets beyond the down payment, which lenders call "reserves," can cause particular problems for people of color. Largely due to intergenerational wealth and past racist policies, the typical White family in America today has eight times the wealth of a typical Black family, and five times the wealth of a Latino family. White families have larger savings accounts and stock portfolios than people of color.

The president of the trade group representing real estate appraisers recently acknowledged racial bias is prevalent in the industry, which sets property values, and launched new programs to combat bias.

"If the data that you're putting in is based on historical discrimination," said Aracely Panameno, director of Latino affairs for the Center for Responsible Lending, "then you're basically cementing the discrimination at the other end."

In written statements, Fannie said its software analyzes applications "without regard to race" and both Fannie and Freddie said their algorithms are routinely evaluated for compliance with fair lending laws, internally and by the FHFA and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. HUD said it has asked the pair to make changes as a result, but would not disclose the details.

Many large lenders also run applicants through their institutions' own underwriting software. How those programs work is even more of a mystery; they are also proprietary.

Some fair lending advocates have begun to ask whether the value system in mortgage lending should be tweaked.

"As an industry, we need to think about, what are the less discriminatory alternatives, even if they are a valid predictor of risk," said David Sanchez, a former FHFA policy analyst, who currently directs research and development at the nonprofit National Community Stabilization Trust. "Because if we let risk alone govern all of our decisions, we are going to end up in the exact same place we are now when it comes to racial equity in this country."

Crystal Marie and Eskias McDaniels' lender denied race had anything to do with their denial. In an email, loanDepot vice president of communications Lori Wildrick said the company follows the law and expects "fair and equitable treatment" for every applicant.

The couple refused to give up after the loan officer told them the mortgage fell through and enlisted their real estate agent to help. Crystal Marie's employer sent multiple emails vouching for her.

Around 8 p.m. on the night before the original closing date, Crystal Marie got an email from the lender: "You're cleared to close." She still doesn't understand how she got to yes, but she was relieved and elated.

"It means so much to me, as a Black person," said Crystal Marie, whose ancestors were enslaved in neighboring South Carolina, "to own property in a place where not that many generations ago you were property.

"It's meant so much."
More Americans are holding off on making travel plans or booking flights because of the rapidly spreading delta variant.

But based on recent indicators and predictions for the holiday weekend, it's likely Charleston will still be busy with tourists this Labor Day.

The airport in North Charleston is one of the top 10 domestic destinations where fliers are arriving for the end-of-summer holiday, according to an Adobe Digital Economy Index analysis.

Other top U.S. destinations include Honolulu, Denver, Orlando, Las Vegas and Phoenix.

Another report put the state's two most popular tourist spots, Charleston and Myrtle Beach, near the top for the most bookings at short-rentals for the weekend.

The short-term rental tracking site AirDNA said Myrtle Beach ranked fourth in the nation, and Charleston came in at No. 14.

Unlike hotels, South Carolina's short-term rentals saw little drop in demand during 2020 and have continued to post strong numbers. By the end of July, the number of nights sold at the state's vacation rentals was up nearly 23 percent from the same period pre-pandemic.

Most Labor Day travel estimates point to a slowdown for what was a fairly dramatic recovery for tourism early in the summer.

Adobe's analysis found that, in June, U.S. consumers spent only 5 percent less on domestic flights than they had in 2019. In contrast, Americans spent about a third less on domestic flights during the first three weeks of August than they had before COVID-19.

Still, South Carolina hasn't seen a significant slowdown in its tourism metrics  at least not yet.

Gary Edwards, a consultant between the Charleston County Aviation Authority and Explore Charleston, said he's not aware of a letup in bookings at Charleston International.

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"We have had robust traffic every weekend this past summer, and we don't expect that to change this weekend," Edwards said.

In terms of hotel data, there has been "no indication" that the delta variant has hurt demand in Charleston, said Daniel Guttentag, director of the College of Charleston's Office of Tourism Analysis.

Last week, occupancy was roughly the same as it was during the same week in 2019, while the average room rate was 11 percent higher. That continues a trend that's been building for most of the summer, Guttentag said.

Though Labor Day tourist traffic has been hindered at times by the threat of hurricanes, the long weekend typically provides a boost to the industry when severe weather isn't a factor.

"I suspect we'll see a jump," he said.

Meanwhile, coronavirus cases have risen so high in South Carolina that the state now has the highest per capita case rate in the country.

The state also has one of the lower vaccination rates in the U.S. About half of eligible residents aren't fully vaccinated yet.

Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said this week that unvaccinated people should avoid traveling this weekend. During a White House briefing on Aug. 31, she said that even people who have the shots should also take "these risks into their own consideration as they think about traveling."

The delta variant has made fully vaccinated people more wary of flying, the travel site The Points Guy found. About half of vaccinated people surveyed feel less comfortable flying domestically now because of the delta variant compared to earlier this summer.

About the same share of vaccinated respondents also are more concerned about attending indoor events, and 45 percent are worried to dine indoors.

Fewer people  vaccinated or unvaccinated  have concerns about going to state or national parks or beaches, the report found.

South Carolina tourism officials have continued to stress that beaches and outdoor activities have enabled the state's travel industry to recover at a faster rate than most.
COLUMBIA  A Lexington County school district with nearly one-quarter of its students in quarantine will require masks through Halloween.

Lexington Two became the third major school district in the state along with Richland One and Charleston County to impose a mask mandate in defiance of a state law.

The only scenario where we can grossly reduce the number of quarantines is when all the individuals are wearing masks, Lexington Two Superintendent Nicolas Wade told the school board Sept. 2. Im very much concerned about whether or not Im going to be able to keep schools open.

In the two weeks since classes began, Lexington Two has already surpassed its COVID peak from last year of 591 COVID cases. More than 2,000 pupils in the 8,800-student district that covers West Columbia in isolation or quarantine, Wade said.

Thats forced officials to temporarily shift four out of its 15 schools into all-virtual classes.

Wood Elementary has shifted to virtual learning through Sept. 15, joining Cayce Elementary, and Northside and Pine Ridge middle schools, which are online only through Sept. 10.

The board voted 5-2 to require masks hours after the S.C. Supreme Court ruled a city of Columbia ordinance mandating masks at schools within city limits violated state law because at least in part school staff paid with state money would be responsible for enforcement.

The states highest court is expected to rule shortly on a second suit filed by Richland School District Two alleging the ban on school mask mandate violates students right to a free education.

Until that matter is settled, Lexington Two board chairwoman Christina Rucker and board member Tre Bray opposed a districtwide mask mandate, citing legal concerns.

Parent Andrew Lewis told the board that the state high courts Sept. 2 decision should make it clear that local mask mandates arent permitted under the state law.

I've almost always been proud of the district, but I'm pretty ashamed the district is even considering masking our children, he said. "Masking is abuse."

But a majority of trustees said the districts rapidly spreading COVID transmission rates made it impossible to delay action any longer.

We cant wait to decide another day, or three weeks from now, trustee ElizaBeth Branham said. Our parents need to work. Our children need to learn. Our teachers need to and want to be with their children.

Meanwhile in neighboring Lexington One School District, officials announced Sept. 2 that three more of its schools  Carolina Springs, Fort Pond and Gilbert elementary schools  have moved to virtual through Sept. 10, joining Pelion and White Knoll middle schools.

Centerville Elementary was on a remote plan through Sept. 3.

Also Sept. 2, Lexington Three School District officials announced that Batesburg-Leesville High School would be on a all-virtual curriculum through Sept. 10.
GREENVILLE  An Easley chiropractors string of businesses must pay $140 million in judgments after a federal whistleblower lawsuit that alleged the medical companies charged for unnecessary tests in exchange for kickbacks.

The default judgments were awarded in U.S. District Court in South Carolina after the owner of the now-bankrupt businesses, Daniel McCollum, didnt contest the amounts the government sought to recover.

The judgments marks one of the largest False Claims Act judgments in the state, according to the U.S. Attorneys Office for the District of South Carolina, which prosecuted the case.

Businesses McCollum either owned or operated include Oaktree Medical Centre, FirstChoice Healthcare, Labsource, Pain Management Associates of the Carolinas, Pain Management Associates of North Carolina, ProLab and ProCare Counseling Center.

In its complaint filed in May of 2019, the government alleged the pain management clinics and drug testing labs that are all owned or operated by McCollum provided illegal financial incentives to doctors and mid-level providers to induce the referrals of urinary drug tests, a violation of the Stark Law and the Anti-Kickback Statute.

It also alleged the clinics, labs, and substance-abuse counseling center billed Medicare, Medicaid and Tricare for unnecessary urinary drug testing and that the pain management clinics billed false claims for unnecessary or unwarranted steroid injections, opioid prescriptions and lidocaine ointment prescriptions.

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The government alleged that the businesses engaged in improper incentives and billing from at least 2011 through 2018, paying doctors and providers bonuses based directly on the number of referrals of urine tests to the labs McCollum owns.

The governments lawyers intervened in the whistleblower suit and sued the businesses, asking for triple the amount the companies illegally billed for unnecessary tests. Oaktree Medical Center in Easley on its own allegedly billed Medicare, Medicaid and Tricare roughly $31 million for urine tests over the eight-year period.

Patients should not have to question whether their doctor recommended a test or procedure for personal gain, said acting U.S. Attorney Rhett DeHart. For years, these companies used improper financial incentives to generate healthcare provider referrals. This $140 million judgment is a cautionary tale of why health care fraud does not pay.

An attorney for McCollum couldnt immediately be reached for comment Sept. 3.
CLEMSON  Clemson University will extend its original three-week mask mandate through Oct. 8.

The university announced on Sept. 3 it will continue to require face coverings in all statewide classrooms, instructional facilities, offices, labs, and residence and dining halls.

The university's mask mandate was put in place after the South Carolina Supreme Court ruled on Aug. 17 that one of the state budget provisos did not forbid a universal mask mandate for public universities and colleges.

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Since Aug. 8  10 days before Clemson started the fall 2021 semester on Aug. 18  there have been 924 positive cases reported on the university's COVID-19 dashboard, about a 1 percent positivity rate. The university attributes this to its "rigorous testing strategy combined with its current mask mandate ... having the desired positive effect," as stated in its announcement.

The university requires all its students to be tested for COVID-19 weekly and its employees tested biweekly, regardless of vaccination status. Almost 85 percent of the faculty, 57 percent of the staff and 52 percent of the student body have voluntarily reported being vaccinated.

The restrictions on mask mandates remain in place for public elementary and secondary schools, however, and the state Supreme Court on Sept. 2 rejected Columbia's ordinance requiring masks in schools.
About a dozen South Carolina National Guardsmen will bolster the staffs of emergency rooms, temporary respiratory clinics and antibody clinics of Tidelands Health hospitals as they deal with a surging COVID-19 case load, officials announced on Sept. 3.

In the past few weeks, both Tidelands Waccamaw Community Hospital and Tidelands Georgetown Memorial Hospital have been operating at more than 100 percent capacity, and the two ERs are inundated with patients experiencing severe COVID-19 symptoms.

With no beds to spare, emergency departments are serving as holding areas for patients who've been admitted but are unable to move to an inpatient floor.

At one point this week, the Tidelands Waccamaw emergency department was holding 22 admitted patients, including nine critical-care patients, because there were no beds available.

Personnel, stretchers and medical equipment such as crash carts have been relocated from other areas of the hospitals to support the ERs. And Tidelands Health has opened three temporary respiratory clinics to provide care for patients with non-emergency respiratory symptoms.

We again welcome the skilled and dedicated members of the National Guard to work alongside our team during this latest wave of COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations, said Ashley Capps, vice president of nursing and operations at Tidelands Health in a recent press release. We are extremely grateful for their partnership and willingness to help serve our community as we experience tremendous demand in our ERs and across our health system.

The Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston says it, too, is about to reach full capacity, but is confident they can continue providing quality care for patients with COVID-19 and those with a wide range of illnesses.

MUSC Charleston is caring for 62 patients with active COVID, including 21 in the intensive care unit plus an additional 24 patients in ICU with COVID-related complications.

"Many of our COVID patients have long hospital stays, especially during this wave of the pandemic," said David Zaas, pulmonary physician and chief clinical officer for MUSC Health. "We're seeing younger patients impacted that are staying in the hospital longer."

Zaas said the vast majority of COVID patients at MUSC and hospitals across the state are unvaccinated and those who are vaccinated are markedly less likely to be in the hospital.

"The way to help our hospitals, is to help slow the surge," said Zaas, "and by practicing all of the behaviors that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recommended and that our MUSC team is advocating for."

MUSC is caring for more than 800 patients.

Statewide numbers

New cases reported: 4,685 confirmed, 1,347 probable

Total cases in S.C.: 608,946 confirmed, 143,432 probable.

Percent positive: 12.6 percent.

New deaths reported: 37 confirmed, 7 probable.

Total deaths in S.C.: 9,434 confirmed, 1,347 probable.

Percent of ICU beds filled (with COVID-19 and other patients): 82.75 percent.

S.C. residents vaccinated

In South Carolina, 57.1 percent of people who are eligible for the vaccine have received one shot, and 48.1 percent of eligible residents are considered fully vaccinated.

Hardest-hit areas

Greenville (491), Lexington (380) and Anderson (374) counties saw the highest totals of newly confirmed cases.

What about tri-county?

Charleston County had 251 new cases on Sept. 3, while Dorchester had 241 and Berkeley had 171.

Deaths

DHEC releases county-level data regarding COVID-19 deaths and the ages of those who have died from the virus on Tuesdays. According to the data published Aug. 31, at least 221 people in South Carolina died from the virus Aug. 22-28, and their ages ranged from young adult (18-34) to elderly (65 and older). Lexington County recorded 25 COVID deaths that week  the highest number in the state. Health officials have reported that the vast majority of patients who are dying from the coronavirus at this stage of the pandemic are unvaccinated.

Hospitalizations

Of the 2,414 COVID-19 patients hospitalized as of Sept. 3, 543 were in the ICU and 371 were using ventilators.

Student, teacher and faculty cases

DHEC's school dashboard shows, through Sept. 1, there have been 4,474 probable and confirmed cases among students and employees in the state's public and charter schools during the current school year.

Variants of concern

DHEC sequences a small, random sample of positive COVID-19 cases each week to determine which variants of concern (alpha, beta, gamma and delta) are circulating in the state. According to data published by the agency that is up to date through Sept 1, 2,313 samples have been identified as variants of concern over the course of the pandemic. More than 1,066 of those samples have been identified as the delta variant, which health officials say is now the dominant strain in South Carolina.

What do experts say?

"Breakthrough infections are significantly less common than those that are in the unvaccinated population," said Zaas. "While not perfect, the vaccine saves lives and is achieving its goal. Getting vaccinated has never been more important."

Go to vaxlocator.dhec.sc.gov to find a clinic near you.

DHEC will not release data relating to COVID-19 in South Carolina for Labor Day. However, The Post and Courier will report all numbers for the three-day weekend online on Sept. 7 and in print on Sept. 8.
America's 20-year presence in Afghanistan ended with Charleston-based C-17 commanders organizing and then flying out the last soldiers from Hamid Karzai International Airport.

Personnel and aircraft from Joint Base Charleston were used for the last flights out of the region, spokeswoman Diana Cossaboom told The Post and Courier on Sept. 3.

"We can confirm our 437th Airlift Wing personnel not only had roles in the last five flights out of Kabul, but each of the aircraft commanders for those five flights were 437th Airlift Wing personnel," she said.

Three of the last five aircraft out of Kabul were 437th Airlift Wing aircraft, she said, referring to the wing's Charleston home-basing.

A night-vision image of Army Maj. Gen. Chris Donahue showed him preparing to leave the airport as the final soldier out of Afghanistan on Aug. 30. The green-tinted picture went viral as a symbol of the end of America's involvement. Cossaboom said it's not clear if a Charleston C-17 carried Donahue away but there is a high possibility it was.

Lt. Col. Alex Pelbath, mission commander from Charleston's 437th Airlift Wing, told CNN about his experience watching Afghan and American personnel exit the region after the Taliban retook the country.

Those last flights were especially historic, he said.

"I had the entire picture of the C-17 force in front of me," Pelbath told the network, referring to the view he had inside the last military plane to leave Afghanistan.

"For sure an image that I will never forget. And I'd say that the moment that I had looking at that was 'I can't believe it's really here,'" he added.

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Crews at Joint Base Charleston have helped transport Army soldiers and vehicles into Afghanistan to assist with evacuations following the Taliban takeover in August.

While the base has been tight-lipped about many of their operations, photos and news releases from the Department of Defense have helped paint a picture of their involvement.

On Aug. 23, a C-17 flown by members of the 701st Airlift Squadron out of Charleston was waiting to land after departing Afghanistan when Capt. Dennis Conner heard from a crew member they were concerned about a woman in the lavatory who was about to have a baby, a news release from the base said.

Tech. Sgt. Leah Schmidt, a 701st Airlift Squadron loadmaster, and Capt. Leslie Green, a 375th Aeromedical Evacuation Squadron flight nurse, delivered a baby girl minutes before the aircraft landed, the base said.

Images dated Aug. 14 and released by the Department of Defense show soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg in North Carolina preparing to board buses to head to Joint Base Charleston.

Later that day, paratroopers made it onto the runway at Charleston Air Force Base and began loading up in C-17s to fly out to Hamid Karzai International Airport.

Images dated Aug. 16 show airmen from the 437th Aerial Port Squadron directing vehicles into the back of C-17s in Charleston.

More details from Charleston's involvement in Afghanistan are expected in the coming weeks. Crews are still working to get other evacuees out of the region.

"Our airmen are still out there working around the clock to bring evacuees to the United States," Cossaboom said.
Charleston County has become the only South Carolina county to mandate COVID-19 vaccinations for all employees, following the city of North Charleston's imposition of a similar policy a day prior.

County employees will be required to be fully vaccinated by Oct. 24 or risk being fired. Most of the covered employees, nearly 80 percent, are already vaccinated according to county officials.

Before approving the policy Sept. 2, council heard from health experts, debated the issue of mandating a medical treatment and discussed the potential impact on county staffing.

Republican council members Jenny Honeycutt and Dickie Schweers voted against the mandate, while Republican Herb Sass and the five Democrats voted in favor. Republican councilman Brantley Moody was absent, but his "no" vote wouldn't have changed the 6-2 outcome.

In a message read to the council, Moody, who is White, said the policy discriminates against Black employees because they are disproportionately vaccine hesitant, prompting rebuttals from most of the Black members of council.

Council Chairman Teddie Pryor, who is Black, said it was "appalling and misleading" to suggest Black employees were being targeted in some way.

Honeycutt raised concerns about the county being sued over "forcing someone to take a medical treatment they dont want to take or risk losing their job." She repeatedly cited statistics about how few county residents have died from COVID-19  572 in a county of more than 400,000.

Pryor pushed for the mandate and mentioned that one of his daughters, a nurse, has been working 12-hour shifts.

Youve got teachers resigning," he said. "You have nurses who are overworked."

Schweers said he is "personally a huge supporter of vaccination" but was uncomfortable making them mandatory.

Charleston County is the seventh largest employer in the county, with 2,484 full and part-time employees, but the mandate would really just apply to fewer than 300. Those are the employees who are both unvaccinated and report to the county administrator.

Employees who answer to elected officials  the county sheriff, treasurer, auditor, clerk of court and recorder of deeds  aren't covered by the mandate.

County Council's vote followed a presentation from Dr. Jane Kelly, the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control assistant state epidemiologist.

Weve not seen as many new infections since January, the peak of the outbreak," Kelly said.

South Carolina has one of the nation's highest rates of COVID-19 cases in relation to the population, and the case counts have skyrocketed. In mid-June the state reported 1,071 cases but during last week of August: 34,666, she said.

The percentage of people ages 31 to 40 hospitalized for the virus increased by 2,300 percent during that time, Kelly said. And 38 children were in hospitals with the virus, statewide, on Sept. 2.

Councilman Henry Darby, a high school principal, initially said he would not be comfortable voting on the issue, and cited his knowledge of the infamous Tuskegee experiments, in which from 1932 to 1972 hundreds of Black men were intentionally left untreated for syphilis.

When it was time to vote, however, he voted "yes" and said he had an obligation to children.

Honeycutt said the 572 deaths from the virus so far in Charleston County represents just 0.13 percent of the county's population. Kelly responded that people who don't get the virus don't die, so it's more important to look at the death rate for people who get the virus.

As a government we have a moral imperative to protect those who come inside our walls," said Councilman Kylon Middleton, a Black minister who said he was initially resistant to getting vaccinated but did so. I cannot be a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church if I am not vaccinated."

On Sept. 1 North Charleston became the first city in South Carolina to mandate that all of its employees must be fully vaccinated. The city of Charleston will likely follow, Pryor said.

I am not one of the people who likes to create controls, North Charleston Mayor Keith Summey said in enacting his order. But unlike anything weve had before, this is a different time."

North Charleston's mandate applies to about 1,100 city employees, including Pryor.

The Medical University of South Carolina, Roper St. Francis and the Ralph H. Johnson VA Medical Center have mandated vaccines for workers. The Department of Defense announced plans to do the same, and some private businesses, such as Delta Airlines, have announced they will charge employees more for health insurance if they are unvaccinated.

Schweers asked if Charleston County could similarly impose a financial penalty for unvaccinated employees, rather than threatening to fire them. The county administrator said that's not possible under the county's health plan.

In August, Charleston County Sheriff Kristin Graziano started offering inmates $50 to get fully vaccinated to help curb a rise in COVID-19 cases at the Charleston County jail. Sheriff's Department spokesman Capt. Roger Antonio said the department "will likely follow suit" if the county imposed a vaccine mandate on employees who don't report to the sheriff.

Timothy Winslow, executive director of the South Carolina Association of Counties, said the association hasn't provided any advice or guidance about mandatory vaccine policies.

I would think it would increase the vaccine rate in Charleston County, just by them doing that," he said. On the other hand, I have counties that would say they dont think they should force people to do things they dont want to do."

Next week, Middleton has asked that county council revisit the idea of a mask mandate.
A Coast Guard crew from Charleston rescued two crewmen from a burning and sinking commercial fishing boat some 9 miles off Bulls Bay overnight.

The two men on the boat were plucked to safety early Sept. 3 and brought ashore, where EMTs treated them at the Coast Guard station, according to a Coast Guard news release.

The crisis began just after 4 a.m. when the captain of the 45-foot Strickly Business called for help on marine radio channel 16. That's the national distress frequency for mariners. The captain reported the fishing vessel was on fire and taking on water. He then turned on the boat's emergency radio beacon and kept in contact with the Coast Guard using his satellite phone after the radio went down.

After reaching the fishing boat, the rescue crew transported the men to the Coast Guard station.

Senior Chief Petty Officer Bradley Derflinger, command center supervisor for Sector Charleston, said the captain's quick use of the emergency radio and the radio beacon "directly impacted the outcome of this case and we were able to know where they were located."

"Everyone involved is extremely thankful a worst-case scenario turned out to be a successful mission thanks to the mariners being well prepared and the quick response of our boat crew from Station Charleston," he said in a prepared release.

He encouraged all mariners to outfit their vessels with proper safety and communication equipment. "It could very well save you or a family member's life," he said.
Police arrested a man and identified a victim in a homicide the night of Aug. 31 in downtown Charleston.

Anthony Holmes, 27, of North Charleston died after being shot, Charleston police Chief Luther Reynolds said at a Sept. 2 news conference.

Authorities arrested Marquise Lawrence, 23, a day after the shooting, charging him with murder, attempted murder and domestic violence in the first degree.

I think its important that we know that were making arrests, that were seeking justice for these families, Reynolds said.

Officers were dispatched about 10 p.m. Aug. 31 to North Romney Street at Bridgeview Village apartments for reports of shots fired, according to an incident report. A domestic dispute had broken out at the Bridgeview Village apartment complex between Lawrence and a woman, Reynolds said.

Shots were fired during the dispute and at least one bullet struck Holmes. A second person was also hit with gunfire, but that wound was not life-threatening. That victim, who was not identified, was treated briefly at a hospital, the chief said.

Lawrence had been out of jail on bail at the time of the Aug. 31 homicide, police said. He was accused of shooting a person in April 2020, also at Bridgeview Village, leading to a charge of assault and battery of a high and aggravated nature.
The fight over requiring face masks in South Carolina schools reached the state's highest court this week.

On Tuesday, the S.C. Supreme Court heard two cases related to masking rules that challenged a state budget provision that prohibits schools from using state-appropriated funds to require masks.

Public health officials have strongly encouraged the use of masks, citing rapidly-rising COVID cases among school-age South Carolinians.

But justices emphasized during hearings this week that they wouldn't be weighing in on the merits of mask, only the letter of the law.

Just a couple days after the court heard the cases, a decision was issued Thursday afternoon, striking down Columbia's ordinance requiring masks.

Post and Courier Columbia reporter Stephen Fastenau breaks down what happened at the hearings and what this decisions means for S.C. schools.

Listen now below or on your favorite podcast app.

Understand SC is a weekly podcast from The Post and Courier that draws from the reporting resources and knowledge of our newsroom to help you better understand South Carolina.

This episode was hosted and edited by Emily Williams.

How to listen:

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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.
Editorials represent the institutional view of the newspaper. They are written and edited by the editorial staff, which operates separately from the news department. Editorial writers are not involved in newsroom operations.
I was saddened when I read Tuesdays article about the fiasco at Daufuskie Islands Melrose Resort.

The project sounded so pristine and enchanting at its inception, but the rest of the story is such a disaster.

Developer James J.T. Bramlette has pleaded guilty in the fraud case and faces up to 25 years in prison on federal charges in his multimillion-dollar scheme.

As we await his sentencing, I was reminded of SCANA executives involved in the failed $9 billion decade-long expansion of the V.C. Summer nuclear power plant in Fairfield County.

It seems these executives will likely get a small slap on the wrist compared to other fraud cases.

These executives should remain in prison as long as any customer is paying higher electric bills because of their misdeeds.

The disparity in sentencing is beyond comprehension. Do other people see this imbalance?

France has 57 nuclear reactors that produce 95% of the nations electricity. It is carbonless and safe.

This corruption scandal might well have been the death knell for the U.S. nuclear industry.

EDWARD HERNANDEZ

Lakeview Drive

Summerville

Use common sense

Thank you, columnist Brian Hicks, for calling out the anti-mask, anti-vaccine, anti-common sense contingent in simple terms anybody can understand.

Regarding the resistance to mask mandates in schools, he asks the obvious question: How many sick kids and dead teachers are an acceptable sacrifice for our convenience?

There is no individual right that allows us to endanger others. Due to the selfish resistance of some, we are all, children and adults, still at greater risk of contracting a deadly disease.

In the face of all the scientific evidence, rising number of deaths and hospitalizations, and reports from health professionals, how can anyone justify not being vaccinated?

They should read Mr. Hicks Aug. 25 column.

If that doesnt change their minds, then they should please stay home or wear masks while the rest of us cooperate to eradicate COVID-19. Its only common sense.

CAROL HECKROTTE

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Rice Field Lane

Mount Pleasant

Landlords should apply

Im concerned rental relief isnt getting to those who need it most.

According to the S.C. Housing website, The S.C. Stay Plus program is a rental and utility assistance program, funded by the U.S. Department of Treasury, that launched in May 2021 to assist those who are experiencing financial hardships and housing challenges as a result of the COVID-19.

But the application process requires access to the internet, ability to upload documentation, receiving a case or ID number and then having the landlord submit documentation for the tenant.

Many who are behind in their rent have limited access to or knowledge about technology, so why not have the landlords submit all documentation to receive the rental assistance? After all, it is not tenants who receives the check for back rent owed, it is the landlords.

This system must be simplified. According to a June Post and Courier story, the S.C. State Housing Finance and Development Authority received $271.8 million for rent and utility assistance in 39 counties. Charleston and Berkeley counties are among seven large enough to receive federal funds directly.

Charleston County started taking applications April 12 for $12.4 million in rent and utility assistance.

If we put the onus on the landlords to get the back rent they are obviously and rightfully due, this would reduce the number of evictions.

PRISCILLA SHUMWAY

Wappoo Hall Road

Charleston

A wacky idea

Why dont we make it mandatory that candidates seeking political office show proof they have worked in a real job for at least five years?

This would prove their work has been evaluated and found satisfactory and they were considered honest and competent.

While were at it, lets make sure that they hold office for no more than two terms and preferably are not lawyers. We dont need more career politicians.

CHATLAND WHITMORE

Creek Side Way

Charleston
From left, former Summerville Police Chief Jon Rogers, beside current Chief Doug Wright and Executive Director of the Coastal Crisis Chaplaincy, Rich Robinson, announce the launch of the Dignity Project at Hutchinson Square in September 2020.
A POST-NATIVE PERSPECTIVE

It is hard to believe these days that the nation has other issues as pressing, if not more so, as the economy, the right of agency over your b Read more
Amid the disaster of our withdrawal from Afghanistan, there were some stories that ended happily. This is one of them.

One of my colleagues and his sister are friends with an Afghan family, a husband, wife and three young children. The father translated for our forces in that country. The family came to America some time ago as legal permanent residents, and the father has a Minnesota drivers license. Several months ago, they learned that a grandmother, who lived in Kabul, was dying. Well before the Afghan collapse, the entire family booked flights to and from Kabul so that they could say goodbye to her.

The time came for them to return, and my friends sister met their flight at the Twin Cities airport. But they were not on it. As I understand it, they were told that, notwithstanding that they all had tickets, only one family member would be allowed on the aircraft. This was several weeks before the collapse of the Afghan military and government, but they were unable to get another flight, and when Kabul fell they were stuck there.

My colleague communicated with individuals on the ground in Kabul and more than once, arrangements were made for this family to go to a safe location where they could be picked up by Marines and brought to the airport. But for some reason, these arrangements misfired. Communications were, to put it mildly, difficult.

My colleague finally came to me and asked whether Senator Tom Cotton might be able to help. He had seen news to the effect that Cottons office had been able to help some people get out of Kabul. I said I would contact Senator Cotton. I did so, and one of his staffers called my colleague in a matter of minutes. He conveyed the necessary information including, I believe, photographs of the family.

I dont know who did what or how it came about, but the next thing I learned, directly from Tom Cotton, was that the family was safe in Qatar. Shortly thereafter, my colleague showed me a picture they had texted him of themselves at the Qatar airport.

So some stories ended happily. Sadly, as a result of the grotesque ineptitude of the Biden administration, far too many did not. Our thanks to Senator Cotton and all those who contributed to saving this deserving family.
There is little doubt that China was already giddy that they get to deal with U.S. climate envoy John Kerry, but having watched Bidens weakness in Afghanistan, they arent even being coy about it any more. They are openly telling Kerry that the U.S. wont get any Chinese cooperation on climate change unless the U.S. backs off pressuring China on other issues, such as trade, human rights, etc. The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday:

China Warns Kerry Climate Cooperation Depends on Overall Ties HONG KONGSenior Chinese officials told U.S. climate envoy John Kerry that continued U.S. hostility on a range of issues could jeopardize cooperation on fighting climate change, though Mr. Kerry said that working-level talks were productive in the run-up to a November climate summit. Mr. Kerry, wrapping up a two-day visit to the northern port city of Tianjin, was warned repeatedly by his hosts that climate cooperation couldnt be kept separate from worsening geopolitical ties between the two countries.
Ive been arguing for a while that private liberal arts colleges often exhibit much more extreme wokism that public universities, so we shouldnt be surprised that Princeton is giving Mount Royal University a run for its money.

On Wednesday, the New York Post ran an article from two Princeton faculty, John Londregan of the politics and international affairs department, and Sergiu Klainerman of mathematics, on the insidious racial slurs of Princetons office of diversity, equity, and inclusion that are being inflicted on arriving first-year students this fall:

The Diversity, Equity and Inclusion office of Princeton University has a message for incoming students: It wants them to participate in tearing down the very institution they have worked so hard to attend. And to drive this message home, the office is more than happy to tear down those who dissent from its official orthodoxy. As members of the class of 2025 arrive on campus, they receive a mandatory injection not of a vaccine against COVID, but of indoctrination. An official video freshmen are required to watch presents an utterly one-sided and negative picture of Princetons history. The video and the accompanying Web site are expensively produced. Yet slick production values do nothing to offset the tendentious slant. . . The video/site includes a two-minute discourse in which classics professor Dan-el Padilla Peralta characterizes free speech as a privilege, rather than a right, and in which he disparages the speech of others with whom he disagrees as masculine-ized bravado. Padilla Peralta goes on to extol free speech and intellectual discourse that is [sic] flexed to one specific aim, and that aim is the promotion of social justice, and an anti-racist social justice at that. Worst, the site singles out classics professor Joshua Katz in a manner designed to stigmatize him as racist, based on his criticism last summer of a defunct student group calling itself the Black Justice League in an article in Quillette. While Katz had strong words for the BJL, the Web site fails to mention that he was decrying the harassment the BJL had directed against students, especially African-American students, who disagreed with its radical aims and tactics.

Theres more; take it in at your leisure. And the usual reminder from David Burge:

PAUL ADDS: You can watch the indoctrination video Steve refers to here.
Kamala Harris has blood on her hands. Not in connection with AfghanistanI doubt that she has had any influence on events therebut as a result of her support for violent crime in Minnesota. In the wake of the George Floyd riots, Harris contributed to the Minnesota Freedom Fund and encouraged others to do so as well. She did so on the pretext that the Freedom Fund was bailing out demonstrators arrested in Minnesota, but of course no one was arrested for demonstrating. Those bailed out were arsonists, aggravated assaulters and other serious criminals.

Moreover, the Minnesota Freedom Fund didnt restrict itself to bailing out those arrested in the summer of 2020. Rather, its efforts to inflict violent crime on Minnesotans have continued to the present day. Last Sunday, an innocent man was murdered by a criminal who had been charged with domestic assault but was sprung by Kamala Harriss Minnesota Freedom Fund just days earlier:

.

Oh, George Howard had been in jail on a domestic assault charge since Aug. 5 and the @MNFreedomFund bailed him out 18 days before he shot and killed Luis Martinez Ortiz at Dowling and I94 last Sunday. Ya picked another winner, MFF, bravo. Thanks so much.

.

. pic.twitter.com/wwErKyLagm  CrimeWatchMpls (@CrimeWatchMpls) September 3, 2021



Kamala Harris exemplifies the evils of contemporary liberalism very well. The problem isnt that liberalisms solutions have failed to achieve their purported goals; rather, the reality is that liberals are on the other side.
Ammo Grrrll provides some useful self-help advice in I AM FINE. She writes:

One of our favorite movies is the 1987 Billy Crystal and Danny DeVito comedy, Throw Momma From the Train. The Crystal character is a frustrated novelist who teaches a Creative Writing class which attracts a variety of sad sacks including Danny DeVitos character, Owen. Owen is a pathetic loser who lives with a mother who would make Tony Sopranos toxic mother look like Mother Teresa. (To use two very current references)

For his part, the Crystal character has issues with his wretched ex-wife. Inspired by a Hitchcock movie, the plot depicts two unlikely conspirators coming up with the idea of killing each others albatross. In one of the failed murder attempts, Owen comes home thinking Crystal has succeeded and the deed is done. Alas, not only is it not done, but there are unseen policemen in his house. He sees his undead mother and screams, Momma! Youre ALIVE!

When he notices the cop, he covers his tracks seamlessly by saying: Old people! You have to reassure them.

I mention this line  which made us laugh long before we reached an age when we ourselves could appreciate occasional proof of life  because I recently bought a coffee mug that says: I AM FINE. To reassure me. Because in the current climate, I dont always feel FINE.

The first step in feeling fine is to realize just how good we have it. I live in the greatest country on Gods green earth, though it seems to be perched on a precipice currently. I have my health, at least maintained at a level that is normal for a short, chubby woman of even Later Late Middle Age. I can see; I can hear; I can and do walk about 10-12,000 steps a day. Although some days it is closer to the 10 than the 12,000. Hahaha. I kid.

I rarely fall asleep while talking with foreign dignitaries, or even dinner guests, except occasionally, a short nap between courses. Although I do enjoy ice cream, I can still speak extemporaneously without dead-staring into space for several awkward minutes. I laugh easily and often. I have a wonderful, loving husband and a large network of smart, funny, kind, valued friends. How lucky is all that???

When we look around us at the poverty, disease, and lack of opportunity for the mass of suffering humanity, we should be ashamed at how many things that throw us off course are truly First World Problems.

I will give you an example: as I have discussed in a couple of columns, we have spent the worst part of the desert summer up North in the mountains where it is routinely 20 degrees cooler than The Dusty Little Village. Our rental place is a delight. It suits us perfectly, even with a whole lower level mancave for Max the Novelist to write in peace. We were prepared to sign up for every summer for the indefinite future. Alas, our landlord just informed us that they are probably going to sell the place.

We  okay, mostly I  went into a bit of a depressive tailspin at the thought of trying to find another suitable place we like as well as this one. Then Max, the Above-Mentioned Novelist, pointed out that I needed to put that problem in perspective. Verbally slapping me in the face so that I could say, Thanks, I needed that. Only without an actual slap and subsequent unfortunate gunplay, police sirens, Urgent Care, restraining orders, you know the drill. KIDDING!

There are tens of thousands of homeless people living, eating and eliminating on the streets of our major cities, and I have one excellent house for sure, and am upset because I may have to look for a different summer house to rent. Get a grip!

So we are almost all of us blessed beyond any possible sense of merit. Lesson #1 should be An attitude of perpetual gratitude. Which is not to say that there are not serious, significant attacks on our liberty and God-given rights, by nefarious agents and bad actors. It is easy to get overwhelmed by the sheer number of those assaults and idiocies. That, I believe, is deliberate. Why do you think our Evil Overlords come up with 3,000-page bills? Its the paper equivalent of Tiananmen Square. Bury us in a blizzard of bovine byproduct.

We have to pick our battles carefully. So that is lesson #2, from Alinsky actually: pick a target, isolate it and freeze it and then mock the living heck out of it and everyone associated with it.

Lesson #3: even the strongest people can be broken. We need to avoid burning out. How to do that? Sometimes we have to just turn off the noise. It is not healthy to spend all day every day surfing the Net and our phones. How my Power Line colleagues do it, I cannot say.

Along the same lines, we need to know our individual limitations. When I glanced even briefly at the two beautiful female Marines who were murdered by the 7th Century jackals, and saw the one holding an Afghan baby, I knew that I could not read further in the article without rendering myself paralyzed with grief and rage. Ignorance may not be bliss, but some knowledge is simply devastating to our morale rather than inspiring us to action.

We need to form supportive networks of like-minded people and get and keep in touch. We need to try really hard to disconnect from the noise long enough before bedtime to get a good amount of sleep. And do all the other things that we know we are supposed to do, but that seem like a lot of trouble  you know the things  hydrate; exercise; take some C, D3 and Zinc, eat a lot more cake; eat a lot less kale; buy more ammo; drink more bourbon. (Some items are just my personal ideas. Your ideas may vary. But rest assured, they are all Science.)

Lastly, no human beings were meant to be fine every minute, any more than we were meant to be safe or comfortable as a permanent lifestyle. Academia and much of corporate America have traded Freedom of Speech, open exchange of controversial ideas, and mental toughness for a totally illusory sense of safety. It is a national disgrace that we have raised a couple generations of children who are assured that they are entitled to be safe from disagreement, challenge and even effort, since all outcomes should be the same.

So sometimes I am sad, sometimes I am angry, often I am disappointed  in myself, in others, in circumstances. But, on balance, I AM BLESSED, LUCKY, and yeah, hand me that coffee cup because I AM FINE.
The worlds elites claim the right to govern by virtue of their technical and bureaucratic expertise. One can think of historical eras when an elites claim to govern by virtue of its superior skills and its record of success would be plausible. Unfortunately, we are not living in one of them.

One of many cases in point: Oxford University head embarrassed Michael Gove is an alumnus. Michael Gove is a prominent British politician. He has held a number of posts in Conservative administrations, including Education Secretary and Justice Secretary. Currently he is Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. Among other things, he advocated for Brexit. So why is the vice-chancellor of Oxford University embarrassed that Gove is an alumnus?

In a candid speech Professor Louise Richardson said the war on wokeness was a problem for institutions and blamed populists, politicians and parts of the media for perpetuating the view that universities are bastions of snowflakes.

The war on wokeness is a problem for institutions? Most of us would say that wokeness is a problem for institutions.

Speaking on a panel alongside vice-chancellors from across the world at Times Higher Educations World Academic Summit, Richardson said: Michael Gove, the British cabinet minister who I am embarrassed to confess we educated, famously said after it was pointed out to him by a journalist that all the experts opposed Brexit, he said: Oh weve had enough of experts.

Amen!

With the vaccine, it seems like the public cant get enough of experts. Many of our scientists have become household names. We have demonstrated through the vaccine work and the development of therapeutics and so on just how much universities can contribute and thats enormously helpful to our cause.

Of course, when experts said that Brexit would destroy Britains economy, they were wrong and Michael Gove was right. But declining to follow the lead of experts is heresy, and I suppose it only makes matters worse if the experts turn out to be manifestly wrong.

As for covid, the experts have not been unanimous on much of anything, and many of them (like the execrable Dr. Fauci) have changed their minds repeatedly, seemingly functioning more as politicians than scientists. The bottom line is that if many millions of people in the U.S., the U.K. and elsewhere have become skeptical of the credibility of alleged experts, it is with good reason.

I share that skeptical attitude, in part because of my own experience. As a trial lawyer, I both worked with and cross-examined hundreds, likely thousands, of experts in various fields. Many of them had extraordinarily impressive credentials. My experience was that experts are like everyone else. Some know what they are talking about, others dont. Some back up their opinions with sound data and careful reasoning, while others crumble under adverse examination. Deferring to someone merely because he or she is a credentialed expert would be a terrible, and sometimes potentially suicidal, practice. Dont do it.
I am scheduled to join Jon Justice, Drew Lee, and producer Samantha Sansevere for the weekly Justice & Drew round table tomorrow morning from 7:00-9:00 a.m. The show runs from 6:00 to 9:00 a.m. weekdays on Twin Cities News Talk AM 1130. It is available via live stream here and in podcast form here.

The show covers local and national news with a sense of humor and an upbeat twist. Entertaining while they educate, Jon and Drew provide a crucial counterpoint to the editorial cowardice and stupidity of the Star Tribune. I think that it is safe to say that our withdrawal from Afghanistan will be a subject of discussion, as it has been on the show all week.

I think its likely well also be talking about my glimpse into the Blue Grand Jury investigation earlier this week. Tom Lyden covered it for FOX9 KMSP here this afternoon. The Star Tribune, which is the proximate cause of the investigation, has yet to get around to the developments this week. Shocking, I know.

The federal judge investigating grand jury leaks in the Chauvin case is not pleased with the MN AG. https://t.co/fserMuaeG5  Tom Lyden (@LydenFOX9) September 2, 2021

Judge Schiltz to AG: "I first want to express my disappointment at your extraordinarily careless handling of confidential and sensitive information regarding a federal grand jury."  Tom Lyden (@LydenFOX9) September 2, 2021

The show has been extraordinarily hospitable to John Hinderaker and me as well as Johns colleagues at the Center of the American Experiment. Along with Alpha News, Justice & Drew is the most important source of local news in the Twin Cities. Please check it out if you might find it of interest.
Yes, no matter what

Yes, but it depends on variety

No, for medical reasons, uncertainty

No, principle

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Umar Danbatta, Executive, Vice-Chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), says the National Digital Economy Policy and Strategy (NDEPS) 2020 to 2030, is an important intervention approved by the Federal Government to make more Nigerian youths self-reliant.

Mr Danbatta was quoted by Ikechukwu Adinde, NCC Director of Public Affairs, as making this known during the North-West two-week training organised by the commission, aimed at implementing the Federal Governments policy to lift Nigerians out of poverty, held at Kano Campus of Digital Bridge Institute (DBI).

We, therefore, express our profound appreciation to President Muhammadu Buhari and to our ministry for making this particular training, which is a practical demonstration of one of the important pillars of the NDEPS 2020-2030, possible, he said.

The NDEPS is aimed at lifting Nigerians, particularly the youths, out of poverty.

Mr Danbatta urged the Nigerian youths to put skills acquired as well as the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) tools received during the nationwide digital literacy training exercise to appropriate and legitimate use.

The training, he said, is a brainchild of the Commission, held across each of the six geo-political zones of the country.

Mr Danbatta said the implementation of the recommendations of the committee of experts, as approved by the government, gave rise to the training, which targets 1,000 Nigerian youths to be digitally trained for self-employment.

The training has provided for you, useful skills, which you have acquired to earn a living for yourself without necessarily relying on government to give you a job. It is our hope at NCC that you will apply the skills appropriately and impact your friends and associates.

I also urge you to resist the temptations to sell the laptops and other IT tools you are going to be provided with, Danbatta told the participants.

It is consistent with this important policy of President Buhari that the Board of the NCC, two years ago, set up a committee of experts chaired by the former chairman, Ernest Ndukwe, to develop modalities and syllabus for the digital training of youths across the six geo-political zones of the country.

The NCC says the objectives of the NDEPS are to support the digital literacy of Nigerian Citizens, Business and Government workers and enable them to acquire cutting edge digital skills.

Others are to achieve a 95 per cent Digital Literacy Level in Nigeria within the next 10 years and to develop a digital education curriculum to meet the current and future needs of the Digital Economy.

Others include ensuring that indigenous technology companies are able to participate actively in the government-funded technology p rogrammes; and to ensure that the policy and regulatory instruments are fitforpurpose and actually support the digital business environment.
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No fewer than 15 intending Christian pilgrims have tested positive for COVID-19 in Delta State.

The state Commissioner for Information, Charles Aniagwu, disclosed this in a statement on Thursday in Asaba.

He said 77 other intending Christian pilgrims from the state missed their flight due to the delay in the release of the test results by the pilgrims authority,

According to Mr Aniagwu, a total of 315 pilgrims from Delta were to be airlifted to Jordan from the Port Harcourt International Airport to perform their pilgrimage.

Of the number, 223 eventually traveled as 15 of them reportedly tested positive for the virus and 77 could not travel due to the late release of their test results.

The commissioner criticised the decision of the Nigerian Christian Pilgrims Commission (NCPC) to centralise COVID-19 tests for intending pilgrims in the state, saying the arrangement was causing too much pain to the travelers.

According to him, the centralised COVID-19 test, ordered by the NCPC, had caused untold hardship to intending pilgrims in the state.

He said it was disappointing for the intending pilgrims because Delta State had accredited centres to carry out the COVID-19 test in the state.

He, however, apologised to the affected pilgrims for the inconveniences suffered as a result of the botched arrangement, while assuring that efforts are on to remedy the situation.

Delta has 2,987 confirmed cases of COVID-19, with 83 deaths as of September 2, according to data from the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control.

(NAN)
Health experts and relevant parties in the fight against Malaria have urged the Nigerian government to increase budgetary allocation to combat the diseases consequences.

This is following the dwindling funding for malaria prevention campaign in the country, especially from donor agencies.

They made the call on Thursday in Abuja at the dissemination meeting to announce the end of Support to the National Malaria Programme Phase 11 (SuNMaP2), a follow up to SuNMaP1 that supported the Nigerian governments efforts to further reduce the nations malaria burden.

The UK-Aid funded programme, which was implemented by the Malaria Consortium, specifically targeted improving the planning, financing and delivery of sustainable malaria programmes across 165 local government areas in six states of Nigeria.

The beneficiary states are Jigawa, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Lagos, and Yobe.

The goal of the programme, according to the organisers, was achieved through partnerships with key stakeholders in the planning, financing and delivery of sustainable and replicable pro-poor service for malaria management.

The programme funders announced the discontinuation of the project last week. They said this was to allow them to move resources to other key health priorities impacted by the COVID-19.

Dwindling funding

International donors including the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis, and Malaria; World Bank, the UKs Department for International Development and the American Presidents Malaria Initiative, have played a significant role in scaling up malaria prevention in Nigeria.

But with the COVID-19 incursion taking a toll on health systems and economies across the globe, donor funding is reducing significantly to execute the war against the disease in Nigeria.

Beyond donor support

In his remarks, the national SuNMaP 2 Team Lead, Nihinlola Mabogunje, said governments at all levels should plan beyond donor support.

We have created that awareness that people should start thinking beyond donors; how they can be self-reliant, she said.

SuNMaP2 from day one was on the issue of sustainability, the first two years was to build the capacity of the National Malaria Elimination Programme.

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The third year was to transit and then the fourth year was to mentor. We are supposed to be in the third year; we are not exactly where we want to be, but one thing that is clear to me is that we must start asking questions about what we should do if money stops coming from donors, Ms Mabogunje explained.

The team lead said Nigerian authorities should start thinking inward on how to continue the SunNMap programmes with domestic funds.

She also expressed optimism that some states where the project was implemented will mobilise domestic resources in a sustainable manner and continue with the project.

The whole essence of SuNMaP2 is about increasing domestic resources and reducing out of pocket expenditure for the common man.

I guess we are getting there with the Basic Health Care Provision Fund (BHCPF) that the government is building up and the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS).

Also on her part, Olufunmilayo Sanni Adeniyi, Director, National Malaria Elimination Programme shared the federal governments plans towards mobilising and increasing domestic resources for Malaria.

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She said the government was working towards setting up an End Malaria Council Fund which is like a basket fund for Malaria where everyone could donate resources for Malaria.

The director, however, called on philanthropists, banks, and oil companies to support the malaria fight in the country.

Gafar Alawode, a programme director of the SuNMaP2 project said the programme helped in the development of a roadmap for sustainable financing for Malaria and built the capacity of state and non-state actors on ways to mobilise resources.

He, however, regretted that the timeframe of the project was truncated due to the global meltdown from COVID-19.

Malaria Endgame

Concerns on domestic funding raised by the health experts builds on a 2019 survey, which warned that funding gaps across the African continent may hinder the achievement of the global target for malaria elimination by 2030.

The survey, Malaria Futures for Africa (MalaFa), the first systematic attempt in many years to collate African experts views on malaria policy found that countries in Africa are highly unlikely to meet the 2030 deadline in the fight against Malaria if considerable changes did not occur in especially local funding and delivery.

Reason for 2030 target

The failure of the Millennium Development Goal 6 for 2015 to combat HIV/AIDS, Malaria, and other diseases brought about the 2030 target.

In May 2015, the World Health Assembly adopted a global strategy by the World Health Organisation (WHO) with a vision to make the world free of Malaria in 2030.

The ultimate goal is to reduce malaria cases and deaths by 90 per cent and to make at least 35 countries free of Malaria as compared to that of 2015.

Though monumental progress has been made, Malaria still remains lethal in endemic countries such as Nigeria.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), Nigeria accounted for 25 per cent of the worlds malaria cases in 2018, with 53 million cases and nine deaths per hour.

Children are the worst affected, according to the 2018 National Demographic and Health Survey (NDHS).

Already, Nigeria missed out on its 2014-2020 National Malaria Strategic Plan (NMSP) of reaching pre-elimination status for the disease (less five per cent which can be interpreted as less than 5000 cases per 100,000 people) and zero mortality from the disease.

While COVID-19 played a role in taking the target off track, poor funding widened the gap in resource mobilisation.
Despite the recently signed Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) and the federal governments plan to deregulate the downstream sector, the subsidy regime will likely continue in 2022, an official has said.

The federal government is already making provision for the controversial petrol subsidy as part of its expenditure in the 2022 budget, the Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Mele Kyari, has said.

The federal government is projecting N900 billion for fuel subsidy for 2022.

Mr Kyari spoke on Thursday at MTEF/FSP hearing organised by the Senate Committee on Finance in Abuja.

This revelation comes amidst unresolved issues between the federal government and the organised labour on the implementation of the full deregulation of the downstream sector of the oil industry.

The government had in March 2020, announced an end to the fuel subsidy regime and the immediate deregulation of the downstream sector of the petroleum industry amid a global oil price crash. The process was later suspended earlier this year to allow for consultation with stakeholders and organised labour.

PREMIUM TIMES had reported how the nation may be expending over N102.5 billion monthly to reduce the retail cost of petrol  a sum higher than the N70 billion budgeted for the provision of Universal Basic Education (UBEC) in the 2021 budget, as well as the N45.19 billion allocated for immunisation.

In its defence, the federal government had said there was need to be considerate to Nigerians and implement structures to help reduce the price of petrol, hence the subsidy.

It also comes despite promises made by the State Minister for Petroleum, Timipre Sylvia, that petrol subsidy will be removed after the Petroleum Industry Bill (now an Act) is signed.

President Muhammadu Buhari signed the PIA two weeks ago.

While many Nigerians have called for the removal of subsidy in order to enable the government to invest the fund in other developmental projects, others have condemned such calls, citing it as perhaps one of the few benefits the masses enjoy from the government. And also because it is not included in the annual budget.

Some groups, including the Nigeria Labour Congress and Trade Union Congress, have advised the government to fix the refineries before removing fuel subsidy.

New plan

Mr Kyari told lawmakers that although no provision was made for fuel subsidy in 2021, the government had begun a conversation with relevant stakeholders to exit the subsidy regime and the process may not be concluded anytime soon, hence the need to reintroduce subsidy in the 2022 budget.

With this revelation, it is unclear how the NNPC intends to solve issues of unremitted revenue

The agency had in April, blamed its non-remittance on costs incurred from subsidy payments on petrol.

There is an ongoing process that is engaging members of the organised labour, civil society organisations and many other institutions of government and other critical stakeholders to arrive at a landing on how and when we can exit the subsidy regime to be very precise.

The government is not sure that it can conclude the process of exiting the subsidy regime before the end of 2021 or early 2022, hence the provision of fuel subsidy in the 2022 Appropriation bill, he said.

Mr Kyari further said the NNPC pays between N100 and 120 billion monthly to keep the pump price of petrol at N162 per litre and that the agency is sustaining imports to avert scarcity.

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PREMIUM TIMES reported how the NNPC boss blamed the agencys non-remittance of revenue on smuggling, round-tripping and other sharp practices.

The lawmakers, however, issued stern warnings about revenue generation which they said, will curb the habit of borrowing to fund the budget.

The Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) sets parameters with which the budget is prepared, including the borrowing plan of the government.

It proposes $57 per barrel as crude price for 2022, $61 per barrel for 2023 and $62 per barrel for 2024 predicated on a base national production of 1.883 million barrels per day in 2022, 2.234 million barrels per day in 2023 and 2.218 million barrels per day in 2024.
Nigerian governors have written a protest letter to the finance minister, Zainab Ahmed, advising her against the payment of the controversial $418 million Paris Club refund-related judgment debts.

At the prevailing official exchange rate of N410 to $1, the money amounts to about N171billion.

In their letter dated September 1, the governors described her directive for the payment of the debts in disregard for their appeals against the controversial judgment debts as an act of corruption and lawlessness.

They urged the minister to withdraw the instruction to the Debt Management Office (DMO) to issue promissory notes to the creditors, quoting a Supreme Court decision that warns any person taking steps that defy court processes as acting at his peril.

In the 1986 Emeka Odumegwu Ojukwu case cited by the governors as judicial precedent, the Supreme Court also asserts its ability to restore the status, wholly irrespective of the merits as they may be ultimately decided.

Femi Falana, the governors lawyer, who signed the letter to the minister, advised her to be guided by the admonition of our highest court as quoted above.

He advised the minister to be mindful of the apex courts decision by withdrawing your directive to the Debt Management Office to issue promissory notes to any contractor and consultant pending the determination of court processes in respect of which your office has been served and notified of their hearing dates.

PREMIUM TIMES had exclusively reported how the finance ministry, through its permanent secretary, Aliyu Ahmed, directed the DMO to start issuing promissory notes to the six creditors as the means of settling the suspicious debts.

The August 12 letter cited President Muhammadu Buharis earlier letter dated January 11 approving the settlement of the debts through the issuance of promissory notes to be funded from the allocations of the state and local governments for 10 years.

Our previous report revealed the Presidents approval ignored repeated demands by the Kayode Fayemi-led Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF) for a forensic audit of the claims of the creditors.

Series of our exclusive reports on the matter identified the trio of the Chief of Staff to the President, Ibrahim Gambari, the Attorney-General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami, and the finance minister, as spearheading the desperate push for the payment despite wide-ranging issues that cast doubts on the legitimacy of the indebtedness.

The issues raised from various quarters range from partial or non-execution of contracts to opaque deals leading to the consent judgments given in favour of the creditors.

A report of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has also discredited about $159 million being claimed by one of the creditors.

The Association of Local Governments of Nigeria (ALGON) had similarly sent separate letters to the AGF saying the borehole contracts its members gave one of the claimants laying claim to the $159 million were not executed.

In April, the NGF, through Mr Falana, wrote the finance minister, asking her to suspend moves to begin paying the money as it was set to file appeals against the judgments.

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Suits filed, hearing date fixed

In the fresh protest letter against the humongous indebtedness, Mr Falana queried the special interest the finance minister is showing in the payment in the face of pending court processes challenging the judgements.

If one may ask, what is the special interest of the Ministry of Finance in directing expeditious payment of disputed claims to individual contractors and consultants in the face of valid court processes challenging the decisions of courts of first instance upon which these claims are based?

He noted that the ministers office had been served with court processes seeking to stop the execution of the judgments pending the determination of the appeals they had subsequently filed.

Mr Falana added that the ministers office had also been served with a hearing notice fixing one of the motions for hearing before the Federal High Court on September 29, 2021.

We are amazed to note that despite the service of these processes as well as hearing notice on your office, your Permanent Secretary acting under your instruction, directed the Debt Management office (DMO) to issue promissory notes to contractors and consultants, whose claims are still being challenged and contested in court, the Senior Advocate of Nigeria stated.

Payment is act of corruption and lawless

Mr Falana noted that the finance minister is illegally authorising the payments to be deducted from the allocations of the state governments for 10 years to defray these bogus amounts of money.

We hold the strong view that this in itself is the height of corruption and lawlessness, Mr Falana wrote in the letter, copies of which were sent to the Attorney-General of the Federation and the DMO.

He pointed out to what he referred to as her sacred duty of staying action on this matter in view of the injunctive reliefs sought in the processes duly filed in court on these matters.

It is the law that once an application for injunctive reliefs (such as the one filed by us and already fixed for hearing) is pending in a court of law, parties are barred from engaging in any act that would foist a fiat accompli on the court in respect of that application or action, he said.

Controversial judgement debts

The debts had accrued from court judgments awarding various sums of money amounting to about $418million to some consultants and contractors.

Some of the creditors claimed to have provided legal consultancy services of helping state and local governments to recover funds over-deducted by the federal government from their allocations between 1995 and 2002 in buying back Paris Club loans and exiting Paris Club.

The contractors among them said they were engaged to execute certain projects in all the 774 local governments in anticipation of being paid from the Paris Club refunds.

Since assuming office as the chairperson of the NGF in May 2019, Governor Kayode Fayemi of Ekiti State has been demanding a forensic audit into the agreements leading to the court judgments.

In February, the National Executive Council (NEC), led by Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo and has the 36 states governors, and some other top federal government officials, as members, also threw its weight behind the NGFs demand for a suspension of the planned payments for a forensic audit to be carried out.
In a rare cabinet reshuffle, President Muhammadu Buhari on Wednesday sacked the Minister of Agriculture, Sabo Nanono, and the Minister of Power, Saleh Mamman, about two years after they took office.

A surprising move from a president known for tolerating below-the-bar performance from his appointees, Mr Buhari said the effort was designed to fix weak areas in his government.

And, with the country still generating and distribution below 5,000 megawatts of electricity to over 200 million people, power had to be one of those areas.

The power sector has proven to be one hard nut that has remained difficult for the president to crack, said Jide Ojo, a political analyst.

Nigerias power challenge outlived all successive governments before President Buhari came. Nonetheless, upon assumption of office in 2015, the president seemed to underestimate the enormity of the task when he appointed the former Lagos governor, Babatunde Fashola, to be not just in charge of the power ministry, but also two others: works and housing. It was a responsibility many understandably saw as too daunting for one person, and that proved true.

Mr Fashola promised improved power supply and came up with an incremental, stable and uninterrupted electricity roadmap, but could not achieve much as there was no remarkable shift from the usual epileptic power experience Nigerians are generally used to.

At the inception of his second stint in office in 2019, Mr Buhari appeared to have realised his mistakes of not bringing on board a hands-on supervisor for the power sector  one who is available round-the-clock without any distractions like heading the ministries of works and housing.

The power ministry was among the five new ministries created by the president in 2019. While Fashola held on to works and housing, Mr Mamman, who holds a Higher National Diploma in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from Kaduna Polytechnic, took over the power ministry. Goddy Agba was appointed the Minister of State for Power.

Mamman in power

Mr Buhari apparently had high expectations of Mr Mamman, a masters degree holder in Business Administration from Bayero University, Kano, and a former assistant director in charge of electricity in the Ministry of Works before his retirement in 2002.

When he assumed office, Mr Mamman identified the challenges confronting the countrys power sector, pledging to stem the tide.

However, after two years in office, evidence abound to show the pledge was not been matched with results as power supply has not only failed to improve but has become more exorbitant for millions of struggling Nigerians.

When Mr Mamman clocked one year in office in 2020, a scorecard of his performance by PREMIUM TIMES showed there was no remarkable improvement in the power sector.

Electricity supply, a perennial problem in the West African nation, remains erratic, with daily power cuts lasting hours, a fact of life even in the most developed urban areas such as Lagos, the countrys commercial nerve and its capital, Abuja.

Mr Buhari told a cabinet meeting Wednesday that the sackings were a result of a process of independent and critical self-review, according to a statement from his spokesperson, Femi Adesina.

These significant review steps have helped to identify and strengthen weak areas, close gaps, build cohesion and synergy in governance, manage the economy and improve the delivery of public goods to Nigerians, he said.

Mamman vs Fashola

Analysts describe Mr Mamman as a sharp contrast of his predecessor, Mr Fashola, who for all his foibles and apparent failure to improve power, went on and on about his incremental, stable and uninterrupted power road map to anybody who cared to listen.

The former governor, a bit of media savvy, always had something to say and adopted the ineffective pattern of the Buhari-led administration of always blaming previous governments and corrupt politicians long before he got the job for the woes of the electricity sector.

Mr Mamman on the other hand was quiet, barely held press briefings and hardly granted media interviews. In his two years in office, he did not embark on any notable tour of power facilities across the country reported in the media. His wikipedia page has very scanty information about such an official heading one of the most important ministries in the country.

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Critics say he lacks the charisma to hold such an office adding that his quiet nature contributed to his inability to put his foot down in the turbulent power sector.

Disquiet in power ministry

Coming to office, Mr Mamman had pledged to focus on creating synergy within the sector between all government agencies under the ministry and pulling all stakeholders towards the same direction.

His coming was however heralded by electricity workers downing tools over unpaid wages in late 2019 with the national grid collapsing for the 12th time that year.

Mr Mammans reign was dogged by internal scuffles with top officials in the power sector, with the controversial probe of the now sacked managing director of the Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trading company (NBET), Marilyn Amobi, for alleged financial mismanagement, disrespect for due process, and contract fraud on the top of the list.

Mr Mamman on December 24, 2019 suspended Ms Amobi, claiming the move was in continuation of the governments effort to reorganise and sanitise the Ministry of Power and its affiliate agencies.

The suspension came after PREMIUM TIMES reported how Ms Amobi instigated the arrest and detention for several hours of nine top officials of the bulk trader by the State Security Services (SSS, also called DSS). The ex-MD had also been accused of abuse and intimidation of employees with concerns over workplace safety and teamwork among staff members.

In January 2020, Mr Buhari curiously overruled the minister, and reinstated Ms Amobi despite indictments by anti-graft agencies, EFCC and ICPC.

Months later, the president sacked the controversial official under mounting pressure.

The minister also had repeated squabbles with the management of the Rural Electrification Agency (REA).

Similar crises so led to the removal of the Managing Director of the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN), Usman Mohammed, in May 2020.

Metering

Early in 2020, before the COVID-19 pandemic started, Mr Mammans power ministry said it was focusing on ending estimated and arbitrary billing for electricity through a nationwide mass-metering programme.

Metering Nigerians is at the top of our Agenda and we hope to have some exciting news on that front soon, he said while marking his one year in office last year.

The Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) directed the Distribution Companies (DisCos) to ensure that all electricity consumers were metered by April 30, 2020.

The order said all other customers on higher tariffs shall be metered by April 30 otherwise they shall remain connected to supply, but without further payment to the DISCos until a meter was installed for them.

The order directed that any customer whose current estimated bill was below the capped price shall remain so without upward review until the installation of a meter by the DISCos.

The deadline elapsed yet, many households remained without prepaid meters and continued to pay exorbitant tariffs.

Until he was removed on Wednesday, the minister was unable to solve the challenge.

Rapid increase in tariff

Asides constant power outages despite Mr Mammans plan to deliver a minimum of 300 megawatts to every state in Nigeria, many Nigerians would remember the reign of the former minister for the rapid hike in tariffs.

In September 2020, PREMIUM TIMES reported how electricity distribution companies (DisCos) began implementation of their proposed hike in tariff which was greeted by outrage among Nigerians, including labour unions.

The government thereafter suspended the hike to hold talks.

In November, the tariff was eventually implemented while discounts were given for sundry categories of customers.

Two months later in January 2021, the Nigerian government yet again approved an increase in electricity tariff payable by electricity consumers.

Cosmetic achievements

Mr Mamman recorded a few pockets of achievements in his two years in charge of the power sector such as enabling Nigeria to participate actively in strengthening the ECOWAS regional electricity market and the completion of some abandoned projects.

The ministry and the Transmission Company of Nigeria partnered with the West African Power Pool, a specialised agency of ECOWAS, the World Bank, AfDB, and other development partners on a number of regional integration projects.

Key among these is the Nigeria-Niger-Benin/Togo-Burkina Faso Regional Inter-connector project, which will give some 611 communities under the power line route access to electricity.

However, his achievements were limited to what critics described as cosmetic approach to addressing biting power challenges.

Any solution?

Before appointing Mr Mamman as the Minister of Power, Mr Buhari had an arrangement with the German firm, Siemens, to help solve the countrys energy problem.

The plan by the German company has three phases, and ultimately targets 25,000 megawatts of operational capacity long term, from 7,000 MW and 11,000 MW, that are to be achieved by 2021 and 2023, respectively, through the first two phases.

Removing severe bottlenecks within the transmission and distribution grid is necessary to allow free flow of electricity, noted Siemens in its proposal seen by PREMIUM TIMES.

This includes rehabilitating defective connections of key substations to the existing control center in order to improve the operation of the transmission network and to unlock its potential, the proposal said.

In the proposal, there are no estimated prices for the phase 2 projects except the Abuja power project put at $770-$815 per kilowatt.

In May 2020, Mr Buhari commenced the second phase of a deal with Siemens, to upgrade the nations dilapidated power infrastructure.

In July 2021, power generation companies (GenCos) said available power generation capacity dropped to 6,000 MW from 9,000MW.
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Ganiyu Oboh, a professor of applied biochemistry at the Federal University of Technology, Akure (FUTA), has emerged Nigerias best researcher according to the 2021 Alper-Doger Scientific Index.

From being ranked the number one in food science in Nigeria and number six on the Worlds list of Top 2 per cent scientists in the ranking released by Stanford University, United States of America, Mr Oboh also emerged Africas best biochemist.

The global ranking, which is based on the scientific performance and the added value of the scientific productivity of individual scientists, also ranked a professor from the University of Ibadan (UI), Olatunbi Farombi, and another from University of Nigeria (UNN), Nsukka, Enugu State, Obinna Onwujekwe, as the second and third respectively.

About Oboh

Mr Oboh, who became a professor in 2012, joined the Department of Biochemistry, FUTA in 1997 as a graduate assistant, the same institution where he bagged his first degree in Biochemistry in 1992, Masters Technology and Ph.D. degrees in Applied Biochemistry in 1997 and 2002 respectively.

He proceeded to the Universidade Federal de Santa Maria, Santa Maria RS, Brazil, for his post-doctoral training in Biochemical Toxicology in 2005 and his second post-doctoral training in Food Biochemistry & Toxicology at Technische Universitat Dresden, Germany, between 2007 and 2008.

About Alper-Doger Scientific Index

The AD Scientific Index (Alper-Doger Scientific Index) is a ranking and analysis system based on the scientific performance and the added value of the scientific productivity of individual scientists.

The index provides rankings of institutions based on the scientific characteristics of affiliated scientists.

One of the major differences of the AD Scientific Index is the provision of the last five years scores and the total scores of the h-index and the i10 index, and the total and last five years number of citations.

Thus, scientists and universities can obtain their academic rankings and monitor developments in the ranking over time.

UI ranks best institution

For the institutional ranking, UI was ranked Nigerias best, followed by the UNN, University of Calabar, Cross River State; FUTA and Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria.

The AD Scientific Index provides both the ranking and analysis results, which reveals the competence of institutions to attract prized scientists and the ability of institutions to encourage advances and retain scientists.
The Nigeria Diaspora for Asiwaju (NDA), a support group, has said the support for the former governor of Lagos State, Bola Tinubu, to run for presidency in 2023 is a collective task.

It said everyone should support Mr Tinubu to become president, irrespective of tribal or religious sentiments.

The Director-General of the newly inaugurated support group, Akin Badeji, said this in a statement made available to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Friday in Abuja.

Mr Badeji, a UK-based chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC), said this after inaugurating the group.

Tinubu stands out as one politician with the best resume to consolidate on the next level milestones of the President Muhammadu Buhari-led administration.

NDA is a partisan group aimed at garnering support in the Diaspora and across the length and breadth of Nigeria for Tinubu presidency, come 2023, Mr Badeji said.

He said the group which had its headquarters in London, UK, and a country office in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), would not rest on its oars until it achieved its desire of enthroning a Tinubu presidency.

Mr Badeji noted that Nigeria was on national rebirth, pioneered by President Buhari, after several years of maladministration by her former handlers.

We looked around for such personality with the political clout and national appeal to the various interest groups, that can consolidate on whatever achievements the Buhari government has made.

And we discovered that one of the All Progressives Congress (APC) national leaders, Tinubu, is the best man for the job.

As a bridge-builder with a great personality and mentality that recognises all and sundry, there cannot be a better replacement for President Buhari come 2023, he said.

Mr Badeji said the choice of Mr Tinubu as the countrys next president was painstakingly taken, after taking several yardsticks into consideration.

He described Mr Tinubu as a leader of leaders, a political colossus, and an embodiment of progressive politics.

The director-general said a formal inauguration of the home country chapter of the group would be before the end of the year.

He said while Adams Dauda would serve as the groups Diaspora Coordinator, Omogbolahan Babawale would serve as its Nigeria Coordinator and Vivian Osadebay as its Director of Finance.

Others, he said were- Lanre Adegun, Director of Media and Publicity; Shehu Bagudu, Mobilisation; Kikelomo Oyebiyi-Oladapo, Treasurer; Ronke Tomori, Women Leader and Matthew Udeme as Chief of Staff attached to the DGs Office.

He said the groups mode of operations would be unveiled to the public soon.

According to him, the group has representations in various countries including; the United States of America, United Arab Emirates, Spain, France, Germany, Russia, Italy, South Africa, Ghana, Canada, Australia, India, China and Saudi Arabia among others.

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(NAN)
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The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has published its draft regulatory instruments on SIM registration and replacement.

The publication on the commissions website is to enable users make contributions where necessary ahead of the release of a final regulation.

This was disclosed Friday in a statement by the spokesperson of the NCC, Ikechukwu Adinde.

The regulatory instruments require Nigerians and other stakeholders to comment on the registration of telephone subscribers regulations, SIM replacement guidelines and spectrum trading guidelines.

The instruments are published under the Nigerian Communications Act 2003 (the Act) in accordance to Section 57 of the Act.

The NCC also announced the date for public inquiry sessions. All three activities are expected to hold Tuesday, October 5, 2021.

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It said interested stakeholders are, by the notice, invited to make written submissions on the subject and participate in the public inquiries.

Details of the virtual meeting will be forwarded to interested attendees prior to the public inquiries.

All submissions must reach the Commission on or before Friday, September 24, 2021 and should be addressed to:

The Executive Vice Chairman

Nigerian Communications Commission

Plot 423, Aguiyi Ironsi Street, Maitama, Abuja

ATTN: Director, Legal and Regulatory Services.
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The federal government has approved a new salary structure for staff of the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC), seven months after the staff protested over poor funding.

The Minister of Communication and Digital Economy, Isa Pantami, announced the approval in Abuja on Thursday.

President Muhammadu Buhari transferred the commission to the Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy in October 2020.

On January 7, the staff of NIMC embarked on a strike over poor staff welfare and their exposure to COVID-19 during the NIN enrollment.

Mr Pantami said the new condition of service and salary scale raised the total NIMC personnel cost by 200 per cent.

He advised the board and management of the commission to ensure the funds are judiciously used for the purposes intended, and tasked members of staff to justify the gesture of the federal government.

The acting chairman of NIMCs governing board, Bello Gwandu, said there had been unsuccessful attempts since 2010 to attain better welfare for the NIMC workforce.

Since 2010 we have been galvanizing efforts to ensure a positive change in the fortunes of NIMCs workforce, but each time we take one successful step forward, there appears to be multiple gridlocks impeding our pace, he said.
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Rights group, the Civil Liberties Organisation (CLO), Akwa Ibom State branch, has proposed a new revenue sharing formula in which the federal government gets only 15 per cent from the Federation Account, the least among the three tiers of government.

The CLO Chairman in Akwa Ibom State, Franklyn Isong, said the federating states should get the largest share of 50 per cent, while 774 local governments in the country should take 35 per cent.

The group called for a constitutional amendment to decongest the Exclusive Legislative List, such that the federal government focuses on defence and foreign affairs.

Under the current sharing formula, the federal government takes 52.68 per cent of the revenue shared, states get 26.72 per cent, while local governments get 20.60 per cent.

Mr Isong said the existing formula prepared 29 years ago by the military has become outdated.

The existing revenue sharing formula is outdated and needed a review, Mr Isong said on Thursday in his presentation at an Interactive Meeting of the Revenue Mobilisation, Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC) with the Akwa Ibom State Government, in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State.

Mr Isong said the federating states should be given the constitutional power over mines and minerals, including oil fields, oil mining, geological surveys and natural gas within their boundaries, and that they should be made to pay 10 per cent of revenue accruing from those resources as tax to the federal government.

RMAFC is currently organising interactive meetings with state governments on a new revenue sharing formula which should take effect in December.

Before the interactive meeting, the RMAFC team met with the Governor of Akwa Ibom State, Udom Emmanuel at Government House, Uyo, where the governor also called for the upward review of revenue to states in order to promote economic growth and enhance industrialisation.
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The Defence Headquarters says no fewer than 5,890 terrorists and their families have so far surrendered to troops of Operation Hadin Kai, in the North-east due to the intensity of military fire-power.

The Acting Director, Defence Media Operations, Bernard Onyeuko, a brigadier general, disclosed this while giving an update on the operations of the armed forces across the country on Thursday in Abuja.

Mr Onyeuko said the troops have sustained their operations against the terrorists, adding that the kinetic and non-kinetic efforts had compelled the terrorists to surrender in large numbers.

He said that 565 of the surrendered terrorists, three commanders, four Amirs, five Nakibs and five cattle rustling specialists had been handed over to Borno government for further management after profiling.

Mr Onyeuko said the troops on 14 August, repelled terrorists attack with the support of the Air Component through air interdiction missions and inflicted heavy casualties on the terrorists and their equipment.

According to him, no fewer than 48 of the terrorists were neutralised, 20 arrested including fighters and commanders.

Their logistics base and facilities including three gun trucks were destroyed in the process.

A cumulative total of 52 assorted arms and 1,977 rounds of 7.62mm assorted calibre ammunition including AK-47 and FN rifles with magazines, hand grenades, commando mortar guns, locally fabricated rifles, Dushka anti-aircraft guns, Dane guns and Nigerian Police rifles among other items were recovered from surrendered terrorists and operations within the period.

Also, a total of seven terrorists collaborators/informants and logistics suppliers were arrested and handed over to appropriate prosecuting agencies for necessary actions, he said.

(NAN)
Africa is likely to miss the urgent global goal of vaccinating the most vulnerable 10 per cent of each countrys population against the Coronavirus (COVID-19) by the end of September, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).

The WHO Regional Office for Africa in a statement released on Thursday said 42 of Africas 54 nations (nearly 80 per cent) are set to miss the target with the current pace of vaccine deliveries and vaccinations.

Nine African countries, including South Africa, Morocco, and Tunisia, have already reached the global target set in May by the World Health Assembly, the worlds highest health policy-setting body.

At the current pace, three more African countries are set to meet the target, while two more could meet it if they speed up vaccinations.

Matshidiso Moeti, WHO Regional Director for Africa said, With less than a month to go, this looming goal must concentrate minds in Africa and globally.

Vaccine hoarding has held Africa back and we urgently need more vaccines.

But as more doses arrive, African countries must zero in and drive forward precise plans to rapidly vaccinate the millions of people that still face a grave threat from COVID-19.

Almost 21 million COVID-19 vaccines arrived in Africa via the COVAX Facility in August, an amount equal to the previous four months combined.

With more vaccines expected from COVAX and the African Union by the end of September, Africa would have enough doses to meet the 10 per cent target, Mr Moeti said.

While many African countries have sped up COVID-19 vaccinations as vaccine shipments ramped up in August, 26 countries have used less than half of their COVID-19 vaccines.

More than 143 million doses have been received in Africa in total, but only 39 million people  around just 3 per cent of Africas population  are fully vaccinated.

In comparison, 52 per cent of people are fully vaccinated in the United States and 57 per cent in the European Union.

The inequity is deeply disturbing. Just 2 per cent of the more than five billion doses given globally have been administered in Africa.

Yet recent rises in vaccine shipments and commitments shows that a fairer, more just global distribution of vaccines looks possible, Mr Moeti said.

According to WHO, COVID-19 cases are declining slightly in Africa but remain stubbornly high.

A rising number of new cases in Central, East and West Africa pushed case numbers up to nearly 215,000 in the week ending on August 29, and 25 countries are reporting high or fast-rising case numbers, with over 5,500 deaths.

Although Africas third wave peaked in July, the decline in new cases is at a glacial pace  far slower than in previous waves.

The pandemic is still raging in Africa and we must not let our guard down, said Mr Moeti.

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Variant

The highly transmissible Delta variant has been found in 31 African countries.

The Alpha variant has been detected in 44 countries, and the Beta variant in 39.

The C.1.2 variant has been identified in 114 cases in South Africa.

Single cases have been found in four other African countries, and very low case numbers have been reported internationally.

While first reported to WHO in July, the prevalence of this new variant remains very low.

We are closely monitoring the spread and evolution of all reported variants of COVID-19, including C.1.2.

Mask wearing, physical distancing, and regular hand washing will help keep you safe from all variants, Mr Moeti said. (Xinhua/NAN)
Anti-corruption agencies and non-governmental organisations have given clues on ensuring transparency and accountability in the budgeting and execution of Zonal Intervention Projects (ZIP), commonly referred to as constituency projects.

They made the call at a roundtable seminar attended by the representatives of the chairmen of both Nigerias leading anti-corruption of agencies  the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), and the Independent Corrupt Practices and other related offences Commission (ICPC), in Abuja on Thursday.

Representatives of other government institutions, civil society organisations, and the media, were also in attendance.

The event, themed Strategic Partnership for Accountability in Nigeria was organised by the Premium Times Centre for Investigative Journalism (PTCIJ), through its UDEME tracking project.

The concept of zonal intervention projects was introduced during the administration of former President Olusegun Obasanjo.

It aimed to ensure equity in the allocation of projects sited in the constituencies of state and federal lawmakers by various Ministries, Departments, and Agencies (MDAs) of government in the budgets of the federation or state.

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Displeased with how previous ZIP projects were poorly executed, participants at Thursdays seminar called for transparency and accountability in the utilisation of fresh funds for the projects.

In his welcome address, the Executive Director of PTCIJ, Dapo Olorunyomi, said the UDEME programme serves as an accountability mechanism for the services of humanity in many Nigerian communities.

Citing section 22 of the Nigerian constitution, Mr Olorunyomi, who is also the publisher of PREMIUM TIMES newspaper, said the UDEME programme which has been running for over three years is an attempt to have the media understands the legal obligations in a democratic system.

He said the second idea around the roundtable is also to help we (PREMIUM TIMES) as a newspaper to give consequence and meaning to that accountability metrics.

The EFCC Chairman, Abdulrasheed Bawa, called for strict compliance and enforcement of extant laws and regulations to promote public accountability and the fight against corruption in Nigeria.

The EFCC boss, who spoke through the commissions Director, Public Affairs, Osita Nwajah, said, there is no better prevention tool than a vigorous enforcement regime, one that is applied across the board in strict adherence with extant laws, rules and regulations.

On his part, ICPC chairman, Bolaji Owasanoye, represented by Hassan Hafiz, said a minimum of N100 billion is being budgeted for ZIP projects with little to show for it.

Mr Hafiz, who heads the ICPC Constituency Projects Tracking Group (CPTG) launched in 2019, said, But in many cases, we do not see these projects. So oftentimes a lot of cases many of these projects were not fully implemented and some of those that were implemented, were not fully executed.

He explained that in dealing with such, the ICPC ensures partnership with relevant stakeholders through its tracking monitoring initiative to guarantee that the contractors who collected monies for the projects were asked to go back to complete the projects.

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According to him, the bulk of the issue on accountability comes from the sponsors of the projects. He said, many times the sponsors of these projects actually connive with the contractors handling these ZIP projects so as not to get them fully executed.

Other participants speak

Zainab Ghali of the Lower Niger River Basin Development Authority (LNRBDA) applauded the stakeholders partnership for accountability on the ZIPs.

She said from inception, the government has been budgeting a lot of money for constituency projects without reasonable outcomes

According to her, partnering with other stakeholders would bring a lot of benefits such as the enlightenment of what the ZIP project is all about to the general public and how these projects are to be executed.

A representative of the Border Communities Development Agency (BCDA) Chris Umogbai urged the sponsors of the project who are the legislators to focus more on their duty by ensuring full execution of the projects.

He said, the legislator pays his role by financing the project into the national budget and once that budget is passed into law. He/she has no business in who execute that project. And issuing a letter saying they have executed and they have not executed. That is not the role of the legislator.

Their responsibility is that of making laws of the people, they to find out whether that project was executed and that is where it ends for the benefit of the people.

Joshua Olufemi, the founder and publisher of Dataphyte, said 65 per cent of the 2021 ZIP projects analysed by his organisation can be categorised as soft projects which include cash grants, training and the rest which he described as unsustainable.

He said only 35 per cent of the ZIPs have to do with construction and works projects.

Mr Olufemi said the Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP) should be the one that should certify if a ZIP project has been fully executed before issuing the final money and should not be done by the legislator.

The whole idea of a legislator signing a letter that a contractor has finished work on a project and should be paid his/her balance is an anomaly.

The only agency by law that should monitor the competition of projects is the BPP,  he said.
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For the second time since 2018, Kaduna State will use electronic voting machines for its local government elections holding Saturday, September 4.

The Kaduna State Governments innovative use of technology to promote election integrity made the state the first in Nigeria to adopt electronic voting, and the second government entity in Africa to achieve the feat after Namibia.

In 2018, Kaduna State made history by being the first in Nigeria to conduct an electronic voting election.

Saratu Dikko-Audu, chairman of the Kaduna State Independent Electoral Commission (KADSIECOM), said the Commission was encouraged by Governor Nasir El-Rufai to deploy technology for elections. She stated that KADSIECOM, therefore, acquired electronic voting machines which were successfully used in 2018.

We pioneered the electronic voting system during our last Local Government Councils election, that was in 2018, she said.

Why that happened was because the Governor of this State, Malam Nasir Ahmad El-Rufai, being very progressive and courageous, decided when we came on board to task us with the responsibility of deploying technology to our Local Government Councils election.

Initially, we thought all he meant was using the smart card reader because it had been such a success in the 2015 elections. But he said no, he wanted us to go the whole hog and have citizens actually vote on a machine and so we set out to develop the voting machine which we eventually presented to the public in 2018.

The chairman disclosed that the state electoral body has put lessons learnt in 2018 into its preparations for the 2021 LG elections. Briefing journalists, Mrs Dikko-Audu explained that the electronic voting machines used in 2018 have been upgraded to prevent multiple voting while preserving the speed of voting and the integrity of the voting process.

Each voters card can only be used once, so the machine will not allow multiple voting. The voter is required to touch the logo of the party he wants to vote for, and that choice is registered, and he can see a paper trail generated through a transparent window in the machine showing the party the voter chose. This paper trail can be tallied to compare it to the electronic result if any party agent at the polling unit so requests.

Mrs Dikko-Audu confirmed that the results will be sent directly from the electronic voting machines to the KADSIECOM servers, while party agents and security agencies at the polling units will have card copies of the summary of results printed from the machine. At the conclusion of voting, the result from each electronic voting machine is printed in ten copies so that the party agents at the polling unit will have a copy each. The security agents at the polling unit will also have copies and the result is transmitted to our server here in Kaduna. It is also stored in the USB port of the machine.

You have four levels where the result is stored: the paper trail, the summary of results, the memory of the machine itself and the transmission to the server at headquarters. It will be hard for anyone to say they want to rig an election and change all those four values. Remember that I said we print ten copies of the summary of results, so ten people already have the results out there. How are you going to get all ten and change them? It will be very difficult.

She noted that 95 per cent of residents of Kaduna State who voted in the 2018 elections said that they found it easy to use the electronic voting machines during the local government elections of 12 May 2018, and she is confident that the ease of usage has been retained in the upgrade.

In the beginning

On May 12, 2018, Kaduna State made history when it introduced electronic voting to elect chairpersons and councillors for its 23 local government councils. The Kaduna State Executive Council had earlier approved the adoption of electronic voting, and budgeted funds for the acquisition of the necessary equipment.

On July 9, 2017, Mrs Dikko-Audu led other commissioners of the KADSIECOM to present the electronic voting machines to be used for the 2018 elections to the members of the Kaduna State Executive Council in the Council Chambers of Government House, Kaduna.

KADSIECOM demonstrated the use of the machine and assured the state government that they were set to take elections to another level of technology-enabled fairness.

Electronic voting is used in Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Curacao, Mexico, Namibia, Haiti, Philippines, the United States of America and Venezuela.
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The very last paragraph of the book closes on an interesting reflection. The 120 years of history traced in the book, from the Jihad to Amalgamation, draws attention to one key characteristic: The Nigerian state has consistently resorted to violence and military force to address political differences. This is still the situation today. Clearly, the time has come for us to learn to negotiate to resolve our differences.

The book I have been waiting for has arrived. It is called: Formation: The Making of Nigeria From Jihad to Amalgamation, written by Fola Fagbule and Feyi Fawehinmi and published this year by Cassava Republic. The authors discovered a magical formula  that the writing of history is too serious an agenda to leave in the hands of historians. These young professionals, both of them in the financial sector, decided to read history books written about the Nigeria land area and then write a compelling narrative which, in a sense, is about the inevitability of the emergence of Nigeria as a nation. Their basic thesis is that given the dynamics of social and political movements in the Nigeria land area at the beginning of the 19th century, whether or not colonialism had occurred, a country very similar to Nigeria of today would have emerged. The argument for the counter-factual is that the colonial regime only tinkered slightly with what they found, focused as they were on their task of exploitation. They did not build a state, they found a state in formation.

What Fagbule and Fawehinmi offer Nigerians is a gripping story of their creation. All nations have a story of formation, which is always partly historical and partly creative. It defines the heroes of the nation and edifies them. It draws attention to the enemies and vilifies them. The language is good, the narrative is clear, the book is fascinating and reads like a novel, with interesting characters, plots, mysteries, love, hate and epic battles. No one, for example, can respect the pompous, incompetent, arrogant, trigger-happy and love-frustrated Fred Lugard and his wife Flora Shaw after reading this book. Both suffered the terrible traumas of frustrated love affairs in their lives and directed their anger at dealing with Nigerians, while telling glorious stories of their alleged contributions to the building of a civilised Nigeria in books and newspaper columns; they should go tell it to the marines.

In other words, the book challenges us to reject the idea that Chimamanda Adichie, for example, articulates that: I am Nigerian because a white man created Nigeria and gave me that identity. I am black because the white man constructed black to be as different as possible from his white. But I was Igbo before the white man came. The real story is that the white man came and found states and political communities that he essentially messed up. Indeed, way back in 1960, Okoi Arikpo emphatically stated that Nigeria is not an accident. It is not an arbitrary block of land chopped off the surface of tropical Africa. On the contrary, Nigeria is a cultural melting pot where cultural influences from all directions have met to produce a most dynamic cultural complex.

To go back to Formation, the book tracks the unlikely series of events and characters that were turning a collection of disparate nations into a major state. In 1800, the Oyo Empire was disintegrating and the survivors had congregated in Abeokuta and later Ibadan, while Ilorin was about to secede. The story has a backbone, the river Niger and its sister, the Benue. The authors describe the River Niger as the best kept tropical secret because from the times of the Romans, the European world wanted to know where it started from and ended, for good reason. These were the arteries along which people fished, farmed, emigrated and transported themselves to wage wars, capture territories, enslave others, d anevangelise; in short, the people engaged in extensive relations. The book outlines the state of play, starting with the story of the Jihad of 1804, which had commenced at Gobir, and within a short period federated the Hausa states, the Fulani Kingdom of Adamawa, Nupeland, Borgu and even Ilorin, which was seized from the crumbling Oyo Empire. Subsequently, Lugard was to add the autonomous peoples north of the Benue to Northern Nigeria and Bornu, which the British took charge of after negotiating with the French. The book also tells the story of the incorporation of the peoples of Southern Nigeria, and the traumatic story of the transition from slave trade to the commerce in other goods.

Formation draws attention to the numerous flowery articles written to support his career by Flora Shaw, the girlfriend to George Goldie, who the British state gave a Royal Warrant to exploit the resources of the country. Goldie was a philanderer and Flora was one of his numerous side chicks. After Goldies wife died, Flora waited for a proposal from her boyfriend, which never came.

I loved the story of the Dahomean all-female battalions, the Agoji. To amuse themselves, they would climb over a mountain of thorns, and enjoy their skins being torn in anticipation of the man tied behind the thorns, who they will kill to their hearts satisfaction. Ask the Egba what they suffered from these feminist warriors. For those who dared insult them by saying, you are nothing but a man, the punishment was death. As for me, I would loath to be in the same room with one of them. I prefer modern feminists.

From day one, Lugard was focused on having a great legacy as a builder of British imperialism and wrote flowery books about his contributions  A Tropical Mandate in 1905 and Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa after retirement in 1922. Formation draws attention to the numerous flowery articles written to support his career by Flora Shaw, the girlfriend to George Goldie, who the British state gave a Royal Warrant to exploit the resources of the country. Goldie was a philanderer and Flora was one of his numerous side chicks. After Goldies wife died, Flora waited for a proposal from her boyfriend, which never came. Desperate, she broke with convention and wrote him a letter asking that he marries her. He had been paid by the British State for the Royal Niger Company, he refused her and went to China to enjoy his wealth, while she went into depression. On the other hand, Fred Lugard as a young man fell madly in love with the wife of his officer in India, but after some time, she became realistic and spurned him. He developed a serious trauma and decided to come to the Niger area to die fighting for the glory of British imperial possessions. Having failed in their love lives, these two married in their late forties. Flora was six years older than Fred, and for more gossip on these characters, read the book.

Lugards career was one of brutality. Even the British Colonial Office found his excesses unbearable. After the massacre at Satiru (Sokoto) in 1906, he was ordered out of Nigeria because he could not be trusted not to be a repeat offender. It was when the British state decided to amalgamate the Northern and Southern Protectorates that they decided that they needed a brutal administrator to deal with the aftermath, so they brought Fred back in 1912. Flora refused to follow him, so he brought his junior brother, Ned, as his personal assistant. This is called nepotism. It was Ned Lugard who invented the term trousered natives, as an insult of the educated Lagos elite, who were criticising the administration of his senior brother.

Lugard was angry and got the court to charge Davies 100 for insulting Oga. For much of Lugards second coming, he had a huge fight with the Lagos press  from Kitoye Ajasa (Pioneer), to George Williams (Lagos Standard), and John Payne (Lagos Weekly Record), among others. Lugards greatest enemy was however Herbert Macaulay, Bishop Crowders grandson, a land surveyor in the Colonial Service.

J. D. Davies of the Times of Nigeria responded to this invective by calling Fred a negrophobist, as the word racist could not be used in the press, being considered as libellous. Lugard was angry and got the court to charge Davies 100 for insulting Oga. For much of Lugards second coming, he had a huge fight with the Lagos press  from Kitoye Ajasa (Pioneer), to George Williams (Lagos Standard), and John Payne (Lagos Weekly Record), among others. Lugards greatest enemy was however Herbert Macaulay, Bishop Crowders grandson, a land surveyor in the Colonial Service. For criticising Lugard, he was framed for corruption, sacked and jailed, with Lugard calling him an ex-convict. Macaulay took this as a badge of honour, laughing at the idea of a conviction for criticising colonialism.

Lugard the murderer was a repeat offender with the Inemo massacre of 1914, having 60 people killed and the 1918 Adubi incident, during which he organised the killing of over 600 Egba protesters. He was immediately retired from service after the incident. To close the chapter on Lugard, the people of Port Harcourt should reflect on why their city was named after Lord Lewis Harcourt, the man who agreed to re-employ Lugard after his first disgrace. Harcourt was a sexual predator who committed suicide after the revelation that he had raped a 12-year old boy.

The very last paragraph of the book closes on an interesting reflection. The 120 years of history traced in the book, from the Jihad to Amalgamation, draws attention to one key characteristic: The Nigerian state has consistently resorted to violence and military force to address political differences. This is still the situation today. Clearly, the time has come for us to learn to negotiate to resolve our differences. I strongly recommend reading this book to all Nigerians.

A professor of Political Science and development consultant/expert, Jibrin Ibrahim is a Senior Fellow of the Centre for Democracy and Development, and Chair of the Editorial Board of PREMIUM TIMES.
Praise be to Allah, the Lord of the Worlds; and may His blessings and peace be upon our Prophet Muhammad and upon all his Family and Companions.

Dear brothers and sisters! Actually, Allah the Almighty made the truthful love among Muslims the strongest bond of loving for the Sake of Allah the Almighty Who will gather those who loved each others for His Sake under the Shade of His Thrown (on the Day of Resurrection) because of that love. Moreover, Islam substantiated such fact by establishing the obligation of preserving the wealth of the Muslim individual, his reputation, his life/soul etc, i.e. no one should harm him nor hurt him in any way.

However, some people love to sail in swamps. They love to envy those whom Allah the Almighty has provided from His favours and blessings. So this will bring about nothing but evil and bad repercussions such as backbiting (Ghibah), tale-bearing (Namimah), scorning and the like.

Respected servants of Allah! Todays sermon discusses the topic of Al-Hasad (destructive envy/jealousy); the disease that many believe that it began to penetrate the rows of Muslims, and heading to their destruction. May Allah the Almighty purify our hearts from grudge and envy, and to render us beloved brothers, ameen.

My beloved people! Hasad (Destructive jealousy/envy) means wishing that a blessing that Allah has bestowed on the envied person be taken away, whether it is a blessing in religion or in the worldly affairs. Hasad is an abhorrent manner. It harms both body and religion. It inflicts harm on Muslim individual, the thing that is prohibited by Allah the Almighty and His Messenger.

Jealousy/Envy refers to the desire that a person feels for the destruction or removal of a blessing that another person has  a destruction which the bearer of this feeling would himself carry out if he had the power to do so. This is quite different to wanting such blessings for oneself while not wishing for them to be removed from others, for that is, indeed, a positive and commendable desire that leads to competition. Competition is not considered blameworthy in general, rather it is considered to be praiseworthy if it is in pursuit of righteousness; Allah the Most High says:

Indeed, the righteous will be in pleasure. On adorned couches, observing You will recognise in their faces the radiance of pleasure. They will be given to drink [pure] wine [which was] sealed. The last of it is musk. So for this let the competitors compete. [Quran, 83:22-26]

Allah Almighty mentions in the Quran the envy of the disbelievers, the hypocrites and people in general. Speaking about the disbelievers, Allah Almighty says:

Many of the People of the Scripture wish they could turn you back to disbelief after you have believed, out of envy from themselves [even] after the truth has become clear to them [Quran, 2:109]

Allah Almighty also says:

Or do they envy people for what Allah has given them of His bounty? [Quran, 4:54]

Envy (Hasad) is an evil disease of the heart that leads to foul conduct and bad behaviour. It leads to animosity, thinking evil of the intentions of others, backbiting, tale-bearing, lying, and the abandonment of other Muslims. It may lead its possessor to inflict physical harm on the person whom he envies and can even lead to murder. It is considered to be among the most dangerous and destructive of internal diseases and is the most destructive to a persons religion and worldly life.

The Messenger of Allah (Peace be upon him) said:

Do not envy one another; do not hate one another; do not turn your back on one another (in discontent); (but) be servants of Allah as brothers. [Al-Bukhari and Muslim]

And Allah orders the believers to seek refuge from the evil of the envious person and envy in general when He says:

And from the evil of the envier when he envies. [Quran, 113:5]

The Messenger of Allah (Peace be upon him) also said:

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Indeed envy eats up good deeds just as fire consumes firewood. [Ahmad]

And there are many stories in the noble Quran that highlight the dangers and evils of envy (Hasad). When we read the story of Prophet Yusuf may Allah exalt his mention and his brothers, we realise the danger of envy, how it blinds, how it snatches mercy away from the heart, and how it drives its possessor to inflict terrible physical pain on the envied person. Allah Almighty says:

When they [i.e., the brothers of Yusuf] said: Yusuf and his brother are more beloved to our father than we, while we are a clan. Indeed, our father is in clear error. Kill Yusuf or cast him out to [another] land; the countenance [i.e., attention] of your father will [then] be accessible to you, and you will be, after that, righteous people.' [Quran, 12:8-9]

Another story that shows the danger of envy is the story of Habil and Qabil: The Quran tells us about the first son of Prophet Adam may Allah exalt his mention, who murdered his brother out of envy (Hasad), which constituted the first crime ever in which blood was spilt. He envied him because Allah accepted his brothers sacrifice but not his; Allah the Most High says:

And recite to them the story of Adams two sons, in truth, when they both offered a sacrifice [to Allah], and it was accepted from one of them but was not accepted from the other. Said [the latter]: I will surely kill you. Said [the former]: Indeed, Allah only accepts from the righteous [who fear him]. If you should raise your hand against me to kill me  I shall not raise my hand against you to kill you. Indeed, I fear Allah, Lord of the worlds. And his soul permitted to him the murder of his brother, so he killed him and became among the losers. [Quran, 5:27-28 and 30]

Dear servants of Allah! The blameworthy type of envy is an unrestricted dislike of the blessings bestowed upon the envied. Therefore, when one despises something, he is hurt and grieved by its very existence, and this becomes a sickness in his heart, to the extent that he derives pleasure from the removal of the blessings from the envied  even if this does not result in any benefit to him except having the pain that was in his soul removed.

This pain is not removed except as a result of the envier continuously monitoring the envied so that he would find relief when the blessing is removed, but it can become more severe, as is the case of the one who is suffering from a physical sickness, in that the blessing, or one similar to it, may return to the envied. The Prophet (Peace be upon him) said:

I swear by the One in whose Hands is my soul! none of you will believe until he loves for his brother what he loves for himself. [Al-Bukhari and Muslim]

He (Peace be upon him) also said:

There is to be no envy except in two cases: (towards) a person whom Allah has granted wisdom, and who rules by this and teaches it to the people, and (towards) a person whom Allah has granted wealth and property along with the power to spend it in the cause of the Truth. [Al-Bukhari and Muslim]

Ibn Umar may Allah be pleased with him, added to this from his own narration:

(And) a person whom Allah has given the Quran and who recites it night and day, and a person whom Allah has granted wealth and property from which he gives in charity by night and day.

Envy (Hasad) may occur as a result of enmity, pride, self-admiration, love of leadership (Hubbur-Riasa) or impurity of the soul. Of these, enmity is the most serious cause, as it leads to malevolence and this, in turn, causes man to thirst for revenge and drives him to gloat over any calamity that may afflict his enemy. Imam Al-Ghazali, may Allah have mercy on him, said in his book Al-Ihyah:

Be aware that envy is one of the deadliest diseases of the hearts, and there is no medicine for the diseases of the heart except through knowledge and deeds. The knowledge that will treat the disease of envy is to know, without any doubt, that envy is lethal for a persons worldly life as well as his religion, and that there is no danger from it to the envied person regarding his life or his religion; on the contrary, the envied person will actually benefit from it. The fact is that envy is actually dangerous for the enviers religion because it is through this envy that he hated Allahs predestination and the blessings that He divided among his servants; he also hated His justice that He established in this world due to His Wisdom; therefore, the envier contested that and objected to it. This is contrary to belief in the Oneness of Allah. Additionally, the envier would share with Shaitan (Satan) and the rest of the disbelievers a love for crises to befall the believers and for blessings to leave them. These are evils in the heart that devour good deeds and erase them like the night erases the day. The person who suffers from envy in his life is tortured by it, and will always be in sorrow every time he sees the blessings of Allah upon the envied person.

Dear brothers and sisters! Know that, jealousy/envy (Hasad) is not only a great sin in Islam but it is considered as the most discouraged and destructive emotion in any religion. Psychologically also, it is one of the major illnesses to human health that destroys a persons mental peace and happiness. Jealous person can cross any limit just to make people unhappy and to make people lose what Allah endowed upon them.

Jealousy (Hasad) is a kind of feeling that leaves the heart of a jealous person impure and empty of faith (Iman). In regard to the purity of the heart, Prophet Muhammad (Peace be upon him) was asked, who are the best people? He (Peace be upon him) replied, the one with a clean heart and truthful tongue. He (Peace be upon him) was then again asked that a truthful tongue is understandable but what does a clean heart mean? Prophet Muhammad (Peace be upon him) answered, It is the heart of one that is pious, pure, and is free of sin, transgressions, hatred and Hasad (envy/jealousy). [Ibn Majah]

Zubair Ibn al-Awwam narrated that Prophet Muhammad (Peace be upon him) said:

There has come to you the disease of the nations before you, jealousy and hatred. This is the shaver (destroyer); I do not say that it shaves hair, but that it shaves (destroys) faith (religion and Iman). [Tirmidhi]

A jealous person is affected more than the person whom he is jealous of. Jealousy not only spoils the peace of mind but it also weaken the faith in Allah; because when a person gets jealous to another person he thinks that Allah has not fair enough with him, though he does not know what blessings Allah has given to His each servant and indeed, Allah does justice better than anybody can think of! Allah the Most High mentioned in Surah Al-Nahl, verse 71:

And Allah has favoured some of you over others in provision. But those who were favoured would not hand over their provision to those whom their right hands possess so they would be equal to them therein. Then is it the favour of Allah they reject? [Quran, 16:71]

Jealousy (Hasad) is not only discouraged in Islam but the following Hadith states clearly that the jealousy factor burns all the good deeds of a person. Prophet Muhammad (Peace be upon him) said:

Beware of jealousy (Hasad), for verily it destroys good deeds the way fire destroys wood. [Abu Dawud]

Jealousy (Hasad) can turn a good person into an evil, same as happened to Iblis/Shaitan. When Allah ordered Angels and Iblis to prostrate to Adam in respect and honour, but Iblis directly refused the order of Allah because he was jealous of the status and position Allah has given to Adam. Iblis said to Allah:

Do You see this one whom You have honoured above me? If You delay me until the Day of Resurrection, I will surely destroy his descendants, except for a few. [Surah Al-Isra; 62]

Jealousy (Hasad) also gives birth to so many other sins in society, like back backbiting (Ghibah), accusation (Tuhmah), general insecurity killing and bloodshed. If a jealous person cannot do anything to harm that person with whom he is jealous of, then he tries to talk about him at the back, usually with the intentions to spoil his image. Sometimes, the intensity of jealousy gets too much high that a person does not satisfy with backbiting, then he reaches to accusation, which is no doubt a major sin considered in Islam.

Therefore, jealousy not only destroys a victim but also harms the attacker up to a greater extent. We as a Muslim should seek help from Allah to keep us away from this dangerous illness-jealousy. To keep ourselves protected from jealousy, we should recite the following chapter of the noble Quran, Surah Falaq, verses 1-5:

Say, I seek refuge in the Lord of daybreak, from the evil of that which He created, and from the evil of darkness when it settles, and from the evil of the blowers in knots, and from the evil of an envier when he envies. [Quran, 113: 1-5]

All praises and thanks are due to Allah alone, Lord of the worlds. May the peace, blessings and salutations of Allah be upon our noble Messenger, Muhammad, and upon his family, his Companions and his true and sincere followers.

Murtadha Muhammad Gusau is the Chief Imam of Nagazi-Uvete Jumuah and the late Alhaji Abdur-Rahman Okenes Mosques, Okene, Kogi State, Nigeria. He can be reached via: gusauimam@gmail.com or +2348038289761.

This Jumuah Khutbah (Friday sermon) was prepared for delivery today, Friday, Muharram 25, 1443 A.H. (September 03, 2021).
And now, 20 years after, almost to the day, we have seen the rumblings of the things that were being discussed in Durban, and yet people are still not listening. They are yet to recognise that White Supremacy, as a global system or a national system, is unsustainable in a world where people are increasingly knowledgeable and exposed to the lie of race.

It is twenty years since the World Conference against Racism in Durban, South Africa. It was a memorable, life-defining, epoch-making experience. One that defined and will still define the issue of race equality for time to come. It was a popular foundation for the world to accept that not only was there systemic racism, but that this was at the core of the global system, both consciously and unconsciously. What has followed in the last two decades has been for the world to take the baton of all that has gone before and actively seeking to change the system, while going forward.

The Durban memories are many and varied. One of the greatest was the speech by the illustrous American actor, Danny Glover, whose rhetoric on that day seemed overblown, but his words have actually proven to be almost prophetic. And, when you reflect on what he said, as we gathered in the protest for reparations, it is scary that those things are coming true right now.

He was slightly elevated but accessible, if I remember correctly, with a megaphone. He said that we the children of Africa from all over the world, were standing in the spectrum of brown, caramel, chocolate, all burnished by the sunset of Kwazulu Natal. Indeed, perhaps for the first time, cheek to cheek and shoulder to shoulder, asking the world to recognise the depth of the pain of the suffering of our ancestors, under the clouds of the continent of Africa, and as the sun had left memories of the day in its distant horizon across the sky. It had been a long, glorious day; and it had been a long, long journey to get to where we were being corralled, harassed and sometimes attacked by the UN Police in a totally unprecedented manner.

The World Conference against Racism for me was actually an awakening. Today, we say people are woke.

I was then coming from a racial equality fight in the United Kingdom and had established a company that was capable of independently educating, facilitating and challenging the institutions of the state and of the private sector to understand and accept that there was a fundamental, systemic problem in the way society was organised. And, there was an assumption of what was called normal, which essentially was that of so-called white people, and a system that assumed that if you were of African descent or other so-called minorities, there was no specific means for you to be considered originally, and there was only a kind of moral need for adjustments to be made to tolerate you. This blighted my racial equality work. Except you were able to show personal malevolent choices, it was really difficult to prove any form of discrimination then. Since, especially in the U.K., there was no possibility of a class action, the best that could be done was to hope that the continuous drips of personal complaints and the broader training of individuals, would inspire change, even when the indignation was well established, as was case by case damage or remedy.

As such, by the time notice of the World Conference against Racism accidentally landed on my table, I had almost exhausted the goodwill, the understanding, the acceptance of my own model of challenging systemic inequality in the United Kingdom; or at least that was what I thought. At the same time, I was in a place where I felt that I was coming close to the ending of where my mother had passed on. Yes, just a few years short of her milestone age of 38, and a transition I thought was an inevitable outcome. And so, there was a certain kind of recklessness, or shall I say boldness, towards trying to make the world a better place. Therefore, I went to Durban as part of the NGO contingent, even though I did not belong to them, coming from the world of private sector consultancy. It was my first adventure into some form of activism, even though my entire business model was based on changing society and the world, ultimately for the better.

Many of us in Durban were not surprised and we left with a sense of foreboding that we were in a world where there was no answer to the intransigence of the U.S. We felt the world needed to listen to the voices and warning of the World Conference Against Racism. I certainly believed we had then opened the door to recognition of the systemic and global system of racism explicitly, and no matter what, that genie could never go back into the bottle.

Thankfully, I found myself going to the Durban NGO event, despite not really being from the community of not-for-profits nor was I staying with any in Durban. But that did not stop the embrace of, the deliberations and, actually, the knowledge-building that occurred in the interaction with the not-for-profit sector. Slowly and gradually, I became part of a dialogue to ensure that the event was going to be powerful enough to leave a mark on the world. Surely, we could do that, I thought. So, we started organising and engaging on the issue of reparations for the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade. At the same time, I was being introduced to the Nigeria that was emerging from the pain of the Abacha years, while meeting the newer NGO lights of the new Republic. Africans from across the world, representing all forms of activism, mixed under the glaring disdain of the new U.S. administration and the twin light of African representatives of their arrogance  Condeeleza Rice and General Colin Powell. For the first time, U.S. foreign policy was fully represented by descendants of the pains of Trans-Atlantic Slavery and they were boldly saying: Get over it.

As such, we planned and discussed how after each formal delibration we were going to make sure that the United Nations (UN) took very seriously the consequences, the effects and the ramifications of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and how to bring together all the African Diaspora to support that. Of course, there were other issues. There was the issue of Zionism and racism, and specifically the fig leaf which the American delegation used to cover their instinctive reaction against a deliberation on systemic racism. And, quite shamefully, it was General Powell and Dr Condoleeza Rice who were used as the arrowheads of denying the results of the deliberations of the World Conference against Racism. Also, the effect of pulling the American delegation out of any discussion that was profitable from that august occasion. There is the boycott that still rings out till today, in the words of President Macron, calling out Durban to delegitimise and boycott a planned UN event in 2021.

It was a critical milestone of the Bush administrations disdain for world opinion, and the first global act highlighting an administration that had just come out of the Supreme Court decision on Bush vs Gore after the fiasco in Florida, during the U.S. presidential election. Hence, everybody who was on the left side of the so-called divide was reticent that the American administration did not care and were fully on a colonial project. In fact, they didnt disappoint in their actions and decisions, as they led a boycott of Durban, with the predictable support of all Western countries who followed suit, one after the other, without fail. Many of us in Durban were not surprised and we left with a sense of foreboding that we were in a world where there was no answer to the intransigence of the U.S. We felt the world needed to listen to the voices and warning of the World Conference Against Racism. I certainly believed we had then opened the door to recognition of the systemic and global system of racism explicitly, and no matter what, that genie could never go back into the bottle.

Looking back, there were many sub-plots and today there have been fundamental changes: Many people and pamphlets from Oromia threatening to secede from Ethiopia because it was dominated by Tigrayan people. The Oromia people, who constituted the most population, were excluded from the nation. I also remember the protest about Sudan. And, there was a movement from South Sudan then, including, of course, all the other tinder issues that you would see at a UN conference on racism. In 2021, these two mentioned concerns have become fundamentally transformed. Of all what really stood out was that deliberation on reparations, and the decision on the systemic issue of racism. The decision that was taken, in that time, in that place, is still rumbling across the world today: From the global Black Lives Matter protests, the clarity and power of Critical Race Theory, and the fact that the President of France, recently, was still citing that conference as a reason for boycotting a UN session.

It was actually indisputable that the entire Western alliance decided to turn the Durban World Conference against Racism into a milestone of disagreement with the rest of the world. It is quite interesting to note that the rest of the world has been rather silent in the years after about the decisions that were taken in Durban. But the effects, even now, a year after the murder of George Floyd, still manifest as a powerful change in the way the world is going to deal with racial inequality.

Actually, something more obviously and literarily ground shattering occurred and it overshadowed peoples recognition of the World Conference against Racism. In many ways, it rushed the world into a new epoch and century in a reactive and not intentional manner. We had entered through the portal because a few days after Durban, planes were flown into the World Trade Centre in New York City.

In my own world, before going to Durban, I had just completed the writing of a play. In many ways, that play, and the words that were exchanged in it, were about systemic racism and how this manifested in Abyssinia in its interaction with United Kingdom in the later part of the 19th century. I wrote about a world in which Western opaqueness and obtuseness led to the suicide of an African Emperor  a narrative of an intervention that had a very damaging legacy on the life of a African nation and its young prince, alongside the loss of one of the greatest libraries in the world, the treasures of Madqala, including one of the oldest Bibles that was pillaged by the British state.

So, it was very clear to me in Durban that the pattern of systemic abuse of Africans and their continent was not new. When I was writing that play, little did I know that it would start touring in September, after I came back from the World Conference against Racism. Actually, something more obviously and literarily ground shattering occurred and it overshadowed peoples recognition of the World Conference against Racism. In many ways, it rushed the world into a new epoch and century in a reactive and not intentional manner. We had entered through the portal because a few days after Durban, planes were flown into the World Trade Centre in New York City.

I remember where I was when it all happened. And, I remember that I was not surprised because I had been to Durban. I had seen that the world was going towards such a cataclysmic event. It was very clear. Durban was that event, in a way, that opened the portal. We were either going to fix the way ahead or we were going to traumatise each other. And so the words of the play, Abyssinia, came alive in the World Trade Centre, as the very warnings of that play became manifest in reality. However, it was far too dangerous to call out Western hubris and deafness. The dangers of relying on military capacity, rather than evolving the patience to listen and understand from common humanity, as well as complexity, was looming large.

And now, 20 years after, almost to the day, we have seen the rumblings of the things that were being discussed in Durban, and yet people are still not listening. They are yet to recognise that White Supremacy, as a global system or a national system, is unsustainable in a world where people are increasingly knowledgeable and exposed to the lie of race. We have not understood that there will never be a secure society in which the hegemony of one ethnic group over the other can be sustained. And so, we see the upheaval in Ethiopia. We are also coming to terms with the fact that we are a global and interdependent world, where it is very critical that we look after each other, as we are seeing with the pandemic, and with vaccination nationalism.

It is also clear, 20 years after the World Conference against Racism, that we are now realising that capitalism, as is presently practiced with the notion of scarcity, is unsustainable. Nor can the hegemony of the U.S., through which other people are children of a lesser God and the caste system of White Supremacy runs things, within that country and across the world, be ever acceptable. So, when people attack Critical Race Theory, the challenge is that they can arrogantly, in an interdependent world, continue to maintain their racial privilege. Across the world and in the U.K., when we deny existence of systemic racism and people are silent when other people are stigmatised on the basis of their ethnicity, when people ignore the pain of others, we create a world that is unsustainable. So, there are many words from the World Conference against Racism that are defining of my life, of my interest, of my commitment. And I commend that conference to everybody, to go through the many deliberations and think with an open mind, because its words have not been put to rest. They are alive. The portal is still open, and the change is yet to become reality. Without intentionally embracing Durban, its consciousness will not rest but keep leaking out in the most surprising of places.

Adewale Ajadi, a lawyer, creative consultant and leadership expert, is author of Omoluwabi 2.0: A Code of Transformation in 21st Century Nigeria.

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Amidst the controversy surrounding the current leadership of the All Progressives Congress (APC), a member of the party has begun drumming support for former Borno State governor, Ali Modu Sheriff.

Mustapha Gambo is a former Senior Political Adviser to the ex-Borno State governor, Kashim Shettima.

He said Mr Sheriffs vast political experience, network of friends and understanding of the intrigues of partisan politics are virtues not available on sale over the counter.

Although Mr Sheriff is yet to officially declare his intention to run for the position of chairmanship, PREMIUM TIMES had reported him saying his decision to contest is largely dependent on how the position is zoned by the party.

Whether I will run for the office or not will be determined by what the caretaker committee takes as a decision on where the leadership of the party will go. Whether it will go to another place or it will remain in our zone.

If it goes to another zone, I will not contest. But if it stays in our zone, I will contest.

The two-time governor who was also national chairman of Nigerias main opposition party, PDP, is among other key political players jostling for the position.

The others are former governor of Nasarawa State and serving senator, Tanko Al-Makura; his counterparts from Borno and Gombe, Kashim Shettima and Danjuma Goje, who are also serving senators; former governor of Zamfara, Abdulaziz Yari; a former member of the House of Representatives from Bauchi, Ibrahim Baba; and a former chairman of the Action Congress of Nigeria in Abuja, Sunny Moniedafe from Adamawa State.

Speaking with journalists on Thursday in Abuja, Mr Gambo said Mr Sheriff has in the past few months, traversed many wards and local government areas across the country to seek support for the ruling party.

He added that former governors in the party have started pledging their support.

The APC needs a stabilising force and with due respect to all those reported to be nursing ambition to vie for the chairmanship of our party, none of them comes close to what His Excellency, Senator Ali Modu Sheriff brings to the table. Apart from being the first governor to be elected twice in Borno state; he was elected twice to the federal parliament as Senator representing Borno Central Senatorial District at different political epochs.

He was chairman, Board of Trustees of the defunct All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP), one of the parties that later merged with others to form the APC. He became the National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), owing primarily to his vast political appeal across the board. Where are we likely to find a man like this?, he said.

While he noted that APC requires a man of vision, foresight and courage to take charge of party affairs, he said with President Muhammadu Buhari out of the ballot for the first time in eight years, the party cannot afford to experiment with its national leadership.

Mr Gambos remarks came just about the time a court in Delta State High Court in Asaba gave a ruling restraining Governor Mai Mala Buni of Yobe State, from parading himself as the caretaker committee chairman of the party pending the hearing and determination of the motion on notice already filed and served.

The court also ordered that Mr Buni and others at the national leadership be served originating summons through any officer or staff of the APC at the partys national secretariat in Abuja.

Prior to the ruling, two presidential aides, Babafemi Ojudu, the special adviser to the president on political matters and Ita Enang, the senior special assistant to the president on Niger Delta affairs, alongside Minister of State for Labour and Employment, Festus Keyamo, had called for Mr Bunis removal as interim chairman.

The party is expected to hold its national elective convention before the end of the year. It is, however, not clear when Mr Sheriff and a few other aspirants will publicly declare their intent to contest.
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The Edo State Government said on Friday that it recorded four deaths and 28 new cases of COVID-19 within the last 24 hours from the third wave of the pandemic.

The Head of COVID-19 response team in the state, Ebomwonyi Osagie, disclosed this during a press briefing on COVID-19 in Benin.

Mr Osagie, a medical doctor, said the state has recorded a total of 28 new cases with four deaths and no recoveries within the last 24 hours from unvaccinated persons.

We have 34 persons in admission, 226 persons in home care and 99 persons have been discharged and 9,663 samples have been collected since the current outbreak of the third wave.

As we speak to you today, we now have 18 people dead from the third wave while from the beginning of the outbreak we have over 200 people who died, he said.

Also speaking, the Permanent Secretary in the state ministry of Health, Osamwonyi Irowa, said efforts were being made to vaccinate teachers ahead of school resumption.

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Mr Irowa further said that there was a need for parents to also get vaccinated so that they dont get infected with the virus transmitted through their children.

Edo is the seventh most infected state in Nigeria, with 5,525 confirmed cases, according to data from the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control.

The Edo State Governor, Godwin Obaseki, in order to curb the spread of the Delta Variant of COVID-19 in the state, introduced a controversial policy seeking to bar unvaccinated residents from having access to public places like church, mosque, and malls.

The governor said he would go ahead to implement the policy, despite a restraining order from a Federal High Court, Port Harcourt.

(NAN)
The embattled chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Lagos State, Adedeji Doherty, said in Lagos on Friday that he would not run for a second term of office.

Mr Doherty was removed as chairman by a Lagos High Court in June and replaced with Dominic Adegbola.

Mr Adegbola, a medical doctor, succumbed to COVID-19 complications last week.

I remain in PDP but will not run for a second term as PDP Lagos State Chairman, Mr Doherty said in a statement.

The partys state congress is scheduled to hold in September.

My experience as chairman over the years has been eventful and has taught me more about life, especially as it relates to my relationship with God.

I am staying out of the race as a sacrifice I have to make in order to create the emergence of a new team of administrators; those I believe should ultimately bring a semblance of peace and unity to the party, he said.

Mr Doherty decried numerous crises periods within the party as well as the sudden death of important members of the party.

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He prayed for the repose of the souls of those who lost their lives at different points, particularly to different illnesses, and especially to the COVID-19 virus.

Mr Doherty said that his political career had been fulfilling in the only party he had ever been a member of, the PDP.

He was once the South-west Zonal Financial Secretary, the Organising Secretary, and later Acting Vice-Chairman of the Southwest zone, before becoming the chairman in November 2019.

He expressed appreciation to all loyal executive members, the Local Government Chairmens Forum and various leaders and party members at the respective levels of the party structure for their support.

Mr Doherty commended all members for the tolerance and patience exhibited during his tenure.

He urged major stakeholders of the party to close ranks and show more love to its teeming members.

Mr Doherty advised the party members to believe in themselves as it concerns resolving internal disagreements, rather than expecting party conflicts to be settled by leaders from other states.

It is really embarrassing as leaders and elders of the party in Lagos State that we cant resolve our differences internally and amicably without the intervention of external bodies.

This shouldnt have occurred at all if we as leaders had put the party first before considering our personal interests, he stressed.

The chairman also called on national leaders of the party to lead by example by taking decisive disciplinary actions on erring members across the nation as stipulated in the partys constitution.

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According to him, though such action can have a short-term setback, it will definitely have a long-term positive effect on the psyche of members.

Mr Doherty advised that all and sundry should extend the olive branch, ensure love, embrace forgiveness and togetherness as members of one great indivisible political family.

(NAN)
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The family of Fatai Ogunseye, a 28-year-old cleric who was allegedly shot by the police at the Ikotun area has approached the Lagos Judicial Panel for compensation and trial of the trigger-happy officer.

The elder brother of the deceased, Rasheed Ogunseye, appeared before the panel on Friday representing the family.

In an affidavit deposed to the panel by the family, they decried the extra-judicial, reckless and gruesome killing of the late Mr Ogunseye by one Charles Okoro, a police inspector on May 20, 2020.

The elder brother said Mr Ogunseye, popularly called Ayenafe, a Muslim cleric and musician, went to Obabiyi Bus Stop, Ikotun, Alimosho Local Government Area, Lagos State, to buy food for himself and his family to break their fast.

At the same time, Inspector Charles Okoro of Ikotun Divisional Police Station was stationed at the bus stop stopping and collecting his routine N100 from Keke NAPEP (commercial tricycle) operators.

According to an eye witness report, in the process of trying to coerce one of the Keke Napep operators into parting with some money, the trigger-happy policeman released three gunshots. The bullet missed the Keke NAPEP operator and hit Fatai Ogunseye who died on the spot, the elder brother said.

PREMIUM TIMES had reported how the Lagos police command said it arrested the police inspector, Mr Okoro, for the alleged killing of the cleric and is facing internal disciplinary procedures.

The then spokesperson, Bala Elkana, in a statement on May 22, 2020, said the officer, if found guilty, will be handed over to the State Criminal Investigation Department Yaba for prosecution in conventional court.

Speaking further at the panel, the brother to the deceased said the family is yet to know the outcome of the police investigation.

Though late Fatai Ogunseye has been buried since June 2020, according to Islamic rites, the family is devastated by the loss of a father, brother, breadwinner, and a man who had great prospects for the future, he said.

He said the deceased is survived by an aged father, his wife, and two children aged 4 and12 years.

Our aged father, Mr. Moshood Ogunseye, is yet to be informed about the death of his son, Mr Ogunseye said.

He said the family wants justice for the gruesome and extra-judicial killing of their son and that the culprit, Mr Okoro, be appropriately disciplined by the Nigeria Police Force and prosecuted for murder.

The family of late Fatai Ogunseye appeals for monetary compensation from this Honourable Panel set up by Lagos State

Government for the unlawful, reckless, and gruesome murder of their son, brother, father, and breadwinner, he said.

Mr Ogunseye tendered photographs of the late Mr Ogunseye lying dead in a pool of his own blood, and pictures of the police inspector, Mr Okoro, as exhibits before the panel.

He also presented online publications of Premium Times and Channels Television dated May 22, 2020, on the arrest of the police inspector, as well as letters written to the state governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, and the Directorate of Public Prosecution to the panel.

The chairperson of the panel, Doris Okuwobi, adjourned the matter till September 17.
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A DPR official sealing off a gas retail outlet on Friday in Lagos.

The Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) on Friday intensified efforts to curtail the incidence of gas explosion in Lagos State with the closure of eight illegal Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) plants.

The DPR, which is the regulator of the oil and gas industry, said the affected LPG (cooking gas) plants did not comply with the prerequisite safety standards and were operating without pertinent approvals.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the sealed gas plants are located at Idimu, Ikotun Egbe, Ipaja, and Igando axis in Alimosho Local Government Area of the state.

Three employees of the gas plants were also arrested by officers of the Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) which collaborated with the DPR in the exercise.

Olubunmi Ogundare, assistant director, Operations, DPR, Lagos Zonal Office, said the move was part of the agencys oversight duty of monitoring activities of companies operating within the industry across the value chain.

She said the LPG plants were shut down for various reasons including operating within densely populated areas and other unapproved locations for gas business.

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Mrs Ogundare said the surveillance, which was a continuous exercise, was aimed at curbing arbitrary location of LPG facilities and ensuring safety of lives and property of Nigerians.

According to her, it will also help to sanitise LPG facilities in Lagos State by enforcing standards in their operations.

She disclosed that a total of 59 illegal gas plants had been sealed by the DPR from January to June.

Those identified illegal LPG facilities contravened the DPR guidelines for the establishment of LPG refilling plants and retailers outlets in Nigeria.

You cannot operate LPG plant without applying for pertinent approval from DPR.

For you to get this approval, you must go through three phases which take place in stages from setting up the LPG facility, construction and commencement of operations.

The three approvals are site suitability, approval to construct, and licence to operate.

If you dont have these pertinent approvals, you are not supposed to operate an LPG facility in Nigeria, Mrs Ogundare said.

She also advised Nigerians to report any illegal and unsafe LPG facility within their locality to DPR for the regulatory agency to take necessary action.

(NAN)
A medical practitioner with Premier Medical Specialist Centre, the hospital accused of professional misconduct leading to the death of a popular Lagos chef, Peju Ugboma, appeared Friday for the first time before the magistrate court in Ikeja, Lagos.

Renner Kingsley, an anaesthetist who had earlier failed to appear before a public hearing instituted by the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC), gave his testimony from Saudi Arabia before a Chief Magistrate, Mukaila Fadeyi, of Court 13.

PREMIUM TIMES reported how Mrs Ugboma, 41, died on April 23 after her fibroid surgery at Premier Specialist Medical Centre, Victoria Island, Lagos.

Her family had accused the hospital, Premier, of unprofessional conduct resulting in her untimely demise.

When Mr Kingsely was cross-examined by the deceased familys lawyer, Oluwaseun Akinde, why it took three hours to transfer the deceased during an emergency to another medical facility, Mr Kignsley said delays in such situation could be categorised into three; primary, secondary and tertiary which could be as a result of logistics, space, traffic.

When he was asked by the coroner the reason for the delay in the case of Mrs Ugboma, he said this question is very best answered by the management team.

Mr Kinsley said the surgery was already scheduled when he came into the theatre, adding that he went through the case notes detailing her medical history on the day of the surgery.

Mr Akinde again asked generally, is it an operation that is scary, such that as part of recommendation we should tell women not to go near it. Or it is such that depending on the case itself there may now be other issues?

Mr Kingsley said it depends on the patients state. But in the case of the deceased, he said this is not minor surgery, let me correct that impression.

This surgery is a severe traumatic procedure because we are going to remove a section of the persons organ and it is not going to be a childs play, removing the uterus or womb and then coming out, it is going to be challenging. This patient has had previous surgery, he said.

In the continuation of his testimony, a witness for the Ugboma family, Oluwatosin Ajala, whose professional conduct was questioned in the last sitting, said the deceased was never in a stable condition and her respiratory rate was also not normal.

Mr Ajala, a member of the Royal College of Gynaecologists and Obstetricians in the UK, said a problem could arise at any moment in this kind of surgery but notwithstanding it was an operation with fewer risks.

He said the deceased was an anaemic patient who went for surgery. She continuously bled and was not adequately sustained, he said.

Mr Ajala said the Nigerian healthcare system does not have a problem in terms of knowledge skills.  While he recommended that there should be guidelines dictating what to do when you have such a situation.

Questionable conduct

This newspaper reported how the lead counsel of Premier hospital, Abimbola Akeredolu. questioned the medical expertise of Mr Ajala.

She had noted in the last sitting that Mr Ajala, the Ugboma family gynaecologist, who is the head of a clinical department in a UK medical facility, had at a time faced an inquest and was reprimanded in the UK over the death of a twin.

Also, Babatunde Irukera, chairman of the FCCPC,while cross-examining Mr Ajala, said your conduct was brought under scrutiny. Is the reprimand consistent with losing your license?

Mr Ajala said No, I was neither given a warning or a sanction. The case was reviewed.

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He added that the inquest he faced in the UK led to guidance and multiple reviews which were not exclusively done by the disciplinary authorities.

Mr Ajala said in the UK there is an ombudsman created by the government for each sector to oversee unprofessional conduct.

The Chief Magistrate adjourned the inquest sitting to September 16 due to poor internet connectivity from Mr Kingsley.
A petitioner at the Lagos State Judicial Panel on Friday narrated the horror he suffered after being shot by officers of the Nigerian Police Force on October 20 last year.

Chukwudera Uba, a resident of Odutuga Street, llasamaja, Oshodi-Isolo, in an affidavit deposed to the panel, said he was hit by bullets shot by the police, on the chest, abdomen, buttocks, and his right hand, and spent days at the intensive care unit due to the shooting

I worked as a Chief Security Officer at St. Abigail International School, Isolo. On 20th October 2020, there was a meeting of the staff of the school at llasamaja which I attended. After the meeting, while I was on my way home, I decided to check on a friend who lives in Ilasamaja.

At about 6:30 p.m., I left my friends place and continued on my journey home. Having decided to walk on foot because I did not have enough funds, I followed a shortcut through lyana Itire.

At about 7 p.m., I received a call from my mother advising me to come home quickly as there was fighting going on in the neighborhood to which I responded that I was already on my way home, he said.

Mr Uba said when he got close to the llasa Police Station area, he noticed a crowd clamouring for the abolition of the Federal Special Anti-Robbery Squad (FSARS).

He said he did not join the crowd but continued on his way home.

However, suddenly, policemen from Ilasa Police Station started shooting sporadically at the peaceful protesters which made everybody to run for safety. I had to run too to hide from the shooting and while trying to find a safe place to hide, I suddenly noticed I was bleeding profusely from the abdomen and my chest.

That was when I realized I had been shot: I was hit on the chest, abdomen, buttocks, and my right hand and passed out due to loss of so much blood, he said.

The petitioner said he is alive because of the timely intervention of his friend, Imoh Nse, who with the help of some good samaritans rushed him to General Hospital at Isolo that night.

He said he was transferred to Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH) at past midnight on October 21, 2020, where he underwent surgery and was hospitalised for about two months before he was discharged.

While hospitalised at LUTH, my family had to sell our only family property in the village to sustain the medical bills. I was in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) for about 2 weeks after the surgery.

I consumed, among other things, about 12 oxygen cylinders (at N12,000.00 each) and 18 pints of blood (at N10,000.00 per pint). Even after discharge. I was required to return for periodic checkups and dressing of the wound which resulted in more medical cost on me and my family,  Mr Uba said.

Mr Uba said as a result of the threatening injuries sustained from the shooting, his life has never been the same as he was laid off from work and subjected to severe trauma and depression.

I have been solely dependent on family members and friends for my livelihood and sustenance. I am unable to take care of my family and meet up with my obligations as the breadwinner of the family, he said.

He submitted photographs of him at LUTH, a patient referral form for the X-rays and scans, and other medical documents.

Stating his demands from the panel, Mr Uba said he seeks justice for the unlawful, reckless and irresponsible action of police officers from Ilasa Police Station.

I also pray the Honourable Panel to help bring the culprits to book. I also ask for monetary compensation to enable me get back on my feet again as I have become incapable of functioning optimally, he said.

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Mr Uba said the Nigeria Police Force has not taken any responsibility for the unlawful action of the police officers, neither has he received any form of compensation from the police.

A retired judge heading the panel, Doris Okuwobi, issued a summons for the doctors that treated the petitioner at LUTH, at the instance of the police counsel.

She adjourned the matter till September 17 for further hearing and cross-examination.
Plattsburgh, NY (12901)

Today

Partly cloudy skies this evening. Thunderstorms likely late. Low near 65F. Winds S at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 80%..

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Partly cloudy skies this evening. Thunderstorms likely late. Low near 65F. Winds S at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 80%.
A row of residences is seen near Wooster Square in New Haven, Connecticut.
DUBAI, UAE, Sept. 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The world is a turbulent place. It has been so since the dawn of time, and it is not set to change anytime soon; this is its nature. We cannot exterminate the risks to our wellbeing as humans, but we can mitigate them, and there is no better way to combat instability and risk than residency and citizenship by investment.

Recent affairs in Lebanon and Afghanistan highlighted our fragility, they served as a reminder that things can go wrong, and they may do so very quickly.

This uncertainty is why many invest in contingency planning. Having a solid backup plan is the best way to combat political and economic ambiguity and safeguard the wellbeing of your family as well as your wealth. And there is no better backup than citizenship by investment.

Related Article: Dominica Second Citizenship  Much More Than Global Mobility

Obtaining a residency or citizenship through investment not only provides you with a second home and the support of another nation if things go wrong in your home country but allows you to move quickly and decisively, as well as providing you with a route to protect your wealth.

Citizenship by investment aligns perfectly with the current turbulence in Lebanon, offering an optimal solution at the 11th hour. Those facing the current challenges in the Middle Eastern country know they may get a lot worse before they get better, and the nation's elite should consider the lessons neighbouring countries learned.

As Iraq & Syria faced conflict, external and internal respectively, their citizens found themselves stranded in unfamiliar territory in the place they once called home. When calamity struck, those who had invested in citizenship by investment could move quickly and ensure they were not grounded in a warzone devoid of any monetary relief. Those who did not have options had to face the challenges head-on, and had to navigate a labyrinth of political and economic turmoil.

You Might Also Like: Citizenship by Investment Or Residency by Investment  Which is Best for You and Your Family?

Iraqi and Syrian high net worth individuals responded reactively to the crisis that struck their home nations, and they are now both considered majority nationalities in terms of citizenship by investment applications.

In Turkey, for example, Iraqis make up 7% of all applications, while they are the number one foreign nationality purchasing real estate within Turkish borders, a venture which can lead to obtaining Turkish citizenship.

The Caribbean nation of Antigua & Barbuda shares the applicant nationality distribution for its citizenship by investment program, and unsurprisingly Iraqis (5.3%) and Syrians (5.8%) make up approximately 11% of all applicants.

However, it seems like the Lebanese elite are acting proactively, as they make up 5.8% of all applicants to the Antigua & Barbuda citizenship program, getting their contingency plans in order early.

Don't Miss: Plan A, Plan B, and Plan C; Why Everyone Needs A Second Citizenship

Afghanistan's government was overthrown in a matter of days; Syria's civil war took months before it started in earnest. One can never know when and how uncertainty will strike, but one must always be prepared if it does.

A major issue to factor in is the ease in which investors can now obtain citizenship by investment. At the time of the invasion of Iraq or the start of the Syrian war, St. Kitts & Nevis required a contribution of 250,000 USD for a single person, it is now 150,000 for a single applicant. What is even more interesting is that the limited time offer from the Caribbean country, which runs until the end of a year, allows a family of four to get St. Kittitian citizenship for 150,000 USD.

Even during the height of the Syrian civil war, Antigua & Barbuda's financial requirement for citizenship by investment applications was a 200,000 USD donation for a single person or a 400,000 USD real estate investment. Currently, prices stand at half of those amounts for both options.

Gaining citizenship by investment has become a quick process, one that takes a few months but can transform one's entire life. It has also become extremely cost-effective, with some programs offering options no more expensive than a luxury car, so it makes perfect sense for someone to invest in it as a plan B sooner rather than later.

People Who Read This Article Also Read: Why Wealthy Nigerians Are Investing In Second Citizenship?

Having a second passport gives its holder the ability to travel visa-free to a plethora of destinations, while also being able to set up bank accounts in their second nation to ensure that their wealth is preserved should the banking system in their home country falter, which usually happens when political turmoil strikes.

It is not just a second passport that can help, but a residency in another country. Portugal's Golden Visa comes to mind here, a residency by investment program which provides its holders with an EU residency card in exchange for an investment in real estate. The golden visa is set to change come 2022, with properties in Lisbon and Porto, the two biggest cities in the nation, becoming ineligible for the golden visa. That change, however, will not be of concern to Lebanese investors, as the time to invest in a Plan B is now, not in one year's time.

Lebanon is in considerably better shape than both Syria and Iraq, but it doesn't provide the wealthy with the life they envisioned for themselves and their families. One hopes that things will get better, and if they do, then citizenship by investment programs would be a venture that enhances a good lifestyle. If they don't, well, citizenship by investment will be the best contingency asset anyone can have. It is the optimal solution for the 11th hour, and the best addition for smooth sailing.

Savory & Partners is an accredited agent for multiple governments where citizenship by investment is offered. Founded in 1797, the agency has evolved from pharmaceuticals to family assets and legacy protection through second citizenship and residency. The company's professional, multinational staff is made up of expert advisors who have guided thousands of clients, including many North African investors, on their journey to find the most suitable CBI program for them. The Savory & Partners team will be happy to answer your enquiries in English, Arabic and French.

SOURCE Savory & Partners
To achieve this, ACE Exchange has formed partnerships with KPMG, KGI Bank, CYBAVO and Lockton to offer protection against anti-money laundering (AML) and other financial crimes on its platform, providing a secured crypto trading platform for all users.

Crypto assets have gained tremendous traction in recent years especially among young investors. Its exponential growth in popularity has also raised concerns over the inherent risks of unregulated transactions between cryptocurrency holders. To prevent cryptocurrencies from becoming the conduits for money laundering, authorities have tightened regulations for the industry, including the new Taiwan's cryptocurrency rules enacted on July 1 which require cryptocurrency exchanges to verify and evaluate user identities.

"ACE Exchange has cooperated with KPMG to put in place relevant measures to fight against money laundering and terrorism financing practices by strictly scrutinizing user information and identities even before the rollout of the new Taiwanese AML regulations for cryptocurrencies. We have also joint hands with Taiwan's criminal and investigative authorities to help establish well-rounded anti-money laundering mechanisms within the crypto space," said David Pan, Founder of ACE Exchange.

Security is ACE Exchange's top priority

ACE Exchange provides dual protection for the New Taiwan dollar and crypto assets. In 2020, the company collaborated with KGI Bank to set up "FIA Fund Trust Custody". Powered by the world-renowned blockchain security firm CYBAVO, ACE Exchange is equipped with a state-of-the-art digital asset security system and third-party digital wallet for users.

Meanwhile ACE Exchange's partnership with the S&P AA-rated international insurance company Lockton allows users to enjoy all-around protection.

Since its inception, ACE Exchange has set priority on security and user protection, which laid a robust groundwork for regulatory compliance regarding AML and KYL in partnership with world-leading law firms, accounting firms and financial institutions.

In early 2018, ACE Exchange received guidance from KPMG to set up transaction procedures and ensure regulatory compliance to address AML and countering the financing of terrorism (CTF) risks.

In 2021, Rex Chu, Risk Consultant and Executive Vice President of Forensic Accounting Services of KPMG Taiwan, assisted ACE Exchange in planning the product development and operating procedures in accordance with relevant Taiwan's laws and regulations, to meet the standards of high-profile financial banks. It has placed ACE Exchange at the forefront of the crypto industry in building and strengthening its risk management protocols and user protection mechanisms.

About ACE Exchange

Established in 2018 by David Pan, former COO of KPMG Innovation and Startups, ACE Exchange is one of the biggest cryptocurrency platforms with best-in-class digital security measures in Taiwan. It currently ranks second in Taiwan in terms of trading volumes in Bitcoin, Ethereum and StableCoins. The brand is committed to building the most professional Fiat to Crypto exchange and providing a channel for all Taiwanese people to access cryptocurrencies easily.

SOURCE ACE Exchange
LOS ANGELES, Sept. 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Armenian National Committee of America  Western Region (ANCA-WR) Board of Directors today announced its unanimous support for Governor Gavin Newsom in the upcoming recall election, urging California-Armenians to vote "no" on their ballots by September 14, 2021.

"Gov. Newsom has demonstrated the depth of his commitment and understanding of issues important to Armenian-Americans throughout his political career," remarked ANCA-WR Chair Nora Hovsepian, Esq. "He has been a true friend of our community, supporting many of our efforts and listening closely to our concerns, which resulted in our endorsement of his gubernatorial campaign in 2018 as well as our opposition to his recall now. As a matter of principle, we support those officials who support our Cause, and we call on our community to do the same."

Governor Newsom has had a long history with the Armenian-American community in his native city of San Francisco, and has been a strong supporter of its issues beginning with his days as a San Francisco Supervisor, then as Mayor of the City following his election in 2003, and as Lieutenant Governor for eight years, before being elected as governor in 2018.

Gov. Newsom's recent engagements with California-Armenian policy priorities include:

Marching in solidarity six miles with our Los Angeles community to the Turkish Consulate on the occasion of the Armenian Genocide Centennial.

community to the Turkish Consulate on the occasion of the Armenian Genocide Centennial. Public calls for divestment of public funds from the Turkish Government and signing AB 1320, the Divestment from Turkish Bonds Act, into law in 2019.

Signing an agreement to create a Trade and Services Desk in Armenia , promoting two-way trade and investment by businesses in Armenia and California .

, promoting two-way trade and investment by businesses in and . Allocating $5 million for the Armenian American Museum in the California budget.

for the Armenian American Museum in the budget. Making the humanitarian decision to allow Hampig Sassounian's parole to stand.

Issuing annual proclamations declaring "Day of Remembrance of the Armenian Genocide" on April 24 .

Ballots have been mailed to all California voters starting on August 16, 2021.

For additional information regarding the recall election, please visit the California Secretary of State website: https://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/upcoming-elections/2021-ca-gov-recall

The Armenian National Committee of America  Western Region is the largest and most influential nonpartisan Armenian American grassroots advocacy organization in the Western United States. Working in coordination with a network of offices, chapters, and supporters throughout the Western United States and affiliated organizations around the country, the ANCA-WR advances the concerns of the Armenian American community on a broad range of issues in pursuit of the Armenian Cause.

SOURCE Armenian National Committee of America -- Western Region
WATERFORD, Wis., Sept. 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Avidity Science, a worldwide leader in life science research tools, today announces it has sold its subsidiaries of Lab Products, LLC and Harford Systems, LLC to Gen Cap America, Inc. ("Gen Cap"), a private equity firm focused on lower middle market buyouts.

"I want to thank the Lab Products and Harford teams for their innovative and customer-focused approach," said Doug Lohse, CEO of Avidity Science. "I'm confident the acquisition by Gen Cap will better align with Lab Products and Harford System's growth objectives. At the same time, Avidity Science remains focused on providing value to our customers, enabling researchers around the world to deliver life changing innovations to improve the quality of life."

"We are thrilled to partner with the exceptional management team at Lab Products & Harford Systems, led by CEO John Soper, in this investment," commented Gen Cap America Managing Director, Chris Godwin. "We look forward to working with the team to further build on the company's long track record of providing the highest quality animal housing and care equipment products and exceptional service to its customers."

Lab Products & Harford are the 14th platform acquisition made from Gen Cap's fund VII.

Lab Products and Harford Systems leadership team remains unchanged in this transaction with John Soper retaining overall responsibility for the newly formed company.

Lohse concluded, "with six acquisitions and a major capacity expansion over the last four years, Avidity Science has established an unmatched solutions portfolio with some of the industry's strongest brands including Edstrom, Hydropac and BioMedic Data Systems, strengthening our position as a trusted partner to the research community."

About Avidity Science

Avidity Science is a worldwide leader in water purification and delivery, control and monitoring and service solutions for the life science and biomedical research communities. Since 1969, our mission has been to enable science to improve the quality of life. With operations in the United States, Europe, and Asia, we are a trusted partner to the global research community through unrivaled technology and support. For more information about these investments and our company, please visit www.AvidityScience.com.

About Gen Cap America

Gen Cap America, Inc. is a Nashville-based private equity firm that provides equity for management buyouts, division spinoffs, and recapitalizations of profitable, well-established lower middle market businesses. For more information, visit www.gencapamerica.com.

About Lab Products / Harford Systems

Established in 1969, Lab Products & Harford Systems are a world leader in the design and manufacture of research model housing solutions. Our patented technologies address research issues of protecting research models and scientific personnel, efficient use of available area and operational efficiency. For more information, visit www.labproductsinc.com.

SOURCE Avidity Science

Related Links

www.avidityscience.com


According to Eric Sarff, President of Murray Wise Associates, "MWA, Kander and NLR each has tremendous experience representing buyers and sellers of agricultural property, but also have a strong track record of collaborating on large projects like the sale of this farm. The team on this assignment leveraged our firms' unique capabilities as well as deep relationships with both the buyer and seller and produced an outstanding transaction result."

"It is unique to find such a high quality specialty produce farm of this size anywhere in the USA today," said Ken Nofziger of Kander. "Demand and values for farmland across different varieties and geographies have been increasing throughout the last couple of years and this sale just reinforces the strength of the current market."

Ben Crosby of National Land Realty Florida added, "Collectively, we are very pleased to assist two long-time clients complete a transaction on this excellent asset. Our team takes pride in delivering these opportunities, even in tight markets. We look forward to doing more business together with all parties in the future."

Murray Wise Associates LLC, headquartered in Champaign, Ill., is a leading national agricultural real estate marketing, management, and investment firm with additional offices in Naples, Florida and Clarion, Iowa. https://www.murraywiseassociates.com

Kander LLC is a strategic and financial advisory firm dedicated to helping business owners, managers, investors, and lenders create and maximize value in a wide range of situations within the farming, food and agribusiness sectors. https://www.kanderllc.com

National Land Realty (NLR) is based in Greenville, SC and has agents in 38 states. The NLR Florida office is based in Winter Haven, FL with Benjamin Crosby as Managing Broker. National Land Realty provides a full range of land and commercial real estate services throughout the United States. https://www.nationalland.com

SOURCE Murray Wise Associates LLC

Related Links

https://www.kanderllc.com

https://www.nationalland.com

http://www.mwallc.com


DUBLIN, Sept. 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Gravity-Based Water Purifier Market: Global Industry Trends, Share, Size, Growth, Opportunity and Forecast 2021-2026" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The global gravity-based water purifier market exhibited strong growth during 2015-2020. Looking forward, the publisher expects the market to grow at a CAGR of around 14% during 2021-2026. Keeping in mind the uncertainties of COVID-19, we are continuously tracking and evaluating the direct as well as the indirect influence of the pandemic on different end use sectors. These insights are included in the report as a major market contributor.



A gravity-based water purifier is a water-purification device that operates through ultra-filtration mechanism or activated carbon. Unlike the conventionally used water-purification solutions, these purifiers do not require electricity for their operations and offer associated advantageous features, including cost-effectiveness and convenience of usage. Owing to this, they are considered as an ideal water-purification solution primarily for the domestic sector.



The gravity-based water purification systems are extensively being adopted globally due to their performance efficiency, easy portability, and zero electricity consumption. The demand for these purifiers is also facilitated by the growing consumer preferences towards convenient and simple water purification techniques. Owing to the degrading quality of drinking water resources, particularly in the Asia Pacific and African regions, the governments are rapidly investing in sustainable and efficient purification infrastructures in these countries. Moreover, the implementation of stringent governmental regulations, coupled with the launch of various initiatives for reducing the carbon footprints has led to the replacement of electricity-based purifiers with gravity-based water purifiers. Furthermore, increasing disposable income levels, rising living standards, and growing consumer awareness are some of the other key factors that are expected to create potential revenue opportunities for players operating in the gravity-based water purifier market.

Competitive Landscape:

The competitive landscape of the industry has also been examined with some of the key players being Aquafine, Aquatech, Eureka Forbes, GE Appliances, HUL, Kent RO Systems, LG, Livpure, Panasonic, and Philips.



Key Questions Answered in This Report:

How has the global gravity-based water purifier market performed so far and how will it perform in the coming years?

What has been the impact of COVID-19 on the global gravity-based water purifier market?

What is the breakup of the market based on the product type?

What is the breakup of the market based on the end-use?

What is the breakup of the market based on the distribution channel?

What is the breakup of the market based on the region?

What are the price trends of gravity-based water purifier?

What are the various stages in the value chain of the industry?

What are the key driving factors and challenges in the market?

What is the structure of the gravity-based water purifier and who are the key players?

What is the degree of competition in the market?

Key Topics Covered:



1 Preface



2 Scope and Methodology

3 Executive Summary



4 Introduction

4.1 Overview

4.2 Key Industry Trends



5 Global Gravity-Based Water Purifier Market

5.1 Market Overview

5.2 Market Performance

5.3 Impact Of COVID-19

5.4 Market Forecast



6 Market Breakup by Product Type

6.1 Individual Water Purifier

6.1.1 Market Trends

6.1.2 Market Forecast

6.2 Community Water Purifier

6.2.1 Market Trends

6.2.2 Market Forecast



7 Market Breakup by End-Use

7.1 Residential

7.1.1 Market Trends

7.1.2 Market Forecast

7.2 Commercial

7.2.1 Market Trends

7.2.2 Market Forecast

7.3 Others

7.3.1 Market Trends

7.3.2 Market Forecast



8 Market Breakup by Distribution Channel

8.1 Direct Sales

8.1.1 Market Trends

8.1.2 Market Forecast

8.2 Company Outlets

8.2.1 Market Trends

8.2.2 Market Forecast

8.3 Online

8.3.1 Market Trends

8.3.2 Market Forecast

8.4 Others

8.4.1 Market Trends

8.4.2 Market Forecast



9 Market Breakup by Region

9.1 Asia Pacific

9.1.1 Market Trends

9.1.2 Market Forecast

9.2 North America

9.2.1 Market Trends

9.2.2 Market Forecast

9.3 Europe

9.3.1 Market Trends

9.3.2 Market Forecast

9.4 Latin America

9.4.1 Market Trends

9.4.2 Market Forecast

9.5 Middle East and Africa

9.5.1 Market Trends

9.5.2 Market Forecast



10 SWOT Analysis



11 Value Chain Analysis



12 Porters Five Forces Analysis

13 Price Analysis

13.1 Key Price Indicators

13.2 Price Structure

13.3 Price Trends



14 Competitive Landscape

14.1 Market Structure

14.2 Key Players

14.3 Profiles of Key Players

14.3.1 Aquafine

14.3.2 Aquatech

14.3.3 Eureka Forbes

14.3.4 GE Appliances

14.3.5 HUL

14.3.6 Kent RO Systems

14.3.7 LG

14.3.8 Livepure

14.3.9 Panasonic

14.3.10 Philips

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/e48sq7

Media Contact:

Research and Markets

Laura Wood, Senior Manager

[email protected]



For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470

For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call +1-800-526-8630

For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900



U.S. Fax: 646-607-1907

Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716

SOURCE Research and Markets

Related Links

http://www.researchandmarkets.com


LOS ANGELES, Sept. 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- IDrive Compute , a high-performance VPS hosting solution with a network of over 20 US based Edge Computing locations, has expanded globally by adding a data center in Dublin, Ireland. This enables developers and businesses based in Europe to host multiple virtual instances on an infrastructure loaded with powerful physical servers and robust hardware resources, all managed off-premise.

After receiving plenty of international demand for the service, IDrive Compute added the Dublin edge center to ensure a faster response for European users when collecting, analyzing and passing through data, instead of directing it to a centralized cloud or server, solidifying efficient operations that promote a high performance business ecosystem. This is the first IDrive Compute edge center based outside of the U.S.

IDrive selected Ireland as its next data center location for IDrive Compute due to the country's renewable energy supply as well as low-cost availability of cooling options, making it a desirable location. Renewable energy currently accounts for over 40% of Ireland's energy mix, with that figure predicted to rise to 70% by 2030 according to a recent report from SEAI .

"Ireland is one of Europe's most rapidly rising data center clusters. The Dublin data center market is home to all of the major colocation carriers, making it a perfect entry point for IDrive into the European market," said Raghu Kulkarni, CEO at IDrive, Inc.

With IDrive Compute, businesses and developers can create and manage multiple virtual machines, run projects with little to no latency, schedule backups for the instances, take real-time snapshots, and add more space to them with block-storage. The VPS infrastructure lets users accommodate computing projects of any scale and size.

IDrive Compute offers pay-as-you-use pricing with on-demand scalability, which offers businesses the ability to scale their computing infrastructure as needed. Pricing remains consistent across all regions, with no hidden charges for specific regions.

About IDrive

IDrive Inc. is a privately held company specializing in cloud storage, online backup, file sharing, remote access, compliance and related technologies. Core services include IDrive, RemotePC and IBackup.

SOURCE IDrive Inc.
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CenturyLink Inc.

CCO Holdings LLC

T-Mobile US Inc.

Telefonica SA

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Security Software Sourcing and Procurement Report: Security Software Procurement prices will increase by 2%-4% during the forecast period and suppliers will have a moderate in this market.

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Table of Content

Executive Summary

Market Insights

Category Pricing Insights

Cost-saving Opportunities

Best Practices

Category Ecosystem

Category Management Strategy

Category Management Enablers

Suppliers Selection

Suppliers under Coverage

US Market Insights

Category scope

Appendix

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.

Contacts:

SpendEdge

Anirban Choudhury

Marketing Manager

Ph No: +1 (872) 206-9340

https://www.spendedge.com/contact-us

SOURCE SpendEdge

Related Links

https://www.spendedge.com


ANCHORAGE, Ala., Sept. 2, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Kloosterboer International Forwarding LCC (KIF) and Alaska Reefer Management LLC (ARM) today filed a motion for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction in U.S. District Court in Anchorage, Alaska, to stop a U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) enforcement action that threatens the ability to supply Alaska seafood to U.S. customers and consumers.

Without warning or explanation, CBP recently issued Notices of Penalty to companies that harvest, process, store and transport Alaska seafood products to the Eastern U.S. via the port of Bayside, New Brunswick, alleging violations of the Jones Act. This was a shock to the industry because the route targeted by CBP has been in place for approximately 20 years and relies on a long-established statutory exception to general Jones Act requirements. The route has also been the subject of multiple CBP rulings and court decisions that confirm its legality.

"We are reeling from crippling penalties, Customs has not been forthcoming to share specifics, and Customs' long-standing guidance tells us we are operating in compliance," said Per Brautaset, President of ARM. "We just didn't have a choice but to try and save our business and our partners' businesses, and all the jobs in Alaska and other communities that will be lost."

Until two weeks ago, the industry had received no hint that CBP was reconsidering its longstanding approval of the route and preparing notices of penalties amounting to over $350 million dollars. Nothing in the Notices of Penalty provides any specificity about the alleged conduct that constitutes a Jones Act violation, or any rationale for CBP's apparent reversal of its longstanding ruling.

"We are grateful for the support of many members of the U.S. seafood supply chain and their legislators who are concerned by this apparent shift in interpretation without warning," said Jennifer Adamski, Director of Logistics & Operations for KIF. "We were forced to halt shipping almost two weeks ago, which has created food supply disruptions and economic hardship to our industry, our customers, and our workers  who risk losing their jobs in Alaska and elsewhere."

To download and review the court filing, click here.

About Kloosterboer International Forwarding

Kloosterboer International Forwarding is a small business formed in Alaska, which arranges with all parts of the supply chain to move goods from Dutch Harbor, Alaska -- the heart of the Bering Sea fisheries  to various customers around the world. Together with its affiliate, Alaska Reefer Management, it contracts with ship owners, cold storage operators, trucking and fishing companies to move cargos in a temperature-controlled setting to further processors in preparation for sale to consumers.

About Alaska Reefer Management

Alaska Reefer Management, LLC is a specialized reefer carrier servicing the Alaska seafood industry and other global trades, providing full-service capabilities to transport products port-to-port.

SOURCE Kloosterboer International Forwarding; Alaska Reefer Management
Video asset available here: https://runonless.com/videos/day-ross-and-the-lion-electric/.

MONTREAL, Sept. 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - The Lion Electric Company (NYSE: LEV) (TSX: LEV) ("Lion" or the "Company"), a leading manufacturer of all-electric medium and heavy-duty urban vehicles, has officially kicked off its participation in the North American Council for Freight Efficiency (NACFE) and Rocky Mountain Institute's (RMI) Run on Less  Electric challenge in partnership with Day & Ross, a top North American transportation and logistics company.

The Lion6 trucks operated by Day & Ross have a range of 200 miles on a single charge and will be used for the company's pickup and delivery routes. The company is currently conducting evaluation testing at its facilities to aid in future electric deployments.

Run on Less  Electric is a best-of-the-best cross-country demonstration of real-world electric trucking technologies. This year's event will feature participants from 13 fleets covering a variety of class 3 to class 8 vehicles, including delivery vans, medium-duty box trucks and heavy-duty tractor-trailers operating in the U.S. and Canada, where the Day & Ross truck will be operating routes in the Montreal area. Data from the three weeks will be used by NACFE and RMI demonstrate the benefits of electrification, including lower cost of ownership and reduced emissions, as well as to evaluate items such as required infrastructure, training needs and more.

"It is great to be kicking off our participation in this years Run on Less event with these new trucks for the Day & Ross fleet. Run on Less is a fantastic platform for us to showcase the full benefits of our Lion all-electric trucks which are available on the market today," said Marc Bedard, Lions CEO and Founder.

"This investment is a critical step in our emission reduction strategy," said Bill Doherty, CEO of Day & Ross. "These electric trucks will help us evaluate how this technology performs within our supply chain, as well as how they will help us meet our long-term sustainability goals."

All of Lion's vehicles are purpose-built for electric propulsion from the ground up and are manufactured in North America. Over the last decade, Lion has established itself as a leader in the zero-emission heavy-duty vehicle industry, having delivered over 400 all-electric heavy-duty vehicles in North America with over 8 million miles driven since 2016.

ABOUT LION ELECTRIC

Lion Electric is an innovative manufacturer of zero-emission vehicles. The company creates, designs and manufactures all-electric class 5 to class 8 commercial urban trucks and all-electric buses and minibuses for the school, paratransit and mass transit segments. Lion is a North American leader in electric transportation and designs, builds and assembles all the key components of its vehicles, including chassis, battery packs, truck cabins and bus bodies.

Always actively seeking new and reliable technologies, Lion vehicles have unique features that are specifically adapted to its users and their everyday needs. Lion believes that transitioning to all-electric vehicles will lead to major improvements in our society, environment and overall quality of life. Lion shares are traded on the New York Stock Exchange and the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbol LEV.

Lion Electric, The Bright Move

Thelionelectric.com

CAUTION REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

This press release contains "forward-looking information" and "forward-looking statements" (collectively, "forward-looking statements") within the meaning of applicable securities laws. Any statements contained in this press release that are not statements of historical fact, including statements about Lion's beliefs and expectations, are forward-looking statements and should be evaluated as such.

Forward-looking statements may be identified by the use of words such as "believe," "may," "will," "continue," "anticipate," "intend," "expect," "should," "would," "could," "plan," "project," "potential," "seem," "seek," "future," "target" or other similar expressions and any other statements that predict or indicate future events or trends or that are not statements of historical matters, although not all forward-looking statements contain such identifying words.

The Company made a number of economic, market and operational assumptions in preparing and making certain forward-looking statements contained in this press release including, but not limited to, that Lion will be able to retain and hire key personnel and maintain relationships with customers, suppliers and other business partners, that Lion will continue to operate its business in the normal course, that Lion will be able to implement its growth strategy, that Lion will be able to successfully and timely complete the construction of its U.S. manufacturing facility and its Quebec battery plant and innovation center, that Lion will not suffer any material disruption in the supply of raw materials on competitive terms, that Lion will be able to maintain its competitive position, that Lion will continue to improve its operational, financial and other internal controls and systems to manage its growth and size and that its results of operations and financial condition will not be adversely affected, that Lion will be able to benefit, either directly or indirectly (including through its clients), from government subsidies and economic incentives in the future and that Lion will be able to secure any required additional funding through equity or debt financing on terms acceptable to Lion. Such estimates and assumptions are made by Lion in light of the experience of management and their perception of historical trends, current conditions and expected future developments, as well as other factors believed to be appropriate and reasonable in the circumstances. However, there can be no assurance that such estimates and assumptions will prove to be correct.

By their nature, forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties because they relate to events and depend on circumstances that may or may not occur in the future. Lion believes that these risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, the following: any adverse changes in the U.S. and Canadian general economic, business, market, financial, political and legal conditions, including as consequences of the global COVID-19 pandemic and the emergence of COVID-19 variants and varying rates of vaccination amongst various countries; Lion's inability to successfully and economically manufacture and distribute its vehicles at scale and meet its customers' business needs; Lion's reliance on key management and any inability to attract and/or retain key personnel; Lion's inability to execute its growth strategy; Any unfavorable fluctuations and volatility in the price of raw materials included in key components used to manufacture Lion's products; Lion's reliance on key suppliers and any inability to maintain an uninterrupted supply of raw materials; Lion's inability to maintain its competitive position; Lion's inability to reduce its costs of supply over time; any inability to maintain and enhance Lion's reputation and brand; any significant product repair and/or replacement due to product warranty claims or product recalls; any failure of information technology systems or any cybersecurity and data privacy breaches or incidents; the reduction, elimination or discriminatory application of government subsidies and economic incentives or the reduced need for such subsidies; natural disasters, epidemic or pandemic outbreaks, boycotts and geo-political events; the outcome of any legal proceedings that may be instituted against the Company from time to time.

These and other risks and uncertainties related to the businesses of Lion are described in greater detail in the section entitled "Risk Factors" in the Company's final prospectus dated May 5, 2021 (the "Canadian Prospectus") filed with the Autorite des marches financiers (the "AMF") and the registration statement on Form F-1 (the "Registration Statement") filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC") and declared effective on June 14, 2021 and other documents publicly filed with the AMF and the SEC. Many of these risks are beyond Lion's management's ability to control or predict. All forward-looking statements attributable to Lion or persons acting on its behalf are expressly qualified in their entirety by the cautionary statements contained, and risk factors identified, in the Canadian Prospectus, the Registration Statement and other documents filed with the AMF and the SEC.

Because of these risks, uncertainties and assumptions, readers should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. Furthermore, forward-looking statements speak only as of the date they are made. Except as required under applicable securities laws, Lion undertakes no obligation, and expressly disclaims any duty, to update, revise or review any forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

SOURCE Lion Electric

Related Links

https://thelionelectric.com/


You can see the full list of crypto exchanges and listing start dates below:

DBX DIGITAL ECOSYSTEM

So, the DBX-token will be listed on the exchange from the 1st to the 5th of September, 2021. The online service for the very first placement of coins will be Bitforex, one of the leading trade platforms in the cryptocurrency world.

Later, there will be:

BitMart (from September 10 , 2021)  which is among the 20 largest exchanges;

, 2021)  which is among the 20 largest exchanges; Lbank (from September 15, 2021 )  a world-class Chinese exchange;

)  a world-class Chinese exchange; WhiteBit (from September 20, 2021 )  a world-class licensed exchange, registered in Estonia;

)  a world-class licensed exchange, registered in Estonia; Latoken (from September 25, 2021 )  advanced platform, which is among the top 20 in terms of the turnover since 2019;

)  advanced platform, which is among the top 20 in terms of the turnover since 2019; Probit (from September 30, 2021 )  the exchange that is among the top 20 best cryptocurrencies;

)  the exchange that is among the top 20 best cryptocurrencies; Coinsbit (from October 5, 2021 )  licensed exchange.

What is DBX?

DBX is a completely new digital ecosystem within a peer-to-peer decentralized financial network. Anonymous instant transaction cryptocurrency does not have a central authority or server to act as an intermediary. The asset is maintained by the users themselves.

Benefits of DBX

User trust in DBX is based on a fully decentralized system building on the principles of keeping records in a distributed blockchain ledger, which prevents DBX coin counterfeiting or double spending transactions. Also DBX provides completely anonymous transactions at the user's request, is fungible and valuable.

The DBX digital ecosystem engages users with its benefits:

Return on investment. The monthly savings from Masternode are guaranteed to increase the investor's portfolio from day one. Fixed payments on investment assets are applied to the holders. Development of the project. The ecosystem is constantly expanding. The increase in the number of projects creates an investment safety cushion. Prospects for asset growth. The digital ecosystem is a tool for the rapid growth of investment assets. Diversification of risks. DBX cryptocurrency is a risk diversification provider for investors in legalized locations around the world. An investor can easily exit DBX without touching fiat currencies with instruments such as real estate, commodities, commodities, stock markets. Convenient management. Management of tokens through an electronic wallet.

Don't miss the launch of DBX tokens on exchanges from September 1 to October 5. Bitforex will act as an online service for IEO. https://www.dbx.so

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1607905/DBX_Crypto_Exchanges.jpg

SOURCE DBX

Related Links

https://www.dbx.so


"As a lover of all things Kansas City, I was excited to experiment with 360 KC Barbeque. This flavor brings a fun new approach to crafting cocktails behind your home bar as well as getting creative outside on the grill," said Mindy. "If you enjoy grilling on the lighter side with fish, you will not be disappointed in this brine!"

360 KC Barbeque Vodka Brined Wild Salmon

1.5 cups 360 KC Barbeque Flavored Vodka

1.5 cups brown sugar

3/4 cup coarse sea salt

1.5 tablespoons black pepper

1.5 lbs wild-caught salmon

1 lemon

In a small bowl, whisk together brown sugar, pepper, salt, and vodka. Place salmon in a large resealable bag. Pour in marinade and massage into the salmon. Refrigerate for two to four hours. Grill the salmon on a cedar plank skin side down for 12-15 minutes or until uniformly pink in the center. Serve with lemon slices and enjoy!

360 KC Barbeque Flavored Vodka was first introduced just over a year ago as a limited release available exclusively in the Kansas City Metro area. This one-of-a-kind vodka quickly became a local fan favorite and led to a partnership with the Kansas City Barbeque Society, the folks who really know barbeque.

Labor Day weekend is also a great time to impress your friends and family with a new brunch cocktail. Click here to check out a variety of 360 KC Barbeque cocktails. The robust flavor and smoked meat garnishes of a 360 Barbeque Bloody Mary make it the perfect cocktail for barbeque enthusiasts and brunch connoisseurs alike.

ABOUT 360 VODKA

360 Vodka is Kansas City's hometown vodka and is a premium brand of Holladay Distillery, the oldest business in the Kansas City area. Learn more at vodka360.com and by following @360Vodka.

2021 Earth Friendly Distilling Co., Weston, MO. Made with Vodka Distilled from American Grain and Natural Flavors. 35% Alc./Vol. (70 Proof). Drink Responsibly. Drive Responsibly. Exist Responsibly.

SOURCE 360 Vodka

Related Links

https://vodka360.com


Data From Their OTT/CTV Platform and Proprietary Header Bidding Solution Cite Publisher Revenue Gains in H1

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Omnichannel ad tech platform and ad server Smaato published its H1 2021 Trend Report, celebrating that their publishers have not only recovered from the pandemic, but rallied.

The report demonstrates ad spend spiked on the platform in 2021 and global eCPMs are up 7.4% YOY. Not only has the industry's digital adoption trend been reflected on Smaato's platform, Smaato's own data also supports the acceleration of OTT/CTV spend, a shift toward header bidding solutions and the importance of contextual targeting in their latest report.

Smaato's publisher monetization options run the gamut, and with the change in user behavior here to stay, the focus on experiences across channels seems to be paying off. As one of the only OTT/CTV platforms to offer dynamic ad breaks and bidding by ad pod, ad slot and auction type, Smaato reports higher eCPMs for ad podding, offering more evidence that delivering experiences delivers results.

Alongside Smaato's built-in Dynamic Ad Insertion (DAI) and Server Side Ad Insertion (SAI) capabilities for OTT, publishers can include platform, genre, series, season, and even episode information in the bid request.

"Advertisers know what they're bidding on, and publishers can see which ad pods, which ad slot and even which episode drives the highest revenue," says Smaato General Manager Matthew Deets. "The win-win comes down to personalizing the experience for the end user."

Another highlight in H1 is Smaato's in-app header bidding solution. Smaato's Unified Bidding is built into their SDK. The report cites publishers using Unified Bidding outperformed the traditional waterfall. In June of this year alone, Unified Bidding in the Smaato SDK outperformed both Android and iOS SDK integrations for won auctions by up to 10x.

"When you look at the data, it's clear how a feature-rich platform focused on user experiences makes an impact on the bottom line," says Deets. "Now that Smaato has joined forces with Verve Group, we can only boost our ability to create personalized experiences for users to drive revenue for publishers."

Download Smaato's H1 Trend report for more of the latest industry trends, insights and data from the Smaato platform.

Smaato's digital ad tech platform is the only omnichannel ad server and monetization solution with controls to make monetization simple. Publishers can bring their first-party data and manage all inventory in one place. Marketers get access to the highest-quality inventory so they can reach audiences around the world and on any device. Headquartered in San Francisco, Smaato is part of Verve Group, a Media and Games Invest (MGI) company, with additional offices in Hamburg, New York, Beijing, and Singapore. Learn more at http://www.smaato.com.

Carrie Pittman

[email protected]

Related Images

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Spending on the Smaato Digital Ad Tech Platform Rallies in 2021

Indexed Ad Spending on the Smaato Platform Evidence of Publisher Comeback in 2021

SOURCE Smaato, Inc.
HONG KONG, Sept. 2, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Allsaints Music Group is pleased to announce the completion of the Series B1 round financing in the amount of US $60 million. This round of financing is led by CMBI and OPPO with co-investors including Xiaomi and Hui Capital etc. Lighthouse Capital is the exclusive Financial Advisor to Allsaints Music Group on this transaction.

Allsaints Music Group was founded by veterans in the field of digital music and its vision is to build the global music artist platform using internet and blockchain technology beyond where it is today. Founder and CEO Yingbo Zhu was the founding CEO of China Telecom iMusic and also a founding member of ASPire Holdings; Co-Founder and Chief Content Officer, Gary Chen was the Founder/CEO of China first legal music platform Top100.cn and Google Music China; and he once served as a partner and Chief Content Officer of ChangBa Music Group.

Early strategic investors of Allsaints Music Group include the world's leading mobile technology companies. The company has reached global strategic agreements with OPPO, vivo, and Xiaomi on streaming music services. Working with music industry partners, Allsaints Music Group can help music artists to reach billions of mobile phone users worldwide by integrating hardware, software, music content, mobile internet and blockchain technology.

Yingbo Zhu, CEO of Allsaints Music Group, said: "We welcome more talents to join us to help global artists and musicians to realize their dreams while standing on the shoulders of giants partners."

Xinghai Zeng, Managing Director of CMBI, said: "We believe that music will be one of the best-applied scenarios of blockchain. The blockchain technology will help to reshape the music industry, help music content creators have more initiatives in the industrial value chain, and help the music business continue its phenomenal growth. We believe this is the biggest opportunity since the emergence of digital music. CMBI's investments portfolio companies in blockchain technology sector will work with Allsaints Music Group very closely during this music industry transformation era. "

James Zheng, Corporate Investment Director of OPPO, said: "Digital music is a market with a huge user base and needs to be improved all the time. We are witnessing big changes of user interaction, content creation, distribution and social networking in this sector brought by new mobile technology. We believe in Allsaints Music Group's professional and excellent team and we are so glad to partner with the company from this early stage. We expect Allsaints Music Group to create better music services to users and the next-generation of global artist and musician platform with more long-term value and sustainable ecology. "

Wen Jiang, Managing Director of Xiaomi Corporate Investment Division, said: "Digital music is a huge market covering the global population but the emerging mobile Internet technology and smart devices are yet to be exploited more to help the transformation of this market. Allsaints Music Group will establish the next-generation global artists and musicians platform to bring artists and fans together. Allsaints Music team has accumulated a profoundly successful track records in the digital music industry. In communications with Allsaints Music team, we always feel their 'sincerity' and 'love' for the global music industry which are highly consistent with Xiaomi's values. We are optimistic about Allsaints Music's future as a pioneer and its contribution to artists and music industry."

Jaden Xie, Executive Director of Lighthouse Capital, said: "Digital music is a huge market for companies to grow to $100 billion valuation potentially and the industry is at a turning point. Allsaints Music team has the top industry resource and integration capabilities. With keen insights on users and subversive product innovation, the company has the opportunity to create a next-generation global music ecology and establish the direct relationship between musicians and fans. We are very optimistic about the future of Allsaints Music Group and we are fortunate to help the whole process of the company's business planning, strategic development and financing transactions. We look forward to witnessing the birth of the next-generation global music platform."

SOURCE Allsaints Music Group Limited

Related Links

www.allsaintsmusic.com


HOUSTON, Sept. 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- American Gilsonite Company (the "Company" or "AGC"), the world's principal commercial miner and processor of uintaite, the unique mineral marketed under its trademark name "Gilsonite", today announced that it has rescheduled its conference call for the quarter ended June 30, 2021 to Tuesday, September 14, 2021, at 10:00 am ET.

Craig Mueller, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Steven Granda, Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, will discuss the Company's financial results and answer questions from the investment community during the conference call.

A rebroadcast of this conference call will be available through October 14, 2021. The dial-in information for both the conference call and the rebroadcast has been be posted to the Company's Intralinks website. Participants for the conference call are requested to dial in five to ten minutes prior to the scheduled start time.

Holders of the Company's Subordinated Notes and holders of the Company's common stock who have executed the Stockholders Agreement can request access to the Company's Intralinks site by contacting Michael Herley by email at [email protected] or by phone at 203-308-1409.

About American Gilsonite Company

AGC operates as an industrial minerals company and is the world's primary miner and processor of uintaite, a variety of asphaltite, a specialty hydrocarbon which AGC markets to industrial customers under its registered trademark name "Gilsonite". Gilsonite is a glossy, black, solid naturally occurring hydrocarbon similar in appearance to hard asphalt and is believed to be found in commercial quantities only in the Uinta Basin in northeastern Utah. Because of its unique chemical and physical properties, Gilsonite has been used in more than 160 products. The Company sells its products to customers in four primary markets: (i) oil and gas, (ii) inks and paints, (iii) foundry and (iv) asphalt. AGC is headquartered in Houston, Texas. To learn more, visit www.americangilsonite.com and follow us on LinkedIn.

Contact: Michael Herley 203-308-1409

[email protected]

Related Links http://www.americangilsonite.com

SOURCE American Gilsonite Company

SOURCE American Gilsonite Company

Related Links

http://www.americangilsonite.com


DALLAS, Sept. 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- American Real PM is one of the top property management solutions for real estate investors in Dallas/Fort Worth, Kansas City, St. Louis and soon to be, the metro Detroit area. American Real PM is dedicated to serving all of their property owners with the same service they would expect if it was their own asset being managed. As investors themselves, American Real PM's focus is on maximizing profits for their clients/investors. American Real PM is passionate about real estate and even more passionate about their tenants and their owners.

American Real PM continues to add new properties to their Dallas Property Management Portfolio each month. Dallas/Fort Worth (DFW) is growing in leaps and bounds, and with every new project expansion, it offers more to newcomers. American Real PM has added new properties that range in rent monthly for $1,795 to $3,500. All of the properties are 3 bedroom 2 baths and have been completely renovated, remodeled and ready for move-in.

In addition to Dallas, American Real PM has added new properties in St. Louis to their St. Louis Property Management. St. Louis is getting more and more attention recently from Overseas investors, it is not surprising really as Missouri is one of the cheapest states in which to buy a house. The new properties under management rent monthly for $1,025 to $1,350. These properties range from 925 Sq Ft to 1175 Sq Ft.

Lastly, American Real PM has added new properties to their Kansas City Property Management Portfolio. Kansas City home prices are rising faster than most U.S. cities. A lack of inventory across the metropolitan area is the biggest driver of the rising prices. But in Kansas City, there is only about one month of supply of available homes for sale  which is an indicator of Kansas City being a strong seller's real estate market.

Another benefit that American Real PM offers to their clients is a way to grow their rental portfolio from within the company. American Real PM offers a service designed to identify good investment opportunities in the markets they manage in called the Active Rental Program. The Active Rental Program or ARP for short is a passive solution offered to current and prospective owners/investors. American Real PM will identify the property, help the investor through the closing process and then manage the asset for the investor. All an investor has to do is sit back and collect their rental income through their very own online investor portal. This portal gives investors an up to date snapshot of the performance of their portfolio at any time. No matter where they are!

For more information on American Real PM and their services, visit their website at www.americanrealpm.com.

Related Images

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SOURCE American Real PM

Related Links

http://www.americanrealpm.com/


In addition to mobilizing emergency shelter services, the ASPCA has already assisted in evacuating more than 150 homeless animals out of impacted communities. All of the animals transported out of impacted communities were unowned before the storm hit and will be made available for adoption.

Shelters that opened their doors to take in homeless animals impacted by the storm include: Brandywine Valley SPCA, New Castle, Del.; Humane Society of Tennessee Valley in Knoxville, Tenn.; Massachusetts SPCA in Boston, Mass.; SPCA of Texas in Dallas, Tex., and Tri-City Animal Shelter in Cedar Hill, Tex.

"The bravery and dedication of animal welfare groups and agencies collaborating to move vulnerable animals out of harm's way has been absolutely inspiring, and we're proud to have our specialists among them to assist Gulf Coast communities devastated by Hurricane Ida," said Matt Bershadker, president and CEO of the ASPCA. "As the work shifts from water and land rescues to operating emergency animal shelters, we will continue to do all we can to support these animals and their owners."

Hurricane Ida made landfall on August 29 as a category 4 storm and has caused significant destruction with major flooding, high winds and power outages. The ASPCA disaster response team remains in communications with local and state emergency response agencies and will continue to provide boots-on-the-ground assistance for impacted shelters and displaced animals and pet owners.

The ASPCA deploys nationwide to assist in relocation, search-and-rescue, sheltering, and reunification efforts during disaster situations including wildfires, tornadoes, and floods. In addition, they work closely with local agencies across the country to help enhance their animal response capabilities through grants and training opportunities. The ASPCA also works with lawmakers to increase access to co-sheltering opportunities, a housing approach that keeps people and pets together when they are displaced by natural or manmade disasters.

On the heels of Hurricane Ida, and as we recognize September as National Preparedness Month, the ASPCA is sharing lifesaving expert tips on keeping animals safe during a disaster and urging residents in the pathway of approaching hurricanes to include pets in their evacuation plans. To learn how to incorporate pets into preparedness plans, visit aspca.org/disasterprep.

For the latest updates on the ASPCA's response to Hurricane Ida, please visit www.aspca.org/idaupdates.

About the ASPCA

Founded in 1866, the ASPCA (American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) was the first animal welfare organization in North America and continues to serve as the nation's leading voice for animals. More than two million supporters strong, the ASPCA is committed to its mission of providing effective means for the prevention of cruelty to animals throughout the United States. As a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit corporation, the ASPCA is a national leader in the areas of anti-cruelty, community outreach and animal health services. For more information, please visit www.ASPCA.org, and be sure to follow the ASPCA on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

SOURCE ASPCA

Related Links

http://www.aspca.org


Key Market Dynamics:

Market Driver

Market Trends

Market Challenges

The rising sales of luxury cars and surging penetration of digital platforms in vehicles are some of the key market drivers. In addition, key market trends such as the development of three-chamber air spring systems and smart air suspension systems will influence the market's growth positively in the next few years. However, factors such as high production costs and short lifespan and heavy maintenance costs will limit the market's growth.

To learn about additional key drivers, trends, and challenges available with Technavio. Take a look at our FREE Sample Report right now!

The automotive air suspension market report is segmented by application (commercial vehicle and passenger vehicle) and geography (Europe, North America, APAC, South America, and MEA). Furthermore, Europe will be the fastest growing region contributing 38% of the market's growth during the forecast period. Germany and the UK will emerge as the key regional markets for automotive air suspension in Europe.

View our sample report for accurate prediction of the contribution of all the segments, and regional opportunities in store.

Companies Mentioned with their Offerings

Continental AG

Dunlop Systems and Components

EnPro Industries Inc.

Hendrickson Holdings LLC

Hitachi Ltd.

thyssenkrupp AG

To Gain Access to more Vendor Profiles with their Key Offerings available with Technavio, Click Here

Related Reports on Consumer Discretionary Industry Include:

Automotive Suspension System Lubricants Market by Application and Geography - Forecast and Analysis 2021-2025

Heavy-duty Truck Suspension System Market by Gross Vehicle Weight Rating and Geography - Forecast and Analysis 2020-2024

Automotive Anti-roll Bar Market by Application and Geography - Forecast and Analysis 2020-2024

Key Topics Covered:

Executive Summary

Market Landscape

Market Sizing

Five Forces Analysis

Market Segmentation by Application

Customer landscape

Geographic Landscape

Vendor Landscape

Vendor Analysis

Appendix

About Us

Technavio is a leading global technology research and advisory company. Their research and analysis focuses on emerging market trends and provides actionable insights to help businesses identify market opportunities and develop effective strategies to optimize their market positions. With over 500 specialized analysts, Technavio's report library Their client base consists of enterprises of all sizes, including more than 100 Fortune 500 companies. This growing client base relies on Technavio's comprehensive coverage, extensive research, and actionable market insights to identify opportunities in existing and potential markets and assess their competitive positions within changing market scenarios.

Contact

Technavio Research

Jesse Maida

Media & Marketing Executive

US: +1 844 364 1100

UK: +44 203 893 3200

Email:[email protected]

Website: www.technavio.com/

Report: https://www.technavio.com/report/automotive-air-suspension-market-industry-analysis

SOURCE Technavio
BELMOPAN, Belize, Sept. 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Following six months of intensive discussions, the Government of Belize ("Belize") has reached an agreement in principle with a committee of institutional investors (the "Committee") comprising Aberdeen Standard Investments, Grantham, Mayo, Van Otterloo & Co. LLC and Greylock Capital Management, LLC. The investors that have appointed the Committee hold close to 50% of the outstanding principal amount of Belize's U.S. Dollar Bonds due 2034 (the "Bonds"). Belize and the Committee have agreed in principle on key indicative commercial terms of a forthcoming cash tender offer (the "Offer") and consent solicitation, through which Belize will seek to purchase, redeem and cancel all of the outstanding Bonds. Such amendments are expected to become effective on the settlement date.

The key features of the agreement in principle that Belize has reached with the Committee are as follows:

Tender Consideration : Eligible holders who tender their Bonds prior to the expiration date of the Offer will receive, on the date of settlement, a cash payment in an amount equal to $550 per $1,000 of the outstanding principal of the Bonds as of September 1, 2021 comprised of (i) $517 per $1,000 of the outstanding principal of the Bonds as of September 1, 2021 (such amount, the "Purchase Price") plus (ii) $33 per $1,000 of the outstanding principal of the Bonds as of September 1, 2021 (in lieu of accrued and unpaid interest on the Bonds calculated through October 19, 2021 ) (such amount, the "Accrued Interest Payment"); Redemption of Non-Tendered Bonds : Subject to consents from eligible holders of more than 75% of the aggregate principal amount outstanding of the Bonds, Bonds held by eligible holders who do not tender prior to the expiration date of the Offer will be redeemed in cash (the "Redemption") on the date of settlement, with a cash payment equal to $517 per $1,000 of the outstanding principal of the Bonds as of September 1, 2021 and will not receive the Accrued Interest Payment; Contingency Account : In addition to the cash payments described above, as provided in the existing trust indenture, all eligible holders will be entitled to a cash payment of approximately $1 per $1,000 of the outstanding principal of the Bonds as of September 1, 2021 , which will be equal to such holders' pro rata share of the aggregate amount in the contingency account held by the trustee under the trust indenture; Marine Conservation Endowment Account : Belize has committed, as an integral part of the transaction, to prefund in full (in the amount of $23.4 million ), at settlement, a Marine Conservation Endowment Account. This endowment account, which will be administered by an affiliate of The Nature Conservancy ("TNC"), will be devoted to supporting future marine conservation projects in Belize ; and Expenses : Belize has agreed to reimburse, on the date of settlement, reasonable and documented fees and expenses of legal counsel to the Committee up to a certain amount.

Belize expects to launch the Offer in the short term, subject to the finalization of an Offer to Purchase and Consent Solicitation Statement, and will seek the support of all other eligible holders of the Bonds.

Belize expects to finance the purchase of the Bonds with funding provided by TNC in connection with their Blue Bonds for Ocean Conservation program (the "Blue Bonds Financing"), which uses private capital to refinance public debt of participating countries in order to support durable marine conservation efforts and sustainable marine-based economic activity. Belize's offer to repurchase the Bonds for cash will be conditional on the consummation of the Blue Bond Financing. As part of the Blue Bonds Financing, Belize would accelerate its marine conservation commitments, including enhanced protections for its coastline, reef and ocean territory as well as the funding of an endowment to support future marine conservation projects in Belize. Belize has reached agreement in principle regarding the key commercial terms of the Blue Bonds Financing with TNC, and with Credit Suisse Group AG and/or its affiliated entities, which is arranging the Blue Bonds Financing. The U.S. International Development Finance Corporation is expected to provide political risk insurance in connection with the Blue Bonds Financing. The parties are working to finalize the definitive documents and consummate the Blue Bonds Financing.

In addition to the consummation of the Blue Bonds Financing, the consummation of the Offer and the Redemption is subject to the satisfaction of certain conditions, including the receipt of valid tenders and consents from eligible holders of more than 75% of the aggregate principal amount outstanding of the Bonds.

The deadline for Belize to settle the offer will be November 19, 2021, which is intended to provide time for the parties to finalize the definitive documentation and consummate the Blue Bond Financing.

If the Offer is consummated, Belize will retire all its outstanding Bonds through the Offer and the Redemption (facilitated by the use of the collective action clause provision contained in the trust indenture). The resulting cash flow savings will materially assist in the alleviation of the devastating consequences of the COVID 19 pandemic as well as help to achieve important environmental conservation goals. Further, the consummation of the Offer, together with Belize's Homegrown Economic program and fiscal consolidation, will pave the way for strong and long-lasting economic growth and the furtherance of critical marine conservation objectives.

Important Notice

This press release is for informational purposes only and is not an offer of securities for sale in the United States or a solicitation of consents of any holders of securities, and none of the Bonds has been or will be registered under the Securities Act of 1933 (the "Securities Act") or the securities laws of any other jurisdiction. Unless they are registered under the Securities Act, the Bonds may be offered only in transactions that are exempt from registration under the Securities Act. This press release does not constitute an offer of the Bonds for sale, or the solicitation of an offer to buy any securities, in any state or other jurisdiction in which any offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful. This press release does not constitute, and may not be used in connection with, an offer or solicitation in any place where offers or solicitations are not permitted by law.

This press release and any other documents and/or materials relating hereto is not being made and the press release and such documents and/or materials have not been approved by an authorized person for the purposes of section 21 of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000. Accordingly, this press release is not being made and related documents and/or materials have not been distributed, and must not be passed on, to persons in the United Kingdom ("UK") other than (i) persons falling within Article 43(2) of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (Financial Promotion) Order 2005 (the "Order"), including existing members and creditors of Belize or (ii) any other persons to whom they may otherwise lawfully be made or distributed under the Order (all such persons described in (i) and (ii) above together being referred to as "Relevant Persons"). In the UK, any investment or investment activity to which this press release or any related documents and/or materials relate is available only to Relevant Persons and will be engaged in only with Relevant Persons. Any person in the UK who is not a Relevant Person should not act or rely on this press release or any related documents and/or materials or any of its or their contents.

NONE OF BELIZE OR ITS ADVISORS NOR ANY OF THEIR RESPECTIVE OFFICIALS, DIRECTORS, EMPLOYEES, AFFILIATES, AGENTS OR REPRESENTATIVES HAVE MADE ANY RECOMMENDATION AS TO WHETHER HOLDERS SHOULD PARTICIPATE IN ANY CONSENT SOLICITATION OR TENDER OFFER THAT MAY BE ANNOUNCED BY BELIZE.

Forward-Looking Statements

All statements in this press release, other than statements of historical fact, are forward-looking statements. These statements are based on expectations and assumptions on the date of this press release and are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties, which could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in such statements. Risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, market conditions, and factors over which Belize has no control. Belize assumes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements, and does not intend to do so, unless otherwise required by law.

Questions regarding this press release may be directed to Joseph Waight (email: [email protected]; telephone +501 822 3866).

SOURCE The Government of Belize
BOSTON, LONDON and NEW YORK, Sept. 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The committee (the "Committee") of holders of Belize's U.S. Dollar Bonds due 2034 (the "Bonds") has engaged with the Government of Belize (the "Government" or "Belize") and its advisors following the Government's March 19, 2021 public announcement of the Government's intention to seek a restructuring of the Bonds. The Committee and the Government have agreed in principle on key indicative commercial terms of a forthcoming cash tender offer and consent solicitation (the "Offer") through which Belize will seek to purchase all of the outstanding Bonds. The details of the proposed transaction are contained in Belize's September 3, 2021 Press Release (the "Government Release") https://www.centralbank.org.bz/docs/default-source/7.0-news-advisories/belize---press-release-announcing-agreement-with-committee---final-version.pdf?sfvrsn=15388c35_2.

The investors that have appointed the Committee hold close to 50% of the outstanding principal amount of the Bonds.

As members of the Committee, Aberdeen Standard Investments, Grantham, Mayo, van Otterloo & Co. LLC and Greylock Capital Management, LLC welcome the environmental and marine conservation features of the proposed transaction with The Nature Conservancy ("TNC"), which is in line with their support for, and continuous development of, innovative ESG financing techniques. The Committee Members and their advisor engaged closely with key local and international stakeholders while collaborating with the process that has made this transaction achievable, and are optimistic that future international sovereign debt operations will incorporate measures that aim to enhance environmental sustainability and resilience.

The Committee's decision to support the proposed transaction, negotiated with the Belize authorities over the last six months, is informed, inter alia, by these considerations:

The uncertain prospects of Belize's economy, including due to the COVID-19 pandemic and other external shocks.

economy, including due to the COVID-19 pandemic and other external shocks. A cash repurchase of the Bonds (in contrast to a more conventional bond exchange) reflected the Government's expressed intent to satisfy, for the foreseeable future, its external financing requirements either from bilateral and multilateral creditors or through loan financings from commercial sources (such as the one being arranged by TNC to fund the Offer).

As an integral part of this transaction, Belize has committed to allocate a significant amount of money toward environmental conservation measures.

As noted in the Government Release, the consummation of the transaction is subject to several conditions including receipt of support from holders of 75% of the aggregate principal amount outstanding of the Bonds (in order to activate the collective action clause in the Bonds) and completion of the financing being arranged by TNC that is required to fund the cash repurchase of the Bonds.

Subject to the Committee's review of satisfactory Offer documentation consistent with this agreement in principle, each member of the Committee intends to tender the entirety of its position in the Bonds in the transaction.

The Committee encourages all bondholders to carefully consider the terms of the Offer in making their own independent appraisal of the merits and risks of participation.

Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP is acting as the Committee's legal advisers.

For further information, contact Thomas Laryea ([email protected]).

No communication and no information in respect of the Cash Tender Offer and Consent Solicitation referred to above may be distributed to the public in any jurisdiction where a registration or approval is required. No steps have been nor will be taken in any jurisdiction where such steps would be required. The foregoing does not, and shall not, in any circumstances constitute a public offering or an invitation to the public in connection with any offer. The Cash Tender Offer and Consent Solicitation may be subject to specific legal or regulatory restrictions in certain jurisdictions. None of the members of the Committee or the legal advisers thereto assumes any responsibility for any violation of any such restrictions by any person.

The foregoing does not constitute an offer of securities for sale in the United States, and the securities mentioned herein have not been, and will not be, registered under the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "Securities Act"). Securities may not be offered or sold in the United States absent registration pursuant to the Securities Act or an exemption from such registration.

The members of the Committee and the legal advisers thereto are not acting as fiduciaries of Belize or any other person. Furthermore, none of the members of the Committee or the legal advisers thereto is acting as a financial or investment adviser, underwriter, dealer manager, or in any similar capacity for Belize or any other person. None of the members of the Committee or the legal advisers thereto assumes any responsibility for, nor makes any representation or warranty, express or implied, as to the accuracy or completeness of any information contained in any offering materials related to Belize or the Cash Tender Offer and Consent Solicitation. Each investor is solely responsible for making its own independent appraisal of the merits and risks arising in connection with participating, or not participating, in the anticipated Cash Tender Offer and Consent Solicitation. In making an investment decision, each investor must rely on its own examination of Belize and the terms of the Cash Tender Offer and Consent Solicitation.

SOURCE The Government of Belize
SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 2, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The California Academy of Family Physicians (CAFP) strongly denounces SB 8, the Texas law which allows private individuals to sue abortion providers and anyone else who assists a person in obtaining an abortion. The CAFP recognizes that an individual has the right to make their own reproductive decisions. In order to improve the health of patients, families, and communities, everyone must have access to the full range of health care services. Abortion is an evidence-based health care service. Limiting abortion access will lead to unsafe abortions and unsafe pregnancies, which result in significant increases in maternal mortality.

"People should be able to access health care when they need it, where they need it, and in a compassionate and dignified environment. Health care professionals should be able to serve their communities by providing patients with the care they were trained to do, and without the threat or intimidation that SB 8 creates," said CAFP President Dr. Shannon Connolly.

The CAFP represents family physicians with diverse individual perspectives, but we stand united in the belief that health care decisions should be made by patients in consultation with a trusted physician who is able to offer all information necessary to ensure informed consent. The CAFP strongly opposes any external interference in this process as it conflicts with the fundamental medical principle of patient autonomy and infringes upon the physician-patient relationship.

The CAFP strongly opposes the criminalization of physicians who provide the medical standard of care to their patients. "Physicians must be able to practice medicine that is informed by their medical education, training, and experience, freely and without threat of criminal punishment." Said Dr. Connolly. "In essence, this law provides a financial incentive for any person to legally harass health care professionals. No physician or health care professional should ever have to choose between offering life-saving care to a patient and the law."

CAFP supports and advocates for health equity. Restricting access to comprehensive reproductive health services--including abortion disproportionately decreases access to care for people of color, low-income individuals, rural residents, and other vulnerable populations.

Family medicine offers a unique perspective as a specialty committed to the care of individuals throughout their lives. Laws like Texas' SB 8 reduce access to important health services, increase health inequity and threaten the foundation of the physician-patient relationship. The CAFP offers itself as a resource to provide expert information on reproductive health and the patient-physician relationship. We support Texans' right to access abortion services and providers' to be able to safely provide these important services without threat of intimidation or criminalization.

About the California Academy of Family Physicians: With more than 10,000 members, including active practicing family physicians, residents in family medicine, and medical students interested in the specialty, CAFP is the largest primary care medical society in California. Family physicians are trained to treat an entire family's medical needs, addressing the whole spectrum of life's medical challenges. Family Physicians serve a broad base of patients in urban, suburban, and rural areas, often in California's most underserved areas.

SOURCE California Academy of Family Physicians

Related Links

https://www.familydocs.org


SHANGHAI, Sept. 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- With the evolving landscape of the global automotive industry, Cango Inc. (NYSE: CANG) ("Cango" or the "Company") is issuing a bi-monthly industry insight called "CANGO Auto View" to bring readers, drivers and passengers up to speed with what's on offer in the automobile market, what trends are emerging, and what holes need to be plugged.

Below is an article from the Company's 4th edition for June 2021.

Autonomous driving is the future, and when it comes to autonomous driving solutions, Baidu Apollo has always attracted much attention. With Baidu's support, Apollo has accumulated L4 autonomous driving test mileage of 10 million kilometers.

Prior to this, Baidu Apollo unveiled Apollo Lite, its closed-loop solution for pure visual self-driving on urban roads. According to the company, this is the only L4 pure visual perception solution for urban roads in China.

According to Wang Liang, chairman of Apollo Technical Committee, Apollo Lite can support parallel processing of 10-channel cameras and data amount of 200 frames/second. The maximum frame loss rate of single visual link can be controlled below 5, realizing 360-degree real-time environmental perception. The visual detection range for front obstacles is stabilized at 240 meters.

In 2020, Baidu launched ANP (Apollo Navigation Pilot), based on the L4 assisted driving on complex urban roads powered by Apollo Lite, high-precision maps and the vehicle-to-everything (V2X) platform. Through dimensionality reduction of L4 technologies, high-precision maps, V2X and the mass production solution for the pure visual system, ANP provides users with assisted driving capability with zero intervention from start to finish. ANP enables vehicles to seamlessly switch from AVP to urban roads, pass ramps, ring roads, highways, high-speed JCT, ETC, and return to urban roads, completing point-to-point autonomous assisted driving.

Baidu Apollo has opened the Apollo database, that is, Apollo Scape large-scale autonomous driving dataset to provide solutions for industry users. It is expected to achieve pre-installation mass production in 1 million vehicles in 5 years.

Didi Chuxing has also made remarkable progress in self-driving. During the Shanghai Auto Show this year, Didi introduced Didi Gemini, a new hardware platform, which incorporates critical hardware upgrades including electronic components and vehicle-level experience. Mounted on the Volvo XC90 redundancy model, DiDi Gemini is architected with multi-layered redundancy protections in four aspects, including high-performance sensors, on-board autonomous driving system, remote safety assistance system and high compatibility with the pre-installed car model. Gemini will be a major feature for DiDi's next generation of self-driving fleet.

DiDi Chuxing claims that its Gemini autonomous driving platform has significantly increased the number and variety of sensors, and enhanced the computing power and other functionalities of the system. The new vehicle includes up to 50 high-resolution sensors, achieving 700 trillion operations per second (TOPS) of performance with imaging speed as fast as tens of millions of point clouds per second, while keeping the overall cost unchanged.

Zhang Bo, CTO of Didi Chuxing and CEO of Automatic Driving, said that safety concerns drove Didi to do research on automatic driving. Didi Gemini designs multiple redundancy layers, so that the main and backup systems are both independent and collaborative, providing multiple security guarantees for users. It is also intended to lay a good safety foundation for the unmanned test phase.

In addition to launching a new hardware platform, Didi Autonomous Driving has also recently upgraded its software. In early April this year, Didi released the world's first video of autonomous driving without disengagement for 5 consecutive hours, showing stable performance in complex scenarios including driving in continuous backlighting, overtaking on narrow roads, turning left without protection, and U-turn at a large intersection. In June 2020, Didi Autonomous Driving started manned test service to the public in Shanghai. In March this year, Didi Autonomous Driving announced a collaboration with Huadu District, Guangzhou on an Intelligent Connected Vehicle (ICV) industry project.

Companies including DJI, SenseTime, Sequoia, PonyTron, QCraft, and Desay SV have also borne some fruit in self-driving.

Among them, the DJI D80/D80+ intelligent driving system can cover the 0 to 80 km/h speed range and is suitable for urban expressway scenarios. The DJI intelligent parking system has four types of application scenarios including assisted parking, memory parking, autonomous parking and smart summon.

Desay SV's first autonomous driving domain controller based on Nvidia's Xavier chip has been installed on Xiaopeng P7 for mass production. Currently, the main focus is on L4~L5 autonomous driving and automotive network safety, with extensive research on the architecture and algorithms.

The SenseAuto smart cabin solution by SenseTime consists of Driver Monitoring System (DMS), Occupant Monitoring System (OMS), Keyless Entry, Virtual Companion and multiple in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) functions powered by augmented reality (AR). It has established in-depth cooperation with carmakers such as Great Wall WEY, Chery JETOUR and NETA Auto. SenseTime has cooperated with more than 30 domestic and foreign industry-leading partners since 2018 and covered over 13 million vehicles in mass production.

About Cango Inc.

Cango Inc. (NYSE: CANG) is a leading automotive transaction service platform in China connecting dealers, financial institutions, car buyers, and other industry participants. Founded in 2010 by a group of pioneers in China's automotive finance industry, the Company is headquartered in Shanghai and engages car buyers through a nationwide dealer network. The Company's services primarily consist of automotive financing facilitation, car trading transactions, and after-market services facilitation. By utilizing its competitive advantages in technology, data insights, and cloud-based infrastructure, Cango is able to connect its platform participants while bringing them a premium user experience. Cango's platform model puts it in a unique position to add value for its platform participants and business partners as the automotive and mobility markets in China continue to grow and evolve. For more information, please visit: www.cangoonline.com.

Media Contact:

Juliet Ye

Cango Inc.

Tel: +86 21 3183 5088 ext.5581

Email: [email protected]

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Cango_Group

SOURCE Cango Inc.
DUBLIN, Sept. 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The "China Outbound Tourism Market 2021 - 2026" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

China outbound tourism market to reveal momentous growth by 2026, and the market's growth momentum will accelerate at a CAGR of 32% during the forecast period

This report on the China outbound tourism market provides a holistic analysis, market size and forecast, trends, growth drivers, and challenges, as well as countries analysis covering around 26 nations.

The report uses data and analysis to discuss potential lucrative opportunities, current and future trends related to China's outbound tourism flow, spending, the purpose of visits, and main destination markets. The report provides a clear insight into current and future tourism developments of the China outbound tourism market.

Furthermore, this report uses a country-focused analysis to explore the China outbound tourism market. A detailed country-wise analysis of the market is provided, covering a total of 26 nations. Drivers and the restraints are studied in detail to better understand the market and to understand the future growth opportunity of the market.

Report Scope:

An Insightful Analysis of the China Outbound Tourism Market and Forecast (2015 - 2026)

China Outbound Tourism Market Share and Y-o-Y Growth (%), 2015 - 2026

Detailed Assessment of the Total China Outbound Tourists Volume and Forecast to 2027

Detailed Assessment of the Total China Outbound Tourists Spending and Forecast to 2027

Delivers a Complete Insights on Number of Outbound Visitor Departures from China to Major 26 Countries with Five Years Forecasts

to Major 26 Countries with Five Years Forecasts Analyses China Outbound Tourism Expenditure to the Major 26 Countries with Five Years Forecast

Breakdown of Historical and Forecast Data (2015 - 2026) between Leisure, Visits Friends and Relatives (VFR), Business and Other Segments

Delivers an In-Depth Analysis of Evolving Market Trends, Drivers and Restraints of the China Outbound Tourism Market

Key Questions Addressed by the Report:

What is the current size of the overall China outbound tourism market?

outbound tourism market? How much Chinese tourists spent while traveling abroad?

To what extent did Covid-19 impact China's outbound tourism market in 2020?

outbound tourism market in 2020? Which countries have the most Chinese tourists?

Which European country has the most Chinese tourists?

In which country do Chinese tourists spend the most money?

How the rise of Chinese tourism will change the face of the World travel industry?

What are the main drivers and restraints in the China outbound tourism market?

outbound tourism market? How is the China outbound tourism market anticipated to evolve during the forecast period 2021 - 2026?

Key Topics Covered:

1. Executive Summary

2. Market Size and Forecast: Total China Outbound Travelers Visitation and Spending (2015 - 2026)

2.1 Total China Outbound Travelers Visitation and Forecast

2.2 Total China Outbound Travelers Spending and Forecast

3. China Outbound Travelers Visitation and Spending Share and Y-o-Y Growth (%) (2015 - 2026)

3.1 China Outbound Travelers Visitation Share and Forecast

3.2 China Outbound Travelers Spending Share and Forecast

4. Key Market Drivers and Inhibitors of the China Outbound Tourism Market

4.1 Market Drivers

4.2 Market Inhibitors

5. China Outbound Tourism Market - Top 26 Countries In-depth Analysis (2015- 2026)

5.1 China Outbound Travelers Visitation

5.2 China Outbound Travelers Purpose of Visit

5.3 China Outbound Travelers Spending

Countries Covered

Australia

Cambodia

Canada

Dubai

France

Germany

Hong Kong

India

Indonesia

Italy

Japan

Korea

Macau

Malaysia

Nepal

New Zealand

Philippines

Singapore

Spain

Sri Lanka

Taiwan

Thailand

The United Kingdom

The United States

Turkey

Vietnam

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/s9yhti

Media Contact:

Research and Markets

Laura Wood, Senior Manager

[email protected]

For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470

For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call +1-800-526-8630

For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900

U.S. Fax: 646-607-1904

Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716

SOURCE Research and Markets

Related Links

http://www.researchandmarkets.com


OMAHA, Neb., Sept. 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Christopher J. Holewinski, DO, FACOI, PharmD. is being recognized by Continental Who's Who as a Trusted Internist and Hospitalist for his exceptional work in the field of Medicine.

Dr. Holewinski holds dual degrees in osteopathy and pharmacy. He is an internist and hospitalist, caring for patients with various disorders and referring patients to specialists when necessary.

Christopher J. Holewinski, DO, FACOI, PharmD.

He graduated from the Creighton University School of Pharmacy, where he earned a BS in biology, his PharmD, and completed a pharmacy residency. He later graduated from Des Moines University College of Osteopathic Medicine, earning his Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine degree. He then went on to perform his residency in Internal Medicine at the Corpus Christi Medical Center. For the last year of his residency, Dr. Holewinski served as a Co-Chief resident.

Dr. Holewinski practiced as a Clinical Infectious Disease Pharmacist at the Corpus Christi Infusion Center in Texas. He also worked as a Clinical Pharmacist at CHI Health Immanuel in Nebraska. Dr. Holewinski joined the CHI Health Clinic Hospital at Mercy Hospital in 2013 as an internist.

He is a Fellow of the American College of Osteopathic Internists, the American Osteopathic Association, and the American College of Physicians. He is board-certified in Internal Medicine by the American Osteopathic Board of Internal Medicine (AOBIM). Dr. Holewinski holds a certificate in Advanced Trauma Life Support. He is associated with the CHI Health Creighton University Medical Center, the Bergan Mercy CHI Health, Immanuel CHI Health, Lakeside CHI Health, Mercy Council Bluffs, and CHI Health Midlands.

In his spare time, Dr. Holewinski is an active member of the St. Wenceslaus Church.

He would like to thank his mentors: Mark Malesker, PharmD; Steven Gates, MD; and Lue Violi, MD. He would like to dedicate this recognition In the Memory of his mentor-in-residency, Antonio Guzman, MD, and In Loving Memory of his father, Mr. Joseph Holewinski.

Contact: Katherine Green, 516-825-5634, [email protected]

SOURCE Continental Who's Who

Related Links

http://www.continentalwhoswho.com


TALLAHASSEE, Fla., Sept. 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- On the eve of Labor Day weekend as consumers emerge from pandemic isolation, they are likely to encounter "voracious marketing tactics" from timeshare companies, warns a Florida consumer advocacy group. The Florida Alliance for Consumers and Taxpayers (FACT) today launched an educational effort, "Timeshare Nightmare," to alert consumers to the risks of high-pressure sales tactics and predatory contracts.

A new survey shows that 137 million Americans are planning to travel for Labor Day despite COVID concerns. That puts them squarely in the sights of aggressive timeshare marketers.

FACT unveiled a Timeshare Nightmare website timesharenightmare.com as part of the campaign, providing consumer protection information and inviting victims of timeshare scams to share their stories in hopes of preventing others from being trapped in bad deals. The pro-consumer group will also be sharing consumer timeshare horror stories on social media.

"After a year and a half of consumers staying home, timeshare marketers are starving for business, so consumers are likely to encounter voracious marketing tactics," said Lee Hinkle, Director of FACT. "Consumers need to know what they are getting into before they sign on the bottom line, and they should never commit before taking time to cool off after a red hot sales presentation."

Hinkle said that while some timeshare operators conduct their business appropriately, others entice customers with promises of affordable vacations and easy resale options, and then apply unrelenting pressure to close the deal before the customer can walk out the door to think about it.

The timeshare industry began in Florida, with an estimated 370+ timeshare properties  almost three times as many as any other state and 31% of all timeshares in the nation. The impact of the COVID pandemic can clearly be seen in an industry report that says that in 2020, timeshare sales totaled approximately $4.9 billion, just 47% of pre-pandemic sales the previous year  but one of the largest timeshare operators reported in July that its "vacation ownership" revenues had increased by a staggering 152% in the second quarter of 2021 compared with the same period from last year.

"So many timeshare pitches sell the dream of owning your little slice of paradise, but far too often these dreams turn into timeshare nightmares as fees and assessments increase and owners discover they can't escape the contracts they were pressured into signing," said Hinkle. "It's easy to see how a timeshare can be made to sound like a great opportunity for hardworking men and women, but too many Floridians find themselves trapped in bad deals with no escape."

As part of its public awareness campaign, FACT will use social media, a website, and media outreach to share testimonials from victims of timeshare scams and high-pressure sales tactics. FACT will also work with other independent organizations whose members are often targeted by the timeshare industry.

SOURCE Florida Alliance for Consumers and Taxpayers
CINCINNATI, Sept. 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- GoSun sells best-in-class solar appliances to help people live with more independence and resilience. Using only the sun enables consumers to cook day or night, keep food and drinks fresh and cold, charge tech necessities like mobile phones and laptops, light up a room or even purify water.

GoSun Solar Power GoSun Solar Power

In the aftermath of Hurricane Ida leaving millions without power up and down the eastern seaboard and California residents struggling with extended power outages due to the California wildfires, it is clear the time has come for people to embrace GoSun products as the life-changing and possibly lifesaving solar power innovations they are.

GoSun makes glamping guilt-free as well as ordinary camping and any other outdoor activity thanks to their eco-friendly solution to life's little  and sometimes large  problems. The outdoor recreation Industry is ripe for investment. In 2019, outdoor recreation accounted for $459.8B and the industry has continued to soar throughout 2020. Solar and Climate Change investments are going viral; they more than doubled in 2020. Moreover, Since Hurricane Sandy, homeowners are always on the lookout for solutions to extended blackouts where power or even clean drinking is scarce or even non-existent GoSun is perfectly positioned to capitalize on all these opportunities.

That's because the company is already selling and shipping products and generating revenue and is profitable. Unlike most other equity crowdfunding campaigns that are pre-revenue, GoSun has a documented track record of business success with no end of new opportunities to grow.

Firmly established thanks to partnerships with Global Empowerment Mission and the United Nations as well as a retail presence in Walmart, Home Depot, Camping World, REI and Amazon, GoSun is an investment opportunity for everyone to think seriously about.

The GoSun equity crowdfunding campaign - https://bit.ly/3ywRJYI

The GoSun corporate website - https://gosun.co/

Contact:

Howard Sherman

833-276-9377

[email protected]

SOURCE GoSun Inc

Related Links

https://gosun.co/


DETROIT, Sept. 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Current Dealers, a turnkey electric vehicle (EV) charging solution, announced today the company is helping Mercedes-Benz, Cadillac, and other General Motors brands with automotive dealerships across the country that need to comply with new electric vehicle (EV) readiness requirements.

Current Dealers helps auto dealers with EV readiness requirements Current Dealers Photo Credit: Auto Shanghai show in Shanghai By ALY SONG / REUTERS - stock.adobe.com

Industry experts project sustained growth towards mass-market adoption in the electric vehicle market, based on global sales, falling battery costs, more vehicle choices, increased range, and expansion of the charging infrastructure. The availability of public charging outlets in the U.S. has more than doubled since 2018, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. To prepare for an increase in sales nationwide, U.S. auto companies are asking local dealers to comply with new EV requirements.

Current Dealers partners with auto retailers, cities, and other businesses to supply, install, and update the green power e-mobility infrastructure needed for full adoption of EVs. This minority-owned company is headquartered in Detroit, launched by local entrepreneurs with experience in the auto and electrical industry. In the company's first two years, Current Dealers' revenue has tripled helping its partners prepare for the upcoming all-electric future.

To support local dealers' compliance with corporate requirements, Current Dealers offers a simple three-part solution to EV charging, including a facility assessment, charger installation, and ongoing service. The assessment process includes a comprehensive site plan, identification of permits needed, visual mockups of installed chargers, and a total cost breakdown. Installations are completed by licensed electricians who are certified in EV chargers. The company also provides the warranties, maintenance, and upgrades needed for all EV products.

"Companies that install an EV Charger can receive up to $30,000 in tax credits. Plus, benefits from increases in revenue." said William McCoy, CEO and founder of Current Dealers. "We are proud of our work in support of Detroit companies implementing sustainable power solutions since we launched two years ago, and we are excited to expand our services to support auto dealers from coast to coast."

As more U.S. consumers demand sustainable vehicle solutions, dealers are strengthening the EV charging infrastructure in support. For example, General Motors is working with public charging provider EVgo to triple the size of the nation's largest public fast charging network, adding more than 2,700 new fast chargers over the next five years.

"To accelerate adoption of electric vehicles, we must strengthen the country's charging infrastructure," said Sal Estrada, COO, Current Dealers. "As auto dealers add more EV charging stations to their facilities, we are ready to support installation and long-term maintenance of the growing U.S. network."

Learn more: https://youtu.be/2pfuYUng0RU

Photo Credit: Auto Shanghai show in Shanghai By ALY SONG / REUTERS - stock.adobe.com

Media Contact:

William McCoy

313.998.3033

[email protected]

SOURCE Current Dealers
MINNEAPOLIS, Sept. 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Health Care Compliance Association (HCCA) is excited to announce the return of our Clinical Practice Compliance Conference and the Healthcare Enforcement Compliance Conference this fall.

As healthcare continues to specialize, these annual conferences provide insights, updates, and strategies that are pertinent to developing and managing an organization's compliance initiatives. Both conferences will feature live educational sessions led by industry leaders and will provide attendees the opportunity to earn live Compliance Certification Board (CCB) continuing education units (CEUs).

The Virtual Clinical Practice Compliance Conference

Held October 1213, 2021, this virtual conference features updates and insights on government initiatives related to physicians, clinics, and physician integrity trends. Join experienced compliance professionals as they share guidance on how to better develop and manage an organization's compliance initiatives in a clinical setting. This year's agenda will include:

Privacy rule changes

Opioid compliance programs

Risk assessments

Medical director agreements

Conflicts of interest

Information blocking

Stark Law

Compliance training

Inpatient coding and billing

Visit the conference website to view the agenda and register. Sign up by September 14 to save on registration!

The Healthcare Enforcement Compliance Conference

Held November 8-10, attendees of the Healthcare Enforcement Compliance Conference can choose which way to attendvirtually or in-person in Washington, DC! Hear firsthand from government enforcement leaders about regulatory changes, expectations, and key priorities. This includes representatives from the HHS-OIG, Civil Division of the DOJ, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Counsel to the Inspector General as well as leaders in the healthcare enforcement compliance industry. Educational sessions will cover:

False Claims Act

Cybersecurity

Fraud enforcement

Enforcement in clinical research

Privacy regulations

Managed care

Telehealth

CMS oversight

Anti-Kickback Statute

Visit the conference website to view the agenda and register. Save your spot by October 12 to save!

About HCCA

Health Care Compliance Association (HCCA) is a non-profit professional membership organization for healthcare compliance professionals. Since 1996, HCCA has been championing ethical practices and compliance standards to promote the lasting success and integrity of healthcare organizations. From our headquarters in Minneapolis, MN, we serve over 11,500 members who work at hospitals, medical groups, clinics, research facilities, health plan providers, and more.

HCCA offers 50+ conferences annually, weekly web conferences, publications, training resources, certification opportunities, and networking for career growth and program development.



SOURCE Health Care Compliance Association (HCCA)

Related Links

https://www.hcca-info.org/


SHEFFIELD LAKE, Ohio, Sept. 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- EarthWise Pet Nutrition Center & Wellness Spa is an all-natural and holistic pet supply store that helps pet parents provide their pets the best possible:

Nutrition,

Grooming, and

Self-Wash

Their stores carry a wide range of natural foods that includes frozen raw, freeze dried, canned, and kibble. Their pet groomers thrive to provide your pet with the best possible look, and their state-of-the-art self-wash facilities ensures a good bonding experience between the pet and pet-parent. In addition, the store offers a wide range of eco-friendly toys & accessories, and pet walking services.

It was their love of pets that led local residents and store owners, Felipe and Sharon Covarrubias to open their Avon Lake store earlier this year. The reason they chose EarthWise Pet is that the company truly cares about the well-being of your pets from a nutrition standpoint as well as caring for the environment and community. The success of the Avon Lake store and the warm welcoming to the community drove the couple to quickly venture into a second location at Sheffield Crossing. "We got the same sense of community from Sheffield Village, all the way up to the mayor," said Sharon.

The store's emphasis is on reputable natural pet foods that are nationally recognized and well-trained staff that will help you find the right food for furry family member. Their food selections include leading brands such as Primal, Fromm, Nulo, Farmina, NutriSource, and more. The Store follows a 5 Star food rating system on many of the products that guarantees:

No by-products,

No corn, soy, wheat, or unnecessary fillers,

An acceptable glycemic index score,

Validated source control, and

Made in the manufacturer's own facility,

When asked what makes EarthWise Pet special, Felipe was quick to respond, "Our staff is key, their pet nutrition training help pet-parents better understand and make sense of their numerous options. There is so much information out there, we'll help you make sense of it."

EarthWise Pet will host a Grand Opening of their new Sheffield Village location on Saturday, September 18th from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Residents from the surrounding communities and their furry friends are invited to participate in the festivities.

During the celebration, the store is hoping to have lovable pets looking for forever homes on-site, raffle baskets, 10% off in all its products, $5 pet nail trims, samples and more. Local and natural products including Cay9Cookies, Mama Trauma Naturals, Zen Doggy, and Confetti Biscotti Dunkies will also be available for purchase.

EarthWise Pet Nutrition Center & Wellness Spa is located at 5275 Detroit Rd, Sheffield Lake, OH 44054. For more information, please visit our Facebook page or website.





SOURCE EarthWise Pet

Related Links

http://avonlake.earthwisepet.com


The international community has largely neglected the TPLF's oppressive 27-year rule history. Tweet this

Fighting broke out between the TPLF and Ethiopian government forces in November 2020 when TPLF attacked one of the federal military bases in Tigray.

"Despite an oppressive 27-year rule by the TPLF -- characterized by killings, use of child warriors, human rights violations, and free speech suppressions -- the international community has largely neglected the TPLF's history when analyzing the tragic conflict unfolding in Ethiopia's Tigray region," said EACC President Yoseph Tafari. "Jones' comments finally speak to the reality on-the-ground. We are encouraged to see the facts finally being reported by the head of the USAID mission in Ethiopia.

"When in power, the TPLF regime embarked on a national campaign to incite ethnic conflict to divide and conquer Ethiopians. Today, TPLF is playing the same playbook. It is alarming that the US and the international community have chosen to treat the outlawed TPLF as equal to the democratically-elected government of Ethiopia."

The TPLF is designated as a terrorist group by the Ethiopian Parliament. The EACC calls upon the US Department of State to list TPLF as a terrorist group for violating international law in armed conflict. The United States must not allow this outlawed group to destabilize Ethiopia and the region; the TPLF must surrender immediately without any precondition.

The EACC strongly believes that the United States must be an honest broker in resolving the conflict in the Tigray region. We urge the United States to foster peace and democracy in Ethiopia consistent with its longstanding commitment to spread democracy and human rights throughout the world.

Ethiopian American Civic Council: Established in 2016, is one the largest and most diverse Ethiopian American diaspora community in the United States with approximately 750,000 members in all 50 states. The EACC represents all of the nearly 90 Ethiopian ethnic groups. The EACC is a US-based, 501(c) 4, nonprofit organization.

Contact: Monica McCafferty

[email protected]

303.903.3394

SOURCE Ethiopian American Civic Council (EACC)
WASHINGTON, Sept. 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- FlyersRights.org has called for oversight hearings with airline CEOs plus labor and passenger representatives.

FlyersRights.org president Paul Hudson explained, "Airlines were given massive federal subsidies to keep public air service strong and reduce COVID infections. But recent record high cancellations, flight delays, plus airline opposition to some important CDC guidelines call into question whether taxpayer money has been misused by airline management."

The airlines received over $79 billion in bailout money across three COVID-related bills in 2020-2021 to help them, their employees, and the air travel industry survive the worst of the COVID pandemic. Congress intended this money to go to pilots, flight attendants, and other airline and airport employees to ensure they were paid during the severely depressed demand period and to ensure that the airlines would have the capacity to meet the increased travel demand as soon as the Covid situation improved.

The airlines, particularly American Airlines, Spirit Airlines, and Southwest Airlines, completely failed the American people. Throughout the summer, airlines have cancelled hundreds of flights per day because they did not have enough employees ready to go. On its worst day, Spirit Airlines cancelled over half of its scheduled flights.

This is unacceptable, and Senator Maria Cantwell, the Chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, sent a letter on this subject to the airlines in July. FlyersRights.org met with her staff to discuss the issue on September 1st and to propose the solution to the latest of airline abuses.

FlyersRights.org requested committee oversight hearings to force Doug Parker, Gary Kelly, Ted Christie and other airline CEOs to explain what they did with the COVID relief money and why their airlines have failed to deliver what the law intended.

Oversight hearings should also include passenger representatives and labor representatives. FlyersRights.org proposed a stimulus and social distancing plan that would have kept the airlines profitable, running at a higher capacity during the pandemic, and would have ensured air travel was safer, all at a lower cost than the bailout packages.

FlyersRights.org is the largest airline passenger organization; it advocates for airline passengers before the FAA, DOT, TSA and other government agencies. See www.FlyersRights.org and @flyersrights on twitter and facebook.

SOURCE FlyersRights.org
LOUISVILLE, Ky., Sept. 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Galen College of Nursing was named this week's Team Kentucky All-Star during Gov. Andy Beshear's weekly Team Kentucky update, for its support of healthcare facilities in need during the fight against the recent COVID surge.

Nursing students from Galen have joined local hospitals and healthcare teams in need by offering assistance with testing, clinical needs, and other services. Galen's Dean Lisa Peak, MSN, RN, CNE, said, "Upon reaching out to facility partners, the need is great. From the fundamentals of nursing care to the need for help with covid testing, to simply having people in the facilities who can help with patient flow with hospitals at capacity, and shortages in staffing across the board. And we will continue to look for ways we can provide support in any form."

During the update, Gov. Beshear welcomed the College's Chief Executive Officer, Mark Vogt; Dean of the Louisville and Hazard Campuses, Lisa Peak MSN, RN, CNE; Director of Clinical Education Dr. Brittney Welch, DNP, RN; and three students: Sophia Allen, Jaquar Morris and Sabrina Hale.

"This will make a huge difference in our fight against COVID, while also offering these students real-life training," said Gov. Beshear. "Thank you. What you and these students are doing is the true spirit of Team Kentucky. We are grateful for your bravery and dedication to caring for our people, supporting our healthcare teams and furthering education in such a critical field. For that, I am honored to name Galen College of Nursing's students and staff this week's Team Kentucky All-Stars."

Said Galen CEO, Mark Vogt, "As a college dedicated to educating future nurses, we have a duty to help. We must set the example to rise to the position of our profession to help meet the needs of our communities. Because that's what nurses do. We see it time and time again in the news, across the country, the tireless work being done."

As the largest educator of nurses in the state, Galen acknowledged the responsibility early in the pandemic to offer assistance wherever it was needed. Galen students and clinical faculty have spent over 4,600 hours assisting with Covid mitigation efforts. This includes efforts with Louisville Metro delivering over 100,000 vaccines at Broadbent Arena, a partnership with the Kentucky Nurses Association completing thousands of COVID tests, and vaccinating underserved populations, as well as work with Pearl Medical to provide thousands of COVID tests to the community.

Continued Vogt, "Unprecedented times call for new ways of thinking and problem solving. In this most vulnerable of times in our history, our student nurses have the opportunity to truly serve while learning invaluable lessons. Any nurse can tell you that the opportunity to serve, to make an impact, is why they are nurses. Galen College of Nursing is dedicated to supporting the nursing workforce and all healthcare facilities who are helping care for us and our families, and to looking for additional ways that we can assist those in need."

About Galen College of Nursing

Founded 30 years ago, Galen College of Nursing is one of the largest private nursing schools in the United States. With a focus solely on nursing education and a mission to expand access to nursing education, the College offers master's, baccalaureate and associate degree education and practical/vocational nursing (PN/VN) programs to over 8,000 students on its campuses in Louisville, Ky., Hazard, Ky., San Antonio, Tx., Austin, Tx., Tampa Bay, Fla., Miami, Fla., Nashville, Tn., Cincinnati, Oh., and Online. Galen College of Nursing is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges to award associate, baccalaureate, and master's degrees. For more information about Galen College of Nursing, visit galencollege.edu .

Contact: Anna Kitson, 502.410.6215

[email protected]

SOURCE Galen College of Nursing

Related Links

https://galencollege.edu


DUBLIN, Sept. 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Global Cross-Border Payments and Remittance Services Growth Opportunities" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The proliferation of the digital platform will encourage customers to move to online transactions. Global remittance and cross-border payments' transaction value is expected to grow from $37.15 trillion in 2020 to $39.9 trillion by 2026.

All major participants are exploring the new Payment-as-a-service (PaaS) and remittance-as-a-service (white label) business model by leveraging on their in-house payment platforms. Global PaaS is expected to reach $25.5 billion by 2026 from $7.1 billion in 2020, expanding at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 23.9%.

Cross-border payments and remittance transactions, even if essential, appear as a commodity for most customers; as a result, the fee structure has to be lowered to not appear as a pain point during the transaction, especially for the digital channel.

Moreover, the rapid growth of mobile penetration across the world can be attributed to the growth of digital adoption in cross-border payments and remittance services. The adoption of omnichannel, mobile-first models that provide multiple touch points between customers and service providers will register high growth. Digitization improves mechanisms to reduce costs.

New, emerging trends in payment technologies, such as Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) can improve the transaction cost and transfer time, and generate real-time data focused on key aspects (e.g., customer behavior). DLT can solve cross-border transaction and settlement problems by verifying the origin and authenticity of a product as it moves across the value chain.

Partnerships with companies that provide Blockchain systems will be crucial to offer security services with a strong focus on transparency and data privacy. Investments in next-gen architectures will increase as companies identify important secure payments such as tokenization, and cloud-native payment platforms.

Next-gen payment technologies, such as Big Data automation and cloud computing infrastructure, lower the costs of the money transfer processing infrastructure. Increased connectivity will enable the use of bank Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) by third-party providers. The exchange of information among different industry participants will improve the outcome of APIs to address different use cases.

The growing use of APIs and more robust connectivity will lead to a better customer experience by enabling converging industry participants to interact and exchange information seamlessly. Financial Institutes (FIs), including Money Transfer Operators (MTOs) and start-ups, are collaborating to test next-gen technologies, share expertise, and implement new business models.

Market participants have developed Money Transfer Platforms (MTPs) leveraging on APIs that enable them to create of a wide range of remittance services, including real-time cross-border transfers, local Account-clearing House (ACH) transfers, funds sent to a debit card account, embeddable payouts, and account payable tool integration. More FIs will invest in APIs as the cross border payment transaction value processed with APIs increases in the short term.

In the next 5 to 10 years, companies across the retail, eCommerce, telco, and technology segments will converge to provide payment capability, thus forming considerable opportunities for FIs to further drive the adoption of digital payments. The data collected during payment transactions could be monetized to create up-to-date and detailed consumer profiles. Data collection monetization could also be used to decrease the overall payment processing transaction cost. With real-time data updates, service providers can run analytics and determine unique patterns in customers' behaviour.

Moreover, the combination of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) has improved the quality and adoption rate of digital onboarding as FIs strive to achieve higher compliance standards and adopt efficient KYC processes. This approach improves digital security and risk management processes; as a result, cross-border payments and remittance services are aligned with regional regulations and security requirements.

Regulatory bodies across the globe have undertaken major initiatives to improve the payment industry. In APAC, Singapore, China, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand established the Asian Payments Network (APN) in 2006 to accelerate the adoption of real-time cross-border interchange banking transactions in the region.

Meanwhile, the European Union (EU) has successfully launched Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) to connect real-time payment systems between EU countries, thereby enabling cross-border transactions.

Key Issues Addressed

What are the key drivers and restraints within the cross-border payments and remittance market?

What are trends within the cross-border payments and remittance landscape in the global market, and what is their impact?

What is the size of the global cross-border payments market? Is it growing?

Which remittance and cross-border payments channels are driving the growth of this market and why?

What is the market outlook like for cross-border payments and remittances across the world?

What are future opportunities within cross-border payments and remittances across the world?

Which are the key market participants? What are the major opportunities for these companies, and how are they positioned to meet customer requirements?

Key Topics Covered:

1. Strategic Imperatives

Why Is It Increasingly Difficult to Grow?

The Strategic Imperative

The Impact of the Top Three Strategic Imperatives on the Global Cross-border and Remittance Service Industry

Growth Opportunities Fuel the Growth Pipeline Engine

2. Growth Opportunity Analysis, Global Cross-border and Remittance Service Market

Scope of Analysis

Market Definitions

Key Questions This Study Will Answer

Cross-border and Remittance Service Market, Channel Segmentation

Cross-border and Remittance Service Market, Money Transfer Value Chain

Cross-border and Remittance Service Market, Regional Segmentation

Key Growth Metrics for Cross-border and Remittance Service Market

Growth Drivers for Cross-border and Remittance Service Market

Growth Restraints for Cross-border and Remittance Service Market

Forecast Assumptions, Cross-border and Remittance Service Market

Transaction Value Forecast, Cross-border and Remittance Service Market

Transaction Value Forecast by Channel, Cross-border and Remittance Service Market

Transaction Value Forecast by Region, Cross-border and Remittance Service Market

Transaction Value Forecast Analysis, Cross-border and Remittance Service Market

Transaction Value Forecast Analysis by Region, Cross-border and Remittance Service Market

Transaction Value Forecast Analysis by Channel, Cross-border and Remittance Service Market

Market Analysis, Cross-border and Remittance Service Market

Competitive Environment, Cross-border and Remittance Service Market

Key Competitors in the Cross-border and Remittance Service Market

Revenue Share, Cross-border and Remittance Service Market

Revenue Share Analysis (Bank and MTO), Cross-border and Remittance Service Market

Revenue Share Analysis (Non-Bank), Cross-border and Remittance Service Market

Case Study - Wirecard

Case Study - Travelex

3. Companies to Watch, Cross-border and Remittance Service Market

Western Union

Telcoin

M-PESA

Paysafe

4. Key Trends, Cross-border and Remittance Service Market

Trend 1 - Key Emerging Trends in Cross-border Payments and Remittance Services

Trend 2 - Payment Platform-as-a-Service (PPAS) Model

Trend 3 - Blockchain is Transforming the Cross-Border Payments and Remittance Industry

5. Growth Opportunity Analysis, Cross-border and Remittance Service Market, Africa and the Middle East

6. Growth Opportunity Analysis, Cross-border and Remittance Service Market, Europe

7. Growth Opportunity Analysis, Cross-border and Remittance Service Market, APAC

8. Growth Opportunity Analysis, Cross-border and Remittance Service Market, North America

9. Growth Opportunity Universe, Cross-border and Remittance Service Market

Growth Opportunity 1 - Digital Remittance Platforms

Growth Opportunity 2 - Blockchain-based Solutions for Quick and Affordable Remittances

Growth Opportunity 3 - Other Financial Services for Customer Value Enhancement

Growth Opportunity 4 - Predictive Analytics and Threat Intelligence for Fraud Detection

10. The Last Word

Companies Mentioned

M-PESA

Paysafe

Telcoin

Travelex

Western Union

Wirecard

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/vxmsx5

Media Contact:

Research and Markets

Laura Wood, Senior Manager

[email protected]

For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470

For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call +1-800-526-8630

For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900

U.S. Fax: 646-607-1904

Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716

SOURCE Research and Markets

Related Links

http://www.researchandmarkets.com


DUBLIN, Sept. 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Social Media Analytics Transforming Global Customer Experience (CX) Services" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

This report discusses some of the innovative use-cases of social media and social media analytics to boost customer journeys throughout various stages.

In addition, it explores how the social media analytics market is evolving with transformative technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), competitive intelligence, sentiment analysis, and more.

It also discusses key players in the market, future trends, market growth drivers, restraints, and predictions around social media analytics investments in-depth and provides relevant recommendations for businesses.

Social media analytics is the process of evaluating and examining data about conversations on social media platforms to understand customer preferences and gain competitive intelligence. Social media analytics can be predictive, prescriptive, or descriptive and help businesses understand different parts of a problem, thereby enabling them to tackle the issue in a strategic manner.

When combined with other voice-of-the-customer (VoC) data (obtained from surveys, reviews, and other sources), social media analytics can be leveraged to inform a business's marketing, sales, service, and engagement initiatives and strategy to offer fulfilling customer experiences.

Despite these benefits, social media analytics is not utilized optimally by most businesses. This is because the benefits of social media or its analytics are not known too well, or the data is too vast and unstructured.

Key Topics Covered:

1. Strategic Imperatives

Why Is It Increasingly Difficult to Grow?

The Strategic Imperative

The Impact of the Top Three Strategic Imperatives on the Global Social Media Analysis Industry

Growth Opportunities Fuel the Growth Pipeline Engine

2. Growth Opportunity Analysis, 2021

Key Business Goals, Global, 2021

Top CX priorities, Global, 2021 to 2022

Interaction Channels Supported by Industry, Global, 2021 to 2022

Estimated Percentage of Interactions Handled Across Channels, Global, between 2019 and 2020

Priority of Channels by Industry Due to COVID-19, Global, 2021-2022

Priority of Technologies by Industry due to COVID-19, Global, 2021 to 2022

Top 2021 Investment Predictions

3. Market Environment, Key Growth Drivers, and Restraints

4. Customer Behavior Shapes Business Behavior

Socially Distanced but Socially Connected - Customer Behavior

Businesses Respond to Customer Behavior on Social

5. Social Media Analytics and Customer Journey

Social Media Analytics Classification

Types of Feedback Business Can Get

A Typical Customer's Journey Mapped Across 5 Buying Stages

Social Media Analytics Across Customer Journey

Digital and Physical Touchpoints Impacting Customers' Buying Journey, Global, 2021

Customer and Business Actions Through the Social Customer Journey

6. Reaping Benefits With Social Media Analytics

Benefits of Social Media Analytics

Evolution of the Contact Center with Social Media Analytics

Evolution of the Contact Center with Social Media

Contact Center and Social Media Process Flow

Contact Center Solutions Providers Leverage Social Media for Customer Care

Limitations of Social Media Analytics for CX

7. Future with Social Media Analytics

Future Trends of Social CX

Future of Work Skills to Ensure Great CX

8. Social Media Analytics and CX Use Cases

Social Media Analysis - CX Use Cases

Use Cases - Social Customer Service Strengthens Customer Relationships

Use Cases - Crisis and Reputation Management to Maintain Brand Perception

Use Cases - Social Selling to Boost Business Revenue

Use Cases - Customer Engagement

Use Cases - Product Innovation and Improvement

9. Social Media Analytics Solution Provider Landscape

Social Media Analytics Providers Profiled

Vendor Scoping

Key Features to Consider While Buying an Analytics Solution

10. Growth Opportunities and Recommendations

Growth Opportunity 1 - Partnerships, Acquisitions, and Mergers to Boost Analytics Capabilities

Growth Opportunity 2 - Emphasis on Security and Data Compliance

Growth Opportunity 3 - Enhancement of Visualization and Reporting Capabilities to Achieve Competitive Differentiation

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/q4fomu

Media Contact:

Research and Markets

Laura Wood, Senior Manager

[email protected]



For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470

For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call +1-800-526-8630

For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900



U.S. Fax: 646-607-1904

Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716

SOURCE Research and Markets

Related Links

http://www.researchandmarkets.com


Discover a more in-depth review of Green Leaf Labs and how their ground-breaking innovation in the hemp and cannabis CBD industry has landed them in the Top 50 Most Trustworthy Companies by clicking here to read the full article!

With an ever-expanding industry of hemp and cannabis CBD products in front of them and licensed and accredited operations in both California and Oregon, the future of testing and development at Green Leaf Labs is expansive.

Don't forget to visit their website for more information on product testing and development today!

Contact: Briana Burke, [email protected]

SOURCE Green Leaf Lab

Related Links

https://greenleaflab.org/


The revenue growth in pace with net profit growth can be attributed to GWM's steady increase in both the sales volume of finished automobile and the average sales price of a single vehicle. GWM's terminal sales have seen explosive growth in the first half of 2021, and 614,389 new vehicles have been sold, with a year-on-year sales growth of 53.68%. Its brand premium capacity has also been steadily improved, and the average sales price of a single vehicle reached CNY 100,800, with a year-on-year growth of 12.15%. The experience upgrade brought out by the continuous implementation of forward-looking technologies is also a key factor for the continuous increase of GWM's sales volume. In the first half of 2021, GWM invested nearly CNY 2.9 billion in science and technology research and development, with an increase of 63.15% compared with that for the same period last year. The investment has been used to accelerate the introduction of forward-looking technologies such as efficient fuel power, intelligent driving and intelligent cabin into new products, and to deepen the innovation of new energy and intelligent technologies.

Thanks to the outstanding performance of the 3rd Gen HAVAL H6, HAVAL JOLION, GWM POER, and other global models in overseas markets such as Russia, Australia, Chile, and South Africa, GWM's overseas sales hit new highs, with overseas sales volume totaling 61,559 vehicles in the first half of the year and a year-on-year growth of 133.24%, which further contributed to the steady growth of the half-year performance. Considering the great global market demand, GWM has put forward a new strategic goal of overseas sales volume totaling 1 million vehicles in 2025, and has made continuous efforts to this end. Recently, GWM and Daimler Group signed an agreement on the acquisition of the Erasemapolis factory in Brazil. This move will accelerate the development of GWM in the South American market. At the same time, GWM has also entered overseas markets including Nepal, Iraq and Brunei with its products such as the 3rd Gen HAVAL H6, HAVAL JOLION, and GWM POER, and continued to expand the market of South Asia, the Middle East and ASEAN.

Next, with the 2025 Strategy as the guiding principle and the transformation into a "global mobility technology company" as the goal, GWM will continue to make all-out efforts and overcome all difficulties to promote the continuous improvement of the product brand matrix and the scientific and technological R&D strength, deepen its global development, and try to achieve a new development peak.

SOURCE GWM
VIENNA, Va., Sept. 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Halvik Corp, a leader in technology, engineering, and professional services for the U.S. Federal market has been awarded 5-year, unrestricted contract estimated at $34M by the US Army Command and Control Support Agency (CCSA). Through this contract, Halvik will help CCSA deliver Command and Control (C2) IT support and automation services to the Army Chief of Staff (CSA), the Army, Deputy Chief of Staff (DCS), HQDA, G-3/5/7, the Department of the Army, Military Operations  Operations, Readiness, and Mobilization Directorate (DAMOOD), the Army Operations Center (AOC), and the Resource and Situational Awareness Center (RSAC).

"Halvik is honored to support CCSA and the HQDA G-3/5/7 mission," said Scott Dees, Vice President of Army Programs at Halvik. "We will draw on our expertise with Agile, DevSecOps, and Cloud native best practices to architect, deploy, secure, and deliver mission critical functions to the warfighter."

"Halvik's work directly supports the Headquarters, Department of the Army's G-3/5/7's ability to manage and mobilize U.S. Army forces worldwide. Our strategic growth focus is closely aligned with delivering advanced IT mission critical services to our nation's military and national security," said Madhavi Bathula, CEO of Halvik.

About Halvik:

Halvik is an award-winning company providing full end-to-end software and management solutions. Since our founding in 2007 we have specialized in providing smart, technology-enabled solutions to help our clients realize new mission and business capabilities, and to continuously enhance and improve operations. Our breadth of capabilities, industry leading experience, client trust, and commitment to excellence, has enabled us to manifest the promise of agile business and adaptive IT into reality.

Contact: [email protected]

SOURCE HALVIK CORP

Related Links

http://www.halvik.com


The entry into operation of the CCG will allow the government to optimize and simplify government services, concentrating around 33 public institutions in one place, in order to improve the institutional framework, guaranteeing quality of services to citizens, efficiency and speed.

Hernandez recalled that upon assuming office "we committed ourselves to creating an agile, dynamic, transparent and efficient Government, and part of that was to avoid wasting money in payment of rents that occurred for many years with public offices."

"Decades and decades of rent payments and none of those buildings ever became property of the State of Honduras", stated the president.

According to Hernandez, the new building complex will mean savings of 15 million dollars per year, which in ten years would save up to $150 million dollars, "this is a sign that things can be done well," said the president.

The complex has two towers of 24 floors each, three horizontal buildings that will be occupied by about 8,500 public officials. In addition, it has four basements with a capacity of 2,400 parking spaces.

The president stressed that the work was carried out with international and national investors thanks to the healthy economy and the solid macroeconomy.

"Thanks to the investors for their trust in Honduras. It was not easy to put together this financial model, and today it is one of the most important projects in the region. When we want to do great things and play in the big leagues, we can do it", said Hernandez.

"When you want, and you have the political will to do things, you can make it happen and we are demonstrating today in Honduras we can make things happen", Hernandez concluded.

Source: https://presidencia.gob.hn

SOURCE Government of Honduras

Related Links

https://presidencia.gob.hn


RENO, Nev., Sept. 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - i-80 GOLD CORP. (TSX: IAU) (OTCQX: IAUCF) ("i-80", or the "Company") will host a live conference call and webcast on September 7, 2021, commencing at 8:30 am ET.

Conference Call

North American Toll-free: 1-800-437-2398

Local: 1-647-792-1240

Webcast Link

Click HERE to access the webcast or visit our website at www.i80gold.com.

Conference Call Replay

A recording of the call can be accessed until September 14, 2021.

North American Toll-free Replay: 1-888-203-1112

Replay Code: 8375917

Certain statements in this release constitute "forward-looking statements" or "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable securities laws, including but not limited to, commencement of trading of i-80 Gold on the Toronto Stock Exchange and completion of the acquisition of the Getchell Project. Such statements and information involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the company, its projects, or industry results, to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements or information. Such statements can be identified by the use of words such as "may", "would", "could", "will", "intend", "expect", "believe", "plan", "anticipate", "estimate", "scheduled", "forecast", "predict" and other similar terminology, or state that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might" or "will" be taken, occur or be achieved. These statements reflect the Company's current expectations regarding future events, performance and results and speak only as of the date of this release.



Forward-looking statements and information involve significant risks and uncertainties, should not be read as guarantees of future performance or results and will not necessarily be accurate indicators of whether or not such results will be achieved. A number of factors could cause actual results to differ materially from the results discussed in the forward-looking statements or information, including, but not limited to: material adverse changes, unexpected changes in laws, rules or regulations, or their enforcement by applicable authorities; the failure of parties to contracts with the company to perform as agreed; social or labour unrest; changes in commodity prices; and the failure of exploration programs or studies to deliver anticipated results or results that would justify and support continued exploration, studies, development or operations.

SOURCE i-80 Gold Corp

Related Links

www.i80gold.com


PHILADELPHIA, Sept. 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Integrated Ventures, Inc, (OTCQB: INTV) ("Company") is pleased to announce joining USA based mining pool, managed and operated by Foundry Digital, LLC, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Digital Currency Group ("DCG"), focused on digital asset mining.

INTV is the latest mining company to partner with Foundry USA Pool, which speciliazes on providing mining pool services to the many institutional clients located in USA. The Company is planning to transfer all existing miners to Foundry pool as well as connect an additional 2,400 more S19J 100 TH miners, manufactured by Bitmain and scheduled to be deployed on monthly basis, by July 30, 2022.

About Foundry Digital, LLC - ("Foundry"):

Foundry USA Pool offers unique miner focused treasury management services, powered by Digital Currency Group's subsidiary Genesis. Those services include ability to generate yield in Bitcoin (BTC) on the in-house mined BTC, which will allow INTV to maximize the overall BTC yield of their operations. Other Genesis-powered products include high-security custody, BTC collateralized lending, derivative products and seamless liquidation.

Foundry serves as a strong US-based alternative to the China-dominated pool industry and delivers its clients some of the most competitive payouts in the industry along with institutional-level standards of transparency and services that fully meet the requirements of publicly-traded companies.

Backed with financial support from its parent company DCG, Foundry is the first North American cryptocurrency mining pool to pay its clients through the Full-Pay-Per-Share ("FPPS") payout method, which relies on an external party, guaranteeing stable, consistent and risk-free payouts.

"We are 100% and 24/7 focused on growing shareholder value," said Steve Rubakh, CEO of Integrated Ventures, Inc. "This partnership with industrial quality mining pool, based n USA is very important to us, as we continue to execute our growth plan. Shortly, we will be filing our 2021/10K and providing shareholders with details on business progress, made during last 90 days"

About Integrated Ventures Inc:

The Company operates as Technology Holdings Company with focus on cryptocurrency sector. Additional information is available by visiting company's website at www.integratedventuresinc.com .

Safe Harbor Statement:

The information posted in this release may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. You can identify these statements by use of the words "may," "will," "should," "plans," "explores," "expects," "anticipates," "continue," "estimate," "project," "intend," and similar expressions. Forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected or anticipated. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, general economic and business conditions, effects of continued geopolitical unrest and regional conflicts, competition, changes in technology and methods of marketing, and various other factors beyond the company's control.

Contact details: [email protected], +1 215-613-1111

SOURCE Integrated Ventures, Inc
ATLANTA, Sept. 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Invesco Advisers, Inc., a subsidiary of Invesco Ltd. (NYSE: IVZ), announced today additional details of the previously announced tender offer and reorganization for Invesco Dynamic Credit Opportunities Fund (NYSE: VTA) (the "Fund").

REORGANIZATION

At the Fund's Annual Meeting of Shareholders held on September 3, 2021, Fund shareholders approved a proposal to reorganize the Fund into a newly created closed-end interval fund (the "Interval Fund"). The reorganization had previously been approved by the Fund's Board of Trustees (the "Board").

The Interval Fund will offer four classes of shares (Class A, Class AX, Class R and Class Y) and will provide liquidity to shareholders in the form of quarterly repurchase offers. Fund shareholders will receive Class AX shares of the Interval Fund priced daily at the Interval Fund's net asset value ("NAV"). The Interval Fund will be managed with the same investment objective and similar investment strategy as the Fund, all as described in the proxy statement/prospectus, which has been filed publicly. Shareholders should read the proxy/statement prospectus as it contains important information about the reorganization and the Interval Fund.

It is anticipated that the closing of the reorganization will occur on or around October 2021 subject to the satisfaction of applicable regulatory requirements and customary closing conditions.

TENDER OFFER

The Fund will conduct a tender offer for cash of up to 12,596,028 of the Fund's outstanding common shares of beneficial interest ("common shares"), representing twenty percent of its common shares.

The Fund's tender offer will commence on Wednesday, September 8, 2021, and will expire, unless extended, at 11:59 p.m., New York City time, on Thursday, October 7, 2021. Subject to various terms and conditions described in offering materials to be distributed to shareholders: (1) purchases will be made at a price per share equal to 98.5% of the Fund's NAV per share as of the close of trading on the next trading day after the expiration of the offer; and (2) if more shares are tendered than the amount the Board has authorized to purchase, the Fund will purchase a number of shares equal to the offer amount on a prorated basis.

The Fund's common shares have recently traded at a discount to its NAV per share. During the pendency of the tender offer, the current NAV per share will be available by telephone at 1-800-341-2929 or on the Fund's website at www.invesco.com/us.

The Fund has implemented a managed distribution plan (the "Plan") whereby the Fund will pay its monthly dividend to common shareholders at a stated fixed monthly distribution amount of $0.075 per share. The Plan is intended to provide shareholders with a consistent, but not guaranteed, periodic cash payment, regardless of when or whether income is earned or capital gains are realized. If sufficient investment income is not available for a monthly distribution, the Fund will distribute long-term capital gains and/or return of capital in order to maintain its managed distribution level under the Plan. A return of capital may occur, for example, when some or all of the money that shareholders invested in the Fund is paid back to them. A return of capital distribution does not necessarily reflect the Fund's investment performance and should not be confused with "yield" or "income." No conclusions should be drawn about the Fund's investment performance from the amount of its distributions or from the terms of the Plan. The Plan will be subject to periodic review by the Fund's Board, and the Board may amend the terms of the Plan or terminate the Plan at any time without prior notice to the Fund's shareholders. The amendment or termination of the Plan could have an adverse effect on the market price of the Fund's common shares.

TENDER OFFER STATEMENT

The above statements are not intended to constitute an offer to participate in the tender offer. Further information about the tender offer will be announced via future press releases. Shareholders will be notified in accordance with the requirements of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, and the Investment Company Act of 1940, as amended, either by publication or mailing or both. The tender offer will be made only by an offer to purchase, a related letter of transmittal, and other documents to be filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC"). Shareholders of the Fund should read the offer to purchase and tender offer statement and related exhibits when those documents are filed and become available, as they will contain important information about the tender offer. These and other filed documents will be available to investors for free both at the website of the SEC (www.sec.gov) and from the Fund.

_____________________________________

For more information, call 1-800-341-2929.

This communication is not intended to, and shall not, constitute an offer to purchase or sell shares of any of the Invesco Funds, including the Fund.

Where to find additional information

In connection with the reorganization, a definitive proxy statement/prospectus was filed with the SEC. All shareholders are advised to read the definitive proxy statement/ prospectus in its entirety because it contains important information regarding the Fund, the Interval Fund, the reorganization, the Board's considerations in recommending the reorganization, the persons soliciting proxies in connection with the reorganization and the interest of these persons in the reorganization and related matters. Shareholders may obtain a free copy of the definitive proxy statement/prospectus and other documents filed by the Fund or the Interval Fund with the SEC, including the Fund's most recent annual report to shareholders, on the SEC's website at http://www.sec.gov, and copies of this information may be obtained, after paying a duplicating fee, by electronic request at the following e-mail address: [email protected]. Copies of all of these documents may be obtained upon request without charge by visiting the Invesco website at invesco.com/us, or by writing to the Fund, at 1555 Peachtree Street, N.E., Atlanta, GA 30309, or calling 1-800-341-2929.

About Invesco Ltd.

Invesco Ltd. is a global independent investment management firm dedicated to delivering an investment experience that helps people get more out of life. Our distinctive investment teams deliver a comprehensive range of active, passive and alternative investment capabilities. With offices in more than 20 countries, Invesco managed $1.5 trillion in assets on behalf of clients worldwide as of June 30, 2021. For more information, visit www.invesco.com.

Invesco Distributors, Inc. is the U.S. distributor for Invesco Ltd.'s retail products. Invesco Advisers, Inc. is an investment adviser; it provides investment advisory services to individual and institutional clients and does not sell securities. Each entity is a wholly owned, indirect subsidiary of Invesco Ltd.

Note: There is no assurance that a closed-end fund will achieve its investment objective. Common shares are bought on the secondary market and may trade at a discount or premium to NAV. Regular brokerage commissions apply.

NOT A DEPOSIT l NOT FDIC INSURED l NOT GUARANTEED BY THE BANK | MAY LOSE VALUE | NOT INSURED BY ANY FEDERAL GOVERNMENT AGENCY

CONTACT: Jeaneen Terrio 212-278-9205; [email protected]

SOURCE Invesco Ltd.

Related Links

https://www.invesco.com


LOS ANGELES, Sept. 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Schall Law Firm, a national shareholder rights litigation firm, announces that it is investigating claims on behalf of investors of Lightning eMotors, Inc. ("Lightning" or "the Company") (NYSE: ZEV) f/k/a GigCapital3, Inc. (NYSE: GIK) 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. Lightning announced its financial results for the second quarter of fiscal year 2021 after the market closed on August 16, 2021. The company disclosed a net loss per share of $0.79 as compared to a loss of $0.10 in the same period for the prior year. The Company also withdrew its full-year guidance, citing "chassis production disruptions" amongst other problems. Based on this news, shares of Lightning fell by almost 17% the next day, harming investors.

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 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 [email protected].

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.

CONTACT:

The Schall Law Firm

Brian Schall, Esq.

310-301-3335

[email protected]

www.schallfirm.com

SOURCE The Schall Law Firm

Related Links

www.schallfirm.com


HOUSTON, Sept. 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Seventy-five million evangelical followers combatting antisemitism celebrated because Facebook has restored the page of the Jerusalem Prayer Team, the largest pro-Israel social network site in the world three months after being shut down after a controversy related to over two million antisemitic posts that appeared on the page in a 72-hour period during the Gaza War.

"Our goal is to build Israel's brand and to make friends of Zion by fundamentally educating Millennials and combatting antisemitism," New York Times bestselling author Mike Evans said.

Evans was in Israel preparing to host a global Facebook event on May 19 to mobilize support for the State of Israel during the Gaza War when he was informed the page was shut down. Christian broadcasters, politicians, faith leaders and celebrities, including President of the Billy Graham Association Rev. Franklin Graham, President of the CBN Network Gordon Robertson, former U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, Governor Mike Huckabee, Pastor Robert Jeffress, Jon Voight, Pat Boone and Pastor Jack Graham were scheduled to take part in the event.

During May 12-14, more than two million antisemitic comments were posted to the Jerusalem Prayer Team page. Facebook shut down the page and notified the Jerusalem Prayer Team on May 16.

Leaders throughout the world came to the support of the Jerusalem Prayer Team and Mike Evans during the crisis; including Fox News host Sean Hannity, Senator Ted Cruz, former presidential candidate and Governor Mike Huckabee and former Prime Minister of Israel Ehud Olmert.

"I'm absolutely appalled by the decision of Facebook to cut you off from the network. I have full competence in the dedication, devotion, principle and support that you have manifested to the State of Israel," Olmert said. "I think the basic principles and value of freedom of speech must allow you the opportunity to share your opinion and support and attitudes towards the State of Israel with all the tens of millions of followers that are dedicated to you."

Evans believes the Facebook page closure appears to have been part of a larger misinformation attack against Facebook that took place during the Gaza War. NBC News reported in May that pro-Palestinian activists are running a coordinated campaign to downgrade Facebook's app review ratings to protest the company's alleged censorship of Palestinian accounts and posts.

The targeted cyberattack changed the average star rating for the social network was down from over 4 out of 5 to 2.3 out of 5 on Apple's App Store and 2.4 out of 5 on the Google Play store Saturday evening after receiving thousands of one-star reviews. Many of the reviews included comments mentioning Facebook's alleged silencing of Palestinian voices and hashtags such as #FreePalestine or #GazaUnderAttack, according to the report.

The Daily Pakistan website reported on May 22 that the Facebook application has a rating of 2.5 on the Google Play Store and 2.4 on the Apple App Store. It has dropped from over 4. People rate these applications based on their services.

Many of the users posted complaints on play stores about how Facebook wiped out their "right to express themselves."

The rating of social applications is likely to drop even further over the coming days as many hashtags are currently trending, condemning these apps for censoring Palestinian posts and allowing provocative Israeli content.

Amid all the censorship, Facebook is alleged to have partnered with the Jewish state to censor Palestinians by creating a page titled "Jerusalem Prayer Team," according to the report. Reports in the international media suggested Facebook liked the page "Jerusalem Prayer Team" on behalf of a large number of users without their consent.

Evans also said he believes what the Jordanian News reported on May 16 in an interview with Ahmed Saleh in an article entitled "Jordanian hacks Facebook Zionist support group."

Ahmad Saleh, on Saturday hacked 'Jerusalem Prayer Team,' a Zionist support group on Facebook, which had allegedly garnered almost 76 million likes.

"I received word that Facebook had created a page in support of Zionists and had (falsely) given 76 million likes to the page," Saleh told Al Ghad. "You may have not even viewed the page but could still find that you or a friend had liked it."

"'I hacked the page because it did not reflect the (real) image of Zionism, and to stand under His Majesty's firm stance on Al-Aqsa Mosque, Muslim holy sites in Palestine, and Hashemite Custodianship. The page was created to glamorize the public image of Zionism and mask its crimes," Saleh said.

He noted that the page had later been shut down due to its official support to the Zionist entity and for breaching the privacy of Facebook users by adding their likes to the page without notifying them. He added that the social media platform used external applications, which had been granted access to user accounts and managed to like the page on their behalf.

Al Jazeera wrote that the Facebook page Jerusalem Prayer Team gets automatic fake likes and followers. This incident came in view after many users of Facebook claimed that their accounts automatically liked the page and they never even visited the page. Many social media users claim that Facebook is behind it and is helping the page to get likes from users without their permission.

Evans has dedicated his life to combatting antisemitism. The Jerusalem Prayer Team founded the Friends of Zion Heritage Center in Jerusalem, in which the late ninth president of the State of Israel Shimon Peres served as the founding chairman. The Friends of Zion award had been given to more than 20 world leaders, including two U.S. presidents, George W. Bush and Donald J. Trump.

Evans said, "Though Facebook claimed it closed the page due to inauthentic behavior and spam, I believe what the Pakistan Daily quoted is in fact what fueled all this," Evans added, "Though Facebook continues to believe the page was shut down due to inauthentic behavior and spam by the Jerusalem Prayer Team, I am thankful the page is back up."

Mike Evans is a #1 New York Times bestselling author of 109 published books read by over 30 million people worldwide. Evans' life work in combatting antisemitism began at the age of 11 when he attempted to defend his Jewish mother against his antisemitic father who was abusing her. His own father strangled him, leaving him for dead. Evans served as an unofficial adviser to former President Donald Trump on Israel, and is the founder of many pro-Israel organizations, including Churches United with Israel and the Ten Boom Holocaust Museum in the Netherlands.

SOURCE Jerusalem Prayer Team
Fast growth healthy meal solutions company, Kevin's Natural Foods announces minority investment. Tweet this

Kevin McCray, Co-Founder and COO of Kevin's stated, "This is a big milestone for Kevin's. Not only are we expanding our capacity for growth, but we are also augmenting our team with knowledgeable, experienced professionals that share our passion around improving people's lives by making clean eating accessible, easy and delicious."

"Kevin's differentiated product offering has allowed the company to build substantial commercial momentum and consumer loyalty," said Michael Recht, Managing Director at TowerBrook. "We are looking forward to partnering with Kevin's dynamic leadership team in the next phase of the company's growth."

Kevin's products can be found in over 11,000 traditional grocery, natural, specialty, club and mass stores, as well as direct-to-consumer platforms like Thrive Market and Amazon. Kevin's is a category-leader in the home meal replacement set and offers a healthy, delicious and better-for-you alternative to traditional incumbent brands.

Kevin's Natural Foods was advised by Wells Fargo Securities, LLC and Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton LLP. TowerBrook was advised by Kirkland & Ellis LLP. NewRoad Capital Partners was advised by Hogan Lovells US LLP.

About Kevin's Natural Foods

Kevin's Natural Foods is a line of healthy entrees, sides, sauces and seasoning blends, on a mission to make clean eating delicious and accessible. Co-founded by Kevin McCray, who battled a severe auto-immune disorder for years and cured his condition through clean eating, Kevin's Natural Foods was born from his desire to help other people eat well. Kevin's guilt-free, sous-vide entrees and sides, and signature certified paleo, keto, and gluten-free sauces allow health-conscious home cooks to whip up delicious meals in five minutes or less.

With restaurant-quality ingredients and recipes, Kevin's products are readily available on the shelves at leading grocery retailers nationwide. All Kevin's products contain no refined sugar, artificial ingredients, grains, or soy, and are made with antibiotic- and hormone-free meat. A true market disruptor, Kevin's Natural Foods is the first clean refrigerated entree brand. For more information, please visit www.kevinsnaturalfoods.com.

About TowerBrook Capital Partners

TowerBrook Capital Partners is a purpose-driven investment management firm headquartered in New York and London. The firm has raised in excess of $17.4 billion to date and invests in private equity and structured opportunities through its family of funds. As a disciplined investor with a commitment to fundamental value, the firm seeks to deliver superior, risk-adjusted returns to investors on a consistent and responsible basis. TowerBrook's value creation strategy aims to transform the capabilities and prospects of the businesses in which it invests. TowerBrook is the first mainstream private equity firm to be certified as a B Corporation. B Corporation certification is administered by the non-profit B Lab organization and is awarded to companies that demonstrate leadership in their commitment to environmental, social and governance (ESG) standards and responsible business practices. For more information, please visit www.towerbrook.com

About NewRoad Capital Partners

NewRoad Capital Partners, LLC, is a growth equity capital firm based in Rogers, AR, that invests in proven and innovative technologies, products and services that serve existing, unmet needs in the marketplace. Founded on the core values of the entrepreneurial spirit, purpose and humility, NewRoad focuses on investing in and acquiring demand-driven businesses in the Retail and CPG and Business Services industries with an emphasis on Supply Chain and Logistics. For more information, please visit www.newroadcp.com.

Media Contacts:

Kevin's Natural Foods:

Kelsie Costa

209-556-7802

[email protected]

TowerBrook:

Brunswick Group

Blake Sonnenshein / Alex Yankus

917-818-5204

[email protected]

SOURCE Kevin's Natural Foods

Related Links

https://www.kevinsnaturalfoods.com


WASHINGTON, Sept. 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Konshens & The Earth Band release a brand new multi-cultural hip hop album for Children. Fronted by International hip hop sensation, Konshens The MC, Funk The Earth is a multi-racial, international collaboration between people who share a common goal for positive social impact and sustainability. The album is inspired by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (The SDG's). Konshens The MC is known for using hip-hop to make grassroots change.

The Earth Band consists of renowned artists and producers Doctor Noize (Cory Cullinan), Lonnie Park and Ricky Kej. The Grammy-winning musician from India Ricky Kej is known globally as a UNCCD Land Ambassador and UNESCO Global Ambassador for Kindness. Lonnie Park is an award winning music producer and has been touring with Ricky for the last six years at music festivals and stadiums, and they performed together at the United Nations Headquarters in New York and Geneva. Doctor Noize (Cory Cullinan) is a chart-topping children's musician and musical theatre composer. All three members of The Earth Band were impressed with both Konshens' passion for the cause and his gift for poetry and performance, which made him the perfect front-man for "Funk The Earth"

The album's first single and video is Positive Energy. The beauty of family and collaboration is emphasized with this song as Konshens' son Nathaniel, Doctor Noize's two daughters, and 25 children's music artist peers  including 5 of the last 6 Grammy winners in the Best Children's Album category  add their voices to a simple message at the heart of the album.

The album's second single, Born From The Land, features guitar by Doctor Noize, flute by Grammy-winner Wouter Kellerman, and guest vocals by Africa's Mzansi Youth Choir and Senegalese legend Baaba Maal, who sang the gripping Wakanda vocals on the Black Panther soundtrack. It's a celebration of the connection between humanity and the land from which we were born  the land to whom we are stewards. This song is also the official United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) "Land Anthem"

The album's third single, The Sun Rises In Your Eyes, continues to emphasize the inspiring impact of children and family, featuring lead vocals by Doctor Noize's daughter Riley playing off the sophisticated rhymes and rhythms of Konshens' rapping. Adding to the playful percussion is India's virtuosic Arun Kumar on vocal percussion, Ricky's keyboards, and Lonnie's electronica production.

Other songs include Grammy Nominee Armand Hutton's uplifting a cappella arrangement in ShineYour Light; the soulful It Only Takes A Smile with Grammy-winning keyboardist Daniel Weatherspoon; children's Grammy-winner Lucy Kalantari playing off Konshens on the gender-busting anthem She Can Do, He Can Do; Lonnie's heartfelt singing on Something Amazing; Grammy-winner Wanz funking up Funk The Planet; the environmental anthems No Plastic Trash and Take Back The Climate; the percussive hip hop of Our Carbon Footprint and horn-section reggae of CO2; and Doctor Noize and Konshens closing the album with the retro Let Me Sing Along.

Funk The Earth is now available at all major digital retailers, streaming sites and at the Funk The Earth Online Store. For all ages, and especially suitable for elementary school children and the adults who belong to them.

Running time: 39 minutes

'FUNK THE EARTH' TRACK LIST:

Positive Energy (feat. Family Music All-Stars)

Born From The Land (feat. Baaba Maal)

No Plastic Trash

Funk The Planet (feat. Wanz)

Take Back The Climate

Shine (feat. Armand Hutton)

She Can Do, He Can Do (feat. Lucy Kalantari)

The Sun Rises In Your Eyes

Something Amazing

Our Carbon Footprint

It Only Takes A Smile (feat. Daniel Witherspoon)

CO2

Let Me Sing Along

Visit www.FunkTheEarth.com

For more information, promo requests, or to arrange an interview with Konshens The MC and The Earth Band, contact [email protected], Mobile: +919972946908.

SOURCE Konshens & The Earth Band
TARTU, Estonia, Sept. 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Liigu is a platform designed to provide new mobility solutions to various vehicle operators. Since vehicle-as-a-service is trending in the automotive world right now, both classic car rental companies and car dealerships with professional fleets can benefit from Liigu platform significantly. It is an easy way to expand revenue streams from the rapidly evolving mobility markets, get better utilization rates for existing fleets and satisfy customers' growing need for contactless mobility services.

Using the Liigu Mobility platform enables vehicle operators to offer modern rental solutions that end customers seek: "This form of rental has to be the future - very efficient", says one of the reviews online . It is the future indeed: easy, convenient, time-saving and available for all generations. No more standing in lines, filling in forms, no extra key to carry. The main struggles of traditional car rental are solved.

The Liigu Mobility platform has been built and developed in partnership with the technology provider Car Rental Gateway Ltd. The platform includes a mobile app allowing customers to book the car, find it in the desired location, unlock and lock it without using any additional tools or keys. Everything can be found in one's smartphone. To guarantee a contactless yet seamless rental experience, Liigu provides personal customer support at every step of each customers' journey. Having one platform, Liigu helps to save time and money needed for handling each rental. It allows vehicle operators to promote vehicles as a service product and increase turnover without hiring extra employees, investing in additional infrastructures such as customer service or selling points.

Liigu is an app-based mobility platform. Liigu's goal is to bring the future of car sharing to the world faster by making smart solutions available to more people. It offers a convenient and sustainable alternative to owning a car. Liigu platform connects professional vehicle owners with people searching for hassle-free personal mobility services from 1 hour up to 24 months.

Media contact:

Annemari Muru, CEO

Lai 11, Tartu 51005

Estonia

Mobile: +372 5344 3295

Email: [email protected]

SOURCE Liigu
WILMINGTON, Calif., Sept. 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- On August 31st, the Los Angeles Boys and Girls Club and 25 of its kids hosted Kwikbit Inc. at its LA Harbor Mahar Clubhouse to launch a new program aimed to narrow California's digital divide.

"Kwikbit's wireless broadband addresses a major issue for many of our kids. Namely, unfettered access to high-speed connectivity afterschool so they can complete their schoolwork," said Mike Lansing, Executive Director of B&G LA Harbor. "Kwikbit's technician arrived mid-morning last Tuesday and a couple hours later the network was up and running on campus. Some 30 minutes after that, Kwikbit had installed a dedicated high-speed connection to a nearby home in dire need of service. It's remarkable," Lansing went on to say.

"Far too many children in Los Angeles County do not have adequate access to the internet, putting them at a distinct disadvantage in terms of their education. Our work with B&G will level the playing field, ensuring that all students are able to succeed in school," said Joe Costello, CEO of Kwikbit.

The Boys and Girls were excited: "Kwikbit is so much faster [than what we had before]. It's a lot of fun being able to all play online together, and doing our coding and schoolwork is so much easier," said local 4th grader and B&G Club member.

The Boys & Girls Club of the Los Angeles Harbor showcased this new service alongside Kwikbit staff. The company sees the successful installation at the B&G Club as a blueprint to urgently deliver fast, reliable internet to underserved communities throughout the State.

These kids have been waiting years for decent internet. Through innovation and cooperation, Kwikbit and LA County Boys and Girls had these children connected in less than a week. This serves as a template for what can be done in California and beyond. Costello concluded.

About Kwikbit:

Kwikbit (kwikbit.com) is wireless technology company based in Minneapolis, MN. Kwikbit's specialized 60 GHz millimeter wave radios driven by their cloud and edge automation tools enable the rapid deployment of multi-gigabit wireless networks when and where they're needed.

SOURCE Kwikbit

Related Links

http://kwikbit.com


Garrison will report directly in to DDB Worldwide Global Chief Marketing & Communications Officer Donna Tobin on North America-focused marketing communications, DEI initiatives, corporate partnerships, social responsibility, and internal and cultural communications. Eboli will report into Lindsay Bennett, Global Head of Marketing who joined the Global MarComms team with Tobin earlier this year.

Tobin said: "Both Maggie and Marianna add an incredible amount of positive energy, strong collaborative mindsets, and solid communications and social media backgrounds to our growing DDB Global MarComms team. I am absolutely thrilled to have them join our team at such an exciting time with so much momentum happening across our global DDB network."

Garrison brings to her role both agency and holding company experience in marketing and advertising. Garrison joins the team from Interpublic Group where she was Marketing and Communications Manager, responsible for the holding company's internal communications efforts, social media strategy, marketing materials, and website management.

Garrison said: "I am excited to join the DDB team at such a pivotal time of transformation and growth. There is a very talented team of leadership in place here and I look forward to working together to build upon the next generation of the historically famous DDB brand."

Eboli joins the team after a two-and-a-half-year tenure at DDB Chicago. She brings to her role an international background, a passion for diversity, equity and inclusion, and a keen eye for digital innovation. At DDB Chicago, Eboli was part of the Miller Lite, McDonald's and Neutrogena teams where she was responsible for each brand's social media strategy, brand identity, content creation and awareness growth.

Eboli said: "I feel so energized to be part of the DDB Global MarComms team during this moment of cultural and creative change. I fell in love with the DDB brand two years ago and am looking forward to continued growth and unlimited creative opportunities within my new global role."

ABOUT DDB WORLDWIDE

DDB Worldwide ( www.ddb.com ) is one of the world's largest and most influential advertising and marketing networks. DDB has been named 2021 Network of the Year by D&AD and ADC, as well as numerous times by the Cannes International Festival of Creativity and the industry's leading advertising publications and awards shows. WARC has listed DDB as one of the Top 3 Global Networks for 12 of the last 15 years. The network's clients include Molson Coors, Volkswagen, McDonald's, Unilever, Mars, Peloton, JetBlue, Johnson & Johnson, and the U.S. Army, among others. Founded in 1949, DDB is part of the Omnicom Group (NYSE: OMC) and consists of more than 200 offices in over 70 countries with its flagship office in New York, NY.

ABOUT OMNICOM

Omnicom Group Inc. (NYSE  OMC) is a leading global marketing and corporate communications company. Omnicom's branded networks and numerous specialty firms provide advertising, strategic media planning and buying, digital and interactive marketing, direct and promotional marketing, public relations and other specialty communications services to over 5,000 clients in more than 70 countries.

CONTACT: Donna Tobin, Global Chief Marketing & Communications Officer, [email protected]

SOURCE DDB Worldwide

Related Links

https://www.ddb.com/


DUBLIN, Sept. 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Mallinckrodt plc (OTCMKTS: MNKKQ) ("Mallinckrodt" or the "Company") today announced that it has reached an agreement with the Official Committee of Opioid Related Creditors (the "OCC") and the Restructuring Support Agreement (the "RSA") Parties to support an amended Plan of Reorganization (the "Amended Plan"), which the Company will file in the coming days. The agreement with the OCC follows recently announced agreements to support the Amended Plan that Mallinckrodt reached with the Official Committee of Unsecured Creditors appointed in its Chapter 11 cases (the "UCC") and certain of Mallinckrodt's second lien noteholders. The terms of all three settlements were filed today with the Bankruptcy Court and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Form 8-K.

Mark Trudeau, President and Chief Executive Officer of Mallinckrodt, said, "With this additional support, we are continuing to build consensus for our restructuring plan, which addresses litigation claims, reduces debt and positions the Company for the long term. The support of these important stakeholder groups reinforces our confidence that this is the best path forward for Mallinckrodt and its creditors, enabling us to preserve value while continuing to serve our customers and patients, support employees and work with our suppliers and other partners. As we continue to make important progress in this process, we remain committed to developing new therapies, improving patient health outcomes and supporting underserved patients with severe and critical conditions."

The Amended Plan is based on the Company's previously announced the RSA and includes key legal settlements that resolve, among other claims, opioid claims brought against the Company. The Amended Plan and RSA provide for a financial restructuring designed to strengthen the Company's balance sheet and reduce its total debt by approximately $1.3 billion.1 Implementing the Amended Plan and RSA will significantly improve Mallinckrodt's financial position and resolves the numerous lawsuits facing the Company, enabling the Company to continue executing its strategic priorities and developing and commercializing therapies that improve health outcomes.

The Amended Plan is now supported by:

Holders of approximately 84% of the Company's guaranteed unsecured notes;

An ad hoc group of first lien term lenders holding approximately $1.3 billion of the Company's outstanding first lien term loans;

of the Company's outstanding first lien term loans; 50 states and territories and the Plaintiffs' Executive Committee in the opioid multidistrict litigation, which will recommend that more than 1,000 plaintiffs in multi-district litigation against the Company support the Amended Plan and RSA;

The Multi-State Governmental Entities Group (the "MSGE Group"), which represents more than 1,300 counties, municipalities, tribes and other governmental entities, across 38 states and territories, with opioid-related litigation against the Company;

An ad hoc group of second lien noteholders holding a majority of the outstanding second lien notes;

The UCC; and

The OCC.

The UCC and the OCC are recommending that the constituents they represent, which include all of the Company's unsecured creditors and opioid plaintiffs, vote in favor of the Plan.

The Bankruptcy Court will hold a confirmation hearing to consider approval of the Plan, which will commence in September 2021. If the Amended Plan is confirmed, the Company intends to file an examinership proceeding in Ireland to effectuate the reorganization in Ireland, which the Company expects may take approximately 90-150 days.

Advisors

Latham & Watkins LLP, Ropes & Gray LLP and Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz are serving as counsel, Guggenheim Securities, LLC is serving as investment banker and AlixPartners LLP is serving as restructuring advisor to Mallinckrodt.

About Mallinckrodt

Mallinckrodt is a global business consisting of multiple wholly owned subsidiaries that develop, manufacture, market and distribute specialty pharmaceutical products and therapies. The Company's Specialty Brands reportable segment's areas of focus include autoimmune and rare diseases in specialty areas like neurology, rheumatology, nephrology, pulmonology and ophthalmology; immunotherapy and neonatal respiratory critical care therapies; analgesics and gastrointestinal products. Its Specialty Generics reportable segment includes specialty generic drugs and active pharmaceutical ingredients. To learn more about Mallinckrodt, visit www.mallinckrodt.com.

Mallinckrodt uses its website as a channel of distribution of important company information, such as press releases, investor presentations and other financial information. It also uses its website to expedite public access to time-critical information regarding the company in advance of or in lieu of distributing a press release or a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) disclosing the same information. Therefore, investors should look to the Investor Relations page of the website for important and time-critical information. Visitors to the website can also register to receive automatic e-mail and other notifications alerting them when new information is made available on the Investor Relations page of the website.

CAUTIONARY STATEMENTS RELATED TO FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

Statements in this document that are not strictly historical, including statements regarding future financial condition and operating results, legal, economic, business, competitive and/or regulatory factors affecting Mallinckrodt's businesses, and any other statements regarding events or developments the company believes or anticipates will or may occur in the future, may be "forward-looking" statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, and involve a number of risks and uncertainties.

There are a number of important factors that could cause actual events to differ materially from those suggested or indicated by such forward-looking statements and you should not place undue reliance on any such forward-looking statements. These factors include risks and uncertainties related to, among other things: Mallinckrodt's ongoing Chapter 11 cases; the ability of Mallinckrodt and its subsidiaries to obtain approval from the bankruptcy court with respect to motions or other requests made to the bankruptcy court throughout the course of the Chapter 11 cases and to negotiate, develop, obtain court approval of, confirm and consummate the Amended Plan or any other plan that may be proposed, the effects of the Chapter 11 cases, including increased professional costs, on the liquidity, results of operations and businesses of Mallinckrodt and its subsidiaries; the consummation of the transactions contemplated by the restructuring support agreement and the Amended Plan, including the settlements entered into with the OCC, the UCC, and Mallinckrodt's second lien noteholders and the ability of the parties to negotiate definitive agreements with respect to the matters covered by the related term sheets, whether related to such settlements, included in the restructuring support agreement or otherwise, the occurrence of events that may give rise to a right of any of the parties to terminate the restructuring support agreement or any of the settlements and the ability of the parties to receive the required approval by the bankruptcy court and to satisfy the other conditions of the restructuring support agreement and the settlements, including satisfying the milestones specified in the restructuring support agreement; governmental investigations and inquiries, regulatory actions and lawsuits brought against Mallinckrodt by government agencies and private parties with respect to its historical commercialization of opioids, including the amended non-binding agreement in principle reached by Mallinckrodt in connection with the announcement of its filing of the Chapter 11 petitions regarding the terms and conditions of a global settlement to resolve all current and future opioid-related claims; potential delays in Mallinckrodt's Chapter 11 process; the proposed settlement with governmental parties to resolve certain disputes relating to Acthar Gel; the possibility that such settlement will not be consummated and the risks and uncertainties related thereto, including the time and expense of continuing to litigate this dispute and the impact of this dispute on Mallinckrodt's financial condition and expectations for performance; the ability to maintain relationships with Mallinckrodt's suppliers, customers, employees and other third parties as a result of the Chapter 11 cases; the availability of operating capital during the pendency of the Chapter 11 cases, including events that could terminate Mallinckrodt's right to continue to access the cash collateral of Mallinckrodt's lenders; the possibility that Mallinckrodt may be unable to achieve its business and strategic goals even if the Chapter 11 plan is successfully consummated; the possibility that Mallinckrodt's Chapter 11 cases may be converted into Chapter 7 cases under the bankruptcy code; the potential termination of Mallinckrodt's exclusive right to file a Chapter 11 plan; the possibility that certain claims against Mallinckrodt may not be discharged as part of the bankruptcy process; developing, funding and executing Mallinckrodt's business plan and continuing as a going concern; Mallinckrodt's post-bankruptcy capital structure; scrutiny from governments, legislative bodies and enforcement agencies related to sales, marketing and pricing practices; pricing pressure on certain of Mallinckrodt's products due to legal changes or changes in insurers' reimbursement practices resulting from recent increased public scrutiny of healthcare and pharmaceutical costs; the impact of the outbreak of the COVID-19 coronavirus; the reimbursement practices of governmental health administration authorities, private health coverage insurers and other third-party payers; complex reporting and payment obligations under the Medicare and Medicaid rebate programs and other governmental purchasing and rebate programs; cost containment efforts of customers, purchasing groups, third-party payers and governmental organizations; changes in or failure to comply with relevant laws and regulations; Mallinckrodt's and its partners' ability to successfully develop or commercialize new products or expand commercial opportunities; Mallinckrodt's ability to navigate price fluctuations; competition; Mallinckrodt's and its partners' ability to protect intellectual property rights; limited clinical trial data for Acthar Gel; clinical studies and related regulatory processes; product liability losses and other litigation liability; material health, safety and environmental liabilities; potential indemnification liabilities to Covidien pursuant to the separation and distribution agreement; business development activities; retention of key personnel; the effectiveness of information technology infrastructure including cybersecurity and data leakage risks; customer concentration; Mallinckrodt's reliance on certain individual products that are material to its financial performance; Mallinckrodt's ability to receive procurement and production quotas granted by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration; complex manufacturing processes; conducting business internationally; Mallinckrodt's ability to achieve expected benefits from restructuring activities; Mallinckrodt's significant levels of intangible assets and related impairment testing; labor and employment laws and regulations; natural disasters or other catastrophic events; Mallinckrodt's substantial indebtedness and its ability to generate sufficient cash to reduce its indebtedness; Mallinckrodt's ability to generate sufficient cash to service indebtedness even if the existing indebtedness is restructured; future changes to U.S. and foreign tax laws or the impact of disputes with governmental tax authorities; and the impact of Irish laws.

These and other factors are identified and described in more detail in the "Risk Factors" section of Mallinckrodt's most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K and other filings with the SEC. The forward-looking statements made herein speak only as of the date hereof and Mallinckrodt does not assume any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events and developments or otherwise, except as required by law.

CONTACTS

Investor Relations

Daniel J. Speciale

Vice President, Finance and Investor Relations Officer

314-654-3638

[email protected]

Media

Michael Freitag / Aaron Palash / Aura Reinhard

Joele Frank, Wilkinson Brimmer Katcher

212-355-4449

Government Affairs

Mark Tyndall

Senior Vice President, U.S. General Counsel

202-459-4141

[email protected]

Mallinckrodt, the "M" brand mark and the Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals logo are trademarks of a Mallinckrodt company. Other brands are trademarks of a Mallinckrodt company or their respective owners.  2021 09/21.

1 Excluding a previously disclosed 2020 excess cash flow sweep of approximately $114 million to First Lien Term Loan Lenders.

SOURCE Mallinckrodt plc

Related Links

http://www.mallinckrodt.com


MINEOLA, N.Y., Sept. 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Michael R. Scoma is being recognized by Continental Who's Who as a Trusted Infectious Disease Specialist for his years of dedicated work in the field.

With over seventeen years of experience, Dr. Scoma is well versed in Infectious Disease treatment and care. As an infectious disease specialist at NYU Langone Hospital in Long Island and his practice Scoma Medical Group PLLC, Dr. Scoma treats all patients with care and compassion.



As the founder of Scoma Medical Group PLLC, Dr. Scoma currently practices at 173 Mineola Boulevard, Suite 401A. He is accepting new patients, and is available for appointments, preventative care, and ongoing patient care. He also works at NYU Langone Hospital, which has 591 patient beds. Aside from medical practice, in his present capacity, Dr. Scoma serves as an Adjunct Assistant Professor within the Department of Medicine at NYU Long Island School of Medicine.



From a young age, Dr. Scoma knew he wanted to pursue a career helping others. He started off earning his Bachelor of Science from Fordham University. In 2004, he graduated from the American University of the Caribbean School of Medicine in Coral Gables, FL. Seeking to further his education, Dr. Scoma then performed his residency in Internal Medicine at NYU Langone Hospital in Long Island from 2005 to 2008. He embarked on a Fellowship in Infectious Diseases at the Yale New-Haven Hospital from 2008 to 2010.



He is licensed by the State Board to practice medicine in New York. Dr. Scoma is board-certified in Infectious Diseases by the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM). Dr. Scoma specializes in treating the novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) infection during the Coronavirus pandemic of 2020. A critical aspect of his day-to-day practice involves managing nosocomial infections, also known as hospital-acquired infections. Infectious Disease experts are critical members of the healthcare community during a pandemic, when thousands of members of the population become infected. As a highly trained Infectious Disease expert, Dr. Scoma works to prevent the spread of Coronavirus while also providing top-notch care for his patients.



Along with rare conditions and COVID-19, Dr. Scoma treats HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis B and C. To determine the cause of a disease, he will consider the symptoms, examining rashes, lymph nodes, chest, abdomen, and genital areas.



Awards for Dr. Scoma's acclaimed work include the Castle Connolly Regional Top Doctors: 1st Edition, Newsday's Top Doctors on Long Island (2019-2020), and Top Doctors New York Metro Area digital guide (2018- 2021).



He is associated with the Infectious Disease Society of America (IDSA), which pursues the mission of reducing the burden of infectious diseases on the community. To give back to his community, Dr. Scoma is involved with charities, including St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital.



When he isn't working, Dr. Scoma enjoys spending time with wife, Anna, and two children, Thomas and Charlotte. He would like to thank his family for their unwavering love and support. His hobbies include playing guitar and exercising.



He would like to dedicate this recognition to Dr. Vincent Quagliarello, and In Loving Memory of his father, Dr. Salvatore Scoma.

Contact: Katherine Green, 516-825-5634, [email protected]

SOURCE Continental Who's Who

Related Links

http://www.continentalwhoswho.com


WASHINGTON, Sept. 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Astronauts Akihiko Hoshide of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and Thomas Pesquet of ESA (European Space Agency) will venture outside the International Space Station for a spacewalk Sunday, Sept. 12.

NASA will provide details about the procedures scheduled for the upcoming spacewalk during a news conference at 2 p.m. EDT Friday, Sept. 10, from NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. Live coverage of the news conference and the spacewalk will air on NASA Television, the agency's website, and the NASA app.

This will be the first spacewalk, or extravehicular activity (EVA) conducted by two international partner astronauts out of the space station's Quest airlock. U.S. EVA 77, originally scheduled to take place Tuesday, Aug. 24, will focus on attaching a support bracket in preparation for future installation of the orbiting laboratory's third new solar array. NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei is recovering from a minor medical issue and will provide support for Pesquet and Hoshide from inside the space station.

Reporters who wish to participate in the news conference by telephone must call the Johnson newsroom at 281-483-5111 to RSVP no later than 4 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 9. Reporters will not be invited to attend briefings on site at NASA centers due to safety restrictions related to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Anyone following the briefing on social media may ask questions using #AskNASA.

News conference participants are:

Dana Weigel , deputy manager, International Space Station Program.

, deputy manager, International Space Station Program. Adi Boulos , NASA spacewalk flight director.

, NASA spacewalk flight director. Sandy Moore , NASA spacewalk officer.

Live spacewalk coverage will begin at 7 a.m. Sunday, Sept. 12, with crew members scheduled to exit the airlock around 8:30 a.m. The spacewalk will last approximately six hours and 30 minutes.

Hoshide and Pesquet will install a support bracket, called a modification kit, on the inward port side of the station's backbone truss structure in a position known as P4, which is closest to the station's pressurized living space. The kit will prepare the site for future installation and deployment of the third of six new International Space Station Roll-Out Solar Arrays (iROSAs). The array will upgrade one of the station's eight power channels. Known as 4A, the channel provides partial power to the U.S. Laboratory, the Harmony module, and the Columbus module. The astronauts will install the modification kit to the mast canister at the base of the original solar arrays.

The crew also will replace a device that measures the electrical charging potential of the arrays and associated surfaces in its vicinity, called a floating point measurement unit, on a separate truss section.

Hoshide will serve as extravehicular crew member one (EV1), with red stripes on his spacesuit, while Pesquet will be extravehicular crew member two (EV2), with an unmarked suit. This will be the fourth spacewalk for Hoshide, the sixth spacewalk for Pesquet, and the station's 244th spacewalk in support of assembly, maintenance, and upgrades.

The spacewalk follows three others to install the first pair of new iROSAs. The station's original solar arrays are functioning well but have begun to show signs of degradation  which was expected, as they were designed for a 15-year service life. The same roll-out solar array design will be used to power elements of Gateway, a new lunar-orbiting outpost in development by NASA's commercial and international partners.

In November 2020, the International Space Station surpassed its 20-year milestone of continuous human presence, providing opportunities for unique research and technological demonstrations that help prepare for long-duration missions to the Moon and Mars and also improve life on Earth. Over that time, 244 people from 19 countries have visited the orbiting laboratory that has hosted nearly 3,000 research investigations from researchers in 108 countries and areas.

Learn more about the International Space Station, its research, and its crew, at:

http://www.nasa.gov/station

SOURCE NASA

Related Links

http://www.nasa.gov


The Nisei Soldier Experience exhibit is the National Museum of the U.S. Army's first special exhibit that showcases an unprecedented collection of Japanese American artifacts that capture the rarely told story of the Japanese American Nisei Soldier during World War II. The exhibit highlights their struggles both at home and abroad, their courageous acts on the battlefield and their long-awaited recognition culminating in the Congressional Gold Medal awarded in 2011.

The importance of their service and the significance of the WWII veteran's visit the Museum was highlighted by multiple visits with high-level United States government officials.

General Erik K. Shinseki (Retired) introduced General Paul M. Nakasone, Commander, U.S. Cyber Command, Director, National Security Agency/Chief, Central Security Services, for keynote remarks. Gen. Nakasone discussed his father's service in WWII veteran who also joined the Military Intelligence Service. Col. Edwin "Bud" Nakasone was born on April 29, 1927 near Wahiawa, Oahu, one of 10 children born to Issei parents. He was 14 years old when Pearl Harbor was attacked and recalls seeing Japanese planes flying overhead on their way to Wheeler Field, a U.S. Army airfield. Drafted in 1945, Nakasone went on to serve in Military Intelligence Service. Nakasone was assigned as part of the U.S. Army military forces in the occupation of Japan and the 168th Language Detachment, 1st Cavalry Division where he assigned people to translation projects in the War Crimes Trials and HQ's daily translations. Discharged in 1948, Nakasone went on to teach history at White Bear Lake High School, MN, and Century College, White Bear Lake, MN until his retirement in 2000. Nakasone remained active in the Army Reserves and retired as a Colonel in April 1987 after nearly 42 years of service.

"The contributions of the Nisei Soldiers during WWII amplified the value and strength that inclusion and diversity, coupled with a strong sense of service can bring to our Nation," Gen. Nakasone said. "They paved the way for future generations of Japanese Americans, myself included."

Erika Moritsugu, deputy assistant to 47th President of the United States, President Joseph Biden, shared her personal connection having two uncles who served during WWII and received Medals of Honor.

"The new exhibit at the National Museum of the U.S. Army and the longstanding work of the National Veterans Network underscore how critical it is to honor and remember the Nisei Soldiers during World War II for their distinguished service fighting for our country," said Erika Moritsugu, deputy assistant to 47th President of the United States, President Joseph Biden. "We will never forget their allegiance and their gallantry. It is part of our legacy and inspiration and a critical part of our American history."

Just the day prior, the Army Chief of Staff, General James C. McConville joined a social reception at the National Museum of the U.S. Army to meet with the two WWII Veterans and Medal of Honor families.

Gen. James McConville, 40th Chief of Staff of the Army visited with the veterans and families and told them, "Our Soldiers today stand on your shoulders and strive every day to live up to the legacy you left us."

Moriyama and Matsumoto were greeted by General Eric K. Shinseki (Retired), 34th U.S. Army Chief of Staff and Christine Sato-Yamazaki, executive director of the National Veterans Network, and joined by three families of Medal of Honor recipients: Pfc. Kaoru Moto, 100th Infantry Battalion; Pfc. Sadao Munemori, 100th Infantry Battalion; and Pfc. George Sakato, 442nd Regimental Combat Team, along with other WWII Veteran families at events at the Museum.

Col. (RET) Charles Morimoto shared "My wife Helen and I made the decision in 2019 that we would visit the Museum when it opened. Nothing could have stopped us from coming for this historic event. I wish more of my fellow Nisei Veterans were still here to see this exhibit that honors the sacrifice, service and honor of our units during WWII. I thank everyone who worked so hard for this exhibit, especially the National Veterans Network."

"I never thought a day or exhibit like this would happen in my lifetime. I am so grateful to everyone who made this exhibit a reality," said Ralph Matsumoto, WWII veteran. "I am grateful to the National Veterans Network for their commitment to telling our story."

Over 26 wartime objects of the 100th Infantry Battalion, 442nd Regimental Combat Team and Military Intelligence Service (MIS) are on display, along with nine life stories and interactive maps that allows visitors to learn about the campaigns and battles fought by the 100th Infantry Battalion and 442nd RCT in the European Campaign and MIS in Pacific Campaign. From 2017 to 2020, the National Veterans Network worked together with the National Museum of the United States Army to gather artifacts and develop the historical content for the Nisei Soldier Experience exhibit.

"For the Japanese American WWII veterans and the families of the 100th, 442nd and MIS, this is an important and significant recognition by the United States Army. Despite being discriminated based on their race, these young men and women rose above fear and prejudice in WWII to demonstrate their loyalty to the United States. It is our hope that many will come to learn to the Museum to learn this American story," said Christine Sato-Yamazaki, executive director, National Veterans Network.

Please visit us at www.nationalveteransnetwork.com, and follow the NVN on Facebook (NationalVeteransNetwork), Twitter (@NtlVetNetwork) or Instagram (nationalveteransnetwork).

Press Contact:

Michelle Suzuki

310-444-7115

SOURCE National Veterans Network
FACTS AT A GLANCE Edition: 5; Released: May 2021 Executive Pool: 742 Companies: 35 - Players covered include Adobe Systems, Inc.; Amazon Web Services, Inc.; Cisco Systems, Inc.; Ellucian Company L.P.; IBM Corporation; Microsoft Corporation; NEC Corporation; Netapp; Oracle Corporation; VMware, Inc. and Others. Coverage: All major geographies and key segments Segments: Service Model (Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)); Deployment (Public Cloud, Private Cloud, Hybrid Cloud, Community Cloud); User Type (Higher Education, K-12) Geographies: World; United States; Canada; Japan; China; Europe (France; Germany; Italy; United Kingdom; and Rest of Europe); Asia-Pacific; Rest of World.

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 Cloud Computing in Education Market to Reach $67.1 Billion by 2026

Amid the COVID-19 crisis, the global market for Cloud Computing in Education estimated at US$19.6 Billion in the year 2020, is projected to reach a revised size of US$67.1 Billion by 2026, growing at a CAGR of 22.4% over the analysis period. Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), one of the segments analyzed in the report, is projected to record a 20.7% CAGR and reach US$30.9 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 Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) segment is readjusted to a revised 24.6% CAGR for the next 7-year period.



The U.S. Market is Estimated at $7.4 Billion in 2021, While China is Forecast to Reach $11.8 Billion by 2026

The Cloud Computing in Education market in the U.S. is estimated at US$7.4 Billion in the year 2021. China, the world`s second largest economy, is forecast to reach a projected market size of US$11.8 Billion by the year 2026 trailing a CAGR of 22% over the analysis period. Among the other noteworthy geographic markets are Japan and Canada, each forecast to grow at 20% and 19.2% respectively over the analysis period. Within Europe, Germany is forecast to grow at approximately 15.8% CAGR.



Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) Segment to Reach US$17.8 Billion by the year 2026

In the global Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) segment, USA, Canada, Japan, China and Europe will drive the 22.3% CAGR estimated for this segment. These regional markets accounting for a combined market size of US$4.2 Billion in the year 2020 will reach a projected size of US$17.1 Billion by the close of the analysis period. China will remain among the fastest growing in this cluster of regional markets. More



MarketGlass Platform

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

https://www.strategyr.com/Panelist.asp



Connect With Us on LinkedIn

https://www.linkedin.com/company/global-industry-analysts-inc./



Follow Us on Twitter

https://twitter.com/marketbytes



Journalists & Media

[email protected]

SOURCE Global Industry Analysts, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.strategyr.com


FACTS AT A GLANCE Edition: 5; Released: May 2021 Executive Pool: 978 Companies: 35 - Players covered include Alibaba Group Holding Limited; Amazon Web Services; AT&T; Google, Inc.; International Business Machines Corporation; Microsoft Corporation; Oracle Corporation; Rackspace Inc.; Verizon Enterprise; and Others. Coverage: All major geographies and key segments Segments: Organization Size (Large Enterprises, SMEs) Geographies: World; United States; Canada; Japan; China; Europe (France; Germany; Italy; United Kingdom; and Rest of Europe); Asia-Pacific; Rest of World.

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 Public Cloud Storage Management Market to Reach $20 Billion by 2026

Amid the COVID-19 crisis, the global market for Public Cloud Storage Management estimated at US$4.5 Billion in the year 2020, is projected to reach a revised size of US$20 Billion by 2026, growing at a CAGR of 27.7% over the analysis period. Large Enterprises, one of the segments analyzed in the report, is projected to record a 25.6% CAGR and reach US$13.3 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 SMEs segment is readjusted to a revised 30.6% CAGR for the next 7-year period.

The U.S. Market is Estimated at $1.8 Billion in 2021, While China is Forecast to Reach $3.5 Billion by 2026

The Public Cloud Storage Management market in the U.S. is estimated at US$1.8 Billion in the year 2021. China, the world`s second largest economy, is forecast to reach a projected market size of US$3.5 Billion by the year 2026 trailing a CAGR of 27.1% over the analysis period. Among the other noteworthy geographic markets are Japan and Canada, each forecast to grow at 24.6% and 24% respectively over the analysis period. Within Europe, Germany is forecast to grow at approximately 19.7% CAGR. More

MarketGlass Platform

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

https://www.strategyr.com/Panelist.asp

Connect With Us on LinkedIn

https://www.linkedin.com/company/global-industry-analysts-inc./

Follow Us on Twitter

https://twitter.com/marketbytes

Journalists & Media

[email protected]

SOURCE Global Industry Analysts, Inc.

Related Links

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Robert Setter, Company President and CEO comments "We are very pleased with the results from our initial exploration program on the Hard Nickel and Nickel 100 claim group and specifically with the work completed during phase 2 of this initial exploration program. So far, we have recorded some relatively high Ni readings measured via portable XRF on the Nickel S block, as mentioned in our news from June 28, 2021 , and our geological team suspects these ultramafic rocks have potential to host awaruite mineralization. This second phase of exploration includes both soil and rock sampling, technical report writing, mapping and assay work, with the remaining work to be done on trenching, geological, geochemical and geophysical surveying. Completion of this remaining work will fulfil our flow-through exploration work program commitments for 2021."

2021 Exploration Program Recap

The initial exploration consisted of rock & soil geochemical surveys and geological mapping on the lower elevation, road accessible Nickel West and Nickel South blocks. 405 soil samples and 149 rock samples were collected on the Nickel West block , and 101 soil samples and 50 rock samples were collected on the Nickel South block. All samples have been submitted to SGS Canada for analytical analysis.

and 101 soil samples and 50 rock samples were collected on the Nickel South block. All samples have been submitted to SGS Canada for analytical analysis. On site X-ray fluorescence analysis (XRF) confirmed the presence of nickel values exceeding 40,000 ppm on the Nickel South block , and 6000 ppm on the Nickel West block in select bedrock samples. It should be noted that pXRF does not necessarily reflect bulk rock composition.

and 6000 ppm on the Nickel West block in select bedrock samples. It should be noted that pXRF does not necessarily reflect bulk rock composition. All rock samples were taken in duplicate, with one sent to SGS Canada for geochemical analysis and a duplicate sample retained at Hardline Exploration in Smithers BC for further mineralogical analysis.

for further mineralogical analysis. Soil samples were submitted for screening to -80 mesh (180 m) and processing with aqua regia digestion , followed by analysis using ICP-OES. Rock samples were submitted for crushing to 75% passing 2mm, riffle splitting 250g and pulverization of the split to better than 85% passing 105 microns, and processing with four acid digestion followed by analysis using ICP-OES.

followed by analysis using ICP-OES. Rock samples were submitted for crushing to 75% passing 2mm, riffle splitting 250g and pulverization of the split to better than 85% passing 105 microns, and processing with four acid digestion followed by analysis using ICP-OES. Further exploration will resume on the Nickel West and Nickel Central blocks including rock and soil geochemical surveys and mechanized trenching.

A Notice of Work application was submitted in February 2021 allowing for mechanized trenching, diamond drilling, geophysics and camps. The Company is working/consulting with the BC government and local First Nations.

allowing for mechanized trenching, diamond drilling, geophysics and camps. The Company is working/consulting with the BC government and local First Nations. The principal target on the Project is nickel occurring as awaruite, but at the exploration stage all other styles of mineralization will be considered.

Systematic, ground-based exploration work began within the area of the claims now covered by the Nickel Project under the direction of Ms. Ursula Mowat , P.Geo. in 1987, continuing intermittently until 2012. This work established the presence of elevated nickel, cobalt , and chromium values in rocks, soils, and stream sediments.

, P.Geo. in 1987, continuing intermittently until 2012. This work established the presence of elevated nickel, cobalt and chromium values in rocks, soils, and stream sediments. The area of the claim groups of the Project were included in Geoscience BC's QUEST and QUEST-West projects, including multiparameter regional geophysical surveys, and regional stream sediment reanalyzes and data compilations between 2008 and 2009. The survey highlighted multiple large geophysical magnetic anomalies on both the Nickel W and S claim groups, suspected to be attributed to ultramafic intrusive rocks from preliminary field mapping with potential to host awaruite mineralization.

Britten's technical paper "Regional Metallogeny and Genesis of a New Deposit Type  Disseminated Awaruite (Ni3Fe) Mineralization Hosted in the Cache Creek Terrane published in 2017 in Economic Geology should be utilized as an interim mineral deposit model or profile for the Nickel Project.

The Nickel Project is worthy of phased, systematic exploration programs designed , and implemented to delineate areas with known or high probability metallic nickel mineralization, and to discover new areas of similar mineralization.

2021 Work Program

The Company currently has sufficient funds in its treasury to fully fund its 2021 proposed work program and its remaining working capital needs for 2021 and 2022.

The proposed work program consists of trenching, surface exploration, diamond drilling, camp construction, and exploration activities to support drilling and trenching, such as soil sampling, rock sampling, prospecting, and geological mapping. The company proposes a 12-man camp to be built in a cirque on the north slope of the un-named mountain west of and adjacent to Mount Sydney Williams, and will be built next to a sub-alpine lake at the headwaters of Van Decar Creek. The location of camp was selected based on past exploration camps at this location and is suitable for supporting exploration. Camp will be used to accommodate field personnel and will be accessed with helicopter. The work program is managed by Jeremy Hansen, P. Geol. and Hardline Exploration Corp.

The Company estimates that this 2021 work program will include $600,000 in exploration expenditures.

Qualified Person

Jeremy Hanson, P.Geo., a qualified person as defined by NI 43  101, is responsible for the technical information contained in this release. Readers are cautioned that the information in this press release regarding the property of FPX Nickel Corp is not necessarily indicative of the mineralization on the property of interest.

About Nickel Rock Resources Inc. www.nickelrockresources.com

The Company is a Canadian-based mineral exploration company active in the exploration for nickel-iron alloy in British Columbia and lithium in Nevada. Nickel Rock Resources Inc. is a Canadian based exploration company whose primary listing is on the TSX Venture Exchange. The Company's maintains a focus on exploration for high value battery metals required for the electric vehicle (EV) market.

About Clayton Valley Lithium Project

Clayton Valley is a down-dropped closed basin formed by the Miocene age Great Basin extension and is still active due to movement along the Walker Lane structural zone. As a result, the basin has preserved multiple layers of lithium bearing volcanic ash, resulting from multiple eruptive events over the past 6 million years, including eruptions from the 700,000-year-old Long Valley Caldera system and related events. These ash layers are thought to contribute to the lithium brines extracted by Albemarle and are also likely involved in the formation of the exposed lithium rich clay deposits on the east side of Clayton Valley. https://nickelrockresources.com/clayton-valley-lithium/

About the British Columbia, Canada Nickel Projects

The Mount Sidney Williams Group consists of five claim blocks in four groups with a total area of 6,125.32 hectares in the area surrounding Mount Sidney Williams, both adjoining and near the Decar project of FPX Nickel Corp., located 100 kilometres northwest of Fort St. James, B.C., in the Omineca mining division. Metallic mineralization includes nickel, cobalt, and chromium. At least some of the nickel mineralization occurs as awaruite. The Mitchell Range Group area claim consist of two contiguous claim blocks covering 3,134.70 hectares with demonstrated metallic mineralization, including nickel, cobalt, and chromium. Nickel cobalt mineralization has not been well explored, but the presence of awaruite has been documented.

On Behalf of the Board of Directors

"Robert Setter"

Robert Setter, President & CEO

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 which include, but are not limited to, comments that involve future events and conditions, which are subject to various risks and uncertainties. Except for statements of historical facts, comments that address resource potential, upcoming work programs, geological interpretations, receipt and security of mineral property titles, availability of funds, and others are forward-looking. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and actual results may vary materially from those statements. General business conditions are factors that could cause actual results to vary materially from forward-looking statements.

Nickel Rock Resources Inc.

1220  789 West Pender Street

Vancouver, BC, Canada V6C 1H2

604- 428-5690

www.nickelrockresources.com

[email protected]

SOURCE Nickel Rock Resources Inc.
NEW YORK, Sept. 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- OTC Markets Group Inc. (OTCQX: OTCM), operator of financial markets for 11,000 U.S. and global securities, today announced Eskay Mining Corp (TSX-V: ESK) (OTCQX: ESKYF), an exploration company focused on the exploration and development of precious and base metals, has qualified to trade on the OTCQX Best Market. Eskay Mining Corp upgraded to OTCQX from the OTCQB Venture Market.

Eskay Mining Corp begins trading today on OTCQX under the symbol "ESKYF." U.S. investors can find current financial disclosure and Real-Time Level 2 quotes for the company on www.otcmarkets.com.

The OTCQX Market is designed for established, investor-focused U.S. and international companies. To qualify for OTCQX, companies must meet high financial standards, follow best practice corporate governance, and demonstrate compliance with applicable securities laws. Graduating to the OTCQX Market marks an important milestone for companies, enabling them to demonstrate their qualifications and build visibility among U.S. investors.

Mac Balkam, Eskay CEO & President commented "we are very pleased to be graduating to the OTCQX Market. This will provide our valued US investors with greater liquidity and execution services through OTCQX. It will also help us to build our visibility among US investors. This is an important step in the evolution of the Company."

About Eskay Mining Corp

Eskay Mining Corp (TSX-V:ESK) is a TSX Venture Exchange listed company, headquartered in Toronto, Ontario. Eskay is an exploration company focused on the exploration and development of precious and base metals along the Eskay rift in a highly prolific region of northwest British Columbia known as the "Golden Triangle," approximately 70km northwest of Stewart, BC. The Company currently holds mineral tenures in this area comprised of 177 claims (130,000 acres).

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

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NEW YORK, Sept. 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- OTC Markets Group Inc. (OTCQX: OTCM), operator of financial markets for 11,000 U.S. and global securities, today announced Raffles Financial Group Limited (CSE: RICH;OTCQX: RAFFF), a Singapore company that provides an array of financial advisory services, has qualified to trade on the OTCQX Best Market. Raffles Financial Group Limited upgraded to OTCQX from the Pink market.

Raffles Financial Group Limited begins trading today on OTCQX under the symbol "RAFFF." 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.

"The trading of RAFFF on OTCQX now provides global investors the ease and convenience to tap into SE Asia's US$ 1 billion financial advisory market with Raffles Financial. We invite investors to grow and expand with us in the world's fastest growing economy of Indo-Pacific," said Dr Charlie In, Chairman/CEO of Raffles Financial Group Limited.

B. Riley Securities, Inc. acted as the company's OTCQX sponsor.

About Raffles Financial Group Limited

Raffles Financial is an established Singapore company with an office in Hong Kong that provides an array of financial advisory services. Raffles Financial is registered with the Monetary Authority of Singapore as an exempt corporate finance adviser. Unlike large investment banks and self-employed financial consultants, Raffles Financial offers customized public listing advisory, arrangement and anchoring-investors services by working with audit, legal, tax and banking professionals.

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


PURCHASE, N.Y., Sept. 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, PepsiCo and its philanthropic arm, The PepsiCo Foundation, announced a commitment of over $500,000 to support emergency food deliveries and rescue operations in Louisiana in partnership with The Salvation Army, Team Rubicon and the Greater New Orleans Foundation. The relief is being mobilized as Hurricane Ida has ravaged the Gulf region and the East Coast, knocking down homes, flooding entire neighborhoods, shutting off power, and creating an immediate need for food and emergency services.

Support provided by PepsiCo and The PepsiCo Foundation will meet specific needs, including:

More than 250,000 nutritious meals for families most in need, distributed through The Salvation Army. PepsiCo's Food for Good operation is donating nutritious, pre-packed, non-perishable meals to complement the hot meals the Salvation Army will serve through their mobile feeding units.

Emergency disaster relief services such as removing downed trees, enabling emergency search and rescue and utility services, and helping the most vulnerable communities rebuild in partnership with Team Rubicon.

Support for local nonprofits through the Greater New Orleans Foundation to work directly with residents to provide temporary roofs, shelter for those not able to return home, legal aid and technical assistance for residents working to navigate FEMA and other applications for assistance.

More than 13,000 nutritious meals for those affected by Hurricane Ida in New York , New Jersey and Pennsylvania , distributed in partnership with The Salvation Army New York.

In addition, PepsiCo Beverages North America (PBNA) and PepsiCo Foods North America (PFNA) are donating hundreds of cases of Aquafina and cases of Gatorade to Houston Community College providing relief assistance, approximately 10,000 cases of Quaker products to Feed the Hungry, a non-profit organization dedicated to feeding the poor and hungry around the world, as well as additional relief funds to local community organizations in the impacted areas.

"While first responders and relief agencies are still assessing the damage of Hurricane Ida, we know that affected citizens need relief now," said Jon Banner, Executive Vice President, Global Communications and President of The PepsiCo Foundation." That's why we're working with our dedicated partners The Salvation Army, Team Rubicon, and the Greater New Orleans Foundation and mobilizing our own Food for Good operation to deliver meals and emergency relief. These communities need our support as they face the immediate impacts of the storm and recover in its wake."

"Partners like PepsiCo enable us to respond quickly with the food, water, and emergency relief that disaster survivors need most in urgent crises like this one," said Alvin Migues, Emergency Disaster Services Director for The Salvation Army, Texas Division. "We're grateful to work together to ensure we are providing these services to those impacted by Hurricane Ida as quickly as possible."

The PepsiCo Foundation will also match employee donations to organizations that are providing critical relief for impacted communities along the Gulf Coast and in the Northeast region, as well as activating PEPHelp, an employee-to-employee program to support employees of PepsiCo affected by natural disasters with financial assistance.

"As a company with a strong presence across North America, PepsiCo is committed to helping our communities, employees, and partners weather the devastation being wrought by Hurricane Ida," said Derek Lewis, President, South Division, PepsiCo Beverages North America. "While supporting first responders and relief efforts as they help these communities is a critical part of our work, we'll also continue to monitor the situation closely so we can respond to communities' long-term needs as needed. Our thoughts and prayers are with all those who are affected."

The PepsiCo Foundation has a longstanding history of community relief efforts and is a member of the American Red Cross' Annual Disaster Giving Program (ADGP), granting at least $500,000 annually to ensure the Red Cross can pre-position supplies, secure shelters, maintain vehicles, train volunteers and prepare for future disasters.

Media Contact: [email protected]

About PepsiCo

PepsiCo products are enjoyed by consumers more than one billion times a day in more than 200 countries and territories around the world. PepsiCo generated more than $70 billion in net revenue in 2020, driven by a complementary food and beverage portfolio that includes Frito-Lay, Gatorade, Pepsi-Cola, Quaker, Tropicana, and SodaStream. PepsiCo's product portfolio includes a wide range of enjoyable foods and beverages, including 23 brands that generate more than $1 billion each in estimated annual retail sales. Guiding PepsiCo is our vision to Be the Global Leader in Convenient Foods and Beverages by Winning with Purpose. "Winning with Purpose" reflects our ambition to win sustainably in the marketplace and embed purpose into all aspects of our business strategy and brands. For more information, visit www.pepsico.com.

About The PepsiCo Foundation

Established in 1962, The PepsiCo Foundation, the philanthropic arm of PepsiCo, invests in the essential elements of a sustainable food system with a mission to support thriving communities. Working with non-profits and experts around the globe, we're focused on helping communities obtain access to food security, safe water and economic opportunity. We strive for tangible impact in the places where we live and workcollaborating with industry peers, local and international organizations, and our employees to affect large-scale change on the issues that matter to us and are of global importance. Learn more at www.pepsico.com/sustainability/philanthropy.

SOURCE PepsiCo Foundation

Related Links

http://www.pepsico.com


NEW YORK, Sept. 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Below are experts from the ProfNet network who are available to discuss timely issues in your coverage area.

EXPERT ALERTS

Treatments for Trauma

Law Students, Legal Assistance and the Eviction Crisis

MEDIA JOBS

RT.com, Writer-Columnist (Remote)

Asia Financial News Group, Reporter ( Asia / Australasia / North America )

OTHER NEWS & RESOURCES

September Events for Journalists and Bloggers

Blog Profiles: Electric Vehicle Blogs

Treatments for Trauma

Dr. Sachi Ananda, PD, LMHC, MCAP

Director of Shatterproof

FHE Health

The mental health effects of trauma on first responders can linger 20 years after an event like 9/11, especially if left untreated. For example, we recently treated a law enforcement officer who worked at Ground Zero. He had been drinking before 9/11, but after 9/11, his drinking became worse. For years this police officer suppressed the trauma he had experienced from 9/11, and his drinking worsened as he tried to self-medicate. By the time he chose to seek treatment, he could no longer manage his drinking and was about to lose his wife and family. Addressing his core trauma took time and required long-term treatment.

Dr. Satchi can discuss the latest treatments for trauma, gleaned from treating over 1,600 first responders through FHE Health's Shatterproof program. She can also discuss the critical need to expand mental health treatment programs and how national events like 9/11 and local events like the Surfside condo collapse have long-term implications for first responders and the public.

Website: www.fhehealth.com

Media contact: Kristine Glenn, [email protected]

Law Students, Legal Assistance and the Eviction Crisis

Donald B. Tobin

Dean & Professor

University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law

Maryland Carey Law students have been working for over a year to help families stay in their homes by providing education on housing related laws and free legal assistance to clients facing eviction across the state.

Dean Donald Tobin can discuss how Maryland Carey Law students are responding to Attorney General Merrick Garland's recent call for the legal profession to assist with the looming eviction crisis.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/donald-tobin-7b766a6/

Website: https://www.law.umaryland.edu/index.html

Media contact: Donald B. Tobin, [email protected]

MEDIA JOBS:

Following are links to job listings for staff and freelance writers, editors and producers. You can view these and more job listings on our Job Board: https://www.cisionjobs.com/jobs/united-states/

OTHER NEWS & RESOURCES:

Following are links to other news and resources we think you might find useful. If you have an item you think other reporters would be interested in and would like us to include in a future alert, please drop us a line at [email protected]

SEPTEMBER EVENTS FOR JOURNALISTS AND BLOGGERS . Fall tradeshows are still feeling the effects of the pandemic, but September still offers a number of unique events for journalists and bloggers.

BLOG PROFILES: ELECTRIC VEHICLE BLOGS . Our latest Blogs We Love roundup features electric vehicle blogs that cover the latest news, trends, reviews, and products in the green car space.

PROFNET is an exclusive service of PR Newswire.



To contact ProfNet: [email protected] or 800-776-3638, ext. 1



SOURCE ProfNet

Related Links

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As the company's public relations agency of record, Ripley PR will leverage Newforma's position as a key partner of more than 122,000 architecture, engineering and construction professionals and elevate the company's presence in the construction and design industry.

"Ripley PR has the proven record of success with B2B tech companies that we were looking for as we expand our communications efforts," said Slater Latour, chief marketing and product officer at Newforma. "The Ripley team has demonstrated their expertise with the consistent results they generate for other clients in our sector. That makes them an ideal partner for Newforma and our technology solution, which allows users to focus on the needs of their clients instead of time-consuming paperwork and data entry that eat into their revenues."

Newforma has been a leader among construction and design tech providers since 2004. The company's innovative PIM technology has helped raise standards for efficiency and excellence in all verticals related to design and building.

Ripley PR was founded in 2013 with a focus on B2B technology, construction, franchising, home services and manufacturing public relations. Ripley PR offers strategic communications services that help clients build brand awareness, establish positive reputations and drive increased leads and sales.

Ripley PR was named to Forbes' list of America's Best PR Agencies for 2021 and has been named to Entrepreneur Magazine's list of the Top Franchise Suppliers three years in a row.

"We're deeply invested in the construction technology industry, so we understand the needs of contractors and the companies that work with them," said Heather Ripley, CEO and founder of Ripley PR. "Construction contractors need a solution like Newforma that gives them access to essential data in real time so they can deliver projects on schedule and within budget. Newforma's streamlined solution designers and contractors addresses a real need in the industry for efficient collaboration and workflows, and we're looking forward to working with them to build their brand and help them redefine the possibilities of PIM."

For more information about Ripley PR, visit www.ripleypr.com or call (865) 977-1973.

For more information on Newforma, visit https://www.newforma.com/.

About Newforma

Newforma's industry-leading Project Information Management (PIM) software streamlines communication, manages files and simplifies construction administration for architects, engineers, contractors, and owners. Our software will reduce the amount of time spent on administrative tasks, streamline project workflows and power real-time collaboration for project teams. Newforma software has more than 122,000 users in more than 1,200 firms. For more information, visit https://www.newforma.com/.

About Ripley PR

Ripley PR, Inc. is an elite, global B2B public relations agency specializing in construction, franchising, technology, home services and manufacturing. Offering a full range of strategic communication services, including crisis management, media relations and social media strategies, Ripley PR uses a blend of strategic business accounting and creative public relations branding to tell compelling stories and deliver measurable results. Ripley PR is a partner in IPREX, the $350 million network of communication agencies, with 1,800 staff and 115 offices worldwide. For more information, visit ripleypr.com or call 865-977-1973.

MEDIA CONTACT:

Heather Ripley

Ripley PR

865-977-1973

[email protected]

SOURCE Ripley PR

Related Links

http://ripleypr.com


WEST END, N.C., Sept. 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Sandhills Center LME/MCO ("Sandhills Center") announced today that it has notified four (4) patients of suspicious criminal activity relating to the potential exposure of protected health information ("PHI"). While Sandhills Center cannot confirm whether any information in its systems was subject to unauthorized access, it has notified the four (4) individuals, as well as the Federal Bureau of Investigation, federal Department of Health and Human Services, North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, and the general public in an abundance of caution.

What Happened? On or about July 21, 2021, an anonymous criminal contacted Sandhills Center claiming to be in possession of stolen data, including protected health information ("PHI"), from Sandhills Center's system, and attempting to extort Sandhills Center for monetary payment. Sandhills Center promptly reported the matter to the FBI, the federal Department of Health and Human Services, and the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, and launched an investigation into the nature and scope of the alleged data theft. Subsequently, the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services received an email from a second unknown individual attaching records containing PHI for four (4) individuals.

Sandhills Center's investigation has been inconclusive; however, Sandhills Center has confirmed that the records were maintained by Sandhills Center, as well as a number of other entities. As such, Sandhills Center has provided written notification to the four (4) impacted individuals and is providing this public notice of the criminal threats in an abundance of caution.

What Information Was Involved? Sandhills Center is aware that an unknown individual has sent the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services copies of medical records containing medical diagnosis/treatment information for four (4) individuals, which documents are in the possession of Sandhills Center, as well as other medical providers and/or regulatory authorities. More broadly speaking, Sandhills Center maintains documents containing medical diagnosis/treatment information for patients; however, Sandhills Center is unaware of any evidence suggesting those documents were accessed or acquired.

What Sandhills Center is Doing. Following its investigation, Sandhills Center has taken steps to further secure its environment and is reviewing existing policies and procedures and implementing additional safeguards to further secure the information in its systems. Although Sandhills Center cannot confirm whether any information in its systems was subject to unauthorized access, Sandhills Center takes these matters extremely seriously, and therefore is providing this public notice in an abundance of caution and after consulting with the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services.

What Potentially Affected Individuals Can Do . Sandhills Center encourages all patients, and all residents of North Carolina, to remain vigilant against incidents of identity theft and fraud by reviewing your account statements and monitoring your free credit reports for suspicious activity and to detect errors. Please review the following "Steps You Can Take To Protect Your Information" for additional information on protecting your personal information.

We understand that you may have questions that are not addressed in this notice. If you have additional questions or concerns, please call (888) 397-0042 between 9:00 am EST and 5:00 pm EST Monday through Friday, and between 11:00 am EST and 3:00pm EST Saturday and Sunday (excluding major U.S. holidays). Please reference Engagement Number B018211.

Steps You Can Take To Protect Your Information

Monitor Your Accounts

Under U.S. law, a consumer is entitled to one free credit report annually from each of the three major credit reporting bureaus, Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. To order your free credit report, visit www.annualcreditreport.com or call, toll-free, 1-877-322-8228. You may also directly contact the three major credit reporting bureaus listed below to request a free copy of your credit report.

Consumers have the right to place an initial or extended "fraud alert" on a credit file at no cost. An initial fraud alert is a 1-year alert that is placed on a consumer's credit file. Upon seeing a fraud alert display on a consumer's credit file, a business is required to take steps to verify the consumer's identity before extending new credit. If you are a victim of identity theft, you are entitled to an extended fraud alert, which is a fraud alert lasting seven years. Should you wish to place a fraud alert, please contact any one of the three major credit reporting bureaus listed below.

As an alternative to a fraud alert, consumers have the right to place a "credit freeze" on a credit report, which will prohibit a credit bureau from releasing information in the credit report without the consumer's express authorization. The credit freeze is designed to prevent credit, loans, and services from being approved in your name without your consent. However, you should be aware that using a credit freeze to take control over who gets access to the personal and financial information in your credit report may delay, interfere with, or prohibit the timely approval of any subsequent request or application you make regarding a new loan, credit, mortgage, or any other account involving the extension of credit. Pursuant to federal law, you cannot be charged to place or lift a credit freeze on your credit report. To request a security freeze, you will need to provide the following information:

Full name (including middle initial as well as Jr., Sr., II, III, etc.); Social Security number; Date of birth; Addresses for the prior two to five years; Proof of current address, such as a current utility bill or telephone bill; A legible photocopy of a government-issued identification card (state driver's license or ID card, etc.); and A copy of either the police report, investigative report, or complaint to a law enforcement agency concerning identity theft if you are a victim of identity theft.

Should you wish to place a credit freeze, please contact the three major credit reporting bureaus listed below:

Equifax Experian TransUnion https://www.equifax.com/personal/credit-report-services/ https://www.experian.com/help/ https://www.transunion.com/credit-help 888-298-0045 1-888-397-3742 833-395-6938 Equifax Fraud Alert, P.O. Box 105069 Atlanta, GA 30348-5069 Experian Fraud Alert, P.O. Box 9554, Allen, TX 75013 TransUnion Fraud Alert, P.O. Box 2000, Chester, PA 19016 Equifax Credit Freeze, P.O. Box 105788 Atlanta, GA 30348-5788 Experian Credit Freeze, P.O. Box 9554, Allen, TX 75013 TransUnion Credit Freeze, P.O. Box 160, Woodlyn, PA 19094

Additional Information

You may further educate yourself regarding identity theft, fraud alerts, credit freezes, and the steps you can take to protect your personal information by contacting the consumer reporting bureaus, the Federal Trade Commission, or your state Attorney General. The Federal Trade Commission may be reached at: 600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20580; www.identitytheft.gov ; 1-877-ID-THEFT (1-877-438-4338); and TTY: 1-866-653-4261. The Federal Trade Commission also encourages those who discover that their information has been misused to file a complaint with them. You can obtain further information on how to file such a complaint by way of the contact information listed above. You have the right to file a police report if you ever experience identity theft or fraud. Please note that in order to file a report with law enforcement for identity theft, you will likely need to provide some proof that you have been a victim. Instances of known or suspected identity theft should also be reported to law enforcement and your state Attorney General. This notice has not been delayed by law enforcement.

SOURCE Sandhills Center LME/MCO
"De Ann is definitely one of Sandler Law Group's doers. She consistently delivers results. With her successful track record, we trust in De Ann's ability to take on the most challenging assignments," says Ken Mezger, Director of Operations, Sandler Law Group. "Her roll-up-your-sleeves and conquer-the-details approach gets the job done in a timely and careful manner that immediately builds trust with our lender clients."

De Ann Rogers has more than three decades of experience in the residential mortgage business, including closing, loan processing and post closing. De Ann's primary role is implementing new clients as well as applying process improvement strategies both internally and with clients to optimize efficiency and accuracy. She trains closers and builds teams to meet outsourcing needs of clients while working closely with both lender clients and internal management to think outside the box to define new solutions, roles and positions to address client and staff needs.

"I am humbled by this recognition. Being nominated, much less selected, as a recipient of such a prestigious accolade from among such a talented pool of professionals is beyond special," says De Ann Rogers, Process Improvement Liaison at Sandler Law Group. "I've been most fortunate to find an organization that cultivates an open door policy, encourages its employees to be contributors, and celebrates its employees on a regular basis. I have an abundance of gratitude for Sandler Law Group for affording me the opportunity to mentor and support future generations of mortgage industry professionals."

"De Ann is an integral member of the Sandler Law Group team. She imparts her impressive knowledge of the mortgage business to everyone she works with, continually demonstrating her drive and excellence," says Andy Sandler, Chairman of Sandler Law Group. "Industry recognitions celebrating the behind the scenes efforts of those who work so diligently to produce results on a daily basis are very important. We are so proud of De Ann and thank her for all she does to lead the way in delivering exceptional service to our valued clients."

About Sandler Law Group

Based in Dallas, Sandler Law Group delivers legal and support services in residential mortgage lending transactions. From residential mortgage legal review and advice to rigorous compliance analysis, Sandler Law Group ensures that the residential mortgage loan closing process goes as smoothly as possible. The firm also has a dedicated team of experts to assist private banking clients with high-speed loan document preparation and legal review. For additional information, please visit www.sandlerllc.com .

Contact:

Regina Uhl

[email protected]

214-257-1832

SOURCE Sandler Law Group
OSLO, Norway, Sept. 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Seadrill Limited (SDRL) ("Seadrill" or the "Company") (OSE:SDRL, OTCPK:SDRLF) is pleased to announce the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas (the "Court") has approved the disclosure statement (the "Disclosure Statement") for the Company's proposed plan of reorganization (the "Plan"), paving the way for our emergence from Chapter 11 in Q4 2021.

The Court authorized the Company to distribute the Disclosure Statement and solicit votes from all lenders on the Plan. The Court also set a hearing to consider approval of the Plan for October 26, 2021.

The Plan provides a clear pathway for Seadrill to restructure its balance sheet with the Company having already secured support from the majority of its senior secured lenders.

The Company's motion to approve the backstop commitment letter has been deferred until a later hearing.

Grant Creed, CFO, commented: "We are pleased with these developments, which put us firmly on track for Chapter 11 emergence. The Court approved our timeline for approval of the restructuring and authorized us to solicit lender votes. This will pave the way for a significant balance sheet deleveraging."

Copies of the Plan and Disclosure Statement, as well as other information regarding the Company's chapter 11 cases, are available at the following website: https://cases.primeclerk.com/SeadrillLimited/.

About Seadrill

Seadrill is a leading offshore drilling contractor utilizing advanced technology to unlock oil and gas resources for clients across harsh and benign locations across the globe. Seadrill's high quality, technologically advanced fleet spans all asset classes allowing its experienced crews to conduct its operations from shallow to ultra-deep-water environments. The Company operates 42 rigs, which includes drillships, jack-ups and semi-submersibles.

Seadrill is listed on the Oslo Brs and OTC Pink markets. For more information, visit https://www.seadrill.com/

FORWARD LOOKING STATEMENTS

This news release includes forward looking statements. Such statements are generally not historical in nature, and specifically include statements about the Company's plans, strategies, business prospects, changes and trends in its business, the markets in which it operates and its restructuring efforts. These statements are made based upon management's current plans, expectations, assumptions and beliefs concerning future events impacting the Company and therefore involve a number of risks, uncertainties and assumptions that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in the forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date of this news release. Consequently, no forward-looking statement can be guaranteed. When considering these forward-looking statements, you should keep in mind the risks described from time to time in the Company's regulatory filings and periodical reporting. The Company undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date on which such statement is made or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events. New factors emerge from time to time, and it is not possible for the Company to predict all of these factors. Further, the Company cannot assess the impact of each such factor on its business or the extent to which any factor, or combination of factors, may cause actual results to be materially different from those contained in any forward-looking statement.

This information is subject to the disclosure requirements pursuant to section 5-12 of the Norwegian Securities Trading Act.

CONTACT:

[email protected]

020 3745 4960

This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com

The following files are available for download:

SOURCE Seadrill Limited
MILWAUKEE, Sept. 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Ademi LLP is investigating Hill-Rom (NYSE: HRC), for possible breaches of fiduciary duty and other violations of law in its transaction with Baxter.

Click here to learn how to join the action: https://www.ademilaw.com/case/hill-rom-holdings-inc or call Guri Ademi toll-free at 866-264-3995. There is no cost or obligation to you.

Ademi LLP alleges Hill-Rom's financial outlook and prospects are excellent and yet Hill-Rom shareholders will receive only $156.00 per share in cash for a total equity value of approximately $10.5 billion and a total enterprise value of approximately $12.4 billion, including the assumption of debt. The merger agreement unreasonably limits competing bids for Hill-Rom by prohibiting solicitation of further bids, and imposing a substantial penalty of $367 million if Hill-Rom accepts a superior bid. Hill-Rom insiders will receive millions of dollars as part of change of control arrangements. We are investigating the conduct of Hill-Rom's board of directors, and whether they are (i) fulfilling their fiduciary duties to all shareholders, and (ii) obtaining a fair and reasonable price for Hill-Rom.

If you own Hill-Rom common stock and wish to obtain additional information, please contact Guri Ademi either at [email protected] or toll-free: 866-264-3995, or https://www.ademilaw.com/case/hill-rom-holdings-inc.

We specialize in shareholder litigation involving buyouts, mergers, and individual shareholder rights throughout the country. For more information, please feel free to call us. Attorney advertising. Prior results do not guarantee similar outcomes.

Contacts

Ademi LLP

Guri Ademi

Toll Free: (866) 264-3995

Fax: (414) 482-8001

SOURCE Ademi LLP

Related Links

http://www.ademilaw.com


Mineral Occurrences

The claims of the Nickel 100 Group (part of the "Nickel Project") cover 18 BC MINFILE chromite occurrences, some of which are reported to be mineralized with nickel, platinum-palladium group and other rare, highly valuable elements.

History

Nickel-cobalt mineralization has not been well-explored, but the presence of awaruite has been documented. Geologist, Ms. Ursula Mowat completed a preliminary field work program over the area of the Nickel 100 claim group in 2004, and confirmed the presence of elevated nickel, cobalt and chromium values in rocks and stream sediments. Ms. Mowat is the recipient of the 2015 H.H. "Spud" Huestis Award for Excellence in Prospecting and Mineral Exploration , granted by the Association of Mineral Exploration in British Columbia ("AME BC"). AME BC is both a large and successful industry association representing the mineral exploration industry in British Columbia .

About the Hard Nickel 4 Property

The Hard Nickel 4 Property is immediately adjacent and southeast of the FPX Nickel Baptiste Deposit, and consists of a mineral claims held originally by Nickel Rock Resources Inc. (now a 20% interest holder in the project). The exploration stage project is in the Takla Lake area of central British Columbia , partially adjacent to FPX Nickel Corp.'s Decar Nickel Project.

, partially adjacent to FPX Nickel Corp.'s Decar Nickel Project. The Decar Nickel Project is an advanced project targeting awaruite, a nickel-iron alloy mineral, hosted by serpentinized ultramafic intrusive rocks of the Trembleur Ultramafic Unit within the Permian to Triassic age Cache Creek Complex.

All the claim groups of the Nickel Project are partially underlain by variably serpentinized ultramafic intrusive rocks of the Trembleur Ultramafic Unit. Metallic mineralization discovered to date on the project includes nickel, cobalt, and chromium, and some of the nickel mineralization occurs as the nickel-iron alloy awaruite, and as sulphide minerals including heazlewoodite, bravoite and siegenite.

The principal target on the project is nickel occurring as awaruite, but at the exploration stage all other styles of mineralization should be considered.

Systematic, ground-based exploration work began within the area of the claims now covered by the Nickel Project under the direction of Ms. Ursula Mowat , P.Geo. in 1987, continuing intermittently until 2012. This work established the presence of elevated nickel, cobalt and chromium values in rocks, soils, and stream sediments.

, P.Geo. in 1987, continuing intermittently until 2012. This work established the presence of elevated nickel, cobalt and chromium values in rocks, soils, and stream sediments. The area of the claim groups of the Nickel Project were included in Geoscience BC's QUEST and QUEST-West projects, including multiparameter regional geophysical surveys, and regional stream sediment reanalyzes and data compilations between 2008 and 2009.

R. Britten's technical paper "Regional Metallogeny and Genesis of a New Deposit Type  Disseminated Awaruite (Ni3Fe) Mineralization Hosted in the Cache Creek Terrane ", published in 2017 in Economic Geology should be utilized as an interim mineral deposit model or profile for the Nickel Project.

published in 2017 in Economic Geology should be utilized as an interim mineral deposit model or profile for the Nickel Project. The Nickel Project is worthy of phased, systematic exploration programs designed and implemented to delineate areas with known or high probability metallic nickel mineralization, and to discover new areas of similar mineralization.

Proposed 2021 Work Program

The 2021 Work Program by the Company consists of the following exploration work.

The proposed work program consists of trenching, surface exploration, drone magnetic surveys, back pack drilling and exploration activities to support drilling and trenching such as soil sampling, rock sampling, prospecting, and geological mapping.

The Company estimates that this proposed work program will include CAD$200,000 in exploration expenditures spent over the fall and early winter of 2021 with additional mining exploration work scheduled for the spring-summer season of 2022. Analyzing the results from the 2021 work program will allow Surge management to plan the 2022 work program leading into the spring of calendar 2022.

Mr. Greg Reimer, Surge President & CEO states: "The Company has decided to partner with Nickel Rock Resources on these properties because we believe that these mineral claims are of a high value to our shareholders. To joint venture these two mineral claims with a credible exploration partner in the region is extremely valuable and we can take advantage of not only their current $600,000 flow-through exploration program, but also the work being done by nearby FPX Nickel Corp (TSXV: FPX) on the world-renown Baptiste Nickel Deposit. By doing so, we have the ability to extract some immediate value from these claims, improve our working capital position, focus our exploration efforts and continue to draw shareholder value. Currently, Surge has over CAD$4 million in working capital, and this 2021 work program is well financed and leaves significant room for a 2022 future work program."

Mr. Greg Reimer continues, "We believe that this joint venture/option transaction and exploration focus is squarely in the best interest of the shareholders, and are excited to have active multiple exploration work programs being conducted in this area of British Columbia."

Qualified Person

Jeremy Hanson, P.Geo., a qualified person as defined by NI 43  101, is responsible for the technical information contained in this release. Readers are cautioned that the information in this press release regarding the property of FPX Nickel Corp is not necessarily indicative of the mineralization on the property of interest.

About Surge Battery Metals Inc. surgebatterymetals.com

The Company is a Canadian-based mineral exploration company active in the exploration for nickel-iron alloy and Copper in British Columbia and lithium in Nevada. Nickel Rock Resources Inc. is a Canadian based exploration company whose primary listing is on the TSX Venture Exchange. The Company's maintains a focus on exploration for high value battery metals required for the electric vehicle (EV) market.

Nevada Lithium Claims

The Company owns a 100% interest in 38 mineral claims located in Nevada. The Northern Nevada Lithium Project is located in the Granite Range about 34 line- km southeast of Jackpot, Nevada, about 73 line-km north-northeast of Wells, Nevada. The target is a Thacker Pass or Clayton Valley type lithium clay deposit in volcanic tuff and tuffaceous sediments of the Jarbidge Rhyolite package. The project area was first identified in public domain stream sediment geochemical data with follow up sediment sampling and geologic reconnaissance.

Caledonia Project, Vancouver Island, BC

The Company has entered into a Property Option Agreement to acquire a 100% interest in 7 mineral claims known as the Caledonia, Cascade and Bluebell, subject to a NSR between 1-2%. Located in the Nanaimo Mining District of northern Vancouver Island. The claims are 7 km north-west of BHP's past producing Island Copper mine which was responsible for extracting 345 million metric tonnes @ 0.41% Cu, 0.017% Mo, 0.19 g/t Au, and 1.4 g/t Ag. During its prime operating period the Island Copper mine was Canada's third-largest copper producer. The Caledonia, Cascade and Bluebell claims area lies within a 50-kilometer-long copper belt northwest of the Island Copper mine.

British Columbia Nickel Project

Hard Nickel 4 and Nickel 100 Claims

The Company has entered into an Option Agreement with Nickel Rock Resources to acquire an 80% interest in 6 mineral claims in the Mount Sidney Williams area (Hard Nickel 4) covering 1863 hectares immediately south of and adjacent to the Decar Project and the Mitchell Range area (Nickel 100) covering 8659 hectares, located in Northern British Columbia. Three of the claims are subject to 2% NSR, including the Hard Nickel 4 claim and the two southernmost claims of the Nickel 100 claims. The acquisition is subject final TSXV Approval.

On Behalf of the Board of Directors

"Greg Reimer"

Greg Reimer, President & CEO

604-428-5690

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 forwardlooking statements which include, but are not limited to, comments that involve future events and conditions, which are subject to various risks and uncertainties. Except for statements of historical facts, comments that address resource potential, upcoming work programs, geological interpretations, receipt and security of mineral property titles, availability of funds, and others are forwardlooking. Forwardlooking statements are not guaranteeing future performance and actual results may vary materially from those statements. General business conditions are factors that could cause actual results to vary materially from forwardlooking statements.

Surge Battery Metals Inc.

1220  789 West Pender Street

Vancouver, BC, Canada V6C 1H2

604- 428-5690

www.surgebatterymetals.com

[email protected]

SOURCE Surge Battery Metals Inc.
AUSTIN, Texas, Sept. 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The NRP Group , a vertically integrated, best-in-class developer, builder and manager of multifamily housing, has broken ground on a 275-unit, fully affordable housing community north of Austin, Texas in Williamson County. The NRP Group is building the 4 percent tax credit and bond development in partnership with Capital Area Housing Finance Corporation (CAHFC).

Located at 15701 Farm to Market 1325 Road, The James on Grand Avenue will help address the need for more affordable housing supply for residents earning up to 60 percent of the Area Median Income. The development will consist of seven, three- to four-story buildings, each with an assortment of one- to four-bedroom units.

"We are very pleased to work with our long-standing partners at Capital Area Housing Finance Corporation on this exciting affordable community for families and working professionals near Austin," said The NRP Group Senior Vice President of Development Jason Arechiga. "CAHFC shares in our mission to create exceptional housing for all renters, regardless of income. Population growth and housing demand in Austin has exploded these past several years as technology companies like Tesla, Apple and Samsung gravitate to the city. The need for more affordable housing accommodations for residents with moderate income profiles is extremely high."

The James on Grand Avenue is within close proximity to ample retail and restaurant options, such as The Domain, one of Austin's premier shopping centers and lifestyle destinations. The development is also a mere three miles east of Apple's new billion dollar campus, which is currently under construction and expected to bring thousands of jobs and billions in investment to the area. Apartment amenities will include a resort-style pool; BBQ pits; a fitness center; a community and business center; a children's center and a playground. Wrap-around services will include financial literacy training, after school programming and first-time homebuyer programs, catering directly to the needs and priorities of residents.

"Williamson County remains an attractive and sought-after destination for working professionals and families in search of affordable, pedestrian-friendly living options in close proximity to jobs and great schools," said Capital Area Housing Finance Corporation (CAHFC) Executive Director Jim Shaw. "CAHFC is dedicated to building workforce and affordable housing across central Texas with resident experience top-of-mind. We are pleased to partner with a trusted developer such as The NRP Group to bring an affordable community of this scale to market."

Leasing is anticipated to begin in August 2022, with final completion scheduled for June of 2023.

About The NRP Group

The NRP Group is a vertically integrated developer, owner, builder, and manager of best-in-class multifamily housing. Since its founding in 1994, NRP has developed more than 43,000 apartment homes, and currently manages over 23,000 residential units. The company employs the entire breadth of its in-house capability to fulfill its mission: creating exceptional rental housing opportunities for individuals and families, regardless of income.

Through its disciplined approach to vetting opportunities, NRP has established a track record of delivering impressive returns for investors. The company's formidable size and depth of talent provides the experience and infrastructure necessary to execute developments of varying degrees of complexity and scope in both urban-infill and suburban locations, including market-rate, affordable, and senior housing. As a three-time recipient of the National Association of Builders Multifamily Development Firm of the Year and recognized Top 25 Developer by Multifamily Executive, NRP is leveraging its decades of expertise by also providing construction and property management services to outside owners and developers. For additional information, visit www.nrpgroup.com



About CAHFC

The Capital Area Housing Finance Corporation (CAHFC) was established in 1981 to address workforce housing needs in Central Texas. CAHFC provides high-quality rental housing to individuals meeting specific income requirements, as well as single-family homeownership assistance for first-time buyers. The corporation partners with consultants, builders, realtors, lenders and local leaders to build relationships that benefit area residents, their communities and counties. CAHFC assists in meeting the housing needs of workforce families in the following counties: Bastrop, Blanco, Burnet, Caldwell, Fayette, Hays, Lee, Llano and Williamson Counties, as well as the City of San Marcos. By providing housing programs and building local and regional partnerships, CAHFC helps local residents achieve their dreams of homeownership while continually contributing to the economy and quality of life of the region.

MEDIA CONTACT:

Samantha DePasquale

Antenna | Spaces

[email protected]

SOURCE The NRP Group

Related Links

https://www.nrpgroup.com


ALEXANDRIA, Va., Sept. 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Salvation Army has activated its Emergency Disaster Services personnel in Louisiana and the Northeast to meet the immediate needs of survivors and first responders affected by Hurricane Ida's landfall as well as the remnants of the storm, which have severely impacted several states already reeling from recent catastrophic weather events.

"The Salvation Army's presence in every zip code of the United States makes us uniquely capable of mobilizing for this disaster event," said Commissioner Kenneth G. Hodder, National Commander of The Salvation Army. "We were preparing response efforts before the storm made landfall, and we will be helping these communities recover long after the flood waters recede."

Hurricane Ida made catastrophic landfall in Louisiana on Sunday, August 29, and continued northeastward with torrential rainfall across multiple states before reaching the coastal communities of New England in the morning of September 2. The Salvation Army has responded with services including feeding, sheltering, and emotional and spiritual care for survivors and first responders, as widespread power outages and flooding have created significant needs in the Southern and Northeastern regions. Trained emergency response teams are providing aid to the affected areas, with additional mobile feeding units, supplies, and volunteers on the way.

"Hurricane Ida is turning into a unique and historic disaster," said Jeff Jellets, Emergency Disaster Services director for The Salvation Army Southern Territory. "Large parts of the Southeast are still facing flooding, high temperatures, and power outages, making it crucial for The Salvation Army to continue providing relief to as many people as possible. We encourage all Americans to donate what they can to support response efforts."

"We are doing everything in our power to respond effectively to the impacts made by Ida," said Robert Myers III, Emergency Disaster Services coordinator for The Salvation Army USA Eastern Territory. "With the continued generosity of the public, we will remain on the frontlines of this disaster, serving those affected by the storm for however long we are needed."

As a community-based organization with more than 7,600 centers of operation, The Salvation Army already held a presence in all of the impacted communities and was aware of the kinds of need that would result from the storm. As the organization ramps up response efforts, several steps have already been taken to assist those affected.

Southern Response:

Trained emergency response teams in Louisiana have already provided 34,881 meals, 14,392 snacks, 28,148 drinks, 974 emotional and spiritual care contacts, 315 hygiene kits, and 133 cases of water.

have already provided 34,881 meals, 14,392 snacks, 28,148 drinks, 974 emotional and spiritual care contacts, 315 hygiene kits, and 133 cases of water. As of today, 40 mobile feeding units are committed to Hurricane Ida relief operations to provide meals, drinks, supplies and emotional and spiritual care to survivors and first responders.

Each mobile feeding unit can serve 500 to 1,500 meals per day.

The Salvation Army will provide food and drinks at 13 locations in New Orleans for as long as needed.

for as long as needed. Additional feeding locations have been established in Albany , Baton Rouge , Hammond , Houma , and Thibodaux and roaming feeding trucks are serving in Gonzalez, Kenner , LaPlace , Napoleonville , and Raceland .

, , , , and and roaming feeding trucks are serving in Gonzalez, , , , and . The Salvation Army currently has 133 disaster workers who have given 4,662 hours of service in response to Hurricane Ida in the South.

Staging centers for relief supplies and assets have been established in Beaumont, Texas and Jackson, Mississippi and two incident management teams with personnel drawn from Alabama , Florida , Louisiana , Mississippi , and Texas are running relief operations from Incident Command Posts in New Orleans and Gonzales .

and and two incident management teams with personnel drawn from , , , , and are running relief operations from Incident Command Posts in and . The Salvation Army is working in partnership with the Southern Baptist Disaster Relief, which has deployed three field kitchens with the capacity to serve 30,000 meals

Northeastern Response:

Because the remnants of Hurricane Ida came so shortly after Hurricane Henri impacted Northeastern states, many communities were at an increased risk of flooding.

The latest flooding could limit the ability of relief teams to reach those in need.

Incident command centers have been established in Pennsylvania , New Jersey , and New York .

, , and . Multiple Salvation Army facilities have incurred flood damage.

The Salvation Army is partnering with city and state officials to determine impacts and coordinate response efforts.

Mobile feeding units have been staged for deployment to serve food, drinks, and emotional and spiritual care to survivors and first responders.

Fixed Salvation Army locations are being prepared to provide feeding and other needed support to those affected.

Cleanup kits are being distributed to Salvation Army locations to use in affected areas.

In addition, Salvation Army disaster personnel are collaborating with federal, state, and local emergency management agencies and other partners to monitor ongoing impacts and adapt response efforts as needed.

Hurricane Ida comes in the middle of what is predicted to be a busy hurricane season. In light of the pandemic, The Salvation Army has adapted service delivery with extra precautions such as social distancing at food distribution sites, adapted feeding models, and updated personal protective equipment requirements.

A digital media kit with current and historical Emergency Disaster Services assets can be found here.

For more information on The Salvation Army's continued response, visit www.salvationarmyusa.org or www.disaster.salvationarmyusa.org.

To make a financial gift to support ongoing disaster relief efforts:

Donate online: give.helpsalvationarmy.org

Donate by phone: 1-800-SAL-ARMY (1-800-725-2769)

Text "GIVE" to 52000 to donate $10 automatically through your cell phone bill

automatically through your cell phone bill Data rates may apply

About The Salvation Army

The Salvation Army annually helps 30 million Americans overcome poverty, addiction, and economic hardships through a range of social services. By providing food for the hungry, emergency relief for disaster survivors, rehabilitation for those suffering from drug and alcohol abuse, and clothing and shelter for people in need, The Salvation Army is doing the most good at 7,600 centers of operation around the country. During times of disaster, 100 percent of designated donations to The Salvation Army are used for immediate response and long-term efforts. In the first-ever listing of "America's Favorite Charities" by The Chronicle of Philanthropy, The Salvation Army ranked as the country's largest privately funded, direct-service nonprofit. For more information, visit SalvationArmyUSA.org. Follow us on Twitter @SalvationArmyUS and #DoingTheMostGood.

Media contact: Joseph Cohen, [email protected]

SOURCE The Salvation Army

Related Links

http://www.salvationarmyusa.org/


The Sister Accord Foundation is dedicated to empowering girls and women, with the mission of teaching one billion girls and women how to love themselves and each other. The Sister Accord Leadership Award is presented annually to individuals whose personal integrity and body of work have made a positive and transformative impact on society at large. Each year, award recipients personify The Sister Accord's three key pillars: to  through self-awareness and leadership development  educate girls and women, enlighten them of the power of sisterhood, and eradicate the bullying and violence they face.

The landmark event was DJ'd by Grammy award-winner Spinderella of Salt-N-Pepa and featured performances by New Edition's Johnny Gill and gospel artist Byron Cage, all of whom received Leadership Awards from the Foundation. Jackson Myles also presented Leadership Awards to influential business leaders and her own personal mentors, Daymond John (CEO of FUBU and star of ABC's Shark Tank), Janet B. Reid, Ph.D. (Founder & CEO of BRBS World, LLC), Janice Bryant Howroyd (Presidential special appointee and Founder & CEO of the ActOne Group), and Jim Bechtold (Chief Innovation & Impact Officer of CEO Forum).

The new Zimbabwe chapter will serve to enlighten and empower the nation's girls and women. Zimbabwean radio personality and women's rights advocate Thabani Patience Gambiza, popularly known as Manjenjenje, has been appointed the ambassador of The Sister Accord Foundation. Gambiza will use her passion to advance the Foundation's goals to unite and protect women.

"At The Sister Accord Foundation, we believe that love is the world's most critical commodity. That is our core message; it is our mantra. Learning comes from self-awareness and leadership development, which is what we call the #heartwork -- and I feel humbled and blessed to have the support of so many remarkable individuals, who join us from such varied walks of life to celebrate the eighth annual Sister Accord Day," said Jackson Myles. "The number eight represents new beginnings, and I am truly thrilled to announce a new day for the girls and women of Zimbabwe. We love our Zim girls, and we are here to serve them. The Sister Accord is a promise that will transform their lives  and we are excited to appoint Thabani as the ambassador for this vital new chapter."

"As Ambassador, I will spread the message of love, peace, empowerment, and identity to my beneficiaries, family, friends, work colleagues, and many other women and girls' networks in Zimbabwe and across borders," Manjenjenje said at the chapter's launch in Zimbabwe, held on August 28th. "It is through my passion that I will assist The Sister Accord Foundation to reach its intended target of one billion women and girls, and continue to speak out against gender-based violence."

"I am truly thankful for this honor. It means a lot, and I do not take it for granted. Many are called, but few are chosen, and when you are called upon to be a leader, there is a level of responsibility and commitment required  and I do not take this award lightly," said Johnny Gill.

"I am humbled and honored to receive this prestigious award from The Sister Accord Foundation. I want to especially thank 'Dr.' Sonia Jackson Myles and all who help bring The Sister Accord vision to life," said Janet B. Reid, Ph.D. "'Dr.' Myles helps women and girls give birth to healthy dreams and to nurture those dreams into reality."

"Thank you to everyone involved with The Sister Accord. This award serves as proof that nobodies from nowhere can accomplish something. I am truly that nobody from nowhere, and it is an honor to be called out by an organization that literally is a light to our world," said Jim Bechtold. "I want to thank The Sister Accord for bringing hope through education, enlightenment, and eradicating bullying and violence."

"This award is much needed and extremely special to me. As a member of the hip hop community and a part of my former group, I must speak on behalf of those who have been in the background and have been misunderstood and voiceless," shared Dee Dee Roper (a.k.a. DJ Spinderella). "To be acknowledged when you feel voiceless or less-than is an affirmation, and I truly appreciate Sonia and The Sister Accord for this honor."

"This is a very special day. I cannot believe it is actually eight years that The Sister Accord has been doing such amazing work in the community and mentoring by example. I truly believe in mentorship, and I am here because of a tribe of mentors," said Daymond John. "That is what I try to do on Shark Tank and in my personal life. Congratulations to The Sister Accord for all they do and to all the other awardees who are being acknowledged. I think about The Sister Accord all the time for the great work Sonia is doing. I wish the Foundation continued success for many, many more years."

"This 8th anniversary of Sister Accord Day is a dynamic celebration of touching millions of girls and women in a global movement that is making the world better for all children. Additionally, working with men and boys as a part of this movement is incredible. It is also inclusive and impactful to our goal of 1 billion served," said Janice Bryant Howroyd. "Today, in the midst of a global pandemic, Sonia Jackson Myles is more successful than ever in her areas of focus: educating girls and women, enlightening all on the power of sisterhood, and eradicating bullying and violence by way of scholarships and targeted programming."

For the second time this year, The Sister Accord Foundation will award $15,000 in scholarships. Three students, who are enrolled full-time in college and attended the August 31st celebration, will be eligible to apply for the Nella D. Jackson Memorial Scholarship, which is made possible by the 7 Principles Foundation. To date, The Sister Accord Foundation has awarded $30,000 in scholarships and one $1,000 business grant.

At the event, a "Sister Accord Slide" dance contest was led by Slide creator Iris T. London of ITL Fitness, with special prizes awarded to winning guests.

The event also paid special tribute to Kelly LaDon Smith, Jackson Myles' Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. line sister and co-pledge, who passed away suddenly at the age of 53 on June 8, 2021.

The event will be rebroadcast on September 8th. Tickets for the rebroadcast are $25 and available at the Foundation's newly launched website TheSisterAccordFoundation.org.

ABOUT THE SISTER ACCORD:

The Sister Accord Foundation (a 501c3 organization) has three global areas of focus: educating girls and women, enlightening girls and women of the power of Sisterhood, and eradicating bullying and violence against girls and women. The Foundation is focused on enabling girls and women to establish and nurture positive, supportive, and loving relationships with each other. As the founder of this organization, Sonia Jackson Myles is committed to have one billion girls and women pledge to live by the aforementioned principles. The Sister A.C.C.O.R.D. Leadership Development Program is used by school districts, and The Sister Accord, LLC's 'Sisterhood & Brotherhood in The Workplace' Platform has made a significant, positive difference in Corporate America and around the globe.

In 2013, The City of Cincinnati proclaimed August 31 as Sister Accord Day. Now, girls and women (boys and men as well) around the world, celebrate Sisterhood on this day. During the annual celebrations, the Foundation asks people around the world to perform random acts of kindness towards a girl or woman. The organization also holds events throughout the year to inspire and promote Sisterhood, Anti-Bullying, Health & Well-Being.

Media Contact

Matthew Berritt

[email protected]

305.310.3210

SOURCE The Sister Accord Foundation
"Readiness and support for our members, employees and communities is our priority with any storm," said Harriet Dominique, President of The USAA Foundation, Inc. "Team Rubicon and American Red Cross are boots on the ground helping those impacted by Hurricane Ida and we want to be right there with them to help support as much as we can."

Team Rubicon already deployed volunteers to the impacted regions and will utilize The USAA Foundation's funding to stand up operations in Hammond and Houma, Louisiana.

"USAA and The USAA Foundation have been some of Team Rubicon's longest-standing partners and this donation will help us expand the services we can provide to the communities impacted by Hurricane Ida," said Art delaCruz, CEO of Team Rubicon. "This funding will jumpstart our efforts to getting Greyshirts on the ground to assist in Louisiana and Mississippi's recovery."

American Red Cross had approximately 650 volunteers on the ground prior to Hurricane Ida making landfall. "The generous gift from The USAA Foundation will provide so much comfort and hope to people experiencing tragedy across the country," said Marty McKellips, Regional Chief Executive Officer of American Red Cross. "The funds will ensure the Red Cross has the resources we need to feed hungry people, deliver much needed medicine and supplies, and give people the strength to rebuild their lives."

In 2020, USAA and The USAA Foundation, Inc. committed $87 million to nonprofit organizations in support of pandemic-related relief, racial equality, and other critical needs across our communities. Additionally, USAA employees gave more than $10 million to nonprofit organizations and logged more than 185,000 volunteer hours to support our communities and those in need.

For those interested in learning more about how they can volunteer their time or donate to relief efforts, visit usaa.com/help. To file an insurance claim, please visit usaa.com/help for more information.

The USAA Foundation, Inc. is a nonprofit, tax-exempt IRS 501(c)(3) organization and cannot endorse or promote any commercial supplier, product or service.

USAA

Founded in 1922 by a group of military officers, USAA is among the leading providers of insurance, banking and investment and retirement solutions to more than 13 million members of the U.S. military, veterans who have honorably served and their families. Headquartered in San Antonio, Tex., USAA has offices in seven U.S. cities and three overseas locations and employs approximately 36,000 people worldwide. Each year, the company contributes to national and local nonprofits in support of military families and communities where employees live and work. For more information about USAA, follow us on Facebook or Twitter (@USAA), or visit usaa.com.

Contact: USAA Media Relations

[email protected]

210-498-0940

USAA on Twitter: @usaa

SOURCE USAA

Related Links

http://www.usaa.com


OTTAWA, ON, Sept. 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - As was announced on July 19, the Government of Canada will allow fully vaccinated foreign nationals meeting the conditions to enter Canada for discretionary (non-essential) purposes starting on September 7, 2021. This decision is based on the latest available data, scientific evidence and epidemiological situation both in Canada and internationally.

At each step of Canada's phased approach to easing border measures, the public health indicators and importation of cases at the border and variants of concern among incoming travelers have been monitored. For instance, as the volume of travellers has increased in recent months, the border test positivity rate has remained low. Between August 9 and 26, the positivity rate for fully vaccinated travellers randomly selected for testing at the border was 0.19% (112 positive tests out of 58,878 completed). While cases are currently increasing in Canada, the illness severity and hospitalization rates remain manageable as Canada's vaccination rates continue to rise. This data along with continued adherence to public health measures by Canadians and incoming travellers, means that Canada is better able to prevent outbreaks of infection and can now allow more incoming fully vaccinated travellers without increasing the risk to the health and safety of Canadians.

Beginning at 12:01 a.m. EDT on September 7, 2021, fully vaccinated foreign nationals will be eligible to enter Canada for discretionary (non-essential) reasons, such as tourism; however, these individuals must:

be fully vaccinated: a traveller must have received, and show proof of, the full series of a vaccine  or combination of vaccines  accepted by the Government of Canada at least 14 days prior to entering Canada . Currently, those vaccines are manufactured by Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, AstraZeneca/COVISHIELD, and Janssen (Johnson & Johnson). have a valid pre-arrival COVID-19 molecular test result taken no more than 72 hours before their scheduled flight or their arrival at the land border crossing, or a previous positive test result taken between 14 and 180 days before departure to Canada . Antigen tests, often called "rapid tests" are not accepted; be asymptomatic; submit their mandatory information via ArriveCAN (App or website), including proof of vaccination in English or French and a quarantine plan; be admissible under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act; and, take a test on arrival, if selected.

Foreign nationals looking to travel for discretionary reasons before 12:01 a.m. EDT on September 7 will not be allowed to enter Canada.

The Government of Canada continues to advise Canadians to avoid non-essential travel outside of Canada  international travel increases your risk of exposure to COVID-19 and its variants, as well as of spreading it to others. It is also important to note that not all countries are allowing discretionary (non-essential) travel by Canadians. Travellers should check the official websites of relevant authorities specific to their destination to find out entry and health requirements and plan prior to their departure from Canada.

Here is what travellers to Canada need to know:

Mandatory pre-arrival molecular test result

Travellers eligible to enter Canada, including those who enter by right (i.e., Canadian citizens, permanent residents, and persons registered under the Indian Act) and foreign nationals who are fully vaccinated, continue to be required to have a negative pre-arrival COVID-19 molecular test result taken no more than 72 hours before the scheduled departure time of their flight to Canada, or no more than 72 hours before their entry into Canada if arriving by land or water. Travellers who have already had COVID-19 and recovered can provide proof of a positive COVID-19 molecular test taken at least 14 and no more than 180 days before the initial scheduled departure time of their aircraft, or their entry into Canada by water or land. If arriving by air, they must provide proof of their test result to the airline prior to boarding their flight to Canada.

All travellers arriving by air, land and water may be required to provide proof of their test result to a Government of Canada official at the border. Antigen tests, often called "rapid tests", are not molecular tests and will not be accepted.

Mandatory submission of information including digital proof of vaccination via ArriveCAN

Fully vaccinated travellers must submit their mandatory information including their digital proof of vaccination in English or French using ArriveCAN (App or website) within 72 hours before their arrival to Canada. Travellers must submit their information before boarding their flight to Canada (if arriving by air) or prior to arriving at the land border crossing (or when entering Canada by marine mode). Individuals travelling on or after September 7 should submit their information after this time. Travellers using the App must ensure they have the most up-to-date version available in the Google Play Store or the App Store for iPhone as of September 7 at 12:01 a.m. EDT.

If travellers are unable to enter their information themselves, they can have a friend or family member enter the information for them.

Fully vaccinated foreign nationals arriving by air, who are seeking to enter Canada for a discretionary (non-essential) purpose must submit their information using ArriveCAN (App or website) before they board their flight to Canada. Travellers who are unable to show their ArriveCAN receipt  either on their mobile device, email or a printed copy  will not be allowed to board their flight.

In addition to their ArriveCAN receipt, travellers must retain a copy (paper or electronic) of their COVID-19 molecular test results, proof of vaccination and the originals of any certified translations available for verification at the border and for 14 days following their entry to Canada.

Border testing surveillance program

As of August 9, fully vaccinated travellers do not need to take a test on arrival unless they are randomly selected to complete a day 1 COVID-19 molecular test. All travellers who are randomly selected for the border testing surveillance program must complete the mandatory arrival test; however, they do not have to quarantine while awaiting the result. Failure to adhere to random testing, if selected, may result in fines.



There are no changes to the mandatory testing requirements for unvaccinated travellers. All travellers, regardless of vaccination status, still require a valid pre-arrival COVID-19 molecular test result.

Vaccinated parents travelling with unvaccinated children

Since August 9, unvaccinated children under 12 years of age of fully vaccinated parents and/or guardians are exempt from quarantine when accompanied by their fully vaccinated parent(s)/guardian(s), but must follow enhanced public health measures, which includes not attending daycare or school for 14 days.

Unvaccinated children between the ages of 12-17 and dependent children 18 or older (due to a mental or physical condition) are permitted to enter Canada with their fully vaccinated parent(s) and/or guardian(s), but are subject to the 14-day quarantine.

All unvaccinated children (except those under 5 years of age) will remain subject to day 1 and day 8 testing requirements. Provinces and territories may have more stringent rules for people who have recently returned from travel.

Travellers should ensure they are using the updated version of ArriveCAN (available as of September 7, 2021, at 12:01 EDT) and include unvaccinated children less than 18 years and dependent adults in their ArriveCAN submission.

Testing and quarantine requirements for travellers who are not fully vaccinated

There are no changes to testing and quarantine requirements for travellers who are not fully vaccinated but eligible to enter Canada such as those entering by right  Canadian citizens, permanent residents and persons registered under the Indian Act. They are still subject to quarantine, all testing requirements (pre-arrival, upon arrival/day 1 and on day 8) and the mandatory submission of travel, contact and quarantine information via ArriveCAN.

Direct commercial and private passenger flights from India and Morocco are temporarily suspended



Canada has suspended direct commercial and private passenger flights from India until at least September 21, and from Morocco until at least September 29. While these flight suspensions are in place, passengers who travel to Canada from India and Morocco via an indirect route will need to obtain a valid pre-departure COVID-19 molecular test result from a third country  other than India or Morocco  before continuing their journey to Canada.

Get informed and be prepared

Before heading to the airport or the border, travellers should inform themselves and fully understand their obligations by ensuring their eligibility to enter Canada and reviewing the COVID-19 vaccinated travellers entering Canada Web page.

Travellers to Canada may experience delays at the border due to the enhanced public health measures. The Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) will not compromise the health and safety of Canadians for the sake of border wait times. The CBSA thanks travellers for their collaboration and patience.

Associated Links





SOURCE Canada Border Services Agency

Related Links

http://www.cbsa-asfc.gc.ca/


"With SabinoCompTech joining, we have talented team members that I feel will fit right into our culture. They have a lot of experience in each of their areas and bring an equal customer experience mindset and standards that will complement Synetek's own," says Mayron Herrera, CEO of The Synetek Group. "With our acquisition of SabinoCompTech, we hope to make a greater impact on the businesses we work with and in the greater business community."

The SabinoCompTech team will be integrated into Synetek's group of talented IT professionals. Both Synetek and Sabino customer's will get the added value of not only a larger team available to them but rich expertise that comes with a joining of forces.

"Our goal has always been to provide the awe inspiring service, solutions and products for our clients and we will continue to do so on a larger scale by joining Synetek," says Nancy Sabino, past CEO of SabinoCompTech and now VP of Sales and Marketing of The Synetek Group. "We are looking forward to the future with Synetek and being able to help many more businesses let go of their IT frustrations with an even more Awesome IT experience."

About The Synetek Group



The Synetek Group was founded in 2004 by Mayron Herrera and Jhovanny Rodriguez and continues to be a privately held company. The company was founded with the goal of providing the same level of service its founders provided while working for large corporations. The Synetek Group focuses on Business Technology Solutions providing small to mid-sized businesses an entire IT department that will not only manage and maintain their infrastructure but that will also focus on the client's business goals.

Since 2014, The Synetek Group has ranked among the top 501 MSPs (Managed Service Providers) in the world, and being recognized on the CRN MSP 500 list, Pioneer 250, Tech Elite 250 and Next Gen 250 awards.

Corporate headquarters are located at 16415 Addison Road Suite 170 Addison, TX 7500.

For more information about The Synetek Group, visit www.syneteksolutions.com.

About SabinoCompTech

SabinoCompTech, a Houston based MSP serving the compliance vertical specifically SMB's in the legal, accounting and private healthcare spaces with The Awesome IT Way, an Outsourced Internal IT Department in a box providing Guidance, Management, Maintenance, and Security in a all inclusive model.

Founded in 2016, SabinoCompTech, has focused and specialized their service offering, processes, and standardized all elements of their service delivery with customer experience top of mind for step of the way.

SabinoCompTech has ranked among the top 501 MSPs in the world and has been recognized as DigiMaster of the Year for outstanding service, recognized as a Next-Gen Leader by CRN, named a thought-leader by Women of the Channel, ranking Top 100 Security firms in the MSP500, and the Channel Partners Masters of Disaster Award.

For more information on SabinoCompTech, visit www.sabinocomptech.com

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DUBLIN, Sept. 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Machine Learning Market Size, Market Share, Application Analysis, Regional Outlook, Growth Trends, Key Players, Competitive Strategies and Forecasts, 2021 To 2029" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The global machine learning market is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 43.3% during the forecast period (2021-2029). The major drivers for machine learning market are proliferation in data generation, technological advancements in machine learning, increasing adoption of connected devices and increased adoption in data driven application. Enterprises are awash in data related to their customers, prospects, internal business processes, suppliers, partners and competitors. Often, they can't control this flood of data and convert it to actionable information for growing revenue, increasing profitability and efficiently operating the business. Organizations of all disciplines across the globe suffer a serious problem of managing data in the form of data retention, understanding dark data, data integration for proper analytics, data access and others.

Volume of Data Collected Now and in Future to Raise Exponentially

Machine learning offers a promising solution to gain economic benefits from the increasing data with the help of predictive analysis and reducing fraud. The volume of data collected by business worldwide is estimated to double every year and lack of understanding of data is cited as a primary reason that overruns project cost, and that may cost business approximately 20% to 35% of their operating revenue. Big data capabilities assist in providing constant changing customers preferences that help companies by assisting them by improving customer's satisfaction, faster decision making, developing strategies for launching new products and exploring new market.

ML in BFSI Remains Indispensable:

Global machine learning market has been segmented on the basis of verticals, deployment modes, organization size and service. The vertical segment is further sub segmented into banking, financial services, and insurance, retail, telecommunication, healthcare and life sciences, manufacturing, government and defense, energy and utilities and other verticals. BFSI segment leads the vertical segment in terms of revenue in the global machine learning market with around 21.9% market share in 2020. The BSFI segment is primarily driven by growing demand of ML in the BFSI sector to automate the process of loan approval, for fraud prevention, risk management, investment predictions, marketing and others. Prominent banks across the globe including JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Citibank, U.S. Bank and others have adopted the machine learning to realize the potential benefits of data driven decision.

ML in Healthcare Application Promising Significant Opportunities

The healthcare and life science vertical is anticipated to grow at the highest rate over the forecast period growing at a CAGR of 44.3% over the forecast period. The high growth rate is attributed to the fact that ML solution has wide potentials across healthcare industry. These include patient data & risk analysis, in patient care & hospital management, medical imaging & diagnosis, drug discovery, life style monitoring & management, medical diagnosis & imaging, precision medicine and others. Furthermore, key companies are providing various machine learning systems across healthcare that includes Google Deep Mind Health, IBM Watson and others. Moreover, increasing healthcare expenditure also leverages huge adoption opportunities for the machine learning. According to the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluations, global healthcare expenditure is expected to reach $18.28 trillion globally by 2040.

NA Leads Revenues APAC to Lead the Growth:

Geographically, global machine learning market has been segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific and Rest of the world (ROW). North America leads the global machine learning market by capturing largest market share in terms of revenue of 36.96% in 2020. The U.S. market for machine learning is primarily driven high adoption of machine learning solutions by both public and private organization, coupled with technological sound infrastructure and proactive government support to artificial intelligence. Furthermore, public as well as private sector are embracing machine learning to realize the benefits of data driven decision which is expected to create lucrative growth opportunities for the machine learning market in North America.

For instance, several companies in the North America region including Walmart, Facebook, Amazon, General Motors, Tesla and others have included machine learning as a part of their marketing strategy, as well as are focusing on deployment of ML to realize operational efficiency within the supply chain. Asia Pacific machine learning system market is anticipated to grow at highest CAGR of 44.1 % during the forecast period. Emergence of machine learning startups, growth in the BFSI, manufacturing and healthcare sector coupled with growing adoption of artificial intelligence by both the private and public sectors along with the investments in artificial intelligence by the governments of countries such as India, China, Japan, etc are the major factors augmenting growth in the machine learning market in Asia Pacific. For instance, China government is focusing on the development of artificial intelligence and machine learning in innovating the abilities of robotics, inventory forecasting and developing driverless car technology in the country.

M&A Remains as Key Strategy to Enhance Market Share:

Merger & acquisition is the primary strategy adopted by companies in global machine learning market. Merger & acquisition is enabling the companies to enhance market through effective leverage of product portfolio and global reach. Product development is the secondary strategy adopted by companies in the global machine learning market. Key market players in this segment include IBM Corporation (New York, US), SAP SE (Walldorf, Germany), SAS Institute Inc. (North Carolina, US), Google, Inc. (California, US), Amazon Web Services Inc. (Washington, US), Baidu, Inc. (Beijing, China), BigML, Inc. (Oregon, US), Fair Isaac Corporation (FICO) (California, US), Hewlett Packard Enterprise Development LP (HPE) (California, US), Intel Corporation (California, US), KNIME.com AG (Zurich, Switzerland), RapidMiner, Inc. (Massachusetts, US), Angoss Software Corporation (Toronto, Canada), H2O.ai (California, US), Alpine Data (California, US), Domino Data Lab, Inc. (California, US), Dataiku (Paris, France), Luminoso Technologies, Inc. (Massachusetts, US), TrademarkVision (Pennsylvania, US), Fractal Analytics Inc. (New Jersey, US), TIBCO Software Inc. (California, US), Teradata (Ohio, US), Dell Inc. (Texas, US), and Oracle Corporation (California, US) and others.

Key questions answered in this report

What are the key market segments in current scenario and in the future by product categories?

What are the key market segments in current scenario and in the future by regions?

What is the key impact of Covid-19 over market revenues and market determinants in the global machine learning market?

What are the primary and secondary macro and micro factors influencing the market growth currently and during the forecast period?

What are the primary and secondary macro and micro factors deterring the market growth currently and during the forecast period?

How to overcome the current market challenges and leverage the opportunities in each of the market segment?

Who are the key players in the operational predictive maintenance market and what are their key product categories and strategies?

What are the key strategies - mergers/acquisitions/R&D/strategic partnerships etc that companies are deploying to enhance market revenues and growth?

Key Topics Covered:



Chapter 1. Preface



Chapter 2. Executive Summary



Chapter 3. Market Determinants

3.1. Market Drivers

3.1.1. Proliferation in Data Generation

3.1.2. Technological Advancements in Machine Learning

3.1.3. Increasing Adoption of Connected Devices

3.1.4. Increased Adoption in Data Driven Application

3.2. Market Restraint

3.2.1. Sensitive Data Security

3.2.2. Computation Limitations

3.3. Market Opportunity

3.3.1. Increasing Demand for intelligent Business Processes

3.3.2. High Demand From Different End Users

3.4. Market Challenge

3.4.1. Ethical Implications of Algorithms Deployed

3.4.2. Prone To Hardware and Software Malfunction



Chapter 4. Global Machine Learning Market by Application/Vertical 2019-2029 ($ Million)

4.1. Global Banking, Financial Services, and insurance Market 2019-2029 ($ Million)

4.2. Global Healthcare and Life Sciences Market 2019-2029 ($ Million)

4.3. Global Retail Market 2019-2029 ($ Million)

4.4. Global Telecommunication Market 2019-2029 ($ Million)

4.5. Global Government and Defense Market 2019-2029 ($ Million)

4.6. Global Manufacturing Market 2019-2029 ($ Million)

4.7. Global Energy and Utilities Market 2019-2029 ($ Million)

4.8. Global Other Verticals Market 2019-2029 ($ Million)



Chapter 5. Global Machine Learning Market by Deployment Mode 2019-2029 ($ Million)

5.1. Global Cloud Market 2019-2029 ($ Million)

5.2. Global On-Premises Market 2019-2029 ($ Million)



Chapter 6. Global Machine Learning Market by Organization Size 2019-2029 ($ Million)

6.1. Global Large Enterprises Market 2019-2029 ($ Million)

6.2. Global Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises Market 2019-2029 ($ Million)



Chapter 7. Global Machine Learning Market by Services 2019-2029 ($ Million)

7.1. Global Professional Services Market 2019-2029 ($ Million)

7.2. Global Managed Services Market 2019-2029 ($ Million)



Chapter 8. North America Machine Learning Market 2019-2029 ($ Million)



Chapter 9. Europe Machine Learning Market 2019-2029 ($ Million)



Chapter 10. Asia-Pacific Machine Learning Market 2019-2029 ($ Million)



Chapter 11. Rest of World Machine Learning Market 2019-2029 ($ Million)

Chapter 12. Company Profile

12.1. Amazon Web Services inc.

12.1.1. Overview

12.1.2. Product Portfolio

12.1.3. Strategic initiatives

12.1.4. SCOT Analysis

12.1.5. Strategic Analysis

12.2. Baidu inc.

12.2.1. Overview

12.2.2. Product Portfolio

12.2.3. SCOT Analysis

12.2.4. Strategic Analysis

12.3. Dell, inc.

12.3.1. Overview

12.3.2. Product Portfolio

12.3.3. Strategic initiatives

12.3.4. SCOT Analysis

12.3.5. Strategic Analysis

12.4. Fair Issac Corporation (Fico)

12.4.1. Overview

12.4.2. Product Portfolio

12.4.3. Strategic Initiatives

12.4.4. SCOT Analysis

12.4.5. Strategic Analysis

12.5. Fractal Analytics

12.5.1. Overview

12.5.2. Product Portfolio

12.5.3. Strategic initiatives

12.5.4. SCOT Analysis

12.5.5. Strategic Analysis

12.6. Google

12.6.1. Overview

12.6.2. Product Portfolio

12.6.3. Strategic initiatives

12.6.4. SCOT Analysis

12.6.5. Strategic Analysis

12.7. Hewlett Packard Enterprise (Hpe)

12.7.1. Overview

12.7.2. Product Portfolio

12.7.3. SCOT Analysis

12.7.4. Strategic Analysis

12.8. Ibm Corporation

12.8.1. Overview

12.8.2. Product Portfolio

12.8.3. Strategic initiatives

12.8.4. SCOT Analysis

12.8.5. Strategic Analysis

12.9. intel Corporation

12.9.1. Overview

12.9.2. Product Portfolio

12.9.3. Strategic initiatives

12.9.4. SCOT Analysis

12.9.5. Strategic Analysis

12.10. Microsoft Corporation

12.10.1. Overview

12.10.2. Product Portfolio

12.10.3. Strategic initiative

12.10.4. SCOT Analysis

12.10.5. Strategic Analysis

12.11. Oracle Corporation

12.11.1. Overview

12.11.2. Product Portfolio

12.11.3. SCOT Analysis

12.11.4. Strategic Analysis

12.12. Sap Se

12.12.1. Overview

12.12.2. Product Portfolio

12.12.3. Strategic initiatives

12.12.4. SCOT Analysis

12.12.5. Strategic Analysis

12.13. The information Bus Company (Tibco) Software inc.

12.13.1. Overview

12.13.2. Product Portfolio

12.13.3. Strategic initiative

12.13.4. SCOT Analysis

12.13.5. Strategic Analysis

12.14. Trademarkvision

12.14.1. Overview

12.14.2. Product Portfolio

12.14.3. Strategic initiatives

12.14.4. SCOT Analysis

12.14.5. Strategic Analysis

12.15. Teradata Corporation

12.15.1. Overview

12.15.2. Product Portfolio

12.15.3. SCOT Analysis

12.15.4. Strategic Analysis



For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/ut9yc7

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Mexico City, Sep 3 : Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has said he would write to his US counterpart Joe Biden next week to push for his proposal to grant temporary visas to Central American migrants, along with other support measures.

"Next week at the latest I will send him a letter because we can't just be detaining and holding; we have to address the causes" of mass migration, Lopez Obrador said on Thursday during his regular morning press conference, referring to the new wave of migrant caravans crossing Mexico's southern border, Xinhua reported.

"People do not leave their towns because they like to, they do not abandon their families because they like to, they do it out of necessity," he added.

In his letter to Biden, Lopez Obrador said he would again propose extending to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador two welfare programs already in place in poorer parts of Mexico: "Sembrando Vida" (Planting Life) and "Jovenes Construyendo el Futuro" (Youth Building a Future).

This would generate some 330,000 jobs in six months in these Central American countries, the president estimated.

For those who sign up for the programs, the Biden administration should offer temporary six-month visas, he proposed.

Mass migration, mainly from Central America, has been on the rise in recent years due to poverty and joblessness, both worsened by the Covid-19 pandemic.
New Delhi, Sep 3 : Back in 2007, when musicians Rajesh Prasanna and Ritesh Prasanna went to listen to the band 'Mrigya' at Delhi International Art Festival, everything changed for them. It was after the performance that they concreted their plans to form a classical fusion band called 'Shwaas'.

And they have come a long way since then -- the band has performed not just across the country but also in the US, several African nations, Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand.

The music they play is a blend of the styles, moods, and textures taken from different cultures and various music systems from the world even as the main style of their presentation is the dual of flute. One witnesses the the use of wind instruments fused with different electronic and western means, with the fusion of classical, blues & jazz lends their music a unique texture bordering between Indian classical and world fusion music.

Stressing that the Benaras gharana has always supported music and musicians of all genres all over the world, Rajesh (Flute and other woodwinds) feels that exposure to different genres of music always gives musicians multiple dimensions. "Fusion is not just about mixing two different genres together. One has to understand the intricacies of both and do justice while uniting them so that none loses its fragrance in the process." Talk to them about the sustainability of surviving as an independent band in India, the group members feel that in a country where only Bollywood rules, independent musicians mostly get a raw deal with very few sponsorships and platforms.

The eight-member group, which besides the Prasanna brothers comprises Parvez Hussain (tabla), Ahsaan Ali (sarangi and vocals), Saurabh Suman (bass guitar), Mohit (drums), Anil Chawla (keyboard), Jagriti Luthra (vocals) and Manish (sound engineer) feels that a major reason that they have survived is their commitment towards promoting authentic and soulful classical music. "In fact, all the members of the 'Shwaas' family belong to different gharanas of Indian classical music," adds Rajesh.

The band which was recently part of HCL Concerts' 'Soundscapes' feels that more companies need to come forward to promote art and culture. "Other corporate houses need to look beyond Bollywood and do their bit for Indian classical arts," asserts Rajesh.

Talk to them about the effect of the pandemic on independent musicians and the members say that the cancellation of live performances has been a major setback to the artist community. "Virtual performances are entertaining but they cannot earn you a livelihood. However, we never stopped our riyaz. Music always creates hope for a better tomorrow." (Sukant Deepak can be contacted at sukant.d@ians.in)
'Thank You for the Music' : ABBA reunite after 40 years, to release new album. Image Source: IANS News

'Thank You for the Music' : ABBA reunite after 40 years, to release new album. Image Source: IANS News

London, Sep 3 : "All I want is to sing out loud." This line from the chart-topping number, 'Thank You for the Music', of the Swedish pop-rock group ABBA took on a special meaning late on Thursday night.

The quartet announced that they had re-united to release their first album, 'Voyage', 40 years after their last venture, 'Visitors', came out in 1981 before the group disbanded the following year.

The band, which was established in 1972 by Agnetha Faltskog, Bjorn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson and Anni-Frid Lyngstad (the first letters of their first names form the acronym ABBA), would have celebrated its golden jubilee next year, had it been together.

Perhaps eyeing the milestone year ahead, and the vibrant nostalgia market, the four have announced that they are releasing 'Voyage' on November 2.

Along with the announcement, the reunited band, which in its heyday made the world groove to unforgettable numbers such as 'Dancing Queen', 'Mama Mia' and 'Money Money Money', released two songs from its 10-track revival album. 'The Guardian' described them as the "stately and epic ballad 'I Still Have Faith in You' and the shimmying 'Don't Shut Me Down'." After selling a record 385 million albums in the days when vinyl ruled the music market, ABBA broke the heart of millions of their fans when they decided to stop their music in 1982 so that each one of four members of the band could chart out his or her individual career.

Since then, Bjorn and Benny have been writing songs for stage productions, and Agnetha and Anni-Frid have been doing independent recordings, but without the stupendous success that they savoured as members of ABBA.

Commenting on their 'Voyage' project, Benny said, "We're truly sailing in uncharted waters. With the help of our younger selves, we travel into the future." Anni-Frid added: "Such joy it was to work with the group again." Will ABBA fans around the world respond as excitedly? That the world would know only after the release of 'Voyage' on November 2.

British fans, meanwhile, have a treat in store for them. The quartet have announced that starting from May 2022, digital versions of themselves will appear every night alongside a 10-piece live band at a new 3,000-capacity venue in London's Olympic park named Abba Arena.

That will be a new concert experience altogether, proving that though the ABBA quartet may have grown grey and added some kilos, they have done so with panache and pizzazz.
Sambhal : , Sep 3 (IANS) Samajwadi MP from Sambhal Shafiqur Rehman Barq, who had been booked for sedition for his statement on Taliban, has now questioned the government on holding talks with the Taliban representatives in Doha.

Barq said, "I had just made a small statement about the Taliban. And I was declared a criminal, a traitor and they booked me under sedition. Now, the government itself is holding talks with the Taliban in Doha. Now what has happened?" Barq, 91, had allegedly said the Taliban are fighting for the "freedom of Afghan people. India, too, had fought for freedom." Later, on the basis of a complaint filed by a BJP leader, police had booked Barq for sedition. The SP MP also made some statements at a press meet, where he was seen defending the Taliban's move and comparing it with India's fight for freedom.

The video of the incident went viral on social media.

Sambhal Superintendent of Police Chakresh Mishra had said. "The Taliban has been declared as a terrorist organisation by the government of India and praising it or defending its moves is an act of a traitor." The statement from the SP MP came against the backdrop of a recent meeting held between India and the Taliban.

India's ambassador to Qatar, Deepak Mittal met the head of the Taliban's political office, Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanekzai.

Barq is a five-term MP and a four-term MLA.
San Francisco, Sep 3 : Google has filed an appeal against the 500 million euro fine brought by the French antitrust watchdog over a copyright dispute related to the tech giant not paying a local media for news content.

The French antitrust body fined Google for failing to comply with its orders on how to conduct the talks with publishers. The Competition Authority said that the appeal would not delay the fine, which the US tech company must still pay, reports The Guardian.

"We disagree with a number of legal elements, and believe that the fine is disproportionate to our efforts to reach an agreement and comply with the new law. We continue to work hard to resolve this case and put deals in place," the report quoted Sebastien Missoffe, Google France head as saying.

"We continue to work hard to resolve this case and put deals in place. This includes expanding offers to 1,200 publishers, clarifying aspects of our contracts, and sharing more data as requested by the French competition authority," he added.

The appeal will be formally ruled on by the Paris' court of appeal, but according to the French Competition Authority, Google will have to pay the fine regardless.

Back on July 13 when the penalty was imposed, the French watchdog also noted that the search engine giant is required to present proposals about compensation plans for news agencies within the next two months, or face up to 9,00,000 ($1.07 million) per day once this deadline expires.
Tehran, Sep 3 : Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian called for Europe's "constructive" act to protect Tehran's nuclear interests, which were harmed after Washington's unilateral withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal.

The "illegal" US measures in 2018 to exit from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and re-impose sanctions on Iran, as well as European countries' "inaction" in this regard are responsible for the current unfavourable situation, Amir Abdollahian said in a telephone conversation with his French counterpart Jean-Yves Le Drian.

Unfortunately, the current US government has continued to use sanctions as a tool to put pressure on Tehran, Xinhua news agency quoted the Iranian Minister as saying.

"However, it should know that we do not surrender in the face of such pressures," Amir Abdollahian said, urging Europe's "constructive role by adopting tactful positions in the area".

"The Islamic Republic is prepared to take part in the negotiations which would bring tangible results" in protecting Iran's rights and interests, he was quoted as saying.

Le Drian, for his part, expressed the hope that negotiations on the revival of the JCPOA will resume and will result in fruition.

The JCPOA Joint Commission, attended by the US delegation indirectly, began in-person talks on April 6 in Vienna to continue previous discussions over a possible return of Washington to the agreement and how to ensure the full and effective implementation of the deal.

After six rounds of talks, the parties have said serious differences remain between Iran and the US for the revitalization of the deal.
San Francisco, Sep 3 : Apple is reportedly meeting with Toyota executives about producing its long-rumoured Apple Car by 2024.

According to DigiTimes, Apple representatives were said to have met with South Korea's SK Group and LG Electronics last month to discuss Apple Car development, and now the iPhone maker is in talks with Toyota.

Apple has been working on a car project since 2014 under the code name, Project Titan.

Earlier, reports mentioned that Apple was also discussing similar plans with other automobile manufacturers including Hyundai.

The first Apple electric car earlier reported to be built on Hyundai's electric vehicle platform.

In a note to investors, TF Securities Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said Apple's deep collaboration with current automakers (Hyundai Group, General Motors and PSA) who have extensive development, production and qualification experience "will significantly shorten the Apple Car development time and create a time-to-market advantage".

Kuo believes that the earliest possible date for an Apple car to hit the market is 2025.

The Apple car is rumoured to feature LiDAR technology which could add a lot of depth to onboard Artificial Intelligence (AI) functions.

The vehicle is expected to use a "C1" chip based on the A12 Bionic processor with in-cabin AI capabilities such as eye-tracking.

The long-rumoured Apple Car is also expected to use LED screens all over the vehicle to inform other drivers what the self-driving system is doing.

In a patent granted by the US Patent and Trademark Office titled "Exterior Lighting and Warning System". Apple's system would involve the creation of displays that are placed around the vehicle and this long display is expected to show a variety of information to other road users.
Chikkaballapur : , Sep 3 (IANS) Karnataka Police have seized as many as 40 tonnes of bones and horns of cows, buffaloes and other animals stacked in three trucks on the Bengaluru-Hyderabad national highway and taken three persons into custody, the police sources said on Friday.

The preliminary investigations revealed that the arrested persons are drivers of the trucks used to transport cattle horns and bones to the Gownipalli village in Bagepalli taluk from Hyderabad. The arrested have been identified as Sadakath Ali, Toufiq and Basheer Ansari.

The accused have told the police that the horns and bones of cattle were mixed with cattle fodder after being powdered. The Bagepalli police have disposed of the seized horns and bones in a forest area after obtaining permission from the court.

According to the Bagepalli police, the hunt is on to nab the owners of the vehicle and the gang which is involved in the trade of selling horns, bones of cattle in Hyderabad and other parts of Telangana.

The Bagepalli police after getting a tip-off managed to get the trucks and arrested the accused in the wee hours of Wednesday. All accused are being sent to judicial custody. The police are suspecting a well established illegal cow slaughtering mafia behind the business and are investigating the case.
September 03 : The untimely and sudden death of actor Sidharth Shukla has shocked his fans, friends, family and industry colleagues. The actor has reportedly died of a heart attack on Thursday morning. He was taken to the Cooper Hospital in Mumbai, where the authorities reportedly said that he was brought dead to the hospital. The 40-year-old actor is survived by his mother and two sisters.

According to reports, while Sidharth's family is awaiting the post-mortem report from the Cooper Hospital, they have informed the Mumbai Police that they do not suspect any foul play and do not want any rumours floating around. They also confirmed that the actor was not under any mental pressure.

Reportedly, Sidharth was brought to the hospital at 10.30 am on Thursday morning. On arrival, Cooper Hospital in Juhu declared him brought dead to the hospital, according to hospital authorities. PTI quoted Cooper Hospital's Dr Jitten Bhavsar, who said the actor was declared dead by the principal medical officer after he was brought to the hospital in the morning. "We are now waiting for the police panchnama, then a post-mortem will happen," Dr Jitten told PTI.

Sidharth was the winner of Bigg Boss 13. Salman Khan, the host of the reality show, mourned his demise on social media and tweeted, "Gone too soon, Siddharth... You shall be missed. Condolences to the family."

Varun Dhawan, who had worked with him in Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhania, shared a throwback photo with him and Alia Bhat from the film's promotions, and wrote, "Rip brother. You are loved by so many and you touched so many with your kind heart and beautiful personality. Today heaven has gained a star and we have lost one. My deepest condolences to the family and loved ones."
Chennai, Sep 3 : The DMK and Congress are trying to woo the Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK), the political outfit of the powerful Vanniyar community, in the run up to the local body elections, the dates of which may be announced anytime soon.

In the state Assembly on Thursday, the leader of opposition and senior leader of Congress party, K. Selvaperuthungai called upon the PMK to join the DMK-led front as it was the DMK that had supported all the demands of the PMK.

Chief Minister M.K. Stalin announced that the government would build a memorial in honour of the 21 people who lost their lives during the Vanniyar quota protests in 1987. It was the AIADMK government that was in power in 1987 and the PMK is now in alliance with the AIADMK since the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

With local body elections to the new districts of Tamil Nadu to be announced any time soon, the Congress and DMK are trying to woo the PMK to its fold. The Vanniiyar community is powerful in Northern Tamil Nadu and the DMK alliance wants to make sure that they win the local body polls easily and hence wooing of the PMK.

The DMK government has in a Government Order implemented the special reservation of 10.5 per cent within the Most Backward Caste (MBC) quota. The reservation was announced by the AIADMK government of K. Palaniswami, and the DMK government soon after it assumed office implemented the reservation through a Government Order (GO). This has led to the PMK becoming soft on the DMK and the front wants to cement this into a solid political alliance with the PMK.

The PMK was expecting a Union Minister berth for the party's youth wing leader Dr. Anbumani Ramadoss, who is the son of the founder leader Dr. S. Ramadoss. Anbumani was a former Union Health minister in the Atal Behari Vajpayee government. With both AIADMK and PMK trying for ministerial berths, Narendra Modi did not consider both the parties during the recent cabinet expansion and the PMK, according to party insiders, was not happy with the NDA alliance ever since.

A senior leader of the PMK told IANS, "The PMK is a political party which is serving the interests of the people of Tamil Nadu and the Vanniyar community had requested a ministerial berth in the Union cabinet for the party. However, it did not materialise. This does not mean that we are shifting stands from the AIADMK-led NDA alliance in TN immediately. The DMK government has been providing all the demands of the PMK and knows the full potential of the party and the Vanniyar community." While the PMK has become almost silent on many issues against the DMK government in Tamil Nadu, political observers are of the opinion that the PMK may not switch sides immediately.

R. Padmanabhan, Director, Socio Economic Development Foundation, a think tank based out of Madurai told IANS, "While the PMK may not immediately switch positions, there is no bonding of the party with the AIADMK and BJP. They can shift to the DMK camp any time and the Chief Minister is working out on a way to support the PMK and to meet its demands as it is a powerful force in Northern Tamil Nadu and no political party can afford to lose its support."

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
Beijing, Sep 3 : Chinese Vice Premier Han Zheng and US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry discussed cooperation against climate change during a virtual meeting.

Noting China's efforts and achievements in coping with climate change, Han said on Thursday that Beijing has always kept its words and deeds on the issue, reports Xinhua news agency.

He said the Paris Agreement should be taken as an important foundation for China-US cooperation on climate change.

He added that it is hoped that both sides will focus on implementing the China-US Joint Statement Addressing the Climate Crisis, continue to make efforts under the objectives and principles of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Paris Agreement, and contribute to the global response to climate change.

On His part, Kerry said the US and China should maintain constructive contacts and jointly deal with global challenges.

The US agrees with China's great efforts to cope with climate change, and is willing to strengthen contact and communication with the country, step up the implementation of the Paris Agreement, and jointly address the threat of global climate change, he added.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
Antigua, Sep 3 : A fine 75 by opener Lizelle Lee and a late-innings charge from Laura Wolvaardt lifted South Africa Women to a 1-0 series lead over West Indies in the second T20 International at the Sir Vivian Richards Stadium on Friday (IST).

Following a washed-out series opener, South Africa Women struck 23 boundaries in their score of 165/3 after being sent in to bat by the hosts. In her 52-ball stay at the crease, Lee accounted for 13 of those boundaries, hitting one six along the way.

Lee combined with Dane van Niekerk (23 off 21 balls) in an opening stand of 53, before the skipper fell to Qiana Joseph, who was miserly in her spell of 1/17 from her four overs.

The loss of van Niekerk did little to slow the visitors down however, and while Marizanne Kapp was slow (24 off 32 balls), Lee continued her charge as the pair put on 69.

Despite the late wickets of Kapp and Lee, both to Hayley Matthews (2/43), the work set the platform for a Wolvaardt blitz in the death overs as she made the most of a nine-ball stay. Hitting Anisa Mohammed (0/27) for a boundary, Wolvaardt launched four sixes in the last four overs of the innings, to move the run rate past eight per over.

It took the wind out of West Indian sails, with the hosts losing wickets at inopportune times during their chase. Kapp claimed the first of her three wickets by dismissing Matthews for 12 (8), cramping the opener for room as she spooned a catch to Sune Luus at mid-wicket.

Left-arm spinner Nonkululeko Mlaba (2/22) was effectively deployed, removing both Deandra Dottin (19) and Kyshona Knight (13) in a spell of 2/22. Kapp returned to rattle the stumps of both Kycia Knight (10) and Chedean Nation (26), finishing with figures of 3/31.

After slumping to 91/5, the hosts struggled to recover, falling short by 50 runs despite Britney Cooper's 26 from 15 balls.

The two sides will return on Saturday for the third T20I.

Brief scores: South Africa Women 165/3 in 20 overs (L Lee 75, L Wolvaardt 33 not out) beat West Indies Women 115/8 in 20 overs (M Kapp 3/31) by 50 runs.
Lagos, Sep 3 : The International Organization for Migration (IOM) is set to launch a new project in Nigeria to protect victims of trafficking as well as smuggled migrants while they are in transit.

The project, scheduled to be launched in Abuja on September 7, seeks to provide assistance to such vulnerable people while they are on the move, said Frantz Celestin, IOM's Chief of Mission in Nigeria, in a statement on Thursday.

The project, titled "Cooperation on Migration and Partnerships to Achieve Sustainable Solutions", would also seek to curb irregular migration, Celestin said.

"The overall objective of the project is to contribute to protection and assistance of people on the move, and decrease irregular migration, using an ecological approach to achieve long-term outcomes," the IOM official said.

"Target beneficiaries are victims of trafficking, smuggled migrants with identified protection needs, stranded migrants and vulnerable migrants in their communities," he said.

He said the IOM would also seek to identify potential areas of enhancing coordination efforts and synergy between key stakeholders involved in providing rehabilitation and reintegration support to vulnerable migrants.

The rising number of irregular migrants has been a growing concern for the IOM, Celestin said, adding that between January and May, more than 29,000 people of African origin had landed on the shores of Europe, using the Mediterranean route.
New Delhi, Sep 3 : India reported a marginal decline of 1,740 cases and logged 45,352 fresh Covid infections in the last 24 hours, pushing the overall country's tally to 32,903,289. The country also witnessed 366 deaths in the same time span, taking the death toll to 4,39,895, according to the health ministry's updated data on Friday.

On Thursday, India reported 47,029 new coronavirus cases and 509 deaths.

The active caseload has also reported a substantial growth of 10,195 and stands at 3,99,778. The active cases account for 1.22 per cent of the total cases in India.

At the same span of time, a total of 34,791 Covid patients were discharged, pushing the overall recoveries to 3,20,63,616. The recovery rate currently stands at 97.45 per cent.

According to the ministry's release, the weekly positivity rate is at 2.66 per cent, which is less than 3 per cent for the last 70 days. At the same time, the daily positivity rate is reported to be 2.72 per cent.

India's cumulative vaccination coverage has crossed the 67 crore landmark on Friday. With the administration of 74,84,333 vaccine doses in the last 24 hours, India's Covid-19 vaccination coverage figure stands at 67,09,59,968 as per the provisional reports of the Health Ministry. This has been achieved through 70,34,846 sessions.

The testing capacity across the country continues to be expanded. The last 24 hours saw a total of 16,66,334 tests being conducted. India has so far conducted 52,65,35,068 tests.

More than 65 crore vaccine doses have been provided to the States/UTs so far through the Government of India free of cost channel and through direct state procurement category. Further, more than 1.20 crore doses are in the pipeline. Around 4,36,81,760 balance and unutilized Covid vaccine doses are still available with the States/UTs to be administered, said the Health Ministry data released Friday morning.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
Riyadh, Sep 3 : The first group of female Saudi Arabian soldiers graduated from the Armed Forces Womens Cadre Training Centre, after completing 14 weeks of basic training that began on May 30.

According to an Arab News report on Thursday, the results of graduates, as well as the names of the most outstanding students and those who had been rewarded with prizes, were announced at a recently-held ceremony, Xinhua news agency reported.

The Kingdom opened military recruitment to women in February this year, as part of the efforts to empower Saudi females.

Military ranks from soldier to sergeant are now available for women in the Saudi Arabian Army, Royal Saudi Air Defense, Royal Saudi Navy, Royal Saudi Strategic Missile Force, and Armed Forces Medical Services.

Saudi Arabia started allowing women to drive vehicles in 2018 after a decades-old ban.

It was one of many initiatives to integrate women into the Saudi society, especially by providing them with job opportunities.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
Mogadishu, Sep 3 : The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has called for sustained funding to enable aid agencies to scale up life-saving assistance in Somalia.

Adam Abdelmoula, Humanitarian Coordinator for Somalia, said in a statement issued here on Thursday that with limited resources and funding, humanitarian agencies need urgent support to provide timely response, reports Xinhua news agency.

Abdelmoula said as the Somalia Humanitarian Funding (SHF), a multi-donor country-based pooled mechanism that allocates funding for the most urgent life-saving interventions, said it has allocated $26 million to scale up assistance for about 1.2 million people in the country.

These critical funds, part of the SHF 2021 Reserve Allocation, will support national and international non-governmental partners operating in Banadir, Bay, Galgaduud, Gedo, Hiraan, Lower Juba, Middle Shabelle, and Mudug regions.

"This allocation will enable humanitarian agencies in Somalia to boost life-saving assistance to the most vulnerable communities in areas where needs are the highest," said Abdelmoula.

According to the OCHA, the $26 million allocation will provide strategic support for selected cluster-specific priorities and integrated interventions, focusing on areas with acute water shortages brought about by prolonged drought, as well as on flood-affected populations in hotspot locations.

It said close to two-thirds ($17 million) of the funding will support priority activities for food security, health, nutrition and Global WASH Clusters while about 36 per cent will bolster response to flood-affected people through integrated and complementary packages.

The UN said the 2021 Somalia Humanitarian Response Plan, which is seeking $1.09 billion, is only 41 per cent funded.

"With multiple shocks persistently causing high levels of humanitarian and protection concerns in Somalia, life-saving assistance must be sustained alongside livelihood support," said the OCHA.
Bengaluru, Sep 3 : The officials of the health department have sealed the Christian Nursing College located in Bengaluru's Horamavu after 31 students tested Covid positive.

The health department said on Friday that the authorities are putting all efforts to trace the primary and secondary contacts of the infected persons in the city.

Among 31 nursing students who tested positive for Covid, 20 hail from Kerala and 11 came from West Bengal. The whole campus has been sealed and the students who tested positive for Covid are being treated at HAL Covid Care Centre.

The students arrived in the city as the colleges were reopened on August 5. Initially, two students tested positive after being tested for showing symptoms. The college authorities have got the Covid test done for all 300 students.

Ten students tested positive and later the tests confirmed Covid positive results for the other six students. The recent tests have confirmed the infection among 15 students.

The authorities have sealed the Christian Nursing college campus, including the 100 meters of the surrounding area. The area has been identified as a containment cluster zone. The health department has instructed the college authorities to take the responsibility for keeping the students in quarantine for 14 days.

Most of the students are studying first-year nursing. The swab samples of primary and secondary contacts have been collected and sent for RT-PCR tests. The entire area has been sprayed with disinfectant to ensure hygiene, explained Mahadevapura Zone health officers.

The incident has come close in the heels of 32 girl students testing positive for Covid in the Noorunnisa Institute of Nursing, located in Kolar Gold Field (KGF).

Karnataka Health Minister K. Sudhakar stated on Tuesday that action will be initiated against the Noorunnisa Institute of Nursing for negligence in following Covid protocols.

"32 students, all from Kerala have tested positive for Covid in the institution. The management should have taken negative reports when they came back from Kerala. This was the responsibility of the organisation. I will make a visit on Wednesday and initiate action," he had stated.

The Karnataka government has brought down the number of cases in the state from 50,000 to 700 to 800 with great difficulty, he reacted angrily.

Sources in the health department said that they are looking into the submission of fake RT-PCR certificates by students and investigating the matter.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)

-- Except for the title, this story has not been edited by Prokerala team and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed
New York, Sep 3 : Antibodies produced by the Pfizer vaccine against Covid-19 decreased more than 80 per cent after six months in some elderly people, according to a study that emphasises the need for booster shots.

Researchers from the Universities of Case Western Reserve, Brown and Harvard studied blood samples of 120 Ohio nursing home residents and 92 health care workers.

In particular, they looked at humoral immunity, also called antibody-mediated immunity, to measure the body's defenses against the coronavirus.

The findings, published on online preprint medRxiv and being peer-reviewed, showed that individuals' antibody levels decreased more than 80 per cent after six months; the results were the same in older adults (median age 76) and caregivers (median age 48) and old alike.

The results support the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommendation for booster shots, especially for the elderly, due to fading immunity, David Canaday, professor at the School of Medicine at Case Reserve.

He added that boosters are even more important as the Delta variant spreads.

The team also presented their unpublished results directly to CDC and were urged to get the data out in the public domain as soon as possible "so we could enter conversation and the decision-making process for booster vaccine recommendations", Canaday said.

The sharp decline is particularly problematic for the elderly because previous research by Case Reserve showed that within two weeks of receiving the second dose of vaccine and being considered "fully vaccinated", older adults who had not previously contracted Covid-19 already showed a reduced response in antibodies that was substantially lower than the younger caregivers experienced.

By six months after vaccination, the blood of 70 per cent of these nursing home residents had "very poor ability to neutralise the coronavirus infection in laboratory experiments", Canaday said.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
Hyderabad, Sep 3 : Actor Rakul Preet Singh on Friday appeared before the Enforcement Directorate (ED) for questioning in connection with a money laundering probe linked to a four-year-old drug case.

She reached the ED office here around 9.10 a.m., an hour before the scheduled time.

The ED has summoned Rakul for questioning on September 6 but she had sought more time citing her busy shooting schedule. However, the agency declined to postpone the questioning and asked her to appear three days before the scheduled time.

She is the third Tollywood personality being questioned by the ED. Director Puri Jagannadh was questioned for nearly 10 hours on Tuesday while actor Charmme Kaur was quizzed for about eight hours on Thursday.

The ED officials are questioning the film personalities about the financial transactions, if any, with those involved in the drugs case.

Both Puri and Charmme were reportedly questioned about the suspected links with Calvin Mascarenhas, a key accused in the case.

The ED last week issued notices to 10 persons connected to Tollywood and two others including a private club manager as part of a money laundering probe linked to the drugs racket.

Actors Rakul Preet Singh, Rana Daggubati, Ravi Teja, Charmme Kaur, Navdeep, Mumaith Khan and director Puri Jagannath have been asked to appear before ED between August 31 and September 22.

Tanish, Nandu, actor Ravi Teja's driver Srinivas are also among those summoned in connection with the drugs racket which was busted with the arrest of drug peddlers in 2017.

Rakul Preet Singh and Rana were not among Tollywood personalities questioned by the Special Investigation Team (SIT) of Telangana's prohibition and excise department, which probed the case.

The drugs racket was busted on July 2, 2017 when customs officials arrested Calvin Mascarenhas, a musician, and two others and seized drugs worth Rs 30 lakh from their possession.

They had reportedly told the investigators that they are supplying drugs to film celebrities, software engineers, and even students of some corporate schools. Mobile numbers of some Tollywood celebrities were allegedly found in their contact lists.

The excise department had constituted SIT for a comprehensive probe. A total of 12 cases were registered, 30 people were arrested while 62 individuals including 11 people connected with Tollywood were examined by the SIT under section 67 of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act and section 161 of Criminal Procedure Code.

The SIT had collected blood, hair, nail and other samples from some of those who appeared before it for questioning and sent them for analysis.

Actors Ravi Teja, Charmme Kaur, Mumaith Khan, director Puri Jagannath and young actors Tarun Kumar and P. Navadeep were among the stars who were questioned by the SIT.

Cinematographer Shyam K. Naidu, actors Subbaraju, Tanish, Nandu and Ravi Teja's driver Srinivas were also among those questioned.

The SIT filed chargesheet in eight out of 12 cases. It, however, gave clean chit to the film personalities who were questioned as part of the investigation.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
Chennai, Sep 3 : HDFC Life Insurance Company Limited (HDFC Life) on Friday announced the acquisition of Exide Life Insurance Company Ltd (Exide Life) from Exide Industries Ltd for Rs 6,687 crore.

The process for merger of Exide Life into HDFC Life will be initiated on completion of the acquisition. The entire process, including the acquisition and subsequent merger, is subject to obtaining the relevant regulatory and other approvals.

The Boards of three companies approved the transaction on Friday morning.

The total cost will be met by HDFC Life by issuing 8,70,22,222 shares on preferential basis at a price of Rs 685 per share to Exide Industries and a cash of about Rs 726 crore totaling Rs 6,687 crore.

According to Exide Industries, it has invested a total of Rs 1,679.59 crore in Exide Life.

The embedded value of Exide Life, as on 30th June 2021, is Rs 2,711 crore and has been reviewed by Willis Towers Watson Actuarial Advisory LLP.

The embedded value of HDFC Life was Rs 27,331 crore.

The acquisition is expected to be completed before June 30, 2022.

Post merger of Exide Life with HDFC Life, the shareholding pattern of the latter will be - HDFC Ltd 47.9 per cent, Exide Industries 4.1 per cent and Others 48 per cent.

As to the rationale for acquisition, HDFC Life said, the proposed transaction will accelerate the growth of its agency business.

The Rs 4,937.46 revenue Exide Life with a networth of Rs 1,481.42 crore complements HDFC Life's geographical presence and has a strong foothold in South India, especially in Tier 2 and 3 towns, thus providing access to a wider market.

Further, Exide Life's predominantly traditional and protection focussed business, will augment the existing embedded value of HDFC Life by approximately 10 per cent.

Exide Life has 36,710 agents as on June 30, 2021.

Meanwhile, the share prices of HDFC Life came down after opening at Rs 742 on Friday after the deal was announced. The previous day closing price of the scrip was Rs 758.

On the other hand, the shares of Exide Industries flared up to Rs 192 after closing at Rs 178.25 on Thursday.

"This is a landmark transaction, first of its kind, in the Indian life insurance space. It would enhance insurance penetration and further our purpose of providing financial protection to a wider customer base," Deepak S. Parekh, Chairman, HDFC Life said.

"We believe that this amalgamation can result in value creation for customers, employees, shareholders and distribution partners. It gives us an opportunity to realise synergies arising out of complementary business models, and further bolster our proprietary distribution network," Vibha Padalkar, Managing Director & CEO, HDFC Life said.

Rajan B. Raheja, Vice Chairman, Exide Industries and Chairman, Exide Life said, "The focus of Exide Industries has always been to enhance the value for its stakeholders. The proposed transaction is another step taken by Exide to meet above stated objective."
London, Sep 3 : Facebook-owned WhatsApp has been fined 225 million euros ($267 million) for breaking the European Union's (EU) data privacy rules.

According to The Verge, Ireland's Data Protection Commission (DPC) announced the decision in an 89-page summary, noting that WhatsApp did not properly inform EU citizens how it handles their personal data, including how it shares that information with its parent company.

WhatsApp has been ordered to make updates to its already lengthy privacy policy and change how it notifies users about sharing their data.

This will bring it into compliance with Europe's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) which governs how tech companies gather and use data in the EU, the report said.

GDPR came into effect in May 2018 and WhatsApp was one of the first companies to be hit with privacy lawsuits under the regulation, it added.

A WhatsApp spokesperson said in an email to The Verge that the company will appeal the decision.

"WhatsApp is committed to providing a secure and private service. We have worked to ensure the information we provide is transparent and comprehensive and will continue to do so," the spokesperson said.

"We disagree with the decision today regarding the transparency we provided to people in 2018 and the penalties are entirely disproportionate," it added.

The decision by the DPC began with an investigation in 2018 and is the second-largest fine levied under GDPR regulations.

In July this year, Amazon was fined a record $887 million for breaching the EU privacy laws.
Kabul/New Delhi, Sep 3 : The Taliban have claimed advances in Panjshir as they captured the centre of Shutul district along with 11 outposts held by opposition forces.

Inamullah Samangani, a member of the Taliban's cultural commission, said that 34 members of the opposition forces were killed in the ongoing clashes, Tolo News reported.

The Taliban shared a video online saying their forces had advanced in Shutul district.

"A heavy toll has been inflicted on the opposite side in last night's operations as well as in this morning's clashes in Shutul district of Panjshir," Samangani said.

However, forces loyal to Ahmad Massoud rejected the figures and claimed that the Taliban has suffered heavy casualties.

A spokesman for the opposition front, Fahim Dashti, said 350 Taliban fighters were killed and at least 290 more were wounded in the clashes in the last four days.

The Taliban has rejected the figures.

"Last night the Taliban made many attempts to enter Shutul district through the Jabal Siraj mountains, but their attempts failed, their bodies remained on the battlefield and they took only 40 bodies with them," Dashti said.

The clashes come as political efforts failed to forge an agreement between the two sides. One analyst said that such clashes will not benefit either side and there is a need to resume the negotiations between the Taliban and forces under Massoud.

Clashes erupted between the Taliban and the resistance movement on Thursday in Gulbahar, the entrance gate of Panjshir province, and both sides used heavy and light weapons, Ariana News reported.

Both sides accused each other of initiating the clash. The resistance movement said the Taliban started the clashes.

"The enemy attacked Panjshir province form Andarab route twice and suffered heavy casualties," said Fahim Dashti, a spokesman for the resistance movement.

Taliban, meanwhile, stated that resistance movement forces attacked them first and finally suffered heavy casualties, the report said.
Auckland, Sep 3 : A man was shot dead by New Zealand police on Friday after assaulting at least six people at a supermarket in Auckland city and the incident has been termed by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern as a "terrorist attack" carried out by a Sri Lankan national who was under surveillance.

Several shoppers were understood to have suffered serious injuries and have been taken to the Auckland City Hospital's emergency department with status 1, meaning the life-threatening condition, Xinhua news agency quoted the NZ Herald newspaper as saying in a reported.

Auckland police confirmed that a man in a supermarket injured multiple people, who was shot and died at the scene.

Armed police have blocked off the roads nearby and at least 10 police vehicles were currently around the mall, where the supermarket is located.

Addressing the media after the incident, Ardern said the perpetrator was killed within 60 seconds of the attack by police, the BBC reported.

"What happened today was despicable, it was hateful it was wrong," she said.

Ardern said said the man had arrived in New Zealand in October 2011 and became a person of national security interest in 2016, adding that "he been under constant monitoring and heavy surveillance due to concerns about his ideology".
September 03 : Most talented actor Anupam Kher, who is currently in USA, did an Ask Me Anything on Twitter recently. While he received quite a number of interesting questions, one netizen slammed the veteran actor on Twitter and wrote, We are not bekaar (useless) like you nor Bhakts sitting here to do your time pass. Anupam Khers decent yet apt response helped to calm the user.

The actor wrote, Ye bolne ke liye bhi jawab to de he diya (You have replied to me, even if you have to this). Basically you couldnt ignore me!

One fan wrote how he missed the days gone by and expressed that he gets disturbed with the present state of the film industry. Aap sabka Bollywood hi sahi tha. Aap sabki filmein marg darshak ka kaam karti thi par ab! Ab toh kuch ghatnao ne iss kadar jhakjhor karke rakh diya ki Bollywood se bharosa hi uth gaya (The Bollywood in your time was good. The films you all did guided us in life. But now, some incidents have shaken me up so much that I have lost faith in Bollywood). #AskAnupam.

Responding to the post, Kher penned a thought provoking one. Gham ki andheri raat mein dil ko na bekarar kar, subah zaroor aayegi, subah ka intezaar kar (Dont be restless in the dark night of sadness. Wait patiently for the morning to come, just wait for it).

Another Twitter user asked the actor about his wife Kirron Khers health, to which the actor replied, She is much better! Thanks! Earlier this year, Anupam Kher had revealed that Kirron Kher was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a type of blood cancer, and is undergoing treatment for the same.

Recently Anupam Kher celebrated 36 years of togetherness with Kirron Kher and marked the special day with a beautiful Instagram post. The veteran actor shared memories from their wedding, and wrote, Happy 36th wedding anniversary dearest #Kirron. It has been a long journey with all the possible emotions of laughter, tears, arguments, sharing, friendship, love and togetherness! But a journey worth it. These black and white pics have all the shades of colour in them. Stay safe and healthy. Love and prayers always! @kirronkhermp #Anniversary #Life #Love.
Chennai, Sep 3 : The US Consul General in Chennai Judith Ravin met with the industry, education and health care leaders of Coimbatore on September 1 and 2. The visit, according to the US Consul general's office, was for exploring the possibilities of business, climate change mitigation, education and innovation.

She met with the business leaders of Coimbatore for further exploring Indo-US trade relations, a statement from the US Consul General office in Chennai on Thursday said.

The Consul General said, "It is wonderful to visit Coimbatore, one of the most important cities in Tamil Nadu. I am impressed with the strength of US-India ties here, and with the many key institutions invested in furthering our relationship. I look forward to building on these important collaborations." The Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry Coimbatore (ICCIC) hosted a seminar on "Accessing the US Market" where the Consul General emphasised strong US-India ties. She met representatives from the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and learned firsthand about the industrial climate of Coimbatore, the statement said.

Consul General Ravin had a nature walk with conservationists at the Nilgiri Biosphere Nature Park. According to the statement, the Consul General stressed upon the commitment of the US to environmental protection and biodiversity conservation. She also met with students, faculty, and management of Vidya Vanam Senior Secondary School. The school is part of Bhuvana Foundation India, a sister organisation of Bhuvana Foundation Nashville, Tennessee.

Consul General Ravin met prominent leaders from industry and academia and discussed internationalisation of campuses in a meeting hosted by Confederation of Indian Industries(CII).

Consul General Ravin also delivered brief remarks at the opening of a roundtable discussion with technology innovators hosted by GRD Institute of Management. The topic of discussion was on the challenges and opportunities faced by innovators, the entrepreneurial landscape of the city, and finding funding and markets in a globalised world.

She also visited the Gedee Car Museum which had on display the American-manufactured Dodge Victory 6, Cadillac Limousine, Chevrolet, Oldsmobile, Chrysler and Studebaker.
Tirana, Sep 3 : Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama announced on members of the new cabinet that will govern the country for a third term during the next four years.

The ruling Socialist Party, led by Rama, won the general elections held on April 25, setting an unprecedented case in Albania for a political party to rule the country for three consecutive mandates, reports Xinhua news agency.

Rama revealed the names of his new cabinet during an Assembly meeting on Thursday, where 12 out of 16 ministers will be women.

In the new cabinet, Arben Ahmetaj, former economy minister, will replace Erion Brace as the new deputy prime minister, who resigned from his post earlier this week after running this post for eight years.

Ulsi Manja, former head of the Parliamentary Committee on Legal Affairs in the parliament, has been appointed as the new justice minister.

In addition, Rama announced three new state ministers -- Minister of State for Youth Bora Muzhaqi, Minister of State for Standards and Services Milva Ikonomi and Minister of State for the Protection of Entrepreneurship Edona Bilali.

Meanwhile, Lindita Nikolla, a former education minister, was appointed by Rama as the new parliament speaker.

The new Parliament of Albania is expected to convene on September 10.
Panaji, Sep 3 : Parties like the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) should stop blackmailing the Congress to form an alliance ahead of the 2022 state Assembly polls, Congress party leader Francisco Pacheco said on Friday.

Pacheco's comment comes a day after NCP National General Secretary Praful Patel said that the Congress must decide on an alliance with his party and other like-minded political outfits within 15 days.

"There are parties who are asking the Congress for an alliance, but Congress is not asking for an alliance. This blackmailing has to stop," Pacheco told a press conference here.

"This is like a threat. No one needs to give a threat to the Congress." Political parties in the state are in the process of working out strategies for the 2022 elctions, with Patel rooting for an alliance of like-minded parties in the state, including the NCP and the Goa Forward party.

Pacheco also said that the NCP should not be pushing the Congress hard to form an alliance claiming the lone NCP in the state assembly Churchill Alemao had been supporting the BJP-led coalition government in the state for the "last four and a half years".

Pacheco, who has previously been a part of a host of political parties including the Goa Suraj Party, United Goans Democratic Party, Nationalist Congress Party and the BJP in the past, had joined the Congress last month.
Cairo, Sep 3 : Egypt is hosting the 'Bright Star' joint military drill with 21 countries after a one-year delay due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the army said in a statement.

The drill, held on the Mohamed Naguib military base at the Mediterranean Sea, will end on September 17, Xinhua news agency quoted the statement issued on Thursday as saying.

"It is one of the largest and most important world military exercises due to the large number of participating troops," it said.

Besides Egypt, troops from 21 countries, including the US, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Saudi Arabia, France, Britain, Greece and Italy, are taking part in the military exercises, it added.

The Bright Star multinational military drill was launched in 1980 as part of the US-brokered peace treaty between Egypt and Israel.

It has been hosted by Egypt in cooperation with the US every two years.

The drill, originally scheduled for September 2020, was suspended due to the raging Covid-19 pandemic.
Washington Dc, Sep 3 : Kanye West's 'Donda' album is chock full of confessions, pleas for mercy, acceptance, and a lot of faith. But a deeper dive into the verses on the mid-tempo song 'Hurricane', featuring 'The Weeknd' and 'Lil Baby', suggests that West may be begging for forgiveness from someone besides the Almighty, according to Billboard.com.

"Here I go actin' too rich, here I go with a new chick/And I know what the truth is/ Still playin' after two kids/It's a lot to digest when your life always movin'," West raps in a couplet that seems to suggest he's referencing being with another woman while married to now-estranged wife Kim Kardashian West after the birth of their children North, 8 and Saint, 5.

The couple, who went on two have two more children -- Chicago, 3, and Psalm, 2 -- are in the midst of a divorce. Despite their split after seven years of marriage, however, Kardashian West attended all three of Kanye's 'Donda' mass listening parties, even wearing what appeared to be her wedding dress at the most recent event in Chicago.

There are other seemingly confessional lyrics on the album that appear to allude to cracks in the couple's relationship.

On the song 'Lord I Need You', Kanye appears to have some questions about his wife's dedication to their union. "Three hours to get back from Palm Springs, huh?" he raps about what is typically a 90-minute ride from the vacation destination to the couple's LA-area home.

"Who you know spend an hour in Walgreens, huh?" He adds, "Too many complaints made it hard for me to think/Would you shut up? I can't hear myself drink." He specifically references his house in 'Hurricane' as well, rapping, "It's a lot to digest when your life always movin'/Architectural Digest, but I needed home improvement/Sixty-million-dollar home, never went home to it."
Gaza, Sep 3 : A Palestinian man was killed during clashes with Israeli soldiers near the border area between the Gaza Strip and Israel, authorities said.

The Hamas-run Palestinian Health Ministry said in a statement that Ahmad Salleh, 26, was shot dead by Israeli soldiers on Thursday night, reports Xinhua news agency.

The Ministry said that 15 Palestinians, including five children, were injured by Israeli soldiers, adding that five of them were shot by live ammunition and 10 others suffered suffocation after inhaling tear gas.

On Thursday night, witnesses said that dozens of protesters, members of "the night disturbance unit" gathered along the border area between eastern Gaza Strip and Israel for the sixth consecutive day.

Members of the unit have been demonstrating every night near the border with Israel to protest the continuation of an Israeli blockade that has been imposed on the impoverished coastal enclave for more than 14 years.

The unit comprises members and supporters of several Palestinian factions, including the Hamas which has been ruling the Gaza Strip since 2007 after it ousted the security forces of President Mahmoud Abbas.

The protesters usually burn tires, detonate homemade percussion grenades and clash with the Israeli soldiers, who usually fire shots to disperse them.

The violent protests came a day after Israel reopened the only commercial crossing of Kerem Shalom and expanded the fishing area off the Gaza coast to 15 nautical miles.

The Israeli media earlier reported that Israel also pumped potable water, allowed the entry of more construction materials into Gaza, and increased the number of permits for Gaza merchants to enter Israel from 2,000 to 7,000.
New Delhi, Sep 3 : The onslaught of the Covid-19 pandemic did impact students' plans to study abroad. Their zeal was pulled down not because of the precautionary travel restrictions and changes in the regulations but because of the confusion that followed regarding international travel rules and the admission process.

The IDP's virtual fair emerged as an all-inclusive information point to resolve all the doubts and queries students have concerning the restrictions and regulations concerning admission processes in their preferred host countries and institutions. This one-platform communication between students, institutions, and international education adds to the convenience of students and their parents.

It keeps them updated about all the latest developments. Besides, it also helps students reach out to the institution of their interest on a one-on-one basis to discuss various aspects of their future study plans. It includes the admission process, budget, scholarships, accommodation, internships, post-study work opportunities, and gathering an understanding of the transition from online to hybrid learning.

One of the most advantageous aspects of the virtual education fair is its accessibility. It provides students with opportunities to explore their prospects in some of the world's best institutions from the comfort of their homes. Both students and parents can participate in the fair and interact with the representations of over 170 world-class institutions from the US, the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Ireland.

It is currently the safest and most convenient medium for both students and institutions to connect from the comfort and safety of their respective locations. Besides allowing students to have an individual counselling session, the event also helps them submit their application ns on the spot for upcoming intakes and avail application fee waivers for various institutions. Students also gain information required for their application, SOP, visa process, and other documentation. The key aim of the event is to create a transparent environment between the attendees and the institutions.

Speaking about IDP's commitment to assist students in their plan to pursue higher studies abroad, Piyush Kumar, Regional Director (South Asia), IDP Education, said: "IDP is known for staying ahead of the curve with its extensive network of more than 1300 approachable experts who help students with the end-to-end process of studying abroad. A personal counsellor is assigned to every interested student to help them plan every detail of their study-abroad journey. We have 40 physical offices and 23 virtual offices where students can interact/meet with their assigned counsellors (during business hours) at their convenience." "We aim to guide as many aspirants as possible. Hence, our virtual education fair is free for all students. The primary goal of the fair is to provide a platform for the students/attendees to discuss their concerns directly with the university representatives via video conferencing. It allows participants to get complete clarity and helps them make decisions for their overseas education plan." The virtual fair, which is open to all, is gaining much popularity. Last year, the event was attended by over 150,000 attendees from various parts of India. With the increase in acceptability of hybrid learning programs and ease in border restrictions for international students, this number is likely to rise significantly this year.

To attend the event, all that one needs to do is book a slot via the official IDP website. Few days before the event day, the participant will receive a joining link on their registered e-mail id along with the details of the virtual meeting. With the help of an IDP expert at the fair, students can select their preferred institutions and interact with them privately through video conferencing.

Mentioning the current changes emerging in the admission process, Kumar said: "Since many countries like the USA, UK, Canada, and Ireland are inviting students for on-campus learning, we expect a mixed response from students regarding their choice of on-campus and hybrid learning options. However, considering the demand for the emerging fields in the post-pandemic period, most students may explore skilled-based courses related to Artificial Intelligence, Data Analytics, Coding, and Process Automation. In addition to this, courses related to Biotechnology, Health Informatics, Pharmacy, Equipment, Manufacturing, and Health Care Infrastructure are also likely to witness a rise in enrollment." According to him, this year, the UK has emerged as one of the most preferred destinations among Indian students, primarily because of its attractive post-study work visa (PSW) policies and student-friendly admission policies. The country also extended the deadline (from July 2021 to September 27) for long-distance students studying remotely to resume on-campus sessions in the UK. Besides the UK, the students also prefer the US as their study destination due to its hybrid learning courses and simplified admission processes. Several US universities have even waived the tests like GRE and GMAT for Indian students. Canada and Ireland are also gaining popularity among international students because of their multicultural environments and flexible course structures.

Online/hybrid courses have altered the dynamics of international education as it has made academic courses offered by the world's most premium institutions accessible to almost everyone. Moreover, with various scholarships (many of which even cover 100 percent of institution fees), bursaries, and financial aids offered by the government and institutions of different host countries, studying abroad is no more a non-feasible and uber-expensive affair. Some institutions have even introduced special Covid bursaries, despite offering need-based and student-specific scholarships for students from weaker economic backgrounds. Banks are also providing easy education loans to students.

It is one of the best times to make the most of these relaxations and avail new-age education courses offered by some of the top-notch institutions worldwide.

IDP assures its assistance to students throughout the International academic trajectory, starting from English language proficiency tests to the application process, visa documentation, and accommodation.

IDP's international education specialists stay in touch with students through the virtual fair and help them in each aspect of their academic journey ahead.
New Delhi, Sep 3 : The Union government has said that no cases of 'MU' variant of coronavirus have been detected from over 51,000 samples analysed so far in India.

This new coronavirus variant 'MU' was identified first in Colombia in January. The World Health Organisation (WHO) has designated the MU strain of coronavirus as a 'variant of interest'.

The Indian Council of Medical Research Director General Dr. Balram Bhargav said, "We are closely monitoring the new coronavirus 'Variants of Interest' named MU and no case has been detected so far in India".

The WHO has warned that the new MU variant shows signs of possible resistance to the vaccines. The WHO said in a statement, "Based on the latest round of assessments, B.1.621 was classified as a Variant of Interest on August 30 and given the WHO label MU".

"The MU variant has a constellation of mutations that indicate potential properties of immune escape. Preliminary data presented to the Virus Evolution Working Group show a reduction in neutralization capacity of convalescent and vaccines sera similar to that seen for the Beta variant, but this needs to be confirmed by further studies," the bulletin added.

Commenting on the MU variant, NITI Ayog Member (Health) Dr V.K. Paul said that government and health scientists are keeping a close watch on this variant of interest.

"It is a must to administer both doses of vaccine and follow the Covid appropriate behaviour to fight against any Covid variant", he added.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)
The Talibans takeover of Afghanistan has led some to draw comparisons with the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979. This is not an accurate comparison. The 1979 Revolution was a popular revolt, while the 2021 Taliban victory was a military take over. The Taliban do not have popular support in Afghanistan. They managed to walk into Kabul because the Afghan armed forces and political establishment had lost the will to fight. And that was the outcome of a growing belief in Afghanistan that Kabul could not withstand the Taliban advance. So self-preservation meant that local leaders simply let the Taliban walk into their cities and settlements.

Although the leadership of the Taliban has learned to make noises not as pungent to the international community as its earlier avatar, the common Talib remains bigoted youth grounded in intolerance and a very conservative interpretation of Islam. Even if those leaders who were based in Doha talk about tolerance and inclusiveness, the support base remains extremely conservative. This will bear heavily on the future direction of the Taliban and the policies it will adopt. Taliban is essentially a Deobandi Sunni group with the political agenda of imposing Sharia of the Hanafi School. That is an existential problem for Shias.

In fact, Iran nearly went to war with the Taliban in 1998 when the Taliban killed Iranian diplomats in Mazar-i-Sharif. This time around, Iran has been very practical in its relations with the Taliban. Iran established ties with the Taliban because it saw them as a useful tool to undermine the US in Afghanistan. And the US decision to withdraw was celebrated as a victory. But this presents difficult questions for Iran. The Taliban has been sectarian in its outlook and deliberately anti-Shia. Iran hopes that its new ties with the Taliban will prevent the revival of an anti-Iran policy.

The Iranian Supreme Leader has insisted that the Taliban have changed. But these hopes may be misplaced. While the Taliban have made all the right noises about having an inclusive government, there is little evidence that they will remain so 'flexible' once all foreign troops are out and international attention shifts away from Afghanistan. The very clear risk for Iran is that the Taliban will establish close ties with Saudi Arabia. Riyadh was among the handful of states that recognized the Taliban in power in 1996. It is not difficult to see why Riyadh would establish ties with the Taliban again. There is an obvious sectarian affinity between Saudi Arabia and the Taliban. This is a new opportunity for Saudi Arabia to gain some leverage against Iran. The regional rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia could escalate in a new arena, and Iran would be on the back foot here.

(Shahram Akbarzadeh is a Research Professor of Middle East & Central Asian Politics. He held the prestigious ARC Future Fellowship between 2013-2016. All views expressed are personal.)
Brussels, Sep 3 : In a debate on Afghanistan, Foreign Ministers of the European Union (EU) discussed how to engage with the Taliban, in particular humanitarian aid and a possible tide of Afghan refugees.

"The purpose of the meeting is to try to reach an agreement on coordinated engagement with the Taliban on the basis of certain conditions, and on the possibilities of cooperation with regional players," the bloc's foreign policy chief Josep Borrell told journalists before the start of the informal meeting in Slovenia on Thursday.

This does not mean recognition, Borrell stressed.

"This requires cooperation with the Taliban." It is important for Germany to set certain conditions, such as the formation of an inclusive government, the protection of human rights and women's rights, and that Afghanistan does not again become a haven for terrorists, said German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas during the meeting.

Luxembourg's Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn stressed that the Taliban must be aware that without international assistance, the country will collapse.

"Europe cannot be a positive Europe if it limits the number of refugees," he said.

The need to allow Afghans at risk to come to Europe was underlined by several other EU Foreign Ministers.

However, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto disagreed, saying that Afghans should not be encouraged to leave the country without restrictions.

Polish Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau agreed with him.

On Friday, the ministers will discuss EU-China relations, the EU's approach towards the Gulf countries and EU cooperation with the Indo-Pacific region.

Indian Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar will present his views at the meeting.
Auckland, Sep 3 : New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern on Friday confirmed that the violent attack that took place at the New Lynn supermarket in Auckland was a "terrorist attack" carried out by a Sri Lankan national who was shot dead by the police.

A spokesperson of ambulance service St Johns said at least six people were injured during the attack that occurred at around 2.40 p.m., including three in critical conditions, reports Xinhua news agency.

"A violent extremist undertook a terrorist attack on innocent New Zealanders at a New Lynn Countdown in Auckland," Ardern told a press conference in Wellington.

"This was a violent attack. It was senseless and I'm sorry it happened," she said, adding that the police shot the offender within roughly a minute of the attack happening.

The attacker was a Sri Lankan national who arrived in New Zealand in 2011 and has been closely monitored by the New Zealand Police from 2016 for his Islamic State-inspired ideology, according to Ardern.

However, it is unknown whether this man is a New Zealand citizen.

New Zealand Police Commissioner Andrew Coster also confirmed at the press conference that the individual behind the attack was under heavy surveillance over "concerns about his ideology".

The offender was acting alone and there was no further threat to the public, said Coster.

The person travelled from where he lived in Glen Eden to Countdown at LynnMall in Western Auckland, and was closely watched by surveillance teams.

He entered the Countdown supermarket where he obtained a knife.

Surveillance teams were as close as they could be, and when the commotion began they acted, according to Coster.

When the man approached them with the knife, he was shot and killed, said Coster.

Armed police have blocked off the roads nearby and at least 10 police vehicles were currently around the mall, where the supermarket is located.

Friday's attack comes two years after New Zealand saw its worst terror attack when a white supremacist gunman murdered 51 Muslim worshippers across two mosques in Christchurch in 2019.
Lucknow, Sep 3 : Congress General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra on Friday expressed concern over the lives being lost in Uttar Pradesh due to viral fever.

In a tweet, she said, "The news of over 100 lives being lost to a viral fever in UP needs immediate attention. Has the UP government not learnt any lessons from the horrific consequences of its disastrous Covid management in the 2nd wave?" She further asked the state government to ensure that all possible resources should be directed towards providing healthcare to the affected and taking adequate precautions to prevent the disease from spreading.

The Yogi Adityanath government has ordered that sanitation and hygiene operations should be taken up on war footing. The chief minister has also asked hospitals to brace up to meet the situation which is being closely monitored by health officials.

The chief minister, who is monitoring the situation himself, has ordered the health department to keep a round-the-clock watch on the situation and increase beds in the medical facilities.

The chief minister has also ordered to run surveillance and awareness program in the state from September 7 to 16, in which health workers would go door-to-door and identify those with fever and Covid symptoms.
Kolkata, Sep 3 : The five-member division bench of Calcutta High Court headed by Acting Chief Justice Rajesh Bindal, who directed the CBI and formed a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to probe post poll violence in West Bengal, on Friday appointed former Chief Justice of the Bombay High Court Manjula Chellur as head of the SIT.

Chellur, who apart from Bombay High Court was also the Chief Justice of Calcutta and Kerala High Courts, will not only oversee the investigating process of the three-member SIT but also provide necessary instructions and look into the day-to-day activities.

Though the five-member bench had earlier announced that a retired judge of the Supreme Court will work as the head of SIT, but as there was no retired apex court judge available so Chellur was appointed.

The decision to appoint Chellur came a day after the state government deployed 10 IPS officers mostly of the rank of ADG, IG and DIG to assist the three-member SIT team.

The team included Kolkata Police Commissioner Soumen Mitra, DG (Telecommunication) Suman Bala Sahoo and ADG (Admin-I) Ravir Kumar.

On August 19, the five-judge bench ordered the constitution of the SIT to look into the allegations other than murder and sexual assault.

The High Court had said the working of the SIT will be "overviewed by a retired Hon'ble Judge of Hon'ble Supreme Court, for which separate order shall be passed after taking his/her consent".

On Tuesday, however, the Court observed that it was aware that the SIT was not functioning and added that required steps would be taken.

In the order, the Court had directed both the CBI and the SIT to file a status report to it within six weeks.

There was a delay of almost a fortnight to create the SIT team, despite Sahoo writing to the government about the Calcutta High Court order.

The state government set up the team just before it has decided to move the Supreme Court on Wednesday.

Immediately after that, the state government appointed 10 IPS officers and asked them to assist SIT in the investigation process.

The SIT has divided the state into five zones - Headquarters, North zone, South Zone, West Zone and Kolkata police.

Two IPS officers will be dedicatedly working for each zone.

Sources in the state Home Department said that each IPS officer will form their own team and look into the specific complaints and report it to SIT within a specific time.

On the other hand, the CBI has already started its work.

The investigating agency, which is supposed to file a status report on post-poll violence investigation of grave nature in six weeks, has registered 38 cases so far.

The four joint directors of the CBI have visited Nandigram, Cooch Behar, Nadia, and parts of North 24 Parganas.
Damascus, Sep 3 : A fresh Israeli missile strike targeted sites in Damascus on Friday, state news agency SANA reported.

The Syrian air defenses intercepted missiles over the southwestern countryside of Damascus as the sound of the interception was clearly heard in the capital, reports Xinhua news agency.

The Israeli strike was carried out from inside the Lebanese airspace, SANA reported, citing a military source.

And the air defenses intercepted most of the missiles.

Meanwhile, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor said the Israeli attack targeted military sites in Damascus.

The Israeli attack is the latest in a string of strikes targeting military sites across Syria.

On August 20, Israel struck several military sites in Damascus, just two days after attacking sites in the southern province of Quneitra.
Bengaluru, Sep 3 : The Consumer court has ordered the state owned transport service, Karnataka Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC) to pay a compensation of Rs 8,010 for stopping the bus 400 meters away from the halting place.

Karnataka State Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission here gave the orders and directed the KSRTC to give the compensation to the victim within 60 days. Vijaya Bai L. (33), a resident of Urdigere taluk in Tumakuru district had filed the petition.

Vijaya had boarded the KSRTC bus from Bengaluru to Tumakuru on October 24, 2018. The conductor, after issuing a ticket till HMT bus stop in the outskirts of Tumakuru, failed to stop the vehicle. Upon her insistence, the bus was stopped 400 meters away from the bus stop.

After alighting from the bus, the petitioner could not cross the highway to reach another side of the road and had to reach the destination by taking the service of autos. After her calls to KSRTC helpline went in vain, she approached Tumakuru District Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission.

The court on July 29, 2019 ordered a compensation of Rs 10,000 and litigation cost of Rs 5,000 with interest. The KSRTC had appealed against this order. The verdict was given by the Karnataka State Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission on July 28.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
September 03 : Tara Sutaria was spotted at Mumbai airport as she jetted off to London to resume shooting for her forthcoming film, 'Heropanti 2', which stars Tiger Shroff in the lead role. Heropanti was Tigers debut film with Kriti Sanon in 2014.

Tara was seen at the airport with her parents, who had come to drop her. The actress was seen hugging her parents and saying goodbye to them. Tara was wearing a black turtle neck crop top, grey denim and knee-length black leather boots. She was also wearing a black mask. Many fan pages have uploaded her pictures hugging her parents before she entered the airport.

Tara has been cast opposite Tiger in Heropanti 2. It will be Taras second collaboration with Tiger after Student of the Year 2. Heropanti 2 will reportedly be even more action packed than the part 1. It is also said that tiger will do some daring stunts in the film.

In March this year, on his 31st birthday, Tiger had shared the release date of his upcoming film Heropanti 2. The actor shared a new poster of the film and tweeted, "My first love is back - action, thrill, like never before! Let's celebrate this one together on the 3rd of December in cinemas." However, due to the second wave of Covid-19 pandemic, shooting couldnt take place, and due to travel restrictions, plans for the international shoot schedule couldnt be made.

My first love is back  action, thrill, like never before! Lets celebrate this one together on the 3rd of december in cinemas #SajidNadiadwalas #Heropanti2@khan_ahmedasas @WardaNadiadwala @NGEMovies pic.twitter.com/g9JyMNzhiM  Tiger Shroff (@iTIGERSHROFF) March 2, 2021

The first look posters of Heropanti 2 were unveiled in February 2020. Back then Twitter users had pointed out the similarities between one of the films posters and Hollywood blockbusters John Wick Chapter 3s poster. Heropanti 2 is directed by Ahmed Khan, who had also directed Tiger Shroffs last release, Baaghi 3.

Meanwhile, Tata Sutaria will be next seen in Tadap opposite Suniel Shettys son Ahan Shetty. The makers have just announced that the film will hit the theatres in December 2021.
Colombo, Sep 3 : Sri Lanka has commended the UK's move to maintain the proscription of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) as a terrorist organisation.

In a statement on Thursday, the Foreign Ministry in Colombo said that that the government has been made aware that the UK Home Secretary has decided to maintain the proscription of the LTTE under the UK Terrorism Act No. 7 of 2000 following the judgement of the Proscribed Organisations Appeals Commission (POAC).

The Commission has rejected the application of a LTTE front organisation to de-proscribe the group in the UK.

"The LTTE, therefore, remains a proscribed organisation in the UK, as in over 30 other countries worldwide, including in the EU region," the Ministry noted.

"The LTTE was initially proscribed in these countries due to the group's brutality and atrocities targeting civilians and democratically elected leaders, involvement in organised crime and other criminal activities that impacted global and regional security.

"The continued retention of the LTTE's proscription worldwide, is a recognition of the continued threat posed by the remnants of the group working through its international network, which continue to finance terrorist activities, radicalise youth towards violent extremism and cause ethnic disharmony and disrupt cohesive living in every country in which they are active," it added.

The UK listed the Tamil rebel group which fought for a separate territory from the Northern and Eastern Sri Lanka, as a terrorist outfit in early 2000.

However the POAC in October 2020 decided to delist the LTTE as a proscribed organisation following an appeal filed in May 2019 by the front organisation challenging the decision.

The Commission held that the UK Home Office's decision to keep the LTTE proscribed as a terrorist organisation was "flawed and unlawful".

However Sri Lanka, which militarily crushed the LTTE in May 2009 after the 30-year-long war, appealed against the Commission's decision stating that there are "sufficient evidence to prove that the remnants of the LTTE and groups aligned with its terrorist ideology are active in foreign countries, working to incite violence and destabilise" the island nation.

India banned the LTTE after the rebel group was accused of assassinating former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991.

The ban had been periodically renewed and in May 2019 the Central government extended the ban for five more years under sub-sections (1) and (3) of Section 3 of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967 (37 of 1967).
Mumbai, Sep 3 : Senior Congress leader and former Union Finance Minister P. Chidambaram on Friday posed 20 questions on the Centre's proposed National Monetization Pipeline (NMP) intended to 'monetise' certain assets and earn Rs 6,00,000 crore revenue over the next four years.

Stating that the government should answer the questions, he demanded to know the NMP objectives and whether it was solely intended to raise the revenues over the next four years.

Referring to the criteria adopted upfront to identify the PSUs that would be disinvested or privatised during the previous UPA government, Chidambaram queried whether the same is the case with the current NDA regime.

Pointing out that for infra projects like roads/highways, a PPP policy already exists, he asked what is the difference, if any, between this (PPP) model and the one that would be adopted by the Centre under the NMP, while addressing the media in the country's commercial capital.

Moreover, if an asset is 'monetised' for 30-50 years, what is the value of the piece of paper that declares the government to be the 'owner' of that asset, what kind of asset will be returned to the government at the end of the period or would it be a "fully depreciated asset" worth practically nothing.

"Since the NMP is silent on the subject, will the government stipulate in the contract that the amount of depreciation should be put in a Depreciation Reserve Account which was used only to maintain, upgrade or add to the asset so that at the end of the lease period a valuable asset is returned to the government," Chidambaram asked.

He also sought answers on whether there will be provision in the contract to prevent asset-stripping by the lessee, the terms included in the Invitation to Bid (ITB) to ensure that the 'monetisation' process does not create monopolies or duopolies in that sector, especially to prevent such (monopolies/duopolies) emerging in the ports, airports, telecom and power sectors.

The finance expert queried whether the lessee will manage the current levels of employment and the policy of reservations, or other policies, subject to sectoral regulators, etc., in the 'monetised' asset.

Harking to the UPA which identified the Railways as a 'strategic sector', he asked what are the other sectors the Centre has identified as 'core' or 'strategic' that would be kept out of the NMP purview.

"Has the government examined the impact of implementation of the NMP on the prices of goods and services in the sector/industry concerned? What will the government or the regulator do in case prices are increased by the lessee of the 'monetized' asset," Chidambaram demanded.

Referring to the government's revelation of the expected revenue of Rs 6,00,000 crore in four years, he asked whether the government would shed light on the total capital investment in the identified assets that are expected to yield the aforesaid revenue.

"The identified assets must be currently yielding a certain revenue every year. Has the government calculated the difference between the current revenue (undisclosed) and the expected revenue (of Rs 6,00,000 crore) over a period of four years? If so, what is the difference between the two amounts each year during the four year period," Chidambaram asked.

On the government's announcement that the NMP would be co-terminus with the National Infrastructure Pipeline (NIP) that is expected to require Rs 100 lakh crore, the ex-FM sought to know how the Rs 6,00,000 crore over a four year period be sufficient to finance a Rs 100 lakh crore NIP.

Furthermore, he sought an assurance from the Centre that the expected sum of Rs 6,00,000 crore "would not be merged with general revenues or used for general expenditure".

Chidambaram further posed if the Rs 6,00,000 crore, when released, would not be diverted to partly-finance the fiscal deficit (Rs 5,50,000-crore in 2021-2022) or retiring old debts.

The Congress leader asked if the government floated a consultation paper on NMP, consulted various stakeholders including the workers or trade unions and demanded to know the outcome/minutes of these consultations.

He also asked whether the NMP was discussed in Parliament, and if not, whether the Centre plans to consult the Opposition Parties or debate in parliament.

Chidambaram said that the US is contemplating measures to contain monopolization and unfair trade practices of giants like Google, Amazon and Facebook, China has announced plans to rein in its giant tech firms and South Korea contained the influence of its huge family-controlled business conglomerates.

"Does the government intend to introduce similar measures while implementing the NMP," Chidambaram asked, saying the Centre "is obliged to answer these questions", and the media must demand replies from the government.
Mumbai, Sep 3 : Actress Bhagyashree, appearing on the 'Zee Comedy Show', has revealed why she was not comfortable doing kissing and hugging scenes while shooting for her 1989 film 'Maine Pyar Kiya', where she featured opposite Salman Khan.

She appears on the show as a special guest this weekend. After Sugandha Mishra Bhosle, Sanket Bhosale and Siddharth Sagar's comedy act based on 'Maine Pyar Kiya', Bhagyashree went down memory lane to recall an apprehensive moment she had while shooting for the film.

The actress said: "I was just 18 years old and though I was in love at that time and going to get married, I had never even hugged a guy till then. I got worried, and started crying after hearing that I will have to hug Salman during a song sequence in 'Maine Pyar Kiya'. After half an hour, Salman came up to me and innocently requested me saying 'Please do it.' I couldn't say no." In the film, there was another scene where Salman and Bhagyashree had to kiss each other. However, due to the latter's apprehension, the sequence was shot with a glass between them.

Recalling the scene, Bhagyashree said: "I was about to get married, so I wasn't so comfortable doing a kissing scene back then. Sooraj sir (Barjatya, director) came up with an idea of having a glass in between us and the kiss would be showcased through that. That's how they changed the sequence." 'Zee Comedy Show' airs on Zee TV.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
Lucknow, Sep 3 : Priyanka Mishra, a constable with the Agra police, who was sent to lines after she posted her video on Instagram, flashing a revolver in uniform, has resigned from her job.

She told reporters that she was being heavily trolled after her video was posted and she was extremely upset with it.

"If people are so angry with me, I would prefer to quit my job," she told reporters.

Her resignation, sent to Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Muniraj G., has not yet been accepted.

Constable Priyanka Mishra had apparently shot the video inside a police station and posted it on social media.

In the clip, posted a week ago, she is seen lip-syncing to a dialogue -- spoken by a male in Hindi -- that appears to laud what is described as Uttar Pradesh's culture of "rangbaazi (show-off)". The speaker seeks to compare the state's perceived notoriety with that of Punjab and Haryana, before suggesting that children as young as five years old have access to guns in the state.

"Haryana, Punjab toh bekaar hi badnaam hai. Aao kabhi Uttar Pradesh. Rangbaazi kya hoti hai hum tumhe batate hain naa gunday pe gaana banaate hain, naa gaadi pe Jat-Gujjar likhaate hain. Humare yahaan 5-5 saal ke launde katta chalaate hain (Haryana and Punjab unnecessarily have a bad name ... Come to UP. Neither do we glorify crime with songs, nor do we display our caste on our cars. In UP, kids as young as five know how to use guns)," the dialogue goes.

Priyanka Mishra, originally a resident of Kanpur, became a constable in the police department in 2020.
Palghar : , Sep 3 (IANS) The Indian Coast Guard on Friday rescued a lone crew member of a mini-barge which broke from its moorings near Ghodbunder and hit the rocks off Palghar coast, officials said here.

Resuming the rescue operation this morning, an ICG helicopter finally rescued the crew member -- identified as Rafique Shaikh -- and handed him over to the Palghar Police for further investigations.

As per preliminary information, the mini-barge had broken from its mooring when the master had stepped ashore for a meal near Ghodbunder on Thursday morning.

The tides and currents took the vessel and it got wedged in the rocks near the Amalapada lighthouse in the Arabian Sea, around 4 kms off Palghar coast, sparking a security scare on Thursday.

Further probe is underway, including whether the vessel master lodged a police complaint or not as multiple agencies got involved.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
September 03 : Rishta Likhenge Hum Naya and Bigg Boss 9 famed actor Suyyash Rai appeal to media via his social media to just let the family and friends of deceased Sidharth Shukla to mourn in peace, and not make a field day out of it!

Bigg Boss 13 winner Sidharth Shukla passed away yesterday due to a massive heart-attack, he was merely 40 years old, leaving everyone in shock and disbelief. As usual, media personnel are trying to cover the ground for fans across nation, but actor Suyyash Rai feels its not the right thing to do.

Suyyash just took to his social media and wrote a post, it read, Please!!! Dear MediaIts brilliant how you guys come and be part of our events and be part of happiness and trust me we really really appreciate it and feel touched by thatbut days like today when someone has lost their loved onesyou all should let them bein their own spaceand give them their timewith their loved ones to say a final goodbye in peace

Its heartbreaking to see them struggle just to step out of the car and reach there!!! Its okay times to let it be!! I know most of you are doing your jobs but its a request from the bottom of my heart to let such events be just a family affair read the full note.

Sidharth Shuklas cremation took place today at Oshiwara crematorium. Celebrities across all platforms visited the venue to pay their last respect to the much loved actor.
Athens, Sep 3 : 'Serpico' and 'Zorba the Greek' music composer Mikis Theodorakis has died at 96. The beloved Greek composer's rousing music and life of political defiance won acclaim abroad and inspired millions at home.

The Greek flag was lowered to half-staff at the Acropolis as three days of national mourning were declared. Theodorakis' death at his home in central Athens on Thursday was announced on state television and followed multiple hospitalisations in recent years, mostly for heart treatment.

Theodorakis had a prolific career that began at the age of 17. As a composer he began in earnest, as he worked in a huge range of genres from film scores and ballet music to operas, as well as chamber music, ancient Greek tragedies and Greek folk, setting the work of leading poets to music, including Spain's Federico Garcia Lorca and the Greek Nobel laureate Odysseas Elytis.

A music series based on poems written by Nazi concentration camp survivor Iakovos Kambanellis, 'The Ballad of Mauthausen', described the horrors of camp life and the Holocaust.

But it was the Oscar-winning film adaptation of Nikos Kazantzakis' 'Zorba the Greek' in 1964, and the slow-to-frenetic title score by Theodorakis that made him a household name. The movie starring Anthony Quinn, Alan Bates, and Irene Pappas picked up three Academy Awards.

Fans of his music were as varied as his work. 'The Beatles' sang a cover of his song and he was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize by the Soviet Union.

But the towering man with trademark worker suits, hoarse voice, and wavy hair also is remembered by Greeks for his stubborn opposition to post-war regimes that persecuted him and outlawed his music.

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis declared three days of national mourning, posting a photograph with Theodorakis at his home following a recent hospitalization.

"I had the honour of knowing him for many years and his advice has always been valuable to me, especially concerning the unity of our people and overcoming divisions," Mitsotakis wrote."The best way to honour him, a global Greek, is to live by that message. Mikis is our history." Born Michail Theodorakis on the eastern Aegean island of Chios on July 29, 1925, he was exposed to music and politics from a young age.

Theodorakis began writing music and poetry in his teens, just as Greece entered World War II. During the war, he was arrested by the country's Italian and German occupiers for his involvement in Left-wing resistance groups.
New Delhi, Sep 3 : China has been eyeing to take control of air bases, including the Bagram air force base, in Afghanistan after the Taliban took control of the war-torn country, which could be detrimental for India's security.

Expressing concerns, experts say this could be an attempt to keep India away from southeast Asia, where China wants to have complete control.

Reacting to the current development in Afghanistan, former diplomat Anil Trigunayat said the recent interview by Taliban's spokesperson clearly said China would be their most important partner under the new Taliban-led Afghan government.

"China is trying to fill the vacuum created after the US forces left Afghanistan economically and gets its Belt and Road (BRI) initiatives going. That is going to happen soon as the Taliban needs somebody to manage the air bases there," said Trigunayat.

The Bagram airport is the biggest airport and technically well equipped as the Americans kept it for their use till the end instead of the Kabul airport.

Both China and Taliban under the new strategic partnership will likely jointly manage the Bagram air base as China needs to have a secure air base when they will increase its economic plans in Afghanistan.

As far as the matter concerning China supporting Pakistan against India, Trigunayat said this has been the reality since long, it has been happening even now. China has always used its veto power to protect dreaded Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorist Masood Azhar when India was working to declare him as an international terrorist.

"Our worry is China, not Pakistan, which is a tool in the hands of China, and they use it to keep India away from Southeast Asia," he added.

West Asia expert Qamar Agha also agrees that China has been mulling for a bigger role in Afghanistan because of its economic interests and with the huge investment plans they aim to control a factionalised government, which will be formed on Friday.

"China has always supported Pakistan for arms, military equipment and has been providing the financial aid to Pakistan and now apprehensions are that it will push Pakistan to engage into a proxy war against India so that it will not face any challenge near the China sea and adjoining areas," Agha said.

The former US diplomat to the United Nations Nikki Haley on Thursday warned that the US needs to closely watch China as it might try to take over the Bagram air force base in Afghanistan following the Taliban's takeover of the war-torn country and use Pakistan to get stronger to go against India.

"We need to watch China because I think you are going to see China make a move for Bagram Air Force base. I think they are also making a move in Afghanistan and trying to use Pakistan to get stronger to go against India. So, we have got a lot of issues," she said.

Haley also said it was time that US President Joe Biden's administration reached out to its key friends and allies like India, Japan and Australia and assured them that the US would guard their backs.
New Delhi, Sep 3 : Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday virtually addressed the plenary session of the sixth Eastern Economic Forum (EEF) held in Vladivostok.

He was the Chief Guest for the fifth EEF in 2019, the first by an Indian Prime Minister.

Applauding President Vladimir Putin's vision for the development of the Russian Far East, Modi reiterated India's commitment as part of its "Act East Policy' of being a reliable partner of Russia in this regard.

He underlined the natural complementarities of India and Russia in the development of Russian Far East.

The Prime Minister stressed on the importance of greater economic and commercial engagement between the two sides in line with the 'Special and Privileged Strategic Partnership'.

He highlighted the importance of health and pharma sectors as important areas of cooperation that have emerged during the pandemic.

He also referred to other potential areas of economic cooperation including diamond, coking coal, steel, timber etc.

Recalling the visit of Chief Ministers of Indian states to EEF-2019, the Prime Minister extended an invitation to the Governors of the 11 regions of Russian Far East to visit India.

An Indian delegation led by Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas Hardeep Singh Puri comprising leading Indian oil and gas companies are attending the India-Russia Business dialogue within the framework of EEF.

An online meeting between Chief Minister of Gujarat Vijay Rupani and Governor of Sakha-Yakutia province of Russia was held on September 2 on the sidelines of EEF.

Over 50 representatives from reputed Indian companies from various sectors will also be participating in the online format.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
New Delhi, Sep 3 : Rahul Gandhi on Friday released a video about how his late father and former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi used to meet people, but now in the era of social media, the people's voices was suppressed, he alleged.

He said, "So the tragedy of politics of today is that, in a world of media, in a world of WhatsApp, in a world of Twitter, in Facebook, that voice is basically suppressed." In the second video released within two days, he showed the picture of Rajiv Gandhi, where he can be seen talking to people, "This picture here. He's listening. Right, so it was constantly listening and he would make these connections -- he would be in this crowd, listen and then suddenly, he would say okay this can be transformed with this instrument," he said.

Rahul said it was a journey where he would go and listen and then go and look around to find instruments that could transform the voice of this nation that he was hearing.

"There is this tremendous voice here, but it is struggling to speak. Of course, that's been magnified today, it's not being allowed to speak, and it is being crushed with monopoly, you know media... it's been crushed with an authoritarian system," he alleged.

Rahul said, "This voice is... call it God. There's nothing more than this voice. It's not a singular voice. It's millions and millions of voices that speak together... have huge power when they speak and tremendous amount of nuance." He said that his father Rajiv Gandhi during the tours was not only connecting with the people, he was actually trying to understand their needs and it was about listening to what they were trying to tell him and I remember a lot of it was just going there and listening."

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
Chennai, Sep 3 : Tamil Nadu Highways Minister, E.V. Velu, will meet Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways, Nitin Gadkari, to convey the state government's decision to close five toll plazas within a 10 km radius.

The state would close down 32 of the 48 toll plazas in the state, a statement from the minister's office said on Friday.

The five toll plazas that will be immediately shut are Nemili near Sriperumbudur, Chennasamudram, Vanagaram, Paranur near Chengalpet and Surapattu.

The minister said that as per the National Highways Fee (Determination of Rates and Collection) Rules 2008, Tamil Nadu should have only 16 toll plazas.

According to the rule, there should be a minimum distance of 60 km between the toll plazas.

The statement said that there are at present 48 toll plazas in Tamil Nadu and many of them violate this provision.

The minister's office also said that the matter has already been communicated to the Union ministry.

The Tamil Nadu government will, as a first step, close down five toll plazas.

"I will meet Nitin Gadkariji personally and apprise him about the unscientific manner in which toll plazas are located in Tamil Nadu. This is creating a lot of trouble for the people. I will communicate the matter to the minister and take the necessary steps after the meeting," Velu told IANS.

Meanwhile, the Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK) and the Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (VCK) have called upon the state government to withdraw the hike in toll plaza rates.

The PMK and VCK have also threatened to launch protests across the state in front of the toll plazas if immediate action is not taken in the matter.
Tokyo, Sep 3 : Harvinder Singh came back from two sets down to beat Bato Tsydendorzhiev of the Russian Paralympic Committee (RPC) 6-5 in a single-arrow shootout and reached the quarterfinals of the Men's Individual Recurve Open at the Paralympic Games on Friday.

Harvinder shot 26 in the first set as against 28 by the Russian. He shot a poor 23 in the next set, including a five, as the Russian surged ahead 26-23. With his back to the wall, the 30-year-old Indian came up with a brilliant 29 in the third set while in response, Tsydendorzhiev scored only 26 as Harvinder made the score 2-4.

Both archers shot poorly in the fourth set with Tsydendorzhiev managing 21 with two 8s and a five while Harvinder too shot a five on the first arrow but got two 9s in the next two to make it 23. With the set scores tied 4-4, both archers shot 28 apiece with an identical 8, 10, and 10. Tied 5-5, Harvinder scraped through with an 8 while Tsydendorzhiev managed only a seven in the shootout, the Indian emerging winner 6-5.

Harvinder will meet Maik Szarszewski of Germany In the quarterfinal later in the day.

Harvinder is the lone Indian archer remaining in contention as Vivek Chikara lost 7-3 to David Phillips in the pre-quarterfinals. After going down in the first set 25-27, Chikara tied the second set at 25-25. He won the next set 28-22 but lost in the next two sets 27-29 and 17-23 in the final, registering a zero on the first arrow of the final set.

Earlier, Harvinder stormed into the pre-quarterfinals by beating Italian Stefano Travisani 6-5 via a shootout in a 1/16 Elimination duel at the Tokyo Paralympic Games here on Friday.

Harvinder, who bagged a gold medal at the Asian Para Games in Jakarta, Indonesia in 2018, had won the first two sets and taken a 4-0 lead winning them 27-24 and 26-22 when his Italian opponent came back strongly to take the third set 27-26 at the Yumenoshima Ranking Field.

The duo bagged a point each (25-25) and the score was still in Harvinder's favour 5-3. However, Harvinder could manage only 8, 7, and 10 points on his final three arrows as Travisani won the fifth set 27-25 with three 9s as he tied the set scores 5-5 and took the match into a single-arrow shootout.

In the shootout, Harvinder, the 30-year-old with a doctorate in economics from Punjabi University, Patiala, shot a 10 while Travisani could manage only 7.

Harvinder thus set up a pre-quarterfinal encounter with the Russian Paralympic Committee's (RPC) Bato Tsydendorzhiev later in the day.

Harvinder, considered by experts in para archery as a bright prospect after his victory in the Asian Para Games in Jakarta, was placed 21st after the ranking round held on August 27.
Thiruvananthapuram, Sep 3 : The 11th Kerala Pay Revision Commission has submitted its final report to Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, suggesting an increase in the retirement age from 56 to 57 for state government employees.

The retirement age for state government employees and teachers was raised from 55 to 56 during the later stages of Congress-UDF rule in Kerala in 2016.

Incidentally, it is only in Kerala that the state government employees retire early, while in most other states the retirement age is 58 or even 60.

The P. Mohandas Commission submitted its final report on the matter to Pinarayi Vijayan, which also includes the suggestion to introduce five-day week for all government offices instead of the present six-day system.

It recommended that all government offices must open at 9.30 a.m. and continue till 5.30 p.m., instead of the present 10 a.m. to 5 p.m schedule.

Among the other recommendations is setting up of a special recruitment board for selecting staff for aided institutions in the education sector, to be overseen by an ombudsman.

Presently, appointments to the aided institutions are made by the respective managements and the salaries are paid by the Kerala government.

It has been alleged for long that appointments of teachers are often made in exhange of hefty sums of money. As soon as the recommendation of setting up a recruitment board for all such appointments was aired by the TV channels, managements like the NSS, a socio-cultural body of the Nair community which owns a string of schools and colleges, have expressed their reservation.

Asked about the recommendations made by the Commission, the Leader of Opposition in Kerala Assembly, V.D. Satheesan, said that it is not possible for him to comment on the matter yet as these are serious issues, and the Congress-led United Democrsatic Front (UDF) will clear its stand only after discussions among the UDF leaders.

The fate of this new report now lies with the Kerala Chief Minister, who will have the final say in both the government and the ruling Left Democratic Front (LDF).

Also, all eyes are on the reactions from the youth wing of the CPI(M), DYFI, which had vociferously opposed raising the retirement age since there are an estimated over four crore educated unemployed youth registered with the state employment agency, waiting for a job.

Some feel the new recommendations might become reality as the financial position of the state is in a bad shape with its public debt at over Rs 4 lakh crore.
Chennai, Sep : The Madras High Court on Friday rejected a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed against the chanting of mantras in Tamil in temples controlled by the Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Department.

Refusing to entertain the petition filed by Rangarajan Narasimham of Srirangam, seeking the court direct the Tamil Nadu government to withdraw the 'Annai Tamil Archanai' scheme, which lets devotees opt for chanting of hymns by priests in Tamil instead of Sanksrit while performing poojas, a bench of Chief Justice Sanjib Banerjee and Justice P.D. Audikesavalu said that the issue was not an unsettled question of law anymore.

It said that a division bench of Justices E. Dharma Rao and K. Chandru (both now retired) had, in 2008, dismissed a batch of petitions filed in the court in 1998, holding that the Agama Sastra does not prohibit chanting of mantras in Tamil.

In his petition, Narasimhan had stated that the HR&CE Department's attempt to translate verses and hymns from Sanskrit to Tamil was "nothing but blasphemy", and "an attempt to create confusion and unrest in otherwise peaceful religious practices".

The petitioner had also contended that a secular state should not interfere in the religious beliefs of a particular community, and that if such an attempt was made by the state in any other religion, it would not end just in confusion but total unrest to the total law and order situation.
New Delhi, Sep 3 : The friendship between India and Russia has stood the test of time, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Friday, stressing the main contours of their relationship.

Virtually addressing the plenary session of the 6th Eastern Economic Forum (EEF) held in Vladivostok, he said: "Most recently, it was seen in our robust cooperation during the Covid-19 pandemic, including in the area of vaccines. The pandemic has highlighted the importance of the health and pharma sectors in our bilateral cooperation." The Prime Minister pointed out that energy is another major pillar of the bilateral strategic partnership.

"India-Russia energy partnership can help bring stability to the global energy market. We envisage an energy and trade bridge. I am happy that the Chennai-Vladivostok Maritime Corridor is making headway. This connectivity project, along with the International North-South Corridor, will bring India and Russia physically closer to each other," he said.

Applauding President Vladimir Putin's vision for the development of the Russian Far East, Modi reiterated India's commitment of being a reliable partner of Russia in this regard, as part of its "Act East Policy".

"This policy is an important part of our special and privileged strategic partnership with Russia," he said.

About bilateral cooperation, he said: "Today I am delighted that one of the India's biggest ship yards Mazagon Docks Ltd will partner with (Russia's) Zvezda for construction of some of the most important commercial ships in the world.

"India and Russia are partners in space exploration through the Gaganyaan programme. India and Russia will also be partner in opening of the Northern Sea Route for international trade and commerce." The Prime Minister highlighted that despite the pandemic-related restrictions, there had been good progress in strengthening business links in many areas.

"This include long-term supply of coking coal to the Indian steel industry. We are also exploring new opportunities in agro industry, ceramics, strategic and rare earth minerals, and diamonds." Modi also cited the separate interaction between diamond representatives from Sakha-Yakutia and Gujarat as part of this forum.

"I am confident that the one billion dollar soft credit line announced in 2019 will create many business opportunities between both countries," he said.

The Prime Minister states that it is also useful to bring together the most important stakeholders regions of the Russian Far East and relevant states in India on the same platform.

"We should take forward the useful discussions that took place during the visit of the Chief Ministers of key Indian states in 2019. I would like to extend an invitation for the Governors of 11 regions of the Russian Far East to visit India at the earliest," he said.

The Prime Minister mentioned that Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Hardeep Puri is in Vladivostok to represent India in the forum.

Noting that Indian talent has contributed to the development of many resource-rich regions of the world, he said: "India has a talented and dedicated workforce, while the Far East is rich in resources. So there is a tremendous scope for Indian workforce to contribute to the development of the Russian Far East. The Far Eastern Federal University which is where this forum is being held is home to a growing number of students from India."
Chennai, Sep 3 : Mixed views were expressed by insurance industry officials to whether a shakeout or promoter exits in the Indian insurance sector are on the cards, as HDFC Life Insurance Company Ltd on Friday announced the acquisition of Exide Life Insurance Company Ltd for Rs 6,687 crore.

"As regards the life insurance sector, the storyboard is clear. The insurers have limited products (endowment, money back), lower internal rate of return (IRR) in endowment policies and disinterest on the part of life insurers to sell term insurance policies after Covid-19 death claims," a senior life insurance industry official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told IANS.

"If a life insurer has commercial banks as its distributors, then it is fine. If not, then the going will be tough," he summed up.

The bancassurance channel business is a major sales channel for the life insurers.

In the case of Exide Life, it does not have a major nationalised/private bank as its corporate agent, but several cooperative banks in this role.

During the first quarter of the current fiscal, Exide Life got bulk of its business from individual agents, brokers, and direct sales.

Interestingly there are banks that have teamed up together to float their own insurance companies - in both life and non-life sectors.

According to the official, even after the foreign direct investment (FDI) limit was hiked to 74 per cent, no new foreign player has started business.

Further, many of the foreign partners in existing life insurance companies have not hiked their stake to 74 per cent, the official added.

Not agreeing that a shakeout is in the insurance sector on the anvil, an industry analyst, not wanting to be named, told IANS that there may be promoters who may want to exit their insurance ventures and focus on their core business.

The analyst said for Exide Industries, its main focus is batteries and would like to concentrate on that by committing additional funds in that business.

Announcing the sale of Exide Life to HDFC Life, Exide Industries Ltd Vice Chairman and Exide Life Insurance Company Ltd Chairman Rajan B. Raheja said: "The focus of Exide Industries has always been to enhance the value for its stakeholders." According to Exide Industries, it has invested a total of Rs 1,679.59 crore in Exide Life, a wholly-owned subsidiary and in turn, gets a value of Rs 6,687 crore on the sale.

Exide Life is the second life insurance company to be sold after AMP Sanmar Life Insurance was sold to Reliance Life Insurance, now Reliance Nippon Life Insurance.

The general insurance sector saw stake sale/purchase last year. Paytm acquired Raheja QBE, HDFC Ergo acquired Apollo Munich, Sachin Bansal bought DHFL General Insurance, and Bharti Axa General was acquired by ICICI Lombard.

Industry officials had earlier told IANS that world over, post opening up of the insurance sector, there will be a large number of players.

About eight years after the sectoral liberalisation, mergers and acquisition would happen but in India, it has not happened in large numbers.

Perhaps the trend is slowly in the making and mergers and acquisitions, promoter's selling out may start happening is one view.

(Venkatachari Jagannathan can be contacted at v.jagannathan@ians.in)
London, Sep 3 : For the third consecutive Test in the ongoing series, Jarvo, a fan dressed in Indian jersey breached the security cordon and entered the field of play.

The incident took place in the 34th over of the England innings on Friday, the second day of the ongoing fourth Test being played at The Oval.

Jarvo ran in before the bowler Umesh Yadav could get into his run-up for a delivery, and got into a position to deliver the ball. The security ran in to nab him.

It remains a surprise how security at different grounds have allowed the fan into the field regularly.

Indian commentator Harsha Bhogle tweeted, "I think a few people need to be sacked at grounds in England. This is a very serious security lapse and it just continues. Not even a prank anymore. #Jarvo #Idiot." Former India opener Wasim Jaffer also mocked the security at English grounds by tweeting a clip.

"Security guards at English grounds: #Jarvo #EngvInd," he wrote.

Jarvo had earlier walked into the field of play as a batsman during the third day's play of the third Test at Headingley.

He had walked into the field padded up, ready to take guard, after the fall of Rohit Sharma's wicket before ground security got into the act and dragged him out.

Earlier, during the second Test at Lord's, Jarvo had walked into the field and got mixed with the fielders. The Indian team members found it amusing.

Back in February during England's tour of India, a local fan had breached security in Ahmedabad and walked into the field of play on the first day of the third Test to meet India skipper Virat Kohli. The local police, however, had taken note of it.
New Delhi, Sep 3 : India has the potential to meet not just the country's, but also the global demand for green hydrogen, Union Minister of State for Earth Sciences and Science and Technology, Jitendra Singh, said on Friday.

He was speaking at the inaugural event of 'International Climate Summit 2021', an initiative by the Environment Committee, PHD Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

The summit's theme was 'Powering India's Hydrogen Ecosystem'.

Explaining India's 'aspirational' goal of 'Hydrogen 2-1-2', the minister said, "2 means green hydrogen that nation costs for less than $2 per kg; 1 means hydrogen storage plus distribution plus refuelling that cost less than $1 per kg and the last 2 is for replacement of incubement end-use technology with green hydrogen technology of less than 2 millions." "More than 90 per cent of our energy is met by imported fossil fuels. Given our population size, the problem of climate change in the world cannot be resolved unless India reduces its emission. That is both a responsibility as well as obligation," the minister said.

He recalled that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced the launch of the National Hydrogen Energy Mission during his 75th Independence Day and spoken about transforming India into a global Green Hydrogen hub for production and exports.

Meanwhile, Minister of State for Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Ashwini Kumar Choubey, said, "We intend to achieve 40 per cent of non-fossil usage by 2030, making a significant stride towards improving the current state of the country and establishing a green hydrogen ecosystem to smoothen the path to a responsible living." Addressing the conference virtually, Chairman and Managing Director of Reliance Industries Limited, Mukesh Ambani, said, "India is determined to achieve 'Azaadi' from dependence on fossil energy and become 'AatmaNirbhar' in new and renewable energy. Since climate change is undoubtedly the most daunting challenge facing human civilisation today, we should rapidly transition to a new era of clean, green and renewable energy. Green hydrogen, a zero-carbon energy will play a fundamental role in the world's decarbonization plans." Stating that every challenge in the human history has come with an opportunity to move to the next level of progress; climate change is an opportunity for human to renew themselves, Ambani shared a target of green hydrogen of 1-1-1.

"$1 per kg of hydrogen in one decade can be achieved," he said.

Co-organised by Invest India in partnership with NITI Aayog, MoEF&CC, Department of Scientific & Industrial Research, CSIR, and the Department of Science & Technology, Government of India, the summit was attended by experts, nobel laureates, policy makers, industry leaders, and scientists from across the globe.
Chandigarh, Sep 3 : Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh on Friday underlined the need to propagate the ideology of the ninth Sikh Guru, Sri Guru Tegh Bahadur Sahib, around the world to promote the values of peace, harmony, secularism and co-existence, which he had upheld through his supreme sacrifice.

In his address in the Assembly's special session to mark the commemoration of 400th Prakash Purb of Guru Tegh Bahadur, he stressed that the Sikh faith is distinguished by the tradition of martyrdom to uphold principles and righteousness given to "us by our great Gurus".

Noting that the life and message of Guru Tegh Bahadur constitutes the essence of what "we have come to regard as Punjabiyat", Amarinder Singh that this comprises "our saanjhi tehzeeb, our ma-boli Punjabi, our close ties of amity and fraternity cutting across people, faiths, castes and communities".

"When we talk of Punjab and Punjabis, Punjabiyat must follow. This Punjabiyat embodied in the life and teachings of the Great Guru need to be understood, appreciated and nurtured carefully," he said, adding that this has been taken by "our people to all corners of the globe where they have made a special place for themselves through dint of hard work, enterprise and sacrifice".

"Punjabiyat often is tested by forces that represent a narrow and short-sighted perspective as against the broad all-embracing vision given by our Gurus, therefore, it is our bounden duty as representatives of the people to guard against such inimical forces very consciously and not to allow our competing political interests to ever undermine the strong foundations of this Punjabiyat." He also said the 400th Prakash Purb of the ninth Guru should help "us renew our pledge and to show the people the right path as their rightful leaders and representatives".

History remembers Guru Tegh Bahadur with great pride as 'Hind Di Chadar' for making the supreme sacrifice for opposing forced conversion and for protection of religious freedom, he noted.

The ninth Guru attained martyrdom in November 1675 along with his associates Bhai Mati Das, Bhai Sati Das and Bhai Dayal Das, who were brutally tortured, to safeguard the religious freedom of Hindus of Kashmir under the reign of Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb.

The Chief Minister also mentioned that Guru Tegh Bahadur's son Dasmesh Pita Sri Guru Gobind Singh has evocatively described his father's sacrifice as "sees diya par sirar na diya (I gave my head but not my creed)".

"Guru Sahib's 'sees' was carried by another associate Bhai Jiwan Singh (known as Jaita ji) to Guru Gobind Singh from Delhi to Sri Anandpur Sahib. On this occasion, let us all pay special tribute to the remarkable bravery and courage of Bhai Jaita ji. History will remember him whenever we speak of this tragic event," he said.

Outlining the celebrations plans of the state government to mark this mega event, the Chief Minister said the elaborate arrangements were earlier made to commemorate this historic event. "However, the surge of Covid cases from April led us to defer the larger public programmes." He said he was happy that the Central government has also decided to observe this historic occasion in a befitting manner.

Punjab Governor Banwari Lal Purohit described the martyrdom of Sri Guru Tegh Bahadur Sahib as one of the most important turning points in the spiritual, religious and political history of India.

"Guru ji shines among the galaxy of great spiritual Gurus whose message continues to guide the humanity and remains universally relevant at all the times," he said.

One of the key elements in the teachings of Guru Sahib has been the spirit of 'sewa' or selfless service, he said. "This is considered as one of the foremost pious duties that the mankind can perform enriching us with selflessness, humility and gratitude towards God." Assembly Speaker Rana K.P. Singh said the unprecedented sacrifice of Sri Guru Tegh Bahadur would ever inspire the mankind to imbibe the message of love, harmony and tolerance, thereby rising above the parochial consideration of caste, color, and creed.

In his keynote address, former Chief Justice of India, Justice J.S. Khehar emphasised the importance of 'ardas' in the Sikh way of life across the globe and said that "we all are blessed today to celebrate 400th Prakash Purb of Sri Guru Tegh Bahadur to remember and contemplate on Guru Sahib".

He cited the martyrdom of the fifth Sikh guru, Sri Guru Arjan Dev, as the event that changed the course of the Sikh history and started the process of militarisation of the Sikhs who until then were a peaceful community.

"This background must be understood to understand the events that shaped the circumstances in Guru Tegh Bahadur ji's life," he said, recounting the life and events of Guru Sahib who didn't bow before the then Mughal Emperor and instead chose martyrdom to ensure protection of religious rights of all.
Hyderabad, Sep 3 : Start-ups can compete for grant funding of up to Rs 10 crore each for developing high-technology solutions against specific requirements posted by Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) under its Technology Development Fund (TDF) scheme.

T-Works and T-Hub on Friday co-hosted a high-level DRDO team led by Director Nidhi Bansal to orient start-ups and MSMEs on TDF scheme.

Bansal said start-ups working with T-Works and T-Hub can make efficient use of the funds awarded by DRDO-TDF. "In fact, 20 per cent of the awarded funds may be used by start-ups to utilise services of supporting incubators," she said.

The TDF has been established to promote self-reliance in defence technology as a part of 'Make in India' initiative. A programme of the Defence Ministry, it is executed by the DRDO to meet the requirements of the three services, defence production, and the DRDO. The scheme encourages participation of public/private industries, with a preference for start-ups and MSMEs, so as to create an ecosystem for enhancing cutting edge technology capability in the defence sector.

Telangana's Principal Secretary, Industries and ITE&C, Jayesh Ranjan, said that the state government has always been proactive in facilitating unique Central government schemes such as DRDO-TDF to reach start-ups.

"We have T-Works, T-Hub, We-Hub, and RICH as part of our innovation ecosystem to drive start-up growth in the state and country," he said.

T-Works, India's largest prototyping centre, will enable start-ups to develop products which meet stringent quality standards of the DRDO through access to industry-grade equipment and in-house technical experts. "The facility will lower barriers for participating companies by providing high-end prototyping techniques at affordable prices all under one roof in our 78,000sft centre in Hi-tec City," said Sujai Karampuri, CEO T-Works and Director Electronics, EV and ESS in the Telangana Government.

Representatives of 50 start-ups and MSMEs and senior officials attended the meet.
Mumbai, Sep 3 : Classical legend, composer and sitarist Shujaat Husain Khan and renowned Iranian-American vocalist Katayoun Goudarzi give new urgency to the age-old love poems of Rumi on their latest album 'This Pale' to be released on October 1.

Grammy-nominated sitar player Shujaat Khan, vocalist Katayoun Goudarzi, Iranian Ney player Shaho Andalibi, and fifth-generation tabla player of the Thirakwa lineage Shariq Mustafa have come together for the creation of the album.

They have forged an unlikely ensemble that has defied the limits of both lockdown and cultural differences to bring a new urgency to Rumi's centuries-old words of wisdom.

'This Pale' is said to b a fresh multicultural take on an old tale. The ecstatic poems of Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi, a 13th-century Persian mystic bard and Sufi master, have always stood for tolerance, love, and inclusiveness.

Shujaat Khan is a sitar player of the Imdadkhani 'gharana' (school of music). He has recorded over 60 albums and was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best World Music Album for his work with the band Ghazal with Iranian musician Kayhan Kalhor.

Khan also sings frequently. His style of sitar playing, known as 'gayaki ang', aims to imitate the human voice.

Katayoun Goudarzi is a vocalist known for maximising the musical qualities of classical Persian poetry using different styles of singing and recitation.
Srinagar, Sep 3 : As the overall law and order situation in the Kashmir Valley remained generally peaceful on Friday in the aftermath of senior separatist leader, Syed Ali Shah Geelani's death, authorities are mulling phased relaxation of the imposed restrictions.

J&K police chief Dilbag Singh said the situation remained totally under control without any untoward incident on Friday.

Inspector of General, Kashmir, Vijay Kumar said that voice call and Internet facility would be restored on all mobile phones by 10 p.m. on Friday.

Authorities had imposed restrictions throughout the Valley on Thursday and suspended mobile telephone operations and Internet facility after the burial of Geelani at the Hyderpora graveyard in Srinagar.

Voice calling, however, remained available on postpaid BSNL mobile phones and broadband also remained functional on dedicated BSNL broadband connections.

Friday prayers were offered by people in local mosques in the Valley as the authorities did not allow large prayer assemblies anywhere.

Reports of stray incidents of clashes between stone-pelting youth and the security forces came in from some places in Srinagar city and Pulwama district, but the authorities said these were promptly controlled without any injury to anyone.

Meanwhile, Kashmir University announced postponement of all exams scheduled on Saturday.
New Delhi, 3 Sep : A "mysterious" tunnel, that leads to the Red Fort, was discovered in the Delhi Assembly recently and preparations are now being made to open it to the general public, Speaker Ram Niwas Goel announced on Friday.

Presently, its history is not fully known, but it is being estimated that the tunnel was used during the British times for movement of political prisoners.

With renovation works underway, it is expected that the tunnel will be opened for the general public by January 26 or August 15, 2022.

Addressing media, Goel said: "When I came here as an MLA in 1993, I got to know about a tunnel. Since then I asked to collect information on it but much details could not be gathered at that time." "We are constantly trying to find out the old history so that it can be passed on to the common people," he added.

According to the Speaker, the then Britisher rulers, had in 1926, turned the premises of the present Assembly, into a court, wherein freedom fighters, kept in the Red Fort, were brought through this tunnel.

He also mentioned a 'Phansi ghar' (hanging chamber) was inside the premises, wherein freedom fighters, sentenced to death, were executed.

"As the hanging house was lying closed for a long time, the renovation works there are underway," the Speaker said.

"Meanwhile, some lights have been installed inside the tunnel and it is also a bit difficult to find out how far the tunnel can go," Goel said, adding that due to the sewer and the Metro related works, it is apprehended that the tunnel would have collapsed.

"For now, the mouth of the tunnel has been opened and soon tourists will get an opportunity to become aware of some unheard aspects of history," he added.
Hyderabad, Sep 3 : When director Shiva Nirvana started shooting for 'Tuck Jagadish' with Nani and other actors in February last year, he had never imagined that the intense family drama he was making wouldn't hit the big screen.

The director and screenwriter had grand plans of releasing the much-awaited movie in theatres, but then came two successive waves of Covid-19 and the blueprint had to be drawn up afresh.

Today, as he prepares for the film's release on the OTT platform, Amazon Prime Video, he says, especially in reply to Nani's social media critics, the team was left with no alternative.

With seating restrictions in force in theatres even in states where they have been allowed to be opened, and the possibility of cinemas operating at 100 per cent capacity in the near future appearing remote, the producers of the film, which was originally scheduled for an April 6 release this year, were faced with two choices: losing serious money or taking the OTT route.

They chose the second option, according to Shiva, also because an OTT platform offers a pan-Indian audience for films. 'Tuck Jagadish' will now be seen by Nani fans across the country at the same time. Of course, Nani won't get the satisfaction of listening to the applause and cheers of a live audience.

Shiva recalled how Nani and he used to discuss which action sequence, power-packed dialogue or emotional scene would evoke the maximum applause from audiences in theatres. But now they know the film wouldn't keep lying in hard disk drives.

The 'natural star', as Nani is popularly called in Tollywood, empathised with those targeting him. "They are my elders. I have immense respect for them. There's nothing wrong because I understand the situation they are in. I am one of their family. I empathise with them," the actor said.

"Some are saying they will ban my movies. If the situation is good and still I don't go for a theatrical release, others will be justified in banning me. In fact, I will ban myself," Nani added, justifying the decision to go for an OTT release.

Shiva, whose debut movie 'Ninnu Kori' with Nani was a blockbuster, is pained over the attack on the actor. He recalled that whenever Nani went to theatres for premieres, he would stand at the door to watch the reaction of audiences.

In an interview to IANS, Shiva Nirvana said a theatrical release remains his first choice, but the situation compelled the production team to take a collective decision to go for an OTT release.

"From my childhood, I used to watch films in theatres. There was no OTT even when I got obsessed with filmmaking. 'Tuck Jagadish' has a big cast, complex emotions, a great musical score and beautiful visuals. I never imagined it will be released on the small screen, but when things happen differently, we need to change ourselves," Shiva said.

"Nani and I used to discuss the kind of response the film would get from audiences in theatres. We felt very disappointed. If there is one disadvantage, there will be one advantage.

"The crowd cheering, claps and whistles won't be there when you see the movie at home, but we will reach out to more people and that is the advantage. If you want to gain some advantage, you have to accept some disadvantages." The director pointed out that their target audience is the 25-60 age group. "Women will like this film, but in the present situation they can't come to theatres. The impact of the second wave is still there," Shiva said.

He added: "There is fear in their minds, there is uncertainty in Andhra Pradesh and overseas. Some theatres have not even opened. We must accept the fact. I want more people to watch the film. People who can't come to theatres, can watch the film on Amazon." Shiva revealed that in the hope that the situation would eventually get better, they kept advising the producers to wait. "We said to the producers that this film should go to theatres, there is no alternative," he recalled. "It was originally scheduled to be released on April 16. We kept postponing, but how long can they wait? We also had to see the problems of producers, the interest (on loans) was mounting and there was no end to uncertainty. In Andhra Pradesh there are no second shows and in other places theatres have not opened. At one point, we had to take a decision and we took the decision collectively," Shiva pointed out.

Shiva and Nani have also assured the producers that in case of losses, they will not demand the remuneration that is due to them.

Shiva believes that making a film for OTT will be a little different from films made for release in theatres. "There is so much great stuff on OTT platforms. If I want to really make some great stuff for OTT, definitely I would like to do it, but doing a film for theatre and giving it for OTT does not feel right. If you wish to go for OTT, plan for it because it involves completely different elements of filmmaking, script writing, and so one."
New Delhi, Sep 3 : The Delhi High Court on Friday held that right to protest and express dissent is a right that occupies a fundamental stature in a democratic polity, therefore, the sole act of protesting should not be employed as a weapon to justify the incarceration of those who are exercising this right.

A single judge bench of Justice Subramonium Prasad made this observation while granting bail to a woman and four men allegedly involved in the offences of rioting, murder of head constable Ratan Lal and injuring DCP Amit Sharma in northeast Delhi during the February 2020 riots.

"The right to protest and express dissent is a right which occupies a fundamental stature in a democratic polity, and therefore, the sole act of protesting should not be employed as a weapon to justify the incarceration of those who are exercising this right," it said, emphasising that it is the constitutional duty of the court to ensure that there is no arbitrary deprivation of personal liberty in the face of excess of state power.

"Bail is the rule and jail is the exception, and courts must exercise their jurisdiction to uphold the tenets of personal liberty, subject to rightful regulation of the same by validly enacted legislation," said the bench, granting bail to Tabassum, a mother of two children.

"The Supreme Court has time and again held that courts need to be alive to both ends of the spectrum, i.e. the duty of the courts to ensure proper enforcement of criminal law, and the duty of the courts to ensure that the law does not become a tool for targeted harassment," it observed.

The high court said it would not be prudent to keep Tabassum, who has two minor children, behind bars for an undefined period of time at this stage.

The high court noted merely being one of the organisers of the protest as well as being in touch with others who participated in the protest is not sufficient enough to justify petitioners were involved in the pre-planning of the alleged incident.

It also granted relief to 27-year-old computer science graduate from Bijnore, Shadab Ahmad, who was arrested on April 6, 2020, in the case. Similarly, the court granted bail to Suvaleen, who is merely 18 years old, Mohd Arif, and Furkan.

The high court noted that in all cases, charge sheets have already been filed and the trial was likely to take a long time. It also imposed bail conditions on the petitioners.

For Suvaleen, the court noted that he can't be behind bars for an undefined period, as the incarceration with hardened criminals will only be detrimental.
New Delhi, Sep 3 : Ahead of the Assembly elections sheduled in five states next year, the big picture has emerged with respect to the performance of the Central government and the overall goodwill of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The five states going to the polls are Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Goa and Manipur. Barring Punjab, all the other states are presently governed by the BJP.

According to the ABP-CVOTER-IANS BATTLE FOR THE STATES - WAVE 1, the goodwill of the Union government remains the same except in Punjab, which is up against the Centre over the three farm laws.

In Uttar Pradesh, the biggest state going to the polls with 403 seats, there is good news for the BJP with high satisfaction ratings for the Union government, and particularly for the Prime Minister.

As many as 37.3 per cent of the respondents are very satisfied with the Union government, while 42.8 per cent feel the same for Prime Minister Narendra Modi, as per the survey.

While 30.8 per cent are satisfied with the Centre, 28.8 per cent are satisfied with the work of the Prime Minister. A total of 31 per cent and 27.6 per cent are not satisfied with the Central government and the Prime Minister, respectively.

In Uttrakhand, which has a history of changing government every five years, the goodwill is maintained for the Central government, as 38.5 per cent people are very much satisfied with it, 21.2 per cent are satisfied to some extent while 37.5 per cent are not satisfied with the functioning of the Central government.

The popularity of the Prime Minister in the hill state is as follows -- 46.1 per cent (very much satisfied), 13.3 per cent (satisfied to some extent) and 39.6 per cent (not satisfied at all).

As per the survey, in Goa, 36.3 per cent people are very much satisfied with the work of the Central government while 49.7 per cent are happy with the Prime Minister.

In Manipur, 26 per cent respondents are very much satisfied, 40.6 are satisfied to some extent and 33.4 are not satisfied with the work of the Central government. As far as the goodwill of the Prime Ministers is concerned, 34.5 per cent are very much satisfied, 28.7 per cent are satisfied to some extent, while 36.8 per cent are not satisfied.

In Punjab, however, 66.8 per cent of the respondents are not satisfied with the work of the Central government, while 59.1 per cent are not satisfied with the Prime Minister.

Overall, 40 per cent respondents are very much satisfied with the Prime Minister, 28.1 per cent are satisfied to some extent, and 29.6 per cent are not satisfied.

The sample size for the survey was 81,006 in five states covering 690 Assembly seats. This state poll is part of the largest and definitive independent sample survey tracker series carried out in India over the last 22 years, conducted by independent international polling agency CVoter.
New Delhi, Sep 3 : Despite a drop in the number of seats it won last time, the BJP will comfortably form the government in Uttar Pradesh which goes to the polls next year, as per the ABP-CVOTER-IANS BATTLE FOR THE STATES - WAVE 1.

The survey revealed that despite an increase in vote share, the BJP will win fewer seats in comparison to 2017, but will comfortably cross the magic mark of 202 seats.

BJP's vote share will increase by 0.4 per cent to 41.8 per cent in 2021 from 41.4 per cent in 2017. However, the number of seats will decrease from 325 in 2017 to 263 next year. The BJP will get 254 to 267 seats, the survey said.

As per the survey, both the number of seats and vote share of the Samajwadi Party (SP), the main opposition party in state, will increase this time. SP's vote share will increase from 23.6 in 2017 to 30.2 per cent in 2021, an increase of 6.6 per cent. Similarly, its seats will increase to 113 in 2021 from 48 in 2017. According to the survey, the SP is likely to get 109 to 117 seats in Uttar Pradesh.

The survey further revealed that both vote share and number of seats of Mayawati's Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) will decrease.

Vote share of BSP will decrease by 6.5 per cent from 22.2 in 2017 to 15.7 in 2021. The number of BSP MLAs will drop by five from 19 in 2017 to 15 in 2021, as per the survey. The BSP is likely to get 12 to 16 seats.

The Congress will also see a decline in vote share and number of seats in Uttar Pradesh, a key state for the revival of the party.

Congress' vote share will decrease by 1.2 per cent from 6.3 per cent in 2017 to 5.1 per cent in 2021. The party will win only five seats in the 403-member Uttar Pradesh Assembly, two less than in 2017, the survey said.

Over 44,000 people participated in the survey from all the 403 Assembly seats in Uttar Pradesh.
New Delhi, Sep 3 : The ABP-CVOTER-IANS BATTLE FOR THE STATES - WAVE 1 is projecting a 4-1 scoreline in favour of the BJP in the five states going to the polls in early 2022 -- Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Goa, Manipur and Uttarakhand.

The BJP is ahead of the pack in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Goa and Manipur. The Aam Aadmi Party is currently leading as the single largest party in Punjab, slightly short of the majority mark.

AAP has emerged as a principal challenger or a close third party in Punjab, Goa and Uttarakhand.

The Congress is facing severe infighting across all the state units with Punjab and Manipur being the worst-hit states.

Uttar Pradesh has Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party vying for second and third spot, respectively, while the BJP being comfortably ahead of both.

The poll shows that anti-incumbency sentiments and the Covid pandemic have not dented the relative vote catching ability of the BJP.

The Congress, the only other national party, continues to be crisis-ridden and is unable to form a cohesive organisation that can offer a meaningful challenge, the survey found.

Uttar Pradesh In Uttar Pradesh, the BJP (NDA) is notching 42 per cent vote share as per the survey figures. This is despite the anger from certain section of influential Brahmin voters. SP is a distant second with a vote share projection of 30 per cent votes and BSP is projected to poll 16 per cent votes. The Congress remains a marginal player with 5 per cent projected vote share.

The BJP is slated to comfortably cross the majority mark with a projected 263 seats. This number is 62 less than its 2017 tally. Therefore, there is some anti-incumbency, but that loss is not enough to unseat the party.

SP will emerge as the principal opposition party with a projected 113 seats. BSP's vote share to seat share conversion remains poor, it is projected to win only 14 seats.

Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath is the most popular leader in the state with 40 per cent of those surveyed naming him as the preferred CM choice. Akhilesh Yadav of SP is the second most popular leader at 28 per cent affirmation. Former CM Mayawati is placed at the third spot with 15 per cent affirmation rate.

The UP BJP is led by a leader who leads his closest rival by close to 13 per cent popularity rating points. Also, UP BJP is projected to lead nearest rival SP by approximately 12 per cent vote share. The BJP, therefore, enjoys advantage of popular leadership and strong vote bank in UP.

Punjab Aam Aadmi Party is projected to become the single largest party in Punjab with a seat share of 55 and vote share of 35 per cent. Faction ridden incumbent, the Congress is currently in the second position with 29 per cent vote share and 42 seat share projection.

In a striking observation, Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal is projected as the most popular leader in Punjab at 21.6 per cent affirmation. It is pertinent to note that this is partly due to non-projection of a CM face by AAP. Akali Dal chieftain Sukhbir Singh Badal is the second most popular leader (19 per cent), closely followed by incumbent CM Amrinder Singh (18 per cent).

The new PPCC President Navjot Singh Sidhu has not cut much ice with the electorate as his popularity number (15 per cent) for CM choice trails that of Bhagwant Mann of AAP (16 per cent). Sidhu currently is the least popular among the Big 5 of Punjab's leadership.

The Punjab unit of BJP is staring at its worst performance in recent decades owing to the anger generated by farmer protests and loss of alliance with the Akali Dal. The party will gain marginal vote share to notch 7 per cent of total votes but it may fail to win a single legislative assembly seat.

Sidhu, the big bold gambit of Congress in Punjab has not shown tangible gains. Rather this move has divided the party. Aam Aadmi Party is clearly benefiting from farmer protests and anti-incumbency, but an absence of CM face is leaving the party just short of majority mark. Akali Dal and the BJP are unable to find a winning formula after their rancorous fallout.

Uttarakhand Despite following a revolving door policy vis-a-vis its CMs, the BJP is projected to win the state. The BJP is projected to win 43 per cent vote share and 46 seats. The Congress is projected to poll 33 per cent vote share despite a spirited fight by its local unit. This vote share may translate into 21 seats.

Key reason for this surprise performance by the BJP is AAP's rise in the hill state. AAP is projected to poll 15 per cent vote share thus taking away a large share of anti-incumbency votes that were to head the Congress way. Although this rise in the vote of share of AAP may not result in significant number of seats as the party is projected to win two seats in the survey.

Ironically enough, while the Congress is placed in the second spot, its leader continues to be the most popular leader as CM choice. Harish Rawat is preferred by 31 per cent of the state as CM choice, incumbent CM Pushkar Singh Dhami is placed second at 22.5 per cent popularity points. Anil Baluni of the BJP is placed a close third with 19 per cent popularity points. Colonel Kothiyal of AAP is preferred CM choice of roughly 10 per cent of Uttarakhandis.

The projected numbers highlight the issue of falling brand equity of Congress as a credible challenger to the BJP. If Congress were to be seen as the one and only challenger to the BJP, then AAP would not be able to cut away anti-incumbency votes. Hence despite a popular leader in its fold and a blundering incumbent party, Congress is unable to take pole position.

Unless Congress can re-establish itself as the primary contender to BJP in the state, it is advantage BJP in Uttarakhand.

Goa Goa is just like the case of Uttarakhand when it comes to BJP-INC-AAP dynamics. BJP is in the pole position with a projected vote share of 39 per cent and a seat share of 24 seats. Except that BJP's lead in the state is also reinforced by a popular leader.

BJP CM Pramod Sawant leads his nearest rival from the AAP by a full 19 per cent points. Currently he is preferred by 33 per cent Goans as the most preferred candidate for CM's post.

AAP is projected to emerge as the principal opposition party dethroning the INC. AAP is projected to win 15 per cent vote share and 5 seats. While the INC is projected to win 15 per cent vote share and 5 seats.

CM Sawant has done a competent job of managing anti-incumbency and is benefiting from complete disintegration of Goa Congress. The anti-incumbent votes are therefore getting split between AAP and Congress. This bodes well for the BJP.

BJP is gaining Goa on the back of non-controversial local leadership and a split in the anti-incumbency vote due to disintegration of Congress. This disintegration seems to be a national trend within smaller states.

Manipur BJP alliance is slated to win the state with 41 per cent vote share and 34 seats. It is significant as it signals the geographic diversity of BJP's ability to beat anti-incumbency across many regions of India.

Currently, the BJP is able to beat back anti-incumbency in North, East and West of India, this could be indicative of a larger subterranean trend that is not being picked up by political observers currently.

In Manipur Congress is holding onto its status of the principal opposition party, its former state unit chief Govindas Konthoujam defected to the BJP a few days ago.

This sums up the state of the Congress. From a potentially easy win the party would have to make do with runners up status.

BJP continues its golden run in Northeast India. Congress is facing a leadership deficit and crisis of credibility in line with rest of India.

The sample size for the survey was 81,006 in five states covering 690 Assembly seats. This state poll is part of the largest and definitive independent sample survey tracker series carried out in India over the last 22 years, conducted by independent international polling agency CVoter.
New Delhi, Sep 3 : The Supreme Court on Friday asked the Delhi Police on how long would it take to complete the probe involving former Fortis Healthcare promoter Shivinder Mohan Singh, who is accused of allegedly misappropriating about Rs 2,400 crore from Religare Finvest Ltd funds.

Senior advocate Sidharth Luthra, representing Singh, submitted his client has been in jail for nearly two years, since October 2019, and the charges have not framed so far.

A bench headed by Chief Justice N.V. Ramana observed: "How much time does it take to complete the probe in a criminal case? The accused cannot be kept in jail without trial." As the complainant's counsel argued that Singh is accused of siphoning of over Rs 2,000 crore, Luthra contested this line of argument by saying that accused in the 2G scam case were granted bail by the top court.

Initially, the bench noted that charges were grave and asked Singh to wait before pressing for bail. However, Luthra argued that other accused, who are traceable, have not been arrested. He emphasised it has been said that investigation is still going on.

After hearing arguments, the top court issued notice to Delhi Police.

"Issue notice to the Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi to respond and inform as to how much time it will take in conducting the investigation," it said.

Singh had moved the top court against the Delhi High Court order passed on June 14, which cancelled the bail granted to him by the trial court.

The high court order had come on RFL's plea challenging the trial court order passed on March 3, granting bail to Shivinder Mohan Singh in the case registered against him by the Delhi Police's Economic Offences Wing for cheating, criminal conspiracy, and criminal breach of trust.

It had noted that in the present case, the "nature and gravity of the accusation against respondent No 2 (Shivinder Mohan Singh) is serious".

In March 2019, the EOW had registered an FIR after it received a complaint from RFL's Manpreet Suri against Shivinder Mohan Singh, former CMD of Religare Enterprises Ltd Sunil Godhwani and former CEO Kavi Arora and others. It was alleged that loans were taken by them while managing the firm, but the money was invested in other companies.
New Delhi, Sep 3 : The Supreme Court was informed by Delhi Police on Friday that a 13-year-old girl, who was missing from Uttar Pradesh since July 8, has been recovered from Kolkata.

A bench headed by Justice A.M. Khanwilkar said: "This is certainly a reflection of the state of Uttar Pradesh Police which could not do it for two months and wanted two weeks further time." The Delhi Police also informed the top court that the man who had allegedly abducted the girl has also been arrested from Kolkata.

Delhi Police's counsel informed the top court that a team went to Kolkata, recovered the girl, and arrested the man. The girl's mother had moved the top court seeking directions to the UP Police and Delhi Police to trace her daughter.

Advocate Pai Amit, representing the girl's mother, submitted that he is extremely grateful to the apex court and the Delhi Police, which recovered the minor girl.

As the top court asked Delhi Police to file a compliance report, and the Uttar Pradesh counsel queried whether Delhi Police would conduct further investigation in the matter, the bench said: "Let Delhi Police file a compliance report and then we will consider the question of who will conduct further investigation." The bench has scheduled the matter for further hearing on September 7.

On September 1, the Supreme Court had asked the Uttar Pradesh Police to hand over the investigation record, in a matter connected with the alleged kidnapping of a 13-year-old girl, to Delhi police by the next day.

"The minor daughter has been missing from July 8, 2021, and despite an FIR being lodged with the Gorakhpur Police (UP) and despite an attempt being made to make a complaint with the Delhi Police, no action whatsoever has been taken to trace the minor daughter and bring her to the Petitioner," said the plea filed through Pai. The petitioner is working as a domestic help in Delhi and claimed the suspect had been trying to lure her minor daughter for a long time.
Hyderabad/New Delhi, Sep 3 : Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao on Friday urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to allot land for the Telangana Bhavan in New Delhi.

The Chief Minister, who called on the Prime Minister in the national capital, requested that Telangana be allotted land for construction of official building of state government 'Telangana Bhavan' in New Delhi like other states, which have their state Bhavans in the national capital.

According to Chief Minister's Office (CMO), the PM who responded positively and gave an assurance that land would be allotted for the purpose.

KCR, as Rao is popularly known, also invited Modi for the inauguration of Yadadri temple.

The state government has taken up the renovation of the Yadadri temple as a prestigious programme. He told the PM that the inauguration of the renovated Yadadri temple would be held in October or November. The PM responded positively and gave clear assurance that he would attend the inaugural programme, the CMO added.
Chennai, Sep 3 : The Madras High Court on Friday directed Tamil Nadu Police to respond to a plea by the accused in the Kodanad murder and heist case, seeking that former Chief Minister K. Palaniswami and AIADMK former interim General Secretary and late Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa's close aide V.K. Sasikala be examined.

A single-judge bench of Justice M. Nirmal Kumar asked the Sholurmattam police in Nilgiris district to file its reply to the plea by the three accused in the Kodanad estate murder and heist case which took place in 2017. It directed the Public Prosecutor, Hassan Mohammed Jinnah, that the reply be filed positively by September 27.

The three accused -- D. Deepu, A. Santhosh Samy, and M.S. Satheeshan -- filed the revision petition before the Madras High Court after the trial court had refused to summon Palaniswami and Sasikala.

Justice Nirmal Kumar, however, told counsel for the accused that they have not listed out the reasons to summon some people for examination as defence witnesses.

District Sessions Judge C. Sanjai Babu has in his order passed on April 30, 2021, said that the three accused had filed a petition before him to summon nine individuals including Sasikala, Palaniswami, Sasikala's relatives Elavarasi and Sudhakaran, former Nilgiris Collector Shankar, former Superintendent of Police Murali Rambha, AIADMK state organiser Sajeevan, Estate manager Natarajan, and Sunil who is under the care of Sajeevan.

The prime accused, K.V.Sayan, had also filed a petition before the trial court to summon nine witnesses for examination.

The only common witness in both the petitions was estate manager Natarajan.

During the trial in the sessions court on April 30, Palaniswami was the Chief Minister, and the trial court judge observed that the accused cannot abuse the process of the court to summon the Chief Minister of the state without any relevance.
New Delhi, Sep 3 : Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia on Friday met regional airline operators to discuss issues affecting their growth and ways to boost regional connectivity.

"Held the maiden discussion with small aircraft and regional airline operators on issues impeding their growth and the way forward for enhanced regional air connectivity," Scindia said in a tweet.

In another tweet, the minister said that the Union Ministry of Civil Aviation is committed towards transforming the landscape of air travel for India's common man.

Regional Connectivity Scheme (RCS)- UDAN has been among the flagship schemes of the government. Last month, Scindia had sought intervention of the Chief Ministers to strengthen the aviation infrastructure in their states.

In a letter to the Chief Ministers of Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, and Chhattisgarh, he requested their personal intervention to strengthen aviation infrastructure.

He urged them to instruct the officers concerned to initiate action for expediting various matters like land allocation, deposition of funds with RACFT, VGF support for international UDAN operations, amongst others.

Scindia also asked them to expedite airport development in their states.

The Airports Authority of India has embarked upon development and expansion of airports in the country at a cost of Rs 20,000 crore in the next 4-5 years in order to meet the growing passenger demand in the country.
Hyderabad, Sep 3 : The Telangana government will take steps for 100 per cent vaccination of teaching and non-teaching staff of government and private schools across the state.

Chief Secretary Somesh Kumar on Friday directed the Collectors and district officials to ensure vaccination of the entire teaching and non-teaching staff of the government schools and private schools.

He also asked them to ensure vaccination of the schools bus drivers, mid-day meal staff, cleaning staff and others (adults) who are associated with the schools.

The Chief Secretary held a teleconference with District Collectors, Additional Collectors, district medical and health officers and other officials to review the situation with reopening of schools.

He reviewed the details of students' attendance and vaccination of teachers. He instructed officials to make sure that every school places a banner stating all the teaching and non-teaching staff are completely vaccinated and the school is following Covid-19 appropriate behaviour.

He instructed the Collectors to ensure all schools follow the Covid appropriate behaviour and proper hygiene measures. He said cleaning of schools should be taken up daily.

If any student/teacher/school worker found with any of the Covid symptoms, the person should be taken to nearest hospitals/primary health centre immediately for Covid test. In case any school is found with Covid positive cases, proper isolation measures should be taken up.

Somesh Kumar also directed the officials to ensure strict and proper precautions during the midday meal programme.

Rashtriya Bal Swasthya Karyakram (RBSK) vehicles will be used for vaccinating the leftover teaching staff/adults who are associated with the schools.

The government and private schools, except residential schools, reopened on September 1. However, the schools have been directed not to compel students to attend the offline classes.

On the direction of High Court, he government also left it to schools to decide whether to conduct only offline classes or only online classes or both.
New Delhi, Sep 3 : Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao on Friday urged the Centre to sanction the Hyderabad-Nagpur and the Warangal-Hyderabad industrial corridor projects.

During a meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi, the Chief Minister submitted a list of demands including sanction of grant-in-aid for proposed textile park, establishment of Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIT), Tribal University and 21 Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas.

He said industrial corridor projects will have significant impact on employment generation in less-developed region of the country and will lead to immense economic development.

KCR, as Rao is popularly known, told Modi that industrial corridor between Hyderabad and Nagpur is proposed on the lines of Delhi-Mumbai industrial corridor, covering a length of 585 km. The project aims to exploit the central location of Nagpur which is proposed as a multi-modal international cargo hub and Hyderabad, which is a major IT and manufacturing destination.

"It proposes to leverage both the high-speed Hyderabad-Nagpur rail link as well as Hyderabad-Nagpur 44 Expressway. The proposed corridor can be designed to be connected through high speed passenger and freight rail connectivity between Hyderabad and Nagpur and also by six/eight laning of the existing national highway - 44 between Hyderabad and Nagpur," reads the letter submitted by the Chief Minister.

"About 50 km on either side of the road and rail corridor is considered as the immediate influence areas. Project influence area comprises of a combined population of 40 million, constituting approximately 27 per cent of total population of both Telangana and Maharashtra," it added.

KCR also urged the Centre to sanction grant-in-aid of Rs 1,000 crore for development of an integrated state-of-the-art textile park at Warangal.

The state intends to develop the textile park in 2,000 acres. The park will have all inclusive textiles value chain facility from fibre to fabric and thereafter to garmenting/apparel making.

KCR told the PM that an investment of nearly Rs 1,600 crore is required to develop the infrastructure facilities in the park. While seeking Rs 1,000 crore from the Centre, he said the balance cost will be met from the state government's resources.

He pointed out that Telangana is the second largest producer of cotton in India with over 60 lakh bales of long staple cotton production annually.

The Chief Minister also demanded sanction of an Indian Institute of Management (IIM) for Telangana. Though the Centre has a policy of establishing one IIM in each state, it did not sanction an IIM for Telangana as there is Indian School of Business (ISB) in Telangana.

KCR, however, wrote that ordinary students cannot afford to study in the ISB because of exorbitant tuition fee. He assured that the state government will provide required land in the premises of University of Hyderabad as there is more than 2,000 acres of land in the campus He also urged the PM to sanction an Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) at Karimnagar under PPP model. He said the state government would provide the required land and also contribute its share of funding as envisaged in the PPP model.

He also sought that the Education Ministry be asked to take steps to start the Tribal University in Telangana as envisaged in the State Reorganisation Act, 2014. He also wanted the Centre to set up this institution as a central university.

The state government has already identified 200 acres of land near Warangal to set up tribal varsity.

The CM also sought sanction of additional posts of Indian Police Service (IPS) officers in view of the creation of 13 new districts after formation of Telangana state. He said formation of new police districts, commissionearates, zones and multi-zones created the need for increasing total IPS cades from 139 to 195.

He also wanted one Jawahar Navodaya Vidyala (JNV) each in 21 newly carved-out rural districts. JNVs are providing access to high quality middle and secondary education to the rural students, particularly from poorer families.

KCR also requested that the Centre completely fund development of roads in areas affected by left-wing extremism instead of putting them in CSS format, in which the state are asked to contribute their share in 60:40 ratio.
Dakshina Kannada : , Sep 3 (IANS) A man in Karnataka's Dakshina Kannada district on Friday filed a complaint with the police, alleging that his wife, who works in Dubai, has terror links and wants to take their daughter away with her.

In his complaint to Superintendent of Police Sonawane Rishikesh, Chidananda K.R. also alleged his wife, Raji Raghavan, is threatening him with dire consequences if he did not agree to her demands. "She claims to be knowing certain organisations and she would get me and my family punished," he alleged.

He also claimed that a person from Lakshadweep is making frequent calls and forcing him to send his wife and daughter to Dubai. "This person is asking me to come to Kerala and he would give lots of money for sending my wife and daughter to Dubai for one year," Chidananda said.

He said that his wife has been working in Dubai for 11 years, and came back home once a year and stayed for a month.

"I asked her to stay back in India as children were growing up, but she refused and went to Dubai. After that, she stopped calling me and receiving my calls. Meanwhile, I got a call from my sister-in-law and she informed me my wife worked as a helper in a school vehicle owned by a Pakistani national in Dubai," he said in the complaint.

Raji Raghavan insisted that she would take the daughter with her and told him that she has come to India for the purpose. When Chidananda objected to it and asked her to stay back in India, she told him that she would take the daughter with her only for 6 months and bring her back.

"My parents objected to the proposal. Raji Raghavan then demanded a divorce and insisted that after divorce, I should be taking care of children. My daughter also opposed it and she has revealed to me that her mother had tortured her for taking my side," he said.

"After that, she was always found busy with her phone. Whenever it rang, she used to go away to speak. She began objecting to Hindu traditions of wearing flowers in the hair and applying vermillion on the forehead during Onam celebrations," Chidananda complained.

Whenever Chidananda asked about what happened to her savings, Raji Raghavan gave contact number of Mohammad Khasim who lived in Lakshadweep and told him that she has lent all the money to him.

He said when he spoke to Khasim, he asked Chidananda to send Raji Raghavan as his wife and if at all he wanted a mother for his children, he needs to wait. "Khasim has even threatened that if I don't send her, they knew how to take her," he said in his complaint.

"My wife, who went to sleep with daughter on July 26, gone away by the morning with a stranger without informing," he said in the complaint.

Chidananda said that he had lodged a complaint with Dharmasthala police station, and was told that she is getting treatment at an ayurveda hospital.

"I have been asked to wait for 10 days. Meanwhile, I am getting calls from Kerala to send away my wife and children. No harm should come to my wife and children. It is to be ascertained where actually she is working in Dubai and who is the person from Lakshadweep," he said.

Chidananda told IANS that, he is suspecting his wife of having possible terror links, and the matter needs to be investigated as her behaviour is suspicious.
Agartala/Guwahati, Sep 3 : The Northeast Frontier Railway (NFR) has started ferrying of raw natural rubber sheets, as a new stream of goods traffic. from Tripura to various states in the country, officials said on Friday.

Tripura, which is the second largest natural rubber producing state in the country after Kerala, is currently cultivating natural rubber in 87,500 hectares of land and producing 90,000 tonnes of rubber annually. Over 1.50 lakh families are directly and indirectly associated with rubber cultivation in the state.

NFR's Chief Public Relations Officer Guneet Kaur said that the railways, in co-operation with the Tripura government, has started transporting natural rubber sheets to different parts of the country and it would economically benefit the rubber growers as well as traders besides transporters of the local area.

"Tripura exported more than 53,000 tonnes of rubber during the 2020-21 financial year to Jalandhar, Ludhiana and Delhi. Transportation normally takes place through roads causing higher carrying cost," she said.

The CPRO said that interactions with rubber traders were held and the traders were informed that they can easily transport rubber from their nearest convenient railway station at a much cheaper rate in comparison to roadways.

Natural rubber is mainly produced in West Tripura, South Tripura and Sipahijala districts and these districts are served by railway stations like Sabroom, Belonia, Udaipur, Agartala, and Jirania.

"Cost of transportation per tonne of rubber by railway from Jirania (Tripura) to Delhi, Jalandhar and Sealdah is Rs 2,492, Rs 2,342 and Rs 1,745 respectively. In comparison, the cost of transportation per tonne by road for the same distance is Rs 4,500, Rs 5,500 and Rs 3,500," the NFR CPRO said.

She said that low cost of transportation would also result in overall availability of products at cheaper rate to the end customer as transport costs reduce.

A senior Rubber Board official said that seven northeastern states, specially Tripura and Assam, are cultivating rubber in 1,90,000 hectares of land annually, producing 1.15 lakh tonne natural rubber. As there are no major rubber-based industries in the region, Tripura, Assam and other states are exporting the raw natural rubber to different states in the country in the form of sheets.
Chennai, Sep 3 : Police and forest officials are on the lookout for culprits after the recovery of a 1.5 metre, 15 kg elephant tusk from a tribal settlement in Tamil Nadu, officials said on Friday.

Officials did not reveal the name of the tribal hamlet from where the tusk was seized on Thursday.

Chief Conservator of Forests and Chief Wildlife Warden Shekar Kumar Niraj told IANS that they "cannot reveal the name of the tribal village from where the tusk was recovered. This would derail the ongoing investigation".

The investigation commenced after information was received of the carcass of a elephant, with its left tusk chopped, being found at the reserve forest area in Udumpalpet forest range.

The forest officials said that there were no external injuries on the body of the elephant and that it seemed to have died a week ago.

The forest officials also said that the arrest would be made in a couple of days and that the department has zeroed in on the culprits. An official said that the investigation is conducted in a scientific manner as DNA fingerprinting is being done, and phone calls made from the area are also being examined.

The Sathyamangalam forest bordering Karnataka has been the area of operation for notorious poacher, Veerappan, who was later killed by a Special Task Force.
New Delhi, Sep 3 : India's textile exporters must aim to increase exports to $100 billion at the earliest, Union Minister Piyush Goyal said on Friday.

In an interaction session with the country's textile industry held here, the Union Minister for Commerce & Industry, Textiles, Consumer Affairs and Public Distribution said: "We must aim to increase textiles exports three times from present export value of $33 billion to $100 billion of textiles exports at the earliest." He asked exporters to achive a target of $44 billion in exports of textiles and apparel, including handicrafts, for 2021-22.

He also called upon the industry to aim to increase domestic production to $250 billion, and that his ministry is working closely with the Finance Ministry to resolve the issue of old dues on incentives for exporters.

Goyal noted that India is showing signs of robust economic recovery as the Q1FY22 GDP grew by a phenomenal 20.1 per cent and 90 per cent growth was seen in total FDI inflow in the first three months of FY22 as compared to same period last year.
New Delhi, Sep 3: Kabul may be in the news, but it is Doha that has become the magnet. Almost everyone of consequence from Japan to India and the European nations are rushing to the emirate to initiate a dialogue with the Taliban.

The latest in that frenzied diplomatic activity is the UK which has sent its Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab to hold talks with the Amir of Qatar and also the Foreign Minister. Raab is on a regional tour to assess the Afghan situation.

On Raab's priority list with the Qataris was evacuation of UK nationals and vulnerable Afghans. He also plans to discuss the rehabilitation of Afghan refugees in neighbouring countries so that they do not head over to the UK and Europe.

Raab's visit was preceded by the UK Prime Minister's Special Representative for Afghan Transition, Simon Gass, to Doha. The agenda for the talks is to provide a safe passage to the Afghans who have been closely allied with the UK over the last 20 years. This is believed to be the first public diplomatic meeting between the Taliban and the UK.

The UK has identified at least around 150-250 individuals along with their families who have to be relocated. Besides a safe passage for strategic Afghans, UK has not disclosed what else is on the agenda with the Taliban.

Just a day earlier the Dutch Foreign Ministry delegation too arrived in Doha to discuss operations at the Hamid Karzai International Airport (HKIA) Kabul and also evacuating foreign nationals and some Afghans.

Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands Sigrid Kaag met Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani. The Netherlands also shifted its Afghan embassy to Doha.

Meanwhile, Japanese news agency Kyodo News reported that the Japanese Foreign Ministry announced on Wednesday the opening up of a temporary office in Doha. This follows its decision to close down the Kabul embassy after the Taliban blitzkrieg in July and August. Japan's Afghanistan ambassador Takashi Okada will lead the Doha office.

Turkey, which has been pushing itself as a power in the Muslim world, and was a part of the NATO mission to Afghanistan, is jostling with Qatar for influence in Afghanistan. The two countries are also working together to operationalise the Kabul airport.

As part of its efforts to reach out to the Taliban more effectively, Turkish ambassador to Qatar Mustafa Goksu met the Taliban representatives in Doha. Turkey has been openly asking for a more prominent role with the withdrawal of the Americans.

India, which is closely watching the dynamics in Afghanistan, too met with the Taliban this week. Indian ambassador Deepak Mittal met the head of the Taliban's political office in Doha, Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanekzai over various issues that worry India. The prominent of these is the curbing of militant activity from Afghan soil that may impact India. New Delhi fears that many militant outfits in Afghanistan, which owe their existence to Pakistani support, may be marshalled against India.

Mittal took up other Indian concerns like the protection of minorities in Afghanistan as well as the operations at the Kabul airport. Stanekzai, the top Taliban representative holding talks with envoys and international delegations in Doha, has trained in top Indian military academies. Various Taliban leaders and commanders have assured New Delhi that the Taliban wants to nurture positive relations with India.

Doha was once again the stage for India's talks over the Afghan situation.

About a fortnight back, External Affairs minister Dr S Jaishankar had visited the Qatari capital to hold talks with Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani on the Afghan scenario. Jaishankar has been a frequent flier to Doha due to the seismic shifts in India's neighbourhood.

The irony is all of this is that though countries are warming up to talk to the Taliban, they have not made commitments about giving it recognition. However, in the fast-evolving Afghan situation, it is apparent that everyone is headed to Doha for a solution.

Qatar has emerged as the only player in the entire geo-strategic region--South Asia, Gulf and Central Asia where Afghanistan lies--that has opened a credible window for the world to view and talk to the Taliban.

Despite Islamabad holding sway over the militant group, owing to its deep relations with commanders and various militants, it is Qatar that has become the global hot spot. Publicly Islamabad has played middleman to just a couple of close allies and the Taliban. Maybe because it is not seen as a reliable enough country owing to its strategic interests in Afghanistan.

Since 29 February 2020, the day when the US signed the much-criticised peace accord with the Taliban in Doha, the oil-rich emirate has been thrust into the limelight for trying to play peace-maker in Afghanistan. Doha has been enabling talks between the two arch enemies the US and the Taliban for long. It also allowed the Taliban to open up an office in one of its plush localities.

The US picked up Qatar for initiating talks with the Taliban because of its neutrality in the region. The Taliban, with its various factions and numerous leaders, too found Qatar a suitable ally. This coming together of opposing forces in the Afghan theatre made Qatar a neutral ground. Probably, even more importantly, it has come up as a trustworthy partner and a reliable mediator between the world and the mercurial multi-headed Taliban.

The Americans and the Taliban leaders have been meeting on the Qatari soil for years, giving more credence to Qatar as a reliable partner for engaging with the Taliban. After a long and patient wait as an enabler for peace talks in Afghanistan, Qatar--the rich gulf emirate has come into its own, with a distinct foreign policy, in a geography littered with rivalries and once-powerful civilisations.

(The content is being carried under an arrangement with indianarrative.com) --indianarrative
New Delhi, Sep 3: With the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan, "the centre of gravity of world politics" has now rapidly shifted towards the east of Kabul, in which not only will India and China play a much larger role but the smaller countries including Nepal, Bhutan and Bangladesh will also come under the spotlight.

As many see the clumsy US exit from Afghanistan as a "huge" defeat for Washington, the Joe Biden administration is now set to up its ante against China in the coming months.

Analysts also said that the US could whip up the anti-China sentiments like never before at this point to maintain its credibility and importance on the global stage.

"The exit of the US from Afghanistan, in my assessment, will accentuate geopolitical alignments more severely the further geographically one moves east from Kabul," Bhaskar Koirala Director of the Nepal Institute of International and Strategic Studies told India Narrative.

"The United States, in the context of the Indo-Pacific Strategy, will most likely devote more attention to smaller countries in South Asia like Nepal as part of its efforts to 'contain' China. This is likely to be one of the consequences of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan," Koirala said.

US Vice President Kamala Harris, who recently visited Singapore, "sought to fortify the image" of her country "as a credible ally by offering a sharp rebuke of China during an address.

"Her effort comes as the White House faces growing questions about its reliability as an international partner amid continuing violence in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan," New York Times said.

The Biden administration will try and further cement its ties with countries like India, Taiwan and Japan among others at a time when questions on credibility of Washington's foreign policy have been raised from across the globe.

The Observer Research Foundation (ORF) in a recently released paper said that across the world there are worries about the reliability and credibility of the US as a guarantor of security.

"It would be foolhardy to take American credibility on external commitments as a given. While there are fewer doubts about US commitments to Europe and the NATO, the looser arrangements in the Indo-Pacific leave open many questions," the ORF paper stated.

As Harris' trip will serve as a test of whether the US can continue to dominate world politics and maintain credibility, all eyes are on countries like India and Taiwan. Will they chalk out an alternative foreign policy? Sources said that there are murmurs within policymakers in South Block to recharter India's foreign strategy which is less dependent on the US and more aligned with other powers.

"The US is driven by its own interests, India must be driven by hers," said an analyst.

(The content is being carried under an arrangement with indianarrative.com) --indianarrative
New Delhi, Sep 3: Cash strapped Taliban says China will be its closest ally, and key partner in the "reconstruction" of the war-torn country.

The Taliban also announced that it will be joining Chinese president Xi Jinping's ambitious project Belt and Road Initiative to revive the Ancient Silk route. In return, China will be allowed to fully tap Afghanistan's mineral resources, copper, lithium and rare earth minerals--the feedstock of the electric-car revolution.

"China will be our main partner and represents a great opportunity for us because it is ready to invest in our country and support reconstruction," group's spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid told the Italian newspaper La Repubblica. He said the New Silk Road, with which China wants to increase its global influence by opening up trade routes, was held in high regard by the Taliban leadership.

The spokesperson's comments are part of mind-games targeting the west, which has expressed deep reservations on drawing Afghanistan into the global economic mainstream.

There are "rich copper mines in the country, which, thanks to the Chinese, can be put back into operation and modernised. In addition, China is our pass to markets all over the world." After the Doha agreement for the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, Taliban leaders have been expanding their diplomacy from their base in Doha. Among the dozens of bilateral and multilateral meetings with officials from the US, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Russia, the group's engagement with China stands out the most.

The Taliban and China are not exactly new partners. They have a working relationship that stretches back at least a decade. In 2016, for instance, the militant group gave Beijing the green light to mine in Afghanistan's Mes Aynak copper mine and assured the Chinese that it was committed to safeguarding "national projects that are in higher interest of Islam and the country." During the July meeting, amid the Taliban's fight with the then Afghan government, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi's hosted Taliban leader Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar in Tianjin. While China shows an inclination to recognise the Taliban, it is also seeking iron-clad guarantees from the group to prevent use of the Afghan soil by Uyghur insurgents to target China.

The Chinese have acknowledged that the Taliban would play "an important role in the process of peaceful reconciliation and reconstruction" of Afghanistan. Sharing a narrow border of 47 miles along the Wakhan corridor, China views Afghanistan as a strategically important neighbour on at least three fronts: minerals and rare-earth materials, trade routes and the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), and the Uyghur minority group. Meanwhile, Chinese foreign direct investment (FDI) into the country could provide Beijing an additional source of geopolitical leverage.

Nevertheless, the Chinese have serious reservations about Taliban's close links with many terror groups such as Al-Qaeda and China's banned organisation, the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM).

After the Taliban's takeover of the country, the Chinese ambassador to Afghanistan Wang Yu was the first foreign representative to meet Mullah Baradar in Kandahar. During the meeting, he reminded Baradar to fulfil his promises-- break off with all terrorist organizations, firmly crack down on ETIM, and address obstacles that hinder regional security and development cooperation.

Despite all the attractions of being in the driver's seat in the Afghan geopolitical cockpit, the Chinese also certainly don't want to be listed as a country to be consumed by Afghanistan -- the Graveyard of Empires.

(The content is being carried under an arrangement with indianarrative.com) --indianarrative
New Delhi, Sep 4 : Congress interim President Sonia Gandhi has constituted a committee to examine the caste census issue with former Union Minister Veerappa Moily as its head, a party statement said on Friday.

Abhishek Manu Singhvi, Salman Khurshid, Mohan Prakash, R.P.N. Singh, P.L. Punia, and Kuldeep Bishnoi, will be the members of the panel, it said.

The committee will study matters related to the Caste census, and present its report to the Congress leadership, the statement said.

The issue of caste census has become a key political point with a wide section of parties, including NDA constituent JD-U, pressing for it.

Last month, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar - who has been a key votary of the demand, had, along with a 10-member all-party delegation from the state, met Prime Minister Narendra Modi to press the demand.
Bengaluru, Sep 4 : A high-level committee meeting, chaired by Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai, on Friday decided to conduct a simple and traditional Mysuru Dasara festival this year.

The Chief Minister also directed the officials to submit an estimate for developing infrastructure in Mysuru in connection with Dasara celebrations.

Briefing reporters after the meeting, Bommai said all the rituals that are connected with the Dasara celebrations such as the inauguration of the festivities atop Chamundi Hills, 'Jambu Savari' (elephant parade) and lighting of the entire city for 10 days will be conducted.

"We have decided to release Rs 6 crore to celebrate Dasara festival at Mysuru, Chamarajanagar, and Sriragapatna," he added.

The high-level committee also authorised the Chief Minister to select the eminent personality to inaugurate the 10-day cultural and religious festival.

With several elected representatives requesting a tourist circuit be established in the Mysuru region, and many potential tourist circuits such as Hampi, Badami, and Vijayapura, Bommai said: "I will discuss with the Tourism Minister and officials to make optimum utilisation of the opportunity to increase tourist inflow in the existing tourism policy." "Tourism has taken a hit due to Covid-19 crisis resulting in an economic slowdown. In this background, concrete steps will be taken to promote tourism," he added.

Cooperation and Mysuru in-charge Minister S. T. Somashekar, Kannada and Culture Minister V. Sunil Kumar, Urban Development Minister Byrathi Basavaraj, Chief Secretary P. Ravi Kumar, MPs, MLAs and other elected representatives were present in the high-power committee meeting.
New Delhi, Sep 4 : As many as 51.6 per cent of the respondents in the five poll-bound states of Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Goa and Manipur prefer Narendra Modi as the Prime Minister as compared to former Congress chief Rahul Gandhi, whose approval rating is merely 30.2 per cent, as per the ABP-CVOTER-IANS BATTLE FOR THE STATES - WAVE 1 survey.

The survey also disclosed that except for Punjab, Modi is the most-preferred PM candidate in the four other states going to the polls next year.

More than 58 per cent of the respondents in Goa prefer Modi as the PM candidate, as compared to Rahul Gandhi (39.4 per cent).

Similarly, in Manipur, 56 per cent of the voters have preferred Modi over the former Congress president, who got the support of only 6.1 per cent respondents. However, 6.1 per cent have chosen none of the two.

In Uttar Pradesh, 48 per cent of the respondents back Modi as the PM, while 33.5 per cent prefer Rahul Gandhi for the top post. A total of 13.6 per cent of the respondents do not support either of the two.

In the hill state of Uttarakhand, 49 per cent voters support Modi as the preferred PM choice, whereas 30.2 per cent opt for Rahul Gandhi. A total of 9.6 per cent of the people surveyed support neither Modi, nor Rahul Gandhi.

Surprisingly, in the Congress-ruled state of Punjab, 39.4 per cent of voters do not support either Modi or Rahul Gandhi, while 9.8 per cent did not give their preference.

In Punjab, Modi is behind Rahul Gandhi in preference, with 30.0 per cent of the respondents backing Rahul Gandhi and 20.5 per cent supporting Modi.

The overall sample size for the survey was 81,006 in five states covering 690 Assembly seats.
Bhubaneswar, Sep 4 : Pandemonium continued to prevail in the Odisha Assembly for the third day of the Monsoon session as opposition Congress created a ruckus.

However, normalcy returned to the House in the post-lunch session following an all-party meeting convened by Speaker S.N. Patro.

As soon as the house assembled for question hour at 10.30 am, Congress legislature party leader Narasingha Mishra raised alleged corruption in the selection process of the Odisha Staff Selection Commission (OSSC).

Joining Mishra, other Congress members too raised slogans against the state government on the issue. Unable to run the house, the Speaker adjourned the proceedings till lunch.

As the situation remained the same in the post-lunch session too, he called an all-party meeting.

Meanwhile, both the BJP and Congress indulged in a blame game over the Assembly stalemate.

Speaking to reporters outside the House, BJP chief whip Mahon Majhi alleged there is a deal between the ruling BJD and the Congress to prevent smooth functioning of the House.

"Adjournment of the House directly till 4 p.m. just a minute after the beginning of question hour shows that there was a secret deal between the BJD and Congress to stall the Assembly," he claimed, adding that neither the government nor the Congress wants to discuss any issue that is the interest of the people of Odisha.

On the other hand, Congress legislator Taraprasad Bahinipati said, "Yesterday, the BJP had raised the Mahanga double murder case and demanded action against minister Pratap Jena. But, today they remained silent. Why they became silent, because, they have nexus with the ruling BJD." Responding to the opposition, government chief whip Pramila Mallick said: "There is a lack of coordination between the opposition BJP and Congress parties. One day, Congress brought one issue, on the other day, BJP raised the same issue. However, the government is ready to discuss any issue that is in the interest of the people of Odisha."
New Delhi, Sep 4 : With an eye on next years municipal polls in the national capital, the BJP has planned to hold over 11,000 meetings with different sections of the society by the end of this month.

Elections to three Municipal Corporations of Delhi (MCD) will be held in April next year. The BJP holds power in the municipal bodies of Delhi since 2007.

Delhi BJP general secretary Harsh Malhotra told IANS that starting from the second week of September, the party plans to hold over 11,000 meetings till the month end.

"During the meetings, our leaders will interact with the people from different sections of the society like women, youth, Scheduled Caste, professionals, people from Uttarakhand, south India and others. The meetings will be held in small groups of around 25 to 50 prominent people from these groups," Malhotra said.

To win the support of the voters from the slum clusters, who traditionally used to vote for the Congress and now backs the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), the BJP has planned small meetings in these clusters from the second half of this month.

"From September 15, we will start holding small meetings of 50 to 100 people in the slum clusters. The plans will be finalised in the next couple of days," Malhotra said.

As part of the preparations, the BJP has formed committees in over 8,000 polling booths in the city.

"Of the 13,789 booths in the city, we have formed 21-member committees in over 8,000 booths," he said.

To get people's response, about a fortnight ago, 14 prominent leaders of party's state unit, including Delhi BJP chief Adesh Gupta, spent a night with people in different parts of city.

The BJP also blamed the Arvind Kejriwal-led Delhi government for stalling civic works by not releasing funds to the municipal corporations.

"The Kejriwal government is not allowing the MCDs to carry out their basic works by not releasing the due funds," Malhotra alleged.

In next year's MCD polls, the BJP faces strong challenge from AAP, as well as the anti-incumbency factor of three terms.

In the last municipal polls in 2017, in order to negate the anti-incumbency factor, the saffron party had denied tickets to all the sitting councilors.

However, the BJP is still to finalise the formula for candidate selection for the next municipal polls.
1-800-Plumber +Air & Electric Ranks No. 4935 on the 2021 Inc. 5000, With Three-Year Revenue Growth of 41.2 Percent

Inc. Magazine Reveals Annual List of Americas Fastest-Growing Private Companiesthe Inc. 5000

Inc. magazine today revealed that 1-800-Plumber +Air & Electric of Amarillo is No. 4935 on its annual Inc. 5000 list, the most prestigious ranking of the nations fastest-growing private companies. The list represents a unique look at the most successful companies within the American economys most dynamic segmentits independent small businesses. Intuit, Zappos, Under Armour, Microsoft, Patagonia, and many other well-known names gained their first national exposure as honorees on the Inc. 5000.



We are humbled to be listed alongside so many other respected names. More than anything, our inclusion on the Inc. 5000 list is a sign of the hard work and dedication of our team and the countless hours they spend caring for our customers and community. They have paved the way for our growth, even during a global pandemic. And of course, a big thank you to our customers. This wouldn't be possible without you. Thank you, from all of us. - Jasen Shreiner

Not only have the companies on the 2021 Inc. 5000 been very competitive within their markets, but this years list also proved especially resilient and flexible given 2020s unprecedented challenges. Among the 5,000, the average median three-year growth rate soared to 543 percent, and median revenue reached $11.1 million. Together, those companies added more than 610,000 jobs over the past three years.

Complete results of the Inc. 5000, including company profiles and an interactive database that can be sorted by industry, region, and other criteria, can be found at http://www.inc.com/inc5000. The top 500 companies are featured in the September issue of Inc., which will be available on newsstands on August 20.

The 2021 Inc. 5000 list feels like one of the most important rosters of companies ever compiled, says Scott Omelianuk, editor-in-chief of Inc. Building one of the fastest-growing companies in America in any year is a remarkable achievement. Building one in the crisis weve lived through is just plain amazing. This kind of accomplishment comes with hard work, smart pivots, great leadership, and the help of a whole lot of people.

1-800-Plumber +Air & Electric of the Texas Panhandle is located in the heart of Amarillo, TX. Since 1995, the Shreiner family has been serving the plumbing, heating, cooling, and electrical needs of the Amarillo and surrounding communities. We strive to take care of our customers with the highest level of excellence and expertise.

CONTACT:

Jasen Shreiner

513 Ross Street

Amarillo, TX 79102

806-622-3862

More about Inc. and the Inc. 5000

Methodology

Companies on the 2021 Inc. 5000 are ranked according to percentage revenue growth from 2017 to 2020. To qualify, companies must have been founded and generating revenue by March 31, 2017. They must be U.S.-based, privately held, for-profit, and independentnot subsidiaries or divisions of other companiesas of December 31, 2020. (Since then, some on the list may have gone public or been acquired.) The minimum revenue required for 2017 is $100,000; the minimum for 2020 is $2 million. As always, Inc. reserves the right to decline applicants for subjective reasons. Growth rates used to determine company rankings were calculated to three decimal places. There was one tie on this years Inc. 5000. Companies on the Inc. 500 are featured in Inc.s September issue. They represent the top tier of the Inc. 5000, which can be found at http://www.inc.com/inc5000.

About Inc. Media

The worlds most trusted business-media brand, Inc. offers entrepreneurs the knowledge, tools, connections, and community to build great companies. Its award-winning multiplatform content reaches more than 50 million people each month across a variety of channels including web sites, newsletters, social media, podcasts, and print. Its prestigious Inc. 5000 list, produced every year since 1982, analyzes company data to recognize the fastest-growing privately held businesses in the United States. The global recognition that comes with inclusion in the 5000 gives the founders of the best businesses an opportunity to engage with an exclusive community of their peers, and the credibility that helps them drive sales and recruit talent. The associated Inc. 5000 Vision Conference is part of a highly acclaimed portfolio of bespoke events produced by Inc. For more information, visit http://www.inc.com.

For more information on the Inc. 5000 Vision Conference, visit http://conference.inc.com/.
Prior winners of the ACHT Semmelweis Leadership Award: Olakunle Olaniyan, Brian Thomas, Raj Gupta, Irma Rastegayeva, Francisco Ward, Carl Middleton and Tyler Cymet. ACHT supports leaders in a variety of ways. Our Fellows can document their activities to receive badges and designations such as Fellow with Special Merit and Fellow with Distinction. In addition, ACHTs consulting arm provides consultations to organizations, enabling them to thrive.

The American College of Healthcare Trustees (ACHT), a social enterprise that promotes exceptional and ethical governance, leadership and decision-making in healthcare, announced several new initiatives, partnerships and awards.

NEW VENTURE



American College of Healthcare Trustees and MedProHC/MedPharma have combined their extensive consulting resources to form one of the most comprehensive healthcare consulting services available, Edge Healthcare. The founding organizations share a philosophy of making the doctor-patient relationship more sustainable and enhancing the viability of hospital systems, hospitals, clinical laboratories and doctors private practices. The new entity will leverage their wide and deep expertise, offering an array of services.

OFFICIAL JOURNAL



Physician Outlook Magazine is now the official journal of the American College of Healthcare Trustees. A both print and online publication with a readership base of nearly 100,000, Physician Outlook Magazine hopes to serve the physician-patient relationship. Addressing the dual audience of physicians and patients, it effectively humanizes and simplifies issues important to patients of all ages, demographics and political persuasions. Advertisers will find that they will be able to reach consumers in innovative and unique ways.

All ACHT Fellows are entitled to a complimentary subscription to the digital version and are offered a 50% discount on the print edition. All ACHT Fellows are encouraged to contribute to the magazine. Join or renew your ACHT Fellowship.

LEADERSHIP TRAINING



Continuously advancing our core mission of providing effective leadership training, ACHT has partnered with FLIGBY to develop an innovative Leadership Development Simulation with Blended Learning Program. FLIGBY is an online, single-user, scenario-based Serious Game in an interactive movie format. It provides a safe but highly realistic environment that shows the real-time consequences of participants managerial decisions.

This Program is being planned as a virtual experience this year and/or as an in-person event in 2022. Please contact ACHT for additional details.

GOVERNANCE COMMITTEE



At a recent Board of Directors meeting, a Governance Committee of the BOD was established. This move reflects the growth of ACHT membership, its board as well as increase in scope and sophistication of the initiatives and programs currently offered or being developed.

AWARD RECIPIENTS



William Greene, FACHT, has received the 2021 ACHT Semmelweis Leadership Award. This award is given in recognition of distinguished and outstanding leadership in advancing the cause of good healthcare governance and leadership for the American College of Healthcare Trustees. Prior recipients of the award included ACHT Fellows: Olakunle Olaniyan, MD, MBA, FACP, FACPE, Patricia Davidson, PhD, Irma Rastegayeva, MSc and Tyler Cymet, DO, FACP, FACOFP.

NEWSLETTER



ACHT publishes a regular email Newsletter, with a readership of 9,000. Those interested in the industry news, ACHT updates, Fellow spotlights and beneficial partner offers are invited to sign up to receive the Newsletter for free. For advertising inquiries, please contact Roxanne Bruce at 207-267-5070 or roxanne.bruce@facht.org.

DATATHON



ACHT announced plans to organize a Datathon to bring diverse stakeholders together to solve an important real world clinical problem. Similar to a Hackathon, during this collaboration data scientists and clinicians get together to use real world information and applied data science tools and techniques to develop actionable intelligence and potential solutions. Current focus is on the arena of critical care where rapid decisions are often required on the basis of incomplete information. Additional focus areas of interest to sponsors will be entertained.

Further information is forthcoming. ACHT will be seeking sponsors and mentors for the Datathon, as well as soliciting ideas for databases to use and topics to be addressed by this effort.

NEW AWARD ESTABLISHED



The American College of Healthcare Trustees along with Physician Outlook Magazine will be honoring Healthcare Leaders of the Year for 2021. Hospitals and medical practices can nominate individuals among several categories for the award and a panel of 4 judges will select one winner in each category. The awardees as well as the nominees will be featured in a special edition issue of Physician Outlook Magazine in January 2022, and some of the nominees will be interviewed by Olderhood Productions International.

Participating organizations will be able to select up to 50 staff members to become Fellows of the American College of Healthcare Trustees and up to 50 staff members to receive both print and digital copies of Physician Outlook Magazine. Other benefits include access to the job boards on both PhysicianOutlook.com and FACHT.org, a copy of VERRAS annual report on hospitals, recognition in the January special edition issue and more.

Additional information about this new Award is forthcoming. For details, please contact Roxanne Bruce at 207-267-5070 or roxanne.bruce@facht.org.

The American College of Healthcare Trustees supports leaders in a variety of ways, said David Levien, MD, MBA, FACS, President and CEO of the American College of Healthcare Trustees. Our Fellows can document their activities to receive badges and designations such as Fellow with Special Merit, FACHT(SM) and Fellow with Distinction, FACHT(D). In addition, ACHTs consulting arm provides consultations to organizations, enabling them to thrive.

About ACHT

The American College of Healthcare Trustees (ACHT) is a national professional association dedicated to promoting high performing, competent, qualified, ethical governance and leadership in healthcare that is person-centered and accountable by providing continuing education, resources, and networking.


2021 Nightingale Awards "We honor Kelly and she is well deserving for her immense contributions during this global pandemic and the sacrifice's that Kelly and her colleagues made - were extreme," states Greg Jamian, AmeriStaff's company President and Board member of Oakland University's School of Nursing.

AmeriStaff Nursing Services, a division of AmeriCare Medical, Troy Michigan is a proud sponsor of the Nightingale Awards. This year AmeriStaff recognized the Healthcare Heroes that risked their lives caring for Covid 19 patients in area hospitals and Homecare Nursing. Kelly Schroeder, RN of Henry Ford Hospital, was announced the winner of the Covid Hero - Staff Nurse Award. "We honor Kelly and she is well deserving for her immense contributions during this global pandemic and the sacrifice's that Kelly and her colleagues made - were extreme," states Greg Jamian, AmeriStaff's company President and Board member of Oakland University's School of Nursing.

The Nightingale Awards Banquet is our 33rd Award Ceremony, Jamian said. For three decades, this has been a night to acknowledge and strengthen the Michigan nursing community and is the equivalent to the Academy Awards of Nursing. This year the Awards Ceremony was held at Meadow Brook Amphitheater on Oakland Universitys Campus, Rochester, MI.

"We are committed to partnering with this extraordinary event, recognizing nurses that have gone above and beyond in their pursuit of excellence," stated Greg Jamian. "Oakland Universitys Nursing program is noted as one of the top academic nursing curriculums in the country and our nurses at AmeriStaff Nursing have participated in the ceremony over the last 20 years, validating our commitment to nursing quality and excellence along with the values Florence Nightingale bestowed upon us."

"AmeriStaffs nurse are drawn to nursing because of a desire to care, to serve, or to help. Nurses make many sacrifices providing care to ensure the betterment of their patients. We salute the frontline home care nurses and caregivers who are taking care of our states most vulnerable patients in response to COVID-19, concluded Jamian.

Since 1981, AmeriCare Medical, Inc. has provided integrated health care services to hospitals, assisted care facilities and private homes throughout Michigan. AmeriCare Medical, Inc. is the parent company of AmeriStaff Nursing Services, Sun Medical Equipment and Rx iV Pharmacy, making it a one stop shop for patients and all of their home healthcare needs. For more information visit: http://www.americaremedical.com

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Over the last year, Anthology has doubled down on our commitment to helping colleges and universities illuminate the right pathways to success for every student through connected data, said Jim Milton, chairman and CEO of Anthology.

Anthology, a leading provider of proven higher education solutions that solve complex challenges associated with the entire learner lifecycle, today announced its significant milestones commemorating its transformational first year as a combined company.

Now serving more than 2,000 higher education institutions with data-driven innovations that address all facets of the collegiate student journey, Anthology closed its fiscal year with nearly 400 solution go-lives and increased overall revenue. As a result, the company was recently honored by Microsoft for outstanding sales achievement and innovation as part of the Microsoft Business Applications 2021/2022 Inner Circle award. Anthology also won the 2021 Tech Edvocate Award for Best Student Information System and Best Higher Education Leader  honoring Chairman and CEO Jim Milton.

At Anthology, we believe that learners need to be at the center of everything we do. They are all unique and bring different backgrounds and interests in what they are seeking in terms of higher education outcomes, said Milton. Over the last year, Anthology has been resolute on our commitment to helping colleges and universities illuminate the right pathways to success for every student through connected data, enabling them to then offer the right combination of academic programs, skills and experiences for successful outcomes.

After a year working mostly in virtual environments due to the pandemic, Anthology held its inaugural user conference  Anthology Together  in person in Dallas, with more than 800 customers, partners and Anthologists in attendance for three days of collaborative and inspiring sessions on leveraging innovation in higher education, in July. Customers presenting ranged from the University of Tennessee Knoxville and Illinois Eastern Community College to University of Texas - Tyler, the Colorado School of Mines Foundation and more.

After implementing and utilizing Anthology Reach at UT Tyler we have realized many more options to engage with prospective students and measure the effectiveness of our campaigns, said David Barron, University of Texas  Tyler Associate Vice President for University Enrollment Management. We are excited about the further development and opportunities to move us forward as an institution by partnering with Anthology.

Also of note is the recent launch of Anthology Academy, a comprehensive learning platform with extensive educational resources and on-demand training opportunities to elevate overall institutional success with Anthologys integrated suite of solutions.

Additionally, the Anthology Encompass platform enabled 1.3 million fundraising contributions totaling nearly $400 million for customer institutions  mostly comprising small donations  over the last year through customers Days of Giving, Giving Tuesday campaigns, and online giving forms.

Designed to harness the collective power of world-class technologies like Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Dynamics 365, and Microsoft Power BI, Anthologys integrated suite of solutions enables higher education leaders to create more connected campuses for student and institutional success with a focus on delivering insights for decision-making. Delivering on its mission to revolutionize higher education, Anthologys innovations are designed based on decades of higher education expertise and enable 24/7 institutional access to all information, reports and analytics to empower informed faculty and staff decision making from anywhere.

About Anthology

Anthology exists to help higher education advance and thrive using modern cloud technology and services that keep the learner at the forefront. Drawing on a fully connected data experience, Anthology solutions create operational efficiencies, provide intelligence for staff and administrators, and empower institutional leaders to support and guide students on a path to success.

The full suite covers admission and enrollment management; student success and retention; institutional and learning effectiveness; alumni and advancement; and enterprise applications and infrastructure, offering solutions to the challenges facing campuses today. Working with more than 2,000 colleges and institutions in over 30 countries, Anthology is constantly discovering new ways to revolutionize higher education. Learn more about our mission at http://www.anthology.com.
Herman Jasper has completed his new book The Legacy Tree: a captivating story of a recent high school graduate, Kenny, who must navigate what it means to be a young Black man in America and decide what kind of life he wants to lead. While his friends and family try to help make up his mind, ultimately it is up to him to choose his path.

Published by Page Publishing, Herman Jaspers gripping tale follows Kenny, a young Black man from Philadelphia who has just recently graduated from high school. Disillusioned by the way Black Americans are treated by law enforcement, Kenny makes the decision to begin selling drugs for fast money. After narrowly escaping a police sting operation, Kenny is sent to live with family members in Georgia who urge him to turn away from dealing drugs and pursue higher education.

The captivating story of The Legacy Tree will pull readers into the mindset of Kenny as he struggles with his decision that will ultimately decide his fate. As his family tells him to give up his life on the streets, his new friends in Georgia present him with an opportunity to continue his old ways. Will his family be able to break through to him, or will Kenny end up in prison or worse?

Readers who wish to experience this mesmerizing work can purchase The Legacy Tree at bookstores everywhere, or online at the Apple iTunes Store, Amazon, Google Play, or Barnes and Noble.

For additional information or media inquiries, contact Page Publishing at 866-315-2708.

About Page Publishing:

Page Publishing is a traditional, full-service publishing house that handles all the intricacies involved in publishing its authors books, including distribution in the worlds largest retail outlets and royalty generation. Page Publishing knows that authors need to be free to create, not mired in logistics like eBook conversion, establishing wholesale accounts, insurance, shipping, taxes, and so on. Pages accomplished writers and publishing professionals allow authors to leave behind these complex and time-consuming issues and focus on their passion: writing and creating. Learn more at http://www.pagepublishing.com.
Sophia Georgia Brown, an educator who was raised in Jamaica, immigrated to the United States, earned multiple graduate degrees and certifications, and has taught for over ten years in Miami Dade, Florida and in the apartment of Continuing Education and Corporate Development at Broward College, has completed his new book My Sugar Island Home: an enchanting memoir offering an unvarnished portrait of life in her homeland in the late twentieth century.

The narrative is written in first person intertwined with snippets of Jamaican patois and Spanish. It describes an impactful childhood filled with excitement, devotion, and gladness comparable to none. The author expresses her appreciation living a simple life in the country with her impartial grandparents who adored her but never uphold her into wrongdoings. Within a short course of time, she lived and travelled between parishes and highlighted the development and contours of Jamaicas economy, music industry, and social infrastructure. While recounting her narrative, she underlines the ideals of respect, values, and courtesy that perpetuated the cultural climate of Jamaicas society in the 70s, 80s, and early 90s. Within the same token, she thanked the Jamaican people for their unselfish and unconditional love that was noted in the maxim: It takes a village to raise a child.

Published by Page Publishing, Sophia Georgia Browns engrossing book is a clear-eyed yet fond reflection on her experiences growing up in the towns and sugar cane plantations of her native Jamaica.

Readers who wish to experience this engaging work can purchase My Sugar Island Home at bookstores everywhere, or online at the Apple iTunes Store, Amazon, Google Play, or Barnes and Noble.

For additional information or media inquiries, contact Page Publishing at 866-315-2708.

About Page Publishing:

Page Publishing is a traditional, full-service publishing house that handles all the intricacies involved in publishing its authors books, including distribution in the worlds largest retail outlets and royalty generation. Page Publishing understands that authors should be free to create, not mired in logistics like eBook conversion, establishing wholesale accounts, insurance, shipping, taxes, and so on. Pages accomplished writers and publishing professionals allow authors to leave behind these complex and time-consuming issues and focus on their passion: writing and creating. Learn more at http://www.pagepublishing.com
The medical spa offers a range of leading edge procedures to people in the Los Angeles/Beverly Hills area and beyond. At our office, clients can receive treatments provided by a doctor with a complete understanding of cosmetic procedures and how they impact the body.

Beverly Wilshire Aesthetics is now open and is offering a range of non-surgical cosmetic procedures to people from throughout the Greater Los Angeles area and beyond. Based in Beverly Hills near West LA and West Hollywood, the med spas clinical approach is based on offering the most advanced offerings provided with unparalleled care and expertise, says founder and chief practitioner Behnoush Zarrini, M.D. Todays non-surgical treatments are becoming more and complicated and advanced. At our office, clients can receive treatments provided by a doctor with a complete understanding of cosmetic procedures and how they impact the body so that our offerings are as effective and as safe as possible, always, says Dr. Zarrini.

The spa offers a long list of innovative procedures including:

--- Lumecca IPL, a treatment for many types of skin blemishes and discoloration, including hyperpigmentation, rosacea, and acne. The procedure involves the use of intense pulsed light. Dr. Zarrini notes the procedure can work with as little as one treatment and involves no recovery and no peeling of the skin.

--- Morpheus8 combines the use of tiny needles with the power of radiofrequency energy for tighter, more youthful skin. Dr. Zarrini notes this state-of-the-art treatment produces significantly better results in terms of facial rejuvenation than older microneedling treatments. Dr. Zarrini notes that Morpheus8 targets fatty tissues 4mm below the skin. The energy stimulates the production of collagen and creates a tighter, more youthful appearance of the epidermis. This procedure is effective for facial rejuvenation and can also be employed on various areas of the body for a more youthful and more muscular appearance without surgery.

--- Juvederm and other facial fillers are also available. Dr. Zarrini says that these procedures are ideal when it comes to reducing wrinkling and plumping up lips and cheeks, as well as removing the appearance of sunken eyes.

Well known in the Los Angeles area as a leading board-certified anesthesiologist, Dr. Zarrini says that the germ of the idea for Beverly Wilshire aesthetics began at a medical conference he attended in Las Vegas. I got to see some of the most exciting new techniques, and then I had a thought, Dr. Zarrini said.  t occurred to me that these leading-edge procedures are extremely powerful and therefore should be performed by an expert physician who fully understands not only the technology but how the body responds to them.

But theres even more to it than that, says Dr. Zarini. Being a doctor also allows me to take a more holistic approach in terms of the interaction of health and appearance. We offer assistance for everything from excessive sweating [hyperhidrosis] to IV vitamin injection therapy for overall wellness. Its important to understand how these treatments may interact. In many cases, I can suggest a combined treatment regimen where our outcomes can add up to more than the sum of the parts, says Dr. Zarrini, a board-certified anesthesiologist.

Beverly Hills Aesthetics is located at 9100 Wilshire Blvd #363 in Beverly Hills near Doheny Drive. Readers can learn more about its services by visiting its website at https://www.bwaesthetics.com/ or calling (424) 222-7896


Early Care and Education Projects (ECEP), a service unit of the College of Education and Health Professions at the University of Arkansas, and CCA for Social Good, a division of CCA Global Partners, are excited to announce their partnership to customize an online early childhood knowledge hub designed to support quality initiatives and positively impact early childhood education throughout the state. This platform serves as a centralized knowledge repository for the tools, resources, and guidance that early educators need to meet the needs of children and families.

The Arkansas Early Childhood Education Resources site is a customized version of ECE Shared Resources, an online early childhood clearinghouse developed in 2009 to support child care quality. This digital solution offers early educators, child care program owners and directors, family child care providers, and early childhood education support staff access to over 2,000 innovative, practical tools, handbooks, policies and guidance on important topics such as budgeting, best practices, human resources, indoor and outdoor safety, emergency preparedness, and more. The resources were developed with one goal in mind - to save valuable time and money so professionals can focus on providing high-quality child care and education.

We are thrilled to see the platform coming to the early childhood education community in Arkansas, noted Denise Sayer, Vice President of CCA For Social Good and innovator of the ECE Shared Resources platform. Over the past year, more than ever, we have seen how the platform can adapt and respond to the particular and ever-changing needs of child care communities, supporting the success and longevity of child care businesses and their mission to provide high quality care to the children and families they serve.

The website, AREarlyChildhoodEducationResources.org, is now available to early educators throughout the state. Arkansas joins 33 other states that have adopted the shared resources platform to support the success of early childhood education across the country.

"I hope that the site marks the foundation for the types of shared services we offer in the years to come," said Deniece Honeycutt, Director of Early Care and Education Projects. "As we continue to focus on expanding and customizing the website to meet the specific, local needs of providers and professionals we look forward to seeing the platform be first of mind to all individuals in the early education field when they are looking for tools, support and guidance."

About CCA For Social Good

CCA For Social Good is an operating division of CCA Global Partners, a privately held cooperative helping small businesses thrive for 30 years. CCA For Social Good provides web-based platforms to help thousands of nonprofit organizations and early childhood education (ECE) centers manage their businesses. The platforms (integrated password-protected websites) deliver robust tools and shared resources resulting in more efficient and successful operations. CCA For Social Good puts time and money back in the hands of directors and managers of ECE programs, allowing them to focus where it matters most: on their missions. To view a sample platform, please visit http://www.ecesharedresources.com.

About Early Care and Education Projects

Early Care and Education Projects (ECEP) provides services to early care providers across the state through funding from the Arkansas Department of Education Division of Elementary and Secondary Education and the Department of Human Services Division of Child Care and Early Childhood Education in collaboration with the University of Arkansas College of Education and Health Professions.

ECEP believes all children deserve quality care no matter the setting (center-based, family child care, faith-based, home visiting, out-of-school time). This site provides a place for early childhood educators to strengthen business practices, share services, and increase buying power while enhancing the quality of care and giving all Arkansas's children a strong start. Early educators will have access to common information and resources, ensuring consistent, seamless, and united high-quality programs for children.
It is such an honor to earn this designation with this distinguished organization, says Dr. Cesar Tapia.

The experienced team at ConfiDenT Dental of Alpharetta is led by dental implant specialist, Dr. Cesar Tapia. Dr. Tapia has been dedicated to a lifetime of continued learning and professional growth and has recently earned fellowship status from The International Congress of Oral Implantologists. Dr. Tapia received his dental degree at the University of Colorado  School of Dental Medicine and is a member of American Dental Association, Academy of General Dentistry, American Academy of Implant Dentistry, American Academy of Oral Systemic Health and the American Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry. The International Congress of Oral Implantologists is dedicated to communicating scientific knowledge and improving the clinical practice of dental implantology worldwide. The ICOI has public information programs, conducts numerous scientific symposia each year and supports research and education through its Implant Dentistry Research and Education Foundation (IDREF).

The awarding of fellowship status is an honor which is achieved through remarkable efforts in education, research and actual clinical experience. Fellow membership is a special step in validating expertise and proficiency in implant dentistry. To qualify for the fellow examination, applicants must be associate fellows in good standing, be fully knowledgeable of both the surgical and restorative phases of implant dentistry, meet the published educational and experiential requirements and possess specified professional and leadership credentials.

It is such an honor to earn this designation with this distinguished organization, says Dr. Cesar Tapia

More about ConfiDenT Dental of Alpharetta:

At ConfiDenT Dental of Alpharetta, they welcome patients of all ages, and at one location, the entire family can take advantage of general, restorative and cosmetic dentistry and utilize advanced dental technology, such as CEREC Primescan and Primemill machine, which gives patients the convenience of having single visits, with same-day crowns, bridges, veneers and more. Located at 11550 Webb Bridge Way, Suite 1 in Alpharetta, GA, the team provides a full line of preventive dental treatments to laser gum disease therapy, Invisalign and dental implants. To learn more about the practices cutting-edge dental services, please visit http://www.confident-alpharetta.com, or call the office at 770-772-0994.
DCCM, a portfolio company of White Wolf Capital (White Wolf) and a national provider of design, consulting, and program & construction management services based in Houston, Texas, is pleased to announce the acquisition of Rochester & Associates.

Based in the greater Atlanta metro area, Rochester & Associates is known for providing private and public entities with civil engineering, land surveying, project management, and infrastructure services. The firm has long-standing relationships throughout the Southeast with state and local governments, real estate developers, state departments of transportation, and consulting engineering firms. In acquiring Rochester & Associates, DCCM is partnering with industry veteran Darrell Rochester, PE, who will continue in his role as CEO of Rochester & Associates, along with Brian Rochester, who will continue his role as Executive Vice President.

Were delighted to welcome Rochester & Associates into the DCCM family, commented James F. (Jim) Thompson, PE, DBIA, CEO of DCCM. This is a tremendous step for DCCM in expanding our reach east, and we couldnt have found a better partner to lead the way. As weve gotten to know the Rochester team, its clear there is tremendous alignment in the way we operate, serve clients, and care for our people, and we cant wait to combine our efforts and build towards our shared vision together.

We are extremely happy to join the DCCM family of companies as the next step of our companys evolution and growth, said Darrell Rochester. Bringing excellent products and services to this market is a major cornerstone of our family business, and our clients will continue to enjoy the responsive, trusted service theyve come to expect, along with access to DCCMs national presence and resources.

After 55 years of success, Rochester & Associates is looking forward to the opportunity of benefiting from DCCMs resources and scale, said Brian Rochester. DCCMs capabilities will also undoubtedly strengthen Rochester & Associates holistic approach to business. Theres a real synergy between the two companies and the complimentary services we provide.

Elie Azar, Managing Director of White Wolf, added We are pleased to welcome Rochester & Associates to the DCCM family of companies and are excited to expand DCCMs service offering into the fast-growing metro Atlanta marketplace. We look forward to partnering with Darrell, Brian, and the entire Rochester team and providing them with the necessary support to continue their growth story.

****

About Rochester & Associates

Rochester & Associates is a multifaceted provider of civil engineering, land surveying, project management, and infrastructure services. The company was established in 1966 by B. Keith Rochester, RLS, as a surveying firm serving the southeastern United States. Since that time, the firm has grown in size, number of offices, and scope of services to become a multidisciplinary civil engineering consulting firm.

For more information, please visit: http://www.rochester-assoc.com.

About DCCM

DCCM is a provider of design, consulting, and program & construction management professional services focusing on infrastructure marketplaces throughout the public and private sectors. Through a family of complementary brand companies, DCCM serves a variety of end markets while offering a national reach.

DCCM is aggressively hiring key industry professionals in all disciplines and is actively seeking further acquisition opportunities throughout North America.

For more information, please visit: http://www.dccm.com.

About White Wolf

White Wolf is a private investment firm that began operations in late 2011 and is focused on management buyouts, recapitalizations and investments in leading middle market companies. In general, White Wolf seeks both private equity and private credit investment opportunities in companies that are headquartered in North America with $10 million to $200 million in revenues. Preferred industries include: manufacturing, business services, information technology, security, aerospace and defense, government services, and infrastructure services.

For more information, please visit: http://www.whitewolfcapital.com.
Drivers can easily be tempted to switch their car insurance providers. However, drivers should not switch their providers without comparing the prices of the current policy with the ones offered by the competitors, said Russell Rabichev, Marketing Director of Internet Marketing Company.

Carinsuranceplan.org has launched a new blog post that explains what advantages are gained by drivers who decide to stay with the same car insurance company.

For more info and free car insurance quotes, please visit https://carinsuranceplan.org/top-reasons-to-stay-with-the-same-carrier

Commercials encouraging drivers to change their current providers are quite common. Every insurance provider is promising that switching to them will help drivers save money on car insurance. Switching to a new insurance company can help drivers pay lower premiums, but in some cases, this action will have the opposite effect.

Drivers should stay with the same carrier for the following reasons:



Get renewal discounts. Drivers who are considering switching their carriers should check if the renewed insurance premiums are better than the current ones. Some insurance companies are offering a small discount upon renewal to their loyal customers. Drivers should compare the price of the renewed rates with the ones from the other insurers and then decide if switching the provider is a better move than staying.

Good bundling policies. Bundling policies to save money on car insurance is quite common. Many drivers are bundling their car insurance policy and the homeowners insurance policy to the same insurance company. Policyholders should check if their current carrier is offering competitive insurance prices for both policies. If the current insurance plan is better than the ones offered by the competition, then drivers should stay with their current insurance providers.

Accident forgiveness. This option is not offered by all insurance companies. In most cases, this option is offered to loyal customers who managed to maintain a clean driving record for several years. This option is very useful for drivers who are in their first at-fault car accident. This option will forgive one at-fault accident and will prevent the insurance premiums to increase.

For additional info, money-saving tips, and free car insurance quotes, visit https://carinsuranceplan.org/

Carinsuranceplan.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.
Oktoberfest celebrates our community, and we love its traditions and the togetherness it brings

The sights, sounds and tastes of Germany are making their way to Elm Grove Village Park. The 5th Annual Elm Grove Community Foundation Oktoberfest, presented by Annex Wealth Management/Annex Charitable Foundation, kicks off in Elm Grove Park on Friday, September 17 at 5 pm with a ceremonial keg tapping, German and local beers, live music, and a Fish Fry. The fun continues Saturday, September 18 at 3:30 pm with a 0.5K Fun Run, followed by the traditional Oktoberfest celebration, with authentic live German music, festive food from food trucks, activities, and lots of local and German beer options. Were honored to once again support one of our favorite Elm Grove traditions, said Dave Spano, President and CEO, Annex Wealth Management. Oktoberfest celebrates our community, and we love its traditions and the togetherness it brings, With an expected crowd of over 4,000 people attending the festivities, the Community Foundation is excited to showcase live local music performances by Julien Kozak and The Jeff Winard Band sponsored by Elliots Ace Hardware.

In addition to live music on the Honest Teeth Dentistry Alpine Yodeler stage, Oktoberfest will again feature a large Bier und Wine tent sponsored by Leinenkugels, a variety of food trucks including Hue Asian Kitchen and Nothing Bundt Cakes, as well as German and American food, pretzels and more. Attendees can participate in several traditional Oktoberfest games including Raise Your Pint on the Zisters/Hermanas stage, Hammerschlagen and a lederhosen/dirndl contest sponsored by Damage Control and Vantage Financial. There will also be a photo booth sponsored by Dental Associates to capture your Oktoberfest memories.

Oktoberfest is becoming a local tradition as village residents and others gather each fall weekend to celebrate with one another and raise money for community projects. said John Meser, President, Elm Grove Community Foundation. We are excited to expand the festivities to Friday night this year and offer a fish fry, another well-known Wisconsin tradition.

Based on its sold-out success in 2018 and 2019, the 0.5K Fun Run is now a permanent addition to Elm Grove Oktoberfest. "The World's Most Important Race in the History of the World, Ever" is a tongue-in-cheek event that not only lampoons the typical 5K, but also those made-for-overachievers-obstacle-course-adventure-races (warning, this race is too short for adventure racing which means there is no adventure racing)! This race, which commences at 3:30 pm, is more of a walk/run beer parade from O'Donoghue's Irish Pub, this years premier Race Sponsor, to the Village Park Oktoberfest grounds to kick off the days festivities. Adults over 21 will enjoy some great brews along the way. Registered runners/walkers get a race t-shirt, a beer at the start, at the half-way point and at the finish line which is our Oktoberfest beer tent. Children are encouraged to participate and will enjoy root beer along the course.

Official Auto Sponsor, Uptown Motors Automotive Group, will provide a pace car this year to ensure runners dont veer off the course and once again offer shuttles to and from the race start line and to the park for the Oktoberfest celebration. Other race sponsors include Bib sponsor, The Richfield Companies, LLC, and Packet Pick Up sponsor Waukesha State Bank.

Admission to Oktoberfest is FREE and registration for the 0.5K is $35 (you can register online at our website). The Oktoberfest celebration will take place rain or shine. Since the Badger and the Packers wont be playing at home, the foundation hopes that village residents along with family and friends will join us for another fun and memorable Oktoberfest celebration. We have plenty of volunteer opportunities available if you are interested in earning volunteer hours or just want to help.
Title Sponsor of Candlelighters' Superhero 5K We hope that by coming together as a community to suit up, honor, and recognize the tremendous bravery these families demonstrate, they will feel strengthened to handle future challenges. --Corey Eschweiler, Esq.

The Las Vegas legal team of ER Injury Attorneys has actively supported the Candlelighters Childhood Cancer Foundation of Southern Nevadas annual Superhero 5K for over a decade. For 2021, the firm is honored to amp up its annual contributions by signing on as this year's Title Sponsor. The fun-run and walk takes place on September 18th at Exploration Park at Mountains Edge (9700 S Buffalo Dr., Las Vegas, 89178) at 8:00 a.m. and directly benefits the children and families served by the foundation.

In addition to sponsoring the 5K fun-run and 1 mile walk, team members from ER Injury Attorneys will be giving away snow cones and more at their booth. They eagerly anticipate seeing familiar faces and making new connections with other community members.

Our team looks forward to the Superhero 5K each year as a means to show our support to all the local families battling childhood cancer. We hope that by coming together as a community to suit up, honor, and recognize the tremendous bravery these families demonstrate, they will feel strengthened to handle future challenges, stated attorney Corey Eschweiler.

Those interested in joining the law firm in giving back and helping Candlelighters Childhood Cancer Foundation of Southern Nevada reach their fundraising goal of $170,000 can register or make a donation online now. To find out even more about the Candlelighters Superhero 5K, call (702) 737-1919 or email Info@CandleLightersNV.org.

MORE ABOUT ER INJURY ATTORNEYS

Helping southern Nevada injury victims put their lives back on track after an accident is a top priority of the legal team at ER Injury Attorneys. In fact, their award-winning lawyers have built a reputation for providing the highest level of service by taking the time to listen, learn, and evaluate the needs of those who contact their law firm. This attention to detail not only promotes a positive and open collaboration, but also a higher success rate in terms of negotiating the best possible results. For more information about ER Injury Attorneys and their dedication to serve and assist local community members, please visit erinjuryattorneys.com or call 702-878-7878.

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Inc. magazine revealed that Georgetown Home Care is No. 3.194 on its annual Inc. 5000 list, the most prestigious ranking of the nations fastest-growing private companies. The list represents a unique look at the most successful companies within the American economys most dynamic segmentits independent small businesses. Intuit, Zappos, Under Armour, Microsoft, Patagonia, and many other well-known names gained their first national exposure as honorees on the Inc. 5000.

"We are so happy to receive this award for the third consecutive year", said John Bradshaw, CEO of Georgetown Home Care. "Making this prestigious list once puts us in great company but to be recognized like this repeatedly is truly an honor. It's a testament to the great team we have built at Georgetown Home Care."

Not only have the companies on the 2021 Inc. 5000 been very competitive within their markets, but this years list also proved especially resilient and flexible given 2020s unprecedented challenges. Among the 5,000, the average median three-year growth rate soared to 543 percent, and median revenue reached $11.1 million. Together, those companies added more than 610,000 jobs over the past three years.

Complete results of the Inc. 5000, including company profiles and an interactive database that can be sorted by industry, region, and other criteria, can be found at http://www.inc.com/inc5000. The top 500 companies are featured in the September issue of Inc.

The 2021 Inc. 5000 list feels like one of the most important rosters of companies ever compiled, says Scott Omelianuk, editor-in-chief of Inc. Building one of the fastest-growing companies in America in any year is a remarkable achievement. Building one in the crisis weve lived through is just plain amazing. This kind of accomplishment comes with hard work, smart pivots, great leadership, and the help of a whole lot of people.

Georgetown Home Care is the premier non-medical agency with offices in DC, Maryland and Virginia. Its mission is to ensure a better quality of life for elderly clients and their families by providing dependable and affordable care. Georgetown Home Care is a locally owned and operated company and is passionate about serving seniors and those in need with hourly and live-in care services.

CONTACT: For additional information about Georgetown Home Care, please contact Jessica Salgado, 202.333.3400, jessicasalgado@georgetownhomecare.com.

More about Inc. and the Inc. 5000

Methodology

Companies on the 2021 Inc. 5000 are ranked according to percentage revenue growth from 2017 to 2020. To qualify, companies must have been founded and generating revenue by March 31, 2017. They must be U.S.-based, privately held, for-profit, and independentnot subsidiaries or divisions of other companiesas of December 31, 2020. (Since then, some on the list may have gone public or been acquired.) The minimum revenue required for 2017 is $100,000; the minimum for 2020 is $2 million. As always, Inc. reserves the right to decline applicants for subjective reasons. Growth rates used to determine company rankings were calculated to three decimal places. There was one tie on this years Inc. 5000. Companies on the Inc. 500 are featured in Inc.s September issue. They represent the top tier of the Inc. 5000, which can be found at http://www.inc.com/inc5000.

About Inc. Media

The worlds most trusted business-media brand, Inc. offers entrepreneurs the knowledge, tools, connections, and community to build great companies. Its award-winning multiplatform content reaches more than 50 million people each month across a variety of channels including web sites, newsletters, social media, podcasts, and print. Its prestigious Inc. 5000 list, produced every year since 1982, analyzes company data to recognize the fastest-growing privately held businesses in the United States. The global recognition that comes with inclusion in the 5000 gives the founders of the best businesses an opportunity to engage with an exclusive community of their peers, and the credibility that helps them drive sales and recruit talent. The associated Inc. 5000 Vision Conference is part of a highly acclaimed portfolio of bespoke events produced by Inc. For more information, visit http://www.inc.com.

For more information on the Inc. 5000 Vision Conference, visit http://conference.inc.com/.
Inc. magazine revealed that INTERMARK FOODS dba El LATINO FOODS is on its annual Inc. 5000 list, the most prestigious ranking of the nations fastest-growing private companies.

The list represents a unique look at the most successful companies within the American economys most dynamic segment - its independent small businesses. Companies like Dell, Microsoft, Zappos, Dominos Pizza, Yelp and many other well-known names gained their first national exposure as honorees on the Inc. 5000.

We feel truly honored to be included in this years Inc. 5000 List said Maria Elena Ibanez, the Founder and President of Intermark Foods. Less than 4% of the honorees make the list 5 times. Our continued growth is made possible by the dedication of our team and our commitment to unique, high-quality foods for the US Hispanic population.

Not only have the companies on the 2021 Inc. 5000 been very competitive within their markets, but this years list also proved especially resilient and flexible given 2020s unprecedented challenges. Together, those companies added more than 610,000 jobs over the past three years.

The 2021 Inc. 5000 list feels like one of the most important rosters of companies ever compiled, says Scott Omelianuk, editor-in-chief of Inc. Building one of the fastest-growing companies in America in any year is a remarkable achievement. Building one in the crisis weve lived through is just plain amazing. This kind of accomplishment comes with hard work, smart pivots, great leadership, and the help of a whole lot of people.

About Intermark Foods, dba El Latino Foods

Intermark Foods, dba El Latino Foods is a Miami-based ethnic specialty food brand with a specially crafted line of products reflecting Latin American and Caribbean flavors. The Company designs, develops, markets and distributes authentic foods for the fast-growing non-Mexican Hispanic segment under its brand El Latino.

Its products revive the nostalgic feelings of the tastes that its clients enjoyed while growing up.

Contact:

Maria Elena Ibanez, President

info@ellatinofoods.com

+1(305) 297 3920

About Inc. and the Inc. 5000

Methodology

Companies on the 2021 Inc. 5000 are ranked according to percentage revenue growth from 2017 to 2020. To qualify, companies must have been founded and generating revenue by March 31, 2017. They must be U.S.-based, privately held, for-profit, and independentnot subsidiaries or divisions of other companiesas of December 31, 2020. The minimum revenue required for 2017 is $100,000; the minimum for 2020 is $2 million. Growth rates used to determine company rankings were calculated to three decimal places. Companies on the Inc. 500 are featured in Inc.s September issue. They represent the top tier of the Inc. 5000, which can be found at http://www.inc.com/inc5000.

About Inc. Media

The worlds most trusted business-media brand, Inc. offers entrepreneurs the knowledge, tools, connections, and community to build great companies. Its award-winning multiplatform content reaches more than 50 million people each month across a variety of channels including web sites, newsletters, social media, podcasts, and print. Its prestigious Inc. 5000 list, produced every year since 1982, analyzes company data to recognize the fastest-growing privately held businesses in the United States. The global recognition that comes with inclusion in the 5000 gives the founders of the best businesses an opportunity to engage with an exclusive community of their peers, and the credibility that helps them drive sales and recruit talent. The associated Inc. 5000 Vision Conference is part of a highly acclaimed portfolio of bespoke events produced by Inc. For more information, visit http://www.inc.com.

For more information on the Inc. 5000 Vision Conference, visit http://conference.inc.com/
Law Office of Blumenthal Nordrehaug Bhowmik De Blouw LLP For more information about the class action lawsuit against Synergy Staffing Inc., call (800) 568-8020 to speak to an experienced California employment attorney today.

The San Diego employment law attorneys, at Blumenthal Nordrehaug Bhowmik De Blouw LLP, filed a class action lawsuit against Synergy Staffing Inc., alleging the company violated the California Labor Code. The lawsuit against Synergy Staffing Inc. is currently pending in the Imperial County Superior Court, Case No. ECU002006. To read a copy of the Complaint, please click here.

According to the lawsuit filed, Synergy Staffing Inc. allegedly (a) failed to pay minimum wages, (b) failed to pay overtime wages, (c) failed to provide legally required meal and rest periods, (d) failed to provide accurate itemized wage statements, (e) failed to reimburse employees for required expenses, and (f) failed to provide wages when due, all in violation of the applicable Labor Code sections listed in Labor Code Sections  201, 202, 203, 226, 226.7, 510, 512, 1194, 1197, 1197.1, 2802, and the applicable Wage Order(s), and thereby gives rise to civil penalties as a result of such alleged conduct.

Synergy Staffing Inc. allegedly failed to fully relieve Plaintiff and other California Class Members for their legally required thirty (30) minute meals breaks. Employees were also allegedly required, from time to time, to work in excess of four (4) hours without being provided the legally required ten (10) minute rest periods. The California Supreme Court defines off-duty rest periods as time during which an employee is relieved from all work related duties and free from employer control.

For more information about the class action lawsuit against Synergy Staffing Inc., call (800) 568-8020 to speak to an experienced California employment attorney today.

Blumenthal Nordrehaug Bhowmik De Blouw LLP is a labor law firm with law offices located in San Diego County, Riverside County, Los Angeles County, Sacramento County, Santa Clara County, Orange County and San Francisco County. The firm has a statewide practice of representing employees on a contingency basis for violations involving unpaid wages, overtime pay, discrimination, harassment, wrongful termination and other types of illegal workplace conduct.

***THIS IS AN ATTORNEY ADVERTISEMENT***
Help is needed to provide assistance for many children, and we are especially proud to help those in our community who may not have the resources to get everything they need to have a successful and fulfilling learning experience.

Leading professional employer organization, INFINITI HR, concludes its second annual School Supply Drive, supporting children grades K to 12 in need of free backpacks and school supplies from Burtonsville Elementary School as well as the nonprofit Neighbor Network based in Dayton, Maryland.

The INFINITI HR hosted School Supply Drive ran from August 2 to August 13, 2021. Customers, business partners, employees, and neighbors of INFINITI HR in the corporate office were encouraged to donate a range of supplies including but not limited to pens, pencils, erasers, crayons, highlighters, notebooks, backpacks, and rulers. In addition, many community members sent money, which members of INFINITI HR then used to shop for supplies.

During the drive, INFINITI HR raised more than $2,000 in cash and filled nearly 50 backpacks with school supplies. On Tuesday August 17th, INFINITI HR employees assembled the backpacks and arranged for distribution to the schools.

Since so many families have been affected by COVID so harshly, this year is going to be exceptionally difficult on many of the underserved Baltimore-Washington metro communities, Wellness Benefit Specialist Bradley Welsh of INFINITI HR said. Help is needed to provide assistance for many children, and we are especially proud to help those in our community who may not have the resources to get everything they need to have a successful and fulfilling learning experience. Our hope is that our School Supply Drive may provide a foundation for children to begin the school year with a fresh start.

INFINITI HR was happy to partner with businesses who promoted and contributed to the School Supply Drive such as Safeware Inc. in Lanham and Columbia, Maryland, Victoria Gastro Pub in Columbia, Maryland, and The Green Turtle in Burtonsville, Maryland. In addition, INFINITI HR would like to thank all the valuable Burtonsville community members who made monetary, time, and service contributions.

For information, to volunteer, or to donate in the future, please contact Bradley Welsh at INFINITI HR at bwelsh@infinitihr.com or 301-329-8567.

About INFINITI HR

INFINITI HR is a leading Professional Employer Organization (PEO). The INFINITI HR PEO platform provides full regulatory compliance management, on-demand HR guidance, real-time payroll/tax filing, POS integration, and access into industry-leading True-Group Master Policies for Workers Compensation, Employment Practices Liability Insurance, and other operational business coverages.

Click here for the latest press releases and up-to-date news on human resources outsourcing. To learn more about how your business can save time, money, and mitigate employer liability, call INFINITI HR at 866-552-7360 or email info@infinitihr.com.
In Her Heart: an adorable tale of faith and maternal bonds. In Her Heart is the creation of published author Leigh Ann Puckett, a loving wife, mother, and grandmother who resides in Washington state.

Puckett shares, Believing all children are gifts from God, a young mother was inspired by a macrame angel Christmas ornament to say a heartfelt prayer asking for another baby. Not only was her prayer answered, but she received some special messages as well.

Published by Christian Faith Publishing, Leigh Ann Pucketts new book is an engaging opportunity to discuss faith with little ones.

With a creative story and carefully crafted illustrations, Pucketts addition to the world of childrens stories is a unique and enjoyable adventure.

View a synopsis of In Her Heart on YouTube.

Consumers can purchase In Her Heart at traditional brick & mortar bookstores, or online at Amazon.com, Apple iTunes store, or Barnes and Noble.

For additional information or inquiries about In Her Heart, contact the Christian Faith Publishing media department at 866-554-0919.
Delivering a new building speculatively in the midst of a pandemic presented challenges as Parkway 66 came on-line in late 2020. Yet despite those challenges we saw a strong demand for high-end high-bay product in Manassas. - Brad Benna, Matan Companies

Matan Companies is pleased to announce the signing of two long-term leases at its Parkway 66 property, which delivered in late 2020 on Cushing Road in Manassas, Virginia. Deeper roots continue to grow from Matans Progress Labs initiative with the signing of a 79,000 square foot lease with Granules Pharmaceuticals who will build out packaging lines, labs, and clean rooms for their pharmaceutical distribution business. The deal is yet another sign of the strong velocity for life science space in the DC Metro market. Matan also signed a lease for 30,000 square feet at Parkway 66 with Brickworks of North America. Their facility features a large selection of masonry products and supplies to promote education and design creativity among trade professionals and customers.

Delivering a new building speculatively in the midst of a pandemic presented challenges as Parkway 66 came on-line in late 2020. Yet despite those challenges we saw a strong demand for high-end high-bay product in Manassas, said Brad Benna of the Matan Companies. These two leases, with a third on the way, will take the building to full occupancy and prove that hypothesis was correct. With the momentum of these successes we are expanding further in Prince William County and hope to welcome more users of all types, especially as we continue to see success with Progress Labs, a massive job creator for the entire region.

The state-of-the-art 189,787 square foot Parkway 66 building features 32 clear ceiling height, 40 x 40 column spacing, a 50 speed bay, 120 truck court, LED lighting, an ESFR sprinkler system and ample parking for employees and trailers. Located at the intersection of I-66 and Rt. 234, directly adjacent to FedEx Grounds distribution hub, Parkway 66 is immediately accessible to all points in Northern Virginia and the Washington, DC metro region.

Matan acquired the 13.56-acre site in September 2019, construction began in October 2019, and the building delivered in late 2020.

About Matan Companies

Matan Companies, headquartered in the Washington, D.C. suburbs, is one of the regions premier commercial real estate services and development firms. Founded over 40 years ago on the principle of providing a comprehensive, full-service approach, the firms current portfolio consists of over 7 million square feet of industrial/bio-life science/office assets, 4 million square feet in the development pipeline, several active residential developments, and a separate portfolio of multifamily and manufactured housing units. The company delivers a full range of services to their real estate investors and tenants including asset and property management, leasing, and tenant services. For additional information about the Matan Companies, please visit http://www.mataninc.com

About Progress Labs

Progress Labs is a development initiative created by the Matan Companies to bring over two million square feet of speculative biomanufacturing-ready space to the Washington DC Metro region over the next three years. The buildings are all designed with biotech users in mind, boasting enhanced utilities and commercial ceiling heights, as well as significant column spacing and floor loads to support their mezzanine requirements. Tenants can expect ample parking and loading spaces, solar vehicle charging stations and secure outdoor equipment areas in premier locations along the I-270 corridor. For additional information about Progress Labs, please visit http://www.progresslabs.com
Minnie Smith, who was born in the State of Mississippi and has four sons, has completed her new book My Two Iraqi Patches": a gripping work that describes how the shock of learning that her sons were being deployed cause her hair to change colors on both sides of her head.

Minnie Smith writes, "When I passed by the mirror and saw the impact of the news of learning that they were being deployed, I said to myself, I did not wake up with both sides of my hair having the gray tracks running down both side of my head. I began to write down often how I felt with what had happened to me, and I felt I had no one to talk to about what I was experiencing. I later learned in moving to West Palm Beach, Florida, that a doctor explained to me that my hair must have been the weakest part of my body, explaining that when people receive devastating news, the part of the body that is the weakest is usually the part of the body that handles the news the worst. For instance, if I had a weak heart, I probably would have suffered a heart attack. I dont think if I had not written about my experience, no one would have believed me.

Published by Page Publishing, Minnie Smiths emotional story details how the author was born in Mississippi and at the time it was similar to a third world country, and today is still poorest state in the United States of America. She always wondered how she could be born in such harsh conditions.

She took to books to see how others lived, and she asked her father why he did not move. His answer to her was, This is home. She is the youngest of seven siblings and learned about life from the ones whom she was close in age to. Her siblings left the state with the exception of two sisters.

Smith describes in great detail how the war affected her sons, Leo and Ralphael. She provides insight into how it changed them and what led them to join the military in the first place. This book is a testament to the sacrifices of all veterans and their families.

Readers who wish to experience this intriguing book can purchase My Two Iraqi Patches" at bookstores everywhere, or online at the Apple iTunes Store, Amazon, Google Play, or Barnes and Noble.

For additional information or media inquiries, contact Page Publishing at 866-315-2708.

About Page Publishing:

Page Publishing is a traditional, full-service publishing house that handles all the intricacies involved in publishing its authors books, including distribution in the worlds largest retail outlets and royalty generation. Page Publishing knows that authors need to be free to create, not mired in logistics like eBook conversion, establishing wholesale accounts, insurance, shipping, taxes, and so on. Pages accomplished writers and publishing professionals allow authors to leave behind these complex and time-consuming issues and focus on their passion: writing and creating. Learn more at http://www.pagepublishing.com.
New Kia Models at Performance Kia

The new Kia models are hugely popular in the US market. Moosic customers who are waiting for the 2022 Kia models can now purchase their dream Kia at Performance Kia. The dealership welcomes six 2022 Kia models - namely 2022 Kia Soul, 2022 Kia Sportage, 2022 Kia K5, 2022 Kia Carnival, 2022 Kia Seltos, and 2022 Kia Telluride - to their showroom. The dealership is all set with the online research pages, model comparisons, and blog posts to get drivers excited about the vehicles performance, technology, comfort, exterior, and safety features. Individuals who are interested in owning the all-new Kia lineups are encouraged to visit the Performance Kia dealerships website: https://www.performancekiapa.com/.

Performance Kia is offering low APR special financing on all the 2022 Kia models for qualified buyers. To take advantage of the financing or leasing options, individuals must fill in the dealership's pre-approved finance form and submit the required details. In addition to providing offers on the new Kia models, the dealership has special offers on other new Kia vehicles that include the 2021 Kia Forte, 2021 Kia Niro, 2021 Kia Niro EV, 2021 Kia Niro Plug-In Hybrid, 2021 Kia Rio 5-Door, 2021 Kia Sorento, and 2021 Kia Sorento Hybrid. Potential customers who would like to learn more about these offers can check out the dealerships special offers page. Like other Kia vehicles, the 2022 Kia models come with 10-year/100,000-mile limited powertrain warranty, 5-year/60,000-mile limited basic warranty, 5-year/100,000-mile limited anti-perforation warranty, and 5-year/60,000-mile roadside assistance plan.

Those with queries regarding the 2022 Kia models can contact the Performance Kia sales team directly at 570-291-5271 or visit the dealership in person. The dealerships showroom is conveniently located at 4225 Birney Ave., Moosic, Pennsylvania. The sales department hours extend from 8:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday and from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturdays.
The ribbon is cut on the new Propel Academy school which welcomed students for in person learning this week. The Northeast Community Propel Academy will provide a dynamic 21st century learning environment for the students of Philadelphia for many years to come, and our team at Gilbane is proud to deliver the school on budget and on time, despite the challenges that the pandemic brought our way.

After more than a year of remote learning, 1,600 students from the School District of Philadelphia (SDP) returned to school this week in the beautiful new Northeast Community Propel Academy, a 180,000 square foot K-8 facility resulting from a public-private partnership (P3) between the district and the experts at Gilbane and Stantec. The building is modern, vibrant, and student-centered, providing an engaging new learning environment for the district, which has experienced extraordinary and sustained growth.

"The Northeast Community Propel Academy will provide an engaging and dynamic 21st century learning environment for the students of Philadelphia for many years to come, and our team at Gilbane is proud to deliver the school on budget and on time, despite the challenges that the pandemic brought our way," said Ed Broderick, President and CEO of Gilbane Development Company. "We stayed nimble, flexible, and determined, and the result is a beautiful new school that reminds us all what is possible when public and private sector leaders work together for the good of the community."

The Northeast Community Propel Academy is a successful model for turnkey project delivery, harnessing the exciting educational opportunities that exist in having K-8 learning environments under one roof, said Luis Vildostegui, Senior Principal and Education Leader in Stantecs Philadelphia office. We value the incredible level of engagement from our project partners, stakeholders, and the community. Together, these voices created a special place that engages nature, both physically and as a metaphor, to reinforce the idea of school as a moment of relief, a place for exploration, imagination, and socialization.

Financing for the project was completed one week before COVID-19 shut down schools in March 2020, yet Gilbane and Stantec completed the $80 million social infrastructure project on time for the start of the 2021-2022 school year.

"For more than 150 years, Gilbane has built a strong record of success, including a growing, impressive portfolio of social infrastructure projects like the Northeast Community Propel Academy," said Susan Tully, Senior Project Manager and K-12 Center of Excellence Leader. "In my role as the leader of Gilbane's K-12 Center of Excellence, I see every day the difference that a vibrant, state-of-the-art learning environment can make in the life of a student, and I'm proud and excited to see that come to life here in Philadelphia."

The Northeast Community Propel Academy consolidates clusters of classrooms and collaborative zones around shared media and tech commons within each grade level house. With a total of nine clusters, grades can be organized vertically or horizontally with the number of classrooms adjustable as needed. The overall arrangement efficiently combines collaborative areas for small learning groups adjacent to media and tech commons, promoting ease of collaboration and the ability to allow for directed break-out activities appropriate to grade level needs.

We know this has been a tough 18 months for everyone, and there will continue to be challenges as we navigate the pandemic. But school reopening has been a long-awaited moment for the District, said Superintendent William R. Hite, Jr., Ed.D. To see the joy on the faces of students, staff and families as they returned to school is a feeling I cant quite describe, and it has been especially exciting to see our Propel Academy community return to a beautiful, new, state-of-the-art building.

Leading design firm Stantec provided architecture, interior design, and civil engineering services for the facility. The urban fabric of Philadelphias Pennypack Park offered unique opportunities for the new K-8 school as students from typically urban areas are able to connect with nature. Taking cues from the site, the design team fully embraced next-gen learning and created a unique, vibrant design that connects students as one community.

All stakeholders were invited to explore design strategies and options in a collaborative and integrated fashion. Stantecs knowledge of SDPs standards and ability to navigate Philadelphias regulatory agencies helped the project team remain on schedule. The team also embraced principles guided by LEED for Schools and WELL Building Standards for Educational Facilities in many components of the schools design.

Gilbane Building Company served as the design-builder, and Gilbane Development Company as the developer. To date, Gilbane has overseen more than $3.5 billion in P3 projects, with 40 projects completed or underway.

This work is done under the umbrella of Gilbanes Public Private Partnership (P3) Group, which implements innovative real estate and financial solutions for a multitude of entities throughout the United States. As a developer/investor, builder, and asset manager, the one company approach harnesses Gilbanes extensive experience in planning and design, real estate development, finance (taxable and tax-exempt), design-build and construction management, and, on certain projects, operations/maintenance to provide a fully integrated solution under one entity. These flexible, customized, turnkey solutions are responsive to client needs, reduce project delivery time frames, and lower capital/occupancy costs to ensure value is maximized for all stakeholders.

About Gilbane

Gilbane, Inc., a private holding company marking its 150th year in business, is one of the oldest and largest family-owned construction, investment and real estate development firms in the world. Gilbane Development Company is the project development, financing and ownership arm of Gilbane, providing a full slate of real estate development and property management services. Gilbane Building Company is a full-service construction services firm providing preconstruction, general contracting, construction management, and design-build services on some of the nations most complex projects. Gilbanes Public Private Partnership Group has delivered or has underway more than $3 billion in P3 projects for healthcare, higher education, K-12 schools, and federal/state/municipal clients. To learn more, visit http://www.gilbaneco.com.

About Stantec

Communities are fundamental. Whether around the corner or across the globe, they provide a foundation, a sense of place and of belonging. That's why at Stantec, we always design with community in mind. We care about the communities we servebecause they're our communities too. This allows us to assess what's needed and connect our expertise, to appreciate nuances and envision what's never been considered, to bring together diverse perspectives so we can collaborate toward a shared success. We're designers, engineers, scientists, and project managers, innovating together at the intersection of community, creativity, and client relationships. Balancing these priorities results in projects that advance the quality of life in communities across the globe. Stantec trades on the TSX and the NYSE under the symbol STN. Visit us at http://www.stantec.com/en/markets/education or find us on social media.
Love and Serve: Our Daily Servant Ministry to Reflect Gods Love: Over 365 Daily Devotions: a moving collection of spiritual reflections. Love and Serve: Our Daily Servant Ministry to Reflect Gods Love: Over 365 Daily Devotions is the creation of published author Pastor Ross L. Worch, a loving husband, father, grandfather, and great-grandfather who graduated from Ohio State University in 1971 before being commissioned into the United States Army in 1972. Retiring from the Army in 1994, he went on to attend Trinity Lutheran Seminary, Columbus, Ohio, from 1994 to 1998, obtaining a Master of Divinity degree and becoming ordained in June of 1998. Pastor Worch also holds a Master of Arts degree in Human Resources Management from Pepperdine University (1981). He has served six churches during his more than twenty-two years of ministry in Missouri, Texas, Ohio, and Arkansas.

Pastor Worch shares, Love and Serve is composed of 377 devotions to give daily guidance in our servant ministry to reflect Gods love to all around us. There are 366 devotions for every day of the year, plus eleven additional devotions for the Church year celebrations that move around the calendar because they are controlled by the changing date of Easter each year. That makes this devotional book useable year after year. By ecclesiastical rules, Easter is the first Sunday after the first full moon after the first day of spring. There are thirty-five possible dates for Easter, from March 22 to April 25. The devotions for Ash Wednesday, Palm Sunday, Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Easter, and Pentecost can be plugged in each year on the specific date that applies for that year.

Love and Serve is really a group of 377 mini-sermons to help us turn Gods Word into daily action. Each devotion is headed by words from the Bible, and the devotion answers the question, What does this mean for us in the twenty-first century? And each devotion ends with a short prayer that is intended to help us put our words into action. This love (agape) is the kind of unconditional love that God has for each of us and the way God wants us to love each other. Agape, when done as God intended, is a verb, an action word. God calls on us to be his ambassadors here on earth. We are to represent God to our neighbors. Love and Serve, used daily, can greatly assist in this endeavor. We are called upon to love God and neighbor and to do Gods work with our hands. We are called to love and serve.

Published by Christian Faith Publishing, Pastor Ross L. Worchs new book is an inspiring opportunity for daily active worship.

With decades of ministry service to pull from, Pastor Worch presents a collection of faith-based writings for those who seek to encourage and nurture a sense of faith.

View a synopsis of Love and Serve: Our Daily Servant Ministry to Reflect Gods Love: Over 365 Daily Devotions on YouTube.

Consumers can purchase Love and Serve: Our Daily Servant Ministry to Reflect Gods Love: Over 365 Daily Devotions at traditional brick & mortar bookstores, or online at Amazon.com, Apple iTunes store, or Barnes and Noble.

For additional information or inquiries about Love and Serve: Our Daily Servant Ministry to Reflect Gods Love: Over 365 Daily Devotions, contact the Christian Faith Publishing media department at 866-554-0919.
Paybotic is honored to attend this years New England Cannabis Convention (NECANN) to be held in Boston, Massachusetts. Paybotic Executive Brian OConnor will attend the convention on behalf of the nationwide payment processing firm. He will operate an exhibit at table 533 along the right side of the west room wall for each day of the event.

Since 2014, NECANN has served as a gathering of knowledge and resources for cannabis entrepreneurs and enthusiasts throughout the industry and New England area. The goal of the expo is to promote engaging, learning, and expanding the potential for cannabis market opportunities among business owners, investors, academics, legal activists, and medical/retail consumers.

As a regionally-targeted convention, NECANNs focus on the needs and potential of local cannabis markets make for a more effective expo than what national shows can provide. Paybotic is excited to show cannabis business owners and key decision makers operating in areas such as Massachusetts, Maine, and Vermont how its payment processing services can help dispensaries flourish in a high-risk industry with dynamic demands.

The first two days of the conference will begin at 9 AM, with each featuring several workshops and seminars that run through 5 PM concerning various subjects around cannabis products and services, both commercial and recreational. The final daybeginning at 11 AM and concluding at 4 PMwill commence with a series of events that specifically target those in fields such as cultivation, processing, medical, technology, and other business applications with cannabis ties.

Vendors, guest speakers, and potential investors are encouraged to attend and participate at the 2021 New England Cannabis Convention. For more information about hosting an exhibit, obtaining a press pass, or becoming a sponsor of NECANN, please visit the event website.

About Paybotic

Paybotic is one of the largest payment processing solution providers for high-risk merchants in the United States. The company specializes in helping cannabis-related businesses process customer payments and maintain compliance amid evolving regulation.

As innovators in the FinTech space, products such as the Cashless ATM have been obvious solutions for Paybotic to implement across the cannabis industry. The company actively works with a variety of sizes of businessesfrom single store locations to multi-state operators and even publicly-traded companies.

Cannabis business owners or decision makers with interest in one or several of Paybotics full suite of industry payment processing services can call 844-420-4729 for more information. Those interested can also visit the Paybotic website to speak with a live agent.
The findings in this report are clear: to strengthen their digital foundation and achieve value-driven outcomes, it's critical that business adopt Service Management strategies and tools that support them." - Christian Lane, CEO and Founding Partner of Praecipio Consulting.

Praecipio Consulting, an Austin-based IT consulting firm that enables digital transformations through leading technologies and business process management, recently published the State of Service Management 2021 Report, which provides an in-depth look at how diverse teams-from Legal, HR, Marketing, and beyond-are adopting Service Management principles to address business challenges and improve ways of working.

Filled with data-driven insights and statistics, the report provides a detailed assessment of emerging trends in Service Management and discusses how the framework contributes to business value, employee wellbeing, and improving the service experience. Some key findings from the full report include the following:



The majority of organizations (71%) have either started or are planning to use ITSM capabilities outside of IT. Only 21% of organizations have no plans.

The top three drivers for Service Management are: process standardization and optimization (22%), cost reduction (21%), and employee experience improvement (19%).

The corporate roles driving Service Management are most commonly the CEO and CIO. CEOs in smaller organizations, CIOs in larger organizations.

Well-advanced Service Management strategies are least likely to have the CIO responsible for driving them  instead, its more likely to be the CEO or COO.

Customer service/support is the most popular use case for Service Management outside of IT  at 88% of organizations with in-flight Service Management strategies.

Service Management tool churn is still high. Only one-third of organizations have no plans to change tools in 2021 or 2022, with 17% currently changing and 24% expecting to in 2021.

The State of Service Management 2021 Report is the result of comprehensive research conducted by Praecipio Consulting, which involved surveying respondents from diverse business teams and who work with organizations of different sizes across various industries. Respondent demographics were based on job role, number of employees at the company, industry, and country.

"As companies continue to face increasing uncertainty in the marketplace, those who are experience-focused and have operational agility will be the ones to keep pace with and thrive in today's business landscape," said Christian Lane, CEO and Founding Partner of Praecipio Consulting. "This requires extending ITSM capabilities and digital technologies to all teams across the organization, which is a trend we have seen play out in the digital space and also confirmed in the State of Service Management 2021 Report. The findings in this report are clear: to strengthen their digital foundation and achieve value-driven outcomes, it's critical that business adopt Service Management strategies and tools that support them."

Access the State of Service Management 2021 Report here: https://www.praecipio.com/2021-state-of-service-management-report

About Praecipio Consulting

Praecipio Consulting is a leading business process and technology consulting firm based in Austin, Texas that helps organizations successfully achieve their digital transformation goals. Specializing in process frameworks, including Agile, IT Service Management (ITSM), DevOps, and Enterprise Service Management, Praecipio Consulting serves as a strategic partner to industry leaders and organizations of all sizes across various industries to optimize business processes by leveraging Atlassians robust product suite along with other technologies. As an Atlassian Platinum Enterprise Solution Partner, Praecipio Consulting offers integrated business and technology solutions that help clients deliver a delightful customer experience, increase costs savings, and improve business performance. Since establishing an official partnership with Atlassian in 2008, Atlassian has recognized Praecipio Consulting as their Partner of the Year for several years, including ITSM Partner of the Year in 2018 and Enterprise Services Partner of the Year in 2020.

To learn more, visit http://www.praecipio.com and listen to The Digital Transformation(ists) podcast. Join the Praecipio Consulting community on linkedin.com/company/praecipio-consulting, https://www.instagram.com/praecipio/, https://www.facebook.com/praecipio/, and https://twitter.com/praecipio/
Labor Day Sale! Extra strength 3000mg CBD and 1000mg full spectrum Rare Hawaiian CBD are on sale for just $59 each! (Regular prices: $99 and $79) Our sale price of $59 is really a steal for such a strong CBD product, said Dalgamouni.

Rare Cannabinoid Company launched its Labor Day Sale, offering up to 40% off CBD to combine with its single extracts of THCV, Delta-8-THC, CBN, CBG, CBC and CBDA.

For a limited time, customers can purchase 1000mg full spectrum Rare Hawaiian CBD and extra high strength 3000mg CBD oil tinctures for just $59 (regular prices are $79 and $99 respectively.)

"We are offering this deep discount so that our customers can get the full benefits of our apothecary line of cannabinoids," said company founder and CEO, Jared Dalgamouni.

"Each rare cannabinoid is believed to offer specific health and wellness benefits, but they work best when combined with each other or a full spectrum CBD for the entourage effect," he said.

For example, THCV can be taken with CBD for a morning boost and appetite control while an evening combination of CBN and CBD may help with relaxation and sleep, he said.

Rare Cannabinoid Company's 1000mg CBD oil tincture contains full spectrum CBD extracted from premium Hawaiian hemp. The plants are grown in the "up-country" Kula region on the island of Maui. This verdant agricultural area is on the western-facing slopes of the dormant volcano Haleakala. The land receives year-round tropical sunshine and rain and has a cooler climate than Hawaiis coastal beach areas. The Hawaiian CBD is carried in certified organic MCT coconut oil and is gently flavored with food grade organic essential oils of Italian lemon and wild orange.

Meanwhile, the 3000mg CBD oil is so strong that its the only Rare Cannabinoid Company product that comes with a glass dropper instead of a spray cap for precision dosing. A serving size is considered 0.25 ml (25mg CBD), which means that there are a whopping 120 servings per 30ml bottle.

Our sale price of $59 is really a steal for such a strong CBD product, said Dalgamouni.

We hope that it will allow our customers to experience the concept of mixing and matching cannabinoids to really figure out what works best for them, he said.

Customers can get a further 15% off all products ordered with an auto-ship subscription. This brings the price of the CBD oils down to $50.15 each. Subscriptions can be cancelled online without any penalties or fees at any time. See how rare cannabinoid subscriptions work here.

Rare Cannabinoid Company was the first to conceptualize an apothecary of cannabinoids. The idea is that depending on the time of day or ones mental and physical needs, they can customize their own personal blend using the brands 500mg single extracts of THCV, Delta-8-THC, CBN, CBG, CBC and CBDA. Rare Cannabinoid Company was the first brand to produce a purified THCV oil tincture and will soon be the first to launch a CBDV oil tincture as well as terpene-only tinctures for relaxation and relief.

Here is a brief definition of each cannabinoid with links to news articles and research:

THCV (tetrahydrocannabivarin): Believed to boost energy and suppress appetite.

Leafly: Everything You Need To Know About THCV

LA Weekly: The Best THCV for Energy and Weight Loss

High Times: THCV, CBN and CBG: Learn which Rare Cannabinoid is Best for Weight Loss, Sleep or Pain

Learn more and buy THCV here.

Delta-8-THC (Delta-8-tetrahydrocannabinol): May offer a feeling of euphoria and ease discomfort and nausea.

High Times: 8 Reasons To Try Delta-8-THC Before Its Too Late

Learn more and buy Delta-8-THC here.

CBN (cannabinol): Supports rest, relaxation and sleep.

L.A. Weekly: CBN for Sleep: Your Guide to the Most Sedative Cannabinoid

Learn more and buy CBN oil here.

CBG (cannabigerol): May ease discomfort and supports brain and body health.

Leafly: Is CBG better than CBD and THC for pain, inflammation, and aging?

Learn more and buy CBG oil here.

CBC (cannabichromene): Supports mental health and may improve mood

Leafly: Natures antidepressant? Rare cannabinoid CBC boosts the brains bliss molecule

Learn more and buy CBC oil here.

CBDA (cannabidiolic acid): May reduce nausea and reduce inflammation from everyday activities.

Learn more and buy CBDA here.

CBDV (cannabidivarin): CBDV studies are looking into its potential uses for inflammation, autism spectrum disorder, muscular dystrophy and seizures.

Learn more and buy CBDV here(coming mid-September).

Relax terpene-only tincture: Blend of pure terpenes -Myrcene, -Pinene, -3-Carene, -Limonene, Linalool promotes calm, relaxation, stress resilience and restful sleep.

Learn more and buy Relax terpene-only tincture here (coming mid-September).

Relief terpene-only tincture: Blend of pure terpenes -Pinene, -Limonene, Linalool and -Caryophyllene may reduce inflammation related to activity, speed up the recovery process and support healthy joints.

Learn more and buy Relief terpene-only tincture here (coming mid-September).

All Rare Cannabinoid Company products are produced in a cGMP facility. For full peace of mind, third-party lab test results are available online and via QR code on the product packaging.

Rare Cannabinoid Company was started by the owners of Hawaiian Choice, Hawaiis most-popular CBD brand. Hawaiian Choice offers CBD tinctures, a cooling CBD topical balm, and vegan CBD gummies, all made with broad spectrum Hawaiian CBD and infused with real Hawaiian fruits, essential oils or honey. Both brands are sold in more than 200 locations across the United States and online. Hawaiian Choice is also sold across Japan and the Mariana Islands.

Brick and mortar stores interested in stocking products from Rare Cannabinoid Company and Hawaiian Choice CBD can learn more and apply for a wholesale account here.
Senior Market Sales logo Dennis has built a business that reflects his work ethic, his honesty and his desire to do the right thing for his members. Those are the type of people SMS is looking for in a partnership.

Senior Market Sales (SMS), one of the industrys premier insurance marketing organizations, has acquired Breitenfeldt Group, a health insurance brokerage specializing in Medicare insurance.

Breitenfeldt Group has built a strong reputation in Minnesota and Wisconsin over the past 25 years, becoming one of the top producers for Medicare there, said SMS President Jim Summers. Combining that talent with the strength of SMS and SMS relationships will create new and exciting opportunities for both companies.

With a work ethic learned from growing up on a central Minnesota dairy farm, Dennis Breitenfeldt started as a one-person agency in 1996 from his living room and the dash of his Pontiac Grand Am. Today, the health insurance brokerage employs more than 50 people in eight offices serving residents of Minnesota and Wisconsin as well as some snowbird states with Medicare insurance, individual and family health insurance and dental and vision insurance. By helping future Medicare beneficiaries understand Medicare before they become members and promising to help them throughout retirement, Breitenfeldt Group has been so successful that additional support is needed to continue growing while maintaining their high service standards, Breitenfeldt said.

We have this referral stream from our current membership that well now be able to service, plus well be able to provide resources for them beyond what we currently have, Breitenfeldt said. The capabilities that SMS brings to the table  from quoting to enrollment  and its national presence made sense to us, but ultimately it boiled down to the culture and enjoying not just what we're doing but who we're doing it with.

For more than 10 years, Breitenfeldt Group has utilized the SMS platform, which includes proprietary technology, proven marketing systems, industry-leading back-office support and a comprehensive product portfolio that includes health and wealth solutions from top carriers. SMS Summers said Breitenfeldt Groups experience and knowledge helping members with Medicare in the employer group space is a natural fit, given SMS new parent company, Alliant Insurance Services, one of the nations largest insurance and employee benefits consulting firms.

Culturally, Breitenfeldt Group and SMS both believe in serving the member first and making the sale second, Summers said. In working together over the years, weve seen its not just words. Dennis has built a business that reflects his work ethic, his honesty and his desire to do the right thing for his members. Those are the type of people SMS is looking for in a partnership.

SMS has more than 320 employees at its Omaha, Nebraska, headquarters, and its distribution network includes 65,000 independent insurance agents, 1,000 career agents, call centers, and a wholly owned Registered Investment Adviser (RIA) firm.

About Senior Market Sales, Inc.

Senior Market Sales (SMS) represents top Medicare Supplement, Medicare Advantage, annuity, life, long-term care, and travel insurance carriers in all 50 states. More than 65,000 independent insurance agents rely on SMS for proprietary technology, competitive insurance products, and expert training and service to help them leverage their time, make more money, and put their business in a position of distinction. Founded in 1982, SMS is headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska. In 2020, SMS joined the Alliant Insurance Services, Inc., family of companies. Visit http://www.SeniorMarketSales.com or call 1.800.786.5566 for more information.

About Alliant Insurance Services

Alliant Insurance Services is one of the nations leading distributors of diversified insurance products and services. We operate through a network of specialized national platforms and local offices to offer our clients a comprehensive portfolio of solutions built on innovative thinking and personal service. The business of managing risk is getting more complex, and Alliant is meeting this complexity head-on, not with more layers of management, but with more creativity and agility. Alliant is changing the way our clients approach risk management and benefits, so they can capitalize on new opportunities to grow and protect their organizations. Visit us at alliant.com.
SGF proudly welcome reproductive endocrinologist Nicole Banks, M.D., to SGF Jones Institute. It may sound cliche, but I became a doctor to help people. ... I empower my patients to ask questions and advocate for themselves so that they feel confident taking the next steps with me along their fertility journeys.

Shady Grove Fertility (SGF), a premier fertility center and home to 85,000 babies born, welcomed today reproductive endocrinologist, Nicole Banks, M.D., to the practices SGF Jones Institute location in Norfolk, Virginia. Dr. Banks joins Tarita Pakrashi, M.D., as the second physician on SGF Jones Institutes physician team, further expanding premier fertility services for individuals and families across the Hampton Roads region.

Effective June 30, 2021, the EVMS Jones Institute transitioned all patient care to SGF. SGF Jones Institute, the new name for the Jones Institute Reproductive Endocrine Clinical Practice, opened to patients on July 7, 2021, in the Jones location on the EVMS campus in Norfolk. The Jones Institute is a respected name in reproductive medicine, stemming from its rich history of firsts, including the first baby born from in vitro fertilization (IVF) in the United States in 1981.

Dr. Banks is now scheduling new patient appointments. She will also provide:



fertility and ovarian reserve testing and diagnosis,

semen analysis,

hysterosalpingogram (HSG),

low-tech fertility treatment options such as intrauterine insemination (IUI),

in vitro fertilization (IVF),

donor egg, sperm, and embryo,

genetic screening and testing,

gestational carrier,

egg freezing,

fertility preservation for patients with cancer, and

LGBTQ family building.

It may sound cliche, but I became a doctor to help people, explains Dr. Banks. I can relate to what my patients are experiencing because I turned to reproductive medicine to help grow my own family. I empower my patients to ask questions and advocate for themselves so that they feel confident taking the next steps with me along their fertility journeys.

Dr. Banks is board certified in obstetrics and gynecology, reproductive endocrinology, and clinical genetics. After graduating from Harvard University magna cum laude, Dr. Banks earned her medical degree from the University of Virginia School of Medicine. She then pursued her residency in obstetrics and gynecology at Georgetown University where she was the recipient of the Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility Resident Award.

Dr. Banks continued her studies with a research-intensive fellowship in genetics at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). During this time, Dr. Banks earned the 2013 ASRM Corporate Member Council In-training Travel Award, where she ultimately contributed to four ASRM presentations on topics including intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI), structural abnormalities of the Y chromosome, and gene mutations. Dr. Banks then completed a second fellowship at NIH in reproductive endocrinology.

Im proud to be part of SGF because the whole practice puts in the extra effort to ensure its providers are practicing evidence-based medicine complemented with genuine patient care, expresses Dr. Banks.

Chief Medical Officer, Eric Widra, M.D., had this to say about Dr. Bankss introduction to the SGF family, Dr. Bankss dedication to scientific advancements and reproductive medicine seamlessly aligns with SGFs drive to safely push the envelope and improve patient outcomes.

To schedule an appointment with Dr. Banks at SGF Jones Institute, call the SGF New Patient Center at 757-512-8547 or complete this brief form.

About Shady Grove Fertility (SGF)

SGF is a leading fertility and IVF center of excellence with more than 85,000 babies born and 5,000+ 5-star patient reviews. With 41 locations, including new locations in Colorado and Norfolk, VA, as well as throughout CO, FL, GA, MD, NY, PA, VA, D.C. and Santiago, Chile, SGF offers patients virtual physician consults, delivers individualized care, accepts most insurance plans, and makes treatment affordable through innovative financial options, including 100% refund guarantees. More physicians refer their patients to SGF than any other center. SGF is among the founding partner practices of US Fertility, the largest physician-owned, physician-led partnership of top-tier fertility practices in the U.S. Call 1-888-761-1967 or visit ShadyGroveFertility.com.
Blush and Bright and Your Pearly Whites: an engaging and creative sea tale. Blush and Bright and Your Pearly Whites is the creation of published author Shey Waldrop, a native of Salt Lake City, Utah, who had a major record deal with Motown Records in California at the age of sixteen, which led to performing in many commercials and a movie.

Waldrop shares, Mermaid sisters Bright and Blush live in the Cove of Hush with their father, the king, and their three best friends, Sapphire, Pete, and Trip.

Bright is the older sister and is very outgoing. She enjoys playing melodies with shells she collected from the ocean floor. Blush is the shy younger sister with a voice that could soften the hardest hearts and create peace across the ocean kingdom.

You will experience adventures in the Briny Deep and the gossip in the Sea of Calamities; and you will get swept away to the Great Beyond.

This story is about the love of their family and how, even though sometimes in life you may lose your way, there is always a lesson to learn and others that play a part in your journey; and if you believe, you will always find your way back home. The story of Bright and Blush will take you from the sea to the air, through tears and laughter, through interactive ways of imagining a new and fantastic world. It will also explain how every tooth lost by a little boy or little girl will one day become an oceans beautiful pearl.

Published by Christian Faith Publishing, Shey Waldrops new book is a unique spin on the tooth fairy that explores the idea that lost teeth become pearls in the ocean.

With this delightful work, Waldrop hopes to encourage the imagination of young readers everywhere.

View a synopsis of Blush and Bright and Your Pearly Whites on YouTube.

Consumers can purchase Blush and Bright and Your Pearly Whites at traditional brick & mortar bookstores, or online at Amazon.com, Apple iTunes store, or Barnes and Noble.

For additional information or inquiries about Blush and Bright and Your Pearly Whites, contact the Christian Faith Publishing media department at 866-554-0919.
Now What?: Next Steps in Your Walk with Christ: a potent examination of what it means to truly live a Christian life. Now What?: Next Steps in Your Walk with Christ is the creation of published author Tommy Boland, a loving husband and father of four who earned a Master of Divinity in 2009 and a Doctor of Ministry in 2020 at Knox Theological Seminary, Fort Lauderdale, Florida. In 2019, he launched Live4G Ministries.

Boland shares, Once you say, I believe! now what? Now it is time to begin the process of becoming a disciple of Christ, to grow and mature in your faith.

Now What addresses the biblical mandate of making disciples (Matthew 28:19) through the consistent application of the means of gracethose activities or disciplines designed by God to conform us more and more into the image and likeness of Christ.

Tommy lays out a simple framework designed to help the new believer build his Christian life on the Rock of Jesus Christ. But thats not all.

This book is also designed to be used as an ongoing training manual for all Christians because the process of discipleship never ends in the life of the believer until we are brought home into glory. The ultimate goal in discipleship is to be making disciples who are committed to making disciples, and this book will help you do just that.

Published by Christian Faith Publishing, Tommy Bolands new book is an inspiring look at steps that can be taken to reaffirm and increase ones faith.

With thoughtful reflections, encouraging questions, and relevant scripture, Boland encourages those who seek a close relationship with God to take a moment to reflect and expand their spirituality.

View a synopsis of Now What?: Next Steps in Your Walk with Christ on YouTube.

Consumers can purchase Now What?: Next Steps in Your Walk with Christ at traditional brick & mortar bookstores, or online at Amazon.com, Apple iTunes store, or Barnes and Noble.

For additional information or inquiries about Now What?: Next Steps in Your Walk with Christ, contact the Christian Faith Publishing media department at 866-554-0919.
2021 American Eagle Silver One Ounce Uncirculated Coin Obverse

The United States Mint (Mint) will accept orders for the redesigned 2021 American Eagle One Ounce Silver Uncirculated Coin produced at the West Point Mint beginning on September 9 at noon EDT. Production of this coin is limited to 175,000 units, and orders are limited to three coins per household for the first 24 hours.

The American Eagle Silver Uncirculated Coin is the collector version of the official United States Mint American Eagle Silver Bullion Coin. Produced since 1986, this coin has been updated with a refreshed obverse (heads) and a completely redesigned reverse (tails) to mark the 35th anniversary of the American Eagle Coin Program.

Like its bullion counterpart, the obverse of the American Eagle Silver Uncirculated Coin features sculptor Adolph A. Weinman's full-length figure of Liberty in full stride, enveloped in folds of the flag, with her right hand extended and branches of laurel and oak in her left. Using technological advancements, the coin has been redesigned to encompass some of Weinmans original details, which renders a closer reflection of his original vision, including the addition of his traditional artist mark. Inscriptions are LIBERTY, IN GOD WE TRUST, and 2021.

The redesigned reverse was created by United States Mint Artistic Infusion Program Designer Emily Damstra and sculpted by United States Mint Medallic Artist Michael Gaudioso. The design depicts an eagle as it approaches a landing, carrying an oak branch, as if to add it to a nest. Inscriptions are UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, E PLURIBUS UNUM, 1 OZ. FINE SILVER, and ONE DOLLAR.

To provide an added level of security, the redesigned American Eagle Silver Coin also includes a reed pattern variation. The Mint benchmarked its efforts against anti-counterfeiting programs implemented by major mints around the world.

The 2021 American Eagle One Ounce Silver Uncirculated Coin (W) is priced at $67. To set up a REMIND ME alert, visit https://catalog.usmint.gov/american-eagle-2021-one-ounce-silver-uncirculated-coin-21EGN.html (product code 21EGN).

The American Eagle One Ounce Silver Uncirculated Coin is included in the Mints Numismatic Bulk Purchase Program. Click here for details.

Visit https://catalog.usmint.gov/ to view additional United States Mint products.

About the United States Mint

Congress created the United States Mint in 1792, and the Mint became part of the Department of the Treasury in 1873. As the Nations sole manufacturer of legal tender coinage, the Mint is responsible for producing circulating coinage for the Nation to conduct its trade and commerce. The Mint also produces numismatic products, including proof, uncirculated, and commemorative coins; Congressional Gold Medals; silver and bronze medals; and silver and gold bullion coins. Its numismatic programs are self-sustaining and operate at no cost to taxpayers.

Note: To ensure that all members of the public have fair and equal access to United States Mint products, the United States Mint will not accept and will not honor orders placed prior to the official on-sale date and time of September 9, 2021, at noon EDT.

To reduce the risk of employee exposure to COVID-19 in the workplace, the Mints sales centers are closed until further notice. Please use the United States Mint catalog site at https://catalog.usmint.gov/ as your primary source of the most current information on product and service status.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:



Visit https://catalog.usmint.gov/coins/coin-programs/american-eagle-coins/ for more information about the American Eagle Coin Program.

Watch our flagship video honoring the American Eagle Coin Program: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rs6_FTgIX8Y.

Visit https://www.usmint.gov/about for information about the United States Mint.

Visit https://catalog.usmint.gov/email-signup to subscribe to United States Mint electronic product notifications, news releases, public statements, and our monthly educational newsletter, Lessons That Make Cents.

Visit and subscribe to the United States Mints YouTube channel to view videos about the United States Mint.

Sign up for RSS Feeds from the United States Mint and follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest.

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United States Mint  Connecting America through Coins
The Underworld: SHEOL- HADES (The Invisible World): Dwelling of the Souls of Dead: a potent opportunity for exploration of a little discussed topic. The Underworld: SHEOL- HADES (The Invisible World): Dwelling of the Souls of Dead is the creation of published author Wagner Bariani Santiago, a loving husband, father, and grandfather who was born in Brazil and later moved to the United States. He studied at Federal University of Goias-Brazil in visual arts and later at Washington Bible College where several theological courses were enjoyed.

Santiago shares, What happens to our soul the second after our death?

Already some books were written with that theme, but none have given a satisfactory answer to this intriguing question!

Some books are based on personal experiences, others on superficial studies, not giving the reader a final answer or the sense of having learned the solution to such a question!

This book was written based on the texts of the biblical scriptures, where we study the original meaning of the Hebrew word Sheol, and the Greek word Hades, which were mostly erroneously translated to hell or grave but actually meaning dwelling of the souls of the dead!

And in unraveling those meanings and comparing them with the context in which it was originally written and inspired by God, one arrives at the conclusion and solution to several unanswered questions in the Bible and fundamental to the understanding of the Christian doctrine and of its relationship with our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ!

The reader will discover a part never studied in the scriptures but unveiled because God made us known!

Its worthy of read and learn!

Follow me in this discovery of the underworld!

Published by Christian Faith Publishing, Wagner Bariani Santiagos new book is a compelling read with helpful, relevant scripture.

Santiago writes in hopes of educating and continuing the conversation on the often-overlooked portions of the Bible that examine the souls journey following the death of the body.

View a synopsis of The Underworld: SHEOL- HADES (The Invisible World): Dwelling of the Souls of Dead on YouTube.

Consumers can purchase The Underworld: SHEOL- HADES (The Invisible World): Dwelling of the Souls of Dead at traditional brick & mortar bookstores, or online at Amazon.com, Apple iTunes store, or Barnes and Noble.

For additional information or inquiries about The Underworld: SHEOL- HADES (The Invisible World): Dwelling of the Souls of Dead, contact the Christian Faith Publishing media department at 866-554-0919.
Through this collaboration, YPO members will be exposed to new, instrumental research and analysis, which will enable them to make a lasting impact in their businesses and communities," said YPO CEO Xavier Mufraggi.

YPO, the global leadership community of more than 30,000 chief executives in 142 countries, today announced the Brookings Institution, a non-profit public policy organization, is a YPO Content Contributor, providing YPO members with the latest in data, research and analysis around important policies and initiatives impacting business leaders of today.

Created in 1916, the Brookings Institution is devoted to independent, in-depth research that leads to pragmatic and innovative ideas on how to solve problems facing society. More than 300 experts research topics on foreign policy, global economics, governance, development and U.S. metropolitan policy.

As a result of this new relationship, the Brookings Institution will offer YPO members the ability to learn from in-depth analysis and discussion with scholars on breaking news topics and the opportunity to attend customized, exclusive briefings and events with Brookings Institution scholars.

YPO is excited to start this relationship with the Brookings Institution, a world-renowned organization committed to finding new ideas to solve problems at all levels, said YPO CEO Xavier Mufraggi. Through this collaboration, YPO members will be exposed to new, instrumental research and analysis, which will enable them to make a lasting impact in their businesses and communities.

Brookingss partners like YPO are vitally important to the institutions mission of providing high-quality, independent, non-partisan public policy research to address some of the worlds most pressing challenges, said Cara Pomponio, Managing Director of Brookings Development. We look forward to working with YPO to share new Brookings research with a broader cross-section of the business community.

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About YPO:

YPO is the global leadership community of more than 30,000 chief executives in 142 countries who are connected by the shared belief that the world needs better leaders. Each of our members have achieved significant leadership success at a young age. Combined, they lead businesses and organizations contributing USD9 trillion in annual revenue. YPO members inspire and support each other through peer learning and exceptional experiences in an inclusive community of open sharing and trust. Visit ypo.org for more.

About Brookings Institution:

The Brookings Institution is a non-profit public policy organization based in Washington, D.C., with roots tracing back to 1916. Brookings is devoted to independent, in-depth research that leads to new ideas for solving problems at the local, national and global level.
Marlowe Granados. Verso, $19.95 trade paper (288p) ISBN 978-1-83976-401-1

In Granadoss amusingly mischievous debut, a young ingenue comes to New York City from London for a summer, seeking to bury her grief over her mothers death. By night, Isa Epley and her friend Gala Novak rub shoulders with celebrities and intellectuals. By day, they make ends meet selling clothes on consignment. Galas gift for being in the right place at the right time opens up new vistas for the impressionable Isa, who records her nighttime adventures in her diary or in notes on her phone (Its inconspicuous; I look as though I am being aloof and texting, but I am noticing and observing all the time). All of 21 (an unserious age, according to her), Isa contents herself with cocktails and the kind of men likely to pay for them, trying to tell the sincere patrons of the arts from the phonies as she pursues a quest for Social Capital, while Gala comes dangerously close to drifting into a cult. Isas keen perception lifts this comedy of manners above the surface she and Gala attempt to glide on for the summers duration (If I were to describe typical New York conversation, it would be two people waiting for their turn to talk). This perfectly sums up a new age of innocence.
When it came time to replace Calvin Crosby as executive director of the California Independent Booksellers Alliance following his decision to become co-owner of the Kings English Bookshop in Salt Lake City, the board decided to name co-executive directors, appointing Ann Seaton, CALIBAs former director of operations, and Kristin Rasmussen, general manager of {pages} a bookstore in Manhattan Beach, Calif., to the posts.

The two women come from different parts of the state. Seaton, who began at CALIBA August 1, was with the association for six years. Before CALIBA formed, she served as administrator and director of operations for the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association and is a resident of San Jose. Rasmussen, who joined CALIBA on August 23, was general manager of [pages} in 2017 and previously served as schools program coordinator for Books Inc.; she lives outside of Los Angeles.

At the time of the appointments, Melinda Powers of Bookshop Santa Cruz and CALIBA board president, said, Given the magnitude of California, its influential economy and its concentration of excellent independent bookstores, we recognize the need for dynamic, visionary, and responsive leadership, and believe our members will be best served by the collaborative power of Ann and Kristin as we expand beyond this past year of global shutdown and explore the true opportunity in a California Independent Booksellers Alliance.

One of the benefits of having two executive directors is that each of them understands the unique culture of their own part of the state. California is a very large and diverse state, Rasmussen says, and each part has its own personality. That said, the California narrative also unites us. There is a pride of place and people who are proud to call it home.

Both Rasmussen and Seaton note that one of the challenges of leading CALIBA, which has about 250 member stores, will be the continual geographic education of New York publishers who remain unfamiliar with the states curious geography. For example, Seaton says, we have two South Bays. There is one near San Francisco and another in Los Angeles. We also have to make it clear that if you have an author read one night in San Jose, you can have them read again in Berkeley, and it wont be the same audience.

Rasmussen adds, It also applies to Los Angeles, where you can have someone read in Manhattan Beach and Pasadena, and there will be no overlap.

At the time of our conversation via Zoom in late August, Seaton was just finishing work on the holiday catalog, and the pair were prepping for two October in-person events, dubbed Discovery Lab 2021, which are taking place during the annual fall regional. The first will be Sunday, October 24, at Books Inc., in San Francisco, and the second will be Thursday, October 28, at Vromans in Pasadena. Each event will feature presentations by six authors, who will each have five minutes to talk about their book. ARCs will be on offer, and there will be snacks and opportunities to network. We kept hearing that booksellers really wanted to get together and see each other again, Seaton says. So we tried to find a pared-down, more casual way to make that happen. It will be very much a mix-and-mingle party atmosphere.

Asked about priorities, Rasmussen says that giving more emphasis to diversity is one obvious emphasis, but not entirely in the conventional sense. Before he left CALIBA, Crosby was integral in creating the Mosaic Community for BIPOC booksellers (see BIPOC Bookstores Form Community on p. 48), and diversity, equity, and inclusion issues remain high on the agenda. In addition, both directors acknowledge that online sales bolstered revenue for many member booksellers during retail lockdowns and they plan to continue supporting those efforts, primarily through enhanced education and communication.

Growth of the association is also a priority, and CALIBA aims to offer more support to online-only, or pop-up booksellers, which have become much more commonplace. It has been really interesting that we saw more stores open in the past year than we saw close, Seaton says. There has been a lot of excitement around opening stores and a lot of different models.

Much credit for the survival of indies, the codirectors believe, goes to the growing importance consumers have put on shopping locally. One of the best things that Ive seen come out of this long nightmare that we have endured for the past year and a half is that, finally, the shop local message has really hit home with our communities, Seaton says.

Rasmussen adds, I think when people actually saw the stores in their communities shut down during the worst part of the pandemic for weeks and months, they realized how valuable an asset these stores were to their communities, what they did for local authors and schools and other community groups, how they are safe havens in their communities.

Before the stores were shuttered, maybe they just didnt get the message. But they do now, Rasmussen says. I think they saw that we booksellers could do things they never imagined we could do: online sales, curbside pickup, or deliveries on bikes. We could get them books quickly and do it with good humor, grace, and a little flair. And that we went the extra mile for our customers is something they really appreciated. The result was an outpouring of love for bookstores across the state that continues to this day. It is, Rasmussen says, something we are all thrilled to see.

Back to the main feature
Op-Ed: Purdue is leaps behind when it comes to the planet
The islands leading network carrier, Zeop, offers services through optical fibre (FTTH) to residential and business customers and needed to refresh their legacy video network to be able to deliver triple play services to those customers.

To deliver linear TV using broadcast technologies, IP multicast for FTTH and RF for cable TV customers, Zeop has deployed Appears X Platform at two datacentres in Paris. From there, video content is transmitted by submarine cable to a new Appear headend on Reunion Island, where the X and XC Platforms combined technology is deployed, and where content can be distributed across the island.

Lucas Telecom remotely managed the deployment of Appears technology for Zeop. Appears X10 has been deployed at its Paris datacentres, while Appears XC5100 and X20 have been operating at the Reunion Island headend for satellite and DTT reception. An additional X Platform has also been deployed at the headend for video processing and scrambling. Finally, the XC5100 is being used for distributing TV services through FTTH and cable access networks.

Xavier Joseph, CEO at Zeop, commented: Our priority is first and foremost to deliver the best television experiences for our customers, but we werent able to offer the new and unique services that our customers want and expect. We knew we needed to modernise but wanted to avoid the pitfalls of the past and futureproof ourselves.

Lucas Telecom is a company weve worked with in the past, and we fully trusted its advice and technology recommendations from Appear. The implementation was seamless, even though it was conducted remotely during the pandemic. What is perhaps most important though, is that our customers can now enjoy the television services they want and love.

Added Christophe Lucas, CEO at Lucas Telecom: As a longstanding partner to Zeop, we wanted to ensure that we had both the technical knowledge and capability to complete this complex project. Appear was the perfect partner for us on this  the versatility and reliability of its technologies, along with the ease of integration, were precisely what was needed to fulfil the needs of this project, and to ensure Zeops television services are future proofed for the next 10 years.

Speaking on the project, Thomas Bostrm Jrgensen, CEO at Appear, said: The Zeop project with Lucas Telecom was a massive logistical challenge. The islands location, the global situation, and the very specific needs of Zeop presented a challenge which only Appears solutions could solve. The benefits that Zeop is already seeing is a testament to both the quality of Lucas Telecoms consultancy, orchestrating a complex implementation under difficult circumstances, as well as the flexibility, reliability and capability of our technology.
The contorted lines of railways and gas pipes across the South Caucasus bear the imprint of a torrid history. Whether breakaway republics from Georgia or the Azerbaijan-Armenian dispute, frozen conflicts have forced nations to move against geographys imperatives. But if this has damaged one country above others, it is Armenia  a nation whose diaspora twice outnumber it.

Over 80% of the former Soviet republics borders have been closed for more than 30 years, stunting its economic development.But the reason for this fiscal debility has recently disappeared.

As the Soviet Union collapsed, Armenia and neighboring Azerbaijan descended into conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountainous region within the latters borders but with a mixed population. Azerbaijan suffered serious territorial losses  nearly a fifth of its country. In response, along with ally Turkey, it closed its border with Armenia. But a rerun of the conflict last year reversed most of Azerbaijans past losses  and with it, the justification for Armenias economic isolation.

Tensions remain high. Borders are yet to be renormalized, leaving the situation as before: a slither of border with Iran to the South (along difficult mountain roads), and one with Georgia to the North (itself not a well-connected country).With few natural resources, the geopolitics has posed major problems for Armenias development since independence. Many of its young now emigrate when they can.

This could all now change with economic reintegration. The November ceasefire agreement committed both countries to reopen the transport lines that existed between them in Soviet days. The most obvious place to begin is the reestablishment of a 1946 train line that ran parallel to Armenias southern border with Iran.

It would be easy to sell to both domestic audiences, many of whom see ones gain coming only at the others expense. The line would connect Armenia into the regional train network, reestablish a rail freight line with Iran at the transit town Julfa, and most importantly, gain a prized part in the so-called middle corridor  the fastest freight line stretching from China to Europe through Turkey and Central Asia, bringing the benefit of wider trade, transit fees, and foreign investment.

For Azerbaijan, it would connect its mainland to its exclave Nakhchivan. Reachable now only through lengthy circumnavigation, it is the worlds largest landlocked exclave and holds special significance in Azerbaijani culture. Consequently, the Armenian government has been talking tough on whether to restore the link, hoping to win concessions. Yerevan has said the November 9 peace accord does not imply the opening of a corridor from Azerbaijan through Armenia to Nakhichevan. But term nine of the agreement states:The Republic of Armenia shall guarantee the security of transport connections between the western regions of the Republic of Azerbaijan and the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic.

Yerevan may be overplaying its hand.The government is right to identify the high value Azerbaijan places on reconnecting with Nakhchivan. However, taking an uncooperative stance may push Azerbaijan to consider building a fresh line on the Iranian side of the border. Allowing this to happen would be a catastrophic miscalculation by the Armenian administration, condemning its economy to isolation for decades to come.

We know which route is preferable for Azerbaijan. For one, the cost of the line through Armenia is cheaper. Though most of the rail line has been looted, tunnels and track ballast remain to run a new one through and upon. Establishing a new line through Iran would require expensive work to clear the path; not to mention the logistical difficulties posed by American sanctions on Tehran. But these costs pale in comparison to the symbolic importance of linking Azerbaijan with Nakhchivan once again.

That is why the Armenian government must cooperate now, or risk being left behind. Leaders have failed to compromise before. Following the first war,the first President of Armenia, Levon Ter-Petrosyan, warned there was a choice when it came to the Karabakh problem: war or peace? The first would be the result of a maximalist Armenian position on the disputed territory: not giving up an inch of land, despite it breaching international law; then achieving recognition of Karabakhs independence or merging with Armenia.The second would be a compromise on the issue where both Armenia and Azerbaijan came to a political settlement: some form of autonomy which preserved the rights of Armenians in Karabakh as a part of sovereign Azerbaijan.

Yet many leaders at the time maintained a maximalist position whilst pretending peace would last indefinitely. Meanwhile, Armenias economy suffered in isolation, as Azerbaijans grew exponentially from its rich natural resources. Azerbaijan was never going to accept the status quo on Karabakh; unable to enter its internationally recognized territory, with over 800,000 internally displaced persons wishing to return to their homes. If compromise was not found, war was the only other path.

Ter-Petrosyans words were not heeded. Uncompromising stances led to the breakdown of a peaceful and diplomatic solution. The resulting loss of most of Karabakh last year was greater than what could have been negotiated.

Now again, the government argues from a false sense of strength that Armenia can go without regional integration and still thrive economically. But this will only hinder generations to come, as the decisions on those before have for the young today. Many will continue to leave the country.

As the recent war demonstrated, nobody will come running to Armenias aid over Karabakh. It must instead rely on itself. Missing out on regional integration will only weaken the country. The question now is whether Yerevan will pursue peace with prosperity or peace without prosperity.

Prof. Ivan Sascha Sheehan is the executive director of the School of Public and International Affairs at The University of Baltimore. Opinions expressed are his own.
Joe Biden asserted in his speech this week that his disastrous plan for the evacuation had the unanimous support of his Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, National Security Advisor, and top military officials. If this is true, it begs the question: now that the war is over, why havent those people resigned? And if they wont resign, why havent they been fired?
It is the beginning of a never-ending bad dream. Joe Biden and the Pentagon have managed to birth a new terrorist haven, destroy much of U.S. strategic deterrence, and alienate our allies and much of the country.

In the hours after the horrific deaths of 13 service members, we have been reassured by our military that our partnership with the Taliban to provide security for our flights was wise. We were told that the terrorist victors share similar goals to ours in a hasty American retreat from Kabul. We were reminded that Afghan refugees (unlike U.S. soldiers) will not be forced to be vaccinated on arrival. Such statements are either untrue or absurd.

On the very day of the attack that killed American troops, the sergeant major of the U.S. Army reminded us in a tweet that diversity is our strength, commemorating not the dead but Women's Equality Day. If so, then is the opposite of diversity -- unity -- our weakness? Will such wokeness ensure that we do not abandon the Bagram air base in the middle of the night without opposition?

The chief of staff at the Office of Naval Intelligence warned the ONI's active duty and retired service members that they must not criticize Biden, their commander in chief, over the Afghanistan fiasco. The office correctly cited prohibitions found in the Uniform Code of Military Justice barring any disrespect shown to senior government leadership.

Indeed, a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Marine Corps was relieved of his command for posting a video accurately blaming military and civilian leadership for the Afghanistan nightmare.

Yet until Jan. 20, retired top brass had constantly smeared their elected commander in chief with impunity.

Recently retired Gen. Michael Hayden retweeted a horrific suggestion that unvaccinated Trump supporters should be put on planes back to Afghanistan, where they presumably would be left to die. Hayden earlier had compared Trump's border facilities to Nazi death camps.

Other retired high-profile military officials variously called their president an emulator of Nazi tactics, a veritable Mussolini, a liar, and deserving of removal from office sooner than later. None of these retired four-stars faced the sort of repercussions that the Office of Naval Intelligence just warned about.

More than 50 former intelligence officials on the eve of the November election signed a letter suggesting that incriminating emails found on Hunter Biden's missing laptop might be "Russian disinformation." They used their stature for political purposes to convince the American people that the story was a lie.

Retired Gen. Joseph Dunford and retired Adm. Mike Mullen recently blasted retired brass who had questioned Biden's cognitive ability. OK. But they should have issued a similar warning earlier, when the violations of fellow retired officers were even more egregious in election year 2020.

Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, apologized for doing a photo op with Trump, erroneously buying into the narrative that Trump had ordered rioters cleared from Lafayette Square for the staged picture. Worse, he leaked to journalists that he was so angry with Trump that he "considered" resigning.

Think of the irony. If Milley considered a politicized resignation to rebuke Trump over the false charge, then surely he could consider a real resignation after overseeing the worst military disaster of the last half-century in Kabul.

Milley had promised to root out white supremacy from the ranks while recommending that his soldiers read Ibram X. Kendi's racialist diatribes.

Something is terribly wrong in the ranks of America's top commanders that reflects something wrong with the country.

The Pentagon needs to stop virtue-signaling about diversity days and culturally sensitive food for Afghan refugees. Instead, can it just explain why the Bagram air base was abandoned by night, or why Taliban terrorists are our supposed "partners" in organizing our surrender and escape?

Which general allowed more than $85 billion in American weapons to fall to the Taliban -- a sum equal to the price of seven new U.S. aircraft carriers?

Who turned over to the Taliban the lists of Americans and allied Afghans to be evacuated?

Who left behind biometric devices that the Taliban are now using to hunt down our former Afghan friends?

Somehow our new woke Pentagon is hell-bent on losing the trust of the American people -- along with the wars it fights abroad.

(C)2021 Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Good morning, its Friday, Sept. 3, 2021, the day of the week when I reprise quotations intended to be uplifting or educational. Todays is from Frederick Douglass, who on this date in 1838 effectuated his escape from bondage in Maryland.

Rented out as a carpenter on the Baltimore docks, Douglass, then known as Fred Bailey, hopped on a train heading north. Posing as a merchant seaman, he changed trains in Philadelphia, then spent a few days in New York City. He was joined there by Anna Murray, a black woman who had been born free and aided in his escape. They were married in New York on Sept. 15, 1838, but they still werent safe from slave hunters who roamed the city. Local abolitionists helped the couple sail to New Bedford, Mass., where they began playing their part in ending slavery on these shores.

Frederick Douglass was a man who would defend himself physically in a fight, even when the odds were not in his favor, and he would urge President Lincoln to enlist slaves in his army, but he is remembered today for the tremendous force of his words, some of which Ill reprise in a moment.

First, Id point you to RCPs front page, which presents our poll averages, videos, breaking news stories, and aggregated opinion pieces spanning the political spectrum. We also offer original material from our own reporters, columnists, and contributors, including the following:

* * *

Fitful 48 Hours for Americans, Afghans Trying to Escape. Susan Crabtree reports on apparent bureaucratic delays that hindered the departure of a chartered plane carrying dozens of U.S. citizens, at-risk religious minorities and Afghan allies.

One Enduring Lesson From Afghanistan: Dont Invade. At RealClearDefense, Scott Savitz examines the 80-year effort by the British to establish governance in Kabul, which presaged later failures by the Soviet Union and the United States.

American Principles and the Challenge of Afghanistan. At RealClears American Civics portal, Adam Carrington considers how concepts articulated by the 18th century French thinker Montesquieu shed light on recent events.

The Lack of Trust in Elections -- and How to Get It Back. Chad Flanders and Kevin Vallier offer a prescription.

When Will PA Mayors Wake Up to the Crime Crisis? Gabe Kaminsky reports on the continuing rise in violent crime in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, and the muted response of Democratic leaders in those cities.

Of the Worlds 25 Dirtiest Cities, 23 Are in China. At RealClearEnergy, David Holt questions why climate-change activists arent calling out the worlds worst polluter.

Five Facts on the U.S. Electric Grid. No Labels has this primer at RealClearPolicy.

* * *

As he became one of this nations most prominent abolitionists, Frederick Douglass repeatedly warned white Americans that a reckoning was coming, and that it was unlikely to be peaceful. If there is no struggle, there is no progress, he said in an 1857 speech in Canandaigua, N.Y. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.

The awful roar that was coming, however, was the sound of cannon fire, not the tides. Yet even after the Civil War ended slavery, much of the work of freedom remained. And Douglass knew something that champions of freedom from Martin Luther King Jr. to Alexander Solzhenitsyn have reminded us, which is that slavery and other forms of tyranny dont only harm those under the yoke. They threaten oppressors as well, stunting their very souls.

In an 1883 speech at a civil rights meeting in Washington, D.C., Frederick Douglass expressed that thought this way: No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck.

And thats our quote of the week.

Carl M. Cannon

Washington Bureau chief, RealClearPolitics

@CarlCannon (Twitter)

ccannon@realclearpolitics.com
One of several private charter planes carrying dozens of U.S. citizens, at-risk religious minorities and Afghan allies was granted State Department clearance to leave Afghanistan early Friday morning after an unsettling 48 hours in limbo as those desperately trying to leave waited for the U.S. government to sign off on the evacuation, according to knowledgeable sources on Capitol Hill and Washingtons foreign policy community.

Rep. Dan Crenshaw, a Texas Republican who served on a SEAL team in Afghanistan, issued a flurry of tweets over the last 24 hours blaming the State Department for keeping multiple private chartered planes grounded in Afghanistan, a charge the department has publicly denied without specifically mentioning Crenshaws assertions.

Late Thursday night, Crenshaw tweeted about a breakthrough.

Good news, just got word that State Department now helped us get clearance for at least one of these private efforts to land in a nearby country, he tweeted.

In several previous tweets, Crenshaw angrily lashed out at department officials, blaming them for blocking an effort to get a plane of U.S. citizens and allies out of Afghanistan.

They need @SecBlinken to help get clearance for the plane to land in a nearby country, he tweeted Thursday. Bidens State Department is refusing to actively assist.

In previous Thursday tweets, Crenshaw provided only limited details about his interactions with State and negotiations with third-party countries to accept the passengers. His office did not respond to requests for elaboration on why the department had a role to play in a private flight to a third-country destination. Other unconfirmed reports have indicated that the private organizations funding the travel were working to secure landing commitments from nearby countries.

Even worse, State Department agreed to give me the contact info for US embassies in these countries so we could go point to point, Crenshaw tweeted. That was hours ago. Ive followed up multiple times, and theyve provided nothing.

A source with first-hand knowledge of the grounded planes said American citizens and Afghan allies waiting to depart experienced a chaotic 48 hours, especially the last 24, when a State Department official gave a verbal okay for the plane to leave without providing the necessary written authorization, then rescinded the clearance just hours later.

Several other planes in the same group  each carrying at least a dozen American citizens  are still awaiting an okay from U.S. officials to leave, the source said. RealClearPolitics is not reporting where the planes are located in Afghanistan and which third-party country or countries they are trying to reach because of security concerns.

The State Department on Thursday denied playing a role in preventing private chartered planes from leaving Afghanistan. Spokesman Ned Price told reporters that before the Aug. 31 deadline for American withdrawal, the U.S. government facilitated the evacuation of thousands of U.S. citizens, lawful permanent residents, and at-risk Afghans aboard chartered aircraft leaving Kabul airport.

But now, Price said, were in a different phase, one in which the U.S. has no assets in Afghanistan and therefore cannot control the airspace  in that country or elsewhere in the region. Still, he said, State is trying to expedite and facilitate landings in third-party countries, although he insisted its not something the American government can control.

The idea that we could prevent a charter flight from taking off is simply not true, he said. Still, he indicated that State is preventing private flights from heading to U.S. military installations out of concerns for the security of personnel who work there, as well as the security of Afghan refugees already airlifted to those locations.

We know that ISIS-K, as we have seen of late, has a keen interest in attacks and a keen interest in attacks against aviation targets, Price told reporters.

The apparently new concern about allowing passage of planes with American citizens and unvetted Afghans on them has some members of Congress scratching their heads. Since the last U.S. troops left Afghanistan three days ago, the Biden administration has boasted about its historic airlift operation that evacuated more than 120,000 people since mid-August.

But State Department officials have not fully explained why agency officials have maintained that the evacuation efforts have been aimed at helping U.S. citizens and Afghans who assisted in the war effort  and are eligible for a special visa  but have allowed the vast majority of Afghan evacuees to be brought to U.S. military bases under a status known as parole. The homeland security secretary can provide instant parole status as a blanket way to admit people by considering humanitarian concerns or reasons benefiting the U.S. national interest. Normally, achieving a Special Immigration Visa, or SIV, can take 18 to 24 months.

Some 20,000 Afghans were airlifted to military installations in the United States in recent weeks while another 43,000 were evacuated to overseas U.S. bases in hopes of eventual resettlement in the U.S., according to Pentagon officials.

Rep. Chris Smith, a New Jersey Republican and longtime human rights champion, spent Thursday touring the Afghan refugee facilities at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in his district, along with U.S. Northern Command Gen. Glen VanHerck. Smith lauded the compassion and dedication that servicemen and women have displayed in assisting the thousands of Afghan refugees who have arrived there this week.

There is both a compelling need and moral obligation to provide immediate safe haven and humanitarian aid to those who have fled unspeakable cruelty, violence and terrorism perpetrated by the Taliban and ISIS-K, he said.

But Smith also expressed deep concerns about the vetting process, or lack thereof, which he said allowed 70% of those being housed at the base to arrive here on parole without documentation that they ever assisted U.S. in Afghanistan. The congressman, who has served in the House for 40 years, found the statistic particularly troubling considering news that the majority of interpreters and other visa applicants were left behind in Afghanistan, as reported by the Wall Street Journal.

While we welcome them as we should  these are people who have suffered so much  we have to make sure they are who they say they are to the best of our ability, he said, stressing the importance of protecting those who work on the base, as well as other refugees now housed there, from a terrorist attack or other criminal behavior.

Smith recalled an incident during the war in Kosovo when he was on hand at the same New Jersey base to welcome 4,400 refugees. One of those refugees, Agron Abdullah, was apprehended years later and sent to jail in 2008 for supplying guns and ammunition to the Fort Dix 4  a group of terrorists who were imprisoned for plotting to kill American soldiers at the installation.

Despite the vetting process used then, he was missed, Smith told RCP. We cannot allow that failure to happen again.

The Washington Times reported Wednesday that a previously convicted rapist who was deported from the U.S. in 2017 was among the Afghan refugees who recently landed at Dulles Airport outside Washington, D.C. The man was flagged by border officials at Dulles and then sent to a detention facility in Bowling Green, Va.

Smith, one of the most ardent human rights champions in Congress, also said he recently tried to push senior Biden administration officials to establish humanitarian corridors in Afghanistan, with NATO allies support, as a way to continue the evacuation of both U.S. citizens and Afghans who assisted the U.S. government. Such safe havens also could help provide shelter, food and health care to displaced Afghans and those seeking to leave. Smith said senior U.S. officials rebuffed him without explaining why it couldnt be done.

Smith is not the only one with deep concerns about the chaotic and deadly exit from Afghanistan. He and several other current and former members of Congress argue theres little evidence so far that the State Department prioritized the evacuation of religious minorities, such as Christian converts, Sikhs, Shiites and other sects who are facing death sentences from the Taliban and ISIS.

Sam Brownback, the former senator and governor of Kansas who served as ambassador for religious freedom during the Trump administration, is part of a loose cadre, including Christian charities, veterans and former special operators, trying to secure safe passage out of Afghanistan for thousands of religious minorities who remain in hiding after the U.S. troop withdrawal.

Ive got a list of hundreds of individuals desperate to get out  now being hunted by the Taliban or other groups, Brownback told RCP in an interview earlier this week.

The Nazarene Fund, an organization founded by Glenn Beck that seeks to help persecuted Christians abroad, has said it has successfully rescued 5,100 Christians and other at-risk people from Afghanistan. The fund has managed to raise some $30 million in recent weeks in response to the crisis.

So far, Brownback says, there have been no firm commitments from the State Department to make evacuating religious minorities a priority despite recent history in Iraq demonstrating the need to protect these communities. In fact, it was the ISIS slaughter of Christians and Yazidis in northern Iraq seven years ago that forced President Obama to send thousands of U.S. troops back into the region after pulling all troops out of Iraq in 2011. Then-Secretary of State John Kerry declared the ISIS slayings a genocide in 2016.

This is not a new phenomenon to us, Brownback said. Most genocides happen to religious minorities.

A State Department spokesperson pushed back at Brownbacks assertions.

Our commitment to individuals at-risk in Afghanistan will not end, the spokesperson told RCP in a statement Thursday. The United States is working vigorously with the international community to explore all options to support vulnerable populations in Afghanistan, including  but not limited to  women, children, journalists, persons with disabilities, and members of ethnic and religious minority groups and other extremely at-risk populations, as well as additional movements of persons who wish to leave Afghanistan in the coming weeks and months.

A bipartisan group of senior foreign policy leaders on Capitol Hill is questioning that commitment after the U.S. was unable to evacuate journalists working for the U.S. Agency for Global Media. Many of the 500 members of that group, including their Afghan families, were turned away at the gates of Kabul airport before the withdrawal deadline even though senior Biden administration officials had told top USAGM official that the journalists would make it through.

"It is absolutely disgraceful the U.S. State Department claimed they evacuated their local employees when in reality they abandoned hundreds of USAGM journalists and their families. Some of these journalists were given express assurances by the Biden Administration that they would be treated as locally employed staff  but were not," Rep. Michael McCaul (pictured), the ranking Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a statement on Tuesday.

Former Rep. Frank Wolf, a Republican from Virginia, predicted a very dark period ahead for Americas credibility on human rights if the U.S. doesnt fulfil its commitment to evacuate all at-risk Afghans. Wolf spent more than three decades in Congress advocating for human rights, fighting for persecuted religious minorities and warning about the terrorist threat emanating from the Middle East before 9/11.

Wolf pointed to Blinkens remarks in late March, in which the new Cabinet secretary took issue with the Trump administration for what he said was an unbalanced emphasis on religious liberty over other concerns, such as victims of human trafficking, treatment of LGBTQ individuals abroad and womens access to abortion, birth control and other reproductive options.

Human rights are also co-equal. There is no hierarchy that makes some rights more important than others, Blinken said at an event unveiling the State Departments 45th annual report on the status of human rights around the world. " At my confirmation hearing, I promised that the Biden-Harris administration would repudiate those unbalanced views. We do so decisively today.

If the U.S. doesnt shift gears and make evacuating religious minorities a top priority, Wolf says it could not only spur a new genocide but also destroy U.S. credibility in condemning other countries persecution of ethnic and religious groups. Wolf specifically mentioned the U.S. ability to call out Chinas treatment of the Uyghurs, the longtime persecution of Christians in Iran, the slaughter of Christians by Boko Haram and other Nigerian terrorist groups, as well as the efforts to help rebuild Christian and Yazidi areas in northern Iraq decimated by ISIS.

It will be a disaster for America, not only in Afghanistan.  Americas credibility has been devastated worldwide, Wolf told RCP Thursday evening. Ive never seen American look so weak and ineffective.
In a Dec. 30, 2020, interview with Fox News, claiming that he had to stand up for his constituents, Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley announced that he would challenge the certification of the 2020 election. These constituents felt disenfranchised, he said, and that their votes didnt count. One take on these voters feelings is that they didnt like the process because they didnt like how things turned out. Its possible, too, that they didnt like the result because they really didnt trust the process.

Mistrusting elections poisons democracy. If a president isnt properly elected, and is even perceived as improperly elected, that can cast doubt on the legitimacy of every decision that his administration makes. American distrust of the electoral process has grown rapidly in the 21st century. After the 2000 election, given George W. Bushs razor-thin Electoral College victory, the dispute over the recount, and the Supreme Courts deciding the matter, many asked whether Bush was really president. Concerns about Russian interference led many to doubt that Donald Trump had legitimately won the 2016 presidential race. And today, some are still litigating the outcome of the 2020 race, while every proposed reform brings with it charges of trying to game the system.

Indeed, we seem to be locked into a kind of a death spiral in election reform, where anything that changes how we run elections is looked at in terms of which side will benefit. Bills being considered  and passed  in many states, justified as improving election integrity and security, seem almost transparently designed to shrink the electorate to a more GOP-friendly core. The goal is not making elections more trustworthy but electing more Republicans.

In essence, this is results-oriented tampering with the election process. Long term, it can only increase cynicism about our elections while stifling other, more sensible, reforms. The same phenomenon plays out in debates over redistricting, where each side jockeys to draw districts not in pursuit of better representation, but to ensure more districts lean their way. Thats nothing new, although we may be entering an era of exceptional brazenness in this regard. Using increasingly sophisticated computer programs to design districts that maximize partisan advantage has become a perverse art form.

To restore trust in elections, we have to find policies that are not simply tilted in favor of one political party. Policy that increases trust in elections has to benefit both sides. This will not be easy: Election reform never occurs in a vacuum, and many reforms do help one side more than the other  much of the time, in fact, we know in advance which side will benefit more. This colors and corrupts debate over the policy. We must work hard to assess reforms on the merits, and not in terms of partisan advantage.

We should start by examining reforms with broad appeal  such as limiting gerrymandering, and publicly financing campaigns  to lessen the appearance of corruption. We might also consider more systematic reform, such as restructuring voting rules so as to make a three- or four-party system viable. Allowing for more parties could lessen partisan polarization and the distrust that flows from it. We might break through red vs. blue into a subtler environment of red, blue, and green. Worldwide, multiparty democracies are less polarized and can be more successful at finding democratic consensus. In addition, considering bigger, if less feasible, reforms may have some benefit, too, and even lead to surprising results. And since it is harder to predict the long-run effects of such reforms and which side benefits from them, we may find it easier to convince the public to adopt them.

But perhaps the easiest thing we can do is to realize that American elections already, and for the most part, deserve our trust. Setting aside partisan rhetoric and conspiracy theorizing, the 2020 election was relatively problem-free. And this was, we should acknowledge, fairly amazing. COVID-19 greatly challenged our systems ability to ensure safe and secure voting. People feared long lines, months-long delays in order to tabulate votes, and delays in mail service that would result in wasted votes. But states for the most part rose to the challenge, passing new laws and adjusting the election process to help people vote without risking their health. The country is full of nameless, heroic local election clerks who made this possible. The election wasnt perfect, of course, but it was more than good enough  and worthy of our trust.

We must think big when considering how to guarantee the right to vote for all in free and fair elections, but we can also draw inspiration from our general success in holding trustworthy elections. Learning to trust the process may mean trusting in the people who make it happen, day in and day out  even when the result doesnt go our way.

Chad Flanders is a professor at Saint Louis University School of Law.
Amid surging crime in Pennsylvanias largest cities, it remains unclear if Democratic leadership is up to the task of ensuring law and order.

Take Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney (pictured), who faces intensifying criticism as the city grapples with a public safety crisis. This year, 137 children under age 18 have been shot in city neighborhoods, and 32 have died. Thats a bullet ripping into a young persons body every 40 hours, wrote the Philadelphia Inquirers Helen Ubinas.

Last month, after a 15-year-old girl was shot in the head in North Philadelphia (she died the next day), community activists called for Kenney to deploy the Pennsylvania National Guard in the crime-ridden city. Kenney, though, said it is not an effective tool to bring in uniformed, camouflaged, gun-rifle-carrying people in helmets to address [the crime] problem.

Recent data indicate that Philadelphia, where crime declined in the early 2010s, is now the second-deadliest city in the United States behind Chicago. As the Philadelphia Inquirer recently put it, Theres only been one day so far this year  Jan. 2  when not a single person was shot in the city. The city experienced a 30-year homicide high in 2020. So far this year, homicides are up more than 24% and shootings more than 25%, according to data from the Philadelphia Police Department.

The epidemic of gun violence in Philadelphia is out of control and our elected officials in the city need to step up and take responsibility, said Nick Gerace, a retired longtime Philadelphia police officer and president of Protect Our Police PAC.

Prosecutions have fallen dramatically under Larry Krasner, the citys progressive district attorney who has sparred with Kenney. As it stands, 65% of gun charges have been dismissed or withdrawn this year, marking a 17% increase since 2015. In 2015, there were 375 guilty pleas; in 2020, just 148.

Yet Kenney has deflected blame. In July, for example, the mayor sent a letter to a city council member who favors declaring the gun crisis an emergency and claimed that doing so is not a solution that will demonstrably change conditions in Philadelphia.

Earlier this summer, after the City Council voted to cut police funding by $33 million for fiscal year 2021, the mayor agreed to eliminate a $19 million increase and cut existing funding by $14 million.

Carlos Vega, a longtime assistant district attorney who unsuccessfully ran against Krasner in Mays Democratic primary, told me that the defund-the-police movement will fail.

Its communities of color being killed, Vega said, observing how 85% of this years homicide victims are black. People have not thought through the impact defund the police is going to have on communities who are suffering the most.

Philadelphia is not alone among Pennsylvania cities in failing to stave off crime. Often overlooked amid the nationwide crime surge is Pittsburgh, in recent years considered the Rust Belts greatest urban success story.

Following last summers riots, homicides have about doubled in Pittsburgh in 2021 over the first six months. As recently as April, the city saw a 90% surge in violence, with police officers pleading for more programs and funding. Young people continue to fall victim to violence, and nonfatal shootings are up about 68%, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. In late August, the University of Pittsburgh warned students about violent criminal activity, especially in the popular South Side neighborhood.

Still, earlier this year, Democratic Mayor Bill Peduto slashed the police budget by $5.3 million. Last summer, not long after a disorderly demonstrator was arrested near Pedutos neighborhood  leading to protests at his house  the mayor acknowledged the right for people to take to the streets to demand much-needed reforms.

But Pedutos praise for protesters wasnt enough to survive the citys Democratic mayoral primary this past May. The more progressive Ed Gainey is poised to win his job in November.

Gainey, a state representative who earned endorsements from Democratic socialists and a major health care union, went so far as to accuse Peduto of overpolicing the city. He has pledged to redirect law enforcement funds to social services.

Pittsburghs GOP insiders see no end in sight to the citys surging crime. Bob Hillen, chairman of the Republican Committee of Pittsburgh, thinks that far-left Democratic leadership under Gainey will continue to give crime a free pass.

We could use more police on the streets right now, Hillen told me. I mean, every night there is a shooting. This is well out of hand. We have to do something quick.

Other regional Republicans are more optimistic. When asked about getting the Steel Citys crime situation under control, Republican state Rep. Rob Mercuri of Allegheny County said, We can do this if we work together in the Pittsburgh region.

The GOP is strategizing on how to oust Democrats in a historically moderate state. The focus is on Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. Bill Peduto and Jim Kenney are gaslighting and deflecting blame, says Allie Carroll, spokeswoman for the state Republican National Committee.

Kenney is term-limited, with Philadelphias next mayoral race in 2022, while Gainey is primed to assume office in a city that hasnt elected a Republican mayor in 88 years. So Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, two Democratic strongholds, find themselves in similar straits. Will their problems trigger a statewide political backlash?
This draft map shows the proposed new state House district lines for northern Michigan, as drawn by the Michigan Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission. Citizens have several opportunities to give input on the map in person and online before it is given final approval.
73, of Traverse City, died Sept. 6, 2021. Marty was the former owner of The Diner and Marty's 3 Mile Carryout. He is survived by wife, Betty; children, Mitchell and Melissa; grandchildren; brother, Bill and step-children, Alyssa, Aislyn and Lucas Johnson. Marty was preceded in death by his s
The Nashville-based band Rainbow Kitten Surprise released an official live album on Aug. 13 of its performances at the Georgia Theatre in 2019.
A group of artists that make up From the River, To the River, install a permanent art piece they called Ask the River at the Brattleboro, Vt., Parking Garage on Monday, Sept. 13, 2021. The new art installation replaces the original one that was hung in 2015.
Brattleboro, VT (05301)

Today

Partly cloudy with late night showers or thunderstorms. Low 61F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 40%..

Tonight

Partly cloudy with late night showers or thunderstorms. Low 61F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 40%.
Brattleboro, VT (05301)

Today

Partly cloudy skies early followed by scattered thunderstorms overnight. Low 62F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 40%..

Tonight

Partly cloudy skies early followed by scattered thunderstorms overnight. Low 62F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 40%.
Afghan refugees in an Italian Red Cross refugee camp, in Avezzano, Italy, Tuesday, Aug. 31, 2021. This quarantine camp in Abruzzo, central Italy, where 1,250 migrants are hosted, is expected to close in a week as the quarantine expires and they are moved to other structures to apply for asylum.
Connecticut is reporting its highest weekly COVID-19 death count in months, but data released Thursday also shows continued signs the Delta-driven surge here is abating.

The state reported an additional 39 coronavirus-related deaths in the past week for a total of 8,394. Hospitalizations decreased by three patients from a day earlier for a total of 357.

Since Wednesday, there were 684 new COVID-19 cases out of 22,868 tests, a positive test rate of 2.99 percent. That brings the 7-day average positivity rate to 3.3 percent  down from 3.5 percent a week ago.

Some health experts in Connecticut have predicted the summer Delta-surge would subside by the end of September.

Thursdays report from the state shows breakthrough infections made up a greater percent of new cases this week compared to last week. But overall the data shows unvaccinated individuals continue to be at a much higher risk for getting severely ill and dying.

Since Aug. 26, the state reported nearly 1,500 breakthrough cases out of 4,500 new cases overall - about 33%. Thats compared to 28% of all reported cases the week prior.

Of the 2.26 million people in Connecticut who are fully vaccinated, the state has identified 8,617 breakthrough cases, accounting for less than half a percent. In total, the state has identified 65 deaths involving fully immunized people, the vast majority of whom were 75 or older. They make up less than a percent of the overall coronavirus-linked deaths.

Also on Thursday, Senate Majority Leader Bob Duffs office released data showing unvaccinated individuals who were hospitalized in June and July due to Covid-19 cost Connecticut hospitals more than $9 million.

Theres real costs associated with not taking the vaccine, Duff, D-Norwalk, said by phone Thursday.

Those whove spread misinformation about the virus and the vaccine bear some responsibility for these costs and the fact that people are getting sick, he said.

After reading a national report showing it cost the U.S. health system billions of dollars to care for unvaccinated patients hospitalized for the coronavirus in June and July, Duff asked the Connecticut Hospital Association if it could provide a state-level cost.

About 98% of the 773 adults hospitalized for COVID-19 in Connecticut during June and July were not fully inoculated, according to the hospital associations data.

Of those, 472 cases were deemed to be preventable  people who were not fully inoculated and were primarily in the hospital due to Covid. An average hospital admission costs $20,000, amounting to $9.45 million to care for those patients over the two months.

Duff said thats likely a conservative estimate as the cost to care for someone in the intensive care unit is much higher and many unvaccinated patients have ended up in the ICU.

We want to make sure people get the care they need and deserve to get better but somebody is picking up those costs whether its going to be the government with Medicare and Medicaid, or insurance companies that will pass the cost along to policy holders, or individuals, he said.

julia.bergman@hearstmediact.com
NEW YORK (AP)  Tales of selflessness and heroism  and of deadly delays and heartbreaking missed opportunities  are emerging after the remnants of Hurricane Ida, the deadliest storm the nation has seen since 2017, pummeled the Northeast with record-breaking rain that flooded roads and houses, killing dozens.

Earlier, Ida laid waste to parts of Louisiana and Mississippi after blowing ashore as one of the strongest hurricanes to hit the U.S.

Here are some of the stories of the victims  and of those who narrowly escaped:

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QUAKERTOWN, Pa.

As their vehicle filled with floodwater in the far northern suburbs of Philadelphia late Wednesday, Donald Bauer helped his wife Katherine climb through a busted back windshield.

My father started pushing my mom out, and telling her to go and go and go, said the couples son, Darby Bauer. All she remembers from being pushed out of the car was him touching her one last time, shouting at her to go.

Katherine Bauer clung to a tree and watched the rising waters carry their Mazda SUV out of sight. She was rescued about an hour later.

Donald Bauers body was found the next morning. He was still in the vehicle.

The couple had attended their daughters college volleyball game and were trying to return to their Perkiomenville home in the worsening storm when their Mazda died and began to float.

Darby Bauer said his father, a 65-year-old retired school bus driver, 100% saved his mothers life.

Without his help, I dont think she wouldve gotten out of the car, he said.

Donald Bauer had one of the biggest hearts we knew, his son said. He was selfless down to his last act.

 Michael Rubinkam, Associated Press

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ELIZABETH, N.J.

Four people died in this small, industrial city when the swollen Elizabeth River swept through an apartment complex, trapping people in their homes. But there were also lifesaving rescues.

Greg Turner's 87-year-old mother called him from the flooded building complex at 8 p.m. Wednesday to tell him water was shooting into the apartment. He tried to race over from his home in another part of town, but floodwaters blocked his path.

Turner hailed firefighters in the street, who told him, Were swamped, but well try to get you over there.

Meanwhile, the water kept rising.

By the time rescuers reached Turner's mother a little before midnight, the water was up to her neck. To reach her, they had to cut a hole through the floor of the apartment above hers and pull her through the ceiling.

She was standing in a sink to keep above the rising water, Turner said. At 87 years old.

She lost everything, Turner said. Im going over to the bank to get some money to buy her some shoes, some clothes, some underwear. Weve got to go get her medicine, everything.

 David Porter, Associated Press

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NEW YORK

Pinned in the door of her boyfriends sub-basement apartment in Queens, Darlene Hsu struggled to keep her head above water and screamed for help.

Friends, neighbors and building staff dialed 911 for 40 minutes, but couldnt get through, said her ex-husband, Dennis Hsu. He said Darlenes boyfriend  the superintendent of the building  ultimately called a friend on the police force for help, and emergency responders arrived about 40 minutes after that. By then, it was too late.

Dennis Hsu said hes angry about the delays  angry the 911 system failed, and angry at people who ignored storm warnings and required rescue from flooded roadways, which diverted emergency resources.

What are you guys doing on the highway? Youre putting other peoples lives at risk, he said.

Darlene Hsu had worked for a property management company and enjoyed sunbathing, swimming, arts and crafts and playing with children.

Hsu described his former wife as a very kind and lovable person.

 Susan Haigh, Associated Press

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LAFITTE, La.

Nora Indovina was desperate to find someone to evacuate her mother before Hurricane Ida came ashore  and thought she had succeeded.

Last time we talked, I told her to get her stuff together because theyre coming to get you, Indovina said. I guess they couldnt get to her.

Emily Boffone, 65, became trapped in her Lafitte home and died in the floodwaters. Her two beloved dogs survived the storm.

Boffone had worked for the Jefferson Parish sheriffs office, first in tax collection and later at booking intake, before retiring five years ago.

She had decided to ride out Ida because her neighbor was also staying, and she thought he could help her in an emergency, Indovina said. But the water rose so fast on Sunday that the neighbor wasnt able to get to her.

On Friday and Saturday, Indovina had been calling officials, trying to find someone who could help her evacuate. I told them she was on oxygen, so she wouldnt be OK if the power goes out. They said they would get her out, said Indovina, speaking by phone from the car as she and her family made their way from Missouri to Louisiana.

She was the best mom in the entire world, she said.

 Travis Loller, Associated Press

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This item has been corrected to show that Emily Boffone was 65, not 55.

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NEW YORK

The storm was raging, and Knrishah Nick Ramskriet, who lived in a basement apartment in Queens, called a friend to say he and his family were leaving.

He wasnt heard from again.

We thought he was OK. But my son called him the next morning and couldnt reach him, said his friends mother, Ahilia Arjun.

Later came the heartbreaking news: Nick and his mother never made it out of their flooded apartment.

He had ambitions of going to school to learn plumbing or some other trade, or maybe to become an engineer, Arjun said.

Nick was like a son to me, she said.

 Bobby Caina Calvan, Associated Press

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WOODBURY, Conn.

Sgt. Brian Mohl, a 26-year veteran of the Woodbury department, called for help about 3:30 a.m. Thursday. His cruiser had been swept away.

Police searched the area with divers, helicopters, boats and drones. Finally, after daybreak, they found his body in the swollen river. First responders worked on him, but he was pronounced dead at a hospital.

His tragic loss is a reminder of the dangers that state troopers and first responders put themselves in every day when responding to emergencies, and they deserve our utmost respect, Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont said in a written statement. Sergeant Mohl served the people of Connecticut with honor and commitment, and for that he will have our eternal gratitude and respect.

 Pat Eaton-Robb, Associated Press

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NEW YORK

Roberto Bravo survived a serious case of COVID-19 last year, only to perish in his flooded basement apartment.

The 66-year-old retired construction worker had temporarily moved into the Brooklyn apartment building owned by his brother, Pablo Bravo, who had been helping Roberto out.

The brothers had come to the United States from Ecuador in the 1980s to make a life for themselves.

Were the story of foreigners, immigrants, come here to make it, live a decent life, Pablo Bravo said Friday as he and his family arrived to clean up the apartment. Basically, we came here not only to grow ourselves, but also to contribute and grow the country. Hard-working people.

Roberto, who was divorced with two adult children, enjoyed spending time at a nearby senior citizen center. He had spent weeks in the hospital battling COVID-19 last year.

Im very sad to see him go this way, Pablo Bravo said. To look at the room where he was, to look at the room where it happened , it gives me the chills. ... Im still shocked. I dont know how I am going to take it tomorrow, or next week.

- David Martin, Associated Press

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WESTCHESTER COUNTY, N.Y.

Four storm victims have been identified in suburban Westchester County, including a rabbi and two computer science professors at Iona College who didnt make it home Wednesday after teaching their classes. The body of Ken Bailie was found, while his wife, Fran, who authorities believed was with him in the car, was missing and feared dead.

The colleges president issued a statement asking for prayers for the devoted professors.

Authorities also recovered the body of 69-year-old Samuel Weissmandl, who had been driving from Rockland County to his home in Mount Kisco when he approached rising flood waters. He called his family to say he was having difficulty in the storm, but they could not get to him in time.

His vehicle ultimately became submerged on an entrance ramp to the Saw Mill River Parkway. Authorities found his body near Route 119 in Elmsford.

Weissmandl was the son of Rabbi Michael Dov Weissmandl, who was known for his efforts to save Jews during the Holocaust.

 Jim Mustian, Associated Press
Ababu Namwamba, Kenya's Chief Administrative Secretary (CAS) in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, stated on Thursday that the EU-India alliance is definitely significant. Speaking during a panel discussion at the Bled Strategic Forum on "Partnership for a Rules-Based Order in the Indo-Pacific" in Slovenia, Namwamba stated that Kenya believes in multilateralism and partnerships. He stressed that the EU-India alliance is undeniably important and it does open up possibilities for future collaborations.

At the panel discussion, Namwamba was accompanied by External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, Slovenian Foreign Minister Dr Anze Logar, and Portuguese Foreign Minister Augusto Santos Silva.

EU-India partnership is definitely significant: Kenyan CAS Ababu Namwamba

"Kenya believes in multilateralism, we believe in partnerships. The EU-India partnership is definitely significant. It does present opportunities for further engagements," Namwamba said. Speaking of China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which is being opposed by some countries as debt-trap diplomacy and corrupt arrangements, Namwamba stated: "I do not think it will be useful to pose a question that would lead to making a choice. The position is that we can engage in a manner that is mutually beneficial for a win-win result. Africa is looking for opportunities for more trade, more investment, and shared prosperity. We believe there is space, opportunity, sufficient for everyone. What is not there is space and opportunity for our greed."

Speaking about Kenya as a Western-Pacific actor on the Quad (Quadrilateral Security Dialogue comprising India, the United States, Australia, and Japan),Namwamba stated: "BRI is an important development. In the context of Quad and BRI, Africa is ready to engage in a manner that is win-win."

He further stated that Kenya serves as an Indo-Pacific gateway to Africa. "This conversation is relevant, specifically to the Horn of Africa (consists of the internationally-recognized countries of Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia and Somalia) and it comes just a month before Kenya assumes the presidency of the United Nations Security Council," he added.

"The region also has many opportunities for the countries within the Indo-Pacific. I want to focus on the recent Regional Comprehensive Economic partnership. This will provide real opportunities for engagements, shared prosperity," he added.

The Indo-Pacific region has intriguing statistics: it has 2.2 billion people, or around 30% of the world's population. The GDP exceeds USD 26 trillion. As a result, the platform presents a chance for Indo-Pacific countries. Concerning the region's concerns, Namwamba stated that he sees three key issues -- militarisation, piracy, and ocean pollution -- as emerging threats.

"We see three important dynamics - militarisation - in the Red Sea, as a source of tension, if not managed it will escalate into a threat. The second one is piracy - transnational crime, these two issues pose a real threat given the volume of trade that goes on in these regions. The third issue of concern is Ocean pollution - dumping of toxic wastes, emission of fuels by ship, along the trade routes," said Namwamba.

Jaishankar on EU-India partnership

Meanwhile, EAM Jaishankar stated at the panel discussion that India has engaged with all 27 EU countries on Indo-Pacific issues. "I have tried to make it a point to make sure that we engage with all 27 EU members. We do realise that Europe is a collective enterprise and you need that to have all stakeholders as much as possible," he said.

"Today, when you speak about a liberal order, trust and transparency, these are issues which, at one time may have been more central to our Western discourse, but are today increasingly shared beyond the Western world," added Jaishankar.

The EAM also praised Slovenian President Borut Pahor for the warm welcome he received in Slovenia. "Thank Slovenia's President @BorutPahor for his gracious welcome. Deeply appreciate his long-standing support for our relationship. Discussed key challenges facing India and EU," tweeted Jaishankar earlier.

He also greeted Slovenia's EU Presidency and met with his counterpart, Dr Anze Logar. "Excellent meeting with Foreign Minister of Slovenia @AnzeLog. Agreed to deepen our political and economic relationship. Welcome Slovenia's Presidency of EU and confident it will take India-EU ties forward. Good exchange of views on Afghanistan and the Indo-Pacific" Jaishankar said in a tweet.

Jaishankar, is on an official visit to Slovenia, Croatia, and Denmark from 2-5 September, as part of a tour to evaluate the bilateral ties with the three Central European nations.

(With inputs from ANI)

(Picture Credit: @HornInstitute/Twitter)
Prime Minister Narendra Modi had a telephone conversation with Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi H.H. Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan on Friday. PM Modi, during the phone call, appreciated and acknowledged the United Arab Emirates' support to the Indian community during the COVID pandemic. PM Modi also conveyed best wishes to his counterpart for Dubai Expo-2020 scheduled to be held in Dubai from October 1.

Had a very useful telecon with His Highness @MohamedBinZayed. Reviewed progress in our comprehensive strategic partnership and discussed recent regional developments. Appreciated UAEs support to Indian community during Covid-19 and conveyed my best wishes for Dubai Expo.  Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) September 3, 2021

What did the two leaders discuss?

PM Modi's telephonic discussion with the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi H.H. Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan positively assessed the continued progress in bilateral cooperation in various areas under the India-UAE comprehensive strategic partnership.

The discussion revolved around regional issues of common concern for both nations. Both PM Modi and his counterpart Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan agreed that there was no place for terrorism and extremism in the world. The leaders stressed the importance of the international community standing together against such forces.

UAE diplomats hold talks with the Taliban over new government formation

Top leaders of the United Arab Emirates reached Kabul on Friday to meet top Talibani leaders. This was also the first international flight that landed at Kabul airport after the exit of the United States from war-torn Afghanistan. Incidentally, ex-Afghan President Asraf Ghani had taken refuge in Abu Dhabi, UAE's capital, after Tajikistan had denied permission for his plane to land there.

UAE, on the request of the United States of America (USA), has agreed to host 5,000 Afghan nationals for a span of 10 days before they move to another country. Moreover, UAE has been a part of the peace talks in Doha along with the US, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the Taliban. Meanwhile, international reports claimed that Abdul Ghani Baradar will lead the new Afghan government set to be announced soon.

Image Credits - ANI/AP
After being falsely accused by Khalistani elements in Australia, Indian patriot Vishal Jood has been released from the charges and will be out of jail on October 15th. The 24-year-old was accused of three suspected hate crimes, including clashes between Haryanvi youths and members of the Sikh community at Harris Park in Sydney in March and April this year. Jood was reportedly arrested by the Australian police on April 16th as he tried to save the Indian flag from a pro-Khalistan group.

The order was passed by Magistrate K Thomsons Parramatta. Vishal reportedly pleaded guilty to three minor charges of altercations that happened between September 16, 2020, and February 14, 2021. For the charges he pleaded guilty to, Jood was sentenced to six months in Jail starting from the day of his arrest, April 16, 2021. His sentence would be over on October 15, 2021. Meanwhile, the Haryana Government and India's Foreign Ministry had been trying every way to release the wrongly accused from Australian prison.

Vishal Jood's family appeal to Australian Government

While speaking to Republic TV, Vishal Jood's father had said that he only wants that his son to be released as soon as possible.

"I also want that all the allegations, which have been pressed against him should be removed. Proper investigation should be initiated against those, who physically assaulted the person, who was hoisting the Indian National Flag. Vishal is not being given food on time and he is often threatened by the Khalistanis lodging in the jail". said Vishal Jood's father.

As several campaigns were initiated by Indian citizens for Jood's release, his father added that this was not his son's personal fight, he had fought this for the respect and dignity of his country, India.

Efforts made by Haryana Government

Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar had written a letter to the Minister of State, Ministry of External Affairs and Ministry of Culture Meenakshi Lekhi over Kurukshetra youth Vishal Jood's release. Urging Lekhi's high priority intervention to secure justice for a 'Son of Haryana' in Australia, Manohar Lal Khattar had said that he has received representations from various quarters including his family who have conveyed to him that Vishal Jood got into a tussle with a group, that was raising anti-Indian slogans and even desecrating the Indian national flag and these groups have subsequently framed him on false charges.

In the letter, the Haryana Chief Minister has further highlighted that he had also held a virtual meeting with some representatives of the Indian diaspora in Australia, who are backing Jood and have started a campaign there, to get him released from jail, as early as possible. The Chief Minister had also arranged a meeting with the Minister of External Affairs, S Jaishankar.
During his speech at Punjab Vidhan Sabha's special session, Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh on Friday said that India continues to remain a pluralistic country that is home to almost every faith in the world. Talking about religious intolerance across the world, he said that China is oppressing Uyghur Muslims and the Taliban is intolerant of religions.

"India has unique cultural tradition. Our ancient texts have expressed the idea of 'Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam'-the world is one family'...India continues to be a pluralistic country that has the unique distinction of being home to almost every faith in the world. This is what gives India its richness and cultural diversity," Singh said.

Quoting the teaching of Guru Tej Bahadur, that is to spread love and religious tolerance, Captain said, "The Chinese are destroying the Uyghurs because they are Islamic. Next to them is Afghanistan, which has an emerging power that doesn't accept religious tolerance in any form."

Religious intolerance in China and Afghanistan

China is home to around 11 million Uyghurs. Earlier, the European Parliament had observed that the Chinese administration was deliberately sending Uyghur women into forced abortions, sterilisation and intrauterine injections. However, China, on several occasions, has denied allegations of human rights abuses and forced labour. The US State Department estimated that since 2017, around two million Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities have been passed through the camp system, which President Xi Jinping's government calls vocational training centres.

Since taking over Afghanistan, the Taliban has started an offensive against minority communities. Multiple reports suggest that the terrorist organisation has massacred and tortured several members of the Hazara community. The Hazara Muslims generally practise Shia Islam and have faced discrimination and persecution in Sunni-dominated Afghanistan and Pakistan. During their last regime, the Taliban had also deprived women of their rights.
Kevadia, Sep 2 (PTI) A political resolution passed on the second day of the Gujarat BJP's executive meeting here hit out at the Congress and "pseudo-secular" elements on issues such as Article 370, and also condemned the post-poll violence in TMC-ruled West Bengal on Thursday. State BJP president C R Paatil later told reporters that the party has entered "election mode" as Assembly polls in Gujarat are due next year.

The meeting was also attended by defense minister Rajnath Singh and Environment and Forests Minister Bhupendra Yadav.

"Congress and pseudo-seculars are spreading lies and trying to misguide people about the land on which Ram Temple is coming up in Ayodhya. This executive condemns such acts," the resolution said.

It also alleged that though people have accepted the abrogation of Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir and the Citizenship Amendment Act, "opposition parties are still trying to incite people over those issues".

Jammu and Kashmir was moving ahead on the path of peace and harmony, but "Congress, those belonging to the Tukde-Tukde Gang and some leaders having a soft corner for Pakistan are demanding restoration of Article 370....We believe that Congress wants to bring back the old days when innocent citizens and soldiers were killed," the resolution said.

It also claimed that "TMC-sponsored" political violence in West Bengal after the Assembly polls there had claimed the lives of over 60 BJP workers so far.

"Congress and pseudo-seculars who otherwise create uproar on all fabricated incidents have maintained a complete silence over this violence in West Bengal, which is also a criminal offense," said the resolution.

"We have now entered into the election mode. Now, the state president, if needed, or general secretaries of different zones will travel in different parts of state and start working as per the tasks allotted to them," state BJP chief Paatil told reporters.

He also announced that BJP workers will celebrate Prime Minister Narendra Modi's birthday on September 17 by performing 'Aartis' at Ram temples in 7,100 villages across Gujarat.

"If there is no Ram temple in a village, then put up a photo of Shree Ram in the local temple and perform Aarti at 7 pm on September 17. As PM Modi-ji has given the gift of Ram Temple (at Ayodhya) to the entire nation, I urge our workers to perform Aarti at Ram temples," he said. PTI PJT PD KRK KRK

(Disclaimer: This story is auto-generated from a syndicated feed; only the image & headline may have been reworked by www.republicworld.com)
Google Assistant is the voice-based search tool provided by Google on all Android devices. Using the Google Voice Assistant, users can do a lot of things on their smartphone, such as making calls, setting up reminders or alarms, playing music, replying to text messages and much more. All that can be done by either saying Hey Google or pressing on the microphone at the Google Search Bar on the home screen.

However, now the American company is working on a feature that will not require users to activate the voice assistant by saying Hey Google and give a voice command directly. Keep reading to know more about the Google Quick Phrase update and when the Quick Phrase update is coming out.

Google Quick Phrases will execute commands without the need to say 'Hey Google'

According to a report by 9to5Google, Google Assistants latest APK contains lines of code that hint at the possibility of a feature that was previously codenamed Guacamole, also known as Voice Shortcuts. In their breakdown of the latest APK, 9to5Google managed to enable the Assistant settings page for Quick Phrases. The report says that Google Assistant will be able to do several tasks without the user waking up the assistant by saying 'Hello Google' or 'Ok Google'. Once the feature is enabled for everyone, users will have to select which tasks they want to be done through the feature. For those wondering about the security of the feature, user recognition through Voice Match will work with the Google Quick Phrase update.

There are multiple commands that can be added to a user's list

The commands added by the user will appear in a section, along with a menu at the bottom to select from and add to the list. In the application, these commands are categorised as To-Dos, Timers, Media Controls, Recommended, Alarms, Connect, General Info and Lights. At the last page of the application, a menu displays information about devices where the commands will work, hinting that smart displays and speakers like Google Home Mini will also be able to execute the Google Quick Phrases command. The list of commands shared by 9to5Google is given below.
A whopping 42 African countries are set to miss their crucial goal of COVID-19 vaccination as they surpass the September deadline, the WHO warned on Friday, September 3. Just nine African countries, including South Africa, Morocco, and Tunisia, have hit the goal of inoculating the target population that was set by the WHO in May.

The rest of the low-income African nations have been unable to vaccinate their "most vulnerable 10%" of the population, said WHO Regional Office for Africa in a statement released on Thursday. A total of 42 of Africas 54 nations, which is nearly 80%, are set to miss the target of COVID-19 vaccination, said WHO. Matshidiso Moeti, WHO Regional Director for Africa said,

Vaccine hoarding has held Africa back and we urgently need more vaccines. But as more doses arrive, African countries must zero in and drive forward precise plans to rapidly vaccinate the millions of people that still face a grave threat from COVID-19. With less than a month to go, this looming goal must concentrate minds in Africa and globally."

Africa was shipped a supply of 21 million COVID-19 vaccines via the COVAX Facility in the month of August, and more jabs are expected to arrive through the WHO facility and the African Union by the end of September. Moeti told the presser that Africa would just have "enough doses" to meet the 10% target.

As the wealthier nations prepare to administer the third booster to their population, Africa, which received 143 million doses, has been able to jab just 39 million people. Around just 2% of the total African population is fully vaccinated, according to WHO.

In the US, 52% of people are fully vaccinated, and more than 57% in the European Union are fully vaccinated by now.

The inequity is deeply disturbing. Just 2% of the more than five billion doses given globally have been administered in Africa. Yet recent rises in vaccine shipments and commitments shows that a fairer, more just global distribution of vaccines looks possible. The pandemic is still raging in Africa and we must not let our guard down, Moeti said.

Tedros asks G7 to 'fulfil' vaccine donation commitments

WHO Chief informed at the presser that he has asked the heads of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank Group, and the World Trade Organization to call on countries that have contracted high volumes of vaccines to swap near-term delivery schedules with COVAX, and the African Vaccine Acquisition Trust (AVAT). Furthermore, he urged the vaccine manufacturers to immediately prioritize and fulfil their contracts to COVAX and AVAT, and to provide regular, clear supply forecasts.
As fighting in Africa's second-most populous country Ethiopia has spread south from its epicentre in Tigray, so has the humanitarian impact. The small town of Debark in Ethiopia's Amhara region is now home to over 16,000 people displaced by recent fighting. Amhara militias allied with federal government forces have been battling advancing forces allied to the neighbouring Tigray region.

Debark's townspeople have seen their own resources stretched with the arrivals of their neighbours in need seeking food and shelter. In interviews with The Associated Press, more than a dozen witnesses offered the most widespread descriptions yet of Tigray forces striking communities and religious sites with artillery, killing civilians, looting health centres and sending hundreds of thousands of people fleeing in the past two months.

Fenta Terefe is a communication officer for the Amhara Regions North Gondar Zone. He wears a camouflage jacket and never leaves home without his machine gun that hangs off his shoulder. He says the displaced have been sheltered in three seperate centres but their conditions remain poor and school is closed for the winter.

Tigrayan forces have been fighting Ethiopia's central government since November 2020. The government says they are terrorists. In June, they took back Tigray's capital Mekele, and vowed to go after Amhara fighters who had occupied parts of Tigray during the war. Debark lies some 80 kilometres from the border of Tigray region. The displaced Amhara now shelter in a kindergarten and wait for food. Shewaye Mare walked for over a day from the border town of Addi Arkay with her 4-year-old son. Adults and children alike had to keep up with the retreating soldiers as they withdrew south.

"The reason we are here is because of the (Tigray People's Liberation Front) junta. While we were in Addi Arkay they came and started attacking the town with heavy artillery, so we fled," Mare said.

The United States, which for months has been outspoken about the abuses against Tigrayans, this week turned sharp criticism on the Tigray forces. USAID, which feeds several million people throughout Ethiopia, has seen Tigray forces looting and emptying some of its warehouse, according to the head of the U.S. Agency for Economic Development, Sean Jones.

"As we came here, there were lots of dead bodies" of defense forces and civilians, said Khadija Firdu, who fled the advancing Tigray forces to the muddy camp for displaced people in Debark. "Even as we entered Debark, we stepped on a dead body. We thought it was the trunk of a tree. It was dark. We came here crying."

Like much about the war, it is not clear how many people in Amhara have been killed, and claims by the warring sides cannot immediately be verified. Each has accused the other of lying or carrying out atrocities against supporters for propaganda. The Tigray forces say their offensive is an attempt to break the months-long blockade of their region of some 6 million people, as an estimated 400,000 face famine conditions in the world's worst hunger crisis in a decade.

(Disclaimer: This story is auto-generated from a syndicated feed; only the image & headline may have been reworked by www.republicworld.com)
Rebels in eastern Congo on September 1 ambushed a stalled civilian convoy that was under military escort, the army said. According to the Associated Press, the rebel group ADF, or Allied Democratic Forces rebels, killed five people and abducted around 80 people initially, however, the army later said that they were able to rescue 60 of them. However, about 20 people remain missing. While speaking to the media outlet, Capt Jules Ngongo, the spokesman for the Congolese Army in Ituri province, said that the attack took place after the convoy had stopped to repair one of the vehicles.

We call on people to remain calm and to trust their army because it is difficult to fight the terrorists, but we will fight for peace to return as soon as possible, Ngongo said.

The ADF rebel group in eastern Congo ambushed a civilian convoy under military escort on Wednesday.



The ambush took place after the convoy stopped to repair one of the vehicles. The gunmen initially kidnapped 80 people, but the army managed to rescue 60 of them. pic.twitter.com/4JzsEoSwhz   Segarra lovero (@jejesegarrajeje) September 3, 2021

According to the news agency, the latest attack has prompted more outcry in eastern Congo. Civilians also say that the rebel group is stepping up its attacks. Christian Munyanderu, a coordinator of a local human rights group, said, What is the purpose of our army? How can a convoy of civilian vehicles be attacked when they were secured by the army? Without capturing even one rebel.

It is worth mentioning that the ADF trace their origins to nearby Uganda. They have long carried out attacks in eastern Congo, at times bringing gunfire to the city centre of Beni. The attacks have even repeatedly prompted anger about the inability of the Congolese army and UN peacekeepers to stop the violence.

DR Congo accepts US military help against ADF

Meanwhile, DR Congo President Felix Tshisekedi last month authorised US special forces to help the Congolese Army battle the ADF. The US forces are expected to boost the DRC armys fight against ADF in the national parks of Virunga and Garamba. The mission will last several weeks and is specifically directed against the ISIL (ISIS) linked armed group.

ADF has already been deemed as a terrorist group by the United States. It is considered the deadliest of dozens of armed militias that roam the Democratic Republic of Congo. The Catholic Church in the country has said that the rebel group has killed about 6,000 civilians since 2013, while a US-based monitor, the Kivu Security Tracker (KST), blames it for more than 1,200 deaths in the Beni area alone since 2017.

(With inputs from AP)
The aid crisis in Ethiopia's Tigray region is worsening with stocks of relief aid, cash and fuel "running very low or depleted", the United Nations said. Since July 12, only 10% of the supplies of relief has reached the stranded people due to intense fighting in the region, according to the UN aid coordination office OCHA. UN further said that the only accessible route to Tigray was through the Afar region using the Semera-Abala corridor, but this has been shut since August 22 after conflict erupted in the region.

According to various humanitarian partners, an estimated 100 trucks of food, non-food items, and fuel is required in Tigray on a daily basis to assist the region with adequate resources. The organisation further said that to send supplies, OCHA requires at least 200,000 litres for the humanitarian response every week.

Since the second week of July, only as little as 282,000 litres have reached Tigray and nothing has reached the region since August 16. The UN agency further said that at least USD 7 million is needed every week to sustain humanitarian operations in Tigray, which is equivalent to 300 million birrs in local currency. These transactions include staff salaries, local procurement, and cash-based assistance. Since July 12, only 47 million birrs have been given to the UN agency for assistance.

What is the ongoing conflict in Tigray and Ethiopia?

The conflict between the Ethiopian troops and the Tigray Defence Force has been ongoing for a 10-month period. Due to the constant fighting in the Tigray and the Afar, the Amhara regions has continued to affect civilians, resulting in food insecurity, displacement, and the disruption of livelihoods. According to the UN's report on the conflict, more than 1.7 million people are being feared to be facing an acute shortage of food in Afar and Amhara. Earlier in August, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said that "a humanitarian catastrophe is unfolding before our eyes" as more than two million people had been displaced, and reportedly 300,000 more people were displaced in Afar and Amhara alone. Almost half a million people are living in conditions that are like famine. The UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) said that 100,000 face severe acute malnutrition within the year.

(With ANI inputs)
Australia would receive 4 million Pfizer doses from Britain in a swap deal that will double the quantity of that COVID-19 vaccine available to Australians in September, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Friday.

Australia has recently struck deals with Singapore and Poland to increases supplies of Pfizer as the nation battles a rapidly-spreading outbreak of the delta variant that started in Sydney in June.

"I said I would leave no stone unturned and I can tell you I've been turning over some stones in recent times to ensure that we can progress the vaccination program as quickly as we possibly can," Morrison said.

"Thanks Boris, I owe you a beer," he added, referring to his British counterpart Boris Johnson.

The British doses will leave on Saturday and Australia would return the same number in December for booster shots.

"At the end of the day, this is a good deal for Britain and it's a good deal for Australia. And it's a good deal because it makes the most of the doses that they have now, which we need, and the doses that we will have later that they will need," Morrison said. "It's a good deal between mates."

Singapore on Thursday delivered 500,000 Pfizer doses in a swap deal that requires the same number to supplied by Australia in December.

Australia bought one million Pfizer doses from Poland for an undisclosed price in August.

The Australian government hopes the states will end pandemic lockdowns once 80% of the population aged 16 and older was fully vaccinated.

Only 36% of that population group was vaccinated, according to the latest government figures.

(Disclaimer: This story is auto-generated from a syndicated feed; only the image & headline may have been reworked by www.republicworld.com)
Following the Talibans violent takeover of Afghanistan, Australias High Commissioner to India Barry OFarrell on September 3 said that the world is disappointed by what happened in the war-torn nation. In recent developments, the foreign forces have left Afghanistan, marking the end of a chaotic and messy exit from Americas longest war. There are still thousands of people who are scrambling to get out of the war-ravaged nation, fearing reprisal from the Taliban. On Friday, O'Farrell told reporters in Raipur, Chhattisgarh,

"I think the world is disappointed by what happened in Afghanistan. I think the world is rightly focussed now on how we evacuate our citizens. Although it is a work particularly for countries who committed military resources to Afghanistan to try and ensure that the democratic country remained democratic."

It is worth mentioning that O'Farrell made the remarks in Raipur, a day after meeting CM Bhupesh Baghel on Thursday. While taking to Twitter, he thanked the CM for his thoughts on how Australia and India can further deepen business, investment and people-to-people ties. The Australian High Commissioner even met with Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik and discussed cooperation between Odisha and Australia in various fields.

CM @Naveen_Odisha held a meeting with @AusHCIndia, Barry O'Farrell and during the meeting, the High Commissioner praised CM for the way in which #Odisha is promoting the Indian hockey teams and the way it has worked towards improving the game. #OdishaForSports pic.twitter.com/4zLZmjEOKQ  CMO Odisha (@CMO_Odisha) August 31, 2021

Taliban takeover

Meanwhile, the Taliban took over Kabul on August 15 after major cities like Kandahar, Herat, Mazar-e-Sharif, Jalalabad and Lashkar Gah fell without resistance as US troops retreated after 20 years from war-torn Afghanistan. The hasty withdrawal of the US troops saw thousands of people attempting to flee from Afghanistan with several clinging to departing US plane's wheels, leading to them falling to their deaths.

The Taliban, which is now in talks with ex-Presidents Hamid Karzai and Abdullah Abdullah for a 'peaceful power transition', will announce the new government formation as soon as its Supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada arrives in Kabul.

Meanwhile, international reports claimed that Taliban co-founder Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar will lead a new Afghan government. The terrorist group recently also took out a victory parade showcasing its weapons, advanced military equipment, explosives, vehicles, and helicopters - most of which were either seized from Afghan troops, the US military or procured from affiliated terrorist organizations. The parade was led by Talibans suicide bombers exhibiting car bombs, barrel bombs, vest explosives, mines and other advanced weapons.

(Image: AP/ANI)


The Taliban on Friday informed that China would continue to maintain their embassy in Kabul. Taliban spokesperson Suhail Shaheen informed that Abdul Salam Hanafi, the deputy head of the Taliban political office in Qatar, held a telephonic conversation with Deputy Foreign Minister of China Wu Jianghao, where the decision was taken. Earlier, the Taliban had urged all countries to reopen the embassies in Kabul, which were closed after the organisation seized control of the country in August.

China will maintain their embassy in Kabul

China has been openly batting for the Taliban and was one of the few countries to agree to accept the new Taliban rule as a legitimate government. Reaffirming the same, the Taliban has now informed that the Chinese embassy will open and continue operations in Kabul. During the phone call, where the decision was taken, the two sides also discussed the current situation in Afghanistan.

"Abdul Salam Hanafi, Deputy Director, PO held a phone conversation with Wu Jianghao, Deputy Foreign Minister of the People's Republic of China. Both sides discussed the ongoing situation of the country and future relations," Qatar-based spokesperson of Taliban Suhail Shaheen tweeted. "The Chinese Deputy Foreign Minister said that they would maintain their embassy in Kabul, adding our relations would beef up as compared to the past. Afghanistan can play an important role in security and development of the region. China will also continue and increase its humanitarian assistance especially for the treatment of COVID-19," Shaheen further tweeted.

The situation in Afghanistan has been deteriorating by the day ever since the Taliban seized control of the war-torn country in August. The Talibans attack to take control came after the United States announced their troops withdrawal from the region. On August 15, the Afghan government fell after President Ashraf Ghani fled the country. The US forces completed their withdrawal from the country on Tuesday, heeding their deadline.

Meanwhile, the Taliban has asked countries to reopen their embassies in the country. The group called on countries, especially the US, to resume diplomatic relations with Afghanistan. Currently, there are 36 embassies of various nations in Kabul and in return, had 71 embassies and general consulates in those foreign nations. While most of these countries shut their operations in Kabul during the seizure of power by the Taliban, some openly announced the suspension of all diplomatic relations with the country. However, China and Pakistan have been openly supporting the Talibans newly forming government.

IMAGE: AP/ TWITTER
French President Emmanuel Macron met with Italian Premier Mario Draghi in Marseille on Thursday ahead of a meeting of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

The leaders were filmed entering Le Petit Nice, an upmarket restaurant, on Thursday evening.

Macron is set to open the IUCN World Conservation Congress on Friday.

France and Italy have been working together to reduce marine pollution and counter the impact of fishing and maritime transport on marine life.

During their meeting Thursday, Macron and Draghi also discussed Libya, Afghanistan and potential migrant flows to Europe.

IMAGE: AP

(Disclaimer: This story is auto-generated from a syndicated feed; only the image & headline may have been reworked by www.republicworld.com)
Ex-Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari has declared official retirement from public service. The news came on Thursday after the Nobel laureate was diagnosed with stage three Alzheimer's disease. The office of the incumbent President Sauli Niinisto released a public statement adding details about the former Presidents' general medical information.

"President Martti Ahtisaari is suffering from Alzheimer's disease. Due to the memory disorder, he receives support in everyday life at home and occasionally spends periods in a nursing home," Finland President Office.

"Ex-President Martti Ahtisaari withdraws from public activity due to illness," the Presidential statement said. The 84-year-old "is receiving support for everyday life at home and occasionally spends periods of treatment in a care facility," the statement added. The former President Ahtisaari is currently in the advanced stage of neurodegenerative disease, the Associated Press reported.

President Martti Ahtisaari has withdrawn from all public engagements due to illness. Ahtisaari is suffering from Alzheimer's disease. https://t.co/9mUsAavgXP  CMI  Martti Ahtisaari Peace Foundation (@cmioffice) September 2, 2021

Primary school teacher-turned diplomat wins Nobel Peace Prize

The 10th President of the Republic of Finland, Martti Oiva Kalevi Ahtisaari, held office between 1994 and 2000. The primary school teacher-turned diplomat worked tirelessly to achieve peaceful negotiations between the Finnish government and the United Nations (UN). He was the UN special envoy for Kosovo and was charged with the "Kosovo Question," the long-running political turmoil between the Serbian government and Kosovo. He was later awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in October 2008 for his "important efforts, ansible continents and over more than three decades, to resolve international conflicts." The Nobel Prize statement said he also played a significant role in resolving conflicts in Namibia and Indonesia.

Among his other major diplomatic achievements, the former President served as Finland's ambassador to Tanzania from 1973-1977. He was also the UN Deputy Secretary-General between 1977-1981 and the UN Commissioner for Namibia from 1976-1981. Later in 1987, Ahtisaari served as the Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations for Administration and Management. In 1995, Ahtisaari finally became the first directly-elected President of Finland. His politically untarnished career and vision for Finland was the main reason for his historic win. Additionally, he was also a supporter of pluralism and accepted religious tolerance publicly. Last but not least, the oldest living Finnish President was the first to urge the Finland government to join NATO and the European Union.

With inputs from AP

Image Credit: AP/Representative
The Norwegian National Authority for Investigation and Prosecution of Economic and Environmental Crime have seized a number of cultural-historical objects. The extensive seizure consists of almost 100 objects that are considered significant for the cultural-historical world heritage. The seizure consists of cuneiform tablets and other archaeological objects from ancient Mesopotamia. The police did not inform them about how they found the objects in Norway.

Norway seizes archaeological objects

The Norwegian National Authority for Investigation and Prosecution of Economic and Environmental Crime(Oekokrim) have found these objects during the search in Eastern Norway during last week. The authorities in the press release informed that they would now examine the authenticity of seized objects. In the press release, the authorities mentioned that Iraqi authorities are demanding the objects to be returned. Taking to Twitter, The Norwegian National Authority for Investigation and Prosecution of Economic and Environmental Crime(Oekokrim) has shared pictures of artefacts on Twitter.

kokrim har beslaglagt i en rekke kulturhistoriske gjenstander som irakiske myndigheter krever tilbakelevert.



Det omfattende beslaget bestar

av gjenstander som anses a vre viktige for den kulturhistoriske verdensarven. https://t.co/Bzg9xEV5cd pic.twitter.com/TKEAtpJRti  KOKRIM (@okokrim) September 3, 2021

The government agency informed that they had assisted the Ministry of Culture in the matter. The agency further mentioned, "Iraqi authorities have reported a large number of ancient artefacts missing which they suspect have been smuggled out of the country", according to AP. The Norwegian National Authority for Investigation and Prosecution of Economic and Environmental Crime has revealed that "a large number of objects were seized during the search, and a number of witnesses interviewed".

Earlier this month, United States has returned more than 17,000 ancient artefacts looted and smuggled out of Iraq during the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. The majority of the artefacts date back 4,000 years to ancient Mesopotamia, according to AP. After the Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi visited Washington to advance bilateral cooperation under the Strategic Framework Agreement, upon his return, several archaeological artefacts were returned to Iraqs Culture Ministry under the two countries largest repatriation agreement. The artefacts were handed over to the Culture Ministry in large wooden crates. Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein and Culture Minister Hasan Nadhim in a press conference informed that the recovery of artefacts was the largest in the history of Iraq and it was the result of efforts of both the government and Iraqs Embassy in Washington.

IMAGE: okokrim/Twitter

Inputs from AP
Syria said it shot down Israeli missiles as they approached the capital Damascus on Friday, saying it had countered an aggression from its longtime adversary with its own air defenses.

State news agency SANA said Syria shot down most of the missiles, which were launched from the area southeast of neighboring Lebanon and targeted areas near Damascus.

It provided no further details, and there was no immediate comment from Israel, which rarely speaks of its military operations in the war-ravaged country.

Video from state broadcasters showed an illuminated object traveling through the sky, followed by a loud rumbling noise.

Israel has launched hundreds of strikes against Iran-linked military targets in Syria over the years but rarely acknowledges or discusses such operations.

Israel views Iranian entrenchment on its northern frontier as a red line, and it has repeatedly struck what it says are Iran-linked facilities and weapons convoys destined for Lebanese Hezbollah.

The Iran-backed militant group is fighting alongside Syrian government forces in the country's long-running civil war.

(Disclaimer: This story is auto-generated from a syndicated feed; only the image & headline may have been reworked by www.republicworld.com)
In a recent development, the United Arab Emirates sent a plane carrying food, water, and medical aid to Afghanistan on Friday. This came after US troops completely withdrew from the war-torn country on August 31. As per media reports, the UAE has sent this aid on humanitarian grounds to support Afghan nationals who have not left the country.

UAE sends plane carrying food and medical aid to Afghanistan

Since the terror outfit of Afghanistan took control of the country, this is going to be the first flight carrying medical and food aid to Afghanistan. The evacuation operation, which had been going on for a few weeks, also came to an end on August 31, when the US military left the area. As many as 1,23,000 people from various countries, including Afghanistan, were airlifted to different countries.

Earlier, on Tuesday, when the US troops left Afghanistan, the Taliban militants celebrated with massive gunfire in Kabul. The US Army settled in Afghanistan and toppled the Taliban regime in 2001 after Al-Qaeda launched the 9/11 attack on the US. However, after 20 years of a tough fight, the Taliban once again came into power, which has escalated fear among western countries that Afghanistan could again become a haven for extremists launching more attacks on other countries.

Notably, the UAE is one of the other Gulf states that have played an important part in the evacuation operation, sending flights for Afghan civilians along with Qatar, Kuwait, and Bahrain.

Current situation in Afghanistan

After the Taliban took the power in the war-torn country, they have been figuring out ways to run the government. As per the latest reports, Mulla Abdul Ghani Baradar, who is one of the supreme leaders of the Taliban, is likely to become the head of the Taliban government. The terrorist group is soon likely to announce the formation of a new government in Kabul on the lines of the Iranian leadership. So far, there has been no confirmation of the leadership. However, several names are doing the rounds. Meanwhile, the new Taliban regime is trying to cover up its brutal image.



(With Inputs from PTI)

(IMAGE: PIXABAY/REPRESENTATIVE)


More than two weeks after the Taliban's stunning takeover in Afghanistan, Pakistan on Thursday, September 2, temporarily closed the Chaman border with the war-torn country citing security concerns. Interior Minister Sheikh Rashid said that Imran Khan-led Pakistan government wants peace and stability in Afghanistan and due to "some concerns" the border at Chaman has been closed as of now, reported ANI quoting The Express Tribune. He further said that they will not allow chaos to spread and there are no Americans left in Pakistan as all those who came have already left. According to a report, since the Taliban's hostile takeover of Afghanistan, pedestrian traffic through Pakistan's Chaman border crossing had increased significantly. Last month, while speaking to CNN, Hameed Ullah, the head of the Coronavirus Health team at the Chaman Border, had claimed that around 18,000 people now cross the border every day.

Stampede at Chaman border crossing led to death of four people

According to a report by Tolo News, following Pakistan's government's announcement to close the key border crossing, at least four people died in a stampede caused due to huge rush at the Chaman border on Thursday. Pakistan, which shares a 2,670 km long border with Afghanistan, is one of the most affected countries due to the influx of fleeing refugees. One of the deceased was a 64-year-old Afghan refugee named Saif Ullah, who was trying to enter Pakistan. Later speaking to CNN, his son Shahid Ullah said that he and his father were crossing the border along with the rest of their family members when they lost him. Later, he found his father dead.

'Pakistan hopes to forge a cordial relationship with new political dispensation in Afghanistan'

However, director-general Pakistan military's media wing said that Pakistan hopes that the Taliban-led government in Afghanistan would take some measures against the banned Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). Besides, last week, Director General of Pakistan's Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) Major General Babar Iftikhar said that Islamabad is hopeful of forging a cordial relationship with new political dispensation in the war-torn country. Pakistan shared the list of most-wanted terrorists affiliated to the banned TTP with Taliban chief Haibatullah Akhundzada, ANI reported quoting Tribune. The report further claimed that Akhundzada has formed a three-member panel to investigate Pakistan's claim that TTP was using Afghanistan to carry out cross-border terrorism.

(With Inputs from ANI)

Image: ANI/AP
Pakistan's financial debt has reached a new high as the countrys total debt rose to Rs.149 trillion under Prime Minister Imran Khans Tehreek-e-Insaf's (PTI) three-year tenure. According to an annual report released by the State Bank of Pakistan, Pakistan's debt currently stands at 399 trillion. Earlier, Pakistans economy was reported to slump to a new low under the PTI rule as the countrys fiscal deficit stood at 7.1 per cent of GDP for 2020-21.

"The annual report released by State Bank of Pakistan shows government debts at 399 trillion and of this, debts rose by Rs 149 trillion during three years under PTI and this debt raised by the PTI government is equal to 80 per cent of debts raised by Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) during 10 years of their rule," local media reported on Wednesday.

Pakistan's debt rises

Pakistan is on the verge of a debt crisis as public debt also increased by over eight per cent in 11 months of the fiscal year ended in June. The rise in public debt came as a result of increased government borrowing to meet the spending requirements during the COVID-19 pandemic, The News International reported, citing the government data in the month of July. Earlier last week, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) handed a sum of USD 2.75 billion to Pakistan under a Special Drawing Rights (SDR) programme as it continues to fight against coronavirus.

According to ANI, financial analysts predict the budget deficit to be in the range of 7.0-7.5 per cent in the fiscal year 2022, as the government could cover the shortfall by cutting expenditures in both its current and developmental structure. However, the Pakistan outlet showed a positive outlook to the increased level of external inflows from multilateral and bilateral development partners and claimed in its official report that the same was indicative of their confidence in the development priorities policies of the PTI government.

Impact of COVID on Pak's economy

Pakistans economy has been struggling to stay afloat, and the COVID-19 pandemic has severely impacted the nations economy, virtually pushing it to the brink of bankruptcy, a report by Observer research Foundation revealed. Pakistans economy does not have the capacity to absorb the massive disruption caused by the pandemic, it informed, adding that the country was forced to seek an Extended Fund Facility (EFF) programme with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) due to its twin deficit problem.



IMAGE: PTI
Amid the raging battle between the Taliban and the Afghan Resistance for Panjshir Valley, a Pakistani ID card has surfaced, again confirming the Imran Khan-led govt's active involvement in the insurgency and 'invasion' of Afghanistan over the recent weeks. This ID card released by the Northern Alliance is of a Pakistani terrorist serving under the Excise and Taxation Department, Government of Punjab (in Pakistan). The document being found on the outskirts of Panjshir clearly suggests that special Pakistani forces are collaborating with the Taliban and Al Qaeda and propelling their agenda to spread terror. This comes just a day after the Al Qaeda, which the US entered Afghanistan to destroy 20 years ago, joined Taliban in its conquest of Panjshir valley, which has held out against wave after wave of attack.

It is important to note that without the assistance of Pakistan, the Taliban may not have been able to conquer Afghanistan so easily, former President Ashraf Ghani having informed US President Biden in July that his country had been invaded by terrorists from Pakistan. Even with Pakistan's active help, sources told Republic Media Network that the Taliban and its hardline terror allies faced a massive setback as over 400 terrorists were killed in a violent clash in Panjshir Valley.

Northern Alliance liberates Charikar; assures the safety of Saleh

As part of their battle, the Northern Resistance Forces liberated Charikar, the capital of Parwan province and also captured the Salang tunnel. Charikar, which is considered to be a strategic location, was snatched back from the clutches of the Taliban. The Salang tunnel is also key as it lies on the Afghanistan-Uzbekistan highway giving a strategic advantage to the Northern Resistance Forces. Resistance sources also informed the Republic Media Network that Afghanistan's 'Caretaker President' Amrullah Saleh and Commander Ahmad Massoud were safe and present in Panjshir Valley. Rumours that were doing rounds stating that both Afghan leaders had fled to Tajikstan due to gains made by the Taliban in Panjshir. This has been called out as propaganda and psychological operations by the Taliban.

Taliban may appoint Mullah Baradar as Afghanistan's Supreme Leader

Reports claim that the Afghanistan government will be led by Taliban leader Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar. Taliban officials have also stated that its former leader and terrorist Mullah Mohammad Omar's son Mullah Yakub will be given a senior position in the new government. However, earlier it was also stated that the new leader could be Mullah Hibatullah Akhundzada, the religious head of the terrorist group, who would lead the new government. Notably, Akhundzada has served as the head of the group's council of religious scholars.

Panjshir Valley Resistance against Taliban

The anti-Taliban front led by the Northern Alliance has been building up resistance in the Panjshir Valley which continues to be the only region out of the fundamentalist group's control. Amid the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, Panjshir Valley under the Northern Alliance forces has been holding the fort against the terrorists and has seen a strong resistance led by 'Caretaker President' Amrullah Saleh and Ahmad Massoud, son of famous anti-Taliban warlord Ahmad Shah Massoud. This comes even after the terrorist group cut off the valley's access to food and supply routes. The entire region has been isolated and surrounded and civilians can neither enter nor get out of the Panjshir Valley amid the growing resistance, as per sources.

Image Credits - Republic World/AP
Kazakhstan President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev on Friday, Sep. 3, stressed the need for his country to bolster its defense capabilities against the external threats as the security situation turned grim in neighbouring Afghanistan, and the threats of Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISIS-K) loomed, that killed 170 Afghans and 13 US troops in Kabul bomb blast. We must prepare for external shocks and worst-case scenarios, modelling external risks has become highly relevant, the Kazakh President said at his third address to the nation since he assumed leadership. Stress tests should be conducted, and scenarios should be worked out that will determine further actions of the state apparatus," news agency ANI quoted him saying, citing the EU Reporter.

Even though Kazakhstan and Afghanistan do not share the border, the political upheaval and power grab conflict between the Taliban and ISIS that ousted the Ashraf Ghani government poses a regional threat to security. As the hardline Islamist group, the Taliban is trying to establish a national government, violence, repression, and terrorism swelled across insurgents-ruled Afghanistan. President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev emphasized the urgent need to boost the country's military capacity, as he had earlier warned that the Talibans takeover of the political power poses "risks" for the Central Asian country.

At the press address during the Kaysar-2021 tactical exercises held in Almaty region, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said, We see growing public concern over the situation in Afghanistan. These events do not pose a direct threat to Kazakhstan. However, there are certain risks," he said. "Therefore, we must carefully monitor the situation and be ready to respond to any challenge.

Apart from the escalating security situation in the region, the Kazakh President also spoke about subjects related to nuclear energy, boosting financial aid for businesses during the pandemic, and five new social initiatives.  Nearly half of the country's budget for 2022-2025 will be allocated to the social sector, ANI reported, adding that the country plans to push the minimum wage of 42,500 tenges [USD100] to 60,000 tenges [USD140] effective January 1, 2021. This is expected to impact at least one million people who will witness better pay. The Kazakh administration also plans to enhance measures to push the local businesses to increase the salaries of the employees.

"Micro and small businesses are particularly affected by this. I propose to introduce a single payment from the payroll with a reduction of the total burden from 34 percent to 25 percent. This will stimulate businesses to bring thousands of employees out of the shadows and make them participants in the pension, social security, and health insurance systems, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said, according to ANI.

Kazakhstan aims to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060

Furthermore, the Kazakh government also plans to transfer pensioners savings above the sufficiency threshold to the Otbasy bank for the subsequent purchase of housing, states EU reporter. The president expressed concerns about the energy shortages that the country might face by 2050, and therefore, laid emphasis on the alternative reliable energy sources. Within a year, the government and the Samruk Kazyna National Wealth Fund should study the possibility of developing a safe and environmentally-friendly nuclear power industry in Kazakhstan, he said. It should also include the development of engineering and creating a new generation of qualified nuclear engineers in our country. Hydrogen energy as a whole is also a promising sector, he continued. The country has pledged to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060.

IMAGE: AP
Amid the escalating war between the Taliban terrorists and Northern Resistance Forces, Afghanistan's caretaker President Amrullah Saleh has lashed out at the Taliban for blocking humanitarian access to Panjshir. Taking to Twitter, Saleh lambasted the Taliban, accusing them of committing war crimes and having no regard for International Humanitarian Law.

Saleh also stated that the Taliban is doing racial profiling and using the 'military age men' of Panjshir as mine clearance tools and forcing them to walk on minefields, apart from blocking phone lines, electricity and access to medicines. He called on the United Nations and other world leaders to take note of the "criminal and terrorist behaviour of Talibs."

Talibs have blocked humanitarian access to Panjshir, do racial profile of travelers, use military age men of Panjhsir as mine clearance tools walking them on mine fields, have shut phone, electricity & not allow medicine either. People can only carry small amount of cash. 1/2  Amrullah Saleh (@AmrullahSaleh2) September 3, 2021

Over the past 23 years since start of the Emergency Hospital we never blocked Talib access to it. Talibs are committing war crimes & have zero respect for IHL. We call on UN & world leaders to take notice of this clear criminal & terrorist behavior of the Talibs.  Amrullah Saleh (@AmrullahSaleh2) September 3, 2021

Resistance Forces pound Taliban terrorists

It was earlier said that Amrullah Saleh and Northern Alliance leader Ahmad Massoud had fled Panjshir to take refuge in Tajikistan, however, Republic Media Network's sources from the resistance have informed that both the leaders are safe and very much present in Panjshir Valley.

Moreover, the Northern Resistance Forces have liberated Charikar, the capital of Parwan province and Salang, a strategic location, from the clutches of the Taliban. Salang is said to be important as it lies on the Afghanistan-Uzbekistan highway, thus giving a strategic advantage to the Northern Resistance Forces. Earlier during the day, Republic Media Network's reporter on ground had also stated that several Taliban terrorists had been admitted to hospital following the violent clash with Resistance Forces. This comes on a day when the Taliban is preparing to formally announce its government.

Although the Taliban is equipped with a huge cache of weapons including automatic assault rifles, rocket launchers, hand grenades along with military transporters left by the US after its hasty exit from Afghanistan, the Northern Alliance led by Ahmad Massoud has been holding the bastion at Panjshir despite being short on supplies, arms and ammunition and making it difficult for the Taliban to breach Panjshir.

Though the Taliban claims to be a changed entity, the mayhem by its terrorists continues on ground, depicting a contrasting picture to the claims made. The Taliban had offered to pardon everyone including government workers and Afghan Military personnel, however, the situation on the ground has been visibly different from the claims made by the Taliban as several military personnel were brutally killed by Taliban terrorists in broad daylight. Led by Ahmad Massoud and Amrullah Saleh, the Northern Resistance forces continue to defend Panjshir and it remains the only province free from the Taliban's rule.
India has signed a construction project with Nepal to reconstruct 14 cultural heritage projects and 103 health projects across the various districts in Nepal. The construction project was signed between the Indian Embassy in Nepal and Nepal's Central Level Project Implementation Unit (Building) of the National Reconstruction Authority (NRA). The project was signed to reconstruct the national heritage sites of Nepal, which were damaged during the 2015 earthquakes.

India signs a reconstruction project with Nepal

According to an official statement issued by the Indian Embassy, the reconstruction project was signed in the presence of Karun Bansal, First Secretary (Development Partnership & Reconstruction), and Shyam Kishore Singh. Project Director, CLPIU (Bldg). Among the 14 cultural projects signed between India and Nepal, 14 cultural heritage like Lalitpur, Nuwakot, Rasuwa were chosen, including Dhading districts, and 103 health sector projects are located in Lalitpur, Rasuwa, Nuwakot, Sindhupalchowk, Ramechhap, Dolakha, Gulmi, Gorkha, and Kavre districts.

India is reconstructing these sites because they were destroyed during the 2015 earthquake, and the construction project is estimated to cost NRs 420 crores. During the event, the Embassy of India, Central Level Project Implementation Unit (Building), and representatives from the central government's project consultants INTACH and CBRI were also present. The Indian government has allocated a grant of $250 million under the post-quake package, including USD 50 million each for education, cultural heritage, and other sectors, including $100 million for the housing sector. It is essential to mention that India has signed agreements to reconstruct 71 education sector projects, 28 cultural heritage sector projects in 7 districts, and 147 health facilities in ten districts. Moreover, around 50,000 houses in Gorkha and Nuwakot will be built under the reconstruction package with GoI grant assistance, read the official release.

(IMAGE: ANI)

(With Inputs from ANI)
Bamdev Gautam, vice chairman of the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist Leninist), led by KP Sharma Oli stepped down from his role on Friday amid the ongoing crisis in the party. He submitted his resignation letter to UML Office Secretary Sher Bahadur Tamang at the party's headquarter in Thapathal.

Gautam has accused KP Sharma Oli's irrational behaviour as the reason for his renouncement. As per an ANI report, Gautam expressed his dissatisfaction with the UML; he said that he has decided to resign from his incumbent position due to Oli's irrational thoughts and unacceptable behaviour. Oli is ruining the party's thought process, he alleged. He also said that despite having played a vital role in the political party's formation and progress, he feels unimportant now. KP Oli doesn't give much importance to him and his opinions, he opined.

He claimed that "Oli's irrational behaviour and mindset to operate the party is the reason for my decision. I also had played a role during the formation of this party but your wrong thoughts, nature and work pattern has made me feel impotent and I hereby announce my resignation from the party's post of vice-chair as well as all kinds of responsibilities with immediate effect," Gautam stated in the letter to party chair KP Sharma Oli.

Bamdev Gautam's term at ULM

During the UML's Ninth General Convention, Gautam was elected as the party's Vice-Chairman. He had been organising a campaign to keep the UML united for the past few months, as Chairman KP Oli and senior politician Madhav Kumar Nepal had been in a conflict. In the meantime, the party's senior leaders have founded a separate party, the CPN (Unified Socialist) party. After parting ties with the UML in 1998, Gautam created the CPN, a breakaway political organisation (ML). Later on, the CPN-UML absorbed the party. After 25 years, Gautam has resigned from the UML. Gautam also revealed that his close associates have joined the Nepal-led party, while his wife is still undecided.

Earlier, 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.

With ANI Inputs

Image Credit: ANI
With a sudden surge in illegal migration, Polish President Andrzej Duda declared a state of emergency in two regions bordering Belarus. On Thursday, the Polish lawmakers proposed the measure to combat the illegal influx of migrants from the Middle East. As per the Associated Press, Poland is the third European Union (EU) country after Lithuania and Latvia that has imposed a state of emergency in borders along with Belarus.

"Hybrid War"

In order to mitigate the situations that could lead to a "hybrid war," Poland initiated the 30days-long state of emergency, the Polish government said in a statement as reported by AP. As per the first-of-its-kind order, Warsaw authorities have stemmed the movement of journalists and other civilians in a 3-kilometre wide no-man's zone along the border. Poland also accused Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko of the increase in mass influx and said that it is a bid to pressurise EU nations over the sanctions it has imposed on Minsk. Amidst the sudden influx in illegal migrants, the step comes as a measure to ensure greater security for Poland and the rest of re EU countries, said Polish Presidential spokesperson Blazej Spychalski.

As of September 2, approximately 24-30 migrants are currently stranded in the no man's land, Polish border guard told AP.

Meanwhile, the sudden limitations have dropped a bomb on a group of Afghan migrants who are now trapped between the Polish and Belarusian tussle. The border standoff has halted movement of about 32 men, women, and children from Afghanistan, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) told in a mail to AP. Additionally, there are also refugees from Iraq stranded in the conflict zone as Poland starts to lay out barbed wire fences.

The decision drew strong criticism from prominent anti-communist leaders in Poland. Condemning the decision, former anti-communist leader Wladyslaw Frasyniuk said he believed that Polish guards "behaved like a pack of dogs that surrounded poor, weak people." Meanwhile, the Polish media also broadcasted images of Polish guards rolling out razor wires at the border.

Belarus reacts

Meanwhile, Belarus government officials rubbished Polish claims of using refugees against EU nations. Theyre saying in the West nowadays that Belarus unleashed a hybrid war on the European Union. Its ridiculous to hear. Belarus, of 10 million (population), unleashed a hybrid war on the 500-million European Union, Foreign Minister Vladimir Makei told reporters on Thursday. Makei also asserted that Belarus has been offering to hold consultations with the EU on the issue of illegal migration, but the European Union is categorically refusing to.

With inputs from AP

Image: AP
A Qatar Airways plane carrying a technical team landed on Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul on Thursday to assist the Taliban in the resumption of the airport operations. On Friday, Qatari-based Al Jazeera news channel had reported that the Taliban, which now controls Afghanistan after the complete US withdrawal on August 31, has asked Qatar for technical assistance to start operating the Kabul airport. It is the first flight to arrive at the Kabul airport since the US troops left Afghanistan.

The hardline Islamist extremist faction, Taliban, has also requested Turkey for technical assistance to run the airport, which, as per the US Federal Aviation Administration is now uncontrolled without air traffic control services (ATC).

As the last plane carrying the US soldiers left Kabul on August 31, the US barred all civil aircraft from flying over the Afghanistan air corridor without prior authorisation unless permitted.

FAA said in a statement, Due to both the lack of air traffic services and a functional civil aviation authority in Afghanistan, as well as ongoing security concerns, US civil operators, pilots, and U.S.-registered civil aircraft are prohibited from operating at any altitude over much of Afghanistan."

As the airport was left non-operational after the US pullout, the Taliban sought technical help from Qatar, which emerged as a key player post the US-led evacuation efforts. A Qatari plane from the Gulf Arab state touched down in Afghanistan at the civilian side of the Kabul airport.

             pic.twitter.com/rpeWz7QdNd  Ahmadullah Muttaqi (@Ahmadmuttaqi01) September 2, 2021

Qatar Airways has just landed at Kabul International Airport, said Ahmadullah Muttaqi, the self-declared chief of Multimedia Branch of The Cultural Commission, Islamic Emirate Of Afghanistan.

Kabul airport in bad shape, Turkey unresponsive on 'technical help' to Taliban

Sources told the local news agencies that the infrastructure at the Kabul airport is in bad shape after the US military draw down. Even as the Taliban asked the Turkish troops for technical assistance, the final ultimatum lied with the Turkish forces on whether to extend help or not. There have been no clear reports on Turkeys response yet. But Qatar flew out a technical team to Kabul even though there has been no official agreement as such signed by both the parties, sources say.

Turkish news agencies, although, have learnt that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan refused help with airport operations to the Taliban following NATO's withdrawal, citing threats made by Taliban to Turkey earlier with regards to Turkish security presence in Afghanistan.
Qatar Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Mohammad bin Abdulrahman Al Thani informed, on Thursday, that there is no clear indication on when flights to Afghanistan will resume. Following their Afghan exit, the USA had handed over operations of the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul to the Taliban.

Kabul airport key for humanitarian assistance in Afghanistan: UN

With the Kabul airport now under the control of Taliban terrorists, Al Thani warned on Thursday that there is still "no clear indication" of when it would reopen. On Wednesday, a team of Qatari and Turkish specialists flew to Kabul to assist with the resumption of operations at the facility, which the United Nations says is critical in supplying humanitarian aid to the country. However, it is unclear whether any commercial airlines will be prepared to provide service.

"We remain hopeful we will be able to operate it as soon as possible. We are still in the evaluation process. We are working very hard and engaging with the Taliban to identify what are the gaps and the risks for having the airport back up and running," Al Thani told reporters in Doha. The Qatari deputy minister also said that Turkey was involved in discussions about reopening the airport and that he hoped Ankara could provide technical assistance.

Turkey said, on Thursday, that it was looking at ways to reopen the airport, with the country's foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, adding that security "inside and outside" the facilities remained a paramount priority, according to CNA. Military flights, which might be used to evacuate more people, could resume first, according to Mevlut Cavusoglu. Qatar said it is still in talks with other international powers to allow commercial flights to resume at the capital's airport.

Western officials visit Qatar to discuss reopening Kabul airport

According to CNA, a number of Western officials, including the German, Dutch, and British foreign ministers, have visited Qatar this week to discuss the reopening of Hamid Karzai International Airport. On Sunday, Italy's foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu is expected to visit Doha. British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said, on Thursday, that his country had evacuated 17,000 British and Afghan nationals since April.

(With inputs from AP News, Image- AP)
Singapores Finance Minister Lawrence Wong on Friday, September 3, said that the nation will hold further steps to reopen the country while, it monitors an increase in daily Coronavirus cases. However, speaking at a news briefing, Wong added that Singapore sees no need to consider re-imposing heightened restrictions. He said that the nation had sufficient vaccine coverage to protect its citizens and the country was becoming more resilient in living with the virus.

Wong, who also co-chairs COVID-19 task force, said, We do not intend to make any new opening moves at this juncture, because there is a time lag between the onset of infections to serious illness, and so we want to take some time to monitor the situation.

He added, Also, we have recently announced a whole series of pilots, be it vaccinated travel or allowing our workers in the dormitories to be out in the community. So we want to allow these pilots to continue over the next few days and weeks before we contemplate further moves.

He said that a tightened posture would only be taken as a last resort to prevent hospitals from being overcrowded. FM Wong said that authorities will continue with aggressive testing and contact tracing to slow down transmission and avoid uncontrollable surges in cases that could easily overwhelm the hospital system. His comments come as Singapore reported 216 locally transmitted cases on Friday.

As of 3 Sep 2021, 12pm, we have preliminarily confirmed that there are 216 new cases of locally transmitted COVID-19 infection. https://t.co/19MoPcc3Wh  Ministry of Health (@sporeMOH) September 3, 2021

Singapore becomes most vaccinated country

According to CNA, Ministry of Health director of medical services Kenneth Mak said that the rise in cases is not unexpected as Singapore resumes more activities. Mak said that there has not been a significant surge in the number of cases that require intensive care. He also added that there have been no new admissions to the intensive care unit since August 21.

Meanwhile, earlier this week, Singapore recorded the highest vaccination rate in the world. According to the health ministry, Singapore's 80 per cent of people out of its 5.7 million population have received their full regimen of anti-COVID shots, making it the first country to have the highest vaccinated population. The nation achieved the maximum vaccination target by implementing a zero transmission mode. Singapore handled the COVID-19 crisis efficiently, as the citizens strictly followed the COVID restrictions.

Image: AP/Pixabay
Weeks after taking over Afghanistan, the Taliban has now said that it has the right to raise its voice for Muslims situated anywhere in the world including Kashmir. As India is already concerned about Pakistan using Afghanistan for anti-India activities, the statement raises a red flag over a flurry of terrorist activities in the Union Territory.

Taliban to raise voice in support of Muslims

In a recent interview with BBC Urdu as reported by ANI, the Taliban's official spokesperson Suhail Shaheen said that being Muslims, it is their right to raise their voice in the favour of Muslims in Kashmir, India, or any other countries across the world.

Further, in an interview with Geo News, he said, "We will raise our voice and say that Muslims are your own people, your own citizens. They are entitled to equal rights under your laws."

However, his comment is now in contrast to the previous remarks made by the group on Kashmir. Reportedly, days after taking over Kabul, the Taliban had stated that Kashmir is a 'bilateral and an internal matter'.

India on Taliban threat

Previously, India's External Affairs Ministry had raised its concern regarding the use of Afghanistan's territory for anti-India activities. Speaking on the matter, MEA spokesperson Arindam Bagchi also mentioned it.

Further talking about it, India's Ambassador to Qatar, Deepak Mittal in a formal and publicly acknowledged meeting with the Taliban leader Mohammad Abbas Stanekzai on Tuesday expressed India's concern regarding the same. Discussions were also held on the safety and security of the Indian nationals who are being evacuated from Afghanistan.

Since the Taliban took over Kabul in the month of August, India has remained concerned about Afghanistan becoming a hub of Islamic terrorism. As a result, more attention is being given to the security situation in Jammu and Kashmir.

(With ANI inputs)

(Image Credits: PTI/Twitter)
Expressing angst at the Thai government's mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic, infuriated demonstrators flooded the streets blocking the traffic, demanding that the Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-Ocha's steps down, according to the footage broadcasted on September 2, Thursday. Protesters swarmed at the Asoke intersection in central Bangkok at around 6:43 pm despite the police orders that banned the gathering of large crowds due to COVID-19. The large sea of protesters registered dissent against the ruling government ahead of the no-confidence vote scheduled for the governing coalition on Saturday.

Angry demonstrators demanded Chan-Ochas resignation as the lawmakers and at least five other ministers challenged the premiers tackling of the novel coronavirus pandemic that led to a mounting death toll. The country recorded 12,103 fatalities and more than 1.2 million confirmed cases since the pandemic hit last year in 2020. Protesters expressed infuriation at the governments response to the pandemic as well as inadequate supplies of COVID-19 vaccines procured by the country, according to the local media reports. Footages released Thursday depicted a large crowd gathered in Thailands capital chanting anti-government slogans and demanding that the Thai PM be ousted. Citizens blamed Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-Ocha for sluggish inoculation, as only 13 percent of Thailands total population has been vaccinated so far.

[Anti-government protesters blocked roads with cars and motorcycles as a part of their car mobs driving along several roads in Bangkok, Thailand. Credit: AP]

[Anti-government protester shoots a firework to riot police during a protest in Bangkok. Protesters demanded the resignation of Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-Ocha for his failure in handling the COVID-19 pandemic. AP Photo/Anuthep Cheysakron]

'People will drive Thai PM out': Angry protesters

Thailands opposition lawmakers have accused the prime minister and five other cabinet ministers of economic crisis, mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic, and corruption, all of which were denied by Chan-Ochas administration. The members of parliament have to choose between the people and Prayuth who has failed, causing losses and deaths of more than 10,000 people, Nattawut Saikua, one of the key organizers was quoted saying by the news agencies. The crowd insisted that if the Thai PM continued to be in power and survived the no-confidence motion, the people of the country will drive him out. In the visuals that are surfacing, protesters were seen setting the car tyre on fire and shooting firecrackers in the vicinity of the Thai leaders residence.
The international community must come together and launch a joint action to tackle the migration surge from Afghanistan post the Talibans political takeover, and not just throw money at the problem," Turkey's foreign minister said on Thursday, 2 September 2021, in indirect jabber at the EU. When asked by a Turkish reporter whether the new migration deal with the European Union (EU) would include Afghan nations fleeing atrocities back home, the Turkish minister rejected the claim saying that any deal that entails just the financial aid in return for Turkey hosting refugees will not be considered.

"Cooperation with an understanding that we're paying, so keep the Afghans in your country' is not acceptable, Cavusoglu told a press conference alongside the Dutch counterpart Sigrid Kaag in Turkey's capital Ankara.We've been saying from the beginning that we will not accept such an offer, he stressed, clearly.

Bugunku konugum #Hollanda Dsisleri Bakan Sigrid Kaagla Afganistandaki son gelismeleri ve ikili iliskilerimizi ele aldk.



Exchanged views on Afghanistan & discussed our bilateral relations w/ my guest today, FM @SigridKaag of the #Netherlands. @ministerBZ pic.twitter.com/On2CWLhyFl  Mevlut Cavusoglu (@MevlutCavusoglu) September 2, 2021

Furthermore, the Turkish Foreign Minister said that the Afghan refugees must be able to return to their homelands voluntarily and in a dignified way once the political situation stabilizes and the government is formed. He elaborated that Turkey does not show bias, and neither differentiated in turning back the refugees as the crisis spillover in the Mideast nation from the 2015 Syrian migrant influx. Irregular migrants sent back from Greece under the 2016 Turkey-EU migration deal, were just as much returned at the border as the migrants fleeing Kabuls turmoil, Cavusoglu told reporters on Sep. 2.

Turkey 'more than fulfilled' its moral by assisting evacuations: FM

Turkish minister stressed that the new deal with EU must outline the safe return for both Afghan and Syrian refugees to their respective countries, adding: "This issue is continuing to worsen, creating problems. If it's a problem for the EU, then it's problem for Turkey, too. Turkey has "more than fulfilled" its moral and humanitarian responsibilities by assisting the other countries in evacuations following the Taliban takeover of the Afghan capital Kabul last month, the minister said. He added Turkeys "greatest hope" for Afghanistan is for the country to "ensure order and stability as soon as possible. Turkish Foreign Minister Cavusoglu cited the 2016 migration deal, saying that Turkey had done its part under this agreement, but that the EU had failed to fulfil its responsibilities.
On Friday, the United Nations resumed humanitarian flights amid ongoing turmoil in Afghanistan since the Taliban's takeover last month. In a media briefing, UN spokesperson Stefan Dujarrik said that the United Nations Humanitarian Air Service (UNHAS) is resuming flights to Afghanistan to deliver relief supplies, reported World Today News quoting Interfax-Ukraine. The UNHAS is operated by the World Food Program (WFP). Speaking further, Dujarrik stated that the UNHAS is resuming flights to enable 160 humanitarian organizations to carry out their activities in the provinces of Afghanistan. He said that efforts are on to strengthen the humanitarian operations by increasing the number of flights as soon as possible. Stating that Afghan capital Kabul is still inaccessible by air, he said the passenger air transportation presently connects Pakistan's capital Islamabad with Afghanistan's Mazar-i-Sharif and Kandhar, reported the news website.

Efforts are on to arrange flights to supply non-food items

Dujarrik further said that efforts are also being made to arrange flights so that non-food items, like medicines, can be sent to provinces where they are urgently required. He also hoped that Kabul airport would also be operational sooner than later which would help in intensifying the humanitarian operations further. Earlier, speaking of the grim situation in the country, Herve Ludovic De Lys, the UNICEF Afghanistan Representative, stated that nearly 10 million children in the country are deprived of their rights and are in urgent need of humanitarian aid, reported ANI. Apart from this, tens of thousands of Afghans have been displaced due to the recent violence and many have become refugees in countries like Pakistan, Iran and Germany.

UN Secretary-General urge nations to help people in Afghanistan

According to The Associated Press (AP), the United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres expressed grave concerns at the growing crisis in Afghanistan and also urged nations to come forward and help the people in the war-ravaged country as they are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance to survive. He said that the country is in urgent need of food and health supplies as at least 18 million Afghans need aid to survive. According to Al Jazeera, Qatar's Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani said that the country has taken up the matter of reopening the Hamid Karzai International Airport with the Taliban. He also claimed that Turkey would be providing the necessary technical support to restart operations at the Airport.

(Image Credits: ANI/AP/Representative)
In a major announcement, UK has pledged to extend humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan's neighbouring countries to help asylum seekers. On Friday, the UK Foreign Office has decided to disburse life-saving aids worth 30 million ($4 billion) to help those who choose to leave the country. "The UK will be releasing up to 30 million of life-saving aid to Afghanistans neighbouring countries to help those who choose to leave Afghanistan as part of the governments efforts to support regional stability," the UK Foreign Ministry said in its statement.

"It is vital that we help those fleeing Afghanistan and do not allow the crisis there to undermine regional stability," UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said.

The UK Foreign Ministry has decided to disburse 10mn for United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to ensure the availability of supplies such as shelters to the Afghan borders. Additionally, the assistance also includes funds to set up sanitation and hygiene facilities, the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office told in a statement. "A further 20 million will be allocated to countries that experience a significant increase in refugees to support reception and registration facilities and provide essential services and supplies," the statement added.

Over 5 million displaced within Afghanistan

As the humanitarian situation continues to worsen under Taliban-occupied nations, so far over 5 million have been reportedly displaced with Afghanistan. "The security and political instability in Afghanistan has compounded an already dire humanitarian situation for the Afghan population... since the start of the year," the statement mentioned. After the final US exit, the international organisations recorded a "significant increase" in refugees movement across Afghanistans borders. The UNHCR has estimated a worst-case scenario of over 500,000 refugees fleeing the country to Pakistan, Tajikistan, Iran, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan in the coming months.

"Thats why these life-saving supplies are so important. They will provide Afghans who have left everything behind with essential kits offering shelter and basic sanitation as they seek to pick up the pieces of their lives. This aid demonstrates the UKs commitment to shoulder our humanitarian responsibility and support those countries who will face the greatest demands for those displaced," UK Foreign Secy Dominic Raab.

Doubled humanitarian aid

The announcement comes after the UK doubled its humanitarian and development aid to Afghanistan on August 19. As per the order, the allotted fund was to provide urgent life-saving assistance to millions of people suffering from the conflict, drought, and COVID-19. "The new funding will build on previous support to Afghanistan which has already helped almost 10 million more children go to school compared with 2001, helped to reduce maternal mortality by more than 42 per cent, and helped to clear more than 8 million landmines and other unexploded munitions," Raab had said. The additional fund took total UK aid to Afghanistan this year to 286 million.

NEWS: UK to provide 30 million of life-saving supplies for Afghan refugees  Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (@FCDOGovUK) September 3, 2021

Meanwhile, the current disbursement of aid was announced amidst the Foreign Secretary's increased visit to the region for "talks on Afghanistan with the focus on securing safe passage for UK nationals and eligible Afghans," the statement said. The UK Foreign Ministry also laid down the governments four international priorities in its statement. As per the statement, the authorities demanded Afghanistan refrain from becoming a haven for terrorists. Secondly, allow international organisations to access those in the humanitarian plight. Lastly, safeguard regional stability; and hold the Taliban to account for human rights.

(With inputs from @FCDOGovUK/Twitter)

(Image: AP)
British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab on Thursday said that the UK will continue to work with the key allies and partners in response to the humanitarian plight of the Afghan nationals and ensure safe passage for those that want to leave the country taken control by the Taliban. Raabs remarks were made following a meeting with the evacuees from Afghanistan hosted by Qatar. The UK government has reportedly been in talks with the Taliban over the safe passage of British nationals out of Afghanistan days after the US and allied forces left the conflict-ridden country on the Aug. 31 deadline, putting an end to Americas 2-decade war.

"Today I met evacuees from Afghanistan who are being hosted by our Qatari friends. The UK has already committed 286m of life-saving aid & will continue working with our partners in response to the humanitarian plight and ensure safe passage for those who want to leave," Raab tweeted on Thursday, Sep. 2.

Furthermore, he said, We are working with regional partners around the clock. I spoke to Tajikistan Foreign Minister Sirojiddin Muhriddin and discussed how our countries can help maintain stability in the region, and tackle the humanitarian situation in Afghanistan.

My colleague @DominicRaab and I toured the temporary housing facilities of the Afghan guests, who are transiting #Doha to their final destinations. Im proud of the efforts of MOFA team and their colleagues from national authorities. Their honorable work reflects Qatari values. pic.twitter.com/txxsc84FUy     (@MBA_AlThani_) September 2, 2021

UK Foreign Secretary on Thursday toured the temporary housing facilities of the Afghan guests, who would be transiting Doha to their final destinations. Raab said that the UK has already committed 286m of life-saving aid as humanitarian assistance to the Afghans hosted by Qatari friends. 10 Downing Street confirmed earlier this week that the British Prime Minister Boris Johnsons special representative for Afghan transition was in Qatar to meet with senior Taliban representatives to discuss the Afghanistan evacuations issue.

Today I met evacuees from Afghanistan who are being hosted by our Qatari friends.



The UK has already committed 286m of life-saving aid & will continue working with our partners in response to the humanitarian plight and ensure safe passage for those who want to leave. pic.twitter.com/MOCLAQZgAT  Dominic Raab (@DominicRaab) September 2, 2021

I am pleased to announce that @MlongdenUK will temporarily head up our new Mission to Afghanistan in Doha, Qatar. Martin has extensive experience in the region and led the @FCDOGovUK rapid deployment team at Kabul airport. pic.twitter.com/0KjZxluMZW  Dominic Raab (@DominicRaab) September 2, 2021

Raab arrived in Qatar yesterday to discuss the Afghanistan situation with Qatar Foreign Minister in Doha, as he had said earlier that there was a need to engage with the Taliban on Afghanistan, although, the UK was not going to recognize the Taliban "any time in the foreseeable future.

Kabul airport could reopen again for UK evacuation

UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab stated at a presser yesterday after a meeting with Qatari counterparts that the evacuation flights from Afghanistan could resume in the near future", and that the Taliban might allow more British nationals and Afghan allies to exit the country. Raab told reporters that he had been in talks with leaders in Qatar to rescue out more British nationals and Afghan nationals.

Kabul airport could reopen again, Raab said, adding "that's looking like it may happen at some point in the near future. Qatari Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, meanwhile stated that a team of tech specialists have been dispatched to Kabul to ensure that the Hamid Karzai International Airport was operational "as soon as possible, adding that it could happen "in the next few days.

Qatar has hosted the Taliban's political office for eight years and is now being a strategic partner with the West to negotiate talks between the UK and the hardline Islamist group. While Raab stressed that there was a need for "direct engagement" with the Taliban, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson stressed at a presser that recognition of the Taliban government would depend on engaging with the West, and the first and foremost priority was to get remaining British nationals and allies out of Afghanistan.

UK believes that a large number of Afghan nationals that provided support to NATO and are eligible to move to Britain have been left stranded in Afghanistan as the US President Joe Biden refused to extend the Aug. 31 deadline and flew the last military plane out of Kabul leaving many Afghan allies and Western citizens behind. Several desperate calls to a State Department number set up to help people trying to flee were made, including by a former US Army translator, Wafa, who attained US citizenship in 2019, following the abrupt and disorderly departure by the United States, as per the reports. But as the US executed its hasty withdrawal, scores of American allies and US nationals who were left behind, are now in disbelief.

UK 'will shift heaven and earth' to evacuate Brits, Afghan allies

Associated Press reports that an estimated 200 American citizens and thousands of desperate Afghans could not make it out of Kabul as US Embassy in Kabul was shut for the foreseeable future and US diplomats, envoys would now be based in Doha, Qatar. As the first direct talks between London and the Taliban kicked off, Prime Minister Boris Johnson told the press that he had felt a "great sense of regret" about those UK left behind in Afghanistan, as he added that he will "shift heaven and earth" to help people leave Kabul. Of course, there were people who couldnt get through, Johnson acknowledged, adding "What I would say to them is that we will shift heaven and earth to help them get out, we will do whatever we can in the second phase. He stressed, without mentioning the US, that the timing[deadline] of this [evacuation] is certainly not the one that this country [UK] would have chosen, and I think that everybody understands that".
The United Kingdom snubbed Pakistan's attempt after its Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi attempted to attack India over Pro-Pakistan Kashmiri Separatist Syed Ali Shah Geelani's death. While spreading mistruths about Geelani's body being 'snatched by the security forces', the Pakistan Minister lied that the separatist could not even get a decent burial. Informing that a funeral ceremony will be held for Geelani all across Pakistan, Qureshi, the Foreign Minister of the biggest state sponsor of terrorism, said that India cannot suppress human feelings and sentiments.

UK slams Pakistan's attempt to drag Kashmir issue

Refusing to buy Qureshi's spiel, UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, who was on the same platform, said that his country's long-standing position is to ask India and Pakistan to find a lasting political solution. UK's Dominic Raab encouraged both the sides to maintain a positive and contructive dialogue.

Remarking on this, General Kochar (Retd) on Friday spoke exclusively to Republic Media Network. Stating that Pakistan has once again tried to internationalise the Kashmir issue, he said that Qureshi does not understand other countries' stand on Kashmir.

General Kochar said, "Raising such an issue, which is not a fact, is a propaganda which Pakistan is trying to do against India. Today the focus is on Afghanistan, everybody is trying to understand how stability can be brought into Afghanistan and he is attempting to do politics over Kashmir."

J&K: Restrictions to remain in place on Friday post Geelani's death

Separatist Syed Ali Shah Geelani, 91, died on Wednesday evening. Following Geelani's demise, security and police deployment in the Kashmir valley was amped up to prevent any untoward incident. The Jammu and Kashmir Police also notified that the currently imposed restrictions and internet shutdowns would continue even tomorrow, Saturday, and a decision on the same would only be taken after the situation is reviewed on September 4.

Peace in the valley after Geelani's death: J&K Police

The Jammu & Kashmir police notified that the situation across the valley remained peaceful and no untoward incident was reported on September 3. The police in a statement added, "Some vested interests and tried to spread baseless rumours about the forcible burial of SAS Geelani by Police. Such baseless reports that are part of false propaganda are refuted by Police." The J&K police added, "As a matter of fact, police instead facilitated in bringing the dead body from house to graveyard as there were apprehensions of miscreants taking undue advantage of the situation." The police additionally informed that the relatives of the deceased were also present during the burial scheduled during the wee hours of Thursday and participated in completing the last rites.

The J&K police while clarifying its stand on the matter said that the general public was requested not to pay heed to the rumours being spread by anti-national elements, especially across the border. The J&K police said so because they perceived that these separatist elements who were trying to take undue advantage of the situation had no other agenda than to disturb the peaceful atmosphere in the valley.

(Image: Republicworld.com)
On the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the US-Australia partnership, President Joe Biden spoke to Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Thursday, 2 September, and thanked him for the close coordination on Afghanistan amid the ongoing crisis in the war-country. Biden further affirmed plans for the forthcoming in-person Quad Leaders Summit.

The White House readout stated, "President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. spoke today with Prime Minister Scott Morrison of Australia. Together they celebrated the 70th anniversary of the U.S. alliance with Australia".

This call comes after America completed its troops withdrawal process from Afghanistan after 20 years of its presence on 31 August. The US has taken in almost 24,000 Afghans at risk as part of evacuations from Afghanistan after the Taliban seized the country. Over 1,24,000 people were brought to the US or to third countries from Afghanistan prior to American troops' withdrawal.

QUAD leaders Summit

In August, senior officials of Australia, India, Japan, US met via a video conference for the first Quad meeting since March, to discuss a number of initiatives including control and management of the COVID-19 pandemic. Biden had proposed a Quad summit meeting involving PM Narendra Modi, Australian PM Scott Morrison, and Japanese PM Yoshihide Suga for September this year. The meeting is scheduled to be held after the general debate of the UN General Assembly, which is to be held in September in New York City.

This meeting is aimed to mark unity among the four Indo-Pacific democracies amid China's growing assertiveness as President Biden is seeking to build "a position of strength" to directly engage with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Australia shuts Embassy In Kabul

The Scott Morrison-led Australian government on 28 August closed its embassy in Afghanistan and has withdrawn all the staff. Even though some Australian nationals reportedly still remain in the Taliban-controlled nation, the embassy has been shut amid fear of further violence.

Australia's Defence Minister Peter Dutton on 27 August informed that Australian troops had left Afghanistan before a deadly suicide bombing attack that killed soldiers and civilians at Kabul's international airport.

Dutton stated, "I can confirm that not too long before the attack Australian troops and the rest of our personnel were wheeled up and out of Kabul".

(With ANI input)

(Image credit: AP)
Washington, Sep 3 (PTI) The Pentagon has said it has seen no evidence to corroborate reports that there were Pakistan nationals along with the Taliban fighters in Afghanistan.

I have not seen anything to corroborate that report, Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby told reporters at a news conference on Thursday when asked about the reported allegations by former Afghanistan president Ashraf Ghani that Pakistan had sent between 10,000 to 15,000 of its men along with the Taliban to capture Kabul and Afghanistan.

As we said before, Pakistan has a shared interest in the safe havens that exist along that border, and they, too, have become -- and have been victims of terrorist activity," Kirby said.

"And I mean, I think that's something that we all share in common here is helping each other and not become victims to those kinds of attacks from that part of the world, he added.

Meanwhile, a key Congressional committee has unanimously adopted an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act seeking a report from Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on the security of Pakistans nuclear arsenal.

The amendment moved by Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney was adopted by House Armed Services Committee by a voice vote on Wednesday.

It seeks a report from the Defense Secretary on the vulnerability of the nuclear arsenal of Pakistan to seizure or control.

This includes considerations of known extremism among personnel of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence and the possibility of terror threats from Afghanistan. PTI LKJ HDA

(Disclaimer: This story is auto-generated from a syndicated feed; only the image & headline may have been reworked by www.republicworld.com)
An Aug. 5 memorandum from President Joe Biden hands eligible Hongkongers a visa extension that carries the right to work.

Immigration authorities in the United States say they will publish details of an 18-month work permit to be offered to "eligible" residents of Hong Kong under a visa extension scheme by the end of the month.

U.S. President Joe Biden issued a memorandum on Aug. 5 allowing Deferred Enforced Departure (DED) for "certain Hong Kong residents," along with the right to work for 18 months.

"Although DED is not a specific immigration status, individuals covered by DED are not subject to removal from the United States, usually for a designated period of time," the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service told RFA in an emailed comment.

"There is no application for DED; however, to obtain employment authorization applicants will need to submit proof of identity and eligibility for DED," it said, adding that details of the scheme would be published by the end of September.

While the move has been largely welcomed, an immigration law expert told RFA that more could be done to extend the lifeline amid a crackdown on dissent back home.

Stephen Yale-Loehr, professor of immigration law at Cornell Law School, said the move was a good first step, but that more is needed.

"There are many things that could be done to help Hongkongers in the U.S.," Yale-Loehr said. "First, the president can extend the initial 18-month period."

"Second, Congress can pass a law giving them the avenue to obtain green cards in the United States," he said, adding that a similar law was passed to aid Chinese students and former members of the 1989 pro-democracy movement on Beijing's Tiananmen Square and elsewhere in China.

Biden's memorandum said DED was being offered to Hong Kong residents due to "the significant erosion of ... rights and freedoms in Hong Kong by the People's Republic of China."

It said the imposition of a draconian national security law on Hong Kong by the ruling Chinese Communist Party had "undermined the enjoyment of rights and freedoms in Hong Kong."

Politically motivated arrests

Hong Kong police have continued a campaign of politically motivated arrests, taking into custody at least 100 opposition politicians, activists, and protesters on national security law-related charges including secession, subversion, terrorist activities, and collusion with a foreign country or external elements, it said.

More than 10,000 people have also been arrested in connection with the 2019 protest movement, which Beijing has claimed was an attempt by "hostile foreign powers" to foment a color revolution in the city.

"[China] has continued its assault on Hong Kongs autonomy, undermining its remaining democratic processes and institutions, imposing limits on academic freedom, and cracking down on freedom of the press," Biden's memorandum said.

Under the law, Hong Kong has seen the forced closure of its pro-democracy Apple Daily newspaper on June 17 and the arrests of senior journalists as well as founder Jimmy Lai for "collusion with foreign powers, along with the arrest of a journalist for searching a public database for car license plates for a documentary.

Plans also emerged for a law banning "fake news" and for tightening government controls over content broadcast by public broadcaster RTHK.

The right to work

A Hongkonger surnamed Chan currently in the U.S. said he is hoping to apply for a "green card," giving him the right to live there permanently, and the DED has been a huge help towards achieving that goal.

"My tourist visa expires at the end of October, so the DED scheme is going to be very helpful to me," Chan said. "I will be able to stay on here, even if I haven't managed to switch to a different visa."

"It makes a huge difference. Not only can I stay here; I'll be allowed to work, too," he said.

The 2019 protest movement began as a mass popular resistance movement to plans by Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam to change the city's extradition law, thereby enabling the extradition of alleged "criminal suspects" to face trial in mainland China.

After Lam refused to listen to the movement's demands, protesters surrounded and broke into the Legislative Council (LegCo) in a bid to defer a crucial vote on the legal amendments, before broadening the movement's demands to include full official accountability for widespread police violence, fully democratic elections and an end to the description of protests as "rioters."

Lam eventually withdrew the amendments, but later postponed the 2020 LegCo elections, citing coronavirus concerns, and presided over a city-wide crackdown on dissent under the national security law, including a "national security law education" program in schools starting with kindergarteners, a move which was cited by many families as a reason for their decision to emigrate.



Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.
Nearly 2,500 soldiers and police in Myanmar have broken with the military junta to join the resistance movement since the Feb. 1 coup that ousted the countrys democratically elected government, defector groups said on Thursday.

Myanmars National Unity Government (NUG), a shadow government made of former lawmakers ousted in the coup, as well as several armed ethnic groups, last month issued calls on members of the military and police to switch sides.

The security forces that have joined the Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM) that sprang up to resist the coup with protests and widespread work stoppages are represented by two groups. The CDM Myanmar Police Channel says 1,000 police have joined the movement, while Peoples Embrace says about 1,500 members of the military have switched sides, and both groups say their numbers are growing.

To date, the highest-ranked defector has been an army colonel, the groups said on Facebook.

The NUGs defense minister, Ye Mon, told RFAs Myanmar Service that the appeal to the military is part of the shadow governments plan to overthrow the military dictatorship.

"We understand that there are intelligent people among the military and the police. Especially those who know what is right or wrong, what is justice and what is injustice, said Ye Mon.

We believe there are many people who know which side they should choose. We expect this directive to have a major impact on most members of the police force and military personnel, except for the handful of the juntas leaders and minions who have committed a series of war crimes," he said.

Myanmars military overthrew the democratically elected National League for Democracy (NLD) government on Feb. 1, claiming the party had stolen the countrys November 2020 ballot through voter fraud. The junta has yet to provide evidence of its claims and has violently repressed anti-coup protests, killing at least 1,043 people and arresting 6,132 others, according to the Bangkok-based Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP).

Ye Mon said the skills and expertise of security forces who defect would be extremely useful in helping the people regain control of the country. In addition, he said the NUG would provide for the safety and well-being of their families.

Captain Lin Htet Aung, who recently joined the CDM, told RFA that the NUGs outreach had been effective and many soldiers and police officers still serving the junta have contacted his group to learn more about how they can defect.

One of the reasons that people are not leaving the army is because they are thinking about their current rank and position, as well as their own security, said Lin Htet Aung.

The NUG is giving guarantees for that. Many in the armed forces are aware of this statement and have contacted us, he said.

Current members of the military can be divided into three groups: those who support the junta, those who do not trust the junta, and a neutral group, Lin Htet Aung said. The defection of the latter two groups would spell doom for the junta, he added.

The NUGs defense ministry last week urged police and soldiers to stop obeying junta orders and to stop arresting, torturing and killing civilians and destroying public property.

The ministry also called on them to stop attacking the peoples defense forces (PDF), the hundreds of militia groups formed by citizens opposed to the coup, some of which are receiving training and support from armed ethnic groups that have been fighting with the military for decades.

The NUG also told security forces how to contact the NUG if they wish to join the resistance.

A former police officer from Myingyan, in the countrys central region, told RFA that the messages from the NUG are encouraging to other police officers because there are many who want to leave but do not know how.

There were people who wanted to leave their posts from the very beginning. It is encouraging for them to see such a statement that welcomes them, Thet Naing Oo said.

It was not only that they didnt approve of the coup. They were unhappy that most of the higher positions in the police force were given to former army officers instead of those among them who had loyally served as officers for years. It was a slap in the face, he said.

The Karenni National Defense Force (KNDF) and the Chin Regional Defense Force (CDF), two of the armed ethnic groups that control territory in the country and have been fighting the military for years, told RFA they are trying to encourage members of the security forces to switch sides.

"The military coup was an unjust and coercive process. Only an insane person would say the actions of the junta are fair, a KNDF spokesman told RFA.

He said it was common in Myanmars history for power hungry generals to exploit lower ranking soldiers for their own benefit, so these soldiers should stop serving the junta as soon as possible.

There is still time for those in the army and police force as well as those who are working in support of the junta to engage with the people, he said.

The KNDF said on Aug. 20 that it would work with the people to uproot the military dictatorship and would welcome those who join the movement with special security guarantees as well as monetary support from public donations.

The CDF, which launched the first civilian armed uprising after the coup, announced on Aug. 10 that it would pay each member of the military who joins the opposition force 5 million kyat (U.S. $3,037) and guarantee their safety.

CDF officials would not disclose to RFA where the money was coming from, but a spokesman for the group said that they expected the announcement to entice soldiers to defect.

"Wouldnt it be better if there is one less gun pointing at ordinary people? he said.

We released the statement as an incentive for police and soldiers who are confused, those who do not want to die for nothing in the jungle and those who dislike the military council," said the spokesman.

The stepped up defection enticement effort came as branches of the PDF militias from a dozen regions in Myanmar announced an alliance to collectively take on the countrys junta. The groups are mostly based in embattled Sagaing region and Chin state, but are also located in of Mandalay and Magway regions, as well as Kachin and other ethnic states.

The junta said last week that the NUG and other groups are trying to disrupt government business and are carrying out terror attacks daily to intimidate the public. The military also offered rewards to whistleblowers and informants who help make arrests of people associated with anti-junta groups.

The military has not yet commented on soldier or police defection to the CDM or other resistance groups.

Local media outlets have quoted military sources as saying that the number of soldiers and officers leaving their posts to join the CDM is rising daily, prompting the junta to consider releasing the countrys ousted leader, Aung San Suu Kyi and holding national elections.

According to the CIAs World Factbook, there are about 400,000 soldiers in Myanmars military, making it one of the largest in Southeast Asia.

Reported by RFAs Myanmar Service. Translated by Khin Maung Nyane. Written in English by Eugene Whong.
As the country struggles with a third COVID-19 wave, many doctors are in hiding.

In this Sunday, Feb. 7, 2021 file photo, medical workers give the three-fingered salute outside Asia Royal Hospital as they watch protesters march in Yangon, Myanmar.

Myanmars military junta has killed five doctors, arrested dozens of others, and driven hundreds more into hiding since it overthrew the elected government seven months ago, undermining the fight against a third wave of the coronavirus pandemic, doctors in the country told RFA.

Doctors not already detained by the junta are on the run to avoid arrest warrants, even as the country struggles with increasing numbers of new COVID-19 cases.

According to RFA records complied since the Feb. 1 coup, four doctors -- Phyo Thant Wai, Thiha Tun Tin, Sai Kwan Saing and Nyein Thu Aung -- have died as a direct result of violence committed by the juntas security forces during anti-coup protests.

A fifth doctor, Maung Maung Nyein Tun, a surgeon at Mandalay Medical University who had joined the anti-coup Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM) and provided free surgery to poor patients, was arrested by junta troops on June 13 and died Aug. 8 after contracting COVID-19 in prison.

The safety of detained doctors has been a major concern, according to their colleagues who remain free.

The juntas violent repression of anti-coup protests and professionals who walked off their jobs to support the CDM has killed at least 1,044 people and arresting 6,197 others, according to the Bangkok-based Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP).

The AAPP has released a list of 45 arrested doctors and 416 doctors for whom arrest warrants had been issued through Aug. 30. Most were arrested and charged under Section 505 (a) of Myanmars Penal Code, which punishes acts that hinder, disturb, damage the motivation, discipline, health and conduct of military personnel and government employees, but there have been no court sentences yet.

Three doctors from Mandalay -- Kyaw Kyaw Thet, Thet Htay, and the widow of Maung Maung Nyein Tun, Swe Zin Oo -- were arrested in June and July. Sources told RFA that they are in prison and at least two of them have been infected with COVID-19.

We only know that Dr. Kyaw Kyaw Thet and Dr. Thet Htay have contracted COVID-19. There is no word yet on where they are being held or what the charges are, a CDM doctor in Mandalay told RFAs Myanmar Service.

Kyaw Kyaw Thet, who was beaten and arrested by the military in Mandalay on July 13, was giving lessons to medical students on YouTube after the coup and sharing medical knowledge with the public.

Thet Htay had been working in charity clinics and hospitals. He was arrested on July 16 while returning home from seeing a patient at a hospital.

There are very few hematologists like Dr. Swe Zin Oo in our country. Imprisonment of such doctors is therefore very detrimental, said the doctor, who requested anonymity for security reasons.

Another Mandalay doctor who joined the CDM told RFA that being sent to prison during a pandemic is essentially the juntas way of imposing a death sentence.

In other words, they are being tortured and persecuted and killed indirectly. If people die in prison, the military can just put the blame on COVID. These are people that just have to die for opposing the junta. There is no proper treatment in the prisons, said the second doctor, who requested anonymity to speak freely.

Dr. Maung Maung Nyein Tun lost his life because he couldnt get enough oxygen. He didnt get proper treatment when he contracted the virus in his cell and he was not hospitalized until it was too late. Its like he was deliberately sent to his death.

According to a survey conducted by Medical Family Mandalay, a local anti-junta rights group made up of medical industry professionals, 85 health workers in the city, including doctors and nurses, were arrested during protests after the coup and repeatedly subjected to psychological threats and physical abuse.

Some said they were arrested in their homes for getting involved in nonviolent anti-coup protests or supporting the protesters.

During the third wave of the pandemic, Myanmars cultural center and largest city Yangon has had a high mortality rate, but doctors there were not spared from arrests by the junta.

Members of the military disguised as COVID-19 patients on July 19 entered the temporary headquarters of the COVID-19 Prevention and Public Benefit Office in the citys North Dagon township and arrested five doctors.

They opened free clinics to treat patients and were arrested for it. Look at the case of North Dagon. We have had so much concern for these comrades. We are wondering whether they are doing well, whether they are getting enough food and water or if they are in life threatening situations, a CDM doctor in Yangon told RFA.

Those doctors who escaped arrest and are in hiding, like me, are also living in fear. We dont know when we too might be arrested, so we are living with anxiety every day. Its not only me, but all doctors like me are dealing with this, the physician said.

The junta announced days after the coup that people could get treatment for coronavirus at military hospitals, but when the third wave hit n July, civilians were denied military care unless they were part of a military family, sources told RFA.

The military has also arrested key people in Myanmars health sector, including Htar Htar Lin, the leader of the countrys COVID Vaccination Team, and Maw Maw Oo, chairman of the Myanmar Emergency Medical Association. Their whereabouts remain unknown.

According to statistics from Johns Hopkins Universitys Coronavirus Resource Center, Myanmar has confirmed 406,099 cases of the virus and 15,600 deaths as of Friday.

Doctors in Myanmar told RFA that deaths peaked when more than 1,000 people died on a single day in July, but the rate of infection has not dropped yet.

An AAPP researcher blames the high infection rate and death toll on the coup.

If the intellectuals, professionals and health workers and our young philanthropists were not in prison, if the young people did not flee to the jungles, we would certainly have survived the third wave of Covid, the researcher told RFA.

The main culprit was the military regime that seized power on Feb. 1," the official said.

The New York-based PHR Physicians for Human Rights and CPHHR Johns Hopkins University Center for Public Health and Human Rights have reported at least 252 attacks on health workers by the junta since the Feb. 1 coup.

More than 190 health workers had been arrested in at least 86 hospital raids since the coup. Hospitals have been seized and occupied by the military at least 55 times, the two groups said in a report.

Reported by RFAs Myanmar Service. Translated by Khin Maung Nyane. Written in English by Eugene Whong.
Police keep Tibetan gatherings out of the public eye to avoid offending Nepal's powerful northern neighbor China, an important source of foreign investment.

Police are seen at the Boudhanath Stupa in Nepal's capital Kathmandu, Sept. 2, 2021.

Tibetans living in Nepal observed Tibets Democracy Day under close watch by local police who kept Tibetan gatherings out of the public eye for fear of offending Nepals powerful northern neighbor China, an important source of foreign investment in the Himalayan country.

Thursday marked the 61st anniversary of the seating of Tibets first India-based parliament-in-exile, a first step in the political development of the Tibetan diaspora community that now includes the election by popular vote of their political leader, or Sikyong.

Nepalese authorities concerned that Tibetan residents might stage protests outside Nepals Chinese consulate deployed large numbers of police to guard the building, Sangpo Lamaprogram coordinator for the Human Rights Organization of Nepal (HURON)told RFAs Tibetan Service.

One could also see many police officers both in uniform and in plain clothes stationed around the Boudhanath Stupa and other Tibetan settlements, Lama said, referring to a large religious structure central to the social and commercial life of the Tibetan community in Nepals capital Kathmandu.

Around 20 officers were also deployed, and a police truck stationed, outside the Jawalakhel Tibetan settlement, also in Kathmandu, he said.

The Jawalakhel Handicraft Center office hosted the [Democracy Day] observance within its own premises, offering prayers and reading a statement from the Kashag, the cabinet of the Central Tibetan Administration, Tibets India-based exile government, Lama said.

It has been hard for Tibetans to do anything freely [in Nepal], Lama said. No arrests or disruptions by police of community events on Thursday were reported, though, he added.

Courage, determination

In its Sept. 2 statement, Tibets India-based Kashag sent greetings and messages of support to Tibetans still living in the formerly independent Tibet, which was invaded and forcibly annexed by China in 1950.

Tibetans inside Tibet have maintained indomitable courage and determination in the face of Chinas continued policy to exterminate the Tibetan identity, and they have been making all-round efforts to protect Tibets religion, culture, language and tradition, for which we remain deeply grateful, the Kashag said.

It is this strength that unites the Tibetans in exile and keeps alive the freedom struggle. It is the common wish in our heart to reunite in Tibet, and we would like to appeal to our brethren in Tibet not to lose their determination.

Nepal, which shares a long border with Tibet, is home to at least 20,000 exiles who began arriving in 1959 when a failed uprising against Chinese rule forced Tibets spiritual leader the Dalai Lama to take refuge in Indias Himalayan foothills.

Nepal is seen by China as a partner in its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) to boost global trade through infrastructure investment, and Nepal's government has cited promises of millions of dollars of Chinese investment in restricting Tibetan activities in the country.

Nepals close political ties with China have left Tibetan refugees in the Himalayan country uncertain of their status, vulnerable to abuses of their rights, and restricted in their freedoms of movement and expression, rights groups say.

Reported by Lhuboom for RFAs Tibetan Service. Translated by Tenzin Dickyi. Written in English by Richard Finney.
Xi Jinpings call for ethnic minorities to prioritize the interests of the nation amounts to an 'aggressive approach to ethnic assimilation,' says one analyst.

Uyghur residents ride past a propaganda billboard showing Chinese President Xi Jinping with ethnic minority children and the phase "Sincerely thank the passionate care of the Party Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping as the core" in Peyziwat, Kashgar prefecture, northwestern China's Xinjiang region, Aug. 31, 2018.

Chinese President Xi Jinpings call for ethnic minority groups to put the interests of the nation first has fueled concerns that the government will double down on up its repressive policies against them, analysts said.

Xis speech at the two-day Central Conference on Ethnic Affairs in Beijing late last month focused on guiding ethnic groups to put the interests of China above all else and to share a sense of community with the Chinese nation.

China has 56 ethnic groups, with the majority Han comprising more than 91 percent of the countrys population of 1.4 billion people.

Xi told assembled officials they must to prevent risks and hidden dangers in ethnic affairs.

[We] should hold the ground of ideology. [We] should actively and steadily address the ideological issues that involve ethnic factors, and continue to eradicate poisonous thoughts of ethnic separatism and religious extremism, Xi was quoted as saying by Xinhua news agency.

International anti-terrorism cooperation should be also intensified, working with major countries, regions, international organizations and overseas Chinese ethnic minorities, added Xi, who is general secretary of the Chinese Communist Partys Central Committee.

The conference was held amid intensifying criticism and sanctions from Western countries over Beijings increasingly repressive policies in northwestern Chinas Xinjiang region, Hong Kong, Tibet, and Inner Mongolia. Beijing vehemently rejects the criticism.

There are 12 million Uyghurs in Xinjiang, up to seven million Tibetans in the Tibet Autonomous Region, and nearly six million Mongols, mainly concentrated in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region on Chinas northern border with Mongolia and Russia.

Previous RFA reports have documented Chinese government policies to reduce or eliminate culture and language education in schools in Xinjiang, Tibet, and Inner Mongolia, causing friction with local communities and prompting protests against the moves.

In some cases, government censors also have shut down ethnic-language websites and social media platforms and censored comments on their policies on the WeChat messaging app.

Chinese authorities have banned the Uyghur language from being used in schools in the Xinjiang Uyghur autonomous Region (XUAR) in favor of Mandarin Chinese, a reversal of a bilingual education policy introduced in 2010 for schools in all minority areas in China.

Likewise, authorities in Tibet have forced primary, middle schools, and kindergartens to offer instruction and courses in Chinese, reducing ethnic students competency in the Tibetan language.

The Chinese government also has implemented a policy that banned Mongolian-language education in schools in Inner Mongolia starting in September 2020, a move that sparked calls by ethnic Mongolian rights activists for independence from China.

Forced assimilation

U.S. and EU lawmakers have called for boycotts of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics unless China stops its repression of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang, where Beijing maintains that firm measures are necessary to prevent religious extremism and terrorism.

China has held up to 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in a network of detention camps since 2017. Beijing has said that the camps are vocational training centers and has denied widespread and documented allegations that it has subjected Muslims living in Xinjiang to severe rights abuses.

Chinas other heavy-handed policies targeting the Uyghurs include the demolition of mosques; the imprisonment of Uyghur intellectuals, artists and business leaders; the replacement of Uyghur with Chinese as the main language in schools; the use of a pervasive and intrusive surveillance system to monitor Uyghurs move; forced labor at factories and farms; and forced birth control and the sterilization of Uyghur women.

The U.S. and other countries and legislatures have deemed the measures as constituting genocide and crimes against humanity.

Xis speech expressed Chinas intention to try to create a Zhonghua Minzu through what minorities see as forced assimilation, Uyghur political analyst Asiye Uyghur said, using a Chinese term for the notion of a Chinese nationality transcending ethnicity.

Chinas current goal is to create a Chinese nation state under the pretext of socialism with Chinese characteristics through forceful means, she told RFA.

If there is not any force to stop China, then it may achieve its goal to forcefully assimilate other ethnic groups in China, including Uyghurs, she added.

Inner Mongolian scholar Yang Haiying, a professor at Japans Shizuoka University, said that the Xi's "so-called modernization is to cover up the cultural destruction in Xinjiang  genocidal policies in Xinjiang."

To cover up the assimilation policy, [Beijing] unilaterally emphasizes unity and does not emphasize equality," he said.

The authorities have lowered the banner of multi-ethnicity in an all-around way and even ignored the provisions of their own constitution, Yang added, in a reference to the 1982 charters stipulation that all ethnic minorities in China are equal and that the state is responsible for protecting their rights and interests.

Xis speech shows China aims to use the concept of the Chinese nation community to replace individual nationalities and to accelerate the process of assimilation, said ethnic Mongolian scholar Khubis.

By way of example, he cited the campus of Zhenglan Banner Mongolian Middle School in Xilin Gol League, where poems in Mongolian praising the Mongolian language and culture were erased and written over with a slogan in Chinese and Mongolian that read: Building a strong sense of community of the Chinese nation.

Policies implemented under tyranny

Jianglin Li, an independent writer and researcher who is an expert in Tibetan history and the Tibetan diaspora, said that Xi speech repeated a message in a talk he gave at the last such conference seven years ago, emphasizing the forging of all China's ethnic groups to support a Chinese nation community.

Xis most recent speech emphasized the implementation of the Communist Partys policies, though the policies do not correspond to the reality of ethnic peoples, he said.

Forcing nomadic populations to relocate to cities, for example, went against their wishes and resulted in protests, Li said.

These policies are implemented under tyranny, and the result of such tyranny is that we see ethnic issues in China persisting, he said.

Li said that while Xi discussed the preservation of ethnic languages in his speech, his actions belied his words in order to present a picture-perfect image to the outside world and combat the flood of criticism that China is facing.

Except for a few changes in the use of terms, Xi's speech depicts the same meaning and wants to meld the nations dozens of ethnic groups into a singular national identity, he said. The aggressive approach to ethnic assimilation remains intact.

Xis speech and his policies are keeping China on the path of genocide and crimes against humanity, said Gordon Chang, a columnist, author and lawyer.

The reality is that Xi Jinping wants to eliminate all ethnic consciousness, he said. He wants a purified Han consciousness, and that is ethnic cleansing in its purest form.

If the policy he discussed is implemented, it would mean the elimination of Uyghur consciousness and the Uyghur people, Chang added.

Chang said the international community should respond to Chinas maltreatment of the Uyghurs by honoring their obligations under the Genocide Convention of 1948 to prevent and punish acts of genocide.

Reported by Jilil Kashgary for RFAs Uyghur Service, Dorjee Tso for RFAs Tibetan Service, and Qiao Long for RFAs Mandarin Service. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.
Louise Xin is a Chinese-Swedish fashion designer who launched her eponymous Stockholm-based brand in November 2020 as Scandinavias first rental-only couture label. Xin turns upcycled materials into elaborate and colorful handmade dresses for customers to rent instead of purchase, hoping to change consumption patterns in the name of sustainability. She dedicated her digital fashion show on Aug. 31 to the Uyghurs to raise awareness about the genocidal policies targeting the predominantly Muslim minority group in northwestern China's Xinjiang region. The five-minute video presentation ended with a model wearing a newspaper print coat and unraveling a banner that said Free Uyghur: End All Genocide. The China-born Xin spoke to reporter Nuriman Abdurashid of RFAs Uyghur Service on Thursday about her why she decided to use couture to call attention to the plight of the Uyghurs, what inspired her to do a fashion show-cum-protest, and how she has enlisted the help of Jewher Tohti, daughter of detained Uyghur academic Ilham Tohti, to draw attention to the use of Uyghur forced labor in the apparel industry. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

RFA: How did you come to use couture to promote awareness of the plight of Uyghurs?

Louise Xin: I also believe that all the problems caused by humans in this world are really based on the false belief that we are separate, that there is a we and a them  that we are Africans, Chinese, Christians, Muslims, that we are different. And that we only see the differences instead of how similar we all are and how we are to united, that there's nothing that one person can do that will not affect someone else in the end. Everything is really connected  not only us, but also the animals in nature. And we just understood that we would not use our advantage against each other or against nature or against animals. We will understand that everything we do will come back to us. Its with this belief that I started this plan that for me, it's not a trend to focus on sustainability or diversity. For me it's one and the same problem or issue. We need to do whatever it takes to contribute to a better society. With everything we do, we should leave the world a little bit better than how we found it. If everybody had the same mindset, we would have an amazing, magical world. So, for my very first fashion show I dedicated it to the Uyghur community because I'm Chinese myself. When I found out what happened in Xinjiang, it really broke my heart. At first I couldn't believe it because it was against everything I believed in growing up as a kid. I just couldn't understand how we can let something as terrible as this happen today in 2021, and that we're not doing more about it.

I tried doing things with political parties and contacting the government and assistance organizations, but I got nos from everybody. I never felt so hopeless in my whole life, [and] I never felt so small in my whole life. And then I just stopped for a moment and [realized that] the only way I could help would be through my creativity, my fashion, my dresses. And that's how the show came about. Today I just put up a GoFundMe [fundraising appeal] for Uyghur kids in exile. Most of them are in Turkey at the moment. I really think that if you give a person a fish they will have food for a day, but if you teach them how to fish, they will have food for life. There is this school that educates [Uyghur] kids and keeps them safe like a kind of community and family. I think it's amazing, and I really want to support that. These kids are just like us. There's no difference between us and them. They too have dreams and hopes. I really hope that with this GoFundMe [appeal] and with this [fashion] project that we can make their dreams come true.

RFA: What inspired you to do this kind of fashion show?

Louise Xin: It came to me when I was at a really low point in my life and I felt so sad with everything that was going on with my personal life. Then [I thought] that what the people I said I was going to help are going through is about 10,000 times worse than anything Ive ever gone through in my entire life. [I told myself that] I could not sit there and pity myself when there's so many people out there who don't have even their own voice and that that had become such a strength for me. So, it gave me all the fuel and power needed to create this fashion show. For me, this has been a cause that I have been very passionate about for over a years time now ever since I started this brand. Its something that is not just a trend, but something Ive tried to educate myself about and try to do what I can do in a longer period of time.

At the same time, I spoke to a friend and told her that I couldn't understand how other people didn't feel as devastated as I was about the genocide [of the Uyghurs], because this is the worst thing that has happened after the Holocaust. How can people know but not care more about it? What she said was that everybody relates to different things depending on their own background. I relate to this because I come from China, and it's so close to me. That's why I invited all these models [to take part in the digital fashion show]. They are all come from different backgrounds and most of them made it on their own with their passion alone. They celebrate human rights causes, and because Im using this show to raise a voice for the Uyghur community, I want them to raise their voices for what they are passionate about as well.

RFA: Even though certain apparel manufacturers know about Uyghur forced labor in the production of clothing, they have continued to do business with China. What is your message about this to the apparel industry?

Louise Xin: I would like to say that, first of all, I understand them. I understand that they have a lot to lose because at the end of the day we're all humans and we just want to try to make a living. Behind a huge corporation, a huge brand, there's also a person who has a heart and feelings and who cares. That very person is the person I'm talking to right now. I really hope that we can understand how powerful we actually are and that we don't need to be afraid because if people are united they can really do so much to change [the world]. The power [of individuals] is more powerful than that of any corporation or state or anything that can be against us.

I believe that once you warm people's hearts, everything else will [follow]. So the worst thing is that they will lose money, maybe in the beginning, if you endorse them. Maybe that's why a lot brands are very afraid of doing that. But what can be worse than to lose your humanity?  I totally understand them. I understand that there's a lot at stake. But I think that if we just act out of courage and face instead of fear, it will be a totally different kind of industry and totally kind of society.

RFA: Do you have any other plans to continue to raise awareness about the Uyghur forced labor issue?

Louise Xin: In doing this show, I came into contact with this amazing friend. Jewher [Tohti], with whom I'm going to have a live Instagram talk. We're going to talk about [Uyghur] forced labor and how important it is [and] how we can use our power as a company to end [it.]. She will be talking about the importance of how we need to endorse the call to action. I really hope that as many people as possible can join this live talk because what she has to say is extremely important. I've learned so much about her and about this whole situation just in the two or three days after we met each other.

Reported by Nuriman Abdurashid for RFA's Uyghur Service. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.
HOMEL, Belarus -- A well-known Belarusian human rights lawyer and his two assistants have gone on trial after providing legal assistance to activists, journalists, and other people who were persecuted in an ongoing crackdown by authoritarian ruler Alyaksandr Lukashenka's regime.

The trial of Leanid Sudalenka and associates Tatsyana Lasitsa and Maria Tarasenka began behind closed doors on September 3 at a court in the southeastern city of Homel.

The three are charged with the "organization and preparation of actions grossly violating public order and financing such activities."

They face up to three years in prison if convicted.

Crisis In Belarus Read our ongoing coverage as Belarusian strongman Alyaksandr Lukashenka ramps up pressure on NGOs and independent media as part of a brutal crackdown against protesters and the opposition following an August 2020 election widely considered fraudulent.

Sudalenka, a prominent human rights defender for two decades, has been repeatedly targeted by the Belarusian authorities.

In April, police in Homel searched his home while the activist was in Sweden.

The ongoing crackdown started after an August 2020 presidential election awarded Lukashenka a sixth term, sparking an unprecedented wave of protests amid allegations the vote was rigged.

Mass protests against Lukashenka were met with the heavy-handed, and sometimes violent, detention of tens of thousands of people. Much of the opposition leadership has been jailed or forced into exile.

Several protesters have been killed and thousands arrested during mass demonstrations demanding Lukashenka's resignation. There have also been what human rights groups call credible reports of torture in the crackdown.
Catalan separatists sought help from Russia as they struggled to break with Spain, The New York Times has reported, citing intelligence files.

Josep Lluis Alay, a senior adviser to the self-exiled former Catalan President Carles Puigdemont, traveled to Moscow on at least two occasions in 2019 to meet with current Russian officials and former intelligence officers in an effort to receive support, the paper said on September 3, citing intelligence reports it reviewed.

Alays trips came less than two years after Puigdemonts government held an independence referendum in October 2017 that passed with overwhelming support as anti-separatist voters largely boycotted it.

Spanish authorities declared the referendum illegal and imprisoned those political leaders who did not -- like Puidgdemont -- flee abroad. The European Union also declared the referendum illegal.

Alay and Puigdemont confirmed the trips to Moscow, which have not been previously reported, but insisted they were part of regular outreach to foreign officials and journalists. The finding by The New York Times suggested there was more to the visits to Moscow.

Alay told the paper that any suggestion that he was seeking Russian assistance was a fantasy story created by Madrid. No charges have been filed against the separatists with respect to their meetings in Moscow.

Western nations have accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of seeking to sow disruption in the West by supporting divisive political movements and support of the Catalan separatists would fit into that strategy, the paper said.

However, there is no evidence that the Kremlin provided assistance to the Catalan separatists, The New York Times said.

The paper pointed out that Tsunami Democratic, a secretive Catalonian protest group that disrupted operations at Barcelonas airport and cut off a major highway linking Spain to northern Europe in 2019, emerged shortly after Alay's trip to Moscow.

It noted that intelligence reports say Alay played a key role in its creation, an allegation he rejects.

Alay also denied intelligence reports that just three days after the large-scale protests began in Barcelona, the capital of Catalonia, he discussed the regions independence movement at a meeting with two Russians close to Putin.

He confirmed meeting in Barcelona with the two officials -- including a colonel in Russias Federal Protective Service, which oversees security for Putin -- but said it was only to politely greet them at the request of his Russian acquaintance Aleksandr Dmitrenko.

Intelligence reports claim that Dmitrenko, a Russian businessman who is married to a Catalan woman, had been helping Alay seek financial and technical assistance in Moscow for the creation of banking, telecommunications, and energy sectors separate from Spain.

The 33-year-old Dmitrenko sought Spanish citizenship but was rejected because of his Russian contacts, according to a Spanish Justice Ministry decision, The New York Times said.

The decision said Dmitrenko receives missions from Russian intelligence and also does different jobs for leaders of Russian organized crime.

Dmitrenko did not respond to the paper's requests for comment.

With reporting by The New York Times
In July, a planned LGBT Pride March in Tbilisi was called off after right-wing protesters attacked activists and journalists, whom they accused of spreading "anti-Georgian sentiments." Dozens of people were injured and a TV cameraman died after being brutally beaten. In the wake of the violence, LGBT activists have not backed down from pushing for change and say their sense of purpose and solidarity is stronger than ever.
Three residents of Belgrade, Serbia, say they've yet to recover, months after contracting COVID-19. They spoke to RFE/RL about the long-term effects they say the virus has had on their health and quality of life.
Around the towering hallways and ornate chambers of the State Duma, Leonid Slutsky is known as an outspoken patriot of Russia, a powerful chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, and the No. 2 official of the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party.

Hes been hit with U.S. financial sanctions in connection with Russias 2014 annexation of Ukraines Crimean Peninsula. Hes also been the focus of a stunning set of sexual harassment allegations, lodged by multiple female reporters who cover the Duma.

According to data derived from a social-media account belonging to his 11-year-old daughter and other sources, it appears that Slutsky and his family have spent a significant amount time over the past three years at a posh seaside villa on the southwestern Turkish coast. His daughter has lived there for much of the past 12 months. And, as of September 1, Slutsky and his wife were also sending her to an $88,000-a-year, American-style private school in Switzerland.

he findings by RFE/RLs Russian Service add new details to Slutskys lifestyle, a lifestyle that appears out of sync with his official income declaration, which in 2020 was just $77,000. His wife, Lidya Slutskaya, declared income of $3,500 in 2020.

Slutsky did not respond to questions e-mailed to him by RFE/RL.

Slutsky's secretary, who answered his official Duma telephone, told RFE/RL that Slutsky was not present, and she said she would have him return the call. During a second call, the secretary provided the mobile phone of a Slutsky aide, who then told RFE/RL he could not contact the lawmaker due to "pre-election fuss-- an apparent reference to Russia's upcoming Duma elections.

In 2018, in the wake of the sexual harassment allegations, Slutsky gave an interview to Snob, an upscale publication targeting Russia's economic and cultural elites.

I dont buy luxury goods," he said. "I prefer to spend money on something more substantial. For example, on the restoration of churches."

Who Is Leonid Slutsky?

First elected to the lower chamber of parliament in 2000, Slutsky has long been in the shadow to the Liberal Democratic Partys flamboyant leader, Vladimir Zhirinovsky.

After Russian troops were sent in to take control of Ukraines Crimean Peninsula in March 2014, Moscow organized a referendum to justify annexing the region. Slutsky was among the lawmakers sanctioned by Western countries immediately after.

The following year, he helped organize visits to the peninsula for Kremlin-sympathetic politicians from several Western countries.

With the exception of a handful of nations, the referendums result has been ignored by most of the world.

In February and March 2018, four female journalists who have reported on the Duma accused Slutsky of sexual harassment and unwanted touching.

Unusually, the allegations caused a furor in Russia, where such harassment is commonplace and rarely investigated.

The Duma's ethics commission cleared Slutsky of wrongdoing, saying it found no signs of "inappropriate behavior."

More than a dozen news organizations pulled their correspondents from the Duma in protest.

That same month, the Latvia-based news site Meduza reported that Slutsky and his wife, who also have an older college-aged daughter, were sending their younger daughter, Lida, to one of the most expensive private schools in Russia.

In 2018, Aleksei Navalnys Anti-Corruption Foundation documented how Slutskys wife had purchased a luxury Bentley Mulsanne, a car that can cost more than $300,000 in the West.

The purchase, Navalnys investigators found, appeared to have been financed with an interest-free, 25 million ruble ($440,000) loan from a billionaire Azerbaijani developer named Mardahai Yushvaev.

Navalny suggested the loan was connected to lobbying for Yushvaev's construction interests in Moscow through Vladimir Resin, another Duma lawmaker who was a top ally of Moscows longtime mayor, Yury Luzhkov. Resin also served as Moscows acting mayor after Luzhkov was fired in 2010.

The Navalny investigation found that a luxury Mercedes-Maybach belonging to Slutsky had, in less than one year, accrued 825 unpaid traffic fines, mostly for the dangerous practice of driving in the lane for oncoming traffic -- something Slutsky admitted to in his interview with Snob magazine.

Turkish Delight

RFE/RL examined thousands of posts on the social-media site TikTok by Slutskys daughter Lida Slutskaya, dating back to 2019. The account was publicly visible until shortly after the Russian version of this investigation was published on September 2.

The posts include extensive interior and exterior images and descriptions of a luxury resort near Bodrum, on Turkeys southwestern coast.

The resort, called Six Senses Kaplankaya, was developed by businessman Serzhan Zhumashov, who is believed to be one of Kazakhstans wealthiest people.

In all, the videos and photographs show that Slutskys wife and Lida have spent a significant amount of time at the villa since 2019.

One of the villas at the complex, where Lida Slutskayas video show her staying in July 2019, is valued at 3 million euros ($3.6 million), according to the resorts marketing website.

Another series of videos appear to show Lida Slutskaya living at the villa almost constantly from October 2020 until April 2021.

RFE/RL was unable to determine if Slutsky or someone else owns the villa.

A nearby, smaller villa in question is marketed by the resort at a nightly rental rate of $2,600.

Elite Education

Many of the social-media posts to Lida Slutskayas account document her schools and summer camps, including the President School in the elite Moscow suburb of Zhukovka, where monthly tuition runs about $2,500.

She also brags about attending a summer camp at a Swiss international school called Institut Le Rosey, with hopes to enroll at the school.

In 2020, the opposition media organization Open Media reported that at least two of Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin's sons attended the elite boarding school, which costs about $100,000 a year.

In early August, she documented how she was preparing to take entrance exams for TASIS The American School In Switzerland, another $100,000-a-year boarding school near the lakeside city of Lugano.

In one of the last TikTok posts publicly visible before the account was made private, Slutskaya published a video in which she wore a uniform from the Lugano school. And she boasts about how she expects to receive a Swiss passport in several years.

In other videos, Lida Slutskaya shows off a collection of expensive sneakers and holds a pile of what appears to be U.S. $100 bills.

Another, published July 8, shows what appears to be Slutsky himself, standing outside a private jet at Moscows Vnukovo-3 airport, apparently en route to Turkey.

Other videos on the TikTok account bolster evidence previously published by other Russian media that Slutsky is closely associated with an Azerbaijani developer connected to a powerful Moscow development company named Kievskaya Ploshchad.

The company, which has built major shopping centers in Moscow, is controlled by a billionaire named God Nisanov, who has been dubbed the king of Russian real estate by the investigative outlet Proyekt.

Videos published on the TikTok channel show Lida Slutskaya referring to Nisanov as uncle and daddys best friend.
Jailed Russian opposition politician Aleksei Navalny says he has distributed the financial part of the Boris Nemtsov Prize, 10,000 euros ($11,850), he received in February, among the families of four political prisoners.

Navalny wrote on Instagram on September 3 that he had asked Nemtsov's daughter, Zhanna, to give 2,500 euros to each family "whose situation is worse than mine."

One recipient will be the family of Pavel Zelensky, a member of Navalnys defunct Anti-Corruption Foundation, who is serving a two-year prison term he was handed in January after a court convicted him on extremism charges for two posts on Twitter.

The family of Andrei Borovikov, the leader of Navalnys team in the northwestern city of Arkhangelsk, will also receive a share of the money. Borovikov was sentenced in April to 2 1/2 years in prison for distributing pornography by sharing a video by the German rock band Rammstein in 2014, in a case Amnesty International described as utterly absurd.

The families of two other activists, Yan Sidorov and Vladislav Mordasov, will also receive the money from Navalny. The two were convicted for attempting to organize mass disturbances and sentenced in 2019 to more than six years each in a penal colony -- sentences that were subsequently reduced to four years.

Navalny was awarded with the Boris Nemtsov Prize for "courage in defending democratic values in Russia" in February.

The annual prize was established by the Boris Nemtsov Foundation. Nemtsov, an opposition politician and an ardent critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, was gunned down in early 2015 near the Kremlin.

Five men from Russia's volatile North Caucasus region of Chechnya were found guilty of involvement in Nemtsov's killing and sentenced to prison terms, but critics, including relatives and colleagues of Nemtsov, say Russian authorities failed to determine who ordered the action.

Navalny was detained at a Moscow airport on January 17 upon his arrival from Germany, where he was recovering from a poison attack in Siberia by what several European laboratories concluded was a military-grade chemical nerve agent.

The Kremlin critic has insisted that his poisoning was ordered directly by Putin, which the Kremlin has denied.

In February, a Moscow court ruled that while recovering in Germany, Navalny violated the terms of parole from an old embezzlement case that is widely considered as being politically motivated. Navalny's 3 1/2 year suspended sentence from the case was converted to a jail term, though the court said he will serve 2 1/2 years in prison given time he had already served.
NALCHIK, Russia -- A court in Russia's North Caucasus region of Kabardino-Balkaria has given a suspended two-year prison sentence to an activist who has no hands after finding him guilty of attacking police.

The city court in Kabardino-Balkaria's capital, Nalchik, convicted and sentenced Aslan Iritov, the leader of Volny Aul (Free Village) rights organization, on September 2.

Iritov had pleaded not guilty and rejects the charge.

The probe against the activist was launched in 2017 after he resisted police officers who came to his house on the eve of a protest rally.

After a struggle, investigators accused Iritov of head-butting one police officer and attempting to strangle another.

A probe was also launched against several of the police officers involved after medical examinations revealed that Iritov's wife, daughter, and brother, who tried to stop the brawl, sustained serious injuries during the incident.

With reporting by Caucasian Knot
UFA, Russia -- The prosecution has asked a court in the Russian city of Ufa to sentence a woman to four years in prison because she sent a small amount of money to the elderly mother of a jailed opposition activist.

Prosecutors asked the court on September 2 to find Ilmira Bikbayeva guilty of financially supporting extremism after she sent a total of about 6,000 rubles ($82) over several installments to the mother of Airat Dilmukhametov, a prominent opposition activist who was sentenced to nine years in prison on extremism charges last year.

Bikbayeva, 59, who went on trial in February in Ufa, the capital of the Bashkortostan region, has pleaded not guilty in the case, insisting that she just wanted to support the woman, who was struggling financially.

Investigators say the money Bikbayeva sent was used by Dilmukhametov for conducting extremist activities.

Rights activists have scoffed at the notion, saying the amount is a little more than one-10th of an average monthly salary in Russia.

In early August, Bikbayeva learned that she was added to a federal list of extremists before the court ruling on her case after she discovered her bank accounts and credit cards had been frozen without warning.

Dilmukhametov, who has insisted that the case against him is politically motivated, was arrested in March 2019 and sentenced to nine years in prison after a court found him guilty of calling on people to violate Russia's territorial integrity and for making public calls for extremism and to support terrorism.

The charge against Dilmukhametov stemmed from a video statement he made in 2018 urging the creation of a "real" federation in Russia with more autonomous rights given to ethnic republics and regions.
Russia's media watchdog has blocked six providers of virtual proxy networks (VPNs), which people can use to circumvent government restrictions on the Internet.

The move, announced on September 3, comes as Russian authorities tighten control of the Internet, blocking access to dozens of websites ahead of parliamentary elections this month.

The Russian watchdog, Roskomnadzor, justified the new restrictions by saying that allowing access to blocked content "created conditions for illegal activities, including those related to the distribution of drugs, child pornography, extremism, and suicidal tendencies."

The targeted VPN providers, including the widely used Nord VPN and Express VPN, are among Russia's most popular, but several other companies offer similar services.

The Russian government in recent years has ramped up control over the Internet under the guise of fighting extremism and protecting minors.

Critics have denounced official oversight of the web as censorship aimed at silencing dissent.

The authorities have also stepped up repression of opposition lawmakers and activists ahead of Russia's nationwide legislative elections, which are scheduled for September 17-19, with nearly all vocal Kremlin critics barred from running.

With reporting by dpa and AFP
WASHINGTON -- The United States has announced sanctions against four Iranian intelligence operatives who sought to kidnap an American journalist as part of a wider attempt to silence critics of the government in Tehran, a move Iran has dismissed.

The Treasury Department announced on September 3 that it was designating senior Iran-based intelligence official Alireza Shahvaroghi Farahani as well as three subordinates, including Mahmoud Khazein, Kiya Sadeghi, and Omid Noori.

Farahani leads a network of intelligence operatives tasked with targeting Iranian dissidents in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United Arab Emirates, the Treasury Department said in its statement.

The four planned to abduct Masih Alinejad, a New York City-based Iranian-American activist and journalist, and transport her via speedboat to Venezuela for eventual return to Iran, according to a criminal complaint filed in July by the U.S. Justice Department.

The four are charged with conspiracy related to kidnapping, sanctions violations, bank and wire fraud, and money laundering.

The Iranian governments kidnapping plot is another example of its continued attempt to silence critical voices, wherever they may be, Andrea Gacki, director of the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control, said in a statement. Targeting dissidents abroad demonstrates that the governments repression extends far beyond Irans borders.

The sanctions block any property the four have in the United States as well as preventing any U.S. citizen from transacting with them.

Iran on September 4 dismissed the move, saying it reflects Washingtons addiction to sanctions.

"Supporters and merchants of sanctions, who see their sanctions toolbox empty due to Irans maximum resistance, are now resorting to Hollywood scenarios to keep the sanctions alive, the Foreign Ministry said in a tweet on September 4, quoting spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh.
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Members of the N.C. Wesleyan College community are mourning the death of a student who died Thursday and has since been identified.
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Brae Hansen, 19, shown with her defense lawyer (left) was sentenced to life in prison without parole in 2009 for the murder of her stepfather, attorney Timothy MacNeil, in 2007. Her brother, Nathaniel Gann, 20, was sentenced to 25 years to life. (John Gibbins / Union-Tribune)

The trials are over, the sentences ordered. But questions remain.

Why did a young brother and sister devise a plot to kill their stepfather, a veteran San Diego criminal defense attorney, who by many accounts had not harmed them?

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Did anger drive them to murder Timothy MacNeil in his Rolando home and try to make it look as though he was shot during a home-invasion robbery? Or was it greed?

Brae Hansen, 19, was sentenced yesterday to life in prison without the possibility of parole for her role in MacNeils death in July 2007. Her brother, Nathaniel Gann, 20, was sentenced to 25 years to life.

This was a planned, cold, calculated execution, said San Diego Superior Court Judge Frederic Link, who pondered the pairs motives during back-to-back hearings.

I dont understand, I dont think anybody understands, and I dont think anybody will ever understand.

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Both were convicted in April of first-degree murder. Hansen was also found guilty of a special-circumstance allegation of lying in wait.

Gann made no statements during the emotional proceedings yesterday except to answer a few questions from the judge. But Hansen tearfully told the packed courtroom that she was sorry for what she had done.

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Im sorry that I robbed the world of his goodness, Hansen said of MacNeil. He was not a perfect man, but he was good.

Im sorry that Ive disappointed so many people, and Im sorry that I made some really horrible decisions.

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Hansens apology seemed little comfort to MacNeils family members and supporters, many of whom did little to hide their anger.

You killed the one person who truly loved you and shattered the lives of those who loved him, said Bonnie MacNeil, who is married to the victims brother, Richard.

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The attorneys girlfriend, Kim Bieda, said she believed MacNeil was killed for money. Police had said the siblings planned to share any inheritance Hansen received.

However, comments from Erin Ellison  MacNeils daughter from his first marriage  had a slightly different tone. She said her father cared deeply for both of his daughters, including Hansen.

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I will miss you and I will think of you; I cant help it, she told Hansen. Im sorry you didnt have enough love in your life to know that this decision would never be worth it.

According to testimony during the three-week trial, Hansen called 911 on July 19, 2007, and reported that she and her stepfather had been surprised by a masked gunman. She said the intruder shot MacNeil after he refused to reveal the combination to a safe.

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MacNeil, 63, was shot four times, including twice in the head.

When police arrived at his Marraco Drive home, they found Hansen  then 17  standing in a downstairs game room several feet from the body with her wrists bound behind her back with plastic ties. She told police she had dialed the telephone with her tongue.

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At first, police treated Hansen like a victim, but a detective became suspicious when Hansen used the name Nathan when describing her attacker.

The murder weapon, a revolver, was found outside the house. It had belonged to the siblings mother, Doreen, who committed suicide the previous summer.

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Witnesses testified that they saw a man fitting Ganns description run from the house after the shooting. A black shirt and mask were found in a nearby tree; Ganns DNA was found on the mask.

Gann was arrested in Arizona, where he lived with his grandmother. Attorney Ricardo Garcia, who represented Gann, argued that Hansen was the mastermind and recruited her brother. Garcia stressed that Hansen played the victim after the slaying and lied repeatedly to police.

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Troy Britt, a deputy public defender who represented Hansen, argued that she participated in the plan to kill MacNeil, but changed her mind. When she tried to back out, her brother threatened her with a gun, Britt said.

Britt unsuccessfully argued yesterday that Hansen should get 25 years to life in prison, noting that the diminutive woman, who suffers from rheumatoid arthritis, was not the shooter.

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But Deputy District Attorney George Bennett said Hansen didnt deserve leniency, and that the murder never would have happened if she hadnt set it in motion.

The only thing Brae Hansen cares about in the whole goddamn world is herself, Bennett said.

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Dana Littlefield: (619) 542-4590; dana.littlefield@uniontrib.com
This story has been modified since its originalposting.

Jurors convicted Wade Griffin III of murder Thursday, a littlemore than a week before the three-year anniversary of the death ofhis former girlfriend, Ever Council.

Councils aunt, a petite woman, wrapped her arms around the muchtaller prosecutor, quietly expressing her gratitude moments afterthe verdicts were read at the Southwest Justice Center courtroom inFrench Valley.

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Prosecutors say Council was beaten and strangled to death on March19, 2007. Police found Griffin laying nude and unconscious on topof her body inside her Murrieta apartment.

After 1 1/2 days of deliberating, the jury convicted Griffin offirst-degree murder and the special circumstances of lying in waitand attempted rape. He faces a sentence of life in prison withoutthe possibility of parole.

Jurors had no significant doubt that Griffin committed a murder,said two male jurors who declined to give their names.

Their debate centered on whether the murder was premeditated, theysaid. They decided it was.

Griffin, 41, sat expressionless and silent at the defense counseltable, as did more than a dozen of Councils relatives and friendswho were in the court gallery when the verdict was read.

Justice was served, said Antonio Council, Ever Councils formerhusband, outside court. She was a good mother and a good person.She was loved by everyone around her.

Ever Council, a native of Mexico, was the mother of his 8-year-oldson, said Antonio Council, 41, of Menifee.

The tragic death of his former wife was compounded by hisrelationship with the man convicted of her murder.

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We were best friends, Antonio Council said of the defendant. Heand I grew up together in Arkansas.

On the morning of her slaying, Council, 34, was talking on thephone with her then-boyfriend, Jeff Warthen, as she prepared toleave her Sonoma at Mapleton apartment for work at a nearby WellsFargo bank.

Warthen called Council around 9:30 a.m. and during theirconversation she let out a horrifying scream, he testified. Afterthe call disconnected and he was unable to reach her again byphone, Warthen drove from Camp Pendleton to her apartment andenlisted the complex managers to check on her.

The complexs maintenance supervisor went inside and found Griffinand Council.

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Griffin was unconscious because he had ingested Soma and Vicodinfrom Councils medicine cabinet. Prosecutors say Council was beatenand strangled to death.

Warren Dodson, a lifelong friend of Griffins, testified thatGriffin called him a few times between 3 a.m. and 6 a.m.

Dodson told jurors that Griffin felt used by the woman, whom he hadtaken on some trips and given money for rent. Griffin never toldDodson the womans name.

Griffin was going to the womans home to scare her and get theapology she owed him, Dodson testified.

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Deputy District Attorney Brandon Smith told jurors Council wasambushed moments after she walked out her front door.

Her pants were cut from the waist to the leg and her bra was rippedapart in the front. The only item of clothing on her body was theleft sleeve of her suit jacket, according to the photos showed incourt.

Her face was covered with blood and one side was visibly swollen,the pictures showed.

Defense attorney Colleen Lawler was not available for comment afterthe verdict.

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In her closing statement, Lawler told jurors Council was dead whenGriffin arrived.

Devastated by the death of his on-again, off-again girlfriend,Griffin swallowed the pills, disrobed and passed out before hecould call for help, she said. Lawler pointed out that the resultsof a sexual assault examination excluded Griffin.

Lawler repeated that police had their sights trained on Griffin andfailed to investigate other men in Councils life. The only manromantically linked to Council who testified was Warthen.

Lawler told jurors that all Griffin wanted from Council was anapology.

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After the verdict was read, the prosecutor recalled thosewords.

The defendant went there to get what he was owed, Smith saidoutside the courtroom. Today, he got what he was owed.

CORRECTION: Anniversary of death misstated

The original version of this story incorrectly stated theapproaching anniversary of the death of Ever Council. Council wasstrangled to death on March 19, 2007, nearly three years ago, nottwo years ago as stated in the article. We apologize.
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The largest intact Martian rock on Earth is now on display for good at the Maine Mineral & Gem Museum. This meteorite is identified as Taoudenni 002.

As indicated in a NewsNation report, weighing 32-pound rock, this object now on display is the second meteorite retrieved near a dessert salt-mining center known as Taoudenni, Mali, 400 miles north of Timbuktu.

The museum press release stated that the stone's measurement is roughly nine inches in width, 10 inches in length, and 6.5 inches in height. Additionally, this meteorite is mainly composed of pyroxene, olivine, and maskekynite.

According to scientists at NASA, the meteorite's origin can be traced to Mars due to the tiny bubbles found in the rock that matched the Red Planet's atmosphere as determined by the Viking probes of NASA from the mid-1990s.

ALSO READ: Microbes on Earth Could Temporarily Live on Martian Surface, New Research Shows

The Taoudenni 002

The largest Mars rock was acquired in April this year by Daryll Pitt, a meteor dealer. Then, it was verified by the Institute of Meteoritics director Dr. Carl Agee, also one of the most renowned classification experts of Mars meteorites in the world.

Describing the Martian rock, Pitt said this is a "spectacular specimen of Mars," not to mention the perfect accompaniment to display just across the room, the largest identified piece of the Moon, instead of the Moon itself.

The meteorite is currently a part of the museum's renowned collection of interstellar rocks, with over 6,000 from Mars, the moon, and the asteroid belt.

Meanwhile, according to NASA, the Zagami meteorite was once believed to be the largest Mars rock found, weighing over 40 pounds, although it has been cut into tinier pieces.

According to a NASA report, Zagami fell in 1962 around 0.75 miles from Zagami Rock, Katsina Province, Nigeria. In the mid-1980s, the main mass with the Geological Survey of Nigeria in Kaduna.

In the late 1980s meteorite dealer, Robert Haag was able to obtain a large piece of Zagami. Since then, as mentioned, the whole specimen has seemingly been cut up into small pieces and distributed.

Open to the Public Today

The museum said the Martian rock resulted from an asteroid effect on the surface of the Red Planet that.

The museum said the rock was the result of an asteroid impact on the surface of Mars that expelled material into an "Earth-crossing orbit in space."

There are below 500 pounds of the Martian rock known to be present on this Planet, said the museum. The Bethel, Maine museum said it would include the meteorite when it opens to the public on Sept. 1

It also said it planned to hold a reception with limited capacity to celebrate the rock's acquisition. In relation to this, two scientists from NASA were expected to attend the event.

Located on Main Street in Bethel, Maine, Maine Mineral & Gem Museum is open daily except for Tuesdays. Encompassing 15,000 square feet and holding 17 interactive displays and a laboratory, this museum is celebrating the mining legacy of Maine, on top of an internationally renowned collection of meteorites with more of the Moon, compared to the globe's every natural history museum, combined.

Report about the Earth's largest Martian rock on display in Maine is shown on TVC News Nigeria' YouTube video below:

RELATED ARTICLE: China's Successful Mars Mission: What Will the Zhurong Rover Do?

Check out more news and information on Mars in Science Times.
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"The Martian" book written by Andy Weir depicts an astronaut left behind on Mars after an accident. Astronaut Mark Watney planted potatoes on Mars to feed himself as it might take years before the next human Mars mission. However, scientists said that planting on the Red Planet is impossible due to harsher radiation exposure than that experienced on Earth.

Mars: Only Habitable Planet in Solar System Next to Earth

Mars is also known as the Red Planet, with a harsh environment that is impossible to host life. According to an article in the American Chemical Society (ACS), scientists have been studying Mars for many decades now since the early 1960s, but they have not sent a manned mission to scour the surface of the Red Planet.

For now, space agencies have only sent small spacecraft and rovers to orbit that flew by then landed on Mars. Their missions are to study the composition of the Red Planet and discover whether they once hosted life after gathering evidence that water once existed on the barren planet.

However, the atmosphere of Mars is 95% carbon dioxide, making breathing difficult for humans. Also, it is colder than Earth, with a temperature of -81 degrees Fahrenheit as it is farther from the Sun.

Despite its harsh environment, the article in ACS suggests that Mars appears to be the most habitable planet in the Solar System next to Earth. Scientists have used some places on Earth to study Mars since they have conditions similar to the Red Planet. These places include some parts of Antarctica, Hawaii, and South America.

Mars' harsh condition will inhibit the growth of plants and would likely kill animals and humans that would live there. Nevertheless, the orbiters and rovers sent to Mars will gather information to help the future human mission to Mars in the following decades.

ALSO READ: Mars Dune Alpha Simulates Living on Red Planet: What Is Inside the 3D-Printed Habitat in Johnson Space Center?

Mars Radiation Exposure 17 Times Harsher Than Earth's

The Earth is lucky to have its magnetic field to protect it from the harsh radiation from the Sun. However, Mars does not have a magnetic field that will block cosmic and solar radiation, and it only has a thin atmosphere.

Social Post reported that radiation exposure on Mars averages 233 micrograms per day, equivalent to 17 times the highest radiation exposure that Earth could experience. Moreover, a solar storm on Mars could be 50 times harsher than what would be experienced on Earth.

Furthermore, NASA scientists found that radiation exposure is more likely to cause plants to not grow on the Red Planet rather than the Martian soil.

A team of researchers experimented with planting vegetables and herbs on Mars-like soil using the volcanic sand from Hawaii. They were able to harvest crops although it was contaminated with heavy metals.



RELATED ARTICLE: Human Mars Mission Safest Only When Less Than 4 Years at Solar Maximum



Check out more news and information on Mars Mission in Science Times.
VENICE, Italy (AP)  Kristen Stewart has long chafed at how her teenage Twilight fame robbed her of her privacy and a normal life, but dont get the wrong idea: Its nothing compared to what Princess Diana endured.

She was the most famous woman in the world, Stewart said Friday. I have tasted a high level of that, but really nowhere near that monumental, symbolic representation of an entire people or nation.

Stewart gained that perspective filming Pablo Larrains Spencer, the latest cinematic look at the late Princess of Wales, which premiered Friday at the Venice Film Festival. Coming out in between seasons of Netflixs The Crown and with the Broadway musical Diana about to open, Larrains upside-down fairy tale focuses on the three-day Christmas holiday in the early 1990s that preceded Dianas formal separation from Prince Charles.

Much has already been said, seen and written about the collapse of the royal marriage, Dianas deep unhappiness and the cruel confines of the British monarchy. Spencer doesnt add new information or novel insights to the Diana pantheon, allowing itself instead to imagine what transpired in those three days at the queen's Sandringham estate in Norfolk, as the peoples princess unraveled.

I think the really sad thing about her is that she  as normal and casual and disarming as her air is immediately  she also felt so isolated and so lonely, Stewart told a Venice press conference. She made everyone else feel accompanied and bolstered by this beautiful light, and all she wanted was to have it back.

This is the second 20th Century icon-in-crisis that Larrain has brought to Venice, after he premiered Jackie, a portrait of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis starring Natalie Portman, in 2016. Larrain said he decided to profile Diana because he wanted to make a movie that my mother would like.

The Chilean director said his mother adored Diana, dressed like her and even had her hair done like her  the famous Lady Di feathered shag. But he said the more he researched Diana, I realized that she carried an enormous amount of mystery, and that mystery combined with the magnetism she had creates the perfect elements for a movie.

Indeed. Diana has been the subject of at least a dozen movies and TV series, from two U.S. made-for-TV movies about the 1981 royal wedding, released a year later, to a 1993 film based on the book Diana: Her True Story to the 2013 movie Diana starring Naomi Watts as the princess.

None have been particularly flattering to the monarchy. Queen Elizabeth IIs motto is often summarized as never complain, never explain. On that principle, Buckingham Palace has refrained from commenting on the many fictionalized accounts of the royal familys life, from The Queen  Stephen Frears 2006 film about the aftermath of Dianas death  to Netflix The Crown.

Stewart, who rose to international fame as a teenage Bella Swan in the Twilight franchise, was asked how it felt to be portraying someone subject to a similar level of voyeuristic obsession that she has experienced. Stewart tackled similar subject matter in Seberg, about the Breathless star Jean Seberg, which also made its out-of-competition debut at Venice in 2019.

Stewart drew the line between mere movie star and global icon. Im allowed to make mistakes, she noted.

She also defended the decision to again explore Diana's story, saying it's an imaginary piece of art, not an invasion of her privacy or that of her family's.

There is a difference between intruding and the multiplicity that art brings to this world, Stewart said.

I think if anyone made a movie about me, I wouldnt feel stolen from or taken from, she added. Theres nothing salacious about our intention. That would probably be more embedded in interpretation.

___

Jill Lawless contributed from London.
Despite crowds and hail, when Katrina Schult and Berk Guldal served Turkish food and whole roasted lamb to 1800 people over the course of three days on Bainbridge Island in March, they came away inspired to move to Seattle and work toward opening the restaurant of their dreams.

They arrived in June and immediately began a series of successful pop-ups called Hamdi, and there are just two more this weekend before they leave for Turkey for a month of culinary and cultural research.

The pair met while working at SingleThread, a Michelin three-star restaurant in Sonoma County, where Guldal rose to sous chef and Schult to captain, and Guldal previously worked at New Yorks highly acclaimed Eleven Madison Park. But during his time in some of the countrys most renowned kitchens, Guldal realized he wanted to show off the food that he grew up with.

Vanessa Ronquillo

People arent used to it here, Guldal says of dishes like kokorec, the Turkish thyme-flecked sweetbreads he serves in Macrinas bui buns that he remembers chasing street carts of as a child. He uses his moms recipe to prepare the ksr, a vegetarian bulgar salad with pepper paste and pickles, and adapted the traditional gavurdag salad featuring sumac, isot peppers, and walnuts, into a ceviche using fresh local fish.

While the pair had little connection to the city prior to moving here, they wanted to get away from the constant smoke and evacuations in California and fell in love with the waterfront city, which Guldal says reminds him a little of Istanbul. They came for the nearby mountains and outdoors, but they also saw in their March pop-up a city hungry for high-quality Turkish food that reflects the countrys traditional dishes. We want to combine the new and old, says Guldal. The new hospitality, but cooking with the old style.

Vanessa Ronquillo

Despite knowing almost nobody in town and needing very specific facilities to run their pop-ups because of cooking over charcoal, they found people willing to learn about what Turkish food can be. They keep hummus on their pop-up menu to give people a familiar entry point, while also showing off what makes it their own, by topping it with garlic confit and oil made from maras pepper and serving it with chips from the lavas they make from scratch and roll by hand. From there, they see customers return to explore the rest of the menu, like their marinated chicken wings with black cumin seeds called kanat and the juicy lamb kebap, made from hand-chopped lamb ribs.

We use only male lambs, Guldal says. Partially, that comes from tradition, but there is a reason behind it: The male lamb has less gamey flavor. When he first came to the U.S., the lamb meat here took him by surprise. Aside from their gender, the lambs eat the Turkish thyme trees, he explains. We didnt even need to season the lamb, it just naturally carries the thyme flavor. By focusing on the male lambs  and adding in the thyme themselves  Guldal found he could eliminate the gaminess. The thyme Hamdi uses  and their peppers, sumac, cumin, and other spices  come directly from Turkey, to ensure they carry proper flavor.

Vanessa Ronquillo

This week, they will run their final two pop-ups before leaving to spend a month traveling around Turkey and cooking in the kitchens of family and friends, looking for inspiration both in the food and the culture, to shape their future restaurant. When they return in October, they plan to continue working with their group of potential investors to raise money and find a location, ideally in Ballard.

Hamdi will run its usual pop-up menu on Sunday, September 5 at Fair Isle Brewing from 12 p.m. to 8 p.m., but also has a special pop-up happening at Obec Brewing on Saturday, September 4, where it will roast an entire lamb  similar to the version they did back in March that led them down the path to Seattle.
MADISON, Wis. (AP)  The chairman of the Department of Natural Resources policy board said Thursday he did nothing wrong when he consulted with a Republican congressman and an aide to the GOP state Senate leader about refusing to step down from his position.

Fred Prehn's term ended in May. Democratic Gov. Tony Evers appointed Sandra Naas to replace him, a move that would give Evers appointees majority control of the board. Prehn, who was appointed by former Republican Gov. Scott Walker, has refused to step aside for Naas.

He said he won't leave until the Senate confirms her. Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu has taken no steps toward a confirmation vote, ensuring Republicans maintain control of the board and with it pollution and wildlife regulations. Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul has filed a lawsuit demanding a judge remove Prehn from the board, arguing he serves at Evers' pleasure and his term has expired.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported Monday that Prehn traded emails with U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany as well as a LeMahieu aide, former University of Wisconsin Regent Gerald Whitburn, a Republican, and conservative lobbyists about his decision to stay on the board.

Prehn issued a statement Thursday morning saying suggestions that he coordinated or consulted with state Republican elected officials are not factual. He said he never spoke to any currently elected Wisconsin state official in regards to this matter.

I did, however, speak with friends and acquaintances as I foresaw holding over could become contentious, he said. I wonder if any other political appointee has ever had discussions with friends and/or colleagues, or even a spouse about what is going on in their lives?

He said he's confident he can legally hold the seat despite Naas' appointment and looks forward to the courts resolving the matter.

Prehn filed a motion on Monday seeking to dismiss Kaul's lawsuit. He contends that a 1964 state Supreme Court decision clarified that state law allows board appointees to stay on until the Senate confirms their successors.

Board terms start and end with the Senate's advice and consent, the motion said.

Republican legislators filed a motion last week seeking to join the case, arguing that state law allows the Legislature to intervene in cases where statutes are challenged and that Kaul's lawsuit could end the Senate's role in confirming appointees.

Kansas-based hunter advocacy group Hunter Nation also has asked for permission to join the case. The group argues that the DNR board regulates its members and as such the group has an interest in ensuring the board is legally constituted. Hunter Nation President Luke Hilgemann, a Wisconsin resident, submitted an affidavit saying he doesn't want his tax dollars to fund an illegally constituted board because that would amount to a financial loss for him.

The attorney general filed a brief seeking a ruling barring the Legislature and Hunter Nation from joining the lawsuit. Kaul argued that the Legislature can intervene only if someone is challenging state law and in this case he's seeking an interpretation and the case's resolution won't affect Hunter Nation at all.

Dane County Circuit Judge Nia Trammell has set a hearing in the case for Sept. 28.

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Follow Todd Richmond on Twitter at https://twitter.com/trichmond1
WASHINGTON (AP)  Health experts and medical groups are pushing to stamp out the growing use of a decades-old parasite drug to treat COVID-19, warning that it can cause harmful side effects and that theres little evidence it helps.

With a fourth wave of infections, more Americans are turning to ivermectin, a cheap drug used to kill worms and other parasites in humans and animals.

Federal health officials have seen a surge in prescriptions this summer, accompanied by worrying increases in reported overdoses. The drug was even given to inmates at a jail in northwest Arkansas for COVID-19, despite federal warnings against that use. On Wednesday, podcaster Joe Rogan, who has been dismissive of the COVID-19 vaccine, announced he had tested positive for the virus and was taking the medication.

Ivermectin has been promoted by Republican lawmakers, conservative talk show hosts and some doctors, amplified via social media to millions of Americans who remain resistant to getting vaccinated. It has also been widely used in other countries, including India and Brazil.

This week, the top U.S. professional groups for doctors and pharmacists appealed for an immediate end to the drugs use outside of research.

We are urging physicians, pharmacists, and other prescribers  trusted healthcare professionals in their communities  to warn patients against the use of ivermectin outside of FDA-approved indications and guidance, said the American Medical Association and two pharmacist groups.

Large studies are now underway in the U.S. and overseas to determine if the drug has any effect on preventing or blunting COVID-19.

The latest plea follows similar warnings from federal and state regulators who are tracking side effects and hospital admissions tied to the drug.

Louisiana and Washington issued alerts after an uptick in calls to poison control centers. Some animal feed supply stores have run out of the drug because of people buying the veterinary form to try and treat COVID-19.

Theres just not any good evidence right now suggesting this is a good treatment for treating or preventing COVID-19, said Randy McDonough, a pharmacist in Iowa City, Iowa

Ivermectin is approved by the Food and Drug Administration to treat infections of roundworms and other tiny parasites in humans and animals like cows, horses and dogs. Tablets are used for internal parasites while ointments are used to treat head lice and other skin infections. The generic drug works by paralyzing the worms and killing their offspring.

The FDA has tried to debunk online claims that animal-strength versions of the drug can help fight COVID-19.

Taking large doses of this drug is dangerous and can cause serious harm, the FDA warned in a public advisory. The drug can cause nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, seizures, delirium and even death, said the agency.

Dr. David Boulware of the University of Minnesota says the drug's side effects are mild at two or even three times the usual human dose. But formulations for farm animals might contain 1,000 times what's safe for humans.

Its pretty easy to get into toxic levels, said Boulware, an infectious disease specialist. All these concentrated doses that are meant for a 2,000 pound horse can certainly get people sick or hospitalized for toxicity.

Boulware says he prescribes the drug to patients a few times a year in the U.S. and more routinely when working in countries where intestinal parasites are common. But he and other experts have been alarmed by the explosive growth in U.S. ivermectin prescribing.

By mid-August U.S. pharmacies were filling 88,000 weekly prescriptions for the medication, a 24-fold increase from pre-COVID levels, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Meanwhile, U.S. poison control centers have seen a five-fold increase in emergency calls related to the drug, with some incidents requiring hospitalization.

The CDC citedone case of a man who drank an injectable form of ivermectin intended for cattle. He suffered hallucinations, confusion, tremors and other side effects before being hospitalized for nine days.

The World Health Organization, the National Institutes of Health and other medical experts have also recommended against using it outside of carefully controlled patient studies. An NIH panel found insufficient evidence for or against the drug for COVID-19, calling for more large, well-designed trials.

The experts noted that early laboratory research showed ivermectin slowed the replication of coronavirus when grown in monkey cells. But such studies are not useful for gauging real-world effectiveness in humans. And they noted other research suggesting the drug would need to be given at levels 100 times the standard dose to have antiviral effects in humans.

The NIH is studying the drug in a large trial comparing a half-dozen established drugs to see if they have some effect against COVID-19.

Experts say those interested in ivermectin should ask about enrolling in such studies.

By participating in a clinical trial youre not going to harm yourself and you're going to help society generate the knowledge we need to know if this works or doesnt work, said Boulware.

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AP Writer Andrew DeMillo contributed to this story from Little Rock, Arkansas

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institutes Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP)  A Palestinian man was killed by Israeli gunfire on Thursday night, Gaza health officials said, during a violent protest along the Israeli border.

Hundreds of Palestinians took part in protests held at five locations, demanding an end to Israel's 14-year blockade of Gaza.

The territory's Hamas rulers have organized a series of similar protests over the past two weeks. In some cases they have turned violent, with the crowds burning tires and hurling explosives toward Israeli soldiers.

Palestinian health officials said Ahmad Saleh, 26, was fatally shot near Jabaliya, in the northern Gaza Strip.

Organizers released a photo of Saleh, wearing shorts and a black T-shirt standing on the beach. May God accept you Ahmad as a martyr of the night disturbances, said a caption.

Health officials said five other people were wounded by Israeli fire, including a 15-year-old boy in serious condition.

The Israeli military said that demonstrators hurled explosive devices, and soldiers responded with live fire.

Saleh became the third Palestinian to die in the recent protests, along with a 12-year-old boy and a Hamas militant. An Israeli sniper was killed when he was shot in the head at point-blank range by a protester.

Israel and Egypt imposed the blockade in 2007 after Hamas seized control of Gaza from the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority. The takeover came a year after Hamas defeated the rival Fatah movement, which dominates the Palestinian Authority, in parliamentary elections.

Israel says the blockade is needed to keep Hamas, an Islamic militant group sworn to Israel's destruction, from arming. Critics say the closure, which has hit the local economy hard due to its travel and trade restrictions, amounts to collective punishment.

Israel and Hamas have fought four wars since 2008, most recently last May.

Israel tightened the blockade after the fighting and only this week lifted most of the measures as Egypt tries to broker a longer-term cease-fire. Israel has demanded that Hamas free two captive Israeli civilians and return the remains of two dead Israeli soldiers as part of a broader deal.

Hamas dismissed the latest Israeli measures as insufficient and has threatened to continue the demonstrations until the blockade is further eased. Our position is that it is insufficient and is no substitute for broad measures that will achieve a real breakthrough in terms of life in Gaza, the group said.
SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP)  Eulalia Garcia was stunned when she opened an invitation from the president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele. A bus would take her family the following day to receive a surprise Christmas gift, it said.

Garcia had survived a mudslide that killed four in her family and destroyed their humble homes on the slopes of the San Salvador volcano.

Her neighbor in Los Angelitos, Ines Flamenco, was so grateful for her invitation that she spent three days earnings on a gift for the president--a bouquet of roses that would turn into a beautiful photo opportunity for Bukele.

I wanted to tell him how happy I was, she recalled.

But the Christmas joy would be short-lived. Their gifts came with a steep price tag.

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This story is part of a series, After the Deluge, produced with support from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

___

The 2020 Atlantic hurricane season wiped out homes and crops and displaced more than half a million people in Central America, particularly in Guatemala and Honduras.

In El Salvador, a populist president saw opportunity where tragedy struck. Bukele moved quickly to demonstrate that he could deliver to hundreds of families from Los Angelitos -- a program that surely would be appreciated by his countrymen.

There was a problem, though. Bukele forgot to ask the people what they needed to recover from the tropical storm.

Disaster struck on the night of Oct. 29, a dam of fallen trees and rocky soil high on the volcano broke under pounding rain, causing the landslide that devoured Los Angelitos.

Garcias husband, Ramon Sanchez, woke up around 10:40 that night. A rock had hit a tree behind my house, the walls shook, and water started coming in everywhere.

Sanchez and Garcia grabbed their two children and pushed through the water to high ground, but Sanchezs mother, brother and two nephews who were sleeping in an adobe house next to theirs were buried alive. They were among eleven people who died as 78 houses were demolished.

It was over as quickly as it began, Sanchez said.

Nearby, Ines Flamenco, 73, awoke and started running only to encounter the mangled body of a neighbor dragged to death by mud and stones. She breaks into tears as she remembers him.

After the deluge, everything seemed to happen fast, like in a movie.

Within an hour of the mudslide, Defense Minister Rene Merino appeared on the scene and tagged President Bukele in Twitter to let him know that he had taken command of the rescue operation.

At dawn, Interior Minister Mario Duran joined the effort. When he spoke to the media, he had smudges of dirt on his face -- proof that the populist government was in the thick of it.

Shelters were set up in schools. Within 48 hours, Housing Minister Michelle Sol arrived with a promise. The government would give homeless families houses. And money to rent houses.

In less than two months they got the invitation to meet with the president.

The trip to receive their surprise gift was 15 minutes and a world away. They crossed a security barrier into Ciudad Marsella, a private residential development with a succession of gleaming new houses on a street so perfect that it didnt seem real.

A guide came up to us, checked our names and took us straight to the door of a house, gave us the keys, said it was ours and told us to wait because the president was on his way, Garcia said.

Each family was given a check for $25,300 to buy their house. With the houses came a list of conditions that they signed without reading. Suddenly, these homeless families -- small-scale farmers -- were part of a middle-class community.

In record time, 50 days after the storm, survivors from Los Angelitos received furnished houses with access to play spaces for children, a swimming pool, food bags, $250 a-month checks until August and a temporary exemption from paying the expenses for security and common premises.

President Bukele arrived with cameras for a speech, hugs and pictures.

He had earmarked $5 million that he said was saved from the construction of a hospital to spend on a residential community with available houses. There was no public bidding, just his decision.

He knew the decision he had taken was considered unconstitutional by many, but Bukele said, rain cannot be unconstitutional.

Public opinion is with Bukele for now. After trying to stop the presidents plans, the opposition mayor of Nejapa, lost local elections in a political landslide to the candidate of Nuevas Ideas --Bukeles party.

But among the mudslide victims, opinions are divided.

After hugging and giving the bouquet of roses to Bukele, Ines Flamenco remembered that she had to go back to Los Angelitos to tend her animals. She realized that the bus ride would cost $3 round trip. Soon shed have to pay utilities and fees.

I panicked. I barely make $5 a day.

She gave the house back.

They took me to a place without asking and then accused me of being ungrateful for a gift that I didnt ask for.

Garcia and Sanchez are keeping their new house for now, but as of July at least 28 families had decided to return them. Like Flamenco, most went back to Los Angelitos.

Cecilia Flores ailing mother got a house in Ciudad Marsella, but it sits empty. She could not live alone in the new house because of her health. If Flores was to move in with her mother, shed have to leave her children behind and quit her job selling lunches to workers at a nearby factory. Theyre back in Los Angelitos, but werent allowed to rent out their new house.

Instead of sitting down to listen and think about the options, Bukele looked for a quick photo op and created a bigger problem for people who already had a lot of problems.
BERLIN (AP)  Seeking to refire his ailing campaign, the center-right Union bloc's candidate to succeed Angela Merkel as chancellor in this month's German election named eight experts Friday to advise him on issues dear to voters, from climate change and education to security and family benefits.

Armin Laschet, who won the Union bloc's nomination after a series of fractious inner-party battles, has received particularly unfavorable reviews recently after a series of slips on the campaign trail in recent months.

Polls this week put the center-left Social Democrats ahead  helped by the relative popularity of their candidate, Finance Minister Olaf Scholz, who is also vice chancellor in Merkel's coalition government.

Speaking at the Berlin headquarters of his Christian Democratic Union party, Laschet said he wants his new team to reflect the Christian-social, liberal and conservative wings of the party.

Several of the experts are familiar faces, including former rival Friedrich Merz, who was tapped to advise Laschet on finance and business matters.

Others, like extremism researcher Peter R. Neumann and music industry manager Joe Chialo, haven't previously figured prominently in the party.

Half of the team's members are women.

Germany's parliamentary election takes place on Sept. 26. Merkel, who led the Union to four election victories, said in 2018 that she would not seek another term.

A survey released by public broadcaster ARD showed the Union bloc receiving 20% of the vote compared to 25% support for the center-left Social Democrats and 16% for the environmentalist Greens. The poll of 1,337 eligible voters conducted Aug. 30-Sept. 1 had a margin of error of two to three percentage points.

Laschet sought with Friday's announcement to put pressure on Scholz, who has been largely responsible for the Social Democrats' recent recovery after a long poll slump. Scholz's party was notorious for infighting in recent years but has shown new discipline in recent months.

Above all, I'm looking forward in the next days to seeing what other personalities the Social Democrats have to show, what the Social Democrats' future team looks like, if you give them your vote, Laschet said. A lot of people are being hidden at the moment.

That was a reference to the Social Democrats' left-leaning party leaders, whom members chose over the pragmatic Scholz in 2019, and other figures on the party's left.

As its poll ratings have declined, the Union bloc has issued increasingly frequent warnings that Scholz would form a government with the hard-left opposition Left Party. Scholz has refused to rule out that option, but it also doesn't appear very likely.

Parties don't necessarily have to finish first in German elections to win the chancellery, since much depends on what coalitions they can form in the weeks and months afterward  but it certainly helps. And a senior Laschet ally insisted that the Union must set its sights on regaining the lead.

We absolutely must not be content with second place, because second place ultimately means opposition and first place means an option to govern," said Bavarian governor Markus Soeder, who battled Laschet for the Union's nomination to run for chancellor earlier this year and has often sounded impatient with the bloc's campaign.

Soeder dismissed the idea of the Union serving as a junior coalition partner in a future government.

If the Union is not No. 1 and by some distance, then there will be a left-wing government  whether it's a very left-wing one or a diluted left-wing coalition, he said.
After a summer that saw record-breaking heat and dry conditions, meteorological fall has finally started in Western Washington. And while many residents are looking to get outside and enjoy the last of summer, state officials are urging caution due to wildfire risk.

While Friday will remain dry and warm with cloud coverage increasing through the day, chances for rain begin increasing Saturday afternoon as a cold front creeps into the area.

"A cold front will push onshore and into the region Saturday, with more widespread rain chances," the National Weather Service (NWS) in Seattle wrote in their Friday forecast discussion. "Light measurable rain is likely across most of the area, though the front will likely be weakening and losing structure as it pushes inland. Highest rainfall totals will likely be along the coast and near the Canadian border, with lower amounts across the southeastern portions of the area."

Rain is expected to linger into early Sunday morning, which will see temperatures begin to dip into the low 50s in the morning. While the weekend might see some scattered showers, Labor Day itself is expected to be sunny and dry with highs in the mid 70s.

Along with packing a rain tarp for showers, those going camping over the long holiday weekend are also advised to check local burn bans before starting any campfires amid the state's ongoing drought emergency. Earlier this week, Skagit County lifted part of its of burn ban to allow recreational fires in the areas east of the Swinomish Channel.

However, burn restrictions are still in effect on all land managed by the Department of Natural Resources (DNR), covering 13 million acres of public and private land, until Sept. 30. Burn bans are also in place for all Washington State Parks, although propane fire pits are still allowed.

"This is not the time to let our guard down," Commissioner of Public Lands Hilary Franz said in a news release Thursday. "Last year, only 93,000 acres had burned by the end of August. What happened next showed us how fast things can change  the Labor Day weekend firestorm burned more than 500,000 acres in less than 36 hours. Im asking the public to help prevent a repeat of last years tragedy by avoiding starting outdoor fires."

In 2020, fires sparked over Labor Day weekend accounted for 70% of all acres burned that year, and devastated the town of Malden with nearly 300 homes destroyed. This year's fire season has already shattered records with more than 1,716 fires around the state according to the DNR.

Weather experts have also predicted that fire season could last longer this year due to dry conditions in the spring. There are currently 12 uncontained large fires burning in Washington, according to the Northwest Interagency Coordination Center.

Areas of Lewis and Pierce County should also expect some slight haze from wildfires burning in the region this weekend, although air quality on the ground is currently not expected to be impacted.
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From Director of Visuals Nicole Fruge:

Veteran freelance photographer and Bay Area native Philip Pacheco has joined The San Francisco Chronicle as a photo editor.

Pacheco comes to The Chronicle after a nine-year career as an independent photographer, contributing to wire services like Getty Images and Agence France-Presse with his work appearing in The San Francisco Chronicle, the New York Times and the Washington Post, among many other publications.

He has documented the destruction of the 2019 Kincade Fire in Sonoma County and civil unrest in the streets of Oakland in the wake of George Floyds death.

As a photo editor at The Chronicle, Pacheco works closely with photojournalists in the field and reporters and editors across the newsroom, conceptualizing and coordinating photo assignments that capture the days news and editing the images Chronicle journalists file to get to the heart of the story.

I feel like being able to think like a photographer and understand their needs and concerns, it makes me feel good that they feel appreciated and understood, and it makes me feel appreciated and understood that I can do something like that, Pacheco said. It's a mutually beneficial thing.

Philip's background as a photojournalist is a tremendous asset. He brings a deep understanding of documentary photography, a wealth of logistical skills and invaluable fire science knowledge to The Chronicle, says Director of Visuals Nicole Fruge.

At The Chronicle, Pacheco is working for his regional hometown paper. Pacheco grew up in Alameda, and spent much of his childhood in Oakland at the cosmetics shop where his mother sold wigs in the front and did eyebrows and eyelashes in the back.

After graduating from UC Riverside, Pacheco initially worked in finance before deciding to go back to school and pursue a Master of Fine Arts degree in documentary photography at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. There, former Chronicle staff photographer and Pulitzer Prize-winner Deanne Fitzmaurice became Pachecos mentor.



She was just the biggest influence on my career, just having that person, he said. Every single time I struggled through an assignment, I would hear her advice in my head.



At The Chronicle, Pacheco is following in Fitzmaurices footsteps.

The Chronicle is somewhere I wanted to be, Pacheco said. I find it really cool that I'm here at The Chronicle where my mentor started.



About The San Francisco Chronicle

The San Francisco Chronicle (www.sfchronicle.com) is the largest newspaper in Northern California and the second largest on the West Coast. Acquired by the Hearst Corporation in 2000, The San Francisco Chronicle was founded in 1865 by Charles and Michael de Young and has been awarded six Pulitzer Prizes for journalistic excellence. Follow us on Twitter at @SFChronicle.
Good morning, Bay Area. Its Friday, Sept. 3, and a San Francisco Michelin-starred restaurant has closed. Heres what you need to know to start your day.

Normally, Labor Day weekend is one of the busiest times in the Lake Tahoe region.

But after 22,000 residents fled South Lake Tahoe, the areas most populous city, tourism is at a standstill as the Caldor Fire continues to burn and choke the air with thick smoke. Businesses are shuttered, communities are empty.

Its just been a gut punch all the way around, said Steve Teshara, CEO of Tahoe Chamber. Its a real shock to the economy. Im not sure who comes out surviving on the other end.

Tahoes tourism saw a significant rebound after long pandemic shutdowns, with many visitors coming from the Bay Area and beyond. Now the Caldor Fire has taken a huge hit on the economy. Read more from Carolyn Said and Ryan Kost.

 Firefighters managed to slow the pace of the Caldor Fire on Thursday as humidity rose and winds calmed, growing just 2,000 acres overnight. It is 27% contained.

 A black bear with burned paws found near the fire was euthanized by state wildlife officials.

 Your home is directly in the path of a fire. Firefighters arrive. Our interactive shows how they try to save it, step by step. Also: How a Caldor Fire crew saved a row of Tahoe cabins.

 Caldor Fire evacuees face exhaustion, crowds and the threat of COVID-19. The fire also has upended the lives and livelihoods of South Lake Tahoes service workers.

 After thousands evacuated the South Lake Tahoe area on Monday, police found 38 people stayed behind, including retired firefighter Scott Swift.

Bay Area air advisory

Tracy Barbutes/Special to The Chronicle

Smoke from several wildfires in Northern California has made its way into the Bay Area, causing an air advisory through Friday with parts of the East Bay seeing the highest concentrations of poor air quality.

 Though it hasnt yet come close to last years horrendous stretches of bad air, some have been complaining of ill effects during extended periods of moderate readings on the Air Quality Index. This is what we know about the impact of breathing moderate air quality for an extended period of time.

 Air quality levels have reached hazardous levels in the South Lake Tahoe area. So is it unsafe to travel to Lake Tahoe now?

 Stay updated on current air quality conditions near you with The Chronicles Air Quality Map.

Coronavirus updates

Nick Otto/Special to The Chronicle

 Berkeley is the first city to join San Francisco in requiring proof of vaccination for certain indoor activities, including at restaurants, bars and gyms.

 Nearly all teachers and other staff members in the San Francisco Unified School District reported being fully vaccinated against COVID-19.

 Bay Area feed stores are seeing an increasing number of requests for the animal drug ivermectin, an unproven treatment for COVID-19.

Around the Bay

 A big payout: A San Francisco couple have been awarded $2.7 million after being harassed by their landlord.

 Sentenced: A former San Leandro police sergeant will serve two years felony probation and pay more than $46,000 for approving overtime he did not work.

Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Check the water shortage status of your area, plus see reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts.

 Fallout over firing: The Santa Clara mayor says she is very concerned about the citys future after the City Councils decision to fire the city attorney, a critic of the 49ers.

 Analysis: The Supreme Courts ruling in a Texas abortion case may foreshadow curtailing abortion rights in another upcoming case and could also send abortion-seeking women from Texas to California.

 Walter Cronkite of the counterculture: Dave McQueen, a radio newsman with a melodious voice, dies at 78.

 Restaurant closure: In Situ, chef Corey Lees ambitious Michelin-starred restaurant at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, has closed permanently. Also: Gotts Roadside is opening a new restaurant in San Franciscos Mission Bay.

 Festival alert: Filmmaker John Waters is set to host Halloween Meltdown, a new festival by the promoters of Mosswood Meltdown, taking place in Oakland in mid-October.

Labor Day weekend getaway

Paul Chinn/The Chronicle 2020

One of the best places to escape for Labor Day weekend is Point Reyes National Seashore. There youll find clean air, plenty of coastal hikes, beautiful beaches and boat-in campsites.

The Woodford Fire in August 2020 burned thousands of acres, and the burn zone is still closed, but the park features 65,000 acres of natural beauty to explore.

Some highlights include Chimney Rock, which features a quick and easy hike with a rewarding view, the beloved Limantour Beach, and Estero Trailhead, an overlooked but awesome hike.

Read more from Tom Stienstra.

Bay Briefing is written by Kellie Hwang and Anna Buchmann and sent to readers email inboxes on weekday mornings. Sign up for the newsletter here, and contact the writers at kellie.hwang@sfchronicle.com and anna.buchmann@sfchronicle.com.
On their third attempt to leave Afghanistan and return to their home in Milpitas, just days after the Taliban seized power, the Sultani family found themselves submerged inside a huge crowd surging toward the Kabul airport gates. The only safe place for the children, aged 3 and 7, was on the shoulders of a cousin and uncle, their tiny fingers gripping their relatives heads.

Suddenly, though, the childrens father lost sight of his 7-year-old daughter.

There were lots of people and they were trying to push everybody and my daughter fell on the ground from my cousins shoulder, said the man, whom The Chronicle is identifying only by his last name to protect family members still in Afghanistan. My wife was crying. I was crying. It was very tough.

For an hour, Sultani and his wife pressed through the heaving masses until they found their child, safe with a cousin. By this point, the U.S. military was no longer allowing anyone to enter the airport. The family returned to the home of Sultanis parents feeling defeated. It was Aug. 19, just 12 days before the U.S. would completely withdraw from its 20-year campaign in Afghanistan. News of Taliban reprisals in the provinces were coming in. The Sultani family was running out of time.

Jessica Christian/The Chronicle

Sultani had worked as a human resources administrator for the U.S. government. When his life was threatened by the Taliban in 2014, he obtained a Special Immigrant Visa, available to Afghans who had worked with the U.S., and was able to take his family to safety. Sultani, his wife and daughter arrived in California in 2017; his youngest child was born soon thereafter. The family had returned to Kabul this summer to visit family when the Taliban seized power and their desperate attempts to return home began.

That very night, the family decided to try to depart again. As they approached the airport gates, passports at the ready, Sultanis father was beaten, he believes by Taliban soldiers. But they made it past the airport gates, thanks in no small part to a direct line Sultani managed to get to Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Fremont, whose office was working around the clock to help families leave the country. As members of Congress were working overtime to help with evacuations, a friend of Sultanis got in touch with one of Khannas colleagues from Pennsylvania, who passed the case along.

While thousands attempted to flee Afghanistan last week, the Sultanis harrowing journey offers a glimpse not only of the chaos on the ground, but also of how important connecting with officials in the U.S. was in finally getting his family onto a flight out.

In a speech Tuesday, one week after the Sultanis finally arrived at San Francisco International Airport, President Biden called the U.S.-led evacuation effort an extraordinary success, citing the 120,000 people who were airlifted out over 17 days. He also said those who remained had chosen to stay. As Sultani watched the president speak on the large television in his Milpitas living room, finally home after a grueling five-day journey, he scoffed, muted the TV and looked out the window.

Jessica Christian/The Chronicle

Khanna said in an interview that the State Department worked in concert with every member of Congress during the 17-day evacuation period, and that the agency official assigned to work with him would respond within the hour whenever Khannas office contacted them about a constituents case. Khanna said this was essential during the repeated attempts it took for Sultani to get his family into the airport.

I was on the phone with (Sultanis friend) personally, (hearing) about how they were getting beaten getting to the airport, Khanna said.

But as responsive as Khanna felt the State Department was, he is now concerned about the estimated 200 to 300 Americans and thousands of U.S.-affiliated Afghans left behind. His office alone believes it knows of nine citizens and one green card holder still stranded.

Are we going to tell families you need to get to the Pakistan border? Are we going to tell them, here is a place you can go? Khanna wondered. What we need is specifics, and who the contacts are.

The scramble over the past two weeks to get people out of Afghanistan has also required the involvement of the Afghan community worldwide, said Mejgan Massoumi, historian of modern Afghanistan and a fellow at Stanford University. She has been part of that effort.

Massoumi has cousins and colleagues who are desperate to leave the country because they fear for their lives. But they are not American citizens, and likely wouldnt qualify for special visas because they didnt work directly with the U.S.

For the past two weeks, Ive been sleepless, helping members of my own family and friends figure out a way out of Afghanistan, she said. Weve been engaged in this evacuation process and weve sort of assumed the role of a learn-as-you-go immigration lawyer for our loved ones back home.

Jessica Christian/The Chronicle

The need for many people to get out is real, she said. Family members inside of Afghanistan are telling us they either had verbal or written threats from the Taliban, Massoumi said. Some are taking photos of degrees from the American University of Afghanistan or other documentation that shows connections to the United States, then destroying it.

Theyre burning these documents because theyre scared that if the Taliban show up at their home ... they will be persecuted on the spot, Massoumi said.

Like many in the Bay Areas Afghan diaspora, watching the current situation brings back difficult memories for Massoumi, who fled Afghanistan in 1980. This is a moment of trauma for me, she said. Im seeing the same thing, the plight of the refugee  thats what my family went through, (but) we left by camels and via coyotes  people who smuggle migrants  before we got asylum.

Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Check the water shortage status of your area, plus see reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts.

That trauma is widespread, said Holly Taines White, communications director at Jewish Family & Community Services East Bay. Her organization has been resettling Afghans since 2008. A lot of them have been living under this intense level of fear and trauma for years, as theyve been wading through the bureaucracy of applying for their visas, she said.

In August, the organization resettled 69 Afghans, and it has accepted 60 more who are currently at the Fort Lee military base in Virginia. Some have a family member or friend they can stay with when they arrive in California, but many need everything, from a furnished apartment to help enrolling kids in school. The East Bay agency is placing most families in the Concord area because of the significant Afghan population already residing there.

We really try to find them housing near community so they arent isolated, Taines White said.

The Sultani family had a home to return to, and Sultani has part-time work. But as they settle back into the Bay Area, Sultani longs for a good job, for an employer who would make use of the six languages he speaks. He is currently a legal permanent resident, and in a few years will be eligible to apply for citizenship.

As soon as I get my citizenship, I will apply for the police department, he said.

In the meantime, he dreams of working as a journalist, hosting a multilingual radio show that would connect families like his here in the Bay Area with interviews, music and news from Afghanistan.

Inshallah, Su

ltani said. If Allah wills it.

Deepa Fernandes and Tal Kopan are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: deepa.fernandes@sfchronicle.com, tal.kopan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @deepafern, @TalKopan
The fermentation tanks at South Lake Tahoes largest brewery are full of beer  the equivalent of 200 barrels worth at least $100,000 at retail. If it sits too long, it will have to be tossed, so South Lake Brewing Co. owners Nicole and Chris Smith, who last week evacuated to Santa Cruz, are working a plan to get back to the brewery, even if just for a few hours.

They want to tend to the tanks and rescue another 250 kegs of stranded beer to keep product moving. We just thought of this idea in the last 24 to 48 hours, Nicole Smith said. Were still working on the logistics of it.

Theyre among scores of local business owners anxiously waiting out the massive Caldor Fire, fearful of what it could do to enterprises still recovering from the pandemic shutdowns.

Its just been a gut punch all the way around, said Steve Teshara, CEO of Tahoe Chamber. Its a real shock to the economy. Im not sure who comes out surviving on the other end. It doesnt matter if youre a large resort or a small restaurant or retail shop  everybody is getting impacted.

Bronte Wittpenn/The Chronicle

Tourism is the lifeblood of Lake Tahoes economy, with some 15 million visitors a year coming to enjoy the natural beauty straddling the California and Nevada border. Catering to those visitors accounts for 62% of the regions some $5 billion in economic input and the lions share of local jobs. Historically, Labor Day weekend is a final flurry of heavy tourism before the slower days of autumn.

All that is at a standstill now, as the Caldor Fire thunders toward the lake while smoke chokes the air and ashes rain from the sky. South Lake Tahoe, the regions most populous city, was evacuated by Monday, with 22,000 people fleeing the flames and all businesses shuttered. Nearby communities likewise are eerily empty. The City of South Lake Tahoe estimates economic losses of roughly $21 million for hotels and $19.4 million for restaurants and retail establishments since smoke started pouring into the area weeks ago, disrupting commerce well before the evacuation.

Obviously there is no one there, so no money is coming in, said Devin Middlebrook, mayor pro tem of South Lake Tahoe. A lot of residents depend on work in the service and hospitality industries, and dont necessarily have salaries and a paycheck coming in, so when there is no work that is an extremely large burden on them.

Nicole Smith from South Lake Brewing worries about her employees who are now out of jobs, especially the folks who work front of house, since most of their income relies on tips.

Were doing the best we can to maybe get them back on unemployment, she says. Shes also trying to put together a small business-focused GoFundMe for the area to get money into hands faster than government programs.

The burden will also fall on the city itself, Middlebrook said, as it gets most of its revenue to fund public services  everything from paving roads to paying police officers  from hotel taxes and sales taxes, volatile sources that are heavily impacted by the shutdowns.

The current disaster underscores the urgent need for the region to diversify its economy, said Heidi Hill Drum, executive director of the Tahoe Prosperity Center, an economic development nonprofit serving the entire Tahoe Basin region.

Anything can impact our economy in an instant, as it did with this fire, she said. No one is staying in hotels or eating in restaurants, so all the jobs were gone overnight.

Bronte Wittpenn/The Chronicle

Heavy dependence on visitors creates a feast-famine cycle, which the community hopes to balance by fostering sectors such as health and wellness and environmental innovation, she said.

An influx of Zoomtown Bay Area tech workers who moved to the idyllic region during the pandemic was one bright spot during the shutdowns, Hill Drum said. In fact, Tahoe is looking at ways to lure more remote workers, although some residents resent the newcomers.

After the devastation of the long pandemic shutdowns, Tahoe tourism had rebounded earlier this summer, thanks to its easy accessibility for drive-in visitors from the Bay Area and elsewhere.

Until mid-August, all our lodging brethren were having amazing months of business, said Jerry Bindel, general manager of Forest Suites Resort at Heavenly Village in South Lake Tahoe. Tahoe was a very popular spot, during COVID  its outdoors, socially distanced, nature-oriented and driveable.

In fact, businesses were struggling to find enough employees, because many lower-wage workers left during the COVID shutdowns and housing remains critically tight, Hill Drum said.

Rebekah Havard tells the same story as many others, about an incredible summer cut short. She and her husband, Don Havard, run three businesses  Chicken in a Barrel, a BBQ spot; Baked Bear, an ice cream sandwich shop; and the concession stand down on El Dorado Beach.

Summer was actually pretty amazing for us up here in Tahoe, she says. They were both working 16-hour days to keep up.

Now the city is empty on what should be one of the busiest weekends of the summer. Not to have that as a cushion? Thats scary, she says.

The fire has left her with lots of questions and few answers: When will residents be allowed back? When will tourists return? Did she and her husband purchase the right insurance? Will it cover this interruption in business?

Theres just so many unknowns, she says. Whatever happens, theyll push through it.

This is our livelihood right here. This is what weve chosen to do with our life  theres not an option not to succeed.

The family-owned Forest Suites has been open with a skeleton staff this week, with about 60 of its 119 suites occupied by firefighters, city emergency staff, police officers and other support people. But on Wednesday, with the flames closing in, those first responders were moved to Lake Tahoe Resort Hotel.

Bronte Wittpenn/The Chronicle

Bindel is remaining on site with a maintenance worker  and just got word that he may be mustered into service to do laundry for 700 firefighters.

One silver lining is that, other than Labor Day weekend, autumn is usually a slower time of year.

This is going into our shoulder season, Bindel said. Were optimistic that this wont hurt us as much because it didnt happen in the middle of the peak (summer and winter) seasons.

And the area has been spared the worst-case scenario so far.

Fire Tracker Follow wildfires across the state Latest updates on wildfires burning across Northern and Southern California

As far as we know nothings been lost yet, not a home, not a business, said Teshara of Tahoe Chamber.

So far, the major ski resorts seem to have emerged relatively unscathed. But ski season, of course, heavily depends on snow, and Californias extended drought will have an impact there.

The past two years have been bad in snowfalls, but hopefully if we get a good winter, it will bring in more money and add more water to the landscape for the next fire season, Middlebrook said. If the (drought) trend continues, it will be another stressor on the local economy.

Chris Thornberg, founder of consulting firm Beacon Economics, said fires and other natural disasters just have short-term economic impacts. He thinks the biggest issues threatening the economy are labor shortages and the housing crisis.

Lake Tahoe is a beautiful place, and when the air cleans out, people will go back, he said. The fire is just one more hit after a bizarre year and a half.

But for individual small businesses, thats scant comfort.

Coming on the heels of COVID, I imagine some businesses just may be done, Heidi Hill Drum said.

Chris Little, whos lived in South Lake Tahoe for over 20 years, just opened Pup Culture, a dog grooming business.

I had to close my doors and evacuate town less than a week after opening, he said. Im scared for the next coming days as winds and fire conditions are not in our favor. I dont know how Im going to be able to pay all of my bills on time, and I dont know when I will be able to continue work.

San Jose resident Michael Taravella, a retired chef, owns a two-bedroom ranch home in South Lake Tahoe that he and his partner purchased in 1998. Renting it to tourists provides the bulk of his retirement income.

Hes lost $3,000  so far  in cancellations. Three weeks ago, before the fires were a direct threat but when they already affected air quality, he had guests drive from Las Vegas.

They spent one night and said, Theres no way; everythings shut down and ash is falling like snow,  he recalled. He refunded their full rent.

I dont foresee anyone contacting me to book our place in the near future, he said.

Carolyn Said and Ryan Kost are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: csaid@sfchronicle.com, rkost@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @csaid, @ryankost
An adult black bear that had third-degree burns on its paws from the Caldor Fire was euthanized by state wildlife officials, authorities said Thursday.

A firefighter battling the blaze in the Meyers area spotted the injured bear on Tuesday and alerted officers with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, who responded to the scene to assess the burns, Kirsten Macintyre, a fish and wildlife spokesperson told The Chronicle.

State wildlife officials typically try to transport injured animals and treat them and rehabilitate them, Macintyre said, but added that its not always possible.

Bears are typically taken to the departments facility in Rancho Cordova, she said.

Kyle Glau, a warden with the CDFW said wildlife officers who were in the area assisting with evacuations were notified of the bear. The fire line was encroaching on the bear, Glau said, and wildlife officers at the scene determined that if they didnt euthanize the bear basically right then and there, that it was going to burn to death, Glau said.

Chronicle photographers at the scene observed the bear licking its paws and resting on a rock near a tree. At one point, it attempted to walk. A Wildfire Defense Systems crew that had been patrolling nearby homes to ensure there werent any spot fires endangering residences found the bear, according to Chronicle photographers. The crew named it Tenderfoot.

Flames from the Caldor Fire did not appear to be causing imminent danger to the area the bear was located while Chronicle photographers were at the scene. Law enforcement officers were asking media to keep a distance from the animal while additional wildlife officials were en route to the area.

Wildlife officers sent photographs to state wildlife veterinarians, who determined the bear was too large to transport out of the active fire area, and that the bear would not survive in the blaze if authorities left the bear in the area, Macintyre said.

Fire Tracker Follow wildfires across the state Latest updates on wildfires burning across Northern and Southern California

It was a combination of the fact that the injuries were bad and there was no easy way to transport him out of the area because it was an active fire scene with firefighting going on, Macintyre said. If he hadnt been so injured, he probably would have tried to get away from the firefighters in the first place, but he was just too injured to move.

The area near where the bear was located has been scorched by the blaze. The Caldor Fire has burned 210,893 acres and was 27% contained on Thursday evening, Cal Fire officials said.

As of Thursday, this has been the only case where state wildlife officials have euthanized an animal in response to wildfire burns for the Caldor Fire, Glau said. State wildlife officials do expect more reports of injured wildlife connected to the blaze, pointing to the Tahoe Basin region that is known to be populated by bears and deer.

Lauren Hernndez is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: lauren.hernandez@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @ByLHernandez
As the Caldor Fire crept east toward South Lake Tahoe early this week, thousands of residents were forced to pack up what belongings they could and abandon their homes amid increasingly smoky and dangerous conditions.

Calmer winds and increased humidity Thursday and Friday have helped fire crews keep the flames at bay. But despite some cautious optimism among fire crews about the state of the blaze, fire officials said it will be some time before residents of the regions largest city are allowed to return home.

It could be some point in the next week, it could be two weeks, said Parker Wilbourn, a fire spokesperson with Cal Fire. We just dont know at this point.

The timeline for the areas repopulation will depend on several factors. Before anyone is allowed to return, utility companies will have to make sure power is back in place. Fire crews will have to clear fallen trees and other threats to power lines, and structures and roadways will have to be cleared of debris and firefighting equipment, Wilbourn said.

Crews are working to tamp down hotspots while keeping an eye on drifting embers that could potentially spark new ones.

Were cautiously optimistic. Were making good progress, Wilbourn said.

As of Friday morning, no structures in South Lake Tahoe had burned, Wilbourn said. A forestry reduction program that removed some of the dry fuel in the area, paired with firefighters efforts and the foresight of individuals who worked to keep their homes free of fire fuel before they left, have helped keep the flames away from private properties.

The Caldor Fire, among the largest burning in Northern California, had scorched 212,907 acres by Friday morning and was 29% contained, up from 27% contained Thursday evening.

The public is reminded to stay vigilant on current fire conditions, Cal Fire said in a tweet Thursday. Please continue to adhere to road closures and any evacuation orders and warnings. A reminder to drive slowly and yield to emergency personnel in the area.

Fire Tracker Follow wildfires across the state Latest updates on wildfires burning across Northern and Southern California

El Dorado County evacuation orders, which are imposed when there is an immediate threat to life, were downgraded to evacuation warnings on Thursday in West Omo, Omo Ranch and Barney Ridge. Evacuation warnings were lifted in Cement Hill, Farnham Ridge, Cosumnes, Mt. Aukum, Coyoteville, Mosquito and Carson White Oak.

The El Dorado County Sheriffs Office has a map with the most up to date evacuation information. Residents are urged to monitor the map and any updates from official sources.

Were going to do everything we can to get (people) back in their homes, Wilbourn said. Were just asking for some patience.

Andy Picon is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: andy.picon@hearst.com Twitter: @andpicon
MADISON, Wis. (AP)  Wisconsin's $100 reward program for those receiving the COVID-19 vaccine will be extended two weeks until Sept. 19, Gov. Tony Evers announced Friday.

Also, the state's second-highest ranking health official who has been the public face for fighting the pandemic announced she is retiring in a week. The departure of Julie Willems Van Dijk, 61, means that the state's two top health officials at the start of the pandemic in 2020 have now left.

Extending the $100 incentive, which began Aug. 20 and was originally scheduled to end on Monday, will give an opportunity for even more people to get vaccinated, Evers said. Between Aug. 20 and Sept. 1, more than 65,000 people received their first dose.

Evers launched the program amid a spike in COVID-19 cases across the state caused by the more infectious delta variant. The seven-day average of new cases in Wisconsin is at a level not seen since early January, before the vaccine was widely available. The number of people hospitalized is also at levels not seen since January.

On Aug. 22, the day before Evers announced the program, the seven-day average of vaccinations in Wisconsin was 8,360. That grew to 9,712 as of Wednesday. More than 3 million people are fully vaccinated in Wisconsin, about 52% of the total population. Among adults age 18 and over, more than 62% are fully vaccinated.

Willems Van Dijk, who has spearheaded the state's response to COVID-19, will retire effective Sept. 10, Evers' administration said. Her departure comes after her boss, former Department of Health Services Secretary Andrea Palm, quit in January to join the Biden administration as deputy secretary at the U.S. Department of Health Services.

After nearly 40 years of service as a nurse and public health leader, it is time that I recommit to the needs of my family, Willems Van Dijk said in a statement.

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Deb Standridge will replace Willems Van Dijk. Standridge served as executive director of the state's now-shuttered COVID-19 field hospital at the state fair grounds.

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Associated Press writer Todd Richmond contributed to this story.
WASHINGTON (AP)  Americas employers added just 235,000 jobs in August, a surprisingly weak gain after two months of robust hiring and the clearest sign to date that the delta variants spread has discouraged some people from flying, shopping and eating out.

The August job growth the government reported Friday fell far short of the sizable gains of roughly 1 million in each of the previous two months. The hiring jumps in June and July had followed widespread vaccinations that allowed the economy to fully reopen from pandemic restrictions. Now, with Americans buying fewer plane tickets, reducing hotel stays and filling fewer entertainment venues, some employers in those areas have slowed their hiring.

Still, the number of job openings remains at record levels, with many businesses eager for workers, and hiring is likely to rebound in the coming months. Even last month's modest job growth was sufficient to lower the unemployment rate to 5.2% from 5.4% in July. With consumers willing to spend and companies trying to hire, the U.S. economy looks healthy.

The details of Friday's jobs report showed how the delta variant held back job growth last month. The sectors of the economy where hiring was weakest  restaurants, hotels and retailers  were mainly those that require face-to-face contact with the public. More Americans said they were unable to work in August because their employer closed or lost business to the pandemic than said so in July.

Hiring in the category that includes restaurants, bars and hotels sank to zero in August after those sectors had added roughly 400,000 jobs in both June and July. Restaurant dining, after having fully recovered in late June, has declined to about 9% below pre-pandemic levels, according to reservations website OpenTable.

Some live shows, including the remaining concerts on country star Garth Brooks tour, have been canceled. Businesses are delaying their returns to offices, threatening the survival of some downtown restaurants, coffee shops and dry cleaners.

The delta variant has taken a bigger toll on the job market than many of us had hoped," said Sarah House, a senior economist at Wells Fargo. "Its going to take workers longer to come back to the labor market than we expected.

As a consequence, many economists now predict that the Federal Reserve won't make a long-awaited announcement that it will begin dialing back its low-interest rate policies until November or later.

The August jobs report slams the door on the prospect of the Fed announcing a pullback when it meets later this month, House said. Fed Chair Jerome Powell made clear last week that the central bank would begin to reverse its ultra-low-rate policies later this year if the economy continued to improve.

A lack of available workers remains a major hurdle to robust hiring. A few months ago, many economists had expected a fading pandemic to encourage more people to resume their job searches. Worries about getting sick on the job would fade, they hoped. And as schools reopened, more parents, particularly women, would return to the workforce.

So far, that hasn't happened. But the demand for workers remains strong. The job listings website Indeed says the number of available jobs grew in August. And the National Federation for Independent Business said its surveys show that half of small businesses have jobs they cannot fill.

Across the economy, that difficulty is compelling employers to offer higher pay. Average hourly wages rose a robust 4.3% in August compared with a year earlier.

Walmart announced this week that it will hire 20,000 people to expand its supply chain and online shopping operations, including jobs for order fillers, drivers, and managers. Amazon said Wednesday that it is looking to fill 40,000 jobs in the U.S., mostly technology and hourly positions.

And Fidelity Investments said Tuesday that it is adding 9,000 more jobs, including in customer service and IT. In such sectors, where face-to-face contact with the public isn't generally required, hiring remains strong.

Among the beneficiaries is Hailey Uejo, who began working Aug. 1 as a project manager at VIDSIG, a San Francisco-based company that provides a live video chat platform whereby customers can interact with celebrities and experts. Previously, Uejo, 24, had worked as a special education teacher. But she felt burnt out by online classes.

COVID gave me the excuse to try something new, she said.

Jonathan Yarnold, CEO of VIDSIG, said the delta variant hasnt affected his companys plans to add 20 to 25 jobs.

Likewise, Sean O'Scannlain, chief executive of Fortune International, which imports, processes and distributes seafood, said his company is on track for record sales and has topped pre-pandemic levels. The delta variant hasn't slowed demand from the higher-end restaurants and grocery stores he supplies.

Yet O'Scannlain said he's struggling to fill 42 open jobs for truck drivers, warehouse workers, accountants and sales workers. He said he thinks that a $300-a-week federal unemployment supplement, which began in March, discouraged some would-be job seekers.

Other factors, too, OScannlain said, have made it harder to hire: Because big companies such as Amazon and Walmart have raised wages, he has had to match their higher pay. Overall, he's raised pay 10% to 15% from a year ago. And some people fear becoming sick on the job from delta.

Those fears were easing in the spring as the numbers were coming down, he said. As infections have spiked, those concerns have risen again.

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Governors in about 25 states stopped paying the $300-a-week federal jobless benefit in June and July because, they said, the extra money was discouraging recipients from looking for work. Yet the proportion of Americans with jobs or searching for one was flat in August, Friday's report showed, suggesting that the cutoff has had little impact so far. Some academic research has found that the early cutoffs have led to only a small increase in hiring.

The $300 payment, as well as two federal programs that cover the self-employed and gig workers, and the long-term unemployed, are set to end next week. About 8.9 million people will lose all their unemployment aid as a result.

One of them is Marianne Leblanc. A live-events designer, Leblanc, 58, lives in Las Vegas, where she used to oversee huge corporate displays at conferences such as the Consumer Electronics Show. Once the pandemic hit, all that work dried up.

Leblanc recently accepted a nine-week temporary job that will require her to fly to several cities, many of them with high COVID counts, which she is reluctant to do because she has lupus, which weakens the immune system.

She is also interviewing for a permanent job, but she has seen previous opportunities fall through. She fears losing the home she rents once her jobless aid ends.

Its been an emotional roller-coaster for the past year and a half," Leblanc said, and its just being amplified by the impending loss of aid.

The hiring slowdown in the U.S. contrasts with an improved picture in Europe, which has passed the U.S. in total vaccine doses and a levelling-off of new infections is helping limit deltas impact.

Retail and recreation activity in Europe has now exceeded its pre-pandemic level, and European Union officials say theyve reached their goal of fully vaccinating 70% of adults by summers end, a higher proportion than in the U.S. In addition, France, Germany and Italy have restricted the access of unvaccinated people to indoor dining and other activities.

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AP Writer David McHugh contributed to this report from Frankfurt, Germany.
INDIANAPOLIS (AP)  Indianas largest hospital system will be stopping all inpatient non-emergency surgeries as the state faces a growing surge of COVID-19 hospitalizations.

Indiana University Health announced Thursday that the surgery suspension would start Monday. The decision comes after IU Health said last week it was cutting such surgeries by half.

The surge of COVID-19 patient volumes has continued to accelerate at a rapid pace, and this temporary change is needed to further relieve pressure on our care teams and to free up space for critically ill patients, IU Health said in a statement.

Indiana hospitals were treating 2,366 COVID-19 patients as of Wednesday, according to the state health department. That is double the number of COVID-19 patients from 24 days earlier.

IU Health, which operates 16 hospitals around the state, also said that more than 200 employees did not meet Wednesdays deadline to get COVID-19 vaccinations and would be suspended immediately. The system announced the requirement in June for its some 36,000 employees.

IU Health has said unvaccinated workers will be placed on a two-week suspension and will be allowed to return to work if they attest to partial or full vaccination.

Vaccinating team members is a safe and effective way to protect patients and help reduce the spread of COVID-19 in facilities and in the community, IU Health spokesman Jeff Swiatek told the Indianapolis Business Journal.

Health officials blame Indianas rapid surge in coronavirus infections and hospitalizations on the highly contagious delta variant, which has been identified in 98% of Indiana COVID-19 samples tested in the past month.

Along with hospitalizations, Indianas COVID-19 deaths and intensive care unit cases have surged since falling to the pandemics lowest levels in June and July.

Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Check the water shortage status of your area, plus see reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts.

The state health department on Thursday added 23 COVID-19 deaths to Indianas toll, raising the pandemic total to 14,845 fatalities of people with confirmed or presumed coronavirus infections.

Indiana hospitals reported about 610 ICU patients with COVID-19 as of Wednesday, taking up 28% of available ICU beds. The number of such ICU patients is nearly three times what it was at the start of August.

The Indiana Hospital Association said the states health system is strained by the delta variants spread at a time when Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tracking shows Indiana has the countrys 15th lowest rate of residents fully vaccinated at 46.5%.

There is a massive storm cloud of this virus sweeping up through Indiana and increasing our states vaccination rate is the most effective way to ease the burden on our courageous health care heroes and ensure a hospital bed for every Hoosier that needs one, hospital association President Brian Tabor said.
SPRINGFIELD, Mass. (AP)  Leaders at a Massachusetts hospital group swamped by a new wave of COVID-19 patients are appealing to the public to help handle the latest outbreak.

Springfield-based Baystate Health has 18% of the states cases but just 5.5% of the states hospital beds, leadership said Thursday.

There were just four patients with the coronavirus in Baystate's four hospitals on July 4, but that had surged to more than 100 at one point this week, President and CEO Dr. Mark Keroack said. It had dropped to 89 as of Thursday.

Baystate operates hospitals in Springfield, Greenfield, Westfield and Palmer.

We are appealing to the community to help us," he said. Everyone in the community has a role to mitigate the effects of this crisis and to help us be there for everybody who needs us.

Baystate officials are speaking with local governments, boards of health, employers and venues, including the The Big E, about mask and vaccine mandates.

Hampden County, where Springfield is located, has just a 52% vaccination rate, compared to 66% for the state as a whole. Three-quarters of Baystate's hospitalized COVID-19 patients are unvaccinated, he said.

The surge in coronavirus patients is straining the entire system, which like many hospitals, is understaffed, he said.

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BROADWAY IN BOSTON

Broadway in Boston on Friday joined several others arts and cultural organizations in the city requiring patrons to show proof of vaccination to attend a performance.

The rule in response to rising coronavirus case counts is in effect until Dec. 31.

It applies to Hadestown, which opens Nov. 2 at the Citizens Bank Opera House and the ongoing Blue Man Group show at the Charles Playhouse.

Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Check the water shortage status of your area, plus see reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts.

The unvaccinated may provide proof of a negative COVID-19 test taken within 72 hours of the performance, or an antigen test within 24 hours.

Masks will also be required for all audience members, employees, crew, and vendors.

As conditions change, we may need to change our protocols based on public health guidelines and applicable law," the organization said.

Tthe Boston Symphony Orchestra and Boston Ballet announced proof-of-vaccination policies earlier this week.
Even before a strict abortion ban took effect in Texas this week, clinics in neighboring states were fielding growing numbers of calls from women desperate for options.

An Oklahoma clinic had received more than double its number of typical inquiries, two-thirds of them from Texas. A Kansas clinic is anticipating a patient increase of up to 40% based on calls from women in Texas. A Colorado clinic that already had started seeing more patients from other states was preparing to ramp up supplies and staffing in anticipation of the law taking effect.

The Texas law, allowed to stand in a decision Thursday by the U.S. Supreme Court, bans abortions once medical professionals can detect cardiac activity, typically around six weeks. In a highly unusual twist, enforcement will be done by private citizens who can sue anyone they believe is violating the law.

Theres real panic about how are they going to get an abortion within six weeks, said Anna Rupani, co-director of Fund Texas Choice, one of several nonprofits that help pay for travel and other expenses for patients seeking out-of-state abortions. Theres this fear that if I cant get it done in six weeks, I may not be able to get it done because I may not be able to leave my job or my family for more than a day.

Traveling for an abortion may be impossible for women who would struggle to find child care or take time off work. And for those without legal U.S. status along Texas southern border, traveling to an abortion clinic also entails the risk of getting stopped at a checkpoint.

Fund Texas Choice is among the groups seeking to expand a network that helps women in Texas and other places with restrictive abortion laws end their pregnancies in other states. It already has seen more women reaching out. The organization typically handles 10 new cases per week but received 10 calls from new clients just Wednesday, when the law took effect.

The phenomenon is not new. Women have been increasingly seeking out-of-state abortions as Republican legislatures and governors have passed ever-tighter abortion laws, particularly in the South. At least 276,000 women terminated their pregnancies outside their home state between 2012 and 2017, according to a 2019 Associated Press analysis of state and federal data.

The trend appears to have accelerated over the past year. Abortion clinics in neighboring states began seeing an uptick in calls from Texas after Gov. Greg Abbott banned abortions in March 2020 for nearly a month under a COVID-19 executive order.

The number of Texans seeking abortions in Planned Parenthood clinics in the Rocky Mountain region, which covers Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming and southern Nevada, was 12 times higher that month. In California, 7,000 patients came from other states to Planned Parenthood clinics in 2020.

The number of Texans getting abortions in Kansas jumped from 25 in 2019 to 289 last year. The Trust Women clinic in Wichita accounted for 203 of those procedures in a three-month period. Those patients traveled an average of 650 miles (1,000 kilometers), Trust Women spokesman Zack Gingrich-Gaylord said.

Last year was a dress rehearsal, he said, predicting similar numbers under the new Texas law.

One woman discovered she was pregnant just as Abbott's emergency order banning abortions was lifted. She and her partner had lost their jobs in San Antonio during the pandemic.

We didnt know which way the world was going to go with everything shut down and no change in sight, said Miranda, who spoke on the condition that only her first name be used for fear of harassment and intimidation. The last thing I wanted to do was be pregnant.

She struggled to find an abortion clinic that could help her. An online search led her to Fund Texas Choice and the Lilith Fund, another organization that offers financial assistance to Texans seeking abortions. They offered to pay for a flight to New Mexico.

Its so comforting because its like someone saying, We got you. Lets take care of this together," Miranda said.

Eventually, she found an appointment at a clinic in Dallas, a five-hour drive away. The groups helped with gas and lodging, aid that will be even more important with the new law, Miranda said.

To be able to help me in a time of need when I had nothing, not even a job  thats something I think a lot of women would benefit from if they knew those options were there, she said.

Trust Women Wichita clinic director Ashley Brink said the phones have been busier than normal this week with potential patients from Texas and beyond. Women also have been calling from Louisiana and Alabama who would typically get abortion care in Texas but are having to travel even farther.

The clinic typically sees 40 to 50 abortion patients in a week and now is expecting an additional 15 to 20.

At Trust Women's clinic in Oklahoma City, 80 appointments were scheduled over the past two days, more than double the typical amount, co-executive director Rebecca Tong said. Two-thirds were from Texas, and the earliest opening was three weeks out.

Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Check the water shortage status of your area, plus see reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts.

Oklahoma has just barely enough clinics for the amount of people here, Tong said. If anyone is thinking, Oh, they can just go out of state, itll be so easy, a lot of clinics in the Midwest and South, we dont do abortion care five days a week.

Oklahoma providers also face the potential for abortion restrictions similar to those in Texas in a matter of months.

In recent months, 15% of patients supported by Cobalt, an abortion access advocacy group in Colorado, were from out of state, president Karen Middleton said. She expects that number to keep rising.

The group administers a fund to cover the cost of the procedure, travel, lodging and meals. It began preparing for a potential influx of patients from Texas several weeks ago.

We reached out to everyone who provides abortion care in the state of Colorado, Middleton said. We asked them to be ready and to let us know if they could handle increased capacity.

Traveling for the procedure may still be out of reach for some. Women without legal U.S. status might turn to abortion medication, said Diana Gomez, advocacy manager with Progress Texas, though even that option is in question.

Several Republican-led states have passed laws making it harder to access the pills and banning prescriptions through virtual health visits. Texas is considering similar restrictions, which could force women to get pills by mail for do-it-yourself abortions or other methods.

They are going to have to go underground and find alternative means in our state, Gomez said.

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Associated Press writer David Crary in New York contributed to this report. Samuels 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.
Amid a state filled with smoke, fire and Labor Day Weekend crowds, the best escape is to Point Reyes National Seashore in West Marin, which has clean air and plenty of space, an array of coastal hikes, beaches, lagoons and boat-in campsites.

A year ago, the Woodward Fire closed the park and burned 4,929 acres, mainly south of Limantour Road. While the burn zone is still closed to the public, as fire recovery experts continue to identify and remove hazard trees, the park still has more than 65,000 acres available with an array of roads, trailheads, beaches, lagoons, lakes and bays to explore.

Here are several places you can visit there this weekend.

Easy hikes

Point Reyes Lighthouse: From the parking lot theres a quick, 0.4-mile walk downhill to the renovated Point Reyes Lighthouse and its observation deck, which features a spectacular lookout across the Pacific. On a clear day you can see to the Farallon Islands and across the Whale Highway. The trip back up is steep. COVID restrictions have closed the lighthouse and visitor center and canceled docent-led tours.

Chimney Rock: This is a spectacular, easy, half-mile hike across a ridge to the headlands, where you can turn back and take in a spectacular view: the ocean on one side, the bay on the other. The trail then leads to the cliff edge above the ocean for a view of a series of rock stacks  the biggest is Chimney Rock.

Tule Elk Reserve: From Pierce Point Ranch, hike on the Tomales Point Trail, a service road, north. You can break off for a ridge-top view of Tomales Bay to the east and the ocean to the west. Herds of tule elk, collecting in sub herds for mating, are sprinkled across the reserve. Bring your binoculars and keep your distance.

McClure Beach : Parking is located at the end of Pierce Point Road, then a half-mile walk to McClure Beach, one of the more secluded beachfronts on the coast. Driftwood Beach is nestled to the adjacent north.

Abbotts Lagoon: This trail descends an easy mile to Abbotts Lagoon to your left, adjoined by coastal sand dunes. Trail then extends to a wilderness beach, 3.2-mile round trip. Pristine.

Tomales Bay

Boat-in campsites: Launch your kayak or small boat from the county-operated Miller Boat Ramp on the east side of Tomales Bay. Time your trip for a windless morning and benign tidal sequence. The campsites are nestled along the wind-sheltered western shore of the bay. Sites available at www.recreation.gov.

Sir Francis Drake Boulevard

Drakes Estero kayak access: On Sir Francis Drake, continue driving past the turnoff for the Estero Trailhead to a left turn (Oyster Road, usually unsigned) at the foot of a deep cove (Schooner Bay) of the estero. Turn left here and drive to parking and access on your right. There is no dock. You hand launch on a muddy shore.

Estero Trailhead: One of the best hikes in the Bay Area, often overlooked. The trail leads through woodlands and then emerges at the foot of Home Bay (1.25 miles in, one way), then crosses a bridge to a coastal ridge with spectacular views of Drakes Estero. Can be extended to gorgeous Sunset Beach; 7.8-mile round trip.

Limantour

Limantour Beach: A slow drive through road repairs, with the burn area from the Woodward Fire to the south, leads to spectacular Limantour Beach, one of the most loved coastal expanses anywhere. Hike north along a sand spit to the mouth of the estero, south toward Sculptured Beach, or pick a seat and take in the expanse of Drakes Bay.

Coast Trail: Turn off Sir Francis Drake and park near the Point Reyes Hostel. A piece of Coast Trail leads along a creek on a service road and emerges at Santa Maria Beach. The trail is then closed in the fire zone to the immediate south.

Coast Camp: Hike-in trail campsites are sold out for the weekend, with sites becoming available in September. Reserve at www.recreation.gov. Its a near-flat 2.8 miles to the campsites; the trail is closed just beyond. Beach is open to continue hiking to Sculptured Beach.

Bear Valley

Rift Zone: The huge parking lot at Bear Valley Visitor Center is open, with access to two trailheads. The Rift Zone Trail starts at the southwest corner of the parking lot. Its an easy walk routed 0.3 miles to Bear Valley Creek, the zone of the San Andreas earthquake from 1906.

Divide Meadow: From the Bear Valley Trailhead, you walk on a service road through an unburned area of Douglas fir, 1.6 miles one way. Pretty and easy.

Glen Camp: With the closed fire zone, backpackers depart from Bear Valley Trail. Its a 4.6-mile trek, one way (with turn on Glen Trail) to remote Glen Camp. Sold out this weekend. Sites available in September. Reserve at www.Recreation.gov.

Palomarin Trailhead

Trailhead/coast view: North of Bolinas, Palomarin is the staging area for a small parking lot and the trailhead. It fills on weekends for those making day trips, often requiring an early arrival. Cliff-top views are spectacular.

Coast Trail: From the clifftop trailhead, the hike starts on a service road where you enter and then exit a series of ravines. At 2.2 miles in, you rise up to a trail junction at a coastal ridge. Stay left here. You then skirt past Bass Lake on the left (2.8 miles in), with good access. You can continue past Crystal Lake (hidden, on right) and then above Pelican Lake on the left  7-mile round trip.

Wildcat Camp: This trail camp is perched on a vegetated terrace above a wilderness beach and has become one of the most desired trail camps in California. Its booked full most nights for the next two months. After the time change at the end of October, a few reservations then become available. To reach it from Palomarin, take the Coast Trail north for 5 miles, one way.

Tom Stienstra is The Chronicles outdoor writer emeritus. Email: tomstienstra2021@gmail.com Twitter: @StienstraTom
Suddenly, with less than two weeks until Californias recall election, a lot more is at stake.

A new law in Texas outlaws abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, making it the most restrictive ban in the nation. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court formally rejected requests by Texas abortion providers to block the law.

Are abortion rights in California on the line as Gov. Newsom faces a recall? How else is California affected by the Texas abortion ban and what does this forecast for Roe v. Wade?

In this episode of the Fifth & Mission podcast, host Cecilia Lei chats with Khiara Bridges, a professor of law at UC Berkeley, and Shannon Olivieri Hovis, the California Director of NARAL Pro Choice California.



Photo above shows a protest against the six-week abortion ban at the Capitol in Austin, Texas. (Via AP)
SACRAMENTO  Legislation to create a statewide system for stripping California police officers of their badges when they commit professional misconduct, a priority for activists since last years racial justice protests, appears poised to pass in the statehouse after lawmakers scaled back the bill this week.

The Assembly approved SB2 by state Sen. Steven Bradford (D-Gardena, Los Angeles County) on Friday, two days after taking amendments to raise the threshold for when officers would lose their licenses and changing the composition of an advisory board that would weigh in on those decisions. The measure must return to the Senate for final ratification before advancing to Gov. Gavin Newsom for consideration.

The latest modifications to the bill, which had already been narrowed, reflect a broader winnowing of the most ambitious proposals this session to overhaul policing practices in the state.

AB26 by Assembly Member Chris Holden, D-Pasadena, which was sent to the governors desk on Wednesday, originally would have disqualified police officers who fail to intervene when their colleagues use excessive force, but now merely establishes new standards for what departments must include in their use-of-force policies.

Another measure aimed to raise the minimum age for officers from 18 to 25, unless they earned a bachelors degree. But AB89, by Assembly Member Reggie Jones-Sawyer, D-Los Angeles, was changed to set a minimum qualifying age of 21 and to develop a curriculum of law enforcement-related courses that prospective officers could take instead of completing a bachelors degree. It is currently pending in the Senate.

It is still tough, even with the stated commitment of legislative leadership and the very clear demands of change in the public, said Peter Bibring, an expert on policing legislation for ACLU California Action, which has lobbied in favor of numerous bills in recent years including the officer decertification and intervention measures. There is still a fight and police associations still have extraordinary sway with many legislators.

California is one of four states without a system to decertify officers who are found guilty of misbehavior and to prevent them from shuttling between law enforcement agencies. Bradford introduced the bill last year, following the murder of George Floyd, but it foundered under intense opposition from law enforcement groups, and bitter disagreements over how the process should work continued this year.

Under SB2, police officers could lose their license to serve in law enforcement for serious misconduct, including using excessive force, committing sexual assault, displaying bias and participating in a law enforcement gang. The state Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training would investigate the allegations, and a civilian-controlled advisory board would review the findings and make a recommendation about whether to decertify the officer.

Another whole provision making it easier to sue an officer for a wrongful death has been stripped out of the bill, while amendments made by a committee last week would allow the commission to suspend officers licenses, not just revoke them entirely, and require members of the advisory board to undergo training.

Among the changes adopted by the Assembly on Wednesday, two-thirds of the commission would have to vote to strip an officer of his or her badge, rather than a simple majority. A requirement that two members of the advisory board be victims of excessive force or people whose family members have been killed by police was softened to a recommendation.

A spokesperson for Bradford said those amendments were brokered by the governors office to address major concerns from law enforcement groups, including that the process might be biased against them. A representative for Newsom declined to comment.

Major law enforcement groups have pulled back on lobbying the Legislature against the bill, but if it becomes law, additional battles could take place as the officer standards commission crafts regulations, including a definition of serious misconduct.

Abdul Pridgen, president of the California Police Chiefs Association, said in a statement that his organization appreciates the work that went into the final version, but still has some concerns with the undefined and broad sections of the measure.

Moving forward, we will work to make sure this law is implemented in a way that provides due process and effectively removes officers for serious misconduct, he said.

Bibring, who is also a senior attorney for the ACLU of Southern California, said advocates who have pushed for a decertification process were disappointed about some of the increased hurdles and that communities directly affected by police violence would no longer be guaranteed a voice on the advisory board. But he said the coalition remained supportive of the proposal and would continue to engage in the regulatory phase to ensure the decertfication process is full and robust.

The framework that the bill sets forth is still very strong, he said.

Alexei Koseff is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: alexei.koseff@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @akoseff
SACRAMENTO  Every voter in California would receive a mail ballot in all future elections if Gov. Gavin Newsom signs a bill sent to him Friday by the state Legislature.

AB37 by Assembly Member Marc Berman, D-Menlo Park, would require county election officials to send a mail ballot to every active registered voter, even in local elections, permanently adopting a system that California established as a safety measure during the coronavirus pandemic. It would also extend the time after election day that mail ballots can arrive and still be counted  to seven days from three days  as long as they are postmarked by election day.

The bill will be evaluated on its merits when it reaches the Governors desk, Erin Mellon, a spokesperson for Newsom, said in a statement.

California elections have been overwhelmingly conducted by mail for years. More than three-quarters of registered voters last year were signed up for permanent vote-by-mail, according to a legislative bill analysis, while 15 counties, including San Mateo, Santa Clara and Napa, already mail every active registered voter a ballot and three counties hold their elections entirely by mail.

But the issue has become intensely partisan, with Democrats pushing to expand the process to make it easier to vote and Republicans accusing them of overlooking clear problems, such as some voters reporting that they received multiple ballots. The bill passed 30-7 in the state Senate and 56-15 in the Assembly last week, with only Democrats in favor and only Republicans opposed.

Rich Pedroncelli/Associated Press

During the Senate floor debate on Thursday, Sen. Shannon Grove, a Republican from Bakersfield who has supported claims that former President Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential election, said mailing every California voter a ballot would create distrust in the voting system.

Sending unsolicited ballots will create an influx in the number of ballots, will increase opportunities for fraud and undermine the integrity of our elections, she said.

Democratic lawmakers countered that numerous studies have found no evidence of widespread fraud from mail voting.

The only reason that there is distrust by anyone in our voting system is because of the unfounded false conspiracy theories that are being spread on social media, on Fox News and other right-wing outlets, said Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco.

Alexei Koseff is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: alexei.koseff@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @akoseff
Scott Strazzante/The Chronicle

Mia Bonta widened her lead Thursday in a special election for an East Bay Assembly seat vacated by her husband, California Attorney General Rob Bonta, according to the latest returns.

Bonta, president of the Alameda Unified School District board and CEO of the nonprofit Oakland Promise, has received 56% of the vote, according to the latest results released Thursday by the Alameda County Registrar of Voters. Her opponent, Oakland social justice attorney Janani Ramachandran, has received 44% and was trailing by 7,761 votes. Every registered voter in the district received a mail-in ballot.
From the days of the Spanish-American War until the end of World War II, the Golden Gate was protected from potential invaders by a mighty ring of artillery. Old gun emplacements can be found in various places around the entrance to the bay, crumbling reminders of that vanished era.

As related in the last Portals, in the late 19th century, Army brass ordered a complete upgrading of Americas aging coastal defenses. San Francisco was the top priority after New York. Work began almost simultaneously in 1891 at Fort Scott in the Presidio and Fort Baker in Marin. The first batteries were installed in the Marin headlands. The gun emplacements at Fort Scott, armed with 5-inch, 10-inch and 12-inch guns and 12-inch mortars, can still be seen today on the cliffs south of Fort Point.

After these installations were completed around 1900, the Army worked west, installing batteries on the bluffs and dunes all the way to Baker Beach. One of those emplacements, Battery Chamberlain, built in 1904, is located just north of Baker Beach. A 6-inch disappearing gun (so called because its recoil caused it to return to a hidden position behind the parapet), received from the Smithsonian in 1977, can be seen at emplacement number 4. Engineers also installed batteries around Fort Miley and Fort Barry.

This ring of batteries served as the Golden Gates main line of defense during World War I. But as Brian Chin writes in Artillery at the Golden Gate: The Harbor Defenses of San Francisco in World War II, by 1915, several new foreign battleships were equipped with turrets with high firing angles, giving them a greater range than the Armys most powerful coastal artillery. Worried that enemy warships could take up positions outside the range of the guns at Fort Miley and shell the city with impunity, the top brass recommended that 16-inch guns be installed at a new military reservation, Fort Funston, as well as in the Marin Headlands.

No action was taken for years, but in 1935, with the threat of war with Japan looming, Congress finally funded those batteries.

In 1936, ground work for Battery Davis at Fort Funston began. The next year, two enormous 16-inch guns arrived. Engineers mounted the guns on their carriages and built concrete casemates 8 feet thick around them, which were then covered with 20 feet of earth and camouflaged so that they could not be seen from the air.

Soon thereafter, the Army constructed Fort Cronkhite on the Marin Headlands. High on 800-foot Wolf Ridge, the Army built Battery Townsley, mounting two 16-inch guns there. Battery Davis and Battery Townsley were the first 16-inch gun emplacements in the country.

In the summer of 1940, the army decided to test the big guns, which had not been fired since they were placed in 1937. The 16-inch guns were rarely fired because their 2,100 pound projectiles were so expensive and because the massive internal pressure generated by firing them caused their barrels to wear out after 250 rounds.

Battery Townsley was chosen for the test firing. The guns had a range of 53,000 yards, meaning the shells would hit the water 30 miles away, 5 miles beyond the Farallon Islands. To be sure that the splashes would be visible, officers had to wait for a clear day. On July 1, 1940, it was finally clear enough, and the gun crew went into action.

The roar of the 16-inch gun was like thunder, one observer recalled. The projectile shot up to 30,000-40,000 feet in the air before descending. The shells went further than expected, and their splashes were never seen. But the guns and casements had performed well. The only critics were some San Franciscans whose windows were broken by the concussive force of the firing.

More from the Archive The Vault Home of the San Francisco Chronicle's archive and more than 150 years of journalism covering the Bay Area and beyond.

For gun crews, carrying out target practice sometimes presented unexpected challenges. One day, the 155mm guns at Fort Funston were about to begin target practice when the San Francisco crab fleet suddenly appeared in their field of fire. The Coast Guard tried to chase the crabbers away, but they kept coming back. Finally, the exasperated safety officer in charge turned to the lieutenant in command of the battery and said, Go ahead and shoot. The lieutenant gave the order to commence firing. When the first rounds went out, he recalled, all the crabbers picked up and headed for the Golden Gate.

Another time, the Army hired a civilian tugboat with an Italian skipper to tow a target for Battery Townsleys 16-inch guns. When the shell landed, it sent up a geyser of water 200 feet high and cut the 400-foot tow cable between the tug and the target. That was too close for the tugboat captain. He began speaking excitedly in Italian, turned that little tugboat around, and that was it, an observer recalled. He wasnt going to be towing any more targets.

Trivia Time The last trivia question: How much did the city's premiere hotel and gambling emporium, the Parker House, rent for in 1849? Answer: $10,000 a month ($354,500 today). This week's trivia question: From 1910 to 1940, how many people entered or departed the country through the immigration station at Angel Island? See More Collapse

After Pearl Harbor, the soldiers manning the coastal defenses went on high alert. But although a Japanese submarine came close to shelling San Francisco on Christmas Eve in 1941, the city was never threatened by invasion, and none of the coastal defense guns were ever fired in anger. After the war, most of the batteries were dismantled. The 16-inch guns were cut into 5-foot, 23-ton pieces and melted down for salvage. The almost two-century era when big guns stood guard at the Golden Gate was over.

Gary Kamiya is the author of the best-selling book Cool Gray City of Love: 49 Views of San Francisco. His most recent book is Spirits of San Francisco: Voyages Through the Unknown City. All the material in Portals of the Past is original for The San Francisco Chronicle. To read earlier Portals of the Past, go to sfchronicle.com/portals.
- Updates: Get info on the Caldor Fire from the Eldorado National Forest.

- Information line: 530-303-2455

- Evacuations: Get the latest info from the U.S. Forest Service and from a map posted by the El Dorado County Sheriff's Office. Find info on RV/trailer space donations on this Google Doc.

- Maps: Find from the Forest Service.

LATEST Sept. 4, 8:30 a.m. Fire crews continued to harness the Caldor Fire near Tahoe overnight and on Saturday morning containment was at 37%, Cal Fire said. The blaze has burned through 214,107 acres.

The area above Kirkwood Ski Resort has been a problematic spot and USFS Operations Section Chief Beale said at Friday night's operations meeting that hand crews and hot shots were securing the area to stop the fire from moving south.

Fire activity along the Highway 50 corridor continued to flare up and aircraft are dumping water and retardant in this area.

Christmas Valley has been another area of concern and hand crews are constructed fire lines to the east and west of the region,

The fire's growth over the past day was 2,350 acres, said Dean Gould, a supervisor with the U.S. Forest Service, at the Friday meeting. This was the fourth straight day of declines in the growth rate. The last time it grew that small was 14 days ago, he noted.

Watch the full Friday evening update.

Sept. 3, 10 a.m. Good news continues to come out of the Caldor Fire as containment on the 212,907-acre blaze near Lake Tahoe increased to 29% on Friday morning.

Amid calmer winds, crews made progress gaining the upper hand on the blaze chewing through parched forest land, and aircraft dropped nearly 500,000 gallons fire retardant and water from local reservoirs on flames, Capt. Parker Wilbourn, a firefighter with Sacramento Metro Fire deployed to the incident, said.

Friday's forecast called for lighter winds but also extremely dry daytime weather, with a warming trend through the weekend as high pressure builds over the West, fire officials said.

Bronte Wittpenn/Hearst Newspapers via Getty Images

The Caldor Fire's northeast tip was only 3 miles south of South Lake Tahoe, which was emptied of 22,000 residents days ago.

The wind-driven fire that began Aug. 14 had raged through densely forested, craggy areas and still threatened more than 30,000 homes, businesses and other buildings ranging from cabins to ski resorts.

But there was optimism and progress as winds eased on the fire's western flank while in the northeast, despite gusty ridgetop winds, firefighters with bulldozers and shovels were steadily hacking out fire lines or burning away vegetation to box in the flames before they reached Tahoe.

In the valleys we're doing plenty of work," fire information officer Marco Rodriguez said. The crews are working and they're doing controlled fires ... to try to make those containment lines a little bit stronger.

Wilbourn noted that crews Friday will be focused on three main problem spots near Wrights Lake, Kirkwood and Heavenly.

He said massive dozer lines have been constructed that tie into the granite rock between Heavenly Mountain Resort and flames to protect the area.

"Were using the weather to our advantage," he said. "Were doing backfiring, building up the containment lines ... a lot of the success we have had is due to the forest reduction, people being mindful of defensible space. Those three things have helped to reduce the fuels."

Wilbourn noted that no homes have been lost in the Kirkwood area or the Tahoe Basin.

Josh Edelson/AFP via Getty Images

Residents who were forced to flee South Lake Tahoe earlier this week remained evacuated along with people across the state line in Douglas County, Nevada.

The resort town can easily accommodate 100,000 people on a busy weekend but on Thursday, just before the Labor Day weekend, it was eerily empty.

Yet after days of flames threatening to engulf the resort town at any moment, any respite was welcome.

I feel like we are truly the luckiest community in the entire world right now. Im so incredibly happy, said South Lake Tahoe Mayor Tamara Wallace, who evacuated to Truckee, California.

Its finally a chance to take a breath, said Clive Savacool, chief of South Lake Tahoe Fire Rescue. Its a breath full of smoke. Nonetheless, I think were all breathing a little bit easier and we feel like were making some progress.

Farther west, evacuation orders were lifted or downgraded to warnings in several areas of El Dorado County.

More than 15,000 firefighters were battling dozens of California blazes that have destroyed at least 1,500 homes. One blaze, the Dixie Fire, was about 65 miles north of the Caldor Fire. It is the second-largest wildfire in state history at about 1,350 square miles and is 55% contained.

California has experienced increasingly larger and deadlier wildfires in recent years as climate change has made the West much warmer and drier over the past 30 years. Scientists have said weather will continue to be more extreme and wildfires more frequent, destructive and unpredictable. No deaths have been reported so far this fire season.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.
Multiple people were injured in a shooting on Interstate 280 in Daly City early Friday morning, officials said.

The California Highway Patrol said it responded to a 911 call at 1:29 a.m. near the southbound lanes of the highway near Highway 1 and just south of the Eastmoor exit. Officers found a gold GMC sport utility vehicle that had crashed.

"Multiple occupants of the vehicle were injured and transported to the hospital," said CHP spokesperson Mark Andrews, who noted the exact number of people injured and the degree of the injuries haven't been revealed.

"We're investigating a possible freeway shooting was involved with the same vehicle," Andrews added. "We don't know exactly where the shooting occurred but we're investigating the vehicle may have been involved in a shooting."

CHP temporarily shut down the southbound lanes to conduct an investigation. The lanes have since reopened.

No other information about the incident was immediately available.

Andrews couldn't provide an exact number of shootings that have occurred in the Daly City-San Francisco area this year, but he said, "There seems to be a little bit of a slight increase in the San Francisco area, specifically on the freeway recently."

Close to this morning's incident, a stretch of southbound 280 in San Francisco was closed Aug. 18. One person was injured in the shooting. "At this point, there's no indication that the two incidents are connected," Andrews said.
Apple said Friday that it would delay its rollout of child-safety measures, which would have allowed it to scan users iPhones to detect images of child sexual abuse, following criticism from privacy groups.

The company announced in early August that iPhones would begin using complex technology to spot images of child sexual abuse, commonly known as child pornography, that users upload to its iCloud storage service. Apple also said it would let parents turn on a feature that can flag them when their children send or receive nude photos in text messages.

The measures faced resistance from computer scientists, privacy groups and civil-liberty lawyers, because the features represented the first technology that would allow a company to look at a persons private data and report it to law enforcement authorities.

Based on feedback from customers, advocacy groups, researchers and others, we have decided to take additional time over the coming months to collect input and make improvements before releasing these critically important child safety features, the company said in statement posted to its website.

The feature would have allowed Apples virtual assistant, Siri, to direct people who ask about child sexual abuse to appropriate resources, as well as enable parents to turn on technology that scans images in their childrens text messages for nudity.

The tool that generated the most backlash, however, was a software program that would have scanned users iPhone photos and compared them with a database of known child sexual abuse images.

The tech giant announced the changes after reports in The New York Times showed the proliferation of child sexual abuse images online.

Matthew Green, a computer science professor at Johns Hopkins University, said that once the ability to sift through users private photos was out there, it would have been ripe for misuse. Governments, for example, could potentially lean on Apples technology to help track down dissidents.

Apple argued that it was going to resist pressure from all governments in the world, including China, Green said. That didnt seem like a very safe system.

Apple did not appear to anticipate such a backlash. When the company announced the changes, it sent reporters technical explainers and statements from child-safety groups and computer scientists applauding the effort.

But Green said the companys move did not seem to take into account the views of the privacy and child-safety communities.

If I could have designed a rollout that was intended to fail, it would have looked like this one, he said.

What matters, experts said, is what Apple will do now that it has hit pause. Would it cancel the initiative entirely, simply roll out nearly identical features after a delay or find a middle ground?

We look forward to hearing more about how Apple intends to change or improve its planned capabilities to tackle these problems without undermining end-to-end encryption, privacy and free expression, Samir Jain, policy director for the Center for Democracy and Technology, an advocacy group, said in a statement.

Joe Mullin, a policy analyst with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights group, said the foundation had a petition with more than 25,000 signatures asking Apple not to implement the feature. He said it was great that theyre taking a moment to think things over, but he and other privacy coalitions would continue to plead with Apple to abandon its plan altogether.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
NEW YORK (AP)  Tyson Foods is offering its front-line workers paid sick leave for the first time, part of an agreement that secured union support for its mandate that all U.S. employees get vaccinated against the COVID-19 virus.

The meatpacking giant said 90,000  or 75%  of its 120,000 U.S. workers have now been vaccinated, up from 50% when it announced the mandate on Aug. 3. Workers have until Nov. 1 to get vaccinated, but there are exemptions for medical and religious reasons under agreement with the the United Food and Commercial Workers and the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union.

Tyson Foods, which owns the Jimmy Dean and Hillshire Farm brands, is among the few companies with a large front-line workforce to impose a vaccine mandate so far. Many companies have taken aggressive steps to encourage workers to get the vaccines while avoiding mandates that could worsen a labor shortage.

Under the agreement, Tyson workers can earn up to 20 hours of paid sick leave. They will also get paid time off to get the vaccine and additional time off for any side effects. The UFCW and the RWDSU represent 26,000 Tyson workers, but the Springdale, Arkansas-based company said paid sick leave would extend to all employees.

The UFCW said it was the union's first time reaching a national agreement to provide paid sick leave for meatpacking workers.

Paid sick leave is critical to ensuring workers can get vaccinated without losing a paycheck, UFCW Marc Perrone said in a statement. Every company in America must follow Tysons lead and act now to guarantee paid leave to help even more of our countrys essential workers get vaccinated as soon as possible.

RWDSU President Stuart Appelbaum said the agreement includes a job exchange plan that will allow employees who don't get the vaccines for medical and religious regions to work in areas with low interpersonal contact."

Workplace advocates have cited inadequate paid sick leave as a key barrier preventing low-income workers from getting the vaccine.

A Harvard survey of service and retail workers found that nearly 60% of workers with access to paid sick leave had been vaccinated by May, compared to less than 50% of workers without that benefit. The study, which surveyed 9,000 workers at large companies from March 2021 to May 2021, also found that more than 60% of workers who got time off to get the shots, or to recover from side effects, were vaccinated. That compared to 39% of workers who received no support from employers for getting the vaccine.

Tyson Foods also said that fully vaccinated employees who test positive for COVID will get up to two weeks of paid leave for the next six months. That benefit will not extend to employees who have religious or medical exemptions.

The company announced several other new benefits, including a week of paid vacation for new hires after six months.

"These measures are the latest examples of our ongoing efforts to make Tyson the most sought-after place to work, Johanna Soderstrom, Tyson Foods' executive vice president and chief human resources officer, said in a statement.

Tyson Foods has staged more than 100 vaccination events since February and offered $200 bonus and $6 million sweepstakes to encourage workers to get the shots.

Other companies, including Amazon and Walmart, the country's two largest private employers, have rolled out similar initiatives while stopping short of requiring the vaccines for hourly workers. But employers have increasingly adopted tougher vaccine policies since the Food and Drug Administration gave full approval to Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine.

Some labor unions have opposed vaccine mandates, while others have insisted that any requirements be negotiated with workers.

This vaccine agreement with Tyson shows just how critical it is for companies to meet with unions before making unilateral mandates, Appelbaum said.

UFCW International Vice President Mark Lauritsen said the Tyson workers who fail to meet the Nov. 1 deadline for getting vaccinated will be considered to have severed their employment. However, he said the agreement allows those workers to return to the company with full pay and seniority if they get the shot later within 180 days.
COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP)  Nearly 100 missing tablets and other archaeological objects from ancient Mesopotamia have been found in Norway and seized, police said Friday.

Authorities said they would now be examined to determine their authenticity and establish their provenance if possible.
EDINBURGH, Ind. (AP)  The first group of Afghan refugees bound for Camp Atterbury in southern Indiana arrived in the state Thursday.

A plane carrying the refugees landed Thursday afternoon at Indianapolis International Airport. The refugees were processed and then boarded buses for the drive to the base about 25 miles (40 kilometers) south of the capital.
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP)  Two teenage boys are facing charges after a Raleigh high school student brought two guns to school on Thursday, officials said.

Enloe High School Principal Jacqueline Jordan said in a message to families that a school employee was alerted about a student with a weapon on campus, The News & Observer reported.
GRANTS PASS, Ore. (AP)  As COVID-19 continued its deadly sweep through Josephine County, things were not going well Wednesday at Asante Three Rivers Medical Center in Grants Pass.

The outpatient center was housing inpatients, the 125-bed hospital held 146 patients, and half of all patients  78  had COVID-19, with 91% of them unvaccinated, according to hospital officials attending a midday online press conference.

This is a very concerning time for all of us, said hospital CEO Win Howard. This is very, very serious. We are in an absolute full-blown health care crisis.

As Howard spoke, Oregon National Guard soldiers were on the medical centers campus helping with nonclinical duties, 110 contract nurses were on their way to the Rogue Valley to help area hospitals, and a refrigerated truck was on the way to Josephine County to hold bodies, if needed.

Later that evening, protesters outside the hospital complained about a state vaccination mandate for health care workers, who must be vaccinated or have an exception by Oct. 18 or face termination. And the refrigerated truck was being set up at an undisclosed location, according to Mike Weber, the countys public health director.

Lots of people are on edge. Lots of lives are on the line.

In the previous seven days, 28 people with COVID-19 died at the hospital, according to Howard, an average of one death every six hours.

Absolutely heartbreaking, he said.

The hospitals 12-bed intensive care unit at noon was holding 18 COVID-19 patients, some of them in cramped, doubled-up rooms, according to Laura Magstadt, a registered nurse and the hospitals vice president of nursing. Doubling up most of the rooms gives the unit 22 beds. At one point recently, 21 patients were housed there.

The youngest COVID-19 patient in the unit just then was 32, Magstadt said. The oldest was 78.

The youngest COVID-19 patient in the entire hospital was 27, while the oldest was 92.

We have a number of people that are in their 30s and 40s, she said.

Ventilators that help patients breathe were in short supply, because of heavy demand.

We are not out of ventilators, Magstadt said. We have come close. We have not run out, but we have gotten close.

As she spoke, a dozen patients were in the hospitals emergency department awaiting a regular room upstairs. Others were awaiting discharge.

Patients were being kept in recovery areas instead of in regular rooms, with some on gurneys, curtains separating them. Others were in cardio and ultrasound areas.

We are trying to find any space we can safely care for patients, Magstadt said.

COVID-19 patients are kept separate from other patients.

Hospital spokeswoman Lauren Van Sickle said she wasnt sure where the refrigerated trailer would be parked, but it wont be at the hospital. As for the protest, she said it wasnt aimed at Asante. She didnt give a precise number of workers who had been vaccinated, but said it increased from 64% over the past couple weeks.

Magstadt was thankful for the soldiers, 32 of whom arrived Aug. 21, with up to 40 expected to stay through September. Most of them are from Southwest Oregon and have put aside their usual work to help.

We are absolutely grateful, Magstadt said. They are doing many things, everything from washing dishes to cleaning rooms, answering phones, running supplies. It has been wonderful to have them. We greatly appreciate them.

She also was thankful for the pending arrival of the contract nurses, who will help with critical care and medical-surgical care. They start arriving today, although its to be determined how many will be assigned to Three Rivers.

It was the best news Magstadt said. Its just a tremendous help.

Hospital workers, she said, have been working an unbelievable amount of shifts.

Several other doctors spoke:

Surgeon Megan Frost expressed concern about the cancellation of urgent surgeries and procedures for people with cancer and at risk of stroke and heart attack.

We dont have the space or the staff, she said.

It might be weeks or months before they can be cared for properly.

I know you have cancer. We cant take care of you right now, she said. Thats a weight on them that they have to live with.

She said there have been angry conversations. Rationing care is a difficult decision.

That doesnt sit with us very well, Frost said. These are still people with life-threatening conditions that we are still having to delay their care.

Hundreds of procedures have been delayed.

Surgeon Estin Yang said the recent spike in hospitalizations is predicted to peak early next week and possibly sooner, based on an Aug. 26 forecast from Oregon Health & Science University.

Early in the pandemic, Southwest Oregon was spared in large part, and there was a major spike last winter, but the current spike is the worst yet, Yang said. At last count, 51 local residents died in August from COVID-19 complications, compared with 20 in December and 20 in January.

People are asking, Why now? Why us? he said.

He pointed to earlier in the pandemic, when fewer people got infected, but fewer people then developed natural immunity from having the disease. He also pointed to the recent arrival of the more aggressive delta variant of the virus. And he said summertime means people are meeting in large groups and traveling.

Together, thats a very good recipe and environment for the current surge, he said.

Dr. Steven Marshak, a pediatrician, said pediatric cases around the nation were rising, and rising in severity, and that childrens mental health was suffering from anxiety and depression.

Most of this, I think, is lack of social networking, lack of school and activities, he said, speaking about mental health issues. Kids deserve to have in-person learning.

But with a new school year beginning, Marshak predicted an increase in cases, quarantining and school shutdowns. He suggested that children 12 and older get vaccinated, and wear masks.

I stress the pathway to overcome this is to protect your children, he said. Do what you can to protect each other.

Dr. Justin Shelton of the Womens Health Center of Southern Oregon said pregnant women with COVID-19 were much more likely to deliver early and need advanced care.

There is a way to avoid these complications, Shelton said, citing studies. Vaccines are safe during pregnancy. Youre also protecting your baby.

Surgeon Scott Nelson, who is past chief of staff at the hospital and current chairman of the Grants Pass School Board, was heartened by the teamwork he saw.

It has also been a wonderful time to see people coming together, taking care of patients, he said. Its been a really good thing to see our community and our staff pull together. What we have here is a dedicated team of professionals.
WASHINGTON (AP)  U.S. officials are looking into reports that in the frantic evacuation of desperate Afghans from Kabul, older men were admitted together with young girls they claimed as brides or otherwise sexually abused.

U.S. officials at intake centers in the United Arab Emirates and in Wisconsin have identified numerous incidents in which Afghan girls have been presented to authorities as the wives of much older men. While child marriage is not uncommon in Afghanistan, the U.S. has strict policies against human trafficking that include prosecutions for offenders and sanctions for countries that don't crack down on it.

One internal document seen by The Associated Press says the State Department has sought urgent guidance from other agencies after purported child brides were brought to Fort McCoy in Wisconsin. Another document, described to the AP by officials familiar with it, says Afghan girls at a transit site in Abu Dhabi have alleged they have been raped by older men they were forced to marry in order to escape Afghanistan.

The State Department had no immediate comment on the documents or the veracity of the details in them. Officials say that they take all such allegations seriously but that many of them are anecdotal and difficult to prove, particularly amid the crush of Afghan evacuees at multiple locations in the Middle East, Europe and the United States.

An Aug. 27 situation report sent to all U.S. embassies and consulates abroad as well as military command centers in Florida points to potential issues involving young girls and older men, some of whom claim to have more than one wife at Fort McCoy, a sprawling 60,000-acre (243-square-kilometer) Army base in Wisconsin. Relevant portions of the document, titled "Afghanistan Task Force SitRep No. 63," were obtained by the AP.

Intake staff at Fort McCoy reported multiple cases of minor females who presented as married to adult Afghan men, as well as polygamous families," the document says. Department of State has requested urgent guidance.

There was no immediate indication from the military or from the departments of homeland security and health and human services, which run the facility, that such guidance had been received.

At the same time, U.S. officials in the United Arab Emirates have expressed similar concerns, sending a diplomatic cable to Washington warning that some young Afghan girls had been forced into marriages in order to escape Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover.

Officials familiar with the cable say it describes allegations by several girls at the Humanitarian City in Abu Dhabi that they had been sexually assaulted by their husbands and seeks guidance on how to handle such cases. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss internal communications.
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LINCOLN, Neb. (AP)  The Nebraska Supreme Court on Friday denied a postconviction appeal by a man serving three life sentences for the 2012 shooting deaths of three Omaha men in a botched drug robbery.

The states high court said Timothy Britt, 34, failed to show in his appeal that he was entitled to an evidentiary hearing on his claims that his trial lawyer was ineffective for failing to call witnesses who could have helped exonerate him.
CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP)  The city of Charleston, South Carolina will now require employees to get vaccinated against COVID-19.

Mayor John Tecklenberg announced Friday that all workers in the state's largest city must be fully vaccinated by Nov. 22, though people can still opt out for medical and other limited reasons.
LEBANON, Ore. (AP)  Fourteen people were arrested and 1,400 pounds of pot were seized east of Corvallis in Lebanon in connection to two large illegal marijuana grow operations, authorities said.

The Linn Interagency Narcotics Enforcement team searched two neighboring properties on Aug. 27 and seized the marijuana, more than 9,000 marijuana plants, a dozen firearms and over $6,000, The Albany Democrat-Herald reported.
SAN DIEGO (AP)  A Los Angeles man pleaded guilty Wednesday to participating in what prosecutors called a textbook Ponzi scheme that defrauded cryptocurrency investors worldwide of more than $2 billion.

Prosecutors said Glenn Arcaro, 44, sat atop the North American branch of the pyramid investment scheme BitConnect, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported.

Arcaro, who pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court to conspiracy to commit wire fraud, admitted in his plea agreement to earning no less than $24 million from the BitConnect fraud conspiracy," the newspaper said.

As part of his plea, Arcaro must pay back that money to investors. He faces up to 20 years in prison when he is sentenced Nov. 15.

The BitConnect scheme is believed to be the largest cryptocurrency fraud ever charged criminally, the U.S. Attorneys Office said in a statement.

Arcaros plea came the same day that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed a civil complaint against BitConnect, the Union-Tribune said.

According to prosecutors, Arcaro and his co-conspirators claimed that BitConnect used a proprietary technology that was able to generate huge profits by using investors money to trade on the volatility of cryptocurrency exchange markets.

In truth, BitConnect operated a textbook Ponzi scheme by paying earlier BitConnect investors with money from later investors, prosecutors said.
BERLIN (AP)  German automaker Daimler on Friday dismissed a cease and desist demand from two environmental groups to commit to ending the sale of combustion engine vehicles by 2030.

Lawyers for Greenpeace and the group Deutsche Umwelthilfe have threatened to sue Daimler, BMW and Volkswagen unless they sign a legal pledge not to put new gas-fueled vehicles onto the market from the end of this decade.

The groups argue that companies are bound by the same rules as governments when it comes to reducing greenhouse gas emissions to combat climate change. The same lawyers successfully sued the German government earlier this year, forcing it to adjust its emissions reduction plans to shift more of the burden onto older generations.

In a letter addressed to Volkswagen, Greenpeace said it believes VW poses a threat to the absolute rights, such as the property, health, and life of our clients by being responsible for the release of large amounts of planet-warming carbon dioxide.

Daimler said in a statement that it saw no basis for the groups' demand.

If it comes to a lawsuit, we will use all legal means to defend ourselves, the company said.

Daimler said it is committed to the goals of the 2015 Paris climate accord and aims to make its entire vehicle fleet climate-neutral by 2039, more than a decade before current European Union rules require it.

BMW said it would examine the legal threat from the environmental groups, but said it was likewise already committed to the Paris accord's goal of capping global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit). The luxury carmaker said it wants to put 10 million fully electric cars on the road over the coming decade. BMW sold more than 2.3 million cars in 2020.

Deutsche Umwelthilfe also sent a cease and desist demand to the oil and natural gas company Wintershall Dea, one of the investors in the Nord Stream 2 pipeline being built from Russia to Germany.

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Follow APs coverage of climate change issues at https://apnews.com/hub/climate-change
BRUSSELS - When President Joe Biden refused to keep U.S. troops in Afghanistan past the Aug. 31 deadline, European leaders argued this forced them to end their evacuation efforts early, despite thousands of citizens and allies still trying to escape the country.

The chaotic withdrawal, which has already prompted soul-searching among Western partners, is now reviving a decades-old debate within the European Union: Does the 27-nation club need its own military?

The E.U. is in its most idealistic sense a peace project. Economic interdependence was supposed to ward off conflicts between members - and it has created the world's largest trading bloc.

While acknowledging that clout, some of its most prominent politicians have argued for years that to become a true global power, the E.U. needs its own defense force, one that is independent of the U.S.-European NATO alliance and does not rely on the United States.

The subject is controversial and the geopolitics are fraught. Many experts say the prospect of rolling out a free-standing E.U. military anytime soon is unrealistic. But the clamoring, which subsided somewhat after Biden's election, has intensified in recent days, as European countries abruptly ended their evacuations ahead of the final American flight out of the Kabul airport.

E.U. foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, asserted that his proposed joint rapid-deployment force of 5,000 troops could have helped to secure the airport, and that a coordinated European security strategy would have allowed the bloc more influence over the "timing and nature of the withdrawal."

"The only way forward is to combine our forces and strengthen not only our capacity, but also our will to act," Borrell said following a meeting of E.U. defense ministers in Slovenia on Thursday.

Other leaders have argued for "strategic autonomy," an ill-defined E.U. buzzphrase that refers to the need for the bloc to become more self-sufficient on a range of issues, especially its security. French President Emmanuel Macron is one of the concept's biggest boosters and has been calling for a "true European army" since he took office - while at one point criticizing NATO as brain dead.

Some nations, especially the Baltic states, remain wary of duplicating NATO's efforts and would be unlikely to support a new joint force.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who once endorsed Macron's suggestion for an army, has nonetheless been a staunch supporter of NATO, as well as the U.S. military bases in her country. But Armin Laschet, who is vying to succeed her, said recently that Europe must be strengthened "such that we never have to leave it up to Americans."

Some critics say European leaders are attempting to distance themselves from the Afghanistan fiasco, despite generally supporting the decision to leave. Germany, for instance, declined to send troops to help stabilize the country last month as the Taliban made sweeping territorial gains. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said shortly after Kabul fell that while the United States pushed for the withdrawal, the alliance ultimately agreed. "We left together," he said.

The renewed debate among European leaders reflects a growing frustration with Biden, who told the world that "America is back," but has pursued foreign policies that echo some of his predecessor's positions.

"What happened in Afghanistan was a defining moment," said Nathalie Loiseau, who chairs the European Parliament's subcommittee on security and defense. When the United States decided to pull out, there was scant coordination with allies, she said. Biden dismissed European calls for a "conditions-based withdrawal" and he refused to extend the deadline for pulling out.

"The U.S. does not want to be the world's policeman," said Loiseau, a member of Macron's political party. "Now, Europeans must stop focusing on what the U.S. does or does not do."

Despite the vigorous recent rhetoric, the idea of a European military remains in some corners of the continent a fantasy and in others a punchline (one satirical Twitter account is devoted to asking "Is there an E.U. army yet?"). Analysts say, at the very least, there are significant obstacles.

Nathalie Tocci, who pushed for the inclusion of strategic autonomy in a 2016 document laying out the E.U.'s defense doctrine, said the political will to create and deploy such a force no longer exists.

"There is not enough oomph behind all this politically to translate it into something practical," said Tocci, the director of the Istituto Affari Internazionali, a global affairs think tank. "We are just not prepared to see body bags coming home, and Afghanistan is not going to change that. It's a political question that Europeans keep on ducking."

Germany, France and Italy were among the top contributors of troops in Afghanistan. While they suffered far fewer fatalities than the United States or Britain, European allies altogether saw hundreds of their service members die, and there is little public appetite on the continent for a continued presence.

One major roadblock to a joint force - or even a coordinated security strategy - is the E.U. requirement that member states make foreign policy decisions unanimously, said Azeem Ibrahim, a director at the Newlines Institute for Strategy and Policy. The unanimity rule has long stalled the bloc's decision-making process.

"European foreign policy is completely dysfunctional," Ibrahim said. "The European Union does not sing with the same voice in the fashion that it used to. Even if you could physically create it, the probability of all the countries unanimously agreeing on a particular course of action is practically impossible."

Some countries have asked the E.U. to invoke an obscure law that would allow member states to move forward with a "coalition of the willing" after a simple majority vote. Borrell backs this plan, but the provision has never been used.

Another thorny question about a joint force: Who would pay for it? The E.U. has earmarked more than $9 billion for the European Defense Fund through 2027, but experts say individual countries would also need to boost their own spending. This could be a challenge, considering that only nine European countries are on track to spend at least 2% of their GDP on defense this year, fulfilling a NATO agreement.

NATO, now a 30-country alliance, has been the primary military force in Europe since the aftermath of World War II, but the United States has long set its agenda. In the weeks since the Taliban took over Afghanistan, European leaders have called the mission a "failure" and a "debacle," saying it's further evidence that the E.U. should be able to act on its own.

Advocates of that notion have been careful to stress that a stronger Europe would improve the transatlantic alliance, not fray it further.

"If you want to go all the way to strategic autonomy, you do have to have a European command - you can't keep pretending you can follow the NATO command structure," said Fabrice Pothier, a former NATO policy chief. "That will indeed create some friction with NATO and possibly with the U.S. and the U.K. But on the other hand, it's up to the European Union to explain, 'This is for us to use when you don't want to step in and do something.'"

An E.U. force could support France's dwindling military presence in Africa's Sahel region, for example, which Pothier called "our other Afghanistan."

Some steps have already been taken to strengthen cooperation between European militaries. France, Germany and Spain are working together on Europe's largest defense project, developing a new fighter jet. But four years after the plan's announcement, the countries only recently finalized the details.

The E.U. has set lofty targets before. In 1999, member states pledged to build a military force of up to 60,000, but it never materialized. Instead, the bloc has had multinational "battle groups" of about 1,500 troops since 2007, but they've never been deployed, due to a lack of funding and political will.

The battle groups are "a paper tiger," Pothier said, and they underscore the challenge of developing a bloc-wide military.

"I think what's missing is: What do you want an army for?" Pothier said. "To do what? To deter the Russians? To ensure access to European seas? To go after the bad guys, the terrorists?"

In theory, these are questions the E.U. defense ministers discussed at back-to-back meetings this week, where they debated a forthcoming "strategic compass" document that will outline the bloc's security risks and policy goals.

The document, to be published next year, will be the first test of how serious E.U. leaders are about strengthening their defense strategy, said Georgina Wright, head of the Europe program at Institut Montaigne. Officials will use it to assess their military capabilities and discuss how best to pool their resources, she said, and it's likely to include an array of proposals, from cybersecurity to space operations. An E.U. army, however, is likely "a long way off."

"As with many European Union foreign policy decisions, there is lots of ambition, but when you look at the practical outcome, it's often the lowest common denominator," Wright said. "It will be interesting to see here if the reality actually matches the initial ambition."
JACKSON, Miss. (AP)  An Emmett Till historical marker in the Mississippi Delta will be repaired or replaced after it was knocked off the pole that supports it, says the president of an advertising agency that made the sign.

Although a previous version of this metal sign was vandalized and another Till historical marker in the area was shot multiple times, Allan Hammons said Friday that he does not see malicious intent in the damage this time.

It was not defaced in any way," Hammons told The Associated Press.

Till was a Black 14-year-old from Chicago who was abducted and killed in August 1955 while visiting relatives in Mississippi. Witnesses said he whistled at a white woman working in a store in the small community of Money, north of Greenwood. Days later, his body was pulled from the Tallahatchie River, where it was tossed after being weighted down with a cotton gin fan.

Tills mother, Mamie Till Mobley, insisted on an open-casket funeral so people could see her sons mutilated body. Jet magazine published photos, and his case became a catalyst for the civil rights movement.

An all-white jury acquitted the two white men charged in his death, but they later confessed in a paid interview with Look magazine.

The historical marker, part of the Mississippi Freedom Trail knocked down this week is outside the former Bryants Grocery & Meat Market in Money.

Hammons said railroad construction has been happening in the area and he thinks its possible that heavy equipment hit the pole and toppled the sign late Monday or early Tuesday. He said a Leflore County road crew put the sign into storage after finding it on the ground Tuesday.

The sign will be repaired or replaced, Hammons said. His firm, Hammons & Associates in Greenwood, has made metal signs to mark significant sites for civil rights and music.

The Greenwood City Council voted in July to put up a bronze statue of Till in that city. The killing of Till remains under federal investigation.

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This story has been corrected to show the sign was toppled late Monday or early Tuesday and was found Tuesday.

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Follow Emily Wagster Pettus on Twitter at http://twitter.com/EWagsterPettus.
VANDENBERG SPACE FORCE BASE, Calif. (AP)  A privately designed, unmanned rocket built to carry satellites was destroyed in an explosive fireball after suffering an anomaly" off the California coast during its first attempt at reaching Earth's orbit.

Firefly Aerospace's Alpha rocket was terminated" over the Pacific Ocean shortly after its 6:59 p.m. Thursday liftoff from Vandenberg Space Force Base, according to a base statement. Video from the San Luis Obispo Tribune showed the explosion.

Firefly said an anomaly occurred during the first-stage ascent that resulted in the loss of the vehicle about two minutes, 30 seconds into the flight. Vandenberg said a team of investigators will try to determine what caused the failure.

The rocket was carrying a payload called DREAM, or the Dedicated Research and Education Accelerator Mission. It consisted of items from schools and other institutions, including small satellites and several demonstration spacecraft.

While we did not meet all of our mission objectives, we did achieve a number of them: successful first stage ignition, liftoff of the pad, progression to supersonic speed, and we obtained a substantial amount of flight data," Firefly said in a statement. The information will be applied to future missions.

Austin, Texas-based Firefly is developing various launch and space vehicles, including a lunar lander. Its Alpha rocket was designed to target the growing market for launching small satellites into Earth orbit.

Standing 95 feet (26 meters) high, the two-stage Alpha is designed to carry up to 2,200 pounds (1,000 kilograms) of payload into low orbit. The company wants to be capable of launching Alphas twice a month. Launches would have a starting price of $15 million, according to Firefly.

Firefly will have to catch up with two Long Beach, California-based companies that are ahead in the small satellite launch sector.

Rocket Lab has put 105 satellites into orbit with multiple launches from a site in New Zealand and is developing another launch complex in the U.S.

Virgin Orbit has put 17 satellites into space with two successful flights of its air-launched LauncherOne rocket, which is released from beneath the wing of a modified Boeing 747.
SPRINGFIELD, Mass. (AP)  A Springfield man was convicted by a jury Friday of a 2018 fatal shooting in the city and was sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole.

Luis Gomez was convicted of first-degree murder in the death of Jesus Flores, according to a statement from the Hampden district attorney's office.
ORLANDO, Fla. (AP)  Florida highway officials on Friday announced that Florida drivers are now able to purchase new Walt Disney World license plates at their local tax collector's offices.

The blue-shaded license plate features a silver drawing of Cinderella's Castle sketched with a 50" in the center to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Orlando-area theme park resort this fall.
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP)  The battle over mask requirements to guard against coronavirus in Florida schools headed for a new legal phase Friday following an appeal by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis of a judge's ruling that a blanket ban on mask mandates exceeds the state government's authority.

The case heads next to the 15 judges on the 1st District Court of Appeal in Tallahassee and could ultimately wind up in the state Supreme Court. The issue is whether the freshly minted Parents Bill of Rights law means parents have sole authority to decide if their child wears a mask or permits a school board to impose a broad mask requirement.

Because that will likely take time, lawyers for parents challenging the ban on mask requirements want Leon County Circuit Judge John C. Cooper to immediately lift an automatic stay that effectively allows the ban to continue to be enforced during the appeal.

Plaintiff attorney Charles Gallagher said in a court filing that the rise of the highly contagious delta variant of the COVID-19 virus makes it all the more important that school districts be permitted to decide student mask mandates for themselves.

If the automatic stay remains in place, defendants would be permitted during the duration of the appeal to enforce the executive order and freely expose students and school staff to increased risk of delta variant infection, which is a continuing constitutional violation, Gallagher wrote. Compelling circumstances are clearly present here.

Cooper set a hearing for Wednesday morning on the parents' request that the stay be lifted. Jacob Oliva, public schools chancellor at the state Department of Education, said in a notice Thursday to local superintendents that enforcement must cease if the stay is lifted.

Under the DeSantis executive order, state education officials have been seeking to penalize defiant school boards by withholding salaries of board members. As of Friday, 13 districts representing more than half of Florida's 2.8 million public school students had imposed mask mandates despite the governor's order that a parental opt-out must be included. Most have only an opt-out for medical reasons.

The rebel districts showed no signs of backing down, with some hiring lawyers to defend their decisions that often came after raucous public meetings pitting pro- and anti-mask parents against each other. Alachua County school Superintendent Carlee Simon, like others, insisted a mask mandate is permitted under the Parents Bill of Rights.

The judge's ruling against the DeSantis order, she said in a statement, confirms what weve said all along, which is that our mask mandate does not violate Florida law.

DeSantis, who is gearing up for a 2022 re-election campaign and a possible 2024 presidential run, has dismissed the recommendation from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that people generally wear masks to prevent coronavirus spread in certain situations. In particular, he contends that masks are less essential for young people and carry some risks of their own for children.

At a news conference Friday in Pensacola, DeSantis said he opposes broad government or business mandates on masks or anything else related to the coronavirus pandemic. He did not directly address the school mask debate.

We've got to protect people's ability to live their lives, DeSantis said. My philosophy is, as a governor, my job is to protect your individual freedom.

The governor's appeal came Thursday night after Cooper issued a written version of his order delivered orally last week. The judge found that the Parents Bill of Rights law exempts government actions that are needed to protect public health and are reasonable and limited in scope  such as masking students to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in schools.

In fact, Cooper wrote that the DeSantis order on school masks itself violates the Parents Bill of Rights by illegally constraining the actions of school boards.

This statute does not support a statewide order or action interfering with the constitutionally provided authority of local school districts to provide for the safety and health of the children based on the unique facts on the ground in a particular county, Cooper wrote.

In addition, the judge said school boards must be afforded a chance to contest any penalties levied against them for adopting a student mask mandate.

The appeals court did not immediately indicate when it would take up the governor's appeal, which first must be filed in a full written document. The action taken Thursday night was a notice to the court that a detailed appeal of Cooper's order is coming.

Also Friday, school officials in Broward, Alachua and Orange counties filed a petition to schedule a hearing before an administrative law judge. According to the filing, the local school officials want the judge to invalidate a state health department emergency rule based on the governor's executive order.

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ELIZABETHTOWN, Ky. (AP)  A former Army major accused of killing three neighbors to eliminate a witness in a court-martial has been sentenced to life in prison, Kentuckys attorney general said.

Christian Richard Martin will not be eligible for parole, according to a statement Thursday from Attorney General Daniel Cameron. Jurors convicted Martin after a two-week trial in June in the deaths of Calvin and Pamela Phillips and Edward Dansereau in Pembroke.

The case attracted national attention four years after the 2015 killings when Martin, who was a pilot for an American Airlines subsidiary when he was arrested, was pulled off a jet in handcuffs before taking off from the Louisville airport.

Special prosecutor Barbara Whaley said during the trial that Martin had motive to kill neighbor Calvin Phillips because he was set to testify in a court-martial that could have ended Martins Army career, news outlets reported. His wife and Dansereau were in the wrong place at the wrong time, she said.

Whaley said a shell casing at the scene was shown to have been fired from a .45-caliber handgun found in a safe in Martins home across the street and that Martins dog tags were found in the couples home.

Defense attorney Tom Griffiths said theres forensic proof that the bullets that killed the victims did not come from his clients gun. He also noted there were no eyewitnesses, no DNA and no fingerprints. He said evidence pointing to his client could have been planted.

Martin was ultimately discharged from the Army and sentenced to 90 days in jail after being convicted by the military court of mishandling classified information and assault on a child, Cameron said.
TUCSON, Ariz. (AP)  State Rep. Randy Friese of Tucson is dropping out of the race to replace retiring Democratic Congresswoman Ann Kirkpatrick.

Friese, a trauma surgeon, said in a statement Thursday that he's not ready to give up his career in medicine.

As the delta variant surges across our region, it has become an increasing challenge to fulfill my obligations to the hospital, my patients, and the campaign amidst a run for Congress, Friese said.

Friese treated then-U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords after she was critically wounded in the Jan. 8, 2011, mass shooting in Tucson. He is a trauma surgeon who has served in the Arizona House since 2015.

Friese's departure from the race leaves two others seeking the Democratic nomination: state Sen. Kirsten Engel, an attorney, and state Rep. Daniel Hernandez, a Giffords intern who put pressure on her wound after she was shot. They're running in the district Giffords represented before she resigned to focus on her recovery.

Friese had led the field in fundraising, reporting $566,000 with $425,000 in the bank as of the end of June, according to Federal Election Commission records.

The 2nd Congressional Districts boundaries likely will change due to redistricting ahead of the 2022 election, but it currently includes parts of Tucson and southeastern Arizona.

The district is one of the most hotly contested in the state with races often decided by razor-thin margins.
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP)  Gazas ruling Hamas militant group on Friday said it recovered the bodies of three men from a smuggling tunnel along the Egyptian border.

The statement gave no cause of death. But a day earlier, the group accused Egypt of pumping poisonous gas into the tunnel. Such accusations could escalate tensions with Egypt just as the Egyptians are trying to broker a cease-fire agreement between Hamas and Israel. There was no immediate Egyptian comment.

Contact was lost with the smugglers late Thursday. Hamas and other militant factions later said that workers had died when toxic gas was pumped into a trading tunnel, calling it murder for which Egyptian authorities bear full responsibility.

Israel and Egypt imposed a crippling blockade on Gaza after Hamas seized power from rival Palestinian forces in 2007. Israel says the blockade is necessary to prevent the Islamic militant group from smuggling weapons into the territory. Rights groups say the blockade amounts to collective punishment of Gazas more than 2 million Palestinian residents.

For years, Palestinians used a vast network of tunnels beneath the Gaza-Egypt border to smuggle in everything from food and fuel to home appliances and motorcycles. Israel and Egypt said the tunnels were also used for weapons smuggling.

In 2013, Egypt began cracking down on the tunnel trade, demolishing tunnels as well as homes in the town of Rafah, which straddles the frontier, in order to create a buffer zone on its side of the border. Authorities said residents would be compensated.

Egypt has been leading mediation efforts since Israel and Hamas fought an 11-day war in May, their fourth since Hamas seized power. Hamas has demanded the easing of the blockade in return for calm, and in recent weeks has organized violent demonstrations along the frontier with Israel.

Egypt often serves as a mediator between Israel and Hamas, and its efforts to secure a broader long-term truce have shown signs of progress in recent days. Israel this week eased the blockade to allow construction materials needed for postwar repairs into the territory. And Israels prime minister, Naftali Bennett, is scheduled to visit Egypt this month.

It was not immediately known what effect Hamas accusations would have on the cease-fire efforts.
SACRAMENTO (AP)  California Gov. Gavin Newsom has made his leadership during the pandemic a centerpiece of his campaign to keep his job, warning in life-and-death terms that his Republican rivals in the recall election are anti-vaccine crusaders who would expose people to a new wave of COVID risks.

The recall election that culminates Sept. 14 was largely was driven by frustration with Newsom's sweeping coronavirus orders that closed schools and businesses and, in turn, cost millions of jobs. He is arguing his decisions saved thousands of lives and replacing him with a Republican could result in soaring case rates and deaths.

In a television ad this week, the first-term Democrat's campaign plastered his Republican rivals with the label anti-vax. Another ad calls the outcome of the recall vote a matter of life and death.

Newsom, however, is taking liberties with broad-brush strokes that distort his opponents' positions.

The top GOP candidates - Larry Elder, Kevin Faulconer, Kevin Kiley and John Cox - say theyve been vaccinated against the virus. All also have said people should get the shot if they wish but that government shouldnt force them. None has said the vaccines are dangerous, a stance typically associated with the term anti-vax.

I think people in high-risk categories, people who are older, ought to be vaccinated. But I certainly dont believe that the government should mandate that, Elder, the leading GOP candidate, told reporters this week.

Im not anti-vax, the 69-year-old talk radio host added. Ive been vaccinated because of my age, because of a blood condition I have, and my doctor strongly advised me to become vaccinated.

To him, Newsom is promoting a lie about his GOP rivals to alarm voters and distract attention from the states surging crime rate, widespread homelessness, struggling small businesses and housing crisis.

Elder and the other GOP candidates have at times shared misinformation about coronavirus and the vaccines, or offered a wink to the anti-vaccine movement.

In the first televised debate, Cox said people who contract the virus don't need the vaccine, a stance that goes against recommendations from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In a recent interview with CNN, Elder said young people" are unlikely to contract the disease and don't need to be vaccinated.

Newsom and many health experts are encouraging anyone age 12 and older to get the vaccine. While children are less likely to be hospitalized than adults, the delta variant has caused a surge in youth hospitalizations.

In the early days of the pandemic, Newsom imposed the nation's first statewide shutdown order. He says his bold actions saved lives. California has recorded the most virus deaths by far  nearly 66,000. However, the death rate is 33rd per capita.

This week, Newsom sought to capitalize on recent improvement during the latest COVID spike, saying California has among the lowest case rates  the fourth lowest in America today. It's not clear what measurement he was using  figures from Johns Hopkins show California ranks 31st in new cases per capita in the last two weeks.

Meantime, California's vaccination rate has reached a record high, with 80% of the eligible population having received at least one shot.

All four GOP candidates have said they would roll back existing state mandates on vaccinations, but that may not have a significant effect. Californias only strict vaccine mandate is for health care and long-term care workers. They must be fully vaccinated by Sept. 30 or face penalties. However, should Newsom lose the recall, a replacement won't be in office by then.

Newsom also ordered state workers and teachers to be vaccinated, but they can avoid the shot by submitting to weekly testing. The governor also mandated teachers and students wear masks but left it to local districts to enforce.

In the recall election, voters are being asked two questions: Should Newsom be recalled and who should replace him? If a majority want Newsom out, then the person among the 46 replacement candidates with the most votes becomes the next governor.

Republicans are trying to tap into a vein of public resentment over Newsom's aggressive actions to blunt the virus. They say he has overreached and the result has been devastating, especially for schoolchildren kept out of classrooms and businesses forced to close.

When it comes to vaccines, there are some distinctions in the four GOP candidates' approaches. While Faulconer and Cox recommend everyone get inoculated, Elder and Kiley say individuals should make up their own minds.

Elder, a lawyer, has a libertarian mindset and rails against government creep in peoples lives. If elected, he has said that any mask or vaccine mandates in place at that time will be suspended right away.

Among the orders Elder would strike down: Any rules that would require unvaccinated state workers to wear masks or be subject to weekly testing to hold their jobs. I think thats an assault on freedom, Elder said.

But he had no intention of intruding into the free market. If a private business wants to require people to wear masks and require people to have shots, thats a whole different thing, he said.

Kiley, a state assemblyman, says he would eliminate the state of emergency Newsom imposed in March 2020, which would prohibit him from enacting sweeping statewide anti-virus mandates.

California is a national outlier as to mandates, and Newsom seems to have done them so he can do ads about his opponents like me reversing them, he said in a statement.

Asked if he would ban local governments or private businesses from enacting vaccine mandates, Kileys spokesman Tim Rosales said: He believes that ending the Governors state of emergency will put COVID protections in the hands of citizens.

Faulconer, a former two-term San Diego mayor, has been the staunchest advocate for vaccines among the Republican candidates. Hes said the No. 1 way that we can get over COVID-19 is to have everyone get the vaccine.

But he says education, not mandates, are the right approach. His spokesman John Burke said Faulconer considers a vax-or-test requirement a reasonable approach for workers. Faulconer also says he wouldnt ban local governments or private businesses from adopting their own mandates on vaccinations.

Cox, who lost the governors race to Newsom in 2018, has delivered an evolving position on vaccines. After first suggesting people who had the virus didn't need the vaccine, Cox in later debates encouraged all people to get vaccinated. Like his rivals, he does not support any state level mandates.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP)  As hospitalizations, deaths and COVID-19 case numbers continue to climb in Tennessee, health experts on Friday pleaded with the public to get vaccinated and continue to wear a mask.

In a letter distributed by the Tennessee Hospital Association, a group of chief officers and chief nursing officers stressed that the latest surge of the virus outbreak is taking a deep toll on the state's frontline workers and wreaking havoc on families who have lost loved ones to the virus.

We grieve for family members as we watch them say their final good-byes, the letter stated. We also are frustrated that the simple steps that could greatly reduce the loss of life are not being taken by all Tennesseans.

As of Friday, there were nearly 1,395 new cases per 100,000 people in Tennessee over the past two weeks, which ranks third in the country for new cases per capita. One in every 134 people in Tennessee tested positive in the past week, according to researchers from Johns Hopkins.

Meanwhile, 42.1% of the population is now fully vaccinated against the virus.

Gov. Bill Lee told reporters earlier this week that the vaccine was the key tool to overcoming the outbreak. But he said he had no plans to change the states current pandemic mitigation strategy. Lee, a Republican, has faced criticism from some medical experts and Democrats for not enforcing stricter measures to combat the virus.

Masks are a key virus-prevention tool that are most effective when worn by a large number of people, public health experts say. The CDC has again recommended them for schools, saying they dont pose health risks for children older than toddler age.

However, Lee has recently signed an executive order allowing parents to opt out of the mask requirement. Hundreds of students have been attending classes without masks ever since. Two lawsuits have since been filed attempting to overturn the statewide order.

As of this week, children made up nearly 40% of the states reported cases. Hundreds of students throughout Tennessee have been forced to quarantine or isolate due to the COVID-19 outbreak. Some schools have closed classrooms, while others have temporarily switched to virtual learning.
DENVER (AP)  A hearing to determine whether a man charged with killing 10 people at a Colorado supermarket will stand trial is being delayed after his lawyers said they believe he has a mental disability that prevents him from being able to understand proceedings or help them defend him.

In an order Thursday, Judge Ingrid Seftar Bakke agreed to postpone Tuesdays preliminary hearing to review the evidence against Ahmad Alissa, as requested by his lawyers. Instead, she said she would use the time to advise Alissa of his rights during the process to determine if he is mentally competent and order an evaluation for him.
SAN MARCOS DE COLON, Honduras (AP)  Row after row of gleaming new greenhouses are rising on fields just a short walk from the land where the family of Zonia Amparo Vasquez has grown corn and beans for four decades.

Construction began in January, but it wasnt until June when locals learned their community was part of a controversial government initiative creating semi-autonomous economic development zones that are exempt from many national laws and taxes.

The peppers and tomatoes the greenhouses produce will be for export and other businesses are expected to someday arrive too.

President Juan Orlando Hernandez, whose comments revealed the nature of the project to locals, promised the Agroalpha project would be be the largest of its type in Central America, eventually creating more than 4,500 jobs in Las Tapias, a tiny settlement in San Marcos de Colon, a rural municipality of some 30,000 people near the Nicaraguan border.

Vasquez and others in Las Tapias say jobs would be welcome, but they are anguished by fear their property could one day be expropriated  something the law potentially gives such development zones the right to do.

Were afraid because no one has come to tell us what is really happening, said the 64-year-old. Her daughter, 40-year-old Dora Elena Ramirez, said she has been losing sleep fretting over where they would live if they lost their land.

It's only one of many worries critics have raised about the Employment and Economic Development Zones, known as ZEDEs for their Spanish initials.

Inspired by libertarian and free-market thinkers as a way to draw foreign investment to the impoverished country, the zones were authorized by a law passed in 2013, when Hernandez was president of the Congress.

A 21-member best practices committee was created to oversee and help regulate the zones. It was, at least initially, dominated by foreign free-market advocates, including several veterans of the Reagan administration, U.S. anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist and Reagan's son Michael.

The zones are exempt from import and export taxes and can set up their own internal forms of government, as well as courts, security forces, schools and even social security systems. They administer their own sea and airports, if any, as well.

While the law says they must comply with most Honduran constitutional principles and international human rights agreements, critics say they basically create a separate state within a state, undermining the country's sovereignty.

Hernandez has said that some 450,000 Hondurans need jobs and the ZEDEs can help generate them. He spoke before an artist's conception of such a future: dawn breaking over a gleaming city of towering skyscrapers and lush parks.

Backers have claimed that the zones would attract so much investment that the country's per capita income could multiply over just a few decades

For years, the idea seemed to have stalled, but Hernandez has pushed the idea and the Supreme Court recently knocked down legal challenges.

The reaction from business, religious and human rights groups was largely hostile.

The United Nations Honduras representatives warned that their creation "could mean serious risks to compliance with the general obligation of the Honduran state to respect and guarantee the free and full exercise of the rights of all residents without discrimination.

The Honduran Council of Private Enterprise criticized the plan. The nongovernmental National Anticorruption Council petitioned Congress to repeal the law.

The ZEDEs are the result of an illegal legislative and judicial process that changes the form of government established by the constitution, the councils Executive Director Gabriela Castellanos wrote.

Some warn the zones could become havens for criminal activity or those wishing to remain beyond the reach of the law.

Ramirez, Vasquezs daughter, recalled that San Marcos de Colon Mayor Douglas Ordonez had spoken earlier about a new business coming with jobs for poor people so they wouldnt emigrate to the United States, but he didn't say it was a ZEDE.

Ordonez said thats because he himself didnt know that until Hernandez mentioned it on television in June.

Hector Herrera, director of the nongovernmental Southern Platform Against ZEDEs, said that locals had told his organization that people from the industrial park had pressured them to sell their land or risk expropriation.

But Las Tapias communal leader Filadelfo Izaguirre said that while he had heard such rumors, no one had approached him about acquiring land. He has lived in the community for 48 years and said the 60-some families there would not easily part with their land.

It would be a lie for me to say they had asked (us) to sell, Izaguirre said. But if that happens, we are going to defend our land and there could even be deaths.

Victor Wilson, an investor and promoter of the industrial park, said there was no intention to expropriate property.

Right now we are generating 500 jobs and our goal is to generate more than 2,400 jobs in San Marcos de Colon, Wilson said. This investment would not have happened without the ZEDE because the process is more agile and allows approval in 60 days.

The normal process could take four years to start a project, he said.

I think the issue of the ZEDEs is being distorted, Wilson said. A state within a state, thats false. Its negative emotionalism to achieve an objective, in this case the elimination of the ZEDEs.

A perhaps more ambitious ZEDE off Honduras northern Caribbean coast also has roused local protests. Residents express similar fears about possible expropriation, especially for the Indigenous inhabitants of the Bay Islands. Those behind the Prospera ZEDE on the island of Roatan also deny any intention to seize property.

Promotions for Prospera depict futuristic apartments overlooking the sea and promise a place with "key checks on governmental power, a bill of rights protecting people of all income levels and a straightforward structure for doing business.

But Vasquez and her neighbors in Las Tapias are unnerved by the prospect of business interests with their own security forces enforcing their own rules.

We agree with creating more jobs, but talk of pushing us out, its not so easy, she said. When someone touches your things its delicate and we are going to defend ourselves.
ST. ROBERT, Mo. (AP)  Remains found earlier this week in Pulaski County have been identified as those of a man who had not been seen for about two months.

The Pulaski County Sheriff's office said Friday the remains were identified as Shaun Etheridge, 37, of Waynesville. He was last seen on June 20.
COUNCIL BLUFFS, Iowa (AP)  A parole officer who shot a suspect in a confrontation that saw the officer also injured has been cleared by a prosecutor of wrongdoing.

Pottawattamie County Attorney Matt Wilber issued a report clearing Officer Mike Brown in the Aug. 20 shooting in Council Bluffs, the Daily Nonpareil reported.
SRINAGAR, India (AP)  Indian authorities enforced a security lockdown and a near-total communications blackout for a second day in disputed Kashmir on Friday after the death of Syed Ali Geelani, a top resistance leader who became the emblem of the regions defiance against New Delhi.

Geelani's death at age 91 on late Wednesday and the ensuing crackdown on public movement and communications by Indian authorities highlighted the turmoil seething just below the surface in the Himalayan region of achingly stunning beauty.

Wearing flak jackets and riot gear, armed police and paramilitary soldiers patrolled streets in Srinagar, the regions main city, and ordered residents to stay indoors.

Razor wire, steel barricades and parked armored vehicles blocked some streets in the city as officials anticipated anti-India protests after weekly congregational Friday prayers.

Geelani, who had multiple ailments and was under house arrest for years, was buried by Indian authorities without any family members present after police snatched his body early Thursday, said his son, Naseem Geelani.

Police denied that Geelani's body had been forcibly buried and called it baseless rumors by some vested interests.

India's archrival Pakistan, which administers another part of Kashmir, observed a day of mourning on Thursday and condemned Geelanis non-public burial.

Geelani spearheaded Kashmirs movement for the right to self-determination and was a staunch proponent of merging Kashmir with Pakistan. For many in Kashmir and beyond, he was an enduring icon of defiance against India.

Many Kashmiris were incensed that they were unable to participate in his last rites.

In life, they feared him and caged him, said Bashir Ahmed, a trader in Srinagar. In his death, the fear of him forced them to snatch his body and cage us all inside our homes.

The anger was magnified after a video widely shared on social media purportedly showed Geelanis relatives, mostly women, frantically tying to prevent armed police from forcing their way into the room where his body, wrapped in the flag of Pakistan, was being kept. It showed women wailing and screaming as police took the body and locked his family and relatives inside the room.

Police said in a statement Thursday that they facilitated in bringing the dead body from house to graveyard as there were apprehensions of miscreants taking undue advantage of the situation.

Kashmir has long been a flashpoint between India and Pakistan, both of which claim the entire region.

Rebels have been fighting against Indian rule since 1989.

India describes the armed rebellion as Islamabads proxy war and state-sponsored terrorism. Most Muslim Kashmiris consider it a legitimate freedom struggle and support the rebel goal that the territory be united, either under Pakistani rule or as an independent country.

The region is one of the most heavily militarized in the world. Tens of thousands of civilians, rebels and government forces have been killed in the raging conflict.

Tensions flared in the region in 2019 after New Delhi stripped Kashmirs semi-autonomy, scrapped its statehood and removed inherited protections on land and jobs. Authorities have since brought a slew of new laws, which critics and many Kashmiris fear could change the region's demographics.
FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP)  Nearly 100 Kentucky National Guard soldiers are deploying to Louisiana to assist with recovery efforts after Hurricane Ida, officials said.

The Kentucky Army National Guards 617th Military Police Company from Richmond is expected to arrive in Louisiana by Saturday and will aid in civil support and relief efforts in the coming weeks, a statement from the agency said.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP)  Republican Gov. Bill Lee on Thursday said he has no plans to introduce anti-abortion legislation similar to what Texas adopted earlier this year.

We do not have any current plans to move forward beyond than what were currently awaiting which is a ruling from the court on the existing piece of legislation that we already have, Lee told reporters.
VILNIUS, Lithuania (AP)  Lithuania on Friday recalled its ambassador to China following the Baltic countrys decision in July to allow self-governing Taiwan to open an office in its capital under its own name.

The Foreign Ministry said Ambassador Diana Mickeviciene had been recalled from Beijing for consultations following the Chinese government statement on August 10.

Last month, China recalled its ambassador to Lithuania and told the Baltic nation to immediately rectify its wrong decision, take concrete measures to undo the damage, and not to move further down the wrong path.

The statement referred to potential consequences for Lithuania if it allowed the office to open but gave no details.

The Lithuanian Foreign Ministry expressed regret over Chinas action and stressed that while respecting the one China principle, it stands ready to develop mutually beneficial ties with Taiwan, just as many other countries in the world do.

China says Taiwan is part of its territory and doesn't have the right to diplomatic recognition, although the island maintains informal ties with all major nations through trade offices that act as de facto embassies, including in the United States and Japan. Chinese pressure has reduced Taiwans formal diplomatic allies to just 15.

Taiwan and Lithuania agreed in July that the office in the capital, Vilnius, set to open this fall, will bear the name Taiwan rather than Chinese Taipei  a term often used in other countries in order not to offend Beijing.

On Friday, the Lithuanian ministry said that diplomats from the European Union -- of which Lithuania is a member  expressed solidarity with Mickeviciene. The deputy EU ambassador to China, Tim Harrington, shared a joint photo on Twitter on Friday as dozens of EU diplomats gathered to demonstrate solidarity with their Lithuanian counterpart as she left Beijing and wished she could return soon, the ministry said.

Lithuania said its embassy in Beijing continues to operate as usual.
BISBEE, Ariz. (AP)  A Maine National Guard soldier has been charged with sexually abusing a colleague while serving on the southern border, officials said.

Bret Chapman, of Walpole, Maine, was charged with kidnapping, two counts of sexual abuse and one count of aggravated assault, Michael Powell, deputy attorney for Arizona's Cochise County, said Friday.

The assault took place in December while the Maine National Guard were deployed in Arizona, he said.

Chapman was arrested on Aug. 27 and posted bail. It's unclear if a public defender has been appointed for him, Powell said. Chapman didn't immediately return an email from The Associated Press seeking comment.

The Maine National Guard, which is aware of the charges, said it couldn't discuss specifics, but it encouraged soldiers to report such behavior.

Sexual assault and all forms of harassment are repugnant and beyond unacceptable  they stand in stark opposition to Army values and what it means to wear our nations uniform. We actively encourage reporting incidents and commend those who do, said Maj. Carl Lamb.

It's unclear why it took so many months to bring charges, but the decision was ultimately made to seek an indictment in Cochise County, Powell said.

The 262nd Engineer Company deployed to the southern border in October to assist U.S. Customs and Border Patrol. It's due to return this fall.
MADISON, Wis. (AP)  More than 8,000 refugees from Afghanistan were being temporarily housed at Fort McCoy in western Wisconsin as of Friday and the military base has a capacity to host up to 13,000 as they are resettled across the country, a military official said Friday.

The base, located about (65 kilometers) east of La Crosse and the Minnesota border, is one of eight in the U.S. processing Afghan refugees since the Taliban took control after the United States withdrew.
ATLANTA (AP)  Morehouse College announced Friday that it has canceled this years homecoming festivities due to a surge of COVID-19.

Events were scheduled to occur Oct. 10-17. They will not be rescheduled. However, the Oct. 16 football game against Fort Valley State University will still be played but without the homecoming designation and with fewer tickets available to the game to implement social distancing.

University officials said they made the decision this week as Georgia broke the record for COVID-19 hospitalizations.

The state has the sixth-highest per capita infection rate in the nation and an unprecedented number of young people have become ill with the virus, Morehouse President David Thomas said. Given the circumstances, a massive in-person gathering on our campus presents a public health risk to our students which is impossible to ignore.

Thomas said nearly 100% of the students and employees on campus have met the vaccination requirement. With aggressive masking requirements and other safety protocols, Morehouse has limited the spread of the coronavirus on campus, he said. But he had to consider the broader community.

'Keeping our students safe is our top priority," he said.

So in place of homecoming, the school will host a students-only fall festival. Access to campus on Oct. 16 will be limited to students and employees and other Atlanta University Center Consortium institutions, Thomas said in his statement.

We would like to thank the many students and alumni who have provided feedback as we made this difficult decision, which balances the understandable desire of our community to gather together with our need to protect our students safety, officials said.
WINDOW ROCK, Ariz. (AP)  The Navajo Nation on Friday reported 74 new COVID-19 cases and one additional death.

The latest numbers pushed the Navajo Nations total to 32,784 cases since the pandemic began more than a year ago and 1,407 known deaths.

Tribal President Jonathan Nez is pleading for residents not to leave the reservation over the Labor Day weekend.

"The safest place to be is at home here on the Navajo Nation where the infection rate for COVID-19 is much lower than border towns and cities off our Nation," Nez said in a statement.

Nez previously said all Navajo Nation executive branch employees will need to be fully vaccinated against the virus by the end of September or submit to regular testing.

The new rules apply to full, part-time and temporary employees, including those working for tribal enterprises like utilities, shopping centers and casinos.

Any worker who does not show proof of vaccination by Sept. 29 must be tested every two weeks or face discipline.

The tribes reservation is the countrys largest at 27,000 square miles (70,000 square kilometers) and it covers parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah.
PINE RIDGE, S.D. (AP)  A Pine Ridge man is in custody after he exchanged gunfire with officers from the Oglala Sioux Tribe after a standoff that lasted several hours.

Oglala Sioux Tribe Police Chief Algin Young said in a statement that officers got a call about gunshots in Pine Ridge on Thursday afternoon and arrived to find a man with a gun who refused to cooperate. Young said the man went into his home and wouldnt listen to law enforcement.
SALEM, Ore. (AP)  With Oregon getting an additional congressional seat based on population growth, Republican and Democratic state lawmakers on Friday presented dueling visions on where that new district should be.

The Oregon House interim committee on redistricting, evenly split with three Democrats and three Republicans, also offered vastly different maps on how the existing five U.S. House of Representative districts in Oregon should be drawn.

Four of Oregon's House seats in Congress are currently held by Democrats while one has long been held by a Republican.

The Democrats map says new congressional District 6 should be south of Portland, Oregon's biggest city, and west of Interstate 5. Republicans also put it south of Portland, but on the east side of the interstate.

Expanding Oregons number of U.S. House seats from five to six wont necessarily be a win for Democrats, who control the state politically.

The new district would be safely Democratic under the Democrats' map and competitive under the Republican map, according to an analysis by FiveThirtyEight, a website that gets its name from the number of Electoral College members and which focuses on opinion poll analysis, politics and other topics.

The maps were released with little fanfare. The proposed placement of the six congressional districts were not discussed by the interim committee members, who met remotely by video. A series of virtual public hearings about redrawing the districts will start next Wednesday.

Rep. Shelly Boshart Davis, a Republican and co-chair of the interim redistricting committee, accused Democrats of having in the past conducted gerrymandering  which is the manipulation of electoral district boundaries to win an unfair political advantage.

"Our current districts have diluted the voices of Oregonians for two decades to advance one political party and incumbent politicians, Boshart said during Friday's meeting.

Rep. Andrea Salinas, a Democrat and fellow co-chair of the interim committee, contested the allegation.

With all due respect to my co-chair, repeating the false claim of gerrymandering doesnt make it true, Salinas said. The maps that were basing our current maps on passed in 2011, and they were passed with overwhelming bipartisan support.

One of the biggest map redraws came from the Democrats, whose draft plan would expand U.S. House District 3  currently squeezed between Portland's eastern suburbs and the Columbia River  toward the southeast, all the way to the edge of the central Oregon town of Bend.

The Republican map squeezes District 3 even closer to the river that marks the Washington state line, to allow for the new District 6 to fit into the electoral boundary puzzle.

In a normal redistricting year, the redistricting process would likely have been completed by this time. But the coronavirus pandemic caused delays in the release of U.S. Census Bureau data required to draw new maps. The redistricting data, culled from the 2020 census, was released last month  four months later than expected.

The redistricting numbers that states use for redrawing congressional and legislative districts show where white, Asian, Black and Hispanic communities grew over the past decade.

Steady population growth  driven by newcomers from other states  is giving Oregon greater national political clout. U.S. Census Bureau figures released in April showed the states population increased by 10% over the past decade. Oregon as a result got an additional congressional district for the first time in 40 years.

For state legislative districts, there is a set number of districts, so lawmakers can only move the boundary lines and the legislators' districts must be equal in population. Congressional districts are added and subtracted to states based on population and also must be equal in population.

State legislative Democrats, who overwhelmingly control the Legislature, agreed to give up an advantage in redrawing the states political districts for the next 10 years in exchange for a Republican commitment to stop blocking legislation in the state Legislature with delay tactics.

The deal gives Republicans more say over what the boundaries for 90 legislative districts will look like and increases the GOPs influence on how to divide the state into congressional districts.

The Legislature has until Sept. 27 to complete the redistricting process.

If lawmakers fail to pass new legislative boundaries by then, the task will fall to Secretary of State Shemia Fagan, a progressive Democrat. Lawmakers have succeeded in passing a legal redistricting plan just twice since 1911.

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Cline, who reported from Portland, Oregon, 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.
MILFORD, Neb. (AP)  The Nebraska State Patrol is investigating after a Milford police officer fired at a vehicle that police said was trying to flee.

No one was injured in the shooting Thursday at a Super Storage business in Milford, the patrol said in a news release.
POCATELLO, Idaho (AP)  Police in Pocatello, Idaho, are investigating a local funeral home after they said a state health inspector contacted them about the business.

The Idaho State Journal reports the Ada County Coroner's office is delivering a mass casualty refrigeration trailer to the Downard Funeral Home to store the bodies that were being held at the business during the investigation.
WARSAW, Poland (AP)  A second child of an Afghan family evacuated from Kabul to Poland died Friday after eating soup containing death cap mushrooms, which the family had unknowingly gathered in a Polish forest outside their quarantine center.

The 6-year-old boy had received an emergency liver transplant but doctors were unable to save him. His 5-year-old brother was pronounced dead on Thursday at Poland's main children's hospital, where both were treated.

The boys' 17-year-old sister was treated at the hospital and released, in good condition. Doctors said the dose of toxins was less damaging to an adult with larger body mass than to children.

Authorities are investigating whether negligence could have been a factor in the poisoning last week.

The family of two adults and four children allegedly cooked soup with the highly poisonous mushrooms they found in the forest around a center where they were undergoing a mandatory quarantine. They entered the center in Podkowa Lesna, a small town near Warsaw, on Aug. 23.

Prosecutors are questioning the centers staff about the events last week as part of an investigation that could lead to possible criminal charges for negligence and unintentional exposing people to a serious threat of loss of health or life, Aleksandra Skrzyniarz, a spokesperson for the prosecutors' office in Warsaw, said. The offense carries a maximum prison term of three years, she said.

Interior Minister Mariusz Kaminski said this week that the poisonings were a tragedy, but did not result from any negligence at the center."

Authorities have rejected media speculation that food rations at the center may have been insufficient.

Poland evacuated the family last month at Britains request after the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. The father had worked for the British military.

In a separate incident at a different center near Warsaw, four Afghan men were hospitalized after eating poisonous mushrooms, according to the state Office for Foreigners.

There are about 1,300 kinds of mushrooms in Poland, some 200 of which are poisonous. They are a popular food, but very good knowledge of them is required to distinguish poisonous from edible ones.

In 2019, 27 people got mushroom poisoning in Poland, and 25 of them had to be hospitalized. No deaths were reported.

Death cap mushrooms, among the most poisonous in the world, closely resemble Polands edible parasol mushrooms.

Mushrooms in Europe are often different from those in the home countries of newcomers, and there have been other such cases of mushroom poisoning in past years in Germany and elsewhere.

In Denmark in 2017, two children from a Congolese refugee family died and another nine family members were hospitalized after eating toxic mushrooms.

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Follow all AP stories on global migration at https://apnews.com/hub/migration.
WARSAW, Poland (AP)  Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said Friday that nobody has the right to lecture his country on democracy, after the European Union said talks were still ongoing over the payment of billions of euros to bloc member Poland due to rule of law issues.

Nobody will teach us what democracy and rule of law are because Poland has a very long and noble history of fighting against all kinds of totalitarianism and despots, Morawiecki said on Facebook.
NORTH PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP)  Nurses and health care workers approved a new three-year contract with the owners of Our Lady of Fatima Hospital in a vote on Thursday.

The union UNAP Local 5110 said its members voted overwhelmingly to approve the new contract with Prospect CharterCare, the Providence Journal reported.
PHOENIX (AP)  The Arizona Supreme Court has revived a lawsuit challenging a decision by the Cochise County Board of Supervisors to appoint one of its members to fill a judicial vacancy, ruling that Arizonans have a sweeping right to go to court to enforce so-called public accountability laws.

The decision Thursday overturns a lower court's dismissal of a 2020 lawsuit that contended the board violated open meeting and conflict of interest laws when it voted to appoint then-Supervisor Patrick Call as a justice of the peace.
MONTREAL (AP)  Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau defended his decision to call an election during the pandemic in first debate of the campaign for this months election.

Trudeau is facing a tough re-election battle against his Conservative Party rival, Erin OToole. The vote is Sept. 20.

Why did you trigger an election in the middle of a fourth wave? OToole asked Trudeau at the French-language debate in Montreal.

Trudeau said he needs a mandate from voters.

Almost 80 percent of Canadians have done the right thing, they got vaccinated, twice in fact, said Trudeau, noting Canada is having a fourth wave because 20 percent are unvaccinated.

And because of them we have to stop democracy from working? No, Trudeau said.

He criticized OToole for not requiring his candidates to be vaccinated.

OToole said he believes the country can find reasonable accommodations for those who are unvaccinated, like rapid testing and social distancing.

Four provinces including Quebec and Ontario, Canadas largest, are bringing in vaccine passports that require citizens to be vaccinated to enter places like restaurants and gyms.

Trudeau called the election last month seeking to win the majority of seats in Parliament but polls show that is unlikely and that he might even lose power to OToole and the Conservative party.

Trudeau had wanted to capitalize on the fact that Canada is now one of the most fully vaccinated countries in the world, but the country is now in a fourth wave driven by the delta variant.

Daniel Beland, a politics professor at McGill University in Montreal, said Trudeau held his ground.

His combative performance might help stop the bleeding for the Liberals or, at least, reassure his base that he still has fire in his belly, Beland said.

The 49-year-old Trudeau, the son of the late Liberal Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, became the second youngest prime minister in Canadian history when he was first elected with a majority of seats in Parliament in 2015. He reasserted liberalism in 2015 after almost 10 years of Conservative Party government in Canada, but scandals combined with high expectations damaged his brand.

His father served as prime minister from 1968 to 1984 with a short interruption and remains one of the few Canadian politicians known in other countries.
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP)  The most sought-after endorsement in Pennsylvania's wide-open Republican primary for U.S. Senate went early to Sean Parnell, but the backing of former President Donald Trump isn't clearing the field for Parnell and it's yet to be seen what sort of help it will provide.

Trump's endorsement, issued in a statement Wednesday afternoon, came early in the race, nearly nine months before next May's primary in what is expected to be one of the nations most competitive Senate contests in next years election.

It helped that Parnell is close with Donald Trump Jr., who has enthusiastically boosted Parnell's candidacy since the day he declared.

Meanwhile, Parnell  a decorated former Army Ranger who penned a memoir of his service in Afghanistan, which became a New York Times bestseller  has had a prominent platform of late, appearing on a raft of conservative TV news shows, livestreams and podcasts since the Taliban began advancing quickly amid a U.S. pullout.

That may have sped up the endorsement, said Sam DeMarco, the Allegheny County Republican Party chair who is friendly with Parnell.

It gave Parnell a national platform to "weigh in on his experience in Afghanistan, as well as thoughts on what went wrong and what should have been done differently, DeMarco said. He exhibited leadership in these television appearances and on social media, which appears to be sorely lacking in Washington, D.C.

Pennsylvanias Senate seat is opening up with the retirement in 2023 of two-term Republican U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey, and both Republicans and Democrats have a big field of candidates in the politically divided state.

Parnell became politically active in recent years, running unsuccessfully for Congress last year and landing a coveted speaking slot at the 2020 Republican National Convention.

Still, no independent poll has emerged that shows Parnell  or any Republican candidate  has established substantial name recognition with voters. Polling shows no clear leader in the GOP field and Parnell's fundraising numbers through June 30 were uninspiring.

Trump's record in Pennsylvania is not perfect: he beat Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016 by 44,000 votes, then lost last year to Democrat Joe Biden by about 80,000.

There is some backlash to Trump following his campaign of baseless claims that the election was stolen from him and his incitement to his loyalists who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.

I think after what happened post-2020 election, I think the presidents behavior was completely unacceptable, so I dont think he should be the nominee to lead the party in 2024," Toomey told CNBC on Friday.

And Trump's endorsements aren't exactly diamond-encrusted: In Texas, Republican Jake Ellzey beat Trump-backed Susan Wright in a U.S. House race just five weeks ago.

The other candidates  conservative commentator Kathy Barnette, real estate investor Jeff Bartos and Carla Sands, Trumps ambassador to Denmark, among them  show no sign of getting out of the way.

Bartos campaign on Friday called him the Republican Partys best chance to hold the U.S. Senate seat in Pennsylvania and said he is leading the field in fundraising, political organization and messaging.

Jeff has outworked every candidate in the field, and will keep doing so all the way through the primary and into the general, his campaign said.

In a statement, Sands said Trump will be disappointed in Parnell endorsement and that no one in the race can match my demonstrated commitment to the America First agenda.

We look forward to having the president on our team in the general election, she said.

In any case, Trump's endorsement should add to Parnell's momentum, York County Republican Party chair Jeff Piccola said.

But, Piccola said, the endorsement is one thing. It'll be interesting to see if the president comes into campaign for him, helps to raise money for him. Those are all questions for the future.

DeMarco said the endorsement is meaningful because of the former president's loyal following among GOP voters and it takes a section of the electorate off the table for Parnell's rivals.

Another important endorsement is that of the state party.

Trump's backing may weigh on that decision.

But the party has elements who typically resist endorsing in contested primaries and, with a big field of candidates, it may not be possible to get an endorsement," Piccola said.

___

Follow Marc Levy on Twitter at https://www.twitter.com/timelywriter.
ROCKFORD, Ill. (AP) 

A northern Illinois coroner has been indicted by a grand jury on charges that include stealing more than $14,000 from dead people.

According to the indictment on multiple counts of official misconduct and theft of government funds, Winnebago County Coroner Bill Hintz stole cash belonging to dead people from the coroner's evidence vault and pocketed about $2,500 he required family members to pay to recover the cremated remains of homeless loved ones.

The defendants actions took advantage of grieving families and abused the trust of Winnebago County residents, Illinois General Kwame Raoul said in a statement this week announcing the indictment.

The charges reported by the Rockford Register Star come nearly a year after Raoul's office charged Hintz with several counts of official misconduct, forgery for allegedly spending money on hotel rooms, car rentals and other expenses unrelated to official county business.

According this week's indictment by a Winnebago County grand jury, Hintz maintained that he released some of the money to the county administrator but Raoul's office said it found no evidence that Hintz had, in fact, done that.

Hintz did not respond to a request for comment that The Associated Press left with his office on Friday afternoon.
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP)  Gov. Tom Wolf has notched perhaps his biggest victory in his strategy to fight climate change in Pennsylvania, but climate-change activists still see his record as full of contradictions and suggest he has enough time left in office to score farther-reaching accomplishments.

The Democratic governor won approval this week from a regulatory board for Pennsylvania to make Pennsylvania the first major fossil-fuel state to impose carbon pricing on power plants, the state's biggest source of carbon dioxide.

The plan likely will face a legal challenge  it faced strong opposition from coal and natural gas interests, labor unions and business associations  and its overall effect on greenhouse gas emissions remains to be seen.

It comes after Wolf's administration has lost opportunities to advance the cause of climate action, environmental advocates say.

For instance, Wolf's administration empowered the methane-emitting natural gas industry by permitting the construction of pipelines, including the heavily fined natural-gas liquid-carrying Mariner East pipelines, they say.

It has permitted gas-fired power plants, including two large plants whose permits are being challenged by environmental groups as too lax on emissions limits, while Wolf agreed to extend millions of dollars in tax breaks to turn natural gas into fertilizer and industrial chemicals.

Wolfs willingness to promote fracking infrastructure and plastics ... will be challenging to the governors long-term environmental legacy because I think science will show us in a few years just how detrimental those anti-environmental practices truly are, said David Masur, executive director of Philadelphia-based PennEnvironment.

Meanwhile, Wolf could have done more to subsidize the buildout of electric-vehicle infrastructure, and backed away from chances to target vehicle emissions, Pennsylvania's second-biggest source of carbon dioxide, some say.

Some acknowledge that Wolf has had little room to maneuver.

His administration must follow permitting laws, and Pennsylvania's Republican-controlled Legislature is protective of hometown natural gas, oil and coal industries in the fossil fuel-rich state.

That has limited his options to executive actions.

At the end of his first term, his administration began enforcing tougher air pollution standards on equipment in new or updated well sites and along pipeline networks in Pennsylvania's vast natural gas industry.

He kicked off his second term by committing his administration to putting Pennsylvania on a path to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, in line with 2015s landmark Paris climate agreement.

The administration has worked hard on that, orienting state agencies toward climate-friendly practices and helping cities and counties to do the same while educating the public about how climate change affects them, Wolfs environmental protection secretary, Patrick McDonnell, said.

People are seeing it and are hungry for more information on how they can engage and how they can help, McDonnell, said. I think the programs were talking about are things that help businesses, residents, others take advantage of all the things were learning to really push things forward.

While Wolf has just 16 months left in office, there are perhaps bigger steps his administration can take, say environmental advocates.

One is to enact a regulation that cracks down on emissions from pre-existing equipment used across Pennsylvania's natural gas fields and pipeline networks.

It is hung up, at least in part, on the question of whether to apply it to smaller-producing wells.

Joe Minott, executive director of the Philadelphia-based Clean Air Council, said it must cover those wells to be effective in capturing methane, a greenhouse gas that researchers say is far more potent than carbon dioxide.

A strong methane rule will be the most concrete way of reducing greenhouse gases, Minott said.

His climate change legacy is frankly on the line," Minott said. The carbon-pricing program is a good start, but its not enough.

Masur said the Wolf administration must finalize a regulation to require automakers to offer electric cars for sale in Pennsylvania as a way to cut emissions.

That, said Masur, could be the crown jewel of the governor's environmental legacy."

The effectiveness of the carbon-pricing program may depend on where emissions caps are set and whether money from the emissions credits is wisely spent on clean energy and energy efficiency programs.

Of great importance is ensuring that money equitably helps poor and minority communities that tend to be more exposed to pollution, said Mark Szybist, a senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council.

There are a lot of different ways that could go and how it goes could determine how much of an impact it has on climate change and on equity, Szybist said.

That, he said, will determine Wolf's legacy on the climate.

___

Follow Marc Levy on Twitter at https://www.twitter.com/timelywriter.
BROCKTON, Mass. (AP)  A former worker at a Massachusetts day care who pleaded guilty to charges of child rape and abuse was committed indefinitely to a state mental hospital after his prison term ended.

A judge determined that Kyle Loughlin, 28, posed a high risk of reoffending during a bench trial Tuesday, the Boston Globe reported.
Courtesy of David Jansen

Lassen Volcanic National Park is still on fire. The second largest conflagration in California history, the Dixie Fire, has now spread over more than half of the park, with nearly 65,000 of the parks 106,452 acres burned.

And while its too soon to assess the damage, initial reports and photographs show that some structures and areas of the park are in pretty bad shape, while others remain pristine and standing.
JOSH EDELSON/AFP via Getty Images

Again and again, fire scientists have commented on the extreme and unprecedented behavior on display in the Caldor Fire, which was elevated last week to the No. 1 priority in the country. Since then, several thousand firefighters have arrived, along with engines, bulldozers and helicopters, and yet containment has evaded fire crews.

Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at UCLAs Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, said the Caldor Fires intensity is equally the product of the climate crisis and a century of fire suppression.
Last week, at a community meeting, fear mounted in South Lake Tahoe as the Caldor Fire raged and a red flag warning lurked in the forecast.

Cal Fire officials told residents they needed a defense of 3,000 to 5,000 firefighters. The Caldor Fire was elevated to the top priority in the nation and, in an attempt to assure residents and community members, Cal Fire officials said that so many resources were coming to Lake Tahoe, they were causing a traffic jam at base camp.

The days that followed were tense as the fire made its advance into the Lake Tahoe Basin. On Sunday, Aug. 29, southeastern winds flared up and the Caldor Fire burned more than 20,000 acres in 24 hours. On Monday, 3,684 firefighters were working across all fronts, as flames ran up and over Echo Summit, burning cabins built and maintained by generations of families, many from the Bay Area. For the thousands of homes nestled below, in the woods of Christmas Valley and Meyers, the future looked grim.

But then, something incredible happened. On Monday night, the fire ran down the valley, to the edge of the neighborhood in Christmas Valley, where it shot embers over Highway 89, starting a spot fire in the forest just above the houses on the other side of the road and continued burning east.

Both sides of the valley were engulfed in flames. But as of Friday, many of the homes in Christmas Valley, Meyers and South Tahoe are still standing.

On Friday morning, the daily reports showed that only 2,200 acres had burned in the prior 24 hours  a fraction of the acreage compared to Sunday night. The fire is 29% contained. One fire official mentioned that luck played a big role in averting a major crisis this week. Others said that the winds didnt wreck the havoc many feared.

Parker Wilbourn, spokesperson for Cal Fire, says that there were three big factors to the success of this week.

First, the progress on the Caldor Fire could not have happened without the sheer number of firefighters, engines, helicopters, bulldozers and other resources. Over the course of the week, nearly a thousand more firefighters arrived; at the peak, firefighter boots on the ground numbered 4,451.

Oh, its made an incredible difference, Wilbourn said. We have 523 fire engines on this incident. Weve got 84 water tenders, 27 helicopters, 62 hand crews and 95 dozers. So we have a tremendous amount of resources fighting this fire.

Jae C. Hong/Associated Press

Second, Wilbourn said that the massive deployment of resources in the Lake Tahoe basin over the last 5 to 10 years to prevent wildfire and promote forest health  steps that were taken to prevent a catastrophe exactly like the one the Caldor Fire threatened  directly helped firefighters combat flames in Lake Tahoe this week.

Finally, Wilbourn commended Lake Tahoe homeowners who heeded the advice officials have been shouting for years: defensible space.

"They're taking ownership of their housing area and that's phenomenal," Wilbourn said. "We want to say thank you to the homeowners, as well as the forestry service, for their efforts."

Rocky Opliger, incident commander of Cal Fire, described at a community briefing on Thursday evening what he saw happen when the Caldor Fire approached Apache Avenue, a street at the edge of Meyers. Flames were stretching 150 feet high as the fire marched toward homes in Meyers, Opliger said. But once the fire reached parts of the forest that had seen recent thinning or controlled burns, the flames lowered to just 15 feet tall, which gave fire engines and hand crews a window to take action, stop the fire from advancing into the neighborhood and prevent homes from burning.

Thats the kind of work we see in the entire South Lake area, Opliger said. He noted that all of the work on the Caldor Fire has been a collaboration of federal, state and local agencies, supported by law enforcement and community leaders. Thats those efforts of all the agencies working together.

In the wake of the Angora Fire, which burned 280 structures in South Tahoe in 2007, almost two dozen agencies across the basin formed a partnership called the Tahoe Fire and Fuels Team with the explicit mission to reduce fuels in the wildland-urban interface (a term experts use to refer to the forests that edge neighborhoods) and prepare communities for the day a wildfire comes.

South Lake Tahoe saw that day this week.

Since 2008, the Tahoe Fire and Fuels Team has treated some 65,000 acres in the Lake Tahoe basins wildland-urban interface, said Forest Schafer, director of the natural resources division of the California Tahoe Conservancy. Those acres of treatment include forest thinning  by hand and by machine  and prescribed burning.

Between 2010 and 2020, Lake Tahoe basin agencies have spent $133 million on forest health projects that are mostly aimed at reducing fuels in the forest and protecting neighborhoods from wildfire.

This week, firefighters arrived in Lake Tahoe from at least eight different states, Wilbourn said, as well as crews from across all of California. He noted that he was sitting next to a firefighter from Los Angeles who joined the fight to help protect Lake Tahoe.

The last thing anybody wants is to see Lake Tahoe burn, Wilbourn said. So we threw everything we had.

On Friday morning, Cal Fire officials said they were cautiously optimistic about the Caldor Fire, but the work is not done yet. Huge dozer lines  built by machines with blades as wide as 10 feet, according to Wilbourn  are still getting built every day to defend South Tahoe from flames. And on Thursday, air attacks dropped 500,000 gallons of retardant and water on flames.

But the weather has taken a turn toward favorable conditions, granting firefighters with mild winds, lower temperatures and more nighttime humidity to help them make progress on containing the Caldor Fire.

Cal Fire officials know that South Tahoe residents are eager to come home. Evacuation orders are still in effect.

We will do everything we can to get people back into their homes, Wilbourn said. We understand that people are frustrated  they just want some sense of normalcy. They want to get back into their homes. And we totally empathize with that. But we want to do it in a safe way.
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.
Thala Ajith has completed the shoot of his upcoming action thriller film Valimai in Russia and he is meeting a lot of bikers in the country. The actor is planning to explore Russia by bike.

The makers of Valimai including director H Vinoth and his assistants are on their way to India. They will be busy with the post-production works from next week. Boney Kapoor, the producer of the film is planning for a possible grand release in October.
New Delhi, Sep 3 (IANS) Zabihullah Mujahid, the official spokesman for the Taliban regime, told an Italian newspaper that China was "our main partner and represents a fundamental and extraordinary opportunity for us as the Chinese government is ready to invest and rebuild our country", the Guardian reported.

Mujahid told the La Repubblica newspaper that the Taliban "care a lot about the One Belt, One Road' project. We own rich copper mines, which, thanks to the Chinese, will be modernised. Finally, China represents our ticket to the markets around the world".

On Beijing, Mujahid said: "He is our main partner because he is willing to invest. We care very much about the Silk Road.".

Asked about the Taliban's relationship with Russia, he told the La Repubblica that relations with Moscow were "mainly political and economic. Russia continues to mediate for us and with us to create the conditions for an international peace", the Guardian reported.

The Taliban have promised to allow safe passage out of the country for any foreigners or Afghans left behind by the massive airlift that ended with the withdrawal of the last US troops on Monday, but the Kabul airport remained closed on Thursday.

The Taliban are expected to announce a new government in Afghanistan within hours, as chaos in the country deepened and aid experts warned of imminent economic collapse, the report added.

--IANS

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The drill, held on the Mohamed Naguib military base at the Mediterranean Sea, will end on September 17, Xinhua news agency quoted the statement issued on Thursday as saying.

Cairo, Sep 3 (IANS) Egypt is hosting the 'Bright Star' joint military drill with 21 countries after a one-year delay due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the army said in a statement.

"It is one of the largest and most important world military exercises due to the large number of participating troops," it said.

Besides Egypt, troops from 21 countries, including the US, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Saudi Arabia, France, Britain, Greece and Italy, are taking part in the military exercises, it added.

The Bright Star multinational military drill was launched in 1980 as part of the US-brokered peace treaty between Egypt and Israel.

It has been hosted by Egypt in cooperation with the US every two years.

The drill, originally scheduled for September 2020, was suspended due to the raging Covid-19 pandemic.

--IANS

ksk/
"The purpose of the meeting is to try to reach an agreement on coordinated engagement with the Taliban on the basis of certain conditions, and on the possibilities of cooperation with regional players," the bloc's foreign policy chief Josep Borrell told journalists before the start of the informal meeting in Slovenia on Thursday.

Brussels, Sep 3 (IANS) In a debate on Afghanistan, Foreign Ministers of the European Union (EU) discussed how to engage with the Taliban, in particular humanitarian aid and a possible tide of Afghan refugees.

This does not mean recognition, Borrell stressed.

"This requires cooperation with the Taliban."

It is important for Germany to set certain conditions, such as the formation of an inclusive government, the protection of human rights and women's rights, and that Afghanistan does not again become a haven for terrorists, said German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas during the meeting.

Luxembourg's Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn stressed that the Taliban must be aware that without international assistance, the country will collapse.

"Europe cannot be a positive Europe if it limits the number of refugees," he said.

The need to allow Afghans at risk to come to Europe was underlined by several other EU Foreign Ministers.

However, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto disagreed, saying that Afghans should not be encouraged to leave the country without restrictions.

Polish Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau agreed with him.

On Friday, the ministers will discuss EU-China relations, the EU's approach towards the Gulf countries and EU cooperation with the Indo-Pacific region.

Indian Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar will present his views at the meeting.

--IANS

ksk/
New Delhi, Sep 3 (IANS) The onslaught of the Covid-19 pandemic did impact students' plans to study abroad. Their zeal was pulled down not because of the precautionary travel restrictions and changes in the regulations but because of the confusion that followed regarding international travel rules and the admission process.

The IDP's virtual fair emerged as an all-inclusive information point to resolve all the doubts and queries students have concerning the restrictions and regulations concerning admission processes in their preferred host countries and institutions. This one-platform communication between students, institutions, and international education adds to the convenience of students and their parents.

It keeps them updated about all the latest developments. Besides, it also helps students reach out to the institution of their interest on a one-on-one basis to discuss various aspects of their future study plans. It includes the admission process, budget, scholarships, accommodation, internships, post-study work opportunities, and gathering an understanding of the transition from online to hybrid learning.

One of the most advantageous aspects of the virtual education fair is its accessibility. It provides students with opportunities to explore their prospects in some of the world's best institutions from the comfort of their homes. Both students and parents can participate in the fair and interact with the representations of over 170 world-class institutions from the US, the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Ireland.

It is currently the safest and most convenient medium for both students and institutions to connect from the comfort and safety of their respective locations. Besides allowing students to have an individual counselling session, the event also helps them submit their application ns on the spot for upcoming intakes and avail application fee waivers for various institutions. Students also gain information required for their application, SOP, visa process, and other documentation. The key aim of the event is to create a transparent environment between the attendees and the institutions.

Speaking about IDP's commitment to assist students in their plan to pursue higher studies abroad, Piyush Kumar, Regional Director (South Asia), IDP Education, said: "IDP is known for staying ahead of the curve with its extensive network of more than 1300 approachable experts who help students with the end-to-end process of studying abroad. A personal counsellor is assigned to every interested student to help them plan every detail of their study-abroad journey. We have 40 physical offices and 23 virtual offices where students can interact/meet with their assigned counsellors (during business hours) at their convenience."

"We aim to guide as many aspirants as possible. Hence, our virtual education fair is free for all students. The primary goal of the fair is to provide a platform for the students/attendees to discuss their concerns directly with the university representatives via video conferencing. It allows participants to get complete clarity and helps them make decisions for their overseas education plan."

The virtual fair, which is open to all, is gaining much popularity. Last year, the event was attended by over 150,000 attendees from various parts of India. With the increase in acceptability of hybrid learning programs and ease in border restrictions for international students, this number is likely to rise significantly this year.

To attend the event, all that one needs to do is book a slot via the official IDP website. Few days before the event day, the participant will receive a joining link on their registered e-mail id along with the details of the virtual meeting. With the help of an IDP expert at the fair, students can select their preferred institutions and interact with them privately through video conferencing.

Mentioning the current changes emerging in the admission process, Kumar said: "Since many countries like the USA, UK, Canada, and Ireland are inviting students for on-campus learning, we expect a mixed response from students regarding their choice of on-campus and hybrid learning options. However, considering the demand for the emerging fields in the post-pandemic period, most students may explore skilled-based courses related to Artificial Intelligence, Data Analytics, Coding, and Process Automation. In addition to this, courses related to Biotechnology, Health Informatics, Pharmacy, Equipment, Manufacturing, and Health Care Infrastructure are also likely to witness a rise in enrollment."

According to him, this year, the UK has emerged as one of the most preferred destinations among Indian students, primarily because of its attractive post-study work visa (PSW) policies and student-friendly admission policies. The country also extended the deadline (from July 2021 to September 27) for long-distance students studying remotely to resume on-campus sessions in the UK. Besides the UK, the students also prefer the US as their study destination due to its hybrid learning courses and simplified admission processes. Several US universities have even waived the tests like GRE and GMAT for Indian students. Canada and Ireland are also gaining popularity among international students because of their multicultural environments and flexible course structures.

Online/hybrid courses have altered the dynamics of international education as it has made academic courses offered by the world's most premium institutions accessible to almost everyone. Moreover, with various scholarships (many of which even cover 100 percent of institution fees), bursaries, and financial aids offered by the government and institutions of different host countries, studying abroad is no more a non-feasible and uber-expensive affair. Some institutions have even introduced special Covid bursaries, despite offering need-based and student-specific scholarships for students from weaker economic backgrounds. Banks are also providing easy education loans to students.

It is one of the best times to make the most of these relaxations and avail new-age education courses offered by some of the top-notch institutions worldwide.

IDP assures its assistance to students throughout the International academic trajectory, starting from English language proficiency tests to the application process, visa documentation, and accommodation.

IDP's international education specialists stay in touch with students through the virtual fair and help them in each aspect of their academic journey ahead.

--IANS

san/ksk/
Indian Naval Ship Airavat reached at Sattahip in Thailand with Covid relief material and delivered 300 oxygen concentrators based on the requirement projected by its government.

New Delhi, Sep 3 (IANS) India supplied oxygen concentrators to Thailand on Friday to help it its fight against the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, Indian Navy said.

INS Airavat has been deployed to deliver Covid relief to friendly foreign nations in southeast Asia who are battling the Covid-19 pandemic, under the aegis of Mission Security and Growth for All in the Region (SAGAR).

In the current deployment, the ship has delivered Covid relief material to Indonesia, Vietnam prior to arriving in Thailand.

A Landing Ship Tank (Large) class ship, INS Airavat, is a part of the Eastern Fleet at Visakhapatnam under the Eastern Naval Command. The ship is indigenously designed and built to induct military vehicles and cargo onto the adversary shores. Her secondary role includes Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HADR).

Thus, she has been a platform of choice for this mission. The ship has taken an active part in the nation's effort to battle Covid-19 since April 2021.

On Thursday, another Indian Naval Ship had supplied Covid relief materials and medical oxygen plants to Bangladesh.

Offshore Patrol Vessel Indian Naval Ship Savitri reached Chattogram harbour, carrying two 960 LPM (Litres Per Minute) medical oxygen plants, developed and manufactured by the Defence Research and Development Organisation, to support the ongoing efforts of the Bangladesh military and government agencies in combating the ongoing wave of the Covid pandemic in their country.

--IANS

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Tel Aviv, Sep 3 (IANS) Israel has appointed its first Ambassador to Bahrain, almost a year after the two countries normalised their ties, the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Eitan Na'eh, who had served for eight months as the temporary head of mission at the Israeli Embassy in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), was appointed as the first Israeli envoy to Bahrain, Xinhua news agency quoted the statement as saying on Thursday.
Barq said, "I had just made a small statement about the Taliban. And I was declared a criminal, a traitor and they booked me under sedition. Now, the government itself is holding talks with the Taliban in Doha. Now what has happened?"

Sambhal (Uttar Pradesh), Sep 3 (IANS) Samajwadi MP from Sambhal Shafiqur Rehman Barq, who had been booked for sedition for his statement on Taliban, has now questioned the government on holding talks with the Taliban representatives in Doha.

Barq, 91, had allegedly said the Taliban are fighting for the "freedom of Afghan people. India, too, had fought for freedom."

Later, on the basis of a complaint filed by a BJP leader, police had booked Barq for sedition. The SP MP also made some statements at a press meet, where he was seen defending the Taliban's move and comparing it with India's fight for freedom.

The video of the incident went viral on social media.

Sambhal Superintendent of Police Chakresh Mishra had said. "The Taliban has been declared as a terrorist organisation by the government of India and praising it or defending its moves is an act of a traitor."

The statement from the SP MP came against the backdrop of a recent meeting held between India and the Taliban.

India's ambassador to Qatar, Deepak Mittal met the head of the Taliban's political office, Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanekzai.

Barq is a five-term MP and a four-term MLA.

--IANS

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Indian industry has greeted a positive step towards a possible India-UK Social Security Agreement, a long-standing demand of Indian businesses operating in Britain to cut down on the additional cost burden associated with getting in skilled Indian professionals on a short-term basis.



The 11th India-UK Economic and Financial Dialogue (EFD) between Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and UK Chancellor Rishi Sunak, which took place via videoconference on Thursday, completed in a joint statement which covered a wide range of areas from climate change cooperation to fiscal services investment enhance.



Also covered in the statement was a commitment to hold discussion that would look to address the social security or pension contribution payments for Indian professionals only in the UK temporarily.

"The UK and India committed to a joint dialogue, including relevant stakeholder participation, for mutual exchanges and sharing of information concerning the possibility of signing a Social Security Agreement. The first meeting took place on 26th August 2021," states the joint statement.

The Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI), which has been campaigning on the issue over the years, said its long-standing apprehension is finally being addressed.

The compulsory National Insurance (NI) contributions of skilled Indian professionals in the UK on temporary visas remains an additional expense burden of around GBP 500 per employee a year, over and above all other taxes and health surcharge paid towards the National Health Service (NHS).

"We are pleased that the two countries are now firmly committed to working towards a possibility of signing a Social Security Agreement. This has been a long-standing concern of FICCI members, as contributions by Indian professionals and companies cost between GBP 413 and GBP 522 per year," stated Baroness Usha Prashar, Chairperson of the FICCI UK Council.



The history of this issue goes as far back as 2007, resulting in a formal letter to the Indian High Commission in London in December 2010 which seemed to have closed the door on the matter from the UK side.

Though, with estimated Indian employee contributions of between GBP 400 and 600 million being at stake annually, the lobbying on the issue continued and the UK's social security agreement in place with the US was pointed out as a good model to pursue.

It would now seem that there is some movement towards finding a long-term resolution.

The India-UK EFD marked the signing off of a USD 1.2-billion package of public and private investment in green projects and renewable energy to enhance India's green growth ambitions.

It also saw the initiate of a new Climate Finance Leadership Initiative (CFLI) India partnership, aimed at mobilising private capital into sustainable infrastructure in India, including clean energy like wind and solar power and other green technologies.

"The announcements in the joint statement are encouraging and FICCI welcomes the ambitious cooperation based on our shared vision for economic growth, sustainability and investment," stated Prashar.

"We are encouraged that the two ministers welcomed the work of the UK-India Sustainable Finance Working Group which is led by FICCI and the City of London Corporation. The group aims to scale flows of finance to support India's sustainable development goals. The group also provides advice and recommendations to green the financial system, including appropriate disclosures and taxonomy," she further said.

The EFD is held yearly between India and the UK and the next one is scheduled in London in 2022. This week's interaction between the senior Cabinet ministers was targeted at driving forward the bilateral agenda of an Enhanced Trade Partnership (ETP), just as the UK's public consultation process for the scope of trade negotiations with India closed on August 31.

Both sides have settled to work towards a free trade agreement (FTA) in future with a man initial goal of doubling India-UK bilateral trade by 2030.
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War for engagement Tensions between CBA and Apple have erupted, not coincidentally, amid a major shift in how Australians pay at the checkout. Smartphones will usurp plastic cards as the most popular form of contactless payment by the end of the year, CBA expects, and that trend comes at a cost to banks. Whenever a payment goes through Apple Pay - a service the banks argue they basically have to provide - Apple takes an undisclosed fee for providing the hardware that turns phones into wallets. Googles digital wallet doesnt charge a fee for doing this, but unlike Apple, it does use consumer data for its business. The rise of digital wallets has been turbo-charged by the pandemic, which accelerated the digitisation of finance, with CBA reporting growth of 90 per cent in digital wallet transactions in the past year. However, this fight is about much more than Apple Pay and its associated fees.

More fundamentally it is a fight over what business customers use when doing their banking: the bank or the tech platform? It is also about how the government regulates payments - one of the most critical services banks provide. The rise of digital wallets such as Apple Pay has been turbo-charged by the pandemic. Credit:Josh Robenstone And the risk is hardly unique to CBA, even if it has been the most outspoken about Apple. But why is Apple considered a threat? AirTree Ventures partner James Cameron says while its a bit rich for CBA to be warning about market share given its own dominance, the critical battle among banks and fintechs is to engage customers via apps. This is one battle in a bigger war: the war for engagement, he says. You really need to be the real estate that people have on their screens, that they turn to five to 10 times daily.

As Afterpay has shown, providing a slick app-based payment service can be a way to pinch millions of customers from banks. Deep-pocketed tech giants could do something similar, but on a larger scale. Evans and Partners analyst Matthew Wilson says there is a long-term risk that Apples popularity with the young in particular leaves banks relegated to being disenfranchised manufacturers. This is Silicon Valley versus the banking system. I think it has the potential to be significant because Apple is stepping in between the bank and the customer. Evans and Partners analyst Matthew Wilson Today, the cut Apple gets from Apple Pay itself is not particularly big. But over five to 10 years, Wilson says it is possible the tech giant could also allow disruptors onto its platform. Such a move could heighten the competition in banking by allowing fintechs to target younger customers in a similar way to how Afterpay uses its app to pinch bank clients.

This is Silicon Valley versus the banking system, Wilson says. I think it has the potential to be significant because Apple is stepping in between the bank and the customer. Everyone wants to own the customer, the distribution/network return is more valuable, he says. Bankers have warned about these potential risks for years, with former NAB chairman Ken Henry saying in late 2017 that banks could be challenged beyond our ability to cope by the big IT platform providers. The difference today is that the disruption is clearly taking place. In the United States, Apple already offers a credit card (issued by Goldman Sachs) and is reportedly working on a buy now, pay later offering. Google last year announced a plan to offer deposit accounts, though the money will be held by licensed banks. Jefferies analyst Brian Johnson says a larger threat from technology giants is in business lending - where tech companies such as Square can use a firms payments data to assess creditworthiness. If youve got the payments data, youve probably got the best data there is on the borrower, he says.

Loading Yet Johnson says there are also opportunities for banks with the systems to exploit the masses of data they hold on customers. Graham Rothwell, who leads Accentures payments practice in Asia-Pacific, also says hes not wholly convinced big techs encroachment into payments will marginalise the banks. Rather, he says the entry of tech giants puts a premium on digital experiences and features such as reward schemes. The ones that should be concerned are the ones that are struggling to design and build great customer experiences, Rothwell says.

Despite the clear encroachment by tech giants into financial services, the money being made by Apple in this area is still relatively small beer for the iPhone maker. Apple discloses the revenue from finance bundled up with services revenue, which also includes its subscription service Apple TV and warranties. Revenue from these activities was US$50 billion ($67.5 billion) in its latest nine-months results, less than a fifth of the total US$282 billion in company-wide revenue for the period. The main point of Apple Pay is to help it sell more of its most important product: the iPhone. Regulatory arbitrage Portfolio manager at Insync Funds Management John Lobb says Apple Pay allows the company to turn the phones into secure substitutes for an old-fashioned wallet, but he doesnt think a major expansion in finance would make sense for the tech giant.

I just dont think the finance side of things is ever really going to shoot the lights out [for Apple], says Lobb, who holds Apple shares in the funds he manages. Yet even if big tech players have no intention of becoming banks, they can expect more regulation. Apple has so far dodged regulation because it does not actually hold the money on behalf of customers, and it argued in a submission to a parliamentary inquiry that it was not even a payment service or payment app. Rather, it says its app provides the technical architecture that allows customers to make payments with their bank cards. But it appears that distinction may soon become less relevant, with the regulatory gap it has squeezed through likely to close. A landmark review of payment regulation led by King & Wood Mallesons partner Scott Farrell released this week proposed a new system that would give the Treasurer more power over payments policy, with the flexibility to regulate digital wallets if needed.

Banks signalled their strong support, with a CBA spokesman saying rapid technological change and new business models were clearly creating challenges for the regulatory framework. As technology continues to transform payments in Australia, regulations need to evolve to ensure that a level-playing field is maintained and strong competition drives better outcomes for Australians and Australian businesses, the spokesman says. Loading And the power of big tech in banking seems to be one thing Labor, the Coalition and the government can generally agree on. Labor Senator Deborah ONeill, a member of a committee investigating digital wallets, accuses the government of taking too long to release Farrells report, and of not having paid enough attention to the regulatory gaps. But she ultimately shares the concerns about Apples power, saying it already has a huge share of the market. Liberal Senator Andrew Bragg says tech giants already have large amounts of power in the economy and society, and while hes instinctively free-market, he is wary about them gaining more clout in payments.
Rag traders Rodd & Gunn have leased office space on Flinders Lane, taking a floor of Manchester House. Rag traders Rodd & Gunn have leased office space on Flinders Lane. Credit: Rodd & Gunn are moving their headquarters from Prahran to the landmark building, which was designed by Bates, Peebles and Smart in 1911-12 for Adelaide clothing manufacturers G & R Wills and Co. The 234 Flinders Lane building was converted into apartments in 2000 but retained the offices on the lower levels. They were purchased by the Theosophical Society in 2019 for $13.5 million. The 590 sq m second-floor office has recently undergone an extensive renovation restoring the original warehouse space.

Fitzroys agents Rob Harrington and Stephen Land negotiated the five-year lease but declined to comment on the rent. Flinders Lane offices, currently very popular with the tech, higher education and creative sectors, are leasing at about $550 sq m. Other historical buildings with new tenants include the Scots Church Assembly Hall on Collins Street. Mr Land has leased one of the tiny 58 sq m mezzanine offices to a pastoral company on a five-year lease with two five-year options, paying $23,500 a year. Built in 1914, the Gothic Revival-style building contains a warren of tiny offices ranging from 15 to 50 sq m.

When they become available, they are often well-received given their character, easily manageable size, and location in the coveted Paris End of Collins Street, Mr Land said. Theme bar File this one under future activities. A Pinot & Picasso franchise has leased space at 2 Guests Lane on the corner of Little Bourke Street. The novel theme-bar has just hit Victoria. There are 55 studios around the country with Fitzroy, Bendigo, Brunswick and Werribee all getting splashed with a slash of red. The 98 sq m space is at the foot of busy office towers, including Goldsborough Village, Bourke Place, 570 Bourke and St James.

The Pinot & Picasso website also promises corporate team building exercises, which is the point of a the CBD franchise. While lockdowns have put a stop to both painting lessons and bars, virtual painting sessions are also promised. The franchisee has signed up for five years at $82,000 a year. Down the street at 189 Queen Street, also on the corner of Little Bourke, a new hospitality group has leased the 211 sq m restaurant space at the bottom of the Adina Hotel. The Queen Street Bar & Grill has signed on for 10 years at $140,000 a year.

The restaurant will cater for both hotel clientele and locals. Ainsworth Property agents Josh Luftig, Tan Thach and Zelman Ainsworth did both deals. Glicks bagels Glicks Bakerys famous bagels are set to be made out in the west and away from their long-held spot in the south-east. Glicks Bakery has paid almost $2000 a sq m for a warehouse in Laverton North. Credit:

Glicks Bakery has paid almost $2000 a sq m for a warehouse at 172-174 Cherry Street in Laverton North in a deal brokered by CBRE agents Lachlan May, Fergus Pragnell and Ricardo Cappelletti. The 1490 sq m warehouse is on a 3296 sq m site, which puts the sale price at around $6.5 million. The price is a record for a 40-year-old warehouse of that size, Mr May said. Glicks, established in Caulfield in the late 1960s, sold its Clayton premises in May for more than $12 million. Cochin fusion

The freehold to Bruce Dowding and Jason Bakers Richmond restaurant Cochin is on the market after 50 years. The double-storey restaurant at 256 Swan Street has been home to the French-Vietnamese fusion Cochin for many years but before that it was one of many Greek restaurants on the Swan Street strip. The family, who once lived above their restaurant, is now selling the 230 sq m property they purchased in 1971. Teska Carson agents George and Larry Takis have hopefully pencilled in an October 1 auction date for the sale. Its expected to sell for more than $1.75 million. Its on 180 sq m of land near the corner of Church Street and close to East Richmond railway station.

Cochin has signed a new 10-year lease on the restaurant and pay $67,295 a year. Portfolio play Burgess Rawson is taking a 61-property portfolio valued at around $260 million to auction at the end of the month. The three-day affair covers properties around the country. Investors who would usually pump their money into the residential sector are turning to commercial assets, according to Burgess Rawson boss Adam Thomas. In our 46 years of operation, we have never presented a portfolio auction of this magnitude, Mr Thomas said.

On the block are South Australias Channel 7 studio in Hindmarsh and the Coates Hire facility in Albert Park. Despite many agents reporting their buyers are missing personal inspections of targeted properties, Burgess Rawsons NSW head Darren Beehag said 58 per cent of the 401 properties sold since March 2020, had sold sight-unseen. Dozen shops A portfolio of 12 shops across Victorias south-eastern regional centres is on the market through an expressions-of-interest program. It is understood the portfolio, available individually or in one line, is being offloaded by the heirs of a local investor and could fetch a total of $9 million.
Prominent businessman Ziggy Switkowski is facing calls to resign as chancellor of Melbournes RMIT university over his appointment as chairman of the crisis-stricken casino giant Crown Resorts.

The National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU), which represents university staff and academics, has said the former Telstra and Optus boss new role at the James Packer-backed gambling giant is inconsistent with RMITs values.

The NTEU says Ziggy Switkowskis appointment as Crown Resorts chairman is inconsistent with RMITs values. Credit:Attila Csaszar

The NTEU and the wide RMIT community expects chancellors to demonstrate a commitment to social wellbeing and the public interest, the union told members on Thursday in an email seen by this masthead.

A union petition calling for Dr Switkowskis immediate resignation says that Crown has been shown time and again to be a socially destructive force.
Queenslanders face the bulk of Australias insurance premium hikes because of the states susceptibility to a warming climate, bushfires and localised flooding.

Six regions - including the Gold Coast, the Sunshine Coast, Brisbane and Moreton Bay- are among the top 10 Australian locations for escalating insurance costs linked to fires, soil erosion, beach erosion and inundation from rivers and oceans.

Erosion of a Gold Coast beach is seen in a photograph taken by Gold Coast City Council. Credit:Gold Coast City Council

The rising insurance costs scenario is contained in Infrastructure Australias 2021 Australian Infrastructure Plan released on Friday.

The plan ranks probable insurance premium rises in 544 local government levels in terms of the number and value of properties at risk of damage from localised flooding, ocean and river inundation and mud and soil flow linked to a warming climate.
Save Log in , register or subscribe to save articles for later. Normal text size Larger text size Very large text size While the lockdowns rolls on in NSW and Victoria, Queenslanders can go to Brisbanes Gallery of Modern Art and view the blockbuster exhibition, European Masterpieces from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Its almost certainly the most impressive show to reach our heavily barricaded shores this year but the pandemic has made it hard to imagine anyone will be travelling north before it winds up on October 17. Perhaps the closest view of the Metropolitan Museum well get in 2021 is the three-part PBS series Inside the Met, which may be sampled on ABC iview. Having ploughed my way through the entire 143 minutes, I emerged feeling disheartened at the ways in which even the greatest museums are being refashioned by the economic and social pressures of our demented age. To those lucky enough to see the GOMA show its the exceptional quality of exhibits that remains in the mind. As a highlights package of European art from the 15th century to the 20th, it showcases all the big names, notably Titian, Caravaggio, Velazquez, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Poussin, Turner and Monet; as well as masterpieces by artists such as Piero di Cosimo and Georges de la Tour, who might be less familiar to Australian audiences. Marie Denise Villers, Marie Josephine Charlotte du Val dOgnes (died 1868) 1801 Credit:Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York The pressure that all art institutions feel to be more open to the work of women artists is reflected in portraits by Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun and Marie- Denise Villers, neither of which required any special pleading by way of gender politics. The commitment to excellence has been part and parcel of the Mets rise to greatness. I wish I could be sanguine about its immediate future. The series, Inside the Met, funded by wealthy donors, was made to celebrate the museums 150th anniversary in 2020. Intended as positive propaganda it should still have been an engaging portrait of a world-renowned institution. Instead, the entire thrust was to present the Met as a beacon of political correctness, fighting for its survival in a challenging environment. Each episode was less than an hour long but felt interminable. Meandering sequences followed ordinary people as they visited the museum, wandered around and said unremarkable things. Curators and conservators spoke at length about what they do and how much they loved their jobs. In theory, this should have been interesting. In practice, there were too many neat little speeches about the money required to fund each department.

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Worst of all in this respect was the executive floor, where the speeches sounded rehearsed, although after years of fundraising it may simply have been second nature. Leader of the pack was President and chief executive, Dan Weiss, who had a lot more to say than Director, Max Hollein. At great length, Weiss gave us his thoughts on topics such as fundraising and philanthropy, leadership and social justice. Nothing controversial, all tailored to present a respectable, thoughtful image. Loading Inside the Met spends no time on the history of the museum and is haphazard in its view of the collection. The three episodes focus on the effects of the COVID-19 outbreak in New York; a new emphasis on social justice in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests; and the museums constant need for funds, to be harvested from donors big and small. These were presented as life and death issues for the Met: With the future unknown was its survival in question? The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, is one of the wealthiest, most well-supported museums in the world. Credit:REUTERS Well, no, not really. With a US$3.3 billion endowment, the Met is one of the wealthiest, most well-supported museums in the world. If it requires even larger amounts of cash thats because maintenance, expectations and ambitions are so high. It costs a lot to keep up appearances.

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Unlike continental museums that are largely supported by the state, American museums  and most other local institutions  are dependent on constant injections of private money from those wealthy patrons and businesses who pay so little tax. Australian governments, both state and federal, would love to emulate the United States in offloading the funding of cultural matters onto the private sector, effectively turning arts and heritage into a user-pays affair. As the museums are obliged to find ever-greater sums, fundraising becomes a core business, no less important than exhibitions and acquisitions. This has a predictable impact on other activities. Shows that might be historically important but unlikely to draw audiences are shelved. Crowd-pleasers and blockbusters become essential sources of revenue, with popularity being the ultimate measure of success. Wealthy patrons are cultivated, even to the extent of putting on shows of their collections. Curators are required to spend a significant amount of their time sucking up to donors. Events such as the Met Gala, with its cast of this months celebrities, become publicity bonanzas. New gimmicks are being dreamt up all the time such as Date Night at the Met  as if a couple needed an excuse to visit the place! Lady Gaga arrives at the Mets Costume Institute benefit gala for the Camp: Notes on Fashion exhibition 2019. Credit:AP In the second episode of Inside the Met, devoted to social justice issues within the museum, staff speak about the urgency of addressing imbalances of race and gender. We watch as a comfortably middle-class African-American mum takes her two small daughters to the museum to ask them, in my view, ideologically blinkered questions about the works on display. She points out that in Emanuel Leutzes iconic painting, Washington Crossing the Delaware (1851) there are no women in the boat. We are also reminded that Washington was a slave-owner, which in many peoples eyes obviates all his other achievements. New gimmicks are being dreamt up all the time such as Date Night at the Met  as if a couple needed an excuse to visit the place! To further demonstrate how right-on it has become, the Met has commissioned works by contemporary Cree artist, Kent Monkman, who parodies Leutzes picture in two large paintings in which gender-bending indigenous figures play starring roles, with Washington being replaced by Monkmans own creation, Miss Chief Eagle Testickle  a non-binary alter-ego of the artist. A classic now questioned: Emanuel Leutzes Washington Crossing the Delaware, 1851 Credit:Getty

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Monkmans large, vibrantly coloured paintings have a striking presence, but the idea of works that reverse the colonial gaze is one of the artistic cliches of our time: a feel-good exercise that makes the woke crowd feel virtuous and infuriates the traditionalists. While not qualifying as a raging conservative, Im repelled by the opportunistic virtue signalling involved in this sort of commission and saddened by the way it reduces Leutzes painting, let alone the complex figure of Washington himself, to a set of vulgar political taboos that need to be swept away by todays critically aware hipsters. While not qualifying as a raging conservative, Im repelled by the opportunistic virtue signalling involved. Such exercises feed the pernicious belief at the heart of cancel culture that we are in some way morally superior to everything that has gone before and are thereby entitled to dismiss the bulk of history, art and literature. Its a cocktail of pathological narcissicism and intellectual laziness, mixed with a dash of pure spite. If any institution should stand as a barrier against these tendencies its the Met  or indeed, the Louvre, the Prado, the Hermitage, or the National Gallery in London. The Two Sisters by Jean Honore Fragonard, c1769-70. Credit:Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York A public museum should not be complicit in any reconstruction of art history that degrades work of significance and promotes mediocrity simply on the grounds of race or gender. Above all, museums need to be defenders of the idea of cultural excellence. We cant banish or shame great artists because of attitudes that were acceptable in their day but are now found reprehensible. Its a bit late to be shocked by Degas anti-Semitism, or Gauguins taste for under-age Polynesian girls. Rather than cravenly offer up its own icons on the bonfire of political correctness a museum needs to reconsider its policies in a measured fashion. If there has been a wilful neglect of women artists, this can be remedied. If gender issues have become a hot topic, they can be factored into rethinking exhibitions and displays. Its no outrage to begin integrating indigenous art into canonical displays of western-style art. But if the museum is not to alienate more viewers than it brings on board, these things need to be done gradually, with sensitivity. Inside the Met shows us a major institution racing to humiliate itself, cocooned in a bubble of self-congratulation. On display in Brisbane: Paul Cezanne Still Life with Apples and Pears, c189192. Credit:Metropolitan Museum of Art

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The signs are everywhere in Australia that we are hastening down that same path. Im not convinced museums should be too eager to add alternative Indigneous place names to every wall label, regardless of the ethnicity of the artist. What does it mean to say that an artist of Anglo-Celtic or Jewish heritage comes from Gadigal country instead of Sydney? Or Narrm instead of Melbourne? Not only is this confusing for the unenlightened who imagine that every artist in the show must be Indigenous, it risks trivialising the indigenous artists relationship with country. In terms of understanding their work it may not matter much that Mitch Cairns hails from Sydney or Lauren Berkowitz from Melbourne, but its crucial that when we look at Nonggirrnga Marawilis paintings we acknowledge her origins and continued presence in Yirrkala. The Art Gallery of NSW is demonstrating the same obsession with fundraising that has permeated the Mets operations. Credit:Jenni Carter The Art Gallery of NSW is moving in this direction with little consideration of all the angles involved. The Gallery is also demonstrating the same obsession with fundraising uber alles that has permeated the Mets operations. Seemingly every event, every contact between the gallery and potential donors, sponsors or simple well-wishers is now charged with the need to extract money or restrict the way money is spent. If theres a threat to great art museums today it springs from a dual embrace of the wealthy and the woke at the expense of everybody else. Shows that are not money-spinners will be radically under-resourced, with neither catalogues nor official openings. The annual Archibald Prize used to be celebrated with a massive party to which all and sundry went along. Now its an invitation-only function for featured artists and a guest, plus an anointed group of sponsors and donors. I dont think this can be blamed solely on the pandemic. Many long-term supporters have been alienated by the impression of meanness and exclusivity generated by these policies, so foreign to the democratic ethos of a public museum. Its ironic this is happening at a time when the gallery is going all-out to boast its social inclusiveness. Jean-Leon Gerome, Pygmalian and Galatea, c1890. Credit:Metropolitan Museum of Art What one sees in Inside the Met, and in the evolution of our local art institutions, is a growing lack of civility. By this, I mean an ideal of citizenship that leads to a bedrock assumption that a public art museum is there for all comers: old and young, rich and poor, black and white, left-wing and right-wing; male, female and every other gender variation. At root, this puts the ball back in the governments court because its a dreadful abnegation of responsibility to see culture as a non-essential service that may be left to rich, arty types who like that kind of thing. In the long-term, the arts have an incalculable importance in shaping our values and sense of identity.

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During that period the Murdochs became firm fixtures on Sydneys society calendar, from dates at Sarahs beloved ballet to doing school drop-offs and turning up on the sidelines of weekend soccer matches. This time, the family has had a more low-key presence, apart from initial sightings at the Royal Easter Show, ballet and around the corridors of the Murdochs Holt Street offices in Surry Hills, though Lachlan did front the Heralds 190th birthday celebrations at the Sydney Opera House in April. Their quiet return is understandable given the pandemic and return of lockdown in recent months, however friends inform PS the family is content and settled here. The recent purchase of a potential new boat shed in Point Piper (which might be a bit small for Lachlans mega yacht under construction in Europe) is a good indication they intend to be in Sydney for some time yet. Team Teos own goal Despite the star power behind embattled celebrity neurosurgeon Charlie Teo, Team Teo managed to kick a spectacular own goal last weekend on Twitter courtesy of multimillionaire charity queen Kerry-Anne Johnston, widow of Jaycar Electronics founder Gary Johnston, who died in March shortly after being diagnosed with melanoma. The Johnstons were last in the news only weeks before the Jaycar founder died. They landed in a row with neighbours in Avalon over a 3.9-metre, tear-drop-shaped letterbox being built at their luxury holiday home.

Last week grieving widow Johnston landed in more hot water, this time on Twitter after she responded to a series of tweets posted by Sydney Professor of Urology Dr Henry Woo, who highlighted a long line of peers in the neurology field who do not enjoy Teos celebrity status but arguably deserve it. Woo also lamented Teos fan base and the narrative of jealousy, tall poppy syndrome and inadequacy they had employed in Teos publicity defence. Johnston, a former director of the Charlie Teo Foundation  a fact she removed from her Twitter bio shortly after taking on Dr Woo  chimed in all guns blazing: Tall poppy? Youve lead [sic] the charge. hope you dont have to go before the board in your career to [be] scrutinised. Watch your step doctor Not only was Dr Woo taken back by the tone of her tweet, so too were other followers on the thread, some accusing her of making a threat that was not a good look for a listed director of the high-profile Starlight Childrens Foundation charitys advisory board. Kerry-Anne Johnston. Credit:Twitter

When PS called Johnston to discuss the tweet, which she subsequently deleted and privately apologised to Woo over, it was her solicitor John Carmody who responded, telling PS his client accepts it was poorly worded and intended as a reflection that each of us may find ourselves in difficulty at some time, and that we should act accordingly. Johnston denied it was intended as a threat but deleted it after being perceived that way, adding it was written on her personal account and had no connection with the Starlight Foundation, even though she includes her board membership details in her Twitter bio. Crashing out Chris Hemsworths big-budget Netflix film Extraction ditching its Sydney shoot is not only bad news for hundreds of people now out of work as a result, but also for those who were looking forward to two major scenes being planned. Premier Glady Berejiklian with Chris Hemsworth. Credit:Twitter

PS hears one of the scenes involved staging a dramatic train crash at Chullora, while another involved shooting inside the old Parramatta jail. Both suburbs are in the thick of Sydneys Delta coronavirus hotspots, even though they were being re-created as locations in Bulgaria, where the film is set. Once filming is completed in Europe, Hemsworth is due back in Australia to start shooting George Millers Mad Max prequel Furiosa, which will star the brilliant Anya Taylor-Joy in the role previously played by Charlize Theron in the 2015 instalment. Scaffolding comes down at Elaine Still no sign of Atlassian billionaire Scott Farquhars proposed rooftop tennis court down at the old Fairfax mansion Elaine in Point Piper, which he and wife Kim Jackson paid $71 million for back in 2017. Scott Farquhar and Kim Jackson.

Readers will recall Farquhar had lodged ambitious plans, which  according to rumours PS revealed  did not go down well with their closest neighbours: Farquhars business partner Mike Cannon-Brookes and wife Annie, who dropped $100 million on the neighbouring Fairwater estate. In recent days, scaffolding and vast swathes of white fabric that have shrouded the site and were erected to show the scale of a previously approved 2015 development application, have been removed. Locals report the house has stood largely silent for quite some time. The historic home Elaine was built in 1863. Despite PSs queries, theres still no word on whether new plans are afoot. Mag eds wanted

There was a time when editing a magazine such as Womans Day was one of the most coveted positions in the Australian media landscape, with the likes of Nene King among the larger-than-life characters to have occupied the chair. Former magazine queen Nene King. Credit:Mark Chew But rather than head-hunting or poaching  as the Packers once did  the Park Street publishing house which has survived years of cost-cutting and blood-letting, which is now known as Are Media, is advertising the role online, along with editorships of Take Five and TV Week. Flouting lockdown rules
Australian fashion figures are further infiltrating the global ranks of Vogue, with Sydney-based stylist Megha Kapoor announced as the new editor of Vogue India. Kapoors surprise appointment by Vogue global editorial director Anna Wintour, follows Australian Margaret Zhangs elevation to editor of Vogue China in February.

Australian-based stylist Megha Kapoor has been appointed editor of Vogue India. Credit:Bowen Arico

It was through Zhang that Kapoor first heard about the prestigious role in April. Margaret called me out of the blue and mentioned that she had been talking about me to Anna, Kapoor, 35, said. It all felt super random.

After a lengthy interview process with Wintour and Conde Nast executives, Kapoor will start as editor on Monday. I am effectively editor but the official title is Content Lead. The way that Conde Nast work globally is changing and titles will be working more closely together.

Born in Punjab, India, Kapoors family moved to New Zealand when she was two years old. She then relocated to Australia to study law at Melbourne University before interning at Vogue India.
The NSW Upper House will not sit next week to prevent the spread of coronavirus in Parliament House and regional areas, despite a push from Labor to restart sittings in a COVID-safe way.

NSW Finance and Small Business Minister Damien Tudehope said on Saturday that Berejiklian government ministers and staff would not attend the Legislative Council for the next scheduled sitting days from Tuesday.

NSW Finance and Small Business Minister Damien Tudehope. Credit:Rhett Wyman

Mr Tudehope said in a statement that Chief Health Officer Kerry Chant had written to the president of the Legislative Council in recent days noting the significant risk of transmission of COVID-19 in Parliament House and the risk of seeding in regional communities when MPs and staff return home.

The NSW governments position has been clear and consistent that all persons in NSW should restrict their movement, particularly at this critical phase in our pandemic response, as advised by the health experts, Mr Tudehope said.

Members of NSW health leave NSW Parliament House which was suspended after NSW Agriculture Minister Adam Marshall tested positive for COVID-19 in June. Credit:Kate Geraghty

At a time when were asking everyone in NSW to make sacrifices to keep us all safe, it is unprincipled and dangerous for politicians to reject the health advice to pursue their own political agenda.

It is important for all community leaders to set an example, therefore Ministers and Parliamentary Secretaries will not resume sitting until the health advice provides that it is safe to do so.

NSW Opposition leader Chris Minns said Parliament should sit again as soon as possible, in a COVID-safe way.

Weve been in lockdown for 10 weeks today. Parliament hasnt sat for that entire period. People are confused about rapidly changing rules and need answers about the path forward.

Parliament is where the government would be forced to answer those questions, Mr Minns wrote on Twitter on Friday.
David King has been appointed National editor of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.

King joined The Age in 2019 as the Sunday editor before moving into the Saturday editor role at the paper. He will replace Tory Maguire who was recently elevated to group executive editor of the mastheads after James Chessell was promoted to parent company Nines managing director of publishing.

David King has been appointed National editor of The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald Credit:Wolter Peeters, The Sydney Morning Herald.

The national editor oversees the mastheads federal politics, business, world and environment coverage.

Maguire said Kings appointment came at a critical time for the mastheads ahead of the UNs climate change conference summit in November, an impending federal election, and the ongoing COVID-19 crisis.
Australian sailor Jessica Watson, who became the youngest person to sail around the world in 2010 at the age of 16, has paid tribute to her long-term partner, who died in Queensland on Monday.

Ms Watson said her partner Cameron Dale, 29, died after suffering a stroke six weeks ago.

Cameron Dale and Jessica Watson. Credit:Instagram

On Monday, 30 August 2021 we lost our Cam  my long-term partner in every aspect of life and planned future. Cam passed away peacefully nearly six weeks after a catastrophic stroke, Ms Watson wrote in a Facebook post.

Well be forever grateful for the dedicated care he received at the Gold Coast University Hospital.
The way people consume their news has undergone such a radical transformation in the past decade or so its hard to keep up. Long gone are the days of newspapers on the kitchen table each morning (sadly) and there are now myriad ways you can get your news whenever you want, wherever you are.

In that vein, I recently bought a smart speaker. I had been surprised to learn that 26 per cent of Australians had one, and that number is growing rapidly. In the US, 33 per cent of Americans own one and theyve been selling them for a year more than us. As Nathanael Cooper, co-host of Please Explain and one of our in-house audio gurus told me, Australia has one of the fastest-growing markets for audio content in the world.

My smart speaker is still in the box, but I intend to get it out this weekend (and learn how to use it) because on Monday we launch our brand new audio project - News with The Sydney Morning Herald.

These short audio updates are designed to bring you the most important stories from our newsrooms. Think radio news bulletins filled with the best Herald journalism.

My enthusiasm for a smart speaker purchase will now become clear - this is the first audio project we have designed with smart speakers front of mind. You will be able to say Hey Google or Hey Alexa followed by Play News With The Sydney Morning Herald and you will get an update directly from our newsroom.
What is wrong with this country? Your report highlights the inequality with his story. We knew the virus was here. Our governments did nothing to prepare. Now the people of Wilcannia are living in even worse conditions than normal, with dire consequences looming and our health and emergency workers are trying to pick up the pieces. Not good enough Scott Morrison. Whos doing your laundry? Geoff Nilon, Mascot While reading about Catherine Bugmys isolation treatment in Wilcannia I pondered the much-reported plight of those in luxurious hotel quarantine. There are standards of care and then there are standards of care. Gary Sullivan, Sans Souci Indigenous communities, particularly those in western NSW, are critical that the federal government has not listened and effectively acted on their concerns about COVID-19 and vaccination. Scott Morrisons government continues to refuse constitutional recognition of Aboriginal people and a properly constituted Voice to Parliament. John Howard was accused of breaking the nations heart over the republican referendum and now Scott Morrison is breaking the First Nations statement from the heart. John Bailey, Canterbury Diversion and division Premier, you want it both ways. You have been urging us to look forward, to anticipate increased freedoms. A diversionary tactic, methinks. On Friday, with 1431 cases and 12 deaths, you said in a few months we will look back, and see how well we have done, and how well our systems have been working. You want us to be diverted from the numbers, and feel grateful? I feel like I have to be a two-faced Janus  looking both ways. Im not sure my neck is up to it. Jennifer Fergus, Manly

Know thyself Next time I see myself described as a self-centred, privileged, latte-drinking eastern suburbs yuppie simply because of my postcode I am not going to get cross, I am going to cop it sweet. The good burghers of Rose Bay obviously dont think the rule about wearing masks outside applies to them. More than half the walkers on the pavements today were mask-less. And the cop shop is just down the road. I think I will stay at home on my exercise bike in future. Carole Molyneux-Richards, Bellevue Hill COVID sucks, this didnt I am a student at Charles Sturt University, and unable to visit the library due to COVID. Imagine my surprise when a book I had requested arrived in the mail with a Chupa Chup and a lovely note from the library staff. Well done, CSU Library staff  I felt really chuffed! Marilyn Walter, Wagga Wagga Get tough on vapes, for kids sake

The most worrying aspect of the fact that primary school children are becoming addicted to nicotine is that no one seems able to stop it (How primary school children get hooked on nicotine vapes, September 3). Even though selling and using e-liquid nicotine is illegal in NSW and Victoria we read of the convenience of purchasing vapes at corner stores. We need more action from Border Force to police illegal imports and from local health authorities monitoring distribution. Raiding convenience stores would be a good start. We cant sit back and let kids poison themselves. Judy Sherrington, Kensington Family plea It was my 90th birthday yesterday (Letters, September 3). I have three children all of whom have been double vaccinated as I also have. One of my sons lives across the street from my nursing home in Terrey Hills but I am not allowed to have him visit me and I have not been able to meet with him or my other son and daughter since June 26. Please, whoever is in charge, allow me to see my family, especially as the fully vaccinated in the general public can look forward to being able to gather outdoors in groups of five from mid-September while we in nursing homes may only leave for essential reasons such as medical appointments. We are in a very depressing situation. Sonia Desmond, Terrey Hills Much has been written about the effect on older people during lockdown, double vaccinated but unable to be visited by similarly double vaccinated offspring. What about young children missing their grandparents and great-grandparents? Our almost 7-year-old granddaughter had to make a few attempts at a video for her JimPa, her 93-year-old great-grandfather because she became too sad and misses him. He has not left his home for months except to get his vaccine, he sees his only child when groceries and books are dropped off. He is in reasonable health but these precious times with great-grandchildren cannot be given back should he die before they can give him a hug. Corinne Johnston, Gymea Bay We can all see how difficult times are for medical staff. It also makes a lot of sense to keep visitors away from vulnerable patients. However, anyone who has had a loved one in hospital knows how important it is to be there. Family has a personal perspective to contribute to patient care. My 95-year-old mother has been in hospital for 10 days and only when it looked like she would possibly die were family members allowed to visit. My sister and her daughter and granddaughters gladly followed strict protocols to enter the hospital and were, almost immediately, able to determine that my mothers intense pain was due to the very uncomfortable bed and chair. The medical staff responded quickly, bringing in a pressure mattress and a comfortable chair. Before long the pain had subsided considerably and my mother no longer needed such strong painkillers. Now that she

is improving we have been told visits can no longer be made. Can we be certain our mothers health needs will continue to be met? Even the most willing medical personnel do not have the time to identify specific, individual needs. Family is important. Leslie Hood, Florey (ACT)

Will need a bigger board As a lifetime boardrider locked down more than five kilometres from the waves, my mental health is suffering so much I find myself walking down to Glebe Point to see if its breaking (Unusual marine mammals move into Sydney Harbour, September 3). Even more hazardous to NSWs healthcare system, Im eyeing off my 1973 vintage skateboard. Is it possible, too, to enact a regulation prohibiting my mates from calling me to tell me how uncrowded and excellent the waves have been and how theyve never been fitter? Lastly, have vaccine evaluators looked into the possibility that a side effect is increased appetite? Enough said, its time for my seventh coffee and fifth snack of the morning, what with lunchtime approaching. Andrew Cohen, Glebe Mighty similarities Chinas ban of non-conforming gender characters on TV reveals some remarkable shared ideologies between the Chinese communists and American conservatives: they both oppose LGBTQI rights and same-sex marriage, they detest the liberal western mainstream media, they hate trade unions but adore big business, they embrace jingoism, chauvinism and might is right, they refuse to face the sins of their founding nations, they traffic in conspiracy theories, they are enthralled in the personality cult of Xi and Trump, and they enforce a puritanical moral code on others while turning a blind eye to transgressions of their own leaders (Beijing outlaws effeminate screen content, September 3). Han Yang, North Turramurra

Is it safe? I guess this means I can now delete the COVIDSafe app from my smartphone (State to dial back contact tracing, with phone alerts for exposure, September 3)? Allan Gibson Cherrybrook When contact tracing is scaled back after the ServiceNSW app is updated, will people checking in manually be followed up promptly? I assume that my phone will still not be compatible with the app, so I would like to feel confident that those of us who cannot check in using the QR code will not be forgotten. Judith Campbell, Drummoyne As appeared in the Herald, on September 3, 2021. Credit:Cathy Wilcox Wilcox brilliant, again

Cartoonist Cathy Wilcox is always brilliantly perceptive but her Draft Agreement reaches new heights (Editorial cartoon, September 3). Her listing of the ignorant and totally absurd reasons of the undersigned and the ultimate agreement should be mandatory reading for the unfortunate misinformed people of whom, unfortunately, there are too many. Wendy Hunter, Charmhaven We can hear the drums The news overnight that ABBA are back with new songs has suddenly made lockdown just that little bit more bearable (The way old friends do: ABBA reform, plan virtual tour and new album, smh.com.au, September 3). Craig Fitzsimmons, Coogee If nothing else, the re-formation of ABBA will give clever lyricists some new material with which to create amusing lockdown jingles: Im all masked up; youve locked me down. Any advances from fellow correspondents? Meredith Williams, Northmead Autoerotic perplexion

Fortunately, I read through an email I was sending parents about an upcoming Cub Camp before hitting send as the predictive text had changed Camp Coutts to Camp Coitus. The mind boggles (Letters, September 3). Sue Wilson, Mosman The liveable daylights Forget the whingers, daylight saving cant come soon enough (Letters, September 3). Long summer evenings after winter make life worthwhile. The referendum in 1976, 45 years ago, showed 1,882,770 in favour and only 868,900 against daylight saving. Some people cannot accept progress. Lindsay Somerville, Lindfield Postscript Letter writers expressed their concerns for the youngest and the oldest of our population this week. Questions were raised about the governments omission of children under 16 from the 80 per cent vaccination milestone which would trigger the relaxation of lockdown rules. How would unvaccinated children fare when exposed to the virus?
Last week an illegal protest in Queensland saw dozens of trucks block the M1. The organisers were calling for an end to the lockdowns and an end to COVID vaccine mandates. One protester, Brock, told Nine: If you dont want to get the vax, dont. If you do want it to get it, get it. But dont keep locking up people.

The irony is that the first demand makes the second impossible. Without mandatory vaccination in high-risk industries or vaccine passports, we will see longer lockdowns, more financial pain, children kept out of classrooms and an Australia disconnected from the world.

Police and the Australian Defence Force patrol the streets of Bankstown, one of the LGAs with strict restrictions allowing only healthcare and emergency service essential workers to leave the area during the lockdown. Credit:Kate Geraghty

People who have done the right thing and been vaccinated want and deserve their freedoms back.

Vaccine certification is already being rolled out across the European Union, Britain and many northern US states  a vaccine passport under which workers, customers and international arrivals can electronically show their vaccination status and safely return to a more normal world.
This whole pandemic started in Australia with us planning for the worst and hoping for the best, and that is a public health mantra: you make sure youve got your pieces in place to deal with the worst things that can happen, he said. Because if you dont, you can get caught on the hop, and weve seen that in NSW, where they went late with the response and now the virus has taken hold. After scaremongering comes a pile-on The federal government this week accused Ms Palaszczuk of scaremongering, and on Friday Prime Minister Scott Morrison repeated his concerns with the Premiers stance. The worst-case scenario is not the plan, he said. What is the plan is the better-case scenario, which sees you take actions, which has always been part of the national plan.

If you do none those things, of course you put the community at great risk. Thats not what the national plan suggests and to suggest that is what the national plan is, that would be a complete misreading of it. Loading Professor MacIntyre conceded getting the balance right on public health messaging was a constant struggle. The messaging has to be carefully nuanced so youre not sending people into a complete panic but on the other hand making them so complacent that they take risks, which results in transmission, she said. In an apparent attempt to take heat out of the issue before the national cabinet meeting on Friday, Ms Palaszczuk told a media conference she wanted the argument to be replaced with a conversation.

Rather than picking fights and attacks, lets have a decent educated conversation, and there is nothing wrong about asking decent questions about the safety of families, the Premier said. But a few minutes later her deputy, Steven Miles, lobbed another salvo at the Commonwealth in his states defence. Loading [On Thursday] Scott Morrison had six members of his team out attacking Queensland, our border restrictions and our Premier, he said. We havent seen a pile-on like that since before the election last year.

Mr Miles was referring to the state election in October 2020, when the federal government attacked the Palaszczuk government a number of times on its border stance. Ms Palaszczuk and her team were returned with an increased majority, campaigning largely on a platform of keeping Queenslanders safe from the pandemic. Its going to just rip through them The Commonwealth this week also criticised Ms Palaszczuks renewed questioning of the vaccination target of 70 to 80 per cent for a reopening, accusing her of changing the goal posts by calling for children under 12 to be vaccinated. Professor MacIntyre said the Doherty modelling figure of 70 per cent was only for those people currently eligible to be vaccinated, meaning the overall vaccination rate would be closer to 60 per cent.

Loading If you completely lift restrictions at [that level], you will get a huge resurgence of disease, she said. The Delta variant is very contagious and if you have that many people who are not immune, its going to just rip through them. Professor MacIntyre said many of those left unvaccinated at 70 per cent would inevitably be children. The problem is that vaccinating 16 years and over means vaccinating 100 per cent of those people, and thats probably not feasible, she said.

Therell be a small percentage who dont and so to achieve that target, weve got to vaccinate the kids. Of course weve had approval for 12 and up, that might bring us closer to it, the clinical trials for children younger than 12 are still ongoing, so when that data is available  hopefully next year  well be in a position to start vaccinating younger kids as well. The Doherty modelling shows what would happen if all restrictions were lifted at a 70-to-80 per cent vaccination rate, however national cabinet planned for a more gradual easing of restrictions. It also agreed to vaccinate all children aged between 12 to 15 to bolster that rate target. Queensland lags behind most other states in vaccination take-up, (on Friday 51.65 per cent of Queenslanders had received one dose and 32.9 per cent two doses) but Queensland Health Minister Yvette DAth insisted that was a supply issue, rather than unwillingness on the part of residents.

Ms DAth also pointed out that Queensland was the most decentralised state in the country, making the rollout logistically more challenging. Delivering these vaccines in Queensland is far different to delivering them in New South Wales or Victoria, she said. Loading You cant talk about lifting restrictions and say south-east Queensland has basically met the target and have [regional] communities on 30-40 per cent [vaccinated]. The great irony of all the political warring this week is that it might be rendered moot if an outbreak of the Delta variant took hold in Queensland, as it had in southern states.

Delta will gain a foothold Queensland has been lucky. The state has seen its share of outbreaks, most recently ripping through half a dozen Brisbane schools and sending parts of the state into lockdown. But the state emerged after just eight days, and a few weeks later life is almost back to normal, despite mask use remaining. On Friday, Queensland recorded no new cases of the virus, despite a number of potential vectors including a truck driver infectious in the community on the Gold Coast for five days and a family who took a clandestine trip to Melbourne.
In a way weve got away with it, but COVID has ripped all of the clothes off, so it is standing there naked ... its extremely likely we will fall short of what we wished wed been able to provide. An Age analysis of performance data has revealed more patients are needing treatment than ever before, placing every part of the sector under strain, including ambulance response times, access to mental health services and hospital waiting lists. But the crisis could be even worse than publicly reported, with the states Auditor-General revealing that the Andrews government cannot assure the community about the safety of its hospitals because of several gaps in the system. In a damning report tabled this week, the Auditor-General found Victoria still does not have a fully functioning statewide incident management system to record adverse events, and found that at least 39 examples of sentinel events  hospital incidents that are wholly preventable and result in serious harm or the death of patient  were recorded as minor or routine.

With lockdown restrictions set to ease gradually in coming months, Mr Andrews on Friday again urged Victorians to get vaccinated to help take the pressure off hospitals and their staff, and signalled that people could soon be banned from attending certain venues or events if they were not immunised. The government is also considering adding two more hospitals  Barwon and the Austin  to its stable of hospitals designated to treat COVID-19 patients. Were going to see cases rise. The maths of this is undeniable. But weve got to slow the rate of increase, Mr Andrews said. Otherwise ... the number of cases will overwhelm our health system. Intensive care units are readying for the possibility that the number of gravely ill patients needing life-saving care will be well in excess of the peak of Victorias second wave, when dozens of patients were in ICU. Were certainly preparing, as we did last year, for it potentially being in the hundreds in intensive care over coming months, said Stephen Warrillow, the director of intensive care at the Austin Hospital, adding that he was hopeful this scenario would not eventuate.

Ventilators, stored after the second wave or never used at all, are being located and checked. General COVID wards are being re-established. Conversations have started with anaesthetists and surgical nurses, who might be deployed to the COVID frontline if there is a reduction in elective surgery to bolster a hospitals COVID capacity. Basically it feels very much like a rerun of last year, said Associate Professor Warrillow. In emergency departments, many staff are having to again wear gowns, goggles and gloves throughout their shifts as a precaution for surprise COVID presentations. Emergency physician Stephen Parnis said there was a feeling of trepidation among health workers, who like most Victorians had been unable to properly recharge their batteries following a string of lockdowns. Emergency doctor Stephen Parnis says numbers are going to get worse. Credit:Eddie Jim

We know that numbers are going to get worse. We just dont know how long [it will last] and how bad it will get, Dr Parnis said. The AMAs Dr McRae said nurses and other public hospital staff were already having holiday leave cancelled and working double shifts. He said while they had the capacity to reduce demand through cancelling some elective surgery, there were things that couldnt and wouldnt stop  including increasing mental health presentations. He said its now likely there will be deaths because overstretched staff will be unable to adequately treat people. In the worst-case scenario where there were tens of thousands of cases, he said it was inevitable that there would be thousands in hospital. The warnings came as national cabinet met on Friday to discuss the expected influx of COVID-19 patients, which has also been a concern for other states.

In NSW, where around 950 coronavirus patients are currently in hospital and a further 150 are in intensive care, non-urgent elective surgery has been paused across Greater Sydney. The same policy has been applied in Western Australia  despite the state being largely COVID-free for months  and South Australia. Victoria has no such restrictions, but hospitals have occasionally been forced to reschedule elective surgeries due to staff shortages. Loading Our hospitals have been preparing for pandemic since last year, creating extra capacity and ensuring we have enough beds, equipment, PPE and staff to manage any surge in patients, while maintaining other services, a Health Department spokesman said. Emergency medicine physician and Victorias AMA vice-president Sarah Whitelaw called for state and federal leaders to work together to overhaul hospital funding, with more money pumped into the system for improvements.
Emergency medicine physician Dr Simon Judkins says when he turns up to work now he finds ambulances waiting out the front as paramedics are forced to stay on to oversee patients because they are unable to offload them at overrun emergency departments. Hospital waiting rooms are full of people waiting hours for care while others lie in stretchers in brightly lit emergency corridors waiting for a bed.

Nineteen months since Australia recorded its first coronavirus case, those delivering healthcare at the front line are warning of a looming catastrophe as staff shortages and workforce burnout further strain the sector.

An Age analysis of performance data has found that virtually every part of the service is deteriorating: from ambulance response times and access to mental health beds, to dental waiting lists and the number of hospital patients receiving urgent treatment. Patients are arriving sicker after putting off care or having their surgeries delayed due to the pandemic.

The death in June last year, confirmed by The Age this week, is one of a number of adverse events being reported. The system, according to the people who work within it, is struggling to cope with unprecedented demand during the global pandemic.

The 27-year-old had recently given birth when she suffered from a suspected postpartum hemorrhage  a serious but treatable condition that can lead to excessive blood loss and a severe drop in blood pressure. By the time she was accepted by the hospital, reportedly more than an hour after arriving at the emergency department, she could not be saved.

It was the type of tragedy that should never happen in Melbourne. A young mother was rushed to the Werribee Mercy Hospital by ambulance but instead of getting the critical emergency care she needed she was forced to wait.

A Safer Care Victoria review has since found there were a number of significant factors that contributed to the death, on June 17 last year. New department guidelines  outlining a maximum 20-minute wait time for patients entering an emergency department  issued the day before had not yet been implemented.

And the young woman who died at Werribee Mercy had been delivered to an emergency department operating at capacity and under extra pressure due to new precautions introduced to safeguard against coronavirus.

In Victoria, 32-year-old Christina Lackmann was found dead in her Caulfield North apartment in April after it took an ambulance more than six hours to respond to her triple-zero call.

Western Australia, which has been COVID-free for months, announced this week it would postpone about half of elective surgeries amid fears the state would be overwhelmed in the event of a fresh outbreak.

In Sydneys hotspots, ambulances and hospitals have been so stretched that coronavirus patients now need to be triaged in makeshift units at Westmead and Blacktown hospitals.

Its Groundhog Day, he says. These are the sort of things that used to be the exception to the rule, but there is a grave concern from emergency doctors that this is almost like a new normal.

Ninety per cent of patient transfers from ambulances to hospitals are meant to happen within 40 minutes, according to the statewide target. Paramedics are waiting at hospitals more than 6000 hours per week above that target, according to a source close to Ambulance Victoria.

Both the COVID-19 environment in which Werribee Mercy Hospital and Ambulance Victoria staff members were operating, and related recent changes to protocols for receiving patients by ambulance, which were instigated by the Department of Health, were significant factors in the event, a Mercy Health spokeswoman said.

Planning is now underway for a new emergency department and improved ambulance bay access at the western suburbs hospital, after the review also highlighted the physical limitations of its ED.

Being ramped for two or three hours wearing the full level of PPE  the plastic gown, your mask, your glasses  it is unconscionable in my view. The material doesnt breathe, so you sweat, youre dehydrated, and once you finally catch your breath and clean yourself up you have to go back out again. Its so exhausting.

Theres absolutely no space for social distancing, people are cramped, and pretty much as far as the eye can see down the corridor you might have 12 or 13 ambulances and stretchers. It looks like Victoria Market on a very busy day, he says.

One paramedic, who did not wish to be named for fear of losing his job, said emergency wards these days were literally like a traffic jam.

Paramedics are so overworked some are being forced to eat meals at service stations during shifts, says the ambulance union.

Victorian Ambulance Union state secretary Danny Hill described his members working conditions as almost dystopian. Some paramedics were forced to eat meals inside ambulances that had just transported COVID patients, or at service stations without proper facilities.

One crew of paramedics recently spent their entire 14-hour night shift waiting at Sunshine Hospital, according to the source. And there are now times that crews are being sent to hospitals simply to relieve their colleagues whose shifts have come to an end as they wait for their patients to be accepted by the hospital.

I have no doubt that when we look back on this there will be a significant number of what we would consider to be preventable deaths.

Whether thats due to sepsis or a delay in [treating] their stroke or a delay in their cardiac care ... there will be stories from every emergency department across the system, he said.

Ask any doctor working in a Victorian hospital about the past 18 months, he says, and they will tell of patients who have become seriously unwell while waiting too long for care.

I remember saying at the time what surge capacity? because hospitals across Victoria were already running at full capacity, he says.

Judkins, a former president of the Australasian College of Emergency Medicine, wonders how much more the system can take. He recalls a time early last year when he heard Australias then chief medical officer, Brendan Murphy, telling reporters that to manage the pandemic hospitals would need to open their surge capacity.

But COVID exacerbated the health crisis. It didnt start it. Australian Medical Association state president Dr Roderick McRae says Victorias healthcare system had been in dire straits long before the pandemic hit.

Hospitals have been underfunded for years, he says, leading to bed and staffing shortages. Problems with the federal government-administered National Disability Insurance Scheme and aged care have not helped  patients are stuck in wards waiting for mandatory assessments to enter both systems, locking up hundreds of hospital beds every week. The latest figures show the Commonwealth only puts in 36 per cent of the total cost of public hospitals, while the state pays 57 per cent.

Other patients, meanwhile, including those who are suicidal and psychotic, spend days waiting to be admitted through emergency department cubicles.

Victoria now has more patients than ever before and they are sicker. Emergency departments treated 479,719 patients in the last quarter, an increase of 34 per cent over the same period last year. And people who deferred having a check-up during lockdowns are now experiencing more complex or critical problems.

McRae says: Weve seen the population in Melbourne double in the last 10 to 12 years and the bed numbers and hospital services just havent kept up. The pandemic has just further exposed every hole that was already there.

Hot wards and short shifts

Since the end of the second wave, Victorias COVID caseload has been relatively light, but its mere existence presents a serious challenge. Virus exposure in a single hospital can filter across the entire health system. If staff are furloughed and patients diverted to neighbouring hospitals, it adds to demand on workers.

This played out at the Royal Melbourne Hospital last week, when 450 staff were forced into isolation after a COVID-infected man, who wasnt tested before surgery, sparked an outbreak at the Parkville facility. As authorities scrambled to contain the cluster, emergency staff were put in place and ambulances diverted to other hospitals for all but the most serious cases.

A nurse at the Royal Melbourne Hospital, who spoke to The Age on the condition of anonymity as she was not authorised to speak publicly, said staff were frustrated that the patient had not been tested before his surgery or even in the days afterwards.

How can a patient be in the hospital for 10 days infecting staff and they havent even been screened for COVID? It just defies logic and belief. It has caused a huge amount of anxiety among staff.

The nurse said the trauma ward at the hospital had been a deemed a hot ward, leaving dozens of staff working in a suspected COVID ward without any warning. The anxiety levels are so much higher this year than they were last year because there are many young nurses who are seeing younger people get infected and come to hospital, she said.

Across Victoria, managers say they are struggling to fill shifts, partly because nurses have been deployed to every corner of the COVID frontline as contact tracers, vaccinators and testing centre staff. Health unions warn of unprecedented rates of double shifts and dangerous levels of burnout, including in maternity wards, where women are being reportedly discharged early from hospital only to return with complications.

Australian Medical Association president Dr Omar Khorshid is reasonably confident that every COVID patient who needs an ICU bed or ventilator will get one. But he said he wasnt seeing any preparations to be able to continue normal healthcare at the same time.

What Im more worried about is all the other healthcare that gets stopped or pushed aside in order to look after COVID patients. And that is what were seeing right now in Sydney, were seeing it in Melbourne, were even seeing elective surgery cancellations in Perth, prior to any COVID because the system is so full, he said.

Patients are raising concerns about the quality of care. Box Hill resident Julie Rowland*, an 84-year-old widow, was last year one of thousands of Victorians sent a taxi instead of a paramedic to transport her to emergency as part of an Ambulance Victoria overhaul designed to free up vehicles from taking on non-urgent cases.

She was alone in her home at a Box Hill retirement village one night when she started to panic that she was having a stroke. I couldnt use my fingers properly, I couldnt speak properly and I was having trouble walking, she tells The Age.

What followed would be laughable if it wasnt so serious. At first the taxi driver struggled to find her address, then he had trouble finding Box Hill Hospital, only a short distance away. Once they arrived, nobody helped her get inside.

All I could think about was: what if something had gone wrong from here to there? she told The Age. What if Id had a stroke? What was the cabby going to do when he didnt even know where the damn hospital was?

The mental health toll

Melbourne psychiatrist Dr Killian Ashe says there has been an extremely concerning increase in people, especially children and young people, presenting to emergency departments with self-harm and mental health distress. A growing number use drugs and alcohol to cope.

Some in the midst of a crisis spend two or three days waiting in emergency departments because no mental health beds are available.

Services are so saturated, both public and private, he says. It really should very rarely come to a person having to present to an emergency department, but unfortunately now it almost always comes to that.

The problem is exacerbated by a severe shortage of mental health workers and beds. Some nurses have become so burnt out theyve opted to leave mental health wards and take jobs helping with vaccination and testing.

Striving towards the best vaccination numbers and keeping people safe from COVID is an awful necessity, but it is the only way out of this, Ashe said. But this mental health pandemic thats coming with it is carrying more morbidity and mortality now, arguably, than actual COVID itself.

Ashe said a faster immunisation program was urgently needed along with more funding to deal with the mental health toll of pandemic stress.

Psychologists are also feeling the pressure as they try to help a growing number of young people who often have to wait months for a referral. Calls to the child counselling service Kids Helpline increased by 30 per cent in the first six months of this year compared to the same period last year.

Childrens needs arent being met ... and youve got all these desperate parents really wanting support for their kids and getting frustrated because they feel like they cant get the help that they need, says Rebecca Thomas, co-founder of Shine Bright Psychology, which caters for school-aged children. That puts a lot of pressure on psychologists as well because we have this huge influx of work that we just cant keep up with. We simply dont have the workforce.

Child psychologist Rebecca Thomas says the pandemics mental health toll will last for years. Credit:Eddie Jim

No simple fix

As demand for health services soars, the question is whether the system can withstand the pressure. And as state and federal leaders squabble over national cabinet vaccination targets to ease lockdowns, what must be done to safeguard hospitals once Australia eventually begins opening up?

The Andrews government has invested $759 million to recruit more than 300 paramedics and registered nurses, to implement a new transport service for patients who do not require urgent care and to boost triage and telehealth. About 350 medical staff have also been recruited from overseas and will be deployed across 30 health services from October.

But Danny Hill argues the health system needs to work like an ecosystem  you cant unclog one part without fixing another.

You can double the amount of ambulances but if you dont have the beds on the wards for patients to move into, and if we dont have enough allied health people to discharge patients, then it wont work.

Psychologists and mental health services have also asked for additional resources, while Australias leading doctors groups are demanding state and federal governments commit to establishing an emergency plan to avoid the system grinding to a halt every time new COVID cases emerge.

This plan could mirror emergency medical responses already in place to handle natural disasters such as bushfires or floods, says emergency medicine specialist Dr Sarah Whitelaw. Once hospitals have hit a certain threshold or a certain percentage of staff have been furloughed, it would trigger a statewide response so entire hospitals are not shut down.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison with Health Minister Greg Hunt. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

Cognisant of the challenge, Prime Minister Scott Morrison has promised to bolster the nations hospitals and make sure the system has the resilience to cope. He is yet to explain how. The government has sought urgent advice from intensive care doctors about what happens after the country hits a vaccination rate of 70 per cent or more and starts easing restrictions. At that point, doctors expect already stretched hospitals will experience a huge and sustained boost in demand from a COVID-19 pandemic of the unvaccinated.

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A national working group has also been convened to address issues highlighted by the pandemic which include national funding arrangements, reforms to care models and workforce fatigue  but the jury is still out on what it might achieve.

Its not going to be an easy, simple fix, says Andrew Hewat, assistant secretary of the Victorian Allied Health Professionals Association.

The workforce has been run too lean for too long, well before COVID. The pandemic has really just exposed the vulnerabilities of the system.

With Rachel Clun
Save Log in , register or subscribe to save articles for later. Normal text size Larger text size Very large text size More trouble at home, says Ray, a young Aboriginal man affiliated with the Judas Priest mob, one of the many gangs from Wadeye named for the metal bands who first captivated the community decades ago on late-night ABC music program Rage. Ray and a dozen or so extended family, mostly women and children, are taking refuge in Darwin, a six-hour drive from Wadeye on the wretched Port Keats Road, and today theyre in a northern suburbs park with swings for the kids and shade for the sitting. Ray from Wadeye is taking time out in Darwin, maybe until next year. Credit:Krystle Wright But only Ray and a young woman stick around to answer questions about how this pandemic has affected them. The rest have shot up the road  scared, Ray explains later, this approaching white stranger was about to force them to get the needle. Through broken English, for it is not his first language, Ray explains hes already twice-dosed with Pfizer, courtesy of a recent stint in jail. The young woman, too shy to say too much, is yet to have her first, even though she is every governments priority. Both want to know the same thing: Where does it come from? The Northern Territory Government will not release the vaccination rates for Wadeye or any remote community, preferring to bundle the numbers into broader regions that incorporate whiter, larger and better-vaccinated towns.

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The best the public can know about vaccinations in Wadeye, also called Port Keats, is the first dose rate for the broad Top End region (excluding Darwin) is 52 per cent. But even this is fraught. Federal government calculations, which tally the administered shots using Medicare information, put the same region at only 26 per cent for first doses. A testing and vaccination clinic in Katherine, about 300 kilometres south of Darwin. Credit:Krystle Wright The math discrepancy alone could be cause for alarm, given these numbers are supposed to inform such important decisions as opening up. And given the Territory has diseases Third World nations have already defeated. The Doherty Institute modelling  taken up by state and territory leaders in their disintegrating compact to transition to living-with-the-virus mode at 70-80 per cent double-dose vaccinations rates of those aged 16-plus  does not investigate what opening up means for Australias sickest and most health-illiterate populations. [One question] is about whether 80 per cent of 16-and-over is appropriate [for opening up], and the answer is no, says Dr Jason Agostino of the National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation.

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Like broad geographic groupings can mask vaccination realities within individual communities, so can national or statewide tallies mask low doses in sub-populations, including those living with disabilities, mental health conditions or in very remote locations, Dr Agostino says. John Paterson, chief executive of the Aboriginal Medical Services Alliance Northern Territory, believes 70-80 per cent may be acceptable in an imaginary homogenous and healthy Australia but could be devastating for Aboriginal communities. The Doherty Institute is doing work on specific groups of Australians now and will report to an unspecified future meeting of national cabinet. But the situation in the far-western NSW town of Wilcannia, described by a local health service as an unfolding humanitarian crisis, is an emerging preview of what can happen when COVID-19 gets into communities whose majority are statistically sick and overcrowded. Wilcannia is about 60 per cent Aboriginal. Wadeye and most other remote Territory communities are closer to 90 per cent. As big businesses and federal Treasurer Josh Frydenberg beat the drum for reopening in line with the very clear [national] plan, Mr Paterson warns the conversation is ignoring extreme and worsening staff shortages in remote communities; poor access to vaccines compared with large centres; frighteningly high rates of chronic disease in Aboriginal communities; and low vaccine take-up rates.

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The big shop in the remote Aboriginal community of Yuendumu. Credit:Janie Barrett To protect against needless deaths once Australians are allowed freedoms to move around, public health measures  contact tracing, isolation and social distancing  need to continue to some extent. But how to self-isolate if 15 or more other people are living in the same three-bedroom house, Paterson asks. Consider that a typical remote community  and there are more than 70 in the Territory  may have only one store from which to buy groceries. How to feed people if the store became an exposure site, as it presumably would, and needed to close, even for a day? How to move people and where to put them? The NSW government has started pushing motorhomes into Wilcannia. But what of the many Territory communities such as Wadeye, cut off in the fast-approaching wet season? AMSANT chief executive John Paterson. Credit:Dan Harrison

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The Territory government would not detail such contingency plans. Chief Minister Michael Gunner has asked the Doherty Institute to do more Territory specific work, particularly taking account its young and vulnerable cohort. Wadeye has a median age of 25, compared with 38 on Sydneys North Shore. Even if the community achieved an 80 per cent vaccination rate of over-16s, half of the population would still be without a single dose. Across the wider Aboriginal population, Dr Agostino says calculating 80 per cent of over-12s still only makes about 60 per cent of the whole. Mr Paterson says until vaccines are approved for all children, these 70 -80 per cent targets will be dangerous for our people. Maningrida elder Charlie Gunabarra, also a chairperson for Malala Health Services, says his Arnhem Land community is a vaccine success story. While the government will not provide figures, Gunabarra says more than 1300 of the communitys 3500 people got their Pfizer jabs in the first four days of vaccinations alone.

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Barnaby Joyce has suggested a $5 billion extension of the Inland Rail into Queensland coal country in return for the Nationals backing a commitment on net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

The Deputy Prime Minister used an address to the National Press Club in Canberra on Friday to announce he had secured $10 million in funding for a business case for a 500-kilometre extension of the freight line from Toowoomba to Gladstone on the Central Queensland coast.

Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce says a new rail line from Toowoomba to Gladstone would deliver big gains to the bush. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen.

Mr Joyce told the Press Club he is prepared to cut a deal to support a net zero target if people come up with something that is a logical efficiency of the economy - for instance ... the Inland Rail.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has signalled his desire to commit to reaching net zero emissions by 2050, but Nationals MPs, including Mr Joyce, say rural communities have already suffered economic loss from Australias commitment to the Kyoto climate pact and they will make sure that doesnt happen again.
Taipei: Taiwan received its first batch of Pfizer vaccines Thursday after a prolonged purchasing process that gave rise to a political blame game with China.

Taiwan had been unable to buy the vaccine itself directly from BioNTech, the German company that had partnered with US-based Pfizer to develop the mRNA vaccine.

Workers unload a shipment of Pfizer vaccines from an aircraft at the Taoyuan International Airport in Taiwan. Credit:AP

Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen earlier accused China of blocking Taiwan from getting the Pfizer vaccine through BioNTech, saying that they had all but signed the contracts when the deal was delayed indefinitely. China has denied any interference.

Eventually, two private companies, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing and Hon Hai Precision Electronics, as well as a Buddhist organisation Tzu Chi, stepped in to buy the vaccines and donate them to Taiwan.
PHILIPSBURG:--- On Tuesday, August 31, four civil servants of the Department of Legal Affairs graduated from the University of Curacaos School of Law Sint Maarten Division. The Certified Legislative Lawyer course completed by the civil servants was organized by the Caribbean Center for Legislation in Sint Maarten, Curacao, and Aruba. The aim of the course is to enable the participants to work as legislative lawyers in each of the three Caribbean countries, in principle in any policy area. Prime Minister and Minister of General Affairs Silveria Jacobs, Minister of Education, Culture, Youth and Sport drs. Rodolphe Samuel, Ministry of General Affairs Secretary-General Hensley Plantijn, and Former Acting Head of the Legal Affairs Department Gilbert de Windt were all present at the ceremony.

During the ceremony, Prime Minister Jacobs addressed the civil servants and stated, An organizations strength lies in the possibility to allow personal growth and individual development of personnel. In turn, the institution benefits from your skills, knowledge, hard work, and dedication. I am grateful that our sister countries are able to collaborate with St. Maarten on this level. If we want to go far within this Kingdom, the best way to do so is together.

Legal Advisors within the government of St. Maarten are highly encouraged to register for the online course by September 10, by emailing This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . The registration is open for civil servants, lawyers, higher councils, and persons with a legal background. The Certified Legislative Lawyer course lasts one year and consists of five modules, namely, Deepening constitutional and administrative law; General legal doctrines; Legislative engineering; Clinic legislation; and In-depth Constitutional and Administrative Law. To obtain the Certified Legislative Lawyer diploma, all modules must be completed with a passing grade.

On behalf of the government of St. Maarten, I would like to congratulate these four women on their major accomplishment for themselves and the people of St. Maarten by extension. Their sacrifice and commitment make a lasting impact on themselves, their department, and the government of St. Maarten, concluded Prime Minister Jacobs.
The emergency operation in Haiti has been completed. The Defense deployment was for 14 days and started on Friday 20 August. The Dutch government decided to deploy Dutch military personnel after a request for help from the Haitian government. Haiti was hit by a massive earthquake on August 14, which claimed many victims and caused damage. The Netherlands was one of the countries that quickly decided to send (military) emergency aid.

The Dutch naval ship HNLMS Holland, with 99 troops, a helicopter, and fast motorboats on board, set sail for Haiti on 20 August. The Dutch deployment took place within a humanitarian aid mission of the European Union. The aid organizations present in Port-au-Prince (including the International Red Cross and UNOCHA from the United Nations) coordinated the aid needs in the disaster area. This resulted in specific tasks for the naval vessel.

Water, medical supplies, and family kits

For example, HNLMS Holland carried out various reconnaissance assignments with a helicopter and FRISCs, in order to get a better picture of the damage and relief needs locally. The patrol ship also assisted with logistics, moving personnel, and equipment from A to B. Many inland roads were damaged by the earthquake and unsafe due to criminal activity. Therefore, transport took place by air or by sea, for example to Les Cayes. Holland also unloaded relief supplies in several places. In Aquin, Anse-a-veau, Baraderes, and Miragoane, among others, water, medical supplies, and family kits were mainly delivered.

From emergency aid to reconstruction

Humanitarian aid is an important and rewarding core task of Defense, said Captain-Lieutenant Commander Harald van Rijn, commander of HNLMS Holland. We have been able to step in to help people in need. My crew, the soldiers who came on board especially for this mission and I look back with satisfaction on our efforts at and above Haiti.

Even after HNLMS Holland leaves, the Netherlands will continue to involve in humanitarian aid in Haiti, where the step is being taken from emergency aid to reconstruction. However, there is no longer any role for the Dutch military in that reconstruction.

Pride

Outgoing Defense Minister in the Netherlands Ank Bijleveld spoke appreciative words to the soldiers involved: For two weeks, the Defense organization provided aid to Haitians in need. We are proud of our colleagues who have worked very hard. HNLMS Holland entered Curacao today.
Somerset, KY (42501)

Today

Partly cloudy skies this evening will give way to occasional showers overnight. Low 66F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 40%..

Tonight

Partly cloudy skies this evening will give way to occasional showers overnight. Low 66F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 40%.
How businesses can protect their people in the new age of work?

Ensuring employee health and safety remains a key priority for organisations this year, especially as we see COVID-19 cases continue to rise in different areas of the world. As an ongoing challenge, COVID-19 has shifted the priorities of many organisations. In fact, improving health and safety for employees is the top strategic goal this year of manufacturing and logistics organisations in the U.S. and U.K., according to research conducted by Forrester on behalf of STANLEY Security. But as we think about reopening and as hybrid workforce models and workspace-on-demand approaches rise in popularity, leaders need to consider implementing the right technologies to help ensure a safe return to the office. This means investing in health, safety, and security solutions that can help leaders protect their people. The intersection of security technology and health and safety Theres no doubt that the scope of security has expanded in the wake of the global pandemic. What was once an area governed by a select few security or IT professionals within a business has now become a crucial company investment involving many key stakeholders. The role of security has expanded to encompass a broader range of health and safety challenges for businesses Additionally, the role of security has expanded to encompass a broader range of health and safety challenges for businesses. Fortunately, security technologies have made significant strides and many solutions, both existing and new, have been thrust forward to address todays biggest business challenges. Investment in security technology Its important to note that businesses are eager to adopt tech that can help them protect their people. Nearly half (46%) of organisations surveyed by Forrester report that theyre considering an increasing investment in technology solutions that ensure employee safety. Technologies like touchless access control, visitor management systems, occupancy monitoring, and installed/wearable proximity sensors are among some of the many security technologies these organisations have implemented or are planning to implement yet this year. Facilitating a safe return to work But what does the future look like? When it comes to the post-pandemic workplace, organisations are taking a hard look at their return-to-work strategy. Flexible or hybrid workforce models require a suite of security solutions to help ensure a safer, healthier environment More than half (53%) of organisations surveyed by Forrester are looking to introduce a flexible work schedule for their employees as they make decisions about returning to work and keeping employees safe post-pandemic. Such flexible  or hybrid  workforce models require a suite of security solutions to help ensure a safer, healthier environment for all who traverse a facility or work on-site. One of the central safety and security challenges raised by these hybrid models is tracking who is present in the building at any one time  and where or how they interact. Leveraging security technology With staggered schedules and what may seem like a steady stream of people passing through, it can be difficult to know whos an employee and whos a visitor. Access control will be key to monitoring and managing the flow of people on-site and preventing unauthorised access. When access control systems are properly integrated with visitor management solutions, businesses can unlock further benefits and efficiencies. For instance, integrated visitor management systems can allow for pre-registration of visitors and employees  granting mobile credentials before people arrive on-site  and automated health screening surveys can be sent out in advance to help mitigate risk. Once someone reaches the premises, these systems can also be used to detect the persons temperature and scan for a face mask, if needed. We will likely see these types of visitor management and advanced screening solutions continue to rise in popularity, as 47% of organisations surveyed by Forrester report that theyre considering requiring employee health screening post-pandemic. Defining the office of the future A modern, dynamic workforce model will require an agile approach to office management. Its imperative to strike the right balance between making people feel welcome and reassuring Businesses want to create an environment in which people feel comfortable and confident  a space where employees can collaborate and be creative. Its imperative to strike the right balance between making people feel welcome and reassuring them that the necessary security measures are in place to ensure not only their safety but also their health. In many cases, this balancing act has created an unintended consequence: Everyone now feels like a visitor to a building. Protocols and processes With employees required to undergo the same screening processes and protocols as a guest, weve seen a transformation in the on-site experience. This further underscores the need for seamless, automated, and tightly integrated security solutions that can improve the employee and visitor experience, while helping to ensure health and safety. Ultimately, the future of the office is not about what a space looks like, but how people feel in it. This means adopting a safety-always culture, underpinned by the right technology, to ensure people that their safety remains a business top priority.
On the eve of Labor Day and the expiration of enhanced unemployment benefits, Indeed.com is posting far larger numbers of Connecticut openings than just a few weeks previously  reflecting both local businesses eager to hire and those offering remote working opportunities.

Nationally, employers added 235,000 jobs in August on a net basis according to the latest estimate issued Friday by the U.S. Department of Labor based on surveys. That was half the average monthly gain to date this year, with DOL indicating the number was pulled down by a decline in retail jobs.

The overall unemployment rate dropped to 5.2 percent, down two-tenths of a point from July. Connecticuts unemployment rate was 7.3 percent in July.

On Saturday, about 125,000 Connecticut residents on unemployment compensation will reach the end of a $300 weekly plus-up the federal government has been subsidizing as extra relief during the COVID-19 pandemic. Some employers have been critical of the extra benefit, saying it is prompting some people they could put to work immediately to staying on the sidelines .

Others are resorting to mammoth bonuses as a one-time shot in the arm to motivate people to apply for available positions. And under Gov. Ned Lamont, the Connecticut Department of Revenue Services has awarded $1,000 bonuses to more than 1,500 people who have accepted jobs under a DRS program, which has a funding commitment to make another 8,500 awards.

The national job numbers were not as strong as people had hoped  maybe the delta [variant] has still got some hesitancy there, Lamont said Friday during a stop in Redding. I think Labor Day reminds us ... how essential the essential workers were. They showed up every day during COVID  they couldnt Zoom or telecommute  they were right there, and I think thats who were going to remember on Labor Day.

As of Friday morning, Indeed listed more than 80,000 jobs in Connecticut, a net gain of 18,500 from just two weeks earlier. That net gain factors in some opportunities that were filled in short order by qualified candidates, as well as some jobs posted by companies in New York and other states dangling work-from-home opportunities.

With the resumption of the school year, some parents may be able to take extra hours or return to work if not holding a job at present. But some employers that rely on college-age workers must now look anew for hired help as they return to class.

The U.S. economy got one small but encouraging sign in August: a sharp drop in the number of discouraged workers who had given up hope of finding any suitable work, with just over 390,000 people in the category DOL uses to describe people who believe no jobs are out there for them. That was down 23 percent in a single month.

DOL estimates that another 5.7 million people would work if handed an opportunity under the right circumstances and parameters, but are not looking actively looking at present and so not classified as unemployed. Another 4.5 million people have settled for part-time work that falls short of the hours they are willing to pull for a better paycheck, however.

And of those looking for work for at least 27 weeks, about 246,000 had success in August, but another 3.2 million were still trying to land a job suitable to meet their living needs. The long-term unemployed accounted for 37 percent of all people looking for work in August.

With federal funding, Connecticut and other states have been working to extend job training to more people considering career changes.

Its a really challenging environment out there to find ... the right, qualified people, said Robert Costantini, CEO of Triax Technologies in Norwalk which has grown rapidly in the past year selling a system to remind workers to maintain distance on job sites during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Alex.Soule@scni.com; 203-842-2545; @casoulman
John Mayer Instagrams about hometown

Fairfield

On his way up to Boston, John Mayer posted a photo of the highway exit to his hometown of Fairfield with the following caption:

"On the road up to Boston. I always like to look out the window when we pass my old hometown of Fairfield, CT. Its my opportunity to take inventory of the passage of time, and for one moment - and a couple of miles - reflect on how profound and formerly unbelievable it is to pass exit 24 from inside a tour bus."
STAMFORD  It's not a night in Havana or New York's Copacabana club or even the Palladium, but for one weekend, the Stamford Hilton will do.

The newly minted Tri-State Dance Festival will explode onto the local dance scene from Thursday to Monday. Tri-State's predecessor, the Connecticut Salsa Festival, was a staple of the local dance community, founded by Stamford dance instructor Lou Lopez. Lopez passed the festival torch to Tri-State Dance Organizer Jeff Taveras after his retirement.

But Taveras and his team want to make something new.

After a yearlong break (or rather, a pandemic-related cancellation), Taveras  a professional dancer himself who now helms Lopez's Latin Moves Dance Studio  decided it was time to grow. The Connecticut Salsa Festival featured workshops, competitions and performances for salsa performers and amateurs alike for 15 years. The event, according to its organizers, marked "the unofficial start of the summer" for area dancers. Most notably, it was the only area dance festival open to youth dancers.

In turn, Taveras asked, "Why not give them more to do?"

The event isn't changing in name only: The festival this year becomes more than a salsa festival. Taveras added two more styles, bachata and hustle, to dancers' repertoires during his takeover with his new co-organizer, pioneering hustle dancer Billy Fajardo.

"We wanted to open it up," Taveras said. "We didn't want to just solely focus on salsa. We wanted to open it up to the bachata community; we want to open it up to the hustle community. And we want to potentially open it up to hip hop, and maybe even the ballroom community going forward."

Salsa, bachata and hustle all intertwine with each other. All popped up in the 20th century, all have evident Afro-Caribbean roots and all are fundamental social dances. The steps were born out of joy and the community of nightclubs and parties, according to historians.

In the lexicon of dance, salsa came first, from the musical genre of the same name. When people conjure up an image of Latin-influenced dance, its smooth steps and dramatic flourishes come to mind, all tracked to iconic Caribbean salseros in New York City like Cuba's Celia Cruz or the bombastic Puerto Rican bandleader Tito Puente.

When people think salsa, they think often imagine Puerto Rico, but its most direct influences come from the Cuban side.

In contrast, bachata is a Dominican style of social dance that's become more popular in the last 10 or 15 years.

"It's on the uprise," Taveras said. Musically speaking, the genre first exploded alongside salsa in the 1960s, though an ocean away in the Dominic Republic.

In a way, hustle sits somewhere in between.

Think Saturday Night Fever. Think house parties in the South Bronx crowded with Puerto Rican teenagers whose parents came up dancing to big band music. Think drama and performance and a whole lot of sequins.

Longtime Connecticut Salsa Festival participant Kathryn Johanessen thinks the theatrical nature of the style is integral to its executing. Salsa and bachata are about the connection, about the moment, she said.

Hustle  a style invented alongside Broadway performers who participated and helped influence the genre -- relies on the pizzaz.

"Not only am I dancing with you," Johanessen imagines one hustler saying to another, "but I'm also dancing for the crowd."

Longtime columnist William Safire argued in a 1975 article that the hustle rejected all the dancing norms of the mid-60s and early 70s  it was methodical, it was partnered and it was sexy. Safire posed the hustle as a "socially acceptable way" to hold a lover closer.

"Now people no longer have to leap into bed to discover if they are physically compatible," after a decade of terpsichorean solitude, he said. "They can dance together first."

But that can be said for all three styles, and that chemistry is what Taveras said he wants to conjure up when participants step out on the stage Friday evening or jump into a social dance on Saturday night.

For the first time since 2019, all the dancers from the region will be together like the pioneers of their styles intended to dance. And dance all night they will.

veronica.delvalle@hearstmediact.com
STAMFORD  Leaders of the Stamford Police Association have endorsed Bobby Valentine in the four-way race for mayor.

The police unions president, vice president and board of trustees picked the unaffiliated candidate and former Major League Baseball manager over incumbent Mayor David Martin and state Rep. Caroline Simmons, who are set to face each other in a Democratic primary this month, as well as Republican candidate and former city police officer Joe Corsello.

After evaluating the candidates for mayor, it is clear that Bobby Valentines experience and dedication to improving all aspects of Stamford put him far above the others, Kris Engstrand, the president of the police association, said in a release.

Engstrand told The Stamford Advocate that the decision to endorse Valentine was made unanimously by himself, the unions vice president and the six members of the board of trustees.

We are the part of the association that hands out the endorsements based on what we think would be best for our membership, Engstrand said.

It is an honor to have the endorsement of our dedicated men and women in uniform, many of whom I've known for decades, Valentine said in a statement. I have the utmost respect for their service to our community, and look forward to a productive relationship when I'm mayor.

The endorsement of Valentine comes weeks after the police unions leadership slammed Martin for requiring all city employees to be vaccinated or get tested weekly for COVID-19.

The matter came up Wednesday during a virtual forum with Martin and Simmons. Martin said he issued the mandate after seeing that COVID-19 cases were on the rise and that many, many large employers were setting similar requirements.

My first responsibility is to keep everyone in this city safe, and that's not always going to make everyone happy, Martin said. It is to get the best solution for our overall city, and this is the one that I came to.

brianna.gurciullo@hearstmediact.com
SALT LAKE CITY (AP)  As a member of the Hazara minority in Afghanistan, Azim Kakaie would have had no access to higher education under the Taliban. Instead, over the past two decades he turned a love for aviation into an air-traffic control job in Kabul, he said Thursday.

Kakaie was working at the airport as the swift takeover by the Taliban engulfed Kabul last week. He had to board an evacuation plane before his family could join him. This week he became the first Afghan refugee to arrive in Utah since the withdrawal of U.S. troops.

I had to abandon everything that I had made in 34 years of my life. Start from zero, he said.

Kakaie boarded a plane quickly because he was already at the airport, but his wife had to try for days, enduring beatings from Taliban fighters at checkpoints that blocked her from the airport, he said. Finally, on the fourth day she was able to get through along with two other relatives  just 30 minutes before a devastating suicide bombing killed over 160 Afghans and 13 U.S. troops. One, Staff Sgt. Taylor Hoover, was from Utah.

Those young American heroes, he said. That is going to be in my heart for the rest of my life.

Shes now in Germany, along with her mother and his brother, who hope to join him in Salt Lake City. He landed late Wednesday night in Utah's capitol, where the jagged mountains and desert climate reminded him of home. Hes looking forward to building a life in the U.S. and finding a job, but he's still concerned for his family back home, including his mother.

Im worried a lot. I cannot say when I am by myself, how much I cry. I dont know whats going to happen. Thats the only time that Im deep under pressure, he said.

The U.S. and its coalition partners have evacuated more than 100,000 people from Afghanistan since the airlift began Aug. 14, including American citizens and many Afghans who helped the U.S. during the 20-year war.

About 200 Afghan refugees are expected to eventually be resettled in Utah, where there is already an Afghan community of a few thousand people, said Aden Batar, director of migration and refugee services for Catholic Community Services in Utah.

The resettlement effort has public support from Republican Gov. Spencer Cox, who cited the historical migration of members of the conservative states predominant faith, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as he asked the Biden administration to send refugees there.
Gov. Ned Lamont issued an executive order late Friday delaying his vaccine mandate for nursing home workers until later this month, granting the request of the states largest health care union, which asked for more time to comply.

A spokesman for the governor said the deadline would be pushed from Sept. 7 to Sept. 27, just three days before Lamonts pandemic emergency powers are due to expire.

The union, SEIU District 1199, declined to comment beyond its previous statement requesting the extension.

The delay comes as at least one nursing home was unlikely to meet the state-imposed deadline while workers at several other homes have quit or are prepared to resign over the order.

Union spokesman Pedro Zayas declined to name the home, which employs 1199 workers, but said residents could have to be moved if adequate staffing isnt in place.

Moving these people around would be very bad for their health and well-being, Zayas said earlier Friday. We continue to be in a pandemic.

Workers must get their first shot by Sept. 27, with an appointment scheduled for their second, or their employer could face a $20,000-per-day fine.

The union, which requested a 30-day extension, said it supported the vaccine mandate but needed more time to educate workers and to prevent staff from getting fired or having to resign for not rolling up their sleeves, further exacerbating an already dire worker shortage.

Vaccination rates for staff vary widely by nursing home from 42 percent to 100 percent, according to state data. The average vaccination rate  76 percent currently  has creeped up in recent weeks.

At the 17 nursing homes operated by Genesis Healthcare, all staff are immunized, excluding the small number of individuals who received medical or religious exemptions, Lori Mayer, a spokesperson for the company, said by email Friday.

Mayer declined to specify how many employees have received one of the two exemptions allowed under Lamonts order. She also declined to provide a count of the employees who were not willing to comply with the policy.

A spokesman for iCare Health Network, which operates 11 nursing homes, said the number of resignations and exemptions is in flux as the company works right up until the deadline to get employees to comply.

Our clinical operations team and nursing home leadership have been meeting daily to make sure we are utilizing all strategies available to us and give employees as many opportunities to receive the vaccine as possible, David Skoczulek, vice president of business development, said in an email Friday.

Overall, the homes are in good shape, he said, due to the fact that we had high vaccination rates across our care centers from the first vaccine push.

Mag Morelli, president of Leading Age Connecticut, a trade organization that includes 40 nursing homes, said employers will decide on a case-by-case how to handle staff who are granted an exemption, which could include reassigning them to another position if they directly care for residents given they wont be immunized.

Most people are working hard either to get workers vaccinated or in compliance with the exemptions, Morelli said.

But when the deadline comes, she said, there will be people who will have to resign.

julia.bergman@hearstmediact.com
CANBERRA, Australia (AP)  Britain is rushing 4 million Pfizer doses to Australia, where authorities are scrambling to bolster supplies of that COVID-19 vaccine and protect the population against a rapidly spreading outbreak of the delta variant.

The swap deal announced Friday follows Australian deals with Singapore and Poland to address a short-term Pfizer shortage.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the British shots would leave Britain on Saturday and double Australias Pfizer supplies in September.

Australia was keen to make more vaccine deals with other governments, Morrison said.

I said I would leave no stone unturned and I can tell you Ive been turning over some stones in recent times to ensure that we can progress the vaccination program as quickly as we possibly can, Morrison said.

Thanks Boris, I owe you a beer, he added, referring to his British counterpart Boris Johnson.

Australia has particularly low vaccination levels compared to other wealthy nations, with only 36% of Australians aged 16 and older fully vaccinated.

The Australian government has been criticized for failing to strike more vaccine deals with manufacturers. Australia had planned to manufacture most of the vaccine for its 26 million people, including 20 million adults.

But one home-grown vaccine was abandoned during development because it produced false positive results to HIV tests. Locally-produced AstraZeneca, which is the only alternative to Pfizer registered for use in Australia so far, proved unpopular with many due to changing medical advice on the risk of blood clots. Australia initially bought only 10 million Pfizer doses but has increased the order to 40 million shots this year.

The first of 10 million shots of the Moderna vaccine is expected to become available soon.

The need for vaccines comes as Australias most populous state, New South Wales, on Friday reported its deadliest day of the pandemic with 12 fatalities and a record 1,431 new infections. The state government predicted the daily death toll will peak next month if the pace of vaccination is maintained.

The state government plans to triple the number of intensive care unit beds and staff in October when the number of COVID-19 patients are expected to peak, New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian said.

She expects 70% of the population aged 16 and older in her state will be fully vaccinated by mid-October.

The outbreak that began in Sydney in June has spread to Melbourne, Australias second-most populous city and the capital of Victoria state.

Victoria reported 208 new infections in the last 24 hours and a single death.

New South Wales and Victoria are in lockdown and see increased vaccinations as the only way to safely ease pandemic restrictions.

The Australia Capital Territory still hopes that its lockdown will stamp out delta. The rest of Australia remains virtually free of the virus.

Singapore delivered 500,000 Pfizer shots to Sydney on Thursday. Australia must repay Singapore and Britain with equivalent numbers of doses in December.

Australia bought 1 million Pfizer doses from Poland for an undisclosed price in August.

The Australian government hopes the states will end pandemic lockdowns once 80% of the population aged 16 and older was fully vaccinated.
What do I do if my basement flooded? How long does it take for flood water to recede? How do I pump water out of the basement?

These are just some questions many in Connecticut are asking after Ida left a wake of flooding and damage across the state.

Below are answers to some flood-related questions including ones about insurance, flood management and assessing storm damage.

Does insurance cover flood damage in cars?

According to State Farm, if a vehicle has been flooded, owners should first take note of the depth of the floodwaters in relation to the car. Don't start the car, and dry it out as soon as possible. Car owners can file a claim with their insurance companies and a qualified mechanic determine the extent of the damage.

Once the inspection is complete, State Farm notes that the insurance company will weigh the costs to repair the vehicle against the cost of replacing it. If the car is considered a total loss by the insurance company, State Farm recommends reviewing next steps with an insurance agent.

What do I do if my basement flooded?

According to State Farm, you should first make sure electricity and gas are shut off before heading into a flooded basement to survey damage. Once these utilities are shut off, remove as much water as possible  anything more than a few inches may require a professional.

Next, State Farm recommends cleaning out the contents of the basement, placing salvageable items into a clean, dry place and throwing away anything that is completely damaged. Additionally, a professional cleaning company should assess what can be cleaned in the basement.

An insurance agent can then help file the claim and determine whether coverage applies, according to State Farm, as well as what companies may be used to assist in restoration.

How do I stop the flooding in my basement?

According to home services website Angi, there are steps homeowners can take prior to heavy rains, which include cleaning out gutters and downspouts, filling cracks in the basements foundation and maintaining its sump pump or having a backup generator in case of power failure.

If the basement floods despite preventative measures, State Farm recommends turning off gas and electricity in the basement before attempting to clean. Once the basement is cleared of water and damages are assessed, State Farm suggests using fans and dehumidifiers to help dry it out, as well as cleaning repeatedly to help prevent mold.

How do I pump water out of the basement?

According to this guide from a North Dakota public health agency, people shouldnt rush to pump out their basements, but they should take photos of the water for insurance purposes prior to pumping. When water isnt covering the ground around the perimeter of the home, the guide says homeowners may begin pumping out the water, but they should refrain from using gasoline-powered pumps or generators indoors as they produce deadly carbon monoxide exhaust fumes.

The water should be drained to the 2 to 3-foot mark, and homeowners should then wait overnight to see if the water levels increased the next day. If the water rose, they will have to drain it again.

What happens if water gets in your car engine?

If your vehicle is flooded, the key is not to start your ignition. According to AutoZone, the first thing you should do is disconnect your car battery. If your car is submerged in water, look for the high-water mark in your car  it will give you an idea of the damage to the car. Once your car is no longer submerged, some safety measures you can take before tending to your engine include siphoning any water out of the fuel system, checking your cars fluids and checking the electrical system.

If there are water droplets in the oil, it means that there is water in your engine and the car should not be turned on as the oil and water will mix and cause further damage to your engine. If there is water, you will need to change your oil and oil filter.

To clear your engine of water, you must first remove the spark plugs and ignition coils. Then use your ignition key to slowly turn the engine. Any water in the engine should eject out of the engine head and exhaust system.

How high does water have to be to flood a car?

The answer depends on the height of the car. Generally, six inches of water will cause most cars to lose control and stall, according to the National Weather Service. One foot of water can float most vehicles away and two feet of rushing water can wash away most SUVs and trucks.

How long does it take for flood water to recede?

The amount of time flood water remains is dependent on the amount of rain that falls but flooding is described as a long-term event that lasts a week or longer, according to the National Weather Service.
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP)  Republican states that have passed increasingly tough abortion restrictions only to see them blocked by the federal courts have a new template in an unusually written Texas law that represents the most far-reaching curb on abortions in nearly half a century.

On Thursday, Republican lawmakers in at least half a dozen states said they planned to introduce bills using the Texas law as a model, hoping it provides a pathway to enacting the kind of abortion crackdown they have sought for years.

In Mississippi, Republican state Sen. Chris McDaniel said he would absolutely consider filing legislation to match the Texas law after a sharply divided U.S. Supreme Court let it stand.

I think most conservative states in the South will look at this inaction by the court and will see that as perhaps a chance to move on that issue, he said.

The Texas law, which took effect Wednesday, prohibits abortions once medical professionals can detect cardiac activity, usually around six weeks and before many women know theyre pregnant. While a dozen states have tried to enact bans early in pregnancy, those laws have been blocked by courts.

Texas may have found an end-run around the federal courts by enacting an unusual enforcement scheme that authorizes private citizens to file lawsuits in state court against abortion providers and anyone involved in aiding an abortion, including someone who drives a woman to a clinic. The law includes a minimum award of $10,000 for a successful lawsuit, but does not have government officials criminally enforce the law.

In addition to Mississippi, GOP lawmakers and abortion opponents in at least five other Republican-controlled states  Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, North Dakota and South Dakota  said they were considering pushing bills similar to the Texas law and its citizen-enforcement provision.

Even though you may have pro-life legislators, you do not always have pro-life bureaucrats who are willing to do enforcement inspections, said Indiana state Sen. Liz Brown, a Republican who has been the sponsor of several anti-abortion bills adopted in recent years.

Republicans for years have turned to statehouses in conservative states to find new ways to erode abortion rights enshrined by the high courts 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. The Supreme Court  at least for now  has cleared a path forward for them.

Were excited, and we really do think that the heartbeat bill strategy is working," said Blaine Conzatti, president of the Idaho Family Policy Center, which opposes abortions.

Idaho passed a law this year with similar restrictions to Texas, but it will only go into effect if a U.S. appeals court upholds another state's law, a condition that has not been met.

Arkansas state Sen. Jason Rapert on Thursday tweeted that he planned to file legislation mirroring Texas law when lawmakers reconvene this fall. The Republican lawmaker sponsored a 2013 heartbeat abortion ban that was later struck down by federal courts and another outright ban enacted this year that a federal judge has blocked.

Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, a Republican, said the state should wait until the more stringent anti-abortion Arkansas law receives a final judgment.

Hutchinson called the courts ruling on Texas law a procedural victory for abortion opponents, but said it doesnt reflect the courts view on whether Roe v. Wade should be reversed. Overturning that decision is abortion opponents foremost goal.

In Tennessee, Stacy Dunn, the president of Tennessee Right to Life, said she is hopeful the Supreme Court's decision to allow the Texas law to go in effect means the high court will rule to reverse Roe. Ten states, including Tennessee, have laws that would effectively outlaw most abortions should Roe v. Wade be overturned.

This Texas law could be a ray of light at the end of a very long and dark tunnel, and our state is ready, Dunn said in a statement.

Democrats also anticipated the Supreme Courts new conservative majority overturning Roe, although they fear a ruling striking it down would leave old state laws outlawing abortions in effect.

Reproductive freedom in our state is built on case law, said New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat, as he pushed for state lawmakers to enact a bill that would enshrine access to abortions.

All of that case law is in turn built on the Supreme Courts decision on Roe v. Wade. If the foundation of that series of case laws is impacted, impaired, taken away, the entire reality in our state falls like a house of cards, which is why we need to, as soon as possible, put this protection into statute."

In New Mexico, Democratic state Rep. Patricia Roybal Caballero of Albuquerque said she was angered by the Texas law because it might lead to underground abortion procedures that endanger the lives of women.

Roybal Caballero, a Catholic for choice in her words, wants New Mexico to provide safe passage to anyone seeking medical care, including abortion procedures that she believes should be a matter of personal choice. A clinic in Albuquerque is one of only a few independent facilities in the country that perform abortions close to the third trimester without conditions.

We dont want to go back to the 1960s and 1970s underground days of illegal abortions," she said. "Its our decision. And if its going to be our decision, it should be a safe and healthy outcome.

___

Associated Press writers Michael Catalini in Trenton, New Jersey; Tom Davies in Indianapolis; Andrew DeMillo in Little Rock, Ark.; Andrew Field in Topeka, Kansas; Chris Grygiel in Seattle; Meg Kinnard in Houston; Kimberlee Kruesi in Nashville; Morgan Lee in Santa Fe, N.M.; James MacPherson in Bismarck, N.D.; Emily Wagster Pettus in Jackson, Miss.; and Sophia Tareen in Chicago contributed to this report.
Surveying a section of washed-out train tracks in the wake of Ida, Gov. Ned Lamont said the states shoreline communities and infrastructure are at extraordinary risk in the face of climate change.

This was built 100 years ago, the governor said, pointing at a section of the rail embankment in Redding that had caved in after the storm dumped record amounts of rain on the state. They were prepared for storms the likes of which you had 100 years ago  the storms today are very different, he added.

The storm brought widespread flooding throughout the Northeast, prompting the National Weather Service to issue a flash flood warning in New York City for the first time, and catching many off guard in a region not normally known for floods. The death toll in the region rose to nearly 50  among them a Connecticut state police trooper who was killed after his vehicle was swept away by floodwaters in Woodbury.

We also see that these events are also impacting public safety, said Katie Dykes, commissioner of the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection. She said the death toll in the Northeast is on par with Superstorm Sandy.

There is no engineer that can design infrastructure that is prepared for the climate that we are going to have if we dont reduce emissions, Dykes added, something she acknowledged would require coordination with other states and the Biden administration.

The damage to the embankment in Redding was among the destruction that caused Metro-North Railroad to shut down the Danbury branch. The New Canaan branch was also closed, according to MTA officials. Rich Andreski, the states bureau chief of public transportation, said they hope to have service fully restored by Tuesday.

The New Haven line, the main artery that runs from Grand Central Terminal along Connecticuts western shoreline, reopened on a weekend schedule Friday.

This isnt the first time weve seen the lines go down, but the first time weve seen all of the lines go down this way and at the same time had 25 road closures state Department of Transportation Commissioner Joe Giulietti said. He pointed out the storms path had it passing through the southern United States, weakening the weather system. If it was a Sandy-type storm, would we be looking at a lot more? he said.

Ida caused thousands of power outages in Connecticut that were reduced to several hundred by late Friday.

Dykes said shes heard from people concerned by the more powerful storms. People are really unsettled, its really unnerving to look out your window and see a pond where your backyard used to be, she said. People who never had to worry about moving their car before a storm because of a concern about flooding.

This is climate change and it is unnerving, Dyes said. But there are things that we can do to address this.
Even before a strict abortion ban took effect in Texas this week, clinics in neighboring states were fielding growing numbers of calls from women desperate for options.

An Oklahoma clinic had received more than double its number of typical inquiries, two-thirds of them from Texas. A Kansas clinic is anticipating a patient increase of up to 40% based on calls from women in Texas. A Colorado clinic that already had started seeing more patients from other states was preparing to ramp up supplies and staffing in anticipation of the law taking effect.

The Texas law, allowed to stand in a decision Thursday by the U.S. Supreme Court, bans abortions once medical professionals can detect cardiac activity, typically around six weeks. In a highly unusual twist, enforcement will be done by private citizens who can sue anyone they believe is violating the law.

Theres real panic about how are they going to get an abortion within six weeks, said Anna Rupani, co-director of Fund Texas Choice, one of several nonprofits that help pay for travel and other expenses for patients seeking out-of-state abortions. Theres this fear that if I cant get it done in six weeks, I may not be able to get it done because I may not be able to leave my job or my family for more than a day.

Traveling for an abortion may be impossible for women who would struggle to find child care or take time off work. And for those without legal U.S. status along Texas southern border, traveling to an abortion clinic also entails the risk of getting stopped at a checkpoint.

Fund Texas Choice is among the groups seeking to expand a network that helps women in Texas and other places with restrictive abortion laws end their pregnancies in other states. It already has seen more women reaching out. The organization typically handles 10 new cases per week but received 10 calls from new clients just Wednesday, when the law took effect.

The phenomenon is not new. Women have been increasingly seeking out-of-state abortions as Republican legislatures and governors have passed ever-tighter abortion laws, particularly in the South. At least 276,000 women terminated their pregnancies outside their home state between 2012 and 2017, according to a 2019 Associated Press analysis of state and federal data.

The trend appears to have accelerated over the past year. Abortion clinics in neighboring states began seeing an uptick in calls from Texas after Gov. Greg Abbott banned abortions in March 2020 for nearly a month under a COVID-19 executive order.

The number of Texans seeking abortions in Planned Parenthood clinics in the Rocky Mountain region, which covers Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming and southern Nevada, was 12 times higher that month. In California, 7,000 patients came from other states to Planned Parenthood clinics in 2020.

The number of Texans getting abortions in Kansas jumped from 25 in 2019 to 289 last year. The Trust Women clinic in Wichita accounted for 203 of those procedures in a three-month period. Those patients traveled an average of 650 miles (1,000 kilometers), Trust Women spokesman Zack Gingrich-Gaylord said.

Last year was a dress rehearsal, he said, predicting similar numbers under the new Texas law.

One woman discovered she was pregnant just as Abbott's emergency order banning abortions was lifted. She and her partner had lost their jobs in San Antonio during the pandemic.

We didnt know which way the world was going to go with everything shut down and no change in sight, said Miranda, who spoke on the condition that only her first name be used for fear of harassment and intimidation. The last thing I wanted to do was be pregnant.

She struggled to find an abortion clinic that could help her. An online search led her to Fund Texas Choice and the Lilith Fund, another organization that offers financial assistance to Texans seeking abortions. They offered to pay for a flight to New Mexico.

Its so comforting because its like someone saying, We got you. Lets take care of this together," Miranda said.

Eventually, she found an appointment at a clinic in Dallas, a five-hour drive away. The groups helped with gas and lodging, aid that will be even more important with the new law, Miranda said.

To be able to help me in a time of need when I had nothing, not even a job  thats something I think a lot of women would benefit from if they knew those options were there, she said.

Trust Women Wichita clinic director Ashley Brink said the phones have been busier than normal this week with potential patients from Texas and beyond. Women also have been calling from Louisiana and Alabama who would typically get abortion care in Texas but are having to travel even farther.

The clinic typically sees 40 to 50 abortion patients in a week and now is expecting an additional 15 to 20.

At Trust Women's clinic in Oklahoma City, 80 appointments were scheduled over the past two days, more than double the typical amount, co-executive director Rebecca Tong said. Two-thirds were from Texas, and the earliest opening was three weeks out.

Oklahoma has just barely enough clinics for the amount of people here, Tong said. If anyone is thinking, Oh, they can just go out of state, itll be so easy, a lot of clinics in the Midwest and South, we dont do abortion care five days a week.

Oklahoma providers also face the potential for abortion restrictions similar to those in Texas in a matter of months.

In recent months, 15% of patients supported by Cobalt, an abortion access advocacy group in Colorado, were from out of state, president Karen Middleton said. She expects that number to keep rising.

The group administers a fund to cover the cost of the procedure, travel, lodging and meals. It began preparing for a potential influx of patients from Texas several weeks ago.

We reached out to everyone who provides abortion care in the state of Colorado, Middleton said. We asked them to be ready and to let us know if they could handle increased capacity.

Traveling for the procedure may still be out of reach for some. Women without legal U.S. status might turn to abortion medication, said Diana Gomez, advocacy manager with Progress Texas, though even that option is in question.

Several Republican-led states have passed laws making it harder to access the pills and banning prescriptions through virtual health visits. Texas is considering similar restrictions, which could force women to get pills by mail for do-it-yourself abortions or other methods.

They are going to have to go underground and find alternative means in our state, Gomez said.

____

Associated Press writer David Crary in New York contributed to this report. Samuels 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.
PHOENIX (AP)  A former Arizona nurse has pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting an incapacitated woman about three years ago at a long-term care facility where she later gave birth.

Nathan Sutherland also entered a guilty plea Thursday to a charge of abuse of a vulnerable adult stemming from his treatment of the woman. The plea agreement calls for a sentence of 5 1/4 to 10 years in prison on the sexual assault conviction and lifetime probation on the other conviction. Sentencing is scheduled for Nov. 4.

The pregnancy was discovered in December 2018 when an employee at the Hacienda Healthcare facility in Phoenix was changing the garments of the then-29-year-old victim and noticed the patient was in the process of delivering a child. Employees told police that they had no idea the woman was pregnant.

Police have said Sutherlands DNA matched a sample taken from the womans son. The victims mother is the boys guardian.

The surprise birth triggered reviews by state agencies, highlighted safety concerns for patients who are severely disabled or incapacitated and prompted the resignations of Haciendas chief executive and one of the victims doctors.

It led to a lawsuit from the victims parents that alleged Sutherland had cared for their daughter on hundreds of occasions from 2012 through 2018, despite promises from the state  which contracts with companies like Hacienda to provide services to people with developmental disabilities  that only women would tend to her. An expert on behalf of her family has said many of Sutherlands encounters with the patient occurred overnight, when fewer staff members and visitors were around.

Lawyers for the family also said Hacienda missed dozens of signs that the woman was carrying a baby, pointing out that she had gained weight, had a swollen belly and missed menstrual periods in the months before the child was born. They said the victim, who has a feeding tube and whose nutrition was reduced in response to her weight gain during the pregnancy, delivered the boy while severely dehydrated and without pain medications.

The victim lived at Hacienda for 26 years, until the childs birth. Her medical conditions stem from a brain disorder that caused motor and cognitive impairments and vision loss. She was also left with no functional use of her limbs.

Sutherland, a licensed practical nurse, was fired by Hacienda after his arrest and has since given up his nursing license.

A judge has approved a $15 million settlement against a doctor who cared for the woman for 26 years while she lived at Hacienda Healthcare. The doctors insurer has argued it has no obligation to pay that amount.

The state of Arizona, which contracts with companies like Hacienda to provide services to people with developmental disabilities, settled last summer for $7.5 million.

In a statement, Perry Petrilli, chief executive of Hacienda Healthcare, expressed relief over Sutherlands guilty pleas.

We have cooperated in every way possible with law enforcement and investigators  and now we hope the judge will sentence Sutherland appropriately given the severity of his crimes, Petrilli said. As ever, our hearts are with the victim and her family. May these final steps in the legal process help them find peace.
NEW YORK - Inside Trump Tower, swank suit-maker Marcraft Clothes once rented the entire 18th floor, outfitting its offices with fireplaces, mahogany-lined closets and two bars for schmoozing customers.

But then Marcraft fell $664,000 behind on rent and went out of business last year - its assets having dwindled to $40.75 in a checking account and "1,200 damaged coats," according to court filings.

One floor up, a business school once led by Kardashian family matriarch Kris Jenner was consumed by lawsuits, falling $198,000 behind on payments to Trump Tower by October 2020, according to court papers. And on the 21st and 22nd floors, the company that made Ivanka Trump shoes racked up $1.5 million in unpaid rent, according to a lawsuit that the Trump Organization filed this year.

But through all that - as Trump Tower has dealt with imploding tenants, political backlash and a broader, pandemic-related slump in Manhattan office leasing since last year - it has been able to count on one reliable, high-paying tenant: former president Donald Trump's own political operation.

Starting in March, one of his committees, Make America Great Again PAC, paid $37,541.67 per month to rent office space on the 15th floor of Trump Tower - a space previously rented by his campaign - according to campaign-finance filings and a person familiar with the political action committee.

This may not be the most efficient use of donors' money: The person familiar with Trump's PAC said that its staffers do not regularly use the office space. Also, for several months, Trump's PAC paid the Trump Organization $3,000 per month to rent a retail kiosk in the tower's lobby - even though the lobby was closed.

Campaign-finance experts said the payments do not appear to be illegal. This kind of PAC has very few restrictions and no expiration date, so Trump is free to spend its money at his own properties as long as he wants.

But they said Trump is continuing a practice that was a hallmark of his presidency by exploiting loose regulations - and his own supporters' trust - to convert political donations into private revenue for himself.

"He's running a con," said Paul S. Ryan, a campaign-finance expert at the watchdog group Common Cause. "Talking about political expenses - but, in reality, raising money for self-enrichment."

The Trump Organization did not respond to questions. A spokeswoman for Trump's political operation, Liz Harrington, defended the spending.

"We are paying market rate for leased office space used to help President Trump build a financial juggernaut to help elect America First conservatives and flip both the House and Senate to the Republicans in the midterm elections," Harrington said.

Harrington said that the PAC had also paid for the lobby kiosk for several months, even though the lobby was closed, because it had inherited the kiosk from Trump's 2020 campaign and "all of the campaign merchandise was still in the space." Harrington said officials expected the lobby to reopen, but - when it remained closed - the PAC stopped paying. The last payment was made in early May.

Trump Tower, a 58-story glass tower on Fifth Avenue, served for years as Trump's primary home, the headquarters of his business and a kind of physical avatar of his success. Its was the set for TV's "The Apprentice," and the backdrop for Trump's announcement of his 2016 presidential campaign.

But, in its midsection, Trump Tower is something more prosaic: a Manhattan office building, with 12 floors available for lease. The Trump Organization's headquarters occupies two other office floors.

The leased floors serve as part of the collateral for one of Trump's biggest outstanding debts, a $100 million loan with the full amount due next year, according to data kept by the real estate analysis firm Trepp. Trump still owns his businesses, including this one, but says that his sons Eric and Donald Trump Jr. manage them day-to-day.

To assess the financial health of Trump Tower - and the importance of the revenue it receives from Trump's own PAC - The Washington Post examined filings with New York taxing authorities, as well as loan documents, campaign-finance records and lawsuits involving Trump Tower tenants.

In the years before he became president, Trump reported to New York City that the tower's office spaces produced income of between $8 million and $11 million per year in rent. Those filings were obtained by The Post after a public-records request.

The most recent filing that the city provided to The Post covered 2017. The Post could not find detailed figures on rental income from the office spaces after that.

But it is clear that some of Trump's customers have recently fallen into turmoil, and at times ended up behind on their rent.

One was Marcraft, a clothing-maker that offered $1,400 Trump-branded suits in the heyday of "The Apprentice." Its 18th-floor suite included a golden Buddha in the elevator lobby and a bar decorated with "a colorful light display for after-hour cocktail parties," according to an archived news release from its architects. It was luxe enough that the New York Times wrote about it in 2006.

Potential customers "look at it with the feeling, 'You are cool, this is interesting,' " a Marcraft executive told the Times.

But Marcraft fell on hard times. Last year, it entered insolvency proceedings in a New Jersey - a kind of state-court version of bankruptcy - saying in court filings that it had more than $30 million in debts, including $664,000 in unpaid rent at Trump Tower.

"It was, for lack of a better word, a carcass," said Morris Bauer, a New Jersey attorney whom the company assigned to take over its meager assets and deal with its creditors. Bauer said he wasn't sure what happened to the Trump Tower suite, but he knew Marcraft had vacated it.

The company, Bauer said, "exists in name, but it's not operating."

One floor up from Marcraft, on Trump Tower's 19th floor, are the offices of the Legacy Business School, which once boasted Kris Jenner as its chairwoman. (She reportedly resigned a few months after the school opened in 2016.) The school is expensive - its $70,000 annual tuition is $19,000 higher than Harvard University's.

But Harvard doesn't hold classes in Trump Tower.

"It is not just an educational campus," the school's website says, making the tower one of its main selling points. "It is studying at the most powerful building in the world."

But that school also appears to have fallen into turmoil.

In February, investors who claimed to be the Legacy's majority owners sued the school's founder, Alessandro Nomellini, demanding Nomellini give up control of the school and its offices. The investors included documents showing that, as of last year, the school owed $198,000 in unpaid rent, taxes and fees to Trump Tower. They asked a judge to cancel the lease entirely. Nomellini has challenged these claims in court.

Nomellini's attorneys declined to comment to The Post - and then, on Wednesday, asked to withdraw from the case, saying that Nomellini had not paid their bills. Nomellini himself did not respond to questions from The Post.

Another major Trump Tower tenant - occupying all of the 21st floor and part of the 22nd - had been Marc Fisher Footwear, the manufacturer of shoes for Ivanka Trump's now-shuttered brand and others. But earlier this year, the Trump Organization sued Marc Fisher Footwear for unpaid rent. The suit said the shoemaker had stopped paying rent in November 2020, and owed more than $1.4 million.

That lawsuit was settled on undisclosed terms in April. A person familiar with the suit said that Marc Fisher Footwear had vacated its spaces at Trump Tower. The firm did not respond to requests for comment from The Post.

Trump Tower does have office tenants still in place: Gucci still rents the massive retail space facing Fifth Avenue. The foundation of Trump friend Stewart Rahr still occupies space on the 24th floor, according to its website. The hops seller Hopsteiner moved in. The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China still rents office space, though it reportedly downsized in 2019. The bank did not respond to questions from The Post.

In the first quarter of this year - the latest for which data was available - Trump Tower's commercial spaces were 75 percent occupied, according to Trepp data. That is lower than the occupancy rates for the tower from any year going back to 2013, Trepp reported. Citywide, this is not a good time to be trying to lease out office space. The effects of the coronavirus pandemic, combined with the construction of new buildings, have created an unusual glut of available space: A recent report by the firm Savills found that 18.4% of Manhattan office space was for rent, the highest level in decades.

One office has remained rented and producing income throughout this tumultuous time: Suite 1501. This 5,490-square-foot space was leased for years by Trump's 2020 campaign, even though the campaign's main headquarters was in Virginia. After Trump left office, his PAC moved in, according to the person familiar with the PAC. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the committee's finances.

The rate Trump's PAC is paying Trump's company for space in Trump's tower appears to be about $85 per square foot annually. That's close to the average for midtown Manhattan, according to Savills, though it's less than the $122 per square foot that Trump got from Marc Fisher Footwear.

At Trump Tower, the former president's PAC appears to be a quiet tenant. Under typical office conditions, with about one worker per 175 square feet, that much space might hold 30 people. But the PAC's latest campaign-finance filing only listed three employees at that address as of June. And even those three don't always work there, according to the person familiar with the PAC: They work from home, or follow Trump to his clubs in Palm Beach, Fla., and Bedminster, N.J.

Even when Trump does visit Trump Tower, the person said, he doesn't use the PAC's rented space. He works out of his old office up in the Trump Organization's headquarters on the 25th and 26th floors.

One recent weekday, a Post reporter sought to visit the PAC's office - but was turned away by a security guard, who said there was no point. Nobody would be there.

Even if Trump's PAC was a loud tenant, it seems unlikely that the neighbors would notice. Trump's own marketing materials indicate the other office space on the 15th floor is vacant.

- - -

Fahrenthold, O'Connell and Dawsey reported from Washington. The Washington Post's Isaac Stanley-Becker and Alice Crites contributed to this report.
When Rabiu Alhassan was in the final term of his journalism masters at Londons City University, he decided he wanted to go home to Ghana to set up a new kind of media outlet, free from political or corporate influences that would seek the truth and hold the powerful to account.

From a seed of an idea, GhanaFact was born. It is just one of many fact-checking organisations around the world that have come of age during the coronavirus pandemic.

When we started we were gearing up to the election of 2020 and we were focused on governance and the economy, says Mr Alhassan, who runs GhanaFact from a small office in Accra. Then the whole world woke up to the pandemic and issues about misinformation.

From false claims, often spread by influential religious leaders, that the vaccine makes you magnetic, infertile or sick, to rumours that the jab is a ruse to insert a microchip  combatting misinformation has kept GhanaFacts team on its toes. One of their latest factchecks is entitled FALSE: Constant sex does NOT kill coronavirus, refuting claims in a fake video circulating on WhatsApp, Facebook and Twitter.

We were thrown into the deep end with health reporting, it was not part of our arsenal, he says.

Staff at the GhanaFact office / Rabiu Alhassan

GhanaFact quickly joined the International Fact-Checking Network, a Nobel Peace Prize-nominated alliance of more than 100 factcheckers around the world, and threw its resources behind debunking Covid fictions.

At first, even as the pandemic spread globally, there were no recorded cases in Ghana. GhanaFact found itself grappling with claims that Africans were naturally immune to Covid-19, or that the virus could not survive in the African heat, Mr Alhassan recalls.

By the time the virus arrived, the focus had shifted to local remedies  people pushing out all sorts of concoctions, like a cup of warm water mixed with ground charcoal could be a cure or chewing on raw onions. Then came the misinformation around the vaccine.

Traditional leaders wait their turn to receive Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccines at the Ridge Hospital in Accra, Ghana / AFP via Getty Images

GhanaFact counters each spurious claim with factual responses from the Africa Infodemic Response Alliance (AIRA), Ghanas health service or other credible sources. The factchecks are posted on its website, social media and through TV and radio channels, with the information translated into 20 local languages.

African-based fact-checking organisations play a crucial role, says Sergio Cecchini, Coordinator of AIRA, a World Health Organisation initiative. Grass-roots networks of journalists and fact-checkers can represent a key card in dismantling and countering misleading information around COVID-19 and other public health emergencies.

In London, the well-established fact-checking service Full Fact has also pivoted to take on Covid-19 myths.

We are very interested in seeing some of the patterns and evolving claims, says Full Facts Ross Haig. Fact checking is just the beginning of the work for our team. We reach out to media organisations to correct the record so the original claim is corrected too.

A pregnant woman recieves the Covid-19 vaccine / Getty Images

While the UKs vaccine rollout has been one of the speediest in the world, Full Fact saw uptake of the jab was slower among certain groups - which were also those likely to more susceptible to misinformation - including pregnant women.

Alarmed by a rise in hospitalisations of pregnant women with Covid-19, Full Fact has partnered with the womens rights charity Pregnant Then Screwed on a new WhatsApp helpline to provide factual answers to concerns about the vaccine.

Full Fact has found no evidence that the vaccine affects pregnancy or causes miscarriages. But Mr Haig says: we dont give advice or tell people what to do - our job is to connect people up to the best available information.

South Africas Real411 factchecking organisation charts trends and tries to stay one step ahead of misinformation by being part of a weekly listening group of academics, government officials, NGOs and community listeners who track social media and pick up on the latest rumours.

South African demonstrators at protest march against the Covid-19 vaccine / AFP via Getty Images

There are people in the community, talking to grannies, asking what are you hearing?. It may be oh Ive heard the Covid vaccine will kill you after two years. It all feeds into a system so we know what were dealing with, says William Bird, the Director of Media Monitoring Africa that runs Real411.

We cant stop all (the conspiracy theories), we just need to make it as difficult as possible. If we keep raising peoples scepticism about what they see on social media, we can get a greater understanding of how destructive some of this misinformation can be.

The algorithms by and large favour misinformation its much easier to spread things that stoke fear and anxiety than calm, rational explanation of why vaccines do work, he says.

Demonstrators hold up banners and placards during a protest against Covid-19 vaccinations in Cape Town / AFP via Getty Images

Social media companies should do more to protect their users, especially in African countries where levels of misinformation literacy are low, says Mr Alhassan of GhanaFact. A lot of people who may be very well educated still believe what they see on WhatsApp videos, they truly believe these things to be true.

Some videos say facemasks and other PPE coming to Ghana have been laced with coronavirus. Others says that women who take the vaccine will be unable to have children in the future. Many of the videos originate in the United States but are overlaid with commentary in a local language.

As well as publishing its factchecks, GhanaFact staff have started to train local journalists and university students on how to spot falsehoods and verify information. But sometimes it feels like they are swimming against the tide, says Mr Alhassan.
Ashtabula, OH (44004)

Today

Isolated thunderstorms this evening becoming more widespread overnight. Low 66F. Winds WSW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 90%..

Tonight

Isolated thunderstorms this evening becoming more widespread overnight. Low 66F. Winds WSW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 90%.
Prime Minister Florin Citu said on Friday that he feels "harassed" by the fact that USR PLUS ministers did not attend the government meeting, and explained that he was "blackmailed" when he was told that the local spending program PNDL 3 will not get the seal of approval until the bill on the abolition of the Section for the Investigation of Judicial Crimes (SIIJ) is passed.

"I was blackmailed when they told me that the draft regulatory act will not get the seal of approval until a bill to dismantle the SIIJ is passed, and I made every effort and supported any measure coming from the Justice Ministry to abolish the SIIJ. Now, I just feel harassed, it's the Romanians who should feel blackmailed," Citu said.

In connection to the ultimatum USR PLUS Co-Chairmen Dacian Ciolos and Dan Barna have given him to hand in his resignation, Citu said that he has the support of the National Liberal Party

Asked about his discussions with President Klaus Iohannis, the Prime Minister replied: "I cannot disclose to you my discussion with President Iohannis, but I will tell you what I tell all Romanians: that I will do my utmost for this government to work, for us to move forward with the implementation of the governing program. Today's decision to approve this investment plan is yet another step in implementing the governing program for Romania's development."

Citu voiced his hope that the rift doesn't end up in the installation of a minority government, adding that USR PLUS must prove maturity.

He also mentioned that he has no mandate from the party's National Political Bureau to switch ministries inside the coalition.

Asked whether he will dismiss USR PLUS prefects, sub-prefects, secretaries of state if the censure motion is tabled, the Prime Minister said that it is bizarre that a motion would be filed against one's own government.

"I don't want us to get there. It would be sad for Romania. USR colleagues, people I rallied in the street with against Ordinance 13, against Dragnea, against ... extremists like those from the party they associate with today," the Prime Minister said.
The increase in natural gas prices is directed by the Russian Federation, through Gazprom, stated, on Friday, the Minister of Economy, Virgil Popescu, on Facebook.

"My opinion, regarding gas, is that after Nord Stream 2 is operational we will see a drop in price," claimed Virgil Popescu.

On the subject of electricity prices, the Minister of Energy mentioned that the producers that don't use fossil fuels are presently selling energy at the marginal price on the market, in the context in which the Green Deal increased by over 100 pct the price of carbon certificates paid by producers of energy sourced from fossil fuels.

"Referring with electricity, the Green Deal led to an increase from 22 to 55 euro of the CO2 certificate. All the other producers that do not use fossil energy, that don't pay CO2, they sell energy with the marginal price of the market, that's the reason for this increase, corroborated with economic growth, with a return from the pandemic, an increase of electricity both in Europe and in Asia, where there is a lot of consumption. Both in electricity, as well as in gas, the increase of consumption was very high," said Virgil Popescu.

The Minister of Energy stated that 10 million Romanians will receive this winter money from the Government for the payment of gas and electricity bills.

Minister Popescu also showed that the main concern of the institution he leads is the creation of new production capacities for electricity and the development of the gas transport network, recalling that during the "Black Sea and Balkans Security Forum" conference he reiterated that the development of nuclear energy is essential for decarbonation.
Prime Minister Florin Citu announced on Friday that he will inform the European leaders and Romania's strategic partners - the USA - about a "toxic alliance" with an extremist party potentially taking shape in Romania.

"I will get in contact with the European leaders about what is happening in Romania. There's a toxic alliance looming, an alliance with an extremist party, a party that wants to harm the Romanians, a party that does not respect private property, does not respect individual freedom, a party I personally consider we should have nothing to do with. I will inform the European leaders and of course, our strategic partners - the USA - about the situation in Romania, and we will learn what they think of it," Citu said after the government meeting.

According to him, it is important that the receivers of the report learn "what their colleagues in Romania" are doing.

"I will send out an information report. It's important for them to know that their colleagues in Romania strike an alliance with an extremist party no one would want anything to do with. It's just a dialogue I'll have with my European colleagues, I'd like to know their opinion - Renew and the other groups that respect democracy, individual freedoms, everything we stand for in the European Union," Citu explained.
Minister Bogdan Aurescu said on Friday that a coordinated European action is a priority in order to achieve evacuating Afghani citizens who have ties with the EU states and European citizens stuck in Afghanistan, informing that Romania managed to evacuate all Romanian citizens (49) who expressed this option.

Aurescu took part, on Thursday and Friday, in the Gymnich informal reunion of Ministers of Foreign Affairs from EU member states, which took place in Kranj, Slovenia, which holds the rotating presidency of the EU Council, context in which the officials discussed in detail about the situation in Afghanistan.

Minister Aurescu presented Romania's preliminary evaluation regarding the situation in Afghanistan and the possible risks which this crisis can have on both the region, as well as the EU. He expressed preoccupation regarding the observance of the human rights, especially of the women and children and drew attention towards the humanitarian situation, which is critical, millions of people displaced inside Afghanistan, having need of urgent support.

The Romanian Minister also mentioned that it is necessary to continue coordination with UN, NATO, USA and other partners regarding the involvement in Afghanistan, including the strategic communication and combating disinformation.

Furthermore, Minister Aurescu pointed out that "any networking with de facto owners of power in Afghanistan should not be a de jure recognition of them".

Last, but not least, the Romanian Minister highlighted that this crisis should not affect the project of consolidation of the trans-atlantic relation, pointing out that any narratives, promoted from outside or within the EU in this context which would attempt to create a fault line between the EU and USA, should be countered.
The no-confidence motion initiated by USR PLUS and AUR against the Citu Government was submitted this evening to the Parliament. Titled "The dismissal of the Citu Government, the only chance for Romania to live!," the document emphasizes that Romania is currently led by a government that "no longer has political legitimacy because it doesn't have the support of a parliamentary majority."

"Romania is currently led by a government that no longer has political legitimacy because it lacks the support of a parliamentary majority. Yet the biggest shortcoming of the government headed by Florin Citu is the lack of moral legitimacy. A person who has seriously brushed with the law in the past and who bends the law now does not present the minimum necessary guarantees to lead the executive power in Romania," the motion states.

According to the document, in recent months Florin Citu has shown that he is "incapable of leading a coalition government, that he is incapable of getting out of the logic of narrow party thinking. This man and all those supporting him seem determined to sacrifice the general interest, the welfare of this country's citizens, only to win their party's internal competition."

The signatories of the motion also argue that Prime Minister Florin Citu and his supporters have shown an entire country that "group or party interests are above the interests of the country."

"In order to garner the necessary support for his election as PNL Chairman, Florin Citu has devised and implemented a plan to finance Liberal mayors with money from the national budget. Without establishing clear criteria for the projects' selection, monitoring and auditing, the 'Anghel Saligny' national investment plan is nothing more than a party piggy bank. In order to have this scheme for influencing the vote at the PNL Convention implemented, Florin Citu dismissed the Justice Minister and immediately appointed an interim ready to execute his orders. The legal and administrative procedures that had to be followed, as due in a rule of law state, were hindering him. Does Romania need investments? Definitely yes. But any local community must have access to a national plan, regardless of the mayor's political color. We need to get out of the logic of kinship relationships and cronyism of the local barons in order to build a society and a country where every citizen finds themselves and where access to public investment sources is based on merit and competence, not on the mayor's party membership card," the motion signatories wrote.
The government adopted on Friday the emergency ordinance (OUG) for the approval of the Anghel Saligny National Investment Programme, Prime Minister Florin Citu announced.

The Premier said that the USR PLUS (Save Romania Union - Party of Liberty, Unity and Solidarity alliance) ministers were absent from the meeting, but there was a quorum for the adoption of this OUG.

"The USR PLUS ministers, although they are paid for it, did not come to the government meeting today, but we had a quorum and we approved the only item on the agenda - the Anghel Saligny National Investment Plan. I want to be very clear that what we have in this programme is in the government programme and we are not doing anything else by today's decision, but respect the government programme. Whoever says anything else does nothing but lie or not respect the government programme," said Citu, after the meeting.

He said it was an investment plan to be linked to the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR), which will be approved in a few weeks' time.

"That is why I appeal again for political maturity, because in just a few weeks we have a very important plan for Romania, the PNRR, which will bring investments of almost 30 million euros to Romania. We need this coalition. Only this coalition, from my point of view, can implement this investment plan," premier Citu added.

The prime minister said that the procedure for the adoption of this project was respected.

"The procedure was followed, I checked twice, I think the Ministry of Transport is a tacit approver," he said.

He noted that some of the amendments tabled by USR PLUS were also included in the draft.

"Some of the amendments are found, although they have not been officially tabled, it is a flaw, but we have included them," the prime minister said.
Prime Minister Florin Citu said on Friday that he wants to keep the coalition with the Save Romania Union - Freedom, Unity and Solidarity Party (USR PLUS) alliance together and that the solution to the current tensions is the nomination of a new Justice Minister, not entering negotiations with the Social Democratic Party (PSD) or the Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR).

"The solution for overcoming this minor impasse, I would say - because it could have been solved immediately with the nomination of another Justice Minister - lies within the coalition, not outside. It does not reside in negotiations with our enemies and the enemies of the Romanian people, the PSD or the extremists. (...) I still cannot fathom that today, in Romania, whoever sits down at the coalition table can bring extremists or socialists for negotiations. (...) PNL and I are making no compromise with PSD. We have no reason to negotiate with the enemies of the Romanian people. To negotiate with PSD means to negotiate against the Romanian people," Citu said in a press statement at the House of Parliament.

He specified that maintaining the coalition and implementing the governing program are important to him and declared himself "very confident" that he will survive the political crisis as Premier. According to the Liberal Prime Minister, his stepping down would mean bringing down his own government.

"Never will the PNL or I make a compromise with the PSD. We will never side with the PSD, the party of Dragnea, Ciolacu and others of the like. We will never ally with them. Whoever sides with PSD is with Dragnea and Ciolacu. He who attempts to trade PSD votes to oust his own government is in the same league with Dragnea and the PSD. (...) We, the PNL, will never take down our own government. The Prime Minister's resignation means taking down your own government. We will never do this, the more so as we have so much to do in the next period. The National Recovery and Resilience Plan will be approved in a few weeks. We must issue an ordinance to offset the Romanians' energy bills this winter. The National Investment Plan must be implemented immediately. And we still have a pandemic on our hands," Citu said.

In his opinion, the adoption of the OUG on the "Anghel Saligny" Program represents an emergency "after 30 years without water, sewage and no paved roads" and stressed that he has "every time" supported the priorities of USR PLUS.

"It is not my fault that after eight months a certain Ministry is underperforming, although now that I see them negotiating with PSD, I might have some answers," Citu said.
USR PLUS (Save Romania Union - Party of Liberty, Unity and Solidarity alliance) co-president Dan Barna said on Friday that the motion of censure against Prime Minister Florin Citu has "all the support" of his party, if Prime Minister Florin Citu is not replaced.

A meeting of the National Political Committee of USR PLUS took place on Friday afternoon.

"Nearly 400 leaders of USR PLUS from across the country attended the reunion, having confirmed. Basically, the national leadership of the party, through the Political Committee, confirmed the position that the National Bureau has transmitted since Wednesday night, since Prime Minister Citu decided to push USR PLUS out of the functioning of this Cabinet, from the support of this Cabinet by dismissing the Minister of Justice. Unmotivated dismissal and on absolutely ridiculous arguments. The mandate is very clear, (co-Chair) Dacian Ciolos has specified it: we ask the coalition to replace the prime minister. If this does not happen, the motion of censure (is tabled) having all the support of USR PLUS," said Dan Barna.
Clark said Thursday that the Bottle District is now under contract and is slated to become a truck dealership. And he insisted that he would not profit from his plan and would recuse himself from bidding on the construction project.

I told (former) Mayor (Lyda) Krewson that I would donate the land from the Bottle District required to build a convention center at no cost to the city, he said. And I would stand by that if for any reason the current people that have it under contract dont close.

Clayco is now headquartered in Chicago. But Clark started the firm in St. Louis, keeps a main office and large presence here, is politically active in the region, and is often connected to some of the areas largest developments and construction projects  such as the BJC hospital expansion and health care giant Centenes downtown Clayton campus.

Clark said Thursday that he has spoken with several business leaders who supported his convention center ideas and sent his proposal to multiple politicians, including St. Louis Mayor Tishaura O. Jones, St. Louis County Executive Sam Page and the entire County Council.

But area political leaders were largely unconvinced  or unwilling to talk about it  on Thursday.
The union is urging shareholders to vote against the companys executive pay plan at the companys annual meeting on Sept. 27. As with most companies, the vote at FedEx is non-binding.

FedEx declined to comment beyond what it has disclosed on executive pay in securities filings. In its informational disclosure to investors, FedEx said a significant portion of executive compensation is at risk and dependent on the company hitting performance goals and share price targets.

FedEx Chief Operating Officer Rajesh Subramaniam, the companys highest paid executive after Smith, also had his $2 million cash bonus reinstated after he received a similar special option award and stock grant worth approximately $6 million at the end of May.

Many U.S. companies tweaked the pay of executives during the pandemic, easing performance targets and even giving them pay rises. Investors then voted down a record number of CEO pay packages at their annual shareholder meetings earlier this year.

Although most shareholder votes on pay are non-binding, some companies have tweaked executive pay when faced with investor opposition. For example, in 2018 Walt Disney Co. renegotiated the compensation of its chief executive at the time, Bob Iger, to toughen performance targets after shareholders voted down his pay.

The Teamsters acknowledged in the letter that Smiths options had yet to vest and that there was still uncertainty over the value of that grant. Smith also accepted a 91% cut in his annual salary during some of the last fiscal year. His salary was $966,125.
It erected dams, built dikes, lined the rivers edge, and piled rock into structures called wing dams that jut into the river, directing the current to make it self-scouring, leaving a 9 foot-deep channel in the middle.

Then, in the early 2000s, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service determined that Corps management was jeopardizing the existence of three species living in the river  two threatened birds, the interior least tern and piping plover, and the endangered pallid sturgeon.

In 2005, the government started the Missouri River Recovery Program, a partnership with the Geological Survey, the Fish and Wildlife Service and multiple state agencies, to understand the species and restore their habitats. Two years later, Congress authorized the Missouri River Recovery Implementation Committee, a group of representatives from agriculture, navigation, conservation, tribal and state interests, to provide recommendations to the Corps.

Practical results came quickly for the tern and plover. Scientists were able to count birds, nests and eggs. They determined that the birds success depended on their access to habitat: Missouri River sandbars.

Thats extremely powerful. And thats what the science should be doing, said USGS hydrologist Robert Jacobson, who works on the program.
When artist Melissa Schmidt sets up her booth for the Sept. 10-12 St. Louis Art Fair, she will place two posters front and center featuring her blown-glass bubble jewelry from the September issue of Vogue Magazine.

In June, as she was driving home from a show in Chicago, Schmidt got an email from Vogue requesting six pieces of her jewelry for a fashion shoot. I had six days to get the pieces to New York. None of the requested pieces was made. With major time management, I got it done, she says.

When she got the email that the pieces would be featured in the September issue, she wondered how they would appear.

When I got the photos from the shoot, and I saw my two bubble necklaces worn with a patterned jacket, a quick look at the buttons on the jacket told me all I needed to know  it was by Chanel. My bracelets appeared with a Givenchy outfit.

My stepdads partner, Dianne Zebell, who is like a stepmom to me, has a phrase for when things go really wrong. It worked for me when things went so right with Vogue  I dont even have a file for that!  I just dont.
EAST ST. LOUIS  A woman from OFallon, Illinois, pleaded guilty to three federal felony charges in court here Thursday and admitted helping her husband with both health care fraud and extortion schemes.

Matissia S. Holt, 43, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in East St. Louis to health care fraud, money laundering and engaging in a monetary transaction with criminally derived property.

Holt admitted helping dupe an Illinois Department of Human Services program intended to keep low-income people with severe disabilities in their homes. Holt falsely claimed to be providing personal assistant services to her husband, Emmitt T. Tiner, when he was out of the state on gambling trips, and helped him pretend to be wheelchair-bound and unable to walk or drive, her plea says.

She also admitted laundering money Tiner had obtained in an extortion scheme by depositing 21 cashiers checks totaling $2.1 million into various bank accounts.

She then admitted using $366,000 of the extortion and fraud profits to buy the couples home in the 200 block of Knollhaven Trail in OFallon and using other money to buy a Cadillac Escalade and a lot north of OFallon. She could face 41 to 51 months in prison under federal sentencing guidelines, her plea says.
Jacob A. Chansley, one of the most recognizable of the rioters who entered the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, pleaded guilty Friday to a federal felony.

Chansley, who was shirtless, wearing a horned headdress and face paint and carrying a 6-foot pole with an American flag, appeared in a series of photos and videos of the insurrection.

The 34-year-old pleaded guilty by video conference to a felony charge of obstruction of an official proceeding and admitted being among the rioters who pushed through police lines and into the Capitol, his plea agreement says.

Proceedings to certify the 2020 election were going on at the time. The crowd broke into the building, with Chansley entering through a door at 2:14 p.m.  one of the first 30 rioters to do so.

By 2:16 p.m., Chansley and others were on the second floor on the Senate side of the building, face to face with a line of Capitol police who were asking them to leave. Chansley used a bullhorn to rile up the crowd and demand that lawmakers be brought out, his plea says.

Members of Congress were evacuated at 2:20 p.m.
I keep hearing the phrase given his age, hell likely die in prison, Eric Davis said in court. Unfortunately, there is no guarantee of that. It seems excuses are being made so as not to get into a trial.

He told the judge that considering Kemps criminal history, its obvious that previous releases from prison were mistakes.

Another release could lead to the devastation of yet another family, he said. Justice, he said, was not served for Haley. If it were any one of your children, youd feel the same way we do.

Eric Davis then turned to Kemp and said, You son of a b----, you better die in there.

Kemp said he expects to.

Kemp rode a bicycle to Haley Davis home in the 3200 block of Pennsylvania Avenue, got into an argument about a friend of hers and shot Davis multiple times, police said. Surveillance video in the neighborhood showed a man riding a bicycle before and after the shooting, charges say. A distinctive tattoo and a limp helped police link Kemp to the shooting, which Kemp admitted to when interviewed by police.
JEFFERSON CITY  Attorney General Eric Schmitt is returning campaign contributions he received more than two months ago from the owner of a controversial video gambling company and his wife.

Schmitt, a Republican running for U.S. Senate in 2022, received two $2,900 checks in June from Steven Miltenberger, owner of Wildwood-based Torch Electronics, and his spouse, Sondra Miltenberger.

Torch has been in court in recent months for allegedly operating thousands of illegal slot machines at gas stations across the state. The company also is suing the state, saying it is being unfairly harassed by the Missouri Highway Patrol.

The announcement that the money was being jettisoned came after the Post-Dispatch asked the attorney generals office if the contribution could be considered a conflict of interest because of the states involvement in litigation against Miltenbergers company.

There was no violation of office policy, but out of an abundance of caution, its my understanding that the donation is going to be returned, Schmitt spokesman Chris Nuelle said Friday. We will remain active in our vigorous defense of the states interest in this case.

A spokesman for Schmitts campaign confirmed the contributions have been returned.
One homeless resident, Brittany Tyler, 22, said earlier in the day they just said weve got to go, and that her tent was removed by city workers.

She said she turned down a city employees offer to take her to a shelter. She said she didnt want to follow the rules imposed by such facilities.

Bishop Michael Robinson, CEO of City Hope St. Louis, said several homeless men were transported by the city in the morning to indoor shelter space overseen by his nonprofit organization at the former Little Sisters of the Poor nursing home on North Florissant Avenue.

He didnt know the exact number but said it was fewer than seven.

In early August, St. Patrick Center opened a 40-tent shelter, dubbed Camp Cole, inside a warehouse three blocks away at Cole and 14th streets. That building is owned by the StarWood Group.

But that and other shelters, such as Biddle Housing Opportunities Center and a community of 50 tiny homes at the former St. Louis RV Park, are full, Dunne has said.

He added that the city was working today with service providers to find places for people to go in supportive housing. They will have individual spaces where were able to keep folks socially distanced.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Academy of Pediatrics recommend masking for school students. Several Missouri doctors have said they fear a new surge in cases due to the lack of mask mandates at most Missouri schools, where fall classes have begun.

Schmitts letter cites exceptions that allow people to shun masks if they have disabilities where the mask causes impairment to their health and well-being  and notes that the ordinances fail to define either health or well-being. Meanwhile, he wrote that the exceptions apply to anyone younger than 18.

I direct that any resident or visitor subject to any physical or legal disability  including any minor under the age of 18  is exempt from the mask-wearing mandate ... provided that he or she (or a parent or guardian, in the case of minors) believes that wearing a mask or face covering will have any significant adverse impact on their personal, mental, or physical welfare, Schmitt wrote.

University of Missouri-Kansas City law professor Ann Marie Marciarille questioned whether Schmitts reasoning would hold up in front of a judge.

Would a court looking at this say its compelling? Marciarille asked. I dont think it makes any sense.
Police Chief Edwards was hesitant to assign any blame, saying that it appeared as though everybody was doing the best they could under the circumstances.

I have no idea what the situation or circumstances were when they evacuated all of those people, he said. They may have been prepared for two nursing homes and had six more in danger. Lets assume they had more to evacuate than they had planned for and they had to decide whether to move them to the facility they had or not evacuate them at all.

But Sabrina Cox, who came to find out what happened to her aunt Bonnie Carenti, said someone should have called her family to let them know Carenti was at the warehouse. She said her father lives five minutes away, and if the family had known, they could have done something to help.

To see this on the news and not even get a call four days in? Cox said. This is unacceptable. Elderly people should not be treated like this. Nobody should be treated like this.



Deslatte reported from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Associated Press writers Chevel Johnson in New Orleans and Jeff Martin in Marietta, Georgia, contributed to this report.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
The display was removed because the Missouri Republican Party is at war with gay people. For more than 20 years, Democrats  with a few Republicans backing them  have tried to pass a version of the Missouri Nondiscrimination Act, which would make it illegal to fire gay people in the state simply because they are gay. Republicans block the bill every year. When he was in the Legislature, Parson regularly voted against it.

The Parson administrations removal of an exhibit on LGBT history from the Missouri (State) Museum was disappointing, said Rep. Crystal Quade, D-Springfield, House minority leader. That the governor lied about his reasons for doing so is indefensible.

There was a time when Republicans also would have been outraged at political interference in the museums operations. It was just a few years ago, when Jay Nixon, a Democrat, was governor, and DNR officials ordered the museum to share some historic artifacts with Bass Pro founder Johnny Morris after Morris, a prolific political donor, made a $50,000 donation to the state parks system.

Republicans held a committee hearing in which they questioned DNR officials to get to the bottom of the interference with a taxpayer-funded museums operations. They had no problem rolling the stone right back up the hill to the governors office, as long as there was a Democrat in the seat.
WARSAW, Poland (AP)  A top European Union official condemned Belarus and expressed support for Poland, Lithuania and Latvia on Friday as a state of emergency took effect in areas of eastern Poland following a surge in illegal migration.

EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell, speaking at a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Slovenia, said that the EUs foreign ministers stand in solidarity with Lithuania, Latvia and Poland and we are ready to take all measures to support them if the situation continues deteriorating.

He also said that they deplored that Lukashenkos regime has cynically used migrants and refugees to artificially create pressure on our Eastern borders.

We said that when we had some migrant pressure on the Spanish border, we said the Spanish border with Morocco is a European border. Now it is time to say that the borders of Lithuania and Poland, on the Eastern part of Europe, are also the borders of Europe, Borrell said.

Poland declared the state of emergency after thousands of migrants from Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere tried to illegally cross into the country from Belarus in recent weeks.
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Shares puts on free Investor Events throughout the year across the country. They provide an opportunity for investors to learn more about companies on the stock market and hear from a range of investment experts including fund managers and Shares journalists.
CLEVELAND, Sept. 1, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Renalis, a Cleveland-based digital health company committed to the treatment of pelvic health disorders, announced the close of its $824K Pre-Seed funding round led by the Healthcare Collaboration Fund.

The Healthcare Collaboration Fund is managed through a partnership between Cleveland-based Venture Investor JumpStart Inc, and University Hospitals Ventures, the innovation and commercialization arm of University Hospitals. The round also includes participation from JumpStart Inc. as well as a mix of individual and private investors.

"Renalis in tackling a significant unmet need in pelvic health management," said Hardik Desai, Sr. Investing Partner at JumpStart. "We are excited to partner with UH and Renalis to commercialize this important technology."

"Renalis has an opportunity to address very prevalent and debilitating pelvic health conditions," said Neil Wyant, Managing Director of UH Ventures. "Our investment enables UH to be its 'living laboratory' so that we can prove out Renalis' novel approach and have an even bigger impact on patient care."

Renalis' first digital therapeutic product, "CeCe", enables patients to record and manage symptoms of Overactive Bladder (OAB) via a mobile application. The new funds will be used to amplify the research within healthcare systems like UH, support regulatory efforts, and strategically build a team to lead commercialization and technology efforts moving forward.

"We are so grateful for this latest funding round," said Renalis CEO, Missy Lavender. "We can now accelerate our go-to-market plan to deliver evidence-based solutions to chronic, expensive, and prevalent conditions like OAB to millions of patients in the U.S. and beyond."

Renalis is a Cleveland-based company committed to developing FDA-approved prescription digital therapeutics for the treatment of pelvic health disorders. The company was founded in 2017 by Missy Lavender, who has suffered from pelvic health disorders, including OAB since the birth of her first child twenty years ago. Renalis' first commercial platform is a digital therapeutic for Overactive Bladder (OAB), which affects over 33 million Americans. In the future, the company plans to launch therapeutics for menstrual disorders, stress incontinence, bowel dysfunction, and chronic pelvic pain as well as, when applicable, will target solutions for all persons with a pelvis.

Contact:Missy Lavender (312) 287-1951 missy@renalis.health

View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/healthcare-startup-renalis-raises-824k-to-accelerate-its-digital-health-platform-301366983.html

SOURCE Renalis
VANCOUVER, BC, Sept. 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Nickel Rock Resources Inc. (the "Company" and "Nickel Rock") (TSX-V: NICL) (OTCQB: NICKLF) (FSE: NMK2) is pleased to announce that the second phase of the its initial exploration program has been completed on its Nickel exploration claims located in northern British Columbia, Canada. The BC Nickel Exploration Project (the "Project") consists of four non-contiguous mineral claims groups held by Nickel Rock Resources Inc. through three separate agreements. The exploration stage project is in the Trembleur Lake area of central British Columbia, partially adjacent to FPX Nickel Corp.'s Decar Nickel Project, which is an advanced project targeting awaruite, a nickel-iron alloy mineral, hosted by serpentinized ultramafic intrusive rocks of the Trembleur Ultramafic Unit. As reported on July 8, 2021, Nickel Rock has optioned out an 80% interest on two of its four mineral claims within the group, the Hard Nickel 4 and Nickel 100 exploration claims, to Surge Battery Metals (TSXV: NILI) in order to concentrate on its exploration efforts on the Nickel Group Claims directly adjacent to the FPX Nickel Corp. (TSXV: FPX) Baptiste Nickel Deposit.

Robert Setter, Company President and CEO comments "We are very pleased with the results from our initial exploration program on the Hard Nickel and Nickel 100 claim group and specifically with the work completed during phase 2 of this initial exploration program. So far, we have recorded some relatively high Ni readings measured via portable XRF on the Nickel S block, as mentioned in our news from June 28, 2021, and our geological team suspects these ultramafic rocks have potential to host awaruite mineralization. This second phase of exploration includes both soil and rock sampling, technical report writing, mapping and assay work, with the remaining work to be done on trenching, geological, geochemical and geophysical surveying. Completion of this remaining work will fulfil our flow-through exploration work program commitments for 2021."

2021 Exploration Program Recap

The initial exploration consisted of rock & soil geochemical surveys and geological mapping on the lower elevation, road accessible Nickel West and Nickel South blocks. 405 soil samples and 149 rock samples were collected on the Nickel West block , and 101 soil samples and 50 rock samples were collected on the Nickel South block. All samples have been submitted to SGS Canada for analytical analysis.

and 101 soil samples and 50 rock samples were collected on the Nickel South block. All samples have been submitted to SGS Canada for analytical analysis. On site X-ray fluorescence analysis (XRF) confirmed the presence of nickel values exceeding 40,000 ppm on the Nickel South block , and 6000 ppm on the Nickel West block in select bedrock samples. It should be noted that pXRF does not necessarily reflect bulk rock composition.

and 6000 ppm on the Nickel West block in select bedrock samples. It should be noted that pXRF does not necessarily reflect bulk rock composition. All rock samples were taken in duplicate, with one sent to SGS Canada for geochemical analysis and a duplicate sample retained at Hardline Exploration in Smithers BC for further mineralogical analysis.

Soil samples were submitted for screening to -80 mesh (180 m) and processing with aqua regia digestion , followed by analysis using ICP-OES. Rock samples were submitted for crushing to 75% passing 2mm, riffle splitting 250g and pulverization of the split to better than 85% passing 105 microns, and processing with four acid digestion followed by analysis using ICP-OES.

followed by analysis using ICP-OES. Rock samples were submitted for crushing to 75% passing 2mm, riffle splitting 250g and pulverization of the split to better than 85% passing 105 microns, and processing with four acid digestion followed by analysis using ICP-OES. Further exploration will resume on the Nickel West and Nickel Central blocks including rock and soil geochemical surveys and mechanized trenching.

A Notice of Work application was submitted in February 2021 allowing for mechanized trenching, diamond drilling, geophysics and camps. The Company is working/consulting with the BC government and local First Nations.

The principal target on the Project is nickel occurring as awaruite, but at the exploration stage all other styles of mineralization will be considered.

Systematic, ground-based exploration work began within the area of the claims now covered by the Nickel Project under the direction of Ms. Ursula Mowat, P.Geo. in 1987, continuing intermittently until 2012. This work established the presence of elevated nickel, cobalt , and chromium values in rocks, soils, and stream sediments.

and chromium values in rocks, soils, and stream sediments. The area of the claim groups of the Project were included in Geoscience BC's QUEST and QUEST-West projects, including multiparameter regional geophysical surveys, and regional stream sediment reanalyzes and data compilations between 2008 and 2009. The survey highlighted multiple large geophysical magnetic anomalies on both the Nickel W and S claim groups, suspected to be attributed to ultramafic intrusive rocks from preliminary field mapping with potential to host awaruite mineralization.

Britten's technical paper "Regional Metallogeny and Genesis of a New Deposit Type  Disseminated Awaruite (Ni3Fe) Mineralization Hosted in the Cache Creek Terrane published in 2017 in Economic Geology should be utilized as an interim mineral deposit model or profile for the Nickel Project.

The Nickel Project is worthy of phased, systematic exploration programs designed , and implemented to delineate areas with known or high probability metallic nickel mineralization, and to discover new areas of similar mineralization.

2021 Work Program

The Company currently has sufficient funds in its treasury to fully fund its 2021 proposed work program and its remaining working capital needs for 2021 and 2022.

The proposed work program consists of trenching, surface exploration, diamond drilling, camp construction, and exploration activities to support drilling and trenching, such as soil sampling, rock sampling, prospecting, and geological mapping. The company proposes a 12-man camp to be built in a cirque on the north slope of the un-named mountain west of and adjacent to Mount Sydney Williams, and will be built next to a sub-alpine lake at the headwaters of Van Decar Creek. The location of camp was selected based on past exploration camps at this location and is suitable for supporting exploration. Camp will be used to accommodate field personnel and will be accessed with helicopter. The work program is managed by Jeremy Hansen, P. Geol. and Hardline Exploration Corp.

The Company estimates that this 2021 work program will include $600,000 in exploration expenditures.

Qualified Person

Jeremy Hanson, P.Geo., a qualified person as defined by NI 43  101, is responsible for the technical information contained in this release. Readers are cautioned that the information in this press release regarding the property of FPX Nickel Corp is not necessarily indicative of the mineralization on the property of interest.

About Nickel Rock Resources Inc. www.nickelrockresources.com

The Company is a Canadian-based mineral exploration company active in the exploration for nickel-iron alloy in British Columbia and lithium in Nevada. Nickel Rock Resources Inc. is a Canadian based exploration company whose primary listing is on the TSX Venture Exchange. The Company's maintains a focus on exploration for high value battery metals required for the electric vehicle (EV) market.

About Clayton Valley Lithium Project

Clayton Valley is a down-dropped closed basin formed by the Miocene age Great Basin extension and is still active due to movement along the Walker Lane structural zone. As a result, the basin has preserved multiple layers of lithium bearing volcanic ash, resulting from multiple eruptive events over the past 6 million years, including eruptions from the 700,000-year-old Long Valley Caldera system and related events. These ash layers are thought to contribute to the lithium brines extracted by Albemarle and are also likely involved in the formation of the exposed lithium rich clay deposits on the east side of Clayton Valley. https://nickelrockresources.com/clayton-valley-lithium/

About the British Columbia, Canada Nickel Projects

The Mount Sidney Williams Group consists of five claim blocks in four groups with a total area of 6,125.32 hectares in the area surrounding Mount Sidney Williams, both adjoining and near the Decar project of FPX Nickel Corp., located 100 kilometres northwest of Fort St. James, B.C., in the Omineca mining division. Metallic mineralization includes nickel, cobalt, and chromium. At least some of the nickel mineralization occurs as awaruite. The Mitchell Range Group area claim consist of two contiguous claim blocks covering 3,134.70 hectares with demonstrated metallic mineralization, including nickel, cobalt, and chromium. Nickel cobalt mineralization has not been well explored, but the presence of awaruite has been documented.

On Behalf of the Board of Directors

"Robert Setter"

Robert Setter, President & CEO

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 which include, but are not limited to, comments that involve future events and conditions, which are subject to various risks and uncertainties. Except for statements of historical facts, comments that address resource potential, upcoming work programs, geological interpretations, receipt and security of mineral property titles, availability of funds, and others are forward-looking. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and actual results may vary materially from those statements. General business conditions are factors that could cause actual results to vary materially from forward-looking statements.

Nickel Rock Resources Inc.1220  789 West Pender StreetVancouver, BC, Canada V6C 1H2604- 428-5690www.nickelrockresources.com info@nickelrockresources.com

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/nickel-rock-issues-an-update-on-its-exploration-program--nickel-properties-in-british-columbia-301369114.html

SOURCE Nickel Rock Resources Inc.
NEW YORK, Sept. 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Starboard Value LP (together with its affiliates, "Starboard" or "we"), one of the largest stockholders of Box, Inc. ("Box" or the "Company") (NYSE: BOX), with an ownership stake of approximately 8.6% of the Company's outstanding shares, today announced that Egan-Jones Proxy Services ("Egan-Jones"), an independent proxy voting advisory firm, has recommended that Box stockholders vote on Starboard's WHITE proxy card to elect all three of Starboard's nominees to the Box Board of Directors (the "Board") at the Company's upcoming 2021 Annual Meeting of Stockholders (the "Annual Meeting"). Egan-Jones' recommendation, combined with prior commentary issued by Institutional Shareholder Services Inc. ("ISS") and Glass, Lewis & Co. ("Glass Lewis"), provides significant validation that change is needed on Box's Board to ensure improved operational, governance, and compensation practices, as well as renewed accountability to common stockholders. Egan-Jones and Glass Lewis also both recommended that stockholders vote "AGAINST" the Company's "say-on-pay" proposal at the upcoming Annual Meeting, providing strong validation for Starboard's concerns regarding poor compensation practices at Box. All three proxy voting advisory firms have acknowledged that Starboard has had a positive impact on Box and have also expressed serious concerns with the defensive preferred equity financing led by KKR.

Peter Feld, Managing Member of Starboard Value LP, stated, "We are pleased that Egan-Jones, an independent proxy voting advisory firm, has recommended stockholders vote on our White proxy card for all three of Starboard's nominees. Egan-Jones joins Glass Lewis and ISS in recognizing the positive impact Starboard has had at Box over the past two years and in highlighting serious concerns with the KKR-led preferred equity financing and related self-tender. We appreciate that Glass Lewis and Egan Jones also both recognize the need for direct common stockholder representation on the Board and that we have the expertise and experience required to help oversee a transformation at Box. The incumbent Board must be held accountable for overseeing years of poor performance, stockholder-unfriendly capital allocation decisions, and serious issues with executive compensation and governance practices.

Our only goal is to help Box perform better and adopt best-in-class practices across operating performance, financial results, governance, and compensation. We, and our nominees, are open-minded about any and all ways to create value at Box, and we are fully and directly aligned with you, our fellow common stockholders. We are seeking your support to elect a minority of new independent directors, including myself as a direct representative of stockholders, to ensure renewed accountability and consistent, improved execution moving forward. Our slate would add needed diversity, differentiated skill sets, and importantly, common stockholder representation to the Board."

Egan-Jones recommended that stockholders should vote on Starboard's WHITE proxy card saying:

"Based on our review of publicly available information, we believe that voting FOR the Starboard nominees is in the best interest of the Company and its shareholders. In arriving at that conclusion, we have considered the following factors:

In our view, there is a compelling reason to vote for Starboard nominees due to the fact that the current Board has shown lack of accountability with regards to the abysmal performance and poor decisions for the past years .

. We believe that Box has an underlying potential among its peers that the Board has failed to maximize . As disclosed in the SEC filing, BOX underperformed its Peer Group by more than 400% and the broader software market by nearly 250% during this time. As a Company that is believed to be well-positioned in software and technology, we believe that the Board has inflicted its current state by its poor operational and financial execution .

. As disclosed in the SEC filing, during this time. As a Company that is believed to be well-positioned in software and technology, we believe that . In our opinion, the Company's questionable and unwarranted financings show how the Board has failed to act in the best interests of the shareholders, but instead favored its own preferred investors . Specifically, the KKR Financing has caused the Company to prematurely raise capital which will be of no benefit to the Company and its shareholders .

. Specifically, . While Starboard acknowledges the inclusion of its own director nominees two years ago, we believe that the Board has failed to engage constructively that will aim for progress and growth. As such, we believe that electing the Starboard Nominees once again - Deborah S. Conrad, Peter A. Feld and Xavier D. Williams  will bring fresh ideas and perspectives in the board room, in order to improve not only the financial and operational aspects of the Company, but its corporate governance practices as well."

We appreciate the support from stockholders who have already voted for Starboard's nominees on the WHITE proxy card and urge all of our fellow stockholders to vote the WHITE proxy card TODAY to support the election of all three of Starboard's highly qualified nominees.

Excerpts from Proxy Advisory Firms' Analysis & Recommendations

In Highlighting the Positive Impact of Starboard's Involvement on Box:

"By the same stroke, we believe it should be noted the principal change agent here clearly remains Starboard, as noted with the broader market generally endorsing the Dissident's challenges to the Company's status quo."  Glass Lewis

"The dissident [Starboard] deserves significant credit for the changes that have taken place since it reached a settlement with the company in March 2020, and the share price performance since the settlement, as well as since the dissident's renewed campaign, likely reflects the positive impact of the dissident's involvement."  ISS

In Supporting the Election of Starboard's Nominees to the Board:

"Given the sum of the foregoing factors, while we maintain a more fulsome and even-handed assessment of Box's post-settlement strategic narrative is challenging here, we believe there remains sufficient cause to support the election of a direct shareholder representative at this time."  Glass Lewis

"While Starboard acknowledges the inclusion of its own director nominees two years ago, we believe that the Board has failed to engage constructively that will aim for progress and growth. As such, we believe that electing the Starboard Nominees once again - Deborah S. Conrad, Peter A. Feld and Xavier D. Williams  will bring fresh ideas and perspectives in the board room, in order to improve not only the financial and operational aspects of the Company, but its corporate governance practices as well."  Egan-Jones

On Box's Stockholder-Unfriendly Preferred Equity Financing Led by KKR:

"Turning, then, to another matter of significant post-settlement contention, we believe investors ultimately have adequate cause to take a relatively dim view of Box's recent capital raising initiatives

In short, we consider Starboard's lengthy criticism of the KKR financing is warranted and substantially more persuasive than the board's much more generous representations."  Glass Lewis

"For instance, many of the governance concerns raised by the dissident about the terms of the $500 million financing and KKR's involvement appear valid

The revelation that KKR syndicated the convert underscores the concerns that shareholders have about the voting requirements and the need for this financing, and undermine the company's argument that it has brought in KKR as a strategic partner. Some of these issues likely resonate with shareholders because of the company's governance track record prior to the dissident's involvement."  ISS

"In our opinion, the Company's questionable and unwarranted financings show how the Board has failed to act in the best interests of the shareholders, but instead favored its own preferred investors. Specifically, the KKR Financing has caused the Company to prematurely raise capital which will be of no benefit to the Company and its shareholders."  Egan-Jones

On Box's Poor Corporate Governance and Poor Compensation Practices:

"These issues pile on to the fact that critical portions of Box's governance architecture remain problematic, a concern which is itself bolstered by the Company's recently executed and curiously reasoned financing with KKR. These issues may suggest the reconstituted board, when pressed, is problematically inclined to revert to obstructive methodologies, while concurrently meting out incremental change in order to burnish optics and potentially mollify investors mulling the potential upside of a partial board spill

With respect to compensation matters, while we acknowledge Box's overall structure has yielded payouts which seem reasonably aligned with performance (i.e. a "B" grade in our Pay-for-Performance model for the most recent period), we believe critical portions of Box's incentive programs continue to hinge on questionably reasoned tenets. This notably includes a heavy shift toward time-based vesting for long-term awards, as well as a disconcerting lack of clarity around maximum short-term incentive payouts. As a result, we currently believe investors have ample cause to reject Box's advisory vote on executive compensation at this time."  Glass Lewis

"After taking into account both the quantitative and qualitative measures outlined below, we believe that shareholders cannot support the current compensation policies put in place by the Company's directors. Furthermore, we believe that the Company's compensation policies and procedures are not effective or strongly aligned with the long-term interest of its shareholders. Therefore, we recommend a vote AGAINST this Proposal."  Egan-Jones

STARBOARD URGES ALL STOCKHOLDERS TO VOTE FOR THE MOST QUALIFIED SLATE OF DIRECTORS TO DRIVE MUCH NEEDED CHANGE AT BOX

RESTORE AND ENHANCE THE VALUE OF YOUR BOX INVESTMENT

PLEASE SIGN, DATE, AND MAIL THE WHITE PROXY CARD TODAY

Starboard's publicly filed investor materials can be accessed at www.shareholdersforbox.com.

If you have any questions, require assistance in voting your WHITE proxy card,or need additional copies of Starboard's proxy materials,please contact Okapi Partners LLC, which is assisting Starboard, at the phone numbers or email listed below.

Okapi Partners LLC1212 Avenue of the Americas, 24th FloorNew York, New York 10036

Stockholders may call toll-free: (855) 208-8901Banks and brokers call: (212) 297-0720E-mail: info@okapipartners.com

About Starboard Value LPStarboard Value LP is a New York-based investment adviser with a focused and differentiated fundamental approach to investing primarily in publicly traded U.S. companies. Starboard seeks to invest in deeply undervalued companies and actively engage with management teams and boards of directors to identify and execute on opportunities to unlock value for the benefit of all shareholders.

Investor contacts:box@starboardvalue.comwww.starboardvalue.com

Okapi PartnersBruce H. Goldfarb/Patrick McHugh(855) 208-8901

Note: Permission to quote from the ISS, Glass Lewis, and Egan-Jones reports was neither sought nor obtained. Emphases added.

View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/starboard-issues-statement-on-proxy-advisory-firm-recommendations-301369225.html

SOURCE Starboard Value LP
About 350 173rd Airborne Brigade paratroopers took part Sept. 2, 2021, in an annual 12-hour, 40-mile hike along Lake Garda that memorializes Brig. Gen. William Darby, who was killed in April 1945 by a German artillery shell. One paratrooper, a sergeant, completed the 40 miles in eight hours. (Wesley Shields/U.S. Army)

VICENZA, Italy  Hundreds of U.S. paratroopers ran, walked and airborne shuffled along Italys largest lake to honor an American war hero and 25 infantrymen killed there in the last throes of World War II.

Some 350 soldiers from the 173rd Airborne Brigade took up the challenge Thursday, starting at the bottom of Lake Garda and heading along the eastern shore all the way to Torbole, 40 miles north.

Thats where then-Col. William Darby, founder of what became the elite U.S. Army Rangers, was killed on April 30, 1945, by a German artillery shell. Darby was posthumously promoted to brigadier general.

On the same day, 25 soldiers from the 10th Mountain Division drowned while crossing the icy lake in an amphibious vehicle, which sank. Their bodies were never recovered.

The annual hike, called the Col. Darby 40-Miler, was initiated in 2010 by retired Army Ranger Rick Tscherne with the cooperation of Italian officials.

The event begins at 6 a.m., and the course winds along the lake through pretty little towns. Hikers must cross the finish line by 6 p.m. to be eligible for coins that Tscherne hands out.

Six hours in, Sgt. 1st Class Bryan Whittier, was at mile 23. Whittier, 33 and an Army Ranger, said hed been mostly walking the route, along with a light, light jog.

About 350 173rd Airborne Brigade paratroopers took part in an annual 12-hour, 40-mile hike along Lake Garda on Sept. 2, 2021, that memorializes Brig. Gen. William Darby, killed in April 1945, by a German Wehrmacht artillery shell. One paratrooper, a sergeant, completed the 40 miles in 8 hours. (Wesley Shields/U.S. Army)

Typically it takes more than 13 hours to walk 40 miles at a relaxed pace, 10 hours at a normal pace and 7 hours and 20 minutes at a rapid pace, experts say.

Brigade troops rarely run such long distances in training, usually keeping to 4 to 8 miles during morning PT, Whittier said.

Some people are at mile 30 already, Whittier said. Theyre running.

The route for the annual Col. Darby 40-Miler hike Sept. 2, 2021, takes participants along the shores of Lake Garda and through the area's charming towns, including Malcesine and its castle, Castello Scaligero. (Wesley Shields/U.S. Army)

Among those were Chief Warrant Officer 3 Will Trimble, who finished in 9 hours and 28 minutes, and Sgt. Erik Knight, who did 40 miles in eight hours, according to 1st Sgt. Wesley Shields.

It was the first time that Shields, an Army Ranger, took part in the event.

It was a gut check for sure, he said. Its the farthest Ive ever rucked.

Shields, 33, said he stopped only to change socks and stretch, fueled by numerous protein and cereal bars, fruit packs and water.

Shields made it to the end in 10 hours and 47 minutes. He said that for the last 5 miles, he picked up his pace to an airborne shuffle, a slow jog, because it just felt better to do an airborne shuffle than to walk.

Paratroopers from the 173rd Airborne Brigade take a load off in the town square of Torbole, Italy, on Sept. 2, 2021, at the end of a 40-mile hike along Lake Garda. The annual hike commemorates then-Col. William Darby, the founder of the U.S. Army Rangers, and 25 infantry troops killed there in April 1945. (Wesley Shields/U.S. Army)

All but one of the 30 participating paratroopers finished. Most everybody was happy theyd done it despite being footsore and quite tired as they boarded their bus back to Vicenza, Shields said.

The second the bus started moving and the AC came on, I looked around and everybody was just racked out, he added.
This April 14, 2021, booking photo provided by the Richland County, S.C., detention center shows Jonathan Pentland, an Army staff sergeant charged with third-degree assault and battery after a video went viral depicting him accosting and shoving a Black man in a Columbia, S.C., neighborhood. (Alvin S. Glenn Detention Center)

The Fort Jackson drill instructor convicted in civilian court last month of a misdemeanor assault captured on video will be moved to a new duty station, officials at the Army post in South Carolina said Friday.

Sgt. 1st Class Jonathan Pentland received an undisclosed punishment from the Army and will soon be moved to his next permanent duty station as he has fulfilled his assignment obligation at Fort Jackson, said L.A. Sully, a spokeswoman for the installation. Pentland was sentenced Aug. 23 to either 30 days in jail or a fine of $1,087 after a two-day bench trial in Richland County magistrate court on a single count of third-degree assault and battery.

"The Richland County trial is complete," Brig. Gen. Patrick R. Michaelis, Fort Jacksons commander, said in a statement. "We are the nation's Army and we continue to value and strengthen our shared trust with our local communities. Soldiers are trained to conduct themselves in a respectful manner and adhere to the Army values. They are also held accountable when they do not.

Sully and other Army officials declined to provide information about the Army punishment Michaelis gave Pentland, citing privacy considerations. She and other Army officials also declined to name Pentlands next duty station.

A spokesman for Army headquarters at the Pentagon also said Friday that the service could not provide any additional information.

Pentland, 42, was seen on video yelling at a young Black man, telling him to leave the soldiers Columbia, S.C., neighborhood. The video was posted to social media in April and shared widely. Pentland is seen in the video shoving the man  an incident that raised accusations of racism against Pentland, who is white. Richland County sheriffs deputies said Pentland struck the victim at least three times. They arrested him on the assault charge on April 14.

That same day, then-Fort Jackson commander Brig Gen. Milford Beagle, Jr. suspended Pentland from his drill instructor duties. Beagle has since moved and taken command of the Armys 10th Mountain Division at Fort Drum, N.Y., and was promoted to major general.

Beagle in April said Pentlands actions violated Army values, but he said he would let the civilian case against Pentland play out before handing down any military punishment or charges.

At the trial, Pentlands lawyer, Benjamin Allen Stitely, argued the soldier was defending friends and family in the neighborhood by confronting the young man, who had been accused of erratic behavior before the video was taken, The State newspaper in Columbia reported. Stitely decried the accusations of racism against Pentland, according to the newspaper report.

Several witnesses testified the 22-year-old victim had displayed erratic behavior in a number of incidents leading up to the video, according to The State. In one instance, a woman accused the man of picking up a baby without permission. The man was also accused of harassing women in the neighborhood, according to the newspaper.

Law enforcement officials at trial, however, testified Pentlands physical response to the incident was unwarranted, the newspaper reported.
The Louisiana National Guard logo is shown in this photo illustration. (U.S. National Guard)

A Louisiana National Guard soldier was found dead Friday in a Department of Public Safety parking lot in Baton Rouge, officials said.

The soldier, whose name was withheld pending next-of-kin notification, was pronounced dead by medical officials at the states complex for emergency operations, according to the Louisiana National Guard. The parking lot is part of the Governor's Office of Homeland Security & Emergency Management, which brings together several state, local and nongovernment agencies to manage emergency situations.

The cause of the death is under investigation by the Louisiana State Police. Sources close to the situation said the soldier died by suicide, according to WBRZ, a local TV station.

There are more than 6,380 Guard troops deployed to Louisiana, with more than 1,000 of those from other states forces, to help with recovery efforts after Hurricane Ida barreled through the eastern half of Louisiana on Sunday.

The Guard declined to answer if the deceased soldier was activated for the hurricane or on duty when the death occurred.
FORT BRAGG (Tribune News Service)  After nearly two decades of war in Afghanistan, the last boots on the ground there belonged to the commander of the 82nd Airborne Division commander. And less than two days after the U.S. withdrawal from the country, the spouses of the division received a visit from the sergeant major of the Army.

A brigade, battalion and the 82nd Airborne Divisons commander, Maj. Gen. Christopher Donahue, were called upon in August to assist with evacuating Americans from the country, where troops have spent nearly two decades since shortly after 9/11.

The troops from the 82nd Airborne Division are part of the Immediate Response Force, which rapidly deploys on short or no-notice deployments.

The latest deployment has been the third for the local Fort Bragg force in less than 18 months.

That is why Sgt. Maj. Of the Army Michael Grinston visited Fort Bragg on Wednesday, to thank the spouses who have supported their soldiers in the deployments.

And they reminded me, three no-notice deployments in the last 18 months, Grinston said following the private meeting. Imagine youre going through this, your spouse is there, then theyre back and theyre gone again, and then they come back and theyre gone again.

In addition to thanking the spouses, Grinston said he also asked for feedback on how the Department of the Army can better support Fort Bragg military families.

With a list to take back with him, he said one of the things that was discussed was spouses who have coped with juggling childcare and medical appointments in the midst of COVID-19.

Some of the spouses, he said, did not have time to make childcare arrangements and are under the impression they are being asked to not bring their child with them to medical appointments.

Grinston said its a point hell discuss with the surgeon general of the Army to determine if the deployment would exempt the spouse from the request.

Childcare wasnt the only topic brought up.

All the deployed paratroopers will see a behavioral health specialist while in the theater before returning to Fort Bragg and once again when they arrive back home, Grinston said.

Grinston said his message is its OK to seek behavioral health help.

He said theres a deliberate plan to support the soldiers currently, and he said he is confident in the behavioral plan at Fort Bragg that is supported by the 18th Airborne Corps command team that the 82nd Airborne Division falls under.

At the same time, Grinston said, leaders should be attuned to whether or not help is needed past the immediate evaluations.

That was a very unique and challenging mission, and there will be a lot of stress from that mission, and it may not come out in Kuwait and it may not come out here. It may be later, a month or two months or three months, six months, a year later down the road.

In reflecting on the role the division had in the latest mission, Grinston said its a historic part of the 82nd Airborne Divisions legacy.

We just couldnt be more proud of how they executed it; but Im going to be honest, even that mission came at a loss, and we want no losses, and thats hard, Grinston said. But I think because of the 82nd, we saved a lot of lives, because they were there, and I think thats in the history of the 82nd. They need to be proud of that.

Grinston commended Alena Knauss, the spouse of Fort Bragg soldier Staff Sgt. Ryan Knauss, who was one of 13 servicemembers do die in an ISIS-K suicide bombing Aug. 26 in Afghanistan.

She is talking about the wonderful person that her spouse was  and her composure  we met her at Dover on Sunday, and I was so impressed by her, just what an incredible woman, he said.

For the local veteran community who served in Afghanistan, Grinston said he understands what its like, because hes also deployed twice to Afghanistan.

He said he asks veterans to reflect on why American troops originally went to Afghanistan, and responds back to say  Osama Bin Laden planned and facilitated the 9/11 attacks right there in Afghanistan.

Did we accomplish that mission? Absolutely. Did it come at a cost? Yes, he said.

He said he recognizes the deployments will be part of the veterans who spent time there, but reminds them to consider that the U.S. has not had any facilitated attacks coming from Afghanistan during the past 20 years.

The person that started those attacks and 9/11 is no longer with us, so every soldier did exactly what the country has asked us to do, Grinston said.

He again thanked the paratroopers, spouses, command team of the 18th Airborne Corps and Fayetteville community on behalf of the secretary of the Army, chief of staff of the Army and himself.

We are the greatest Army in the world because of the support we get from our communities, like Fayetteville, Grinston said.

Grinston reflected on security force assistance brigades continued mission to advise, assist, enable and accompany indigenous conventional forces in combat operations, calling it vital.

The 2nd Security Force Assistance Brigade and Security Force Assistance Command are at Fort Bragg with that mission.

Youre going there to make a better place for other people around the world, and I dont think we should stop trying to do that, he said.

___

(c)2021 The Fayetteville Observer (Fayetteville, N.C.)

Visit The Fayetteville Observer (Fayetteville, N.C.) at www.fayobserver.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
The guided-missile destroyer USS Kidd steams through the Taiwan Strait on Aug. 27, 2021. (Kaylianna Genier/U.S. Navy)

U.S. Navy operations in the South China Sea wont be affected by a new Chinese law requiring foreign vessels to give notice before entering waters claimed by Beijing, according to the Defense Department.

An amendment to Chinas 1983 Maritime Traffic Safety Law that took effect Wednesday requires certain vessels to provide a checklist of information, including call signs, positions, estimated time of arrival and the next port of call, the Chinese state-run Global Times reported Sunday.

The amendment specifies that submersibles, nuclear-powered vessels and ships carrying dangerous substances, such as oil or chemicals, must notify Chinese officials before entering areas China claims as territorial waters, according to the Naval War Colleges Stockton Center for International Law.

The amendment was approved in April by Chinas Standing Committee of the National Peoples Congress.

However, U.S. forces, under international law, will continue to transit those areas or operate in them, according to a Defense Department spokesman.

The United States will continue to fly, sail and operate wherever international law allows, Lt. Col. Martin Meiners told Stars and Stripes in an email Wednesday.

The Navys 7th Fleet routinely conducts freedom-of-navigation operations and transits through areas China has claimed as its territorial waters, including the Taiwan Strait and island chains in the South China Sea.

Most recently, the guided-missile destroyer USS Kidd steamed through the Taiwan Strait on Aug. 27, the Navys eighth trip through the waterway this year.

The U.S. has long maintained that one nations law must not infringe the rights of other nations under international law, Pentagon spokesman John Supple told Stars and Stripes in an email Wednesday.

Unlawful and sweeping maritime claims, including in the South China Sea, pose a serious threat to the freedom of the seas, including the freedoms of navigation and overflight, free trade and unimpeded lawful commerce, and the rights and interests of South China Sea and other littoral nations, he said.

Beijing regularly criticizes U.S. Navy activity in areas it claims in the South China Sea, along with the U.S. position rejecting those claims.

Chinas sovereignty, rights and interests in the South China Sea have been formed in the course of a long history, Zhao Lijian, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, said at a July 12 news conference. They are supported by abundant historical and legal basis and upheld by the Chinese government all along.

No country objected to this position until the 1970s, Zhao added.

The U.S. accusation that our maritime rights and interests in the South China Sea have no basis in international law totally runs counter to facts, he said.

Beijings asserted claim over vast swaths of the South China Sea largely stem from the nine-dash line, a demarcation adopted from a 1947 Chinese map. In 2016, a United Nations tribunal declared some of Chinas claims in the South China Sea unlawful under the Convention on the Law of the Sea.
The U.K. Carrier Strike Group, including the aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth, train with the Indian navy in the Indian Ocean, July 21, 2021. (Royal Navy)

YOKOSUKA NAVAL BASE, Japan  The HMS Queen Elizabeth is slated to make a port call at the home of the U.S. Navys 7th Fleet during the Royal Navy carriers inaugural visit to Japan.

The Queen Elizabeth will arrive in the country over the weekend, British Embassy Tokyo announced Friday in a news release. The flagship of the U.K. Carrier Strike Group is in the middle of a nearly eight-month maiden deployment thats expected to span 26,000 nautical miles and include stops in 40 countries.

The U.K.-Japan relationship has a long history, the United Kingdoms ambassador to Japan, Julia Longbottom, said in the release. We believe this visit marks the elevation of our defense and security relationship to a new level.

The Yokosuka port call was confirmed during a phone call Friday with Naval Forces Japan spokeswoman Cmdr. Katie Cerezo, who could not specify exactly when the Queen Elizabeth will arrive.

The strike group includes two destroyers, the HMS Diamond and Defender; two frigates, the HHMS Richmond and Kent; a nuclear-powered submarine; a Dutch frigate, HNLMS Eversten; and a U.S. destroyer, USS The Sullivans.

Ten Marine Corps F-35Bs are also aboard the Queen Elizabeth.

Another carrier, the USS Carl Vinson, departed Yokosuka on Tuesday after four days of crew rest and relaxation. Sailors were restricted to base due to coronavirus precautions.

Activities of the U.K. group, which experienced a COVID-19 outbreak in mid-July, will be in line with prevention measures set by the Royal Navy and Japanese government, according to the embassys release.

All parties are paying very close attention to the coronavirus situation, and so the Queen Elizabeth sailors will be observing a strict protocol, Cerezo said.

The strike group is expected to participate in drills in the air and at sea with the Japan Self-Defense Forces, according to the embassys news release.

To operate alongside the JSDF in exercises covering surface warfare, anti-submarine warfare and air warfare, we have pushed our partnership to a new level, Capt. Simon Staley, U.K. defence attache to Japan, said in the release. In demonstrating our maritime capability and ambition we can work further with Japan in developing equipment together in the future.

The U.K. strike group has already participated in several naval drills that have included U.S. and Japanese forces.

During the U.S. Navys Large-Scale Exercise 2021 in late August, the Queen Elizabeth held a cross-deck training exercise with the amphibious assault ship USS America in which the two flagships swapped F-35Bs at sea.

In July, the Queen Elizabeth, the Yokosuka-based USS Ronald Reagan and the U.S. Navy's Iwo Jima Amphibious Ready Group conducted large-scale exercises in the Indian Ocean. The U.K. carrier trained with the Indian Navy about a week later.
Sailors stationed at Naval Station Rota, Spain, greet evacuees from Afghanistan after their arrival at the base aboard a U.S. Air Force C-17 Globemaster III, Sep. 1, 2021. (John Owen/U.S. Navy)

Nearly 2,700 Afghan evacuees temporarily housed at U.S. Navy bases in Spain and Italy have departed for America, U.S. Naval Forces Europe-Africa said Friday.

About 1,900 evacuees have left Naval Air Station Sigonella in Sicily and another 750 have departed Naval Station Rota in Spain, said Capt. Tamara Lawrence, U.S. Naval Forces Europe-Africa spokeswoman.

A sailor stationed at Naval Station Rota, Spain, directs a child evacuee from Afghanistan to a check-in station after his arrival at the base aboard a U.S. Air Force KC-10 Extender, Sept. 1, 2021. ( Nathan Carpenter/U.S. Navy)

Evacuees from NAS Sigonella and NS Rota are flown to Washington Dulles International Airport or Philadelphia International Airport. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is overseeing resettlement of evacuees, who initially are processed through several U.S. military bases, according to the departments website.

U.S. service members assist evacuees from Afghanistan as they depart a U.S. Navy Boeing C-17A Clipper at Naval Air Station Sigonella, Italy, Aug. 28, 2021. (Kegan E. Kay/U.S. Navy)

Lawrence said the number of evacuees at NAS Sigonella and NS Rota changes several times each day with multiple flights arriving and departing from each base. NAS Sigonella has a maximum capacity of 4,000 persons with NS Rota at 3,000, neither of which have been exceeded, Lawrence said.

U.S. Air Force Tech. Sgt. Angie Smith carries a sleeping baby down from an Airbus A320 aircraft carrying evacuees from Afghanistan to Naval Air Station Sigonella, Italy, Aug. 29, 2021. (Kegan E. Kay/U.S. Navy)

Four U.S. military bases in Europe have accepted nearly 38,000 Afghan evacuees during the past two weeks with about half already in the U.S.

Evacuees from Afghanistan depart a U.S. Air Force KC-10 Extender after landing at Naval Station Rota, Spain, Aug. 31, 2021. (Nathan Carpenter/U.S. Navy)

A U.S. Navy sailor interacts with a child evacuated from Afghanistan as they wait to check-in after arrival at Naval Air Station Sigonella, Italy, Aug. 27, 2021. ( Caine Storino/U.S. Navy)

USO volunteers offer stuffed toys to an evacuee from Afghanistan as she arrives at Naval Air Station Sigonella, Italy, Aug. 28, 2021. (Claire DuBois/U.S. Navy)
President Joe Biden talks as he tours a neighborhood impacted by Hurricane Ida, Friday, Sept. 3, 2021, in LaPlace, La. (Evan Vucci/AP)

LAPLACE, La. Giant trees knocked sideways. Homes boarded up with plywood. Off-kilter street signs.

Less than a week after Hurricane Ida battered the Gulf Coast, President Joe Biden walked the streets of a hardhit Louisiana neighborhood and told local residents, I know youre hurting, I know youre hurting.

Biden pledged robust federal assistance to get people back on their feet and said the government already had distributed $100 million directly to individuals in the state in $500 checks to give them a first slice of critical help. Many people, he said, dont know what help is available because they cant get cellphone service.

Residents welcomed Bidens Friday presence, one of them drawing a sign with his last name and a heart for the dot on the i. They laughed and posed for selfies.

More formally, Biden met with state and local officials in LaPlace, a community between the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain that suffered major wind and water damage and was left with sheared-off roofs and flooded homes.

I promise were going to have your back, Biden said.

He also took a flyover tour of pummeled areas including Lafitte, Grand Isle, Port Fourchon and Lafourche Parish, where Parish President Archie Chaisson said 25% of the homes in his community of 100,000 were gone or had catastrophic damage.

The president later met privately with Gov. John Bel Edwards, House Republican Whip Steve Scalise, who is from Louisiana, and local officials including Chaisson.

The devastation was clear even as Air Force One approached New Orleans, with uprooted trees and blue tarps covering shredded houses coming into view. The road to LaPlace exhibited power-line wood poles jutting from the ground at odd angles.

Trips to natural disaster scenes have long been a feature of U.S. presidencies, moments to demonstrate compassion and show the public leadership during a crisis. They are also opportunities to hit pause, however temporarily, from the political sniping that often dominates Washington.

In shirtsleeves and boots, Biden was welcomed at the airport by Edwards, a Democrat. Several Republicans, including Sen. Bill Cassidy and Rep. Scalise, were also on hand.

Edwards said Biden has been a tremendous partner, adding that he intended to keep asking for help until the president said no.

In the aftermath of Ida, Biden is focusing anew on the threat posed by climate change and the prospect that disaster zone visits may become a more regular feature of the presidency. The storm has killed at least 14 people in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, and at least 49 in the Northeastern U.S.

The president has pointed to that destruction to call for greater public resolve to confront climate change. His $1 trillion infrastructure legislation intends to ensure that vital networks connecting cities and states and the country as a whole can withstand the flooding, whirlwinds and damage caused by increasingly dangerous weather.

At Fridays briefing with local officials, Biden insisted the infrastructure bill and an even more expansive measure later on would more effectively prepare the country.

It seems to me we can save a whole lot of money, a whole lot of pain for our constituents, if we build back, rebuild it back in a better way, Biden said. I realize Im selling as Im talking.

Sen. Cassidy tweeted later that in his conversation with Biden, we spoke about the need for resiliency. We agreed putting power lines beneath the ground would have avoided all of this. The infrastructure bill has billions for grid resiliency.

Past presidents have been defined in part by how they handled such crises.

Seemingly casually, Donald Trump lobbed paper towels to people in Puerto Rico after a hurricane, generating scorn from critics but little damage to his political standing. Barack Obama hugged New Jersey Republican Gov. Chris Christie in 2012 after Superstorm Sandy, a brief respite from partisan tensions that had threatened the economy. George W. Bush fell out of public favor after a poor and unprepared response to Hurricane Katrina, which swamped New Orleans in 2005.

Scientists say climate change increases the frequency of extreme weather events  such as large tropical storms, and the droughts and heatwaves that create conditions for vast wildfires. U.S. weather officials recently reported that July 2021 was the hottest month recorded in 142 years of record-keeping.

Bidens nearly eight-month-old presidency has been shaped in part by perpetual crises. The president went to Texas in February after a cold winter storm caused the states power grid to fail, and he has closely monitored the wildfires in Western states.

Besides natural disasters, the president has had to contend with a multitude of other challenges. He is searching for ways to rescue the 100-200 Americans stuck in Afghanistan after the longest war in U.S. history ended a matter of days ago. He is also confronting the delta variant of the coronavirus that has plunged the country into an autumn of uncertainty only months after he declared independence from the disease at a July 4 celebration on the White House lawn.

Ida was the fifth-most powerful storm to strike the U.S. when it hit Louisiana on Sunday with maximum winds of 150 mph, likely causing tens of billions of dollars in flood, wind and other damage, including to the electrical grid. The storms remnants dropped devastating rainfall across parts of Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey on Wednesday, causing significant disruption to major cities.

___

Associated Press writers Melinda Deslatte in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Christina Larson and Darlene Superville in Washington contributed to this report.
Displaced Ethiopians from different towns in the Amhara region wait for aid distributions at a center for the internally-displaced in Debark, in the Amhara region of northern Ethiopia on Aug. 26, 2021. (Mulugeta Ayene/AP)

DEBARK, Ethiopia  As they bring war to other parts of Ethiopia, resurgent Tigray fighters face growing allegations that they are retaliating for the abuses their people suffered back home.

In interviews with The Associated Press, more than a dozen witnesses offered the most widespread descriptions yet of Tigray forces striking communities and a religious site with artillery, killing civilians, looting health centers and schools and sending hundreds of thousands of people fleeing in the past two months.

In the town of Nefas Mewucha in the Amhara region, a hospital's medical equipment was smashed. The fighters looted medicines and other supplies, leaving more than a dozen patients to die.

"It is a lie that they are not targeting civilians and infrastructures," hospital manager Birhanu Mulu told the AP. He said his team had to transfer some 400 patients elsewhere for care. "Everyone can come and witness the destruction that they caused."

The war that began last November was confined at first to Ethiopia's sealed-off northern Tigray region. Accounts of atrocities often emerged long after they occurred: Tigrayans described gang-rapes, massacres and forced starvation by federal forces and their allies from Amhara and neighboring Eritrea.

Thousands of people died, though the opaque nature of the war -- most communications and transport links have been severed -- means no one knows the real toll.

The Tigray forces retook much of their home region in a stunning turn in June, and now the fighting has spilled into Amhara. Angered by the attacks on their communities and families, the fighters are being accused of targeting civilians from the other side.

The United States, which for months has been outspoken about the abuses against Tigrayans, this week turned sharp criticism on the Tigray forces.

"In Amhara now, we now know that the (Tigray forces have) ... looted the warehouses, they've looted trucks and they have caused a great deal of destruction in all the villages they have visited," the head of the U.S. Agency for Economic Development, Sean Jones, told the Ethiopian Broadcasting Corporation.

He called the Tigray fighters "very aggressive." USAID, which feeds millions throughout Ethiopia, has seen Tigray forces looting and emptying some of its warehouses, he said.

While the U.S., United Nations and others urge all sides to stop the fighting and sit down to talks, those on the ground believe there's no peace to come. Many Ethiopians outside Tigray support the federal government's war effort, and as Tigray forces advance, families heed recruiting drives and send loved ones for military training. Ethiopia's government says "millions" have answered the call.

"Our children are living in terror. We are here to stop this," said Mekdess Muluneh Asayehegn, a new Amhara militia recruit. Propping a gun on a full plastic sack, she lay on the ground and practiced sighting.

Militia fighter Abebaw Adugna, left, shows his wound to a woman from his hometown of Addi Arkay at a center for the internally-displaced in Debark, in the Amhara region of northern Ethiopia on Aug. 27, 2021. Adugna says he was shot by Tigrayan forces during a fight for his town and the bullet is still in his leg. (Mulugeta Ayene/AP)

But the consequences of the call to war are already coming home.

"As we came here, there were lots of dead bodies (of defense forces and civilians) along the way," said Khadija Firdu, who fled the advancing Tigray forces to a muddy camp for displaced people in Debark. "Even as we entered Debark, we stepped on a dead body. We thought it was the trunk of a tree. It was dark. We came here crying."

It is not clear how many people in Amhara have been killed; claims by the warring sides cannot be verified immediately. Each has accused the other of lying or carrying out atrocities against supporters.

Shaken, the survivors are left to count bodies.

In the town of Debre Tabor, Getasew Anteneh said he watched as Tigray forces shelled and destroyed a home, killing six people.

Getasew helped carry away the dead. "I believe it was a deliberate revenge attack, and civilians are suffering."

In recent interviews with the AP, the spokesman for the Tigray forces Getachew Reda said they are avoiding civilian casualties. "They shouldn't be scared," he said last month. "Wherever we go in Amhara, people are extending a very warm welcome."

He did not respond to the AP about the new witness accounts, but tweeted in response to USAID that "we cannot vouch for every unacceptable behavior of off-grid fighters in such matters."

The Tigray forces say their offensive is an attempt to break the months-long blockade of their region of some 6 million people, as an estimated 400,000 face famine conditions in the world's worst hunger crisis in a decade. The situation "is set to worsen dramatically," the U.N. said Thursday.

The fighters also say they are pressuring Ethiopia's government to stop the war and the ethnic targeting that has seen thousands of Tigrayans detained, evicted or harassed while the prime minister, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, has used words like "cancer" and "weeds" to describe the Tigray fighters.

Ethnic Amhara, more than half a million now displaced, say innocent people have been killed as Tigray forces move in.

"I've witnessed with my own eyes when the (Tigray forces) killed one person during our journey," said Mesfin Tadesse, who fled his home in Kobo town in July. "His sister was pleading with them when they killed him for no reason."

Zewditu Tikuye, who also fled Kobo, said her 57-year-old husband was killed by Tigray fighters when he tried to stay behind to protect their home and cows. "He wasn't armed," she said. Now she shelters with her six children in a small house with 10 other people.

Others seek shelter in schools, sleeping in classrooms as newcomers drenched from the rainy season arrive. They squat in muddy clearings, waiting for plastic plates of the spongy flatbread injera to be handed out for the latest meal.

And as earlier in Tigray, people in Amhara now watch in horror as the war damages religious sites in one of the world's most ancient Christian civilizations.

On Monday, the fourth-century Checheho monastery was hit by artillery fire and partially collapsed.

"This is very brutal," said Mergeta Abraraw Meles, who works there as a cashier. He believes it was intentionally targeted by the Tigray forces. They had come peacefully, he said, but then lashed out after facing battlefield losses.

In the rubble of the monastery was a young boy, dead.

___

Cara Anna in Nairobi, Kenya contributed.
Nigerian soldiers man a checkpoint in Gwoza, Nigeria, a town newly liberated from Boko Haram on April. 8, 2015. Nigeria's army announced on Friday, Sept. 3, 2021, that nearly 6,000 Islamic militants surrendered in recent weeks. (Lekan Oyekanmi/AP)

LAGOS, Nigeria  The Nigerian army says nearly 6,000 Islamic militants have surrendered in the countrys northeast in recent weeks, marking one of the largest defections since the 12-year insurgency began.

The announcement Thursday by military spokesman Bernard Onyeuko comes several weeks after Nigerias army had announced that some 335 militants had laid down their arms.

The mass defections also follow the reported death of Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau in May, whose control over the group had been substantially weakened in recent years as a breakaway faction known as Islamic State West Africa Province, or ISWAP, rose to prominence.

ISWAPs leader has said that Shekau detonated explosives killing himself after a battle between the two groups. Analysts believe some of the militants may now be defecting because they do not want to join ISWAP in the wake of Shekaus death.

Borno State Gov. Babagana Zulum has supported the surrendering of the militants but he has acknowledged that the defections put the state in a very difficult situation.

We have to choose between an endless war or to cautiously accept the surrendered terrorists, which is really painful and difficult for anyone that has lost loved ones, difficult for all of us and even for the military, whose colleagues have died, Zulum said last month.

Boko Haram has been waging a bitter war against Nigeria since 2009, and the insurgency has spread over the years to the neighboring countries of Cameroon, Niger and Chad.

The conflict has left tens of thousands dead and displaced more than 2.3 million people in the Lake Chad region.
Ahmed Aathill Mohamed Samsudeen appears in the High Court in Auckland, New Zealand, Aug. 7, 2018, Samsudeen was shot and killed by police after he attacked people in an Auckland supermarket, Friday, Sept. 3, 2021, with a knife, injuring seven. (Greg Bowker/New Zealand Herald via AP)

WELLINGTON, New Zealand  New Zealand authorities imprisoned a man inspired by the Islamic State group for three years after catching him with a hunting knife and extremist videos  but at a certain point, despite grave fears he would attack others, they say they could do nothing more to keep him behind bars.

So for 53 days from July, police tracked the man's every move, an operation that involved some 30 officers working around the clock. Their fears were borne out Friday when he walked into an Auckland supermarket, grabbed a kitchen knife from a store shelf and stabbed five people, critically injuring three.

Two more shoppers were injured in the melee. On Saturday, three of the victims remained hospitalized in critical condition and three more were in stable or moderate conditions. The seventh person was recovering at home. The youngest victim was a 29-year-old woman, the oldest a 77-year-old man.

Court documents named the attacker as 32-year-old Ahamed Aathil Mohamed Samsudeen, a Tamil Muslim from Sri Lanka who arrived in New Zealand 10 years ago on a student visa seeking refugee status, which he was granted in 2013.

Undercover officers monitoring Samsudeen from just outside the supermarket sprang into action when they saw shoppers running and heard shouting, police said, and shot him dead within a couple of minutes of him beginning his attack. A bystander's video records the sound of 10 shots being fired in rapid succession.

Armed police stand outside a supermarket in Auckland, New Zealand, Saturday, Sept. 4, 2021, a morning after an Islamic State-inspired man from Sri Lanka entered a supermarket where he stabbed and injured six shoppers. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern described Friday's incident as a terror attack. (Brett Phibbs/AP)

The attack has highlighted deficiencies in New Zealand's anti-terror laws, which experts say are too focused on punishing actions and inadequate for dealing with plots before they are carried out. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said lawmakers were close to filling some of those legislative holes when the attack occurred. She vowed law changes by the end of the month.

Police Commissioner Andrew Coster said the law they were working under required a suspect to make the first move.

"We might have an understanding of intent, and ideology, and we might have high levels of concern," Coster said. "But that is not sufficient for us to take any enforcement action."

Samsudeen was first noticed by police in 2016 when he started posting support for terror attacks and violent extremism on Facebook.

Police twice confronted him but he kept on posting. In 2017, they arrested him at Auckland Airport. He was headed for Syria, authorities say, presumably to join the Islamic State insurgency. Police searches found he had a hunting knife and some banned propaganda material, and he was later released on bail. In 2018, he bought another knife, and police found two Islamic State videos.

He spent the next three years in jail after pleading guilty to various crimes and for breaching bail. On new charges in May, a jury found Samsudeen guilty on two counts of possessing objectionable videos, both of which showed Islamic State group imagery, including the group's flag and a man in a black balaclava holding a semi-automatic weapon.

However, the videos didn't show violent murders like some Islamic State videos and weren't classified as the worst kind of illicit material. High Court Judge Sally Fitzgerald described the contents as religious hymns sung in Arabic. She said the videos described obtaining martyrdom on the battlefield by being killed for God's cause.

A court report warned Samsudeen had the motivation and means to commit violent acts in the community and posed a high risk. It described him as harboring extreme attitudes, living an isolated lifestyle, and having a sense of entitlement.

But the judge decided to release him, sentencing him to a year's supervision at an Auckland mosque, where a leader had confirmed his willingness to help and support Samsudeen on his release.

The judge said she rejected arguments Samsudeen had simply stumbled on the videos and was trying to improve his Arabic. She said an aggravating factor was that he was on bail for earlier, similar offenses and had tried to delete his internet browser history.

Fitzgerald noted the extreme concerns of police, saying she didn't know if they were right, but "I sincerely hope they are not."

The judge also banned Samsudeen from owning any devices that could access the internet, unless approved in writing by a probation officer, and ordered that he provide access to any social media accounts he held.

"I am of the view that the risk of you reoffending in a similar way to the charges upon which you were convicted remains high," the judge concluded. "Your rehabilitation is accordingly key."

Two months later, Samsudeen took a train from a mosque in the Auckland suburb of Glen Eden where he was living to a Countdown supermarket in New Lynn, tailed at a distance by police. He wheeled a shopping cart around the store like the other customers for about 10 minutes. The store was less crowded than normal due to coronavirus distancing requirements, and undercover police were hanging back so as not to be noticed.

At about 2:40 p.m. he began shouting "Allahu akbar"  meaning "God is great"  and started stabbing random shoppers, sending people running and screaming, unleashing an attack that shocked a nation.

On Saturday, Samsudeen's brother Aroos said the family wanted to send their love and support to everyone hurt in the attack. He said Samsudeen had been suffering from mental health problems, wanted to impress his friends on Facebook and had no support.

"He would hang up the phone on us when we told him to forget about all the issues he was obsessed with. Then he would call us back again himself when he realized he was wrong," Aroos said. "Aathil was wrong again yesterday. Of course we feel very sad he could not be saved."
Tourists who have traveled to North Korea in the past have had their visits closely regulated and monitored by authorities. (Pixabay)

American passport holders hoping to travel to North Korea as tourists will have to wait at least one more year.

The State Department extended its travel ban to the dictatorship on Thursday, saying in a memo that U.S. citizens face a serious risk of arrest and long-term detention constituting imminent danger to their physical safety.

The ban, which has been renewed annually since 2017, expires Aug. 31, 2022, unless extended or revoked by the Secretary of State, the memo said.

Tourists who have traveled to North Korea in the past have had their visits closely regulated and monitored by authorities. North Korean handlers normally accompany the foreigners, prohibiting them from freely socializing with citizens and preventing them from taking unauthorized photographs.

The State Departments notice provides an exception to the policy for those specially validated for such travel, ostensibly for diplomatic purposes approved by the U.S. government.

If a request for travel to North Korea is approved, the State Department recommends that the traveler draft a will and discuss a plan with loved ones regarding care/custody of children, pets, property, belongings, non-liquid assets (collections, artwork, etc.), funeral wishes, etc.

The United States does not have diplomatic or consular services in North Korea and is unable to provide emergency services, the State Department says on its website.

The travel ban took effect in September 2017, months after the death of Otto Warmbier, a 22-year-old college student from Ohio.

Warmbier took part in a five-day tour of North Korea by way of China in December 2015. Shortly before leaving the country, he was accused of attempting to steal a propaganda poster and arrested. Despite having pleaded guilty, he was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor.

Warmbier spent the next 17 months in prison, where he eventually fell into a coma. He was evacuated to the U.S. but died two days after arriving.

Three other American captives were released by the regime after negotiations in 2018. The three Korean Americans were imprisoned for one to three years after being accused of espionage and hostile acts.
A South Korean lawmaker claims that President Moon Jae-in has directed several military units to test whether soldiers become immune to COVID-19 variants by having them remove their masks. (Pixabay)

CAMP HUMPHREYS, South Korea  The South Korean military is denying an allegation it has implemented an experimental no mask policy to test troops herd immunity against the coronavirus.

National Assembly member Ha Tae Keung, of the conservative Peoples Power Party, raised the claim during a press conference on Aug. 27. He said President Moon Jae-in directed several military units to test whether soldiers become immune to COVID-19 variants by having them remove their masks.

The policy, Ha alleged, was to observe and test the efficacy of herd immunity, responsiveness to variants, fatality rate, and so on.

Ha did not disclose the source of his claim but provided a list of military units that allegedly received the directive. He said Moon made the order without consulting the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency, the government body responsible for researching infectious diseases and illnesses.

It is a very shocking thing that the president, who is the commander-in-chief, directed the military to carry out virtually the [experiment] at the risk of the military personnels health and safety, Ha told reporters. If [this is true], I hope the president immediately makes a direct apology to the people and soldiers of the whole force.

The Blue House did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.

Ha is among a dozen candidates running for his partys nomination for the next presidential election in March.

The Ministry of National Defense denied the allegation and described it as misleading, in a statement to Stars and Stripes on Tuesday. The statement did not mention whether Moon had specifically given an order and the ministry did not elaborate on the matter.

The military has considered easing COVID-19 restrictions for the welfare of its troops and to normalize unit activities in military compounds, the statement said. Expressing this as experiment  is to belittle the militarys efforts to normalize.

The current COVID-19 regulations have been more debilitating for troops than to ordinary people, the defense ministry said, adding that discussions to loosen the rules were considered due to an accumulation of soldiers senses of fatigue.

While most of the country waited to receive a coronavirus vaccine earlier this year, South Korean service members were prioritized under government orders. Roughly 94% of troops are vaccinated compared to 33% of the general population.

Measures to ease guidance on infection prevention and control partly has not been decided yet, the Defense Ministrys statement said. They will be settled after close discussions between [the ministry] and health authorities.
Buy Photo Tokyo reported 2,539 coronavirus infections and 10 deaths, Friday, Sept. 3, 2021. Thats 1,688 fewer cases than the same day last week. (Akifumi Ishikawa/Stars and Stripes)

CAMP FOSTER, Okinawa  U.S. military commands across Japan announced 82 new cases of the coronavirus respiratory disease on Friday, mostly at Kadena Air Base on Okinawa.

Meanwhile, new infections in the nations capital city continued to slide for a 12th consecutive day, according to Tokyo Metropolitan Government data.

Tokyo reported 2,539 coronavirus infections and 10 deaths, according to public broadcaster NHK, which cited metropolitan government data. Thats 1,688 fewer cases than the same day last week.

Kadena has 47 new infections discovered between Aug. 28 and Friday, the base announced on its website. The installations number of active cases stands at 72. No other information was provided.

Yokota Air Base, the home of U.S. Forces Japan in western Tokyo, reported 19 new infections from the previous week.

One person tested positive after arriving in Japan from the United States, a base statement said. Eight were already quarantined as close contacts, and the other 10 were identified by public health authorities.

Yokosuka Naval Base, the 7th Fleets homeport south of Tokyo, had a dozen people contract COVID-19 since Tuesday, according to a base news release. Four immunized individuals tested positive after displaying symptoms, and another infection was discovered during a medical screening.

The remaining seven were not immunized, the release said. Yokosuka has 65 active cases.

Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni, near Hiroshima, had four people test positive in the past 24 hours, the base announced Friday. Three were already in quarantine; one has since been moved into quarantine.

Contact tracing is ongoing, the statement said.

Japan reported 16,738 new coronavirus cases as of 6:30 p.m. Friday, 9,312 less than the same day last week, according to public broadcaster NHK and the World Health Organization. There were 63 deaths nationwide.

The government has counted more than 1.5 million COVID-19 cases during the pandemic and 16,100 deaths, the WHO said.

Okinawa prefecture, home to most U.S. troops in Japan, reported another 507 new infections  185 fewer than the same day last week  and three deaths Friday, according to the prefectures Department of Public Health and Medical Care. Okinawa is under a state of emergency until Sept. 12.

South Korea update

No new cases of COVID-19 were reported by U.S. Forces Korea by 6 p.m. Friday.

South Korea added 1,709 new infections at midnight Thursday and five deaths, according to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agencys Central Disease Control Headquarters.

The government has counted over 255,400 COVID-19 cases during the pandemic and 2,300 deaths, the WHO said.
Chanthu downgraded to a tropical depression, remains stalled east of China, forecast to move through Tsushima Strait. (Joint Typhoon Warning Center)

Noon Wednesday, Sept. 15, Japan/Korea time: Tropical Depression Chanthu remains stalled off the east China coast. Joint Typhoon Warning Centers latest forecast track takes it through the Tsushima Strait, bring some gusty winds and up to 3 inches of rain for the Sasebo area as it moves through rapidly into the Sea of Japan (East Sea).

At 9 a.m., Chanthu was 296 miles west-southwest of Sasebo Naval Base, Japan, moving east at 7 mph with 35-mph sustained winds and 46-mph gusts. Fleet Activities Sasebo remains in Tropical Cyclone Condition of Readiness Storm Watch.

JTWC forecasts Chanthu to remain off the China coast for another day, then hit the gas pedal and move northeast through the Tsushima Strait, weakening in terms of wind, but bringing plenty of rain for both Kyushu and Koreas south coast, up to 3 inches in and around Sasebo, and shower activity Friday for Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni before dissipating in the Sea of Japan.

***

6:15 a.m. Wednesday, Sept. 15, Japan/Korea time: Chanthu has been downgraded to a tropical depression by the Joint Typhoon Warning Center, and could dissipate before it even reaches the Tsushima Straits.

At 3 a.m., Chanthu was 322 miles west-southwest of Sasebo Naval Base, crawling southeast at 6 mph and had weakened to 35-mph sustained winds and 46-mph gusts at center.

JTWC forecasts Chanthu to start moving north-northeast late Wednesday into Thursday, weakening as it moves, then die out south of Cheju Island off Koreas south coast. Well keep an eye out in case Chanthu regenerates.

***

11:30 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 14, Japan/Korea time: With every passing update, Joint Typhoon Warning Centers forecast track for Tropical Storm Chanthu keeps edging away from the Korean peninsula and toward Japans southwest island of Kyushu and western Honshu.

At 9 p.m., Chantu was 344 miles west-southwest of Sasebo Naval Base, Japan, moving east-southeast at 5 mph and holding steady at 52-mph sustained winds and 63-mph gusts at center.

Fleet Activities Sasebo remains in Tropical Cyclone Condition of Readiness Storm Watch. Fleet Activities Chinhae has not set an accelerated TCCOR, but U.S. Forces Korea posted a bulleting on its Facebook page, alerting personnel in Areas IV and VII to possible gusts of 58 to 75 mph and between 5 to 10 inches of rain associated with Chanthu.

If Chanthu remains on present course, JTWC projects it to start moving north, ever so slowly, on Wednesday, then hit the gas pedal on Thursday, moving northeast through the Tsushima Strait between Koreas southeast coast and western Kyushu.

JTWC forecasts Chanthu to weaken to 40-mph sustained winds and 52-mph gusts as it passes 44 miles north-northwest of Sasebo and 105 miles south-southeast of Chinhae between 11 a.m. and noon Friday, then 53 miles north-northwest of Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni at about 6 p.m. Friday.

Chanthu is then projected to move rapidly along the north coast of Honshu, then cut across its Tohoku (northeast) region, passing 121 miles south-southeast of Misawa Air Base early Saturday evening. Not an especially strong wind event, but plenty of rain is in store for Japans main islands this weekend.

***

Noon Tuesday, Sept. 14, Korea time: Chanthu has been downgraded to a tropical storm and remains in a holding pattern east of Shanghai on Chinas east coast. Joint Typhoon Warning Center continues to forecast Chanthu to hit the accelerator northeast on Thursday, passing through the Tsushima Strait between Koreas southeast coast and Kyushu in southwestern Japan as a tropical storm.

At 9 a.m., Chanthu was 355 miles southwest of Kunsan Air Base, South Korea, moving northeast at 4 mph with 63-mph sustained winds and 81-mph gusts. Sasebo Naval Base remains in Tropical Cyclone Condition of Readiness Storm Watch.

If Chanthu stays on present heading, JTWC projects it to put the hammer down at mid-morning Thursday, packing 46-mph sustained winds and 58-mph gusts, passing 26 miles south-southeast of Pusan on Koreas southeast coast and 107 miles north-northwest of Sasebo between noon and 1 p.m. Friday.

Chanthu is then forecast to move rapidly through the Sea of Japan (East Sea), skimming the north coast of Honshu, then crossing 49 miles southeast of Misawa Air Base at 5 p.m. Saturday, still packing 46-mph sustained winds and 58-mph gusts.

***

11:30 p.m. Monday, Sept. 13, Korea time: Chanthu is barely clinging to Category 1-equivalent typhoon status and has slammed on the brakes in its journey north, pausing just east of Shanghai, China, forecast to remain stationary for a day or so, then take off northeast passing just off the Korean Peninsulas south coast, according to the Joint Typhoon Warning Center.

At 9 p.m., Chanthu was 113 miles east of Shanghai and 426 miles southwest of Pusan, on Koreas southeast coast, crawling north at 4 mph with 75-mph sustained winds and 92-mph gusts at center.

Sasebo Naval Base in southwestern Japan remains in Tropical Cyclone Condition of Readiness Storm Watch. Its possible for Naval Base Chinhae on Koreas southeast coast to upgrade similarly as Chanthu approaches from the southwest.

If Chanthu continues on present heading, JTWC projects it to keep losing strength as it makes a circular track east of Shanghai, then kick it back into high gear at mid-morning Thursday, trucking northeast, passing 30 miles south of Chinhae, 24 south of Kimhae International Airport and 13 south of Pusan as a tropical storm, 46-mph sustained winds and 58-mph gusts at center.

Destructive winds arent forecast for southeast Korea or southwest Japan for the moment, but expect quite a bit of rain along both coasts as Chanthu knifes through the Tsushima Strait into the Sea of Japan (East Sea) as the weekend approaches. More to come at mid-day Tuesday.

***

6:20 p.m. Monday, Sept. 13, Korea time: Typhoon Chanthu continues to dial back the intensity; its now a Category 1-equivalent system, still forecast to stall along Chinas east coast for a couple of days before darting northeast, skirting the Korean peninsulas south coast late this week.

At 3 p.m., Chanthu was 117 miles east-southeast of Shanghai, on Chinas east coast, and 443 miles southwest of Pusan, on South Koreas southeast coast, moving north at 20 mph, still packing 86-mph sustained winds and 104-mph gusts.

If Chanthu stays on present heading, Joint Typhoon Warning Center projects it to keep moving north until early Tuesday morning, braking to a halt, still hanging on to Category 1-equivalent status at 75-mph sustained winds and 104-mph gusts at center, 103 miles east of Shanghai at about 10 p.m. Monday.

Chanthu is forecast to weaken as it stands fast through late Thursday, then put the pedal to the metal northeast, passing almost directly over Naval Base Chinhae, Kimhae International Airport and Pusan between 2 and 3 p.m. Friday, still packing 52-mph sustained winds and 63-mph gusts. Not typhoon strength, but still strong, with plenty of rain forecast. More to come around midnight.

***

12:15 p.m. Monday, Sept. 13, Korea time: Typhoon Chanthu continues to weaken as it keeps moving north and remains forecast to graze the south coast of Korea as a tropical storm later this week.

At 9 a.m., Chanthu was 313 miles northwest of Kadena Air Base, Okinawa, rumbling north-northeast at 18 mph, still packing Category 2-equivalent 98-mph sustained winds and 121-mph gusts.

If Chanthu stays on present course, Joint Typhoon Warning Center forecasts it keep moving north just off the east coast of China, living its last hours as a typhoon as it passes 56 miles east of Shanghai at mid-morning Tuesday.

From there, JTWC forecasts Chanthu to stall out for a day or so, then curving northeast, weakening into a tropical storm and skimming the south coast of the Korean Peninsula, passing 21 miles south of Naval Base Chinhae, 15 south of Kimhae International Airport and 6 south of Pusan between 8 and 9 a.m. Friday. Not a strong wind event, but could be a heavy rain event. Stay tuned.

***

Midnight Sunday, Sept. 12, Japan time: Typhoon Chanthu has really dialed back the intensity in the last several hours.

Its now a Category 2-equivalent system, is putting Taiwan and Japans southwesternmost islands in its rear-view mirror, getting ready to skirt the east coast of China, pause right around Shanghai, then turn northeast.

According to the Joint Typhoon Warning Center, Chanthu has the south coast of Korea in its sights by late this week.

At 9 p.m. Sunday, Chanthu was 719 miles south-southwest of Pusan, on Koreas southeast coast, moving north-northeast at 12 mph, still packing 110-mph sustained winds and 132-mph gusts at center.

The wind field is fairly wide, and the more vicious of the winds are in Chanthus east quadrants, which is why Okinawa felt such gusty winds for much of Sunday, with more forecast for Monday.

Still, Chanthu is forecast by JTWC to pass 315 miles west of Kadena at 1 a.m. Monday. U.S. bases on Okinawa remain in seasonal Tropical Cyclone Condition of Readiness 4 and should stay that way unless something totally unforeseen happens.

If Chanthu remains on present heading, JTWC projects it to keep moving north and keep weakening as it moves, passing 16 miles east of Shanghai at 3 a.m. Thursday as a tropical storm, then make a sharp right turn heading northeast.

Chanthu is then forecast to carry 46-mph sustained winds and 58-mph gusts at center as it skims Koreas south coast, passing 10 miles north of Naval Base Chinhae, directly over Kimhae International Airport and 13 miles north of Pusan around 5 p.m. Friday. More to follow at mid-day Monday.

***

Noon Sunday, Sept. 12, Japan time: Chanthu has weakened into a Category 3-equivalent typhoon, not nearly as strong as before, but still a vicious beast, now making its way along the east coast of Taiwan, headed toward Chinas east coast and possibly toward southwestern Japan, according to the Joint Typhoon Warning Center.

At 9 a.m., Chanthu was 391 miles west-southwest of Kadena Air Base, Okinawa, rumbling north at 12 mph packing 127-mph sustained winds and 150-mph gusts at center.

If Chanthu continues on its present path, JTWC projects it to keep moving north, passing 45 miles east of Taipei at mid-afternoon Sunday, still packing 121-mph sustained winds and 150-mph gusts, then pick up forward speed and weaken into a tropical storm as it passes 48 miles east of Shanghai at midnight Tuesday.

From there, Chanthu is forecast to curve northeast, reaching Cheju Island at 9 a.m. Friday packing 46-mph sustained winds and 58-mph gusts at center.

And from there, questions remain. Might Chanthu curve toward Japans main islands or drive through the Tsushima Strait into the Sea of Japan (East Sea)? The GFS and ECMWF forecast ensembles tend to diverge on that subject. Stay tuned.

Midnight Saturday, Sept. 11, Japan time: It appears as if Chanthus days as a super typhoon have ended, according to the latest from Joint Typhoon Warning Center.

But its still a vicious Category 4-equivalent beast, and while its forecast to weaken as it moves north, Chanthu is setting its sights on Taiwans east coast on Sunday, the east China coast early next week and possibly southwestern Japan as the week unfolds.

At 9 p.m. Saturday, Chanthu was 489 miles southwest of Kadena Air Base, Okinawa, and 229 miles south of Taipei, churning north-northeast at 8 mph, still packing 138-mph sustained winds and 167-mph gusts at center. Weaker than before, but still a powerful monster.

If Chanthu remains on present heading, JTWC projects it to skim Taiwans east coast, retaining Category 4-equivalent strength, then gradually weaken as it makes its way along the China coast and reaches cooler waters.

Chanthu is forecast to see its final moments as a typhoon when it passes 44 miles east of Shanghai at 3 a.m. Wednesday.

JTWC and the GFS and ECMWF forecast ensembles indicate a sharp right-hand turn northeast as it weakens into a tropical storm, then possibly moving over Japans main islands or through the Tsushima Strait into the Sea of Japan (East Sea) well into next week. Stay tuned.

***

5:40 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 11, Japan time: Its not quite as strong as it was this morning, but Chanthu remains a powerful Category 5-equivalent super typhoon. It continues roaring through the Philippines Batanes island group and is preparing to buzz-saw the east coast of Taiwan, according to the Joint Typhoon Warning Center.

And the lingering question remains, whether it might affect southwestern Japan in the coming week, and how much.

At 3 p.m., Chanthu was 529 miles southwest of Kadena Air Base, Okinawa, and 276 miles south of Taiwans capital, Taipei, rumbling north-northwest at 9 mph, packing 161-mph sustained winds and 196-mph gusts at center.

If Chanthu stays on present heading, JTWC projects it to push due north along Taiwans east coast through Sunday as a Category 4-equivalent beast, then along Chinas east coast, remaining a Category 1-equivalent typhoon as it passes 56 miles east of Shanghai at mid-day Tuesday.

Once past Shanghai, Chanthu is forecast to make a sharp curve northeast as it weakens into a tropical storm by the end of the JTWC forecast period, mid-afternoon Thursday.

Model-track guidance and the GFS and ECMWF forecast ensembles agree generally on a northeast track over or near Japans main islands to follow. Stay tuned.

***

8:15 a.m. Saturday, Sept. 11, Japan time: Just when it doesnt seem possible for Chanthu to get stronger, it does.

Joint Typhoon Warning Center reports that Super Typhoon Chanthu is packing sustained winds approaching 180 mph. And there is the lingering question of whether it might impact Japans southwesternmost islands by the middle of next week.

At 3 a.m., Chanthu was 596 miles southwest of Kadena Air Base, Okinawa, rumbling north-northwest at 11 mph, packing 178-mph sustained winds and 219-mph gusts. Certainly the most powerful tropical system in the world so far this year.

Tropical Cyclone Wind Signal 4 is hoisted for the Batanes islands, according to the Philippines national weather authority PAGASA. Typhoon warnings are posted for Taiwan, according to the Central Weather Bureau.

If Chanthu stays on present course, JTWC projects it to pass through the Batanes and Babuyan islands, then skim the east coast of Taiwan, maintaining Category 4-equivalent intensity as it passes 84 miles east of Kaohsiung and 35 east of Taipei between 4 a.m. and 7 p.m. Sunday, then skim Chinas east coast, weakening as it moves into cooler waters and interacts with land.

Long-term, Chanthu remains forecast to make a sharp turn east, becoming a tropical storm at the end of the forecast period, early Thursday morning. The GFS and ECMWF forecast ensembles indicate northeast tracks through Japans main islands later next week. Much to keep an eye on. Stay tuned.

***

12:15 a.m. Saturday, Sept. 11, Japan time: Once more, Chanthu has regained Category 5-equivalent super-typhoon intensity and remains on course to graze northeastern Luzon and the east coast of Taiwan through the weekend, according to the Joint Typhoon Warning Center

Questions remain, though, about its long-term future and whether southwestern Japan may come into the picture by the middle of next week.

At 9 p.m. Friday, Chanthu was 307 miles north-northeast of Metro Manila and 615 miles south-southwest of Kadena Air Base, Okinawa, hurtling northwest at 12 mph packing 161-mph sustained winds and 196-mph gusts at center.

If Chanthu stays on present course, JTWC projects it to pass just northeast of Cagayan in northeaster Luzon, bull through the Babuyan and Batanes island groups and along Taiwans east coast, passing 84 miles east of Kaohsiung and 43 miles east of Taipei between 5 a.m. and 8 p.m. Saturday, still packing 121-mph sustained winds and 150-mph gusts. Plenty of rain forecast as well, for all regions affected.

From there, Chanthu is projected to pick up forward speed and move along Chinas east coast and into cooler waters. As it makes forecast pass of 93 miles southeast of Shanghai early Tuesday morning, Chanthu is projected to make a sharp turn east and weaken into a tropical storm by the end of the forecast period, late Wednesday evening.

Model-track guidance and the GFS and ECMWF forecast ensembles remain divided on just where Chanthu might end up. Stay tuned.

***

12:15 p.m. Friday, Sept. 10, Japan time: Once again, Chanthu has morphed into Category 4-equivalent a super typhoon.

Joint Typhoon Warning Centers forecast track continues to take it northbound through Taiwan over the weekend and along Chinas east coast at the start of the week.

Where it goes from there, is still open to question.

At 9 a.m., Chanthu was 673 miles south-southwest of Kadena Air Base, Okinawa, rumbling northwest at 12 mph, packing 150-mph sustained winds and 184-mph gusts at center.

If Chanthu keeps on its present heading, JTWC projects it to graze the coast of Cagayan in northeast Luzon, pass directly through the Batanes and Babuyan island groups on Saturday, then ram ashore over southeast Taiwan late Saturday evening, still packing 138-mph sustained winds and 167-mph gusts.

Chanthu is expected to cross Taiwan from south to north overnight Saturday into Sunday, re-emerging over water in the East China Sea, steadily weakening and passing 126 miles east of Shanghai at mid-morning Wednesday as a tropical storm.

Where to from there? The GFS and ECMWF forecast ensembles remain somewhat at odds, with EMCWF indicating a track over eastern China and GFS favoring a track toward southwestern Japan. Okinawa appears out of harms way, but again, thats open to debate. Stay tuned.

***

Midnight Thursday, Sept. 9, Japan time: With every passing Joint Typhoon Warning Center update, Typhoon Chanthu (no longer a super typhoon) gets more and more intriguing. Where will it go? Taiwan? China? Southwestern Japan? A combination of all three?

At 9 p.m., Chanthu was 348 miles east-northeast of Metro Manila, moving west-northwest at 14 mph and had weakened (if it can be called that) to 138-mph sustained winds and 167-mph gusts, still Category 4-equivalent strength, but forecast to keep weakening as it moves north.

If Chanthu stays on present heading, JTWC projects it to curve northwest, then north, passing just off of Cagayan in northeastern Luzon, grazing the east coast of Taiwan, passing 22 miles east of Taipei at 4 p.m. Sunday, still packing 98-mph sustained winds and 121-mph gusts as it roars past.

From there, Chanthu is forecast to head north, skimming the east coast of China for most of Monday, then make a sharp right turn east at mid-afternoon Tuesday, almost like its pausing, taking a look around and trying to decide which way to go at the end of the forecast period. The GFS and ECMWF forecast ensembles seem to agree. Stay tuned.

***

7 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 9, Japan time: Here we go again. Chanthu has weakened some, it keeps wavering a bit, but it remains a vicious Category 4-equivalent super typhoon. And according to the latest Joint Typhoon Warning Center forecast track, it appears as though Japans southwestern islands or the Korean peninsula, or both, might not be out of the woods.

At 3 p.m., Chanthu was 420 miles east of Metro Manila, moving west-northwest at 10 mph, still packing 150-mph sustained winds and 184-mph gusts at center.

If Chanthu remains on present course, JTWC projects it to pass just east of Cagayan in northeastern Luzon through Friday, perhaps strengthening slightly as it curves northwest to north, then cut a swath through the weekend over Taiwan, making a near-direct hit on Taipei at mid-afternoon Sunday, still packing 115-mph sustained winds and 144-mph gusts at center.

After that  well, JTWC forecasts Chanthu to weaken as it moves north, into a Category 1-equivalent typhoon as it passes Shanghai at mid-evening Monday, then becoming a severe tropical storm at mid-afternoon Tuesday as it moves south of the Yellow Sea (West Sea) near the Korean peninsula by the end of the forecast period.

Model-track guidance, the GFS and ECMWF forecast ensembles are in general agreement that Chanthu could turn northeast from that point, possibly threatening Kyushu in southwestern Japan or the southeastern tip of the Korean peninsula by the middle of next week.

In short, much has changed already, but more change could still happen. Stay tuned.

***

11:45 a.m. Thursday, Sept. 9, Japan time: Super Typhoon Chanthu has re-intensified into a Category 5-equivalent cyclone. It remains east of Luzon in the Philippines, and Joint Typhoon Warning Centers latest forecast track takes it across southern Taiwan on Sunday and skimming Chinas east coast early next week.

At 9 a.m., Chanthu was 477 miles east of Metro Manila, moving west at 12 mph with 161-mph sustained winds and 196-mph gusts at center.

If Chanthu stays on present heading, JTWC projects it to remain a super typhoon for the next two days, curving northwest and weakening slightly as it makes landfall over the southern tip of Taiwan, passing 22 miles west of Kaohsiung and 75 west of Taipei, still packing 115-mph sustained winds and 138-mph gusts.

Chanthu is next forecast to make secondary landfall over east China as a Category 1-equivalent storm, then weaken into a tropical storm as it comes within 58 miles of Shanghai at the end of the JTWC forecast period, mid-morning Tuesday.

The GFS and ECMWF forecast ensembles are in better agreement, at least on reaching the China coast; GFS then forecasts a sharp right turn toward Japans southwesternmost islands by the middle of next week. Stay tuned.

***

11:45 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 8, Japan time: Chanthu has weakened slightly, but remains a powerful super typhoon. Joint Typhoon Warning Centers latest forecast track keeps it on course toward the northern Philippines and Taiwan, maintaining Category 4-equivalent intensity through the next few days.

At 9 p.m. Wednesday, Chanthu was 776 miles south-southeast of Kadena Air Base, Okinawa, churning west at 12 mph, packing 155-mph sustained winds and 178-mph gusts at center. Slightly weaker than at last report, due to an ongoing eyewall replacement cycle; once thats done, Chanthu could restrengthen.

If Chanthu stays on present heading, JTWC projects it to curve northwest in the next few days, waver between typhoon and super-typhoon status as it moves, passing just northeast of the northern tip of Luzon and through the Babuyan island group as a super typhoon late Friday evening.

From there, JTWC forecasts Chanthu to gradually weaken, pass south of Taiwan and ram ashore over southeastern China, still a Category 2-equivalent typhoon as it makes landfall.

Then theres the pesky spread among model-track guidance and the GFS and ECMWF forecast ensembles  in some cases, the solutions spread as far west as southern China and Vietnam and as far east as Kyushu and Shikoku in southwestern Japan. This is still a young storm and much can change. Stay tuned.

***

5:45 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 8, Japan time: Chanthu has intensified into the second Category 5-equivalent super typhoon of the northwest Pacific tropical cyclone season. Its Joint Typhoon Warning Center forecast track has edged further south, and Chanthu is now projected to graze northeast Luzon in the Philippines and pass south of Taiwan in the coming days.

At 3 p.m., Chanthu was 780 miles south-southeast of Kadena Air Base, rumbling west-southwest at 14 mph, packing 161-mph sustained winds and 196-mph gusts at center.

If Chanthu stays on present heading, JTWC forecasts it to weaken back to a Category 4-equivalent cyclone, but waver between typhoon and super-typhoon status for the next couple of days, passing near Aparri on Luzons north coast, rumble through the Babuyan island group, then south of Taiwan before making landfall at mid-morning Monday over southeastern China.

Surigae was the other northwest Pacific super typhoon, back in April; it followed the east coast of the Philippines, curved south of Okinawa and Japans main islands and hurtled all the way to south of Alaska as a sub-tropical low in late April.

***

6:15 a.m. Wednesday, Sept. 8, Japan time: In less than two days, Chanthu has mushroomed from a tropical disturbance to a Category 4-equivalent monster, and according to the Joint Typhoon Warning Centers latest forecast track, it may yet become a super typhoon within the next several hours.

At 3 a.m., Chanthu was 794 miles south-southeast of Kadena Air Base, Okinawa, rumbling due west at 13 mph, packing 144-mph sustained winds and 173-mph gusts at center.

If Chanthu remains on current heading, JTWC forecasts it to peak at 155-mph sustained winds and 190-mph gusts by as early as mid-afternoon Wednesday, remaining a super typhoon as it curves west-northwest toward the southern tip of Taiwan, passing 48 miles southwest of Kaohsiung at 3 a.m. Sunday, then making landfall at 3 a.m. Monday over southeastern China.

What happens after that remains a question mark. The GFS and ECMWF forecast ensembles indicate movement over land in southeastern China, possibly moving back over water and heading toward southwestern Japan. Wait and see. Stay tuned.

***

12:10 a.m. Wednesday, Sept. 8, Japan time: Typhoon Chanthu has turned onto a westerly heading and continues to intensify. Joint Typhoon Warning Center projects Chanthu may eventually peak as a Category 4-equivalent super typhoon by late Friday evening as it approaches southern Taiwan.

At 9 p.m. Tuesday, Chanthu was 828 miles south-southeast of Kadena Air Base, Okinawa, moving almost due west at 13 mph and had strengthened to 81-mph sustained winds and 98-mph gusts at center, Category 1-equivalent intensity.

If Chanthu remains on present course, JTWC forecasts it to keep strengthening as it arcs west-northwest, peaking at 150-mph sustained winds and 184-mph gusts at 9 p.m. Friday, then graze the southern tip of Taiwan, passing 37 miles south-southwest of Kaohsiung late Saturday evening, still maintaining Category 4-equivalent strength.

From there, where Chanthu heads remains open for debate.

Both the GFS and ECMWF forecast ensembles indicate a curve north along the southeast China coast or through the Formosa Strait. GFS long-range best track favors a curve northeast around the Japanese southwesternmost islands toward Kyushu sometime early next week.

Thats a long way off. A lot can change over the course of seven days or so. Stay tuned.

***

6:20 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 7, Japan time: Chanthu has become the northwest Pacifics fourth typhoon of the season. Joint Typhoon Warning Center continues to forecast Chanthu to move west-northwest, peaking as a Category 4-equivalent typhoon before reaching the southern tip of Taiwan late Saturday.

At 3 p.m., Chanthu was 879 miles southeast of Kadena Air Base, Okinawa, moving west-northwest at 12 mph with 75-mph sustained winds and 92-mph gusts at center, Category 1-equivalent intensity.

JTWCs forecast calls for Chanthu to keep strengthening quickly, reaching 132-mph sustained winds and 161-mph gusts at mid-afternoon Friday, then weakening as it crosses the southern edge of Taiwan.

JTWC continues to forecast Chanthu to not be a threat to U.S. bases in Japan or Korea. But theres quite a spread in the model-track guidance and the GFS and ECMWF forecast ensembles. Bear in mind that Chanthu is just over a day old, so a lot can change in the coming days.

***

7 a.m. Tuesday, Sept. 7, Japan time: 19W has been upgraded to a tropical storm, and while rapidly strengthening, the latest Joint Typhoon Warning Center forecast track takes it even further away from Japans southwesternmost islands than reported earlier.

At 3 a.m., 19W was 989 miles southeast of Kadena Air Base, Okinawa, moving northwest at 8 mph with 52-mph sustained winds and 63-mph gusts at center.

If 19W continues on same heading, JTWC projects it to curve west-northwest, continue to intensify quickly over the warm waters of the Philippine Sea, peak at 121-mph sustained winds and 150-mph gusts as it moves toward southern Taiwan by early Sunday morning.

***

12:15 a.m. Tuesday, Sept. 7, Japan time: Tropical Depression 19W has strengthened some, but remains forecast by Joint Typhoon Warning Center to pass well southwest of Okinawa late Saturday.

At 9 p.m., 19W was 1,043 miles southeast of Kadena Air Base, moving north-northwest at 8 mph, and its core winds have increased to 35-mph sustained winds and 46-mph gusts. U.S. bases remain in seasonal Tropical Cyclone Condition of Readiness 4.

If 19W stays on present heading, JTWC projects it to curve west-northwest in the next day or so, mushrooming as it moves, peaking at 110-mph sustained winds and 127-mph gusts at center, but passing 385 miles southwest of Kadena at 9 p.m. Saturday, the end of the current JTWC forecast period.

Model-track guidance and forecast ensembles remain somewhat spread out, with GFS continuing to show a curve toward Japans southwestern Ishigaki and Miyako Islands, while ECMWF favors a track more toward Taiwan and southeastern China. We will see what we will see.

***

6:15 p.m. Monday, Sept. 6, Japan time: Happy Labor Day, all.

Tropical Depression 19W is now up and at em well to Okinawas southeast and is forecast to track toward Taiwan and Japans southwestern-most islands.

For the moment, according to the Joint Typhoon Warning Centers initial forecast track, it does not appear to be a threat to Okinawa, but its way too early to make a definitive call. A lot can change over a few days.

At 3 p.m., 19W was 1,090 miles southeast of Kadena Air Base, moving almost due north at 7 mph with 29-mph sustained winds and 40-mph gusts at center. U.S. bases on Okinawa remain in seasonal Tropical Cyclone Condition of Readiness 4.

If 19W remains on its present course, JTWC projects it to curve west-northwest in the next day or so, intensifying as it moves across the warm Philippines Sea waters, peak at 110-mph sustained winds and 127-mph gusts and come within 338 miles southwest of Kadena at mid-afternoon Saturday.

Model-track guidance and forecast ensembles are quite divided, with GFS indicating a curve northeast toward Japans southwestern islands and ECMWF favoring a track toward China, with plenty of outliers in each ensemble.

Too early to tell. The only thing certain is uncertainty. Storm Tracker has the watch.

As for Tropical Storm Conson, JTWC forecasts it to head northwest through central Luzon in the Philippines. Were keeping an eye on that one as well.

***

3 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 5, Japan time: Make that two tropical disturbances, 94W Invest 328 miles west-southwest of Guam and 95W Invest 513 miles east-southeast of Legazpi in the Philippines. Too early to tell, however, if either may become a threat to U.S. facilities.

Model track guidance and forecast ensembles for 94W indicates a track northwest toward Japans southwesternmost islands followed by a northeast curve in the next five to six days. Guidance and ensembles for 95W show a north to northwest track toward the Philippines and/or Taiwan.

Its really too soon to draw any conclusions regarding either system. Whether either becomes a threat to Okinawa, southwestern Japan or South Korea, is too early to say. Joint Typhoon Warning Center calls for slight intensification, if any, over the next day or so. Storm Tracker still has the watch.

***

3:30 p.m. Friday, Sept. 3, Guam time: Been awhile since weve had tropical traffic in the western Pacific, but eyes are now being cast on 94W Invest, a tropical disturbance that at 10 a.m. was 267 miles south of Andersen Air Force Base.

According to forecast models, 94W could head northwest toward Japans southwestern Ryukyu Islands next week.

But its too early to draw conclusions; the disturbance first surfaced on Thursday, and model guidance and forecast ensembles, though in general agreement on a northwest track, are pretty much spread out at this point. Storm Tracker has the watch.
Pentagon spokesman John Kirby listens during a media briefing at the Pentagon, Thursday, Sept. 2, 2021, in Washington. Kirby is joined by U.S. Air Force Gen. Tod Wolters, commander, U.S. European Command and NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Europe, via video conference. (Alex Brandon/AP)

Some 38,000 Afghans have been evacuated from their country to four U.S. military bases in Europe during the past two weeks, and nearly half have since moved on to the United States, the top American general in Europe said Thursday.

The U.S. military has sped up the processes to move the Afghans through American hubs in Europe and the Middle East in recent days, as the Pentagon has worked to swiftly move eligible evacuees to American soil, said Air Force Gen. Tod Wolters, commander of U.S. European Command.

Wolters warned last week that the screening process had been moving at an unsustainably slow rate, with evacuees typically stuck at the European bases for days, and sometimes approaching the 10-day limit that host nations  Germany, Italy and Spain  agreed to allow U.S.-bound evacuees in their countries.

We've refined this process over the course of the last 10 days, Wolters said Thursday in a news briefing. As you can well imagine if we wind up in situations where we are backed up with evacuees in certain locations, if the screening process is too exorbitantly slow, [then] we can wind up having some serious problems.

Since evacuation operations began at the European bases  Ramstein Air Base and Rhine Ordinance Barracks in Germany, Naval Station Rota in Spain and Naval Air Station Sigonella in Italy  the military has moved from processing about 60 evacuees per hour to more than 250 per hour, Wolters said. He largely credited software improvements that allow security screening systems to work together more efficiently.

The U.S. military has been conducting biometric and biographic security screenings of all the Afghans aiming to enter the United States, which run their information through several databases overseen by the Defense Department, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the FBI, Wolters said. Evacuees are screened when they first enter the U.S. bases in Europe, shortly before they board a flight to the United States and again once they arrive on American soil, he said.

To date, only one of the 38,000 Afghans to arrive at an American base in Europe has been flagged as having a problematic background. Wolters said the individual had been transferred into the appropriate custody of U.S. interagency officials in Germany. Asked if the individual was a member of the Islamic States Afghan affiliate, known as ISIS-K, or the Taliban, Wolters said he could not provide specific details about the case, but he understood the person was not a high threat.

Another 58 evacuees, Wolters said, had yet to clear the security screens as of Thursday, but he said he expected all of those individuals to be cleared in the coming days.

To date, Wolters said 12,000 evacuees had come through Ramstein, 5,000 through Rhine, 2,500 through NAS Sigonella, and about 1,800 through Rota.

The general said he expected the pace to hasten in the coming days, with some 2,500 to 3,000 Afghan departing the European bases for the United States each day. So far, about 16,000 Afghans have moved from bases in Europe to the United States. The White House said Thursday that it had space for about 50,000 Afghans in the United States at military bases in Texas, Virginia, Wisconsin and New Jersey. The Pentagon said Wednesday that some 20,000 Afghans had arrived in the United States.

Meanwhile, the 20 U.S. troops injured in the ISIS-K bombing at Kabuls airport last week as they worked to evacuate as many people from Afghanistan as possible, have left Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany and they are recovering at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., officials said.

Top Marine Corps leaders, Gen. David Berger, the service commandant, and the Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps Troy Black, visited the 15 injured Marines at Walter Reed on Monday and Wednesday, according to the service.

One of the injured Marines was in critical condition, as of Thursday, a Marine statement said. Three were in serious condition and the other 11 were in stable condition. The condition of the other five wounded service members was not immediately available, a Pentagon official said.

I want to extend our deepest sympathy to the families of the 13 heroes, who gave their lives to save so many Americans and so many Afghans in the Aug. 26 bombing at Kabuls Hamid Karzai International Airport, Wolters said Thursday. We also extend our thoughts and prayers to all those wounded, and all the family members  [of] those who paid the ultimate price in Afghanistan over the course of the last two decades.

You'll always be remembered, and you'll always be in our thoughts and prayers.
The death cap mushroom is extremely poisonous. (USDA.gov)

WARSAW, Poland  A second child of an Afghan family evacuated from Kabul to Poland died Friday after eating soup containing death cap mushrooms, which the family had unknowingly gathered in a Polish forest outside their quarantine center.

The 6-year-old boy had received an emergency liver transplant but doctors were unable to save him. His 5-year-old brother was pronounced dead on Thursday at Poland's main children's hospital, where both were treated.

The boys' 17-year-old sister was treated at the hospital and released, in good condition. Doctors said the dose of toxins was less damaging to an adult with larger body mass than to children.

Authorities are investigating whether negligence could have been a factor in the poisoning last week.

The family of two adults and four children allegedly cooked soup with the highly poisonous mushrooms they found in the forest around a center where they were undergoing a mandatory quarantine. They entered the center in Podkowa Lesna, a small town near Warsaw, on Aug. 23.

Prosecutors are questioning the center's staff about the events last week as part of an investigation that could lead to possible criminal charges for negligence and unintentional exposing people to a serious threat of loss of health or life, Aleksandra Skrzyniarz, a spokesperson for the prosecutors' office in Warsaw, said. The offense carries a maximum prison term of three years, she said.

Interior Minister Mariusz Kaminski said this week that the poisonings were a "tragedy, but did not result from any negligence at the center."

Authorities have rejected media speculation that food rations at the center may have been insufficient.

Poland evacuated the family last month at Britain's request after the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. The father had worked for the British military.

In a separate incident at a different center near Warsaw, four Afghan men were hospitalized after eating poisonous mushrooms, according to the state Office for Foreigners.

There are about 1,300 kinds of mushrooms in Poland, some 200 of which are poisonous. They are a popular food, but very good knowledge of them is required to distinguish poisonous from edible ones.

In 2019, 27 people got mushroom poisoning in Poland, and 25 of them had to be hospitalized. No deaths were reported.

Death cap mushrooms, among the most poisonous in the world, closely resemble Poland's edible parasol mushrooms.

Mushrooms in Europe are often different from those in the home countries of newcomers, and there have been other such cases of mushroom poisoning in past years in Germany and elsewhere.

In Denmark in 2017, two children from a Congolese refugee family died and another nine family members were hospitalized after eating toxic mushrooms.
In this March 30, 2018 file photo, Alexanda Amon Kotey, left, and El Shafee Elsheikh, who were allegedly among four British jihadis who made up a brutal Islamic State cell dubbed "The Beatles," sit on a sofa during an interview with The Associated Press at a security center in Kobani, Syria. (Hussein Malla/AP)

Seven years after the Islamic State horrified people around the world by beheading hostages and using their deaths in propaganda videos, one former member has admitted to his involvement in the killings of four Americans.

Alexanda A. Kotey, 37, pleaded guilty Thursday in federal court in Alexandria to playing a role in the kidnappings and deaths of journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff and aid workers Peter Kassig and Kayla Mueller. The three men were beheaded on camera in videos posted online. The circumstances of Muellers death remain unclear.

All four traveled to Syria, their friends and family have said, out of an intense desire to help - either by reporting on the war there or giving aid to those displaced by the conflict.

Koteys plea marks the first time a member of the Islamic State has been held accountable in a U.S. court for those killings. He faces a mandatory life sentence.

In exchange for his admission of guilt and promised cooperation, prosecutors agreed that after Kotey serves 15 years in a U.S. prison, he may seek to serve the rest of his sentence in the United Kingdom, where he was born. If that happens, Kotey also agreed he would plead guilty in a United Kingdom prosecution and face a life sentence there, and be returned to the United States if released by the U.K.

The government agreed to the possible transfer because three British men were also abducted by the same terror group, and two, aid workers David Haines and Alan Henning, were slain. A third, journalist John Cantlie, was never found and the British government said in 2019 he may still be alive.

Parents of all four American victims were in the courtroom Thursday, taking notes and dabbing their eyes as the names of their children were read over and over. They had pressed for criminal trials in the United States.

After the hearing, Diane Foley, James Foleys mother, thanked the Justice Department for this outstanding prosecution while beseeching the government to prioritize the return of all U.S. nationals kidnapped or wrongly detained abroad, calling it a silent epidemic.

Kotey was captured in Syria in 2018 along with El Shafee Elsheikh, another accused Islamic State militant who is awaiting trial in the case, and brought to the United States in October.

Along with the masked killer from the videos, Mohammed Emwazi, who died in a 2015 drone strike, and a fourth Londoner, Aine Davis, they became known by hostages as The Beatles because of their British accents.

Kotey was born and raised in London and began practicing Islam in his early 20s. He and Emwazi attended the same mosque and traveled to Syria together in 2012.

The United Kingdom, which had revoked the pairs citizenship, aided the U.S. prosecution after assurances the men would not face the death penalty.

The justice, fairness and humanity that this defendant received in the United States stand in stark contrast to the cruelty, inhumanity and indiscriminate violence touted by the terrorist organization he espoused, Raj Parekh, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, said after the hearing. Today, through the voices and lives of the victims, justice spoke, and it is those words that will resonate through history.

In court, Kotey read a statement in which he said he was principally involved in every process of these negotiations of trying to extract ransom from the United States, including emails and the proof-of-life videos and emails sent to the hostages families. This role of mine required that I at times engage in acts of violence against the captives in order to subdue them, in order to compel those western governments, including the United States, to act fast and cooperate with our demands. I had no doubt that any failure of those foreign governments to comply with our demands would ultimately result in either the indefinite detention of those foreign captives, or their execution.

He said he also served as a sniper for the Islamic State.

Prosecutors have alleged that both Kotey and Elsheikh were involved in the Islamic States attempts to extract ransom from prisoners families through calculated brutality.

Kotey instructed hostages to kneel and watch a Syrian prisoners execution while holding signs begging for their release, prosecutors said.

Under President Barack Obama, the military tried and failed to rescue the four American hostages.

Foley, 40, a freelance journalist working for the Boston-based GlobalPost, was abducted along with a British translator in November 2012. GlobalPost said it worked desperately to rescue Foley, but video of his death was released in August 2014.

Sotloff, 31, was also a freelance journalist, raised in Florida, who was abducted near Aleppo in August 2013. Video of his death was released in September 2014.

Mueller, 26, was a humanitarian aid worker from Arizona who had worked with agencies such as Doctors Without Borders when she was kidnapped in August 2013. Her family received an email with photos confirming her death in February 2015.

Kassig, 26, was a former Army Ranger from Indiana who founded a humanitarian aid group for refugees and was on his way to deliver food and medical supplies to refugees when he was abducted in October 2013. Video of his death was released in November 2014.

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria reached its peak in 2015, and as the groups territory shrunk, the campaign of public beheadings ended. But adherents of the groups violent ideology continue to rely on such brutal methods; in recent months, observers say Islamist militants have decapitated dozens of civilians in Mozambique.

Elsheikh is set to go to trial in January. Davis was imprisoned in Turkey in 2017.

Kotey pleaded guilty to charges including hostage-taking resulting in the deaths of four Americans. and conspiring to support the terrorists who killed American, British and Japanese hostages.
Nauman Hussain, center, who is charged with 20 counts of second degree manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide in the 2018, limousine crash walks into a converted courtroom to accommodate more people at the Schoharie High School gymnasium Thursday, Sept. 2, 2021, in Schoharie, N.Y. (Hans Pennink/AP)

SCHOHARIE, N.Y.  The operator of a limousine company was spared prison time Thursday in a 2018 crash that killed 20 people when catastrophic brake failure sent a stretch limo full of birthday revelers hurtling down a hill in upstate New York.

Loved ones of the dead excoriated Nauman Hussain, 31, as he sat quietly at the defense table during a hearing that was held in a high school gymnasium to provide for social distancing among the many relatives, friends and media members attending.

Hussain, who operated Prestige Limousine, had originally been charged with 20 counts each of criminally negligent homicide and second-degree manslaughter in what was the deadliest U.S. transportation disaster in a decade.

But under an agreement for Hussain to plead guilty only to the homicide counts and spare families the uncertainties and emotional toll of a trial, he faces five years of probation and 1,000 hours of community service. His case had been delayed by the coronavirus pandemic.

As Judge George Bartlett III prepared to accept the agreement, loved ones of the victims took turns talking of lives cut short, the holes left in their own and their frustration that the operator would avoid time behind bars.

Every day I try to wrap my head around this impossible situation, said Sheila McGarvey, whose 30-year-old son Shane McGowan and his wife, Erin, were passengers. I hate every day without him.

She wished, she said, that a fraction of any money Hussain spent on lawyers would have been spent to fix the limo's brakes.

Hussain was accused of putting the victims in a death trap.

My son, my baby boy, was killed in a limo while trying to be safe, said Beth Muldoon, the mother of Adam Jackson, 34, who was killed along with his wife, Abigail King Jackson.

The couple, who with the others had rented the limo to avoid drinking and driving, had two small children. Muldoon lamented the holidays and life milestones the parents will miss.

One spectator left the hearing, cursing and shouting, He killed 20 people, before apologizing to the judge on her way out.

Hussain sat quietly as parents talked about their smothering grief and anger. Defense attorney Joseph Tacopina said his client accepts responsibility for his actions and cried as the relatives spoke.

Hussain did not answer reporters' questions after the court proceeding.

Under the deal, Hussain will be formally sentenced after an interim probation of two years. The judge noted that Hussain's guilty plea could be used to buoy any lawsuits.

On Oct. 6, 2018, Axel Steenburg of Amsterdam, 30 miles west of Albany, rented the 2001 Ford Excursion limousine for the 30th birthday of his new wife, Amy. The party group, ranging in age from 24 to 34, included Axels brother, Amys three sisters and two of their husbands, and close friends.

En route to Brewery Ommegang, south of Cooperstown, the limos brakes failed on a downhill stretch of state Route 30 in Schoharie, west of Albany. The vehicle blew through a stop sign at a T-intersection at over 100 mph (160 kph) and crashed into a small ravine near a popular country store.

Seventeen family members and friends were killed, along with the driver and two bystanders outside the store.

Schoharie County District Attorney Susan Mallerys office has said Hussain allowed passengers to ride in the limo despite having received multiple notices of violations from the state and having been told repairs were inadequate. State police said the vehicle should have been taken out of service because of brake problems identified in an inspection a month before the crash.

But complications were highlighted in the plea agreement.

In a separate report last fall, the National Transportation Safety Board concluded that while the crash was likely caused by Prestige Limousines egregious disregard for safety that resulted in brake failure, ineffective state oversight contributed.

Prosecutors and Hussains lawyers said the plea agreement assured a resolution in a case that would have faced an uncertain outcome if presented to a jury.

Lee Kindlon, an attorney for Hussain, has said his client tried to maintain the limousine and relied on what he was told by state officials and a repair shop that inspected it.

According to the plea agreement, Hussain had the 2001 vehicle serviced at a Mavis Discount Tire store multiple times in the two years before the crash, including twice for brake repairs. The same shop also inspected the limousine, rather than the state Department of Transportation as required, the document said.

A telephone message left with Mavis Discount Tires corporate headquarters in Millwood, New York, was not immediately returned.

Prestige repeatedly changed the listed number of seats and took other steps to skirt safety regulations, according to documents released by the NTSB.

The safety board said last fall that the state Department of Transportation knew of Prestiges out-of-service violations and lack of operating authority and that the state Department of Motor Vehicles failed to properly register the limousine, allowing Prestige to circumvent safety regulations and inspection requirements.

In February 2020, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed limousine safety bills inspired by the upstate crash and one in 2015 on Long Island that killed four women.

One law requires safety belts, and another requires drivers of limos carrying nine or more passengers to have a passenger-endorsed commercial drivers license.

__

Associated Press writer Carolyn Thompson contributed from Buffalo, N.Y.
WASHINGTON (Tribune News Service)  Congress is considering providing another $60 million to help address the massive pandemic-induced backlog of records requests that has kept veterans and their families from accessing benefits, including medical treatment.

Veterans request copies of their service records, which are held by the National Archives and Records Administration, in order to receive many available benefits including treatment through Veterans Affairs, college tuition through the GI Bill, home loans, proof of military experience for employers, and the option to be buried in veterans' cemeteries. Often the records are sent directly to the agency that needs them, and the veteran may not maintain a copy for future use.

Most service records prior to 2004 are not digitized and could not be accessed remotely while federal workers were ordered to work from home for months during the pandemic. Millions of veteran records only exist on paper.

The backlog reached a peak of half a million requests in May 2021, according to William Bosanko, Chief Operating Officer at the National Archives and Records Administration.

On Thursday the House Oversight and Reform Committee approved the new funds as part of a $3.5 trillion social spending bill expected to be considered later this fall.

The $60 million to the National Archives will go to address backlogs in responding to veterans requests for military personnel records, and to increase digital preservation efforts and to address existing Freedom of Information Act requests. It is in addition to $150 million already approved by Congress this year to speed up digitization.

This funding will help ensure that veterans can obtain the benefits and essential services they are entitled to after sacrificing for our country, committee chairwoman Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., said.

National Archives officials have recalled employees to work in person at its main St. Louis facility, created a second shift and implemented weekend shifts. It has also hired more staff and contractors and is prioritizing emergency claims, according to National Archivist David Ferriero. While the growth of the backlog has plateaued, the National Archives has repeatedly warned Congress it does not currently have the resources to address the backlog.

In July, Ferriero wrote in a letter to lawmakers that without more money it would take at least another year to process all outstanding claims.

They cant wait a year. They deserve this now, said Rep. Fred Keller, R-Pa., who added that his office has been inundated with calls from veterans seeking help getting claims processed more quickly.

Most veterans who left service after 2014 already have digital records available, according to the VA, but the federal effort to digitize existing records has dragged since it began in 1994. Older veterans are the most likely to still have paper records that have to be pulled and scanned in person at a National Archives facility.

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2021 Los Angeles Times. Visit at latimes.com.

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem visits the U.S. border near McAllen, Texas, on July 26, 2021. Noem announced Friday, Sept. 3, 2021, that the National Guard troops she deployed to the U.S. border with Mexico will return later this month. (Stephen Groves/AP)

SIOUX FALLS, S.D.  South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem announced Friday that National Guard troops that she deployed to the U.S. border with Mexico will return later this month.

The Republican governor deployed 48 National Guard troops to Texas in July. The deployment came in response to a request from Texas and Arizona to send law enforcement officers under an agreement between states to assist during emergencies. Noem said the soldiers encountered more than 6,000 people crossing the border in the month and a half they were stationed there.

"Unfortunately, because of the Biden Administration's failed border policies, the system has become one of facilitating the crossing of illegal immigrants into our country," she said in a statement.

Overall, U.S. authorities stopped migrants about 210,000 times at the border in July, up from 188,829 in June and the highest in more than 20 years. But the numbers aren't directly comparable because many crossed repeatedly under a pandemic-related ban that expelled people from the country immediately without giving them a chance to seek asylum but carried no legal consequences.

A federal judge ruled Thursday that the U.S. government's practice of denying migrants a chance to apply for asylum on the Mexican border until space opens up to process claims is unconstitutional.

After a visit to the border in July, Noem had said she would consider keeping the troops in Texas beyond a two-month deployment but wanted Texas to cover some of that cost. Noem said Friday that Texas no longer needed South Dakota's help and that it would increase "its financial commitment and manpower from within the state."

Noem was heavily criticized for accepting a $1 million donation from a private foundation to fund the National Guard's deployment. Experts said it set a troubling precedent in which a wealthy patron can effectively commandeer U.S. military might to address private political motivations.

But with the support of the top general of the South Dakota National Guard, Noem did not back down.

However, the House Armed Services Committee this week moved to block states from accepting private funds to pay for cross-state National Guard deployments. The proposed condition was added to the annual National Defense Authorization Act.

South Dakota will send 125 National Guard troops to the southern border next month as part of a federal deployment.
Jacob Anthony Chansley, also known as Jake Angeli and the QAnon Shaman, takes part in a demonstration in Peoria, Ariz., Oct. 15, 2020. (Wikimedia Commons)

WASHINGTON  The bare-chested man photographed on Jan. 6 standing on the Senate dais in horns, fur-lined headdress and red-white-and-blue face paint pleaded guilty Friday to felony obstruction of Congress in the Capitol riot, potentially facing at least three years in prison.

Known as the QAnon Shaman, Jacob Anthony Chansley became one of the most visible participants in the storming of the U.S. Capitol. He was captured in news coverage worldwide chanting, praying and shouting expletives about Mike Pence being a traitor while holding a flag-draped spear at the vice presidents presiding desk in the Senate chamber.

Its Only A Matter of Time. Justice Is Coming! Chansley, 34, admitted writing on a note left at the desk.

On Friday, Chansley in a deal with prosecutors pleaded guilty to one of six charged counts: corruptly obstructing, influencing, or impeding an official proceeding, a joint session of Congress meeting to certify the 2020 presidential election.

A former actor and self-described QAnon conspiracy follower, Chansley faces an estimated prison term of 41 to 51 months under advisory federal guidelines at his sentencing on Nov. 17, U.S. prosecutor Kimberly Paschall said.

Chansley also served in the Navy as a supply clerk from September 2005 to October 2007, leaving the service as a seaman apprentice, according to his personnel record.

That is really what happened? . . . And you are in fact guilty? U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth asked at a plea hearing in federal court in Washington.

Yes, your honor, said Chansley, who appeared by video-teleconference from a low-security federal prison complex in Littleton, Colo., where he was taken in July for psychiatric evaluation.

Chansley is one of a little more than 50 people who have pleaded guilty among 600 charged so far in the Capitol breach, which authorities said contributed to five deaths, assaults against 139 police officers and, later, suicides among law enforcement who responded.

Chansleys case highlighted the role played by the far-right QAnon extremist ideology in radicalizing some would-be insurrectionists.

The FBI has reported that more than 20 self-identified QAnon adherents were arrested in the riot, and one, Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt, was fatally shot by police while breaching a barricaded House Speakers Lobby door. QAnons unidentified online prophet had promised in thousands of cryptic postsbased on discredited claims that former President Donald Trump was leading a spiritual war against a cabal of Satan-worshipping global elites and deep state international child-sex traffickers who control the world, a struggle to culminate in a mass roundup of enemies.

In costume and using the name Jacob Angeli, Chansley was repeatedly photographed and interviewed in 2020 at pro-Trump rallies, often carrying a sign that read, Q sent me.

When you really do enough research, it all ties together, he told the Arizona Republic about QAnon.

In social media posts before the riot, Chansley advocated identifying and then hanging those he believes to be traitors within the United States government, according to court documents. FBI agents say that in interviews with them, Chansley said he had plans to go to the Arizona Capitol and might engage in similar acts in the future.

In plea papers, Chansley admitted being among one of the first 30 rioters inside the U.S. Capitol building, entering through a broken door on the first floor of the Senate side at about 2:14 p.m. after others smashed through adjacent windows.

The invasion triggered the evacuation of House and Senate members, as well as Pence, who had refused Trumps pleas to block the vote certification. At 2:16 p.m., Chansley admitted, he challenged police through a bullhorn, demanding that lawmakers be brought out.

Chansley ignored police orders to leave the building, making his way instead to the Senate gallery and floor, which he occupied from 2:52 p.m. to 3:09 p.m., he acknowledged.

Men - some wearing helmets, camouflage gear, waving Trump flags and carrying zip ties - dropped to the floor, rifled through desks, stole papers and described an information operation against the government.

As recorded on video by a New Yorker reporter, a police officer urged the men to step away from the sacredest place in the Capitol. Chansley replied he was going to sit in the vice presidents chair because Pence was a traitor, handing his phone to another participant to have his photo taken before beginning a shouted group prayer.

In plea papers, Chansley admitted to giving thanks for the opportunity to allow us to send a message to all the tyrants, the communists, and the globalists, that this is our nation, not theirs, that we will not allow America, the American way of the United States of America to go down.

He went on to say [t]hank you for allowing the United States of America to be reborn. Thank you for allowing us to get rid of the communists, the globalists, and the traitors within our government.

Attorney Albert Watkins acknowledged his client is iconically and forever linked as the face of January sixth, but said he suffered from mental illness. A U.S. Navy veteran who served as a supply clerk seaman apprentice from 2005 to 2007, Chansley was kicked out for refusing an anthrax vaccine, military records show.

Military medical records supported the findings of a recent court-ordered evaluation conducted by the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, which showed that while the defendant is mentally competent, he suffers from personality disorders exacerbated by pandemic lockdowns over the eight months he has been jailed pending trial, Watkins said.

The defendant was not a planner. He was not an organizer, Watkins said, asking the judge to release Chansley pending sentencing.

Doing so would promote the humanity and integrity of proceedings and get Chansley more medical care, Watkins said.

The events of January sixth will always remain, but the real truth of January sixth will be how our nation, our Department of Justice, our justice system employs patience and compassion for those with mental health vulnerabilities, Watkins said.

In a statement, Chansleys attorney also said he has repudiated the Q previously assigned to him and requested to no longer be identified with the letter.

The judge took the request under advisement, after opposition by prosecutors and said he would rule promptly.

Chansley was arrested Jan. 9 in Arizona and charged by a six-count indictment with felony counts of rioting and obstructing an official proceeding of Congress, punishable by up to 20 years in prison, as well as misdemeanor counts including trespassing and disorderly conduct.

Chansley made headlines after his arrest when he asked to be fed only organic foods, citing religious beliefs, and he begged to be released after Watkins said he lost 20 pounds in jail.

He also gave an unapproved interview from jail with 60 Minutes+ in May, describing his actions as peaceful and well-intentioned, remarks Lamberth wrote showed a detachment from reality.
In this Aug. 24, 2021, file photo, provided by the U.S. Marine Corps, families walk towards their flight during ongoing evacuations at Hamid Karzai International Airport, in Kabul, Afghanistan. (Samuel Ruiz/U.S. Marine Corps)

The Biden administration and more than 200 private agencies are rushing to establish a system for the resettlement of tens of thousands of Afghans, many of whom fled their country with little more than the clothes they were wearing.

The State Department plans to spend as much as $2,275 for each evacuee as the relocation effort unfolds in communities across the country over the next few months, according to a department official. The money is to be used for housing, food, other necessities and enrolling children in school.

"This is not business as usual. We're not ready. We've never done anything like this," said Chris George, executive director of Integrated Refugee & Immigrant Services in New Haven, Conn. "But we're going to get ready. And if it's not perfect, that's OK, because this is an emergency."

The influx will test the ability of the U.S. government and private groups to provide assistance after former President Donald Trump slashed the number of refugees allowed into the U.S. and imposed strict limits on who was permitted to come. President Joe Biden has vowed to rebuild the system.

As many as 50,000 evacuees will arrive under so-called humanitarian parole, a stopgap program that gives them a year to apply for permanent visas. Other Afghans, including those that worked directly for the U.S. government, will be under separate immigration categories.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said Friday the U.S. has admitted about 40,000 people evacuated from Afghanistan - 31,600 of whom are special immigrant visa holders, special immigrant visa applicants, or other vulnerable Afghan nationals arriving under humanitarian parole.

The State Department is consulting with Congress on the eligibility of the Afghans for federal benefits, including Medicaid, the official said. Humanitarian parolees will be eligible for federally funded health insurance through the end of September, according to a resettlement director familiar with the matter.

George said he had recently hired two realtors to rent apartments in Hartford and New Haven even before his organization receives arrival notices -- an unprecedented step for a non-profit that usually relies on its housing coordinator.

He added that he had also brought in an education coordinator to register children for school and arrange for tutoring.

His and other organizations plan to enlist volunteers who can help furnish apartments, drive families, and even offer spare rooms in their homes.

"We're seeing an unprecedented level of private support but that's not going to make up the difference," said Mark Hetfield, chief executive of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, which has been resettling Afghans in upstate New York.

Major companies have also pitched in, with Airbnb Inc. promising temporary housing for 20,000 displaced Afghans worldwide and Walmart Inc. pledging $1 million to aid groups.

"To deal with an issue of this scale and scope, we are going to do some things that are going to disrupt how we've historically done it," said Chris Lehane, a spokesman for Airbnb. "We're using the infrastructure of a tech platform to integrate help and hopefully free up NGOs and government to get people jobs and find permanent housing."

While housing and food are the most immediate priorities, the new arrivals must also find work.

Texas Medical Technology, a medical equipment manufacturer in Houston, this week said it had hired five of the 100 Afghans the company plans to engage for a variety of positions, including in textiles and engineering, over the next 12 months.

"The demand is there," said Sean Rybar, co-owner of the company. "We need the workers, so we are open arms to refugees."
Korean Ambassador for Peace medals (Facebook)

SELINSGROVE, Pa. (Tribune News Service)  Michael and Walter Schrey watched with pride as their father, Donald Schrey, received a Korean Ambassador for Peace medal at the VFW in Selinsgrove Thursday.

"It's a great honor," said Walter Schrey, who traveled from Pittsburgh for the event.

Donald Schrey, 89, of Selinsgrove, served in the Army for "two years, four months and five days" and said the medal presentation stirred up many memories of his service during the Korean War, like having to carry a 26-pound machine gun.

In all, U.S. Rep. Fred Keller presented nine medals. Schrey was the only living recipient in attendance as family members and elected officials including state Reps. Lynda Schlegel Culver and David Rowe and Snyder County Commissioners Joe Kantz, Chuck Steininger and Adam Ewig applauded their service.

Two other honored veterans, Harry Hummel, of Northumberland, and William Hill, of Selinsgrove, did not attend.

Relatives accepted the medals on the behalf of veterans of the Korean War who have died.

Selinsgrove resident Ruth Deluca held a framed black and white photograph of her late husband, Pasquale Deluca, in his service uniform, as she picked up the award. Susan Beasley, the daughter of Eugene Leitner; Cristian Latsha, the daughter-in-law of Kurvin Batdorf, and several members of the late George Dubaskas's family also accepted the medals posthumously on their loved ones behalf.

Thomas Forman, whose sons were unable to be at the event, was also awarded a medal posthumously.

"For generations, the service and sacrifice of America's veterans have secured the blessings of freedom and protected our way of life; we are forever in their debt," said Keller. "Millions of Americans served in the Korean War, many of whom came from right here in central and northeastern Pennsylvania. While the conflict is sometimes referred to as the 'Forgotten War,' we must always remember the heroic efforts of these extraordinary individuals and honor the many sacrifices they made to keep us safe."

Joseph Dubaskas Sr., of Selinsgrove, shared harrowing stories of his late father's service  which began at age 14 during World War II when he lied about his age and joined the Army  and post-military life during which he worked for two decades in the Bureau of Prisons.

While serving in Korea in the early 1950s, George Dubaskas was a prisoner of war for 22 months. He retired from the military in 1971 after receiving numerous medals, including two Purple Hearts, Bronze Stars and a Silver Star, all of which his son brought with him to Thursday's ceremony.

In 1991, while working at a federal prison in Talladega, Ala., George Dubaskas spent three days as one of several hostages taken after 118 Cuban prisoners seized control of the facility.

Tearing up as he recounted the trials his father faced, Joseph Dubaskas Sr. was joined by his children, Talisha Probst, Shanda Dubaskas and Joseph Dubaskas Jr., all of Selinsgrove, who each expressed their adoration of the late patriarch.

"We have a sense of pride to know our grandfather did all that," Joseph Dubaskas Jr. said.

"He definitely led a life of service," said Probst.

(c)2021 The Daily Item (Sunbury, Pa.)

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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.
An MIQ worker is calling for clarity around Covid-19 vaccines recognised in New Zealand after he was inoculated in China.

He said there has been confusion among his employer and health workers regarding whether he is considered fully vaccinated after receiving two doses of Sinopharm.

The Ministry of Health said it's considering whether other vaccines could be allowed for border workers, but at the moment Pfizer is the only one recognised here.

Auckland man Thomas Wang went back to China to visit family in January. While he was there, he received two doses of the Sinopharm Covid-19 vaccine.

He returned to New Zealand in April and, earlier this month, he applied for a job at a managed isolation and quarantine hotel. He said he was told that his Chinese vaccination wasn't accepted.

"What I have done is not accepted by the employer and they just said I will ... make another reservation for you. You have to be vaccinated again," he said.

Wang said he next went to a vaccination centre but health workers weren't sure what to do.

"Everyone was puzzled. Everyone just wondered what to do."

Wang said he waited for an hour before staff told him that he didn't need to be vaccinated again.

He was given the job at MIQ, but said it's been inconvenient because he didn't have the vaccination card given to those who've received Pfizer.

Instead, he had an email from a GP practice saying he is fully vaccinated with Sinopharm and doesn't need Pfizer.

Wang said he didn't mind getting vaccinated again, as long as there are no health risks.

Immunisation Advisory Centre medical advisor Professor Peter McIntyre said international evidence shows Sinopharm performs reasonably well when it comes to protecting people from severe illness, but it's not as good at producing antibodies as Pfizer.

"Although there's not a lot of detailed information, it probably isn't as good as stopping you [from] getting just any infection, or potentially passing on an infection as a fully vaccinated person with Sinopharm compared to Pfizer."

McIntyre said given, Wang was working at the border, that had to be taken into account.

However, he said there aren't any major health concerns with getting a third dose of a different vaccine - it might just increase the likelihood of feeling a bit off-colour afterwards.

"Well, I think you could make quite a strong case that it would be appropriate for that person to have an additional dose of Pfizer just to increase their antibody levels," he said.

McIntyre said New Zealand needed to consider its position on people who have been inoculated overseas with different vaccines.

"I would say that it is a gap ... probably not a big gap, but nevertheless an important gap to fill, because these sort of situations of people who've had other vaccines and what does that mean in various contexts in New Zealand will come up more and more."

Unite Union represents MIQ workers. Its national secretary John Crocker agreed that with more people who have been vaccinated overseas returning to New Zealand and looking for jobs, it could become an issue.

"Not every vaccine is approved here yet, so we do need to keep that in mind when we're setting rules of entry and working in jobs that require vaccination."

The Ministry of Health said in a statement that being vaccinated is not a requirement for entry into the country and it's looking at the broader issue of recognised vaccines for inbound travellers to New Zealand.

It said it's preparing advice for the government and any decisions will be made public in due course.

Liu Chen - RNZ
Bay of Plenty Police are urging people to adhere to Alert Level 3 restrictions and stay close to home this weekend.

Bay of Plenty District Commander Superintendent Andy McGregor say alert level restrictions are in place for the safety of the everyone.

Now is not the time to lose sight of that and jeopardise our efforts to date, says McGregor.

People should be staying at home unless they have a reason to travel such as accessing permitted services.

Everyone needs to keep it local theyre heading out for exercise, whether thats a walk, bike ride, swim or other activity, he says.

Police will be out and about at popular recreational spots to remind people of the restrictions in place.

Motorists should also expect to be stopped and asked about the nature of their travel.

McGregor says, Anyone going long distances to mountain bike trails or beaches can expect to be turned around.

Mountain biking is permitted at Alert Level 3, but riders need to stick to easy trails theyre familiar with. Choose a trail close to home and dont go on tracks that are grade 3 or above.

"Now is certainly not the time to take up a new sport or hobby.

If people run into trouble with weather or injury and require help, this immediately put others at risk, he says.

"Do the right thing this weekend  keep it safe, keep it local.
Minister for the Prevention of Family Violence and Sexual Violence Marama Davidson is reminding New Zealanders that there is support available for anyone feeling unsafe during this lockdown.

We know that family violence and sexual violence can escalate in times of crisis, including isolation, says Davidson.

As the lockdown continues, families and relationships may face additional stresses and fatigue. It is important to remember that you do not need to stay in your home or bubble if it is an unsafe environment.

Throughout lockdown, I have been in regular contact with service providers, officials and engaging with members of the public daily to understand peoples experiences across Aotearoa and whether any additional support is required.

Support services, such as refuges are working hard to support women and children to stay COVID safe and free from violence. They continue to encourage people to reach out, they are ready and available to help.

Many social services are providing supportive early interventions to help families and de-escalate the potential of violence. The preliminary data on reporting of family violence to Police has increased and I am pleased that people are reaching out and seeking help.

I encourage anyone who feels unsafe to reach out to their support network or contact one of the support services listed on the Governments COVID-19 website.

For support with anxiety, distress or mental wellbeing, you can call or text 1737 to talk with a trained counsellor for free, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

I also want those who are feeling stressed, angry or worried about their behaviour, to know that there is help available for them too.

Acknowledging these feelings takes courage, especially during these difficult times. I encourage you to reach out for support and help, and to remember that you too can leave a situation if you need, in order to keep your loved ones safe.

We all need to be checking on our whanau, friends and neighbours to make sure they are safe in their bubble. If you are concerned about someone, reach out to support services.

Family violence and sexual violence crisis services can operate under Alert Level 4 and Alert Level 3. The Government recognises this is critical so our communities know there are specialist services available and ready to help.

People in danger or an emergency should contact Police on 111, follow the operators instructions if you cant speak. If you cannot call, leave your bubble and ask a neighbour or passer-by to call for you.
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Re: Government wants carmakers to produce flex engines Biofuels are welcome

However, they should not harp on those for cheap fuel for 2 reasons.

One fuel is costly & will get costlier in future because it's perishable fossil fuels. Biofuels can only supplement the quantity in a set mix, not replace it, till alternative technology (s) are brought in place. Again new technologies will be costly & reliability will be unknown. Automakers need to speed up on Fuel Cells (cleanest & most democratic option IMO).

Second, fuel is costly in India because of taxes & oilcos profit margins. While taxes are undoubtedly high, but they are directly linked to cost of governance, it's the profit margins of Oilcos that are more killing. All of Govt Controlled oilcos are actually making post tax profits to the tune of 10-20%. This can be higher if these companies actually tighten belts. Simply reducing profits by 10% can do the trick. But, guess the bureaucracy is quite professional here.



Coming to biofuels, these are in fact a     solution as we are one of biggest manufacturer of sugar & it's byproduct - molasses (also used in distilleries for liquor production) along with wonder seeds like jathropha are the ones that can help here. There are makers like - Ford & Renault that have vehicles that can run on alternate fuels. There ought to be other manufacturers vehicles that are compliant with biofuels. Hopefully the long dark tunnel of fuel pricing is lit in few alleys.
Sony is one of more than 100 companies thatdue to COVID concernspulled out of exhibiting at the CEDIA (Custom Electronics Design and Installation Association) Expo happening this week in Indianapolis, IN. Instead, the company presented a series of live online presentations to show custom installers what they would have seen at the show.

Several high-end TVs were discussed, including the XR-Z9J 8K LCD, XR-X95J 4K LCD, XR-A90J 4K OLED, XR-A80J 4K OLED, XBR-48A9S 4K OLED, and XR-100X92J 4K LCD. But all of these had already been announced; the Z9J and X95J have just started shipping.

Sony The HT-A7000 has drivers firing forward, upward, and sideward to create an immersive soundfield.

Among the few products that had not been previously announced were two home-theater sound systems that caught my attention. The HT-A7000 is Sonys new flagship soundbar that purports to provide 7.1.2 immersive audio with five front drivers, two beam tweeters that bounce the surround channels off the side walls, two upfiring speakers that bounce the overhead channels from the ceiling, and two front-facing low-frequency drivers. You can also add optional rear-surround speakers and a 200W or 300W subwoofer.

Even more interesting is the HT-A9, a package with four identical, wireless, powered speakers and a control unit. Each truncated-cylindrical speaker has a front-facing woofer and tweeter as well as an upfiring driver, and the included control box enables what Sony calls 360 Spatial Sound Mapping that creates up to 12 phantom speakers. This allows the system to play music in the companys 360 Reality Audio format. And like the HT-A7000, you can add an optional subwoofer.

Sony Here, you can see the driver array in the Sony HT-A7000 soundbar.

Both systems include sound-field optimization that compensates for imperfect placement of the speakers using built-in microphones and sophisticated DSP algorithms. In addition, the HT-A7000 and HT-A9 can connect to certain Sony TVs (models Z9J, X95J, A90J, A80J) with a feature called Acoustic Center Sync. In this configuration, the TV enhances the center channel, causing the dialog to appear to be coming from the screen itself.

As you might expect, both systems can accept audio via Bluetooth and Wi-Fi streaming, they support Apple AirPlay 2 and Spotify Connect, and they include Chromecast built-in. Also, they are compatible with Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa voice control.

No pricing or availability was announced during the presentation. You can read more about the Sony HT-A7000 soundbar online; more information about the Sony HT-A9 soundbar is online as well.
In a nutshell: There are a myriad of television brands out there to choose from, and it looks as if US consumers are about to have another option, possibly as soon as this October. According to reports, Amazon is expanding its TV-based product line and will launch its own branded sets in the United States.

Insider writes that the retail giant has been working on the upcoming TVs for the last two years. They come from the company's Amazon Devices and Lab126 R&D divisions that designed, among other things, the Kindle and the Echo speakers.

The televisions themselves were reportedly designed and manufactured by third parties; TCL is one of those mentioned. Though, Amazon is also said to be designing a separate, in-house TV. Whether that will also get a US release is unclear.

The third-party TVs are expected to be large-screen models that range from 55 to 75 inches. Being an Amazon-branded product, they will feature Alexa integration. No word if they will also come with Fire TV software pre-installed, but it seems likely. Amazon already partners with some manufacturers on Fire Edition televisions, such as the Toshiba C350 4K UHD.

This won't be Amazon's first entry into the field. It sells AmazonBasics TVs in India that are also made by third parties; it launched 50-inch and 55-inch models under the low-cost brand in the country last year. It'll be interesting to see if the TVs Amazon release in the US also fall into the budget category and how they stack up against other manufacturers' sets, many of which sell on the company's website.

In other Amazon news this week, its video games division was recently absolved of blame for the New World beta killing EVGA graphics cards. The hardware manufacture says the fault lay with poor soldering around the cards' MOSFET circuits.
In brief: Qualcomm's next Snapdragon Wear 5100 might not be the mind-blowing upgrade to Wear 4100 that some have been waiting for, but all the hints so far point to improved energy efficiency and a more compact chip package size, both of which are welcome improvements.

Qualcomm has been working on a successor to the Snapdragon Wear 4100 platform, but a new leak suggests the company isn't all that interested in giving it a significant performance boost. Instead, this will likely be an iterative upgrade that will improve energy efficiency and chip package size more than anything else.

Last month, Wear OS enthusiasts over at XDA Developers spotted the company's upcoming chipset in code under the "Monaco" codename. At the time, this offered some hope that it could feature Arm's Cortex-A73 cores just like the Snapdragon 662 and 460 mobile platforms for phones.

However, a new report from WinFuture suggests otherwise -- initial samples of the "SW5100" chipset will utilize the same Arm Cortex-A53 cores as the Snapdragon Wear 4100+. In contrast, Samsung's new Exynos W920 chipset powering the Galaxy Watch4 features Cortex-A55 cores, which are up to 20 percent faster. Not much is known on the GPU front, however, so there's still hope for the Wear 5100 chipset to look like more than a half measure.

Qualcomm is said to be testing several configurations of the Wear 5100, some of which have two gigabytes of LPDDR4X RAM and either 8 or 16 gigabytes of eMMC storage. The upgrade to LPDDR4X is significant, both in terms of performance and power efficiency. That said, the biggest efficiency gains will come via an improved AON co-processor for the always-on display functions and some of the health and fitness tracking functionality.

It's worth pointing out that most of the Exynos W920's energy efficiency improvements come from being manufactured on a 5nm process node. We don't know the exact process node that Qualcomm will use for the Snapdragon Wear 5100, but the company has been in talks with both Samsung and China's SMIC to secure manufacturing capacity for the new chip.
Windows, which is developed and published by Microsoft Corporation, is one of the top computer systems in the market. Many consumers rely on this system to complete their online work tasks, virtual classes, and other PC activities.

Although huge numbers of users across the globe are very familiar with it, there are still some individuals who are having a hard time accessing some of its features, including the Sound Settings.

This function is pretty essential, especially when you are having some issues with your laptop's sound levels. Once that happens, tech experts highly suggest to do is adjustments to the Sound Settings.

If you are one of the individuals who doesn't know how to access this feature, here are four easy steps you can rely on.

How To Access Windows Sound Settings

According to MakeUseOf's latest report, accessing your Windows PC's Sound Settings is a piece of caked. To do this, you need to follow these instructions:

Also Read: Microsoft Kicks Out WIndows 11 Users with Unsupported CPUs from Insider Program

Using Sound Control Panel Tabs

Using sound control panel tabs is pretty easy. There are four kinds of tabs you can tweak to achieve the sound quality you prefer on your desktop. To access each one of them, you need to use your Windows search bar and enter the following codes:

Recording Tab (rundll32.exe Shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL Mmsys.cpl,,1)

Playback Tab (rundll32.exe Shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL Mmsys.cpl,,0)

Sound Tab (rundll32.exe Shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL Mmsys.cpl,,2)

Communication Tab (rundll32.exe Shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL Mmsys.cpl,,3)

Relying on Volume Mixer and Spatial Sound Settings

Aside from your PC's sound control panels, you can also adjust your laptop's sound using Spatial Sound Settings and Volume Mixer:

To access Volume Mixer, all you need to do is access the sound icon and choose the "Open Volume Mixer" option.

To access Spatial Sound Settings, you need to click the sound icon and click the "Spatial" option.

These methods are both applicable on Windows 11 and Windows 10. If you still don't have Microsoft's latest computer system, then you need to know the updated Microsoft Windows 11 CPU requirements.

Fixing Windows Headphones Detection Issue

If you don't want to have your laptop or PC on loudspeaker, then the best thing you can do is use headphones or earphones. But, many consumers complain that Windows usually can't detect their wearable device.

WCCFTECH provided some of the things you need to check to fix the headphones detection issue of Microsoft Windows 11 or Windows 10:

Check Battery

Check Other Connected Devices

Check Bluetooth

Do Windows Troubleshooting

For more news updates about Windows and other Microsoft products, always keep your tabs open here at TechTimes.

Related Article: Cheaper Microsoft Defender for Endpoint P1 Arrives To Protect Your Android, iOS, Windows, and macOS Endpoints

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 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Twitch is not having a good past few days.

Ever since the "A Day Off Twitch" boycott that several Twitch streamers conducted to protest senseless verbal abuse against members of minorities, the streaming platform has consistently lost user traffic, reports Kotaku. The boycott was in direct response to harassment campaigns called "hate raids," which has plagued a lot of content creators there lately.

Twitch experienced a roughly 22% decrease in peak concurrent traffic during the day of the protest. The number, which came from the website Twitch Tracker, corresponds to a drop to 3.5 million peak concurrent viewers from an average of 4.5 million.

Furthermore, over 10,000 content creators on the streaming platform rallied behind "A Day Off Twitch, causing the total number of Twitch streamers to go down as a result.

Another data tracking website, this time GameSight Analytics, offered more insight into the decreased traffic on Twitch. On Aug. 25, a total of 897,745 channels were broadcasting, resulting in 2.4 million hours streamed and around 65 million hours of view time. By the time of the Twitch boycott, that dropped to 834,107 channels, 2.2 million hours streamed, and 54.8 million hours of view time.

The aforementioned Twitch boycott took the spotlight this week with a streamer named Raven (real name withdrawn) posting a video on her Twitter account of racist hate speech flooding her chat during a broadcast. She was then joined by fellow streamers Lucia Everblack and ShineyPen, who themselves have also been victimized by these hate raids.

Read also: How To Stream on Twitch Using a PlayStation, Xbox, and Switch

Is Twitch Doing Something To Curb the Hate Raids?

According to the company's recent tweets regarding the incident, they are. They went on the social media platform to state that they're developing channel-level ban evasion detection solutions, alongside account improvements "for months." But Twitch also said that they have to deal with "motivated bad actors" finding ways around their solutions, which is why they can't share further details about the work they've been doing so far:

No one should have to experience malicious and hateful attacks based on who they are or what they stand for. This is not the community we want on Twitch, and we want you to know we are working hard to make Twitch a safer place for creators. https://t.co/fDbw62e5LW  Twitch (@Twitch) August 20, 2021

Streamers, however, still feel like Twitch isn't doing enough to decisively crackdown on the propagation of hate speech on the platform. And this has likely resulted in some high-profile content creators jumping ship to YouTube Gaming.

Twitch Streamers Leaving

The latest popular Twitch streamer to make a move was Tim Bettar, better known as TimTheTatMan. His move followed the departure of another highly popular streamer, Ben "DrLuop" Lupo.

Bettar's departure from Twitch didn't explicitly tag the "A Day Off Twitch" movement as a catalyst. Instead, he revealed in an interview that his move was mainly driven by the desire to spend more time with his wife and young son. This is more or less the same reason that Lupo stated.

Either way, the departure of these high-profile content creators from the platform creates a real problem for Twitch and possibly strengthening its direct competition in YouTube Gaming. If more content creators leave, this will convince more fans to leave and further decrease Twitch viewership.

Related: How to Stream on Twitch | Ultimate Beginner Guide 2021

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Written by RJ Pierce

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Tesla Bot was created by Elon Musk so that he can ensure that the robotics industry and AI world would be safe, and not cause harm or destruction once the tech becomes present. A lot of robotics companies have already showcased their technology, and the growing number of startups present a massive question and fear among many.

Musk initially foreshadowed that the world would be "reporting to AI" and that a "robot future" is coming. Moreover, initially, Musk warned the world of artificial intelligence. Nevertheless, several months later, he announced the Tesla Bot on AI Day with the clean energy company.

Tesla Bot: Created to Ensure Safety in All Robots

A Twitter fan asked the multi-tech CEO about his decision to make the Tesla Bot, particularly because Musk warned in the earlier years that AI can be dangerous to humans. The fan had presented a massive but simple question, and it is because these are two contradicting statements or actions from the CEO.

Here, the Tesla CEO answered that a lot of companies have already made robots that are automated or use artificial intelligence to function, including the likes of Boston Dynamics.

Despite the many competitors, Musk's Tesla Bot would not go against them in terms of technology, features, or function. However, what Tesla would border on is the "safety" aspect of the humanoid robot which the company has released unprecedentedly, something that was not expected by the public.

The robots are coming anyway, as Boston Dynamics videos clearly show.



I will not be able to ensure that robots made by other companies are safe, but I can try my best to do so at Tesla.  Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 2, 2021

The billionaire said that he cannot ensure that the technology and creation of other companies would be safe, and can only promise that the Tesla Bot would be the one to be the "safe" one among all.

The CEO pledged that he would do try his best in making their creation a safe one, as the world is contemplating accepting robots in the present.

Read Also: 'Tesla Bot' to Launch in 2022 Says Elon Musk, To Do the Boring, Dangerous, Repetitive Things People Don't Like To

Tesla AI for Tesla Bot

The AI that would be used for the humanoid robot would be the Tesla AI, and it is something that the company has designed from the ground up. It was not revealed by Musk, the showcase, or Tesla whether it was a collaboration with sister companies like OpenAI, which is popularly known to have works regarding this.

That being said, the Tesla Bot would have the technology from Tesla themselves, designed and created by the company. It is known that the AIs which Tesla use is for the electric vehicles, particularly the Neural Network which helps to control the car.

Also, this is something that is deeply embedded within the system's Full-Self Driving, infotainment system, and other AI needs of the EV.

Is Tesla's Artificial Intelligence Good?

Currently, Tesla is under investigation from the NHTSA for its Autopilot data, particularly as there were several crashes that involved the company's tech and vehicle.

Sufficient to say that Tesla's AI needs more time to be tested and considered if it is either good or bad, something which would be tested once released.

Related Article: Tesla Bot Job Listings Appear on EV Giant's Careers Page after Elon Musk Announced Humanoid Robot

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Written by Isaiah Richard

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
A brown dwarf that has been nicknamed "The Accident" has been discovered by a citizen scientist thanks to an online program he made himself.

Dan Caselden made the discovery using data from the Near-Earth Object Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE), which belongs to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

Researchers, who have since observed the brown dwarf, said that The Accident is different from the usual brown dwarfs previously discovered.

Brown Dwarf Nicknamed 'The Accident' Discovered

A brown dwarf nicknamed "The Accident" has been discovered by a citizen scientist named Dan Caselden using an online program he made as well as data from NASA's NEOWISE.

The formal name of The Accident is WISEA J153429.75-104303.3, according to a report by Space. The Accident can be found 50 million light-years away from Earth.

This brown dwarf, however, is not like previously discovered brown dwarfs as discovered by researchers after further observations.

According to Space, The Accident is estimated to be around 10 to 13 billion years old. That number is double the usual age of other brown dwarfs.

"We expected that brown dwarfs this old exist, but we also expected them to be incredibly rare," according to astrophysicist Federico Marocco, as quoted in the report by Space.

"The chance of finding one so close to the solar system could be a lucky coincidence, or it tells us that they're more common than we thought," Morocco adds.

The Accident also spins at about 500,000 mph, which makes it faster than the other brown dwarfs that are located in the same distance from Earth.

Further Observations Using Ground-Based Telescopes

Since the discovery of The Accident, astronomers have conducted further observations of the unusual brown dwarf using ground-based telescopes at the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii.

The researchers eventually discovered that The Accident "appeared so faint that it was undetectable, confirming it is in fact very cold, and therefore very old," according to Space.

It was also discovered that The Accident has low levels of methane in comparison to other previously discovered brown dwarfs. The researchers think that the low levels of methane support the idea that The Accident after the Milky Way galaxy was formed.

Also Read: New Stars Discovered In Milky Way Core: Discovery Sheds New Light On Globular Clusters, How The Galaxy Formed

What is a Brown Dwarf?

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) has said that brown dwarfs "aren't quite stars and aren't quite planets."

"Though they form like stars, these objects don't have enough mass to kickstart nuclear fusion, the process that causes stars to shine," according to JPL.

An example of a brown dwarf that has been previously discovered is the WISE J085510.83-071442.5. When it was discovered in 2014, it was said to be the coldest brown dwarf ever discovered.

Another example of a brown dwarf is the SDSS J0104+1535, which was discovered in 2015.

Related Article: Even VLT Is Having Difficulty Finding Missing Brown Dwarf

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Written by Isabella James

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
(Photo : Image from Unsplash Website) Australian Government Tests Facial Recognition Application to Implement During Quarantine Measures

The Australian government is now testing out facial recognition for them to implement during quarantine measures. The new application is currently being tested in order to make sure that residents are following COVID-19 home quarantine orders.

Home Quarantine App

According to The Western Journal, the application is listed as Home Quarantine SA in app stores and is to be unveiled by the government on August 23, 2021. The app uses geolocation as well as facial recognition software in order to track those that are still in quarantine, according to the South Australia Premier Steven Marshall's statements to Australia's ABC in an interview in August 2021.

South Australians that are ordered to quarantine have to download the app. The app ensures that the citizens comply with the quarantine orders by contacting certain people at random and asking them to provide their proof of location within just 15 minutes. Another use of technology for COVID-19-related matters is the storing of the COVID-19 vaccine card digitally.

Registered Quarantine Address

Citizens would also share their location with the government or even provide "live face check-ins" in order for them to confirm that they are at the "registered quarantine address" according to the description by the app. Marshall told ABC that nobody tells them how often or when and that it is on a random basis. The ones being quarantined would have to reply within 15 minutes.

South Australia's COVID-19 guidelines, health officials, and law enforcement officers can also direct citizens to quarantine in their own homes or even in "quarantine hotels" for a total of 14 days. People breaking quarantine can face a fine up to $1,000, according to the guidelines.

Home-Based Quarantine Monitoring

Individuals who also miss their geolocation check-ins will also be receiving a follow-up phone call where they can discuss why they missed the notification. If they miss that as well, a "compliance officer" could visit their home as noted by the app's FAQ.

Marshall noted to ABC that they use the app in order to verify that people were where they should be during home-based quarantine. The application's pilot program started on August 23, 2021, and had 50 participants. Marshall, however, told ABC that he also plans statewide adoption.

Read Also: Facebook, Reddit, and TikTok are Struggling to Remove Posts Promoting Horse Drug as COVID Cure

West Australian G2G Now

He noted that he thinks every single South Australian should feel proud that they are the national pilot for the new home-based quarantine app. Another similar application that is known as the G2G Now was developed by the Australian technology firm called GenVis is also being used by the West Australian government in order to monitor people that are in quarantine.

The use of the app is reportedly voluntary except for individuals that are traveling from a certain "high risk jurisdiction" according to the app's FAQ. The app's description reads that performing quarantine checks is now actually quick, fun, and easy with the help of G2G Now.

The South Australia Ministry of Health did not give an immediate response to an after-hours request for comment by The Daily Caller News Foundation. The delta variant has become a growing concern for the public as health officials say the strand of virus eats people's lungs.

Related Article: COVID-19 Mortality Predicted by This Enzyme? New Study Claims Most Deaths Have It on Their Blood Samples

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Written by Urian B.

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
(Photo : Image from Apple Website) FAA Bans Specific Apple MacBook Pro Model on US Flights | Find Out Which Model

The FAA is now banning a specific 2015 15-inch Apple MacBook Pro that reportedly had defective batteries on US flights. For those that own 2015 MacBook Pros or aren't sure of the model, there's a simple way to check.

FAA Bans Dangerous Devices on Airplanes

Samsung has suffered some backlash over the Galaxy Note 7 being banned from US flights once the device exploded on a Southwest Airlines flight, according to PCWorld. Apple had also attracted similar attention after Bloomberg reportedly quoted a statement that came from the United States Federal Aviation Administration that confirmed that the 2015 15-inch MacBook Pros that had defective batteries were banned from US flights.

The FAA statement also follows a "voluntary" recall for the devices that Apple reportedly issued in June which followed the discovery that the batteries were actually a fire risk due to them being prone to overheating. The recall also applies to a number of variations of this model made from September 2015 to February 2017. The exploding Samsung Galaxy Note 7 was recalled in the past as early as 2017 for its exploding batteries.

MacBook Pro Hasn't Caught Fire Yet

There have also reportedly been no reports of one of these MacBook models catching fire just yet on a flight. The ban has technically been in place ever since Apple issued its recall. On July 10, 2021, the FAA quote-tweeted a certain post by Digital Trends with photos of the reportedly affected MacBook with the reminder that the recalled batteries do not fly.

According to the story by MacWorld, this is the FAA's policy for all batteries that are recalled, although it's actually quite rare for them to publicly call out everything. Bloomberg's report notes that the main difference, in this case, is that the FAA actually alerted the airlines regarding the recall and also issued a statement.

EU Aviation Safety Agency Makes Moves

So far, the EU Aviation Safety Agency has reportedly only told airlines to make sure that all of the affected MacBooks are turned off and are not used when on flights. The model has also already been banned on four cargo carriers namely Thomas Cook Airlines, TUI Group Airlines, Air Italy, as well as Air Transat. Other products that have been recalled in the past include Intel smartwatches for burning wearers.

For those that don't know if their model was recalled, click on the Apple icon located on the top left corner of the macOS menu bar and click on About This Mac. If the Overview Menu notes "MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid2015)," this could mean you have an affected model.

Read Also: Apple Asks Employees for 'Voluntary' Vaccination Status Report | No Mandate Given

How to Check if Your MacBook Pro Model has a Recall

Copy the serial number of the unit and plug it into the Apple recall site to know for sure. After that, owners will have to take the device either to a nearby Apple Store or at least an Apple Authorized Service Provider nearby to have the model replaced for free.

Owners can also check on the official Apple support page in order to mail it in, but the whole process could take up to two weeks. Once again, it would be better to keep safe and replace the model instead of waiting for something bad to potentially happen.

Related Article: Amazon to Hire 55,000 Corporate and Tech Roles for Global Expansion Plans | Find Out More

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Written by Urian B.

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
TikTok challenges are usually all fun and games all captured in thousands of videos with millions upon millions of views... up until someone lands in the hospital.

That, unfortunately, has been the case for some TikTok challenges that went viral for all the wrong reasons because of how harmful they end up being for the participants.

Some of the dangerous TikTok challenges have resulted in physical injuries, terrible side effects to participants' health, and even death in some cases.

Here are some of the TikTok challenges that have sent people straight to the hospital and which you should not attempt if you value your wellbeing:

TikTok Benadryl Challenge

In September 2020, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a warning over the TikTok Benadryl Challenge. Participants of the TikTok Benadryl Challenge consumed large amounts of Benadryl to induce hallucinations.

The FDA warned that consuming too much Benadryl could lead to seizures, coma, heart problems, and even death. Participants have been hospitalized due to the side effects and there was a reported death related to it.

A teen from Oklahoma was reported to have passed away after consuming too much Benadryl for the challenge.

TikTok Blackout Challenge

Anyone with common sense will know and understand that choking yourself is harmful for your life in general. That, however, did not stop people from trying the TikTok Blackout Challenge, which even resulted in the death of a 12-year-old boy from Colorado, per a report by Screen Rant.

To simply put, the TikTok Blackout Challenge involves a participant choking himself or herself until he/she passes out.

Prior to the death of the 12-year-old boy, a 10-year-old girl in Italy passed away while attempting the TikTok challenge.

TikTok Fire Challenge

A teenaged participant of the so-called TikTok Fire Challenge was rushed to the hospital in June 2021 after suffering severe burns from attempting the challenge.

According to a previous report here on Tech Times, the TikTok Fire Challenge was started by a user named Jack Jerry, whose videos "show him spraying hairspray on his mirror in the shape of a star, circle, or square and then lighting it on fire in the dark."

Related Article: TikTok 'Fire Challenge:' What Is It and Why Oregon Teen Ends Up Hospitalized?

TikTok Milk Crate Challenge

One of the TikTok challenges that have landed people in the hospital is the Milk Crate Challenge. The TikTok Milk Crate Challenge involves participants walking over milk crates that have been stacked into a pyramid.

The whole thing just sounds like a recipe for disaster, which ended up being the case for many of the participants of the TikTok challenge.

According to a report by The Washington Post, doctors have treated participants of the Milk Crate Challenge who ended up with shoulder dislocations, ACL tears, injuries to the spinal cord, and more. TikTok has since banned the challenge from its platform.

People doing this like they have the best health insurance... pic.twitter.com/6znbsi8h0a  Mike  (@ogmike) August 21, 2021

Also Read: TikTok Tongue-Piercing Game: 13-Year-Old Girl Undergoes Abdominal Surgery After Trying it--Other Dangerous TikTok Trends You Shouldn't Try

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 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
(Photo : Image from Commons.Wikipedia.com) US Labor Board Investigates Two Complaints Alleging Apple of Unfair Labor Practices

The United States National Labor Relations Board is now investigating two complaints that were filed by Apple employees. These complaints allege certain unfair labor practices being made against the company.

Two Filings Against Apple

According to CNet, these were reportedly according to the filings on the official agency website. One particular complaint that was filed on August 26, 2021, relates to accusations of retaliation, discipline, as well as discharge.

Another one that was filed on September 1, 2021, alleges threats as well as promises of benefits. The board's official website notes that it investigates all particular charges that are filed with the agency. It was also noted that if it determines the complaint has merit, it would then try to broker a certain settlement or even pursue legal action directly against the accused.

Complaints Against Apple

A principal software engineer at Apple by the name of Cher Scarlett confirmed in a Tweet that she actually filed the September 1, 2021 complaint. She noted in the tweet that these all revolve directly around unlawful conduct as well as unlawful rules that have reportedly been engaged in over the previous five months and particularly over the previous month.

She also reportedly added in a subsequent tweet that Apple employees should directly contact the NLRB if ever they were told "not to participate" in the whole wage transparency survey, not to talk regarding their pay, or were even coercively questioned regarding it. The complaints actually come as the tech giant now faces a wave of employee activism in the most recent months.

Read Also: FAA Bans Specific Apple MacBook Pro Model on US Flights | Find Out Which Model

Concerns About Apple Privacy

In August 2021, employees even criticized Apple's move to scan their US customers' iPhones and computers in order to search for images of child abuse. The criticism was also about worrying that it could lead to censorship or even the arrest by repressive governments. More and more Apple employees have also been coming out with reports of discrimination and unfair treatment as the numbers of the #AppleToo start to grow as well.

In July 2021, employees reportedly started circulating an internal petition pressing executives for a number of flexible working conditions as the company started laying out post-lockdown return-to-work policies. Apple also immediately did not respond to a request for a comment but also declined to discuss the complaints with Reuters as well, which earlier reported on the supposed filings.

Apple reported to the news agency noting that they take all of the concerns very seriously and that they thoroughly investigate whenever a concern is being raised and out of respect for the privacy of a number of individuals involved, the company does not discuss certain specific employee matters. Apple has also reportedly spent a massive amount on lobbying in certain places like the EU. Apple had reportedly spent a whopping $4.1 million in lobbying alone in the EU amidst a barrage of many antitrust investigations.

Related Article: Apple Asks Employees for 'Voluntary' Vaccination Status Report | No Mandate Given

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 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
(Photo : Image from Unsplash Website) WhatsApp Fined $267 Million for Not Being Transparent About Data Sharing with Facebook

WhatsApp was just slapped with a 255 million euro fine or $267 million USD fine after GDPR investigation conducted by Ireland's official Data Privacy Commissioner or DPC found out that the platform was not transparent regarding how it shared data with its parent company, Facebook.

GDPR Transparency on WhatsApp Services

The investigation reportedly started in December 2018 and also examined whether WhatsApp has been able to discharge its GDPR transparency obligations with regard to the actual provisions of information as well as the transparency of the information towards both users as well as non-users of WhatsApp's services. WhatsApp got a $267 million fine, according to DataProtection.

The DPC noted in a statement that this includes information that is provided to the data subject as well as the processing of information between WhatsApp as well as other Facebook companies. The DPC has also initially submitted its decisions back in December 2020 but actually faced backlash from eight different EU regulating bodies due to the fine being considered as too small at just 50 million euros or over $59 million USD. WhatsApp has ended support for a number of devices, check them out.

DPC Statements on WhatsApp

By the end of July 2021, the European Data Protection Board actually decided to force the DPC to increase the proposed fine up to 225 million euros or over $267 million USD. The DPC added that in addition to the imposition of the administrative fine, the DPC has reportedly also imposed a reprimand along with another order for WhatsApp in order to bring its processing into compliance through taking a range of specified remedial actions.

The DPC reportedly found that WhatsApp, which already has over two billion monthly users, has violated sections 5(1)(a); 12, 13, and also 14 of the GDPR by not actually being transparent regarding data it was able to collect from both users and non-users. Regulators reportedly took issue with the technical ways that WhatsApp processed the user data as well as the way that those processes are explained in its own privacy policies.

Read Also: Twitter Tip Jar to Include PayPal, CashApp, and Cryptocurrency Wallet Addresses, Rumor Suggests

WhatsApp on Transparency

WhatsApp currently has three months in order to make changes to its official transparency. The fine is reportedly the second largest ever issued after the whole 886.6 million euro or over $1 billion USD fine that was handed down to Amazon in July 2021. Experts, however, noted that WhatsApp and Facebook will spend a number of years in court fighting the fine before it will ever be paid.

According to the story by ZDnet, WhatsApp reportedly called the fines "disproportionate" in a certain statement and noted that it is committed to providing a secure and private service. A European privacy expert and chair of non-profit noyb.eu, Max Schrems, noted in a statement that the fine was actually a step forward for privacy regulations but also criticized the DPC for waiting this long in order to issue a fine. As of the moment, for those that want to switch from WhatsApp, Microsoft teams are also being considered.

Related Article: FTC Bans SpyFone, Maker of Stalkerware App | App Sold Real-Time Access to Secret Surveillance Empowering Stalkers and Domestic Abusers

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 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
NASA Preserverance Mars Rover's second attempt to collect rock samples from the red planet seems to work successfully.

However, the team members of the mission reiterated that additional data is still required to fully confirm it.

As per Space.com, the team behind the drilling and collecting of the Mars rock samples announced their work on Sept. 2.

NASA Perseverance Mars Rover and Rock Sample

It is worth noting that the first attempt of NASA Perseverance did not go as expected. The Mars rover ended up stumbling upon a problem during the collection of the first Martian rock that scientists from Earth were supposed to study.

NASA's Perseverance rover started drilling the rocky surface of the Red Planet for a potential soil sample last Aug. 6.

However, as the team behind it was supposed to collect the material in the tube-like container they faced a problem.

That said, the United States space agency rover had to do it all over again for a second attempt to bring home some rock samples from Mars.

The team will have to gather at least eight samples before going back to Earth. On top of that, the Perseverance rover is also tasked to look into any signs of life forms on the Red Planet.

NASA Perseverance Successfully Collects Rock Sample

According to DW, the data retrieved last Sept. 1 suggested that NASA Perseverance was able to properly collect the rock it drilled from Mars.

The NASA Mars rover drilled to collect up to two meters or six and a half feet of rock samples. The robotic arm of the Perseverance took the natural material and stored it in its tummy.

The scientist gave the first successful rock collection the moniker "Rochette."

It is to note that Perseverance uses numerous scientific tools to examine the chemical and mineral composition of the rock, and Rochette was able to pass the initial tests.

Read Also: China to Create Mars Helicopter Like NASA's Ingenuity; First Crewed Mission Set in 2033

Rock Samples Needs Further Data to Confirm

However, scientists on Mars are still uncertain if they have successfully collected the rock samples due to external factors, like the lighting conditions and the lack of sunshade on that part of the Red Planet.

The project manager of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Jennifer Trosper, further noted that: "We will work through this small hiccup with the lighting conditions in the images and remain encouraged that there is a sample in this tube."

The Mars rover scientists will take another photo of the rock sample on Sept. 3 and send it to Earth on Sept. 4 to further confirm if the collection is still intact. By then, the team will seal and store it.

Related Article: NASA's Curiosity Rover Shoots Breath-taking Photos of Mars' 18,000-Foot Mountains

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 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has plans to launch an electric car in the next two years. The automaker said that it would be a steering wheel-less EV that will cost $25,000.

Elon Musk Says Tesla Will Create $25,00 EV

In a report by Electrek on Thursday, Sept. 2, Musk has already confirmed some of the details about the $25,000 electric car.

According to the people who attended the recent meeting with the Tesla CEO, the upcoming compact car in 2023 will not carry the "Model 2" name.

Instead, it would be a new car that still uses the Full-Self Driving feature but the twist is it won't come with a steering wheel and even pedals.

Previously, China teased that it is developing a Tesla for the customers. The past reports said that the project was still ongoing.

In line with the release of a new Tesla car, there are Chinese publications that reported about the EV maker's upcoming car.

The media outlets said that the vehicle would undergo a series of tests in late 2021. It would be more budget-friendly compared to the Tesla Model 3.

In another report, Tesla has announced that a fresh prototype for the Tesla electric vehicle has already been finished. Currently, the suppliers for the unnamed car are already in the queue.

As per the recent meeting, Tesla seems to be releasing two electric cars at an unknown date.

The first one will be launched in China. It will borrow a traditional Tesla design but with more compact components. The second one will adopt the FSD.

Tesla said it would be a cheap car that will soon be unveiled in the US.

Tesla Cars in China and United States

According to Teslarati, the Model 3 will be the basis of the creation of the Tesla car that will arrive in China. The target market of this vehicle will be the consumers who have a limited budget for the purchase.

Despite its affordable price, Tesla plans to develop an EV that could compete with other local electric cars in the Chinese market. The automaker will equip the vehicle with the usual features of its car.

On the other hand, Tesla is eyeing to launch a budget-wise FSD car in the US. The firm bet on it to be a solution for autonomous driving.

Considering that the popular Chevy Bolt EV features no steering wheel on its car, Tesla is likely sticking with the same concept.

Tesla first announced the Model 3 concept during the Autonomy Day event in 2019.

Somehow, Tesla is on its way to dominating the EV market. The company wants to attend to all the demands of the buyers amid tighter competition with the world's biggest names in the EV car industry.

Read Also: Tesla FSD 3.0 Retrofit's Price Now Down to $1,000--Previous Hardware Buyers Could Get a $500 Refund

Tesla Wants to Become an Electricity Provider

Last month, Tesla officially applied to be an electricity supplier in Texas.

Over the past years, the company has been exploring a potential way to bring electricity to different parts of the world.

The improvement of its electric battery could have been a spark plug for the company to enter the industry.

Going back to the Tesla cars, the company should be mindful of the concerns of its customers. For instance, the problem in July about the rodents gnawing the wires in the Tesla cars should be addressed properly by the firm.

Related Article: Tesla Ordered to Give Detailed Autopilot Data as NHTSA Investigates 12 Accidents

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 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
WhatsApp announced that it would no longer work on some iOS and Android smartphones this coming Nov. 1. The popular Facebook-owned messaging application will halt its processes permanently on a total of 43 smartphones.

These unluck models include Apple, Samsung, LG, ZTE, Huawei, Sony, and other popular brands. This is a big deal for many users since WhatsApp is one of the most widely used messaging applications in the market.

Various individuals are using the messaging platform to contact their friends and loved ones and for work and business purposes. These are just some reasons why WhatsApp users need to save their contacts and messages to newer handset models.

WhatsApp Would No Longer Work on These Smartphones

According to Metro UK's latest report, smartphones running systems older than OS 4.1, iOS 10, and KaiOS 2.5.1 would no longer be able to access their WhatsApp accounts. On the other hand, a complete list of the affected handset models was also provided:

Also Read: WhatsApp Mod Can Infect Your Android Device--How to Avoid it?

Samsung Galaxy Trend Lite, Galaxy Trend II, Galaxy SII, Galaxy S3 mini, Galaxy Xcover 2, Galaxy Core, and Galaxy Ace 2

Huawei Ascend G740, Ascend Mate, Ascend D Quad XL, Ascend D1 Quad XL, Ascend P1 S, and Ascend D2

LG Lucid 2, Optimus F7, Optimus F5, Optimus L3 II Dual, Optimus F5, Optimus L5, Optimus L5 II, Optimus L5 Dual, Optimus L3 II, Optimus L7, Optimus L7 II Dual, Optimus L7 II, Optimus F6, Enact , Optimus L4 II Dual, Optimus F3, Optimus L4 II, Optimus L2 II, Optimus Nitro HD and 4X HD, and Optimus F3Q

Sony Xperia Miro, Sony Xperia Neo L, Xperia Arc S

Apple iPhone Se, iPhone 6S, iPhone 6S Plus

Aside from these models, the following brands would also be affected:

HTC Desire 500

Archos 53 Platinum

Caterpillar Cat B15

Wiko Cink Five

Wiko Darknight

Lenovo A820

UMi X2

Faea F1

THL W8

Alcatel One Touch Evo 7

In other news, WhatsApp's new 90-Day Disappearing Messages feature would arrive on the upcoming 2.21.17.16 beta update. On the other hand, WhatsApp iOS to Android Chat Transfer has finally rolled out.

What You Need To Do

Upgrading your old smartphone is the main solution if you still want to access your WhatsApp messages. However, if you still don't have enough budget to buy newer ones before the Nov. 1 date, then you can still transfer your messages to your email. Just follow these simple steps provided by FonePaw:

Start WhatsApp on your phone. On the top right corner, go to Settings>Chats> Chat History>Email Chat. Select your preferred chat boxes that you would transfer to your email. Then fill in the email address, click the Send button. After sending the chats successfully, you can check your mailbox for the chats.

For more news updates about WhatsApp and other popular messaging apps on iOS and Android, always keep your tabs open here at TechTimes.

Related Article: WhatsApp Fined $267 Million for Not Being Transparent About Data Sharing with Facebook

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Written by: Griffin Davis

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Bansky NFT scam, which cost $336,000 or 242,000, might have happened because of the artist's negligence. The fraudulent activity occurred last Tuesday, Aug. 31. Security experts explained that the scammers advertised a blockchain artwork on the popular website, claiming that it is Banksy's first NFT or non-fungible token.

The fake blockchain masterpiece on the world-renowned graffiti artist's official website was sold to a British collector. However, it was later found out that the thousand-dollar NFT was actually counterfeited.

On the other hand, Sam Curry, a cybersecurity expert, claimed that the scam took place because Banksy ignored his warning. He added that the official website of the English-based modern-day painter could have a weakness on the social network Discord.

"I'd clicked one and immediately saw it was vulnerable, so I reached out to Banksy's team via email as I wasn't sure if anyone else had," said Palisade's founder and security consultant.

Banksy's Negligence Leads To NFT Scam?

According to BBC's latest report, NFTs are artworks that can be tokenized to create a digital certificate of ownership, which users receive when they buy or resell the blockchain product.

Also Read: Tron Founder Justin Sun Buys $10.5 Million Worth NFT Joker Tpunk

However, security experts claimed that non-fungible tokens are quite vulnerable to scams and other fraudulent schemes since they don't really provide the actual digital masterpiece or copyright.

Now, with only one mistake of Banksy, a thousand-dollar NFT scam happened. Curry explained that the graffiti artist did not respond to his emails. The security experts even said that he tried other methods just to contact Banksy, including messaging the modern-day artist on his official Instagram account.

Sources confirmed that the cybersecurity researcher already contacted Banksy way back on Aug. 25, which is roughly six days before the scam took place on the artist's official web page.

In other news, CryptoPunk digital creators signed a contract with a major Hollywood agency. On the other hand, Steam received the new NFT game "MIR4".

How To Avoid Fake NFTs

Since NFT is now becoming more popular than ever, many people are now digging deeper into this rising blockchain artwork. However, scammers are also becoming more interested in non-fungible tokens since they think that new fans are easy targets.

If you don't want to be one of their victims, you can follow these simple tips provided by NFTCulture:

If you are buying a bespoke edition of something, make sure it exists on the marketplace you are using before purchasing.

Be sure to know the accurate contract address of the piece you are buying.

Top-tier marketplaces do have some checks and balances in place that make it safer when purchasing art.

For more news updates about Banksy and other related topics, always keep your tabs open here at TechTimes.

Related Article: Fake Banksy NFT Sells for 244k, Hacker Returns Money to British Collector After Sale

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 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
FDA (Food and Drug Administration) has been deciding if the vaping or e-cigarette industry should continue. For the past few years, millions of U.S. residents have been using vapes as an alternative to traditional tobacco, which many experts consider more deadly than e-cigarettes.



As of the moment, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration still hasn't approved the use of e-cigs. Because of this, medical experts and vape manufacturers have been arguing if e-cigarettes are really safe compared to regular cigars.

On the other hand, traditional ones are regulated and controlled by the FDA for the past few years. But, that doesn't mean that the FDA approves cigarette smoking in the United States.

However, the vape industry's situation is quite different since the FDA doesn't get involved in the production and distribution of these e-cigars. Meanwhile, the health department confirmed that it would pass down its judgment on vaping companies this coming Sept. 9.

Would FDA Approve or Disapprove Vaping Industry's Continuation?

Currently, the FDA still hasn't provided any hint if it would support or reject the continuation of the e-cigarette industry in the country.

Also Read: E-Cigarette Online Stores in China Asked to Stop

On the other hand, Time Magazine reported that anti-vaping critics and other public health groups are already urging FDA to reject the use of e-cigars, especially the famous brand Juul, which is currently considered the market leader of the vaping market.

"Juul fueled the youth e-cigarette epidemic and is still the #1 brand among youth," said Tobacco-Free Kids, one of the anti-smoking group campaigns fighting against the use of vapes and e-cigars.

However, this was rebutted by vaping industry's representatives, saying that if FDA bans the use of e-cigarettes, many Americans may go back to using traditional cigars instead.

In other news, some reports suggest risks of using vape. Some health experts claim e-cigarette flavorings could increase cardiovascular risks. In 2019, some teens in Wisconsin were hospitalized because of vaping. .

Is E-Cigarette Safer Than Traditional Cigar?

According to Henry Ford's report, traditional cigarettes are still more dangerous compared to vapes since they could lead to lung cancer and other serious health complications.

However, e-cigars also have some harmful effects that could affect consumers in the long run. These include the following:

Ultrafine particles can be inhaled deep into the lungs.

Flavorants such as diacetyl, a chemical linked to serious lung disease.

Volatile organic compounds.

Heavy metals, such as nickel, tin, and lead.

For more news updates about FDA and other related topics, always keep your tabs open here at TechTimes.

Related Article: E-Cigarette, Vape Quitting: Withdrawal Symptoms Like Drugs and Regular Cigarette Addiction

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 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
(Photo : GettlyImages/ CHRISTOF STACHE ) Apple logo

Apple announced it would delay its child protection feature following intense criticism from public and security experts. The child protection feature would scan the photos of the users for child sexual abuse material or CSAM.

However, security experts pointed out that it could affect user privacy and that the system may wrongfully accuse users of saving child pornography even if they aren't. The feature was supposed to be distributed later this year.

Apple Halts the Release of CSAM

According to The Verge, Apple announced its plans for the scanning feature. It is intended to help protect children from predators who use their devices to search for pornographic materials.

Apple added that based on the feedback from their customers, several researchers, and advocacy groups, they have decided o take more time over the coming months to collect input and make the necessary improvements before releasing the feature.

Apple's original press release regarding the changes, which were intended to reduce the proliferation of CSAM, has the same statement as the newest release.

Also Read: Apple CSAM Detection: How to Stop it from Scanning Your iPhone, iPad Photos

The original release detailed three changes in the works, one of them being Search and Siri putting resources to prevent CSAM if a user searched for any information related to it.

The two other changes came under severe scrutiny. One change would immediately alert parents when it detects that their children receive or send sexually explicit images. It would also blur sexually explicit photos for children.

The other change would scan the pictures stored in a user's iCloud account for CSAM. If they are detected, it will report them to the company's moderators.

The moderators would then forward the reports to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children or NCMEC.

The Backlash Over CSAM

Apple had detailed the scanning system at length these past few weeks to ease the users' worries and advocacy groups, but unfortunately, it did not change their minds.

Edward Snowden, a former whistleblower, called Apple's CSAM as a "disaster in the making."

Even Apple employees expressed their concerns about the CSAM tool, which flooded the company's Slack channel.

The scanning system will scan pictures stored in iCloud Photos on your device and assess these pictures together with a database of known CSAM image hashes given by NCMEC and other child safety organizations.

Still, privacy and security experts had criticized Apple for the new scanning system, arguing that it could have created an on-device surveillance system and violated the privacy of the users who store their photos in their devices.

On Aug. 5, the Electronic Frontier Foundation said in a statement that the new scanning system would break the company's promises of the messenger's encryption, and it could cause broader abuses no matter how well-intended the system is.

Ben Thompson at Stratechery stated that Apple is compromising the device that people operate and that users have no say in the matter.

According to ArsTechnica, more than 90 policy groups from the United States and worldwide signed an open letter urging the tech company to stop its plan to have iOS devices scan photos for CSAM.

The letter was forwarded to Apple CEO Tim Cook. The organizations stated that even though the feature is intended to protect children and reduce the spread of CSAM, they are concerned that they will be used to censor speech, threaten the privacy and of the users, and threaten their security.

Related Article: Apple's CSAM Catches San Francisco Doctor With Child Exploitative Images on His iCloud

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 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
(Photo : GettlyImages/ Pool) Apple Car

Apple hired two-car engineers to join the company. The engineers, which are former employees of Mercedes, are expected to take part in the tech giant's effort to continue to build out its team for the development of the Apple Car.

Apple Welcomes Two Former Mercedes Engineers

The two engineers will focus on mass production of vehicles, dynamics, vehicle steering, and project and software management. They also previously worked at Porsche, doing the same tasks.

The engineers admitted that Apple tapped them to join their company, according to MacRumors. They are currently working on product design and are now a part of the "Special Projects Group."

The Apple Car, previously called Project Titan, is the tech giant's most secretive project. Despite several rumors, the company's goal in joining the auto industry is unclear.

Also Read: Apple Car Technology Can Help Drivers and Passengers Find Their iPhones Inside the Vehicle

The two newly hired engineers join a list of former engineers and executives that the company has tapped in from some of the largest car markers in the world.

The tech giant continues to form its workforce and continues to gather people with the skills and talents needed to design and manufacture the Apple Car. However, it has also suffered several setbacks.

Apple lost several top managers from Project Titan in 2020, derailing their timeline for the car.

Kevin Lynch, known for his work on Apple Watch, is currently the leading Project Titan.

While Apple has invested in its in-house talent, it will also need third parties to help its plans push through.

Apple is said to be discussing options with several suppliers, including its most significant supplier, Foxconn.

The tech giant is also in talks with several carmakers for potential partnerships. However, the talks and discussions have not ended in any formal deal yet. It was also reported that Apple might not have any deals with Kia and Hyundai as they denied discussions with the tech giant.

Foxconn is known as the mass producer of the iPhone. It is tapped to take part in the supply chain of Apple Car, which is said to be released in 2025.

Apple is also preparing to manufacture the batteries in the United States, as the company wants an all-American setting for its vehicle.

One of Apple's most recent hires previously held responsibilities in the mass production release schedule of Mercedes vehicles, which means the tech giant can benefit from that too.

Testing Site in Arizona

Despite the rumors that Apple is focusing on the development of Appel Car, an automotive testing site located in Arizona used by the tech giant to test out its vehicle has been purchased by a firm that has leased the area for years.

The site is 5,458 acres and is located near Phoenix, Arizona. Chrysler previously used the area as a proving ground.

According to Apple Insider, Route 14 Investment Partners LLC, a company based in Delaware, purchased the site for $125 million.

According to AZ Big Media, the company is managed by the law office of Greenberg Traurig. The true owner's name is not revealed, but it is believed that it is connected to Apple.

In November 2017, Route 14 leased the site in 2015. The company was registered in Delaware under the Corporation Trust Company in 2015.

On Sep. 3, MacRumors reported that it had seen a copy of the existing development agreement. The news site confirmed that the purchase date of the area was on June 25.

Related Article: Tim Cook Reveals Apple Car is Autonomous like a Robot, Hopes Parler Returns to App Store in Sway Podcast

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The logo of the citizen-initiated ballot proposal to cap short-term rental licenses. A protest against the proposal was withdrawn Monday, which meant the protest hearing scheduled for Tuesday afternoon was canceled. (Courtesy image)
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Louisiana has been approved for a federal program that allows Hurricane Ida survivors to stay in a hotel for up to 30 days, officials said Friday.

The program is run by FEMA  the Federal Emergency Management Agency  and is called transitional sheltering assistance.

It is separate from state- and parish-operated shelters, which house 3,427 people in 28 sites, according to Catherine Heitman, communications director for the Department of Children and Family Services.

Those interested in a hotel have to register for assistance  www.disasterassistance.gov or by calling 1-800-621-3362.

Applicants have to show residence in one of the declared disaster areas, be able to verify occupancy and be displaced and unable to live in the home they occupied before the storm arrived Sunday.

Hurricane survivors cannot request a hotel.

However, FEMA will identify those survivors who qualify and let them know by telephone, text message or email.

Those who meet the rules have to find and book their own rooms.

Hotels taking part in the program are listed on DisasterAssistance.gov under the link Transitional Sheltering Assistance Program or by calling the FEMA helpline at 1-800-621-3362.

240,000 in Louisiana have applied for federal Hurricane Ida assistance; $93M distributed About 240,000 Louisiana residents have applied for federal assistance in the wake of Hurricane Ida, up from 18,000 on Monday, officials said T

FEMA officials also said those who qualify for a hotel may have to travel a significant distance to find a room.

Hotels have been approved for Louisiana, Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Florida, Mississippi, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Texas.

FEMA only pays for the room and any taxes.

Survivors are responsible for meals, transportation and other costs.

The current plan covers 30 days  Sept. 2-Oct. 2.

Hotels costs are not retroactive before Sept. 2 but hurricane survivors can submit their receipts to FEMA for possible reimbursement of out-of-pocket expenses.

Those who qualify also have to sign a document when they check in and pledge to follow guidelines for the program.

Those seeking a local shelter can call 211 or get information by texting 898-211 and typing lashelter.

The hotel option applies to residents of all 25 parishes declared federal disaster areas.

The two state shelters are the Raising Cane's River Center, 275 S. River Road in Baton Rouge and the Rapides Coliseum, 5600 Coliseum Road in Alexandria.

+2 'Blue roof' program to bring familiar tarps to Louisiana parishes impacted by Hurricane Ida Federal officials will be offering free, temporary roofs for Orleans, Jefferson and 11 other parishes damaged by Hurricane Ida, Gov. John Bel 

Local shelter space is always changing.

"It is very fluid," Heitman said.

"They are opening and closing constantly just depending on the need, depending on their resources," she said.

Check back with The Advocate for more details.
Gov. John Bel Edwards said Thursday evening the state will take aggressive action if warranted in the deaths of four nursing home patients sent to Tangipahoa Parish to ride out Hurricane Ida.

Edwards made the comment during a briefing after he visited St. Bernard, Plaquemines and Tangipahoa parishes in the wake of the storm, which struck Sunday.

The governor said the death toll from the hurricane is nine and that the coroner ruled three of the four nursing home fatalities as storm-related.

The victims were among more than 800 patients who were sent to a warehouse in Tangipahoa Parish, where investigators were kicked off the premises, according to the state.

"If warranted we will take aggressive action against any responsible parties," Edwards said.

The Louisiana Department of Health has opened an investigation.

Edwards told reporters nursing home officials make decisions on when evacuations are called for and where patients are sent.

The governor said that, aside from the nursing home residents, the death toll includes two drownings and three carbon monoxide deaths.

"Historically speaking we lose most people after the storm," he said.

"We lose them to things like driving into water that is deeper than you believe it to be. So we need everybody to be careful, be patient."

President Joe Biden is set to visit the state on Friday.

"I don't think there is any substitute for actually being on the ground ... seeing with your own eyes the utter devastation Louisiana has sustained because of Hurricane Ida.'

The governor said power outages total 902,943 customers, which means far more people since households usually include several people, and that is down by about 200,000 since the peak of the storm.

He said 25,000 utility crew members from 38 states, including California and Maine, are making repairs.

Edwards said transmission and distribution lines in Lafourche and Terrebonne parishes amounts were devastated.

He said the gasoline shortage in southeast Louisiana stems in large part from the fact eight refineries are out of operation.

Those eight account for two-thirds of the state's refining capacity.

Two are expected back in operation in the next few days.

"Even if that happens we are going to be at half of our refining capacity," Edwards said.

Officials announced Wednesday that residents of 13 parishes are eligible for temporary roofs, known as blue roofs or blue tarps.

+2 'Blue roof' program to bring familiar tarps to Louisiana parishes impacted by Hurricane Ida Federal officials will be offering free, temporary roofs for Orleans, Jefferson and 11 other parishes damaged by Hurricane Ida, Gov. John Bel 

The governor said 22,000 people have applied for the tarps.

"That is the most in the history of the program," he said.

Before the briefing choppers landed at the National Guards Regional Staging Area north of Amite in Roseland, La., where rows of 16-wheelers lined up to transport bottled water, MREs and tarps.

Gov. Edwards, flying over Tangipahoa Parish, told the those flying with him: Mammas house made it," meaning her house survived Hurricane Ida.

Blake Paterson of the Capitol news bureau contributed to this report.
Terry Smith is resourceful, but after four days without power in sweltering Baton Rouge summer heat, his patience is waning.

Smith, who lives on Main Street north of Mid City, said he wants to see more utility workers in the neighborhood. Adding to his frustration: Electricity was restored days ago in other nearby areas.

Though Baton Rouge was largely spared severe wind damage and flooding from the storm, some residents are suffering serious aftershocks. Heat index values have climbed above 100 the past few days and public health advisories warned residents to stay hydrated and avoid overexertion.

"You can't sleep. You wake up sweating," Smith said. "The only place to get cool is in the car, but then you need more gas."

Follow Hurricane Ida's path of destruction through Louisiana, with aerial photos and video On the ground in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Ida, people tell stories of panicked rescues, unimaginable loss and dangerously close calls.

The fact that people are spending hours in gas lines despite the abundance of oil refineries in south Louisiana  including the ExxonMobil facility in north Baton Rouge  is pathetic, he said. Across Louisiana, the gasoline distribution system is falling apart due to damaged production facilities, power outages and increased demand.

Smith said one of his neighbors had recently returned home after being hospitalized with COVID  only to face dangerously hot temperatures.

Smith has been spending his days searching for gas and ice, commiserating with neighbors and charging his cell phone with a contraption hooked to his car battery since the cigarette lighter stopped working. To demonstrate, he popped the hood and fished out his phone from beside the battery.

In the house next door, Sharon Porter said she slept with an ice pack last night. She thought about visiting relatives with electricity for a reprieve from the heat, but she worries about COVID spreading in crowded indoor spaces.

She already had to throw out the contents of her fridge, and working from home has been impossible, which could eat into her vacation time.

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A few miles away at the Leo S. Butler Community Center in Old South Baton Rouge, families were taking advantage of the "cooling station" city leaders have opened there. Metro Councilwoman Carolyn Coleman was bustling around Thursday afternoon, keeping things in order.

Allison Gaddy, who lives nearby on Convention Street with her husband and three sons, said she tried to prepare her kids for the possibility of several days without power. She said they all enjoy camping, so grilling and spending time outside is nothing new. But the heat is too much.

"As a mom, we already handle so much pressure every day," she said. "Now having to do it all outside in the heat  laundry, cooking, keeping the family running  that becomes emotionally damaging when there's no end in sight."

However, Gaddy and other residents were quick to point out that things could have turned out a lot worse, especially since the storm drifted east after landfall, passing through Livingston and Tangipahoa instead of Baton Rouge.

Kamry Walker, who works at the community center, has been spending all day helping distribute meals and provide other resources to residents, then going home to a sweltering house. She lives with her mom and grandparents in the Fairfields neighborhood off North Foster Drive.

"The people across the street have lights on," she said, almost in disbelief. "Like I look across the street, and they have lights and air conditioning. But man, it's pitch black over here."

The family has been using their gas stove sparingly because that only makes the house hotter, she said. That means canned tuna, lunchmeat and whatever else requires minimal cooking.

Walker said a cold shower before bed wears off pretty quickly, but waking up at 4 a.m. provides a nice opportunity to wait in line for gas before work.

"It definitely makes you appreciate things even more," she said. "Just sitting in the dark, thinking this is how people used to live. We're basically in survival mode."
The results of the 85-foot Red Oak was blown into the middle of the roof at Stacey Fabre, daughter, right, and Linda Fabre's, mom, home after the wind and water damage aftermath caused by Hurricane Ida Wednesday Sept. 1, 2021, in Ponchatoula, La. Fabre wipes sweat away from her face due to the heat while cleaning out. Ladders are used to keep the broken beams from crashing on in.
Media veteran Bruce Gordon is seeing his 30-year dream for a new $400 million upgrade of Wollongong CBD move a step closer to fruition with the unveiling of the plans for what is known as WIN Grand.

The project, to be built by Mr Gordons private company Birketu, has been put on public exhibition and follows five years of consultation with Wollongong City Council, extensive research on the regions demographics, and a design competition run in early 2020 which was awarded to Australian architectural firm, BVN.

WIN Grand will be bordered by Crown, Keira, Burelli and Atchison streets and aims to create a connected city centre by opening this block for community activation. One key element will be the sustainability of the project which aims to become Wollongongs first carbon-neutral precinct.

An artists impression, commissioned by BVN Architecture, of the new $400m WIN Grand development in Wollongong. Credit:BVN Architecure

Mr Gordon is the owner of the WIN Television network and also the largest shareholder of the Nine Network, which owns this masthead, and holds a significant stake in Nine Entertainment Co.
Australias economic resilience in the wake of Chinas efforts to punish it for diplomatic slights has some on our shores declaring victory. They might be speaking too soon.

Former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said last month that Chinas campaign to make us more compliant has completely backfired. Beijings pressure, he added, has demonstrated to China that they can pull all these levers, and it doesnt actually work.

Exports continue to scale record heights even as China has blocked or limited a growing number of imports from Australia since May 2020. Still, the dispute -- China accuses Australia of taking a hostile approach on issues ranging from a clampdown on foreign investment to questions on the origins of COVID-19 -- is casting a shadow over the future.

China-Australia relations are strained, and it could cost us. Credit:Alamy

Even as Beijing has left the immensely profitable iron ore sector untouched until recently, its focusing on Australian products that would form the backbone of future trade, such as lobsters and wine, and warning its students against studying there.
Grace has played a really important role in shaping our understanding of how First Nations artists and makers can connect with the fashion industry, says Lauren Ellis, curatorial manager at Bendigo Art Gallery. She translates community-centred art practices into striking fashion outcomes that resonate with visitors from all walks of life; Hibiscus Sunrise was a very important piece for us to acquire. Drawing on traditional construction techniques, the garment was inspired by black and white wedding photographs of Lees grandmother. It is accompanied by three custom neck pieces handwoven with beaded details, their striking coral palette evoking tropical northern skies. The woven accessories are created through a grasshopper weave technique Grace learnt from a master weaver in her Torres Strait community, and the shape of the dress itself is an ode to traditional Torres Strait Islander womens dresses, says Ellis. A closer look reveals the intricate craftsmanship of its hand-painted hibiscus motifs and woven elements, which express powerful personal and cultural narratives. It is an ensemble that says warmth, joy and grace, and the world could certainly use a little more of that right now. Tube top and Y-front trousers, Dion Lee (Fall 20 Collection), Powerhouse Museum (Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences), Sydney

Dion Lee, Tube top and Y-front trousers, Look 39, Fall 2020. All the cool kids drooled when Aussie-expat designer Dion Lee sent unisex hip-bone-baring trousers down the runway last year. This teardrop-shaped cutaway  complete with bondage-inspired leather hip-straps  instantly became a thing among celebrities and A-listers. A rust-orange pair, with co-ordinated tube top, now sits in the museums permanent fashion collection. In purchasing this outfit, we wanted to explore how Dion has so confidently and effortlessly moved into creating non-binary, gender-fluid clothing, says Roger Leong, senior curator at MAAS. Whats so clever about this outfit is that its sexy in its reference to bondage wear, but its not sexualised. Its all about the body beautiful. Id call it classy bondage outerwear that draws inspiration from lingerie and swimwear. Lee, who imbues his design practice with an interplay of form, proportion and texture, was a design student when the Powerhouse first showcased his work more than a decade ago. The battle axe, DI$COUNT UNIVER$E (Spring 2019 collection), National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

DI$COUNT UNIVERSE, The battle axe red silk velvet shoulder dress, (Spring 2019 collection), National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, courtesy of the artists. Australias favourite anti-fashion queens DI$COUNT UNIVER$E created this velvet and tulle number for their 2018 Women collection and it is one of 10 garments gifted to the NGA by designers Kami James and Nadia Napreychikhov. Rebecca Edwards, Sid and Fiona Myer curator of ceramics and design at the NGA, first saw it on the runway at New York Fashion Week. This dress, and the whole Women collection, really speaks to what I feel is the contemporary voice of feminism she says. It gives an inclusive take it or leave it account of what being a woman in the 21st century really means. All of DI$COUNT UNIVER$Es work is underpinned by strong social, cultural and political messaging. However, set against a framework of the #MeToo movement when all that erupted, I felt Women says something much bigger, something that needed to be represented in NGAs collection. Earning a spot in the NGAs Know My Name exhibition showcasing the work of female Australian artists, the battle axes unapologetic shade of red is sledgehammer-subtle. Add the architectural shoulder proportions, delicately dotted velvet tulle skirt and the word WHORE slapped around its dainty belted waist, and this was always going to be a talking point among visitors. Call it an ironic hoot, a power slogan, or proverbial middle finger to the idea of traditional femininity, it dares you to look away. Get Mean gown, Viktor & Rolf (Spring 2019 haute couture collection), Art Gallery of South Australia

A model wears the Get Mean dress during the Viktor & Rolf Spring Summer 2019 show in Paris. Credit:Getty Images AGSAs senior curator of decorative arts, Rebecca Evans, was tickled pink when she received an oversized parcel from Amsterdam recently. The sorbet-hued Get Mean gown from Dutch fashion artists Viktor & Rolfs Spring 2019 Fashion Statements collection practically leapt from its box in a sugar-rush of tulle, frills and rousing letters. My director and I had binge-watched Emily in Paris on Netflix last year ... one of the episodes parodied Viktor & Rolfs Spring 2019 collection, which made us revisit how hilarious and relevant these meme garments still are, Evans says. We simply couldnt go past the Get Mean gown, which plays on the notion of fashion and feminism. The idea of women getting mean was very much on the forefront of every media agenda in the country throughout 2020, so the gown was relevant for a number of reasons. Programmed to lend its sweet sass to an AGSA exhibition next year, the gowns Get Mean call to action is appliqued like a pop-cult meme onto the bodices felt heart, mimicking the heart-shaped novelty lollies one might have gifted a Valentine some moons ago. Its tent-like silhouette kicks out in layers of A-line tulle, while frill-trimmed puff sleeves reference classic 20th-century womens evening wear.
Cameron Woodhead and Steven Carroll have cast their eyes over a batch of recently released fiction and non-fiction books. Here, they share their recaps and reviews.

FICTION PICK OF THE WEEK

The Wingmaker, Mette Jakobsen, Text, $27.99

Credit:

Readers of Mette Jakobsen will have come to admire the impressive poise of her writing. Her previous novels, The Vanishing Act and What the Light Hides, possessed it in spades and so does her latest, The Wingmaker, which begins with the jewel-like intensity of a short story.

Art restorer Vega seeks solitude at a Seafarers Hotel near the beach. Her passion for restoration has alighted on a marble angel statue of rare beauty, and she is determined to finish the job. The angel isnt the only thing with wear and tear: Vega herself has emotional scars and continues to suffer the after-effects of a heart attack. Her search for tranquillity might be harder than she thinks  theres a naked man sprinting from the hotel as she arrives  but theres consolation in the absurdities she encounters. Jakobsen is a quiet writer by inclination, yet here, her sharp internal landscapes are balanced by the flamboyant whimsy of life pressing on, regardless of trauma or the weight of the past.
Then the Indonesian who also called himself a Leb, Osama, tumbled towards us. He and Shaky hugged and shook hands and laughed for the next 10 minutes as though I wasnt there. Most days, I felt like we three were the same breed of dog but all of a sudden, I was conscious of our differences: I knew this day would be blamed on the Lebanese, just like the gang rapes and drive-bys had been blamed on the Lebanese. But it was me, the only full-blooded Lebo among us, who felt any grief for the people that plummeted from those buildings. Finally, Osama turned to me with a sinister smirk, his thin lips and pronounced cheekbones swelling. Dont feel sorry for them, bro, he said, Bin Ladens done all kinds of evil shit, but you think these people ever even heard of him until today? How is today any different for us than yesterday or the day before that? Telopea Street, Punchbowl, in 2001. Credit:Julian Andrews Five minutes before the bell went, as I was making my way to class, I ran into the copper-skinned Palestinian named Isa Musa. He was a foot taller than me, standing casually in the centre of the quadrangle. An unnerving lull suddenly shot across the concrete beneath my feet  something about the expression on each Lebs face that reminded me of a dagger; the way he looked around with a slicing glare and sharp curl of the lips. The only boy who seemed normal and balanced that morning was Isa, which was odd because he was usually the one screaming at all the teachers about how those hypocrites stole my country! Why does anyone even care about this? the Palestinian said to me. How is today any different for us than yesterday or the day before that or the days leading back to 1948?

I stared up at Isa, Arabic fumbling off my tongue: Bismillah al-rahman al-rahim. In the name of God, most gracious, most merciful. A beam of light shot through the clouds, hitting my face and scrunching my eyes. I twisted my neck towards the sun, feeling its heat across my brow as tears formed under my eyelids. Then I opened my eyes again and noticed the Australian flag at the head of the quadrangle. It was glaring over me, limp and calm and silent in the warm air, halfway down the flagpole. I turned back to Isa, pointed at the flag and said look. His eyes followed the direction of my finger and then his broad shoulders contracted, his colossal chest expanded, his large jaw and Adams apple pierced the air, and in this stance, the Palestinian hardened into a pillar of salt. You OK, bro? I mumbled, trying to sound chill. The bell rang and the Lebs of Punchbowl Prison moved onto their classes like packs of cackling hyenas and Isa Musa kept staring at that flag, static, and slowly, I backed away from him, confused, so confused  Dr Michael Mohammed Ahmad outside Punchbowl Boys High School in 2019. Credit:Dominic Lorrimer In period three, my entire grade had been instructed to head to the library. I was with the 40 other students in Year 10, all of whom were sitting in groups of five around each table, vociferously sharing bullcrap stories like I heard there were no Jews in the World Trade Centre today.

At my table sat Osama the Indonesian and Shaky the half-caste and this four-eyes named Bassam that no one messed with because his older brother was a drug-dealer. All three of them had their collars up and the top two buttons of their shirts undone, pride oozing from their sunburned chests. Day after day, the Lebs were in a relentless war with the teachers; zero interest in Shakespeare, all they ever did was wolf-whistle at the chicks on the street outside our classroom windows. No teacher tolerated such behaviour but today even the educators werent interested in the Bard of Avon. It was only Isa, who was also sitting at my table, that said stuff this, we should be doing King Hamlet right now. King Lear, I replied. On the left side of the library stood Mr Watson, a history teacher we called Nose Job because he had excess meat blocking his left nostril, and Miss Wu, a commerce teacher who had a Masters in business, which meant nothing to us because she couldnt speak English. On the other side of the room stood our English teacher, Mrs Laila Haimi, who was technically one of us because she was Arab and Muslim and grew up in The Area. Out the front of the library was the principal, Mr Whitechurch. His thin grey hair was brushed to one side, his chequered tie was clasped tightly around his neck and his fair skin was flaking beneath the librarys fluorescent lights. Whitechurch waited patiently for each blathering young man to look in his direction until finally a Maronite named Antony, who could bench-press 130 kilograms, screamed out yulla, boys, shut up! Everyone went quiet as Whitechurch cleared his throat and tugged down at his collar. Ill be talking to each grade for one period today, he squealed nervously. Perhaps that necktie was blocking his windpipe. I want to give you all an opportunity to discuss the terror.

Straightaway, Isa Musa raised his hand. The entire left side of Whitechurchs face began to spasm like he was going to spit out the F-word. Youre relentless, Musa, he seethed, Ill be speaking first. Isa kept his hand in the air, dipping his head down across the desk like a Rottweiler and nestling his gaze upon the principal. Three thousand people are dead. Its probable that the perpetrators were Middle Eastern and Muslim, like yourselves, so I understand why youre all upset, said the principal. Credit:AP Whitechurch gritted his teeth. Weighing up the situation, he seemed to realise that Isas hand wasnt going down until he spoke. Then he did what any sensible principal would do  he ignored the mongrel.

OK, so this morning, America was attacked, Whitechurch said. Three thousand people are dead. Its probable that the perpetrators were Middle Eastern and Muslim, like yourselves, so I understand why youre all upset   Whitechurch rambled on, and all the while, Isas arm hovered over his head of thick black curls. There was a bored expression on the Palestinians face, his bottom lip bulging, his camel eyelashes flickering. Thirty-nine other sand monkeys sat there impatiently, heaving through their snouts, their piercing eyes on the principal like he was raw meat. Whitechurch continued. The pictures of airplanes flying into buildings, fires burning, huge structures collapsing, have filled us with disbelief. Boys, I only ask for your respect, for the children whose worlds have been shattered, for all whose sense of safety and security has been threatened. On he went, but no one was listening anymore; we were all staring at Isas upstretched arm now, staring until at last, Whitechurch announced OK, questions. Everybody in the room, students and teachers, waited for the principal to let the Palestinian speak but instead he looked around for someone else as though Isa was translucent. This went on for ages, Isa with his arm so high that even the children in Gaza could see it, and Whitechurch patiently looking around like George W. Bush staring vaguely into the distance. Slowly, Bashir Gazelles hand ascended.

Go, said Whitechurch. Bashir massaged the base of his circumcised-penis-shaped-head as he said in a deep croaky voice: You gotta admit, sir, America asked for it. Whitechurch nodded at him and replied calmly: I know why someone like you would say such a stupid thing. Five more hands were now in the air, along with the Palestinians, which had been up for the past 30 minutes. Whitechurch pointed to Ibo, whom everyone called Lesbo due to his high voice. I contend that our pupils are feeling victimised, Ibo explained.

In a kneejerk reaction, the boy sitting by his side, Omar, whose boxy head and spikey hair made him look like the Arab Bart Simpson, blurted out thats gay! Omar would usually be sent to the deputys office after a comment like that, but Whitechurch was distracted by another arm in the air. Once again ignoring Isa, the principal signalled for a student we called Cabbage  because his body was shaped like a cabbage  to speak. Sir, is there even any proof that it was us? How do you know it wasnt the Jews? In the closest way that someone could actually take this question seriously, Whitechurch inhaled a tired breath and replied there will be many conspiracy theories floating around right now. The best thing we can do is trust our government. Three questions later and there were no more hands up except for Isas. He still had his gaze fixed on the principal, but his eyes had slumped like a custard tart. Whitechurch kept looking around for someone else to raise his hand, but wed all waited long enough, we wanted to hear what the Palestinian had to say. The Lebs of Punchbowl Prison locked their silent gapes onto Whitechurch, gums drooling. There was a drawn-out delay before finally the principal sighed  he knew hed have to give in eventually  and said very well, Musa, what? Isa slowly lowered his bulldog-thick arm and sat up straight. Student and teacher alike were glued to him, silent and still as death itself. Then, just before the Palestinian cracked the static air with his quivering voice, a sense of despair washed over me: why would Isa Musa have anything meaningful to say? Which wog from Punchbowl has ever said a meaningful thing in his life?

Isas chest deflated, shoulders hunched, face shrivelled  sinking into the Red Sea. His fat lips slowly spread apart as he took in a deep breath and began to speak. Ive been at this school since 1998, he said, fractured voice growing stronger as he went on. Over those past three years, a million Arabs like us have been murdered by America and Israel and you never gave a damn. Then this morning some Americans die and you put the flag half-mast. There was not even a breath between when the Palestinian stopped and Punchbowl Prison exploded  Lebos screaming in one voice yaaaaaaaaaaaaah! and bashing their hands on the tables. It sounded like an army was charging over the barbed wires of the school. Osama the Indonesian and Shaky the half-caste shouted at Whitechurch, kol khara! which in their butchered Arabic means eat shit! From across the library, Ali Fatala and Bashir Gazelle were on their feet, chanting eye for eye, tooth for tooth! Even Antony, the wood-worshipping bench-presser, had his hands around his mouth in the shape of a speakerphone, hollering sucked in, Aussie gronk. Lesbo was flailing his hands and torso like a belly dancer and Omar, whod just called him gay, was ululating like a hijabi, Le-li-li-li-li-li-li. Then up onto his table was Abdul Solomon, Punchbowl Boys self-proclaimed mufti, howling takbeer! which means shout out loud! and all the Muslims replied Allahu akbar!, which means God is great! Once again, takbeer! and Allahu akbar! Our teachers said nothing, including Mrs Haimi, whose fair Arab skin was withering under the white library lights, her soot-black lashes matted, her green eyes turning grey and vacant. Whitechurch tried to raise his voice over the boys. There were Australians that died in there today, he blubbered, Australians. But it was too late  the Lebs of Punchbowl Prison had found themselves among the souls of the suicide bomber: Shout out loud: God is Great! Arabs like us have been murdered by America and Israel and you never gave a damn, then some Americans die and you put the flag half-mast. Isa Musa, Student, Punchbowl Boys High School, 2001. An entire generation passed by before I saw Isa Musa again. Our government had invaded Afghanistan and Iraq; thousands of bogans had rioted on a beach singing no Lebs and physically assaulted anyone who looked like us; the premier described our protests as the unacceptable face of multiculturalism, the media cried out, I am Charlie and the immigration minister called us the mistakes of the Fraser government. At last  as though the whole world had finally gone blind  an Australian-born white supremacist entered two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, and slaughtered 51 Muslims peacefully conducting their Friday prayers. Three days later, I found myself standing in front of the silver dome of Auburns Gallipoli Mosque. A beam of light shot through the clouds and between the mosques minarets, which pricked the sky like two spears, striking my face. I quickly spun away from the sun and standing right there before me, also staring up at the mosque, was the Palestinian from high school. He still had his copper complexion and broad shoulders, but his thick black curls had vanished, as had mine.
Freedom is a slippery sucker. The imprecision of the term has come into stark relief as the coronavirus pandemic continues to define our daily existence. Is freedom found in a picnic in the park and boarding an overseas flight or, rather, in the knowledge that you can? Is it a state of mind or a physical reality  and whose is more important, yours or mine or theirs?

American writer Maggie Nelsons latest non-fiction work, On Freedom, hits shelves as we bore of sourdough and streaming and are forced to reckon with what makes a life worth living. The books exploration of the various uses the hard-working word term freedom has been put to, as well as by who and for what reasons, feels ready-made for our era of lockdowns.

Maggie Nelson says she wanted to urge people to think beyond the binary of freedom and so-called unfreedom. Credit:

But actually, Nelson, who lives in Los Angeles, started working on the book more than four years ago, at the start of the Trump presidential era, before Me Too, before Black Lives Matter protests, before J.K. Rowling published those tweets and that essay, and well before out-of-control viruses spreading around the world stopped being the plot of sci-fi novels, although these culture-shaking events are, to varying degrees, present in the book.

Nelson had wanted to take on the subject for more than a decade since it cropped up when she was writing her 2011 book, The Art of Cruelty, about violence in art. She puts her interest in freedom down to two long-held frustrations: how the right attempts to capture the word, and the conflation of moments of liberation with the day-to-day practice of freedom (theres the revolution, she says, then theres the morning after).
In this episode of Good Weekend Talks we look at Bryan Brown, the 74-year-old stalwart of the Australian film industry who has starred in everything from the critically acclaimed Breaker Morant and Newsfront to the iconic 1980s miniseries The Thorn Birds and Hollywood smash hit Cocktail.

The podcast explores how Brown has gone from hand-me-downs to a harbour view, from commitment cynic to a 38-year marriage, and now, from non-reader to short-story writer.

Good Weekend senior writer Amanda Hooton profiles Brown for our cover story this week: Life of Bryan: Archetypal Aussie bloke, evergreen actor  and now, published author.
More than 20 years after Rebel Wilson first started learning her craft at the Australian Theatre For Young People she has repaid the faith showed in her with a donation of $1 million to the company.

The money will go towards the groups new home in Walsh Bay, to be named the Rebel Theatre.

Artistic director Fraser Corfield said he was overwhelmed by the Pitch Perfect stars extraordinary generosity.

I feel that I owe ATYP a lot: Rebel Wilson at her Los Angeles office. Credit:Darcy Hemley-Casucci

Its hard to explain the significance of this to the company, he said. Its a game-changer for ATYP and for youth arts generally.
This mix of news footage, cold statistics and personal anecdotes creates a powerful mosaic, but Epicenters remains firmly Lees own take; bright red chyrons appear regularly on the screen, in distinctive Lee style  when we see footage of Brooklyn, its Da Peoples Republic of Brooklyn; former president Trump appears labelled as Agent Orange; former president Obama is Barack Brudda Man Obama.

Lee talks to frontline medical workers, survivors, emergency responders, obit writers and more to create an oral history of the pandemic in New York. He speaks to a colleague who lost his mother; we see footage of rapper Waka Flocka Flame, early in the pandemic, declaring on radio that minorities cant catch the virus; then CNN anchor Van Jones talking about such conspiracies having killed more minorities than the KKK.

Produced and directed by filmmaker Spike Lee, this epic documentary weaves interviews, anecdotes, witness accounts, archive footage and more into a tribute to New York in the wake of the challenges the city has faced over the last 20 years. Featuring more than 200 interviews, all conducted by Lee, Epicenters opens with journalists, medical workers and others recalling the first time theyd heard about a mystery virus in China. The first two-hour instalment follows the citys coronavirus outbreak from early 2020 when President Trump declared The virus does not stand a chance against us, to the point where more Americans have died of COVID-19 than died in World War II, the Korean War, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan combined.

From the pandemic, Lee veers into the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, examining the citys racial injustices activists, rising police violence and the January 6 siege of the Capitol. This episode covers everything from a chilling comparison of Lees 1989 film Do The Right Thing to the harrowing footage of George Floyds arrest, to interviews with New York congressmen and women and even rapper Busta Rhymes, who coined the Agent Orange handle for Trump.

Despite Epicenters grim subject, Lee finds room for levity  hes an empathetic interviewer, often asking subjects to repeat a particularly powerful line, or talking about their sports, and there are entertaining tangents throughout.

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The third instalment opens with archive footage of the World Trade Centre towers being built, an interview with French high-wire artist Philippe Petit, who famously walked between the Towers in 1974 and Lee himself reminisces about his time as an extra on the 1976 version of King Kong. Its an unusual route into the biggest news story of the 20th century, before dozens of first responders, survivors, the bereaved, reporters, airline workers and even the odd celebrity reflect on the events of September 11, between footage from the day  so familiar but just as horrifying 20 years on. There are also lesser-known stories, including one that even Lee hadnt heard, about the maritime evacuations on the day; up to 500,000 people were rescued by boat on 9/11  more than the number evacuated from Dunkirk in World War II.

The fourth episode, set to air in the US on 9/11, was not available to reviewers here; critics in the US took issue with Lees inclusion of conspiracy group Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, and an interview he gave last month in The New York Times intimating that he didnt believe the official government explanation for what happened on 9/11. After widespread criticism, Lee is now re-editing the final chapter, but released a statement saying that he still has questions and that he hopes the legacy of his documentary would be a congressional hearing about 9/11.
The sartorial decisions of astronauts are hardly labour-intensive. You have to wear a spacesuit and that is pretty much that. Clearly miffed by such restrictions, Jeff Bezos decided to go very big on his accoutrements when he blasted into space in July. Following his 11-minute flight, the tech titan stepped from his spacecraft onto the desert earth of west Texas in uncharacteristic garb. Bezos wore a cowboy hat and boots, presumably to labour the point about space being the last frontier.

Cranking up the symbolism, he then posed for pictures holding the goggles of female aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart. On his wrist, meanwhile, Bezos wore an Omega Speedmaster Moonwatch Master Chronometer.

Jeff Bezos, in cowboy hat and Amelia Earhart goggles, has his eyes set on conquering space. Credit:Getty Images

To be fair, this was an unimpeachable choice, with Omega renowned as the watch brand that first conquered space. In the early 1960s, NASA bought a range of chronographs from different brands in a bid to find the most reliable watch for their astronauts. The watches were subjected to the most rigorous trials in the history of horology. The Speedmaster was the only one to pass.

Understandably, Omega has milked this lunar connection ever since and many Speedmaster models bear casebacks with the engraving: Flight Qualified for all Manned Space Missions. But theyre hardly the only watch brand to be fascinated with outer space. This year, Rolex released an Oyster Perpetual Cosmograph Daytona with a dial hewn from a 600 million-year-old meteorite. Other watches to have left the earths orbit include the Breitling Navitimer and the Seiko Pogue 6139.
These are skills that transfer across all the subjects, Wood says. So the ability to be able to read, comprehend, write, read for meaning, be able to work through a text and understand what the text is telling you and how you can create meaning. He adds that parents would ideally be mixing in other opportunities to get kids creative juices flowing by drawing on their other interests, and encouraging them to be active. How parents are to help kids engage in any subjects after theyve all been crammed into a house together for extended periods is another question. Indeed, even teaching experts arent getting off scot-free.I can tell you, my kids are very quick to remind me that Im not their teacher at home, says Wood, whose children are aged five, nine and 12. My household is probably like everybody elses. If its anything like mine, then maths and English classes are sandwiched around some regretful tantrums. Like when I verbally pounced on my 12-year-old daughter after struggling to get my weeping eight-year-old to sit down to do maths. If I could just have this one thing I love, without it being shat on from a great height! I said, after my daughter side-eyed my dance moves while I listened to loud music in my earphones  my prime coping strategy.

If this has been you, more or less, theres some more good news: Youre normal. As long as you are not harming your children or frequently yelling at them. It is perfectly normal to have an outburst, for people to have a tantrum, says Associate Professor Monica Thielking, chair of Swinburne Universitys department of psychological sciences. A healthy family with healthy relationships will experience conflict. Loading Parents, she adds, should be prioritising their childrens wellbeing over any anxieties they have about how much or how little they are accomplishing scholastically. Its been well documented that anxiety levels among children have been rising during the pandemic, with Kids Helpline reporting a 40 per cent increase in calls from children during COVID-19, compared to pre-pandemic. Your wellbeing always overrides everything, says Thielking, who is also a registered psychologist and qualified youth worker. Without wellbeing, children dont learn well.

Parents should allow their children to skip days of classes, if needed, and do so in consultation with their childs school, says Thielking. She adds that if kids are hating home schooling and experiencing psychological impacts, parents should seek outside help. Aside from that, parents should focus on nurturing their childs confidence in their learning ability. When they lose that [confidence], thats when educators face many challenges, says Thielking. So, how to do it? Wood recommends parents focus on being there to help, rather than to teach. One of the things that Ive learnt as a teacher is you cant make kids do things, says Wood. So it is around a lot of encouragement and a lot of positivity, a lot of building up of the confidence of what kids can do, and do well.

Thielking agrees. If a child is working on a maths problem and they get the answer wrong, reward the effort rather than the result. If they stop making an effort, thats when everything else will fall apart. And parents often have greater skills at their fingertips to help their kids learn at home than they realise, say experts. Theres such a fear at the moment [among parents] around this idea of [their kids] being behind, but we dont actually have any strong research in this particular area around the effects of lockdowns and schooling. Professor Susanne Garvis, Swinburne University For younger children, just living in a very verbal household in which parents are answering childrens questions and getting them to paraphrase whats happening in books theyre reading is helpful, says Professor Susanne Garvis, chair of Swinburne Universitys education department. If we keep these skills going as a bare minimum, thats OK, because we know that these things are effective, she says. Younger children who are struggling to feel engaged with their classes can also gain a lot from online resources like ABC Educations Behind The News program and Melbourne Zoos virtual tour, says Professor Valsamma Eapen, chair of UNSWs Infant Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. Theyre things you can pack in without you even realising its learning, she says.

For older children and teenagers, instilling hope around their future career is critical, Thielking says. What are their strengths, their passions, what kind of career do they see themselves in that they will be happy? When children find meaning in the work that they do, they will do better, theyll be more motivated. Older kids will benefit from being encouraged to teach their parents how they solved a problem at home, even if its something that has nothing to do with schoolwork, like cooking a meal. Its actually great for the learning process that they have to think about, and restate to you, the steps theyve gone through in the learning process, says Thielking. Thats developing skills to solve problems. If they come into a new problem, they can think about how they solved it previously. Any child whos struggling because they are not being challenged enough, says Thielking, should be encouraged to research their interests online and speak about them with their parents. And parents of children of any age should also be mindful of what is, says Professor Garvis, one of the greatest misunderstandings about home schooling now. Theres such a fear at the moment [among parents] around this idea of [their kids] being behind, but we dont actually have any strong research in this particular area around the effects of lockdowns and schooling.
A four-year-old girl who attends a childcare centre in a Logan suburb has tested positive for COVID-19.

Queensland Chief Health Officer Jeannette Young. Credit: Supplied

Late on Friday Nine News reported that the child was a close contact of a 46-year-old Logan truck driver who tested positive this week.

The girl attended The Boulevard Early Learning Centre in Mount Warren Park on Tuesday and Wednesday.

This centre is also used for after school care by children who attend Windaroo State School.
How an 83-year-old who had never been in trouble with the law could be criminally charged and face a court date for an offence she didnt know she was committing is a prime example, her lawyers say. Mrs Hunt, who has lived in the same house in Black Rock for 50 years, was told by VicRoads that their records showed a letter was sent out to her in March last year telling her if she did not submit medical evidence that she was still fit to drive, her licence would be suspended. Lawyers say Mrs Hunts case is a prime example of people unnecessarily pushed towards the criminal justice system. Credit:Joe Armao Mrs Hunt said she never received it. Oh gosh, no, I would have seen to it, she said. Her daughter Diana said her mother was usually fastidious with her bills.

She files every bit of paper shes got. Shes got stuff from when they got the house 50 years ago, Diana said.I know that letter never arrived. Mrs Hunt left her car on the side of the road and was given a lift home by a neighbour. A few weeks later, she received a letter informing her that she had been charged with driving while disqualified and she was expected to turn up to court. Diana said though her mother would never let on  They [the police] were very gentle I have to say, very good, Mrs Hunt said  being criminally charged was distressing. She was scared and frightened. Shed never stepped foot in a courtroom, Diana said. Her lawyer at the community legal centre, Ash Galvin, appealed to police to use their discretion and police prosecutors withdrew the charge.

Victoria Police said in a statement the charge was withdrawn on public interest grounds, due to Mrs Hunts age, physical health and likely sentence. You could argue the system worked and it arrived at the right result ultimately, however, what has that particular person gone through in the meantime and is that the best way we can do things? Mr Galvin said. If youre going to suspend somebodys licence, it shouldnt be done on the basis of one letter sent by post with no follow-up or confirmation. The Department of Transport - on behalf of VicRoads - said it did not comment on individual cases. The Peninsula Community Legal Service has called for a variety of reforms including expanding the use of text messages and emails to alert people to potential infringements, more access and resources to the scheme that allows people to work off fines and a lower threshold for people to claim special circumstances to appeal fines.

According to government figures, more than $5.6 million in fines were withdrawn in the last year against people who were experiencing family violence. More than 1100 people worked off $3 million in fines through the work and development permit scheme. Fines Victoria continues to improve pathways through the infringement system for vulnerable Victorians, a government spokesperson said. We encourage anyone with outstanding debt to contact Fines Victoria to discuss the best option to resolve their fine. The government has in full, or in principle, committed to recommendations out of a fines reform report that included a change in the special circumstances threshold to appeal fines. Loading

The fines reform work arose out of IT issues with Fines Victoria, which saw some people being first alerted of fines at the final demand stage. Shadow attorney-general Ed ODonohue said the government wasted millions on a botched fines system. Too many fine notices are failing to be delivered to Victorians, leaving them with fines they didnt know about and have difficulty in paying, he said. As for Mrs Hunt, her drive in January was her last, and she decided with her medical issues to give up her licence altogether. She said she missed the independence terribly, but managed to get around using public transport. Her Mazda was sold and had become a young mans first car.
The mastermind of one of Melbournes most notorious armed robberies, where bandits dressed as road workers hijacked an Armaguard van and stole $2.32 million, has been jailed for 14 years.

In May a County Court jury found Pasquale Lanciana guilty of armed robbery and other charges, after the five-member fake road gang stopped the van on June 22, 1994, handcuffed the three guards at gunpoint and drove them and the van through the side streets of Richmond.

Pasquale Lanciana, pictured outside the County Court earlier this year, has been jailed for 14 years. Credit:Justin McManus

After removing crates of cash, the gang left the guards handcuffed and blindfolded in the van. The Armaguard officers had that morning picked up money from the Reserve Bank in Melbourne and were driving to a depot when a gang member holding a Stop/Slow sign halted the van before it was to enter what is now the Monash Freeway.

Another gang member activated a concrete-cutting saw to distract the Armaguard driver, while two others opened the vans doors. One told the guards: Dont f---ing move, this is a robbery. Just do as youre told and no one will get hurt.
Hit-run driver Puneet Puneet, who killed a young student in Melbourne 13 years ago, has been remanded in custody in India.

Puneet was a 19-year-old learner driver behind the wheel of a V6 Commodore when he lost control and hit students Dean Hofstee and Clancy Coker in Southbank, Melbourne, in 2008. Mr Hofstee was killed and his friend was severely injured.

Puneet Puneet after being bailed from the Magistrates Court in 2008. Credit:Angela Wylie

Puneet pleaded guilty to culpable driving in Victoria and was awaiting sentence in 2009 when he absconded on a passport borrowed from a friend.

He was arrested in India in 2013 - on his wedding day - and has since faced protracted extradition hearings to determine if he should be sent back to Melbourne.
Save Log in , register or subscribe to save articles for later. Normal text size Larger text size Very large text size Australia has a stronger defence against extremist threats after 20 years of the war on terror, former prime minister John Howard has declared amid a warning from his successor Kevin Rudd about the growing danger from the Talibans victory in Afghanistan. Mr Howard said Australians were safer from two decades of conflict after the terror attacks in New York and Washington on September 11, 2001, but he acknowledged a series of US strategic mistakes including the rushed retreat from Kabul in recent weeks. Former Australian prime minister John Howard was in the United States celebrating 50 years of the alliance with former US president George Bush during the September 11 attacks. Credit:Sky News I think because of whats been done, its probably less likely that something like September 11 will happen again, but thats very hard to answer, Mr Howard said on whether the threat of Islamist terror was any smaller today. I cant say other than that we are better prepared, were more alive, we have better mechanisms, our intelligence gathering arrangements, which are extremely valuable, are probably superior to what they were 20 years ago. The Watson Institute of International and Public Affairs at Brown University in the United States estimates the US wars since 2001 have cost $US6.4 trillion, led to 801,000 deaths as a direct result of fighting and displaced another 21 million people. There is no equivalent Australian estimate but Mr Rudd told The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age that the war in Afghanistan had probably cost the nation $15 billion in direct military spending.

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The whole framing of these engagements as a war on terror was misplaced, Mr Rudd said. Afghanistan was about removing a regime which gave succour to one terrorist organisation, al-Qaeda, but Iraq did not add up to a war on terrorists at all. In fact, it created a new breed of terrorists, who then brought mayhem across the entire Middle East. So in terms of that counter-terrorist objective in Iraq, its been a massive failure. Another former prime minister, Tony Abbott, said Australias response had helped make sure there was no further attack on the scale of September 11, but he said the fall of Kabul showed the extreme danger continued. The bursting into our lives of radical Islamism was a sign that history had not ended with the triumph of liberal democracy and the emergence of China has made these times the most dangerous since the height of the Cold War, Mr Abbott said. I fear we are now called upon to maintain a level of military readiness not seen for at least a generation and for which we are mentally ill-prepared.

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One challenge, Mr Abbott added, was the collapse of self-confidence and the culturally corrosive woke movement in the West. Loading Mr Howard was in Washington DC for talks with George W Bush, then US President, when terrorists hijacked four aircraft and flew two of them into the World Trade Centre in Manhattan and the third into the Pentagon in Washington DC. Investigators believe the passengers on the fourth plane, UA93, overcame the hijackers before it crashed. The attacks killed 2977 people and injured more than 6000. Speaking ahead of the anniversary of those attacks, Mr Howard said his government had been right to invoke the ANZUS treaty with the US and join its ally in the war in Afghanistan weeks after the attacks, as well as joining the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Mr Howard faulted the US, however, for mistakes such as dismantling the Iraqi army and purging the Iraqi government in a de-Baathification program that fuelled resistance to the US and its allies. Asked if Australians should be more reluctant to follow the US into battle after the cost of the conflict over two decades, Mr Howard said he was confident in the strength of the ANZUS alliance because of the shared values between the US and Australia. It is very important arising out of this that we dont lose faith in the value of the American alliance as the ultimate security guarantor, he said.

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It doesnt mean we shouldnt spend a lot of money on our own defence  when I was in government I always gave a higher priority to defence spending than just about anything else, and I continue with that view. But I think it would be very foolish to see any realignment of the American alliance  that would be a huge mistake. Mr Howard has criticised the Biden administration for its retreat from Afghanistan including the decision to name a date for the withdrawal, emboldening the Taliban, but he said it was wrong to see the events as proof of American decline alongside the rise of China. I think because of whats been done, its probably less likely that something like September 11 will happen again. Former prime minister John Howard Well, I dont think it confirms the rise of China, unless you argue that its been an American retreat and therefore automatically China has filled the void. Thats always a pretty precarious sort of argument to mount, he said. I think the strengths and weaknesses of China vis-a-vis America are still there, irrespective of whats happened. Theres no strategic link between whats happened in Afghanistan and what may or may not happen in relation to China and Taiwan, none whatsoever. I think the big change in China has been for a period of close to 15-plus years China was governed by people who believe in cooperating with the West, its now governed by somebody who has become very belligerent towards the West.

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I dont think thats the fault of the Americans or any American administration. Mr Rudd cautioned that the US retreat from Afghanistan could lead to another safe haven for terrorists, increasing the threat, but he agreed with Mr Howard that this did not mean the US was weakened in its dealings with China. Were the Chinese, in particular, to be tempted to use this, in my judgement, strategic error of the US to withdraw from Afghanistan and the way in which its been done, to test American mettle in East Asia somewhere, that would be a deeply flawed decision, Mr Rudd said. The politics in Washington now, informed by the political backlash against what happened in Kabul, will be to double down in reaction to any provocation either by the Russians or the Chinese. I would hope the hard-heads in Beijing understood that. In the longer term, however, there would be a debate about American staying power and this meant Australia had to rely on its own strengths rather than the ANZUS Treaty. It would be unwise for any Australian government, or alternative government, to assume that in a decades time our national security interests can be predicated on the alliance alone, Mr Rudd said.

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Alexandria, Virginia: A British national has admitted in a US federal courtroom that he played a leadership role in an Islamic State scheme to torture, hold for ransom and eventually behead American hostages.

Alexanda Anon Kotey, 37, pleaded guilty to all eight counts against him at a plea hearing in US District Court in Alexandria. The charges include hostage-taking resulting in death and providing material support to the Islamic State group from 2012 through 2015.

He admitted guilt in connection with the deaths of four American hostages  journalist James Foley, journalist Steven Sotloff and aid workers Peter Kassig and Kayla Mueller  as well as European and Japanese nationals.

Alexanda Amon Kotey, allegedly among four British jihadis who made up a brutal Islamic State cell dubbed the Beatles, speaks to The Associated Press at a security centre in Kobani, Syria, in 2018. Credit:AP

Kotey is one of four Islamic State members who were dubbed the Beatles by their captives because of their British accents. He and another man, El Shafee Elsheikh, were brought to the US last year to face charges after the US assured Britain that neither man would face the death penalty.
He was obviously a supporter of ISIS ideology, Ardern said, acknowledging that she was personally aware of him as a threat risk. Speaking about the attack before taking questions, Ardern said: It was hateful, it was wrong. It was carried out by an individual, not a faith. He alone carries the responsibility for these acts. Ardern said she believed it was in the public interest to share more about the mans history, but said details of the mans history with authorities in New Zealand had been suppressed by the courts and urged people to be patient while her government worked to find a way to release them. New Zealand Police Commissioner Andrew Coster said while there would be questions about whether officers could have done more to stop the stabbing which left six people injured, he was satisfied police members did not only what we expect they would do in the situation, but did it with great courage.

Coster said the perpetrator had travelled from his home from Glen Eden, in Aucklands south-west, to the nearby Countdown supermarket in New Lynn where he was watched by surveillance and tactical teams. The man then obtained a knife from within the store and began the attack, with authorities intervening in just 60 seconds from when the incident began. [Police teams] need to maintain sufficient distance for surveillance to be effective, so they were as close as they possibly could be without compromising the surveillance, he said. Ardern said the authorities were not looking for anyone else in relation to the stabbing, and she was confident the man was a lone-wolf actor who had a violent ideology and (was) ISIS-inspired.

Loading Looking shaky and drawn during the press conference, Ardern said she was absolutely gutted by the attack and said there had been nothing to indicate that the man was going to carry out the attack on Friday. I can tell you the agencies were using every single possible means available to them to protect the New Zealand public from this individual, she said. Of all of the tools that we have, constant monitoring and surveillance ... is one of the strongest that we have, and that is what was attached to this individual. The fact that he was in the community will be an illustration of the fact that we havent succeeded in using the law, to the extent we would have liked. Prime Minister Scott Morrison tweeted a statement condemning the horrific terrorist attack in Auckland.

Our thoughts are with all those affected. We stand with our Kiwi family in deploring all such violent acts designed to create fear and divide us. Kia kaha New Zealand. The attack comes only two weeks after Kabul fell to Taliban militants, spurring fears that extremists in other parts of the world would be inspired to carry out attacks. There is no evidence, however, that the Auckland attack was in any way inspired by events in Afghanistan. Ambulance service St John New Zealand said three patients in a critical condition and one patient in a serious condition had been taken to Auckland city hospital. Another patient in a moderate condition was at Waitakere Hospital, while a sixth patient also in a moderate condition was being treated at Middlemore Hospital. A witness, Tim, who did not want his last name used, said he saw an elderly man lying on the ground with a stab wound to his abdomen. A middle-aged woman was also stabbed in the shoulder, he said.

Michelle Miller was doing her afternoon shop when she saw the scene unfold. She said the man was running around like a lunatic and attacking people. All I heard was a lot of screaming, she said. Miller, who fled the supermarket as police rushed in, said she heard officers ordering the man to give himself up and get on the ground before shots were fired.

Shoppers were evacuated from the shopping mall by police. Credit:Stuff Another witness, Brittany Denyer, was about to park to enter the shopping centre when police officers ran up to her and told her to hurry up and evacuate immediately. People were panicking, and it was a gridlock trying to get out of New Lynn. Police and ambulances [were] everywhere. I was told by another police officer while I was waiting to be diverted that someone had been stabbed, she said. Videos posted online showed panicked shoppers running out of the shopping mall and looking for cover as the situation unfolded. Auckland is currently under strict stage-four lockdown due to a coronavirus outbreak, but people have been queuing outside supermarkets and pharmacies.
Theater is back! And considering what's playing in New York City this fall, it's back with a vengeance. These are the 9 shows I'm most excited to see in the coming months. Whether you're looking for a trenchant new drama, a very musical evening, or you just want to laugh your ass off (yes, please) there is something on this list for you.

Anthony Roth Costanzo and Justin Vivian Bond star in Only an Octave Apart.

( Ruven Afanador)

1. Only an Octave Apart (first performance September 21)

Theater audiences likely already know Justin Vivian Bond, "Kiki" of Kiki & Herb and the grand doyenne of the New York cabaret scene. But they should also know Anthony Roth Costanzo, the opera star who made a big splash in the lavish Met production of Akhnaten. Costanzo is a countertenor, which is the highest male voice in music. Mx. Bond's range is...not quite that high. The two artists represent two different voices from two very different musical disciplines  but can they come together to make something beautiful? Can they find the connection between Purcell's 17th-century aria "Dido's Lament" and Dido's early 2000s radio hit "White Flag?" I can't wait to find out.

2. The Visitor (first performance October 7)

This musical adaptation of Thomas McCarthy's 2007 film about a widowed college professor who gets wrapped up in the fight to keep two young undocumented immigrants from being deported features an A-list cast and creative team. Tony winner David Hyde Pierce (Curtains) will play Walter, the college professor, while Tony winner Ari'el Stachel (The Band's Visit) will play Tarek. The score is by Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey (Next To Normal), with a book by Yorkey and Kwame Kwei-Armah (Elmina's Kitchen) and direction by Daniel Sullivan (nearly every Shakespeare in the Park). This was set to open last year at the Public's Newman Theater (original home of Hamilton and Fun Home), so to say that it is the most highly anticipated new musical in New York is an understatement.

3. Caroline, or Change (first performance October 8)

This is one of those musicals that didn't quite take off on Broadway, but about which people still speak wistfully. With music by Jeanine Tesori (Fun Home) and book/lyrics by Tony Kushner (Angels in America), it tells the story of Caroline, a Black maid working for a Jewish family in 1963 Louisiana, just as the civil rights movement is about to change America forever. One of my greatest regrets is never seeing the original production, but when I arrived in New York at the end of summer 2004, it was already gone. This new production at Studio 54 for the Roundabout Theatre Company is an opportunity for Broadway audiences to experience a musical that many people feel never got a fair shake, and perhaps rediscover a lost gem that was ahead of its time.

Michael Benjamin Washington starred in the 2019 Signature Theatre revival of Anna Deavere Smith's Fires in the Mirror.

( Joan Marcus)

4. Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 (first performance October 12)

Anna Deavere Smith interviewed over 350 Angelenos for this sweeping theatrical documentary about the 1992 Rodney King beating, a shocking incident of police brutality caught on camera that led to protests and riots  nearly three decades before George Floyd became a household name. 1992 was also the year that Smith created her acclaimed documentary play about the Crown Heights race riots, Fires in the Mirror, which was revived off-Broadway in 2019 at Signature Theatre. Smith returns to Signature for this new play about a seemingly old subject, which is distressingly still as relevant as ever.

Jackie Hoffman is one of the many hilarious actors appearing in Fairycakes.

( David Gordon)

5. Fairycakes (first performance October 14)

If you need a laugh, this looks like a promising ticket. From the mind of Douglas Carter Beane (The Little Dog Laughed, The Nance) comes this wild mash-up of A Midsummer Night's Dream and multiple classic fairytales. It features an all-star cast of some of the best stage comedians in the country, including Jackie Hoffman (The Addams Family), Ann Harada (Avenue Q), Arnie Burton (Peter and the Starcatcher), Julie Halston (everything by Charles Busch), Mo Rocca (The Daily Show), Chris Myers (An Octoroon), and Jason Tam (Be More Chill). I will be shocked if there is any unmasticated scenery left by the end of this run.

Rob McClure stars in Mrs. Doubtfire on Broadway.

( Joan Marcus)

6. Mrs. Doubtfire (first performance October 21)

I've been looking forward to this one for over two years now. The 1993 Robin Williams film about a father who disguises himself as a British nanny in order to circumvent the terms of his custody agreement regularly played on repeat in my childhood home. While the new Broadway musical performed three previews in March 2020, Covid put an end to all of that  until now. The musical represents the sophomore outing of the creative team behind Something Rotten (who did pretty darn well for their freshman musical). It stars Rob McClure, a replacement in Something Rotten and one of Broadway's nicest guys. Mrs. Doubtfire promises to be a night of rip-roaring musical comedy, which is something you might be in the market for after a grueling year-and-a-half.

Ade Otukoya, Emana Rachelle, Sandra Okuboyejo, Abena, Nana Mensah, and Charlie Hudson III star in Jocelyn Bioh's Nollywood Dreams, directed by Saheem Ali, at MCC Theater.

( Caitlin McNaney)

7. Nollywood Dreams (first performance October 21)

Another holdover from the before times, Jocelyn Bioh's newest comedy takes place in the boom times of Nigerian cinema  the 1990s. It's about an aspiring ingenue trying to break into the business and the aging star who stands in her way. Could this be All About Eve a la Lagos? Bioh struck comic gold in her 2017 debut, School Girls; or, The African Mean Girls Play, which was set in 1980s Ghana (costume designers love her). Her fresh take on Shakespeare's Merry Wives was also the perfect way to welcome back New York audiences to Shakespeare in the Park. Bioh is one of America's funniest, shrewdest playwrights, and that makes Nollywood Dreams a must-see.

Uzo Aduba leads the cast of Lynn Nottage's Clyde's on Broadway.

( David Gordon)

8. Clyde's (first performance November 3)

When a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner has a new play on Broadway, attention must be paid, which is why Lynn Nottage's Clyde's has a big red circle around it in my calendar. Nottage is the writer of Ruined and Sweat, as well as the forthcoming Michael Jackson bio-musical on Broadway. Clyde's is about a truck stop sandwich shop staffed by the formerly incarcerated. It stars Uzo Aduba (Orange Is the New Black) and Edmund Donovan, who has become one of my favorite actors following his breathtaking performances in Greater Clements and Lewiston/Clarkston. Nottage has a gift for dramatizing the lives of the most marginalized in our society, so I am glad that she has made room on Broadway for a group of Americans who are routinely excluded  often through the insidious device of a box on an employment application.

Babak Tafti starred in Sylvia Khoury's Against the Hillside at Ensemble Studio Theatre in 2018. The actor and playwright reunite for Selling Kabul at Playwrights Horizons.

( Gerry Goodstein)

9. Selling Kabul (first performance November 17)

Sylvia Khoury's latest play is about Taroon, a translator for the US military in Afghanistan who has been left behind by the recent withdrawal of troops, and who spends his days in hiding from the Taliban. The consistently compelling actor Babak Tafti (Othello, The Profane) stars as Taroon. Khoury impressed me with her dramatization of individuals swimming against the riptide of global events in her 2019 drama, Power Strip, about Syrian refugees in Greece. Selling Kabul was announced before the sudden collapse of Afghanistan's forces, and recent events have made this already timely play even more urgent.
Arturo Luis Soria has been studying this role for a lifetime. That's because, in his new solo play, Ni Mi Madre, he portrays his own mother, Elizabeth ("Bete" for short). She might deny that the character is her, but Bete, an opinionated Brazilian immigrant with an extraordinary mixed family and a highly theatrical gay son, has a story that was made for the stage.

'Ni Mi Madre'' tells the story of a woman who leaves Rio de Janeiro and a strained relationship with her own mother to form a new family in the United States. The furious improvisation of child-rearing is made even more complicated by the pressures and expectations of a strange culture, where ideas like "time out" and "ADHD" clash with Bete's more traditional upbringing.

The solo play is now performing at Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, the first live production to reopen the beloved off-off-Broadway venue. This is also Soria's first time back onstage since the Broadway run of The Inheritance ended back in March 2020.

I spoke with him about the genesis of Ni Mi Madre and what he has learned about his mom in the process.

Arturo Luis Soria plays Bete in Ni Mi Madre at Rattlestick Playwrights Theater.

( Andrew Soria)

This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

How long have you been playing your mother?

I started to write this play in 2008. I was in a solo performance class for undergrad, and we had to churn something out every week. I can't remember exactly what the prompt was. It was something to do with childhood. I started to write about mine, but from my perspective  and it wasn't funny. So I was frustrated, and one day, I said, "You know what...forget it. I'm gonna put on a dress and I'm just going to talk like my mother." And it worked! So that's how it began. This current version took shape at Yale Cabaret with Danilo Gambini, the director.

What does your mother say about it?

She laughs...and she cringes. She'll say to me, "That's not me. That's a character you created." But then she'll proceed to give me five notes after every performance, things like, "I wouldn't have said it like that." And I'll say, "But mami, didn't you say it's a character I created?" And she'll say, "It is...but the character would say it like this."

As the play has developed over the years, it has gotten a little deeper. I think those moments can be hard for my mom. But after seeing this production, she told me she really enjoyed it. I mean, she bought out a third of the house.

Not a difficult thing to do at Rattlestick.

Yeah! She bought 25 tickets to see it on Saturday. They all loved it and they loved her. It's always nice when people after the show want to meet her and congratulate her. I think that makes her feel good.

Arturo Luis Soria wrote and stars in Ni Mi Madre at Rattlestick Playwrights Theater.

( Andrew Soria)

What does the title mean to you? Is it "not my mother" or "nor my mother?"

In Spanish, it's both. There's a line in the play where Bete says, "I wasn't ready to face my past, nor my pain, ni mi madre." Nor my mother. I believe that in order to move forward, we have to look back. We have to be able to face that which came before us to have the knowledge, wisdom, and strength to move forward.

Do you think that kind of retrospect is a privilege? One of the themes to emerge from this piece is the immigrant hustle that doesn't allow much time for self-reflection.

There's a truth to that. It was really true of my parents and grandparents. They came and they worked. I think about my mom saying, "I didn't have time to look back. I had to keep you alive." So that's a sentiment that exists within my immigrant family. I think of my dad's mother: She sold everything back in Ecuador to save the life of her mother. For her, it was a no-brainer. She had to think about the present. So I do think reflection is a privilege. I haven't had to make a long voyage like that to save my family. I'm reaping the benefits of the choices they made. I've been privileged enough to grow up here and pursue my dreams of being an artist and actor  which to them is like, What are you doing? An actor? You're going to be poor.

So they weren't always supportive of this career path?

My mother always was! She said, "If you're going to do it, then do it. And make sure you can live off of it." Luckily, I have been fortunate enough to be able to do that.

Arturo Luis Soria and his mother wear Purificacion Garcia at the opening night of Ni Mi Madre.

( Andrew Soria)

As an actor, I imagine stepping into a role gives you a certain amount of empathy for your character. Was this true of playing your mother?

Absolutely. I learned a lot, and I keep learning things. I was 21 when I started. I was trying to make sense of my childhood. That was a period in my life when I realized my parents weren't superheroes. They were human. This play gave me the opportunity to understand and humanize my mother  and my grandmother, whom I never met. I was rewriting the script and learning more up to the last minute of this production  things I wasn't able to understand at 21, because I hadn't lived enough yet.

Other members of your extended family make cameo appearances in Ni Mi Madre. Are there other plays in here?

There are! I have something else cooking that would tie into the family. But I won't say much for now. The other characters in the play are quite explosive in their own way, and that deserves some air time.
AP

Biden blasts high court failure to block Texas abortion curb

WASHINGTON  President Joe Biden on Thursday blasted the Supreme Courts decision not to block a new Texas law banning most abortions in the state and directed federal agencies to do what they can to insulate women and providers from the impact.

Hours earlier, in the middle of the night, a deeply divided high court allowed the law to remain in force. It is the nations biggest curb to abortion rights since the court announced in its landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that women have a constitutional right to abortion.

The court voted 5-4 to deny an emergency appeal from abortion providers and others but also suggested that their order likely wasnt the last word and other challenges can be brought.

Biden said in a statement that his administration will launch a whole-of-government effort to respond to this decision and look at what steps the federal government can take to ensure that women in Texas have access to safe and legal abortions as protected by Roe.

Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement that the Justice Department was deeply concerned about the Texas law and evaluating all options to protect the constitutional rights of women, including access to an abortion.

Biden, who has come under pressure from Democrats to expand the size of the Supreme Court, has ordered a review of the court that is due next month.

The Texas law, signed by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott in May, prohibits abortions once medical professionals can detect cardiac activity, usually around six weeks and before many women know theyre pregnant.

The law is part of a broader push by Republicans nationwide to impose new restrictions on abortion. At least 12 other states have enacted bans early in pregnancy, but all have been blocked from going into effect.

The high courts order declining to halt the Texas law came just before midnight Wednesday. The majority said those bringing the case had not met the high burden required for a stay of the law.

In reaching this conclusion, we stress that we do not purport to resolve definitively any jurisdictional or substantive claim in the applicants lawsuit. In particular, this order is not based on any conclusion about the constitutionality of Texass law, and in no way limits other procedurally proper challenges to the Texas law, including in Texas state courts, the unsigned order said.

Chief Justice John Roberts dissented along with the courts three liberal justices. Each of the four wrote a statement expressing disagreement with the majority.

Roberts noted that while the majority denied the request for emergency relief the courts order is emphatic in making clear that it cannot be understood as sustaining the constitutionality of the law at issue.

Separately, the justices are planning to tackle the issue in a major case when they begin hearing arguments again in the fall. That case involves the state of Mississippi, which is asking to be allowed to enforce an abortion ban after 15 weeks of pregnancy.

The vote in the Texas case underscores the impact of the death of the liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg last year and then-president Donald Trumps replacement of her with conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett. Had Ginsburg remained on the court there would have been five votes to halt the Texas law.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor called her conservative colleagues decision stunning.

Presented with an application to enjoin a flagrantly unconstitutional law engineered to prohibit women from exercising their constitutional rights and evade judicial scrutiny, a majority of Justices have opted to bury their heads in the sand, she wrote.

Texas lawmakers wrote the law to evade federal court review by allowing private citizens to bring lawsuits in state court against anyone involved in an abortion, other than the patient. Other abortion laws are enforced by state and local officials, with criminal sanctions possible.

In contrast, Texas law allows private citizens to sue abortion providers and anyone involved in facilitating abortions. Among other situations, that could include anyone who drives a woman to a clinic to get an abortion. Under the law, anyone who successfully sues another person would be entitled to at least $10,000.

Justice Elena Kagan wrote that the law was patently unconstitutional, and Justice Stephen Breyer said a woman has a federal constitutional right to obtain an abortion during the first stage of pregnancy.

However, anti-abortion groups cheered the courts action.

This is the most significant accomplishment for the pro-life movement in Texas since Roe v. Wade, said John Seago, legislative director for Texas Right to Life, the states largest anti-abortion group. We had the Supreme Court that is allowing the strongest bill weve ever passed to go into effect. And that is unheard of.

Kristan Hawkins, the president of Students for Life of America, said in a statement that her group was celebrating this decision for what it is, baby steps in the right direction toward the obvious conclusion that Roe is fatally flawed and must go.

But Nancy Northup, the head of the Center for Reproductive Rights, which represents abortion providers challenging the law, vowed to keep fighting it.

Right now, people seeking abortion across Texas are panicking  they have no idea where or when they will be able to get an abortion, if ever, she said.

Texas has long had some of the nations toughest abortion restrictions, including a sweeping law passed in 2013. The Supreme Court eventually struck down that law, but not before more than half of the states 40-plus clinics closed.
Jennifer Conary looks away as she receives a COVID-19 vaccination May 12, 2021, in Auburn, Maine.
Staff Reporter

Nyamekye Daniel has been a journalist for five years. She was the managing editor for the South Florida Media Network and a staff writer for The Miami Times. Daniel's work has also appeared in the Sun-Sentinel, Miami Herald and The New York Times.
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Blount school board adjourns with shouting

Amy Beth Miller | The Daily Times During the Blount County Board of Education meeting on Thursday, Sept. 2, Beth Tucker calls board member Vandy Kemp racist. In an August Facebook post Kemp suggested that people who were speaking against critical race theory would help their case if they included people who are not white in presenting their views. The front side of a card distributed at a Blount County Board of Education meeting on Thursday. The reverse side of a card distributed at Blount County Board of Education meeting on Thursday. Amy Beth Miller | The Daily Times After the Blount County Board of Education adjourned Sept. 2, while she was speaking, Beth Tucker said, "They tell you to come, they tell you they're going to listen, and then they don't listen." Tucker called board member Vandy Kemp racist for a social media post that suggested people speaking out against critical race theory would help their case if they included people who are not white in presenting the group's views. Amy Beth Miller | The Daily Times Elizabeth Myers-Rees told the Blount Count Board of Education at its meeting Thursday, Sept. 2, Any parent who wishes to mask their children has the freedom and the right to do so. Do not hinder our freedoms and rights not to follow suit. Amy Beth Miller | The Daily Times Ami Davis asked the Blount County Board of Education on Thursday, Sept. 2, what would trigger a face mask requirement in the schools. Citing current COVID-19 case numbers, she said, "None of these numbers are good, and we're heading in the wrong direction."

The Blount County Board of Education quickly adjourned its meeting Thursday after a speaker criticized board member Vandy Kemp during the public comment period.

Public comments at the meeting already had covered face masks, critical race theory and a transgender student using the girls restroom at William Blount High School before Beth Tucker raised her complaint against Kemp.

Before the meeting, cards being handed out as people entered the Central Office called Kemp a living example of systemic racism.

The card included part of a Facebook post from Aug. 5. in which Kemp refers to people who spoke against critical race theory during last months school board meeting and suggested It would help the case if you could include your Black friends (and other non white folks) in presenting your groups views.

During the public comment period, board members already had told Tucker not to mention a board member or teacher by name, which they said was longstanding policy.

Tucker then said to Kemp, I brought my Hispanic daughter, if thats a prop enough for you. Is that acceptable?

At that point board Chairman Robbie Kirkland called for a motion to adjourn, which the board did.

They tell you to come, they tell you theyre going to listen, and then they dont listen, Tucker said. Go ahead and walk out because the entire community is watching you. We are on watch, so be aware, she said as someone appeared to video the school board with a mobile phone and others applauded.

Youre racist. Youre racist, and youre virtue signaling, Tucker shouted just before Kirkland asked one of the multiple deputies at the meeting to take her out of the meeting room.

Youre only louder. Youre not right, another member of the audience said to Tucker.

Asked for comment after the meeting, Kemp said in the Facebook thread she offered to meet with people and they declined.

Masks and more

At the beginning of the meeting the school board heard from both sides of the debate about wearing face masks as a precaution to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

Elizabeth Myers-Rees began by saying, If you can smell smoke while wearing a mask, it provides no protection from viral infection.

After discussing masks harboring bacteria and restricting the exchange of carbon dioxide, she said, Mandating masking of our children, who have the lowest risk of contracting or transmitting this virus according to all available data, is in my mind criminal.

Any parent who wishes to mask their children has the freedom and the right to do so. Do not hinder our freedoms and rights not to follow suit, she said to applause.

Ami Davis noted that last week across Tennessee nearly 40% of COVID-19 cases were among children. She also cited the record number of COVID-19 cases at Blount Memorial Hospital, rise in daily cases in the county over the past month and Blount Count Schools data.

A dashboard BCS put on its website shows during the week of Aug. 16-20 COVID-19 testing on campus found 36 student positives and six staff members along with self-reported cases of 29 students and five staff members.

None of these numbers are good, and were heading in the wrong direction, she said, asking what indicators would prompt the district to require instead of just strongly recommending masks. Her remarks also received applause.

Division

Michelle Hooper, a leader of the group that has been speaking at recent meetings, called on the school board to adopt a resolution rejecting concepts of critical race theory not only in classrooms but also all personnel training.

There was a time when teachers and students could have courageous conversations, she said. They could talk about racial identity and focus on reconciliation, not division and placing blame. The objective was on unity and the richness and power of diversity.

She said the real intent of CRT is to divide and dismantle us as a nation.

She characterized it as promoting helplessness, victimization or demonization of entire groups of people.

Cheryl Wall told the school board she pulled her daughter from Blount County Schools and said the district has failed every student in the system, citing academic test scores.

Your job is to teach our kids math, reading, some accurate history and some science, she said. You have made it your duty to teach values and morals with no regard to mine. Im standing here again to let you know thats not your right or duty.

She objected to Carpenters Elementary School holding a Diversity Day to promote kindness and having a hug line, so during morning drop off the school does not have parents inside, although they may come in by appointment later.

WBHS bathroom

April Heatherly raised the issue of a transgender student using the girls room at William Blount High School. Because of that, she said, her daughter and others will not use the restroom.

What are we going to do to keep our female students safe, whenever they cannot go into the restrooms without being faced with a male student being in their restrooms. Its not okay, she said.

During Thursdays meeting the board passed the second reading of Policy 3.220, Access to Private Facilities. The policy says, Students, employees or teachers may request reasonable accommodations if they desire greater privacy when using muti-occupancy restrooms or changing facilities located in the school building or when using multi-occupancy sleeping quarters while attending a school-sponsored activity.
Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes at DickPolman.net. Email him at dickpolman7@gmail.com.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas updates reporters on the effort to resettle vulnerable Afghans in the United States, in Washington on Sept. 3, 2021. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo)

40,000 From Afghanistan Airlift Have Entered United States: Official

Some 40,000 people airlifted from Afghanistan have arrived in the United States, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said Friday.

U.S. troops flew or facilitated the flight of more than 120,000 people from the airport in Kabul during about two-and-a-half weeks through Aug. 30, when the troops withdrew from Afghanistan completely.

Approximately 13 percent of the evacuees that have entered the United States have been U.S. citizens, according to Mayorkas. Another 8 percent were lawful permanent residents. The rest were Special Immigrant Visa holders or applicants or other Afghan nationals deemed vulnerable to Taliban terrorists if they had not been evacuated.

Mayorkas has been using his powers of parole to let in some Afghans who lack a visa, the Department of Homeland Security revealed last week. Mayorkas declined to say how many Afghans have been granted parole.

The evacuees were initially flown from Kabul to U.S. military bases in third countries, such as Ramstein Air Base in Germany.

After vetting by a team of hundreds of government workers, including FBI officials, the cleared evacuees were flown to the United States. Most have been landing at Dulles International Airport in Virginia or Philadelphia International Airport in Pennsylvania.

They are then shuttled to one of eight military bases scattered across the country, including Fort Bliss in Texas and Fort McCoy in Wisconsin.

Approximately 25,600 Afghans were being housed at the military bases as of Sept. 3, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told reporters in Washington.

Families evacuated from Kabul, Afghanistan, walk through the terminal before boarding a bus after they arrived at Washington Dulles International Airport, in Chantilly, Va., on Sept. 2, 2021. (Jose Luis Magana/AP Photo)

The military has a capacity across the eight installations for about 36,000 but is working to increase that to at least 50,000. No more bases are expected to be needed to house the evacuees.

About 1,000 Afghans have been resettled, or moved off of bases, according to U.S. Air Force Gen. Glen VanHerck, commander of the North American Aerospace Defense Command and Northern Command.

Mayorkas said the number of evacuees is expected to come in above 50,000.

The number is something I dont want to estimate becauseas Ive mentioned beforeour commitment is an enduring one, he said. This is not just a matter of the next several weeks. We will not rest until we have accomplished the ultimate goal of Operation Allies Welcome.

U.S. officials pledged to Afghans who helped U.S. troops in the war in Afghanistan that they would be evacuated before troops withdrew. Some were not. Between 100 and 200 Americans were also left behind.

Governors from each party have said they will welcome refugees to their states.

The Afghans fleeing the Taliban regime served alongside Americas military forces and fought for freedom. Were grateful for their efforts and Arizona wholeheartedly welcomes our fair share of the refugees in our state, Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey and Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers, both Republicans, said in a joint statement last month.

But some officials have expressed concern about the influx of refugees, arguing they could pose security problems.

Rep. Tom Tiffany (R-Wis.) said he visited Fort McCoy last week and discovered all Afghan nationals there were on parole.

The Biden administration has circumvented the SIV process, he said.

Afghans are also being allowed to leave the base at will, he added.
A person scans a QR code on an Apple Watch to temporarily send their digital driver's license to another mobile phone at a Harmons Grocery store in Salt Lake City, Utah on Aug. 4, 2021. (George Frey/Getty Images)

8 US States to Adopt Apple Digital ID, Drivers License

Apple announced on Wednesday it will launch, with the cooperation of eight states, a digital version of a drivers license or state ID that can be installed on an iPhone.

The first states that will roll out the feature to an Apple Wallet or Apple Watch, are Arizona, Connecticut, Georgia, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Oklahoma, and Utah, according to a statement by Apple.

Apple also works with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to equip some security checkpoints at selected airports with a touchless capability to read and process digital IDs on iPhone or Apple Watch, the statement said.

Airport customers will be able to simply tap their iPhone or Apple Watch to present [their IDs] to the TSA, without taking out their physical card or handing over their device, the statement explained.

To add a drivers license or state ID to an iPhone, their users will need to tap an add button, take a selfie, and complete a series of facial and head movements during the setup process.

Once verified by the issuing state, the customers ID or drivers license will be added to Wallet.

To present their drivers license or state ID to an identity reader at the airport, customers will need to be authenticated by their iPhones fingerprint recognition or facial recognition feature. Only upon successful authentication, the drivers license or state ID on the device will be shared with the TSA, the statement said.

Users do not need to unlock, show, or hand over their device to present their ID.

Apple claimed that neither the state which issued the drivers license nor Apple will know where and when the device owners presented their ID.

If a device gets lost, its owner can use Apples app called Find My to locate the lost phone, and lock it or erase its contents.

Arizona and Georgia will be the first states to introduce this new feature to their residents, with six other states following soon, the statement added.

Arizona is at the leading edge of states making mobile IDs available to the public, and we are pleased to work with Apple and give Arizonians the choice, convenience, and security of adding their drivers license to their Apple Wallet, Eric Jorgensen, director of the Arizona Department of Transportation Motor Vehicle Division, said in the statement.

Spencer R. Moore, commissioner of the Georgia Department of Driver Services, said in the statement, Georgia is a national leader when it comes to the safety and security of its driver and identity credentialing process, with more than 99 percent of Georgians REAL ID compliant.

REAL ID is a set of security standards enacted by Congress in 2005 that needs to be followed by agencies issuing identification documents such as drivers licenses, according to the Department of Homeland Security. Georgia has followed these rules since 2012, said Georgias Department of Drivers Services.

Together [with Apple], we will deliver customer convenience through touchless identity verification and enhanced security and privacy protection through technology, Moore said. The identity proofing bar has been raised significantly thanks to Apple and innovative states like Georgia.

The idea of expanding mobile phones to prove a persons identity have raised some concerns that consolidating so much personal information on a phone increases the risk of infringement on ones privacy.

Shelia Dunn Joneleit, a spokesperson for the National Motorists Association, told the Associated Press in May, When you have a physical thing in your hand, no one can hack that unless you lose it.

She also expressed a concern that the digitalization of IDs may impact peoples rights in states that require a drivers license or state ID to vote because not everyone can afford a smartphone.

Moreover, if people hand over their mobile phones to police it may potentially violate the Fourth Amendment which protects people against unreasonable searches and seizures by the government, Joneleit said.
Douglas Jensen (C) speaks to U.S. Capitol Police officers inside the building in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)

Accused Capitol Breacher Ordered Back to Jail After Getting Caught Using the Internet

An Iowa man accused of participating in the breach of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 was jailed again after getting caught using the internet.

There was clear and convincing evidence that Douglas Jensen accessed the internet on a cell phone on Aug. 13 and watched video of a cyber symposium related to the 2020 presidential election on a phone days before that, U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly wrote in a Sept. 2 order.

Kelly in July let Jensen go free from jail, pending trial, but with certain conditions. Because accessing the internet violated one of those conditions, Jensen is headed back to prison.

According to prosecutors, Jensen was found by an officer alone, in his garage, using an iPhone to stream news from Rumble, a video platform, 30 days after his release.

Jensen offered a series of excuses regarding the violation of the terms of release before eventually admitting that he had spent two days that week watching a cyber symposium put on by MyPillow founder Mike Lindell.

Jensens lawyer told the court in a motion for his release that the man had been a victim of numerous conspiracy theories that were being fed to him over the internet by a number of very clever people and that he had not intended to, nor did he, commit violence on Jan. 6.

Jensen did become caught up in the QAnon movement, which revolves around a number of theories, but recognized while sitting in a jail cell in Washington that he bought into a pack of lies, according to the motion. Jensen had a wakeup call in jail and was prepared to comply with conditions set by the court to go home, be with his family, and work, the lawyer added.

Douglas Jensen is seen in a file mugshot. (Polk County Jail via AP)

After Jensen violated the conditions, prosecutors said Jensens alleged disavowal of QAnon was just an act; that his alleged epiphany inside the D.C. Jail was merely self-advocacy; and that, at the end of the day, Jensen will not abandon the misguided theories and beliefs that led him to menacingly chase U.S. Capitol Police Officer Eugene Goodman up the Senate staircase on Jan. 6.

Kelly, a Trump nominee, agreed.

Its now clear that he has not experienced a transformation and that he continues to seek out those conspiracy theories that led to his dangerous conduct on Jan. 6, the judge said during a hearing on Thursday, the Associated Press reported.

I dont see any reason to believe that he has had the wake-up call that he needs, the judge added.

Christopher Davis, a lawyer representing the defendant, asked the court to allow Jensen to remain free from jail. Jensen complied with other conditions of his release, such as remaining home, and should be given another chance.

Davis said his client did not dispute that he went on the internet but described it as Orwellian for prosecutors to move to have his client jailed again for sitting in his garage and using the internet.
Backpacks and belongings of Afghan people who were waiting to be evacuated are seen at the site of the Aug. 26 twin suicide bombs, which killed scores of people including 13 U.S. troops, at Kabul airport in Afghanistan on Aug. 27, 2021. (Wakil Kohsar/AFP via Getty Images)

Afghanistan Brings Disaster, but No Responsibility Is Taken

Commentary

Two weeks ago in this space, I wrote about the foolishness of a political leader like President Joe Biden who is so ideologically rigid, so thoroughly self-identified with his beliefs about the world that, when those beliefs turn out to be wrong, he can never afford to acknowledge the truth.

This week, Biden provided yet another illustration of this foolishness by an address to the nation, occasioned by what anyone could see was Americas worst military disaster in nearly half a century.

Yet not only did he fail to acknowledge the disaster, he treated it as if it were a triumph.

Last night in Kabul, he began, the United States ended 20 years of war in Afghanistan. The longest war in American history. We completed one of the biggest airlifts in history with more than 120,000 people evacuated to safety. That number is more than double what most experts thought were [sic] possible. No nation, no nation has ever done anything like it in all of history. Only the United States had the capacity and the will and ability to do it, and we did it today.

Then he continued: The extraordinary success of this mission was due to the incredible skill, bravery and selfless courage of the United States military and our diplomats and intelligence professionals.

Even allowing for the fact that he knew he could rely on a sycophantic media to back up or rationalize this patently false claim to success, or least decline to notice its falseness, it was a powerful testimony to the capacity for self-delusion of the modern ideologueboth of him who made the claim and those millions who are presumably still willing to support him in that self-delusion.

A few weeks earlier, right around the time that Biden was assuring us that the likelihood theres going to be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely, I also wrote of how the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the military services, General Mark Milley, had also become a prisoner of ideology, since he appeared to have acquiesced in the hard-line Democratic ideologues view of Trump supporters as a threat to national security.

This delusion, presumably shared by other senior officers in the armed forces, was potentially even more dangerous than that of Biden about the Taliban, but it also turned out to have foreshadowed it.

You could tell by the transparently political happy-talk briefing given by General Hank Taylor and Pentagon press secretary John Kirby a week before the curtain fell on the American military presence in Afghanistan. (We still dont know, as of this writing, how many other Americans were left behind there when the last military transport took off.)

Im pleased to report our best departure results since evacuation operations began have happened in the last 24 hours, burbled General Taylor. Where 37 US Military aircraft, 32 C-17s, five C-130s departed from Kabul with approximately 12,700 personnel. On top of that, 57 coalition and partner aircraft left Kabul aircraft with 8900 personnel.

He was speaking before the deaths of 13 American service personnel in the suicide bombing at Kabul Airport on Aug. 26. That tragic event caused General Milley to feel pain and anger but no regrets for anything he had done.

The pain and anger, he said, comes from the same as the grieving familieswhich seemed to rule out the possibility that some of the anger of the grieving families was directed at himself.

This is tough stuff, he explained. War is hard. Its vicious. Its brutal. Its unforgiving.

No kidding! Dont look to him to take any responsibility for those 13 deaths, however. War was to blame, not he.

In the olden days, losing generals would expect to be relieved of their commandand be thankful they werent living in Roman times when they would also have been expected to fall on their sword to atone for the dishonor of losing.

As late as 1757, the British put Admiral Byng up before a firing squad for a relatively trivial loss in the Seven Years War. Voltaire responded by saying that it was good to kill an admiral from time to time, pour encourager les autresto instill a bit more intestinal fortitude in the surviving admirals.

Yet apparently in our age of ideology, when no one with the right political views can ever be wrong, no American general will even lose his job or his generals pension over the military debacle in Afghanistanthough a lowly lieutenant colonel, who thought and said publicly that somebody higher up ought to pay a price for the disaster, was relieved of duty and forced to resign his commission.

It shouldnt be necessary to say it, but someone who can never admit to his mistakes can never learn from them.

Thats presumably why weve been making the same mistake in waging our American wars since Koreathe mistake of not realizing that if youre not winning, youre losing.

General Douglas MacArthur warned us against this mistake when he was fired by President Harry Truman for believing that he had been put in charge of U.N. Forces in the Korean war to win it, not to create bargaining chips for politicians to trade away in negotiations with the enemy.

In war, as General MacArthur put it, there is no substitute for victory.

But the lesson of his dismissal for all our generals since, down to General Milley, has been that you can never get in trouble, no matter how badly you screw up, for agreeing with the civilian leadership, only for disagreeing, never for being too cautious or complacent, only for being too bold.

Only, that is, for wanting to win. For it is boldness that wins wars. Not caution. Not complacency.

With leaders who can never admit they were wrong, we can expect to do a lot more losing.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Emergency services carry dead bodies of migrants after being recovered from a wooden boat at the port of Los Cristianos in the south of Tenerife, in the Canary Island, Spain, on April 28, 2021. (Andres Gutierrez/AP Photo)

Aid Group: 22 Migrants Die on Way to Spain; Dozens Missing

MADRIDA humanitarian aid group that monitors the plight of migrants taking perilous seaborne routes to Spain said that 21 women and one girl have died and several dozen more people were lost at sea while trying to reach the Canary Islands.

Helena Maleno, founder of nongovernmental organization Walking Borders, tweeted Thursday that 22 bodies have been recovered from a migrant boat by the Moroccan navy. She said there was one girl among the female casualties, who were mostly from the Ivory Coast and Guinea.

Spains maritime rescue service said it had no information on the case.

Reached by The Associated Press, Moroccos national police confirmed that authorities in the coastal city of Dakhla were looking into the case, but refused to provide details. Health authorities in the southern city also refused to provide any information.

Maleno said that the boat started its journey carrying 86 people, including 36 women and 13 girls.

The Atlantic route from the west coast of Africa to Spains Canary Islands has become one of the most used and deadliest routes for those desperate to reach Europe.
Dozens of Chicago police officers and personnel walk out of the Leighton Criminal Courthouse after attending the bond hearings for two brothers charged in connection with the fatal shooting of Officer Ella French, Tuesday, Aug. 10, 2021, in Chicago. French was fatally shot and her partner was critically wounded in West Englewood while in the line of duty Saturday night. (Ashlee Rezin/Chicago Sun-Times via AP)

Ambush-Style Attacks on Law Enforcement Skyrocketing in 2021: Union

The number of ambush-style attacks on law enforcement officers has leapt this year, a national police union says.

Data show 83 officers were shot in 67 separate ambush-style attacks between Jan. 1 and Aug. 31, according to the National Fraternal Order of Police.

Thats up 148 percent from the same time period last year.

Its just a massive increase, Joe Gamaldi, vice president of the union and a Houston police sergeant, told The Epoch Times.

Officers can be ambushed when people make a fake 911 call in an attempt to lure them to an area and attack them. One such attack unfolded in Arvada, Colorado, in June, leaving police officer Gordon Beasley dead. Another took place in Nashville in June.

The other primary type of ambush involves situations where officers arent able to defend themselves. An example is when officers conduct a traffic stop and somebody opens fire on them as theyre approaching the vehicle.

Officers are being attacked at a record pace this year. The 220 police officers shot so far in 2021 is on track to set a record number, Gamaldi said. The union started tracking the number four years ago.

Forty officers have been killed by gunfire during the same time period.

Its an extremely dangerous time for law enforcement right now, he said.

The police officer pinned the jump to the anti-police rhetoric used by some activists and media, the jump in violent crime seen across the United States since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the so-called progressive district attorneys in major cities who are dramatically altering existing practices, such as letting accused criminals stay free until trial or dropping various charges automatically.

Police officers should remain extremely vigilant, being aware of their surroundings, particularly in moments of downtime on the job, Gamaldi said.

We need to be careful, we need to make sure that we have our eyes out there. We also need to make sure that were providing backup for one another on the streets and we need to make sure that agencies are properly staffing, he added.
Angel Flight Reunites Boy, 3, With Parents Separated by Queensland Border Closure

A charity has stepped in to help reunite a three-year-old boy with his mum and dad after they were separated when the Queensland government shut its border to New South Wales (NSW) amid the CCP virus Delta variant outbreak.

The toddler has been separated from his mum and dad for eight weeks, stuck on a cattle station with his grandparents in the remote town of Griffith, NSW.

The family say they implored the Queensland government to let young Memphis Francis cross the state border to return to his parents care, but were rejected several times.

Instead, they say Queensland Health insisted the family fly to Brisbane via Sydney, the epicentre of the current COVID-19 Delta variant outbreak, where they would then enter hotel quarantine for two weeks.

This wasnt an option for the family, however, due to health concerns related to the boys grandparents and not wanting them to unnecessarily put themselves at risk by travelling to a COVID-19 hotspot.

Enter Angel Flight Australia, a charity that offers free compassionate flights to those living in remote areas too far from medical facilities.

Angel Flight CEO, Marjorie Pagani, told The Epoch Times the charity was happy to help Memphis with a free flight from his grandparents home in Griffith, to his parents north of the border in Queensland.

We got involved in helping Memphis after a number of Queensland community members called to ask if we could assist, Pagani said via email Friday.

Whilst this type of flight is a little different from our usual missions, we are glad we are able to provide this opportunity for Memphis and his family.

Due to our fantastic volunteers, we have the capacity to assist with these types of compassionate missions which provides an important free service to the Australian community, she said.

Memphis mum, Dominque Facer told 2GB radio Friday she was excited to hug her boy when theyre reunited later that day.

Eight weeks has felt like eight years, so it is definitely going to be very emotional, Facer said.

Im definitely going to ugly cry and just not let him go, she added.

Meanwhile, a teary grandma Alex was thankful for the communitys support and for Angel Flight, saying that she and her husband would donate $1,000 to the organisation.

I cant express how thankful we are as a family, she said.

Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt on Thursday described Queenslands border policy as a profound moral failure.

After extensive media coverage on the issue, Queensland on Thursday granted the exemption for Memphis to cross the border and return to his parents

The states Chief Health Officer Jeannette Young had said she was not aware of the issue previously but confirmed the exemption was granted.

Fridays flight will be the third compassionate mission Angel Flight has operated during the COVID-19 pandemic, having previously helped returned traveller Anna Coffey visit her dying father in Melbourne after she was denied a border pass, as well as returned traveller Daniel Cioffi with a flight from Brisbane to Adelaide to see his dying mother.
A prisoner waits in a holding cell in the Twin Towers Correction Facility during a media tour of the facility and of the adjacent Los Angeles Men's Central Jail in downtown Los Angeles on May 19, 2004. (ROBYN BECK/AFP via Getty Images)

Antelope Valley Residents Disappointed Over Judges Ruling to Release Sexual Predator to Neighborhood

When a few Antelope Valley residents learned that a sexually violent predator was set to be released into their community, they called their friend Vladimir Gomez.

Gomez, a 25-year resident of the area, previously worked to mobilize the community to petition against the placement of Pillowcase Rapist Christopher Hubbart into their neighborhood in 2014.

They called me and said, we have a new fight, Gomez told The Epoch Times.

Were so tired of being a dumping ground to release ex-convicts, Gomez said.

Gomezs petition to oppose the offenders release garnered more than 3,600 signatures from concerned residents.

Like with the communitys previous fight, however, the courts would ultimately rule in favor of placing the sexually violent ex-convict in Antelope Valley.

Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge James Bianco agreed to release Calvin Grassmier, 66, to a home in a rural neighborhood in the Sun Village/Littlerock area by Oct 1.

Grassmier was convicted on three counts of rape by force and two other counts of sexual assault in the 1970s and 1980s; his last offense was committed in 1988, according to the Los Angeles District Attorneys office. Grassmier will wear an ankle monitor and will be under 24/7 surveillance upon initial release.

Bianco previously rejected a bid for Grassmier to be released in La Crescenta-Montrose, after residents held several protests in June. The judge cited the areas spotty cell service, which may pose difficulties in tracking Grassmiers ankle monitor bracelet.

Some Antelope Valley residents gathered in protest at the Hollywood Courthouse on Sept. 1, where the judge agreed to place Grassmier in Littlerock at the request of the California Department of State Hospitals.

Misty Vivirito, a sexual assault survivor and resident of Antelope Valley, wrote a letter to the DAs office that was read in court by a prosecutor. Vivirito said she was worried for the safety of her four daughters as well as other children in the neighborhood.

Gomez, who is also president of the Wilsona Elementary School District board, expressed concern for the children in the area.

Grassmier will live just a quarter-mile from [Littlerock] High School, and close by [Daisy Gibson Elementary School], Gomez said. There are children that will walk by his house on their way to school.

For years, the Antelope Valley area, which includes Palmdale, Lancaster, and Littlerock, has been a go-to release spot for ex-convicts with a history of sexual violence. The Pillowcase Rapists release in 2014 lasted for 18 months until he violated parole guidelines. According to the Megans Law website, there are currently 206 sex offenders in Palmdale, and 415 in Lancaster.

This makes it hard for the rural community to grow, according to Gomez.

Were a growing community, Gomez said. In the past 25 years Ive been here, Ive seen a lot of people come up from LA and the San Fernando Valley, because housing is cheaper up here. But thats not going to happen anymore with all these sexually violent predators coming to our communities.

County officials, including Supervisor Kathryn Barger, expressed frustration with the courts decision.

Placing Mr. Grassmier at the house  further traumatizes this already marginalized community, Barger wrote in a letter urging Bianco to reconsider Grassmiers placement. This placement, which is located within two miles of four schools, will make families feel unsafe and unsettled in their own homes and neighborhoods. I agree with the concerned residents who want assurance that Mr. Grassmier will abide by the conditions of his release and appreciate the judges ruling that calls for 24/7 security at Mr. Grassmiers residence.

Gomez said that even though he was disappointed by the judges ruling, he urged people to continue to fight.

To [get] to the judges, we have to get involved with elected officials in our communities, to voice our opinions, and to vote in local elections, Gomez said. The safety of the community should be a number one priority.

The Epoch Times reached out to Judge James Bianco and he declined to comment.
The accused U.S. Capitol rioter dubbed the QAnon Shaman, Jacob Chansley (center) and other protestors outside the Senate chamber of the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Arizonas QAnon Shaman Agrees to Plea Deal in Capitol Breach

The so-called QAnon Shaman Jacob Chansley has agreed to a plea deal for his role in the Jan. 6 breach of the U.S. Capitol, with a hearing set for Friday morning, according to a court filing.

Chansley will appear before Judge Royce C. Lamberth for a plea agreement hearing, according to a docket entry in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

The Arizona man was seen shirtless at the Capitol building on Jan. 6, wearing a distinctive hat with horns. He told a U.S. Capitol Police officer and an FBI agent the following day that he traveled to Washington because Trump called for all patriots to go there to protest as Congress met in a joint session.

A criminal complaint alleges Chansley wilfully and knowingly entered or remained on the floor of a House of Congress or in any cloakroom or lobby adjacent to that floor, without authorization to do so.

Chansley, 33, was arrested in January and charged with a six-count indictment with civil disorder, disorderly conduct, and obstruction of an official proceeding, among other counts. The details of his plea agreement with government, including which charges he is pleading guilty to, are yet to be made public.

In a news release this week, Chansleys attorney, Albert Watkins, said that Chansley, in the months following the Capitol breach, had charted a difficult path involving pain, depression, solitary confinement, introspection, recognition of mental health vulnerabilities, and a coming to grips with the need for more self-work.

Watkins said that Chansley has repudiated his beliefs in the QAnon conspiracy theory.

The attorney previously disclosed last month that Chansley was recently diagnosed by Federal Bureau of Prisons psychologists with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and other mental illnesses.

Jacob Chansley, center, and other protesters are seen inside the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021. (Manuel Blace Ceneta/AP Photo)

In a previous interview, Watkins told The Epoch Times that the conditions Chansley is facing in prison are gulag-like treatment.

His mental health and emotional well-being are significantly challenged, Watkins said. He was not violent or destructive in any manner. He was not armed. He did not threaten. There is no end in sight. His only reliable unmonitored contact with the outside world is his attorneyme. He is alone.

Nearly 600 protestors have been charged in connection with the Capitol breach so far, many of whom have remained in custody without bail.

In an interview with CBS News 60 Minutes Plus in March, Chansley said that his actions were not an attack on this country.

That is incorrect. That is inaccurate entirely, he said. I sang a song and thats a part of Shamanism. Its about creating positive vibrations in a sacred chamber.

I also stopped people from stealing and vandalizing that sacred space, the Senate. I actually stopped someone from stealing muffins out of the break room. I also said a prayer in that sacred chamber because it was my intention to bring divinity, to bring God back into the Senate, he added.

He claimed that police officers waved him into the Capitol building on Jan. 6.

That is the one very serious regret that I have, was believing that when we were waved in by police officers that it was acceptable, Chansley said.

Watkins has said that he will hold a virtual press conference following the hearing at 2 p.m. EST.

Allan Stein contributed to this report.
As Reports Come in of US Citizens Still in Afghanistan, GOP Reps Question Numbers Quoted by Biden Admin

Republican Congress members are disputing the numbers the Biden administration is quoting of Americans left behind in Afghanistan after the last U.S. troops left the country on Monday, citing the calls their offices are getting from citizens stranded in a country now under Taliban rule.

President Joe Biden said in an address Tuesday: Now we believe that about 100 to 200 Americans remain in Afghanistan with some intention to leave. Most of those who remain are dual citizens, long-time residents who had earlier decided to stay because of their family roots in Afghanistan, adding, The bottom line: [Ninety-eight] percent of Americans in Afghanistan who wanted to leave were able to leave.

Rep. Michael Waltz (R-Fla.), a Green Beret, told Fox News on Tuesday: I think were all somewhere on the spectrum between rage and grief at any one given moment, but just this morning, literally just a few hours ago, we were in touch with American citizens and their children that were denied access to Kabul International.

Republicans have been urging the Biden administration to continue rescue efforts in Afghanistan as their offices receive calls from those still stranded in Afghanistan.

At least 24 students from Southern California are stuck in Afghanistan, officials said this week. The students, as well as some parents, are stranded in the Central Asian country after going there for a summer trip, a spokesman for the Cajon Valley Union School District confirmed via email to The Epoch Times.

The group was visiting relatives in Afghanistan when they found themselves stranded after the Taliban took over the country in mid-August.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) on Wednesday said his office is helping get people out of Afghanistan. Nasria, a pregnant American citizen, has braved beatings and harassment by the Taliban trying to get past their checkpoints to return to the US. This is one of the individuals we continue to help. All should know the Americans left behind in Afghanistan by President Biden.

Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Toria Nuland told reporters at a Sept. 1 press briefing that the United States is committed to getting Americans out by air and by land.

As I said, we are working on trying to get thatsupporting those partners on the ground who are trying to get that airport open. And we are also looking at land routes. I think on land routes, I dont want to be any more specific because, as you know, it is a long journey with lots of dangers and we dont want to further endanger folks who might be involved in that, said Nuland.

Since the U.S. militarys total exit from Afghanistan on Aug. 31, private groups and former military personnel have stepped up to raise funds and get citizens and allies out. They estimate the U.S. citizens still there to be in the thousands, not hundreds.

Glenn Beck, a conservative media personality, in West Palm Beach, Fla., on Dec. 19, 2019. (Brendon Fallon/The Epoch Times)

Glenn Beck, one of the founders of The Blaze news network and of the Nazarene Fund, told Dave Rubin on The Rubin Report on Friday he believes the number of U.S. citizens still in Afghanistan to be a few thousand, given the original number Biden quoted of 16,000 U.S. citizens in Afghanistan. Beck has been leading the Nazarene Fund to charter planes to get citizens and allies out of Afghanistan.

Beck has been in the Middle East helping to coordinate the evacuation of U.S. citizens and allies via the Nazarene Fund since mid-August. Lets just put it this way. I dont think anybody knows the American number, but its not 300 or 200. Its not anywhere close to that, said Beck.

Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) said his office is also getting calls from American citizens still inside Afghanistan. @SecBlinken and @StateDeptSpox: I am in contact right now with US citizens in Afghanistan who tried to leave but couldnt. Now they have what they need to leave except clearance from State. DM me please, Crenshaw wrote on Twitter the day the U.S. military left Afghanistan.

The State Department has also said they can only estimate the numbers of citizens, claiming that, of the about 200, some do not want to leave.

Were trying to determine exactly how many. Were going through manifests and calling and texting through our lists, and we will have more details to share as soon as possible. Part of the challenge with fixing a precise number is that there are longtime residents of Afghanistan who have American passports and who are trying to determine whether or not they want to leave. Many are dual citizen Americans with deep roots and extended families in Afghanistan who resided there for many years. For many, its a painful choice, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Monday.

John Kirby, the Pentagon spokesman, told MSNBC on Aug. 31 that the Biden administration had to pull troops out when they did because of the terrorist threats.

I mean there was a very credible, very specific, increasing threat stream by ISIS that was making the entire operation more perilous, and we had to make some decisions in the last couple of days to make sure that we could get everybody out as safely as possible and not imperil civilians any more than they already were.

Zachary Stieber contributed to this report.
At Least 2 Injured in Philadelphia Building Collapse: Reports

At least two people are injured after a building collapsed Thursday night in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, according to local reports.

The two people, a 69-year-old man and a 68-year-old woman, were rushed to hospital after the collapse of the building around 10 p.m. local time, reported WPVI.

The two injured people were taken to Temple University Hospital, officials said, according to CBS Philly. The nature of their injuries and conditions are unknown as of early Friday.

The multi-floor building is located on North Front St. and West Susquehanna Ave in the Kensington neighborhood.

Multiple initial local reports said that there may be multiple people trapped at the site after the collapse.

The cause of the collapse is unknown as of early Friday, and authorities are investigating.

A photo posted by Fox 29 showed firefighters and other emergency services personnel at the scene.

The collapse comes a day after remnants of Hurricane Ida swept through the U.S. East Coast with heavy rain and flash flooding, affecting several states including Pennsylvania, Maryland, Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey.
Craig Kelly announces his leadership of the United Australia Party and speaks against COVID-19 vaccination in a press conference at Parliament House on August 23, 2021 in Canberra, Australia. (Rohan Thomson/Getty Images)

Aussie MP Drafts Bill To Enforce A Pay Cut for Politicians During COVID-19 Lockdowns

United Australia Party party leader and MP for Hughes, Craig Kelly, is proposing a bill that will cut politicians salaries during lockdowns.

The private members bill called Were All in This Together Act 2021 seeks to reduce politicians salaries to $750 per week while the state or territory is in lockdown.

ALL MPs need to take a PAY CUT to show their support, Kelly wrote in a post on Twitter on Sept. 1. As leader of the United Australia Party, Ill make sure were all truly in it together.

Kelly told the St George & Sutherland Shire Leader newspaper that if those who make decisions need to go through the same financial distress, the public does, perhaps they will think harder before making decisions that negatively impact on constituents.

If governments are going to continue to deny Australians the freedom to earn a living or prevent them from opening their business, and politicians expect families to survive on $750 per week for an extended period, then politicians and senior bureaucrats, including myself, need to set an example and cut their salaries to the same $750, he said.

Kelly is currently looking for a seconder among the Parliaments MPs, who can help to introduce the bill this season. The bill will call on support from all shire and state Liberals and ALP members. If it passes, the legislation will be introduced at a state level as Kellys Federal Private Member bill, which is dedicated to truck drivers and asks for No Requirement for Medical Treatment (Including Vaccination) Without Consent.

Tony Abbott addressed media at Parliament House in Canberra on Sept. 15, 2015. (Stefan Postles/Getty Images)

Similarly, Tony Abbott, the former Australian Prime Minister, has raised the issue of temporarily reducing the salaries of MPs and public servants.

One of the most grating phrases of this whole pandemic has been were all in this together because frankly, we havent been in it together, Abbott said in an interview with the Institute of Public Affairs.

We have got a private sector calamity happening and  no public servant has lost his or her job, no public servant has had his or her pay cut. In fact, in some states, their pay has dramatically increased, he said, referring to Victoria, in which politicians pay has gone up while private sectors are losing jobs and people who still have jobs are experiencing pay cuts.

Abbott also pointed out that in New Zealand (NZ), Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, sitting members of the NZ parliament and senior public servants have taken a 20 percent pay cut for six months.

The sensible thing to do would be to follow Jacinda Ardern and temporarily reduce the salaries of MPs, and public servants earning, say, over $150,000 a year, Abbott said.
The UK's Prime Minister Boris Johnson greets Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison ahead of a meeting to formally announce a trade deal at 10 Downing Street, London, on June 15, 2021. (Dominic Lipinski/PA)

Aussie PM Says 4M Pfizer Doses Travelling From Downing Street to Down Under

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has announced that Australia will receive a further 4 million Pfizer vaccine doses in a swap deal with the United Kingdom.

The planes on the tarmac now, it will be leaving tomorrow, and those doses will be coming over the course of the next few weeks, Morrison told reporters in Canberra on Friday.

From Downing Street to Down Under, we are doubling down on what the Pfizer doses are here in Australia this month, he went on to say.

This comes just days after the prime minister secured a similar deal with Singapore for half a million Pfizer doses, and is in addition to the 1 million doses purchases from Poland.

I said I would leave no stone unturned. And I can tell you Ive been turning over some stones in recent times, to ensure that we can progress the vaccination program as quickly as we possibly can, Morrison said.

The doses from the UK will be distributed around the country on a per capita basis, with Morrison declaring the extra doses would significantly bring forward the opportunity for Australia to open up again under the National Plan.

Morrison also thanked UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson for his great friendship with Australia, saying they had discussed this plan for some time.

He described the swap deal as being mutually beneficial for both countries. Its a good deal because it makes the most of the doses that they have now, which we need, and the doses that well have later, that they will need, he said.

Its a good deal between mates, he went on to say.

Buoyed by the millions of additional Pfizer doses, Morrison noted that of the 20.3 million vaccine doses that had already been administered in Australia, about 10 million were AstraZeneca.

We are now at the point where 80 percent of over 50s have had their first dose, he said, noting they would, in the weeks ahead, get their second dose and be considered fully vaccinated.

The prime minister encouraged people, particularly those over 60, to get the AstraZeneca vaccine jabs.

Lets keep this going Australia because, at these rates, we are really going to be able to hit the marks that we all want to hit in the weeks and months that are ahead, Morrison said, referring to the national cabinets phased plan to achieve 70-80 percent vaccinate rates in order to reopen the country.
Members of Taliban political office Abdul Latif Mansoor (L), Shahabuddin Delawar (C) and Suhail Shaheen attend a news conference in Moscow, Russia, on July 9, 2021. (Tatyana Makeyeva/Reuters)

Australian PM Condemns Talibans Claim Aussie Soldiers Died in Vain

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison says the Talibans claim that 41 Australian soldiers died in vain in Afghanistan were sickening and untrue.

The prime minister rebuked the comments from Taliban spokesperson Suhail Shaheen, who made the incendiary remark earlier in the week.

It is sickening and untrue, but Im not surprised about a dishonourable statement from the Taliban, Morrison told reporters in Canberra on Friday.

They should know that the world is watching them and they expect them to live up to the statements they have made.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison at Parliament House in Canberra, Australia on Aug. 20, 2021. (Rohan Thomson/Getty Images)

He said Taliban commitments to allow people safe passage out of Afghanistan needed to be honoured.

Trust matters, the prime minister said.

We will be seeking to ensure in everything we can do to ensure they seek to establish that trust because, at this stage, the account is in deficit with any trust you could put in the Taliban.

The issue of the attacks in Afghanistan and the countrys future were discussed in a phone call between Morrison and U.S. President Joe Biden on Friday.

Morrison said Biden was due to meet with some of the U.S. service personnel wounded in at attacks in Kabul and asked him to pass on Australias condolences and thanks to them and the families.

This comes as a group of U.S. Republican lawmakers on Thursday sent a letter to Biden, urging him to release a full, unedited, and unredacted transcript from his July phone call with exiled Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani, who fled Kabul on Aug. 15, allowing the Taliban to take the capital unopposed.

By Matt Coughlan. Epoch Times reporter Caden Pearson contributed to this report.
Australian State to Use Geolocation, Live Face Recognition Quarantine App

The Australian state government of South Australia is rolling out a new quarantine app that requires users to use geolocation and live face recognition check-ins.

Known as Quarantine SA, the mobile app tracks users location at each random check-in request to make sure they are at an approved address.

The app is supported by the states health and police departments.

Several live face recognition and geolocation check-ins are done on a randomised schedule at various intervals throughout the day to confirm the individual is at an approved address and complying with home quarantine mandates.

Users have just 15 minutes to respond to the random check in and if they miss one, they will receive a follow-up phone call from the Home Quarantine SA team to discuss the reason why.

If an individual misses the phone call from the Home Quarantine SA team for whatever reason, a compliance officer may visit the approved address to check they are there.

According to the official government website, the app provides support and resources to enable you to safely quarantine at home and will increase South Australias quarantine capacity and provide a safe, sustainable and cost effective alternative to medi-hotel quarantine.

Residents currently under quarantine at the Ariel Apartment complex are seen on their balcony on on July 14, 2021 in Melbourne, Australia. (Asanka Ratnayake/Getty Images)

Interstate travel within Australia has been severely restricted in an effort to suppress the spread of COVID-19 while the countrys borders are currently closed with international travel from Australia remaining strictly controlled.

People wanting to return to South Australia, and who have been approved to use the home quarantine app, will have to apply by providing their full legal name, date of birth, approved quarantine address, mobile phone number and email address.

People will still be required to quarantine for 14 days.

Back in August, South Australian Premier Steven Marshall said the app was being rolled out to make home-based quarantine more cost-effective.

In the past where we have had this option for people coming from interstate and in the early days from overseas, it required a very heavy police presence to go and check on them, Marshall told ABC news.

Now we have had a great uptake of the QR code check-in app here in South Australia, people say its the best in the country, I think theyre right and now we are the national selected pilot for this home-based quarantine app.

South Australia Premier Steven Marshall at Memorial Drive in Adelaide, Australia on Jan. 29, 2021. (Mark Brake/Getty Images)

He noted that the app was part of a pilot that consisted of 50 people, but it would be expanded to international travellers in subsequent weeks.

I think every South Australian should feel pretty proud that we are the national pilot for the home-based quarantine app, Marshall added.

Information on the state governments website about using the app recently became available to the public.

The app comes as Australia is in the midst of a COVID-19 virus Delta variant outbreak in the states of New South Wales and Victoria, where both state leaders refuse to lift restrictions until at least 70-80 percent of their residents are vaccinated with at least one dose.

Officials this week announced a three-month extension of the human biosecurity emergency powers that allow it to restrict Australians from outbound international travel amid the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus pandemic.

Originally due to end on Sept. 17, the emergency powers, which have been in place since March 2020, will continue until Dec. 17.
Beijing Strangles Its Steel Industry to Rein in Iron Ore Prices

Analysis

Iron ore prices have tumbled as Beijing has suppressed demand and cracked down on its domestic steel production.

The key steel ingredient plummeted from near-record high prices of US$220 a tonne in July to US$140 last week, reaching its lowest value since December of last year.

To achieve this, Beijing has cut demand for iron ore and shrank production over the last six months, slapping its steel exports with two separate price hikes whilst simultaneously lowering the cost of imports.

The worlds largest steelmaker, state-owned Baowu, claimed that the plans to lower steel output fell in accordance with Chinas emissions reduction targets.

A worker works on a production line manufacturing bicycle steel rims at a factory, as the country is hit by the COVID-19 outbreak, in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, China, on March 2, 2020. (China Daily via Reuters)

This is a political issue with no room for bargaining, and it must be resolutely implemented, Baowu Chairman Chen Derong said, reported Reuters.

But a political analyst at Curtin University and author of 54 books on communist systems, Joseph Siracusa, believes Beijings top economic plannerthe National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC)had little intention in meeting climate change commitments.

The NDRC would not hesitate to use the narrative of emissions reduction as a convenient cover-up, mainly because the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) has no real interest in pursuing Paris Climate Accord targets at the expense of the national plan, Siracusa told The Epoch Times.

Political analyst Joseph Siracusa. (Supplied)

Instead, amid falling iron oreand subsequently steelprices, Siracusa pointed out that the CCP had prioritised the continued development of its own domestic steelmuch of which was sourced from Australia.

Beijing is fully utilising Australias iron ore for its steel use in infrastructure as well as militarywherever top-grade steel is required, Siracusa said.

Siracusa suggested that the CCP would be willing to slam its local steel mills for raising iron ore prices and hampering the development of Beijings priority sectorssuch as its military.

Theyre lowering production right now as a punishment to the local industries  because if theyre going to jack up the price of steel, then those missiles cost more money, buildings cost more money, rockets cost more money, Siracusa said.

High-grade steel, Siracusa noted, is commonly used in submarines, planes, ships, rockets, and ballistic missiles. And in 2020, Chinas navy size eclipsed that of the United States.

But Beijings plan to thwart skyrocketing iron ore prices began much earlier after the resource reached an all-time high of $230 a tonne on May 12.

The NDRC, along with four more of the states developmental departments, echoed in a public statement that the CCP had attached great importance to stabilising commodity prices.

The NDRC accused Chinas steel industry of colluding with each other to manipulate market prices and establish monopolies, fabricating and spreading information about price increases, and hoarding.

At that point, the NDRC warned the CCP had a zero tolerance for such activities, threatening to investigate steel mills by continuing to increase law enforcement inspections and subsequently punishing offenders.

After the crackdown, global iron ore prices immediately fell, reaching $180 a tonne on May 26.

But the effect of the intervention was seemingly short-lived, with global iron ore prices surging again in June and hovering at around $220 for over a month up until Beijing announced its plans to limit total steel production.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Biden Not Certain Federal Government Can Respond to Texas Abortion Law

There may be nothing that the federal government can do in response to the new Texas abortion law, President Joe Biden acknowledged on Friday.

Texas in a law that took effect Sept. 1 banned abortions after fetal heartbeats are detected, and mandated that doctors performing abortions try to detect a heartbeat before attempting the procedure.

Biden said Thursday that he was directing White House lawyers to analyze existing law to see whether federal agencies could somehow guarantee a higher level of abortion access than is allowed under the new measure.

Asked Friday what his administration could do, he said he was not sure.

What I was toldand I must tell you, I am not certainI was told that there are possibilities within the existing law to have the Justice Department look and see whether there are things that can be done that can limit the independent action of individuals in enforcing a state law, he said at the White House, answering a question for the first time in days.

I dont know enough to give you an answer yet. Ive asked that to be checked, he added.

The Texas law enables private citizens to sue doctors who allegedly perform illegal abortions or individuals who aid and abet illegal abortions.

It also prohibits state officials from enforcing the measure, an unusual arrangement that helped the law withstand initial scrutiny from the Supreme Court.

An exam room is seen at the Planned Parenthood South Austin Health Center in Austin, Texas, on June 27, 2016. (Ilana Panich-Linsman/Reuters)

Biden and a number of other high-profile Democrats have railed against the law in recent days, describing it as an attack on the constitutional right to abortion as decided by justices in Roe v. Wade.

It not only empowers complete strangers to inject themselves into the most private of decisions made by a womanit actually incentivizes them to do so with the prospect of $10,000 if they win their case, Biden said in a written statement this week.

The president on Friday reversed himself on a related matter, saying that he respected people who believe life begins at the moment of conception but that he does not agree and would not impose that on people.

Speaking as vice president in 2015, Biden said that Im prepared to accept that at the moment of conception theres human life and being, but Im not prepared to say that to other God-fearing, non-God-fearing people that have a different view.

Biden is a Catholic who has been denied communion for going against the faiths teachings concerning abortion.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, meanwhile, said Thursday that making laws governing when, how, and where abortions are done should be up to states, not the Supreme Court.

Roe v. Wade was created out of nothing, Paxton said during an appearance on Newsmax. There was no precedent. There was no law. They claim its constitutional, right, but they basically created this right that had never existed before, and they overrode all of our state laws, including Texas. And the reality is it should be local jurisdiction, local states making those decisions.

The Republican also accused Biden of being strongly in favor of abortion and wanting no limits on it.

He doesnt want states having any control over it, Paxton said. And the reality is thats not the way it should be.
U.S. District Court is shown as the case against two ISIS-cell members dubbed "the Beatles" the two men showed up remotely at the federal courthouse and be have been charged with murder of American citizens in Alexandria, Va., on Oct. 07, 2020. (Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)

British-Born ISIS Beatles Terrorist Pleads Guilty in US Court

A British-born member of the ISIS terrorist group pleaded guilty on Thursday to eight U.S. criminal charges including lethal hostage taking and conspiracy to support terrorists.

Alexanda Amon Kotey, 37, was one of four ISIS terrorists nicknamed the Beatles by their captives due to their British accents.

The terror cell has been accused of beheading several Western hostages, including four Americansjournalist James Foley, journalist Steven Sotloff, and aid workers Peter Kassig and Kayla Mueller. Two BritonsAlan Henning and David Haineswere also among the victims.

London-born Kotey was a UK citizen, but the British government withdrew his citizenship.

A combination picture shows Alexanda Kotey and Shafee Elsheikh, who the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) claim are British nationals, in these undated handout pictures in Amouda, Syria released on Feb. 9, 2018. (Syrian Democratic Forces/Handout via Reuters)

During a two-hour change of plea hearing at U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Virginia, Kotey pleaded guilty to all eight charges against him, including hostage taking resulting in death and conspiracy to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization resulting in death.

In a prepared summary, Kotey said he left the UK for Syria in August 2012 alongside ringleader Mohammed Emwazi, also known as Jihadi John, who was killed by a U.S. drone strike in 2015.

Kotey admitted his role in capturing hostages, and said he also worked in the ISIS terror groups recruitment division and its English media department.

He said he helped open up channels of negotiation with the authorities, families, and representatives of those Westerners held by ISIS.

Kotey said his job was to extract contact details for loved ones of those taken hostage. The terrorists would then demand the release of Islamist prisoners held by the West or large sums of money in return for the hostages freedom.

He said he was not physically present at any of the killings of the Western captives.

Kotey was captured alongside El Shafee Elsheikh, another member of the Beatles terror cell, in Syria in 2018 by the U.S.-supported Syrian Democratic Forces while trying to escape to Turkey.

Kotey and Elsheikh were taken to the United States last year to face charges on the condition they would not be given a death sentence.

Under his plea agreement, Kotey promised to fully cooperate with the U.S. government.

District Judge T.S. Ellis said that, under a tentative arrangement between U.S. and British authorities, Kotey could be transferred to Britain after 15 years imprisonment to face justice in his country of birth.

Family members of all four American victims attended Thursdays hearing.

Kotey will be sentenced on March 4 next year.

PA and Reuters contributed to this report.
A man speaks during a Natomas Unified School District board meeting regarding a teacher who allegedly taught his students to become leftist revolutionaries. (Natomas Unified School District/Screenshot via The Epoch Times)

California School Board Faces Backlash Over Far-Left Teacher

A school board in Northern California faced intense backlash from parents this week after a high school teacher apparently bragged on camera that he wanted to turn his students into revolutionaries, had a poster of Chinese communist tyrant and mass murderer Mao Zedong on his wall, and had an Antifa flag.

The Natomas Unified School District, located in Sacramento County, confirmed Wednesday it put a teacher on leave and is now taking action to fire him, according to a statement from the district (pdf). The board didnt make mentions to the teacher, but he was identified in other reports and in an undercover Project Veritas video as Gabriel Gipe.

Yesterday, a group released an undercover video that has been covered extensively. In this video, a teacher at Inderkum High School was recorded sharing his educational approach that is disturbing and undermines the publics trust, the statement said.

But on Wednesday, a number of parents appeared in front of a Natomas school board meeting and vented their frustration that a teacher would have a poster of Mao, the founder of the Chinese Communist Party who is estimated to have caused the unnatural deaths of tens of millions of people and orchestrated the Cultural Revolution. The Project Veritas video alleged to show the inside of the teachers classroom, which included a poster of Mao.

Meanwhile, Maos failed Great Leap Forward, which triggered a widespread famine, has been described by some as the worst mass murder of all time, killing upwards of 45 million people.

You feel this pain right here? Its not going away. The only question I got is where does the [expletive] buck stop? asked a man during the board meeting on Wednesday. He added to applause from the audience: This is bigger than one teacher  there were so many red flags. The man had an Antifa flag behind his desk. He had Chairman Mao in the [expletive] corner. Are you kidding me?

Said a woman at the board, The reason why my daughter is standing behind me is because my job as a parent is to protect her from anybody that has ill will towards her.

The unnamed woman said her daughter was either in Gipes class or in contact with him.

In two weeks and 13 days, he was allowed to change my daughters mind about some fascist [explicative] that yall have let in this school, the woman said.

Any teacher or staff pushing anti-American, hateful political agendas against America on our students, families, work communitieswe want you out now, parent Paizly Gomez told the school board. Not paid leave, and not in a week or two. Now.

Im outraged. Of course, Im furious about this, another parent said. As you guys sit up there behind your bureaucracyI blame the leadership from the top down.

Another parent said that the school board, principals, and other teachers are criminals and co-conspirators in allowing Gipe to teach there, adding that communist regimes are evil.

Meanwhile, superintendent Chris Events told KCRA-3 that Gipe had informed him the Project Veritas video was heavily edited, although its not clear how.

The district has since removed the posters from Gipes classrooms, as wells as stamps with images of mass-murdering Soviet dictator Josef Stalin with an insensitive phrase, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, and others, according to the statement. Project Veritass footage also appeared to show the red-and-black Antifa flag displayed on his classroom walls.

Gipe also told an undercover Project Veritas member that he would motivate his students to actively participate in left-wing events, adding that he worked with the PSLapparently referring to the Party for Socialism and Liberationand other groups. Whats more, he claimed there are more teachers who have similar viewpoints as he does teaching at the school.

I do it for extra credit, so they get points for doing it. And so that encourages them to do it, he said in the video. Ive had students show up for protests, community events, tabling, food distribution, all sorts of things.

The Epoch Times has contacted the Natomas Unified School District for additional comment.
Taliban co-founder Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar (L) and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi pose for a photo during their meeting in Tianjin, China, on July 28, 2021. (Li Ran/Xinhua via AP)

China Forms New Axis of Collaborators With Pakistan and Taliban, Former US Commissioner Says

The communist regime in China has created a new alliance to challenge the United States and Western democracy, according to Johnnie Moore, a former U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) commissioner.

Theyre creating a new axis of collaborators against the Western democratic order, Moore said, referring to the alliance of China, Pakistan, and the Taliban, in a recent interview with The Epoch Times American Thought Leaders program. He called the alliance a geopolitical catastrophe.

The #CCP is engaging in exploitive foreign policy with the #Taliban, says Reverend @JohnnieM. Amid #Beijing's attempts to undermine the US, Moore says that the concerns of US credibility are 'overstated.' ClipWatch FULL @AmThoughtLeader on @EpochTVushttps://t.co/zHwdWK7PtP pic.twitter.com/LPrqRHw6xi  Jan Jekielek (@JanJekielek) September 4, 2021

China has openly backed the Taliban in recent months. In June, Chinas foreign minister Wang Yi, at a meeting with his counterparts from Pakistan and Afghanistan, vowed to bring the Taliban back into the political mainstream. A month later, Wang welcomed a visiting Taliban delegation led by Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar.

After the Talibans swift takeover of Kabul in mid-August, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) quickly welcomed the Talibans rise in the war-torn nation, though the Chinese regime has yet to formally recognize the terrorist group.

The Taliban has also seen the CCP as an important ally. In a recent interview with the Italian newspaper la Repubblica, Taliban spokesperson Zabiullah Mujahid praised Beijing as a main partner and a gateway to markets around the world.

Moore said there are three reasons Beijing values a partnership with the Taliban. First, the Chinese regime wants to tap into Afghanistans rare earth and other minerals, which are estimated to be worth up to $3 trillion.

Rare earths are 17 elements on the periodic table that are vital in many industries including consumer electronics, defense, and green technologies. Currently, China controls about 80 percent of the global rare earth supply, and has previously cut off its exports as a retaliatory tactic against other countries.

Additionally, Beijing wants to control movement across its shared border with Afghanistan, Moore said.

Chinas far-western Xinjiang region and Afghanistan share a 46-mile-long border. The Chinese regime fears that Uyghur militants might use the border crossing to launch attacks in Xinjiang, where Beijing has locked up more than 1 million Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities in internment camps.

Most important of all, Moore said, Beijing wants to exploit the current situation in order to diminish the prestige of the United States.

Beijing has used the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan as fodder for its propaganda campaign, painting the United States as an unreliable partner. Most recently, on Sept. 3, state-run China Daily published an article criticizing U.S. democracy. It argued that when the United States exported its model of democracy, it brought disaster to the countries concerned.

The CCPs Neocolonialism

The relationship between Beijing and the Taliban is the latest example of a neocolonialism and exploitive foreign policy emanating from the Chinese Communist Party in Beijing, that aims to take advantage of any country and any leader gullible enough to accept their promises, which are almost never fulfilled, Moore said.

Many developing countries, including Kenya, Nepal, and Mozambique, have become indebted to China after they signed up to Chinas Belt and Road investment initiative (BRI). Beijing rolled out the initiative in 2013 to build up trade routes linking China with other parts of the world in an effort to build up geopolitical influence.

Both Pakistan and Afghanistan are also BRI members; the latter signed up to the Chinese initiative in 2016. On Sept. 2, the Taliban expressed a desire to continue being part of the BRI.

That day, Abdul Salam Hanafi, a senior member in the Taliban negotiating team, told assistant Chinese foreign minister Wu Jianghao that the BRI would contribute to the regions development and prosperity.

Moore said: What they [CCP] do is they exploit vulnerable countries through leaders in order to advance their agenda.

And whats happening around the world slowly and what the Taliban will learn, and what Pakistan will learn, and some of these other countries that have chosen to go down this path, is what the Chinese people long ago learned but arent allowed to say: The first victim of the worst vices of the Communist Party is its own people, the Chinese people.

Frank Fang journalist Frank Fang is a Taiwan-based journalist. He covers news in China and Taiwan. He holds a Master's degree in materials science from Tsinghua University in Taiwan.
Chinese Propaganda at Home and Abroad: Beijing Wages Propaganda Battle Abroad

Part 1 of 3: The CCP co-opts American mainstream media in its global propaganda campaign

Analysis

To win over the hearts and minds abroad and at home, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) uses a variety of tools such as state media, complicit foreign media, self-criticism in the United States, and self-censorship in foreign countries.

Through these powerful tools, fueled by social media, the CCP is able to take advantage of real or imagined shortcomings of Western powers, particularly the United States, to convince Americans and Chinese citizens alike, that Western democracy is failing and that the Chinese system is superior.

The goal of CCP propaganda is to trumpet the benefits of the Chinese system, as well as the notion that living under the protection of the CCP is best. Chinese citizens need not yearn for Western freedoms or democracy, as they already enjoy a better life than the rest of the world. Left-leaning Westerners are led to believe that the West should learn from China, adopting its system of socialism with Chinese characteristics, providing an improved and more egalitarian life for all of its citizens.

The CCP maintains several news media abroad, to act as government mouthpieces, spouting Party propaganda and influencing Westerners, as well as overseas Chinese. Some of these include China Global Television Network (CGTN), Xinhua, Global Times, and Sing Tao Daily. Then-U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warned that these media were owned and effectively controlled by the CCP, and were part of a (CCP) propaganda effort.

Chinese state media abroad generally exploit the failures of democratic countries, while promoting a positive image of the CCP. This Xinhua article, Chinese democracy puts Western illusion in [the] dust, explains how Chinese democracy is superior to Western democracy. This is ironic for an effective one-party state, with little or no media freedom, where citizens do not vote for their countrys leader.

Another Xinhua article, Heavy-handed crackdown on protests lays bare U.S. double standard on human rights, takes on the police reaction to the George Floyd riots. Meanwhile, pro-democracy demonstrators in Hong Kong were being arrested in the middle of the night and pro-democracy legislators were being ejected from parliament. At the same time, in Xinjiang, Uyghurs were being subjected to the most inhumane treatment, including forced labor, torture, forced conversion, and organ harvesting.

A Global Times headline ran, China urges terrorist crackdown by Taliban, as Kabul deadly blasts exemplify US failure. The Global Times is quick to say that the United States failed in Afghanistan, while avoiding any mention of the fact that the CCP has already held high-level talks with the murderous Taliban and that it financially supports numerous terrorist organizations, including the United Wa State Army (UWSA) in Burma (also known as Myanmar) and the Naga Separatists in India.

Front pages of the China Daily (L), the Beijing News (C) and the Global Times (R) featuring the Notre-Dame Cathedral disaster, in Beijing on April 17, 2019. (Nicolas Asfouri/AFP via Getty Images)

Headlines in Xinhua stated, Chinese investment brings Africa hope, not trap and China lauded for championing global efforts in helping Africa. The implication here was that, not only was Chinese economic engagement with Africa beneficial to Africa, with no downside, but the rest of the world recognized and commended Chinas generosity. International observers, however, have called the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI, also called One Belt One Road) a debt trap, which causes countries to lose some of their autonomy and control of their infrastructure, while increasing their indebtedness. Sri Lanka, for example, lost control of their airport and their largest seaport. As a result of BRI lending, the Congo, as of 2019, owes China 38.92 percent of GDP, Djibouti 34.64 percent, and Angola 18.95 percent.

Similarly, this Global Times story, Quarantined Italians praise Chinese governments COVID-19 fight, illustrates the gratitude of the Italian people to the CCP for saving their country amid a pandemic, which started in China. The CCP locked down its own people, suspended civil and human rights, crashed its economy, and drove up unemployment. Additionally, many observers believe that the most likely origin of the pandemic was the Wuhan lab. Consequently, this is one more example of the CCP creating a problemabusing its own citizens and then taking credit on the world stage for being a savior. Meanwhile, Italians were angry that Beijing had published Grazie China videos and social media posts, which allegedly thanked China for their help during the pandemic. Italian researchers determined that a number of the accounts, posing as Italian citizens expressing gratitude, were actually Beijing botscarried out by the 50 Cent Army or wumao (Chinese citizens paid to post CCP-dictated content).

Sing Tao Daily, based in Hong Kong, is a pro-Beijing media that targets overseas Chinese. This headline is typical: Attending the return ceremony of the slain soldier, looking down at his watch, Biden was shamelessly criticized by conservativesSing Tao looks for any misstep of the U.S. government and exploits it. Criticism of Chinese leader Xi Jinping would be unthinkable in China, therefore, CCP media interpret criticism of the American president, by Americans, as evidence that the country is on the verge of collapse.

Other stories in Sing Tao take the opportunity to espouse CCP sentiments such as this story about a meeting between State Councilor Yang Jiechi and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken: Bidens War Letter to Xi Jinping. According to the story, Yang told Blinken, I dont think most countries in the world recognize the universal values advocated by the U.S., or agree that U.S. opinions can represent international public opinion. The CCPs goal is to displace the United States as the world leader. Part of achieving this goal is promoting the notion that the world would prefer to be led by China than by the United States.

In 2019, China Global Television Network (CGTN), which runs stories such as America Failed Its Democracy, was deemed a foreign agent by the U.S. Department of Justice.

In October 2020, the Trump administration designated six more Chinese media as foreign missions, including Yicai Global, Jiefang Daily, the Xinmin Evening News, Social Sciences in China Press, the Beijing Review, and the Economic Daily, bringing the total to 15 Chinese media that were forced to register. As foreign missions, these entities are required to disclose to the U.S. State Department their lists of staff, as well as property holdings. Unlike censorship of foreign media in China, the United States did not and does not restrict what these and other foreign media may publish. The U.S. position is that readers are free to read what they wish, but that they have the right to know that these media are part of a CCP propaganda effort, rather than independent or unbiased news outlets.

In 2021, the Department of Justice added Sing Tao Daily to the list of Chinese media that had to register as foreign agents. Sing Tao claims to be a privately-owned company, but both the current and former owners of Sing Tao Daily were members of the Chinese Peoples Political Consultative Conference, a high-level advisory body composed of people loyal to and with close ties to the CCP.

Editors note: Part 2 discusses how Beijings global propaganda campaign is aided by U.S. citizens and companies, dependent on Chinese money. Part 3 delves into how Chinas domestic propaganda machine praises the CCP, controls its people, and mocks America.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Chinese Propaganda at Home and Abroad: Complicity of US Actors

Part 2 of 3: Beijing's international propaganda campaign is aided by US citizens and companies, dependent on Chinese money

Analysis

According to the Hoover Institution, Beijing has been conducting an ongoing propaganda campaign in the United States for some time. This campaign has been focused on undermining U.S. confidence and policies, while exploiting the freedom of speech and the current wave of Americans self-criticism.

The Chinese regimes primary tools have been U.S. social media, classrooms, and mainstream media.

Over 200,000 Twitter accounts were found to be working directly for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), exploiting the death of George Floyd or other U.S. claims of systemic racism. Meanwhile, in China, ethnic Tibetans, Uyghurs, and Mongolians have been the victims of all manner of repression and abuses, including cultural genocide, torture, detention, and crimes against humanity.

U.S. classrooms have been another front where the CCP has waged its propaganda war. The Confucius Institutes (CI), placed on U.S. college campuses, were paid for by China, but came with stipulations that students cant discuss sensitive topics such as human rights, Tibet, the Tiananmen Square massacre, or Taiwan. The CIs were also accused of spying and of keeping tabs on the activities of Chinese and Taiwanese students on U.S. campuses.

The logo of Twitter is displayed on the screen of a smartphone and a tablet in Toulouse, France, on Oct. 26, 2020. (Lionel Bonaventure/AFP via Getty Images)

One of the CCPs largest mouthpieces, Xinhua News Agency, was allowed to rent a tremendous billboard in New Yorks Times Square, in 2011. Signage in Times Square is very expensive, and the landlords were happy to accept payment, even from the CCP.

Similarly, over a period of just a few months, China Daily paid millions of dollars to U.S. newspapers, magazines, and other media for propaganda inserts, supplements, printing, and advertising. Over a four-year period, the payments were estimated at a total of $19 million, of which The Wall Street Journal received $6 million, while The Washington Post got $4.6 million. This underscores the fact that the CCPs international propaganda campaign is aided by U.S. citizens and companies, dependent on Chinese money.

Many of the CCP payments to U.S. media were for inserts that appear to be news stories, but are actually promoting the Beijing narrative of world events. One of these inserts had the headline Belt and Road aligns with African nations, espousing the benefits of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in Africa, and how the people of Africa welcomed Chinas friendship and aid. The article failed to mention negative aspects of the BRI, such as debt slavery, corruption, loss of sovereignty, and Chinese businesses driving locals out of certain sectors. Another story told how U.S.China tariffs negatively affected American homebuyers, through the increased cost of lumber.

While this story was meant to discredit then-President Donald Trump for enacting the tariffs, and turn his voters against him, it failed to mention that the tariffs were put in place to save jobs in the U.S. lumber industry or that they were in response to decades of China charging higher tariffs on U.S. products.

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) reported that China Daily paid for $50,000 of advertising in The New York Times, while it paid $240,000 to Foreign Policy, $34,600 to The Des Moines Register, and $76,000 to the CQRoll Call. The total spent by China Daily came to $11,002,628 paid to newspapers, for advertising, plus an additional $265,822 paid to Twitter. Other recipients of a total of $657,523 in CCP money were The Los Angeles Times, The Seattle Times, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Chicago Tribune, The Houston Chronicle, and The Boston Globe.

Consequently, the DOJ required China Daily to disclose its activities under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).

Chinas media propaganda campaign is enabled by U.S. mainstream media. U.S. left-leaning media have, at times, promoted Beijings positions while discrediting conservative media, simply for publishing an opposing viewpoint. One example would be outlets that supported Chinas claims that the origin of COVID-19 wasnt the Wuhan Institute of Virology, while criticizing conservative media for publishing evidence to the contrary. At the same time, CCP media in America attempted to shift blame for the origin of COVID-19 to other countries, including the United States.

A subtle example of U.S. medias complicity in Party propaganda is that they often refer to Xi Jinping as the president of China, rather than the General Secretary of the CCP. By definition, a president is elected. Not only was Xi not elected, but the constitution of the Peoples Republic of China was altered, allowing him to remain in power for life.

U.S. self-censorship is another tool in the CCP toolbox. The fear of losing access to Chinese markets drives many U.S. private firms to avoid doing anything that might upset Beijing. U.S. filmmakers are among the worst culprits. Several of the largest U.S. media, including NBC News, CNBC, and MSNBC, are owned by Comcast, which also owns Universal Studios. China is now the most important export market for films, and, consequently, Universal has edited a number of its films to accommodate the Communist Party.

The film Top Gun removed a Taiwanese flag from the main characters flight jacket. The remake of Red Dawn changed the script, having the United States implausibly invaded by North Korea, rather than communist China. YouTube has been known to defund or delete videos critical of the CCP regime. The general manager of the NBAs Houston Rockets apologized to Beijing, after tweeting in support of the Hong Kong pro-democracy protesters.

One of the more bizarre examples of self-censorship was when the European Union removed language blaming China in a report on disinformation.

Through its propaganda efforts, U.S. media complacency, and U.S. self-censorship, Beijing is able to portray China as a country with a different but equal style of government, where the citizenry enjoy a high standard of living, a great deal of freedom, and universally support the Communist Party. Of course, if this were true, the regime would hold general elections and would have no need to censor media and social media at home or abroad.

Editors note: Part 1 examines how the Chinese regime uses American mainstream media to wage its propaganda battle abroad. Part 3 delves into how Chinas domestic propaganda machine praises the CCP, controls its people, and mocks America.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Contentious AfghanistanPakistan Border Remains Great Game Hotspot After Taliban Takeover

Afghanistan and Pakistan have a long disputed border called the Durand Line. Despite the Talibans close relationship with Pakistan, where most of its leaders were based before Aug. 15, the group has said that the Afghans dont agree with the Durand Line.

Experts say the Talibans statement is an indication of the continuity of the so-called Great Game that has defined the geopolitics in the region, which started with threats to conquer British India in 1798. The Durand Line was created to stop those threats.

The Durand Line is a 1,660-mile-long boundary drawn by colonial Britain that pushed 40,000 square miles of Afghan territory into colonial Indias map in 1893, sealing the boundaries of Britains most prized, economy-driving colony from anyone who was their enemy, according to Ambassador Rajeev Dogra, the author of the acclaimed book, Durands Curse: A-Line Across the Pathan Heart.

Ever since, Afghan governments have protested against it because the line goes against historical tradition and by law is illegal, Dogra told The Epoch Times in an email.

Moreover, it was drawn arbitrarily, dividing families and peoples lands. Thats why the Pashtun people resent it, and as far as they are concerned, they carry on with their family linkages as before, through marriages and by trading with each other.

After the British left the Indian subcontinent in 1947, the contentious territory became Pakistans property, and today constitutes a significant percentage of it.

That same year, the Afghans demanded a revision of the border with Pakistan, but were denied. Consequently, Afghanistan was the only member nation in the United Nations that voted against Pakistans membership, according to a report by Vinay Kaura of the Middle East Institute.

Before the Durand Line was drawn by the British Foreign Secretary Mortimer Durand, the British and Afghans would often run incursions into each others territories, stirring up serious border tensions.

These border tensions have continued since then between the Afghans and the Pakistanis, including a serious conflict between the ousted Afghan government and the administration in Islamabad after violent clashes at a border post in 2017 left 13 dead and 80 injured.

Pakistan started a fence along the Durand Line in 2017 when militants repeatedly launched cross-border attacks on Pakistani posts. The double fence, which is about 13 feet high, is 90 percent finished and expected to be completed next summer, although the Taliban has expressed concerns about it.

The Afghans are unhappy and oppose the fencing. The new Afghan government will announce its position on the issue. The fencing has separated people and divided families. We want to create a secure and peaceful environment on the border so that there should not be any need to create barriers, Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid said in an interview with Pashto TV, a Pakistan media outlet.

Dogra said it must be remembered that the Taliban are mainly of Pashtun origin.

They have made it clear that they do not accept this artificial line which divides them, he said.

However, Abhinav Pandya, CEO of Usanas Foundation, an India-based think tank, and the author of Radicalization in India, told The Epoch Times that the Talibans opposition to the Durand Line is for domestic consumption of Afghan nationalist sentiment.

In Afghanistan, ethnic and nationalist identity is a very crucial factor. The Taliban claims to be the freedom fighters who expelled the foreigners. At this stage, they do not want to expose themselves by toeing Pakistans line on the Durand Line. If they do, theyll be exposed as stooges and proxies ruling Afghanistan under the control of the foreign power Pakistan, Pandya said.

Afghan Border Police personnel keep watch during an ongoing battle between Pakistani and Afghan Border forces near the Durand Line at Spin Boldak, in Afghanistans Kandahar Province, on May 5, 2017. (Javed Tanveer/AFP via Getty Images)

Cursed History

Dogra said that to understand the Durand Line, one has to understand the Great Game that brought about fundamental changes to the power equations of the world, because it began the decline of Great Britain as a global power.

It also was the beginning of Russian revisionism, leading to its expansion into the Soviet Union, he said, adding that the Great Game started innocuously in 1798 with a letter by the Afghan Amir (King) Shah Zaman to the Governor-General of India, Richard Wellesley.

Shah Zaman wanted to send a military expedition to North India to drive out the Maratha army. In this, he had sought the British help. But rather than reflect calmly over the proposal, Richard Wellesely started having nightmares about wild Afghans descending from the mountains and causing mayhem in India, Dogra said.

Wellesley had historical reasons to be alarmed, because the Mongols, Huns, and Mughals had invaded and plundered India through the same mountain passes. To keep the Afghan amir away, the British approached Iranian ruler Fath-Ali Shah, but involving him didnt end their troubles. By this time, Napoleon and the Russian czar wanted to march into India through the land route that came through Afghanistan, he said.

While Napoleon finally abandoned his plan, the British imagined there was a threat from the Russian czar, whose territory was 2,000 miles away.

This was just the opening that some ambitious young British officers needed for adventure and to further their career prospects. The Great Game was started then to ward off the imaginary Russian threat.

It ended in 1893 when the British Foreign Secretary Mortimer Durand tricked the Afghan amir into signing an agreement by which he agreed to a rough line on a small map that became known as the Durand Line, said Dogra, adding that, ironically, the amir put his signature on an agreement written in the English language, which he could neither read nor speak.

Yet, in that moment of misjudgment, he gave away 40,000 square miles of Afghan territory. How and why he did so remained a mystery for over a century, says Dogra, whose book Durands Curse addresses this mystery.

An Afghan border policeman aims a rocket launcher on his position at the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan in the Goshta district of Jalalabad Province east of Kabul, Afghanistan, on May 9, 2013. Border tensions between the two countries had escalated dramatically, with both sides accusing the other of unprovoked attacks. (AP Photo/Rahmat Gul)

Taliban and the Durand Line

When the Taliban ruled Afghanistan for a short period in the late 1990s, Pakistan thought the group would support its claim on the Durand Line and would also control the Pashtun nationalism in the northwest frontier, thus providing an outlet for Pakistani Islamists, according to Middle East Institutes Kaura.

The actual result was the exact opposite. Categorically refusing to recognize the Durand Line, the Taliban went on to foster Pashtun nationalism, albeit of an Islamic character, which greatly affected Pakistani Pashtuns. The overthrow of the Taliban following the U.S. invasion in 2001 also transformed the nature and dimension of Pakistans Afghan policy. Pakistans pro-Taliban policy cost it the sympathy and support of the non-Pashtun tribes in Afghanistan, Kaura said.

After 9/11, when Pakistan made a U-turn in its relationship with the Taliban, it cost them the loyalty of Pashtun clans in Afghanistan, he said.

Dogra said the Durand Line was never meant to be a border between Afghanistan and British India; it was supposed to be an area of influence.

We should also remember that Pathans have for centuries lived with a code of honor called Zan, Zar, and Zameen (woman, gold, and land) as their only lodestars. So the loss of 40,000 square miles is as much a physical hurt as a loss of their macho pride. The Taliban want to erase this national insult, he said.

The international community should step in on the side of justice, he said, and the United Nations should protect the Afghan interests on the Durand Line.

Pandya said even though the Taliban didnt agree to the Durand Line in principle, the group never tried to foment any anti-Pakistan unrest or revolt of Pashtuns on the Durand Line.

So this is just a posture to project moral face and show themselves as the champion of Afghan identity. I dont read much into it, he said. As a caution in understanding the Taliban position, Pandya said that Islam doesnt accept the idea of nation-states.

Entire ummah [the collective community of Islam] is one, he said. The Taliban believing in this radical Islamic ideology will have its impact on Pakistani society also, which is itself undergoing massive radicalization. Then we should not forget that Taliban religious ideology is Deobandi, which has a huge setup in Pakistan and is older than the creation of Pakistan.

They may go out of the Pakistan armys control. The sweeping jihadi radicalization will be problematic for Pakistan in the future.
DC Police Fatally Shoot Man Holding Rifle-Style Paintball Gun

An unnamed Metropolitan Police Department officer fatally shot a man reportedly holding a firearm on Tuesday night in Washington, D.C., according to law enforcement officials.

The officers were responding to a call reporting a man with a long gun, though the firearm could have been an airsoft gun or paintball gun, Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) Chief Robert Contee said during a Wednesday night press conference. The MPD posted a photo of the firearm, which appears to be a First Strike T15 Paintball Gun.

It appears it is possible [the firearm was an airsoft gun], Contee told a reporter. He added that the department was unsure about the specifics related to the alleged firearm.

Thats not the condition that it was in when it was displayed to officers, Contee said of the photo of the gun posted to social media. This weapon looks very real. It appears to be some type of airsoft rifle, perhaps a paint gun.

MPD is responding to an officer-involved shooting in the 1400 blk of V St, NW. Preliminary reports of an exchange of gunfire, and a subject & an officer have sustained gunshot wounds. Chief Contee will provide a briefing shortly live on Twitter. Media staging at 14th & V St, NW.  DC Police Department (@DCPoliceDept) September 1, 2021

The officers spoke with the man, identified as 34-year-old George Watson, several times before he returned carrying a long gun, Contee said. The man brandished a rifle-style weapon and aimed at the officers, according to the MPD.

Chief Contee provides an update to the Officer involved shooting that occurred in 1400 block of V Street, NW. https://t.co/oX4uPoaEYG  DC Police Department (@DCPoliceDept) September 1, 2021

At least one officer shot at Watson, to whom officials then rendered aid, according to the MPD. Watson and an unnamed MPD officer were transported to a hospital to be treated for gunshot wounds, where Watson died of his injuries, Contee said.

Contee said he didnt know whether the officers gunshot wound was sustained from the suspected paintball gun. Officers involved in the incident were placed on leave and body camera footage is under review, according to the MPD.

The MPD did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundations request for comment.

By Kaylee Greenlee

From The Daily Caller News Foundation

Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.
Teacher and former OUSD School Board Member Brenda Lebsack wants the California School Board Association (CSBA) to fully define the meaning of nonbinary. (Photo courtesy Aaron Jacoby)

Define Nonbinary, Teacher Tells California School Boards Association

California schools are deliberately keeping parents in the dark about inclusion policies that allow children to change genders without their consent, says a teacher and former school board member in Orange County.

Brenda Lebsack, a teacher in Santa Ana Unified School District (SAUSD) and former Orange Unified School District (OUSD) school board member, recently sent an email to the California School Boards Association (CSBA) demanding that it clearly define the meaning of nonbinary to school board members and parents.

In the Aug. 26 email, Lebsack alleges CSBA knowingly withheld from school boards across the state the definition of the term nonbinary, which is now a choice on student data forms. She claims nonbinary means unlimited gender choices.

Calling nonbinary a third gender is like calling Baskin Robbins an ice cream flavor, Lebsack wrote.

If unlimited gender choices are allowed, students could theoretically identify themselves as having both genders, no gender, or list their preferred pronouns as tree, for example, Lebsack told The Epoch Times.

We have books that tell them that starting in preschool, she said.

The National Association for the Education of Young Children glossary states that gender identity is viewed by current science as fluid and expansive.

Troy Flint, CSBA chief information officer, denied that CSBA has deliberately held back information but admitted that CSBA hasnt actually spelled out in detail what the term nonbinary means.

I guess I just dont understand how its complicated. I mean, binary is a pretty basic English word. Why is that hard to figure? Nonbinary, he said, means not limited or restricted to two categories.

Flint told The Epoch Times that Lebsack has been on a three-year-long crusade criticizing state policies on gender identity and sex education.

Shes not even a trustee. Shes formerly a trustee in one district out of a thousand in California, and I dont think that her critique carries any particular authority on this issue as an individual, he said.

Why does Ms. Lebsack get to determine exactly what terms need to be defined explicitly?

In a written statement, Flint said: CSBA categorically refutes the claim that we have failed to inform members about the gender choice option on student data forms. This is the latest allegation in Ms. Lebsacks long-running crusade to cast a cloud over and obstruct any effort at updating board policies related to sexual orientation and gender identity, merely because these policies conflict with her personal views.

Fortunately, CSBAs actions and model policies are not determined by the outlook of any individual school trustee, instead they are designed to ensure that local education agencies can effectively serve their students and comply with state and federal laws and regulations, Flint said in the statement.

In this file photo, a student works on a math assignment in Laguna Niguel, Calif., on May 12, 2021. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)

Students Needs Unclear

OUSD school board member Rick Ledesma told The Epoch Times that school board members need a full and clear explanation of what nonbinary means in order to properly do their jobs, especially if nonbinary does mean unlimited gender choices.

If they say its going to be unlimited gender categories, then explain to me as a board member, how Im going to direct my school district from a curriculum standpoint and from a psychological services standpoint. I dont even know if this is going to necessitate psychological services or health services, right? Define what Im supposed to operationally be prepared for, he said.

How do you prepare for unlimited gender choices? How do we fund it?

Ledesma has made his own inquiries to CSBA but hasnt received a response.

If its so easy to define nonbinary  then tell me what it means, he said. We need to know it, because we have to have some level of educational services provided for tree or guppy or whatever the case may be.

Ledesma suggested CSBAs attempt to discredit Lebsack is designed to prevent her from getting media attention.

Its a political tactic, he said.

He supports Lebsacks efforts to bring the gender inclusion discussion to the table so that parents know whats going on. Shes brought it to my attention, and I get it now.

The state isnt only trampling on parental rights but even to a certain extent the maturation and psychological makeup of a child, Ledesma said.

Does that mean all rights go to the state and up from there in terms of the gender aspect? Thats what were being told right now: all rights for gender designation, the state gets to dictate. They dictate by saying the kid gets to dictate.

In her email, Lebsack states that nonbinary is an umbrella term to encompass unlimited genders that are ever-expanding and ever-evolving according to CDEs Health Framework passed in May 2019 by the State Board of Education.

She alleges that CSBA hasnt told California school trustees that school personnel and mental health workers can change a students gender in the California Longitudinal Pupil Achievement Data System (CALPADS) solely based on a students request without parental consent or specifying the childs age.

Withholding this information from school boards prevents trustees from properly doing their job to inform parents and is absolute deception, Lebsack wrote. She denounced the CSBA for failing to properly do its job.

Lebsack pointed out that the California Department of Education (CDE) refers to nonbinary as a third gender and then lists several other genders.

California Senate Bill 179, passed in 2017, recognizes three gendersfemale, male, and nonbinaryand allows individuals to amend their gender designation on state-issued identification documents. The Gender Recognition Act describes nonbinary as an umbrella term for people with gender identities that fall somewhere outside of the traditional conceptions of strictly either female or male.

It also states: People with nonbinary gender identities may or may not identify as transgender, may or may not have been born with intersex traits, may or may not use gender-neutral pronouns, and may or may not use more specific terms to describe their genders, such as agender, genderqueer, gender fluid, Two Spirit, bigender, pangender, gender nonconforming, or gender variant.

In her email to CSBA, Lebsack cites a 2018 press release announcing Tom Torlakson, former California superintendent of public instruction, partnered with the top education officials from Oregon and Washington to send a letter opposing federal attempts to redefine the concept of sex and gender government-wide, making that definition purely biological.

The assumption underlying California policy is that gender is a spectrum that is not necessarily linked to biological sex. State legislation allows all individuals, including students, to self-certify to their chosen gender category of male, female, or nonbinarystarting on January 1, 2019, the release states.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) verifies this assumption by defining gender nonbinary as gender creative, which means students can create or make up their own genders Lebsack said.

The CDC calls these other genders gender minorities that, based on critical race theory (CRT), may be considered marginalized and oppressed, while biological male and female genders may be considered privileged oppressors, Lebsack told the CSBA.

By failing to fully define what nonbinary means, the CSBA has caused school trustees and districts to violate state education laws that obligate districts to inform parents, she alleged.

California Education Code 51101 states that parents and guardians of pupils enrolled in public schools have the right and should have the opportunity, as mutually supportive and respectful partners in the education of their children within the public schools, to be informed by the school, and to participate in the education of their children, Lebsack said.

Lebsack said parents deserve to be respected and informed, and she urged the CSBA to immediately right this wrong so they can better participate in their childrens education.

Lebsack sent the email to CSBAs top executives including CEO and Executive Director Vernon Billy and Keith Bray, general counsel and chief of staff, as well as more than 100 executives and staff.

Flint reiterated that CSBA has updated its policy in newsletters and other communications materials but didnt cite a full definition of nonbinary.

I do refute her accusation that we have not informed members about this. We updated the policy. Perhaps Ms. Lebsack feels that we should have sent some sort of separate communication parsing the exact language because this is an issue of concern to her, but the fact remains that we did provide policy updates which were responsive to the law that she mentioned, he said.

Maybe she feels we should have done it differently. Thats not surprising, because shes striving for a particular outcome.

When asked if the CSBA also had a particular outcome in mind, Flint replied: Yes, we do have a certain outcome. Our outcome is to follow the law. Everything we have put out is in alignment with state and federal law.

What we are trying to do is give board members the information they need to uphold the law, and the policy updates that we have provided members allow them to do that.

And as far as the word nonbinary goes, people can have a debate about this, but I think nonbinary quite literally means not limited or restricted to two categories. So, I think one can extrapolate from that there are multiple options. And importantly, the policy updates we provide guide trustees in whats required of them.

(Courtesy Brenda Lebsack)

Gender and Critical Race Theory

In her email to CSBA, Lebsack attached an image of a Black Lives Matter (BLM) coloring sheet, which she said is designed to teach elementary students gender concepts. It depicts a bearded, bespectacled man with flowers on his T-shirt and a bow in his hair partially blocking the words BLACK LIVES MATTER in large capital letters behind him.

There are two versions of the BLM coloring sheets, which The Epoch Times has obtained.

One reads: Everybody has the right to choose their own gender by listening to their own heart and mind. Everyone gets to choose if they are a girl or a boy or both or neither or something else, and no one else gets to choose for them.

The other reads: We make space for transgender people to participate and lead. We know that cisgender (not transgender or gender nonconforming) people in our society have privilege, and we want to uplift transpeople, especially black trans women who often experience violence.

Flint said its up to each school district to decide if they want to use BLM materials in their lessons.

The state is not prescriptive about whether an individual teacher or a district would have incorporated Black Lives Matter into their curriculum. It certainly doesnt advocate for specific position on that. I mean, the state law obviously encourages a certain diversity of curriculum but as for targeting Black Lives Matter or any other groups specifically, no. These are decisions that are made at the local level, he said.

Lebsack contends that gender inclusion is more aptly gender confusion and delusion, and could have lifelong consequences, such as sterility for students. Public schools are intentionally confusing kids about their gender and encouraging the use of puberty blockers which lead to infertility, she states on her website, Brenda4Kids.com.

She is fighting against what she sees as extremist ideologies and unethical medical practices being promoted in the education system.

Lebsack has accused the state government and its agencies of child abuse and psychological exploitation. In a six-minute video, Lebsack shows examples of gender inclusion ideology that many schools have embraced and claims parental rights are rapidly eroding in California. She also advocates for school choice to be put on the 2022 election ballot.

Lebsacks video shows a short clip of a cartoon used to teach students about gender inclusion in San Diego Unified School District and other districts that use the Advocates RRR, or 3Rs, (Rights, Respect, Responsibility) curriculum endorsed by the CDE.

These elementary cartoons also glorify non-biological genders and stigmatize biological male and female genders, Lebsack says in her video.

The cartoon compares gender to a tossed salad, Lebsack says in the video. Biological males and females are considered old school like a boring rock hard wedge of iceberg lettuce and a stinky old dried up tomato, while other nonbinary genders are compared to exciting salad ingredients, she says.

The salad used to represent nonbinary genders is described as a romaine and kale salad with avocado, cucumber, shishito peppers, and four kinds of cheese sprinkled in balsamic straight from Italy.
Depicting Chinas Real-Life Tragedies Through Dance

Though Angela Lin is a dancer, she finds the process of mastering her craft similar to the process of reading and understanding classical Chinese poems.

You need to dig deep into the meaning behind the words to understand what the author means, because the words are often conveying the message indirectly.  Angela Lin

You need to dig deep into the meaning behind the words to understand what the author means, because the words are often conveying the message indirectly, she said in a recent interview. Classical Chinese dance, with its roots in ancient imperial courts and plays, has been passed down through the ages with postures and movements unique to Chinese culture.

Lin, who began training in classical Chinese dance at 8 years old, realized that the way in which one can find seemingly endless interpretations of Chinese poems was similar to how, in classical Chinese dance, emotions are not conveyed directly but through subtle movements and gestures.

Having an introverted personality, Lin, 20, is grateful that she has learned to express herself through dance. She will be competing at the ninth NTD International Classical Chinese Dance Competition this weekend, where she will put her skills to the test.

Lin will compete at the NTD International Classical Chinese Dance Competition this weekend. (Edward Dye)

The last time she competed, at the 2018 competition, she won bronze in the junior division, having performed a piece in which she portrayed a Chinese literary figure: Zhu Yingtai, a young woman who disguised herself as a man in order to study to become a Confucian scholar.

This time, she will be taking on a more somber role. She will be portraying an adherent of the spiritual group Falun Dafa, who is compelled to speak the truth amid severe persecution in China.

Angela Lin began training in classical Chinese dance at 8 years old. (Edward Dye)

Angela Lin (Edward Dye)

The story is based on true events happening in China today; Falun Dafa, also known as Falun Gong, is an ancient Chinese spiritual discipline with meditative exercises and moral principles based on the tenets of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. The practice, introduced to the public from 1992 through 1994, became enormously popular, garnering about 100 million adherents by 1999.

Fearing that the movement would pose a threat to the Chinese regimes rule, then-paramount leader Jiang Zemin launched a brutal campaign to eradicate the faith in July 1999. Adherents have been severely suppressed since, with hundreds of thousands rounded up and sent to labor camps, brainwashing centers, jails, and other forms of detention. They are often tortured while imprisoned, in an effort to coerce them into giving up their faith. To date, thousands have been confirmed to have died due to the persecution, though the true number is likely much higher due to the difficulty of getting sensitive information out of China.

Having an introverted personality, Lin, 20, is grateful that she has learned to express herself through dance. (Edward Dye)

Lin will be portraying a Falun Dafa practitioner who goes to Tiananmen Square in Beijing to protest the persecution.

I want to be a voice for them, Lin said, because theyre willing to stand up for the truth.

Lin seeks to convey through dance the complex set of emotions. (Edward Dye)

Lin explained that she seeks to convey through dance the complex set of emotions the practitioner had: hesitant to unfurl a banner declaring that the spiritual practice is righteous, afraid of potentially being jailed and losing her life, but ultimately determined to do what she believes is right.

The competition finals can be streamed on NTD.com on Sept. 5 from 1 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. (Eastern time); the awards ceremony will begin at 7 p.m.
A student wears a facemask as she enters the St. Lawrence Catholic School on the first day of school after summer vacation in north of Miami, on Aug.18, 2021. (Chandan Khanna/AFP via Getty Images)

DeSantis Appeals Courts Ruling Allowing Mask Mandates in Schools

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Thursday appealed a judges ruling that states he surpassed his authority when he issued an executive order banning school boards from imposing mask mandates.

Attorneys for the Republican governor took the case to the 1st District Court of Appeal in Tallahassee, seeking to reverse Leon County Circuit Judge John C. Coopers ruling last week.

Cooper on Friday ruled that the state could not sanction local school boards that require masks to prevent the spread of COVID-19, namely the Delta variant, on school property. His decision essentially gave the states 67 school boards the authority to impose mask mandates for students without parental consent. Coopers ruling was automatically stayed by the appeal.

At a press briefing earlier this week, DeSantis said that he is confident that Florida will win on appeal by linking the mask requirement order to the Parents Bill of Rights, saying that the law reserves for parents the authority to oversee their childrens education and health.

Cooper however previously addressed the law, saying in his decision that it does not ban mask mandates and does not authorize the governor to forbid schools from adopting a blanket mask policy.

Separately, on Monday, Floridas Department of Health announced that it is withholding funds from two school districts in Broward and Alachua counties that defied Gov. Ron DeSantiss July 30 order banning mask mandates.

The education department said that the funds would be withheld until the school districts comply with state law and rule.

Florida is one of several states where Republican governors have sought to prevent local governments and school districts from mandating masks.

These governors have said that such rules infringe on personal liberty. Proponents of mask mandates have said the rules are necessary to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 across the country.

On Aug. 30, the U.S. Department of Education announced that it is probing five GOP-led states that have prohibited mask mandates in schools, including Iowa, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Utah, saying such policies could be discriminatory against students with disabilities.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
QUEBECA disorganized and poorly evaluated health system for seniors contributed to the high COVID-19 death toll in the province, according to Quebecs health and welfare commissioner.

Joanne Castonguay released her preliminary report Thursday about the state of the health and social services network for seniors on the eve of the pandemic.

During the first months of the health crisis, from March to August 2020, no fewer than 5,157 elderly Quebecers died, accounting for 90 percent of total COVID-19 deaths in the province at the time.

This is probably one of the worst crises that modern Quebec has ever known, if not the most serious of all, she said in the report.

A combination of several factors, she said, led to an unprecedented crisis for seniors in long-term care and other residences across the province. There was no comprehensive strategy to offer a uniform quality of care, services were disorganized and poor data collection prevented care providers from making timely and correct decisions, she said.

Tasked in August by the government to look at the provinces COVID-19 response, Castonguay spoke to about 100 health workers who experienced the situation first-hand. She said based on her interviews, it became clear the management of the first wave of the pandemic has seriously undermined the dignity and integrity of the elderly, leading to a worsening of their physical and psychological health.

Castonguay said there was no official body tasked with compiling results of the evaluations conducted in longterm care homes, adding that the government didnt evaluate the care given to seniors in private residences that had contracts with the province.

As a result of the lack of proper evaluations, it was difficult to hold health-care providers accountable for their conduct during the pandemic, she said.

She said the problems in the network had been well-known under several governments and numerous reports had been produced on the shortcomings, but little had been done. The COVID-19 crisis exacerbated existing problems and the responsibility for the fiasco should be collective, she said.

The governance of long-term care and services has received little attention in the major concerns of successive governments, she noted. We also observe that no mechanism has been provided to ensure the capacity of the state to finance long-term care and long-term services.

The commissioner wrote that she wanted to understand why Quebec had not been able to better protect vulnerable seniors at the height of the pandemic and will provide solutions to prevent a repeat.

Castonguays final report is due at the end of December.

Health Minister Christian Dube said in a statement Thursday that several elements raised in the report had been addressed during the last two waves of COVID-19.

By Jocelyne Richer
Ahmaud Arbery (L) poses with his mother, Wanda Cooper, in an undated photograph. (Courtesy of S. Lee Merritt)

Ex-Prosecutor Indicted Over Ahmaud Arbery Case, Accused of Helping Shield Suspects

A Georgia grand jury on Thursday indicted a former prosecutor on misconduct charges related to the probe into the death of 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery.

Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr in a press release said that Ex-Brunswick Judicial Circuit District Attorney Jackie Johnson is indicted on allegations that she used her position to help protect the three men charged with murder in Arberys case.

Johnson is accused of obstructing police and violating her oath of office after Arberys death last February. Arbery was fatally shot on a residential street as he ran through Brunswick, a small Georgia neighborhood, on Feb. 23, 2020.

After video footage of the incident emerged on May 5. last year, a father and son, Gregory McMichael, 65, and Travis McMichael, 34, were arrested and charged with murder and aggravated assault on May 7 in the fatal shooting of the 25-year-old. The individual who captured the 36-second mobile footage of the violent encounter, 50-year-old William Roddie Bryan Jr., was arrested on charges of felony murder and criminal attempt to commit false imprisonment on May 21.

The three men were then indicted in April this year on hate crime and other charges. They were each charged with a count of interference with rights and a count of attempting kidnapping. The McMichaels were both charged with one count of using firearms during the alleged crimes.

Greg McMichael formerly worked as an investigator in Johnsons office before retiring in 2019. According to evidence presented in pretrial hearings in the murder case, he rang Johnsons cellphone and left her a voice message asking for advice soon after the shooting occurred.

Jackie, this is Greg, he said, according to a recording of the call included in the public case file. Could you call me as soon as you possibly can? My son and I have been involved in a shooting and I need some advice right away.

Greg McMichaels cellphone records for that day show that Johnson did not return his call.

However, the indictment accuses Johnson of showing favor and affection toward Greg McMichael in the investigation and interfered with police officers at the scene by directing that Travis McMichael should not be placed under arrest.

Lee Merritt, an attorney for Arberys mother, said in a statement on Thursday that prosecutors must be held accountable when they interfere with investigations in order to protect friends and law enforcement.

A federal judge last week scheduled an early 2022 trial for the three Georgia men. Their next pretrial hearing in the federal case is scheduled for Sept. 9. All three remain jailed on state murder charges and are scheduled to stand trial on those counts this fall in Glynn County Superior Court. Jury selection in the state case is scheduled to start Oct. 18.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Florida Gov. DeSantis Appeals Ruling That He Doesnt Have Authority to Ban Mask Mandates in Schools

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis appealed a judges ruling that the governor overreached and does not have the power to bar school districts from implementing mask mandates.

The notice to appeal filed Thursday by DeSantiss office said that the filing in this Notice triggers an automatic stay pending review. Last week, Leon County Circuit Judge John Cooper called DeSantiss order unconstitutional and said he cannot enforce it.

I have heard significant evidence concerning the medical and scientific basis for face mask policies and I conclude this evidence demonstrates that face mask policies that follow CDC guidance at this point in time are reasonable, Cooper said.

Earlier this week, the Republican governor said that the state will win its appeal in the First District Court of Appeal in Tallahassee due to a new state law, the Parents Bill of Rights, that was recently passed.

Well end up getting it back, DeSantis said of the appeal. Obviously [Coopers ruling], its problematic. Parents, he added, should be given the ability to opt-out of mask mandates.

His executive order, which was issued in July, directed the Florida Department of Education and the Florida Department of Health to implement emergency rules that give parents a choice about whether their children should wear masks despite school districts decisions to hand down COVID-19 masking mandates.

But Cooper, in his ruling, cited the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)s recommendation for universal masking of children in school even though the CDC earlier this year recommended that only unvaccinated children wear masks. Meanwhile, some studies have shown that children under the age of 18 are the lowest-risk group to be hospitalized or die from COVID-19, while other studies found that children dont play a significant role in the spread of the virus.

A study in March from the CDC found there were more virus-related illnesses in Florida school districts that didnt implement mask-wearing, although the study found that at the time the instances of school-related COVID-19 cases were small statewide. A Journal of American Medical Association (JAMA) study in April discovered that children between the ages of 0 and 9 didnt have substantial rates of SARS-CoV-2 infection during school attendance periods, referring to the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus that causes COVID-19, suggesting that they did not have a substantial role in COVID-19 spread either during this period.

Outside the studies, some parents speaking at board meetings in Florida and other states have said that mandating children to wear masks in school is tantamount to child abuse, although some federal health officials have rejected that assertion.

School boards in 13 Florida districts have since voted to defy DeSantis order, citing the spread of the Delta variant in their decision to mandate masks. The Biden administration announced it would provide federal funds for any district that loses money over mask mandates.
National Folk Festival Cancels Aussie Political Cartoonist Michael Leunig Citing Vaccination Views

The artwork of prominent Australian artist, poet, and political cartoonist Michael Leunig was pulled from the planned posters of the 2022 National Folk Festival (NFF) for his views on the COVID-19 vaccine.

In a statement to The Epoch Times, the NFF board acknowledged Leunigs importance in the Australian creative landscape but said the festival hadnt been aware of his views on vaccination at the time of their collaboration and would be withdrawing the artwork.

The National Folk Festival is strongly committed to respecting individual beliefs and opinions and the right to hold them, the NFF statement said on Aug. 30. However, there is a significant tension between Mr Leunigs position and the National Folk Festivals commitment to vaccination as one of the essential tools in enabling the Festival to go ahead in 2022.

Leunig, who was declared a national living treasure in 1999 by the National Trust, told The Epoch Times that he had not been notified of the NFFs decision and was shocked.

They didnt ask me. I wasnt asked: Well, what are your views?' he said on Sep. 1, insisting that he was not, in fact, against vaccinations.

The artist explained that his position on COVID-19 vaccines was that any individual should follow their own instinct and understanding and that it was a persons right to choose what they do with their body.

I think there is something so radical and fundamental about that boundary which is our body. If people want to do it to make themselves feel better  good on them, I support them. I support anyone in their choice, he said.

Leunig said that his views on vaccines had been misrepresented for many years, coming about after he published a drawing in the Fairfax media in 2015 that conveyed a message about the rights of parents to decide whether or not their children would be immunised.

I did a cartoon, which essentially said dont be too hard on mothers who have a stand on this. Go easy, he said.

Leunig noted that he wasnt trying to make an anti-vaxxer statement; rather, he was saying: Get off peoples backs if they are having a conscientious kind of position and are trying to work it out.

At the time, Australia was debating whether or not to implement mandatory vaccination for school-aged children. However, the cartoon prompted a backlash from some sectors that labelled his views dangerous, with Leunig telling Radio National at the time that he and his family had received death threats.

He also questioned how a folk music festivala genre of music that grew out of traditional forms of music which were regularly used to make social commentarycould choose to silence someones art.

Leunig noted that he had experienced pressure for standing up for his beliefs previously, after being a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War. But he noted that recently more people in the public eye had been castigated for their presumed views, especially if they diverge from a prevailing social narrative.

I was simply labelled that with permanent dye, he said, referring to being considered an anti-vaxxer after the cartoon was published.

Leunig said it was part of his duty and his job as a political and social commentator to use his art to be a voice of intelligent opposition and to question what is going in society.

Despite the backlash, Leunig is prosaic about the recent censorship noting that the environment of todays society requires more work to convey a message of sanity.

I dont think I censor myself, but I have to work three times as hard to convey sanity in a time of insanity, the artist said. I have to speak in metaphors and allegories.

The NFFs decision to cancel the artwork comes as Australia is experiencing a third outbreak of COVID-19the Delta variantin two states and one territory. The Greater Sydney region has seen a weekly average of around 1,000 new cases of community transmission per day.

Currently, both federal and state authorities are promoting vaccinations as a way out of the lockdown measures that are part of Australias national strategy to control the COVID-19 pandemic.

The National Cabineta national body made up of state and territory leaders, and the prime ministeragreed to a four-phased plan that requires each jurisdiction to implement measures to accelerate vaccination rates during Phase A, the current stage of the national plan.

Phase B is unlocked when 70 percent of people are vaccinated and may mean that restrictions are eased for those who are fully vaccinated, while Phase C is triggered when 80 percent of people are vaccinated, and this stage may include opening international borders.
German Labour Minister Hubertus Heil speaks during a news conference about the situation at the job market amid the COVID-19 pandemic, in Berlin, Germany on March 31, 2021. (Hannibal Hanschke/Reuters)

German Employers Not Allowed to Request Workers Vaccination Status: Labor Minister

The German government rejected a suggestion on Wednesday that would give employers the right to find out whether their employees are vaccinated against the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus.

Hubertus Heil, the minister of labor and social affairs, said that Germany has strict privacy laws and employers cannot force workers to show such information, although he agreed that pragmatic solutions are needed for places that are at a greater risk of transmitting the CCP virus, such as hospitals or prisons.

We must act according to the rule of law. Acting under the rule of law means that an employer is not entitled to information about health data[and] is also not allowed to look at the medical records of an employee, because this is very personal data, Heil said while speaking to broadcaster ARD, RT reported.

Regarding places that are at a greater risk, it is likely that employees will have to show, in the future, that they have either been vaccinated, recently tested negative, or recovered from the CCP virus, although no such law has passed yet.

However, exemptions to Germanys privacy laws were made in August to allow restaurants to reopen, with staff and customers required to show that they are vaccinated or recently tested negative.

Heils remarks do coincide with an agreement from the cabinet on Sept. 1 that ruled employers must allow their employees time off to get vaccinated. Companies deciding on those measures could take into account the vaccination status of their staff if they knew it.

Christine Lambrecht, the minister of justice and consumer protection, told the Funke media group that peoples health information is personal and sensitive, but she agreed that granting employers this information might be possible in risky workplaces.

German Federal Minister for Justice and Consumer Protection Christine Lambrecht at Federal Ministry Family Affairs on Aug. 19, 2021 in Berlin, Germany. (Gerald Matzka/Getty Images)

Health information of employees is particularly sensitive, and the question of a vaccination against coronavirus is part of that, Lambrecht said.

Germany, which has one of the lowest recorded death rates per capita in Europe, has previously rejected compulsory vaccinations, saying such a law would undermine public trust. Many countries, including the United States and France, have already made COVID-19 vaccinations mandatory for healthcare staff, public sector workers, and others.

In France, anger over new CCP virus rules has sparked nationwide protests, with tens of thousands of people taking to the streets for weeks straight, accusing the government of overreach and a restriction of peoples freedom.

Reuters contributed to this report.

From NTD News
Afghan resistance movement and anti-Taliban uprising forces personnel patrol along a road in Rah-e Tang of Panjshir province on Aug. 29, 2021. (Ahmad Sahel Arman/AFP via Getty Images)

Heavy Fighting Erupts Between Taliban and Anti-Taliban Group in Afghanistans Panjshir

Heavy fighting erupted on Thursday between the Taliban and an anti-Taliban resistance group in the Panjshir Valley, the last significant holdout area in Afghanistan, according to local residents and resistance officials.

The Panjshir, mountainous region located north of Kabul, has a long history of resisting the Taliban, the Soviet Union, and even the British Empire. The coalition is led by Ahmad Massoud, the son of a famed anti-Soviet resistance fighter who vowed to battle the Taliban after the groups near-takeover of Afghanistan and its capital, Kabul, last month after U.S. military forces pulled out.

Over the past week or so, the Taliban sent its forces to the valley and surrounded it. Taliban and resistance leadersthe National Resistance Front of Afghanistanhad said they were working on negotiations but those appear to have collapsed, leading to heavy fighting on Thursday.

Local residents confirmed the fighting to Al Jazeera and other outlets, while Fahim Dashti, an official in the National Resistance Front, claimed in an audio message that the Taliban lost about 40 members during the fighting. Ali Nazary, a spokesman for the Front, told CNN that the Taliban lost some of its heavy equipment and weaponry on Thursday.

Nazary told the AFP news agency that the Taliban launched more attacks overnight on Thursday.

There is heavy fighting in Panjshir, Nazary said. [Massoud] is busy defending the valley.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told news outlets that the group started operations after negotiation with the local armed group failed, adding that the resistance group suffered heavy losses in the fighting.

The fighting has gotten worse and worse with each night, Asadullah, a 52-year-old local, told Al Jazeera, adding that the fighting has been relegated to the mountains and not in the valley itself.

The Taliban have not changed, and they still are after dominance throughout the country, Massoud said on Wednesday in a CNN interview. We are resisting dominance, intolerance, and oppression brought by one political force over the majority of the population that do not support them.

Some analysts said that the Taliban have a major advantage over the resistance fighters in terms of manpower and weapons. The Taliban was able to capture a significant number of U.S. weapons, vehicles, and equipment as it took over the country.

The Taliban have a significant advantage, Nishank Motwani, an Afghan analyst based in Australia, told the AFP news agency. They are very well armed, and they have the psychological factor in their favour in that they precipitated the fall of the government so quickly.
Viana Chacol, 65, and her dog, Chanel, rest at a cooling shelter at the Treme Recreation Community Center in New Orleans, La., on Sept. 2, 2021. (Chris Granger/The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate via AP)

Idas Death Toll Grows After 4 Nursing Home Residents Found Dead in Warehouse

Four nursing home residents died in a warehouse in Louisiana this week, adding to the death toll from Hurricane Ida.

Over 800 nursing home residents, including those who died, were evacuated to a facility in Tangipahoa Parish ahead of the hurricane, the Louisiana Department of Health said.

Inspectors with the state tried visiting the site on Tuesday after hearing reports of deteriorating conditions at the facility, the department said Thursday. The inspectors were expelled from the property and prevented from conducting a full assessment.

All of the residents were rescued from the warehouse later in the week, according to Louisianas chief medical officer, Dr. Joe Kanter.

Fourteen were found to be in such bad shape that they required hospital care. Another four were dead. According to a coroner, three of the deaths were related to the storm.

There are just no words, Kanter told reporters at a briefing in Tangipahoa Parish.

The rest were taken to shelters or other nursing homes in a massive effort involving the use of buses, ambulances, and other vehicles.

State officials are investigating what happened.

This is a serious and active investigation. We will be taking action against these nursing facilities, and will be making appropriate referrals to law enforcement, the state health department said.

The residents were evacuated from seven nursing homes across four parishes. All are owned or linked to developer Bob Dean, according to local media.

Dean could not be reached by The Epoch Times.

He told WVUE-TV that elderly deaths are not out of the ordinary.

Normally, we lose two to three a day because they are very ill, Dean said. I did the best that I could. Im the only man that has a private evacuation center from Texas all the way to Florida.  That first day cost me over a million dollars to evacuate. One million dollars, and the government never pays me anything. I just do it because I have to save people.

Unless a mandatory evacuation order is in place, nursing home operators decide when and where to evacuate. But they are required to provide safe conditions for their residents.

When the situation degrades to the point that happened fairly quickly, starting on Monday, then the owner of the homes have an obligation to either move those residents themselves to a better facility or to ask for help. He did neither, Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, told reporters.

Were going to do a full investigation into whether the owner of these facilities failed to keep these residents safe, and into whether he intentionally obstructed efforts to check in on them and to determine what the conditions were in the shelter, the governor added. And if warranted, we will take aggressive legal action against any responsible party.

Tangipahoa Parish President Robby Miller told WVUE-TV said the warehouse had no beds. Instead, there were mattresses on the floor.

We wouldnt have wanted our family members or anyones family members in there, he said.
In First Election Debate, No Knockout Blows or Damaging Gaffes

Commentary

Election debates can make or break a campaign. An election debate provides voters with their first chance in a campaign to see party leaders directly facing off against each other on issues. While a debate alone rarely moves the electoral needle much, there are cases where a knock-out punch is scored against a rival. There are even other cases where a politician shoots themselves in the foot. Politicians are motivated to score points, but cagey as well.

In the 1984 debates, Brian Mulroney famously cornered John Turner with his You had an option, sir! statement over patronage appointments. It was considered a turning point in the campaign.

More recently, in the Alberta 2015 campaign debate, Premier Jim Prentice mortified voters when he turned on the diminutive NDP leader Rachel Notley with the condescending statement: I know that math is difficult. It was criticized as bullying and insulting to women. Those six words deflated the Progressive Conservative campaign and contributed to the NDP upset victory.

In the first debate of this electoral campaign, there were no knock-out blows scored nor any damaging errors. The leaders were all composed and clearly well-rehearsed. The moderating was impressive, and the event went smoothly. We have seen so many debate models that degenerated into shouting matches. In TVAs Face-a-Face debate, was nice to see order maintained while candidates could still directly engage each other.

Being a French-language debate, it provided a test for leaders outside Quebec to demonstrate their ability (or lack thereof) to speak French. NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh had already demonstrated French proficiency in the 2019 election. Conservative Leader Erin OToole proved himself to be comfortable and fluid in French during the debate. This is a critical point, as Quebec voters are language-sensitive and are unlikely to embrace party leaders who cant speak French well.

The incumbent Prime Minister is usually targeted in debates as opposition leaders pile on in hopes of chipping away support. The TVA debate was no exception, though the leaders were all relatively civil. Justin Trudeau maintained his composure well throughout the barrage, but he did have a hard time justifying why he called an early election and the other leaders pounced on this. While Trudeau couldnt express a clear answer to the question, he maintained his stance and got through that round of questioning relatively unscathed.

Trudeau scored some points on OToole by repeatedly demanding to know if OToole supports private provision of health care. It is a bit of a disingenuous attack considering that Canada already has a lot of private delivery options in health care. Our universal health-care system is a political sacred cow, however, and OTooles refusal to directly answer that question with a negative may frighten some people. It was a continuation on the theme of the video tweeted out by Chrystia Freeland that had been doctored to make it appear OToole was looking to degrade the universality of the health system. That video backfired on the Liberals as it was such dirty play. Continuing to attack OToole on the issue may not work out as well as the Liberals are hoping.

Singh stayed tight to the NDP script of constantly decrying the ultra-rich and playing the politics of envy. He is pursuing an opposition role, and really only needs to remain solid rather than trying to score points.

Bloc Leader Yves-Francois Blanchet was personable and confident in the debate. He could stick to his Quebec-first theme and let the other leaders fight over other policy issues. Blanchet worked to corner other leaders into committing to bringing a planned pharmaceutical facility to Quebec rather than Ontario. No leaders would commit, and he created a new wedge. On the controversial Quebec Bill-21 that banned the wearing of religious symbols for those working in the public service, Blanchet was able to put other leaders on the spot. The bill is popular in Quebec but condemned in the rest of Canada. Leaders aside from Blanchet taking sides on the bill are sure to lose support in one region or another.

All in all it was a solid debate performance, and because of that nobody gained or lost any significant ground in the campaign. Some challenging issues were debated, and people came away at least a bit better informed on where the party leaders stood.

The main event will be the English debate on Sept. 9. There is one more French debate as well, but it will be that final one held less than two weeks before voting day where we will truly see the leaders put out their best efforts, whether in confidence or in desperation, as the campaign nears its end.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Popcorn and Inspiration: The Wings of Eagles: A Sentimental, Multifaceted Character Study

A Sentimental, Multifaceted Character Study

Approved | 1h 50min | Biography, Drama, War | 1957

One of John Fords more sentimental films, The Wings of Eagles is a biopic about Fords friend and frequent filmmaking collaborator, Frank Spig Wead. Ford was inspired to make this 1957 film 10 years after Wead passed away, as a dedication to his friend.

The film is based on a 1944 short story by Wead, published in an issue of The American Magazine. The story was adapted for the big screen by screenwriters Frank Fenton and William Wister Haines.

The first act of the movie takes place right after World War I and details Weads younger years as a reckless U.S. Navy junior officer. His life mainly consists of rowdy times with his drinking buddy Jughead Carson (Dan Dailey). During an impromptu bout of naughtiness that culminates with Wead flying a plane (which he isnt qualified to operate) into the backyard swimming pool during a senior officers banquet, he narrowly avoids being court-martialed.

Unruffled, Wead drives home drunk from the court-martial hearing with Carson and enters his one-bedroom cottage, which he and his wife, Minnie Min Wead (Maureen OHara), occupy with their infant son. Minnie is irate at his behavior, and we first see that Weads priorities are more skewed toward partying than spending time with his family.

Things take a tragic turn when the couples baby dies due to a high fever. After a grieving period, Wead becomes more serious about his military service. Rising out of the ashes like a phoenix, his newfound passion is to prove that combat aviation has a place in the Navy. He attends aviation training at the Aeronautic Station in Pensacola, Florida. After he successfully graduates, Minnie proudly pins his golden flight wings onto his uniform.

The Weads have a couple more children, two daughters, and their family life is relatively good despite the usual quibbles. Wead begins to heavily promote the concept of air racing in order to develop naval aviation as viable to the public, other military branches, and especially Congress (for funding).

Frank (John Wayne) and Minnie Wead (Maureen OHara) have it good  for a while, in The Wings of Eagles. (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer)

Weads push to legitimize naval air power places his Navy aviation team in direct conflict with the Army aviation team, and an intense rivalry develops between them. Racing and endurance competitions are organized, and the two teams compete against one another.

As Wead throws himself more and more into his mission of proving naval aviation prowess and breaking various air racing records, he spends long periods away from his family. When he does return, with a promotion to the fighter squadron commander, ill fortune strikes again: He tumbles down a dark stairway at home and breaks his neck, resulting in paralysis.

Wead (John Wayne, front) succumbs to depression, and Carson (Dan Dailey) tries to bring him out of it. (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer)

The paralysis leads to depression, which, in turn, has repercussions on his marriage. But Wead accepts the visits and encouragement of his Navy friends, particularly Carson. Throughout the years, with the constant help of Carson, Wead begins to recover somewhat physically. Carson also inspires him to follow another career.

As Mead begins the process of reconciling with his family, the attack on Pearl Harbor occurs. Will he continue to reunite with his family, or is the call to serve his country once again, too tempting?

Frank Wead (John Wayne) and Minnie (Maureen OHara), in The Wings of Eagles. (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer)

One of the things I really enjoyed about this film is that it switches between peppy humor and weighty drama rather effortlessly. It also showcases John Waynes wide acting range, since he plays a sensitive and thoughtful characteragainst type. (He even tears up in one scene.) OHara is compelling as usual, and she and Wayne fit well together. After all, they were frequently paired throughout their acting careers.

The Wings of Eagles, then, is a rousing portrait of a complex man and an excellent tribute to one of the founders of naval aviation.

The Wings of Eagles

Director: John Ford

Starring: John Wayne, Maureen OHara, Dan Daily

Running Time: One hour, 50 minutes

Not Rated

Release Date: Feb. 22, 1957

Rated: 4 stars out of 5



Ian Kane is a filmmaker and author based out of Los Angeles. To learn more, visit DreamFlightEnt.com or contact him at Twitter.com/ImIanKane
ISIS Terrorist Pleads Guilty to Role in Beheadings of Four Americans

A former ISIS terrorist on Sept. 2 pleaded guilty to the brutal kidnapping, torture, and deaths of four Americans, two of whom were journalists, the Justice Department announced.

Alexanda Amon Kotey, a former British citizen, served as an ISIS terrorist and participated in the captivity of American and European hostages in Syria.

He is among those responsible for the 2014 executions of four American citizens; James Wright Foley, Kayla Jean Mueller, Steven Joel Sotloff, and Peter Edward Kassig, all of whom died as hostages in ISIS custody.

Kotey, 37, also participated in hostage operations involving British, Italian, Danish, and German nationals, among others.

According to court records, Kotey and two other ISIS members supervised the terrorist organizations jails and detention facilities at which the hostages were held and were responsible for transferring hostages between detention facilities.

Mohammed Emwazi was identified as the ISIS extremist the media has dubbed, Jihadi John. Emwazi is originally from London. (Screenshot)

The former ISIS militant engaged in a prolonged pattern of physical and psychological violence against the hostages in an effort to control them and compel the victims family members and the U.S. government to pay large monetary ransoms for their release.

Often, this would end with public beheadings that were videotaped and uploaded online, as was the case with American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff, aid worker, Peter Kassig, and British citizens David Haines and Alan Henning.

Kotey and alleged co-conspirator El Shafee Elsheikh, 33, whose case remains pending in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, were captured together in January 2018 by the Syrian Democratic Forces as they attempted to escape Syria for Turkey.

Another member of the group, Mohamed Emwazi, who conducted the videotaped beheadings, was killed in November 2015 in a U.S. military airstrike in Syria.

This file photo posted on the website freejamesfoley.org shows journalist James Foley in Aleppo, Syria, in July 2012. (freejamesfoley.org, Nicole Tung/AP Photo)

Kotey pleaded guilty to all of the offenses charged in the eight-count indictment, which includes one count of conspiracy to commit hostage taking resulting in death; four counts of hostage taking resulting in the deaths of the four Americans, one count of conspiracy to murder U.S. citizens outside of the United States; one count of conspiracy to provide material support or resources to terrorists resulting in the deaths of U.S., British, and Japanese nationals; and one count of conspiracy to provide material support or resources to a designated foreign terrorist organization resulting in the deaths of U.S., British, and Japanese nationals.

He is now facing a mandatory life sentence in prison and is scheduled to be sentenced on March 4, 2022, by Senior U.S. District Judge T. S. Ellis.

This guilty plea ensures that Kotey will spend the rest of his life in prison for the horrific crimes he has committed, Acting Assistant Attorney General Mark Lesko for the Justice Departments National Security Division said in a statement.

Although there remains much work to be done in this case, we hope todays events provide some measure of justice for Koteys victims and their families as they continue to grieve the loss of their loved ones. I want to thank all of the agents, analysts and prosecutors who worked tirelessly on this investigation and prosecutiontheir efforts are proof that the National Security Division and our partners will not rest in our commitment to hold accountable terrorists who target and attack U.S. citizens anywhere in the world.
Joseph Wu, Taiwan Foreign Minister speaks about exchanging representative offices with Lithuania during a press briefing in Taipei, Taiwan, on July 20, 2021. (Taiwan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs/Screenshot via AP)

Lithuania Recalls Beijing Ambassador Over China-Taiwan Spat

VILNIUS, LithuaniaLithuania on Friday recalled its ambassador to China following the Baltic countrys decision in July to allow self-governing Taiwan to open an office in its capital under its own name.

The Foreign Ministry said Ambassador Diana Mickeviciene had been recalled from Beijing for consultations following the Chinese government statement on August 10.

Last month, China recalled its ambassador to Lithuania and told the Baltic nation to immediately rectify its wrong decision, take concrete measures to undo the damage, and not to move further down the wrong path.

The statement referred to potential consequences for Lithuania if it allowed the office to open but gave no details.

The Lithuanian Foreign Ministry expressed regret over the Chinese regimes action and stressed that while respecting the one China principle, it stands ready to develop mutually beneficial ties with Taiwan, just as many other countries in the world do.

The Chinese communist regime says Taiwan is part of its territory and doesnt have the right to diplomatic recognition, although the island maintains informal ties with all major nations through trade offices that act as de facto embassies, including in the United States and Japan. Pressure from the Chinese regime has reduced Taiwans formal diplomatic allies to just 15.

Taiwan and Lithuania agreed in July that the office in the capital, Vilnius, set to open this fall, will bear the name Taiwan rather than Chinese Taipeia term often used in other countries in order not to offend Beijing.

On Friday, the Lithuanian ministry said that diplomats from the European Unionof which Lithuania is a memberexpressed solidarity with Mickeviciene. The deputy EU ambassador to China, Tim Harrington, shared a joint photo on Twitter on Friday as dozens of EU diplomats gathered to demonstrate solidarity with their Lithuanian counterpart as she left Beijing and wished she could return soon, the ministry said.

Lithuania said its embassy in Beijing continues to operate as usual.
NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian looks on during a COVID-19 update and press conference in Sydney, Australia, on August 27, 2021. (Lisa Maree Williams-Pool/Getty Images)

Living With Delta Involves Getting Annual Booster Shot: Australian Premier

As New South Wales (NSW) learns to live with COVID-19, health procedures will eventually become available through normalised processes such as a yearly booster shot, Premier Gladys Berejiklian said.

Living with Delta means social distancing, QR codes, vaccine passports, it also means once a year getting a booster or a jab to vaccinate, Berejiklian told media today. Most people will get it from their workplace or through GPs, much in the same way you get your flu shot.

However, an infectious disease expert, Australian National Universitys Professor Peter Collignon, recently said evidence suggested that booster shots were not yet needed in Australia.

Israel is one of the most vaccinated countries in the world, and it has begun to offer booster shots to all citizens after health officials announced that the effectiveness of Pfizer against the CCP virus waned after six months.

Despite high vaccination levels, the country is currently struggling with a new wave of infections and hospitalisations. As a result, Sweden has banned all travellers from Israel.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has also secured an additional 85 million Pfizer vaccines, enough to enable booster coverage throughout 2022.

NSW recorded 1,431 new daily cases and 12 deaths, and Berejiklian warned the public that the numbers would continue to rise into October, which is anticipated to be the worst month for the states health system.

Thats why were just asking people, especially in the next fortnight  every time any of us leave the house we need to assume we have the virus, she said. So even with a mask, you need to have good social distancing.

Berejiklian said continued lockdowns were unsustainable, so people need to learn to live with the CCP virus and treat it similarly to the flu.

Yesterday, Berejiklian said people needed to confront the truth and put COVID-19 deaths into perspective, pointing to the annual flu deaths prior to the pandemic.

The sad reality is outside of a pandemic, we lose between 600 and 800 people every year to the flu, she said. At the moment, there are 8 million citizens who dont have a choice about when they leave their homesthat is no way to live.

She also called for a gradual shift in focus away from daily case numbers and towards the number of people in intensive care and vaccination numbers.

September and October will be the most challenging because well be going through the phase of dealing with extra ICU hospitalizations, she said. But well also be going through both the exciting but challenging time of opening up.

While the NSW health system has been working on expanding its ICU bed capacity to almost 2,000, including staff, Berejiklian admitted the system would become stretched as numbers peak in the coming weeks.

Next week, the NSW government will release detailed plans for the health system to handle the stress.
Local Tax Increases Slam Californians

Commentary

When I was at the Orange County Register writing unsigned editorials, from 1987 to 2016, we made sure always to oppose every local tax increaseincluding bonds, which I called delayed tax increases, because thats where the money eventually comes from. Local and state governments cant print their own money, unlike the federal government.

Although we sometimes lost, especially with school bonds, we usually defeated the increased levies. Even when we lost, every local government knew it would face the gauntlet of several editorials, and likely signed columns, blasting them for assaulting the taxpayers.

By contrast, the Los Angeles Times backed almost every tax increase put before it. The result is Orange County has lower taxes and is much more livable than Los Angeles.

Thats confirmed by a new study (pdf) by the California Tax Foundation, titled Local Tax Trends in California: A Survey of Ballot Measure Elections from 2010-2020. It found over that decade such taxes increased by $8.82 billion a year statewide. Voters rejected just $3.17 billion in tax increases.

On the positive side, Proposition 13 saved taxpayers $2.4 billion a year. The 1978 tax limitation measure requires two-thirds voter approval for taxes earmarked for special purposes. But if only a majority vote had been required, taxes would have gone up that higher amount.

I gleaned several key things from this study. Heres some of my analysis that goes beyond their data.

Although the study does not break down the 58 counties, it does so for seven regions. The Southern California region includes Orange County and the two areas most like it: San Diego County and the Inland Empire. These areas are largely urban but more conservative and Republican than the rest of the states populous areas.

Hotel Tax

Consider the voter approval of hotel taxes, also called the Transient Occupancy Tax (TOT). These are popular because the locals dont pay for them, only visitors who dont live and vote thereexcept tourists and convention groups sure do consider price. A higher TOT means fewer people not only occupying hotel rooms, but fewer patronizing local restaurants, tourist attractions, and stores.

Heres the tally of the seven regions for 2010-2020, from lowest passage rate to highest:

Its a textbook in social illusions. Los Angeles and the Bay Area, with passage rates above 80 percent, are plagued with increasing homelessness and crime. They solve the problem with higher taxes to pay for more social programs, which dont work. But the taxes make living there harder.

Meanwhile the Central Valley and Southern California, with passage rates around the 50 percent rate, are doing much better.

Utility Users Taxes

Another tax localities love to impose is Utility Users Taxes (UUT). Hey, its just a user fee. You dont want the infrastructure to collapse so you miss the latest Netflix binge, do you?

Heres the breakdown, from lowest passage rate to highest:

Aside from the anomaly of Northern California passing all its UUT increases, the numbers show more reluctance when a tax boost hits voters own pocketbooks directly. Yet the general pattern holds, with Southern California and the Central Valley more reluctant to jack up taxes than Los Angeles and the Bay Area.

Conclusion: Will It Continue?

Next year brings another election cycle. Taxes and bonds again will clog ballots. But will these high passage rates continue?

They may not. Especially after COVID-19 slammed family and business budgets, Californians seem more skeptical of taxes, and of government in general. The word also is getting out that, as Jon Coupal of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association puts it, nowadays all tax increases go to the bloated pensions of retired government workersthat is, to those no longer performing actual services for the public.

With kids back in the classroom, school districts soon will have accurate numbers on how many kids now are being homeschooled. EdSource reported in July, During the height of the pandemic, almost 35,000 California families filed an affidavit with the state to open a private home school, more than double those of the previous year.

Public schools will have difficulty advancing tax increases if attendance numbers are down. And itll also be hard to convince homeschooling families to back tax increases for services they wont even see.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, is seen before receiving his first dose of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine at the National Institutes of Health, in Bethesda, Md., on Dec. 22, 2020. (Patrick Semansky/Pool via Reuters)

Mu CCP Virus Variant Not An Immediate Threat: Fauci

A variant of the virus that causes COVID-19 and is spreading in South America is not a problem for the United States right now, a top health official said Thursday.

The Mu variant, formally B.1.621, was classified as a variant of interest by the United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) this week.

It was first detected in Colombia in January. Since then, some larger outbreaks have been reported in South America and in Europe.

Early data indicate that it could cause a reduction in protection from COVID-19 vaccines, but this needs to be confirmed by further studies, WHO said in its weekly epidemiological report on COVID-19, the disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus.

U.S. officials are aware of the variant and keeping a close eye on it, Dr. Anthony Fauci, told reporters in a virtual briefing on Thursday.

But the variant is not close to becoming prevalent in the United States at this time, according to genomic sequencing of CCP virus cases in the country.

It is rarely seen here, but it is not at all even close to being dominant. As you know, the Delta is more than 99 percent dominant, Fauci, a chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden and the longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Fauci also appeared to downplay the preliminary data that suggests the Mu variant evades certain antibodies, including those produced by vaccines.

Remember, even when you have variants that do diminish, somewhat, the efficacy of a vaccine, the vaccines still are quite effective against variants of that type, he said.

The prevalence in both Colombia and Ecuador of the strain has consistently increased over time, according to the WHO, now making up nearly 4 in 10 cases in the former and more than 1 in 10 in the latter.

More studies are required to understand the phenotypic and clinical characteristics of this variant. The epidemiology of the Mu variant in South America, particularly with the co-circulation of the Delta variant, will be monitored for changes, WHO said.

Francois Balloux, chair in computational biology and systems biology at the UCL university in London, said on social media on Thursday that the WHO likely elevated the Mu variant because of a recent uptick of cases of the variant in the United States.

Its not particularly concerning at this stage, but worth keeping an eye on, he wrote.
Sunlight falls on Ebbett's Field, a rent-regulated housing complex in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn in New York City, on July 29, 2020. (Scott Heins/Getty Images)

New York Eviction Moratorium Extends to January 2022

New Yorks statewide eviction moratorium will be extended to Jan. 15, 2022, Gov. Kathy Hochuls office announced on Thursday.

The states lawmakers voted to extend the residential and commercial eviction moratorium on Wednesday, when Hochul convened a special session of the state legislature for the vote. She later signed the measure into law, which will extend the eviction ban that was set to expire on Aug. 31.

The move comes after the U.S. Supreme Court last month struck down the Centers for Disease Control and Preventions (CDCs) eviction moratorium, as well as part of New York states eviction moratorium.

The pandemic has created unimaginable anxiety for families and business owners who have lost income and are struggling to pay the rent every month, Hochul said in a statement on Thursday.

To help remedy the Supreme Courts heartless decisions striking down the New York and the Biden administrations moratoriums on evictions, we are enacting a new moratorium on residential and commercial evictions and extending the protections of New Yorks Safe Harbor Act to January 15. These steps will alleviate the crisis facing vulnerable New Yorkers who are suffering through no fault of their own.

A previous policy in New York state was found by the Supreme Court to have potentially violated landlords rights to due process. That policy had prevented tenants from being evicted, if the tenants claimed in a form that they suffered economically, or that moving would risk their health, amid the pandemic.

The new eviction moratorium seeks to protect tenants from eviction and give landlords the right to challenge any tenants claim of financial hardship that shields them from eviction.

The new law still allows tenants to fill out a similar form, but also enables landlords to challenge such claims by requesting a hearing in housing court to seek review of the claims if they doubt that a tenant is experiencing financial hardship. Judges will decide whether to go ahead with an eviction case.

More than 700,000 households in New York owe an estimated $2.2 billion in rent collectively, according to the National Equity Atlas. Most eviction cases have been paused in housing courts since the start of the pandemic, March 2020, when the states moratorium was first put in place. It had been extended twice prior to the latest extension.

According to Hochuls office, New Yorkers who are struggling to pay rent can apply for assistance through the states Emergency Rental Assistance Program, which has obligated or distributed more than $1.2 billion in funding, including over $300 million in direct payments to more than 23,000 landlords, as of Aug. 31.

Applicants to this program are automatically protected from eviction while their application is pending and will receive a year of eviction protections if they qualify for assistance, according to Hochuls office.
A vial of Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine is seen in Los Angeles, Calif., on Aug. 23, 2021. (Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images)

Newly Approved COVID-19 Vaccine Not Yet Available in US

The first COVID-19 vaccine approved for use in the United States is not available yet and its unclear when the first doses will be ready for administration.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Aug. 23 approved a vaccine from Pfizer and its German partner, BioNTech. But at the same time, drug regulators extended (pdf) emergency use authorization (EUA) for existing doses of the vaccine.

The FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) declined to answer or did not respond to questions about when the approved vaccine, dubbed Comirnaty, would be available.

Pfizer did not answer directly when asked and BioNTech did not return an inquiry.

But health officials from states across America confirmed to The Epoch Times that they do not have any Comirnaty doses, and that none are expected soon.

Comirnaty-labeled doses are not yet in circulation in the U.S. yet, a spokesman for the Arizona Department of Health Services told The Epoch Times in an email.

There is no timeline for when the branded product will start to be shipped, a spokeswoman for the Tennessee Department of Health added.

An official in Massachusetts said that the approved doses are not likely to be distributed until October, at the earliest.

Georgia, Illinois, North Dakota, West Virginia, Wyoming, and Washington state have also not received any Comirnaty doses, officials said.

The authorized doses were already produced. The approved doses are ones produced in the future.

Approval requires a higher threshold of proof of safety and efficacy than authorization.

Both vaccines are made by Pfizer and BioNTech.

The companies product has been distributed in Europe under the Comirnaty brand for months.

Hundreds of Millions of Doses Left

States and the federal government have plenty of the existing vaccine left.

Oklahoma, for instance, had more than 210,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine on hand as of Aug. 30, a spokesperson for the states health department told The Epoch Times via email.

Pfizer is one of three COVID-19 shots being administered in the United States.

The United States bought 300 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine before purchasing an additional 200 million doses in July. As of Sept. 2, just 211 million of those had been administered.

The federal government has a large amount of the originally-labeled vaccine to be distributed before the branded product is released, the Tennessee spokeswoman said.

Denise Hinton, the FDAs chief scientist, wrote in the letter extending the authorization for existing doses that there is not sufficient approved vaccine available for distribution to all of the adults 16 years or older in the United States while there is a significant amount of the EUA doses.

A Pfizer spokesperson told The Epoch Times via email that the EUA product will be shipped and used until its expiry date, provided the proper storage conditions are maintained.

Some states indicated they will not maintain a separate count of those who receive the approved vaccine and those who have gotten the EUA version. A number of officials appeared to be unaware that there was any legal difference between the existing doses and those that fall under the approval.

People receiving vaccines must be informed when theyre receiving an authorized, unapproved product, according to FDA documents. People are now being told (pdf), if they get a Pfizer jab, that theyre receiving either the Comirnaty vaccine or the authorized Pfizer vaccine.

A patient receives her booster dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine at the Southfield Pavilion in Southfield, Michigan, on Aug. 24, 2021. (Emily Elconin/Getty Images)

Formulation the Same; Legally Distinct

Dr. Janet Woodcock, the FDAs acting commissioner, touched on the matter in a phone call with reporters on Aug. 23. She said that while production of the approved vaccine product is underway, the FDA approved vaccine and the EUA authorized vaccine have the same formulation and can be used interchangeably.

There are no safety or efficacy concerns with doing so, officials say.

A footnote in the letter states the vaccines are legally distinct with certain differences that do not impact safety or effectiveness.

The FDA declined to answer when asked what that meant.

The Pfizer spokesperson said it refers to the differences in manufacturing information included in the submissions for authorization and approval.

Specifically, while the products are manufactured using the same processes, they may have been manufactured at different sites or using raw materials from different approved suppliers, the spokesperson said.

The company declined to share whether the same manufacturers that produced the EUA vaccine will produce the new doses.

Dr. Peter Marks, the director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research at the FDA, told reporters last week that the approval process included inspecting facilities where the vaccine is being manufactured as well as reviewing thousands of pages of data and information concerning safety, effectiveness, and manufacturing quality.

Confusion

The FDA on Aug. 23 sent two separate letters, one outlining the EUA extension and the other telling BioNTech that new doses of its vaccine were approved.

The process has caused a great deal of confusion, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) wrote in a letter to Woodcock last week.

He accused the FDA of rushing the approval process because Comirnaty isnt generally available at this time.

There is no doubt that the FDAs action will lead to more vaccine mandates and increased pressure on those currently choosing not to get vaccinated, Johnson wrote.

If there is insufficient supply of Comirnaty vaccines for those succumbing to the coercion of mandates, isnt the FDA de facto endorsing vaccine mandates utilizing EUA vaccines? he added later.

The FDA has not yet responded to the senators questions, a spokesperson told The Epoch Times in an email.

A number of jurisdictions and agencies announced new vaccine mandates in the wake of the approval, with many officials citing the approval as impetus for the requirements.

Signage is seen outside of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) headquarters in White Oak, Md., on Aug. 29, 2020. (Andrew Kelly/Reuters)

Experts: Not Unusual

Several experts said that the twin approval-extension process appeared normal.

Is it unusual to allow people to use the vaccine that was produced, up until this approval last week, under an EUA now that its approved? I dont think theres any reason not to, Dr. Sidney Wolfe, founder of the Public Citizens Health Research Group, told The Epoch Times.

Federal law dictating the regulation of biological products such as vaccines can be read as preventing approval of doses that were authorized under EUA, Dr. Roger Klein, a policy adviser to The Heartland Institute who has advised the FDA, added.

Theyre not going to offer a retrospective approval, he told The Epoch Times. I dont think thats unusual. It isnt, quite frankly, a reason in my view to be concerned.

The FDA did not answer questions as to why the agency approved future doses and authorized existing ones.

Both Wolfe and Klein said the approval seemed warranted by the data, which primarily came from a clinical trial involving 44,000 people, half of whom received the vaccine and half of whom received a placebo. But they differed on whether the approval process, which lasted 97 days, took too long.

I think they took an appropriate amount of time, Wolfe said.

They sort of missed the party, given that so many hundreds of millions of doses of these vaccines have been given out, Klein said.

Age and Liability

The approval was only for those 16 or older. The vaccine remains under EUA for children between the ages of 12 and 15. It also only has EUA, not approval, for booster shots for certain people 12 and up with compromised immune systems.

FDA officials discouraged doctors from giving the vaccine to children 12 and under, a population in which its effects are still being studied.

We dont have the proper data, Woodcock told reporters last week.

There have been claims, meanwhile, that the EUA vaccine and the approved one are treated differently in terms of liability.

Thats not correct.

Both forms of the vaccine fall under the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act, because then-Health Secretary Alex Azar in March 2020 issued a declaration, per the act, to give immunity to manufacturers of COVID-19 countermeasures unless they engage in willful misconduct.

The government encourages the production of vaccinations and medications used to fight a pandemic like COVID-19 by protecting the companies making them from lawsuits, Mark Sadaka, a medical litigations lawyer, told The Epoch Times.

In normal times, people who believe theyve been harmed by a vaccine appeal to the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. Under the emergency act, people who believe they or a loved one suffered serious injury or death from a vaccine must go to the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program (CICP), a different government-run program, for compensation.

Nearly 1,700 claims related to COVID-19 countermeasures, including 686 related to vaccines, were filed as of Aug. 2, but only two have been reviewed and decided on. Both were rejected because the standard of proof for causation was not met and/or a covered injury was not sustained, the programs webpage states.

The Health Resources and Services Administration, which runs the program, told The Epoch Times that theyre working on processing claims as quickly as possible.

For the majority of COVID-19 countermeasure claims, including COVID-19 vaccine claims, the CICP is still waiting for records and documentation to be submitted, a spokesman said in an email.

Requesters must demonstrate proof that an injury or death occurred as a direct result of the administration or use of a countermeasure like a vaccine.

Meiling Lee contributed to this report.
A group of protesters outside of the MHRA headquarters in central London, where police blocked them from entering, on Sept. 3, 2021 (Andrew Wood/Twitter/PA)

Protesters Try to Force Their Way Into Headquarters of UK Medicines Regulator

A group described as anti-vaccine protesters tried to force their way into the London headquarters of the national UK medicines regulator that approves COVID-19 vaccines.

The Met police said that the protesters later became violent towards officers.

In various footage posted to social media on Sept. 3, dozens of police drive back a crowd of demonstrators who are trying to get through the doors of the building on Cabot Square in Canary Wharf.

That building is the headquarters of the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA).

Some footage and messages on social media suggest that the group was protesting against the vaccination of children. One local councillor who was on the scene described them as anti-vaccination anti-Covid rules.

The protest came just ahead of a long-anticipated recommendation by another official body on whether healthy 1215 year-olds should be vaccinated.

We have officers attending a demonstration outside a commercial building on Cabot Square in Canary Wharf, the Met Police said on Twitter, at about 2:00 p.m. A number of officers are on scene, guarding the entrance to the building.

About an hour later, the group moved off to another location, where the Met said a number became violent towards police officers.

Four of our officers have been injured during clashes, said the Met Police in their latest update at around 3:30 p.m. This is unacceptable. We remain on scene. Updates to follow.

A group of protesters try to get past police and into the headquarters of the MHRA in central London on Sept. 3, 2021. (Andrew Wood/Twitter/PA

Police said that they had made arrests at a demonstration by a separate group in Canary Wharf along Bank Street. However, it appears that those arrested belonged to a protest by Extinction Rebellion.

Andrew Wood, councillor for Canary Wharf, who was on the scene and taking photos which he shared on Twitter, said leaflets were being handed out about the vaccination of children at the protest at the MHRA headquarters.

Just to make clear protests this afternoon are anti-vaccination anti-Covid rules not XR Rebellion (who were here this morning for a separate not disruptive protest), he wrote on Twitter.

The incident came just as another official body, which was set up to make recommendations on COVID-19 vaccinations, said that the government should not vaccinate healthy 12 to 15 year olds.

Last week, a group of demonstrators occupied the entrance of the headquarters of ITV News and Channel 4 News in London, claiming that the media are misinforming people about vaccines and the pandemic.

Police were called to the ITN (Independent Television News) production studios in central London on Aug. 23, according to the Met Police, after a group unlawfully gained access to the building.

Several times in the past few months, groups have peeled away from broader large-scale protests against pandemic measures to protest outside media premises. Last month, a group of protesters similarly sought out a broadcast building once headquartered by BBC News, and used now to host other broadcasts.
The accused U.S. Capitol rioter dubbed the QAnon Shaman, Jacob Chansley (center) and other protestors outside the Senate chamber of the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

QAnon Shaman Jacob Chansley Pleads Guilty to Jan. 6 Capitol Breach Charge

Jacob Chansley, sometimes known as the QAnon Shaman, pleaded guilty to a felony charge during the Jan. 6 Capitol breach, according to court records on Friday.

He pleaded guilty in a virtual court hearing in Washington D.C. on a count of obstruction of an official proceeding, the court documents said. The guilty plea was made as part of a deal with prosecutors and was accepted by Judge Royce Lambeth, reports said.

Shortly after the Jan. 6 incident, Chansley, of Phoenix, was held without bond and has been in custody since then. While in detention, he was diagnosed with transient schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression, and anxiety after a medical examination.

Previously, Chansleys lawyer said that his client no longer wants to be associated with the Q movement, asserting that he is a long avowed and practicing Shaman.

The road leading up to the events of January 6 traversed years. The path charted by Mr. Chansley since January 6 has been a process, one which has involved pain, depression, solitary confinement, introspection, recognition of mental health vulnerabilities, and a coming to grips with the need for more self-work, Watkins said in a statement. It is imperative that patience and compassion be accorded those, who like Mr. Chansley, were non-violent, peaceful and possessed of genuine mental health issues.

In connection to the incident, more than 600 people have been arrested. The vast majority have been released until trial, although a number of defendants have been held in what their lawyers have said are inhumane conditions.

About two months ago, lawyers for some of the defendants told The Epoch Times that several are in solitary confinement 23 hours per day, have been denied medical care, and have restricted access to their defense counsel.

There are about 50 plus or minus that are being detained, that have been in prison for months and will likely remain in prison for many more months until their day in court, attorney John Pierce said at the time.

And Watkins, during a Friday hearing, noted that Chansleys mental health problems were exacerbated by the federal government keeping him behind bars before trial.

He is a man with mental health vulnerability who has, for eight months, been in what any doctor [would say] is the worst thing you can possibly have done to you if you have a personality disorder, which is be placed in solitary confinement, he said Friday.

Chansleys sentencing date was set for Nov. 17. Watkins asked the judge to allow him to be released from prison pending the sentencing hearing, and the judge said he would consider it.
Pakistan's Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi (R) speaks during a press conference as Britain's Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab watches after their meeting in Islamabad on Sept. 3, 2021. (Farooq Naeem/AFP via Getty Images)

Raab Visits Pakistan to Discuss Safe Passage out of Afghanistan

British Foreign Secretary visited Pakistan on Thursday and Friday to discuss safe passages from Afghanistan for British nationals and Afghans who worked for the UK.

The foreign secretary posted a number of photos on Twitter, showing him arriving at what appears to be a mountain at the PakistanAfghanistan border by military helicopter, and speaking with Pakistani soldiers.

Good to see [the] situation on the ground and understand whats happening at the PakistanAfghanistan border, Raab wrote.

Discussed safe passage for British Nationals, and those who have worked with [the] UK in Afghanistan.

Raab said during a joint press conference with Pakistani Foreign Minister Makhdoom Shah Mahmood Qureshi that Pakistans support and role will be vital going forward.

We have a shared interest in supporting a stable and peaceful future for Afghanistan, he said.

He also said the UK will support regional partners, particularly like Pakistan, which are expecting large influxes of Afghan refugees.

In an earlier statement on Friday, the Foreign Office said the UK will allocate 20 million ($28 million) to such countries to support reception and registration facilities and provide essential services and supplies.

Another 10 million ($14 million) will be made available immediately to humanitarian partners, such as the UNHCR, to enable essential supplies such as shelters to be dispatched to the Afghan borders as well as setting up sanitation and hygiene facilities, the Foreign Office said.

Raab traveled to Pakistan from Qatar, the first leg of his diplomatic mission to rally regional support regarding the situation in Afghanistan.

During his visit to Doha on Thursday, Raab toured the temporary housing facilities holding Afghans waiting to be processed before travelling to their final destination.

He also spoke to Tajikistan Foreign Minister Sirojiddin Muhriddin and discussed how the two countries can help maintain stability in the region, and tackle the humanitarian situation in Afghanistan.

The British military airlifted about 15,000 British nationals, Afghans nationals who worked for the British military or government, and their families during Operation Pittinga two-week evacuation operation after the Taliban took over Kabul in mid-August.

Its hard to know many were left behind after the Taliban refused to extend the U.S. imposed evacuation deadline on Aug. 31, but ministers previously said that the estimated number of British nationals remaining in Afghanistan is in the low hundreds, and that between 800 and 1,100 Afghans who would have been eligible to settle in the UK under the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy were left behind.

While establishing processing hubs in countries surrounding Afghanistan, Raab also spoke to the Qatariswho have acted as an intermediary between the West, the former Afghan government, and the Talibanabout getting Kabul airport up and running again to resume evacuation.

I dont think were yet able to say anything formal but thats looking like it may happen at some point in the near future, Raab said on Thursday.

Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani said on Thursday that there hasnt been a clear indication when the airport will be fully operational, but he was working very hard on it, including negotiating with the Taliban.

We will remain hopeful that we will be able to operate it as soon as possible, he told a press conference.
A nurse prepares a Pfizer BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine as part of a vaccine drive by the Fernandeno Tataviam Band of Mission Indians in Arleta, Los Angeles, Calif., on Aug. 23, 2021. (Lucy Nicholson/Reuters)

Reports of Rare Body Inflammation After COVID-19 Vaccinations Being Investigated by EU Watchdog

The European Unions drug regulator said it is reviewing the risk of a body inflammation condition in connection to the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine.

The European Medicines Agencys safety panel is looking into a report of a 17-year-old male teen from Denmark having developed Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome (MIS). The teen has fully recovered, the agency said, adding the condition was reported after other COVID-19 vaccines.

MIS is rare and its incidence rate before the COVID-19 pandemic estimated from five European countries was around 2 to 6 cases per 100,000 per year in children and adolescents below 20 years of age and below 2 cases per 100,000 per year in adults aged 20 years or more, said the regulator in a statement. At this stage, there is no change to the current EU recommendations for the use of COVID-19 vaccines.

The condition was previously reported in people following a COVID-19 infection unrelated to vaccines, according to the health agency. But the Danish 17 year old had no such medical history.

It is important to understand that a careful assessment of MIS is ongoing, and it has not been concluded that mRNA COVID-19 vaccines cause MIS, a Pfizer spokesperson told Reuters. The Epoch Times has contacted the company for comment.

Five cases of MIS were reported in the European Economic Area as of Aug. 19 after the Pfizer vaccine, while one case was reported with each Johnson & Johnsons and Modernas vaccine, the European regulator said.

Safety data released by the CDC and Pfizer at a meeting on Monday did not include any incidences of MIS in those who took the vaccine, which was granted full approval in the United States last month.

The European safety panel said it is investigating cases of blood clots in the veins, known as venous thromboembolism, in connection to the Johnson & Johnson shot.

Venous thromboembolism was included in the risk management plan for COVID-19 Vaccine Janssen as a safety issue to be investigated, based on a higher proportion of cases of venous thromboembolism observed within the vaccinated group versus the placebo group in the first clinical studies used to authorize this vaccine, according to the European Medicines Agency.

COVID-19 is the illness caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus.

MIS in children, meanwhile, is a recently coined medical condition associated with the virus, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It was first called pediatric multisystem inflammatory syndrome and shared similar symptoms to Kawasaki disease and toxic shock syndrome.

Reuters contributed to this report.
President of Afghanistan Ashraf Ghani meets with U.S. President Joe Biden in Washington, on June 25, 2021. (Nicholas Kamm/AFP via Getty Images)

Republicans Demand Full, Unedited Transcript Between Biden, Exiled Afghan Leader

A group of Republican lawmakers on Thursday sent a letter to President Joe Biden, urging him to release a full, unedited, and unredacted transcript from his July phone call with exiled Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani, who fled Kabul on Aug. 15, allowing the Taliban to take the capital unopposed.

The two leaders last spoke on the phone July 23, just weeks before the Taliban terrorist group seized control of Kabul. In their roughly 14-minute phone conversation, neither Biden nor Ashraf Ghani appeared aware of or prepared for the immediate danger of the entire country falling to insurgents, according to excerpts of a transcript reviewed by Reuters.

Biden in July allegedly pressured Ghani to change perception by backing a new military strategy and unveiling the details in a press conference with Afghanistans prominent political figures, according to the partial transcript.

I need not tell you the perception around the world and in parts of Afghanistan, I believe, is that things are not going well in terms of the fight against the Taliban, Biden said. And there is a need, whether it is true or not, there is a need to project a different picture.

The group of 27 House Republicans, led by Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-N.Y.), in their letter demanded answers from Biden, accusing the administration of making a series of false assurances to Americans and Afghan allies regarding the situation on the ground prior to the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the country.

The contrast between your Administrations official spin and the reality on the ground revealed a bewildering lack of coherence, strategy, and fundamental transparency, the letter, obtained by the Daily Caller, reads.

It appeared repeatedly as if your Administration was engaging in a deliberate effort to conceal the truth and mislead the American public. On August 31, new evidence emerged that suggests this is exactly what you have been doing since the start of this operation, the lawmakers wrote.

The lawmakers also noted that the excerpts of the transcript reviewed by Reuters indicate that Biden promised to provide air support to the Afghan military, a vow you never fulfilled.

This damning phone call further erodes your credibility and the confidence of the American people in your ability to lead. Your disturbing emphasis on perception, a term you used four times in the Reuters excerpts of the call with Ghani, over substance and truth demands scrutiny and accountability, they added.

The Republican lawmakers concluded their letter by requesting that Biden make the full, unedited, and unredacted transcripts of his July 23 conversation with Ghani public, so Congress can determine the degree to which you may have deliberately misled the American people leading up to and during this disastrously executed operation.

The American people deserve answers and clarity. We urge that your administration expeditiously releases the full transcripts of the call, they added.

Representatives for the White House didnt immediately respond to a request for comment by The Epoch Times.

Months before he fled the country, Ghani, who is believed to be in the United Arab Emirates, claimed that his government could resist the terrorist groups attacks without U.S. support, and that no power in the world could persuade him to get on a plane and leave the country.

It is a country I love, and I will die defending, he claimed in an interview with German news magazine Der Spiegel published on May 14.

The presidents words saw tens of thousands of Afghan families flee their homes, hoping to find safety from the approaching Taliban in Kabul.

Afghan Vice President Amrullah Saleh has remained in the country following Ghanis exit. He said on Twitter on Aug. 17 that he has remained to fulfill his duty as the caretaker president as outlined in the countrys constitution, adopted in 2004.

He has since vowed to resist the Taliban from the Panjshir Valley, together with Ahmad Shah Massoud, the son of a former anti-Soviet mujahideen commander.

Reuters contributed to this report.
Santa Ana Police Chief Says He Was Targeted After Police Union Votes No Confidence

The Santa Ana Police Union issued a vote of no confidence against Santa Ana Police Chief David Valentin on Sept. 1 after what the city described as a months-long political and personal attack against the chief by the unions president.

For over a year, the Santa Ana Police Officers Association (SAPOA) has requested the City Council and City Administrators respond to complaints of workplace mistreatment, harassment, retaliation, favoritism, alleged criminal behavior and lack of leadership, a statement from the union said.

The Santa Ana Police Officers Association, Board of Directors unanimously voted to ask its members if they had confidence in Chief David Valentins ability to lead the police department. The result is that the majority have voted NO CONFIDENCE in his ability to lead the Santa Ana Police Department!

According to the statement, 54 percent of the 275 sworn police officers and 78 non-sworn employees voted no confidence in Valentin. In total, 83 percent of sworn police officers and 45 percent of civilian staff cast a ballot for the vote.

An organization that has NO confidence in its leadership is severely limited in carrying out its mission, the statement reads. The police departments men and women are highly trained competent professionals laboring under a misguided and ineffective administration.

In response to the vote of no confidence, the city said the election only comes as the result of the unions president, Gerry Serrano, when he allegedly took inappropriate action after the city wouldnt give him another city job in order to increase his pension.

According to Transparent California, a website that tracks public employee salaries, Serrano made $290,589 in base pay in 2019, and $504,846 in total pay with benefits.

Serrano said in an email that if he didnt get the second city job, he would burn the City down, and bring the no-confidence vote against Valentin, the citys statement said. Valentin placed Serrano on administrative leave Aug. 27.

Serrano said the no-confidence vote is his way of burning the city down, the city wrote, noting the public must understand that the vote is only a result of Santa Ana holding Serrano accountable for his actions, inappropriate influence, and intimidation of city staff.

In response to the vote of no confidence, which doesnt require any action by the city, Valentin, who has been with the department for 31 years and chief since 2018, said he will refuse to let it distract from the departments mission to protect and serve the city.

I will diligently and effectively continue to lead the dedicated women and men of this department, in service to the 340,000 residents of Santa Ana, Valentin said. This unwarranted vote does not, and will not in any way, distract, disturb or deter me and the members of this department from effectively delivering public safety services to the needs of the community we have been sworn to serve.

Santa Ana City Manager Kristine Ridge said she was disappointed that Serrano would lead a vote in the interest of personal financial gain.

The Police Officers Associations vote today is hardly an overwhelming display of opposition to Chief Valentin, but it is a sad day for the POA membership, Ridge said. Its disappointing that the POA presidents desire for personal financial gain and use of misinformation have led to a vote that is not in the best interest of our police officers.

Im confident that in the future, the truth about these misstatements will come out.  I have complete faith in Chief Valentins leadership. I hope that we can move forward, heal the Santa Ana Police Department and focus on serving the residents of Santa Ana, she said.

The chief also received the support of Santa Ana Mayor Vicente Sarmiento, who said he fully supports Valentin.

Although I respect our officers opinions, and their right to collectively bargain for wages, benefits and workplace conditions, only the City Manager has the responsibility to decide who fills this essential public safety role, Sarmiento said.

Police Chief Valentin has my full support and confidence. The community should rest assured that our police department will continue to operate professionally and ethically despite distractions that stem from a personal, rather than structural, problem.
SUHSD Superintendent Dan Burns addresses a packed school board meeting when dozens of parents showed up to demand disciplinary action for students who participated in an incident involving crude and racially insensitive photos and videos of a black baby doll posted on Instagram on Aug. 24, 2021, in Salinas, Calif. (Screenshot via YouTube/SUHSD Official)

School District to Discipline 27 Students Involved in Black Baby Doll Incident

Twenty-seven high school students in Salinas, California, will face consequences for participating in an incident involving crude and racially insensitive photos and videos of a black baby doll posted on Instagram.

Salinas Union High School District (SUHSD) Superintendent Dan Burns said in a video and written statement released Monday night that the district has concluded its investigation into the students derogatory and harassing actions.

The images showed the doll, named Shaniqua, being run over by a vehicle and posed in front of an ambulance. The doll had its eyes crossed out, with a bandana around its neck and what appeared to represent an ankle bracelet.

The incident has led to increased tensions in the community, which is already divided over the SUHSDs controversial ethnic studies program and the teaching of critical race theory.

Burns issued an apology on behalf of SUHSD and school board members to the African American and black community for impacts caused by the actions of students who participated in this unacceptable racially insensitive and intolerant incident.

He said the district acknowledges the pain caused for our African American and black students and staff, in particular our black female students who see themselves as represented in the black baby doll depicted in this event.

Burns said an investigation into allegations made against any and all staff members by an outside agency is currently in progress.

As for student involvement, the district has concluded its investigation into the derogatory and harassing actions exhibited in disturbing photos and videos, he said.

Due to student privacy rights, SUHSD is unable to disclose specific consequences for student behavior due to student privacy rights.

The investigation found that the student responsible for creating the Instagram account got the doll from a local retail store. The student is not African American and is not an athlete or on the cheer team, Burns said.

The guilty group consisted of 15 Latino, nine white, two multi-racial, and one black student. They were identified via photos, videos, and interviews, according to the statement.

The district has already met with all the students and their families.

The students will face consequences according to varying levels of culpability. All of them must participate in Anti-Racist Education training in addition to other determined consequences, including but not limited to disciplinary consequences and/or loss of extracurricular privileges, Burns said.

We realize that these unacceptable racially insensitive and harassing actions have impacted students, staff, and the community at large, thus we have begun working with various community partners and organizations to engage in the healing process. This process includes taking short-term and long-term actions to live up to the promise of the SUHSD Black Lives Matter/Social Justice Initiative, Burns said.

Some of the actions to eliminate biases and racial microaggressions include engaging in:

 Meaningful and reflective conversations about the role of race in education in maintaining inequitable structures and practices;

 Professional Learning in antiracist and culturally responsive/sustaining pedagogies for staff;

 Anti-Racist education training for students and staff;

 Review of curriculum through a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion lens;

 Review and adjustment of disciplinary policies and practices;

 Training in restorative/transformational justice practices; and

 Continued implementation of Ethnic Studies as a graduation requirement for all students.

The district is also hiring a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Coordinator to help the SUHSD achieve an unbiased and inclusive district free of discrimination, harassment and negative stereotypes toward any person or group, Burns said.

We recognize these steps represent only the beginning as we commit to working together to learn, heal, and enact positive change in our district and in our community, he said.
Columbia, SC Mayor Steve Benjamin speaks at the U.S. Conference of Mayors winter meeting in Washington, on Jan. 24, 2019. (Yuri Gripas/Reuters)

South Carolina Supreme Court Strikes Down Citys School Mask Mandate

South Carolinas Supreme Court on Thursday struck down a school mask mandate in the states capital city in the midst of its largest surge in COVID-19 cases since last winter.

In the latest of several such legal cases across a nation where cultural and political clashes have erupted over the COVID-19 response, the court ruled 5-0 to issue a declaratory judgment for South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson, who brought the case against the city of Columbia.

Wilson, a Republican, argued a state law that allows parents to decide whether their children wear masks in school trumps the citys mask mandate ordinance for private and public elementary and middle school students and staff.

The emergency school mask ordinance, brought by Columbia Mayor Steve Benjamin in response to the surge in infections, had been approved by the city council in Columbia two weeks ago. The ordinance, which also applied to daycare centers, was aimed at children too young to be vaccinated.

South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster said in a post on Twitter that the court had come to a sound conclusion based on the rule of law.

A parents right to decide whats best for their child is now definitively protected by state law, he said, while encouraging residents to get vaccinated.

Benjamin, a Democrat, said in a statement that the city will always act to preserve and protect the lives, health and safety of our children. This is a sad day for children in South Carolina.

The justices wrote in their opinion that they fully recognize that strong and passionate opinions exist on both sides of this debate, but are constitutionally bound to only interpret and apply existing laws and not make policy.

The South Carolina legislature in June passed a provision in the state budget prohibiting cities from enacting mask mandates.

Two weeks ago, the Texas Supreme Court rejected Governor Greg Abbotts attempt to suspend a mask mandate. A state judge in Florida last week ruled that Governor Ron DeSantis administration cannot ban public school districts from requiring face masks.

Southern states, including South Carolina, have seen a recent spike in COVID-19 cases, partly due to the highly contagious Delta variant.

By Brendan OBrien
Students wear masks as they work in a fourth-grade classroom at Elk Ridge Elementary School in Buckley, Wash., on Feb. 2, 2021. (Ted S. Warren/AP Photo)

South Carolina Supreme Court Upholds State Legislation Prohibiting Mask Mandates in K-12 Schools

The Supreme Court of South Carolina ruled unanimously on Thursday in favor of legislation prohibiting local school districts from using state money to enforce mask mandates.

Specifically, the ordinances enforcement provisions unequivocally place the responsibility to enforce the mask mandate on school personnel, forcing school employees to choose between violating either state or local law, the court stated.

The ruling (pdf) also invalidates an ordinance implemented by Columbia City Council that required students and staff to wear face coverings while on K12 school grounds.

South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson said in a press release: We appreciate the courts quick ruling and its confirmation of our legal arguments. The court emphasized what weve been saying all along that we are not arguing mask policy, we argued rule of law. The court has confirmed that a city ordinance cannot conflict with state law.

Columbia Mayor Stephen Benjamin, who pushed for the mandates, said in a press release that its a sad day for children in South Carolina.

What is even sadder is the people who have been elected to protect them, who should always and only act to keep them healthy, educated, and alive, wont fight for them, Benjamin said. With record numbers of our children falling ill to this deadly virus, we pray for our children.

The decision comes almost a month after Benjaminciting a rising of COVID-19 caseshad declared a state of emergency in the state capital when he called a special meeting the next day, where the council voted to mandate masks for all faculty, staff, visitors, and children in public and private schools, and daycares that instruct children from ages 2 to 14.

Benjamin argued in the council meeting that the state constitution and city code gave him and the council the authority to mandate masks in schools.

However, the next week after the councils vote to mandate masks, Wilson sent a notice to Benjamin stating that the council must rescind its order because the state legislature had passed a budget proviso stating, no school district, or any of its schools, may use any funds appropriated or authorized pursuant to this act to require that its students and/or employees wear a facemask at any of its educational facilities.

Credulity Strained

Columbia City Council had argued that its ordinance doesnt conflict with the state legislation, however, the court deemed the claim without merit.

The notion that city employees would infiltrate the schools and, without any assistance from school personnel and without a penny of state funds, would be able to mandate masks and impose civil penalties for violations strains credulity and, in fact, is demonstrably false, as proven by the terms of the ordinances themselves.

South Carolina Targeted

The U.S. Department of Education said on Aug. 30 it had opened investigations into five Republican-led states that banned mask mandates in schools, including South Carolina.

The Education Departments Office for Civil Rights (OCR) claimed that prohibiting mask mandates could be discriminatory against students with disabilities by denying them safe access to learning.

Miguel Cardona, the U.S. Secretary of Education, wrote in a letter (pdf) addressed to Gov. Henry McMaster, a Republican, that the states prohibition of local school districts from adopting science-based strategies to prevent COVID-19 outbreaks conflicts with the federal education departments requirements, which Cardona said is supported by the American Rescue Plan Act.

In addition to South Carolina, the OCR sent letters to chief state school officers in Iowa, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Utah.

Earlier in August, President Joe Biden had said that his administration was checking on whether universal mask mandates in public schools could be implemented, however, he stated that he didnt believe the administration had that power.

GQ Pan contributed to this report.
The Supreme Court is seen in Washington on Sept. 21, 2020. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)

Supreme Courts Ruling in Favor of Texas Abortion Law Prompts Senate Judiciary Committee to Examine Shadow Docket

U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, announced Friday that the panel will hold a hearing to investigate if the Supreme Court is abusing its authority when it hands down a decision without full court procedures, a process dubbed shadow-docket.

This anti-choice law is a devastating blow to Americans constitutional rightsand the court allowed it to see the light of day without public deliberation or transparency, said Durbin in a press statement after the ruling. At a time when public confidence in government institutions has greatly eroded, we must examine not just the constitutional impact of allowing the Texas law to take effect, but also the conservative Courts abuse of the shadow docket.

Out of about the 70 cases the high court considers, most of them have clear deadlines, public oral arguments, and published opinions, while some of them are emergency appeals that do not have clear and transparent procedures.

The Supreme Court rules allow for emergency requests by litigants that believe their cases have been wrongly decided by a lower court. The decisions in these cases are meant to be temporary while an appeal is made.

Durbin said the high court needs to earn public trust and the recent ruling in the Texas abortion ban case, using the emergency abridged procedure, would erode that trust.

In addition, Durbin said Democrats will examine the shadow docket being used for overturning the Biden administrations eviction moratorium and reinstating the Remain in Mexico policy that was ended by Biden when he took office in January.

In her dissenting opinion, liberal Associate Justice Elena Kagan wrote that the emergency ruling illustrates just how far the courts shadow docket decisions may depart from the usual principles of appellate process.  In all these ways, the majoritys decision is emblematic of too much of this Courts shadow docket decision-makingwhich every day becomes more un-reasoned, inconsistent, and impossible to defend.

The Supreme Court, in a 54 ruling on Wednesday, denied a bid to stop Texas from banning abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected, allowing the abortion ban to remain in effect while abortion rights groups continue to challenge the restriction.

Senate Bill 8, known as the Texas Heartbeat Act, was signed into law by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott in May. The law enables private citizensexcept for an individual who impregnated a woman through rape or incestto sue physicians who perform abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected.

Besides the Judiciary Committees announcement, the courts decision prompted furious statements from many Democrats.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said the law necessitates codifying Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision decades ago that ruled access to abortion is a constitutional right. She also said the House would vote and debate on the pro-abortion bill authored by Rep. Judy Chu (D-Calif.) and others to enshrine into law reproductive health care for all women across America.

Abortion is the act of ending the life of an unborn baby.

President Joe Biden on Thursday also denounced the Texas law, describing it in a statement as an unprecedented assault on a womans constitutional rights under Roe v. Wade, which has been the law of the land for almost fifty years.

Republicans, meanwhile, widely cheered the new law and the court decision that let it remain in effect.

The Supreme Court just let Texass pro-life law go into effect, saving countless innocent lives, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) said in a statement.

BREAKING NEWS!!!! wrote Abby Johnson, former Planned Parenthood director-turned-pro-life advocate, on Twitter. The Supreme Court decision is out!! They will NOT interfere in the Texas Heartbeat Law!!! What an amazing victory! Babies win!!!!! Life wins!!!!!

Zachary Stieber contributed to this report.
People wearing face masks stand in a line as they wait to be vaccinated at the Sydney Olympic Park Vaccination Centre at Homebush in Sydney, Australia, on Aug. 16, 2021. (David Gray/AFP via Getty Images)

Sydney Law Firm Files Lawsuit to Overturn Australian States Public Health Orders

A Sydney law firm has filed an action against the New South Wales (NSW) health minister, chief medical officer, and the state and federal governments, calling for public health orders to be declared unconstitutional and illegal.

Ashley, Francina, Leonard and Associates (AFL) argue that the health orders require vaccinations to be mandated across a broad class of workers, including teachers, health care workers, builders, and airport staff.

We say that (NSW Health) Minister Brad Hazzard and Dr. (Kerry) Chant have exceeded their delegated powers by civilly conscripting workers to taking a vaccine, which has only provisional approval from the Therapeutics Goods Administration (TGA), and where the clinical evidence from Phase III trials is incomplete, a press release read. The TGA is Australias drug regulatory body.

It is our view that vaccine compulsion strips citizens of their basic human rights, including their right to work, their right to bodily integrity and their right to informed consent to medical treatment without coercion, it continued.

The firm, AFL, claimed they received thousands of inquiries from front-line workers, university students, parents, and employers.

Fred Nile, member of the NSW Parliaments Upper House said in a statement, I personally wish to commend you for your legal challenge launched against Health Minister Brad Hazzard and Dr Kerry Chant over mandatory COVID jabs for frontline workers.

On Friday, the first hearing at the NSW Supreme Court was held with over 19,000 people tuning into the live stream to hear the proceedings. Over 300 pages of written statements were tendered along with the statement of claim.

Justice John Sackar said the claim raised several questions on the validity or unreasonableness of the NSW public health orders and three questions related to the constitution.

The plaintiffs, AFL, agreed for the need to drop Hazzard and Chant from the lawsuit so that the matter could be expedited and resolved faster.

AFL will have time to decide before the next hearing at 9 a.m. next Wednesday.

Greater Sydney and NSW has been under extended lockdown since late June to contain an outbreak of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, Delta variant, commonly known as the novel coronavirus.

The lockdown was originally slated to run for four weeks, before it was extended twicedue to low vaccination and high infection ratesuntil Sept. 30.

Recent figures have revealed the damage extended lockdowns have caused with mental health support service, Lifeline Australia, saying August was its busiest month on record, while attempted suicide rates have also increased.

Federal and state governments (NSW and Victoria) are pinning their hopes on improving vaccination rates as a means to control the outbreak and move the country away from relying on harsh lockdown measures and restrictions.

In late July, the National Cabinetan intergovernmental body involving the prime minister and state and territory leadersagreed on a four-stage vaccination roadmap.

The country is currently working towards vaccinating 70 percent of the populationtriggering Phase B or the second stage of the roadmapwhich is meant to see stay-at-home orders and restrictions largely removed around the country.

Public discontent at prolonged lockdowns, however, has been brewing, with an increase in protest activity and petitions against government-mandated restrictions, vaccine mandates or passports.
A Taiwanese Air Force F-16 in foreground flies on the flank of a Chinese People's Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) H-6 bomber as it passes near Taiwan on Feb. 10, 2020. (Republic of China (ROC) Ministry of National Defense via AP)

Taiwan Says Chinese Forces Could Paralyze Its Defences: Report

Taiwan warned in its annual defense report that the Chinese regime could paralyze the islands defenses and fully monitor its deployments.

Taiwans National Defence Ministry identified more serious threats from the Chinese military in its latest report. The Ministry has submitted the report on Chinese military capabilities and next years defense budget to the legislature on Aug. 31.

This years report said that the Chinese military could launch what it termed soft and hard electronic attacks. This includes blocking communications across the western part of the first island chain, the string of islands that run from the Japanese archipelago, through Taiwan, and down to the Philippines.

China can combine with its internet army to launch wired and wireless attacks against the global internet, which would initially paralyze our air defenses, command of the sea and counter-attack system abilities, presenting a huge threat, according to the report.

With precision missile attacks that can hit anywhere on the island, China is also capable of paralyzing Taiwans military command centers and combat capacity of its naval and air forces, it said.

The report noted the Chinese military is still unable to conduct large-scale landing operations due to a lack of transport abilities and logistical support. However, Beijing is working to boost these capabilities.

The Chinese regime regards the self-ruled island as part of its territory, and has suggested the use of force to bring democratic Taiwan under its control.

A Chinese Peoples Liberation Army H-6 bomber is seen flying near the Taiwan air defense identification zone, ADIZ, near Taiwan, on Sept. 18, 2020. (Taiwan Ministry of National Defense via AP)

In addition, the Ministry mentioned both the regimes threats of using disinformation to influence public opinion and repeated incursions into its air defenses zone. According to the Ministrys real-time data, Taiwan has detected over 400 Chinese patrols in the past eight months, more than the figures for the whole of 2020.

Raising the Alarm

A Taiwanese military expert analyzed that the report is raising the alarm on the regimes military preparation and also calling for political and diplomatic supports from the international community.

Lee Cheng-hsiu, a senior assistant research fellow in the National Security Division of the National Policy Foundation in Taipei, told The Epoch Times that this report is to raise the alarm of the Chinese Community Partys (CCP) military preparation and ambitions for aggression against Taiwan.

It called on the international community to recognize the risk of armed conflict across the Taiwan Strait, Lee said on Wednesday. On the other hand, its reminding Taiwanese to be on guard against CCPs force threats.

Lee said the Biden administration still believes the Chinese regime doesnt have the ability to attack Taiwan, adding that the United Staets hopes the island could improve its defense ability and defuse tensions through dialogues.

Last month, the U.S. State Department approved $750 million worth of military equipment to Taiwan, saying the support is the basis for maintaining regional stability. In 2020, the Trump administration also approved a $600 million weapons sale.

In the face of CCPs stepped-up military activities, Taiwan proposed the biggest defense budget of NT$372.6 billion ($13.4 billion) for 2022, with an extra $1.4 billion on new fighter jets, according to Taiwanese state-owned Central News Agency.

Reuters contributed to this report.
Tennessee Governor Bill Lee attends The National Museum Of African American Music Grand Opening at The National Museum of African American Music in Nashville, Tenn., on Jan. 18, 2021. (Jason Kempin/Getty Images)

Tennessee Governor: No Plans to Introduce Abortion Law Similar to Texas

State is awaiting the results of a court ruling on abortion law signed last year

Tennesee Gov. Bill Lee said Thursday there are no plans to introduce an abortion law similar to the one that recently went into effect in Texas, adding that his office is awaiting the results of a court ruling on an abortion ban that he signed into last year.

The Texas law went into effect after the Supreme Court issued a 54 ruling to deny an emergency request from abortion providers to block the law. The measure effectively bans nearly all abortions once a fetal heartbeat is detected, occurring usually within six weeks of a pregnancy.

Last year, Lee signed off on one of the strictest abortion bans in the country, although it was promptly blocked by federal court from being implemented. The governor has since vowed to do whatever it takes in court to defend the mandate.

In comments to reporters, Lee stated that he is planning to wait for a court ruling on an abortion ban that Tennessee already passed.

I havent read the Texas law. So I cant really speak to the particular nuances of that piece of legislation. I can only speak to what were doing here, said Lee, a Republican.

And his office, Lee said, does not have any current plans to move forward beyond what we are currently awaiting, which is a ruling from the court on the existing piece of legislation that we have.

Lee added that he hopes the unborn are protected in any way that we can see that protection for them in his state.

Tennessee is awaiting a ruling on a similar piece of legislation that was passed in 2020 that also bans abortions after a fetal heartbeat can be heard.

Earlier this year, Tennessee federal Judge William Campbell issued an injunction on the measure and argued that the public interest will not be harmed by preserving the status quo.

Texass law allows private citizensexcept for an individual who impregnated a woman through rape or incestto sue physicians who perform abortions after a fetal heartbeat can be detected.

The applicants now before us have raised serious questions regarding the constitutionality of the Texas law at issue, the Supreme Courts majority wrote in an opinion earlier this week. But their application also presents complex and novel antecedent procedural questions on which they have not carried their burden.

A number of pro-life organizations such as the Texas Alliance for Life praised the Supreme Courts decision, while pro-abortion groups decried the move.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Armed police patrol the area around Countdown LynnMall after a mass stabbing incident in Auckland, New Zealand, on Sept. 3, 2021. (Fiona Goodall/Getty Images)

Terrorist Killed in New Zealand Supermarket Attack

A man inspired by ISIS has carried out a terrorist attack at a supermarket in Auckland on Friday afternoon, stabbing six people before being shot and killed by police.

This was a violent attack. It was senseless, and I am so sorry it happened, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said.

The attack took place at 2.40 p.m. at a Countdown supermarket at New Lynn, a southwest suburb of Auckland, and was carried out by a Sri Lankan national who was a known threat to New Zealand, Ardern said.

Armed police patrol the area around Countdown LynnMall after a mass stabbing incident in Auckland, New Zealand, on Sept. 3, 2021. (Fiona Goodall/Getty Images)

Ardern said the man was under constant monitoring because of his radical ideology, and that it was the surveillance team and special tactics group that shot and killed him, within the space of about 60 seconds of the attack starting.

Police Commissioner Andrew Coster said the man grabbed a knife from within the store, and when the commotion started, two officers engaged him, shooting him when he approached them with the knife.

I acknowledge this situation raises questions about whether police could have done more, whether police could have intervened more quickly, Coster said. Im satisfied based on the information available to me that the staff involved did not only what we expect they would do in this situation, but did it with great courage.

Police guard the area around Countdown LynnMall after a violent extremist took out a terrorist attack stabbing six people before being shot by police in Auckland, New Zealand, on Sept. 3, 2021. (Fiona Goodall/Getty Images)

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern speaks to the media at a press conference with the details of the Auckland supermarket terror attack, at the Beehive Theatrette in Wellington, New Zealand, on Sept. 3, 2021. (Robert Kitchin  Pool/Getty Images)

Details on why the attacker is known to the countrys security agencies are the subject of a suppression order by the court, Ardern said.

But she revealed that the violent extremist arrived in the country in 2011 and was put on a national security watch list from 2016.

I can tell you that agencies were using every single possible means available to them to protect the New Zealand public from this individual. Every single possible means, she said.

It was senseless, and Im so sorry that happened.

Newshub reported that Ardern and Coster were forced to explain how the man, who was so closely monitored, was able to carry out an attack.

This individual is very surveillance-conscience and surveillance teams working with an offender over an extended period of weeks need to maintain sufficient distance for that surveillance to be effective so they were as close as they possibly could be without compromising the surveillance, Coster said.

St John confirmed that three patients were in critical condition at Auckland City Hospital. A further three patientsone in a serious condition and two in moderate conditionswere also taken to hospitals across Auckland.

Police escort people from LynnMall to their cars after a violent extremist took out a terrorist attack stabbing six people before being shot by police in Auckland, New Zealand, on Sept. 3, 2021. (Fiona Goodall/Getty Images)

Newshub reported the man yelled Allahu Akbar as he attacked.

Ardern said she did not want to see a backlash against any community from the incident.

What happened today was despicable. It was hateful. It was wrong, she said. It was carried out by an individual, not a faith, not a culture, not an ethnicity, but an individual person who was gripped by ideology that is not supported here by anyone or any community.

He alone carries the responsibility for these acts, she said.
Dead fish and crustaceans collected by municipal workers on the shore of "Cala del Pino" beach are seen in a bucket, in Murcia's Mar Menor lagoon, Spain, on Aug. 20, 2021. (Eva Manez/Reuters)

Thousands of Dead Fish Wash up in Spanish Lagoon

Spanish authorities are expanding a ban on harmful fertilizers around a saltwater lagoon on the countrys Mediterranean coast, where several tons of dead fish have washed up in recent weeks.

Once a magnet for tourism and a sanctuary for marine life, the Mar Menor in Murcia, on Spains Southeastern Mediterranean coast, has seen fish stocks plummet in recent years, with similar mass die-offs occurring in 2016 and 2019.

Residents began seeing dead fish and crustaceans on Aug. 16.

We calculate that some 20 tonnes have died to date, said Jose Luis Garcia, director of the World Wildlife Funds marine programs in Spain, two weeks ago.

The beaches were closed for two weeks while a clean-up operation got underway to remove the fish carcasses.

Dead fish and crustaceans lay on the shore of Cala del Pino beach in Murcias Mar Menor lagoon, Spain, on Aug. 20, 2021. (Eva Manez/Reuters)

Murcia is one of Spains main producers of fruit and vegetables, with much of the produce exported to northern Europe.

The Murcia government estimates that every day around 5 metric tons (5.5 tons) of fertilizer runoffs from nearby farms are washed into the lagoon.

Jorge Sanchez, a biologist with the ecological association Asociacion de Naturalistas del Sureste, explained that some of those fertilizers can cause algae blooms, which deplete oxygen in surface water, killing fish.

It has been demonstrated in different scientific reports, and the regions own reports, that there was an episode of anoxia, lack of oxygen, and this lack of oxygen was produced by the massive arrival of nutrients to the lagoon that promoted the excessive development of algae, which during the nightwhen they stop photosynthesis and begin to consume oxygenthey consumed the oxygen from the water column in the deep areas and this caused the fish to die, Sanchez said.

A group of concerned locals have set up a campaign group SOS Mar Menor to pressure the local government to do more to protect the lagoon.

Isabel Rubio, SOS Mar Menor Spokesperson said that they want farms to be held responsible for the nitrate pollution.

What we want is that the focus is placed on all the farms, mainly intensive irrigation, that surrounds this Mar Menor, and that are contributing to this contamination by nitrates, Rubio said. What we want is that the measures are not here but that they are put there, where the farms are, that is to say that irrigation and cultivation should be prohibited on the farms that are using water illegally.

Local farmers believe that the problem does not lie in their irrigation but in the underground aquifers.

Orange farmer Manuel Martinez, who is President of the Farmers Community of Cartagena, said that local agriculture uses a precise irrigation method called drop by drop system to avoid water wastage.

Ninety-nine percent of our area is localized irrigation, it is a precision risk, what is developed here is precision agriculture, where everything is controlled, this measures how much water is applied to each crop, when it is applied, to what time is applied, absolutely everything is analyzed before planting a horticultural plantation to know what to supplement it with, absolutely everything is controlled, Martinez said.

Scientists at the Oceanographic Center of Murcia are analyzing the causes of the mass fish mortality.

They confirmed that the cause was hypoxia (reduced oxygen levels) due to spills of agricultural fertilizers.

Researchers believe the system has collapsed after decades of irrigated agriculture.

Victor Manuel Leon, a marine pollution expert with the Spanish Oceanographic Institute in Murcia, said that badly treated wastewater is also at fault, as well as intensive agriculture.

It is a consequence of an accumulated activity over recent decades, both due to wastewater discharges that were not well treated, the development of intensive agriculture in the last 30 or 40 years, and a lack of control of these discharges from these activities. This has led to a massive arrival of nutrients, particularly nitrogen and phosphorus, to the system that has been assimilating it for many years, but there has come a time when the system has not been able, Leon said.

The regional government of Murcia announced on Aug. 25 that the use of inorganic nitrogen fertilizers at farms within 1,500 meters (1,640 yards) of the Mar Menor lagoon is to be prohibited.

The lagoon is a well-known beauty spot and is popular for tourists.

Reuters contributed to this report.
U.S. Census Data Reveal Changes in California Reapportionment and Diversity

Commentary

The U.S. Census Bureau has been releasing interesting data from the 2020 count. Here are some numbers of interest to Californians.

Loss of Congressional Seat

The reason California is losing a seat in the U.S. Congress is because its population grew 6.1 percent from 2010 to 2020. However, the U.S. population grew by 10.1 percent, nearly double that rate.

The Golden States population rose by 2.28 million to 39.5 million. But Texass grew 4 million, to 29.1 million. Thats a 15.9 percent growth rate.

Aside from California, the states losing seats are in the Northeastern Rust Belt. Those gaining seats were in the South or the West.

Because California is losing a seat in the House, from 53 to 52, redrawing districts will be especially contentious. The California Citizens Redistricting Commission already has been meeting to decide how to carve up the 52 districts, as well as 40 state Senate, 80 Assembly, and five Board of Equalization districts. The commission will make its map decisions before Jan. 14, 2022.

A pre-Census estimate (pdf) by the Rose Institute of State and Local Government at Claremont McKenna College estimated the San Francisco Bay Area would gain seats in all areas. Silicon Valley continues to prosper. Despite its ludicrously high housing prices, it still attracts the global computing top guns.

The study also found the Bay Areas gains would come almost entirely at the expense of LAs San Gabriel Valley and Downtown/Gateway regions. Combined, the two neighboring regions should expect to lose one-third of an Assembly district, half a State Senate district, and half a congressional district.

States Gaining or Losing Seats

Even though some states enjoyed only small population gains, these were enough, on top of the cumulative gains over recent decades, to push them over the top for a new seat. For example, Montanas 2010-20 population increase was just 94,810. But it rose to 1.1 million in 2020 from 799,065 in 1990.

In similar fashion, Illinois lost only 18,124 people, but that was enoughafter decades of mistreating Illinois with high taxes and regulationsfor it to lose a seat. Its population increased to 12.8 million in 2020 from 11.1 million in 1970. That was a jump of just 15 percent in 50 yearsas the U.S. population rose by a whopping 63 percent.

In those five decades, Californias population rose even faster, by 98 percent, nearly doublingalthough the actual declines of the past couple of years show those heady gains are in the past.

Heres the data for all the seven states losing a congressional seat, the five states gaining one seat and Texas, which will gain two seats. Its ranked by percentage increase in population.

California Second Most Diverse State

California is the second most diverse state after Hawaii. The Bureau calculates a Diversity Index, which measures the likelihood two random people are of different ethnic background.

It noted, In general, the states with the highest DI scores are found in the West (Hawaii, California and Nevada), the South (Maryland and Texas; along with the District of Columbia, a state equivalent), and the Northeast (New York and New Jersey).

The national rate is 61.1 percent.

The 10 most diverse states:

The statisticians also ran a Diversity Index study for counties. Here are the top 10 most diverse counties in California:

Notice Orange County is the ninth most diverse county in California. Los Angeles County isnt even in the Top 10, but comes in at 13th.

So much for attacks on Orange County as being a bastion of skinheads and Behind the Orange Curtain, a reference to the Iron Curtain that separated Communist Eastern Europe from free Western Europe until the Berlin Wall fell in 1989.

If anything, Orange County remains much more free, with lower taxes and a stronger backing of Second Amendment gun rights, than Los Angeles, San Francisco, and other left-leaning counties.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson with Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison in the garden of 10 Downing Street, London, UK, on June 15, 2021. (Dominic Lipinski/PA)

UK and Australia Agree to Share Vaccine Doses

Four million doses of the Pfizer jab will be sent from the UK to Australia as part of a COVID-19 vaccine deal.

Australia will return the same overall volume of doses before the end of the year, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) said.

The agreement will share doses at the optimum time to bolster both our countries vaccination programmes, Health Secretary Sajid Javid said.

The arrangement will allow the UK to better align timings of vaccine supply with future need, including for any booster programme or extension of the rollout to younger teenagers, the DHSC said.

The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) is yet to provide a recommendation on either, but Prime Minister Boris Johnson appeared to confirm on Thursday that a booster programme will begin this month.

He said, The priorities now are the older generation going into autumn and winter, and we have always said there would be a booster programme in Septemberin this monthand we are going ahead with that.

Following the announcement of the agreement with Australia, Javid said: Vaccines have built a strong wall of defence in the UK and we want to support nations around the world in recovering from COVID-19 and improving access to vaccines.

Our agreement with Australia will share doses at the optimum time to bolster both our countries vaccination programmes.

By working with international partners to coordinate the rollout of life-saving vaccines, we will protect more people from this awful virus and save lives.

The first batch of 292,000 doses to Australia is due to be shipped shortly.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who announced the move in a press conference from Canberra on Friday, said: The plane is on the tarmac now. It will be leaving tomorrow.

Those doses will be coming over the course of the next few weeks, which will see us double the Pfizer doses that we have during September.

This means from Downing Street to Down Under, we are doubling down on what the Pfizer doses are here in Australia this month.

Australia has one of the slowest vaccine rollouts among wealthy countries, with just 36.4 percent of people over the age of 16 fully vaccinated, according to the Australian Immunisation Register.

The countrys two most populous states, Victoria and New South Wales, are in lockdown and counting on getting their residents vaccinated to contain the outbreak of the Delta variant which began in Sydney in mid-June.

The deal with Australia comes as the UK announced that the latest batch of its Oxford/AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines has been delivered through the COVAX scheme, designed to ensure vaccines are available for poorer countries around the world.

The government said more than nine million COVID-19 vaccines from the UK have now been sent to developing nations across Africa and Asia.

The agreement with Australia is separate from the commitment to send 100 million vaccines overseas, the DHSC said.

By Aine Fox and Benjamin Cooper
A staff member poses with a vial of Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine at a vaccination centre in Cardiff, U.K., on Dec. 8, 2020. (Justin Tallis/Pool/Getty Images)

UK Vaccines Advisory Body Not Recommending CCP Virus Vaccines to Healthy Children Under 16

The UK governments advisory body on vaccination has decided not to recommend universal CCP virus vaccination for 1215-year-olds, contrary to expectations.

The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) on Friday said its taking a precautionary approach because children have a very low risk of getting seriously ill from the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virustwo in a million admitted to PICU according to the latest analysis.

Given this very low risk, considerations on the potential harms and benefits of vaccination are very finely balanced, the JCVI said in a statement.

The Department of Health and Social Care on Aug. 28 preemptively told Englands health service to get ready to vaccinate all 1215-year-olds in anticipation of a recommendation in favour of mass vaccination for the age group.

The Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine was approved in June for use on children over 12 years old by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA).

The Moderna vaccine was approved for children over 12 years old last month by the MHRA, but it has not yet been given to children in the UKs vaccination programmes.

The JCVI has previously recommended giving one dose of the vaccine to all 1617-year-olds.

Explaining the difference between the two age groups, the JCVI said the social behaviour and infection rate between the two age groups have been rather different, and the older age group can provide informed consent on their own.

The extent of any indirect benefits healthy children can gain from CCP virus vaccination is highly uncertain according to current data on the impact of vaccination on transmission in the short and medium term, the JCVI said.

A number of recent studies suggested that while the CCP virus vaccines are still effective against serious disease, its efficiency in reducing transmission is largely diminished in a Delta variant-dominated environment.

The JCVI added that due to school closures during previous lockdowns, theres limited understanding of how schools can impact transmission in wider society, and the lack of understanding increases this uncertainty about the potential impact of vaccination.

With regard to the safety of the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, which is an mRNA vaccine, JCVI said that there is increasingly robust evidence of an association between vaccination with mRNA COVID-19 vaccines and myocarditis.

While the adverse event is still very rare and mostly short, the clinical picture is atypical and the medium to long-term (months to years) prognosis, including the possibility of persistence of tissue damage resulting from inflammation, is currently uncertain as sufficient follow-up time has not yet occurred, the statement says.

While healthy 1215-year-olds can gain little from the CCP virus vaccine, children in this age group with underlying health conditions are still advised to get vaccinated.

The JCVI has previously recommended giving the vaccine to 1215-year-olds with severe neuro disabilities, Downs syndrome, immunosuppression, and multiple or severe learning disabilities.

The offer is now extended to 1215-year-olds who have conditions including hematological malignancy, sickle cell disease, type 1 diabetes, and congenital heart disease.

The United States, Israel, Australia, and a number of European countries have started or will start to offer CCP virus vaccination to 1215-year-olds.

Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated the number of COVID-19 vaccines approved for children over 12 years old. The Epoch Times regrets the error.
Afghans line up outside a bank to take out their money after the Taliban takeover in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Sept. 1, 2021. (Stringer/File Photo/Reuters)

US Has No Plans to Release Billions in Afghan Assets, Treasury Says

WASHINGTONThe Biden administration has no plans to release billions in Afghan gold, investments, and foreign currency reserves parked in the United States that it froze after the Talibans takeover, despite pressure from humanitarian groups and others who say the cost may be the collapse of Afghanistans economy.

Much of the Afghan central banks $10 billion in assets are parked overseas, where they are considered a key instrument for the West to pressure the Taliban to respect womens rights and the rule of law.

Any unfreezing of these assets may be months away, financial experts said.

Officials from the U.S. State Department, U.S. Treasury, White House National Security Council, and other agencies have been in regular discussions about Afghanistans finances since the Taliban took over in mid-August, ahead of what the United Nations and others see as a looming humanitarian crisis.

Any decision to release the funds would likely involve top U.S. officials from several departments but will ultimately be up to President Joe Biden, the experts said.

Food and fuel prices are soaring across Afghanistan, amid a shortage of cash triggered by a halt in foreign aid, a halt in dollar shipments, and a drought.

Afghan families gather to receive foodstuffs distributed by an Islamabad-based Christian organization on the outskirts of Chaman, a town in Pakistans southwestern Baluchistan province, on the border with Afghanistan, on Aug. 31, 2021. (AP Photo)

The U.S. Treasury this week said it had granted a license authorizing the U.S. government and its partners to continue to facilitate humanitarian aid in Afghanistan. It also gave Western Union, the worlds largest money transfer firm, and other financial institutions a green light to resume processing personal remittances to Afghanistan from migrants overseas.

The Treasury Department is not easing sanctions on the Taliban or loosening restrictions on their access to the global financial system, a spokesperson told Reuters.

The United States government has been in touch with humanitarian partners in Afghanistan, both regarding security conditions on the ground and about their ability to continue their humanitarian work, the spokesperson said.

As we maintain our commitment to the Afghan people, we have not reduced sanctions pressure on Taliban leaders or the significant restrictions on their access to the international financial system.

Shah Mehrabi, an economics professor in Maryland and long-time member of the Afghan central banks board, a senior Russian official, and humanitarian groups are among those urging the U.S. Treasury to also unfreeze the Afghan assets, saying that lives are at stake.

The gravity of the situation is so immense. Every day that passes is going to result in more suffering and more exodus of people, Mehrabi said.

The International Monetary Fund has also blocked the Taliban from accessing some $440 million in new emergency reserves, or Special Drawing Rights, issued by the global lender last month.

Adnan Mazarei, former deputy director of the IMF and now a fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said the United States could not legally release the Afghan assets until there was an internationally recognized government, and that could take many months to occur. The IMF could not act until its board voted, once a government was recognized.

Afghans line up outside a bank to take out their money after the Taliban takeover in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Sept. 1, 2021. (Stringer/File Photo/Reuters)

He said a central banks reserves are typically not touched except as a last resort. Even Iran, struggling under intense international sanctions, has not used its IMF emergency reserves, he said.

Brian OToole, a former Treasury Department official now with the Atlantic Council, said a release of the Afghan assets would not solve Afghanistans considerable problems.

Just releasing those funds doesnt stabilize the Afghan economy, or do anything like that. What it does is give the Taliban access to billions of dollars, he said. I dont think theres gonna be a lot of appetite in the U.S. to do that, nor should there be.

By Andrea Shalal and Daphne Psaledakis
US Should Wage Information Warfare Against CCP to Expose Evil Nature of Regime: China Analyst Bill Gertz

In response to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)s all-encompassing campaign to subvert freedoms worldwide, the United States should have its own form of ideological warfare against the Party to expose the evil nature of the regime, its corruption, and its crimes against humanity, says China expert and journalist Bill Gertz.

Such measures are necessary, according to Gertz, because the CCP is waging a low-level form of warfare, which stops short of actual conflict, against the United States and free world, but the West is not doing enough to counter itespecially on the information front.

Ideological and information warfare is the most important thing that can be done right now, Gertz, national security correspondent for The Washington Times and author of the book Deceiving the Sky, said in a recent interview with EpochTVs Crossroads program.

Its going to take all of our resources, all of our will, and everything we have in order to confront [the CCP] and ultimately defeat it, he said. It has to be done ideologically; it has to be done in the information sphere.

According to Gertz, part of the problem with the United States China strategy is that successive administrations, both Democrat and Republican, have failed to recognize that communist China is a Marxist-Leninist state that sees itself as engaging in a war against capitalism led by the United States as their main enemy.

Currently, U.S. China policy is framed in terms of strategic competition, but Gertz thinks the administration needs to move beyond this concept to recognize China as an enemy not just to the United States, but also to freedom and democracy for all nations of the world.

This is going to be the challenge for the United States, which is strongly divided internally, no doubt with help from the Chinese Communist Party through its influence operations, he said. We need to really get focused on the China threat.

The expert urged the Biden administration to step up its game on the information warfare front, describing its current efforts as woefully inadequate. The U.S. State Departments Global Engagement Centeran interagency body tasked with countering foreign propaganda and disinformation campaigns has done very little on this front, Gertz said, adding the administrations public diplomacy has also been very weak and ineffective.

U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Chris Donahue, the final American service member to leave Afghanistan, boards a C-17 cargo plane at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul on Aug. 30, 2021. (U.S. Central Command via Getty Images)

Afghanistan

Gertz described the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and the collapse of the U.S.-backed Afghan government as a strategic success for Beijing.

The regime has been driving home the point that having U.S.-backed troops on its western border is a major threat to the Communist Party, he said.

Meanwhile, the CCP has capitalized on the United States chaotic withdrawal from the country for propaganda, to portray that the U.S. system has failed and that the Chinese system is on a roll, Gertz said. Chinese state media have also been pushing the narrative that the United States cannot be relied upon to defend Taiwan if Beijing attacks.

This aggressive rhetoric should serve as a real wake-up call for the United States, he said.

The Chinese regime is also looking to make economic inroads into Afghanistan, eyeing its estimated $1 trillion in mineral deposits and extending the Belt and Road Initiative, Beijings massive infrastructure investment project. Though such plans may not come to fruition in the country given the destabilizing security situation, Gertz said.

He also noted that the CCPs opposition to all religions, especially Islam, would be the breaking point between the Taliban and the CCP.

The Taliban is going to recognize that theyre dealing with an atheistic, communist, totalitarian state that is not looking out for its interest, Gertz said.

So for the Chinese, the so-called Chinese model of governance to have any chance of success in Afghanistan under the Taliban is close to zero.

Terri Wu Terri Wu is a general assignment reporter based in the Washington DC metropolitan area.
A shopper loads items into her car in the parking lot of a Walmart in Willow Grove, Pa., on May 19, 2021. (Matt Rourke/AP Photo)

Walmart Raising Wages by at Least $1 an Hour for More Than 565,000 Workers

Walmart announced Thursday that it will be raising the hourly wages for more than 565,000 of its store workers by at least $1 amid fierce competition from among companies for skilled workers during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The worlds largest retailer said in a memo to staff that the move marks the third investment the company has made in salaries in the past year. Walmarts U.S. average hourly wage currently stands at $16.40 with the latest wage increase.

Effective Sept. 25, associates in the Frontend, Food & Consumable and General Merchandise work groups will receive at least a $1 an hour raise. That means a raise for more than 565,000 store associates. Its our third wage investment in store associates over the past year, U.S. CEO John Furner wrote in a memo sent to employees, which was obtained by Yahoo Finance.

The latest announcement comes just one day after the company said it plans to hire 20,000 new associates across more than 250 Walmart and Sams Club distribution centers (DCs), fulfillment centers (FCs), and transportation offices.

Walmart will be holding special hiring events on Sept. 8-9 to attract the best and brightest candidates in all our supply chain locations, and will be looking to fill a broad range of roles including freight handlers, lift drivers, order fillers, and management positions.

A worker pushes shopping carts in a Walmart parking lot in Irvine, Calif., on Feb. 5, 2021. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)

The company noted that due to stiff competition, the average wage for such positions is $20.37 per hour.

Back in July, Walmart said it would pay 100 percent of college tuition and book costs for employees in an effort to help curb soaring student loan debts, starting Aug. 16.

In March, the company raised the pay for 425,000 of its store associates in the digital and stocking workgroups from $13 to $19 per hour, dependent on location and market.

Like other retailers, Walmart is facing nationwide labor shortages and hiring difficulties as the COVID-19 pandemic upended job market dynamics.

In an effort to counteract shortages and attract workers, numerous companies, including other large retailers, have implemented new perks and higher wages in recent months.

Low-price retailer Dollar General Corp. said on Wednesday it was looking to hire more workers at stores and distribution centers as well as truck drivers.

The discount chain, which has hired more than 50,000 employees since mid-July, is offering a $5,000 sign-on bonus to drivers as it expands its private fleet.

A worker wears a mask while organizing merchandise at a Walmart store, in North Brunswick, N.J., on July 20, 2020. (Eduardo Munoz/Reuters)

Rival Dollar Tree is offering a $1,000 sign-on bonus to ensure its distribution centers are sufficiently staffed ahead of the holiday season.

Last month, grocery chain Aldi announced plans to hire more than 20,000 U.S. workers across its stores and distribution centers and raise its wages.

E-commerce giant Amazon.com will hire 55,000 more workers to keep up with demand in retail, its cloud services and advertising, among other businesses, its new chief executive, Andy Jassy, told Reuters on Wednesday.

Target, CVS Health, and Walgreens Boots Alliance have all said they are boosting starting wages to $15 an hour.

Elsewhere in Thursdays memo, Furner also touted some of the other recent employee benefit rollouts, including free counseling and paid time off in what he called another trying year, Yahoo reports.

Reuters contributed to this report.
Wildlife Photographer Captures Caiman Greeting Butterfly Sitting on Its Snout

A professional wildlife photographer has captured a calm caiman greeting a butterfly as it lands on his snout.

The yacare caiman is native to the northern Pantanal region in Brazil. Professional wildlife photographer Leighton Lum, 33, of Hawaii, snapped the picture while he was visiting the area of Cuiaba, Brazil.

Butterflies tend to land on caimans during the dry season when it is very hot outside as theyre searching for water, he said.

(Courtesy of Caters News)

He added: In general, they are not aggressive or dangerous, but respect should always be given to them as they do still have a nice set of teeth and powerful jaws.

The Pantanal has an estimated 10 million caimans, which is the largest single population of any crocodilian in the world.

They are the common prey item for the jaguar, which is the apex predator in the Pantanal.

Epoch Times contributed to this report.

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A logo is pictured outside the World Trade Organization (WTO) building in Geneva, Switzerland, on April 1, 2021. (Denis Balibouse/Reuters)

WTO Backs US in Solar Cell Case Brought by China

BRUSSELSThe United States secured a victory at the World Trade Organization (WTO) on Thursday in a case brought by China over U.S. measures to limit the import of solar panel cells.

A three-person WTO panel rejected all four of Chinas claims and said that the measures did not breach global trade rules.

The United States imposed a system of tariffs and a quota in 2018 after U.S. producers complained that imports of certain crystalline silicon photovoltaic cells had increased to such an extent that U.S. domestic industry risked serious harm.

The safeguard measures are due to be in place for four years, with annual reductions in the duty rates from an initial 30 percent. The duties have applied to solar modules and, beyond a set quota, to solar cells.

The Chinese regime contested the measures on a series of points, such as that Washington had not established a causal link between the increased imports and harm to industry.

I welcome the WTO panels findings rejecting Chinas challenges to the U.S. solar safeguard as baseless, U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai said in a statement.

The safeguards were put in place by then-President Donald Trump at the same time as similar three-year measures for washing machines. Trump extended them by two years at the start of 2021, just before leaving office.

By Philip Blenkinsop
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP)  Manjula Wijesuriya had COVID-19, but his friends and family say that's not what killed him.

When the 51-year-old tutor suffered a heart attack in late July, his loved ones rushed him to a nearby hospital in a suburb of Sri Lankas capital, Colombo. But as his condition deteriorated over the next few hours, they found it impossible to get him a bed in an intensive care unit.

That's because a test confirmed Wijesuriya also had the coronavirus, and virus patients must be admitted to separate ICUs. All of them were occupied. The father to three died on Aug. 1  a day after stepping foot inside the hospital.

It was a tragic death, said his friend Tissa Jananayake. Even though he had COVID, he did not die because of it. He died because he did not receive treatment for the heart attack; he died because he could not get an ICU bed.

Wijesuriyas death is a worrying sign of how the latest coronavirus surge, driven by the highly contagious delta variant, is swamping the Indian Ocean island nation.

The delta variant is like a bomb, said Channa Jayasmana, state minister of pharmaceutical production, supply and regulation. It exploded in ... London and India. Now it has exploded in Sri Lanka, he added.

In the last two weeks, Sri Lanka has seen an unprecedented rise in coronavirus patients and deaths. The country's latest wave of infections, which began in April, has been the most severe of the pandemic. Around 80% of the countrys total deaths occurred during this current wave, which also accounts for the majority of confirmed cases since the pandemic began.

While the Health Ministry doesn't release data on how many COVID-19 beds are occupied, doctors and medical associations warn that ICU beds for coronavirus patients and morgues across Sri Lanka are rapidly nearing maximum capacity.

In recent weeks, television channels and social media have been inundated with dramatic visuals of overrun and overburdened government hospitals, with patients forced to sleep on floors while waiting for treatment.

Daily confirmed cases have doubled to 3,000, while deaths have shot past 100 a day. Sri Lanka has confirmed over 358,000 cases since the pandemic began and more than 6,000 deaths.

Doctors and health officials say the delta variant has swept across the country with dizzying speed, and is quickly moving from cities and into the suburbs. The government has appealed to the public to stay at home except in an emergency.

The rise in infections has pushed oxygen demand to unacceptably high levels that are increasing by the day, said Dr. Padma Gunaratne, president of the Sri Lanka Medical Association.

The latest barrage of cases comes as restrictions were slowly being eased following a monthlong lockdown in May and June.

New restrictions have followed. A ban on all public gatherings began on Sunday while weddings receptions will be banned from Tuesday. And a nighttime curfew began Monday that exempts only essential services.

The Health Ministry is also adding more hospital beds. Last week, the World Health Organization said it provided emergency medical equipment to 78 hospitals in Sri Lanka, including beds, oximeters, oxygen cylinders and concentrators.

President Gotabhaya Rajapaksa also changed his health minister on Monday. Keheliya Rambukwella, the media minister and government spokesman, takes over the Health Ministry, while predecessor Pavithra Wanniarachchi was appointed as transport minister.

Starting Sept. 15, no one will be allowed to enter public places without a vaccination card. But the government has held off on imposing a new lockdown, fearing the damage to the already ailing economy.

Instead, Sri Lanka's leaders are banking on the vaccination drive to see them through the surge. It used more than 1 million AstraZeneca shots to begin its vaccination drive before supplies from neighboring India dried up. Sri Lanka then looked to China, whose Sinopharm vaccine has been the most widely used in the drive so far. Sri Lanka has also received doses from Japan, Russia, the U.S. and through the U.N.-backed COVAX program.

Officials are confident they will receive enough doses to fully immunize 70% or 15 million people out of the 22 million population by the end of September. So far, 4 million have received both doses while 11.6 million got the first shot.

But this is not enough to stop the current wave or the large number of deaths, said Dr. Ravi Rannan-Eliya, executive director of the Institute for Health Policy  especially since Sinopharm and other vaccines are not fully effective in blocking the delta variants transmission.

Authorities will need to test more rapidly and make plans to vaccinate the remaining 30% of the population, who are mostly children, he added. This target of inoculating 70% of the population that they (the government) are chasing is no longer enough.

Experts say the next few weeks are of immediate concern, with cases likely to escalate quickly, especially with no lockdown in place. We need to pay attention, we need to do something, said Gunaratne of the Sri Lanka Medical Association. We are at a very critical point.
CHICAGO (AP)  Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker said Thursday that he's very concerned about the U.S. Supreme Courts decision not to block a new Texas law banning most abortions in the state, and vowed Illinois would continue to welcome women from elsewhere who need reproductive health care.

Shame on those Texas lawmakers for taking away, not just womens rights, but womens health," Pritzker, a first-term Democrat, said at an unrelated news conference in Chicago. "Banning abortion does not keep women safe.

A deeply divided high court allowed the Texas law to remain in force in the nations biggest abortion curb since the court legalized abortions nationwide almost half a century ago. The court voted 5-4 to deny an emergency appeal from abortion providers and others but also suggested that their order likely wasnt the last word and that other challenges can be brought.

In recent years, Illinois has expanded abortion rights in anticipation of Supreme Court challenges.

In 2019, Pritzker signed sweeping legislation that established womens access to the procedure as a fundamental right and required insurance coverage for abortion, contraception and related medical care.

The law voided decades-old abortion regulations that were on the books but hadnt taken effect because of court orders, including restrictions on late-term abortions and criminal penalties for doctors who performed them. It was urged by activists and Democratic leaders who called it a crucial matter with a conservative shift on the Supreme Court and prohibitions on abortion in other states that could lead to overturning the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, which legalized abortion nationwide.

In 2017, Republican then-Gov. Bruce Rauner signed a law allowing state health insurance and Medicaid coverage for abortions. It also removed language in Illinois law stating a desire to criminalize abortion if Roe v. Wade was overturned.

I am very concerned and focused on making sure that here in Illinois we are a beacon of hope for women who need reproductive health, and were seeing that people in states like Missouri have had to come across the border in order to just protect their own rights to see a doctor for goodness sakes, Pritzker said.

The number of out-of-state residents who sought abortions in Illinois has increased each year since 2014 when they amounted to 2,970 out of a total 38,472 abortions in the state, according to the Illinois Department of Public Health. In 2019, the latest data available, there were roughly 7,500 women crossing state lines, making up about 16% of the roughly 46,500 abortions in Illinois that year.

___

Follow Sophia Tareen on Twitter: https://twitter.com/sophiatareen
BAGHDAD (AP)  Grand Ayatollah Sayyed Mohammed Saeed al-Hakim, one of Iraqs most senior and influential Muslim Shiite clerics, has died of a heart attack, members of his family said. He was 85.

A relative, Mohsen al-Hakim, told The Associated Press that al-Hakim died at the Al Hayat hospital in the southern holy city of Najaf on Friday where he was taken after suffering a sudden heart attack. His office announced that he died of a sudden medical condition it did not specify.

Al-Hakim holds the highest theological title in Shiite Islam - Ayatollah al-Uzma, which means Grand or Supreme Ayatollah. He was seen as the top contender to succeed Iraqs top Shiite cleric, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who is in his early nineties.

The Najaf-born cleric is a member of the well-known and highly respected Hakim family of Shiite scholars. His maternal grandfather is Mohsen Al-Tabatabai Al-Hakim, a scholar and one of the most prominent thinkers of Shiite Islam. His father is Muhammad Ali al-Hakim, one of the most respected clerics in Najaf.

His second cousin, Sayyed Ammar al-Hakim leads the al-Hikma, or National Wisdom Movement, one of the largest Shia political parties in Iraq.

Along with the Afghan-born Mohammed Ishaq al-Fayadh, Al-Hakim's was seen as the most likely contenders to succeed al-Sistani, Iraq's top Shiite spiritual leader.

Iraq's president and prime minister and other politicians issued statements eurlogizing Al-Hakim. The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad tweeted its condolences, describing him as a symbol of peace, love, and harmony across the region.

Mohammed Saeed al-Hakim was exposed from early on to an education that focused on jurisprudence and religious studies and had some of the most prominent clerics among his teachers. He soon turned to teaching and became one of the leading Shiite scholars in Najaf.

Like most Shiite religious leaders in the holy city, he was put under house arrest during the last days of Iraqi dictator Saddam Husseins rule, before the U.S. invasion of Iraq. He was among a group of three top Shiite leaders who were threatened with death by a rival Shiite cleric shortly after Saddam was toppled in 2003.

He was targeted in an attempted assassination in 2003, when his house in Najaf was bombed. Three of al-Hakim's bodyguards were killed, and members of his family were injured. Al-Hakim himself came away from the blast with minimal injuries. Relatives blamed terrorists for the bomb, which was hidden in a gas cylinder.

Al-Hakim is one of four Grand Ayatollahs who teach at the Hawza, the religious seminary of Najaf. He has written many books and publications, some of which were translated into several languages. Al-Hakim is survived by a wife and eight children. A funeral is expected to be held Saturday in Najaf, where he will be buried.
EDWARDSVILLE  Madison County Circuit Judge Amy Sholar has announced she has permanently declined joining the Illinois Judges Retirement Pension System.

Retired Illinois judges have an average pension of around $146,000 annually.

I wanted to send a clear message that I accepted the appointment as Madison County Circuit Court Judge to help people and interpret the law fairly for everyone, said Sholar.

I know that everyone may not understand this decision, but its a matter of principle, she said. Its no secret that we have a pension system in Illinois that is clearly broken and anything that I can do as an individual to help not be a burden on that system, felt like the responsible thing to do.

In April, Supreme Court Justice David Overstreet appointed Sholar to fill a vacancy in the Third Judicial Circuit. The historic appointment was the first-ever appointment of a Republican woman to the judiciary.

The Third Judicial Circuit includes both Madison and Bond counties. Sholar has announced she will run for the judicial post in November 2022.

Sholar has 19 years of courtroom experience and was the founding partner of Sholar Stephan Law where she primarily focused on domestic litigation. She also has been a court-appointed guardian ad litem for children in Madison County. Before opening her own law firm, Sholar served as planning coordinator for the city of Alton.

She earned her Bachelor of Arts degree from Southern Illinois University and her Juris Doctor from Saint Louis University School of Law.
Gordon Taylor, the owner of Black Gold Guns & Ammo, 2001 Karbach St. Ste. F, said he's concerned about the effects of Texas' new constitutional carry law that does not require gun owners to undergo training in order to legally carry the weapon in public. (Photo by Adam Zuvanich)
Join Workers Circles Secular Jewish Sunday School for a joyful in-person reopening this fall!

Is your family interested in exploring Jewish cultural identity, social justice, and Yiddish? Registration is now open for the Manhattan Workers Circle School, a secular Jewish education program for children ages 2-13 held Sundays 10:30 AM-1:00 PM at the Manny Cantor Center, 197 East Broadway. We are excited to return in-person for a fun, safe program that combines classroom time with outdoor learning, play and exploration of the rich cultural resources of the Lower East Side.

RSVP HERE FOR OPEN HOUSE & FIRST DAY: SUNDAY, SEPT 19, 10:30 AM-1:00 PM.

Weather permitting, we will start the day at 10:30 AM outside Seward Park Library (across the street from Manny Cantor Center). Masks required for all, proof of vaccination required for ages 12 and up. Please bring a snack for your kids.

Open House Schedule:

10:30-11:00 Gather outside Seward Park Library (right across the street from Manny Cantor Center), for klezmer music, movement, and introductions

11:00-11:45 Class 1 for kidsprospective students welcome!

11:45-12:15 Snack and outdoor play at Seward Park playground

12:15-1:00 Class 2 for kidsprospective students welcome!

Questions? Email shule director Beth Zasloff: bzasloff@circle.org.

Visit us online: www.circle.org/manhattan & Facebook.

Our shule (Yiddish for school) invites families to build a contemporary Jewish identity rooted in an exploration of cultural heritage and a search for justice. We are a welcoming community of multifaith, multiracial families with diverse gender identities, family structures, and Jewish journeys, from across the greater NYC area.

Program includes:

Classes for children ages 2-13

Bnei Mitsve

Yiddish language and culture

Parent programs

Family field trips

Holiday celebrations

Teen community service and activism opportunities

Hear from our parents:

Shule has taught us how to hope and dream and fight for justice in really hard times.

BETH AND RACHEL, Brooklyn parents

Our child really loves the combination of hands-on learning, Yiddish music and song, family recipe cooking classes, and its big family atmosphere.

LARISSA AND TYLER, Lower East Side parents

When we get to engage with other families and my daughter sees all of the people and generations connected through Yiddish language and culture  especially at our shule which is very diverse  she and I are able to be all of ourselves at once.

JUDITH, Upper West Side parent

*This is a paid advertisement.
Salida, CO (81201)

Today

A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible early. Mainly clear skies. Low near 45F. Winds W at 10 to 15 mph..

Tonight

A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible early. Mainly clear skies. Low near 45F. Winds W at 10 to 15 mph.
Salida, CO (81201)

Today

A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible early. Mainly clear skies. Low near 45F. Winds W at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible early. Mainly clear skies. Low near 45F. Winds W at 5 to 10 mph.
News

Grand jury returns new indictments

SEVIERVILLE  A Sevier County grand jury advanced attempted murder charges this week against a woman accused of trying to kill her boyfriend outside their Jersey Drive apartment in July.

Forty-year-old Janice Loretta Hamilton is charged with attempted first-degree murder as well as aggravated domestic assault in relation to the July 22 incident.

Sevierville Police reported Hamilton had been arguing with the man outside their apartment complex, and then got into her car and chased him through the parking lot.

Police reported she eventually struck the man, catching him between the car and a wall.

He was airlifted to UT Medical Center after the incident. He was treated and released.

Hamilton has been in the Sevier County Jail since her arrest.

The grand jurys decision means jurors found there was probable cause to advance her case to Sevier County Circuit Court, where she could face a trial on the charges.

A grand jury is a panel of randomly selected Sevier County residents who meet in confidential sessions to determine whether there is enough evidence to proceed with a criminal trial against an accused party. The grand jury does not determine guilt or innocence.

When the panel returns a finding of no true bill, it means the charges against a defendant are dismissed but can be presented again.

When it returns an indictment, it means the panel determined there was sufficient evidence to send the charges on to Sevier County Circuit Court.

The grand jury returned the following findings in Mondays session:

NO TRUE BILL

 Brandon Scott Hall aggravated sexual battery

 Dakota Ryan Pack  rape

INDICTMENTS

 Autumn K. Adams  DUI, implied consent, open container, drivers to exercise due care

 Casey Aaron Allen  burglary other than habitation, theft

 Casey Aaron Allen  theft

 Tejpaul Singh Bajwa  aggravated domestic assault, violation of order of protection,

 Tejpaul Singh Bajwa  violation of order of protection

 Dreshaun A. Bell  DUI

 Joshua David Brownlee  possession of schedule VI drugs, possession of drug paraphernalia, financial responsibility, speeding

 Cheryn Mackenzie Cosby  driving on a revoked license

 Heriberto Vargas Cruz  driving on a suspended license, speeding

 Joel Anthony Danisi  domestic assault

 Joshua Allen Eaker  cruelty to animals, child abuse, possession of a weapon by a convicted felon

 Michael William Ellison  driving on a suspended license, following too closely

 Elijah James Evenson  aggravated domestic assault, theft, trespassing, possession of a handgun by a convicted felon, interference with emergency calls

 Julie Marie Felton  retaliation for past action

 Julie Marie Felton  assault

 Julie Marie Felton  aggravated domestic assault

 Hunter Ferguson  possession of schedule VI drugs, possession of drug paraphernalia, possession of meth with intent to sell

 Steven Goins  aggravated assault, reckless endangerment, simple possession, possession of drug paraphernalia, DUI

 Ryan William Guy  possession of a firearm with intent to go armed during a dangerous felony, possession of schedule VI drugs, light law

 Jennifer A. Hannifin  possession of schedule II drugs, simple possession, possession of drug paraphernalia, possession of meth with intent to sell, registration law

 Ashley D. Hibbert  resisting arrest, DUI, driving on a suspended license, improper lane change, speeding

 Kyle Maurice Hightower  possession of handgun while under the influence, DUI, obedience to police officer

 Carley Renee Huskey  driving on a revoked license

 Mandy Jo Johnson  reckless endangerment, failure to stop after an accident involving injuries, financial responsibility

 Summer Rayan Lawson  theft, failure to appear

 Summer Rayan Lawson  failure to appear, simple possession, driving on a suspended license, obedience to any required traffic control device

 Jorge Luis Rosindo Lua  vandalism

 Jalessa N. Martin  driving on a suspended license, seat belt

 Ray Christopher Mason  second count of DUI

 Michael Paul McGill  aggravated assault

 Stacia N. Means  DUI

 Juan Montes-Barajas  second count of DUI and driving on a suspended license

 Jerad James Ogle  trespassing, resisting arrest, evading arrest, reckless driving, DUI, implied consent

 Sarah Jolene Ogle  driving on a revoked license

 Fernando Osorio  theft of property worth $2,500 to $10,000, simple possession

 Tanner Purviance  DUI, open container

 Danny Lee Reed  evading arrest, driving on a suspended license, driving on the right, speeding

 Odalys D. Roman  DUI

 Jonathan Seth Stalcup  first-degree murder, especially aggravated kidnapping, tampering with evidence, abuse of corpse

 Whitney Michelle Thacker  possession of schedule II drugs, possession of meth

 Matthew Adam Vaughn  financial responsibility, driving on a revoked license, speeding

 Heather Marie Whaley  vandalism, financial exploitation of elderly person, abuse of a vulnerable adult

 Jada L.Williams  DUI, implied consent, light law

 Shane Anthony Williams  theft of property worth $2,500 to $10,000, evading arrest

Contact Jeff at jfarrell@themountainpress.com or Twitter at @jeffmtnpress
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Financial support for students as families plunged into poverty

PHUKET: Financial assistance was handed out to 500 children from families plunged into poverty by the ongoing economic crisis so the children can continue their schooling yesterday (Sept 2).

COVID-19economics

By The Phuket News

Friday 3 September 2021, 01:07PM

Financial assistance was handed out to 500 students from families plunged into poverty. Photo: PR Phuket

Financial assistance was handed out to 500 students from families plunged into poverty. Photo: PR Phuket

Financial assistance was handed out to 500 students from families plunged into poverty. Photo: PR Phuket

Financial assistance was handed out to 500 students from families plunged into poverty. Photo: PR Phuket

Financial assistance was handed out to 500 students from families plunged into poverty. Photo: PR Phuket

The funds were handed out by the Women Association for Creative Thailands Social Development, the Phuket office of the Equitable Education Fund (EEF), the Boon Rawd - Eakkapot Vanich Foundation and the Angels Wings Foundation.

Present of the handover at the Faculty of Management Science meeting room at Phuket Rajabhat University were Phuket Governor Narong Woonciew in his role as chairman of the Working Group for the Promotion of Area-Based Education Projects for Equality of Education in Phuket Province, joined by Phuket Provincial Administrative Organisation (PPAO, or OrBorJor) President Rewat Areerob.

Also present was Anchalee Vanich Tephabutra, former Phuket MP and President of the Women Association for Creative Thailands Social Development, which donated B400,000 to the initiative. The amounts donated by the other contributors was not reported.

Ms Anchalee explained that the assistance was much needed as many families across Phuket had been plunged into acute poverty.

Research conducted by lecturers from the Prince of Songkla University has found that the average monthly income of the population of Phuket during the pandemic is only B1,961 per month. This number is considered lower than the poverty line in Thailand, Ms Anchalee noted.

The economic crisis under the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the educational system and many students in Phuket. Some children have had to move out of the province because their parents have become unemployed. Some children are facing the risk of dropping out of schools because their families cannot support the cost of education, Mrs Anchalee explained.

We have come to help these groups of children to have a chance to extend their educational career. Most of the students who are receiving the scholarships will take the entrance examinations for higher education at famous faculties and institutions such as Chiang Mai University, Mae Fah Luang University, Walailak University, and so on, Ms Anchalee explained.

In addition, we are also supporting students at Phuket Vocational College and the Phuket Labour Development Center, she continued.

One of the students who received financial support at the event yesterday expressed her deep gratitude for the donation from officials and the foundations, especially in this tough time under the pandemic, she said.

The money will be spent on school supplies such as stationary, paying internet bills so she can attend online classes, and for food for living, the student said.

The national EEF notes that there are 569,000 poor primary and secondary aged students in Thailand. Beyond that there are 670,000 children aged from 3 to 17 years old who are out of school.

Many more children who are from very low-income families who have limited opportunities to get to higher education or secure good jobs, the EEF admits.

The poorest primary and secondary aged students are those whose average monthly income of family members are between US$40-300, according to the Department of Provincial Administration, Ministry of Interior and Office of Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Education.

According to the National Education Account of Thailand, children who are from very low-income families  the lowest 20% of the population  have only a 5% chance of getting into higher education, which is about six times below the national average.

In July this year, Ms Anchalee while spearheading an initiative by the Phuket EEF office to determine the risk of children not being able to attend school due to the impact of the economic crisis in Phuket found that 10% of shoolage children were already not attending school due to the familys dire financial situation.

Among the parents Ms Anchalee spoke to during that mission were people left jobless or forced to close their businesses that relied on tourism.

One couple were left homeless after they were unable to pay their rent for a year.
Montreal, CA (H4T1V6)

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Partly cloudy skies early with heavy thunderstorms developing overnight. Low 23C. Winds SSW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall may reach one inch..

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Partly cloudy skies early with heavy thunderstorms developing overnight. Low 19C. Winds SSW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall may reach one inch.
NEW ORLEANS (AP)  Power should be restored to New Orleans by the middle of next week, utility officials said Friday, and sheriff's deputies warned people returning to communities outside the city to come equipped like survivalists because of the lack of basic services in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida.

The storm knocked out electricity to more than 1 million customers in Louisiana, but almost all lights in the city should be back on by Wednesday, according to Entergy, the company that provides power to New Orleans and much of southeast Louisiana in the storms path.

The lack of power has made a sultry stretch of summer hard to bear and added to woes in the aftermath of Ida. Louisiana authorities searched Friday for a man who shot another man to death after they both waited in a long line to fill up at a gas station in suburban New Orleans.

The utility issued a statement asking for patience and acknowledging the heat and misery in the storm's wake. More than 25,000 workers from 40 states are trying to fix 14,000 damaged poles, more than 2,200 broken transformers and more than 150 destroyed transmission structures.

Please know that thousands of employees and contractors are currently in the field working day and night to restore power. We will continue working until every community is restored," said Rod West, a group president for utility operations.

The outlook was bleaker south and west of the city, where Ida's fury fully struck. The sheriff's office in Lafourche Parish cautioned returning residents about the difficult situation that awaited them  no power, no running water, little cellphone service and almost no gasoline.

Residents can return to the parish outside of curfew times but are advised to come prepared with all provisions necessary to self-sustain, deputies wrote on Facebook.

The utility offered no promises for when the lights will come back on in the parishes outside New Orleans, some of which were battered for hours by winds of 100 mph (160 kph) or more.

President Joe Biden arrived Friday to survey the damage. He met with local officials and toured a neighborhood in LaPlace, a community between the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain that suffered catastrophic wind and water damage that sheared off roofs and flooded homes. The president also planned a flyover tour of other hard-hit communities, including Lafitte, Grand Isle, Port Fourchon and Lafourche Parish.

I promise were going to have your back, Biden said at the outset of a briefing by officials.

But some people could not wait for the power to come back, and a second evacuation was underway. New Orleans and neighboring Jefferson Parish continue to help people find shelters or connect with family members outside the heavily damaged areas.

C.J. Conrady was at one of those centers Friday in Marrero with his brother and their mother. She was in a wheelchair after a surgery just before Ida struck left her with incisions all the way up her back. An intravenous line to give her antibiotics fell out the day before, and there was no refrigeration in their home to keep the insulin for her diabetes cold.

We decided to tough it out and see if the power would come back on soon. It did not, Conrady said.

New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell said the city on Friday started helping to relocate residents of senior homes. At the Renaissance Place senior home, dozens of residents lined up to get on minibuses equipped with wheelchair lifts after city officials said they determined conditions at the facility were not safe and evacuated it.

Reggie Brown, 68, who was waiting to join fellow residents on a bus, said residents, many in wheelchairs, have been stuck at the facility since Ida. He said elevators stopped working three days ago and garbage was piling up inside. The residents were being taken to a state-run shelter, the mayor's office said.

Im getting on the last bus," Brown said. "Im able-bodied.

A phone message for the company that manages the Renaissance site, HSI Management Inc., was not immediately returned.

On Saturday, the city was to start providing daily transportation for other residents seeking to leave for public shelters, Cantrell said.

Gwen Warren was already trying to get out on Friday, waiting for a bus to Alexandria or maybe farther north to Monroe. She stayed after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 knocked out power for weeks. But at 61, Warren said the stifling September weather was just too much.

Any place the Lord blesses us to go out of this heat, where were able to get some food, get a hot bath and, you know, just some comfort, is fine, Warren said.

In other developments, Louisiana health officials started an investigation into the deaths of four nursing home residents who were evacuated to a warehouse ahead of the severe weather.

The residents who died were among hundreds from seven nursing homes taken to the warehouse in Independence, where health officials received reports of people lying on mattresses on the floor, not being fed or changed and not being socially distanced to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, which is currently ravaging the state.

A coroner classified three of the deaths as storm-related.

When a large team of state health inspectors showed up on Tuesday to investigate the warehouse, the owner of the nursing homes demanded that they leave immediately, Louisiana Department of Health spokesperson Aly Neel said.

Neel identified the owner as Bob Dean. The Associated Press called several numbers connected to Dean and attorneys who have represented him in the past, but they did not respond.

Dean told Baton Rouge television station WAFB that the inspectors were on his property illegally.

We only had five deaths within the six days, and normally with 850 people, youll have a couple a day, so we did really good with taking care of people," Dean said.

Louisianas health department said Friday that two dozen nursing homes have been evacuated from parishes hard-hit by Ida.

Gov. John Bel Edwards promised a full investigation and aggressive legal action if warranted and said none of the other nursing homes were having issues.

Biden has promised full federal support to Gulf Coast states and the Northeast, where Ida's remnants dumped record-breaking rain and killed at least 50 people from Virginia to Connecticut.

At least 14 deaths were blamed on the storm in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, including the three nursing home deaths. The Louisiana Department of Health on Friday reported an additional death  a 59-year-old man who was poisoned by carbon monoxide from a generator that was believed to be running inside his home. Several deaths in the aftermath of the storm have been blamed on carbon monoxide poisoning, which can happen if generators are run improperly.

The most dangerous part of a hurricane is after the storm, said Entergy New Orleans CEO Deanna Rodriguez, who asked people to be careful around generators. Here its sadly happening again.

More than 800,000 homes and businesses remained without power Friday evening across southeast Louisiana, according to the Public Service Commission. Thats about 36% of all utility customers statewide, but it's down from the peak of around 1.1 million five days ago as the storm arrived with top winds of 150 mph (230 kph). It is tied for the fifth-strongest hurricane ever to strike the mainland U.S.

___

Deslatte reported from Baton Rouge and Santana reported from Marrero. Associated Press writers Chevel Johnson in New Orleans; Jeff Martin in Marietta, Georgia; Sudhin Thanawala in Atlanta; and Jeffrey Collins in Columbia, South Carolina, contributed to this report.
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP)  A seafood processing company with operations in Alaska and Washington state will require its employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19.

Our team often works in close quarters and in remote communities with limited access to health care resources, Rodger May, president and chief growth officer at Peter Pan Seafood Co., said in a statement.

Requiring employees to be vaccinated is the new gold standard. This is the best way I know to keep them and the communities we work in as healthy as possible, May said.

The policy will be enacted in tiers. The first tier includes employees at company headquarters in Bellevue, Washington; the Seattle warehouse; Alaska processing facilities in Valdez, Port Moller, Dillingham, and Alaska support centers in Dillingham, Sand Point and Naknek.

Those employees already have a 95% vaccination rate. The others must be fully vaccinated by Oct. 1.

The second tier includes all employees at the processors facility in King Cove, Alaska. A deadline for those employees will be announced later.

The company said in an email to The Associated Press that 80% of its employees are included in the first tier, with the rest working in King Cove. Peter Pan didnt respond to a question asking how many employees were in each tier.

Exceptions will be made for people who have medical or religious reasons not to be vaccinated, but employees who dont fall under those categories and choose not to be vaccinated will be fired, the email to the AP said.

The mandatory vaccinations do not apply to crew members in the fishing fleet, which operate separately from Peter Pan, the email said.
EDWARDSVILLE  Psychological services for two high-profile 2019 murder cases were approved by the Madison County Boards Judiciary Committee on Friday.

Madison County Public Defender Mary Copeland requested a psychological evaluation for Brittany N. McMillan, 29, of Birmingham, Alabama. She has been charged in the Dec. 19, 2019 deaths of Shari Yates, 59; her son, Andrew AJ Brooks, 30; and John McMillian, 32, in Bethalto.

Copeland also sought a psychological evaluation for Zachary I. Capers, 26, of Collinsville, accused in the March 18, 2019 deaths of Michael and Dr. Lois Ladd of Edwardsville.

Capers trial is set for December. McMillans trial is tentatively set to start Jan. 24, 2022.

Killian and Associates  a mental health group based in Springfield, Illinois  would conduct the examination of McMillan. Pocket Expert Forensic Consulting LLC, no address cited, would provide services for Caper.

Both requests now go to the Madison County Finance Committee before final approval by the Madison County Board.

Brittany McMillan and Brady K. Witcher, 42, both of Birmingham, Alabama, were charged in the Dec. 19, 2019, deaths of Yates, Brooks and John McMillian.

Authorities allege McMillan and Witcher killed a woman in Alabama on Dec. 13, 2019, before holding a Nashville, Tennessee, couple against their will and driving their truck to Bethalto. There, authorities allege, Witcher killed the Bethalto residents and Brittany McMillan took Yates Ford Focus, which was later found at a motel in Hazelwood, Missouri.

Brittany McMillan has a pre-trial conference set for Sept. 14 in front of Circuit Judge Kyle Napp. She has been charged with nine counts of first-degree murder, all Class M felonies, and one count each of armed robbery and aggravated vehicular hijacking, both Class X felonies. The multiple first-degree murder charges account for different theories related to the killings.

Witchers trial was scheduled to start Sept. 13 but, according to court documents, he has been hospitalized. A pretrial conference was held Sept. 3. He faces the same charges as Brittany McMillan, in addition to unlawful possession of weapons by a felon, a Class 2 felony.

Both are being held without bond.

Capers is charged with multiple felonies in the deaths of Michael Ladd, 79, a local contractor, and his wife, Dr. Lois Ladd, 68. The two were found dead at their residence at about 10:30 a.m. on March 18, 2019.

Edwardsville Police were contacted after an employee at Dr. Ladds chiropractic office called police when she failed to report for work. Police responding to the home, near a wooded residential area north of downtown, found the couple dead in their home. The Major Case Squad of Greater St. Louis was contacted for assistance into the investigation.

Capers faces four counts of first-degree murder, all Class M felonies. He is also being held without bond.
WOOD RIVER  The Madison County Health Department recorded 104 new confirmed and probable COVID-19 cases on Thursday.

Nearly a third of the cases  37  were in people younger than 20, according to the MCHD. Eighteen of the new cases were in Granite City, with 11 in Bethalto.

One additional death, a man in his 50s, was reported Thursday, taking the countys COVID-19 related death total to 559. To date the MCHD has recorded 35,666 cases and 404,336 tests.

On Friday the Illinois Department of Public Health reported 30,319 new confirmed and probable cases of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Illinois, including 178 additional deaths, since reporting last Friday, Aug. 27.

The deaths included a Macoupin County woman in her 70s, bringing the fatalities total there to 119, and two people in Greene County, bringing its fatality total to 54. COVID-19 related deaths this week also were recorded in Montgomery, St. Clair and Randolph counties.

To date, the IDPH is reporting a total of 1,538,324 cases, including 24,067 deaths.

As of Thursday night, 2,286 people in Illinois were reported to be in the hospital with COVID-19. Of those, 551 patients were in intensive care unites and 302 were on ventilators. In Madison County there were 51 COVID-19 patients in hospitals and 10 on ventilators on Thursday night.

More than 78% of Illinois adults have received at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose and 61% are fully vaccinated, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A total of 14,005,857 vaccines have been administered in Illinois as of Thursday night.

In Madison County, 248,480 people had received at least one COVID-19 vaccination as of Thursday. The county also had 126,445 residents fully vaccinated, or 47.81%.

More Information COVID-19 cases by county Madison - 35,666 (559 deaths) Jersey - 3,056 (52 deaths) Calhoun - 592 (5 deaths) Greene - 1,795 (54 deaths) Macoupin - 6,121 (119 deaths) Montgomery - 4,352 (75 deaths) St. Clair - 33,782 (549 deaths) Clinton - 6,580 (94 deaths) Bond - 2,341 (23 deaths) Monroe - 4,900 (96 deaths) Randolph - 5,014 (92 deaths) Washington - 1,956 (26 deaths) Source: IDPH COVID-19 cases by ZIP code 62002 (Alton) - 4,357 62010 (Bethalto) - 1,613 62067 (Moro) - 362 62035 (Godfrey) - 2,360 62037 (Grafton) - 232 62012 (Brighton) - 928 62014 (Bunker Hill) - 462 62052 (Jerseyville) - 1,916 62095 (Wood River) - 1,490 62084 (Roxana) -209 62048 (Hartford) - 166 62087 (South Roxana) - 236 62018 (Cottage Hills) - 402 62024 (East Alton) - 1,127 62025 (Edwardsville) - 4,328 62034 (Glen Carbon) - 1,788 62062 (Maryville) -1,115 62294 (Troy) -2,240 62040 (Granite City/Pontoon Beach) - 5,509 62234 (Collinsville) - 4,300 62249 (Highland) -2,535 62281 (St. Jacob) -482 62097 (Worden) - 355 62088 (Staunton) - 911 62069 (Mt. Olive) - 390 62033 (Gillespie) - 659 62626 (Carlinville) - 1,199 62016 (Carrollton) - 519 62044 (Greenfield) - 229 62092 (White Hall) - 502 62082 (Roodhouse) - 345 62047 (Hardin) - 208 62022 (Dow) - 143 For a complete list of cases by ZIP code, visit https://www.dph.illinois.gov/covid19/covid19-statistics. Source: Illinois Department of Public Health See More Collapse

Other county fully vaccinated rates include Monroe County with 50.92%, St. Clair County at 45.8%, 46.19% in Clinton County, 44.46% in Jersey County, 44.08% in Macoupin County, 41.91% in Montgomery County, 38.2% in Bond County, 35.13% in Calhoun County and 32.3% in Greene County.

The MCHD has scheduled COVID-19 vaccination clinics for anyone 12 and older regardless of where they live, work or attend school. The Pfizer vaccine will be given; parents or guardians must be present for vaccinations of 12- to 17-year-olds.

Free vaccination clinics are planned:

 Sept. 8 at Lewis & Clark Community College in Godfrey;

 Sept. 9 at Edwardsville High School;

 Sept. 22 at the Highland School District Office; and

 Sept. 30 at Triad High School in Troy.

For details visit www.madisonchd.org. Walk-ins are accepted, but appointments are preferred. For assistance, call 618-692-8954, Ext. 2.

The Calhoun County Health Department will host a vaccination clinic on Sept. 9 at its office in Hardin. For an appointment, call 618-576-2428.
Abraham Lincolns Emancipation Proclamation, which took effect on Jan. 1, 1863, in theory liberated all slaves in states that had joined the Confederacy.

In practice, however, the proclamation was simply ignored by Dixie slave-owners. Why should they obey an edict issued by that Yankee president when they were no longer citizens of the United States?

The Union armies that entered the South put teeth into the Emancipation Proclamation. Slave-holders could shrug off a Yankee document but not Yankee troops.

While reading Marion Morrisons A History of the Ninth Regiment Illinois Volunteer Infantry, which was published in 1864, I found references to John Kuhn, an Alton soldier who liberated a slave.

Born in St. Gallen, Switzerland on May 20, 1833, Kuhn emigrated to the United States and landed in New York in June 1849. He moved to Alton in 1854 and, a year later, joined the Alton Jaegers.

In my book Abolitionism and the Civil War in Southwestern Illinois, I noted that the Jaegers were a military unit of German immigrants who belonged to Altons Turnverein. Kuhns years with the Jaegers gave him invaluable military experience for his service in the Union army during the Civil War.

When the war began in 1861, Kuhn had risen to the rank of captain. The Alton Jaegers became Company A of the Ninth Illinois Volunteer Infantry on July 26, 1861.

Gen. Ulysses Grant occupied Paducah, Kentucky, in September of 1861, which gave the Union control of the Ohio, Tennessee and Cumberland rivers. Paducah became a staging area for Union troops as well as a supply depot and hospital center.

Kuhn on Sept. 9 was appointed the provost-marshal of Paducah, and his company was detached to serve as the provost guard. Kuhn was promoted to major on Dec. 2, 1861.

The Illinois Ninth saw action at Fort Donelson and Shiloh in 1862. The Ninth suffered the heaviest losses of any Union regiment at the Battle of Shiloh. Kuhn was the only Ninth field officer who wasnt wounded. That November, however, Kuhn suffered a wound at the Battle of Corinth, Mississippi.

Kuhn served as commander of a convalescent camp in Memphis, Tennessee in the summer and fall of 1863. He rejoined the regiment at Athens, Alabama, on Nov. 21, 1863, according to Morrison.

Morrison, who served as chaplain of the Ninth, recorded the following incident in his book to give readers some idea of the horrors of slavery.

During the recent scout to Courtland and Moulton (towns in Lawrence County, Alabama), when in camp near the former place, the orders of Lieut. Col. Phillips were to be ready to move by daylight. The guard were instructed to wake them two hours before day.

Adjutant Henry Klock was informed by an orderly that there was a lady wishing to see the Colonel. The woman, Morrison tells us, was very decently, but plainly dressed. By the Colonel. Morrison is probably referring to Lt. Col. Phillips.

The Ninths full colonel was August Mersey, who had been born in Germany. The colonel was duly awakened and informed that a woman wished to see him. In a half-sleeping condition, as Morrison puts it, the colonel told the adjunct to see what the woman wanted.

When Klock asked what she wanted of the colonel, he was perfectly amazed by her reply. The woman said her master was going to sell her, and she wished to know if she could not go with them.

Her plea demonstrates that, despite the Civil War and the threat posed by Union armies, the sale of slaves continued unabated.

Clearly moved, Klock assured this slave that he would speak to the Colonel about it, and that he thought they could make arrangements for her to go with us. The well-meaning adjunct was unable to keep his promise, however. The colonel had gone back to sleep  so the womans fate would be decided by Kuhn.

Kuhn told her at once that she could go along.

The woman, who is never named in Morrisons account, came into Decatur [Alabama] with our Regiment. He tells us that she was so nearly white, that she was mistaken for a white woman. She was, in all probability, her masters daughter or sister.

Kuhn liberated this slave and made the Emancipation Proclamation a stark reality for her former owner.

John J. Dunphy is an author, the Godfrey 15th Precinct Democratic Committeeperson and recording secretary for the Godfrey Democrats.
To the Editor,

We are currently watching a debacle in and around Kabul. While some talking heads hail the success of the pullout, we hear and see what is really happening. Hundreds of our citizens left behind and told to fend for themselves. Taliban going house to house maiming and murdering anyone with ties to the US; Gunning down girls trying to go to school. Untold billions of supplies and equipment along with thousands of cases of ammo and weapons; add in 200 plus aircraft.

Yes, it was a success for sure. But for whom? Those in cabinet posts and other advisory positions seem to have been recruited from some liberal think tank or Clown College. Those two are remarkably similar.

What comes from the President is often a few clicks from reality. Most could see what we were getting. For the last few years it was obvious there were times his elevator did not go up past the mezzanine. He is sheltered, mic sometimes cut off in an attempt to keep a secret most of us already know.

One question troubles me. How does a loving family subject the patriarch to trying to function in front of the public with limited capacity? Money should not be a factor, given the millions the Bidens have reaped from China and Eastern Europe.

Power and more greed could be it. This would put them right in line with the Clintons. Only difference the Clintons probably left behind more bodies.

So whats next? Could be the President goes back to his basement to hide full time and we get a Socialist or Communist( whichever label you prefer) to run the country. Wont that just be lovely?

Ron Saylor

Alton


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London, KY (40741)

Today

Partly cloudy this evening followed by increasing clouds with showers developing after midnight. Low 66F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 40%..

Tonight

Partly cloudy this evening followed by increasing clouds with showers developing after midnight. Low 66F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 40%.
Westerly, RI (02891)

Today

Mostly cloudy. Low near 65F. Winds light and variable..

Tonight

Mostly cloudy. Low near 65F. Winds light and variable.
Falcon Oil & Gas surged 85 per cent to 9.35p this week after sharing the results of the production log test at the Amungee NW-1H well in Australia.

The results suggest a normalised gas flow rate equivalent of between 5.2-5.8m standard cubic feet per day per 1,000 metres of horizontal section.

A recent report by an industry analyst suggests that gas flows greater than 3m standard cubic feet per day from a 1,000-metre horizontal well are required to demonstrate the commerciality of the Beetaloo, said chief executive Philip O'Quigley.

Oil and gas companies Falcon and Reabold Resources saw big swings in their share prices

Going the other way was Reabold Resources, which slumped 24 per cent to 0.28p after it provided an update on activities at West Newton, operated by Rathlin Energy.

Shareholders were rattled by talk of clear signs of reservoir damage in the Kirkham Abbey reservoir, which is probably preventing more significant flow at this time.

Reabold holds roughly a 56 per cent economic interest in West Newton.

Eurasia Mining managed to drive its share price 83 per cent higher to 28.75p after a progress update.

It said significant developments have been made at its operating West Kytlim mine, while its joint venture partner, Rosgeo has confirmed that the process on the licence for Nyud and Moroshkovoe open pit deposits is in an advanced state.

Meanwhile, the Monchetundra definitive feasibility study is in the final stages of its development.

Elsewhere in the resources sector, ECR Minerals announced the purchase of a property at 35 Brewing Lane, Springmount, Australia.

Although it sounds like the gold exploration and development company has suddenly branched out into the real estate business, the property actually covers 16 acres within the 45 square kilometre Creswick licence area in Victoria, Australia.

The property will provide a base for activities across the licence area as ECR advances its drilling programmes. ECR shares were up 28 per cent this week.

Half-year results from Immedia Group cheered the market, despite the board and management team confessing it was not happy with the performance.

The shares surged 32 per cent to 17.875p after the supplier of multi-media content revealed a substantial improvement on trading EBITDA [underlying earnings] compared to the prior period.

Sector peer Mobile Streams also had a good week, rising 18 per cent to 0.265p.

The AIM-quoted mobile content and data intelligence company said its LiveScore service in Mexico, which was launched at the end of July, has exceeded its August subscriber target by 250 per cent with more than 3,500 subscribers now signed up.

Based on this number of subscribers, Mobile Streams estimates that this service in Mexico alone should generate at least $1.5million over three years in additional revenue for the company.

Powerhouse Energy Group has signed a binding agreement for the exclusive use of its waste to energy DMG technology in Poland, Greece and Hungary with Hydrogen Utopia International (HUI).

HUI wants to develop power projects using Powerhouses technology in these counties through partnerships and deals with states, regional authorities and the private sector.

Powerhouse Energy shares were 28 per cent higher this week.

Full-year results from Arcontech Group, the provider of products and services for real-time financial market data processing and trading, contained a downbeat assessment from chairman Geoff Wicks, who said the future of our market remains uncertain and it may be some time until it returns to previous levels of activity.

The shares lost around a fifth of their value after the company said that due to the impact of Covid-19 on net new sales in the 2020/21 financial year, this year's profit is expected to be flat or lower, as any pick up in revenue will not be fully reflected in results until 2022/23.
Student property landlords with rentals in smaller university towns or cities typically generate the best returns, research has revealed.

Specialist buy-to-let mortgage lender Paragon Bank has identified the ten best locations to rent out homes for students, highlighting the places where investors can generate the highest rental yields.

Towns and cities with just one university fare particularly well, with seven of the top 10 only having one main higher education institution.

Student populations in these locations were also typically smaller at less than 25,000, suggesting that the best returns are not always found in major cities.

Paragon analysis of applications for property within popular student postcodes over the past two years highlighted that the best yields are typically generated by student properties located in smaller university towns or cities

Swansea was deemed to be the highest yielding town or city for student property, according Paragon Bank's analysis of rental activity over the past two years.

The rental yield is the percentage return a landlord can expect to make back on the purchase price each year, before tax, mortgage payments and other costs are included.

For example, a five per cent yield on a 200,000 property would amount to 10,000 per year in rental income.

The average property price in Swansea is 231,534, whilst the average annual rental income is 22,140, meaning investors could typically expect a rental yield of 9.56 per cent.

The city is served by one main university, Swansea University, which boasts 20,375 students, according to higher education statistics agency data.

Richard Rowntree, managing director of mortgages at Paragon Bank says: 'Smaller locations will often offer more traditional type student accommodation such as HMOs, whilst property values are generally cheaper in these locations, which can help generate better returns.'

The next highest-yielding location is Hull, home to 14,255 students, where the average student property in the city generates a return of 8.68 per cent per annum.

Of the top 10 locations, only Liverpool, Coventry and Leeds had more than one university.

Liverpool, the highest yielding major city with two or more universities had an average property price of 225,178 with an expected rental return of 18,569 a year on average, an 8.25 per cent yield.

Richard Rowntree, managing director for mortgages at Paragon Bank, said: 'When it comes to student property investment, heading to the major cities doesn't always generate the best returns, as these figures demonstrate.

'Smaller towns and cities will typically have a lower proportion of purpose built student accommodation, which has become more commonplace in major cities, whilst major cities also offer a wider array of property that students can rent, such as city centre apartments or build-to-rent schemes.

'Smaller locations will often offer more traditional type student accommodation, such as houses in multiple occupation (HMOs), whilst property values are generally cheaper in these locations, which can help generate better returns.'

Another reason for some of the lower yields in the major cities is thought to be due to greater competition in those cities between investors.

Research by the National Residential Landlords' Association has found that a majority of student landlords picked properties in areas of large cities that were known for being popular with students.

James Wood, policy manager at the NRLA, said: 'Areas like Fallowfield in Manchester or Headingly in Leeds are locations that are well known for housing students.

'As a result, competition for properties is likely to be higher than it would be in smaller towns and cities with a university.

Why invest in student property?

Rental yields are an important consideration for investors, and Paragon's research reveals a trend of higher yields amongst those who let to students compared to those that dont.

For example, student landlords made an overall mean rental yield of 6.6 per cent in the third quarter of 2020, compared to 5.6 per cent for those who did not let to students.

Student property can either be similar to a normal buy-to-let, where the whole property is rented between friends who co-habit, or a student HMO where students rent each room individually on their own tenancy agreement.

A property is deemed an HMO if at least three tenants live there, forming one household and sharing bathroom or kitchen facilities with one another.

Data shows that landlords who include student lets in their portfolios have consistently achieved higher yields compared to those that dont.

If five or more tenants live in the property and form one household, it will be deemed a large HMO. In this case, the landlord must meet certain standards and obligations which can include minimum bedroom sizes and having proper fire safety measures in place.

HMOs are popular among property investors targeting student tenants for the higher yields they can achieve.

Rob Bence, co-founder and chief executive of Property Hub says: 'Aside from the fresh influx of new tenants each year, the key driver for investing in student property is the higher yields.

'Students tend to pay higher rents than standard buy-to-let tenants, particularly if they're renting by the room.'

What are the pitfalls of student property?

Purpose-built student accommodation is on the rise, particularly in the bigger cities and this can make life harder for buy-to-let investors with a student focus.

According to Paragon's research, two in five student landlords are concerned about the competition created by build-to-rent or purpose-built student accommodation in the areas they invest.

Bence says: 'There's been a rise in the popularity of purpose-built student accommodation with cracking facilities, which has dampened the demand for student property and typical student HMOs.

'Some student properties just can't compete with the purpose-built ones with all the bells and whistles.'

Purpose built student accommodation and build-to-rent schemes funded by corporations have attracted students away from the traditional house shares in some locations

Student landlords have a host of other issues to consider, including void periods during the summer months and the fact that students are not necessarily known for being the most house-proud tenants.

Three in ten landlords consider property damage as their main concern when letting to students, according to Paragon.

Bence says: 'Wear and tear on student lets tend to be a bit higher.

'Good students that look after property can and do exist, but be prepared for group gatherings and parties.'

Letting to students will mean there is a higher likelihood of damage, although this is by no means a given.

Student lets are typically HMOs, meaning that landlords need to be aware of the extra regulations they must follow including HMO licensing every five years, increased fire safety requirements and waste disposal.

James Wood, policy manager at the National Residential Landlords Association says: 'Failure to comply with HMO licensing or management regulations carries steep penalties, and landlords must ensure they follow all of them.

'It's often best to move into the student market after gaining some experience letting dwellings to families instead.'

What should you consider before buying a student property?

Despite the yields on offer, investing in student property won't be for everyone.

Research carried out by market research company BVA BDRC on behalf of Paragon, shows that only 13 per cent of landlords currently let to students.

To put that in perspective, 13 per cent of landlords also let to local housing allowance claimants, 12 per cent to retirees and 52 per cent to families with children, the most common tenant type.

Before purchasing a student property, it is wise to consider why you are investing in property in the first place.

It is important to establish whether you are investing for future house price gains, or for immediate passive income to either re-invest or to supplement your lifestyle.

Bence says: 'Investors will still benefit from capital growth, but most investors who choose to go down the student route will be income driven.'

For landlords who prioritise yields, single university locations where student populations are typically below 25,000 appear to offer some of the best investment opportunities

As with any property investment, prior research could be the difference between triumph and disaster.

Looking at the number of students who choose to live away from home at the local university, and checking the amount of purpose-built student accommodation, are good places to start.

Bence says: 'Occupancy levels in popular student locations during covid have taken a hit, but these hits can happen anywhere if investors don't do their research properly.

'Students want to be close to their university but also local amenities.'

Checking average rents in the city for the prior year on Rightmove, as well as checking the current supply of available properties, can help you become better-informed.

Speaking to local letting agents may also give you a sense of student demand, as well as the best areas to invest in.

It is also worth researching any future investment projects into the city or at the university, which might prove a draw for tomorrow's students, according to Bence.

Finally, landlords need to be aware of any article 4 directions in place.

These directions prevent landlords from switching the planning use of a property from family (C3) to HMO (C4) classification.

'If this is in place in an area it will limit the number of available investment properties,' says Wood.

'Locations that are well-known for housing students often have article 4 directions in place, according to Wood, which tend to push up the sale prices of properties with an existing HMO classification.

'As a result, landlords want to look for areas without article four in place and a substantial student population outside the main cities,' he says.
Star US investor Cathie Woods Ark Investment Management will shun banks as well as a number of controversial sectors with the launch of its new ARK Transparency ETF.

The strategy will embrace a focus on companies environmental, social and governance credentials.

In a filing with the US regulator this week it was revealed that Arks latest investor offering will invest in around 100 companies, valued at least $1billion each, which score high marks for their transparency standards and overall reputation.

Its ESG focus means that ARK Transparency will not invest in companies within the alcohol, chemicals, fossil fuel transportation, gambling, metals, minerals, natural gas, oil or tobacco industries.

Ark Investment Management's Cathie Wood targets transparency in latest offering

While the exclusion of these industries is often common practice for funds with an ESG focus, ARK Transparency has taken the unusual step of also preventing itself from investing in the banking or confectionery industries.

Recent years have seen a boom for ESG investments, which is expected to continue for some time to come. The global ESG fund market is on track to grow from its current level of $37.8trillion to $53trillion by 2025, according to Bloomberg analysis, representing more than a third of all fund assets.

Arks CEO and chief investment officer Wood has risen to prominence with her media-savvy and outspoken approach to business.

She is an advocate for the social good that can be delivered through the disruptive power of technological progress, notably having predicted Elon Musks Tesla will reach a share price of $3,000 in 2025 compared to its current value of around $730.

Wood also believes bitcoin will one day reach $500,000, compared to its current value of $49,383 at the time of writing.

US investors will be able to buy the ETF through their usual broker or investing app.

However, UK-based investors may face a challenge if they wish to access Woods innovative strategies, with most of the countrys DIY investing platforms having pulled US-based funds after the introduction of new rules in 2018.

However, this does not mean UK investors are short of options when it comes to innovation in the low-cost world of exchange-traded funds.

So-called thematic ETFs, which target specific trends in global markets, are growing rapidly in popularity and reached 32.4billion in total assets in Europe alone this year, according to Morningstar data.

Poll Do you invest in index funds through a tracker or ETF? Yes - most of my portfolio Yes - a little of my portfolio No - but I plan to No - I prefer active investing Do you invest in index funds through a tracker or ETF? Yes - most of my portfolio 1087 votes

Yes - a little of my portfolio 617 votes

No - but I plan to 1490 votes

No - I prefer active investing 210 votes Now share your opinion





Just yesterday, micro-investing platform Wombat launched its latest offering, the Battery Boom fund, which gives UK investors exposure to the rapid growth in the global adoption of battery and energy storage solutions.

The ETF's largest holdings include developer of hydrogen fuel cell systems Plug Power, and it allows investors to capitalise on advancements in battery technology driven by the increasing adoption of electric vehicles, which already account for more than half of global battery demand.

The fund provides investors with exposure to companies across the battery ecosystem, including those involved in raw materials mining, manufacturing, and emerging technologies such as autonomous driving.

It is listed on the London Stock Exchange with the ticker CHRG and will cost investors a total expense ratio of 0.4 per cent.

CEO and co-founder of Wombat Kane Harrison said: Batteries are critical to global energy transformation efforts and demand for them is only going to grow, not least from EV manufacturers as people continue to move away from vehicles powered by petrol and diesel.

With battery technology improving all the time, its importance cant be overstated, and we are delighted to offer a thematic fund that provides investors access to the companies that have the highest potential for growth in what is an exciting emerging global megatrend.
Rio Tinto is refusing to bow to growing pressure to ditch its London listing and shift its quote solely to Australia.

The mining giant is a dual-listed company  two separate firms that operate as a single business and is quoted on two stock exchanges. Its shares are traded in Sydney and London, where it is a member of the prestigious FTSE100 index.

If Rio scrapped its London quote it would deal a devastating blow to the LSE, which is renowned as a home for miners.

Digging deep: If Rio scrapped its London quote it would deal a devastating blow to the LSE, which is renowned as a home for miners

City sources told the Mail that Rio has faced calls to abandon London after it blew up two 46,000-year-old Aboriginal caves in Western Australia last year to expand an iron ore mine.

The tragedy sparked a board clear-out, which included then-chief executive Jean-Sebastien Jacques, and a parliamentary inquiry. And it led campaigners, politicians, local communities and investors to urge Rio to put more of an emphasis on Australia, where it conducts a huge amount of its mining operations. They claimed the company was out of touch with the native peoples living on its most lucrative land.

Some have pressured the company to simplify its structure and slim it down to one corporation based in Australia as it seeks to rebuild its reputation.

But bosses are not budging and cite the fact that 76 per cent of its investors hold shares in the London-listed firm, compared with 24 per cent in the Australian entity.

A spokesman for Rio said: 'We remain very comfortable with our dual-listed company structure.'

But the question could be raised again if Rio hires an Australian to replace chairman Simon Thompson, who quits at next year's annual meeting.

Rio bosses also insist the company is different from its rival, BHP, which announced last month it was scrapping its dual structure in the wake of selling its oil and gas business.

The LSE is still smarting from the move  which will knock out one of the largest companies on the index.
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Barre, VT (05641)

Today

Variable clouds with scattered showers and thunderstorms, mainly late. Low 64F. Winds SSE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 40%..

Tonight

Variable clouds with scattered showers and thunderstorms, mainly late. Low 64F. Winds SSE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 40%.
The Supreme Courts decision on a Texas abortion ban raises the stakes for the Pa. governors race
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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.
Webster Groves, MO (63119)

Today

Thunderstorms likely this evening. Then a chance of scattered thunderstorms overnight. Low near 65F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 60%..

Tonight

Thunderstorms likely this evening. Then a chance of scattered thunderstorms overnight. Low near 65F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 60%.
The day after Hurricane Ida struck Louisiana, Delaney Nolan spent hours biking around New Orleans, handing out money to people who needed to pay for supplies or for the hotel rooms where they'd taken shelter.

Once the cash ran out  banks were closed, and ATMs were empty or no longer running without electricity  Nolan Venmo'd people the money they needed. As an organizer for the mutual aid group Southern Solidarity in Louisiana, she and her team also handed out free meals from restaurants that were cooking up their food stockpiles before they spoiled.

Nolan is among the faces of philanthropy that are tending to the immediate personal losses inflicted by the hurricane. Mutual aid networks like Southern Solidarity spring into action to supplement the more established relief services from federal and local governments, as well as larger charities.

The networks, in which community members pool resources and distribute donations to care for one another, seek to avoid the traditional charity model of giver and receiver. They grew in popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic as communities across the country faced dire needs. And now they are mobilizing in the wake of other disasters like Hurricane Ida.

Mutual aid is the most effective help right now, Nolan said. It's built on communications with a lot of neighbors and existing relationships, from personally knowing what people need.

Established philanthropic groups are joining to support the mutual aid groups, too. Jasmine Araujo, the founder of Southern Solidarity, said that days after the hurricane hit, the organization GlobalGiving had called her and said there would be donations coming to her group quickly.

Most of our funds, though, come from individual donors, she said. We dont usually get a lot of grants from bigger groups right away.

GlobalGiving launched its Hurricane Ida Relief Fund over the weekend to speed distribution of funds for those in need, said Donna Callejon, who leads the group's disaster response effort.

The funds come in, and we mobilize quickly, said Callejon, adding that because GlobalGiving has worked in the area for years, it has a list of partners that have already been vetted to receive funds. We have experience working in Louisiana with a lot of historically disenfranchised groups.

Another Gulf is Possible, a collective of 11 organizers and artists based in Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida had stored up 30 kits of solar panels, batteries, lanterns, power banks, iPads and water filters in preparation for the storm. They are gearing up to distribute the items to community organizers in New Orleans and the predominantly Native American communities of Grand Bayou and Grand Bois. But reaching people in some areas has been difficult because of the power outages, said Bryan Parras, a member of the group.

People need everything, said Anne White Hat, a Louisiana resident who's part of the group, which has been collecting masks, googles, and gloves to protect communities from mold or lead during clean-up efforts.

Mutual aid efforts allow everyone, no matter their status, to contribute what they are able, said Tanya Gulliver-Garcia, a director at the Washington-based Center for Disaster Philanthropy. The pandemic showed us that even in a cash-dependent society, people and their stuff are still a valuable resource."

Most of the nation's 800 formal mutual aid groups formed during the pandemic, according to the group Mutual Aid Hub. Community fridges, for example, have sprung up in many cities since last year, allowing anyone to donate and take food.

Members of Mutual Aid Disaster Relief, another group, have been circulating an online form where people sign up to help remove trees, share meals, host spaces for donation collections, provide counseling and perform other services for those impacted by Ida. About 90 new people have signed up to contribute in the past few days, a regional coordinator estimates.

Help has also come from grassroots rescue groups. In the aftermath of Hurricane Ida, Paul Middendorf, a volunteer disaster responder from Houston, traveled across hard-hit LaPlace, driving home to home in a high-water vehicle in an effort to rescue Louisianans from chest-deep floodwater.

Most of those rescued were in shock, Middendorf said, with some stationing themselves in their attics, fearful of rising waters and with nowhere to go. Many sought help from CrowdSource Rescue, a Houston-based disaster response group that connects people seeking help with trained volunteers. Along with Middendorf, it has aided dozens of other volunteers do rescues or wellness checks during the disaster response.

By the time Middendorf arrived at the homes, most of the floodwaters had receded. But some residents still feared leaving their attics. A couple of the families, I literally coaxed down the attic as the waters receded, Middendorf said.

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CrowdSource Rescue, which launched in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey in 2017, directs people seeking help to call 911 before contacting them. The group says it provides assistance when local officials are overwhelmed with requests. Matthew C. Marchetti, the group's executive director, says its average donation size is $60. So far, Marchetti says he's confirmed that the volunteers have rescued 364 people from floodwaters using boats and high-water vehicles.

Volunteers connected with CrowdSource had been fielding requests for help since Ida made landfall, but the fierce winds had initially made it impossible for them to respond. Middendorf, of Houston, rode out the storm at a parking lot in Baton Rouge, before heading 56 miles (90 km) southwest to LaPlace, where he found many trapped by floodwaters. Requests for help also came in for Lafitte, another town that suffered major flood damage.

Despite coordination efforts amongst different rescue groups, Marchetti says there were overlaps in responses. Similar concerned pleas for help had flooded into Cajun Navy Relief, a group of Louisiana volunteers who help with search and rescue after hurricanes and floods.

Owen Belknap, a student at Louisiana Tech University who leads one of the rescue teams, said his team managed to rescue one person in Laffitte. Belknap and his friends, also volunteers with Cajun Navy, began helping with disasters three years ago when a tornado swept through their hometown of Ruston, Louisiana. They joined the Cajun Navy last year as Hurricane Laura pummeled southwest Louisiana, killing 27 people.

Once a business major, Belknap transitioned to studying nursing as he grew more passionate about rescue efforts. With a few more days before the school year begins, he has time, he said, to help cut knocked-down trees and distribute supplies to the affected communities.

Amid the devastation, institutional funders have also opened their pocketbooks. Among them, the family foundation of Arthur M. Blank, the co-founder of The Home Depot and owner of the Atlanta Falcons, has pledged $500,000 each to a community foundation in New Orleans and The American Red Cross, whose volunteers are on the ground working on recovery efforts. Verizons company foundation has said its donating $100,000 to the Baton Rouge-based Foundation for Louisiana to aid those impacted by Ida.

My inbox is really full right now with queries from the funder community asking where to really pitch in, said Regine Webster, the vice president of Center for Disaster Philanthropy.

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This version is edited to include more states where organizers for Another Gulf is Possible currently live and clarifies Nolan's title.

___

The Associated Press receives support from the Lilly Endowment for coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits. The AP is solely responsible for all content. For all of APs philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.
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Nauman Hussain pleaded guilty to criminally negligent homicide charges Thursday, admitting for the first time that his failure to keep up repairs on his stretch limousine led to the Oct. 6, 2018, crash that killed all 18 people on board and two pedestrians in what remains the nations deadliest transportation disaster in more than a decade. (TU)

A stunned U.S. East Coast faced a rising death toll, surging rivers, tornado damage and continuing calls for rescue Thursday after the remnants of Hurricane Ida walloped the region with record-breaking rain, drowning more than 40 people in their homes and cars.(AP)
Popular butcher Applestone Meat Co. has closed its retail locations in the Hudson Valley and put its state-of-the-art butcher shop and retail park up for sale in Stone Ridge.

Applestone began as a meat processing facility for farmers before transitioning to retail and specializing in locally sourced, whole-animal butchery with retail locations in Stone Ridge, Hudson and Eastchester. Founded by Josh Applestone, a third-generation butcher and co-author of The Butchers Guide to Well-Raised Meat, the company pioneered the 24/7 meat vending machine concept as an innovative way to bring an always-open craft butcher shop to several Hudson Valley towns.

In a 2018 interview with Bloomberg, Josh Applestone estimated that the Stone Ridge vending machines sold about 3,000 pounds of meat per week and represented 70 percent of Applestones sales.

He also co-founded Fleishers Craft Butchery and sold that company in 2013; Fleishers Uptown Kingston location closed in 2017, leaving a neighborhood butcher shop void until the Meat Wagon arrived on the scene this year.

Stefano Diaz, who first got his start at Fleishers and owns and operates Kingstons Meat Wagon, worries that the Applestone closure will leave customers with fewer choices beyond big box stores, like Hannaford or Shop Rite, for their meat products.

There are still small stores like mine that are trying to produce a good quality product, said Diaz. The need for better quality product is out there. It could take time for people to find their sources, but ultimately I think there is a good source for every community.

FarleyPierson

Kitchen facility for sale, Applestones future unclear

In July, Applestone Meat Co. announced it was closing its meat business, including all retail locations. Now, its facility is following the same fate.

The 7,000-square-foot butcher shop and retail park was listed for $2.95 million on August 23 by Halter Associates Realty. About 1,300 square feet of that overall site footprint is dedicated to humidity-controlled walk-in refrigeration. The adjacent Picard Building is a fully renovated retail space that also has a professional restaurant kitchen on the ground level and four office suites on the floor above.

Contents, like commercial kitchen equipment, are negotiable.

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In this case, there was an unfinished professional kitchen in one of the buildings with brand-new but never-used equipment, including a 12-burner Garland stove, said Halter Associates Realty broker for the property, Peter Cantine. Its contents for a professional kitchen and meat-packing facility.

The listing includes a three-bedroom home on the property, as well as 28 parking spaces for staff, and an outdoor common area with grilling stations and a pavilion. Cantine said there has already been interest in the week the property has been listed but wouldnt disclose more details.

Josh Applestone and his companys future remains unknown; he declined to comment to the Times Union: Hudson Valley. However, the Applestone Meat Co.s website announced the closure of its retail locations, stating: In the immediate future well be developing and offering products and services to help retailers expand their businesses through innovative technologies. We look forward to sharing more information about this soon.

Applestones email signature provides a clue: his new title is CEO of Applestone Solutions. That companys website describes its mission as dedicated to building an automated retail experience for 24/7, low-touch purchasing for stores and retail outlets, suggesting he may be replicating and scaling the popular meat vending machine model for other industries and businesses.
Breakneck Ridge, one of the most popular trails in the Hudson Valley, is aptly named. Even with a dedicated Metro-North train stop for day trippers, hikers must cross the two-lane, high-speed Route 9D before they can begin the short but somewhat treacherous hike that involves rock scrambling and a steep incline.

Now, that could change.

New York State Parks today announced a recent property acquisition along Route 9D in Putnam County with the goal of relocating the trailhead for Brook Trail at Hudson Highlands State Park to provide a safer access for hikers as well as an improved, southern access point for Breakneck Ridge.

State Parks purchased the property, the former catering business Chalet on the Hudson, for $1.71 million from the not-for-profit Open Space Institute.

While this property is only about two acres, it will have a large impact by allowing State Parks to create a relocated trailhead and amenities for Hudson Highlands that will help with pedestrian safety on Route 9D, State Parks Commissioner Erik Kulleseid said in a press release.

Currently, there is no parking for the Brook Trailhead on Route 9D, which means people need to walk along the highway to reach the trail. In fact, all trails along the highway, including Breakneck and Brook, were closed in April 2020 due to the volume of pedestrians walking along 9D, creating a dangerous situation for both walkers and motorists. The relocation of the trailhead and associated parking to this location would help solve the safety issue.

People pull off to side of the road or walk from Little Stony Point to the trail if they want to use [Brook Trail], said Amy Kacala, Executive Director of Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail, a nonprofit. This would create a small parking area and provide a trail connection.

Kacala said that while it wont be a fix-all move, it will help keep more people off of Route 9D, which is a 55 mile-per-hour highway with no shoulder.

There needs to be a number of moves such as this to shift some of the behaviors of hikers into a more organized pattern to improve safety, said Kacala. It will help motorists and hikers and improve this specific trail head.

The new trailhead would also provide alternate access into Breakneck Ridge from the south, which means hikers could avoid the rock scramble  ideal for those hiking with a dog or seeking an easier ascent.

Breakneck Ridge became a little safer earlier this season, when a new connector trail constructed by Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail. The new Ninham Trail, accessed by the Wilkinson Trailhead, provides an alternate ascent route to and from Breaknecks false summit.

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Kacala said the New York New Jersey Trail Conference has been tracking data and, since the connector trail was created at the end of June, there have been no reports of lost or injured hikers at Breakneck. Overall, Hudson Highlands State Park, which Breakneck is a part of, drew in more than 3.1 million visitors over the past decade.

If people need to stop their hike earlier, theyre able to with this trail and they dont need to wander, said Kacala. When people wander, thats when there are reports of injuries and lost hikers. People are using it and it seems to be working.

The acquisition of the property will also help maintain the regions ecological integrity by protecting wildlife bio-corridors and preserving scenic viewsheds in an area of development pressure. The property is situated along the Hudson, offering views of Revolutionary War historic sites and the U.S. Military Academy at West Point across the river.

Both Putnam County Executive MaryEllen Odell and State Senator Sue Serino said in a press release that the acquisition is especially timely with the backdrop of COVID-19 and more residents and tourists exploring the great outdoors and trails here in the Hudson Valley.
About a six-and-a-half to seven-hour drive from the Capital Region, Bar Harbor on the northern coast of Maine awaits. The area is a prime destination for viewing wildlife, exploring nature, relaxing by the beach and indulging in some of the best lobster youve ever had. Theres even lobster ice cream. Here are some best Bar Harbor bets.

West Street Hotel

50 West St., Bar Harbor; theweststreethotel.com

Nestled into a prime location, West Street Hotel is filled with comfortable rooms and friendly staff. Its also right around the corner from great shopping, across the street from whale watching and nature tours, and within walking distance of local eateries. You could put the car in the hotel parking lot and leave it there, and happily spend the vacation walking around the area. The hotel staff will also help book activities like humpback whale tours and lobster boating, along with offering guidance to area attractions such as Acadia National Park. Depending upon the type of vacation youre seeking, you could opt for the family-friendly oceanside pool or the rooftop pool thats open to adults only.

Bar Harbor Whale Watch Company

1 West St., Bar Harbor; barharborwhales.com

Located just across from the West Street Hotel, Bar Harbor Whale Watch Company offers more than whale watching. Ask for a tour recommendation based on the time of year youre visiting. The Puffin and Lighthouse Cruise, for instance, allows you to see all the area lighthouses along with rare puffins (from a distance  legally, the tour cant get too close to the small seabirds, so be sure to bring binoculars to view them or a camera with a zoom lens to capture their photos).

Acadia National Park

nps.gov/acad

A trip to Bar Harbor wouldnt be complete without a visit to one of the top 10 most-visited national parks in the United States. As Acadia National Park encompasses nearly 50,000 acres along the middle of Maines coast, research it ahead of time to decide where to go. One recommendation: Visit Thunder Hole at high tide, where waves smack against the rocky shore and provide a display of 40-foot splashes.

Thurstons Lobster Pound

9 Thurston Road, Bernard; thurstonforlobster.com

About 30 minutes southwest of Bar Harbor, on the shore of Mount Desert Island, is Thurstons. Its apt slogan Straight from the sea to your plate is evidenced by lobster boats puttering in through the busy harbor to drop off freshly caught lobsters in a variety of sizes straight to the restaurant. Enjoy whole steamed lobsters with a pinch of salt and warm butter, steamers with broth and butter, and other seafood dishes while surrounded by beautiful views of the water. Dont forget to try a whoopie pie  theyre outstanding here.

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Side Street Cafe

49 Rodick St., Bar Harbor; sidestreetbarharbor.com

Side Street Cafe combines the seafood youre craving from time spent on the coast with warm, filling comfort food. Indulge in creamy crab dip or lobster mac n cheese loaded with local lobster meat. End your meal with a slice of fresh Maine blueberry pie, and be sure to select something off the craft cocktail menu  perhaps a watermelon-cucumber-mint margarita.

Ben & Bills Chocolate Emporium

66 Main St., Bar Harbor; benandbills.com

When in Maine, you should eat lobster in every single form. Ben & Bills is known for its delicious homemade chocolates and ice cream, including one flavor in particular: a butter pecan-based confection loaded with chunks of fresh Maine lobster. The story behind its creation involves a customer who remarked, kiddingly, that the shop didnt offer anything with lobster in it. Ben & Bills obliged by creating its lobster ice cream as a joke, but it stuck. If youre (understandably) not ready to commit to a full cones worth, ask for a sample  you may be pleasantly surprised.

Thank you to the West Street Hotel and the Bar Harbor Whale Watch Company for hosting me.

Jessica Kelly is a food and travel writer originally from Buffalo. Follow her on Instagram @adventures.are.waiting.
BALLSTON SPA  It looks like the Village of Friends may be friendly to marijuana sales.

The mayor of the village of Ballston Spa said he and other elected officials are open to allowing cannabis dispensaries, a move that will give the villages 1.7 square miles yet another economic boost.

It would benefit us financially, Mayor Larry Woolbright said. I asked our treasurer if she could do a quick back of the envelope calculation. Her guess was we would get $30,000 a year.

Woolbright said that is about 2 percent of the villages tax levy of $1.7 million.

Under state law, municipalities that dont want marijuana dispensaries or on-site consumption must formally opt out by passing a local law by Dec. 31. Both Colonie and Ballston, in which the southern end of the village falls, are considering opting out of on-site consumption or lounges. If the local law in Ballston passes, which it may on Sept. 14, Woolbright said that does not preclude village sales. It also means, he said, that Ballston is not entitled to any of the marijuana-related revenue. All of the sales tax dollars generated will go to the village.

We still have time and the (board of) trustees could still bring it up, said Woolbright. But we discussed it once and there was no interest in opting out.

The majority of the village actually falls into Milton, with the dividing line, appropriately, being High Street. On Friday, Milton Supervisor Benny Zlotnick said the town has not discussed opting out, but he is leaning toward allowing cannabis sales.

If there is a tax benefit, we should look at those avenues, Zlotnick said.

That means Ballston Spa would have to share its portion of the sales tax revenue with Milton if the dispensary falls into both the village and town lines.

So far, Woolbright said he hasnt gotten much pushback, except from parents who fear it will be a bad influence on their children.

But Woolbright argues that opting out would not keep it out of the community as dispensaries would likely be nearby, including bordering towns like Milton.

It doesnt appear to me that there is any way to moderate any potentially negative impacts, Woolbright said. The choice is do we want to take advantage of the financial positives or do we not? Its going to be here in the community one way or another.

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In recent years, Ballston Spa has experienced financial hardships that have since been resolved by the villages new leadership, including Woolbright, a Republican, and an all-Democratic board of trustees. The village has also undertaken an ambitious plan to economically revitalize the village with a 72-page Next Wave program that includes the redevelopment of the Angelica Textile Laundry Services building, trails, housing projects and replacement of the water tower.

The plan, Woolbright said, signals we are open for business."

Malta Supervisor Darren OConnor, whose town lies to the east of the village, said he, like Ballston and Colonie officials, will seek to opt out.

That's my personal preference, OConnor said. We will see what the other four (town) board members want. If we dont take action, the town is completely locked in. Any future board can also reverse it if we opt out. Bringing it up to the board is the only way to get to voters.

Nearby Saratoga Springs will probably go the way of Ballston Spa and allow for dispensaries. However, Commissioner of Accounts John Franck said that the City Council may have some public hearings on the matter.

"We want to hear from the public," Franck said.
MINNEAPOLIS (AP)  Minnesota U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar and her progressive congressional allies urged President Joe Biden on Friday to stop construction on Enbridge Energy's Line 3 replacement, even as the project nears completion and the options to stop it dwindle.

Omar was joined by U.S. Reps. Rashida Tlaib, of Michigan, Cori Bush, of Missouri, and Ayanna Pressley, of Massachusetts, and Minnesota state Sen. Mary Kunesh, at a news conference in Minneapolis. The Democratic women called on Biden to revoke a federal water quality permit and stop the project, as the president did with the Keystone XL pipeline the day he took office.

Ahead of a planned weekend trip to northern Minnesota, where the pipeline is being upgraded, Omar and her allies echoed the arguments of Indigenous and environmental activists that the pipeline project would worsen climate change, violate Native American treaty rights, and risk spills in waters where Indigenous people hunt, fish and gather wild rice.

We are here because the climate crisis is here, Omar said. The climate crisis is now. The climate crisis is happening and the last thing we need to do is allow the very criminals who created this crisis to build more fossil fuel infrastructure."

The visit comes days after Omar sent a letter signed by nearly 50 state legislators and members of Congress to ask the Biden administration to meet with tribal leaders.

The heads of several Minnesota state agencies this week pushed back against several points in Omar's letter, saying it exaggerated how much water Enbridge has pumped out of construction ditches amid the current drought and that the amount was actually well within approved limits. They also said claims in Omar's letter that law enforcement used police dogs to intimidate protesters and fired "less-lethal" rubber bullets against demonstrators were false.

Pipeline supporters, including Republican U.S. Rep. Pete Stauber, of Minnesota, state lawmakers and pipeline workers, held a press conference at the Capitol in St. Paul earlier Friday to laud the jobs the pipeline has brought to the region. Jason George, business agent of Local 49 of the International Union of Operating Engineers, which has a couple thousand members on the project, called Omar's letter an attack on pipeline workers.

Enbridge spokeswoman Juli Kellner called Omar and her allies misinformed, citing the letter from Democratic Gov. Tim Walz's commissioners. Kellner said six years of reviews, court decisions and permit approvals disprove claims that Line 3 would violate treaty rights or damage the region's environment.

Replacing Line 3 has taken all of us working together  communities, tribes, unions, contractors, elected officials, companies, organizations, industry voices, and the support of thousands of individuals," Kellner said. "We encourage legislators to learn the facts about Line 3, tour a worksite and meet some of the tribal monitors and the thousands of union workers building Line 3.

As Line 3 opponents continue organizing despite dwindling options for stopping the project  including a major rally last week when more than 1,000 protesters descended on the Capitol  the replacement pipeline is nearly finished.

Published reports on Wednesday indicated that Enbridge has told shippers it will begin offering a capacity of 620,000 barrels per day starting in October. Kellner declined to confirm the October start date but said Line 3 is expected to be fully operational at 760,000 barrels per day in the fourth quarter of this year.

Earlier on Friday, Indigenous activists hosted a conference call to publicize a letter from the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination asking the U.S. to respond to allegations of human rights abuses against Anishinaabe people in northern Minnesota due to Line 3's construction.

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Winona LaDuke, executive director of the Indigenous-based environmental group Honor the Earth, said the affected tribes may sue the United States in international court if the federal government doesn't respond to the U.N. committee's letter.

What we want is an environmental impact statement and a stop on the project before this corporation gets to make a billion dollars a year of profit off the destruction of our people, she said. We intend to continue to pursue international remedies.

Also Friday, a federal judge rejected an effort by the state Department of Natural Resources to quash a novel rights of nature lawsuit against the pipeline. The lawsuit, which names Manoomin -- the Ojibwe word for wild rice as one of the plaintiffs, will proceed in tribal court.

Line 3 starts in Alberta and clips a corner of North Dakota before crossing northern Minnesota en route to Enbridges terminal in Superior, Wisconsin. The 337-mile (542.35-kilometer) segment in Minnesota is the last remaining step in replacing the deteriorating pipeline, which was built in the 1960s.

___

Mohamed Ibrahim 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.
SCHENECTADY - Craft beer has become big business.

And with a brewery in the shadows of Schenectady County Community College, it's not surprising that the schools Workforce Development & Community Education Division has created a new brewer/distiller apprenticeship title aimed at bringing new employees to the brewing industry.

And the school has launched an initiative to get students of color involved in brewing.

Apprenticeships provide a no-cost/low-cost way for those in the industry to expand their skills through hands-on training at their place of work and related instruction at the college, according to a news release the college put out Thursday touting the new program.

It states that SCCC will provide $5,000 to help with the tuition and other related expenses, including fees, books and equipment.

The new apprenticeship program was developed in partnership with the state Labor Department, industry experts and instructors in the colleges non-credit brewing courses.

Breweries across the state can register directly with the Labor Department to become a sponsor for an apprentice or can register with the Center for Economic Growth who can act as a group sponsor and assist with the development and implementation of the apprenticeship title, according to the release.

New York ranks No. 4 in the nation for number of wineries, No. 2 in the nation for number of breweries and No. 3 in the U.S. in wine production and number of distilleries, according to Empire State Development.

There are currently 1,288 craft beverage manufacturers, yielding a $5.4 billion economic impact in the state and beer and 897 farm licensed manufacturers in the state.

Additionally, SCCC will for the first time in the fall offer an introduction to Brewing and Distilling class Monday and Wednesday evenings from 6:30 to 9 p.m. from Sept. 7 to Dec. 15 at Frog Alley Brewing Co. in downtown Schenectady.

The college has held non-credit brewing courses for the past six years, but this is the first year that courses will take place at Frog Alley.

Students will have the opportunity to learn firsthand all that goes into a successful brewing operation from brewing science and beer maturation/storage to malting, mashing, brewing, fermentation, finishing and distillation basics.

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The goal of this course is to provide a pool of trained, entry-level brewers/distillers in the growing craft beverage industry.

The college is working on another front to improve the opportunity and access to people of color in brewing and distilling.

There is a new cohort of Black students starting class at Frog Alley Brewing on Sept. 7 with the intention of using what they learn to start a Black-owned brewery and distillery in the region.

Dr. Steady Moono, president of SUNY Schenectady, pointed to the Brewer/Distiller Apprenticeship title, partnership with Frog Alley Brewing Co. and efforts to recruit traditionally underrepresented students of color into the brewing courses as examples of how the college continues to expand its offerings.

At SUNY Schenectady, we are taking career training a step further through our new apprenticeship title and outreach efforts to individuals of color who are underrepresented in the brewing field, Dr. Moono stated. As breweries continue to expand in New York state, we will develop training and initiatives to support this expansion, especially as the state continues to rebuild from the pandemic.

Employers who would like more information about the apprenticeship title or how to become a registered sponsor can contact Sarah Wilson-Sparrow at wilsons@sunysccc.edu or Christine McLear, workforce development manager at the Center for Economic Growth, at christinem@ceg.org.
Hans Pennink/Associated Press

ALBANY  State Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie announced on Friday  two days after lawmakers came to Albany for an extraordinary legislative session  that two of his members have tested positive for COVID-19.

Assemblymembers Charles Fall of Staten Island and Inez Dickens of Manhattan are quarantining after getting their diagnoses, Heastie said in a news release. Both have been vaccinated, he said.
SCHOHARIE  Susan Mallery stood speaking alone with a colleague behind the velvet ropes that had been set up in the high school gym here as part of a makeshift courtroom Thursday.

Mallery, the district attorney for Schoharie County, had just watched as Nauman Hussain pleaded guilty in the deaths of the 20 victims of the October 2018 limousine crash that occurred just 3 miles down the road from where she was standing.

None of the family members of the victims, many of whom had just poured their hearts out in more than two hours of gut-wrenching testimonials about losing their loved ones, were rushing to thank Mallery.

In fact, many of them had directed their anger at her during their emotional outpouring for what they saw as apparent missteps in the case that led to Mallery's decision to accept a no-jail plea deal instead of going to trial.

"I don't think that the DA has the experience to try the case properly," Mary Ashton, the mother of victim Michael Ukaj, said during her testimonial. Ashton suggested that the case should have been handled by Albany County prosecutors instead.

Given the chance by Schoharie County Court Judge George Bartlett, Mallery did not explain in open court her reasons for agreeing to the plea.

And when asked by the Times Union for an explanation as she was about to leave the gym, Mallery said she was ethically bound not to speak because the case is technically still pending.

"I can only talk about process," Mallery told the Times Union.

That's because, Mallery explained, under the terms of the deal, in which Hussain pleaded guilty to 20 counts of criminally negligent homicide, Hussain's sentence of five years of probation won't officially be handed down until he completes two years of interim probation, a period in which sentencing is technically suspended.

During those two years, Hussain must perform 1,000 hours of community service, which is double the maximum recommended amount for his crime under sentencing guidelines.

And if Hussain doesn't live up to that requirement, or if he violates his probation, the judge can decide to change Hussain's sentence to prison instead, up to a maximum of four years.

Mallery has explained her reasoning behind closed doors to the families of the victims, and the plea deal document itself explains the reasons why the plea deal is acceptable to both Mallery and Hussain  and perhaps why the families might benefit.

But the document is clear that Mallery's case against Hussain had developed serious problems since a grand jury indicted Hussain in April 2019.

Bartlett himself said in court that he understood that the punishment outlined in the plea deal would disappoint the public and the families.

"I understand that many people, with good reason, feel the proposed sentence here is way too light," Bartlett said. "This recommended sentence was the result of much careful thought and analysis."

Most of the issues revolve around evidence that Mallery's office had uncovered in the wake of Hussain's indictment about his interactions with the Mavis Discount Tires shop in Saratoga Springs where Hussain serviced the 34-foot stretch Ford Excursion limo that crashed.

The evidence included testimony from the store's since-fired manager who told investigators that the store had regularly falsified invoices for customers in order to meet certain company sales goals - including invoices for brake work that Hussain had requested after the Excursion failed a March 2018 Department of Transportation roadside inspection in part due to bad rear brakes.

That's critical because the likely cause of the crash was determined to be brake failure  and Mallery's case essentially centered around proving that Hussain had failed to properly maintain the vehicle and ignored orders from the DOT to keep the Excursion off the road until the brakes were fixed and other safety issues were resolved.

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"The evidence shows that Mr. Hussain paid Mavis for certain brake services, but such services were not described or reflected accurately on the Mavis invoices," the plea deal document, dated Sept. 1, states.

The invoice issue could cast doubt on whether Hussain was completely to blame.

"As a trial strategy, giving the jury a villain to blame other than the defendant can be very effective," Lee Kindlon, one of Hussain's attorneys, told the Times Union.

Through a spokesperson, Mavis declined to comment Thursday. The company is a defendant in civil cases that the families of the victims have filed against the Hussain family and others.

Mallery's case also centered around the fact that under DOT regulations, a limo that size should have been undergoing inspections by the DOT every six months since a limo the size of the Excursion  which could seat 21 people  was required to be part of the DOT's bus safety program.

But Hussain's attorneys would have argued at trial that a "reasonable person" would think that taking the limo to Mavis to be serviced was not criminal, especially because the Mavis manager had told Hussain that the shop was the only one in the area that could service a limo seating 20 passengers. Mavis even put the Excursion through a Department of Motor Vehicles inspection, which the Excursion passed.

"Mr. Hussain relied upon Mavis  who told him that they were the only ones that could work on the limo  and they put themselves out there as experienced professionals," Kindlon told the Times Union. "Beyond that, the state of New York inspectors knew he was taking the car to Mavis and never told him it was insufficient."

Derrick Hogan, an attorney who leads the criminal practice at the Albany office of Tully Rinckey, said he can't blame Mallery for not speaking to the press at this point.

"The case is technically not over," Hogan said. "That can be why she won't comment. But I don't think they (district attorney's office) would have made that offer if they didn't think it was a fair and just offer."
JACKSON, Miss. (AP)  Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves said Thursday that he's appointing a former aide as his new chief of staff.

Parker Briden was one of the spokesmen for Reeves during the 2019 gubernatorial campaign. He became the governor's deputy chief of staff for external affairs in 2020, working on response to severe weather outbreaks and the COVID-19 pandemic. Briden left Reeves' office in April and became campaign manager for Bernie Moreno, a Republican U.S. Senate candidate in Ohio.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP)  A Tennessee man has been charged with taking part in the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, federal court documents showed.

Christopher Michael Cunningham of Nashville was charged Aug. 30 in District of Columbia federal court with illegally entering a restricted building, violent entry and disorderly conduct in the Capitol building, and other charges, court records showed.
ALBANY  A federal judge sentenced a Troy pizzeria owner to three years of probation Thursday for importing about 125,000 masks from China to sell above market value during early days of the pandemic.

Imran Selcuk, 35, was also fined $2,500 during his appearance before U.S. Magistrate Judge Christian Hummel.

In March, Selcuk pleaded guilty to price-gouging designated scarce materials, a federal misdemeanor that carried the potential of a year in jail.

In a letter to the judge, Selcuk's attorney said the Turkish native, who became an American citizen in 2012, is the son of a college vice president, comes from a "law abiding and caring family." He has a wife and five-year-old son, stated his Albany-based attorney, Nicholas Evanovich.

Selcuk obtained some 100,000 KN95 masks  the Chinese equivalent of the N95 masks used by U.S. health care workers  at $1 a piece. He acquired another 25,000 surgical-style masks at 50 cents each. Selcuk sold the KN95 masks at $10 a piece as of May 20, 2020, and in packages (10-pack for $58.99; 50-pack for $269.99; 1,000 for $4,499). And he sold the surgical masks ranging from a 10-pack for $15.99 to a 50-pack for $60, court papers said.

Selcuk sold the masks at his business, Big Apple Pizza on 14th Street in Troy, on its website and at a website he created called www.albanyfacemasks.com. Selcuk tried to sell the masks on eBay but the online marketplace stopped his attempt due to concerns over price-gouging, court papers said.

"At a time when the public was scrambling for personal protective equipment because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the defendant bought approximately 100,000 purported KN95 masks and additional surgical masks from an overseas manufacturer," Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Gadarian told the judge in a sentence recommendation memo.

The prosecutor told Hummel that Selcuk had zero background in importing masks and protocol in place to ensure that the masks met their supposed filtration level. He said Selcuk sold the masks at excessive prices not only compared with pre-pandemic pricing for similar equipment but also compared to his acquisition costs.

"For example, the defendant offered KN95 masks for sale at approximately 10 times what it cost him to purchase them," the prosecutor said. "Moreover, the defendant made claims about the masks performance levels and certifications that he never verified and that ended up being false."

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PPE case

In another, separate matter in U.S. District Court on Thursday, Jean R. Lavanture, 48, also known as "Rudy Lavanture, of Saugerties, became the third defendant to plead guilty in a scam to get fraudulent loans from a government pandemic relief program. Lavanture admitted he conspired with co-defendant, Sean M. Andre, to obtain $4,309,581 in Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans between June and August 2020 by submitting fraudulent loan applications in the names of four companies that Lavanture controlled.

"Each loan application grossly misrepresented each companys employees and payroll," acting U.S. Attorney Antoinette Bacon's office said in a news release. "Each application also included false corporate tax documents that Andre created as part of the scheme. Lavanture admitted that none of his companies actually had a payroll or employees."
Will Waldron/Times Union

CLAVERACK - State Police said they are investigating a car crash in Columbia County that killed two men on Sunday.

Troopers responded to the report of a car that went off Preusser Road after striking a utility pole and bursting into flames around 1 a.m., officials said.
SARATOGA SPRINGS  Saturdays are the big days at Saratoga Race Course. Always have been, always will be.

Trainers, owners and jockeys all want to shine on Saratoga Saturdays. If you win one of those races with the jumbo purses, the summer can be made in one afternoon.

Trainer Brad Cox has owned the day during the first seven weeks of the Saratoga summer. Don't blame him if he's greedy. He wants one more.

The 41-year-old Cox is hunting for the top prize in Saturday's Grade I, $1 million Jockey Club Gold Cup. His first full Saratoga season has brought plenty of hardware so far.

Cox won the $1.25 million Travers and $600,000 Jim Dandy with Essential Quality. And Knicks Go, who has called Cox's shedrow home this summer, took the $1 million Whitney. Cox was supposed to win those races as he ran the favorite in all of them.

He'll have to earn his money on Saturday because his horse in the 1 1/4-mile Jockey Club Gold Cup  Night Ops  is the 5-1 fourth choice on the morning line set by New York Racing Association oddsmaker David Aragona.

The Bill Mott-trained Forza Di Oro is the 8-5 morning-line favorite and is followed by Happy Saver (9-5), who won this race last year. Max Player (5-2), Chess Chief (15-1) and Forewarned (50-1) are also in the field.

Night Ops has run well this year, just not well enough to find the winner's circle. In six starts in 2021, he has four seconds and two third-place finishes.

In his most recent start, he was second behind Art Collector in the ungraded Alydar here on Aug. 6. Art Collector went on to win the Grade II, $800,000 Charles Town Classic last Friday night in West Virginia.

Night Ops, who will be ridden by Manny Franco, was also second in the Grade III Monmouth Cup behind Dr. Post on July 17, second in the ungraded Blame Sakes at Churchill Downs on May 29 and second in the Grade III Ben Ali at Keeneland on April 10.

"He knocks on the door a lot," Cox said outside his barn on the Oklahoma Training Track. "I wish he would knock it down."

Night Ops, a son of Warrior's Reward, has won six of 24 career starts and also has seven second-place finishes and four thirds.

His best win was the Grade III Cornhusker Handicap at Prairie Meadows in July of 2020. That's the same race Knicks Go won this year before coming to Saratoga to win the Whitney.

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Cox has been happy with the way Night Ops has worked at the Spa.

"He has a race over the track, which is valuable," Cox said. "And he has responded with two good works since. I hope he can move forward, and, if he does, he will be a factor."

In his most recent work, Night Ops went five furlongs in 1:02 on Travers day morning.

Cox is hoping that Night Ops will relish the Jockey Club Gold Cup distance. It will be the first time he has run the mile and a quarter. He has shown that he does his best running late.

"He ran really well against Art Collector and he has run against some really good horses," Cox said. "We are looking forward to giving him one more shot and we think he fits with this group."

If Night Ops can pull off a win in the Jockey Club Gold Cup, he will be able to join the exclusive group of Cox runners that have run so well here this summer.

"Those two races, the Whitney and the Travers, are as good as it gets," Cox said. "It's a huge accomplishment. I am proud of those horses and our team that does a fantastic job here and at other locations (Ellis Park in Kentucky and Indiana Grand in Indiana). It really has been a great summer for us."
ALBANY  Struggling business owners say many people are apparently choosing to continue collecting unemployment rather than returning to the workforce, including some who may be exploiting loopholes and cashing in on state benefits as well as the federal pandemic assistance thats scheduled to end on Monday.

The situation is devastating many businesses, from private law firms to contractors and the hospitality industry, especially restaurants, many of which are being forced into closure or to shorten their hours of operation. It has also affected theme parks, transportation hubs and colleges, where students returning to school this fall found dining halls shuttered due to a lack of available workers.

But as several federal pandemic unemployment benefits are set to expire next week, business owners are also hopeful that people will return to the workforce  something that has happened in states that declined to administer the federal aid.

Jimmy Vann, who owns Bombers Burrito Bar restaurants in Albany and Schenectady, said that before the coronavirus pandemic struck it was not uncommon for him to have 30 people apply for a job within six hours of posting a position on Craigslist.

Now, when he posts a job, including on platforms that hed never needed to use such as Facebook, Vann said, Ill get zero applicants, or one. Theres no pool of people.

Ive never even had to do this before, but I have a welcoming table in both restaurants with applications printed out. I see this at other places, Vann said.

Recently, a person filled out an application but did not write down their cellphone number so Vann had no way to contact the person to set up an interview or offer them a position. Other times, people agree to take a job, but dont show up for their first shift and are never heard from again.

In other instances, business owners interviewed for this story acknowledged, there appears to be a pattern of able-bodied workers applying for jobs  a requirement of receiving unemployment benefits is that someone actively seeks employment  but then declining to show up for interviews or accept jobs that have been offered.

Under the rules outlined by the state Department of Labor, those collecting unemployment must keep a log of their job applications and efforts to find work. But the rules dont specifically state that someone must follow through by showing up for an interview or taking a position that is offered.

The correlation between someone not showing up for a scheduled interview and collecting of benefits is a misguided narrative. Often someone may have found another job or decided they are not a qualified candidate for a job, Peter Brancato, a Department of Labor spokesman, said in a statement. DOL will investigate case referrals where definite offers of work have been made and refused. Refusing a job interview, where a person must still interview for a job, in and of itself is not disqualifying for benefits.

Brancato did not respond to a follow-up question about whether the agency has received complaints from business owners or other employers regarding individuals collecting unemployment who fail to follow through with job interviews or offers.

But there have been complaints. In July, according to records filed with the department that were shared with the Times Union, there was a formal complaint made by an Albany-area attorney who wrote a letter to the agency listing four people who were apparently receiving unemployment benefits but had either declined to show up for interviews or rejected positions that were offered.

In one instance, a woman who was offered a full-time job declined, saying she could only work 20 hours per week because that would enable her to continue collecting unemployment benefits.

Although unemployment numbers have improved since the height of the pandemic, the lack of workers has hobbled many industries and also hampered supply chains globally. For some, the decision to collect unemployment benefits may also be a balance: When factoring in expenses such as mileage, parking or child care, someone may make more or nearly as much income by staying home and collecting government aid.

Mark Eagan, president and CEO of the Capital Region Chamber, said the federal pandemic benefits approved by Congress that have been extended and paid out to millions of people have exacerbated the worker shortage.

Ive heard it almost daily since the spring, that its an impediment to bringing people back, Eagan said. For an entry-level position, because of the extra $300, theyre making the same or in some cases more (by not working). And if they can make the same or in some cases more not to work  thats why youre probably even seeing some restaurants right now that are not open for lunch, or theyre not open every day."

Eagan said the lack of workers has also been especially challenging for nonprofits that are unable to hire staff members.

The reality is that when Congress passed all of this, they thought it was going to take a long time for the economy to bounce back, Eagan said. And because of all of the other stimulus, it came back quicker. So the extra unemployment probably really wasnt needed for this period of time.

According to the regulations, if applicants do not search for work, document their work search, and submit proof if asked, they could lose their benefits and have to pay back benefits they received.

"The (Department of Labor) looks into all complaints filed by employers about people declining work while collecting benefits," said Brancato, the department's spokesman. "There were cases during the pandemic where it was determined that a person refused work without good cause and their benefits were terminated."

But it's unclear how many individuals  if any  have been penalized since March 2020, when New York documented its first coronavirus case, for either failing to document their efforts to find work or to accept a job offer.

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"During the pandemic (Department of Labor) staff was focused on getting benefits to the more than 4 million unemployed New Yorkers while simultaneously reviewing eligibility requirements," Brancato added.

In December, Democrats and Republicans in Congress debated the need to extend the federal benefits, which initially were providing $600 per week to unemployed individuals on top of their state unemployment benefits. The temporary benefit was eventually reduced to $300 per week, but the legislation also extended the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) program to provide eligibility for the self-employed, gig workers, freelancers and others in non-traditional employment who do not qualify for regular unemployment insurance.

In March, facing a weak jobs report, many Democrats in Congress began to join Republicans in questioning the impact of the benefits on the economy and signaled they may not support another extension beyond this month.

The office of Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer, who has said there was overwhelming support among Democrats to provide the additional federal aid, declined to comment.

More than 7 million people are expected to lose unemployment benefits next week, and many states have rejected calls from the administration of President Joe Biden to use emergency coronavirus funds to provide additional aid to those without jobs.

Nicholas Porreca, who has owned Pasta Pane in Clifton Park since 2015, said he has had a record level of business this summer but still has had to temporarily close his restaurant on Sundays and Mondays because of the lack of available workers.

Earlier this summer, a line cook quit, Porreca said. "He said, 'Well, I can make almost the same as what you pay me ($20 an hour)  if I claim unemployment. I can stay home and I dont have to pay for child care.'

Porreca said some restaurant operators are being forced to pick up their own food and other supplies because delivery drivers are not available.

More than two dozen states declined to administer the extended federal pandemic unemployment benefits. Porreca said a friend of his in the hospitality industry in Texas, one of the states that ended its participation in the federal program, said that when it was stopped there they suddenly received hundreds of job applications.

Porreca has a couple of openings for cooks and received more than 15 responses, but only two have gotten to the point where were communicating.

"Thats not what unemployment is for, Porreca said, referring to those who have chosen unemployment benefits over work. You have to check a box that says you are ready, willing and able to work  and all these people are not.

Vann, who said he is grateful for the devoted workers who have stayed and helped keep his businesses open, remains desperate for help. He had hoped to begin reopening restaurants in the Empire State and Harriman plazas that are normally crawling with state government workers. He added that people can apply in person or on his website, BombersBurritoBar.com.

"I was always taught by my parents to work hard and they instilled that into me, and I dont know if that philosophy is dwindling, Vann said. Dont get me wrong, theres still shining stars that are young and willing to work but it just seems like its almost like, especially after this whole pandemic thing, peoples outlook on work has completely changed.

With his sales cut roughly in half  the sort of downturn that has afflicted many restaurants and small businesses  Vann said costs remain and things still break that are expensive to fix.

Its been very difficult, he said. I hope I make it. Its scary.
News Reporter

Eddie Trizzino has been a reporter with the Times West Virginian since August of 2017, covering the entertainment, business and health beats. He spends most of his time listening to records, going to the movies and strolling through the town.
This Sept. 24, 2015, file photo shows Brooklyn Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio as Pope Francis, right, arrives at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York. The Vatican has concluded that allegations of sexual abuse dating back a half-century against DiMarzio do not have the semblance of truth," but an attorney for the accusers said they will continue to pursue their civil cases.
[September 03, 2021] 2D Fighting Game "Melty Blood: Type Lumina" Preorders Now Available for the Digital Release Introducing Character Features and Gameplay Videos

TOKYO, Sept. 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Project LUMINA (Notes Co., Ltd., Aniplex Inc., DELiGHTWORKS Inc.) has begun accepting preorders for the digital version of 2D fighting game "Melty Blood: Type Lumina" for Nintendo Switch/Xbox One as of August 26, and for PlayStation4 as of September 2. Products Available for Preorder

1. MELTY BLOOD: TYPE LUMINA Digital Deluxe Edition

Price: 69.99USD / 69.99EUR

* Includes a digital book looking back over the history of the Melty Blood series & the digital edition of the "Melty Blood Archives" music player. 2. MELTY BLOOD: TYPE LUMINA Digital Standard Edition

Price: 49.99USD / 49.99EUR Preorders Available Standard Edition Preorder

PlayStation4 https://store.playstation.com/product/UP2772-CUSA27480_00-MBTL000000000000

Nintendo Switch (United States)

https://www.nintendo.com/games/detail/melty-blood-type-lumina-switch/

Xbox One https://www.microsoft.com/store/productid/9nx4g02hn7ms Deluxe Edition Preorder

PlayStation4 https://store.playstation.com/product/UP2772-CUSA27480_00-2179878531310326>







https://www.nintendo.com/games/detail/melty-blood-type-lumina-deluxe-edition-switch/

Xbox One https://www.microsoft.com/store/productid/9pbkjmbm9qm1 * No preorders will be available for Steam. Please wait until the release date.

* Nintendo Switch: If you do not see your region listed on the official website, please check the Nintendo e-Shop on your Nintendo Switch.

Playable Characters & Battle Previews

Videos introducing the battle appearance, special moves, and in-game voices for 8 playable characters will be made available.

New videos will be linked on the official Twitter account ( https://twitter.com/MB_LUMINA ). Shiki Tohno: https://youtu.be/ntDXsbInCBs

During battle, he removes his glasses to use his Mystic Eyes of Death Perception. This ability and his knife are his primary weapons. A standard character with a simple and easy to use skill set who specializes in close-quarters combat. Arcueid Brunestud: https://youtu.be/rsAfzYB8EAY

Mainly uses her abilities as a True Ancestor in battle. An easy-to-use and powerful close-range fighter able to quickly rush in and overwhelm opponents. Ciel: https://youtu.be/MBCbpOwcNFM

A well-balanced fighter able to attack at long-range with a variety of projectiles, as well as physical prowess that excels in close-range combat. Akiha Tohno: https://youtu.be/-HJpHiPqt1U

This character lends herself towards a playstyle where she corners her opponents through specials that have a wide area of attack and easy-to-use regular attacks. Kouma Kishima: https://youtu.be/MU4BCq07XVo

Excelling in close-quarters combat, he possesses a super armor that allows him to attack while simultaneously withstanding attacks from his opponent. With the super armor, he has nothing to fear from his opponents and can throw everything into attacking. Hisui & Kohaku: https://youtu.be/orN3wFEPSNY

Hisui: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZfjoJquHvw

A technical fighter with a variety of projectiles and traps who also excels at speedy rush attacks. This character makes full use of her housekeeping (?) abilities, using cooking and cleaning tools, and even furnishings to attack opponents. Kohaku: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWlIZRjCe-E

A tricky fighter who excels in mid- and long-range combat with her far-reaching attacks and traps. Swinging her bamboo broom and drawing the sword hidden within, the unique and varied battle style of this character makes her very fun to play with. Miyako Arima: https://youtu.be/Qt62IWYEIZo

A small but strong and speedy close-range fighter with explosive power. What she lacks in range, she makes up for with abundant methods for breaking down her opponents' defenses. Noel joins the battle as a playable character!

Noel joins the battle as a new playable character for the first time in the Melty Blood series. This character specializes in mid-range combat using her large weapon to corner opponents. * The boxed edition will not be available for sale outside of Japan.

* Cross-platform battles between PlayStation4/Nintendo Switch/Xbox One/Steam are not supported.

* Please note that the content and specifications may change without prior notice. SOURCE DELiGHTWORKS

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[September 03, 2021] AM Best Affirms Credit Ratings of Tokio Marine & Nichido Fire Insurance Co., Ltd. and Its U.S. Subsidiaries

AM Best has affirmed the Financial Strength Rating (FSR) of A++ (Superior) and the Long-Term Issuer Credit Rating (Long-Term ICR) of "aa+" (Superior) of Tokio Marine & Nichido Fire Insurance Co., Ltd. (TMNF) (Japan). The outlook of these Credit Ratings (ratings) is stable. (See below for a detailed listing of the U.S. subsidiaries.) The ratings reflect TMNF's balance sheet strength, which AM Best assesses as strongest, as well as its strong operating performance, very favourable business profile and very strong enterprise risk management (ERM). TMNF's balance sheet strength assessment reflects risk-adjusted capitalisation that is at the strongest level, as measured by Best's Capital Adequacy Ratio (BCAR). Besides its sizable solvency capital of over JPY4 trillion (USD 36 billon), this assessment is also supported by the company's low financial leverage. TMNF has a track record of strong operating performance, mainly supported by steadily increasing premium income; a consistently strong and sizable domestic business with an average five-year combined ratio of approximately 95.5% (fiscal years 2016-2020), excluding its compulsory automobile liability insurance (CALI) business; and an expanding overseas portfolio. Although TMNF's international businesses recorded a decline in profit in fiscal year 2020 due to the adverse impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, AM Best expects the company's consistently strong net premium written (NPW) growth in recent years to result in better profitability over the long term. TMNF continues to maintain a strong and leading position in Japan, with a market share of over 25% in terms of NPW; the company also topped its domestic peers in all major lines of business in terms of NPW volume in fiscal year 2020. Over the past decade, TMNF has successfully expanded overseas and built a high quality book of overseas insurance business with its disciplined merger & acquisition strategy, which now accounts for approximately 35% of its NPW. AM Best believes that TMNF's leading position in its domestic market and increasingly sizable international business profile will help it navigate challenging market conditions while enhancing earnings over the medium to long term. The compan continues to have a sophisticated ERM framework that is embedded throughout its organisation. AM Best believes that TMNF's ERM programme is very effective in managing its group-wide exposure to potential earnings and capital volatility.



The stable outlooks reflect AM Best's expectation that TMNF will maintain its overall balance sheet assessment, supported by risk-adjusted capitalisation at the strongest level, as measured by BCAR, while maintaining the strong performance in its domestic non-life business and developing its overseas insurance business in a prudent manner over the intermediate term. Negative rating actions could occur if there is material deterioration in risk-adjusted capitalisation, such as substantial losses caused by investment volatility or large-scale natural catastrophes. Negative rating actions could also occur if there is significant deterioration in Tokio Marine Holdings, Inc.'s credit profile, including its risk-adjusted capitalisation, financial leverage or interest coverage levels.

The FSR of A++ (Superior) and the Long-Term ICRs of "aa+" (Superior), each with a stable outlook, have been affirmed for the following subsidiaries of Tokio Marine & Nichido Fire Insurance Co., Ltd.: Tokio Marine America Insurance Company

Trans Pacific Insurance Company

TM Specialty Insurance Company

TNUS Insurance Company Ratings are communicated to rated entities prior to publication. Unless stated otherwise, the ratings were not amended subsequent to that communication. 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 use of Best's Credit Ratings, Best's Preliminary Credit Assessments and AM Best press releases, please view Guide to Proper Use of Best's Ratings & Assessments. AM Best is a global credit rating agency, news publisher and data analytics provider specialising 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/20210903005312/en/

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[September 03, 2021] ETC Announces Fiscal 2022 First Quarter Results

SOUTHAMPTON, Pa., Sept. 03, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Environmental Tectonics Corporation (OTC Pink: ETCC) (ETC or the Company) today reported its financial results for the thirteen week period ended May 28, 2021 (the 2022 first quarter).

Robert L. Laurent, Jr., ETCs Chief Executive Officer and President stated, With portions of the global economy beginning to open, we are beginning to see the start of resurgence in ETCs business as evidenced by the improved results of our 2022 first quarter, during which we received new orders in excess of $10 million. Many of the projects in our international pipeline are also building momentum. Fiscal 2022 First Quarter Results of Operations Net Income (Loss) Attributable to ETC Net income attributable to ETC was $2.2 million, or $0.13 diluted earnings per share, in the 2022 first quarter, compared to a net loss attributable to ETC of $1.6 million during the 2021 first quarter, equating to $0.11 diluted loss per share. The $3.8 million variance is due to the combined effect of a $2.4 million increase in other income, net, a $1.2 million increase in gross profit, and a $0.3 million decrease in operating expenses. Net Sales Net sales in the 2022 first quarter were $6.1 million, an increase of $1.2 million, or 23.7%, compared to 2021 first quarter net sales of $4.9 million. The increase in net sales was due primarily to an increase in sales of Sterilizers to Domestic customers. Slightly less than half of the Sterilizer net sales in the 2022 first quarter stemmed from orders booked during the same quarter. Bookings in the 2022 first quarter were $10.2 million, of which $2.8 million were of Sterilizers and $6.0 million were of Aeromedical Training Solutions to a long-term International customer. Lower net sales were generated in the 2021 first quarter due to the combination of a lower backlog entering fiscal 2021 compounded with the effects of the COVID-19 global pandemic, which not only impacted the Companys ability to generate bookings, especially internationally, but also forced the closure of the Companys corporate headquarters and main production plant for about one-third of the 2021 first quarter in accordance with Pennsylvania state mandates. Gross Profit Gross profit for the 2022 first quarter was $1.7 million compared to $0.5 million in the 2021 first quarter, an increase of $1.2 million, or 221.3%. The increase in gross profit was due to the combined effect of an increase in net sales and an increase in gross profit margin. Gross profit margin as a percentage of net sales increased to 27.5% for the 2022 first quarter compared to 10.6% for the 2021 first quarter primarily due to the recognition in net sales of approximately $1.7 million, or 28.0%, of both 2022 first quarter net sales and the aforementioned $6.0 million International Aeromedical Training Solutions order, which traditionally produce our highest margins. The lower gross profit margin in the 2021 first quarter was a result of the lower net sales noted above not being able to support fixed overhead expenses. Operating Expenses Operating expenses, including sales and marketing, general and administrative, and research and development, for the 2022 first quarter were $1.7 million, a decrease of $0.3 million, or 13.6%, compared to $2.0 million for the 2021 first quarter. The decrease in operating expenses was due primarily to lower general and administrative expenses, which included a reduction in headcount and legal fees now that the claim litigation pertaining to a firm fixed-price contract dated June 14, 2010 to build a suite of research altitude chambers at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base has been settled. Other Income, Net Other income, net for the 2022 first quarter was $2.4 million compared to $17 thousand for the 2021 first quarter, a variance of $2.4 million due almost entirely from accounting for the forgiveness of the Paycheck Protection Program (the PPP) loan. Cash Flows from Operating, Investing, and Financing Activities During the 2022 first quarter, due primarily from the increase in accounts receivable, the increase in prepaid expenses and other current assets, and the decrease in other accrued liabilities, offset, in part by the decrease in contract assets, the Company used $0.1 million of cash for operating activities compared to $2.6 million during the 2021 first quarter. Under Accounting Standards Codification (ASC) 606, accounts such as contract assets and accounts receivable represent the timing differences of spending on production activities versus the billing and collecting of customer payments. Cash used for investing activities primarily relates to funds used for capital expenditures of equipment and software development. The Companys investing activities used $41 thousand during the 2022 first quarter compared to $14 thousand during the 2021 first quarter. The Companys financing activities used $1.0 million of cash during the 2022 first quarter for repayments under the Companys credit facility compared to providing $3.4 million of cash during the 2021 first quarter with proceeds from the PPP loan and borrowings under the Companys credit facility. About ETC ETC was incorporated in 1969 in Pennsylvania. For over five decades, we have provided our customers with products, services, and support. Innovation, continuous technological improvement and enhancement, and product quality are core values that are critical to our success. We are a significant supplier and innovator in the following areas: (i) software driven products and services used to create and monitor the physiological effects of flight, including high performance jet tactical flight simulation, fixed and rotary wing upset prevention and recovery and spatial disorientation, and both suborbital and orbital commercial human spaceflight, collectively, Aircrew Training Systems (ATS); (ii) altitude (hypobaric) chambers; (iii) hyperbaric chambers for multiple persons (multiplace chambers); (iv) Advanced Disaster Management Simulators (ADMS); (v) steam and gas (ethylene oxide) sterilizers; and (vi) environmental testing and simulation systems (ETSS). We operate in two primary business segments, Aerospace Solutions (Aerospace) and Commercial/ Industrial Systems (CIS). Aerospace encompasses the design, manufacture, and sale of: (i) ATS products; (ii) altitude (hypobaric) chambers; (iii) hyperbaric chambers for multiple persons (multiplace chambers); and (iv) ADMS, as well as integrated logistics support (ILS) for customers who purchase these products or similar products manufactured by other parties. These products and services provide customers with an offering of comprehensive solutions for improved readiness and reduced operational costs. Sales of our Aerospace products are made principally to U.S. and foreign government agencies and to civil aviation organizations. CIS encompasses the design, manufacture, and sale of: (i) steam and gas (ethylene oxide) sterilizers; and (ii) ETSS; as well as parts and service support for customers who purchase these products or similar products manufactured by other parties. We sell our sterilizers to medical device manufacturers, pharmaceutical manufacturers, and universities. We sell ETSS primarily to commercial automotive and heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) manufacturers. ETC-PZL Aerospace Industries Sp. z o.o. (ETC-PZL), our 95%-owned subsidiary in Warsaw, Poland, is currently our only operating subsidiary. ETC-PZL manufactures certain simulators and provides software to support products manufactured domestically within our Aerospace segment. The majority of our net sales are generated from long-term contracts with U.S. and foreign government agencies (including foreign military sales (FMS) contracted through the U.S. Government) for the research, design, development, manufacture, integration, and sustainment of ATS products, including altitude (hypobaric) and multiplace chambers (Chambers), and the simulators manufactured and sold through ETC-PZL, collectively, Aeromedical Training Solutions. The Company also enters into long-term contracts with domestic customers for the sale of sterilizers and ETSS. Net sales of ADMS are generally much shorter term in nature and vary between domestic and international customers. We generally provide our products and services under fixed-price contracts. ETCs unique ability to offer complete systems, designed and produced to high technical standards, sets it apart from its competition. ETC is headquartered in Southampton, PA. For more information about ETC, visit http://www.etcusa.com/ . Forward-looking Statements This news release contains forward-looking statements, which are based on managements expectations and are subject to uncertainties and changes in circumstances. Words and expressions reflecting something other than historical fact are intended to identify forward-looking statements, and these statements may include words such as may, will, should, expect, plan, anticipate, believe, estimate, future, predict, potential, intend, or continue, and similar expressions. We base our forward-looking statements on our current expectations and projections about future events or future financial performance. Our forward-looking statements are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and assumptions about ETC and its subsidiaries that may cause actual results to be materially different from any future results implied by these forward-looking statements. We caution you not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. Contact: Mark Prudenti, CFO Phone: (215) 355-9100 x1531 E-mail: mprudenti@etcusa.com - Financial Tables Follow - Table A ENVIRONMENTAL TECTONICS CORPORATION SUMMARY TABLE OF RESULTS (in thousands, except per share information) Thirteen

weeks ended Thirteen

weeks ended Variance 28-May-21 29-May-20 $ % Net sales $ 6,080 $ 4,914 $ 1,166 23.7 Cost of goods sold 4,406 4,393 13 0.3 Gross profit 1,674 521 1,153 221.3 Gross profit margin % 27.5% 10.6% 16.9% 159.4% Operating expenses 1,722 1,993 (271) -13.6 Operating loss (48) (1,472) 1,424 -96.7 Operating margin % -0.8% -30.0% 29.2% -97.3% Interest expense, net 151 156 (5) -3.2 Other income, net (2,409) (17) (2,392) 14070.6 Income (loss) before income taxes 2,210 (1,611) 3,821 Pre-tax margin % 36.3% -32.8% 69.1% Income tax provision 20 20 - 0.0 Net income (loss) 2,190 (1,631) 3,821 Loss attributable to non-controlling interest 3 2 1 50.0 Net income (loss) attributable to ETC 2,193 (1,629) 3,822 Preferred Stock dividends (121) (121) - 0.0 Income (loss) attributable to common and





participating shareholders $ 2,072 $ (1,750) $ 3,822 Per share information: Basic earnings (loss) per common and participating share: Distributed earnings per share: Common $ - $ - $ - Preferred $ 0.02 $ 0.02 $ - 0.0 Undistributed earnings (loss) per share: Common $ 0.13 $ (0.11) $ 0.24 Preferred $ 0.13 $ (0.11) $ 0.24 Diluted earnings (loss) per share $ 0.13 $ (0.11) $ 0.24 Total basic weighted average common and

participating shares 15,569 15,569 Total diluted weighted average shares 15,569 15,569





Table B ENVIRONMENTAL TECTONICS CORPORATION OTHER SELECTED FINANCIAL HIGHLIGHTS (amounts in thousands) Thirteen

weeks ended

28-May-21 Thirteen

weeks ended

29-May-20 EBITDA * $ 2,679 $ (1,148) As of 28-May-21 26-Feb-21 Working capital $ 8,954 $ 10,032 Total shareholders equity (deficit) $ 2,061 $ (76) * In addition to disclosing financial results that are determined in accordance with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America (U.S. GAAP), we also disclose Earnings Before Income Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization (EBITDA). The presentation of a non-U.S. GAAP financial measure such as EBITDA is intended to enhance the usefulness of financial information by providing a measure that management uses internally to evaluate our expenses and operating performance and factors into several of our financial covenant calculations. A reader may find this item important in evaluating our performance. Management compensates for the limitations of using non-U.S. GAAP financial measures by using them only to supplement our U.S. GAAP results to provide a more complete understanding of the factors and trends affecting our business.





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[September 03, 2021] QIAGEN to Enter the DAX - Germany's Leading Stock Market Index

QIAGEN N.V. (NYSE: QGEN; Frankfurt Prime Standard: QIA) announced today it has been chosen to be included in the DAX (Deutscher Aktienindex), the leading German stock market index in Germany. "Joining the ranks of Germany's top publicly listed companies is a great milestone and achievement for QIAGEN," said Thierry Bernard, Chief Executive Officer of QIAGEN N.V. "The relevance of molecular testing to fight disease, develop medicines and conquer scientific frontiers has never been stronger. Our employees are the reason for this achievement and have never been more committed to achieving our vision at QIAGEN of making improvements in life possible." Roland Sackers, Chief Financial Officer of QIAGEN added: "Our inclusion in the DAX 40 is a recognition of the progress QIAGEN has made to deliver long-term profitable growth and create value for shareholders and other stakeholders. Even more important has been the contribution of QIAGEN's solutions to increasing our knowledge about the biology of life and improving outcomes for patients. This goes to the heart of what our employees do every day and making a significant impact on daily life around the world." QIAGEN was built on a revolutionary way to extract DNA - composed of the building blocks of life - from a wide range of biological samples. As a spinout of the University of Duesseldorf, QIAGEN has become a global company on track to achieve more than $2 billion in sales in 2021. With about 6,000 employees worldwide, QIAGEN's corporate headquarter is in Venlo, the Netherlands, while the operational headquarters site is n Hilden, Germany.



QIAGEN is implementing a successful growth strategy that aims to create significant value for its stakeholders, including shareholders. The company's portfolio of Sample to Insight portfolio address the growing molecular testing needs of customers across the continuum from research and pharmaceutical R&D in the life sciences to clinical molecular diagnostics. The changes in the DAX, which is being expanded to include the 40 largest companies based on market capitalization, is set to take place on Monday, September 20, 2021. This is also the date when QIAGEN will no longer be included in Germany's MDAX, which will now be the index for the next 50 companies based on market capitalization after the DAX.

QIAGEN also continues as a member of Germany's TecDAX, which is comprised of the 30 largest German companies from the technology sector. Additionally, QIAGEN's Global Shares are listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), making it one of only a few companies listed on exchanges in both countries. For more information, please visit http://www.qiagen.com About QIAGEN QIAGEN N.V., a Netherlands-based holding company, is the leading global provider of Sample to Insight solutions that enable customers to gain valuable molecular insights from samples containing the building blocks of life. Our sample technologies isolate and process DNA, RNA and proteins from blood, tissue and other materials. Assay technologies make these biomolecules visible and ready for analysis. Bioinformatics software and knowledge bases interpret data to report relevant, actionable insights. Automation solutions tie these together in seamless and cost-effective workflows. QIAGEN provides solutions to more than 500,000 customers around the world in Molecular Diagnostics (human healthcare) and Life Sciences (academia, pharma R&D and industrial applications, primarily forensics). As of June 30, 2021, QIAGEN employed approximately 5,900 people in over 35 locations worldwide. Further information can be found at http://www.qiagen.com Source (News - Alert) : QIAGEN N.V. Category: Corporate View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210903005443/en/

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[September 02, 2021]

Antennas Direct And Mohu Launch Promotion To Provide Antennas To Consumers Impacted By Locast Ruling

ELLISVILLE, Mo., Sept. 2, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, Antennas Direct and Mohu, the leading HDTV antenna providers, announced a 30% discount on their products for all customers, especially those affected by the Locast service suspension. The coupon code LOCAST30 is valid for TV antennas and accessories on www.antennasdirect.com or www.gomohu.com until September 13th.

Additionally, Antennas Direct is giving away a free ClearStream Eclipse antenna to the first 1,000 people who email support@antennasdirect.com with a screenshot or photo of the letter they received from Locast announcing its service suspension.

Antennas Direct and Mohu are focused on providing consumers with cutting-edge antennas that provide affordable, reliable access to free broadcast channels. With Locast suspending its service, this leaves many subscribers without the broadcast channels they're used to viewing. Antennas Direct and Mohu hope to solve this disconnect for these cord-cutters.

"Unfortunately, the Locast ruling is yet another example of cord-cutting services creating huge headaches for consumers," said Richard Schneider, CEO and founder of Antennas Direct. "We don't want consumers to suffer or lose access to channels they're used to viewing. HDTV antennas have always provided free access to broadcast networks and we hope to connect with any Locast subscribers to fill that viewing gap."

Antennas Direct and Mohu have a wide selection of indoor and outdoor antenna products to choose from. Top-performing indoor antennas include the Mohu Leaf 50 , the ClearStream Eclipse , and the Mohu Leaf Metro , and popular outdoor antennas include the ClearStream 4MAX , the ClearStream MAX-V , and the Mohu Sail . Consumers who are interested in understanding which antenna is right for them  based on their location  can visit Antennas Direct's transmitter locator and use Mohu's antenna comparison function while shopping online.







For more information about this promotion, visit: Antennas Direct or Mohu 's blog. To learn about Antennas Direct or Mohu, please visit www.antennasdirect.com or www.gomohu.com .

About Antennas Direct:

Antennas Direct is the #1 LEADER in antenna technology with a fresh take on modernization and a foundation built on a culture of innovation and forward-thinking that has been a driving force for over 15 years. The company is the largest manufacturer of over-the-air outdoor antennas specifically tuned for the core-DTV frequencies broadcast in North America. Antennas Direct are the pioneers of the cord-cutting movement, spreading antenna awareness to millions of consumers since 2003. The company has invested major resources into the discovery and implementation of new antenna designs for digital reception. The firm is a member of the Inc. 500|5000 Hall of Fame and Future of TV Coalition. Visit www.antennasdirect.com for more information.

About Mohu:

Mohu, The Cord Cutting Company now owned and operated by Antennas Direct, is part of the largest privately-owned consumer electronics manufacturer in North America. Dedicated to leading the TV cord-cutting revolution, the company's motto is "Be Set Free", making high-quality, easy-to-install, cost-effective HDTV antennas and cord-cutting products which enable consumers to have an exceptional experience without burdensome costs or constraints. Since introducing the world's first paper-thin Leaf HDTV indoor antenna in 2011, Mohu has helped its customers save more than $1 billion by eliminating monthly cable and satellite bills in favor of the TV they want at a cost they can control. For more information, visit www.gomohu.com .

Media Contact:

antennasdirect@shiftcomm.com

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/antennas-direct-and-mohu-launch-promotion-to-provide-antennas-to-consumers-impacted-by-locast-ruling-301368861.html

SOURCE Antennas Direct
[September 02, 2021] BrainChip Celebrates Milestone Podcast With Leadership Roundtable

BrainChip Holdings Ltd (ASX: BRN), (OTCQX: BRCHF), a leading provider of ultra-low power high performance artificial intelligence technology, today announced that the 10th episode of its monthly podcast, "This is our Mission," will be positioned as a fireside chat featuring top BrainChip executives. The podcast will be published on September 7 at 4 p.m. PDT and shared across the company's podcast platforms and the BrainChip website. This informal, "fireside chat"-style discussion features BrainChip founder and CEO Peter van der Made, co-founder and Chief Development Officer Anil Mankar, Chief Financial Officer Ken Scarince and Vice President of Worldwide Sales Rob Telson talking about where the company as a whole currently stands, the progress of the Akida chip, and future prospects of both the technology and the difference it will make in revolutionizing artificial intelligence at the Edge. "What an exciting opportunity for those interested in the impact neural networking processors will have across industries and as part of people's daily lives to be able to be in the room, as it were, with these pioneers of the Akida event-based processor," said podcast host and moderator Telson. "We have had a tremendous response to our monthly podcast series. Though we get a chance on a daily basis to interact with one another, we are all eager to share those interactions with our audience as we talk about where we started, where we are today and how bright of a future we are poised to have." BrainChip's Akida brings artificial intelligence to the edge in a way that existing technologies are not capable. The solution is high-performance, small, ultra-low power ad enables a wide array of edge capabilities. The Akida (NSoC) and intellectual property, can be used in applications including Smart Home, Smart Health, Smart City and Smart Transportation. These applications include but are not limited to home automation and remote controls, industrial IoT, robotics, security cameras, sensors, unmanned aircraft, autonomous vehicles, medical instruments, object detection, sound detection, odor and taste detection, gesture control and cybersecurity.



The BrainChip Podcast is a monthly event intended to provide company and industry insight for the engineering community in target markets, as well as analysts, technical and financial press and investors. Past podcast episodes are available to listen to at https://brainchipinc.com/brainchip-podcasts/ About BrainChip Holdings Ltd (ASX: BRN, OTCQX: BRCHF)

BrainChip is a global technology company that is producing a groundbreaking neuromorphic processor that brings artificial intelligence to the edge in a way that is beyond the capabilities of other products. The chip is high performance, small, ultra-low power and enables a wide array of edge capabilities that include on-chip training, learning and inference. The event-based neural network processor is inspired by the spiking nature of the human brain and is implemented in an industry standard digital process. By mimicking brain processing BrainChip has pioneered a processing architecture, called Akida, which is both scalable and flexible to address the requirements in edge devices. At the edge, sensor inputs are analyzed at the point of acquisition rather than through transmission via the cloud to a data center. Akida is designed to provide a complete ultra-low power and fast AI Edge Network for vision, audio, olfactory and smart transducer applications. The reduction in system latency provides faster response and a more power efficient system that can reduce the large carbon footprint of data centers. Additional information is available at https://www.brainchipinc.com Follow BrainChip on Twitter (News - Alert) : https://www.twitter.com/BrainChip_inc

Follow BrainChip on LinkedIn (News - Alert) : https://www.linkedin.com/company/7792006 View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210902005753/en/

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[September 02, 2021] Axis Communications Celebrates 25 Years of Network Camera Evolution

SINGAPORE, Sept. 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Axis Communications, the global market leader in the network video market, celebrates the 25 year anniversary of the network IP camera. The Swedish-based company has built on its strong heritage of excellence in networked hardware products to become the global market leader in IP-based network video surveillance, driving the evolution from analog to IP to AI in cameras. In 1996, Axis connected a camera to the network and with that, the world's first network camera was born. Since then, Axis Communications has evolved the camera offering: 1998 - first encoder

1999 - world's first network video chip and the most sold video security camera for 5 years in a row

2001 - First video analytics (VMD)

2008 - First use of H.264 compression for network cameras

2009 - First network cameras with HDTV, remote focus and zoom functions

2006 - First downloadable video analytics ( AXIS 242S IV Video Server )

) 2010 - First thermal network camera

2011 - First platform for analytics and introduction of Lightfinder technolog y

2011 - First launch of AXIS Camera Application Platform (ACAP ) platform

) platform 2013 - First launch of physical access control solutions

2015 - Launch of open standard network and Axis Zipstream technology

2016 - Launch of camers with pan, tilt, roll, zoom (PTRZ) technology and laser focus technology

2017 - First launch of network radar technology

2020 - First launch of deep learning camera

2021 - Generation 4 of AXIS Camera Application Platform (ACAP ). AXIS Camera Application Platform (ACAP) is an open application platform that enables members of Axis Application Development Partner (ADP) Program to develop applications that can be downloaded and installed on Axis network cameras and video encoders. ACAP makes it possible to develop applications for a wide range of applications such as security applications that improve surveillance systems and facilitate investigation, business intelligence applications that improve business efficiency and camera feature plug-ins that add value beyond the Axis product's core functionality





Since 1996, the Swedish-based company has advanced its business operations to serve customers across various segments such as retail, transportation, banking and finance, cities, government, education, healthcare, smart buildings, data centres, industrial and manufacturing, law enforcement, stadiums, casinos and many more. Today, Axis has offices in 50 countries, with over 3,800 employees worldwide and generated total sales of USD$1.2 billion in 2020, and more than one million of its network cameras have been installed worldwide. Axis has achieved this incredible success through its unwavering commitment to building and nurturing its partner community. Today Axis worldwide community of system integrators and resellers is more than 24,000 strong. Boudewijn Pesch, Vice President of APAC at Axis Communications commented, "At Axis Communications, we are constantly looking for ways to evolve and revolutionise the network camera technologies, from inventing IP cameras, to driving innovation in thermal cameras, to explosion-protected cameras and AI in cameras. We see the future of network cameras coming with AI and deep learning capabilities. To lead in this AI space, Axis will be introducing new versions of its own developed ARTPEC chip, our deep learning initiatives, the new ACAP platform and of course all the exciting new products, including the addition of siren systems to expand the breadth of our audio solutions." About Axis Communications Axis enables a smarter and safer world by creating network solutions that provide insights for improving security and new ways of doing business. As the industry leader in network video, Axis offers products and services for video surveillance and analytics, access control, intercom and audio systems. Axis has more than 3,800 dedicated employees in over 50 countries and collaborates with partners worldwide to deliver customer solutions. Axis was founded in 1984 and has its headquarters in Lund, Sweden. For more information about Axis, please visit our website www.axis.com . SOURCE Axis Communications

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[September 02, 2021] Virgin Mobile launches Spacetalk Adventurer: A smartwatch designed to keep kids connected while giving parents peace of mind

SYDNEY, Sept. 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Spacetalk Ltd. (ASX:SPA, www.spacetalkwatch.com) is pleased to announce that Virgin Mobile has today announced the addition of Spacetalk Adventurer to its product portfolio, offering kids an innovative, stylish and safe way to stay in touch. The new smartwatch, designed for children aged 5-12, offers kids a new level of independence within safety parameters set by their parents  ideal as kids head back to school. As a smartphone, watch and GPS all in one, Spacetalk Adventurer is packed with capabilities and is designed with safety at its core. Adventurer is built to be age responsible, providing restricted access to the internet so parents can rest assured their children can't access inappropriate content. Instead, kids and parents alike can enjoy features including reward stars, messaging, fitness and alarms, as well as a host of enhanced parental controls such as school mode, safe zones and controlled contacts. Key features of Spacetalk Adventurer: 4G mobile network connectivity via a Virgin Mobile SIM

Scratch resistant and IP67 water resistance

Integrated heart rate sensor along with fitness and wellness features through the Spacetalk app

Hi-res 5MP front facing camera

Improved high accuracy GPS locator with Google Map Key features of the Spacetalk app: Cntrolled contacts so children can only make and receive calls from a list of pre-approved contacts

School mode allows parents to define classroom periods, so the smartwatch is totally distraction free, functioning as a watch only until school mode is switched off

Safe zones enable parents to set defined geo areas via the Spacetalk app and get an instant update when the wearer arrives/leaves the pre-programmed zones, for example, home/school

Reward stars to set goals and reward children for good behavior



Director of Mobile Product and Propositions at Virgin Mobile, Annie Brooks , said: "We're excited to expand our wearables range by stepping into the kids' market to offer our customers the market-leading, built-for-purpose kids smartphone watch  Spacetalk Adventurer. It is a fantastic addition to our product range, offering customers a practical and safe device for children to enjoy, while giving parents reassurance and peace of mind that their kids can keep connected safely." CEO and Founder of Spacetalk, Mark Fortunatow, said: "Spacetalk is rapidly becoming part of the must-have safety and communication fabric for young children and family's lives. We're absolutely thrilled to be part of Virgin Mobile's device portfolio."

Virgin Mobile customers can get Spacetalk Adventurer in Midnight Black from just 12 per month with 1GB of data or from 13 per month with 2GB data on a 36-month contract. The device also comes with interchangeable straps that can be purchased via Spacetalk's website. The Spacetalk app can be download for free from the Apple App Store and Google Play, offering a range of features and providing parents access to their child's account to see their activity for the day, monitor their usage and activate parental controls. The app subscription (RRP 3.99 per month for up to two watches), is included in all of Virgin Mobile Spacetalk Adventurer tariffs, meaning customers who purchase the device from Virgin Mobile can save up to 143.64 over a 36 month contract. About Spacetalk Ltd. Spacetalk Ltd. (ASX: SPA) is a global technology provider of secure communication solutions for families to stay connected and protected. Spacetalk's range of all-in-one smartphone GPS watches for children (Spacetalk Kids and Spacetalk Adventurer) and seniors (Spacetalk Life) are purpose built with tailored features, design qualities and best practice data encryption, security and privacy technologies, for families to stay confidently connected. Fun, fashionable, secure and technologically advanced, Spacetalk devices deliver confidence for the child and senior wearer, enhanced controls for the guardian, and engaging functionalities for the whole family to stay connected. The Spacetalk App is designed to provide a family environment for fun, engaging and secure media consumption beyond its device control functionalities for the guardian. Every linked contact  parents, grandparents, extended family members and friends  regardless of whether they are Android or iOS users, can interact with linked Spacetalk devices and each other through the Spacetalk App. Spacetalk was founded in 2001 and listed on the ASX in 2003 as MGM Wireless Limited, which developed the world's first SMS student absence notification platform for schools and went on to become Australia's most successful school messaging company. On 12 November 2020 the Company changed its name to Spacetalk Ltd. SOURCE Spacetalk Ltd.

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[September 02, 2021]

HLDS Launches BTS Character Brand "TinyTAN" Licensed Product "Clip Mobile Charger Pack"

TOKYO, Sept. 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Hitachi-LG Data Storage (HLDS) has announced the launch of a licensed product from the BTS character brand "TinyTAN".

The "TinyTAN Clip Mobile Charger Pack," which has gathered questions since Teaser was released on HLDS' official Instagram on August 31, was fully released on HLDS' Instagram on September 3.

It will also be released at 7:0 p.m. on the popular YouTuber Heisei flamingo channel.







"TinyTAN Clip Mobile Charger Pack" is a special package composed of various smartphone accessories such as fully wireless auxiliary battery clip and finger ring iRing, which is introduced by HLDS for the first time. It allows the battery to be freely detached and used more conveniently. It was also made to make it convenient to watch videos anytime, anywhere using a C-type cradle.

In addition, the package includes a key ring designed with BTS' first Billboard No. 1 song Dynamite as the motif, wrist strap of the TinyTAN logo, and a sticker of various designs that can decorate the product according to preference.

The "TinyTAN Clip Mobile Charger Pack" will be released in two editions: the white edition, which emphasizes neatness and simplicity, and the character edition, which emphasizes cuteness and color.

Meanwhile, HLDS is also announcing the release of other related products in addition to this product, raising consumers' curiosity.

More detailed information on the 'TinyTAN Clip Mobile Charger Pack' can be found on Hitachi-LG Data Storage's official website.

SOURCE Hitachi-LG Data Storage
[September 02, 2021] ACE Exchange Tackles Cryptocurrency Money Laundering With KPMG, KGI Bank and CYBAVO

TAIPEI, Sept. 2, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- As nations around the world step up trying to take control over cryptocurrencies to prevent financial crimes, ACE Exchange, a leading cryptocurrency exchange based in Taiwan, has proactively implemented numerous measures to meet relevant requirements and help tackle money laundering, aiding Taiwan's regulatory authorities to establish a secure and transparent cryptocurrency environment. To achieve this, ACE Exchange has formed partnerships with KPMG, KGI Bank, CYBAVO and Lockton to offer protection against anti-money laundering (AML) and other financial crimes on its platform, providing a secured crypto trading platform for all users. Crypto assets have gained tremendous traction in recent years especially among young investors. Its exponential growth in popularity has also raised concerns over the inherent risks of unregulated transactions between cryptocurrency holders. To prevent cryptocurrencies from becoming the conduits for money laundering, authorities have tightened regulations for the industry, including the new Taiwan's cryptocurrency rules enacted on July 1 which require cryptocurrency exchanges to verify and evaluate user identities.



"ACE Exchange has cooperated with KPMG to put in place relevant measures to fight against money laundering and terrorism financing practices by strictly scrutinizing user information and identities even before the rollout of the new Taiwanese AML regulations for cryptocurrencies. We have also joint hands with Taiwan's criminal and investigative authorities to help establish well-rounded anti-money laundering mechanisms within the crypto space," said David Pan, Founder of ACE Exchange. Security is ACE Exchange's top priority

ACE Exchange provides dual protection for the New Taiwan dollar and crypto assets. In 2020, the company collaborated with KGI Bank to set up "FIA Fund Trust Custody". Powered by the world-renowned blockchain security firm CYBAVO, ACE Exchange is equipped with a state-of-the-art digital asset security system and third-party digital wallet for users. Meanwhile ACE Exchange's partnership with the S&P AA-rated international insurance company Lockton allows users to enjoy all-around protection. Since its inception, ACE Exchange has set priority on security and user protection, which laid a robust groundwork for regulatory compliance regarding AML and KYL in partnership with world-leading law firms, accounting firms and financial institutions. In early 2018, ACE Exchange received guidance from KPMG to set up transaction procedures and ensure regulatory compliance to address AML and countering the financing of terrorism (CTF) risks. In 2021, Rex Chu, Risk Consultant and Executive Vice President of Forensic Accounting Services of KPMG Taiwan, assisted ACE Exchange in planning the product development and operating procedures in accordance with relevant Taiwan's laws and regulations, to meet the standards of high-profile financial banks. It has placed ACE Exchange at the forefront of the crypto industry in building and strengthening its risk management protocols and user protection mechanisms. About ACE Exchange Established in 2018 by David Pan, former COO of KPMG Innovation and Startups, ACE Exchange is one of the biggest cryptocurrency platforms with best-in-class digital security measures in Taiwan. It currently ranks second in Taiwan in terms of trading volumes in Bitcoin, Ethereum and StableCoins. The brand is committed to building the most professional Fiat to Crypto exchange and providing a channel for all Taiwanese people to access cryptocurrencies easily. View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ace-exchange-tackles-cryptocurrency-money-laundering-with-kpmg-kgi-bank-and-cybavo-301368898.html SOURCE ACE Exchange

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[September 03, 2021] MIT Centre for Future Skills Excellence commences First Batch of PG Diploma in AI & ML in association with Microsoft and CloudThat

PUNE, India, Sept. 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- MIT Centre for Future Skills Excellence, MIT Art, Design and Technology University yesterday commenced its first batch of post graduate diploma programme in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in association with Microsoft and CloudThat Technologies. The PG Diploma will span over 50 weeks and 3 trimesters, which include mentorships, Global Microsoft certifications, practical hands-on, industry internships and capstone projects. The first cohort of student aspirants and working professionals were welcomed in the virtual mode on Thursday, Sept. 02, 2021 through the online induction programme because of the pandemic; dignitaries from Microsoft, CloudThat, and MIT-ADT University inspired students in their new educational journey. The MIT Group of Institutions, widely recognized for engineering, technology, and management programmes, launched MIT Centre for Future Skills Excellence (MIT-FuSE), an endeavour to provide students and working professionals with specialized training and global certification in emerging technologies. PG Diploma in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, developed for the industry, by the industry with a better and efficient higher education ecosystem and aims to generate the most employable and smart AI and ML techno-functional professionals. CloudThat Technologies is the first company in India to offer Cloud Training and Consulting services for mid-market and enterprise clients from across the globe. Founded by Mr. Bhavesh Goswami, CloudThat has been empowering tech professionals with best-in-class training and consulting services. Hence, this training facilitator makes this most sought-after PG Diploma a better learning experience with potential job opportunities. During the induction programme, Prof. Dr. Mangesh Karad, Executive President & Vice-Chancellor MIT-ADT University, said, "Working professionals today are challenged with keeping themselves updated with future emerging skills to sustain in this dynamic economy. MIT-ADT University has identified the emerging technology frontiers such as AI & ML, Cloud Computing, Cybersecurity, Blockchain, RPA, IoT, Digital Supply Chain, Procurement & Networks for technology aspirants and the curriculum has been integrated with relevant project-based learning to build future India." He congratulated these students in making the right decision in choosing this course for their career advancement.



Chief Guest, Mr. Bhavesh Goswami, Founder & CEO, CloudThat Technologies, shared anecdotes from his journey of starting his career with Java as a young budding tech enthusiast. He said, "In the modern world, if you are trained with a few technologies and Programming languages, only then you will be relevant to the industry, as against to the earlier generation, who could be absorbed immediately in companies by even one of the programming languages or technologies. Students have to be enthusiastic, ever curious and ever learning to progress better in this field." The guest of honour for the Induction Programme was Dr. Vinnie Jauhari, Director, Education Advocacy, Microsoft Corporation India Pvt. Ltd. She stated, "Edtech Companies are progressing in leaps and bounds." She reiterated, "Students must have a growth mindset and be curious and only this will help them evolve more as a professional." She emphasized on the use of social media to follow the latest trends and upgrades in technology. She suggested that students should be aware of all relevant certifications on AI like Microsoft, as all the companies accept them as proof of credentials. And sustainability is the core aspect of technology, she said.

Senior Trainer & Facilitator, Mr. Sharat Kanthi congratulated the students on their choosing the right course. He stated, "Academic and corporate approach has collaborated together in this training. This programme has been aligned together with industry standards and hence the students will be absorbed immediately in companies and startups." He reiterated that the PG diploma course has been curated in such a way. Prof. Tejas Karad, Project Director at MIT Group of Institutions graced the event. He applauded the joint efforts of MIT-FuSE, CloudThat, and Microsoft which has been made possible due to thoughtful integration. He observed, "The diversity of this cohort will help the students to progress well in this field." He congratulated the students who have chosen wisely this course that will help them understand the technology and get better opportunities in the corporate world. Prof. Suraj Bhoyar, Project Director at MIT-FuSE highlighted the MIT Centre for Future Skills Excellence's vision and mission as "transforming and enabling individuals to become successful professionals who will impact tomorrow's economy." He stressed the rising use of AI, machine learning, and automation in the workplace, as well as the growth of remote employees and gig workers as a significant portion of the workforce that would require ongoing upskilling. The global certifications are included in the PG Diploma Programmes considering skill-based job demands across the world, which will undoubtedly aid the student community, as well as recent graduates and working professionals, in overcoming the loss of learning opportunities caused by the global pandemic. It's crucial to remember that only those that put in the time and effort to upskill and improve their existing abilities will be successful in the future. He detailed the delivery mechanism of the course with unique internship engagement during trimester pattern & learning framework. Aspirants must continue to push for new paradigms of knowledge and capabilities due to the ever-changing nature of the future corporate environment. All programmes will be delivered through LMS and can be accessed via a web-based learning app. In September 2021, the next cohort of SAP, AI/ML, Robotic Process Automation, Cloud Computing, and Cybersecurity will begin. To learn the future skills today for a better tomorrow, complete your applications today on www.mitfutureskills.org About MIT-ADT University



MAEER's Trust which is known to set the strong precedence for the privatization of Engineering education in Maharashtra had taken a first mover's advantage by establishing the Maharashtra Institute of Technology (MIT-Pune), in 1983, which continues to remain the flagship institute of the group.



MIT Art, Design and Technology University, Pune has been established under the MIT Art, Design and Technology University Act, 2015 (Maharashtra Act No. XXXIX of 2015). The University commenced its operations successfully from 27th June 2016. The University is a self-financed institution and empowered to award the degrees under section 22 of the University Grants Commission act, 1956. The University has a unique blend of Art, Design, and Technology as the core of its academics. Recently, MIT Art, Design and Technology University, Pune has accomplished the following accolades: Ranked 26th for ARIIA 2020 by the Ministry of Education, Govt. of India . Received 5 Star rating for exemplary performance by the Ministry of Education's Innovation Council, Govt. of India . Conferred with Best University Campus Award by ASSOCHAM, New Delhi Granted with Atal Incubation Centre under ATAL Innovation Mission, NITI Aayog, Govt. of India MIT Art, Design and Technology University has been taking a holistic approach towards imparting education wherein the students are being motivated to build a complete winning personality which is "physically fit, intellectually sharp, mentally alert and spiritually elevated". The students are being encouraged to participate in yoga, meditation, physical training, spiritual elevation, communication skills, and other personality development programmes. Currently, we have 7500+ students studying in various schools of higher education under the University viz. Engineering and Technology, Food Technology, Bioengineering, Arts, Design, Marine Engineering, Journalism and Broadcasting, Film and Television, Music (Hindustani Classical Vocal and Instrumental), Teacher Education, and Vedic Sciences. Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1479539/MIT_ADTU_Logo.jpg

Photo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1608038/Induction_Programme_AIML.jpg

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[September 03, 2021] H.I.G. Growth Partners Invests in Corelight's $75M Series D Financing

H.I.G. Growth Partners ("H.I.G.") is pleased to announce that one of its affiliates has invested in the Series D growth financing for Corelight ("Corelight" or the "Company"), a leading cyber-security platform focused on network detection and response ("NDR"). Founded in 2013 and based in San Francisco, Corelight is the industry's first open NDR platform. Built on the de-facto open source network security monitoring platform, Zeek and leveraging the power of Suricata, an independent open source threat detection engine, Corelight provides security teams with the world's best network evidence to close investigations quickly. This helps security operations teams to better inspect, respond, and remediate against sophisticated network threats. Corelight's platform is used globally by some of the largest financial institutions, retail and healthcare organizations, critical infrastructure providers, and government agencies. The Series D round includes new investors, H.I.G., Energy Impact Partners, CrowdStrike Falcon Fund, CapitalOne Ventures,and Gaingels, with additional participation from existing investors, including Accel, General Catalyst, Insight Partners, and Osage Venture Partners. The investment will be used to expand product development, marketing, and sales, as well as promote hiring of exceptional and diverse talent around the globe.



"This latest investment is a powerful affirmation not only of the network detection and response category, but also of our open-source heritage, data-centric approach, and commitment to customer success," said Brian Dye, CEO of Corelight, in a press release announcing the financing this week. "I am grateful for our investors' partnership as we help organizations around the world move to a data-driven security strategy." "Major high profile cyber-attacks have accelerated investment in leading cyber-security solutions to protect and defend critical network infrastructure," said Scott Hilleboe, Managing Director of H.I.G. Growth Partners. "We believe Corelight's platform, rooted in a data-centric approach, is uniquely positioned to become the industry leader for network detection and response. We're excited to support their next phase of growth."

About Corelight Corelight provides security teams with network evidence so they can protect the world's most critical organizations and companies. Corelight's global customers include Fortune 500 companies, major government agencies, and large research universities. The Company has received investment support from Accel, General Catalyst, Insight Partners and Osage University Partners. Based in San Francisco, Corelight is an open-core security company founded by the creators of Zeek, the widely-used network security technology. For more information, www.corelight.com. About H.I.G. Growth Partners H.I.G. Growth Partners is the dedicated growth capital investment affiliate of H.I.G. Capital, a leading global alternative investment firm with $45 billion of equity capital under management.* H.I.G. Growth seeks to make both majority and minority investments in strong, growth-oriented businesses located throughout North America, Europe and Latin America. H.I.G. Growth Partners considers investments across all industries but focuses on certain high-growth sectors where it has extensive in-house expertise such as technology, healthcare, internet and media, consumer products and technology-enabled financial and business services. H.I.G. Growth strives to work closely with its management teams to serve as an experienced resource, providing broad-based strategic, operational, recruiting, and financial management services from a vast in-house team and a substantial network of third-party relationships. For more information, please refer to the H.I.G. website at www.HIGgrowth.com. * Based on total capital commitments managed by H.I.G. Capital and affiliates. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210903005019/en/

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[September 03, 2021] Secfi Expands Core Team With Senior Executives Jaime Moreno de los Rios and Neha Bhatia Ramdas

Secfi, the fastest growing equity financing and planning platform helping startups and their employees better manage equity compensation from employment offer to IPO, today announced two new leadership hires to continue to grow their offerings and solutions. They have named Jaime Moreno de los Rios as the company's new Chief Operating Officer and Neha Bhatia Ramdas as the company's new VP of Sales. With these new roles in place, Secfi aims to continue to lead the equity planning space by providing the expertise, tools and financing for startup employees to own their stock options with confidence. Jaime Moreno de los Rios joins Secfi as its new COO, offering over 15 years years of investment management and startup expertise to the role. Most recently, he was VP of Corporate Development & Investor Relations at Flexport, where he also managed the lending business, Flexport Capital. Prior to that, he spent 10 years in Investment Banking at J.P. Morgan in San Francisco, London and Hong Kong, where he advised Tech startups on more than $20 billion worth of capital raisings, M&A, debt offerings and IPOs. He also spent 2 years working for the German venture builder Rocket internet as its Country Manager for Spain and Nigeria. He holds a double major in Law and Business Administration from the University of ICADE in Madrid. "Employee equity is both a complicated space and an untapped financial market poised for exponential growth. I am thrilled to join a company that can offer startup employees the solutions they need to become empowered shareholders to build their financial lives. Secfi is only at the beginning of its ourney and I'm excited to help even more startup employees have confidence in their equity plan," said Jaime Moreno de los Rios, COO of Secfi.



Neha Bhatia Ramdas joins Secfi as its VP of Sales. She brings 14 years of experience in the financial industry, with a specialized focus in building and growing successful sales organizations that provide end-to-end value for their customers, from the first interaction to the last. At Secfi, she will be helping the startup community navigate complex financial decisions around their stock options with a team that's built years of expertise in all facets of equity. Prior to this role, she was VP of Sales at OpenInvest, which was recently acquired by JP Morgan (News - Alert) . She also has a background in financial analytics at firms such as BlackRock. Neha holds a Masters in Mathematics of Finance from Columbia University as well as a Masters in Mathematics Analysis from the University of Cambridge. "Joining Secfi at this stage is so promising," said Neha Bhatia Ramdas, VP of Sales. "We've worked with employees at nearly every startup unicorn but we're only scratching the surface. There are many more in the startup community that are making one of the biggest financial decisions of their lives without the education and resources they need. I am excited to work with more of the startup community and also expand our set of products to help them make the most of their equity."

Secfi has helped employees from some of 2020 and 2021's biggest IPOs, including Affirm, Coinbase and Snowflake, to unlock liquidity from their equity and improve their financial outcomes. The company provides equity planning expertise, tools and financing so startup employees can own their stock options with confidence. "As we continue to scale the work we are doing at Secfi, I'm excited to bring on exceptionally talented individuals to help advance our mission of helping startup employees make life-changing financial decisions, starting with their stock options," said Frederik Mijnhardt, CEO of Secfi. "We've already helped thousands of employees, representing $20 billion worth of equity on our platform, to better understand their stock options. With 2021's IPO market already eclipsing 2020's record-breaking year, equity is becoming an even more important consideration in the startup community. Jaime and Neha's experience and expertise allows us to reach even more startup employees and executives to help them get more out of their equity." About Secfi

Secfi is trusted by thousands of startup employees for equity planning and financing. We're the first to provide a proprietary suite of equity planning tools, 1:1 guidance with licensed equity strategists and a set of financing products that enable employees to own a stake in the company they helped build. We also provide company-wide education for startups at all stages to help their team make the best decision for their own situation. Currently, we have worked with employees from more than 80% of all U.S. unicorns. For more information, please visit www.secfi.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210903005042/en/

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[September 03, 2021] Humana Foundation Donates $500,000 to Support Disaster Recovery in the Wake of Hurricane Ida

The Humana Foundation, philanthropic arm of Humana Inc. (NYSE: HUM) for the past 40 years, is donating $500,000 towards relief and recovery efforts for those impacted by Hurricane Ida in Louisiana. This giving is part of The Foundation's commitment to supporting communities in crisis through Disaster Philanthropy. Hurricane Ida made landfall along the Louisiana coast on August 29, leaving at least one million without power, over 400,000 without water, and a yet to be known impact on loss of life and home. As the city and the surrounding areas begin the process of cleaning up, affected communities need assistance meeting basic needs including food, water, medical care and shelter. Because of the crisis situation created by this hurricane, the Humana Foundation is donating $500,000 to help with relief and recovery efforts. An initial $300,000 will be allocated to the following organizations to meet immediate needs: $100,000 to United Way of Southeast LA - funding will be split equally between New Orleans and rural service areas

$100,000 to Imagine Water Works

$100,000 to Bayou Community Foundation Because aditional needs will emerge in the days and weeks ahead, an additional $200,000 has been dedicated to address the crisis as it evolves. "Times of challenge reinforce the importance of caring for one another, and we are dedicated to providing relief during this difficult time," said The Humana Foundation Interim CEO Caraline Coats. "We are donating to organizations on the ground in Louisiana who understand what the community is experiencing and are able to deliver the care so desperately needed right now."



Beyond this donation, Humana Inc. is taking steps to further support those affected by Hurricane Ida. These actions include: For all affected members, Humana has suspended referrals and prior authorization requirements for acute, post-acute, outpatient and physician services.

Humana is providing affected members who need to seek care out-of-network with the same cost-sharing they would get from an in-network health care provider or facility.

For its pharmacy members, Humana has suspended restrictions on refills to allow for travel difficulties and evacuations.

For members and non-members alike, Humana as established a free crisis intervention hotline and counseling services for anyone who may need help and support to cope with the disaster and its consequences. You can reach Humana's work / life program counselors and specialists by phone at 1-888-673-1154) (TTY: 711), who are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week to provide confidential assistance to those who need help.

For employees and their families, our crisis response teams have set up sites in areas of Louisiana impacted by significant power and water outages to distribute food and water and provide temporary shelter for employees to charge mobile phones and cool off.

For Humana members and the community at large, Humana is mobilizing bulk shipments of shelf-stable meals and water to centralized locations in New Orleans and Baton Rouge. "So many of our Louisiana friends and neighbors are suffering as we work to pick up the pieces in the wake of Hurricane Ida, one of the most devastating storms in U.S. history," said Humana Gulf States Medicare President Matt Berger. "As a lifelong Louisianan, I am so grateful that Humana and The Humana Foundation are stepping up to contribute to the hurricane relief and recovery efforts. Humana has a longtime history in the state of Louisiana and a strong commitment to the health of Louisianans in the many communities we serve."

About Humana Humana Inc. is committed to helping our millions of medical and specialty members achieve their best health. Our successful history in care delivery and health plan administration is helping us create a new kind of integrated care with the power to improve health and well-being and lower costs. Our efforts are leading to a better quality of life for people with Medicare, families, individuals, military service personnel, and communities at large. To accomplish that, we support physicians and other health care professionals as they work to deliver the right care in the right place for their patients, our members. Our range of clinical capabilities, resources and tools - such as in-home care, behavioral health, pharmacy services, data analytics and wellness solutions - combine to produce a simplified experience with the goal of making health care easier to navigate and more effective. More information regarding Humana is available to investors via the Investor Relations page of the company's website at humana.com, including copies of: Annual reports to stockholders

Securities and Exchange Commission filings

Most recent investor conference presentations

Quarterly earnings news releases and conference calls

Calendar of events

Corporate Governance information. About The Humana Foundation The Humana Foundation was established in 1981 as the philanthropic arm of Humana Inc., one of the nation's leading health and well-being companies. Located in Louisville, Ky., The Humana Foundation seeks to co-create communities where leadership, culture, and systems work to improve and sustain positive health outcomes. For more information, visit humanafoundation.org. Humana and The Humana Foundation are dedicated to Corporate Social Responsibility. Our goal is to ensure that every business decision we make reflects our commitment to improving the health and well-being of each person, each community, the environment, and the collective healthcare system. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210903005225/en/

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[September 03, 2021] Fresh Approach Needed for 'Broadband Nation': Organization Behind Canada's Largest Rural Network Calls on Federal Parties

HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, Sept. 03, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- i-VALLEY, a not-for-profit creating Canadas largest rural municipal network, is calling on all Federal Parties to take a new approach to broadband creation.

Broadband is Canadas Number One priority; almost all progress in the past sixty years has come because of networked innovation, stated i-VALLEY President Terry Dalton. Canada has made progress, but we are still woefully short of the resources we need to arm our people with access to modern health care, emergency services, and economic and social growth. Mr. Dalton called for Federal parties to endorse a new concept of a BROADBAND NATION, featuring: A Unified Development Strategy that is not based on competitions between communities for funding, but instead features a planned network covering the enire country;

that is not based on competitions between communities for funding, but instead features a planned network covering the enire country; An economic cooperation structure that brings in community, private, provincial and federal financing, because the broadband gap in Canada will require some $50-billion, and there is only $4-billion on the table; and

that brings in community, private, provincial and federal financing, because the broadband gap in Canada will require some $50-billion, and there is only $4-billion on the table; and An accessible fee structure for broadband use, based on community governance of the network, as Canadas private companies have created the worlds most expensive network access fees.





If any of these elements is missing in our national plan, it will fail the people of Canada, and will be inadequate for future crises such as COVID and future prosperity through network-driven economic growth, said Mr. Dalton. Our well-being depends on a planned, financed and accessible broadband network. About i-VALLEY

i-VALLEY is a not-for-profit association dedicated to creating regions of Smart or Intelligent Communities based on world-best broadband speeds. It has been awarded the worlds first Smart Rural Region certification, and is currently working with the Municipality of Pictou County, Nova Scotia, on Canadas largest rural network. For further information please contact Barry Gander:

Barry.Gander@i-valley.ca

https://www.i-valley.ca/



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[September 03, 2021] Tenable to Participate in Upcoming Investor Conferences

COLUMBIA, Md., Sept. 03, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Tenable , the Cyber Exposure company, today announced that its Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Amit Yoran, and Chief Financial Officer, Steve Vintz, are scheduled to attend upcoming investor conferences.

Details for each event are as follows: Piper Sandler Global Technology Conference

September 13, 2021

Attendee: Steve Vintz Jefferies Virtual Software Conference 2021

September 15, 2021

Attendees: Amit Yoran and Steve Vintz For more information and webcast links, visit https://investors.tenable.com/ .



About Tenable

Tenable is the Cyber Exposure company. Over 30,000 organizations around the globe rely on Tenable to understand and reduce cyber risk. As the creator of Nessus, Tenable extended its expertise in vulnerabilities to deliver the worlds first platform to see and secure any digital asset on any computing platform. Tenable customers include more than 50 percent of the Fortune 500, more than 30 percent of the Global 2000, and large government agencies. Learn more at www.tenable.com. Investor Inquiries:

investors@tenable.com

Media Contact:

tenablepr@tenable.com



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[September 03, 2021] Beverly Donawho, RiskExec VP, Is Awarded HousingWire's 2021 Insiders Award

DALLAS, Sept. 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Asurity is delighted to announce Beverly Donawho, Vice President of Compliance Products and Services at RiskExec, has been awarded HousingWire's 2021 Insiders Award. This HousingWire award celebrates operational all-stars within the housing industry who have made significant impacts within their individual companies. "The 2021 HousingWire Insiders all possess the intellect, stamina and leadership to transform the housing industry for the better -- growing business and supporting millions of American families," said Clayton Collins, CEO of HW Media. Combining her deep Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) expertise with the technological power of the RiskExec platform, Beverly has assisted financial institutions in meeting the credit needs of their communities across the country. In her role as VP of Compliance Products and Services, Beverly helps RiskExec clients with CRA Exam Readiness Assessments, CRA/HMDA Data Integrity Audits, Fair Lending, and Fair Servicing. "Her resourcefulness, problem-solving skills, and confidence allow her to provide unprecedented client support to those who use the RiskExec software," says Dr. Anurag Agarwal, President of RiskExec. "Beverly's compliance expertise has helped clients improve their internal processes and procedues  so much so that even prospective clients ask for her assistance. She has become a trusted SME to the CRA community, and lenders nationwide rely on her advice and guidance."



Before joining the Asurity team, Beverly served as the Vice President and CRA Officer at American National Bank of Texas. While there, she managed the bank's CRA, HMDA, and Fair Lending programs. Her time spent working on CRA modernization efforts in the financial industry helped her build a highly efficient approach to delivering professional services and to developing new features for the RiskExec software. "I am committed to sharing my compliance passion through continuous improvement for our industry. I thoroughly enjoy partnering with our clients in achieving their goals through the RiskExec solution," says Beverly Donawho. "I am honored to be a recipient of the 2021 HousingWire Insider's award and congratulate all the others who were selected."

"Beverly has a real knack for solving seemingly intractable problems," says Andy Sandler, Asurity's Chief Executive Officer. "And that's no easy feat. At Asurity, we deal with complex issues involving large data sets, technology, ever-changing compliance rules, and more. Beverly has a gift for distilling the complex and making it more accessible for everyone to understand." About Asurity and RiskExec Asurity delivers compliance-focused solutions to the mortgage and consumer lending industries. RiskExec is one of Asurity's leading SaaS-based products, combining the best of compliance expertise with state-of-the-art software for reporting and analytics to help lenders meet demanding regulatory requirements. RiskExec is embraced by financial institutions to analyze high-volume data for compliance or other uses in mortgage, auto lending, student lending, and other forms of credit and deposit products. Asurity also offers AsurityDocs, a leading solution for the dynamic preparation of compliant mortgage document packages. For additional information, please visit www.asurity.com . Contact: Darci Johnson, djohnson@asurity.com, 214-220-6452 View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/beverly-donawho-riskexec-vp-is-awarded-housingwires-2021-insiders-award-301369101.html SOURCE Asurity

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[September 03, 2021] Granite Announces Vice President of Transformation

Granite Telecommunications, LLC, a leading provider of communications solutions to businesses and government agencies throughout North America, announced that Sana Sheikh has been promoted to Vice President of Transformation, Deputy General Counsel and Vice President of Strategic Affairs. In her new role, Ms. Sheikh will spearhead cross-functional initiatives to strengthen and scale Granite's next-generation voice, broadband and data solutions, while continuing to supervise regulatory matters, government relations, carrier partnerships and vendor relationships. Ms. Sheikh joined Granite in 2015 as a member of Granite's in-house legal team and has since become responsible for strategic initiatives which have helped to propel the company from $1 billion in annualized revenue to $1.65 billion during her tenure. In 2017, Ms. Sheikh played a critical role in Granite's award of the $50 billon General Services Administration's Enterprise Infrastructures Solutions ("EIS") contract. In 2021, Ms. Shikh helped lead efforts for Granite's proposal and award to provide SD-WAN, broadband and managed services to a large federal agency with over 30,000 locations nationwide with responsibilities for the mail. Ms. Sheikh has represented Granite on competitive policy issues at the FCC and served on panels for the Federal Communications Bar Association (News - Alert) , National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissions and INCOMPAS.



"Sana is a shining example of the talent and creative capabilities within Granite," said Rob Hale, Granite President & CEO. "Competition, innovation and service are the backbone of our company, and I am excited to take bold steps into Granite's future with a gifted team and Sana at the helm of our transformation initiatives." About Granite

Granite delivers one-stop communications solutions to multilocation businesses and government agencies throughout the United States and Canada. The $1.65 billion company serves more than two-thirds of the Fortune 100 companies in the United States and has 1.75 million voice and data lines under management. Granite launched in 2002 and grew quickly by helping businesses simplify sourcing and managing local and long-distance phone services with one point of contact and one invoice for all their locations nationwide. Today, Granite is the leader in aggregating Plain Old Telephone Services (POTS) and has extended its unique value proposition - "one company, one contact, one bill" - to include a range of advance business communications services, including Internet access, SD-WAN, wireless WAN, hosted PBX (News - Alert) , SIP trunking, mobile voice and data, mobile device management, managed security, network integration and much more. Granite employs more than 2,400 people at its headquarters in Quincy, Mass., and nine regional offices nationwide. For more information, visit www.granitenet.com.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210903005035/en/

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[September 03, 2021] ATTENTION CURRENT AND FORMER OPPENHEIMER CUSTOMERS WHO INVESTED IN HORIZON PRIVATE EQUITY III: National Investor Fraud Law Firm KlaymanToskes Announces Investigation of Potential Claims on Behalf of Oppenheimer Customers Over Ponzi Scheme Losses

National investor fraud law firm, KlaymanToskes (" KT (News - Alert) "), has commenced an investigation of potential FINRA arbitration claims on behalf of former and current Oppenheimer & Co., Inc. ("Oppenheimer") (NYSE: OPY) customers who invested in the alleged Horizon Private Equity III ("Horizon") Ponzi scheme. Investors are suing Oppenheimer for its role in enabling a massive Ponzi scheme devised by Marietta, Georgia resident and former Oppenheimer registered representative, John Woods, which was operated through his firm, Southport Capital. From 2008 to 2016, John Woods and his brother Jim Woods allegedly solicited a significant number of customers from Oppenheimer to invest in Horizon while Woods was registered as a broker and investment adviser with the brokerage firm. Investors were told they would earn a return by investing in government bonds, stocks or real estate projects. However, Horizon has allegedly not earned any significant profits from these investments, andwere only able to pay the guaranteed return to existing investors by raising and using new money.



According to a recently filed SEC Complaint, as of July 2021, over 400 investors across 20 states held Horizon investments, and were owed over $110M in principal. Many investors are elderly retirees. The sole purpose of this release is to investigate potential FINRA arbitration claims relating to Oppenheimer's supervision of John Woods and the Horizon Ponzi scheme. Current and former Oppenheimer customers who invested in Horizon from 2008 to 2016 and who have information related to the handling of their investments, are encouraged to contact securities attorney Lawrence L. Klayman, Esq., at (561) 542-5131, and download our Special Report.

About KlaymanToskes KT is a leading national securities law firm which practices exclusively in the field of securities arbitration and litigation on behalf of retail and institutional investors throughout the world in large and complex securities matters. KT has recovered more than $220 million for investors in FINRA arbitrations. KT has office locations in California, Florida, New York, and Puerto Rico. Destination: https://klaymantoskes.com/horizon-oppenheimer-ponzi-scheme-investigation/ View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210903005280/en/

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[September 03, 2021] Tauriga Sciences Inc. Fully Repays its $135,000 Inventory Factoring Credit Facility, Entered Into on October 6, 2020



The Company Repaid This Facility Entirely in Cash: 5 Equal Installments of $21,214.29 and a Final Installment of $42,428.58 NEW YORK, NY, Sept. 03, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- via NewMediaWire -- Tauriga Sciences, Inc. (OTCQB: TAUG) (Tauriga or the Company), a New York based diversified Life Sciences Company, today announced that it has fully repaid and retired its $135,000 Non-Convertible inventory factoring credit facility (the Facility), entered into with an institutional investor, on October 6, 2020. The Company repaid this Facility entirely in cash: for 5 equal installment payments of $21,214.29 and a final installment of $42,428.58. Due to the Companys improved retail business, it decided to retire this Facility a month early.



This $135,000 in factoring capital was structured as a non-convertible promissory note (interest bearing: 10.00% per annum), with a built in 6-month grace period. Repayment of this loan, contractually, was to occur in 7 equal monthly payments of $21,214.29 (Repayment Period: April 5, 2021 thru October 5, 2021). Link to Press Release from October 6, 2020 https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2020/10/06/2104547/0/en/Tauriga-Sciences-Inc-Secures-135-000-in-Inventory-Factoring-Capital-to-Support-its-Accelerating-Revenue-Growth.html The Broker Dealer, Moody Capital, acted as the Placement Agent for this transaction. ABOUT TAURIGA SCIENCES INC. Tauriga Sciences, Inc. (TAUG) is a revenue generating, diversified life sciences company, engaged in several major business activities and initiatives. The company manufactures nd distributes several proprietary retail products and product lines, mainly focused on the Cannabidiol (CBD) and Cannabigerol (CBG) Edibles market segment. The main product line, branded as Tauri-Gum, consists of a proprietary supplement chewing gum that is Kosher certified, Halal certified, and Vegan Formulated (CBD Infused Tauri-Gum Flavors: Mint, Blood Orange, Pomegranate), (CBG Infused Tauri-Gum Flavors: Peach-Lemon, Black Currant), (DELTA 8 THC Infused Tauri-Gum Flavor: Evergreen Mint), (Vitamin C + Zinc Infused Tauri-Gum Flavor: Pear Bellini), (Caffeine Infused Tauri-Gum Flavor: Cherry Lime Rickey), & (Vitamin D3 Infused Tauri-Gum Flavor: Golden Raspberry). The Companys commercialization strategy consists of a broad array of retail customers, distributors, and a fast-growing E-Commerce business segment (E-Commerce website: www.taurigum.com). Please visit our corporate website, for additional information, as well as inquiries, at http://www.tauriga.com



Complementary to the Companys retail business, is its ongoing Pharmaceutical Development initiative. This relates to the development of a proposed Pharmaceutical grade version of Tauri-Gum, for nausea regulation (specifically designed for the following indication: Patients Subjected to Ongoing Chemotherapy Treatment). On March 22, 2021, the Company announced that it had Converted its U.S. Provisional Patent Application (filed on March 17, 2020) into a U.S. Non-Provisional Patent Application. The Patent, filed with the U.S.P.T.O. is Titled MEDICATED CBD COMPOSITIONS, METHODS OF MANUFACTURING, AND METHODS OF TREATMENT. On December 18, 2020 the Company disclosed that it had entered into a Master Services Agreement with CSTI to lead the Company's clinical development efforts. The Company is headquartered in Wappingers Falls, New York. In addition, the Company operates two full time E-Commerce fulfillment centers: one located in Montgomery, Texas and the other in Brooklyn, New York.

DISCLAIMER -- Forward-Looking Statements This press release contains certain forward-looking statements as defined by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 which represent managements beliefs and assumptions concerning future events. These forward-looking statements are often indicated by using words such as may, will, expects, anticipates, believes, hopes, believes, or plans, and may include statements regarding corporate objectives as well as the attainment of certain corporate goals and milestones. Forward-looking statements are based on present circumstances and on managements present beliefs with respect to events that have not occurred, that may not occur, or that may occur with different consequences or timing than those now assumed or anticipated. Actual results may differ materially from those expressed in forward looking statements due to known and unknown risks and uncertainties, such as are not guarantees of general economic and business conditions, the ability to successfully develop and market products, consumer and business consumption habits, the ability to consummate successful acquisition and licensing transactions, fluctuations in exchange rates, and other factors over which Tauriga has little or no control. Many of these risks and uncertainties are discussed in greater detail in the Risk Factors section of Taurigas Form 10-K and other periodic filings made from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Such forward-looking statements are made only as of the date of this release, and Tauriga assumes no obligation to update forward-looking statements to reflect subsequent events or circumstances. You should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. Contact: Tauriga Sciences, Inc. 4 Nancy Court, Suite 4 Wappingers Falls, NY 12590 Chief Executive Officer Mr. Seth M. Shaw Email: sshaw@tauriga.com cell # (917) 796 9926 Company Instagram: @taurigum Personal Instagram: @sethsms47 Twitter: @SethMShaw Corp. Website: www.tauriga.com E-Commerce Website: www.taurigum.com



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[September 03, 2021] LendingPoint Named by Atlanta Business Chronicle as One of Best Places to Work in 2021

LendingPoint, a financial technology platform, today was named one of the 2021 Best Places to Work by the Atlanta Business Chronicle. The award marks the company's second recognition this year, following its 2021 Atlanta Business Chronicle Pacesetter Award in April, and signals a continuation of the growing momentum LendingPoint sustained through a year of changing workplace norms across the globe. During a time when workers' relationship to work evolved constantly, LendingPoint remained committed to cultivating and empowering employee experience and fulfillment. Designed to recognize employers in the Atlanta area that foster exceptional employee engagement, the Best Places to Work award surveys employees on their company's workplace environment, people practices, as well as insurance, financial, and wellness benefits. Employees also comment on their employer's business performance, hiring status, and remote-work opportunities. Companies with the highest scores are then ranked and awarded. "Thanks to our incredible team, we are thrilled to be recognized as one the best places to work in the Atlanta metro area," said Tom Burnside, CEO and Co-Founder of LendingPoint. "The global community has endured countless changes due to the pandemic, and we've worked hard to put our employees' safety first every step of th way. Our customers' experience is only as good as our employees' experience. That's why we work to foster a safe, collaborative and supportive culture, and we give our employees the resources to make an impact in both the business and the community. Providing greater access to financial services starts with creating an environment for our team to thrive and do their best work."



The Best Places to Work award is the latest in a series of landmark successes for LendingPoint. In July, the company announced the closing of its largest securitization to date. This transaction is the largest single-platform issuance backed by online consumer loans since the start of the pandemic. LendingPoint also expanded its C-suite executive team in May, hiring veteran risk executive Ashish Gupta (News - Alert) as Chief Risk Officer, and Chris Johnson, who recently joined the team as Head of Capital Markets. This April, the company ranked #15 among Atlanta Business Chronicle's Largest Fintech Companies. In March, LendingPoint closed a $110 million, 5-year corporate mezzanine credit facility with partners MidCap Financial Trust and Apollo Investment Corporation. Since the company issued its first loan in 2015, LendingPoint has originated over $4 billion. About LendingPoint

LendingPoint is a financial technology platform that provides financing origination solutions to consumers, for ecommerce and point of sale partners, and lending institutions. The company's fraud prevention, risk and asset management algorithms are used to create financing opportunities across the credit spectrum. Its LendingPoint Merchant Solutions platform provides ecommerce platforms, merchants, and other service providers fully integrated, one-stop financing solutions to convert more customers. For the past three years, LendingPoint has been named one of Inc. 5000's list of fastest-growing private companies, ranking 17th in 2019. LendingPoint ranked on Deloitte's (News - Alert) Technology Fast 500 list in 2019 and 2020 and was honored as one of the top 40 fastest growing companies in Atlanta by ACG 2019, 2020, and 2021. LendingPoint is a privately held company headquartered in Metro Atlanta, with offices in New York and California. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210903005307/en/

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[September 03, 2021] OTC: ILUS, ILUS International (Ilustrato Pictures International Inc.), Appoints Experienced Group Finance Director, Nadine Bell, to its Senior Management Team

NEW YORK, NY, Sept. 03, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- via NewMediaWire -- ILUS International Inc. (OTC: ILUS) is a M&A company focused on acquiring and developing public safety technology-based companies across the globe. ILUS has been undertaking due diligence on multiple acquisitions whilst consolidating and improving the financial management of existing acquisitions. The appointment of a dynamic Group Finance Director with a broad range of experience is of huge significance to the growth and sound management of the ILUS group of companies.

Nadine Bell joins ILUS as a finance expert with 19 years experience. Her extensive and varied experience has seen her lead the financial management of manufacturing, construction, commercial and legal entities in Europe and the Middle East. It is of particular importance to ILUS that Nadine has successfully conducted financial planning and reporting across multiple countries with different legal entities. She has also initiated and led large projects, from the introduction of entire accounting and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems to large human resources process implementations and strategies. Nadine also has a successful track record in audit and compliance management. ILUS Managing Director, John-Paul Backwell, said the following of Nadines appointment: Nadines skills and experience, along with her unique ability to multi-task and work on multiple deals and projects simultaneously, suits our challenging and fast paced environment. Nadine will hit the ground running with the acquisitions that are underway, whilst adding value to the implementation of the new global ERP system for all ILUS companies. With ILUS making big moves in a short timeframe, Nadine is capable of proactively anticipating what is needed and will ensure that all the checks and balances are in place for both rapid and continued sustainable growth. 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 webcastsalso 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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[September 03, 2021] AM Best Affirms Credit Ratings of Solunion Seguros, Compania Internacional de Seguros y Reaseguros S.A.

AM Best has affirmed the Financial Strength Rating of A (Excellent) and the Long-Term Issuer Credit Rating of "a" (Excellent) of Solunion Seguros, Compania Internacional de Seguros y Reaseguros S.A. (Solunion) (Spain). The outlook of these Credit Ratings (ratings) is stable. Solunion is the operating holding company of the Solunion group of companies, a 50-50 joint venture between MAPFRE Participaciones, S.A.U., a wholly owned subsidiary of MAPFRE S.A. (MAPFRE), and Euler Hermes Luxembourg Holding S.a.r.l., a subsidiary of Euler Hermes Group S.A. (Euler Hermes). Allianz SE is the ultimate parent of Euler Hermes. The ratings reflect Solunion's 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. The ratings also consider the strategic and operational support Solunion receives from its joint shareholders, including significant reinsurance support in the form of quota-share arrangements and excess of loss protection. Solunion's balance sheet strength assessment is underpinned by its risk-adjusted capitalisation, which remained at the strongest level as at year-end 2020, as measured by Best's Capital Adequacy Ratio (BCAR). The balance sheet strength assessment is supported further by Solunion's prudent reserving approach and conservative investment strategy. Solunion is highly dependent on reinsurance, but the associated risk is considered limited, as reinsurance arrangements are solely with the company's shareholders. Solunion has been consistently profitable over the recent years, reporting a five-year weighted average combined ratio of 89.5% and return on equity of 6.4% (2016-2020). As at June 2021, results were positive and in line with the budget, despite the ongoing challenging economic environment. An offsetting factor is te uncertainty around the sustainability of the trade credit results in light of the economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic in the markets where the company operates. However, AM Best note the company's ability to take prompt risk-mitigating actions on non-performing business when required.



Solunion is a relatively small, albeit growing, credit insurer, reporting gross written premium of EUR 211 million in 2020, with a product offering limited to trade credit and surety lines of business. The company's market profile is concentrated in Spain, with some geographical diversification as a result of business underwritten in Latin America. Positive business profile factors include the company's ability to leverage the trade credit expertise and capabilities of Euler Hermes, whilst accessing MAPFRE's widespread and well-established distribution channels in its target markets. 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 use of Best's Credit Ratings, Best's Preliminary Credit Assessments and AM Best press releases, please view Guide to Proper Use of Best's Ratings & Assessments.

AM Best is a global credit rating agency, news publisher and data analytics provider specialising 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/20210903005311/en/

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[September 03, 2021] ImpulSeven Introduces i7 Token Swaps and New Staking Mechanism

Mauritius, Sept. 03, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- (via Blockchain Wire) ImpulSeven is a user-friendly DeFi ecosystem that introduces numerous innovative financial products and services. This game-changing project offers crypto enthusiasts multiple solutions including farming, staking, and lending in one convenient location. The platform boasts a 4th generation decentralized exchange (DEX) that utilizes an advanced order book model to support complex arbitrage trading options. Users can leverage the DEX to trade futures, derivatives and spot swaps. Trades on the ImpulSeven DEX are governed by smart contracts designed to eliminate counterparty risk, guarantee perpetual liquidity and boost transaction execution speeds. ImpulSeven hails from i7, an ERC-20 token that serves as the utility and governance token for the entire ecosystem. The i7 token also functions as the primary payment means for users looking to access any service/product within the ecosystem. ImpulSeven recently opted to remove old liquidity (VEN tokens) from SafeSwap and Uniswap and replace it with the new i7 token. The project team announced the swap from the VEN to i7 token on August 21, with the actual process commencing on August 23. All Ven token holders who participated in the ImpulSeven presale via the YFDAI Launchpad can now convert their old tokens to i7. They simply need to visit the ImpulSeven dashboard, connect to any Ethereum-supported browser wallet and follow the seven easy steps highlighted here to complete the token swap. New i7 Staking is now Live! The ImpulSeven team is delighted to announce that the new i7staking mechanism went live on August 23. The latest product allows digital asset holders to earn passive income with i7 tokens by contributing liquidity to the ecosystem.



The i7 staking feature redistributes 80% of transaction fees to liquidity providers as dividends, thus incentivizing users to deposit more capital into the DeFi protocol. The new staking mechanism offers flexible options such as 72-hour locks, 90-day locks, and UFDAI staking. Besides the staking feature, ImpulSeven will roll out its i7 Dex and Farming pool on September 2, 2021. DeFi farming will facilitate investors to deposit crypto into liquidity pool smart contracts and get i7 tokens for contributing capital to the project.

ImpulSeven Is Moving Towards Full Democratization ImpulSeven boasts a unique DeFi infrastructure that is user-centred and completely decentralized. The project integrates other highly sought-after and unique features such as fast transaction execution, total transparency and reliability. The team plans to make the project fully democratized by launching a decentralized governance system on September 4, 2021, at 4 P.M UTC. The democratic process will empower token holders to make proposals that improve the ecosystem and vote on future development objectives. The ImpulSeven project hinges on seven core elements that make it truly stand out from the competition. These elements have been laid out for seamless execution in the new internal roadmap that the team published on August 28. One of the critical components of the project is yield and liquidity mining which allows i7 token holders to generate lucrative passive earnings. Another unique element that gives ImpulSeven the edge over rivals is decentralized recurring billing, facilitating automated subscription payments. The ImpulSeven AI Bot Is Coming Soon Another standout feature for ImpulSeven in 2021 is the launch of the first version of its AI Bot. The product, set for launch in November of 2021, will enable users to maximize profits on each trade without lifting a finger. The Arbitrage trading bot uses artificial intelligence to look for discrepancies in token prices across multiple DEXes. Once it identifies a possible winning trade for a particular token pair, it synchronously executes money-making trades across different exchanges until the price gap closes. To learn more about the innovative ImpulSeven project and its upcoming features, connect with the community via the following social media channels: Telegram Announcement Channel: https://t.me/Impulsevendefi Telegram Community: https://t.me/Impulseven Medium: https://medium.com/@Impulsevencoin Twitter: https://twitter.com/impulse_ven LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/Impulseven



Website: https://www.Impulseven.com



Stefan Petersen The Capital stefan@thecapital.io

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[September 03, 2021] The Law Offices of Frank R. Cruz Reminds Investors of Looming Deadline in the Class Action Lawsuit Against DiDi Global Inc. (DIDI)

The Law Offices of Frank R. Cruz reminds investors of the upcoming September 7, 2021 deadline to file a lead plaintiff motion in the case filed on behalf of investors who purchased DiDi Global Inc. ("DiDi" or the "Company") (NYSE: DIDI): (a) American Depositary Shares ("ADSs" or "shares") pursuant and/or traceable to the registration statement and prospectus (collectively, the "Registration Statement") issued in connection with the Company's June 2021 initial public offering ("IPO" or the "Offering"); and/or (b) securities between June 30, 2021 and July 2, 2021, inclusive (the "Class Period"). If you are a shareholder who suffered a loss, click here to participate. DiDi purports to be the world's largest mobility technology platform. The Company claims to be the "go-to brand in China for shared mobility," offering a range of services including ride hailing, taxi hailing, chauffeur, and hitch. On or about June 30, 2021, DiDi sold about 316.8 million ADSs in its IPO for $14 per share, raising nearly $4.5 billion in new capital. On July 2, 2021, the Cyberspace Administration of China ("CAC") stated that it had launched an investigation into DiDi to protect national security and the public interest. It also reported that it had asked DiDi to stop new user registrations during the course of the investigation. Onthis news, the Company's share price fell $0.87, or approximately 5.3%, to close at $15.53 per share on July 2, 2021, on unusually heavy trading volume.



Then, on Sunday, July 4, 2021, DiDi reported that the CAC ordered smartphone app stores to stop offering the "DiDi Chuxing" app because it "collect[ed] personal information in violation of relevant PRC laws and regulations." Though users who previously downloaded the app could continue to use it, DiDi stated that "the app takedown may have an adverse impact on its revenue in China." On July 5, 2021, The Wall Street Journal reported that the CAC had asked the Company as early as three months prior to the IPO to postpone the offering because of national security concerns and to "conduct a thorough self-examination of its network security."

On this news, the Company's stock price fell $3.04 per share, or 19.6%, to close at $12.49 per share on July 6, 2021, on unusually heavy trading volume. By the commencement of this action, the Company's stock was trading as low as $12.06 per share, a nearly 14% decline from the $14 per share IPO price. The Registration Statement was materially false and misleading and omitted to state material adverse facts. Throughout the Class Period, Defendants made materially false and/or misleading statements, as well as failed to disclose material adverse facts about the Company's business, operations, and prospects. Specifically, Defendants failed to disclose to investors: (1) that DiDi's apps did not comply with applicable laws and regulations governing privacy protection and the collection of personal information; (2) that, as a result, the Company was reasonably likely to incur scrutiny from the Cyberspace Administration of China; (3) that the CAC had already warned DiDi to delay its IPO to conduct a self-examination of its network security; (4) that, as a result of the foregoing, DiDi's apps were reasonably likely to be taken down from app stores in China, which would have an adverse effect on its financial results and operations; and (5) that, as a result of the foregoing, Defendants' positive statements about the Company's business, operations, and prospects, were materially misleading and/or lacked a reasonable basis. Follow us for updates on Twitter (News - Alert) : twitter.com/FRC_LAW. If you purchased or otherwise acquired DiDi ADSs pursuant or traceable to the IPO and/or securities during the Class Period, you may move the Court no later than September 7, 2021 to request appointment as lead plaintiff in this putative class action lawsuit. To be a member of the class action you need not take any action at this time; you may retain counsel of your choice or take no action and remain an absent member of the class action. If you wish to learn more about this class action, or if you have any questions concerning this announcement or your rights or interests with respect to the pending class action lawsuit, please contact Frank R. Cruz, of The Law Offices of Frank R. Cruz, 1999 Avenue of the Stars, Suite 1100, Los Angeles, California 90067 at 310-914-5007, by email to info@frankcruzlaw.com, or visit our website at www.frankcruzlaw.com. If you inquire by email please include your mailing address, telephone number, and number of shares purchased. This press release may be considered Attorney Advertising in some jurisdictions under the applicable law and ethical rules. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210903005002/en/

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[September 03, 2021] DATRON Dynamics Celebrates 25th Anniversary by Donating $25,000 of Tooling to STEM Programs

DATRON Dynamics, Inc., the North American provider of DATRON high-speed, precision CNC machines, will mark its 25th anniversary by donating $25,000 worth of cutting tools across ten educational institutions that have DATRON machines in their STEM program. Each of the selected institutions, including the University of Oregon, the University of New Hampshire, the University of Maryland, the University of Western Ontario, the University of Washington, Southern New Hampshire University, Universite Laval, and Mount Si High School of the Snoqualmie Valley School District, and two others, will receive a $2,500 voucher to purchase cutting tools for their DATRON machines. Ashleigh Theberge, Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Washington said, "We are grateful for this tool donation; it will enable our undergraduates, graduate students, and researchers to advance their projects and research!" Heather MacNeill, Senior Progra Manager and Makerspace Advisor for the Makerspace at the UNH Entrepreneurship Center, said the tooling donation will help their budget stretch even further in the coming school term:"The Makerspace at the UNH Entrepreneurship Center is entirely donor funded and free for all students on campus. Having the in-kind support from DATRON means we can provide more opportunities for our students to bring their ideas to life in our Makerspace!"



Established in 1996, DATRON Dynamics brings smart manufacturing solutions to a variety of industries. DATRON machines and cutting tools are German-Engineered for precision, ease of use, and speed. DATRON's exclusive line of end mills is designed to increase throughput and provide superior surface finishes. When asked about this important anniversary, Bill King, President of DATRON Dynamics, Inc. said, "DATRON Dynamics feels the best way to honor this milestone is by investing in the educational programs that are developing our next generation of engineers, machinists, and makers. I am thankful to DATRON AG for allowing us to represent this industry- leading technology, to our incredible team of dedicated employees for their tireless efforts and expertise, and finally to our customers, who have entrusted us with being a part of their growth and vision. I could not be more proud of what our team has built and accomplished over the past 25 years."

About DATRON Dynamics DATRON Dynamics, Inc. is the premier provider of DATRON CNC Milling Machines, tooling, service, and support in North America. With an East Coast headquarters located in Milford, NH and a West Coast division in Livermore, California, DATRON Dynamics combines the benefits of DATRON's German-Engineered CNC technology with first class service and support across the US, Canada, and Mexico. DATRON Dynamics | www.datron.com View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210903005415/en/

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[September 03, 2021] BizVibe Highlights Key Challenges Facing the Publishing Industry | Monitor Business Risk and View Company Insights

NEW YORK, Sept. 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- BizVibe has added key challenges and trends for information industry groups on their buyer and seller platforms. BizVibe's newspaper, periodical, book, and directory publishers industry group, one of the largest information industry categories, consists of 75,000+ publishing company profiles which now contain 50+ company data points, including a list of potential challenges which are expected to impact market participants over the next few years. One challenge in the publishing industry is an increase in labor costs. With margins always under threat from competition and other external forces, industry players are also struggling with rising labor costs. Rises in minimum and average wages due to government regulations or competitive pressure are impacting the costs that operators incur when securing even typically low-skilled jobs. The pinch is more prominent for operators who have a higher proportion of permanent staff. By identifying such challenges, BizVibe is helping users analyze which suppliers are right for their business, while allowing them to efficiently monitor the risk of doing business. Get Free Access to all Industry Challenges Key Insights Provided for Publishing Companies In addition to analysis on how key challenges are expected to impact information businesses, BizVibe company profiles contain numerous high-quality insights to help users discover, track, compare, and evaluate suppliers or sales prospects. These insights include: Relevance and influence of industry trends and challenges, segmented by region

Press releases and news coverage referencing key trends and challenges

Risk of doing business score, segmented by operational, financial, compliance, and country risk

Tp company competitors at the global, regional, and national levels

Names of top company decision makers, including job titles and social profiles

Company financials such as annual revenue, profitability ratios, and management effectiveness



View 50+ Company Data Points for Free Publishing Product and Service Categories

BizVibe's platform provides access to over 10 million buyer and supplier company profiles. Businesses from more than 200 countries are categorized into 40,000+ product and service categories, each providing detailed insights tailored to the needs of procurement and sales teams globally. The newspaper, periodical, book, and directory publishers industry group features 75,000+ company profiles categorized into 10+ product and service categories, enabling clients to identify and connect with potential new business partners across diverse market segments. Product and service categories for the publishing industry include: Book Publishing

Educational publishing

Cookbook publishing

Greeting card production

Comic book publishing

Magazine distribution Get Free Company Profile Access for all Categories BizVibe for Buyers and Sellers BizVibe is a modern B2B platform dedicated to connecting buyers and sellers from around the world. Powered by the latest best-in-class solutions, BizVibe is designed to help companies generate leads, shortlist suppliers, request proposals, and identify global companies. Evaluate companies side-by-side to compare key metrics and initiate productive partnerships. Buyers use BizVibe to discover suppliers from among more than 5 million companies using advanced search filters and comparison tools. Features for buyers include: Shortlist potential suppliers

Track and compare companies

Set up custom news alerts

Quickly create and customize RFIs Explore BizVibe's buyer services: https://www.bizvibe.com/buyers Sellers can take advantage of BizVibe's smart sales intelligence tools to discover, evaluate, and communicate with prospects across 300+ categories. Features for sellers include: Identify and qualify sales prospects

Receive customized prospect recommendations

Analyze and evaluate potential buyers

Integrate CRMs for efficient data transfer Discover BizVibe's seller tools: https://www.bizvibe.com/sellers About BizVibe BizVibe has been conceptualized and built by a team based out of Toronto, Bangalore, and London. We are a branch of Infiniti Research and have dedicated units in all three locations. BizVibe helps buyers find the most relevant suppliers from around the world and helps sellers target prospects who need their products and/or services. For more information, please visit www.bizvibe.com and start for free today. Contact BizVibe

Jesse Maida

Email: jesse@bizvibe.com

+1 855-897-5880

Website: https://www.bizvibe.com/ View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/bizvibe-highlights-key-challenges-facing-the-publishing-industry--monitor-business-risk-and-view-company-insights-301367659.html SOURCE BizVibe

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[September 03, 2021] Albertsons Companies Donates $500,000 to Communities Impacted by Natural Disasters

Albertsons Companies (NYSE: ACI) announced today it will donate $500,000 to help provide food to those impacted by Hurricane Ida and the California wildfires. The donation will support local food banks and other hunger relief organizations in providing approximately 2 million meals to affected communities. "Hurricane Ida and the California wildfires have impacted our associates, customers and communities. We're thankful we are able to assist local hunger relief organizations as they provide much-needed relief to those affected by these disasters," said Vivek Sankaran, Chief Executive Officer. "I also want to thank our store and distribution associates who are working tirelessly to serve our neighbors in these communities during this challenging time." The company is donating $250,000 to Hurricane Ida response efforts and $250,000 to aid in Northern California wildfire disaster relief with the goal of providing meals to those impacted by the disasters.



"Many of the impacted communities already had high rates of food insecurity," said Luis Guardia, President of the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC). "Being displaced by fires or weather issues only intensifies these issues. It's wonderful to have good corporate neighbors like Albertsons Companies who care about the communities they serve." These contributions are part of Albertsons Companies long-standing commitment to supporting hunger relief. In 2020, along with the Albertsons Companies Foundation, the Company gave $260 million in food and financial support, including $95 million through its Nourishing Neighbors Program, to help provide food and nutrition to those in need.

About Albertsons Companies Albertsons Companies is a leading food and drug retailer that operates stores across 34 states and the District of Columbia with more than 20 well-known banners including Albertsons, Safeway, Vons, Jewel-Osco, Shaw's, Acme, Tom Thumb, Randalls, United Supermarkets, Pavilions, Star Market, Haggen, Carrs, Kings Food Markets and Balducci's Food Lovers Market. The Company is committed to helping people across the country live better lives by making a meaningful difference, neighborhood by neighborhood. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210903005436/en/

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[September 03, 2021] First BanCorp. Announces Payment of Dividends on Preferred Stock

First BanCorp. (the "Corporation") (NYSE: FBP), the bank holding company for FirstBank Puerto Rico, announced today that its Board of Directors has declared the following monthly cash dividends on its outstanding shares of Series A through E Noncumulative Perpetual Monthly Income Preferred Stock (the "Preferred Stock"):







Series Annual

Dividend

Rate (%) Monthly

Dividend Per

Share Outstanding

Shares Record Date Payment Date A 7.125% $0.14843750 197,386 September 28, 2021 September 30, 2021 B 8.35% $0.17395800 296,146 September 15, 2021 September 30, 2021 C 7.40% $0.15416670 249,852 September 15, 2021 September 30, 2021 D 7.25% $0.15104167 285,522 September 15, 2021 September 30, 2021 E 7.00% $0.14583330 415,240 September 15, 2021 September 30, 2021

About First BanCorp. First BanCorp. is the parent corporation of FirstBank Puerto Rico, a state-chartered commercial bank with operations in Puerto Rico, the U.S. and British Virgin Islands and Florida, and of FirstBank Insurance Agency, LLC. Among the subsidiaries of FirstBank Puerto Rico are First Federal Finance Limited Liability Company and First Express, Inc., both small loan companies. First BanCorp's shares of common stock trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol "FBP." Safe Harbor This press release may contain "forward-looking statements" concerning the Corporation. The words or phrases "expect," "anticipate," "intend," "look forward," "should," "would," "believes" and similar expressions are meant to identify "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, and are subject to the safe harbor created by such sections. Such forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements regarding the Corporation's ability to declare dividends on the Corporation's Preferred Stock in any future periods. Such statements are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and contingencies that may cause actual results to differ materially from the expectations, intentions, beliefs, plans, estimates or predictions of the future expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. These risks, uncertainties and contingencies include, but are not limited to the factors described in the Corporation's Annual Report on Form 10-K, in its Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q and in other filings with the SEC (News - Alert) . The Corporation does not undertake, and specifically disclaims any obligation, to update any "forward-looking statements" to reflect occurrences or unanticipated events or circumstances after the date of such statements, except as required by the federal securities laws. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210903005045/en/

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[September 03, 2021] iSIGN Media Announces the Close of its Previously Announced Private Placement of up to $1.2 million

TORONTO, Sept. 03, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- iSIGN Media Solutions Inc. (iSIGN or Company) (TSX-V: ISD) (OTC: ISDSF), a leading provider of interactive mobile proximity marketing and public security alert solutions announced it has closed the final tranche (the Final Tranche) of its previously announced non-brokered private placement (Placement) of up to $1,200,000.

The Company completed the Final Tranche of the Placement for total gross proceeds of $110,000 by issuing 2,200,000 Units (Units) at a price of $0.05 per Unit, with each Unit consisting of one Common Share of the Company (each a Common Share, collectively, the Common Shares) and one common share purchase warrant (each warrant referred to herein as a Warrant and collectively, the Warrants). Each Warrant entitles the holder to purchase one Common Share at a price of $0.075 for a period of 24 months from the date of closing. All securities are subject to a four month hold period. With this Final Tranche, the Company has received funds totaling $832,510 and has issued a total of 16,650,200 Units (Units) at a price of $0.05 per Unit. Each Unit consists of one Common Share of the Company (each a Common Share, collectively, the Common Shares) and one common share purchase warrant (each warrant referred to herein as a Warrant and collectively, the Warrants). Each Warrant entitles the holder to purchase one Common Share at a price of $0.075 for a period of 24 months from the date of closing each tranche. All securities are subject to a four month hold period from date of their issuance. The proceeds of the Placement will be for new software development and enhancements to existig technologies and operational purposes.



Participants in this placement include Alex Romanov and Bruce Reilly, who are deemed to be related parties, as such term is defined in Multilateral Instrument 61-101, Protection of Minority Security Holders in Special Transactions (MI 61-101), being the Companys Strategic Advisor to the Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer and Director. For this transaction, the Company has relied on the exemption from the formal valuation requirements of MI 61-101 contained in section 5.5(a) of MI 61-101 and has relied on the exemption from the minority shareholder approval requirements of MI 61-101 contained in section 5.7(a) of MI 61-101.

About iSIGN Media

iSIGN, a Canadian company based in Toronto (Richmond Hill), Ontario is a data-focused, software-as-a-service (SaaS) company that is a pioneering leader in the areas of location-based security alert messaging and proximity marketing utilizing Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity in complete privacy. Creators of the Smart suite of products, a patented interactive proximity marketing technology, iSIGN enables the delivery of messages to mobile devices in proximity, with real-time reporting and analytics on a variety of metrics. 2019 winner of Richmond Hills Innovator of the Year award. Partners include IBM, Keyser Retail Solutions, Baylor University, Verizon Wireless, TELUS and Mtrex Network Solutions. www.isignmedia.com Forward-Looking Statements

This news release may include certain forward-looking statements that are based upon current expectations, which involve risks and uncertainties associated with iSIGN Medias business and the environment in which the business operates. Any statements contained herein that are not statements of historical facts may be deemed to be forward-looking, including those identified by the expressions anticipate, believe, plan, estimate, expect, intend and similar expressions to the extent they relate to the Company or its management. The forward-looking statements are not historical facts but reflect iSIGN Medias current expectations regarding future results or events. These forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results or events to differ materially from current expectations. iSIGN Media 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.  2021 iSIGN Media Solutions Inc. All Rights Reserved. All other trademarks and trade names are the property of their respective owners. Company contacts: Bruce Reilly

iSIGN Media Solutions Inc.

bruce@isignmedia.com Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor Its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the accuracy of this release.



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Registration Open for Licensed Tennessee Educators Until Sept. 30

NASHVILLE, TN  Today, the Tennessee Department of Education announced a new grant opportunity that will provide up to 2,400 licensed Tennessee educators the ability to add a new Special Education (SPED) and English as a Second Language (ESL) additional endorsement to their educator license. This grant opportunity will also be offered during the 2022-23 school year, allowing another cohort of 2,400 educators to earn an additional endorsement in either SPED or ESL at low or no cost, building off additional efforts to provide these opportunities to over 5,000 educators.

Since August 5, 2021, the department has collected participant nominations from districts, with each LEA being guaranteed at least three participant seats in each additional endorsement pathway being offered. Remaining seats will now be filled on a first-come, first-served basis by Tennessee educators who self-register for the additional endorsement pathway of their choice.

The primary purpose of this grant is to address educator vacancies across Tennessee by providing a pathway for current educators to add endorsements at no out-of-pocket cost. This grant also provides current Tennessee educators additional opportunities to develop new knowledge and skills to help them grow in their practice and to better support all students, whether in their current role or in a new role.

"In Tennessee, we are committed to providing our teachers with opportunities to advance their professional careers and skillsets while responding to the needs of our districts, schools, and students, said Commissioner Penny Schwinn. This is the sixth grant made available in recent months to support serving students with disabilities and the fourth grant made available for Tennessee educators to earn an additional endorsement at low or no-cost. We are dedicated to making Tennessee the state to become and stay a teacher.

In order to register for participation in one of these additional endorsement opportunities, currently licensed Tennessee educators should complete one of the relevant forms below by Thursday, September 30, 2021:

The partnership with Trevecca and UT-Knoxville is an incredible resource for school systems across the state. We are faced with the challenge of teaching shortages each year and this grant allows educators to add an endorsement in subject areas that are often difficult to fill, said Dr. Joey Vaughn, Director of Schools, Manchester City Schools. The opportunity provided by this grant is greatly appreciated by districts and educators in Tennessee."

Two additional endorsement grants, totaling $2 million, have been awarded to Trevecca Nazarene University and University of Tennessee-Knoxville to provide coursework in a virtual, asynchronous environment at no-cost to licensed Tennessee educators. Grant funds will also cover the cost of one administration of a required licensure assessment for all participants.

The University of Tennessee at Knoxville is excited to launch the UT-PLAYS (Personal Learning at Your Speed) Special Education Additional Endorsement program, as funded by the Department, said Dr. David Cihak, Associate Dean of the College of Education, Health, and Human Sciences, University of Tennessee, Knoxville. The teacher-participants that we are currently enrolling in these programs are highly motivated and incredibly enthusiastic about the ability to broaden their professional knowledge, skills, and dispositions of the teaching profession. We are extremely grateful to the Department for funding this investment in Tennessees teachers, and we look forward to seeing Tennessees schools and ultimately Tennessees students benefit from this investment for years to come.

We're serious about our mission to serve, and we're thankful to the state of Tennessee to help multiply those efforts, said Dr. Patrick Osborne, Professor of Leadership Studies and Associate Provost at Trevecca Nazarene University. This opportunity is very exciting! It's an absolute privilege to assist our communities, fellow neighbors, and educators in this endeavor. We are grateful to do so."

Those individuals who have already been nominated by their district for this opportunity, or for another additional endorsement opportunity being offered by the department, will not be eligible for self-registration at this time. For the SPED additional endorsement opportunities being offered, either districts or participants will be responsible for covering the cost of 1 required licensure assessment prior to earning their endorsement.

This is the sixth grant program made available by the department in recent months to support LEAs in serving students with disabilities, the fourth grant made available by the department that allows current Tennessee educators to earn an additional endorsement at low or no-cost, and the second grant made available by the department that allows educators to gain an additional endorsement in ESL for free.

This latest grant announcement builds upon the work the department has done to offer 450+ educators the opportunity to add an additional endorsement in SPED, ESL, or Secondary Math at no cost during the 2021-22 school year.

In total, the department has now offered more than 5,000 Tennessee educators the opportunity to earn an additional endorsement in SPED, ESL, or Secondary Math over the next 2 years while completing coursework through an approved Educator Preparation Provider (EPP). All of these programs greatly expand access to high-quality additional endorsement programs by allowing Tennessee educators to complete online coursework at low or no-cost.

To read more about previous Additional Endorsement grants offered by the department, click here and here.

For Tennessee Department of Education media inquiries, contact Edu.MediaInquiries@tn.gov.

###
ANDERSON COUNTY, SR 61 Bridge over Norfolk Southern Railway and Market Street in Clinton: SR 61 East is reduced to one lane through this bridge repair project. Motorists should be alert for workers present, changing conditions, lane shifts, and use extreme caution through this area.

ANDERSON COUNTY, US 25/SR 9 Bridge over Clinch River between SR 61 and Carden Farm Drive: SR 9 northbound is reduced to one lane approaching the bridge as crews continue work in this area. Motorists should be alert for workers present, changing conditions, lane shifts, and use extreme caution through this bridge construction project.

BLOUNT COUNTY, US 129 North and South between SR 35 Hall Road and Tyson Boulevard: US 129 North is reduced to one lane between Hall Road and Hunt Road as crews perform widening and roadway realignment through this project. This closure will remain in place around the clock for an estimated four to six weeks. Motorists should expect potential delays during peak travel times. Motorists should be alert for workers present and brief stoppages of traffic through this roadway construction project. For project information, go to https://www.tn.gov/tdot/projects/projects-region-1/sr-115-alcoa-highway-hall-road-to-tyson-blvd.html

BLOUNT COUNTY, SR 335 Hunt Road between Ambrose Street and Ramsay Street: Motorists should be alert for possible lane closures at various times as crews install utilities through this construction project. Motorists should be alert for workers present directing traffic and use extreme caution through this area.

BLOUNT COUNTY, SR 33 between Foothills Mall Drive and Henry Street: Motorists should be alert for possible nightly lane closures between the hours of 7 p.m. and 6 a.m. the following morning through this intersection improvement construction project. Motorists should be alert for workers present, changed conditions, and use extreme caution through this area.

BLOUNT COUNTY, US 411/ SR 35 between High Street and Sevier County Line: Motorists should be alert for possible lane closures between the hours of 7 p.m. and 6 a.m. the following morning through this resurfacing project. Motorists should be alert for workers present, possible delays, and use extreme caution through this area.

CAMPBELL COUNTY, I-75 North and South between Mile Markers 135 and 142: Motorists should be alert for possible temporary lane closures between the hours of 7 p.m. and 6 a.m. the following morning through this project. Motorists should be alert for slowed or stopped traffic, expect potential delays, and use extreme caution through this area.

CAMPBELL COUNTY, SR 63 between Myers Lane and Frontier Road/Woodson Lane: Motorists should be alert for possible temporary lane closures between the hours of 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. and/or 7 p.m. and 6 a.m. the following morning through this construction project. Motorists should be alert for slowed or stopped traffic, expect potential delays and use extreme caution

through this area.

CARTER COUNTY, US 19E/SR 37 Bridge over the Doe River and Riverview Road: Motorists should be alert for possible lane closures through this bridge repair project. Motorists should be alert for workers present, slowed traffic, and use extreme caution in this area.

CARTER COUNTY, SR 37 between Doe River Bridge and Willow Lane: Motorists should be alert for possible lane closures between the hours of 9 a.m. and 8 p.m. through this resurfacing project. Motorists should be alert for workers present, possible delays, and use extreme caution through this area.

CARTER COUNTY, SR 67 between SR 359 and SR 91: Motorists should be alert for possible lane closures during daylight hours through this resurfacing project. Motorists should be alert for workers present, possible delays, and use extreme caution through this area.

CARTER COUNTY, SR 359 between I-26 and Milligan Highway: Motorists should be alert for possible lane closures during daylight hours through this resurfacing project. Motorists should be alert for workers present, possible delays, and use extreme caution through this area.

CLAIBORNE COUNTY, SR 33 between New Hope Road and Russell Road: Motorists should be alert for possible lane closures between the hours of 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. through this resurfacing project. Motorists should be alert for workers present, expect delays and use extreme caution through this area.

CLAIBORNE COUNTY, SR 63 between Old Town Creek and US 25E/SR 32: Motorists should be alert for possible lane closures through this construction project. Motorists should be alert for workers present, expect delays and use extreme caution through this area.

COCKE/GREENE COUNTY, SR 35 between Cloud Way and Bright Hope Road: Motorists should be alert for possible lane closures during daylight hours through this resurfacing project. Motorists should be alert for workers present, possible delays, and use extreme caution through this area.

GREENE COUNTY, US 11E/SR 34 both directions between Blue Springs Parkway and Forest Road in Mosheim: Motorists should be alert for lane closures and lane shifts through this area for bridge repair operations. These lane closures will remain in place 24/7 until repairs are complete. Motorists should be alert for workers present, changing conditions, and use extreme caution in this area. This bridge repair project is estimated to be complete on or before October 31, 2021.

HAMBLEN COUNTY, SR 34 between Jefferson County Line and Walters Drive: Motorists should be alert for possible lane closures between the hours of 7 p.m. and 6 a.m. the following morning through this resurfacing project. Motorists should be alert for workers present, expect possible delays, and use caution through this area.

KNOX COUNTY, I-40 East and West between Mile Markers 369 and 375: Motorists should be alert for possible temporary lane closures nightly between the hours of 7 p.m. and 6 a.m. the following morning through this resurfacing project. Motorists should be alert for workers present, slowed traffic, expect potential delays, and use extreme caution through this area.

KNOX COUNTY, I-640 East and West between Mile Markers 0 and 3.6: Motorists should be alert for possible temporary lane closures nightly between the hours of 9 p.m. and 6 a.m. the following morning through this milling and resurfacing project. Motorists should be alert for workers present, slowed traffic, expect potential delays, and use extreme caution through this area.

KNOX COUNTY, I-640 Ramps at Exit 8: Motorists should be alert for possible temporary lane closures nightly between the hours of 7 p.m. and 6 a.m. the following morning through this construction project. Motorists should be alert for workers present, slowed traffic, expect potential delays, and use extreme caution through this area.

KNOX COUNTY, Various Interstates through Knoxville: Motorists should be alert for possible mobile lane closures nightly between the hours of 8 p.m. and 6 a.m. the following morning as crews perform roadway maintenance activities. Motorists should be alert for workers present, slow or stopped traffic, and use extreme caution in this area.

KNOX COUNTY, US 129/SR 115 Alcoa Highway between Topside Road and Maloney Road: Motorists should be alert for possible temporary lane closures and lane shifts as crews perform work through this project. Motorists should be alert for new traffic patterns. Motorists should be alert for workers present, reduce speed and use extreme caution through this area. For project information, go to https://www.tn.gov/tdot/projects/projects-region-1/sr-115-alcoa-highway-little-river-to-maloney.html

KNOX COUNTY, US 129/SR 115 Alcoa Highway between Maloney Road and Woodson Drive: Motorists should be alert for possible temporary lane closures and lane shifts as crews perform work through this project. Motorists should be alert for new traffic patterns. Motorists should be alert for workers present, reduce speed, and use extreme caution through this area. For project information, go to https://www.tn.gov/tdot/projects/projects-region-1/sr-115-alcoa-highway-maloney-to-woodson.html

KNOX COUNTY, US 441 Broadway Viaduct between Jackson Avenue and Fifth Avenue: US 441 Broadway Viaduct over Norfolk Southern Railroad in downtown Knoxville is closed for bridge replacement. The Broadway Viaduct will be closed to all traffic for the duration of the project. During the closure, Broadway will be closed from the intersection of Oak Avenue, Worlds Fair Park, and Jackson Avenue to just north of the Depot Avenue intersection. Depot Avenue will also be closed. These closures will ensure the safety of workers and motorists as crews demolish the old bridge and reconstruct the new bridge. Primary and Local Detour Routes around the bridge closure will be in place. For detour routes and project information, go to https://www.tn.gov/tdot/projects/projects-region-1/broadway-viaduct.html

KNOX COUNTY, US 441/SR 71 Chapman Highway between Highland View Drive and Burnett Lane: Motorists should be alert for possible lane closures daily between the hours of 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. through this construction project. Motorists should be alert for workers and equipment present, expect potential delays, and use extreme caution through this area. For project information, go to https://www.tn.gov/tdot/projects/projects-region-1/chapman-highway-evans-to-burnett.html

KNOX COUNTY, SR 62 Western Avenue between Copper Kettle and Texas Avenue: Motorists should be alert for possible nightly lane closures between the hours of 7 p.m. and 6 a.m. the following morning through this resurfacing project. Motorists should be alert for workers present, reduced speeds, expect possible delays, and use caution through this area.

KNOX COUNTY, SR 62 Oak Ridge Highway at Schaad Road: Motorists should be alert for possible lane closures through this area at various times as crews perform roadway resurfacing and signal work at this intersection. Motorists should be alert for workers present, reduced speeds, expect possible delays, and use caution through this area.

KNOX COUNTY, SR 332 Concord Road between Turkey Creek Road and Northshore: Motorists should be alert for possible lane closures daily between the hours of 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. and new traffic patterns through this construction project. Motorists should be alert for workers present, expect potential delays, and use extreme caution through this area. For project information, go to https://www.tn.gov/tdot/projects/projects-region-1/sr-332-proposed-widening.html

KNOX COUNTY, SR 332 Northshore Drive between Lyons View Pike and Papermill Road: Motorists should be alert for possible temporary lane closures nightly between the hours of 7 p.m. and 6 a.m. the following morning as crews perform work on concrete curb ramps through this area. Motorists should be alert for workers present, reduced speeds, expect possible delays, and use caution through this area.

LOUDON COUNTY, I-75 North and South between Mile Markers 79 and 84: Motorists should be alert for possible temporary lane closures between the hours of 7 p.m. and 6 a.m. the following morning through this resurfacing project. Motorists should be alert for workers present, slow traffic, expect delays, and use extreme caution through this area.

LOUDON COUNTY, SR 72 between Good Hope Road and Corporate Park Drive: Motorists should be alert for possible closures at various times through this resurfacing project. Motorists should be alert for workers present, slow or stopped traffic, and use extreme caution in this area.

LOUDON COUNTY, US 321/SR 73 between I-40 and Simpson Road: Motorists should be alert for possible nightly lane closures between the hours of 7 p.m. and 6 a.m. the following morning through this resurfacing project. Motorists should be alert for workers present, slow or stopped traffic, and use extreme caution in this area.

LOUDON COUNTY, US 411/SR 33 between Blount County Line and Monroe County Line: Motorists should be alert for possible lane closures daily between the hours of 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. through this resurfacing project. Motorists should be alert for workers present, slow or stopped traffic, and use extreme caution in this area.

MORGAN COUNTY, SR 29 between Vanderpool Road and Scott County Line: Motorists should be alert for possible lane closures daily between the hours of 9 a.m. and 8 p.m. through this resurfacing project. Motorists should be alert for workers present,

slow or stopped traffic, and use extreme caution in this area.

MORGAN COUNTY, SR 62 between Petit Lane and SR 116: Motorists should be alert for possible lane closures daily between the hours of 9 a.m. and 8 p.m. through this resurfacing project. Motorists should be alert for workers present, slow or stopped traffic, and use extreme caution in this area.

ROANE COUNTY, I-40 West between Mile Markers 340 and 344: Motorists should be alert for possible lane closures at various times through this slope stabilization project. Motorists should be alert for workers present, reduced speeds, lane shifts, and use extreme caution through this area.

ROANE COUNTY, I-40 East near Mile Marker 362: On Tuesday, September 7, 2021 and Wednesday, September 8, 2021, motorists should be alert for possible lane closures the hours of 8 a.m. and 5p.m. as crews perform roadway repairs. Motorists should be alert for workers present, slow or stopped traffic, and use extreme caution in this area.

SEVIER COUNTY, SR 71 between US 411 and Macon Lane: Motorists should be alert for possible lane closures daily between the hours of 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. through this construction project. Motorists should be alert for workers and equipment present, expect potential delays, and use extreme caution through this area.

SULLIVAN COUNTY, I-26 East and West between Mile Markers 5.3 and 9.9: Motorists should be alert for possible temporary lane closures through this resurfacing project. Motorists should be alert for workers present, slow or stopped traffic, expect potential delays, and use extreme caution in this area.

SULLIVAN COUNTY, I-81 North near Mile Marker 72.5: Motorists should be alert as a complete shoulder closure is currently in place in this area and also for possible temporary lane closures between the hours of 7 p.m. and 6 a.m. which may occur as crews haul off slide debris. Motorists should be alert for workers present, slow traffic, and use extreme caution through this area as work vehicles and hauling trucks will be exiting on and off the shoulder area throughout daytime work hours.

SULLIVAN COUNTY, SR 34 Intersection at Industrial Park Rd: Motorists should be alert for lane reductions through this intersection improvement project. Motorists should be alert for workers and equipment present, changed traffic patterns, expect potential delays, and use extreme caution through this area.

SULLIVAN COUNTY, SR 93 from near I-26 (Log Mile 6.2) to near US 11W/ SR 1 (Log Mile 11.3) : Motorists should be alert for possible lane closures through this resurfacing and bridge repair project. Motorists should be alert for workers and equipment present, expect potential delays, and use extreme caution through this area.

UNICOI COUNTY, SR 81 between Log Miles 0 and 1.8: Motorists should be alert for possible lane closures daily between the hours of 9 a.m. and 8 p.m. through this resurfacing and safety project. Motorists should be alert for workers and equipment present, expect potential delays, and use extreme caution through this area.

UNICOI COUNTY, SR 107 between 6th Street and SR 173: Motorists should be alert for possible lane closures daily between the hours of 9 a.m. and 8 p.m. through this resurfacing and safety project. Motorists should be alert for workers and equipment present, expect potential delays, and use extreme caution through this area.

WASHINGTON/CARTER COUNTIES, SR 91 between Broadway Street and SR 67: Motorists should be alert for possible lane closures during daylight hours through this resurfacing project. Motorists should be alert for workers present, possible delays, and use extreme caution through this area.

WASHINGTON COUNTY, SR 93 between Davis Road and Fire Hall Road: Motorists should be alert for possible temporary lane closures through this construction project. Motorists should be alert for workers present, reduced speeds, and use caution through this area.

For information on statewide interstate construction motorists can access the Tennessee Department of Transportation

SmartWay website at https://smartway.tn.gov/traffic

TDOT is now on Twitter. For up to the minute traffic information in Knoxville and the Tri-Cities follow us on Twitter at www.twitter.com/knoxville511. For statewide travel information follow www.twitter.com/TN511
Here's a bit of FRIDAY FORESHADOWING that should offer Kansas City denizens a sense of place and a reality check for this next phase of the plague.

To wit . . .

LOCAL GUV FLEXES ON SMALL BIZ DEFIANCE AGAINST COVID RULES WHILST BOX STORES REMAIN UNTOUCHED BY COWTOWN POLITICOS!!!

To her credit, only Council Lady Melissa Robinson has shown a bit of interest in pushing back against big companies like Walmart.

Meanwhile . . .

The small time politicos at 12th & Oak know they're outgunned by global corporations.

And so . . .

Smacking down small biz is the only option available in order to enforce public health orders and remind the public that we do, in fact, live in a community that operates by rules & regs.

To be fair, in another post we shared Jackson County's side of the story.

Accordingly . . . Small biz isn't in any position to argue with elected officials given their tenuous position and desperate need for licensing and permitting from state & local municipal bodies.

More to the point . . .

The fight over COVID masks is silly given that the low-grade kit has always been essentially harmless and there is, in fact, still a pandemic underway.

Read more via www.TonysKansasCity.com news link . . .

Jackson County shuts down Rae's Cafe over repeated COVID-19 health order violations KANSAS CITY, Mo. - The owner of Rae's Cafe in Blue Springs is refusing to comply with a Jackson County Department of Health order to close the restaurant after repeated violations of the county's COVID-19 orders. A sign was posted on the restaurant's door Friday stating health officials had closed the establishment.

Update . . . As of this writing the place was still open and we'll see if the suburban po-po get involved . . . Developing . . .
Once everyone starting carrying around digital monitoring devices disguised as phones, privacy was pretty much a thing of the past.

Accordingly . . . A local right-wing blog offers a peek at more digital surveillance that will help the guv more easily tax Americans . . . AND chase even more people to the crypto market . . .

The Biden Administrations 2022 budget proposal  which claims to advance equity across government  included a provision that generally slipped under the radar, but would impose onerous new reporting requirements on community banks and raises privacy questions.

The Independent Community Bankers Association reports that the proposal would require financial institutions to report information on customer bank accounts to the IRS.

Currently, banks are only required to report deposits of $10,000 or more, however, the proposal would require banks and other financial institutions to report to the IRS on the deposits and withdrawals of all business and personal accounts with a balance of more than $600.

Read more via www.TonysKansasCity.com news link . . .
As always, we want to help our blog community unpack this slap fight . . .

Kudos to Missouri Senator Greg Razer . . .

His Super Minority Party status give him almost ZERO influence in Jeff City and his work on behalf of Kansas City, Missouri could be documented on the back of a matchbook.

HOWEVER . . .

Stirring outrage over something as inconsequential as a historical exhibit is a worthwhile poseur POWER MOVE which has drawn attention and, likely MUCH MORE IMPORTANTLY, donations from across the nation.

Here's more explanation of the kerfuffle over what's really nothing more than rage pr0n that helps the easily angered and gullible empty their wallets despite the political reality that culture war tactics haven't helped the Missouri Democratic Party advance the goals of their constituents . . .

Governor Parsons office became aware of the display after receiving several complaints regarding the display. The Department of Natural Resources manages the Museum and state statute requires the Department to coordinate activities relating to the Museum with the Board of Public Buildings. The statutorily mandated process was not followed in this instance, thereby, causing the Department of Natural Resources to remove the display, Jones said in a statement.

Read more via www.TonysKansasCity.com news link . . .

Missouri pulls LGBT history exhibit from Capitol after complaints An exhibit documenting the history of LGBT rights was removed from Missouri's state Capitol after officials received complaints about it. Missouri state Sen. Greg Razer (D), who is openly gay, tweeted on Thursday that the exhibit had been in the Missouri State Museum for just four days before it was removed.

Update . . .
Johnstown, PA (15901)

Today

Partly cloudy this evening with more clouds for overnight. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 67F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Partly cloudy this evening with more clouds for overnight. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 67F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph.
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My fiance and I recently returned from this illustrious hotel located in a beautiful section of Hopewell Jamaica on the border of Montego Bay, and were extremely pleased with the level of service and professionalism displayed by each member of staff. Interestingly enough my fiance and I stayed at a Riu Hotel located in Montego Bay just days prior to our reservation at Round Hill due to a personal need for a change of location, so we had the unique experience of staying at two well known hotels in one trip. We were located in the Oceanfront Balcony Room and stayed for a total of 3 nights. Though each have their own particular styles, attractions and pricing.Round Hill Hotel was the clear winner. With stunning views, lush greenery and the way in which the property was purposefully built into the landscape we felt as though we were one with nature. Oddly enough, though it is a family friendly hotel one would assume its more of a couples retreat because of romantic atmosphere the property exudes with the ambient sounds of nature and dimly lit walkways. At first we were taken aback when noticing there was no tv provided in our room (though a dedicated tv room is on property), but once we opened up our window overlooking the ocean we soon realized what a distraction it would have been. The ambiance of the hotel was just the starting point. The cuisine offered at the hotel was certainly one to remember. At no point did the Chef disappoint, the menu items each night was different and featured a wide variety. The drinks were also quite fresh and never failed to pack a punch. Above all, the friendly and knowledgeable staff is who ties this place together and makes the stay worthwhile. Each meal was accompanied with laughter and wonderful conversation with the staff members. Even after checkout when our flight was delayed for 3+ hours, the staff made sure we were comfortable on the beach with a drink in hand and had our driver on standby until we were ready to leave. I would highly recommend this hotel and my fiance and I personally look forward to returning at some point in the future.
We have been to Maxx royal so many times , but this one was the best experience I spent the best days of my life there because there was teenage club , I made so many friends from there and I learned so many things everything was just unbelievably good and amazing , I want to say thank you to all the best animators in the business ; Marco,Katya,Masha,Hassan and Nazli these guys really appreciated my presence and gave me all the affection I needed Im really grateful for that , I love them so much ( teenage club is the best thing that happened in this hotel ) .
With travel starting to increase & this query coming up often, I have decided to post some advice for travellers regarding this topic.

The Peruvian Amazonian rainforest is one of the most biodiverse regions on the planet, but bear in mind that the rainforest is not open like the plains of Africa, so wildlife viewing is always a challenge. That said, a rainforest experience is something so special that many people cannot describe it at first & some, after having gone for wildlife viewing are rewarded with a life-changing spiritual experience. To maximise your wildlife viewing & wilderness experience requires careful planning, so get in touch with someone who knows the Peruvian Amazon well & who can help you meet your expectations. It really takes someone with long-term experience to help you get the best out of your visit.

The Iquitos area is for the Amazon River itself, luxury cruises & river dolphins, while Tambopata is for macaws, jaguars, capybaras & trails. Most people with a southern Peru itinerary including Cusco & Machu Picchu tend to go to Tambopata as it works out well flight-wise & time-wise. The Tambopata area offers a more intensive wildlife experience in general, but some like Iquitos to be based on a river boat & take excursions from there. However I have heard of many people being disappointed by their wildlife viewing experiences out of Iquitos unless taking 8 days or so to get to one of the research stations. Iquitos is a big city so you do need to get far away to see much wildlife that is not either fed by hand or in animal parks/zoos. Try to stay away from parks offering the possibility to hold animals - great for selfies, but causes a lot of stress to the animals concerned.

The Tambopata lodges are now much more comfortable than those out of Iquitos with a number of accommodation options available & the jaguar viewing rate is over 35% - with the best time of year for jaguars being the colder months of May & June. Tambopata has the macaw clay licks which do not occur near Iquitos. Capybaras in the Iquitos area have become nocturnal due to hunting pressure, while their numbers have increased in Tambopata leading to corresponding increased jaguar sightings.

For shorter itineraries where you have 3-5 days available for the rainforest Tambopata is really the best option. With 3 days/2 nights you only get one full day in the rainforest, so try to extend to 4 days/3 nights if at all possible as this doubles your time in the rainforest & allows you to make the most of the activities on offer at the lodges - different trails, macaw & parrot clay lick visits, birding, butterflies, research project talks etc. The quality of the rainforest in terms of wildlife viewing varies so be careful choosing your lodge & under present circumstances make sure that you can be supplied with information regarding covid protocols.

With reduced visitor numbers airlines have reduced the number of flights between Lima, Puerto Maldonado & Cusco. Sky airlines was the only one flying direct from Puerto Maldonado to Cusco for example & they stop that service on 27 October. Latam therefore is the only option & from November have one or two flights from Puerto Maldonado to Cusco opening up. At the moment they are flying Puerto Maldonado-Lima-Cusco, so a very long way round, but pricing is not too high. From Lima to Puerto Maldonado & vice-versa is easy for most days. Both airlines use the same type of Airbus aircraft. For Iquitos you need to fly in from Lima & Latam airline is recommended here.

I hope I have managed to answer some questions with this post.

As a travel industry professional specialising in this region I cannot make specific recommendations naming lodges etc. due to forum rules, but I am always happy to answer more specific questions via messaging.

Come to Peru soon!
When do we think UK will be off the red list?

When do we think UK will be off the red list?

Hoping to travel to Bulgaria next March, what are people's thoughts on whether UK residents will be allowed in? Realise none of us can know for certain, but was curious on what the consensus was to give me a bit of comfort when booking flights :)

March feels like a long way away so I should hope it will be in a better state by then, but then again that's what a lot of us were thinking a year ago for travel around now! And I'm not very clear on how aggressively Bulgaria is tackling covid. Or how case numbers are behaving there.

Apologies for yet another covid entry question, however I couldn't find any topics on this specifically. All the questions I found were around red list status in the next few weeks.
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Ukrainian military intelligence forces risked their lives in Kabul to find and safely extract from the country people from the evacuation list.

The Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense (GUR MO) has shown exclusive footage of the evacuation mission in Afghanistan, Ukrinform reports.

In order to find and safely pick up people from the evacuation list, GUR special operations forces would walk outside the airports protected perimeter. None of the other evacuation missions dared to make such a risky decision, as the area outside the airport was already controlled byTaliban militants. However, this approach allowed them to find and pick up in a short timeframe as many as possible people whose names had been agreed for the evacuation, GUR MO notes.

According to the intelligence report, Ukrainian pilots were also an important part of the mission, as they worked in difficult conditions, under constant threat of coming under fire during takeoff.

The evacuees were astonished to see Ukrainian special forces taking personal risks to save the civilians! the report reads.

Read also: Blinken thanks Ukraine for its assistance in evacuating people from Afghanistan

As Ukrinform reported earlier, the rescue operation in Kabul was run by the Defense Ministrys Main Intelligence Directorate with the assistance of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and support of the Presidents Office.

Among the evacuees were citizens of Ukraine, other countries nationals, including UN officials, members of human rights organizations, employees with Global Mail, USA Today, Washington Post, Stars and Stipes, and other media outlets, as well as those who had cooperated with the coalition forces in the country.

Despite the fact that Ukraine did not operate its own peacekeeping contingent in Afghanistan, its rescue mission ranked eighth largest among European countries by the number of evacuees lifted from Afghanistan  more than 700.

Photo: JIM HUYLEBROEK / THE NEW YORK TIMES

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The governments of Ukraine and the United States have signed a Memorandum of Understanding on commercial cooperation.

The press service of the Ukrainian Ministry of Economy informed that following the signing of the memorandum, Ukrinform reports.

According to First Deputy Prime Minister - Minister of Economy Oleksiy Liubchenko, in the coming months Ukraine intends to develop a package of projects in the main areas of cooperation - decarbonization, energy modernization, development of transmission networks, and infrastructure.

"I would like to note that today's memorandum will be a reliable basis for implementing projects in these areas, given the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between the Ministry of Economy of Ukraine and the ExportImport Bank of the United States," said Liubchenko.

The memorandum provides for the promotion of commercial participation of U.S. companies in the Ukrainian economy, as well as participation of Ukrainian companies in the U.S. economy. Participants also have auxiliary goals related to the development and implementation of commercial projects and public procurement in both Ukraine and the United States.

The ministry's press service noted that the signing of the memorandum lays the foundation for long-term U.S.-Ukraine commercial cooperation in such areas as energy, infrastructure, digital economy, defense and civil defense technologies, customs and border control technologies, cybersecurity, medical equipment and technologies; pharmaceuticals, etc.

The parties agreed that the list could be expanded if necessary.

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The Office of the Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister for European Integration has outlined next steps for the development of border infrastructure.

According to the Government portal, on September 2, a special meeting on the issues of functioning of international checkpoints was held under the chairmanship of Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration of Ukraine Olha Stefanishyna.

Representatives of the Ministry of Economy, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Infrastructure, the State Food and Consumer Service, the State Customs Service, the State Border Service and SE Ukrinteravtoservis coordinated efforts to modernize checkpoints across the state border, reads the report.

According to Stefanishyna, due to the Association Agreement, Ukraine has increased bilateral trade with the European Union.

"We are working on integration into the EU internal market, which will undoubtedly have a positive impact on the further growth of our trade. The load on checkpoints will grow. All this requires the development of checkpoints across the state border - both the opening of new and modernization of existing ones. First of all, it concerns the development of infrastructure, the quality of access roads, the arrangement of service areas and capacity increase, said.

During the meeting, the participants noted the launch of preparatory works and the beginning of modernization of priority checkpoints - Yahodyn, Krakivets, Uzhhorod, Chop (Tysa), and Luzhanka. At the checkpoints, it is planned to purchase vehicle inspection scanning systems, install intelligent video surveillance systems, construct a European-type warehouse for confiscated goods, etc.

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Ukraine intends to develop the electronic exchange of tax information with the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

According to Ukrinform, this issue was discussed at a meeting between Ukraine's First Deputy Prime Minister, Economy Minister Oleksiy Liubchenko and the IRS management, the Ukrainian Economy Ministry's press service reported.

During the meeting, Liubchenko announced Ukraine's intention to develop the electronic exchange of tax information as part of the signing of a Tax Information Exchange Agreement or a similar agreement, based on Article 26 of the OECD Model Tax Convention regarding the exchange of tax information.

"The importance of such an exchange is difficult to overestimate, because, for example, transfer pricing rates cover transactions worth almost $3.5 billion with 152 U.S. counterparties," Liubchenko said.

He also emphasized the need to exchange experience in the field of tax investigations, including in view of the established unit in the State Tax Service of Ukraine.

The U.S. side, in turn, pledged to assist the Ukrainian side not only in the exchange of tax information, but also in the exchange of experience. The head of the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, Charles Rettig, noted the growing role of the analytical component in the work of the Service, as well as the importance of raising public awareness to create a new paradigm of perception of the tax service as a body that serves all functions of the state.

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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has met with Apple chief executive Tim Cook.

The head of state announced this on Twitter, according to Ukrinform.

"It's a pleasure to meet with Tim Cook, who runs a company that inspires all supporters of digital transformation in the world by its example. Ukraine is already a global IT hub. We are interested in expanding Apple's presence in Ukraine and implementing new ambitious joint projects," Zelensky wrote.

According to the president's press service, Zelensky briefed Cook on Ukraine's achievements in the IT sector and expressed interest in further expanding Apple's presence in Ukraine, including through online support teams, Apple Music and AppStore moderators, and service centers.

The president and his team presented the Diia City project to Apple's CEO.

The sides also discussed the census project, which Apple has successfully implemented in the United States, and the possibility of cooperation in implementing a similar task in Ukraine.

"In addition, the meeting participants discussed the possibility of cooperation in the field of programming education for schoolchildren, students, veterans, health care workers, as well as the provision of computer equipment to schools and teachers - in support of programs that are already being implemented in Ukraine," the report reads.

According to the report, the parties also discussed the possibility of Apple building a data center for iCloud services in Ukraine, following the example of the center that was built in Denmark. They also talked about the localization of Apple products and the Ukrainianization of the Siri personal assistant.

"I hope that the dynamics of Apple's development and the pace of digitalization of our country will help create a success story for Apple in Ukraine and Apple with Ukraine," Zelensky said.

Zelensky is on a working visit to the United States at the invitation of U.S. President Joe Biden. They met in the White House on September 1.

Zelensky is to end his visit to the U.S. on Sunday, September 5.

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An authoritarian regime would be impossible in Ukraine as the countrys strong civil society would not let that happen, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said while speaking with the faculty and experts at Stanford University.

Asked whether he is afraid to become a "dragon" after killing one, the head of state said: As for killing a dragon, Ive been President of Ukraine for two years already. The situation is more complicated with your acquaintances (Russia  ed.) but this is an internal choice of their country. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian civil society is so strong, free, and democratic that whatever someone might want to do, whatever comes to their mind, its impossible for a dragon to appear in Ukraine. Theyll clip his wings, the president's press service reports.

Zelensky mentioned Mark Zakharovs movie To Kill a Dragon. He said that Ukrainians and Russians have common periods of history and victory, while at the same time, Russias state policy differs from that of Ukraine as it is aimed at taking, not giving.

"We have read the signals Russia sent, claiming its Ukraine that allegedly doesnt want to end the war. This is confusing. It wasnt we who unleashed this war. We really do want to put an end to it. But, again, we didn't start it," the president said.

As Ukrinform reported earlier, President Volodymyr Zelensky is currently in the United States on a working visit at the invitation of U.S. President Joseph Biden. On Thursday, September 1, the two leaders held a summit at the White House. On September 2, Volodymyr Zelensky arrived in California.

The trip is scheduled to wrap up on Sunday, September 5.

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Minister of Culture and Information Policy Oleksandr Tkachenko says yet another disinformation spin by the Russian FSB security service, this time  about World War 2-era "Ukrainian hit squads is a hasty response to the recent discovery of a mass shooting site near Odesa where NKVD victims are buried.

Tkachenko took to Telegram to decry Russian allegations, Ukrinform reports.

"The FSB declassified some data on the executions of civilians by alleged Ukrainian hit squads during World War 2. The IC (Investigative Committee  ed.) of the Russian Federation immediately hopped on a bandwagon," Tkachenko wrote.

According to the minister, a group of former Red Army soldiers and civilians collaborating with the Nazis were allegedly killing civilians in Orel region during WW2.

"But if you read the aggressive headline, which already sounds like a verdict, you can see that the Russians were killing their own people living in Orel region. At least 80% of the hit squad, including its three commanders, are residents of Kaluga region, Siberia, Ivanovo, and Bryansk suburbs, while only two persons were said to be from Ukraine, while origin of two other persons. Still, this was enough for them to brand a predominantly Russian group of collaborators Ukrainian hitmen. What was that thing their leader said? He who calls others names is called those names themselves, said Tkachenko, referring to Vladimir Putins response to accusations of being responsible for a number of assassinations.

The spin was in fact a lame job by its masterminds, Tkachenko said, noting that it was merely "a hasty response to the terrifying discovery of Ukrainian researchers near Odesa."

He reminded that works are now underway to research the site of what once used to be a Soviet security service (NKVD) facility outside Odesa where, according to various estimates, between 5,000 and 20,000 civilians have been tortured and killed by the Bolsheviks before being buried at the premises during the period of Great Terror in 1937-1939.

"This is a crime, the evidence of which, besides archival materials, includes execution ditches filled with the bodies of innocent victims  Ukrainians, Odesa residents. This is a real mass crime committed by the communist totalitarian system, whose successor is modern Russia," Tkachenko said.

Obviously, Ukraine's intention to investigate the site of mass burials and executions is in sharp contrast to the "Russias greatness" and "a good man Stalin" narratives. Weve grown used to this," Tkachenko declared.

The minister said that, even in the face of a grueling defensive war, constant blackmail and disregard for international norms by the aggressor power, Ukraine will still find the resources to let the world learn the truth about all crimes committed by the NKVD-KGB-FSB.

"As for filling Russia's information field with lies and manipulative information, this content is for domestic consumption only. It's just spam aimed to not let an average Russian never even have a chance to think, analyze, and see where the truth is and wheres half-truth and outright lies," Tkachenko remarked.

As reported earlier, on September 1, Russias Investigative Committee, based on the allegedly declassified materials provided by the FSB, opened a criminal case into the killings during WW2 of civilians in Russias Orel region by the Nazis and their accomplices.

These materials contain information about a punitive detachment led by a POW, former Red Army officer nomme de guerre "Hetman," set up by the Germans during the occupation of Orel region in 1941-1943. As per the FSB, this man, whose call sign hints at his Ukrainian origins, orchestrated the executions of civilians in the villages across Orel regions Znamyansky district in 1942.

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The American media said the strategic partnership between the two countries had never been stronger than now, and that the page with Trumps impeachment had been turned.

President Volodymyr Zelensky's visit to the United States, which kicked off on August 31, is coming to a conclusion, while all the important meetings and talks have already been held.

The Ukrainian president had a two-hour one-on-one with his U.S. counterpart Joe Biden, met with energy and defense ministers, the NASA chief, U.S. lawmakers, leaders of local think tanks, businesses, and the Ukrainian community. The parties signed a number of important documents  on the strategic foundations of the defense partnership, cooperation in the field of defense technologies, data exchange, and energy, including on the completion of construction at the Khmelnytskyi NPP, which will run on American nuclear fuel, and others.

INFORMAL IMPRESSIONS

An Ukrinform correspondent used his chance to witness the start of talks at the Oval Office on September 1, when the two presidents made brief statements to the media.

It was obvious that Volodymyr Zelensky tried to act with dignity and look equal, wholesome, firm, and decisive, in which he certainly succeeded.

Photo from the Ukrainian President's Office

Later, as he was speaking to reporters, Zelensky described the meeting as mens talk, that is, presumably, he asked hard questions as they stand  without much curtsy or allegories. And in some cases, Biden probably had to elaborate on his position, especially with regard to procrastination and indecisiveness on several issues important for Ukraine's security, such as NATO membership prospects; threats related to the completion of Nord Stream 2; U.S. participation in the peaceful settlement of the Russian-Ukrainian military conflict; intelligence sharing; buildup of the Ukrainian Navy fleet, etc. Some of Ukraine's proposals were new to the United States, including the one on a new format for negotiations on Russia's occupation of Ukrainian territories, other than the Normandy Four platform.

Speaking to the press, analysts, and businessmen, Zelensky repeatedly hinted that he was not about launching negotiations just the sake of such negotiations that would only touch upon some abstract intentions or strategies that are far from reality.

"Our strategy is a tactic," he said, commenting to the leaders of U.S. think tanks on the Western powers "readiness" to allow Ukraines accession to NATO, which, however, results in no concrete steps. "Its now or never," Zelensky added expressively, referring to the fact that Ukraine needs to be accepted to the defense alliance as soon as possible rather than someday.

It seems that Volodymyr Zelensky is not ashamed of insisting on having issues that are vital for Ukraine resolved, even when he gets hints about the bad timing and is asked to avoid such topics.

Photo from the Ukrainian President's Office

Perhaps some would call this stubbornness, but it is the stubbornness of a statesman who knows well what his country needs.

NEW TONE IN RELATIONS

The U.S. media, now mainly focusing on the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and the damage caused by Hurricane Ida, praised Zelensky's long-awaited visit, noting that the page related to President Trump's attempts to exploit Ukraine to tar his opponent in the election campaign, Joe Biden, has been turned. By the way, Zelensky's name has since become familiar to many Americans.

After meeting with lawmakers on Wednesday, Zelensky was asked about the impeachment story and whether relations between the United States and Ukraine have improved since then.

"Id like Ukraine to be famous, not infamous," he said.

The White House meeting marked an opportunity for the Eastern European leader to set a new tone with a new administration in person, CNN wrote. According to the report, the White House believes that "in the 30 years since Ukraine achieved independence, our strategic partnership has never been stronger than it is now."

Photo from the Ukrainian President's Office

The Washington Post published a piece with an eloquent headline "Biden backs lasting support for Ukraine as both nations move on from the Trump-era obsession with Kyiv.

The summit gave Biden an opportunity after the "turbulent withdrawal" from Afghanistan to emphasize his foreign policy priority, which he often cites as the reason behind the pullback of forces from the Middle East, according to the newspaper. Biden dwelled on this in his brief remarks made in the Oval Office ahead of the face-to-face with Zelensky, speaking in favor of a "whole, free, and peaceful Europe" and reiterated his rejection of "Russian aggression."

This is important for Biden, says former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine John Herbst, who is now part of the Atlantic Council Eurasian Center, amid the terrible two weeks he had with the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, which for some it undermines the U.S. presidents authority as a strong foreign policy leader. As per Herbst, the summit with Zelensky gave Biden opportunity to show that he is in fact at the peak of his game.

KEY TOPICS

Zelensky has repeatedly emphasized that the prospects of Ukraine's accession to NATO and threats coming from Nord Stream 2 are key to the current talks. Although, of course, neither he nor anyone on his team expects that Ukraine will be allowed to join the Alliance in these five days, and that the gas pipes will be dismantled altogether.

Jen Psaki / Photo from EPA

Biden has made it clear that he sees the pipeline as a fait accompli, and White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters Wednesday that Ukraine has yet to pass several tests (apparently to continue fighting corruption) before joining NATO, and that the decision cannot be approved by the United States alone.

But as is known, water grinds stone... And "strategy" can eventually turn into "tactics" ...

Ukraine counts on U.S. support in the event of another spike of Russian aggression once the pipeline is commissioned. And Zelensky did hear words of support from his American counterpart who promised that, if Russia took any such steps, it sanctions would immediately be enforced against Nord Stream 2.

All these agreements are reflected in a joint statement issued by the two presidents. Although, of course, any promise remains a promise until it is fulfilled. And this position defended by President Biden is perceived far from unequivocally  in both Ukraine and the United States.

What seems clear is Ukraine's bipartisan support on Nord Stream 2 and a number of other issues.

According to him, Zelensky took great pleasure in talking in the Capitol with representatives of the Congressional Ukrainian Caucus, a bipartisan support group for Ukraine. Both Republicans and Democrats have spoken out against the pipeline project. Marcy Kaptur, a Democrat Congresswoman who has previously authored a legislative amendment to pursue sanctions on Nord Stream 2, is particularly pro-active in her stance opposing the Russian pipe. The amendment was approved by the House of Representatives and is yet to pass Senate and be signed by President.

Photo from Twitter

By the way, during a meeting with the Caucus members, Zelensky presented Congresswoman Kaptur with the Order of Princess Olha, which she reported via Twitter.

Republicans, in turn, keep stubbornly pressing on Biden's inconsistency with the Russian pipe issue as grounds to shower him with more criticism.

Jim Risch / Photo from IPN

GOP Senator Jim Risch has voiced a rather harsh statement on Biden's position. President Zelenskys visit did result in the administrations release of much-needed, albeit belated, military assistance for Ukraines fight against Russian encroachment, but the administration neglected to address the most pressing concern for Ukraine  the Russian Nord Stream 2 (NS2) pipeline. President Bidens promise to sanction Russia if it uses NS2 to harm Ukraine rings hollow and will never be fulfilled, the senator concluded.

At the same time, he said, Congress will continue its efforts to stop the completion and operation of NS2 and ensure Ukraine is not threatened by this project. Punishment after the fact has not proven effective in stopping Russias malign activities before. Nord Stream 2 will be no different.

* * *

A Ukrainian presidents visit to the United States is always a top event in the countrys foreign policy agenda. The very fact that the Ukrainian leader was received in the White House sends an unequivocal signal of support  something the incumbent administration doesnt tend to do particularly often. Zelensky turned out to be only the second European leader to be granted such honors. However, the first one was Angela Merkel, whom Biden told yes to the Nord Stream 2 completion.

Will Zelensky's visit to the United States take relations between the two countries to a new level? He himself is quite cautious about the prospects, modestly referring to the documents signed, agreements reached, and meetings held as "important."

Photo from the Ukrainian President's Office

"Now it is difficult to say whether these documents are bound to become historic and whether they will take the relations to a new level," he said at one of the meetings. "But I definitely want this very much."

Most probably, the majority of Ukrainians share Mr Zelenskys wish.

Volodymyr Ilchenko, New York

im
Ukrainian humanitarian cargo for the security needs of the Republic of Lithuania has reached its destination, Ukrinform reports, referring to the State Emergency Service.

"On September 2, the humanitarian cargo sent by Ukraine for the security needs of the Republic of Lithuania reached its destination and passed all the necessary customs procedures," reads the report.

The State Emergency Service reminded that on August 14, 38 tonnes of Ukrainian humanitarian cargo was delivered. On September 1, Ukraine sent other 48 tonnes of humanitarian aid to Lithuania.

"This is the first and second stages of assistance out of three that Ukraine sends in accordance with a decree of President Volodymyr Zelensky and a resolution of the Cabinet of Ministers," reads the report.

The assistance will help strengthening the protection of Lithuania's borders from illegal migrants.

As reported, in late May, Alexander Lukashenko stated that Minsk would no longer detain illegal immigrants trying to enter the European Union through Belarus.

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| By University of Maryland School of Medicine News

In an effort to increase COVID-19 vaccination rates among children and families, and ultimately help bring the pandemic under control, the Department of Family & Community Medicine (DFCM) and the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM) are partnering with key community and faith-based groups in Baltimore City to reach the most vulnerable and underserved communities. This partnership will also extend across Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, and West Virginia.

Niharika Khanna, MBBS, MD, DGO, Gloria M. Reeves, MD, and the Rev. Kobi Little.

The Community-Based Workforce for COVID-19 Vaccine Outreach Program at UMSOM will support families with children ages 12 to 15, including those with special behavioral health needs, by addressing barriers to vaccines. It will also provide culturally relevant information, practical support, and one-on-one conversations with trusted community partners about vaccine concerns. The multistate program is funded by a $7.8 million award from the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA). It builds upon community work already underway by UMSOM that is funded by the Maryland Community Health Resources Commission, which aims to reach individuals in vulnerable communities at the grass-roots level across the state.

It is critical to understand that the objections and concerns about getting vaccinated are real and valid in these communities in order to address them, said Niharika Khanna, MBBS, MD, DGO, professor, Department of Family & Community Medicine, section chief of population health in the department, and co-principal investigator (PI) for the program. We must acknowledge them and tailor our conversations accordingly.

Language and cultural barriers are being addressed by cultural ambassadors and community leadership engagement. Multiple methods of communication are planned, including face to face, virtual, print, live, radio, television, social media, billboards, and other methods. UMSOMs partners are going into communities that are difficult to reach using a public health messaging truck. Others are reaching the homeless population with street-based outreach and are engaging post-penitentiary populations through behavioral health providers.

The regions of the four states that have high rates of vaccine hesitancy are in a variety of settings, including rural and urban communities, said co-PI Gloria M. Reeves, MD, associate professor, Department of Psychiatry at UMSOM, which is partnering with UMSOM's Department of Family & Community Medicine. Our outreach plans were developed to address specific geographic challenges such as poor internet access, utilize community strengths like coordination with local schools and faith-based organizations, and provide testimonials from community representatives on how they approached vaccine decision-making.

Partnering with Key UMB Programs and Community Leaders

The program incorporates key community partners already trusted in these communities, such as several Area Health Education Centers (AHEC), including the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB) Community Engagement Center (CEC). Other community partners central to this program include the AME Zion Church, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Baltimore branch, Community Behavioral Health, National Federation of Families, and Family Voices. UMSOMs partnerships with these community leaders will help to identify those with vaccine hesitancy in a wider swath of the population across four states. These partnerships will be used to develop a family, community, and faith-based approach toward enhanced outreach in these communities. This is not a one-size-fits-all program.

Based on information collected from community leaders and members of each population, the program will be tailored to meet the specific religious, ethnic, and socioeconomic needs of each community.

"Through this HRSA-funded collaboration with UMB and other partners, we will be able to help our communities to overcome vaccine hesitancy by initiating conversations about the very real and certain consequences of COVID-19, including hospitalization, long-term disability, and death," said the Rev. Kobi Little of the Baltimore NAACP.

"The vaccines are our best shot at staying safe, Little said. By engaging in frank and honest conversations with friends, family, and neighbors at the grass-roots level, we hope to activate communities to lead efforts to protect our people and get everyone vaccinated."

The goal in Baltimore is to address social barriers to COVID-19 vaccines and develop strategies and infrastructure to address vaccine hesitancy in Baltimore City ZIP codes that have neighborhoods where roughly 70 percent of the population has not been vaccinated. The program will also tap into synergies with the NAACP, AME Zion Church, and the central AHEC to address the need in Baltimore for community outreach and engagement. The DFCM is partnering with the SEED School in Baltimore to provide vaccination, education, and outreach to parents, students, and school staff. The central AHEC will provide navigation and post-vaccine care packages.

Community Outreach Through Largest HRSA Award in Maryland to Reach Vulnerable Communities

A key component to the program involves hiring and mobilizing community outreach workers and family peer specialists, who will serve as trusted messengers to support families in one-to-one relationships. It will also include community health workers, social support specialists, and others to increase vaccine access for the hardest-hit and highest-risk communities through high-touch, on-the-ground outreach to educate and assist individuals in getting the information they need about vaccinations.

UMSOM is one of 14 recipients of funding from HRSA for the $125 million community-based program announced in June by the Biden-Harris administration. It is the largest of two awards granted in Maryland.

A Data-Based Approach Toward Reaching Vulnerable Communities

Khanna has been tracking patient data in vulnerable communities, with the intent of gaining a greater understanding of COVID-19 and how it has impacted patient care. This data tracking helped set the stage to better direct future health care directives, repurpose clinical teams, redesign workflows, ensure optimal patient care for those with COVID-19, and to bring them into or continue primary care. In particular, her team focused on Family Medicine patients largely from West Baltimore as a baseline for building a deeper insight about patient symptoms and transmission.

Armed with this information, Khanna and her team began publishing a monthly COVID-19 Dashboard, which includes a number of data-based perspectives on the emerging trends in unique COVID-19 cases by race, age, and sex. Since the start of vaccination for COVID-19, they also tracked vaccination trends in patients with data collected in the Chesapeake Regional Information System for our Patients (CRISP), the designated Health Information Exchange in Maryland and the District of Columbia. In addition, the team focused on age, race, chronic disease, and socioeconomic predictors of health.

A particular area of interest was socioeconomic factors and how they intersect with COVID-19, for which Khanna and her team used the Area Deprivation Index (ADI) intensity map. The ADI incorporates census data to rank neighborhoods by socioeconomic disadvantage in a region of interest. The resulting data revealed that the most pandemic-vulnerable Family Medicine patients were African Americans living in highly deprived areas within densely populated multihousing units, followed by whites living in areas with low or intermediate ADI ranks.

This community-based approach is built on our close connections within these communities and is supported by data generated by our own faculty, setting the path toward fighting the COVID-19 pandemic in the broadest way possible, said E. Albert Reece, MD, PhD, MBA, executive vice president for medical affairs, UMB, and the John Z. and Akiko K. Bowers Distinguished Professor and dean, UMSOM. We know that vaccines are our best defense against this deadly virus, and they are even more important as we are seeing a rise in cases with new variants.
Support groups are crucial to help refugee women cope with their anxieties and stress, especially arising from the pandemic lockdown.  UNHCR/Natalia Lazaro

To be lost in the dark, and not be seen by anyone.

This was the powerful phrase used by refugee woman, Mina* about her struggles with mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic in Malaysia.

"Nobody could understand the darkness I have been through. I could see the people but I had no courage to call out for help, I felt lost and helpless, said Mina.

Then Mina found an emotional lifeline - an online support group for refugee women. Joining the group helped Mina manage her depression and anxiety.

This platform brought me light and showed me the way. I can dream of my future now because I am seen. I feel loved and heard again," she said.

Mina is part of the COVID-19 Women Support Project, an online psychosocial support group project by the University of New South Wales (UNSW) and UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency in Malaysia. It aimed to create a safe space for refugee women to seek support and assistance on matters concerning their mental health and emotional well-being in a time of COVID-19.

The project began in August 2020 as concerns grew regarding the patterns of increased domestic abuse and family violence cases globally due to COVID-19 lockdowns.

In light of this, we needed a platform to support the mental health needs of hundreds of vulnerable refugee women, said Michelle Fong who heads the sexual and gender-based violence programme at UNHCR. We also identified that lockdowns and physical distancing restrictions due to COVID-19 meant that these sessions needed to be done virtually if they were to benefit the greatest number of vulnerable women.

16 refugee women leaders were selected to attend a month-long training session by UNSW and UNHCR on psychosocial support and gender-based violence response. These leaders were then appointed as focal points to facilitate eight online support groups, comprising refugee women from Afghanistan, Sudan, Somalia, Yemen, Pakistan, and Myanmar.

We knew it was vital to engage empowered refugee women leaders themselves, working closely with both international and local NGOs, to provide this online platform supporting vulnerable refugee women, said Fong. We can already see the results of this refugee-led project in assisting refugee women cope with their anxieties and stress arising from the pandemic lockdown.

These support group sessions are conducted virtually using the audio call feature on various messaging applications, where 15 to 20 refugee women are able to speak openly about a variety of mental health concerns, including grievances and challenges in coping during the pandemic. Each session lasts no more than 90 minutes and takes place three times a month.

Since the start of the project, over 1,600 refugee women in Malaysia from 11 to 60 years old have benefitted from attending at least one of over 280 sessions. Many attend these support group sessions religiously, and the improvement in them have been notably positive.

As we compare our situations as individuals and as a group within our community before and after we joined this project, we really have recognized a great positive change. From isolated group members, knowing and caring less about each other, we are now a united group that provides valuable support to each other, said Samia, a 43 year-old Sudanese refugee who is one of the projects focal points. She also added that she feels privileged to be given the opportunity to work with other refugee communities and learn from the experiences of others.

Regular de-briefing sessions are held among the focal points and UNHCR as well as NGOs with expertise in mental health issues faced by refugee communities, such as Asylum Access, Tenaganita, and the Malaysian Social Research Institute (MSRI), to report or escalate any pressing matters from the support group sessions, especially if there are cases with protection concerns. For specific cases of need, the focal points are also trained to make referrals to NGOs, providing the people they serve with health, education, and livelihood assistance.

UNHCR plans to continue this project next year, expanding it to include more refugee communities in need. Fong said, It is crucial that this continue to be a refugee-led, women-led programme, and we look forward to working with them to bring change to their families and communities.

The far-reaching impact of the project on the refugee womens well-being is clear.

We now think we are one hand, we share and support each other, give advice, and call each other to attend the sessions punctually," said Maymun, a 35 year-old Somali refugee widow with four children.

Through the group, we feel we matter. We have a voice and are pleased to have other women leaders there for us to make our voices heard.

*Name changed to protect identity
Four years after fleeing to Bangladesh from Myanmar, Rohingya refugees may have just survived their most challenging year yet.

Life in the congested camps that are home to over 880,000 Rohingya refugees was already tough, but the COVID-19 pandemic has brought new hardships  limiting movements, closing learning centres and reducing on-site assistance provided by aid organizations.

Then came a massive fire in March that reduced nearly 10,000 shelters to ashes and killed 11 refugees. The fire was followed by a particularly wet monsoon season that brought more than 700mm of rain in just one week between 27 July and 3 August, inundating more than 400 local villages, washing away shelters and triggering flooding and landslides that killed some 20 people, 10 of which were refugees. Some 24,000 refugees were forced to abandon their homes and belongings.

"We are always scared of diseases and fire."

Since we live in a congested situation, we are always scared of diseases and fire breaking out and of our houses getting flooded, said Asmida, 33, one of more than 7,000 refugee volunteers trained by the UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR, and partners to respond to emergencies such as fires and flooding.

During the monsoon season, she has helped pregnant women, children and elderly people from her block reach a safe place. She and the other volunteers have also worked tirelessly to help organize and coordinate the work of clearing away mud and repairing shelters, roads and bridges.

Rohingya refugee volunteers like Asmida, together with Bangladeshi workers from the surrounding communities in Coxs Bazar District, form the backbone of delivery for humanitarian services in the camps, particularly over the past 18 months when COVID restrictions have reduced the presence of aid workers. They know the whereabouts of the most vulnerable people in their communities likely to need help in an emergency and keep an eye on the most flood-prone areas in the camps when the monsoon rains are particularly heavy.

Mohammad Aiyaz, another volunteer, was monitoring one such area last month when he heard children screaming.

We saw that a boy was drowning in the canal, he recalled. I went close to him and tossed a throw bag to him. He caught it and we pulled him safely to the bank and handed him over to his parents.

Eleven people were killed and more than 9,500 shelters were destroyed by a huge fire that broke out in one of the camps in March.  UNHCR/Iffath Yeasmine

Refugee volunteers worked day and night in heavy rain to rescue refugees stranded by severe flooding in the camps.  UNHCR/BDRCS

Rohingya refugee volunteers work to re-build a bamboo bridge destroyed by floods.  UNHCR/Amos Halder

Humayun Kabir, a Bangladeshi community health worker, helps Rohingya refugees waiting to receive their first COVID-19 vaccine.  UNHCR/Amos Halder

Noor Islam was among the first group of the Rohingya refugees to receive a COVID-19 vaccine in August.  UNHCR/Amos Halder

As well as acting as first responders in emergency situations, refugee volunteers, who include trained community health workers, have played a vital role during the COVID-19 pandemic  sharing life-saving messages on how to prevent infection, recognize symptoms and where to go for testing and treatment.

Recently they have been helping prepare the ground for the roll-out of COVID-19 vaccines following the decision by the Bangladeshi government to start offering them to older Rohingya refugees.

Humayun Kabir, a local Bangladeshi, supervises one of the groups of Rohingya community health workers who are working to ensure that as many older refugees as possible take up the offer of a vaccine.

In the beginning, there was some fear and confusion regarding the vaccine, he said. We were successful to help them overcome [that] through messaging, leaflets and videos.

The first round of vaccinations started on 10 August and over 34,000 refugees aged 55 and above have now received their first jab.

Among them was Nur Islam, 59. In my lifetime of more than 50 years in Myanmar, I never received any vaccines, he said. After coming to Bangladesh, we got our first vaccines. We are six members in the family, among whom only I could be vaccinated so far.

For those with disabilities or too frail to reach one of the 56 vaccination centres, the volunteers help to transport them from their shelters by carrying them or using homemade stretchers.

If the Rohingyas are not safe, the Bangladeshis are not safe either, Humayun pointed out. Thats why vaccination for all is crucial.

With a second phase of the vaccination rollout due to start in the coming months that is expected to reach more Rohingya refugees, there is some hope that restrictions in the camps will eventually be eased. But natural disasters and lack of space and durable shelters remain concerns for refugees now entering their fifth year of displacement.

When we came here, we thought that we could return within one or two years, said Nur Islam. Now four years have passed. Young people get married and start families, but we dont have enough space for all the family members.

"I want our kids to be safe from landslides and flooding."

Asmida worries about her childrens safety and their future.

I want our kids to be safe from landslides and drowning, she said. I want them to get back to the learning centres so they can have an education and meet other children. It will also keep them busy and safe.

As time passes, the needs of hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees living in 34 camps continue to grow. For now, humanitarian assistance remains their only lifeline.

Giving Rohingya refugees greater possibilities to develop skills and be productive will contribute to peace and stability in the camps and help prepare them better for return, said Ita Schuette, UNHCRs Head of Office in Cox's Bazar. We must centre our efforts on providing them with opportunities to serve a purpose, but also to continue dreaming of a brighter future.

She called on the international community to continue supporting Rohingya refugees and the Bangladeshi government and local communities who have been hosting them.

We have a responsibility to not allow this to become a forgotten crisis.


Walla Walla Public Schools Superintendent Wade Smith is ready to open the districts schools on Sept. 7 for full-day in-person learning, despite a nearby districts struggles in doing the same thing.

The Dayton School District had to close for grades 6-12 due to a COVID-19 outbreak.

More than 30 students have been quarantined or have been out sick in Dayton since the district opened on Aug. 24.

Dayton Superintendent Guy Strot said Thursday, Sept. 2, that it is unclear if the outbreak occurred at school or away from school. He said Columbia County Public Health is doing contact tracing.

As of the time this story was published, attempts to reach Columbia County Public Health have been unsuccessful.

Smith expressed confidence in his own districts safety plans.

I cant speak for Dayton and the situation there, Smith said. What I can tell you is were taking the safety of our kids very seriously. Were enforcing the mask mandate, were striving to maintain that three-foot (rule for social distancing of students in the classroom) wherever and whenever possible.

Smith said the district is taking other steps as well.

Were keeping up our cleaning, our hygiene, all of that, Smith said. We are maximizing air flow, maximizing filtration.

The district was able to keep students distanced 3 feet apart in elementary and middle schools last year when it switched to full days for those students.

However, Walla Walla High School students never did return to full days for multiple reasons. A remodeling construction project at the school has put about half of its buildings out of commission at a time.

Wa-Hi Ready to Open The new business education classroom is ready to go at Walla Walla High School, Thursday, Sept. 2, 2021.

This made fitting everyone in while keeping them distanced difficult.

At the time, the rule requiring 3 feet of distancing between students was just that, a rule that was required to be followed. Now, however, it is more of a target.

In fact, Washington Superintendent of Public Instruction Chris Reykdal announced all schools must offer in-person learning to families that wish it or lose state funding.

Not being able to distance students 3 feet apart is not to be used as an excuse.

Another reason high school students did not return to full days is there were only about seven weeks left of the school year and students had just switched to a hybrid schedule.

Smith said making a move would force the school to develop new student schedules from scratch, which in some cases would have involved splitting some classes up and students changing teachers with only seven weeks left of an already chaotic year.

Now, Smith said, the school has had all summer to figure things out.

This has allowed Principal (Ron) Higgins the summer months to adjust class sizes and adjust teachers and where theyre teaching to make sure the ones with the highest class load are in the largest classrooms, Smith said.

These adjustments make Smith cautiously confident.

Am I worried? Absolutely, Smith said. We want to do everything we can to keep our kids full-time in the classroom, on the courts and on the field. Were going to do everything we can to make that a reality for our kids and our staff.

Administration staff, such as Smith, are not the only ones wanting to get students back in schools. Keith Swanson, the president of the teachers union that represents Walla Walla, said teachers are still supportive of opening Sept. 7.

Teachers are really excited to see their students, even if at the same time they are concerned about the current COVID situation, Swanson said. I think its really important to build back those face-to-face relationships between teachers and students.

Swanson added that he hopes families are getting vaccinated.

Smith also said there are things families can do to help prevent an outbreak in Walla Wallas schools.

Its all about partnerships. Partnerships with our staff, our kids and our parents and families, Smith said. If you, or your kid or student are not feeling well, do not come to school. We have an amazing testing capacity and can come to your house and test you for COVID  When in doubt, give us a call. Wear masks and practice distancing.

Still, whats happening in Dayton cant be ignored. Dayton was able to fit all students in classrooms at the start of last school year when the mandate was to keep students 6 feet apart. That district had a lot of success last year, staying in-person for most of the year.

But distance learning is back for many of Daytons students, and Smith acknowledges the necessity of preparing for the same thing in Walla Walla.

He said plans have been developed to return single classes, or a whole school, to in-person learning if needed.

Smith also said he hopes that a majority of staff being vaccinated will help keep everyone safe as well. He said that since the mandate from Gov. Jay Inslee that all school staff be vaccinated  with health and religious exemptions in place  he hasnt personally had anyone call him to say they are quitting.

Walla Walla Public Schools safety protocols, including plans in case a return to distance learning is needed, can be found at ubne.ws/wwps-safety.
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Baldwin County School District staff receive COVID-19 vaccines during a vaccine clinic held last March. The school district will partner with the North Central Health District to provide COVID-19 Pfizer vaccines on Friday, Sept. 10, prior to the Baldwin High School Homecoming football game from 3:30 and 7:30 p.m. at the Baldwin County Board of Education. These vaccines will be available to students age 12 and older, Baldwin County Employees, parents/guardians, and family members.
Union Springs, AL (36089)

Today

Cloudy with occasional rain showers. Low near 70F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 50%..

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Cloudy with occasional rain showers. Low near 70F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 50%.


(Photo : 4 Things to Do if College Counseling Is Unavailable)

Mental health among college students is a serious and complex problem. According to an Inside Higher Ed study, 65% of students reported having fair or poor mental health. Just in the last decade, the number of anxiety and depression cases almost doubled. The American College Health Association claims that the number of previous depression diagnoses or treatments grew from 9% to 20% in 2009-2019.

It has to do with many factors of a campus experience. Students have to adjust to a completely new schedule, accommodation, and academic curriculum. Sometimes, students have to write a research paper, take a shift, or visit a friend all in one day. So, it is incredibly hard to manage huge levels of stress.

Although colleges recognize the problem and try to provide resources, they are not always available. In this article, we'll list down all other resources open to students in case college counseling is not available.

Other Campus Resources

Often, colleges offer free or low-cost counseling. It usually has a limited amount of sessions; yet, it is a great opportunity. But it is not the only thing to keep in mind. A college might have a training center for future counselors. They can offer free or low-cost therapy sessions to other students as they need experience for their education.

Also, there might be therapy groups available. They can be either provided by college staff or self-organized by students dealing with similar issues. Sometimes, talking to someone with the same experience is very helpful.

It is important to check out your rights and accommodations. Depending on the diagnosis and personal needs, a person might get such services:

preferred seating;

study breaks, additional breaks;

separate room for passing an exam;

opportunity to give written presentations or exams instead of oral;

opportunity to record lectures;

extensions of deadlines;

studying from home.

If you feel like these options can reduce anxiety or help with ADHD, it is worth looking at which of them are available in your college.

Off-Campus Therapy Options

The next option is to look for help off-campus. Of course, there are many therapists out there, but the two main issues are money and availability for students.

Therapy is not very affordable, so it is important to look for any options that allow saving some money while taking care of mental health.

There can be a local psychology training clinic with grad students offering sessions. They are still supervised by a licensed therapist, so it is not as risky as one might think.

In addition, one might research low-cost and sliding scale payment therapy options.

YMCA also offers low-cost mental health help for individuals. The prices vary depending on the income of a person, so it is worth checking out if you have a YMCA nearby.

Open Path is a non-profit organization that helps people find affordable and licensed therapists. One can find professionals that charge $30-50 per session. Yet, one needs to pay one time for membership on Open Path ($49).

Governmental Institutions

There are many associations, organizations, and institutions that can offer a lot of resources to students struggling with mental health. Here are some that can be useful in different times of need.

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (1-800-273-8255) is available 24/7 for emergencies. One can get immediate support and referral to a local group or therapist.

Crisis Text Line is also available 24/7 and is devoted to less urgent issues (text "HOME" to 741741). A professional will help deal with stress or overbearing emotions. Crisis counselors can make you calm down and feel safe. They can refer one to other specialists as well.

The American Psychiatric Association has a lot of helpful resources on its website. There is also an opportunity to find a local support group or psychiatrists there.

The Anxiety and Depression Association of America has a great site with lots of advice and tips on reducing anxiety and depression symptoms. And one can find a counselor via this platform as well. Besides, it has an online support group that one can join.

The National Institute of Mental Health has a lot of articles on mental health issues students struggle with. One can find symptoms, possible treatments, and advice on how to help yourself or others.

Other Online Resources

There are many other ways to get help online - forums, chat groups for support, online counseling, or downloading an app. Some apps can be used to calm down, meditate, reduce anxiety and stress, track mood, etc. Here is what one might look for.

Research for online support groups for specific issues like depression, ED, ADHD, anxiety, etc.

7 Cups is a free website with trained volunteers to talk to. They cannot provide therapist advice, but they can listen and help get through. There is also a paid option to upgrade to a licensed therapist for $150 per month.

Consider online counseling platforms like Talkspace.com (it has free groups led by therapists and paid sessions) or Real (free group sessions and one-to-one options).

Bliss is a resource by CIMHS where one can follow eight free sessions on well-being and mental health on their own. One can learn to track mood, manage emotional and high-stress situations, as well as discover helpful techniques to calm down.

Calm is a simple yet effective app for relaxation via guided meditations.

Headspace is another amazing app with lots of resources on managing well-being and living mindfully. It has tips, tricks, and meditations to calm down, focus, or relax.

In Summary

Mental health is an essential concern of every person wishing to live a fulfilling life. Students need to take care of their mental state because they deal with huge loads of stress on a daily basis. However, if college counseling is not available to you, it is not the end of the world. There are many other options and professionals to reach out to.
As Texas State volleyball star Janell Fitzgerald enters her senior season, not only is she s Read more
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WASHINGTON (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 03rd September, 2021) The first since 2016 high-level meeting between the Biden administration and Mexico is set to take place on September 9 to reinvigorate economic dialogue between the countries, the White House said on Friday.

"On September 9, the Biden-Harris Administration will convene the first U.S.- Mexico High-Level Economic Dialogue (HLED) since 2016 in recognition of the broad, deep economic agenda that the United States shares with Mexico," the White House said in a press release.

The meeting's agenda will include promotion of sustainable economic and social development in Southern Mexico and Central America, the release said.

The HLED was established in 2013 to advance strategic economic and commercial priorities for both the US and Mexico in order to boost economic development, job creation, and reduction of poverty and inequality, according to the release.

In August, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and other US officials met with Mexican counterparts to discuss the upcoming economic meeting in September as well as possible solutions to the migration crisis on the US-Mexico border.
Brdo castle (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 3rd Sep, 2021 ) , Slovenia, Sept 2 (AFP/APP):EU defence ministers on Thursday weighed proposals for a European rapid reaction force after the bloc was sidelined during the US-led evacuation from Afghanistan.

Calls have grown for the 27-nation group to develop its own joint military capability to respond quickly to crises in the wake of the chaotic scenes at Kabul airport after the Taliban seized power.

"Afghanistan has shown that deficiencies in our strategic autonomy come with a price and that the only way forward is to combine our forces and strengthen not only our capacity but also our will to act," EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell told journalists after the meeting in Slovenia.

"If we want to be able to act autonomously and not be dependent on the choices made by others, even if these others are our friends and allies, then we have to develop our own capacities.

" Among the propositions is a plan, first aired in May, to set up a 5,000-strong force as part of a review of the EU's overall strategy due to be presented in draft form in November.

But the proposal is yet to gain EU-wide support, and there are major doubts over whether there is the political will to engage such a force. The bloc, for instance, never used a system of so-called battlegroups it set up in 2007.

"The EU and its Member States must carry greater weight in the world -- to defend our interests and values and to protect our citizens," European Council President Charles Michel wrote in an online post.

"The chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan forces us to accelerate honest thinking about European defence."
Montreal, Sept 3 (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 3rd Sep, 2021 ) :Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau devoted most of his time in a first election debate late Tuesday to discussing the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, and hit out at his main challenger, Conservative leader Erin O'Toole.

The French-language dustup, less than three weeks before voting, saw the one-time golden boy of Canadian politics square off against O'Toole, whom he now trails in public opinion polls, as well as New Democratic Party leader Jagmeet Singh and Yves-Francois Blanchet at the reins of the separatist Bloc Quebecois.

They sparred over mandatory Covid vaccines, child care, taxation and the economy, oil and climate change, gun violence, the #MeToo movement, racism and "Quebec bashing." "You do not know the issues, Mr. O'Toole!," Trudeau said. "You have not costed any of your policy proposals. It is not a serious plan." He also accused the frontrunner of supporting "two-tier" private and public health care, which a majority of Canadians reject.

At the same time, Trudeau found himself on the defensive for having called the snap election only 18 months after the last general election, which he defended by saying a new mandate was needed to steer the nation out of the pandemic.

"We must give Canadians the choice," he shot back at challengers as he picked apart the Conservatives' election plank.

The Liberals called the election while high in the polls, hoping to regain a majority in the House of Commons, but Trudeau stumbled in the first two weeks of the campaign.

Few wanted an election now, when Canadians are just starting to emerge from pandemic lockdowns of the past year to return to the office and send their kids back to school -- and O'Toole made sure Trudeau knew it.

"Now is not the right time for an election," O'Toole said, accusing Trudeau of "putting his own interests ahead of Canadians' interests." The other two leaders also piled on with similar rebukes.

After six years of Liberal rule, the Tory leader presented himself to the nation as the face of "change" and fiscal restraint after the Liberals ran up massive deficits to help households and businesses weather the pandemic.

Two more nationally-televised leaders debates, one in French and one in English, are scheduled for September 8 and 9.

The four main party leaders will be joined then by the Greens' Annamie Paul.
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Foreign Minister Makhdoom Shah Mahmood Qureshi and his counterpart from the Republic of Slovenia Anze Logar on Thursday exchanged views on the latest developments in Afghanistan

ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 2nd Sep, 2021 ) :Foreign Minister Makhdoom Shah Mahmood Qureshi and his counterpart from the Republic of Slovenia Anze Logar on Thursday exchanged views on the latest developments in Afghanistan.

During the telephonic conversation, the two Foreign Ministers also discussed matters pertaining to strengthen bilateral relations.

Foreign Minister Qureshi said that being next door neighbor of Afghanistan, Pakistan and its people have suffered the most after the people of Afghanistan, a press release issued here by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said.

He underscored the paramount importance of peace and stability in Afghanistan, for the safety and security of the people of Afghanistan and the region. He highlighted the salience of an inclusive political settlement.

The Foreign Minister underlined that the international community should remain engaged with Afghanistan to forestall a dire humanitarian situation and to ensure economic stability.

He underlined that the EU can play pivotal role in this regard. Republic of Slovenia currently holds the Presidency of the European Union.
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British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab has thanked Pakistan for safely evacuating British citizens from Afghanistan, adding that the UK will continue to provide aid to Afghanistan on humanitarian grounds.

ISLAMABAD: (UrduPoint, UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News-Sept 3rd, 2021) British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab hinted on Friday that the UK government had intention to get closer to the Taliban government in Afghanistan.

Raab said it would not have been possible to evacuate some 15,000 people from Kabul without some degree of cooperation with the Taliban, who seized Kabul on August 15.

"We do see the importance of being able to engage and having a direct line of communication," said Raab while addressing a joint press conference with Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi on Friday.

Foreign Minister Qureshi said that through such dialogues with the British government representatives, Pakistan upgrades its relations with the UK to a higher level.

He said Pakistan had made "tremendous progress" on getting out of FATF's grey list. "We have taken legislative steps, administrative steps, and concrete steps that are being taken," he said.

FM Qureshi said he discussed Pakistan's name on the UK's Red List, adding that he told the British foreign secretary how people in Pakistan felt about it and "what needs to be done to take Pakistan's name off the Red List and into the Amber List."

The foreign minister said he is happy that a meeting has been arranged between Dr Faisal Sultan and British authorities on Monday in which he would suggest ways in how "both sides can be comfortable and overcome this challenge."

"On the whole, it was a frank and candid discussion. Thank you for coming," concluded the foreign minister.

Speaking after the foreign minister had concluded his opening statement, Raab said that the UK valued its historic relations with Pakistan, adding that he had a positive and constructive discussion with FM Qureshi.

"We want to further strengthen our ties with Pakistan," he said.

He thanked Pakistan for safely evacuating British citizens from Afghanistan, adding that the UK will continue to provide aid to Afghanistan on humanitarian grounds.

"We will continue to help Afghanistan's neighbouring countries, including Pakistan," he vowed. "We want to see a prosperous Afghanistan,".

Hoping the Taliban will bring stability and an end to violence in Afghanistan, the UK foreign secretary said it was premature to talk about recognising the Taliban at the moment.

Speaking about Pakistan's inclusion in the Red List, Raab said Dr Faisal Sultan would hold a meeting with UK authorities to discuss the technical aspects of the case.

"We will be able to take the decision on excluding Pakistan's name from the Red List on technical grounds," he said.

In response to a question, the foreign minister said he had raised the issue of atrocities in occupied Kashmir that are being committed by India.

Qureshi said he discussed how Geelani was denied a "decent burial" by Indian security forces, adding that it was a violation of an individual's basic right.

"There will be hundreds of funerals [for Geelani]. There is one taking place right here in Islamabad today. Every parliamentarian will go there. If you [UK foreign secretary] were not here, I would have gone myself," h added Qureshi.

He said it was not possible to suppress freedom of expression. The Pakistani foreign minister said he discussed the issue with Raab, who said the UK's position on Kashmir is a stated and known one.

"However, he told me that it does not stop them from raising human rights issues. If they [UK authorities] do that, thank you."

In response, Raab said that the UK has a longstanding policy of encouraging India and Pakistan both to pursue a longstanding solution to the Kashmir crisis.

"It is not for the UK to impose its solution to the Kashmir crisis," he said, adding that London encouraged both Islamabad and New Delhi to hold concrete dialogue over the issue.

Raab had reached Islamabad Thursday night for a two-day visit to Pakistan to discuss bilateral ties and the situation in Afghanistan after the Taliban swept the country.

Foreign Minister Makhdoom Shah Mahmood Qureshi earlier held official talks with Secretary of State Dominic Raab. The talks covered the evolving situation in Afghanistan and bilateral matters.

Foreign Secretary Raab is also scheduled to have an interaction at the leadership level, the Foreign Office said in a statement. He will meet Prime Minister Imran Khan and Chief of the Army Staff Qamar Javed Bajwa.

Raab will be visiting the Torkham border with other British officials Friday afternoon, sources in the British government had said, adding that the purpose of the Torkham border visit is to get acquainted with the problems of the Afghan refugees.

Britain will work with Pakistan to help Afghan refugees, the sources said.

After completing his visit to Pakistan, the UK foreign secretary will reportedly brief British officials on the issue of refugees.

Pakistan and the United Kingdom have been closely engaged in the latest developments in Afghanistan.

Prime Minister Imran Khan had a comprehensive exchange of views with Prime Minister Boris Johnson telephonically on August 18.

FM Qureshi and Secretary of State Dominic Raab discussed the situation in Afghanistan twice on August 16 and 27. The visit will reinforce the current momentum in high-level exchanges.

Raab is the third western foreign minister coming to Pakistan after the Kabul fall. Prior to his visit, Germany's Heiko Maas and Netherlands' Sigrid Kaag came to Islamabad.

Before travelling to Islamabad, Dominic Raab visited Doha to hold talks with Qatari leadership on the Afghan crisis.

While speaking during a joint press conference with Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani, Raab had said there is a need to engage with the Taliban on Afghanistan, but Britain has no immediate plans to recognise their government.

"Our commitment on the part of the United Kingdom to Afghanistan remains. We need to adjust to the new reality," Raab had told reporters.

'UK foreign secretary to hold talks on rescue of Britons left behind in Kabul'

Raab has been under intense fire for being away on vacation as Kabul fell after the collapse of the Ashraf Ghani government, and thousands of Britons were left stranded.

The UK government had said Raab will head to the region for talks about the rescue of those left behind in Kabul after the departure of the remaining foreign forces.

The foreign secretary had said he would be leaving for the region on Wednesday, after a combative grilling on the governments handling of the crisis in Afghanistan by the Foreign Affairs Committee, but did not say where exactly, due to security reasons.

Meanwhile, a UK government source confirmed that Raab will be meeting civilian and military leadership during his visit to Pakistan and that the visit was being held at the request of the UK government.

The source had added that Raab will also likely meet a representative of the Afghanistan government.

On Tuesday, Raab had told the Foreign Affairs Committee: Were always very careful about signalling travel movements because of the security implications. But I can tell you Im leaving after this committee to go to the region.

Committee chair Tom Tugendhat had asked Raab: Is this your first trip to Pakistan?

Ive been to Pakistan before but not as a foreign secretary, he had responded.

Raab had said the central assessment of the UK government was that Kabul was unlikely to fall in 2021, despite it ultimately being taken by the Taliban in the middle of August.

The central assessment that we were operating to, and it was certainly backed up by the JIC (Joint Intelligence Committee) and the military, is that the most likely, the central proposition, was that given the troop withdrawal by the end of August, youd see a steady deterioration from that point and it was unlikely Kabul would fall this year, he had said.

Raab had pledged not to recognise the Taliban as the official government of Afghanistan, but said the UK and its allies will test them and judge them.

He had told the Foreign Affairs Committee: We will not recognise the Taliban. I believe the US and most of the like-minded G7 countries have all said the same. What we will do is test them and judge them by how they respond.

I think we will need, as I have said, a much broader caucus of countries involved in trying to resolve this. The United States is going to remain engaged and responsible for what happens next and of course, we want to work very closely with them,.
One of the most hotly anticipated sci-fi blockbusters in years was finally set to land on Friday, as the world premiere of "Dune" arrived at the Venice Film Festival

Venice, Sept 3 (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 3rd Sep, 2021 ) :One of the most hotly anticipated sci-fi blockbusters in years was finally set to land on Friday, as the world premiere of "Dune" arrived at the Venice Film Festival.

Journalists and industry folk were ordered to hand in their phones to prevent any shots leaking out from the screenings.

Meanwhile, fans prepared for a cavalcade of stars to descend on Venice's glitzy Lido island, including Timothee Chalamet, Zendaya, Jason Momoa, Oscar Isaac and Javier Bardem.

With a $165-million budget and a critically adored director in Canadian Denis Villeneuve, hopes are high that the film can shake the curse that has attached to previous attempts to adapt the landmark 1960s novel.

Through hits like "Sicario" and "Arrival", Villeneuve has put himself alongside Christopher Nolan as one of the rare directors who can deliver deadly serious cinema that also pulls in the punters.

He has also proved his worth to sci-fi fans with "Blade Runner 2049", a lauded sequel to the Ridley Scott classic.

The build-up has not been all roses, with the release delayed by almost a year due to the pandemic.

Villeneuve has also clashed with Warner Bros over its decision to release the film on streaming platforms at the same time as cinemas.

He told Total Film that decision was "ridiculous", saying: "The best way I can compare it is to drive a speedboat in your bathtub."The film is playing out of competition at Venice, which has a particularly starry line-up on Friday, with Kristen Stewart also premiering her biopic of Princess Diana, "Spencer".
MINSK (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 03rd September, 2021) Some 60 migrants, mainly from Iraq and Afghanistan, are stuck on Belarus' borders with Poland and Latvia, Deputy Chairman of Belarusian Border Committee Roman Podlinev told Sputnik.

"Currently, we know of four groups of refugees at the border  two at the border with Latvia, two at the border with Poland. The total number of migrants in these groups is about 60 people, mostly citizens of Iraq and Afghanistan," Podlinev said.

The border committee official added that the situation on the ground "changes every hour.

"

"It is difficult to track the movements of migrants, because our colleagues, border guards from neighboring EU countries are constantly trying to push refugees, including women and children, into our territory, often with the use of physical force and special means, with intimidation with weapons and service dogs," Podlinev said.

Lithuania, Latvia and Poland accuse Belarus of letting migrants cross over to get back at the EU for imposing economic sanctions on it. Belarus argues it can no longer afford tough border security.
GAZA (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 03rd September, 2021) A clash between the Palestinians and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) on the border of the Gaza Strip and the Jewish state has left one Palestinian killed, according to media reports.

The victim is a 26-year-old man, Al Aqsa radio broadcaster reported on late Thursday. The incident took place in the Jabalia refugee camp.

The IDF has confirmed to Sputnik that the soldiers have opened fire during the clashes.

"More than 1,000 protesters have gathered near the security fence in the Gaza Strip. Participants of the clashes are throwing explosives and burning tires.

The IDF soldiers deployed in the area are using various means to disperse the protesters, including the fire with live ammunition of the 22-mm caliber when needed," the IDF said.

The clashes on the Israeli-Gaza Strip border have been underway for several days and have already left two Palestinians and one Israeli soldier dead.

The Palestinian protesters are demanding the suspension of the Gaza strip blockade, the opening of the border crossings, and the green light for the reconstruction of the enclave after the May hostilities.
WASHINGTON (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 03rd September, 2021) US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin will travel on Sunday to visit four Persian Gulf nations allied to the United States, Defense Department spokesperson John Kirby said on Friday.

"Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin departs on a trip [on] Sunday to visit Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia," Kirby said in a statement.

Austin will meet during his trip with regional partners and thank them for their cooperation in the US evacuation of Americans, Afghans and others from Afghanistan, the statement said.

The Defense Secretary will also "reaffirm our strong defense relationships in the region," the statement added.

Austin will also meet with US service members and government personnel to thank them for the skill and professionalism with which they conducted the evacuation, according to the statement.
Shifting to university life after experiencing the regimen and structure of military life can prove to be quite the challenge for veterans enrolled as students at the University of South Florida. To help ease this transition, USF offers services and support for more than 7,400 veterans, active-duty military and their dependents through its Office of Veteran Success (OVS). And now, thanks to a recent grant from the U.S. Department of Education, these services will be enhanced.

The Center of Excellence for Veteran Student Service grant for $427,469 will be used to expand the capacity of OVS, building on existing services and expanding the support at the St. Petersburg, Sarasota-Manatee and Tampa campuses. The unit provides admissions assistance, scholarships, career counseling, employment assistance, VA benefits and health services guidance, and social space for interactions among students and with staff.

The grant will establish an interconnected unit that aligns policies, processes and initiatives across all three campuses while strengthening access for veterans in Hillsborough, Manatee, Pasco, Pinellas, Polk and Sarasota counties. Services will be more focused and targeted to those students with the greatest need and will expand mental health services.

"The University of South Florida is proud to be recognized as a national leader for supporting student veterans and for our deep institutional commitment to student success, said USF President Rhea Law. "This grant provides an opportunity for USF to further invest in our programs to make an even greater impact on this honored population across the university.

"This grant provides a greater opportunity of navigating the military-to-academic transition where I can have a meaningful college experience from my earned service, said Todd Post, a student veteran on the St. Petersburg campus. This opens additional opportunities for resources and programs for our student veterans where we can feel more appreciated for our service as veterans."

OVS assists in making the academic journey a smooth one for the nations veterans. Services range from administering scholarships and guiding veterans understanding of the GI Bill and educational benefits, to tutoring and advising, to courses on career exploration. The office offers an environment where veterans can study, connect and socialize with other veterans to share this academic journey. This peer connection is invaluable to these students.

I am very thankful for our Tampa Bay Area Congressional delegations support in our grant application, said Larry Braue, director of the Office of Veterans Success. The grant presents a tremendous opportunity to reestablish high-quality services for our student veterans in the aftermath of the pandemic. By reinforcing academic, career and mental health support for our veteran population, we will be able to remedy the unavoidable consequences of isolation student veterans faced over the last year.
Archbishop Visvaldas Kulbokas begins his mission in Kiev as the new Apostolic Nuncio to Ukraine on 7 September. The 47-year-old Lithuanian-born Archbishop has served in the Secretariat of State and in various Pontifical missions. He describes his meeting with Pope Francis on Thursday as a father who sends him with his encouragement and blessing.

By Taras Kotsur

In an interview with Vatican News, Archbishop Visvaldas Kulbokas, whom Francis appointed Apostolic Nuncio to Ukraine last June and who will begin his assignment in Kiev on 7 September, speaks about his origins from Lithuania to Ukraine, and his experience at the Secretariat of State.

Born in Klaipeda, Lithuania, on 14 May 1974, Archbishop Kulbokas entered the Holy See's diplomatic service in July 2004, and has worked in the Pontifical missions in Lebanon, the Netherlands, the Russian Federation, and at the Section for Relations with States of the Secretariat of State. He has also served at the Apostolic Nunciature in Kenya since 2020.

The meeting with the Pope on Thursday, the Archbishop explained, was a moment that was anything but formal and rather more the greetings between a father and a son, who is about to leave, and to whom the parent entrusts his trust and heart, so that he may take them along with him.

It was a joyful moment, noted the Nuncio. I met a youthful and energetic Pope who expressed his priorities for Ukraine to me  a country, that the Pope has repeatedly stressed, he loves very much.

While not specifying the details of the conversation Archbishop Kulbokas spoke on what he considers to be the main challenges of the new mission, noting the strong encouragement received from Pope Francis.

How did the meeting with the Pope go, what did it mean to you?

The Pope expressed his vision and priorities for Ukraine to me, stressing several times how much he loves the country. He also entrusted to me his concerns about the great suffering of the Ukrainian people, both in the past and in the present, giving me his vision of Ukraine. it is, above all, a vision of encouragement, because if the people are suffering, if the country is suffering, you have to encourage them and it is not easy to do that.

I can say that it was a meeting between father and son. When the son has to go somewhere, the father says, "carry my heart, carry my mind, carry my voice, and represent it in the country." And it was a very joyful and lively moment, because I met a very energetic Pope who has known Ukraine since he was 12 years old. In fact, it was Ukrainian priests who taught him how to serve Mass.

What challenges seem most important to this mission?

Above all, that of proclaiming Jesus. When the focus is on Jesus, everything else becomes relativized. In addition, what the Pope has stressed several times: joy. We Christians, starting with the bishops, the priests, must bring joy. Of course, there are problems but we have to face them without getting discouraged. Today's Ukrainian reality is full of difficulties and problems, starting with the war, then the economic and social difficulties, the repercussions on political life and then the difficulties within the Church, and between the Catholic Church and the other Churches. And so the Pope encouraged me by saying: "Under the protection of Jesus and the Saints, carry your mission with much peace, with much heart, without losing your inner joy". So it was a father sending me, encouraging and blessing me.

You come from Lithuania which shares a common history with Ukraine of being under an atheist regime for a period during which time the Church was persecuted. You are the first with this experience. Does this help you to better understand the situation and context in Ukraine?

I am sure it does. We will have to work on it and put in some effort, but I am sure that this personal history of mine helps - being born when we were still part of the Soviet Union. I remember that my father and my mother used to go to Kiev for medical treatment. Kiev, for us, in my home, was almost the same country. So now if I go to Kiev, it is my home! In this sense, going to work in a country that is so close to my heart is much easier, because there is much more heart and much more understanding - at least historical. I am not saying that I understand all the difficulties that there are today, but the historical ones, yes. And I am sure all of this helps a lot.

In your recent interview with Vatican News you requested for prayers because it will take a lot of grace from the Holy Spirit to deal with all these challenges ...

What does prayer give us? It gives us courage; it encourages us to be creative. Prayer is an inexhaustible source. This is also a piece of advice I received from the Pope: a lot of prayer, my own personal prayer. In this regard, I will be very grateful for the prayers of my friends and also of those who listen to me, when they offer that personal prayer, that personal blessing, sending it to me spiritually through the saints and through the angels.
Josep Borrell, the Official in charge of EU foreign policy (ANSA)

The EU and Britain have joined the United States in saying they will deal with the Taliban, but won't see them as Afghanistan's government.

By Nathan Morely

The EU and Britain have joined the United States in saying they will deal with the Taliban, but won't see them as Afghanistan's government.

Josep Borrell, the official in charge of EU foreign policy, said any engagement would be subject to strict conditions and would only be to support the Afghan people.

Borrell said Brussels would co-ordinate with the US, G7, G20 and other organisations, and that it would initiate a regional political platform of co-operation with the country's neighbours.

The move comes as the Taliban prepares to announce who will be in its government.

Separately, the Russian President Vladimir Putin has said the US pullout from Afghanistan was catastrophe and has caused a humanitarian disaster. The Russian ambassador to Kabul has said Moscow is in touch with potential members of the Taliban's new government.

Separately, the Afghan flag carrier, Ariana Airlines, will resume domestic flights from Kabul airport later. The airport has been closed to commercial traffic since the Taliban took over Kabul last month.
An attacker inspired by the Islamic State group stabbed six people at a New Zealand supermarket on Friday before police who had the man under surveillance shot him dead, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said.

Ardern said the man, a Sri Lankan national who arrived in New Zealand in 2011 and was on a terror watchlist, entered a shopping mall in suburban Auckland, seized a knife from a display and went on a stabbing rampage.

She said six people were wounded, three critically, before police who were monitoring him opened fire within 60 seconds of the attack starting.

"What happened today was despicable, it was hateful, it was wrong," she said, adding it was not representative of any faith or community.

Asked about the man's motivations, she said: "it was a violent ideology and ISIS-inspired", using another name for the Islamic State group.

Ardern said she was limited in what she could say publicly about the man, who had been under surveillance since 2016, because he was the subject of court suppression orders.

Police Commissioner Andrew Coster said authorities were confident the man was acting alone and there was no further danger to the community.

New Zealand's worst terror attack was the Christchurch mosques shootings in March 2019, when a white supremacist gunman murdered 51 Muslim worshippers and severely wounded another 40.
Vietnam's coronavirus epicenter Ho Chi Minh City, which has kept residents confined at home under lockdown, is considering reopening economic activity from September 15, shifting from a "zero COVID-19" strategy to a policy of living with the virus.

The city of 9 million people is targeting a phased reopening and the full vaccination of its citizens by the end of this year, according to the draft seen by Reuters, which has yet to be endorsed.

Ho Chi Minh City last month deployed troops to enforce its lockdown and prohibited residents from leaving their homes to slow a spiraling rate of deaths. Just 3% of Vietnam's 98 million population has been fully vaccinated.

Vietnam's biggest city, a business hub flanked by industrialized provinces, aims to "promote economic recovery ... and move towards living with COVID-19," the draft proposal said.

The reopening would be gradual, and low-interest loans and tax cuts would be offered to affected firms, it said.

Ho Chi Minh City alone has recorded 241,110 coronavirus infections and 9,974 deaths, representing half of the country's cases and 80% of its fatalities.

The vast majority of those have come in recent months, ending hopes that Vietnam could continue to achieve success it showed in 2020, when aggressive contact tracing and quaratining led to one of the world's best COVID-19 containment records.

The ministry of health on Friday reported 14,922 coronavirus infections, a record daily increase, raising its caseload to 501,649 with 12,476 deaths.

Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh on Wednesday warned Vietnam could be facing a lengthy coronavirus battle and cannot rely on lockdown and quarantines indefinitely.

During a visit to a smartphone factory of Samsung Electronics in the northern province of Thai Nguyen on Friday, Chinh urged the company to help Vietnam procure vaccines from South Korea and to maintain its long-term investment in Vietnam.

Foreign firms operating in the country, including Samsung "can put their trust in Vietnam's efforts in tackling the pandemic," Chinh said.

The health ministry on Friday called on recovered COVID-19 patients to help the city battle the epidemic.

In capital Hanoi, where dozens of new cases per day have been recorded in recent weeks, authorities will extend strict lockdown in most parts of the city beyond September 6 and will conduct 1 million tests from now through the end of Sunday.


PHNOM PENH, Cambodia  Thirty years ago, as the Cold War was drawing down, four warring factions from Cambodia and 18 members of the international community signed the Paris Peace Accords, a comprehensive agreement that laid out a process to end the countrys long civil war. Looking back over the decades since the document was signed Oct. 23, 1991, observers of Cambodian politics said the Accords have had a mixed impact on the country. While it successfully started the end of the civil war, its flawed implementation early on allowed the Cambodian Peoples Party (CPP) to erode the Accords democratic and human rights provisions. Yet, they said, the Accords remain an important reference point for national and international political players that seek to promote democracy in Cambodia. Currently, however, its influence on Cambodias political system has all but disappeared. In 2017, the CPP returned the country to a type of one-party rule that preceded the agreement and cracked down on democratic freedoms.

The [Paris Peace Accords] is the last vestige of the dream that was Cambodian democracy, human rights, and freedom, Ear Sophal, a scholar of Cambodias politics and development at Arizona State University's Thunderbird School of Global Management, told VOA Khmer. The CPP/Hun Sen has tried to make people forget it ever happened. CRNP/Sam Rainsy have tried to keep the idea of the [Accord] as a sacred document that still needs to be fulfilled: a promise no-one should forget, he said, referring to the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CRNP) and its former leader. It is about control of history and of the future.

The most important political goal of the Paris Peace Agreements, only implicit in its actual text, was to bring the Cold War in Asia to an end, disentangle outside powers from Cambodias domestic struggles, and put politics back in Cambodian hands."

Ambitious accords, never fully implemented From an international perspective, the Accords are considered a success as all five permanent UN Security Council members agreed to end their support for the different warring Cambodian factions, while Vietnam agreed to end its decade-long occupation of the country. They also agreed to the first, large post-Cold War UN peacekeeping mission, which administered the state in order to implement the peace deal. Signatories include the permanent Security Council members, Australia, Vietnam, Indonesia and Thailand, and a number of other Asian countries. On a national level, the comprehensive political settlement signed on October 23, 1991 involved commitments to disarm and demobilize the factions ahead of free and fair elections for a new government. And to establish a multi-party electoral system, rule of law and human rights protection in Cambodia. Accountability for crimes during the war was dropped from the agreement after objections of China, the Khmer Rouges former patron, while Western leaders were reluctant to revisit the United Nations recognition of the Khmer Rouge as the rightful leaders of Cambodia throughout the 1980s, and accusations related to the heavy U.S. bombing of Cambodia during the 1960s and 1970s, according to a 2017 United States Institute for Peace brief on the Accords impacts. A UN Tribunal for Khmer Rouge-era crimes began only in 2007.

The implementation of the national-level commitments of the Paris Peace Accord was troubled from the start. The UN mission was unable to prevent the Khmer Rouge from breaking the agreement and resume fighting. Later, after the 1993 elections, the UN mission accepted CPP demands for an equal share of power in the government, despite the Royalist FUNCINPEC party winning a plurality of the vote. With a precedent set for a tepid international response, Prime Minister Hun Sen, throughout the 1990s, used the CPPs communist-era grip on government bureaucracy, armed forces, the courts and local networks across the country, to force the Royalist opposition out of politics. Meanwhile, his government managed to defeat or cause defections among the internationally abandoned Khmer Rouge forces, who collapsed by 1998. The international community feted the defeat of Pol Pots forces and failed to punish Hun Sens power grab in violation of the Accords democratic provisions. Journalist Sebastian Strangio said, The most important political goal of the Paris Peace Agreements, only implicit in its actual text, was to bring the Cold War in Asia to an end, disentangle outside powers from Cambodias domestic struggles, and put politics back in Cambodian hands. It achieved all of these things to a large degree. However, it is questionable whether the pacts human rights provisions were ever fully achievable after decades of war, repression and political rivalry, as well as lingering ethno-nationalism in Cambodian politics, he told VOA Khmer. I think that most nations that signed the Paris Agreements were quite realistic about this, viewing these principles as essentially aspirational, said Strangio, author of the 2014 book Hun Sens Cambodia. The contradiction of the treaty is that it aimed to disentangle foreign governments from Cambodias internal struggles, while committing them (on paper) to a transformation of Cambodian politics that could only be brought about (if at all) by sustained involvement in the countrys domestic political affairs, he added.

A reference point in international politics Yet, observers said, the Accordsand the roughly two decades of relative political openness and democratic freedom that followed it until 2017, when the ongoing crackdown began are likely to remain an important marker for Cambodian politics in the future. Some governments, like the U.S., continue to use the treaty as a reference point for their involvement in the country. Astrid Noren Nilsson, a scholar of Cambodian politics, said, For the signatories, the Accords serve as a convenient frame for their legitimate involvement, monitoring current political developments. This has been evident throughout the period since 2017 when foreign embassies have kept reaffirming their commitment to the [Accords]. But the [Accords] are unlikely to take on significance beyond that level. Added Strangio, The Paris Agreements are sometimes referenced by Western governments in their criticisms of the CPP governments repressive behavior, but most outside governments have little interest in becoming deeply involved in a project to democratize Cambodia. Following the Accords, Western governments had offered generous donor support for Cambodias economic development, recovery from conflict and the promotion of liberal values, often through funding a large civil society sector. The United States said it has provided $3 billion to Cambodia since 1991. However, the political rise of China in past decade has offered Cambodia an alternative source of economic and diplomatic support, on which the CPP government has relied after it did away with democratic pretense. Its relations with Washington have deteriorated since and recently became marred by U.S. claims that China is developing a permanent base in Cambodia, which the latter has denied.

Contentious in national politics In contemporary national politics, the role of the Accords in Cambodias history and future remains contentious. It is viewed by the CPP as a tool for the opposition that needs removing. This is evident, according to Noren Nilsson, from Hun Sens insistence that the 1993 constitution has superseded the Agreement, his governments 2020 decision to end a national holiday commemorating the Accords, and Hun Sens repeated claims that his 1990s win-win policy was responsible for defeating the Khmer Rouge. For the CNRP on the other hand, the [Accords] serve as a benchmark against which current political developments are to be measured, so as to hold the government accountable. The [Agreements] are for them a legal tool which they seek to use to keep the international community closely involved in current politics, said Noren Nilsson, who is a scholar at Lund University, Sweden.

It will remain an indelible part of Cambodias political game. As such, the principles contained in the treaty will always be there to be taken up by future generations of politicians and activists.



During last years anniversary of the 1991 agreement, Hun Sen remarked, Were there no commencement of [Prince] Sihanouk-Hun Sen negotiation, there would not be [the] outcome of the Paris Peace Agreement. Secondly, were there no win-win policy that I formulated, issued and lead with participations [sic] from every stakeholder and the Cambodian people, there would not be peace as it is now. In October 2017, the premier told the opposition to stop dreaming about the agreements political principles, adding that the agreement is like a ghost. Eng Chhai Eang, the exiled former deputy president of the CNRP, said, Cambodians who want Cambodia to have genuine democracy and freedoms, they will still remember. Only Hun Sen and his clan want to forget [it] because the Paris Peace Agreements [would] make him lose power and unable to control any people as he wants, he told VOA Khmer. Eng Chhai Eang said the opposition, international community and many in Cambodian society consider the spirit of the Accords a foundational agreement for Cambodias political system, and they hold the CPP accountable for violating it. CPP senator and party spokesman Sok Eysan said, We dont care about [such] criticism. But we are on the right track of maintaining democratic principles and rule of law in accordance with the spirit of the Paris Peace Agreements, whose meaning has been included in the Constitution of the Kingdom of Cambodia. Sok Eysan added, The Paris Agreements didnt bring complete peace It is the achievement of the Cambodian Peoples Party, who completed the peace.
Albania is temporarily hosting some 600 Afghan refugees who have fled the violence and chaos in their country. The last of several flights  with 150 people on board  arrived in Albania on August 30. Ilirian Agolli spoke to some of them. Keida Kostreci narrates his story.
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Since the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan, Turkey has been holding talks with the groups leadership. Despite long historical ties and a shared religion, some analysts warn Ankara could be overestimating its advantages. Dorian Jones reports from Istanbul.
President Joe Biden will visit Louisiana on Friday to survey the aftermath of Hurricane Ida and speak with local and state leaders, the White House said Wednesday. Biden will also deliver a speech Thursday outlining his administration's response to the storm.

Ida was the fifth most powerful storm to strike the U.S. when it hit Louisiana on Sunday with maximum winds of 150 mph (240 kph), likely causing tens of billions of dollars in flood, wind and other damage, including to the electrical grid.

More than 1 million homes and businesses in Louisiana and Mississippi were without power after Ida toppled a major transmission tower and knocked out thousands of miles of lines and hundreds of substations. New Orleans was plunged into total darkness at one point; power began returning to the city on Wednesday.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Biden "absolutely would not" visit Louisiana if his presence would take away from relief efforts.

Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards suggested the visit would be crucial for the president to understand the destruction by seeing the widespread damage for himself.

"There's nothing quite like visiting in person," Edwards told reporters Wednesday following a briefing with local elected officials in Jefferson Parish, which took direct blows from Ida. "When you see it for yourself, it is just so much more compelling."

Asked what type of assistance he planned to request from Biden, Edwards said, "Quite frankly, the list is going to be very, very long." But he said a priority would be for a housing program to help people rebuild.

The White House says Biden has been getting regular updates on the storm and its aftermath. He has held several conference calls with governors and local officials to discuss preparations and needs after the storm and has received briefings from FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell.

FEMA had sent tons of supplies, including generators, tarps and other materials to the region before the storm, and federal response teams are working on search and rescue.

Authorities blame the storm for at least six deaths.

Biden's trip Friday to the Gulf region will cap a difficult stretch for the president, who oversaw the chaotic exit of the U.S. military from Afghanistan after a 20-year engagement. That included the deaths of 13 U.S. service members helping evacuate more than 120,000 Americans, Afghan allies and others fleeing life under Taliban rule.

As Ida bore down on the Gulf Coast on Sunday, Biden was at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware to witness the return of the remains of the 13 U.S. servicemen and women who were killed in suicide bombing last week at Afghanistan's airport in Kabul, where the evacuations were taking place.
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(Bemidji, MN) -- The Minnesota Department of Transportation was recognized as a recipient of the 2018 Secretary of Defense Employer Support Freedom Award on Friday, Aug. 24, at the Pentagon Auditorium in Washington, D.C.

The award is the highest U.S. government honor to employers for support of National Guard and Reserve employees.

Its a tremendous honor to be receiving the Freedom Award, said Eric Davis, chief of staff. We are proud of the nearly 500 veterans and employees actively serving as a member of the Guard and Reserve.

Fifteen recipients were selected from the more than 2,350 nominations highlighting how civilian employers went far beyond what federal law requires to support them. The Freedom Award began in 1996 to recognize exceptional employer support, and only 250 companies nationwide have received the award.

MnDOT was nominated by Capt. TJ Melcher, district 2 public engagement director.

"As a member of the Minnesota National Guard, said Melcher, I am proud of the supportive culture at MnDOT; its what sets them apart from other employers. The exceptional care of leaders, along with the additional devotion of regular employees, to supporting citizen soldiers and their families.

Capt. Melcher is a great example of the kind of employee we are so fortunate to have at MnDOT, added Davis. These men and women continue to serve the transportation needs of Minnesota after serving our nation.

Award nominations come from a Guard or Reserve member who is employed by the organization they are nominating. Nominations were submitted for employers in all 50 states, Guam-CNMI, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and the District of Columbia.

Established in 1972, Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve (ESGR) is a Department of Defense agency that seeks to promote a culture in which all American employers support and value the military service of their employees.
At the end of 2001, I published a series of articles on the attacks of September 11, 2001, followed by a book in March 2002 [1]. The book was translated into 18 languages and opened a worldwide debate questioning the veracity of the official US narrative. However, the international press refused to discuss my arguments and launched a campaign accusing me of "amateurism" [2], "conspiracy theory" [3], and "denial" [4].

Above all, the US authorities and their supporters reduced my work to the first few pages of my book: the challenge to the official version of the attacks. But it is a work of political science aimed at denouncing what these false-flag attacks would make possible: the surveillance of Western populations and the endless war in the wider Middle East. In this article, I will therefore review what has been learned about these attacks over the past 20 years, but more importantly, I will check whether my predictions from 2002 were correct or not.

The black hole of 9/11

If we are asked what happened on 9/11, we will all visualise the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. We have forgotten many other things, such as the insider trading in the shares of the affected airlines, the fire in the Old Eisenhower Building, or the collapse of a third tower in the World Trade Center.

What is most astonishing is that almost no one remembers that at 10am, Richard Clarke triggered the Continuity of Government Plan [5]. At that very moment, President Bush and Congress were suspended from office and placed under military protection. President Bush was taken to an air base in Nebraska where the CEOs of the upper floors of the Twin Towers had been since the previous evening [6]; and Congress to the Greenbrier megabunker. Power fell into the hands of the "Continuity Government". It was in the Raven Rock Mountain megabunker (Site R) [7]. Power was not returned to the civilians until the end of the day.

Who exactly were the members of this Continuity Government and what did they do during the time they were in power? We still dont know. The members of Congress who asked the question were not allowed to hold a session of their assembly on the subject.

Please understand that until we have clarification, the 9/11 controversy will continue. The procedure implemented on September 11 was designed by President Eisenhower at a time when nuclear war was feared. If he, the Speakers and a majority of Congress were killed, there would be no constitutional powers. The military would logically have to assume the continuity of government. But this was obviously not the case on that day. Not one elected official was dead. The transfer of power was therefore unconstitutional. It was strictly speaking a coup detat.

The attacks of September 11

In my book and afterwards, I hypothesised about what really happened on that day. But this is irrelevant to my point. The people who perpetrated this crime wanted to create a shock comparable to Pearl Harbor, as the members of the Project for a New American Century wrote earlier, so that they could change the way the United States lives and functions. So they told us a tall tale that we swallowed without flinching. But :

 To this day, there is no evidence of the 19 designated hijackers on board the hijacked planes. They were not on the lists of passengers on board the planes released by the airlines on the same day. The videos of the hijackers at the airport were not taken in New York, but at other airports where they were transiting.

 To date, there is no evidence that the 35 telephone communications between passengers on the hijacked flights and the ground existed [8]. This applies both to the conversation attributed to the brave passenger who allegedly attacked the hijackers on UA 93, and to the conversation testified to by US Solicitor General Theodore Olson with his wife on AA 77. In contrast, at the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui (accused of being the 20th hijacker who would not have boarded the plane), the FBI testified that none of the planes had phones in the armrests, that passengers should have used mobile phones, that cell phones at the time could not work at altitudes above 5,000 feet, and that the records provided by the phone companies did not show any of the communications mentioned - including that of Attorney General Olson.

 To date, there is no physical explanation for the collapse of three of the World Trade Center towers onto their own footprints (i.e. vertically). The Twin Towers were hit by two planes, but were not shaken. However, their fuel would have run down the vertical beams and melted them. A third tower was destabilised by the fall of the first two to its side. It too would have collapsed, not laterally, but vertically. It should be noted that no explanation was given for the lateral explosions heard by the firemen and widely filmed, nor for the vertical beams that were severed and not melted; two pieces of evidence attesting not to an accidental but to a controlled demolition. It should also be noted that no collapse of skyscrapers has ever been observed, either before or after 9/11, following a large-scale fire... and that no one has learned the lessons of this attack and therefore changed the way such buildings are constructed to prevent such a catastrophe. Finally, the photographs taken by firefighters of "pools" of molten steel and those taken by FEMA (the disaster management agency) of the melting rocks in which the foundations were built are inexplicable according to the official version.

 To date, there is no evidence that an airliner hit the Pentagon. Already the next day, the fire brigade had given a press conference at the Pentagon during which they had attested that they had not found anything suggestive of a plane. The authorities, who had issued a vengeful statement against my book, announced that they had collected many parts of the plane and reconstructed it in a hangar. Then they stopped communicating on this subject. Moreover, the families of the passengers of the plane in question, after having been scandalised by my words, changed their minds when they were given back funeral urns, claiming to have identified the bodies of their relatives thanks to their fingerprints (which would have been totally destroyed during fires at those temperatures). Some refused to sign the confidentiality agreement offered to them in exchange for large compensation payments.

Widespread surveillance of Western populations

In the days following the attacks, the Bush Administration had Congress vote on an anti-terrorist code, known as the USA Patriot Act. This is a very large piece of legislation that had been drafted over the previous two years by the Federalist Society (of which Solicitor General Theodor Olson and Attorney General John Ashcroft were members). It suspends the Bill of Rights in cases of terrorism.

At the time of the formation of the United States, there were two opposing groups. The first, around Alexander Hamilton, drafted the Constitution to set up a system comparable to the British monarchy, but with governors instead of nobles. The second, around Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, only accepted the Constitution after it had been amended to prevent the use of Reason of State. These 10 amendments are called the Bill of Rights. Their suspension challenges the balance on which the United States was founded. It gives power to the first group, the descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers, the Puritans exiled from England. President Bush is a direct descendant of one of the 41 signatories of the "Mayfower Pact" (1620).

In order to implement the USA Patriot Act, a new department was created, the Homeland Security Department, which brings together various existing agencies. It has a political police force capable of spying on any citizen. According to the Washington Post, which revealed this in 2011, it has hired 835,000 civil servants, 112,000 of whom are secretly employed [9], making the United States the most Orwellian country on the planet. The way this department works was revealed in 2013 by Edward Snowden. Snowden not only provided information about the NSAs foreign eavesdropping system, but also about domestic mass surveillance in the US. He now lives as a political refugee in Russia.

This system, although less documented, is gradually spreading to all Western states, through the Five Eyes [10] and Nato.

The "endless war": from 9/11 to the fall of Kabul

A month and a half after the attacks, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld created the Office of Force Transformation, which he entrusted to Admiral Arthur Cebrowski. The idea was to change the very function of the Armed Forces. The Rumsfeld/Cebrowski doctrine [11] is a reform as important as the creation of the Pentagon after the 1929 crisis. This time, it is about adapting to financial capitalism. From now on, the United States will no longer try to win wars, but on the contrary to make them last as long as possible; this is what President Bushs expression "endless war" means. Their aim will be to destroy local state structures so that natural wealth can be exploited without having to endure political control; as Colonel Ralph Peters summed it up: "Stability is Americas enemy" [12].

This is exactly what has just happened in Afghanistan. The war started there just after 9/11. It was only supposed to last a few weeks, but it never stopped. The Taliban victory that we have just witnessed was organised by the United States itself in order to make the conflict last even longer. That is why President Biden has just said that the US did not go into Afghanistan to build a state, as it did in Germany and Japan after the Second World War. Joe Biden had, during his meeting in Geneva with Vladimir Putin, rejected the endless war. However, he has just relaunched it, aligning himself with the Rumsfeld/Cebrowski doctrine like Barack Obama.

None of the conflicts that began after 9/11 have ended. On the contrary, instability has taken hold in Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen and Lebanon. One can of course call these conflicts "civil wars" and accuse their leaders of being "dictators", or explain nothing at all, but the fact remains that they were stable before Western intervention and that Gaddafis Libya and Aouns Lebanon were US allies when their misfortunes began.

Vice President Cheney had set up a secret group in the White House to design the development of the National Energy Policy. He was convinced that oil would run out in the medium term. This is why the United States destroyed states in order to be able to exploit their oil in the long term, but not now. Moreover, the Rumsfeld/Cebrowski doctrine states that one should not fight globalised powers such as Russia and China. On the contrary, they should be given access to the natural resources they have conquered, but they should be forced to pay royalties to the US in order to exploit them.

By publishing a number of internal US military reports, Julian Assange has not revealed any sensitive information. But all these documents show that the Pentagon has never been interested in winning the post-9/11 wars. Assange was persecuted to the point of insanity.

To wage these wars, the Pentagon secretly created clandestine Special Forces: 60,000 soldiers without uniforms [13]. They are capable of assassinating anyone in any country without leaving any trace. Bob Woodward revealed the "Global Attack Matrix" operation, decided three days after the attacks [14]. Wayne Madsen published the names of the first victims in Papua, Nigeria, Indonesia and Lebanon [15].

Conclusion

All my predictions have been verified over the last 20 years. Unfortunately, few people have seen how the world has changed. Most refuse to make the connection between the revelations of one side and those of the other and to see the responsibility of the Western democracies for the crimes committed in the wider Middle East.

The problem remains the same: we cannot admit that the criminal is close to us.
Plan a magical wedding day in Vermont, whether ablaze with fall color, capped with snow, or lush with the green of summer. If you're interested in learning more, click here.

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Stowe, VT (05672)

Today

Cloudy skies this evening followed by scattered showers and thunderstorms overnight. Low 63F. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 50%..

Tonight

Cloudy skies this evening followed by scattered showers and thunderstorms overnight. Low 63F. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 50%.
A manhunt for a man law enforcement called a very dangerous suspect is over.

Adam Ruiz was captured Friday afternoon in Jackson County after first engaging with law enforcement on Sunday.

Adam Ruiz being taken into custody (Photo courtesy Danny Rich) Adam Ruiz being taken into custody (Photo courtesy Danny Rich)

Ruiz and another person were found on foot near the causeway off Highway 117.

Stay with WAAY 31 for updates.

From earlier:

He had been on the run since Sunday, when he led several law enforcement agencies through a multi-county chase. It started in Walker County in central Alabama, made its way up through Huntsville, before finally ending near the Tennessee state line.

He was last seen near a boat dock in Stevenson. That's where they found his truck when the chase ended.

Helicopters circled the wooded area for nearly an hour. The Jackson County Sheriff's Office also use their search dogs to try to pick up Ruiz's scent. He was believed to be on foot near the Tennessee River.

The Walker County Sheriff's Office says Ruiz has eluded police for several days. They called him a violent criminal with a long record, who may also have ties to a gang.

He is considered to be armed and dangerous, as well as a threat to the community.
The city of Huntsville is facing rapid growth. Now that Huntsville is the largest city in Alabama, the local police department is taking steps and preparing for the needs of a larger city.

Huntsville Police Department is looking to add another precinct. Right now the police department has just three precincts, but recruiter, Paul Nordan, said when the city grows, the police department needs to match the growth.

"As the city grows and moves west like it is now, we're going to have to put a precinct out there so that officers are out there to serve those citizens," said Nordan.

When it comes to serving citizens towards the west side of the city, Nordan said response times will be much quicker when the department has another precinct.

In order for a quick response time and another precinct, Nordan needs to hire more officers.

"We do want people of high moral character, people who have a true heart for service and understand that the citizens of Huntsville are a priority here," said Nordan.

The Police Department is now going outside state borders to find officers fitting that description.

"We got recruits that come from California, Oregon, Washington State, and then we got our guys from, our guys and gals from the Tennessee Valley," said Nordan. "So yeah we recruit locally, we got campaigns in Atlanta, Memphis, Louisville, Nashville, Birmingham, Montgomery, we're all over the map right now."

Huntsville Police Department is still in the beginning stages of adding the next precinct.

Applications are open until October 1, 2021, for the March 2022 academy. You can find more information, here.
Decatur, IL (62521)

Today

Partly cloudy this evening with more clouds for overnight. Low near 60F. Winds N at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Partly cloudy this evening with more clouds for overnight. Low near 60F. Winds N at 5 to 10 mph.
Martin Adler returns to Italy to meet three children he nearly shot in world war two.

Rome mayor Virginia Raggi welcomed 97-year-old retired American soldier Martin Adler to the capital, hosting him at city hall on Thursday.

The US veteran returned to Italy last week, 77 years after he almost shot three Italian children during world war two, as a 20-year-old soldier.

For more than seven decades Adler kept a cherished photograph with the three siblings, taken in 1944 in the Bologna area of Italy.

Last year his daughter Rachelle launched a campaign to try and track down the protagonists of the photo and - thanks to social media and the efforts of historian Matteo Incerti - the "bambini" were found to be all still alive.

Adler made contact with them, virtually, before travelling to Bologna to meet Bruno, Mafalda and Giuliana Naldi - now all in their 80s - last week.

It was an emotional, joy-filled reunion, very different to their first encounter in the autumn of 1944, when Adler and a fellow US soldier entered a seemingly empty house in the village of Cassano di Monterenzio.

Adler, who fought along the Gothic Line as the Nazis retreated, heard a noise from a wicker basket and was on the point of shooting, thinking it might have been German soldiers in hiding, when a startled mother ran into the house screaming "Bambini! Bambini!"

Martin Adler with Bruno, Mafalda and Giuliana Naldi in 1944

The US soldiers lowered their guns and out emerged a shaken Bruno, Mafalda and Giuliana from the basket, with Adler giving them chocolate and later posing for the now famous photograph.

77 years later Adler is currently in Rome as part of an "incredible journey" around Italy "to places where he fought against Nazi-fascism with the Allied troops and our partisans", said Mayor Raggi.

"On 3 June 1944 he won the bronze medal for valour at Rocca Priora and entered Rome as a liberator two days later" - Raggi said - "Resting in Ostia for a short period, on 20 June 1944 he went to pray at the Tempio Maggiore in the Jewish quarter."

During his visit to Rome this week Adler was also welcomed by the president of the city's Jewish community, Ruth Dureghello, returning to the Great Synagogue and donating a postcard he had sent from there to his mother in 1944.

Raggi said that Adler, "who lived through the nightmare of racial discrimination, anti-Semitism and fought Nazi-fascism, told us that we must build peace every day."

On Wednesday evening the Italian foreign minister Luigi Di Maio attended a ceremony in honour of Adler organised by the US embassy to Italy.

This evening, Friday 3 September, Adler will present the book about his wartime experiences in Italy - I bambini del soldato Martin by historian Matteo Incerti - at Marcella Royal Hotel on Via Flavia at 18.30.
Some of these indicators can be reconciled by incorporating the impact of the Covid-19 delta variant on the service sector, especially given the disappointing employment numbers for retail, leisure and hospitality. Others, including the headline job creation number, can be treated as temporary noise in light of a still solid multi-month average. But the data also give room for more structural and secular explanations that point to the risk of a more difficult outlook.
If Laschet is to secure the chancellery, he will likely need to strike a coalition deal with the Greens and the FDP in a Jamaica alliance, so called because the party colors black, green and yellow match the Caribbean islands flag. However, if the current trend persists and the SPD wins, Scholz could form a red-yellow-green coalition with the FDP and the Greens, known as the traffic light option. Another possibility, though unlikely, would be a red-red-green alliance with the far-left Linke replacing the pro-business FDP. The SPD joined with Merkel in a grand coalition for 12 of her 16 years in power and the two sides have all but ruled out a repeat of that this time. Forming a government could take many weeks and Merkel will remain at the helm until the Bundestag votes for a new chancellor.
The Cybertruck was first unveiled at that impromptu window-smashing event in late 2019, scheduled to be available later this year, and is now reportedly delayed until late 2022, with high-volume production not happening until a year after that. This follows hot on the heels of a tweet from CEO Elon Musk saying Tesla Inc.s revamped Roadster sportscar should ship in 2023 provided 2022 goes easy on him. That model was first unveiled almost four years ago, with an original launch date of last year. Incidentally, that unveiling was a mere digestif to the main event, the reveal of the Tesla Semi truck, due to begin production two years ago and still due.
Gaming platform sensation Roblox Corp.s digital Lego-style worlds clearly inspire fun and creativity. But its creator economy is also inextricably tied to the labor of under-13s (54% of users) and developers who receive a nominal 25% cut for their efforts. The firm has pointed to hundreds of developers who earn over $85,000 a year from their work, yet its still unnerving to see one disillusioned 11-year-old take to YouTube to say people are being lied to about how easy it is to be successful on the platform.
The administrations new measures aim to streamline the system. Asylum officers from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) normally conduct initial credible fear screenings of immigrants at the border. Theyd be given greater authority and additional resources to expedite the process, easing burdens on immigration courts and detention facilities, and helping to clear the backlog. By itself, this wouldnt eliminate the problem of applicants disappearing before their cases can be heard, but it would reduce it, by cutting the delays that create the loophole. The plan calls for some 2,000 new asylum officers and staff. The administration has asked for some $438 million to cover the cost. Congress should grant the request.
So instead of moving out, many of the very well-heeled are likely to spend the extra money for a larger place in the city. Thats going to mean rising prices at the high end. But that price pressure will trickle down to the lower end of the market. Rich people paying a premium for bigger places will price some people out of existing large units, despite rent stabilization. And remodeling to combine small condos and apartments into bigger ones will put a squeeze on available space. The people displaced by these changes will move into housing thats currently occupied by lower-income residents, and so on, in a cascade. Eventually, demand will filter through to all segments of the market, and the urban affordability crisis will continue.
Its hard to know. One theory is its part of Xis ambition to serve a third term as president, a possibility now that the decades-old system of term limits has been overturned. Thatd be easier if hes popular. Another possibility is that these measures have long been on Xis agenda, but other things got in the way. After his 2017 speech, China became embroiled in a broad trade war with the U.S. Then once a deal was reached, the pandemic hit. Now hes got a clearer path to put the ideas into action. Ahead of its 100th anniversary in July, the Communist Party declared the completion of a long effort to create a moderately prosperous society. That opened a door for Xi to set the pursuit of common prosperity as a new guiding principle. (Forecasts from Bloomberg Economics suggest China could become the worlds biggest economy as soon as 2031.) Also, several of Chinas tech behemoths are now bigger than the largest state-owned enterprises, and their founders have amassed incredible wealth, which may seem politically threatening to the Communist Party.
It was just so much repetition, day in and day out, and so, so much emotion had to be vibrating at the surface, Paulson says. Beanie would be the first to tell you this is not her genre. This is not what she has spent the launching of her career doing. But for Beanie, it was so important, no matter how tired she was, no matter how emotionally spent she was, to just do another one for Monica.
We have evacuated, and we will admit to the United States, individuals other than U.S. citizens, legal permanent residents and Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) holders, Mayorkas said. For example, we will admit into the United States, after the screening and vetting is completed and we are assured there is no derogatory information that creates a risk to the American public  individuals who are in the application process for a Special Immigrant Visas but who have not received those visas. We will admit individuals who worked for our embassy. We will admit vulnerable Afghan women and girls, journalists, and others constituencies that need our relief, and we are very proud to deliver it.
The report also faulted department leaders and lawyers for allowing ITMS to operate under an inappropriately broad interpretation of its legal powers. Commerce officials were aware of concerns for years about the unit exceeding its authority but did little to rein it in, the report found. The Department had been on notice of potential issues . . . since at least 2017, the report states, citing an Inspector Generals report that year.
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After a long flight to Fairbanks and a three-hour bus ride to the park, my wife and I lugged our backpacks loaded with camping gear and two weeks of food onto a green school bus that would carry us inside the park. A family with a young child plopped down in front of us. Before the driver started the engine, the boys father queued up a Disney movie on his smartphone and thrust the glowing screen in front of the childs face, leaving the sound on full blast. (The American people, we know, lost their collective minds during the pandemic; many of them also seem to have misplaced their ear buds.) As we drove west into the park, along one of the most majestic roads in the entire world, past ancient glaciers, tundra with grazing caribou, rocky peaks dotted with white Dall sheep and deep valleys flowing with glistening, braided rivers, the boy kept his head down and watched Mickey while the rest of us sat listening to the mouse squeak out his lines. Sartre was only half right: Hell is other peoples children.
Having now seen four of its exhibits, Ive been repeatedly struck by what an immersive, imaginative experience it always is, full of small, clever touches that might be all but impossible at a larger institution. Such touches include the bookshelves in the current The Push Pin Legacy exhibition, full of books that contain covers and/or illustrations by artists who worked for the studio known for the exuberant, kaleidoscopic style that pushed back  so to speak  against the advertising aesthetic of the time. Founded in 1954, Push Pin was home to many lauded designers, including Seymour Chwast, Reynold Ruffins, Edward Sorel and Milton Glaser, who was perhaps best known for creating the iconic I  NY logo. Amazingly, visitors are welcome to actually take the books from the shelves and look through them.
The Pentagon promises soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen tuition money to take college courses while theyre serving, giving them a head start on credits they can use to rise up the ranks in the military or, later, in civilian life. And Brenner, then a platoon commander in his mid-20s, thought it was a good idea to get 19-year-olds to read books and use their brains when they would otherwise have been wasting away.
In court, Kotey read a statement in which he said he was principally involved in every process of these negotiations of trying to extract ransom from the United States, including emails and the proof-of-life videos and emails sent to the hostages families. This role of mine required that I at times engage in acts of violence against the captives in order to subdue them, in order to compel those Western governments, including the United States, to act fast and cooperate with our demands. I had no doubt that any failure of those foreign governments to comply with our demands would ultimately result in either the indefinite detention of those foreign captives, or their execution.
Jones said initially that he was unaware of the state law mandating that officers report all traffic stops, even if they did not result in citations. He said later in the interview that he was aware of the law and that Montgomerys 1,300 sworn officers did in fact report all traffic stops through the states e-ticketing system, regardless of whether they ended in written citations. The departments reporting policy, as referenced by OLO, did not reflect how officers had been trained, he said.
Dr. Wolke answered all those questions and hundreds of others in Food 101, a syndicated, biweekly column that ran in The Post from 1998 to 2007. With clarity, concision and a bounty of puns and jokes, he explained that adding salt to water might change the taste but will hardly speed up the cooking, and that a process known as the Maillard reaction accounts for why red meat turns brown on the stove.
John Frederick Carrington, 53, was taken into custody on Wednesday in the District, police said. Carrington had been wanted in the slaying of his mother, 71-year-old Johnetta Wormley, who was found dead in her Temple Hills home on Sunday, police said. Police had been called to her home for a welfare check.
After D.C. police said in a news release Thursday that Carrington had been charged with two counts of first-degree murder and one count of felony murder in the three old homicides, the U.S. attorneys office said in a statement Friday that it is working with [police] on the investigation and has not filed charges to date. The office said authorities are in the process of extraditing Carrington to Maryland.
Schklowskys crimes came to light after an au pair living in his Reston home discovered a camera in a vent in her room, Bezilla said. She went to authorities and a search of Schklowskys home turned up devices with more than 8,000 lewd images, including the pictures and videos of the Herndon High School students, Bezilla said. Images of child pornography downloaded from the Internet were found on a hard drive.
New Orleans officials have estimated that about 200,000 people evacuated the city ahead of Ida, and 200,000 remained. While Mayor LaToya Cantrell said Ida hit too quickly to issue a mandatory evacuation, she and other city officials have started to plot out voluntary evacuations given the intensity of the heat and an uncertainty about when the power will come back on.
WHO says new test shows Ivory Coast didn't have Ebola case: New tests show that Ivory Coast did not have its first case of Ebola in more than 25 years after all, the World Health Organization said, reversing course after the reported case last month prompted thousands of vaccines to be deployed. The initial report sparked fear because the woman had traveled by bus for several days from Guinea to Ivory Coast, coming into contact with at least 140 people, officials said. She eventually made her way to Abidjan, Ivory Coast's commercial capital, and was hospitalized; a test showed she had Ebola. However, no other suspected cases emerged in the subsequent weeks. On Tuesday, Ivorian authorities informed the WHO that a second laboratory, the Institut Pasteur in Lyon, France, had retested those samples and "found no evidence of the virus."
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When New Orleans was hit with a ransomware attack in December 2019, LaGrue said her staff worked seven days a week through February to ensure police communications and other city services were sufficiently restored to maintain public safety during Mardi Gras. Theyd planned to slow the pace after that. But when the coronavirus struck in force days later, the seven-day weeks returned as IT staff struggled to manage a string of covid-related crises using technology that was still hobbled.
Just think of the sons and the daughters and the moms and dads and loved ones trying to reach each other in the feeling of fear or maybe something happened and its just because they cant  the cellphones not working, Biden said. Think of the millions of people reaching out for help. This is important and its critical.
He said he would stop the law before it went into effect so that the courts may consider whether a state can avoid responsibility for its laws in such a manner. Defendants argue that existing doctrines preclude judicial intervention, and they may be correct. But the consequences of approving the state action, both in this particular case and as a model for action in other areas, counsel at least preliminary judicial consideration before the program devised by the State takes effect.
On the issue of security, 53 percent now say they are very or somewhat confident that U.S. officials can identify and exclude possible terrorists from entering the country alongside the refugees, though a far smaller 16 percent say they are very confident of that. Forty-six percent say they are not so or not at all confident of the governments ability to screen out possible terrorists. Confidence in security screening differs heavily along partisan lines, with about 7 in 10 Democrats confident the United States can prevent terrorists from entering the country, compared with just over half of independents and just over 3 in 10 Republicans.
All I can say is their theme song, their electoral theme song, is going to be American Woman,  said John Anzalone, a Democratic pollster, reciting the lyrics to that 1970 anthem by the Guess Who: American woman, get away from me. . . . Dont come knocking around my door. I dont wanna see your shadow no more. The message to female voters, he said, is, We dont need you.
In the first quarter of this year  the latest for which data was available  Trump Towers commercial spaces were 75 percent occupied, according to Trepp data. That is lower than the occupancy rates for the tower from any year going back to 2013, Trepp reported. Citywide, this is not a good time to be trying to lease out office space. The effects of the coronavirus pandemic, combined with the construction of new buildings, have created an unusual glut of available space: A recent report by the firm Savills found that 18.4 percent of Manhattan office space was for rent, the highest level in decades.
Today everybody is talking about antifa and critical race theory and BLM. Ive seen churches now, instead of putting the gospel on the marquis of the church, that church now says Black Lives Matter, but theyve got the acronym wrong  BLM. It really means Because Larry Matters, Hibbs said during the service.
But the Texas law, also known as SB 8, has sparked particular outrage for a unique provision: It protects those who get abortions from litigation, but allows private citizens to sue abortion providers and anyone else who aids or abets an abortion after six weeks. Those who sue  who reportedly are not required to have any connection to the abortion or even live in Texas  are also entitled to at least $10,000 if they win.
His decision ushers in a period of political uncertainty in Japan at a time when the Biden administration is seeking to restore alliances that were strained during the Trump-era America First approach. With neighboring South Korea also set to hold a presidential election next spring, the shifting domestic dynamics in two crucial U.S. allies could affect U.S. policy on issues such as North Koreas nuclear threat and strategic competition with China.
Deadly floods in Zhengzhou this summer have brought the catastrophic effects of climate change home to China, even as many Americans came to a similar realization by intense wildfires on the West Coast. Both countries governments know they must curb emissions for their own peoples welfare, but what share of the cost is borne by each remains under negotiation.
The group of 27 men, four women, a 15-year-old girl and an elegant gray cat, which they say traveled with them from Afghanistan, has been stuck for more than three weeks near the Polish village of Usnarz Gorny. Polish border guards refuse to let them enter the country where they are seeking protection, and Belarus will not let them back in.
If you want to go all the way to strategic autonomy, you do have to have a European command  you cant keep pretending you can follow the NATO command structure, said Fabrice Pothier, a former NATO policy chief. That will indeed create some friction with NATO and possibly with the U.S. and the U.K. But on the other hand, its up to the European Union to explain, This is for us to use when you dont want to step in and do something. 
The 49-year-old Trudeau, the son of the late Liberal Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, became the second youngest prime minister in Canadian history when he was first elected with a majority of seats in Parliament in 2015. He reasserted liberalism in 2015 after almost 10 years of Conservative Party government in Canada, but scandals combined with high expectations damaged his brand.
Charlene Thomas, 73, passed away while at the Daviess Community Hospital, Sept. 8, 2021. She was born April 23, 1948, in Washington, to Eugene Matteson and Eileen (Best) Matteson. Charlene was a homemaker who loved to play the piano, enjoyed genealogy, and liked to play cards and board games
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National Australia Banks group executive has warned any legislation to force major banks to finance fossil fuel producers could lead to higher borrowing costs for individual Australians, in a heated parliamentary inquiry into investment exclusions.

Senior executives from Commonwealth Bank, National Australia Bank, Westpac and ANZ appeared before an inquiry into investment in Australias export industries on Friday, where they faced questioning by chair George Christensen.

NABs top executive David Gall warned of unintended consequences of using laws to force banks to fund thermal coal. Credit:Dominic Lorrimer

The inquiry was set up following outrage from conservative politicians, including Mr Christensen and Agricultural Minister David Littleproud, over moves by financial institutions including superannuation funds and banks to reduce exposure to carbon-heavy industries.

All major banks have now pledged to align operations with the Paris Climate Agreement, introduced net zero emissions targets and set dates for exiting the thermal coal industry, in an effort to de-risk operations and attract foreign capital.
Early last month at a sprawling factory on the highway connecting Hanoi to the port city of Haiphong, a single worker tested positive for COVID-19. The Delta variant was spreading swiftly through the Southeast Asian nation at the time, and on August 4, provincial officials suspended work at the auto-parts manufacturer.

An ocean away, Toyota Motor Chief Purchasing Group Officer Kazunari Kumakura was watching intently. The plant is operated by a key Toyota supplier and is one of Vietnams biggest assemblers of wire harnesses -- a basic but essential yoke for cables that holds the inner workings of an automobile together.

As the infection at the facility disrupted operations, Toyotas inventories grew thin. Since July, the Japanese automaker had been examining its suppliers in the region, which has become a COVID hotspot, on a daily basis to assess how dire things were getting.

The global chip shortage is hurting car makers around the world. Credit:AP

Eventually, unable to secure a number of parts, including the wire harnesses from Vietnam and chips from Malaysia, Toyota succumbed. The worlds No 1 automaker shocked the market by announcing it would slash its output of cars in September by 40 per cent compared to previous production plans.
The Australian sharemarket bounced off a two-week low on Friday to secure a narrow weekly rise, helped along by gains for the iron ore giants and energy firms and optimism over the nations vaccination progress.

Positive moves for Commonwealth Bank, NAB, biotech CSL and a new record high for Macquarie Group also helped the benchmark S&P/ASX 200 rise as it added 0.5 per cent to close at 7522.9.

The market managed to finish the week 0.5 per cent ahead - its best performance in three weeks - as the book closed on a largely satisfying earnings season, and the end of August marked the 16th monthly rise in the past 17 months.

Fridays advance halted a two-day slide for the local bourse, with investors seemingly happy to take their lead from a record-setting Wall Street.

The ASX finished the week marginally ahead. Credit:Istock

Miner BHP rose from a nine-month low with a 1 per cent gain to $42.35, while Rio Tinto was up 2.5 per cent to $111.37 and Fortescue Metals added 0.7 per cent to $20.85. Those gains came despite softening iron ore prices.

Lithium producers were strong and energy companies climbed. Whitehaven continued its stellar run amid surging coal prices with another 6.8 per cent rise to $2.84, while Woodside Petroleum, Viva Energy and Beach finished ahead.

Macquarie Group rose by as much as 1 per cent to a new all-time peak of $169.77.

The biggest weaknesses on Friday were in the technology sector, with Afterpay down 2.8 per cent to $130.71 and Xero dropping 1.2 per cent to $151.01.

Investors were bracing for US jobs data on Friday night, with breath bated as to whether it will sway the US Feds stance on the tapering timeline.

Australia is awaiting direction from its own central bank next week, with the RBA tipped to delay tapering or even extend its bond-buying program as lockdowns threaten economic growth.

That said, the market its apparently set on treating COVID cases, lockdowns, and the subsequent slowdown as a transitory phenomenon, with hopes high that vaccinations will allow for a more substantial reopening.

Dale Gillham, Chief Analyst of successful financial services company Wealth Within, said the markets weekly rise may be a sign that the bulls have not finished with the current uptrend that started with the COVID low in March 2020.

As I continue to say, we need confirmation that a move is unfolding before we react, as the market could easily start to trade down next week into the low, Mr Gillham said in a note to clients.

My advice right now is to wait until we have confirmation of a move in either direction and to remember that now is not the time to speculate.
The elephant in the global room is Chinas ferocious property squeeze. Xi Jinping is deliberately breaking the back of the worlds biggest financial bubble.

The Chinese economy already has one foot in recession - by its own cyclical standards - and is heading for a hard-landing over the next few months as construction is starved of credit.

President Xi Jinping is shaking up the Chinese economy. Credit:Getty Images

Markets should be prepared for what could be a much worse-than-expected growth slowdown, and potential stock market turmoil, said Ting Lu, Nomuras chief China economist. The scale of Chinas cement addiction is eye-watering. Half the worlds cranes are in China. Were talking about 50 per cent of the global construction business, he said.

Home building and property make up 17 per cent of Chinese GDP, including furniture and appliances. The sector also generates 44 per cent of local government revenues through land sales and fees, injecting $US1.3 trillion ($1.8 trillion) a year into the economy as quasi-fiscal spending. All told, property makes up a quarter of the Chinese economy, three times the relative weighting of Americas extreme bubble in 2007.
Gretta Rays perfectionism stood between her and her debut album. Its been five years since her award-winning single, Drive, attracted a national audience, and the expectation to deliver an album loomed large.

But Ray had growing up to do, and Begin To Look Around reflects a worldlier and wiser woman. Its a confident chronicle of heartbreak and freshly declared independence that she has delivered on her own terms, though ultimately on the pandemics timetable.

Musician Gretta Ray. Credit:courtesy EMI Music

I finished writing this record towards the end of 2019 ... it has been a waiting process to finally share these songs with people, she explains. But learning lessons, being able to capture those lessons, in the songs that I wrote  thats very empowering, for sure.

Ray was in her final year at Princes Hill Secondary College when she won Triple Js Unearthed competition for emerging songwriters in 2016, over 1000 fellow entrants. Her winning song, Drive, a melodic guitar-based pop song that announced her as a talented storyteller and vocalist, gave her an instant fan base and public profile.
Queensland virus alert sparks calls for action

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The NSW government announced on Wednesday that 30 motorhomes would open at the towns caravan park so that people stuck in overcrowded housing could isolate away from their families to avoid spreading the disease. Wilcannia resident Catherine Bugmy is in isolation as she has COVID. Credit:Nick Moir But questions are now being asked over why the state government didnt set up alternative accommodation for the town's vulnerable population after the virus first entered the community. The countrys peak Indigenous health body said it didnt know why the government didnt act sooner, considering it was a key element of the response planning for Aboriginal communities. We always knew that people couldnt safely isolate at their homes and the plans that we put in place were mainly centred around removing positive cases from their homes so that they could help protect their families, so thats always been the plan, said Jason Agostino, an epidemiologist and medical adviser to the National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation (NACCHO).

Asked if NACCHO had any idea why the state governments response had taken so long, Dr Agostino replied: No. Catherine Bugmy doing her washing in the Darling River outside Wilcannia. Credit:Rhett Wyman "The pandemic response is up to each jurisdiction, he said. Responding to Ms Bugmys claims, the Far West NSW Local Health District said it is in the process of organising the collection of used clothes for washing. It said all food given to people isolating is freshly cooked in Broken Hill before being transported to Wilcannia. Asked to explain why it had taken so long to set up extra accommodation in Wilcannia, NSW Health referred the Herald to its initial announcement that it would open the motorhomes next week after consulting the community.

The outbreak in far western and western NSW is suspected to have originated from a couple who were in a western Sydney hotspot in July. But the Western NSW Local Health District urged people not to focus on how the outbreak started, and instead focus on how to bring it under control. What we now know is there is so much broad spread of this delta strain across all of our communities, with people infectious in all of our communities its not so much where it came from, its whats happening today, said Scott McLachlan, its chief executive. Just days ago a leaked letter from a well-respected local Aboriginal health service to the Prime Minister, obtained by the Herald, described the situation in Wilcannia as a humanitarian crisis and said it had been raising the alarm about overcrowded housing for more than a year.

The letter from the Maari Ma Aboriginal Health Corporation was also scathing over the chaotic handling of the unfolding catastrophe in far western NSW, saying government responses had been entirely reactive. "The fact of the matter is, the horse has already bolted in Wilcannia, so priority issues there today are humanitarian and acute medical care, in particular alternative accommodation," the letter said. Federal Labor spokeswoman for Indigenous Australians, Wiradjuri woman Linda Burney, said the growing outbreak in Wilcannia was unacceptable. Today alone we had four new cases in Wilcannia. There are now upwards of 80 people in Wilcannia, a town of 700, with COVID, she said. Loading

She argued that the government should have foreseen the problems people would face trying to safely isolate, given the well-known problem of overcrowding in the community. It is too little too late, two and a half weeks too late, to get mobile homes out to Wilcannia. Wilcannia has been crying out for the capacity to isolate for a very long time now, she said. Dr Agostino explained that overcrowded housing was one of the biggest reasons Indigenous communities are considered more at risk from COVID-19 than the general population, and has been factored into planning since the pandemic began. In many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities we see over 10 people in a house, often without adequate infrastructure for cleaning and health as well, so it is the biggest issue, he said. The far western region of NSW, where Wilcannia is located, has the lowest rates of fully vaccinated Indigenous people in the state. Just 13 per cent of the Indigenous population has received two jabs.
An internal text exchange has emerged that asserts somebody who has power in China secretly helped a large Australian abattoir overcome an export ban in exchange for issuing a lucrative labour hire contract to a favoured recruitment syndicate.

The 2020 text message from a senior manager at Goulburn-based Southern Meats shows the high value of the trade in Chinese people willing to work in Australian abattoirs.

From left to right, labour recruiter David Zhu, his former business partner Eddie Zhi and Southern Meats general manager Craig Newton in Beijing.

In March, The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald reported Craig Newton, general manager of the large NSW-based abattoir Southern Meats, defied federal government advice and met secretly in Beijing with a top Chinese customs official in a successful attempt to overturn a $10 million export licence ban imposed over a labelling error.

Southern Meats and the two men who helped arrange the meeting in late 2019, Eddie Zhi and David Zhu, who are involved in supplying foreign labour to Australian abattoirs, have denied any payments or inducements were offered to have the ban overturned.
The COVID Delta epidemic in NSW is at a watershed. The next two weeks will be critical if a real crisis is to be avoided. Encouragingly, its effective reproduction rate fell for five days in a row before rising and falling over succeeding days. However, NSW cases are still doubling every 11 days. The states public hospital system is already struggling to cope with 1000 new cases a day.

How will it cope if NSW reaches 2000 cases a day? What will it mean if the public hospital system cannot cope? What will be the flow-on effects to other Australian states and to New Zealand?

Then and now, a stark contrast in managing a health crisis ... federal health minister Neal Blewett at the World Ministerial Summit on AIDS in London in 1988. Credit:AP

Although the Morrison and Berejiklian governments emphasise the importance of economic considerations, the relationship with health costs is not a zero-sum game. The higher the health costs, the worse the economic damage. Reducing deaths and disease reduces economic costs. There are many other countries where control of COVID has been lost for a time. It is not pretty and wont be if this happens in Australia.

No one should underestimate by now the difficulty for political leaders in managing COVID. Initially, that management in Australia had many strengths. However, recent weaknesses in the strategies adopted by the federal and NSW governments are having serious health and economic consequences.
For our free coronavirus pandemic coverage, learn more here.

Save Log in , register or subscribe to save articles for later. Normal text size Larger text size Very large text size It was David Koch, breakfast TVs longtime barometer of middle Australia, who last week articulated best the frustrations of so many about the fractured federation and seemingly dysfunctional national cabinet. Sparring with Scott Morrison from his prime ministerial courtyard while Australians devoured their Weeties, the Sunrise host asked if the PM was feeling like a lame duck. You really cant get Queensland and WA to toe the line? Kochie said. You can say, stick to the plan, but if they say no, we dont want to theres nothing you can do about it. Should you have imposed a health emergency so  we have consistent rules for everyone right across the country? Prime Minister Scott Morrison doesnt have the power to implement consistent rules across the country. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen Morrisons response hinted at an underlying exasperation. There is not that power in Australia  It just doesnt exist. So, I cant sort of play fantasy government, he said.

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I think these powers of the states were not as well known at previous times because we didnt have pandemics running like we do now. While political brawling between premiers and prime ministers is nothing new, the coronavirus pandemic has introduced a new generation of Australians to the complexities and oddities of the federation. Daily press conferences have elevated state and territory leaders to day-time TV celebrities, each becoming pantomime characters in the weekly build-up to national cabinet meetings. Formed in the whirlwind of mid-March 2020, as death tolls mounted in Europe and global financial markets were sent into freefall, the national cabinet  comprising all state and territory leaders  was assembled to co-ordinate a consistent national response. Loading Its early success  a reflection of the national unity at the time  has made it a permanent, but to many problematic, part of the political landscape. As the pandemic progressed the patience and general politeness of those early days have dissipated as leaders publicly, and privately, traded barbs. Morrison took on Victorias Daniel Andrews over contact tracing and Defence troops. Andrews upset South Australias Steven Marshall by suggesting no one wanted to visit his state anyway when it closed its borders. For months, NSWs Gladys Berejiklian and Queenslands Annastacia Palaszczuk were engaged in a bitter and personal brawl over border closures. Berejiklians perceived schadenfreude towards Victorias second wave ensured Andrews returned the same favour when it was NSWs time to lockdown. West Australias Mark McGowan, who all but wiped out his opponents at home with a landslide election win last year, picked a fight with almost all of the east coast over his hardline border stance.

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ACT Chief Minister Andrew Barr has taken swipes at Andrews for locking out Canberrans and lashed out at Berejiklian in the past month for leaving the nations capital horribly exposed to the Delta outbreak. Five leaders, most notably McGowan and Palaszczuk, have been re-elected during the pandemic and point to their increased majorities as justification of their stances. There is a hollow acknowledgement that things should not be leaked but there is also an understanding that every state has to serve their political purposes, one source close to the inner workings says. Every jurisdiction will ultimately do what serves their political purposes first, without exception. Loading While Morrison has dismissed many of these grievances as nothing more than performative premiers playing to their own voters, whatever faint illusion of camaraderie was left has been shattered by damaging and highly personal leaks out of the Prime Ministers own state in recent weeks. First came the anecdote that a cranky Morrison had let fly at the NSW Treasurer Dominic Perrottet during a private meeting, swearing at displeasure over negotiations to upgrade COVID-19 financial support. Then, at the weekend, claims Berejiklian had called Morrison a bully and evil. The NSW Premier told reporters to not believe what you read.

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A number of times Ive read things during the course of this pandemic that hasnt been based on fact, she said. But the damage was done. NSW Liberals put the animosity down to a number of factors, many of which are mired in the factional dysfunction of the party in Morrisons home state. Some believe senior figures wish to destabilise Berejiklian from within, others say they are settling old scores. Some put it down to the fact the pair have never been overly close and arent fans of each others leadership style. Loading There is little doubt Berejiklian did not appreciate the suggestion being planted in the media that she only went harder in her lockdown strategy at Morrisons urging. While Morrison, weeks earlier, was left blindsided by her fierce criticisms of the vaccine rollout and demands other states send doses her way. The relationships between Morrison and the leaders of the two biggest states  and to a greater extent their teams of loyal advisers  has been rocky since the bushfires in late 2019. Both sides briefed differing accounts to journalists about the others claimed incompetencies while trying to keep their bosses fingers away from it. While personal animosities have dominated politics since Cassius and Brutus turned on Caesar, those who sit in the national cabinet each week insist the process is working.

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You know what happens every week before national cabinet, every week the stories appear, oh theyre disagreeing, nothings happening etcetera, etcetera, Morrison told Koch. Everybody lays in. Then we get together in the room on the Friday and we sort it out. In the room Those who sit in the room stress the public dynamic is rarely the way things play out when the secure video links fire up behind closed doors. Although, several leaders say privately that meetings have become more sombre, tense or even a little emotional in recent times amid fierce debate about vaccinating children and a plan based on the Doherty Institute modelling to ease restrictions when vaccination rates 70 to 80 per cent. The forum, several leaders say, operates at its best when the differences between states and territories are acknowledged. Neither is there always an alliance between Labor and Liberal leaders. One leader says: I think if aliens came down and watched the debate, they wouldnt be able to tell who is in a red shirt [Labor] or a blue shirt [Liberal]. Morrison knows which leaders he can corral on certain issues and he starts from there to win support.

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Patrick, who served on submarines in the Royal Australian Navy before getting into politics, knows how to stay on target. He will keep trying to reveal the JobKeeper details. For now, however, private companies have retained the right to keep the payments secret because of what was missing in the JobKeeper law last year: a disclosure regime and a clawback mechanism to force companies to repay money they did not deserve. Loading An honesty system was put in place, Patrick told the Senate. The Parliament said we needed to help companies and nobody begrudged that sentiment. We passed laws on April 8 last year that had no detail  we basically had flyers passing around the chamber talking about what JobKeeper would do, but in actual fact all the legislation that we passed was a head of power and we left all of the rules to the Treasurer. He created an honesty system that said: if you predict that you are going to have a loss in turnover you can put your hand up and get JobKeeper. But he made a massive prudential failure that has cost us billions  in fact, it hasnt cost us billions, it has cost our children billions because it came from debt. And its cost our grandchildren. Thats whats happened here: no safeguards. How many billions were not needed? The best estimate comes from the Parliamentary Budget Office, which ran the numbers in response to questions from Labor frontbencher Andrew Leigh. The money was meant to go to companies that expected or experienced a fall in their turnover, but it clearly went to some companies that prospered in the pandemic.

The PBO found that 157,650 companies increased their turnover in the first three months of the scheme but collected $4.6 billion anyway. It found 195,381 companies did the same in the following three months, collecting $8.4 billion. Leigh, an economist, says the $13 billion was wasted. He dismissed the governments claim that this money helped save 700,000 jobs. If those companies were creating jobs, they were doing it because their revenues were rising, he says. This was like a government handout to companies that were winning the lottery. Loading There is a broader measure of the JobKeeper largesse. The PBO told Leigh that $25 billion went to companies that did not experience the fall in turnover required under the rules. Companies with more than $1 billion in turnover were meant to show a 50 per cent decline, while the test was 30 per cent for smaller ones. Many saw their sales fall, but not by enough to meet the tests. Most kept the money. Morrison and Frydenberg treat the criticism as an attack on the entire scheme. They will defend JobKeeper to the end, whether that comes at the next election or beyond, because it has become a brand all of its own. After all, it helped 3.8 million workers at its peak. Without the wage subsidy, the Reserve Bank said last December, one in five recipients would not have kept their jobs  the source of the claim that it saved 700,000.

Frydenberg insists it was right to let companies receive JobKeeper funds when they anticipated a fall in turnover because they could keep workers in the confidence the subsidy was coming. The goal was to provide certainty. Treasury advised him to keep this in the second stage of the scheme, from July to September last year. Only after that point, when the worst of the crisis seemed to pass, did the rules change so companies had to prove an actual fall. Loading Would a Labor government force companies to repay some of the $13 billion? It remains to see how much of it will be left, Labor treasury spokesman Jim Chalmers told the ABC on Thursday morning. It is an unlikely scenario: a retrospective clawback. Frydenberg is probably hoping it becomes Labor policy before the next election. But the key point about the Labor position is that it supports the scheme while finding fault with the safeguards  or lack of them. None of this is a reason for leaving Australians in the dark about who received $90 billion in extraordinary help. This week in federal Parliament, the last sitting until late October on the current schedule, was an opportunity for the legislature to insist on its power over the executive. It missed the chance. This was in the same week the Coalition dismissed an attempt by independent MP Helen Haines to debate her bill to create a national integrity commission that would be much stronger than the governments own. And the same week the government introduced a bill to shield national cabinet from freedom-of-information law.
London: Once maligned in Australia as the horror show of the Wests mismanagement of the coronavirus pandemic, Britain is now providing vital clues about what life post-vaccinations can look like.

Britain enjoys one of the worlds highest vaccination rates, with 88 per cent of the population aged over 16 given their first dose and almost 79 per cent fully jabbed. As a percentage of the whole population this constitutes around 63 per cent.

While debate in Britain is now focussed on whether to vaccinate younger teens and children, as well as to whom any boosters should be administered, Britains current vaccination success is one Australia is hoping to emulate, according to Australias Chief Medical Officer Professor Paul Kelly.

The stadiums of England are full. Credit:AP

About a month ago, they started to really increase those numbers of cases but ... in contrast to previous waves their death rate has remained extremely low, Professor Kelly told a news conference in Canberra last month.
A wooden sign with the logo of River City FOP Lodge 614, which represents almost all Louisville Metro Police officers. (WDRB file photo)
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I cover a range of stories for WDRB, but really enjoy tracking what's going on at our State Capitol. I grew up on military bases all over the world, but am a Kentuckian at heart. I'm an EKU alum, and have lived in Louisville for 30 years.
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'Somebodys got to do it': Fire departments face staffing crisis

Anthony Wahl Blackhawk Technical College firefighting students are timed as they don their fire safety gear during a training session at the Janesville Fire Departments training center April 8. The students had two minutes to get fully dressed with their masks on and oxygen operating. Anthony Wahl Blackhawk Technical College instructor Paul Yakowenko, right, checks a firefighting students mask during an April 8 training session in Janesville. The students had two minutes to be fully dressed with their masks on and oxygen operating. Anthony Wahl Blackhawk Technical College firefighting students practice entering a structure with limited openings during a training session in Janesville on April 8. The students squeezed themselves through the wooden structure multiple times to build muscle memory on how to enter structures safely. The state requires 60 hours of instruction before a firefighter recruit can go on a call. Anthony Wahl A Blackhawk Technical College firefighting student braces the ladder as another climbs down from a second-floor opening in a structure during a training session in Janesville. Each student practiced climbing up and down the ladder and learned how to properly enter an upper-floor window. Anthony Wahl Logan Gragg of Orfordville climbs a ladder to a second-floor opening in a training structure during a training session in Janesville on April 8. Anthony Wahl Blackhawk Technical College firefighting students look around inside a training structure as they wait to descend a ladder from a second-floor window at the Janesville Fire Departments training facility. Anthony Wahl Blackhawk Technical College firefighting student Sean OFlanagan waits for his turn to descend a ladder from a second-floor window during a training session in Janesville. Anthony Wahl Blackhawk Technical College instructor Paul Yakowenko, right, watches as a student enters a second-floor window during a training session in Janesville. Anthony Wahl A Blackhawk Technical College student learns how to properly enter and exit a second-floor window during a training session in Janesville on April 8. Anthony Wahl A firefighting student braces the ladder as another climbs down from a second-floor opening during an April 8 training session in Janesville. Each student practiced climbing up and down the ladder and entering the window properly. Anthony Wahl Cameron Letts tightens the strap to his mask as a group of Blackhawk Technical College firefighting students are timed putting on their fire safety gear during a recent training session in Janesville. Randy Pickering Rob Balsamo

JANESVILLE  This is part of the state test. You dont make this, you go home, barked firefighting instructor Paul Yakowenko to a class of recruits from Blackhawk Technical College.

Yakowenko was teaching a basic technique: passing through a 16-inch gap between two studs in a burning house in full gear, including a mask and air tank.

The training at the Janesville Fire Departments training center was part of a course called Firefighter 1.

The state requires 60 hours of instruction before a recruit can go on a call.

Many fire departments require additional training, driven by the fear of lawsuits from damage or injury resulting from wrong decisions by young volunteers, said Rob Balsamo, fire science coordinator at Blackhawk Tech.

Among the recruits squeezing between the studs was Cameron Letts, 22, the newest recruit for the Footville Fire Department. The Janesville warehouse worker said hell get paid $7.25 an hour each time he goes on a call.

Im not in it for the money, he said.

The same could be said for many hundreds of rural firefighters in the state these days. They are paid for each call, and theyre still called volunteers.

This paid on call system is one of many changes in rural firefighting driven by societal changes over the past 30 years, said Edgerton Fire Chief Randy Pickering, who has served in rural departments around the state during that time.

The result has been a drop in volunteers and in some areas, longer response times.

The problem has crept up slowly, and it has become a crisis that few outside the fire service understand, Pickering said.

Another recruit in the Blackhawk Tech class was Phil Loduha, 30, a probationary member of the Brodhead Fire Department.

I want to serve the community, and I know it takes volunteers serving to make it work, he said.

Loduha grew up in Rockford, Illinois. During his past eight years of living in small towns, he has grown to love rural America.

And I know it takes volunteers serving to make it work, to keep it what it is, and I wanted to be able to contribute to that. Somebodys got to do it, and volunteer numbers are dwindling, so I really wanted to help out. 

That is something that is always top-of-mind for department leadership, the recruiting aspect, finding new folks.

Pickering, who has been a volunteer firefighter in several Wisconsin fire departments, said American society and the fire service have changed greatly over the years, and those changes are the root of the problem.

Call volumes





Pickering joined his first department 40 years ago. His department answered 356 calls that year, and that was considered a busy year.

Today, the Edgerton Fire Protection District handles 90 calls a month, including medical calls. Thats 1,080 calls a year.

Employers used to let workers who were volunteer firefighters run out the door once or twice a week to answer emergency calls. They saw it as supporting their community, Pickering said.

But as demands have grown exponentially over the past 30 years, my guys were going out the doors three times a day, he said. No employer in the world who is trying to stay in business is going to let their employees run out the door three times a day.

Letts said his employer has been understanding about him leaving work early to get the required training, but he wont be rushing from work to answer calls. Rather, like a lot of volunteers these days, he will take his turn handling weekend shifts.

Family time





Husbands and wives often both work full-time jobs these days, Pickering noted.

If they want to spend any time with their families, one or two calls a week back 30 years ago was at least doable, he said.

But three times a day?

You have more demands for service and people with less discretionary time to offer, Pickering said.

Anthony Wahl Blackhawk Technical College firefighting students wait in line as they practice entering a building through the space between wall studs during a training session in Janesville on April 8. Most rural fire departments in Wisconsin and across the country have found it increasingly difficult to attract new volunteers.

Stopgaps





Rural departments have responded by making changes that cost money. Pickering called it a Band-Aid approach to a problem that never stopped festering.

Paying by the call is one widespread change. Another is hiring a few career firefighters to staff shifts while keeping the volunteers.

Edgerton has six career firefighters and 42 who are paid per call. Milton has three career firefighters plus its volunteers, Pickering said.

Pickering spoke to The Gazette before his department began talking to the town of Milton, which is considering breaking away from its longtime joint fire department with the city of Milton.

The Milton Joint Fire Department, meanwhile, has been moving toward a full merger with the neighboring all-career fire department in Janesville.

Often, career employees staff the ambulances, which handle the bulk of calls these days, and they are there to get things rolling if theres a fire, Pickering said. Volunteers fill in on nights and weekends.

Another solution is creating shifts that paid-on-call workers sign up to work.

It really starts to get to the point of a part-time job, Pickering said. We call them paid on premise. Of my 42 paid-on-call, we average about 1.5 a day in paid-on-premise time.

The first step for all-volunteer departments is often to hire a full-time chief. Those chiefs typically also become the local fire inspector, a must-have because the state requires fire inspections.

Edgerton is required to perform 620 fire inspections a year, for example. Thats a lot of work on top of administrative duties.

Departments with ambulances often turn to full-time EMTs or paramedics to make sure they have the staff to take calls, Pickering said.

Pickering is a volunteer, but thats unusual, he said. The advantage of a volunteer chief is that money is available for other paid staff.

Training





There was a time when a volunteer firefighter could jump on the truck and fight a fire with little training, but the state has increased its requirements over the years.

Some departments require even more training, which helps protect them from lawsuits over injuries or property damage during calls, said Blackhawk Techs Balsamo.

The minimum training now takes 60 hours. A full Firefighter 1 certification takes more than double that, Pickering said. Its another burden that could dissuade potential volunteers.

Standards increase every year, Pickering said, and for good reason. Requirements include training on topics such as hazardous materials, blood-borne pathogens and cancer risk in firefighting.

Free time





Just because its hard doesnt mean you shouldnt be focused on how to solve the problem. Finding people whove got the discretionary time to volunteer and assist is really hard right now, he said.

Pickerings approach: Basically, youre vying for peoples discretionary time. You have to create an environment where they see value in what theyre doing with their discretionary time. If they feel theyre treated with respect and treated to the context that what theyre doing is helping their community, and you provide training and good equipment and facilities, there are people out there who are willing to help. It can work, but it takes a lot of hard work to make that work.

But Pickering knows of three other Wisconsin communitieshe wouldnt name themwhere things have gotten so bad that when a call comes in, the 911 center dispatches all three fire departments.

Often, the crew for one call is cobbled together from two or three departments, and that extends the response time as EMTs travel to a next-door community.

Sometimes, volunteers will put off vacations because they fear their ambulance wont be staffed, Pickering said.

The locals of the unnamed departments organized a meeting two years ago to educate elected officials, but none showed up, he said.

Response time





Pickering pointed to a chart by the American Heart Association that shows for every one minute of delay in emergency care of a heart attack, survival chances drop 10%.

Likewise, the chances for a structure to survive drop fast if a fire in a room doesnt feel the gush from a fire hose within seven minutes, he said.

The policymakers are absolutely immune to getting their heads around how bad this problem is, Pickering said.

Lawmakers havent been totally deaf. The state Department of Safety and Professional Services recently proposed a grant program to promote training partnerships among fire departments, technical colleges and high schools.

The program would allow training to begin in high school. Credits would apply toward high school graduation and firefighter preparation programs.

Janesville Fire Chief Ernie Rhodes promoted a youth firefighting program when he appeared before the Legislatures Joint Finance Committee in Whitewater on April 9, requesting $100,000 for a pilot program.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency offers grants to help fire departments recruit and retain firefighters. But the grants are competitive. Only 17 have been awarded to Wisconsin departments since 2015.

Congressional proposals to make volunteer fire and EMS personnel eligible for student loan forgiveness and housing assistance have not passed, according to news reports. Other proposals include modifying the tax code to make it easier for local communities to offer incentives.

Costs





Tax dollars pay for a lot of fire department expenses, but with state caps on how much municipalities can raise through property taxes, most volunteer departments still hold fundraisers to help pay for equipment.

A fire engine at minimum can cost you $300,000, and thats a cheap one, Balsamo said. Firefighting gear without the air pack is $3,000, minimum.

We, thank heavens, have a very, very vibrant (fundraising) association that supports us really well, Pickering said. This year, were having to replace all cardiac monitors in the ambulances, at a cost of well over $100,000.

I dont think people realize the amount of time and energy it takes to manage a fire department as well as all the resources needed to provide that fire (and rescue and ambulance) protection, Balsamo said.

The National Volunteer Fire Council estimates nationwide volunteer numbers have dropped from 884,600 to 682,600 in 2017.

The scale of the loss of volunteer firefighters estimated in this report is really disturbing and something that we need to work as a community and a nation to address, the councils chairman, Kevin Quinn, said at the time.

The councils study showed firefighters as a group were aging, with 53% over age 40, compared with 37% in 1987an indicator of fewer young recruits than in the past.

Brodhead fire recruit Loduha might belong to a small elite group who are inspired by the chance to serve.

There are some people there who are professionals in other departments as their full-time job, and they volunteer in Brodhead, Loduha said. Its really awesome to be able to train with and learn from people who do it for a living.

Rural fire chiefs across the state, no doubt, would love to see a lot more recruits with Loduhas attitude walking through their doors.
NEWTOWN  A gunmaker being sued by nine families who lost loved ones in the Sandy Hook shootings has subpoenaed the academic, attendance and disciplinary records of five children killed that day. The subpoena included requests for school records of four educators who were killed.

Lawyers for those nine families moved in court Thursday to seal those confidential records of the five slain children and four slain educators requested by the bankrupted Remington company.

We have no explanation for why Remington subpoenaed the Newtown Public School District to obtain the kindergarten and first-grade academic, attendance and disciplinary records of these five school children, said the families lead attorney, Josh Koskoff, after filing a motion to change the protection order in state Superior Court in Waterbury. The records cannot possibly excuse Remingtons egregious marketing conduct, or be of any assistance in estimating the catastrophic damages in this case. The only relevant part of their attendance records is that they were at their desks on December 14, 2012.

Dec. 14, 2012, was the day a 20-year-old gunman took his mothers AR-15-style rifle from an unlocked closet and shot his way into a locked Sandy Hook Elementary School, killing 20 first-graders and six educators.

Nine families who lost loved ones sued Remington for wrongful death, claiming the once-powerful gunmaker recklessly marketed a military-grade gun to civilians. Remington argued that it manufactured a legal firearm that was sold lawfully to the gunmans mother, and that it was the gunman who was responsible for the worst crime in Connecticut history.

In 2016, a state Superior Court judge agreed that Remington was protected under a federal law that shields the gun industry from most liability when its products are misused. In 2019, the state Supreme Court ruled the families had grounds to pursue an unlawful marketing claim under Connecticuts Unfair Trade Practices Act. Later that year, the United States Supreme Court sent the case back to trial court by refusing to review it.

Since them, Remington has been dissolved in bankruptcy court, and four insurance companies have taken over the former companys defense.

The battle to keep the private records of the nine Sandy Hook victims confidential comes as both sides prepare for trial in the highest profile lawsuit of its kind in the country. The lawsuit was in national headlines last in July, when two of Remingtons four insurance companies offered each of the nine families a $3.6 million settlement. The families have yet to respond.

A week before that surprise partial settlement offer, Remington raised eyebrows when it was accused of handing over 18,000 random cartoons and 15,000 irrelevant pictures of people go-karting and dirt-biking as part of its pretrial data requested by the families.

On Thursday, Koskoff accused Remington of crossing the line.

There is no conceivable way that these childrens application and admission paperwork, attendance records, transcripts, report cards, [and] disciplinary records, to name only some of the things sought by the subpoena, will assist Remington in its defense, and the (families) do not understand why Remington would invade the families privacy with such a request, Koskoff wrote in a motion filed Thursday. We have never seen subpoenas directed to first-graders educational records, let alone childrens attendance records, or disciplinary records.

Newtown schools Superintendent Lorrie Rodrigue was not immediately available to comment.

A copy of Remingtons mid-July subpoenas was submitted with the families motion on Thursday.

The families attorneys asked the judge to remove protections for Remingtons proprietary information that are now obsolete.

The reason: Remington no longer exists as a company.

Remingtons counsel recently conceded: Remington no longer has a proprietary interest in those documents because Remington no longer exists. Koskoff writes in the families motion. Counsel is right that Remington is no longer entitled to claim confidentiality for documents it has produced or will produce.

rryser@newstimes.com 203-731-3342
DODOMA, Tanzania (AP)  Tanzania's president on Wednesday said five people are dead, including three police officers, after a gun battle with an armed man near the French Embassy in Dar es Salaam.

It was not immediately clear whether the shootout in the heavily guarded diplomatic area was a terror attack. Inspector general of police Simon Sirro told reporters the armed man was a foreigner and police believe he was from Somalia. Sirro also warned the attack could be linked to the jihadist insurgency in neighboring Mozambique, where a growing number of African nations are jointly pursuing the fighters.
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Allied forces invaded Italy during World War II, the same day Italian officials signed a secret armistice with the Allies, and more events that happened on this day in history.

Video 1783: Treaty of Paris 1939: King George VI 1943: Italy 1978: Pope John Paul I 1995: eBay 2003: Paul Hill 2005: New Orleans 2010: Robert Gates 2011: The Vatican 2016: Barack Obama and Xi Jinping 2016: Donald Trump 2019: Walmart 2020: Donald Trump 2020: Facebook 2020: Michael Reinoehl
WOODBURY (WFSB)  The death of a Connecticut State Police sergeant who was swept away by flood waters in Woodbury has been ruled an accident.

Sgt. Brian Mohl died on Thursday after he got stuck in flooding early in the morning on Wednesday.

His body was escorted to the Munson-Lovetere Funeral Home in Woodbury on Friday afternoon.

Early Thursday morning, state police said they received a call around 3:30 a.m. from Mohl, who said his cruiser was taking on water near Jack's Bridge in Woodbury.

Fallen state police sergeant identified Police have released the name of a state police Sergeant who died after he was swept away in flood waters early Thursday morning in Woodbury.

When search crews arrived, they found Mohls cruiser, but he was not inside.

The found him hours later and rushed him to Yale New Haven Hospital via LIFE STAR.

He was later pronounced dead.

The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner said Mohl died from blunt trauma to the torso.

Tributes have been pouring all over social media since the news hit on Thursday.

Connecticut mourns death of state police sergeant WOODBURY, Ct. (WFSB) - The entire state is mourning, after a Connecticut State Police (CSP) 

Sergeant Mohl joined the State Police Training Academy on Nov. 25, 1994, and graduated on June 1, 1995, with the 105th Training Troop.

He was assigned to Troop A in Southbury and transferred to Troop L in Litchfield after being promoted to Sergeant in May 2000.

The family of Sergenat Mohl released a statement, saying:

"We want to thank everyone for their thoughts and prayers. The loss we have suffered is immeasurable. Brian was an incredible person. He was a loving son, brother, husband, father, uncle, and friend and to say he will be missed is just not enough. Brian loved being a State Trooper. He proudly served with the Connecticut State Police for over 26 years and those that worked with him said he always had a way of making you feel as though you were part of the team and that he truly cared about them. Even though Brian was committed to his work he always found a way to put his family life first. He never lost sight of that. If he wasnt at work, he was spending time with us. Brians love for his family was larger than life. He had a special way about him with his kindness, humor and warmth. Seeing the outpouring of prayers and support from the Connecticut State Police, the New York State Police, the law enforcement community and the community as a whole has deeply touched our hearts. We cannot begin to express our gratitude for all of your compassion. We will have no further statements and will not be granting media interviews. We ask that our familys privacy be respected during this difficult time."

His wake will be at the Xfinity Theatre on Sept. 8, from noon to 6 p.m. His funeral also be at the Xfinity Theatre on Sept. 9 at 11 a.m.

Any one wishing to donate to the family can go to Venmo account @CSP-Union or check can be sent to the Connecticut State Police Union, with a notation stating Sgt. Brian Mohl. Donations can be mailed to: SGT. Brian Mohl Fund, c/o CSPU, 500 Main Street, East Hartford, CT 06118.
Dating from 1972, when South Africa was still in the grip of apartheid and before Athol Fugard's international reputation as that country's preeminent dramatist had been cemented, [[Statements[[ emerges as a grim snapshot of forbidden love and its consequences under an oppressive, uncaring regime. Etched in disillusionment and suppressed fury, Fugard's script is a mixture of raw monologues and jagged duets that are tantalisingly vivid in one moment but dramatically inert the next.

Shaq Taylor and Scarlett Brookes are Errol and Frieda, a South African couple whose love affair is illegal simply because he is Black and she is white. Absurd as that may seem to a 2021 metropolitan audience, it was the horrible reality in the climate when Fugard wrote this play, and if its power to shock has diminished, its sense of outrage and understated misery certainly has not. There is a stark poetic beauty in the text, although some may find the relentless dourness hard to swallow.

Diane Page's tense, terse production has a vivid sense of time and place, enhanced by Esther Kehinde Ajayi's subtle but relentless sound score, and skilfully locates a tone for the play at the axis of despair and erotic ecstasy. If it feels entirely humourless, the argument surely is that there is nothing remotely amusing about racism and inequality: the future for this couple looked bleak even before they were shopped to the authorities. If one is grateful that this uneasy piece lasts a mere 75 minutes, reflect also that we as an audience are lucky enough to have the option of walking away from this sadness and injustice; Errol, Frieda and their ilk had to, and in some areas of the globe, still have to, live under it.

Taylor is astonishing as Errol, bringing dignity, fire and a thrilling, expressive physicality to this highly intelligent, sensitive man whose ambition and joy is thwarted by being born in the wrong place at the wrong time. His performance alone would justify a trip to Richmond. Opposite him, Brookes gives Frieda a convincing melancholic resignation that haunts, despite an occasional tendency to swallow her lines. Richard Sutton provides jolts of malevolent energy in the somewhat thankless role of the Detective Sergeant on their case.

Page's staging is unfortunately painted into something of a corner by Niall McKeever's striking but cumbersome in-the-round set design. A giant hole or pit in the centre of the Orange Tree's circular stage, it serves as a useful metaphor for the vortex of despair, evil and segregation that will ultimately whirl away any chance the characters have of happiness and union, it is only seldom inhabited by the actors and frustratingly limits the playing space as they totter around it. If the intention is to give a sense of constant tension, then it's successful, but it makes for tedious blocking, and frequently ruins the sight lines  at least on the lower level  unless you're in the very front row. Rajiv Pattani's lighting goes from atmospherically murky to flashbulb-bright blinding in the blink of an eye, and feels entirely appropriate.

Ultimately, Fugard wrote richer, more nuanced and accomplished plays than this one, but there is still a deep well of feeling here and a sense of the tragedy of hope extinguished that stays with the viewer long after the short performance is done. Diane Page hasn't re-introduced a masterpiece but she's providing a welcome opportunity to reappraise a slice of unhappy, unfair life that still resonates, albeit only with fitful power. I admired it more than I enjoyed it.
Quincy, IL (62301)

Today

Mostly clear this evening then becoming mostly cloudy after midnight. Low 58F. Winds light and variable..

Tonight

Mostly clear this evening then becoming mostly cloudy after midnight. Low 58F. Winds light and variable.
Coronavirus

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Ward: More than 50 percent of CHI St. Alexius Williston's patients are COVID-19 positive

Williston Herald file photo CHI St. Alexius Health in Williston. rjean / By Renee Jean rjean@willistonherald.com Hospitalization rates from COVID-19 infetctions are much lower in vaccinated people than in those who are not vaccinated.

CHI St. Alexius in Williston hit the airwaves at a statewide press conference on North Dakotas COVID-19 situation. The hospital has 10 cases of COVID-19 right now, two more than at the last peak, and those cases are in a younger demographic than before, according to Chief Medical Officer Cary Ward for CHIs Midwest Division.

Ward noted that CHI has 10 hospitals spread across North Dakota, giving them a statewide perspective on how COVID-19 is progressing in different regions.

Our largest numbers are in our western hospitals in Williston and Dickinson, and then also in Bismarck, he said. And I think Williston tells a really important story.

Vaccination rates in Williams County are around 30 percent, Ward noted, and that has allowed COVID-19 to continue ramping up in the west. At the end of July, Williston had about 24 active COVID-19 cases, Ward said, but that has jumped in August to around 135 active cases.

The important thing is, in Williston, 50 percent of the patients  actually more than 50 percent of the patients hospitalized are COVID positive. The age ranges from 14 to 68, he said. The important point I want to make is, 100 percent of these patients are unvaccinated. Weve heard this term before, but this really feels like an epidemic of the unvaccinated.

Previously, when someone was hospitalized with COVID-19, people would wonder what the medical history was, Ward added. Were they overweight, did they have diabetes, what was the underlying condition? Thats changed.

Now, often the only risk factor is that they have not had the vaccine, Ward said. We are seeing perfectly healthy patients in their 20s and 30s come in, requiring hospitalization. In Dickinson, we have six patients now. Some as young as in their 30s.

Vaccine hesitancy is something Ward hopes people will reconsider, and he was not alone. All of the hospital officials participating in Wednesdays press conference, who represent North Dakotas five major hospitals, said much the same.

Its been shown over 400 million doses, its exceedingly safe and very effective, Essentia Health's Chief Medical Officer Dr. Richard Vetter said.

Misinformation has led some individuals astray, Ward suggested. The antidote, he suggested, is a simple and honest conversation with ones own health care provider, who can help individuals sort through what information is actual and factual and what information is misleading, or quite simply fake.

Talk to your doctors or nurses or pharmacists and others in health care who are looking at this data  your state officials, state healthcare leaders, he suggested. And please really pay close attention to the vast majority of the information, the valid information, showing that these vaccines are extremely safe, extremely effective  more than 90 percent effective  even against this variant (for preventing hospitalization and death).

North Dakotas coronavirus cases have risen sharply of late, jumping by 500 cases on Monday, which includes cases from over the weekend, and adding another 188 new active cases on Tuesday. Hospitalizations, and then deaths, tend to lag those figures, Gov. Doug Burgum pointed out, as he shared graphs that suggest the latest coronavirus surge is potentially steeper than the last one in November, when the state hit a peak of more than 10,000 active cases.

This time, the cases are largely being seen in a younger demographic. And the surge is also coming at a time when COVID-19 cases are straining health care capacity elsewhere in the country. This means North Dakota hospitals cannot likely pull health care staff from other regions of the country to meaningfully staff more beds, Burgum pointed out, in answer to a question about whether Field Hospitals are likely.

Last year, labor was able to move from the south in the summer to the north in the fall, and that helped us get through our crunch, he said.

Without appropriate support staff, Field Hospitals would be offering beds with little to no real medical care.

Burgum also said the low vaccination rates in the state mean the risk of a health care shortage is very real. He joined doctors on the call, pleading with the public to reconsider if they havent yet gotten vaccinated.

We know that COVID is evolving, Burgum said. We know that COVID for some people results in serious illness, and even mortality. And so again, its not about what government says, its about what people do.

What people do will ultimately determine the outcome of the pandemic not just for for themselves but for their friends and family.

Officials with North Dakotas largest hospitals all outlined similar situations. They described declining transfers from other hospitals seeking higher levels of care, and said they are often near the ceiling of health care capacity for a wide range of illnesses, not just COVID-19.

We think its important for people to know that across the state and in our hospitals, weve stood up our ethics committees again, President and CEO of Sanford Health Micheal Lebeau said. Were preparing to make difficult decisions like we had to last time. Those decisions include who gets the next bed, who gets the next ventilator, and how many patients can you truly take care of with limited number of staff.

LeBeau said North Dakotas health care professionals deserve thanks for the role theyre playing on the front lines of the pandemic.

We have about 500 additional shifts that have been picked up over the last week, he said. Thats a personal sacrifice that our frontline staffs make and each of our hospitals have these folks who are spending the majority of their waking hours at the hospital to care for folks. So we think its important for people to continue to step up. Were asking everybody to get out and get vaccinated and take care of themselves.

The doctors on the call also highlighted questionable cures for COVID-19. In particular, the recent trend where people are self-medicating with Ivermectin, a horse dewormer.

The drug is meant for animals and has had zero testing on humans, State Health Officer Dr. Nizar Wehbe pointed out.

If you think something could be helpful, why dont you go and communicate or talk with your medical provider? he said. They are the trusted source of information, and they can tell you what would be best in your situation, as well as for a specific ailment or a specific COVID infection that you might have contracted.

Dr. Jeffrey Sather echoed that sentiment when it comes to untested Ivermectin use on humans.

It kind of bends my mind to think of the number of people that dont want to get a vaccine because it is not yet FDA approved, but they go off and grab all these treatments that arent regulated whatsoever and are putting them in their body, and also going off and buying something thats for a cow or their horse and using it, Trinity Chief of Medical Staff Dr. Jeffrey Sather said. There are certainly reliable sources out there, and if you want to find information on a particular item, you can find it. I can find all kinds of information about the world being flat if I go look for it. But look for a reliable source. A trusted source of information thats been vetted through experts.
WILTON  The town recently welcomed its newest firefighter, Samuel Guttman.

His hire went into effect on Aug. 26 but he will undergo 15 weeks of training away from the department. Guttman will prepare for his role for the next few months at the Connecticut Fire Academy in Windsor Locks before returning to duty in Wilton, according to a release from the town.

Guttman was sworn in this past week at the fire department headquarters on Danbury Road by Town Clerk Lori Kaback. His family was in attendance.

Wiltons newest firefighter is a retired United States Marine Corps corporal, an emergency medical technician and a former volunteer firefighter with the Trumbull Fire Department where he joined as a junior member in 2013.

We very much look forward to Sams joining our team here in Wilton, said Fire Chief Jim Blanchfield.

Blanchfield said the process to hire a new firefighter in Wilton is a comprehensive one, starting with written and oral examinations conducted by the Connecticut Firefighter Testing Consortium. Hiring is determinant on passing the Connecticut Physical Ability Test.

The Wilton Fire Department administration then conducts panel interviews with the candidates.

Finally, those selected candidates appear before the Fire Commission, which may decide to extend a provision offer. That candidate will then go through a series of post-offer, pre-employment tests, including a detailed background investigation.

After he successfully completed this lengthy process, Fire Commission Chairperson Casey Healy joined with fellow commission members Terrie Schwartz and John Hall to officially extend Guttman the offer.

The Fire Commission was pleased to extend an offer of employment to Sam Guttman and looks forward to his beginning his career with the Wilton Fire Department upon his graduation from the Connecticut Fire Academy, Healy said.
Dan Rather poses in a CBS studio in New York on Feb. 20, 2001, left, Peter Jennings poses on the set of ABC's "World News Tonight" in New York on Feb. 5, 2001, center, and "NBC Nightly News" anchor Tom Brokaw delivers his closing remarks during his final broadcast, in New York on Dec. 1, 2004. Most Americans were guided through the events of the day by one of three men: Tom Brokaw of NBC News, Peter Jennings of ABC and Dan Rather of CBS. Each had extensive reporting experience before that, Brokaw and Rather were at the White House during Watergate, and Jennings has been a foreign correspondent. (AP Photo)

NEW YORK (AP)  Turn on your television.

Those words were repeated in millions of homes on Sept. 11, 2001. Friends and relatives took to the telephone: Something awful was happening. You have to see.

Before social media and with online news in its infancy, the story of the day when terrorists killed nearly 3,000 people unfolded primarily on television. Even some people inside New York's World Trade Center made the phone call. They felt a shudder, could smell smoke. Could someone watch the news and find out what was happening?

Most Americans were guided through the unimaginable by one of three anchors: Tom Brokaw of NBC News, Peter Jennings of ABC and Dan Rather of CBS.

They were the closest thing that America had to national leaders on 9/11, says Garrett Graff, author of The Only Plane in the Sky, an oral history of the attack. They were the moral authority for the country on that first day, fulfilling a very historical role of basically counseling the country through this tragedy at a moment its political leadership was largely silent and largely absent from the conversation.

The news media has changed in the ensuing 20 years, and some experts believe the same story would feel even more chaotic and terrifying if it broke today.

But on that day, when America faced the worst of humanity, it had three newsmen at the peak of their powers.

___

Brokaw, Rather and Jennings were the kings of broadcast news on Sept. 11, 2001. Competitive drive and ego had led them to that place. Each had anchored his network's evening newscasts for roughly two decades at that point. Each had extensive reporting experience before that  Brokaw and Rather at the White House during Watergate, Jennings primarily as a foreign correspondent.

While they weren't the only journalists on the air  CNN's Aaron Brown memorably narrated the scene from a New York rooftop, for example  ABC, CBS or NBC were the first choices for news.

Unlike today, when a TV studio is likely to be stuffed with people from many backgrounds when a big story breaks, back then it was pretty clear who was in charge.

The three of us were known because we had taken the country through other catastrophes and big events, Brokaw recalled this summer. The country didn't have to, if you will, dial around to see who knew what.

Smoke billows across the New York City skyline after two hijacked planes crashed into the twin towers on Sept. 11, 2001. Most Americans were guided through the events of the day by one of three men: Tom Brokaw of NBC News, Peter Jennings of ABC and Dan Rather of CBS. Each had extensive reporting experience before that, Brokaw and Rather were at the White House during Watergate, and Jennings has been a foreign correspondent. (AP Photo/Patrick Sison, File)

Each was in New York that morning. They rushed to their respective studios within an hour of the first plane hitting the World Trade Center at 8:46 a.m.

Was it a terrible accident? The second plane bursting into the towers with a ball of flame, and scary reports from the Pentagon, answered that question but left many more.

Initial network reports were handled by journalists of considerable reputation: Katie Couric, Matt Lauer, Bryant Gumbel, Charles Gibson, Diane Sawyer. Yet the faces of the tragedy became a trio of legendary anchors  Brokaw, Jennings and Rather  reflecting an era of broadcasting where white men still commanded the top jobs.

It was clear that it was an attack on America, says Marcy McGinnis, who was in charge of breaking news at CBS that day. You want the most experienced person in that chair because they bring so much. They bring all of their life experience, they bring all of their anchoring experience.

It's hard to convey the confusion and anxiety they stepped into. At one point Brokaw wondered aloud whether damage to the towers would be so severe they would have to be taken down. Yet viewers could see that, moments earlier, most of one tower had already collapsed.

Things were happening too quickly to keep up.

The country needed some sort of stability, some sort of ground, says David Westin, ABC News president at the time. Where are we? What's going on? How bad can this get? It needed some sense of, Theres some things we do know and some things we don't know. But this is how we go forward from here.'

Those are usually duties handled by politicians who take to the airwaves at the first sign of a wildfire, hurricane, pandemic or some other disaster. Yet government leaders were kept out of sight for much of Sept. 11 until it was clear the attack was over.

Until late afternoon, President George W. Bush stayed in the air on Air Force One; then-primitive communications captured TV signals only intermittently, allowing the president to watch broadcast TV only when the plane flew over big cities.

The president's absence accentuated the importance of the television anchors and, in fact, led to anger by some members of the Bush administration toward Jennings that lingers to this day. Egged on by Rush Limbaugh, they felt Jennings slighted Bush in the way that he pointed out that the president was out of sight for several hours during the crisis. Westin said Jennings was misinterpreted.

___

On that day, each anchor exhibited particular strengths.

Brokaw, who had just authored The Greatest Generation, a book about those who fought World War II, was instantly able to put the event into context: We were witnessing history, he explained, and not just news.

Smoke billows across the New York City skyline after two hijacked planes crashed into the twin towers on Sept. 11, 2001. Most Americans were guided through the events of the day by one of three men: Tom Brokaw of NBC News, Peter Jennings of ABC and Dan Rather of CBS. Each had extensive reporting experience before that, Brokaw and Rather were at the White House during Watergate, and Jennings has been a foreign correspondent. (AP Photo/Patrick Sison, File)

He called it the biggest attack on U.S. soil since the War of 1812, said the profile of Manhattan had changed forever, that day-to-day life would not be the same. This has been a declaration of war on the United States, he told viewers.

Looking back, Brokaw says he felt it was his primary job to give viewers more than what they could see for themselves onscreen.

Throughout my career, I was constantly trying to think, Whats the big picture here? he says. I think that was especially true that day.

Rather would tap his foot on the brakes, reminding those watching to distinguish between fact and speculation. Before Twitter and Facebook existed, he cautioned that rumors would spread like mildew in a damp basement.

When he took over CBS coverage, he told viewers that the word of the day is steady, steady. Yes, there have been some terrible things happening but until and unless we know the facts, it's very difficult to draw many conclusions.

He reminded people that the whole city is not in smoke and flames, not by a long shot.

Sometimes his caution got the better of him, as he repeatedly referenced unconfirmed reports that the first tower had fallen. By then, viewers could see that for themselves.

Emotions and tensions were high that day, Rather told The Associated Press recently. In order to cut through the noise, to help calm the panic, you have to be clear, concise and transparent. People will know exactly where they stand and can assess for themselves.

Surprisingly few false reports slipped through in those early hours, most prominently that a car bomb had exploded at the State Department in Washington. One group falsely claimed responsibility for the attack. Speculation was kept largely in check, though in the shadow of the World Trade Center attack eight years earlier, Osama bin Laden's name quickly came up.

Jennings was the consummate anchorman. He skillfully weaved all of the elements  eyewitness accounts, expert analysis, fast-breaking bulletins and what viewers saw with their own eyes  into a compelling narrative.

Thats what he was born to do, says Kayce Freed Jennings, widow of the ABC anchorman, who died of lung cancer in August 2005. He was in a zone. He was a great communicator and, perhaps, great communication was the most important thing he could offer that day.

Each of the anchors, trained in the old school, kept emotions in check. The exception was Jennings, whose eyes were moist when the camera returned to him following a report by ABCs Lisa Stark.

He revealed that he had just checked in with his children, who were deeply stressed. So if youre a parent and youve got a kid in some other part of the country, call em up, he advised.

FILE - Fire and smoke billows from the north tower of New York's World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001 after terrorists crashed two hijacked airliners into the World Trade Center and brought down the twin towers. Most Americans were guided through the events of the day by one of three men: Tom Brokaw of NBC News, Peter Jennings of ABC and Dan Rather of CBS. Each had extensive reporting experience before that, Brokaw and Rather were at the White House during Watergate, and Jennings has been a foreign correspondent. (AP Photo/David Karp, File)

There was more of a formality even 20 years ago than there is today, where there is no limit to how personal anchors will get sometimes, MSNBCs Brian Williams says now. For Peter to do that kind of instantly included all of us.

At first, talk of casualties was kept at a minimum. No one knew. That changed when the second tower imploded, still the morning's most breathtaking moment. The anchors prepared viewers for the worst.

There are no words to describe this, Rather said then. It's a time to watch, absorb and think. What we had hoped and prayed would not happened, could not happen, has happened. New York's World Trade Center, in effect, has been destroyed. The loss of life will be high.

It's going to be horrendous, Brokaw told viewers. The damage is beyond what we can say.

We're all human, Brokaw said this summer, even those of us who are journalists who spend our lives trying to put things into context and add to the viewers' understanding. We have to be both empathetic and help the viewer through what they are seeing.

That night, after more than a dozen hours on the air, Brokaw returned to an empty apartment, his wife and family out of town and unable to get back. He poured himself a drink and took a phone call with the news that a family friend had died, unrelated to the attacks.

For 40 minutes, he sat on the edge of his bed and cried.

___

Brokaw stepped down from NBC Nightly News after the 2004 election. Now 81 and ailing, he keeps busy writing books but seldom appears on television. Rather left CBS News after the fallout from a 2004 story about Bush's National Guard service. Now 89, he's an energetic tweeter about politics and the media.

New anchors are in their old roles at ABC (David Muir), CBS (Norah O'Donnell) and NBC (Lester Holt).

If a Sept. 11-styled attack was to happen in today's media world, where would people turn for news? The cable news networks are better established now as a place to go for breaking news, yet they're also much more driven by opinion. How many people would instantly want their news seen through an ideological prism?

Many would likely go to social media first, Graff said. Television anchors are already acutely aware, during breaking news, that many people watching them are also monitoring Twitter feeds.

I have a hunch that we would spend a lot of our time knocking down misinformation on social media, Williams says.

Besides opinion and speculation, the Internet would be home to more reporters, amateur or otherwise. First word that something was wrong might not have come from a plane hitting the World Trade Center, but in a tweet from someone saying their plane had been hijacked.

Recreated scenes of passengers rushing the cockpit of United Airlines Flight 93 to confront hijackers before the plane crashed in Pennsylvania became a part of Sept. 11 lore. Today, someone might post pictures of the real thing on Instagram.

The world would surely see in graphic detail the horror of what was going on in the World Trade Center  the mangled bodies, uncontrollable fires and decisions about whether to jump or burn.

Television news had traditional gatekeepers making editorial decisions on Sept. 11  most prominently, the decision not to show pictures of people leaping or falling to their deaths. Networks eventually halted reruns of planes striking the towers, worried that traumatized children would think the same tragedy was happening again and again.

On social media, there are no such guardrails.

It would defy censorship, says David Friend, author of Watching the World Changes: The Stories Behind the Images of 9/11. As panic-inducing as it was and as tragic an experience it was historically in this country, had the current technology been around in 2001, I think you would have had something far more heart-wrenching.

___

The passage of time and David Westin's current job  he's now an anchor on Bloomberg Television  have given him perspective on what Peter Jennings did on Sept. 11, 2001. He believes Jennings was the best television news anchor ever and, as terrible as the day was, it was his crowning achievement.

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All three were prepared on that day, says Russ Mitchell, an anchor for WKYC-TV in Cleveland. Two decades ago, he was a stand-in for Rather if he needed help on Sept. 11. All of their careers had led up to that point.

There's one other thing the men appeared to have in common.

Freed Jennings said she doesn't believe her husband ever looked at tapes of his performance that day. That wasn't his way, she said. Brokaw said he hasn't, mostly because he's afraid he'd spot a mistake that would eat at him. Rather hasn't either, and his reason is simplest.

Living through the day once was enough.

___

David Bauder covers media for The Associated Press. Follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/dbauder
The auto industry has raced ahead on an electric wave with more manufacturers joining the race seemingly every day.

This photo provided by Jeff Helmkamp/LakeExpo shows Vision Marine Technologies' Vision Marine Bruce 22 boat with one of their E-Motion motors. The electric boat is capable of reaching speeds of 49 mph. (Jeff Helmkamp/LakeExpo via AP)

The auto industry has raced ahead on an electric wave with more manufacturers joining the race seemingly every day.

The boating industry has sputtered far behind, bogged down by low-horsepower engines and batteries that take up nearly half the boat.

That's in the process of changing.

Bolstered by new technology, the electric boats are now faster, have smaller batteries with longer ranges and are still zero emission.

"Electric boats used to be good for just cruising around," said Alex Mongeon, CEO of Montreal-based Vision Marine Technologies. "Now they have more power and last a long longer."

Vision Marine has helped lead the charge in more powerful electric boats. Other companies riding the electric motor wave include Swedish luxury boat builder X Shore and Arc, started by former SpaceX employees.

An avid boat racer and electrician by trade, Mongeon and Vision Marine began working in 2015 on developing a more powerful yet still efficient electric outboard motor.

They created the E-Motion 180, the first electric boat engine to use lithium batteries.

The electric outboard boasts 180 horsepower and can reach speeds of 60 mph, a first in electric boating. The E-motion 180, which costs about $5,000 more than a standard internal combustion engine, can be used with any boats that use a 180 HP outboard gas engine, typically between 18 to 26 feet.

The engines can fully charge overnight and all that's needed is a 220-volt outlet  a boating version of plug and play. Maintenance is far less than ICE engines because there are fewer moving parts.

The electric engines are noiseless, odorless and smokeless, so there's no more yelling at each other while onboard or leaving a layer of smoke in your wake.

Sales of the E-Motion 180 started in May with delivery expected later this year.

"It is so cool because nobody has gone to this comparable horsepower," said Randy Truesdale, chief operating officer of SBX Marine, a Florida-based custom boat builder and brokerage company. "You see some of the electric motors, you might get one that says its, you know, 50 to 70 horsepower equivalent, but nobodys done what were doing with the new 180."

Electric boating has been embraced by celebrities like Drake, Robert De Niro and Greta Thunberg, according to Vision Marine. Many tour operators have turned to electric boats, and so have cities for rental and water taxis.

Many waters have been designated marine protected areas  26% in the United States, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration  which ban motorized boats. Many allow electric boats because they are cleaner and emit no sound.

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"The only sound youll hear is the water hitting the hull and people enjoying themselves," Mongeon said.

And a lot more people have been enjoying themselves on the water during the pandemic.

According to National Marine Manufacturers Association, sales of powerboats were up 12% in 2020 with more than 310,000 new sales, the highest numbers since before the recession of 2008.

Boat rental companies have seen their numbers soar as well, including a 700% growth year-over-year growth for GetMyBoat, the world's largest boat rental company.

"In the rental cycle, it has become hugely popular because of the great activity for people who dont necessarily want to buy a boat," Truesdale said. "You can kind of relate to whats going on with COVID and allowing people to get outside. Boats are kind of like the perfect tool for social distancing."

The new era of electric boats, with the added power and limited environmental impact, are making it even more enjoyable.
LONDON (AP)  English educator Richard Sheriff watched this week as a group of energetic 11-year-olds entered their new secondary school for the first time  finding their classrooms, eating in the cafeteria, racing around the halls.

FILE - In this Sept. 2, 2021, file photo, children sit in a classroom at school in Strasbourg, eastern France. Children across Europe are going back to school, with hopes of a return to normality after 18 months of pandemic disruption and fears of a new surge in infections from the highly infectious delta variant of the coronavirus. (AP Photo/Jean-Francois Badias, File)

LONDON (AP)  English educator Richard Sheriff watched this week as a group of energetic 11-year-olds entered their new secondary school for the first time  finding their classrooms, eating in the cafeteria, racing around the halls.

The familiar rituals of a school sparking back to life were especially poignant after a year and a half of disruption driven by the coronavirus pandemic, said Sheriff, head of the Red Kite Learning Trust, a group of primary and secondary schools in the Yorkshire region. But in addition to the usual excitement, he had a new feeling this year: Trepidation.

The start of a new school year in many Northern Hemisphere nations comes as the highly infectious delta variant continues to drive a surge in coronavirus cases.

Still, many governments including Britains are determined to get children back into classrooms after 18 stop-start months of lockdowns, remote learning and abandoned exams. U.K. schools, have closed for three-month stretches twice since early 2020, and major year-end exams have been canceled two years running, throwing university admissions into chaos.

FILE - In this Sept. 1, 2021, file photo, children wearing face masks to prevent the spread of coronavirus walk in the corridor as they return to primary school in the village of Belegis, west of Belgrade, Serbia. In the Balkan nations that are among Europes poorest, meanwhile, low vaccination rates and surging outbreaks have made it difficult to get kids back to class after a year and a half. (AP Photo/Darko Vojinovic, File)

While most European countries are retaining some restrictions for schools, British Prime Minister Boris Johnsons Conservative government is pushing this year for something approximating pre-pandemic normality. It has removed social distancing and mask-wearing orders and no longer requires pupils to be grouped into bubbles to limit the spread of the virus.

Instead, the government says students should be tested regularly, and schools will be given guidance on improving ventilation.

Politicians and the group of scientists that advises the government have acknowledged its a gamble. The Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies said in August that it is highly likely that exponential increases will be seen in school-attending age groups after schools open.

A separate independent group of scientists that is often critical of the British governments pandemic response went further, calling the plan reckless.

But Education Secretary Gavin Williamson said testing would help root out cases, and defended the government's strategy as striking a sensible balance.

FILE - In this Sept. 2, 2021, file photo, French President Emmanuel Macron speaks with children during a visit at Bouge primary school in Malpasse district of Marseille, southern France. In France face coverings must be worn by pupils 6 and up, and whole primary school classes will be sent home if one child tests positive. (AP Photo/Daniel Cole, Pool, File)

Britain, which lifted almost all pandemic restrictions on business and socializing in July, has among the highest coronavirus rates in Europe, with upwards of 30,000 new confirmed infections each day. Hospitalizations and deaths remain far lower than during previous surges, thanks to an inoculation campaign that has seen nearly 80% of people over 16 fully vaccinated. But Britain is still averaging about 100 coronavirus deaths every day.

Unlike the U.K., Italy and Spain are maintaining social distancing and masks for students and staff. Italy also requires teachers to show proof of vaccination or a recent negative coronavirus test, as do Turkey and Greece.

In France, where students headed back to school Thursday, face coverings must be worn by pupils 6 and up, and whole primary school classes will be sent home if one child tests positive.

In the Balkan nations that are among Europes poorest, meanwhile, low vaccination rates and surging outbreaks have made it difficult to get kids back to class after a year and a half.

In Kosovo, where the weekly average of new cases rose more than tenfold between July and August, the start of the school year has been delayed by two weeks until Sept. 13. Neighboring Albania also postponed school, and the government has ordered mandatory vaccinations for teachers. Only a third of Albanias population, and less than 20% of people in Kosovo, have been fully vaccinated.

FILE - In this Aug. 31, 2021, file photo, girls walk in a deserted school yard, in Kosovo's capital Pristina. In Kosovo, where the weekly average of new cases rose more than tenfold between July and August, the start of the school year has been delayed by two weeks until Sept. 13. (AP Photo/Visar Kryeziu, File)

Even in countries with high inoculation rates, warning bells are sounding in areas where schools have already returned. Scotland has seen cases soar to the highest level yet in the pandemic since schools reopened in mid-August. Israel, where school resumed Wednesday, is restricting students in areas with the highest infection rates to online learning for now.

In Germanys North Rhine-Westphalia, 30,000 students and almost 300 teachers in the state of 18 million are in quarantine, two weeks after school started. Infection rates in young people between 5 and 19 are by far the highest of any age group.

The United States may give hints of what lies ahead. American students returned to classrooms over the last month in many places just as the delta variant started to hammer the country, triggering dozens of outbreaks in schools. In some states, children now make up the largest proportion of new COVID-19 infections.

Many schools have shut down entirely or reverted to online learning because so many children and staff got sick or had close contact with those infected. In the state of Georgia, many school superintendents said they experienced more cases and quarantines in the first few weeks of class than during all of last year.

The start of school year has also led to fierce battles between parents and administrators over mask requirements that have devolved into violence at times.

Pupils at Covid test station as they entered their new secondary school for the first time at Wales High school, Sheffield, England, Friday, Sept. 3, 2021. Fewer measures are in place in schools than during last term, with bubbles and masks no longer in use in England and Wales, while Northern Ireland has also scrapped social distancing requirements. (AP Photo/Rui Vieira)

European countries appear less polarized, but tensions around masks and vaccines are rippling in countries including Poland, where school leaders are bracing for pushback from parents.

I cannot imagine a 7-year-old wearing a mask anywhere at school, even for five minutes, said Alina Nowak, the mother of a student at a primary school in southern Warsaw. They are stressed out enough as it is, returning after the lockdown.

Teachers unions in several countries have opposed mandatory vaccinations for school staff. In Italy, protests against the governments green pass system of vaccine passports have been marred by violence, including an attack in which a reporter for the national daily La Repubblica was punched repeatedly in the face.

Many countries with high vaccine rates are banking on immunization to serve as a bulwark between infection and illness  especially in Britain since there are few other restrictions. Most U.K. teachers have been vaccinated, though its not mandatory. Sheriff says only two of his schools 1,400 staff have declined to get the vaccine.

But most schoolchildren aren't vaccinated. Britain is currently offering shots to those age 16 and up, as well as children ages 12 to 15 considered at heightened risk from the virus. The U.K.'s immunization authority has not recommended shots for all children in that age group, but the government is considering whether to join the United States, Canada and many European nations in vaccinating everyone 12 and over. It said it would make a decision shortly.

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In the meantime, some schools are sticking to tougher measures than the government advised.

Pepe DiIasio is keeping masks in hallways and communal areas of Wales High School near Rotherham in northern England where he is the principal.

We felt wed start cautiously and keep masks rather than have to move back into that situation should there be a spike, he said.

My prediction is that well see more masks be worn in the next month. I mean, I hope not," he said. "But I think experience would tell us that they will.

___

Associated Press writers Monika Scislowska in Warsaw, Poland, Josh Hoffner in Phoenix and reporters around the world contributed to this report.
OTTAWA - Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau found himself the target of his political opponents over the timing of an election call during the fourth wave of COVID-19, as new modelling suggests the country is headed for a difficult fall.

Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau, left to right, Bloc Quebecois Leader Yves-Francois Blanchet, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, Conservative Leader Erin O'Toole and debate moderator Pierre Bruneau pose for a photo during the first French leaders' debate on Thursday, September 2, 2021 in Montreal. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Martin Chevalier - POOL

OTTAWA - Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau found himself the target of his political opponents over the timing of an election call during the fourth wave of COVID-19, as new modelling suggests the country is headed for a difficult fall.

Trudeau triggered the election three weeks ago and it wraps on Sept. 20.

Since then, daily case counts have ticked up. As of Thursday, the average daily number of new cases over the last week was almost 3,500, up from 2,900 a week ago, and just over 700 at the beginning of August.

The number of people in intensive care units has also gone up during that time, to 241 from 199, and hospitalizations too are up to 559 from 419  although the figures are far below the more than 1,200 people in intensive care and 4,500 hospitalized at the peak of the third wave over April and May.

The Public Health Agency of Canada on Friday warned Canada could see more than 15,000 new cases a day by October under current transmission rates with the ramp up running through election day in two weeks' time.

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh told reporters in Quebec City that the figures were a reminder of why it was problematic for Trudeau to pull the plug on his minority government and "call a selfish summer election."

"People are frustrated, people are upset. It's been a long pandemic and it's been a long and difficult time," Singh said after unveiling his party's promises to Quebecers.

"We can't now let down our guard and throw away all that sacrifice that was made. And so we need to make sure we're very careful and vigilant and prudent about how we move forward."

Singh, like Conservative Leader Erin O'Toole, said he is prepared to fight an election virtually if public health officials demand renewed restrictions, although didn't detail his party's contingency plan.

Speaking in Montreal, O'Toole pointed to a broadcast set the Conservatives created in a downtown Ottawa hotel as an avenue for him to make announcements and do call-in town halls with voters, which he has done at times since the campaign kicked off.

He also noted Trudeau's suggestion after Thursday night's French-language debate that another minority government could send voters to the polls in another 18 months.

"We should not be in a campaign. Only Mr. Trudeau wanted this campaign for his own personal interest," O'Toole said. "And last night, he threatened another election if he doesn't get his way with this one. Canadians deserve better than that."

Trudeau on Friday said he was merely remarking about the average lifespan of a minority government in Canada.

He sought to draw clear lines between him and his opponents, as polls suggest a narrowing race between the three front-runners, by calling the differences between the parties "stark."

Trudeau argued his party's plan would help the country through the pandemic, as well as fully vaccinated Canadians who he said "don't deserve to go back into lockdowns."

"I am not done fighting for Canadians. I am not done with the hard work Canadians expect for a better future for everyone," Trudeau said in Mississauga, Ont.

Green party Leader Annamie Paul said she's hearing from concerned voters about the health and safety of their families, including children heading back to school, many of whom are too young to be eligible for a vaccine.

Added into the mix are concerns about the way politics is conducted in this country and how partisanship seems to have overtaken good public policy, Paul said.

"They're dismayed that we have this election for that reason," she said after calling for a national database to track police use-of-force.

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"If there's one thing that people are hoping for, beyond the specific issues of concern, it's just that we will find more ways to get along with each other, to work in co-operation so that we can help people in a meaningful way."

The campaigns have over three weeks tried to largely hold events outdoors and observe public health restrictions. Canada's chief public health officer said campaigns needed to follow local rules.

"I expect everyone, and doesn't matter what we're gathering to do, you have to observe public health, local public health advice," Dr. Theresa Tam said during a virtual briefing with reporters.

"At the same time, more broadly speaking, I think right now is not the time to gather in huge numbers with people that are not within your household without taking significant layers of protection and knowing what you're heading into."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 3, 2021.

 With files from Mia Rabson
In 2017, Courtney Lynn Ottrix started blogging about things to do in Cleveland. Shed done some freelancing in the past, and the blog offered occasional opportunities for income.

In 2017, Courtney Lynn Ottrix started blogging about things to do in Cleveland. Shed done some freelancing in the past, and the blog offered occasional opportunities for income.

But two years later, when her full-time position was eliminated, Ottrix suddenly found herself self-employed.

I had started to see what could be of my business if I gave it my all, Ottrix says. And literally overnight, Courtney Covers Cleveland went from a blog to next level.

Whether youre pushed into it like Ottrix or have time to make a plan, following these steps can help you transition your business from a side hustle to self-employment.

1. SEPARATE YOUR BUSINESS AND PERSONAL FINANCES

Ottrix started her self-employment by working as an independent contractor. But as she began working with larger brands and bringing in more revenue, she chose a business structure, filed for an employer identification number and opened a business bank account.

Separating your business and personal finances is a key step on the way to formalizing your business, says Keith Hall, president and CEO of the National Association for the Self-Employed.

Start to visualize and treat the business like a business. Its separate from your personal stuff, Hall says, adding that you need to make an unwritten commitment to never mix the two.

Creating a business entity and filing for an EIN is necessary before you can apply for grants and loans or make wholesale purchases, adds Lewis Weil, founder of Austin, Texas-based financial planning company Money Positive.

2. START BOOKKEEPING

At a minimum, keep a spreadsheet listing your revenue and expenses so you can see if youre making money, Weil says.

Business owners grow to enjoy looking at their numbers, Weil says. Its really nice to be able to just push a button and be like, Ah, I made money this quarter.

As your business gets more complex, Weil recommends starting relationships with a bookkeeper and certified public accountant.

Ottrix recently began working with an accountant who uses accounting software, which has helped her develop a better understanding of her different income streams.

Everyone thinks they have to do everything by themselves, Ottrix says. No, you hire help. The most successful people build really, really good teams.

3. FORMALIZE YOUR BUSINESS PLAN

If youre already freelancing, you probably have a good sense of how much you can earn per item or per client, Hall says. But you may not have a formal business plan that translates those numbers into enough money to make a living.

If your family needs you to make $100,000  How many clients is that? How many engagements is that? How many rocking chairs is that? Hall says. That business plan is your map.

Weil recommends new business owners aim to pay themselves twice as much as they need for monthly obligations like rent or mortgage payments, food and utilities. On top of that, youll need enough revenue to cover business expenses and taxes. About 30% of your revenue after expenses should be set aside for quarterly tax payments, Weil says.

4. PREPARE YOUR PERSONAL FINANCES

Some entrepreneurs, like Ottrix, become self-employed out of necessity. But if you have time to plan for a transition, prepare your personal finances by building up your personal emergency fund and paying down high-interest debt, like credit cards. If you get health insurance from your employer, research the cost of COBRA or a health insurance marketplace plan.

If youre earning money from a side business, Weil recommends letting it pile up in your business bank account . He encourages saving enough to pay yourself for three to six months before relying solely on your business for your income.

Take care of the basics in a very conservative way so you can take the big risks, Weil says.

5. JUMP IN

The final step, Hall says, is to let go of the side of the pool  whether you climbed in by choice or were pushed in by circumstances  and start swimming.

Its easy to feel like youre in the deep end, especially when what once fit into evenings and weekends is now a necessity to generate income.

The reality is that every day as an entrepreneur is not glitter and gold, Ottrix says. Like, yes, I work for myself, but I do a lot of work.

In those instances, remember the self in self-employment. Measure success against your business plan  not your peers  and embrace the fact that youre in charge of your own destiny.

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I didnt wake up and say, I wanted to always start my own business, but here we are, Ottrix says. And I could never see myself going back to anything else.

_______________________________________

This article was provided to The Associated Press by the personal finance website NerdWallet. Rosalie Murphy is a writer at NerdWallet. Email: rmurphy@nerdwallet.com.

RELATED LINKS:

NerdWallet: Business Structure: How to Choose the Right One https://bit.ly/nerdwallet-business-structure

The National Association for the Self-Employed https://www.nase.org
CANBERRA, Australia (AP)  Britain is rushing 4 million Pfizer doses to Australia, where authorities are scrambling to bolster supplies of that COVID-19 vaccine and protect the population against a rapidly spreading outbreak of the delta variant.

Pfizer COVID-19 vaccinations are prepared at a medical center in Sydney on March 14, 2021. Australia will receive 4 million Pfizer doses from Britain in a swap deal that will double the quantity of that COVID-19 vaccine available to Australians Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Friday, Friday, Sept. 3, 2021. (Joel CarrettAAP Image viaAP)

CANBERRA, Australia (AP)  Britain is rushing 4 million Pfizer doses to Australia, where authorities are scrambling to bolster supplies of that COVID-19 vaccine and protect the population against a rapidly spreading outbreak of the delta variant.

The swap deal announced Friday follows Australian deals with Singapore and Poland to address a short-term Pfizer shortage.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the British shots would leave Britain on Saturday and double Australias Pfizer supplies in September.

Australia was keen to make more vaccine deals with other governments, Morrison said.

I said I would leave no stone unturned and I can tell you Ive been turning over some stones in recent times to ensure that we can progress the vaccination program as quickly as we possibly can, Morrison said.

Thanks Boris, I owe you a beer, he added, referring to his British counterpart Boris Johnson.

Australia has particularly low vaccination levels compared to other wealthy nations, with only 36% of Australians aged 16 and older fully vaccinated.

The Australian government has been criticized for failing to strike more vaccine deals with manufacturers. Australia had planned to manufacture most of the vaccine for its 26 million people, including 20 million adults.

But one home-grown vaccine was abandoned during development because it produced false positive results to HIV tests. Locally-produced AstraZeneca, which is the only alternative to Pfizer registered for use in Australia so far, proved unpopular with many due to changing medical advice on the risk of blood clots. Australia initially bought only 10 million Pfizer doses but has increased the order to 40 million shots this year.

The first of 10 million shots of the Moderna vaccine is expected to become available soon.

The need for vaccines comes as Australias most populous state, New South Wales, on Friday reported its deadliest day of the pandemic with 12 fatalities and a record 1,431 new infections. The state government predicted the daily death toll will peak next month if the pace of vaccination is maintained.

The state government plans to triple the number of intensive care unit beds and staff in October when the number of COVID-19 patients are expected to peak, New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian said.

She expects 70% of the population aged 16 and older in her state will be fully vaccinated by mid-October.

The outbreak that began in Sydney in June has spread to Melbourne, Australias second-most populous city and the capital of Victoria state.

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Victoria reported 208 new infections in the last 24 hours and a single death.

New South Wales and Victoria are in lockdown and see increased vaccinations as the only way to safely ease pandemic restrictions.

The Australia Capital Territory still hopes that its lockdown will stamp out delta. The rest of Australia remains virtually free of the virus.

Singapore delivered 500,000 Pfizer shots to Sydney on Thursday. Australia must repay Singapore and Britain with equivalent numbers of doses in December.

Australia bought 1 million Pfizer doses from Poland for an undisclosed price in August.

The Australian government hopes the states will end pandemic lockdowns once 80% of the population aged 16 and older was fully vaccinated.
WASHINGTON (AP)  Health experts and medical groups are pushing to stamp out the growing use of a decades-old parasite drug to treat COVID-19, warning that it can cause harmful side effects and that theres little evidence it helps.

FILE - This Friday Jan. 29, 2021 file photo shows the packaging and a container of veterinary ivermectin in Johannesburg, South Africa. Ivermectin is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to treat infections of roundworms and other tiny parasites in humans and some large animals. Health experts and medical groups are pushing to stamp out the growing use of the decades-old parasite drug to treat COVID-19, despite warnings that it can cause harmful side effects and theres little evidence it helps. (AP Photo/Denis Farrell)

WASHINGTON (AP)  Health experts and medical groups are pushing to stamp out the growing use of a decades-old parasite drug to treat COVID-19, warning that it can cause harmful side effects and that theres little evidence it helps.

With a fourth wave of infections, more Americans are turning to ivermectin, a cheap drug used to kill worms and other parasites in humans and animals.

Federal health officials have seen a surge in prescriptions this summer, accompanied by worrying increases in reported overdoses. The drug was even given to inmates at a jail in northwest Arkansas for COVID-19, despite federal warnings against that use. On Wednesday, podcaster Joe Rogan, who has been dismissive of the COVID-19 vaccine, announced he had tested positive for the virus and was taking the medication.

Ivermectin has been promoted by Republican lawmakers, conservative talk show hosts and some doctors, amplified via social media to millions of Americans who remain resistant to getting vaccinated. It has also been widely used in other countries, including India and Brazil.

This week, the top U.S. professional groups for doctors and pharmacists appealed for an immediate end to the drugs use outside of research.

We are urging physicians, pharmacists, and other prescribers  trusted healthcare professionals in their communities  to warn patients against the use of ivermectin outside of FDA-approved indications and guidance, said the American Medical Association and two pharmacist groups.

Large studies are now underway in the U.S. and overseas to determine if the drug has any effect on preventing or blunting COVID-19.

The latest plea follows similar warnings from federal and state regulators who are tracking side effects and hospital admissions tied to the drug.

Louisiana and Washington issued alerts after an uptick in calls to poison control centers. Some animal feed supply stores have run out of the drug because of people buying the veterinary form to try and treat COVID-19.

Theres just not any good evidence right now suggesting this is a good treatment for treating or preventing COVID-19, said Randy McDonough, a pharmacist in Iowa City, Iowa

Ivermectin is approved by the Food and Drug Administration to treat infections of roundworms and other tiny parasites in humans and animals like cows, horses and dogs. Tablets are used for internal parasites while ointments are used to treat head lice and other skin infections. The generic drug works by paralyzing the worms and killing their offspring.

The FDA has tried to debunk online claims that animal-strength versions of the drug can help fight COVID-19.

Taking large doses of this drug is dangerous and can cause serious harm, the FDA warned in a public advisory. The drug can cause nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, seizures, delirium and even death, said the agency.

Dr. David Boulware of the University of Minnesota says the drug's side effects are mild at two or even three times the usual human dose. But formulations for farm animals might contain 1,000 times what's safe for humans.

Its pretty easy to get into toxic levels, said Boulware, an infectious disease specialist. All these concentrated doses that are meant for a 2,000 pound horse can certainly get people sick or hospitalized for toxicity.

Boulware says he prescribes the drug to patients a few times a year in the U.S. and more routinely when working in countries where intestinal parasites are common. But he and other experts have been alarmed by the explosive growth in U.S. ivermectin prescribing.

By mid-August U.S. pharmacies were filling 88,000 weekly prescriptions for the medication, a 24-fold increase from pre-COVID levels, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Meanwhile, U.S. poison control centers have seen a five-fold increase in emergency calls related to the drug, with some incidents requiring hospitalization.

The CDC citedone case of a man who drank an injectable form of ivermectin intended for cattle. He suffered hallucinations, confusion, tremors and other side effects before being hospitalized for nine days.

The World Health Organization, the National Institutes of Health and other medical experts have also recommended against using it outside of carefully controlled patient studies. An NIH panel found insufficient evidence for or against the drug for COVID-19, calling for more large, well-designed trials.

The experts noted that early laboratory research showed ivermectin slowed the replication of coronavirus when grown in monkey cells. But such studies are not useful for gauging real-world effectiveness in humans. And they noted other research suggesting the drug would need to be given at levels 100 times the standard dose to have antiviral effects in humans.

The NIH is studying the drug in a large trial comparing a half-dozen established drugs to see if they have some effect against COVID-19.

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Experts say those interested in ivermectin should ask about enrolling in such studies.

By participating in a clinical trial youre not going to harm yourself and you're going to help society generate the knowledge we need to know if this works or doesnt work, said Boulware.

____

AP Writer Andrew DeMillo contributed to this story from Little Rock, Arkansas

____

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institutes Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
SACRAMENTO (AP)  California Gov. Gavin Newsom has made his leadership during the pandemic a centerpiece of his campaign to keep his job, warning in life-and-death terms that his Republican rivals in the recall election are anti-vaccine crusaders who would expose people to a new wave of COVID risks.

Conservative radio talk show host Larry Elder speaks to supporters during a campaign stop outside the Hall of Justice downtown Los Angeles, Thursday, Sept. 2, 2021. Elder is running to replace Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom in the Sept. 14 recall election. The recall was largely driven by frustration with Newsom's sweeping coronavirus orders that closed schools, businesses and in turn, cost millions of jobs. In a television ad this week, Newsom's campaign blasted his Republican rivals as anti-vaxers, However Elder, and other top GOP candidates Kevin Faulconer, Kevin Kiley and John Cox all say they have been vaccinated against the virus and none has flatly said the vaccines are dangerous. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

SACRAMENTO (AP)  California Gov. Gavin Newsom has made his leadership during the pandemic a centerpiece of his campaign to keep his job, warning in life-and-death terms that his Republican rivals in the recall election are anti-vaccine crusaders who would expose people to a new wave of COVID risks.

The recall election that culminates Sept. 14 was largely was driven by frustration with Newsom's sweeping coronavirus orders that closed schools and businesses and, in turn, cost millions of jobs. He is arguing his decisions saved thousands of lives and replacing him with a Republican could result in soaring case rates and deaths.

In a television ad this week, the first-term Democrat's campaign plastered his Republican rivals with the label anti-vax. Another ad calls the outcome of the recall vote a matter of life and death.

Newsom, however, is taking liberties with broad-brush strokes that distort his opponents' positions.

The top GOP candidates - Larry Elder, Kevin Faulconer, Kevin Kiley and John Cox - say theyve been vaccinated against the virus. All also have said people should get the shot if they wish but that government shouldnt force them. None has said the vaccines are dangerous, a stance typically associated with the term anti-vax.

I think people in high-risk categories, people who are older, ought to be vaccinated. But I certainly dont believe that the government should mandate that, Elder, the leading GOP candidate, told reporters this week.

Im not anti-vax, the 69-year-old talk radio host added. Ive been vaccinated because of my age, because of a blood condition I have, and my doctor strongly advised me to become vaccinated.

To him, Newsom is promoting a lie about his GOP rivals to alarm voters and distract attention from the states surging crime rate, widespread homelessness, struggling small businesses and housing crisis.

Elder and the other GOP candidates have at times shared misinformation about coronavirus and the vaccines, or offered a wink to the anti-vaccine movement.

In the first televised debate, Cox said people who contract the virus don't need the vaccine, a stance that goes against recommendations from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In a recent interview with CNN, Elder said young people" are unlikely to contract the disease and don't need to be vaccinated.

Newsom and many health experts are encouraging anyone age 12 and older to get the vaccine. While children are less likely to be hospitalized than adults, the delta variant has caused a surge in youth hospitalizations.

In the early days of the pandemic, Newsom imposed the nation's first statewide shutdown order. He says his bold actions saved lives. California has recorded the most virus deaths by far  nearly 66,000. However, the death rate is 33rd per capita.

This week, Newsom sought to capitalize on recent improvement during the latest COVID spike, saying California has among the lowest case rates  the fourth lowest in America today. It's not clear what measurement he was using  figures from Johns Hopkins show California ranks 31st in new cases per capita in the last two weeks.

Meantime, California's vaccination rate has reached a record high, with 80% of the eligible population having received at least one shot.

All four GOP candidates have said they would roll back existing state mandates on vaccinations, but that may not have a significant effect. Californias only strict vaccine mandate is for health care and long-term care workers. They must be fully vaccinated by Sept. 30 or face penalties. However, should Newsom lose the recall, a replacement won't be in office by then.

Newsom also ordered state workers and teachers to be vaccinated, but they can avoid the shot by submitting to weekly testing. The governor also mandated teachers and students wear masks but left it to local districts to enforce.

In the recall election, voters are being asked two questions: Should Newsom be recalled and who should replace him? If a majority want Newsom out, then the person among the 46 replacement candidates with the most votes becomes the next governor.

Republicans are trying to tap into a vein of public resentment over Newsom's aggressive actions to blunt the virus. They say he has overreached and the result has been devastating, especially for schoolchildren kept out of classrooms and businesses forced to close.

When it comes to vaccines, there are some distinctions in the four GOP candidates' approaches. While Faulconer and Cox recommend everyone get inoculated, Elder and Kiley say individuals should make up their own minds.

Elder, a lawyer, has a libertarian mindset and rails against government creep in peoples lives. If elected, he has said that any mask or vaccine mandates in place at that time will be suspended right away.

Among the orders Elder would strike down: Any rules that would require unvaccinated state workers to wear masks or be subject to weekly testing to hold their jobs. I think thats an assault on freedom, Elder said.

But he had no intention of intruding into the free market. If a private business wants to require people to wear masks and require people to have shots, thats a whole different thing, he said.

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Kiley, a state assemblyman, says he would eliminate the state of emergency Newsom imposed in March 2020, which would prohibit him from enacting sweeping statewide anti-virus mandates.

California is a national outlier as to mandates, and Newsom seems to have done them so he can do ads about his opponents like me reversing them, he said in a statement.

Asked if he would ban local governments or private businesses from enacting vaccine mandates, Kileys spokesman Tim Rosales said: He believes that ending the Governors state of emergency will put COVID protections in the hands of citizens.

Faulconer, a former two-term San Diego mayor, has been the staunchest advocate for vaccines among the Republican candidates. Hes said the No. 1 way that we can get over COVID-19 is to have everyone get the vaccine.

But he says education, not mandates, are the right approach. His spokesman John Burke said Faulconer considers a vax-or-test requirement a reasonable approach for workers. Faulconer also says he wouldnt ban local governments or private businesses from adopting their own mandates on vaccinations.

Cox, who lost the governors race to Newsom in 2018, has delivered an evolving position on vaccines. After first suggesting people who had the virus didn't need the vaccine, Cox in later debates encouraged all people to get vaccinated. Like his rivals, he does not support any state level mandates.
NEW ORLEANS (AP)  Power should be restored to almost all of New Orleans by Wednesday, 10 days after Hurricane Ida destroyed the city's electrical grid and left more than 1 million customers in Louisiana without power, utility officials said Friday.

Viana Chacol, 65, and her dog, Chanel, rest at a cooling shelter at the Treme Recreation Community Center in New Orleans, La., Thursday, Sept. 2, 2021. The facility features water, charging stations, bathrooms, food, and other basic services to help residents after Hurricane Ida. (Chris Granger/The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate via AP)

NEW ORLEANS (AP)  Power should be restored to almost all of New Orleans by Wednesday, 10 days after Hurricane Ida destroyed the city's electrical grid and left more than 1 million customers in Louisiana without power, utility officials said Friday.

Entergy, the company that provides electricity to the city, issued a statement asking for patience and acknowledging the heat and misery in Idas aftermath. More than 25,000 workers from 40 states are trying to fix 14,000 damaged poles, more than 2,200 broken transformers and more than 150 destroyed transmission structures.

Please know that thousands of employees and contractors are currently in the field working day and night to restore power. We will continue working until every community is restored. said Rod West, a group president for utility operations.

People wait to get gas at a Shell Station on Veterans Memorial Blvd. in Metairie, La., Thursday, Sept. 2, 2021. Stations are slowly starting to open days after Hurricane Ida. (Chris Granger/The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate via AP)

Customers with damage where power enters their home will need to fix it themselves, and there could be some smaller areas that take longer, the company said. The utility offered no promises for when the lights will come back on in the parishes east and south of New Orleans, which were battered for hours by winds of 100 mph (160 kph) or more.

In other developments, Louisiana health officials on Thursday announced an investigation into the deaths of four nursing home residents who were evacuated to a warehouse ahead of the severe weather.

The residents who died were among hundreds from seven nursing homes taken to the warehouse in Independence, where health officials received reports of people lying on mattresses on the floor, not being fed or changed and not being socially distanced to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, which is currently ravaging the state.

A coroner classified three of the deaths as storm-related.

A damaged car sits beside floodwaters in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida, Wednesday, Sept. 1, 2021, in Jean Lafitte, La. (AP Photo/John Locher)

When a large team of state health inspectors showed up on Tuesday to investigate the warehouse, the owner of the nursing homes demanded that they leave immediately, Louisiana Department of Health spokesperson Aly Neel said.

Neel identified the owner as Bob Dean. Dean did not immediately respond Thursday to a telephone message left by The Associated Press at a number listed for him.

Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards promised a full investigation and "aggressive legal action if warranted.

Meanwhile, President Joe Biden was scheduled to visit Louisiana on Friday to survey the damage after promising full federal support to Gulf Coast states and the Northeast, where Ida's remnants dumped record-breaking rain and killed at least 50 people from Virginia to Connecticut.

Emergency personnel evacuate people at a mass shelter Thursday, Sept. 2, 2021 in Independence, La. Multiple nursing home residents died after Hurricane Ida, but full details of their deaths are unknown because state health inspectors said Thursday that they were turned away from examining conditions at the facility to which they had been evacuated. (Chris Granger/The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate via AP)

At least 13 deaths were blamed on the storm in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, including the three nursing home residents. Several deaths in the aftermath of the storm were blamed on carbon monoxide poisoning, which can happen if generators are run improperly.

The most dangerous part of a hurricane is after the storm, said Entergy New Orleans CEO Deanna Rodriguez, who asked people to be careful around generators. Here its sadly happening again.

About 850,000 people in Louisiana, including much of New Orleans, remained without power, down from the peak of around 1.1 million five days ago as the storm arrived with top winds of 150 mph (230 kph). It is tied for the fifth-strongest hurricane ever to strike the mainland U.S.

Tens of thousands still have no drinking water in the midst of a sultry stretch of summer. Floodwaters still fill some communities, and lines for gas stretched for blocks in many places from New Orleans to Baton Rouge.

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Edwards said more than 220,000 people have already registered for assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and 22,000 have applied for a federal program to place tarps on damaged roofs. About 72,000 blue roofs  tarps to protect protect homes with damaged roofs  may be needed across Louisiana, federal officials said.

I know that people are anxious and tired, Edwards said Thursday. I know theyre hot. And the tempers can flare when theyre waiting in those long gas lines. Im asking people to be patient.

Some of New Orleans hospitals have had their regular power supply restored, said Dr. Jennifer Avegno, director of the New Orleans Health Department. A senior center has been converted to a place for residents to receive limited health care, she added at a Thursday briefing.

Declining numbers of coronavirus patients and restoration of power at additional sites helped the recovery at Louisianas largest hospital system. Ochsner Health CEO Warner Thomas said the system's COVID-19 patient count fell to 663 from 990 about a week ago, Thomas said. That coincides with the states overall declining case numbers.

___

Deslatte reported from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Associated Press writers Kevin McGill in New Orleans; Stacey Plaisance in Lafitte, Louisiana; Jeff Martin in Marietta, Georgia; Sudhin Thanawala in Atlanta; and Jeffrey Collins in Columbia, South Carolina, contributed to this report.
DAYTON, Ohio (AP)  Federal marshals arrested an Ohio man Thursday who was accused of running toward and yelling at an MSNBC journalist who was doing a live report by a Mississippi beach after Hurricane Ida.

DAYTON, Ohio (AP)  Federal marshals arrested an Ohio man Thursday who was accused of running toward and yelling at an MSNBC journalist who was doing a live report by a Mississippi beach after Hurricane Ida.

Benjamin Dagley, 54, of Wooster, Ohio, was sought by police in Gulfport, Mississippi, on suspicion of assault and by the sheriff's department in Ohio's Cuyahoga County for a probation violation, the U.S. Marshals Service said in a news release.

MSNBC journalist Shaquille Brewster was reporting Monday in Gulfport when live video showed a man pulling over in a pickup truck and running directly toward Brewster and yelling into the wind, You're going to report this accurately, right?

A local curfew was in place. Brewster and the camera operator turned away from the man, who kept yelling. As Brewster said he would end his report, the man could be seen on camera walking toward him, still yelling.

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Brewster is Black, and the man in the truck was white, leading to conversations on social media about the racist optics of the encounter.

Brewster said a short time later on Twitter: Appreciate the concern guys. The team and I are all good!

The Gulfport Police Department said it was seeking Dagley to charge him with two counts of simple assault, one count of disturbing the peace and one count of violating an emergency curfew.

The Marshals Service said officers found Dagleys truck Thursday in the parking lot of a Dayton shopping plaza and arrested him after he came out of a store. Dagley was booked into jail there after his arrest. Online jail records did not show whether he has an attorney to speak for him.

Dagley pleaded guilty in 2018 in Cuyahoga County to attempted felonious assault, inducing panic, and vandalism after he broke into an electroplating company in 2017 and drilled holes in tanks of dangerous chemicals, C leveland.com reported. That sent an employee to the hospital.

Dagley was sentenced to five years' probation and 30 days in jail; instructed to undergo anger management; and ordered to pay $15,370 in restitution and a $5,000 fine.
The day after Hurricane Ida struck Louisiana, Delaney Nolan spent hours biking around New Orleans, handing out money to people who needed to pay for supplies or for the hotel rooms where they'd taken shelter.

Mailboxes line a flooded street in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida, Wednesday, Sept. 1, 2021, in Lafitte, La. Following Hurricane Ida, mutual aid networks sprang into action to supplement the more established relief services from federal and local governments, and charities. (AP Photo/John Locher)

The day after Hurricane Ida struck Louisiana, Delaney Nolan spent hours biking around New Orleans, handing out money to people who needed to pay for supplies or for the hotel rooms where they'd taken shelter.

Once the cash ran out  banks were closed, and ATMs were empty or no longer running without electricity  Nolan Venmo'd people the money they needed. As an organizer for the mutual aid group Southern Solidarity in Louisiana, she and her team also handed out free meals from restaurants that were cooking up their food stockpiles before they spoiled.

Nolan is among the faces of philanthropy that are tending to the immediate personal losses inflicted by the hurricane. Mutual aid networks like Southern Solidarity spring into action to supplement the more established relief services from federal and local governments, as well as larger charities.

The networks, in which community members pool resources and distribute donations to care for one another, seek to avoid the traditional charity model of giver and receiver. They grew in popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic as communities across the country faced dire needs. And now they are mobilizing in the wake of other disasters like Hurricane Ida.

Mutual aid is the most effective help right now, Nolan said. It's built on communications with a lot of neighbors and existing relationships, from personally knowing what people need.

Established philanthropic groups are joining to support the mutual aid groups, too. Jasmine Araujo, the founder of Southern Solidarity, said that days after the hurricane hit, the organization GlobalGiving had called her and said there would be donations coming to her group quickly.

Most of our funds, though, come from individual donors, she said. We dont usually get a lot of grants from bigger groups right away.

GlobalGiving launched its Hurricane Ida Relief Fund over the weekend to speed distribution of funds for those in need, said Donna Callejon, who leads the group's disaster response effort.

The funds come in, and we mobilize quickly, said Callejon, adding that because GlobalGiving has worked in the area for years, it has a list of partners that have already been vetted to receive funds. We have experience working in Louisiana with a lot of historically disenfranchised groups.

Another Gulf is Possible, a collective of 11 organizers and artists based in Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida had stored up 30 kits of solar panels, batteries, lanterns, power banks, iPads and water filters in preparation for the storm. They are gearing up to distribute the items to community organizers in New Orleans and the predominantly Native American communities of Grand Bayou and Grand Bois. But reaching people in some areas has been difficult because of the power outages, said Bryan Parras, a member of the group.

People need everything, said Anne White Hat, a Louisiana resident who's part of the group, which has been collecting masks, googles, and gloves to protect communities from mold or lead during clean-up efforts.

Mutual aid efforts allow everyone, no matter their status, to contribute what they are able, said Tanya Gulliver-Garcia, a director at the Washington-based Center for Disaster Philanthropy. The pandemic showed us that even in a cash-dependent society, people and their stuff are still a valuable resource."

Most of the nation's 800 formal mutual aid groups formed during the pandemic, according to the group Mutual Aid Hub. Community fridges, for example, have sprung up in many cities since last year, allowing anyone to donate and take food.

Members of Mutual Aid Disaster Relief, another group, have been circulating an online form where people sign up to help remove trees, share meals, host spaces for donation collections, provide counseling and perform other services for those impacted by Ida. About 90 new people have signed up to contribute in the past few days, a regional coordinator estimates.

Help has also come from grassroots rescue groups. In the aftermath of Hurricane Ida, Paul Middendorf, a volunteer disaster responder from Houston, traveled across hard-hit LaPlace, driving home to home in a high-water vehicle in an effort to rescue Louisianans from chest-deep floodwater.

Most of those rescued were in shock, Middendorf said, with some stationing themselves in their attics, fearful of rising waters and with nowhere to go. Many sought help from CrowdSource Rescue, a Houston-based disaster response group that connects people seeking help with trained volunteers. Along with Middendorf, it has aided dozens of other volunteers do rescues or wellness checks during the disaster response.

By the time Middendorf arrived at the homes, most of the floodwaters had receded. But some residents still feared leaving their attics. A couple of the families, I literally coaxed down the attic as the waters receded, Middendorf said.

CrowdSource Rescue, which launched in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey in 2017, directs people seeking help to call 911 before contacting them. The group says it provides assistance when local officials are overwhelmed with requests. Matthew C. Marchetti, the group's executive director, says its average donation size is $60. So far, Marchetti says he's confirmed that the volunteers have rescued 364 people from floodwaters using boats and high-water vehicles.

Volunteers connected with CrowdSource had been fielding requests for help since Ida made landfall, but the fierce winds had initially made it impossible for them to respond. Middendorf, of Houston, rode out the storm at a parking lot in Baton Rouge, before heading 56 miles (90 km) southwest to LaPlace, where he found many trapped by floodwaters. Requests for help also came in for Lafitte, another town that suffered major flood damage.

Despite coordination efforts amongst different rescue groups, Marchetti says there were overlaps in responses. Similar concerned pleas for help had flooded into Cajun Navy Relief, a group of Louisiana volunteers who help with search and rescue after hurricanes and floods.

Owen Belknap, a student at Louisiana Tech University who leads one of the rescue teams, said his team managed to rescue one person in Laffitte. Belknap and his friends, also volunteers with Cajun Navy, began helping with disasters three years ago when a tornado swept through their hometown of Ruston, Louisiana. They joined the Cajun Navy last year as Hurricane Laura pummeled southwest Louisiana, killing 27 people.

Once a business major, Belknap transitioned to studying nursing as he grew more passionate about rescue efforts. With a few more days before the school year begins, he has time, he said, to help cut knocked-down trees and distribute supplies to the affected communities.

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Amid the devastation, institutional funders have also opened their pocketbooks. Among them, the family foundation of Arthur M. Blank, the co-founder of The Home Depot and owner of the Atlanta Falcons, has pledged $500,000 each to a community foundation in New Orleans and The American Red Cross, whose volunteers are on the ground working on recovery efforts. Verizons company foundation has said its donating $100,000 to the Baton Rouge-based Foundation for Louisiana to aid those impacted by Ida.

My inbox is really full right now with queries from the funder community asking where to really pitch in, said Regine Webster, the vice president of Center for Disaster Philanthropy.

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This version is edited to include more states where organizers for Another Gulf is Possible currently live and clarifies Nolan's title.

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The Associated Press receives support from the Lilly Endowment for coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits. The AP is solely responsible for all content. For all of APs philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.
A roundup of some of the most popular but completely untrue stories and visuals of the week. None of these are legit, even though they were shared widely on social media. The Associated Press checked them out. Here are the facts:

FILE - In this Friday, Aug. 27, 2021 file photo, President Joe Biden meets with Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington. On Friday, Sept. 2, 2021, The Associated Press reported on stories circulating online incorrectly asserting Biden slept during high-level talks with Bennett. But during a 14-minute video taken during the meeting, Biden does not fall asleep. He looks down at his lap several times, including when hes listening and reading from his notepad. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)

A roundup of some of the most popular but completely untrue stories and visuals of the week. None of these are legit, even though they were shared widely on social media. The Associated Press checked them out. Here are the facts:

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Helicopter videos show Taliban attempt to hang flag, not execution

CLAIM: Video of a man dangling from a helicopter in Kandahar, Afghanistan, shows the Taliban performing a public execution.

THE FACTS: Footage of a man suspended from a helicopter in Afghanistan sparked outrage online this week as social media users, politicians and news outlets alike falsely claimed it showed the Taliban killing someone in a public display. The Taliban are now hanging people from our left-behind helicopters and flying them around for all to see one Twitter user wrote Monday in a post shared nearly 6,000 times. This is on every single Biden voter. The video does appear to show the Taliban using a Black Hawk helicopter that was previously used by the Afghan military, according to the markings on the aircraft. However, it shows not a killing, but a Taliban fighter attempting to place a flag on a tall flagpole at the Kandahar governors office on Sunday, according to Saadullah Wolesmal and Farid Ahmad Yousuni, two residents of Kandahar who watched the scene as it played out. Wolesmal said the pole was a remnant of the Afghan government, and Afghanistans black, red and green flag was previously affixed to it. A Taliban fighter was suspended from a helicopter and tried to affix the Talibans white flag to the pole. He did not succeed, Wolesmal and Yousuni said. A close analysis of videos from the scene shows that the man dangling from the helicopter was hanging from a harness, not from his neck, and could be seen waving his arms. Footage from additional angles circulating on social media confirms the man was suspended near a flagpole that matches the poles at the Kandahar governors office.

 Associated Press writer Ali Swenson in Seattle contributed this report, with additional reporting from Associated Press writer Tameem Akhgar in Istanbul.

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Schools in Ohio suburb arent vaccinating kids without parental consent

CLAIM: Schools in the Dayton, Ohio, suburb of Kettering are vaccinating children for COVID-19 without notifying parents or requesting their consent.

FILE - In this Thursday, Aug. 26, 2021 file photo, a woman is injected with her second dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine at a Dallas County Health and Human Services vaccination site in Dallas. On Friday, Sept. 2, 2021, The Associated Press reported on stories circulating online incorrectly asserting there is currently no FDA-approved vial of COVID-19 vaccine available in the U.S. But after Pfizer submitted six months of follow up safety data, the FDA granted full approval for those 16 and older to use the vaccine, now marketed as Comirnaty. (AP Photo/LM Otero, File)

THE FACTS: The claim spread by Twitter users  including Ohio U.S. Senate candidate Josh Mandel  this week is bogus and first circulated before students had returned to classes in the district. "You guys, this is Dayton, Ohio, this is Kettering Schools, a female narrator says in a false, widely circulating TikTok video. Every parent needs to see this, you need to be aware, because your kids are not safe. The narrator shows a clip of an Aug. 11 livestream video from InfoWars, a right-wing website that has spread numerous COVID-19 conspiracy theories. The clip features part of an interview with a caller who claims his brothers daughter got vaccinated at school without her fathers knowledge or consent. The caller says his brother lives in Kettering, Ohio. The claim is unequivocally false, said Scott Inskeep, the Kettering City Schools superintendent. No one in our schools has or EVER would allow ANY minor student to be vaccinated in our schools without the expressed permission of the childs parent or legal guardian, Inskeep said in a statement. When we held our student vaccine clinics last spring, a parent or guardian had to accompany their minor child to the clinic or the vaccine was not administered. Furthermore, this radio program appears to have aired on August 11, the day before we had ANY students in school. The nearby district of Dayton Public Schools also issued a statement on social media denying claims that it had forced vaccinations on students. It specifically countered social media rumors that any students were taken out of class to be vaccinated on Aug. 13. This is false, the statement read. DPS is not currently in session so students are not yet in class, and at no point would the district force student vaccinations. COVID-19 vaccines are available for anyone 12 and older in Ohio. Children under 18 who are not emancipated are required to have parental consent for any vaccine, according to the Ohio Department of Health. Mandels campaign team did not respond to an emailed request for comment.

 Ali Swenson

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Post makes false claim about FDA approval for Pfizer's shot

CLAIM: There is currently no FDA-approved vial of COVID-19 vaccine available in the U.S.

THE FACTS: Following the U.S. Food and Drug Administrations full approval of Pfizers COVID-19 vaccine last week for those 16 and over, posts online are misrepresenting the announcement to falsely claim the vaccine still lacks formal approval. One Instagram post acknowledged the Comirnaty vaccine had received FDA approval, but made the false claim that the only available doses are Pfizer vials that are still just under emergency use authorization. In fact, Comirnaty is the brand name Pfizer is using to market its COVID-19 vaccine and there is no distinction between the two. In December, the FDA granted Pfizers vaccine emergency use authorization based on a study of 44,000 people 16 and older who were followed for two months. During public health emergencies, the FDA can issue emergency use authorizations for products that prevent, treat or diagnose a disease. After Pfizer submitted six months of follow up safety data, the FDA granted full approval for those 16 and older to use the vaccine, now marketed as Comirnaty. The formulation used in the FDA-approved Comirnaty vaccine is identical to the shot that previously received emergency use authorization. "Its the same vaccine, Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, vice dean for public health practice and community engagement at Johns Hopkins University and former FDA deputy commissioner, told the AP. There is only one vaccine. Sharfstein said since some people were waiting for the FDA to grant full approval, last weeks announcement should encourage more vaccinations. Pfizer was already using the Comirnaty name on its vaccine vials and packaging before the vaccine received full approval for people 16 and older on August 23. Pfizer announced in December that it was marketing the vaccine in the European Union under that brand name. A Pfizer news release at the time said the name Comirnaty, represents a combination of the terms COVID-19, mRNA, community, and immunity, to highlight the first authorization of a messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccine, as well as the joint global efforts that made this achievement possible with unprecedented rigor and efficiency  and with safety at the forefront  during this global pandemic. Pfizers COVID-19 vaccines remain under emergency use authorization for teenagers ages 12 through 15, and for immunocompromised individuals receiving a third dose, until Pfizer submits its application and safety data for those groups.

 Associated Press writer Beatrice Dupuy in New York contributed this report.

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Video of Pelosi supposedly caught on hot mic was manipulated

CLAIM: After President Joe Biden offered to answer questions during a virtual meeting, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was caught saying, We dont want him to talk.

FILE - In this Wednesday, March 3, 2021 file photo, President Joe Biden listens to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of Calif., during a virtual meeting with the House Democratic caucus in the South Court Auditorium of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, at the White House complex in Washington. On Friday, Sept. 2, 2021, The Associated Press reported on a manipulated video circulating online incorrectly asserting that after Biden offered to answer questions during the virtual meeting, Pelosi was caught saying, We dont want him to talk. The video clip that appears to show the awkward moment was actually manipulated and was first shared online with a label identifying it as satire. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)

THE FACTS: The video clip that appears to show the awkward moment was actually manipulated and was first shared online with a label identifying it as satire. The clip was taken from a video of a March 3 virtual session of the House Democratic Caucus Virtual Issues Conference, where Biden discussed his legislative priorities. Pelosi addressed Biden on a virtual screen. After concluding his remarks, Biden said: And Im happy to take questions if thats what you  Im supposed to do, Nance. Whatever you want me to do. In the manipulated video, a voice that sounds similar to Pelosis, can be heard saying, Am I on? No, we dont want him to talk. The voice was added to the video. In the actual video, Pelosi did not respond and the screen that showed her cut to a photo of Biden. The original video ends shortly after that. A comedian and voice actor who performs under the name Michael Clive created the altered video as political satire. But some social media users then shared his video without the satire label. Yes, thats me, imitating Nancy Pelosi but that Twitter version has been edited, Clive, who also uses the name Michael Kaminski, told The Associated Press in an email. The original is labeled satire at the end. In March, social media users shared a clip from the same event falsely claiming that the feed was cut off so Biden couldnt answer questions. The video feed that was uploaded online does end after Biden's introductory remarks, but that is because the event was closed to the press during the question and answer period. Biden did take questions, including one about systemic racism and the child tax credit, the AP reported.

 Associated Press writer Arijeta Lajka in New York contributed this report.

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Shell oil platform did not break loose during Hurricane Ida

CLAIM: The Shell-operated deep water oil platform known as the Mars/Olympus platform has broken loose following Hurricane Ida and is now free within the Gulf of Mexico.

THE FACTS: A Facebook account dedicated to sharing weather updates from members of the public, Mississippi Weather Network, erroneously posted on Aug. 29 that the platform had broken loose during the storm but then retracted the post later that day when the information could not be verified. An update on the Facebook page notified readers that page administrators had taken the post down until further information can be verified by the oil company(ies) in question or U.S. government officials. The update reads: We may not always get it right, but we never purposefully get it wrong to mislead anyone." Though the inaccurate post about the storm damage had been taken down, social media users continued sharing screenshots of it. The U.S. Coast Guard conducted a flyover on Aug. 29 that revealed no oil platforms had broken loose, according to an agency statement. Shell also performed its own flyover the next day and confirmed that its Mars, Olympus and Ursa platforms were all intact and on location. About 300 offshore platforms were evacuated ahead of Ida, leading to a pause of 80 percent of the gulfs oil and gas production, according to the U.S. Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement.

 Beatrice Dupuy

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Biden didnt fall asleep during meeting with Israeli Prime Minister

CLAIM: Image shows President Joe Biden sleeping during high-level talks with a foreign head of government.

THE FACTS: In the days following Biden's Aug. 27 meeting with Israeli Minister Naftali Bennett, the false claim appeared on social media despite news coverage showing Biden was awake and engaged. A widely shared post on Facebook shows an image of Biden at the meeting with his head down and his eyes appear to be closed. Under the screenshot, the image says, Watch: Joe Biden Caught (asterisk)Sleeping(asterisk) During High-Level Talks with Foreign Head of Government. But image is misleading and the description is false. During a 14-minute video taken during the meeting, Biden does not fall asleep. He looks down at his lap several times, including when hes listening and reading from his notepad. The image is captured in one of these moments. The two leaders met to discuss a range of topics, including COVID-19 and Irans nuclear capabilities. It was the first face-to-face meeting between the two men since Bennett was sworn-in as prime minister in June.

 Associated Press writer Terrence Fraser in New York contributed this report.

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Animals didnt escape zoo in NJ storm

CLAIM: Images show that a variety of wild animals were loose in South Orange, New Jersey, on Thursday after they escaped overnight from the Turtle Back Zoo amid Hurricane Ida flooding.

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THE FACTS: Lions, crocodiles, penguins and gorillas did not roam the streets of South Orange, New Jersey, despite a hoax that was circulating widely the morning after severe flash flooding in the area. Breaking: Reports of escaped animals circulate throughout South Orange, New Jersey after the TurtleBack Zoo (@TurtleBackZoo) is severely flooded, a Twitter account impersonating CNN wrote early Thursday morning. Local authorities advise all South Orange residents to stay home until the animals are returned back to their homes. The post, which was accompanied by images of animals seemingly wandering loose on city streets, spread to Instagram and Facebook later Thursday. But reverse-image searches prove that the images are old. A photo of a pack of lions wading into a street appeared in reports about Indias Gujarat region in 2019. A photo of penguins gathering on a dark, slick sidewalk hails from South Africa and has circulated online since 2013. A photo of a crocodile stalking toward cars is from coastal Australia in 2019. And an image of an ape-like creature standing in a street has appeared online since 2014, when it sparked both skepticism and bigfoot theories after it was shared in a Facebook group for residents of Anaheim Hills, California. The Turtle Back Zoo in West Orange, New Jersey, confirmed the reports were fake Thursday morning, writing on Twitter that zoo staff secured the animals indoors before the downpour. We appreciate everyones concern about our animals and staff during the storm, the tweet read. Staff stayed through the night to monitor. There was no loss of power and all of our animals and animal areas weathered the storm well and remain safe and secure within the facility.

 Ali Swenson

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As customary, there will be celebrations and somber reflections as American Jews observe the upcoming High Holy Days  their faiths most important period. There also will be deep disappointment, as rabbis once again cancel or limit in-person worship due to the persisting COVID-19 pandemic.

A class in Judaism is held under a tent set upon outside Temple Beth El, Monday, Aug. 30, 2021, in Augusta, Maine. The recent COVID-19 upsurge is disrupting plans for full-fledged in-person services. The ability to see people face to face is wonderful, whatever way they choose to come, Rabbi Erica Asch says. But theres a little bit of sadness that we cant all be together the way wed like. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)

As customary, there will be celebrations and somber reflections as American Jews observe the upcoming High Holy Days  their faiths most important period. There also will be deep disappointment, as rabbis once again cancel or limit in-person worship due to the persisting COVID-19 pandemic.

The chief culprit is the quick-spreading delta variant of the coronavirus, dashing widespread hopes that this years observances, unlike those of 2020, could once again fill synagogues with congregants worshipping side by side and exchanging hugs.

Im crushed emotionally that were not able to be in-person, said Rabbi Judith Siegal, whose Temple Judea in Coral Gables, Florida, will hold only virtual services for the holy days as the pandemics upsurge buffets South Florida.

For many rabbis, this is our favorite time of the year  were extroverts who love to be with people, Siegal said. We really miss being able to be together.

Instead, Siegal and her staff are filling the synagogues sanctuary with cardboard cutouts of congregation members, including children and pets.

At many synagogues, such as The Temple in Nashville, Tennessee, there will be a mix of in-person services, including indoor and outdoor options, and virtual offerings for people staying home. In many cases, plans keep changing with the approach of Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, which starts the evening of Sept. 6, followed by Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, on Sept. 15-16.

Theres an asterisk by everything, said The Temples senior rabbi, Mark Schiftan. Were not even sending out more than very tentative information about Yom Kippur because thats too far out.

Rabbi Erica Asch teaches a class under a tent set upon outside Temple Beth El, Monday, Aug. 30, 2021, in Augusta, Maine. The recent COVID-19 upsurge has prompted the synagogue to erected a tent outside the temple to accommodate worshippers during the upcoming services. The ability to see people face to face is wonderful, whatever way they choose to come, Asch says. But theres a little bit of sadness that we cant all be together the way wed like. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)

At Temple Beth El in Charlotte, North Carolina, Rabbi Asher Knight and his staff have planned meticulously for holiday services, requiring advance registration for congregants whether they want to participate in person or online.

Everyone attending in person must wear a mask, and vaccinations are mandatory for all those 12 and over.

Everything we do leads to the preservation of life, Knight said.

Another Temple Beth El, in Augusta, Maine, also will require masks inside the synagogue. But workers have erected a big tent in the yard for an outdoor service Sept. 7.

The ability to see people face to face is wonderful, whatever way they choose to come, Rabbi Erica Asch said. But theres a little bit of sadness that we cant all be together the way wed like.

At Valley Beth Shalom, a Conservative synagogue in Los Angeles serving about 10,000 people, no unvaccinated worshippers will be allowed on the campus during the holy days. That includes all children under 12 because they're ineligible for vaccinations, a decision Rabbi Noah Farkas called the saddest thing we did this year.

All of us were hoping this holiday season was going to be a do-over from 2020, Farkas said. After all the pain, all the distancing, I was hoping we could shake it off and everyone could come back and give each other hugs. Thats not going to happen."

Amy Asin, who directs the Union for Reform Judaisms Strengthening Congregations initiative, said many rabbis feel similar disappointment.

In this August 2021 photo provided by Steve Pearlman, Rabbi Noah Farkas and Cantor Phil Baron tape a musical rendition of Oseh Shalom for the Rosh Hoshanah service from the "pop up High Holiday TV Studio on the Valley Beth Shalom campus in Encino, Calif. All of us were hoping this holiday season was going to be a do-over from 2020, Farkas says. After all the pain, all the distancing, I was hoping we could shake it off, and everyone could come back and give each other hugs. Thats not going to happen." (Steve Pearlman via AP)

Theres been an incredible amount of resilience over the past 18 months, and now there are very serious levels of exhaustion, she said.

Another emotion  sorrow  pervades the 2,000-strong congregation at the Shul of Bar Harbour, an Orthodox synagogue in Surfside, Florida, the city where 98 people died when a condominium collapsed in June. Rabbi Sholom Lipskar estimates that 40% of those killed were Jewish, including perhaps a dozen or more who were active in the Shul community.

Theres no question that this tragedy, and its lingering pain and anguish, is part of the community at this point, Lipskar said. At same time, recognizing who we are as Jewish people, we have learned to live with the most extraordinary adversity."

God has blessed us, he added. We are here, we are alive, we have a purpose in life. Were going to look to a new year. Theres a very big sense of power and renewal.

Lipskars synagogue is one of about 1,100 across the U.S. affiliated with the Hasidic organization Chabad-Lubavitch. Chabad's media relations director, Rabbi Motti Seligson, said the synagogues will host in-person High Holy Days services, many of them outdoors, following guidelines from local medical authorities.

For those who choose to pray at home, Chabad is distributing a booklet containing Rosh Hashana prayers.

In some communities, pandemic worries are compounded by concerns over possible incidents of antisemitism during the High Holy Days, which overlap with the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

A Jewish volunteer group, Community Security Services, has been promoting free webinars for New York-area Jews aimed at increasing security awareness. The threat against Jews in NY has reached record levels," an online ad warned. "The hatred and violence is impacting all of us.

"Whats striking about the threats is that they come from the left and right of the ideological spectrum," said Evan Bernstein, national director of Community Security Services.

We have to be keenly aware of that and not think its only coming from one particular group," he said.

Security experts are concerned by white supremacists, pro-Palestinian activists and people embracing conspiracy theories blaming Jews for the pandemic, said Mitch Silber, who heads a regional security initiative on behalf of New York-based Jewish organizations.

The Jewish community in the U.S is facing what may be the most diverse sets of threats weve ever seen, Silber said.

With more services and events being held outdoors due to the pandemic, security experts say those might be more vulnerable to attacks and are offering advice on minimizing potential dangers.

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But for the Chabad Jewish Center of St. Charles County, in greater St. Louis, holding services and events such as study groups outdoors has been essential during its short time in existence, having been founded in 2019 shortly before the pandemic hit.

Weve never had services indoors for high holidays, Rabbi Chaim Landa said. Were going into the second year of this, but this is all we know thus far.

Last year 120 people participated in the centers Rosh Hashana observance in a park, and this year it's preparing for 200 people.

Were open for the high holidays, Landa said. Our calling is to be there at these important times.

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Associated Press religion coverage receives support from the Lilly Endowment through The Conversation U.S. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
VANDENBERG SPACE FORCE BASE, Calif. (AP)  A privately designed, unmanned rocket built to carry satellites was destroyed in an explosive fireball after suffering an anomaly" off the California coast during its first attempt at reaching Earth's orbit.

A rocket launched by Firefly Aerospace, the latest entrant in the New Space sector, is seen exploding minutes after lifting off from the central California coast on Thursday, Sept. 2, 2021. The Alpha rocket was "terminated" over the Pacific Ocean shortly after its 6:59 p.m. liftoff from Vandenberg Space Force Base, according to a base statement. (Len Wood/For The Santa Maria Times via AP)

VANDENBERG SPACE FORCE BASE, Calif. (AP)  A privately designed, unmanned rocket built to carry satellites was destroyed in an explosive fireball after suffering an anomaly" off the California coast during its first attempt at reaching Earth's orbit.

Firefly Aerospace's Alpha rocket was terminated" over the Pacific Ocean shortly after its 6:59 p.m. Thursday liftoff from Vandenberg Space Force Base, according to a base statement. Video from the San Luis Obispo Tribune showed the explosion.

Firefly said an anomaly occurred during the first-stage ascent that resulted in the loss of the vehicle about two minutes, 30 seconds into the flight. Vandenberg said a team of investigators will try to determine what caused the failure.

The rocket was carrying a payload called DREAM, or the Dedicated Research and Education Accelerator Mission. It consisted of items from schools and other institutions, including small satellites and several demonstration spacecraft.

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While we did not meet all of our mission objectives, we did achieve a number of them: successful first stage ignition, liftoff of the pad, progression to supersonic speed, and we obtained a substantial amount of flight data," Firefly said in a statement. The information will be applied to future missions.

A rocket launched by Firefly Aerospace, the latest entrant in the New Space sector, is seen exploding minutes after lifting off from the central California coast on Thursday, Sept. 2, 2021. The Alpha rocket was "terminated" over the Pacific Ocean shortly after its 6:59 p.m. liftoff from Vandenberg Space Force Base, according to a base statement. (AP Photo/Matt Hartman)

Austin, Texas-based Firefly is developing various launch and space vehicles, including a lunar lander. Its Alpha rocket was designed to target the growing market for launching small satellites into Earth orbit.

Standing 95 feet (26 meters) high, the two-stage Alpha is designed to carry up to 2,200 pounds (1,000 kilograms) of payload into low orbit. The company wants to be capable of launching Alphas twice a month. Launches would have a starting price of $15 million, according to Firefly.

Firefly will have to catch up with two Long Beach, California-based companies that are ahead in the small satellite launch sector.

Rocket Lab has put 105 satellites into orbit with multiple launches from a site in New Zealand and is developing another launch complex in the U.S.

Virgin Orbit has put 17 satellites into space with two successful flights of its air-launched LauncherOne rocket, which is released from beneath the wing of a modified Boeing 747.
WASHINGTON  The U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security says the government expects to admit more than 50,000 people into the country from the Afghanistan airlift.

FILE - In this Aug. 21, 2021, file photo, provided by the U.S. Marine Corps, U.S. Marines with Special Purpose Marine Air-Ground Task Force - Crisis Response - Central Command, provide assistance during an evacuation at Hamid Karzai International Airport, Kabul, Afghanistan. Many U.S. citizens and green card holders are still in the Afghan capital despite official promises that every American who wants to leave Afghanistan would be taken out. (Staff Sgt. Victor Mancilla/U.S. Marine Corps via AP, File)

WASHINGTON  The U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security says the government expects to admit more than 50,000 people into the country from the Afghanistan airlift.

Alejandro Mayorkas suggested Friday that figure could climb in what he called an unprecedented evacuation. Mayorkas told reporters during a news conference that the U.S. has brought more than 40,000 people into the country from Afghanistan since the fall of Kabul last month.

About a quarter of those who have come so far are U.S. citizens or permanent residents. The rest, he said, include people who have received the special immigrant visas for Afghans who worked for the U.S. or NATO as interpreters or in some other capacity. Also included in this group are people who have applied but not yet received the visa and those considered vulnerable under Taliban rule.

That last group includes women, children, and members of civil society, Mayorkas said.

The secretary, who came to the U.S. as a refugee from Cuba as a child with his family, spoke proudly of the evacuation effort and said the number of people admitted could exceed 50,000.

He said all those entering the U.S. are undergoing security screening and vetting in a number of transit points, where they are tested for COVID-19 and offered a vaccine.

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WASHINGTON  The Pentagon says Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin will visit Persian Gulf allies to thank them for their cooperation in the evacuations from Afghanistan.

Spokesman John Kirby said Austin will depart Sunday and visit Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

He said the Pentagon chief will reaffirm U.S. defense relationships in the region. He also will visit with U.S. service members.

Qatars permission for the United States to temporarily house Afghan evacuees at al-Udeid air base was a key to facilitating the Kabul airlift. It will be Austins first visit to the Gulf since President Joe Biden announced in April that he was ending U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan.

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DUBAI, United Arab Emirates - A Qatari jet carrying the Gulf countrys special envoy for counterterrorism and conflict resolution has arrived in Kabul.

A Qatari official with knowledge of Friday's visit said officials would discuss efforts at an inclusive government and the resumption of civilian commercial operations at the airport. The official addded that Qatar continues to work closely with nations whose embassies relocated to the Qatari capital of Doha from Kabul in past days. Those countries include the United States, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Japan part of an effort to provide safe corridors and freedom of movement for those still in Afghanistan.

No further details were provided.

Mutlaq bin Majed Al Qahtani, the Qatari envoy who landed in Kabul, said his nation remains an impartial mediator and has engaged with all sides. Qatar has hosted Taliban political leaders for years, as well as unsuccessful attempts at peace talks between the militant group and the U.S.-backed government before its collapse.

Al Qahtani said in a statement to The Associated Press that Qatar's "priority with the Taliban includes guaranteeing a peaceful transfer of power and ensuring an inclusive and effective government is formed to serve the Afghan people.

Women gather to demand their rights under the Taliban rule during a protest in Kabul, Afghanistan, Friday, Sept. 3, 2021. As the world watches intently for clues on how the Taliban will govern, their treatment of the media will be a key indicator, along with their policies toward women. When they ruled Afghanistan between 1996-2001, they enforced a harsh interpretation of Islam, barring girls and women from schools and public life, and brutally suppressing dissent. (AP Photo/Wali Sabawoon)

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PRISTINA, Kosovo --- Kosovos government says that the number of Afghan evacuees who had worked with NATO, and their families arriving in the country has reached 467.

The first group of 111 Afghans arrived in the country on Sunday.

Interior Minister Xhelal Svecla on Friday met with international organizations to discuss the current situation and needs on the temporary housing of the Afghan citizens in Kosovo.

Svecla said that NATO has assisted in their accommodation so far and called for assistance from the organizations despite their support for dignitary accommodation to make their stay easier in the country.

Kosovo has said it may temporarily shelter up to 2,000 Afghans while they process documentation on their final destination to the United States.

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COPENHAGEN, Denmark  Denmark's foreign minister says the country will not recognize any Taliban government.

Jeppe Kofod told Danish broadcaster DR on Friday that leaders there are concerned about ensuring that the progress we have made through two decades of efforts in Afghanistan can be sustained.

The most immediate priority, Kofod said, is ensuring that everyone on the country's evacuation list can leave Afghanistan in good order.

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KABUL, Afghanistan  A few dozen protesters have gathered outside the presidential palace in Kabul, urging the country's new Taliban leadership to uphold women's rights achieved under Western patronage and include women in the upcoming government.

At one gate on Friday, around a dozen women held up small printed pages urging for A heroic Cabinet with the presence of women. The protestors chanted slogans asserting human rights and saying they did not want to return to the past.

A document circulated by protesters demanded that Afghan women are granted full rights to education, social and political contributions in the country's future, and general freedoms including that of free speech.

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MORE ON AFGHANISTAN:

 US defends strike that Afghan family says killed innocents

 Qatar says its not clear when Kabul airport will reopen

 Those left in Afghanistan complain of broken US promises

 Afghans face hunger crisis, adding to Talibans challenge

 Biden defends departure from forever war, praises airlift

 UN chief urges countries to help Afghans in hour of need

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 Find more AP coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/afghanistan

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HERES WHAT ELSE IS HAPPENING:

WARSAW, Poland  A government official says that Poland will temporarily host some 500 Afghan evacuees who had worked for NATO in Afghanistan.

Michal Dworczyk said Friday that the Afghans will remain in Poland for up to three months before moving on to other countries. Depending on their choice, up to 50 persons will be able to settle in Poland. However, Poland has not been a popular destination in Europe for migrants.

Dworczyk, a top aide to Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, said on Radio RMF FM that the first group of some 250 persons would arrive Friday from the NATO air base in Ramstein, Germany.

Separately, Poland has evacuated some 1,300 people from Kabul, mostly Afghanis, who had worked with Polands military and diplomatic mission, and their families and said it is taking responsibility for them.

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KABUL, Afghanistan  The Taliban say Western Union will resume its operations in Afghanistan, opening a rare conduit for foreign funds to flow into the cash-strapped country.

The groups s cultural commission spokesman, Ahmadullah Muttaqi, announced the move Friday. The American financial services giant had halted operations in Afghanistan when the Taliban took power in the capital on Aug. 15.

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The opening will be especially welcomed by Afghans with foreign relatives abroad. Hundreds of people have been lining up daily outside Afghan banks to withdraw cash. Withdrawals have been limited to $200 per week and cash machines arent working. The overcrowding means that not everyone manages to obtain money on a given day.

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WASHINGTON  President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden visited injured U.S. troops at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Thursday night.

There are 15 Marines at the hospital in Bethesda, Maryland, just outside Washington, who were wounded in an Aug. 26 suicide bombing at the Kabul airport. The attack occurred as the U.S. government was arranging evacuations of Americans, Afghans and allies before the nearly two-decade war in Afghanistan officially ended Aug. 31.

Eleven Marines were also killed in the attack, as well as one Army solider and one Navy corpsman. Biden traveled to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware on Sunday to witness the return of their remains to U.S. soil in a solemn dignified transfer.

One of the wounded Marines was in critical condition. Three were in serious condition and 11 in stable condition.
WELLINGTON, New Zealand  New Zealand reported its first coronavirus death in more than six months on Saturday, while the number of new cases continued to trend downward.

Pfizer COVID-19 vaccinations are prepared at a medical center in Sydney on March 14, 2021. Australia will receive 4 million Pfizer doses from Britain in a swap deal that will double the quantity of that COVID-19 vaccine available to Australians Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Friday, Friday, Sept. 3, 2021. (Joel CarrettAAP Image viaAP)

WELLINGTON, New Zealand  New Zealand reported its first coronavirus death in more than six months on Saturday, while the number of new cases continued to trend downward.

Health authorities said the woman who died was in her 90s and had underlying health problems.

Authorities reported 20 new community cases, all in the largest city of Auckland.

A woman wearing a face mask walks by signs for the precaution against the coronavirus at a park in Seoul, South Korea, Thursday, Sept. 2, 2021. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)

New Zealand remains in lockdown as it tries to eliminate an outbreak of the delta variant that began last month.

New cases in the outbreak have steadily fallen from a peak of more than 80 each day. New Zealand has so far escaped the worst of the pandemic and has reported just 27 coronavirus deaths since it began.

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MORE ON THE PANDEMIC:

People weaning face masks cross Cheonggye stream in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, Sept. 1, 2021. South Korea on Wednesday reported more than 2,000 new coronavirus cases, approaching a daily record set last month just a day after officials cautiously expressed hope that infections may slow. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

 US booster plan faces complications, some may miss Sept. 20 start

 Parents of disabled kids sue over Iowa ban on mask mandates

 Idaho hospitals nearly buckling in relentless COVID-19 surge

 U.S. hospitals hit with nurse staffing crisis; some travel for more pay

FILE - In this Sept. 2, 2021, file photo, French President Emmanuel Macron speaks with children during a visit at Bouge primary school in Malpasse district of Marseille, southern France. In France face coverings must be worn by pupils 6 and up, and whole primary school classes will be sent home if one child tests positive. (AP Photo/Daniel Cole, Pool, File)

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 Find more AP coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic and https://apnews.com/hub/coronvirus-vaccine

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HERES WHAT ELSE IS HAPPENING:

A worker feeds macaques during a feeding time at Sangeh Monkey Forest in Sangeh, Bali Island, Indonesia, Wednesday, Sept. 1, 2021. Deprived of their preferred food source - the bananas, peanuts and other goodies brought in by the tourists now kept away by the coronavirus - hungry monkeys on the resort island of Bali have taken to raiding villagers' homes in the search for something tasty. (AP Photo/Firdia Lisnawati)

MADRID  Spain is tweaking its travel entry rules from next week to require vaccination certificates from U.S. tourists, adjusting to recent European Union advice on stricter rules due to growing anxiety over coronavirus contagion in the U.S.

The European Councils decision earlier this week to remove the U.S. from a safe list of countries for nonessential travel also came amid unanswered calls from European officials for reciprocity in travel rules. Despite the EUs move to open its borders to U.S. citizens in June, the U.S. didnt allow EU tourists in.

Spain, a major tourism destination, is among a handful of EU countries that has announced steps to adjust its entry rules to the Councils recommendation.

The country published Friday the new guidelines on its official gazette, also removing Israel, Kosovo, Lebanon, Montenegro and North Macedonia from the safe list.

FILE - In this Sept. 2, 2021, file photo, children sit in a classroom at school in Strasbourg, eastern France. Children across Europe are going back to school, with hopes of a return to normality after 18 months of pandemic disruption and fears of a new surge in infections from the highly infectious delta variant of the coronavirus. (AP Photo/Jean-Francois Badias, File)

Under the rules, U.S. tourists will no longer be admitted from Monday, Sept. 6, unless they can show proof of being fully vaccinated at least 14 days before their trip. Unvaccinated children under 12 traveling with vaccinated adults are also allowed in the country.

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SACRAMENTO, Calif -- Hospitals in the heart of Californias Central Valley are running out of beds in their intensive care units because of an influx of coronavirus patients.

State officials announced Friday that hospitals in the 12-county San Joaquin Valley region have had fewer than 10% of staffed adult ICU beds for three consecutive days.

North Korea's Kaepoong town is seen behind a North Korean military guard post, bottom, from the unification observatory in Paju in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, Sept. 3, 2021. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un ordered officials to wage a tougher epidemic prevention campaign in "our style" after he turned down some foreign COVID-19 vaccines offered via the U.N.-backed immunization program. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)

The news triggered special rules that require nearby hospitals to accept transfer patients.

If ICU capacity falls to zero, hospitals statewide must also accept transfer patients.

California is averaging 27.9 newly confirmed cases per 100,000 people, down from 33.1 last month. But hospitalizations have continued to increase, with 8,766 patients.

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People wait in front of La Boucherie on Vestergade in Copenhagen on the night between Thursday, Sept. 2 and Friday, Sept. 3, 2021. From Wednesday, nightclubs and bars could be open more or less as usual with a dance floor and without distance. This is the first time since the coronavirus pandemic hit Denmark. (Olafur Steinar Gestsson/Ritzau Scanpix via AP)

NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- As hospitalizations, deaths and COVID-19 case numbers continue to climb in Tennessee, health experts on Friday pleaded with the public to get vaccinated and continue to wear a mask.

In a letter distributed by the Tennessee Hospital Association, a group of chief officers and chief nursing officers stressed that the latest surge of the virus outbreak is taking a deep toll on the states frontline workers and wreaking havoc on families who have lost loved ones to the virus.

As of Friday, there were nearly 1,395 new cases per 100,000 people in Tennessee over the past two weeks, which ranks third in the country for new cases per capita. One in every 134 people in Tennessee tested positive in the past week, according to researchers from Johns Hopkins.

Meanwhile, 42.1% of the population is now fully vaccinated against the virus.

Kristen Connelly, R.N. of the Surgical intensive care unit (SICU) at St. Luke's Boise Medical Center in Boise, Idaho holds back tears as she talks about the pressure of dealing with the influx of patients to the hospital because of COVID-19 on Tuesday, Aug. 31, 2021. (AP Photo/Kyle Green)

Gov. Bill Lee told reporters earlier this week that the vaccine was the key tool to overcoming the outbreak. But he said he had no plans to change the states current pandemic mitigation strategy.

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IOWA CITY, Iowa  Parents of disabled students have filed a federal lawsuit seeking to strike down Iowas law banning schools from requiring masks, arguing it endangers their health and denies equal access to education.

The lawsuit is backed by the American Civil Liberties Union and disability rights organizations. Coronavirus cases and hospitalizations are climbing in Iowa to their highest levels since last winter.

FILE - In this April 13, 2021, file photo White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator Jeff Zients speaks during a press briefing at the White House in Washington. President Joe Bidens plans to start delivering booster shots by Sept. 20 for most Americans who received the COVID-19 vaccines are facing new complications that could delay the availability for those who received the Moderna vaccine. Dr. Janet Woodcock, the acting FDA commissioner, and CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky, briefed Zients and other officials about the expected Moderna delay on Thursday, Sept. 2, officials said. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, File)

Iowa is averaging about 1,200 confirmed cases per day in the last week, and roughly a quarter of those are among ages 17 and under. About 5% of Iowa patients hospitalized with confirmed COVID-19 infections on Wednesday were age 17 or below.

Gov. Kim Reynolds defended the law at a news conference, saying it lets parents choose whether their students should wear masks. She says those who feel unsafe in classrooms can enroll in online-only programs.

Unlike last fall, schools are barred by law from offering a hybrid schedule or temporarily moving to online-only classes.

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FILE - In this Aug. 14, 2020, file photo, an NHL logo is displayed as Washington Capitals players skate prior to NHL Eastern Conference Stanley Cup playoff hockey game against the New York Islanders in Toronto. The NHL plans to punish unvaccinated players more harshly if they test positive for the coronavirus as part of protocols for the upcoming season. Teams will be able to suspend unvaccinated players without pay if they cannot participate in hockey activities. Those who are fully vaccinated will have any COVID-19 positives treated as hockey injuries and still be paid. (Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press via AP)

CONCORD, N.H.  New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu is hospitalized with flu-like symptoms after testing negative three times for the coronavirus.

Governor Sununu is being evaluated by Portsmouth Hospital this morning as a precautionary measure to determine the cause of the flu-like symptoms he has been experiencing this week, Chief of Staff Jayne Millerick said in a statement.

On Wednesday, Sununu said he tested negative hours after his office said he wasnt feeling well, postponed an Executive Council meeting and began isolating. Sununu is vaccinated, receiving the Johnson & Johnson vaccine on April 10.

He took a trip to Kentucky on Monday to see how officials in that state are handling a surge in cases.

A class in Judaism is held under a tent set upon outside Temple Beth El, Monday, Aug. 30, 2021, in Augusta, Maine. The recent COVID-19 upsurge is disrupting plans for full-fledged in-person services. The ability to see people face to face is wonderful, whatever way they choose to come, Rabbi Erica Asch says. But theres a little bit of sadness that we cant all be together the way wed like. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)

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ATLANTA  A nurse staffing crisis is forcing many U.S. hospitals to pay top dollar to get reinforcements to handle the crush of COVID-19 patients this summer.

The problem, health leaders say, is twofold: Nurses are quitting or retiring, exhausted or demoralized by the crisis. Many are leaving for lucrative temporary jobs with traveling-nurse agencies that can pay $5,000 or more a week.

In Texas, more than 6,000 travel nurses have flooded the state to help through a state-supported program. But the same time 19 travel nurses started work at a hospital in the northern part of the state, 20 other nurses there gave notice theyd be leaving for a traveling contract, said Carrie Kroll, a vice president at the Texas Hospital Association.

FILE - In this May 7, 2020 file photo, workers leave the Tyson Foods pork processing plant in Logansport, Ind. Tyson Foods, on Friday, Sept. 3, 2021 is offering paid sick leave for the first time to its front-line workers, part of an agreement that secured union support for its mandate that all U.S. employees get vaccinated against the COVID-19 virus. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy, File)

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WASHINGTON  President Joe Bidens plan to start delivery of booster shots by Sept. 20 for most Americans who received COVID-19 vaccines is facing complications that could delay the availability for those who received the Moderna vaccine, administration officials said Friday.

Biden announced last month that his administration was preparing to administer boosters to provide more enduring protection against the coronavirus, pending approvals from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration. He recommended boosters eight months after the second shot.

However, those agencies are awaiting critical data before signing off on the third doses, with Modernas vaccine increasingly seen as unlikely to make the Sept. 20 date.

FILE - In this Aug. 24, 2021, file photo a tent is seen outside the emergency room at The Queen's Medical Center in Honolulu. Health care workers in Hawaii say a lack of government action is worsening an already crippling surge of coronavirus cases in the islands, and without effective policy changes the state's limited hospitals could face a grim crisis. (AP Photo/Caleb Jones, File)

According to one official, Moderna produced inadequate data for the FDA and CDC to approve the third dose of its vaccine. The FDA has requested additional data that is likely to delay those boosters into October. Pfizer is further along in the review process, with an FDA panel review on boosters on Sept. 17.

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MADISON, Wis.  Wisconsins $100 reward program for those receiving the COVID-19 vaccine will be extended two weeks until Sept. 19.

Democratic Gov. Tony Evers says extending the incentive will give an opportunity for more people to get vaccinated. The program began Aug. 20 and was originally scheduled to end Monday.

FILE  In this Aug. 24, 2021, file photo people sit on a Waikiki Beach in Honolulu. Hawaii was once seen as a beacon of safety during the pandemic because of stringent travel and quarantine restrictions and overall vaccine acceptance that made it one of the most inoculated states in the country. But the highly contagious delta variant exploited weaknesses and now the state is experiencing a record surge. (AP Photo/Caleb Jones, File)

Between Aug. 20 and Sept. 1, more than 65,000 people received their first dose. Evers launched the program amid a spike in cases across the state caused by the more infectious delta variant. The level of new cases and hospitalizations are at a level not seen since January.

On Aug. 22, the day before Evers announced the program, the seven-day average of vaccinations in Wisconsin was 8,360. That grew to 9,712 as of Wednesday. More than 3 million people are fully vaccinated in Wisconsin, about 52% of the total population. Among adults age 18 and over, more than 62% are fully vaccinated.

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NEW YORK  There will be celebrations and somber reflections as American Jews observe the upcoming High Holy Days. There also will be disappointment as rabbis once again cancel or limit in-person worship due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

FILE In this July 18, 2021 file photograph, New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu addresses racing fans at a NASCAR Cup Series auto race in Loudon, N.H. Sununu has been admitted to a hospital, Friday, Sept. 3, with flulike symptoms that have lasted for days and after having tested negative three times for COVID-19. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa, File)

The chief culprit is the quick-spreading delta variant of the coronavirus. Its surge has dashed widespread hopes that this years observances, unlike those of 2020, could once again fill synagogues with congregants worshipping side by side. One rabbi in Florida has decided to hold only virtual services for the holy days.

Other synagogues are offering a mix of in-person and virtual offerings. Temple Beth El, in Augusta, Maine, will require masks inside the synagogue. Workers also erected a big tent in the yard for an outdoor service Sept. 7.

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BOISE, Idaho  Intensive care beds are full of unvaccinated coronavirus patients at a hospital in Boise, Idaho, and doctors are bracing for the need to conserve scarce resources for the patients most likely to survive.

Macaques eat bananas during feeding time at Sangeh Monkey Forest in Sangeh, Bali Island, Indonesia, Wednesday, Sept. 1, 2021. Deprived of their preferred food source - the bananas, peanuts and other goodies brought in by the tourists now kept away by the coronavirus - hungry monkeys on the resort island of Bali have taken to raiding villagers homes in the search for something tasty. (AP Photo/Firdia Lisnawati)

At St. Lukes Boise Medical Center, the view in every direction is heartbreaking. In one room, a pregnant woman in her second trimester relies on an artificial breathing machine. Down the hall, a nurse cries as she recounts the waves of anger and grief that fill her days.

Idaho is among the nations lowest in vaccination rates, and experts warn new infections could number 30,000 a week by mid-September.

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ROME  Italy officials say theyd consider making COVID-19 vaccination mandatory, but for now theyre generally pleased at the publics turnout for shots.

FILE - In this Wednesday, Aug. 18, 2021 file photo, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis speaks at the opening of a monoclonal antibody site in Pembroke Pines, Fla. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has appealed a judges ruling that the governor exceeded his authority in ordering school boards not to impose strict mask requirements on students to combat the spread of the coronavirus. The governors lawyers took their case Thursday, Sept. 2, 2021 to the 1st District Court of Appeal in Tallahassee. (AP Photo/Marta Lavandier)

On Friday, 71% of those in Italy age 12 and older have been fully vaccinated. The government says its confident it will meet its target of having 80% of the eligible population vaccinated by the end of September.

Health Minister Roberto Speranza says the government wants this number to grow even more and is weighing whether to extend the Green Pass requirements to other situations. The pass indicates a person has at least one vaccine dose, recovered from COVID-19 in the last six months or tested negative for the illness in the last 48 hours.

Its needed to dine indoors, access gyms, attend concerts or travel on domestic flights or train, ferry or bus between Italys regions. School teachers and other personnel need a Green Pass to access school premises. Vaccination is required for health care workers.

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BRUSSELS  The European Union and drugmaker AstraZeneca say they reached a deal to end a legal battle over the slow deliveries of the companys COVID-19 vaccines.

The European Commission says AstraZeneca made a firm commitment to deliver a total of 300 million vaccine doses by March. The commission says it involves the pharmaceutical company providing 135 million doses by the end of this year plus another 65 million doses in the first quarter of 2022. Around 100 million have already been supplied.

The EU accused AstraZeneca of acting in bad faith by providing shots to other countries, notably former EU member Britain. It argued the company should have used its production sites in the U.K. to help fill the EUs order.

AstraZeneca says, along with its partners, it has supplied more than 1.1 billion doses of vaccine to more than 170 countries and approximately two-thirds have gone to lower-income countries.

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JOHANNESBURG  South Africas Health Minister Joe Phaahla says the government will let businesses decide whether to make vaccinations mandatory for employees and clients.

He says restaurants, bars, grocery stores and other businesses must set their own policies on deciding if patrons must be vaccinated. He says the government plans to encourage people to get inoculated, with incentives such as allowing soccer matches and music concerts for vaccinated people.

Currently, such public gatherings are not permitted under COVID-19 restrictions. More than 13 million South Africans have received at least one vaccine dose, including 5.7 million who are fully vaccinated.

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LONDON  Children across Europe are going back to school after 18 months of pandemic disruption.

But in many countries, there are concerns of a new surge in infections from the highly infectious delta variant of the coronavirus.

Unlike the U.K., Italy and Spain are maintaining social distancing and masks for students and staff. Italy also requires teachers to show proof of vaccination or a recent negative coronavirus test, along with Turkey and Greece.

In France, where students headed back to school Thursday, face masks must be worn by pupils 6 and up.

Britain, which lifted nearly all pandemic restrictions on business and socializing in July, has among the highest coronavirus rates in Europe, with upward of 30,000 new cases each day. Hospitalizations and deaths remain far lower than during previous surges, thanks to an inoculation campaign that has seen nearly 80% of people over 16 fully vaccinated.
A senator who chairs a committee set up to forge ties between the Canadian and Afghan parliaments has been receiving desperate pleas for help from Afghan politicians.

Taliban fighters buy Taliban flags in Kabul, Afghanistan, Monday, Aug. 30, 2021. A Senator who chairs Parliaments Canada-Afghan friendship committee has been receiving desperate pleas for help from Afghan Parliamentarians.THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP, Khwaja Tawfiq Sediqi

A senator who chairs a committee set up to forge ties between the Canadian and Afghan parliaments has been receiving desperate pleas for help from Afghan politicians.

Sen. Salma Ataullahjan says she has received daily appeals for help to escape the Taliban from Afghans she met on official parliamentary business.

One Afghan woman MP told the senator that her car has been confiscated and that she is in hiding while trying to find a way to leave the country.

Ataullahjan, who was brought up in Pakistan and is Pashtun  the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan  said she has been inundated with calls from Afghans, including journalists, fearing for their safety.

They include Afghan politicians she met as co-chair of the Canada-Afghanistan Parliamentary Friendship Group and as vice-president of Canadas Inter-Parliamentary Union, which fosters ties between parliaments.

The senator said she receives pleas each day from Afghans, including those who helped Canadian NGOs and are unable to get out.

She said one such woman was beaten up at the airport trying to flee with her children and is now in hiding.

On a daily basis I am getting cries for help, she said. This woman MP I met said I fear for my safety. We have nothing, even our cars, everything has been taken away.

Ataullahjan sits in the Conservative caucus and is the first person of Pakistani origin to be appointed to the Senate. She speaks Pashto, which is widely spoken in Afghanistan, and is the daughter of a Pakistani senator and granddaughter of Bacha Khan, who led an independence movement from British rule. As a child, she used to holiday in Kabul and lived near the Afghan border.

She held the last official meeting of the Canada-Afghanistan Parliamentary Friendship Group via Zoom on July 29. The meeting heard reports of targeted killings of religious scholars, women, members of the LGBTQ community, artists and journalists.

In an interview with The Canadian Press, the senator said she fears for Afghan women, including those who were in positions of power.

If you are a female you are in jeopardy. They (The Taliban) hate outspoken women, she said.

She said she is contacted every day by desperate Afghans via WhatsApp, phone, email and Zoom. But she said wifi is sporadic and it is becoming harder for them to stay in touch.

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The senator expressed frustration with the lack of response from Canadian authorities when she has requested help for Afghans in peril to leave the country.

When we have applied for people under threat, we havent heard anything, she said.

The Liberal government has been repeatedly criticized for not acting quickly enough to save Afghans with ties to Canada. A special immigration program for those who helped Canada with its military mission in Afghanistan has been plagued by bureaucratic and technical problems.

Ataullahjan instigated a Parliamentary report in 2010 which recommended that plans be set out to support women in Afghanistan after Canada's combat mission ended.

The report by the Senate Committee on Human Rights did not anticipate the country being retaken by the Taliban.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 3, 2021.
EDMONTON - Albertans want to talk about a lot more than coal when it comes to development in their beloved Rocky Mountains, says the head of the committee charged with collecting public opinion on the issue.

A conveyor belt transports coal at the Westmoreland Coal Company's Sheerness Mine near Hanna, Alta., Tuesday, Dec. 13, 2016. The head of the panel collecting public input of coal in the Rocky Mountains says Albertans have a lot to say on the issue. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh

EDMONTON - Albertans want to talk about a lot more than coal when it comes to development in their beloved Rocky Mountains, says the head of the committee charged with collecting public opinion on the issue.

"There was such a dam of public sentiment built up behind this issue, it's like opening a sluice gate," Ron Wallace, chairman of the province's coal policy committee, said in an interview.

His group has just wrapped months of meetings with industry, environmental groups, municipalities and individuals.

As the public comment period closes, he said the group has collected 605 emailed submissions and held 59 meetings. On its website, it has published 16 technical papers and 36 meeting submissions.

If there's one theme that has emerged, Wallace said, it's that people don't want a coal policy that only deals with the how and where of mining. They want a broad policy that balances economic, environmental and recreational needs over an entire landscape.

"While our terms of reference are clearly focused on a modernized coal policy, we are recognizing that any factors that are going into that modernization are going to have to take account of these broader issues," he said.

Coal development has been controversial in Alberta since spring 2020 when the United Conservative government suddenly revoked a policy that had protected the summits and foothills of the Rockies from open-pit coal mines since 1976. Within weeks, thousands of hectares were leased for coal exploration on those landscapes  the headwaters for most of the province's drinking water and one of its favourite travel destinations.

After an intense public outcry, Energy Minister Sonya Savage restored the protections, paused the sale of new leases and struck Wallace's committee to get advice on how to proceed.

Water concerns were prominent, Wallace said. Albertans were concerned about the amount of water the industry would need in an already water-challenged region as well as about selenium contamination, an element common in coal seams and toxic to fish.

"Water has become a major theme. The great majority of Albertans are concerned primarily about water."

Others wanted to ensure that the area's recreation potential isn't impaired, especially as Alberta's population continues to grow. Some were concerned about coal's impact on endangered animal and fish species.

Others wanted to express their concerns over how the province regulates and manages energy development. Wallace pointed to a survey conducted early in the committee's consultations that suggested 85 per cent of Albertans didn't trust the province's energy regulator.

"The briefs that have come in have expanded on and confirmed those early indications from the public about their concerns over everything from regulatory enforcement all the way through to application of regional plans," Wallace said.

Some submissions supported mining.

"Those people have a great deal at stake," said Wallace. "It's their jobs, it's their welfare, it's their economy."

But most have wider concerns, including 25 municipalities that signed a letter from the Town of High River that said "the inherent value of the eastern slopes only exists with the landscape remaining intact."

Wallace points out the original 1976 coal policy was developed in conjunction with an overall policy for the eastern slopes. A modern coal policy can do no less, he said.

"A modern coal policy is going to have to be structured to take these concerns into consideration."

Wallace praised the quality of the submissions the committee received. He said the committee's public registry has become a "farmers market" for much of the best and latest research on coal, coal markets and coal's environmental impacts.

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"This is a gold mine of advice for the government," he said.

He promised it will be faithfully reflected in the first volume of the committee's report. He said it will come out early this fall, with the final report due Nov. 15.

Wallace said the government will have to listen.

"People were searching for opportunities to engage. I don't see any way the government could ignore the message that's been brought forward here."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 3, 2021.

 Follow Bob Weber on Twitter at @row1960
EDMONTON - Premier Jason Kenney, two months after declaring victory over COVID-19, is offering $100 to Albertans who aren't vaccinated to try to curb nation-leading cases of the illness that have again pushed the province's hospitals to the brink.

Alberta Premier Jason Kenney takes his mask off at a news conference where the provincial government announced new restrictions because of the surging COVID-19 cases in the province, in Calgary on Friday, Sept. 3, 2021. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Todd Korol

EDMONTON - Premier Jason Kenney, two months after declaring victory over COVID-19, is offering $100 to Albertans who aren't vaccinated to try to curb nation-leading cases of the illness that have again pushed the province's hospitals to the brink.

Kenney said 70 per cent of eligible Albertans are fully vaccinated, and 78 per cent have had one shot, but immunization rates are stalling and the unvaccinated are swamping hospital beds.

He defended the $100 payout  to those over 18 who get their first or second vaccine doses  against accusations it's unfair to those who already are fully vaccinated.

"I wish we didn't have to do this, but this is not a time for moral judgments. This is a time to get people vaccinated," Kenney said Friday in Calgary.

He noted past incentives, including three $1-million lotteries, have not adequately moved the vaccination needle.

"We have left no stone unturned and yet we have the lowest vaccination rate in Canada," Kenney said.

"Im much more concerned about protecting our hospitals than I am about some abstract message that this ($100) sends."

The government is also bringing back a provincewide mask mandate for all indoor public spaces and workplaces, except in classrooms, where decisions are up to school boards.

Licensed bars, restaurants and pubs must stop alcohol sales by 10 p.m., and all businesses are being asked to rethink having staff return to work.

It's being recommended unvaccinated people limit close contacts to 10 people or less.

Alberta has been experienced an increase in cases averaging more than 1,000 a day for the past week  the highest in Canada.

The province reported Friday that there were 515 COVID-19 patients in hospital, 118 of them in intensive care. That's double the numbers from 11 days ago.

The fourth wave has been fuelled by the more contagious Delta variant. The result has been emergency room bed closures, patient transfers and cancelled elective surgeries.

Alberta Health Services announced another round of surgery cancellations Friday as intensive care units filled to 95 per cent of capacity.

"It is tight," said Dr. Verna Yiu, head of Alberta Health Services, the province's health-care provider.

Dr. Deena Hinshaw, chief medical officer of health, said: "It is clear we are at risk of exceeding our province's ICU capacity if we do not make changes."

Kenney's United Conservative government has declined to bring in a vaccine passport as is being done in Quebec, British Columbia, Ontario and Manitoba to encourage vaccination. In those provinces, proof is required to enter bars, restaurants and sports events.

The premier has said there are concerns those rules violate health privacy, but noted some businesses and professional sports teams in the province will require fans to show proof of vaccination.

The Opposition NDP said a vaccine passport is needed and could be downloaded online or on smartphones. Leader Rachel Notley said Kenney needs to act on it now rather than get left behind.

"The premier has failed  again. He has brought Alberta to a place of imminent danger to our health-care system," Notley said in Lethbridge, Alta.

"Jason Kenney is choosing to pay the angry mobs who are literally protesting outside our hospitals blocking ambulances, while cutting the wages of the nurses who are working inside of them."

Kenney's government is seeking to reduce the wages of nurses in the current round of collective bargaining.

The province has not brought in new rules since lifting all but a handful of health measures July 1. Municipalities, universities, schools boards, sports teams and businesses have introduced their own rules on masking, testing and vaccinations.

This is the third time in four waves of the pandemic that Kenneys government has been criticized for failing to act until numbers hit dangerous levels.

In May, doctors were briefed on how to triage patients as the third wave pushed hospitals to the breaking point before Kenney brought in renewed health restrictions.

Kenney declared victory over the virus on June 18 and announced almost all health restrictions would be lifted, the first province to do so. He cited the fact that 70 per cent of eligible Albertans had received at least one vaccine dose.

On Friday, the premier was asked if he regrets declaring COVID-19 was manageable.

We made a decision based on the evidence in front of us, said Kenney, who added that he relied on Hinshaw's advice.

Political scientist Duane Bratt said Kenney's $100 plan appears driven by an ideological reluctance to impose any health restrictions  a move that could result in more strife.

"I don't think its going to play out well," said Bratt of Mount Royal University in Calgary.

"Not only are you bribing the unvaccinated, who are the cause of the problem, you are punishing everybody else.

"We're already seeing a clash between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated in society. This is going to accentuate it even more."

The effects of the new health orders were immediate.

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Calgary-based musician Jesse Peters said he got vaccinated as soon as possible, but has now been told a number of his bookings have been cancelled due to the 10 p.m. alcohol cutoff.

"You don't want to hate people and you don't want to demonize people, but at the same time I think ... 'Could you please, for the love of God, just do this bare minimum thing so that we can feed our families and get back to work?'" said Peters.

In Edmonton, musician Mike Grier said: "To, again, be kind of pandering to the lowest common denominator is a little ridiculous, especially when we've seen in other jurisdictions that vaccine passports really drive vaccination rates.

"Alberta," he said, "is always choosing to do the most ridiculous thing."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 3, 2021.

 With files from Fakiha Baig in Edmonton
OTTAWA - Canada's chief electoral officer has announced the initial ceiling on parties' expenditures in the election campaign now in full swing.

Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau's campaign plane sits on the tarmac next with Conservative Leader Erin O'Toole's plane during the Canadian federal election campaign in Montreal, Que., on Friday, September 3, 2021. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette

OTTAWA - Canada's chief electoral officer has announced the initial ceiling on parties' expenditures in the election campaign now in full swing.

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The spending limits are based on the length of the voter list in each riding as well as the number of ridings where respective parties have endorsed a candidate.

Stephane Perrault says the Liberals and NDP  the only two federal parties to post a candidate in all 338 electoral districts  each face a spending cap of $30.03 million.

The Conservatives max out at $29.95 million, as they're down one candidate after turfing a Nova Scotia nominee who was accused of sexual misconduct.

Maxime Bernier's People's Party of Canada can spend no more than $27.87 million, the Green party $22.58 million after furnishing just 252 candidates, and the Bloc Quebecois $7.16 million, since it runs only in Quebec.

Elections Canada says the final limits on expenditures for parties and candidates will be available on Sept. 13  exactly one week before election day  after voters lists have been revised.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 3, 2021.
OTTAWA - Maj.-Gen. Dany Fortin's lawyers are fighting a federal attempt to quash their client's lawsuit over his removal as head of Canada's vaccine distribution campaign.

Maj.-Gen. Dany Fortin arrives to be processed at the Gatineau Police Station in Gatineau, Que., on Wednesday, Aug. 18, 2021. Maj.-Gen. Dany Fortin's lawyers are fighting a federal attempt to quash their client's lawsuit over his removal as head of Canada's vaccine distribution campaign. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang

OTTAWA - Maj.-Gen. Dany Fortin's lawyers are fighting a federal attempt to quash their client's lawsuit over his removal as head of Canada's vaccine distribution campaign.

In a newly filed Federal Court submission, they say the government's motion to toss out his case has no merit.

The Department of National Defence announced in a terse statement on May 14 that Fortin was stepping down from his position at the Public Health Agency of Canada, which he had held since November.

Military police referred his case to the Quebec prosecutor's office five days later.

Fortin's lawyers allege the decision to remove him was unreasonable, lacked procedural fairness and involved Liberal government interference in the military chain of command. They are asking the court to reinstate him in his old role or an equivalent position.

In arguments filed with the court Friday, Fortin's counsel say acting chief of the defence staff Wayne Eyre, recently promoted to general, was succinct in relaying the news to their client: Its a "fait accompli," he told Fortin.

The evidence points to the inescapable conclusion that the decision to remove Fortin was made by the ministers of health, national defence, the prime minister and the Privy Council clerk, the submission says.

However, under the military chain of command, the decision should have been made by Eyre alone, it contends.

The decision-makers prevented Eyre from doing so, which constituted "improper political interference in the military chain of command," the submission says.

"Regardless of who made the decision, it is objectively unreasonable and cannot stand."

Fortin was formally charged in Gatineau, Que., on Aug. 18 with one count of sexual assault dating back to 1988. He has denied any wrongdoing.

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Federal lawyers argue Fortin's application for judicial review is premature because the grievance process established under the National Defence Act and the Queens Regulations and Orders for the Canadian Forces provide an adequate alternative remedy.

Fortin's lawyers disagree.

"The grievance process is not an adequate alternative remedy in this case," they argue.

"The grievance process will be a meaningless exercise because the Canadian Armed Forces did not make the decision in question, cannot make a decision in relation to it, and cannot provide an effective remedy."

In addition, the grievance process will be time-consuming and slow because of systemic delays, the submission adds.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 3, 2021.
OTTAWA - Elections Canada says it still has a "significant need" for workers to staff polling stations across the country for the Sept. 20 federal election.

Voters enter the polling station at St. Luigi Catholic School during election day in Toronto on Monday, October 21, 2019. Elections Canada says it still has "significant need" for workers to staff polling stations across the country for the Sept. 20 federal election. THE CANADIAN PRESS/ Tijana Martin

OTTAWA - Elections Canada says it still has a "significant need" for workers to staff polling stations across the country for the Sept. 20 federal election.

The agency is hoping to hire about 232,000 poll workers, the same number it employed for advance polls and election day in 2019, but recruitment has so far fallen short.

Chief electoral officer Stephane Perrault has warned that recruitment for this federal election would likely be more difficult since some people who've traditionally helped out during elections may be more reluctant to do so in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

He's also warned that the pandemic would likely make it more difficult to find polling locations because traditional sites, such as schools, may refuse to open their facilities to voters.

As of Sept. 1, Elections Canada says its returning officers have secured about 3,600 locations for advance polls, which will operate Sept. 10-13. That's comparable to the number of advance polling locations available in 2019.

For election day, however, about 14,300 polling locations have been secured  roughly 1,100 fewer than were secured in 2019.

"As the chief electoral officer has indicated in the past, there are fewer facilities available for polling places in the current pandemic context and voters may have to travel a little longer than in the past to cast their ballot and may be asked to wait outside to respect physical distancing measures," Elections Canada spokesman Matthew McKenna said Thursday.

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He said extra voting desks will be added at each location to accommodate an increased number of voters. Returning officers have also attempted to find larger locations to accommodate health and safety measures, he added.

Elections Canada has also pared back the number of poll workers at each desk, to one from the usual two.

Even so, its recruitment efforts have so far fallen short. However, Elections Canada is not saying by how much, other than to say there remains "significant need" for poll workers.

"We encourage Canadians to get involved in the democratic process and come work the election," McKenna said.

Polls workers are paid anywhere from $17.72 per hour to $23.44 per hour, depending on their duties. They are paid the same rate for a one-day training session, as well as for work at advance and election day polls.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 2, 2021.
OTTAWA - Tens of thousands of Canadians living abroad, including those not travelling home because of the pandemic, have applied to vote remotely in the coming election.

A sample ballot box is seen ahead of the 2019 federal election at Elections Canada's offices in Gatineau, Que., Friday, Sept. 20, 2019. Tens of thousands of Canadians living abroad, including those not travelling because of the Covid pandemic, have applied to vote remotely in the coming election. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang

OTTAWA - Tens of thousands of Canadians living abroad, including those not travelling home because of the pandemic, have applied to vote remotely in the coming election.

Over 45,000 Canadians have already registered for postal ballots from abroad, as experts predict that record numbers of overseas residents will vote in the forthcoming election.

But embassies have warned that delays to postal systems due to COVID-19 could hamper expatriates' ability to vote in time for polling day.

A number of diplomatic posts are offering to courier ballots back to Ottawa in time for the election.

There are an estimated 2.8 million adult Canadians living abroad who are eligible to vote, if they can provide a previous address and proof of citizenship.

They must register to vote with Elections Canada and their ballots have to arrive in Ottawa by 6 p.m. on election day.

The Canadian Expat Association, which represents Canadians abroad, predicted there would be a slight uptick in the number of overseas Canadians voting during the COVID-19 pandemic compared to the last election when over 30,000 Canadians cast their votes from overseas.

The Consulate General in Hong Kong, where around 300,000 Canadians live, is among the diplomatic posts offering to deliver completed postal ballots to Ottawa by courier.

Diplomatic staff in Hong Kong have been proactively reaching out to Canadians to inform them how to register to vote, and about voting deadlines.

In New Zealand, the Canadian High Commission has warned Canadians wishing to vote about delays to the postal service due to COVID.

The High Commission warned that New Zealand post is experiencing longer delays than usual as a result of the pandemic. To get their ballot to Ottawa before the deadline on polling day, Canadians could mail it to the High Commission in advance which would pay for it to be sent to Canada.

It has also warned that to receive ballots, Canadians should ensure that you can safely access the address you provide to Elections Canada (where your ballot is being sent) during lockdown.

Canadians based abroad during the election can register to vote online in the riding they last lived in. They are sent ballots to return in prepaid envelopes to Ottawa.

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Overseas voters have been warned by Elections Canada they have until Sept. 14 to register for a ballot.

We encourage electors who are interested in voting to apply as soon as possible, a spokesman said. These ballots need to get back to Ottawa by 6 p.m. eastern time on election day.

Allan Nichols, CEO of the Canadian Expats Association, said he expected there to be "a slight uptick" in the number of overseas votes cast at this election from overseas.

"Of the 2.8 million Canadians overseas, it is a very tiny number who will exercise their right to vote," he said. "But having the right to vote is exceptionally important."

In the 2019 election, 34,144 Canadians voted from overseas, the highest number on record. It was the first poll which allowed all Canadians living abroad to participate, following a change to the law which extended the right to vote to all Canadians abroad, regardless of how long they had been outside the country.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 3, 2021.
OTTAWA - The question of what would happen to $6 billion in child-care funding promised to Quebec if the Liberal government loses power sparked a lively exchange during the first televised leaders' debate on Thursday.

Conservative Leader Erin O'Toole takes part in the first French leaders' debate on Thursday, September 2, 2021 in Montreal. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Martin Chevalier - POOL

OTTAWA - The question of what would happen to $6 billion in child-care funding promised to Quebec if the Liberal government loses power sparked a lively exchange during the first televised leaders' debate on Thursday.

The Liberals, Conservatives and New Democratic Party are all pitching competing child-care visions in this election campaign, with an eye to bringing down costs for families.

The issue is unique in Quebec compared to the rest of the country because for decades the province has offered a subsidized daycare system.

Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau has touted Quebec's model, which costs $8.50 a day for families able to get a spot, as an example the rest of Canada should follow. His government introduced a national daycare program in its April budget to cut fees down to an average of $10 a day within five years.

Quebec's system is not without its issues, however, as last month there were 50,000 names on a waiting list to secure a space. The province has experienced the recent closure of many family daycares and there are concerns there aren't enough people around to do the job.

Conservative Leader Erin O'Toole was pressed during the French-language debate hosted by TVA to specify the fate of the deal Trudeau announced alongside Quebec Premier Francois Legault before the election was called.

"The system here in Quebec is excellent and we will co-ordinate with Mr. Legault's government," O'Toole said. "But we also have another plan for Canadian families."

O'Toole's plan is to create a new refundable tax credit that could pay eligible families up to $6,000, which he says would be of particular help to low-income parents in Quebec.

Bloc Quebecois Leader Yves-Francois Blanchet pushed the Conservative leader on whether he would give Quebec its promised $6 billion, questioning what O'Toole meant when he said he would co-ordinate" with Legault.

"We'll have an approach of partnership and co-ordinate the effective system here in Quebec, OToole said, adding his approach would make sure all families benefit immediately.

Experts say while the Conservative tax credit could have some immediate impacts, it doesn't address the shortage of spaces.

As for Trudeau's national daycare plan, expert analysis suggests it wouldn't provide any savings to parents in Quebec whose children are already in the provincial system.

With the election at its midway point, Trudeau is leaning heavily on the Liberal child-care program and attacking the Conservatives for wishing to shred the eight deals Ottawa has signed with the provinces. It has also signed two deals with territories.

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The Liberal plan is to provide child care centres with direct subsidies. Its deals with provinces amount to around $12.6 billion to fund nearly 144,000 spaces.

Trudeau said giving Quebec $6 billion would create 37,000 child-care spaces.

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, whose party has long promised to nationalize child care, said he agrees with Trudeau's approach but that the Liberals shouldn't be rewarded for doing something they promised 30 years ago.

OToole also criticized Trudeau for six years of inaction on the file.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 2, 2021.

Note to readers: This is a corrected story. A previous version said the Liberal government introduced a national daycare program in its April budget that would reduce fees to $10 per day by the end of 2022.
OTTAWA  Weeks after he pulled the plug on his own minority government, Justin Trudeau predicted Thursday that Canadians could be back at the polls within 18 months if they dont elect a majority.

OTTAWA  Weeks after he pulled the plug on his own minority government, Justin Trudeau predicted Thursday that Canadians could be back at the polls within 18 months if they dont elect a majority.

During Thursday nights French debate in Montreal, the Liberal leader was the sole man on stage who said a minority government could fall within two years of the federal election on Sept. 20.

And for that, he blamed the Conservatives.

"The differences that we have with the Conservatives  on vaccines, on child care, on the environment  I think that we would maybe find ourselves in 18 months in another election if we had a minority government," Trudeau said.

The Liberal leader, who dissolved Parliament to hold a snap election on Aug. 15, also cast doubt on the prospect of a coalition after the election, stating Canada has no history of such arrangements.

Trudeau made the statement amid the first direct clash of political leaders in a formal debate that took place at the TVA television studios in downtown Montreal. The four men invited to take part  Green Leader Annamie Paul did not attend, as her party has no seats in Quebec  stood in a circle at safe pandemic distances before images of Canadas Parliament buildings. Over two hours, they sparred over health care, child care, climate change and their plans to recover from the pandemic.

And while Trudeau tried to needle Conservative Leader Erin OToole and Bloc Quebecois Leader Yves-Francois Blanchet for not supporting mandatory vaccines, other social issues the Liberals have tried to highlight during the campaign  such as access to abortions  were conspicuously absent from the televised debate.

It was not until the waning minutes of the engagement that the Liberal leader touched on guns, stating OToole would reverse the Trudeau governments ban on "military-style assault weapons."

The Conservative leader responded that he would work with police and local governments to reduce crime, and seemed to deny the fact that his platform states he would indeed scrap the Liberal governments ban on guns deemed to be "assault weapons."

Trudeau, too, was forced on the defensive. Right off the bat, his three opponents attacked him for calling a snap election, with Blanchet stating it was dangerous during a fourth wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, and OToole alleging it has distracted from crises such as the wildfires in British Columbia and the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban.

Jagmeet Singh, the NDP leader, also accused Trudeau of calling an election in a bid to win a majority government.

Trudeau fired back that it is "ridiculous" to suggest that, because a minority of people remain unvaccinated, Canadian democracy cant progress with an election.

"Our democracy is more robust than you think," Trudeau told OToole during a heated exchange in the early minutes of the debate.

On climate change, Blanchet pressed Trudeau on his governments decision to nationalize the Trans Mountain oil pipeline and spend billions to expand it. The Liberal leader pledged to use all profits from the project to finance a transition to green energy.

"Yes, we purchased a pipeline," said Trudeau, adding that it would bring more money to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and help workers in Western Canada.

"I understand that Canadian unity doesnt interest you," Trudeau quipped to Blanchet.

Trudeau then turned to accuse OToole of planning to turn Canada around by retreating to the countrys old emissions target.

Given the milieu and the language of the debate, much of the focus was trained on issues relevant to Quebec, with the Bloc leader criticizing his opponents for trying to centralize power over provincial responsibilities in Ottawa.

"Since when is there something that a Canadian can do that a Quebecer is incapable of doing?" Blanchet asked during a segment of the debate on health care.

OToole claimed his Conservatives would transfer funding "without conditions" and accused Trudeaus Liberals, who have promised national standards in long-term care, of "paternalism" towards the provinces.

Singh also defended his proposals in areas of provincial jurisdiction, which include ending for-profit long-term care, stating he cant stand back "with his arms crossed" after the pandemic killed people in institutions that fall under provincial jurisdiction.

During another discussion that showed the bitterness of the last Parliament spilled into the debate, Blanchet demanded that Singh apologize for calling a Bloc MP racist and for one of his MPs statements about racism in Quebec.

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In a particularly heated response, Singh firmly stated that "Quebec bashing" is unacceptable, but defended his accusation against the Quebec MP, which took place during a Commons vote on police violence, and said he only regrets that the episode became about him and not racialized people who have been killed in interactions with police.

With its 78 seats and distinct political culture, the province of Quebec is a key battleground in the federal campaign. All parties long to make gains there, and have tailored messages to try and speak to the francophone majority that has voted en masse for different parties in each election over the past decade.

In 2011, the province boosted the New Democrats to their best result ever in an "orange wave" under Jack Layton. In 2015, Trudeaus Liberals benefited from gains in the province. And in the last election, in 2019, the revitalization of support for the Bloc Quebecois, which climbed from 10 to 32 seats, was a major reason why Trudeaus Liberals lost their majority in Parliament.

At the start of the current campaign, the Liberals held 35 seats in Quebec and the Bloc held 32. The Conservatives, meanwhile, held 10 and the New Democrats were reduced to just one, in Montreal.

 with files from Tonda MacCharles

 Toronto Star
A pamphlet purportedly produced by the Manitoba Human Rights Commission  bearing with 18 reasons why someone wasnt going to get the COVID-19 vaccine  isnt worth the paper it is printed on

The Manitoba Human Rights Commission is warning the public that a pamphlet bearing the commission's logo is full of misinformation about vaccinations and the Human Rights Code. (Nathan Denette / Canadian Press files)

A pamphlet purportedly produced by the Manitoba Human Rights Commission  bearing with 18 reasons why someone wasnt going to get the COVID-19 vaccine  isnt worth the paper it is printed on

The MHRC said in a statement Friday it has learned someone created a fake leaflet, using the commissions logo, to spread misinformation about vaccinations and the Human Rights Code.

"The commission warns the public that these pamphlets are fake, have not been issued by us, and contain content regarding COVID-19 vaccines that is false," the statement says.

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"We ask that the public destroy any pamphlets in their possession and/or cease distribution of the pamphlets."

On one side of the paper, under the MHRCs logo, is a list of discrimination which violates the Human Rights Code. At the bottom are the phone numbers for contacting the MHRC, as well as an email address.

On the other side is false information printed under the headline "18 reasons I wont be getting a COVID vaccine," written by a person considered to be an anti-vaxxer on social media.

The MHRC says the public should rely on information about vaccines from either credible sources, including the provincial government or their doctor.

The commision has issued its own guideline on human rights and COVID-19 vaccine requirements, which people can review on its website. "The commission recognizes the critical role that COVID-19 vaccines play in protecting the health and well-being of our communities."
Critics charge the provinces meddling in Manitoba Hydro has kept more than 1,500 First Nations evacuees separated from home and sequestered in city hotels for weeks longer than necessary.

Critics charge the provinces meddling in Manitoba Hydro has kept more than 1,500 First Nations evacuees separated from home and sequestered in city hotels for weeks longer than necessary.

On Friday, the Manitoba NDP and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers accused the Tory government of failing to make getting community members home a priority.

Little Grand Rapids and Pauingassi First Nations were evacuated by July 20, due to wildfire smoke.

On July 21, fires damaged the first of an eventual 105 hydro poles, which cut off electricity to the fly-in communities. Power has still not been restored.

On Aug. 23, Hydro said restoration work would begin that day and last a further six to eight weeks.

However, NDP MLA Ian Bushie (Keewatinook), NDP Hydro critic Adrien Sala (St. James) and IBEW Local 2034 business manager Mike Espenell said the Crown corporation has the ability to complete the work in two weeks.

They accused the province of contracting the work to Valard Construction, a U.S.-owned company, to reduce costs at the expense of speed and efficiency.

"I think it comes down to, ultimately, Hydro trying to do things on the cheap and not being able to allocate the resources to an area thats critical," said Bushie, whose riding contains the two impacted First Nations.

The trio pointed to the October 2019 ice storm, which left thousands in southern Manitoba without power, as an example. Hydro reported 4,000 damaged poles and restored service within 15 days.

The dissonance between that event and the six to eight weeks quoted to the First Nations communities has evacuees fuming, Bushie said.

"Theyre frustrated  frustrated and angry  that this work takes too long," he said. "They have the mentality that if this was happening in the southeast or southwest corner of Manitoba, we wouldnt be having this discussion. They would have service set up immediately and it would be all hands on deck."

The energy utility understands the frustration, but its working as fast as it can, said Manitoba Hydro spokesman Bruce Owen.

"Given the lack of road access, much of the work replacing fire-damaged poles must be done by helicopter, and there will be times when the helicopter cannot fly safely because of weather conditions, such as lightning or low clouds," he said in an email.

"We are also working in challenging Canadian Shield terrain, where many of the replacement poles must be set in rock. This type of work requires specialized drilling equipment."

Crown Services Minister Jeff Wharton said his PC government has been communicating with Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs Grand Chief Arlen Dumas and Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak Grand Chief Garrison Settee about the progress.

He echoed the difficulties of working in more northern terrains and dismissed the comments from Bushie and Sala.

"For the NDP to equate this situation to the 2019 ice storm is disingenuous, and they know that," Wharton said in an email.

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The claims rang false for Espenell, who said his work has put him in contact with Manitoba Hydro for 26 years. IBEW 2034 represents 2,300 Hydro workers.

"I can say wholeheartedly that responding to something like this is very, very much in our wheelhouse," he said. "We could delay other projects and get this done... Theres no doubt in my mind. And two weeks, I think, is a pretty conservative estimate to restore that amount of infrastructure."

Espenell said he believes the situation will damage relationships between Hydro and First Nations.

Canadian Red Cross spokesman Jason Small said the relief organization is currently supporting 1,040 evacuees from Little Grand Rapids and 500 from Pauingassi.

Manitoba Hydro said, as of Thursday evening, 28 of impacted 105 poles had been replaced.

cody.sellar@freepress.mb.ca
Despite polls indicating support is now falling behind or statistically tied with the Conservatives, a local Liberal candidate said his party doesnt regret calling a snap federal election.

Despite polls indicating support is now falling behind or statistically tied with the Conservatives, a local Liberal candidate said his party doesnt regret calling a snap federal election.

"I think the prime minister has said very clearly: Canadians need to have their voices heard. All of us are at the doors and were certainly hearing the voices of the folks in our community. Its very positive Were not obsessed with poll results at all. Were obsessed with hearing from Canadians. We have no doubt that there will be a good result on (election night)," said Terry Duguid, the incumbent Liberal candidate for Winnipeg South.

A Leger poll released Tuesday found the Conservatives are leading the race with 34 per cent support among decided voters, followed by the Liberals at 30 per cent and NDP at 24 per cent.

An Ipsos survey released Wednesday found 32 per cent of decided voters would vote Conservative, 31 per cent would vote Liberal and 23 per cent would vote NDP.

Duguid noted there are still weeks left before the Sept. 20 election: "It is mid-campaign. Theres a long way to go."

The remarks followed a Thursday news conference held to detail a water protection pledge in the Liberal campaign platform, which Duguid stressed would help improve Lake Winnipeg.

If re-elected, the Liberals promise to: invest $1 billion over 10 years in an ongoing freshwater action plan to restore and protect lakes; invest in freshwater research; update the Canada Water Act to reflect climate change and Indigenous water rights; and establish a Canada Water Agency in 2022 to help cope with extreme floods and droughts linked to climate change.

"Our 2017 fresh water (action plan) was $70 million over five years for the Great Lakes and Lake Winnipeg basins, $25.7 million for Lake Winnipeg alone. Funding will now be $100 million a year for 10 years, with a multi-fold increase in funding for the Lake Winnipeg basin. Its good news for a lake that is one of the most stressed in North America and the world," said Duguid.

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The Liberal candidate said he expects Lake Winnipegs portion of the annual funding would grow "four or more times" higher, though exact amounts wouldnt be revealed until the next budget.

He said the Liberals would also support all three phases of the $1.854-billion north end sewage treatment plant upgrade in Winnipeg. So far, the city, province and feds have only worked out a deal to cover the cost of its first phase.

"Weve stepped up on phase 1, weve committed to stepping up on phase 2 and phase 3. Weve just got to get it done because Lake Winnipeg cant wait," said Duguid.

When completed, the final phase of that project would reduce the amount of algae-promoting nutrients that flow out of the sewage plant and wind up in Lake Winnipeg.

Joyanne.pursaga@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @joyanne_pursaga
Public-school classes will be cancelled on the last day of September so students and staff can observe Canadas inaugural National Day for Truth and Reconciliation and reflect on the ongoing legacy of residential schools.

Public-school classes will be cancelled on the last day of September so students and staff can observe Canadas inaugural National Day for Truth and Reconciliation and reflect on the ongoing legacy of residential schools.

The Education Department sent a letter to superintendents and independent school principals Friday to confirm schools will be closed Sept. 30, a date formerly recognized as Orange Shirt Day.

"Its only been in the last decade that things have come to light in terms of real action and true stories being highlighted," said Mary Courchene, a longtime educator and elder from Sagkeeng First Nation, who attended Fort Alexander Residential School.

"It was a secret for so long  over 150 years."

Three generations of children in Courchenes family were forcibly taken from their homes to go to a school set up to shame and dispossess Indigenous youth of their cultural identity. Her children also attended day school.

Public commemoration of the history of residential schools is "a vital component of the reconciliation process," the Truth and Reconciliation Commission wrote.

Call to action No. 80 in the TRCs final report asked the federal government to establish a statutory holiday to honour survivors, their families and communities.

Since 2017, Manitoba has formally acknowledged Orange Shirt Day at the end of September to recognize the harms caused by the residential school system and affirm a commitment to ensure all childrens lives are protected and valued. The colour is of significance because Phyllis Webstad, who is credited for creating the movement, was stripped of the orange shirt her grandmother bought her when she went to an assimilative school.

In the spring  as the country grappled with the tragic findings of hundreds of unmarked graves on residential school sites  the House of Commons unanimously passed legislation to recognize Sept. 30 as a national day of commemoration.

It was in late May that the remains of 215 children were found buried near a former residential school in Kamloops, B.C. The discovery prompted other Indigenous communities across the country to start their own searches to confirm what had long been suspected.

Indigenous Reconciliation Minister Alan Lagimodiere officially announced Friday that Manitoba would be recognizing the new day of observance.

In addition to school closures, non-essential government services and offices will be shuttered. Flags on all provincial government buildings will also be lowered to half-mast for the day.

Lagimodiere said Manitoba is supporting several Indigenous-led events throughout this month to provide the public with opportunities to listen to and learn from First Nations, Metis and Inuit stories.

In years past, Courchene, an elder-in-residence at Seven Oaks School Division, has visited schools to talk about her lived experience. She is currently planning her schedule for 2021-22.

"We won't be finished talking until all our truth is out," she said.

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Katherine Legrange, director of 60s Scoop Legacy of Canada, issued a statement Friday to encourage all Manitobans to spend Sept. 30 learning about residential schools, day schools and '60s Scoop policies.

Also Friday, Manitoba NDP Leader Wab Kinew gave thanks to all the survivors who advocated for the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation to be recognized as a provincial holiday. Kinew introduced a bill to recognize Orange Shirt Day in 2017.

He added, "Now its time for the PC government to implement all of the TRC calls to action so we can move forward together."

The commission's calls include requests to establish a mandate of age-appropriate curriculum on residential schools in K-12; fund teachers colleges to provide training on integrating Indigenous knowledge and create senior-level positions in government dedicated to Indigenous content in education.

maggie.macintosh@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @macintoshmaggie
MANITOBAS new health minister says she is taking doctors concerns seriously heading into the COVID-19 pandemics fourth wave.

MANITOBAS new health minister says she is taking doctors concerns seriously heading into the COVID-19 pandemics fourth wave.

A dozen local doctors sent a letter Wednesday night to Health Minister Audrey Gordon, putting forth five recommendations. They want Manitoba to legislate paid sick leave for those infected or quarantined, urgently evaluate and improve ventilation in school classrooms, make vaccines mandatory for first responders, increase contact tracing and testing, and consider supplying third-dose booster shots to the elderly, immunocompromised and to front-line health-care workers.

Gordon didnt make specific promises Thursday, when asked about the counsel, but said she would take a "whole of government" approach to addressing the message.

"Very serious concerns were raised, and I want the physicians that penned the letter to know that we have common goals in mind, which is to protect Manitobans and to protect the 230,000 children under 12 that have not been vaccinated... I take very seriously what they have written in the letter and well certainly be looking into each specific issue that they have raised," the minister said.

Police and firefighters are municipal employees, and the City of Winnipeg has not implemented a vaccine mandate for its employees and no commitment to do so has been announced. Gordon said she met with Mayor Brian Bowman and they share the goal of encouraging vaccinations.

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Many of the same doctors who co-signed the recent message have been writing letters of caution to the provincial government throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. In June, they urged officials to prepare for the back-to-school season to keep unvaccinated children safe. The recommendations have largely gone unheeded, but the doctors wrote theyre glad to see the return of the mask mandate and expansion of vaccine requirements to enter businesses.

"Our emergency rooms, hospital wards and intensive care units are now filled to capacity despite the relatively low numbers of COVID cases over the summer. This is a consequence of over a year of burnout and resignations of health workers, nursing shortages, inadequate and inequitably distributed resources, and delays in medical investigations, surgery and other therapies," the doctors warned in Wednesdays letter.

On Thursday, chief provincial public health officer Dr. Brent Roussin said officials are "acting prudently" considering where Manitobas case counts are now compared with other jurisdictions.

 with files from Maggie Macintosh

katie.may@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @thatkatiemay
Carrie McKinnon will reach a milestone Sunday, but not one to celebrate.

Carrie McKinnon will reach a milestone Sunday, but not one to celebrate.

McKinnon, who needs a knee replacement, will mark her 700th day of being on a wait list for surgery. She has lots of company.

Some 30,000 Manitobans have had surgeries  including cardiac, knee and hip or cataracts  pushed back because of months-long COVID-related shutdowns for non-urgent and elective procedures.

"It just feels inhumane," said McKinnon, 52, a former competitive volleyball player.

"I can still get by, but Im getting pretty close to a cane. And I know Im not the worst."

JOHN WOODS / FREE PRESS FILES Carrie McKinnon, who needs a knee replacement, will mark her 700th day of being on a wait list for surgery. She has lots of company.

Statistics provided Wednesday by Shared Health, in response to a request by the Free Press, show some 30,000 surgeries, representing more than 5,000 surgical slates, have been put on hold since March 2020.

A Shared Health spokesman cautioned there could be more.

"As each wave of the pandemic arrived, many surgeons stopped scheduling elective and non-urgent surgeries they knew were likely to be postponed," said the spokesman. "This number also does not take into account the untold number of invisible patients who have delayed seeking out care for various ailments due to concerns about COVID."

At St. Boniface Hospital, where cardiac surgeries are performed, fewer of these elective surgeries were done during the three pandemic waves of March 23-June 14, 2020, Oct. 26, 2020, to Jan. 10, 2021, and May 3-Aug. 22.

"This number also does not take into account the untold number of 'invisible' patients who have delayed seeking out care for various ailments due to concerns about COVID."  Shared Health spokesman

Where pre-pandemic, 663 elective cardiac surgeries were performed during those dates, only 498 (or 165 fewer) were done during the pandemic waves. Cardiac surgery slates are still being scheduled at about 75 per cent of normal.

While the cardiac wait list is long, it also is taking longer to get people out of hospital post-surgery.

"Cardiac patients who had their elective surgeries delayed due to COVID are generally now sicker as a result and require longer stays in critical care recovery beds  creating a backlog that causes surgery delays," said the spokesman.

Just 435 hip and knee joint replacements were performed in the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority between May 3 and July 25  49.2 per cent lower than the same period in 2019.

While provincewide numbers from the Brandon and Boundary Trails Health Centres werent yet available, the hip and knee surgery programs at Concordia and Grace hospitals have recorded more than 4,000 surgeries delayed.

"Cardiac patients who had their elective surgeries delayed due to COVID are generally now sicker as a result and require longer stays in critical care recovery beds  creating a backlog that causes surgery delays."  Shared Health spokesman

Eye surgery numbers were also way down at Misericordia Health Centre, with 71 per cent fewer cataract and retinal procedures going ahead between May 3 and July 25. Private clinics were able to pick up some of the slack, with 1,452 surgeries being performed. Provincewide numbers for these procedures were also not available at this time.

While stats arent available for other surgeries, Shared Health says there are significant wait lists for all types, including: orthopedic, spinal, urologic, gynecologic, and foot and hand.

There may be some light at the end of the pandemic tunnel, however.

"Tentative plans are in place to return to pre-COVID surgical capacity levels at a number of sites next week including Victoria hospital, Misericordia, and Pan Am Clinic," the spokesman said.

"Elective surgical slates have slowly been increased throughout the summer to boost capacity as redeployed and reassigned nurses return to surgical units and new staff become better oriented to their work."

Manitoba slow to bail out surgery wait lists swamped in second wave: report Click to Expand JOHN WOODS / WINNIPEG FREE PRESSCarrie McKinnon, who needs a knee replacement, is photographed at her home in Winnipeg Thursday, July 8, 2021. McKinnon has been waiting for months for the replacement and has had her surgery cancelled. Reporter: May Posted: 7:00 PM Jul. 8, 2021 Carrie McKinnon has been waiting for a knee replacement for nearly two years. Every day, she checks the province's latest COVID-19 hospitalization numbers, excited to see them decline, wondering when there will be hospital space for her. "Every time the phone rings, I jump, like, 'Is it going to be today?'" she says. Read Full Story

McKinnon was put on the wait list Oct. 7, 2019, with the surgeon believing it would be done sometime in March or April 2020.

She almost had the surgery done in May 2020, but a problem cropped up briefly in her blood work.

"The surgery was supposed to be done on May 20, but they shut down everything on May 21," said McKinnon. "I had that little window, but I didnt get in."

While waiting for another window to open, she has joined the voices calling for hip and knee replacement surgeries to be taken off the elective side and be considered urgent, because of the limitations put on lives.

The provincial government needs a plan to not only get through the wait list caused by COVID-19 shutdowns, but also to clear up the long line that existed even before the pandemic, McKinnon said.

"We need government to step up," she said. "What is their plan? Surgeons said last year they were willing to work on weekends, but the government didnt open it up.

"It is so heartbreaking to see what has happened to our health-care system."

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca

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Disappointment rang out from both sides of the political aisle Thursday, in response to an aggressive rally a day earlier outside Health Sciences Centre in Winnipeg.

Disappointment rang out from both sides of the political aisle Thursday, in response to an aggressive rally a day earlier outside Health Sciences Centre in Winnipeg.

Protesters decried vaccine mandates and passports, but often and repeatedly devolved into shouting conspiracy theories and general disinformation.

Hospital staff and patients complained of having difficulty accessing the building or being harassed for wearing masks, said a spokesperson for Shared Health.

"We know of some patients who opted to cancel their appointments rather than approach the protesters standing near our entrances," said the spokesperson, calling the demonstration "profoundly disrespectful."

Health Minister Audrey Gordon addressed the situation during a morning news conference.

"For our health-care workers to possibly be barred from going to work or to provide services from Manitobans is deeply disheartening. Im disappointed," she said.

Some trying to access the building were doing so to receive care or possibly to visit a family member whos ill, the minister said.

"Maybe they are in palliative care wards, maybe they were visiting a child thats at the hospital receiving surgery or treatment. So kindness is paramount," Gordon said.

"I think theres a space and time to share your concerns, and we want to always remember to do that in a respectful way that respects individuals rights to access care and rights to their views about the public health orders, as well... They have a right to speak out but they dont have a right to block an individual from accessing care at a hospital facility."

In a rare moment of agreement between the major political parties, NDP health-care critic Uzoma Asagwara weighed in with similar remarks about Wednesdays demonstration.

"It is incredibly disappointing that people made the decision to protest outside of a hospital, which has health-care workers working around the clock, putting in overtime, not seeing their families, putting their health at risk on a daily basis to provide care to Manitobans," said Asagwara.

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"It is incredibly disrespectful that those folks made the decision to do that in that way."

Doctors Manitoba president Dr. Kristjan Thompson urged any such protesters to direct their efforts more appropriately in the future.

"While doctors fully support Manitobans right to protest, we are extremely concerned any time a protest interferes with patient care," he said in an email.

"Protests about government policy decisions are best held at the legislature, where those decisions are made, not at a medical facility offering patient care."

Protesters gathered at other Canadian hospitals Wednesday  notably, in several cities in British Columbia, where one health authority reported the assault of a health-care worker.

cody.sellar@freepress.mb.ca
Manitobas unsuccessful six-month campaign to sell the benefits of Bill 64 has come to a halt, with the minister in charge of public schooling admitting defeat by putting reform plans on hold.

Manitobas unsuccessful six-month campaign to sell the benefits of Bill 64 has come to a halt, with the minister in charge of public schooling admitting defeat by putting reform plans on hold.

Education Minister Cliff Cullen provided an update on the Education Modernization Act  controversial legislation that, at its crux, aimed to replace English-language school boards with a centralized education authority  at a news conference Thursday.

"The governance model was certainly a lightning rod," said Cullen. "We recognize that, so were scrapping Bill 64."

The proposed reorganization  unveiled in March at the same time as the delayed 2019 education review  and related uncertainty raised stress levels in schools already grappling with COVID-19 disruptions and led some staff to leave in search of more stable careers.

RUTH BONNEVILLE / FREE PRESS FILES "The governance model was certainly a lightning rod," said Education Minister Cliff Cullen. "We recognize that, so were scrapping Bill 64."

Cullen acknowledged the legislation created anxiety, but he stopped short of apologizing for how the province handled the unpopular bill.

Calling improving education a journey rather than a sprint, he told reporters the province's focus will be on ongoing consultation and repairing burned bridges with stakeholders while an overhaul of education is halted indefinitely.

"Our priorities are wanting to make sure our students and staff are safe over the next few months as we battle the fourth wave," he said.

Bill 64 was slated to set up a school system run by government appointees. The legislation also proposed parent advisory councils be revamped to give volunteer guardians an opportunity to weigh in on school hiring, budgeting and student assessments.

RUTH BONNEVILLE / FREE PRESS FILES Numerous anti-Bill 64 campaigns distributed lawn signs across the province to forward their fight.

Cullen repeatedly touted the reforms as measures that would empower parents to participate in their childrens education and save up to $40 million in administrative expenses.

Meantime, critics were outspoken about concerns local voices would be silenced without school board trustees and the fact that the most recent round of amalgamations did not result in savings. Numerous anti-Bill 64 campaigns distributed lawn signs across the province to forward their fight.

NDP education critic Nello Altomare was quick to call out the province for its reluctance to scrap Bill 64 earlier. More than 500 people, a record in the Manitoba legislative assembly, signed up to speak about the bill at the committee stage.

"Instead of being focused on kids, they're focused on a political agenda, and that part is concerning," said Altomare.

"Instead of being focused on kids, they're focused on a political agenda, and that part is concerning."  NDP education critic Nello Altomare

Cullen previously called opponents  including the Manitoba Teachers Society, Manitoba School Boards Association and Manitoba Association of Parent Councils  a "vocal minority" and accused stakeholders of spreading misinformation.

The education ministers tone changed late last month; after endorsing Heather Stefanson as a leadership candidate for the Progressive Conservatives, he smirked and clapped at his colleagues campaign kickoff when she promised to scrap Bill 64 if elected.

Thursday marked his first media appearance since video showing him cheering at the Aug. 18 event sparked calls for his resignation. When asked about his reaction, Cullen dodged a direct answer, noting there are nuances between his roles as an elected official and minister.

Cullen said cabinet decided to seriously consider backing down from Bill 64 recently when there was an opportunity to reconvene and collectively discuss feedback on it.

New premier tired of the acrimony Click to Expand JOHN WOODS / WINNIPEG FREE PRESSManitoba interim Premier Kelvin Goertzen, who replaced Brian Pallister, holds his first media conference at the legislature in Winnipeg Wednesday, September 1, 2021. Reporter: ? Posted: 2:58 PM Sep. 1, 2021 Newly minted, temporary Manitoba Premier Kelvin Goertzen is striking a new tone, scrapping controversial legislation and pledging to listen to Manitobans. There is lots of division in Manitoba, Goertzen said Wednesday, hours after being sworn in as premier. Read Full Story

Not long after freshly minted interim Premier Kelvin Goertzen was sworn in Wednesday, he announced five contentious bills  including 64  that were delayed in the spring would be thrown out so a new leader can start with a blank legislative agenda.

Cullen could not say Thursday whether revised education reforms will be introduced during the 2021-22 school year. He indicated the next premier and cabinet will make such decisions, although the province intends to reflect on the K-12 review and Better Education Starts Today strategy, a broad provincial action plan that draws on review commission recommendations and complements Bill 64.

The fact Bill 64 disregards the commissions suggestion to amalgamate boards and redesign them so there are both appointed and elected trustee positions on them is among the many criticisms levelled about the legislation.

Alan Campbell, president of the school board association, said he slept well Wednesday night for the first time in a long time.

"Its very good news," said Campbell, a trustee in the Interlake, "but at the end of the day, we have to rebuild our relationship with the government that tried to eliminate us."

maggie.macintosh@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @macintoshmaggie

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NOBODY in the Sudanese refugee camp told Wedan Hamad about periods.

NOBODY in the Sudanese refugee camp told Wedan Hamad about periods.

When Hamad first soaked through her underwear, she was frustrated and confused. She figured shed have to hide the blood, until her aunt stepped in and helped.

"My mom never talked with me," Hamad said. "Our culture, sometimes, is very tough."

Decades later, Hamad is working in the basement of First Lutheran Church in Winnipegs West End to ensure hundreds of girls across the globe have access to menstrual products.

She and four other immigrant women have sewn 600 reusable pads and holding bags. The women regularly attend sewing sessions, English classes and child-care drop-offs through the Excel Empowerment Centre, which is stationed in the church.

The centre partnered with Mennonite Central Committee four months ago. On Wednesday, MCC representatives collected the volunteer-made goods, which will be shipped to school-age girls and incarcerated women in Ukraine next month, as part of the charitys dignity kits.

"They learn (about personal hygiene) at the school, they talk to them openly  its not like us. Im happy to hear (that)," Hamad said, getting emotional.

Achol Majer marvelled at the snap buttons shed helped to sew into the pads. Shed received pads when she was in a South Sudanese refugee camp, but there was no way to fasten them  theyd fall out often.

GABRIELLE PICHE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Help for Ukraine - Immigrant women band together in the basement of First Lutheran Church to sew menstrual products for vulnerable girls.

"Some girls, if you have your period, and you dont have money to buy the... pads, you refuse to go to school," she said. "(You) have a shame in front of your (peers), and people will laugh at you. The best way is to stay home."

Destigmatizing periods boosts confidence, Majer said. "Some years later, you will be somebody. You will see yourself in a different angle."

The volunteers  some of whom have sewing certificates  can finish a product in five minutes. They take two strips of pre-cut cloth (provided by MCC) and sew them together, adding elastics and buttons after.

"The idea of this program is to empower immigrant women to do the work (with the knowledge) that they came with," said Rebecca Deng, centre executive director.

Right now, the women are volunteers. Hopefully soon, theyll be paid for their skills, Deng said.

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"Finding a job is one of the challenges in Canada... because of the language barrier."

The women sew tote bags, masks and cultural garb. The pads have been their latest challenge; those will be shipped in buckets with underwear, towels, soap and other hygiene items. MCC has sent such kits to other countries, including South Sudan.

"Its a lot of people power here," said Sophia Bezoplenko, material resources co-ordinator for MCC Manitoba. "Im so grateful that these women have volunteered... to do this."

She called the kits life-changing for recipients and said MCC hopes to continue its partnership with the Excel Empowerment Centre.

The public can support the centre by sending monetary donations to First Lutheran Church or giving online at canadahelps.org. Information on making dignity kits is available at mcccanada.ca/kits.

gabrielle.piche@freepress.mb.ca
The dissonance is striking.

This week, Texas passed the most restrictive abortion law in America. It bans abortions after six weeks  a point at which many women do not even know they are pregnant  and makes it so people who help a patient obtain an abortion, from the doctor who performs the procedure all the way down to the friend or cab driver who takes the patient to the clinic, can be sued by a plaintiff who, per the New York Times, "need not have a connection or show injury." This is cruel, dangerous and terrifying.

In Manitoba, meanwhile, people are protesting vaccine mandates and masks, waving placards bearing a familiar phrase better suited to protesting what's happening in Texas: "My body, my choice."

To all the anti-mask, anti-vaxx protesters out there: Wow. I am honestly so thrilled to see that so many of you are pro-choice! Truly. That's great. Does this mean you are also going to not only respect but offer your full-throated support of a pregnant person's right to choose? Are you going to advocate for equitable, accessible abortion care  which is health care  for all people who are pregnant and do not want to be? Are you concerned about what's happening in Texas?

Yeah. Somehow, I didn't think so.

JESSICA LEE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Hundreds gathered outside the Health Sciences Centre in Winnipeg on Wednesday to protest against vaccines, vaccine passports and COVID restrictions.

Let's acknowledge the false equivalence between a public-health measure and a personal medical procedure. Last I checked, abortion isn't contagious, and one person's choice to get one will not result in several close contacts being put on ventilators.

But the fact that this reproductive-justice slogan has been co-opted by anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers is galling for a pretty simple reason: those who use "my body, my choice" to advocate for reproductive justice actually care about the health and well-being of other people. Those who use it to advocate for their choice not to wear a mask or get a vaccine care only about themselves.

The rollback of reproductive rights is harmful for people who can get pregnant, full stop. Restrictive abortion laws do not prevent unwanted pregnancies or, for that matter, abortions  that's where comprehensive sex education comes in  it just drives abortions underground, making them dangerous and deadly.

You probably know someone who has had an abortion, which are performed for many, many reasons, not just the ones society has deemed valid (most recognizable as the rape/incest exception, which the new Texas law doesn't even have). Many people who choose to get abortions are already parents. People who choose to get abortions come from a wide-cross section of age and socio-economic brackets, although their access to the procedure is not the same. Some are wanted pregnancies. Some are unwanted pregnancies. The reasons they are ended are varied and complicated and, frankly, none of your business.

JOEL MARTINEZ / THE MONITOR Abortion rights supporters gather to protest the new Texas law on Wednesday in Edinburg, Texas.

You may never choose to get an abortion. You may never be confronted with that choice. But that doesn't mean someone else shouldn't have the right to have one. See, "my body, my choice" was never "just" about one individual's body. It's about ensuring reproductive justice for all.

"My body, my choice" is not about blocking an emergency entrance to Health Sciences Centre because you're upset about vaccine mandates; it's more than a little ironic that a hospital in which the ICU is largely caring for unvaccinated COVID-19 patients was the site of an anti-vaccine protest. It's not about refusing to get a vaccine to help stop the spread of a virus that has killed more than four million people worldwide and has altered the lives of others who may have survived but are still dealing with symptoms. It's not about refusing to put a couple centimetres of cloth over your face to help protect living, breathing children.

Your right to choose whether or not to be vaccinated is not being taken away. Your decision may come with undesired consequences  such as increased restrictions and social exclusion  but it's still a choice available to you.

You want to see what actual rights violations look like? Talk to a person currently trying to get an abortion in Texas.

jen.zoratti@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @JenZoratti
A federal Conservative government would commit to building a $1.854-billion north end sewage treatment plant upgrade in Winnipeg and two new Manitoba flood outlets if elected Sept. 20.

A federal Conservative government would commit to building a $1.854-billion north end sewage treatment plant upgrade in Winnipeg and two new Manitoba flood outlets if elected Sept. 20.

In a news release, Conservative Leader Erin OToole pledged his government would ensure a few key projects are constructed, including the Lake Manitoba and Lake St. Martin outlet channels, the sewage plant work and a previously announced overpass at St. Marys Road and the Perimeter Highway in the provincial capital.

"These projects will ensure that Manitoba has the modern infrastructure needed to keep people and goods moving, meet the needs of growing communities and prevent flooding," OToole said in the release.

The release did not explain how the federal party would ensure the projects are completed. In an emailed statement, Conservative spokesperson Mathew Clancy said the Tories would cover up to 40 per cent of the total costs for each project.

In July, the current Liberal government announced $116.1 million from its Investing in Canada Infrastructure Program to support Phase 1 of the north end sewage treatment plant upgrades. The province will pay $96.7 million and the City of Winnipeg will contribute $143 million.

No senior government funding has been announced for the proposed second or third phases, the latter of which is meant to reduce algae-promoting nutrients that flow out of the plant and make their way into Lake Winnipeg.

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A federal Conservative government would "be a federal funding partner for the entirety of the project," Clancy said.

Construction of the Lake Manitoba and Lake St. Martin flood outlets is expected to cost about $540 million, for which Ottawa previously committed to pay half the cost. The megaproject has been held up by submission woes, including disputes over the amount of consultation required with Indigenous groups.

In June, the Manitoba government said construction on the outlets could begin as soon as this fall as long as all federal clearances and consultation requirements are met.

The outlet project was planned after flooding caused $2.1 billion in damage and forced 7,000 people to be evacuated in 2011. In an apparent mistake, the Conservative news release describes the flooding damage and evacuations as taking place last year.

joyanne.pursaga@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @joyanne_pursaga
The federal election, now just over two weeks away, has turned into the horse race no one expected, with Erin OTooles Conservative Party currently ahead in the polls and, depending on how the votes shake out, possibly on course to boot Justin Trudeaus Liberals from power. With so much at stake, and with control of the government seemingly up for grabs, the campaign has taken on a frenzied, intense tone.

Opinion

The federal election, now just over two weeks away, has turned into the horse race no one expected, with Erin OTooles Conservative Party currently ahead in the polls and, depending on how the votes shake out, possibly on course to boot Justin Trudeaus Liberals from power. With so much at stake, and with control of the government seemingly up for grabs, the campaign has taken on a frenzied, intense tone.

As Trudeaus lead slipped away over the past two weeks, the current prime minister responded by reaching deep into the Liberal bag of tricks. The result was a flurry of "greatest hits" attacks on OToole: the Conservatives would privatize health care, reopen the abortion debate, defund child care, and on and on.

But the attacks seem not to have gained much traction. Indeed, one misleadingly edited video of OToole talking about health care, tweeted out by finance minister Chrystia Freeland, gained a "manipulated media" warning from Twitter, a rare and notable rebuke to the campaign.

Trudeaus flailing attacks have been quite the spectacle, but even more eye-catching has been the intensity of crowds gathering to boo and goad the prime minister. Last week, protesters organized to hector both Trudeau and the journalists accompanying him to a campaign stop in Bolton, Ont. Video of the footage shows scores of Canadians, grimacing and snarling as they screamed and hurled curses at the prime minister. Notably, several seemed to be doing so with their kids standing beside them.

A poster displayed at one protest accused Trudeau of high treason and portrayed him being led to a noose. These images are unsettling. They give the impression that our democracy is coming undone before our eyes.

The truth, however, is that Canadian democracy has always featured intense, hard-fought election campaigns. Even the unsettling imagery is nothing new. A recent example includes a 2019 protest against Ontario Premier Doug Ford which featured a mock guillotine  complete with red spray-painted on the blade  with protesters holding a sign saying, "May history repeat itself chop chop."

The tradition goes far back. Following the First World War, a cartoon portrayed prime minister Arthur Meighen, who as solicitor general in 1917 had participated in drafting the governments previous conscription bill, handing a Canadian soldier to a pair of clawed, blood-dripping hands emblazoned with "Imperialism."

French academic and political writer Andre Siegfried first travelled from France to Canada to learn about our country in 1898, and returned to observe the 1904 federal election campaign. In his remarkable 1906 treatise on Canada, Siegfried noted, among many other observations, that elections in Canada are fiercely contested. In fact, Siegfried thought electoral politics in Canada was more bitterly fought than in any other country he had observed.

Nevertheless, we are in somewhat uncharted territory in 2021. The intensity of the current campaign has received a jolt from the COVID-19 pandemic. While Trudeau has not come up for much criticism of his governments handling of the pandemic, opponents of vaccination, lockdowns and vaccine passports have become major players in the campaign.

The protests again Trudeau have been riddled with anti-vaccine and anti-mask sentiment. And the online venom that has come to plague Canadian politics has been super-charged by conspiracy theorists and vaccine skeptics.

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Public disapproval of this anti-vaccine and anti-mask activism appears to have presented a political opportunity to the listless Liberal campaign. Increasingly, the Liberals have sought to link these sentiments to the Conservative Party. The Tories, for their part, have provided some irresistible targets for the Liberals to exploit.

The Liberal campaign, for example, dug up a video of Conservative MP Cheryl Gallant conspiratorially fretting about a coming "climate lockdown" if the Liberals are re-elected. Given the opportunity to condemn Gallants comments, OToole declined to do so. And some of the attendees at the disgraceful Bolton protest were volunteers with nearby Conservative campaigns.

But in fairness, OToole has tried mightily to put distance between his party and the extremes of the anti-vaccine protests. "The threatening images and behaviour are disgusting," the party categorically tweeted out. "This needs to stop immediately. Canada is better than this." And the party gave the boot to its campaign workers who were identified among the Bolton rabble.

The fact the Liberal campaign seems to willingly expose itself to protests  allowing Trudeau to be drowned out by howling protesters while the video cameras are rolling, when every other campaign would never allow a leader to speak so close to groups of protesters  suggests they think there is potential electoral benefit to keeping this misbehaviour front and centre.

After all, campaigning against OToole has done little to blunt the Conservatives rise in the polls. Who can blame Trudeau for instead wanting to campaign against the almost universally unliked anti-vaxxers?

Royce Koop is a professor of political studies at the University of Manitoba and academic director of the Centre for Social Science Research and Policy.
WERE about to send kids back to school at a time when it feels as if COVID-19, mandatory masking and mandatory vaccinations have become political fodder in both federal and provincial politics. So, aside from our respective political views, what should we really be considering as we do so?

Opinion

WERE about to send kids back to school at a time when it feels as if COVID-19, mandatory masking and mandatory vaccinations have become political fodder in both federal and provincial politics. So, aside from our respective political views, what should we really be considering as we do so?

Before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, when educators talked about "risk," it was usually in the context of how we can get kids to take them more often.

Trying something new; writing a word you dont know how to spell; putting artwork up on the wall; speaking in front of an audience; flipping the switch on a circuit you just built; attempting a calculus problem on your own; taking the bus to your first day of an internship. Kids and young adults take these kinds of risks at school every day, often many times a day. No matter how small they may be, taking risks is how kids learn and grow. When students take risks, mistakes become opportunities to learn and succeed.

In early 2020 (which feels to many students, parents and educators more like three years ago than 17 months ago) the conversation about "risk" changed. What are the risks of this new virus? Am I at risk of getting it? Am I at risk of transmitting it? Is it safe to be in school/at work? Will someone I love get sick, or worse? None of us wanted to contemplate these questions, and we certainly didnt want our children to have to think about them throughout their day at school.

As we collectively struggled with these questions, schools plunged into months of remote learning, safe-return plans, cohorts, teaching the fundamentals of hand-washing, masks and self-screening, all while sitting in assigned seats behind Plexiglas or connecting through the screen of a laptop or tablet, or even just your parents phone if thats what you had.

Schools adapted to the pandemic quickly and effectively because safety is just part of what they do.

Last September, school resumed with safety as a top priority. It was different (almost militaristic) to see children lined up at assigned entrances, physically distancing and receiving squirts of hand sanitizer from their teacher as they entered the school while parents waved from a distance in the playground.

Teachers and students adapted remarkably quickly to these new routines  not that it was easy. Perhaps this was in part because student safety and health as a top priority is actually the norm in our public schools. Educators and support staff know very well that safety and belonging are the soil in which learning is rooted.

While rich, meaningful learning is the raison detre of every school, the well-being and safety of students is a prerequisite, foundational to setting the stage for academics, exploration, achievement and excellence. Whether looking at the Public Schools Act, Manitoba Educations provincial code of conduct or Safe and Caring Schools documents, the Public Schools Amendment Act (Bill 18), or emergent school-division policies such as Seven Oaks School Divisions new anti-racism policy, it is evident that before students can engage in meaningful learning, they must feel safe and included.

Schools adapted to the pandemic quickly and effectively because safety is just part of what they do.

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This September, as students and staff return to classrooms, we know that continuing with the fundamentals will make schools safer. Risk cannot be eliminated, but it can be reduced. Self-screening, hygiene, masks and cohorts for children who cannot yet be vaccinated will undoubtedly reduce the risk of transmission of COVID-19 and its variants.

Most of all, getting fully vaccinated as soon as you are eligible will significantly improve safety in schools, especially for unvaccinated youth, and if we can so easily improve safety in schools, why wouldnt we?

Currently, as mask mandates start to return across the country, Manitoba is requiring vaccinations for designated provincial employees, including those in education and child care. Children turning 12 before Dec. 31, 2021 and older can also do their part to make schools safer by getting fully vaccinated.

That means kids will be able return to taking the risks that pay off: building rockets; publishing a poem; dropping eggs from the roof in contraptions made of milk cartons and cotton balls; using a new ingredient in foods class; or taking a guess when they dont know the answer.

If we are going to take risks, lets take risks that help kids learn and grow  not risks that make kids sick.

Andrew Volk is a principal in the Seven Oaks School Division and dad to a vaccinated Grade 7 student.
OUR province has weathered three distinct surges of COVID-19 cases that have depleted our health-care resources and strained our response capacity. Although we had all hoped we were past the worst, it now appears a fourth surge, driven by the highly transmissible delta variant, is imminent.

Opinion

OUR province has weathered three distinct surges of COVID-19 cases that have depleted our health-care resources and strained our response capacity. Although we had all hoped we were past the worst, it now appears a fourth surge, driven by the highly transmissible delta variant, is imminent.

The third surge, which peaked in May, involved younger patients than before and generated hospital and Intensive Care Unit admissions that brought us to our knees. Had other provinces not experienced their peak surges earlier and accepted temporary relocation of Manitoba patients, many would have died, owing to lack of local hospital staff and resources to support them.

Current modelling suggests that this scenario is very much again on the table, but without the expectation that other provinces will be able to assist, since their own forecasts of the coming surge are as worrisome as our own.

Despite low case counts and falling COVID-19-associated hospitalizations during the summer, the situation in Manitobas health-care system remains extremely fragile. Although fewer than 15 COVID-19-related cases remain in intensive care, the total number of active ICU beds is more than 150 per cent of normal capacity, with more than 90 per cent occupancy  far higher than following our previous surges.

This is a consequence of the reappearance of patients who have deferred treatment of serious medical conditions during the COVID-19 emergency of the last 18 months. An additional factor contributing to fragility and lack of resilience of health-system capacity is the substantial attrition of experienced staff, particularly acute care and ICU nurses and respiratory technicians, owing to illness and burnout.

Going forward, it would be prudent to be aware that approximately one-third of the vaccinated, despite not becoming seriously ill, may still be infected with and could potentially transmit the delta variant, the dominant variant now circulating in Manitoba.

Another major issue going forward is that children will be at much higher risk for serious illness during the next delta-driven surge than previously, particularly once schools reopen.

Following a period of excess optimism and the premature withdrawal of COVID-19-related control measures, provincial authorities have begun to reinitiate measures such as indoor masking and proof-of-vaccination requirements for indoor activities. In addition, vaccine mandates have been ordered for particular groups.

This is an excellent start. However, given the dire modeling predictions released by Manitoba public-health authorities on Aug. 25, additional measures are well advised. Such measures should include:

1) Urgent re-initiation of a broad suite of public-health measures, including mandated masking, recommended restrictions on social gatherings and required physical distancing in public areas and work spaces.

2) Extension of vaccine mandates to include law enforcement and fire/rescue personnel at a minimum.

3) Extension of vaccine mandates to eligible students in addition to staff of all schools, colleges and universities.

4) In lieu of the two previous items, serious consideration should be given to vaccine mandates to cover all eligible residents of the province.

5) Immediate optional booster vaccination for all front-line health-care workers in order to protect our health-care force from vaccine break-through infections that could severely deplete staff ranks during the next surge.

6) Optional booster vaccination for high-risk individuals, including nursing-home residents and the elderly in the general population, to further minimize hospitalizations.

7) Rapid development and opening of community and hospital-based monoclonal antibody (laboratory-produced molecules engineered to serve as substitute antibodies) infusion clinics to dispense medications already purchased and made available by Health Canada; such drugs have been shown to reduce hospitalizations in high-risk individuals and would further protect our fragile hospital system.

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8) Upgrades to school protections, including physical spacing, improved ventilation and mandatory masking in K-12 and other institutional environments.

Despite the abject failures of the past, when more than 50 critically ill patients had to be transported out of province owing to a lack of capacity within Manitoba, provincial leaders seem to be more cognizant of the risks associated with the imminent fourth wave of COVID-19 cases. We can all applaud their recent decisions, but they should go further to protect both our health-care-system capacity and our children.

Should a severe or extreme scenario come to pass and we have not done all within our capability to hold it at bay, the regret we all experience would be palpable and profound.

With better preparation, including universal indoor masking in public spaces, extension of mandated vaccinations, including boosters, to critical health-care personnel and high-risk individuals, and a layered approach to limit acquisition and progression of COVID-19 infection, the next surge could be a minor nuisance rather than the catastrophe that models suggest could be our fate.

Shutdowns could be avoided; a semblance of normal life could resume. Our next decisions will determine the outcome. I hope we make the right ones.

Anand Kumar is a Winnipeg intensive-care physician and infectious-disease specialist.
The City of Winnipeg will now require proof of COVID-19 immunization to visit its pools, fitness and leisure centres, and arenas.

The City of Winnipeg will now require proof of COVID-19 immunization to visit its pools, fitness and leisure centres, and arenas.

The move  in effect starting Friday  is "in accordance with provincial public health orders announced today," according to a Thursday night news release.

"In addition, those participating in indoor programming at these facilities, as well as city libraries, are required to show proof of immunization," the release said.

"Individuals that do not show proof of immunization will not be permitted to enter the facility or participate in indoor programming, unless they fall under an exemption in the provincial public health orders."

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Customers are encouraged to bring a piece of government-issued ID to confirm identity matches their COVID-19 immunization card.

The city said it will continue to review the latest provincial public health orders to determine whether there are any additional impacts to its programs and services.

Meantime, Winnipeg continues work on a vaccine mandate for civic staff.

"Provincial officials have recommended that organizations follow the provinces lead in mandating COVID-19 vaccinations for their employees," the release said.

"Towards that end, and to align our efforts with those of the province where appropriate, we are working on a vaccine mandate for our front-line employees who have ongoing contact with vulnerable populations, especially children.

"More information will be provided in the coming days."
A prominent Manitoba Indigenous leader is castigating the NDPs northern MP, arguing Niki Ashton doesnt deserve to be re-elected later this month.

A prominent Manitoba Indigenous leader is castigating the NDPs northern MP, arguing Niki Ashton doesnt deserve to be re-elected later this month.

"Niki has been very ineffectual; I don't think Niki has actually enhanced our advocacy and our region," said Grand Chief Arlen Dumas of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs.

"It's been a time of spinning wheels and not making any progress, or anything substantial. That's happened for far too long, and we need a fresh perspective and a refresh in that seat up there."

Ashton has said the NDP is the best choice to advocate for the Churchill-Keewatinook Aski riding, which shes held since 2008.

Dumas said Ashton fell out of his favour during efforts to transfer ownership of the railway that serves as Churchill's lifeline. He supported her for years, but felt betrayed when she took the position that the Hudson Bay Railway be nationalized, instead of transferred to Indigenous owners.

In late 2016, months before a catastrophic washout on the line, the Missinippi ownership group tried to take over the rail line and Port of Churchill from Denver-based Omnitrax.

Dumas claimed Ashton said she would write a letter of support for the local effort, but then publicly called for the assets to instead be nationalized.

She has not commented publicly on his version of events.

The grand chief attempted to clarify his remarks after a campaign event last week at The Forks for federal NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, but may have muddied the waters further.

At the event, Dumas and northern Grand Chief Garrison Settee both voiced their support for Liberal candidate Shirley Robinson  but then said they were supportive of First Nations candidates, in general.

And despite favouring Robinson's candidacy, Dumas was critical of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's government.

"We need a government that is willing to listen; a government that is not going to impose half-measure or half-steps," he said at the Aug. 26 event.

The AMC speaks on behalf of all chiefs in the province and Settee leads Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak, which represents the northern reserves. Both are non-partisan organizations, though AMC endorsed the NDP in the 2019 provincial election.

At MKOs annual assembly last month, northern chiefs threw their support behind Robinson, but Settee said that they can support multiple candidates from different parties, and will always show support for First Nations.

MIKAELA MACKENZIE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES Niki Ashton, NDP member of parliament for Churchill-Keewatinook Aski.

"We will support our Indigenous people, whoever they are," he said at the Singh event.

While the AMC has not indicated whether it will advise First Nations members on who to support Sept. 20, Dumas said he personally is pushing for Robinson.

Ashton was unavailable to comment Thursday.

"I am proud to fight for First Nations left behind by this government," a statement attributed to her said.

In recent years, Ashton has made weekly statements in the House and during new conferences about issues impacting northern Manitoba reserves, from housing crises to unfulfilled Liberal pledges to build health centres in her riding.

Yet Dumas said Ashton hasnt been as effective as former NDP MP Romeo Saganash, who is Cree and managed to get a bill passed implementing a United Nations decree on Indigenous rights.

"If Romeo could do it, why couldn't Niki?" said Dumas.

He argued Ashton leveraged Indigenous constituents in her 2017 race for the federal NDP leadership  she finished third behind Singh and Charlie Angus  without having done enough for them.

"There's a different between rhetoric and self-promotion and actual tangible results," Dumas said.

Ashton insists shes made progress in getting the Trudeau government and that of former prime minister Stephen Harper t o do more on COVID-19 military support, clean drinking water and economic development.

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"By working together with Indigenous peoples and communities, we have been able to get results," she wrote.

"After more than 150 years, it had been clear that the Liberals and Conservatives are not only not part of the solution  their policies and neglect are the problem."

Meanwhile, Dumas said Indigenous politicians should put their interests first, regardless of which party they represent.

He noted former MLA Elijah Harpers key role in bringing down the Meech Lake Accord in 1990. The agreement was aimed at recognizing the special role of Quebec in the Constitution, but not Indigenous people, and so Harper filibustered a vote so it could not pass, despite its support from his NDP colleagues.

dylan.robertson@freepress.mb.ca
U.S. Sens. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) and Amy Klobuchar and, Tina Smith (both D-MN) are among a group urging Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to include support for homegrown renewable fuels in the upcoming reconciliation package.

Providing additional market access for higher blends of low carbon fuels in the budget reconciliation process will create jobs in rural communities, lower the price of fuel for consumers at the pump, reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, and, most importantly, decrease carbon emissions, the legislators wrote.

They continued later in the letter: We know that the climate crisis is happening right now and we need to confront it with a sense of urgency. Our goal is to decarbonize our transportation sector through an all-hands-on-deck approach that includes investment and incentives for both electric vehicles (EVs) and homegrown renewable fuels.

The legislators specifically asked Schumer and Pelosi to consider including the Biofuel Infrastructure and Agricultural Product Market Expansion Act, Consumer and Fuel Retailer Choice Act, Low Carbon Biofuel Credit Act, Clean Fuels Vehicle Act, Biodiesel Tax Credit Extension Act, and enacting a long-term extension of the Second Generation Biofuel Producer Tax Credit in the budget legislation.
The judge also said use-of-force expert Barry Brodds suggestion that Floyd could have been resting comfortably on the pavement was the soundbite of the day. Brodd was one defense expert who was harassed after Chauvin's trial.

Plunkett disagreed, saying the call to action is different for someone who is watching something live rather than reading a report.

Prosecutors initially opposed livestreaming Chauvin's trial but now say it was the right move  protecting everyone during the pandemic, allowing for meaningful public access and letting people watch the fair administration of the justice system.

They favor livestreaming the second trial as well, saying defense claims that audio-video coverage would deny them a fair trial are unconvincing. They say there is no concrete evidence that any witnesses are refusing to testify for the defense  and if that is the case, reluctant witnesses can be compelled to appear.

Indeed, if Defendants have difficulty finding expert witnesses  and there is no evidence that they cannot secure experts  that difficulty is a product of their overwhelming guilt, prosecutors wrote.
DULUTH, Minn. (AP)  Parts of the popular Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness will reopen Saturday as firefighters make progress fighting wildfires in northeastern Minnesota.

The Superior National Forest is lifting the full closure of the Boundary Waters and the Crooked Lake area near the fires in Canada. The closure had dealt a blow to tourists who spend months planning trips to Boundary Waters and to the outfitters and other businesses that serve them.

The national forest also was slightly modifying closure maps for the Greenwood fire, and the John Ek and Whelp fires. The closure of U.S. Forest Service land at the Upper Gunflint Trail remains in place, the Star Tribune reported.

Were thrilled to reopen some of our public lands to visitors. The drought is not over, but were starting to see more rain and lower temperatures. These conditions moderate fire activity and lessen the chance of new fires showing up, Connie Cummins, supervisor for the Superior National Forest, said in a statement Wednesday.
A Lake Geneva man was recently released on a $1,000 signature bond after being arrested for allegedly driving drunk with children in his car within the Mt. Olympus Resorts campground and striking a building.

Christopher A. Shawhan, 32, faces a maximum prison sentence of four years and fines up to $8,000, as well as a revoked license for a maximum of 12 years after being charged with a third offense of drunk driving with a minor in the vehicle and a third-offense driving with a prohibited alcohol concentration while children were in the car.

According to the criminal complaint, callers reported Shawhan after he was driving a silver 2016 Chevrolet quickly within a campground and struck a cabin at around midnight Aug. 21. Witnesses said he kept driving and parked in the driveway of a cabin roughly five doors down, getting out of the car with children.

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Wisconsin Dells Police Officer Micha Dunse met with Dunse outside the cabin after talking to security workers who also said they saw Shawhan with children. When the officer walked up to the cabin, there were two children on the front patio, according to the complaint. He found Shawhan behind the cabin.
Believe it or not, politics isnt always at the top of my mind. Family and friends come first. Then theres the certainty I feel that no matter what we do, well be forgiven for any mistakes weve made, and our lives dont end with what we call death. I wrote about that back in 2014, and my belief is even stronger today.

I was a senior in college when my father called, saying that mom had died suddenly of a cerebral hemorrhage. That afternoon shed told him she had a headache and was reaching for the aspirin bottle when she collapsed and never regained consciousness. A doctor pronounced her dead within an hour. Since I had just had a long phone conversation with her the night before, and shed been fine, it was hard for me to believe.

That night at home, after trying to console my dad and Sandy, my severely disabled sister, I went to bed, but couldnt sleep because I couldnt stop crying. All of a sudden, I felt a rosy glow coming from the doorway. I looked up and there stood my mother in her old blue bathrobe. On her face was the most beautiful smile Id ever seen.

Why are you crying? Im happier than Ive ever been, she said, and was gone. Right then I knew it was all rightthat life went on, only in a different place.
A long-running lawsuit related to a development project in the city of Beaver Dam was dismissed Thursday.

The developers for the Oak Point Village apartment complex near Kohls in Beaver Dam sued both the town of Beaver Dam and the city of Beaver Dam in June 2019 over a barrier the town placed on Woodland Drive that blocked access to the construction site at the time. The town and city reached an agreement that summer to get the barrier removed that resolved their dispute, but the lawsuit from the developers remained, seeking damages and claiming the issue violated a development agreement and impacted the ability to market the new complex.

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Access to the apartment complex involves going through the town and back into the city on Woodland Drive. The town and city are separate entities. Those with blue fire signs in front of their homes that say Town of Beaver Dam live in the town and outside city limits.

The city reached a final settlement with the developers last month to have the city pay $25,000 to cover part of the costs of Woodland Drive construction to end the lawsuit. The lawsuit was dismissed by Judge Brian Pfitzinger in Dodge County Circuit Court on the merits, with prejudice and without costs Friday afternoon.
Leita Walker, a media attorney, said the media wants maximum transparency in all cases, "but especially this one that has the potential to tear the fabric of this community." She said had Chauvin's case ended with a different verdict, the livestream would have helped build public trust.

During the hearing, Gray dropped his earlier request that the state provide all use-of-force reports since July 2016 in which another officer intervened in force used by a colleague, because he is pursuing information from the city himself. An officer's duty to intervene came up often during testimony in Chauvin's trial.

Cahill also denied a defense request to rule that a potential expert witness for the state coerced Hennepin County Medical Examiner Dr. Andrew Baker to change his findings by noting that neck compression was a factor in Floyd's death. Paule said the state failed to take action after prosecutors learned former Washington, D.C., medical examiner Dr. Roger Mitchell threatened to write an op-ed critical of Baker's findings. The state ultimately did not call Mitchell as a witness in Chauvin's case.

"I'm not finding any coercion at all," Cahill said, but he ordered the state to provide the defense with materials about their exchanges with Mitchell, and he said the defense could question Baker about any possible coercion during cross-examination at trial.
Habitat for Humanity is holding a pair of events in Columbia and Sauk counties honoring women that have served their country.

She Served is an initiative for women veterans in the area put on by Habitat for Humanity of Wisconsin River Area. These veterans are invited to a home build in Baraboo on Sept. 11, and in Wyocena volunteers will be cleaning and restoring veterans headstones.

Morgan Pfaff executive director for Habitat WRA said there are still spaces available at both events. The event is open to everyone with the goal to get as many veterans to sign up.

And yes, men are welcome to join as well, Pfaff said.

For more information Women veterans who are interested in participating at these events can sign up at www.hfhwisconsinriver.org/sheserved or call the Habitat office at (608) 448-2888.

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Covid-19 Update 72: Netcare vaccination site at Wits

Wits staff and students can now get their Covid-19 vaccine at the Netcare site on campus.

The University has collaborated with Netcare to make Covid-19 vaccines easily accessible for members of the Wits community. Wits staff and students will be able to get their Covid-19 vaccination in the Wits Sport Multipurpose Hall, Braamfontein Campus East from 6 September until 23 September 2021.

The Netcare vaccination site is available to staff and students, their immediate family members and household members who are 18 years and older.

All persons accessing the Wits campus and receiving a vaccine must complete the Covid-19 screening tool on the day via the Logbox app. Staff and students can alternatively dial *134*8627# and visitors can dial*120*8501# to complete the Covid-19 screening.

The vaccination site is available as follows:

Date: 6 - 23 September 2021 (Mondays to Fridays)

Time: 08:00  16:00

Venue: Wits Sport Multipurpose Hall, Braamfontein Campus East

Parking: Visitor parking is available at the Planetarium visitor parking area.

4 Easy Steps to get your vaccine at Wits:

1. Register on the Electronic Vaccination Data System (EVDS) system

2. Book a date at the Netcare vaccination site at Wits via this link:

For Staff (and family members): https://witsapps.wits.ac.za/workflow/app/forms/view/64

For Students (and family members): https://witsapps.wits.ac.za/workflow/student/forms/view/65

3. Bring proof of identity (South African ID or passport) with Wits staff/student card and booking confirmation to the vaccination site. People on medical aid will be required to provide their medical aid number. The vaccine is for free for everyone including those on medical aid.

4. Get vaccinated.

Netcare will administer the Pfizer vaccine 1st or 2nd shot. One must be 2 weeks post COVID if recently tested positive, or 42 days post 1st Pfizer shot to receive 2nd Pfizer shot.

Vaccinate at any other site

If you are 18+, you can go to any vaccination site or sites close to Wits such as the Liberty site in Braamfontein, the Charlotte Maxeke Academic Hospital in Parktown, the Yeoville Recreational Centre or the Hillbrow Clinic.

Dont hesitate. Vaccinate.

About COVID-19 vaccines

Everything you need to know about vaccines  our only viable strategy for living with Covid-19

Six myths about vaccination for Covid-19 put to rest

More information about vaccines at SA Coronavirus website and the Wits COVID-19 portal
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) - Two members of New Yorks state Assembly have tested positive for COVID-19 days after lawmakers gathered for a special legislative session.

Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie said Friday that Assemblymembers Charles Fall and Inez Dickens had tested positive for COVID-19.

Heastie says both Fall and Dickens were vaccinated and are quarantining. He says the Assembly is reaching out to other members and staff who may have been in contact with Fall and Dickens during Wednesdays session in Albany. Those who were in close contact have been advised to quarantine until they can get a COVID test.

Assemblywoman Marianne Buttenschon, D-119, was at the session Wednesday but says she did not have any close contact with either Fall or Dickens. She said she reached out to a doctor for clarification on proper protocol, and was not advised to quarantine.
It's time now to welcome the newest members of our Morning Mug Club -- brought to you by Holland Farms Bakery & Deli.

Coming up on Sunday, Sept. 5, the Otter Lake Volunteer Fire Department and Auxiliary is hosting their 37th Annual Steak Bake and $2.00 Truck Raffle.

The event is happening at the Otter Lake Vol. Fire Dept. on State Route 28.

Meals will begin to be served at 4 p.m.

For the cost of $15.00, you get a 12 ounce New York Strip Steak, salt potatoes, corn on the cob and a buttered roll (drinks are available for purchase).

They have a small chinese auction during the afternoon and live music from "Double Barrel" at 8 p.m.

The $2.00 truck drawing for a 2021 Dodge Ram Warlock 4-Wheel Drive Crew Cab ($42,170 MSRP) is happening at 10 p.m. (you do not need to be present to win). Second Prize: $500.00 - Third Prize: $250.00

Otter Lake is about an hour North of Utica and 20 minutes South of Old Forge.
UTICA, N.Y.  Mohawk Valley Health System is getting more than $1 million in FEMA funding to help recover from the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic.

Congresswoman Claudia Tenney, R-22, says the grant money was awarded through FEMAs Disaster Relief Fund established in March of 2020, to cover the cost of providing extensive COVID testing for staff, nursing home residents and patients.

MVHS performed more than 21,000 tests in just the first six months of the pandemic, and the grant will reimburse the network for costs not covered by insurance.

Louis Aiello, senior vice president and chief financial officer at MVHS, says the hospital system plans to submit more applications for federal aid.

MVHS is grateful for the partnership with Arthur Cornwell from FEMA and Van Miles from the NYS Division of Homeland Security & Emergency Services to secure the more than $1 million from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) that will help to cover some of the costs related to COVID-19, he said. We look forward to continuing to work with these partners as we submit additional applications to FEMA to cover the monumental costs incurred to take care of our patients, employees and the entire community.
ALBANY, N.Y. -- All teachers and school staff in New York will have to show proof of vaccination or be tested for COVID-19 each week, according to a new emergency regulation passed by the state Public Health and Health Planning Council Thursday.

Schools will be required to offer screening testing for any staff at least once per week, and maintain the capacity to test any students, teachers or other employees that are symptomatic or have been exposed to COVID-19.

"My top priority is to get children back to school and protect the environment so they can learn, and everyone is safe," said Gov. Kathy Hochul. "On day one of my administration, I announced a series of bold back-to-school initiatives, including a universal mask requirement for anyone entering our schools. We are now issuing guidance to make sure our school staff are vaccinated or tested regularly for themselves and their families, our students, and our communities. Our children deserve to be safe and protected in schools, and I am doing everything in my power to guarantee that."

The state has also finalized and released the official school safety guidance, following requests for further clarification from some district officials and teachers' unions.

The guidance prioritizes in-person learning and includes recommendations and requirements for vaccinations, face masks, physical distancing, and testing to monitor potential transmission. The guidance aligns with the CDC recommendations, which districts were advised to follow. Districts also have the flexibility to put additional safeguards or restrictions in place if necessary.

Read the full guidance below:
FRANKFORT, N.Y.  A vehicle crashed into a utility pole on McIntyre Road in Frankfort late Thursday night, leaving power lines across the road and in nearby trees.

Police say the crash happened around 10:30 p.m.

National Grid was called to the scene to remove the power lines from the tree and restore service.

It is not yet clear if anyone was injured in the crash, or if any tickets were issued.

The cause is under investigation.
TIPPECANOE COUNTY, Ind. (WLFI)-Two of three school districts in Tippecanoe County will change quarantine guidelines when it comes to COVID-19. This comes as the Governor issued a new executive order allowing schools to change them if a mask mandate is in place. The change is something Lafayette School Corporation Superintendent Les Huddle says will help keep kids in school.

"The difference will be the number of children and adults that have to quarantine when we have a positive situation," said Huddle.

Basically, students and staff won't have to quarantine if they were in direct contact with someone who tested positive in a classroom setting if everyone was masked. This change in guidance is something both TSC and LSC will be moving forward with.

"Hopefully it will keep many more students in our schools and have the opportunity to continue their academics in person," said Huddle.

In a statement to News 18, the Tippecanoe School Corporation said "This change is a welcome relief and recognizes what we have seen in terms of spread in the classroom. Last school year, very few students placed on quarantine ended up testing positive."

According to Tippecanoe County Health Officer Dr. Jeremy Adler, that statement is true.

"What we observed last year when obviously masks were mandated in all the schools was that there was a fairly low rate of quarantined students testing positive for COVID-19 during their quarantine," said Dr. Adler.

In 2020 there was a total of 256 cases out of 11,000 students quarantined over the year. However, he does have his concerns about this decision.

"Without quarantine, we may see asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic transmission within classrooms and see more cases," said Dr. Adler. "We will have to watch the data closely to see if that happens."

Another concern is that the Delta variant is more transmissible. Adler says the COVID-19 strain that was dominant at the beginning of that pandemic wasn't as contagious.

On average, one person would infect 1-2 other people. However, when it comes to the Delta variant the average person spreads it anywhere from 8-9 people, which is why Adler says it's important people understand these guidelines correctly.

"It's important to remember that this order from the Governor and the State Department of Health only applies to classrooms, not to other settings, not even other settings in schools just the classrooms," said Adler.

Dr. Adler said that this executive order caught the Health Department off guard. The new quarantine guidelines don't require testing, however, testing was never required for people who were in contact with a positive case. There was an option for people to test in quarantine at a certain point. If their test was negative they could get out of quarantine earlier. The recommendation from the CDC is if a person is exposed to a close contact they recommend getting tested after day 3 or 5 to make sure you arent an asymptomatic carrier.

While both LSC and TSC have decided to change their guidelines the West Lafayette Community School Corporation hasn't decided yet. In a statement, the interim superintendent said the following,

"After the release of the Governor's Executive order, we organized a meeting within the West Lafayette Schools composed of board representatives, school administration, school nurses, and the physicians who advise our district. The plan is to meet early Friday morning. The district's School Opening Plan states we will follow the guidelines of CDC, state, and local officials. We are fortunate that the leadership of West Lafayette Schools adopted the full mask recommendation from the beginning of the school year. The Executive Order does not expect more than what we are presently implementing. The order allows school boards the option of having requirements and measures that may be more restrictive, but not less restrictive. Our discussions will be how we best serve our students, families, staff, and community during this continual unusual time."
When Lt. Col. Green returned to his post at Camp Grant following his expedition into the White Mountain area he filed a report to his superiors in California on Aug. 20, 1869. In that report he included his recommendation that a reservation be created for the Apache Bands living in the area 
Children take part in a running game at a kindergarten in Huzhou, Zhejiang Province, on Wednesday, the first day of the new semester for most students across China. Schools nationwide are taking steps to relieve the academic burden of their students and promote the all-around development of the youngsters. [For China Daily/Wu Zheng]

Primary and junior high school students in Beijing benefited from a new education policy on Wednesday, as they were allowed to stay on campus to pursue their hobbies and other after-school activities.

From Wednesday, the school day starts at 8:20 am, which is about one hour later than previously. However, parents still can send their children earlier than 8:20 am if they need to go to work early.

The nationwide "double reduction" policy, aims to relieve students of the burden of excessive homework and reduce the need for after-school tutoring. One of the key measures is to allow students to stay on school premises for two hours beyond 4 pm, the previous closing time for schools.

At 5:40 pm on Wednesday, the first day of the new school semester, many students started to trickle out from the campus of the Primary School Affiliated to the University of International Business and Economics in Chaoyang District.

Unlike the past, more parents were waiting outside the school to pick up their children, instead of grandparents. When schools had closed at 4 pm, many parents were still at work and couldn't collect their children.

"It's good that I can come to pick up my daughter," said a mother surnamed Wang whose son is in the second grade at the primary school. "I have bought extra exercise books for my kid to do since she has no homework now. I still need to know how well he has learned."

The changes mean that students can choose to do their homework on the school campus after classes.

Wang said teachers will need to communicate more with parents to keep them updated on the performance of students.

"We had a reading course after classes ended at 4 pm," said Zhang Zirui, a second grade student at the primary school. "Then we did our homework at school. I don't have to do homework when I go back home."

Lan Lan, a student at a junior high school, said she now has less homework. "The teacher has cut out the repetitive content in the homework, which I welcome a lot," she said.

She said she stayed at her school until 6:30 pm on Wednesday. "My teachers have asked our opinions on what activities we would like to attend in the future for the after-school period," she said. "The school is planning more events, which I'm looking forward to very much."

Despite the new policy, outside the primary school's campus employees from after-school English-language training institutions were handing out leaflets to parents on Wednesday.

Beijing education authorities announced earlier no new tutoring institutions will be approved and existing ones will be reviewed. Restrictions on course content and timetables were also released.

Many Chinese cities, including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, and Chengdu, Sichuan Province, have adopted the "double reduction" policy.

The Guangzhou Education Bureau issued a notice last week on reducing the burden of primary and junior high school students while promising to improve the quality of education.

At Xiaobei Road Primary School, students in the first and second grades are not assigned written homework. Third and fourth graders have written daily homework that is designed to be completed in 40 minutes, while those in the fifth and sixth grades do one hour of written homework, said the school's principal Han Ping.

Teachers coordinate on the total homework load, she said, adding that the school administration is working to improve the quality of homework to make it more interesting to students.

Wang, the father of a junior high school student, said the measures showed the greater emphasis the government places on compulsory education and its intentions to lessen the burden on schools, parents and students.

(Source: China Daily)
Chinese President Xi Jinping addresses the Global Trade in Services Summit of the 2021 China International Fair for Trade in Services via video, Sept. 2, 2021. [Xinhua/Huang Jingwen]

BEIJING, Sept. 2 (Xinhua)  President Xi Jinping on Thursday unveiled a slew of new measures to facilitate trade in services in the country's latest efforts to share its development opportunities and boost global economic recovery.

China will explore the development of national demonstration zones to promote the innovative development of services trade and increase support for services sector in countries participating in the Belt and Road Initiative, Xi said while addressing the Global Trade in Services Summit of the 2021 China International Fair for Trade in Services (CIFTIS) held in Beijing.

The country will optimize the rules for the services sector by supporting Beijing and other localities in piloting the alignment of domestic rules with the ones in high-standard international free trade agreements and in building digital trade demonstration zones, Xi said.

A stock exchange will be set up in Beijing to serve innovation-oriented small and medium-sized firms, Xi said.

"Let us join hands to defeat the COVID-19 pandemic and get through these tough times," Xi said.

"Using peace, development and win-win cooperation as the 'golden key', we will be able to address the challenges facing the world economy and international trade and investment, and create a brighter future for all," he said.

Themed "Towards Digital Future and Service Driven Development," the 2021 CIFTIS will last from Sept. 2 to Sept. 7.

As a massive exhibition and trading platform dedicated to trade in services, the CIFTIS played an important role in boosting worldwide trade last year, when the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted global trade.

Addressing the CIFTIS in 2020, Xi made three proposals, calling on all countries to jointly foster an open and inclusive cooperation environment, work together to invigorate momentum for cooperation driven by innovation, and break new ground in win-win cooperation.

At a press conference last week, Vice Minister of Commerce Wang Bingnan said the ministry has rolled out 36 detailed measures to implement what was proposed at last year's CIFTIS, with many seeing significant progress.

For example, the country introduced its first negative list for cross-border trade in services at the Hainan free trade port in July, marking the highest level of opening-up in the cross-border services trade realm.

As COVID-19 has accelerated the digitalization of trade in services, this year's CIFTIS features a dedicated section for digital services for the first time.

The 2021 CIFTIS has attracted the registration from more than 12,000 enterprises, up 52 percent from that in 2020. Representatives from 153 countries and regions signed up for the event, compared with 148 last year.

Chinese President Xi Jinping addresses the Global Trade in Services Summit of the 2021 China International Fair for Trade in Services via video, Sept. 2, 2021. [Xinhua/Yue Yuewei]

(Source: Xinhua)
Three Chinese recipients of the Florence Nightingale Medal (from left to right): Tuo Yali, Cheng Shouzhen and Hu Minhua [Xinhua]

Three Chinese nurses awarded the Florence Nightingale Medal this year, the highest distinction in the field of nursing, all fought on the front line against COVID-19, the Red Cross Society of China said on Thursday.

Vice-President Wang Qishan, who is also honorary chairman of the society, awarded medals to the three nurses at the Great Hall of the People on Thursday.

Wang Ping, vice-president of the society, said that 25 nurses from 18 countries were awarded the accolade this year, including three from China, the most from any country.

The honor, given once every two years, recognizes exceptional courage and devotion to caring for people affected by emergencies, as well as exemplary achievements and pioneering spirits in the field of public health or nursing education.

Wang Ping told a news conference that since 1983, when China began submitting candidates to the international committee, 83 Chinese nurses had been given the award.

Cheng Shouzhen, one of this year's recipients, is the head of the nursing department at Sun Yat-sen University's First Affiliated Hospital in Guangzhou, Guangdong Province.

Early last year, Cheng, 59, headed a medical team treating patients in Wuhan, Hubei Province  the city hit hardest during the domestic epidemic  for 61 days. Less than a month after returning from the city, she was dispatched to Serbia to assist that country's battle against COVID-19.

"As a member of the foreign medical aid team, I visited 22 cities experiencing serious local outbreaks and 84 designated hospitals or communities," she said.

Hu Minhua, 53, another recipient based at the Ninth Hospital of Nanchang in Jiangxi Province, has been dealing with HIV/AIDS patients for more than two decades. She also used her expertise to save COVID-19 patients in Wuhan last year.

"The most important thing in caring for patients, whether they are infected with AIDS or COVID-19, is to have sympathy for them and think of and address their needs from their perspectives," she said.

Tuo Yali, a 47-year-old intensive care nurse at Qingyang People's Hospital in Gansu Province, also received the award. She has coped with extremely dangerous situations with limited resources during several emergencies, including the severe acute respiratory syndrome outbreak in 2003, the Wenchuan earthquake in 2008 and the COVID-19 epidemic.

While in Wuhan, she helped care for 278 COVID-19 patients, including 156 in severe or critical condition.

(Source: China Daily)
Baku is the capital of Azerbaijan, one of the former Soviet republics. It is located on a small peninsula that juts out into the Caspian Sea. Historically, the city was an important center for the religion of Zoroastrianism and the home of several Jewish communities from Europe and the Caucusas region. Baku has been highly-coveted for centuries by various empires, in large part because of its natural harbor and vast petroleum resources. Several empires ruled Baku long before it became the capital of an independent Azerbaijan. Today, the city is well-known for its oil economy. In fact, oil has been exploited in the vicinity of Baku for more than a millennium.

Geography and Demographics

There are a couple of theories as to the origins of the name Baku. One theory hypothesizes that the name comes from the old Persian term, Bagavan, which means City of God. Another theory suggests that the name comes from the Persian term, Badkube, which translates as city where the wind blows, denoting the fact that Baku is frequented by blowing winds. The issue with this theory, however, is that the word Badkube was invented in the 6th century CE, while Baku was founded prior to the 5th century CE. In the Azeri language, Baku is pronounced Baki.

Panoramic view of Baku - the capital city of Azerbaijan that is located by the Caspian Sea shore.

Baku is situated on the southern end of the Absheron Peninsula, on the wide Bay of Baku, which forms part of the Caspian Sea. To its south are several small islands that form the Baku Archipelago. The coastal area of the city lies as much as 28 meters below sea level. Surrounding the city are a number of mud volcanoes and salt lakes. Bakus land area totals 260 sq. km. During Soviet times, the city was a popular vacation spot. Now, however, Baku, the Absheron Peninsula, and the Caspian Sea are classified as the most environmentally-devastated places on Earth. This environmental damage includes severe air, soil, and water pollution.

View of the historical mosques and the walls of Shirvanshahs Palace in the Old town with the modern glass Flame Towers skyscrapers in dramatic sunset light.

The city of Baku is divided into three parts: The Old Town, the boom town, and the Soviet-built town. The downtown area of the city is located in the Old Town, and includes the old walled city of Baku, which has been designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The walled city consists of narrow alleys, cobblestone streets, and ancient buildings, such as the Palace of the Shirvanshahs, the Maiden Tower, and the Juma Mosque. Since 1988, more than 225 street names have been changed to erase the citys Soviet legacy.

Tourists walking on the streets of Baku, Azerbaijan. Editorial credit: Vastram / Shutterstock.com

Bakus population is estimated to be about 2.37 million, making it the largest city in Azerbaijan, and home to approximately one in five Azerbaijanis. More than 90% of the citys population is of ethnic Azeri origin. Prior to 1988, there were significant communities of Russians, Armenians, and Jews. Azeri, a Turkic language that is the official language of Azerbaijan, is the most spoken language in Baku, but many of the citys residents also speak Russian as a second language. More than 94% of Bakus population practice forms of Islam (mainly Shiite). Prior to the Soviet era, Baku was home to three different Jewish communities: The Ashkenazim (Jews of Central and Eastern European origin), the Mountain Jews, and the Georgian Jews. When Azerbaijan was part of the Soviet Union, the Soviets seized most of the Jewish property in the city, though following the USSRs collapse, the Azerbaijani government gave the ownership of several synagogues and a Jewish college back to the citys Jewish community.

Economy

Oil platform off the Caspian Sea coast near Baku, Azerbaijan.

Petroleum is the mainstay of the Azerbaijani economy. Oil was expropriated naturally in Baku as far back as the 10th century CE. The first oil well in the city was drilled in the mid-19th century. Today, much of the Azerbaijans oil and gas infrastructure resides in Baku, including a pipeline that transports crude oil from a terminal close to the city all the way to the port city of Ceyhan, located on the southeastern Mediterranean coast of Turkey. Industries located in Baku produce equipment used by the petroleum sector. The city is also home to metalworking, shipbuilding and repair industries, electrical machinery manufacturing, the production of chemicals and construction materials, and food processing. The citys stock exchange has been operating since February 2001. Hotels owned by Western companies have also been built in Baku since the fall of the USSR. In the future, Baku has the potential to be a leader in the development of green energy. Because of its windy climate, for example, the city makes an ideal site for the development of wind energy.

History

Ateshgah Fire Temple in Surakhani near Baku, Azerbaijan.

What is now Baku has been inhabited since the Stone Age, about 100,000 years ago. There may also have been a settlement there during the Bronze Age. According to Christian tradition, it is said that the apostle Bartholomew was killed at the bottom of Bakus Maiden Tower. A fifth century historian named Priscus of Panium, mentioned the presence of the famous Bakuvian fires, which indicates that the site was an important center for the Zoroastrian religion. During the Islamic period, Baku is mentioned as a place with vast petroleum resources and a natural harbor suitable for both fishing and shipping.

The Old City Icheri Sheher in Baku, Azerbaijan.

From about the 8th century CE, Baku was under the control of the Arab Caliphate. Later on, a dynasty known as the Shirvanshahs took over. The Shirvanshahs established an Azeri state in the historical region of Shirvan. Between the 7th and 10th centuries, Baku was a frequent target for the Khazars, a semi-nomadic Turkic people. Between the 10th century and the middle of the 12th century, the city was a target for the medieval Slavic state known as Kievan Rus. The Mongols invaded Baku in the 13th century. The early 16th century marked the beginning of approximately two centuries of almost uninterrupted Persian rule. Russia was the last imperial power to gain control of Baku, when it did so in the early 19th century. Oil exploitation on a wide commercial scale began in 1872, when the Russians sold parcels of oil-rich land around Baku to private investors. Shortly thereafter, investors from all over Europe and the United States came to invest in the regions oil patch. These investors included the famous Rothschilds and Nobel brothers. An industrial oil belt, which was dubbed Black City, was built near Baku. By the 1890s, Baku provided 95% of the oil used by the Russian Empire, and about half all the oil in the entire world.

In 1917, in the midst of World War I and the collapse of the Russian Empire, Baku fell under the control of the so-called Baku Commune, led by a Bolshevik named Stepan Shaumyan. In the same year, the Bolsheviks, with the help of an Armenian militia, massacred thousands of Azeris and other Muslims in the city during what were called the March Days. A year later, members of the Azerbaijani faction in the Transcaucasian Sejm (parliament) declared Azerbaijans independence. Azerbaijani forces then captured Baku and massacred thousands of Armenians in revenge for the March Days. On April 28, 1920, the Russian Bolsheviks invaded Baku, which became the capital of the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic shortly thereafter. Baku and the rest of Azerbaijan were part of the USSR until it collapsed in 1991. In the same year, the first independent mayor of Baku was appointed. In the early years of the 21st century, the oil economy in the city entered a period of resurgence. New oil infrastructure was developed, including the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli field and the Shah Deniz gas field.
The city of Antwerp, 2nd-largest city of Belgium, has awarded to TotalEnergies the extension of its public charging network for electric vehicles. It will expand the existing network by installing new EV charge points by 2024, including high power charge.

BRUSSELS, BELGIUM: The city of Antwerp, Belgium's second-largest city, has awarded the extension and development of its public charging network for Electric Vehicles (EV) to TotalEnergies. As part of this exclusive contract, the largest to date awarded in the country, TotalEnergies will expand the existing network of the city of Antwerp by installing new EV charge points by 2024, including high power charge.

Awarded until 2034 for standard charging points (22 kW) and until 2038 for high power charge points, the contract covers the supply, the installation, the technical and commercial operation of the public charging network. The entire electricity needs of this network will be covered by green electricity produced by TotalEnergies, notably from offshore wind farms, allowing Antwerps EV users to benefit from a 100 percent renewable electricity charge for their vehicles.

"We are very pleased to have been entrusted by the City of Antwerp with this concession over the coming years, and we will use our expertise to support the evolution of mobility for its citizens. In Belgium, as in other markets where we are expanding into electric mobility, we are committed to providing a user experience and electric charging services that meet our customers expectations, said Alexis Vovk, president, marketing & services, TotalEnergies.

We are very pleased with this agreement. Based on realistic forecasts, it allows us to meet the needs for charging infrastructures in Antwerp, while at the same time responding rapidly and efficiently to the concrete questions posed by the development of electric mobility in the city," said Koen Kennis, First Alderman in charge of mobility for the city of Antwerp. "The city of

Antwerp and its citizens are indeed very keen to allow a judicious and reasonable deployment of charging stations in the streets, in order to preserve the urban aesthetics, while keeping a fair number of parking spaces for the inhabitants.

This new contract strengthens TotalEnergies' position as a key player in electric mobility in Europe, in line with its ambition to operate more than 150,000 EV charge points by 2025.

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The spread of COVID-19 from its current epicentre in Sydney, to western parts of the state of New South Wales (NSW), is creating a crisis for rural health care systems, especially those that cover the highly vulnerable populations of Aboriginal communities. Currently, more than 750 indigenous people are infected and one Aboriginal man has died.

Australian Medical Assistance Teams in Wilcannia offering door-to-door COVID-19 vaccinations and testing. (Source: Wilcannia On The Baaka Darling River Facebook)

The virus is now widespread in rural NSW. In the regional hub of Dubbo, in the states central west, there are more than 450 active cases. Other rural towns closer to Sydney also have active infections including Orange, Bathurst, Parkes, Forbes and Bourke.

Western Local Health district chief executive Scott McLachlan told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) last week that the infection levels were very concerning and the numbers of cases infectious in the community means the potential further spread of this virus across the whole of Western NSW. Further adding increased pressure to the health care system, 156 health staff were in isolation after being identified as close contacts.

A microcosm of the disaster facing the Aboriginal population is the situation unfolding in the small rural town of Wilcannia, almost 1000 kilometres west of Sydney.

With the announcement of seven new cases today, there are now 85 COVID infections in the town. Given that the population is just 745, more than 11 percent have contracted the virus. This makes it the largest hotspot in the state by per capita infection, with more than double the rate of the worst hotspots in Sydney. Over 60 percent of the population are Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and at least 62 of the active cases are people who are Indigenous.

The dire social conditions in these rural communities are accelerating the disaster. In a 2017 survey conducted of households in western NSW, the Murdi Paaki Regional Assembly (MPRA) found that 54 percent of Wilcannia residents lived in properties that were often or always crowded. Some 26 percent said their living conditions had affected their health.

In an interview with the ABC, Chloe Quayle, who grew up in the area, said COVID-19 was ripping through the community like wildfire at the moment, which is really, really scary. Quayle explained that people were isolating in tents down on the river and stuff, and sleeping out the front [of their homes] if they tested positive. How are you supposed to isolate when there is so much overcrowding in the homes?

Catherine Bugmy, interviewed by the Sydney Morning Herald, has been forced to wash her clothes in a nearby lagoon, as she is not allowed to use communal washing facilities since testing positive for the virus. She does not have access to a microwave or toaster, and was given stale food by the authorities, which she had to cook with a fire outside. Weve been cooking kangaroo tail, and dry curry, she said, Government got to put their foot down and help.

COVID test results are taking up to a week to be reported, leading to infected people spending longer in the community and transmitting the virus. The towns medical centre does not have intensive care or ventilator facilities, and nor do many regional hospitals.

Last week, an Aboriginal woman with COVID-19, who had difficulty breathing, was reportedly turned away from the Wilcannia medical service. Only later was she airlifted to Adelaide Hospital, nearly 600 kilometres away.

In a Facebook video about the incident, indigenous woman Monica Kerwin noted the absence of any ventilators in Wilcannia, commenting: This woman needs medical treatment right now she is struggling to breathe. Kerwin said that when the woman was first at the medical facility, they wouldnt let her in the front door. They made her sit out in the cold.

In a chilling warning, Kerwin added that NSW Health does not have a COVID plan here, they dont have ventilators. They dont have anything. I think theyve just got body bags.

The NSW Government is acutely aware of the existing healthcare crisis among rural Aboriginal communities. In 2012, the current NSW Health Chief Medical Officer, Dr Kerry Chant, prepared a report into the health problems of Aboriginal people in Western NSW.

Titled The Health of Aboriginal People of NSW: Report of the Chief Health Officer, it covered Aboriginal life expectancy and child mortality, the health of mothers and children, risk factors for ill health, as well as delivery of health services to this population.

Now almost a decade old, the report found that hospitalisation rates were 1.7 times higher for Aboriginal people than for the general population. The indigenous were also 2.7 times more likely to be hospitalised for diabetes, and suffered increased rates for cardiovascular disease, stroke and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. All these underlying conditions heighten the risk factors for COVID-19.

The rates have only increased in the past ten years. According to a 2019 report by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), more than half of the NSW Aboriginal population had one or more chronic conditions that posed a significant health problem.

Last year, the Maari Ma Aboriginal Health corporation warned federal Indigenous Health Minister Ken Wyatt of grave fears that the virus would spread to the vulnerable communities. They outlined the risks caused by high rates of overcrowded and poorly maintained housing, a lack of food security, a highly mobile population and issues with poor health and chronic diseases.

Maari Ma CEO Bob Davis, author of the letter, wrote the poverty and extreme vulnerability of Aboriginal people and communities in the Murdi Pakki region [which encompasses much of far-western NSW] is a direct result of decades of failed government policies. Im sure you can understand our anxiety that these failures do not continue, or worsen, throughout the COVID-19 crisis.

In a letter to Prime Minister Scott Morrison this week, Maari Ma Aboriginal Health stated that a humanitarian crisis was unfolding. The official response had been chaotic, and the mistakes and problems were mounting...Disappointingly no tangible plan was in place prior to this outbreak that could have been easily implemented. As a result, weve been playing catch up from day one.

The NSW Liberal-National government has sought to redirect responsibility for this crisis onto the very communities affected. Health Minister Brad Hazzard labelled those who attended a funeral in Wilcannia, on August 13, as selfish, stating if you are actually spreading the virus, you could be responsible for people's deaths. As family members of the deceased have noted, the funeral was held prior to the announcement of a state-wide lockdown.

In reality, the NSW government is responsible for the crisis occurring in regional communities, as well as in Sydney. With the support of the state Labor opposition, it has refused to implement workplace closures and other measures demanded by epidemiologists to stop the spread, and is instead insisting that the population must learn to live with the virus.

Hazzard also insinuated that vaccine hesitancy among indigenous communities was contributing to the outbreaks. Last week, the ABC reported that only 6.3 percent of the Aboriginal population in Western NSW was fully-vaccinated, compared with 26 percent of the non-indigenous population in the region.

Jamie Newman, from Orange Aboriginal Medical services, told the ABCs 7.30 Report that vaccination rates were low due to reduced supply. We had overwhelming support for [vaccinations] but when we're having 100 to 200 doses of vaccine delivered a fortnight, you can't maintain connection with communities by offering something that's not there, he said. The low rates are one expression of a shambolic rollout across the board.

The crisis in Wilcannia, and more broadly, is an indictment of state and federal governments, Labor and Liberal-National alike. For decades they have slashed public healthcare funding in remote areas, regional centres and the major cities alike. Now their homicidal program of letting the virus rip, to ensure corporate profits, is leading to a catastrophe for workers, the vulnerable and the poor.
So little does Dana Inc. care about its workers that it keeps them on the assembly line while it is sprayed with toxic chemicals supposedly to prevent the spread of COVID-19, workers at the Ft. Wayne, Indiana plant have told the World Socialist Web Site. As a result, workers have been exposed to the powerful chemical disinfectant Aspen One Step, which has specific warnings about the dangers of ingestion, inhalation or eye or skin exposure, the workers report.

Dana plant at Ft. Wayne

One worker, who was angered over this reckless practice, explained what happened. A worker called into the union and reported it to Human Resources that they tested positive. Management instructed the chip house cleaning crew employees to spray the department for COVID-19. The shift supervisor instructed workers not to leave while the spraying took place. Within minutes workers had headaches and were nauseated, and the supervisor refused to let workers go home. They gassed the line and didnt allow workers to go home!

Other workers described the ruthless negligence of management. The BS supervisor told the union he would discipline all the workers. After a struggle by the workers involving the plant superintendent, the workers were sent home, he reported. One particularly arrogant supervisor, Ron Bortner, a human resource manager, told workers the chemical was harmless and said, You could eat [it] on your food, the worker reported.

In fact, the label on the bottle, which workers photographed and sent to the WSWS, has a long list of precautionary statements about exposure to the fungicide and the emergency measures that must be taken if it is inhaled, ingested or makes contact with the eyes or skin.

Aspen ONE STEP sprayed onto workers on the line

The label says the following:

First Aid:

 Have the product container or label with you when calling a poison control center or doctor or going for treatment.

If in Eyes:

 Hold eye open and rinse slowly and gently with water for 15-20 minutes.

 Remove contact lenses, if present, after the first 5 minutes, then continue rinsing eye.

 Call a poison control center or doctor for treatment advice.

If on Skin or Clothing:

 Take off contaminated clothing.

 Rinse skin immediately with plenty of water for 15-20 minutes.

 Call poison control center or doctor for treatment advice.

If Swallowed:

 Call poison control center or doctor immediately for treatment advice.

 Have person sip a glass of water if able to swallow.

 Do not induce vomiting unless told to do so by the poison control center or doctor.

 Do not give anything by mouth to an unconscious person.

If Inhaled:

 Move person to fresh air.

 If person is not breathing, call 911 or an ambulance, then give artificial respiration, preferably by mouth to mouth, if possible.

 Call a poison control center or doctor for further treatment advice.

Note to Physician:

 Probable mucosal damage may contraindicate the use of gastric lavage.

In other words, the product could damage the nose, throat and lungs, and this could be worsened by traditional efforts to pump the stomach (gastric lavage). According to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the disinfectants chief chemical ingredient, ammonium chloride, is on the Right to Know Hazardous Substance List and can severely irritate the skin, irritate the nose, throat and lungs if inhaled, cause an asthma-like allergy, and exposure can affect the kidneys.

According to a production worker, the spraying of One Step was not limited to one section of the plant nor was production stopped. They bring in these contractors to spray some mystery chemical to clean the area. They wont stop production. Theyll just tell the infected person(s) to go home and continue the line.

Bortner, the human resources manager, was promoted after the line was sprayed, workers said. They described his policy of harassing workers, its basically a human rights violation. If you get FMLA, you have a bullseye on your back by them.

Like other corporations, Dana Inc. sacrifices safety for production and profit. People are dying in the plant! another worker said. I knew three production workers and one skilled tradesman who died. The line they worked on had 11 people before. These workers were buffing materials and repairing machines. One guy died after a smoldering fire, not because of the fire itself, but inhalation of the smoldering smoke led to cancer. The two other workers also had cancer and died.

There was an exhaust filter for these machines, so workers wouldnt breathe in the smoke. Many times, it was disconnected. People would call OSHA, but nothing would happen. The union didnt do anything either. These local officials should all be in prison.

After reading about Danny Waltersa Dana worker who died after suffering a seizure at the Dry Ridge, Kentucky plant in June 2021he continued, There should be a collection for his wife. Its absurd what happened to him. They dont care whether we live or die. Foremen at our plant victimize workers. Its similar to workers getting murdered by cops.

He continued explaining the lack of repairs in the plant with the continuation of the line. When it rains or snows, the roof leaks. One winter we had leaks, and a repair crew was hired in. The repair equipment slipped on water and knocked out the transformer pole, and the crew was fired. Instead of repairing the roof, they put out barrels to collect the water.

A Tier One worker said, Several people are falling out like flies with no sanitization in the plant. In many departments theres hardly any air flow, oil is spilled, parts are hanging incorrectly, the roof leaks. None of these are ever fixed. Most times it gets up to 100-115 degrees in the summer time. If we do get fans, they are damaged, dusty and oil-covered, with broken wires. I left work wiping sweat off my forehead, and it was crystalized salt. You step outside the plant or get a drink, the supervisor scolds you to get back to work.

Oil covered fan given to workers by management

Roughly 4,000 workers in the US are fighting against Dana, which recorded $484 million in gross earnings in the first half of 2021. The workers have overwhelmingly defeated the pro-company contract being pushed by the United Auto Workers and United Steelworkers unions.

Workers voiced their opposition to the contract. Were expected to keep making more parts while things are taken away from us. The union gets paid. Why would they care if we get paid less or treated poorly? Jeff Gleason, a District 7 United Steelworkers rep, made $103,559 in 2019, while Tier Two workers and workers hired after 2017 will not reach $22.00 an houror $44,000 a yearuntil 2026, under the UAW-USW contract.

Responding to the contract struggle, another worker said, If Ford says we want parts, get back to work. The union and Dana will try to ram through the contract.

Workers at Dana Inc. already work up to 80-hour weeks. This week workers at Fort Wayne were told that the Labor Day weekend would be mandated workdays. This is after most have worked continuously for two to three weeks straight and some for even longer. The UAW and USW are trying to force workers to remain on the jobeven after they repudiated the contractin order to help management stockpile parts in the event of a strike.

Trash can to collect rain water

One worker said management told workers that the parts orders were behind. We were told Ford, GM and Chrysler made orders today. Many of the older workers said that theyre mandating us because of the threat of a strike. She continued, Growing up all I heard was how great Dana Fort Wayne and Fort Wayne GM was. Working here is something else. When you see the trash cans filled from rain water coming through the ceiling, its like a Third World country.

Join the Dana Workers Rank-and-File Committee and fight by our side. Email us at danawrfc@gmail.com, and text us at (248)-602-0936.
As far as providing a picture of the state of the Australian economy goes, the national accounts figures released on Wednesday, which showed a 0.7 percent increase in growth for the June quarter, and a 9.6 percent increase for the year, were largely meaningless.

Centrelink queue in the inner-city Sydney suburb of Leichardt during 2020 [Photo: WSWS Media]

As the Guardians economics commentator Greg Jericho put it, the figures demonstrated that the annual growth exceeded the previous record of 9 percent, in March 1967. If that sounds absurd, well yes, it is, Jericho wrote. He recalled that during the mining boom, the highest annual growth was 4.9 percent and you dont have to have a degree in economics to know something is amiss.

Although worthless in economic terms, the growth number for the quarter, well above estimates that had predicted a rise of only 0.3 percent, had decisive political significance.

It was immediately seized on by the political and media establishment to push for the abandonment of meaningful public health measures to deal with the Delta variant of COVID-19.

The Australian Financial Review (AFR) immediately sprang into action. It has been at the forefront of a campaign to change the mindset of the public, insisting that that measures must be taken to deal with the pandemic.

According to the AFRs economics editor John Kehoe, the surprisingly solid growth in the June quarter demonstrated how commerce flourishes when lockdowns are not throttling the economy.

While the mood was dark in lockdown states, the national accounts showed that if restrictions were eased the economy can thrive, concluding that soon, Australians will have to emerge from their caves, with thousands of daily virus cases circulating in the community.

Federal treasurer Josh Frydenberg, who has been warned by his department that a contraction of at least 2 percent can be expected in the September quarter, seized on the figures to push for the ending of public health restrictions.

Commenting on the national accounts data, Frydenberg highlighted the statement by Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews this week, signalling his governments abandonment of any attempt to eradicate the Delta variant.

I welcome the acknowledgement in Victoria today that eliminating the Delta variant is an impossibility. It cannot be done. No country has done that and based on the best medical advice we have, we cant do it, Frydenberg said.

This is an outright lie. Through stringent public health measures, China has been able to keep infections and deaths many times below levels elsewhere, and modeling, presented by renowned epidemiologists to a seminar hosted by the World Socialist Web Site, showed that Delta could be eliminated.

As for the growth number itself, there was considerable hype around the fact that it was above the estimates that had been put at 0.3 percent at best.

This ignored the fact that the figures showed the economy was slowing even before the Delta variant struck. There were relatively few lockdowns in the June quarter, but growth of 0.7 percent was well below the 3.1 percent recorded in the December quarter and the 1.8 percent in March.

The main items in securing a positive rate were the increases in household spending, up by 1.1 percent, adding 0.6 percentage points to the overall figure, and government spending. Public inventories soared by 460 percent to an all-time high of $2.1 billion, much of which is calculated to have been vaccine stockpiles.

The figures for the September quarter will certainly show growth falling into negative territory, with the only question being by how much, and whether the decline will continue into the last three months of the year.

The Treasury estimate is for a contraction of at least 2 percent in the September quarter, with other forecasts considerably greater. Deloitte Access Economics has predicted a September contraction of more than 4 percent.

Internal data compiled by the Commonwealth Bank on credit and debit card spending has shown that consumer spending has dropped by 9 percent so far in the September quarter. The bank is forecasting a big contraction of around 4.5 percent for the three-month period.

But, as economic distress worsens, the federal government is moving to cut relief spending, as it pushes for the economy to open up, regardless of the level of COVID-19 cases.

Frydenberg said that once the vaccination targets of 70 and 80 percent of the adult population were reached, there should be no expectation that the scale of our economic support would need to continue in the same way it is today.

Some restrictions may remain before those levels were reached and that would need to be factored into government decision-making. But large programs would not be required. That economic support cant continue, he said.

The existing levels of support are already inadequate. The number of people receiving the JobSeeker unemployment benefit has increased by 36 percent, compared with pre-pandemic levels. While some people are getting the $750 disaster payment, others are being forced to try and survive on $315 a week.

As Frydenberg was claiming that the latest growth data showed the resilience of the Australian economy, Foodbank Australia, the leading provider of food and groceries to charities, has reported that it is handing out as many hampers in one day as it would normally do in a week. The organisations chief executive, Brianna Casey, said the demand was mind-blowing.

In NSW, we are receiving thousands of inquiries. We have actually seen a growth in food relief of 200 percent in the last nine weeks. Last week in both NSW and the ACT, we had the biggest distribution week on record, she said.

Research by the Australian Council of Social Services shows that because of the restrictions imposed on the very limited assistance provided by the federal government, almost 90 percent of those on the lowest incomes in lockdown are not receiving the disaster payment.

It is a very different story at the financial heights of the economythe constituency for which Frydenberg speaks with his talk of resilience.

Oxfam has estimated that, in the 18 months of the pandemic, Australias 31 billionaires have seen their fortunes increase by nearly $85 billion.

The most egregious expression of this process is the iron ore magnate, Andrew Forrest, who has raked in around $857 million a year for the past 10 yearsa rate of wealth accumulation of $2.35 million a day.

At the same time, a veritable looting operation of public funds has been carried out by some of the countrys largest companies. According to the Australian Broadcasting Corporations 7.30 program, tens of thousands of companies benefited to the tune of $6 billion from the federal governments JobKeeper wage subsidy. One in six companies that received the payment suffered no fall in turnover, while others, that doubled and even tripled their turnover, received hundreds of millions of dollars.

This was not a case of a few rogue operators, but was built into the very foundations of the system, which was designed by the Morrison government in the closest collaboration with the trade union peak body, the ACTU, at the start of the pandemic.

The poster boy of this process has been Gerry Harvey, the billionaire head of the retail giant Harvey Norman. This week he belatedly repaid $6 million of JobKeeper, given to his head office, but is keeping another $15 million. The company received the money even as Harvey reported at the start of the pandemic that panic buying was an opportunity, and the companys sales were up by 9 percent.

Harvey Norman was able to receive this money all within the law. Government authorities, which ruthlessly pursue overpayments to those on Centrelink, while delaying or denying support for tens of thousands every week, have not recovered one cent of the companys JobKeeper bonus.

Together with the response to the latest national accounts data, this episode is another timely reminder of the real state of economic relations. It underscores that when capitalist politicians and their media mouthpieces speak of the economy they are not referring to the millions of workers whose labour is the source of all wealth, but to the operation of a socio-economic machine that ensures that this wealth is siphoned up to the highest layers of society.
The following statement was adopted at the latest meeting of the Cross-Canada Educators Rank-and-File Safety Committee, which was held last Saturday. Since the meeting, Canadas fourth COVID-19 wave has continued to accelerate, with 3,853 new infections and 38 deaths recorded Wednesday. The pandemic is exploding in western Canada. Over the past seven days, Alberta has recorded 159 infections per 100,000 people, Saskatchewan 135 per 100,000 people and British Columbia 93. Alberta has begun transferring patients and suspending non-emergency surgeries as hospitals fill up, while a Saskatchewan-based infectious disease specialist has warned that the provinces health care system is on the verge of getting crushed.

The CERSC will hold its next meeting on Saturday, September 11 at 1:30 p.m. EST. To participate, email cersc.csppb@gmail.com

***

As the deadly fourth wave of the COVID-19 pandemic gathers pace across Canada, all provincial governments are pursuing a criminally reckless policy of fully reopening schools. Even though scientific evidence and real-world experience with the Delta variant has shown that it poses an increased risk to children, millions of kids, teachers, and their families are being deliberately exposed to possible infection and death by the political establishment.

Protest last week against BC NDP government's school reopening plan. (Facebook)

The Cross-Canada Educators Rank-and-File Safety Committee condemns this ghoulish experiment with the lives of children, teachers, and their relatives. We demand an immediate halt to all plans for in-person learning across the country. This must be part of a comprehensive strategy involving public health measures, vaccinations, financial support for families, and non-essential business shutdowns to eliminate and eradicate COVID-19. This is the only scientifically grounded policy capable of bringing the pandemic to an end and preventing the deaths of thousands more Canadians, including children.

The only way this strategy will be adopted is through the mass mobilization of educators at all levels, support staff, parents, students, and other sections of workers in a political struggle to put the protection of human life ahead of private profit. This struggle is directed against all factions of the political establishment. Irrespective of the political party in power, all provinces are pursuing the same policy towards COVID-19. Whether it is the nominally left New Democrat government in BC, Jason Kenneys hard-right United Conservatives in Alberta, Doug Fords Tories in Ontario, or Francois Legaults Quebec first, anti-immigrant Coalition Avenir Quebec, their slogan for the new school year can be summed up as follows: let the virus rip! This is overseen by Trudeaus federal Liberal government, which has endorsed the reopening strategy at every step and cavalierly imposed a pandemic election on the population in the midst of the fourth wave.

Ontario Chief Medical Officer of Health Kieran Moore spoke for the entire political and financial elite when he declared that it is time to normalize COVID-19 in our schools. In making this statement, Moore acknowledged that 10 to 15 percent of Ontarios close to 1 million school children could be infected at any one time during the coming months. This translates into over 100,000 students in Ontario alone, and many more if schools remain open for several months.

It has been scientifically proven that such levels of infection will result in debilitating long-term illnesses and deaths on an unprecedented scale. Figures from other countries, including Britain, suggest that about 1 percent of all child COVID-19 cases result in hospitalization. In the United States, child hospitalizations and deaths have shot up over the past month following the reopening of schools.

At an event on August 22 sponsored by the World Socialist Web Site entitled For a global strategy to stop the pandemic and save lives!, Dr. Malgorzata Gasperowicz, a researcher at the University of Calgary and co-founder of Zero Covid Canada, cited international statistics to show that between 3 and 12 percent of infected children suffer from Long Covid. This includes severe symptoms such as mental and physical impairments, breathlessness, heart problems, and brain fog.

Applying these figures to the situation set to unfold in Canada, the ruling elite is prepared to accept hundreds of thousands of children plagued by the debilitating symptoms of Long Covid, thousands of hospitalizations, and dozens if not hundreds of child deaths. Across the country, some 10 million people remain unvaccinatedincluding 5 million childrenand therefore at high risk of infection and serious illness. While those who are fully vaccinated are generally protected against serious illness, studies have shown that if they get infected, they spread COVID-19 just as effectively as unvaccinated people.

Speaking at the same event, Dr. Michael Baker, a public health physician who has advised the New Zealand government, remarked, The precautionary principle states that you dont expose the population to a hazard if you dont know the consequences of that and where you think that the effects may be severe.

The CERSC heartily agrees. And for that reason, we conduct our struggle in irreconcilable opposition to the teacher trade unions in every province. Throughout the pandemic, they have worked tirelessly to demobilize opposition among educators to in-person learning and are now endorsing the homicidal policy of reopening schools. The line of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers Federation is repeated by every other education union across the country: government back-to-school plans may not be perfect, but if teachers have concerns over unsafe working conditions they can file a work-refusal individually.

This course will lead to disaster. The work refusal system is part of the pro-employer labour relations framework, which leaves the ultimate decision in the hands of the very same government authorities that are pushing educators and students back into life-threatening conditions. Moreover, the strategy of every educator for themselves and let the devil take the hindmost prevents the mass collective action, including protests, job actions, and the building of a nationwide strike movement that is urgently required to stop in-person learning and save lives.

The CERSC therefore urges all educators, support and administrative staff, students, parents, and workers to join a unified struggle for the following demands:

A halt to all in-person learning until the pandemic is brought under control. Billions of dollars to fund a high-quality system of online learning, and social and psychological support for students and families. The shutdown of all nonessential businesses with full compensation for all workers affected, paid for by the bumper profits made by the billionaires and other mega-rich capitalists since the beginning of the pandemic. The adoption of a comprehensive strategy of eliminating and eradicating COVID-19 across Canada. Scientists have convincingly demonstrated that by combining public health measures, school and business closures, travel bans, and vaccines, COVID-19 could be extinguished within two months. Since this strategy is only viable in the long-term on a global scale, the CERSC fights for its implementation in close collaboration with our sister educator rank-and-file committees in Britain, the US, Germany, and Australia.

Realizing these demands is the only way to prevent an unprecedented wave of mass illness and death among the most vulnerable section of the population. The CERSC therefore issues an urgent call to all sections of workers and young people to join its struggle. Now is not the time for passive contemplation or a wait-and-see attitude. If you agree with the science and wish to protect the health and lives of children, their families, and educators, now is the time to become active and fight.

Over the coming weeks, the CERSC will wage a determined campaign to explain the science on which the eradication strategy is based to educators and their supporters. It will fight to broaden the committees influence, set up rank-and-file committees in schools and other locations, and build support for a nationwide strike movement to enforce a strategy of eliminating COVID-19. The CERSC will also wage a resolute struggle to link the fight of educators and support staff to stop the pandemic and save lives with the strike wave that has swept sections of the working class across Canada in recent months to demand better working conditions and higher wages, including among industrial, food processing, and health care workers.

For information about setting up a rank-and-file safety committee at your school or educational institution, contact the CERSC at cersc.csppb@gmail.com.
August 30 marked the first day of the City University of New Yorks 2021-2022 academic year.

The reopening had been touted by the CUNY administration as a victory over the pandemic. This was in line with the New York City governments reckless and delusional #homecoming campaign and its criminal drive to reopen K-12 schools, under conditions where the majority of the citys children remain ineligible for the COVID-19 vaccine.

CUNY Graduate Center (Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

The resumption of mass, in-person learning will inevitably lead to a sharp increase in infections, hospitalizations and deaths among students, professors and staff, as well as their family members, friends and loved ones.

The CUNY system is the largest municipal university system in the US. It has an enrollment of over a quarter of a million students and nearly 50,000 employees, including approximately 20,000 non-academic and 30,000 academic staff. The City College system is functionally integrated into the professional, industrial, commercial educational and cultural life of the nations most populous city.

Approximately 45 percent of the nearly 50,000 course sections across CUNYs 25 colleges and campuses will be conveyed in a hybrid or in-person format, while some 55 percent will be delivered online, the university systems website states.

The administration initially mandated that all students participating in face-to-face instruction show proof of vaccination, but allowed those with religious or medical objections to be exempt.

After an outcry from faculty and staff opposing non-vaccinated individuals being admitted onto campus, the policy was changed to require all students to become vaccinated and submit documentation by September 27 or face academic consequences. This decision coincided with the Food and Drug Administrations full authorization of the Pfizer vaccine last week.

CUNY students and staff have criticized this change as being too little, too late, as the deadline for proof of vaccination will come nearly a month after classes begin.

The current official seven-day average for new infections in New York, just above 1,700, is nearly six times higher than three months ago, while hospitalizations have increased by a factor of more than two since the beginning of the summer. The largest increase in positive cases in the city, according to Department of Health (DOH) data, is among residents aged 18 to 24, and 25 to 34, approximately 70 percent of whom are fully vaccinated.

The DOH released a memo on August 23 on breakthrough infections, which warned that vaccinated individuals had the potential to spread the Delta variant, possibly just as severely as non-vaccinated persons.

Only 15 percent of New York City residents aged 12 to 17 have received two doses of the vaccine, and no vaccine has as yet been approved for children below this age. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has reported a surge in childhood infections, with more than 180,000 new positive test results and 24 deaths among US children in the third week of August.

A recent outbreak at Duke University in North Carolina, a university with similar COVID-19 mitigation policies as CUNYs, saw over 350 positive test results in a student population that was 98 percent vaccinated. The administration responded by allowing for more remote class options, shutting down indoor dining, and requiring masking outdoors as well as indoors. This indicates that even with strict mitigation policies, the spread of infections is still inevitable unless full shutdowns are implemented.

These figures by themselves undermine the narrative pushed by the New York City government along with the corporate and media establishment that the individual choice to become vaccinated is the singular mechanism for ending the pandemic. The drive to reopen universities under these conditions very clearly spells disaster.

The efforts of CUNY to force the resumption of in-person learning have been met with outright hostility by students, faculty, staff and parents. An August 20 report in CUNY Queens Colleges student-led newspaper warned of rising sympathy for strike action.

Last week, an anonymous twitter account tagged COVID @ CUNY was launched for CUNY faculty to submit reopening safety concerns and express opposition to the reopening. The account was created by a member of the Professorial Staff Congress (PSC), the union that nominally represents the 30,000 CUNY employees, though the account states that it is not officially sanctioned by the PSC.

[CUNY] John Jay [College] employees have been threatened with dismissal if they choose to hold a hybrid or in-person class online, even temporarily, out of safety concerns, one submission reported. Another submission said, Im teaching with nearly 40 in an unventilated, windowless basement room designed for 25, because my [department] added extra students. They promised not to do this but they lied. No permission for [temporary] remote [classes], and weve been warned.

Another anonymous user wrote: [CUNY] Hunter College is opening more than any other campus for no reason... Its clear the safety plan is rooted in open windows and magical thinking. We wrote up a lot of spaces on our [safety] walkthrough, and they have no answers for logical questions.

Another user wrote: The queue to get [a student identification card] at [CUNY Borough of Manhattan Community College] is massive and packed into a theatre. No social distancing, just skipping a seat each. No skipped rows... Full regular size classrooms with unmasked professors too.

One parent shared a photograph of a Hunter College auditorium jam-packed with students, adding the following comment: Approximately 900 students, according to the professor, for my sons class, a chemistry lecture that could have been on Zoom. Irresponsible given the Delta Variant. WTF, Hunter College?

In response to and in anticipation of opposition to this weeks reopening, several tightly-controlled protest events have been organized by the PSC. The PSC is Local 2334 of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). The AFT played an instrumental role in suppressing the graduate student strike the University of Michigan in September of 2020. Its millionaire president, Randi Weingarten, has worked with the Biden administration to herd millions of unvaccinated children into unsafe schools.

Last Tuesday, the PSC organized a press conference at CUNY headquarters in midtown Manhattan, which was followed by a small rally at Hunter College on Thursday and a similar event at CUNY Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn on Tuesday.

At each of these events, popular opposition to reopening has been channeled behind the #CUNYSafeReturn narrative, although the discontent is quickly spiraling out of control.

Speakers at Tuesdays press conference included PSC President James Davis and Vice President Andrea Vasquez. It featured appeals written by local and state politicians for the CUNY administration to do the right thing, urging it to follow safety protocols on proper ventilation and masking. Nowhere present in any of the events was the demand to shut down in-person learning until the pandemic is eradicated.

In response to the livestream of the press conference, one online commenter wrote that all students and staff should stay home working remotely for the whole entire school year.

Another wrote, [W]e dont want to return to normal where adjuncts are disposable, tuition increases, cuts to funding, hiring freeze, crumbling infrastructure. We need to become strike ready! And make demands for the COMMON GOOD in solidarity with the working class around the world. We wouldn't be in this situation right now if we had a union that wasnt scared of the word STRIKE.

The latter user was referring to the already atrocious conditions faced by thousands of academic workers not only at CUNY but across the country. The precariousness of the situation facing this section of the working class has been greatly exacerbated by the pandemic.

In the spring and summer of last year, the CUNY administration used the health crisis as a pretext to lay off approximately 2,800 adjuncts and staff. It then breached contract and withheld raises indefinitely from around 2,500 of its lowest-paid workers, including assistant staff and lecturers making under $47,000 annually in one of the most expensive cities in the country. Class sizes were also increased, with the administration citing low enrollment and budgetary problems.

At New York University (NYU) and Columbia University in the spring of 2021, graduate student workers took strike action against similar COVID austerity attacks. The 2020 University of Michigan graduate student strike was triggered by massive opposition to the same brutal conditions.

At NYU, Columbia and University of Michigan, strikers had to fight against not only the administration, but also their respective unions, the United Auto Workers (UAW) in the case of NYU and Columbia, the AFT in the case of Michigan. The union bureaucracy systematically worked to isolate the struggles and prevent them from gaining broader momentum.

CUNY students and employees face similar enemies in the administration as well as in the PSC. Those seeking a genuine alternative to the university systems disastrous reopening policies should not have one shred of confidence in the unions charades.

Instead, they should join the growing movement of the working class to not only eradicate the pandemic, but also to raise basic living standards, defend democratic rights and end imperialist wars abroad. We urge CUNY students and staff who wish to advance this struggle to join the International Youth and Students for Social Equality, become involved in the New York City Educators Rank and File Safety Committee, and build the International Workers Alliance of Rank and File Safety Committees .
Dear Brothers and Sisters:

This week, we Dana workers stood up across the country and shouted No! to the sweatshop contract proposed by Dana, the UAW and the USW. The tentative agreement has been voted down in plant after plant, in many cases by more than 90 percent. Our coworkers at Toledo, Ohio voted the global contract down unanimously yesterday, 435 to 0, and in Columbia, Missouri the vote was 97 percent no. No matter how the UAW and the USW try to spin it, this contract is being shot down by the overwhelming majority of workers and virtually every plant.

The company and pro-company unions thought they could force us to work for five years with no pay increase, more mandated overtime and higher copays. We said: not this time. This time, we are uniting and organizing ourselves so that our demands are met. We want an 8-hour day, 40-hour week, 75 percent pay increase, no tiers, safe COVID policies, no speed-ups, no points system, as well as functioning air conditioning and new, clean machines. We want the right to see our families, the right to be healthy, the right to a good living and the right to live our lives.

We have every right to be proud of our solidarity, across different plants, tiers and generations, and in the face of the lies and threats by the UAW and USW officials. The unions tried to isolate us from each other for so long, but we see more clearly now that our conditions are the same, that to win we must act as one, and not let the company and the union pit us against each other.

The no vote means the fight is just beginning. We are in a two-front war: against Dana and its bought-and-paid-for unions. We cannot let down our guard. To prepare for the next stage of this fight, we must lay out a battle plan, study the forces arrayed against us and marshal all our forces and allies.

The company-union conspiracy

The Dana bosses are extremely nervous about a strike. The auto industry is already facing a critical labor and parts shortage and the last thing they want is a strike at a critical components manufacturer. This puts us in an advantageous position. But it also means the corporations and the UAW/USW will do everything to prevent us from using our strength and appealing to our brothers and sisters in the auto industry to support us.

In St. Clair, Michigan, 97 percent of workers voted no, but the company is reportedly trying to get the UAW to force an immediate re-vote on the same contract. This is exactly what the UAW did to the Volvo Trucks workers in Virginia earlier this summer, after they rejected three UAW-backed contracts by as much as 91 percent.

The role of the union

But we know the UAW and USW will do everything to weaken us and try to beat us down. Union officials are berating us, threatening us, spying on us and even assaulting us to try and get us to accept five more years of sweatshop labor. They are nothing but a bunch of thugs who think they can treat us like slaves.

In Lima, Ohio, eyewitnesses report that UAW Local 1765 President P.J. Meyer had to be held back from physically attacking a female worker who asked a question about the contract process on social media. The question was whether the UAW could legally force the contract through by overriding workers no vote. Meyers angry explosion is very revealing.

One man who witnessed the apparent assault said Meyer was yelling so loud at the worker that their entire line could hear him threatening to whip her ass. The local Vice President reportedly also yelled at workers for talking about the contract on Facebook. Workers report that union executives in Toledo, Ohio and Danville, Kentucky shrieked and shouted at workers until their heads turned blue and effectively ordered them not to speak to one another or read information about the contract published by the World Socialist Web Site Autoworker Newsletter.

We workers will not accept this kind of thuggery anymore. We have rights! We have the right to free speech and to information! We will not allow our brothers and sisters to be assaulted by company sellouts simply for speaking their mind. We demand that PJ Meyer be removed as Local 1765 president, expelled from the UAW and fired from Dana immediately.

As the unions try to force us into submission, they are actively conspiring with the company, shamelessly, in full view. By extending the old contract day-by-day, they help the company stockpile products in case of a strike. In Dry Ridge, workers report the UAW appointed company supervisors as strike captains. They are forcing us to work mandated overtime and accept speed-ups. Workers in Fort Wayne learned from supervisors that there is no specific order to fill on overtime this coming weekend, they just want inventory. The company and unions are trying to get us to break our own backs scabbing on ourselves. Adding insult to injury, Dana and the USW mandated them on Labor Day.

The path forward for Dana workers

Therefore, we demand the UAW and USW set an immediate strike deadline and immediately cease extending the old contract day-by-day. We know Dana makes billions and that its CEO James Kamsickas made $10 million last year forcing us into COVID-infested sweatshops while the corporate and union executives worked from home. They can afford to meet our demands.

We need a strategy for victory. Strikes are serious, and if there is to be a strike, we want to win it. To win, we must have unity within every plant and between every plant so that we all act as one. We must have a way to rapidly disseminate information across the entire Dana workforce so that each of us knows what is happening, everywhere, all the time. We must have a way to democratically discuss our demands and our strategy. If we can do so, we will have tremendous power and we can overcome the fear that comes from feeling isolated.

We must appeal to the workers at GM, Ford, Stellantis, Deere and other companies to back us if Dana tries to run production with strikebreakers. All autoworkers have a stake in a joint fight to overturn decades of UAW-USW backed concessions and fight for decent wages and working conditions.

The Dana Workers Rank-and-File Committee (DWRFC) calls on workers to speak to those they have confidence in about developing a rank-and-file strike committee comprised of trusted men and women who have never held union office. These rank-and-file strike committees must begin preparing their plants for strike action now. Make preparations to be able to get information across every shift, every production line, every corner of the shop floor. Get every worker on the same page. Keep out spies from the company and union as well as their stool pigeons.

Local strike committees should send representatives to a national strike committee which is responsible for making sure all plants act as one.

We are fighting not only one company, but an entire system. Behind Dana stands the major auto companies, behind the major auto companies stand the banks, behind the banks stand all of Wall Street. These corporations have deindustrialized our home states, foreclosed our homes, destroyed our infrastructure, funneled opioids into our communities, and sent us to die in war.

The time has come to reverse decades of attacks on the working class. Our committees must build support for our struggle in the working class as a whole. We have powerful potential allies. We must reach out to workers at the other parts plants and major assembly plants, as well as to the teachers, the nurses, the coal miners, and to Dana workers across the world. We must establish lines of communication with the major production facilities for GM, Stellantis and Ford, where many of our friends, relatives and neighbors work.

Our success in this struggle will depend on whether we have democratic control of this process or whether we let the UAW and USW force through the companys contract. There is no time to delay. To contact the DWRFC about organizing a new leadership for the struggle at Dana, email us at danawrfc@gmail.com or text at (248) 6020936.
After hundreds of vaccinated students and staff tested positive for COVID-19 at Duke University, the university administration is implementing stricter measures to stop the spread of the virus.

Duke Chapel (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

Although Duke boasts the highest vaccination rate among major North Carolina universities and is requiring all students and staff to receive their shot by October 1, last week 349 students and 15 employees tested positive for the virus. All but eight were fully vaccinated. These cases have arisen in the context of vaccination rates for students standing at 98 percent, and 92 percent for faculty. Students are also tested weekly and those who are unvaccinated are required to take a test twice a week.

In an attempt to control the growing outbreak, the administration is placing new limits on student activities. In addition to the previous mandate requiring masks in classrooms and indoor settings, all students must now wear masks outdoors, while at the gym and generally around other students. All indoor seating for dining has been moved outside, with more than 25 tents set up across campus for meals. Faculty have also been given the temporary option of shifting classes online for the next two weeks due to many students missing class because of quarantine.

According to the Raleigh News and Observer, Duke administrators announced the new guidelines in an email saying this surge is placing significant stress on the people, systems and facilities that are dedicated to protecting our health, safety and the ability of Duke to fulfill its educational mission, particularly our isolation space for on-campus students who test positive.

One year ago, while classes were fully remote, only 241 students and staff tested positive for coronavirus during the entire fall semester, in contrast to the 349 positive cases just this past week. Such a substantial increase in transmission is occurring under conditions where universities and schools are attempting to reopen under normal conditions, all while the Delta variant continues to spread throughout the population, causing more and more breakthrough cases and filling up ICU units across the state.

In fact, more than 3,700 people are currently hospitalized across North Carolina. At Duke University Hospital and Duke Health Raleigh, the ICUs are currently at capacity. At Duke Regional Hospital in Durham, two ICU beds are available. In the larger Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill Triangle region, there are a cumulative 12 remaining ICU beds available to treat critically ill patients.

Over the month of August, 788 North Carolinians died from COVID-19, making it the deadliest month of the pandemic since February, even though vaccines have become widely available. The state also reported over 7,200 new cases on Wednesday, with a 13.8 percent positivity rate. Of the cases that have been sequenced, 97 percent are Delta, according to the latest report from the CDC.

Other universities across the state have also begun to reopen for full in-person instruction during August, though most are not requiring students or staff to be vaccinated. At the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, from August 23 to August 30, 158 students and 16 employees tested positive. At UNC Chapel Hill, 230 students tested positive in the last week, and 468 were reported in the last month.

At Appalachian State University, where only 51 percent of students and 88 percent of staff are vaccinated, 216 positive tests have been reported. Though university testing is limited and these figures may not represent the full extent of the spread, the positivity rate has surged to 10.5 percent this past week, the highest it has been since the beginning of the pandemic.

In response to this, more than 200 faculty have petitioned to move all possible courses online until vaccination rates increase and COVID-19 transmission rates decrease.

Across the nation, students and faculty are facing similar conditions, with University of Michigan faculty circulating a similar petition that has received over 700 signatures from graduate students, lecturers and staff.
Labor Party parliamentarians played the leading role, working hand-in-hand with the Liberal-National Coalition government ministers, in rushing anti-democratic electoral bills through Australias parliament last week in just over 24 hours.

Anthony Albanese addresses ALP conference (Source: YouTube)

Labor and the Coalitionthe two main parties of capitalist rulehold the overwhelming majority of seats in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, so they collaborated to push the bills through in record time.

The Socialist Equality Party (SEP) has launched a campaign throughout the working class against the laws. The corporate and political establishment is seeking to suppress the rising opposition to its reopening drive as the COVID-19 pandemic resurges, threatening thousands of working-class lives, including those of children.

Nothing comparable to last weeks scenes in parliament has been seen since November 2005, when Labor, as well as the Greens, helped the Howard Coalition government recall the Senate to pass sweeping police-state terrorism legislation in just 36 hours. That unanimous stand was based on Howards dubious claim, never substantiated, that his government had received specific intelligence about a terrorist threat.

Labors role in spearheading the passage of the latest bills is revealing. It reflects the nervousness in ruling circles that the resistance of workers, students and parents to the premature return to classrooms and workplaces could erupt out of the control of the increasingly discredited and detested Coalition government.

Hence the need to shore up Labors vote, as well as the Coalitions, by barring access to elections for alternative parties. That includes the SEP, the only one advancing the necessity for workers to mobilise on the basis of a socialist perspective to protect lives and eradicate COVID-19.

As the SEP explained in its statement yesterday, Defeat bipartisan Australian drive to de-register political parties! the laws set out to strip party registration from every party not currently represented in parliament. With a federal election looming, the legislation compels parties to provide details of 1,500 memberstrebling the previous requirementwithin just three months, all in the middle of widespread lockdowns.

Without registered party status, election candidates cannot identify their political affiliations on ballot papers. They must be listed without any party name, or as independents.

That not only denies the essential right of political parties to campaign and communicate their views in elections. It robs voters of the ability to cast conscious political votes.

One of the bills specifically seeks to block support for the socialist program advocated by the SEP. It bans parties from using the names socialist or communist (as well as labor, liberal and green) if another registered party has already claimed that label, no matter how falsely.

Another provision restricts voting rights by cutting pre-poll voting to a maximum of 12 days before elections. This undercuts the ability of many working-class voters to cast ballotsmore than 40 percent of the electorate voted pre-poll or by post at the last election in 2019.

The introduction and passage of these bills have been buried throughout the corporate media. There is clear concern in the ruling class that support is collapsing for the long-time parties of capitalist rule, and the public must be kept in the dark about the efforts to prop them up.

Last weeks token two-hour debates in each house of parliament demonstrated that Prime Minister Scott Morrisons Coalition government is relying on Labor to prosecute the attack on democratic rights.

Labor MPs were the most aggressive exponents of the bills. Milton Dick, who holds the seat of Oxley in western Brisbane, denounced people whingeing and whining about this changeso-called believers in freedom and democracy.

Dick also provided a glimpse of the behind-the-scenes operation between the government and Labor to produce the bills. He said Labors shadow minister for electoral matters Senator Don Farrell had worked incredibly hard with Morrisons right-hand man, Assistant Minister Ben Morton, to ensure that we do work in a bipartisan way.

Both Dick and Morton declared, without explanation, that some minor parties already met the new 1,500-member threshold. They referred to the Animal Justice Party, Shooters, Fishers and Farmers, Pauline Hansons One Nation, Sustainable Australia and the Liberal Democratic Party. These are all pro-capitalist parties, regarded as useful safety valves to divert the disaffection back into the parliamentary arena.

Labor speakers claimed that the bills would prevent billionaires such as mining magnate Clive Palmer registering parties without real members. But like the other parties with seats in parliament, Palmers United Australia Party is exempt from the membership requirement, having just recruited far-right Coalition defector Craig Kelly.

The truth is that all the parliamentary parties would have difficulty nominating 1,500 members, unless they could count MPs, staffers, trade union officials and other office holders. They are bureaucratic shells, dominated by branch-stacking conducted by narrowly-based factional powerbrokers.

Labor and the Coalition were intent on seeking to deregister as many parties as possible. They summarily rejected amendments by Kelly and another right-wing figure, Senator Jacqui Lambie, to lower the membership requirement rule to 1,000, and make it apply to only new parties applying for registration, not those already registered.

Another Labor spokesman, shadow minister Andrew Giles, gave voice to the concerns within the capitalist establishment that alternative parties can gain wider support by standing in federal elections. He said a registered party could build a profile and name recognition by having its name on ballot papers.

Giles provided an insight into the profoundly anti-democratic outlook that permeates the ruling class. He declared that such ballot recognition was a privilege and significant benefit, not a basic democratic right. It was an advantage that came with responsibilities to uphold the parliamentary order.

Likewise, Giles agreed with his Coalition colleagues that registered parties had to hand over membership lists in order to demonstrate a genuine base of community support. That denies the function of elections themselves, which are meant to determine levels of political support.

In an attempt to distance her party from the anti-democratic move, Greens Senator Larissa Waters spoke and voted against the bills in Senate. In the House of Representatives, however, Greens leader Adam Bandt notably remained silent.

Waters said the de-registration measures were an attack on our democracy. But the Greens supported the previous 500-member rule, which was an anti-democratic provision introduced under the Hawke Labor government in 1984, requiring party registration for the first time.

Combined with state funding for the parliamentary parties, the 1984 laws were themselves a bid to shore up the parliamentary establishment, for which popular support was already crumbling because of growing social inequality and declining working and living conditions.

The party registration scheme was a pre-emptive strike against working-class unrest. The Hawke governments corporatist Prices and Incomes Accords with the trade unions paved the way for a decades-long assault on workers jobs and conditions provoking widespread disaffection and opposition among workers.

The 1984 legislation proved unsuccessful in bolstering the parliamentary order, however. The share of votes going to Labor and the Coalition has continued to fall, down to 75 percent in 2019. This reflects the deepening hostility to their bipartisan pro-business program.

The SEP has always opposed the party registration laws, which also compel parties to hand over the details of their members. That opens them up to surveillance and harassment, and violates the principle of secret ballots, which are meant to provide voters with privacy regarding their political affiliations.

The SEP calls for a concerted campaign to demand the repeal of the latest laws and all restrictions on the democratic right of parties and individuals to stand in elections. At the same time, we appeal to every one of our supporters and readers: apply to become an electoral member of the SEP to help us retain our registration and defeat this attack.

To discuss and take forward this fight, we urge readers to contact the SEP:

Website: http://www.sep.org.au/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SocialistEqualityPartyAustralia/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/sep_australia
This week, automotive engineering workers at the Birmingham, England plant of the multinational GKN Automotive voted to strike to against plans to close the facility.

The closure plans, first announced in January, would see the loss of over 500 jobs and an estimated 1,000 across the supply chain. The workers delivered a majority of 95 percent, on a turnout of 95 percent.

The GKN Automotive plant in Birmingham (Google Maps)

The plant plays a key role in the UK auto parts industry, supplying driveline systems for petrol and diesel cars to auto companies Jaguar Land Rover, Toyota and Nissan. The Birmingham workers are part of GKNs global workforce of 27,500employed in 51 manufacturing centres across 20 countries.

GKN is owned by Melrosethe private-equity venture capitalist group. The plant is slated to close in 2022, with work being transferred to other countries. According to a February 25 Guardian article, citing sources close to the plans, about four-fifths of Birminghams work could be moved to a plant in Olesnica, south-west Poland. The rest of the work could move to locations in France

Melrose chief executive Simon Peckham justified the closure by saying there was falling demand in the UK car industry for its products, with the factory having lost a quarter of its orders. The plant was outmoded and the industry-wide move away from fuel-run vehicles to electric ones meant another 40 percent of its output was threatened. GKN Automotive Chief Executive Liam Butterworth declared, Sadly, an increasingly competitive global market means the site is no longer viable.

Having voted to strike, workers at GKN should be under no illusion about who they are up against in the fight ahead. They are in a battle on two fronts: against GKN and the Unite trade union.

Unite has done nothing to mobilise a single worker among its automotive membership outside of GKN to fight the Birmingham closure, despite boasting on its web site that its Automotive sector represents 100,000 members across the UK, including vehicle assembly and the supply chain. No joint struggle has been organised with the hundreds of workers at GKN Wheels and Auto Structures in Telfordmembers of Unite and the GMB unionswho were involved in strikes for several days in July over a pay deal and strikes over pay and detrimental attacks on redundancy terms. The Telford plant was taken over by another private equity firm, Aurelius, in 2020.

It has instead waged a reactionary nationalist campaign aimed at herding workers behind a campaign to defend British industry, which has only served to isolate GKN workers in the UK from tens of thousands of their GKN co-workers employed in Europe and internationally.

Only now, fully nine months after the company announced the closure plans, have workers been given the opportunity to vote for industrial action. Unite sanctioned the ballot through gritted teeth, having no choice after the workforce at the end of June In a consultative ballot overwhelmingly voted in favour of strike action. The aim of the consultative ballot, a favoured tactic of the union bureaucracy, was to delay for months any possible conflict with the company as it sought to win GKNs support to keep the plant open based on a cost-cutting agenda that would enable it to remain competitive.

Unite pleaded with the company that the strike is a last resort and it will inevitably cause severe disruption to production schedules for the companys key customers. The solution is obvious. The government needs to make good on its promises to support the company through a period of change and GKN Melrose needs to end its threat of closing a strategically important and valuable asset.

Rather than naming any dates for strikes to hit GKNs production and profits, Unite responded to this weeks overwhelming mandate for industrial action by begging the firm to accept its corporatist proposals to keep the plant open.

The union declared Wednesday, Following the decisive yes vote, Unite has called together all interested parties to reach agreement on future production and support, given the plants key role in the transition of the automotive sector to electrification. These include the government, local politicians, GKNs customerssuch as JLR, Toyota and Nissanthe Advanced Propulsion Centre and GKN Automotive CEO Liam Butterworth.

This was a reference to a plan put forward by Unite in February to bring together senior union officers, shop stewards from the plant, and local politicians including the Labour MP Jack Dromeya former leading official of Unites predecessor, the Transport and General Workers Union.

There was no need for workers to immediately mobilise against the plans, claimed Unite national officer Des Quinn back in February, as Thankfully, with an 18-month window before the factory closes, Unite is hoping to develop a watertight business case guaranteeing the factorys future.

Commenting on what it described as fruitful talks with Kwasi Kwarteng, the Conservative government secretary for business enterprise and industrial strategy, Quinn stated, Melrose is guilty of breaking its commitments to shareholders and investors. It claimed it wanted to build a UK powerhouse, but the reality is it is planning to export UK jobs to Europe. Unite made the case to the business secretary that this is a highly viable factory that has a vital role.

Dromey, a leading member of Unites coalition, admitted in a debate in parliament in April on the Birmingham closure, I have been involved, sadly, in many, many workplace closures over the years

On May 6, Unite outlined its business plan to keep the site open. Under the subheading Operational savings it boasted that, The alternative business plan details a high value of operational savings and establishes a set period when potential investment will be paid back. In a further boost to the alternative business plan, the government has made it clear that it will provide significant assistance to ensure that the Birmingham plant is a success. The plan was worked on jointly by Unite and senior management.

Such entreaties were not enough for GKN Automotive execs, however, who rejected the offer and proceeded with plans to close the plant. This was the cue for Unite to escalate its nationalist campaign, during which time it organised just one protest of the workforce, on July 7, outside the plant.

This was done under conditions in which there was a powerful basis to mobilise workers across Europe to oppose GKNs attacks.

On July 9, all 422 workers employed by GKNs Campo Bisenzio plant in Florence, Italy, were issued with dismissal notices and told that their plant would close, with the work relocated across its European operations. Workers immediately began an occupation of the plant in opposition. A protest of several thousand took place in the city on July 24 in support of the workers struggle.

As with Unite in Britain, the Italian IndustriAll trade union did nothing to unify the struggles of workers across borders who are employed by the same company hellbent on destroying their livelihoods. Instead, they appealed to management in Britain, including Liam Butterworth, to keep the Florence plant open in collaboration with the unions!

In a July 24 letter, IndustriAll General Secretary Luc Triangle said the decision to announce the redundancies completely ignores the role of the social partners [the unions] in the case of collective redundancies. Triangle insisted that the move was not necessary as the GKN could help itself to yet more funds from the taxpayer: The decision to proceed with mass redundancies also takes no account whatsoever of existing support measures for the economy from the Italian government in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Job losses should be conducted with the collaboration of the trusted European Works Council, Triangle declared, urging GKN to engage in a proper dialogue with worker representatives and trade unions, both at national level in Italy and at European level with the EWC. If the company would at least drop the plant closure threat, he pledged in conclusion, On the trade union side, we are available to evaluate all options that see the production continuity of the site

All such options promoted by the unions are based on offering corporations the necessary cost-cutting and job losses to convince them to keep one plant open at the expense of a plant across borders. Just prior to the latest strike ballot result being announced, Labour MP Dromey laid out the reactionary agenda of Unites coalition: The company is not just sacking British workers here . But they are then going to export British production to continental Europe, to France, to Germany and to Spain its a betrayal of the British national interest.

Workers at GKN must oppose all efforts by the pro-company Unite and its partners to divide them on a national and plant by plant basis. The fight of workers in Birmingham is a global one. Auto industry workers are fighting to defend their jobs and conditions all over the globe. In recent weeks Volvo workers have struck in the United States and thousands of US workers at auto parts conglomerate, Danawho have an axle producing facility employing hundreds of workers in Birmingham a few miles from GKNs planthave just thrown out a union backed sweatshop company contract.

Workers in Birmingham, Florence and every other production location must unify their struggles by taking matters out of the hands of the union bureaucracy. The first step must be the formation of rank-and-file committees that can reach out to and organise GKN and automotive workers in Britain, Italy and all over the world. To take that fight forward, the International Committee of the Fourth International has called for the formation of the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees, or IWA-RFC.
A recent study shows that the United States places dead last among 11 high-income, industrialized countries in the organization and delivery of health care for its residents. This situation has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, which is ripping off the remaining tattered Band-Aids from an already deplorable health care system.

EMT Giselle Dorgalli, second from right, looks at a monitor while performing chest compression on a patient who tested positive for coronavirus in the emergency room at Providence Holy Cross Medical Center in the Mission Hills section of Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)

The Commonwealth Fund compared health care in the US, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. The study ranked the countries in access to care, care process, administrative efficiency, equity and health care outcomes. The US came in last in every category but care process, which includes measures of preventive care, safe care, coordinated care, and engagement and patient preference, where it placed second.

The US last-place standing in relation to access to care, equity and health care outcomes are the product of the subordination of all aspects of the health care system to private profit. The delivery of health care and access to prescription drugs are all beholden to the profiteering of the giant health care chains, pharmaceutical companies and the insurance industry.

The US is the only one of the countries studied that does not provide what the study terms universal coverage. While the health care systems in none of the other countries has anything in common with genuine socialized medicine, the US is the only one of the 11 that makes no pretense of providing universal coverage.

The already appalling state of US health care has worsened over the course of the pandemic, affecting not only patient care and outcomes but the working conditions of nurses and other health care workers. One of most common issues for nurses in hospitals is the lack of safe staffing ratios, which are central to providing adequate care to patients and to ensure the safety of both staff and patients.

These conditions have prompted an uptick in nurse contract struggles. Nurses have also left hospitals seeking other nursing positions, including as traveling nurses, or left the nursing field entirely in search of better pay and working conditions. While most of the nurses struggles have been limited short strikes or protests, at every turn the nursing unions have isolated these actions and worked to betray nurses and capitulate to the hospitals demands.

The most significant of these struggles is the ongoing five-month strike of 700 nurses at St. Vincent hospital in Worcester, Massachusetts over safe staffing ratios. The strike is now in critical danger of being sold out by their union, the Massachusetts Nurses Association (MNA). When the strike began in March, about 100 nurses crossed the picket line. St. Vincent and its multibillion-dollar owner Tenet claim that around 200 nurses have crossed the picket line.

After five days of secret negotiations with executives of the hospital, the MNA bargaining committee signed off on a tentative proposal that does not meet the nurses central demand of guaranteed safe staffing. The MNA bargaining committee was only prevented from carrying through with this betrayal and ending the strike by Tenets refusal to remove the scab replacements it hired during the strike.

More than 830 workers at three Tenet-owned hospitals in Southern California last month authorized a walkout over staffing, pay, benefits and pandemic-related safeguards. However, the National Union of Healthcare Workers negotiated contracts for the hospital workers to prevent a strike, refusing to mobilize these workers to back the nurses at St. Vincent who are facing betrayal by the MNA.

In Chicago, 300 nurses at the Community First Medical Center went on a one-day strike July 26, while 1,400 nurses from USC Keck & USC Norris Cancer Hospital in Los Angeles went on a two-day strike July 13-14 to voice their protest over unsafe staffing ratios.

Last month, nurses at West Penn Hospital in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania voted to authorize a strike after six months of negotiations. Nurses are frustrated that hospital management has failed to respond to their request for measures to deal with the nurse staffing crisis.

A nursing crisis has been happening before the pandemic, Kayla Rath, a postpartum nurse, told a rally last month. Its just gotten much worse. I know many nurses that left because it was too stressful and we havent replaced them.

West Penn is part of the Allegheny Health Network, which comprises several facilities. The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) already represents some 4,000 workers at Allegheny Health, and the union has made clear that it will not seek to unite these workers in a common struggle.

In Connecticut, a strike set to begin June 4 was called off at the 11th hour by SEIU District 1199 New England. This was the third time in a month that the SEIU called off a strike in the state by nursing home and group home workers at the last minute.

Nurses at Mc Laren Macomb Hospital in Michigan had also voiced their opposition to unsafe staffing ratios and were ready to go on strike, but were presented with a rotten contract sanctioned by Local 40 of the Office and Professional Employees International Union (OPEIU). When its contents were first made public, the WSWS wrote that items listed are vague and indicate that there are no meaningful enforcement mechanisms in place to specifically guarantee that McLaren will abide by the staffing obligation.

A nurse at McLaren informed the WSWS that nothing has changed since then, saying, Still the same terrible staffing issues. And to make it worse, staffing did not know we ratified our contract that had new nurse-to-patient ratios, so they keep trying to staff us to the old matrix.

Many hospitals were and are still unprepared to deal with the influx of patients due to COVID-19, and conditions are getting worse in hospitals with each passing day the Delta variant is allowed to rampage through the population, with some states in even worse straits than others.

A recent study by WalletHub compared the 50 US states and the District of Columbia across 44 measures of health care costs, accessibility and outcomes. Louisiana and Arkansas, now experiencing more COVID-19 hospitalizations than ever before, ranked the second and third worst states for health care.

Florida ranked 14th worst in this same study, and due to the major influx of hospitalizations is expected to have critical staff shortages in 70 percent of hospitals, according to the Florida Hospital Association. In Nevada, ranked the ninth-worst state, cases are also rising with each passing day. On August 4, nurses protested at Mountain View Hospital in opposition to unsafe staffing ratios.

The deepening crisis of the health care system as it intersects with the pandemic is creating worsening conditions for nurses and other health care workers and propelling them into struggle. This is epitomized by the struggle at St. Vincent Hospital. The ongoing isolation of their strike on the part of the MNA and AFL-CIO is a deliberate policy. The unions long ago abandoned the defense of the workers and have spent decades securing pro-company agreements, while channeling workers political opposition behind the Democratic Party.

To be successful, the strike at St. Vincent and at hospitals across the country requires the building of new organizations of strugglerank-and-file committeesunifying their fight across the US and internationally, in opposition to the pro-corporate trade unions.

Serious scientists and medical professionals know that global measures must be enacted to eradicate the pandemic and put an end to preventable deaths. The WSWS calls on health care workers to join in the SEP today and fight to put an end to a health care and political system that places profit over lives.
The US Supreme Courts decision to allow the Texas abortion ban to go into effect September 1 is a brutal attack on democratic rights that must be opposed by the entire working class. At a stroke, abortion has been made effectively illegal in a state with nearly 10 percent of the American population. As many as two dozen other states are expected to follow the Texas example. The outlawing of abortion in half the country will not wait for a formal decision by the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade: It has already begun.

In this June 30, 2021, file photo the Supreme Court is seen in Washington. The Supreme Court is allowing a Texas law that bans most abortions to remain in force, stripping most women of the right to an abortion in the nations second-largest state. The court voted 5-4 to deny an emergency appeal from abortion providers and others that sought to block enforcement of the law that went into effect Wednesday, Sept. 1. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

The Texas state law, passed last May, imposes the so-called fetal heartbeat rule adopted by half a dozen states previously, which effectively prohibits abortion after about six weeks of pregnancybefore most women even know they have become pregnant. The name is itself a medical absurdity, since at six weeks there is no fetus, only an embryo, and no heart to beat, only a collection of cells able to discharge electricity, which is detectable only on monitors developed in the last several decades.

A remarkable feature of the Supreme Court action is its moral and intellectual cowardice. The five justices who comprise the majority offered only a single paragraph to explain it, unsigned by any of them, made public 24 hours after the law had been allowed to take effect, and released to the public just before midnight. This for a decision that has incalculable and immediate effects on the lives of thousands of women, and ominous implications for millions.

The four justices who opposed the 54 decision spelled out the contradictions and legal absurdities of the Supreme Court action in dissenting opinions. Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that the Texas law is a breathtaking act of defianceof the Constitution, of this Courts precedents, and of the rights of women seeking abortions throughout Texas the court has rewarded the states effort to delay federal review of a plainly unconstitutional statute, enacted in disregard of the courts precedents, through procedural entanglements of the states own creation.

Justice Elena Kagan focused on the anti-democratic procedure adopted by the high court itself, not only in the Texas abortion issue, but in a series of other cases decided in what is now called the shadow docket, where the court rules on an emergency basis without hearings and other essential legal procedures. One such action was the recent high court ruling striking down the ban on most evictions imposed as a public health measure by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Without full briefing or argument, and after less than 72 hours thought, this Court greenlights the operation of Texass patently unconstitutional law banning most abortions, she wrote. It has reviewed only the most cursory party submissions, and then only hastily. And it barely bothers to explain its conclusionthat a challenge to an obviously unconstitutional abortion regulation backed by a wholly unprecedented enforcement scheme is unlikely to prevail.

This is a critical issue, as one legal analyst explained to the WSWS: Perhaps the single most important consideration in deciding such injunctions is the likelihood of success on the merits. The Texas law cannot be sustained unless Roe is reversed, as the dissents point out. The fact that the Supreme Court majority denied the injunction without discussing the likelihood of success on the merits can only be interpreted by someone who understands how these jurisprudential matters work as a stealth overruling of Roe.

Reactionary and anti-democratic policies require reactionary and anti-democratic methods. Almost as significant as the effective repeal of abortion rights in the Texas law is the method chosen to carry out this attack: authorizing any individual to file a lawsuit against anyone who aids or abets an abortion, with the promise of a $10,000 reward and recovery of all legal costs if the lawsuit is upheld. As Justice Sotomayor wrote, In effect, the Texas Legislature has deputized the States citizens as bounty hunters, offering them cash prizes for civilly prosecuting their neighbors medical procedures.

According to press reports, Texas Right to Life has already begun soliciting anonymous tips on its website and asking for volunteers to join the team of pro-lifers working to enforce the law. An online form solicits informants to name a clinic or doctor potentially involved and pledges to ensure that these lawbreakers are held accountable for their actions.

The appeal to vigilantism is a feature of other new Texas state laws, like the bill restricting voting procedures that was passed last week, empowering far more aggressive conduct by poll watchers, whose task will be to challenge the right of voters to cast ballots. Because of another new state law permitting unrestricted open carry of firearms without license or permit, voters going to the polls are likely to confront armed challengers demanding their credentials.

President Biden issued a statement Wednesday denouncing the Supreme Court action as an unprecedented assault on a womans constitutional rights under Roe v. Wade, and the Texas law as one that unleashes unconstitutional chaos and empowers self-anointed enforcers to have devastating impacts.

But he proposed in response to this no more than consultations between the White House and various federal departments to see what steps the Federal Government can take to ensure that women in Texas have access to safe and legal abortions In other words, nothing. He did not call for Congress to pass a law to codify Roe v. Wade, which would require overriding a Senate filibuster. Too many Senate Democrats support the filibusteror oppose abortion rightsto carry this out.

The Democrats invariably use the five-member ultra-right majority on the Supreme Court as an excuse for doing nothing, but every one of these five justices owes his or her seat to the perfidy and fecklessness of the Democratic Party.

Clarence Thomas was confirmed after the notorious hearing presided over by Senator Joe Biden, then the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, who refused to block the nomination. Samuel Alito was confirmed after 18 Democrats joined with the Republicans to shut down a filibuster.

Neil Gorsuch was confirmed to fill the seat vacated by the death of arch-reactionary Antonin Scalia after Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell blocked the filling of the vacancy by President Obama with only a perfunctory response from either the White House or the Senate Democrats. McConnell then abolished the filibuster for Supreme Court nominationssomething the Democrats now refuse to do to consolidate Roe v. Wade into law.

When Trump nominated Brett Kavanaugh for the high court in 2018, the Democrats avoided any examination of his right-wing political and judicial recordincluding on abortion rightsin favor of a #MeToo-style denunciation of actions he allegedly carried out as a teenager, 30 years before his nomination. This approach, as well as the whole #MeToo campaign, was enthusiastically supported by the pseudo-left and publications like Jacobin.

Two years later, following the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg less than two months before the election, McConnell cynically abandoned the supposed principle of holding back on filling a Supreme Court vacancy during the final year of a presidency and rammed through Trumps nomination of Amy Coney Barrett. Her gender made her immune to the type of attack carried out against Kavanaugh, as well as winning her points in those layers of the upper-middle class obsessed with identity politics.

As the World Socialist Web Site wrote in 2019,

The systematic evisceration of abortion rights across much of the country has attracted only a tiny fraction of the energy, money and media attention devoted to the Democrats reactionary #MeToo campaign, which seeks to improve the fortunes of upper-income womenactors, corporate executives, professorsby removing their male superiors and peers through largely trumped-up allegations of sexual misconduct. The Alyssa Milanos of this world do not care about abortion rights for working class women in Alabama and Georgia. Even with a total US ban, they would always be able to jet off to Toronto or London.

This political record demonstrates that even in those areas where the Democratic Party professes the most irreconcilable differences with the Republicans, such as abortion rights, this corporate-controlled party is incapable of offering any serious resistance to the mounting attacks on the democratic rights of the working class.

The fight to defend abortion rights, and all democratic rights, can go forward only through the independent political mobilization of the working class, in a struggle against the Democratic Party and the entire capitalist two-party setup, for a revolutionary socialist perspective.
As a COVID outbreak continues to spiral out of control with more than 1,000 infections every day in New South Wales (NSW), and cases climbing to more than 200 in Victoria, the state and federal governments are pressing ahead with a plan to reopen the economy, end lockdowns and force the population to live with the virus over the coming months.

Gladys Berejiklian (Credit: @GladysB, Twitter)

This program was adopted in JulyAugust by the national cabinet, composed of the federal government and all of the state and territory leaders, most of them from the Labor Party. Since then, and amid the worst crisis in Australia since the pandemic began, NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian and representatives of the federal Liberal-National Coalition government have insisted with ever-greater vehemence that there is no alternative but to end lockdowns, whatever the consequences in infections and hospitalisations.

The chorus was joined this week by Victorian Labor Premier Daniel Andrews, who explicitly rejected any aim of eliminating COVID transmission, falsely claiming that it was impossible with the highly-infectious Delta variant. Instead, the only issue was increasing vaccination rates to reach the arbitrary targets of 70 and 80 percent of the adult population inoculated, which trigger the lifting of restrictions under the national roadmap.

The government leaders have presented vaccinations as a silver bullet, covering up the experiences in countries such as Britain, the US and Israel, where similar reopenings have led to a massive increase in cases and hospitalisations. The homicidal character of their program, however, was spelled out by Berejiklian at a press conference yesterday.

The NSW premier was asked by a journalist to comment on modelling that there could be 50 COVID deaths per day across Australia, six months after a reopening based on 70 percent adult vaccination rates. Berejiklian responded that people would have to face the confronting reality.

You are going to have death, she said, but you have death with the flu, and 50 people lose their lives every day to heart disease. While death was horrible, it was also necessary to put things into perspective.

In other words, Berejiklians incessant declarations that is necessary to normalise COVID mean normalising mass death for the indefinite future. Her comments were made the day before 12 fatalities were revealed this morning, the worst toll since the pandemic began and daily infections climbed to 1,431. Given that infection numbers are tending to double every 11 days, the state is on track to register 3,000 daily cases or more by mid-September.

With the rising infection numbers, which state authorities predict will continue to grow for the next several weeks, Berejiklian has declared that October will be the worst month for both hospitalisations and deaths. She has repeatedly refused, however, to make public the modelling upon which this assessment is based, or to provide any concrete figures on likely rates of mortality and illness.

Daily infections only surpassed 1,000 on August 25. With a hospitalisation rate of 5.5 percent, every day cases reach that number, at least 50 people will require medical care. At 2,000 cases, the number would climb to over 100, and at 3,000 to more than 150. Given that in most cases, severe illness occurs in the second week of infection, most of the hospitalisations from the past ten days of cases near or above 1,000 have yet to occur.

Amid this lag between cases and hospitalisations and well before any peak of infections, the health system is already at breaking point. There are now 979 COVID patients in NSW hospitals, most in Sydney, with 160 in intensive care units (ICUs), 63 of whom require ventilation. Each of the figures has doubled over the past fortnight.

The rapid rise compelled two major hospitals in SydneyWestmead and Blacktownto pause COVID admissions for 24-hours late last month so they were not overwhelmed. Other facilities are activating surge and emergency plans, while most elective surgeries have been indefinitely paused.

The state has 846 active, staffed ICU beds, meaning coronavirus patients already account for around 19 percent of total capacity. Berejiklian and Health Minister Brad Hazzard have repeatedly touted a supposed quadrupling of potential capacity, claiming an additional 2,015 ventilators and beds. A leaked memo from the NSW government to the national cabinet, published by the Saturday Paper, revealed existing staffing levels would only allow for only 164 of the extra beds to become operational.

The repeated assurances, that the hospitals will cope with any level of COVID admissions, were further exposed as lies by a chilling new guideline sent to NSW ICU staff and publicly-revealed by news.com.au on Wednesday. The directive foreshadows the development of a triage system in hospitals, under which treatment and resources would be provided to patients most likely to survive, and effectively withdrawn from those likely not to.

Complex ethical and clinical treatment issues can occur. It may be necessary at some point to begin prioritising limited critical care resources to those with a need for treatment and those who are most likely to survive, the document states. Such prioritisation decisions would need to take into account all patients probability of survival, as well as the availability of limited critical care resources.

The guidelines recall the catastrophes that befell the healthcare systems in Italy, parts of the US and India, at earlier stages of the pandemic. During the first wave, Italian hospitals were directed to refuse service to people over the age of 70, if there were younger patients requiring treatment.

Medical experts are warning of a similar disaster in Sydney and NSW. In the news.com.au article, an anonymous ICU doctor explained: If something keeps going up, without stopping, its going to overwhelm any system in the world... If we have a surge, weve got like a four-stage plan. The final stage is like, you know the whole ICU becomes a Covid ICU. But that would be catastrophic, because then we couldnt do any of the other work. Patients requiring treatment for heart attacks, strokes, traumatic injuries and other life-threatening conditions would have nowhere to go.

The dangers are compounded by the fact that the peak in hospitalisations, predicted by Berejiklian, is the same month her government says it will begin a reopening, based on 70 percent adult vaccination rates. Schools are set to fully resume in-person teaching in late October to early November, workplaces currently closed will be reopened, and high-risk venues, such as restaurants and bars, will be permitted to serve patrons.

Berejiklians modelling appears to be based on the assumption that 70 percent vaccination rates will result in a dramatic fall in transmission. But this has not been the case anywhere in the world, meaning that while hospitals may reach crisis point in October, the situation is unlikely to improve over the following months.

The prospects of a meltdown of healthcare provision are exacerbated by the surge in Victoria, where daily infections exceeded 100 on Wednesday, and have already reached 208 this morning. The states contact-tracing is overwhelmed, with half of the cases announced this morning not being linked to an existing outbreak, while testing rates are abysmally-low, amounting to 40,00050,000 per day in a population of almost seven million.

During a surge of infections in the state mid-to-late last year, Victorias hospital system was on the brink of being overwhelmed. Already, there are 58 cases in hospital, 21 of them in ICU and 14 of those on ventilators. After decades of funding cuts, the hospital systems in states such as South Australia and Western Australia are frequently operating near capacity, even without COVID patients, meaning there is likely no surge capacity anywhere in the country.

Under these conditions, the entire focus of the political establishment is on pressing ahead with the reopening. Victorian Labor Premier Daniel Andrews declaration on Wednesday that there was no prospect of returning to zero transmission, has been hailed by the financial elite, as a major advance for this criminal campaign.

An article by Dennis Shanahan in yesterdays Australian hailed the formation of a powerful triumvirate, politically and practically backing the national cabinets plan for easing restrictions and reviving business: Scott Morrison as Prime Minister, Daniel Andrews, as the pre-eminent Labor government leader, and Gladys Berejiklian, the senior Liberal premier. The three had found common ground in wanting to revive the economy and strike a political and practical balance in living with Covid-19.

Andrews position demonstrates the bipartisan character of this pro-business offensive. His open adoption of the live with the virus mantra has been presented as an important battering ram, to force the state Labor governments in Queensland and Western Australia (WA) to open their borders and allow for the circulation of Delta.

Over recent days, WAs Labor Premier Mark McGowan has accused the federal government of being on a mission to bring COVID into his state, while his Queensland counterpart Annastacia Palaszczuk has warned that a rushed reopening threatens the health and lives of children. Their posturing is bound up with their fears of mass social and political opposition from the working class if they are seen to allow a major outbreak of the Delta variant under conditions where it is not yet circulating in their states. Both premiers were reelected last year, based on false assertions that they protected their population from the coronavirus.

Like of all of the state and territory leaders, however, McGowan and Palaszczuk signed up to the national roadmap, predicated as it is on living with the virus and allowing its spread. Andrews open embrace of these murderous policies foreshadows a similar about-face in Queensland, WA and everywhere else.
Students and faculty at Syracuse University announced their intention to strike for the implementation of remote courses amid a recent surge in COVID-19 in Onondaga County. The opposition, promoted under the hashtag #NotAgainSU, is encouraging students and faculty to demand a remote learning option, the organization posted on Instagram Sunday.

Hendricks Chapel, Syracuse University (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

#NotAgainSUs Instagram page links to a petition listing their demands. The petition calls on students to refuse to attend any in-person course and encourages educators to not hold in-person classes until their demands are met. The group of students and educators have called for an indefinite struggle until the university allows students and faculty to have the option of online learning for their courses.

Classes have not yet begun, and the public health alert level has already been raised to red. Weve also heard reports that several faculties fell ill to COVID after attending a faculty orientation this past week alone, the petition states.

Syracuse University has announced its plan for the school year. It includes returning to fully in-person classes, lax testing requirements, dining and event spaces resuming full capacity, and all this at the cost of endangering everyone's health, especially harming the disabled and immunocompromised people in our community.

I support the demand to approve the option for every student and teacher to participate in online learning if they wish, the statement says. This is a necessary decision to protect our communities from COVID-19.

University officials have confirmed 22 active COVID-19 cases on campus and its campus masking requirement is at red level, meaning visitors and students must wear masks indoors at all times. However, students are not required to wear their masks in their own dorms and vaccinated employees can go maskless while alone in private offices, personal workstations, or when working independently outdoors on campus.

Four faculty members at the universitys School of Public Communications tested positive for COVID-19 just last week, the school announced. All currently impacted faculty members have been in quarantine since last week, and temporary instructors are teaching their classes. Officials said more cases are currently being identified through contact tracing and warn more cases among students and staff are likely this academic year if the university does not change its policies.

Syracuse has announced it requires proof of COVID-19 vaccination from all students, faculty and staff members, but allows medical and religious exemptions. A university spokesperson did not say whether all four professors were vaccinated, citing concerns about their privacy. The university claims that 90 percent of the student and employee population is fully vaccinated.

The steady rise in hospitalizations mirrors the increasing spread of Covid-19 in the community. During the past week, the county has reported 809 new cases, nearly four times the 207 new cases during the last week of July, county records show.

Syracuse hospitals reported caring for an average of 67 Covid-19 patients a day during the past week, more than four times the average number from the final week of July. As of the time of this wiring, nine patients are in intensive care. Approximately 735 county residents have died of COVID-19.

County officials said approximately 61 percent of newly hospitalized patients were not vaccinated, while 39 percent occurred among vaccinated patients, demonstrating that vaccination does not fully protect an individual from the virus.

Although hospital cases have not yet risen to the troubling levels of last December and January, when Syracuse hospitals treated up to 300 coronavirus patients a day, central New York still only had about a quarter of its hospital beds available, according to the state health department.

The growing opposition to the unsafe reopening of class at Syracuse takes place amid a growing wave of opposition among students and educators at universities across the country.

At Duke University, where 98 percent of students and 92 percent of faculty are vaccinated, 349 students and 15 faculty and staff tested positive for COVID-19 last week. The university was forced to halt indoor dining and implement mask mandates in outdoor areas. Similarly, the University of California, Berkeley saw its test positivity rate jump from 0.5 percent last week to 5.8 percent this Tuesday. Again, cases are rapidly increasing despite high vaccination rates for students and faculty (97 percent and 96.9 percent respectively).

These cases offer further proof that under conditions of rapid spread of the delta variant of the coronavirus, there is no safe way to reopen schools. Any significant opposition to this disastrous policy will inevitably come into conflict with the capitalist system and the interests of the corporate and financial elite.

Students must turn to teachers, healthcare workers, and other workers who are faced with similar dangerous conditions. The International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE), the youth movement of the Socialist Equality Party, is fighting to link students up with workers for a common struggle against the dangerous reopening of schools and workplaces. We encourage youth and students to take up the fight against the pandemic and join the IYSSE.
TERRE HAUTE, Ind. (WTHI) - Safe Routes to school will continue throughout this week.

Riverscape got a grant from the State Department of Health to start this program in Terre Haute.

The Safe Routes to School Program focuses on the 56 students living within one mile of Fuqua Elementary.

Through the next few weeks, kids have the chance to walk to school with local role models.

This week, kids had the chance to walk to school with Indiana State University honor students.

Students from the school will continue to walk to school throughout the next few weeks.
SHELBURN, Ind. (WTHI) - One Wabash Valley school district is reversing its decision to make masks optional.

The move comes as COVID-19 cases are rising.

Northeast North School Corporation held an emergency meeting on Thursday.

In that meeting, the board made masks mandatory.

That is for all students and staff throughout the district.

However, there is an exception.

It is only when six feet of social distancing is not possible.

The scene was different in the Northeast North School Corporation's meeting when they announced masks would be required again.

While other school boards saw divided votes and tempers flaring, Northeast North was a different story.

Don Ransford is a school board member of Northeast North, and he says masking was the best option.

"We feel like this is going to give us a handle on a problem that's happened since school began," said Ransford.

He was one of the five voting in the unanimous decision to bring masks back.

The board says that doing so when six feet of social distancing is not possible, is the middle ground that brought many parents together.

While we were there, several parents wore masks.

We found only two who did not.

Also, the only people we saw speak at the meeting from the public were in favor of masks.

One parent says this shouldn't be a political issue.

"I don't care what side of the aisle you are on, we have got to do something different," said the parent.

She says she has noticed more resistance from other parents, and little resistance from students she's interacted with.

"Not one child I've talked to or been around had a problem with their masks until they saw how their parents were acting about their masks."

The board said the reason they're imposing this is for two reasons:

One is the new executive order from Governor Holcomb incentivizing schools to mask up.

The order exempts students and staff from quarantines if they are masking and exposed to COVID-19.

That is only if they do not show symptoms.

The second is to limit quarantines.

The school board says it has had problems with high quarantines recently.

"We want our students in school. That's where learning takes place the best. We have a great virtual system, but it's not going to be comparable to in the classroom," said Ransford.

While we were at this meeting, the board emphasized that they want to create a middle-ground here.

They say that mandating masks at all times would be too polarizing.

The mandate will go into effect on Sept. 7.
PARIS, Ill. (WTHI) - An Edgar County man will face charges after police said he was involved in the child abuse of a baby.

The investigation started last month when the Illinois State Police received information about the possible abuse of an eight-month-old baby.

The accusations involved 25-year-old Shane Eslinger from Paris.

After their investigation, police arrested Eslinger earlier this week. He was charged with Aggravated Domestic Battery.

This investigation is ongoing. If you have information in this investigation, call (217) 278-5004 or email ISP.DCI.Zone05@Illinois.gov.
PARKE COUNTY, Ind. (WTHI) - The apple trees are loaded at Ditzler Orchard in southwestern Parke County, and one of the owners, Judi Ditzler, told News 10 that's because of the weather.

"Last year we had a freeze that took out most of our apples. This year it did not get that cold in May, and the blooms continued. We've had to thin to get the apple crop down to where we want it, Ditzler said."

While a warm spring produced a lot of apples, summertime heat can create a lot of problems for Indiana orchards.

"It develops some pathogens that we usually don't see here. They see them in the south, but it hasn't been in this area. Now it is because we've got this heat," Ditzler explained.

In the meantime, Ditzler said families love coming out to the orchard.

"People love to come out and have that outdoor experience, pick a few apples, you know, get a scoop of ice cream, pick up a pumpkin. I mean it's just a nice family outing," she said.

For those who don't want to wander through the orchard, there are plenty of pre-picked apples in Ditzler's store.

The twelve-acre orchard plants several varieties of apples that'll take them through October.

"Every week we have a different apple. Apples get ripe at different times," Ditzler said.

In addition to apples, Ditzler Orchard told News 10 it will also offer pumpkins, mums, gourds, and other fall-time favorites in the coming months.

Owners said there are still some stone fruits available, too, like peaches and plums.

To learn more about Ditzler Orchard, including directions and hours, click here.
TERRE HAUTE, Ind. (WTHI) - We are learning more about an early Friday morning shooting on the campus of Indiana State University.

Just before 4:00, Terre Haute police officers near 7th and Wabash heard several gunshots around 7th and Cherry Streets. While investigating, they said they heard several more shots near ISU's Federal Hall.

Police said they found the suspect, later identified as Yantre Edwards, trying to leave.

Police said Edwards was firing a gun in the parking lot, damaging a window on a campus building. No injuries were reported.

Edwards was arrested on charges of Criminal Recklessness, Possession of Marijuana, and Operating a Motor Vehicle while Intoxicated.
JACKSON, Miss. (AP)  A Mississippi man freed after nearly 23 years in prison is suing the district attorney who prosecuted him six times in the killings of four people at a furniture store.

Attorneys for Curtis Flowers filed the lawsuit Friday, seeking an unspecified amount of compensation.

Flowers was released in December 2019, about six months after the U.S. Supreme Court tossed out the conviction and death sentence from his six trials.

Flowers is Black, and justices said prosecutors improperly excluded Black jurors.

Montgomery County District Attorney Doug Evans did not immediately respond to a phone message from The Associated Press on Friday seeking comment about the lawsuit.

The suit also names three investigators as defendants.
STARKVILLE, Miss. (WTVA) - Health care workers in Mississippi are beginning to see the help promised by MEMA.

OCH Regional Medical Center was one of the 50 hospitals in the state assured to receive extra help to assist in the battle of COVID.

Eddie High is a respiratory therapist at the local hospital.

He's worked in the trenches of the hospital through the coronavirus since it first became rampant over a year ago and he said the work has been draining.

Were exhausted physically. Were exhausted mentally and were exhausted emotionally, he explained.

To help the front-line workers behind the hospital, MEMA sent 10 workers to OCH to assist in its effort to fight COVID.

They sent six nurses and four respiratory therapists.

One of those four respiratory therapists who joined OCH is Keisha Johnson.

We came all with the same mission," she said. "Its to help and to serve the community the best way we could.

Johnson is from Atlanta.

She and her new coworkers came from all across the country to assist Mississippians during this deadly pandemic.

High said the help is much appreciated, as they bring new ideas and fresh perspectives to the hospital while also working well with the therapies OCH already utilizes.

Johnson said she feels it was worth it to leave her family and friends in Atlanta to help the fight here in Mississippi.

The staff was already overworked and was so appreciative of us being here and helping," said Johnson. "It makes us feel good.

Johnson said MEMA told the extra staff they'd be in Starkville for four weeks, but she said as long as the hospital needs help, they'll stay.

High said he wants people to understand that the virus is a real threat and that the hospital needs you to help slow its spread.
What can employers do if workers avoid COVID-19 vaccines?

They can require vaccination and fire employees who don't comply, or take other actions such as withholding company perks or charging extra for health insurance.

Businesses for months have been encouraging workers to get vaccinated, in some cases offering incentives like time off or gift cards. But more are taking a harder stance and requiring vaccinations for any remaining holdouts, a push that has gained momentum since Pfizers vaccine recently received full approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Employers "feel like theyve sort of hit that point where the unvaccinated are not going to do it unless theres something significant making them do it, said Wade Symons, a partner with Mercer, a benefits consultant.

Its legal for businesses to require the shots, and they could fire employees who dont comply. In other cases, workers might be required to wear masks or get regular tests for the virus. Some companies also are considering making the unvaccinated pay more for their health insurance.

At Delta Air Lines, unvaccinated employees on the company health plan will be charged $200 a month to help cover costs for possible COVID-19 hospital stays.

Symons said other employers will more likely add smaller charges of $20 or $25 per paycheck that might be refunded once the employee is vaccinated.

Employers might also restrict the use of office space, company gyms or business travel only for the vaccinated. In Las Vegas, MGM Resorts International has said unvaccinated employees will not be paid for time off to quarantine if they test positive for the virus.

Vaccine requirements will mainly come from businesses that need workers on a job site, Symons said.

Employers have to offer exemptions or accommodations from vaccine requirements for some who don't get the shots for medical or religious reasons.

Walt Disney World and Ohio State University are among the large employers that said they'll make vaccination mandatory since Pfizer's shot was given the FDA's full approval. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin also has said that military troops must immediately begin to get the vaccine.

Some states like Montana have either banned employers from requiring vaccines or limited when they can issue such a mandate.
JACKSON, Miss. (AP)  An Emmett Till historical marker in Mississippi will be repaired after being knocked off the pole that supports it.

That's according to Allan Hammons, president of an advertising agency that made the sign.

A previous version of this metal sign was vandalized and another Till historical marker in the area was shot multiple times.

Hammons told The Associated Press on Friday the sign was not defaced this time.

Till was a Black teenager from Chicago who was killed in Mississippi in 1955 after witnesses said he whistled at a white woman in a country store.

His killing and an all-white jury's acquittal of two white men who later confessed became a catalyst for the civil rights movement.
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Streaming service Discovery Plus is launching in The Philippines in a partnership with local telecoms giant Globe.

In low income, less developed markets and those where credit card usage is not widespread, partnerships with local telecoms or cable firms can offer billing and marketing by the telco that enable lower cost packages and wider access.

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Discovery Plus will be widely available in app stores and on multiple platforms from October. Globe customers have access from Thursday to a selection of early bird offers, some providing a year of free access as part of a connections bundle, and another offering one year of the service for just PHP99 ($1.99).

At launch in The Philippines, Discovery Plus will include 18,000 episodes of content sourced from Discovery Channel, TLC, HGTV, Investigation Discovery, Food Network, Magnolia Network, Travel Channel, Animal Planet and Asian Food Network. Non-fiction content is sourced from History Channel (Crime Investigation Asia, Hidden Cities and Mountain Men) and the BBCs natural history offerings Planet Earth and Life.

Discovery Plus Original titles include 90 Day Journey, a series focused on fan-favorite couples, 90 Day Fiance series and 90 Day: The Single Life. Other original shows include: Say Yes to the Dress: In Sickness and In Health, Ghost Adventures: Top 10 and Buddy Vs Duff. The company said that an additional 100 new original titles will be available before the end of the year.

The launch of Discovery Plus in the Philippines represents another step forward in the platforms global expansion and further strengthens our direct-to-consumer proposition across Asia Pacific, said Simon Robinson, President, Asia Pacific, Discovery, in a statement.

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In the past year and a half, weve seen tremendous change in how people consume content and keep themselves entertained. Many are hungry for new things to watch and to create shared experiences with their family and friends, said Ernest Cu, president and CEO of Globe.

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Mikis Theodorakis, the celebrated Greek composer of Zorba the Greek, Z and Serpico and among the most politically active of all 20th-century composers, died Thursday at his home in Athens. He was 96.

His official website listed the cause of death as cardiopulmonary arrest. Today we lost a part of Greeces soul, Greeces cultural minister, Lina Mendoni, said on Twitter. Mikis Theodorakis, Mikis the teacher, the intellectual, the radical, our Mikis, has gone.

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Greek president Katerina Sakellaropoulou called him a pan-Hellenic personality a universal artist, an invaluable asset of our musical culture, and Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis announced three days of national mourning.

Theodorakis colorful score for the 1964 Zorba the Greek, starring Anthony Quinn and Alan Bates, was an international hit (its soundtrack album reached the top 30 of Billboards album charts) with its infectious Zorbas Dance and its unusual bouzouki sounds. It was nominated for a Grammy and a Golden Globe. The dance became known as sirtaki and Zorbas Dance was covered numerous times, including by Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass.

As director Michael Cacoyannis said at the time, Theodorakis succeeded in creating music of such inner excitement and stirring rhythms as to match the glorious defiance of Zorbas spirit. They did five other films together, including adaptations of classic literature (Electra in 1962, The Trojan Women in 1971, Iphigenia in 1977), a contemporary comedy (The Day the Fish Came Out, 1977) and a Biblical story for television (The Story of Jacob and Joseph, 1974).

Theodorakis political activities inspired later film-music masterpieces. He was elected three times to the Greek Parliament, first as a left-wing deputy in 1964, and his outspoken nature resulted in his music being banned by the military junta that took power in 1967. He was jailed, then interned in a concentration camp, and  after international pressure by fellow artists including Leonard Bernstein, Arthur Miller and Harry Belafonte  exiled in 1970.

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The Greek-French film director Costa-Gavras insisted on his music for Z, the 1969 political thriller loosely based on the 1963 assassination of Greek anti-war activist Grigoris Lambrakis. Theodorakis wrote a compelling score in secret, the music smuggled out and recorded in Paris; it won the BAFTA as the years best score in 1970.

Costa-Gavras reunited with Theodorakis for another political thriller, 1972s State of Siege, about terrorist kidnappings in South America; the composers use of traditional Latin American folk instruments resulted in one of his most evocative scores. And in 1973, Theodorakis wrote the music for Sidney Lumets Serpico, about corruption in the New York City police department. Both scores were BAFTA nominated; Serpico, with arrangements by American jazz artist Bob James, also earned a Grammy nomination.

After the overthrow of the Greek military regime, Theodorakis returned to Greece in 1974, continuing both his musical career and his political activities. He was re-elected to the Greek Parliament in 1981 (as a Communist) and 1989 (as a Democrat), and in the 1990s he became general music director of Hellenic Radio and Television orchestras. And while he continued to score the occasional European film, most of his music was in the classical realm including several symphonies, operas and song cycles.

He was born in Chios, a Greek island in the Aegean Sea, in 1925. He studied music at the Athens Conservatory during the 1940s and later on a state scholarship in Paris during the early 1950s. His early works, including a piano concerto, a symphony, and four ballets, written during the late 1950s, received international acclaim (including a gold medal at the 1957 Moscow Music Festival).

Theodorakis other scores for notable directors included Ill Met by Moonlight, for British filmmakers Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger in 1957; Phaedra for Jules Dassin in 1962; and Five Miles to Midnight for Anatole Litvak in 1962.

Survivors include his wife Myrto Altinoglou, daughter Margarita Theodoraki and son George Theodorakis.

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For board members deciding on options to rename Thomas Nelson Community College, it came down to three contenders  Virginia Peninsula, Harbor Bridge and Two Rivers.

One Thomas Nelson Local College Board member said when he Googled Virginia Peninsula, the first thing that came up was the regional jail.

Another said she didnt care for the name Two Rivers, partly because another school had considered it, but mainly because the two rivers  York and James  dont touch all Peninsula localities. Another said the name Harbor Bridge reminded him too much of the harbor and bridge-tunnel.

As the board at the Hampton campus hashed out which name best represented the school, its mission and was easiest to market, three candidates quickly went down to one, with members voting Wednesday in favor to recommend Virginia Peninsula Community College. That choice goes to the State Board for Community Colleges, which is expected to vote to rename the 54-year-old institution later this month.

I would be happy to stand behind either of those names, says college president Towuanna Porter Brannon, referring to Virginia Peninsula and Two Rivers, Both of them are pretty inclusive. Both of those names are about our mission.

A majority of the local board felt the name Virginia Peninsula was inclusive in the community, and would make more sense to people from outside the area looking for a school and reflective of this region.

Last summer, the Virginia community college chancellor asked schools under his purview to begin reviewing campus symbols, anything with connections to racism or slavery, as racial justice protests erupted around the nation.

In February, the board voted unanimously to rename the school, already leaning toward anchoring it to the geographic region. The college is named for Thomas Nelson Jr.  a former Virginia governor and Revolutionary War hero who signed the Declaration of Independence. Nelson also owned a couple hundred slaves, and historians have documented he built his wealth and legacy on the labors of those slaves.

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The college selected a task force of students, faculty, staff, alumni, board members and community members to research the institution. It also conducted surveys and hosted town halls to gather more input. The group decided on names reflecting the schools geographic area, and wanted the name to be timeless.

As the task force progressed, local opposition  some from alumni  surfaced against changing the schools name. Some said it was akin to erasing history.

The college also used a marketing firm to help with how each of the final three names would be marketed to help rebrand the schools image.

In July, two other Virginia Community College institutions announced name changes  John Tyler became Brightpoint and Lord Fairfax became Laurel Ridge, according to a school release. Going forward, Patrick Henry Community College will be called Patrick & Henry in a nod to the counties it serves. In addition, Dabney S. Lancaster Community College also is expected to undergo a name change.

The local board also voted earlier this year to begin renaming other buildings on the Hampton campus  Griffin and Wythe halls  named for associates of Nelson. Three additional buildings named for contemporaries of Nelson  Moore, Diggs and Harrison  are scheduled to be replaced with new buildings in coming years, officials said.

Lisa Vernon Sparks, 757-247-4832, lvernonsparks@dailypress.com
Ross and Angeline Eschette and their 7-year-old son evacuated their home state of Louisiana for Texas this weekend as Hurricane Ida prepared to hit.

The Eschettes will return to their home in Lockport later this week as a family of four after Angel Eschette gave birth while evacuated.

"She wanted to be part of the hurricane party," Ross Eschette said of the couple's newborn daughter, Adeline Grace, born on Aug. 30, just after Ida battered Louisiana as a fierce Category 4 storm.

Angeline Eschette's original due date was Sept. 17, but her water broke overnight on Aug. 30 as they stayed with extended family members at a hotel in Nacogdoches, Texas.

The Eschettes, both natives of Lockport, a small town of about 3,000 people one hour outside of New Orleans, said they had weathered hurricanes before, but did not want to take any chances with Ida while expecting their second child.

"My No. 1 concern was to get as far away from the storm as possible, just to keep her from having the baby," said Ross Eschette, 36. "In planning the evacuation, it wasnt just lets find a [hotel] room and go there, it was lets find a hospital and then find a room nearby."

The Eschettes said they not only had to evacuate their home and find a hospital away from home that they could be near, but also did so while Angeline Eschette, 33, dealt with a higher risk pregnancy due to gestational diabetes and was quarantining after testing positive for COVID-19.

"I was waiting to get vaccinated until after I gave birth. Even though they said theres no harm, I still had my concerns about it," she said. "But I was very lucky to not have a severe case."

MORE: How to help Hurricane Ida victims with donations, volunteering

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last month strengthened its recommendation for COVID-19 vaccination during pregnancy, stating that all women who are pregnant, breastfeeding or trying to get pregnant now or might become pregnant in the future should get a COVID-19 vaccine.

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The Eschettes and their family members drove an RV six hours from their home in Lockport to Nacogdoches, where Angeline Eschette gave birth at Nacogdoches Medical Center.

PHOTO: Ross and Angeline Eschette pose with their newborn daughter at Nacogdoches Medical Center, in Nacogdoches, Texas. (Courtesy Ross and Angeline Eschette)

Ross Eschette, who did not contract COVID-19, was able to stay with his wife and daughter in the hospital room, but was not allowed to leave due to COVID restrictions.

Adeline Grace was born healthy, weighing in at 8 pounds and one ounce, according to her parents.

MORE: Communities in Louisiana and beyond rally to support Hurricane Ida victims

Both of Adeline's great-great-grandmothers are, by chance, named Ida, according to Angeline, who said she did not consider the name for her daughter.

"When Hurricane Katrina hit our area, everybody named their babies Katrina after that, so my nephew thought it would be funny to name her Ida and then said he was going to call her Ida Lynn," said Angeline. "I said, 'No, thats not going on the birth certificate.'"

PHOTO: Adeline Eschette was born in Nacogdoches, Texas, where her family evacuated to during Hurricane Ida. (Courtesy Ross and Angeline Eschette)

Both Angeline and Ross Eschette said they have had to balance their joy at the birth of their daughter with the heartache of the devastation caused by Hurricane Ida, particularly in Lockport.

The family said the hospitals in the area, including where Angeline planned to give birth, all had to evacuate their patients during the storm for various reasons.

"In the situation that we were in, we definitely made the right choice," said Ross Eschette. "And weve been treated with the utmost respect [at Nacogdoches Medical Center]. They definitely made our experience everything we needed it to be."

"I feel lucky to be safe in a place that was out of harms way and that I had a safe place to deliver," added Angeline Eschette.

PHOTO: Ross and Angeline Eschette's children Ryan, 7, and newborn Adeline are pictured together in Nacogdoches, Texas. (Courtesy Ross and Angeline Eschette)

The couple said they have heard from neighbors that their home's roof was severely damaged but their house is still standing. They expect electricity in their town to be out for the next three to four weeks.

As of Wednesday, over 884,000 customers remained without power in Louisiana, according to a report from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) obtained by ABC News.

"Its hard for us to stay here for a while financially so we will try to make our way back home towards the end of the week," said Angeline Eschette, who was discharged from the hospital on Wednesday. "We have a camper and they have a few campgrounds where were going to try to set up because we cant go back home right now. Our town is just a disaster."

PHOTO: Ross and Angeline Eschette are pictured with their children in Nacogdoches, Texas. (Courtesy Ross and Angeline Eschette)

Ross Eschette said he has been in touch with friends who stayed behind in Lockport to see what supplies are needed so that they can try to get them in Texas before they drive home.

"People are watching the news and seeing the devastation of what our hometown and the surrounding area are going through, but the number one thing about us is we are the most resilient people in the world," he said. "We all come together and were going to rebuild better than ever. Its definitely not going to stop us."

Mom battling COVID-19 gives birth after evacuating Hurricane Ida originally appeared on goodmorningamerica.com
Ursula Rickenbacher, who sparked the special occasion category with her Ursula of Switzerland label, died Wednesday at her home in Troy, N.Y.

Rickenbacher, who was believed to have been in her 80s, died of natural causes, according to her longtime associate Beth Easly, who served as vice president of merchandising for Ursula of Switzerland for many years. Nicknamed the queen of lace, the enterprising designer was also known for her mother-of-the-bride dresses, a moniker she eschewed, and other attire for social occasions.

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In 1962, the Switzerland-born Rickenbacher traveled solo to the U.S. as a teenager intent on starting her own business. She initially specialized in crocheted hats, making the samples and handling the finishing in New York. Rickenbacher had been trained in Europe as a patternmaker and milliner. The silhouettes varied from chin-strapped helmets to berets.

She was born in Switzerland and she had always heard that the United States was the land of promise and opportunity. Being a very strong woman, she felt that she would never be able to do that in Switzerland. Thats what drove her to the U.S., Easly said.

She formally incorporated Ursula of Switzerland in 1969.

Her breakout opportunity happened after Rickenbacher showed her knitted beanie hats to a Henri Bendel buyer at one of its weekly open calls for designers. But her designs were not immediately picked up by the retailer. It was only after Yves Saint Laurent showed similar beanie hats with little pom-poms on top in one of his collections and the buyer remembered the little Swiss girl, who was making them in New York City and thus placed the first order for knitted skull hats. One of Ursulas greatest assets was that she was always ahead of her time and always a visionary. She was always making hats and clothes and selling them off her back to make money to go to the next step, Easly said.

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The designer used her married name of Garreau  she married the struggling thespian Richard Garreau, whom she had met in New York  until she and her husband divorced in 1989. She then reverted to her maiden name of Rickenbacher. In a 1966 interview with WWD, she discussed what prompted her millinery business. I was appalled at what American women put on their heads. I needed a hat for the winter and couldnt find one, so I made one.

After starting out as a milliner, Rickenbacher edged into apparel, making jumpsuits, pants, halters, knitwear and other designs with a sexy flare under the label Garreau in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Once the disco era took hold in the mid-70s, the designer added daytime dresses, especially dance-friendly soft styles. At the end of the 70s, being from Switzerland, she said, Lets put some Swiss lace on our dance dresses. And special occasion was born. It really didnt exist as a category. No one was really doing that, Easly contended.

Ursula of Switzerlands soft romantic dresses evolved into even lacier styles and gowns. That prompted Rickenbachers nickname as the queen of lace and her reputation as the founder of the special occasion category. That element of the business did not exist in the 70s  and soft romantic dresses were scarce in mainstream America, Easly said. In the 1970s, when the industry executives started referring to her designs as mother of the bride, a new term at that time, Rickenbacher was not thrilled. Easly said, She didnt even want to be known as mother-of-the-bride. She said, What is that? But she created a category not knowing that she was doing such a thing, by putting that Swiss lace on the first dresses and giving them to the market. Thus, she became the Queen of Lace. That category evolved into mother of bride.

For a young woman, that was something that made her sound old, Easly explained. She was always, like, Cant they call it something else?

Throughout her career, Rickenbacher was motivated by her passion and love of the United States and fashion and design, Easly said. She was all-consumed by it, always. It was her baby. We talked about not having children because Ursula of Switzerland was her baby.

After becoming an American citizen in 1984, Rickenbacher vowed to make all of her products in the U.S.  in New York State. She lived up to that commitment until the company closed.

Soft-spoken, organized, never showy and always elegant, Rickenbacher distinguished herself by getting her message across in a more understated way than many of the brasher executives in the Garment District at that time. But dont let that quietness make you think that she was not thinking or doing [things], or was not going to get things done. People were surprised that she would dig her feet in and get it done, said Easly, adding that the Ursula of Switzerland business was in the many millions, declining to be more specific.

Rickenbachers affinity for the color white was evident throughout the corporate headquarters, which was adorned in white from ceiling to floor  furniture, filing cabinets, walls, duct systems, tables and more. She thought everything should be plain and fresh and modern. White was her favorite color, Easly said.

Although her work ethic was unwavering, Rickenbacher practiced a work-hard, play-hard way of life. Known for her entertaining and giftgiving, Rickenbacher indulged friends and employees in over-the-top parties, providing not only entertainment and food but accommodations, too. She would rent out the expansive Sagamore Hotel for a party and cover the overnight stays for guests. At the Saratoga Racetrack, Rickenbacher hosted parties under large tents, never one to spare expenses for entertaining or taking care of customers, salespeople or employees, Easly said. She believed her employees were her best assets and she treated us so wonderfully, which is why many of us stayed for many years. She was loyal to us and we were loyal back to her.

Partially beleaguered by the toll of the pandemic shutdown, the designer revealed in August 2020 that she planned to close her business and the company closed its doors for good two months later. At that stage, the employee base about was 20 people.

However, in the 1980s and early 90s, Ursula of Switzerland was a powerhouse brand in the special occasion business. Although the founder always maintained production in New York City and a showroom in the Garment District  first at 1400 Broadway and later at 530 Seventh Avenue  Rickenbacher moved her companys corporate headquarters in the late 70s to Waterford, N.Y. There the company occupied five floors of a building with about 20,000 square feet on each floor.

in 1993, Ursula of Switzerland added eveningwear and employed about 100 people in the Waterford factory where sample production, patternmaking and administrative functions were handled. The company relied on outside contractors in mill towns, too. Addressing the generational need for the launch of eveningwear, Rickenbacher said, From mother of the bride, I only had to reach for a little more design.

Shortly before the terrorist attacks of 9/11, Ursula of Switzerland had decided to pivot from department store distribution to mom-and-pop ones so the company closed its Seventh Avenue showroom and handled all operations from its corporate headquarters upstate. Recognizing the increasing dominance of major players like Federated, Rickenbacher felt that hundreds of independent stores would be more loyal to the brand and pay their bills on time. The volume dropped tremendously. But she became more profitable because she didnt have to give markdown money to department stores at the end of the year, Easly said.

A tribute may be held at a later date, when pandemic-related travel restrictions ease and Rickenbachers relatives in Europe can attend.

There are no immediate survivors.

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Brooke Dueringer and Ali White

Courtesy Ali White

Sisters in Georgia gave birth to daughters on Aug. 6 at the same hospital after having nearly identical pregnancies.

"It was totally not planned," new mom Brooke Dueringer, 28, told local outlet WRDW of the exciting coincidence she experienced alongside sister Ali White, 25. "I hadn't told Ali we were trying, and Ali of course didn't tell us they were trying, so it was a big surprise for us and the whole family."

"We got to share all the experiences together and [could ask each other], 'Has this happened to you? Did you experience this?'" White told Good Morning America. "Our doctors' appointments were the same day almost every time."

Brooke Dueringer and Ali White

Courtesy Ali White Brooke Dueringer and Ali White with family

On Aug. 9, Dueringer shared a photo via Facebook to announce the birth of her daughter Palmer Rae.

"Everyone tells you how much that day will change your life and now we know! It's the best feeling in the world (with a lot of new things to learn)!!" she wrote.

Dueringer explained that "her cousin Hudsyn gets to share the same birthday" because "she was born later that night."

"We love her so much," Dueringer added. "She's the sweetest most loving baby and we are soaking up every moment."

RELATED: Couple Posts a $240 Invoice for No-Show Wedding Guests: 'Have to Hold Each Other Accountable'

Brooke Dueringer and Ali White

Courtesy Ali White Brooke Dueringer and Ali White with family

Speaking to Good Morning America on Thursday, the sisters said their due dates were five days apart, but their family members often joked about them giving birth on the same day.

"Our mom kept saying, 'We can have their birthday parties together if they're born on the same day,'" Dueringer told the outlet. "But I didn't think it would happen."

She added, "It's just been an awesome, awesome experience. We did not think this would happen. It's been really awesome to have everything happen so close together and to have everyone so close together."

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RELATED: Unvaccinated Nurse & 'Amazing' Mom of 5 Dies of COVID After Giving Birth to Baby While Intubated

Dueringer had to be induced for labor two weeks before her delivery date. That same day, White experienced contractions and went to the same hospital as her sister, where she gave birth to her daughter Hudsyn Blaire seven hours after Deuringer. At the hospital, they were two rooms apart, they shared on GMA.

"When they were wheeling me to my room, Brooke was already there and the nurse was like, 'Do you want to peek in on your sister?'" White recalled.

Dueringer added, "We had a group text going on and our husbands were going back and forth [between rooms]. Everybody tells us now the whole floor was talking about it."

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Brooke Dueringer and Ali White

Courtesy Ali White Brooke Dueringer and Ali White with family

Dueringer and White revealed to GMA that they found out they were pregnant with their first child within a week of each other, experienced pregnancy together, had the same OBGYN and scheduled their appointments together. Now they're experiencing maternity leave together.

"Ali and I are very close, so they're definitely going to be very close," Dueringer said.

Speaking to WRDW, Dueringer said they'll "probably" celebrate their daughter's birthdays together "for the first few years."

She added, "And then they will probably want their own parties, and their 21st birthday will be so much fun."
A University of Minnesota student athlete was acquitted Friday of charges that he sexually assaulted another student at a birthday party near campus in August 2020.

Kevin Nedrick, 22, has been suspended from the track and field team since his arrest last August, when he was charged in Hennepin County District Court with third-degree criminal sexual conduct.

Both he and the alleged victim testified in a trial that began Tuesday before Hennepin District Judge Jay Quam. Closing arguments were made Thursday afternoon.

Nedrick, a shot putter who is well-known in his native Jamaica, cried when the verdict was read Friday.

He had testified the alleged victim was hitting on him before the encounter, and broke down on the stand when he talked about the trial and the accusation.

"I worked all my life to get here and it can be taken in a moment for something I didn't do," he said.

The alleged victim also testified, saying Nedrick had overpowered her, pushed her into her bedroom, kissed her neck and penetrated her with his finger after she had told him to stop multiple times during a 10 to 15 minute encounter. The alleged attack occurred at the apartment where the party occurred.

Campus police were called about 1:15 a.m. to the apartment about a possible sexual assault. The woman testified she had been helping her roommate, who was vomiting in the bathroom, when Nedrick overpowered her.

The woman underwent a sexual assault examination at a hospital, where a nurse noted bruises on her left forearm and fresh marks on her neck.

Nedrick attended high school in Jamaica before competing at Barton Community College in Great Bend, Kan. He later transferred to the U.
Ang Gelu Lama

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A 2-year-old boy and his parents were among those who died in New York City on Wednesday, as Hurricane Ida dumped record-breaking rain on the Tri-State area.

The family of three  son Lobsang Lama, his mother Mingma Sherpa, 48, and father Ang Lama, 50  were found "unconscious and unresponsive" inside their home on 64th Street in Woodside, Queens, a spokesperson for the NYPD confirmed to PEOPLE.

They were trapped in their basement apartment as floodwaters came barreling through their window. The entire unit flooded, as did the first-floor apartment above.

Choi Sledge, who lives on the building's third floor, told The New York Times that Sherpa called her around 9:30 p.m., frantically asking for help.

"She said, 'The water is coming in right now,' and I say, 'Get out!' Get to the third floor!" Sledge recalled to the outlet. "The last thing I hear from them is, 'The water coming in from the window.' And that was it."

The family was originally from Nepal, Lobsang's teacher  Martha Suarez  told The New York Daily News.

"The baby was so cute," Suarez told the outlet. "Just a happy boy, very nice family."

She showed up on Thursday at the family's home for her scheduled appointment, bursting into tears when talking to the Daily News.

"They didn't call me, they didn't cancel me, so I was coming as usual," she recalled. "This is too hard for me."

RELATED: Photos of Tropical Storm Ida's Destruction in the Northeast

Hurricane Ida

Gary Hershorn/Getty Flooding from Hurricane Ida

RELATED: 8 Dead, Including Toddler, After Hurricane Ida Hits the Tri-State Area Causing Flooding, High Winds

As of Thursday evening, at least 44 people have died in the Northeast due to the flash flooding from Ida, Reuters reported. In New York City, 13 people lost their lives, while a total of 23 people in New Jersey have died.

"The majority of these deaths were individuals who got caught in their vehicles by flooding and were overtaken by the water," New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy said Thursday afternoon. "Our prayers are with their family members."

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Other casualties in Pennsylvania, Connecticut and Maryland have been reported.

RELATED: Hurricane Ida: How You Can Help People Affected By the Storm

Hurricane Ida

Spencer Platt/Getty

RELATED: Deadly Natural Disasters Have Increased Five-Fold Over 50 Years Due to Climate Change

The massive storm brought torrential rainfall, flooding, tornadoes, and strong winds. The fast-rising floodwaters swept away cars and even shut down the New York City subway system.

Both Murphy and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio had declared a state of emergency on Wednesday.

On Thursday, de Blasio spoke out about the devastation on Twitter and urged people to take the climate crisis seriously.

"Last night's storm was horrifying and unlike anything our city has ever faced," he wrote. "We lost nine people to this storm. The sudden brutality of these storms is not a coincidence. Climate change is REAL and we have to act NOW before more lives are lost."
New Jersey flooding

Michael M. Santiago/Getty

Three New Jersey police officers are lucky to be alive after they were forced to hang onto trees amid flooding caused by the remnants of Hurricane Ida.

Officer James Hoffman of Hopewell Township responded to a rescue call on Wednesday night, but soon found himself trapped in floodwaters, according to a post on the city's Facebook page.

"While struggling to reach the person in need, his vehicle was swept sideways and was rapidly lifted by the rising water of Stony Brook," the post said. "Very quickly he realized he needed to get out of the car, but the door would not open due to the pressure of the water. He removed the gear he was wearing and was able to escape the vehicle through the window."

Hoffman then traveled about 100 yards until he was able to grab ahold of a tree.

RELATED: Photos of Tropical Storm Ida's Destruction in the Northeast

New Jersey flooding

Michael M. Santiago/Getty

Two other officers, Michael Makwinski and Robert Voorhees, ventured out to rescue Hoffman, but soon found themselves also hanging onto a tree to protect themselves from the fast-moving waters.

Hoffman, Makwinski and Voorhees were rescued about two hours later, the city said in their message.

"With all three officers in the water, holding on to trees for approximately 2 hours, rescue units from all over the area and the state arrived to provide aid," their post read. "The three officers were rescued by the efforts of the swift water rescue teams from the Union Titusville Fire Company, the Lawrenceville Fire Company and the Hamilton Fire Department."

RELATED: Lifeguard Dies, 7 Others Injured in Lightning Strike on Jersey Shore: 'Like a Bomb Went Off'

According to NJ.com, the officers fired their guns to help rescue crews track down their location.

"We owe them a debt of gratitude," Hopewell Township Police Director Bob Karmazin told the outlet of rescue workers who arrived at the scene.

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RELATED VIDEO: 2-Year-Old Boy Among 22 People Dead After Ida Batters the Northeast with Record Rain and Tornadoes

Other police officers in areas affected by the storm were not so fortunate. In Connecticut, a state trooper was killed Thursday morning after his cruiser was swept away in heavy flooding, according to WFSB.

On Thursday afternoon, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy said 23 people in the state have died during the storm so far.

"The majority of these deaths were individuals who got caught in their vehicles by flooding and were overtaken by the water," he said. "Our prayers are with their family members."

Before being downgraded to a tropical storm, Hurricane Ida touched down in Louisiana as a category 4 hurricane earlier this week.
A 9-month-old baby girl from Afghanistan died Wednesday night after reaching the U.S. on an evacuation flight to Philadelphia, city police said.

A spokesperson for the Philadelphia Police Department confirmed the news to PEOPLE Friday. The baby became unresponsive during a flight from Germany to Philadelphia International Airport, Department of Defense spokesman Lt. Col. Chris Mitchell told CBS News.

Customs and Border Protection said the child suffered a medical emergency during transit, and emergency personnel met the plane when it landed at 9:16 p.m., the PPD spokesperson told PEOPLE. The infant and her father were rushed to Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, and she was pronounced dead at 10:10 p.m., per CBS.

RELATED: Crew of Last Flights Out of Afghanistan Describes Eerie Scene  and the Tension and Relief of Lift-Off

Philadelphia Airport

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"Our thoughts and prayers are with the parents and family," Mitchell told ABC News.

Due to her age, her death is now being investigated by the PPD's special victims unit and the Philadelphia Medical Examiner's Office.

RELATED: The 'Almost Unbelievable' Moment George W. Bush Learned About 9/11: 'I Could See That Horror'

ir Travel Picks Up As COVID Restrictions Lift, Philadelphia

Marcus DiPaola/NurPhoto/Shutterstock

The child's death marks the first of an evacuee from Kabul on U.S. soil. According to the BBC, the Biden administration said it has evacuated about 124,000 people from the Afghan capital since the Taliban took control on Aug. 14.

At the height of the rescue mission, U.S. military planes were said to be taking off from Kabul every 39 minutes.

About 3,654 evacuees from Afghanistan arrived in Philadelphia between Aug. 28 and Sept. 1, CBS reported.
President Joe Biden delivers remarks on the U.S. COVID-19 response and vaccination program at the White House on Aug. 23, 2021. (Photo: JIM WATSON via Getty Images)

The White House is pushing congressional Democrats to reverse course on a plan to shortchange President Joe Bidens request for tens of billions of dollars in funding for the prevention of future pandemics.

Biden proposed spending $30 billion on pandemic preparedness and prevention as part of his American Families Plan earlier this year, but Senate Democrats outline of a massive health and social spending package they will negotiate in the coming months allocates under $10 billion toward preventing and preparing for future outbreaks, even as the coronavirus pandemic surges yet again.

The White House began pressuring members of Congress earlier this week to bump that $10 billion up to at least $15 billion in what it is billing as a down payment for a larger $65 billion plan to prepare the nations public health infrastructure, which has been underfunded for decades.

Its vital that we start with an initial outlay for $15 to $20 billion to jumpstart these efforts, Eric Lander, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, told reporters in a conference call on Friday.

The $65 billion White House pandemic preparedness plan would aim to ensure the rapid development  in 100 days or less  of vaccines against any future virus and also work to massively speed up production, guaranteeing enough vaccines to inoculate the United States within 130 days and the world within 200 days. It would also aim to boost the nations supply of personal protective equipment and create new early-warning systems to catch pandemics early on.

As devastating as the COVID-19 pandemic is, there is a reasonable likelihood that another serious pandemic that may be worse than COVID-19 will occur soon  possibly within the next decade. Unless we make transformative investments in pandemic preparedness now, we will not be meaningfully prepared, the document outlining the plan warns.

The request for more pandemic prevention funding could have major political and policy consequences as Democrats craft a budget package designed to pass on a party-line vote with their thin congressional majorities. The package is currently expected to cost $3.5 trillion over 10 years, paid for by a variety of tax hikes on corporations and the wealthiest Americans, though moderate Democrats  including West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin  are seeking to shrink the plan.

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But since the budget package is likely to be one of Democrats only chances to pass major legislation, the intra-party battles to secure funding for everything from subsidized child care to free community college could be fierce. The White Houses request for extra money could mean fewer funds are available for everything else.

At the same time, Democratic strategists have also begun circulating polling about the popularity of spending on pandemic prevention and fretting about the potential political blowback of failing to fully fund efforts at a time when the coronavirus pandemic  which has killed almost 650,000 Americans and repeatedly shaken the foundations of the nations economy  remains the top issue for voters.

Data For Progress, a progressive polling outlet, found that 76% of Americans support investing in pandemic prevention while only 16% oppose it. When respondents were asked how the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee  which has jurisdiction over the funds  should spend the $276 billion allocated to it, a 27% plurality said pandemic prevention should be the committees top priority.

Guarding Against Pandemics, which is funded in part by cryptocurrency billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried, paid for the Data for Progress poll. The group has also pushed lawmakers to restore the pandemic prevention funds.

The $65 billion pandemic preparedness plan, crafted jointly by the National Security Council and the Office of Science and Technology Policy, will make it into a future presidential budget request, Lander said, portraying the proposal as a generational effort.

Like any ambitious endeavor, whether its going to the moon with the Apollo mission or cracking human DNA with the Human Genome Project, an effort like this will take serious sustained commitment and accountability, Lander said.

The White Houses efforts have the support of Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), the chair of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. But some Democrats are worried about how the House Energy and Commerce Committee  which also needs to fund many of the $3.5 trillion budget packages climate change and health care priorities  will handle the issue.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.
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The flags! Those beautiful flags!

The flags are flying at Memory Park this week. They have been up for a few days, and will remain up through the 9/11 day of remembrance. Each September the flags are there, standing proud and strong, for the longest stretch of time each year. They are installed before the Labor Day holiday weekend for all to enjoy, and remaining through the solemn and somber commemoration of one of the most tragic days in our countrys modern day history. Nothing lessens the pain of that day 20 years ago, but the site of Old Glory multiplied by the dozens and dozens of beautiful flags is always comforting.

The Rotary Club of Lake Conroe receives a much appreciated assist in setting the flags from both the Montgomery High School Interact Club and mother/daughter members of The Montgomery Chapter of The National Charity League. If time allows, take a few minutes to visit Memory Park over the remaining eight or nine days. The flags will be returned to storage Sept. 13 or Sept. 14. I think its safe to say our community thanks all the volunteers who assist with the park and the flag project.

The Rotary Club of Conroe welcomed some international guests at Rotary last week. Rotarians David and Susan Fitzhugh and their son Matt were visiting from their home in South Africa. David and Susan lived in Conroe awhile back and were in the US visiting Conroe friends. They exchanged banners with the club (A Rotary tradition) and enjoyed the sights to be seen at Honor Cafe. The military memorabilia is always such a treat - and an added bonus - for RCC visitors. We hope youve had a wonderful visit and will visit the club on your next trip too.

Plans continue to gel for the upcoming ISOSOT - In Spirit of Spirits of Texas - FUNraiser for the RC of Conroe. The second year event will again be held at Honor Care, this year on Tuesday, Oct. 26. The format will remain basically the same, but with some fun changes. The opening of Honor Cafes new semi private 2,000 square foot room is allowing for more guests for the event, with the silent auction being moved to that new room, along with a small wine and beer tasting hosted by a select group of Conroe area wineries and breweries. There will be a small charge for the tasting, but it will be a great opportunity for the purveyors to showcase their libations. Many more details coming soon on this.

Tickets will remain at $75 per person. The ticket price includes a great meal from Chef Oscar. Thirty dollars of each ticket supports RCCs charitable work, and another $5 of each ticket goes to Rotary Internationals End Polio Campaign. There will be door prizes for those who bring a non perishable food item for a chosen organization. More cool pieces are being added to this event week by week, and the tickets will be available very soon. Stay tuned.

Rotary District 5910 is once again partnering with Disaster Aid USA to help those affected by Hurricane Ida in Louisiana. District Governor Jerry Springfield has asked Clubs to consider making contributions that will be used to purchase building supplies for this effort.

Our district has partnered with Disaster Aid USA over the years when tragedy has hit. Rotarian y Wayne Beaumier of District 5890 is the lead for www.disasteraidusa.org in our area. They have equipment needed for situations we face on the Gulf and are positioned locally so they can move in with Rotarian volunteers after a disaster and provide immediate response. This fund is open for donations from any and all who would like to help in this effort. Our thoughts and prayers continue for all who were affected by this devastating storm.
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YORK  The York County Commissioners will hold the official public budget hearing for the 2021-22 fiscal year next Tuesday afternoon, starting at 1:30 p.m.

They will discuss nuances of this years proposed budget, as well as hear from taxpayers, consider its adoption and a special hearing to set the final tax request.

This will be a separate part of the regular meeting of the county board  as the rest of the business at hand will take place during the regular morning session.

The budget hearing will be held in the commissioners chambers, which is located on the main floor of the courthouse.

Also on Tuesday, starting at 8:30 a.m.:

 The commissioners will consider authorizing the emergency manager to submit a hazard mitigation notice of interest for a safe room to be granted and installed at the Aging Services facility.

 They will consider an operating agreement with the Nebraska Department of Transportation.

 The board will likely go into executive session to receive advice from legal counsel on a personnel matter and for the protection of the publics interest. And they are scheduled for a hearing regarding York County Attorney John Lyons (personnel matter).
A majority of University of Nebraska-Lincoln students, faculty and staff report being fully vaccinated against the coronavirus, the university said Friday.

While UNL did not require COVID-19 shots this fall, 69% of students taking classes on campus are vaccinated, according to information they uploaded to a voluntary registry, as well as 81% of faculty and 74% of staff.

According to UNL, 91% of Husker athletes also reported being vaccinated.

UNL did not require vaccination before the start of fall classes but indicated those who were would be exempted from having to submit a saliva test on a weekly basis.

The university also offered prizes to incentivize community members to roll up their sleeves.
But Cooper tempered his critique to reporters, sounding optimistic that a final budget he could sign was still quite possible.

We need to take whatever time we need to make the transformational changes that are going to be so important to this state, Cooper said Thursday. "Yes, its a little more complicated. And we all have to come to an agreement on how this is going to work.

There are enough Democrats in each chamber to uphold a Cooper budget veto if party members remain united. That happened in 2019, causing a budget stalemate with Republicans that never got fully resolved. But with several Democrats already voting earlier this year for preliminary versions of the budget, there's no guarantee a veto would stand this time.

House and Senate Republican leaders took until early June to agree on spending caps for state funds  $25.7 billion this year and $26.7 billion for next year.
New Delhi: Tata Consumer Products on Friday announced the rollout of new branding for the Tata Soulfull range of health and wellness food. The company said it has integrated the Tata logo into the Soulfull portfolio, subsequent to Tata Consumer Soulfull Pvt Ltd becoming a 100 per cent subsidiary of Tata Consumer Products in February 2021.

The integration was completed within 100 days of the acquisition, Tata Consumer Products said in a statement.

"The new branding brings the power of the Tata brand to the Soulfull portfolio and will further enhance its credentials and brand positioning," said the consumer products firm that unites the principal food and beverage interests of the Tata Group under one umbrella.

The Tata Soulfull product range is focused on the health and wellness food segment with a portfolio of millet-based products for kids and adults, the statement said.

"The Tata Soulfull product range complements our existing portfolio of offerings, opens up opportunities in the fast-growing healthy snacking and mini meals segment and allows us to participate in newer consumption occasions," said Tata Consumer Products Managing Director and CEO Sunil D'Souza.

Stating that health and wellness is a key consumer trend, he said, "Tata Soulfull is well positioned to cater to this. The rollout of the 'Tata Soulfull' brand marks an important milestone for us and will help combine the strengths of both brands in order to expand our market presence in this segment."

The company said the 'Tata Soulfull' logo will now be integrated into all touchpoints for the brand across online platforms, marketing collaterals and packaging.

Tata Consumer Soulfull Managing Director and CEO Prashant Parameswaran said the company is gearing up to take Tata Soulfull to the next level, considering the growth opportunities in the segment.

"We are confident that the power of the Tata brand combined with Tata Consumer's sales and distribution network will help us further unlock the potential of the Soulfull brand," he added.

Tata Soulfull currently offers a range of healthy snacks and breakfast cereals like 'Ragi Bites' and 'Millet Muesli', as well as plant based protein drinks like 'Smoothix'.

Parameswaran said the 'Tata Soulfull' branding will enhance the brand's credibility and make health more accessible and mainstream while retaining its vibrancy. Also Read: Redmi 10 Prime with 50MP quad cameras launched in India: Check price, features and more

"This will help us further our purpose of making ancient millets relevant for the 21st century and make our offerings available to many more consumers across India," he added. Also Read: Amazon could launch Alexa-powered TV in October: Report
New Delhi: Retail gold loans outstanding jumped by 77.4 per cent to Rs 62,412 crore in 12 months up to July from Rs 35,189 in the previous corresponding 12 month period, signalling signs of financial distress in Indian households.

Overall, retail or personal increased by about 11.2 per cent in the said period. Notably, retail loans account for 26 26 per cent of total bank credit, according to a report by Indian Express.

Indias largest public lender, the State Bank of India, noted that the gold loans jumped by 338.76 per cent as of June 2021, with the total gold loan book standing at about Rs 21,293 crore.

The sharp rise in gold loans hints at how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted Indian households. The pandemic-induced lockdowns, unemployment and increased medical bills are to blame for the rise in gold loans.

In such distress, gold loans, which doesnt require much documentation, especially related to credit score, became one of the most attractive options for Indians seeking to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 from their day-to-day lives.

During the reported period, credit card outstanding also soared by 9.8 per cent to Rs 1.11 lakh. The swelling of the credit card outstanding figures suggests that consumers are using the borrowing payments mode for their daily purchases. Credit card outstanding had increased by 8.6% in 12 months ending July 2020. Also Read: Samsung develops industry-first '200 million pixels' mobile camera technology

In contrary to retail loans, RBI data suggests that credit to large industries shrank by 2.9 per cent to Rs 22.75 lakh crore. The data signals industries non-willingness for making new investments. Also Read: Xiaomi launches Redmi 10 Prime with 6000 mAh battery, 50 MP camera: Price, feature and specs

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#mute
Duration: 145 minutes

Director: Justin Lin

Cast: Vin Diesel, John Cena, Michelle Rodriguez, Tyrese Gibson, Chris 'Ludacris' Bridges, Charlize Theron, Nathalie Emmanuel, Jordana Brewster, Sung Kang, Helen Mirren and Kurt Russell.

Rating: **1/2

The fizz in the 'Fast & Furious' franchise seems to be flattening out progressively. The ninth edition of this over-the-top, frenetic-paced, action-packed franchise opens with a promise but ends on a ridiculously convoluted and low note.

The film is a bloated thriller with a weak and worn-out storyline that only die-hard 'Fast & Furious' fans would be able to follow. There is a semblance of a story only if you have the patience of sitting through loads of jaw-dropping, gravity- and logic-defying stunts, which include a satellite and spaceship sequence.

The narrative takes off from two years after the events of 'F8: Fate of the Furious'. Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) is now leading a retired life in the countryside, raising his son Brian with his wife Letty Oritz (Michelle Rodriguez).

Their old associates, Roman Pearce (Tyrese Gibson), Tej Parker (Chris 'Ludacris' Bridges) and Ramsey (Nathalie Emmanuel), arrive with the news that the plane of Mr Nobody (Kurt Russell), an intelligence operative, has crashed in Montequinto, Central America, after being attacked by rogue agents when he was capturing Cipher (Charlize Theron), a criminal mastermind.

Dominic, who is fondly called 'Dom', agrees to help them investigate who the rogue agent is after realising his brother Jakob (John Cena) is involved.

Searching through the debris of the crashed plane, they find a part of a device named Aries, which can hack into any computer-controlled system that includes all satellites and weapons of the world.

How, after travelling to Cologne, London, Tokyo and Edinburgh, the team finds the other part of the device, forms the crux of the narrative.

Like in its previous edition, there is a track of family drama in 'F9'. This time, it is the rivalry between the two Toretto brothers, Dom and Jakob. A master assassin, who has spent his life living in the shadow of his elder brother, Jakob now hopes to outshine his brother by controlling the world through his nefarious activities.

The plot, punctuated with emotional flashbacks of events in Dom and Jakob's lives, breaks the momentum of the mayhem-laden sequences and thus crashes the viewing experience.

Vin Diesel and John Cena put up a balanced performance, neither outshining the other. The rest of the veteran star cast with their superb on-screen chemistry are clearly at home in their roles and they seem to be having a great time delivering their chops.

On the production front, the set pieces are big and outlandish. The action sequences, including the delightfully destructive car chase involving magnets et al, are perfunctory in design.

Though every frame is flamboyant and blockbuster in appearance and is layered with surgical precision, the film fails to deliver an awe-inspiring feel.
Amaravati: The Andhra Pradesh High Court on Thursday (September 2, 2021) sentenced four serving IAS officers and one retired to varying terms of imprisonment holding them guilty of contempt for "wilful disobedience" of the court order of February 10, 2017.

Three other IAS officers, including Chief Secretary Aditya Nath Das, were let off in the case as the charge against them has been dismissed. The convicted IAS officers include Principal Finance Secretary Shamsher Singh Rawat, Chief Minister's Additional Secretary Revu Mutyala Raju, SPS Nellore district Collector K V N Chakradhara Babu and former Collector M V Seshagiri Babu.

Mutyala Raju had also previously served as Collector of SPS Nellore district. Retired IAS officer Manmohan Singh, who was the then Principal Secretary (Revenue) in 2017, has also been convicted in the case.

Justice Battu Devanand pronounced the order on a contempt petition filed an agriculturist Tallapaka Savitramma of SPS Nellore district. Rawat and Singh have been sentenced to one-month imprisonment while others have been sentenced to two weeks imprisonment. A fine of Rs 1,000 has also been imposed on each of them.

ALSO READ | Supreme Court lashes out at section of media for giving 'communal angle' to everything

Justice Devanand, however, ordered suspension of the sentence for a month to enable the convicted to go for an appeal, according to the petitioner's lawyer C Vani Reddy. Savitramma filed a writ petition in the High Court in 2017 stating that her land measuring three acres was resumed by the revenue authorities and allotted to the National Institute of Mental Health without any notice or payment of compensation.

In December 2016, the revenue authorities promised to pay compensation to her for the land and that was also reported to the Lokayukta, she said. Justice A Rajasheker Reddy of the High Court, on February 10, 2017, ruled in favour of the petitioner and directed the revenue authorities concerned to pay compensation to her within three months.

In 2018, Savitramma filed a contempt case in the High Court after the revenue authorities failed to implement the court's order. In June this year, Justice Devanand, while hearing the contempt case, observed that from the material available on record, the revenue divisional officer had submitted bills to the accounts office on July 6, 2020 but they were not cleared till March 30, 2021.

"In the opinion of this court, nearly eight months delay occurred in the office of the Principal Accounts Officer in clearing the bills and making payment of compensation to the petitioner," he had noted.

In August, the judge heard the arguments of the respondents and reserved judgment. The verdict was delivered on Thursday.

The judge closed the case against the then Chief Commissioner of Land Administration Anil Chandra Punetha (since retired), then Joint Collector of SPS Nellore district A Md Imtiyaz, the local tahsildar and the deputy director of NIMH.

The case against incumbent Chief Secretary Aditya Nath Das, who became a party to the case only because he held full additional charge of the Principal Finance Secretary post for a few days in February-March this year, was dismissed.

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New Delhi: The retired Calcutta High Court Chief Justice Manjula Chellur to head the SIT constituted by Calcutta HC to probe the post-poll violence cases reported during the assembly polls in the state.

Earlier, on August 19, in a major setback to West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, the Calcutta HC had ordered a court-monitored Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe into the incidents of post-poll violence in the state, and for other cases, the court has ordered an SIT. The court also ruled that the compensation to victims to be given through direct bank accounts.

Meanwhile, the state government has also filed a Special Leave Petition challenging the Calcutta High Court order in the Supreme Court.

A seven-member committee set up by the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) had earlier looked into alleged incidents of post-poll violence and recommended a court-monitored CBI probe.

On the other hand, the CBI on Thursday filed its first charge sheet in the ongoing probe into violence following elections in West Bengal. In the charge sheet, they have accused two men of murdering a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) worker in the Birbhum district in May.

According to the PTI report, the charge sheet, submitted before the Rampurhat court, contains the names of the two accused allegedly involved in the murder of a BJP worker, following the declaration of assembly election results on May 2.

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New Delhi: The Ganga River and its tributaries have crossed the danger level in several areas in Bihar as a result of incessant rainfall in the state capital Patna and neighbouring country Nepal.

According to the officials, the Ganga River is flowing 12 cm above the danger mark in Patna, while Gandak and Kosi rivers have also crossed the danger level in several areas in the state.

In an interview with ANI, Director of Central Water Commission in Patna, Sanjeev Kumar Suman said, "It is definitely a cause of concern. People and animals are rendered homeless."

"Gandak and Budhi Gandak are flowing above the danger mark. Kosi is flowing above the danger mark in Khagaria," Suman said.

"Both Nepal and Patna is witnessing heavy rainfall for the last few days. If the water level will increase upstream, it will affect the downstream," he said.

Additionally, the Commission informed in a tweet, "River #Gandak at #Lalganj in #VAISHALI district of Bihar continues to flow in EXTREME FLOOD SITUATION. It is flowing at a level of its previous HFL i.e. 51.75 m. Hydrograph is appended."

Earlier, the Commission had informed, "River #Gandak at #Rewaghat in district #MUZAFFARPUR #Bihar is continues to flow in SEVERE SITUATION with Rising trend as on 2.9.2021. @MoJSDoWRRDGR @NDRFHQ."

Meanwhile, the East Central Railway on Wednesday suspended the rail movement between the Darbhanga and Samastipur section as the flood water touched near the rail bridge between Hayaghat and Thalwara station of the Samastipur division.

Earlier, on Tuesday, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar conducted an ariel survey of the flood-affected areas of Darbhanga and said that the state government is continuously monitoring the flood situation in the Darbhanga district.

The Chief Minister had also informed that financial aid of Rs 6,000 is being provided to affected families. "The state government is continuously monitoring the situation of affected areas. Every time Bihar gets flooded during the monsoon season. The government is planning something to control the water level of rivers in Bihar. We are hoping that the plan will not make the situation worse in the future as it is now," Kumar had told reporters.

(With Agency inputs)

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New Delhi: Biological E has received approval for conducting phase II/III human clinical trial of COVID-19 vaccine candidate Corbevax on children above five years and adolescents, the Department of Biotechnology (DBT) said on Friday. (September 3)

Corbevax, an BD protein sub-unit vaccine, has been developed with supported from the Department of Biotechnology and its PSU Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC), it said.

PTI had first reported the grant of approval to Biological E for trial of its vaccine candidate on Wednesday.

The approval of the Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) for conducting phase III comparator safety and immunogenicity trial in adults came after the Subject Expert Committee's (SEC) review of Phase I and II clinical trials data.

"Additionally, Biological E also received approval on 01.09.2021 to initiate Phase II/III study to evaluate safety, reactogenicity, tolerability and immunogenicity of Corbevax vaccine in children and adolescents," the DBT said.

Mahima Datla, Managing Director, Biological E. Limited, said these approvals would help support its subsequent filings with the World Health Organization (WHO) as well.

So far indigenously developed Zydus Cadila's needle-free COVID-19 vaccine ZyCoV-D has received emergency use authorisation from the drug regulator, making it the first vaccine to be administered in the age group of 12-18 years in the country.

The DCGI in July had granted permission to the Serum Institute of India (SII) for conducting phase 2/3 trials of Covovax on children aged 2 to 17 years with certain conditions.

The development of Corbevax was supported by the Department of Biotechnology and its PSU Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC) from the preclinical stage to phase III clinical studies, the DBT said.

"We look forward to the clinical development of candidate Corbevax for paediatric and adults," DBT Secretary Renu Swarup said.

Datla said, "We are delighted to receive these significant approvals from the DCGI. These approvals encourage our organisation to move forward and successfully produce our COVID-19 vaccine to meet the vaccination needs."

"We are grateful to BIRAC for their support and we are enthused that these approvals would help support our subsequent filings with WHO as well. We appreciate and acknowledge the contribution of all our collaborators for their continued support in this endeavour," Datla said.

(With agency inputs)
Mumbai: The Bombay High Court on Friday (September 3) issued notices to the Centre and the Maharashtra government over a writ petition seeking that sale of books be included in the list of essential services in view of the COVID-19 safety-related restrictions imposed in the state.

A single bench of the high court presided over by Justice K K Tated issued the notices, asking the governments to respond to the plea filed by the Marathi Prakashak Parishad, an organisation of Marathi book publishers from Pune.

In its plea filed through advocates Asim Sarode, Ajinkya Udane, the petitioner organisation said that restrictions on the opening of book stores as part of the COVID-19 safety restrictions imposed in the state had adversely affected the book publishing industry.

While the availability of alcohol had been considered even during the last year's lockdown, why had the state and the central government authorities not included sale of books in the list of essential services, asked the plea.

The petitioner organisation has sought that the Union government includes sale of books in the essential services list notified under the Essential Services Maintenance Act. It has also sought directions to the Maharashtra government to look at other states, such as Kerala, that permit sale of books even amid the pandemic-related restrictions, and make similar arrangements.

"Books should be declared as an integral part to exercise the right to life with human dignity and freedom of expression," the plea reads.

It further said that "the process of reading books reduces stress" and helps one achieve "better mental health".

The high court will hear the plea further next month.

(With agency inputs)
New Delhi: Among new developments in Afghanistan, the Taliban failed to form a new government on Friday (September 3), the announcement of which will now take place on Saturday.

Zee News Editor-in-Chief Sudhir Chaudhary on Friday discussed the Talibans failure to establish a government in the Afghan nation.

With this unsuccessful attempt, the world must have understood that for terrorists, it is easy to partake in terror activities, however, politics and forming a government through mutual consent is not their cup of tea.

When it came to deciding leaders and their roles in the government, the Taliban could not develop a consensus. The Taliban followed the deadline to drive out America, but they could not adhere to the deadline to form a government in Afghanistan.

Their attempt resulted in a failure as this is the first experience for terrorists to form a government. But today, the Taliban's lack of experience in government formation has come in front of the whole world.

Even as the Taliban could not form a new government, they took out a Victory Day Parade, wherein their suicide bombers were seen carrying the Taliban flag.

Suicide Bombers are those who take the lives of many innocent people in the name of jihad. The Taliban in their Victory Day Parade describes such suicide bombers as their real soldiers, which is no less than making fun of the peace-loving countries of the world.

The Taliban also displayed their weapons including suicide jackets, bags in which bombs are detonated, rocket launchers, barrel bombs, armored vehicles and gunpowder in this Victory Day Parade.

A Black Hawk helicopter was also seen flying, which is said to have been flown by a pilot of the Afghan Air Force, as the Taliban do not have such pilots. It is to be noted that these are the same helicopters that America left after it ended the 20-year war in Afghanistan on August 31.

Such a parade has already taken place in Kandahar. However, in this parade, the Taliban showed their new flag to the world. The Taliban has changed its flag 30 times in the last 102 years. They think that changing the flag will change everything else, however that is not the case.

ALSO READ: Taliban government formation in Afghanistan postponed, says spokesperson

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Dehradun: The Enforcement Directorate has asked the health department to provide the information about a dozen of labs as it suspects the forgery in the COVID-19 sampling.

After getting a letter in context to the phony COVID-19 sampling by various labs of Uttarakhand, the ED ordered a probe into the matter as some labs were suspected to be involved in money laundering. The Secretary of the state health department has confirmed the information in the letter.

According to the media reports, a dozen of pathology laboratories including some renowned private labs of the state are involved in the fraud COVID-19 sampling.

As per the media reports, fraud in COVID-19 test samples at a large level was confirmed during the Maha Kumbh in Uttarakhand and the ED probed for the same.

After the investigation, some other labs also came under the suspicion of money laundering and ED has asked the health department to provide detailed information about these labs as some of these labs have worked in the COVIS-19 test sampling process of Maha Kumbh.

It is pertinent to note that a number of laboratories were caught forging the COVID-19 test samples during the Maha Kumbh in the state.

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Mumbai: The National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Friday (September 3) told the Bombay High Court in an oral statement that it will not take any coercive action against poet-activist Varavara Rao till September 6 when his plea for medical bail extension will be heard.

Rao, an accused in the Elgar Parishad-Maoist links case and currently on interim medical bail granted by HC in February this year, is supposed to surrender before the Taloja prison authorities on September 5.

Rao's counsel, senior advocate Anand Grover, sought an extension of bail before a bench of Justices SS Shinde and NJ Jamadar on Friday. However, due to paucity of time, the matter could not be heard. HC said it will hear Rao's plea on September 6.

Grover then urged HC to ensure no coercive action was taken against Rao until then. Additional Solicitor General Anil Singh, who appeared for NIA, in an oral statement said,"We will not take any coercive action until the next hearing."

On February 22 this year, a bench of Justices SS Shinde and Manish Pitale had granted Rao (82) interim medical bail on "humanitarian grounds." At the time, Rao, suffering from multiple ailments, was undergoing treatment at Nanavati hospital in Mumbai after being shifted out of Taloja jail following the court's intervention.

At the time, the HC had said if it did not grant Rao medical bail, it would be abdicating its duty to protect the principles of human rights, and a citizen's fundamental rights to life and health.

The bench had imposed stringent bail conditions, including a direction to Rao to stay within the jurisdiction of the Mumbai NIA court for the period he was out on bail, as well as forbidding him from establishing any contact with his co-accused in the case.

(With agency inputs)
New Delhi: As a part of the Air-bubble agreement, flights between India and Bangladesh will resume today (September 3, 2021), according to the civil aviation ministry. The flight services are resuming after four months of suspension due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Earlier, in a communication to the Civil Aviation Authority of Bangladesh, the ministry said the air bubble can be restarted from September 3 till resumption of international passenger flights. Domestic carriers, including SpiceJet, IndiGo and Air India, will be operating flights to Dhaka.

The announcement was made by Rajeev Jain, Additional Director General (Media & Communications) and spokesman for the civil aviation ministry.

"Passengers travelling from Bangladesh to India shall be mandatorily subjected to self-paid confirmatory molecular tests on arrival at the Indian airports concerned (port of entry). Therefore instead of a blanket restriction of 140 passengers per aircraft it is proposed that the capacity may be restricted to a specific percentage of the installed seat capacity of the aircraft (say 90 per cent or 95 per cent)," MoCA Said.

ALSO READ : India extends ban on scheduled international flights till September 30

The release added that the flights under the air bubble will start with seven frequencies per week, for any country carrier.

"This Ministry has examined the proposal in consultation with the health authorities of India and would like to propose resumption of operations under the Air Bubble with 7 frequencies per week (for carriers of either country)," the Indian aviation ministry said.

However, travellers holding tourist visas will not be allowed to travel to India.

"Government of India would be applicable to such passengers, as amended from time to time. It may be noted that passengers holding tourist visas are not allowed to enter India as on date," MoCA Letter read.

(With Agency inputs)

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New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi asserted on Friday (September 3) that the India-Russia friendship has stood the test of time and noted the "robust" cooperation between the two countries during the COVID-19 pandemic, including in the vaccination programme.

My remarks at the Eastern Economic Forum. https://t.co/FE8mRgm75q  Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) September 3, 2021

Addressing the plenary session of the Eastern Economic Forum (EEF), Modi said energy is another major pillar of the strategic partnership between the two countries and that India and Russia can together help bring stability to the global energy market.

Noting that India has a talented and dedicated workforce while the Far East is rich in resources, the prime minister said there is tremendous scope for Indian talent to contribute to the development of the Russian Far East.

He recalled his 2019 visit to the Russian city of Vladivostok to attend the forum and the then announcement of India's commitment to an "Act Far East policy".

The policy is an important part of India's "special and privileged strategic partnership" with Russia, Modi said.
New Delhi: The Indian Army is ready to procure around 100 drones, 'SkyStriker' from a Bengaluru-based company, Alpha Design-led joint venture (JV) involving Israeli firm Elbit Security Sysy Systems (ELSEC).

This could be a big boost to Indias drone arsenal and can not only stave off any future attacks but can also capably carry out air strikes similar to Balakot. The contract worth Rs 100 crore was signed on September 1, according to a report by The Times of India.

A SkyStriker is an Unmanned aircraft system that can acquire and strike operator-designated targets with a a warhead installed in the fuselage. The drones are capable of mass destruction and can carry ammunition atop them and can strike targets from far off distances.

The Elbit systems website described SkyStriker as a cost-effective loitering munition that is capable of long-range precise tactical strikes. It can reach a distance of 20 kms within 10 minutes.

The SkyStriker is enabled with latest technology and can provide direct-fire aerial-precision capabilities which will improve performance, situational awareness and survivability of the troops and Special Forces.
In a bizarre photograph doing rounds on social media, a JD(U) MLA can be seen wearing undergarments inside Tejas, a luxury train. Later, when he was questioned for his unique choice of attire inside a train full of passengers, he defended his action with even a weirder comment.

"I was wearing only the undergarments as my stomach was upset during the journey," he told ANI.

Fellow passengers of the train had complained about the behaviour of the MLA when he was seen roaming in his undergarments. "The moment I boarded the train, I wanted to use the loo immediately. So I removed my kurta pyjama and took the towel on my shoulder. I did not have the time to wrap it around my waist," said Mandal.

Elaborating the series of events, the MLA said that an individual sitting in the adjoining compartment stopped him by holding his hand and questioned him for roaming "naked". "That person asked me why I roaming naked. He held my hand. He disturbed me. Then I rushed to the toilet," he said.

He further said, "The moment I came out, I asked him who are you. He said I am general public. To which I questioned who does this to an MLA."

#WATCH I was only wearing the undergarments as my stomach was upset during the journey: Gopal Mandal, JDU MLA, who was seen in undergarments while travelling from Patna to New Delhi on Tejas Rajdhani Express train yesterday pic.twitter.com/VBOKMtkNTq  ANI (@ANI) September 3, 2021

He claimed that there was no woman present in the compartment at the time he walked past to go to the toilet. "When the police came and questioned us about the argument, I showed them my clothes. I am almost 60 years old. That man held my hand and embarrassed me. He pushed me to which I responded by abusing. Thereafter, I apologised to him," he said.

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Thiruvananthapuram: While the state government has faced the heat for failing to curb the surge in COVID-19 cases, Kerala CM Pinarayi Vijayan has ruled out a complete lockdown in the state stating that it will create a huge crisis for the economy and livelihoods, as per the CMO. He asked everyone to strictly follow the quarantine protocol or else fine will be levied. "Nobody wants another state-wide lockdown because its implementation will adversely affect the economy and the livelihood of the people," the CM said.

The CM has asked the local self government bodies in the state to intervene effectively in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic and said neighbourhood committees would be formed to check the spread of the virus.

#COVID19: Kerala CM Pinarayi Vijayan has ruled out a complete lockdown in the state stating that it will create a huge crisis for the economy and livelihoods, as per CMO (File photo) pic.twitter.com/ack5M6r1q2  ANI (@ANI) September 3, 2021

Vijayan, who was speaking at a virtual meeting of statewide local self government body representatives and officials, said the state was able to keep the case fatality rate at around 0.5 per cent even when the test positivity rate was around 18-20 per cent. "Neighbourhood committees, comprising government officials, volunteers, resident associations, would be set up for COVID-19 mitigation. Intervention should be made to reduce the spread in the state. The neighbourhood committees, rapid response team, ward-level committees, police and sectoral magistrates should implement the restrictions and control the spread," Vijayan said.

He said those who come in contact with a positive patient should be kept under observation and asked the local self government bodies, leaders, and officials to work together as they have done in the initial phase of the pandemic. "We have already given the first dose of vaccine to 74 per cent of the people and second dose to 27 per cent of the population. All health workers and frontline workers have been administered with the first dose of vaccine and 86 per cent of them received the second jab," he said.

Kerala continues to register a record number of COVID-19 infections with the state reporting 29,322 new cases and 131 deaths on Friday (September 3). As per the state health department, the total death toll mounted to 21,280. At a time when COVID-19 cases in other parts of the country have declined after the ravaging second wave, Kerala continues to contribute a majority of infections to India's fresh daily count for the past several days.

(With Agency inputs)

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A special Guava sapling will be planted at Delhi's 7, Lok Kalyan Marg, which is the official residence of the Prime Minister thanks to a student from Kerala. Jayalakshmi, a student of class X, had bagged the Kerala Governments Karshaka Thilakam Award for maintaining an organic farm in her courtyard.

Veteran Malayalam actor Suresh Gopi who had received the sapling from Jayalaxmi had promised to present it to Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself in his next trip to the national capital.

In a Facebook post, the actor-turned-politician stated that the sapling from a village in Keralas Pathanamthitta district was presented to the Prime Minister, as promised. Sharing a photo, he also added that PM Narendra Modi had accepted the sapling wholeheartedly and assured to have it planted in his official residence.
New Delhi: The Supreme Court has put an interim stay on the Kerala government's decision to hold Class XI exam physically from September 6. Amid rising cases of COVID-19 in the state, the apex court has come to this decision. The next hearing is scheduled for September 13.

The Supreme Court has expressed concern about the growing number of COVID cases in the state. The court has said that the situation in Kerala is alarming because of continuing rise in virus cases. Children of tender age can't be exposed to risk as around 35,000 cases being reported daily from the state, the court said in its ruling.

Supreme Court puts interim stay on Kerala government's decision to hold Class XI exam physically from September 6th, amid rising cases of #COVID19 in the state. Next hearing on September 13th. pic.twitter.com/LdeO7VOu5n  ANI (@ANI) September 3, 2021

A bench comprising Justice AM Khanwilkar, Justice Hrishikesh Roy and Justice CT Ravikumar passed the judgement. "I have been Chief Justice of Kerala and I can say Kerala has one of the best medical infrastructures in the country. Despite that, Kerala has not been able to contain Covid cases," Justice Hrishikesh Roy was quoted saying by NDTV.

Also read: Kerala mulls reopening schools even as COVID cases breach 41-lakh mark

Kerala, which recorded the country's first coronavirus case in early 2020, on September 2 reported 32,097 new COVID-19 infections and 188 deaths, taking the total infection count to 41,22,133 and the fatalities to 21,149. This was the third consecutive day when Kerala reported over 30,000 coronavirus cases. The state alone makes for more than 70% of the COVID cases in the country.

Earlier this week, the Union Health Ministry had said that Kerala needed to step up its efforts to bring down the growing cases of COVID, and called for a "smart and strategic lockdown". The Health Ministry had also warned that if it failed to take effective steps, it could now spread to neighbouring states. The state of Karnataka has already said travellers from Kerala need to provide a negative RT-PCR test no older than 72 hours, despite vaccination status.

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Pune: Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar on Friday (September 3) urged citizens not to put the state government in a position where it has to shut everything in the view of a third wave of the coronavirus pandemic.

He expressed concerns over people letting their guard down against COVID-19 in rural areas and added that the Centre has already cautioned all the states, citing that Kerala and Maharashtra have been reporting the highest number of cases.

Speaking to reporters, Ajit Pawar said, "Unfortunately, in rural areas, some people are becoming lax. They are not scared of coronavirus. They don't use masks, don't follow physical distancing, and they have assumed that everything (COVID-19 pandemic) is over. This has led to rising infections."

The Deputy Chief Minister appealed, "All this should stop somewhere. People should not put the state government and administrations in a position where they have to close everything if the third wave hits." Pawar was speaking to media after holding a review meeting of the COVID-19 situation in Pune.

He said that the Chief Minister has appealed to people from time to time, but some people politicise the issue and resort to celebrating festivals.

When asked about reopening of schools, Pawar said that discussions are being held with the concerned experts and a decision will be taken, adding "There are two opinions. Some say schools should open after Diwali, while others say they should be reopened in places where the COVID-19 positivity rate is zero. The chief minister, however, will take the decision."

Speaking about the BJP and MNS' demand to open temples in the state, Ajit Pawar said as the civic elections are round the corner, every party was striving to make its presence felt, which is why this "emotional" issue was being raised. He said that while Ganesh Utsav is drawing closer, people must refrain from celebrating the festival on a grand scale.

The Deputy CM reportedly said, "Since all big mandals (organisers) have decided to celebrate the festival in a simple manner and as there will be no decorations, there is no scope for crowding. However, we will monitor the situation from day one, and if we find that gatherings are taking place, stricter measures will be taken from the second day."

Pawar, who is also the guardian minister of Pune, said that the Divisional Commissioner (Pune division) informed that at least 5 lakh doses may be available for the district soon, and the authorities will try to speed up the vaccination in slums.

(With Agency Inputs)
New Delhi: Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra on Friday (September 3) attacked the Uttar Pradesh government over deaths due to suspected viral fever and dengue-like symptoms.

She slammed the Yogi Adityanath dispensation for not drawing "lessons" from its "disastrous" COVID-19 management during the second wave of the pandemic.

Sharing a news report, Vadra took to Twitter and wrote, Has the UP government not learnt any lessons from the horrific consequences of its disastrous Covid management in the 2nd wave?"

The Congress leader asked the state government to direct all resources towards healthcare. She added, "All possible resources should be directed towards providing healthcare to the affected and taking adequate precautions to prevent the disease from spreading.

As per official sources, the death toll due to dengue and viral fever in Uttar Pradeshs Firozabad district mounted to 50 on Friday, PTI reported. Chief Medical Officer Dinesh Kumar Premi in a statement said, "So far, 50 people have died due to dengue and viral fever. Ten areas -- nine blocks and a Nagar Nigam area -- in the district are affected.

Premi said there are currently 36 active camps in the district and 3,719 people, including those who have fever, are under treatment.

UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has directed the Principal Secretary, Medical Education, to camp in Agra and Firozabad districts to keep a tab on the situation. An official spokesperson informed that isolation beds with the facility of oxygen reserved for coronavirus patients will be used for the treatment of viral diseases including dengue.

(With agency inputs)

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Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh on Friday (September 3), praised Indias pluralism, its culture and tradition and said that the uniqueness of the country lies in the fact that it's home to different faiths.

"India continues to be a pluralistic country that has the unique distinction of being home to almost every faith in the world. This is what gives India its richness and cultural diversity," said Amarinder Singh at a special session of the State Assembly.

India continues to be a pluralistic country that has the unique distinction of being home to almost every faith in the world. This is what gives India its richness & cultural diversity: Punjab CM Captain Amarinder Singh at a special session of the State Assembly pic.twitter.com/1oW14Q7X8B  ANI (@ANI) September 3, 2021

The CM said that Guru Tegh Bahadur, the ninth of the 10 gurus who founded Sikhism, had sacrificed his life for the sake of humanity.

Amarinder Singh said, "It was to uphold the right of people of this land to peacefully follow the faith of their choice, that Guru Sahab (Guru Teg Bahadur) gave his 'shahadat'. By doing so he set a unique example in the history of sacrificing his life."

Singh said that the country and Sikkhism believe in the world being one family, and are concerned about the welfare of the whole of humanity. "India has unique cultural tradition. When we call Indianness, this is the idea of India. Our ancient texts have expressed idea of 'Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam'- the world is one family. In Sikh faith, we've concept of 'Sarbat da bhala' - welfare of entire humanity."

(With ANI inputs)

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New Delhi: According to the Gautam Buddh Nagar Police, a ban on take-home services provided by restaurants and eateries in Noida and Greater Noida has been announced. The services from restaurants and eateries will not be allowed during a night curfew in the district, which is from 10 pm-6 am.

There will be a ban on Take Home services of hotels and dhabas etc, after 10 pm till 6 am. CrPC Section 144 is imposed in Gautam Buddh Nagar. Additional Director General (Law and Order) Prashant Kumar has instructed all districts in the state to ensure compliance of the daily 10 pm to 6 am night curfew, the police statement read, as reported in the media.

Additionally, police commissioner Alok Singh, while talking to Hindustan Times, said that home deliveries were considered as essential services only during the first wave of COVID-19, which was last year when restaurants and hotels were not allowed to open for dine-in customers.

Now that restaurants and hotels are open through the day, food deliveries will not be considered essential services during the night curfew, he said.

This announcement was made on Wednesday (September 1, 2021) following which the restaurant owners in Noida expressed disagreement. Varun Khera, President of the National Restaurants Association of India, in an interview with the Hindustan Times, said, Since the lockdown in 2020, food deliveries were considered essential. All through the Covid curfew this year too, food deliveries have been going on without a hitch and became the only source of income for restaurants in the district. Almost 70% of the home delivery orders come after 8-9 pm and go on till 11 pm to 1 am. If this is taken away from us, we will not be able to survive.

Another owner, Devendra Awana was quoted as saying, Although our restaurant is known for our dine-in service, we began to deliver more after the Covid pandemic and now it has become a major source of our revenue. There are barely any lunch orders and home deliveries during dinner time, which starts at 9 pm and goes on till midnight, sustained us. If this is also taken away from us, we may have to shut down.

Meanwhile, the 10 pm deadline does not only affect the restaurant owners but also poses several problems for the customers. Many of the working individuals said that they all work in the corporate and IT sector and have dinner after 10 pm, but following this new rule, they will not be able to order food even if they are tired after a tiring day. Many residents of Noida expressed their unhappiness and stated that the time restrictions on home deliveries of food do not gel with the lifestyle of people living in the city.

Another owner of Asian Empire restaurant in Sector 76, Mohit Bhardwaj also spoke around the same lines. He said, the lifestyle of those in corporate and IT sector is such that they have their dinner only after 11 pm and some who work at night shifts also order food from us at 1 am. If we shut out operations at 10 pm, that means we cannot take any order after 9-9.15 pm. In Sector 76 alone, there are at least 10 more such eateries like ours who have at least a hundred customers in nearby high rises and this move will affect them all.

Meanwhile, Uttar Pradesh on Thursday recorded 36 fresh COVID-19 cases which pushed the infection tally to 17,09,386, while with no daily death due to coronavirus being registered in a span of 24 hours. Additionally, 11 more COVID-19 patients have recovered from the disease in the state, taking the total number of recoveries so far to 16,86,287.

Over seven cases were reported from Lucknow, six from Maharajganj, three each from Budaun and Varanasi, two each from Allahabad, Kanpur Nagar, and Shrawasti, and one each from Gorakhpur, Meerut, Barabanki, Ghaziabad, Bareilly, Auraiya, Ballia, Bulandshahr, Jaunpur, Kanpur Dehat and Sitapur, a government bulletin said.

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New Delhi: The Allahabad High Court judge came into limelight after he not only said that Parliament should make a law declaring cow a national animal but also claimed in the 12-page order that scientists believe cow is the only animal that inhales and exhales oxygen.

Justice Shekhar Kumar Yadav made these observations on Wednesday (September 1) while denying bail to Javed who had been accused of cow slaughter. While netizens were left stumped by the oxygen remark, here are some other points made by Yadav:

1. The Centre should table a Bill in Parliament and "declare cow as the national animal and make strict laws against those who talk about harming the animal".

2. "Scientists believe cow is the only animal that inhales and exhales oxygen," Times of India quoted him as saying.

3. "Fundamental right is not only the prerogative of beef eaters. Rather, those who worship the cow and are financially dependent on them also have the right to lead a purposeful life."

4. "The right to life is above the right to kill and the right to eat beef can never be considered a fundamental right."

5. "There are hundreds of examples in our country that whenever we forgot our 'sanskriti' (culture), the foreigners attacked us and made us slaves. Even today, if we do not wake up, then we should not forget the autocratic Taliban invasion and occupation of Afghanistan," IANS quoted the order as saying.

6. "It is not that only Hindus have understood the importance of cows, Muslim rulers have also considered the cow an important part of India`s culture during their reign. Babur, Humayun and Akbar had banned cow slaughter in their religious festivals. Mysore's ruler Hyder Ali had made cow slaughter a cognisable offence."

(With agency inputs)

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New Delhi: As total COVID-19 cases breached the 41-lakh mark in the state, the Kerala government on Friday (September 3) directed the local self government bodies to ensure strict implementation of quarantine and isolation guidelines and warned of taking actions against the violators.

The quarantine and isolation norms stipulated therein shall be strictly enforced throughout the state by the implementing agencies," the state government order undersigned by Chief Secretary VP Joy read.

The order comes in the backdrop of the state reporting 30,000 daily cases for the last two weeks.

Directing the Rapid Response Teams, ward level committees, neighborhood clusters and the officials concerned of the Police, Revenue, Health and Local self government departments for strict implementation of COVID-19 guidelines, the government warned, "Action shall be taken against people violating the norms of quarantine, invoking the provisions of the Disaster Management Act, Kerala State Epidemic Act and other relevant legal provisions in force.

Further, the Kerala government said agencies would provide home delivery of essential items to quarantined persons if they meet difficulties.

On Friday, Kerala police filed 1,405 cases for violation of coronavirus health protocol. Around 8,508 incidents of not wearing masks and 85 cases for flouting quarantine guidelines were also registered.

Meanwhile, Kerala logged 29,322 new COVID-19 cases taking the total caseload to 41,51,455. With 131 fatalities, the death toll mounted to 21,280, as per the official data on Friday.

(With agency inputs)

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New Delhi: The Supreme Court has expressed its displeasure and concern over the way a section of web portals, social networking sites and channels run fake news and harm reputations in absence of a regulatory mechanism.

Hearing a batch of petitions on Thursday, Chief Justice of India N V Ramana peeved over attempts by a section of the media to give communal colour to news and flagged lack of accountability of social media and digital platforms. The CJI said that they do not respond to complaints even from judges.

The Bench, which also comprised Justices Surya Kant and A S Bopanna, was hearing the petition was filed by Jamiat Ulama I Hind and the Peace Party, seeking appropriate direction to stop certain media sections from allegedly spreading fake news while linking the spread of COVID-19 with the Nizamuddin Markaz event in 2020.

The CJI said, The problem is everything in this country is shown with a communal angle by a section of the media The country is going to get a bad name ultimately, adding "I don`t know, why everything is given communal angle. They (these social networking sites) only listen to powerful voices and write anything against judges, institutions without any accountability."

The CJI Ramana observed, "These social media sites and channels even don`t respond to us. They say we are not responsible. Institutions, judges, maligned on social media."

The Solicitor General (SG) Tushar Mehta, senior lawyer appearing for the Union of India (UoI), told the Supreme Court that "please grant me two weeks we will file something". To this, the CJI said, "you have taken four adjournments to file affidavit Mr Mehta."

"Please grant me time for 2 weeks. We need to file a document," Mehta said, adding that the balance is between freedom of the press and the right of citizens to get correct information. We have tried to make sure that no untoward information/news is broadcast. Rules have been framed for broadcasters and web portals."

The CJI observed many web portals are not under the control of anybody, asking Mehta, "If you go to Youtube, you can see there is much fake news and false information being circulated. Anyone can start doing it. You have regulatory mechanisms as far as papers and TV are concerned, but "are you suggesting that there is no regulatory mechanism?"

The CJI observed, what is the use of powerful debates if only people who are powerful are allowed to get their matters redressed and the common man`s grievance is not addressed?

Pleading for listing the matter related to IT rules next week, Mehta said that these rules have been challenged in various High Courts, and orders are being passed.

Mehta, however, said that there is a regulatory regime now for SM and OTT platforms and referred to The Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, adding that the Rules call for appointment of an Indian resident as the grievance redressal officer.

The Rules have been challenged in various High Courts and the Centre has filed a petition seeking transfer of all these cases to the Supreme Court. He also cited the Cable Television Networks (Amendment) Rules, 2021, saying it provides for two layers of self-regulation and then oversight by a government committee.

On Mehta's transfer plea, the CJI said "as far as the transfer plea is concerned, let the same be listed along with this petition on the next date."

The Supreme Court directed that it will hear all the petitions challenging Cable Rules amendment 2021 and Digital media IT rules 2021, after six weeks.

(With Agency Inputs)

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Chennai: An official committee has suggested enactment of a law by the state to provide for admission to professional degrees like medicine on the basis of marks obtained in the qualifying exam, the Tamil Nadu government said on Thursday (September 2) in the Assembly.

The President's assent should be received for the proposed Bill following passage in the House, which would ensure social justice and this also indicated the need for elimination of NEET, the government said.

A policy note (2021-22) tabled by Health Minister Ma Subramanian in the Assembly for his department said, this initiative would ensure social justice and protect all vulnerable student communities from being discriminated in admission to medical education programmes.

"The Committee of Secretaries has suggested to promulgate an Act, similar to TN Act No 3/2007, indicating the need for elimination of NEET in medical education and get the President's assent for the same," the note said adding it would ensure social justice.

The 2007 TN law provided for admission to engineering, medicine, dental, agriculture and other allied courses on the basis of marks in the qualifying exam and it received the President's assent.

Citing the submission of recommendations of a high-level committee headed by Justice AK Rajan in July, the government said the panel studied whether the NEET-based admission process had an adverse effect on aspirants of medical education in Tamil Nadu.

The detailed study includes students from poor sections of society in both urban and rural regions and those who had studied in government schools and in Tamil medium.

Following Justice Rajan Panel's recommendations to the government, an official committee of secretaries under the chairmanship of chief secretary V Iraianbu was constituted to suggest appropriate measures to implement the recommendations of the high-level panel.

The policy note said the Tamil Nadu government has been consistently opposing NEET and considering the plight of poor students, Chief Minister M K Stalin had made an announcement on June 5 to constitute a panel under the chairmanship of Justice Rajan.

ALSO READ: CBSE Board Exam 2022: Class 10, 12 term 1 sample papers released, direct link to check here

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New Delhi: Turkey's Envoy to India, Firat Sunel has called for furthering Delhi-Ankara ties, which he described as the "fundamental goal" for his country, given that both countries are "rising stars in their respective regions with their growing economies and increasing role in the international arena, rising stars in their respective regions"

Speaking to WION's Diplomatic correspondent, Sidhant Sibal, Envoy Sunel said, "Turkey and India would benefit from improving comprehensive bilateral relations in all fields."

Frat Sunel has been Turkish Envoy to India since May 2021, and had been previously Turkey's founding envoy to Eritrea. He has also authored three novels, one of which was adapted to TV series.

Meanwhile, Turkey has welcomed Delhi-Taliban engagement. Welcoming the statement by the Ministry of External Affairs on India's Taliban engagement, Turkey's Ambassador to India, Frat Sunel, said, "engagements with all stakeholders are important". Envoy Sunel explained, "We believe that steady and gradual engagement with the Taliban is one of the key factors for stability in Afghanistan."

The MEA, on August 31, announced that the Indian envoy to Qatar, Deepak Mittal, and the Head of the Talibans Political Office, Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanekzai, had met. This was the first public announcement of such a meeting, which the statement pointed out happened at the request of the Taliban.

WION: How do you see India-Turkey ties?

Frat Sunel: Turkey and India have a long history of close ties. And deep-rooted cordial ties between peoples always contribute positively to interstate relations. We have many commonalities based on culture and history and share fundamental values such as democracy and rule of law. Turkey was one of the first countries to recognize Indias independence and to establish diplomatic relations with her in 1947. Turkey was also among the first countries which opened a diplomatic mission in India, namely in July 1948. The Agreement on Cultural Affairs and the Treaty of Friendship signed in 1951 between Turkey and India were other milestones in our friendly relations. We have named two streets in Ankara after the great Mahatma Gandhiji and Rabindranath Tagore, while in Delhi the road right outside the residence of Honourable Prime Minister of India is named after our founding father, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. Both countries are rising stars in their respective regions with their growing economies and increasing role in the international arena. Naturally, it is a fundamental goal for Turkey to further develop and deepen relations with India and we are pleased to acknowledge similar sentiments from Indian side. There is significant potential for further cooperation in key areas such as commerce, trade, investments, culture, tourism and science. We can further cooperate bilaterally and in the international fora on numerous regional and global issues.

In spite of all these facts, I believe our current relations, especially the economic and commercial ones, are far from reflecting the real potentials of our respected countries. There is great room for further enhancing Turkish-Indian cooperation almost in every field. While we may have differences in certain issues, which is very normal in international relations, we should not allow these to hold hostage the development of our ties. We should focus on our positive agenda as well as common grounds and interests. In short, Turkey and India would benefit from improving comprehensive bilateral relations in all fields.

WION: Since your arrival, we have seen positive developments. This includes Turkey sending assistance to India which interestingly had Rumi quotes. What next is being planned in the ties?

Frat Sunel: We have an expression in Turkey: iyi dost kara gunde belli olur (its like: a friend in need is a friend indeed). While the Covid-19 pandemic has swept across the world, India was unfortunately one of the countries most adversely affected during the second wave. And as a friend of India, Turkey couldnt have stayed idle while India was dealing with adversities of the pandemic. We sent medical assistance of approximately 45 tones on board two A400M military cargo aircraft to support Indian people, and what better way to express this with Rumis message of hope and optimism. This message of Rumi (After hopelessness there is so much hope and after darkness there is much brighter sun) had special relevance here because Sufism is a part of our common cultural values we have been sharing for centuries. Turkey puts human in the centre of her foreign policy. Therefore, we tried to share our sincere feelings with the people of India on many occasions such as disasters, terrorist acts etc. through statements by our Foreign Ministry as well as Embassy. Showing the solidarity with the friends in difficult times is our culture as it is in India. Some people may think that I exaggerate a bit but it is true: Turkish people still appreciate the contribution of people from British India to Turkey in her liberation war which later inspired also India in her independence struggle against imperialist powers.

Back to the first part of your question: Indeed, this year marked some positive developments in our bilateral relations. For instance, Foreign Ministers HE Jaishankar and HE Cavusoglu met in Dushanbe on the margins of the Heart of Asia conference on Afghanistan in March which made the first such interaction in more than a year. I sincerely hope we can soon resume high-level bilateral visits. Next year, Turkey and India will celebrate the 75th anniversary of the establishment of their diplomatic ties. I firmly believe that this will mark a great occasion to the enhancement of our relations.

WION: Any way both sides are planning to increase people to people ties, in a post pandemic world?

Frat Sunel: Ties between the people of Turkey and India are based on solid foundations. Strong connection between our people was manifested many times in our history by the deep-rooted fellowship and affection. I strongly believe that building on the people to people ties would support the enhancement of relations between states. In this sense, cultural relations will be a priority. We have so many similarities. Turks like to watch Bollywood movies and Indian like watching Turkish series. Turks are very interested in Indian culture and they really have very warm feelings towards Indians. Indians visiting Turkey notice what I say. We have many areas to cooperate from literature to cinema. Tourism relations is also another area that we could improve. I think collaboration in these fields will allow our people to overcome any prejudices. In my tenure I will certainly put special focus on these areas. I hope in the light of the recent updated quarantine regulations for passengers from India to Turkey, more Indian tourists will benefit from the beauties of Turkey and hospitalities of Turkish people.

WION: When it comes to Afghanistan, what is Turkey's way forward. Turkey has been playing a key role in the country. Will Turkey recognise any Taliban led govt in Kabul?

Frat Sunel: The evil terrorist attack at the Hamid Karzai International Airport on August 26 which we all condemned in the strongest term, made it clear once again that the full restoration of security and civil order and the overall protection of human life and property are of utmost importance. Stability is the most urgent need in Afghanistan and we believe that only inclusive approaches can pave the way to this end. Turkey monitors closely the developments in Afghanistan and follows the talks between the parties carefully. We keep contacts with various Afghan political figures and are ready to do our best for security and wellbeing of the Afghan people. We maintain our diplomatic presence in the country and continuously updating our plans according to developments regarding the security situation. Turkish Embassy in Kabul remains open and our Ambassador implements his duties without any interruption. On the other hand, recognizing any government in Afghanistan is an issue which shall be considered in lights of various factors such as its approach to fundamental rights and its inclusiveness.

WION: How do you see India's role in Afghanistan?

Frat Sunel: We welcome the statement of the Ministry of External Affairs announcing the first official talks in Doha with Taliban. Engagements with all stakeholder are important. We believe that steady and gradual engagement with Taliban is one of the key factors for the stability in Afghanistan. The situation in Afghanistan would have direct impacts on India. As a country that has contributed USD 3 billion so far for the stability and security of Afghanistan and as a non-permanent member of the UNSC, India can play an active role in this regard.

WION: Any way both countries, India and Turkey are coordinating on Afghanistan.

Frat Sunel: The instability and security gaps or risks can directly affect our respective countries adversely although none of us has common borders with Afghanistan. Therefore maintaining peace and stability in Afghanistan is of vital interests of both countries. Our relevant authorities already collaborated during the air evacuation operations after August 15th at the Kabul airport. Turkey and India have made immense contribution to Afghanistan during the last 20 years. We shall continue helping Afghanistan to recover from years of conflict and strife.

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New Delhi: With the second wave of COVID-19 receding, the Yogi Adtiyanath-led Uttar Pradesh government reopened all schools from Wednesday (September 1, 2021). According to the media reports, now the schools in the state will open for six days, rather than five.

In an order issued by the additional chief secretary of secondary education, Aradhana Shukla, the authorities stated that as the weekend curfew in the state has come to an end, the schools in Uttar Pradesh will now open from Monday to Saturday for classes 9-12.

It is to be noted that the schools in UP for classes 9-12 had already opened from August 16, 2021, and for Classes 6 to 8 from August 23. However, the government hasnt made attendance for students compulsory in view of the ongoing pandemic.

The state government allowed the reopening of schools with various restrictions in place. As per the SOP issued by the government, the school authorities need to make sure that at the entry gate of every school/ madrasa, thermal screening of children should be done to check for Covid symptoms. Additionally, sanitisers should be arranged in classrooms.

Meanwhile, Uttar Pradesh on Thursday recorded 36 fresh COVID-19 cases which pushed the infection tally to 17,09,386, while with no daily death due to coronavirus being registered in a span of 24 hours. Additionally, 11 more COVID-19 patients have recovered from the disease in the state, taking the total number of recoveries so far to 16,86,287.

Over seven cases were reported from Lucknow, six from Maharajganj, three each from Budaun and Varanasi, two each from Allahabad, Kanpur Nagar, and Shrawasti, and one each from Gorakhpur, Meerut, Barabanki, Ghaziabad, Bareilly, Auraiya, Ballia, Bulandshahr, Jaunpur, Kanpur Dehat and Sitapur, a government bulletin said.

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New Delhi: The government on Thursday extended till September 30 visas of all foreign nationals stuck in India due to COVID-19 pandemic, an official spokesperson said.

The spokesperson said the decision was taken because a number of foreigners who came to India on various types of visas prior to March, 2020 got stranded in the country in the absence of flights to their destinations due to the pandemic.

"The central government had facilitated the stay of such foreign nationals within India by giving deemed extension of their regular visa or e-visa or stay stipulation period on gratis basis without levy of any overstay penalty.

"This facility which is presently available till August 31, 2021 has now been extended by the central government till September 30, 2021. Such foreign nationals will not be required to submit any application to the FRRO/FRO concerned for extension of their visas till September 30, 2021," the spokesperson said.

Before exiting the country, they may apply online for an exit permission on e-FRRO portal which would be granted by the authorities on gratis basis without levy of any overstay penalty.

The spokesperson said that if someone wanted visa extension beyond September 30, they may apply on the online e-FRRO platform on payment basis, which would be considered by the authorities, subject to the eligibility as per the extant guidelines.

The spokesperson made it clear that Afghan nationals, already in India on any category of visa, will be granted extension of visa under guidelines issued separately for Afghan nationals.

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New Delhi: Rajasthan Public Service Commission (RPSC) has invited applications for the posts of Statistical Officer. Interested candidates can apply through the official website of RPSC on rpsc.rajasthan.gov.in.

The recruitment drive will fill 43 vacancies in the Commission. The application form can be submitted on or before October 2, 2021.

Eligibility criteria:

Candidates must possess Masters degree in Economics or Statistics or Mathematics with paper in Statistics or Commerce with Statistics or M.Sc (Agriculture) Statistics. A certificate (RS-CIT course conducted by Rajasthan Knowledge Corporation Limited) awarded by Vardhaman Mahaveer Open University, Kota or any other certificate awarded by a competent authority declared equivalent to above certificate by the Department of Information, Technology and Communication, Government of Rajasthan is also required to apply. Candidates should be adept in Hindi written in Devnagri Script and have knowledge of Rajasthani culture.

Candidates should be between the age group of 21 to 40 years.

Application fee:

Candidates as per the amounts mentioned below for various categories will have to pay the fees online.

General category- Rs 300

EWS category- Rs 250

SC/ST category- Rs 150

RPSC Recruitment 2021: Check steps to apply

1. Visit the official website of RPSC at rpsc.rajasthan.gov.in

2. Homepage will appear, click on Apply Online under Important Links category

3. Log in details and fill the application form

4. Upload the required documents and pay the application fees

5. Submit the application form and download for future references

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New Delhi: Money Heist, one of the most popular shows, will be coming out with part one of its final fifth season on September 3 on Friday (September 3) on Netflix. The crime-thriller which began in 2017 will now end with a final fifth season. According to the makers, the fifth season is divided into two parts which will be releasing on September 3 and December 3.

In the trailer, fans caught a glimpse of their favourite characters who've been enclosed in the Bank of Spain for over 100 hours. In the first few seconds, it was revealed that The Professor had been caught by police officer Alicia Sierra as she entrapped him, says "checkmate" and then weakened him with a punch to his head. Another twist had arisen when we witnessed the military attempting to capture the gang.

As you immerse yourselves into the fifth chapter of the gripping action crime-thriller, take a look at these interesting facts about the show that we bet you didn't know.

1. The original title of the show was NOT La Casa de Papel: While die-hard fans may be aware, most of you might not know that the original name of the series is La Casa de Papel which in English translates to The House of Paper. However, this was not the makers' first choice when they were selecting a title. Alex Pina, the creator of the show, wanted the show to be named Los Desahuciados, which translates to 'The Outcasts'. He thought it would fit as all characters on the show are misfits and outcasts of sorts.

After much deliberation, they stuck to La Casa de Papel as the first scene showed the characters robbing a bank which is essentially a 'paper house'.

2. Tokyo was the first character to be named: Out of all the characters on the show, Tokyo was the first one to get her name. The story behind her name is simple but amusing at the same time. In an interview, Money Heist producer Jesus Colmenar revealed that Alex Pina, the show's creator, arrived at work while wearing a shirt with the word 'Tokyo' written on it. This inspired him to name the character Tokyo.

3. Money Heist makers wanted to shoot at The Royal Mint of Spain: Initially, the creators were hoping to shoot the show at The Royal Mint of Spain, however, they didn't get permission to do so. So, they had to look for other similar-looking buildings to do the job. They shot the initial scenes at Spanish National Research Council after which only studio settings were required.

4. Creators consulted the national police, the Spanish Ministry of Interior for the show: To add realism to the show, the creators approached the national police and the Spanish Ministry of Interior on bank robbery protocol and took other inputs from them regarding law and order.

5. Banknotes used in the show were authorised by the Bank of Spain: As an anti-counterfeit measure, the makers increased the size of the banknotes used for the show. They were printed with prior permission from the Bank of Spain.

For the unversed, the series narrates a story about a mastermind named The Professor, who gathers a team of specialists to carry out the biggest heist ever performed. Essentially, he wants to print millions of Euros in the Royal Mint of Spain.

The series had won Best Drama Series at the 46th International Emmy Awards in 2018 and over time has attracted tons of critical appreciation for its complex plot, characters and unique storyline.

Fans can watch the first part of the final season on September 3, 2021, on Netflix. The second part will be out on December 3.
New Delhi: It is certainly not a pleasant sight, which Shehnaaz Kaur Gill's fans would ever want to see her in. The young, budding star was inconsolable at Sidharth Shukla's last rites journey. Her first appearance post his untimely death has shaken fans, media and friends.

Shehnaaz Gill was accompanied by her brother Shehbaaz and looked completely heartbroken. She was teary-eyed and inconsolable.

Sidharth Shukla breathed his last on September 2, 2021. His untimely demise has left his family and fans grieving. Although initial reports suggest he died of a heart attack, the exact cause of his death is yet to be ascertained. He was 40.

In the recent development, the late actor's post-mortem report has been handed over to the Mumbai police this morning. However, as per our sources, it has been learnt that doctors who conducted the post-mortem have reserved their opinion report.

(Pic Courtesy: Viral Bhayani)

No external injury marks were sustained on the body, as per the report. However, Sidharth Shukla's viscera samples have been sent for chemical analysis to get a clear picture of the cause behind his death, reportedly. According to sources, his histopathology study will be conducted and the cause of death will be clear only then.

Several celebrities from the film and TV world reached his residence and later at Oshiwara crematorium to pay their last respects.

May his soul rest in peace!
New Delhi: Popular television and film actor Sidharth Shukla's last rites have been performed today at Oshiwara Crematorium in Mumbai. Amid heavy rainfall, his grieving family members, celeb friends and an ocean of fan following bid Sidharth a tearful goodbye.

He breathed his last on September 2, 2021. Although initial reports suggest he died of a heart attack, the exact cause of his death is yet to be ascertained. He was 40.

Several celebrities from the television and film industry came to offer condolences at Sidharth Shukla's residence and later at the Oshiwara Crematorium. Sidharth's mother was accompanied by family members as she headed for her son's last rites.

Close friend Shehnaaz Gill was accompanied by her brother Shehbaaz and looked completely heartbroken. She was teary-eyed and inconsolable. This was her first appearance since the unfortunate and untimely demise of Sidharth Shukla.

In the recent development, the late actor's post-mortem report has been handed over to the Mumbai police this morning. However, as per our sources, it has been learnt that doctors who conducted the post-mortem have reserved their opinion report.

No external injury marks were sustained on the body, as per the report. However, Sidharth Shukla's viscera samples have been sent for chemical analysis to get a clear picture of the cause behind his death, reportedly. According to sources, his histopathology study will be conducted and the cause of death will be clear only then.

A detailed report will be sought after a chemical investigation, it has been learnt.

Sidharth Shukla, who is survived by his mother and two sisters, was dead when he was taken to the Cooper Hospital in Juhu around 10.20 am, authorities at the hospital told PTI.

The hospital's Dr Jitten Bhavsar said Shukla -- who won Bigg Boss 13 in 2020 and joins the ranks of actors on the cusp of fame who went too early -- was declared dead by the principal medical officer when he was taken to the hospital around 10.20 am.

May his soul rest in peace!
New Delhi: Famous TV and film actor Sidharth Shukla breathed his last on September 2, 2021. His untimely demise has left his family and fans grieving. Although initial reports suggest he died of a heart attack, the exact cause of his death is yet to be ascertained. He was 40.

In the recent development, the late actor's post-mortem report has been handed over to the Mumbai police this morning. However, as per our sources, it has been learnt that doctors who conducted the post-mortem have reserved their opinion report.

No external injury marks were sustained on the body, as per the report. However, Sidharth Shukla's viscera samples have been sent for chemical analysis to get a clear picture of the cause behind his death, reportedly. According to sources, his histopathology study will be conducted and the cause of death will be clear only then.

A detailed report will be sought after a chemical investigation, it has been learnt.

Sidharth Shukla, who is survived by his mother and two sisters, was dead when he was taken to the Cooper Hospital in Juhu around 10.20 am, authorities at the hospital told PTI.

The hospital's Dr Jitten Bhavsar said Shukla -- who won Bigg Boss 13 in 2020 and joins the ranks of actors on the cusp of fame who went too early -- was declared dead by the principal medical officer when he was taken to the hospital around 10.20 am.

The actor's body will be kept at the state government post mortem centre overnight and the post mortem report will be released tomorrow on Friday.

"Once the certificate (of death) is given by the doctor, the police will issue the NOC (no objection certificate) to the relatives and then they can claim the body. However, it's the investigating officer who deals with the report of post mortem. It is confidential information between the doctors doing the autopsy and investigating officer," Dean Mohite said later in the day.
New Delhi: Popular television and Bollywood actor Sidharth Shukla's untimely demise has sent shockwaves across the industry. The actor reportedly died after he suffered a massive cardiac arrest on Thursday (September 2) morning. He was rushed to Mumbai's Cooper Hospital where he was declared dead by doctors.

Meanwhile, his fans and friends from the industry have still not been able to come to terms with the fact that Sidharth Shukla is no more. Social media is filled with grief-stricken posts and pictures of the actor.

Late Bollywood actor Sushant Singh Rajput's Shweta Singh Kirti too could not stop herself from expressing her shock at Sidharth's death. Shweta Kirti lost her younger brother and actor Sushant Singh Rajput, 35, only last year.

Taking to her Instagram account, Sushant Singh Rajput's sister Shweta Singh Kirti shared a picture of Sidharth Shukla and a tweet the late actor had made after SSRs case had been transferred to the CBI. Shweta wrote, "You will be missed Siddharth, gone too soon. Hope your soul rests in peace. I wonder, why God calls all the good ones early!"

The moment Shweta posted this, fans took to the comments section to mourn the loss of both the stars. Fans were unable to control their emotions and tagged both Sushant and Sidharth as good man saying that both of them will meet in heaven, fans could not control their emotions.
New Delhi: Punjab National Bank (PNB) on Thursday urged the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal to quash Jet Airways rescue plan. The state-owned lender has alleged irregularities in the defunct debt-laden carriers account as the reason why the rescue plan should be halted for now.

The PNBs request could delay the return of Jet Airways which was grounded two years ago. Notably, last month, a consortium of London-based Kalrock Capital and a UAE-based businessman had agreed to invest about Rs 1000 crore in Jet Airways as capital to bail out the carrier from its debt that started building up in 2019.

PNB is currently arguing that the Jets court-appointed rescue official had initially accepted its claim of nearly 10 billion rupees ($137 million) from the airlines backers, but then reduced it by 2 billion rupees, according to its tribunal filing quoted in a report by Reuters.

PNB argued in front of the NCLAT that the reduction in the amount was arbitrary and illegal. Additional Solicitor General of India Aman Lekhi said that the tribunal has agreed to hear the case. The next date of hearing has been set for September 2021. "How PNB has been treated is wrong - both substantively and procedurally," Lekhi said.

Faced with increasing competition from low-cost rivals, Jet Airways grounded all flights in April 2019 due to rising debts. Since then the carrier has been trying to make a recovery. Also Read: Sensex crosses 58K, Nifty tops 17,300: SBI, HCL Tech in focus in early trade

Last year, the financial creditors of Jet Airways, including PNB, had approved the resolution plan. Also Read: Supertech twin-tower case: Noida Authority's planning manager suspended, SIT team set up

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#mute
New Delhi: The Uttar Pradesh government has suspended a manager in the planning department of the Noida Authority in connection with the construction of two multi-storey towers that had come up in violation of building bye-laws, official sources said.

On the directives of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, a four-member Special Investigation Team (SIT) was formed under the chairmanship of Sanjiv Mittal, secretary of the Industrial and Infrastructure Development department, to probe the irregularities that transpired between 2004 and 2017 and ensure a time-bound probe.

Additional Chief Secretary Manoj Kumar Singh, Additional DGP Rajeev Sabarwal and Chief Town Planner Anoop Kumar Shrivastava are other three members of the SIT, Additional Chief Secretary (Information) Navneet Sehgal said.

The manager's shunting comes in the wake of a Supreme Court directive that ordered demolition of the twin-towers built by realty firm Supertech illegally in its Emerald Court housing project in Noida Sector 93A.

After the top court's rapping to the industrial development body under the Uttar Pradesh government, Adityanath had also ordered an inquiry into the matter on Wednesday and called for strict action against those guilty.

"Mukesh Goyal, manager in the planning department, was nominated to attend the Supreme Court hearings in the Emerald Court case. He regularly attended the court hearings but did not bring case updates and important facts to the notice of senior officers of the Noida Authority," official sources in Lucknow said.

"The planning manager has prima facie been found guilty of irregularities and irresponsibility in work. A departmental inquiry has already been initiated against him and he has been placed under immediate suspension with effect from September 1," the sources said.

Around a half a dozen other Noida Authority officials are also under scrutiny for their alleged role in the case, they added.

In its Tuesday order, the Supreme Court had directed that the towers be razed within three months for violation of building norms in "collusion? with district officials, holding that illegal construction has to be dealt with strictly to ensure compliance with the rule of law.

The case pertained to realty firm Supertech constructing two 40-storey towers illegally in its Emerald Court housing project premises with over 900 flats and 21 shops in the twin towers.

Residents of the housing project claimed their consent was not taken for the twin towers, which were being built in violation of norms, and moved court.

The Allahabad High Court had in 2014 ordered demolition of the twin towers with the Supreme Court upholding the verdict in 2021. Also Read: HDFC Life Insurance to buy Exide Life in a Rs 6,687 crore cash and stock deal

However, buyers who have invested their money in these towers hoped their interest would be protected, even as the Supertech Group said it would be filing a review petition in the case. Also Read: NASA's Perseverance rover successfully collects first rock from Mars
New Delhi: US-based ecommerce giant Amazon appears to be all set to launch Amazon-branded TVs in the American market. The Alexa-powered smart televisions could be launched as soon as October 2021.

At present, Amazon sells a slew of consumer electronic devices such as smart displays, smart speakers and Fire TV sticks, among others. The ecommerce major is now looking to add smart televisions to its lineup.

The upcoming television could be launched in screen sizes ranging from 55 to 75 inches.

Amazon is unlikely to have in-house manufacturing for the televisions and could partner with third-party manufacturers such as TCL for the production of Alexa powered smart TVs.

However, Amazon is also reportedly working on a TV designed in-house. However, the launch date of that television is not clear yet.

Moreover, reports suggest that Amazon could partner with a large consumer electronic firm like LG or Samsung for its upcoming television.

Currently, Amazon sells televisions under the AmazonBasics brand in India, where the e-commerce major has partnered with BestBuy to sell Toshiba and Insignia TVs that run Amazons Fire TV software. Also Read: Flipkart Smartphone Carnival: Check out deals and discounts on iPhone 12, iPhone 11, iPhone XR and more

Besides sells television, Amazon also sells equipment that can make any TV smart. These devices also include Fire TV Stick and Fire TV Cube. Also Read: Sensex rallies 277 points to end above 58K, Nifty above 17,300
New Delhi: Xiaomi is all set to host another launch event for Indian customers on Friday (September 3). The Chinese brand will launch the Redmi 10 Prime smartphone in the Indian market, along with Redmi TWS Earbuds.

Redmi 10 Prime expected features

Redmi 10 Prime is expected to have a massive 6,000mAh battery that can also offer support for reverse charging. The upcoming smartphone will be powered by the MediaTek Helio G88 SoC processor which also powers the Redmi 10 smartphone.

Xiaomi has also teased several other features ahead of the much-awaited launch. These features include an adaptive refresh rate and a hole-punch display. The smartphone is also expected to pack dual microphones. Also Read: Airtel rolls out 3 new Disney+ Hotstar recharge plans ahead of IPL 2021 Phase 2: Price, validity, benefits

Redmi 10 Prime expected price

The 4GB RAM+ 64GB storage variant of the Redmi 10 Prime was launched globally at $179 which translates to around Rs 13,300. The 6GB RAM and 128GB variant storage model was rolled out at a starting price of $219 (around Rs 16,600). In India, the Redmi 10 Prime smartphone could be launched at a similar price point. Also Read: PNB urges NCLAT to quash Jet Airways rescue plan, heres why

When will Xiaomi launch event start?

Xiaomi will be live streaming the launch event on YouTube. The event will begin at 12 noon.

Where to watch the Xiaomi launch event start?

You can watch the live stream of the event here:

You can also live stream the launch event of the Redmi 10 Prime and Redmi TWS Earbuds India on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OKicnKH6Yk
New Delhi: Samsung Electronics has succeeded in developing `200 million pixels` for the first time in the industry and is leading changes in the next generation mobile device camera market.

The mobile image sensor ISOCELL HP1 is the new product in 2 years following the `ISOCELL Bright HMX` released in August 2019. For this product, 200 million pixels which are 0.644um(micrometer, 1/1 million m) are installed on the optical format (diameter of area where images are recognized through camera lenses).

The number of pixels has increased by 85% compared to the previous models` 108 million pixels, and the size of the optical format has been minimized from 1/1.33 to 1/1.22 inches.

Samsung Electronics' new technology `ChameleonCell` is also applied to the new product for the first time. The technology can combine 4 or 16 nearby pixels depending on the filming environment.

It uses 0.64ummicro pixels when there is enough light, and 1.28umor 2.56mm pixels when it is dark, such as night or indoor, to receive more light. The company explained that users can take bright and vivid photos through this technology.

It also equipped a technology to record 8K high-resolution video with 30 frames per second without loss of viewing angle by using 4 nearby pixels as combined one.

In addition, Samsung Electronics also introduced Dual Pixel Image Sensor `ISOCELL GN5`, which is the smallest size with 1/1.57 inches.Dual pixel is a technology that enables fast and accurate auto-focus functions by attaching two photodiodes that focus the camera.

In particular, Samsung Electronics has strengthened its auto-focus function by utilizing `dual pixel pro` technology for this product. Common dual pixel products utilize only the left and right phase differences of subjects to automatically focus, on the other hand, this product utilized all upper, lower, left and right phase differences.

Also, it applied FDTI (Front Deep Trench Isolation) process for the first time that can minimize crosstalk occurred by application of pixel ultrafine technology and maximize full well capacity. Also Read: WhatsApp users alert! Bug in image filter may have exposed your data, vulnerability now fixed

Through this technology, it implemented same level of performance of 1.2umpixels products although it has 1.0umpixels. Also, it enables to take high-definition photographs of 100 million pixels through color filter relocation algorithm that utilizes a single photodiode as a pixel in an environment with rich light. Also Read: Xiaomi launches Redmi 10 Prime with 6000 mAh battery, 50 MP camera: Price, feature and specs
New Delhi: A young comedian, Sidharth Sagar, who shot to fame with his impressive comic timing and mimicry acts on Comedy Circus - Chinchpokli To China. Reports of him being under drugs influence surfaced online and fans were worried to know that he has yet again got into substance abuse.

According to Times of India report, the stand-up comedian, who is currently seen on 'Comedy show' judged by choreographer-turned-filmmaker Farah Khan went missing from the sets recently. On August 26 night, Mumbai police cops found him in a bad state. The officials then called his mother, who was in Delhi.

She reportedly has now admitted Sidharth Sagar to a rehab.

His mother told TOI, "Not many are aware that he was undergoing treatment for bipolar and he used to have hallucinations. I tried to balance his life and got him till here. I had always told him that the more popular you get, the more enemies you will make in the industry. I had always taught him to lead a balanced life and not to run behind money. For me peace is the most important thing and I had told him that. We can feed you your entire life but dont want to see you again in a bad state. I will fight for my son till my last breath and not let anyone come in between. If it would not have been urgent I would have never travelled to Delhi. I am not sure if it is because of drugs or because he had stopped his treatment for bipolar. That I will only get to know him when I speak to him when I come back to Mumbai."

Earlier in 2018, his missing reports surfaced online and he released a video stating that last few months have been very difficult for him and he will address the media shortly in a day or two. Sidharth also thanked the people who supported him in tough conditions. He mentioned that ever since his 'missing' reports have gone viral, he has been getting several phone calls and text messages.

He battled substance abuse and recently came back to work.

Sidharth is best known for his quirky stand-up acts. He was first seen on Comedy Circus Ke Ajoobe along with Krushna Abhishek and Sudesh Lehri. The trio won the comedy show that year. He was then seen playing the lead role in comedy show 'Pritam Pyare Aur Woh'.

He made his debut in Comedy Circus - Chinchpokli To China. Sidharth started working as a stage artiste from a very young age reportedly.
New Delhi: In an answer to the curious questions about how astronauts living in spcae accomplish their daily-life activities with nearly no or less gravity in outer space. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) astronaut Megan McArthur from ISS (International Space Station) shares a clip to demonstrate exactly how the astronauts wash their hair up in space.

McArthur has provided a detailed step-by-step process on how she washes hair in space. She started by wetting her hair with the help of a pouch of water. She put the water on her scalp and covered the hair with a towel so that it water droplets dont spread all over the area in zero gravity.

She then combs her hair to spread water all over her hair and apply shampoo and combs again. After applying the shampoo she rinses it with minimal water while covering hair with a towel. She ends the process by styling her hair straight.

Shower Hour! Astronauts cant take showers in space or the water would go everywhere, so I thought I would demonstrate how we keep hair clean on the @Space_Station. The simple things we take for granted on Earth are not so simple in micro-gravity! pic.twitter.com/wfXhNv6zzD  Megan McArthur (@Astro_Megan) August 31, 2021

The shampoo used by the astronauts is a no-rinse shampoo that requires no water to wash off. The video has garnered over 41k views hundreds of comments expressing amusement over the process.

ALSO WATCH: Storm interrupts weather report! Adorable dog steals spotlight on live stream, netizens love it
New Delhi: The Ghol fish is known for its medicinal value and pharmaceutical companies are known to use the fish to make dissolvable stitches. It is scientifically known as Protonibea diacanthus and is a type of blackspotted croaker fish with huge demand in countries like Indonesia, Thailand, Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia.

The fish became the talk of the town, after a fisherman from Palghar, Maharashtra, Chandrakant Tare and his crew near Wadhwan caught over 157 Ghoul fishes which fetched them a whopping Rs 1.33 crore. Ghol fishes are rare in the area due to pollution and fishermen have to venture deep into the sea to get a good catch.

Here are some unknown facts about the Ghol fish:

This fish is also known as Sea Gold and the native to the Indo-Pacific region.

They are known for their medicinal value.

Pharmaceutical companies are known to use the fish to make dissolvable stitches.

These are considered one of the most expensive marine fish available.

The bladder of Ghol fish also cures kidney stones.

Additionally, its heart boosts sex power and immunity.

Its fins are said to have medicinal value as well.

They are used in wine production in Singapore.

Ghol fish also contains many vitamins, minerals, proteins, which helps in maintaining eyesight.

This fish was indeed a prized catch for Chandrakant Tare, who after a long break due to COVID-19 restriction, went fishing on August 28. He had no idea how his luck was about to turn.

Tare and around eight crew members set off sailing for fishing on August 28 late evening. They went to Wadhwan, which is 20 to 25 nautical miles, on the boat Harba Devi. As people learned about their catch, eager buyers reportedly gathered and the fish were sold to the highest bidder, who were traders from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar reportedly.

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Washington: The US needs to closely watch China as it might try to take over the Bagram air force base in Afghanistan following the Taliban's takeover of the war-torn country and use Pakistan to get stronger to go against India, a former senior American diplomat has warned.

America's former envoy to the United Nations Nikki Haley said President Joe Biden has lost the trust and confidence of American allies after his hasty decision to withdraw troops from Afghanistan. She said there are many challenges in front of the US.

The US needs to make sure that Americans are protected and the country's cybersecurity is strong "because actors like Russia are going to continue to hack us because we show no signs of willingness to fight back," she said.

"We need to watch China because I think you are going to see China make a move for Bagram Air Force Base. I think they are also making a move in Afghanistan and trying to use Pakistan to get stronger to go against India. So, we have got a lot of issues," she said.

In July, the US military left Bagram Airfield - its key base in Afghanistan - after nearly 20 years. At its height, the Bagram base was home to tens of thousands of US troops.

"The biggest thing he (Biden) should do is strengthen our allies, strengthen those relationships, modernise our military, and make sure we are prepared for the cyber-crimes and the terrorist crimes that are headed our way,? she said in response to a question.

She said it is time that President Biden's administration reaches out to its key friends and allies like India, Japan and Australia and assure them that the US will have their back.

The first thing you should do is immediately start connecting with our allies, whether it's Taiwan, whether it's Ukraine, whether it's Israel, whether it's India, Australia, Japan, all of them, and reassure them that we will have their back and that we need them as well, Haley said.

Secondly, we need to make sure that we are going on an anti-terrorist effort across the world because we are now going to see -- with this moral victory that the jihadists have, you are going to see a heavy recruitment campaign around the world.

You are going to see more lone wolf situations, she added. Haley slammed Biden for his disastrous withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan.

By the end of that speech that President Biden gave, it was the beginning of the lame-duck presidency for Joe Biden,? she said.

I mean, he has lost the trust and confidence of every member of the military and the military families that I'm proud to be a part of. He has lost the trust and confidence of our allies who are now negotiating without us because they don't know why we are doing what we're doing, she said.

Biden, she alleged, has lost the trust and confidence of the American people. If you look at the fact that the jihadists are celebrating in the streets because America has run out of town and they left them with billions of dollars worth of equipment and ammunition as a housewarming present, she said.

You couldn't ask for a more embarrassing, humiliating situation than what we have right now. The world is more definitely a dangerous place. Just because we are out of Afghanistan does not mean this war is over, Haley said.

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Geneva: Many Afghans were struggling to feed their families amid severe drought well before Taliban militants seized power last month and millions may now face starvation with the country isolated and the economy unravelling, aid agencies say.

"In the current context, there are no national safety nets...Since the 15th of August (when the Taliban took over), we have seen the crisis accelerate and magnify with the imminent economic collapse that is coming this country`s way," Mary-Ellen McGroarty, World Food Programme country director in Afghanistan, told Reuters by video link from Kabul.

In an August video provided by the WFP, Afghan women wearing head to toe-covering burqas and men in turbans line up for supplies at a U.N. food distribution centre in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif.

A bearded man leaves carrying a sack of 46 kilos (101.4 pounds) of fortified wheat flour on his back.

"There are no crops, no rain, no water and people are living in misery. This is a great mercy from God and it really helps poor and needy people," Delawar, who lives in Balkh province whose capital is Mazar, says in the video after getting rations for his family of eight.

Food prices have spiked since the second drought in four years ruined some 40% of the wheat crop, according to the WFP.

Millions of Afghans could soon face starvation due to the combination of conflict, drought and COVID-19, it has said. It has urgently appealed for $200 million, warning that WFP supplies will run out by October as winter sets in.

"The situation that we have unfolding at the moment is absolutely horrendous and could morph into just a humanitarian catastrophe," said McGroarty.

"The Taliban depend on the U.N. and they know it - they can`t feed the population," said another U.N. official who has worked in Afghanistan but declined to be identified.

Moreover, civil servants` salaries are not being paid, the currency has depreciated, and banks have limited weekly withdrawals to $200 since the Taliban takeover, McGroarty said.

WFP has maintained operations throughout Afghanistan and has been able to import food from Uzbekistan and Pakistan, reaching 200,000 people with supplies in the past two weeks, she said, and hopes to restore an air bridge to Kabul airport.

`PALLOR AND PAIN`

McGroarty, an Irish aid veteran, has met some of the 550,000 Afghans uprooted by fighting and drought this year, now living in makeshift tents. In June, she visited food centres in Mazar that distribute wheat flour, oil, lentils and salt.

"I just see the grey and the pallor and the pain in their faces as now they have to put their hands out for something to be able to feed their children," she said.

McGroarty, recalling Afghanistan`s 2017-2018 drought, said: "People are again faced with no food in the larder, no food to put on the table, having to sell the little bit of assets or livestock that they have to try to survive."

A lack of both snow and rainfall has left "fields of dust" in drought-hit Mazar and Herat to the west, she said, adding: "So it`s just a tapestry of one crisis on top of the other."

Malnutrition already affects one in two children under the age of five in Afghanistan, where 14 million people or one-third of the population faces "acute food insecurity", the WFP says.

Its latest assessment says that 15 of Afghanistan`s 34 provinces showed less food consumption in the last month, the worst-hit being Ghazni, Khost, and Paktika in the east.

"While a refugee outflow is not an immediate likelihood, food shortages, further insecurity and economic downturn could hasten such a scenario in Afghanistan," it said.

Christine Cipolla, the International Committee of the Red Cross`s regional director for Asia and the Pacific, said that fighting, drought and damage to essential services had triggered internal displacement.

Critical infrastructure in Kunduz, Kandahar, and Lashkar Gah has been destroyed, she told Reuters. "We have seen attacks on medical facilities, civilian homes, electricity supply, water supply systems - and all that will need to be repaired."



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Kabul: The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has urged the SAARC countries and international communities to provide a safe haven to Afghan journalists seeking help.

In a statement on Friday, the IFJ said, "Concerns for the state of press freedom and freedom of expression in Afghanistan are escalating following the Taliban militant`s takeover, as mounting attacks and threats against Afghan media and journalists coincide with the United States departure from the country on August 31."Journalists in Afghanistan are in need of crucial support at this critical juncture in history. Therefore, the IFJ urges the SAARC governments to provide necessary supports including visas, safe houses, and other logistical measures at this time of severe humanitarian crisis," IFJ added. Hundreds of journalists and their families are facing a difficult situation, without passports, visas, or funds to survive, according to IFJ sources.

Those journalists who had reported critically about the Taliban, or those from ethnic communities, have fled to neighboring countries including Pakistan. More than 90 media outlets have reportedly closed during this period, IFJ said.Despite assurances from the Taliban for a private, independent, and free media, their present actions and historical evidence prove otherwise. Afghan journalists who fear for their safety and security under the Taliban, recall that during the previous Taliban regime (1996-2001), the press was heavily controlled and independent journalism was almost impossible.

The Taliban has a history of targeting journalists and restricting media coverage. This outflux of media workers encapsulates a fear among journalists that their work will not be possible under the Taliban's rule.

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Islamabad: Pakistan on Thursday temporarily closed a key border crossing with Afghanistan, apparently due to fear of the influx of refugees eager to leave their homeland after the Taliban seized power last month.

Chaman border crossing - the second-largest commercial border point with Afghanistan after the Torkham commercial town in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa - has been closed due to security threats, Geo News reported, citing sources.

Earlier in the day, Interior Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed had said that the Chaman crossing may be closed for some days due to security threats.

"We will be closing the Chaman crossing for a while," he said, without specifying how long the border would be shut.

He said there was calm in and around the border.

"Our forces are present at the border. We are proud of our security institutions for the service they are rendering for the security of the country," he said.

He said Pakistan desires peace and stability in Afghanistan, adding that peace in Afghanistan is important for peace in Pakistan.

The crossing links Pakistan's border town of Chaman with Spin Boldak in the Afghan province of Kandahar and is frequented by the Afghan as well as used for trade between the two countries.

Thousands of Afghans have been amassing around the crossing to sneak into Pakistan which has already announced that it was not in a position to accept more refugees, according to security officials.

Already around 3 million Afghan refugees have been living in Pakistan, some for more than three decades, since the invasion of their country by the erstwhile USSR in 1979.

Pakistan officials have expressed fears that about a million more would rush into the country if border regulations were relaxed.

Currently, more than 90 per cent of Pakistan's over 2,500-kilometer border with Afghanistan has been fenced and only about a dozen crossing points allow entry to those having valid travel documents.
New Delhi: The Taliban is set to unveil new government in Afghanistan on Friday, September 3, according to reports. An announcement will be made to lay out the key appointments to the new Islamic government.

While Sheikh Haibatullah Akhundzada will be the supreme authority of the new government. Earlier, Anamullah Samangani, a member of the Taliban`s cultural commission had informed, "The Islamic government that we will announce will be a model for the people. There is no doubt about the presence of the Commander of the Faithful (Akhunzada) in the government. He will be the leader of the government."

The co-founder of the Taliban, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar has been appointed as the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Afghanistan, local media informed. He is also expected to be in charge of the day-to-day affairs.

Also, Sirajuddin Haqqani an influential operations leader and Mawlawi Muhammad Yakoub, who is the son of the Taliban movements founder Mullah Muhammad Omar are expected to be given key positions.

The arrangements have been made and the ceremonies will be held at the Presidential palace, Ahmadullah Muttaqi, chief of multimedia branch for the cultural commission of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan said.

Though, discussions on formation of the new government have been more or less final, other details like the system`s name, the national flag or national anthem remain to be held, Tolo News reported.

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New Delhi: After getting the control over the large part of Afghanistan, Taliban are reaching up to various countries to get support to the forthcoming government of Afghanistan. The representatives of the political office of Taliban held meetings with the delegations of United Kingdom, Germany and China informed Taliban Spokesperson Suhail Shaheen.

M Abbas Stanikzai, Deputy Director, Political Office (PO) and his accompanying delegation met with Simon Gass, Special Envoy of the Prime Minister of UK and Markus Potzel, German Ambassador to Afghanistan in Doha. They have discussed the ongoing situation of the country, rehabilitation of the Airport and issues related to economic development and humanitarian assistance, political and security topics as well as mutual relations came under discussion.

Spokesperson informed that the UK delegation reiterated that they had already increased their humanitarian assistance and was ready to cooperate with IEA in future as well and the German delegation emphasized on boosting and continuing their humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan.

The PO delegation welcomed their humanitarian assistance. Spokesperson further informed that Abdul Salam Hanafi, Deputy Director, PO held a phone conversation with Wu Jianghao, Deputy Foreign Minister of the Peoples Republic of China. Both sides discussed the ongoing situation of the country and future relations.

While giving the details of the telephonic conversation the spokesperson informed that the Chinese Deputy Foreign Minister said that they would maintain their embassy in Kabul, adding our relations would beef up as compared to the past and Afghanistan can play an important role in security and development of the region.

Dy FM of China also assures the Taliban that China will also continue and increase its humanitarian assistance especially for treatment of COVID-19.

Meanwhile, sources informed that Slovenia holds the rotating presidency of Council of the European Union for the period July to December 2021.

In this capacity, it will host an informal meeting of the EU Foreign Affairs Council on today, which will be attended by EU Foreign Ministers. This format, known as the Gymnich meeting, is a highlight of each Presidency.

A special invitation has been extended to Indian foreign minister Jai Shanker by the EU Presidency to participate in this informal meeting and interact with the EU FMs.

Focus of discussions is likely to be on developments in Afghanistan and the Indo-Pacific (EU's Indo-Pacific Strategy is expected in September 2021).
Washington: All four people aboard a small jet were killed Thursday morning when it crashed shortly after taking off from a small airport in Connecticut, officials said. The jet took off just before 10 AM From the Robertson Airport before crashing into the building at Trumpf Inc., a manufacturing company, Farmington Police Lt. Tim McKenzie said.

"It appears there was some type of mechanical failure during the takeoff sequence that resulted in the crash behind us," he said.

The plane, a Cessna Citation 560X, was headed to Dare County Regional Airport in Manteo, North Carolina, the Federal Aviation Administration said. Two pilots and two passengers aboard the plane were killed, McKenzie said. Their names were not immediately released.

We are responding to a plane crash into a building at 111 Hyde Rd. Media can stage at the intersection of New Britain Ave and Hyde Rd for now. Any updates will be on our Twitter page. Please avoid the area so emergency crews can evacuate the immediate area.  Farmington CT Police (@FarmingtonCTPD) September 2, 2021

The crash set off chemical fires inside the Trumpf building, Gov. Ned Lamont said. Everybody who was inside the Trumpf building has been accounted for and there were no serious injuries, McKenzie said Lamont said authorities were in the process of identifying those who died on the plane. He said there was nothing left of it when first responders arrived.

"It was just a ball of fire, an explosion, and then the chemical fires afterwards," he said.

"I think they are still trying to identify who was there, identify the next of kin before we can say anything else. I just know it was incredible. The thing was filled with jet fuel." Farmington is in central Connecticut, about 10 miles (16 kilometers) southwest of the state capital of Hartford.

McKenzie said an intense fire burned for over 20 minutes.

Caleb Vaichaus, who works near the crash site, said he ran to the scene after hearing a loud explosion and seeing billows of black smoke from the Trumpf building.

"I ran straight toward it to see if I could help. I got as close as I possibly could and the flames were extremely hot and the fire was just getting bigger," he told WTIC-TV.
New Delhi: One of the oldest faces of Afghanistans struggle, former Prime Minister and chief of the Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin (HIG) party Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who returned from exile in 2016, has supported dialogue and elections to decide the next Afghan government. The 72-year-old, who is participating in discussions with Taliban leaders, is known to have deep and well-established links with Pakistans intelligence agencies.

The veteran Afghan leader spoke to an Indian news channel, and talked in detail about the roles of Pakistan, China and his role in the formation of the current regime under Taliban.

Hekmatyar, who is currently one of the oldest faces of Afghanistans struggle, has witnessed three consecutive superpowers invade Afghanistan in the past century - the British, the Soviet Union and the United States of America, said that the forces of these nations entered Afghanistan at the peak of their power but they failed to achieve any of their strategic goals and had to withdraw with their heads hanging in shame.

According to him, the geostrategic importance of Afghanistan has been boosted by the eventual defeat of the United States in the twenty-year-long intractable war, adding that Afghanistan has now turned into a playground of regional and global rivalries.

Asked about his talks to the Taliban, Hamid Karzai and Abdullah Abdullah regarding the formation of the new government, the vetran leader said that "We have to wait till the Taliban arrive at an internal consensus with regards to their stance and proposed structure for the coming political order. Such a plan can then be forwarded to other stakeholders through the formal and final negotiations."

About his role in the new administration, theveteran war lord told the news channel that he was satisfied with and thankful to Almighty Allah for the withdrawal of NATO troops, adding "Im willing to unconditionally support the Taliban in consolidating the security/law and order sector as well as the formation of a centralized government."

When asked about Afghanistan's role in removing Pakistans negative mindset and influence, the former Afghan PM said that everyone has understood the fact that insecurity, conflict and the presence of terrorist outfits or states are detriment to all, adding "Pakistan is second only to Afghanistan in how much it has been affected due to all these conflicts."

According to him, the future Afghanistan governments should be non-aligned and should strive to prevent them from becoming a site for political, intelligence, military and economic rivalries, adding "Previous experiences have shown that every time Kabul has aligned with a regional or global rival, it has always led to conflict. Past alignments with the US and Soviet Union have gone on to prove that point, a bloody history we should diligently avoid."

When asked about China, and his support to Islamic fighters in East Turkestan, the veteran leader said that Afghanistan is in dire need of security and development to compensate for the forty-year-old conflict, adding "We need to heal from our wounds before we can think about other issues especially those concerning the world beyond our borders."

About the way the US troops have withdrawn from Afghanistan, Hekmatyar termed it appalling and contrary to all humanitarian standards, as it was coupled with savagery, bloodshed and destruction, adding "We can say that their departure was filled with vengefulness and hatred towards Afghans - both friends and foe."

On his joining the future government in Afghanistan, the veteran leader told CNN-News18 that the Taliban will have to make decisions about the structure and composition of the government based on the circumstances of the country and its national interests, adding "We hope that they are mindful of all these aspects while taking the necessary decisions."

Asked about what kind of a society will he want to see in Afghanistan, he categorically said that it should be a free, independent, non-aligned, war-free Afghanistan that should have a government representative of "our Muslim and national values".

About the role of women in new Afghanistan, he was quoted as saying "women in an Islamic Afghanistan will enjoy all their inalienable human and Islamic rights. They shall feel more valued than women of any other country since the rights and privileges given to women in Islam are far more progressive and equal compared to all other schools of thought and systems."

About India role in new Afghanistan, the veteran Afghan leader said, "India should play a positive and constructive role in Afghanistan, contrary to their role in the past four decades. It chose to support the invasion and occupation of both the Soviet Union and the United States of America instead of supporting the Afghan cause for freedom."

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